“and I said you can shirk all things and he said Ah can you”---Faulkner
As The Deer
My pillow lies over on the empty side where Kara used to sleep. I stretch to pull it toward me, noticing the fan unplugged in my peripheral. I sigh. The multiplication of little things unhinges a man. Silence multiplied by stray pillows multiplied by unplugged fans is equal to… nothing but the arbitrary combination of words. Every explanation, every story amounts to nothing but the arbitrary combination of words.
How long have you slept with a fan Kara asked. Since I was fifteen, I said, when my dad’s salary dropped after becoming a pastor and we moved to Florida in a smaller house where I had to sleep in the garage for a summer. I still sleep with it in Pennsylvania, I said noticing her look, because I am too used to the sound of the hum. Then she asked whether the rhythm of her breathing would be enough to replace it and I said I hoped so.
The fan plug lies on the floor behind a leather chair on the empty side. I roll out of bed to go plug it in. The feat of rolling out of bed is the same as in, only reversed. Like when Jesus rolled the stone away, only reversed. That there is a grave at all is a miracle let alone the resurrection; all of it an accident of consciousness. Jesus is an accident of consciousness, an attempted therapeutic amalgamation of words that’s no more therapeutic than anything else.
The clock reads 11:50 on the bureau a few feet off the foot of the bed. Six months at 11:52. He stared at his at his watch, reaching for the sheet with his right hand while starting at the watch on his left. We were shivering from the cold but Kara was not. Then he looked up from his watch to say to the driver. 11:51, the clock clicks another minute as I walk by the foot of the bed to go plug in the fan. I knew what he was doing when he started at his watch.
Before the ceremony my father said of marriage that it amounts to a commitment to the annihilation of selfishness. She was a nurse at St. Mary’s and already had that advantage on me. That’s why she drove us to and from breakfast, because she knew that’s what I needed. Doubting Thomas she said do you need to see Jesus’ hands and feet? What evidence do you need? She chewed her waffle. Her eyes. What do you need, she said. I need to sleep before class tomorrow I said we should go, and she said she’s driving. Kara was tired when we drove for home and so was I, but she didn’t work till second shift and I had classes.
My gait gradually lowers like in those evolution pictures where amoeba changes into man, only reversed. Now crawling to reach the outlet. The decline of being concomitant with the incline of amoebas. Stuck on a memory; stuck on the arbitrary combination of words. Keep still, I said; don’t talk. Keep your eyes open. Wait. Wait. Keep your eyes open. Her wide eyes. Her lashes, she used to wink; her wide eyes watched the world. The carpet curves around my knees, my hands leave tracks like deer tracks.
My fingers trace the boarders of the mattress over Kara. Just think I said about how Jesus would hesitate to wash those uglies, and she said ugly feet are better than hairy feet. She wiggled her toes. She smiled. I trace her legs and her back, ivory and smooth and sensitive. I trace around her ear, her hair, blond and wavy when its wet.
But nothing but the sheets and Kara’s smell on the sheets. Cotton blossom she called it. Called it. Past tense active indicative. Words.
Professor Davies says that we wear the Holy Spirit like a Halloween costume. People and people like him have these habits of saying what they do not know they mean. A Ghost somehow inside us and in us and with us. Prepositions. Words. Sometimes the fan blows under the sheets lifting them body-like above the mattress, and I am haunted by the space Kara used to fill. Comfort that was beside me and across me. Cotton blossom comforting me. Yet still we call Him Comforter. Professor Davies also says that as the deer panteth after the water so his soul panteth after God. How can one drink on God and hope to be sated when he is thirsty only for his wife of two short years? More words. Professor Davies drinks what he calls life, and thinks he is filled when all he is, is distracted with words.
Because ever since that night I have believed that life and death are siblings not strangers, the offspring of that accident of consciousness we call hope. Among other accidents. I cannot shake unbelief, I said. She smiled her nurse’s smile. Let’s go get breakfast since we’ll be up talking anyway. Her eyes. I have class tomorrow I said I need to sleep, but she whisked back the sheets, and I smiled and turned off the fan, grabbing the keys off the nightstand.
As the deer panteth across the road, so my soul after You.
I do no heal bodies, I heal despair she said sipping her orange juice. Patients press the nurse’s button, and I must be as ready for death as for turning the sheets. And there really is no difference between the two; death is just as much a practical matter in the end as anything else. Ask the elderly dripping into their bed pans or signing their last will and testament.
