In the Heart of the Heart of the Country

by William H. Gass

  Fender. You have no job. He had no job. He shrugged. So. The weather was lousy, dinner not so hot again, bed would be . . . as always. But he had an address. My god, those are the world’s worst words, the world’s worst, I mean when you read in the papers where it says that so and so of no fixed address was picked up for loitering or pinching purses or was arrested for drunk and disorderly and it says: of no fixed address. Imagine. Pearson keens; he wails with his arms. Such a person has no place. He can’t be found. He’s like one of those unphysical things they talk about in science now—like one of those things that’s moving, you know, always moving on, but through no space. Jesus. Who can understand? I leave that sort to them like I leave these vagrants to police; but imagine a man without a place to be, a place that’s known, that has a name, is some way fixed; why that’s like being alone at sea without a log to hang on—and the sharks at your toes. Fender shrugged. Fender: you have no job. You lack an occupation, Fender—a position, Fender—a spot to johnny on. He shrugged. Yeah. He lacked. And Fender—Charlie Fender—of such and such a number, such and such a road, in such and such a town and state, has quit, is fired, is out, at his age, after so, so many years . . . . Yes, he thought, I do not even occupy myself.

  In the arms of the chair he felt a great distance from everything. His arms on the arms of the chair embraced him, squeezed. And he was not in the space his toes turned up in. It could, he supposed, have happened to him any time: a terrible accident like a plane crash, dividing limbs and luggage up indifferently, scattering toiletries. Planes were property. He saw his socks softly falling; they’d snag eventually on wires and trees. Everything was property—Pearson was correct—yet pouf! and it’s snowing shirts and business papers. The chair . . . the chair’s arms were weariless. Pouf, Fender. Can you restrain your bacteria? No, you’re freezerless. So pouf! One day it’s done. Even now you’re melting down. True—but those icicles gather the snow as it softens, oppose their coldness to the sun, and turn their very going into . . . Isabelles. Look, Fender: feet flat on the floor. Keep. Them. There. Arms in the arms of the chair. Armchair. Oh hug, and hold hard, and be beloved! But Fender did not stir. His inner exclamations were like advertising signs—for gasoline and colas—the worst kind. Chair arms were property. They would enwooden him; reskin him in something floral, a disposition of designs as in a dance to decorate his coverings. He’d be . . . tattooed. It was stupid. He tried to drive himself into wordlessness. There were so many words which worried him. Phrases. Voices. Scenes. It was stupid. Ah, finally you’re For Sale, Fender. Yeah. He lived in his pie like the peas. That’s very funny. I hope—I trust you see the humor in it—for you to be For Sale. Held in the chair he could not move to any music. He was tattooed. The legs fold over on the dotted line. Tat. Tat. Tat. He stared at his knees . . . where fell like trousered water . . . what? They played colored lights on the wall of Niagara. His icicles gleamed. That boy had taken such a big one—god—so carelessly—and carried it away. What did he know! what did he feel! the pain to that poor house! the wrench! Yet Fender did not shout; he did not move. He was falling away toward his feet nonetheless . . . softly, still. Like socks scattered from a suitcase in an air crash . . . lightly snowing. In each pie there are how many? how many? how many? . . . peas.

  So finally you’re For Sale, Fender. That’s very funny. I hope you see the humor in it. It makes a fellow’s job a whole lot easier—I mean, if there’s humor in it and the humor’s seen, it’s easier all around. Be happy, eh? Does that check? How long do you plan to stay listed? Well it was fart smart to stand empty through the winter, that’s all I say. What I mean, it was dumb—bum dumb. Come to think of it, you were vacant longer than that. You’re bound to be badly shit up. Now if I were you, considering your kind of case, what’s best by and large and everything, why I’d try multiple listing. That way, if a good thing turns up, maybe you can close the deal on your own—after all, you’re with an agency—Pearson—jesus, he’s piss bliss, Pearson is. Anyway, you can’t expect anybody to make you their main concern—I mean, you know, that’s the way it goes, it’s a tough business, and five percent of you—well it won’t run to much. Okay? It’s good that’s clear—a happy thing. Now what are your sizes? How much room do you have around the ribs there—there in the cage? Many kidney malfunctions? They come on often, about your age. Your shoulders slope and we ought to burn that wart off your chin. Why the hell—if I had a wart on my chin like that—Look, I’ve got the usual things to check out . . . . Um, your skin is sort of fibrous looking, I’m afraid, and pretty splotchy—poor stuff—scaly, thin—a sour diet. How long have those bruises been in? and that spread of blood along the shin? broken capillaries, are they? Say, Fender, no bull, we’re in the same business, man to man, eh? why take the trouble? Hell, you know the list’s the same for everybody: sinus, spleen, intestines, all those glands . . . . Should we start with the palate and drop straight down: teeth, tonsils, tongue, lungs, liver, bronchial tree? would it be worth the bother? And after that, let’s see, going up it’s rectum, colon, stomach, heart, and so on, all the soft goods, and then the skull, spine, pelvis, ribs, et cetera, et cetera—but there’s little point—I mean, consider your chances calmly a minute. Well look, fellow, there’s no charm to your entrances. Like I say—we’ve got to face the facts, and an old place is an old place. You know the business. No surprises. Right? So let’s concentrate on good points if we can—jolly buttocks maybe—we’ve customers for them. But I don’t like that loosening hair. Jesus, look what you’ve done to your knuckles. And how about the light in there? Dammit, you know it’s the first thing they ask. They come in—they want to see where the light falls. Say, I’ll tell you a trick. I always take a yardstick with me, and times like that, when the sun’s pouring pleasantly in, I just measure it up for them—so many feet of it. You can figure the effect. Selling’s not all fuck luck, nossir. Not all fuck luck . . . fuckaluck. What? you’re cool? no crap now, how could you be cool? you’ve no shade. Hey—isn’t that right? Nothing to say—right? Fender, you haven’t any answer—right? How will they look with a colored bulb in your porch light, the walls of Niagara? Had your heart flushed recently or your bowels scrubbed? I like to have the dates. Well no harm, no harm, we’re friends in business—but let’s look at some stools before I leave, on the off chance, just the same. . . .

