Mr. Potter (6 page)
Authors: Jamaica Kincaid
Can a human being exist in a wilderness, a world so empty of human feeling: love and justice; a world in which love and even that, justice, only exist from time to time and in small quantities, or unexpectedly, like a wild seedling of some necessary and common food (rice would do, or corn would do, or grain of any kind)? The answer is yes and yes again and the answer is no, not really, not so at all. And on that day Elfrida, Mr. Potter's mother she was then and would always be, walked into the sea, everything was so ordinary and itself, as if ordinariness might not sometimes be worth celebrating, as if ordinariness could never be longed for, as if ordinariness could never be missed, as if ordinariness was all there was and anything else was an interruption: the light from the sun sprawled across the small island lazily now, for it had long ago fiercely driven away every shadow, it had long ago with fierceness penetrated every crevice; the sky in some places
was a thin blue, as if it had exhausted being that color, blue, as if it was at the very end of being that color, blue, and in some other places the blue of the sky was so intense, so thick was the sky with that color, blue, as if that color, blue, was only then being made, as if it was so new, as if it had never been seen before, and nothing could replace it and this blue might satisfy every known want; and the trees and vegetables grew, not carelessly and wantonly (they lived mostly in a perpetual drought), with leaves everywhere surrounding flowers and fruit and seed, but grew with a careful sadness, sometimes hovering near the ground, as if reaching up to the sky would be a mistake; and sometimes a single tree would arrange itself in this way, half of it dormant, half not, and the dormant half rested and the growing half grew sparingly; and the land itself, the land over which Elfrida Robinson walked on her way into the sea which would then swallow her up, curved and straightened out, rose up into small hills and then flattened out, and the land was not welcoming and it was not rejecting, not on purpose; it was only the land of a very small island, an island of no account, really, and she was of no account, really, only she was the mother of my father and I know I cannot make myself forget that.
was a thin blue, as if it had exhausted being that color, blue, as if it was at the very end of being that color, blue, and in some other places the blue of the sky was so intense, so thick was the sky with that color, blue, as if that color, blue, was only then being made, as if it was so new, as if it had never been seen before, and nothing could replace it and this blue might satisfy every known want; and the trees and vegetables grew, not carelessly and wantonly (they lived mostly in a perpetual drought), with leaves everywhere surrounding flowers and fruit and seed, but grew with a careful sadness, sometimes hovering near the ground, as if reaching up to the sky would be a mistake; and sometimes a single tree would arrange itself in this way, half of it dormant, half not, and the dormant half rested and the growing half grew sparingly; and the land itself, the land over which Elfrida Robinson walked on her way into the sea which would then swallow her up, curved and straightened out, rose up into small hills and then flattened out, and the land was not welcoming and it was not rejecting, not on purpose; it was only the land of a very small island, an island of no account, really, and she was of no account, really, only she was the mother of my father and I know I cannot make myself forget that.
And the dress she wore on that day she walked into the sea was made of blue poplin, and even the very fabric that covered her tormented skin had its
own tormented history, the very name, poplin, so innocent even in description, so humble when seen in large bolts, so humble when made into a garment worn by Elfrida in any situation, sitting down or walking toward her death being swallowed up by the sea; and the dress had a white collar made of white chambray and sleeves with cuffs of white chambray, and she crossed her arms across her body, just above her waist and just below her breast, as if she were her own child and needed soothing and encouragement just before a difficult task. She wore no shoes, for she did not have any of her own. Her eyes were closed as she walked along the road; on either side of her were landscapes, brown clay heaving up, brown clay sweeping downward, and her eyes were closed not to shut out a beckoning world, not to shut out a world that might tempt her to love it; her eyes were shut because they were so tired, they had been open for so very long. And the world, satisfied in its ordinariness, moved this way and then that, as usual, and Elfrida Robinson, who was even then Mr. Potter's mother, walked without doubt and without purpose toward the sea.
