David Wallace - Infinite jest

‘Didn’t know whether to shit or shout Dixie after it went off. And the look on his face.’

‘One of the times for me was I’m in some bar in Lowell with some guys I’m crewing around with and we were there with some other guys, just fucking Lowell knuckleheads, your young drunks that are just getting to be your young working-type drunks that stop off after work for just a couple and don’t make it home til closing. Just putting away boilermakers and playing darts and this and that. And this one guy on the crew starts making moves on this one guy’s girl, this real ordinary-looking guy’s in there with his girl and one of our guys starts saying this and that to her, trying to pick her up, and her date got pissed off, you know, who can blame him, and there was words exchanged and so on and so forth, and we was all there with this first guy, in our like group, he was the one talking the shit to this guy’s girl but he was our boy, we’re all in the crew, so we all crew up on this girl’s date and push him around somewhat, you know how it is, say he’s talking shit to our boy, he gets a little bit of a beating, dope-slaps, nothing like extreme or blood, and we kick his ass around a little bit and toss him out of this bar and get this girl to drink boilermakers with us and the one guy that was making the moves on her in the first place gets her to start playing strip-darts, like taking off bits of clothes for points in darts, which the keep isn’t too like thrilled but these boys are his customers, it’s like family. We’re all real drunk and playing strip-darts.’

T get the picture. Sounds like a real nice picture.’

‘Except when I got a little smarter later I learned you never in a neighborhood bar fu— you don’t ever mess with a local guy with a girl and make him look small in front of the girl and then stay there where it happened if he leaves, because it’s this kind of guy always comes back.’

‘You learned to leave.’

‘Because this guy like a half-hour later on he comes back packing. Packing means there’s a Item involved, now, see.’

‘Item?’

‘A gun. This wasn’t a big one, I’m remembering a.25 somewhat, in that range, but in he comes and comes straight over to the dart game and the girl that’s down to her slip and pulls it out and without saying nothing up and comes right over and shoots our boy, that’d taken his girl and made him look small, shoots him right in the head, right in the back of the head.’

‘Boy was crazy as a shithouse rat.’

‘Well Joelle he’d got made small in front of his girl, and we stayed, and he came back and plugged him in the back of the head.’

‘And killed him dead.’

‘Not right away he didn’t die. The negativest part for me is what we do. All us guys with the guy that was shot. We are all very fucked up by this point in time. I remember it not seeming real. The keep’s busy calling the Finest, the guy drops the Item and the keep grabbed him and covered him with the bar piece and called the Finest and kept the guy back behind the bar, I think mostly now to keep us from eliminating his map right there, out of payback. We’re all blotto-zombie drunk by this juncture. The girl, there was blood all down the side of her slip. And here our boy’s shot in the head, the guy’d shot him right through the back of the head from the side, and blood’s all over. You always maybe think of individuals bleeding in this one way, like steady. But your serious bleeding comes with the pulse, if you didn’t know. It like shoots out and dies down and shoots out.’

‘Don’t have to tell me.’

‘Well I don’t know you, Joelle, am I right? I don’t know what you seen or know.’

‘I saw an old boy cut his hand off with a chainsaw cutting back brush back of the Cumberland when I was fishing with my Daddy. Like to have bled to death right there. My Daddy had to use his belt. Before he got it tied off the blood came like that, with the pulse. My Daddy got him to the hospital in his car, like to saved his life. He’d had some training. He could save lives like that.’

‘I tell you, what still gets me is we was so drunk we didn’t even somehow take it seriously, because everything seemed like a movie when I got real drunk. I still wish we’d thought to take him to the hospital right away. We could of piled him in. He wasn’t dead yet even though he didn’t look good. We didn’t even lay him down, we got this idea, one of the guys started walking him around. We all walked him around in circles like some kind of O.D., thought if we could keep him walking til the wagon came he’d be OK. By the end we was dragging him, I think then he was dead. Blood all over everybody. The gun wasn’t more than an old.25. People was yelling at us to pile him in and take him to the hospital, but we’d got this walking-him-around idea into our heads, to hold him up and walk him in circles, the girl’s screaming and trying to put her stockings on and we’re yelling to the guy that’d shot him how we were going to off with his map and so on and so forth, till the keep called an ambulance and they came and he was dead as a stick.’

‘Gately that’s really bad.’

‘Why are you even up, don’t have to work.’

‘I like it when it snows real early like this. This is the best window. But you learned a lesson.’

‘His name was Chuck or Chick. The one that got shot that time.’

‘Did you hear that McDade person at supper? You know how some folks have one of their legs shorter than the other?’

‘I don’t listen to those guys’ crap.’

‘It was down at the far end of the table at supper. He was telling Ken and me how he had a counselor when he was in Juvenile in Jamaica Plain, he had this counselor he said she had this condition where each leg was shorter than the other.’

‘I don’t think I follow you, Joelle.’

‘Each of the woman’s legs was shorter than the other.’

‘How can a leg that’s shorter than the other leg have the other leg shorter than it?’

‘He was having us on. He said the point was an AA point, that it defied sense and explaining and you just had to accept it on faith. That creepy Randy guy with the white wig was backing him up with a very straight face. McDade said she walked like a metronome. He was making fun of us, but I still thought it was funny.’

‘Maybe tell me about this veil of yours, then, Joelle, if we’re talking about defied sense.’

‘Waaaay out to one side. Then waaaay out to the other side.’

‘Really. Let’s really interface if you’re in here. How come with the veil?’

‘Bridal thing.’

‘…’

‘Aspiring Muslim.’

‘I didn’t mean to pry in. You can just tell me if you don’t want to talk about the veil.’

‘I’m also in another fellowship, with almost four years in.’

‘U.H.I.D.’

‘It’s the Union of the Hideously and Improbably Deformed. The veil is a sort of fellowship caparison.’

‘What’s it compared to?’

‘We all wear one. Almost all of us, with some time in.’

‘But if you don’t mind, how come you’re in it? U.H.I.D.? How’re you supposed to be deformed? It’s nothing that sticks way out, if I can say it. Are you, like, missing something?’

‘There’s a brief ceremony. It’s a bit like giving out chips over at the Better Late Than Never meeting, for Varying Lengths. The new U.H.I.D.s stand and receive the veil and don the veil and stand there and recite that the veil they’ve donned is a Type and a Symbol, and that they are choosing freely to be bound to wear it always — a day at a time — both in light and darkness, both in solitude and before others’ gaze, and as with strangers so with familiar friends, even Daddies. That no mortal eye will see it withdrawn. That they hereby declare openly that they wish to hide from all sight. Unquote.’