Wayne would say, “That’s a goddamned weenie! That is a goddamned weenie!”
The man of course is never to be produced, and the day of measuring roof jacks and threatening the man declines from its prospects of gargantua, Wayne retiring to Coors, Floyd to science fiction. For weeks, even months, Wayne and Floyd measure roof jacks. A surprising number can be found that measure thirteen inches in height by nine inches in girth, exactly.
Wayne and Floyd measure roof jacks finally automatically, compulsively, learning to gauge them on sight with great precision—“Ten-seven, skip it”—and finding the eerily common thirteen-nine in a twilight zone of ambivalent sexuality. After work they clean themselves with creamy go-jo and coarse rags and cold beer.
Finally they stop measuring roof jacks. Wayne may shake his head occasionally, passing a thirteen-nine. Floyd ignores or has forgotten roof jacks as anything other than obstacles not to trip over.
Days, once they abjure gargantua, even absurd gargantua, and descend into their ordinary smallnesses, have a way of remaining small. The lives that inhabit the days also assume postures of ordinary smallness. One day an apex of sorts, laughable though it be, of men together measuring roof jacks with twenty-five-foot Stanley Powerlocks, gives way to the men scattered, disconnected, down from the roof, doing less than measuring roof jacks and laughing. Threatening nothing. Threatening, finally, not even themselves.
And Wayne today? Wayne today is as elusive as Wayne yesterday. But Wayne isn’t afraid of anything because he knows he is afraid of it. I, by contrast, think myself fearless, and when something scares me it scares the shit out of me and forces me to undergo a little private analysis the likes of which never trouble Wayne. If you are afraid of everything, you are finally not afraid of anything. It is when you presume to be not afraid of a few things that the terror creeps in. The terror resides in correctly identifying what you are afraid of and what you are not afraid of. The absolutely fearful person is in an absolute and comfortable position: against the ropes, ready for it all. The presumer, the poseur of courage, is looking left, right, behind himself, trembling.
And what of Ugly, Wayne’s estranged wife, with two kids and already, no doubt, Wayne’s bad teeth in their malnourished heads? What of poor Felicia and the rug rats? Plastic shoes, polyester shorts, impetigo legs, happily playing, and at nothing demonstrably inventive or clever or advanced or Montessori. The debilitating issue of debilitated parents. Who will grow up to be, the boys, broadcast magnates or serial killers and, were there girls, Union 76 cashiers or actresses of first-tier Hollywood sexuality. Life all over the road. These people are afraid of nothing.
Of Felicia I know nothing. On the one occasion when Wayne called her Ugly in my presence, I noticed at that moment her nice ass, in short, tight shorts of a color like magenta, set off by her very white legs and of a stretchy knit material, the combination of which — these dimestore pants and unhealthily white legs — was exciting, and if she had asked me if she was ugly, I would have said she was not, but she did not (why would she? how could she?), and I did not volunteer a correction (very easy to do: “Wayne, for God’s sake”). And why did I not correct him? None of my business? Too smarmy? Would it have been open flirtation to compliment her even by the left-handedness of scolding my friend her husband? I think I suspected I would worsen the situation if I said, Not ugly to me. And this seems true still. But how I might have worsened it was obscure then and still is. Felicia would have given me a look, then or an hour later, delivered me a colder beer than that she delivered Wayne, or she would have been disgusted with me. That, I think, is the better probability. Not ugly, big boy? And what are you going to do about it? Shit. And she continues to diaper a rug rat, fetch us beer, hide.
I was perfectly free to say, “Wayne, if she’s ugly, I’ll tell you what: I’ll pay your rent and bills here for a month and all I want is one week with her, if she’ll have me. Put the question to her.” I was perfectly free to do this. Of all the things I was afraid of, Wayne was not one of them.
At the time I would have seen such a proposition as a blessing, or at least an improvement, for the suffering Felicia. A week with me! All my teeth! Muscles! College! Now I see that she was lucky I never spoke.
Wayne may be roofing, but I am afraid.
All Along the Watchtower Chihuahua
VERY OFTEN, EVERY DAY, every so often, every day I go down to the quay. To the water. No quay. Don’t know what a quay is.
Every day I go down to the water. I would like to say this. Every day I go down to the water.
Lies abound: not every day, not go down, and what precisely does “to the water” purport to mean? To lap it, to look at it, to get in it, all the above, none, what? And “the water”—what water, and if it were determinable would it be the same water every day? I think not.
I and some water on a daily basis come face-to-face; that is ridiculous but not more inaccurate. I entertain some wetness before me. But it is not really the water itself one goes down to, whether going down or up, which you might do were the water a volcano lake, and mine might be, my water, which is not mine to possess except in figure of speech; it is not the water to which one “goes” but its garnish. I fancy crabs, spiders that can walk on the water, rings on it made by the lips of fish snapping at spiders, though I glean that fish avoid the arachnid; water lily, lily pad, other kelpishness and rot, mud beside the water and under the water, the abandoned appliance in the water and in the mud, orphaned tackle, predators dead and alive, trash in the water, turtles. It is not the water but that for which the water is a vehicle that we go, however often, down to, or up to, to do what we do at the water. A redheaded neighbor named McGillicuddy, who looks and acts exactly like Lucille Ball, and I possibly mean Lucille Ball playing a character named McGillicuddy, which I think she did, and I wonder at this set of connections, if that they are, but not much, because I do not have time: this very real Mrs. or Ms. or Miss M. is after me. Her boy has a blue trike. Him I like. She has chased me, palpably.
Obloquy — what the hell does that mean? Are we a little tired of a lack of education here? I submit that I am. Yam.
Of indigo ravens near the water I am fonder than a two-stroke for oil. And some Juicy Fruit to watch them by, my my my. Paper clouds the issue. For me. There is litter in the world, most of it paper, some of it technically trash and some of it merely finally trash after a full life of not-trash, your contracts and books and things. They, too, finally litter the busied head. As much as a worm box a lakeshore. My head is a mudbank. Do not depend on me for your logic. You can depend on me to bitch about litter and head litter and to run from Mrs. McGillicuddy until she catches me, and that probably she probably will. Do. Oops. Oopsie-Daisy. What if that — Oopsie-Daisy — were her first name?