by Don Webb
She could have seen the cold barrel of the gun. The light from the street light would have let her see it. I have measured this. My own bedroom is just as far from the streetlight. I have tried to make it just like hers. I turnoff all the lights and then I try out different things with mirrors and stopwatches. I want to know how long she had to think about it. She couldn’t have time to think all the things I’ve thought about it. I’ve had weeks and weeks. I suspect that she had less than a minute, from when she saw them to the bullet entering her forehead.
She didn’t get up. She was sitting when the bullet struck. Maybe she was really defiant, refusing to get up for some hooligan that had disturbed her house. Maybe she was afraid. I’ve got to know what she thought. That way I’m prepared. I can’t imagine an event like that happening. How can you die and not be prepared? So I try out things.
I got the key to her house.
No one knows this. I did not tell the sheriff. Long ago she gave a key to my wife, so that my wife could carry in the mail and newspaper; when Velma had to go to Ohio that time and take care of her sister. My wife never gave the key back.
I remembered it a few days after the shooting. The FBI had come and gone and the sheriff was done with the place. There would be some months before the county would figure out who the house belonged to. So it just set there full of darkness and mystery.
One night I waited till two in the morning and then I went in. I took a little flashlight and made my way up the stairs. I went to her swivel chair and I sat down in it, swiveling around each time the hose settled, trying to imagine the killer coming up the stairs in the dark. I could see his head; it was almost like he was there, but I didn’t know what I would think. What would my last thoughts be, if I knew they would be my last thoughts. I wondered if she would have thought of her husband that had abandoned her forty years ago.
Just think of it. She was with that guy for six, seven months and that was what had shaped her whole life. It gave her the Ice Palace. It gave her a reputation as a woman that men run away from. It gave her every unhappy day. All the other six months, all the half years since had done so much less, except for the night of the Fourth. Perhaps it set her free.
I have been back in the house more often. At first I was very careful. I would late until early morning. Some mornings I couldn’t do it. I would fall asleep about midnight, and then when I opened my eyes, rosy-fingered dawn had taken the sky. I realized though, that no could see me enter from the back of her house, anyway. Just as no one had seen the killer enter. I would just wait until nightfall.
The house was hot, since there was no power and therefore no AC. I really thought a good deal about ice cream. Someone had emptied out the refrigerator. I guess that is lagniappe for the sheriff. Since the crime investigation is over I can touch things. I touch her desk, I lay in her bed. Sometimes I get down on all fours and touch the bloodstain on the carpet with my forehead. I listen. Thing are very quiet in the house, so you can hear anything. I heard a leaf from one of her big maples hit the roof. In a few months it will be autumn. Soon the house will belong to somebody. Maybe the county can claim it, but it will stop being empty. Stop being our house.
I wish she could tell me what she thought.
I tried to find out things from the sheriff about the investigation, but he either knew nothing, or told me nothing. I found out that he talked about me. There’s a bar in town called the Shamrock, and I went there the night in August when it had been over a hundred that day and I needed something cool. I hadn’t been in years, and the bartender told me that the sheriff said I was obsessed about the case. Implied I was in love with the widow MacPhearson.I laughed. He laughed. I ain’t never going in there again.
I’m not in love with her. I just want to know what she thought. I lived next to her for forty years. I don’t know what she thought.
We were both the same. We never took vacations. We we’re born here. We never left the city except briefly. We looked out at the same street. We knew the same people. We read Reader’s Digest and the TV Guide. We shopped at the Sac-n-Pac and the HEB. Watered our lawns on the same days. Everyday she would say to me, “Good Evening Mr. Clemens.” Most of the year, she would add, “Hot enough for you?” I would say “Good Evening Mrs. MacPhearson, can’t complain and it wouldn’t do any good if I did.” I never asked her what would happen if suddenly some were to kill her. Kill her with a real bullet and then bounce a dart off of her. I never asked what she would be thinking of. Suddenly it was dark, darker than it had been for forty years since her husband ran out on her, dark. She would be assessing whether or not to bother to try and fix the lights, and habit and “common sense” would say, “yes, go fix the lights.” Then she would hear the killer’s footsteps. Come at last, after all those years of waiting. She may have had time to straighten her hair. Time to formulate one last greeting. No, she would have been silent. Silent like I am every night as I sit in her chair. She would have turned to face them. She had forty years to prepare. Up till the last minute, she would have thought that it could have been him, coming back after all those years to thank her for keeping their dream alive after so many miserable lonely mornings. Thank you, honey. And she could have told him—what? Which of the many speeches prepared for over the years.
