Peru. Gordon Lish

or from any one of the towns which were around there then.

      I just realized something—namely, that I could not tell you where the nanny was from, either—in the sense of where the nanny used to live before she started living at the Lieblichs’. All I can tell you is the idea which she gave me specifically, that where it was where, that it was a place which was where all of the boys were stronger boys than we were, and were Christian ones, Christian.

      She said that they were wild Indians, that they were rascals, that they were ruffians and scamps.

      She always had her uniform on. I never saw her without her uniform on—or without those rubber bands which she always had on over the wristwatch on her wrist. You know what I can say about the nanny which will give you the exact feeling I had about her? I can say that she always felt like she was there even when I was just thinking about her.

      King of the Mountain, Hide and Seek, Tag—maybe Steven Adinoff was used to playing games like those games. I don’t know. Builder or Gardener or Farmer—he could have thought these were just sissy games. In all honesty and sincerity, the nanny herself, maybe even she thought that, maybe all of the times when she was sitting there in the chair for her to keep an eye on us in the sandbox, maybe that’s what the nanny was really thinking of to herself, that we were playing a game which just a sissy would play, even though she was the one who more or less set the game up that way herself, who said, who always said, which three games she was going to give us to pick from, and then, and who then, after we did it, after we picked, who would not ever let us switch to something different, to another game, no matter what.

      Right this instant I could vomit from just reminding myself of how he talked—right this very instant I think I almost could, although I suppose that this is just an exaggeration from me feeling so involved in the whole question of discussing all of this at all, or at least from just the feeling which you have when you finally actually start.

      We didn’t even play games like Button, Button, Who’s Got The Button? Or the game of London Bridge.

      She said the thing she had to always watch out for with us was somebody getting too overexcited or getting too overheated or getting too worked up, and then, before you knew it, before you know it, it is all at sixes and sevens and somebody has to pay the piper. She said that this was why there had to be rules—that the reason was to keep things from getting to be all at sixes and sevens for everybody.

      I’ll tell you one of the things the nanny said the most.

      She said, “A place for everything, and everything in its place.” This is something I agreed with then—and now that I am a man of fifty years of age, all I can say to you is experience has taught me to agree with it even more.

      I think this was one of the reasons why Andy Lieblich was so lucky to have her. There were a lot of reasons why Andy Lieblich was lucky to have a nanny, but this one was one of the biggest ones—namely, the reason that the nanny kept her eye on things for you and taught you things which in later life could stand you in good stead, whereas in my particular case I just had a mother for her to do this and not some extra person the way Andy Lieblich did.

      To be absolutely truthful with you, I personally liked it when I had the feeling that there was a sense in which I was the nanny’s boy too—in the same way that Andy Lieblich himself was—that is, not her flesh and blood in the strict sense of the term of flesh and blood, but instead her job, the thing she was mainly supposed to be thinking about and looking out for throughout the course of the day.

      Right then! Right there!—that’s exactly it, that was exactly it, my almost saying the livelong day, my wanting to say the livelong day—really feeling myself hardly able to stop myself from saying the livelong day—killing Steven Adinoff, it was the same feeling, the thing with like rhyming the sounds, or like rhyming the words!

      Or like some, you know, some beat in me or something.

      Imagine, what would I do if I had a hoe in my hands?

      She probably thought to herself how could boys like this ever hurt each other? On the other hand, it was she herself who said that boys will be boys and that you could never tell a book by its cover.

      It was so quiet when I was killing him.

      Aside from the water sizzling and aside from her rolling them up and down, her rolling the rubber bands up and down over her wrist and her wristwatch. And make no mistake of it—I for one was listening closely, believe you me, I was a boy who was all ears.

      That’s how I can tell you, that’s how I happen to know about it to tell you—about the overall sensation of sogginess.

      Here’s the best way to say it—on the inside I was listening to myself, listening to the words—whereas on the outside I was all ears and didn’t miss, did not miss a peep.

      Not words—but like words.

      When there’s time, if there’s time, I’ll explain.

      There was never any yelling or any screaming or even anybody saying “Stop!” or “Don’t!” Even he himself, even Steven Adinoff himself, there was not one time when he said anything like this. But you know what? Now that I know what I know, I can tell you that it all makes perfect sense, perfect sense—that it is not even funny how perfect or perfectly the whole thing fits.

      You want to know what he said?

      You want to hear what Steven Adinoff actually said?

      He said, “You don’t have to kill me.”

      He said, “You didn’t have to kill me.”

      Outside of the things which he said about his Johnny Mize card, those were all of the things which Steven Adinoff actually said to me without a single sole exception— “You don’t have to kill me,” and “You didn’t have to kill me,” and then of all these other things when he got up and was walking around and checking his pockets and stepping in and out of the sandbox—I mean, all of these other things about a baseball card, about his baseball card, about the baseball card he had when we were still waiting for the nanny to make up her mind and give us her decision.

      Oh, but there were lots of different things for you to hear if you are talking about not things like talk and so on but what you would have heard if you were listening to just him—sounds like squishy ones, that’s the best word I can make up to describe them—squishy sounds, squishinesses. But this is leaving out the sounds of when, for instance, the handle of his rake banged into the handle of my hoe or of when somebody hit the side of the sandbox or even hit the sand itself—or hit the grass actually, hit the Lieblichs’ lawn actually—because, if the truth be known, even in their backyard the Lieblichs had a lawn.

      Here are some other thoughts that come to mind—or then let’s just say just words which do.

      Sluggishness and exhaustion and a kind of dragging-down feeling. I mean the feeling of everything weighing too much and of sinking, the sound of sogginess and the feeling of sogginess and of a tremendous quiet stopping and plunging, everything too heavy to move but also too heavy to stand still and stay put in one spot—all that and words, or just the sounds of the words like drogue, dredge, carborundum, torque. Do you hear what I mean? It’s incredible how those ones are just the right ones as far as words are concerned. Not that it hasn’t taken me forever to come across just the right ones—dredge, drogue, carborundum, torque. And also inside of me, especially when I first felt the feeling of the hoe in my hands when it first actually connected so that you felt you had really connected with something really solid, this is when I really felt what I have to call a buzzy feeling—up deep inside of way up inside of my backside—a small buzziness, small but very tingly, or tingling—this small buzzing or buzziness.

      Here is something I am certain about—I had the same sound inside of me when I was looking up at Iris Lieblich looking down at me.

      Ask yourself something—ask yourself if you can remember ever having a feeling like this—namely, one where you are so tired that you have to lie right down, but then the instant that you do it, then you feel that you are so tired that you