William Gass - In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

Mr. Wallace wavers on his stick and spits. The whole street echoes with him. His friend dwindles.

Portents are next. They follow pain as pain the weather. Anyone is a friend of Mr. Wallace who will stay.

The starfall past the Atlas stack — a cruel sign. They are all bad, the signs are. Evil is above us. “Evil’s in the air we breathe or we would live forever.” Mr. Wallace draws the great word out as he’s doubtless heard his preacher. The cane rises with difficulty. The tip waves above the treetops. “There,” bellows Mr. Wallace, his jowls shaking. “There!” And he hurls the cane like a spear. “Smoke, sonny, comes out and hides the sky and poisons everything. I’ve got a cough.” His hand is tender on his chest. He taps with it. He hacks, and stumbles. Spit bubbles on the walk and spreads. The friend or friendly stranger bobs and smiles and flees while Mr. Wallace waits, expecting the return of his cane. “I can’t bend,” he almost whispers, peering at the disappearing back. His smile stays, but the corners of his mouth twitch. Wearily his eyes cross.

“Cane cane cane,” Mr. Wallace calls. His wife hurries. “Cane cane,” Mr. Wallace calls. She waves her hanky. “Cane,” he continues until it’s handed back. “Hot.” Mrs. Wallace nods and mops his brow. She settles his hat and smooths his sleeve. “You threw your cane again,” she says. Mr. Wallace grows solemn. “I tried to kill a squirrel, pumpkin.” Mrs. Wallace leads him home, her face in tears.

What a noise he makes! I thought I couldn’t stand it when I came. His puffed face frightened me. His eyes were holes I fell in. I dodged his shadow lest it cover me, and felt a fool. He’s not so old, sixty perhaps; but his eyes run, his ears ring, his teeth rot. His nose clogs. His lips pale and bleed. His knees, his hips, his neck and arms, are stiff. His feet are sore, the ankles swollen. His back, head and legs ache. His throat is raw, his chest constricted, and all his inner organs — heart, liver, kidneys, lungs, and bowels — are weak. Hands shake. His hair is falling. His flesh lies slack. His cock I vision shriveled to a string, and each breath of life he draws dies as it enters his nose and crosses his tongue. But Mr. Wallace has a strong belly. It is taut and smooth and round, like a baby’s, and anything that Mr. Wallace chooses to put into it mashes up speedily, for Mr. Wallace, although he seeps and oozes and excretes, has never thrown up in his life.

I could hear him walking. That was worst. When I raked the yard I faced in his direction and went in when I saw him coming. With all my precautions his voice would sometimes boom behind me and I would jump, afraid and furious. His moist mouth gaped. His tongue curled over his bent brown teeth. I knew what Jonah felt before the whale’s jaws latched. Mr. Wallace has no notion of the feelings he creates. I swear he stinks of fish on such occasions. I feel the oil. It’s a tactile nightmare, an olfactory dream — as if my smell and touch divided from my hearing, taste, and vision, and while I watched his mouth and listened to its greeting, fell before whales in Galilee, brine stung and bruised while the fish smell grew as it must grow in the mouth of a whale, and the heat of an exceptionally hardy belly rose around.

More and more I knew my budding world was ruined if he were free in it. As a specimen Mr. Wallace might be my pride. Glory to him in a jar. But free! Better to release the sweet moving tiger or the delicate snake, the monumental elephant. I was just a castaway to be devoured. It was bad luck and I rocked and I cursed it. Mr. Wallace spouted and I paced the porch with Ahab’s anger and his hate. Mrs. Mean wanted my attention. She passed across my vision, brilliant with energy, like the glow of a beacon. Each time my stomach churned. Her children tumbled like balls on the street, like balls escaping gloves and bats; and on the day the boy Toll raced in front of Mr. Wallace like a bolting cat and swung around a sapling like a rock at the end of a string, deadly as little David, then I saw how. Well, that’s all over now. Mr. Wallace dreads me as the others do. He inches by. He looks away. He mumbles and searches the earth with his cane. When Mr. Wallace completes his death they will wind crape around his cane and stick it in his grave. Mrs. Wallace will stand by to screech and I shall send — what shall I send? — I shall send begonias with my card. I say Good Morning, Mr. Wallace, how did you pass the night? and Mr. Wallace’s throat puffs with silence. I cannot estimate how much this pleases me. I feel I have succeeded to the idleness of God.

