Gordon Lish - Collected Fictions

But a bird does not say to itself okay, here goes a feather, I am finished with this feather, I am getting rid of this feather. Because the man was prepared to believe no bird relieved itself of a feather in hopes the man would retrieve it. There was not a matter of mind to be inquired into. Although neither was it an accident, was it? Nothing was an accident. A scheme was bound to be bound up in it, whatever it was, somewhere. For example, hadn't the man once been in the company of a boy who said feder for feather? This is what the man pondered about, or pondered on, thinking ponderingly, "What's the deal?"

The man reasoned along this line, or bethought himself along this line of reasoning. For did it not stand to reason that not everyone in the present dispensation could report of himself his once having been in the company of a boy who said feder for feather? Wasn't there something going on in this somewhere, and couldn't you end up somewhere in it dying from it? There were hints, there were foretokenings — the proof was everywhere for anyone with the acumen to read the dread indications. There would be a disease conducted into the man from this relation he had conceived with the feathers. It would be a feather-borne disease, despite the care the man took never to handle a feather directly. No, no, this last, that last sentence, all wrong, it's all too wrong — wrought, wrought, it's all too wrong and wrought, diction thick with effort. I can't write this. It cannot be written.

But, oh, the thrill of them!

Feathers.

The abundance.

The very copia.

Now that the man had started noticing.

Mustn't it mean these birds were everywhere?

Or had been?

Although there were times when the man could go from the bottom of the city to the top of it and not spot the first feather. But around in front of the museum, this was where there were always to be found good pickings. On the other hand, the man could not always take himself to the museum, could he? It was not always convenient for the man to go to the museum. You did not get to the museum by going in the direction the man was mainly given to going in, which instead was the direction of the market.

The market.

Here was where the man got his groceries, earlier called to your attention by the noun staples.

And, oh, the cleaning materials!

Kaptain Kleeno, for instance.

The direction that took the man to the market, this was the direction the man was given to walking in, whereas the museum was opposite of this, and rather a longer walk by half. Forget it. I'm worn out with this. I'm disgusted with this. I am absolutely exhausted with this and am anyway stalled in my tracks with this. Mind is elsewhere. You know what it is to stand under a pediment? He did not know where the feathers came from. He did not care to know where it was on the body of the birds the feathers came from, or had come from. From wing, from tail, from under the gut, it all sickened the man. Expressions of life sickened the man. The man seemed excited as much for the thing they were known by as for the thing they were.

But how say which is which? — feather here, feather there. Feder. Later on in this it will be said to the man, someone will later on in this come to say to the man, "You feather your nest? This your game, you feather your nest?" Was the bleach killing him? The man was convinced the bleach could be killing him. Or the ammonia. Forget Kaptain Kleeno. Scratch Kaptain Kleeno. No one's buying it, no one's falling for it, something named by the name Kaptain Kleeno. But couldn't anything kill a person? Everything could kill a person. The least little thing could kill anybody — and would. This sentence, for instance. Even just the comma in it.

Ever think of collecting the names of soaps?

Palmolive?

Woodbury?

Camay?

Pears, Dove, Castile?

How could you say something wasn't killing you if it were doing it in increments too small for you to tell?

Isn't this why they say imperceptibly?

An ant might know, on the one hand, or a tortoise on the other.

But not a man.

Aren't there mites on feathers?

He soaked them in a solution of his making.

The man mixed ammonia and bleach and bleach and ammonia.

And Kaptain Kleeno.

Used the tweezers to deliver the day's gatherings to the basin where the purifications were done. It was a plastic basin, bought for the very thing, and disposed of and replaced every several days, for fear a swarm of undead mites might have come to congregate in it, having furiously replenished themselves in a crevice where dribs of moisture would coalesce into a natal soup too teensy to be detected without special optics.

I suppose you know where it was the man got his plastic basins from. Well, it was in that direction that the man so often pointed himself. Counter-museum-ward, that is. Ivory Soap, Lux Soap, Murphy's in a pinch. Not that results were not also to be had along the old wall along the way to either destination, a rumply mossy affair of mortar and stone declaring the great wilderness to its one side and the city to its other. Ah, the man had heard them in there, the rats in there. Had heard them jostling around in there, disturbing the loose earth with their wormy hairy tails. There were times when a wind could make the man weep. There were times when the man might have fallen to his knees in grief for the wind that had rushed forth from its lair and reached from him the feather he was about to take. The man never took a feather with his fingers. It was unthinkable, unthinkable! This was why the man was dying, wasn't it?

His precautions, the tweezers, the ablutions in the basin, didn't the man choose death from care over death from disease? Someone said something once. Hadn't someone once said something once? Liver fluke, a liver fluke, this is what the man thought he remembered someone once saying once — touch a feather with your finger and get a liver fluke. But what would it be, a liver fluke? The man stood over the basin with the magnifying glass and tweezers.

The fumes were impossible. That plural or singular? The feather lay bathing on the one side. It would be necessary to catch it by the spine and reverse it onto its other side. You call it rachis, I call it spine. The source for liver fluke, was it the same as that for "You feather your nest? This is your game, you feather your nest?" I can't stand this anymore. I am so totally fed up with this and with everything else evermore. Wait a minute, so wait a minute — so how come the man didn't write this in French? He is trying to break the habit. What if I leave the city? What if I just get everything I've got and just leave? The man did not know how they lost a feather — was it from sickness or from combat or age? There was once this time once when I was walked right up to by a robber once and I said to him the money take the money but can't I keep these? I keep them in a thing which used to have bits of matchbooks in it and when I get the top off to get another one in, they make a noise like shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. It's terrible, it's terrible — shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. How did it start? Does anyone know how it starts? Here's the thing — shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Yardley.

Tide.

Duz.

Era.

Dial.

Cheer.

Wisk.

Joy.

Dawn.

Oh yes, of course—"You feather your nest? This is your game, you feather your nest?"

Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Cark, cark — what does cark mean?

Fella says everything in depth is horrible.

Fella says the sensibility that reaches out for the sense in things makes contact with the impossibility in them.

Yes, he was feathering it!

This was the whole idea of it — to feather it, to get it feathered, to make certain there were feathers in it.