Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  But I just screamed instead.

  I screamed, "Uncle Henry! Uncle Henry! It's the ocean, Uncle Henry! I caught the ocean, Uncle Henry! Help, I'm calling you, Unky, please!"

  THE STORY IS HE CAME WHEN HE CAME. I mean, he came when he got good and ready to come.

  Shut her off, the motor.

  (Johnson, Evinrude, not Mercury.)

  Came stamping his way on over, squatted himself down, reached out and took the line in with his hand, drew it in on over close to him with his hand, and then gave it a little yank to jerk the hook down out from off from where it was stuck up into the boards up under on the underneath side of the dock.

  Muttering what sounded to me like—

  "Blood in mud."

  REVISION OF THE PRODIGAL SON

  THERE WAS NOTHING I COULD THINK OF to say to the woman. It occurs to me to wonder, however, if there had been a reason for me to. It is entirely plausible she expected no attention from me at all—and that she meant to affirm, in her absent gazing at the close of her tale, to want no further of my presence, let alone some exhibit of utterance in anxious display of my having reckoned with, and run to the ground, the significance of what she had just conveyed to me, which anecdote—on the surface of it, at any rate—was not much to speak of, was it? Merely—namely!—that the boy had succeeded, with no particular talent required of him for him to do so, at calling her aside from her distractions—the clearing of the chargers from the great table, the gathering therefrom of the slops for the hounds—this to ask of her if it would induce in her any pleasure for her to see him in his costume now that it was won.

  "Costume?" she said.

  "Oh yes!" said the boy, shivering, veritably shivering, with exclamation.

  "Your costume?" said the woman.

  "Quite exactly that," said the boy. "For, you know, for the band," said the boy. "So would you?" said the boy.

  "But of course," the woman said, touching certain of the implements still to be taken from the soiled damask spread all about them—implements or damask, the woman did not say to me which.

  The boy went from the hall and, after an interlude longer than—it had seemed to her, or so claimed the woman—the period of this person's expulsion from her netherness, returned to it got up not as he had been but now in the manner of him who would do what he could, as ably as he could, to carry off the bearing of a certain adjunct to the brass section of an organization of souls who could be depended upon, while making music, to march.

  "See?" the boy said.

  "I see," the woman said.

  "You like it?" the boy said, braid and brocade a rhyme thereinafter, the woman averred to me, to be forever grommeted to the far bronze bulkhead of her unappeasable mind.

  "Yes indeedy," the woman said, for the first detecting, she said she believed, the wet performance of long, sluggish tongues slapped back into place in the slack, pink mouths they had unfurled themselves from.

  Then the chewing.

  She heard the dreadful chewing.

  "It's lovely," she said. "It's your uniform," she said. "For when, for if, the band in town, the town band, plays," she said. "Oh, yes, I love it," the woman said she had said.

  "I think I sort of knew it, Mother," the boy said. "I sort of think I knew you would, Mother," the boy said, now striking a pose for the woman, now concocting himself into the posture of one who would never rest until his horn had imagined its last, murderous note.

  "That's it?" I said.

  "That's what?" she said.

  "The thing you wanted to have me hear," I said.

  "He had," she said, "a hat."

  I said, "Well, yes—but billed or furred?"

  To which inquiry no reply was made to me that I could ever have made out, so loud was the cry, it must have been, for if not death, then—please, please!—for at least for silence.