She paused and drew a circle in the syrup with her fork, smiling. Hope like waffles must come in increments, she teased, must be commensurate with the appetite, be it a hope for clean sheets or salvation from God. And whether you choose to hope or believe in it or just desire it doesn’t matter so long as you have it, a bite at a time. And even if it is an illusion then it is a pleasant fantasy because it is sweeter than the alternative. And I asked what she thinks is the alternative and she said an empty stomach.
My head is propped against the chair, the fan in my peripheral. I can hear my hair scraping against the leather through my skull while stabbing for the outlet. I can hear the heater too, vibrating, breathing. The plug goes in and the fan is already switched on, pointing in the wrong direction toward me on the floor. I know because I can feel the air; and I can hear it and had heard it before and would keep hearing it. And I remember anew the white noise and the unmeaning. It blows fresh against my face, like the feel of her breathing while she kissed, only not. Kara breathed heavily and with a pitch in her voice.
She shouldn’t have turned the wheel. The headlights cracked and windshield and my ribs. She shouldn’t have turned the wheel. As the deer panteth across the road, so my soul after You.
I do not have the luxury of bricks or birds where the wind and the weathering don’t because they can’t. The fan and the white noise and the unmeaning. But I have class tomorrow I said, and she smiled, so I smiled. Words, words, words. Unmeaning doesn’t mean unmeaning. It can’t; I can’t.
I push myself off the carpet, smelling to see if she’s still in the sheets. One should never stick their necks out for giraffes, I kidded, and she laughed, her wide eyes and the orange juice everywhere. The waitress got a good tip. Nighttime breakfast and the waitress poured her more orange juice. The wind and the weathering and the waitress got a good tip. Keep your eyes open, I said. Wait. Wait.
The clock reads 11:52. I stand up, the fan breathing, and scud back around the bed, tracing the border of the mattress with my finger. Her wide eyes and that dip in her neck, that cotton blossom dip, in the valley of the collar bone, the valley of the shadow of death. And her breasts and waist, ivory and smooth and sensitive. Then her legs and feet.
She’s not breathing, he said, and I mumbled words I do not remember. Time of death, he said, 11:52. I do not remember what I said, and it would not matter if I did. The fan and the white noise, and I call it silence not her breathing, and I call it the unmeaning and the hum of the fan as if that’s not a meaning. And I, bending over, retrograde, smell her in the sheets again like in the evolution pictures, only reversed. Stuck on a memory, stuck on the arbitrary combination of words.
She stopped laughing about the orange juice. The antlers nicked the mirror on my side. Her wide eyes. Don’t turn the wheel. Headlights. It tipped. The sound like crackling fire. It rolled, and only I was there. She was there and then she was not. The sound like crackling fire, like splintering wood. The windshield and my ribs. Powder from the airbag. My ribs. It rolled again.
The sheets are cold, so I make friction with my hand and slip back in. Then the fan isn’t blowing on my face so I turn it toward me, and the sheets feel cold again. I pull the covers over my head, forgetting and not forgetting to turn the lamp off, forgetting and not forgetting about the light. She’s not breathing, he said.
The windshield was not there, and she was not there. I crawled out on my elbows, my shoes scrapping against the glass and pavement, like the crunch of walking over acorns during autumn, only not. I looked back into the jeep, then looked at my hands, and back into the jeep. She was not there. I tried to stand, pulling myself up by the door handle.
Then came the pause and the drop and the ineffable. She lay on her back on the ground some 20 yards away, heaving, her waist wrapped around a tree. I ran, autumn beneath my feet. A man stepped out of his car watching me run. I fell on my knees next to her. My ribs, and I pulled her toward me. The orange juice stained my shirt and the blood stained the orange juice. Keep still, I said; don’t talk. Keep your eyes open. Wait. Wait. Keep your eyes open.
Words, words, hollow words. Silence is a sound the second you say it. And it was silent when she went limp and I say it, and it is silent now in the white noise of the fan and I say it. The banality of words. The banality of the dead. The banality of that goddamn deer. The drama banal par excellence. Therapy is Lethe or death or her alive. Not prayer, not Jesus. It is not even therapeutic to say there is no therapy. Just words. From an is to a was, a thou to a that. Calling it languor doesn’t accustom you to the fan.
The covers are over my head, but the light still sneaks through. I remember the lamp. Me trying to sleep in the darkness, but the light always shining through. The little things unhinge a man, like stray pillows or unplugged fans or kindled lights. I pull the covers back squinting in from the brightness, and stretch to pull the lamp chain. It slips a bit so I shift further over to get a good grip and tug.
It is dark now; I close my eyes. But even now I see. Somehow my eyes always have patterns, though less so than when in the light. How can I see colors on the back of my eyelids when there is no light? What am I seeing if not light?