own tormented history, the very name, poplin, so innocent even in description, so humble when seen in large bolts, so humble when made into a garment worn by Elfrida in any situation, sitting down or walking toward her death being swallowed up by the sea; and the dress had a white collar made of white chambray and sleeves with cuffs of white chambray, and she crossed her arms across her body, just above her waist and just below her breast, as if she were her own child and needed soothing and encouragement just before a difficult task. She wore no shoes, for she did not have any of her own. Her eyes were closed as she walked along the road; on either side of her were landscapes, brown clay heaving up, brown clay sweeping downward, and her eyes were closed not to shut out a beckoning world, not to shut out a world that might tempt her to love it; her eyes were shut because they were so tired, they had been open for so very long. And the world, satisfied in its ordinariness, moved this way and then that, as usual, and Elfrida Robinson, who was even then Mr. Potter's mother, walked without doubt and without purpose toward the sea.
And she walked from the flat center, which was formed by clay, toward the south and southwest, which was hilly for it had been formed by long-dormant volcanoes, and then she walked north and then toward the northeast, and she passed the Bendals
stream, which was near the village of Bendals. But a stream, so often a symbol of the gentleness of life in its slow, calm, steady flow, the tender sound it so humbly makes, its very existence a repudiation of so much that is harsh and violent and frightening in the world as we human beings find itâa stream of water could not come to her attention; a stream anywhere, what was that? And she walked toward the sea, but not toward the sea as it was to be found at English Harbour, or Old Road Bluff, or Willoughby Bay, or Nonsuch Harbour, or Boone's Point, or Wetherell Point, or Five Islands, or Carlisle Bay, or Lignum Vitae Bay, or Dieppe Bay. She walked toward Rat Island, a small formation of rock that in silhouette resembled a rodent exposed to its enemies and vulnerable, and this formation of rock was connected to Antigua by a narrow sliver of land, an isthmus. And many years later, for her life ended in nineteen hundred and twenty-seven or sometime not far from around then, my own mother would take me to Rat Island to teach me to swim and I never learned to do that, and on Good Fridays, after the sad mourning service for a man murdered many years ago, my mother and I went to Rat Island to dig for cockles and search for a pink-colored seaweed; we never found enough of either to make a meal, but even so, each year we went again and again after Good Friday services to Rat Island. Nothing of
any use grew there, it harbored families of wild pigs, pigs that had escaped domesticity and had grown ferocious, though they were not dangerous, only frightening if you came upon them unexpectedly. And once, while I stood on the shore watching my mother swim in the waters off Rat Island, she took a deep dive and disappeared from my sight and my sense of loss, loss of her, my mother, was so beyond my own understanding that to this day, just to remember it, places me on the edge of just before falling into nothingness, a blank space that is dark and without borders and will always be so. But it is to this place that Elfrida walked, Rat Island, into the bay there, and the seas took her in, not with love, not with indifference, not with meaning of any kind. And it was at Rat Island that Elfrida Robinson died and it was at Rat Island that I falsely thought my mother had died, but at the time of the incident with my mother, I did not know of Elfrida Robinson, I did not know of Mr. Potter, but he was my father all the same and Elfrida was his mother.
