Percival Everett - Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

Hey, he said. That was all he said. It wasn’t particularly antagonistic or sarcastic, just a hey, but Murphy didn’t like it. Murphy remained seated while he approached, told Squirt to stay.

You do building work? the man asked.

I do. I do building work.

Want a job? He stopped and looked out across the valley, the brown smog hanging over it. He nodded at the view. “You got a nice spot here.”

I like it.

Like I said, you want some work? We got a leak in our roof. It’s pretty bad by now.

It can be really hard to find where a roof is leaking.

We pay pretty good, he said.

Murphy looked out across the landscape at the man’s house. Are you Donald or Douglas? he asked.

This is the part I knew you would like or you knew I would like.

Take a guess. We don’t look nothing alike.

Donald, Murphy said.

Bahhhhnnnn . The fat man made an awful game show sound. I’m Douglas. I’m the pretty one.

Sorry.

We don’t look nothing alike.

I’m bad with faces and names, Murphy said. When can I come by and look at your roof?

You can stop by anytime. I’m on my way out right now, but Donald will be around. Just tell him I talked to you. Blow your horn and wait in the yard, though. Don’t knock.

Okay. Why not?

Donald’s kind of paranoid.

If you go back and read the first paragraph and even the first page you will note that there is no mention of the Eiffel Tower or the fact that it is on the Seine, and you will not find the fact that between the Saint Cloud Gate and the Louvre there are twelve bridges, but yet you know it now. Don’t say I never told you anything.

Murphy wanted to tell the man to go fuck himself and his brother as well, but he needed the work and he didn’t really know why he disliked them so much. In fact, Murphy really needed the work. He wouldn’t shoot me, would he?

Yes.

How easily that yes comes and it makes you, me, wonder just why it would be so easy to not only say yes, but to shoot at a person. But I step outside myself here or at least outside the inside that I have established. There was apparently room here for little more than a monosyllabic, circumscribed utterance.

I won’t knock.

Yep, got yourself a nice view here. You got a nice big barn out back, too. Do you use it?

I keep my horse in it, Murphy said.

If you ever want to rent it out, Douglas or Donald said. Murphy had already forgotten which one he said he was. You know my memory. The funniest thing is I forget how bad my memory is.

I’ll keep you in mind.

So, go on over there whenever you want. The man walked back toward his little truck. He pulled out his cell phone and started yakking loudly, then drove away, kicking up rocks and dust.

Murphy watched him go. Squirt had moved to the edge of the porch to watch the fat man leave. Murphy looked at his soggy cereal and got out of his chair. He thought about the job he didn’t want and then about all the jobs he didn’t have and then about the bills he needed to pay. A much-needed job had fallen into his lap. What was bad about that?

Murphy had to wait awhile to go over and assess the job at the fat brothers’ house. The vet was coming to check out his horse. Trotsky was a twelve-year-old gelded leopard Appaloosa with a good attitude but not a lot of sense. Murphy tried to ride him every day in the hills behind his place. The horse was in need of his shots and he had been lethargic lately.

This business about vets. I could use a good vet. Vets have better medication to dispense than these quacks.

Maybe this is close to, but not what you want to write. Perhaps it’s just ever so different. Like when you come back to a restaurant a few weeks later and the leek soup is just a wee bit saltier or doesn’t have that hint of fennel that you recall, the very thing that made you come back, and yet, even though you’re disappointed, you have to admit that the soup is better this time and so you sit there, stroking your napkin, it’s kind of slick, and you wonder how it’s supposed to clean your mouth, stroking your napkin, thinking, This is not what I came in here for, but it’s better, it’s so much better, but still it’s not what I wanted, but it will no doubt be what I will want in the future, but how will I, in sound judgment, be able to return to this place with the notion that I can get what I got last time, my reason for returning? Fennel.

The paddock was set on a gentle slope, a big blue-gum eucalyptus on the uphill side. The drainage was generally pretty good, but with the horse constantly pacing the perimeter the sand would mound up under the metal corral pipes. When it rained the mounded sand served as a dam. And when the water was dammed, it just pooled there and then the gelding would stand like a fool, ankle deep, but pawing, digging himself into the muddy soup, courting thrush and lameness. When I could see the rain coming, and that was not often enough, I would go out and shovel gaps to drain the water. Sometimes I forgot or the storm developed quickly and I’d have to do the shoveling during the downpour. I was doing just that, at dusk, rain running over the brim of my hat into my face and down my collar, when I noticed the trickle of blood on the animal’s wet neck. The usually spooky horse was at once less nervous and more agitated than ever, an unfortunate combination in a twelvehundred-pound sack of dumb muscle. I put my hand to his nose and he snorted out a wet breath. I slowly moved my fingers up his jaw and to his neck, talking to him the while. I found a wound that had already begun to granulate over. He’d found a nail or something else to throw himself onto. The wound and the area around it were soft and angry and tender. I took away my hand and ducked through the corral pipes, looked at him and thought how it was always something. I grabbed a halter from a nail inside the barn, hooked him up, and led him to a stall. Then it was back through my foaling shed and into the house, where I called the vet.

The vet’s answering service delivered the message and she called me a few minutes later. I described the wound.

And as I deliver such facts, having assumed this status of firstperson narrator, not a distinction of honor, am I still in a position to dispatch such facts that might be about myself, standing away from and outside the persona of the narrator? Where did the fat drug brothers go? Where are we, son? Father? Father along. We’ll know all about it. And what about that dream? There was a dream speech. Or is that to come? Nat Turner and all that? Am I or is the story (stories) seeking to mesh racial formations or standards, and blech! What is your racial formation? Well, I start with a racial foundation and work my way up.

I’ll come over now, she said.

It is almost dark, I said. I listened to the rain pounding my roof, beating like fists instead of drops.

But I’m really not that far away. It will be better than driving three times as far tomorrow.

I couldn’t disagree with her, though I was feeling tired and probably lazy and didn’t really want to trudge back out into that downpour and all that mud and manure. And I didn’t want to lace up my boots once more.

Laura arrived pretty quickly. It was darker and the rain was falling, if possible, harder. I met her at her truck with a flashlight. I thanked her for coming out.

Probably not the swiftest of ideas, she said.

Well, he’s inside now.

Well, that’ll make things a little more pleasant. The doctor followed me through the long foaling shed and into the small barn. The rain was deafening on the old metal roof.

I switched on the light but nothing happened. Rain. I grabbed another battery-powered lantern from the wall and switched it on. It flickered. I hope this is bright enough. I held the light in the stall and caused the horse to start. He’s always spooky, I said.