Author: Brad Zellar

—Dan Corrigan, “Eddie Potomac,” from the Ballroom Portraits, Rhinelander, Wisconsin. 1978.

I worked side-by-side with this guy for seven years. Shooter Devaney. He’d been a hotshot basketball player back in high school, but something went wrong somewhere along the line, just like something went wrong for so many of the guys I grew up with, myself included.

Shooter was always flinching. Looking through our old high school yearbook not long ago I noticed that he was even flinching in his class picture, so the seeds of the thing were apparently there all along. It was like the camera was a blow, like he couldn’t handle posterity or whatever it was.

I’ve survived a few things, he’d say to me. Don’t think I haven’t. You know my wife? She’s likely at home right this moment dancing alone to records in our living room. When people ask her what she does she can’t just say she’s a housewife. No, she claims she’s a retired cheerleader. What woman in this town isn’t?

Some people I’ve learned don’t need some anonymous tragedy to put a spook in their blood; they’re just born with some creeping thing that won’t leave them alone.

My teeth are giving me fits, Scooter would say. My whole life I’ve never had a comfortable mouth. Or: I have no intention of ever getting on an airplane. That just ain’t my place, the sky.

Scooter couldn’t sleep. He’d talk about that. He once asked me, Do you remember that big cage ball they used to bring out in gym class to roll right over everyone? That just did not seem like the correct proportions for any kind of a ball. I used to have nightmares about that thing.

We were taking apart animals for a living back in those days, breaking them down into meat. There were billboards around our town that read, “Meat is Community.” It was bloody, stinking work, but the damn thing about it was you wouldn’t find a single vegetarian in the entire plant.

I don’t know why this should occur to me just now. I suppose because it was such a long time ago, and seems even longer than it could conceivably have been, like I’ve been transported to where I am now from another planet. Sometimes when my head gets tangled up I can actually convince myself that such a thing is possible.

To dine, drink champagne, make a racket, and deliver speeches about national consciousness, the conscience of the people, freedom, and such things, while slaves in tail coats are running round your tables, veritable serfs, and your coachmen wait outside in the street, in the bitter cold –that is lying to the Holy Ghost.

—Chekhov, Diary, February 19, 1896

Do you see that bruise blooming out there along the western horizon? I do believe that is the darkness coming on, fellas. Dutch, old boy, while we wait for them beans to boil why don’t you tune up that geetar of yours and favor us with one of them old hellhound yodels of yours? I might suggest the one about Satan and the fat little baby, where the bird carries away the baby and hides it under a bush and a badger finds it there and offers to trade it to Satan for the chance to walk upright like a man; and though Satan eventually agrees to this particular arrangement, he finds himself over time increasingly embittered by the hard bargain the badger drove with him so he makes that little baby grow up to be a great tyrant, and the tyrant one day orders the execution of the badger, who has been going about the world as an investment banker.

I love that song.

What is the one invention you couldn’t possibly live without?

Do you subscribe to the theory that if the shoehorn were to become obsolete we would see the end of the true-fitting slip-on?

When was the last time you listened to Nirvana’s “Nevermind”?

In your dreams are you most commonly flying, swimming, or naked on a schoolbus?

If there was a new planetary order that allowed humans to buy celebrities as pets, and money (and money-making potential) were no object, which celebrity would you buy?

What is the fastest you have ever driven an automobile?

Be Honest: Did you ever throw a rock at a Mormon?

If you could have one sentence tattooed on your body what would it be?

Did you ever see a giant in the supermarket, signing autographs and selling bacon?

Choose one: Ween or Queen?

Would you harpoon a whale, if given the opportunity?

If you could resurrect one dead rock star, who would it be?

If God gave you the power to eradicate a single species from the planet, which creature would you mark for extinction?

Is that the necklace the dog gave you?

Do you know the way to San Jose?

Are we almost there?

You call that a proper meal?

You call that a day?

What in God’s name is wrong with you?

Any further questions?

All last night there was never any doubt that this day was going to drag me into the harsh light and try to kick some words out of me, but I once again tried to convince myself that I was somehow made of sterner stuff than the average fellow. I wasn’t about to cough up any words until I was good and ready. I resolved to get right up and put something loud and bracing on the stereo (I eventually decided on Fu Manchu) to drown out the baying of the gray boys who I knew would already be milling out front and lobbing taunts and insults at my house.