stream, which was near the village of Bendals. But a stream, so often a symbol of the gentleness of life in its slow, calm, steady flow, the tender sound it so humbly makes, its very existence a repudiation of so much that is harsh and violent and frightening in the world as we human beings find itâa stream of water could not come to her attention; a stream anywhere, what was that? And she walked toward the sea, but not toward the sea as it was to be found at English Harbour, or Old Road Bluff, or Willoughby Bay, or Nonsuch Harbour, or Boone's Point, or Wetherell Point, or Five Islands, or Carlisle Bay, or Lignum Vitae Bay, or Dieppe Bay. She walked toward Rat Island, a small formation of rock that in silhouette resembled a rodent exposed to its enemies and vulnerable, and this formation of rock was connected to Antigua by a narrow sliver of land, an isthmus. And many years later, for her life ended in nineteen hundred and twenty-seven or sometime not far from around then, my own mother would take me to Rat Island to teach me to swim and I never learned to do that, and on Good Fridays, after the sad mourning service for a man murdered many years ago, my mother and I went to Rat Island to dig for cockles and search for a pink-colored seaweed; we never found enough of either to make a meal, but even so, each year we went again and again after Good Friday services to Rat Island. Nothing of
any use grew there, it harbored families of wild pigs, pigs that had escaped domesticity and had grown ferocious, though they were not dangerous, only frightening if you came upon them unexpectedly. And once, while I stood on the shore watching my mother swim in the waters off Rat Island, she took a deep dive and disappeared from my sight and my sense of loss, loss of her, my mother, was so beyond my own understanding that to this day, just to remember it, places me on the edge of just before falling into nothingness, a blank space that is dark and without borders and will always be so. But it is to this place that Elfrida walked, Rat Island, into the bay there, and the seas took her in, not with love, not with indifference, not with meaning of any kind. And it was at Rat Island that Elfrida Robinson died and it was at Rat Island that I falsely thought my mother had died, but at the time of the incident with my mother, I did not know of Elfrida Robinson, I did not know of Mr. Potter, but he was my father all the same and Elfrida was his mother.
And Elfrida Robinson walked into the sea, as if the sea was life and so was to be joyfully embraced, and the sea swallowed her and then twisted her dry like a piece of old clothing and then ground her into tiny bits and then the tiny bits dissolved and vanished from sight, but only from sight, for they are still there, only they cannot be seen. And the moment she surrendered her life was not the very moment the sea
closed over her; that moment had come a long time before. The moment she surrendered her life, the moment that the space between her and the world became vast and unknowable, had occurred long before the very powerful reality of the sea's water had overtaken her. Then there was a silence, but only for her; and then there was a blackness, but only for her; and the world retreated to beyond words and order and beauty and all its opposites, but only for her. And after a short while, no one spoke of her again, her courage (for it was that, courage) became cowardice and then strange, so strange that it must not be repeated, and after a short while no one thought of her again, not her only child, her son, Mr. Potter, not his father Nathaniel and not Nathaniel's other children or his other wives or loves or acquaintances, not anyone, and only I now do so, think of her, and she was Mr. Potter's mother, my father's name was Mr. Potter.
closed over her; that moment had come a long time before. The moment she surrendered her life, the moment that the space between her and the world became vast and unknowable, had occurred long before the very powerful reality of the sea's water had overtaken her. Then there was a silence, but only for her; and then there was a blackness, but only for her; and the world retreated to beyond words and order and beauty and all its opposites, but only for her. And after a short while, no one spoke of her again, her courage (for it was that, courage) became cowardice and then strange, so strange that it must not be repeated, and after a short while no one thought of her again, not her only child, her son, Mr. Potter, not his father Nathaniel and not Nathaniel's other children or his other wives or loves or acquaintances, not anyone, and only I now do so, think of her, and she was Mr. Potter's mother, my father's name was Mr. Potter.
