Loudermilk

by Lucy Ives

  Harry tries to think about it. Also, he tries not to think about it. He has to write. There is something flickering in him, but maybe flickering is not the right word. Maybe it shifts, twitches, yes or no. Natural things, Harry writes. It could be the title of a new list. But a poem, Harry thinks, is not a list.

  Harry has the feeling he wants to walk backward. Of course, he is sitting down, but he can make out some kind of music. The music seems to be behind him. It’s not exactly a song, but that does not prevent Harry from wanting to hear it. The challenge is to get himself to fall. He can’t walk where he needs to go. It has to be an accident. Meaning is stale in every realm known to woman or man, and Harry cannot be where stale meaning is. He needs to sink back into that greenish-reddish veil through which he can see the gently pulsing backs of words, the frilled edges of sentences. The only way to get to the poem is to drop into a perfectly Harry-shaped shadow. Which is where he is, he sees, right now.

  The paper is nearby and there is the radio.

  Natural Bush

  In the god-drenched eras of the past

  He applied to seven schools, got into none.

  He wrote so charmingly about the cunning

  of underage girls, salads, heart-on-leotard emotion . . .

  There was nothing crabbed about his declaration.

  He was buying a country newspaper.

  He would call and go, “Oh look, they’re breaking

  bones! Oh gosh!

  Feels like a lottery we’re running,

  but the charity is (an) illusion.”

  His dovish views, his catbird seat; he was

  quick to apologize to veterans’ groups.

  Gaze into his background.

  He comes to us from Maryland.

  —T. A. LOUDERMILK

  Twenty-Six

  A Break

  “Harrison!” Loudermilk yells. “You’re making me proud! This is some good, weird shit.” It’s late afternoon and Loudermilk is back from wherever he has been for the past three days.

  Harry had left the new poem, neatly printed out, on the kitchen bar. He was hoping, though he is not eager to admit it, for just such a response. Now he emerges from his cave and greets his long-lost comrade in literary treachery. “Hey,” he says.

  “Only thing is”—Loudermilk is bending over the page with the Groucho robe slung around his shoulders, though underneath he wears what appears to be standard attire, no doubt obtained at some point in his travels (Are those women’s jeans?)—“this title? Like, maybe a tad much?” Loudermilk strokes his chin and ponders the ceiling. “Yeah,” he murmurs, “I just can’t tell! There’s something kinda eerie here, you know? I can feel it. Like, think about it, ‘Natural Bush,’ like, really, what the fuck is that? When has a person like me ever seen that? I’m saying”—Loudermilk stares at Harry—“you’re onto something, like, effing with them, jamming the old poetry radar! You’re challenging their god, you know?”

  “All in a day’s work.”

  “Only you would say that, Harrison. So what do you want me to do with it? I should submit it so these assmasters can scrape and grovel at your genius?”

  “It’s not mine.”

  “Oh, right,” Loudermilk says. There is something light and odd in his tone. “I almost forgot! These are my poems.”

  “To a certain extent.”

  Loudermilk isn’t listening. “For I am the genius and master of all ass! Sometimes I forget! Like, going about my day-to-day, I have cause to ask myself, ‘Who is Troy, I mean, Loudermilk, anyway?’” Loudermilk purses his lips. “Can it be that I am really he? Do I not sometimes sense that he is someone else? And, thus, who am I? What if I were to lose my identity altogether? What would I do with myself, then?” Loudermilk, as if lit from within by a glutinous nineteenth-century feeling, drifts toward a window.

  Harry suggests, “Maybe you would just be whoever you were?”

  “But I do not really think so, Harrison! I like who I am.”

  Harry asks what that is supposed to mean.

  Loudermilk shifts back into his normal register. “Whatever, dude. I’m sure a systems nerdalingus like yourself can figure that out. Now, would you mind getting out of my way because I need to shower?”

  Harry, before he can stop himself, blurts out his surprise that Loudermilk is going out again so soon. Because he can tell that’s what Loudermilk’s planning.

  “Yes, Harry, I am indeed going out and boldly so. I have a life. I have things to see, people to do. You know the drill. Anyway, if I’m going to hand this poem in this week, we’re going to need a few more of them coming up. So you’d probably better head back to the old drawing board.”

