William Gass - Middle C

Their further greetings were equally conventional and consequently cordial. Roger will be in shortly; he’s at the barn repairing the tractor, Deborah said, he’ll be along, and how about tea? They followed her into a sunny kitchenette. How convenient the machine proved to be, Joey thought, Roger didn’t have to be here. The tractor could play broke and its driver miss the visit. Joey began to put words to their discussion of how important her husband’s presence would be. To Miriam, only the sight of the unseeable baby mattered. Joey was green as a shriveled lime. But Debbie? Her attitude he could not discern.

The table was ready for them. A pot of jam, he saw, had been set on a robust red tomato, the largest among the many tomatoes that hung from several long thin inadequate vines inked into the cloth. The sun rollicked along the lips of the teacups, already put about. Lemon slices had been cut, and sugar cubes collected in a kind of square bowl whose odd configuration was meant to be moderne. No cake?

Miriam asked many questions, none requiring an answer, while Joey worried about Roger, who was in what barn? Joey’d not seen a barn, or any — what were they called? — outbuildings of the sort that usually sat around like ill-treated dogs and glared at the main house they were not allowed to visit. Miriam and Deborah shared a laugh as Debbie drew some buns from her oven. Sugar buns, well, what a treat, Joey said, though neither listened, except perhaps the stove did, despite having its door closed.

On a fan of fingers, Miriam counted the crucial months before the baby was due. Never had he felt so shut out, even when, on their various journeys, he was often excluded because of his age and inexperience. In those migratory days Joey was sometimes the very subject from which he was being shielded; but now, though as large in the room as they, he was noticed no more than the tomatoes that even several saucers and a trivet could not conceal from his eyes; even though each of these implements was being gay and prancy on his behalf, while sugar and sunlight were stirred into pourings of tea.

I don’t see any barn. Where is the barn?

– — – — – — – — – — –

Does it fold up during the night and only appear when you need it?

– — – — – — – — – — –

I remember noticing that your car was gone, Deb, is your barn, then, a drive distant? That’s unusual, isn’t it? not to be nearby? I don’t remember missing the barn when we were out here for the wedding.

It’s a drive. I haven’t been sick a day so far. Roger walks it sometimes. I feel the same each morning as I felt the day before.

Oh, that’s fortunate. But it’s early. I remember how sick you made me … ach … as sick as that evil English clotted cream that brought me to bed that time, remember? you were eight? No, it was the eight days running I threw up, I’m thinking of. You were how old?

Isn’t it unusual for the barn … you know … to be so far away?

Gee, I don’t remember. All that — it’s as if it happened in another life. This house was built under the only tree.

I was very impressed by tractors when I was a kid. Well, the ones I liked were bulldozers really.

For me it’s like yesterday, that other life, Miriam said in her serious voice. I see it plain as that windowpane. I hear it — the sirens and the plosions and the burning — I hear them in my head, especially at night. At night, you must remember, we waited for the rockets.

They kept shoving rubble into piles so trucks could cart the bombing off. Joey tried to hang this contribution in what proved to be a closet.

No flows for a while, no cramps. What a relief. I do the same things I always do.

That’s fortunate, but that will change, oh my, will it. I swear I used to feel my skin stretch.

I always wanted to sit on one. You suppose Roger could hoist me up?

Joey sensed some wheels on the gravel drive — it was probably Roger — but then he heard an engine rev, and the wheels moved out of earshot. He fastened his gaze on a saltcellar made entirely of knobbles.

Is it red — the tractor, he heard himself ask. Is it red?

Miriam admired the tomato-covered cloth.

Coloring-book red, his sister said. I did it myself. The colors are fast.

Do you have pink things set aside, his mother wanted to know.

Plenty of time for that. Have some more? Plenty of time.

It’s only a pebble right now, but it will be a boulder someday, Joey considered saying but wisely did not.

No hurry now, Miriam said, you’ll be in a hurry soon enough.

All smiled. Including the cups.

The tractor? Is it …?

– — – — – — – — – — – — –

Joseph informed the Major of his new duties, and even spoke about some of his misgivings, confiding in her, to his surprise, more fully than he had his mother. But of course the Major could ride free on his train of thought while Miriam wouldn’t want to pay the fare.

My sister will bear a Boulder.

Marjorie didn’t smother a laugh.

No, I mean her husband’s name is Boulder. We’ve never mentioned it. As if it were unspeakable like God’s. Or as if Deborah’s husband didn’t exist. We never used his given name either. Roger Boulder. Mr. and Mrs. Roger Boulder request the presence of a name at the christening of … Now … now that colony he calls his family is frantically trying to find suitable names for the coming kid. Like Nick. Or Rocky. Bad enough that Deborah’s should end in—

While he’s still a baby you can call him Pebble.

See, that’s what I mean. In my heart I already have — made a pebble of the fetus.

Melody. No, Melodious. What do you think of Melodious Boulder? … or Carrie?

Barry Harry Downie.

I think Very Much would be a good pair. And for a boy — Clint — no — Cliff.

I have it. Izzy.

You are gifted. I dated a boy once whose name was Steve Sleeve. They laughed in happy unison as if they had just seen a bluebird.

Impatiens, or Touch-Me-Not, Busy Lizzie .

Professor Skizzen was sitting sidesaddle on an orange crate he had upended in a dormer of his attic. This leftover space had become his office because he could carry on business better from any cranny that refused to accommodate a telephone. Though hidden from almost all eyes, it was lit by a single high window that provided lots of southern sun and a good view of the distant trees. If Joseph heaved up the sash, he could peer directly down upon his mother’s garden, upon the tops of hedges and low shrubs, and take in the outlines of her carefully laid out beds. In the middle stood the great vine-smothered beech, its bench, and a puddle-sized pool where Skizzen would often vainly search his reflected face for a tuneful line. Sometimes he would catch sight of his mother hunched over while wielding a hoe or, trowel in hand, sprawled upon the ground, her legs sticking out from behind a bush, her hat poking up through a forest of fronds. He had discovered to his horror (it had now dwindled to a small disturbance) that Miriam liked to sniff the earth, plus the low stems of her plants, precisely at the point they went into the ground. Where the living and the dead intersect, Joseph had observed, but his mother would have none of it. The earth is as lively as you or I, she said. I smell it, but I also listen to it breathe.

Only a brisk walk up a rising street from where he perched, Whittlebauer sat as steady as Stonehenge, and there his students gathered. He heard the college bells divide the academic day into equal and peaceful parts, but never felt the years as they slipped away.

If Joseph’s seat was not very luxurious — even precarious, rudimentary — it was appropriate and would not encourage nodding off, which he was now inclined to do, although his customarily scrappy little lunch should have left him alert as a hunter. Two similar boxes elevated a drafting board to the level of his knees. Many years ago — oh, so many, Joseph thought — he had come upon this castoff in a salvage shop in Urichstown. Ancient ink stains, coffee spills, and the tracks of thumbtacks, collecting like boxers in neutral corners, made interesting this instrument’s once-featureless face; and there the professor cut out columns of the latest calamitous news from the daily papers, labeled them as to subject, pasted pictures with their accompanying clips into scrapbooks, and emptied a handful of raisins nearby his glass of tepid tea.