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Some Distance
By
Dylan Nice, Oct 03, 2009
I could hear him whispering as I slept. The sunlight would be weak. It would be pale and I could hear him
whispering like a prayer, but they weren’t prayers. I could hear his slippers scuffing the linoleum. I’m dying,
he would say. And louder, I am dying.
He woke me every Sunday morning with a plate of French toast. I had no appetite in the morning and hated French
toast. The morning would be dulled by dark wood paneling, the red drapes. I would sit up on the fold-out sofa,
set the plate on my sleeping bag, and slowly begin.
Weekends I spent with him, we’d go to malls to walk. He kept his change in a plastic grocery bag. He would unwad
it from his pocket and set it on the counter while he counted out coins. I would look at the magazine rack.
He walks alone when I’m gone. After work he walks around town, his thoughts spilling out. He talks to himself,
thinking about the wife who left him twenty years ago, still telling her why she’s wrong. He calls meeting
someone impossible. He walks for hours, sometimes reading, until he feels tired, and then he drives home to the
other side of the mountain.
He finds things and brings them home. Outside Dumpsters, inside them. Sort-of-broken chairs, warped folding
tables, vacuum cleaners, a couch once. A fold-out sofa.
The folding table in his kitchen has books on it a foot thick. Books about the Bible longer than the Bible.
Meditationals. Devotionals. Cassette tapes: Chants. The Sacred and Profane. The Moody Blues. Blood on the
Tracks.
There are books on the washer and dryer. Stacked against the walls. He washes laundry in the bathtub, heats the
water on the stove. How would you describe my house? he asked once. How would you? I said. Functional, he said.
A box.
At restaurants, he’ll take long blinks, lean into his plate, fold into himself. He’ll breath heavy and chew. I’ll
sit up straighter, look closely at him.
“This is good,” he’ll say, noticing me.
He walks faster than me. He wears corduroy pants and knitted sweaters. He walks with his head down. Sometimes he
starts walking much faster, something bothers him and he puts some distance between us, and then he slows and I
can see he’s gone tired again. I can hate him for that. I want to shove him down. He closes his eyes and faces
the sun.
We drive. On small trips, sometimes to nowhere. He rents cars and brings the CDs I make him. The Bootleg Series.
Rubber Soul, Tonight it’s Revolver.
“The man could deliver a song” he says. “I want you to hear this one.” And I have heard it, many times without
impression. It’s the last track, the song with the sound of birds scattering, sounds twisting, the one that says,
surrender, assures us, it is not dying.
“I want you to hear,” Dad says, sitting up, “because it’s like he’s gotten so far away, so close to nothing, that
everything’s being shredded, sound itself is being shredded.”
He says this and now I can see Dad, out there in this desert he’s made. Alone with nothing and God. It’s all
empty except for him walking through this wilderness. And if I could make that true, if it were real, there would
be nothing wrong with him.
Dylan Nice grew up in the Allegheny Mountains, where his brother still burns coal and drives truck. His
work has appeared in NOON 2009, Unsaid, Quick Fiction, and is forthcoming from Dewclaw. He lives in
his apartment.
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