I did not want to meet him. He scares me. But once I saw those dead eyes briefly come alive to some softness like a hamster’s or a small child’s. He scares me like something out of a sea bottom. Behind him the putty is flaking down at the bottom of the long bar mirror where the sunlight always hits with that one beam, just that one beam. A flashlight beam at the bottom of Netherson’s sea and this disturbs me. People look at Netherson and laugh that laugh of deserted insides, very flat, no reaction from him. It occurs to me all the laughter here is like that. Even the two waiting for me to come back and get my treatment when I bring the order.
Minnie, almost to the full kneel like a woman in church, I think of her and Netherson getting naked together, for he is her man. That’s hard to realize. She’s his woman and you can’t believe he ever asked for anything. Although I am ashamed and even cruel sometimes, I need to be with some woman, testament to my existence. Be in a suit have some money sell something travel. Somebody would sort of miss me. Netherson stuck on himself in his zombiehood. If my cat would die I could have freedom and a personality maybe but I love the cat. She reminds me there is not much to it, only the noise, and sleeps three quarters of the day.
The hands on the clock seem like snakes any minute to curl out and fall on your neck. But on my boots I can rise, I am solid, I can stand with Netherson, I have the soul of an implacable Negro. In certain moments, not many, I can reasonably imagine a tall naked woman standing there beside me with her hand on my butt, saying, Yes I am all his. Sometimes I think about my mother’s panties and where I came from, place to place to place. She was tall and strong and my father was in helicopter technology, a civilian hired by different arms of the service. I was not curious enough to ask much about him and now I realize he might have been interesting although something about my devoted apathy in my teens wouldn’t let me like him. He loved it that helicopters packed the most punch in modern war. He was short, but he stood tall on that fact, and he stood tall in lots of places, Florida, Oregon, Delaware.
My mother would tremble at the window when he was overhead in a helicopter. She was a nervous woman, but tall and strong. Even nervous my mother was stronger than my father. He was freckled with round shoulders but he had fine fingers for his work and in Louisiana he received an award on the tarmac near those tall pines and red dirt. The pines had moss hanging down and I was back in a veil of it pretending I was dead while the helicopters in the air went by pop pop pop packing their punch. Much of what I see reminds me of death but death is interesting, not just sitting there. It is red, green, and blue of dirt, pines, and sky, and it is moving around, my mother being nervous there at the window. Death was like Stalin moving behind the scenes with a mustache killing every other person, Stalin the very man my father opposed, as I gather. Yet he died and they cut the brain out of his head to study.
I had a dream about Stalin in my room looking for his brain. My mother was in the dream, still nervous, she seemed to know where it was. My dead father was sailing around the room showing everybody his lung cancer but laughing at Stalin even though he hardly ever laughed when he was alive. I want to be dead like Netherson, nothing in my eyes, maybe be nothing but black muscle with eyes in it. Minnie would come to me. No more on her knees making extra money listening and agreeing. No more enduring this shame and this slackness and the total indifference of Netherson.
Death, let’s get it on, I say.
Not so fast though.
Here we go again at my table. Look who’s back, the lone wartberry, guy says.
While I’m holding the trays up, the man who looks like me except groomed has not said a word yet, but he has roll crumbs on his mouth and the white sauce of the salad remains in a line across his upper lip. He does not eat well, so impatient he is, while the other goes on.
We are sworn to bring the message home to you, Wartly. We do wish we could see your dreams. Most waiters are waiting until a better thing turns up. But you, Wartly, seem already promoted beyond your talents. This man speaking is courtly, of the world. Even his rich tie looks born for him, his shoes are loving animals gathered to his feet. When I brought him more tea, the meal had not tired him at all. He says, Our old pale old Wartly. Why are you alive? Could it be that anyone would find you necessary? We’ve figured you as a walking breathing missing person but nobody searching for you.
Yes who? The other man, even more like me suddenly, finally spoke. His look lingered on me. I could hardly believe he had spoken. He is moving up in my eyes and shoulders with his expression. He is taking possession, after long patience, in exasperation, is how it feels. I move away from myself into even further nothing, not toward death, not toward Netherson, and I float out the window, past Minnie Hinton still on her knees before her paying customer, always right, the hissing man, him set there in a pout, and I float out into the alley into the hot meat exhaust fan and pavement oil with my arms around the Dumpster, is how it feels.
I could be Fagmost, on the other hand. He is that drunkard always sick under the stands after every ball game, puking up his guts but smiling. He screams at the team for three solid hours and then you will see him dancing alone in the lowbrow clubs around town. You see him on his hands and knees but making kick motions like a dancer shot down. Then one night two policemen piled into the crowd and dragged Fagmost off, him all wet in his lumpy flower shirt and dirty beard. He never claimed to be nice like everybody around here aspires to. I am nice, I am all right. What a nothing to be said, no? Why, he turned on the television just to get another herd of foreigners to scream at. He fed stray cats is the best thing I know about him. I could be him, but I doubt I have the staying power to be a good drunkard. You see Fagmost trying to eat a hearty meal, the way his lips quiver and he scrapes around at it, this man can move you with his lack of memory and gut persistence. He is smiling, mostly, and you see him back under the stands of the football stadium, puking without a thought of the well-dressed women around him and all the while wearing his smile. My Lord if I, say, had a good four-year war behind me and was a hopeless lush carried down the street by a flock of children on Memorial Day, that would be something like Fagmost, that would be Fagmostian, I wouldn’t have to stand for any of this over at that table. Nobody wants to take the time to insult Fagmost, he is so out there.
But I just want to eat candy and drink three sodas with it then fall asleep with a sweat on me watching some women prisoners in slips on the television, wanting to be their guard. I would even wear a slip too just for fun because all women know how to talk. I would like to have a poison ivy rash and have them scratch it for me, all in their slips and their little folkways to cure what ails you.