See the motherless Roderick Nathaniel Potter, but he did not know himself to be so, motherless. See him a small boy, vulnerable to all that is hard and without heart, to all that is hard and without love, to all that is hard and without mercy. See him a small boy! Eating his penny loaf with no butter on it, drinking his cup of cocoa with no milk in it, never drinking a cup of milk at all; eating his small amount of rice and fish that came from the bottom of the pot, the part that had burned. See his clothes, his khaki pants, his shirt of
chambray, thinned in some parts, shredded in some parts, hang without shape on his poor frame, shrink away from his body as if in terror of touching that coarse, scaly covering that is his skin. See him walk across a yard, the soles of his feet bare, naked, as they meet the immediate, near surface of the earth, and sometimes this near surface is soft mud and sometimes this near surface is hard and dry and stony. See him walk down a narrow lane, carrying a letter in his hands, or a brief message on his lips; see him walk down a narrow lane with a large bundle of something importantâfood, for instanceâbalanced carefully (not beautifully, he was not a woman) on his head; see him walk down a narrow lane, with the concerns of Mr. Shepherd and his wife, Mistress Shepherd, on his small boy's shoulders. See the small boy, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, asleep on a bed of old and dirty rags, not old and clean rags like the ones that made up the bed on which he was born. See the small boy, so tired, so hungry, before he falls asleep, just before he falls asleep, and hear the grinding sound from his belly, like an old unoiled saw, its blade put to green wood. See the small boy asleep, in a slumber so deep, and his dreams become so much a reality, so much a world of its own, and this world is sometimes the opposite of the one he knows when awake and sometimes it is just the same, and sometimes he does not miss them and sometimes he does not even remember them afterward.
See the small boy asleep in a slumber so deep, seamlessly still, his body seems stilled, but not in death, not in the life of death, his body is stilled yet moving with stillness (for yes, that could be so, moving and stillness at one and the same time; it could be so and it was so), and he breathes in and he breathes out, and his chest moves up and down, gently. See the small boy, he would become Mr. Potter, his name then was Roderick Nathaniel on his birth certificate, his name then was Roderick Potter in his mother's mind, his name then was Drickie to all who met him. See the small boy coming awake in the morning, from the deep slumber that had produced a not at all troubling landscape, a landscape with its up and downs, its good and bad; see the small boy awake in the world of his corner in the kitchen, and when he wipes his eyes, a thick liquid, almost like perspiration but it is not, has, while he was sleeping, oozed out of his eyes and thickened into a thin crust, and collected in the corners of his eyes, the corners of both eyes, and the thick coalesced liquid in the corners of his eyes causes him to see at first dimly and falsely and this makes him angry and he violently scrubs the film from his eyes and all that is before him is clear: he will step out of bed, he will put on his clothes (he has no shoes), he walks away from his sleeping life now, he walks into the world and he is in perfect harmony with himself, for perfect harmony is the province of a good God, or the
province of the ordinarily degraded. Mr. Potter, my father, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, was of the ordinarily degraded. And see him now round a corner, not yet in possession of the knowledge of his own misery, never to be in possession of the knowledge that the world has rained down on him injustice upon injustice, cruelty upon cruelty, never to be in possession of the knowledge that though his very being was holy, his existence was a triumph of evil. See him round the corner of the alley, any alley, carrying an object in which he takes pleasure: a stone over which he tripped, and the stone has a funny shape for a stone, or a strange texture for a stone, or he picks up the stone for a reason he will never know; and when carrying the stone, as he rounds the corner of the alley, he is skipping, a sign of playfulness, he is tossing the stone in the air and successfully catching it, a sign of playfulness, and he is alone and the joy of himself skipping as he throws a stone into the empty air and catches it is his own, it is something he possesses; and in that moment he is in harmony with his joy and is himself, something he possesses. See Mr. Potter, a small boy, his spirit in harmony with his own actions, his actions in harmony with his spirit; see Mr. Potter, boundless and joyful, as he traverses a very small corner of the world, see him in this way when he was a child, for this is so rare in his life, a joyfulness that was without boundaries. See him as a small boy, for he was
Drickie then, he was not Mr. Potter yet, he was not even Roderick, he was Drickie, a small boy, and his mother had walked into the sea, and his father had died after cursing the small share he received of the fruits of the sea, and he was living with people who could not love him, who could not love anything at all, and neither could he, Drickie, who was not yet Mr. Potter.
