Wilgus Pieces

Wilgus Pieces (From Crazy Quilt, a novel-in-progress) by Gurney Norman The oppressor consciousness tends to transform everything surrounding it into an object of its domination. The earth, property, production, the creations of men, men themselves, time—everything is reduced to the status of objects at its disposal. —Paulo Friere Pedagogy of the Oppressed Nothing is more typical of modernist fiction than its shattering of narrative line....The writer makes real artistic meaning of meaninglessness the usual way, the old way, by creating a self-relevant artistic whole. He produces a work whose parts cohere. He imposes a strict order upon chaos. —Anne Dillard "Fiction In Bits" 25 Dear Gretch, Did I spoil your birthday party? I probably did but I guess I'm sitting here hoping that maybe I didn't. I shouldn't have spent the afternoon with Paul. But we always tell such good stories when we're together. Then I came barrelling down the Parkway trying to get there on time. When I was young it took four and a half hours to wind down old Route Fifteen from Blaine to Lexington. I used to ride the bus to Lexington a lot to see my father there, and later, on my way job-hunting in Ohio, I'd ride it and change in Lexington. Do you remember the old Lexington bus station there on Short Street? I loved that place, spent many an hour there waiting to catch the two a.m. for Blaine, me a teenage boy coming home from some adventure or other. What's great about bullshitting with Paul is, even though he's still so young, he knows what you mean when you say Route Fifteen is a Mythic Highway. It damn well is. I'm pretty obsessed with it. I've thought about devoting a column to it, if I could ever get it together enough to write another column. The paper comes out, but it's increasingly hard to see that I have anything to do with it, which is okay in a way, I mean, modesty is something I'm learning, I have less and less need to think that I am influencing anything. This hotel life is quite wonderful in that regard. Peaceful and neutral. I'll write you again soon. I know I talk loud. And talk a lot when I'm stoked. (Hey, how about an Audio Newspaper? The Blaine Herald on cassette! Every week, here comes the news of the entire county as Spoken Word!). But what I'll try to do, dear honey, is confine my loudness to my birthday parties, and try to let go of the microphone when I'm at someone else's. I'll be down again before long but I have definitely pledged to drive no more till I get my driver's license back. Chastened and humble, I am still, what? (Seeking a definition!) Love, Wilgus 26 r^3 / ~S ^: X On Fridays, in the early fifties, if you lived along Route' Fifteen between Winchester and Jackson you could sit on your front porch in the evening and watch cars go by bumper-to-bumper till one or two o'clock in the morning. Twenty thousand cars, a hundred thousand people, would pass your house, all headed south into the hills. And then on Sunday afternoon, there they'd be again, the Chevrolets and Plymouths, Fords and Pontiacs, loaded down with people, going north, back to the cities where they lived and worked a five-day week, till it was time to come back home again the following weekend. This drunk woman in the Finley Inn comes by the table where I'm sitting, leans over and sticks her face up close to mine, says, "There ain't gonna be no hidin place when God sets the world on fire!" I know it, honey, I said to her. I know it. 27 Walking up Main Street in the early morning, past Neely's and Pogue's, The Rexall Store, Johnson's Hardware, Tots N' Teens and Preston's Dry Goods (old Mr. Preston already there at seven-thirty arranging bolts of cloth in a new display in...