What Is All This? (38 page)

Good thinking, and just the right tone.

You bet. And someone did come by who could break the twenty. I gave the cabby the fare and a big tip, so he wouldn't go crazy if he thought I didn't give him enough, and left the cab, came into the building and took the elevator up. It worked fine, for once—no bumping and then stopping between floors. Put the key in the door lock. It slid right in—sometimes it doesn't and gets stuck. And everything seems fine here. I see Angela did a good job cleaning up.

We pay her enough.

Do we ever. So?

Yes?

So, what about you?

Your day finished?

If you mean was that everything—no, I didn't tell you all. Something very strange did happen at work when I got back after being robbed. And there was also something one of the policemen at the cleaner's said when I told him “You mean you're not going to fingerprint the glass counter both robbers put their hands on?”

What did he say?

No, I've talked enough. You. What happened today?

Really, when I think of it, nothing.

Come on, tell me. I think I've a few minutes before I have to start getting ready to go out. Lillian's picking me up here. What time is it?

Five after six.

Five after? Oh God, she's supposed to be here at six. Your watch accurate?

I set it this morning off of the radio clock.

There you go, then. Sorry. I have to shower and shave.

It's all right. Your stories are always much better than mine anyway, and you tell then much better too.

Do I? I wouldn't say that. And you'll keep her company if I'm not out in time, okay?

Once more. I want to try it once more. I don't want to be told I can't. I don't want to be held back in any way. Verbally, physically, whatever, no. I want to try it again and will try it again and I'm trying it again right now and I don't know just yet whether it works.

It doesn't. I can see that. I don't know why I tried. I tried because there was nothing else to do but try. I don't know how true that is, but I was in my house. There was nothing to do. I'd read the papers and finished a book. I cleaned up the house and did my exercises for today and for tomorrow too. I ate for two days too. I tried to sleep and dream but I couldn't. I was, in a word, restless. In two words, very restless. I walked around outside and in and told myself I was doing nothing. Then said aloud: You are doing nothing. And I was, though I was really doing something. I was saying out loud you are doing nothing. But that was almost doing next to nothing. I wanted to do something more than that. I wanted to do something. I wasn't. All I was doing was saying I was doing nothing. All right. So I sat down, which still wasn't doing anything much more than nothing, and thought about what else I could do, which was doing something a little more than doing nothing or next to nothing. But how long can I think that before it too becomes doing something that's just about nothing? So I got up and walked around thinking about doing something more than just next to nothing, but I'd covered that thinking when I was sitting. So I went into my study, sat at the typewriter and began typing this. It is something just a little more than doing next to nothing, but if I continue doing it, though I don't know what I'll continue doing if I do, it'll be something that's just about next to nothing. To avoid doing that, I'll try something else.

I write—of course
I
write—and of course I write, though maybe not of course for both, because someone else could be writing this, or I could be dictating it, even if I say I'm not. But I am writing and not dictating this, I swear, though I also swear I'm a good liar, but I'm writing this and what I write, which would be the start of the first paragraph I write if I deleted, as I think I should, everything that precedes is:, is: Up you go, there you are, now you help me, and I stick my arm up, she leans over and grabs my wrist and helps me up. I get on top of the wall where she is, say Ready? and she nods, and we both jump down to the other side.

So what do you think (I say)?

That we go right back over (she says). I don't like it.

You don't like what?

It here. This place.

What about this place, or why?

We don't belong here. We've heard terrible things about it. We might be trespassing; it could be dangerous. I don't know, but let's go back.

We've come to explore, that's why we're here. We've seen the wall countless times from the other side, said several times we wanted to see what's on the other side. Now we're on the other side for the first time and we see what's on the other side, which looks almost like the side we came from. Let's go further in to see what's further in.

