Fra Keeler Read online

  “They don’t take much,” I said as though I were speaking from my chin, because I was holding my head up high and looking down at him and it was difficult to move my lips while holding my face in that manner. But he didn’t say much in return, so I said, “They’re easy to take care of, especially in this weather.” He just nodded his head yes, like he was still deep in thought, and I couldn’t tell anymore if he was thinking about the plants or about the thing he had wanted to say but had never said. And then he climbed into his truck, and I caught a glimpse of his hand releasing the brake, of his foot pressing the gas, a limp foot on the accelerator. I saw his arm go up and I followed the crease of his shirt from his shoulder down to his hand. He was waving goodbye. What a fat hand, I thought from the doorway, because I had stepped backward into it now. With his limp foot he pressed on the accelerator and did an about-turn with the truck and left.

  “What a strange man,” I said to myself, and closed the door and the living room darkened. I looked up at the ceiling, a high ceiling with a dusty skylight. I debated for a second whether I should dust the skylight or just let it be what it wanted to be: a surface for dust to settle on, a dust town. I decided it was better off the way it was and let it be. Anything that’s been a certain way for long enough is difficult to alter, and any alterations to it could be interpreted as nothing short of a manipulation, either by the thing being altered or by the person doing the alteration, even if all you’re talking about is dusting a skylight, I thought, and went back into the kitchen. The papers were still strewn about on the floor as they had been ten minutes ago when I had gotten up to open the door. I walked over them, one leg then the other, carefully; I didn’t want to step on them. But then the room started to turn again, ever so slightly. Curse of the kitchen, I thought, or these papers, and then the blood rushed out of my brain and returned again, a mere second later. It occurred to me that this time I could have gone dizzy because of the skylight. Or more precisely because of my thoughts about the skylight. It always makes me queasy to think of manipulation as a general category, I thought, and bent over to pick up some of the papers. Maybe if I stack them, I thought, and managed to stack the papers without the blood swirling again in my brain. When I bent down to stack the papers, I thought the sensation I had had in my brain earlier was the same sensation I had once felt when I shook a pomegranate near my ear. Or, not exactly a sensation, but a sound. That when I shook the pomegranate it had made the same sound as the sound my blood made when it swiveled in my brain, and that both sounds led to the same sensation: of something having dissolved where it shouldn’t have. I went over the memory, from when I picked up the pomegranate to when I shook it near my ear: I had squeezed the pomegranate by rolling it, had pressed into it with my thumbs, juiced it without cracking it open, because it’s the only way to juice a pomegranate without any special machines. All the juice was swiveling about inside the shell of the pomegranate, channeling its way around the seeds the way river water channels itself around driftwood. When I put the pomegranate down I could still hear the juice working its way around the seeds that were dead without their pulp. I had squeezed the pomegranate till the pulp was dead. I could invent a machine to juice pomegranates, I thought, and not just pomegranates but persimmons too, some very basic, cheap tool people could use in their homes, and then I imagined a thousand people, all wearing their house slippers, juicing their pomegranates and persimmons for breakfast, and I thought, never mind, no doubt someone has already invented it. I took the stack of papers that I had collected off the floor, along with the package, and placed them on the counter. To one side, I thought, to one side to be done with them.

  I decided to open the package the mailman had delivered. I went over to the stove, because that’s where I keep my butter knives, right next to the stove, and I wanted to use one so I wouldn’t have to bother peeling the tape off the box, because it bothers me to watch the skin of the box come off with the tape. It’s a death worse than the pomegranate’s, to be skinned alive. But then again, it’s just a box, I thought, and not a person, and if I wanted to I could go on like that forever, about all the different mechanisms of dying, all its nooks and crannies; I could create some kind of death pyramid, and there would be a pyramid for each object, and every kind of person too, and from top to bottom I would figure out the range of deaths each thing or person could suffer, from unlikeliest to likeliest cause of death and be done with it once and for all. Then I told myself either to shut up or drop dead and took a drink of water from the sink and looked out the window.

