The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 3

by Donald Harington

  Softening herself, Latha will design the pattern, “Rose of Sharon” for the quilt which her suitor/quilters will stay up all night long finishing in time for the funeral, each of them not needing to be told how special Sharon was to Latha and how magnificent this particular quilt would have to be, with threads of gold and silver and titanium. It will be during that all-night quiltathon that they will discuss the solution to the problem of how this story can continue to be told although Sharon will no longer be alive to tell it. Latha herself will get credit for voicing the answer: that we have all of us become so familiar with Sharon’s narrative techniques throughout this enduring chronicle that we can each of us go on doing the telling ourselves. We can hear Sharon’s voice still speaking and telling. And since, as we already know or have guessed, this chronicle has no conclusion, the perpetual rights of storytelling may be allowed to devolve upon whoever may endure thus far through a reading of the book.

  Once this solution is agreed upon among the quilters, old George Dinsmore, who first appeared as the “Baby Jim” of Lightning Bug who fell through the hole of the outhouse, prompting his mother to remark that it would be easier to have another one than to clean him up, and who will have all these years served as Vernon Ingledew’s right-hand-man, manager of the ham factory, and the only one of Latha’s quilters capable of sewing a respectable fan stitch of quarter rounds, will expire of natural causes at the age of eighty-six, which, he will have been heard to comment back, “is a good age to go.” His former boss, Vernon, retired for many years from the governor’s office and unsuccessful in his bid for senator, will be required to close down the Ingledew Ham Factory and to lay off with pensions its few remaining employees. The razorbacks who will not have already been converted into ham and bacon will be permitted to live and to return to the wilderness where Vernon had found them back in the twentieth century, and where they may still be found to this day.

  Vernon will ask of his grandmother permission to take George’s place at the quilting frame, and will prove to be an intelligent and nimble stitcher, at least for a while, but will refuse to discuss politics and thus will seem unfriendly to the other quilters, who will suggest politely to His Former Excellency that he ought to stick to his laboratory, where, having discovered a cure for cancer early in this century, he will now be hard at work on curing the common cold. Vernon’s place at the quilting frame will remain vacant until eventually another old geezer will show up, a stranger, a retired professor from St. Louis who has brought a letter of introduction written by Dawny himself and wishes to do a 3DTV interview with Latha. She, having given no interviews for the previous two dozen years, will be at first be indisposed, but the professor’s possession of a letter from Dawny will almost win her over. She will introduce him to the other quilters, each in his turn, and the professor will look the men over and make an allusion to Penelope in Homer’s Odyssey, Odysseus’ forlorn wife pestered by suitors during his absence, she who relieved herself of their importunities by promising to choose among them as soon as she finished weaving a shroud for her father-in-law (but each night unraveled what she had done during the day and thus put the suitors off until Odysseus’ return).

  Upon revealing his name as Brian Walter, the suitors (not Penelope’s but Latha’s) will realize that it was he, along with his wife Lynnea, to whom Dawny had dedicated his noble novel With.

  “Can you quilt?” she will ask Professor Walter.

  “I can juggle,” he will assert, pantomiming the suspension of six balls in the air simultaneously. He will be as tall as Dawny and it will occur to Latha that having him here would be almost as good as having Dawny here, and in fact he contends that he loves her as much as Dawny ever did, or as much as any of these suitors do, a declaration which brings a loud protest from Ben, Dan and Drum.

  She is charmed, and tells him to go right ahead and ask her anything he wants to ask. The first question, once he has turned on his senseo camera, will be, “How has Dawny changed over the decades you’ve known him?”

  “He was just a little spadger, five going on six, when first I laid eyes on him,” Latha will say. “And the last time I got a chance to lay eyes on him, many years ago, he was white-haired and stooped and slow, but I could tell he was still the same tender sentimentalist he’d always been.”

