The Loibner-Waitkus Primer

ait

E H T

W er

bn

i o L

s u k

M I R

R E

P

1

Th is

pa ge an —P d sp age 2 ac ing —ha rea s b so een ns . P inte lea nt se ion tur all n t y le o t ft b he la ne nk xt for pa ge desi . gn

AN KP AG E

BL

2

for Liko

3

Th is

KP AG E

pa ge an —P d s ag pa e 4 cin — g r has ea be so ns en in .P lea tent se ion tur all n t y le o t ft he bla ne nk xt fo pa r d ge es . ign

AN

BL

4

It is not late? A late time to be living? Are not our generations the crucial ones? For we have changed the world. Are not our heightened times the important ones? For we have nuclear bombs. Are we not especially significant because our century is?—our century and its unique Holocaust, its refugee populations, its serial totalitarian exterminations; our century and its antibiotics, silicon chips, men on the moon, and spliced genes? No, we are not and it is not.

–Annie Dillard, For the Time Being

5

KP AG E

AN

ag e— an d s Pag pa e 6 cin — g r has ea be so ns en in .P lea tent se ion tur all n t y le o t ft he bla ne nk xt fo pa r d ge es . ign

is p

Th

BL

6

Table of Contents Lists of Other Works by Annie Dillard, Wendy McLeod & Kurt Vonnegut...........................8 “The Deer at Providencia” by Annie Dillard...............................................................................9 “A Writer in the World” by Annie Dillard...................................................................................13 “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard...................................................................................... 17 “Mnemonics” by Kurt Vonnegut................................................................................................. 21 “How to Write with Style” by Kurt Vonnegut..........................................................................23 “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston.......................................................................... 25 “The Leap” by James Dickey........................................................................................................31 “Adultery” by James Dickey........................................................................................................ 33 “Sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds.......................................................................................... 35 “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party” by Sharon Olds.................................................................36 “The Pope’s Penis” by Sharon Olds............................................................................................37 “The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb” by Sharon Olds...............................38 The House of Yes by Wendy MacLeod.......................................................................................39 Scene One.........................................................................................................................................................................................43 Scene Two......................................................................................................................................................................................... 50 Scene Three......................................................................................................................................................................................53 Scene Four.........................................................................................................................................................................................55 Scene Five..........................................................................................................................................................................................58 Scene Six............................................................................................................................................................................................. 72 Scene Seven.....................................................................................................................................................................................78 Scene Eight.......................................................................................................................................................................................82 Scene Nine.........................................................................................................................................................................................85 Scene Ten...........................................................................................................................................................................................87 Scene Eleven...................................................................................................................................................................................90 Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard..................................................................................................103 “Part One: Newborn and Salted”................................................................................................................................. 105 “Part Two: God’s Tooth”.......................................................................................................................................................110 “Part Three: Holy the Firm”................................................................................................................................................114 Quotations from Writers in This Primer.................................................................................120 The Elements of Style by William Strunk, Jr., & E.B. White.................................................121 From Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard...................................................................... 142 From For the Time Being by Annie Dillard............................................................................. 143 “Write Like Hemingway” by Allen Loibner-Waitkus.............................................................144 “Common Usage Problems” by Allen Loibner-Waitkus....................................................... 145 “Comma Commandments” by Allen Loibner-Waitkus......................................................... 147 Literary Terms...............................................................................................................................149 “ALW’s Life Tips” by Allen Loibner-Waitkus............................................................................151 Suggested Reading....................................................................................................................... 152 Colophon.........................................................................................................................................153

7

Books by Annie Dillard

Plays by Wendy MacLeod

Tickets for a Prayer Wheel (1974—poems) Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (1974—nonfiction narrative) Holy the Firm (1977—nonfiction narrative) Living by Fiction (1982—nonfiction narrative) Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982—narrative essays) Encounters with Chinese Writers (1984—nonfiction) An American Childhood (1987—memoir) The Writing Life (1989—nonfiction narrative) The Living (1992—novel) Mornings Like This (1995—found poems) For the Time Being (1999—nonfiction narrative) The Maytrees (2007—fiction) The Abundance (2016—selected and new essays)

Apocalyptic Butterflies (1987) The House of Yes (1990) The Shallow End and The Lost Colony (1992) Sin (1994) Schoolgirl Figure (1995) The Water Children (1997) Juvenilia (2003) Things Being What They Are (2003) Find and Sign (2012) The Ballad of Bonnie Prince Chucky (2014) Women in Jeopardy (2015) Slow Food (2015)

Books by Kurt Vonnegut Player Piano (1952—novel) The Sirens of Titan (1959—novel) Canary in a Cat House (1961—short fiction) Mother Night (1962—novel) The First Christmas Morning (1962—play) Cat’s Cradle (1963—novel) God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater (1965—novel) Welcome to the Monkey House (1968—short fiction) Fortitude (1968—play) Slaughterhouse-Five (1969—novel) Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1970—play) Between Time and Timbuktu (1972—play) Breakfast of Champion (1973—novel) Wampeters, Foma and Grandfalloons (1974—nonfiction) Slapstick (1976—novel) Jailbird (1979—novel) Palm Sunday (1981—nonfiction) Deadeye Dick (1982—novel) Galápagos (1985—novel) Stones, Times and Elements (1987—play) Bluebeard (1987—novel) Hocus Pocus (1990—novel) Fates Worse than Death (1991—nonfiction) Bagombo Snuff Box (1997—short fiction) Timequake (1997—novel) God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian (1999—short fiction) A Man Without a Country (2005—nonfiction) Armageddon in Retrospect (2008—short fiction) Look at the Birdie (2009—short fiction) While Mortals Sleep (2011—short fiction) We Are What We Pretend to Be (2012—short fiction) If This Isn’t Nice, What Is? (2013—nonfiction) Sucker’s Portfolio (2013—short fiction)

8

The Deer at Providencia a narrative essay by ANNIE DILLARD

There were four of us North Americans in the jungle, in the Ecuadorain jungle on the banks of the Napo River in the Amazon watershed. The other three were big-city men. We stayed in tents in one riverside village, and visited others. At the village called Providencia we saw a sight that moved us all, but shocked the men.

bruises bleeding inside the skin. Now three of its feet were hooked in the rope under its jaw. It could not stand, of course, on one leg, so it could not move to slacken the rope and ease the pull on its throat and enable it to rest its head.

Repeatedly the deer paused, motionless, its eyes veiled, with only its rib cage in motion, and its breaths the only sound. Then, after I would think, “It has given up; now it will die,” it would heave. The rope twanged; the leaves clattered; the deer’s free foot beat the ground again. We stepped back and held our breaths. It thrashed, kicking, but with only the one leg. The other three legs tightened inside the rope’s loop. Its hip jerked; its spine shook. Its eyes rolled; its tongue, thick with spit, pushed in and out. Then it rested again. We watched this for fifteen minutes.

At one point three young village boys charged in to release its trapped legs, then jumped back to the circle of people. But instantly the deer scratched up its neck with its hooves again and snared its forelegs right back in the rope. It was like Br’er Rabbit and the Tar Baby.

We watched the deer from the circle, and then we drifted on to lunch. Our palm-roofed shelter stood on a grassy promontory from which we could see the deer tied to the tree, pigs and hens walking under village houses, and black-and-white cattle standing in the river.

There was a slight breeze.

Lunch, which was the second and better lunch we had that day, was hot and fried. There was a big fish called doncella, a kind of catfish, dipped whole in corn flour and beaten egg, then deep-fried. With our fingers we pulled soft fragments of it from its sides to our plates, and ate; it was delicate fish-flesh, fresh and mild. Someone found the roe, and I ate that too—it was fat and stronger, like egg yolk, naturally enough, and warm.

There was also a stew of meat in shreds with rice and pale brown gravy. I had asked what kind of deer it was tied to the tree; Pepe had answered in Spanish, “Gama.” Now they told us this, too, was gama, stewed.

••• The first thing we saw when we climbed the riverbank to the village of Providencia was the deer. It was roped to a tree on the grass clearing near the thatch shelter where we would eat. The deer was small, about the size of a whitetail fawn, and apparently full-grown. It had a rope around its neck and three feet caught in the rope. Someone said that the dogs had caught it in the morning and the villagers were going to cook and eat it that night.

The clearing lay at the edge of the little thatchedhut village. We could see the villagers going on about their business, scattering feed corn for the hens near their homes, and wandering down paths to the river to bathe. The village headman was our host; he stood beside us as we watched the deer struggle. Several village boys were interested in the deer; they formed part of the circle we made around it in the clearing. So also did the four men from Quito who were guiding us around the jungle. Pepe was the real guide. Few of the very different people standing in this circle had a common language.

We watched the deer, and no one said much.

The deer lay on its side at the rope’s very end, so the rope lacked slack to let it rest its head in the dust. It was “pretty,” delicate of bone like all deer, and thin-skinned for the tropics. Its skin color looked virtually hairless, in fact, and almost translucent, like a membrane. Its neck was no thicker than my wrist; it had been rubbed open on the rope, and gashed. Trying to get itself free of the rope, the deer had cut its own neck with its hooves. The raw underside of its neck showed red stripes and some

9

I suspect the word means merely game. At any rate, I heard that the village dogs had cornered another deer just yesterday, and it was the deer which we were now eating in full sight of the whole article. It was good. I was surprised at its tenderness. But it is a fact that high levels of lactic acid, which builds up in muscle tissues during exertion, tenderizes.

After the fish and meat we ate bananas fried in chunks and served on a tray; they were sweet and full of flavor. I felt terrific. My shirt was wet and cool from swimming; I had had a night’s sleep, two decent walks, three meals, and a swim—everything tasted good.

From time to time, one or another of us would look beyond our shaded roof to the sunny spot where the deer was still convulsing in the dust. Finally, our meal completed, we walked around the deer and back to the boats.

agony like that.”

I nodded.

••• Now I am home. When I wake I comb my hair before the mirror above my dresser. Every morning for the past two years I see in that mirror, beside my sleep-softened face, the blackened face of a burnt man. It is a wire-service photograph clipped from a newspaper and taped to my mirror. The caption reads: “Alan McDonald in Miami hospital bed.” All you can see in the photograph is a smudged triangle of a face from his eyelids to his lower lip; the rest is bandages. You cannot see the expression in his eyes; the bandages shade them.

The story, headed “Man Burned for Second Time,” begins: “Why does God hate me? Alan McDonald asked from his hospital bed.

“When the gunpowder went off, I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I just couldn’t believe it. I said, ‘No, God couldn’t do this to me again.’”

He was in a burn ward in Miami, in serious condition. I do not even know if he lived. I wrote him a letter at the time, cringing.

He had been burned before, thirteen years previously, by flaming gasoline. For years he had been having his body restored and his face remade in dozens of operations. He had been a boy, and then a burnt boy. He had already been stunned by what could happen, by what life could veer.

Once I read that people who survive bad burns tend to go crazy; they have a high suicide rate. Medicine cannot ease their pain; drugs just leak away, soaking the sheets, because there is no skin to hold them in. The people just lie there and weep. Later they kill themselves. They had not known, before they were burned, that the world included such suffering, that life could permit them such pain.

This time a bowl of gunpowder had exploded on McDonald. “I didn’t realize what had happened at first,” he recounted. “And then I heard that sound from thirteen years ago. I was burning. I rolled to put the fire out and I thought, ‘Oh God, not again.’

“If my friend hadn’t been there, I would have jumped into a canal with a rock around my neck.”

••• That night I learned that while all of us had been watching the deer, the others were also watching me.

We four North Americans had grown close in the jungle in a way that was not the usual artificial intimacy of travelers. We liked one another. We stayed up all that night talking, murmuring, as though we rocked on hammocks slung above time. The others—from big cities: New York, Washington, Boston—remarked now on the lack of expression on my face earlier, as I watched the deer, or the lack, at any rate, of any expression they expected. They had looked to see how I, the youngest of us and the only woman, was taking the sight of the deer’s struggles. I look detached, I don’t know. I was thinking.

I remember feeling very old and energetic.

I might have said that, like Thoreau, I have traveled widely in Roanoke, Virginia. I eat meat. These things are not issues. They are mysteries.

Gentlemen of the city, what surprises you? That there is suffering here, or that I know it?

We lay in the tent and talked. “If it had been my wife,” one man said with special vigor, amazed, “she wouldn’t have cared what was going on; she would have dropped everything right at that moment and gone in the village from here to there, she would not have stopped until that animal was out of its suffering one way or another. She couldn’t bear to see a creature in

10

His wife concludes the piece, “Man, it just isn’t fair.”

•••

•••

When we walked by the deer at Providencia for the last time, I said to Pepe, with a glance at the deer, “Pobrecito”—”Poor little thing.” But I was trying out Spanish. I knew at the time it was a ridiculous thing to say.

I read the whole clipping every morning. This is the Big Time here, every minute of it. Will someone please explain to Alan McDonald in his dignity, to the deer at Providencia in his dignity, what is going on? And copy me on it.

11

President Barak Obama (above) holds Annie Dillard’s hand after awarding her the National Humanities Medal on 10 Sept. 2015.

Parker Posey (above) portrays Jackie-O in Wendy MacLeod’s The House of Yes. Oscar-nominated French-Canadian actress Geneviève Bujold (right) as Mrs. Pascal in The House of Yes.

Kurt Vonnegut (right) works on his most famous novel—Slaughterhouse-Five—around 1968

12

A Writer in the World a nonfiction narrative by ANNIE DILLARD

People love pretty much the same things best. A writer, though, looking for subjects asks not after what he loves best, but what he alone loves at all. Strange seizures best us. Frank Conroy loved his yo-yo tricks, Emily Dickinson her slant of light; Richard Selzer loves the glistening peritoneum; Faulkner, the muddy bottom of a little girl’s drawers just visible when she’s up a pear tree. “Each student of the ferns,” I read, “will have his own list of plants that for some reason or another stir his emotions.”

Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment. “The most demanding part of living a lifetime as an artist is the strict discipline of forcing oneself to work steadfastly along the nerve of one’s own most intimate sensitivity.” Anne Truitt, the sculptor, said this. Thoreau said it another way: Know your own bone. “Pursue, keep up with, circle round and round your life. . . . Know your own bone: gnaw at it, bury it, unearth it, and gnaw at it still.”

Write as if you were dying. At the same time, assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. That is, after all, the case. What would you begin writing if you knew you would die soon? What could you say to a dying person that would not enrage by its triviality?

Write about winter in the summer. Describe Norway as Ibsen did, from a desk in Italy; describe Dublin as James Joyce did, from a desk in Paris. Willa Cather wrote her prairie novels in New York City; Mark Twain wrote Huckleberry Finn in Hartford, Connecticut. Recently, scholars learned that Walt Whitman rarely left his room.

••• The writer studies literature, not the world. He lives in the world; he cannot miss it. If he has ever bought a hamburger, or taken a commercial airplane flight, he spares his readers a report of his experience. He is careful of what he reads, for that is what he will write. He is careful of what he learns, because that is what he will know.

The writer as a consequence reads outside his time and place. He reads great novels: Daniel Deronda, say, and the novels of James McBride. His nonconformity may be his only hope.

The writer knows his field—what has been done, what could be done, the limits—the way a tennis player knows the court. And he, too, plays the edges. That’s where the exhilaration is: He hits up the line. He pushes the edges. Beyond this limit, here, the reader must recoil. Reason balks, poetry snaps, some madness enters, or strain. Now courageously and carefully, can he enlarge it? Can he nudge the bounds? And enclose what wild power?

The body of literature, with its limits and edges, exists outside some people and inside others. Only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. In working-class France, when an apprentice got hurt, or when he got tired, the experienced workers said, “It is the trade entering his body.” The art must enter the body too. A painter cannot use paint like glue or screws to fasten down the world. The tubes of paint are like fingers; they work only if, inside the painter, the neural pathways are wide and clear to the brain.

Cell by cell, molecule by molecule, atom by atom, part of the brain changes physical shape to fit the paint.

You adapt yourself, Paul Klee said, to the contents of the paint-box. Adapting yourself to the contents of the paintbox, he said, is more important than nature and its study. The painter, in other words, does not fit the paints to the world. He most certainly does not fit the

13

world to himself. He fits himself to the paint. The self is the servant who bears the paintbox and its inherited contents. Klee called this insight, quite rightly, “an altogether revolutionary new discovery.”

••• It makes more sense to write one big book—a novel or nonfiction narrative—than to write many stories or essays. Into a long, ambitious project you can fit or pour all you possess and learn. A project that takes five years will accumulate those years’ inventions and richnesses.

Much of those years’ reading will feed the work. Further, writing sentences is difficult whatever their subject. It is no less difficult to write sentences in a recipe than sentences in Moby-Dick. So you might as well write Moby-Dick. Similarly, since every original work requires a unique form, it is more prudent to struggle with the outcomes of only one form—that of a long work—than to struggle with the many forms comprising a collection.

Each chapter of a prolonged narrative is problematic, too, of course, and the writer undergoes trials as the structure collapses and coheres by turns—but at least the labor is not all on spec. The chapter already has a context: a tone, setting, characters. The work is already off the ground. You must carry the reader along, of course, but you need not, after the first chapters, bear him aloft while performing a series of tricky introductions.

••• A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer?”

“Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know. . . . Do you like sentences?”

The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old, and do I like sentences?

If he had liked sentences, of course, he could have begun, like a joyful painter I knew. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, “I liked the smell of the paint.”

••• Hemingway studied, as models, the novels of Knut Hamsun and Ivan Turgenev. Isaac Bashevis Singer, as it happened, also chose Hamsun and Turgenev as models.

Ralph Ellison studied Hemingway and Gertrude Stein.

Thoreau loved Homer; Eudora Welty loved Chekhov.

Faulkner described his debt to Sherwood Anderson and Joyce; E. M. Forster, his debt to Jane Austen and Proust.

By contrast, if you ask a twenty-one-year-old poet whose poetry he likes, he might say, unblushing, “Nobody’s.” In his youth, he has not yet understood that poets like poetry, and novelists like novels; he himself likes only the role, the thought of himself in a hat.

Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gauguin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills.

They loved the range of material they used, the work’s possibilities excited them; the field’s complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and they produced complex bodies of work that endure. Then, and only then, the world maybe flapped at them some sort of hat, which, if they were still living, they ignored as well as they could, to keep at their tasks.

••• Writing every book, the writer must solve two problems: Can it be done? and, Can I do it? Every book has an intrinsic impossibility that its writer discovers as soon as his first excitement fades. The problem is structural; it is insoluble; it is why no one can ever write this book.

Complex stories, essays, and poems have this problem, too—the prohibitive structural defect the writer wishes he’d never noticed. He writes it in spite of that. He finds ways to minimize the difficulty; he strengthens other virtues; he cantilevers the whole narrative out into thin air, and it holds. If it can be done, then he can do it, and only he. For there is nothing in this material that suggests to anyone but him its possibilities for meaning and feeling.

••• Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened, and its deepest mystery probed?

14

Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages his intellect and heart—and our own? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms?

Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaning, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than the power which, from time to time, seizes our lives and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking. We should amass half-dressed in long lines like tribesmen and shake gourds at one another, to wake up; instead we watch television and miss the show.

And if we are reading for these things—and only if—why would any of us read books with advertising slogans and brand names in them? Why would anyone write such books? Commercial intrusion has overrun and crushed, like the last glaciation, a humane landscape. The new landscape and its climate put metaphysics on the run. Must writers collaborate? Well, in fact, the novel as a form has only rarely been metaphysical; usually it presents society as it is. The novel often aims to fasten down the spirit of its time, to make a heightened simulacrum of our recognizable world in order to present it shaped and analyzed. This has never seemed to me worth doing, but it is certainly one thing literature has always done. Writers attracted to metaphysics can simply ignore the commercial blare, as if it were a radio, or use historical settings, or flee to nonfiction or poetry.

Quality is a very horrible, tart, hard, dark and cold Attraction or Drawing together, like Winter, when there is a fierce, bitter cold Frost, when Water is frozen into Ice, and besides is very intolerable.

If you can dissect out the very intolerable, tart, hard, terribly sharp Pith or Kernel, and begin writing the book compressed therein, the sensation changes. Now it feels like alligator wrestling, at the level of the sentence.

This is your life. You are a Seminole alligator wrestler.

Half-naked, with your two bare hands, you hold and fight a sentence’s head while its tail tries to knock you over.

Several years ago in Florida, an alligator wrestler lost. He was grappling with an alligator in a lagoon in front of a paying crowd. The crowd watched the young Seminole and the alligator twist belly to belly in and out of the water; after one plunge, they failed to rise. A writer named Lorne Ladner described it. Bubbles came up on the water. Then blood came up, and the water stilled. As the minutes elapsed, the people in the crowd exchanged glances; silent, helpless, they quit the stands. It took the Seminoles a week to find the man’s remains.

At its best, the sensation of writing is that of any unmerited grace. It is handed to you, but only if you look for it. You search, you break your heart, your back, your brain, and then—and only then—it is handed to you.

From the corner of your eye you see motion. Something is moving through the air and headed your way, on two white wings. It flies directly at you; you can read your name on it. If it were a baseball, you’d hit it out of the park. It is that one pitch in a thousand you see in slow motion; its wings beat slowly as a hawk’s.

One line of a sonnet, the poet said—only one line of fourteen, but thank God for that one line drops from the ceiling.

••• The sensation of writing a book is the sensation of spinning, blinded by love and daring. It is the sensation of rearing and peering from the bent tip of a grass-blade, looking for a route. At its absurd worst, it feels like what mad Jacob Boehme, the German mystic, described in his first book. He was writing incoherently as usual, about the source of evil. The passage here, though, will serve as well for the source of books.

The whole Deity has in its innermost or beginning Birth, the Pith or Kernel, a very tart, terrible Sharpness, in which the astringent

••• Push it. Examine all things intensely and relentlessly. Probe and search each object in a piece of art. Do not leave it, do not course over it as if it were understood, but instead follow it down until you see it in the mystery of its own specificity and strength. Giacometti’s drawings and paintings show both his bewilderment and persistence. If he had not acknowledged his bewilderment, he would not have persisted. A twentieth-cen-

15

tury master of drawing, Rico Lebrun, taught that “the draftsman must aggress; only by persistent assault will the live image capitulate and give up its secret to an unrelenting line.” Who but an artist fierce to know—not fierce to seem to know—would suppose that a live image possessed a secret? The artist is willing to give all his or her strength and life to probing with blunt instruments those same secrets no one can describe in any way but with those instruments’ faint tracks.

Admire the world for never ending on you—as you would admire an opponent, without taking your eyes from him, or walking away.

One of the few things I know about writing is this: Spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every

time. Don’t hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The very impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful; it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly be—comes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.

After Michelangelo died, someone found in his studio a piece of paper on which he had written a note to his apprentice, in the handwriting of his old age: “Draw, Antonio, draw, Antonio, draw and do not waste time.”

16

Living Like Weasels

a nonfiction essay by ANNIE DILLARD

A weasel is wild. Who knows what he thinks? He sleeps in his under- ground den, his tail draped over his nose. Sometimes he lives in his den for two days without leaving. Outside, he stalks rabbits, mice, muskrats, and birds, killing more bodies than he can eat warm, and often dragging the carcasses home. Obedient to instinct, he bites his prey at the neck, either splitting the jugular vein at the throat or crunching the brain at the base of the skull, and he does not let go. One naturalist refused to kill a weasel who was socketed into his hand deeply as a rattlesnake. The man could in no way pry the tiny weasel off, and he had to walk half a mile to water, the weasel dangling from his palm, and soak him off like a stubborn label.

And once, says Ernest Thompson Seton—once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won.

I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant?

Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful air- borne bones?

middle of it, merely dampening their hooves; from the distant shore they look like miracle itself, complete with miracle’s nonchalance. Now, in summer, the steers are gone. The water lilies have blossomed and spread to a green horizontal plane that is terra firma to plodding blackbirds, and tremulous ceiling to black leeches, crayfish, and carp.

This is, mind you, suburbia. It is a five-minute walk in three directions to rows of houses, though none is visible here. There’s a 55-mph highway at one end of the pond, and a nesting pair of wood ducks at the other. Under every bush is a muskrat hole or a beer can. The far end is an alternating series of fields and woods, fields and woods, threaded every- where with motorcycle tracks—in whose bare clay wild turtles lay eggs.

So. I had crossed the highway, stepped over two low barbed-wire fences, and traced the motorcycle path in all gratitude through the wild rose and poison ivy of the pond’s shoreline up into high grassy fields. Then I cut down through the woods to the mossy fallen tree where I sit. This tree is excellent. It makes a dry, upholstered bench at the upper, marshy end of the pond, a plush jetty raised from the thorny shore between a shallow blue body of water and a deep blue body of sky.

The sun had just set. I was relaxed on the tree trunk, ensconced in the lap of lichen, watching the lily pads at my feet tremble and part dreamily over the thrusting path of a carp. A yellow bird appeared to my right and flew behind me. It caught my eye; I swiveled around— and the next instant, inexplicably, I was looking down at a weasel, who was looking up at me.

••• I have been reading about weasels be- cause I saw one last week. I startled a weasel who startled me, and we exchanged a long glance.

Twenty minutes from my house, through the woods by the quarry and across the high- way, is Hollins Pond, a remarkable piece of shallowness, where I like to go at sunset and sit on a tree trunk. Hollins Pond is also called Murray’s Pond; it covers two acres of bottom- land near Tinker Creek with six inches of water and six thousand lily pads. In winter, brown-and-white steers stand in the

••• Weasel! I’d never seen one wild before. He was ten inches long, thin as a curve, a muscled ribbon, brown as fruitwood, soft-furred, alert. His face was fierce, small and pointed as a lizard’s; he would have made a good arrowhead.

17

There was just a dot of chin, maybe two brown hairs’ worth, and then the pure white fur began that spread down his underside. He had two black eyes I didn’t see, any more than you see a window.

The weasel was stunned into stillness as he was emerging from beneath an enormous shaggy wild rose bush four feet away. I was stunned into stillness twisted backward on the tree trunk. Our eyes locked, and someone threw away the key.

Our look was as if two lovers, or deadly enemies, met unexpectedly on an overgrown path when each had been thinking of some- thing else: a clearing blow to the gut. It was also a bright blow to the brain, or a sudden beating of brains, with all the charge and inti- mate grate of rubbed balloons. It emptied our lungs. It felled the forest, moved the fields, and drained the pond; the world dismantled and tumbled into that black hole of eyes. If you and I looked at each other that way, our skulls would split and drop to our shoulders. But we don’t. We keep our skulls. So. He disappeared. This was only last week, and already I don’t remember what shattered the enchantment. I think I blinked, I think I retrieved my brain from the weasel’s brain, and tried to memorize what I was seeing, and the weasel felt the yank of separation, the careening splash-down into real life and the urgent current of instinct. He vanished under the wild rose. I waited motionless, my mind suddenly full of data and my spirit with pleadings, but he didn’t return.

Please do not tell me about “approach-avoidance conflicts.” I tell you I’ve been in that weasel’s brain for sixty seconds, and he was in mine. Brains are private places, muttering through unique and secret tapes— but the weasel and I both plugged into another tape simultaneously, for a sweet and shocking time. Can I help it if it was a blank?

What goes on in his brain the rest of the time? What does a weasel think about? He won’t say. His journal is tracks in clay, a spray of feathers, mouse blood and bone: uncollected, unconnected, loose leaf, and blown.

“Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single.

Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received.

Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein.”

••• I would like to learn, or remember, how to live. I come to Hollins Pond not so much to learn how to live as, frankly, to forget about it. That is, I don’t think I can

18

learn from a wild animal how to live in particular—shall I suck warm blood, hold my tail high, walk with my footprints precisely over the prints of my hands?—but I might learn something of mindlessness, something of the purity of living in the physical sense and the dignity of living without bias or motive. The weasel lives in necessity and we live in choice, hating necessity and dying at the last ignobly in its talons. I would like to live as I should, as the weasel lives as he should. And I suspect that for me the way is like the weasel’s: open to time and death painlessly, noticing everything, remembering nothing, choosing the given with a fierce and pointed will.

I missed my chance. I should have gone for the throat. I should have lunged for that streak of white under the weasel’s chin and held on, held on through mud and into the wild rose, held on for a dearer life. We could live under the wild rose wild as weasels, mute and uncomprehending. I could very calmly go wild. I could live two days in the den, curled, leaning on mouse fur, sniffing bird bones, blinking, licking, breathing musk, my hair tangled in the roots of grasses. Down is a good place to go, where the mind is single. Down is out, out of your ever-loving mind and back to your careless senses. I remember muteness as a prolonged and giddy fast, where every moment is a feast of utterance received. Time and events are merely poured, unremarked, and ingested directly, like blood pulsed into my gut through a jugular vein. Could two live that way? Could two live under the wild rose, and explore by the pond, so that the smooth mind of each is as everywhere present to the other, and as received and as unchallenged, as falling snow?

We could, you know. We can live any way we want.

People take vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience— even of silence—by choice. The thing is to stalk your calling in a certain skilled and supple way, to locate the most tender and live spot and plug into that pulse. This is yielding, not fighting. A weasel doesn’t “attack” anything; a weasel lives as he’s meant to, yielding at every moment to the perfect freedom of single necessity.

“I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part.”

••• I think it would be well, and proper, and obedient, and pure, to grasp your one necessity and not let it go, to dangle from it limp wherever it takes you. Then even

19

death, where you’re going no matter how you live, cannot you part. Seize it and let it seize you up aloft even, till your eyes burn out and drop; let your musky flesh fall off in shreds, and let your very bones unhinge and scat-

ter, loosened over fields, over fields and woods, lightly, thought- less, from any height at all, from as high as eagles.

20

Mnemonics

a short story by KURT VONNEGUT

Alfred Moorhead dropped the report into his Out basket, and smiled to think that he had been able to check something for facts without referring to records and notes. Six weeks before, he couldn’t have done it.

Now, since he had attempted the company’s two-day Memory Clinic, names, facts, and numbers clung to his memory like burdocks to an Airedale. The clinic had, in fact, indirectly cleared up just about every major problem in his uncomplicated life, save one—his inability to break the ice with his secretary, Ellen, whom he had silently adored for two years. . . .

“Mnemonics is the art of improving the memory,” the clinics instructor had begun. “It makaes use of two elementary psychological facts: You remember things that interest you longer than things that don’t, and pictures stick in your mind better than isolated facts do. I’ll show you what I mean. We’ll use Mr. Moorhead for our guinea pig.”

Alfred had shifted uncomfortably as the Mann read off a nonsensical list and told him to memorize it: “Smoke, oak tree sedan, bottle, oriole.” The instructor had talked about something else, then pointed to Alfred.

“Mr. Moorhead, the list.”

“Smoke, oriole, uh—” Alfred had shrugged.

“Don’t be discouraged. You’re perfectly normal,” the instructor had said. “But let’s see if we can’t help you do a little better. Let’s build an image, something pleasant, something we’d like to remember. Smoke, oak tree, sedan—I see a man relaxing under a leafy oak tree.

He is smoking a pipe, and in the background is his car, a yellow sedan. See it, Mr. Moorhead?”

“Uh-huh.” Alfred had seen it.

“Good. Now for ‘bottle’ and ‘oriole.’ By the man’s side is a vacuum bottle of iced coffee, and an oriole is singing on a branch overhead. There, we can remember that happy picture without any trouble, eh?” Alfred had nodded uncertainly. The instructor had gone on to other matters, then challenged him again.

“Smoke, sedan, bottle, uh—” Alfred had avoided the

instructor’s eyes.

When the snickering of the class had subsided, the instructor had said, “I suppose you think Mr. Moorhead has proved that mnemonics is bunk. Not at all. He has helped me to make another important point. The images used to help memory vary widely from person to person. Mr. Moorhead’s personality is clearly different than mine. I shouldn’t have forced my images on him. I’ll repeat the list, Mr. Moorhead, and this time I want you to build a picture of your own.”

At the end of the class, the instructor had called on Alfred again. Alfred had rattled the list off as though it were the alphabet.

The technique was so good, Alfred had reflected, that he would be able to recall the meaningless list for the rest of his life. He could still see himself and Rita Hayworth sharing a cigarette beneath a giant oak. He filled her glass from a bottle of excellent wine, and as she drank, an oriole brushed her cheek with its wing.

Then Alfred kissed her. As for “sedan,” he had lent it to Aly Khan5.

Rewards for his new faculty had been splendid and immediate. The promotion had unquestionably come from his filing-cabinet command of business details.

His boss, Ralph L. Thriller, had said, “Moorhead, I didn’t know it was possible for a man to change as much as you have in a few weeks. Wonderful!”

His happiness was unbroken—except by his melancholy relationship with his secretary. While his memory worked like a mousetrap, paralysis still gripped him whenever he thought of mentioning love to the serene brunette.

Alfred sighed and picked up a sheaf of invoices.

The first was addressed to the Davenport Spot-welding Company. He closed his eyes and a shimmering tableau appeared. He had composed it two days previous, when Mr. Thriller had given him special instructions. Two davenports faced each other. Lana Turner⁸, sheathed in a tight-fitting leopard skin, lay on one. On the other was

21

Jane Russell⁹, in a sarong10 made of telegrams. Both of them blew kisses to Alfred, who contemplated them for a moment, then reluctantly let them fade.

