Collected Fictions

by Gordon Lish

  FACTS OF STEEL

  NOTHING WOULD PLEASE ME more than for me as an artist to be free to sit here and tell you the truth. But they won't let me do it. May I tell you something? They will not let me do it. The whole kit and caboodle of them are all in cahoots. I'm telling you, it sickens me, it just sickens me, the way things are. You cry out against it from the pit of despair, but ask yourself, does it do you any good? This is why I have no choice but to resort to ruse after ruse. God knows I get no pleasure from it. The last thing I as an artist desire is for me to have to sit here and keep developing this worldwide rep I have as a rusefier extraordinaire. But am I the one who has the say? I am not the one who has the say. You heard of the road of life? Because this is exactly what this is, it is the fucking road of life. Oh, how could I have been such a fool, thinking to myself Gordon darling you are an artist darling you are in the driver's seat darling there will cometh your day in the sun. But who are they giving any day in the sun? They are not giving anybody any day in the sun. So you see how come the facts of steel? Ergo, the facts of steel. Can I tell you something? Let me tell you something. Whatever your occupational pursuit, take pains you throw the devils off. Because it's either that or you're under their thumb. You have heard of the proverbial thumb? Because it's either they get you under it or they bind you hand and foot. But save your tears. Nobody cares. Believe me, they can't wait to stand there and spit in your face. The whole mob of them, once they get their hooks into you, your goose is cooked. I'm sorry, but they're worse than Greeks. Will they let you live? They will not let you live. Will they let you speak? They will not let you speak. And guess who the loser is. Do I have to tell you who the loser is? Because the answer is Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Public. Hey, you're just lucky they don't make you make it zinc. So what chance do I as an artist have but to dance to their tune? You know what it is? I'm telling you what it is. It is a national disgrace. But I Gordon did not start it. It was either Andrew Carnegie who did or the other cocksucker, Henry James.

  GROUND

  YOU EVER PLAY THE GAME which when you were little of you take your fingers and you walk the feet of them all around? Not all around anywhere, not walk the feet of them all around just anywhere, but walking them just on the rug your hand was on or on the bed your hand was on or on something you could be on if you put your hand down like fingers are feet like that on it—like even like on a table?

  So you ever play it, this game?

  He was a little man.

  If you were me, then he was a little man.

  But even if you were a little girl, then maybe he was still a little man.

  And strong.

  Strong and could do anything.

  Mine could fly if I got a piece of tissue paper or if I tore off a piece of something else like that like some type of paper like that and got it caught or got it stuck up in between the tops of them—my fingers, my fingers!—kept it caught in there and stuck in there up there where the head was—like these ones here, like the tops of these ones two ones here—can't you see where these ones two ones here, how they come together as fingers where there's this crease in them, you could call it, or call it, you know, like this crouch or crotch or whatever they say?

  It was the head.

  The crease was the head—and the rest was the arms and the legs—and the tips of the fingers, like call them the fingertips, they were the feet—and wait a minute, wait a minute—the piece of the tissue paper or the piece of any other kind of paper, it was the cape the little man had coming out of the back of his head, it was the cape which the little man had on him for him to have on him like a flying cape for the little man to stand there on his feet and have it flung out back behind him from out in the back of his head for when the little man wanted to go ahead and jump up and fly anywhere up over something so long as there was room in the air up over whatever it was, which was where the air was.

  But I outgrew the flying idea.

  I'm sitting here telling you I went ahead and decided in my mind for me to go ahead and outgrow the whole idea of the little man flying anywhere as being like too much magic as an idea.

  I got old enough—probably seven, probably eight—where it was an age I was in in which I did not like it anymore as far as the whole idea of me letting the little man fly up into the air over anything, or even just the idea of just me letting the little man take off up into the air for only like a little bit from like the rug, let us say, or like from maybe, in a pinch, from like just the back of my other hand.

  Flying, if you went ahead and had the flying in the game, then face facts, face facts, since when was it with anything in the game like flying like that in it still even in any sense of the word still a game?

  I don't think, or didn't think, it was anything.

  Flying—please.

  Come on, don't make me laugh, flying, ha ha.

  Because it was only a game when it was the way it first was when you first started to play it, the little man walking all around everywhere in more or less in the same place.

  Or skipping if he wanted.

  Or running if he wanted.

  Or just like standing there and not moving if standing there and not moving was what the little man felt like doing for the time being.

  Or even falling down on your knuckles and making believe it was his knees.

  It had to be a game.