chambray, thinned in some parts, shredded in some parts, hang without shape on his poor frame, shrink away from his body as if in terror of touching that coarse, scaly covering that is his skin. See him walk across a yard, the soles of his feet bare, naked, as they meet the immediate, near surface of the earth, and sometimes this near surface is soft mud and sometimes this near surface is hard and dry and stony. See him walk down a narrow lane, carrying a letter in his hands, or a brief message on his lips; see him walk down a narrow lane with a large bundle of something importantâfood, for instanceâbalanced carefully (not beautifully, he was not a woman) on his head; see him walk down a narrow lane, with the concerns of Mr. Shepherd and his wife, Mistress Shepherd, on his small boy's shoulders. See the small boy, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, asleep on a bed of old and dirty rags, not old and clean rags like the ones that made up the bed on which he was born. See the small boy, so tired, so hungry, before he falls asleep, just before he falls asleep, and hear the grinding sound from his belly, like an old unoiled saw, its blade put to green wood. See the small boy asleep, in a slumber so deep, and his dreams become so much a reality, so much a world of its own, and this world is sometimes the opposite of the one he knows when awake and sometimes it is just the same, and sometimes he does not miss them and sometimes he does not even remember them afterward.
See the small boy asleep in a slumber so deep, seamlessly still, his body seems stilled, but not in death, not in the life of death, his body is stilled yet moving with stillness (for yes, that could be so, moving and stillness at one and the same time; it could be so and it was so), and he breathes in and he breathes out, and his chest moves up and down, gently. See the small boy, he would become Mr. Potter, his name then was Roderick Nathaniel on his birth certificate, his name then was Roderick Potter in his mother's mind, his name then was Drickie to all who met him. See the small boy coming awake in the morning, from the deep slumber that had produced a not at all troubling landscape, a landscape with its up and downs, its good and bad; see the small boy awake in the world of his corner in the kitchen, and when he wipes his eyes, a thick liquid, almost like perspiration but it is not, has, while he was sleeping, oozed out of his eyes and thickened into a thin crust, and collected in the corners of his eyes, the corners of both eyes, and the thick coalesced liquid in the corners of his eyes causes him to see at first dimly and falsely and this makes him angry and he violently scrubs the film from his eyes and all that is before him is clear: he will step out of bed, he will put on his clothes (he has no shoes), he walks away from his sleeping life now, he walks into the world and he is in perfect harmony with himself, for perfect harmony is the province of a good God, or the
province of the ordinarily degraded. Mr. Potter, my father, Roderick Nathaniel Potter, was of the ordinarily degraded. And see him now round a corner, not yet in possession of the knowledge of his own misery, never to be in possession of the knowledge that the world has rained down on him injustice upon injustice, cruelty upon cruelty, never to be in possession of the knowledge that though his very being was holy, his existence was a triumph of evil. See him round the corner of the alley, any alley, carrying an object in which he takes pleasure: a stone over which he tripped, and the stone has a funny shape for a stone, or a strange texture for a stone, or he picks up the stone for a reason he will never know; and when carrying the stone, as he rounds the corner of the alley, he is skipping, a sign of playfulness, he is tossing the stone in the air and successfully catching it, a sign of playfulness, and he is alone and the joy of himself skipping as he throws a stone into the empty air and catches it is his own, it is something he possesses; and in that moment he is in harmony with his joy and is himself, something he possesses. See Mr. Potter, a small boy, his spirit in harmony with his own actions, his actions in harmony with his spirit; see Mr. Potter, boundless and joyful, as he traverses a very small corner of the world, see him in this way when he was a child, for this is so rare in his life, a joyfulness that was without boundaries. See him as a small boy, for he was
Drickie then, he was not Mr. Potter yet, he was not even Roderick, he was Drickie, a small boy, and his mother had walked into the sea, and his father had died after cursing the small share he received of the fruits of the sea, and he was living with people who could not love him, who could not love anything at all, and neither could he, Drickie, who was not yet Mr. Potter.
