Chapter 35 Section 33

I opened my eyes and realized there was someone or something nearby, what time was that?Is it another odd hour?The room was dark and full of cobwebs.I stretch my legs, blink, and slowly focus on a familiar figure.It was Wilder, standing two feet from the bed, staring into my face, and we looked at each other for a long while.His large round head, combined with his small hands and feet and stocky body, gave him the appearance of a primitive clay sculpture, a family idol of unknown origin.I had a feeling he was going to show me something.When I quickly got out of bed quietly, he walked out of the room, and I saw that he was wearing thickly padded ankle boots.I followed him down the hall to the window that looked out on our backyard.I was barefoot, without a nightgown, and felt a chill through my man-made Hong Kong-made nightgown.Wilder stood looking out the window, his chin barely an inch above the ledge.It’s as if I’ve been wearing asymmetrical pajama pants my entire life, with tops buttoned in mismatched buttonholes and trousers unbuttoned and drooping.Is it already dawn?Are those birds singing in the tree crows?

There is a man sitting in the backyard.A white-haired man sat upright in an old wicker chair, a strangely motionless and silent figure.At first I was so dazzled and sleepy that I didn't know how to judge what I saw.It seems to require a more careful explanation than I can come up with at this point.It occurred to me that this person had been embedded there for some purpose.Then, obvious and intense fear began to descend, as if a fist had been squeezed tightly again and again in my chest.Who is he?What's going on here?I realized that Wilder was no longer with me.I walked to the door of his room just in time to see his head buried in the pillow.When I got back to bed, he was fast asleep.I don't know what to do.I turned pale and felt cold.I trudged toward the windows, grasping doorknobs and railings, as if to remind myself of the identity and presence of real objects.He was still there, staring at the hedge.From the dim light, I saw his profile, motionless and insightful.Is he as old as I first thought?Or is the white hair purely symbolic, but part of the allegorical power?Of course it is!He may be Reaper, or Reaper's footman, from the age of plague, of torture, of endless wars, an artisan of sunken eyes in madhouses and leprosy houses.He might have been a man of epigrams and doomsday prophecies - he gave me half-hearted glances that were both civilized and sarcastic as he chanted the elaborate lines about my journey to death Sarcasm.I watched him for a long time, waiting for him to make a move.His stillness was majestic.I felt like I was getting paler every second.What does it mean to be pale?How does it feel to see the flesh of Death?To take you away?I was scared to the core.I am hot and cold, wet and dry, myself and someone else.That fist clenched in my chest.I went to the stairs, sat on the top step, and looked into the palm of my hand.So much is still there.Every word and every event is a beading of radiant creation.My own ordinary hand is covered with a net of meaningful crossed and spiral palm prints. It is a field of life, which in itself may become the object of study and wonder for many years.A cosmology against nothingness.

I got up and went back to the window.He is still there.I hide in the bathroom.I closed the urinal lid and sat on it for a while, thinking about what to do next.I don't want him in this house. I paced back and forth for a while.I rinse my hands and wrists with cold water and splash cold water on my face.I felt both light and heavy, bewildered and alert.I took a landscape paperweight from the bookshelf by the door.A three-dimensional painting floats inside this plastic disc, its colors flickering as I turn it in the light.changing planes.I like this statement.It seems to be the music that exists.How nice it would be if a man could see death as another aspect in which he sojourns for a while!Another aspect of the universe's raison d'être.The camera goes along the "Bright Angel Trail".

I get back to things around me.If I want to throw him out of the house, the thing to do is get out.First I'm going to look at the younger kids.With my snow-white feet, I walked quietly through the rooms.I see if there are any blankets that need to be covered, if the toys are to be taken out of the warm hands of some child, and I feel like I am entering a TV scene.There was silence and everything was fine.Would they view the death of a parent as another form of divorce? I went in to see Heinrich.He was lying on the upper left corner of the bed, curled up tightly, looking like a juggling toy that would suddenly unfold when touched.I stood at the door and nodded.

