Scumbler

by William Wharton

  I reach for my old standby, 23 SKIDOO. I start rubbing, grinding it in. The combination of smoothness and built-in fine grit is comforting. I rub, scrub, scour, rinse, till the paint and dirt are gone. I dig with a nailbrush and nail file until the worst is out from under my fingernails. I pat my hang-nailed hands dry, then walk out into the living room.

  I sit there alone in the quiet of the night, rocking in my rocking chair, listening to my favorite wall clock tick; trying to synchronize my rocking to the swing of the pendulum; trying to slow down the angry, tired pumping inside. I want to calm myself, make it go away. I try a few Kee Rings. Keeeerinng-Keeeerinng; I think I hear bird wings flapping.

  There’s only my amber vigil light burning, glowing in the dark. I’ll sit up till my clock strikes one more time. One more time might just be quite enough.

  FIN

  XXIII

  THE ULTIMATE NEST

  But my God! If some fool’s willing to give me three hundred and twenty thousand for that forty acres; think of it! I could surely borrow three hundred thousand. What a nest I could build with that! Just imagine!

  First-I’d-sink-a-thousand-foot well, a shaft of steel casing deep into the earth, pulling up silver water free to that dry, open air. I’d tap hundreds of underground rivers, go almost down to sea level.

  I’d bring it up with a gigantic multicolored, transparent plastic vaned windmill. It’d rise thirty feet off the ground with vanes fifteen feet long. Those rivers of water would just spurt into the air.

  Then I’d build more windmills to catch the soft ocean breeze blowing over my mountain. I’d turn that breeze into electricity and store it deep underground in rows of batteries hooked in parallel—hundreds of them, drinking in my electricity, holding it for me.

  I’d have so much energy I wouldn’t use even a fraction of it. I’d get one of those two-way meters installed by the electric company. I’d pay them for any electricity they gave me, which would be nothing; then they’d pay me for all the electricity I’d pile back on them, and I’d really pour it into those lines.

  I might put in solar panels, too, photon-platinum catalytic types, like on the satellites, as well as ordinary heat collectors. I’d put up windmills all around the outside edges of the property where they wouldn’t get in the way of things. I’d have the vanes on these windmills just the right balance of different transparent colors so when they spin fast enough, they’ll blend to a shining, glowing white, like flying saucers or halos. Imagine seeing them all swing together, with changes in wind direction; it would look like a bird dance.

  LIGHT DISKS, SPINNING IN THE SUN,

  GLOWING, TWISTING IN MYSTICAL ASSONANCE.

  The next thing, I’ll fence the whole forty, not so much to keep people out but to protect the animals inside. I want to stock my mountain with peace-loving animals: rabbits, deer, squirrels, guinea pigs, chickens, ducks—animals that will live a practically free life but you can pet if you want, they wouldn’t really be wild.

  I’ll build this nest on the very top ridge; on that flat part there. I’ll build it sort of like that nature nest the kids and I built down there in the Morvan, only on a COLOSSAL scale.

  The center pole will be a column cast in bronze and more than thirty feet high. It’ll be three feet in diameter and hollow in the center like a miniature Bernini column. Water will flow up pipes in the center to the top. Then some of that water will flow gently down the outside of the column, twisting, spinning, trickling down. This column will have all sorts of paths, and hollow places and little pools, miniature mountains and waterfalls, spurtings and drippings with different sounds to the water, according to how far it falls, how it hits the metal, how thick the bronze is. Smooth parts will become golden down to the bronze where the water runs over it; other parts will be all shades of green, with moss growing on some places.

  There will be thousands of different combinations as the water flows down that center pole until it reaches the pond at its base.

  This pond will be at least twenty feet in diameter and with more than a thousand ways the water drips into it. It’ll be filled with fish and with little fountains inside, squirting, reaching up to meet the water coming down. Lily pads, water flowers, goldfish and all other kinds of tropical fish will be sprinkled by silver droplets of constantly falling water.

