Percival Everett by Virgil Russell

by Percival Everett

  And about this numbering and about this lack of naming. Oh, I am not any man’s everyman and neither are you. I have a name. I named you. Well, your mother, bless her soul, named you, claiming that since you would wear my last name, she had the right to supply your first. So, she named you but spelled it differently, funny if you ask me, not exactly a display of imaginary prowess, but, in fact, an exercise of imaginary prowess, not that I mean to sound harsh and condescending, but rather I am harsh and condescending or at least you accuse me of being so. Your name, any name, such a magical thing. Others are called by your name. Actually, not your name, but the name that a word that sounds like your name names.

  11

  Billy, the absence of balls notwithstanding, showed little if any fear in the faces of the orderlies, who, outside the view of family visitors and any caring staff, could be anything from mildly neglectful to physically abusive. Those of us who could still communicate effectively were spared the extreme treatment, but the mild neglect could be employed in such a way as to discredit our accounts, anything from miraculously locating missing items in places where we claimed to have looked to the more basic having one of their stories corroborated by another orderly. The brotherhood of orderlies was in fact a tight order, but Billy was resolved to destroy them. I did not need much convincing to join his cause and as the younger of the two of us, I knew that I would be called upon to perform the trickier missions. The precise speculative tenets of the brotherhood were not available to us and the workings of minds so primitive and brutish were just plain mystifying and therefore it was not only difficult to predict what they were going to do, but downright impossible to even comprehend the motivating principles behind their seemingly involuntary, automatic cruelties. There was, at the very least, a pecking order within the herd of ruffians, if not a formed and ritualistic scale of rank. I can name them for you here in disposition of power.

  Harley. Could I have chosen a better name myself ? He was the shortest of them but easily the most vicious, but probably not the most dangerous, at least in close quarters. I am hard pressed to say that this is a necessary trait of a leader, but I would listen to any argument supporting the theory. He was nearly as wide as he was tall, not fat, but built like a front-loading washing machine and, as with such a machine, it was easy to see that things were turning within, though one would be challenged to identify any one article of clothing, save for perhaps a shoe. Unlike the bleached white smocks and slacks of his comrades, he was clad in powder blue, a distinction that quite discernibly pleased him. He, at times, could appear almost handsome, or at least not ugly, no doubt a function of his functional, if only utilitarian, intelligence. His head was square, in thematic concert with his body. His hair was receded and regrettably long in the back. He had meeting eyebrows, not so much almond as Brazil-nut-shaped eyes, large and round and closeto-his-head ears, a large convex nose with turned-down nostrils, a short mouth with straight lips, a square and jutting chin, and no facial hair to speak of. I suppose the same is true of all of us, that a mere catalog of our physiognomy sounds rather unprepossessing and repulsive, but somehow all of his features were worn in the right places and in more-or-less standard proportion and so the overall effect was not too terribly bad. He walked with a slight but conspicuous limp; the favored side seemed to change periodically, leaving Billy to conclude that his shoes were too tight and hurt his feet and that particular pairs caused diversely distributed pain. I admonished Billy about his tasteless alliteration but had to concur. Harley was complex enough that the mere acquisition of the property of others was not the sole motivating principle behind his odious behavior, though it was in no way insignificant. It was the power dynamic within his herd that drove him and I believed that it was finally sexual, that lording over his subordinates actually gave him a boner. What came of that erection, and for that phrasing I apologize, I did not know and I did not care to imagine. Harley was also fond of a particular cologne, the name of which I did not know, and it was either extremely potent or he bathed in it.

