Flying to America

by Donald Barthelme

  When his aircraft was forced down at the Akron Airpark by the lapse of the port engines, which of course he had been expecting, Buck said: “But this, this . . . is Akron!” And it was Akron, sultry, molecular, crowded with inhabitants who held tiny transistor radios next to their tiny ears. A wave of ingratitude overcame him. “Bum, bum,” he said. He plumbed its heart. The citizens of Akron, after their hours at the plant, wrapped themselves in ill-designed love triangles which never contained less than four persons of varying degrees of birth, high and low and mediocre. Beautiful Ohio! with your transistorized citizens and contempt for geometry, we loved you in the evening by the fireside waiting for our wife to nap so we could slip out and see our two girls, Manfred and Bella!

  The first telephone call he received in his rum raisin hotel room, Charles, was from the Akron Welcome Service.

  “Welcome! new human being! to Akron! Hello?”

  “Hello.”

  “Are you in love with any of the inhabitants of Akron yet?”

  “I just came from the airport.”

  “If not, or even if so, we want to invite you to the big get-acquainted party of the College Graduates’ Club tonight at 8:30 P.M.”

  “Do I have to be a college graduate?”

  “No but you have to wear a coat and tie. Of course they are available at the door. What color pants are you wearing?”

  Buck walked the resilient streets of Akron. His head was aflame with conflicting ideas. Suddenly he was arrested by a shrill cry. From the top of the Zimmer Building, one of the noblest buildings in Akron, a group of Akron lovers consummated a four-handed suicide leap. The air! Buck thought as he watched the tiny figures falling, this is certainly an air-minded country, America! But I must make myself useful. He entered a bunshop and purchased a sweet green bun, and dallied with the sweet green girl there, calling her “poppet” and “funicular.” Then out into the street again to lean against the warm green façade of the Zimmer Building and watch the workmen scrubbing the crimson sidewalk.

  “Can you point me the way to the Akron slums, workman?”

  “My name is not ‘workman.’ My name is ‘Pat.’”

  “Well, ‘Pat,’ which way?”

  “I would be most happy to orient you, slumwise, were it not for the fact that slumlife in Akron has been dealt away with by municipal progressiveness. The municipality has caused to be erected, where slumlife once flourished, immense quadratic inventions which now house former slumwife and former slumspouse alike. These incredibly beautiful structures are over that way.”

  “Thanks, ‘Pat.’”

  At the housing development, which was gauche and grand, Buck came upon a man urinating in the elevator, next to a man breaking windows in the broom closet. “What are you fellows doing there!” Buck cried aloud. “We are expressing our rage at this fine new building!” the men exclaimed. “Oh that this day had never formulated! We are going to call it Ruesday, that’s how we feel about it, by gar!” Buck stood in a wash of incomprehension and doubt. “You mean there is rage in Akron, the home of quadratic love?” “There is quadratic rage also,” the men said, “Akron is rage from a certain point of view.” Angel food covered the floor in neat squares. And what could be wrong with that? Everything?

  “What is the point of view there, to which you refer?” Buck asked dumbly. “The point of view of the poor people of Akron,” those honest yeomen chanted, “or, as the city fathers prefer it, the underdeveloped people of Akron.” And in their eyes, there was a strange light. “Do you know what the name of this housing development is?” “What?” Buck asked. “Sherwood Forest,” the men said, “isn’t that disgusting?”

  The men invited Buck to sup with their girls, Heidi, Eleanor, George, Purple, Ann-Marie, and Los. In the tree, starlings fretted and died, but below everything was glass. Harold poured the wine of the region, a light Cheer, into the forgotten napery. And the great horse of evening trod over the immense scene once and for all. We examined our consciences. Many a tiny sin was rooted out that night, to make room for a greater one. It was “hello” and “yes” and “yes, yes” through the sacerdotal hours, from one to eight. Heidi held a pencil between her teeth. “Do you like pencil games?” she asked. Something lurked behind the veil of her eyes. “Not . . . especially,” Buck said. “I . . .”

  But a parade headed by a battalion of warm and lovely girls from the Akron Welcome Service elected this tense moment to come dancing by, with bands blazing and hideous floats in praise of rubber goods expanding in every direction. The rubber batons of the girls bent in the afterglow of events. “It is impossible to discuss serious ideas during a parade,” the Akron Communists said to Buck, and they slipped away to continue expressing their rage in another part of the Forest.

  “Goodbye!” Buck said. “Goodbye! I won’t forget . . .”

