A Lot of Good Nights

It was now getting late and Pauline and I went down to say

good night to Charley. We could barely see him sitting down on

his couch, near the statues that he likes and the place where he

builds a small fire to warm himself on cold nights.

Bill had joined him and they were sitting there together, talking

with great interest about something. Bill was waving his

arms in the air to show a part of the conversation.

"We came down to say good night," I said, interrupting them.

"Oh, hi," Charley said. "Yeah, good night. I mean, how are

you people doing?"

"OK," I said.

"That was a wonderful dinner," Bill said.

"Yeah, that was really fine," Charley said. "Good stew."

"Thank you."

"See you tomorrow," I said.

"Are you going to spend the night here at iDEATH?" Charley

said.

"No," I said. "I'm going to spend the night with Pauline."

"That's good," Charley said.

"Good night."

"Good night."

"Good night."

"Good night."

Vegetables

Pauline's shack was about a mile from iDEATH. She doesn't

spend much time there. It's beyond the town. There are about

375 of us here in watermelon sugar.

A lot of people live in the town, but some live in shacks at

other places, and there are of course we who live at iDEATH.

There were just a few lights on in the town, other than the

street lamps. Doc Edwards' light was on. He always has a lot of

trouble sleeping at night. The schoolteacher's light was on, too.

He was probably working on a lesson for the children.

We stopped on the bridge across the river. There were pale

green lanterns on the bridge. They were in the shape of human

shadows. Pauline and I kissed. Her mouth was moist and cool.

Perhaps because of the night.

I heard a trout jump in the river, a late jumper. The trout

made a narrow doorlike splash. There was a statue nearby. The

statue was of a gigantic bean. That's right, a bean.

Somebody a long time ago liked vegetables and there are

twenty or thirty statues of vegetables scattered here and there

in watermelon sugar.

There is the statue of an artichoke near the shingle factory

and a ten-foot carrot near the trout hatchery at iDEATH and a

head of lettuce near the school and a bunch of onions near the

entrance to the Forgotten Works and there are other vegetable

statues near people's shacks and a rutabaga by the ballpark.

A little ways from my shack there is the statue of a potato.

I don't particularly care for it, but a long time ago somebody

loved vegetables.

I once asked Charley if he knew who it was, but he said he

didn't have the slightest idea. "Must have really liked vegetables,

though," Charley'd said.

"Yeah," I'd said. "There's the statue of a potato right near

my shack."

We continued up the road to Pauline's place. We passed by

the Watermelon Works. It was silent and dark. Tomorrow

morning it would be filled with light and activity. We could see

the aqueduct. It was a long, long shadow now.

We came to another bridge across a river. There were the

usual lanterns on the bridge and statues in the river. There

were a dozen or so pale lights coming up from the bottom of the

river. They were tombs.

We stopped.

"The tombs look nice tonight," Pauline said.

"Certainly do," I said.

"There are mostly children here, aren't there?"

"Yes," I said.

"They're really beautiful tombs," Pauline said.

Moths fluttered above the light that came out of the river

from the tombs below. There were five or six moths fluttering

over each tomb.

Suddenly a big trout jumped out of the water above a tomb

and got one of the moths. The other moths scattered and then

came back again, and the same trout jumped again and got

another moth. He was a smart old trout.

The trout did not jump anymore and the moths fluttered

peacefully above the light coming from the tombs.

Margaret Again

"How's Margaret taking all this?" Pauline said.

"I don't know," I said.

"Is she hurt or mad or what? Do you know how she feels?"

Pauline said. "Has she talked to you about it since you told her?

She hasn't talked to me at all. I saw her yesterday near the

Watermelon Works. I said hello but she walked past me without

saying anything. She seemed terribly upset."

"I don't know how she feels," I said.

"I thought she'd be at iDEATH tonight, but she wasn't there,"

Pauline said. "I don't know why I thought she'd be there. I just

had a feeling but I was wrong. Have you seen her?"

"No," I said.

"I wonder where she's staying," Pauline said.

