They let him lie down in a bedroom until dinner. No attempt, strangely, to remove his muddy clothing and make him take a shower. Too afraid of him, perhaps.
His eyes the deepest sinkholes, caverns of ache, falling through to the backside of his head. Nose completely blocked, as usual, and throat raw from breathing through his mouth. He has trouble swallowing, and it’s not possible to have the next breath until after swallowing. A kind of panic, trying to clear that tiny passage. His life passing through the smallest hole. All we are is breath, and he can never get one.
And thoughts, without end, his head never turning off. So tired they jump everywhere, his practice in Fairbanks at a standstill, patients all having their appointments postponed, over and over, death for a practice. He was going to bring on another dentist before he left, but the few he interviewed could tell. They knew he was not well.
And the ranch, whether the IRS will get it, whether he’ll ever see it again, the feeling of hot air coming up the lower glades, blowing against his face and the hairs on his arms, pure pleasure, seeing the patterns in grass, swirls and eddies from several hundred yards approaching, closest sense of god visiting us. His father standing there fat and hidden away but perhaps feeling the same pleasure. Who can know? His father grew up on a farm in another time, only ten years after the first flight, long before TV and when the moon was only myth, not something that could be reached, and certainly not by a halibut. His father peeled potatoes, woke before daylight, ran traplines. What else?
Each of them a collection of myths but the gaps between the stories are enormous. Even what he knows of himself, even that is mostly gap, mostly unknown. Mary ignores every gap, forces a continuous story, one that all makes sense because it can’t do otherwise, and to Gary it has never occurred that there is a story or not, and his children are the center still of every story and can’t imagine any gaps yet, but they will when their father is gone. Jim’s problem is that he can’t enter his life, and he will pass along this problem.
What he needs is to jack off. The only time he can forget breathing and thinking. So he gets up, groaning, and reaches to the bottom of his duffel for one of his Hustlers.
The women are helping put out a fire, wearing large red firemen’s helmets and little else, handling hoses in ways that don’t seem focused on the task at hand. One is squatting down, her lips butterflied, and she looks so perfect, some airbrushed visitation from Mars or the pearly gates. A god he can believe in, Pussydon, god of the seas within us, endless water for any fire. Two of the women are having a water fight, nipples showing through wet, white T-shirts, hoses spurting into the air, and one of them is sitting on a thick dick, her leg held out to the side.
Jim’s dick feels so satiny and soft, but the light touch is only at first. He squeezes then, really as hard as he can, and likes the ache of that, and then he’s pumping beyond what’s comfortable, because it’s so difficult to come now. It used to be easy. He used to try not to come. But now he has to yank as fast as he can, so fast his shoulder freezes up and the end of his dick burns, and when he comes there’s so little to show, dried up from doing it too often. Purple and swollen all around the head of his penis, bruised, painful, and the skin below that torn a bit, just very small tears no more than a couple millimeters, but they sting. Jim is out of breath, gasping from the effort, not from pleasure. He feels so little pleasure now, only need.
He wonders whether he was loud enough for anyone to hear. He uses a tissue to clean the tiny bit of come, stuffs his Hustler back down into the duffel bag, and tries again to rest or even sleep. How amazing it would be to just sleep. His heart hammering still, his arm and shoulder and dick all pulsing, his head spiraling in pain. Smell of video porn booths, that smell that comes from jacking off several times without a shower between, something the semen does to rot and transform. When do the good moments come, the ones worth living for? When are they supposed to be? He needs to talk with Rhoda, needs a plan for how to get through this evening, because right now it feels impossible.
So he takes a shower. At least that’s productive. Muddy clothing crusted and flaking on the tile floor, and he steps naked into water too hot and steaming, feels his skin burn, watches it turn red, keeps having to step out of the stream and then goes back, wants immolation but not dry. Hot water one of the purest pleasures, but just a few degrees hotter and everything changes.
He can’t endure. He has to turn the temp down, and it feels good to go all the way to cold, because his skin is superheated now, residual cooking, but then he’s coughing, weak from no sleep, and he turns off the water, grabs a towel that is too old and rough, has to pat himself dry carefully. It hurts too much to rub.
He leans his head out the door and yells, “Hey can I borrow pants and a shirt?”
Why bother getting dressed at all? The daily actions, the routines, he hates the whole circus. How many meals has he eaten? A thousand every year, at least, so forty thousand times chewing through what mostly was unwanted, only necessary, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, pasta, canned soup, some dry piece of meat, and how many times taking a shit? Maybe fifteen thousand times? A hundred thousand pisses? Taking clothes on or off at least thirty thousand times.
