Again you’ll ask why I should care, wouldn’t I rather be free of him? Not by suicide, I’ll say. Why not? you’ll say. Let him kill himself. It’s not your fault, think how convenient it would be. It will be shock for the rest of my life, I’ll say. Shock? Shame, make it. Shame? Guilt, then. Guilt! Your eyes will open, your mustache will tremble, your cheeks flicker, I can see the contempt now. You’ll make a speech, I can imagine it well: did you make life for him? Did you decree the conditions under which he was born and grew up? Did you put him under the spell of the seasons, give him the rhythm of autumn fall winter and spring, put him on the life track through infancy youth old age, did you establish the dichotomy of mind and body and the further dichotomy of mind and self, did you invent the sexes and plague your invention with disorders, did you create the institutions in which he is prisoned, did you build the cities, found the colleges, establish the churches, did you invent the language, the vocabulary, the grammar, did you distill the corruption and inject it into human veins? Who (you’ll ask) do you think you are?
Nevertheless I’ll defend my distress. It’s the repudiation, I’ll say, the total rejection. Rejection of you? you’ll say. Rejection of life, I’ll say, which includes me of course. This will start you up again, and I’ll have to hear it all a second time, since when are you responsible for life?
So. If what you’re saying is, if he commits suicide I should shrug my shoulders and say trala, that’s how it goes, trala trallala, if that’s what you’re saying—
Not me, Dr. Saunders.
HENRY WESTERLY: To his father
Since this was what you were thinking about last, you’ll want to know how it came out. When asked for the reasons, Sheriff Haines said, As far as we know it was motiveless. No one knows what he was trying to do.
Motivation, probability. Let’s project what we know into the events, so as to infer likely motivations. Nine days they endured the isolation and austerity of their regime, with only two externally observed breaks in the routine: first the illness and release of the daughter Dinah, and second the capture of the negotiator Angel Vertebrate. The latter chained among them always naked and required to perform intercourse with the wife at Truro’s gunpoint and for his pleasure from time to time. As time passed and Truro thought what to ask in exchange for his prisoners’ release, evidently the answer eluded him and days passed with no further messages coming out. He must have grown still more desperate from the blockage of his own mind that refused to give up its secret. Inarticulate that he was, stupid with words, the idea of hostage-taking derived from the newspapers, he could not say even to himself that what he wanted was for someone to prove to him the importance of being father and husband, of protecting his family and his career as the world expected him to—if indeed that was what he wanted. Nor that he wanted to be honored and praised for it, his fatherhood and husband-hood—if that’s what it was. Nor could he say that he wanted to be shown reasons why he should continue to live as a civilized being and not some wild thing, conventional in his box house among everyone else’s box houses, protected from the real world by the drowning element—if that was a part of it. Nor that he wanted proof by irrefutable argument of the value of life or of having a name title and file of numbers. Inarticulate, with such great wordless pain, dissatisfaction, restlessness, it must be that after a certain length of time, of what seemed like timeless waiting, while he huddled in the shelter of his absolute power, barricaded in his perfect privacy, sovereign in his fortified home, at last and perhaps quite suddenly this longing and dissatisfaction revolted like an overdose: nausea, so that instead of protection he craved freedom; instead of enclosure, space; instead of power to contain a world, power to break out and spill.
Get dressed. No doubt he gave the command to the naked Vertebrate and his wife. We’re going out.
You want to know how he described it to himself. Going for a ride, he says. Taking a trip. Is it a vacation, a holiday afternoon drive around the Island, taking the air for refreshment before returning to the labor of the cell, or is it a major change, a bid to solve the problem or bring it into a new stage? Is he expecting, wordless as he is, to find the solution by driving about, does he think he has a goal, some place he’ll recognize from which he can launch his effort in a new way, or does he merely mean to shake out the creases of his confinement by a stretch? Are these ends distinguishable to him without words?
