Scumbler. William Wharton

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      The Rats’ Nester

      Right now, here in Paris, we have seven different nests. That’s not counting our old water mill, two hundred miles from Paris. I spend half my time rousting out, fixing up, furnishing these nesting places.

      Rats’ nesting’s what it all is; can’t seem to keep myself from burrowing, digging in; always stuffing bits and pieces into one corner or another.

      Even before we snuck away from California, we had four nests and forty acres; not a single one of those places there you’d call a real home: a trailer dug into the side of a hill, a tent nestled against a cave, then the shack on top of a hill we called home before it burned down. There was also that place I built with rock and cement at the edge of a streambed in a gully up on the forty.

      We furnished all those nests complete to knives and forks; every one a hideout, places we could run to if things got too bad; holes where we could go to ground, wait it out, hide from the crazy ones, learn to like radioactive eggs, a purple sun over green skies, a stinking stagnating dead world.

      A family man’s got to think ahead these days, especially someone like me, living on the outside, ex-con, a man who had his first nest – wife, two little ones, house, everything – snatched out from under him. I’m always looking for someplace for us to hide.

      In California I cadged stuff from the Salvation Army, junk shops. Here in Paris I haunt flea markets; sometimes I can fix up a whole hideout for less than fifty bucks.

      A MAN FOR A WOMAN. EACH TO EACH

      OTHER: MOTHERING FATHER.

      FATHERING MOTHER.

      We’ve been living in Paris more than twenty years now; I’m not sure why anymore; maybe I’m a new kind of bum, rats’-nest bum. Every New Year’s morning, I check with the family, ask if they want to go back.

      No, they like to stay, like being aliens.

      I still think of myself as a serious artist, paint hard and heavy when I’m not caught up in nesting fevers, father juices.

      Don’t get me wrong. I’m not talking about masterpieces, museums; used to dream that war; just don’t care so hard anymore. When the end gets closer, those kinds of crazy ideas don’t mean much; everything gets sucked into the painting itself.

      ONE LEG OF A ZIGZAG, MY LIFE

      TACKS WINDWARD WITHOUT A LUFF.

      I like to rent out our Paris hideouts to last-ditch people: students and artist types, end-of-the-line people; they appreciate my hiding places, feel safe.

      One of these nests is in a quarter behind the Bastille. This part was supposed to be torn down fifty years ago. I’m nibbling around over there one day, looking for something to paint, something to fix up, something, anything; helping me delude myself into believing life makes some kind of sense, any kind.

      I’m on my Honda motorcycle. I traded a painting for this Honda seven years ago; it’s over ten years old now and has 160 cubic centimeters displacement with around 75 cubic centimeters of power left. About like me: plugging up, wearing thin, metal-mental fatigue, general sludgishness.

      I have my box and canvas strapped on my back, they rest on the carrier. Sometimes I paint sitting ass-backwards, straddling the bike, with feet jammed on the foot pegs. At my age, the back can’t take much