He scribbled a note to Ellen: Please make sure Davenport Spot-welding Company and Davenport Wine and Cable Company have not been confused in our billing. Six weeks before, the matter would certainly have slipped his mind. I love you, he added, and then carefully crossed it out with a long black rectangle of ink.

In one way, his memory was a curse. By freeing him from hours of searching through filing cabinets, it gave him that much more time to worry about Ellen. The richest moments in his life were and had been—even before the Memory Clinic—his daydreams. The most delicious of these featured Ellen. Were he to give her the opportunity to turn him down, and she most certainly would, she could never appear in his fantasies again. Alfred couldn’t bring himself to risk that.

The telephone rang. “It’s Mr. Thriller,” said Ellen.

“Moorhead,” said Mr. Thriller, “I’ve got a lot of little stuff piled up on me. Could you take some of it over?”

“Glad to, chief. Shoot.”

“Got a pencil?”

“Nonsense, chief,” said Alfred.

“No, I mean it,” said Mr. Thriller grimly. “I’d feel better if you wrote this down. There’s an awful lot of stuff.”

Alfred’s pen had gone dry, and he couldn’t lay his hands on a pencil without getting up, so he lied. “Okay, got one. Shoot.”

“First of all, we’re getting a lot of subcontracts on big defense jobs, and a new series of code numbers is going to be used for these jobs. Any number beginning with Sixteen A will designate that it’s one of them. Better wire11 all our plants about it.”

In Alfred’s mind, Ava Gardner12 executed a smart manual of arms13 with a rifle. Emblazoned on her sweat-

er was a large 16A. “Right, chief.”

“And I’ve got a memo here from . . .”

Fifteen minutes later, Alfred perspiring freely, said, “Right, chief,” for the forty-third time and hung up. Before his mind’s eye was a pageant to belittle the most flamboyant dreams of Cecil B. DeMille. Ranged about Alfred was every woman motion picture star he had ever seen, and each brandished or wore or carried or sat astride something Alfred could be fired for forgetting.

The image was colossal, and the slightest disturbance might knock it to smithereen. He had to get to pencil and paper before tragedy struck. He crossed the room like a game-stalker, hunched, noiselessly.

“Mr. Moorhead, are you all right?” said Ellen, alarmed.

“Mmm. Mmm!” said Alfred, frowning.

He reached the pencil and pad, and exhaled. The picture was fogging, but it was still there. Alfred considered the ladies one by one, wrote down their messages, and allowed them to dissolve.

As their numbers decreased, he began to slow their exits in order to savor them. Now Ann Sheridan, the next-to-the-last in line, astride a western pony, tapped him on the forehead with a lightbulb to remind him of the name of an important contact at General Electric— Mr. Bronk. She blushed under his gaze, dismounted, and dissolved.

The last stood before him, clutching a sheaf of papers. Alfred was stumped. The papers seemed to be the only clue, and they recalled nothing. He reached out and clasped her to him. “Now, baby,” he murmured, “what’s on your mind?”

Oh, Mr. Moorhead,” sighed Ellen.

“Oh, gosh!” said Alfred, freeing her. “Ellen—I’m sorry, I forgot myself.”

“Well, praise be, you finally remembered me.”

22

How to Write with Style an obscure 1985 essay by KURT VONNEGUT 2. Do not ramble, though.

I won’t ramble on about that.

Newspaper reporters and technical writers are trained to reveal almost nothing about themselves in their writings. This makes them freaks in the world of writers, since almost all of the other ink-stained wretches in that world reveal a lot about themselves to readers.

We call these revelations, accidental and intentional, elements of style.

These revelations tell us as readers what sort of person it is with whom we are spending time. Does the writer sound ignorant or informed, stupid or bright, crooked or honest, humorless or playful—? And on and on.

Why should you examine your writing style with the idea of improving it? Do so as a mark of respect for your readers, whatever you’re writing. If you scribble your thoughts any which way, your readers will surely feel that you care nothing about them. They will mark you down as an egomaniac or a chowderhead—or, worse, they will stop reading you.

The most damning revelation you can make about yourself is that you do not know what is interesting and what is not. Don’t you yourself like or dislike writers mainly for what they choose to show you or make you think about? Did you ever admire an emptyheaded writer for his or her mastery of the language? No. So your own winning style must begin with ideas in your head.

3. Keep it simple.

As for your use of language: Remember that two great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. “To be or not to be?” asks Shakespeare’s Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story “Eveline” is this one: “She was tired.” At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do.

Simplicity of language is not only reputable, but perhaps even sacred. The Bible opens with a sentence well within the writing skills of a lively fourteen-year-old: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.”

4. Have guts to cut.

It may be that you, too, are capable of making necklaces for Cleopatra, so to speak. But your eloquence should be the servant of the ideas in your head. Your rule might be this: If a sentence, no matter how excellent, does not illuminate your subject in some new and useful way, scratch it out.

1. Find a subject you care about.

Find a subject you care about and which you in your heart feel others should care about. It is this genuine caring, and not your games with language, which will be the most compelling and seductive element in your style.

I am not urging you to write a novel, by the way—although I would not be sorry if you wrote one, provided you genuinely cared about something. A petition to the mayor about a pothole in front of your house or a love letter to the girl next door will do.

5. Sound like yourself.

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was Conrad’s third language, and much that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as

23

unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens to not be standard English, and if it shows itself when your write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to write like cultivated Englishmen of a century or more ago.

6. Say what you mean.

I used to be exasperated by such teachers, but am no more. I understand now that all those antique essays and stories with which I was to compare my own work were not magnificent for their datedness or foreignness, but for saying precisely what their authors meant them to say. My teachers wished me to write accurately, always selecting the most effective words, and relating the words to one another unambiguously, rigidly, like parts of a machine. The teachers did not want to turn me into an Englishman after all. They hoped that I would become understandable—and therefore understood. And there went my dream of doing with words what Pablo Picasso did with paint or what any number of jazz idols did with music. If I broke all the rules of punctuation, had words mean whatever I wanted them to mean, and strung them together higgledy-piggledy, I would simply not be understood. So you, too, had better avoid Picasso-style or jazz-style writing, if you have something worth saying and wish to be understood.

Readers want our pages to look very much like pages

they have seen before. Why? This is because they themselves have a tough job to do, and they need all the help they can get from us.

7. Pity the readers.

They have to identify thousands of little marks on paper, and make sense of them immediately. They have to read, an art so difficult that most people don’t really master it even after having studied it all through grade school and high school—twelve long years.

So this discussion must finally acknowledge that our stylistic options as writers are neither numerous nor glamorous, since our readers are bound to be such imperfect artists. Our audience requires us to be sympathetic and patient readers, ever willing to simplify and clarify—whereas we would rather soar high above the crowd, singing like nightingales.

That is the bad news. The good news is that we Americans are governed under a unique Constitution, which allows us to write whatever we please without fear of punishment. So the most meaningful aspect of our styles, which is what we choose to write about, is utterly unlimited.

8. For really detailed advice...

For a discussion of literary style in a narrower sense, in a more technical sense, I recommend to your attention The Elements of Style, by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White. E.B. White is, of course, one of the most admirable literary stylists this country has so far produced.

You should realize, too, that no one would care how well or badly Mr. White expressed himself, if he did not have perfectly enchanting things to say.

24

In Sum: 1. Find a subject you care about.

2. Do not ramble, though.

3. Keep it simple.

4. Have guts to cut.

5. Sound like yourself.

6. Say what you mean.

7. Pity the readers

The Gilded Six-Bits

a short story by ZORA NEALE HURSTON

It was a Negro yard around a Negro house in a Negro settlement that looked to the payroll of the G. and G. Fertilizer works for its support.

But there was something happy about the place.

The front yard was parted in the middle by a sidewalk from gate to doorstep, a sidewalk edged on either side by quart bottles driven neck down into the ground on a slant. A mess of homey flowers planted without a plan but blooming cheerily from their helter-skelter places.

The fence and house were whitewashed. The porch and steps scrubbed white.

The front door stood open to the sunshine so that the floor of the front room could finish drying after its weekly scouring. It was Saturday. Everything clean from the front gate to the privy house. Yard raked so that the strokes of the rake would make a pattern. Fresh newspaper cut in fancy edge on the kitchen shelves.

Missie May was bathing herself in the galvanized washtub in the bedroom. Her dark-brown skin glistened under the soapsuds that skittered down from her washrag. Her stiff young breasts thrust forward aggressively, like broad-based cones with the tips lacquered in black.

She heard men’s voices in the distance and glanced at the dollar clock on the dresser.

“Humph! Ah’m way behind time t’day! Joe gointer be heah ‘fore Ah git mah clothes on if Ah don’t make haste.”

She grabbed the clean mealsack at hand and dried herself hurriedly and began to dress. But before she could tie her slippers, there came the ring of singing metal on wood. Nine times.

Missie May grinned with delight. She had not seen the big tall man come stealing in the gate and creep up the walk grinning happily at the joyful mischief he was about to commit. But she knew that it was her husband throwing silver dollars in the door for her to pick up and pile beside her plate at dinner. It was this way every Saturday afternoon. The nine dollars hurled into the open

door, he scurried to a hiding place behind the Cape jasmine bush and waited.

Missie May promptly appeared at the door in mock alarm.

“Who dat chunkin’ money in mah do’way?” she demanded. No answer from the yard. She leaped off the porch and began to search the shrubbery. She peeped under the porch and hung over the gate to look up and down the road. While she did this, the man behind the jasmine darted to the chinaberry tree. She spied him and gave chase.

“Nobody ain’t gointer be chunkin’ money at me and Ah not do ‘em nothin’,” she shouted in mock anger.

He ran around the house with Missie May at his heels.

She overtook him at the kitchen door. He ran inside but could not close it after him before she crowded in and locked with him in a rough-and-tumble. For several minutes the two were a furious mass of male and female energy. Shouting, laughing, twisting, turning, tussling, tickling each other in the ribs; Missie May clutching onto Joe and Joe trying, but not too hard, to get away.

“Missie May, take yo’ hand out mah pocket!” Joe shouted out between laughs.

“Ah ain’t, Joe, not lessen you gwine gimme whateve’ it is good you got in yo’ pocket. Turn it go, Joe, do Ah’ll tear yo’ clothes.”

“Go on tear ‘em. You de one dat pushes de needles round heah. Move yo’ hand, Missie May.” “Lemme git dat paper sak out yo’ pocket. Ah bet it’s candy kisses.”

“Tain’t. Move yo’ hand. Woman ain’t got no business in a man’s clothes nohow. Go way.”

Missie May gouged way down and gave an upward jerk and triumphed.

“Unhhunh! Ah got it! It ‘tis so candy kisses. Ah knowed you had somethin’ for me in yo’ clothes. Now Ah got to see whut’s in every pocket you got.”

Joe smiled indulgently and let his wife go through all of his pockets and take out the things that he had

25

hidden for her to find. She bore off the chewing gum, the cake of sweet soap, the pocket handkerchief as if she had wrested them from him, as if they had not been bought for the sake of this friendly battle.

“Whew! dat play-fight done got me all warmed up!”

Joe exclaimed. “Got me some water in de kittle?”

“Yo’ water is on de fire and yo’ clean things is cross de bed. Hurry up and wash yo’self and git changed so we kin eat. Ah’m hongry.” As Missie said this, she bore the steaming kettle into the bedroom.

“You ain’t hongry, sugar,” Joe contradicted her.

“Youse jes’ a little empty. Ah’m de one whut’s hongry.

Ah could eat up camp meetin’, back off ‘ssociation, and drink Jurdan dry. Have it on de table when Ah git out de tub.”

ice cream parlor at, Joe?” “A new man done come heah from Chicago and he done got a place and took and opened it up for a ice cream parlor, and bein’, as it’s real swell, Ah wants you to be one de first ladies to walk in dere and have some set down.”

“Do Jesus, Ah ain’t knowed nothin’ bout it. Who de man done it?”

“Mister Otis D. Slemmons, of spots and places--Memphis, Chicago, Jacksonville, Philadelphia and so on.”

“Dat heavyset man wid his mouth full of gold teeths?”

“Yeah. Where did you see ‘im at?”

“Ah went down to de sto’ tuh git a box of lye and Ah seen ‘im standin’ on de corner talkin’ to some of de mens, and Ah come on back and went to scrubbin’ de floor, and he passed and tipped his hat whilst Ah was scourin’ de steps. Ah thought Ah never seen him befo’.”

Joe smiled pleasantly. “Yeah, he’s up-to-date. He got de finest clothes Ah ever seen on a colored man’s back.”

“Aw, he don’t look no better in his clothes than you do in yourn. He got a puzzlegut on ‘im and he so chuckleheaded he got a pone behind his neck.”

Joe looked down at his own abdomen and said wistfully: “Wisht Ah had a build on me lak he got. He ain’t puzzlegutted, honey. He jes’ got a corperation. Dat make ‘m look lak a rich white man. All rich mens is got some belly on ‘em.”

“Ah seen de pitchers of Henry Ford and he’s a sparebuilt man and Rockefeller look lak he ain’t got but one gut. But Ford and Rockefeller and dis Slemmons and all de rest kin be as many-gutted as dey please, Ah’s satisfied wid you jes’ lak you is, baby. God took pattern after a pine tree and built you noble. Youse a pritty man, and if Ah knowed any way to make you mo’ pritty still Ah’d take and do it.”

Joe reached over gently and toyed with Missie May’s ear. “You jes’ say dat cause you love me, but Ah know Ah can’t hold no light to Otis D. Slemmons. Ah ain’t never been nowhere and Ah ain’t got nothin’ but you.”

Missie May got on his lap and kissed him and he kissed back in kind. Then he went on. “All de womens is crazy ‘bout ‘im everywhere he go.”

“How you know dat, Joe?”

“Don’t you mess wid mah business, man. You git in yo’ clothes. Ah’m a real wife, not no dress and breath. Ah might not look lak one, but if you burn me, you won’t git a thing but wife ashes.”

Joe splashed in the bedroom and Missie May fanned around in the kitchen. A fresh red-and-white checked cloth on the table. Big pitcher of buttermilk beaded with pale drops of butter from the churn. Hot fried mullet, crackling bread, ham hock atop a mound of string beans and new potatoes, and perched on the windowsill a pone of spicy potato pudding.

Very little talk during the meal but that little consisted of banter that pretended to deny affection but in reality flaunted it. Like when Missie May reached for a second helping of the tater pone. Joe snatched it out of her reach.

After Missie May had made two or three unsuccessful grabs at the pan, she begged, “Aw, Joe, gimme some mo’ dat tater pone.”

“Nope, sweetenin’ is for us menfolks. Y’all pritty lil frail eels don’t need nothin’ lak dis. You too sweet already.”

“Please, Joe.” “Naw, naw. Ah don’t want you to git no sweeter than whut you is already. We goin’ down de road a lil piece t’night so you go put on yo’ Sunday-go-to-meetin’ things.”

Missie May looked at her husband to see if he was playing some prank. “Sho nuff, Joe?” “Yeah. We goin’ to de ice cream parlor.” “Where de

26

“He tole us so hisself.”

“Dat don’t make it so. His mouf is cut crossways, ain’t it? Well, he kin lie jes’ lak anybody else.”

“Good Lawd, Missie! You womens sho is hard to sense into things. He’s got a five-dollar gold piece for a stickpin and he got a ten-dollar gold piece on his watch chain and his mouf is jes’ crammed full of gold teeths.

Sho wisht it wuz mine. And whut make it so cool, he got money ‘cumulated. And womens give it all to ‘im.”

“Ah don’t see whut de womens see on ‘im. Ah wouldn’t give ‘im a wink if de sheriff wuz after ‘im.”

“Well, he tole us how de white womens in Chicago give ‘im all dat gold money. So he don’t ‘low nobody to touch it at all. Not even put day finger on it. Dey told ‘im not to. You kin make ‘miration at it, but don’t tetch it.”

“Whyn’t he stay up dere where dey so crazy ‘bout ‘im?”

“Ah reckon dey done made ‘im vast-rich and he wants to travel some. He says dey wouldn’t leave ‘im hit a lick of work. He got mo’ lady people crazy ‘bout him than he kin shake a stick at.”

“Joe, Ah hates to see you so dumb. Dat stray nigger jes’ tell y’all anything and y’all b’lieve it.”

“Go ‘head on now, honey, and put on yo’ clothes.

He talkin’ ‘bout his pritty womens--Ah want ‘im to see mine.”

Missie May went off to dress and Joe spent the time trying to make his stomach punch out like Slemmons’s middle. He tried the rolling swagger of the stranger, but found that his tall bone-and-muscle stride fitted ill with it. He just had time to drop back into his seat before Missie May came in dressed to go.

On the way home that night Joe was exultant.

“Didn’t Ah say ole Otis was swell? Can’t he talk Chicago talk? Wuzn’t dat funny whut he said when great big fat ole Ida Armstrong come in? He asted me, ‘Who is dat broad wid de forte shake?’ Dat’s a new word. Us always thought forty was a set of figgers but he showed us where it means a whole heap of things. Sometimes he don’t say forty, he jes’ say thirty- eight and two and dat mean de same thing. Know whut he told me when Ah wuz payin’ for our ice cream? He say, ‘Ah have to hand it to you, Joe. Dat wife of yours is jes’ thirty-eight and two.

Yessuh, she’s forte!’ Ain’t he killin’?”

“He’ll do in case of a rush. But he sho is got uh heap

uh gold on ‘im. Dat’s de first time Ah ever seed gold money. It lookted good on him sho nuff, but it’d look a whole heap better on you.”

“Who, me? Missie May, youse crazy! Where would a po’ man lak me git gold money from?”

Missie May was silent for a minute, then she said, “Us might find some goin’ long de road some time. Us could.”

“Who would be losin’ gold money round heah? We ain’t even seen none dese white folks wearin’ no gold money on dey watch chain. You must be figgerin’ Mister Packard or Mister Cadillac goin’ pass through heah.”

“You don’t know whut been lost ‘round heah. Maybe somebody way back in memorial times lost they gold money and went on off and it ain’t never been found.

And then if we wuz to find it, you could wear some ‘thout havin’ no gang of womens lak dat Slemmons say he got.”

Joe laughed and hugged her. “Don’t be so wishful ‘bout me. Ah’m satisfied de way Ah is. So long as Ah be yo’ husband. Ah don’t keer ‘bout nothin’ else. Ah’d ruther all de other womens in de world to be dead than for you to have de toothache. Less we go to bed and git our night rest.”

It was Saturday night once more before Joe could parade his wife in Slemmons’s ice cream parlor again. He worked the night shift and Saturday was his only night off. Every other evening around six o’clock he left home, and dying dawn saw him hustling home around the lake, where the challenging sun flung a flaming sword from east to west across the trembling water.

That was the best part of life—going home to Missie May. Their whitewashed house, the mock battle on Saturday, the dinner and ice cream parlor afterwards, church on Sunday nights when Missie outdressed any woman in town—all, everything, was right.

One night around eleven the acid ran out at the G. and G. The foreman knocked off the crew and let the steam die down. As Joe rounded the lake on his way home, a lean moon rode the lake in a silver boat.

If anybody had asked Joe about the moon on the lake, he would have said he hadn’t paid it any attention. But he saw it with his feelings. It made him yearn painfully for Missie. Creation obsessed him. He thought about children. They had been married more than a year now.

They had money put away. They ought to be making little feet for shoes. A little boy child would be about right.

27

He saw a dim light in the bedroom and decided to come in through the kitchen door. He could wash the fertilizer dust off himself before presenting himself to Missie May. It would be nice for her not to know that he was there until he slipped into his place in bed and hugged her back. She always liked that.

He eased the kitchen door open slowly and silently, but when he went to set his dinner bucket on the table he bumped it into a pile of dishes, and something crashed to the floor. He heard his wife gasp in fright and hurried to reassure her.

“Iss me, honey. Don’t git skeered.”

There was a quick, large movement in the bedroom.

A rustle, a thud, and a stealthy silence. The light went out.

What? Robbers? Murderers? Some varmint attacking his helpless wife, perhaps. He struck a match, threw himself on guard and stepped over the doorsill into the bedroom.

The great belt on the wheel of Time slipped and eternity stood still. By the match light he could see the man’s legs fighting with his breeches in his frantic desire to get them on. He had both chance and time to kill the intruder in his helpless condition--half in and half out of his pants--but he was too weak to take action. The shapeless enemies of humanity that live in the hours of Time had waylaid Joe. He was assaulted in his weakness. Like Samson awakening after his haircut. So he just opened his mouth and laughed.

The match went out and he struck another and lit the lamp. A howling wind raced across his heart, but underneath its fury he heard his wife sobbing and Slemmons pleading for his life. Offering to buy it with all that he had. “Please, suh, don’t kill me. Sixty-two dollars at de sto’. Gold money.”

Joe just stood. Slemmons looked at the window, but it was screened. Joe stood out like a rough-backed mountain between him and the door. Barring him from escape, from sunrise, from life.

He considered a surprise attack upon the big clown that stood there laughing like a chessy cat. But before his fist could travel an inch, Joe’s own rushed out to crush him like a battering ram. Then Joe stood over him.

“Git into yo’ damn rags, Slemmons, and dat quick.”

Slemmons scrambled to his feet and into his vest

and coat. As he grabbed his hat, Joe’s fury overrode his intentions and he grabbed at Slemmons with his left hand and struck at him with his right. The right landed. The left grazed the front of his vest. Slemmons was knocked a somersault into the kitchen and fled through the open door. Joe found himself alone with Missie May, with the golden watch charm clutched in his left fist. A short bit of broken chain dangled between his fingers.

Missie May was sobbing. Wails of weeping without words. Joe stood, and after a while he found out that he had something in his hand. And then he stood and felt without thinking and without seeing with his natural eyes. Missie May kept on crying and Joe kept on feeling so much, and not knowing what to do with all his feelings, he put Slemmons’s watch charm in his pants pocket and took a good laugh and went to bed.

“Missie May, whut you cryin’ for?”

“Cause Ah love you so hard and Ah know you don’t love me no mo’.”

Joe sank his face into the pillow for a spell, then he said huskily, “You don’t know de feelings of dat yet, Missie May.” “Oh Joe, honey, he said he wuz gointer give me dat gold money and he jes’ kept on after me--” Joe was very still and silent for a long time. Then he said, “Well, don’t cry no mo’, Missie May. Ah got yo’ gold piece for you.”

The hours went past on their rusty ankles. Joe still and quiet on one bed rail and Missie May wrung dry of sobs on the other. Finally the sun’s tide crept upon the shore of night and drowned all its hours. Missie May with her face stiff and streaked towards the window saw the dawn come into her yard. It was day. Nothing more.

Joe wouldn’t be coming home as usual. No need to fling open the front door and sweep off the porch, making it nice for Joe. Never no more breakfast to cook; no more washing and starching of Joe’s jumper-jackets and pants.

No more nothing. So why get up?

With this strange man in her bed, she felt embarrassed to get up and dress. She decided to wait till he had dressed and gone. Then she would get up, dress quickly and be gone forever beyond reach of Joe’s looks and laughs. But he never moved. Red light turned to yellow, then white.

From beyond the no-man’s land between them

28

came a voice. A strange voice that yesterday had been Joe’s.

“Missie May, ain’t you gonna fix me no breakfus’?”

She sprang out of bed. “Yeah, Joe. Ah didn’t reckon you wuz hongry.” No need to die today. Joe needed her for a few more minutes anyhow.

Soon there was a roaring fire in the cookstove. Water bucket full and two chickens killed. Joe loved fried chicken and rice. She didn’t deserve a thing and good Joe was letting her cook him some breakfast. She rushed hot biscuits to the table as Joe took his seat.

He ate with his eyes in his plate. No laughter, no banter. “Missie May, you ain’t eatin’ yo’ breakfus’.”

“Ah don’t choose none, Ah thank yuh.”

His coffee cup was empty. She sprang to refill it.

When she turned from the stove and bent to set the cup beside Joe’s plate, she saw the yellow coin on the table between them.

She slumped into her seat and wept into her arms.

pillow she found the piece of money with the bit of chain attached.

Alone to herself, she looked at the thing with loathing, but look she must. She took it into her hands with trembling and saw first thing that it was no gold piece. It was a gilded half dollar. Then she knew why Slemmons had forbidden anyone to touch his gold. He trusted village eyes at a distance not to recognize his stickpin as a gilded quarter, and his watch charm as a four-bit piece.

She was glad at first that Joe had left it there. Perhaps he was through with her punishment. They were man and wife again. Then another thought came clawing at her. He had come home to buy from her as if she were any woman in the longhouse. Fifty cents for her love.

As if to say that he could pay as well as Slemmons. She slid the coin into his Sunday pants pocket and dressed herself and left his house.

Halfway between her house and the quarters she met her husband’s mother, and after a short talk she turned and went back home. Never would she admit defeat to that woman who prayed for it nightly. If she had not the substance of marriage she had the outside show.

Joe must leave her. She let him see she didn’t want his old gold four-bits, too.

Presently Joe said calmly, “Missie May, you cry too much. Don’t look back lak Lot’s wife and turn to salt.”

The sun, the hero of every day, the impersonal old man that beams as brightly on death as on birth, came up every morning and raced across the blue dome and dipped into the sea of fire every morning. Water ran downhill and birds nested.

Missie knew why she didn’t leave Joe. She couldn’t.

She loved him too much, but she could not understand why Joe didn’t leave her. He was polite, even kind at times, but aloof.

There were no more Saturday romps. No ringing silver dollars to stack beside her plate. No pockets to rifle.

In fact, the yellow coin in his trousers was like a monster hiding in the cave of his pockets to destroy her.

She often wondered if he still had it, but nothing could have induced her to ask nor yet to explore his pockets to see for herself. Its shadow was in the house whether or no.

One night Joe came home around midnight and complained of pains in the back. He asked Missie to rub him down with liniment. It had been three months since Missie had touched his body and it all seemed strange.

But she rubbed him. Grateful for the chance. Before morning youth triumphed and Missie exulted. But the next day, as she joyfully made up their bed, beneath her

She saw no more of the coin for some time though she knew that Joe could not help finding it in his pocket.

But his health kept poor, and he came home at least every ten days to be rubbed.

The sun swept around the horizon, trailing its robes of weeks and days. One morning as Joe came in from work, he found Missie May chopping wood. Without a word he took the ax and chopped a huge pile before he stopped.

“You ain’t got no business choppin’ wood, and you know it.”

“How come? Ah been choppin’ it for de last longest.”

“Ah ain’t blind. You makin’ feet for shoes.”

“Won’t you be glad to have a lil baby chile, Joe?” “You know dat ‘thout astin’ me.”

“Iss gointer be a boy chile and de very spit of you.”

“You reckon, Missie May?” “Who else could it look lak?”

Joe said nothing, but he thrust his hand deep into his pocket and fingered something there.

29

It was almost six months later Missie May took to bed and Joe went and got his mother to come wait on the house.

Missie May was delivered of a fine boy. Her travail was over when Joe come in from work one morning. His mother and the old woman were drinking great bowls of coffee around the fire in the kitchen.

The minute Joe came into the room his mother called him aside. “How did Missie May make out?” he asked quickly.

“Who, dat gal? She strong as a ox. She gointer have plenty mo’. We done fixed her wid de sugar and lard to sweeten her for de nex’ one.”

Joe stood silent awhile.

“You ain’t ask ‘bout de baby, Joe. You oughter be mighty proud cause he sho is de spittin’ image of yuh, son. Dat’s yourn all right, if you never git another one, dat un is yourn. And you know Ah’m mighty proud too, son, cause Ah never thought well of you marryin’ Missie May cause her ma used tuh fan her foot round right smart and Ah been mighty skeered dat Missie May wuz gointer git misput on her road.”

Joe said nothing. He fooled around the house till late in the day, then, just before he went to work, he went and stood at the foot of the bed and asked his wife how she felt. He did this every day during the week.

On Saturday he went to Orlando to make his market. It had been a long time since he had done that.

Meat and lard, meal and flour, soap and starch. Cans of corn and tomatoes. All the staples. He fooled around town for a while and bought bananas and apples. Way after while he went around to the candy store.

“Hello, Joe,” the clerk greeted him. “Ain’t seen you in a long time.”

“Nope, Ah ain’t been heah. Been round in spots and places.”

“Want some of them molasses kisses you always

30

buy?”

“Yessuh.” He threw the gilded half dollar on the counter. “Will dat spend?”

“What is it, Joe? Well, I’ll be doggone! A gold-plated four-bit piece. Where’d you git it, Joe?” “Offen a stray nigger dat come through Eatonville.

He had it on his watch chain for a charm--goin’ round making out iss gold money. Ha ha! He had a quarter on his tiepin and it wuz all golded up too. Tryin’ to fool people. Makin’ out he so rich and everything. Ha! Ha! Tryin’ to tole off folkses wives from home.”

“How did you git it, Joe? Did he fool you, too?”

“Who, me? Naw suh! He ain’t fooled me none.

Know whut Ah done? He come round me wid his smart talk. Ah hauled off and knocked ‘im down and took his old four-bits away from ‘im. Gointer buy my wife some good ole lasses kisses wid it. Gimme fifty cents worth of dem candy kisses.”

“Fifty cents buys a mighty lot of candy kisses, Joe. Why don’t you split it up and take some chocolate bars, too? They eat good, too.”

“Yessuh, dey do, but Ah wants all dat in kisses. Ah got a lil boy chile home now. Tain’t a week old yet, but he kin suck a sugar tit and maybe eat one them kisses hisself.”

Joe got his candy and left the store. The clerk turned to the next customer. “Wisht I could be like these darkies. Laughin’ all the time. Nothin’ worries ‘em.”

Back in Eatonville, Joe reached his own front door.

There was the ring of singing metal on wood. Fifteen times. Missie May couldn’t run to the door, but she crept there as quickly as she could.

“Joe Banks, Ah hear you chunkin’ money in mah do’way. You wait till Ah got mah strength back and Ah’m gointer fix you for dat.”

The Leap

a poem by JAMES DICKEY

The only thing I have of Jane MacNaughton Is one instant of a dancing-class dance.

She was the fastest runner in the seventh grade, My scrapbook says even when boys were beginning To be as big as the girls, But I do not have her running in my mind, Though Frances Lane is there, Agnes Fraser, Fat Betty Lou Black in the boys-against-girls Relays we ran at recess: she must have run Like the other girls, with her skirts tucked up So they would be like bloomers, But I cannot tell; that part of her is gone.

What I do have is when she came, With the hem of her skirt where it should be For a young lady, into the annual dance Of the dancing class we all hated, and with a light Grave leap, jumped up and touched the end Of one of the paper-ring decorations To see if she could reach it. She could, And reached me now as well, hanging in my mind From a brown chain of brittle paper, thin And muscular, wide-mouthed, eager to prove Whatever it proves when you leap In a new dress, a new womanhood, among the boys Whom you easily left in the dust Of the passionless playground. If I said I saw In the paper where Jane MacNaughton Hill, Mother of four, leapt to her death from a window Of a downtown hotel, and that her body crushed-in The top of a parked taxi, and that I held Without trembling a picture of her lying cradled In that papery steel as though lying in the grass, One shoe idly off, arms folded across her breast, I would not believe myself. I would say The convenient thing, that it was a bad dream Of maturity, to see that eternal process

31

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

Most obsessively wrong with the world Come out of her light, earth-spurning feet Grown heavy: would say that in the dusty heels Of the playground some boy who did not depend On speed of foot, caught and betrayed her.

Jane, stay where you are in my first mind: It was odd in that school, at that dance.

I and the other slow-footed yokels sat in corners Cutting rings out of drawing paper Before you leapt in your new dress And touched the end of something I began, Above the couples struggling on the floor, New men and women clutching at each other And prancing foolishly as bears: hold on To that ring I made for you, Jane— My feet are nailed to the ground By dust I swallowed thirty years ago— While I examine my hands.

32

40

45

50

Adultery

a poem by JAMES DICKEY

We have all been in rooms We cannot die in, and they are odd places, and sad.

Often Indians are standing eagle-armed on hills In the sunrise open wide to the Great Spirit Or gliding in canoes or cattle are browsing on the walls Far away gazing down with the eyes of our children

5

Not far away or there are men driving The last railspike, which has turned Gold in their hands. Gigantic forepleasure lives Among such scenes, and we are alone with it At last. There is always some weeping Between us and someone is always checking A wrist watch by the bed to see how much Longer we have left. Nothing can come Of this nothing can come

10

15

Of us: of me with my grim techniques Or you who have sealed your womb With a ring of convulsive rubber: Although we come together, Nothing will come of us. But we would not give It up, for death is beaten

20

By praying Indians by distant cows historical Hammers by hazardous meetings that bridge A continent. One could never die here Never die never die While crying. My lover, my dear one I will see you next week When I’m in town. I will call you If I can. Please get hold of Please don’t Oh God, Please don’t any more I can’t bear . . . Listen:

33

25

30

We have done it again we are Still living. Sit up and smile, God bless you. Guilt is magical.

