William Gass - Omensetter’s Luck

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maidenhead

Janet's no longer a boy-oh

A man and a woman opened the flap. Jethro rose, shouting angrily: that woman is a woman of Midian. Who plays the harlot with this daughter of Moab, bringing this plague of heads upon us? And he took up David's spear, for David was weeping — Absalom's head was swinging by its hair — and rushed down the aisle to spit the man and woman on it beautifully-bravo. David praised him, saying: you have turned back the wrath of God from the people of Israel. Then a strange head was brought in, a head without features, smiling, without cheeks or lips or chin, and Furber said: who is this? what is the meaning? and David answered: this is the head of Jethro, a priest of Midian, once father-in-law to Moses, and a wise adviser.

His mother came from the kitchen where she was peeling cucumbers. What is the matter, Jethro, she said. This too, he thought, is a sign, even the smell of cucumber, and I must try to understand it. At the end of his dream, while he'd sat paralyzed beside King David, another head had been brought. This is the head of Solomon, your son, a voice said to David. King David rose slowly, his weapons falling from him. But I die before Solomon, he said. Shall I cut this child in two, said Solomon's head. I die before Solomon, David said, his garments falling from him. Tell me I'm not smiling. Tell me. I can't hear you, he shouted, his body falling from him. Tell me I'm not smiling not smiling not smiling. . But his head wore a smile as sweet and mild and rosy as the heads, for example, of Saul and Amasa, as the heads, for instance, of Goliath and Joab, or as the head of the foolish Sheba which Joab caught so awkwardly just in time. Jethro gave his mother a reassuring peck and asked for breakfast: sugared peaches in cream, fresh milk, sweet rolls with sweet butter, whole strawberry jam.

You'd have loved my mother, Pike. Happy? Proud?

Visiting ladies in elaborate Sunday hats shaded my face from the sun that came streaming through the parlor windows in the summer afternoons. Mother hugs me. He's decided, she says, and they — the ladies with smoothed cosmetic faces — smile and sigh. So young. And mother would always misunderstand them. But not too young to decide, she'd insist. Maybe Aunt Janet would come away from the fishbowl. She hoped the fish would nibble at her finger. She said she thought it would tickle. If she did stop it was always to ram that finger, dripping, into my ribs. Her wide hat would darken my eyes and I would blink at the things which hung from the brim. So you've chosen Christ, my boy, she would say in a low soft voice, putting her face close to mine so I always saw the powder at the bottom of her wrinkles. That's-she drives the finger into my side — fine. Mother hauls me to her bosom in an overflow of love, denting my nose with one of her buttons. He doesn't say much about it… but Janet, I think he's had an experience.

Pike, what if I'd said: yes mother, I've seen the private parts of fatty Ruth? Would my life have changed? Much? Oh I should have spoken out. Shame. Not to praise the parts of fatty Ruth. Ah if I'd had your spirit, Pike, when her skirts were hoisted up. Breathe your spirit into me.

wiggle oh

gigolo

we'll live so bungalow

in my soft down below

until you drown

Pike speaks: ladies love religious little boys.

By god Pike, you're right. I was loved. I was held, pinched, squeezed, encompassed by beads. Then Morton, too, sanctimonious old pimp, shook my hand and gave me a hymnal with a broken spine. What number was it? Ninety-two? we rise to praise… no, nineteen, no, that's the number of the psalm: "the heavens declare the glory" — but Pike, it's what I learned as a boy from Paul, though I was a long time understanding it. "Day to day uttereth speech." What is the meaning? God spoke that day between the lower lips of fatty Ruth but I missed the meaning of his proposition. Well even Moses was slow witted with the burning bush. I missed the meaning again of Auntie Janet who has just now cocked her thumb and taken aim with her right forefinger blam! hug chest quick — too late it's into the rib just under my arm and the moon is falling near, see the mountains and the craters and the lines of snow and ice. There's a chapped mouse squeaking indistinctly cheeses priced at sss-blam! dime. Cheeses. Holey cheeses. Janet, I believe he's had an experience. Well the boy's high-strung. But he's changed; you've no idea. And so young, dear child. He doesn't shake. He may, again, there's plenty of time.

I should have reminded her, Pike, that Jesus was a God already as a fetus, but I've no spirit, no proper spirit. Christ. No ghost. Whirld. Shreech.

one a pastor

two a parson

hot cross bun

three a doctor

four a brother

bake them done

five a reverend

six a shepherd

eat each one

seven a preacher

eight a teacher

we're not done

nine a minister

ten the sinister

end has come

Listen, Pike, you are a stone ghost now, a trick of the light, and perhaps you know already what I'm trying to say, for you've been through it all and died of love, the best death. My face is muffled in my mother's clothing. Her rhinestones injure me. See: my feet are going. Fish flee the forefinger of my aunt. The sun streams over the geraniums. What has this to do with what I feel, with what I am?

Aunt Janet sits carelessly on the edge of her chair, her hands like fruit that's fallen in her lap. Her gaze is soft and watery. The past has overtaken her, just as you, Pike, have overtaken me. I was nearly twelve, you understand, and I would search her eagerly like a lover. But her grief was all inside her, Pike. She might as well have been of stone or plaster like that sentimental saint. And when in my room I would weep, for I was fond of weeping in those days, I realized my grief had no connection with my tears. Anyone might see how they streamed, but no one could know how they burned. Then I tried the private parts of fatty Ruth on my aunt and mother. Oh I was like the searching prince in Cinderella, hiking every skirt. But they've been badly misnamed. There's nothing really private to those parts which I later heard the boys in seminary call the banks of the river Urine, nor did they have the slipper's size; for although all the girls and ladies wore it, none of them seemed nicely fitted. One day — it was sometime after my "experience," perhaps three weeks or a month, and Janet had come according to her custom to nose our fish and stir them up — after her kiss had smeared cosmetic on my cheek and she had cocked her fist and painfully speared my side, congratulating me because I'd ceased my shaking (a pillow for your mother's head, she said); after she'd lit on the edge of the simple ladder chair she fancied because it was as light and delicate as herself, and had taken breath toward one of her favorite "ticklish topics," since her conversation consisted entirely of prefaces, forewords, and introductions to pink tumescent subjects which she safely never touched; and when she had, following an especially long and devious preamble to what I guessed was the problem of the unwed mother, sunk behind the sea which rose suddenly in her eyes as it always did, I saw her — mind this Pike, are you awake? — I saw her, poised on the edge of her chair as I've said her habit was, let go and slowly topple over. We helped her up at once, of course. She didn't seem hurt or even ill. Slipped off, my mother said, because she has to perch and never minds what she's doing. You may think it's my diseased imagination — it has a beggar's body — I freely admit it — but I see her still, whenever I wish, letting go and falling, her skirts flattening and streaming behind her and then ballooning as she turns in the air. I had penetrated the quality of the act, Pike, and I was dreadfully shaken by my knowledge, though I tried not to show it and got away as soon as I dared. She'd had too much of life, and she'd let go of it at last and left the wire. In my dreams sometimes I see her too, slipping from a window sill or off a windy mountain ledge, her skirts rising about her as she descends and revealing beneath them the private parts of fatty Ruth. On she somersaults until I've lost the sense of heads or tails and she has spun herself into a single, broadly grinning, comic mask.