Padgett Powell - You & Me

So the old bird is actually pretty smart, not inane?

It is not for me to say.

Are we perfect?

No.

You have such a poor attitude.

I confess it.

You would.

Should I deny that I have a poor attitude?

Anyone with a proper attitude would deny that he has a poor attitude.

But I have a poor attitude because I confess that we are not perfect. I should claim that we are perfect, indicating that I am a lunatic.

No, indicating that you are a positive thinker.

You would like me to be more positive?

Yes.

That will make it all better?

Yes.

All right. We are perfect. Tomorrow we will make a million dollars. My dog will never die. The dead one did not die. No more deer will be struck by cars. My intellectual fundament is not subject to measurement or decline. My soul is eternal. The hungry children of the world tomorrow will find bacon and eggs in their stockings. Rosy human potential is limitless.

See? Is that so hard?

No. It is not hard at all. Imbecility is the greatest feel-good power on earth. It’s why so many are drawn to it, like religion. It is a religion.

There you go again, taking a turn for the worse.

I must pull up out of the trees. I recant. Imbecility is a rare affliction that we are rapidly eliminating as we evolve into the perfect species on the happy planet. Any more talk out of me of the other sort and I’ll just wear the dunce cap for a bit.

I’m bopping in my head to something something the Midnight Rider .

What?

It’s a song. I never listen so I only know the last words in a line, if that. Something, something, the Midnight Riiiider…

Why don’t they saponify hemp oil itself?

Who?

Well, they, They, anybody, but this Dr. Bronner outfit would be a more logical party than say Colgate-Palmolive. They recently made a big deal of putting hemp oil in place of jojoba oil in their soaps.

The famous hippie soaps.

Yes. Hemp for the hippie, you see.

Does the hippie want hemp in everything he uses?

That would seem to be the premise. So what I am saying is why not just take straight hemp oil and saponify it?

Maybe it would be lousy soap.

It probably would be lousy soap, but what’s that got to do with anything? Hemp oil is probably a lousy additive compared to jojoba oil, which itself was regarded as a magical elixir and selling aid for years. Now it’s out. Hemp is in. I’m seeing this. When the hemp soap is worn down to suppository size, you slip it up the bombay winking portal like a suppository and get high.

Or you cut it down, like a plug of chew—

Or they just make it in suppository form, like these little parlor soaps in baskets in B&Bs—

Those are called parlor soaps?

I don’t know. Novelty soaps? Demitasse?

They have wrappers on them, pleated wrappers—

Like candy, sort of. Anyway, the hippies just pop these hemp-soap suppositories in and go about their buzzy days.

The oil surely won’t deliver a buzz.

I’m thinking it won’t, but that won’t be a total dissuasion. A man can have an assful of gushy hemp oil on hand anytime a narc elects to conduct a body search. It will be a kind of countercultural chaw. The laxative value is probably high.

They can sell it as Soap Not On A Rope.

This is my million-dollar idea for today.

These bullet things—

You mean our heads?

Yes, we have to do something about these bullet things, our heads if you insist—

What can we do about our own heads?

I don’t know but we cannot very well sit around uncomplaining and content with powder for brains, can we?

From an ethical point of view, or from perhaps a social point of view, you are right, we do not want to be perceived as having been content to having had bullets for brains. But from let us say a naturalistic point of view, is one really capable of repudiating his own brain? Has this been done too often in the animal kingdom?

So you maintain we just sit around like the howitzer heads we are until we go off?

Yes, we just calmly take aim at an enemy downrange, which is anyone who happens to be downrange, and sooner or later, according to high principles of military art or acknowledging the low principles of happy circumstance putting a victim in our crosshairs, we kill. We use our heads and annihilate. It’s easy. It’s what we are designed to do. We are bullet heads. You need to relax.

That much is true. I do. Need to relax.

We all do.

All us bullet heads need to chill.

Right on. We could hurt our selves if we don’t.

Bullets don’t just go off by themselves.

No, they don’t.

Exhale.

Okay.

They’ve started letting us take the yoga classes if we wrap our heads in towels.

That is good news.

Yes it is.

That is a man with fifty functional rain hats.

What do he paw fink?

What?

A man with fifty hats makes me think of a joke about a bear. A country boy is told that a bear hibernates all winter. What do he do? the boy asks. He sucks his paw, the teacher says. What do he paw fink? the boy asks. You needed to have been there.

Where?

I will estimate that I heard my aunt tell this about 1962 in a rented cabin on the Crooked River in Georgia. Boozists and card players.

Big hit, was it?

Medium hit. They lost a large quantity of beer leaving it in a chest freezer too long, looked like ropes of intestines and brown glass in there. Good snake count outside. Rough river with some salt water in it. Nice place. These places are all gone now. At least I fink they are.

I fink so too. My paw is dead.

Mine too. This is one reason why I do not discredit totally a man with fifty rain hats.

I am not following you, but I dig where you comin’ from.

My paw could wear one of those hats were he here. I did not really know him. That is a shame. Had I to do it over again, and if he himself had fifty rain hats, I would not laugh at him for that, is all I am—

— Yes yes, perfectly clear.

You going to pay me, or whut?

How much you worth?

Four grand.

Four grand.

Yes.

Okay.

You don’t think I am worth four grand?

I said I’d pay.

You said, Okay. You have doubts.

Okay, I doubt that you are worth four grand.

Okay. Pay me.

That is what I said I would do. No one who argues to effect the initial status quo is worth four grand.

I made an error. I have mental problems.

I would say that you do. It may take your four grand to begin to address them.

That would be a waste of money. My first purchase will be a deep-fried hamburger, followed by a nice leather bag for some new toiletries. I lost all my toiletries in the misplaced-car incident, or series of misadventures related to losing the car, I should say.

Your toiletries.

My toothbrush and chiefly my Eveready badger-bristle shaving brush, which I had had over twenty-five years. It’s like losing a child, or a parent. When I get a good new ditty bag and a shaving brush in it I can begin to reassimilate into normal living. Hat, boots, beer come next. Redhead on my arm. Hot-air-balloon vacation, that kind of thing, snap me back into my BVDs just fine.

Four grand will get you there?

I should think so. Yes.

You’ll stop this trebly warbling and trembly walking around and all the goddamn moping and incoherent expressions of your pain as if only you have any, and the incessant holding of your large face in your tiny hands?