I went in to see Babette.She returned several ages and became a girl again, a person who was running in a dream.I kissed her head and smelled the hot, putrid breath of her sleep.I saw that one in a pile of books and magazines.The radio rang.I was afraid that the voice of someone calling the radio station, some stranger's soulful mourning, would be the last words I'd ever hear in life, so I hurried out of the room. I went downstairs to the kitchen.I looked out the window and there he was, sitting in the wicker chair on the wet grass.I opened the inner heavy door, and then the weatherproof outer heavy door.I went out and hugged it tightly to my stomach.When the outer heavy door slammed shut, the man's head shook and his legs parted.He stood up and turned to face me.Gone was the strange and unconquerable stillness, and with it the air of insight and the sense of the ancient and terrible secret he communicated.From the mysteriously vanishing shadow of this first figure, a second figure begins to emerge, begins to assume a solid shape, develops in the fresh light a series of movements, lines and features, forming a silhouette, a living person; As I watched with a little amazement, his physical features gradually became clear, and they seemed to grow more and more familiar.It wasn't Death who stood before me, but only Vernon Dickie, my father-in-law.

"Am I asleep?" he said. "What are you doing out there?" "I just didn't want to wake you up." "Did we know you were coming?" "I didn't know it myself until yesterday afternoon. All the way, fourteen hours." "Babette will be glad to see you." "I'm sure." We both entered the house.I put the coffee pot on the stove.Vernon was wearing a well-worn denim jacket.He sat down at the table and played with the hijab of an old Zippo lighter.His expression was like that of a man who is in a hurry to escape from a group of women.His silver-gray hair was dull and a little yellow; he combed his own into a ducktail.He had a stubble beard and hadn't shaved in about four days.His chronic cough seemed to have grown a jagged edge, with an element of self-abnegation.Babette was less worried about his cough than about the fact that he took ironic pleasure from his dry coughing and seizures, as if there was some great charm in this terrible noise.He still wears a military belt with a long horn on the buckle.

"So fuck it. I'm here. It's great!" "What are you doing these days?" "East does the roofing, and the west removes the rust and paints. I do side jobs for extra money, unless there's no other jobs I can do. The side jobs for extra money are all there." I looked at his hands.What a bruise, nicks, dents, permanent oil and mud between the fingers.He looked around the room, trying to find something old that needed to be replaced or repaired.Such faults generally provide opportunities for conversation.It gave Vernon the advantage to talk about fillers and gaskets, about grouting and caulking and plastering.At times he seemed to offend me with terms like ratchet bit and narrow-sided hook saw.He saw my hesitation on such matters as a sign of some deep incompetence or stupidity.These are the things that make up the world, and not knowing or caring about them is a betrayal of basic principles, of gender, of race.What's more useless than a man who can't fix a leaky faucet? — This man is basically useless, dead to history and to the genetic information in his genes.I'm not sure I disagree.

"I said to Babette the other day: 'If there's anything your dad isn't like, it's that he's not like a widower.'" "What did she say about it?" "She thinks you're a danger to yourself.' He'll fall asleep smoking a cigarette. He'll die on a burning bed with a missing woman beside him—a person officially missing, poor, lost, powerless. An established, multiple divorced woman.'” Vernon coughed in agreement with the insight.A series of gasps from the lungs.I could hear the stringy goo slapping his chest back and forth.I poured him a cup of coffee and waited.

"That's it, you know where I'm busy, Jack, there's a woman fucking marrying me. She goes to church in a mobile home. Don't tell Babette." "I would never do such a thing." "She's really going to have to get really excited. Start with a discounted phone number." "She thinks you are too lawless to marry." "The thing about marriage these days is that you don't have to go out of the house to get those little extras. You get everything in the closet of an American family. For better or worse, this is the time we live in. Wives do things, they want Do things. You don't have to wink. It used to be that the only thing available in American families was basic human behavior. Now you have a choice. I tell you, it's stupid. It's That astonishing remark about our time, that the more choice you have in your home, the more whores you see on the street. What do you think, Jack? You're a professor. What does that mean?"

