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

Shoes, the rug — he saw the rug — and the foot of a table rising from the weave, thickening as it treed its top — was it rosily wooded? — waxed featureless and gleaming. Prop-purr-tee: a lovely sound. Was he an organ looking out? was this how it seemed to the liver, lying… where? He knew where peas were likely in pot pies, but he could not imagine his liver — did not wish — the way he dreamed of women, always smudged across the crotch. Prop-purr-tee. They shone. He could not watch. Fender — why not rent? All right, all right then, I’d like to give you a break, but it’s not up to me, a sale’s no certain thing, not everybody’s hunting, it isn’t like you were a honey-sweet piece, they’re not anxious, they’ve no itch. Oh sure, to live above themselves, but not, you know, to… Hey, does that check? Now — damage to the skin? property your vintage, some crazing’s likely — but, yeah, we’ve covered that. Drafts get in? I don’t know, Fender. Honestly. You’re in a bad district. It’s the slack season. Things are slow all over. You might try lodgers….

Deposit of paper on the table, slick painted wall — he saw the wall — it went up nowhere, sight ran like water over it. Prop. Prop. Look, Fender, it’s a busy time, a busy time…. Sure they’ll laugh — pee hee hee — that’s how they’ll laugh. What can I do? If they laugh, they laugh. A dog’s house is a dog’s house, to be cunt blunt, and so they’ll laugh. You bet there’ll be a lot of traipsing in and out. They’ll want to know what you see from where you are; they’ll ask how’s the view… should this be news? Like my boss says: it ain’t funny but it’s money. Okay. Let’s trot along. Feet flat, I suppose? bladder patched?… yeah? often? how much will it hold in a pinch? Hah hah. Just came to me like that — they do. Elbows next. Knees, then? Joints of the toes? You’re all bones and belly, the style’s not in fashion. Well, it’s not my fault, Fender, but they’re going to want a good stiff prick and a stony cod, you know, the kind that lays back warm against the belly when it’s up, what the kids call nowadays a real hot rod. They’ll want one if they’re eighty — and who can blame them? Perhaps if you were to try the market another time, or place yourself in the hands of some bright young fellow, a real comer. There’s that guy in your office — Glick. He’ll be off on his own soon and happy for your business….

The wall went into ceiling at the wall’s fold. He gave his head a crank to follow; saw the ceiling: gray white similarities of space, quite grayish, sunless, not about to snow, undappled, white, weighted, heaven, up and down, so far, so low, his whole height, lengthy, heavy as a purchase — the same unsagging same. Listen, I’m trying to tell you, Fender. We all come to it. That’s the way it goes. It’s simple. You got a place and nobody wants to live in it. Okay, okay, it’s just a job — with me it’s just a job. Let’s see you swallow. Fine. Now spit.

There were figures moving at the top of the street, dark spots swimming in his eyes, cinders from somewhere. The light was bad for him — the terrible glare — his whole head was burning. He blinked, and then for a moment he could see plaid lumberjackets, red caps and boots and shining buttons, yellow corduroy. A whole company of children — boys mostly — were milling about, hurling snow and yelling on the hill. You’ve no right to weep, Fender, whose fault is it? His chair held him; he had no energy; he would never sell again; certainly he was sick. What’ll you do, then, Fender? What’ll you do tomorrow? Tomorrow, he thought. God. The coming hour, the minute following, the second next. Should he sneeze? lift his left hand? laugh? He tried to clear his head for the children. For a time, while he watched, they churned and circled aimlessly on the crest, but gradually their movements grew purposive, and they began uniting more often, then parting regularly, like a pulse. At last they stood fixed for an instant, brightly, in a red knot. He saw them point toward him — point directly — and he heard them shout. In his anguish, groaning, he gripped the arms of the chair that held him, yet he made no attempt to rise and intercept. He was conquering himself for the third time that day. Stripes, boots, buttons, squares, yellow — he stared at them — sleds and plastic pails and metal shovels, tassels, mittens, bells, plaids, furries, the branch of a spruce, clouds of upended snow, catcalls, piercing whistles, a fluttering scarlet-and-dark-green scarf behind a child’s throat like a military banner. Then it was as though, suddenly, a fist had opened, and they came down the hill like a snowfall of rocks.

We certainly had no complaints about the house after all we had been through in the other place, but we hadn’t lived there very long before I began to notice every morning the bodies of a large black bug spotted about the downstairs carpet; haphazardly, as earth worms must die on the street after a rain; looking when I first saw them like rolls of dark wool or pieces of mud from the children’s shoes, or sometimes, if the drapes were pulled, so like ink stains or deep burns they terrified me, for I had been intimidated by that thick rug very early and the first week had walked over it wishing my bare feet would swallow my shoes. The shells were usually broken. Legs and other parts I couldn’t then identify would be scattered near like flakes of rust. Occasionally I would find them on their backs, their quilted undersides showing orange, while beside them were smudges of dark-brown powder that had to be vacuumed carefully. We believed our cat had killed them. She was frequently sick during the night then — a rare thing for her — and we could think of no other reason. Overturned like that they looked pathetic even dead.

I could not imagine where the bugs had come from. I am terribly meticulous myself. The house was clean, the cupboards tight and orderly, and we never saw one alive. The other place had been infested with those flat brown fuzzy roaches, all wires and speed, and we’d seen them all right, frightened by the kitchen light, sifting through the baseboards and the floor’s cracks; and in the pantry I had nearly closed my fingers on one before it fled, tossing its shadow across the starch like an image of the startle in my hand.

Dead, overturned, their three pairs of legs would be delicately drawn up and folded shyly over their stomachs. When they walked I suppose their forelegs were thrust out and then bent to draw the body up. I still wonder if they jumped. More than once I’ve seen our cat hook one of her claws under a shell and toss it in the air, crouching while the insect fell, feigning leaps — but there was daylight; the bug was dead; she was not really interested any more; and she would walk immediately away. That image takes the place of jumping. Even if I actually saw those two back pairs of legs unhinge, as they would have to if one leaped, I think I’d find the result unreal and mechanical, a poor try measured by that sudden, high, head-over-heels flight from our cat’s paw. I could look it up, I guess, but it’s no study for a woman… bugs.

At first I reacted as I should, bending over, wondering what in the world; yet even before I recognized them I’d withdrawn my hand, shuddering. Fierce, ugly, armored things: they used their shadows to seem large. The machine sucked them up while I looked the other way. I remember the sudden thrill of horror I had hearing one rattle up the wand. I was relieved that they were dead, of course, for I could never have killed one, and if they had been popped, alive, into the dust bag of the cleaner, I believe I would have had nightmares again as I did the time my husband fought the red ants in our kitchen. All night I lay awake thinking of the ants alive in the belly of the machine, and when toward morning I finally slept I found myself in the dreadful elastic tunnel of the suction tube where ahead of me I heard them: a hundred bodies rustling in the dirt.