Illustrations by Rachel Levit
Once we were at a fancy literary-award party. It was one of the fancier ones we have been invited to. People were dressed formally, the bar was open, and dinner was served at round tables alternating men and women. In addition to old-timers with names we recognized but may not have read, there were a couple actors and important folk and… You get the picture. It was that kind of thing—but everyone was acting like it was normal. Then a murmur arose. Heads turned, and we looked around and followed everyone’s eyes to one man. He walked closer, and we started to overhear people saying, “David… Dave…”
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It was David Means, considered by many to be the short-story writer of the moment. He has published four books of stories, including Assorted Fire Events (which won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize), The Secret Goldfish, and The Spot (a New York Times Notable Book), and has also been awarded two O. Henry Prizes and was named a 2013 Guggenheim Fellow. Right now he’s working on a new collection of stories and a novel. Below you’ll find a new story by David about his fictitious (or at least we think so) funeral arrangements. We liked it a lot and so will you.
Dear Morrison: As instructed, I’ve put down a few thoughts about a memorial service. I’ll have this notarized later in the morning. The house is quiet. The river is catching dawn light. I’ve been up all night.
As the mourners arrive, play Glenn Gould’s version of the Bach’s French Suite no. 2 at a volume loud enough to mask the shuffling of feet and the scraping of chairs and, if it happens to be spring, the sound of birds outside; if it’s early fall and windows are open, the dead-leaf rustle. Include a note in program: “On good days William Kenner felt the glory of existence in the phrasing, in the arched fingers striking the keys. He spent way too much time imagining Gould on the shore of the lake, hands deep into his pockets, head bent forward, with the Canadian sky looming over him. He spent too much time trying to connect Gould’s so-called idea of north with his own Michigan idea of north: those sudden midsummer chills that hit Petoskey, and that one night in particular when the pine cones froze off the trees and drummed on the tin porch roof outside his bedroom window.” When everyone’s seated, play “Like a Rolling Stone.” Note in the program: “When alive, Kenner spent too much time pondering Dylan’s lyrics and never did figure out who that mystery tramp might’ve been, although he did often like to think that the figure came out of the hinterlands, one more American sociopath, perhaps, and he knew the type from his own boyhood, having seen them come and go, taking his sister out at night, pulling up at the curb in the summer haze of the street lamp.” Everyone should remain seated during this music portion of the program, including Don Philpot, who, if he’s still alive, will be nervously pinching the flesh on his upper lip where, as a teenager, he had a mustache. He’ll be fidgeting because—I like to imagine—he’ll be thinking about the Newburgh deal. He might also be thinking about the time the four of us went down to the Amish quilt auction in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and we got into an argument about the motions of the spotters. Philpot maintained that the men doing the signaling were intuitively manipulating the invisible field of energy—those are his words exactly—that formed around any kind of interaction that might lead to a deal. If you were keen enough, he claimed, you could tweak this field to your own advantage in the bidding.
Next, play the original versions of Louis Armstrong’s “West End Blues” and then “St. James Infirmary,” (six minutes 31 seconds total), at which point—presumably—Philpot will break into one of his sweating fits, wiping his forehead with his handkerchief, adjusting his ass on the seat, sulky with shame.