They got dressed and he unlocked them and pointed his gun at them as they marched out to the car, and he made Angel Vertebrate do the driving to keep them under control. All the things we don’t know which he probably didn’t know either. Was he expecting the police to pursue? Was it a surprise or one of those facts of life you must live with if you want to live life? At any rate, there they were, the police tearing after them a hundred miles an hour, he could see them across the dunes in the slow winding of the road out by the North Point Light. And ordered Angel Vertebrate to step on it, don’t let them catch up. Like the exhilaration on a roller coaster, go faster around the curves, give it all it’s got, you son of a bitch.
Why were they pursuing, have you thought of that? You drive on the Shore Road around the Island and you come back to the town where you started. Where did the police think he could escape to? Why should they care, a private family outing? Only that he himself had defined it nine days before, not a family outing but a kidnapping. The police were taking him at his word, wordless though he was. Because of his word, they chased him. Once the chase began they could charge him with speeding if they couldn’t get him on anything else.
Looks like he was inviting the police to pursue, don’t you think? Guess it how you like. They come finally to this straightaway, a mile along the duny beach and the marsh on the other side, opening out to a hundred again but for the roadblock they now see at the other end. Wordless, his brain cooks up the plan for escape, not to crash through the roadblock but to turn around, pass the other car as it tears down the road, for surely no sane cop even on a crazy chase will risk a head-on collision. Turn around you son of a bitch—to Angel Vertebrate—who doesn’t like that gun at his ear and does what he’s told. Turns around and here comes that pursuing car bearing down where they’re starting up in the opposite direction, too fast to stop, so you’d think the trick would work, he would get by them and be on a clear road again—back to the North Point (and eventually of course, in either direction, the town).
So you would think, but for whatever went wrong. The car, turned around, facing in the direction from which it had come, the roadblock behind it and the other speeding police car unable to stop—it starts to go, but only for a moment. Suddenly it veers off the road.
Afterwards the police discover the bullet hole in Angel Vertebrate’s head and though the tests have not yet been completed, everyone knows what they will show—the bullet that killed Vertebrate came from Sam Truro’s pistol. Close range at the temple. The question is not whether he shot him but why. You could look for some desperate motive. Something subtle enough to justify the whole adventure. His opportunity for suicide at last, making sure he takes his most particular enemy with him. A pretty good explanation. Or maybe this was the moment that Angel Vertebrate decided to be a hero. Maybe he was trying to put the car in front of the screeching police car, deliberately seeking a collision, upon which, seeing his intent, Truro shot him. Maybe he was pleading, arguing, and Truro lost patience. All these are good explanations. The one I prefer has less motivation. It was the nerve and panic of that moment of crisis trying to slither out of the trap. He was holding the gun at Vertebrate’s head, squeezing hard and holding tight, while he urged with his body the effort to get turned around and moving again—urging with the twist of his shoulder, the push of his hips, every shift of gear, turn of the wheel that Vertebrate made—until he squeezed the gun too hard. Bang! Off it went—loud—as much a shock to Truro as to the others, who screamed at the explosion and the body of the victim leaping all reflex and falling dead on the steering wheel while t
he car skewed and toppled into the ditch, throwing everyone upside down. Seeing the man he had killed, and the car stopped in the sandy grass, hearing the screams of his wife and child, maybe now the wordless man recognized the moment he had been preparing for, whether to avert or to meet head on—and saw nothing left to his life but gunfire. The final gesture whose aim was to prove that whatever other vague things he wanted, one thing at least was true: he was serious, he meant it. With his leg broken from the twist of the crash, he didn’t wait for them but pushed the door open himself and dragging this new and unfamiliar pain beneath him got out onto the grass and fired into the air the shot whose echo he had been longing to hear.
WILLIAM KEY: What to tell Philip
The old woman in the wheelchair spoke to Melanie as she came out of the church. She was with a blond young man. I asked Melanie who she was.
Penny Glade, Melanie said, I think that’s the name.
I recognized the name but couldn’t remember where.
I asked her, Melanie said, did she want to speak to someone but she said she didn’t know anybody so no thank you.
