Joy Williams - The Quick & the Dead

“You want ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’?”

“I’ve been asking ,” the youth said.

“I love ‘Ghost Riders in the Sky’,” Sherwin said. “It just goes on and on.”

The youth’s friend materialized beside him. “Well, play the goddamn thing then,” he said. The two of them could be twins, but this one was shaggier, coarser. Cute, Sherwin thought.

“I was just about to take a break,” Sherwin said. “It’s break time. I wouldn’t want to play it when my heart wasn’t in it.”

“You should get a new personality,” the rough one said. “Yours is just about worn out.” He was looking pointedly at Sherwin’s tuxedo jacket, which was, in fact, a little shabby. Sherwin had four of them, all in barely presentable condition.

“It’s not that easy, pretty,” the muffin one said. “You’re very skilled at it, but most people wouldn’t know where to begin getting a new personality.” He put his hand on his lover’s arm.

Sherwin sensed great animosity toward his person tonight. Perhaps his true self, usually so carefully concealed, had become visible, and instead of being remarkable resembled a little speckled stone that kept presenting itself to be kicked. People mostly left him alone. Or avoided him, whatever. But he was having a problem tonight. His friend Jasper, who was having a problem with brain lesions, who was dying, actually, had said, “Now, Win, when you’ve got a problem, don’t think of it as such. Think of it as a mystery, then it’s not a problem anymore but a lovely mystery.”

Someone in the vicinity was saying, “If we can get enough people in that subdivision, there’ll be enough effluent to support a golf course.”

The rough darling was giving Sherwin a big murderous smile. His left incisor had been sharpened to quite a point. Sherwin missed being in love, the danger and stupidity of it. He walked outside and lit a cigarette. My self, he thought, a little speckled stone. Weren’t there screaming stones somewhere? Probably in Celtic lands. They screamed when something bad was about to happen, some avoidable catastrophe poised to occur.

The woman with the rucked heels and sticker mole was lying on a chaise longue, her eyes closed and her hands folded over her stomach. Some people passed out like that, just had the knack of doing it in a formal fashion.

Sherwin walked around smoking. The party had reached that warbling keen, the trilling glossolalia he knew so well and detested. He saw what appeared to be a buzzard just before the curve in the driveway and flicked his cigarette at it. It dragged itself off a bit. A buzzard and something wrong with it to boot. He regretted throwing the cigarette. That had been unkind. He lit another and leaned on the haunch of a red Mercedes convertible whose bumper sticker declared, “My Friend Was Killed by a Drunk Driver.” Person always had to have a certain kind of face on when driving that car. They must have another car they drove when they wanted to relax. Could this belong to the woman who’d passed out, the survivor who couldn’t even get her dog to listen to her troubles? Did Schopenhauer tell his problems to his poodles? Maybe that’s why he had a succession of them. Let me just run this past you … Human life has no goal, nor could the goal be reached even if it existed. Sound right to you?

That was the problem, the dilemma, Jasper was attempting to turn into such a delightful mystery at Green Palms. He had told Sherwin he was committed to conscious dying; he was sure he could make a go of it. You’ve got to go on a tour of unaccustomed thinking, Jasper said. If you’re willing to take the tour, then … What? Sherwin had asked. What then? Anything can happen, Jasper said. That’s all? Sherwin said. That’s enough to make me laugh. Anything can happen? That’s all you get for going on this tour? Jasper had never been congenial or hopeful, and now he was; it was terrible timing. His skin was sallow and his feet were bloated and gray, the long thick nails curving downward almost like a bird’s talons. He couldn’t bear the slightest pressure on his feet, not even a sheet; the breath of a door closing, a breeze, was agonizing beyond endurance. Sometimes the two of them would lose themselves for long moments, regarding Jasper’s feet. Fissures would appear, exposing a slice of shining liquid, or a bruise, a black aureole, would be born. The feet seemed to want to possess a life independent of Jasper, who they possibly and quite rightly felt was going to quit them soon.

I’ll be the first one to die consciously, Jasper assured him. Others have tried and failed, but I’m not going to fail. I think you have to start practicing for this moment at an early age, Sherwin said. Before I came here and was in the hospital there was this kid there, Jasper said. I never met him, he was in pediatrics and they wouldn’t let me near pediatrics, but he was seven years old and he was going to die and his wish, his only wish, was to get into the Guinness Book of World Records . I didn’t think that was even published anymore, Sherwin said. The record he was going for was to possess the largest collection of business cards by any individual on earth. Boxes were set up all over the hospital for people to drop their business cards in, to help this deluded kid meet his goal. I just wanted to find him and shake him, you know? That kid made me so angry, and the people who encouraged him in this … this project made me even angrier. They should’ve been helping him to die consciously. That might be hard for a little kid, Sherwin said. Yeah, to give him the benefit of the doubt, seven’s a funny age, Jasper said. Even so, I just wanted to shake him; and that wasn’t doing me any good, you know. Dying’s like any other job, it’s important to do it right. You’ve got to purify yourself. Maintain a schedule. With a schedule it doesn’t seem so bad. On Jasper’s schedule was a visit to the coast. He wanted cold seawater poured over his head, flattening his hair, chilling his scalp. He wanted the feel of that. They had to let him fly out to the coast, come back, it could be done, it wouldn’t even take a day. This place is full of dying people, you know, this place I’m in, Jasper said, and none of them is going to die aware because they’re so old and they don’t have the strength for it. But I am because I’m young, Win, I’m young.

You’re going to make me cry, baby, Sherwin said. But he didn’t feel close to crying. He didn’t even know why he came to visit Jasper. They’d had some good times once.

If you were me, I don’t think I’d stay with you like this, Jasper said. It’s awfully nice of you to visit me.

You wouldn’t stay with me? Sherwin said, professing anguish.

I don’t think so. I probably wouldn’t, Jasper said. I don’t like sick people.

Jasper faded in and out. He was struggling against it. He thought he was doing it in a new way.

I want to be good at this, Win. All these people here, they see with their memories. It’s no good, Win.

I thought you were supposed to make nice memories, Sherwin said. I thought that was the point.

I asked my aunt to put my years and my months and my days on my marker, Jasper said. Do you think she’ll do that?

I don’t know from aunts.

They don’t do it so much anymore, the months and the days. Jasper blinked his eyes several times. I’m going to change the subject. I’m announcing this so you’ll know I’m doing it deliberately, that it’s not like a weird mental convulsion I’m having. I’m doing this consciously. I don’t think my voice sounds right. I’ve got to concentrate. Maybe you should go.

Sherwin undesirable even here at deathside; it was humiliating. Sherwin began feeling sorry for himself. No, I’m going to stay with you, baby.