as I know. I don’t think … I know what I’m talking about.
Well, well, being well into my life as it’s been called I see well how it’ll end, unless in some meaningless surprise. If anything dramatic were going to happen to make me successfuller … agreeabler … endurabler … it should’ve happened by now, we will agree. A change for the better still isn’t unthinkable; miracles can be cited. But the odds against a wireless
deus ex machina
aren’t encouraging.
Here, a confession: Early on I too aspired to immortality. Assumed I’d be beautiful, powerful, loving, loved. At least commonplace. Anyhow human. Even the revelation of my several defects—absence of presence to name one—didn’t fetch me right to despair: crippledness affords its own heroisms, does it not; heroes are typically gimpish, are they not. But your crippled hero’s one thing, a bloody hero after all; your heroic cripple another, etcetcetcetcet. Being an ideal’s warpèd image, my fancy’s own twist figure, is what undoes me.
I wonder if I repeat myself. One-track minds may lead to their origins. Perhaps I’m still in utero, hung up in my delivery; my exposition and the rest merely foreshadow what’s to come, the argument for an interrupted pregnancy.
Womb, coffin, can—in any case, from my viewless viewpoint I see no point in going further. Since Dad among his other failings failed to end me when he should’ve, I’ll turn myself off if I can this instant.
Can’t.
Then if anyone hears me, speaking from here inside like a sunk submariner, and has the means to my end, I pray him do us both a kindness.
Didn’t. Very well, my ace in the hole:
Father, have mercy, I dare you! Wretched old fabricator, where’s your shame? Put an end to this, for pity’s sake! Now! Now!
So. My last trump, and I blew it. Not much in the way of a climax; more a climacteric. I’m not the dramatic sort. May the end come quietly, then, without my knowing it. In the course of any breath. In the heart of any word. This one. This one.
Perhaps I’ll have a posthumous cautionary value, like gibbeted corpses, pickled freaks. Self-preservation, it seems, may smell of formaldehyde.
A proper ending wouldn’t spin out so.
I suppose I might have managed things to better effect, in spite of the old boy. Too late now.
Basket case. Waste.
Shark up some memorable last words at least. There seems to be time.
Nonsense, I’ll mutter to the end, one word after another, string the rascals out, mad or not, heard or not, my last words will be my last words
WATER-MESSAGE
Which was better would be hard to say. In the days when his father let out all five grades at once, Ambrose worried that he mightn’t see Peter in time or that Peter mightn’t stick up for him the way a brother ought. Sheldon Hurley, who’d been in reform school once, liked to come up to him just as friendly and say “Well if it ain’t my old pal Amby!” and give him a great whack in the back. “How was school today, Amby old boy?” he’d ask and give him another whack in the back, and Ambrose was obliged to return “How was school for you?” Whereupon Sheldon Hurley would cry “Just swell, old pal!” and whack the wind near out of him. Or Sandy Cooper would very possibly sic his Chesapeake Bay dog on him—but if he joked with Sandy Cooper correctly, especially if he could get a certain particular word into it, Sandy Cooper often laughed and forgot to sic Doc on him.
More humiliating were the torments of Wimpy James and Ramona Peters: that former was only in third grade, but he came from the Barracks down by the creek where the oyster-boats moored; his nose was wet, his teeth were black, one knew what his mother was; and he would make a fourth-grader cry. As for Ramona, Peter and the fellows teased her for a secret reason. All Ambrose knew was that she was a most awful tomboy whose pleasure was to run up behind and shove youso hard your head would snap back, and down you’d
Well, well, being well into my life as it’s been called I see well how it’ll end, unless in some meaningless surprise. If anything dramatic were going to happen to make me successfuller … agreeabler … endurabler … it should’ve happened by now, we will agree. A change for the better still isn’t unthinkable; miracles can be cited. But the odds against a wireless
deus ex machina
aren’t encouraging.
Here, a confession: Early on I too aspired to immortality. Assumed I’d be beautiful, powerful, loving, loved. At least commonplace. Anyhow human. Even the revelation of my several defects—absence of presence to name one—didn’t fetch me right to despair: crippledness affords its own heroisms, does it not; heroes are typically gimpish, are they not. But your crippled hero’s one thing, a bloody hero after all; your heroic cripple another, etcetcetcetcet. Being an ideal’s warpèd image, my fancy’s own twist figure, is what undoes me.
I wonder if I repeat myself. One-track minds may lead to their origins. Perhaps I’m still in utero, hung up in my delivery; my exposition and the rest merely foreshadow what’s to come, the argument for an interrupted pregnancy.
Womb, coffin, can—in any case, from my viewless viewpoint I see no point in going further. Since Dad among his other failings failed to end me when he should’ve, I’ll turn myself off if I can this instant.
Can’t.
Then if anyone hears me, speaking from here inside like a sunk submariner, and has the means to my end, I pray him do us both a kindness.
Didn’t. Very well, my ace in the hole:
Father, have mercy, I dare you! Wretched old fabricator, where’s your shame? Put an end to this, for pity’s sake! Now! Now!
So. My last trump, and I blew it. Not much in the way of a climax; more a climacteric. I’m not the dramatic sort. May the end come quietly, then, without my knowing it. In the course of any breath. In the heart of any word. This one. This one.
Perhaps I’ll have a posthumous cautionary value, like gibbeted corpses, pickled freaks. Self-preservation, it seems, may smell of formaldehyde.
A proper ending wouldn’t spin out so.
I suppose I might have managed things to better effect, in spite of the old boy. Too late now.
Basket case. Waste.
Shark up some memorable last words at least. There seems to be time.
Nonsense, I’ll mutter to the end, one word after another, string the rascals out, mad or not, heard or not, my last words will be my last words
WATER-MESSAGE
Which was better would be hard to say. In the days when his father let out all five grades at once, Ambrose worried that he mightn’t see Peter in time or that Peter mightn’t stick up for him the way a brother ought. Sheldon Hurley, who’d been in reform school once, liked to come up to him just as friendly and say “Well if it ain’t my old pal Amby!” and give him a great whack in the back. “How was school today, Amby old boy?” he’d ask and give him another whack in the back, and Ambrose was obliged to return “How was school for you?” Whereupon Sheldon Hurley would cry “Just swell, old pal!” and whack the wind near out of him. Or Sandy Cooper would very possibly sic his Chesapeake Bay dog on him—but if he joked with Sandy Cooper correctly, especially if he could get a certain particular word into it, Sandy Cooper often laughed and forgot to sic Doc on him.
More humiliating were the torments of Wimpy James and Ramona Peters: that former was only in third grade, but he came from the Barracks down by the creek where the oyster-boats moored; his nose was wet, his teeth were black, one knew what his mother was; and he would make a fourth-grader cry. As for Ramona, Peter and the fellows teased her for a secret reason. All Ambrose knew was that she was a most awful tomboy whose pleasure was to run up behind and shove youso hard your head would snap back, and down you’d
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