Norman Rush - Mortals

He was sorry for Iris. He had gotten her when she was young. In retrospect, that was a problem. Her premarital sexual experience had been so paltry it was unfair. It was pathetic. He was what there was of her sexual universe, with, as he recalled, two ancient exceptions, both unsatisfactory. How her condition could be what, undone, reversed, at this stage of the game without terrible pain he had no idea, but she had a right and he recognized it and he loved her. He needed to keep in mind her mother, how dreamily repressive her benighted mother had been when it came to sex. After all, Iris had been thirteen years old before she realized it was permissible to actively wash her genitals as opposed to gazing up at the ceiling and whistling something merry while soapy water passively traversed them in the shower. She had made the discovery during a summertime visit to the country place of one of her girlfriends whom she had observed routinely giving herself a good scrub between the legs, case closed. It was licit. But when he said she had a right he meant that she did and she didn’t at the same time, because there was a preexisting deal of course, their marriage, all his love, their love, years of it, her vows and his, of course. All he knew was that he had to keep her. And if he could possibly construe Morel as someone for her to be into and out of, and then back to him and into his arms wiser and with a better sample of the real world of unsleeping penises and a notch on her garter belt that would make her feel better, then … then good luck with construing, since it looked like he was going to be unable to expel her doctor from his personal universe by the main scenario he had come up with. He thought, Help me, but it would say something if she came back to me post facto, not that I can bear to think about it. He was full of pain again. If it would help her after the fact, he could concoct a lie about fucking someone he hadn’t, but that would require conviction, details, be impossible. Don’t ask me to, he thought. He couldn’t. Keletso was mumbling that it had been a mistake to leave a gazetted road. Ray was in no position to disagree. He would try not to propose doing it in the future. Keletso had turned the windscreen wipers on, the flies were so thick.

Were events like this extraordinary to the local population or were they the equivalent of leaf storms in September in Massachusetts? It felt to him like a what, a genuine abomination, Miltonic, an epiphany or revelation about some underlying corruption pressing up, the earth rotting from the heart outward and breaking the surface and the flies pouncing, summoned from everywhere, some conceit like that, some nonsense like that. It was getting darker, amazingly. Iris had to be free. He thought, If only you could pluck certain thoughts out of your head like thorns, via machine, if there could be a device for that like the blackhead extractors that used to be advertised in comic books, bastard things. He had owned one and it had produced little bloody wounds and scabs on his face, essentially. Why had he persisted with it for so long, refusing to credit that the thing was worthless and having to explain his face downstairs in the morning, his purchase?

He thought he was detecting a scorched smell in the air. It reminded him of something from his past, and he knew what it was. The dead past is forever, he thought. But he knew what it was, it connected to his brother’s asthma, when he had been delegated to watch a pot boil containing water and chopped-up grapefruit rinds stewing to make a home remedy for Rex, a thick liquor. His family had loved home remedies as opposed to quick going to the doctor and paying something, no, the thing was to go endlessly with home remedies and time would pass and all would be well for free. And he had gone off to read while he was waiting, one of the Fu Manchu books, and he had gotten engrossed in it and the elixir had boiled down to a foul gum and then scorched, sending a stench into the bedroom, where his mother sat incessantly stroking his brother’s forehead while he coughed histrionically, giving her a fit. It’s amazing what stays with you from childhood, not to mention what doesn’t, he thought. Recently he had been embarrassed to have to admit to Iris that he had forgotten what his first words were, or word. He must have known at one point. But with age the fabric of the mind started to develop blank spots here and there, like cigarette burns, as it had been described to him once upon a time. His mother might remember what his first word had been, or she might not.

It was unbelievably dark.

Ray thought, She is my light, my nightlight, my pilot light, and she is out, going out, out and about.

Keletso was looking at him. Obviously he had done it again.

“Nothing,” Ray said.

Sudden commotion from the front seat brought Ray sharply awake. The flies were behind them. It was sunrise, still dim, and Keletso seemed to be half out of the cab flailing one leg violently against the side of the vehicle, why? And he was cursing, which was unheard of, another shock. Ray bent across into the front in order to help, to do something, and grasped that Keletso was fighting a snake. In terror he climbed over the seat and lunged for the storage pocket on the right front door where there should be a machete, unless they had moved it. They had. Then it would have to be in among the miscellany of infrequently used tools and oddments under the seat. He found it. They had never used the thing and it was still tight in its canvas sheath but he had it and freed it and flourished it as he got out of the vehicle on the passenger side shouting, “Here I am.”

He ran around to Keletso, who was spread-eagled, gripping the top of the open door with one hand and the edge of the cab roof with the other and kicking out so violently that his undershorts were slipping off. A dark green snake about as long as a boy’s arm was somehow fastened to the heel of Keletso’s right boot, the heel proper if he was seeing correctly, below the foot, and he was wagging the snake in the air like a pennant and groaning terrifyingly with the effort. I brought this man here , he thought, guilt rearing in him.

Ray was shouting at the snake, intending to be helpful and obviously failing, since Keletso, seeing him in his shorts and barefoot, was raging at him to get back into the vehicle and to stop dancing, which was what he was doing no doubt looked like. He couldn’t help it. He was trying to find an opening to use the machete. He had to do something. Keletso was worried about other snakes. He had a point. Ray was being as careful as he could. What did Keletso want? What should he do?

With a cry of triumph, Keletso brought the snake down hard against the doorframe sill, where he managed to pin it with both boots. Instantly Ray was beside him with the machete, ready to strike but finding it impossible with Keletso so much in the way. Ray forced himself to seize the still-lashing tail of the snake with his left hand, stretching it down against the chassis. Crouching, he gained the scope for a clean maximum blow. Keletso’s legs were vibrating. His undershorts had fallen to his ankles. The snake’s skin was dry. The beast was powerful. Ray hacked at the snake with all his strength and it came apart. Bright, sweet-smelling blood spat into his face from the wound. He had gotten a third of the snake, it looked like. He had no idea what the top part of the snake could still do, the head. Now he knew why Keletso always slept with his boots on and why that was such an excellent idea.

Keletso had gotten his shoulder under the top rim of the doorframe and, braced so, was able to exert decisive force downward. Blood gouted up between his boots. It was okay.

Keletso leapt free of the vehicle. He dragged his boot along the ground and the battered ruin of a snake came away from it at last. Ray was still holding his third of the snake in his hand. It seemed to twitch, and he dropped it.