Padgett Powell - Cries for Help, Various - Stories

I suggest we leave Mrs. Fiberung upon the horns of her little dilemma on the grounds that she is as capable as we are of solving what are, after all, her trivial problems. We have problems of our own we might be better advised to inspect. To the extent that they too are trivial, we might well advise our ownself to abjure them too. To hell with Mrs. Fiberung and her little problems, and to hell with us and our little problems, and let us get on with it.

The odd volleyball net is before us beside the pool that Mrs. Fiberung has quit. Husbands do leave, boys do stray, girls do play, the Wide World of Sports will cover about anything. Buttocks. Buttocks in spandex. Before the buttocks develop that large-curd cottage-cheese dimpling, one of the saddest things on earth and one of God’s chief oversights. On the other hand, the buttocks before the curding is one of His proudest moments and indeed one of the signal arguments for His existence. To see Him working his way toward the human buttock, whether with the hand of the Darwinian selector or not, traveling from the hairy hind of quadrupeds to the fulgent, obscene turquoise and carmine noise of the baboon’s operatic ass to the smooth, domed, cleaved, in-the-beginning firm-as-Jell-O and perfect-for-spanking human buttocks is to see a great mind at work, and to place the buttocks in that relation to the shitty rump of an ox or to the cloaca of the slithering beast is not less than placing the sun in relation to a planet. Because of the butt, God exists. I have a butt, or had a butt, therefore I am the son of God.

Put on these Indian flyer things here.

What are you talking about?

These.

Put them where?

On your ears, I guess.

Have you lost your mind?

No. Why?

I am not putting those on my ears.

I think that’s what they’re for.

You think those are earrings?

What else are they?

They look more like bagpipes, or porcupines. Put them on your ears .

I got them for you.

Well take them back.

I can’t.

Why not?

The Indians said they would kill me if I tried to exchange a purchase. Tribal law allows this, owing to the long history of broken treaties, etc.

The earrings are moving.

Good God.

Those are porcupines. They sold you drugged porcupines. You are a fucking idiot, even before you announced I was to wear them.

How was I to know what they are? All I know about porcupines is that they eat buildings.

That is probably why the Indians won’t exchange them for something that does not eat buildings.

Why didn’t the Indians just kill them?

Instead of get money from you to take them away?

Yes.

I don’t know. That’s a hard one.

I couldn’t see them well. They were half in the box, in tissue paper.

Something in a Dell computer box, weighing forty pounds, they tell you is earrings, and you buy it.

They said it was some kind of “flyer things,” they mumbled, I thought they meant some kind of ceremonial headdress, not mere earrings, I don’t know.

I think this is a transitional relationship.

What is?

You and me. You and I.

Transitional?

Yes. Crossing.

Into what?

Into not a relationship.

Because I bought you some earrings that turn out to be live animals? You regard that as an infraction ?

That you expect me to strap twenty-pound balls of deadly quills to my head, yes, that is an infraction.

I don’t expect it now that I see what they are.

That makes it even worse. You’d be somehow less stupid if you drugged me now and tied these things to my head.

You fly off the handle at the least provocation. I think you are right. The relationship is ABC. I will find a woman who does not freak because you buy her a surprising gift.

I’ll have a lot of fun telling people about my ex who bought me porcupine earrings, whole porcupine earrings.

A gross distortion. They’ll know you are crazy.

I won’t be able to deny it, for having been with you up to that point.

Your whole life will become a fabric of lies if you start saying shit like that.

Shit like what?

Forget it. I bet these guys make good pets if you can keep them from eating the house. I think I’ll ride out to the rez and thank the Indians profusely. They’ll be laughing at me and it will be perfect. I’m in a new zone. We’re all stupid, finally, baby doll, so you might as well get free in the deep end. Where you can maneuver.

You won’t believe what Steve did yesterday.

Steve who?

Steve Peanutbrain.

What?

He bought two porcupines and expected me to wear them as earrings.

So? Did you?

I did not. They weighed twenty pounds apiece and started moving. For starters.

Ralph the boinkologist last week invited a squirrel to breakfast in our house and fed it eggs and jelly at the table. I said what the hell was going on and Ralph said, “Hey, this guy went to the fifth grade.” The squirrel looked up from the industry of chewing through a jelly pack and tipped his hat to me. Ralph had put a hat on him. He was the size of a small bear.

Maybe he had been to fifth grade.

That’s what I’m thinking about then. I asked why Ralph didn’t give the guy some jelly from the jar and he said he’d already been through that with the guy. The squirrel had found the jelly pack at a picnic and wanted to eat it and he wanted to open it himself. We watched him nibble around the jelly pack. He dropped it and retrieved it from the floor and was back in the chair with unbelievable quickness. His hat fell off and Ralph put it back on his head.

So all in all you had a better time of it than I did with Steve offering me porcupine earrings.

I guess I did.

When will it ever end?

What?

Life, I guess.

Has it begun?

I think it has.

Well if it has, it is going to end soon enough. We don’t have much in the way of prospects. Our husbands are bringing rodents into the house for odd purposes. They arguably are not of sound mind.

We are with them, so we are not of sound mind either.

Would we be any worse off, really, had you strapped the porcupines to your head and had I had a bite with the squirrel at my own table?

I’d be worse off, you might have gotten away with it. I’d be in the hospital.

People must talk about us.

Yes. And tell me, do you want to hear what they have to say?

No.

Life can go on as it must as long as I do not have to listen to people talk .

Maybe this is what Steve and Ralph are onto. They aren’t exactly out there soliciting the approbation of people or listening to them. Steve finds it funny that the Indians think they duped him.

What Indians?

The Indians who sold him the porcupine earrings, telling him apparently they were ceremonial headdress.

That’s funny.

That’s why he bought them, I think. I maybe overreacted.

I think you did.

Maybe you were a little short with the fifth-grade squirrel.

Maybe I was.

Maybe we owe some apologies.

I think we do. Let’s have a cookout.

Steve’s pretty mad.

We’ll wear teddies, like a Hefner scene. Or I have this very sexy old-fashioned tan two-piece. Get the squirrel a case of jelly packs. What do the porcupines eat?

Treated plywood, I think.

We have that.

I really don’t like people, you know that?

We are sisters!

I will try a little P.T. plywood myself.

The Lord is my shepherd. Shall I want?

You shan’t. What do you mean, tan two-piece?

It’s like flesh-colored. Hideous. Very sexy in 1959.