Please note in the program the following: “Kenner sat on the board of the New York State Real Estate Ethics Committee and chaired the Committee for Real Improvement in Real Estate. He worked tirelessly for justice.” On the other hand, if it’s clear that I was killed by Sullivan, please substitute the following: “Kenner tangled with the Evil. Gangster. Sullivan, who, in concert with a dear friend, shafted him out of the land in Newburgh and proceeded to build the Highland Estates, yet another bedroom community of commuters who had to cross the bridge to catch the train in Beacon when, if I’d had my way, they might’ve taken the ferry that Kenner (I) was well on the way to putting into service, having already, at the time of the bid, through careful nursing of connections to the state, received all the permits and pilot certificates necessary to develop a high-speed Newburgh/Manhattan service.” I pondered way too much not only the bedroom community that Philpot built, the cluster of nondescript buildings, the terraces with unusually low railings (the jerk had the Newburgh building inspector in his pocket too), but also the lives of those who lived in the units and commuted to Manhattan from upstate every day, rising at dawn, dressing quietly in the dark so as not to wake their wives, or husbands, and then slogging across the miserable bridge to the train and the long ride down to the city, and then, hours later, returning home in the dark—except in the summer, when the glorious Hudson Valley, bathed in warm dusk, would mock their servitude; whereas I, through financial finesse and my intuitive sense of the volume needed to project my ideas past the scratchy noise of the real estate market, had found a way to spare the commuters such a fate. Just as Louis Armstrong, with his ability to play loudly and in tune at the same time, was able to project through the limitations of the Victrola and then, later, of mono AM radio filled with static. His horn threw itself in the front of the background noise, doing whatever it wanted to do, joyful and strong.
When the Armstrong piece is over, please ask for a moment of silence. If Philpot is still alive and in attendance—with sweat beading on his brow and his long legs jittering—he’ll find this short pause unendurable, and he’ll sense that Armstrong is mocking his inability to play the market honestly.
Note: I would like my body to be on display, dressed in a clean white shirt, black tie, dark trousers, along with my hand-sewn Italian shoes. (Please have them resoled.) I’d like the undertaker to clean up the razor-burn blemishes under my chin and trim my eyebrows and my ear and nose hairs. Please tilt the coffin slightly toward the room so that a view of my body is unavoidable. If my face is disfigured by an act of violence—most likely at the hands of Sullivan, but possibly Bob Hartwell, who had a grudge against me because of the tree-chopping incident, the border dispute, and the subsequent surveying expenses, and who stopped acting in a neighborly fashion around 1991—do your best to clean up the blemishes on my neck and the small crater on my left eyelid, which still bothers me because I remember the cauterizing tool the dermatologist used, the unexpected burst of pain, and the smell of flesh burning. Again, even if my face is a Cubist mess, please present it to the mourners. Please put a note in the program, or make an announcement after the moment of silence:
“It was William Kenner’s wish that each of you take one last look at his face. Please make every attempt humanely possible to take at least one glance. Even if his face fills you with the sharp envy (you, Philpot!) of knowing that he’d had the Archdiocese of New York in the palm of his hand when he negotiated the easement for the entry road to the retirement home for nuns, which later became fondly known around town as the Nunnery. Kenner often admired the meadow property—beautiful as the grass swayed in the wind off the river, only 30 miles north of Manhattan. Kenner had bought the meadow long before he moved to town. He and Ann rented a car and drove out of the city in search of a country house, a weekend retreat, and when they came to the meadow, with the palisade looming over the northern border, they got out of the car, waded into the grass, and fucked each other senseless. Then, on the way out, Kenner spotted the FOR SALE sign and bought the land that would, years later, retrospectively, even a score.”
One afternoon, over lunch, we declared ourselves business partners of the old-school type, willing to seal deals with a handshake and a smile. Why bother signing a contract when friendship and trust would suffice? You may recall, Don (my corpse might say), that Ann and I made a number of overtures of friendship to you and Marie. One was the invitation to join us for our annual trip to the Amish auction near Lancaster. These were, you’ll recall, the days when we were keeping a tally of our dinner-party invites. We owed you an invite equivalent to three of your parties, and I figured that even with your petty accounting you’d see a trip to Amish country at our expense as the equivalent to eating Marie’s food three times. I figured, and Ann did, too, that you understood that we attended your dinner parties out of compassion.
Note to Morrison, if you’re still alive and still my counsel when you get this document, or to Comstock, or Swinburne, if you take over as my counsel, or to whoever at Morrison, Comstock & Swinburne happens to land the job of tending to this document, here are a few key points:
• After the tidal flood, the terraces’ collapse, and subsequent lawsuits, Don’s betrayal of me with Sullivan’s help probably cost him a shitload of legal fees.
