Eyes

by William H. Gass

  Dad would with a smile ask me how many passengers had perished in the most recent crash of my train when it scampered off into the dismal swamps of El Gard beneath our dining table’s drop leaf. He would smile because I would always reply: at true play there are no consequences, although I hardly knew what the two words meant. Not even broken bones? Maybe seven suitcases were flung about and their contents scattered. Wreckage of any kind? Few dishes were shaken even in the dining car when I picked the engine up. So I sent back his smart-ass smile. I didn’t plan on staging an accident at the expense of my presently blooming paper lake.

  I always hoped that a naked lady lay concealed beneath the countless connections I was supposed to make, but no luck, instead I possessed the most conventional box of jigsaw pieces imaginable whose garish colors clashed with their absurd shapes depicting a childish drawing. Green for crayoned grass, blue for cloudless sky, smoke for smoke—the clichés seemed essential to any childhood scribble—house with chimney, front walk that wiggles, floating stick figures except, in a corner, for no reason at all, one of the three bears, painted to look stuffed—the whole thing sawn out of some cardboard at midnight by a drunken tailor.

  My parents could not bare me

  My parents bore me

  My parents brought me up to be their flogging post.

  My parents used me for their flogging post. And would say now that I’m a whinery. I wrote numbers on the backs of the bear puzzle pieces—the nature of nature from none to five hundred. Now I can reassemble the damn thing in less time than it takes for you to type—oh—Seventy!

  After I have been dumped on by dear ole dad, and there is a mildly broken spring to my walk, I spit on my childhood rendition of his face. Together they paint a pretty picture…the spill of spit…a pretty picture here…the swill of spit…a pretty picture there…the smear of spit…fragile as fragile glass…a pretty picture…

  After every Christmas, when the needles of the spruce hurt the hands that handle them—ow! t inder!—I pack my train into the cardboard carton it came in: engine, cars, track, transinformer, station. Just so. There was no room for anything extra Santa might have brought. Those things—the recent gifts—were auntie-bagged. I remember about bagging. My aunt Nector made sacks from scraps of cloth and along their open edges threaded a drawstring that I pulled when I was hanging disobedient soldiers. Then I stashed the bags on the bottom and at the right-hand corner of the toy chest: artificial trees, alphabet blocks, a dollhouse bench, sign that said SLOW—CHILDREN CROSSING. Aunt Nector sewed me a small doll dressed like a pilgrim for Thanksgiving that I used to tie to the tracks, but the train would hit her and run off the rails instead of cutting her in two the way it was supposed to. A little more sanding made the tin shine like new-poured iron. Nevertheless, I found that the most rubbed sections of rail were always where the problem was. The engine would jump forward for a moment, then—look out—jerk to a stop—ouch—up and down the length of my entire train. Including all three streamlined cars. The Silver Star. It was a Streamliner a lot like a real one I’d seen in magazines. Out there where the air was clean. Excep

  Aunt Nector was plenty stupid not to know when it was Christmas and when it was Halloween, when it was Easter and when it was Rosh Hashanah, when it was President’s Day, when it was the Ruination of the World.

  Tuh, that’s it: t for me and t for you…damn if dad didn’t do what he threatened to: he kept all the edges and threw the rest away. He said they symbolized forgotten soldiers but I think it stood for a penitentiary where thoughts that were both dirty and hilarious were kept, eating gruel with a spoon.

  Everybody wanted to ride on the Streamliner because

  Let me think.

  Out there where the air was clear.

  Out where? There!

  t these little pieces are always the hardes t though my typewriter will double ells automatically hardest got it fits

  In any case, the bags were easy ways to wrap presents and they could be reused every year like the same old excuses. My aunt liked to sponsor the second chance. Gift pouches she called them. In the kangaroo of Christmas. Hop a long way from the North Pole. Australians, my dad said, slept upsidedown like bats. They freed Aunt Nector from several concerns: now she wouldn’t have to unwrap packages as if they were bombs; now she needn’t fear of tearing the tissue paper or cutting the wrong string; it would no longer be necessary to iron the creases flat for me where, at each corner, the foldings had become crimped, so I could lay them away in an equally flat box saved for the purpose that was remarkably no thicker than a tie, though it was roomier in every other direction, as if it might have held maps once, instead of sheets of secondhand wrappings, and a cache that became a symbol of her penny ante thrif

  t. They are all red as raw meat you’d think…the picture should begin to come in view about now arty image hah got one

