Stephen Dixon - What Is All This? - Uncollected Stories

I write — of course I write — and of course I write, though maybe not of course for both, because someone else could be writing this, or I could be dictating it, even if I say I’m not. But I am writing and not dictating this, I swear, though I also swear I’m a good liar, but I’m writing this and what I write, which would be the start of the first paragraph I write if I deleted, as I think I should, everything that precedes is:, is: Up you go, there you are, now you help me, and I stick my arm up, she leans over and grabs my wrist and helps me up. I get on top of the wall where she is, say Ready? and she nods, and we both jump down to the other side.

So what do you think (I say)?

That we go right back over (she says). I don’t like it.

You don’t like what?

It here. This place.

What about this place, or why?

We don’t belong here. We’ve heard terrible things about it. We might be trespassing; it could be dangerous. I don’t know, but let’s go back.

We’ve come to explore, that’s why we’re here. We’ve seen the wall countless times from the other side, said several times we wanted to see what’s on the other side. Now we’re on the other side for the first time and we see what’s on the other side, which looks almost like the side we came from. Let’s go further in to see what’s further in.

(To me that’s almost writing nothing at all, or worse than nothing, though writing next to nothing could be worse than nothing if I keep it. Maybe I should chuck it all from the start. Or go back over the wall when she first asked us to and continue from there. Or climb over the wall for the first time with or without her but try to forget I’ve been over this wall before. Instead I’ll just go a little farther in from where we are now over that wall and see what I find. For sometimes things just happen, like a wild dog might appear and try to bite off my leg. What I mean is how will I know what I can or can’t find if I don’t look for it and give myself the time? Of course by continuing from here I’ll be stopping myself from finding what I might just find if I started from a place farther back or completely over again, so what it boils down to is my wanting to go on because I normally wouldn’t and because I am here and don’t expect to be here again, even if I realize this can be worse than doing nothing at all. I should delete this entire paragraph, or at least cut or correct certain parts, like the “of course” that starts the previous sentence and “so what it boils down to” and such. But because that’s also what I’ve always done — cutting, correcting, retyping, making better, maybe making worse — when all I want to do is go further in and see what happens and explore, this time I won’t.)

A dog appears out of the woods. Look, a dog (she says). Here, doggy, doggy, here. It seems like a nice trained dog.

I don’t think it is (I say).

The dog growls, barks, Lucinda jumps. (I am not Lucinda. My name’s Hank, in real life and in this what I write. I also see I didn’t have to say who Lucinda wasn’t, because this being a first-person piece, Lucinda — at least in this country — obviously can’t be me. But I now see why I felt I had to say something about who Lucinda wasn’t: Lucinda could have been the dog. But I’ve never seen that dog before or known its name. Instead of saying I wasn’t Lucinda, I should have said the dog wasn’t, since I didn’t want to give the impression it was the dog who jumped. I know there’s some flawed logic in there or whatever it’s called if flawed logic isn’t it, but I’m not going to go over it and delete or correct it or any of the other flawed logic and possible grammatical mistakes that precede and might follow this paragraph, since all I want to do is go further on and not get sidetracked so much.)

Go home (I say). I think Lucinda thinks I said it to her, because she runs to the wall.

Help me over (she says).

I didn’t mean you when I said go home (I say). But I’ll skip sticking the “I say” and “she says” in parentheses. I don’t know why I started it; I’ve never done it before. I’m sure I did it for pedantic literary reasons: that it might come out meaning something more than if I wrote it in a more normal way. I’m frequently trying for something new and most of the times it doesn’t work. But I’ll keep the parenthesized “I say” and “she says” I have in so far, even if I know they didn’t work. But where was I?

I didn’t mean you, I say, but the dog.

I’m going home even if you didn’t mean me, as I don’t want to deal with dogs or anything else here. I’ve seen what’s on this side, or seen enough, and now I want to get back over to the other side, not so much to go home, although I just might. Now help me over.

Wait; let’s go further in.

Help me over, I said.

And I said just a little further in.

Dog barks and snarls and then rushes at me, and I don’t move. I read to do that some place, or rather, I once read to do that and not show any fear. So I stand still and say to the dog without what I think is a sign of fear in my appearance and voice: GO HOME! Or rather: GO HOME, the exclamation point being redundant and unnecessary, I think, just as I think the word redundant or unnecessary is redundant or unnecessary if I use one or the other. And I put the command in caps because I of course yelled it, which is why the exclamation point was redundant or unnecessary: for how loud can I seem to yell on a page without my having to say I yelled very loud or I yelled so loud I must have been heard a city block away? In other words, for I didn’t explain that well, I don’t think an exclamation point adds anything to the capital letters when I’m yelling. And why the “of course” from above, since if it was of course , why say it was? There’s probably a good reason, or just a reason, forget the good, the reason being idiomatical, I think. Anyway, the dog snarls again and snaps at my pointing finger — I’m pointing at it but not too close to its open mouth, and that arm of the pointing finger is the only part of my body that moved — and turns and goes. Dog does: disappears into the woods.

Come on, Lucinda says. I also don’t see why I don’t use quotation marks for dialogue. I don’t usually like it when others leave them out. You have — I do — the writer does — more flexibility with quotation marks. For instance, if I write a line like — Come on, Lucinda says (or: Come on, Lucinda says), but with a period after says rather than a comma, it could seem as if I want a character to say aloud “Come on, Lucinda says,” rather than just “Come on,” which is what I intended up there. I think I’ve almost made a case against quotation marks with my example, so let me give a clearer one. I’ve time? Because I usually like a tight piece, and these explanations and examples are dragging this one out. But last one and then I’ll try to go straight through.

If I write, and I’ll put the example on its own line to make it even clearer:

— Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand, how do we know I’m not having a character say “Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand”? It’s possible, and so is her giving him his hand. His hand might have been torn off by the dog and she picked it up and gave it to him to take to the hospital, while she fought off or distracted the dog so he could escape, to get it sewed back on right away. Or else she might have found his hand somewhere, or the dog dug it up and brought it over to her — an artificial hand, perhaps — and given it to him because she knew it was his. Or she might have taken his left hand, we’ll say, and put it in his right hand when he still had both hands attached to his body, artificial or not, or because he had no control of his left hand because it had been permanently maimed during a war. Or the control he didn’t have might have been when he touched her when he knew she didn’t want to be touched, and to show she didn’t want to be touched, she put his touching hand into his other hand, whether the touching hand or the one she put the real hand in was artificial or not. Or both his hands could have been artificial, and she didn’t want to be touched not because they were artificial but because she simply didn’t want to be touched by him, or at least not on the place he touched her.