Padgett Powell - You & Me

That might be the classic instance of this phenomenon, yes. But I think there are more frightening instances of it. I met a man recently who came on like a car salesman when there was no commerce between us and it put me into a guard, an almost Royalist snootiness that I very much did not like. What I did not like about it, beyond being made into a false personality, a boor, was that I could see he was oblivious to it, to my being a snob, because he was continuing on his program of taking advantage of me, or of the world in general, of which I just at that moment must have appeared to be a part of in front of him.

What put you off about this fellow?

He was smiling effusively and kept repeating my name. He was positioning me to like him by affecting to regard me as special. It put me into the role of a loan officer, or a hawk sitting a branch watching a mouse on the ground, or an off-duty prison warden.

Nothing wrong with the off-duty prison warden.

Come to think of it, you are right.

You should thank the man.

I’ve been ungenerous.

As usual.

Yes. You’re no Christian, Senator. I knew Christian.

Rosy turtles. With green eyes and yellow hair.

Yes?

I see them.

Hair?

Yellow hair.

Does it seem strange, hair on turtles?

No. Some of them are cropped short, like tennis balls, some spiked-out and gelled-looking, some just look like boys with yellow hair. Or girls.

So it’s unnatural-looking hair?

Well, it does look bleachy, but I think that is a conclusion we draw faced with yellow hair, on turtles or no, and in this case, for some reason, I am inclined to think this bright yellow hair is natural.

Custer was said to have—

Famously. Custer was a boorish happy ass. These turtles, my friend, are serious and somber, responsible… citizens. I nearly said dudes.

Where are these turtles?

In my mind. In the province of my mind.

Is there any kind of natural surround for them or are they—

They are just there, turtles, without props or context; nor do they weirdly float about or appear deliberately isolated. When you see turtles with hair, with agreeable expressions, rather friendly-looking dudes, you don’t examine the area around them overmuch, I find.

A reasonable position, with hairy turtles in view. No prob from me here. I need to get out, get a little air, purchase a small quantity of sugar from a vendor, snack on it as I idly perambulate, whiling away what little remains of my little and inconsequential life, of my dear dearth of time on this hallowed planet.

I am sorry I have set you off. With my turtles.

Not at all. I feel just excellent. I am fond of your turtles and live vicariously through them and have a sunny disposition for your having seen them. These visions sustain us. They are all we have.

Amen.

They make us religious, almost.

What is the big picture?

Please. Don’t.

Don’t what?

Start. I can’t. Today. No more big-picture mauning. Your yellow-haired turtles is a big-picture maun at an acceptably veiled, small-picture scale. That I can take.

You have invented this word, maun .

Maybe I have.

What does it mean?

I can’t take that either. You’re asking me things you know. You know what it means.

I suppose. Studio Becalmed mauned, then he met Jayne, she died, and he mauned some more, differently from before, and when your dog dies you maun a little. And so forth.

It’s a rather warm-soup and somewhat philosophical kind of longing. Studio was not free of mauning even when he knew Jayne, of course.

Of course. I was speaking hastily and sloppily, of course.

There is no pressure upon us not to be sloppy.

But there is pressure that we not be too sloppy, lest we not strike the happy-accident monkey keys and say something that pleases us.

Do you think often, or ever, of Miles Davis doing all that dope and blowing into his horn until something flies out that pleases him and everyone around for miles and miles?

That is why they called him Miles.

If we are not too sloppy they will call us Inches.

Why do we talk?

Why would we not?

I suspect that is why we talk: what would we do if we did not talk?

Precious little else, darlin’.

My point.

Your point is that we do nothing but talk…

And that if we cease, we do nothing, are nothing.

Well, given how little we talk about, we are next to nothing already.

I dispute you not.

You brought this up, suggesting you might dispute it — I’m sorry, here I am talking inaccurately, doing the next-to-nothing thing we do sloppily. I mean to say: your bringing this up might suggest you are concerned with how little or nothing we are.

No, I am content to be nothing. It might be argued, for example, that a secretary of defense talks about matters that are far from the nothing end of the gravity-in-talk spectrum. I would rather we talk as we do than as secretaries of defense.

We are not con men, whatever else we are or are not.

And if we are, we con but our own self, and we have occasion to think of things to say that we don’t say, and think even of, say — I do this, I don’t know about you — I think once in a while, say, of the stray dog Jesus, wending His handsome way, turning down girls.

I see Jesus in his mind alone take the T-shirt off a nubile with his teeth and shake that shirt as a dog does a rag.

Shake the life out of it!

Shake it, Jesus buddyro!

Does the girl stand there admiring Him?

She stands there with her arms crossed modestly over her desert-chilled chest, smiling enigmatically, patient with the Savior in His paroxysm, saying to herself, I’ll never tell, I’ll never tell…

Oh! Don’t you long for the days when discretion reigned?

I long for the days when it existed at all.

Do you prefer to fish from the bank or from a boat?

I prefer to fish from wherever fish are less likely to be taken. I am fond of the fishing show on television.

Is this too a quiet vision of Jesus?

It is probably something of the sort, yes.

Could you dig a Flood?

You mean another big one?

Yes.

Yes. I’m in. Two of everything on the boat, the rest of us die. I am in .

There are some people who should die before the Flood.

Who?

Well, all these regimes that make refugees of millions of their own people, these regimes that bomb other countries to set them free, these gangs in Toyota trucks gunning down barefoot people, of course they all need to drop off right now. Just crumple over into the mass graves they have prepared for someone else. Then there are some others I want to see gone.

Are you talking about the phone virus?

I am. A person talking on a cell phone in his car, when he switches off the car, crumples over on the seat right there, just like a regime war criminal. Anyone dumping trash not at a dump gets the virus and crumples over on top of the crap he dumped; he will be found there by the sheriff if not by buzzards first.

People that throw shit out of a moving car chap my ass as much.

And mine. When so much as a plastic wrapper goes out of that car the perp will vomit prodigiously into his own car, and when he pulls over to address the issue and switches the car off, phitt! For that matter a person walking who tosses a paper cup to the ground will go down on his knees and have about five seconds to contemplate the cup before he too joins the unrighteous dead and improves the world that awaits the Flood.