  MISS SPECIALTY

  SUPPOSE SOMEBODY DID TO YOU something like this to you. Suppose they made out their Last Will and so forth so it says they want for their wife, they want for her when she dies, to be laid to rest alongside of where they are, whereas they want for you, when you die, to be laid to rest over on the other side of her and not anywhere on the other side of him. So what is your opinion of this if this was your father? I would be interested to hear people's opinion of this if this was their father. What about it if somebody (your father) did something like this to you? Because the thing of it is, what would you do if they did? Would you go try to do anything about it? Because what I don't get is what could you do? Because suppose he died already and suppose then she did. Because then who would be left for you to go argue with? So if this was what happened to you, what would you go do about it, do you think? Would you go try to do something about it with the front-office people in charge of the cemetery? Would you go try to see if you could talk them out of it? But don't they probably have to go by the Last Will and so forth? They can't just forget it, can they? I don't think the people in charge of a cemetery can just say forget it as far as a Last Will and so forth goes. Because I'm positive they can't. So you know what I think? I think you just have to go along with it. I think you probably just have to. I think you either go along with it or go get yourself laid to rest someplace else. Like in a whole different cemetery, for instance. But like which cemetery? Which place? I never thought of any other place. I always thought of only this place. I always thought of where the whole family is—the aunts, the uncles, and you-know-who, for instance. So I don't know. I have to make up my mind. But how can I make up my mind if I don't know? Well, this is not the only question. There is another question on top of this question. Because my cousins keep writing to me as regards the tree. My cousins keep asking me what is my vote as regards the tree. They mean because of the shade. My cousins keep telling me pay attention because the tree is killing the grass because of the shade. But would you believe them if they told you? Why should you believe them just because they told you? They want you to take their word for it—but isn't it what people always do? Don't people always want you to take their word for it? Didn't I take his word for it? But look where it got me, taking his word for it. It got me her side, hers—whereas what's so wrong with his? What's the matter with me being on his? I'm not saying the tree's not killing the grass. I am just saying maybe it's just what they're saying. So how do I vote? Because it has to be a unanimous vote. The front-office people won't do anything about anything unless it is a unanimous vote. I could ask them themselves as far as the tree. But where's the guarantee? Do I have any guarantee? They could say it's killing the grass just to get rid of the question. Aren't they probably fed up with the question? And what if they're in cahoots with my cousins? Because I keep being of two minds as far as this. I keep being of two minds as regards everything. I need an eye-witness. But where am I going to get an eyewitness? You know what I am between? I am between the devil and the deep blue sea. In my mind, in my mind, I keep looking at these questions and keep seeing me being nothing but between the devil and the deep blue sea. Why is everybody taking advantage of me? People have to stop taking advantage of me. Everybody should be more on the up-and-up with me. There could be plenty of grass. There could be grass galore. So whose idea of it is it as regards how much of grass is not enough? My cousins probably have their reasons. Don't people have their reasons? There is such a thing as people having reasons. You know what else? Let me tell you what else. There are people who have it in for trees. There are people who have it in for people and then go get them confused with trees. There are people who go look at trees and then get them mixed up with people. Then they go around having it in for a tree. They can't help themselves. It's a thing in their minds. You can't blame them for it. It's not their fault. It's like a sickness. They don't even know what they are doing even. It is deep in their brain. They act like they've got something against a tree, but it is really something they've got against people. But it's all unbeknownst to them because of how deep it goes down in the brain. I used to be like thi
s. I used to be just like this myself. It's a normal human thing. It couldn't be a more normal more human thing. You think there wasn't once a tree like this for me? I am not ashamed to say it. It does not make me ashamed for me to say it. It's one of the most normal of human things for people. It's just the way a tree can look. But since when is it normal for a Last Will and so forth? It's no joke of just nature, either. Because we had a street with places of business and some of them were like people to you, the businesses. I'm serious. You think places of business are places of business, but doctors will tell you. They don't want to tell you, but they can tell you. It's why I'm making a list of them. So we will see what we will see. Just don't hold me to anything. I am making no promises. Go look for somebody else if you are looking for somebody to go paint themselves into a corner for you. I don't want to get involved in any binding alliances. I am well aware of the stumbling blocks. Others have fallen to the wayside before me. But then you stop and think. You get back on track again. In your mind, in your mind, you get a picture of Central Avenue. You don't let them get under your skin. You take them in stride. Where would the human race be if everybody threw up their hands the instant there was something not taken in stride? Just listen to this, for instance—Bea's Tea Room, Rosalind Light, the Arida Shop, Bess Diloff, Miller's, Raeder's, Cascade Laundry, Ben's Associated, Simon's, Sakoff's, Dalsimer's, Jildor, W. R. Grant's, Ruth Hatch, Kate Hite, Trees, Postur-Line, Sisteen, Miss Specialty, the Central Theater, the bank, the bank, the Peninsula Bank. Go check on me if you want to go check on me. I don't care if you go check on me. I invite you to go check on me. I am extending you a written invitation for you to go check on me. You think I am making a mountain out of a molehill? Because I do not want for you to think I would not respect your opinion. As far as your opinion, let us not forget whose idea it was for me to ask you for it in the first place. Because it was my idea for me to ask you for it in the first place. So what is the verdict? You think I should just learn to live with it? Except what about what she once said to me once? Because how was I supposed to know anything about daffodils? I did not know anything about daffodils. Nobody had ever taken me aside and said to me anything about daffodils. It was a totally unbeknownst subject to me, daffodils. There was not one person who had ever given me any instruction along the lines of daffodils. Saying to a child who the fuck are you for you to go stand in my daffodils. For shame! You hear me? For shame! Whereas I thought all I was doing was just being under a tree. I thought look at me just being under this bad tree. Because this was the tree which looked like him to me, which looked like her to me, which looked like everybody to me. And she's screaming at me about daffodils. So I ask you, this is why I ask you, who can be laid to rest, how can anybody ever be laid to rest, you think I can ever be laid to rest—you or me or anyone anywhere—whichever side, on whoever's side!—and be ever even a little peaceful?

