Begin to Exit Here (26 page)

“What do you want me to read?” she said.

“Read the whole Bible,” I said. “It should only take four or five days.”

She sipped some Michelob Dry and wiped some sweat from her nose.

“Just open it at random and read the first thing you see,” I said.

She flipped open the Bible, squinted at the page and began reading aloud:

“And David said to Uriah, Go down to thy house, and wash thy feet. And Uriah departed out of the king's house, and there followed him a mess of meat from the king.”

She stopped and looked at me. “A mess of meat?” she said. “That doesn't sound biblical. It sounds like Jethro, from the ‘Beverly Hillbillies.'”

“Do it again,” I said. “Flip some pages and read something else. It's all very spiritual.”

She did it, and read this:

“When a man hath taken a new wife, he shall not go out to war, neither shall he be charged with any business: but he shall be free at home one year, and shall cheer up his wife which he hath taken.”

“That's nice,” I said.

“Yes,” Janice said, sipping some beer and flipping through the pages again. “But I'm not doing it at random anymore. I'm going to read that part in Ecclesiastes you picked out last night.”

I watched her look through the pages until she finally stopped.

“Here it is,” she said, staring down at me in her shadow as she read the passage:

“Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labor that I had labored to do: and behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun.”

“Yes,” I said. “All was vanity and vexation of spirit, and I hurt you, without excuse or understanding. And I alienated Perrault, that Philistine fuckhead whose ignorance and narrowness is the law. And though I walk through the valley of death, the ravine of despair, the ditch of grief, the culvert of psychological disorders, I will fear no evil, because I'm too stupid. You can bury me now.”

Janice put her hand on my cheek. “You
are
buried,” she said.

“Put on your black veil now and mourn for me.”

“Oh. That's right,” she said, then reached into her bag and pulled out a little black hat with a black veil on it. She smiled as she put it on, and said “I'm mourning, now. Do I look nice?”

“You're pretty. I'm glad I love you.”

She touched my cheek again, rubbing her fingertips along my skin. “Now that you're buried, now that you're
immobile and helpless, what do you think you should do? Sink or sink?”

“It's not a very good choice. I don't believe in failure, no matter how many times I do it.”

She took the veil off and tossed it into the sand behind her as she stared at me and moved her face closer to mine. I wanted to hold her, but I couldn't move.

“Are you going to kiss me?” I said.

“No. I'm going to suck your brains out through your ears,” she said quietly, laughing a little bit with her lips on mine.

Published by

Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27514-2225

a division of

Workman Publishing

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 1992 by John Welter. All rights reserved.

Chapter one of this book was first published on the editorial page of the
Kansas City Star
, as a literary sketch.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

E-book ISBN 978-1-61620-235-4