But it wasn’t him. Just some random person, like any of the faces that she saw in the Ice Palace everyday. Then she had a moment for her last thought on earth.
I pray every night when I sit here, that her last thought was of ice cream, thick and flowing from the spigot, flowing on into eternity.
SHRIMP ANARCHY
1½ cup onion
1 cup celery
2 medium green peppers
4 cloves garlic
1 lb. cleaned raw shrimp
¼ cup margarine
2 cups tomato sauce
1 cup water
2 tsps. minced parsley
1 tsp. salt
1 tsp. Cayenne pepper
2 bay leaves
3 cups rice (prepare separately)
Chop onion, celery, peppers, and garlic. Cook in margarine fat for about five minutes. Remove from heat; stir in tomato sauce, water and seasonings. Simmer about ten minutes. Add shrimp, cover and cook for ten to twenty minutes until shrimp are pink and tender. Serve over hot rice.
While shrimp are in preparation have your local troop perform the following actions:
I. Begin calling all local branches of the federal government and tell them that their department has come under fire in the national budget cutting process. Advise them that the only hope for their jobs is an immediate flight to Washington to testify before the Senate finance committee. The bureaucrats will then flee their offices. As they abandon their offices, send paint crews to rename the offices for plumbing and artistic firms. Change locks. The resulting confusion will end federal control of your area.
II. Blow up all cable TV facilities in your area. Call all local TV stations. Threaten them with destruction unless they agree to show nothing but the “What Makes Auntie Freeze?” episode of My Mother the Car. This will cause all but the most brain damaged among the local populace to turn off their sets and begin to think. For those who still remain addicted to the tube, there isn’t any hope anyway.
III. Call up all the local schools, identifying yourselves as the local fire Marshall, tell them it is time for an impromptu fire drill. Call up all firms which provide ice cream refreshments from trucks. Tell the trucks to head to the schools, that a special school holiday has just been declared and the kids will want to celebrate. Remind them to announce the holiday over their loud speakers as the they approach the schools.
IV. Call the local churches, synagogues and mosques. Tell them that the largest churches in the city have started a raffle program that gives money to a random church goer. Ask them if they have a statement on the how much money They would pay to have someone to attend their church. Tell them that all the other churches are making statements at the local radio statio
ns. Call all the local radio stations and tell them that church groups are making a hostile march on them en masse. Tell the radio stations the only way to avoid religious attack is to quickly found their own religions and start broadcasting them right away. Tell them that the churches won’t attack their own. This will cause the state’s greatest ally in enslavement, the churches, and the state’s second greatest ally, the media to fight amongst themselves.
V. Call up local government offices and tell them that the feds are planning to absorb all their functions in a few days. Say that the governor/mayor has said that the only way folks may keep their jobs is if they picket all federal buildings, with placards marked “Power to the People!”. The federals will have all left, and the arriving picketers will be picketing the locksmiths and painting crews. Call the local newspapers and ask them why all our local government is downtown picketing honest working men and women? Why is local government opposed to Labor? Express a hope that the local newspaper will cover the story, since all the radio seems to talk about any more is religion.