  DE PROFUNDIS

  WHICH IS YOU TAKE COFFEE, you take milk, you take sugar, or you take sugar substitute, depending on which your preference is, depending whether it's for sugar or for sugar substitute. Me, I always go for the substitute.

  Then you go take some ice to it, depending if you have a blender which can deal with ice in it.

  So I'm blending.

  I'm blending with the reconditioned blender we went ahead and had reconditioned before one thing leads to another and everything goes and gets itself so haywire and she, guess what, drops dead from it.

  Brother, does it work!

  I'm telling you, talk about when a thing works!

  Producing, you might say, on low power a nice type of low-powered type of smooth-powered output—and then, when geared up to full power, giving out more of a more powerful type of full-powered output but meanwhile not being self-induced into erupting into the type of wave motion which you know how it can get crazy on you to the point where the contents of the canister is all of a sudden climbing the walls of the canister, making a wreck of the kitchen counter, not to mention the rest of the kitchen, from like, you know, from coming all of the way up and out from like this—down there!—this, you know, this vortex.

  It's not called a vortex?

  Well, guess who just cleaned up the tiles up.

  Bleached the grout lines even.

  You know the tile boundaries around them made of grout, they're not grout lines?

  Grout boundaries!

  So finish the blending and pour out the blendation—and sorry, I'm sorry, but it's sensational, it's a sensation.

  Down her in a gulp.

  Down the whole deal in one whole gulp.

  Turns out it's the best darn drink which I have ever in all my experience blending drunk.

  So here I am—a widower, the widower—standing at the sink, thinking all credit to them which did the reconditioning, credit to the heavens to the outfit which turned around and did the reconditioning—rewinding the little motor for it, regapping the synapses of the switches for it, getting the wiring—isn't there a magneto, a terminal, a resistor?—wired up for it just right.

