Ironweed

What Francis recalled of this unmanageable situation was the compulsion to flight, the most familiar notion, after the desire not to aspire, that he had ever entertained. And after searching, as swiftly as he knew how, for his lost digital joints, and after concluding that they had flown too deeply into the dust and the weeds ever to be retrieved again by any hand of any man, and after pausing also, ever so briefly, for a reco

He found his way to a freight yard, found there an empty boxcar with open door, and so entered into yet another departure from completion: the true and total story of his life thus far. It was South Bend before he got to a hospital, where the intern asked him: Where’s the finger? And Francis said: In the weeds. And how about the nose? Where’s that piece of the nose? If you’d only brought me that piece of the nose, we might be able to put it back together and you wouldn’t even know it was gone.

All things had ceased to bleed by then, and so Francis was free once again from those deadly forces that so frequently sought to sever the line of his life.

He had stanched the flow of his wound.

He had stood staunchly irresolute in the face of capricious and adverse fate.

He had, oh wondrous man, stanched death its very self.

o o o

Francis dried his face with the towel, buttoned up his shirt, and put on his coat and trousers. He noddçd an apology to Rowdy Dick for having taken his life and included in the nod the hope that Dick would understand it hadn’t been intentional. Rowdy Dick smiled and doffed his cap, creating an eruption of brilliance around his dome. Francis could see the line of Dick’s cranial fracture ru

“You all right in there, Francis?” Helen called. “Who are you talking to?”

Francis waved to Rowdy Dick, understanding that some debts of violence had been settled, but he remained full of the awareness of rampant martyrdom surrounding him: martyrs to wrath, to booze, to failure, to loss, to hostile weather. Aldo Campione gestured at Francis, suggesting that while there may be some inconsistency about it, prayers were occasionally answerable, a revelation that did very little to improve Francis’s state of mind, for there had never been a time since childhood when he knew what to pray for.

“Hey bum,” he said to Jack when he stepped out of the bathroom, “how about a bum gettin’ a drink?”

“He ain’t no bum,” Clara said.

“Goddamn it, I know he ain’t,” Francis said. “He’s a hell of a man. A workin’ man.”

“How come you shaved?” Helen asked.

“Gettin’ itchy. Four days and them whiskers grow back inside again.”

“It sure improves how you look,” Clara said.

“That’s the truth,” said Jack.

“I knew Francis was handsome,” Clara said, “but this is the first time I ever saw you clean shaved.”

“I was thinkin’ about how many old bums I know died in the weeds. Wake up covered with snow and some of ‘em layin’ there dead as hell, froze stiff. Some get up and walk away from it. I did myself. But them others are gone for good. You ever know a guy named Rowdy Dick Doolan in your travels?”

“Never did,” Jack said.

“There was another guy, Pocono Pete, he died in Denver, froze like a brick. And Poocher Felton, he bought it in Detroit, pissed his pants and froze tight to the sidewalk. And a crazy bird they called Ward Six, no other name. They found him with a red icicle growin’ out of his nose. All them old guys, never had nothin’, never knew nothin’, stupid, thievin’, crazy. Foxy Phil Tooker, a ski

“I believe when you’re dead you go in the ground and that’s the end of it,” Jack said. “Heaven never made no sensicality to me whatsoever.”

“You wouldn’t get in anyhow,” Helen said. “They’ve got your reservations someplace else.”

“Then I’m with him,” Clara said. “Who’d want to be in heaven with all them nuns? God what a bore.”

Francis knew Clara less than three weeks, but he could see the curve of her life: sexy kid likes the rewards, goes pro, gets restless, marries and makes kids, chucks that, pro again, sickens, but really sick, gettin’ old, gettin’ ugly, locks onto Jack, turns monster. But she’s got most of her teeth, not bad; and that hair: you get her to a beauty shop and give her a marcel, it’d be all right; put her in new duds, high heels and silk stockin’s; and hey, look at them titties, and that leg: the skin’s clear on it.

Clara saw Francis studying her and gave him a wink. “I knew a fella once, looked a lot like you. I had the hots for him.”

“I’ll bet you did,” Helen said.

“He loved what I gave him.”

“Clara never lacked for boyfriends,” Jack said. “I’m a lucky man. But she’s pretty sick. That’s why you can’t stay. She eats a lot of toast.”

“Oh I could make some toast,” Helen said, standing up from her chair. “Would you like that?”

“If I feel like eatin’ I’ll make my own toast,” Clara said. “And I’m gettin’ ready to go to bed. Make sure you lock the door when you go out.”

Jack grabbed Francis by the arm and pulled him toward the kitchen, but not before Francis readjusted his vision of Clara sitting in the middle of her shit machine, sending up a silent reek from her ruined guts and their sewerage.

o o o

When Jack and Francis came back into the living room Francis was smoking one of Jack’s cigarettes. He dropped it as he reached for the wine, and Helen groaned.

“Everything fallin’ on the floor,” Francis said. “I don’t blame you for throwin’ these bums out if they can’t behave respectable.”

“It’s gettin’ late for me,” Jack said. “I used to get by on two, three hours’ sleep, but no more.”

“I ain’t stayed here in how long now?” Francis asked. “Two weeks, ain’t it?”

“Oh come on, Francis,” Clara said. “You were here not four days ago. And Helen last night. And last Sunday you were here.”

“Sunday we left,” Helen said.

“I flopped here two nights, wasn’t it?” Francis said.