Not Dead Yet by Herbert Gold

Author:Herbert Gold
Language: nld
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcade Publishing
Published: 2011-04-04T04:00:00+00:00

As children, we slept in twin beds in the same room. We took turns telling stories to each other at night, the usual ones—flying over houses to escape monsters, swimming under seas to find lost continents, battling in jungles for justice or for our lives. When we were told by our mother to be quiet, tomorrow was a school day, we continued in whispers. I frightened him or he frightened me, and then we faded into the miracle of sleep, continuing our adventures without companionship because that's the way the world often was.

This busy dreaming may have set us permanently into the storytelling mode. Although the stories go on and on, some find ways to end them and he never did. His dreams wandered the skies and swam the seas and gazed at monsters and never reached a state of mere meditation upon the partial wholeness of the world. That acceptance of shapely incompleteness is the paradox of finishing. For him, nothing ever finished.

I remembered something of the spirit of our sleepy adventures when it came time to tell stories for my children. They also liked to walk with him and listen to his ramble, his explorations, his far-fetched dartings into anecdote and fabulous inventions, sometimes ending in bursts of unexpected laughter. They made links where he made none, or perhaps they didn't need links, since the adventures were exotic and his grin was reassuring. “Did that really happen to you, Uncle Sid?”

“What do you think?”

“Well, maybe…”

“So that's why I'm telling you.” And they preferred that it did happen; the sea lion must really have carried him under the ice, it was much better to think so.

Among his papers were photographs, faded brown, of the two of us in short pants, probably three and four years old, sitting proud in a cart pulled by a goat. In our hearts we were fighter pilots, or perhaps fighter goat riders. I am holding the reins. Surely both our mother and the proprietor of the goat and the cart are standing nearby, begging these solemn boys to smile. But we have our own intentions, we don't smile. This is our serious business, too important for us to waste energy listening to a mother and a gypsy with a goat. I'm sure Sid wants to hold the reins. I'm not sure if I let him.

Our youngest brother, calling with the news, had cleared his throat and said: “Sid passed.” Something mysterious had happened, and I hated that he was telephoning from Cleveland to pronounce this verb without a direct object. I was irritated by the language, but maybe passed was the right word anyway. It's familiar habit in families—the words “familiar” and “family” are close relatives and often as troublesome with each other as close relatives are—to fall into patterns of vexation.

When our mother caught us fighting (translation: I was beating Sid up), she reached for the telephone and asked for the police department. “Hello, Officer Cecil? I have a very bad boy here.” Next I would be going to jail, and it would serve me right.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.