Percival Everett - Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

43

But on the way back home tonight, you wish you’d picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As if it were you who could, somehow, save him.

There was a rainbow over the hills to the north of campus. Maria Cortez stared at them. Gravity hates me, she said.

Gravity hates all of us, I told her.

I remember when gravity didn’t give me a second thought.

It was just biding time.

I heard that Ramona was fired.

I looked around for Ramona and didn’t see her. I saw Leon standing at the central building. He was wiping down a wheelchair, perhaps of someone who had died. He’d been wiping it for a good thirty minutes, nervously glancing about all the while.

I can’t say I’m sorry to see her go.

The last I’d see of Ramona was when she and Harley were having an argument that tumbled with them into the dining room.

I know it was you, Harley said.

I have to clean Chen’s toilet.

Leon and Cletus don’t have the initiative and I know it’s not Tommy.

I punched in at six just like every other day.

Just admit you’ve been doing stuff on your own.

What do you want to talk about?

I’m done with you.

Me? Me? You think I did it?

You might as well pack up. With that Harley stormed away.

Ramona followed. Billy, it must be Billy.

Who?

44

The question was whether there was some real value to which all of this, all our naming, thinking, speaking, breathing, wanting, loving, lusting, fearing, worrying, laughing, obsessing, liking, hating, changing, hindering, bringing, facilitating, curbing, retarding, tilting, running, sitting, looking, gazing, staring, listening, learning, ignoring, forgetting, misplacing, framing, distrusting, calling, naming, relinquishing, passing, entrusting, remembering, eating, drinking, sleeping, beating, hurting, contributing, basking, consigning, waking, stirring, losing, winning, drawing, informing, rigging, equipping, falling, disclosing, naming, administering, requiring, mustering, bathing, setting, washing, stalling, disguising, causing, ridding, masking, detailing, indicating, disposing, designating, clumping, breaking, counting, limiting, naming, eclipsing, assuming, flowing, tattling, tempering, flowering, veiling, dispensing, donating, teaching, helping, falsifying, disseminating, hurrying, dodging, naming, working, sullying, providing, succeeding, stonewalling, throwing, kicking, believing, uttering, serving, renouncing, attaining, venting, punching, treading, expanding, diminishing, devoting, hustling, stopping, dealing, allowing, qualifying, vacationing, showing, desiring, yearning, exploring, swearing, hedging, mining, raising, delivering, reneging, modulating, agreeing, betraying, naming, making, singing, whispering, exuding, burying, covering, occasioning, keeping, leaving, impeding, rising, clearing, deferring, sabotaging, executing, racing, balking, naming, stockpiling, sacrificing, distressing, coming, suppressing, slipping, inculpating, jacketing, shouting, lunging, frustrating, circulating, expressing, equivocating, flourishing, rotting, recoiling, repressing, emitting, impressing, collapsing, trusting, naming, thriving, trapping, pitying, depressing, convalescing, proffering, surrendering, renewing, hosting, slanting, stringing, ducking, knowing, deciding, lying, pussyfooting, challenging, doting, adhering, granting, hesitating, bequeathing, questioning, triumphing, obstructing, affecting, blocking, regarding, choking, grasping, delaying, inhibiting, shaping, milling, interfering, negating, reversing, revering, feeling, imploring, dipping, concocting, tergiversating, convincing, cherishing, naming, noticing, impugning, perceiving, camouflaging, arranging, tensing, evoking, sequestering, destroying, filling, sharing, healing, entwining, listing, steaming, petitioning, primping, separating, tainting, decentering, ambushing, refilling, becoming, sidestepping, sensing, emptying, steeling, calculating, identifying, smiting, converting, frolicking, achieving, adoring, refusing, dogging, constructing, clutching, stealing, extolling, quivering, faltering, menacing, imperiling, frothing, testing, abdicating, narrowing, opening, prospecting, directing, misunderstanding, judging, dividing, taking, producing, vacillating, hoping, indulging, tailoring, airing, atoning, sweeping, browbeating, repelling, surfacing, studying, reproducing, visiting, delighting, electing, copying, paralleling, creating, bracing, rattling, biting, reaching, taunting, functioning, obviating, gravitating, naming, turning, wavering, gambling, lapping, nailing, risking, discouraging, placating, divining, discerning, pushing, pulling, timing, preaching, spinning, yanking, processing, deducing, tracking, relying, lighting, preparing, referencing, stroking, understanding, substituting, facing, existing, portraying, moping, idling, furthering, sublimating, warning, hewing, darkening, petting, misdirecting, presiding, forcing, distancing, patting, rationalizing, alienating, elevating, putting, quibbling, caring, repairing, projecting, worshipping, apologizing, sizing, brownnosing, riddling, chancing, deploring, descending, prodding, skirting, orienting, asserting, gesturing, inserting, reducing, deserting, overtaking, righting, grating, echoing, fuming, torturing, insinuating, channeling, discounting, leaking, naming, diving, naming, practicing, deriding, continuing, sorting, laboring, interspersing, nodding, restoring, routing, situating, accounting, tightening, relaxing, doing, telling, occupying, uniting, ribbing, centering, releasing, revisiting, holing, pampering, losing, objecting, starring, appealing, doubling, positing, reviewing, giving, wobbling, referring, viewing, regulating, hooking, extinguishing, burnishing, encouraging, waffling, igniting, iterating, answering, reeling, naming, popping, recapitulating, shilly-shallying, dillydallying, refuting, disputing, blowing, tintinnabulating, conjuring, having, hunkering, rejecting, dithering, extending, undertaking, inhaling, exhaling, teasing, beating, scratching, defining, defaming, fooling, trimming, containing, cutting, nibbling, naming, attending, conforming, abiding, rerouting, lasting, taming, claiming, blaming, shaming, portaging, naming, ticking, kissing, tonguing, presuming, imagining, dreaming, graying, sectioning, lashing, jeopardizing, resting, meaning, testing, concluding, cresting, modeling, dragging, lifting, pickling, naming, inducing, tickling, slashing, licking, sticking, bounding, doubting, leaping, jumping, deeming, punctuating, naming, standing, tasting, spitting, swallowing, thumbing, fingering, naming, lounging, scrounging, hounding, resisting, clapping, waving, besieging, retreating, attacking, relenting, sucking, screwing, fucking, and naming, would lead to.

45

It was a small stage, but it was our stage, a kind of theater-in-the-round, we endlessly confusing each other with directions left and right and up and down, our backs always to our audience, our terrorists. Our terrorists had no names, no affiliations, would show up on no arrays of radar, and their insignificance in the world spoke grimly to our place in the world, even though the stakes of our performance were high, could not have been higher, and they, the stakes, were certainly not diminished by our temporal and physical proximity to that most supreme of all stakes. The fact that Billy was so old did not, would not, cause us to mourn his death any less, but no one heard us. The same with Dorothea Greene, Clarissa Madden, and Diego Jones. Considering the lost ones, the murdered ones, and the nature of administrative and familial reactions and response, the criteria for our selection became painfully obvious and glaring. We, each of us, subjected to the torment of the Gang of Six, had no one, no children, no friends, no spouses. We had outlived everyone and this was our reward, this was what we had found or what had found us.