Ghost of a Flea by James Sallis Read Free Book Online Page A

want the attention.”
    “ Gotta be it.”
    “My name’s Don Walsh. How you doing?”
    “Man, whatchu care? You the one did this. Now you goan come in here, ’pologize?”
    Don didn’t say anything more, just kept eye contact, his expression neutral. After a moment the kid said, “I’m okay, man. You know.” Then he looked away.
    “Yeah. Well, case you didn’t notice, I ain’t gonna be up dancing much sooner than you are.”
    “Won’t look near as good when you do , neither.”
    “That’s for damn sure…. You ever get tired of watching that TV?”
    “Sometimes. Mornings ’specially. Ain’t never much on then. News ’n’ shit, all them ol’ dudes in their richass suits.”
    “Could I get you some books or something?”
    “What the fuck’m I gonna do with books?”
    “Okay…. How about this, then? We’re both gonna be here awhile. You don’t mind, I could come over now and then, maybe a couple times a day, we could hang out.”
    “Why would you wanta do that?”
    “Hey, there’s not any more to do in my room than there is in yours. Nothing else, it’d help pass the time. We could talk.” Don glanced up at the TV. “Or just watch all these fine women.”
    “You wanta come, how’m I gonna stop you? Yeah. Yeah, I guess that be all right.”
    “Good.”
    Don motioned, and I started backing out the door. Just as I was about to swing the chair around, the kid said, “My name’s Derick. Derick Soames. Most ever’one calls me Jeeter, though.”
    “Good to meet you, Jeeter,” Don said. “This is Lew. You’re on the streets, he’s a good man to know.”
    “He is, huh, him and his richass suit. Why? He goan save me from getting myself punked by the like of you?” What might have been a laugh almost made it out of him. We started out the door again.
    “Don Walsh.”
    “Yeah?”
    “I did used to play some checkers, back when I was a kid.” Don nodded.
    “One more thing …”
    “Okay.”
    “You know where my tooth is?”

Chapter Nine
    THINGS ARE THE MIND’S mute looking glass, Walter de la Mare, another on the long list of forgotten writers, said. And Whitman, that things, objects, are a coherent world to themselves, the “dumb, beautiful ministers of reality.”
    Certainly they become that when you’re drunk. You watch for hours as shadows from a palm or banana tree toss heads, sway and sweep wings across the wall beside your bed, doing all the creative things you should be doing. Towels tossed on the floor by the tub suddenly seem to harbor both great beauty and codes never before suspected, kennings just beyond reach, the towels’ folds and convolutions catching up, as a phonograph record does sound, those of your own mind.
    Drinking also maroons you without provisions on the island of self. Like most other promises it makes, alcohol’s vow of kinship, that it will bridge your life to others, smooth the way, proves false. Fooled again: you’re alone. The path remains treacherous—stones in your passway, as Robert Johnson would say. And not another footprint on the whole island.
    Emerson: Wherever we go, whatever we do, self is the sole object we study and learn. A solipsism that America took to its clanky, pragmatic heart not as philosophy but as operator’s manual. Humanism was from the first, of course, a matchless arrogance. And American individualism was humanism writ large, not just arrogant but colossally arrogant: Emerson’s “infinitude of the private man” turned out for the masses like bins of polyester shirts marked down for quick sale, durable, practical, all but indestructible, unlovely.
    Still and well enough, there on your island of Scotch or gin, palm trees swaying, mind become this curious suspension bridge built from scraps of driftwood and salvage, everything remains fraught with meaning. Whitman also wrote
    To me the converging objects of the universe perpetually flow,
    All are written to me, and I must get what the writing means
    and I have to wonder