Donald Barthelme - The Dead Father

No, Julie said. No speech.

A speech to the men? asked the Dead Father. To my assembled loyal, faithful —

No, said Julie.

Yes, said Thomas. Tomorrow.

Tomorrow?

Maybe tomorrow, said Thomas.

My speech!

To bed, said Thomas. All to bed now. Pleasant dreams.

Thomas regarded his orange tights, his orange boots, his new silver belt buckle.

Yes! he said.

Let him make his speech, Julie said.

Yesterday you said no.

I was in a fouler mood yesterday. Today I am in a fairer mood.

That’s interesting, Thomas said. How do you do that?

I ignore sense data, she said, let him make his speech.

Thomas turned to the Dead Father.

Would you like to make your speech now?

I have prepared some remarks, said the Dead Father. Remarks which are perhaps not without pertinency.

Thomas gathered together the men and Emma.

The men stood in a ragged half circle. The nineteen. Edmund with his hand on his back pocket, where the flask was. Emma at one tip of the crescent, Julie at the other.

The Dead Father stepped forward and assumed his speaking position, a kind of forwardly lean.

All the men lighted cigarettes. Julie lighted a cigarette as did Emma.

The Dead Father placed the tips of the fingers of his two hands together.

In considering, he said, inconsidering inconsidering inconsidering the additionally arriving human beings annually additionally arriving human beings each producing upon its head one hundred thousand individual hairs some retained and some discarded — All the men sat down and began talking to each other. In contemplating I say these additionally arrived human beings not provided for by anticipatory design hocus or pocus and thus problematical, we must reliably extend a set of ever-advancing speeding poised lingering or dwelling pattern behaviors sufficient unto the day or adequate until the next time. Given the existence of the next time, anticipatory design neurosis designs for integration of the until-then-threatening non-self-requested experience of life and sweet, sweet variable stresses and flows to carry inward and inwardize if rain floods fires earthquakes tornadoes do not occur as predicted but look out of the window and see how dark the sky, how bold the wind, how whipped the trees, how gravitational the red falling skinripping rooftiles not provided for by anticipatory design fury preallotted to the discontinuance of consciousness known as sleep, let us pray. Tensionally cohered universe here today and gone tomorrow finity inward and finity outward and ever-advancing speeding poised lingering or dwelling particles in waveful duality and progressive conceptioning and Father’s Day interface with holistic behaviors unpredicted by parts such as you, me, them, and we, and I, and he, and she, and it. These, assigned by a static or “at rest” analysis to super series of unpredictable mathematical frequencies composed of complementary and reciprocal numbers found in cyclic bundling of experience not necessarily compromised by variable geographic bundle limitations, but sometimes, as in the song at twilight when the lights are low and the flickering shadows softly come and go, to multidynamically blossom or burst forth in beauty or pain and pre-and postnatal … disappointments. . next appropriate trial balance struck… as to what might be… in the best case… however. However. Given the already-secreted true experience of the regeneratively-evolving comprehensive world-design effort against fire flood pestilence violent atmospheric disturbance and providing seventeen cubic feet of air per minute per person free of toxic or disagreeable odors or dust, or malice, we feel that metals broadly speaking and synthetics narrowly speaking will interlink into continuously improving world-around extra-corporeal networks, networks within which only individual man presents himself as an inherent island of physical discontinuity sad to say, sad to say, physical discontinuity and torpor, total velocities of which known practices have proved inadequate to solve. Given however all-over compensatory design despair such as is known to you and known to me, and freakiness, and bearing in mind push-pull as prior to and above all, and disregarding those whose larger pattern security is challenged or threatened by these systematically pulsing alternations, we project your existence here as possibly tolerable within tolerances of.01, 02, and.03, given up-tooling of social engineering extra-genetic razzle post-partum reprepositioning and I spy. Thank you.

The Dead Father waited for the applause.

A storm of applause from the men!

Thank you, the Dead Father said, thank you.

Prolonged and fervent applause. Whistles. Stamping of feet. Waving of handkerchiefs (the women).

Thank you. Thank you.

A wonderful speech, said Thomas.

A marvelous speech, said Julie, would you autograph my program.

Thank you, said the Dead Father, of course.

Quite extraordinary, said Emma, what did it mean?

Thank you, said the Dead Father, it meant I made a speech.

Beautifully done, said Thomas, are you free for lunch?

Thank you, said the Dead Father, I think so.

Julie was wiping the Dead Father’s brow, with her handkerchief.

A long time since I’ve heard anything like it, she said, a very long time, not since my student days in fact.

Thank you, said the Dead Father.

The men loved it, said Thomas.

Yes, said the Dead Father.

Positively on the edge of my chair, said Emma, figuratively speaking.

Thank you, said the Dead Father, it was a pisser all right.

Enough! said Julie.

Why is it, asked the Dead Father, that alone among the members of this party I am not allowed to be filthy-mouthed?

Because you are an old fart, she said, and old farts must be notably clean of mouth in order to mitigate the disgustingness of being old farts.

The Dead Father lunged against his cable.

Look how the red is rising to his top, Emma observed.

The Dead Father burst off down the road, his cable trailing.

He is going to do it again, said Thomas.

They followed at a rapid pace.

They found the Dead Father standing in a wood, slaying. First he slew a snowshoe rabbit cleaving it in twain with a single blow and then he slew a spiny anteater and then he slew two rusty numbats and then whirling the great blade round and round his head he slew a wallaby and a lemur and a trio of ouakaris and a spider monkey and a common squid. Then moving up and down the green path in his rage he dispatched a macaque and a gibbon and fourscore innocent chinchillas who had been standing idly by watching the great slaughter. Then he rested standing with the point of his sword stuck in the earth and his two hands folded upon the hilt. Then he again as if taken by a fit set about the bloody work slaying a prairie dog and a beaver and a gopher and a dingo and a honey badger and an otter and a house cat and a tapir and a piglet. Then his anger grew and he called for a brand of even greater weight and length which was brought him by a metaphorically present gillie and seizing it with his two fine-formed and noble hands he raised it above his head, and every living thing within his reach trembled and every dead thing within his reach remembered how it got that way, and the very trees of the wood did seem to shrink and step away. Then the Dead Father slew a warthog and a spotted fawn and a trusting sheep and a young goat and a marmoset and two greyhounds and a draghound. Then, kicking viciously with his noble and shapely foot at the piles of the slain, raw and sticky corpses drenching the earth in blood on every side, he cleared a path to a group of staring pelicans slicing the soft white thin necks of them from the bodies in the wink of an eye. Then he slew a cassowary and a flamingo and a grebe and a heron and a bittern and a pair of ducks and a shouting peacock and a dancing crane and a bustard and a lily-trotter and, wiping the sacred sweat from his brow with one ermine-trimmed sleeve, slew a wood pigeon and a cockatoo and a tawny owl and a snowy owl and a magpie and three jackdaws and a crow and a jay and a dove. Then he called for wine. A silver flagon was brought him and he downed the whole of it in one draught looking the while out of the corner of his ruby eye at a small iguana melted in terror against the limb of a tree. Then he tossed the silver flagon into the arms of a supposititious cupbearer sousing the cupbearer’s hypothetical white tunic with the red of the (possible) wine and split the iguana into two halves with the point of his sword as easily as one skilled in the mystery fillets a fish. Then the Dead Father resumed his sword work in earnest slaying diverse small animals of every kind, so that the heaps mounted steaming to the right and to the left of him with each passionate step. A toad escaped.