David Wallace - Broom of the System

Lang cleared his throat. “But then after some time went on like that, on one particular Saturday we didn’t go. We couldn’t go that time. My Daddy had some emergency, I had shit to do, so on. So we didn’t go that Saturday. And the next day I remember we couldn’t go that day either. There was just no two ways about it. But Monday we did go, to make up the visit, like surprise her with a visit, to make it up, which seemed fair and all. We all went ahead and piled in that Monday after I got off school. We went, and as we pull up that long drive up the hill we’re confused, ‘cause we can see her, hair all white and wheelchair shining, there on the porch, with everything looking all dark and nasty around her in the tinted glass. And my Daddy goes ’What the hell?‘ ’cause here it was Monday, not Saturday. And it was cool out, you know. It was like November, and things could get cool. But and so she’s sitting there anyway on the porch, in her chair, in blankets, so on.

“And we get up there and get out of the car and go on up to the porch, and she’s glad as hell to see us, like I said her eyes were milky but the milk seemed like it went out of them when she was real happy. She was clapping her hands real slow and soft, and smiling, and trying to hurry to pull pot holders and shit out of the blankets in her lap to show my mother, and grabbing at us and all, and my Daddy says something like ‘Momma it’s Monday, it’s not Saturday, we couldn’t come Saturday so we come today instead to be fair, now you tell me how’d you know to be out here waiting for us today, we didn’t tell anybody we was coming,’ so on. And she looks at my Daddy I remember like she don’t understand, for a time, and then she smiles, real nice, and shrugs, and looks around at us and says well she waits for us every day. Then she nods. Every day, see. She says it like she thought we knew how she waited for us to maybe visit every goddamned day.”

Lenore watched Lang.

“Turned out she didn’t know Saturday from Adam anymore,” Lang said. “She didn’t know we had this shit down to a routine.” He looked out past Lenore. “Or else maybe she did know, but she waited anyway, thinkin’ maybe she’d get lucky and we’d want to see her even on some day when we didn’t have to. Even when it got real cool out on the porch of the place she’d wait, it turned out. She just kept looking at my Daddy like she didn’t see what the problem was, this was just her life, now, here, didn’t we know it? While all the while we just stood around feeling terrible. I remember I felt like shit after that. I was big-time sad.” Lang rubbed at an eye. “She died after that, too, ‘fore I got much older.”

Lenore watched Lang rub one eye. She thought about his grandmother. Lang stopped rubbing his eye and looked at her. Lenore found her throat aching again. She began to cry, just a little bit.

“Now I didn’t mean to make you sad,” Lang said. He smiled kindly. “That’s my sad, it’s not your sad.”

He began kissing at Lenore’s eyes, to get the tears. He did it so gently that Lenore put her arms around his neck. After a minute Lang rolled her toward him and began with one hand to try to unhook the fastener on her bra. Lenore let him, and kept her arms around his neck. Lang played with Lenore’s breasts while she cried and held onto him and thought of a sky in Texas, in November, through tinted glass.

/a/

“Good morning, Patrice.”

“Good morning. How are you this morning?”

“I’m just fine thank you. The nurse tells me you have something for me. ”

“Yes.”

“Can I ask what it is?” “Three men go camping in the woods. One of the men starts out doing all the cooking, but the three men make an arrangement where, if either of the other two complain about the man’s cooking, the complainer will automatically take over the cooking.”

“I’m not sure I understand, Patrice.”

“The cook cooks and cooks, and the other two campers smile and say it’s very good, and they all continue to camp. And by and by the cook gets tired of cooking, and wishes someone would complain and so have to take over for him, but there are still no complaints. So the cook begins overcooking things on purpose, or burning them, or hardly cooking them and having them be raw. But the other two campers still eat it all and manage to smile. Soon the cook begins putting soap in the coffee, sprinkling dirt on everything he cooks, but still the other two go out of their way not to complain.”

“Is this a joke? This is a joke, Patrice, I can tell.”

“So finally the cook gets angry, he’s so very tired of cooking, and he goes deep into the woods and finds a pile of moose droppings, and he takes them back to camp and roasts them, and serves them for dinner, along with soapy coffee. And the other two campers dig in, and the cook smiles at them expectantly, and they’re eating very slowly, and also looking at each other, with faces. Finally one of them puts down his fork and says to the cook, ‘Hey, Joe, I’m afraid I’ve got to tell you that these things taste like moose droppings. Good, though.’”

“Ha-ha.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Patrice, that was splendid, that joke. Where did you hear that? Did you make that joke up?”

“My son told it to me.”

“Well isn’t that just good, Patrice.”

“Yes.”

“When exactly did he tell that joke to you?”

“I think a joke like that ought to be worth some breathing, don’t you?”

“I certainly do.”

“I sure think so.”

/b/

11 September

The End Is a Night Fire.

It is another May night, because May never ever ends. Here is a street that should be dark. In a gust of light the cement of the street can be seen to be new and rough. Some of the homes do not yet have lawns. All the trees are young and thin and supported by networks of ropes and stakes. They flicker and whip in the wind of light.

The wind is a wind of hot sparks. The sparks rise and whirl and die in the shrouds of light they make. At the end of the street sighs a burning home. The home looks the same as every other home on the street. It is on fire. Fire comes out of every opening in the home and rises. As the fire makes more openings in the home and rises from them, the home sighs and settles. The heat of the fire makes the fence in the lawn glow red, and the fence cooks the lawn around it.

The home begins to fold into its fire. Fire comes out of all the openings. It sounds like paper crinkling. It tightens the skin of your face. The fire cannot be controlled, and the home draws in all the air on the street and with a sigh folds down into itself. It takes farever. Everything falls into itself, slow as feathers.

Out the door of the home flies a bird with its tailfeathers on fire. It rises into the sky in circles. It spirals up and up into the sky until its light melts into a sparkle of stars. Down to the lawn floats a corkscrew pattern of burnt feathers.

Feet run over the lawn, through the flaming feathers. Fieldbinder and Evelyn Slotnik, hand in hand, run into the night, their hair on fire. In the light of their own hair they are wind. They make glowing cuts in the black square blocks of the suburbs as they run the tiny miles to the Slotniks’ pool. Fences blush and fall away. An airplane is flying low overhead. The passengers look down and see it all. They see one shining pond of fire soaking out into the lawns and making shrouds of needled light that float up toward them, disappear when they touch. They see two surprised points of orange fire moving too fast through black backyards and waffled fences, making for a kidney of clean new blue water that lies ahead in a line lit up from below. It is captured forever on quality film.