• Again, in retrospect, the score between us was already even, because long before the Newburgh deal I’d fleeced the Archdiocese, and therefore Rome and indirectly Philpot’s supposedly devoted wife (she wasn’t), who—as Don told me one evening as we hiked together to the top of Hook Mountain—Oz-like, majestic—saw herself as a vassal of Rome and, through Rome, of the Holy Spirit. In other words, by dickering with the Archdiocese, which was determined to build the home for the nuns on that property, I was actually dickering Don’s wife, who tithed a percentage of your income to the Church and thus, via the Church and the meadow deal, to me.
• I simply did what any self-respecting businessman might have done if he’d had the good fortune of owning the sliver of land that the Church needed to house retired nuns in dignity and safety, with a beautiful view. I didn’t buy the meadowland intending to exploit it.
• In death I’ll feel absolved of guilt and yet still sorrowful about the rending of a friendship.
• I intend, if I’m not killed by Sullivan, or in a freak accident of some kind, to continue telling my son the story of Philpot’s betrayal as a lesson in how deep trust and friendship can be exploited for material gain. I intend to sit him down again and say: “Son, I don’t know if you remember my old friend, Don Philpot, who used to come over to the house when you were a boy.” My hope is to wait until I’m on my deathbed to tell him the story again, making use of the deathbed aura, the beep of the machine as a backbeat. I’ll explain that our friendship went back to my childhood in Michigan, before I moved out here, and I’ll tell my son about the time when Don and I were slapping a puck around on Portage Pond, and on a dare he skated as close as he could to the inlet where the creek went under the road. He fell through the pale blue ice, and I shimmied on my belly with my stick, spreading my legs to disperse the weight as I guided him to shore. Then I took off his wet clothes, wrapped him in my coat and took him to my car, where I cradled and hugged him to warm him. I saved his life. He said as much over the years. He said, I owe you my life, Kenner. He said it over lunch that day. He said, That time you were playing around with that kid, Brent, in the rail yard, you saved his foot, and then a few months later, you saved my life. Not bad. Most of us would be satisfied with saving one foot, or a life, but to save a foot and a life is a big, big thing, he said. And I said, Don, it was nothing. All I did was help you slide along the ice to the shore, and it wasn’t that far. I’ll tell my son that he thanked me again and again over the years for saving his ass. His ass, I’ll tell my son. He told me I saved his ass. But the way I think about it, I saved an ass. I’ll stress that it’s dangerous to do business with an old friend. Precise memory vaporizes when it comes into contact with cash. (Morrison: It’s possible that by the time these instructions get put into action I’ll have already told the story again to an older version of my son, so it’s possible that my son will be giving Philpot the evil eye during the moment of silence. If you’re alive and attending, please watch him. If he gives Don the evil eye, you can safely assume that he’s heard the lifesaving/ice story as it relates to the Newburgh/betrayal story. If not, you can assume that I didn’t have a chance to tell it to him again because I died at the hand of Sullivan, who, I might as well add here, called me the other night, I think. Someone called with a thick accent, or with a handkerchief over the mouthpiece [do they still do that?] and spoke in a mumbled tone about vindication.)
• I tried—and I’m still trying—to instill in my son a sense of compassion strong enough to develop into an ethos of love, so that he’ll eventually be able to find it in himself to forgive a heinous, albeit typically American, act of financial violence, along with a betrayal of a handshake: an extended squeeze of flesh on flesh and a big up-and-down shake that lasted for about a minute as we chuckled and agreed that we were the best of friends and that no written contract was necessary. A sense of shared destiny threw us back to the Midwest, and I mentioned this to Philpot after the shake. I said: Isn’t it amazing that two fuck-up kids from the sticks are closing a friendly handshake deal for what might be the largest landgrab north of Bear Mountain in years?