  Tommy was a beanpole with two left feet. Literally, he had two left feet. When he faced north both of his big toes pointed east. It turns out that it is true what they say about the clumsiness of dancers so endowed. Merely walking was a challenge and made for a sideways, crablike gait that was both noisy and profoundly ugly. I believed that his constant shuffling and stumbling kept him in his nasty, contemptible mood. On his most pleasant days he was dismissive and scornful. On his worst he was hateful, black hearted, and monstrous, rolling over slippered toes with wheelchairs that he was shoving at life-threatening speeds through congested hallways. It may well be that there was not an honest bone in his sinister, leftleaning body and I never once heard him say anything that was factual, even in response to the most mundane and seemingly simple questions, even when the facts were unmissable, staring him and whomever else in the face. When asked by a day nurse if Abraham Chen’s prosthetic leg had been left back in his rooms, he responded, No, I put it on him before we left, leaving the nurse and Abraham Chen to exchange confounded glances. But I’ll take him back so that I can tighten the strap, Tommy then said. If such a thing was possible, I was of the opinion that the man had two left eyes as well, a condition that manifested in a barely perceptible but constant pull of his face to that direction. There was a rumor that Tommy liked to sneak sly ganders at the old ladies when they were being bathed or taken to the bathroom. Though I never (Allah be praised) saw him doing so, it was easy enough, however sickening and repulsive the picture, to imagine his depraved and salacious, distorted, lefteyed squint around this corner or that.

  Cletus. Cletus was a troll of a man, Nordic in appearance, with a patch covering, I think, his good eye, and he possessed upper incisors that presented like tusks. His hair in troll fashion was thick and uncombable and Billy thought on more than one occasion that a tail was hidden in his white britches. He wore a gold cross on a cheap gold chain around his neck, no doubt the source of his power. He had lived near humans long enough to have learned many of our ways and so he was conscientious about pleasant greetings but always managed to make us regret it in short order. Though not as short as Harley, he was far slighter, weighing perhaps as much as a woman of equal height, his protruding ears like wings. If he had not been so repugnant in appearance, he might not have been frightening at all, but there was a sneakiness about him that one could almost smell. It wasn’t that it seemed he wanted something, but it seemed he was going to take something. Though none of us carried wallets or purses, we clung to them anyway in his presence. He smelled vaguely sweet but not good. Whenever he skipped down the corridor, and he often did, I could hear Grieg’s In the Hall of the Mountain King. Now, I knew that trolls are not naturally evil, only misunderstood and, of course, primitive, but he was, if not evil, then he might as well have been evil.

  Leon was truly the brute of the lot. At over six and a half feet, he lumbered about like the giant he was, broadshouldered, deepchested, stronglimbed, and brawnyhanded; his ridiculously large feet, hard like hooves in the most padded of gym shoes, announced his approach in oddly syncopated whumps upon the linoleum tiles. He always sounded as if he’d just stopped and then another footfall would shake the floor. Whether he was Fafner or Fasolt, it didn’t matter; he could have been both, but he would never have been lithe enough to catch Freyja. He was ungainly beyond reasonable belief; so inelegant was he in movement that Harley would not allow him to be in the same space as Tommy and his two left feet, perhaps for consideration of safety, more, I like to think, for aesthetic reasons. Leon’s hands were too large for many common tasks, though he was strangely adept at threading needles, which I saw him do twice. Once for Regina Brown, who was working on an embroidery, and then for a temporary night nurse upon whom he held an obvious crush and with whom he held not even the slightest chance. His head was shaved, but he was lazy and so his head was only nearly smooth, but not smooth enough to appear clean, plant matt
er and lint and dust seeming to find its static charge irresistible. Six cubits and a span in height, Billy would say of the man, referring to biblical Goliath. I used to be a religious man, a real scripture reader, he said, and then my balls were excised by German shrapnel. My faith went with them. Leon, like Tommy, could sneak up on no one. In fact, none of the already-mentioned thugs had stealth as a weapon, Harley being always announced by his fragrance and Cletus being subject to involuntary fits of giggling.

