“Yes.”
“Can I ask what it is?” “Three men go camping in the woods. One of the men starts out doing all the cooking, but the three men make an arrangement where, if either of the other two complain about the man’s cooking, the complainer will automatically take over the cooking.”
“I’m not sure I understand, Patrice.”
“The cook cooks and cooks, and the other two campers smile and say it’s very good, and they all continue to camp. And by and by the cook gets tired of cooking, and wishes someone would complain and so have to take over for him, but there are still no complaints. So the cook begins overcooking things on purpose, or burning them, or hardly cooking them and having them be raw. But the other two campers still eat it all and manage to smile. Soon the cook begins putting soap in the coffee, sprinkling dirt on everything he cooks, but still the other two go out of their way not to complain.”
“Is this a joke? This is a joke, Patrice, I can tell.”
“So finally the cook gets angry, he’s so very tired of cooking, and he goes deep into the woods and finds a pile of moose droppings, and he takes them back to camp and roasts them, and serves them for dinner, along with soapy coffee. And the other two campers dig in, and the cook smiles at them expectantly, and they’re eating very slowly, and also looking at each other, with faces. Finally one of them puts down his fork and says to the cook, ‘Hey, Joe, I’m afraid I’ve got to tell you that these things taste like moose droppings. Good, though.’”
“Ha-ha.”
“Ha-ha.”
“Patrice, that was splendid, that joke. Where did you hear that? Did you make that joke up?”
“My son told it to me.”
“Well isn’t that just good, Patrice.”
“Yes.”
“When exactly did he tell that joke to you?”
“I think a joke like that ought to be worth some breathing, don’t you?”
“I certainly do.”
“I sure think so.”
/b/
11 September
The End Is a Night Fire.
It is another May night, because May never ever ends. Here is a street that should be dark. In a gust of light the cement of the street can be seen to be new and rough. Some of the homes do not yet have lawns. All the trees are young and thin and supported by networks of ropes and stakes. They flicker and whip in the wind of light.
The wind is a wind of hot sparks. The sparks rise and whirl and die in the shrouds of light they make. At the end of the street sighs a burning home. The home looks the same as every other home on the street. It is on fire. Fire comes out of every opening in the home and rises. As the fire makes more openings in the home and rises from them, the home sighs and settles. The heat of the fire makes the fence in the lawn glow red, and the fence cooks the lawn around it.
The home begins to fold into its fire. Fire comes out of all the openings. It sounds like paper crinkling. It tightens the skin of your face. The fire cannot be controlled, and the home draws in all the air on the street and with a sigh folds down into itself. It takes farever. Everything falls into itself, slow as feathers.
Out the door of the home flies a bird with its tailfeathers on fire. It rises into the sky in circles. It spirals up and up into the sky until its light melts into a sparkle of stars. Down to the lawn floats a corkscrew pattern of burnt feathers.
Feet run over the lawn, through the flaming feathers. Fieldbinder and Evelyn Slotnik, hand in hand, run into the night, their hair on fire. In the light of their own hair they are wind. They make glowing cuts in the black square blocks of the suburbs as they run the tiny miles to the Slotniks’ pool. Fences blush and fall away. An airplane is flying low overhead. The passengers look down and see it all. They see one shining pond of fire soaking out into the lawns and making shrouds of needled light that float up toward them, disappear when they touch. They see two surprised points of orange fire moving too fast through black backyards and waffled fences, making for a kidney of clean new blue water that lies ahead in a line lit up from below. It is captured forever on quality film.
/c/
One of the oars fell into the water and Neil Obstat, Jr., lunged for it, knocking over his can of beer so that beer fizzed on his pantleg. He struggled to get the heavy oar back in its lock.
“God damn it,” he said.
“Just keep the fucker still, Neil,” said Wang-Dang Lang.
“Shit,” said Obstat. Some people trying to fish over in the next rowboat were mad at the commotion and were giving Obstat the finger.
Lang was in the bow of the boat he and Obstat had rented at the Great Ohio Desert Fish License and Boat Rental Center for what Lang thought was a truly criminal amount of money.
“This whole thing’s just gettin’ too goddamn commercialized,” he’d said to Obstat. Obstat had shrugged and hefted the beer.
Lang had some binoculars through which he was watching Lenore Beadsman and Rick Vigorous wandering along the lake’s edge through one of the really blasted and forbidding parts of the Desert. Despite the weekend crowds, Lenore was easy to see in her bright white dress, and of course there was too the matter of Rick Vigorous’s beret. Lang and Obstat were way out in the lake. Obstat was supposed to be rowing the boat so that they stayed just even with Lenore and Rick.
“What do you see?” Obstat had asked from the oars.
When Rick and Lenore were turned the right way, Lang could see their faces, but he couldn’t yet make out what they were saying. They weren’t talking much. Lenore was moving pretty easily through the deep sand, but Lang could see Rick Vigorous having trouble and sometimes needing to trot to keep up. Lenore kept making him look at his watch, as if time were an issue. It was still only mid-morning, but it was hot for September. Crowds wove in and out around Lenore and Rick. Someone on the rim was hawking black tee-shirts in a voice Lang could hear clear out on the water.
Lang held the binoculars in one hand. His other hand hurt like hell today, from twirling his car keys on his injured finger last night. He thought his bird-bite might be getting infected.
“Fucking bird,” he said.
Obstat was grunting at the oars. He kept clunking them against the sides of the boat. Lang and Obstat were positively mowing over people’s fishing lines, and the people in the other boats were getting really pissed off, but Lang told Obstat not to pay them any mind.
“Just remember I get a gander or two at those unearthly legs, climbing dunes,” Obstat gasped as he pulled.
“They’ll start sayin’ important shit any minute now,” Lang said.
/d/
“I absolutely insist that you invite me to relate a story.”
“My shoes are full of this goddamned sand.”
“Lenore…”
“Hey! Watch where you’re going for Christ’s sake!”
“Dear. Excuse us, please.”
“For crying out loud.”
“Terribly sorry.”
“Hell of a place for a picnic.”
“If you want my opinion, Lenore, they should either obliterate this place or enlarge it. The touristiness of the whole thing is negating whatever marginal attractions this place had to offer.”
“People aren’t smelling too terrific in this sun, either, I notice.”
“Forget smells. You’re here to concentrate on potential grandmother-signs.”