Percival Everett - Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

You don’t see too many girls with those anymore.

Do you have a middle name?

I do. And you?

It’s Virgil.

21

Thanks ever so much for the footnote, said he,

Thanks ever so much for the plug.

Thanks for the roses and very strong tea,

And for business swept under the rug.

Remember the pudding we dined on last night,

The wine and that stinky bit of cheese,

And jot down the names of those still all right

And tuck them away with the keys.

Dream of a place under the evening star

And of pigeons all lined in a row,

Of asphodels, lilies, and blooms without scent

And the tugging of the undertow.

Recall the pudding we dined on last night,

The wine and rather rank cheese.

Jot down the names to be read in the light

And tuck them away with the keys, the keys,

Tuck them away with keys.

22

When you kick out for yourself, my dear, and you will, remember, whatever you do, to find good people to be your friends. Billy had regained consciousness but not his complete senses. I was both his daughter and myself, it seemed. He was in a bed in a room in the hospital building of Teufelsdröckh. He then said, You know, we are as old as we feel.

How old do you feel, my friend?

I am a mountain.

I asked the doctor, a man not as old as a plumber’s new watch, how Billy was doing.

He’s ninety, the doctor said.

Immediately I had renewed respect for his judgment and his profession. I nodded.

Always build one door opposite another so that birds, bats, and the wind have a way out. It will also allow your house to become a flute, if it so chooses.

23

Were I to begin this all again, here and undeferred and noncircuitously, I might begin: The river runs past Eden, from the sag of the shore to the bend of the bay, delivering us back to where we first set about. But I cannot begin this all again and, what is more, I would not, will not, shall not. Never keep all of your allusions in one basket. And never assume there is not a fish at the end of your line.

Why are you talking like that?

I thought you were asleep.

How can I sleep with you spouting that gibberish and with all these hellish machines beeping and screaming every few seconds?

Are you feeling stronger?

Billy ignored the question. Tell them they don’t need these machines. I’ll let them know when I’m dead. Or you’ll let them know. They might not trust you at first, but they’ll finally believe you. He lay back and closed his eyes. Have you ever contemplated the meaning of life?

The meaning of life is the purpose of life. I’d settle for any meaning at all.

Is it going to rain?

The photograph is fine, a little wrinkled, but fine.

Billy nodded. Give them hell. Say something else crazy, like you were saying before.

I don’t have any more gibberish.

Of course you do. You’re full of it.

Once upon a time, Billy, once upon a time.

He spoke with his eyes shut, his lids fluttering. I don’t believe in god and so I don’t believe in heaven, but still I hope to see my little girl’s face.

I know just what you mean.

Come now, just a wee bit more from the fountain of nonsense?

Come forth, Lazarus! And he came fifth and lost his job.

I knew you had it in you.

And so Billy ceased breathing and stopped his blood from circulating, though I believe his brain was still doing brain things. His unsympathetic, attendant machines announced his resolution in concert monotone. The doctor and a nurse clogged into the room to stand motionless at the foot of the bed. He’s gone, I said, and to my surprise they believed me.

24

Once upon the middle of a story — in the remote distance dense plumes of smoke mingled with jets of flame that gushed forth from an immense pile of earthly dividers — the multitude of common spectators sent up an ecstatic shout and clapped hands with an emphasis that made the welkin echo. Throughout that room there was the same obscurity as before, but not the same gloom associated with Billy’s loss. No flame had vanished and the whole scene remained.

That night I brought in the keys from the hole behind the azaleas beneath my window, removed them from the plastic bag from the Rite Aid pharmacy, and sorted them by size, then color. Keys. Blades and bows. I again paused at the very old-looking one, so primitive and so strange.

25

Murky as it is, the conventional precept that the idea signification contains an augmentation/intensification uncertainty has rather obvious ramifications. The theory that the signification of a term is, in fact, a concept supports the implication that significations actually have individual substance. But are not the significations here for all of us? Are they not public? I’m afrege this is true. Maybe not. Cannot the same be signified for more than one person regardless of psychological predisposition or disposition, for that matter? Even still, understanding the signification, grasping the individual substance of such a thing, is an act of cognitive individuation. So then it comes down to the occupation of a particular and singular, if not nameable or isolatable, psychological state for some meaning to be available or even possible. Alcohol.

This I thought while dead Billy sat at my table. We were drinking. I more than he. He was contained in a forest-green cremation urn wrapped with three tan stripes and a tan cap. It was shaped a like Russian nesting doll and maybe it was, because I never opened it. I would scatter you someplace, my friend, but I would not know where.

Thankfully, Billy did not reply.

We went through the keys together. Some were obviously door keys, others keys to either cabinets or locks. A couple were certainly padlock keys. None was marked in any way to yield to me its corresponding lock. Billy suggested that I take one short key and one long, or at least two keys quite dissimilarly shaped, and search with them alone until I discovered their mates in the world. This made sense. I would not confuse the keys and I could finally create a key to the keys. And then I would devise a plan for my keys.

And what is this one?

Odd, isn’t it?

Billy held the old rusty key and studied it. It must be a keepsake or a charm. It certainly opens no door around here.

Like Zeno to the roost, you are. When was the last time you visited? I know, I know, you just can’t seem to get here or there or anywhere for that matter. Half a step, half a step, half a step home. There is a nice nurse at the desk during the afternoon into the evening. I like her short hair because it does not make her look like a boy. I like her in spite of her taste in men. But because of her taste in men, I can know a little. A little about whens and wheres, goings and comings. And she keeps my secret, our secret, and so I guess that makes us accomplices and I guess that means we’re on the same side and I suppose that means we share the same enemies and I wonder if that means that I am all wrong about her taste in men.

26

Dear Adverbs, Adverbial Phrases, and Turns of Phrase,

I am writing to express, an odious word, perhaps rather then, to impress upon you, in no uncertain terms, enthusiastically even, my indebtedness to you. Your unqualified and qualifying force, your abating timbre, your mitigating music, your bombastic possibility, oh, how gently you insert yourselves, allowing such modest station as extraneous expression, superfluous excess. I will probably, without a doubt , and without fail admit to your undying, if I may be so dramatic, importance to the language I speak, and you would do well to recognize that the language to which I refer is not English, but, merely, crucially, human language. It has taken me, and I hate even to count, many years to so happily employ my unused and, surprisingly, up until recently, unwanted and, largely, unnoticed supply of ly ’s.