The Fourth Interlude

I sit among very real presences: the pistol in my hand, a hot breath of wind too weak to trouble a leaf, the rough bark of the oak against my back, the sullen shadows of drooping leaves. Samuel Johnson said, "When a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully." That's true. And it's even truer when the man is about to be shot in the next ten minutes, five minutes, one minute . . .

"About to be shot"–I remember from a long time ago that "about to be shot" is a passive voice construction, as if there is no shooter, only the shot. No division between selves. No "this part of me hates that part of me." The bullet is only an answer to a summons.

But who is summoning whom?

Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh, Mr. Gibbons? What are you waiting for?

We seldom (never?) live in the present until the moment we leap to our deaths and even then we imagine the exhilaration of the fall, see the ground rushing toward us, and then–

Ninety-nine point nine percent of life is a dream: memories grown vague or events deliberately misremembered to exaggerate our successes or to disavow our failures.

Fantasies of sexual encounters.

Adventures that may or may not have happened.

Row, row, row your boat, madly down the stream–

Either we loiter among the sullen shadows of the past or we conceive a bright future into which we project our desires and dream about "what we would do if we had the money." (I too have promised God I would help the poor if He would just give me some money). We fantasize about the house we will build or the journeys we will take. If we just had the money.

I fantasize about who I would be. If I just had the money.

I remember drinking whiskey with Glenn on a gravel bar of Whetstone Creek and cursing the stars because they shine forever while I am doomed to die.

There's that damned passive voice again!

Earlier that afternoon Glenn and I had "celebrated" Decoration Day at the Mountain Grove Cemetery. The graves had been festooned with flags and wreaths and flowers, and when the wind blew, the cemetery resembled a flotilla of the dead. Glenn laughed when I said that, but I wasn't trying to be funny. Anyhow, I stumbled over a nearly hidden headstone, and I cleared away the grass with my foot. The inscription read, "William 'Billy' Simpkins. 1881-1887. We will always love you, Ma and Pa." That's when I knew for sure I was going through with my scheme to become the Purple Knight.

They say every death portends a birth. Well, that night on the banks of Whetstone Creek, Glenn and I toasted Little Billy Simpkins, dead in his grave for the last ten years but taking shape again in a delusory delirium.

Last night in the wee hours of the morning (that's what I call the time when I get up to go to the bathroom), Billy Simpkins came to me (as he has so often before) bald as a gourd and wearing a yellow nightshirt. He said, "Well, Mr. McQuary, looks like you 'n' me are in the fifth panel of a four panel strip! And you know what that means?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means you 'n' me weren't nothin' more than a couple line drawings in the Daily Gazette. So go ahead and pull that trigger and get it over with, 'cause you know what?"

"What?"

"Cartoons don't never die: we're goon but not forgotten! Har-de-har-har! See you in the funny papers!"

He vanished, and I got up to piss.