  Brian Walter will snatch the senseo out of the air in which it has been floating while recording in three dimensions with sound, smell and taste, and feeling the scene it perceives. He will make adjustments to it, explaining he wants to get more of the background, which includes the quilters busy at work, as well as an assortment of cats in various attitudes of languor, curiosity, contention, and self-washing. If Brian Walter will bother to ask, she will gladly identify the cats by name, pointing out that three of the males are named after three of the quilters: Ben, Dan, and Drum.

  But instead he asks, “What is your favorite story about Dawny that has never made it into his books?” This last question she will be loath to answer, declaring that she will only answer it after Dawny is dead.

  “But what if he survives you?” the professor will protest.

  “He won’t,” she declares.

  “Do you think the only reason you’re still alive at the age of one hundred and twenty-one is that Dawny has granted you immortality?”

  Latha will not be able to prevent a scoff escaping her lips. “Didn’t you ever ask him that?” she will want to know.

  “Several times,” Brian Walter will answer. “The best answer I ever recorded was, ‘I may have created her, but I am not in charge of her.’”

  “Well-spoken,” Latha will say. “How would you feel if you knew someone was in charge of you?”

  “Helpless,” he will admit. And his senseo will reverse its direction and record all the lineaments of his face.

  “Turn that thing off,” Latha will request, “and let me show you how to quilt.”

  For such an old coot, he will be a quick study, and will soon be stitching almost as well as the George whom he will have replaced. But he will keep his senseo running, hovering and snooping, this day and the next and the next, and before his stock of 3DTV tape is all used up, he will have enough footage to be edited into a respectable film, which will answer such tricky questions as “What have you learned about yourself in the last year that you couldn’t have learned in your first one hundred and twenty-one years?” and “What do you still feel passionate(ly) about?” and “How long do you intend to live?” and “What are your daily routines?”

  Instead of requiring her to answer the last question, he suggests that he be allowed to leave in her presence a Questcamera, the sort of top-of-the-line free-floating senseo that can follow her around wherever she goes all day long from get-up to lie-down. He will show her how to turn it off during moments of privacy, such as using the toilet. She will not mind its watching her get dressed for the day. She will always dress slowly. One of the problems of living so long is that you outlive your clothing. Latha’s few favorite dresses will be worn out, threadbare, faded, but they will still fit, and she will go on wearing them until they disintegrate. In the kitchen she will pour herself a cup from the automatic self-cleaning coffeemaker that turns itself on at the same time each morning, brewing a Colombian roast from beans that came not from Colombia but some factory in Indiana. Her cereal will have already poured itself into a bowl and the fridge will have already poured milk over it and sliced a banana over it, so all she will have to do is sit and eat it, scanning the morning news on the readmaster. She will also eat one-quarter of a cantaloupe that the fridge will have sliced and placed into another bowl. The pet-feeder will have already measured out a morning ration for her cats and dogs, who will have finished eating long before she will have, and will be loafing in the shade of the trees and the dogtrot. Brian’s Questcamera will follow her out to her garden, where she will be seen mostly inspecting the work that will have already been done by her Gardenmaster, a robomachine which plants, cultivates, weeds, and harve
sts. Although she will occasionally miss the sweaty work of honest toil in the garden, she will realize that perhaps she is too old for it. The Questcamera and the Gardenmaster will not speak the same language and will not like each other and she will be relieved when they will go their separate ways.

  The Questcamera will, however, fall in love with her cats, stalking them while they are stalking, pouncing when they pounce, beating them in staring matches, and affectionately bumping heads with them. Boastfully, the machine will chase birds the cats cannot reach, but as if to get even, the cats will snatch at fish in the creek, and when the Questcamera tries to do this, it will get all wet and Brian will have to fix it.

  Every night the Questcamera will follow Latha to bed and remain alert until she dozes off. It will be curious about what books she is reading, and will read over her shoulder. But before putting out the light, she will need to visit the bathroom and will turn off the Questcamera while she sits patiently and recites to herself:

  Tinkle, tinkle, little pee.

