My grandmother is having an operation. They want to see if she has lung cancer. Did I tell you that?
Yes.
I don’t know what’s going to happen.
How could you?
I was going to visit her when you called.
Earlier the man had left a message for the woman on her machine. Now he is waiting for her to call back, for her to give the green light to a weekend at the shore. Last night the man drank scotch at his kitchen table and watched a baseball game. At three a.m. he threw up into an old maroon sweater draped at the side of the bed. The man knew drinking scotch was a mistake and he knew he wouldn’t need an old maroon sweater. He couldn’t remember how he came to possess this sweater nor could he remember ever wearing it. The man’s house was filled with things he couldn’t account for. Plastic hangers in the closet, a pair of white briefs in the dresser, a plastic cigar cutter, hip flask, two antique lamps, the small black-and-white television. The man thought maybe someone had a key to his apartment and was using it for storage. This morning he threw out the old maroon sweater along with the empty scotch bottle. He considered recycling the bottle but then reconsidered. The man lit two matches to mask the smell of scotch and dried vomit and burned his fingers. He liked the way that felt, the sharpness of it.
The man decides this is too much waiting for the telephone to ring, for the woman to give the green light to a weekend at the shore. He drives to the park where he finds an empty bench. He sees oldsters walking, fishing, and boating. Dozens of oldsters walk along a designated path, all of them going in the same direction like they are on a carousel. Other oldsters cast fishing lines from the pier. They wedge their poles into the railing so they don’t have to hold them. The man looks into various coolers to find blues and bait and tackle and other things he cannot identify. The man has never been fishing, though he would like to someday. He sees geese, ducks, gulls, blackbirds, squirrels, right construction boot, compass and a sign that says Re-Elect ___ for County-Executive scattered everywhere around. He takes a cigar from his coat pocket and tries to light it. The wind does not allow him to do this. The wind turns the flame into a spastic belly dancer. He puts the lighter and cigar back in his pockets and stands up. He limps along the path like the oldsters do but in the opposite direction, counter to their clockwise. He says out loud to two passing oldsters, Long walks, short piers. The oldsters look at him like he is a criminal. He walks to his car and drives home. He calls the woman to get green light to weekend at shore. There is no answer. He leaves a message that says, Today I bled all over the hallway and mopped all over the floor and hangs up. The man thinks he has done well for himself with this message. He is pleased. He decides to take his clothes off and strips naked. He locates a tattered copy of a men’s magazine at the bottom of his sock drawer. He pours baby oil into his right hand and successfully masturbates into a mildewed washcloth he’s fished from the hamper. He puts the washcloth back into the hamper and walks to the bathroom. He showers. He does not clean the tile because he forgets to bring either a rag or a clean washcloth with him into the shower. After the shower he dresses. He drinks a glass of water and swallows three aspirin all at once. He gags and tastes the rotten chemistry in his mouth. For the first time today he brushes his teeth. The man then recovers the soiled maroon sweater from the trash and walks it to the backyard. He is careful not to touch the part of the fabric he threw up into. He throws the soiled maroon sweater in one of two empty oil drums behind the shed. He pours lighter fluid into the drum, lights a match, and drops it into the drum. He goes inside to retrieve the magazine he masturbated to and frisbees it into the drum from fifteen feet. When the magazine lands in the drum it has no effect on the fire and the sound it makes is dull and muted. He pours more lighter fluid into the drum, collects sticks and twigs from behind the shed, takes off the t-shirt he is wearing, and drops all of it, the sticks, twigs, and t-shirt into the drum. The man then goes back inside and gathers the cigar, cigar cutter, plastic hangers and six-inch black-and-white television and puts all of that into the drum. He does not dance around the fire like a pagan or say anything out loud. He doesn’t consider putting anything else into the drum, either. Not things he recognizes as his own or the other things he cannot account for. What he does is warm his hands and breathe in the fumes. He takes the kind of breaths doctors tell you to take when they examine you, before they have to stitch up your head because someone punched you in the face or after you fell in the hallway and cracked your head open. The odor is foul. He wonders what is most responsible for the foul odor, if it is the synthetic fabrics or the dried vomit, the dirty magazine, the television, the plastic hangers, or if it is all of them put together. He feels poisoned. He feels it in his lungs, in his stomach. He thinks he might vomit again so he positions himself over the drum. He leans in and waits. The man dry heaves four times. He does this loudly like he is trying to scream the poison out of him. He takes his hands off the rim, stands upright, and takes three steps away from the fire toward the house. The man is tired and his back aches. He is thirsty but does not want to go inside for water. Should the telephone ring the man will not hear it from where he is behind the shed. The telephone does not, in fact, ring. There is only the sound of the fire and two birds chirping back and forth to each other. He moves in again and stands over the oil drum. Everything in there burns like kindling.
