Something Like My Name

Something Like My Name

Adam Phillips

Something Like My Name, by Adam Phillips. Copyright 2016, 2019 by Adam Phillips. All rights reserved. Published in US by Propertius Press, Martinsville, VA. No part of this work may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

ISBN eBook: 978-046-371-664-9

ISBN Paperback: 978-1-79483-612-9

Available in eBook and Paperback from Propertius Press. Cover art by Sam Mills. Cover design, all other graphics, and layout by Propertius Press. Copyright 2019 by Propertius Press. All rights reserved.

Propertius Press

Martinsville, Virginia

http://www.propertiuspress.com

email: admin@propertiuspress.com

Acknowledgments: For my wife, without whom none of the history of the world, at least my version of it, would have occurred.  For The Lunchwagon, Large and in Charge, Smiley, and the artist formerly known as He Who Cannot Be Named.  

Every day, just to be able to walk, to smell stuff, to see a dog walk past you... You realize how lucky you are. -Ronny Turiaf 

Table of Contents

The Book of the Dead

Exodus

The Shadow of the Valley of Death

Purgatory

Proverbs 4

Clarion Call

Apocrypha

The Invisible World

Offerings

Covenant

Proverbs 3

Chapters of Coming Forth By Day

Saved

Proverbs 2

The Weighing of the Heart

Proverbs

Crusader

Hero

Deuterocanonical

About the Author

The Book of the Dead

Apotheosis

It's what he'd become.

While his teammates waited at the base of the tunnel praying or bobbing with the music or whispering to the ghosts of their dead mothers or fathers or brothers or sisters, Aaron shut himself into a dark equipment closet. Rumor held he was smoking pot, puking away his nerves, crying, sticking a voodoo doll, beating off, painting Flathead Indian symbols on his torso, saying a rosary, performing tayammum, reciting some Irish blessing his grandmother had taught him, drinking a mixture of raw oysters and Tabasco sauce...

In the claustrophobic dark amongst a century of sweat and canvas, he would never die. Had never been born. Never wanted to fuck somebody or kill himself. Never been scared, or proud. He was the first man, and the last man. Every man you've ever known. Drowning and floating in the dark he surrendered ownership of his body. Then it was time to come out.

Sending the team pouring up the tunnel onto the court pogoing, swinging their fists, exhorting the crowd to rise and scream. Aaron came last, eyes set blandly on some spot in the middle distance, walking through the pandemonium like a man alone in a deserted gym. He may have been talking to himself.

Coaxing one man into falling down, he drove his elbow into the mouth of another, rising through the misted blood to twist and slam the ball behind his head. The opposition dispatched hulking seven-footers, bulldogs with crewcuts and big hands and criminals trained to ruin his knees or gouge his eyes, but nothing worked. Worst of all for the victims, instead of pounding his chest or humping the air he tongued his black mouthpiece placidly, hands on his hips, looking into the rafters. As if he's done all this before. As if trying to locate something he's forgotten to do.

****

The Oracle (Aaron)

Joe and I do the same fucking thing every night. He's got this radio, big homemade mess all fucking jerryrigged, five decks of bands and dials and these nasty looking clumps of welded brass wire and fucking tinfoil. That shit can pick up anything in the fucking world. Japanese baseball, dogfighting, cockfighting, all kinds of military shit, some fucking, ice cave disaster in Antarctica...

And some messed up shit. Guys announcing any little kids listening ought to meet them at such and such mall the next day for presents and ice cream. A lady saying she's kept in a fucking footlocker under a bed. Some asshole for an entire fucking hour rolls out his plan to poison all the drinking water in Seattle.

That fucking radio... you got the lights off and you're listening to a gunfight in Bosnia or a fucking Pearl Jam concert in Brazil and it's like all that shit, distance, you being you over there and me being me over here, it's a fucking lie. Like there's just one fucking story in everybody's ear, over and over. I used to feel that way sometimes as a fucking kid. Lying in my bed up in the attic, listening to the tractors coming in, dogs barking, sprinklers clicking, smelling the turned up dirt... I wouldn't have explained it like that, but I did.

****

Syd the Witness

Aaron gets home that night and his roommate, Joe Elroy, is agitated. Which isn’t exceptional. Joe’s a good guy, but wired too tight. You’re talking about a PBS special or the Dewey decimal system and his jaw’s grinding, dancing like a kid who has to piss... I never particularly enjoyed hanging out with Joe because it’s always such a fucking production. You can’t drink beer and smoke a joint and shoot pool, it’s got to be absinthe, aged in a monkey skull, drunk on top of a particular species of pine tree, smoking hash from a recipe in a Paul Bowles book, in preparation for playing pitz, or some shit. A lot of didgeridoo. Drum circles. Body painting. Running around in the forest.

Joe’s listening to the game and the radio goes tits up, cuts out, right as Aaron loads up the winning, or losing, shot. And it strikes him creepy, like Aaron’s been erased, sucked up into the ether. And that right there’s the type of guy he was. Nothing’s ever just a fried wire in an old piece of shit radio.

So Aaron gets his hand up into the guts, jiggling wires and turning screws, O’Leary’s there, but at that point he gets so paranoid Aaron’s going to electrocute himself he goes running off into the night... Anyway, all of a sudden the thing comes back exactly where it had left off, like Vandals down two, Cobb in the corner, triple-teamed, goes up with the shot... and hits it! Hits the three-pointer! The Vandals win the game! – even though two hours have passed. Then something blows, shocks the shit out of him, the whole goddamn thing catches on fire, and that’s the last anyone ever hears out of that radio.

