William Gaddis - A Folic Of His Own

Dark had taken the trees and the torn surface of the pond out there by the time she came down where bursts of colours dancing across his face from the illumination of the screen belittled its repose till the sound of his name restored all its accumulated anxiety in an instant, in the blink of an eye caught up in a wince. — What?

— I said are you awake? what on earth are you watching? and a voice from the screen obliged her with 'a sea anemone which looks like a harmless flower but is in reality a carnivorous animal.'

— It's my nature program he told her, slouching almost upright.

— You do have curious tastes don't you, she came turning on lights. — Has Harry called? And when it finally rang — We're fine, did you get to that new doctor? Well whatever you call him, you… I know that Harry but you've simply got to make time, if you don't you're going to end up like… that's exactly what I mean, he's sitting right here waiting for the evening news to whet his appetite for supper, I mean I can't take care of both of you can I? Scenes of mayhem from Londonderry to Chandigarh, an overweight family rowing down main street in a freak flood in Ohio, a molasses truck overturned on the Jersey Turnpike, gunfire, stabbings, flaming police cars and blazing ambulances celebrating a league basketball championship in Detroit interspersed with a decrepit grinning couple on a bed that warped and heaved at the touch of a button — because they offered him a settlement Harry, almost a quarter million dollars but of course he insists on going ahead with the case or rather Mister Basic does, he was out here for… what? The Stars and Bars unfurled in a hail of rocks and beer cans showering the guttering remnants of a candlelight vigil — but if you can just try to be patient with her Harry, you know her mother just died and she's been in an awful state trying to… to what? Oscar will you turn that down! that now she wants you to help her break her mother's will? I don't see what… well they never really got on after her mother was converted by that wildeyed Bishop Sheed was it? a million years ago convincing her that it was more exclusive with Clare Luce and all that after the wads of money she'd been giving St Bartholomew's with these millions of Catholics jamming every slum you can think of if you call that exclusive, she…

— Look! Christina look! Placards brandishing KEEP GOD IN AMERICA, MURDERER — come quickly! and caught in the emergency vehicles' floodlights towering over it all the jagged thrust of — that, that Szyrk thing that, look!

— I'll talk to you later Harry, something's going on. What in God's name…

— It was struck by lightning and the dog, they said it killed the dog that's what all those candles…

— Well thank God for that.

— No but look at them look at the, that sign that little girl was carrying that said murderer that's Father, they said that was Father they, look! Did you see that? The effigy swung back into view and away to reveal a collision between a hot dog cart and a sandwich board purveyor of novelty flags, Spot dolls, keychains, T shirts bearing the Spot logo blazoned beyond on chests and unrestrained breastworks engulfing a frail girl whose meager bosom cautioned You may play with my dog but leave my pussy alone abruptly swept away by PROCHOICE, IT'S MY BODY, ART IS FILTH, a siren's wail and a bullhorn exhorting Go home now, youall uns just go home, hear? BLACK PRIDE, THE LAVENDER COALITION, SMOKE WHITE OWLS, HE MARKS THE SPAROWS FALL as the camera nosed its way through the streaming candles for a jarring glimpse of fur wadded there in a spotlit glare broken off in the shadow of the effigy swinging closer, close enough to read MURDERER JUDGE THYSELF pinned to its robes — because he called it an act of God, the lightning, that's what they said, that's the candlelight vigil.

— My God.

— No don't turn it off! Wait… The screen brightened. A leggy blonde cycled down a country lane and they were told she'd found relief from hemorrhoids as she passed them beaming, a woman gnashed gleaming dentures and they were told how she kept them in place, a sometime movie star pursued the active life with a tennis racket no longer hampered by incontinence — well try another station! and once again the sirens wailed, flags, placards, beer cans and fists flew, a moment's inattention and an armoured personnel carrier spewing tear gas down an emptied street — my God look! but the black body necklaced with a blazing tire turned out to lie at a crossroad in Soweto and now, poised at a casement window, a lady in impeccable negligee stirred by a gentle breeze over phantom breasts smiled serenely on the unruffled landscape of a country morning after a satisfactory bout with an overnight laxative in the day's early light, mist rising on the pond out there and the smell of — some more coffee? Ilse? over the morning paper's rehearsal of flying fists and beer cans, rocks and occasional items of intimate apparel culminating in twenty seven cases of injury, one of alleged rape and two arrests heralding a national outpouring of grief signaled on highways and byways throughout the land in lighted headlamps blinded by the sun as screens everywhere came to life with each delicate step in extracting the limp twelve pound remains from their fatal entrapment following emergency measures taken by the Village under the watchful eyes of dark suited local officials in unaccustomed neckties knotted once for all and hung over bedposts during the week, assorted insurance adjusters and senior citizens, white minister, black pastor, and the media cornering a stoic James B shouldered aside by his expansive father confronting their microphones in a mix of cordiality and vengeance, survivors of the night's melee and the entire resident dog population of every hue and cry, their numbers to be swelled in these days to come by gifts from many points of the compass and as various a herd of givers, a mastiff from a black coalition in Chicago and a pit bull from an anonymous donor in Mississippi, two salukis and an Afghan signed ChubbyChasers International and a registered cocker spaniel from a former First Lady and a springer from a more recent one but none, elegized the press, could take the place of little Spot in the heart of little James B, or in the heart of America, or, as it soon proved, in the astute vision of the boy's guardian ad litem filing suit against the Village charging negligence, distraint, conversion, conspiracy, loss of companionship and restraint of trade where it all might have ended down the road in Judge Elbert Haynes' Wink County Supreme Court with no more than the usual racial abrasions and related high jinks attendant on jury selection thereabouts but for the shrewd eye of presiding Village Board member J Harret Ruth surveying the wider prospect of Federal jurisdiction and so proceeding by impleader to provide the requisite out-of-state litigant in the odd bedfellow of the original creator of the vehicle of entrapment and 'rusting travesty of our great nation's vision of itself thus satisfying the simmering local appetite for a proven common enemy — landing the whole enchilada, as Harry phrased it standing there in front of the smoking fireplace rattling the law newsletter he'd been reading from — right back in the old man's lap.

— Whatever all that means.

— Means they've dragged this sculptor Szyrk into it makes it a Federal case, diversity of citizenship.

— A name like that what could he expect.

— Nothing to do with his name Christina, just meant to protect somebody from another state against getting chewed up by your local rednecks.

— Which is exactly what will happen. Can't you fix that fire?

— Exactly. Get a jury trial going they'll chew him up and spit him out, something wrong with the damper I just opened it. The old man they're really out to get, this J Harret Ruth with his own cheap political agenda's nose up so far between the cheeks with that Neanderthal senator of theirs up for reelection, if they can kill the Judge on this appeals court seat that's what he's after, you'll see. Perfect forum, you get the…