Something in My Eye: Stories (2 page)

“Please don't get upset,” they said. “If we sometimes sound harsh and insensitive, it's only because we aim to find out the truth of yesterday morning.”

“I'm doing fine,” I said.

“And besides, appreciation of beauty doesn't really pertain much to Buddy's story,” they said. “There was, in fact, nothing beautiful about his actions yesterday.”

“I'm aware of that.”

“Are you also aware that at the jailhouse where they are holding him, he routinely asks—on the hour—to be executed?”

“Such a strange man,” I said. “Out of curiosity, what manner of execution is he requesting?”

“A hanging. He has stressed several times that it must be public.”

“It's not so good to hang a man,” I said, feeling a little bold. “The rope leaves a hideous bruise. And the soiled trousers. . . .”

“So you are intimately familiar with the hanged?”

“Oh, yes,” I said. “My brother went the way of the rope a long time ago.” Again I was not lying.

“That's very sad. Very interesting and sad.” I saw several of them dab handkerchiefs at their eyes. “Does suicide run in your family?”

“Oh, no,” I said. “My brother committed an atrocity and was justly punished for it.”

“How is it,” they said, “that you have managed to avoid this kind of fate yourself? You carry your parents' genes, after all.”

“I was adopted,” I said. Also true. “I did not meet the people who made me.”

“Here it seems appropriate,” they said, “to ask how you came to know Buddy?”

“I answered his want ad for a roommate.”

“Do you remember what the ad said?”

“Oh, yes. ‘Happy man needs like creature to sleep on other side of bedroom and pay half the rent, until the day when roommate is no longer present among the willing, at which point remaining roommate will pay rent in totality or find other roommate.' ”

“So you might admit that right away, the warning signs were there?”

“I find people very difficult to read,” I said. “And I admired his honesty in saying that there would come a day when he'd be gone. I can't tell you how many roommates of mine have skipped out without any notice.”

“Do you plan to search for a replacement, now that Buddy is gone?”

“No,” I admitted. “I think a part of me still believes he will come back. I plan to leave his bed the way he left it.”

“And what way was that?”

“Messy,” I said, which had everyone, including myself, laughing for a moment.

Then a door on the side of the room opened, and several more of them walked in, carrying cameras and microphones. Some very good-looking ones approached me, and—whispering in my ear—offered outrageous sums for the chance to record the remainder of my interview. Obviously I agreed. I even signed the contracts with my own pen.

“Now,” they said, “Did you two have a conversation while he performed his jumping jacks?”

“No,” I said. “I knew enough not to disturb him when he exercised.
However, when he was finished, he came and sat at the edge of my bed and leaned over me.”

“The memory must be chilling now, considering what he was doing only hours later.”

“I thought it was nice of him to devote time out of his busy day to me. While I pretended to sleep, he whispered a song in my ear. To interrupt him would have been a sin, his voice was so gorgeous.”

“Tell us the nature of the song,” they said.

“Well,” I said, “the melody was rather rudimentary, almost folksy. Were it not for the lyrics, it could have been a children's song. He sang, ‘Farewell endless toiling, farewell old shambling frame. I'm attending to my second self, reacquiring my good name. Please regard me joyfully, as you listen to me sing. I have an appointment in America, for to kiss the king's fat ring.' Then he went on to rhyme ‘atrocity' with ‘paucity,' which I thought especially clever.”

“And how did you interpret those lines?”

“I didn't,” I said. “I thought it was a spiritual.”

“Do you realize,” they said, “that he was spelling out exactly what he was going to do later that day? The fatalism in those farewells? The second self? The fat ring of the king? It couldn't be more obvious.”

“Well, now that you mention it, his words do seem a bit prophetic. Maybe Buddy was trying to warm me, in his own way. He was quite a man.” My heart ached a little for him just then.

“Did you say warn, or warm?”

“I don't remember,” I said.

“In what way was he quite a man?”

“Well,” I said, “yesterday morning, after his jumping jacks and that apparently clue-ridden song, I opened my eyes just as he began disrobing. He stood there, in his glory, for several minutes, until I told him to get in the shower or risk getting me a little hot under the comforter. I'm sure you know how well-proportioned Buddy is—you have access to medical records, correct?”

