This Footstool Earth. John Zeugner
up to the all-white room.
“You really want to go up, don’t you?” she pointed to the door.
“Of course! You know that better than I do.”
“I know so much more than you know, especially about yourself—your tiresome needs.”
“I don’t wish to be tiresome.”
“Nor would I let you, mon petite choux.”
“I know that. I do know that.”
“So, we understand each other and can talk sincerely about going up. Don’t tell me again, how anxious you are, how full of expectations, anticipations, deliverances that always recede as we approach them. That discussion is tiresome, more than tiresome, boring. Useless and boring.” She took a long sip of the tea and then closed her eyes and rocked slowly back against the blue print of the wing chair. “I’m thinking today we need to take extreme measures, ones outside, well outside, our usual parameters. Explorations at the edge, beyond the simply extreme, rather at the cusp of the transcendent, on pain’s periphery, so that insight cannot be separated from anguish. Does it interest you? Spiraling anguish. Can you feel it? Endure it? What would it reveal? More likely, what would it set free in you, in us? I’d like us to ask the key question: what could reside beyond our abominations? What would passing through them suddenly illuminate? Could we pass beyond the tatemae of our investigation to the actual honne? I think we could, and what would we find? Daisy waiting for us? Could we sacrifice a bull as if we were killing a man? Kill a lamb as if breaking a dog’s neck? Burn incense as if worshiping an idol? Could we do it all?”
“Yes! Of course we could.”
“And at the end of it what would our abominations reveal?”
“Quick and joyous passage through the moat. Lolloping deliverance through thick thighs of hurt.”
“Offensive language again. Extra strikes against you, severe ones.”
“And deserved.”
“Don’t be frivolous, don’t be trivializing. You will suffer greatly for it.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry either. It’s insulting and at the same time boring. So readily offered from your entirely manufactured and bogus sentiments. I’m here to show how disassociated your pain is, how trivial that is, compared to the searing I’m willing to inflict. Have you not seen how much you are a human being-manque?”
“Not manqué! I’m not a bogus person.”
“Such a phony objection. Unworthy of you, and garnering greater suffering no doubt. Yes, you have only a shell reality, a puppet of normality, performing normal sentiments on the mica edge of self-perceived mockery. A sham of feeling wandering after affirmation, anxious for a spanking or full-on flagellation. And yet through agonized tears recognizing its very phoniness, lack of substance, lack of conviction about anything, even the pain it wallows in. Begging to be set on fire, consumed with actual conviction, but ever never finding any.” She paused, looked strangely pensive. “Maybe I really can’t get you over the moat, can I?”
“You can. You have. You often have.”
“But not every time, is it not so? Don’t lie to me.”
“Yes, not every time, but often enough.”
“Often enough. . .” she mused a moment, as if counting the times. “Could we sacrifice a bull as if slaying a person?”
“Of course!”
“Kill a lamb as if breaking a dog’s neck?”
“Yes!”
“Burn incense as if worshipping an idol?”
“In our white-hot room, why not?”
“Good. Let us go upstairs. And while I work, tell me, tell me slowly, how Lewis died.
II: A, B, C, Lewis Walling
The bullet from nowhere entered through his spleen and exited shoving segments of his stomach, intestine, pancreas and duodenum out into the rice field’s still, grey water. He thought, I’ve been gut shot, the worst of all prospects. Shot by an unseen unrecognized enemy as alone in this special place as I am. Perhaps I wasn’t the target at all. Maybe a rifle went off somewhere, having been tossed by someone ignorant of the effect, until the firing happened.
The force of the wound tossed his innards away from him, bobbing in the rice water like a cat avoiding embarrassment. His blood streamed out as if to lasso his fractured insides floating away. For a moment he imagined he could collect them still, but that attempted movement sent pain swelling through his shock and he collapsed into the water, finding only at the last minute the strength and coordination to turn his head up and aside for air. Water and gasping mixed in his bobbing search to survive.
She only opened the door about three inches. The chain lock was not visible, but he sensed she had wedged her foot against the door’s edge, keeping just three inches for them to exchange slow looks. Lewis thought, I must not let my guts get away. I must gather them up and keep them close, so that repair and revival can occur. If they get away I’m lost. “You’re all growed up,” she said with a sweetness that reminded him of so very much. “I suppose so,” he answered with what he knew she’d find suaveness, worldly mastery, true maturity. But he knew she didn’t really care about that, only about him. He’d come to see her because he knew she cared only about him. “And how did you find me?” she said. “By looking and looking, and asking and asking,” he answered, leaning closer into their three inches, trying to see her better, smell her closer. Yes, she was not open to the world. He knew that, sensed that when she left so quickly. Why did he want so much to see her now? Because she cared about him, was that truly it? Yes, truly that was it. He knew it was now the purest moment for certainty. No time, absolutely no time for obfuscation. No time for calculated response, no time for strategy. I can’t reach out now to grab my guts. They’re floating away, almost over the horizon.
“I’m glad you’re growed up.”
“So am I.” He thought, why did I seek her out now? Why now? Because he knew at some level that he would die soon, could that be it? As his guts swam away he knew beforehand their outer drift well beyond seeping blood lasso; and therefore what was most precious in the future must be recovered, reaffirmed, re-celebrated, re-lived, re-stamped with indelible accent, indelible belief. So of course, he sought her out. He wanted her to know beforehand how she had shaped him, and, besides, when he thought about departure who else really mattered to him?
-§-
B interrupted him: “Who the hell are you talking about?”
A answered for C: “Annie May. Doesn’t that click something for you?”
“Of course not. Why should it. A name I’ve never heard before.”
“So, you didn’t read the play. You’re way behind. Naughty lad who didn’t do his homework.”
“What a lot of horseshit. Who has time to read a play?”
-§-
Was there someone else with her that she wouldn’t let him in? He might have asked but realized it was not someone else that kept them fixed on their three inches of seeing one another. He realized her memories hardly converged with his, and that terrible separation of fulfillment kayoed any communication. She was at least 45 years old; he was 20. He was white, she was black. She had held him since he was one and one-half years old. “I wanted to see how you were. How you were getting along. And I wanted to say goodbye.”
“That’s good,” she answered.
“You never said goodbye, but I wanted to say goodbye.”
“It’s been some time. Your folks didn’t want me to say goodbye. Just get out I guess.”
“I never understood.”