VI. Call the police and announce that the biggest shopping mall in town is offering a free fifty dollar gift certificate to the first two hundred police men who show up in uniform at the mall. Call all the malls and tell them that the police are in a state of revolt, and are coming to mall after mall to loot freely. If they doubt the story call up the biggest mall and ask if the police are coming in number. Tell them that to avoid panic, they should leave the malls—keeping all the doors open and hope that the police will take what they want and just go away. Tell to the homeless in your neighborhoods, that it’s a good day to visit the malls for a clothing upgrade.
VII. At this point shrimp will be done, go home, eat shrimp, start next batch.
VIII. Go to all the empty churches, synagogues, and mosques. Put large hand lettered signs on each. “Going out of Business sale! All furniture free for hauling.” Give everyone that shows up some of those anarchists zines,you’ve been storing for years. Numerous copies of The Stars My Destination are also nice gifts. Help people loot the churches, synagogues, and mosques. Tell each one of them, “Well we’re going to have start figuring this stuff out for ourselves now.” Mention that all the local government offices have gone out of business too, and that everything there’s free as well.
IX. Get a large electromagnetic crane, such as the kind used in car demolition lots. Use its mighty magnetic field to wipe away all records at banks, courthouses, and taxation offices.
X. Storm the electric power station. Turn all power of in the city for twenty three minutes.
XI. In the instability that will follow use your judgment and creativity to change a mindless falling away of the system into an individualistic small scale society unlike any that have existed in history save for our dreams. Some ice-cream would be nice too, since the shrimp burns a little. Maybe served with out anarchy. Serves four.
THE GAME
In all other respects he is a benevolent conformist. He decided that all men are allowed one vice. Open or hidden. The best vices—although, he would admit that one doesn’t rationally choose one’s vices—the best vices are the ones that do not destroy the practitioner or permanently injure his victim. Although he gave little thought to his victims. He dealt in fear. He stalked women. He never did anything to his victims. He never even caught them. Or attempted to do these things. Or thought of these things.
Anytime can be a beginning. He would sit on a bench in a park (or an airport, or a shopping mall) and wait. Something would catch his eye. A startling silhouette or a dress ablaze with purple. Then he would rise—quietly, discreetly. He would follow the woman. Never women or a woman with a man or men. Such things could lead to consequences that could disturb his real life. His eight-to-five job forty-nine weeks a year. He relished the backward glance. He could detect the whole continuum: notice, curiosity, confirmation, alarum, fear, flight. The women didn’t cry out to security guards or passersby. He never pressed that close. If she paused to study mannequins, he paused to review the wares of B. Dalton. If she stopped for a drink in a fountain, he would admire the maidenhair tree. If she ran, he would return to his bench. Never, never run in public. The woman would go to her car, he to his (in his college days a ten-speed racing bike sufficed). He would follow her to her house or apartment through labyrinthine suburbs and careful turning tricks. The more elusive she was the greater his excitement. He can’t stand it when some great event occurs and interferes with his ploys.
Today, this brilliant Friday, seemed as good a day as any. Summer chases could be very long as wily women led him into the twilight. He sat on a boulder in a pocket park in LaGrange Park. He waited. It had been a busy day bristling with office politics, vague corporate depravities, and hour-long calls to Japan. All of this tension slid from his back into the gray slate. He was ready. He spotted a young woman feeding pigeons. She looked intelligent, enough. Hope she doesn’t live here. She looked up and smiled. He smiled. She glanced up from time to time. Each time she caught his eye. Nervousness began. She quick walked to her car—a red BMW a sign of upward mobility and great resourcefulness. Good.
He went to his baby blue Continental—slightly revved up—slightly improved. A man has to spend money on his secret vice. That’s how you measure his devotion to it.
To his glee, she quickly left LaGrange Park heading northward for the lake. She might even be from out of town. Illinois plates. Soon they were on the Miracle Mile.
Traffic was very dense today. Soon everything came to a standstill. Something had gone wrong. Her car was two cars ahead. He could see her watch him in her mirror. This wasn’t how the game was played. It wasn’t any fun anymore.