“Yes, but this is news to us that the two of you had a relationship.”

“Oh, not at all,” I said. “We were perfect platonic roommates. Only it had been a good number of months since I'd had a chance to ravish someone, so I was definitely ready to go. I'm sure everyone here can relate.”

The room went silent. I looked down to see what I had written on my palm, but discovered that my pen had exploded—my hands were smeared all over with ink and nothing legible remained.

“We are,” they said, “so deeply saddened by the . . . events yesterday, that it seems impossible, at this moment, to either empathize or fail to be offended by your sentiment.”

“May I ask a favor?”

“You may.”

“I'm feeling a little tickle in my lungs as I talk, and if it isn't too much to ask, I'd like a towel to expel the culprit into.”

Then the door opened and one of them left. We all sat in silence. Some cried silently, shifting the cameras away from me and onto themselves, while into the cameras they mouthed the word “why?” over and over. Then the door opened again, and someone in white entered, making his way down the aisle. He placed the towel on the table. With a clean finger I drew it to the table's edge, picked it up, coughed several times into it, and then, when it was safely in my lap, used it to clean the ink.

“Better?” they said.

“I think so,” I said.

“Though it pains us to ask this,” they said, “you became aroused by Buddy's display?”

“That would be putting it lightly.”

“And though it perhaps breaches matters of good taste,” they said, “did you act on these feelings of arousal?”

“I touched myself beneath the covers after he entered the shower,” I said, which was a lie. In truth, I had taken him in the
shower, and he had cleaned every area unreachable to me. It was not the first time; we were practically strangers. It was just something we did once in a while.

“Do you value your life?” they asked.

“Certainly,” I said. “I'd like to accomplish many things before I die. I'd like to see a solar eclipse or perhaps the northern lights, and/or hunt a grizzly. There are others, but I don't imagine you're interested in them.”

“Does it worry you that, in light of these new revelations, you might be charged with aiding and abetting the perpetrator of this . . . ?”

“Those who charge me would be mistaken,” I said, and I was being truthful again. “He clearly led a double life. It's not so rare. But let me just say this, atrocity aside: the Buddy I knew was smart, intelligent, playful, funny, mischievous, playful, easy-going, sensitive, playful, and considerate.”

“What time did he exit the shower?”

“Nine-fifteen.”

“What time did he leave the apartment?”

“Around ten-thirty.”

“And the . . . , excuse us, was committed at eleven o' clock. Did you have any more interactions with him in the forty-five minutes after he left the shower and before he left the apartment?”

“Yes,” I said. “He dressed, put on his backpack, and stood beside the breakfast table where I sat watching television.”

“Do you remember what program you were watching?”

“It was the news.”

“And what was being reported?”

“Something certainly paling in comparison to the atrocity,” I said. Seeing that my use of the word really was affecting them, I just couldn't help myself anymore. “I apologize for using the word ‘atrocity,'” I said.

“Try to remember. Maybe something he was watching set him off.”

“They were reporting a story about a cat stuck in a tree. This happened in the ghetto, I think, and no fireman would try and save it because they feared the people who inhabited the ghetto. So for several days, and without the fire department's help, the ghetto-dwellers fed the cat by means of a long pole. ‘And for the time being,' the reporter concluded, ‘the cat is fat and happy on its perch.' The story was going to be continued the following day.” This was a complete lie. I could not remember what I was actually watching.

“Did he say anything to you while you sat at the table?”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, right before he left, he stood over me and put his hand on my shoulder and said—”

But before I could begin, the door opened once again, and another one of them came in. He was dressed like the others—nicely, in a crisp suit—and he whispered in the ear of the person nearest to him. Then the person who received the initial message whispered in the ear of the one closest to him, and so on and so on until the entire room sat up very straight and began to fidget.

“We apologize for interrupting,” they said, “but we have just received word that a lynch mob has broken into the jail and done unto Buddy what he has been clamoring for all day. Please continue, but do make it brief. We've lined up interviews with several mob members.”