34

Sex Without Love

a poem by SHARON OLDS

How do they do it, the ones who make love without love? Formal as dancers, gliding over each other like ice-skaters over the ice, fingers hooked inside each other’s bodies, faces 5 red as steak, wine, wet as the children at birth whose mothers are going to give them away. How do they come to the come to the come to the God come to the still waters, and not love 10 the one who came there with them, heat rising slowly as steam off their joined skin? I guess they are the true religious, the purists, the pros, the ones who will not accept a false Messiah, love the 15 priest instead of the God. They do not mistake the partner for their own pleasure, they are like great runners: they know they are alone with the road surface, the cold, the wind, the fit of their shoes, their overall cardio20 vascular health—just factors, like the other in the bed, and not their truth, which is the single body alone in the universe against its own best time.

35

The One Girl at the Boy's Party a poem by SHARON OLDS

When I take our girl to the swimming party I set her down among the boys. They tower and bristle, she stands there smooth and sleek, her math scores unfolding in the air around her.

They will strip to their suits, her body hard and 5 indivisible as a prime number, they’ll plunge in the deep end, she’ll subtract her height from ten feet, divide it into hundreds of gallons of water, the numbers bouncing in her mind like molecules of chlorine 10 in the bright-blue pool. When they climb out, her ponytail will hang its pencil lead down her back, her narrow silk suit with hamburgers and french fries printed on it will glisten in the brilliant air, and they will 15 see her sweet face, solemn and sealed, a factor of one, and she will see their eyes, two each, their legs, two each, and the curves of their sexes, one each, and in her head she’ll be doing her 20 wild multiplying, as the drops sparkle and fall to the power of a thousand from her body.

36

The Pope's Penis

a poem by SHARON OLDS

It hangs deep in his robes, a delicate clapper at the center of a bell.

It moves when he moves, a ghostly fish in a halo of silver seaweed, the hair swaying in the dimness and the heat—and at night, 5 while his eyes sleep, it stands up in praise of God.

37

The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb a poem by SHARON OLDS

Whatever he needs, he has or doesn’t have by now.

Whatever the world is going to do to him it has started to do. With a pencil and two Hardy Boys and a peanut butter sandwich and grapes he is on his way, there is nothing more we can do for him. Whatever is stored in his heart, he can use, now.

Whatever he has laid up in his mind he can call on. What he does not have he can lack. The bus gets smaller and smaller, as one folds a flag at the end of a ceremony, onto itself, and onto itself, until only a triangle wedge remains.

Whatever his exuberant soul can do for him, it is doing right now.

Whatever his arrogance can do it is doing to him. Everything that’s been done to him, he will now do.

Everything that’s been placed in him will come out, now, the contents of a trunk unpacked and lined up on a bunk in the underpine light.

38

5

10

15

20

The House of Yes

by WENDY MacLEOD

39

For my teachers, Lee Brewer and Leon Katz, who told me to take off the white gloves

40

Author's Note The play started with a particular house, a house I saw in an elegant suburb of Washington, D.C. There was just something about this chic, moneyed house that made me want in. And Lesly begins the play wanting in.

The title came from graffiti I saw written on a bathroom wall: “We are living in a house of yes.”

And that made me think about Edgar Allan Poe and pornography and mostly about amorality. The play is about people that have never been said no to. It’s about an insularity I see in the upper classes, people who have cut themselves off from the rest of the world and are living by the rules they’ve invented.

It is a great mistake to imagine the play is “camp” because the characters pretend to be Jack and Jackie Kennedy. To do the play that way is to undermine its emotional truth, and the love, however twisted, between the characters. Mrs. Pascal desperately loves her daughter and is trying to protect her, and the twins love each other deeply, tragically. However to speak of such things is “déclassé” and the characters only allow themselves that luxury at one or two points in the play. It is that tension between the Noel Coward veneer and the Pinteresque subtext that makes the play both funny and moving.

Some common questions. What’s the deal with Anthony? Why does he do what he does? Perhaps because he truly loves Lesly and shares his brother’s longing for “normalcy.” Perhaps he’s out to finally outdo his older brother. Or perhaps he tears Marty and Lesly apart for his sister’s sake.

What’s the deal with the assassination game? The construct of the two Kennedys allows the twins to make love to each other. In a blurring of events, they have confused the Kennedys with their own parents and we are merely watching an X-rated version of children playing house.

Finally, who is telling the truth at the end of the play? Did Mr. Pascal walk out on the family or was he, in fact, murdered by Mrs. Pascal? I will only say that every actor must present their character’s version with absolute conviction.

Wendy MacLeod August 1995

41

CAST OF CHARACTERS JACKIE-O MARTY, Jackie-O’s twin brother ANTHONY, their younger brother MRS. PASCAL, their mother LESLY, Marty’s fiancee

SETTING McLean, Virginia, a wealthy suburb of Washington, D.C. around the corner from the Kennedys.

The living room, and a guest bedroom, in the Pascals’ house.

TIME Thanksgiving, during a hurricane, some 20 years after JFK’s assassination.

NOTE: The walls of the living room would be covered with paintings but we don’t see paintings, only frames which suggest the walls. The low, black leather sofa is actually a chic simulation of a car seat, perhaps the back seat of a limousine. The floors are black-and-white-checked linoleum. Select objects suggest the family has lived abroad—a camel saddle hassock, an Italian triptych, etc.

The characters shouldn’t enter and exit, they should appear and disappear, suggesting that spies are everywhere.

The “game” should probably be underscored with music, to heighten the ritual.

42

THE HOUSE OF YES

(A Suburban Jacobean Play) Scene 1 Sound of hurricane. Lights up on Jackie-O furiously rearranging the furniture.

Anthony enters and watches her. Long pause.

ANTHONY.

It looked better before. (Jackie-O ignores him.) It’s all getting blown away anyway. You gonna move the TV?

JACKIE-O.

Too many wires.

ANTHONY.

Good. I want to watch the football game.

JACKIE-O.

What football game?

ANTHONY.

Any football game.

JACKIE-O.

Help me move this coffee table.

ANTHONY.

Move it where?

JACKIE-O.

In front of the sofa.

ANTHONY.

That’s no good.

JACKIE-O.

That’s where coffee tables go. In front of sofas. Help me masking tape the windows.

ANTHONY.

You gonna put those crosses?

JACKIE-O.

Yeah.

ANTHONY.

(Looking out the window.) The Kennedys aren’t putting crosses on their windows.

JACKIE-O.

They could really care. They have ten other houses.

ANTHONY.

It’s like wearing garlic those crosses.

JACKIE-O.

It was on the news. It can’t hurt.

ANTHONY.

Yes, it can. It goos up the windows.

JACKIE-O.

Did Marty call?

ANTHONY.

Last night.

43

JACKIE-O.

I know last night. Did Marty call today?

ANTHONY.

He’s bringing a friend.

JACKIE-O.

What?

ANTHONY.

He said he’s bringing a friend.

JACKIE-O.

Male or female?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know.

JACKIE-O.

What did he say exactly?

ANTHONY.

He said, “Tell Mom I’m bringing a friend.”

JACKIE-O.

Why not me? Why not, “Tell Jackie I’m bringing a friend?”

ANTHONY.

Groceries.

JACKIE-O.

What?

ANTHONY.

I think it pertained to groceries, bedrooms, like that. Logistics.

JACKIE-O.

What else did Marty say?

ANTHONY.

He said, “Hello, Anthony?” I said, “Yeah. Marty?” He said, “Yeah.” We said, “Hey.”

JACKIE-O.

Marty said “hey?”

ANTHONY.

Not like hey, like H-E-Y, but like a noise, a noise of jubilation.

JACKIE-O.

Marty was jubilant?

ANTHONY.

At that point in the phone call. Or at least he was doing a fair impersonation of jubilant.

JACKIE-O.

Marty was pretending to be jubilant?

ANTHONY.

Oh my God. What’s wrong with Marty?

JACKIE-O.

And who’s this friend?

ANTHONY.

And who’s this friend? Exactly.

JACKIE-O.

Then what did he say?

ANTHONY.

He said, ‘How you doing?” I said, “Good. How you doing?” He said, “Good.”

JACKIE-O.

But he was lying. He’s not good. He hates New York. He’s coming home.

44

ANTHONY.

For Thanksgiving.

JACKIE-O.

For good.

ANTHONY.

Did he say that?

JACKIE-O.

I don’t know. Did he?

ANTHONY.

No.

JACKIE-O.

How come nobody told me about this friend? (Mrs. Pascal enters carrying a cocktail.)

MRS. PASCAL. Jackie, did I tell you your brother’s bringing a friend?

JACKIE-O.

What kind of friend?

MRS. PASCAL. I don’t know. Marty’s never had a friend before. Who taped up the windows?

JACKIE-O.

I did. I saw it on the news.

MRS. PASCAL. That tape leaves goo. It goos up the windows.

JACKIE-O.

Goo is what tape is all about. Goo is what makes it tape instead of paper.

MRS. PASCAL. A person offers a little constructive criticism and a person gets lectured on the nature

of things. I came in to ask a question but I can’t think what it is. Ah, Anthony, did I make

up the guest room?

ANTHONY.

How should I know?

MRS. PASCAL. A person asks a civilized question and a person gets thrown to the lions. I’ll go up and check. (She turns and looks at the TV.) Is this a bowl?

ANTHONY.

Yes.

MRS. PASCAL. Is it a bowl relevant to us in any way?

ANTHONY.

No.

MRS. PASCAL. Then turn it off. I don’t want electrical things on. Anthony, did you give your sister her medication?

ANTHONY.

Uh-huh.

MRS. PASCAL. Did you check under her tongue? (Mrs. Pascal exits.)

ANTHONY.

Were you excited when I came home?

JACKIE-O.

That was different. You were dropping out of college.

45

ANTHONY.

A good college.

JACKIE-O.

So why did you leave?

ANTHONY.

With Marty gone, who was gonna take care of you?

JACKIE-O.

Mama.

ANTHONY.

Yeah. Right.

JACKIE-O.

I hear his car. I hear Marty’s car.

ANTHONY.

You can’t hear cars. There’s a hurricane.

JACKIE-O.

Where’s my brush? I had a hairbrush right here.

ANTHONY.

What did it look like?

JACKIE-O.

It looked like a hairbrush! Like a brush you brush your hair with!

MRS. PASCAL. (Re-entering.) Was it pink?

JACKIE-O.

Yes, it was pink goddamnit! It was pink. It was pink, and now it’s gone!

MRS. PASCAL. I put it upstairs. I didn’t want it around the food.

JACKIE-O.

It wasn’t around the food. The food is in the kitchen.

MRS. PASCAL. It was on the same floor as the food.

ANTHONY.

I have a comb.

JACKIE-O. I don’t want a comb! I want a brush! Combs just straighten your hair out. I want it to gleam.

ANTHONY.

It is gleaming.

JACKIE-O.

It is not!

ANTHONY.

It is, it is. I need sunglasses almost.

JACKIE-O.

It is?

ANTHONY.

It is. (A wind blows into the house as Marty and Lesly enter, bedraggled, and wet. Jackie-O sees only Marty. She runs to him and straddles her legs around him.)

JACKIE-O.

Marty!

MARTY.

Jackie. (Jackie-O slides off of Marty as she becomes aware of Lesly.) Lesly. This is Jackie-O. My mother. Anthony. Meet Lesly. Lesly and I are engaged. (Jackie-O screams then begins to

46

laugh. Every one nervously joins in. Jackie-O stops laughing.)

JACKIE-O.

I have to find my hairbrush.

LESLY.

I have a comb. (Jackie-O just looks at her, then exits.)

MRS. PASCAL. Marty, you’re a wreck.

MARTY.

I was in a hurricane. I just came in from a hurricane.

MRS. PASCAL. Marty, you look thin. Are you thin? You look so thin. Oh my God, I sounded like a

mother. Didn’t I sound just like a mother?

MARTY.

You are a mother.

MRS. PASCAL. I know and I still can’t believe it. I look at you people and wonder however did you fit in

my womb. Now Marty there’s some Liebfraumilch in the kitchen. Why don’t you go and

pour us a nice glass of Liebfraumilch. Anthony you go too. You can smell the cork or something.

ANTHONY.

Can’t I stay here?

MRS. PASCAL. No, you cannot. This is girl talk in here.

ANTHONY.

I like girl talk.

MRS. PASCAL. Well, if you were here it wouldn’t be girl talk, would it?

ANTHONY.

Do I have to smell the cork?

MRS. PASCAL. No, darling. You just have to do something in some other location. (Anthony and Marty exit.)

LESLY.

You have a lovely home.

MRS. PASCAL. Home?

LESLY.

Your house. It’s lovely.

MRS. PASCAL. Oh, yes, it was. I mean it is. I mean it will be until it gets blown away. We’ll all get blown

away to Oz or something.

LESLY.

That was a tornado.

MRS. PASCAL. What?

LESLY.

A tornado. In Wizard of Oz. Not a hurricane.

MRS. PASCAL. Really? Are you sure? (Lesly nods.) My. How long have you known Marty?

47

LESLY.

About six months.

MRS. PASCAL. And you know him pretty well, do you?

LESLY.

I don’t know. I think so. I guess you’ve met a lot of Marty’s girlfriends.

MRS. PASCAL. Not really.

LESLY.

I hope I’m the first fiancee.

MRS. PASCAL. You’re definitely the first, the very first. And I hope the last.

LESLY.

Me too.

MRS. PASCAL. I had one great passion in my life, and do you know who that was?

LESLY.

Your husband?

MRS. PASCAL. My husband. Precisely. I didn’t know he was my one great passion until he was gone.

Until he was gone my one great passion was the man I met that night at a party. My one

great passion was any man I met that night at a party who could use a new adjective

to describe me. I have no idea who my children belong to. All I know for sure is that

Jackie and Marty belong to each other. Jackie’s hand was holding Marty’s penis when

they came out of the womb. The doctors swore to me. It’s in some medical journal somewhere. (Pause.)

LESLY.

Well, I guess I’ll go freshen up now.

MRS. PASCAL. Do. By all means. You’re drenched. (To Anthony, offstage.) Anthony, did I put clean towels

out on the bed?

ANTHONY.

(Entering.) How should I know?

MRS. PASCAL. Go and see. And show Lesly to her room. And show her how to jiggle the toilet so it doesn’t run. (Anthony and Lesly exit. Marty enters with a tray of wine glasses.) Marty. A word.

MARTY.

A word, Mama, or many words?

MRS. PASCAL. Now don’t get snippy, Marty, you’ve been in this house exactly 37 seconds, and you’re

already snippy. It’s no wonder your father died young, he’d simply had it with all the

snippiness, a person can die a slow death from being snipped at year after year, the way he said solid when meant salad, the two of you would not let it go, like a puppy with a rag

doll. Or the time he missed the exit on 495, those things happen on interstates, mistakes

are made, that’s what those No U-Turn places are for ...

MARTY.

Daddy didn’t die a slow death.

MRS. PASCAL. Let’s stick to the subject.

48

MARTY.

I have no idea what the subject is.

MRS. PASCAL. I’ll tell you what the subject is not ...

MARTY.

No, Mama, that’s too broad a category. Tell me what the subject is.

MRS. PASCAL. You. A fiancee. Here. Why? MARTY.

I love her, and I’m trying to follow procedure.

MRS. PASCAL. Do you love her for any particular reason?

MARTY.

Why? You didn’t like her?

MRS. PASCAL. I talked to her for exactly 37 seconds, Marty. Who is she? What does she do?

MARTY.

She’s a waitress in the Donut King on 14th Street. She smells like powdered sugar.

MRS. PASCAL. Men don’t marry girls who smell like powdered sugar. They have a sweet little affair

with them which they recall fondly in their twilight years.

MARTY.

Don’t be such a snob.

MRS. PASCAL. Your sister has been out of the hospital less than six months. Last week she nearly lost

it because the seltzer water was flat, and you bring a woman home. Not just a woman, a

fiancee, an anti-Jackie. Are you trying to push your sister over the edge?

MARTY.

No.

MRS. PASCAL. Just what then are you trying to do?

MARTY.

Be normal.

MRS. PASCAL. Well, it’s a little late for that, young man.

MARTY.

Do you want us to leave?

MRS. PASCAL. Yes, I want you to leave, at once, without further ado. As soon as the storm lets up. If

you don’t, I’ll take away your sheets, your towels, everything.

MARTY.

What do I tell Lesly?

MRS. PASCAL. Tell her the truth.

MARTY.

The truth?

MRS. PASCAL. That your sister’s insane. She’ll understand MARTY.

Don’t say insane. She’s ... ill.

49

MRS. PASCAL. If she were ill, I could give her an aspirin and put her to bed. I could make her that soup

you’re supposed to make.

MARTY.

Chicken noodle.

MRS. PASCAL. That. Alas, I cannot. I mean, I can make the soup for heaven’s sake, it comes in a can, but

I cannot make her well. I have tried but to no avail.

MARTY.

“To no avail.” What was that?

MRS. PASCAL. I’m getting dramatic.

MARTY.

Well, stop it. I thought it was better that I come and tell her myself.

MRS. PASCAL. It would be better if you didn’t tell her at all. It would be better if there was nothing to

tell, if there is anyone present who knows why this marriage should not take place it is me.

MARTY.

Why?

MRS. PASCAL. Why what?

MARTY.

Why shouldn’t the marriage take place?

MRS. PASCAL. You know why.

MARTY.

Tell me. (Pause.)

MRS. PASCAL. Excuse me. I’m going to go baste the turkey and hide the sharp objects. (She exits.)

CROSSFADE

Scene 2 The guest bedroom.

ANTHONY.

So these are the towels. Do you like them ‘cause I could get you others? We have black ones with Roman scenes on them.

LESLY.

That’s okay. These are dry, that’s the only thing. (Pointing to her wet clothes.) This is just from the car to the door, can you believe it?

ANTHONY.

Yes.

LESLY.

It’s a hurricane.

ANTHONY.

I know.

50

LESLY.

I curled my hair this morning. With a curling iron. And now look.

ANTHONY.

I always thought a curling iron was shaped like an iron.

LESLY.

No. It’s like a hot dog.

ANTHONY.

I know.

LESLY.

(Looking into the mirror.) This is ‘sposed to be waterproof mascara. Ha ha.

ANTHONY.

You look lovely. Did I show you the toilet thing?

LESLY.

Yeah.

ANTHONY.

Oh, yeah.

LESLY.

You just jiggle it.

ANTHONY.

Right. It hasn’t worked right since Jackie flushed the lizard.

LESLY.

The lizard?

ANTHONY.

Marty’s lizard.

LESLY.

Marty has a lizard?

ANTHONY.

Had, had a lizard.

LESLY.

It got in there by mistake?

ANTHONY.

No. On purpose.

LESLY.

It liked the water.

ANTHONY.

I guess. Jackie put it there.

LESLY.

And then she forgot.

ANTHONY.

No, she remembered.

LESLY.

She flushed him on purpose?

ANTHONY.

I think she was jealous. Marty loved that lizard. It turned different colors. Well, I guess you want to do mascara or something.

LESLY.

Yeah.

ANTHONY.

There’s bobby pins on the bureau. ‘Cause of Emily Post and all.

LESLY.

She stayed here?

51

ANTHONY. No. She said a hostess should do her hair in every guest bedroom to see if there was

enough light, so my mom did that. And there was. So if you want to do your hair, you’re set.

LESLY.

I do.

ANTHONY.

What?

LESLY.

Want to do my hair. ‘Cause of the rain and all.

ANTHONY.

It looks nice the way it is.

LESLY.

Come on.

ANTHONY.

Really.

LESLY.

Well, I guess I’ll see you at dinner.

ANTHONY.

I hope you like turkey ‘cause that’s what we’re having.

LESLY.

Yes. I mean. It’s Thanksgiving.

ANTHONY.

Did I show you the toilet thing?

LESLY

Yeah.

ANTHONY.

And the towels.

LESLY.

They’re here.

ANTHONY.

Could you just check and see if there’s sheets ‘cause my mother was all distracted?

LESLY.

(Checking.) Yeah, there are.

ANTHONY.

And pillows?

LESLY.

Anthony, I don’t mean to be unpolite, but I’m kind of tired? And all? So?

ANTHONY.

Oh, I’m sorry. It’s just ... we never had a guest before.

LESLY.

Never?

ANTHONY.

Never.

BLACKOUT

52

Scene 3 The guest bedroom. Lesly is hurriedly getting dressed for dinner.

Marty stands where we last saw ANTHONY. LESLY.

(Urgently, sotto voce.) The toilet’s running.

MARTY.

(Miming jiggling.) Did you ...

LESLY.

Yes, but ...

MARTY.

It’ll stop eventually.

LESLY.

It’s making a noise.

MARTY.

I can’t hear it.

LESLY.

It was.

MARTY.

What are you doing?

LESLY.

I don’t like these shoes.

MARTY.

They look fine.

LESLY.

They skid. I nearly skidded.

MARTY.

Come here.

LESLY.

No.

MARTY.

Why not?

LESLY.

Lipstick.

MARTY.

Reapply. (Marty kisses her passionately.) We don’t have to stay here.

LESLY.

Marty.

MARTY.

What?

LESLY.

It’s Thanksgiving.

MARTY.

Nobody cares.

LESLY.

But we drove ...

MARTY.

We can drive back. We could watch the parade.

53

LESLY.

It’s rained out.

MARTY.

Says who?

LESLY.

The news. They showed Bullwinkle. Blowing. He nearly came undone.

MARTY.

Now that would be something to see.

LESLY.

Where you think he’d end up?

MARTY.

I don’t know. Outer space?

LESLY.

Somebody’s backyard probably. (Marty nuzzles her. Laughing.) Let go.

MARTY.

I love your shoes.

LESLY.

Stop.

MARTY.

You’ve met them. They’ve met you. Let’s go.

LESLY.

They gave me towels and bobby pins and everything

MARTY.

Bobby pins?

LESLY.

It would be rude.

MARTY.

They won’t care.

LESLY.

(Suddenly worried.) They don’t like me.

MARTY.

They love you!

LESLY.

I wore the wrong clothes.

MARTY.

No.

LESLY. I was in a hurricane you know, a person can’t look all ... when it’s raining and blowing and ...

MARTY.

You looked beautiful. You are beautiful. Kiss me.

LESLY.

They’re your family.

MARTY.

You’re my family.

LESLY.

Not yet.

BLACKOUT

54

Scene 4 The guest bedroom. Jackie-O stands where we last saw Marty.

JACKIE-O.

Did Marty tell you about me?

LESLY.

Oh, yes.

JACKIE-O.

What did he tell you?

LESLY.

He told me how you were.

JACKIE-O.

How’s that?

LESLY.

You know. Glamorous.

JACKIE-O.

I spend most of my days with my head in the toilet bowl.

LESLY.

Well.

JACKIE-O.

Throwing up pills. I can’t think when I take the pills and a person needs to think. I mean if a person can’t think, what are they?

LESLY.

Why are you taking pills?

JACKIE-O.

The doctors make me.

LESLY.

Have you talked to them? About not being able to think and all.

JACKIE-O.

Oh, they’d just think I was crazy, not taking my pills. Most doctors are men, you know, and they think we’re all perpetually premenstrual.

LESLY.

Well, we are, except when we’re actually having it. You know, the visitor.

JACKIE-O.

The visitor?

LESLY.

That’s what I call it.

JACKIE-O.

Are you saving yourself for marriage?

LESLY.

How do you mean?

JACKIE-O.

Blood on the sheets, all that.

LESLY.

Well, we live together, Marty and me.

JACKIE-O.

That must be hard, saving yourself for marriage when you live together.

LESLY.

I’m not. Saving myself.

55

JACKIE-O.

No?

LESLY.

Do you think I should of?

JACKIE-O.

If I were getting married I’d want to check out the goods.

LESLY.

Me too.

JACKIE-O.

How were they? The goods.

LESLY.

Marty? I can’t describe it.

JACKIE-O.

I could.

LESLY

What?

JACKIE-O.

What’s the wildest place you’ve ever made love?

LESLY.

With Marty?

JACKIE-O.

Yes.

LESLY.

I can’t talk like that about your brother.

JACKIE-O.

Pretend he’s not my brother. I do.

LESLY

Well, one time ...

JACKIE-O.

What?

LESLY.

I can’t?

JACKIE-O.

Why not?

LESLY.

It’s embarrassing!

JACKIE-O.

If you don’t tell me, I’ll just get it out of Marty.

LESLY.

He would never.

JACKIE-O.

What?

LESLY.

Talk like that.

JACKIE-O.

Marty and I tell each other everything.

LESLY.

Everything?

JACKIE-O.

Yes.

56

LESLY.

Did he tell you about his other girlfriends?

JACKIE-O.

Did he tell you about his other girlfriends?

LESLY.

There was one he said.

JACKIE-O.

Did he tell you about her?

LESLY.

No. What was she like? The girl?

JACKIE-O.

She wasn’t a girl. She was a woman.

LESLY.

She was older than Marty?

JACKIE-O.

No, they were almost exactly the same age. Talk about glamorous. She was glamorous.

LESLY.

I thought so. Is she still here? In Washington?

JACKIE-O.

Very much so. I wonder ...

LESLY.

What?

JACKIE-O.

No, it’s none of my business.

LESLY.

What?

JACKIE-O.

If he plans to see her while he’s home.

LESLY.

Why didn’t he marry her?

JACKIE-O.

He couldn’t.

LESLY.

Why not?

JACKIE-O.

It was a family thing.

LESLY.

The families objected?

JACKIE-O.

Something like that.

LESLY.

He never told me.

JACKIE-O.

Men and their secrets.

LESLY.

Not all men have secrets.

JACKIE-O.

We all have our secrets.

CROSSFADE

57

Scene 5 To the living room, where Anthony sits alone. Marty enters.

MARTY.

Where’s Jackie-O?

ANTHONY.

In her room.

MARTY.

What’s she doing there?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know. Brushing her hair?

MARTY.

How is she doing?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know. She’s in her room

MARTY.

I mean generally.

ANTHONY.

In general?

MARTY.

Yes.

ANTHONY.

Good. I mean. Good for Jackie.

MARTY.

What does she do all day?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know. I mean, what does anybody do all day? What do you do all day? What do I do all day?

MARTY.

What do you do all day?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know. I guess that’s why people keep diaries. So they know. She reads books.

MARTY.

What kind of books?

ANTHONY.

Assassination books.

MARTY.

How many assassination books can there be?

ANTHONY.

A lot. Lincoln, McKinley, Kennedy, King, Kennedy ...

MARTY.

All right.

ANTHONY. And she watches soap operas. She likes it especially when they have a character and that

actress leaves the show and a new actress steps in and becomes the character. And

nobody on the show notices any difference. They treat that character exactly the same as before.

MARTY.

Jackie watches soap operas?

58

ANTHONY.

I guess you heard about the seltzer water thing. That was the last big, you know.

MARTY.

It was flat?

ANTHONY.

Yeah, like when somebody doesn’t screw the top back on.

MARTY.

So what’d she do?

ANTHONY.

Well, she started screaming about bubbles, how there were no bubbles, so she started boiling the seltzer water, and when the water started bubbling, she poured the boiling water back into the seltzer bottle, which was plastic and started to melt and kind of melted into her hand where she was holding it, and she had to go to the emergency room with third degree burns. And on the way home, whenever Mama and I asked her a question she’d tell us to stop giving her the third degree, and she’d laugh kind of like hysterically. So she’s not what you’d call recovered.

MARTY.

Do you think I should stay?

JACKIE-O.

(Entering.) Yes. Yes, I do. (Jackie-O picks up a glass of wine.)

ANTHONY.

You’re not supposed to, uh, have that.

JACKIE-O.

What?

ANTHONY.

The wine.

JACKIE-O.

Isn’t there enough?

ANTHONY.

There’s enough, but ... (To Marty.) She’s not supposed to have that.

MARTY.

Why not?

ANTHONY.

Because of her medication.

JACKIE-O. Not this medication, Anthony. The one before I couldn’t drink. They’ve switched me. I

used to be orange, now I’m blue. I wanted pills to match my eyes. (Toasting.) Color me beautiful.

MARTY.

Mama wants us to leave. She’s afraid I’ll push you over the edge.

JACKIE-O.

I’ve been over the edge. Now I’m back.

MARTY.

Lesly doesn’t know about the hospital.

JACKIE-O.

Oh?

MARTY.

She knows about the hospital, but not what kind of hospital.

JACKIE-O.

Does she know about your hospital?

59

MARTY.

Sort of.

JACKIE-O.

Let me guess. You had your appendix out.

ANTHONY.

You did?

MARTY.

No.

JACKIE-O.

Hey, Marty, ya wanna show me your scar?

MARTY.

No.

JACKIE-O.

I’m sorry about that by the way. I didn’t mean to maim you. I only meant to kill you.

MARTY.

These things happen.

JACKIE-O.

I’ve noticed Anthony wears a lot of layers around me, don’t you Anthony? Look at him.

He’s got a T-shirt, a vest, and a jacket.

ANTHONY.

I’m wearing the jacket ‘cause it’s Thanksgiving.

JACKIE-O.

You weren’t wearing it before.

ANTHONY.

I put it on after Marty got here.

MARTY.

It looks nice.

ANTHONY.

I got it at the Treasure Trove. I think it belonged to a Kennedy.

JACKIE-O.

Why? Is there a bullet hole?

MARTY.

Jackie.

ANTHONY. The lady said Mrs. Kennedy donated a bunch of stuff. She was pretty sure this was in the Kennedy batch.

JACKIE-O.

You see, Marty, you’ve turned the household upside down. Anthony went out and bought a jacket, I went to a lot of trouble to get sane, so you can’t just leave. Lesly, on the other hand, is free to go at any time. (A window bangs.)

ANTHONY.

I’ve never been to a hurricane before, have you?

JACKIE-O and MARTY. Yes. ANTHONY.

When?

JACKIE-O.

It was before you were born. We went to Virginia Beach and our motel was right on the water. Mom and Dad were drinking rum and Pepsi out of Styrofoam cups and giggling.

60

ANTHONY.

All the good things happened before I got born.

JACKIE-O.

This wine is not very cold.

ANTHONY.

Mom forgot to put it in the icebox.

JACKIE-O.

I wish I had a piece of ice.

ANTHONY.

I’ll get you one.

JACKIE-O.

Don’t you go, Anthony. Marty, fetch me a piece of ice, will you?

ANTHONY.

I’ll get it for you.

JACKIE-O.

Marty’s been in the car all day, I’m sure he’d leap at an opportunity to stretch his legs.

ANTHONY.

He doesn’t know where we keep the ice.

JACKIE-O.

Everyone knows where you keep the ice, Anthony.

MARTY.

(Softly, to Jackie-O.) Are you gonna be good when Lesly comes down?

JACKIE-O.

Marty, I’m the hostess. (Marty exits.)

ANTHONY.

(Calling after him.) And make sure it’s cold!

JACKIE-O.

She’s pretty, isn’t she?

ANTHONY.

Who?

JACKIE-O.

Who do you think?

ANTHONY.

I guess.

JACKIE-O.

She doesn’t seem like Marty’s type. Do you think she seems like Marty’s type?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know.

JACKIE-O.

Now you and she would make a cute couple. Why, I’ll bet you’re just the same age.

ANTHONY.

They’re getting married Jackie. She’s got a ring.

JACKIE-O.

Tiffany’s?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know!

JACKIE-O.

I think she has a sneak for you.

ANTHONY.

Stop.

61

JACKIE-O.

I do.

ANTHONY.

She’s engaged. (Marty enters, carrying an ice cube.)

JACKIE-O.

Oh, Anthony, look, isn’t that the prettiest ice cube you’ve ever seen?

MARTY.

It used to be bigger.

JACKIE-O.

I wonder what happened.

MARTY.

Whatever it was it happened just between the kitchen and here.

JACKIE-O.

Look, Marty, your hands are all wet. Now that’s a clue.

LESLY.

(Entering.) It probably melted. On the way. (Pause. They all turn to look at her.)

JACKIE-O.

Oh, my. Good evening.

LESLY.

Good evening.

JACKIE-O.

Is that an evening dress?

LESLY.

I don’t know.

JACKIE-O.

It certainly looks like an evening dress.

ANTHONY.

It’s very pretty.

LESLY.

I dressed for dinner.

ANTHONY.

Would you like a glass of Liebfraumilch?

LESLY.

No, thank you. I’ll just have a glass of wine.

MARTY.

(Quietly.) That’s the name of the wine.

LESLY.

Oh. (Laughing nervously.) I don’t speak French.

JACKIE-O.

Who does?

ANTHONY.

You do.

JACKIE-O.

Oh, that’s right, I do.

LESLY.

What does the name mean?

JACKIE-O.

In French? I think it means something German.

LESLY.

Oh.

62

MARTY.

It means “loving mother’s milk.”

LESLY

You speak French?

MARTY.

No. German. (Pause.)

LESLY.

I know how to say “I love you” in sign language.

ANTHONY.

Let’s see. (Lesly signs “I love you.”) Cool.

JACKIE-O. Don’t leave this girl alone with any handsome deaf-mutes Marty, that’s my advice to you.

MARTY.

Jackie.

JACKIE-O.

Tell me, Lesly, have you ever been to Washington before?

LESLY

No.

JACKIE-O.

Not even on a field trip? Not even on your fifth-grade field trip?

LESLY.

No. I mean my class went, but I didn’t go.

JACKIE-O.

In fifth grade? Really?

MARTY.

Sixth. Sixth grade.

JACKIE-O.

So you just snubbed it. You just snubbed your nation’s capitol.

LESLY.

My parents wouldn’t let me go.

JACKIE-O.

What’s their number?

LESLY.

What?

JACKIE-O.

