The Living End by Stanley Elkin

Author:Stanley Elkin
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781564783424
Publisher: Dalkey Archive Press
Published: 1979-04-15T05:00:00+00:00

“He’s telling them tales,” the caretaker reported to his wife.

“You boys get away from there,” Quiz said. “That’s hallowed ground.”

They play in cemeteries now, he thought, and tried to imagine a world where children had to play in cemeteries—death parks. (Not until he asked was he disabused of his notion that there had actually been a war. What disturbed him—it never occurred to him, as it had never occurred to the boys, that the war was never for his benefit—were his feelings when he still thought there had actually been a battle—feelings of pride in the shared victory, of justification at the punishment meted out to the invaders from Minneapolis. All these years dead, he thought, all those years in Hell, and still not burned out on his rooter’s interest, still glowing his fan’s supportive heart, still vulnerable his puny team spirit. All those years dead, he thought, and still human. Nothing learned, death wasted on him.)

But a world where children could play in cemeteries and nuzzle at his little tit of death. He shuddered. He who could feel nothing, less tactile than glass, his flesh and bone and blood amputated, a spirit cap-side by a loose bundle of pencils, buttons, thread, nevertheless had somewhere somehow something in reserve with which to shudder, feel qualms, willies, jitter, tremor, the mind’s shakes, all its disinterested, volitionless flinch. And at what? Sociology, nothing but sociology. Who had lived in Hell and seen God and who had, it was to be supposed, a mission. Who represented final things, ultimates, whose destiny it was to fetch bottom lines. A sentimental accomplice, an accessory gone soft. (For he’d felt nothing when the bullet sang which had dropped his pal, Ellerbee, felt nothing for the people—he’d have been a teenager then—at whose muggings he’d assisted, felt nothing presiding at the emptying of wallets, cash drawers, pockets—he had quick hands, it was his kind of work, he was good at it—and once, on a trolley commandeered by his fellows actually belly to belly with the conductor, quickly depressing the metal whosis of the terrified man’s change dispenser, lithely catching the coins in his free hand and rapidly transferring dimes to one pocket, quarters, nickels and pennies to others.)

But he had not gone soft. Remorse was not his line of country, no more than sociology. A question plagued him. Not why children played in cemeteries but where the officials were who permitted it. Where, he wondered, was the man who said “Oatcakes”? Or the fellow who’d led the boys in war games? He was outraged that, exiled in earth, appearances had not been kept up. He could imagine the disorder of his grave—candy wrappers, popsicle sticks, plugs of gum on his gravestone. He wanted it naked, the litter cleared. It was his fault for talking to them in the first place. He’d dummy up.

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