Padgett Powell - You & Me

Well, what matter is but one more?

Exactly mine own sentiment. We are so d’accordo that if anyone could accompany another to a magic place, you could me.

Yes, and horndog reciprocal, I am sure. But we know better.

We know better.

Would you care to go—

I would care to go fishing in that orange light I was telling you about. Some green frondage, in a wind. Either a monkey or a boy who resembles a monkey.

That is all you need.

No. I want also a canteen full of water, a tidy bureau of clothes, a postcard in my bungalow sent to a previous occupant, a lamp, a broom, a skillet, a spider, and a storm.

That is all you need.

That is all I need. Yes.

You would wish to be a man?

God no. Why do you ask?

Perhaps I misunderstood a complaint…

I do not wish to be a man. What you may have heard was my wondering how it is that I am not one, and do not care. This was at least my position at an earlier date.

It has advanced?

Yes. Now that I have had time to reflect a bit, I see that the situation is really considerably worse. I am not merely not a man. I am not even properly a boy, a good boy. But I have affected the costume of a good boy.

And mien? Is this a place we can finally use that word?

I think so. Or countenance.

So you are not even a boy.

No. I am a coward, an ass, and something else that I had my finger on last night but have now conveniently again forgotten.

Again?

Yes, it is convenient to forget one is a coward and an ass and whatever egregious else one is as frequently, or a little more frequently, than one recalls.

Go get us some coffee. I feel already tired today.

Alas, perfect, you jog me well, you queer musketeer: I am a lazy coward and ass.

Were we born lazy or did we through industry of some kind, some noble force, get tired?

That is the hopeful way to look at it, but I fear not. Why dispute it? Why struggle? A coward struggles to not admit he is lazy, or an ass, or a coward. There is bravery in surrender.

If you surrender you are brave and not a coward. I think you are in a jam here. Or is it a jamb?

In a jam of logic or in a door jamb of… I’ll get the coffee.

We have need of adventure. Let us have one.

Summon Studio Becalmed.

From the dead?

The land of adventure if there is one. We will say to him, Studio, we poor cowards and asses are lazy and afraid, can you help us?

And Studio will say?

Fresh from the dead, he will say, Where is Jayne? Where are the Alps of Heaven? Where’s my dog? I at least must pet my dog.

Your dog is right here, Studio. We took good care of him. He is about sixty years old but there he is, not a hair on him, and Parkinson’s, but he is well drugged, so do not mind all that shaking and drooling, it’s the best we can do.

You are a mean bastard.

Who?

You.

Is that you saying that to me or Studio saying that to me?

That, to you, am saying, I. To speak to Studio Becalmed about his dog like that!

Studio is dead now over sixty years; I think he can take care of himself.

It’s not exactly the Boy Scouts.

Who said that?

Studio said that.

What the hell does that mean, Studio? “It’s not exactly the Boy Scouts”?

I cannot believe the tone you are taking with Studio. He’s dead, and he’s in our house.

He’s our dead houseguest.

Yes, exactement.

Where did we go so wrong, Moonpie?

To be speaking this way to the beloved dead?

In the Bakersfield in which we do not have a life, yes.

This, to you, confess, must, I, to not having a clue. But sore wrong we turned, and we are not young girls anymore.

I’m just a mouthful of pajama air.

I can’t play the accordion.

Picasso could paint.

I fell down once and did not get up for ten days.

Where was this?

In France. Or Belgium. Or Switzerland. It’s murky over there.

Troppo vino?

Couldn’t get enough.

This falling down and not getting up was not vino-related—

No. I fell down, and I could not get up. It was pleasant. I was speaking but no one could hear me. They were concerned for me, in twos and later fives, reaching out to me literally and figuratively. I wound up in a bed. There was no ID, or OD, or MO, or whatever it is called.

Diagnosis?

Yes, there was no inside diagnosis, outside diagnosis, or any known mode of operation for it. I fell down, couldn’t get up, and ten days later got up, said thanks, and walked out.

Without paying.

They would not take my money.

This all, I take it, was before I knew you.

Yes.

Because you don’t seem to have this kind of purposeful life now, since I have known you.

No, those were the good old days, sho nuff.

Have you ever seen those clips of flamingoes walking in water to a rock ’n’ roll sound track and it looks like they are stepping to the beat? Really with-it dancing pink birds?

Yes, I have seen that. Pinking shears.

I like that a lot.

I do too.

Are we free?

Insofar as no one is going to pay money to possess us, I deem us free.

Are we free to do anything we want to do?

Insofar as the better of those things cost money to do, I deem us not free.

But we are free to do the free things?

Yes, but we are afraid to do them.

What are we afraid to do?

We are afraid to be men, to engage the world bravely, to be upright in our behavior, to have moral height, to display ditto fiber, to shoot ourselves, to have another dog, to talk to anyone except Studio Becalmed largely because he was not afraid to have another dog and we respect that in another person, especially one safely dead who does not challenge us—

Okay. I get it.

I miss my dog more than I miss my parents.

Amenhotep.

Why would one want his dog back more than his parents back?

Because one liked his dog more? Is it a question so difficult that we need a computer geek to configure the answer?

We need them to configure everything else. Why not?

Let me change the subject, though not really: have you looked at yourself well in a mirror recently?

No. Should I?

I do not advise it.

Be neat, be brave, be Buster-Brown bustamente.

What does that mean?

I do not know. But does it not sound right ?

It does. I hazard that you are implying that if we’d been neat and brave and Buster-Brown bustamente we’d be all right today, instead of… this.

That I imply.

I am in the accordion with you. Nice to see that Buster Brown get a piece of the Coppertone girl, wouldn’t you say?

You put it more vulgarly than we need to but indeed that is a mythological vision with a purity of force and justice in it.

His hard shiny shoes, his hope, her round unsunned buns, the nippy little dog playing around them.

Her clothes are nearly already off. One can see Buster perhaps struggling to undo the eponymous brogans, comically, sitting on the ground in his short pants, little Miss Coppertone saying, Hurry up, Buster Brown, for God’s sake.

Took off a piece of my finger last night in the Benriner. You know there is a cautionary slogan on the slide, WATCH YOUR FINGERS?

I did not know that.

Well, you do now, and I can report that that warning is not bullshit; the bullshit content in WATCH YOUR FINGERS on the mandoline veggie-holder slide thing is one hundred percent not bullshit.