So, obviously, they’d caught the tail-end of a replay on the post-game show. But I can appreciate how it struck them at the time. Like he’d reached in and yanked himself back from the dead. Like he had to make sure the story got a chance to finish before shit started burning.

****

The Prophesy (Aaron)

We were so fucking wound up about all that weird shit with the radio, me bringing it back to life and the fucking thing exploding, we had to get out of that fucking apartment. We threw some booze and weed in a backpack and hiked up to Anvil Rock to watch the fucking sunrise. Worst day of my fucking life. Which is weird, because at that point it could have been the best day of my fucking life. For a hundred years guys have been throwing their beer bottles down into these wicked fucking stalactites or mites or whatever the fuck at the bottom of the cliff, so when the sun comes up or goes down it throws this fucking laser show, fucking tie dye, off all that broken glass. All the way up we’re smoking joints, drinking whiskey, and pretty quickly the fucking day got away from us...

We get up on that flat rock a million miles up above the fucking city, one thing leads to another, Joe makes some smartass fucking comment and we start grabassing, fucking wrestling... I’m dragging Joe around in a fucking headlock and all of a sudden the fucking curtains come rolling in, I’m seeing the world through a fucking pinhole... I thought I was going to puke or fucking pass out, but after I stood there holding my fucking knees for a minute I got shit more or less under control. I opened my eyes and I saw this fucking dustdevil, whirlwind, out there in the fucking wheatfields... Right then it fell apart, spun itself back into a bunch of fucking dust. Here’s this shape, nothing else like it in the fucking world, maybe a whirlpool but that’s different, then whatever happens, some gust of wind, some fucking pebble, some butterfly farts in fucking China and you’ve got nothing but a handful of fucking dirt falling out of the air. It’s the first thing when I opened my eyes and that’s the pointless shit that went through my fucking head. Then my toes hanging over the edge of the cliff.

I couldn’t see him down there at the bottom, because of the glare, but I guess I knew.

I guess I’ve always known. I’ve just been waiting for it, my whole life.

****

Aaron rocks back to jump but his feet clench the edge and he runs stumbling to the trail. He doesn't touch his friend. He loves his friend but there's no reason to touch him, not now. He sprints ten miles back into town. The sunset projects ineffably off the broken glass, a trembling kaleidoscopic pillar of fire. Blood creeps sluggishly down the spangled harlequin face of the cliff.

****

O’Leary Anticipates the Second Death

They bought her a kitten. One of those ugly suckers with a flat face. Fluffy. White. Snowball. Obviously.

That was right, basically, at the end. After all the surgeries and chemo and radiation, after all the hippie stuff, the vitamin c and garlic and mud wraps, after all the Hail Mary type of shit, the magnets and trips to some sacred forest in Northern California... Jesus. Not that you can blame them for trying everything. I’d try everything. But nothing worked, so after awhile Aaron’s folks just brought her home and bought her a cat.

She was laying on the couch, petting that cat, and... it was about over. And that wasn’t supposed to be any big secret from anybody. She didn’t feel good, man. Burned from the radiation, swollen up with all the chemicals. She couldn’t walk because the tumors were in her joints, couldn’t barely hear because of something with the chemo... the skin in her mouth was coming out for Christsake...

And there we were, me and her, bullshitting about movies, about the high school basketball team, about what a dick Mr. Allerby the eighth grade science teacher was, when all of a sudden it hits me, not that she’s dying, obviously, but that she fucking knows. Here’s this kid that got screwed out of everything. Never been to a dance, never played on a team, never been kissed. Never got to think about her first car or her husband or being rich when she grows up. From the second she wakes up in the morning until she falls asleep at night, no matter what else she’s doing, no matter what else she’s thinking about, I’M GOING TO DIE SOON is right there like a neon sign flickering and buzzing a mile high.

Her whole life has been Ronald McDonald house, getting cut open, getting stuck with needles and pumped full of shit that makes you puke and your hair fall out. Her whole life has been sick, scared, seeing everybody crying. Crying because of her. How do you keep from just curling up in bed and letting it happen? How do you keep from getting into your stepdad’s gun cabinet and just blowing the shit out of everyone you see? If it had been me, I guarantee that shit would have been over before it even started.

But here she is, petting that cat, smiling and yawning, bullshitting with her brother’s friend...

And here I am. And I’m not sure if I’m supposed to feel happy, because it’s not me, or guilty, since there’s no good reason it isn’t me, or inspired with the lesson of how well she’s taking it...

But I guess the point, if there is one, wouldn’t be aimed at me. It’s not like God’s torturing and killing some innocent girl just because there’s shit some idiot in Idaho needs to figure out.

****

Prologue (Syd)

Once O’Leary threw up into a cemetery. There were precedents, weird shit happening when he’s stoned. False heart attacks, hearing things, forgetting what it feels like to be him... We’re stuck in Spokane traffic, hottest day of the year. Worst time, worst place. I look in the rearview right as this watery explosion of puke comes spurting through O'Leary’s teeth. Like a bolt of lightning on a clear blue day. He’s pulling hand over hand at this endless stringer of mucous like a magician barfing up handkerchiefs, croaking Christ Syd, pull over... I cut through four lanes of traffic, two wheels up on the sidewalk, O'Leary falls out of the car and shoves his head between the bars of