(To me that's almost writing nothing at all, or worse than nothing, though writing next to nothing could be worse than nothing if I keep it. Maybe I should chuck it all from the start. Or go back over the wall when she first asked us to and continue from there. Or climb over the wall for the first time with or without her but try to forget I've been over this wall before. Instead I'll just go a little farther in from where we are now over that wall and see what I find. For sometimes things just happen, like a wild dog might appear and try to bite off my leg. What I mean is how will I know what I can or can't find if I don't look for it and give myself the time? Of course by continuing from here I'll be stopping myself from finding what I might just find if I started from a place farther back or completely over again, so what it boils down to is my wanting to go on because I normally wouldn't and because I am here and don't expect to be here again, even if I realize this can be worse than doing nothing at all. I should delete this entire paragraph, or at least cut or correct certain parts, like the “of course” that starts the previous sentence and “so what it boils down to” and such. But because that's also what I've always done—cutting, correcting, retyping, making better, maybe making worse—when all I want to do is go further in and see what happens and explore, this time I won't.)

A dog appears out of the woods. Look, a dog (she says). Here, doggy, doggy, here. It seems like a nice trained dog.

I don't think it is (I say).

The dog growls, barks, Lucinda jumps. (I am not Lucinda. My name's Hank, in real life and in this what I write. I also see I didn't have to say who Lucinda wasn't, because this being a first-person piece, Lucinda—at least in this country—obviously can't be me. But I now see why I felt I had to say something about who Lucinda wasn't: Lucinda could have been the dog. But I've never seen that dog before or known its name. Instead of saying I wasn't Lucinda, I should have said the dog wasn't, since I didn't want to give the impression it was the dog who jumped. I know there's some flawed logic in there or whatever it's called if flawed logic isn't it, but I'm not going to go over it and delete or correct it or any of the other flawed logic and possible grammatical mistakes that precede and might follow this paragraph, since all I want to do is go further on and not get sidetracked so much.)

Go home (I say). I think Lucinda thinks I said it to her, because she runs to the wall.

Help me over (she says).

I didn't mean you when I said go home (I say). But I'll skip sticking the “I say” and “she says” in parentheses. I don't know why I started it; I've never done it before. I'm sure I did it for pedantic literary reasons: that it might come out meaning something more than if I wrote it in a more normal way. I'm frequently trying for something new and most of the times it doesn't work. But I'll keep the parenthesized “I say” and “she says” I have in so far, even if I know they didn't work. But where was I?

I didn't mean you, I say, but the dog.

I'm going home even if you didn't mean me, as I don't want to deal with dogs or anything else here. I've seen what's on this side, or seen enough, and now I want to get back over to the other side, not so much to go home, although I just might. Now help me over.

Wait; let's go further in.

Help me over, I said.

And I said just a little further in.

Dog barks and snarls and then rushes at me, and I don't move. I read to do that some place, or rather, I once read to do that and not show any fear. So I stand still and say to the dog without what I think is a sign of fear in my appearance and voice: GO HOME! Or rather: GO HOME, the exclamation point being redundant and unnecessary, I think, just as I think the word redundant or unnecessary is redundant or unnecessary if I use one or the other. And I put the command in caps because I of course yelled it, which is why the exclamation point was redundant or unnecessary: for how loud can I seem to yell on a page without my having to say I yelled very loud or I yelled so loud I must have been heard a city block away? In other words, for I didn't explain that well, I don't think an exclamation point adds anything to the capital letters when I'm yelling. And why the “of course” from above, since if it was
of course
, why say it was? There's probably a good reason, or just a reason, forget the good, the reason being idiomatical, I think. Anyway, the dog snarls again and snaps at my pointing finger—I'm pointing at it but not too close to its open mouth, and that arm of the pointing finger is the only part of my body that moved—and turns and goes. Dog does: disappears into the woods.

Come on, Lucinda says. I also don't see why I don't use quotation marks for dialogue. I don't usually like it when others leave them out. You have—I do—the writer does—more flexibility with quotation marks. For instance, if I write a line like:—Come on, Lucinda says (or: Come on, Lucinda says), but with a period after says rather than a comma, it could seem as if I want a character to say aloud “Come on, Lucinda says,” rather than just “Come on,” which is what I intended up there. I think I've almost made a case against quotation marks with my example, so let me give a clearer one. I've time? Because I usually like a tight piece, and these explanations and examples are dragging this one out. But last one and then I'll try to go straight through.

