What Happened

Rormerly “Braggart”

I have never been very dextrous, which I bring up because just today I had to fix the furnace for my landlord — a nice old man who wouldn’t harm anybody, but he is miserably dumb, unbelievably dumb — and crawling behind the furnace in his cold basement with a good pair of jeans on, I had to reach blindly into a spot really too small for my hand and remove a valve screw, the culprit that had us all freezing for two days. Mr. Lang would never have discovered this, of course, being about as bright as the dirt on your shoe, though he’s a generous old man whom I would never insult to the face — though what I saved him by repairing his furnace was substantially more than the back rent he offered to waive as a way of thanking me. I took him up on it, by the way, not knowing a polite way to tell him a few hundred dollars means very little to me, and that I expect to pay him in full very shortly, as well as all my other debts — no small potatoes, let me assure you — when my next deal comes through.

But I suspected it — the valve screw — as soon as he described the problem to me, even though my previous experience with furnaces was embarassingly slight. I make no pretense at being a handyman, taking much more pride in whatever small abilities I can claim in the realm of painting, that being my first love, and the one thing I truly aspire to be great in, though I do not really expect such a thing ever to happen. I am immodest enough to believe it could happen, were not the American taste in art in the late 20th Century what it is: that is to say, non-existent, leaping stupidly between the extremes of sentimentality and dazzlement, like a child who doesn’t know if it wants to read a book in which dogs save people’s lives, or make himself sick on a carnival ride. In short, I think that my paintings are perhaps too refined for this crass age or rather perhaps too crass for this overly refined age. But that’s only the opinion of one man — myself. And it must be said that I paint because I’m a painter, not because I flatter myself that some will find my paintings pleasurable to look at, much less that they will find them frightening, which in my mind is the one response that marks all great art and — yes, back to the story.

It’s an incident I remembered when I realized today that, after all these years, I am still as clumsy with my hands as I ever was — except, of course, when the work my hands are asked to do is painting, at which skill I feel I have developed some little expertness and can, for example, paint a straight hairline stroke of any length, freehand, as well as the next painter, in my own opinion. Reaching to the back of that furnace to get that valve screw out, and then dropping it and not being able to get it back in until I had taken the blower unit off — that’s what I wanted to mention. I did, by the way, go ahead and attempt to adjust the unit for more noiseless operation while I had it accessible — as anyone would have, perhaps. But what I wanted to tell is my realization that I am today just as unlucky at manipulating small objects as I was over 20 years ago, on the day I wrecked my father’s new Ford Rambler.

That incident was certainly a comedy of errors and I think you may find it amusing, as my family always has.

It began on a fine Missouri morning — in April I think it was. I was eight or nine years old, and this was when we were living in a mobile home on a roadside park for campers that my father had established. He was one of the first to see the potential for such a business, at least in our part of the country, as this was in the 1960s when there were no such things yet as “recreational vehicles,” but only shells a person could put on the back of their pickup truck, or the little single-axle enclosures — actually small house trailers — that you attached to the rear bumper of a truck or car and pulled around. If my father had held onto his idea and his business for about 10 more years, he might have made it, but as it was he only had our little spot beside the freeway for about six months, when he sold it and went into the manufacture of epoxy face impressions — miniature Mount Rushmores of a house’s family members, made for attaching to a front door. It was another idea he gave up on before it made back any of the money he had sunk into it. But the story of my father’s many failed and sometimes hare-brained money-making schemes is one I am too loyal to recount, for I would never humiliate him willingly — though it must be said he didn’t show that particular type of concern for me when he had a chance to speak to the media. But I have said before and will say again that I am not concerned, like so many in my field, with the opinion some reader of a supermarket funny paper thinks about my personality, as if such people have any qualifications in that department.

The particular story I am referring to I am sure you are well aware of, and I will only say that what I found insulting was not the way they treated my art as a joke, but the attempt of that hack journalist to say something nice about my work, as if I could possibly care what someone of that variety feels. “A remarkable eye for detail,” was his incisive summary, which was something even the morons of headline-land could see for themselves from the photographs — which were the only worthwhile thing about the piece and maybe in a way made up for the nonsense. Why should I care if some five-dollar prostitute of the writing profession refers to my works as “chill-life” and “YECCHspressionism?” You may remember that the headline of the story I refer to shared the front page with one about a woman whose dead twin still resided in the woman’s skull, and one about space aliens serving in Congress. I will stand by my art, thank you. And, quite honestly, I harbor no bitterness about the episode. I only wanted to make it perfectly clear to the public that on the whole I got a good laugh from the episode — in addition to a great deal of sadness over the low state of America’s collective IQ.