How could they have ruined a perfectly good field trip? Really. People like that burn me up. Don’t they burn you up, Marty?

MARTY.

They didn’t have the money.

JACKIE-O.

What a lie. How much could it have cost?

MARTY.

Too much.

LESLY.

My father was unemployed. My father was laid off.

JACKIE-O.

Were you poor? Did you eat chicken pot pies?

LESLY.

Pancakes. A lot of pancakes.

63

JACKIE-O.

Pancakes. Pancakes, Marty. And how did you pull yourself out? Out of poverty I mean.

LESLY.

I left Pennsylvania.

JACKIE-O. That was a step in the right direction. Clearly. (Lesly looks at the paintings hung on the wall.) Do they have paintings in Pennsylvania?

MARTY.

Jackie.

JACKIE-O.

Well, Marty I’ve never been to Pennsylvania. I’ve never even met anybody who’s been to Pennsylvania, much less been from Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania is just this state that gets in your way when you have to go someplace else!

LESLY.

Why do they call you Jackie-O?

JACKIE-O.

We went to an Ides of March party. I went as Jackie Onassis. In a pink Chanel suit and a pillbox hat. And blood ... on my dress.

LESLY.

Blood?

JACKIE-O.

And other stuff too. Like macaroni. Kind of glued on. Like brains. (Pause.)

LESLY.

I don’t think that’s funny.

JACKIE-O.

Nobody else did either. Nobody talked to me all night.

MARTY.

I talked to you.

JACKIE-O.

Yes. You talked to me. Marty. Jackie-O wants a drink drink. Let’s drink rum and Pepsi out of Styrofoam cups. Anthony, come on darling, let’s drink rum and Pepsi out of Styrofoam cups. Bring in some ice!

MARTY.

We’re out of ice.

JACKIE-O.

How can we be out of ice?

MARTY.

Mama forgot to fill the ice trays. I gave you the last cube.

JACKIE-O.

I thought this was the modern world. I thought that in the modern world a person could get whatever they wanted.

ANTHONY.

The Pepsi’s cold

JACKIE-O. It’s not the same. I’m not talking about ice, I’m talking about texture! I’m talking about

texture! In the last hurricane we had ice. Mama and Daddy had a bucket of ice and a

cooler down the hall. We just marched down the hall whenever we had a yen for ice.

(There is a trace of hysteria in Jackie-O’s voice. Marty crosses to her and soothes her like a child.

Anthony hovers nervously. Lesly watches.)

MARTY.

Jackie. Jackie-O. Marty’s here.

64

JACKIE-O.

A person gets her heart set on a certain thing ...

MARTY.

Yes ...

JACKIE-O.

A person gets her heart set on a certain thing ...

MARTY.

Yes.

JACKIE-O. And if a certain person can’t get the thing her heart is set on, a certain person goes insane. (To Lesly, suddenly matter-of-fact.) I suppose you think I’m going insane just to be fashionable.

LESLY.

I don’t think you’re insane.

JACKIE-O.

You don’t think I’m insane?

LESLY.

No.

JACKIE-O.

You don’t think I’m just an eensy-weensy bit insane?

LESLY.

I don’t think you’re insane. I think you’re spoiled.

JACKIE-O.

Oh, please. If people are gonna start telling the truth I’m going to bed. (The lights flicker then go out. Pause.)

LESLY.

Does this happen a lot?

JACKIE-O.

Every hurricane.

ANTHONY.

We bought emergency candles. They’re right in this drawer. (Enter Mrs. Pascal.)

MRS. PASCAL. Anthony, did we remember to buy matches?

ANTHONY.

Nobody buys matches. People find matches.

MRS. PASCAL. People buy matches, Anthony, but not people like us. People like us forget to buy matches.

LESLY.

You could light them on the stove.

MRS. PASCAL. Electric. Electric stove. Oh, my God. ANTHONY.

What?

MRS. PASCAL. Dinner. Thanksgiving dinner.

ANTHONY.

There’s matches in the bathroom. (Marty exits into the bathroom.)

MRS. PASCAL. Why are there matches in the bathroom?

65

ANTHONY.

For the smell. When somebody does one.

JACKIE-O.

That’s not why they’re in the bathroom.

ANTHONY.

It’s not?

JACKIE-O.

It’s for my scent candle.

ANTHONY.

It is?

JACKIE-O.

“When somebody does one.” God.

MARTY. (Re-entering.) I got them. Where’s the candles? (Anthony hands Marty a candle. He lights it.)

MRS. PASCAL. If I had put the turkey in one hour earlier we’d be impervious.

LESLY.

We ate at McDonald’s anyway.

MRS. PASCAL. What?

LESLY.

On the way. At a rest stop.

MRS. PASCAL. Well.

LESLY.

We got hungry.

MRS. PASCAL. Does anybody want any cranberry sauce?

ANTHONY.

Just cranberry sauce?

MRS. PASCAL. You can eat it raw.

LESLY.

It’s not really raw. It’s been pre-cooked.

MRS. PASCAL. Jackie, is that a drink you’re drinking?

JACKIE-O.

This drink?

MRS. PASCAL. Yes. JACKIE-O.

No.

MRS. PASCAL. Anthony, is that a drink she’s drinking?

ANTHONY.

It’s Liebfraumilch.

MRS. PASCAL. Take it away from her.

ANTHONY.

She said she switched medication.

66

MRS. PASCAL. She’s mistaken. Take it away. Jackie, you look tired, why don’t you go to bed?

JACKIE-O.

I get bored in bed.

MRS. PASCAL. Well, I’m going to bed, and I think everyone should do the same.

ANTHONY.

It’s still early.

MRS. PASCAL. There’s no television and no food. What is there to stay up for?

ANTHONY.

Conversation.

MRS. PASCAL. Oh, that, that only gets you into trouble. Take it from one who knows. Give me a candle

and I shall find my way. Never mind, I’ll just curse the darkness. (Mrs. Pascal exits.)

LESLY.

It’s been a long day.

JACKIE-O.

Not as long as yesterday. Yesterday was 24 hours.

LESLY.

I meant with the traveling and all.

JACKIE-O.

It’s no easier staying in one place. Take it from one who knows.

MARTY.

Was that wise? I think that was wise.

JACKIE-O.

I knew it would happen. One day I’d just wake up wise.

MARTY.

One day I woke up stupid.

JACKIE-O.

You did?

MARTY.

It was terrible.

JACKIE-O.

What did you do?

MARTY.

I went back to sleep.

JACKIE-O.

That was wise.

LESLY.

I’m tired Marty. I’m going up now. Are you coming up?

MARTY.

Soon. (Lesly hesitates for a moment and then exits. Anthony calls after her.)

ANTHONY. Clean towels and a washcloth are laid out on the bed! Yell down if you need anything!

(Marty and Jackie-O smile.) What?

MARTY.

(To Jackie-O.) I got your letter.

JACKIE-O.

Oh?

67

MARTY.

I’ve forgotten his name. The one who was lousy in bed.

ANTHONY.

Who was lousy in bed?

MARTY.

But to be lousy in bed, you have to be in bed, don’t you?

ANTHONY.

Who was lousy in bed?

JACKIE-O.

That actor.

ANTHONY.

Peter? Peter was lousy in bed? I can’t believe it.

MARTY.

Tell me about Peter, Anthony.

ANTHONY.

He wears black. And he has a gap between his teeth. His eyes are green and one eye is squinty. Like sexy, not like disfigured. He’s in love with Jackie, you can tell. If he gets to hold her coat for her, his heart breaks into a million pieces on the floor.

MARTY.

So Peter’s in love with Jackie-O.

JACKIE-O.

Don’t use that word.

MARTY.

What word?

JACKIE-O.

Love. Love is for tiny people with tiny lives. Peter and I have nothing in common. Now you and I, Marty, have a great deal in common. Parents, DNA, bone structure.

ANTHONY.

He doesn’t look like he’d be lousy in bed.

JACKIE-O.

Now Anthony, we have something to tell you ...

MARTY.

Let’s talk about Anthony. Let’s express some familial concern about Anthony. Now, Anthony, why aren’t you at school?

ANTHONY.

I dropped out.

MARTY.

(To JACKIE-O.) He dropped out.

JACKIE-O.

Yes, I know.

MARTY.

Why did you drop out Anthony?

ANTHONY.

Why didn’t you go with her Marty?

MARTY. Excuse me Anthony, but we’re talking about you now. We’re expressing Familial Concern.

ANTHONY.

No you’re not.

MARTY.

We’re not?

68

ANTHONY.

You’re playing the Familial Concern game.

JACKIE-O.

Oh, Anthony, don’t be sincere. It’s déclassé.

ANTHONY.

I hear you crying at night alone in your room. (To Marty.) I hear her crying at night alone in her room.

MARTY.

(To Jackie-O.) You cry at night alone in your room?

ANTHONY.

Don’t make fun of her! I won’t let you make fun of her!

MARTY.

I wasn’t going to make fun of her. I was going to ask her what she cries about.

JACKIE-O.

You want somebody for a very long time and then you have them and they love you and they make love to you, but it’s not enough. This is the truth about sex.

ANTHONY.

Is that why Peter was lousy in bed?

JACKIE-O. I’m not talking about Peter, Anthony. I’m talking about Marty. I’m talking about Marty.

(Pause.)

ANTHONY.

Why did you tell me? I wish you hadn’t told me!

JACKIE-O.

Anthony, you knew ...

ANTHONY.

I did not know! How old were you?

JACKIE-O.

Young.

ANTHONY.

My whole life?

JACKIE-O.

Practically your whole life.

ANTHONY.

I felt left out.

JACKIE-O.

Little brothers always feel left out.

ANTHONY.

I felt majorly left out! Is that why you went crazy?

JACKIE-O.

No.

ANTHONY.

That’s why you went crazy. You were ashamed.

JACKIE-O.

I wasn’t ashamed.

ANTHONY.

Well, you should be!

JACKIE-O.

Don’t be bourgeois, Anthony.

ANTHONY.

I’m not being bourgeois! Don’t call me bourgeois just ‘cause I know right from wrong!

69

(To Marty.) Does Lesly know?

MARTY.

No.

ANTHONY.

Well, are you gonna tell her?

MARTY.

No.

ANTHONY.

You’re not gonna tell her?

MARTY.

How can I tell her?

ANTHONY.

You just ... tell her.

MARTY.

Why?

ANTHONY.

So she knows.

JACKIE-O.

I’ll tell her.

MARTY.

Don’t.

JACKIE-O.

She’ll understand. She’s from Pennsylvania. Entire towns are related.

ANTHONY.

That’s like cousins.

JACKIE-O.

So?

ANTHONY.

So you’re not cousins. You’re twins.

JACKIE-O.

That explains a great deal. Why Mama insists on celebrating our birthdays on the same day for example. I thought she was just being chintzy with the party favors.

ANTHONY.

It would be bad enough if you were brother and sister, but twins ...

JACKIE-O.

Your moral outrage is very specific, Anthony ...

ANTHONY.

It’s like fucking a mirror! (Pause.)

JACKIE-O.

Anthony said “fuck.”

MARTY.

I know. I heard.

JACKIE-O.

Fucking a mirror. That sounds painful.

ANTHONY.

(To Marty.) Go upstairs. Go upstairs and tell her or I’ll ...

MARTY.

What?

ANTHONY.

Be really mad. (Pause. Anthony exits. Jackie-O goes to kiss Marty.)

70

MARTY.

Don’t.

JACKIE-O.

What?

MARTY.

Do that.

JACKIE-O.

Okay, let’s do something else. Let’s do mime.

MARTY.

No. (Jackie-O does a conventional box mime.)

JACKIE-O.

Guess where I am? I’m in a box and I can’t get out.

MARTY.

No, I’m in a box and I can’t get out.

JACKIE-O.

Well, I’m sorry, that wasn’t a very good mime, Marty, because I didn’t see that at all.

MARTY.

Why did you have to tell him?

JACKIE-O.

To get him out of the room.

MARTY.

What if he tells Lesly?

JACKIE-O.

He won’t.

MARTY.

What if he does?

JACKIE-O.

Are you ashamed?

MARTY.

Of what?

JACKIE-O.

Of us. Of what we have.

MARTY.

Had.

JACKIE-O.

I don’t recognize the past tense.

MARTY.

I’m not ashamed.

JACKIE-O.

What are you?

MARTY.

I don’t know. I see other houses, I see other lives and ...

JACKIE-O.

What?

MARTY.

They’re not like mine.

JACKIE-O.

They’re not like mine either.

MARTY.

They could be.

71

JACKIE-O.

Other lives don’t interest me.

MARTY.

That’s what we always said, but maybe we said that because we thought we couldn’t have it, maybe ...

JACKIE-O.

We could all move to Pennsylvania.

MARTY.

I should go up soon.

JACKIE-O.

We’re not going to bed until one of three things happens. The hurricane ends or we run out of rum.

MARTY.

That’s two. (Jackie-O smiles slowly at him.)

CROSSFADE

Scene 6 The guest bedroom. Lesly is unpacking. Anthony stands in the doorway.

ANTHONY.

I have to talk to you.

LESLY.

About what?

ANTHONY.

Stuff.

LESLY.

Okay, but I’m unpacking.

ANTHONY.

Can I help?

LESLY.

No, that’s okay.

ANTHONY.

Why not?

LESLY.

There’s, you know, girl stuff.

ANTHONY.

Tampons?

LESLY.

Anthony.

ANTHONY.

Underwear?

LESLY.

What did you want to talk to me about?

ANTHONY.

Where did you meet Marty?

LESLY.

At a party.

72

ANTHONY.

What kind of party?

LESLY.

Like, a party someone has in their house, you know. Apartment.

ANTHONY.

What did he say and what did you say?

LESLY.

Well, there were no chairs. There were two chairs. Boat chairs, like those chairs they have on boats. So Marty was sitting in one. And then he got up. You know. To give me the chair. I knew he wasn’t from New York.

ANTHONY.

So you fell in love with him.

LESLY.

No. I thought he was gay.

ANTHONY.

You did? Why?

LESLY.

Well, everyone is. In New York. I mean not me. But everyone. Men. And he was so beautiful, you know?

ANTHONY.

Do you think I am? Beautiful.

LESLY.

Well, you look like Marty.

ANTHONY.

I do?

LESLY.

Uh-huh.

ANTHONY.

‘Cause we’re not exactly sure we had the same father. I mean my mother always had the same husband. But she was kind of a free spirit. You know. Like that.

LESLY.

Doesn’t that bother you?

ANTHONY. Well, I mean if it did it wouldn’t change anything. I mean I don’t mean to be Buddhistic or anything.

LESLY.

Be what?

ANTHONY.

Buddhistic.

LESLY

Oh, that’s okay.

ANTHONY.

How old are you?

LESLY.

Twenty-three.

ANTHONY.

Me too.

LESLY.

Oh. I thought you were younger.

ANTHONY.

Well. I am. What do you think about sex?

73

LESLY.

Well, I mean, sex is good with the right man. But you have to be careful, you know.

Especially in New York.

ANTHONY.

Careful?

LESLY.

Diseases. Like that.

ANTHONY.

Mental diseases?

LESLY.

No.

ANTHONY.

But you should be careful of mental diseases too.

LESLY.

I guess.

ANTHONY.

If somebody else fell in love with you now, what would you do?

LESLY.

Tell them I was engaged.

ANTHONY.

You wouldn’t, you wouldn’t maybe check it out, see if maybe he’s got something to offer or ... like that.

LESLY.

No.

ANTHONY.

Do I have a fever? (Lesly puts her hand on his forehead and sits beside him.)

LESLY.

No.

ANTHONY.

Are you sure?

LESLY.

I’m pretty sure.

ANTHONY.

Can you check again? (Lesly checks again.)

LESLY.

Well, you’re warm, but not like a fever. More like warm.

ANTHONY.

It’s because I’m sitting next to you. I’m warm because I’m sitting next to you.

LESLY.

Anthony.

ANTHONY.

What?

LESLY.

You know. Like I said.

ANTHONY.

Lesly. Can I hold your hand? Just hold your hand?

LESLY.

Okay.

ANTHONY.

What’s that?

74

LESLY.

A scar.

ANTHONY.

From what?

LESLY.

A cheese knife. I was cutting cheese.

ANTHONY.

That’s it? That’s the story?

LESLY.

Uh-huh.

ANTHONY.

I have a scar. Here. (He points to his neck.) Marty and Jackie were playing French Revolution and they made me play Marie Antoinette. I probably have mental scars too.

Mental scar tissue.

LESLY.

Marty’s probably gonna be coming up pretty soon.

ANTHONY.

I don’t think so. He’s with Jackie-O.

LESLY.

So?

ANTHONY.

Can I hold something else now? Can I see your knees?

LESLY.

No.

ANTHONY.

I like that expression “bee’s knees.” Like “I think you’re the bee’s knees.”

LESLY.

Bees don’t have knees.

ANTHONY.

Tell me about when you lost your virginity.

LESLY.

No.

ANTHONY.

Tell me something.

LESLY.

I don’t know what to tell you.

ANTHONY.

Anything. (Pause.)

LESLY.

In fourth grade, Cindy McKinney, she was this girl, she always wore a purple bra with a white shirt, you know?

ANTHONY.

No. What?

LESLY.

Like she was showing off that she had a bra, you know.

ANTHONY.

Oh.

LESLY.

I hate people like that.

ANTHONY.

Me too. Cindy McKinney, huh?

75

LESLY.

Yeah.

ANTHONY.

Whatever happened to old Cindy McKinney?

LESLY.

I don’t know.

ANTHONY.

Purple. I hate that.

LESLY.

Me too.

ANTHONY.

Do I have a fever?

LESLY.

I already checked. Before. Twice.

ANTHONY.

I know but this time I think I really have one.

LESLY.

(Checking his forehead.) You’re warm. But not like burning up.

ANTHONY.

I think I have a brain tumor.

LESLY.

You do?

ANTHONY.

And you know what the big tragedy of that is?

LESLY.

You’ll die?

ANTHONY.

Yeah. But I’ll die without ever having ... you know.

LESLY.

You’ve never ... ?

ANTHONY.

No.

LESLY.

I thought you went to Princeton.

ANTHONY.

Only for two months.

LESLY. It’s not that big a tragedy. I mean unless you’re with exactly the right person it’s not that great.

ANTHONY.

It’s not that great?

LESLY.

No. Like if they smoke they taste like ashes. Like that. Or they like stick their tongue in your ear so much you get like chapped ears.

ANTHONY.

Wow.

LESLY.

Or like they start and you have to go to the bathroom.

ANTHONY.

Lesly.

76

LESLY.

Huh?

ANTHONY.

I don’t smoke. I won’t stick my tongue in your ear, and if you have to go, we’ll just stop, and then when you come back, we’ll start again.

LESLY.

Anthony, it’s too weird. Doing it with two brothers is like incest.

ANTHONY. Lesly. About incest. I have two words to say to you. Jackie-O and Marty. Jackie-O and Marty. (Lesly’s head slowly turns towards him.)

LESLY.

How do you know that?

ANTHONY.

They told me.

LESLY.

Who told you?

ANTHONY.

Jackie.

LESLY.

Ha.

ANTHONY.

Then Marty. Marty too. (Lesly is silent.) Are you okay?

LESLY.

(Softly.) No.

ANTHONY.

Sweetie?

LESLY.

Why’d you call me that?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know. It just came out.

LESLY.

My dad used to call me that. Before.

ANTHONY.

Before what?

LESLY.

Before he died.

ANTHONY.

I could call you that again.

LESLY.

That’s okay. I don’t know what to do.

ANTHONY.

I could stay with you.

LESLY.

Stay with me how?

ANTHONY.

Anyway you want me to stay with you.

LESLY.

With your clothes on?

ANTHONY.

Or off. (Pause. Lesly looks at him.)

77

LESLY.

You look like Marty.

ANTHONY. You look like Lesly. Lesly? I love you, Lesly. (Anthony begins to kiss her hair and her cheeks.

She allows him to. She sighs and offers her lips to be kissed. Mrs. Pascal appears unseen and watches, a cocktail glass in her hand. We hear the amplified sound of ice tinkling.)

BLACKOUT

Scene 7 The guest bedroom. Anthony is sleeping, wearing only boxer shorts.

Lesly sits on the side of the bed, dressing.

ANTHONY.

(Sleepily.) Where are you going?

LESLY.

To find Marty.

ANTHONY.

He’s not in his room.

LESLY.

How do you know?

ANTHONY.

When I went to the bathroom his door was open. (Pause.) Lesly, was I terrible?

LESLY.

(Kissing him on the head.) You were fine.

ANTHONY.

Fine?

LESLY.

Just fine.

ANTHONY.

You mean “just fine” or “just” fine?

LESLY.

It was your first time.

ANTHONY.

It’s supposed to last longer, isn’t it?

LESLY.

Eventually.

ANTHONY.

How long does like Marty last?

LESLY.

Anthony.

ANTHONY.

What?

LESLY.

That’s personal.

ANTHONY.

You won’t tell him, will you?

LESLY.

What?

78

ANTHONY.

How I was.

LESLY.

No.

ANTHONY.

But you’re gonna tell him? About us?

LESLY.

I don’t know.

ANTHONY.

What about honesty, the importance of honesty in a relationship? I’ll always be honest with you, Lesly.

LESLY.

Oh.

ANTHONY.

Always.

LESLY.

Well. Thank you.

ANTHONY.

You looked different with your clothes off.

LESLY.

You’re supposed to.

ANTHONY.

I mean different from the way I imagined your body with your clothes off with your clothes on. You have muscles. You could work like on a farm.

LESLY.

I did.

ANTHONY.

Like those Soviet women with the kerchiefs.

LESLY.

The fat ones?

ANTHONY.

No, the ones with the kerchiefs.

LESLY.

Russian women are fat. (Lesly stands.)

ANTHONY.

Your shirt is on inside out.

LESLY.

I always do that.

ANTHONY.

Turn on the light if you want.

LESLY.

The electricity’s out.

ANTHONY.

Maybe it’s back. Try the light.

LESLY.

I don’t want to.

ANTHONY.

Why not?

LESLY.

I’m shy.

79

ANTHONY.

Lesly, we just ...

LESLY.

That’s different. That was just something I did. You have to be with someone for a while before you let them really look at you.

ANTHONY.

Do you let Marty look at you?

LESLY.

Of course. Damn. I broke my heel.

ANTHONY.

Here. Give it to me. I have Crazy Glue.

LESLY.

How long does that take?

ANTHONY.

I have to read the instructions. It works overnight.

LESLY.

That’s too long. I’ll just go barefoot.

ANTHONY. Wait. Let me fix it for you. It doesn’t need overnight. That was a lie. (She hands him the shoe.)

LESLY.

Anthony, not five minutes ago, you said you would always be honest with me.

ANTHONY.

I lied. To keep you here.

LESLY. I can’t stay here. And you can’t stay here. I was confused before. I was in a state of confusion.

ANTHONY.

That’s ‘cause we were in the heat of passion

LESLY.

I wasn’t in the heat of passion.

ANTHONY.

I’m closing my ears.

LESLY.

I was pretending you were Marty. But it didn’t work. You’re brothers, but you smell different, taste different, everything.

ANTHONY.

How do I smell?

LESLY.

Clean. Like a laundromat.

ANTHONY.

And Marty?

LESLY.

Champagne.

ANTHONY.

What else?

LESLY.

I missed the scar.

ANTHONY.

Jackie’s scar?

80

LESLY.

No, Marty’s. On his stomach. From when he had his appendix out.

ANTHONY.

Marty had his appendix out?

LESLY.

Didn’t he?

ANTHONY.

No. Jackie shot him.

LESLY.

Stop.

ANTHONY.

She did.

LESLY.

Why?

ANTHONY.

‘Cause she felt like it. He was gonna go to New York, and she didn’t want him to go.

LESLY.

Is my shoe ready?

ANTHONY.

I just glued it.

LESLY.

Give it to me.

ANTHONY.

No. It won’t hold. You’ll fall down the stairs.

LESLY.

I’ll be careful.

ANTHONY.

If you go down there, you may see something.

LESLY.

I know.

ANTHONY.

Carnal.

LESLY.

I know.

ANTHONY.

So why put yourself through it? Wait till the morning, and then tell him it’s over.

LESLY.

What’s over?

ANTHONY.

It.

LESLY.

Us?

ANTHONY.

No. Him. You and him.

LESLY.

It’s not over, Anthony. We’re over.

ANTHONY.

I know.

LESLY.

No. We’re over. You and me.

81

ANTHONY.

Over? How can we be over?

LESLY.

We just are. Can I have my shoe?

ANTHONY.

No.

LESLY.

Fine. (Lesly limps out. She closes the door behind her. Anthony hurls the shoe at the door.)

CROSSFADE

Scene 8 The living room.

JACKIE-O.

There is something I’ve been meaning to ask you. There’s this thing I’ve heard and if I thought for one second it were true I would probably kill myself. Does your fiancee work in a donut shop?

MARTY.

A Donut King. Actually.

JACKIE-O.

A Donut King. So is she like the Queen? Are we entertaining royalty?

MARTY.

She would be like a donut lady-in-waiting.

JACKIE-O.

So she’s sort of a marginal donut figure?

MARTY.

In all fairness she is a minor and not a major donut figure. Because it’s a chain you see, and there are women just like her all over the city.

JACKIE-O.

My point exactly.

MARTY. No, my point, my point, Jackie. There are women just like her all over the city. I know

that. But this one belongs to me. I have chosen to love her. It wasn’t thrust upon me by ...

JACKIE-O.

Destiny?

MARTY.

I’m going to bed.

JACKIE-O.

Can I come?

MARTY.

No. (Jackie-O moves to kiss him.) Jackie. I love her.

JACKIE-O.

(Disdainfully.) Love.

MARTY.

Yes, love, love! I am tired of being above everything! I want to be a human being!

JACKIE-O.

Okay. Let’s be human beings.

82

MARTY.

You don’t know how. (Jackie-O begins to cry.)

JACKIE-O.

(Softly.) You didn’t come. To my hospital. You didn’t come.

MARTY.

I came.

JACKIE-O.

They didn’t tell me.

MARTY. I came at night. I stood under your window. I watched you put on your make-up. I

watched you cry it off. And I knew. I was the one making you crazy. So I left. I went to New York.

JACKIE-O.

But I’m not crazy now, I’m better! I watch soap operas. I bake brownies. Normalcy is coursing through my veins!

MARTY.

I want you to have a life. I want you to love someone you’re allowed to love.

JACKIE-O.

I miss you. I miss you so much.

MARTY.

I miss you.

JACKIE-O.

When I was with Peter, I couldn’t come without seeing your face. When you make love to that Lesly-girl do you see my face?

MARTY.

Sometimes.

JACKIE-O.

My face how? From when?

MARTY.

The night we went to the party, the Ides of March party. You ran into the room in your slip and pillbox hat ...

JACKIE-O.

And heels, I got to wear heels ...

MARTY.

And Mama’s stockings with the seams. You sat down on the couch ...

JACKIE-O.

I was waiting for my skirt, the macaroni wouldn’t dry ...

MARTY.

I followed the seams of your stockings, and then I was afraid ...

JACKIE-O.

So I began the game. Marty. Look. (Jackie-O puts on a pink pillbox hat.)

MARTY.

You look lovely.

JACKIE-O.

I have everything. The dress. Everything.

MARTY.

The dress?

JACKIE-O.

The suit. I could put it on.

MARTY.

Don’t.

83

JACKIE-O.

For old time’s sake. (Jackie-O begins to dress in a 1960s pink Chanel suit.)

MARTY.

Lesly may come down.

JACKIE-O.

She won’t come down.

MARTY.

How do you know?

JACKIE-O.

She won’t come down. I have the gun. (Jackie-O pulls out a gun.)

MARTY.

Put it down

JACKIE-O.

There’s no bullets, Marty. See for yourself. (Marty checks the gun.)

MARTY.

But the blank, they’ll hear the blank.

JACKIE-O.

In the storm?

MARTY.

It’s getting quiet.

JACKIE-O.

We’re in the eye.

MARTY.

Do you still remember that day?

JACKIE-O.

The day of the party?

MARTY.

The day he was shot.

JACKIE-O.

The radio was on, the TV was on.

MARTY.

Mama was crying, and Daddy was crying.

JACKIE-O.

And Daddy was leaving.

MARTY.

Finally leaving.

JACKIE-O.

She covered him with her body. She tried to keep him there.

MARTY.

She tried to keep his head on, but it was falling off.

JACKIE-O.

You be him, and I’ll be her.

MARTY.

I’m him?

JACKIE-O.

And I’m her. (Jackie-O points the gun at him and shoots. He falls. In slow motion they re-enact the moments after Kennedy was assassinated. Jackie-O cradles Marty’s head in her lap. Then she straddles him. Marty slowly sits up as Jackie-O arches her back and moves in for a kiss. Lesly stands in the doorway watching.)

BLACKOUT

84

Scene 9 The guest bedroom. Lesly enters, out of breath, whimpering. She slams the door and leans against it. She looks up and starts as she realizes Mrs. Pascal is sitting on the bed where she’d left Anthony.

MRS. PASCAL. You’re not bleeding.

LESLY.

No.

MRS. PASCAL. Who’s bleeding?

LESLY.

Nobody.

MRS. PASCAL. Thank God. LESLY.

Where’s Anthony?

MRS. PASCAL. Why? LESLY

I have to talk to him!

MRS. PASCAL. (Standing up.) There’s croissants in the kitchen. They’re filled with something. I forget

what. You can eat yours in the cab.

LESLY.

I’m not taking a cab.

MRS. PASCAL. How are you getting to the train?

LESLY.

I’m not taking the train.

MRS. PASCAL. Then how are you getting back to New York?

LESLY.

Marty will drive me.

MRS. PASCAL. Marty’s needed here.

LESLY.

Marty’s needed there!

MRS. PASCAL. Oh, you’ll find a replacement.

LESLY.

No, I won’t.

MRS. PASCAL. You already have. (Beat.)

LESLY.

Were you spying on us?

MRS. PASCAL. A mother doesn’t spy. A mother pays attention.

85

LESLY.

Marty won’t let me go without him. He loves me!

MRS. PASCAL. You’re just a symbol to him. A symbol of all that is good and pure.

LESLY.

I’m not a symbol!

MRS. PASCAL. Not any more.

LESLY.

Please don’t tell him about Anthony. It will only hurt him.

MRS. PASCAL. It’s a little late to worry about hurting Marty.

LESLY.

He never has to know.

MRS. PASCAL. You can see that Jackie-O’s a very sick girl. She needs her family.

LESLY.

She has you. She has Anthony.

MRS. PASCAL. We’re beside the point as far as Jackie-O’s concerned.

LESLY.

Jackie-O should learn she can’t always have everything her way.

MRS. PASCAL. Jackie can have everything her way. She always has.

LESLY.

Is that how you raised them?

MRS. PASCAL. People “raise” cattle, children just happen.

LESLY.

They don’t just happen.

MRS. PASCAL. You can read Dr. Spock from now till Doomsday, but children just happen all the same.

This one has blue eyes, and that one’s insane.

LESLY.

Well, she can’t have Marty. Marty’s mine.

MRS. PASCAL. Oh, please, Marty’s maybe been sort of yours for six months. He’s belonged to Jackie for 20-odd years.

LESLY.

Very odd.

MRS. PASCAL. Leave this morning, or Marty finds out where you spent the night. Leave now with your

symbology in tact, or stay and lose Marty anyway.

LESLY.

So what if I slept with his brother! He slept with his sister!

MRS. PASCAL. I’m sure I don’t know what you’re talking about.

LESLY.

I’m sure you do.

86

MRS. PASCAL. Sure? One can never be sure. Don’t forget your toothbrush.

BLACKOUT

Scene 10 A few moments later. Anthony stands where we last saw Mrs. Pascal.

Lesly searches the room wildly.

ANTHONY.

What? What? What?

LESLY.

The suitcase.

ANTHONY.

What suitcase?

LESLY.

The blue suitcase, my suitcase, where is it?

ANTHONY.

Under the bed. Did you see them?

LESLY.

What?

ANTHONY.

Jackie, Marty.

LESLY.

Uh-huh.

ANTHONY.

Was I right? Was it carnal?

LESLY.

Yes. No. I don’t know.

ANTHONY.

I told you not to go. Didn’t I tell you not to go? (Lesly hurriedly packs her suitcase.) I’m worried, I’m worried sick. You can’t leave like this, in a hurricane.

LESLY.

I’ve got to get Marty out of here.

ANTHONY.

Can I come? I want to go to New York. I like the way it smells.

LESLY.

Nobody likes the way it smells.

ANTHONY.

I do. Like pretzels. Street pretzels.

LESLY.

You can’t come with us.

ANTHONY.

Why?

LESLY.

We live in a studio.

ANTHONY.

I’m talking about love and you’re talking real estate.

87

LESLY.

I don’t love you, Anthony.

ANTHONY.

Fine. Pass the salt. Pour it on my body. Turn me inside out like a slug.

LESLY.

What’s a slug?

ANTHONY.

You don’t know what a slug is?

LESLY.

Is it like a potato bug?

ANTHONY.

What’s a potato bug?

LESLY.

They live under flagstones.

ANTHONY.

Like patios?

LESLY.

Yeah.

ANTHONY.

Put that back.

LESLY.

What?

ANTHONY.

That hairbrush.