And how many swallows, how many breaths? Mostly we are machines, working pieces of meat.
A soft knock and Mary’s voice, wavering: “I have a pair of Gary’s jeans here, Jim, and one of his shirts.” So he opens the door, standing there in his towel, and she doesn’t look at him, just holds her hand out, head turned away, and he takes the clothing, closes the door again.
Soft old clothing, worn jeans and flannel shirt, too big for him. Smell of detergent.
He walks out like a shrunken old man no longer fitting his previous self. Something diminished and barefoot.
“We have to get you some socks,” Mary says. “And slippers.”
“I need to call Rhoda,” Jim says. He’s in the hallway at the edge of the living room. Mary has disappeared for the socks, but Gary and David and Tracy are all watching him.
“That’s not a good idea,” Gary finally says.
“I need a plan,” Jim says. “How to get through the evening.”
He doesn’t like that David and Tracy are hearing this, but there’s nothing else he can do.
“Everything’s fine,” Gary says. “We’re just going to have some dinner here. And maybe we can play pinochle after.”
“The plan’s not like that.”
“Well what kind of plan then?”
Jim feels the enormity, the impossibility. Why does he ever think there can be a plan?
“Can we play pinochle now?” David asks.
“Okay,” Jim says. He will try not to scare his children.
The dinner table is already set, so they use a folding card table, brown, just like the one Jim has up in Fairbanks. Same brown folding chairs, plastic over metal. He will kill himself at his card table. If it happens when he’s back up in Alaska, that’s where he always sits. No other furniture. So he’ll be in a chair just like this, at a table identical, the .44 magnum resting on it, loaded, and he’ll be talking with Rhoda on the phone. He’ll call her and she’ll probably be at work, or with her new boyfriend, or otherwise busy, and she won’t be able to hear him well. He’ll say, “I love you but I won’t live without you.” Or maybe “can’t” instead of “won’t,” because really is it any choice? And she won’t hear and he’ll have to repeat it, all things made small in the end, the utter lack of dignity on our way out, and then he’ll pull the trigger and much of his head and blood will be instantly on the ceiling and walls but he won’t have to see it, won’t have to see or feel or know anything else ever again. All suffering gone in an instant, and so why has he delayed?
Gary deals him cards in threes, and this seems right. Nothing clear in life. You’d never be dealt a single card, always two other ways you might go. He arranges them by suit, has more diamonds than anything else, only one heart, his life with money and no love, and this is both a weak hand and a strong hand, no help to his partner but he might take the lead. Is anything neutral? Can cards just be cards? What will it be like on the other end of the phone? What will the gunshot sound like, and will there be dripping afterward, pieces of him raining from the ceiling? Will she ever answer a phone to that ear again? And will his death become more important than the death of her parents, or will that murder and suicide remain primary?
“Your bid,” Gary says.
But Jim hasn’t heard anything. “Where is it at?” he asks.
“Twenty-seven to you.”
“Twenty-seven then.”
David is his partner across the table, eager, watching him. He must have already bid once, which means he has at least a helping hand.
“It’s to you,” Gary says, but Jim has missed the bids again, has no idea what anyone has said. Mary standing there holding her cards in one hand, not sitting because she’s still prepping the food.
“I’ll bid,” Jim says. “Whatever the next number is.” Not one of them has ever done this in their entire family history of pinochle, but it seems to work fine, and Jim ends up with the bid. “Diamonds,” he says, and he notices that Tracy is sitting close beside him, watching his hand. He puts an arm around her. “Do you think we’ll make it?” he asks her.
She smiles and bounces on her seat in response, but no words, which is fine with Jim. He’d like everyone to stop using words.
David passes four cards. The missing ten is there for the run, and even the two aces he needed, but Jim does not feel excited. He lays down the run and aces to pleased bobbing and expression from everyone, which gives him a moment to hide. He can play pinochle without thinking, passing losers to David, picking up his cards again, and playing out the lead ace as he has always done in how many thousands of hands, then his singleton ace of hearts, then the queen of diamonds to flush the higher trump, all ordered, and why have they played this for so many years? Were they really not able to come up with anything else to fill the time? Is everyone in fact on the edge of suicide all their lives, having to get through the day with card games and TV and meals and so many routines, all meant to avoid any moment of coming face-to-face with a self that is not there?