A
nd Mr. Potter's mother had smelled of onions, that was all he could remember of her, that she smelled of onions and that the last time he saw her she placed him, this small boy, her only child, in the care of Mr. and Mistress Shepherd, and she walked away from him and for a long time after that (what exactly could that be to a small boy?) he thought she might come back and get him, and then he thought she might come back and say something, anything, to him, and then after that he thought, She will come back just to take a glimpse of me, I will see her as she takes a glimpse of me, and then all this was followed by a large blank space of darkness and light, sometimes separated, the darkness and the light, sometimes mingling, the darkness and the light, and this single blank space of only darkness and lightâseparated
or commingledâwas where Elfrida Robinson, his mother, stayed. And when he smelled onions, he remembered her, just the smell of onions being cooked or sometimes the smell enclosing the words as they emerged from someone's mouth, or sometimes the smell of onions just in the air when there was no explanation for it at all, as if the smell in the air was a premonition, a sign of some kind. But onions were not food, onions only flavored food, onions were not a staff of life, onions only made a staff of life more palatable, more enjoyable. And his unfulfilled longing for his mother did not create a feeling of emptiness in him, as far as he knew then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and his mother abandoning him when he was so small and vulnerable to the whole history of evil directed at him and at all who looked like him, and so vulnerable to the many, many small indignities that rained down on him in particular, did not influence his view of the world as far as he knew it then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and after a long time, long after he had been a boy but quite close to the time in which he would die, he could not remember his mother's name, he could not remember his mother's face, the shape of it, the color of it, the feel of it, he could not remember her name, he could only remember that his mother smelled of onions, a food not at all necessary to sustain life. His
mother smelled of onions and onions and onions again.
nd Mr. Potter's mother had smelled of onions, that was all he could remember of her, that she smelled of onions and that the last time he saw her she placed him, this small boy, her only child, in the care of Mr. and Mistress Shepherd, and she walked away from him and for a long time after that (what exactly could that be to a small boy?) he thought she might come back and get him, and then he thought she might come back and say something, anything, to him, and then after that he thought, She will come back just to take a glimpse of me, I will see her as she takes a glimpse of me, and then all this was followed by a large blank space of darkness and light, sometimes separated, the darkness and the light, sometimes mingling, the darkness and the light, and this single blank space of only darkness and lightâseparated
or commingledâwas where Elfrida Robinson, his mother, stayed. And when he smelled onions, he remembered her, just the smell of onions being cooked or sometimes the smell enclosing the words as they emerged from someone's mouth, or sometimes the smell of onions just in the air when there was no explanation for it at all, as if the smell in the air was a premonition, a sign of some kind. But onions were not food, onions only flavored food, onions were not a staff of life, onions only made a staff of life more palatable, more enjoyable. And his unfulfilled longing for his mother did not create a feeling of emptiness in him, as far as he knew then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and his mother abandoning him when he was so small and vulnerable to the whole history of evil directed at him and at all who looked like him, and so vulnerable to the many, many small indignities that rained down on him in particular, did not influence his view of the world as far as he knew it then, and this did not change up to the day he died; and after a long time, long after he had been a boy but quite close to the time in which he would die, he could not remember his mother's name, he could not remember his mother's face, the shape of it, the color of it, the feel of it, he could not remember her name, he could only remember that his mother smelled of onions, a food not at all necessary to sustain life. His
mother smelled of onions and onions and onions again.
How each moment is brimming over with the possibility of change, how each moment is brimming over with the new; and yet how in each moment the world is seemingly fixed and steadfast and unchanging; how for some of us we are nothing if we are not like the cockle in its shell, the bird in its feathers, the mammal covered with hair and skin; how certain we are that the world will ensure our fixed state of happiness or misery or anything of the vast range in between; how in defeat we see eternity and how so too we see forever and ever and ever again and again in victory; how in some dim and distant way we feel we are nothing and how certain we are that we are everything, all that is to be is present in us and no thing or idea of any kind will replace us.