LESLY.

It’s my hairbrush.

ANTHONY.

It is not.

LESLY.

It is too.

ANTHONY.

Where’d you buy it?

LESLY

I don’t remember ...

ANTHONY.

Yeah. Right.

LESLY.

Macy’s! I bought it at Macy’s!

ANTHONY. Put everything back. Don’t leave. (Anthony starts to take everything out of her suitcase. She

tries to put it back in. He pulls her down on the bed beside him.) How can you stay with him when you know, you know?

LESLY.

I don’t know! I don’t know! (Pause.)

ANTHONY.

We could go to Pennsylvania.

LESLY.

What would we do in Pennsylvania?

ANTHONY.

We could become Amish people.

88

LESLY.

You can’t just become Amish.

ANTHONY.

What’s the name of your town?

LESLY.

You’ve never heard of it.

ANTHONY.

But I want to. Hear of it.

LESLY.

It’s called Home.

ANTHONY.

It is not.

LESLY.

It is.

ANTHONY.

Really?

LESLY.

Really.

ANTHONY.

What does that mean?

LESLY.

It doesn’t mean anything. It’s what it’s called.

ANTHONY.

Let’s go there.

LESLY.

Anthony. I am not gonna go to Pennsylvania with you. I am not gonna go to New York with you. I am not gonna go to the 7-Eleven with you. (Pause.)

ANTHONY.

I didn’t ask you to go the 7-Eleven with me.

LESLY. It was an example. For emphasis. I needed a third thing for emphasis. Can you sit on my suitcase?

ANTHONY.

What?

LESLY.

Can you sit on my suitcase?

ANTHONY.

Can I sit on your suitcase? You’re standing there asking me if I can sit on your suitcase?

You’re standing there callously asking me if I can sit on your suitcase when you know and I know as soon as that suitcase is latched you’ll swing it off the bed and carry it downstairs and take you and it out of my life.

LESLY. The hell with it. (Lesly takes out a few pieces of clothing so that the lid will close. Anthony picks

up one of the articles of clothing and presses it to his nose. She snatches it back.) Stop smelling my clothes!

ANTHONY.

I will never love another woman. I will go to the desert and love only sand.

LESLY.

Sand? What do you mean you’ll love only sand? (Lesly starts for the door with the suitcase.)

ANTHONY.

You never go hungry in the desert, Lesly. Do you know why?

89

LESLY.

Why?

ANTHONY.

Because of the sand which is there.

CROSSFADE

Scene 11 The living room. The morning after. Marty’s tie and Jackie’s hat are askew, their shoes are off, buttons are undone. Empty wine bottles and dirty glasses are strewn about. Mrs. Pascal picks up the glasses.

JACKIE-O.

Don’t clean, Mother. Honestly. Don’t we have a maid?

MRS. PASCAL. Not anymore.

JACKIE-O.

What happened to her?

MRS. PASCAL. She quit when you shot your brother.

JACKIE-O.

The Kennedys have a maid. The Kennedys have everything.

MRS. PASCAL. Except for luck.

JACKIE-O.

I think they’re lucky; they’re all dead.

MRS. PASCAL. It’s too early in the morning to go all morbid. You’ll be sleeping in coffins next and

drinking out of skulls.

JACKIE-O.

It’s been done.

MRS. PASCAL. So has Death.

MARTY.

It’s been done to Death.

MRS. PASCAL. He speaks.

MARTY.

What’s for breakfast?

MRS. PASCAL. Croissants. They’re in the kitchen. They’re filled with something. I forget what.

MARTY.

I guess we’ll find out.

JACKIE-O.

How exciting. Don’t you find life to be exciting?

MRS. PASCAL. What’s that gun doing there?

JACKIE-O.

It’s not a gun. It’s a camera.

90

MRS. PASCAL. It is too a gun.

JACKIE-O.

It’s a camera that looks like a gun.

MRS. PASCAL. Give it to me.

MARTY.

It’s an empty gun.

MRS. PASCAL. How do you know?

MARTY.

I checked.

MRS. PASCAL. What is it doing there?

JACKIE-O.

Being gun-like, gun-esque.

MRS. PASCAL.`Where did it come from?

JACKIE-O.

God.

MARTY.

We were taking a trip down memory lane.

MRS. PASCAL. I want it now.

JACKIE-O.

I’ll put it away.

MRS. PASCAL. Marty.

MARTY.

I’ll put it away. (Marty exits with gun.)

JACKIE-O.

Mother, you’re white as a ghost. You look positively Ibsen-esque.

MRS. PASCAL. If it happens again, they’ll put you away. They’ll just put you away.

JACKIE-O.

Only if someone finds out.

MRS. PASCAL. She must have family somewhere.

JACKIE-O.

What?

MRS. PASCAL. Lesly.

JACKIE-O.

I’m not going to shoot Lesly!

MRS. PASCAL. Just don’t.

JACKIE-O.

That’s all we need is Marty mooning over some dead girl.

MRS. PASCAL. She’s leaving anyway

91

JACKIE-O.

When?

MRS. PASCAL. This morning.

JACKIE-O.

Why?

MRS. PASCAL. I suggested it.

JACKIE-O.

And she agreed?

MRS. PASCAL. More or less.

JACKIE-O.

Why would she leave?

MRS. PASCAL. Maybe we’re not her cup of tea.

JACKIE-O.

Is Marty going with her?

MRS. PASCAL. Don’t be silly.

JACKIE-O.

If he leaves again, I’ll implode. I’ll just implode.

MRS. PASCAL. He’s staying.

JACKIE-O.

Where is she now?

MRS. PASCAL. Packing I imagine.

JACKIE-O.

She’s packing?

MRS. PASCAL. As we speak.

JACKIE-O.

What if she forgets something?

MRS. PASCAL. We’ll burn it. (Marty re-enters without gun.) Is it away?

MARTY.

Yes.

MRS. PASCAL. Did you hide it?

MARTY.

I put it somewhere.

MRS. PASCAL. But did you hide it?

MARTY.

Only in the sense that I put it somewhere and no one saw me put it there.

MRS. PASCAL. If I walked into the room where you put the gun, could I see it?

MARTY.

No.

92

MRS. PASCAL. Then it’s hidden.

JACKIE-O.

Don’t worry, Mama. We won’t bloody the carpets.

MRS. PASCAL. Do you actually think I’m worried about my carpets?

JACKIE-O.

Aren’t you?

MRS. PASCAL. A little. I had to steam clean the last time. And there’s still a sort of shadow. (Mrs. Pascal

disappears. Lesly enters with a suitcase.)

JACKIE-O.

My. You’re up early. Did you sleep all right?

LESLY.

Why are you wearing that costume?

JACKIE-O. Everything else was in the wash. There’s croissants in the kitchen. No pancakes today I’m afraid.

LESLY.

I have to talk to Marty.

JACKIE-O.

I wonder what about. (Lesly waits for Jackie-O to leave. She doesn’t.)

LESLY.

(To Marty.) You were supposed to sneak into my room last night.

MARTY.

I fell asleep.

LESLY.

Did you?

JACKIE-O.

No. He stayed up.

LESLY.

By yourself?

JACKIE-O.

With me.

MARTY.

The hurricane took the Kennedy’s stables. The horses got loose. Secret Servicemen were all over the place. Wearing sunglasses.

LESLY.

I didn’t hear any horses.

MARTY.

What jumped over the moon, a cow or a horse?

LESLY.

A cow.

MARTY

Oh. I thought it was a horse.

LESLY.

No. A cow.

MARTY.

What’s the rest of it? Silverware was involved I know. Hey diddle diddle ... (Mrs. Pascal appears, carrying a tray of croissants.)

93

MRS. PASCAL. (To Lesly.) Lesly, you’re up! I see you’re all packed.

LESLY.

Yes.

MS. PASCAL.

Can I call you a cab?

LESLY.

I don’t need a cab.

MRS. PASCAL. How are you getting to the train station?

LESLY.

I’m going with Marty.

MRS. PASCAL. He’s going to drive you?

LESLY.

He’s coming with me.

MRS. PASCAL. Oh. I don’t think so.

LESLY.

He can decide for himself.

MRS. PASCAL. To make a decision you need all the facts, and I don’t think Marty has all the facts.

(Anthony enters.) Ah, Anthony, how did you sleep? Did you sleep all right?

ANTHONY.

What?

MRS. PASCAL. Lesly, how did you sleep? Did you sleep all right?

LESLY.

(Guarded.) Yes, thank you.

MRS. PASCAL. Did Anthony sleep all right?

LESLY.

Why don’t you ask him?

MRS. PASCAL. Marty, why don’t you ask your brother how he slept.

MARTY.

Why?

MRS. PASCAL. Jackie, why don’t you ask your brother how he slept.

JACKIE-O.

How’d you sleep, Marty?

MRS. PASCAL. Your other brother.

JACKIE-O.

How’d you sleep, Anthony?

MARTY.

What’s going on?

ANTHONY.

Lesly stayed with me last night. (Beat.)

94

JACKIE-O.

Ah, a quaint Pennsylvania prenuptial custom.

MRS. PASCAL. Well, I for one am shocked. (To Lesly.) Young lady, what do you have to say for yourself?

(Lesly says nothing.)

JACKIE-O.

She’s pleading the fifth.

MRS. PASCAL. I never cared for that symphony.

JACKIE-O.

Wasn’t he deaf by then?

MRS. PASCAL. Call me old-fashioned but I’d say the wedding’s off.

JACKIE-O.

It’s just as well. I always cry at weddings.

MRS. PASCAL. I even cried at mine. I must have had a premonition.

MARTY.

Get out.

JACKIE-O.

And go where?

MARTY.

There, I imagine.

JACKIE-O.

I hate to go there. I like to be here.

MRS. PASCAL. When you go there, it becomes here.

JACKIE-O.

It does?

MRS. PASCAL. Come on, I’ll show you. (Mrs. Pascal exits. Jackie-O scoops something off the coffee table and follows.)

ANTHONY.

If you really cared about her you wouldn’t a brought her here.

LESLY.

I wanted to come here.

MARTY.

And you did. Come. Or didn’t you?

LESLY.

Don’t. (Beat.)

ANTHONY.

You don’t deserve her. (Anthony exits.)

MARTY.

How was he?

LESLY.

I can’t tell you.

MARTY.

Weren’t you there?

LESLY.

I was there but ...

95

MARTY.

What?

LESLY.

He didn’t want you to know

MARTY.

I’ll bet.

LESLY.

How he was.

MARTY.

That good, huh?

LESLY.

It was his first time.

MARTY.

Yeah. Right.

LESLY.

It wasn’t?

MARTY.

What do you think?

LESLY.

Then why would he say it?

MARTY.

To get laid.

LESLY.

Well, I’m sorry, but when somebody says something I tend to think it’s the truth. It’s just the way I am, the way I was brought up, and if somebody forgets to mention something I wouldn’t think to ask, for example, did you sleep with your sister?! (Pause.)

MARTY.

Do you think masturbation counts as infidelity?

LESLY.

What?

MARTY.

When I sleep with me and not you, am I cheating on you?

LESLY.

Marty. Stop it. I came downstairs before.

MARTY.

Before when?

LESLY.

During it, the thing.

MARTY.

What thing?

LESLY.

The thing with the gun. And the costume.

MARTY.

Oh, God.

LESLY.

Why do you do that? (Marty doesn’t answer.) Do you want me to leave?

MARTY.

You gotta help me.

LESLY.

How?

96

MARTY.

Talk me back. Tell me about Sundays. What you and I would do on a Sunday.

LESLY.

We’d get up.

MARTY.

Right. Right. We’d get up. What about the alarm? Did the alarm go off?

LESLY.

No alarm, baby, it’s Sunday.

MARTY.

Oh. Oh yeah. Sunday.

LESLY.

The digital clock says 10:39. I climb out of bed. I pull the comforter over your bare shoulder. The cat is weaving in and out of my legs.

MARTY.

Coco.

LESLY.

I feed her. I come back to bed. I stroke your cheek. My fingers smell like tuna fish.

MARTY.

I pull you down onto me. You have rings, mascara rings, like a football player.

LESLY.

You have bad breath. I kiss you anyway.

MARTY. I watch you dress. I feel sad when you buckle your bra. There they go, I think. There they go.

LESLY.

I lose my other shoe.

MARTY.

I find your other shoe.

LESLY.

We read menus in the windows on Avenue A. We read the right side. We go to the Mogador. I forget what Eggs Florentine is.

MARTY.

Like Benedict with spinach.

LESLY.

The waitress says toast or pita? Toast or pita?

MARTY.

What about the newspaper? We forgot to buy a newspaper!

LESLY.

Later, newspaper comes later. We go to a street fair. I buy you a scarf.

MARTY.

Blue.

LESLY.

You buy me a barrette, a barrette with a bone.

MARTY.

Pebbles, like Pebbles.

LESLY.

We buy tulips.

MARTY.

Pink.

LESLY.

And a Sunday Times. We go home. It’s late afternoon and the sign comes on.

97

MARTY.

Jesus saves.

LESLY.

Across the street.

MARTY.

Jesu Salva.

LESLY.

We run a bath. You wash my back.

MARTY.

Shoulders like wings, bird shoulders.

LESLY.

Marty, I want you to leave with me. I want you to leave with me now.

MARTY.

Yes. All right. Yes. (A toilet flushes loudly. Jackie-O stands in the doorway.)

JACKIE-O.

I just flushed your car keys down the toilet.

LESLY.

Marty, gimme your keys.

MARTY.

(Checking his pockets.) I don’t have them.

LESLY.

Where’s your extra set?

MARTY

In my room.

LESLY.

Get them.

MARTY.

At home.

LESLY.

We’ll call a cab. Where’s the phone book?

MARTY.

By the phone. (Lesly goes to the phone table.)

LESLY.

The yellow pages.

MARTY.

Underneath.

LESLY.

The phone’s dead.

JACKIE-O.

Don’t look at me.

LESLY.

Marty’s not gonna stay here with you. We’re leaving for New York this morning. I don’t care how. Anthony told me about you. He told me what you did to that lizard. (Anthony appears in the doorway.)

JACKIE-O.

Oh, Anthony, not that old lizard story

LESLY.

And I know what else you did. I know where the scar came from. I know why they sent you to the hospital.

JACKIE-O.

You’re a regular Nancy Drew ...

98

LESLY.

You’re making him crazy, you want him to be crazy like you. Look at yourself, look at your clothes, you’re making fun of a woman who lost her husband, a man died, a man was murdered, a man who did something for other people ... What have you ever done for somebody else? If you really love Marty, think about what his life would be like here in this house, your mother will die, you’ll be left alone, you’ll have babies with webbed feet that you bury out back in the yard ...

JACKIE-O.

Where in the yard?

LESLY.

What?

JACKIE-O.

Where exactly in the yard? On the croquet lawn? By the bird bath? Marty, where do you think we should bury these babies with webbed feet? The back yard is getting very crowded I think. Positively littered with corpses. First Daddy’s and now duck babies.

LESLY.

You killed your father?

JACKIE-O.

Not me. Mama.

MARTY.

My father left my mother. Years ago. The day Kennedy was shot.

JACKIE-O.

He tried to leave but Mama shot him. We buried him by the central air.

MARTY.

They were installing central air. There was a hole in the ground, but not for him, for the air conditioner. She’s confused. You’re confused, Jackie. He left Mama. He called a cab.

JACKIE-O.

She covered him with her body. She tried to keep him there ...

MARTY.

Jackie Kennedy, not Mama, Jackie Kennedy ...

JACKIE-O.

She tried to keep his head on, but it was falling off ...

MARTY.

Lesly, go get your suitcase. (Lesly exits.) Anthony, go with her.

ANTHONY.

Give her her pills, Marty.

MARTY.

Which pills?

ANTHONY.

I don’t know which pills, she changed pills. (Jackie-O pulls out the gun.)

JACKIE-O.

One more time, Marty? For old time’s sake?

ANTHONY.

She’s got a gun. Get the gun!

MARTY.

It’s only blanks.

JACKIE-O.

One more time, and I’ll give you the car keys.

ANTHONY.

(Rummaging through prescription bottles.) Here’s the blue ones, try the blue ones.

99

JACKIE-O.

One more time, that’s all I ask. Then you can go back to the land of the donut kings ...

ANTHONY.

What does she want? What is she doing?

MARTY.

Anthony, go get Mama.

ANTHONY.

Give her the blue ones. I think it’s the blue ones.

MARTY.

Go! (Anthony exits.)

JACKIE-O.

You be him.

MARTY.

Yes.

JACKIE-O.

And I’ll be her.

MARTY.

I’m him?

JACKIE-O.

And I’m her. (Jackie-O lifts the gun and points it at him. She shoots. Three spotlights pick up the faces of the other three characters at the moment they hear the gunshot. Marty falls back on the couch. Jackie-O drops the gun and falls beside him cradling his head in her hands. They are both drenched with blood. Their position echoes the position of the Kennedys the moment after the assassination. Mrs. Pascal drops her cocktail glass. Amplified sound of glass shattering. Outside the wind dies.)

100

PROPERTY LIST Cocktail glass with ice (MRS. PASCAL) Tray of wine glasses with wine (MARTY) Wet clothing (LESLY) Ice cube (MARTY) Clothes (LESLY) Matches (MARTY) Candle (ANTHONY) Shoe with broken heel (LESLY) Pink pillbox hat JACKIE-O) Pink Chanel suit (JACKIE-O) Gun (JACKIE-O) Suitcase (LESLY) Hairbrush (LESLY) Empty wine bottles Dirty drinking glasses Tray of croissants (MRS. PASCAL) Prescription bottles with pills (MRS. PASCAL)

101

SOUND EFFECTS Hurricane Banging of a window Ice, in glasses, tinkling; amplified Toilet flush Glass shattering, amplified Wind dying down

102

Holy the Firm

by ANNIE DILLARD

103

for Gary

104

Part One: Newborn and Salted Every day is a god, each day is a god, and holiness holds forth in time. I worship each god, I praise each day splintered down, splintered down and wrapped in time like a husk, a husk of many colors spreading, at dawn fast over the mountains split.

I wake in a god. I wake in arms holding my quilt, holding me as best they can inside my quilt. Someone is kissing me—already. I wake, I cry ”Oh,” I rise from the pillow. Why should I open my eyes?

I open my eyes. The god lifts from the water. His head fills the bay. He is Puget Sound, the Pacific; his breast rises from pastures; his fingers are firs; islands slide wet down his shoulders. Islands slip blue from his shoulders and glide over the water, the empty, lighted water like a stage.

Today’s god rises, his long eyes flecked in clouds. He flings his arms, spreading colors; he arches, cupping sky in his belly; he vaults, vaulting and spread, holding all and spread on me like skin.

Under the quilt in my knees’ crook is a cat. She wakes; she curls to bite her metal sutures. The day is real; already, I can feel it click, hear it clicking under my knees.

The day is real; the sky clicks securely in place over the mountains, locks round the islands, snaps slap on the bay. Air fits flush on farm roofs; it rises inside the doors of barns and rubs at yellow barn windows. Air clicks up my hand cloven into fingers and wells in my ears’ holes, whole and entire. I call it simplicity, the way matter is smooth and alone.

I toss the cat. I stand and smooth the quilt. “Oh,” I cry, “Oh!” I live on northern Puget Sound, in Washington State, alone. I have a gold cat, who sleeps on my legs, named Small. In the morning I joke to her blank face, Do you remember last night? Do you remember? I throw her out before breakfast, so I can eat.

There is a spider, too, in the bathroom, with whom I keep a sort of company. Her little outfit always reminds

me of a certain moth I helped to kill. The spider herself is of uncertain lineage, bulbous at the abdomen and drab. Her six-inch mess of a web works, works somehow, works miraculously, to keep her alive and me amazed.

The web itself is in a corner behind the toilet, connecting tile wall to tile wall and floor, in a place where there is, I would have thought, scant traffic. Yet under the web are sixteen or so corpses she has tossed to the floor.

The corpses appear to be mostly sow bugs, those little armadillo creatures who live to travel flat out in houses, and die round. There is also a new shred of earwig, three old spider skins crinkled and clenched, and two moth bodies, wingless and huge and empty, moth bodies I drop to my knees to see.

Today the earwig shines darkly and gleams, what there is of him: a dorsal curve of thorax and abdomen, and a smooth pair of cerci by which I knew his name.

Next week, if the other bodies are any indication, he will be shrunken and gray, webbed to the floor with dust.

The sow bugs beside him are hollow and empty of color, fragile, a breath away from brittle fluff. The spider skins lie on their sides, translucent and ragged, their legs drying in knots. And the moths, the empty moths, stagger against each other, headless, in a confusion of arcing strips of chitin like peeling varnish, like a jumble of buttresses for cathedral domes, like nothing resembling moths, so that I should hesitate to call them moths, except that I have had some experience with the figure Moth reduced to a nub.

Two summers ago I was camping alone in the Blue Ridge Mountains in Virginia. I had hauled myself and gear up there to read, among other things, James Ramsey Ullman’s The Day on Fire, a novel about Rimbaud that had made me want to be a writer when I was sixteen; I was hoping it would do it again. So I read, lost, every day sitting under a tree by my tent, while warblers swung in the leaves overhead and bristle worms trailed their inches over the twiggy dirt at my feet; and I read every night by candlelight, while barred owls called in the forest and pale moths massed round my head in the

105

clearing, where my light made a ring.

Moths kept flying into the candle. They would hiss and recoil, lost upside down in the shadows among my cooking pans. Or they would singe their wings and fall, and their hot wings, as if melted, would stick to the first thing they touched—a pan, a lid, a spoon so that the snagged moths could flutter only in tiny arcs, unable to struggle free. These I could release by a quick flip with a stick; in the morning I would find my cooking stuff gilded with torn flecks of moth wings, triangles of shiny dust here and there on the aluminum. So I read, and boiled water, and replenished candles, and read on.

One night a moth flew into the candle, was caught, burnt dry, and held. I must have been staring at the candle, or maybe I looked up when a shadow crossed my page; at any rate, I saw it all. A golden female moth, a biggish one with a two inch wingspan, flapped into the fire, dropped her abdomen into the wet wax, stuck, flamed, frazzled and fried in a second. Her moving wings ignited like tissue paper, enlarging the circle of light in the clearing and creating out of the darkness the sudden blue sleeves of my sweater, the green leaves of jewelweed by my side, the ragged red trunk of a pine. At once the light contracted again and the moth’s wings vanished in a fine, foul smoke. At the same time her six legs clawed, curled, blackened, and ceased, disappearing utterly. And her head jerked in spasms, making a spattering noise; her antennae crisped and burned away and her heaving mouth parts crackled like pistol fire. When it was all over, her head was, so far as I could determine, gone, gone the long way of her wings and legs. Had she been new, or old? Had she mated and laid her eggs, had she done her work? All that was left was the glowing horn shell of her abdomen and thorax—a fraying, partially collapsed gold tube jammed upright in the candle’s round pool.

And then this moth essence, this spectacular skeleton, began to act as a wick. She kept burning. The wax rose in the moth’s body from her soaking abdomen to her thorax to the jagged hole where her head should be, and widened into flame, a saffron yellow flame that robed her to the ground like any immolating monk. That candle had two wicks, two flames of identical height, side by side. The moth’s head was fire. She burned for two hours, until I blew her out.

She burned for two hours without changing, with-

out bending or leaning only glowing within, like a building fire glimpsed through silhouetted walls, like a hollow saint, like a flame faced virgin gone to God, while I read by her light, kindled, while Rimbaud in Paris burnt out his brains in a thousand poems, while night pooled wetly at my feet.

And that is why I believe those hollow crisps on the bathroom floor are moths. I think I know moths, and fragments of moths, and chips and tatters of utterly empty moths, in any state. How many of you, I asked the people in my class, which of you want to give your lives and be writers? I was trembling from coffee, or cigarettes, or the closeness of faces all around me. (Is this what we live for? I thought; is this the only final beauty: the color of any skin in any light, and living, human eyes?) All hands rose to the question. (You, Nick? Will you? Margaret? Randy? Why do I want them to mean it?)

And then I tried to tell them what the choice must mean: you can’t be anything else. You must go at your life with a broadax. . . . They had no idea what I was saying. (I have two hands, don’t I? And all this energy, for as long as I can remember. I’ll do it in the evenings, after skiing, or on the way home from the bank, or after the children are asleep. . . .) They thought I was raving again. It’s just as well.

I have three candles here on the table which I disentangle from the plants and light when visitors come.

Small usually avoids them, although once she came too close and her tail caught fire; I rubbed it out before she noticed. The flames move light over everyone’s skin, draw light to the surface of the faces of my friends.

When the people leave I never blow the candles out, and after I’m asleep they flame and burn.

The Cascade range, in these high latitudes, backs almost into the water. There is only a narrow strip, an afterthought of foothills and farms sixty miles wide, between the snowy mountains and the sea. The mountains wall well. The rest of the country—most of the rest of the planet, in some very real sense, excluding a shred of British Columbia’s coastline and the Alaskan islands— is called, and profoundly felt to be, simply “East of the Mountains.” I’ve been there.

I came here to study hard things—rock mountain and salt sea—and to temper my spirit on their edges.

“Teach me thy ways, O Lord” is, like all prayers, a rash

106

one, and one I cannot but recommend. These mountains—Mount Baker and the Sisters and Shuksan, the Canadian Coastal Range and the Olympics on the peninsula—are surely the edge of the known and comprehended world. They are high. That they bear their own unimaginable masses and weathers aloft, holding them up in the sky for anyone to see plain, makes them, as Chesterton said of the Eucharist, only the more mysterious by their very visibility and absence of secrecy. They are the western rim of the real, if not considerably beyond it. If the Greeks had looked at Mount Baker all day, their large and honest art would have broken, and they would have gone fishing, as these people do. And as perhaps I one day shall.

But the mountains are, incredibly, east. When I first came here I faced east and watched the mountains, thinking, These are the Ultima Thule, the final westering, the last serrate margin of time. Since they are, incredibly, east, I must be no place at all. But the sun rose over the snowfields and woke me where I lay, and I rose and cast a shadow over someplace, and thought, There is, God help us, more. So gathering my bowls and spoons, and turning my head, as it were, I moved to face west, relinquishing all hope of sanity, for what is more.

And what is more is islands: sea, and unimaginably solid islands, and sea, and a hundred rolling skies. You spill your breath. Nothing holds; the whole show rolls. I can imagine Virginias no less than Pacifics. Inland valley, pool, desert, plain—it’s all a falling sheaf of edges, like a quick-flapped deck of cards, like a dory or a day launched all unchristened, lost at sea. Land is a poured thing and time a surface film lapping and fringeing at fastness, at a hundred hollow and receding blues. Breathe fast: we’re backing off the rim.

Here is the fringey edge where elements meet and realms mingle, where time and eternity spatter each other with foam. The salt sea and the islands, molding and molding, row upon rolling row, don’t quit, nor do winds end nor skies cease from spreading in curves. The actual percentage of land mass to sea in the Sound equals that of the rest of the planet: we have less time than we knew. Time is eternity’s pale interlinear, as the islands are the sea’s. We have less time than we knew and that time buoyant, and cloven, lucent, and missile, and wild.

The room where I live is plain as a skull, a firm setting for windows. A nun lives in the fires of the spirit,

a thinker lives in the bright wick of the mind, an artist lives jammed in the pool of materials. (Or, a nun lives, thoughtful and tough, in the mind, a nun lives, with that special poignancy peculiar to religious, in the exile of materials; and a thinker, who would think of something, lives in the clash of materials, and in the world of spirit where all long thoughts must lead; and an artist lives in the mind, that warehouse of forms, and an artist lives, of course, in the spirit. So.) But this room is a skull, a fire tower, wooden, and empty. Of itself it is nothing, but the view, as they say, is good.

Since I live in one room, one long wall of which is glass, I am myself, at everything I do, a backdrop to all the landscape’s occasions, to all its weathers, colors and lights. From the kitchen sink, and from my bed, and from the table, the couch, the hearth, and the desk, I see land and water, islands, sky.

The land is complex and shifting: the eye leaves it.

There is a white Congregationalist church among Douglas firs; there is a green pasture between two yellow fallow fields; there are sheep bent over beneath some alders, and beside them a yard of running brown hens.

But everything in the landscape points to sea. The land’s progress of colors leads the eye up a distant hill, a sweeping big farm of a hill whose yellow pastures bounce light all day from a billion stems and blades; and down the hill’s rim drops a dark slope of fir forest, a slant your eye rides down to the point, the dark sliver of land that holds the bay. From this angle you see the bay cut a crescent; your eye flies up the black beach to the point, or slides down the green firs to the point, and the point is an arrow pointing over and over, with its log-strewn beach, its gray singleness, and its recurved white edging of foam, to sea: to the bright sound, the bluing of water with distance at the world’s rim, and on it the far blue islands, and over these lights the light clouds.

You can’t picture it, can you? Neither can I. Oh, the desk is yellow, the oak table round, the ferns alive, the mirror cold, and I never have cared. I read. In the Middle Ages, I read, “the idea of a thing which a man framed for himself was always more real to him than the actual thing itself.” Of course. I am in my Middle Ages; the world at my feet, the world through the window, is an illuminated manuscript whose leaves the wind takes, one by one, whose painted illuminations and halting words

107

draw me, one by one, and I am dazzled in days and lost.

There is, in short, one country, one room, one enormous window, one cat, one spider, and one person: but I am hollow. And, for now, there are the many gods of mornings and the many things to give them for their work—lungs and heart, muscle, nerve, and bone—and there is the no man’s land of many things wherein they dwell, and from which I seek to call them, in work that’s mine.

Nothing is going to happen in this book. There is only a little violence here and there in the language, at the corner where eternity clips time.

So I read. Armenians, I read, salt their newborn babies. I check somewhere else: so did the Jews at the time of the prophets. They washed a baby in water, salted him, and wrapped him in cloths. When God promised to Aaron and all the Levites all the offerings Israel made to God, the firstfruits and the firstling livestock, “all the best of the oil, and all the best of the wine,” he said of this promise, “It is a covenant of salt forever.” In the Roman church baptism, the priest places salt in the infant’s mouth.

I salt my breakfast eggs. All day long I feel created. I can see the blown dust on the skin on the back of my hand, the tiny trapezoids of chipped clay, moistened and breathed alive. There are some created sheep in the pasture below me, sheep set down here precisely, just touching their blue shadows hoof to hoof on the grass.

Created gulls pock the air, rip great curved seams in the settled air: I greet my created meal, amazed.

I have been drawing a key to the islands I see from my window. Everyone told me a different set of names for them, until one day a sailor came and named them all with such authority that I believed him. So I penciled an outline of the horizon on a sheet of paper and labeled the lobes: Skipjack, Sucia, Saturna, Salt Spring, Bare Island. . . .

Today, November 18 and no wind, today a veil of air has lifted that I didn’t know was there. I see a new island, a new wrinkle, the deepening of wonder, behind the blue translucence the sailor said is Salt Spring Island. I have no way of learning its name. I bring the labeled map to the table and pencil a new line. Call that: Unknown Is-

land North; Water-Statue; Sky-Ruck; Newborn and Salted; Waiting for Sailor.

Henry Miller relates that Knut Hamsun once said, in response to a questionnaire, that he wrote to kill time.

This is funny in a number of ways. In a number of ways I kill myself laughing, looking out at islands. Startled, the yellow cat on the floor stares over her shoulder. She has carried in a wren, I suddenly see, a wren she has killed, whose dead wings point askew on the circular rug. It is time. Out with you both. I’m busy laughing, to kill time.

I shoo the cat from the door, turn the wren over in my palm, unmoved, and drop him from the porch, down to the winterkilled hair grass and sedge, where the cat may find him if she will, or crows, or beetles, or rain.

When I next look up from my coffee, there is a ruckus on the porch. The cat has dragged in a god, scorched.

He is alive. I run outside. Save for his wings, he is a perfect, very small man. He is fair, thin-skinned in the cat’s mouth, and kicking. His hair is on fire and stinks; his wingtips are blackened and seared. From the two soft flaps of the cat’s tiger muzzle his body jerks, naked.

One of his miniature hands pushes hard at her nose. He waves his thighs; he beats her face and the air with his smoking wings. I cannot breathe. I run at the cat to scare her; she drops him, casting at me an evil look, and runs from the porch.

The god lies gasping and perfect. He is no longer than my face. Quickly I snuff the smoldering fire in his yellow hair with a finger and thumb. In so doing I accidentally touch his skull, brush against his hot skull, which is the size of a hazelnut, as the saying goes, warmskinned and alive.

He rolls his colorless eyes toward mine: his long wings catch strength from the sun, and heave.

Later I am walking in the day’s last light. The god rides barefoot on my shoulder, or astride it, or tugging or swinging on loops of my hair.

He is whistling at my ear; he is blowing a huge tune in my ear, a myth about November. He is heaping a hot hurricane into my ear, into my hair, an ignorant ditty calling things real, calling islands out of the sea, calling solid moss from curling rock, and ducks down the sky for the winter.

I see it! I see it all! Two islands, twelve islands,

108

worlds, gather substance, gather the blue contours of time, and array themselves down distance, mute and hard.

I seem to see a road; I seem to be on a road, walking.

I seem to walk on a blacktop road that runs over a hill.