  The Welcome Service girls looked very bravura in their brief white-and-gold Welcome Service uniforms which displayed a fine amount of “leg.” Look at all that “leg” glittering there! Buck said to himself, and followed the parade all the way to Toledo.

  3.

  “Ingarden dear,” Buck said to the pretty wife of the mayor of Toledo, who was reading a copy of Infrequent Love magazine, “where are the poets of Toledo? Where do they hang out?” He showered her with gifts. She rose and moved mysteriously into the bedroom, to see if Henry were sleeping. “There is only one,” she said, “the old poet of the city Constantine Cavity.” A frost of emotion clouded her fuzz-colored lenses. “He operates a juju drugstore in the oldest section of the city and never goes anywhere except to make one of his rare and beautiful appearances.” “Constantine Cavity!” Buck exclaimed, “even in Texas where I come from we have heard of this fine poet. You must take me to see him at once.” Abandoning Henry to his fate (and it was a bitter one!) Buck and Ingarden rushed off hysterically to the drugstore of Constantine Cavity, Buck inventing as they rolled something graceful to say to this old poet, the forerunner so to speak of poetry in America.

  Was there fondness in our eyes? We could not tell. Cadenzas of documents stained the Western Alliance, already, perhaps, prejudiced beyond the power of prayer to redeem it. “Do you think there is too much hair on my neck? here?” Ingarden asked Buck. But before he could answer she said: “Oh shut up!” She knew that Mrs. Lutch, whose interest in the pastor was only feigned, would find the American way if anyone could.

  At Constantine Cavity’s drugstore a meeting of the Toledo Medical Society was being held, in consequence of which Buck did not get to utter his opening words which were to have been: “Cavity, here we are!” A pity, but call the roll! See, or rather hear, who is present, and who is not! Present were

  Dr. Caligari

  Dr. Frank

  Dr. Pepper

  Dr. Scholl

  Dr. Frankenthaler

  Dr. Mabuse

  Dr. Grabow

  Dr. Melmoth

  Dr. Weil

  Dr. Modesto

  Dr. Fu Manchu

  Dr. Wellington

  Dr. Watson

  Dr. Brown

  Dr. Rococo

  Dr. Dolittle

  Dr. Alvarez

  Dr. Spoke

  Dr. Hutch

  Dr. Spain

  Dr. Malone

  Dr. Kline

  Dr. Casey

  Dr. No

  Dr. Regatta

  Dr. Il y a

  Dr. Baderman

  Dr. Aveni

  and other doctors. The air was stuffy here, comrades, for the doctors were considering (yes!) a resolution of censure against the beloved old poet. An end to this badinage and wit! Let us be grave. It was claimed that Cavity had dispensed . . . but who can quarrel with Love Root, rightly used? It has saved many a lip. The prosecution was in the able hands of Dr. Kline, who invented the heart, and Dr. Spain, after whom Spain is named some believe. Their godlike figures towered over the tiny poet.

  Kline advances.

  Cavity rises to his height, which is not great.


  Ingarden holds her breath.

  Spain fades, back, back . . .

  A handout from Spain to Kline.

  Buck is down.

  A luau?

  The poet opens . . .

  No! No! Get back!

  “. . . and if that way is long, and leads around by the reactor, and down in the valley, and up the garden path, leave here, I say, to heaven. For science has its reasons that reason knows not of,” Cavity finished. And it was done.

  “Hell!” said one doctor, and the others shuffled morosely around the drugstore inspecting the strange wares that were being vended there. It was clear that no resolution of censure could possibly . . . But of course not! What were we thinking of?

  Cavity himself seemed pleased at the outcome of the proceedings. He recited to Buck and Ingarden his long love poems entitled “In the Blue of Evening,” “Long Ago and Far Away,” “Who?” and “Homage to W. C. Williams.” The feet of the visitors danced against the sawdust floor of the juju drugstore to the compelling rhythms of the poet’s poems. A rime of happiness whitened on the surface of their two faces. “Even in Texas,” Buck whispered, “where things are very exciting, there is nothing like the old face of Constantine Cavity. Are you true?”

  “Oh I wish things were other.”

  “You do?”

  “There are such a lot of fine people in the world I wish I was one of them!”

  “You are, you are!”

  “Not essentially. Not inwardly.”

  “You’re very authentic I think.”

  “That’s all right in Cleveland, where authenticity is the thing, but here . . .”

  “Kiss me please.”

  “Again?”

  4.