  Harry is trembling.

  “I’m going out,” Loudermilk repeats.

  “Where?”

  “I’m making friends,” says the real poet.

  Twenty-Seven

  Elsewhere

  Harry is dreaming.

  He stands in a white space. Rectangles seem important here. There are screens, about the size of chalkboards. They are made of translucent white gauze. Harry walks among them. The problem, he can intuit, is less that he has no authority here than that he has neglected to find protectors. It’s all his fault.

  Harry peers around corners. Also, inexorably, behind him there is a wind. The wind has a sound; it’s not just a feeling. One of Harry’s ears gets hot.

  Harry is in a small room.

  Someone is kneeling in a corner, a man.

  At first Harry thinks this thin man is naked, but when the man stands up, Harry can see that he is wearing a tight beige suit the same shade as his face and hands. The man is wearing a tall hat. The hat is conical and pointed, like a witch’s hat. The hat is made of clear glass and its tip glints ominously, like a piece of medical equipment.

  “Hello,” says the man.

  Harry doesn’t know what to say.

  “I am the Glass Hat Man,” the man says. “Otherwise known as Neutral Man.”

  Harry realizes that the Glass Hat Man, aka Neutral Man, looks a lot like Loudermilk, except thinner and much older, as if Harry is seeing a faded, shrunken version of Loudermilk at a distance.

  “I live here,” the Glass Hat Man, aka Neutral Man, says. “This is where I work.” The Glass Hat Man twirls a luxuriant white mustache that Harry has somehow neglected to notice. The mustache is like cotton or snow, the fur of a rabbit, pure and filled with blue light. The Glass Hat Man’s mustache must be made of glass.

  “You want to move,” the Glass Hat Man tells Harry.

  Harry feels himself nodding. Behind Harry’s head, the wind picks up. Harry can see that the Glass Hat Man’s lips are forming words, but the rushing sound blots out everything else. The Glass Hat Man is raising his arms. He is pointing with both of his index fingers. Harry follows the gesture.

  Harry is moving. The Glass Hat Man becomes a voice. Harry can no longer see the Glass Hat Man. Harry is in the hallway again and the hallway extends to another space. Harry can make it out before him, an arched entry.

  Harry can’t stop shivering.

  The wind blows.

  “They are hunting,” the Glass Hat Man says.

  Harry notes that although the wind seems to be coming from behind him, it actually originates at a point in front of his body, possibly the entrance before him. Harry is beginning to hear a clamor, too. It’s the sound of metal pots being struck by metal spoons, dogs barking, paper shaking, car engines turning over, the low horns of ships, intermittent explosions.

  “It’s the hunt,” Harry hears the Glass Hat Man, somewhere, remark.

  “I’m not supposed to be here,” Harry says.

  “Your name is Hearry,” the Glass Hat Man says.

  “What?”

  “Heeerrrry. Heeerrrrry! That’s your name!”

  “OK,” says Harry.

  The Glass Hat Man does not reply, but Harry’s ears precipitously become unclogged and he is inside. It’s blue here, a sky just before evening,
when space begins to blacken at its edges. There are flashes. The flashes occur in the shapes of stars. The ceiling is domed, veined with red. Before Harry is an immense gold ladder. The ladder sways. Harry can feel the Glass Hat Man, Neutral Man, aged, shrunken Loudermilk, whoever he is, at his side. The Glass Hat Man shoves Harry toward the ladder with warm little shoves, sighing with what seems like a kind of ecstasy each time he touches him.

  “Look!” the Glass Hat Man exclaims, and Harry is compelled to gaze up, up to the top of the ladder, where he can perceive a large, bright entity.

  Somehow the wind is also—or, rather—emerging, originating from this being. The being becomes bigger and bigger. Harry can make out details of her form. She is a monkey or a cat, he thinks, but covered in feathers. Harry can see that the feathers are composed of extremely fine frosted glass. She has the bladelike wings of a swan or other large waterfowl, affixed to her back upside down.

  “Madame Singe,” hisses the Glass Hat Man.