• As an example of extreme forgiveness, I told my son the story of Bill Burdick, who opened fire on a Pizza King. I painted a complete picture: gray sky over an upstate town. Diners eating pizza, folding food into their mouths. You have to see it, I told my son, who was only ten at the time. Imagine ten people sitting at tables with red-and-white checks, a red candle at each, I said. Five days before Christmas, mind you. A postcard tableau, a warm port in the storm of a recession, with most of the storefronts outside boarded and a few other buildings gutted by arson fires. Everything cozy inside, with a jukebox playing Louis Armstrong’s original version of “What a Wonderful World.” Eating pizza, they were oblivious to the misfortune walking down the street. But that pizza parlor, for whatever reason, was waiting for Burdick. (My son looked bored. He rolled his eyes.) Just as the patch of land I purchased years back, the so-called meadowland up the road, you know, the meadow where we go sometimes to walk, was begging to be denuded and graded in preparation for digging; you smooth and grade first and then you dig out the hole, line it with plywood, and pour a foundation. (I’ll retell the Burdick story again when he’s older. You forget most of what you hear at age ten. You get the rudiments and then let the rest float away. That piece of meadow I owned was begging to be exploited by the Church, so to speak, I’ll say, if I live. If I don’t live, he’ll still have the basic gist of the Burdick story to instruct him on compassion and forgiveness.) I unfolded—and might do so again in the near future, if I live—the pizza-parlor scene in order to prepare him for one of the main points, which was that Burdick had admitted that he massacred the pizza parlor “for the hell of it because it was waiting for me to do it,” he said, first in the initial police interrogation and then, later, in front of the packed courtroom. Burdick took the stand against the advice of counsel and explained, simply, that he’d killed 15 folks “for the hell of it.”
(Morrison: Do you remember the conversation we had a few years ago, in which you explained to me that one out of every 20 or so clients could be counted on to go against your counsel? You said: “It’s often the most judicious souls, the considerate ones who go against the advice of counsel.” Then, in another meeting, you told me: “It is counsel’s advice that you keep your mouth shut about Sullivan. Let it go. Do not attempt to approach Sullivan. Don’t make public or even private statements about Newburgh, Sullivan, or Philpot.”)
• The other point of the Burdick story was that the sole survivor of the Pizza King massacre, LeAnne Kelly, whose St. Christopher medallion necklace deflected a kill shot to the chest, had offered forgiveness to Burdick. “If Burdick could attempt to kill me for the hell of it, then I have every right to forgive him for the hell of it,” she said in a television interview. She had big, hazel eyes and a long, elegant nose. She spoke with composure, pursing her lips slightly, pursing them some more, and then releasing her mouth into a gorgeous smile. I wasn’t saved from the financial bullet of betrayal, I’ll say to my son, or will have said, No such luck for your old man. I didn’t have a St. Christopher medal around my neck, so to speak, to spare me betrayal by an old friend.
As for the eulogy and all of that, I think I’ll leave most of it to the living (whoever they might be) to plan that part of the service, although let me say for the record that I’d like the Reverend Woo, if he’s still around, to give one of his long-winded, incomprehensible sermons, drawing from the Book of Job and whatever passage he can find that contains the word vainglory—something from Philippians, perhaps. Note: please ask Woo to pound on the word vainglory. And then I assume that there will be the usual personal comments from grieving family members and then, if I live long enough, perhaps my son, perhaps a young man by now, might get up and tell the story of my taking the train down to Yonkers to find Sullivan, one clear winter day (yesterday, to be precise), and going to his so-called social club, a ratty little building with windows covered with faded newsprint. I’d seen the building many times on the news, during coverage of the so-called Boss War, in the summer of 1987, when Sullivan was supposedly solidifying control of the Eastern Syndicate, as they kept calling it. On television, it was a classic brick storefront with an old sign—Hudson Shoe Repair—with missing neon tubes. When I saw it in person, it looked astonishingly shabby, a stubby brick building in a block of high-rises and condos not far from the railroad station. In person, it seemed to radiate a criminal desperation. Just seeing it, from across the street, filled me with confidence. The Sullivan gang—according to reports—was now fragmented and losing power by the day. I like to imagine that my son will use this story to illustrate my gumption, my fearlessness. The truth is, I felt fearless. Fueled by my anger and my almost cosmic sense of betrayal (You, Don! You miserable liar. Judas. Handshake deceiver), I marched right up to the door, gave it a knuckle-rap and waited for an eye to appear in the eyehole. Someone on the other side of the door grunted a phrase. I knocked again and heard the grunt again. Password, the grunt seemed to be saying, and I said, I don’t know the password. I’m here to speak to Sullivan. He doesn’t know it, but he’s expecting me. When the door opened, I was facing an old man with a cane. He was toothless, with one eyelid stuck shut. He kept one hand clutched behind the lapel of his tweed jacket, looked me up and down with his good eye and said, What do you want? I said, I’ve come in search of the truth about a matter. And he said, What matter? And I said, It’s an upstate matter. (Let me stress here that I had an intuitive sense of how to speak.) Upstate how? he said. And I said, Upstate land. Stay here, he said, and he closed the door and left me standing outside in the fresh air, with the blue sky overhead. I stood and stood and felt my feet on the ground.