  The parachutes of the other passengers snapped and crackled in the darkness all around him. There had been a malfunction in the afterburner and the pilot decided to “ditch.” The whole thing was very unfortunate. “What is your life-style, Cincinnati?” Buck asked the recumbent jewel glittering below him like an old bucket of industrial diamonds. “Have you the boldness of Cleveland? the anguish of Akron? the torpor of Toledo? What is your posture, Cincinnati?” Frostily the silent city approached his feet.

  Upon making contact with Cincinnati Buck and such of the other passengers of the ill-fated flight 309 had survived the “drop” proceeded to a hotel.

  “Is that a flask of grog you have there?”

  “Yes it is grog as it happens.”

  “That’s wonderful.”

  Warmed by the grog which set his blood racing, Buck went to his room and threw himself on his bed. “Oh!” he said suddenly, “I must be in the wrong room!” The girl in the bed stirred sleepily. “Is that you Harvey?” she asked. “Where have you been all this time?” “No, it’s Buck,” Buck said to the girl, who looked very pretty in her blue flannel nightshirt drawn up about her kneecaps on which there were red lines. “I must be in the wrong room I’m afraid,” he repeated. “Buck, get out of this room immediately!” the girl said coldly. “My name is Stephanie and if my friend Harvey finds you here there’ll be an unpleasant scene.”

  “What are you doing tomorrow?” Buck asked.

  Having made a “date” with Stephanie for the morning at 10 A.M., Buck slipped off to an innocent sleep in his own bed.

  Morning in Cincinnati! The glorious cold Cincinnati sunlight fell indiscriminately around the city, here and there, warming almost no one. Stephanie de Moulpied was wearing an ice-blue wool suit in which she looked very cold and beautiful and starved. “Tell me about your Cincinnati life,” Buck said, “the quality of it, that’s what I’m interested in.” “My life here is very aristocratic,” Stephanie said, “polo, canned peaches, liaisons dangéreuses, and so on, because I am a member of an old Cincinnati family. However it’s not much ‘fun’ which is why I made this 10 A.M. date with you, exciting stranger from the sky!” “I’m really from Texas,” Buck said, “but I’ve been having a little trouble with airplanes on this trip. I don’t really trust them too much. I’m not sure they’re trustworthy.” “Who is trustworthy after all?” Stephanie said with a cold sigh, looking blue. “Are you blue Stephanie?” Buck asked. “Am I blue?” Stephanie wondered. In the silence that followed, she counted her friends and relationships.

  “Is there any noteworthy artistic activity in this town?”

  “Like what do you mean?”

  Buck then kissed Stephanie in a taxicab as a way of dissipating the blueness that was such a feature of her face. “Are all the girls in Cincinnati like you?” “All the first-class girls are like me,” Stephanie said, “but there are some other girls whom I won’t mention.”

  A faint sound of . . . A wave of . . . Dense clouds of . . . Heavily the immense weight of . . . Thin strands of . . .

  Dr. Hesperidian had fallen into the little pool in vanPelt Ryan’s garden (of course!) and everyone was pulling him out. Strangers met and fell in love over the problem of getting a grip on Dr. Hesperidian. A steel band played arias from Wozzeck. He lay just below the surface, a rime of algae whitening his cheekbones. He seemed to be . . . “Not that way,” Buck said reaching for the belt buckle. “This way.” The crowd fell back among the pines.

  “You seem to be a nice young man, young man,” vanPelt Ryan said, “although we have many of these of our own now since the General Electric plant came to town. Are you in computerization?”

  Buck remembered the endearing red lines on Stephanie de Moulpied’s knees.

  “I’d rather not answer that question,” he said honestly, “but if there’s some other question you’d like me to answer . . .”

  vanPelt turned away sadly. The steel band played “Red Boy Blues,” “That’s All,” “Gigantic Blues,” “Muggles,” “Coolin’,” and “Edward.” Although each player was maimed in a different way . . . but the affair becomes, one fears, too personal. The band got a nice sound. Hookers of grog thickened on the table placed there for that purpose. “I grow less, rather than more, intimately involved with human beings as I move through world life,” Buck thought, “is that my fault? Is it a fault?” The musicians rendered the extremely romantic ballads “I Didn’t Know What Time It was,” “Scratch Me,” and “Misty.” The grim forever adumbrated in recent issues of Mind pressed down, down . . . Where is Stephanie de Moulpied? No one could tell him, and in truth, he did not want to know. It is not he who asks this question, it is Mrs. Lutch. She glides down her glide path, sinuously, she is falling, she bursts into flame, her last words: “Tell them . . . when they crash . . . turn off . . . the ignition.”

  Bone Bubbles

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