He resolved that when things started up again he’d just drive straight home. Unless she followed him. No that was unthinkable. People began turning off their motors. He checked his tank—one quarter full. With the modifications the LTD consumed great quantities of gas. He turned off his car missing the air conditioning instantly. Windows went down everywhere. Not his. When he played the game he liked to feel cut off. Remote. Frankly he felt dirty. There’s a lot of dirt in a solitary vice, a vice that no one else even thinks of—let alone practices.
People began to talk. No doubt filling the silence with the cheap inventiveness of the bored commuter. He could hear the waves of the lake. It had been a long time since he had heard them. How long? Memory seemed uncertain. He was losing touch. Too much detritus from the gray world of the office. How could you tell Monday from Wednesday, or March from May? How could you tell what happened in which May or how many Mays had gone by? He needed real experiences. He would do the things he’d done as a child. He would begin as soon as this traffic jam was over.
No boats on the lake today. Some people, some irresponsible people had begun to leave their cars. How would these vehicles ever get moving if some of them were abandoned—blocking key lanes? He began to inventory his childhood experiences deciding which to re-create first.
Perhaps a noise, a siren or a gong sounded during his reverie. Everyone seemed to be leaving his or her cars. Let them. He had a good idea. When they were gone he would walk up to the young woman. Make a contact for once. A real human contact. In only seconds all the cars were empty. He walked to the BMW. It, too, was empty. He had expected her to stay, although he wasn’t sure why.
Suddenly he was afraid. A child of the nuclear generation he could imagine only one disaster. He ran for the nearest building, a tall round hotel topped with a rotating restaurant. It looked like a giant child-proof bottle. The lobby was empty. No emergency instructions crackled over the PA system. He went to the elevator. He must get down. To the core of the earth. It arrived and he descended to the sub-basement. Fluorescent light showed a jungle of brightly painted pipes. Maybe it was safe here.
Where was everybody? He returned to the lobby. He shouted. Shouting did not come easily to him. He had to warm up to it with several half-shouts. Finally he achieved full volume. No one here. At
least, no one answered him. He walked to his car. The radio stations were off the air, except for one FM easy-listening station that was entirely automatic.
He came back to the hotel. He borrowed a room key. TV was still going. It lasted about half an hour. He locked his room but he didn’t know what he locked it against. He read What to Do in Chicago and the Book of Revelations. The lights flickered about nine and then went out. He was hungry. He made his way in the dark to a vending machine. He smashed the glass with a chair and picked up the display candy and peanut butter-filled crackers. He unwrapped them carefully—feeling the chocolate with his blind fingers afraid of swallowing a fragment of glass. He returned to his room, drank a lot of water, and locked his door.
The next day he ascended the fire stairs to the restaurant and ate a smoked chicken from a warming refrigerator. He watched the still city. The empty lake.
He decided he was singularly deficient of survival skills. He neither hunted nor fished. When he ran out of food—he would visit a nearby pharmacy.
The phone was dead.
He hadn’t thought of it ’til now.
He returned to his room. He could steal everything. He could be the wealthiest man in the world. Tomorrow he would explore things.
He went to all the shops of the Miracle Mile—seeing all the luxuries his life had denied him.
On the third day he woke to the sounds of motors starting. He ran out of his room. People had returned.
They were silent. They avoided his eyes.
He would never, never bridge the gap.
YOGA FOR BOLSHEVIKS
I believe that we need an aristocracy in which each person can be an aristocrat. That is to say every human being is entitled to a legitimate pride in his environment and antecedents. The Socialist vision is somewhat similar. However it insists too much on material values. Its appeal is to those people who cannot respect themselves without good clothes and well-filled tummies. That is a wrong assumption. An Indian no matter how dire his poverty can dispense hospitality with dignity. He is his own welcome. Roger W. Babson once asked me what I thought was the solution of the high cost of living. I answered, “The Indian system. Fewer wants.” He that knows he is as good a man as his neighbor does not need to impress by evidence of material wealth.
