JOHN THOMPSON
231
a bit slack-jawed. There inside on the lip all day and all night in the ardor
of burning coal would squat his mother's fat bean pot. From the other
breech below, his father would shovel out the ashes and shake the groan–
ing grinding grid with the long handle so like the crank that starts his
car-rake out the clinkers. Some day Dick himself would do that and fire
up the furnace too.
Rather obviously our long delayed convergence is about here. But first
Dick has an urgency of his own and not entirely welcome just at this time,
for he is after all quite by himself now. He certainly knows how to answer
the call of nature without assistance, no diapered infant he. Yet as he climbs
again the hollow reverberating second floor stairwell his inner rumblings
may be stirring likewise some devoutly-to-be-forgotten archeologies of
failure in this matter, failures too recent for the pride of his years. He is
alone and will have to shift for himself. Dick sets out on one more of the
day's pilgrin1ages, all of them so lonely and foreboding to him.
Manfully he settles to the task. No doubt it would be well received by
all concerned
if
we could only leave him to it in decent privacy, but the
events to occur call for our quite neutral and sober witness, at least, as we
say, up to a point, when we may withdraw our attention in favor of the
rolling truck. Until then, we must report that his knickers and BVD's are
coiled over his tennis shoes that swing free some inches clear of the bath–
room linoleum. An awkwardness of the BVD being of one piece although
it boasts to be sure a flap for these purposes but risky he concluded-the
awkwardness is that he has had to divest himself of sweater and jersey to
strip down the undergarment. So but for the encumbrance of his ankles he
is naked. Let us at least partially avert our gaze but not leave this poor
innocent, for I take it we are persons of balance about the physical
economies of anin1als. Even the urologist's daughter was hesitant here,
stalling along. Bowels are not exactly a polite subject for conversation,
but as Miss
Hepburn knew,
Life has some problems that are basicfor all
of
us.
She overcame
her natural reticence to tell the special problems of sharing a Congo out–
house with the Bogies. Strange how few other writers have thus mastered
their modesty. To Swift these matters are obsessively revolting, to Rabelais
endlessly side-splitting; to Col. Cantwell by the river they made a ritual for
his own commemoration. From children themselves and from their expli–
cators we learn of the magic significance it holds for them. But from
whom else and in what books? It is a spare record. To Leopold Bloom of
course natural
mulch of dung,
as simple to his humanity as he is to the nature
of all men or so human as we might wish all men could be. And yes, Henry
Miller. ..But let us not wonder that our authors, our public voices, have
been so reticent. Rather be grateful this process has not inspired the end–
less song, sonnet, story, pageant, dance, commandments and litigation,
