Mark Dunn - American Decameron

“You have until four o’clock to subside. Perhaps you should think about slugging that weisenheimer who thought he’d be clever and put that come-to-life French postcard right into the middle of your instructional film.”

“I should. I should invite him over and let him have it.”

“That’s good. Keep thinking those angry thoughts. I’ve got to go straighten up the parlor. Here’s something else you can park your brain on: think of Aunt Melvina without her clothes, trying to confine all that naked avoirdupois to a single chair.”

Palmer nodded, then shuddered.

Tillman and Gail arrived at four o’clock on the dot. Hezzie was wearing the best suit he had: his heat-generating electric suit. But because the short circuit still hadn’t been found and fixed, he left it unplugged. It wasn’t necessary to plug it in anyway, it being a warm summer’s day, and so the unplugged electrical cord was left to trail behind him like a limp tail. It wasn’t too much of an inconvenience, except when he turned to acknowledge the entrance of his brother Palmer and the cord got wrapped lasso-like around one leg.

“How long has it been, Tillman?” Palmer asked his oldest brother, all grins and no flagpole.

“Too long, little brother,” replied Tillman, grinning back. “Hezzie tells me you’re taking a correspondence course that involves watching instructional films.”

“Among other things, yes. They say that the day will soon come when we’ll all be learning how to be electricians and plumbers and barbers and whatever you please by watching educational movies in the comfort of our own homes. It’s the way to go. Especially for those of us who don’t wish to ever leave our homes.”

Tillman nodded. He frowned sympathetically. “You too, Hezzie?”

“As of October 8—” Hezzie directed this to Gail, who sat next to Tillman on the sofa, “it will have been nine years since either of the two of us has stepped outside the ol’ family manse.”

“Goodness!” exclaimed Gail. “Who brings your food? What happens when something comes up that demands your presence elsewhere?”

Palmer and Hezzie both shrugged at the same time. “It hasn’t happened yet,” said Hezzie. “I write my funny pieces for Grit and Palmer helps me with my inventions. He’s a very able assistant. As for foodstuffs, we have longstanding arrangements with the various purveyors in town to deliver all that we require to our front door step.”

“But it encourages me,” said Tillman, “that you’re learning a trade, Palmer. Something that will eventually take you out into the world.”

Palmer nodded. “Someday I do hope to find the courage to leave. I’m certain that my brother Hezzie does as well.”

Hezzie nodded.

Palmer turned to Gail, whose eyes were now watering from involuntary commiseration with the two brothers’ plight. “Have you ever met anyone like us?”

“One of the wing-walkers I worked with one day couldn’t find the courage to leave the cockpit of the plane. In her defense, she had just seen a flock of geese knock another daredevil right off the wing and into the arms of Jesus, so I can’t blame her. But no, I’ve never known two men who together couldn’t find the wherewithal — let’s not use the word ‘courage’—to leave the house they’ve lived in since…I take it you’ve both been here since adolescence, would that be correct?”

The brothers nodded as one.

“Now. Hezekiah,” Gail went on, “Tillman tells me that you’ve been an inventor for quite some time now. Would you like to introduce me to some of your little brainchildren?”

Hezzie was happy to take his brother’s new girlfriend down into his basement laboratory/workroom, where he entertained her with demonstrations of the propeller-affixed life preserver, a cigarette holder with built-in ashtray, a “timesaving” motorized toothbrush, a machine designed to indent dimples into the cheeks, and an umbrella-shaped shield against inconveniently directed grapefruit squirts. Gail found it all delightful and then, in a blink, her smile evaporated. She shivered. “I’m sorry, but I don’t do well this far underground. I don’t even much like the ground , for that matter. Tillman, take me up to your roof. I’d like to sit up on your roof for a while and catch my breath.”

While Tillman and Gail were climbing up to the rooftop of the old Grampian Hills mansion where all three boys had grown up, Palmer and Hezzie sat downstairs pronouncing Gail Hoyt a gentle, beautiful soul with a pert little Colleen Moore mouth and a funny, engaging disposition, and “brave beyond every known definition.”

“For not only does she come and go at will from edifices that would hold men like you and me in a form of torturous psychological imprisonment,” said Palmer with both admiration for his houseguest and rancor over his present situation, “she has walked the circus tightrope and played tennis on the wings of aeroplanes. Our future sister-in-law drinks in deep draughts from the elixir of adventure and the fully realized life. Perhaps, brother,” and now Palmer hesitated, “perhaps she can work that miracle of all miracles for us .”

“And just how would she do that ?” asked Hezzie. “Merely opening the front door so as to more efficiently aerate the house will, on occasion, nearly put me into a faint.”

“What’s wrong with us, brother?” returned Palmer. “There are creatures among us who soar above the clouds and yet we can hardly move upon the ground. We’re plankton, brother, or something to be found among the anchored constituents of the phylum Mollusca.”

As the two brothers were bemoaning their burden of shared agoraphobia, something unfortunate was taking place up on the roof. A deer hunter on the forested hill behind the house missed his target and sent his projectile with blistering speed right into Tillman Hopper’s left shoulder, knocking him from the pitched roof. Gail, attempting to stay his tumble, did something that had only happened to her once before (and since she was only a baby at the time, she had no recall of it): she lost her balance and fell earthward as well. Both of the lofty lovers landed upon the grassy front lawn, the impact leaving them in a state of temporary unconsciousness.

Together Tillman’s two younger brothers stood before the front parlor window and absorbed the scene before them: Tillman and his new girl Gail, lying tangle-limbed next to one another on the green lawn. “Someone will surely motor by and see them there and call for an ambulance,” said Palmer.

Hezzie shook his head. “They’re hidden from the street by that large hedge. Don’t you see?”

“Then we should telephone the hospital immediately,” said Palmer.

Hezzie shook his head again. “But we can’t. This morning I borrowed the electromagnet from the telephone receiver for my combination electric hair rejuvenator and radio helmet.”

“Then remove the components, brother, and put them back into the telephone.”

“The process would take time — time which we don’t have. One of us will have to go and seek help from a neighbor.”

“It would be death to me,” said Palmer, his expression transmogrifying itself into a look of abject terror.

“You think that only you would die were we to leave this house? I believe it to be true of myself as well, Palmer. But could it be — could it be, brother, that our brains are playing a terrible trick on us, the way that Mother’s brain made her go into that delicatessen and fill her purse with scrapple and headcheese when the butcher wasn’t watching?”

Palmer shook his head, confused, frightened, impotent, and self-loathing.

Finally Hezzie said the thing that his brother was wholly receptive to hearing: “All logic says that we will not die. It is only mindless illogic that requires us to remain within this house. And yet regardless of the outcome with regard to our own survival, do we not love our brother enough to put our lives on the line for him — for the girl he loves who climbs flagpoles and walks on the wings of aeroplanes? Has he not allowed us to live here in the house of our birth, to draw from the family accounts as needed while he must work in Scranton and demean himself by making buttons to keep himself financially solvent?”