As expected, your final shots miss. The cork. Just meandering along. A stone making its way through an extinct animal’s intestinal tract. The alcoholic man behind the counter continues to follow someone or something with his eyes, although when you turn around to see, you can’t figure out who or what it is. All of the fair’s polite but insistent din returns in a rush after the silence that fell while you were concentrating on your shot; you see (with your one good eye) the rectangular parasol-like ceiling over the carousel’s gondolas being lifting on poles toward the pale spring sky, it’s bright red and spinach green, it rises then suddenly sinks rotating the whole time, rising and sinking, you see (with your one good eye) the riders’ hair blowing in the wind created by the momentum, and you hear their shouts as they ride through fearful pleasure (one might say) without getting anywhere (one can safely assume).
The long, complex, tangled shadows of tree trunks and bare branches across the edge of the lot, sliding imperceptibly (in spots of sun and shade) over the few people who, unlike you, are on their way to, not from the fair in the low light; the sidewalk is striped by the comblike shadow cast by the iron fence, which blends with the shadows cast by the trees, which in turn branch out to cover the open lot and the street, where they lengthen until they’re unrecognizable: together they form an almost complete negative image of the botanical gardens, which is projected across the asphalt, and you can still hear the shrieks from the carousel as you make your way through this image, pulling on a pair of knit gloves, which up until now were only a bulge in your pocket, and tucking them tight beneath the sleeves of your jacket; it isn’t spring yet, it’s just winter pretending to be spring.
When you lift it up, the receiver is cold against your hand (after you’ve removed your gloves again: apparently, you didn’t know the number by heart after all, or rather, you weren’t entirely convinced that you knew it, so to be safe you checked the telephone book (with your one good eye), but it’s nearly impossible to turn the pages of a telephone book with gloves on; therefore, you had to take them off again). You hear the dial tone, empty and urgent, like it always is in a telephone booth: a finger of sound pointed straight at you. No, you won’t call. You just stand there in the telephone booth, staring through the glass, which is smudged, scratched, and scribbled up, across the street toward a neon sign, which says BINGO in bright red letters, and which, in contrast to the decorative, oftentimes flower-shaped lights adorning the fair’s stalls, isn’t just lit but blazing, as if night’s fallen early. Probably because the façade’s already in shadow, you think, a wall of shadow against the low spring light, you see (with your one good eye) the sign blinking off and on, off and on at an irregular tempo, somewhere between lampposts twenty-five and twenty-six (calculated from the vulcanizing shop down the hill), or maybe, you think (horrified at the thought), it’s between posts twenty-six and twenty-seven instead, are you really going to have to go all the way back to post number ten (if the placement and numbering of the posts in the row is considered incontrovertible) if the post numbers are carved in stone, so to speak), just to confirm your count? no! you think, because you remember the location of number twenty quite clearly (next to the grocer’s loading dock), and with the aid of your excellent memory, you hold a lightning-quick review of the next five posts, picturing each one with absolute clarity, until you know with certainty that the pedestrian reflector (that’s got to be what it is) is flickering in the half-darkness between lampposts twenty-five and twenty-six.
No panting, no gasping, at least not too much, after you finally leave the steep, long hill behind you and follow the curve behind the fence onto relatively level ground, which means you’ve passed the endurance test with flying colors, although that was a given, considering your powerful heart, your strong lungs, your vigorous circulation, which is as strong now as a twenty year old’s, you think, well, maybe a thirty year old’s, but it’s definitely better than your stereotypical overfed, boozed up, nicotine-dependent couch potato of a forty year old, out of breath after hauling himself up the two flights of stairs to his stuffy apartment where he’ll devour his TV dinner or his meal-in-a-can, and then, enervated by the foul, uncirculating air, throw himself onto the sofa in front of the TV, a sickbed of a sofa, an unburied coffin, a type just as common as the indolent weakling who depends on the strong few to carry him through life, you think, they’re nothing but parasites, that’s right, disgusting parasites, you think, although they could’ve been saved, their lives and their health could’ve been saved if someone had just taken the time to give them a good shake, wake them up, snuff out their cigarettes, empty their bottles, throw out their junk food, and chase them outside for exercise, exercise, and more exercise, and raw food, and exercise, cross-country jogging for example, until the sweat was pouring off their brows, and after that a little more exercise to boot, couch potatoes can take a lot more punishment than you think, and then a cold shower afterward, how refreshing, talk about character building, you think, and jogging, always more jogging out in the fresh air, out in the resinous woods with the spruce needles, fresh earth, pine cones, moose shit, cotton grass drifting on a pleasant breeze; you’d love to give them all a good, swift kick, you think (you certainly have the strength for it!), you’d like to kick them out of their couchy quagmires, their sofas with seats like quicksand, sucking them in until all the poor saps can do is flail about with their arms sticking pathetically out of the cushions, and their heads, those wan, pale faces that have hardly seen the light of day, in no condition to do anything but watch TV or read dusty books (instead of taking a stab at the Book of Nature, which is always open wide!), really they’re miserable creatures with no legs and arms, they’re nothing but heads, they can only move their eyes, side to side, up and down, eyes helplessly rolling inside a head that’ll soon be lost to the couch’s quicksand cushions, what a horrible, cadaverous existence when they should’ve stood tall and strong and fought like men with wills of iron, they should’ve been wrestling against the lions and wild beasts, against the jungle! against distant mountains’ endlessly blue cliffs and valleys! against the great forests’ and their untamed expanse! against the last milliseconds of a race! they should’ve planted flags in the polar ice! South Pole and the North Pole both! without complaint! without a whine! without a whimper! you think, as you close in on the pedestrian reflector, which is moving (on foot) through the light of lamppost number twenty-five.
If only Garm were loping along beside you now. This guy is young, just a kid, probably not even twenty, and he isn’t dressed for the cold fall evening (especially since he’s walking (and moving fast, though at a lazy, slouching, shuffling stride) and not running, like he should be), you think; as if he’s pulled himself out of his leather recliner (where he’d probably been lolling, munching on candy and potato chips) and walked right out the door; yes, you hit the nail on the head, you think, he’s fat and awkward, he’s got a lazy, rolling stride, his face is remarkably ugly, he’s got small, narrow eyes (he’s probably nearsighted, but too vain for glasses), a pig snout for a nose, his nostrils so close as to be nearly vertical (like holes in an electrical outlet), a weak chin, puffy cheeks, though he has strong legs, a true hick, and to top it all off, you see and hear that he’s chuckling softly to himself, laughing in both his throat and his nose, and the question becomes, Is he insolent enough to be laughing at you, but hah! you think, you’re in such great shape for your age, you’ll have no trouble putting him in his place if he tries anything, this seventeen-year-old jellyfish; if he were, for example, to step into your path and try to prevent you from riding on to lamppost number twenty-six, you’d give that adipose pig one of your left hooks, it was famous in its time (no one ever expects it from a right-hander), right on his double chin, and after that you’d deliver a crushing right-handed blow to his fatty skull, and a respectable kick to his groin and one for his solar plexus, then you’d hop up and down on his chest, up and down, with your full weight (which, unfortunately, is only a fraction of his), until every bone in his body was broken, pulverized, that good-for-nothing waste of space, you think (as you steer your bike farther out to give him plenty of room), he wouldn’t have had a chance. He’s completely lost in his thoughts, though. He barely glances at you as you peddle on by.