"I think she's staying with her brother."

"I feel bad about this. Margaret and I were such good friends.

All the years we've spent together at iDEATH," Pauline said. "We

were almost like sisters. I'm sorry that things had to work out

this way, but there was nothing we could do about it."

"The heart is something else. Nobody knows what's going

to happen," I said.

"You're right," Pauline said.

She stopped and kissed me. Then we crossed over the bridge

to her shack.

Pauline's Shack

Pauline's shack is made entirely of watermelon sugar, except

the door that is a good-looking grayish-stained pine with a stone

doorknob.

Even the windows are made of watermelon sugar. A lot of

windows here are made of sugar. It's very hard to tell the difference

between sugar and glass, the way sugar is used by Carl

the windowmaker. It's just a thing that depends on who is doing

it. It's a delicate art and Carl has it.

Pauline lit a lantern. It smelled fragrant burning with water-

melontrout oil. We have a way here also of mixing watermelon

and trout to make a lovely oil for our lanterns. We use it for all

our lighting purposes. It has a gentle fragrance to it, and makes

a good light.

Pauline's shack is very simple as all our shacks are simple.

Everything was in its proper place. Pauline uses the shack just

to get away from iDEATH for a few hours or a night if she feels

like it.

All of us who stay at iDEATH have shacks to visit whenever

we feel like it. I spend more time at my shack than anybody

else. I usually just sleep one night a week at iDEATH. I of course

take most of my meals there. We who do not have regular names

spend a lot of time by ourselves. It suits us.

"Well, here we are," Pauline said. She looked beautiful in the

light of the lantern. Her eyes sparkled.

"Please come here," I said. She came over to me and I kissed

her mouth and then I touched her breasts. They felt so smooth

and firm. I put my hand down the front of her dress.

"That feels good," she said.

"Let's try some more," I said.

"That would be good," she said.

We went over and lay upon her bed. I took her dress off. She

had nothing on underneath. We did that for a while. Then I got

up and took off my overalls and lay back down beside her.

A Love, a Wind

We made a long and slow love. A wind came up and the windows

trembled slightly, the sugar set fragilely ajar by the wind.

I liked Pauline's body and she said that she liked mine, too,

and we couldn't think of anything to say.

The wind suddenly stopped and Pauline said, "What's that?"

"It's the wind."

The Tigers Again

After making love we talked about the tigers. It was Pauline

who started it. She was lying warmly beside me, and she wanted

to talk about the tigers. She said that Old Chuck's dream got her

thinking about them.

"I wonder why they could speak our language," she said.

"No one knows," I said. "But they could speak it. Charley

says maybe we were tigers a long time ago and changed but

they didn't. I don't know. It's an interesting idea, though."

"I never heard their voices," Pauline said. "I was just a child

and there were only a few tigers left, old ones, and they hardly

came out of the hills. They were too old to be dangerous, and

they were hunted all the time.

"I was six years old when they killed the last one. I remember

the hunters bringing it to iDEATH. There were hundreds of people

with them. The hunters said they had killed it up in the hills

that day, and it was the last tiger.

"They brought the tiger to iDEATH and everybody came with

them. They covered it with wood and soaked the wood down

with watermelontrout oil. Gallons and gallons of it. I remember

people threw flowers on the pile and stood around crying because

it was the last tiger.

"Charley took a match and lit the fire. It burned with a great

orange glow for hours and hours, and black smoke poured up

into the air.

"It burned until there was nothing left but ashes, and then

the men began right then and there building the trout hatchery

at iDEATH, right over the spot where the tiger had been burned.

It's hard to think of that now when you're down there dancing.

"I guess you remember all this," Pauline said. "You were

there, too. You were standing beside Charley."

"That's right," I said. "They had beautiful voices."

"I never heard them" she said.

"Perhaps that was for the best," I said.

"Maybe you're right," she said. "Tigers," and was soon fast

asleep in my arms. Her sleep tried to become my arm, and then

my body, but I wouldn't let it because I was suddenly very

restless.