  How amazing, I always thought, that this particular green tissue, requiring exactly these folds, when they were used to wrap such fur-trimmed slippers safely in a shoe box, will finally suffer and endure Aunt Nector’s healing iron to reach reusable condition—wow, what a disappointing conclusion—all this only to end up as a packing wad that will prevent jostling among the letters of my ink stamp alphabet box.

  The Silver Star seemed to be moving while standing still. It hid its inner workings like a watch. It signified Ease. Grace. Luxury. Chic. Au Currant that juices the rails. To go with Airflow Pedal Planes, Airflow Pedal Cars, Airflow Pedal Trikes, Airflow Pedal Trains. Whatever bore the name: the trailer that’s pulled by the Chrysler.

  I begged her. Alice unbuttoned her blouse. I held my breath—deep, as you do for docs. She showed me. We were sitting right here alongside the toy chest. She said hers composed the toy chest now. They were moderate in size but round the nubbles were dark brown circles—a pond’s pebbly curls. We were sitting close together playing touch me, touch me there. B lis s. We were sitting on the toy box playing with ourselves. I never again had a happiness so brief, so intense, so scared.

  Ink pad moistened with spit. I rubbed the noses of the letters forcibly into the black pad so as to stamp the headlines of our family newspaper—intermittently issued—I was the publisher, editor, printer, newsboy, and subscriber. MOTHER SERVES ICE CREAM AT BIRTHDAY FEAT fet oh well a ruined page.

  t Denver. I remember visiting in the early fall, a yellow—yellow fog—a pall hung over the city, crawling nearly to the mountains. It was the latest thing in phenomena: the shape of a long-held puff of air. I would call out the times: the Silver Star will depart Chicago at 3 p.m. (if that was when I was down on my knees wiping track with a soft cloth to remove what sanding—I hoped—had loosened), or I would announce, in a voice made for announcements: the Silver Star is arriving on time from Indianapolis on Track 3 at 5:49. I liked to brag when the Streamliner got all way round the Christmas tree and had done the papier-mâché tunnel, running on regular like the Studebaker did, a bitch in heat, not the car but the train was, yowling as if from the pain produced when the prongs of one piece of track entered the metal tubes of another. I had so many sections of straight and so many fewer of curve, I don’t remember the number, but when prongs were completely hidden in their sleeves, my right of way extended from the tree right under the dinner table where the tunnel was too, a stretch of straight rail it had to be a stretch of straight rail since

  for some reason dodge the table legs? dodge the crumb accumulations? March the troops beneath hide peer up skirts

  I’ll have to think about it. Why won’t that damn blue piece fit something. I keep picking it up. My hand holding it hovers like a copter above the board. No fit found. Toss to the ground. So like blue. Screw you too.

  every year, for a few years, I would get at Christmas several lengths

  more sheets of snowflaked paper

  MOTHER SERVES ICE CREAM

  THE WRONG COLOR

  tissue-thin were our familial relations You could see thr
ough our skins but make out only hinted forms The real reasons for anything were not quite discernible My hands were two spooks

  for some reason oh yes because I asked Santa for it on my first list, on my initial petition to the reindeered deity: please a section or so of track please a switch oh yes and a station and a station master who comes out of the station when the train passes a switch = one more reason I need a switch = oh sweety the wind in my window now makes the seed pods of our whitebud tremble, vibr

  it won’t be long and I’ll be gone

  they say a healthy breeze might bring it all back to me, nah, I don’t believe so no life isn’t like that

