Laird Hunt - The Impossibly

If I could imagine it might be interesting, I can’t, and had the energy, I don’t, I might, using some mechanism involving the number of times I’ve been knocked out, compose a record of my days. I can remember once reading about the consistent pattern of a saturated presence of low-grade fractures in the skull and clavicle area of ancient remains, and suspect that if by some chance my bones retain their integrity long enough for them to bear some anthropological interest if found by future researchers, the presiding scientist might draw the conclusion that he was dealing with some sort of anachronism, which is to say that, by my own reckoning, I’ve been knocked out — I’m not counting smacks here — upwards of a dozen times. Starting very early. Much too early. And it was of this that I thought when I came to — an image of myself, a little too small, having been struck and, some interval having passed, waking up. I woke up. It was the same room, same table, same, likely, chair, I thought. Although my recent interlocutor was gone, and in place of his chair, behind where he had sat, was a round mirror, in which, looking back, rather dull — an old man. Who regarded himself for a time. Then stood, collapsed, stood again, and walked out.

I would like to return now, in a manner of speaking, to the little house near the old part of the city where the woman lived. Follow me, she had said. It was to the little house that I followed her. On the way, though she didn’t blindfold me, she did ask me not to speak, as she had a slight headache and found my voice, which is a little high-pitched, grating. You could gag me, I said. I have asked you not to speak, she said. So we walked along in silence, or in as much silence as two old people can manage in navigating poorly maintained streets — one of them, not me, wheezing a little — with curbs of varying heights and pieces of loose stone and piles of sand. Once, having nearly fallen into one of these last, because of one of the penultimate, I cursed, though remembering her injunction I did not do so loudly. We had bumped into each other some distance from her house, and I took advantage of the time to continue thinking about my dream, and also about several other things that came to mind, one of which had to do with a dark airshaft I had once lived by and another of which had to do with the advantages, first for a perpetrator and then for an investigator, of being a ghost. This last, however, devolved into an internal debate on the practicality, with regard to one-on-one contact, of such a state, i.e., would a dead individual possessed both of sentience and some means of self-propulsion, in fact be able to satisfactorily conduct investigations, i.e., interview living individuals and relate conclusions or relevant observations to them? The dead individual might only, and with great effort, be able, when the guilty party’s name, for example, was mentioned in conversation, to knock over a vase, or produce some meaningful condensation, or partially appear, but who could predict how such interventions would be treated, or if they would receive any consideration at all? My sort of ghost, I concluded shortly before we arrived at her house, would most likely be the kind that, not deficient in self-awareness and some measure of intent, would lack a predictable means of locomotion, and so would have to rely, to carry out investigations, on such things as local wind currents and fluctuations in the magnetic field. Most likely, as I pictured it, my course would take on something of the aspect of an all-but-incapacitated butterfly, or a plastic bag caught in an updraft, adding dubious consistency to the air.

We entered her house and sat down at her kitchen table, where I picked up an apple and she took the mask away from her face. Oh, I said. Yes, it’s me, she said. I wondered, looking carefully at her, why it seemed so easy to be certain about her identity. After all, it had been some time, and I had only known her then for a short while. Only a few weeks, she said. If that, I said. You remember because you didn’t like me. That’s true enough. I mean you like me now, but then you didn’t like me. What does that mean? You know what it means. No I don’t. Nevertheless, it is me — I asked her why she was revealing her identity now. There’s no longer any reason to keep it from you, she said. What reason was there before? It was important not to influence the early stages of your investigation. Are the early stages over? Yes. Well I still don’t know anything. You probably know more than you think. This seemed reasonable and even vaguely encouraging, so I changed the subject. I asked her how she had been and what she had done with herself all this time, and she said she had done very well for a while, then very poorly and that lately, largely due to her acquaintance with the individual with the face, she was doing a little better. Who is he? I said. She told me. That guy? I said — he was just some schlep who couldn’t say good-bye. He’s made something of himself. Unlike me is what you mean. She didn’t answer. Answer me, I said. Yes, unlike you. This silenced me for a while. As I sat there, silent, listening to her light wheezing, she told me some more about her life and about some of her exploits, which I have to say I found a bit dull. And also a bit sad. Maybe more sad than dull. Maybe all sad.

When I was quite young, as I have mentioned previously, I lived in certain rural areas, as often as not surrounded by various domesticated animals, as well as various wild and even savage ones. Also in abundance, in the summer months, as in all such regions of the world, were any number of insects, which used to become intrigued by us at night or prowl in the evergreen bushes or hover above stumps in small, oblivious swarms. The wasps stung and the arachnids frightened and the horses and mules, if you got too close to them, or let them come up behind you, would bite, and although there were cats to come and gently brush against your legs and dogs to lie beside you when you had been made to lie very still facedown in the barnyard, most of the menagerie seemed to have a certain mildly ferocious aspect in common with the other — I mean not me — bipedal inhabitants of the house. With so many animals on my mind and numerous occasions to think about them, either before I fell asleep or when I was locked up, I acquired the habit of describing to myself the characteristics of various hybrid beasts. Some of these were very pretty and quite wonderful, such as the occasionally carnivorous glow-in-the dark hummingbird with the colors and patterns of the swallowtail; others were less so. It was one of these latter — a species that inhabits and is in fact engendered by the smoldering space between two openly antagonistic old people (the relatives I lived with during that period) sitting opposite each other — that I thought of as we sat there at her kitchen table. The evocation was unpleasing. Suddenly, everything was unpleasing. I picked up her mask and looked at her through it. What happened that day all those years ago? I said. You sure you want to hear it? No, but start talking.

After you dropped us off, she said, we went upstairs and, as had been arranged, found them waiting there. We also found that during our absence a great number of items had been added to the shelves, and she, as had been arranged, quickly added what the two of you had brought back from the trip. Then they carried in the animals and splashed it all with violet paint. She laughed when they splashed it all with violet paint. Especially at the monkey, he kept looking at his hands. I think it was at this point that you called. And a little while later they brought you in. After you came to they sent me into the kitchen to cook. She stayed in the room with the Stutter and the skinny woman and took her turn at burning you. Your good buddy John was there for that part. We sat in the kitchen and when the remainder of the food had cooled we ate it. Then we all left and a couple of days later they got the package you had put the wrong address on, then your pal, your hero, who, you’ve probably gathered, was working with us the whole time, came back to pick you up. The end.