  Now Harry sees the face. He begins to hear trumpets, the sound of hundreds of columns in a hall. Madame Singe’s face is doors, not a face. It is a gate that shudders as the ladder rocks—

  Harry wakes with a jerk, soaked in sweat.

  He listens, grateful, to a passing car.

  Twenty-Eight

  Custom

  Harry is trying to believe that it is a good idea. He wants to give Loudermilk a chance to make up for his increasingly numerous and protracted absences.

  Loudermilk has appeared out of nowhere with a bottle of scotch. Loudermilk is in the house again and is not even listening to Harry’s concerns.

  “We’re going,” Loudermilk says.

  “Unwise,” Harry repeats.

  “No, no.” Loudermilk shakes his head. “No, no, no! You’re not getting what I’m saying, little one. I wasn’t looking for clarification. I’m pretty much sure it’s been almost a month since you went outdoors. What was the last time? All Hallows’ Eve? I’m telling you, this is not even a fucking conversation. Plus, you accompanying me is still the best strategy of all time. We’re hiding you in plain sight! P.S.: Is that what you are wearing?”

  “I am physically wearing these clothes.”

  “Again with the attitude, dude. Switch that up and make it some gratitude! I’m asking, Harrison, you want to wear that? You look, seriously, like shit, dude.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You’re welcome. Now change.”

  Harry says that he does not feel like changing.

  Loudermilk takes a lap. He is walking without bending his knees. “It’s always like this with you these days, dude.”

  It is 11:00 a.m. on Thanksgiving. There has been a frost. Clouds loom, and an odd, saffron-colored light hovers over the front lawn.

  Loudermilk says that perhaps Harry does not comprehend the progress that he, Loudermilk, has recently made with his instructor Don Hillary, his amazing incursion into the man’s good graces. Loudermilk says that he, for all intents and purposes, has everything sewn up for next year as far as stipend money is concerned if Harry would just come make nice with these hamsters. “Please help me seem humble, dude!”

  Harry asks to know how exactly his presence will contribute to Loudermilk’s humility.

  “Because I told them about you! I mean, not told told, but I, you know, told them something, about how I have this stellar friend who’s, like, this complete surreal genius although he has these pretty severe emotional handicaps, and now, believe it or not, they want to meet you. You’re expressly invited. I can’t fucking go without you.”

  Harry reminds Loudermilk that he’s been introduced to Marta once before. He also reminds Loudermilk, in case he’s forgotten, that what he’s telling these people is complete and utter bullshit?

  Loudermilk counters with something about how this is a hazard of their current working conditions. Or, he says, he means their current free-money, nonworking conditions! He says it would be greatly appreciated if Harry would for one hot millisecond stop obsessing over minor details and gaze at the grand scheme. He asks Harry if he, Loudermilk, needs to remind him, Harry, that today is Thanksgiving, the American day of thankful giving, and from where he, Loudermilk, stands, the two of them have a lot to be thankful for, Harry in particular.

  Harry doesn’t reply. He would like to be removed from the present by any possible means. He dislikes Loudermilk so much in this moment! But he also feels very keenly the lack of any alternative. For the true problem isn’t Loudermilk. The true problem is that Harry doesn’t care enough about the generally social project of living. Harry knows this now. Unlike Loudermilk—who, for all his vile habits, is really quite committed to humanity—Harry can’t involve himself. He can’t work himself up the way Loudermilk does. In fact, Harry mostly doesn’t care at all.

  It’s a typical mood and a natural predilection of Harry’s. It’s a way he wants to be—an idea he has about how he’d like to spend his day, which is to say, in punishing solitude. Nothing about life, for Harry, is integrally informed by the fact of the presence of others and all their difficulties and the need to deal. It’s not some kind of far-reaching machination as it is for Loudermilk. It’s just not how Harry sees things, because Harry doesn’t, in fact, “see.”

  Anyway, Loudermilk knows this. Loudermilk says, “You see my point.”

  Harry tells him, “Fuck your point,” but he gets up and goes into his room and puts on his one nice shirt and comes back out.

  “Stellar,” observes Loudermilk.

  They walk over to the Hillary residence. The campus is a tomb.

  Harry wants to know if Loudermilk has any idea who else will be there.

  “Dude, I really do not know. Do the math. It was enough for me that we got the invite.”

