only knows what Hippolyte Paul De Mille is connected to.
He claims he can make a long-dead corpse stand up and walk around, if he wants it to.
I am skeptical.
“I surprise you,” he says in Creole. “I show you someday.”
• • •
George Metzger, according to Ketchum, is still alive, and a man of very modest means by choice—and still running a weekly paper in Cedar Key. He had kept enough money for himself, anyway, that he did not have to care whether anybody liked his paper or not. And very early on,in fact, he had lost most of his advertisers and subscribers to a new weekly, which did not share his exotic views on war and firearms and the brotherhood of man and so on.
So only his children were rich.
“Does anybody read his paper?” said Felix.
“No,” said Ketchum.
“Did he ever remarry?” I said.
“No,” said Ketchum.
Felix’s fifth wife, Barbara, and the first loving wife he had ever had, in my opinion, found the solitude of old George Metzger in Cedar Key intolerable. She was a native of Midland City like the rest of us, and a product of its public schools. She was an X-ray technician. That was how Felix had met her. She had X-rayed his shoulder. She was only twenty-three. She was pregnant by Felix now, and so happy to be pregnant. She was such a true believer in how life could be enriched by children.
She was carrying Felix’s first legitimate child. He had one illegitimate child, fathered in Paris during the war, and now in parts unknown. All his wives, though, had been very sophisticated about birth control.
And this lovely Barbara Waltz said of old George Metzger, “But he has those children, and they must adore him, and know what a hero he is.”
“They haven’t spoken to him for years,” said Ketchum, with ill-concealed satisfaction. He plainly liked it when life went badly. That was comical to him.
Barbara was stricken. “Why?” she said.
Ketchum’s own two children, for that matter, nolonger spoke to him, and had fled Midland City—and so had escaped the neutron bomb. They were sons. One had deserted to Sweden during the Vietnam War, and was working with alcoholics there. The other was a welder in Alaska who had flunked out of Harvard Law School, his father’s alma mater.
“Your baby will be asking you that wonderful question soon enough,” said Ketchum, as amused by his own bad luck as by anybody else’s, “—‘Why, why, why?’ ”
Eugene Debs Metzger, it turned out, lived in Athens, Greece, and owned several tankers, which flew the flag of Liberia.
His sister, Jane Addams Metzger, who found her mother dead and vacuum cleaner still running so long ago, a big, homely girl, as I recall, and big and homely still, according to Ketchum, was living with a refugee Czech playwright on Molokai, in the Hawaiian Islands, where she owned a ranch and was raising Arabian horses.
“She sent me a play by her lover,” said Ketchum. “She thought maybe I could find a producer for it, since, of course, there in Midland City, Ohio, I was falling over producers every time I turned around.”
And my brother Felix parodied the line about there being a broken heart for every light on Broadway in New York City. He substituted the name of Midland City’s main drag. “There’s a broken heart for every light on old Harrison Avenue,” he said. And he got up, and went for more champagne.
His way up the stairs to the hotel proper was blockedby a Haitian painter, who had fallen asleep while waiting for a tourist, any tourist, to come back from a night on the town. He had garish pictures of Adam and Eve and the serpent, and of Haitian village life, with all the people with their hands in their pockets, since the artist couldn’t draw hands very well, and so on, lining the staircase on either side.
Felix did not disturb him. He stepped over him very respectfully. If Felix had seemed to kick him intentionally, Felix would have been in very serious trouble. This is no
He claims he can make a long-dead corpse stand up and walk around, if he wants it to.
I am skeptical.
“I surprise you,” he says in Creole. “I show you someday.”
• • •
George Metzger, according to Ketchum, is still alive, and a man of very modest means by choice—and still running a weekly paper in Cedar Key. He had kept enough money for himself, anyway, that he did not have to care whether anybody liked his paper or not. And very early on,in fact, he had lost most of his advertisers and subscribers to a new weekly, which did not share his exotic views on war and firearms and the brotherhood of man and so on.
So only his children were rich.
“Does anybody read his paper?” said Felix.
“No,” said Ketchum.
“Did he ever remarry?” I said.
“No,” said Ketchum.
Felix’s fifth wife, Barbara, and the first loving wife he had ever had, in my opinion, found the solitude of old George Metzger in Cedar Key intolerable. She was a native of Midland City like the rest of us, and a product of its public schools. She was an X-ray technician. That was how Felix had met her. She had X-rayed his shoulder. She was only twenty-three. She was pregnant by Felix now, and so happy to be pregnant. She was such a true believer in how life could be enriched by children.
She was carrying Felix’s first legitimate child. He had one illegitimate child, fathered in Paris during the war, and now in parts unknown. All his wives, though, had been very sophisticated about birth control.
And this lovely Barbara Waltz said of old George Metzger, “But he has those children, and they must adore him, and know what a hero he is.”
“They haven’t spoken to him for years,” said Ketchum, with ill-concealed satisfaction. He plainly liked it when life went badly. That was comical to him.
Barbara was stricken. “Why?” she said.
Ketchum’s own two children, for that matter, nolonger spoke to him, and had fled Midland City—and so had escaped the neutron bomb. They were sons. One had deserted to Sweden during the Vietnam War, and was working with alcoholics there. The other was a welder in Alaska who had flunked out of Harvard Law School, his father’s alma mater.
“Your baby will be asking you that wonderful question soon enough,” said Ketchum, as amused by his own bad luck as by anybody else’s, “—‘Why, why, why?’ ”
Eugene Debs Metzger, it turned out, lived in Athens, Greece, and owned several tankers, which flew the flag of Liberia.
His sister, Jane Addams Metzger, who found her mother dead and vacuum cleaner still running so long ago, a big, homely girl, as I recall, and big and homely still, according to Ketchum, was living with a refugee Czech playwright on Molokai, in the Hawaiian Islands, where she owned a ranch and was raising Arabian horses.
“She sent me a play by her lover,” said Ketchum. “She thought maybe I could find a producer for it, since, of course, there in Midland City, Ohio, I was falling over producers every time I turned around.”
And my brother Felix parodied the line about there being a broken heart for every light on Broadway in New York City. He substituted the name of Midland City’s main drag. “There’s a broken heart for every light on old Harrison Avenue,” he said. And he got up, and went for more champagne.
His way up the stairs to the hotel proper was blockedby a Haitian painter, who had fallen asleep while waiting for a tourist, any tourist, to come back from a night on the town. He had garish pictures of Adam and Eve and the serpent, and of Haitian village life, with all the people with their hands in their pockets, since the artist couldn’t draw hands very well, and so on, lining the staircase on either side.
Felix did not disturb him. He stepped over him very respectfully. If Felix had seemed to kick him intentionally, Felix would have been in very serious trouble. This is no
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