— She hasn't even called has she? His hand warmed to its task, to the neighboring breast — I don't know when she'll come back, she just used that call for an excuse to get out of here, out of this madhouse she called it it was just an excuse, Harry will be there with a towel around him and a drink in his hand they're probably having a great time right now at some fancy…
— Listen! She stalled his hand rounding her thigh till the shuffle of carpet slippers had passed in the hall — no, there's something wrong Oscar, the way they sounded when they called, will you turn off that light in the fishtank? as the faint sound of a trickle reached them, — it's spooky.
A heavy mist pierced by sporadic gunfire waking the day, waking the sleeper to a confusion of realms with a fleeting white disc up there that might have been the sun or the moon confounding the day shapelessly enveloped out over the pond obscuring the opposite shore colliding with history as spectacle, the shotgun blasts with Hooker's opening volleys through the morning mists down on Jackson's two divisions bestriding the Hagerstown pike where by midmorning the slaughter was done, the attack repulsed and the mist burned away by the sun as it proved to be now over heels of toast and more tea meliorated by today's hair of the dog muffled in a much darned black sock all hopelessly aswirl for lack of a recipe to bring the ingredients together in some grand design illuminating the whole in this battle all tactics and no strategy, leaving no course open but getting to choose your own category in history as a game show.
What famous Civil War general was shot down and killed by his own men? abruptly conjuring history costumed as theatre: We are speaking of General Jackson, sir! clamouring through the clutter of blasted hopes and grand intentions, history as madness, the God-driven man who knows without question and acts, but admire him? riding forth in the dusk hand pointed heavenward to organize the pursuit rolling up the Union flank at Chancellorsville in one of the most brilliant manoeuvres in history as war, seizing death in victory and his commander left crippled without his right arm's divinely sanctioned audacity to prolong the slaughter for two more years staring its futility square in the face embracing war as madness with his General Ewell was it? who thought he was a bird? did bird songs and ate birdseed?
What three famous men living or dead have had the first name Rudolph.
Hitler? — Good God! he muttered, backing off furtively from the solitary audience propped up before the screen there in a litter of crusts and glossy wrappings — Good God! again, bursting into the kitchen, — can such stupidity really exist?
— You said you wanted somebody to talk to didn't you?
— I didn't mean him I meant, I mean him yes, plain as the nose on his face when Lee lost Jackson the whole cause was lost but he wouldn't face it, he kept the slaughter going for two more whole years, half starved boys without shoes in their first long pants blown to bits at Vicksburg, Chattanooga, the Wilderness, that old fool in there with his fried hog rinds talking about the noble cause it was vanity, vanity that's all it was, look at Gettysburg. Lee might have taken Meade at Gettysburg but he couldn't get his act together, do you think Pickett would have led that insane charge if Jackson had been around taking his orders direct from the Almighty?
— I don't know Oscar, but we're out of bread.
— Have you looked? We can't be out of everything.
— There's this jar of olives.
— We'll starve him out, he muttered, coming down heavily on a wooden chair to seize the wine bottle there on the bare kitchen table and cling to it like a stanchion, — he wants some more Tater Skins when we go shopping how does he think we, will you hand me a glass? I never knew anyone could be so selfish even Christina, I can't even reach her. When I called there I got some awful woman who said she was Harry's sister I didn't know he had one, when I said where's Christina she said she didn't know or give a damn and hung up, what about your friend's car the one with red hair?
— He dumped her so she needed it back, all he wanted off her was what he got off of me but just wait! You can hire a cab can't you?
— To go shopping for Tater Skins? splashing wine on her hand where she set down the glass, — we can't even…
— We can starve him out Oscar but what about us, am I supposed to just sit here eating Cream of Wheat while you get the DT's drinking all this wine?
Bent unsteadily over the basin for a late afternoon shave the ultimate confusion of realms collided upstairs and down, reaching for a towel all unawares as he'd been of that excursion laid out erect beside her on a bed littered with cans of shoe polish that he was, as real as anything, this very instant walking naked into the junkyard of the mind here in the sunroom where sleep tempered the soft rise and fall of her belly and the descent of an intinerant hand idly scratching the warm crest mounting the vulvate den massed thick with hairs like some mortal Gorgon spread for the thrust of an impudent tongue in the shaving mirror turning to search a drawer for a clean shirt from the sticky doings in that marshy venereal bog where Dionaea muscipula closed the spined hinges of pudendal lips summoning up the legendary vagina dentata as he zipped up his trousers on their oblivious tenant, a faint whimper and flick of her tongue the only avowal of his visit, licking her lips and her hand rising gently kneading her breast coming over on her side where time passed over her unbroken and unheard as his footsteps down the stairs, her face still buried in the pillow when his howl burst down the hall full upon her starting her up crying out — I'm coming! where he stood as though turned to stone staring wide with horror at the screen, fifty, a hundred of them writhing in a ball round eyes mirroring nothing in this mating frenzy of darting tongues' search for the scented female among them seizing him by a rigid arm stumbling down the hall beside her to the kitchen drawn up panting, both of them, recrimination prompting her abrupt recovery with — so there! didn't I tell you? That's what it will be like!
— But what, what are you talking about!
— On your nature program in there, only the next time you'll really be seeing them! as she thrust the wine bottle from reach, — and Oscar? now fully recovered, — I need some money.
— But, good God so do…
— I have to go down there Oscar. Because I've been thinking about poor Daddy all alone down there with only Mama and this big operation where you don't know what can happen if tragedy strikes and we'd never had this chance to get reconciled like you and your daddy I'd never forgive myself. You want some coffee?
— No. Yes! Of all the, if tragedy strikes it's a common operation happens all the time there's no reason you no, no the only reason you want to go it's just an excuse, it's just like Christina it's just an excuse to get out of here and leave me with this this, with him in there and…
— Well what am I doing here anyway? What am I even doing here! It's spooky. If I came to help you out back when you were alone and get away from Al I can get away from him down there can't I? Because what am I supposed to do, you have to go in there and talk to him and pack him up to go home if you want to wait till she gets back because you already got done what he came up here for about your daddy's will and everything didn't you? and there's my poor daddy down there I don't even know if he's got one, where it was always Bobbie everything was for Bobbie and all this insurance mess on that Porsche he bought him now he hasn't got Bobbie anymore with this big operation where the Lord might call him I have to be by his side don't I? I'm his daughter aren't I?