The Nearly Complete Works: Volume 3 by Donald Harington

Author:Donald Harington [Harington, Donald]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 9781611094381
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2012-11-20T05:00:00+00:00

Tinkle, tinkle, little pee.

How I wonder if I be.

If I be enough to keep,

I must pee before I sleep.

Fortunately for posterity, although the Questcamera’s eye will be shut, its ear will still be open and it will catch and remember this ditty, Latha’s sole contribution to the world of poetry.

Before the quilters will have given up their needles and returned to more manly pursuits, each of them will select and supervise the piecing of his own personal burial quilt, and Brian will take back with him to St. Louis a lovely quilt in the so-called crazy quilt pattern, which, he will be heard to maintain, is symbolic not only of his life but also of this book. Possibly he will not ever be buried in it, because it will not be too many more years before medical science, with some help from Vernon Ingledew, will eradicate death. Even before the total abolition of death, or rather the beginning of the universal program of voluntary leave-taking, medical science, again with some help from Vernon Ingledew and his co-conspirator Day Whittacker, will have discovered and perfected the age-reversal process, whereby everyone, if they will so choose, can grow younger instead of older. Latha will not so choose. Records will no longer be kept, but the Guinness Book will have gone out of print for years, and no one will know if Latha is the oldest woman on earth.

But as she will have said, she will outlive her creator, who, like Hank Ingledew and George Dinsmore and countless others, will breathe his last at the age of eighty-six. That last breath will be with difficulty, owing to pneumonia, which will have plagued him periodically for years and which took away his mentor, William Styron, in 2006. He will use that last breath to whisper into the ear of his beloved wife Kim his parting sentiments and also a reminder that Latha and the quilters will have already determined that the remainder of the Enduring book can be readily composed by the reader.

Some of those readers will have already turned out the light and tried to sleep. Others will first, before turning out the light, want to visit their bathrooms for the recitation of Latha’s ditty. Still others will insist that they want to remain awake long enough to read the story of a “visit” that Latha will receive, via the high technology senseophone, which enables us to feel literally in the presence of the caller. The woman will not be age-reversed and will appear to be as old as Latha herself. She will declare that her name is Rachel Rafferty, and that she had known Latha very well during her confinement to the Arkansas Lunatic Asylum.

“But,” Latha will protest, all of it coming back to her, “you aren’t real.”

“Who is?” Rachel will say. “But I must admit that this new senseophone my triple-great grandson gave me for Christmas makes you so real I could reach right out and touch you.”

“But,” Latha will say again.

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