  I won’t be lonely in my state of death. There are lots of spooks on the other side pretending to be alive, but many more folks who are healthy as heifers pretending to be dead on mine. Sunk in silence are the graves of submarines. In my toy box I had two toy submarines silver as knives I had klept from the dime store. Safe on the bottom they rested, smothered by thoughtlessness. Finally, nobody remembered me living or me dead, ever again, no matter what. Even if—again—it never rains. Train rails hidden in weeds and cinders. No Denver. No Chicago. No arrivals. Hah. No departures. No God. No knowing. No ME DEAD AT FOURTEEN. Didn’t I use that heading once, to scare an auntie? I devoted one issue to the sudden passing of my mom, another to the expected demise of dad, one more to the inevitable falling of relatives into the hands of pets

  DEATH DAY EXTRA

  Of pirates and other myth-making creatures

  All aboard. I’d shout, and then place a paper person on the ceiling of the Silver Star—“roof” doesn’t seem right—on top—and I would be that paper person clinging to the forehead of the train where the engine (during an escape by me and my minions following our robbery of the local bank) is; yes, is, okay, is, right, but wasn’t I always in the hero’s role? no, no I wasn’t, I remember, I was a rogue, and a rapscallion, it was part of my business to outwi

  t was the hero’s role—t the local constabulary—to create crimes, to sei ze the reins of power from General Chollop

  Naughties/Misdemeaners/Crimes/Sins

  A naughty was when I locked myself in mom’s closet. A misdemeanor was when I stole the submarines. Crimes earned me a whipping. Only sometimes was I caught and sent to see the doctor. Sin was something else. Eloise (not Louise) was a girl from Sunday school I was trying to feel up for some reason let’s say it was for information so I would let her read to me from a book dear to her father (why should I care about that old coot?) passages that were supposed to keep everything pure between us. The problem was I wanted to play doctor; she wanted to play church, the rules and results of which could be found in Sylvanus Stall’s book What a Young Boy Ought to Know, which she showed me as if it were a family secret (what I wondered then was the D.D. that followed his absurd name?). Oh boy, I thought, this book has pictures too, explicit drawings, big disappointment, fish nibbling at bait and stories full of scares and frights and warnings such as “Satan has laid traps and snares all along your path through life, and you will need to be very, very cautious, lest you are ruined for time and destroyed for eternity.” Well I wasn’t cautious and I was ruined and I will be destroyed for eternity.

  Alone though alive in the twilight of life far from any center of feeling not in my knuckles nor in the snot that’s been blown from a nose empty of ideas and far from the center of any ceiling only alone like a speck-sized spider crossing a neglected wall where it will be smacked by my palm regardless of its record of good or evil or the smear we leave squashing it.

  Sylvanus was against card playing. I didn’t care for cards either, not even solitaire. Because I crushed the cards that were not playable

  bent the corners sIf you can’t play with a plaything what good is it? On a bet I threw that damn marionette down the back stairs, skidoo it flew, but the fool thing didn’t break just got its shoulder string tangled with its shoe.

  Even so, when I played, I played by myself; and mostly, when I played by myself, I played at war. And when I played at war I announced the whole thing as if it were a ballgame broadcast over the radio for the ears of eager listeners.

  REPORTS FROM THE FRONT

  I liked best the March Out. That was the moment the armies that were to be enemies in the coming war left their camps. One marched by land on a road the rug made—therefore down a woven band of burgundy to the beginning of its fringe. Another came (no not by sea because too few ships were to be found docked in the toy bin at the five & dime; no sailor soldiers were there, either, to man them) along the twisting foothill paths, over the slick glacial slabs, at last above the frost line, across the cracks between the mountains, and that meant atop blocks and small boxes, between pillows aslope to the plain of battle beneath the dining table, brave oh so brave in their disciplined lines of march, trucks as transport—putt putt putt—cavalry at a trot—clop clop clop—as well as airplanes zuzz bombing one another from above because I needed all my troops to participate and couldn’t be troubled by pictures of former days when soldiers stood or knelt in colorful lines and died like blown-out candles, or recent times when they fought like worms ventilating the ground or, killed while they crept down burnt halls and peered around blurred corners, or kicked in doors, machine-gunning people in what were once their homes, in what was once a town. Boom. Reeeek. Poom. That noisy. Bullets whistling through a ricochet like a warbler’s song. War is war I said and death the deity.