The hill creates itself, a powerful suggestion. It creates itself, thickening with apparently solid earth and waving plants, with houses and browsing cattle, unrolling wherever my eyes go, as though my focus were a brush painting in a world. I cannot escape the illusion. The colorful thought persists, this world, a dream forced into my ear and sent round my body on ropes of hot blood. If I throw my eyes past the rim of the hill to see the real—stars, were they? something with wings, or loops?—I elaborate the illusion instead; I rough in a middle ground. I stitch the transparent curtain solid with bright phantom mountains, with thick clouds gliding just so over their shadows on green water, with blank, impenetrable sky. The dream fills in, like wind widening over a bay.

Quickly I look to the flat dream’s rim for a glimpse of that old deep . . . and, just as quickly, the blue slaps shut, the colors wrap everything out. There is not a chink. The sky is gagging on trees. I seem to be on a road, walking, greeting the hedgerows, the rose hips, apples, and thorn.

I seem to be on a road walking, familiar with neighbors, high handed with cattle, smelling the sea, and alone. Already, I know the names of things. I can kick a stone.

Time is enough, more than enough, and matter multiple and given. The god of today is a child, a baby new

and filling the house, remarkably here in the flesh. He is day. He thrives in a cup of wind, landlocked and thrashing. He unrolls, revealing his shape an edge at a time, a smatter of content, footfirst: a word, a friend for coffee, a windshift, the shingling or coincidence of ideas. Today, November 18 and no wind, is clear. Terry Wean—who fishes, and takes my poetry course—could see Mount Rainier. He hauls his reef net gear from the bay; we talk on its deck while he hammers at shrunken knots. The Moores for dinner. In bed, I call to me my sad cat, I read.

Like a rug or wrap rolling unformed up a loom, the day discovers itself, like the poem.

The god of today is rampant and drenched. His arms spread, bearing moist pastures; his fingers spread, fingering the shore. He is time’s live skin; he burgeons up from day like any tree. His legs spread crossing the heavens, flicking hugely, and flashing and arcing around the earth toward night.

This is the one world, bound to itself and exultant.

It fizzes up in trees, trees heaving up streams of salt to their leaves. This is the one air, bitten by grackles; time is alone and in and out of mind. The god of today is a boy, pagan and fernfoot. His power is enthusiasm; his innocence is mystery. He sockets into everything that is, and that right holy. Loud as music, filling the grasses and skies, his day spreads rising at home in the hundred senses. He rises, new and surrounding; he is everything that is, wholly here and emptied—flung, and flowing, sowing, unseen, and flown.

109

Part Two: God's Tooth Into this world falls a plane.

The earth is a mineral speckle planted in trees. The plane snagged its wing on a tree, fluttered in a tiny arc, and struggled down.

I heard it go. The cat looked up. There was no reason: the plane’s engine simply stilled after takeoff, and the light plane failed to clear the firs. It fell easily; one wing snagged on a fir top; the metal fell down the air and smashed in the thin woods where cattle browse; the fuel exploded; and Julie Norwich seven years old burnt off her face.

Little Julie mute in some room at St. Joe’s now, drugs dissolving into the sheets. Little Julie with her eyes naked and spherical, baffled. Can you scream without lips? Yes. But do children in long pain scream?

It is November 19 and no wind, and no hope of heaven, and no wish for heaven, since the meanest of people show more mercy than hounding and terrorist gods.

The airstrip, a cleared washboard affair on the flat crest of a low hill, is a few long fields distant from my house—up the road and through the woods, or across the sheep pasture and through the woods. A flight instructor told me once that when his students get cocky, when they think they know how to fly a plane, he takes them out here and makes them land on that field. You go over the wires and down, and along the strip and up before the trees, or vice versa, vice versa, depending on the wind. But the airstrip is not unsafe. Jesse’s engine failed. The FAA will cart the wreckage away, bit by bit, picking it out of the tree trunk, and try to discover just why that engine failed. In the meantime, the emergency siren has sounded, causing everyone who didn’t see the plane go down to halt—Patty at her weaving, Jonathan slicing apples, Jan washing her baby’s face—to halt, in pity and terror, wondering which among us got hit, by what bad accident, and why. The volunteer firemen have mustered; the fire trucks have come—stampeding Shuller’s sheep—and gone, bearing burnt Julie and Jesse her father to the emergency room in town, leaving the rest of us to gossip, fight grass fires on the airstrip, and pray,

or wander from window to window, fierce.

So she is burnt on her face and neck, Julie Norwich.

The one whose teeth are short in a row, Jesse and Ann’s oldest, red kneed, green socked, carrying cats.

I saw her only once. It was two weeks ago, under an English hawthorn tree, at the farm.

There are many farms in this neck of the woods, but only one we call “the farm”—the old Corcoran place, where Gus grows hay and raises calves: the farm, whose abandoned frame chicken coops ply the fields like longboats, like floating war canoes; whose clay driveway and grass footpaths are a tangle of orange calendula blossoms, ropes, equipment, and seeding grasses; the farm, whose canny heifers and bull calves figure the fences, run amok to the garden, and plant themselves suddenly black and white, up to their necks in green peas.

Between the gray farmhouse and the barn is the green grass farmyard, suitable for all projects. That day, sixteen of us were making cider. It was cold. There were piles of apples everywhere. We had filled our trucks that morning, climbing trees and shaking their boughs, dragging tarps heavy with apples, hauling bushels and boxes and buckets of apples, and loading them all back to the farm. Jesse and Ann, who are in their thirties, with Julie and the baby, whose name I forget, had driven down from the mountains that morning with a truckload of apples, loose, to make cider with us, fill their jugs, and drive back. I had not met them before. We all drank coffee on the farmhouse porch to warm us; we hosed jugs in the yard. Now we were throwing apples into a shredder and wringing the mash through pillowcases, staining our palms and freezing our fingers, and decanting the pails into seventy one-gallon jugs. And all this long day, Julie Norwich chased my cat Small around the farmyard and played with her, manhandled her, next to the porch under the hawthorn tree.

She was a thin child, pointy chinned, yellow bangs and braids. She squinted, and when you looked at her she sometimes started laughing, as if you had surprised

110

her at using some power she wasn’t yet ready to show. I kept my eye on her, wondering if she was cold with her sweater unbuttoned and bony knees bare.

She would hum up a little noise for half-hour stretches. In the intervals, for maybe five minutes each, she was trying, very quietly, to learn to whistle. I think.

Or she was practicing a certain concentrated face. But I think she was trying to learn to whistle, because sometimes she would squeak a little falsetto note through an imitation whistle hole in her lips, as if that could fool anyone. And all day she was dressing and undressing the yellow cat, sticking it into a black dress, a black dress long and full as a nun’s.

I was amazed at that dress. It must have been some sort of doll clothing she had dragged with her in the truck; I’ve never seen its kind before or since. A white collar bibbed the yoke of it like a guimpe. It had great black sleeves like wings. Julie scooped up the cat and rammed her into the cloth. I knew how she felt, exasperated, breaking her heart on a finger curl’s width of skinny cat arm. I knew the many feelings she had sticking those furry arms through the sleeves. Small is not large: her limbs feel like bird bones strung in a sock. When Julie had the cat dressed in its curious habit, she would rock it like a baby doll. The cat blinked, upside down.

Once she whistled at it, or tried, blowing in its face; the cat poured from her arms and ran. It leapt across the driveway, lightfoot in its sleeves; its black dress pulled this way and that, dragging dust, bent up in back by its yellow tail. I was squeezing one end of a twisted pillowcase full of apple mash and looking over my shoulder. I watched the cat hurdle the driveway and vanish under the potting shed, cringing; I watched Julie dash after it without hesitation, seize it, hit its face, and drag it back to the tree, carrying it caught fast by either forepaw, so its body hung straight from its arms.

She saw me watching her and we exchanged a look, a very conscious and self-conscious look—because we look a bit alike and we both knew it; because she was still short and I grown; because I was stuck kneeling before the cider pail, looking at her sidewise over my shoulder; because she was carrying the cat so oddly, so that she had to walk with her long legs parted; because it was my cat, and she’d dressed it, and it looked like a nun; and because she knew I’d been watching her, and how fondly, all along. We were laughing.

We looked a bit alike. Her face is slaughtered now, and I don’t remember mine. It is the best joke there is, that we are here, and fools—that we are sown into time like so much corn, that we are souls sprinkled at random like salt into time and dissolved here, spread into matter, connected by cells right down to our feet, and those feet likely to fell us over a tree root or jam us on a stone.

The joke part is that we forget it. Give the mind two seconds alone and it thinks it’s Pythagoras. We wake up a hundred times a day and laugh.

The joke of the world is less like a banana peel than a rake, the old rake in the grass, the one you step on, foot to forehead. It all comes together. In a twinkling. You have to admire the gag for its symmetry, accomplishing all with one right angle, the same right angle which accomplishes all philosophy. One step on the rake and it’s mind under matter once again. You wake up with a piece of tree in your skull. You wake up with fruit on your hands. You wake up in a clearing and see yourself, ashamed. You see your own face and it’s seven years old and there’s no knowing why, or where you’ve been since.

We’re tossed broadcast into time like so much grass, some ravening god’s sweet hay. You wake up and a plane falls out of the sky.

That day was a god, too, the day we made cider and Julie played under the hawthorn tree. He must have been a heyday sort of god, a husbandman. He was spread under gardens, sleeping in time, an innocent old man scratching his head, thinking of pruning the orchard, in love with families.

Has he no power? Can the other gods carry time and its loves upside down like a doll in their blundering arms? As though we the people were playing house— when we are serious and do love—and not the gods?

No, that day’s god has no power. No gods have power to save. There are only days. The one great god abandoned us to days, to time’s tumult of occasions, abandoned us to the gods of days each brute and amok in his hugeness and idiocy.

Jesse her father had grabbed her clear of the plane this morning, and was hauling her off when the fuel blew. A gob of flung ignited vapor hit her face, or something flaming from the plane or fir tree hit herface. No one else was burned, or hurt in any way.

111

So this is where we are. Ashes, ashes, all fall down.

How could I have forgotten? Didn’t I see the heavens wiped shut just yesterday, on the road walking? Didn’t I fall from the dark of the stars to these senselit and noisome days? The great ridged granite millstone of time is illusion, for only the good is real; the great ridged granite millstone of space is illusion, for God is spirit and worlds his flimsiest dreams: but the illusions are almost perfect, are apparently perfect for generations on end, and the pain is also, and undeniably, real. The pain within the millstones’ pitiless turning is real, for our love for each other—for world and all the products of extension—is real, vaulting, insofar as it is love, beyond the plane of the stones’ sickening churn and arcing to the realm of spirit bare. And you can get caught holding one end of a love, when your father drops, and your mother; when a land is lost, or a time, and your friend blotted out, gone, your brother’s body spoiled, and cold, your infant dead, and you dying: you reel out love’s long line alone, stripped like a live wire loosing its sparks to a cloud, like a live wire loosed in space to longing and grief everlasting.

I sit at the window. It is a fool’s lot, this sitting always at windows spoiling little blowy slips of paper and myself in the process. Shall I be old? Here comes Small, old sparrow-mouth, wanting my lap. Done. Do you have any earthly idea how young I am? Where’s your dress, kitty? I suppose I’ll outlive this wretched cat. Get another. Leave it my silver spoons, like old ladies you hear about. I prefer dogs.

So I read. Angels, I read, belong to nine different orders. Seraphs are the highest; they are aflame with love for God, and stand closer to him than the others. Seraphs love God; cherubs, who are second, possess perfect knowledge of him. So love is greater than knowledge; how could I have forgotten? The seraphs are born of a stream of fire issuing from under God’s throne. They are, according to Dionysius the Areopagite, “all wings,” having, as Isaiah noted, six wings apiece, two of which they fold over their eyes.

Moving perpetually toward God, they perpetually praise him, crying Holy, Holy, Holy. . . . But, according to some rabbinic writings, they can sing only the first “Holy” before the intensity of their love ignites them again and dissolves them again, perpetually, into flames.

“Abandon everything,” Dionysius told his disciple. “God despises ideas.”

God despises everything, apparently. If he abandoned us, slashing creation loose at its base from any roots in the real; and if we in turn abandon everything— all these illusions of time and space and lives—in order to love only the real: then where are we? Thought itself is impossible, for subject can have no guaranteed connection with object, nor any object with God. Knowledge is impossible. We are precisely nowhere, sinking on an entirely imaginary ice floe, into entirely imaginary seas themselves adrift. Then we reel out love’s long line alone toward a God less lovable than a grasshead, who treats us less well than we treat our lawns.

Of faith I have nothing, only of truth: that this one God is a brute and traitor, abandoning us to time, to necessity and the engines of matter unhinged. This is no leap; this is evidence of things seen: one Julie, one sorrow, one sensation bewildering the heart, and enraging the mind, and causing me to look at the world stuff appalled, at the blithering rock of trees in a random wind, at my hand like some gibberish sprouted, my fist opening and closing, so that I think, Have I once turned my hand in this circus, have I ever called it home?

Faith would be that God is self-limited utterly by his creation—a contraction of the scope of his will; that he bound himself to time and its hazards and haps as a man would lash himself to a tree for love. That God’s works are as good as we make them. That God is helpless, our baby to bear, self abandoned on the doorstep of time, wondered at by cattle and oxen. Faith would be that God moved and moves once and for all and “down,” so to speak, like a diver, like a man who eternally gathers himself for a dive and eternally is diving, and eternally splitting the spread of the water, and eternally drowned.

Faith would be, in short, that God has any willful connection with time whatsoever, and with us. For I know it as given that God is all good. And I take it also as given that whatever he touches has meaning, if only in his mysterious terms, the which I readily grant. The question is, then, whether God touches anything. Is anything firm, or is time on the loose? Did Christ descend once and for all to no purpose, in a kind of divine and kenotic suicide, or ascend once and for all, pulling his cross up after him like a rope ladder home? Is there— even if Christ holds the tip of things fast and stretch-

112

es eternity clear to the dim souls of men—is there no link at the base of things, some kernel or air deep in the matrix of matter from which universe furls like a ribbon twined into time?

Has God a hand in this? Then it is a good hand. But has he a hand at all? Or is he a holy fire burning self-contained for power’s sake alone? Then he knows himself blissfully as flame unconsuming, as all brilliance and beauty and power, and the rest of us can go hang. Then the accidental universe spins mute, obedient only to its own gross terms, meaningless, out of mind, and alone.

The universe is neither contingent upon nor participant in the holy, in being itself, the real, the power play of fire.

The universe is illusion merely, not one speck of it real, and we are not only its victims, falling always into or smashed by a planet slung by its sun—but also its captives, bound by the mineral-made ropes of our senses.

But how do we know—how could we know—that the real is there? By what freak chance does the skin of illusion ever split, and reveal to us the real, which seems to know us by name, and by what freak chance and why did the capacity to prehend it evolve?

I sit at the window, chewing the bones in my wrist.

Pray for them: for Julie, for Jesse her father, for Ann her mother, pray. Who will teach us to pray? The god of today is a glacier. We live in his shifting crevasses, unheard. The god of today is delinquent, a barn-burner, a punk with a pittance of power in a match. It is late, a late time to be living. Now it is afternoon; the sky is appallingly clear. Everything in the landscape points to sea, and the sea is nothing; it is snipped from the real as a stuff without form, rising up the sides of islands and falling, mineral to mineral, salt.

Everything I see—the water, the log—wrecked beach, the farm on the hill, the bluff, the white church in the trees—looks overly distinct and shining. (What is the relationship of color to this sun, of sun to anything else?) It all looks staged. It all looks brittle and unreal, a skin of colors painted on glass, which if you prodded it with a finger would powder and fall. A blank sky, perfectly blended with all other sky, has sealed over the crack in the world where the plane fell, and the air has hushed the matter up If days are gods, then gods are dead, and artists pyrotechnic fools. Time is a hurdy-gurdy, a lampoon, and death’s a bawd. We’re beheaded by the nick of time. We’re logrolling on a falling world, on time released from meaning and rolling loose, like one of Atalanta’s golden apples, a bauble flung and forgotten, lapsed, and the gods on the lam.

And now outside the window, deep on the horizon, a new thing appears, as if we needed a new thing. It is a new land blue beyond islands, hitherto hidden by haze and now revealed, and as dumb as the rest. I check my chart, my amateur penciled sketch of the skyline. Yes, this land is new, this spread blue spark beyond yesterday’s new wrinkled line, beyond the blue veil a sailor said was Salt Spring Island. How long can this go on?

But let us by all means extend the scope of our charts.

I draw it as I seem to see it, a blue chunk fitted just so beyond islands, a wag of graphite rising just here above another anonymous line, and here meeting the slope of Salt Spring: though whether this be headland I see or heartland, or the distance-blurred bluffs of a hundred bays, I have no way of knowing, or if it be island or main.

I call it Thule, O Julialand. Time’s Bad News; I name it Terror, the Farthest Limb of the Day, God’s Tooth.

113

Part Three: Holy the Firm I know only enough of God to want to worship him, by any means ready to hand. There is an anomalous specificity to all our experience in space, a scandal of particularity, by which God burgeons up or showers down into the shabbiest of occasions, and leaves his creation’s dealings with him in the hands of purblind and clumsy amateurs. This is all we are and all we ever were; God kann nicht anders. This process in time is history; in space, at such shocking random, it is mystery.

A blur of romance clings to our notions of “publicans,” “sinners,” “the poor,” “the people in the marketplace,” “our neighbors, as though of course God should reveal himself, if at all, to these simple people, these Sunday school watercolor figures, who are so purely themselves in their tattered robes, who are single in themselves, while we now are various, complex, and full at heart. We are busy. So, I see now, were they. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place? There is no one but us. There is no one to send, nor a clean hand, nor a pure heart on the face of the earth, nor in the earth, but only us, a generation comforting ourselves with the notion that we have come at an awkward time, that our innocent fathers are all dead—as if innocence had ever been—and our children busy and troubled, and we ourselves unfit, not yet ready, having each of us chosen wrongly, made a false start, failed, yielded to impulse and the tangled comfort of pleasures, and grown exhausted, unable to seek the thread, weak, and involved. But there is no one but us. There never has been. There have been generations which remembered, and generations which forgot; there has never been a generation of whole men and women who lived well for even one day. Yet some have imagined well, with honesty and art, the detail of such a life, and have described it with such grace, that we mistake vision for history, dream for description, and fancy that life has devolved. So. You learn this studying any history at all, especially the lives of artists and visionaries; you learn it from Emerson, who noticed that the meanness of our days is itself worth our thought; and you learn it, fitful in your pew, at church.

~ There is one church here, so I go to it. On Sunday mornings I quit the house and wander down the hill to the white frame church in the firs. On a big Sunday there might be twenty of us there; often I am the only person under sixty, and feel as though I’m on an archaeological tour of Soviet Russia. The members are of mixed denominations; the minister is a Congregationalist, and wears a white shirt. The man knows God. Once, in the middle of the long pastoral prayer of intercession for the whole world—for the gift of wisdom to its leaders, for hope and mercy to the grieving and pained, succor to the oppressed, and God’s grace to all—in the middle of this he stopped, and burst out, “Lord, we bring you these same petitions every week.” After a shocked pause, he continued reading the prayer. Because of this, I like him very much. “Good morning!” he says after the first hymn and invocation, startling me witless every time, and we all shout back, “Good morning!”

The churchwomen all bring flowers for the altar; they haul in arrangements as big as hedges, of wayside herbs in season, and flowers from their gardens, huge bunches of foliage and blossoms as tall as I am, in vases the size of tubs, and the altar still looks empty, irredeemably linoleum, and beige. We had a wretched singer once, a guest from a Canadian congregation, a hulking blond girl with chopped hair and big shoulders, who wore tinted spectacles and a long lacy dress, and sang, grinning, to faltering accompaniment, an entirely secular song about mountains. Nothing could have been more apparent than that God loved this girl; nothing could more surely convince me of God’s unending mercy than the continued existence on earth of the church.

The higher Christian churches—where, if anywhere, I belong come at God with an unwarranted air of professionalism, with authority and pomp, as though they knew what they were doing, as though people in themselves were an appropriate set of creatures to have dealings with God. I often think of the set pieces of liturgy as certain words which people have successfully addressed to God without their getting killed. In the high

114

churches they saunter through the liturgy like Mohawks along a strand of scaffolding who have long since forgotten their danger. If God were to blast such a service to bits, the congregation would be, I believe, genuinely shocked. But in the low churches you expect it any minute. This is the beginning of wisdom.

Today is Friday, November 20. Julie Norwich is in the hospital, burned; we can get no word of her condition. People released from burn wards, I read once, have a very high suicide rate. They had not realized, before they were burned, that life could include such suffering, nor that they personally could be permitted such pain.

No drugs ease the pain of third -degree burns, because burns destroy skin: the drugs simply leak into the sheets.

His disciples asked Christ about a roadside beggar who had been blind from birth, “Who did sin, this man or his parents, that he was born blind?” And Christ, who spat on the ground, made a mud of his spittle and clay, plastered the mud over the man’s eyes, and gave him sight, answered, “Neither hath this man sinned, nor his parents: but that the works of God should be made manifest in him.” Really? If we take this answer to refer to the affliction itself—and not the subsequent cure—as “God’s works made manifest,” then we have, along with “Not as the world gives do I give unto you,” two meager, baffling, and infuriating answers to one of the few questions worth asking, to wit, What in the Sam Hill is going on here?

The works of God made manifest? Do we really need more victims to remind us that we’re all victims?

Is this some sort of parade for which a conquering army shines up its terrible guns and rolls them up and down the streets for the people to see? Do we need blind men stumbling about, and little flamefaced children, to remind us what God can—and will—do?

I am drinking boiled coffee and watching the bay from the window. Almost all of the people who reef net have hauled their gears for the winter; the salmon runs are over, days are short. Still, boats come and go on the water—tankers, tugs and barges, rowboats and sails.

There are killer whales if you’re lucky, rafts of harlequin ducks if you’re lucky, and every day the scoter and the solitary grebes. How many tons of sky can I see from the window? It is morning: morning! and the water clobbered with light. Yes, in fact, we do. We do need remind-

ing, not of what God can do, but of what he cannot do, or will not, which is to catch time in its free fall and stick a nickel’s worth of sense into our days. And we need reminding of what time can do, must only do; churn out enormity at random and beat it, with God’s blessing, into our heads: that we are created, created, sojourners in a land we did not make, a land with no meaning of itself and no meaning we can make for it alone. Who are we to demand explanations of God? (And what monsters of perfection should we be if we did not?) We forget ourselves, picnicking; we forget where we are. There is no such thing as a freak accident. “God is at home,” says Meister Eckhart, “We are in the far country.”

We are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all. We sleep to time’s hurdy-gurdy; we wake, if we ever wake, to the silence of God. And then, when we wake to the deep shores of light uncreated, then when the dazzling dark breaks over the far slopes of time, then it’s time to toss things, like our reason, and our will; then it’s time to break our necks for home.

There are no events but thoughts and the heart’s hard turning, the heart’s slow learning where to love and whom. The rest is merely gossip, and tales for other times. The god of today is a tree. He is a forest of trees or a desert, or a wedge from wideness down to a scatter of stars, stars like salt low and dumb and abiding. Today’s god said: shed. He peels from eternity always, spread; he winds into time like a rind. I am or seem to be on a road walking. The hedges are just where they were. There is a corner, and a long hill, a glimpse of snow on the mountains, a slope planted in apple trees, and a store next to a pasture, where I am going to buy the communion wine.

How can I buy the communion wine? Who am I to buy the communion wine? Someone has to buy the communion wine. Having wine instead of grape juice was my idea, and of course I offered to buy it. Shouldn’t I be wearing robes and, especially, a mask? Shouldn’t I make the communion wine? Are there holy grapes, is there holy ground, is anything here holy? There are no holy grapes, there is no holy ground, nor is there anyone but us. I have an empty knapsack over my parka’s shoulders; it is cold, and I’ll want my hands in my pockets. According to the Rule of St. Benedict, I should say, Our hands in our pockets. “All things come of thee, O Lord, and of

115

thine own have we given thee.” There must be a rule for the purchase of communion wine. “Will that be cash, or charge?” All I know is that when I go to this store—to buy eggs, or sandpaper, broccoli, wood screws, milk- I like to tease a bit, if he’ll let me, with the owners’ son, two, whose name happens to be Chandler, and who himself likes to play in the big bins of nails.

And so, forgetting myself, thank God: Hullo. Hullo, short and relatively new. Welcome again to the land of the living, to time, this hill of beans. Chandler will have, as usual, none of it. He keeps his mysterious counsel.

And I’m out on the road again walking, my right hand forgetting my left. I’m out on the road again walking, and toting a backload of God. Here is a bottle of wine with a label, Christ with a cork. I bear holiness splintered into a vessel, very God of very God, the sempiternal silence personal and brooding, bright on the back of my ribs. I start up the hill.

The world is changing. The landscape begins to respond as a current upwells. It is starting to clack with itself, though nothing moves in space and there’s no wind.

It is starting to utter its infinite particulars, each overlapping and lone, like a hundred hills of hounds all giving tongue. The hedgerows are blackberry brambles, white snowberries, red rose hips, gaunt and clattering broom.

Their leafless stems are starting to live visibly deep in their centers, as hidden as banked fires live, and as clearly as recognition, mute, shines forth from eyes. Above me the mountains are raw nerves, sensible and exultant; the trees, the grass, and the asphalt below me are living petals of mind, each sharp and invisible, held in a greeting or glance full perfectly formed. There is something stretched or jostling about the sky which, when I study it, vanishes. Why are there all these apples in the world, and why so wet and transparent? Through all my clothing, through the pack on my back and through the bottle’s glass I feel the wine. Walking faster and faster, weightless, I feel the wine. It sheds light in slats through my rib cage, and fills the buttressed vaults of my ribs with light pooled and buoyant. I am moth; I am light. I am prayer and I can hardly see.

Each thing in the world is translucent, even the cattle, and moving, cell by cell. I remember this reality.

Where has it been? I sail to the crest of the hill as if blown up the slope of a swell. I see, blasted, the bay transfig-

ured below me, the saltwater bay, far down the hill past the road to my house, past the firs and the church and the sheep in the pasture: the bay and the islands on fire and boundless beyond it, catching alight the unraveling sky. Pieces of the sky are falling down. Everything, everything, is whole, and a parcel of everything else. I myself am falling down, slowly, or slowly lifting up. On the bay’s stone shore are people among whom I float, real people, gathering of an afternoon, in the cells of whose skin stream thin colored waters in pieces which give back the general flame.

Christ is being baptized. The one who is Christ is there, and the one who is John, and the dim other people standing on cobbles or sitting on beach logs back from the bay. These are ordinary people—if I am one now, if those are ordinary sheep singing a song in the pasture.

The two men are bare to the waist. The one walks him into the water, and holds him under. His hand is on his neck. Christ is coiled and white under the water, standing on stones.

He lifts from the water. Water beads on his shoulders. I see the water in balls as heavy as planets, a billion beads of water as weighty as worlds, and he lifts them up on his back as he rises. He stands wet in the water.

Each one bead is transparent, and each has a world, or the same world, light and alive and apparent inside the drop: it is all there ever could be, moving at once, past and future, and all the people. I can look into any sphere and see people stream past me, and cool my eyes with colors and the sight of the world in spectacle perishing ever, and ever renewed. I do; I deepen into a drop and see all that time contains, all the faces and deeps of the worlds and all the earth’s contents, every landscape and room, everything living or made or fashioned, all past and future stars, and especially faces, faces like the cells of everything, faces pouring past me talking, and going, and gone. And I am gone.

For outside it is bright. The surface of things outside the drops has fused. Christ himself and the others, and the brown warm wind, and hair, sky, the beach, the shattered water—all this has fused. It is the one glare of holiness; it is bare and unspeakable. There is no speech nor language; there is nothing, no one thing, nor motion, nor time. There is only this everything. There is only this, and its bright and multiple noise.

116

I seem to be on a road, standing still. It is the top of the hill. The hedges are here, subsiding. My hands are in my pockets. There is a bottle of wine on my back, a California red. I see my feet. I move down the hill toward home.

You must rest now. I cannot rest you. For me there is, I am trying to tell you, no time.

There are a thousand new islands today, uncharted.

They are salt stones on fire and dimming; I read by their light. Small the cat lies on my neck. In the bathroom the spider is working on yesterday’s moth.

Esoteric Christianity, I read, posits a substance. It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a “spiritual scale,” and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base. In touch with the Absolute! At base. The name of this substance is: Holy the Firm.

Holy the Firm: and is Holy the Firm in touch with metals and minerals? With salts and earths? Of course, and straight on up, till “up” ends by curving back. Does something that touched something that touched Holy the Firm in touch with the Absolute at base seep into ground water, into grain; are islands rooted in it, and trees? Of course.

Scholarship has long distinguished between two strains of thought which proceed in the West from human knowledge of God. In one, the ascetic’s metaphysic, the world is far from God. Emanating from God, and linked to him by Christ, the world is yet infinitely other than God, furled away from him like the end of a long banner falling. This notion makes, to my mind, a vertical line of the world, a great chain of burning. The more accessible and universal view, held by Eckhart and by many peoples in various forms, is scarcely different from pantheism: that the world is immanation, that God is in the thing, and eternally present here, if nowhere else. By these lights the world is flattened on a horizontal plane, singular, all here, crammed with heaven, and alone. But I know that it is not alone, nor singular, nor all. The notion of immanence needs a handle, and the two ideas themselves need a link, so that life can mean aught to the one, and Christ to the other.

For to immanence, to the heart, Christ is redundant and all things are one. To emanance, to the mind, Christ touches only the top, skims off only the top, as it were, the souls of men, the wheat grains whole, and lets the chaff fall where? To the world flat and patently unredeemed; to the entire rest of the universe, which is irrelevant and nonparticipant; to time and matter unreal, and so unknowable, an illusory, absurd, accidental, and overelaborate stage.

But if Holy the Firm is “underneath salts,” if Holy the Firm is matter at its dullest, Aristotle’s materia prima, absolute zero, and since Holy the Firm is in touch with the Absolute at base, then the circle is unbroken.

And it is. Thought advances, and the world creates itself, by the gradual positing of, and belief in, a series of bright ideas. Time and space are in touch with the Absolute at base. Eternity sockets twice into time and space curves, bound and bound by idea. Matter and spirit are of a piece but distinguishable; God has a stake guaranteed in all the world. And the universe is real and not a dream, not a manufacture of the senses; subject may know object, knowledge may proceed, and Holy the Firm is in short the philosopher’s stone.

These are only ideas, by the single handful. Lines, lines, and their infinite points! Hold hands and crack the whip, and yank the Absolute out of there and into the light, God pale and astounded, spraying a spiral of salts and earths, God footloose and flung. And cry down the line to his passing white ear, “Old Sir! Do you hold space from buckling by a finger in its hole? O Old! Where is your other hand?” His right hand is clenching, calm, round the exploding left hand of Holy the Firm.

How can people think that artists seek a name? A name, like a face, is something you have when you’re not alone. There is no such thing as an artist: there is only the world, lit or unlit as the light allows. When the candle is burning, who looks at the wick? When the candle is out, who needs it? But the world without light is wasteland and chaos, and a life without sacrifice is abomination.

What can any artist set on fire but his world? What can any people bring to the altar but all it has ever owned in the thin towns or over the desolate plains? What can an artist use but materials, such as they are? What can he light but the short string of his gut, and when that’s

117

burnt out, any muck ready to hand?

His face is flame like a seraph’s, lighting the kingdom of God for the people to see; his life goes up in the works; his feet are waxen and salt. He is holy and he is firm, spanning all the long gap with the length of his love, in flawed imitation of Christ on the cross stretched both ways unbroken and thorned. So must the work be also, in touch with, in touch with, in touch with; spanning the gap, from here to eternity, home.

Hoopla! All that I see arches, and light arches around it. The air churns out forces and lashes the marveling land. A hundred times through the fields and along the deep roads I’ve cried Holy. I see a hundred insects moving across the air, rising and falling. Chipped notes of birdsong descend from the trees, tuneful and broken; the notes pile about me like leaves. Why do these molded clouds make themselves overhead innocently changing, trailing their flat blue shadows up and down everything, and passing, and gone? Ladies and gentlemen!

You are given insects, and birdsong, and a replenishing series of clouds. The air is buoyant and wholly transparent, scoured by grasses. The earth stuck through it is noisome, lighted, and salt. Who shall ascend into the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in his holy place?

“Whom shall I send,” heard the first Isaiah, “and who will go for us?” And poor Isaiah, who happened to be standing there—and there was no one else—burst out, “Here am I; send me.”

There is Julie Norwich. Julie Norwich is salted with fire. She is preserved like a salted fillet from all evil, baptized at birth into time and now into eternity, into the bladelike arms of God. For who will love her now, without a face, when women with faces abound. and people are so? People are reasoned, while God is mad. They love only beauty; who knows what God loves? Happy birthday, little one and wise: you got there early, the easy way.

The world knew you before you knew the world. The gods in their boyish, brutal games bore you like a torch, a firebrand, recklessly over the heavens, to the glance of the one God, fathomless and mild, dissolving you into the sheets.

You might as well be a nun. You might as well be God’s chaste bride, chased by plunderers to the high caves of solitude, to the hearthless rooms empty of voices, and of warm limbs hooking your heart to the world.