"I have no idea." "The wives wear edible panties. They know the words, the usage. Meanwhile, night and day, in all weathers, there are prostitutes standing in the streets. Who are they waiting for? Tourists? Businessmen? Men who have become carnal stalkers? It's like the truth has been exposed. I read in some paper that the Japanese - a whole plane of men - went to Singapore, it's a big deal nationality." "Are you seriously considering marriage?" "I'd be crazy to marry a woman who goes to church in a mobile home." Vernon had a sly look, a quiet intelligence that was both alert and sharp, a shrewdness that waited for the perfect moment.All this made Babette nervous.She had seen him sidle up to women in public places and interrogate them in his quiet, sly way.She refused to go to the restaurant with him because he was afraid of his casual and overly intimate remarks to the waitresses, and his professional asides and comments on the late-night voice of the old radio.He had put her through moments of jitters, anger, and embarrassment many times in his makeshift leather-based shelter at the food stand.

Now she's in, in her tracksuit, and ready to do her morning run up the gym steps.Her body seemed to lose momentum when she saw her father sitting at the table.She stood there with her knees bent.She can't do anything else, only the ability to be dumbfounded.She looked as if she was imitating a stunned person.She was a stunned picture, a lovely innocent heart, as confused and surprised as when I saw him sitting in the yard just now, as quiet as death.I looked at her whole face with surprise and bewilderment. "Did we know you were coming?" she said. "Why didn't you call? You never called." "I'm here, great event, blow the horn." Still bending her knees, she tried to enhance the freshness of his arrival, and took a few more glances at his slender and strong body and haggard face.It must have seemed to her an elder, a father at such an age, to appear in her kitchen like this with epic power; a rich history of associations and relationships, to remind her Who she is, shedding her disguise without warning, momentarily reining in her listless life. "I could have gotten my stuff ready first. You look bad. Where do you sleep?" "Where did I sleep last time?" They were both looking at me, trying to remember. While we were making breakfast, when the kids came downstairs and approached Vernon gingerly for him to kiss and ruffle his hair, when after a few hours Babette grew accustomed to the patched-jeans, As I walked the unhurried figure, I began to notice her hovering close by with great interest, doing little things for him, listening there.Pleasure is expressed in everyday gestures and automatic rhythms.From time to time she had to remind Vernon what foods he liked to eat, how he liked to cook and season them, which jokes he told best, which characters in the past were complete fools and which were comical heroes.Press materials from another former life poured out of her.The tone of her voice changed, taking on a rustic air.The words used and the meanings involved have also changed.She was the same girl again, helping her dad sand down old oak and lift the radiator off the floor.His years as a carpenter, he dashed around on a motorcycle, he got tattoos on his upper arms. "You're looking more and more like a cowpea, Dad. Finish those potatoes. There's still more on the stove." Vernon would say to me, "Her mother makes the worst French fries you can eat, like the French fries you get in a state park." Then he'd turn to her and say, "Jack Know the problems I've had in state parks. They can't be heartwarming." We moved Heinrich from the bed to the couch to make room for Vernon.Sometimes at seven o'clock in the morning, or six o'clock, or some other time when the sky is gray, Babette or I go downstairs to make coffee and find him already in the kitchen and get restless.He gave us the impression that he was out to outwit us and make us feel guilty by suggesting that no matter how sleep deprived we were, he was getting less sleep. "I'll tell you, Jack. You're old and you think you're ready for something but don't know what it is. You're always getting ready. You brush your hair and you stand at the window and look out. I It felt like there was a little sleazy guy running around me all day. That’s why I jumped in the car and drove on.” "Go break the magic," I said, "get out of the chores. Chores, when taken to the extreme, Fern, can kill. A friend of mine said that's why people take vacations—not to relax , or looking for thrills or new sights to visit, but to escape from the death that exists in everyday chores." "Who is he, a Jew?" "What does that have to do with this matter?" "The gutters on your roof are caved in," he told me. "Don't you know how to fix it?" Vernon liked to hang around the house, waiting for the garbage man, the phone