I felt like a man ready to defend his honor. I felt like a man ready to defend his honor against the forces of evil, so to speak. I felt like a man standing outside an old shoe-repair shop in the Yonkers business district, with the sound of the Metro-North train arriving at the station a few blocks away, trailing a long strand of tension and stress as it tried to brake to a stop; and then, a minute later, the repowering, the gathering steam. It was an express, I knew, because expresses were diesel-powered so they could pass Croton, where the third rail ended, and head all the way up past Beacon to the end of the line in Poughkeepsie. The sound of the train leaving filled me with strength—I’ll explain to my son. A minute later, the door opened and the man appeared again and gestured me with a wave of his cane into a dark room that smelled of bootblack and cleaning compounds and gun oil. There were a few old tables and even older chairs. The man led me to the back, lifted a gate, and pushed me behind a counter where, in a reclining chair, Sullivan sat with a cigar in his mouth, a friendly look on his face. (If I’m dead now, Morrison, please know that it has something to do with the feeling I got when I saw his face, because it seemed to me, as he gestured toward a chair, that he had honest eyes, deep twinkling blue. It’s also possible—if I’m dead now and you’re reading this a few weeks later—that I was fooled by his casual voice as he said, Go ahead, state your business. Tell me who you are and what you want. It was a fatherly voice.) I dove right in and told him everything from my point of view. I told him about Philpot (you, Don!) and our early friendship, the time I saved his life on the ice in Michigan, and then about the handshake deal and the Newburgh land and our agreement to use state funds to finance a high-speed ferry service to the city. As I spoke, he listened attentively and swung his cigar in the air, making short looping gestures, as if conducting. Again, his eyes seemed to twinkle as I spoke of the bond I’d felt with Philpot, one that came from sharing hour after hour of our boyhood days. We were further bonded, I explained to Sullivan, by our both having abandoned Michigan for the East Coast. As he listened, Sullivan’s eyes seemed to tear up. (Up until this point, I now see, I had not gone against your counsel, Morrison. I was simply a confessor bemoaning a business deal gone sour.) I was nothing but a lonely man in Yonkers, on a clear, beautiful winter day, spilling his soul to a man who was notoriously quick-tempered; who had killed, according to news accounts, at least a hundred men. He seemed, as he swung his hand, trailing smoke, to understand my honor as it related to risk and death, and I’m sure now, as I write this (it’s late and I’ve been drinking) that he understood, up to a point, my willingness to go against common sense. I’d even say that he seemed impressed with me as he said, Go on. I get it. Go on. You left the homeland for the East. So I did go on. I accused Philpot (you, Don!) of conspiring with him against me on the silent bid for the Newburgh land. I implied, against the advice of counsel, that the two of them had been in cahoots against me, and that someone would have to pay for the crime, somehow.