Look how he loves you! Are you bandaged now, or loose in a sterilized room? Wait till they hand you a mirror, if you can hold one, and know what it means. That skinlessness, that black shroud of flesh in strips on your skull, is your veil. There are two kinds of nun, out of the cloister or in. You can serve or you can sing, and wreck your heart in prayer, working the world’s hard work. Forget whistling: you have no lips for that, or for kissing the face of a man or a child. Learn Latin, an it please my Lord, learn the foolish downward look called Custody of the Eyes.

And learn power, however sweet they call you learn power, the smash of the holy once more, and signed by its name. Be victim to abruptness and seizures, events intercalated, swellings of heart. You’ll climb trees. You won’t be able to sleep, or need to, for the joy of it. Mornings, when light spreads over the pastures like wings, and fans a secret color into everything, and beats the trees senseless with beauty, so that you can’t tell whether the beauty is in the trees dazzling in cells like yellow sparks or green flashing waters—or on them—a transfiguring silver air charged with the wings’ invisible motion; mornings, you won’t be able to walk for the power of it: earth’s too round. And by long and waking day— Sext, None, Vespers—when the grasses, living or dead, drowse while the sun reels, or lash in any wind, when sparrows hush and tides slack at the ebb, or flood up the beaches and cliffsides tangled with weed, and hay waits, and elsewhere people buy shoes then you kneel, clattering with thoughts, ill, or some days erupting, some days holding the altar rail, gripping the brass-bolt altar rail, so you won’t fly. Do you think I don’t believe this? You have no idea none. And nights? Nights after Compline under the ribs of Orion, nights in rooms at lamps or windows like moths? Nights you see Deneb, one eyed over the trees; you vanish into the sheets, shrunken, your eyes bright as candles and as sightless, exhausted. Nights Murzim, Arcturus, Aldebaran in the Bull: You cry, My father, my father, the chariots of Israel, and the horsemen thereof! Held, held fast by love in the world like the moth in wax, your life a wick, your head on fire with prayer, held utterly, outside and in, you sleep alone, if you call that alone, you cry God. Julie Norwich; I know. Surgeons will fix your face.

This will all be a dream, an anecdote, something to tell your husband one night: I was burned. Or if you’re

118

scarred, you’re scarred. People love the good not much less than the beautiful, and the happy as well, or even just the living, for the world of it all, and heart’s home.

You’ll dress your own children, sticking their arms

through the sleeves. Mornings you’ll whistle, full of the pleasure of days, and afternoons this or that, and nights cry love. So live. I’ll be the nun for you. I am now.

119

QUOTATIONS from writers in this primer “We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”

–Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night “There is no shortage of good days. It is good lives that are hard to come by. A life of good days lived in the senses is not enough. The life of sensation is the life of greed; it requires more and more. The life of the spirit requires less and less; time is ample and its passage sweet. Who would call a day spent reading a good day? But a life spent reading— that is a good life.”

–Annie Dillard, The Writing Life “My husband. Precisely. I didn’t know he was my one great passion until he was gone.

Until he was gone, my one great passion was the man I met that night at a party. My one great passion was any man I met that night at a party who could use a new adjective to describe me. I have no idea who my children belong to.”

–Wendy MacLeod, The House of Yes

“Sometimes I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It’s beyond me.”

–Zora Neale Hurston “And Lot’s wife, or course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that because it was so human.

So she was turned into a pillar of salt. So it goes.”

–Kurt Vonnnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five “I had been my whole life a bell, and never knew it until that moment I was lifted and struck.”

–Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

120

Elements of Style

by STRUNK & WHITE

121

I. INTRODUCTORY This book is intended for use in English courses in which the practice of composition is combined with the study of literature. It aims to give in brief space the principal requirements of plain English style. It aims to lighten the task of instructor and student by concentrating attention (in Chapters II and III) on a few essentials, the rules of usage and principles of composition most commonly violated. The numbers of the sections may be used as references in correcting manuscript.

The book covers only a small portion of the field of English style, but the experience of its writer has been that once past the essentials, students profit most by individual instruction based on the problems of their own work, and that each instructor has his own body of theory, which he prefers to that offered by any textbook.

The writer’s colleagues in the Department of English in Cornell University have greatly helped him in the preparation of his manuscript. Mr. George McLane Wood has kindly consented to the inclusion under Rule 11 of some material from his Suggestions to Authors.

The following books are recommended for reference or further study: in connection with Chapters II and IV, F. Howard Collins, Author and Printer (Henry Frowde); Chicago University Press, Manual of Style; T. L. De Vinne Correct Composition (The Century Company); Horace Hart, Rules for Compositors and Printers (Oxford University Press); George McLane Wood, Extracts from the Style-Book of the Government Printing Office (United States Geological Survey); in connection with Chapters III and V, Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch, The Art of Writing (Putnams), especially the chapter, Interlude on Jargon; George McLane Wood, Suggestions to Authors (United States Geological Survey); John Leslie Hall, English Usage (Scott, Foresman and Co.); James P. Kelly, Workmanship in Words (Little, Brown and Co.) It is an old observation that the best writers sometimes disregard the rules of rhetoric. When they do so, however, the reader will usually find in the sentence some compensating merit, attained at the cost of the violation. Unless he is certain of doing as well, he will probably do best to follow the rules. After he has learned, by their guidance, to write plain English adequate for everyday uses, let him look, for the secrets of style, to the study of the masters of literature.

II. ELEMENTARY RULES OF USAGE 1. Form the possessive singular of nouns with ‘s.

Follow this rule whatever the final consonant. Thus write, Charles’s friend Burns’s poems the witch’s malice This is the usage of the United States Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press.

Exceptions are the possessives of ancient proper names in -es and -is, the possessive Jesus’, and such forms as for conscience’ sake, for righteousness’ sake. But such forms as Achilles’ heel, Moses’ laws, Isis’ temple are commonly replaced by the heel of Achilles the laws of Moses the temple of Isis The pronominal possessives hers, its, theirs, yours, and oneself have no apostrophe.

2. In a series of three or more terms with a single conjunction, use a comma after each term except the last.

Thus write,

122

red, white, and blue honest, energetic, but headstrong He opened the letter, read it, and made a note of its contents.

This is also the usage of the Government Printing Office and of the Oxford University Press.

In the names of business firms the last comma is omitted, as Brown, Shipley and Company The abbreviation etc., even if only a single term comes before it, is always preceded by a comma.

3. Enclose parenthetic expressions between commas.

The best way to see a country, unless you are pressed for time, is to travel on foot.

This rule is difficult to apply; it is frequently hard to decide whether a single word, such as however, or a brief phrase, is or is not parenthetic. If the interruption to the flow of the sentence is but slight, the writer may safely omit the commas. But whether the interruption be slight or considerable, he must never omit one comma and leave the other. Such punctuation as Marjorie’s husband, Colonel Nelson paid us a visit yesterday, or My brother you will be pleased to hear, is now in perfect health, is indefensible.

Non-restrictive relative clauses are, in accordance with this rule, set off by commas.

The audience, which had at first been indifferent, became more and more interested.

Similar clauses introduced by where and when are similarly punctuated.

In 1769, when Napoleon was born, Corsica had but recently been acquired by France.

Nether Stowey, where Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, is a few miles from Bridgewater.

In these sentences the clauses introduced by which, when, and where are non- restrictive; they do not limit the application of the words on which they depend, but add, parenthetically, statements supplementing those in the principal clauses. Each sentence is a combination of two statements which might have been made independently.

The audience was at first indifferent. Later it became more and more interested.

Napoleon was born in 1769. At that time Corsica had but recently been acquired by France.

Coleridge wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner at Nether Stowey. Nether Stowey is only a few miles from Bridgewater.

Restrictive relative clauses are not set off by commas.

The candidate who best meets these requirements will obtain the place.

In this sentence the relative clause restricts the application of the word candidate to a single person. Unlike those above, the sentence cannot be split into two independent statements.

The abbreviations etc. and Jr. are always preceded by a comma, and except at the end of a sentence, followed by one.

Similar in principle to the enclosing of parenthetic expressions between commas is the setting off by commas of phrases or dependent clauses preceding or following the main clause of a sentence. The sentences quoted in this section and under Rules 4, 5, 6, 7, 16, and 18 should afford sufficient guidance.

If a parenthetic expression is preceded by a conjunction, place the first comma before the conjunction, not after it.

He saw us coming, and unaware that we had learned of his treachery, greeted us with a smile.

4. Place a comma before and or but introducing an independent clause.

The early records of the city have disappeared, and the story of its first years can no longer be reconstructed.

The situation is perilous, but there is still one chance of escape.

Sentences of this type, isolated from their context, may seem to be in need of rewriting. As they make complete

123

sense when the comma is reached, the second clause has the appearance of an after-thought. Further, and, is the least specific of connectives. Used between independent clauses, it indicates only that a relation exists between them without defining that relation. In the example above, the relation is that of cause and result. The two sentences might be rewritten: As the early records of the city have disappeared, the story of its first years can no longer be reconstructed.

Although the situation is perilous, there is still one chance of escape.

Or the subordinate clauses might be replaced by phrases: Owing to the disappearance of the early records of the city, the story of its first years can no longer be reconstructed. In this perilous situation, there is still one chance of escape.

But a writer may err by making his sentences too uniformly compact and periodic, and an occasional loose sentence prevents the style from becoming too formal and gives the reader a certain relief. Consequently, loose sentences of the type first quoted are common in easy, unstudied writing. But a writer should be careful not to construct too many of his sentences after this pattern (see Rule 14).

Two-part sentences of which the second member is introduced by as (in the sense of because), for, or, nor, and while (in the sense of and at the same time) likewise require a comma before the conjunction.

If a dependent clause, or an introductory phrase requiring to be set off by a comma, precedes the second independent clause, no comma is needed after the conjunction.

The situation is perilous, but if we are prepared to act promptly, there is still one chance of escape.

For two-part sentences connected by an adverb, see the next section.

5. Do not join independent clauses by a comma.

If two or more clauses, grammatically complete and not joined by a conjunction, are to form a single compound sentence, the proper mark of punctuation is a semicolon.

Stevenson’s romances are entertaining; they are full of exciting adventures.

It is nearly half past five; we cannot reach town before dark.

It is of course equally correct to write the above as two sentences each, replacing the semicolons by periods.

Stevenson’s romances are entertaining. They are full of exciting adventures.

It is nearly half past five. We cannot reach town before dark.

If a conjunction is inserted, the proper mark is a comma (Rule 4).

Stevenson’s romances are entertaining, for they are full of exciting adventures.

It is nearly half past five, and we cannot reach town before dark.

Note that if the second clause is preceded by an adverb, such as accordingly, besides, so, then, therefore, or thus, and not by a conjunction, the semicolon is still required.

I had never been in the place before; so I had difficulty in finding my way about.

In general, however, it is best, in writing, to avoid using so in this manner; there is danger that the writer who uses it at all may use it too often. A simple correction, usually serviceable, is to omit the word so, and begin the first clause with as: As I had never been in the place before, I had difficulty in finding my way about.

If the clauses are very short, and are alike in form, a comma is usually permissible: Man proposes, God disposes.

The gate swung apart, the bridge fell, the portcullis was drawn up.

6. Do not break sentences in two.

In other words, do not use periods for commas.

I met them on a Cunard liner several years ago. Coming home from Liverpool to New York.

He was an interesting talker. A man who had traveled all over the world, and lived in half a dozen countries.

124

In both these examples, the first period should be replaced by a comma, and the following word begun with a small letter.

It is permissible to make an emphatic word or expression serve the purpose of a sentence and to punctuate it accordingly: Again and again he called out. No reply.

The writer must, however, be certain that the emphasis is warranted, and that he will not be suspected of a mere blunder in punctuation.

Rules 3, 4, 5, and 6 cover the most important principles in the punctuation of ordinary sentences; they should be so thoroughly mastered that their application becomes second nature.

7. A participial phrase at the beginning of a sentence must refer to the grammatical subject.

Walking slowly down the road, he saw a woman accompanied by two children.

The word walking refers to the subject of the sentence, not to the woman. If the writer wishes to make it refer to the woman, he must recast the sentence: He saw a woman, accompanied by two children, walking slowly down the road.

Participial phrases preceded by a conjunction or by a preposition, nouns in apposition, adjectives, and adjective phrases come under the same rule if they begin the sentence.

On arriving in Chicago, his friends met him at the station.

When he arrived (or, On his arrival) in Chicago, his friends met him at the station.

A soldier of proved valor, they entrusted him with the defense of the city.

A soldier of proved valor, he was entrusted with the defense of the city.

Young and inexperienced, the task seemed easy to me. Young and inexperienced, I thought the task easy.

Without a friend to counsel him, the temptation proved irresistible.

Without a friend to counsel him, he found the temptation irresistible.

Sentences violating this rule are often ludicrous.

Being in a dilapidated condition, I was able to buy the house very cheap.

8. Divide words at line-ends, in accordance with their formation and pronunciation.

If there is room at the end of a line for one or more syllables of a word, but not for the whole word, divide the word, unless this involves cutting off only a single letter, or cutting off only two letters of a long word. No hard and fast rule for all words can be laid down. The principles most frequently applicable are: a. Divide the word according to its formation: know-ledge (not knowl-edge); Shake-speare (not Shakes- peare); de-scribe (not des-cribe); atmo-sphere (not atmos-phere); b. Divide “on the vowel:” edi-ble (not ed-ible); propo-sition; ordi-nary; espe-cial; reli-gious; oppo-nents; regu-lar; classi-fi-ca-tion (three divisions possible); deco-rative; presi-dent;

125

c. Divide between double letters, unless they come at the end of the simple form of the word: Apen-nines; Cincin-nati; refer-ring; but tell-ing.

The treatment of consonants in combination is best shown from examples: for-tune; pic-ture; presump-tuous; illus-tration; sub-stan-tial (either division); indus-try; instruc-tion; sug-ges-tion; incen-diary.

The student will do well to examine the syllable-division in a number of pages of any carefully printed book.

III. ELEMENTARY PRINCIPLES OF COMPOSITION 9. Make the paragraph the unit of composition: one paragraph to each topic.

If the subject on which you are writing is of slight extent, or if you intend to treat it very briefly, there may be no need of subdividing it into topics. Thus a brief description, a brief summary of a literary work, a brief account of a single incident, a narrative merely outlining an action, the setting forth of a single idea, any one of these is best written in a single paragraph. After the paragraph has been written, it should be examined to see whether subdivision will not improve it.

Ordinarily, however, a subject requires subdivision into topics, each of which should be made the subject of a paragraph. The object of treating each topic in a paragraph by itself is, of course, to aid the reader. The beginning of each paragraph is a signal to him that a new step in the development of the subject has been reached.

The extent of subdivision will vary with the length of the composition. For example, a short notice of a book or poem might consist of a single paragraph. One slightly longer might consist of two paragraphs: A. Account of the work.

B. Critical discussion. A report on a poem, written for a class in literature, might consist of seven paragraphs: A report on a poem, written for a class in literature, might consist of seven paragraphs: A. Facts of composition and publication.

B. Kind of poem; metrical form.

C. Subject.

D. Treatment of subject.

E. For what chiefly remarkable.

F. Wherein characteristic of the writer.

G. Relationship to other works.

The contents of paragraphs C and D would vary with the poem. Usually, paragraph C would indicate the actual or imagined circumstances of the poem (the situation), if these call for explanation, and would then state the subject and outline its development. If the poem is a narrative in the third person throughout, paragraph C need contain no more than a concise summary of the action. Paragraph D would indicate the leading ideas and show how they are made prominent, or would indicate what points in the narrative are chiefly emphasized. A novel might be discussed under the heads:

126

A. Setting.

B. Plot.

C. Characters.

D. Purpose.

A historical event might be discussed under the heads: A. What led up to the event.

B. Account of the event.

C. What the event led up to.

In treating either of these last two subjects, the writer would probably find it necessary to subdivide one or more of the topics here given.

As a rule, single sentences should not be written or printed as paragraphs. An exception may be made of sentences of transition, indicating the relation between the parts of an exposition or argument.

In dialogue, each speech, even if only a single word, is a paragraph by itself; that is, a new paragraph begins with each change of speaker. The application of this rule, when dialogue and narrative are combined, is best learned from examples in well- printed works of fiction.

10. As a rule, begin each paragraph with a topic sentence; end it in conformity with the beginning.

Again, the object is to aid the reader. The practice here recommended enables him to discover the purpose of each paragraph as he begins to read it, and to retain the purpose in mind as he ends it. For this reason, the most generally useful kind of paragraph, particularly in exposition and argument, is that in which a. the topic sentence comes at or near the beginning; b. the succeeding sentences explain or establish or develop the statement made in the topic sentence; and c. the final sentence either emphasizes the thought of the topic sentence or states some important consequence.

Ending with a digression, or with an unimportant detail, is particularly to be avoided.

If the paragraph forms part of a larger composition, its relation to what precedes, or its function as a part of the whole, may need to be expressed. This can sometimes be done by a mere word or phrase (again; therefore; for the same reason) in the topic sentence. Sometimes, however, it is expedient to precede the topic sentence by one or more sentences of introduction or transition. If more than one such sentence is required, it is generally better to set apart the transitional sentences as a separate paragraph.

According to the writer’s purpose, he may, as indicated above, relate the body of the paragraph to the topic sentence in one or more of several different ways. He may make the meaning of the topic sentence clearer by restating it in other forms, by defining its terms, by denying the converse, by giving illustrations or specific instances; he may establish it by proofs; or he may develop it by showing its implications and consequences. In a long paragraph, he may carry out several of these processes.

1 Now, to be properly enjoyed, a walking tour should be gone upon alone.

1 Topic sentence.

2 If you go in a company, or even in pairs, it is no longer a walking tour in anything but name; it is something else and more in the nature of a picnic.

2 The meaning made clearer by denial of the contrary.

3 A walking tour should be gone upon alone, because freedom is of the essence; because you should be able to stop and go on, and follow this way or that, as the freak takes you; and because you must have your own pace, and nei-

3 The topic sentence repeated, inn abridged form, and supported by three reasons; the meaning of the third (“you must have your own pace”) made clearer by denying the converse.

127

ther trot alongside a champion walker, nor mince in time with a girl.

4 And you must be open to all impressions and let your thoughts take color from what you see.

4 A fourth reason, stated in two forms.

5 You should be as a pipe for any wind to play upon.

5 The same reason, stated in still another form.

6 “I cannot see the wit,” says Hazlitt, “of walking and talking at the same time.

6-7 The same reason as stated by Hazlitt.

7 When I am in the country, I wish to vegetate like the country,” which is the gist of all that can be said upon the matter.

8 There should be no cackle of voices at your elbow, to jar on the meditative silence of the morning.

8 Repetition, inn paraphrase, of the quotation from Hazlitt.

9 And so long as a man is reasoning he cannot surrender himself to that fine intoxication that comes of much motion in the open air, that begins in a sort of dazzle and sluggishness of the brain, and ends in a peace that passes comprehension. —Stevenson, “Walking Tours”a

9 Final statement of the fourth reason, in language amplified and heightened to form a strong conclusion.

1 It was chiefly in the eighteenth century that a very different conception of history grew up.

1 Topic sentence.

2 Historians then came to believe that their task was not so much to paint a picture as to solve a problem; to explain or illustrate the successive phases of national growth, prosperity, and adversity.

2 The meaning of the topic sentence made clearer; the new conception of history defined.

3 The history of morals, of industry, of intellect, and of art; the changes that take place in manners or beliefs; the dominant ideas that prevailed in successive periods; the rise, fall, and modification of political constitutions; in a word, all the conditions of national well-being became the subjects of their works.

3 The definition expanded.

4 They sought rather to write a history of peoples than a history of kings.

4 The definition explained by contrast.

5 They looked especially in history for the chain of causes and effects.

5 The definition supplemented: another element in the new conception of history.

128

6 They undertook to study in the past the physiology of nations, and hoped by applying the experimental method on a large scale to deduce some lessons of real value about the conditions on which the welfare of society mainly depend.—Lecky, The Political Value of History

6 Conclusion: an important consequence of the new conception of history.

In narration and description the paragraph sometimes begins with a concise, comprehensive statement serving to hold together the details that follow.

The breeze served us admirably.

The campaign opened with a series of reverses.

The next ten or twelve pages were filled with a curious set of entries.

But this device, if too often used, would become a mannerism. More commonly the opening sentence simply indicates by its subject with what the paragraph is to be principally concerned.

At length I thought I might return towards the stockade.

He picked up the heavy lamp from the table and began to explore.

Another flight of steps, and they emerged on the roof.

The brief paragraphs of animated narrative, however, are often without even this semblance of a topic sentence.

The break between them serves the purpose of a rhetorical pause, throwing into prominence some detail of the action.

11. Use the active voice. The active voice is usually more direct and vigorous than the passive: I shall always remember my first visit to Boston.

This is much better than My first visit to Boston will always be remembered by me.

The latter sentence is less direct, less bold, and less concise. If the writer tries to make it more concise by omitting “by me,” My first visit to Boston will always be remembered, it becomes indefinite: is it the writer, or some person undisclosed, or the world at large, that will always remember this visit?

This rule does not, of course, mean that the writer should entirely discard the passive voice, which is frequently convenient and sometimes necessary.

The dramatists of the Restoration are little esteemed today.

Modern readers have little esteem for the dramatists of the Restoration.

The first would be the right form in a paragraph on the dramatists of the Restoration; the second, in a paragraph on the tastes of modern readers. The need of making a particular word the subject of the sentence will often, as in these examples, determine which voice is to be used.

The habitual use of the active voice, however, makes for forcible writing. This is true not only in narrative principally concerned with action, but in writing of any kind. Many a tame sentence of description or exposition can be made lively and emphatic by substituting a transitive in the active voice for some such perfunctory expression as there is, or could be heard.

There were a great number of dead leaves lying on the ground.

Dead leaves covered the ground.

The sound of the falls could still be heard. The sound of the falls still reached our ears.

The reason that he left college was that his health became impaired.

Failing health compelled him to leave college.

It was not long before he was very sorry that he had said what he had.

129

He soon repented his words.

As a rule, avoid making one passive depend directly upon another.

Gold was not allowed to be exported.

It was forbidden to export gold (The export of gold was prohibited).

He has been proved to have been seen entering the building.

It has been proved that he was seen to enter the building.

In both the examples above, before correction, the word properly related to the second passive is made the subject of the first.

A common fault is to use as the subject of a passive construction a noun which expresses the entire action, leaving to the verb no function beyond that of completing the sentence.

A survey of this region was made in 1900. This region was surveyed in 1900.

Mobilization of the army was rapidly carried out. The army was rapidly mobilized.

Confirmation of these reports cannot be obtained. These reports cannot be confirmed.

Compare the sentence, “The export of gold was prohibited,” in which the predicate “was prohibited” expresses something not implied in “export.”

12. Put statements in positive form.

Make definite assertions. Avoid tame, colorless, hesitating, non-committal language. Use the word not as a means of denial or in antithesis, never as a means of evasion.

He was not very often on time.

He usually came late.

He did not think that studying Latin was much use.

He thought the study of Latin useless.

The Taming of the Shrew is rather weak in spots.

Shakespeare does not portray Katharine as a very

admirable character, nor does Bianca remain long in

memory as an important character in Shakespeare’s works.

The women in The Taming of the Shrew are Katharine is disagreeable, Bianca insignificant. unattractive.

The last example, before correction, is indefinite as well as negative. The corrected version, consequently, is simply a guess at the writer’s intention.

All three examples show the weakness inherent in the word not. Consciously or unconsciously, the reader is dissatisfied with being told only what is not; he wishes to be told what is. Hence, as a rule, it is better to express a negative in positive form. not honest dishonest not important trifling did not remember forgot did not pay any attention to ignored did not have much confidence in distrusted The antithesis of negative and positive is strong: Not charity, but simple justice.

Not that I loved Caesar less, but Rome the more.

Negative words other than not are usually strong: The sun never sets upon the British flag.

13. Omit needless words.

Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.

130

This requires not that the writer make all his sentences short, or that he avoid all detail and treat his subjects only in outline, but that every word tell.

Many expressions in common use violate this principle: the question as to whether whether (the question whether) there is no doubt but that no doubt (doubtless) used for fuel purposes used for fuel he is a man who he in a hasty manner (hastily) this is a subject which this subject His story is a strange one.

In especial the expression the fact that should be revised out of every sentence in which it occurs. owing to the fact that because in spite of the fact that though (although) call your attention to the fact that remind you (notify you) I was unaware of the fact that I was unaware that ( did not know) the fact that he had not succeeded his failure the fact that I had arrived my arrival See also under case, character, nature, system in Chapter V. Who is, which was, and the like are often superfluous.

His brother, who is a member of the same firm His brother, a member of the same firm Trafalgar, which was Nelson’s last battle Trafalgar, Nelson’s last battle As positive statement is more concise than negative, and the active voice more concise than the passive, many of the examples given under Rules 11 and 12 illustrate this rule as well.

A common violation of conciseness is the presentation of a single complex idea, step by step, in a series of sentences which might to advantage be combined into one.

Macbeth was very ambitious. This led him to wish Encouraged by his wife, Macbeth achieved his to become king of Scotland. The witches told him ambition and realized the prediction of the witches that this wish of his would come true. The king of by murdering Duncan and becoming king of Scotland Scotland at this time was Duncan. Encouraged by in his place. (26 words.) his wife, Macbeth murdered Duncan. He was thus enabled to succeed Duncan as king. (55 words.)

14. Avoid a succession of loose sentences.

This rule refers especially to loose sentences of a particular type, those consisting of two co-ordinate clauses, the second introduced by a conjunction or relative. Although single sentences of this type may be unexceptionable (see under Rule 4), a series soon becomes monotonous and tedious.

An unskilful writer will sometimes construct a whole paragraph of sentences of this kind, using as connectives and, but, and less frequently, who, which, when, where, and while, these last in non-restrictive senses (see under Rule 3).

The third concert of the subscription series was given last evening, and a large audience was in attendance.

Mr. Edward Appleton was the soloist, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra furnished the instrumental music.

The former showed himself to be an artist of the first rank, while the latter proved itself fully deserving of its high reputation. The interest aroused by the series has been very gratifying to the Committee, and it is planned to give a similar series annually hereafter. The fourth concert will be given on Tuesday, May 10, when an equally attractive program will be presented.

Apart from its triteness and emptiness, the paragraph above is bad because of the structure of its sentences, with their mechanical symmetry and sing-song. Contrast with them the sentences in the paragraphs quoted under

131

Rule 10, or in any piece of good English prose, as the preface (“Before the Curtain”) to Vanity Fair.

If the writer finds that he has written a series of sentences of the type described, he should recast enough of them to remove the monotony, replacing them by simple sentences, by sentences of two clauses joined by a semicolon, by periodic sentences of two clauses, by sentences, loose or periodic, of three clauses—whichever best represent the real relations of the thought.

15. Express coordinate ideas in similar form.

This principle, that of parallel construction, requires that expressions of similar content and function should be outwardly similar. The likeness of form enables the reader to recognize more readily the likeness of content and function. Familiar instances from the Bible are the Ten Commandments, the Beatitudes, and the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer.

The unskilful writer often violates this principle, from a mistaken belief that he should constantly vary the form of his expressions. It is true that in repeating a statement in order to emphasize it he may have need to vary its form.

For illustration, see the paragraph from Stevenson quoted under Rule 10. But apart from this, he should follow the principle of parallel construction.

Formerly, science was taught by the textbook Formerly, science was taught by the textbook method; method, while now the laboratory method is now it is taught by the laboratory method. employed.

The left-hand version gives the impression that the writer is undecided or timid; he seems unable or afraid to choose one form of expression and hold to it. The right- hand version shows that the writer has at least made his choice and abided by it.

By this principle, an article or a preposition applying to all the members of a series must either be used only before the first term or else be repeated before each term.

The French, the Italians, Spanish, and Portuguese The French, the Italians, the Spanish, and the Portuguese In spring, summer, or in winter In spring, summer, or winter (In spring, in summer, or in winter) Correlative expressions (both, and; not, but; not only, but also; either, or; first, second, third; and the like) should be followed by the same grammatical construction. Many violations of this rule can be corrected by rearranging the sentence.

It was both a long ceremony and very tedious.

The ceremony was both long and tedious.

A time not for words, but action A time not for words, but for action Either you must grant his request or incur his You must either grant his request or incur his ill will. ill will.

My objections are, first, the injustice of the My objections are, first, that the measure is measure; second, that it is unconstitutional. unjust; second, that it is unconstitutional.

See also the third example under Rule 12 and the last under Rule 13.

It may be asked, what if a writer needs to express a very large number of similar ideas, say twenty? Must he write twenty consecutive sentences of the same pattern? On closer examination he will probably find that the difficulty is imaginary, that his twenty ideas can be classified in groups, and that he need apply the principle only within each group. Otherwise he had best avoid the difficulty by putting his statements in the form of a table.

16. Keep related words together.

The position of the words in a sentence is the principal means of showing their relationship. The writer must therefore, so far as possible, bring together the words, and groups of words, that are related in thought, and keep apart those which are not so related.

132

The subject of a sentence and the principal verb should not, as a rule, be separated by a phrase or clause that can be transferred to the beginning.

Wordsworth, in the fifth book of The Excursion, In the fifth book of The Excursion, Wordsworth gives a minute description of this church. gives a minute description of this church.

Cast iron, when treated in a Bessemer converter, By treatment in a Bessemer converter, is changed into steel. cast iron is changed into steel.

The objection is that the interposed phrase or clause needlessly interrupts the natural order of the main clause.

This objection, however, does not usually hold when the order is interrupted only by a relative clause or by an expression in apposition. Nor does it hold in periodic sentences in which the interruption is a deliberately used means of creating suspense (see examples under Rule 18).

The relative pronoun should come, as a rule, immediately after its antecedent.

There was a look in his eye that boded mischief.

In his eye was a look that boded mischief.

He wrote three articles about his adventures in He published in Harper’s Magazine three articles Spain, which were published in Harper’s Magazine. about his adventures in Spain.

This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson This is a portrait of Benjamin Harrison, grandson of of William Henry Harrison, who became President William Henry Harrison. He became President in 1889 in 1889.

If the antecedent consists of a group of words, the relative comes at the end of the group, unless this would cause ambiguity.

The Superintendent of the Chicago Division, who A proposal to amend the Sherman Act, which has been variously judged A proposal, which has been variously judged, to amend the Sherman Act A proposal to amend the much-debated Sherman Act The grandson of William Henry Harrison, who William Henry Harrison’s grandson, Benjamin Harrison, who A noun in apposition may come between antecedent and relative, because in such a combination no real ambiguity can arise.

The Duke of York, his brother, who was regarded with hostility by the Whigs Modifiers should come, if possible next to the word they modify. If several expressions modify the same word, they should be so arranged that no wrong relation is suggested.

All the members were not present.

Not all the members were present.

He only found two mistakes.

He found only two mistakes.

Major R. E. Joyce will give a lecture on Tuesday On Tuesday evening at eight P. M., Major R. E. Joyce evening in Bailey Hall, to which the public is will give in Bailey Hall a lecture on “My Experiences in invited, on “My Experiences in Mesopotamia” at Mesopotamia.” The public is invited. eight P. M. 17. In summaries, keep to one tense.

In summarizing the action of a drama, the writer should always use the present tense. In summarizing a poem, story, or novel, he should preferably use the present, though he may use the past if he prefers. If the summary is in the present tense, antecedent action should be expressed by the perfect; if in the past, by the past perfect.

An unforeseen chance prevents Friar John from delivering Friar Lawrence’s letter to Romeo. Juliet, meanwhile, owing to her father’s arbitrary change of the day set for her wedding, has been compelled to drink the potion on Tuesday night, with the result that Balthasar informs Romeo of her supposed death before Friar Lawrence learns of the nondelivery of the letter.

But whichever tense be used in the summary, a past tense in indirect discourse or in indirect question remains

133

unchanged.

The Legate inquires who struck the blow.

Apart from the exceptions noted, whichever tense the writer chooses, he should use throughout. Shifting from one tense to the other gives the appearance of uncertainty and irresolution (compare Rule 15).

In presenting the statements or the thought of some one else, as in summarizing an essay or reporting a speech, the writer should avoid intercalating such expressions as “he said,” “he stated,” “the speaker added,” “the speaker then went on to say,” “the author also thinks,” or the like. He should indicate clearly at the outset, once for all, that what follows is summary, and then waste no words in repeating the notification.

In notebooks, in newspapers, in handbooks of literature, summaries of one kind or another may be indispensable, and for children in primary schools it is a useful exercise to retell a story in their own words. But in the criticism or interpretation of literature the writer should be careful to avoid dropping into summary. He may find it necessary to devote one or two sentences to indicating the subject, or the opening situation, of the work he is discussing; he may cite numerous details to illustrate its qualities. But he should aim to write an orderly discussion supported by evidence, not a summary with occasional comment. Similarly, if the scope of his discussion includes a number of works, he will as a rule do better not to take them up singly in chronological order, but to aim from the beginning at establishing general conclusions.

18. Place the emphatic words of a sentence at the end.

The proper place for the word, or group of words, which the writer desires to make most prominent is usually the end of the sentence.

Humanity has hardly advanced in fortitude since Humanity, since that time, has advanced in many other that time, though it has advanced in many other ways, but it has hardly advanced in fortitude. ways.