repairman, the postman, the boy who delivered the paper in the afternoon.Anyone who can talk to him about techniques, procedures; sets of special methods; routes, time slots, equipment.In this way, he can better grasp many things and learn how to do things in some fields outside his profession. He likes to tease children quietly.They grudgingly answered his ridiculous words.They are suspicious of all relatives.Relatives are a sensitive matter, they are part of a murky and complex past, divided life stages, memories of a past that can be recreated by a word or a name. He liked to smoke a cigarette in his battered little passenger car with the hatch back. Babette watches from the window, seemingly expressing love, worry, annoyance and despair, hope and sorrow all at the same time.Vernon needed only to alter the weight of his influence to produce a series of powerful emotions in her. He likes to mingle with the crowd shopping in the market. "I'm counting on you to tell me, Jack." "tell you what?" "You are the only person I know who is educated enough to give me the answers." "The answer to what?" "Are people always this silent in front of the TV?" One night, I heard a human voice and thought it was him moaning in his sleep.I put on my nightgown and walked down the hall to find the sound coming from the TV in Denise's room.I went into the room and turned off the TV.She fell asleep amidst a pile of blankets, books and clothes.On the urge to look for the Dellers pills, I crept to the open storage room, turned on the light, and peered in.I used my body to close the door, half of my body was inside and half was outside.I saw a lot of clothes, shoes, toys, game consoles and other items.I poked around, and a few times I found traces of some childhood taste: plasticine, sneakers, pencil wood flowers.There might be a bottle in an unused shoe, an old shirt pocket crumpled up in a corner.I heard her move.Immediately I didn't move and held my breath. "What are you doing?" she said. "Don't worry, it's me." "I know who it is." I continued to look around in the storage room, thinking this way I wouldn't look too guilty. "I also know what you're looking for." "Denise, I recently had a scare. I thought something terrible was about to happen. Thankfully, it turned out I was wrong. However, there was an after-effect. I need 'Dale', it may will help me solve the problem." I continue to rummage. "What's the question?" "You know it's not enough to have a question? Otherwise I wouldn't be here. Don't you want to be my friend?" "I'm your friend. I just don't want to be tricked." "No juggling. I just want to try the drug. There are four pills left, and I'll take them, and that's the end of the matter." The more casually I spoke, the more likely I was to impress her. "You won't eat them, you'll give them to my mother." "Let's get one thing straight," I said like a high-ranking government official, "your mother wasn't a drug addict, and 'Dale' isn't that kind of drug." "So what is it? Just tell me what it is?" Something in her voice, or in my heart, or in the absurdity of the present moment made me consider the possibility of answering her question.Come to a breakthrough.Why not tell her straight up?She is conscientious and able to weigh the implications of serious matters.I realized that Babette and I were always foolish to keep her from knowing the truth.That girl will accept the truth, understand us better, and love us even more despite our weaknesses and fears. I went and sat on the bed.She observes me carefully.I told her the basic story, but I left out the tears, the passion, the fear, the terror, my exposure in Neodin-D, Babette's sex with Mr. Gray, our argument about who was more afraid of death.I focused on the drug itself, telling her everything I knew about its survival in the gastrointestinal tract and brain. The first thing she mentioned was the issue of side effects.Every drug has side effects.A drug that would eliminate the fear of death could have dire side effects, especially if it's still experimental.Of course, she was right.Babbitt talked about total death, brain death, left-brain death, partial paralysis, other cruel and bizarre symptoms of mind and body. I told Denise that the power of suggestion was more crucial than the side effects. "Remember how you heard on the radio that billowing smoke made your palms sweat? Your palms sweat too, don't you? The power of suggestion makes some people sick and some people well." 