  To this day I love lead red-coated soldiers picking meadows to march through, line up in, fire in, fall in dumb shits look out the artillery has opened up I hear horsemen, the horns of the cavalry, the snap of banners in the wake of the charge, hoofs hammering the oak floors the refreshing way rapid water rushes against rocks so much better than landmines

  The nightly news

  has repeated views

  US making war:

  We kick in doors.

  Our rifle butts

  them in their huts

  as we make wars

  and kick in doors.

  Those in cahoots

  our mighty boots

  kick in their doors

  and round up scores.

  The world deplores

  our frequent wars,

  our lying leaders,

  special pleaders,

  as nightly shows

  show how it goes,

  when we make the war

  they all deplore:

  we kick in doors.

  General Chollop is rumored to be marshaling his troops near the sofa. A thick and slowly rising mist reveals their numbers. Lucky Strike smoke. The breath of a visitor. What way shall they come? On TV they have machine guns shoot you down. On TV they make war on horseback airplanes tanks. The kids I won’t have fathered won’t have to imagine the cry charge, in protest the charge will be charged to him.

  Ah, hah! happy horsemen will advance through the valley’s meadows, waddle its creeks, and stir its dreams. The foot soldiers will follow but only two abreast. Then, assembling at the umbrella stand, the tanks will crawl over imaginary mountain roads covered by hemlock branches for camouflage, and groaning in protest as only metal can.

  DRUNKEN MOTHER THROWS UP

  AT BIRTHDAY PARTY

  I believed whatever was read to me while I was being lured to sleep, so I was wroth whenever I ran into a wall and it didn’t open like a shower curtain on a waterfall. I twice tried with no results but a bruise or two, and a puff of shaken plaster—similar celebrations for victory, and badges for bravery—were my rewards. My occasionally best friend Timmy said wonderland was behind the wardrobe, but when I climbed inside mine I was swiftly locked in, the latch chastised me, I heard its tisk, and I felt smothered by my own clothes, short in length as they were, and yet muffling quite completely most of my cries, which grew after a while more shrill as I became thoroughly afraid. I kicked and pounded till finally my mother found me there—she had been hunting me anyway since sonny wa
s supposed to go to church with the whole family—and pulled the door open with a why are you hiding in here you could have smothered and spoiled everyone’s day dear heaven how you’ve messed up your best coat I don’t know if you can wear it to services now with those wrinkles exactly like the ones you leave me to wear as worry on my brow. Are you okay finally Mr. Snivel Root? I thought you liked church. Wipe your eyes and let’s get this business under way we don’t want to be late because it is embarrassing to be caught hunting a pew in the midst of the first amen.

  Mother wasn’t such a bad wad. She served ice cream of the right flavor. A bit of a tease is all. Kept the cone out of my reach until cream melted on the upper edge of her fist. I licked it off. That was my payment. Licking. I will give you a licking. I was given a giggle, sometimes a squeeze, before the fragile cone’s crackle.

  Bobby believed in Santa Claus but not in snowy wastes and imaginary landscapes. Presents shrouded in white tissue paper were piled into hills about Santa’s farm and factory. There were so many people waiting for the Christ child to be born there had to be, if counted, hills of dead lead soldiers, piles of blocks, heaps of teddy bears, stacks of erector sets, and scheduled trains, whole ranges made of games designed to improve a slow kid’s motor skills, as well as towers of books to be read from by fathers trying to sound like Riding Hood, Grandma, or the Wolf, each paint box and yo-yo in a snowy white disguise over which the sled slid when gathering them in sacks. What did they take kids for, these duped adults, telling them Santa’s cheeks were rosy with frostbite—gee whiz—when they were obviously flushed as dad’s cheeks often were with the brandy everybody left by the fireplace at the very edge and entrance to the Blessed Birth Day? Nevertheless, it was a yearly disappointment not to receive the slingshot, air rifle, or anatomically correct doll I had written Santa to request. My father says that Santa won’t give me anything until I improve my writing. Mother says that when she was a girl she was courted by everybody including ferrets. She repeats this over and over. She has successfully hidden the gin.