I got up and put on my overalls and went for one of the long

walks I take at night.

Arithmetic

The night was cool and the stars were red. I walked down by

the Watermelon Works. That's where we process the watermelons

into sugar. We take the juice from the watermelons and

cook it down until there's nothing left but sugar, and then we

work it into the shape of this thing that we have: our lives.

I sat down on a couch by the river. Pauline had gotten me

thinking about the tigers. I sat there and thought about them,

how they killed and ate my parents.

We lived together in a shack by the river. My father raised

watermelons and my mother baked bread. I was going to school.

I was nine years old and having trouble with arithmetic.

One morning the tigers came in while we were eating breakfast

and before my father could grab a weapon they killed him

and they killed my mother. My parents didn't even have time

to say anything before they were dead. I was still holding the

spoon from the mush I was eating.

"Don't be afraid," one of the tigers said. "We're not going to

hurt you. We don't hurt children, just sit there where you are

and we'll tell you a story."

One of the tigers started eating my mother. He bit her arm

off and started chewing on it. "What kind of story would you

like to hear? I know a good story about a rabbit."

"I don't want to hear a story," I said.

"OK," the tiger said, and he took a bite out of my father.

I sat there for a long time with the spoon in my hand, and then

I put it down.

"Those were my folks," I said, finally.

"We're sorry," one of the tigers said. "We really are."

"Yeah," the other tiger said. "We wouldn't do this if we didn't

have to, if we weren't absolutely forced to. But this is the only

way we can keep alive."

"We're just like you," the other tiger said. "We speak the

same language you do. We think the same thoughts, but we're

tigers."

"You could help me with my arithmetic," I said.

"What's that?" one of the tigers said.

"My arithmetic."

"Oh, your arithmetic."

"Yeah."

"What do you want to know?" one of the tigers said.

"What's nine times nine?"

"Eighty-one," a tiger said.

"What's eight times eight?"

"Fifty-six," a tiger said.

I asked them half a dozen other questions: six times six, seven

times four, etc. I was having a lot of trouble with arithmetic.

Finally the tigers got bored with my questions and told me to

go away.

"OK," I said. "I'll go outside."

"Don't go too far," one of the tigers said. "We don't want

anyone to come up here and kill us."

"OK."

They both went back to eating my parents. I went outside

and sat down by the river. "I'm an orphan," I said.

I could see a trout in the river. He swam directly at me and

then he stopped right where the river ends and the land begins.

He stared at me.

"What do you know about anything?" I said to the trout.

That was before I went to live at iDEATH.

After about an hour or so the tigers came outside and stretched

and yawned.

"It's a nice day," one of the tigers said.

"Yeah," the other tiger said. "Beautiful."

"We're awfully sorry we had to kill your parents and eat

them. Please try to understand. We tigers are not evil. This is

just a thing we have to do."

"All right," I said. "And thanks for helping me with my

arithmetic."

"Think nothing of it."

The tigers left.

I went over to iDEATH and told Charley that the tigers had

eaten my parents.

"What a shame," he said.

"The tigers are so nice. Why do they have to go and do things

like that?" I said.

"They can't help themselves," Charley said. "I like the tigers,

too. I've had a lot of good conversations with them. They're

very nice and have a good way of stating things, but we're going

to have to get rid of them. Soon."

"One of them helped me with my arithmetic."

"They're very helpful," Charley said. "But they're dangerous. What are you going to do now?"

"I don't know," I said.

"How would you like to stay here at iDEATH?" Charley said.

"That sounds good," I said.

"Fine. Then it's settled," Charley said.

That night I went back to the shack and set fire to it. I didn't

take anything with me and went to live at iDEATH. That was

twenty years ago, though it seems like it was only yesterday:

What's eight times eight?

She Was

Finally I stopped thinking about the tigers and started back to

Pauline's shack. I would think about the tigers another day.

There would be many.

I wanted to stay the night with Pauline. I knew that she would

be beautiful in her sleep, waiting for me to return. She was.

Date: 2015-12-17; view: 915