Then I remembered Wyoming. The blond young man was helping her into her car, which was on the grass at the end of the row beyond the church. I remembered everything, the long trip across the country, the lip-to-lip, the two fiancés, the geology of the West. She was already in the car and about to go when I caught up. I wanted to see her. I wanted to see what she looked like and how she would talk. Penny Glade, I said.
She didn’t look like much. She sat small, frail, shoulders hunched. Her face was puffy and pale. Close up I could see the residue of old intelligence printed around her eyes, but it was slack now. She was tired and gazed up at me with mild patience. She was not interested in me.
I tried to find the right thing to say, thinking what a dramatic reunion this would be if the right people were here. Is there anyone left with an urgent need to meet Penny Glade? Maybe Philip. I said, I remember your name. You were a friend of Thomas’s.
Are you his son?
Ex-son-in-law. (I don’t know why I had to be so precise.)
He was a friend of my husband who’s now dead, she said.
According to the narrative Thomas never met Harrison Glade, so why did she say that? I wanted to make the connection, get something going, so I said, You went to Wyoming with Thomas. Then instantly I was afraid she’d ask how I knew, and I’d have to reveal Thomas’s obsession with her. But she ignored it almost as if she had forgotten there ever was a Wyoming.
She said, I knew he was on the Island but we never got in touch.
That’s too bad, I said. He would have liked to see you.
She introduced the blond young man, her son Harrison. I saw in the paper where Thomas got shot by Sam Truro, she said. That was heroic of him.
I decided not to correct her. I wanted to hear her mention Wyoming. I’m sure his son Philip would like to meet you, I said.
Philip was at the church door shaking hands with guests. If you can wait a few minutes.
I have to go, she said. She wasn’t interested in Philip. Why should she be?
She wouldn’t stay. The son, who had said nothing, drove her off and I watched the car down the road. If the original Harrison Glade is dead, it must be the son who’s in the phonebook.
LARRY REALM: What to tell Dolores
I’m sorry in a limited way. I’m sorry on account of you and the baby and Grandmother. Not on account of him.
He’s had it coming for the last year and a half. I’m sorry it had to be just now, but this was my only opportunity. I’ve been holding it back since Angela told me this morning, or I’ve been postponing it for a year and a half. But I didn’t realize what I was postponing until Angela told me. That electrified me. I had to wait though. I couldn’t do it dressed up for lunch with all the people. Balsam and Carl and Edna and all the relatives. Then the funeral, where all through I was distracted thinking about this jerk brother next to me. I gave him a hint then, I said I need to talk to you and he mumbled something hostile which I didn’t get. Then the handshaking and everybody back to the house for outdoor refreshments and I had to put up with that too, when suddenly he started off down the street, and I knew if I didn’t act now I never would.
He was leaving. Back to the Inn to change his clothes to take the late afternoon ferry and hitchhike home. I don’t know if he said goodbye to Grandmother but he didn’t to me. I saw him down the street and knew he was gone.
I ran after him. I apologize for running off, but I couldn’t take time to explain, or to change my clothes, which was not so nice for my suit. I ran after him, leaving you with the baby and all the people on the lawn with their plates, and I could hear the party behind me as I went down the street. When he saw me he went faster which just stirred me up, so I ran hard and finally he stopped.
Not exactly friendly. What the fuck’s the matter with you? he said.
I was too mad to tell him. We were at the corner and there was an open lot. All I could do was call him a sonofabitch. He had a smart reply: Don’t say that about your mother.
The reason I didn’t tell him the matter was that he ought to know without being told. If he didn’t, too bad for him. I hit him. Not hard yet, more push than hit. I shoved him. He tried to talk, What’s the matter with you? and I shoved him harder. Once I started shoving I wanted to shove more. I shoved him off the sidewalk into the lot and toward the bushes, and he tried to ward me off and asked what the fuck was wrong with me like it was all he could say. Finally he said, Cut it out, and hit me, which is when I got really mad and slugged him in the face.