  But my heart stopped because it was a clear day and I could see the trees, very round and close. Somewhere in the back of my brain I heard the door of the yurt creak shut. Suddenly there was a faint smell of rust in the air and I could hear the hinges on the door creaking, but I couldn’t see the yurt. Everything dimmed in the peripheries, the way everything dims when the sun gets blocked by clouds, and its rays are cut off, instantly. I looked around. There wasn’t a rusty nail or old hinge anywhere near me and as soon as I thought this the smell faded, retreated back into whatever mystery it had emerged from. I was beginning to grow dizzy again, and thought, the oxygen in my brain is being sucked out by whatever is on the other side of that door, and then his name crept up, Fra Keeler, but I managed to push it down because I remembered the mailman looking at the plants sidelong, and then his name crept up and I managed to push it down, pink and happy as a shrimp that mailman, I thought, and then his name crept up again, sidelong, and I felt compelled to stare at the trees because in addition to oxygen trees are supposed to give you peace and quiet, and maybe that’s what the mailman was thinking when he was staring at the plants sidelong. “They really do accomplish their objectives,” I said to myself, those trees, and his name crept up, because the leaves on the branches are good to look at, bristling in the breeze, shivering—giving a small shudder and then staying still—and his name crept up, and I remembered the butter knife and grabbed it and walked back over to the package and pressed the knife against the tape just like I had wanted to, and sliced the tape through and the flaps opened and I pushed them down, wings of an underdeveloped bird, I thought, and his name crept up.

  Inside the package there was a bright pink flyer. Nothing pushes things out of the mind like reading, I thought, and read the flyer. Welcome to Ancestry.com, it said, his name didn’t creep up, but something else did, something old and stale, a thing like a worm; not a worm itself, but shaped like a worm that had died inside me and that I needed to throw up. But I couldn’t throw it up because I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what it was, and I thought the hell with this, the hell with the package and the flyer and decided to go out to buy some beans because one can never have enough beans in storage. I grabbed my jacket and stepped out, but the sky darkened in a strange flash and it was purple instead of blue and I thought I don’t need the beans after all and turned around to go back inside. But just as I stepped through the doorway I heard the voice of the mailman behind me. He was saying something about the nature of plants, but I couldn’t quite make it out—that they were sensitive or prickly or a combination of both—and I turned around to see what it was he was saying, but it was dark, because the sky had gone purple, and my eyes were still adjusting so I couldn’t see anything. When my eyes adjusted I saw that no one was there; just pitch silence and the sky, vast and heavy as a rock.

  I stepped back inside, swung the door shut and turned the lock. I looked up at the skylight: it hadn’t changed, not a trace of purple, and I thought, it’s dirty … it’s too dusty … but I didn’t want to have any redundant thoughts so I didn’t look at the skylight for long. I just stepped inside the kitchen, very matter-of-factly because that is how you move on. I went straight to the package and picked up the flyer and placed it face down on the countertop, and I thought it strange that a Web-based company would be using regular mail to introduce itself, and the thoughts about the skylight were gone. I dug further into the package.

  Under
the flyer there was a series of instruction manuals. I flipped through the pages, not one by one, but the way you would shuffle a deck of cards, using your thumb and index finger, so that all the numbers go flying by and start to blend together because you see the six so quickly after the nine, or the jack of clubs so quickly after the queen of hearts, and so on. At any rate, I flipped through the first manual this way. How many manuals could the company need to explain its services, I thought. And out of the corner of my eyes I caught the words flying and put them together in my head to make a sentence because some words organize themselves predictably into sentences. What they were getting at was a list of suggestions. How to determine who would be the most lucrative person with whom to start your research. It seemed the ancestor with the most public life would yield the most information, because I saw the words public life so soon after the word yield, and by a public life it seemed they meant a life at the center of which there was a war, because then a list of wars flew by, right under my eyes, from the Civil War to the First and Second World Wars, and the Vietnam and Gulf Wars too, and I thought, these people, whoever they are, are obsessed, there’s more to a public life than wars, and dumped the manual in the trash and closed the lid on it.