  Ramona. The only woman among the terrible tribe, but one would hardly have known it. Stealth was in fact her first and most striking power. She was a creeper, having the annoying habit of materializing at one’s shoulder out of the crystalline blue. Ramona was of medium height and build and of a bit less than medium intelligence. It seemed that she ran with the boys because they were the only game in town, so to speak. In some raggedy village on the steppes of Uzbekistan or Kyrgyzstan or Turkmenistan, she might have been considered mildly appealing, what with her exaggerated but not so well-defined biceps and broad back. The K-Swiss gym shoes she wore were always impossibly white and unblemished, even after bouts of mopping up diarrhea, blood, or vomit. She wore a ring on the fourth finger of her left hand, though I did not believe her to be married or even attached to another living human animal. When she spoke it was always a loud whisper, a deafening hiss that went unmissed by anyone within a range of thirty or more feet. Ramona spoke in apparent non sequiturs, but her utterances were actually always just a few minutes behind everyone else, if not her actions. Tommy and Cletus were once trying to get an administrative office door unstuck, having just come in from their smoking break with Ramona. Ramona watched for a few seconds and when asked for a flat-head screwdriver from the box, she said, I don’t have any cigarettes, but she passed along the tool without pause. The oddest thing was that from her cavernous mouth, a mouth that remained slightly open for breathing, came the warmest breath, breath one was prepared to find foul but it was not, yet neither did it smell good. It was merely warm.

  Finally there was the unfortunately named Billy. The old Billy did call him Silly but also referred to him as Billy Dud, a more appropriate nickname, as Silly almost made him sound interesting. Billy Dud was so frightfully bland that mosquitoes refused to stick their proboscises into him, treated him as if he’d been soaked in DEET. He was pure, unadulterated background, complete camouflage, a sort of ninja of boredom. If he leaned against a wall, he became the wall. If he carried large cartons, he became a carton. His voice was white noise. He was a chameleon, fading, receding, into the back of any room as if on greased rails, smoothly, effortlessly, a complete forgettable slide to some corner or other. He was a member of the wicked crew only by passive attachment. It was not clear that the others were even aware of his membership or him. They probably wondered on occasion while smoking in the courtyard, just to whom did that sixth shadow belong? The strangest thing about Billy Dud was that once you did catch a glimpse of him you realized that he was beautiful, damn beautiful. But then he would open his mouth and then the mind-numbing, characterless, vanilla static would wash over you and the room and you would be left wondering what you had seen.

  If you live long enough you come to understand that the only terrifying thing is not knowing when a thing is going to happen, whether good or bad. And the older you get, the more you count on knowing when things are going to happen. Bad things, uncomfortable things, death things, are only unsettling and dismaying when they fail to comply with the schedule, the scheme, the plan. The scariest thing about the Gang of Six, as Billy had dubbed them, was that they had no obvious schedule and no apparent goals. One evening, after dinner, after Billy Dud had blended into the salad bar of the dining hall, Harley came in to check the pockets of everyone for suspected illicit drugs. The only staff there were the orderlies, the food workers having been escorted out by the giant Leon. Many of the residents, especially the blue-haired old women at the next table, always accused old Billy of being paranoid and therefore a nuisance, but tonight all were on the same dismal page of shared humiliation. The Gang laughed when a condom was found in Sheldon Cohen’s pocket. Cohen had been a medical doctor and I did not know if he was having sex with anyone, but he wanted at least to be safe and prepared if the opportunity and other things arose. I never saw a man over seventy so embarrassed; it’s really not something we feel. Finding no banned substances, the goons left with whatever cash they could find. Billy stood and shouted out his displeasure. Do you hooligans know no shame!

  Even I had to admit that his word choice was antiquated and therefore undercutting of any gravity he hoped to convey.

  Hooligans? Harley smiled and stepped up face to neck with Billy. Sit down, old man.

  I will report you.

  Go ahead. Tell them what the big bad hooligans did. He looked around the room, Just remember, all of you, that it will be weeks before any action is taken. Weeks. With that he pressed his meaty palm into Billy’s chest and forced him back down into his chair.