I was not ready, at that moment, to begin considering what all of it meant. Buddy was a fine acquaintance, but was he something more? It was difficult to know. We were roommates, and then we were not. I ate several pieces of cheese. I took a long swallow of water. I looked down at my lap, where my inky fingers clutched the inky towel. I looked out over the restless crowd. They seemed to require something more. So I took a deep breath and said, “He put his hand on my shoulder and said, ‘Goodbye, dear roommate, I'm leaving this place, striking out for new country, settling the outer banks. Goodbye good roommate, I'll remember the long lost ribbon in your hair, playing gourd and hatchet in the gazebo long ago, oh
roommate of mine. Though we didn't even know each other, didn't know each other's minds. It's such a shame, that we might have lived for so long together and been ignorant of each other. I am feeling so mournful, so solemn, sweet roommate. I want to believe in the future, but I can't see beyond my watch. I want to bite from the essence, the true root. I want to ride through the city in a caravan at dawn. I want the drums to encircle me, the vultures to wheel over me. I want the bitter bile of betrayal to flee from me. I want the warm expansive language of joy to radiate around me. Recall, oh roommate, that fine fellow down the hall who used to show his skin to anyone who'd cross their eyes. Recall that evening sun that set golden, golden, golden, then red in the west. Recall how we once shared this dim corporeal property together. Goodbye my sweet devil with flies in your eyes, you who saw everything as it should be instead of as it was. May there be some noble path shining somewhere for you; may the Lord keep a nice nasty watch over you. And to all my sweet darlings plunging from rooftops, to all my good ghosts forever ascending fearless: goodbye.' Then Buddy left for the atrocity.” This was a bald lie, but it felt right somehow. As right as anything could, anyway, given the circumstances. Buddy had actually said nothing that morning, had really just abandoned me there at the table.

Lyrics: could it be john walking though that door / at long last our son is home from the war we all still strongly support it is him isn't it / come give us a kiss and a hug all around / don't forget me john I'm your sister and I love you / did you see the banner we hung across the lawn the one that said welcome home john we are proud of you the whole state of alabama is proud of you / that uniform is as pristine as the day you left us john it sure is spiffy / I kind of expected it to be speckled with our enemies' blood john why not / oh of course they let you wash it I wasn't thinking john forgive me / what was it like over there all we had were our imaginations / we understand you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to but did you get the care packages we sent / your mother worked so hard on those packages john in fact it cost us a fortune to ship all that food even though I tried to explain to her that it wasn't as if there weren't grocery stores where you were there were grocery stores weren't there john / did you get the letters I sent john did you get all those letters from my classmates there were a lot of them / you must have been busy john but we were hoping you would write once in a while but I'm sure you were too busy defending
and spreading freedom but none of that matters because you are home and the army can't legally force you to return for another tour and now you have some pocket money and college is waiting if that's what you still want to do / john wants to eat everyone gather around the table while we say a long and thankful prayer

Lyrics: before we all devour we have to give thanks to the man who is responsible for all of our business here who knows when you are sleeping and given to idleness and when you are supremely alert / we don't have much money never had much money / you could say that economic factors forced you into war but that would deny your individual choice dear john you understand you strong independent man son of mine / I guess you picked up the habit of not praying but just ask your sister she prays by her bedside every night and expects results so I don't think you can walk in here having forgotten all religion and expect us your dear family to understand when you deny the fact that jesus lord is upon you even when you least expect it / there are some principles which we all share surely you haven't forgotten the power of shared principles john you know you always carry the blood and beliefs of those who made you don't you john / I had a good day at school today yes we know honey but john is just freshly home from the war / here john have a piece of this steak you know how poor we are so it isn't everyday we eat steak but here take a piece of this and put it in your mouth it's tender isn't it / john likes that steak you can tell he likes it when he smiles that way / have another piece john you are too thin what did they feed you over there / you did not eat fear john is making a joke come on everyone laugh at john's joke / it's been a long time since we laughed in this house but we can laugh again with impunity because our boy the thing we made from scratch is here in the flesh and hungry