Where's Wilbur?

Strange--I posted this entry earlier today, but it seems to have been deleted. Hopefully, this one stays up.--JS

Two weeks ago:

I stepped outside to smoke one of the Cigaronne cigarettes I’d picked up on my monthly trip to town.

I walked out into the woods, sat down on a stump surrounded by woodchips, and lit up. For a moment, I wished I was with my old friend and mentor, Roger Clay, smoking several cigarettes to his one large Macanudo 54 ring size cigar, enveloping ourselves in wreaths of smoke and good conversation over a glass of Glenfiddich Scotch. I would be arguing—erroneously—that David Hume had severely damaged philosophical endeavor, and Roger would be pointing out that philosophy goes where its practitioners can take it, and that Hume had not only taken it in a direction it needed to go at the time, but that he was responding to the works of those I’d not yet thought worth reading. I’d bring up the flaws of Hume’s argument against causality, and he’d laugh, knowing that I’d taken my ideas from cribbed lecture notes, rather than close readings, of Hume’s texts.

I took another pull from my cigarette and imagined myself once more in the presence of this Ravelstein, learning by experience that the best talk of history, philosophy, and literature was accompanied by the best food, drink, and smoke. I’d mention a poem, say Rilke’s Duino Elegies. Roger would set down his cigar, leap up, dash into his house, and return with a book, which he would place in my hands. “Old So-and-so, the great translator of Rilke, worked for fifteen years on his edition Elegies,” he’d say, “and this same So-and-so lauded this new translation.” He was filled with this kind of information, and like his cigars, he only partook of the finest literature. We only live a short time, and we can't waste precious life on that which doesn’t come highly recommended. “Take the book, it’s yours.”

“I couldn’t take this,” I’d say, knowing that I could never win the battle. “It’s too much. I insist you keep it—”

I’d lapsed into reverie for so long that I’d only barely registered a slight chill—no, an itchiness—no, a what is that?—that had started in my legs and had progressed up to my chest. Snapping out of my fantasy, I identified the sensation: things were crawling on me.

I leaped up just as I felt the first bite. Looking down, I saw that the stump was infested with large, red ants. I started viciously scratching my chest, and the shock wave of this act alerted ants across my body that the time had come to wage war. I felt two, three, then undifferentiated innumerable tiny stabs before realizing that I was covered in an undersuit of ants. In my panic, I screamed like a little girl, scratching and itching and leaping as I started trying to strip away my clothing. To my surprise, my screaming didn’t stop while I was trying to do all these things at once, and I heard myself, “ay! Ay! Ay! Ay! Ay!”, wailing, scratching, unbuttoning, scratching, jumping, scratching, wailing, wailing, unbuttoning, and whipping myself into such a frenzy that I actually hindered myself from promptly removing my clothing. I was down to my underwear, violently smacking my chest, biting an arm, whipping my ant-filled hair back and forth, when I saw movement out of the corner of my eye.

It was Wilbur. He was pointing a gun at me.

“Ay ay ay ay ay,” I said, as Wilbur lowered the gun and yelled out something like, “Pangloss!”

I yelled back, “Ayayayaywhat the fuck are you doing, Wilbur?”

He yelled the same word again, then hollered, "is that you? Do you need some help? What can I do for you?”

I had rid myself of most of the ants by this time, and although I was still in frenzy mode, I had enough sense to realize that between ants and rifle slugs, those tiny creatures that had raised welts all over my body were the lesser of two evils. I yelled, “get the hell away from me, Wilbur,” my voice mixed with fear (of that rifle) and bravado (from just having survived an ant attack). I started stepping slowly backwards from him, “ay”-ing as I went.

He stepped forward, trying to close the distance between us. “But…Mr….Mr…Stevenson? I can explain…what’s happened to you?”

“AY.AY.GET.AWAY.FROM.ME.YOU.CRAZY.BASTARD.AY.” I said forcefully, as if I was stating that the square root of 81 is 9, or that Lesotho is a country in Africa.

Then I tore off to the house, almost ripped the screen door off its hinges. I locked the screen door, the living room door, the deadbolts. In my panic, wedged an antique American Fanback Windsor Side Chair against the door, an action for which even panic-fear cannot provide excuse.
I panted, whimpered.

A few seconds later, a quick look out the living room window told me that Wilbur was either gone or sneaking around another side of the house. I quickly made the circuit of the first floor, locking doors and furtively glancing out windows as I ran. I called for Ruthie to stay upstairs, then bolted up the stairs, taking them three at a time. Ruthie met me at the landing.

Here’s what she saw: her husband, sweating profusely, underwear halfway off, naked body covered in red welts, twitching and scratching and digging at his hair, muttering quietly: “ay…ay…ay…”

“Everything alright, dear?” she said in her lilting, pilled-out voice (see tomorrow’s post for backstory on Ruthie’s re-emergence into the speaking world).

“Ay…ay…Wilbur tried to kill me!” I panted.

“You know, I had a strange feeling about him,” she said. “I couldn’t really place it. Now we know: he wants to kill you.” She smiled as if she had just figured out a pesky crossword puzzle entry. “Well, I wouldn’t chat with him much in the future, what with him trying to kill you and all.”

“Er, yes honey. Probably not a good idea,” I replied, and then for good measure: “ay.”

“Let’s go watch some Poker on the TiVo,” she said. “I know that’s your favorite.”

My panting was slowing now, and the pain of the ant bites rose as my panic level dropped. After I applied ointment to the greater part of my body, we did watch television together, each of us taking turns cooing to Kellie and intermittently discussing the statistics of certain poker hands. At one point in the afternoon, she said to me, “by the way, you weren’t smoking out there, were you?”

“No, no,” I said. “Just…getting close to nature. Too close.”