  How I wonder if I be.

  If I be enough to keep,

  I must pee before I sleep.

  Fortunately for posterity, although the Questcamera’s eye will be shut, its ear will still be open and it will catch and remember this ditty, Latha’s sole contribution to the world of poetry.

  Before the quilters will have given up their needles and returned to more manly pursuits, each of them will select and supervise the piecing of his own personal burial quilt, and Brian will take back with him to St. Louis a lovely quilt in the so-called crazy quilt pattern, which, he will be heard to maintain, is symbolic not only of his life but also of this book. Possibly he will not ever be buried in it, because it will not be too many more years before medical science, with some help from Vernon Ingledew, will eradicate death. Even before the total abolition of death, or rather the beginning of the universal program of voluntary leave-taking, medical science, again with some help from Vernon Ingledew and his co-conspirator Day Whittacker, will have discovered and perfected the age-reversal process, whereby everyone, if they will so choose, can grow younger instead of older. Latha will not so choose. Records will no longer be kept, but the Guinness Book will have gone out of print for years, and no one will know if Latha is the oldest woman on earth.

  But as she will have said, she will outlive her creator, who, like Hank Ingledew and George Dinsmore and countless others, will breathe his last at the age of eighty-six. That last breath will be with difficulty, owing to pneumonia, which will have plagued him periodically for years and which took away his mentor, William Styron, in 2006. He will use that last breath to whisper into the ear of his beloved wife Kim his parting sentiments and also a reminder that Latha and the quilters will have already determined that the remainder of the Enduring book can be readily composed by the reader.

  Some of those readers will have already turned out the light and tried to sleep. Others will first, before turning out the light, want to visit their bathrooms for the recitation of Latha’s ditty. Still others will insist that they want to remain awake long enough to read the story of a “visit” that Latha will receive, via the high technology senseophone, which enables us to feel literally in the presence of the caller. The woman will not be age-reversed and will appear to be as old as Latha herself. She will declare that her name is Rachel Rafferty, and that she had known Latha very well during her confinement to the Arkansas Lunatic Asylum.

  “But,” Latha will protest, all of it coming back to her, “you aren’t real.”

  “Who is?” Rachel will say. “But I must admit that this new senseophone my triple-great grandson gave me for Christmas makes you so real I could reach right out and touch you.”

  “But,” Latha will say again. “But Dr. Kaplan convinced me you were entirely in my imagination.”

  “Kaplan!” Rachel will exclaim as if it were a dirty word. “That asshole wouldn’t have known I was a figment if I’d have put out for him. Kaplan and his phobias! There ought to be a word for a phobia of making someone happy.”

  Latha will reach out to lay her hand on Rachel’s arm but will discover, as all of us will have at one time or another when using the senseophone, that it is only air. Still, the woman will be speaking so clearly, and it will have been so long since Latha last experienced any sort of hallucination, that she will begin to believe that the woman really is Rachel, who was her dearest friend at the asylum and who kept her from sooner going over the brink.

  “Where are you calling from?” Latha will ask. The woman will appear to have a very long body, and Latha will recall that she had been a star basketball player who had got into serious trouble for fondling her minister during a baptism.

  “I’m in New Orleans,” the woman will say. “Where on earth are you? I’ve been trying for years to find you.”

  “I’m in a place called Stay More, Arkansas,” Latha will tell her, “which used to be my hometown, if you remember, but isn’t a town any more, just a place.”

  “Are you well and happy?” Rachel will ask.

  “Oh yes, I have no complaints,” Latha will declare, “except that they waited so long to invent a cure for death, and so many people I loved have died off.”

  “Same here,” Rachel will say. “But now we’ve got each other, so let’s make the most of it.”