If I tell this story to my son, I’ll stop right here, pull short and avoid describing being led out of the social after shaking Sullivan’s hand. I’ll say I got confirmation that Philpot had truly fucked me. I’ll keep it clean and simple. I’ll avoid telling my son about the way Sullivan’s face changed, about the way his eyes became dead cold, blurry blue, and his lips became firm and tight against his teeth in a smile that seemed politely politic, charged with a task of hiding a placid, benign malice toward his audience. (As a matter of fact, Sullivan looked a bit like old photos of JFK. Beautifully haunted as he looked out at the world with a gentility and authority tempered with physical pain.) I’ll avoid telling my son about the way Sullivan’s attention went from me to his cigar, which he examined carefully, and then, after clearing his throat a few times, he began to speak in a voice that was tight and intense. He told me about his best friend, years back, in Hell’s Kitchen (Back when hell was still in the kitchen, he said), a kid named Kenny Bruen, and how they worked together, pickpocket schemes on the subway, this and that, until they were both working for what he called a higher establishment. Then one day the fork appeared, he said. The big fork that always appears. Then he looked past me and said, Right, Johnny. Doesn’t that fork always appear? Best friends, you gonna end up with that fork. It’s gonna happen. You put trust in his basket, and the other guy the same amount of trust in your basket, and one of the baskets is gonna feel too fucking heavy. It’s simple physics. Now don’t get me wrong. I’m not relating this directly to your story. I mean, you and Philpot. What do I know? For all I know he screwed you over because you pulled him off the ice. Maybe you should look at it that way. You might’ve done yourself a favor and left him to sink like a stone. The way I see it, I should’ve let Kenny die before I had to kill him. On a roof we were running from some punks and had to make a jump to another building. Nothing we hadn’t done a million times before, and then he got snagged on an air vent or something, lost his footing and ended up—fuck if I really know how it happened, I didn’t see it—hanging from the ledge, like in a movie. I got his hands and hauled him up and we did what you did. I mean hugged and held each other. Kenny said, You saved my life. I said, I didn’t do anything you wouldn’t do. He said: Still, you saved my life. And now when I think about it I knew right then on the roof that I’d probably have to kill him if he kept talking like that. I eventually had to tell him. I said, Kenny, stop saying you owe me your life. I don’t want hear it. You don’t owe me a thing. Then a few years passed. I mean time went along, and we were doing a sit-and-wait on a guy who owed big on a horse at the raceway. We were in the car for about 12 hours, waiting for this guy to come out, and we got bored. So Kenny starts going back to the old days and ends up talking about that time he almost died and how I helped him out and all, and I knew right then, in the car, that I’d have to kill him. It was in the cards. Just by virtue of the fact that I knew he couldn’t go on owing anyone so much without taking something from me.
That’s the way it works, Sullivan said, and then he stopped speaking and stared at me. The room was getting dark. So what I’m seeing is Philpot fucked you over, but only to give you the excuse you need to kill him. You don’t see it that way, but it’s that way if you look close enough. Believe me, give it long enough and you’re going feel it in your bones. Now, I’d like you to look at it from my perspective. Don’s a good feed. I feed him lines and he legitimizes deals and feeds me a take and we both part ways until the next feed appears. If something doesn’t happen to you, it’ll happen to him, and I’m not sure I can afford that. Sullivan drilled his eyes at me and said: I could kill you now, right here, but that’s not my style. You came to me and I asked you to talk. It’s not my style to kill a guy who was asked to tell a story and told it. I’ve got other ways of doing things, he said, vaguely, and then he made a gesture and the old man put his hand on my shoulder and we walked through the smell of shoe polish (and maybe gun oil. I swear, Morrison, I smelled gun oil), and then I was outside in the wintry twilight. Right then, standing there, I understood that I was either a man who was going to be killed by Sullivan, or a man who, by some good fortune, was going to live into old age, unless I died of some other cause. Weirdly enough, Morrison, I felt better knowing that the two possibilities were in play. On the train home I felt a weight lifting. The river outside was flowing with steely resolve. My options, which before the meeting had seemed innumerable and impossible to pin down, suddenly seemed delightfully few and clear.
As I write this, Ann is asleep upstairs. I just checked on my son, and he was asleep, too, making his little snoozy sound, with the faint twilight coming into his room through the window. Everything, right now, is safe and cozy.
© David Means, 2013
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