Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

“But one more thing. Only what I wanted to say to you before I got distracted and asked about your hearing.”

“All right. One more thing. What?”

“Your face.”

“Yes, my face.”

“Yes, that you have a face.”

“You’re right. How completely absentminded of me. I have a face. Thanks for reminding me. Goodbye.”

He starts off. I grab his arm. He swivels around hard this time and says “Stop me once more and I’m going to do something you won’t like.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re provoking me. Detaining me for some ulterior or insidious reason of your own which I think I’m finally on to and am a little fearful of. Now, may I go? Not that I have to ask you. But rather, I am going, and stop me once more and it’s the police I talk to next, not you.”

“Go on, go on, I’m not stopping you.”

“You don’t call grabbing my arm a couple of times and saying nonsensical things to stop me, stopping me?”

“To be honest, yes, I’d say I stopped you, but not with nonsensical things.”

“Oh? That I have a face?”

“My point wasn’t just that you have a face. For we all have faces. All except those poor disfigured people who don’t have faces. Not disfigured. People without faces at all, I mean. But that wasn’t my point. My point was that you have something on your face.”

“My nose.”

“Yes, your nose. You see, you knew. I didn’t have to tell you after all.”

“Don’t I know. And excuse me for being so blunt, sir, but you’re mad.”

“No I’m not. I thought you were more observant than that. Can you take a little more honesty for one day? I’m feeling unusually content with myself talking with you here, not at all mad. That’s honesty. That’s an honest statement about my life, is what I’m saying, which you might or might not agree.”

“I mean in the head, which you knew perfectly well. A screw loose. Daft. Disturbed. Your desperate need for attention perhaps. Your…but I’m not going to analyze you. Excuse me for even having said what I did, as your mental and emotional states are none of my business. And now I’m going. Stop me again and I will call the police, and after that, who knows? Maybe the courts will decide you belong in an asylum for a while, which I don’t think you’d like in the least. Now, have I made my point clear?”

“Good and clear. If that was any indication how you make your points, then you make them very well.”

I watch him go. I sit on the curb. I watch the cars and trucks go by. The vehicles. Buses, bicycles, motorcycles, scooters. People go by too. Baby carriages. Not along the street but across it and then on the sidewalk across the street. Lots go by. Dogs with their walkers, dogs without. A battery-powered wheelchair. Two girls on roller skates in the street. Only roller skaters I saw today on the street or off. Day goes by. Night comes and stops. I stay on the curb. I look at the lights of passing planes overhead. I look at the water running along the curb under my legs. A twig floats by. Half a walnut shell empty side up. Piece of paper. I pick it up and read it. It’s the label of a pickle jar. Spices, cucumber slices, vinegar, a preservative, and where it’s made and by which company and the kind of pickle it is. I drop it into the water and it floats away. Someone must have opened a fire hydrant nearby.

A dog off its leash stops and sniffs the parking meter pole I’ve been using as a back rest. I shoo it away. It comes back. I say “Scat.” It sniffs the pole some more and lifts its leg. I say “Get out of here, beat it, scram,” and raise my hand.

“Touch that dog and you’re in trouble,” a man holding a leash says.

“He your dog?”

“Whether he is or isn’t, just say I don’t see anyone beating on dogs.”

“If he’s your dog, tell me, so I can ask you to call him away.”

“Why? The pole’s public. On a public sidewalk alongside a public street. So that dog has as much right to the pole as you.”

“Any sensible person knows people have more rights than dogs. Just the word ‘public,’ for instance, will tell you that. From publicus, pubes, populus, people, people, not that one should expect anyone else to know that.”

“Okay. Maybe some people have more rights than dogs. But for you, I don’t think so.”

“Whatever you say. But I don’t want your dog, if he is your dog — just this dog then — stepping a step nearer to me and lifting his leg again, or I’ll summon the police and have it taken away. There’s the street for what a dog has to do, not the sidewalk or against a building wall or fire hydrant or parking meter pole, and certainly not against me.”

He raises his finger in a curse sign and walks away. The dog follows, does its duty against a parking meter pole a few feet away. Does its other duty on the sidewalk a few feet past that. The man inspects it, hooks the leash on the dog’s collar, and they leave. I continue to sit. Those were the only words I said to anyone or were said to me since I saw that other man on the street and tried to speak to him about his face. Then it begins to rain. Someone dressed for the rain and under an umbrella comes over to me and says “Don’t you think you should come out of the rain?”

That your umbrella?”

“Yes.”

“Can I get under it?”

There’s only room enough for one. You want an umbrella, buy one. If you haven’t the money, work so you can buy one. I don’t think that’s too unreasonable a solution. But if you want a cold and possibly a fatal case of pneumonia, then you’re doing exactly the right thing.”

Thank you for your advice. I think I’ll just continue to sit.”

“If that’s what you really want, I’ve no complaints.”

She goes. I continue to sit in the rain. I begin to catch a cold. Coughs, sneezes, a few feverish chills. The rain turns to sleet and then snow. I continue to sit. I can’t see the sky or the buildings across the street because of the snow and now not even the passing vehicles. The rain soaked me, now the snow covers me. I have no coat or hat on and only half a pair of socks, and the water’s soaked through the holes in my soles and the protective layers of paper inside my shoes to my feet. Several people stop beside me. They’re all dressed for the snow. One of them says “You have to come out of the snow. It’s a blizzard. Twenty inches are expected. It’s going to last till early tomorrow the weather report says. You’ll freeze to death out here.”

“You know or have a better place for me to go? I’ve run out of thinking or looking for them.”

“Under an awning. If all the awnings around here are down because the owners are afraid they’ll be crushed or blown away, then in a lobby or store. And if not there because they’d rather not have you for whatever their reasons, then in a parked car if you can find one unlocked or in one of those shelters downtown, but someplace warmer and more sheltered than here.”

Thank you very much but I don’t think I can do that anymore.”

“If you’re too sick to, I’m sure we can call some service to help.”

“No, I think it’s better I just sit.”

Someone must have called the police. By this time I’m very sick. The police put a coat on me, carry me to a drugstore and sit me beside a warm radiator till an ambulance comes. I’m driven to a city hospital, wheeled into the emergency section, put on an examining table. The curtains are pulled around me. My clothes are scissored off. The doctor who takes care of me is the same man I spoke to earlier today about something regarding his face. He checks my eyes and ears and after taking my pulse and listening to my chest, says “Personally, I knew you’d come to no good.”