  It had to be in a place.

  He could jump, the little man could jump, it was still okay as a game if, okay, if the little man jumped, but the whole idea of it was the little man had to end up coming back down onto whichever it was your hand was on—like some rug and so on, or like some bed and so on, like even on just like this one particular place they had in your house so long as it was clear to you right from the start in your mind like this one particular place the little man is starting out from is the little man's place for the time being of the game.

  But letting the little man fly, no, Jesus Christ, no, wasn't flying for fucking babies?

  I got rid of it.

  I threw it away.

  Did it probably around the age, I bet, of six probably or of seven, it could have been, or maybe even as late as maybe the age of eight.

  The tissue, I mean. The little man's cape.

  Or it could have just been not just tissue in the sense of tissue paper but tissue in the sense of something which was paper like tissue paper.

  But the place we had, my family, the place we had, it always had tissue paper put away in it somewhere away in it back in those old, you know, back in those old or call them olden days.

  This place I live in now, there is no tissue paper around in it anywhere, except for toilet paper.

  But neither is there any little boy or little girl in it who's constantly asking you for anything.

  Those were the days!

  God, I miss those old or olden days.

  There was this one place which when you, where when you really set your mind to it, it made the best place for me to play the game of the little man with or without his cape of tissue paper on him.

  Do you call it a throw?

  I think they call it a throw.

  It was on the floor all of the time in our parlor all of the time—which had these stones in all of these different colors—but so was the throw, wasn't it?

  All colors?

  In different-colored colors?

  In all of these various different-colored colors?

  I don't know.

  It was made out of old socks or something—or out of old, you know, old stockings.

  Maybe it was old rags it was made out of.

  I could play for hours.

  I could get him down there on this throw rug which they had in there in the parlor and keep him going in there with me for hours, the little man.

  Walking mostly.

  Mostly walking mostly.

  But skipping when he had this skipping feeling in him rising in him in this mind in him that, you know, that he wanted, as the l
ittle man, to skip. Or go skipping.

  Or jump, for instance.

  Maybe run maybe if he wanted.

  You know.

  It was up to him, the little man.

  It was all of it always all of it up only to him.

  Did I tell you the fringe was the thing?

  It had this fringe—the throw on the floor in the parlor, it had like this fringe on it sticking out from it in the sense of like a fringe on it, which was definitely, as far as me, the thing.

  The little man getting to the edge of the throw and then making up his mind as far as the fringe.

  Him getting there to the edge of it and like making up his mind what to do, what to do—what do I do, what do I do?—do I step off and get myself down into it in the fringe where there are all of these like, my God, like cords cut off?—where there are down there like these big dirty cut off cords cut off?—like in Jesus fucking Christ, the fringe!

  Scatter—there's the word for us, my God, that's the word for it!—scatter, isn't it scatter as in a scatter rug?

  It wasn't a throw they said it was—it was a scatter which they said it was.

  You know, the rug.

  A scatter rug.

  Fringed.

  Like made of tied-together knots of things—like of socks and things—a stocking where there wasn't anymore socks to go with it anymore—and all around the edge all around it, this cut-off dirty-looking stuff.

  Fringe.

  But oh, the colors of it, the colors of it, oh!—and the same went for, and the same was always going for the stones where when I went there to the parlor there was the floor for me to get down on and as a boy be happy forever and play.

  Oh, play.

  All the time never being able for me to wait to get home and then for me to go over there to it in the parlor for it and get him down on it and start us letting him see what the story was going to turn out to be once we got him going as far as the game.

  Namely, where he'd go.

  Or if he would.

  How far he was going to go for him to get where he had to be.

  And what he'd do if he did.

  Sometimes the little man had all of these millions and millions of various different plans he was always thinking about—take a trip here, take a trip there—skip all of the way on the way, jump every other step, or like just keep running like mad.

  But you know what?

  Mostly the little man just did what he did without him having even any conceivable idea.

  But then—whoops!

  Uh-oh.

  He'd like, you know, he'd like get to the edge.

  The older I got, the more and more the little man just went ahead and did that—took a trip and took himself all of the way over to someplace where he was standing right the fuck on it—not the edge of any throw, of course, but the edge, let's call it, of the scatter, I mean!—and then the next thing, it had to be what?—step down into it or don't do anything or go back and make another safer plan or a plan that was safe.

  Hey, I tell you it was forever?

  The floor all over the parlor, if you were the little man, it looked to you like, hey, that out there, isn't it, if you really look at it, forever out there?