  FANGLE OR FIRE

  PEOPLE BELIEVE ME, or think me, imagine me to be Lish, the lit-fag, hyphen entered aforethought. Whereas nothing could be farther—or further—from the truth. The truth is that I have not been, and shall never be, a man of books, as I have, whilst under orders, sought to seem to be, but that I have been—and should like to continue to be—a fighter against our nation's enemies within the theater of our nation's boundaries. I was inducted into service in 1954, this at an installation called Miami Retreat. My sponsor was Helen Deutsch, married name Siegel, younger sister to my mother, Regina. I can furnish the documents. You have heard of Fort George Meade? You have heard of Maryland's Laurel Park? You have heard of the National Security Agency? The terms of the agency's mandate to act for the common good, as inaugurated by the President and as thereafter regulated solely under the direct jurisdiction of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, frees the N.S.A., shall we call it, from potentialities of legal and political tether to all entities of Government save those just remarked. Hence, the volatility—or vaporousness—of my position and that of my colleagues—or cohorts. Please know that I seek to cover myself with no special status—or favor—when I hasten, as I must, to illumine a certain detail of my affiliation as heretofore recorded. The N.S.A., or NSA, was organized, as was everything else in its day, to perform duties contextualized within the perception of that which could properly be construed as international in the emphasis of concern, thus confining, to the extent reasonable, the compass of the aforementioned entity to activities whose source and flux placed the impress of those activities beyond the borders of this land—or suitably without the so-called Line of Limit. Here you have it. We come, in this, to the peculiar character of my status and, accordingly, to the case to be made for the making of this disclosure. Let me explain—or struggle to unstitch—what will at first appear, I do not doubt, both inexplicable and too tightly seamed to yield to parsing. My mother is—or was—Regina. She was one of five girls—daughters of Louis Deutsch and Ethel Goldstein. My father, however—and now we commence to approach the crux of it—was one of five boys and three girls—the offspring, it was claimed, of Rachel Boulansky and Isaac Lishkowitz. In fact, my paternal grandmother's name was Routchel Boolski, my paternal grandfather, for his part, named Sik Lescowicz. These two made their way to these shores, it was thought, from Russ-Polen, whereas papers demonstrate Louis and Ethel brought themselves hither from Vienna. The issue of this other pair—Pauline, Regina, Helen, Adele, and Sylvia, names cited in order of birth—spoke, owing to the fluency of their parents in these tongues—or idioms, or idioma—German and Hungarian and, presently, impeccable English, owing, the accomplishment of this last, to the intervention of the Metropolitan Orphan Asylum at Astoria, New York, the shelter to which the children were sent on the occasion of the death of Louis (circumstances "suspicious," to say the "least") and the ensuing incompetence of Ethel, herself confined to a facility for persons suffering
such an infelicity. It was here—at Metropolitan—that (these details are acknowledged in diarist accounts given by Pauline, the eldest) the keen lingual and mathematical skills of Helen and Adele were first detected and thereafter, quite purposively, "cultivated," or nourished, or encouraged. That our forefathers were not unalert to the coming belligerencies with the Axis powers, this so long previous to the actual onset of events, is terribly interesting, or intriguing, I believe—or allege—but we doubtless could not handily sustain a digressive inquiry into the matter so soon in the formation of our not unperplexing considerations, could we? Thusly, thenly, as for the case in and among the non-Deutsch side of the "family," the products were these, sequence of enunciation again controlled by order of sequencing: Joseph, Jenny, Ida, Charles, Lily, Samuel, Philip, Henry. I now focus our attention on two suggestive items—no person named Uncle Joseph nor any person named Aunt Jenny was ever in view either of myself or of any official body in pursuit of the Government's proprietary engagement with the lives of its "citizens." Furthermore, Henry, my uncle Henry—all through the war years—which is to say the years one is referring to when one refers to the years of the war years—"fished" for flounder and for fluke, this whilst anchored "offshore" in the so-called channel, his vessel a small, wood boat—or wooden boat—or rowboat—its engine either a modestly powered Johnson outboard motor, or Evinrude, or Mercury. The man's "sons"—Big Eugene, Kenny or Kenneth, and Abby or Abbott—were, during the interval to which I now point notice—members of our armed forces, this in the European theater of operation. Fulton Lewis Jr. would say, "That's the top of the news from here!" Here is a further element worthy, at this stage, I aver, or believe—or think—of notation—namely, that in the film, or