'Dale' It probably doesn't matter how strong or weak it is. If I think it's going to benefit me, it will benefit me." "To a certain extent." "We're talking about death," I whispered. "In the purest sense, it doesn't matter what's in these pills. It could be sugar, it could be flavoring. I long to be tricked, to be tricked." .” "Isn't that kind of silly?" "That's what happens to desperate and desperate people." There was a silence.I waited for her to ask me if this despair was inevitable, if she would one day experience the same fear, the same process of suffering. But, she said, "Since it doesn't matter if the effect is strong or weak, I've thrown the bottle away." "No, you didn't. Where did you throw it?" "I threw it in the trash compactor." "I don't believe it. When did that happen?" "About a week ago. I thought Babe might have sneaked into my room and found it. So I decided to just get rid of it. No one wanted to tell me what it was, did anyone? So I put it with all The cans and bottles and other useless things were thrown away. Then I compacted it." "It's like dealing with an old car." "Nobody's gonna tell me. And that's all they have to do. I've been here the whole time!" "Okay, don't worry, you helped me." "About all they need to say is those eight words." "I'm better off without it." "It won't be the first time they've lied to me." "You're still my friend," I said. I kissed her on the head and went to the door.I realized I was starving.I went downstairs to find something to eat.The kitchen light was on.Vernon sat at the table, fully dressed, smoking a cigarette and coughing.The ash on the butt was an inch long and was beginning to crumble.It was a habit of his to let the ashes hang.Babette believes that he did this to cause worry and anxiety in others.This is just a symptom of the situation in which he acts recklessly. "Exactly the person I want to see." "Fern, it's midnight, aren't you going to sleep?" "Let's go outside in the car," he said. "Are you serious?" "What we have here is a situation that should be dealt with privately. This room is full of women, am I right?" "It's just the two of us here. What do you want to talk about?" "They sleep with their ears pricked up," he said. We go out the back door so as not to wake Heinrich.I followed him along the path that bordered the house and down the steps into the driveway.His car was parked in the dark.He got in and sat down behind the wheel, and I rolled up my nightgown and got in next to him, feeling trapped in the confined space.There was a smell in the car, like the body and rail shop smells of some dangerous gas, scrap metal, tarp heads, and vulcanized rubber.The trim inside the car was torn.In the light of the street lamps I saw wires dangling from the dashboard and the roof unit. "I want you to take this, Jack." "Take what?" "I've had it for years. Now I want you to have it. Who knows if I'll ever see you guys again? Forget it. Who cares. It's amazing." "You're giving me this car? I don't want it. It's a horrible car." "In all your life as a man, in this world today, have you ever owned a weapon?" "No." I said. "That's what I figured. I said to myself, this man here is the last man in America who has no means of protecting himself." He reached into a hole in the backseat and pulled out a small black thing.He holds it in the palm of his right hand. "Take it, Jack." "What is it?" "Hold it up and turn it around, feel it, it's loaded." He handed it to me.I said stupidly again, "What is it?" There was something unreal in the feeling of holding a gun in my hand.I kept staring at it, wondering what Vernon's motives might be?Will he turn out to be the dark messenger of death.A loaded gun.The changes it caused in me were so rapid that it made my hands tingle even as I sat there staring at it, unwilling to call out what it was.Was it Vernon's intention to stimulate thought, to propose a new design, a plan, a shape for my life?I want to give it back. "It's a little bauble, but it shoots real bullets—it's all a man of your stature could rightly ask for in a weapon. Don't worry, Jack. No one can track it down." "Why would anyone want to track it down?" "I feel like if you give someone a loaded gun, you have to give details about it. Here's a .25 caliber 'Zumwalt' automatic pistol, made in Germany. It doesn't have the stop of a heavy caliber weapon Power, but you're not going out to subdue a rhino, are you?" "That's the problem. What am I going out to subdue? Why do I need this thing?" "Don't call it a thing. Have respect for it, Jack. It's a well-designed weapon. Practical, light, and easy to stash. Try to get to know your pistol. It's only a matter of time when you'll use it. " "When should I use it?" "Don't we live on the same planet? What century is it? See how easy it is for me to break into your backyard. I pry open a window and I'm in. I could be a professional thief, a criminal on the run, A bum with a stubble; a killer who hangs out after the sun goes down; a murderer who works in the company and kills innocent people on weekends. You choose." "Maybe there needs to be a gun where you live. Take it back, we don't want it." "I got myself a combat ammunition barrel near my bed, and I don't want to tell you how much trouble it caused when it had human features painted on it." He