William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

— Men in the trees, will you pull that quilt up over his knees Lily? He's shivering, of course he feels perfectly ghastly, he probably doesn't remember a thing.

— Oh yes, yes, every second of it it was glorious! He came forward splashing coffee on the quilt — when Hooker brought up those six batteries of cannon? His officers riding out front with their sabres flashing setting up the firing line it was stunning, all the guns opening up at once raking the cornfield, those bayonets gleaming in the smoke and blood spattered all over the green corn they lost half their force, the Confederates lost half their force, it was glorious.

— While we're losing our minds here worrying about you in jail or a ditch somewhere catching pneumonia, for God's sake will you sit still and drink your coffee? Where are you going! Lily can get it for you.

— Going where Lily can't go for me. Hooker took over two thousand casualties Harry, two hours they never stopped for a second, twenty five hundred casualties in that bloody cornfield they never stopped for a second.

— My God look at him, a gallon of wine it still hasn't worn off if he drove like he's walking we're lucky he's alive, why he got up and put on that blue suit and a necktie to go for a ride he looks like he lost ten pounds overnight, he's white as a sheet.

— Because he's shaved, Christina. It's because he's shaved.

— Well no wonder he looks odd, I mean thank God he got rid of that asinine excuse for a beard, he looks like a schoolboy on his way to a funeral, that's what they're for aren't they? isn't that what funerals are for? her voice fallen abruptly to a tone as vague as the steps taking her aimlessly toward the windows, — all the hurt and anger and making up for these miserable notions of guilt, isn't that what funerals are for? to simply roll up all these confused feelings in a ball and, and simply fill the gaping hole that Father's left in our lives? I mean no wonder he looks numb babbling about blood on the corn and men in the trees, depriving him of that, it's like a last parting slap in the face from Father denying him that.

— Going too far Christina, probably never occurred to the old man the way he felt about these sentimental tributes and all your mealymouthed claptrap about the resurrection and the life just trying to spare everybody the embarrass…

— Harry he never spared anyone a thing in his life! He was the most, one of the most selfish men who ever lived, the law was the only thing that was alive for him people were just its pawns look at us! Look at poor Oscar and his whole, going back to that whole sad business about his mother it was simply coldblooded, Father was always coldblooded right to the end ordering up this cremation without even a fare-thee-well? a shiver shawling her own shoulders there gazing out over the frozen silence of the pond that would suffice, if he had had to perish twice, that poem about fire and ice whose was it, Yeats? that for destruction ice was great? but he had chosen for the fire, and then some line about desire? or hate?

— What? what did you say?

— No nothing, nothing I was, nothing.

— Clean getaway Christina, nothing that strange about it is there? Strip away the poetry and off to the crematory, time comes I hope you'll do as much for me.

— Don't joke about it! His whole world caving in around him and, Oscar? are you all right?

— Joke was on him, wasn't it? He'd paused there in the doorway doing up the front of his trousers, — the last laugh?

— What are you talking about.

— Bilk, that Neanderthal Senator Bilk, Father beat him to the wire on that impeachment didn't he? Stabbed him in the back with a cat's shin-bone, you remember that Harry?

— Oscar just sit down, have you eaten anything?

— Have your choice of fathers, we just saw Holmes shot through the neck when the Twentieth Massachusetts was hit on three sides didn't we? so that smug autocrat could preen himself at the breakfast table at his son's expense, you've read that haven't you Harry? My Hunt after 'The Captain'? Self serving piece of sentimental humanism at his son's expense published in the Atlantic before the blood was dry on those piles of amputated limbs he loved it, Doctor Oliver Wendell Holmes he loved every minute of it.

— Well we've simply got to eat something, where's Lily.

— Got to get started Christina, I'll eat something later when I, I thought you'd come in with me.

— Obviously I can't can I? I mean this law clerk coming up here with God knows what for us to sign I hardly know what I'm doing.

— Don't have to rush it do you? Get Bill Peyton out of the way we can clear up any questions but it all looks simple enough, death and taxes, same old things people spend their lifetimes trying to outsmart, this place goes to you and Oscar with whatever's in the estate unless he's made some eccentric bequests somewhere, client we had left everything to fight against circumcision but…

— Harry? do you know how it ended?

— Probably a good bank balance somewhere Oscar, Federal judge's salary over a hundred thousand a year and expenses nothing but whisky and cigarettes? He was up pulling on his jacket, — hell of an irony isn't it? Federal judge at a hundred thousand with this stream of hotshot lawyers pulling down half a million, a million shouting at him showing off to the client sitting there guilty as hell he collects win or lose?

— No, no I couldn't figure that out. All the crying and moaning and those bodies piled up in the Bloody Lane with that sort of spectre standing there ankle deep in pools of blood looking down on the two dead substitutes? Because that was the whole point wasn't it, because Grandfather never appeared on the battlefield that was the point, it was Bagby who stumbled on their corpses at the end of act two but then what happened. I got confused, how did they end it? Did John Israel show up at Quantness right at the end? because I got confused and…

— Oh, got to confess Oscar I dozed off, pretty strenuous day for all of us and I…

— The whole scene with Kane in prison that's right out of the Crito in my last act I'll get it, you can read it I'll get it.

— Can't right now, I've got to get started. Where's Christina.

— But, all right, you don't have to. That's all right Harry you don't have to, it doesn't really matter does it? He came down unsteadily on the sofa — I just thought, you're not really missing anything but, no that's all right.

— Not what I meant Oscar, look.

— No no it's all right, it doesn't really matter does it, just a lot of, it's all those ideas I had that got in the way it's all sort of stiff and old fashioned, characters making speeches and, those ideas that just got in the way that's what happened, it doesn't matter.

— Look, I don't want to read it till I can give it my full attention that's what I mean, few things I've got to clear up so we can take time to sit down and do it right, you follow me?

— Because I just thought maybe I, I thought with no funeral service or stone or anything maybe I could still try to…

— Far as that goes nothing to prevent you from putting up a stone or a monument for him is there? Put it right out here on your grounds overlooking the pond if you want to? Make a lot more sense than lined up with a lot of crosses and stone angels, far as that goes you can always arrange a memorial service any kind you want to, these secular times that's what most civilized people do anyhow isn't it?

— But a fifth of the net, you probably couldn't mount much of a production on a fifth of the net could you, when you don't even know how much it will amount to?

— Tried to explain that to you Oscar, what that in lieu of phrase is in there for, keeps things halfway fair so the judge has the discretion to make an award in lieu of damages when their creative accounting comes up with a fifth of nothing but I don't get the connection between the…