William Gass - Eyes - Novellas and Stories

I liked best the March Out. That was the moment the armies that were to be enemies in the coming war left their camps. One marched by land on a road the rug made — therefore down a woven band of burgundy to the beginning of its fringe. Another came (no not by sea because too few ships were to be found docked in the toy bin at the five & dime; no sailor soldiers were there, either, to man them) along the twisting foothill paths, over the slick glacial slabs, at last above the frost line, across the cracks between the mountains, and that meant atop blocks and small boxes, between pillows aslope to the plain of battle beneath the dining table, brave oh so brave in their disciplined lines of march, trucks as transport — putt putt putt — cavalry at a trot — clop clop clop — as well as airplanes zuzz bombing one another from above because I needed all my troops to participate and couldn’t be troubled by pictures of former days when soldiers stood or knelt in colorful lines and died like blown-out candles, or recent times when they fought like worms ventilating the ground or, killed while they crept down burnt halls and peered around blurred corners, or kicked in doors, machine-gunning people in what were once their homes, in what was once a town. Boom. Reeeek. Poom. That noisy. Bullets whistling through a ricochet like a warbler’s song. War is war I said and death the deity.

To this day I love lead red-coated soldiers picking meadows to march through, line up in, fire in, fall in dumb shits look out the artillery has opened up I hear horsemen, the horns of the cavalry, the snap of banners in the wake of the charge, hoofs hammering the oak floors the refreshing way rapid water rushes against rocks so much better than landmines

The nightly news

has repeated views

US making war:

We kick in doors.

Our rifle butts

them in their huts

as we make wars

and kick in doors.

Those in cahoots

our mighty boots

kick in their doors

and round up scores.

The world deplores

our frequent wars,

our lying leaders,

special pleaders,

as nightly shows

show how it goes,

when we make the war

they all deplore:

we kick in doors.

General Chollop is rumored to be marshaling his troops near the sofa. A thick and slowly rising mist reveals their numbers. Lucky Strike smoke. The breath of a visitor. What way shall they come? On TV they have machine guns shoot you down. On TV they make war on horseback airplanes tanks. The kids I won’t have fathered won’t have to imagine the cry charge, in protest the charge will be charged to him.

Ah, hah! happy horsemen will advance through the valley’s meadows, waddle its creeks, and stir its dreams. The foot soldiers will follow but only two abreast. Then, assembling at the umbrella stand, the tanks will crawl over imaginary mountain roads covered by hemlock branches for camouflage, and groaning in protest as only metal can. DRUNKEN MOTHER THROWS UP AT BIRTHDAY PARTY

I believed whatever was read to me while I was being lured to sleep, so I was wroth whenever I ran into a wall and it didn’t open like a shower curtain on a waterfall. I twice tried with no results but a bruise or two, and a puff of shaken plaster — similar celebrations for victory, and badges for bravery — were my rewards. My occasionally best friend Timmy said wonderland was behind the wardrobe, but when I climbed inside mine I was swiftly locked in, the latch chastised me, I heard its tisk, and I felt smothered by my own clothes, short in length as they were, and yet muffling quite completely most of my cries, which grew after a while more shrill as I became thoroughly afraid. I kicked and pounded till finally my mother found me there — she had been hunting me anyway since sonny was supposed to go to church with the whole family — and pulled the door open with a why are you hiding in here you could have smothered and spoiled everyone’s day dear heaven how you’ve messed up your best coat I don’t know if you can wear it to services now with those wrinkles exactly like the ones you leave me to wear as worry on my brow. Are you okay finally Mr. Snivel Root? I thought you liked church. Wipe your eyes and let’s get this business under way we don’t want to be late because it is embarrassing to be caught hunting a pew in the midst of the first amen.

Mother wasn’t such a bad wad. She served ice cream of the right flavor. A bit of a tease is all. Kept the cone out of my reach until cream melted on the upper edge of her fist. I licked it off. That was my payment. Licking. I will give you a licking. I was given a giggle, sometimes a squeeze, before the fragile cone’s crackle.

Bobby believed in Santa Claus but not in snowy wastes and imaginary landscapes. Presents shrouded in white tissue paper were piled into hills about Santa’s farm and factory. There were so many people waiting for the Christ child to be born there had to be, if counted, hills of dead lead soldiers, piles of blocks, heaps of teddy bears, stacks of erector sets, and scheduled trains, whole ranges made of games designed to improve a slow kid’s motor skills, as well as towers of books to be read from by fathers trying to sound like Riding Hood, Grandma, or the Wolf, each paint box and yo-yo in a snowy white disguise over which the sled slid when gathering them in sacks. What did they take kids for, these duped adults, telling them Santa’s cheeks were rosy with frostbite — gee whiz — when they were obviously flushed as dad’s cheeks often were with the brandy everybody left by the fireplace at the very edge and entrance to the Blessed Birth Day? Nevertheless, it was a yearly disappointment not to receive the slingshot, air rifle, or anatomically correct doll I had written Santa to request. My father says that Santa won’t give me anything until I improve my writing. Mother says that when she was a girl she was courted by everybody including ferrets. She repeats this over and over. She has successfully hidden the gin.

The partly finished puzzle lies there like a partly ploughed field inviting every eye and then commanding the eyes’ hovering fingers to halt their indecisive swaying in order to squeeze the chosen little knob into its chosen little notch. It won’t fit. It certainly looked like a fit. How I hate sharing. I hate that hovering hand, uncertain, in the puzzle’s airspace. I end up letting mom finish putting together a bowl of ripening pears, open shutters, reclining nude. Get the goddamned thing back in the box. I don’t care if it’s by Matisse. See how the pieces cling to one another like a clump of elderberries. None of this fruit is mine. Only the few puzzles I’m allowed to begin-middle-and-end, by myself alone, are mine.

How they once sat in that bowl so plump and pristine, so pristine and plump, their stems in the air to enjoy the ticklish strokes of the painter’s brush. How they once sat fixed, defeated by disuse, in the bowl smeared on the canvas and waiting for the photograph’s grin as if it were his penis going in. How many thousand copies of that stupid still life were made for the jigsaw to chew to pieces, all small all knobbed all broken into five hundred wiggly shaped shards.

The way you could tell it wasn’t a chicken that laid all those eggs at Easter…the way was the colors they were colored. A few were speckled, but most of them were a wishy-washy blue or a smeary rose or a wrung-out purple or a yellow that smelled of pickle juice. And chickens had more affection for their eggs than to leave them any old place even under leaves or in a nest of crab grass. So a rabbit was a good guess, and Bobby believed that if he didn’t eat those eggs — boiled as a precaution — there’d be baby rabbits grazing on every lawn until the mower got them or a dog. Easter was a funny day. You were given candy in a nest of shredded cellophane because God’s son, after he was murdered by a cloud of thrown stones, pushed away a few rocks from the cave where he was hiding and displayed his organ in an unfurling of raincoat. What rabbits had to do with this was a mystery. Jerry said that it was rabbits because they were always fucking when they weren’t eating and consequently constantly giving birth by means of those everywhere eggs, but Bobby said that such dumb stuff was for Christmas to figure out. Jerry said nevertheless rabbits were chosen to represent rebirth and picked because nobody was inclined on Easter to eat them with the eagerness that, for no discernible reason, they did ham.