A man can only avoid these confrontations, though, if he’s absolutely unwilling to move, and the instant I took a step out the front door (I was brazen enough to believe I could sneak away for a sandwich) they were on me. I can almost chuckle now as I recall my poor wife standing on the porch in a panic, screaming, “Scramble! Scramble, honey! Run! Improvise!”

I had no chance, not a chance in the world. Not today. Not Monday. They had me face down in the front lawn in no time at all, and the biggest of the bunch was kneeling in the small of my back while one of his toadies had a fistful of my hair and was yanking my head backwards from the wet grass.

“Say something!” the big one demanded.

“Say what?” I asked.

“Say anything,” he said.

I clenched my teeth and shook my head. “I have nothing to say.”

“Say, ‘How can I make this fruit look prettier?’”

“No,” I said, and even as I heard myself mutter the word I could feel my resolve eroding. Out of the corner of one eye I could see kids on their way back to school pausing to watch this spectacle from the sidewalk in front of my house.

“Say, ‘I’m so helpless I’m practically stone-aged.’”

I tried to once again shake my head, but the one goon was now yanking my hair at such an angle that it felt like he might break my neck.

“Just say it, honey,” my wife said from the porch. “Get it over with.”

I waited a long moment, breathing heavily, while the biggest of the gray boys increased the pressure on the small of my back.

“I’m so helpless I’m practically stone-aged,” I finally said.

That got a reaction out of the bastards, all right. They released me and leapt around my yard bumping chests and exchanging clumsy high-fives before piling back into their black Camaro with the smoked-glass windows. As I attempted to swipe away the mud and grass stains from my pants and jacket they tore off down the block and disappeared around the corner.

“Those fuckers,” I said.

My wife came over and patted me on the back. “It’s okay,” she said. “That wasn’t so bad this time. At least they didn’t get you to say, ‘How can I make this fruit look prettier?’”

In Cuba, when they have tornadoes, they kill them. When they see one coming, they start shooting it with their rifles and shotguns, and the explosions make the tornadoes disappear. When I tell people in America that they shoot tornadoes in Cuba, they don’t believe me. But I believe because I’ve seen it happen; I’ve seen the dark funnel drop out of the sky, then disappear when the men from the farms start shooting it.

—Tony O! The Trials and Triumphs of Tony Oliva, Tony Oliva with Bob Fowler. Hawthorn Books, 1973.

The knowledge of evil is an inadequate knowledge.
—Spinoza, Ethics

But the most important thing is that one can no longer be sure nowadays who is and who is not in a state of temporary insanity.

—Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov

The Shatterer has come up against

you.

Man the ramparts;

Watch the road.

—The Book of Nahum, 2.1

…Something real amongst shadows.

—Socrates, Meno

…We do not dare to be philosophical.

—William Barrett, Irrational Man

There is no denying that we fear the end of things because our way of life has brought so many things to an end.

—Wendell Berry, “Discipline and Hope”

Is it not against all natural reason that God out of his mere whim deserts men, hardens them, damns them, as if He delighted in sins and in such torments of the wretched for eternity, He who is said to be of such mercy and goodness? This appears iniquitous, cruel, and intolerable in God, by which very many have been offended in all ages. And who would not be? I was myself more than once driven to the very abyss of despair so that I wished I had never been created. Love God? I hated Him!

—Martin Luther, in Roland Bainton’s Here I Stand

We fly forgotten as a dream, certainly, leaving the forgetful world behind us to trample and mar and misplace everything we have ever cared for. This is just the way of it, and it is remarkable.

—Marilynne Robinson, Gilead

…how quickly the burnt-out candles multiply.

—C.P. Cavafy, “Candles”

We are only dogs chasing cars.

—Joseph Schumpeter

Who, then, are the immortals? Those who lived a long time, those who reappear time after time, those who had more life than death, but less time than life.

—Carlos Fuentes, This I Believe

From too much love of living,

From hope and fear set free,

We thank with brief thanksgiving

Whatever gods may be

That no life lives forever;

That dead men rise up never;

That even the weariest river

Winds somewhere safe to sea.

—Swinburne, The Garden of Proserpine

When do we set sail for happiness?

—Baudelaire, Journaux Intimes