  They are approaching the front door. Loudermilk does this little neurotic touch of his hair that informs Harry that Loudermilk is in some way excited about what is about to transpire.

  Loudermilk makes use of a brass knocker.

  Now there are footsteps. The door is opened by Marta Hillary.

  “Marta,” Marta Hillary says, extending her hand to Harry. She has either actually forgotten their initial meeting or is letting him know she will be willing to.

  Harry allows his hand to be held, stroked by small fingers.

  “You must be Harry. Troy has told us so much about you. Your work sounds absolutely fascinating.”

  Harry blinks. “Yup,” he mutters.

  Marta laughs. “Don’s just in the kitchen. He’s dying to see you, Troy. He says you’re going to keep up with him. I know you’ll do your best.”

  Loudermilk hefts the bottle of scotch. “Apologies!” He mugs regret.

  Marta Hillary laughs again. This time Harry thinks he catches something, a part of the laugh that is not really laughter. Harry tries to hear this part of the laugh more clearly, but as soon as his mind inclines toward Marta Hillary the unusual part of the laugh dissipates, and the laugh is nothing more than the most generic of cues, some sawdust.

  Marta Hillary is looking at Harry. “Why don’t you go ahead?” she says. A hand flicks up. Marta indicates a hallway.

  Now Marta Hillary is gone. They’re alone.

  The house is not modest. It’s in the colonial style, as if to spite its midwestern setting. The floors are a light wood, bare and highly polished. The walls are eggshell. A formal stair ascends to a second-floor landing. The look is Americana, updated for the now-vanished 1990s: Shaker chairs, Hudson-school scene, plus brushed-aluminum side table. Harry thinks they pass a priceless abstract expressionist silkscreen on their way into the kitchen.

  Here they find Don Hillary tied into a red apron, ministering to the stovetop. There is an open bottle of port to his left and below him sputtering gravy. Hillary’s face is purple from heat and inebriation.

  “You’re here!” Hillary bellows.

  Loudermilk does introductions.

  “Good! Yes! Great!” Hillary exclaims. Today he is in high spirits. H
e springs across the room and pulls down a pair of jelly jars that he fills with several fingers’ worth of amber fluid. “There!” He hands the jars out. “Salud!”

  Loudermilk sets the gift scotch on a counter. “This is already an unbelievable improvement on Thanksgivings past. I just want you to know that, Don.” He downs some port. He is doing this face loaded with legible appreciation.

  “And you brought your old ‘writing teacher’ a gift!” Hillary dances belatedly over to the bottle. “I can guarantee you this won’t go to waste.”

  “I would never have believed it would.” Loudermilk grins mildly.

  Harry is standing silent in the center of the kitchen floor. He has not touched his drink.

  “You know me too well!” Hillary hops back over to the stovetop. He sniffs his gravy. In fact, Don Hillary is an unusually slight man, a frog. His narrow legs are bowed inside his creased blue jeans. He wears a striped oxford shirt, the back yoke of which he has sweated through already. The outlines of a white undershirt show. Hillary hums a few lines to himself: “La da dee, la da da. La da dee, la da da.” He taps his metal spoon against a pot edge. He guzzles port. “She’s homeless, she’s homeless,” Hillary yodels in falsetto.

  “This is a great place,” Loudermilk is saying, ignoring Hillary’s unexpected rendering of Crystal Waters’s club favorite. “You and Marta have a truly extraordinary home!”

  Now Hillary applies an electric can opener to the rim of a can of condensed mushroom soup. He yells, “She has her spots and I have mine! It’s pretty civilized, or should I say, civil! I’m Catalonia and she’s Spain.”

  “Ha!” is the sound Loudermilk makes. He leans against a counter. It’s obvious to Harry, at least, that Loudermilk has no idea what Hillary is getting at. Foreign affairs are not his strong suit.

  “If you ask her, she’d probably say something about the Balkans. She’s so fucking tragic!” Hillary consults his port once more. “Anyway, I bet you already want to get in her class next semester. Am I right? Find out what all the buzz buzz buzz is about?” Hillary is now laying the mushroom sludge over a glass casserole containing green beans. He admires his handiwork.