  It’d take several lifetimes just sitting and watching that column and the pond filled with fish and flowers.

  TIME INVISIBLE, INTEGRATE TO ME, NOT

  PUSHING OR PULLING. JOYFULLY FLYING

  SHADOWS OF DEEPEST GREEN SHADOWS.

  Other water going up the center of my column will flow over a multicolored stained-glass pyramid like a circus tent. This will be the glass roof covering our entire patio. The nest will be built around this patio, with my column, the falling water, the pool, the fountains in the center.

  The glass of this patio roof will be of many colors and thicknesses, in all changing patterns so you can make up any pictures from them you want in your mind: moving colored clouds. It will be like looking at the windows in Chartres or the Sainte-Chapelle on a sunny day with your eyes half closed. But it will be ten times more exciting because you’ll be inside, part of it. Also, this glass will seem as if it’s alive, because water will be trickling over it continually, making runnels of thickness and thinness, always varying without being predictable, causing millions of light patterns and spectra over everything under it.

  The water will flow over the glass, then over the roof of the house and down to catchment basins and out to the pool-moat.

  INSIDE A KALEIDOSCOPE, BENDING LIGHT,

  A LUMINOUS SCULPTURE, TIDEWAY OF TIDINGS.

  My nest won’t just be round or square or any geometric figure known to man; it’ll be totally irregular, forming at least twenty different kinds of triangles, all pointing their apexes up high to the top of the column; it’ll look like a free-floating-all-glass cathedral.

  Some of the water up there on top will gush like a geyser as high as Yosemite, or the fountains in the gardens of Versailles, or maybe even as high as that big geyser on the lake in Geneva. It’ll spout different heights according to the wind or sun or the time of day or year, but all blended to natural schedules so it’s never the same. It won’t spout in the rain but it can spout so you can have your own rain shower whenever you want, even on the hottest, driest day.

  Around the outside of my nest will be wonderful green lawns, dichondra or Bermuda grass, or some ground cover so they won’t need to be mowed; I hate the sound of a lawn mower almost as much as that of a vacuum cleaner.

  THE MUSIC OF NEAR SILENCE,

  LIVE AIR, INSECTS BUZZING WATER

  FALLING, THE CLEAN BREEZE BLOWING

  THROUGH CHAPARRAL, BUCKTHORN AND WILD LILAC.

  Then, twenty feet farther out from the nest, will be the swimming pool-moat. It’ll go all around the nest but will be only eight feet wide. It’ll have most of the same angles as the house but still be different. Nothing will be monotonous; everything will always be a surprise in this nest, even if you live hundreds of years there.

  You’ll be able to swim all around that pool and it won’t be deep anywhere: only four feet at the most; just for swimming, no diving. Around my nest, there will be flying but no diving.

  In this pool-moat you can swim for almost a quarter mile without repeating yourself; you can swim along there and be looking out on one of the most beautiful views in the world: the entire Santa Monica Bay, the Santa Monica Mountains, rough and natural, with the simple Topanga Village below.

  Off in the distance—just the right distance—on clear nights you can see the San Fernando Valley with lights of all colors, like long strings of jewels, glowing in the dark. You can swim naked in clean, safe, warm water up there, too.

  The outside of my moat will be a wall, because the land drops away from the exact top of the mountain where my nest will be located; the nest will be wrapped in beveled angles around its patio. So nothing but beautiful rolling
green and gray hills, alive, like a sleeping earth giant under a muted patchwork quilt, wilt be between you and the edge of sky.

  The water in my pool-moat will be warm because it will have come down over the glass, over the roof of the house, where it will have soaked up all the heat. This will make the house always cool inside, not too dry and not moist either. There will be no glare in the house, even on the hottest days, and all the walls will be natural wood or rock except for the door-windows. The panes of glass in the outside sliding door-windows will be polarized. There will be double door-windows, one polarized vertically, the other horizontally, so you can slide the two doors over each other and block out all light and heat, or have one door alone blocking only heat or both doors open to let in heat and light. It will always be comfortable in my nest.

