Notable American Women Read Free Page A

reproductive fire, given his inability to father very many effective persons during his enforced copulations with the Silent Mothers.
    Let it not be said that this father is without an animal response to the son, in which warmth of the old-fashioned kind flows in the chest and a certain pity is forthcoming no matter what feeble
gestures of life
the Ben Marcus system manages to perform, even if the boy were to attempt to physically beat the father, a type of aggression the father is completely prepared for, by the way, no matter how dark it is in here, or how much advantage a creature has who can see his own goddamned hands. The father would beat down the son’s attack, naturally, wound him just enough to reaffirm the boy’s all-encompassing weakness and widespread failure, and then hold his injured body and attempt a soothing litany of comfort words. I am sure it is what he wants, and it is not beyond me to talk soft. I can make a creature weep and will do it if I see the need, if it leads to a situation I might require within my larger strategy. I have said things to this boy that, if heard by an outsider, would fairly indicate a degree of affection being transmitted. It could easily be understood as love: “There there, little Ben.” “Egghead.” “Bald Beauty.” “Sugar Cheeks.” “It’s okay, Sweetbread.” “Just breathe.” “Tiny Shark.” “Little Tiny Shark.” “Skin Fish.” All little nicknames that produce an unreasonable amount of pleasure in his person, cause him to curl up and grin and gaze at the sky.
    Oh no, I admit it, the father is truly sympathetic to weakness, frailty, and lost hope in a son, should it be exhibited, particularly when the son has been
regularly tormented in the worst
way by an animal,
indeed brought to submission by a dog, and used for unbearable purposes by a group proposing an end to all motion. Allowances are made for every kind of error. Nor is it that a father wishes to make a case, either legal or emotional, against his son (which is not to say that a good case could not be made, because it certainly could), or wishes that his son would stay his hand at attempting to narrate
events he cannot possibly
grasp,
whether or not they happened to him, or concepts that, when presented without the appropriate theory and context, such as the Weather Museum, for Christ’s sake, the Clay Head of Jesus, and the Women’s Frequency of Sound,
appear ridiculous and untrue,
and will be believed by no one, dumb ass. A father is pleased anytime a son can regulate his busily superficial mind for the time required to command a book’s worth of language to the page. Such a feat is particularly notable, given the aforementioned mental challenges of the son, when it can barely be expected that the son remember to bring potatoes to the underground area where his father waits to be fed. When his only task is to
bring a potato to his goddamned father,
or to let new air into his father’s area, where the old air has already been used, because there is a living man down here!, or to walk his father up above when his father has gone months, motherfucker, without seeing a house, a stick, a bird, a window, a road,
the key objects of our time,
when his father has no new air to clean his eyes and rid his skin of the language fluid poured in by the man with the tube, who speaks his Sentences of Menace, trying to burst the father’s body with words. Let a man wash himself, and stride in the open air, for fuck’s sake! Given his systematic incompetence and neglect of the one person he was born to love, how can a single word from Ben Marcus’s rotten, filthy heart be trusted?
    Granted, I love my son dearly. He has been a sweet boy at times (I can picture his long head sailing through the air like a ball), and rather touching to observe, despite his failures. He is cute, with his wet red mouth, and it would no doubt be