  From where you were to all of the way forever?

  From all of the stones from under the fringe out to the end of the place where we lived to the whole other rest of everything.

  Once you went ahead and took the first step.

  Like if you were the little man.

  Sun porch, sun porch!

  Did I say parlor?

  I'm sorry.

  Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry.

  The Lishes' place did not have any parlor.

  It had a sun porch over on one side of it—that's what we had, that's what the place we had had!—oh so forever sunny in the sun porch so long as you were never in it without the little man.

  Hey, so long as you were never in it without these two ones of your two fingers right up to this crease between them right here.

  The place had a sun porch on it and the floor of the sun porch had all of these different-colored field stones on it and the name of the kind of the rug on it, it was named, I'm telling you, a scatter rug, everybody everywhere was always calling it the scatter rug on the floor of the sun porch in the sun porch of where we lived and believe you me when I tell you there were these tied socks and things it was made of, there were like these stockings knotted among the things this thing was actually knotted of, washrags, washrags, pajama legs, nighties, all of it all torn up and all probably all knotted up or probably all tied up but with like these cords of this cut-off crap of it all around all the whole edge of it, and filthy? I'm telling you, it was so filthy and so sickening, but didn't I, Gordon, didn't I get down there and make him be there—him?

  These fingers here.

  Standing capeless on incomparable feet.

  Oh, play, indomitable child, play!

  Till they call and call please.

  But who hears please?

  Nobody hears please—nor needs to.

  Hear instead elsewhere, hear instead anywhere—hear instead turn, my beloved, turn!

  But the little man never once did.

  THIS SIDE OF THE ANIMAL, OR, BRICOLAGE

  ALL DAY LONG THE MAN READ to them from the storybooks they had. They seemed to like to hear him read to them, but it was not possible for the man to tell if this was truly so. Perhaps they merely put up with the man, his thin white hair hanging in meager clots from his thin glittery skull. Perhaps he had beguiled the children into their feeling sorry for him, or feeling sad for him, or feeling afraid to be unquiet in his company.

  The man was so tired.

  It hurt his legs when there was one of them, or two, who would take to his wasted lap for a while. But didn't all the parts of the man hurt, no matter if his lap were filled or not with any child anymore?

  How on earth had he got this weak, this old?

  It had never been his plan. His plan had been to be strong, and to come to the last of his life with the power of his youth. Not one jot of himself would time ever wrest from his fisted hands. But time had, hadn't it?

  It was a trick.

  It had to have happened when his attention had been situated elsewhere. But where? Certainly not on the children who had conducted into his life these numberless offspring of theirs. There were so many of them—grandchildren, everywhere grandchildren—whereas it required no numbering for the man to reckon there was hardly even one of him and that not at all long from now would there be a sign of even that?

  He was alone, had always been alone, and would die—perhaps this very night—as solitary as he had forever in his memory been.

  The man had no complaints, not a one.

  Yet what could have made him so horribly weary just this very instant?

  Fatigue must have hurtled down at him from somewhere overhead and now, at the end of the day, it felt to the man as if exhaustion, breathless itself, lay gasping as it hung from his neck, snatching at the frail struts of the crazed skeleton as the man struggled to free himself from this last cruel assailant.

  But why bother?

  After all, was the man not preparing for sleep?

  They had made up some sort of contraption for him in the main room. It had rather surprised him to turn away from the kisses goodnight and discover behind himself the site where he had sat from sun-up wearing himself out enunciating for the children—for the grandchildren—transformed into what would be his bed. When had this happened? How could it have? Hadn't he been occupying the very place, reading and reading to half of creation since the very stroke of day?

  Everyone seemed so capable nowadays.

  By what means had this occurred? Was there any precedent in their lives for this? Where was the example in managing matters that had guided these children of his in their accomplishment of such infernal displays of competence, competence—skill and grace? It had not been their mother, surely. Long go
ne in her dishevelment somewhere to the dreadful margins, hadn't the woman made a proper mess of things, starting with—let gentility select our diction—her exercise, first and last, of, shame, shame, bed-making?

  Wait a bit.

  He had packed his sleeping pills—but exactly where? The little overnight bag he had fitted them into, what had the children—or the grandchildren, damn every squirming living one of them!—done with it?

  Ah, there.

  Or here.

  Yes, yes.

  Just where it ought to be—at the foot—or is it the head?—of this exasperating business that must have once been a couch before the new ingenuity on the march in the world decided to interfere with it and make it serve two ends.