  They will make the most of that call. For hours. They will reminisce about what a terrible place the asylum was, although Nurse Richter was a nice person until she ran away with Dr. Silverstein, and Betty Betty was a lot of fun. They will tell each other most of what has happened to them, beginning with how they got out of the asylum and everything since. From the distance of all these years, even the campus of the asylum will seem idyllic, with that pond and all those flowers. Latha will tell her to be sure and order a copy of a book called Enduring, because Rachel is in it. “I’ve known the guy who wrote it all of his life, and in fact he was buried here at the Stay More cemetery. You must come up and visit sometime.”

  “I’ll do that when they invent teleportation,” Rachel says.

  “At this rate, it won’t be long,” Latha says, and both women will laugh.

  But the book will not end with the sound of their laughter.

  It will not end with Latha going to bed later that night and dreaming of Rachel.

  It will not end with somebody walking off into the sunset, or of an opened door about to close.

  It will not end with an automobile driving off, or a train whistle blowing as the train pulls out (indeed, all surface travel will have ended years before).

  It will not end with the sound of the spring on a screen door stretching and twanging.

  It will not end with an invitation to stay more. It will not even end with an essay on how Latha will have always known the meaning of the town’s name and will have heeded it, and will still be heeding it.

  It will not end with a goodbye, or a farewell or a godspeed or a catch you later. It will not end with any sort of valedictory.

  It will not end.

  Contents

  Prologue: Let Us Build Us a Book

  Sulphur City

  Cherokee City

  Marble City

  Buffalo City

  Cave City

  Lake City

  Mound City

  Arkansas City

  Garland City

  Bear City

  Y City

  Epilogue and Acknowledgments

  Afterword

  Appendix: The Cities, Found and Lost, of America

  And the whole earth was of one language, and of one speech.

  And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there.

  And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar.

  And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we
be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

  —Genesis 11:1-4

  Prologue: Let Us Build Us a Book….

  Our story begins at a two-room walk-up apartment over a furniture store in far-off Brookings, South Dakota, on Main Avenue—not Street, which would be commonplace, but Avenue, with a hint of aspiration and vainglory comparable to naming an ambitious hamlet “city” out of pure hope and dreaming.

  For the length of a school year a man was the sole renter of that apartment. It wasn’t conveniently close to the state university where he was teaching, but he had always wanted, for a few months at least, to dwell in a Main Street walk-up, over a store, to see what such urban living was like; most of his life he had lived in the country on the edge of a village, in the green hills of New England.

  The two rooms consisted of a kitchenette with a refrigerator so small it wouldn’t make ice, requiring trips to the little store on the corner for ice cubes for his regular drinks, and a living-sleeping area with newspapers and magazines scattered and piled, an unmade cot, and a lone window covered with his grandmother’s Ozark crazy quilt to blot out the harsh rising eastern sun. A long flight of stairs led from Main Avenue’s sidewalk up to the level of his apartment; at the top of the landing lived the woman super, who never spoke to him but sometimes taped a note to his door: “Mr Harrigan—The Next Time You get Drunk—You just Don’t Pisse All over the Foot of the Stairs—Or Clean it Up Yourself.” (She never got his name right, but we may as well use her error as a handy disguise.) Since the foot of the stairs was frequented at night by dancers from the Go-Go Lounge next door, transient cowboys, the town bum, the village idiot, as well as reveling college students and an occasional dog, Professor Harrigan could never be sure if it had indeed been himself who had committed the offense.

  Main Avenue changed character after dark; during the daytime it was a respectable street of shops, cafés, the post office, drugstore, barbers, the dentist, a florist, and even a bookshop (used); by night it became a drag strip and cruising strip for whatever cars could roar or glide down its three-block length, turn around, and come back. From the west, farmers and teen-aged farm boys swept in off the plains like drifting snow and settled in the beer joints and went to the Go-Go Lounge to watch the naked girls. From the east, students from the state university, who never seemed to have any reason to open books at night, pub-crawled the college hangouts in cellars and side streets. But after dark the professor changed character, too.