Read Percival Everett by Virgil Russell for Free Online Page B

feeling was there immediately. Before they spoke even, the inside of their house, of their world, struck me as loud.
    Loud enough I think at this point to make the point that maybe, though it pains me to say it, a certain Frenchman was correct about the nature of and the mission of the narrative of fiction or perhaps any narrative or, more accurately, the human desire, urge, push, to construct a followable, if not familiar, narrative, a story that has and makes or seems to make sense, a history that can be told and retold, a story that can be understood or thought to be understood, but there is no story after all, is there? is there? Every fool believes that if the coin has come up heads ten times in a row, it will more likely be tails this next time.
    And what is this, you say say say, pull the taffy, play play play, the hounds in the attic, the sheep has a fin, and everyone waits to begin again. Blow snot from your left as you plug up your right, kill bugs with your bullets and turn off the light.
When First I Saw That Form Endearing
    And all the details. Of rooms. Of meals. Of walks. Of gardens. Two sofas, facing each other, of worn, camel-colored leather, piping around the cushions the same color. Scratches and a small torn place on the side nearest the hearth. The coffee table, cherry wood, was once a dining table, but the legs were sawn off, very evenly, expertly, but the wooden floor was not true, so the pencils rolled off, two circles from sweating glasses, etched forever. All set on the hardwood floor, covered partially by the worn and generic Oriental rug, stressed and frayed to threads in places. Meatloaf made with brown sugar that you never liked but actually requested on occasion. The meat was too sweet and there was more sweetness added by the red sauce, possibly ketchup on top, but baked in, and yet it was still too dry. Mashed potatoes, the skins still on, lumpy and made with heavy cream. Corn bread, cooked in a pan, so it had to be cut into squares, with jalapeño peppers, baked hard on the edges. Green fried rice, almost crispy, with lots of scrambled egg. On white china, paper thin. And poppy-seed cake with a walnut filling, too sweet. With vanilla ice cream from a round tub. The tablecloth was robin’s-egg blue and too big for the table. The turn around the block past the round fountain in the yard at the corner; the gurgling of it dawned on you only when you were right on it, a big urn with a weak stream in the middle, spilling over the edge onto the ghosts of koi. The dark-purple irises that you were sorry you planted, though you loved to look at them, always needing to be divided, always being given away as gifts in paper bags saved from the market, the rhizomes lying there like bodies in a mass grave. The peonies of many colors, that you loved and everyone told you wouldn’t grow, but they did grow, but in a different place altogether. The morning-glory vine on the back fence, blue against the pink dawn sky. The hyacinth. The star jasmine, heady, crazy heady. Around the edges, purge and garlic planted to keep the gophers away, but you swore the gophers enjoyed the garlic. All the details. Everything in the details. Details, details, details. Of rooms, meals, walks, and gardens. Details telling us who we are, where we are, and why. Telling us everything. Telling us nothing. Because we live inside our heads. So much bullshit? In the middle of the middle of middle America. So much bullshit? In the details.

So Wide a River of Speech
    Deep, well past halfway, into the journey of my so-called life, I found myself in darkness, without you and you and you and you, a whole list of you, and stuck on this crooked trail, the straight one having been lost, and it is difficult to express how in this darkness, rough and stern, every turn presented a new fear, as bitter as death, but what I saw, what I saw there, out of slumber and wide awake in that dark place, was at the termination of some world and the beginning