The story I wish to tell you began, as I said a minute ago, one morning at my father’s roadside park, Motorist Heaven, which I always viewed as overstatement, having even as a child some small amount of taste, though I make no great pretensions about my artistic sensibilities at that stage. To keep the story brief, it was the day we were to go grocery shopping with Mother. For myself and my two sisters, that event was always an exciting one. You see, living beside a freeway for four months or so (at that time) and for five years before that on a poultry farm a long distance from the nearest town, we did not have what you could call a thriving social life. Until I went to college, in fact, I had practically no social experience of graces at all, and it was not until I finally arrived in New York that I was able to say “Please” and “Thank You” without believing myself an impostor. I find it all rather amusing now, and like to surprise new acquaintances by telling them that for the first 20 years of my life I was a complete ass, and somewhat bashful to boot. I must admit, though, that as I was growing up, I felt sorry for myself, and at times amused myself with fantasies of murdering my parents. I think that is something all children go through, and I do not feel myself especially virtuous for resisting the impulse, since in many ways my parents were hard-working, wonderful people whom any child would love. My mother and father always meant well, but were simply never blessed with opportunities to lift themselves above their genetic endowments or to extricate themselves from the strange obsession of my father to bring ruin and confusion upon everything he touched.

The girls and I — one was older, one was younger — had gone outside to wait for Mom who was, as usual, late in getting out of bed, and perhaps was ironing her shopping dress — those details of course I would not have noticed, for in those days I was not exactly a great observer of the social condition. I was probably even a little duller than most children my age, or would have seemed so to an ordinary observer, since the temperament of artists is often misunderstood even when fully developed, and I by no means would claim I was a fully developed artist at the age of eight or nine — though I should say in all honesty that even then I was known to exhibit what some called a flair for drawing, and also had a habit of making what my mother called “remarks:” small observations about human nature and other such goings on that were, you might say, the first inklings of the social satire I was to attempt, in my own modest way, in these later years. I see that I have wandered from the path again, however. I will once more return to my storyline, and this time I promise I will stay there!

We were outside, Patsy and Vicki and I. Patsy, the youngest, was watching traffic go by, which was always a favorite pasttime of hers (today she is a token clerk in a toll booth!). Vicki and I were standing around the car, tossing gravel at one another’s feet and so forth. We were anxious to get going because, as I said, life beside the freeway was not your average kid’s idea of excitement.

“I wish she’d hurry,” said Vicki, or something to that effect. I don’t claim to be a writer or to have a precise memory for dialog, since data of that sort would be more detrimental than otherwise in my line of work.

“I wish she’d hurry, too,” I said, mimicking her words and delivery. I used to do that to tease my elder sister, but other times I think I might just have enjoyed the sound of hearing the same sentence twice. I was never one to annoy my sisters unduly, or anyone, for that matter. Though, as I have told you, I can be tenacious in defending my work.

“I want to buy some new knee socks,” my sister Vicki was saying. “Purple ones. I want to buy a costume jewelry necklace. I want to get my ears pierced. I’m going to see if she’ll let me buy a pair of stockings. Some of my girlfriends already wear stockings. I think pretty soon I’ll have to start wearing a training bra.”

“Why do you think that pretty soon you’ll have to start wearing a training bra?”

“I really don’t want to talk to a boy about it, Junior. Why do you ask such wierd questions?” You know, of course, that Junior is what I was called, in those days. Being given the same name as my father was meant to be an honor, I’m sure, but I’m also sure that no son in history has enjoyed the appelation “Junior,” no matter how great the father or the rest of the name.

My father came out from behind the trailer, which is where he had his workshop, and he checked under the hood of the car. It was his new Ford Rambler, a toy-red station wagon on which he had painted “Motorist Heaven” in big Old English letters, to give it a biblical flavor. The car was actually two years old, but it was new to us and was the least-old used car my father had ever owned. He was very proud of it and considered it evidence of the fortunes soon to come our way — as soon as America started taking more house trailer vacations and flocking from all corners of the country to stay overnight at Motorist Heaven. This was something Dad believed certain to begin any day now.

“Son, get in the car and start the engine,” my father said.

My father said this to me without a trace of humor or gentleness, even though he knew as well as anyone in the world at that time, on this planet, that I had never in my life even thought about starting a car, much less doing it.

Of course I could not call attention to this fact, since it could be misunderstood as disobedience — or even stupidity. So even though I then said, “Start the car?” it was meant rhetorically, formed from equal parts habit and not knowing what else to say. The fact that I did not instantly move towards the driver’s seat of the car had more to do with the drowsiness induced by my sister’s uninspired babbling than any particular reluctance to obey my father. However, my father was in one of his impatient moods, of which he had several, all of them characterized by a short temper.

“Come on, Junior, godammit, get in and start the…the you-know-what.” It was a vulgar word, I’ll just leave it at that. Basically the most vulgar word. I’ve never liked anyone being talked to that way. But I’ve told you that before.

I did not know what my father was attempting to do to the car, with his head under the hood and one hand holding, of all things, a phonograph speaker box; nor did I know how to make an automobile engine start running. If I may say so, I was not the type of boy who found cars very interesting, though if I had been, I have no doubt I would have had at least some inkling what to do next, being not exactly stupid even then, as I think you will permit me the immodesty to state. However, my father was not the kind of individual who could imagine that other people might legitimately not know something he himself knew, even if those other people were children. Believing it was not the right time to instruct my father in this basic fact of human nature, and perhaps partly out of pride as well, since it was me my father had asked to start the car and not my sister, who was two years older — for these reasons, I bit my tongue and did as I was told.