  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.

  ORDER OF INSECTS

  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.

  I never think of their species as alive but as comprised entirely by the dead ones on our carpet, all the new dead manufactured by the action of some mysterious spoor—perhaps that dust they sometimes lie in—carried in the air, solidified by night and shaped, from body into body, spontaneously, as maggots were before the age of science. I have a single book about insects, a little dated handbook in French which a good friend gave me as a joke—because of my garden, the quaintness of the plates, the fun of reading about worms in such an elegant tongue—and my bug has his picture there climbing the stem of an orchid. Beneath the picture is his name: Periplaneta orientalis L. Ces répugnants insectes ne sont que trop communs dans les cuisines des vieilles habitations des villes, dans les magasins, entrepôts, boulangeries, brasseries, restaurants, dans la cale des navires, etc., the text begins. Nevertheless they are a new experience for me and I think that I am grateful for it now.

  The picture didn’t need to show me there were two, adult and nymph, for by that time I’d seen the bodies of both kinds. Nymph. My god the names we use. The one was dark, squat, ugly, sly. The other, slimmer, had hard sheath-like wings drawn over its back like another shell, and you could see delicate interwoven lines spun like fossil gauze across them. The nymph was a rich golden color deepening in its interstices to mahogany. Both had legs that looked under a glass like the canes of a rose, and the nymph’s were sufficiently transparent in a good light you thought you saw its nerves merge and run like a jagged crack to each ultimate claw.

  Tipped, their legs have fallen shut, and the more I look at them the less I believe my eyes. Corruption, in these bugs, is splendid. I’ve a collection now I keep in typewriter-ribbon tins, and though, in time, their bodies dry and the interior flesh decays, their features hold, as I suppose they held in life, an Egyptian determination, for their protective plates are strong and death must break bones to get in. Now that the heavy soul is gone, the case is light.

  I suspect if we were as familiar with our bones as with our skin, we’d never bury dead but shrine them in their rooms, arranged as we might like to find them on a visit; and our enemies, if we could steal their bodies from the battle sites, would be museumed as they died, the steel still eloquent in their sides, their metal hats askew,
the protective toes of their shoes unworn, and friend and enemy would be so wondrously historical that in a hundred years we’d find the jaws still hung for the same speech and all the parts we spent our life with tilted as they always were—rib cage, collar, skull—still repetitious, still defiant, angel light, still worthy of memorial and affection. After all, what does it mean to say that when our cat has bitten through the shell and put confusion in the pulp, the life goes out of them? Alas for us, I want to cry, our bones are secret, showing last, so we must love what perishes: the muscles and the waters and the fats.

  Two prongs extend like daggers from the rear. I suppose I’ll never know their function. That kind of knowledge doesn’t take my interest. At first I had to screw my eyes down, and as I consider it now, the whole change, the recent alteration in my life, was the consequence of finally coming near to something. It was a self-mortifying act, I recall, a penalty I laid upon myself for the evil-tempered words I’d shouted at my children in the middle of the night. I felt instinctively the insects were infectious and their own disease, so when I knelt I held a handkerchief over the lower half of my face . . . saw only horror . . . turned, sick, masking my eyes . . . yet the worst of angers held me through the day: vague, searching, guilty, and ashamed.