  Had you followed Billy back to his apartment after the abovedescribed confrontation with Harley that took place at the end of the insane ratification of his rants against the Gang, you would have seen him open that briefcase that he kept stowed on the bottom shelf of his bookcase and take out hand-drawn maps of the community complex and grounds that he had composed and amended over his ten-year residency at Teufelsdröck h. Then, as he placed himself over the spread-out papers, you would have seen him scratching crazily at the back of his head and pulling on his thumbs the way he always did when excited or nervous. But it was not specifically this night that had Billy pondering over his charts. He did so every night, his pencil making slight and subtle alterations to tables and diagrams and even graphs, tracking the comings and leavings of the Gang members, their combinations, what they were carrying. Billy never seemed to know just what he was looking for, but that night, he pointed at me with end of his number two pencil. It’s up to you, he said.

  What’s up to me?

  You have to sneak into the break room and take Cletus’s keys.

  Excuse me?

  I would do it, but I’m old.

  I’m seventy-eight.

  I’m glad we’re on the same page. This is how it has to go.

  The summer evening had begun to fold the world in its mysterious embrace. Except that the sun had set hours ago and no rest was to come to my storm-tossed heart. I was to put on my darkest clothes and time it all just right.

  12

  The orderlies’ break room was set at the southeast corner of the central building on campus, a square, characterless block of palered bricks that housed the dining facilities and the administrative offices, such as they were. That the break room was on that particular corner was hardly of any consequence, since I had no sense of directional orientation, but to Billy it was the linchpin of the entire operation. He reasoned that as I was setting out at dusk the fact that that side of the building would be darker would be to my advantage. In fact, it did not matter at all, and I didn’t point it out to him that the whole perimeter of the building was fairly well lit. What was useful were Billy’s markings of the security guard’s nightly rounds, of which there was essentially one. At six, upon arriving for his shift, he would make a leisurely circle about the building and then settle in behind his desk at the front door and watch blue movies on his player under the counter. He thought he was being covert in his activity, but he was hard of hearing and so the sound was turned up just loud enough that even we, those with a bit of deafness, could hear the moaning. I imagined the movies to not be hard-core, as they said, but rather the kinds of movies I had see advertised in my town newspaper when I was a kid, the ads saying to call the theater for the title. Billy and I had agreed, read Billy had explained, that entry into the break room was to be best achieved through the window on the south wall that seemed to always be open and also offered the cover of some star jasmine bushes. That was reasonable eno
ugh. My mission, my assignment, was to collect as many keys as I could find, we would figure out to which locks the keys matched and how to best use them later, and to bury them behind the azaleas outside my apartment. My heart was racing as I leaned against that exterior wall, not so much out of fear but because I had just performed my version of a sprint across the hundred-yard lawn. The sprinklers came on just as I slapped my back against the bricks, either luck or bad timing because I had told Billy that I could make the run in a third the time. A look into the room confirmed that it was empty and the sound of the sprinklers covered my prying of the screen loose from the window. The plan was working beautifully. However, there is nothing quite so inelegant as an old man climbing through a window. A thousand sprinklers could not have masked the noise I made knocking over a table with a hot plate and plastic dishes and a chair on which had sat a large metal mixing bowl that now served as a bouncing gong. Luckily the guard could not hear it or was otherwise engaged, an image I tried to instantly expel. At any rate, I stood there, frozen, wondering why I would choose to freeze in plain view instead of hastily trying to hide or to crawl right back out the window through which I had just come. But I paused there for many seconds, as much to let my back ease into uprightness as anything else, until I was satisfied that no one was coming. I put back the table and chair and bowl and then I searched surfaces, lockers, and pockets and found a ring with eight keys, seven rather conventional and one old skeleton type. I was just about to exit when I heard movement in the corridor. I ducked into a corner beside the row of lockers and behind a chair draped with an orderly’s white uniform.