William Gass - Eyes - Novellas and Stories

t. They are all red as raw meat you’d think…the picture should begin to come in view about now arty image hah got one

How amazing, I always thought, that this particular green tissue, requiring exactly these folds, when they were used to wrap such fur-trimmed slippers safely in a shoe box, will finally suffer and endure Aunt Nector’s healing iron to reach reusable condition — wow, what a disappointing conclusion — all this only to end up as a packing wad that will prevent jostling among the letters of my ink stamp alphabet box.

The Silver Star seemed to be moving while standing still. It hid its inner workings like a watch. It signified Ease. Grace. Luxury. Chic. Au Currant that juices the rails. To go with Airflow Pedal Planes, Airflow Pedal Cars, Airflow Pedal Trikes, Airflow Pedal Trains. Whatever bore the name: the trailer that’s pulled by the Chrysler.

I begged her. Alice unbuttoned her blouse. I held my breath — deep, as you do for docs. She showed me. We were sitting right here alongside the toy chest. She said hers composed the toy chest now. They were moderate in size but round the nubbles were dark brown circles — a pond’s pebbly curls. We were sitting close together playing touch me, touch me there. B lis s. We were sitting on the toy box playing with ourselves. I never again had a happiness so brief, so intense, so scared.

Ink pad moistened with spit. I rubbed the noses of the letters forcibly into the black pad so as to stamp the headlines of our family newspaper — intermittently issued — I was the publisher, editor, printer, newsboy, and subscriber. MOTHER SERVES ICE CREAM AT BIRTHDAY FEAT fet oh well a ruined page.

t Denver. I remember visiting in the early fall, a yellow — yellow fog — a pall hung over the city, crawling nearly to the mountains. It was the latest thing in phenomena: the shape of a long-held puff of air. I would call out the times: the Silver Star will depart Chicago at 3 p.m. (if that was when I was down on my knees wiping track with a soft cloth to remove what sanding — I hoped — had loosened), or I would announce, in a voice made for announcements: the Silver Star is arriving on time from Indianapolis on Track 3 at 5:49. I liked to brag when the Streamliner got all way round the Christmas tree and had done the papier-mâché tunnel, running on regular like the Studebaker did, a bitch in heat, not the car but the train was, yowling as if from the pain produced when the prongs of one piece of track entered the metal tubes of another. I had so many sections of straight and so many fewer of curve, I don’t remember the number, but when prongs were completely hidden in their sleeves, my right of way extended from the tree right under the dinner table where the tunnel was too, a stretch of straight rail it had to be a stretch of straight rail since

for some reason dodge the table legs? dodge the crumb accumulations? March the troops beneath hide peer up skirts

I’ll have to think about it. Why won’t that damn blue piece fit something. I keep picking it up. My hand holding it hovers like a copter above the board. No fit found. Toss to the ground. So like blue. Screw you too.

every year, for a few years, I would get at Christmas several lengths

more sheets of snowflaked paper MOTHER SERVES ICE CREAM THE WRONG COLOR

tissue-thin were our familial relations You could see through our skins but make out only hinted forms The real reasons for anything were not quite discernible My hands were two spooks

for some reason oh yes because I asked Santa for it on my first list, on my initial petition to the reindeered deity: please a section or so of track please a switch oh yes and a station and a station master who comes out of the station when the train passes a switch = one more reason I need a switch = oh sweety the wind in my window now makes the seed pods of our whitebud tremble, vibr

it won’t be long and I’ll be gone

they say a healthy breeze might bring it all back to me, nah, I don’t believe so no life isn’t like that

I won’t be lonely in my state of death. There are lots of spooks on the other side pretending to be alive, but many more folks who are healthy as heifers pretending to be dead on mine. Sunk in silence are the graves of submarines. In my toy box I had two toy submarines silver as knives I had klept from the dime store. Safe on the bottom they rested, smothered by thoughtlessness. Finally, nobody remembered me living or me dead, ever again, no matter what. Even if — again — it never rains. Train rails hidden in weeds and cinders. No Denver. No Chicago. No arrivals. Hah. No departures. No God. No knowing. No ME DEAD AT FOURTEEN. Didn’t I use that heading once, to scare an auntie? I devoted one issue to the sudden passing of my mom, another to the expected demise of dad, one more to the inevitable falling of relatives into the hands of pets DEATH DAY EXTRA

Of pirates and other myth-making creatures

All aboard. I’d shout, and then place a paper person on the ceiling of the Silver Star—“roof” doesn’t seem right — on top — and I would be that paper person clinging to the forehead of the train where the engine (during an escape by me and my minions following our robbery of the local bank) is; yes, is, okay, is, right, but wasn’t I always in the hero’s role? no, no I wasn’t, I remember, I was a rogue, and a rapscallion, it was part of my business to outwi

t was the hero’s role — t the local constabulary — to create crimes, to sei ze the reins of power from General Chollop

Naughties/Misdemeaners/Crimes/Sins

A naughty was when I locked myself in mom’s closet. A misdemeanor was when I stole the submarines. Crimes earned me a whipping. Only sometimes was I caught and sent to see the doctor. Sin was something else. Eloise (not Louise) was a girl from Sunday school I was trying to feel up for some reason let’s say it was for information so I would let her read to me from a book dear to her father (why should I care about that old coot?) passages that were supposed to keep everything pure between us. The problem was I wanted to play doctor; she wanted to play church, the rules and results of which could be found in Sylvanus Stall’s book What a Young Boy Ought to Know , which she showed me as if it were a family secret (what I wondered then was the D.D. that followed his absurd name?). Oh boy, I thought, this book has pictures too, explicit drawings, big disappointment, fish nibbling at bait and stories full of scares and frights and warnings such as “Satan has laid traps and snares all along your path through life, and you will need to be very, very cautious, lest you are ruined for time and destroyed for eternity.” Well I wasn’t cautious and I was ruined and I will be destroyed for eternity.

Alone though alive in the twilight of life far from any center of feeling not in my knuckles nor in the snot that’s been blown from a nose empty of ideas and far from the center of any ceiling only alone like a speck-sized spider crossing a neglected wall where it will be smacked by my palm regardless of its record of good or evil or the smear we leave squashing it.

Sylvanus was against card playing. I didn’t care for cards either, not even solitaire. Because I crushed the cards that were not playable

bent the corners sIf you can’t play with a plaything what good is it? On a bet I threw that damn marionette down the back stairs, skidoo it flew, but the fool thing didn’t break just got its shoulder string tangled with its shoe.

Even so, when I played, I played by myself; and mostly, when I played by myself, I played at war. And when I played at war I announced the whole thing as if it were a ballgame broadcast over the radio for the ears of eager listeners. REPORTS FROM THE FRONT