Denis Johnson - The Resuscitation of a Hanged Man

He took a deep breath, standing quietly by the door, and then surprised himself by bursting into tears. Something must be getting to me, he thought, yanking out his shirttail and wiping at his eyes. The sobs doubled him over and shook him as if dislodging a strange, heavy obstruction from his throat. When he stood up straight again his heart was lighter, though his head hurt and his eyes felt wounded. He reached his right hand carefully through the shattered panel, opened the door, and went through the kitchen and the airless living room to Ray Sands’s work area.

English had a cigarette while he puttered around in his dead boss’s studio, peering into the tripod camera’s lens, repositioning the two tungsten lamps, and blowing smoke into the somber darkroom. In the office itself he found the file drawer open and empty. It stood to reason that Sands’s executor would have been here, and maybe, thought English, there was cause to remove the files. But he couldn’t help it, the numberless fingerprints of a conspiracy blazed brightly on all the objects around him now.

The telephone on Sands’s desk was working. English dialed the numbers he’d found in Gerald Twinbrook’s office, and had a couple of conversations. The first two were New York numbers, one no longer in service and the other belonging to an art gallery; but the person answering hadn’t heard of any Gerald Twinbrook.

“So this isn’t his gallery? He doesn’t show paintings there?”

“I know my artists,” the man said. “I don’t know Gerald Twinbrook.”

The third number belonged to the Notch Lodge in Franconia, New Hampshire. A recorded message told him the lodge was closed from October 10 until the first of June.

Franconia — the Truth Infantry — matters drifted together into secret shapes. His head said: What if this, what if that? What if it all ties together, what if somewhere a bad man sits making sense of it all, with my fate in his hands? This situation is adding up. I’ve got everything but the area code on this one. He picked up Ray Sands’s felt-tipped pen with the idea of writing down all the facts of the case — the people, the places, the connections — Provincetown, Marshfield, Franconia; Ray Sands and Grace Sands; Marla and Carol and Leanna; Twinbrook and the Cape light and John Skaggs, the unholy nineteenth-century Midwestern Lazarus; Twinbrook and the big corporations and the Truth Infantry and God and Jesus and the Bishop … But the pen was dry and he decided in favor of letting these things boil inside him until they produced a driving steam. He turned over the few papers on the desktop, a couple of errand lists in Ray Sands’s small, square hand, several bills with the payment vouchers torn away, and when he uncovered what he saw, for an instant, as a white card on which were penciled the words Kill the Bishop , but which he found under the lamp to be an envelope bearing, in Sands’s print, the name

Leanna Sousa

it was like walking past a phone booth just at the moment someone says “Hello?”—that one word corkscrewing out of a whole life.

He put the envelope down and dialed the fourth telephone number, one in the 202 area. A woman answered and said, “Good afternoon, this is the White House.”

“White House?”

“This is the White House. You’ve reached the telephone number of the President.”

“The real President? I mean,” English corrected himself, “the real phone number? Can I talk to him?”

“If you’ll state your purpose,” she said, “we’ll connect you with a staff member who can help you.”

English hung up on her.

He picked up the envelope bearing Leanna’s name.

It wasn’t addressed to Leanna, or to anybody. Her name ran across the upper left corner, just a notation. English held the envelope gently. He thought of steaming the flap loose or getting the thing X-rayed, and then he just tore it open with his thumb, remembering the owner of this communication was dead. The note was handwritten on yellow lined paper. He closed his eyes and willed himself to understand that it couldn’t possibly be an instruction to him from God to kill the Bishop of his diocese. And it wasn’t, he saw, from Sands to Leanna, which he’d also feared, but to Marla Baker from the lover who’d lost her that winter — from Carol.

Dear Marla,

This evening you called and before I recopy what I read to you on the phone I just want to say how important it is for me to express to you those thoughts. It’s very frightening for me to put my feelings on the line, without that edge of “control” or the notion of the “observer” lurking in the wings. So …

just spent an agonizing evening thinking and feeling about possibly everything under the sun — wanting to write down and clarify that confusion — the confusion of wanting you, really desiring you — a desire that runs very deep and continues to cut deeper — I say cut because this kind of opening is at once pleasurable and painful — I’m in a dilemma — for me, some very important things are happening between you and me — and I want for you to have all that you want for yourself — but I also have “wants”—at issue for me now is whether I’m able to continue being sexually involved with you while you are involved sexually with another woman again — with Leanna again, I almost couldn’t write her name. — I know I’ve never felt the sexual and sensual highs I’ve experienced with you, but now I’m beginning to feel myself construct limits and barriers between you and me — in my mind and body. I realize that ideally this shouldn’t be so — that I should be able to be totally and fully there with you — to leave mysel open to the experience of your love and affection — regardless of who is sleeping with you tonight or any other night — and I’ve been trying real hard to deal with that one in as open and rational a way as I possibly can — but I know that for now that is beyond me. I want you very much, I want to continue to grow and nurture my love for you, to allow it to unfold, recognizing our sexual selves as an essential part of that love’s core — I think you know I wouldn’t ask for this unless I felt what was happening now was pulling us apart—

I guess there isn’t much more to say other than that you embrace the above as an expression of some really deep feelings that I felt compelled to share with you. It scares me when you talk about being “fucked unconscious.” That’s definitely not the Marla I know — let me know, please, how you’re feeling and what rages or anger you have for me. I hope what I’ve said won’t be resented — keep loving!!

Loving you,

English put his head down on the desk. Why did everything vibrate when he touched it? — strands of an indecipherable web, connections that shouldn’t be there. The coincidences of his life assailed him. The walls of the world were soft; wherever he bumped up against them he pushed through into inscrutable chaos and naked meaning and Heaven and Hell. But there was comfort in touching this letter. It gave him peace just holding it in his hand. It brought to mind the lonely safety of those nights he’d spent listening to Carol and Marla’s conversations, those nights when he, the only one awake in the world, had known all about them and had forgiven them.

When he got outside, the sky had darkened. Within minutes a stiff wind was blowing over the harbor. Now what? Was it going to snow? Winter into spring into winter. Miss Leanna had turned into Mister. Wafer and wine into body and blood. And people dying — passing from life into meat. All these transformations. They were too much for him.

English stopped in at the Yardarm Tavern because they’d recently gotten a videotape player, and from all the way out in the street he could see film credits wandering up over the big screen. Lawrence of Arabia.