in the motion picture, The Memoirs of Vidouq—which "theatrical" event I was witness to whilst conducting myself as a "book editor" (in the employ of the house of Alfred A. Knopf, an imprint of the corporate "body" known as Random House) and thus comporting myself as a participant, on behalf of the foregoing, in or at the Frankfurt Book Fair of 1991—there appears a character called "the abbess." Need I say more? I think not. The piece was shown—or exhibited—at—mark you, please—the Prater Nonstop. The credits, offered for one and all at the finito of things—a black-and-white affair mounted, one gathered, sometime during, or just previous to, the hostilities so famously prosecuted across Europe by the "powers that be," or "powers that were"—declare one Sissy Mangan as the performer playing the part of "the abbess." I ask that you offer sensitive study to the name Sissy Mangan. You are, or are not, conversant, are you not, with the curious sentence "It is well for you"? You can, if interrogated on such a score, indicate the speaker of this sentence—the distinguished text wherein the sentence is "spoken"? Let me, as a poseur, or posturer, or postulant, hurry to proclaim that I hope so. I cannot overstate the breadth of what I shall, in this "scription," expect of you—nor the finesse or vitesse or depth of it. I beg you to realize I "sign" my death warrant when I "sign" this writing. It must therefore not be in vain that I do so. Bear in mind, dearest, the sons of Uncle Henry are at large, absence of hyphen aforethought. Nevertheless, insofar as the existence of the commission treating of the resolution of relations between the Deutsches and the "Lishes" is at stake, there remain, or remains, the Chinese to contend with, do there, or does there, not? Am I losing you? Alas, what is it but regrettable that the tale to be told cannot be told elsewise? Yet told it must be. Yet go forward, as teller, I must and I will. Adele is dead—"presumably" of cancer. A carcinoma of the bones, which probably hurts like the dickens. Like Regina—Reggie—Adele busied herself with covering various of her "garments" with sequins and beads. Or spangles. One such spangle—another detail it would "be well" for you to keep "in mind"—was known as the bugle, or bugler. But we must not abandon touch with the truth that these ornaments were obtained by Adele—and by Reggie—in great number, or supply—and without cost to themselves—by their exploiting their ties with the "Lish" side of the family, which "side" was reputedly, or reportedly, or putatively, in the hat business—and was therefore in the practice of buying trim in bulk. Dad—my father—would fetch such "material" home to Mother, who, for her part, would, in turn, fetch a lesser portion of same along to her sister Adele. Helen, meanwhile, was "in" Laurel Park (Maryland), where, as of this writing, a certain Freedom Fighter and his spouse continue to sustain their matrimony in (protected) residence. Helen, meanwhile—we are "talking about" the years 1937 and 1938—was "one of many" or was "one among many," which many—the plant at Fort George Meade was still to become fully operational—devoted itself, or themselves, to the round-the-clock collective expression of their singular gifts in an assault on the stubborn fascia, or raffia, of certain enemy codes, or of the codes of certain enemies. By 1954, or in the year of 1954, Helen Deutsch, then Helen Deutsch Siegel, stood forth, among her kind, as the premier cryptoanalyst in Government service. She was "retired" from that service in the year 1962, this in possession of a lozenge-configured medal. Listen, she kept upon her person two pistols—a sidearm and chest set. What other implements of the kind she might have borne herself about with, one can only, even now, wonder at. Well, we are both, she and myself, bound—to this day—by the War Secrets Act. It scarcely matters, it appears, that Aunt Helen is ninety-four or better and that I was never, at any point in my career, since the impanelment I underwent in 1952—I ask your indulgence for my quite plainly having erred by a factor of two years when I earlier rehearsed for you the date I did—at, or in, Miami Retreat. It owes, or is owing, this small error, one must insist, to the "medication" that, disabling as its effects may sometimes seem to be, enables, or facilitates, or makes composable, the composition of these sentences. Listen, I could get killed for writing this. May it not be that I will be killed for writing this. It is not, for that matter, inconceivable that certain persons in the "publishing biz" might make themselves the instrument of my disconcertion. Does one know? Can one know? One does not know. One cannot know. I went in—in 1952—as a Deutsch against "the Lishes." I did not "go in" as a citizen against whomsoever—as Helen had, as Adele, until her death, did. I complain not. I submit no complaint. It has been a great adventure. It has been one thrill after another. What a happiness, my stint! One cannot claim too lavishly for its part! May God keep this language safe! I, Gordon—Gordon!—speak, shriek, from White Plains, from experience, as a patriot.