  At night, extra heat from the pool will flow through tunnels beneath the floors where there will be volcanic rock to absorb this heat and radiate warmth; on warm days or nights this heat will be used to generate energy and run quiet, natural coolers. The temperature will always be just the way you want it.

  And can you imagine swimming in water where there’s no end? It’ll be like swimming in a loving ocean. Even someone like me who’s afraid of water could relax in that pool. It will be caressing, soothing, nothing of fear: just wonderful weightlessness.

  All the rooms in my nest will open inside onto the patio. The windows will be like Japanese windows on the inside, with small panes and not polarized. They’ll slide on silent ball-bearing rollers so you can close off the patio or push them open all together and let the patio come into the rooms: privacy or openness according to what you want. Sometimes you won’t be able to tell the difference between the patio and the nest; the patio will be part of the nest, the deepest inside part.

  In it will be birds flying free, a wonderful place for birds to fly, a huge semi-tropical environment, year round. There will be thousands of different flowers, blooming all the time, with oranges, lemon and grapefruit trees, avocados, mangoes, guavas, persimmons, Iychees, arbutus and bananas. The birds will be mostly canaries, because they sing, but there will be exotic finches, also some nightingales and parakeets. How my canaries will love singing with the symphony of water, bathed in flickers of color. Their wings will whisper wind songs as background to their own music.

  Each bathroom will have sliding panels out onto the lawn so we can shower or bathe as if outside in nature. The bathing tubs will be smooth rock pools surrounded by greenery; the water will flow in over natural rocks. The wall around the moat will give privacy.

  We might not even wear clothes in this nest, except for decoration sometimes: some nice fabric draped over a shoulder or wrapped around a waist, something to match the colors and lights of a particular day, or the music or the smells. Everything will be totally in tune, all running together but continually different, like good music or good painting or some good poetry.

  There will need to be a road up to this nest for bringing in supplies once a year, or for letting in a few guests who can’t fly; but mostly the gates will be locked and the road not used.

  The only real way to visit this nest will be by air. The only kind of plane able to land on our landing place will be ultralights or hang-gliders, no helicopters. Helicopters are worse than vacuum cleaners and lawn mowers for noise.

  Imagine how beautiful it will be seeing the flashing bright Dacron colors of hang-gliding friends coming up with air currents and veering to land, or the put-putting up of an ultralight like a flying motorcycle, circling, then settling onto the deep green of our special airstrip surrounded by multicolored flowers.

  Finding a place to park our ultralights in the world down below can be a problem. Perhaps we’ll never go down, just cruise over the hills or out over the ocean. Or I might be able to make a deal with some schools allowing children to come up for a visit, opening the gates for them to walk up from the Topanga Village. I’ll trade this off for landing rights in their parking lots or football fields when they aren’t using them. I know the kids would enjoy visiting this nest.

  One special thing will be I’m going to hang my paintings everywhere on the inside walls. There will be space for at least two hundred paintings, all beautifully lit so each one will be a special world of its own. It’ll be a private museum, like the Getty or Frick, but more personal; all these paintings will be me. Boy, it’d sure be wonderful seeing all my paintings at once, like looking back over my entire life, seeing, feeling, smelling it all happen again.

  I’m sure kids would love to see something like that, and besides they could watch the birds and fish, pet the animals outside. They’d probably like swimming around in the pool-moat, too. I’d set up a current so they could float around on little boats or just float out on their backs. With only four feet of water none of them are going to drown. It’d all be safe and I’d keep an eye on them.

  Of course, all this would cost much more than a mere three hundred thousand dollars, but then again, I’d be getting rich from my “energy farm” —all that electricity I’m pumping back to the electric company. Besides, this place will be getting more and more valuable as I build it; I could float other loans, go for a second, third, fourth mortgage. This sky nest would be so beautiful nobody would ever let anything happen to it. It’d be proof of how incredibly wonderful, exciting this life can be if we want it to and we let it happen to us.