THE INDIAN FROM INDIANA
EVERYONE WAS AFRAID OF THE INDIAN FROM INDIANA BECAUSE HE WAS DRUNK AND FROM INDIANA. We were afraid he would embarrass us in front of everyone. We were afraid he would ruin our evening. None of us were sure where Indiana was and so we didn’t know how the Indians from there behaved. Some of us had heard of Indiana and one of us said out loud that it might be somewhere in the middle of the country. Then another one of us said they do a lot of farming there and they play basketball and the country is flat as a sheet of paper. We didn’t know if all Indians from Indiana were drunks like this one but one of us said he didn’t think so. He said they wouldn’t be good at basketball and wouldn’t be able to farm if they all were drunks like this Indian here. We didn’t even know if that’s what you called someone from Indiana, an Indian, but it made sense to most of us. We were gathered together for a celebration but I forget what we were celebrating. There wasn’t much to celebrate then so even the slightest victory, a morning without incident, for instance, would be grounds for a celebration. None of us knew how the Indian came to be where we were. None of us had seen him before. Eventually this Indian from Indiana cornered me into a discussion about language, specifically the English language and where it came from. I don’t know what made him think this was something I’d want to discuss. There is nothing about me that says I like to talk about the English language and where it came from. Maybe it was because he was an Indian that he thought otherwise. Maybe this is what goes on in Indiana when they’re not farming and playing basketball. He seemed to speak English like he’d been speaking it his whole life but he was drunk so you couldn’t tell for sure. The rest of us were at the bar when he cornered me so I was on my own. Had I known this was to happen I would’ve accompanied the rest of us to the bar. I wouldn’t have let myself get cornered by an Indian had I known better. I almost never know better beforehand and this is why I often find myself in these sorts of fixes. At any rate, this Indian went on to say English derives from the languages of love. This is when I took the glass of water beside me and drank from it. I was hoping it was gin in the glass or vodka but it turned out to be water. I looked down on this Indian to see if maybe he’d fallen or had decided I wasn’t the one to discuss this with. He was drunker now than he was before. His eyes were halfway shut and there was spittle on his chin and beard. It was good he was short so I could drink a glass of water and look down on him at the same time. I felt like I needed to keep an eye on this little Indian. He was still there beneath me by the time I’d finished the water. I waited for the rest of us to get back from the bar. I didn’t know what was taking so long but I figured they’d be back soon. This way the Indian would be distracted and skulk away. I’d seen him skulk away several times that night. His habit was to approach someone on their own, do some talking and gesturing, then skulk away when others joined them. I was waiting for this to happen when it occurred to me he was referring to Romance languages. In his drunken Indian head you can see how he would get from there to there and for a second I was filled with something, a feeling I cannot describe. It was almost like love, maybe, or awe, for all Indians everywhere, their complexities and foibles. So I told him he was right, that English comes from the languages of love. I figured there was no harm and the Indian might appreciate it. I don’t think he heard me, though, because the rest of us were approaching and the Indian was already in retreat and like that he was somewhere else. The Indian stayed on through the night but we never saw him again and none of us knows what became of him. Whenever the rest of us gather to celebrate something these days we’ll take turns telling stories of that night and the Indian from Indiana. Almost none of these stories are true but that doesn’t stop anyone from telling the stories or listening to them. It is embarrassing is what it is, that we find these sorts of tales amusing. The rest of us know this full well and the ones that don’t suspect it.