William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

— With the will, here, he wants us to read the will before we sign to make sure we under…

— But I thought it was already probated, I mean why in God's name would we contest it if we're the sole beneficiaries, equal shares and per stirpes and the rest of that nonsense?

— There's a bequest in there for him Christina, a bequest for five hundred dollars and he must be afraid that we'd…

— And that's why he came all the way up here? My God I've never heard such a miserable, where's a pen, can we get this ridiculous business over with?

— When it's signed by a witness and…

— Well Lily can write her name can't she? Has he got a pen? and she stood over him searching deep among worn folds of worsted, reminded of a case down there where they had an old night watchman who couldn't write signed his pension checks with his thumbprint till somebody noticed he must be over a hundred and ten years old with the checks still coming through and when they investigated they found his thumb in a bottle of formaldehyde up on a kitchen shelf with the green tomato preserves and — just give me the pen!

— But Christina wait, you're not taking my car are you? one step behind her up the hall — you can't just leave us here you can wait for him to call, can't you? and at the door — you're just using this! You're just using it as an excuse to get away and leave us with…

— Exactly.

Name three African countries beginning with C.

— You ought to get on one of those Oscar.

— One of what! he snapped over the clamour of the studio audience greeting Cameroon.

— He's already up to almost four thousand dollars, they let you choose your own category and you could…

— Listen, we've got a game show going right here, she just drove out with my car how are we going to get him out of here, I don't know when she'll be back we've got to shop for food and…

— You want a ham sandwich?

What breed of African antelope is named after an American car?

And the din went on interspersed with graphic portrayals of lower back pain and laxatives, arthritic fingers and acid stomach, incontinence and hemorrhoids each summoning a moan of satisfaction embracing fellowship with this geriatric fraternity in armchairs, loungers and contorting mattresses throughout the land gnashing dentures over Black Bean Nacho Chips and Tater Skins with another pull at the brown sock as afternoon displaced the morning and the conquest of Africa eighteen thousand dollars the richer had long since given way to the interminable war between the animal and vegetable kingdoms on the nature program where a potato leaf under attack by a caterpillar provoked a lethal case of indigestion in its assailant and a belch from the solitary audience intruded upon with suggestions for his departure by bus? by plane? He must have got a round trip ticket hadn't he? as mountain pine beetles busy boring out lodgings to lay eggs for a new generation in the mighty ponderosa pine were assailed by a noxious flow of resin engulfing the tiny nursery, they could even call a cab to get him to the airport while the weather was still fine, it could change overnight with a storm, a blizzard, marooned here with the ham whose aroma even now crept near lending its pungent emphasis to a coyote tobacco plant rewarding a jack rabbit's ravin with a severe attack of diarrhea, she'd found this can of creamed corn in the recipe book where it told you how to make these ham croquettes for supper when darkness had set in and the flowering clusters of wild parsnip flooding their grazing predators with poison had been displaced by Serbs slaughtering Croats on the evening news.

— Well he's dead isn't he? she said as he gasped scraping the last of his croquette into the trash. — He was floating around on top of the fishtank so I threw him away. You think I should go down there Oscar? I tried to call Mama before they do this operation on him only they were busy getting all this spiritual counseling in case the Lord calls him so I hardly know what I'm doing. You think you should go in there and feel his pulse? With those ashes he's got in that can up there on the shelf by your grandfather's picture in that black smock thing we can just leave this croquette and everything out here on the table for when he gets up in the night, you want to finish this wine? He gets up about five times and you hear this trickle trickle trickle in there, couldn't he close the bathroom door and just get it all done at once like everybody else? Old men, he muttered something about old men pouring off the last of the wine, a gland called the prostate that can swell up when men get old and cut off the flow from the bladder so — that's what Daddy has! she'd got her breath again, — this operation where they're going inside him and cut if off that's why I'm scared, you think I should go down there? A fairly common operation from all he'd heard, the real danger was cancer, if they got in there and found — cancer? What about me! she took up later pressing his hand to her breast there in the half dark — feel it? did it get any bigger? Well? she'd been told to have an x-ray hadn't she? a mammogram? — I'll go tomorrow, I'll go when she brings the car back out tomorrow.

— She hasn't even called has she? His hand warmed to its task, to the neighboring breast — I don't know when she'll come back, she just used that call for an excuse to get out of here, out of this madhouse she called it it was just an excuse, Harry will be there with a towel around him and a drink in his hand they're probably having a great time right now at some fancy…

— Listen! She stalled his hand rounding her thigh till the shuffle of carpet slippers had passed in the hall — no, there's something wrong Oscar, the way they sounded when they called, will you turn off that light in the fishtank? as the faint sound of a trickle reached them, — it's spooky.

A heavy mist pierced by sporadic gunfire waking the day, waking the sleeper to a confusion of realms with a fleeting white disc up there that might have been the sun or the moon confounding the day shapelessly enveloped out over the pond obscuring the opposite shore colliding with history as spectacle, the shotgun blasts with Hooker's opening volleys through the morning mists down on Jackson's two divisions bestriding the Hagerstown pike where by midmorning the slaughter was done, the attack repulsed and the mist burned away by the sun as it proved to be now over heels of toast and more tea meliorated by today's hair of the dog muffled in a much darned black sock all hopelessly aswirl for lack of a recipe to bring the ingredients together in some grand design illuminating the whole in this battle all tactics and no strategy, leaving no course open but getting to choose your own category in history as a game show.

What famous Civil War general was shot down and killed by his own men? abruptly conjuring history costumed as theatre: We are speaking of General Jackson, sir! clamouring through the clutter of blasted hopes and grand intentions, history as madness, the God-driven man who knows without question and acts, but admire him? riding forth in the dusk hand pointed heavenward to organize the pursuit rolling up the Union flank at Chancellorsville in one of the most brilliant manoeuvres in history as war, seizing death in victory and his commander left crippled without his right arm's divinely sanctioned audacity to prolong the slaughter for two more years staring its futility square in the face embracing war as madness with his General Ewell was it? who thought he was a bird? did bird songs and ate birdseed?

What three famous men living or dead have had the first name Rudolph.

Hitler? — Good God! he muttered, backing off furtively from the solitary audience propped up before the screen there in a litter of crusts and glossy wrappings — Good God! again, bursting into the kitchen, — can such stupidity really exist?