gave me a sly look.I stared at the gun again.It occurs to me that this is the last measure of a man's ability in the world.I weighed it in my palm and sniffed it with my nose on the muzzle of the steel pipe gun.What does it say that a person violates his own knowledge of ability, happiness, and personal worth by holding a gun that can kill, skillfully handling it, willing and ready to use it at any time?A hidden deadly gun.It is a secret, it is a second life, a second self, a dream, a magic, a conspiracy, a delirium. Made in Germany. "Don't tell Babette. She'll be very upset if she finds out you're hiding a weapon from her." "I don't want it, Fern. Take it back." "And don't leave it lying around. Some kid gets it, and you'll be on the job right away. Be smart. Think about where it's best to put it, so that when you use it, you can find it when you look for it. Pre-calculate your shots." Range. If you had someone break in, where would he come from? How would he get access to valuables? If you had a psychopath, where would he attack you from? Psychopaths are unpredictable because they Don’t know what you’re doing. They’ll come at you from anywhere—from branches, branches. Consider sticking some broken glass on your outside window sill. Learn to get down on the floor quickly.” "We don't want guns in this town." "Be smart once in your life," he said in the darkened car. "It's not what you want that matters." Early the next morning, a group of people came to repair the street.Vernon was out immediately, watching them chip away and drag the asphalt; he stood by them as they flattened the smoking tar.As the workers left, he felt lost, and his visit seemed to be over.We begin to see a blank void where Vernon stands.He looked at us at a careful distance, as if we were disaffected strangers.An inexplicable lethargy builds up in our attempts to talk. Outside on the sidewalk, Babette hugged him and cried.For parting, he shaved, washed the car, and wrapped a blue floral scarf around his neck.As if she couldn't cry enough.She looked at his face and cried again.She hugged him and cried.She gave him a Styrofoam food basket filled with sandwiches, chicken and coffee.She was still crying when he put the food basket between the seat padding that his fingers had pulled out and the seat cotton that the knife had torn. "She's a good girl," he told me gravely. He sits in the driver's seat, running his fingers through his ducktail hair and grooming himself in the mirror.Then he coughed for a while and gave us another old phlegm slapping punch.Babette cried again.We leaned over to the passenger window and watched him sit casually between the door and the driver's seat, one left arm dangling out the window, hunched over in a driving stance. "Don't worry about me," he said, "a little falter is nothing. People my age falter. It's a natural thing to falter at a certain age. Forget coughing. Coughing is good for health, This mobilizes the waste in the lungs. As long as the waste doesn't take root in one spot and stay there for years, it can't hurt you. So coughing is fine. The same goes for insomnia, and insomnia is fine. I started from sleep What do you get out of it? At your age, every extra minute of sleep equals one less minute of useful work. Go cough or stagger. Never mind the women. Women are fine. We'll rent a recorder Watch on the VCR and have some sex together, it pumps blood to the heart. Forget about smoking. I like to say to myself, I'm eating, drinking or smoking something. Let's quit smoking. They will die of Just one other bad thing. Money isn't an issue. I'm all in. No pension, no savings, no stocks, no bonds. So you don't have to worry about money stuff, it's safekeeping. Never mind those teeth The teeth are fine. The looser they are, the more you can wiggle them with your tongue, which makes the tongue a little bit more work. Don't worry about hand tremors. Everyone trembles sometimes, I'm only left handed. The way to appreciate hand tremors is to pretend it's someone else's hand. Never mind sudden and unexplained weight loss. There's no point in eating something that you can't see. Don't worry about your eyes. Those eyes will never look the same Worse. Forget about the head completely. The head always goes before the body. That's the way things are supposed to be. So don't worry about the head. The head is fine. Worry about the car. The steering wheel is all crooked. Factory Fang retracted the brakes three times for inspection. The hood went out and landed on the potholed ground." Not at all ostentatious.Babette thought the last part of the words—the part about the car—was comical.I stood there in amazement, watching her walk in cheerful little circles, with weak knees and a sluggish gait, all her fears and defenses drifting away with his eloquent recounting of the past.

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