Timequake - Kurt Vonnegut [38]
What Trout had failed to extrapolate from the premise of the timequake and rerun, in the relative peace of the far end of West 155th Street, was that everybody for miles around was immobilized, if not by death or serious injury, then by PTA. He wasted precious minutes waiting for the arrival of healthy young ambulance crews and policepersons and more firepersons, and disaster specialists from the Red Cross and the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who would take care of things.
Please remember, for God’s sake: He was eighty-fucking-four years old! Since he shaved every day, he was often mistaken for a bag lady rather than a bag gentleman, even without his baby-blanket babushka, and so incapable of inspiring any respect whatsoever. As for his sandals: At least they were tough. They were made of the same material as the brake shoes on the Apollo 11 spacecraft, which had delivered Neil Armstrong to the Moon, where he was the first human being ever to walk on it, in 1969.
The sandals were government surplus from the Vietnam War, the only war we ever lost, and during which Trout’s only child Leon had been a deserter. American soldiers on patrol in that conflict wore the sandals over their lightweight jungle boots. They did that because the enemy used to stick spikes pointed upward, and dipped in shit so as to cause serious infections, in paths leading through the jungle.
Trout, so reluctant to play Russian roulette with free will again at his age, and especially with the lives of others at stake, finally realized that, for better or worse, he had better get his ass in gear. But what could he do?
33
My father often misquoted Shakespeare, but I never saw him read a book.
Yes, and I am here to suggest that the greatest writer in the English language so far was Lancelot Andrewes (1555- 1626), and not the Bard of Avon (1564-1616). Poetry was certainly in the air back then. Try this:
The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.
Lancelot Andrewes was the chief translator and paraphraser among the scholars who gave us the King James Bible.
Did Kilgore Trout ever write poems? So far as I know, he wrote only one. He did it on the penultimate day of his life. He was fully aware that the Grim Reaper was coming, and coming soon. It is helpful to know that there is a tupelo tree between the mansion and the carriage house at Xanadu.
Wrote Trout:
When the tupelo
Goes poop-a-lo,
I’ll come back to youp-a-lo.
34
My first wife Jane and my sister Allie had mothers who went nuts from time to time. Jane and Allie were graduates of Tudor Hall and had once been two of the prettiest, merriest girls at the Woodstock Golf and Country Club. All male writers, incidentally, no matter how broke or otherwise objectionable, have pretty wives. Somebody should look into this.
Jane and Allie missed the timequake, thank goodness. My guess is that Jane would have found some goodness in the rerun. Allie would not have. Jane was life-loving and optimistic, a scrapper against carcinoma to the very end. Allie’s last words expressed relief, and nothing more. They were, as I’ve recorded elsewhere, “No pain, no pain.” I didn’t hear her say it, and neither did our big brother Bernie. A male hospital attendant, with a foreign accent, relayed those words to us via telephone.
I don’t know what Jane’s last words may have been. I’ve asked. She was Adam