And if I just said to Daddy, “This is pure sausage, nothing but,” he’d never know the difference anyway, from the taste, except it’d be good, and that’s what he wanted. So sometimes I’d feed him the un-American sausage, making sure to throw out the label so he couldn’t read it. To tell the truth, I’d rather lie to my daddy than disappoint him in the matter of his sausage. All his life long, he’d eat his breakfast one way. He’d cut the center right out of one of his patties and put it on the side and then eat all his eggs and his grits and his toast and all the other sausage, mixing them up together, wolfing them down, but he’d save that center bite for last. And it all came down to that. I couldn’t help myself caring, being who I am. And it’s been that way all my life. For a few years, my caring so bad about a thing like that shifted from my daddy to my husband. But he run away to Mobile in pursuit of I don’t know what-all and I went back and lived with Daddy for a spell, till he got tired of me in general and he bought me and Eddie our mobile home out on the edge of town. Still, he done that on the condition that weekday mornings I’d continue to make his breakfast before I went in to work. Pretty much till my spaceman lover come into my life, I’d sit at the kitchen table where I grew up and wait till there was nothing left on my daddy’s plate but that last bite of sausage and he’d slow way down and then at last he’d spear it with his fork and lift it up, like he was a Catholic, which he wasn’t, far from it, but if he was, he would’ve crossed himself right then, before putting it on his tongue, it was that important to him.
And the sad thing was, till I flew off into outer space for the first time, it was that important for me, too. My daddy’d taken everything else away, to feel good about. You know what I mean? I heard all those words he said. I knew I didn’t have much to take pride in. Except that bite of sausage.
Weary now, and sad again, we stop speaking, my wife Edna Bradshaw and I. I am. I am apart. I wish to place my sixteen fingertips upon her. But her eyes droop shut, and I take her in my hands but I help her to slide down, her body sinking beneath the covers as if this were the sea and she were a pirate ship full of treasure.
5
I wonder sometimes about dreams. There is often music in my head as I sleep, the humming of my blood and my marrow, but there are no sights, no people visiting, no dramas. For the creatures of this planet, there is never any rest. The world they try to leave behind will not let go. It pursues them into the darkest places and unfolds its tent and strings its lights and It’s Another Opening of Another Show. Bigtime Thrills and Spills. I listen to these creatures speak of their dreams and I want very badly to bring them peace, to put my hands on all of them and let them sleep, truly sleep, and take their rest. After Edna’s night voice was Made Fresh from Pork, Ham, and Pork Loin and Spiced Just Right, she must have begun to dream of sausage, as well. And it was a Sausage Dream of great persuasiveness, for in spite of the memories of her father, she wakes after her sleep with the idea of making breakfast for all of our visitors.
I say, “They will each of them sleep for as long as it is convenient for us.”
“That’s okay,” Edna says. “I’ll be ready for them — let’s see, there’s twelve plus you and me — just give me an hour.”
“But I wish for most of them to continue to sleep. I must do my work now, speaking to them one at a time.”
A sadness passes over Edna’s face. I do not understand. And now even a welling of tears. “What is it, my wife Edna Bradshaw? Have I been a clunkhead?”
She smiles at me, though the tears do not seem to cease. “No,” she says. “Not at all, Desi. Where’d you even get that word? It’s okay. I don’t mean to interfere with your work.”
“You spoke to me last night of the sadness of making breakfast.”
“I did?”
I lift my hand and she remembers. She casts her eyes downward. I think she is embarrassed. “Please,” I say. “This was a very interesting thing you told me. But as a consequence, I do not understand why it would disappoint you so, not to do this thing for all these people.”
“They need to eat.”
“We have always had adequate ways to feed our visitors.”
Edna is not looking at me now. Still another mood has come over her. She pulls a tissue from a box beside our bed, and another, and three more quickly, and a sixth and seventh, and then even more, so that I lose count, she is snatching at them as if they are in a place they should not be. Finally she contemplates her hand stuffed full of tissues. She addresses the hand. “I know about how you feed your visitors. I was a visitor once upon a time, don’t forget.”
I say, “It is a Liquid Diet Rich in Protein and Food Value. You need not worry for them.”
Edna pats at her eyes with her handful of tissues. “I do wish we’d begun this conversation before I put my makeup on. This is a real test for my No-Smear Revlon.”
“This is a surprising subject suddenly to find in your words,” I say.
“Well, you spacemen aren’t near as smart as you think you are,” my wife Edna Bradshaw says, sharply.
I am having trouble following her associative connections. The disparity I have noted, between the words inside me and the words I speak, has a corollary. It is this. I can begin to hear the latent music in the words of this world when I can place the voice inside me. But when these words must pass from the voice of a visitor across a physical space and then enter my mind as external things, things that must then be transformed back into spirit, into music, into deep feeling, into the cries of a soul, at these times I think I understand very little. In this sense, certainly, my wife is correct, though I would rephrase her assertion. I am not acting near as smart as I feel I am capable of being. She is watching me now, even as this analysis is passing through me, delaying my audible voice to her. And now I am struck by the sudden realization that I thought of her, implicitly, as a “visitor” moments ago. I was reluctant last night even to characterize her as a woman and now she is a visitor, which is even farther from my feelings for her. And still nothing presents itself for me to speak. There seem to be no words to send back across this physical space. Will she remember me from this moment as she remembers her father, with regret and anger? Am I failing her in some terrible way even in the very process of wondering if I am failing her in some terrible way? This is a real test for my No-Smear superior intelligence. I am not as smart as I think I am.
And I say, unexpectedly for both of us, “Clunkhead.”
Her hand lunges forward and grabs a sizable part of my cheek and squeezes and jiggles it. This physical attack is very distressing to me, especially given the sudden lightheartedness of her demeanor as she does it. This is a side to Edna that shocks me, and the violence goes on. I am bearing it the best I can and now Edna even says, “Oh you spaceman,” in that cheery, loving voice that I have grown to recognize in spite of the neutrality of the words themselves. I am very confused and her attack on my cheek ceases and her hand drops and I think I have missed something. I think she has meant this gesture as a friendly thing. After all, she does not have suckers on her fingers. Without recognizing the drastic difference of effect, given the limitations of her species’ body, she could be trying to replicate the basic act of physical attachment that I offer her.