  2. The phone rang persistently. I let it ring a few times. Imagine, I thought, the possibilities on the other end. Another seed, all of this leading to Fra Keeler. Fra Keeler, I thought, and his name did an about-turn in my mind. I reached for the receiver. Death, I thought, it is so sudden. I picked up the receiver. One minute, I thought, one is going along, “Hello,” I said, and the next, there is nothing with which to do one’s going along, because one is horizontal somewhere, or lying dead in a pit, “Hello,” I said again, but there was no one on the other end, or floating downstream in a river, I said, “Hello,” one minute, I thought, and the next; it must be the mailman, stubborn horse of a caller.

  But why would he be calling me? The mailman. I glanced over at the package. The wars, I thought, the mailman. And the wars spun in my brain like numbers in a lottery bowl, blasphemy, I thought, the mailman. He must have seen me throw the wars in the trashcan. And it wasn’t only him who could see me, I thought, because with my mind’s eye I could see him, sitting on a solitary chair holding the receiver with his fat hand. “Hello,” I said, and thought, his hand is like a boiled lobster. “Are you calling about the wars,” I thought to ask, but there was no one on the other end. Not a word out of his mouth. “Cat got your tongue,” I said to him, “Mr. Mailman.” And my ears got hot. I cursed him: “Dumb as a lobster,” I said, “you are, Mr. Mailman,” and hung up the receiver.

  A minute later the phone rang. This time I picked up right away, half a ring, nothing more, and heard a clicking noise on the other end. An automated voice came on: “Welcome to Ancestry.com,” it said, and I said, “Thank you,” and hung up the receiver. And then the phone rang. I picked up right away, half a ring, nothing more, a load of white noise on the other end, “Welcome,” the voice said, and I felt my mouth fat and milky around my tongue. I thought goats, a thousand goats, walking across my mind, milk the goats, I thought, and they kept walking across my mind. “Welcome to Ancestry.com,” said the voice, and I thought what the hell is this, and I threw the receiver against the wall and then the phone rang, two rings, nothing more. I picked up, “Welcome to Ancestry.com,” the voice said, “Press one.” I said, “You piece of shit mailman,” and heard the words come out of my mouth. “Welcome to Ancestry.com,” said the voice, I hung up, and then the phone rang.

  “How can we assist you?” It was a real person now.

  “Thank you,” I said. The mailman, I thought, playing games with me now.

  “We would be happy to be of assistance if you have any questions,” he said, “sir,” he said, swallowing to smooth out his voice.

  “Assistance, sir,” I said, “I think I’m fine.”

  “In the event that your research is not progressing at an acceptable rate,” he said, “sir,” picking up force in his voice now.

  What madness is this, I thought. “Thank you,” I said, and hung up the receiver.

  And then the phone rang, two rings, nothing more, “Press one,” it said, the voice, and then the phone rang. And I thought, the mailman, the goats, the trashcan, the wars, and the voice started again, “Welcome to Ancestry.com.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Sir, thank you.” It was a real person now.

  “We would be happy to be of assistance if you have any questions,” he said, “sir,” swallowing now.

  “Assistance, sir?” I asked.

  “Yes,” he said, “in the event that,” and he was getting ready to increase the force in his voice and then the phone rang. “Welcome to Ancestry.com,” it said, and I thought what madness is this, and the wars started spinning faster in my brain, a long list of wars flattened against the sides of my brain. And I thought: it hurts: the words, and then the phone rang and my blood was boiling so I threw the phone against the wall and shattered the receiver, and I thought the hell with this, the hell with the seeds and the connections, and crawled onto the couch and went to sleep.

