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A warm spring wind ruffles Jim's black curls and the fine hennaed hair of Brad. " 'Well, Brad, what's for supper?' " 'You just go in the other room and wait.' Playfully he shoos Jim out of the kitchen, and puts on his apron. "Dinner is Lucy Bradshinkel's cunt saignant cooked in kotex papillon. The boys eat happily looking into each other's eyes. Blood runs down their chins." Let the dawn blue as a flame cross the city.... The backyards are clean of fruit, and the ash pits give up their hooded dead.... "Could you show me the way to Tipperary, lady?" Over the hills and far away to Blue Grass.... Across the bone meal of lawn to the frozen pond where sus- pended goldfish wait for the spring Squaw Man. The screaming skull rolls up the back stairs to bite off the cock of erring husband taking dour advantage of his wife's earache to do that which is inconvenient. The young landlubber dons a southwester, beats his wife to death in the shower.... Benway: "Don't take it so hard, kid.... 'Jeder macht eine kleine Dummheit.'" (Everyone makes a little dumbness. ) Schafer: "I tell you I can't escape a feeling... well, of evil about this." Benway: "Balderdash, my boy... We're scientists. ...Pure scientists. Disinterested research and damned be him who cries 'Hold, too much1' Such people are no better than party poops." Schafer: "Yes, yes, of course... and yet... I can't get that stench out of my lungs...." Benway (irritably): "None of us can.... Never smelled anything remotely like it.... Where was I? Oh yes, what would be result of administering curare plus iron lung during acute mania? Possibly the subject, un- able to discharge his tensions in motor activity, would succumb on the spot like a jungle rat. Interesting cause of death, what?" Schafer is not listening. "You know," he says impul- sively, "I think I'll go back to plain old-fashioned sur- gery. The human body is scandalously ineffcient. Instead of a mouth and an anus to get out of order why not have one all-purpose hole to eat and eliminate? We could seal up nose and mouth, fill in the stomach, make an air hole direct into the lungs where it should have been in the first place...." Benway: "Why not one all-purpose blob? Did I ever tell you about the man who taught his asshole to talk? His whole abdomen would move up and down you dig farting out the words. It was unlike anything I ever heard. |