  I wouldn’t be worried about fires. With that moat all around and the water shooting up over everything like a veil of protection, there’d never be any danger of things burning. There could be a roaring forest fire all around and we’d turn up the rain a little bit and sit there on top of that hill, covered by mists of water making steam clouds all around, and just watch. We couldn’t be safer.

  Also, with our moat, no snakes or tarantulas or scorpions or even spiders would be able to get in. Kate might come live with me someday. Maybe even one day the kids could move in, then their kids. Maybe even my first kids, the ones I’ve never known, and even Jane could join us. We could all live together like a happy family for a long time up there.

  Around the outside of the pool I’d build a jogging track, just the right firmness and softness to absorb shock. It’d be banked to keep too much weight from being put on one side or the other. This’d be even better than running around the dining-room table in Paris and I wouldn’t have to make up different places to pretend I was running. I’d be running exactly in the place where I am, in the place I choose.

  The whole hill down from the jogging track, thirty feet or more, would be planted in that kind of tiny succulent with fluorescent red, purple and pink flowers.

  From down below, looking up to the top of our mountain, it will look as if the mountain has garlands of color around its neck and is wearing a huge, colored, pointed dunce cap. It’ll be nice for everybody to look up and know we’re happy there.

  With a nest like this—quiet, relaxing; where I can paint and concentrate, swim in our moat-pool, do Yoga, meditate watching the water, birds, fish, little animals playing—have fun with my family, it would be like heaven. I wouldn’t have anything to fight or worry me. I could probably live twenty more years—maybe even a thousand. This’d be my ultimate nest.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  William Wharton is the pseudonym for the author of eight novels: Birdy, Dad, A Midnight Clear, Scumbler, Pride, Tidings, Franky Furbo, and Last Lovers. He has also written two memoirs, Ever After: A Father’s True Story and Houseboat on the Seine. Birdy won the American Book Award for best first novel when it was published in 1978, became a national bestseller, and was made into an award-winning film starring Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine. Dad was a National Book Award nominee and was made into a feature film with Jack Lemmon and Ted Danson; the movie version of A Midnight Clear starred Ethan Hawke, Kevin Dillon, and Gary Sinise. A native of Philadelphia, Wharton fought in World War II, where he was part of the Army Specialized Training Program. In 1960, he received a Ph.D. in psychology from UCLA a
nd moved to France. There Wharton made his living as a painter while raising his two daughters and two sons; the tragic death of his daughter Kate, her husband, and two infant daughters was the subject of Ever After. He now lives with his wife, Rosemary, outside of Paris on a houseboat on the Seine. Wharton’s works have been acclaimed worldwide and have been translated into over fifteen languages.

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  PRAISE FOR WILLIAM WHARTON’S BOOKS

  SCUMBLER

  “A marvelously vital novel about the power of the

  imagination to create and recreate life.”

  —Valerie Miner, Los Angeles Times

  “A fascinating excursion into the mind and temperament

  of an artist.”

  —George Core, The Washington Post

  “Scumbler is about the pleasure of creation and the

  pangs of ordinary existence. Its prose is as exuberant as

  its subject matter.”

  —Doris Grumbach, Chicago Tribune

  BIRDY

  (Winner of the American Book Award for First Fiction in 1978)

  “A writer’s triumph and a reader’s delight.”

  —Toni Morrison

  “It soars!…Part psychological thriller, part mystery…

  a portrait of a friendship as firm as it is unlikely, and an

  utterly plausible account of an unbelievable obsession.”

  —Time

  “One of the strangest and most memorable stories to

  come out of America in many years. William Wharton

  is quite exceptionally gifted.”

  —John Fowles

  DAD

  (A National Book Award nominee)

  “This is a great American novel. Wharton’s eye is sharp