  In my dream I could see the receiver. At first it was huge, monumental. I felt my eyes were inside my brain, small as pearls. Then slowly my eyes got bigger. The size of marbles and then a pair of dice, they rolled back into my sockets, and it was as though my eyes had their backs to the receiver, so that the receiver got smaller and smaller, until it was tiny, curved like the tail of a lobster and I was very far away, with my eyes in the right place looking out of my brain. Then it faded. The receiver faded and my eyes rolling around the receiver faded and it was all world again and I was just a person in it looking out of my brain: I was in a theater. There was a woman on stage. There were red lights in the background; they cast a dull, pinkish hue over the stage. She said “Come closer,” the woman on the stage, and I thought she said “Fra Keeler,” but I couldn’t be sure so I got up and walked closer. It was dark, even under the pink light in the theater, and an acid smell took over, then it was her face, and she said, “Come closer,” and I thought she said “Fra Keeler,” and I walked closer, and she said, “You did this,” pointing at her face, and I said, “No, no I didn’t,” because I could see her face was burnt. Hardly anything left of it. And she said, “You did this,” as she continued to point at her face, and I thought, this is a monologue, she is performing, and then again she said, “You did this,” pointing at her face, and I said, “No, no I didn’t, you did this to yourself,” and then she covered her face with a black cloth and walked off stage, and I thought, it’s mother talking to me in my dreams. I wanted the curtains to go down so I said “Curtains” but they wouldn’t go down, and all I could hear was, “You did this, you were the one who did this to me,” and I woke up and immediately drew the curtains and outside everything was as calm as a sparrow—the sun, the trees, the grass, the mailboxes: it was a new day.

  I opened the door and stepped out onto the sidewalk. The dream, it was a flash in the pan, just an instance. I stared at the sidewalk, the plants, all in a row in the soil. I thought of the mailman, his pink, happy face staring at the plants, and the word sidelong inched its way toward me like a worm. Plants, I remembered thinking, they are good to look at, and I had thought this ahead of him, the mailman, because he had said something to that effect shortly afterward. Ideas get in the air, I thought, and looked up and saw the mailman down the street knocking on someone’s door. He knocked on the door for quite some time. I know because I stood there for a while, long enough for the word sidelong to inch its way toward my foot and crawl up my pant leg too. And for a moment there were two mailmen: the mailman as I remembered him staring at the plants, and the mailman knocking on the neighbor’s door, until the first of the two images faded, and adjusted into one mailman, mailman supreme, with his fat lobster hand knocking on the neighbor’s door. What a clear day, I thought, looking down the street toward the mailman. Any more sunlight and everything would have been whitewashed. I could se
e clearly. The mailman down the street, his boiled hand, and I took a step toward him, and I could have taken another hundred, and then someone answered his knocking, and the door swung wide open, and his hand did a cartwheel where the door was. I was still very disoriented from my dream—“you did this,” her voice echoed, drumming against the sides of my brain—and then his hand came back down to rest by his side.

  I wasn’t very far away down the block. I had taken a few steps and could have taken a few more. There was an old lady standing in the doorway where the mailman’s hand had been. She was standing in the doorway holding a candle in broad daylight. I took a step closer, and with all my steps accumulated I was two thirds of the way down the block now. Her entire house was pitch dark, and I thought, it’s the dark ages, it’s the dark ages through her doorway. Her hand trembled. I took a step closer to see if there were any red lights in the background, but there weren’t any, and I thought, upstairs, there could be a reddish light upstairs, and I leaned over to see. I could see the edge of her staircase. There was a glimmer of white light, then the old lady handed the candle to the mailman and with two free hands took the package in exchange. “You have to sign for it,” said the mailman. “Yes, sir, I have to sign for it,” she said, and put the package down by her feet. I could see the mailman was very pleased; his whole posture relaxed when she signed for it. Then he handed her the candle, “A shame to be out of lights,” he said, and she said, “Yes, indeed.” I could hear their entire exchange. With all my steps having accumulated I was very close behind them. The mailman turned around to take his leave so that suddenly we were two men face-to-face. I thought, what a great frame, the mailman with the door shut behind him, and the old lady on the other side of the door with her candle and her package by her feet. Then I looked straight at the mailman because there was no escaping the situation.