If I write, and I'll put the example on its own line to make it even clearer:

—Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand, how do we know I'm not having a character say “Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand”? It's possible, and so is her giving him his hand. His hand might have been torn off by the dog and she picked it up and gave it to him to take to the hospital, while she fought off or distracted the dog so he could escape, to get it sewed back on right away. Or else she might have found his hand somewhere, or the dog dug it up and brought it over to her—an artificial hand, perhaps—and given it to him because she knew it was his. Or she might have taken his left hand, we'll say, and put it in his right hand when he still had both hands attached to his body, artificial or not, or because he had no control of his left hand because it had been permanently maimed during a war. Or the control he didn't have might have been when he touched her when he knew she didn't want to be touched, and to show she didn't want to be touched, she put his touching hand into his other hand, whether the touching hand or the one she put the real hand in was artificial or not. Or both his hands could have been artificial, and she didn't want to be touched not because they were artificial but because she simply didn't want to be touched by him, or at least not on the place he touched her.

It's obvious I still can't explain this properly now, or correctly, not properly, or clearly, which is just another example, or two of them, that I can't explain this clearly now. Nor do I want to go back to try to correct or delete all or part of what I've written since Lucinda said “Come on.” As I said, and if I didn't, I'm saying it now: I just want to push on.

Lucinda says (but in the new way) “Come on.” I say “No, you come with me.” She says “Please, help me over the wall. I have to get away from here. It's too spooky, dangerous. Foreboding—that's the word. There are signs all around that say do not enter. (Or Do Not Enter.) We've heard awful things about this place. There's a couple supposed to live near here who eat any children who wander over the wall—exaggerated, perhaps, but just that people say something as horrible as that must mean something about what kind of people the couple are. So, help me.”

No, I say.

Now that's the example I should have used before. Not that “Come on, Lucinda says” or “Come on, Lucinda says, giving him his hand.” And I didn't intentionally leave out the quotation marks around “No” just to make a better example, but now that I did, I think it is. Because by saying “No, I say,” which that
No, I say
above could have meant, it could have meant I was saying both “No” and “I say”—the “I say” to emphasize how much I was saying “No.”

That explained it only a little better than my previous examples explained what they were supposed to be explaining, and I said I wouldn't get sidetracked again from whatever my intention was in doing this piece, which after getting sidetracked so much, I forget. What was it? To let something go? “Going to let my mind go,” I think I said, whatever that means. What does it, if that was it, the intention, for if it was, exact or otherwise, that “Going to let my mind go,” I now don't know. I read back but can't find it. I know it's there, but I read back too quickly, maybe because I just want to push on, not back, which also might have been my intention, or the only one. Sounds familiar. Was it? My intention, sole or one of? I ask Lucinda if she remembers if I mentioned what my intention was in starting out to get here, other than just to climb over the wall and be here, and she says “What?” “Nothing about my wanting to just push on or letting my mind go, or something else?” and she says “Not to me you didn't.” “Didn't mention it, you mean?” and she says “Far as I can remember, yes.”

Hell with it and the woods. I'm not going to push on if I don't know why I'm pushing on, though I don't see why I can't if I don't, but hell with it as I said. I realize all that could be an alibi of sorts. How so? That I just don't want to go through these woods yet, out of tiredness, disinterest, lack of courage, etcetera—normal reasons, in other words, so there it stands. What does? The issue, the issue.

“Let's go over,” I say, and she says “Where?” and I say The wall, of course,” and she says “Finally, because I thought you still might have meant the woods.” I say “To go over to the woods? What the hell would that mean if I'd said it?” and she says “Don't get testy again. I thought you might have meant it as another word for through them,” and I say “Why? Have you ever heard me use the word ‘over' that way before?” and she says “You never made up words that I know of, or used words in any way other than what they were meant for and people could easily understand, but I thought this time might have been the exception. It's obvious I shouldn't have thought that.” “You shouldn't have,” and she says “All right, so I shouldn't have and won't anymore, if it's going to irritate you so much, but let's go over in the way you said.” We go to the wall. I give her a boost. She makes it to the top, gets on her knees and stretches down and gives me her hand and I clasp it and she says “Ready?” and I nod, and she pulls me to the top.

We jump to the other side. She takes a deep breath and says “Don't you like it better over here?” and I say “No, I don't think so.” Then go back over, but without my help this time,” and I say “You know that anytime I want to, I could, because I don't need your help.” She says “Catch me,” and runs toward home, and I chase her and she lets me catch her and we roll on the grass and laugh and kiss and make love and then go home. At night, I come back and stare at the wall.