Padgett Powell
You & Me
for Amanda Dahl
who loved forty-four
Do you know where you are, Mr. Barthelme?
In the antechamber to heaven.
He felt rather like someone lying in a bath after all the water has run out, witless, almost dead.
~ ~ ~
Somewhere between Bakersfield, California, and Jacksonville, Florida — we think spiritually nearer the former and geographically nearer the latter — two weirdly agreeable dudes are on a porch in a not upscale neighborhood, apparently within walking distance of a liquor store, talking a lot. It’s all they have. Things disturb them. Some things do not.
&
There’s about fourteen ounces of this left.
There’s a hair in it.
It’s okay.
If you said “lard-and-hair sandwich” to her, my mother would gag.
Was that a Depression food?
I think it was a joke, but I’m not sure.
I’ve heard of butter and sugar sandwiches. But that would hardly be a Depression meal.
I have no idea what the Depression was, or what the war was, or the wars after that, or before — I don’t know anything at all, you get right down to it.
So these codgers have something on us.
Yes they do. That is our cross to bear. Everyone knows shit but us.
Let’s make the best of it.
Fuck these codgers.
They come over here with that shit, tell ’em to go eat a lard-and-hair sandwich.
I will.
&
I wish something would move out there.
Where?
Out there. On the broad plain of life.
I thought that’s where you meant. Me too.
Be nice, some action.
Of some import.
We could say we did something…
With ourself.
Telling a codger who says quite properly we ain’t doing shit to eat a lard-and-hair sandwich does not in the long term constitute a life.
No it does not.
Well if a war doesn’t break out on you, and you don’t stumble into making money, and you can’t play ball, and women treat you wrong, or men, and you aren’t a movie star, and you don’t have any talent, and you aren’t smart, etc., what are you, we, supposed to do, exactly?
Live until we die, without any more pondering than a dog, is my guess.
And that is a good guess, but it seems less a guess than the natural conclusion every hapless human being comes to on his witless own. It’s a default position. It supports all dufus behavior.
Yes, it even supports “the pursuit of happiness.”
Indeed it does.
&
Today we are becalmed, as we are daily becalmed.
Every day we are becalmed.
Becalmed is our middle name.
My uncle was named Jake Becalmed. His brother was Hansford Becalmed. Their brother was Cuthbert Becalmed.
No one is named Cuthbert Becalmed.
Wait. The fourth brother was Studio Becalmed.
No mother names a son Studio.
This one did.
Is it Italian?
What?
The name Studio.
We aren’t Italian, is all I can say to that.
So this kid is called Studio, and what happens to him?
Well he was killed in the war.
I mean what happened to him as a result of his name.
Nothing.
Nobody razzed his ass.
No.
He was Studio, end of chapter.
As far as I know.
Studio Becalmed.
No, their name was not really Becalmed.
That was a joke.
Of sorts.
We aren’t very funny, when we joke.
No. Because we are becalmed.
Studio. I like him.
I do too.
&
Studio Becalmed had one great affair before his brief life was terminated, with the actress Jayne Mansfield.
Who herself was not long-lived.
Indeed not — beheaded on the Chef Menteur—
Yes, in the days when stars went overland in cars instead of in airplanes as they now do.
Anyway, when Studio frolicked with Jayne Mansfield he was like a tiny man lost in the Alps.
I suspect that that is a vulgar reference to her giant bosom?
It is if we let it be. On the other hand what do we know of Studio and his inclinations? He may well have been spiritually lost, not in mountains of flesh as it were but in the blond glow of happiness, or something.
We are safer assuming ourselves vulgar, and maybe Studio too. After all, he was to die in World War II, and men wanting breasts then or otherwise desirous of flesh were not to be discredited as they are today.
Healthy desires today are all clotted up into Healthy Choice.
Yes, and the smart man chooses Not Wanting if he wants to be safe.
Studio, let us say, was the last healthy man.
Why not? I am certain that he was. He was healthy and then he was dead, and Jayne missed him, then died herself, as much of a broken heart as of decapitation.
It’s a lovely conceit. Studio lay in the mud, Jayne in the untopped car, forever sundered, or forever together if you can participate in the large fiction of their frolicking together in the final Alps of Heaven.
That is a wonderful phrase. I would propose we name us a dog that.
What? Alp?
No. Final Alps of Heaven. They use long names in registry, you know.
I knew that. What would we call the dog?
I think Final would be amusing. Of would be not bad. Alp is out.
Agreed. Heaven would require explanations unto the tedious.
We could say we inherited the dog from Studio Becalmed and Jayne Mansfield, that we are the godfathers to their child.
Fifty years after the fact.
Yes.
This has promise. Tell these codgers, Don’t pet Final Alps of Heaven, you asshole, that is the dog of Studio Becalmed and Jayne Mansfield, even you will recall the mountainous breasts she had, hands off!
When they look at us as they will, we say, Even if you were gay we would not let you pet that dog. If you were gay of course you would show some respect for that dog. We are having fresh basil pesto for dinner, will you stay?
I bet they won’t.
Of course they won’t.
Beanie weenies and let them cornhole the dog, they’d stay.
Oh don’t be uncharitable. Beanie weenies and we let them play with the dog and they’d stay.
Yes, you are right.
I am always right.
True. Does it get tiring?
Be real. Of course not. Why would it?
It’s supposed to.
Yes, and I respect you for playing the straight fool, but really, Constant Rectitude is one of the large peaks in the Final Alps of Heaven.
Let us get another dog and call him that, use his full registered name. Or you could even adapt the name for yourself. Con, Connie, Rex, Tude, Constant Rectitude!
Constant Rectitude, go to your room until your father gets here with his belt.
Constant Rectitude took another hiding today for his constant transgressions.
Constant Rectitude and Studio Becalmed have run away to join the circus, but they joined the Army instead in error and will die as patriots rather than as syphilitic roustabouts.