The rest, as they say, is history, and my family has always seemed determined to keep it that way, though in my own mind it is really no more than a humorous story to be told once or twice in a lifetime and then forgotten, since there is so much else to do with one’s life that is more amusing, not to mention more improving, than telling and retelling an anecdote of this nature. The reason I am telling the anecodte today is that as my doctor — or should I say as my friend — you have always shown a special interest in these memories that seem to return to me from nowhere and hang about for a day or two like an old acquaintance, down on his luck, looking for a free meal and nagging for attention.

I do suppose, by the way, that there is something to be learned from these memories which come up out of seemingly nowhere, but I really can’t imagine what it is, since any neuroses or whatever you might want to call them were resolved, if I may say this without sounding ungrateful, long before I decided to try analysis as a sort of stimulus to my muse, though I suppose it would be dishonest to say I was at that time or any other time experiencing any particular lack of “inspiration.” Yes, I have naturally, being human, had periods when I desired and needed respite from the creation of art, an indulged myself in what some might call laziness, and which I might as well admit to have been just that, since you know as well as me that procrastination, so-called, has been what some might call my besetting sin, though I prefer to think of it as a natural counterbalance to my other and frankly much stronger obsession, the drive to create endlessly, without cessation or a slackening of effort.

But I have broken my promise. I said I would tell the tale and nothing but the tale, so here is its conclusion (and I hope you don’t mind small punch lines to big buildups, because that’s what this is — but remember, you asked me to tell you about these little fits of memory I have!)/

I sat in the driver’s seat and could barely see over the top of the dashboard. I felt so small that I thought something must be wrong with the seat, since I had ridden often in the other seat up front and had never noticed it to feel so low. I knew of course that I had to turn the key, which was right there in the ignition, but I wasn’t sure about all the other preliminaries — which pedals to step on, which switches to pull, and so forth. I didn’t have time to reason it out and, quite frankly, I had no desire to. I wasn’t happy being forced to do this thing, and I suppose what I wanted was to just attempt my best shot, face my father’s inevitable wrath, and have the whole ordeal behind me.

When I turned the key. I am telling you, Dr. Saul, I must have, without knowing it, had my foot pressed hard on the gas pedal, because the Rambler never started that fast for anybody else. There came an incredible blast of sound that at first I thought was my father, howling with hate and pain as I ran over him. Then I realized that the blast of music had come from the thing he had been holding — the speaker box — because I saw it ejected from my father’s hans into the air, a pair of wires dangling behind it. The music stopped just an instant before the speaker was flying. I watched the object rise into the air, and then descend, but did not hear the sound of its impact over the roar of the car’s engine. I did not have time to detet how badly my father might have been injured becasue the car was moving forward at a slow but unrelenting speed. What I will tell you now, although I didn’t understand it myself until afterward, was that I had started the vehicle with its gears engaged, and that the accelerator pedal, by some grotesque accident of fate, had chosen that moment to become stuck in a down position.

It was not get to my knees on the seat. I saw that I was traveling forward at a speed that quite honestly made me feel sick, though it was probably no faster than I was used to traveling on my bicycle. What had happened, evidently, is that I started the car with it in gear, and by some vicious twist of fate the accelerator pedal had stuck.

I remember thinking I should jump from the car, but in the panic of the moment I didn’t seem to have the physical dexterity for it. I then thought about attempting to steer the car into anything that might be solid enough to stop it. But I had to rule that out, too. I knew that if I wrecked the car, and lived to tell about it, my father would surpass all previous records of punishment.

I saw our big gravel lot coming to an end ahead of me and began to turn the steering wheel. To my relief, the car responded by turning in the desired direction. But then I was heading back towards my father and sisters. My father, I saw, was alive, but in some way injured. He was struggling to get to his feet, but with such scrambling, abnormal movements that his attempts failed. I was heading straight for him, and to me he seemed a goner. He was yelling mightily, but the nature and volume of his words did nothing to help me stop or even slow the car.

Patsy was making two fists and jumping up and down with joy, enjoying my unexpected variation on the usual scenery of our yard. Vicky, the oldest of us kids, had one hand on her hip the way she did whenever she saw an opportunity coming in which to scold —

I understand doctor. Yes, I can resume — or conclude, I would say — the story next week. I’ve waited 20 years to tell it, and, ha ha, it’s just an amusing tale, after all. I don’t know why I thought to bring it up today. Oh, yes, because of the accident with Mr. Lang. Didn’t I tell you? He hit his head as I was reattaching the blower unit. He had been speaking very loudly even before the impact with his forehead. Why was he speaking loudly? Oh, instructions, do it this way, turn the mother-you-know-what — yes, a very sweet, decent man, in his way. I’m very fond of him and his wife. Oh, they both use language like that, at times. You know the neighborhood I presently live in. I expect to be moving some time this year, once I close the deal on my new series —

Yes, doctor, I understand we’re out of time. I believe I already indicated — yes, he’s doing fine. He doesn’t remember exactly what happened, but I told him. He’s a good man. Both of them are. They wouldn’t hurt a fly, and neither would I.