That knocked him down, but he jumped up, and we slugged it out. Haven’t had that kind of fight with my brother since we were twelve. When we started I didn’t know if I could still dominate (I was taking a chance), because he’s put on weight and I’m lean, but his weight’s not strong whereas I’ve been running every day. The only thing he had going for him was desperation. But when he tried to fight, that just provoked me. It was his attitude, by which I mean not what he said but his manner of fighting which implied I was imposing on him and it was my fault and he was just enduring. It made me even madder. I slugged and pounded, and everytime he hit back it made me mad and when he hunched and protected his head it made me mad, and when he grunted and moaned it made me mad, and every word he said, like Cut it out, or What’s the matter or Please Larry or God damn you or Fuck, it made me mad. The fact of his existence made me mad, so that anything he did which reminded me of his existence made me mad. The madder I got the harder I smashed and the harder I smashed the madder I got.
I got him on the ground and sat on him. I pushed his face into the dirt and banged it. He curled like a hedgehog in his Sunday funeral suit where I sat on him slicing my hand across his back chop chop.
I heard a warning voice in my head: Don’t kill him. It was like your sweet voice. It wasn’t for his sake though. It was the trouble for me and you and the baby if I killed him. I saw a big stone near where I was pounding him, and I seriously thought of smashing him with it, which would have finished him, but I heard your sweet voice, so I didn’t.
Uncle William stopped me. I didn’t know he was there until he grabbed my arm. That’s all right, when I saw him I realized I was done. He was saying something like Stop Larry and somebody was talking about the police. It’s all right, I told him. You don’t need to call the police.
There were others, townspeople, I don’t know who. William asked me what it was about. I pointed to Gerald on the ground and said, Ask him. When he said, Damned if I know, I wanted to hit him again, but I was tired enough to resist the impulse.
He looked bloody. His suit was a mess. So’s mine.
Gerald was crying. Sitting on the ground looking up at us and crying. Unexpectedly I felt sorry for him. I didn’t want to but I did. I remembered some brotherly things which at that moment I didn’t want to remember. He said, I’d like you to tell me what I did.
I said, If you
don’t know you’re dumber than I thought.
He was sitting there thinking and I thought it was finally dawning on him, until he said, The only thing I can figure is that you hate my guts for being born.
So what’s the use, if that’s all he can get out of it, a lesson gone to waste.
He needed information, but damned if I’d spell it out in front of these people. It was demeaning to lecture him after what we had been through, which was like a furnace with its meaning in a flame contained entirely within. I settled for a hint. I said, Ask Tommy if you don’t know. Then I realized I had betrayed Tommy and all I could do was make threats, like, If you touch him again, I’ll come back and finish the job.
I watched him plod toward the Inn. He’ll have fun hitchhiking with all those cuts and bruises. I wonder if we’ll ever speak to each other again. When William and I came back to the house, we went behind so people wouldn’t see us. I’m sorry I’m a mess, but I had to do it. I couldn’t stand myself if I didn’t.
LUCY WESTERLY: To Thomas
I’m in a bad mood. We had refreshments on the lawn after the funeral, prepared by Beatrice and Melanie and Patty, and there was a fight. It just sickened me and falsified everything.
I didn’t see the fight, which took place down the street. I saw my grandson Gerald leave the party but not his brother Larry, who went after him. I was talking on the lawn receiving condolences, thanking people. I saw news run through the party like a flash of wind, one group to another, but I noticed they were keeping it from me. I had to ask and Melanie told me.
At first I thought it unimportant. Everybody has problems and things will erupt. You wonder but it doesn’t have anything to do with you. But this gave me a bad feeling like spoilage. Grandchildren fighting at their grandfather’s funeral, leaving a festival dedicated to family so as to fight. I tried to think it natural, boys as boys, but I heard a deeper feeling waking up that called it desecration. Denial of you and me. Repudiation, that’s the word I’m looking for. Blood against blood.
Telling Time Page 21
