It was Augie the Mouse. He sat facing the window, his back against the vertical bars, knees up, hands jammed into the pockets of his long strange charcoal coat, big-buttoned, rabbinical. He had a small pointed face. His hair was dark and wild. He kept sniffling, and every time he sniffled he moved his head to the left, as though to clean his nose on the worn lapel of the coat; he couldn’t get his nose that far down, however, and kept rubbing his chin instead—a detail he didn’t appear to notice.
“What do you want?”
Augie cocked his head. The window was shut and he couldn’t hear what had been said. Lightborne thought of running out of the room. He thought of shouting for Odell. But the man was just sitting there. His casual attitude finally prompted Lightborne to open the window.
“What do you want?”
“I still don’t hear you.”
“What do you want?”
“You’re seeing things. There’s nobody here.”
“Broad daylight,” Lightborne said, not knowing quite what he meant.
Augie seemed to take the remark as a compliment.
“People can see us from those windows.”
“They can see you. I’m not here. They see some old man moving his lips.”
“Is this a new hangout for derelicts? The streets are no longer adequate. Is that what I’m meant to conclude?”
“You see these glasses I’m wearing?”
“I can call my colleague, who’s right in the next room there.”
“These are called shooting glasses,” Augie said.
Down on Houston Street, Moll watched a flock of pigeons fly over a two-story building into the back alleys. Seconds later Lightborne saw the same pigeons turn a bend and hurry toward a nearby roof.
“Do I have something for you?”
“I’m beginning to hear,” Augie said.
“Did somebody send you to pick up something from me? Is that it? An item?”
“I’m taking form.”
“Is it something that fits into a round can?”
“You’re beginning to see me,” Augie said. “I just arrived from my country place.”
Lightborne heard something behind him. It was Odell, standing on this side of the partition. Augie didn’t seem upset at the sight of another person. He sat sniffling, hands still in his pockets.
“What happens now?” Lightborne said. “Do I tell my colleague to go get it and bring it out to you while I remain here as insurance? He knows the handling procedures. Is that what happens?”
“No.”
“What happens?”
“You invite me in.”
“We can do that,” Lightborne said. “We can do it inside. Fine, sure. But all this is assuming you tell me who sent you.”
“Hey. I’m not here to audition.”
“I don’t necessarily mind parting with the item. But I’d like the option of knowing the recipient.”
Augie let his head slump to one side, closing his eyes at the same time. Weary disappointment. I come here to do a simple job, he seemed to be thinking, and they start in with their complications, with their ballbreaking little remarks. Opening his eyes, he waited a long moment before moving his head to an upright position.
“Maybe you notice how far into these pockets my hands go. Practically half an arm is in there. That’s made possible by the pockets being conveniently ripped out. What my hands are in there holding, if you want a clue to size, it takes both hands to hold, and I’m not talking about dick. You know dick?”
“I know,” Lightborne said with a sigh.
“It’s not dick I’m holding.”
He invited Augie in. Odell, surprisingly, seemed to grasp the nature of the situation, and said nothing. All three went into the gallery. The second reel was running. One of the women from the earlier footage—unidentified—was teaching the oldest of the girls how to waltz, leading her stiffly around the floor. Briefly visible were two smaller girls, running from the camera.
Lightborne turned on the two nearest lamps and asked Odell to halt the screening and get everything repacked. Augie the Mouse strolled around the gallery, browsing, both hands still in his pockets, holding the sawed-off whatever-it-was.
Lightborne wondered if they’d blame him for what was on the film. All he could do was suggest possible outlets. They could sell it to one of the networks for a news special. They could sell it to the Whitney Museum or the Canadian Film Board. He’d come up with a list of suggestions. What else could he do? Could he tell them people like to dress up? Could he tell them history is true?
Moll felt like walking. After early rain, the day had turned warmer and very bright. Movies in the afternoon. The rude surprise of sunlight when you emerge. What is this place? Why are these people so short and ugly? Look at the hard surfaces, the blatant flesh of things.
When she reached Tenth Street, a limousine seemed to approach her, moving slowly down Fifth Avenue, veering toward the curb. She felt herself reacting.
Days later, trying to hail a cab outside her building, she watched another long black car move toward her. She was certain this one would stop. She waited to see the back door slowly open. It was raining lightly and the wipers cut a pair of arcs across the windshield.
But the car kept on moving, droplets of rain gleaming on its surface. She watched it head onto the transverse road on the other side of Central Park West, where it disappeared in the trees.
Levi Blackwater surveyed the remains from a small rise about sixty yards away. He was motionless, positioned in a crouch, leaning slightly forward on his toes. His left hand, as though acting independently of his field of concentration, gathered a quantity of loose dirt.
The land was a raked paint surface. The power of storms to burnish and renew, he thought, had never been more clearly evident. The sky was flawless. Things existed. The day was scaled to the pure tones of being and sense.
The last sweeps of weather had caused the body to become partly buried. Levi knew who it was from the color of the trousers and the single russet boot still visible. He also knew what to do with the body. He remembered.
You approach death with a clear mind. You choose the right place. They’d discussed this often. Glen used to talk about pure landscape. He loved the desert. When you leave the earth-plane, there’s a right place and a right way.
Levi knew everything there was to know about Glen. His childhood and adolescence on army bases. His father’s steady ascent through the ranks—nicer houses, bigger backyards. His mother’s piteous drift into lassitude, amnesia, silence. Glen spoke of these things with intense detachment, already a student of the process of separation. They camped, the two men, in the desert, talking into the starry dawn.
Glen wanted to be left in a sitting posture. What was known as an “air burial” would be provided. No receptacle for the body. No actual burial. He would be placed on a wooden framework or rudimentary platform of Levi’s devising. Left for the air, for the large soaring birds. They’d discussed it often.
Levi had always wanted to giggle when Glen mentioned this. It was such an oversimplification. It left so much out.
Still, he would do as his friend had asked. In his own excessive way, Glen believed. He believed easily and indiscriminately, taking to things with a quick and secret fervor. It was a tendency which Levi had hoped to moderate, given the opportunity.
He let the dirt pass through his hand. He got to his feet, cap low over his eyes, and walked in his crooked way toward the body, slowly. Glen would get his air burial, yes. But first Levi would sit and chant, directing the escape, the separation of the deceased from his body, as taught by the masters of the snowy range.
This was a lama function, and therefore an enormous presumption on Levi’s part, but he knew the chant, after all, and he had love in his heart for the world.
It was a day of primal light, perfect arrangements of color. No voice could speak this. A raven swayed in the wind.
After chanting, he would try to determine wheth
er the spirit had indeed departed. Levi wasn’t sure he knew how to do this. But he believed he would feel something; something would tell him whether he was on the right path. He knew for certain how you started. You started by plucking a few strands of hair from the top of the dead man’s head.
About the Author
Don DeLillo, who was born in 1936 in New York, is the author of nine highly acclaimed novels including Great Jones Street, Players, Ratner’s Star, Running Dog, and The Names (all available in Vintage Contemporaries editions).
Don DeLillo, Running Dog
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