This steel is principally used for making razors, Because of its hardness, this steel is principally because of its hardness. used in making razors.

The word or group of words entitled to this position of prominence is usually the logical predicate, that is, the new element in the sentence, as it is in the second example.

The effectiveness of the periodic sentence arises from the prominence which it gives to the main statement.

Four centuries ago, Christopher Columbus, one of the Italian mariners whom the decline of their own republics had put at the service of the world and of adventure, seeking for Spain a westward passage to the Indies as a set-off against the achievements of Portuguese discoverers, lighted on America.

With these hopes and in this belief I would urge you, laying aside all hindrance, thrusting away all private aims, to devote yourselves unswervingly and unflinchingly to the vigorous and successful prosecution of this war.

The other prominent position in the sentence is the beginning. Any element in the sentence, other than the subject, becomes emphatic when placed first.

Deceit or treachery he could never forgive.

So vast and rude, fretted by the action of nearly three thousand years, the fragments of this architecture may often seem, at first sight, like works of nature.

A subject coming first in its sentence may be emphatic, but hardly by its position alone. In the sentence, Great kings worshiped at his shrine, the emphasis upon kings arises largely from its meaning and from the context. To receive special emphasis, the subject of a sentence must take the position of the predicate.

Through the middle of the valley flowed a winding stream.

The principle that the proper place for what is to be made most prominent is the end applies equally to the words of a sentence, to the sentences of a paragraph, and to the paragraphs of a composition.

134

IV. A FEW MATTERS OF FORM Headings. Leave a blank line, or its equivalent in space, after the title or heading of a manuscript. On succeeding pages, if using ruled paper, begin on the first line.

Numerals. Do not spell out dates or other serial numbers. Write them in figures or in Roman notation, as may be appropriate.

August 9, 1918 Chapter XII Rule 3 352d Infantry Parentheses. A sentence containing an expression in parenthesis is punctuated, outside of the marks of parenthesis, exactly as if the expression in parenthesis were absent. The expression within is punctuated as if it stood by itself, except that the final stop is omitted unless it is a question mark or an exclamation point.

I went to his house yesterday (my third attempt to see him), but he had left town.

He declares (and why should we doubt his good faith?) that he is now certain of success.

(When a wholly detached expression or sentence is parenthesized, the final stop comes before the last mark of parenthesis.)

Quotations. Formal quotations, cited as documentary evidence, are introduced by a colon and enclosed in quotation marks.

The provision of the Constitution is: “No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any state.”

Quotations grammatically in apposition or the direct objects of verbs are preceded by a comma and enclosed in quotation marks.

I recall the maxim of La Rochefoucauld, “Gratitude is a lively sense of benefits to come.”

Aristotle says, “Art is an imitation of nature.”

Quotations of an entire line, or more, of verse, are begun on a fresh line and centered, but not enclosed in quotation marks.

Wordsworth’s enthusiasm for the Revolution was at first unbounded: Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, But to be young was very heaven!

Quotations introduced by that are regarded as in indirect discourse and not enclosed in quotation marks.

Keats declares that beauty is truth, truth beauty.

Proverbial expressions and familiar phrases of literary origin require no quotation marks.

These are the times that try men’s souls.

He lives far from the madding crowd.

The same is true of colloquialisms and slang.

References. In scholarly work requiring exact references, abbreviate titles that occur frequently, giving the full forms in an alphabetical list at the end. As a general practice, give the references in parenthesis or in footnotes, not in the body of the sentence. Omit the words act, scene, line, book, volume, page, except when referring by only one of them. Punctuate as indicated below.

In the second scene of the third act In III.ii (still better, simply insert III.ii in parenthesis at the proper place in the sentence) After the killing of Polonius, Hamlet is placed under guard (IV. ii. 14).

2 Samuel i:17-27 Othello II.iii 264-267, III.iii. 155-161 Titles. For the titles of literary works, scholarly usage prefers italics with capitalized initials. The usage of editors and publishers varies, some using italics with capitalized initials, others using Roman with capitalized initials

135

and with or without quotation marks. Use italics (indicated in manuscript by underscoring), except in writing for a periodical that follows a different practice. Omit initial A or The from titles when you place the possessive before them.

The Iliad; the Odyssey; As You Like It; To a Skylark; The Newcomes; A Tale of Two Cities; Dicken’s Tale of Two Cities.

V. WORDS AND EXPRESSIONS COMMONLY MISUSED (Many of the words and expressions here listed are not so much bad English as bad style, the commonplaces of careless writing. As illustrated under Feature, the proper correction is likely to be not the replacement of one word or set of words by another, but the replacement of vague generality by definite statement.)

All right. Idiomatic in familiar speech as a detached phrase in the sense, “Agreed,” or “Go ahead.” In other uses better avoided. Always written as two words.

As good or better than. Expressions of this type should be corrected by rearranging the sentence.

My opinion is as good or better than his.

My opinion is as good as his, or better (if not better).

As to whether. Whether is sufficient; see under Rule 13.

Bid. Takes the infinitive without to. The past tense is bade.

Case. The Concise Oxford Dictionary begins its definition of this word: “instance of a thing’s occurring; usual state of affairs.” In these two senses, the word is usually unnecessary.

In many cases, the rooms were poorly ventilated.

Many of the rooms were poorly ventilated.

It has rarely been the case that any mistake has Few mistakes have been made. been made.

Certainly. Used indiscriminately by some speakers, much as others use very, to intensify any and every statement. A mannerism of this kind, bad in speech, is even worse in writing.

Character. Often simply redundant, used from a mere habit of wordiness.

Acts of a hostile character Hostile acts Claim, vb. With object-noun, means lay claim to. May be used with a dependent clause if this sense is clearly involved: “He claimed that he was the sole surviving heir.”

(But even here, “claimed to be” would be better.) Not to be used as a substitute for declare, maintain, or charge.

Compare. To compare to is to point out or imply resemblances, between objects regarded as essentially of different order; to compare with is mainly to point out differences, between objects regarded as essentially of the same order.

Thus life has been compared to a pilgrimage, to a drama, to a battle; Congress may be compared with the British Parliament.

Paris has been compared to ancient Athens; it may be compared with modern London.

Clever. This word has been greatly overused; it is best restricted to ingenuity displayed in small matters.

Consider. Not followed by as when it means, “believe to be.” “I consider him thoroughly competent.” Compare, “The lecturer considered Cromwell first as soldier and second as administrator,” where “considered” means

136

“examined” or “discussed.”

Dependable. A needless substitute for reliable, trustworthy.

Due to. Incorrectly used for through, because of, or owing to, in adverbial phrases: “He lost the first game, due to carelessness.” In correct use related as predicate or as modifier to a particular noun: “This invention is due to Edison;” “losses due to preventable fires.”

Effect. As noun, means result; as verb, means to bring about, accomplish (not to be confused with affect, which means “to influence”). As noun, often loosely used in perfunctory writing about fashions, music, painting, and other arts: “an Oriental effect;” “effects in pale green;” “very delicate effects;” “broad effects;” “subtle effects;” “a charming effect was produced by.” The writer who has a definite meaning to express will not take refuge in such vagueness.

Etc. Not to be used of persons. Equivalent to and the rest, and so forth, and hence not to be used if one of these would be insufficient, that is, if the reader would be left in doubt as to any important particulars. Least open to objection when it represents the last terms of a list already given in full, or immaterial words at the end of a quotation.

At the end of a list introduced by such as, for example, or any similar expression, etc. is incorrect.

Fact. Use this word only of matters of a kind capable of direct verification, not of matters of judgment. That a particular event happened on a given date, that lead melts at a certain temperature, are facts. But such conclusions as that Napoleon was the greatest of modern generals, or that the climate of California is delightful, however incontestable they may be, are not properly facts. On the formula the fact that, see under Rule 13.

Factor. A hackneyed word; the expressions of which it forms part can usually be replaced by something more direct and idiomatic.

His superior training was the great factor in his He won the match by being better trained. winning the match.

Heavy artillery is becoming an increasingly Heavy artillery is playing a larger and larger important factor in deciding battles. part in deciding battles.

Feature. Another hackneyed word; like factor it usually adds nothing to the sentence in which it occurs.

A feature of the entertainment especially worthy of mention was the singing of Miss A. (Better use the same number of words to tell what Miss A. sang, or if the program has already been given, to tell something of how she sang.) As a verb, in the advertising sense of offer as a special attraction, to be avoided.

Fix. Colloquial in America for arrange, prepare, mend. In writing restrict it to its literary senses, fasten, make firm or immovable, etc.

He is a man who. A common type of redundant expression; see Rule 13.

He is a man who is very ambitious.

He is very ambitious.

Spain is a country which I have always wanted I have always wanted to visit Spain. to visit.

However. In the meaning nevertheless, not to come first in its sentence or clause. The roads were almost impassable.

However, we at last succeeded in reaching camp.

The roads were almost impassable. At last, however, we succeeded in reaching camp.

When however comes first, it means in whatever way or to whatever extent.

However you advise him, he will probably do as he thinks best.

However discouraging the prospect, he never lost heart.

Kind of. Not to be used as a substitute for rather (before adjectives and verbs), or except in familiar style, for something like (before nouns). Restrict it to its literal sense: “Amber is a kind of fossil resin;” “I dislike that kind of notoriety.” The same holds true of sort of.

Less. Should not be misused for fewer.

He had less men than in the previous campaign.

He had fewer men than in the previous campaign.

Less refers to quantity, fewer to number. “His troubles are less than mine” means “His troubles are not so great

137

as mine.” “His troubles are fewer than mine” means “His troubles are not so numerous as mine.” It is, however, correct to say, “The signers of the petition were less than a hundred, “where the round number, a hundred, is something like a collective noun, and less is thought of as meaning a less quantity or amount.

Line, along these lines. Line in the sense of course of procedure, conduct, thought, is allowable, but has been so much overworked, particularly in the phrase along these lines, that a writer who aims at freshness or originality had better discard it entirely.

Mr. B. also spoke along the same lines.

Mr. B. also spoke, to the same effect.

He is studying along the line of French literature.

He is studying French literature.

Literal, literally. Often incorrectly used in support of exaggeration or violent metaphor.

A literal flood of abuse A flood of abuse Literally dead with fatigue Almost dead with fatigue (dead tired) Lose out. Meant to be more emphatic than lose, but actually less so, because of its commonness. The same holds true of try out, win out, sign up, register up. With a number of verbs, out and up form idiomatic combinations: find out, run out, turn out, cheer up, dry up, make up, and others, each distinguishable in meaning from the simple verb. Lose out is not.

Most. Not to be used for almost.

Most everybody Almost everybody Most all the time Almost all the time Nature. Often simply redundant, used like character.

Acts of a hostile nature Hostile acts Often vaguely used in such expressions as “a lover of nature;” “poems about nature.” Unless more specific statements follow, the reader cannot tell whether the poems have to do with natural scenery, rural life, the sunset, the untracked wilderness, or the habits of squirrels.

Near by. Adverbial phrase, not yet fully accepted as good English, though the analogy of close by and hard by seems to justify it. Near, or near at hand, is as good, if not better. Not to be used as an adjective; use neighboring.

Oftentimes, ofttimes. Archaic forms, no longer in good use. The modern word is often.

One hundred and one. Retain the and in this and similar expressions, in accordance with the unvarying usage of English prose from Old English times.

One of the most. Avoid beginning essays or paragraphs with this formula, as, “One of the most interesting developments of modern science is, etc.;” “Switzerland is one of the most interesting countries of Europe.”

There is nothing wrong in this; it is simply threadbare and forcible-feeble.

People. The people is a political term, not to be confused with the public. From the people comes political support or opposition; from the public comes artistic appreciation or commercial patronage. The word people is not to be used with words of number, in place of persons. If of “six people” five went away, how many “people” would be left?

Phase. Means a stage of transition or development: “the phases of the moon;” “the last phase.” Not to be used for aspect or topic.

Another phase of the subject Another point (another question) Possess. Not to be used as a mere substitute for have or own.

He possessed great courage.

He had great courage (was very brave).

He was the fortunate possessor of He owned Respective, respectively. These words may usually be omitted with advantage.

Works of fiction are listed under the names of Works of fiction are listed under the names of their their respective authors. authors.

The one mile and two mile runs were won by The one mile and two mile runs were won by Jones

138

Jones and Cummings respectively. and by Cummings.

In some kinds of formal writing, as in geometrical proofs, it may be necessary to use respectively, but it should not appear in writing on ordinary subjects.

So. Avoid, in writing, the use of so as an intensifier: “so good;” “so warm;” “so delightful.” On the use of so to introduce clauses, see Rule 4.

Sort of. See under Kind of.

State. Not to be used as a mere substitute for say, remark. Restrict it to the sense of express fully or clearly, as, “He refused to state his objections.”

Student body. A needless and awkward expression, meaning no more than the simple word students.

A member of the student body A student Popular with the student body Liked by the students The student body passed resolutions.

The students passed resolutions.

System. Frequently used without need.

Dayton has adopted the commission system of Dayton has adopted government by commission. government.

The dormitory system Dormitories Thanking you in advance. This sounds as if the writer meant, “It will not be worth my while to write to you again.” Simply write, “Thanking you,” and if the favor which you have requested is granted, write a letter of acknowledgment.

They. A common inaccuracy is the use of the plural pronoun when the antecedent is a distributive expression such as each, each one, everybody, every one, many a man, which, though implying more than one person, requires the pronoun to be in the singular. Similar to this, but with even less justification, is the use of the plural pronoun with the antecedent anybody, any one, somebody, some one, the intention being either to avoid the awkward “he or she,” or to avoid committing oneself to either. Some bashful speakers even say, “A friend of mine told me that they, etc.” Use he with all the above words, unless the antecedent is or must be feminine.

Very. Use this word sparingly. Where emphasis is necessary, use words strong in themselves.

Viewpoint. Write point of view, but do not misuse this, as many do, for view or opinion.

While. Avoid the indiscriminate use of this word for and, but, and although. Many writers use it frequently as a substitute for and or but, either from a mere desire to vary the connective, or from uncertainty which of the two connectives is the more appropriate. In this use it is best replaced by a semicolon.

The office and salesrooms are on the ground The office and salesrooms are on the ground floor; floor, while the rest of the building is devoted to the rest of the building is devoted to manufacturing. manufacturing.

Its use as a virtual equivalent of although is allowable in sentences where this leads to no ambiguity or absurdity.

While I admire his energy, I wish it were employed in a better cause.

This is entirely correct, as shown by the paraphrase, I admire his energy; at the same time I wish it were employed in a better cause.

Compare: While the temperature reaches 90 or 95 degrees Although the temperature reaches 90 or 95 degrees in in the daytime, the nights are often chilly. the daytime, the nights are often chilly.

The paraphrase, The temperature reaches 90 or 95 degrees in the daytime; at the same time the nights are often chilly, shows why the use of while is incorrect. In general, the writer will do well to use while only with strict literalness, in the sense of during the time that.

Whom. Often incorrectly used for who before he said or similar expressions, when it is really the subject of a following verb.

139

His brother, whom he said would send him the His brother, who he said would send him the money money The man whom he thought was his friend The man who (that) he thought was his friend (whom he thought his friend) Worth while. Overworked as a term of vague approval and (with not) of disapproval. Strictly applicable only to actions: “Is it worth while to telegraph?”

His books are not worth while.

His books are not worth reading (not worth one’s

while to read; do not repay reading).

The use of worth while before a noun (“a worth while story”) is indefensible.

Would. A conditional statement in the first person requires should, not would. I should not have succeeded without his help. The equivalent of shall in indirect quotation after a verb in the past tense is should, not would.

He predicted that before long we should have a great surprise.

To express habitual or repeated action, the past tense, without would, is usually sufficient, and from its brevity, more emphatic.

Once a year he would visit the old mansion. Once a year he visited the old mansion.

VI .WORDS OFTEN MISSPELLED accidentally advice affect beginning believe benefit challenge criticize deceive definite describe despise develop disappoint duel ecstasy effect existence fiery formerly humorous hypocrisy immediately incidentally latter led Loibner-Waitkus

140

lose marriage mischief murmur necessary occurred parallel Philip playwright preceding prejudice principal privilege pursue repetition rhyme rhythm ridiculous sacrilegious seize separate shepherd siege similar simile too tragedy tries undoubtedly until

141

from Heaven and Earth in Jest from PILGRIM AT TINKER CREEK by ANNIE DILLARD We don’t know what’s going on here. If these tremendous events are random combinations of matter run amok, the yield of millions of monkeys at millions of typewriters, then what is it in us, hammered out of those same typewriters, that they ignite? We don’t know. Our life is a faint tracing on the surface of mystery, like the idle, curved tunnels of leaf miners on the face of a leaf. We must somehow take a wider view, look at the whole landscape, really see it, and describe what’s going on here. Then we can at least wail the right question into the swaddling band of darkness, or, if it comes to that, choir the proper praise.

At the time of Lewis and Clark, setting the prairies on fire was a wellknown signal that meant, “Come down to the water.” It was an extravagant gesture, but we can’t do less. If the landscape reveals one certainty, it is that the extravagant gesture is the very stuff of creation. After the one extravagant gesture of creation in the first place, the universe has continued to deal exclusively in extravagances, flinging intricacies and colossi down æons of emptiness, heaping profusions on profligacies with ever-fresh vigor. The whole show has been on fire from the word go. I come down to the water to cool my eyes. But everywhere I look I see fire; that which isn’t flint is tinder, and the whole world sparks and flames.

142

from Now

from FOR THE TIME BEING by ANNIE DILLARD

The closer we grow to death, the more closely we follow the news. Year after year, without ever reckoning the hours I wasted last week or last year, I read the morning paper. I buy mass psychotherapy in the form of the lie that this is a banner year. Or is it, God save us from crazies, aromatherapy? I smell the rat, but cannot walk away. It is life’s noise—the noise of the news—that sings “It’s a Small World After All” again and again to lull you and cover the silence while your love boat slips off into the dark.

The blue light of the television flickers on the cave wall. If the fellow crawls out of the cave, what does he see? Not the sun itself, but night, and the two thousand visible stars. Once, I tried to converse with him, the fellow who crawled out of his blue-lit cave to the real world. He had looked into this matter of God. He had to shout to make himself heard: “How do you stand the wind out here?”

I don’t. Not for long. I drive a schoolkids’ car pool. I shouted back, “I don’t!

I read Consumer Reports every month!” It seemed unlikely that he heard. The wind blew into his face. He turned and faced the lee. I don’t know how long he stayed out. A little at a time does for me—a little every day.”

143

WRITE LIKEAllen HEMINGWAY Loibner-Waitkus While Hemingway never served up writing advice to the masses, we can glean a few things from his written comments on writing, various interviews, and his works themselves. Vonnegut narrowed his list down to seven, but never one to be verbose, Hemingway’s list can be narrowed down to only four.

1. USE SHORT SENTENCES. While sophisticated writing should include simple, compound, complex, and compound-complex sentences, don’t bog your readers down with 100-word sentences. Shorter sentences move your readers along and don’t make them feel like they have to put significant effort into reading.

2. USE SHORT FIRST PARAGRAPHS. Three to five sentences is plenty. Get to the point.

3. USE VIGOROUS ENGLISH. Vigorous English is all about focus. Find the perfect word, not the easy word. Using vigorous language requires you to revise, revise, and revise again. Once your draft is complete, look at each word. Is there a better, stronger word you could use?

4. BE POSITIVE, NOT NEGATIVE. This does not mean everything has to be sunshine and unicorns. Write “economical,” not “inexpensive.”

Write “bad,” not “not good.”

144

COMMON USAGE PROBLEMS Allen Loibner-Waitkus a, an

bust, busted

accept, except

can, may

affect, effect

capital, capitol

aggravate

careen, career

all, all of

center around

all ready, already

cite, site

all right

compare to, compare with

all together, altogether

complement, compliment

a lot

continual, continuous

among, between

convince, persuade

amongst

could care less

amount, number

could of, should of, would of

and etc.

deaf, Deaf

and/or

disinterested, uninterested

anxious, eager

due to

anymore, any more

especially, specially

as

everyday, every day

assure, ensure, insure

everyone, every one

at

farther, further

awhile, a while

feel

because, since

fewer, less

beside, besides

firstly

better, had better

gay, homosexual, lesbian

blond, blonde

get, got

145

good, well

quote, quotation

hanged, hung

real, really

he/she, his, her

respectfully, respectively

hisself

shall, will

historic, historical

since

hot water heater, hot-water heater

so

impact

sometime, some time, sometimes

imply, infer

stationary, stationery

in, into, in to

such

inside of, outside of, off of

supposed to

is when, is where

than, then

its, it’s

they/them

later, latter

thru

lay. lie

till, until, ‘til

like, such as

toward, towards

literally

try and

loose, lose

unique

may, might

use, utilize

maybe, may be

used to

myself

wait for, wait on

OK, O.K., okay

who, which, that

principal, principle

who, whom

146

COMMA COMMANDMENTS Allen Loibner-Waitkus THOU SHALT USE A COMMA BEFORE AND, BUT, OR, AND OTHER COORDINATING CONJUNCTIONS LINKING INDEPENDENT CLAUSES.

THOU SHALT USE A COMMA TO SET OFF YES AND NO. No, you cannot wear white after Labor Day.

It was raining on Friday night, so we didn’t go to the football game.

Jonathan bought eight pairs of shoes, but he forgot to buy the socks I asked him pick up for me.

Yes, I think that is a great idea.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO SET OFF DIRECT ADDRESSES.

Travis went to Berlin for the summer, and he really enjoyed it.

I am not going to be seen with you in public carrying that fake Prada handbag, Jennifer.

Happy birthday, Curt!

THOU SHALT USE A COMMA AFTER MOST INTRODUCTORY ELEMENTS. On the third Wednesday of every month, my book club meets at my house.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO SET OFF TAG QUESTIONS. It’s raining outside, isn’t it?

Because he was busy smoking crack, Brian didn’t notice his toddler had climbed into the washing machine.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO SET OFF NONESSENTIAL ELEMENTS.

Samantha is pregnant, right?

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO SET OFF MILD INTERJECTIONS.

Annie Dillard, who wrote For the Time Being, won the Pulitzer Prize in 1975 for Pilgrim at Tinker Creek.

Oops, my socks don’t match.

Well, it could be worse.

My sister, Tracy, lives in Benton. (Note: I only have one sister. If I had more than one sister, Tracy would be essential, and no commas would be necessary.)

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO SET OFF ABSOLUTE PHRASES.

My friend Matt, for example, has several sisters.

Having been the last person to finish eating the main course, Shemiracle had the nerve to order dessert.

My stepmother, surprisingly, is younger than I.

The charity, its donations already slumping, forgot to advertise the event.

147

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO SET OFF CONTRASTING PHRASES.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS ACCORDING TO STANDARD PRACTICE WITH QUOTATIONS.

It was Meghan, not Justin, who decided raising bees inside was a good idea.

Matt said, “I will never speak to him again after he called me stupid during our wedding reception.”

Jose, unlike Billy, finished his homework before class.

“I can’t believe you would let something so minor bother you so much,” I said.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS BETWEEN ITEMS IN A SERIES.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS TO PREVENT MISREADING.

Corky ate ham, eggs, sausage, bacon, and toast for breakfast.

Though mostly happy, people still have moments of depression.

Rita lifted weights, ran a mile, and did yoga before going to work.

Tell Mary, Grace is finished eating.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS BETWEEN TWO OR MORE ADJECTIVES THAT MODIFY THE SAME WORD EQUALLY. You should see Maribeth’s shiny, sleek new car.

Farrah is a caring, dependable friend.

THOU SHALT USE COMMAS ACCORDING TO STANDARD PRACTICE IN LONG NUMBERS, DATES, PLACE NAMES, AND ADDRESSES. Despite her pathetic salary, Ginny bought a house that cost $250,000.00.

April 1, 1976, is a day the world changed forever.

Austin, Texas, has fewer residents than Tampa, Florida.

Her address is 324 Ash Street, Little Rock, Arkansas 72205.

148

LITERARY TERMS Allen Loibner-Waitkus

alliteration—a number of words, having the same

euphony—soothing, pleasant sounds

first consonant sound, occurring close together in exposition—the basic situation or introduction of

a series

a piece of fiction allusion—a brief and indirect reference to a person, place, thing, or idea of historical, cultural, lit-

first person—the narrator IS a character in the sto-

erary, or political significance

ry

antagonist—the character who comes into conflict

flat character—an underdeveloped, two-dimen-

with the main character (not always the bad guy)

sional character

Bildungsroman—a coming-of-age story

foreshadowing—hints of clues of what’s to come

cacophony—harsh, discordant sounds

hyperbole—exaggeration for literary effect

climax—the point of highest interest

imagery—language that evokes one or all of the five senses

dénouement—the conclusion or resolution of a in medias res—in or into the middle of a narrative

piece of fiction

or plot diction—the choice of language used by the speakjuxtaposition—placing close together or side by

er or writer

side for comparison or contrast dramatic irony—the reader or audience knows Künstleroman—a story about an artist’s growth to

something the characters in the story or play don’t

maturity dynamic character—a character who changes over malapropism—confusion of words that are similar

the course of the story

in sound epistolary—fiction written as a series of documents; the usual form is letters, although diary en-

metaphor—a resemblance of two contradictory or

tries, newspaper clippings, and other documents

different objects is made based on a single or some

are sometimes used

common characteristics

149

motif—recurrent thematic element

stock character—a character we see again and again in literature (the town drunk, the bumbling

onomatopoeia—words that sound like what they

cop, the nerd, etc.)

mean stream of consciousness—the unbroken flow of pathetic fallacy—giving human emotions to things

thought and awareness of the waking mind

that aren’t human symbolism—signify ideas and qualities by giving personification—giving human characteristics to

them symbolic meanings that are different from

things that aren’t human

their literal sense

protagonist—the MAIN character (not always the

synecdoche—uses a part to represent the whole

good guy) synesthesia—a neurological phenomenon in which red herring—false hints or clues intended to con-

stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway

fuse the reader

leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway

round character—a well-developed, three-dimentheme—a main idea or an underlying meaning of

sional character

a literary work that may be stated directly or indisatire—literary work holding up human vices and

rectly

follies to ridicule or scorn third person—the narrator IS NOT a character in setting—where and when a story takes place

the story tone—the attitude of the author toward the characters, subject matter, reader, etc.

simile—draws resemblance with the help of the verbal irony—the intended meaning of a statement

words “like” or “as”

differs from the meaning that the words appear to situational irony—the opposite of what the reader

express verisimilitude—the quality of seeming real

expects to happen happens static character—a character who doesn’t change over the course of a story

150

ALW’S LIFE TIPS

Allen Loibner-Waitkus

1

# —If you tell someone you made a #2 in your pants, they will never suspect you of making it up. The uses are countless.

2

# —There are more legitimate reasons to be violent than there are to be mean.

3

# —Invest in quality pens and sunglasses.

4

# —If you are ever uncomfortable in a situation, leave. If you don’t have a good reason to leave, make one up. If you can’t think of one, feel free to borrow my #1.

5

# —Take care of your bartender, and your bartender will take care of you.

6

# —It’s really hard for someone not to like you if they think you like them.

7

# —Wear sunscreen. Seriously.

8

# —The higher your level of education, the more valuable your time is considered.

9

# —Tips should start at 20% and go up the better the service. If you think your waiter or waitress deserves less than 15%, then you may need to speak to management about the business’s quality of service.

10—Never argue anything that can be definitively proved via a simple Google search.

#

151

READING

Suggested

American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. 5th ed., text-revision ed., American Psychiatric Publishing, 2022. [ISBN-13: 978-0890425763] American Psychological Association. Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.

7th ed., American Psychological Association, 2019. [ISBN-13: 978-1433832178] Associated Press. The Associated Press Stylebook: 2022-2024. 56th ed., Basic Books, 2022.

[ISBN-13:978-1541601659] Dillard, Annie. For the Time Being. Vintage Books, 2000. [ISBN-13: 978-0375703478] ———. Living by Fiction. Harper Perennial, 2000. [ISBN-13: 978-0060915445] ———. The Writing Life. Harper Perennial, 2013. [ISBN-13: 978-0060919887] Jones, Kenneth Lyons, et al. Smith’s Recognizable Patterns of Human Malformation. 8th ed., Elsevier, 2021. [ISBN-13: 978-0323638821] Kaufman, Lester, and Jane Straus. The Blue Book of Grammar and Punctuation: An Easy-to-Use Guide with Clear Rules, Real-World Examples, and Reproducable Quizzes. 12th ed., JosseyBass, 2021. [ISBN-13: 978-1119653028] Modern Language Association of America. MLA Handbook. 9th ed., Modern Language Association of America, 2021. [ISBN-13: 978-1603293518] Post, Lizzie, and Daniel Post Senning. Emily Post’s Etiquette. Centennial ed., Ten Speed Press, 2022. [ISBN-13: 978-1984859396] Vonnegut, Kurt. Slaughterhouse-Five, or The Children’s Crusade. Dell, 1991 [ISBN-13: 978-0440180296] ———. Wampeters, Foma and Granfalloons: (Opinions). Dial Press, 1999. [ISBN-13: 978-0385333818] Vonnegut, Kurt, and Suzanne McConnell. Pity the Reader: On Writing with Style. Seven Stories, 2020. [ISBN-13: 978-1644210215]

152

Colophon

T

he Loibner-Waitkus Primer was designed by Allen Loibner-Waitkus using Adobe In-Design 2022, Adobe Photoshop 2022, and Adobe Illustrator 2022 on an Apple MacBook Pro. The entire primer contains only two font families: Freight Pro (a complete font family) and One Thousand (a script). The entire document is designed in grayscale and contains no color other than black— CMYK, Pantone, or otherwise.

The cover images—Cigarettes by Bogdandreava—was obtained via Envato Elements.

WORKS INCLUDED BY DATE OF ORIGINAL PULICATION: The Elemennts of Style by William Strunk, Jr. and E.B. White—1918, “The Gilded Six-Bits” by Zora Neale Hurston—1933, “Mnnemonics” by Kurt Vonnegut—1951 Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard—1974 Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard—1977 “Adultery” by James Dickey—1981 “The Leap” by James Dickey—1981 “The Deer at Providencia” by Annie Dillard—1982 “Living Like Weasels” by Annie Dillard—1982 “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party”

by Sharon Olds—1984

“Sex Without Love” by Sharon Olds—1984 “How to Write with Style” by Kurt Vonnegut—1985 “The Pope’s Penis” by Sharon Olds—1987 The House of Yes by Wendy

MacLeod—1990 “The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb” by Sharon Olds—1999 For the Time Being by Annie Dillard—1999

CREDITS Dickey, James. “Adultery.” The Complete Poems of James Dickey, edited with an introduction by Ward Briggs, forward by Richard Howard, South Carolina UP, 2013, p. 362.

———. “The Leap.” The Complete Poems of James Dickey, edited with an introduction by Ward Briggs, forward by Richard Howard, South Carolina UP, 2013, p. 264.

Dillard, Annie. “The Deer at Providencia.” Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, Harper Perennial, 1992, pp. 78-84.

———. For the Time Being. Alfred A. Knopf, 1999.

———. Holy the Firm. Harper and Roe, 1977.

———. “Living Like Weasels.” Teaching a Stone to Talk: Expeditions and Encounters, HarperPerennial, 1992, pp. 29-34.

———. Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. Harper Perennial, 2013.

———. “A Writer in the World.” The Abundance: Narrative Essays Old and New, forward by Geoff Dyer, Harper Collins, 2016, pp. 105-18.

Hurston, Zora Neale. “The Gilded Six-Bits.” Zora Neale Hurston: The Complete Stories, introduction by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Sieglinde Lemke, Harper Perennial, 2008, pp. 86-98.

MacLeod, Wendy. The House of Yes. Dramatic Play Service, 1995.

Olds, Sharon. “The One Girl at the Boys’ Party.” Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 31.

———. “The Pope’s Penis.” Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 42.

———. “Sex Without Love.” Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 24.

———. “The Summer-Camp Bus Pulls Away from the Curb.” Strike Sparks: Selected Poems, 1980-2002, Alfred A. Knopf, 2004, p. 139.

Strunk, Jr., William, and E.B. White. The Elements of Style, 4th ed., Pearson, 1999.

Vonnegut, Kurt. “How to Write with Style.” The Marginalian, 14 Jan. 2013, www.themarginalian.org/2013/01/14/how-to-write-with-style-kurtvonnegut/.

———. “Mnemonics.” Kurt Vonnegut Complete Stories, collected and introduced by Jerome Klinkowitz and Dan Wakefield, Seven Stories, 2017, pp. 322-24.

153

Nothing is going to happen in this book. There is only a little violence here and there in the language, at the corner where eternity clips time.

–Annie Dillard, Holy the Firm

This first edition of THE LOIBNER-WAITKUS PRIMER features works by the following: WILLIAM STRUNK, JR. (1869-1946)

JAMES DICKEY (1923-1997)

ZORA NEALE HURSTON (1891-1960)

SHARON OLDS (1942-Present)

E.B. WHITE (1899-1985)

ANNIE DILLARD (1945-Present)

KURT VONNEGUT (1922-2007)

WENDY MacLEOD (1959-Present)

ALLEN LOIBNER-WAITKUS (1976-PRESENT)

lw

LOIBNER-WAITKUS 154