Except in the case of Mrs. Mean. I am no representative of preternatural power. I am no image, on my porch — no symbol. I don’t exist. However I try, I cannot, like the earth, throw out invisible lines to trap her instincts; turn her north or south; fertilize or not her busy womb; cause her to exhibit the tenderness, even, of ruthless wild things for her wild and ruthless brood. And so she burns and burns before me. She revolves her backside carefully against a tree.

2

Mrs. Mean is hearty. She works outside a good bit, as she is doing now. Her pace is furious, and the heat does not deter her. She weeds and clips her immaculate yard, waging endless war against the heels and tricycles of her children. She rolls and rakes. She plants and feeds. Does she ever fall inside her house, a sprung hulk, and lap at the dark? The supposition is absurd. Observation mocks the thought. But how I’d enjoy to dream it.

I’d dream a day both warm and humid, though not alarming. Leaves would be brisk about and the puff clouds quick. This, to disarm her. She’d be clipping the hedge; firmly bent, sturdily moving, executing stems; and then the pressure of her blood would mount, mount slowly as each twig fell; and a cramp would grow as softly as a bud in the blood of her back, in the bend of her legs, the crooksnap of her arms, tightening and winding about her back and legs and arms like a wet towel that knots when wrung.

Now the blood lies slack in her but the pressure mounts, mounts slowly. The shears snip and smack. She straightens like a wire. She strides on the house, tossing her lank hair high from her face. She will fetch a rake; perhaps a glass of water. Strange. She feels a dryness. She sniffs the air and eyes a sailing cloud. In the first shadow of the door she’s stunned and staggered. There’s a blaze like the blaze of God in her eye, and the world is round. Scald air catches in her throat and her belly convulses to throw it out. There’s a bend to her knee. The sky is black and comets burst ahead of her. Her hands thrust ahead, hard in the sill of the door. Cramp grasp her. Shrivel like a rubber motor in a balsa toy her veins. Does her husband waddle toward her, awag from stern to stem with consternation? Oh if the force of ancient malediction could be mine, I’d strike him too!

… the vainest dream, for Mrs. Mean is hearty, and Mr. Mean is unpuncturable jelly.

Mr. Wallace can bellow and Mrs. Wallace can screech, but Mrs. Mean can be an alarm of fire and war, falling on every ear like an aching wind.

Among the many periodicals to which I subscribe is the very amusing Digest of the Soviet Press and I remember an article there which described the unhappiness of one neighborhood in a provincial Russian city over the frightfully lewd, blasphemous, and scatological shouts a young woman named Tanya was fond of emitting. She would lean from the second-story window of her apartment, the report said, and curse the countryside. Nothing moved her. No one approached without blushing to the ears. Her neighbors threatened her with the city officials. The city officials came — were roundly damned. They accused her of drunkenness, flushed, and threatened her with the party officials. The party officials came — were thoroughly execrated. They said she was a dirty woman, a disgrace to Russia — an abomination in the sight of the Lord, they would have said, I’m sure, if the name of the Lord had been available to them. Unfortunately it was available only to Tanya, who made use of it. The party officials advised the city officials and the city officials put Tanya in jail. Useless. She cursed between bars and disturbed the sleep of prisoners. Nor was it well for prisoners to hear, continually, such things. They transferred her to another district. She cursed from a different window. They put her in the street, but this was recognized at once as a terrible error and her room was restored. The report breathed outrage and bafflement. What to do with this monster? In their confusion they failed to isolate her. They couldn’t think to shoot her. They might have torn out her tongue. Abstractly, I’d favor that. All the vast resources of civilization lay unused, I gathered, while Tanya leaned obscenely from her sill, verbally shitting on the world.