And there was a man named Mr. Shepherd and he was married to Mrs. Shepherd and they were both descended from African slaves and also other people who were of no real account, to look at Mr. and Mistress Shepherd; they looked mostly as if they were descended from Africans who were slaves. And Mr. Shepherd said ⦠but there was nothing for him to say, for everything was in his face, so tautly scrunched up as if mimicking in every way a hand made into a fist, and this fist, powerful for it was a ball of anger
made physical, could not release itself and so Mr. Shepherd's face looked like a face, it was a face, but it did not telegraph acceptance, kindness, love, curiosity, or the feeling that what was to come would be a welcome and divinely sanctioned adventure. Mr. Shepherd's face was full of the vigor to be found in the hated. Mr. Shepherd was common, as are all human beings in a way; in a very particular way he was made up of his past, and all human beings, when they find themselves with other human beings, are made up of their past, their past is their true currency. And Mr. Shepherd said nothing even though he spoke many words, but his words could certainly not change the past, nothing could ever do that, the past was a certainty. And Mr. Shepherd paused, he stopped, he froze permanently, eventually, and the world as he came to know it was the taut fist waiting to meet a deserving something, and this was his face. His face was always a representation of these two things: the potential of triumph and the certainty of defeat. It was in such a world and in the care of such two people, Mr. Shepherd and Mistress Shepherd, that Mr. Potter, my father, for Mr. Potter was my father's name, grew up; that is to say, he attached himself to the world, attached himself to the world we all know, the world that is round and has an above and a below and an across, and an over there, and a just right near here and a beyond there and a how could such a thing be: a
mystery, something confounding, something that was beyond an explanation on which he could agree. Mr. Potter thickened. And injustice became so real to him it was like breathing, it was like oxygen, it was like standing up, it was like the blue that was the sky, it was like the water that made up the ocean, it was like anything that stood before him: always there, it had a right to be there, and its disappearance would mean a new order, and in that case where would Mr. Potter be? But Mr. Potter kept on, not through his own will, but he kept on growing, that little boy, and Mr. Shepherd hated him as Mr. Shepherd hated his own self and so too he hated all that was around him, but not Mistress Shepherd, he did not hate her, he did not love and he did not hate her, but why? And Mr. Potter grew up into a man, and that man became Mr. Potter, that man that grew up from Drickie, toiling through the perils of life, he was young, new, and foolish, and he survived all of this, the young and the new and the foolish, and then one day he was Mr. Potter and no one had made him that way, one day he knew himself to be Mr. Potter. And Mr. Shepherd taught Drickie how to drive and Drickieâwhose name was Mr. Potter eventually, and I came to know him by that name, Mr. Potter, and the name by which I know him is the way he will forever be known, for I am the one who can write the narrative that is his life, the only one reallyâdrove Mr. Shepherd to Shepherd's School, a
school for boys like Mr. Potter but those boys did not have a mother who had walked into the sea, and Mr. Shepherd hated the boys of the Shepherd School and he hated Mr. Potter more than that, and he hated himself even more, though he did not know it. And Mr. Shepherd loomed over Drickie in every way that could be imagined, for what else could he do; and the world in its entirety, and in every way imaginable, loomed over Drickie, for that is the way of the world no matter how it constitutes itself, it looms and looms, and Drickie became the opposite of glowing; he grew dull, like something useful made of a precious metal but forgotten on a shelf, he grew dull and ugly, in the way of the forgotten, and this is true: often a thing that is ugly is ugly in itself, and often a thing that is ugly is only a thing that is forgotten, kept from view and kept from memory, and often a thing that is ugly is not only a definition of beauty itself but also renders beauty as something beyond words or beyond any kind of description. And â¦
made physical, could not release itself and so Mr. Shepherd's face looked like a face, it was a face, but it did not telegraph acceptance, kindness, love, curiosity, or the feeling that what was to come would be a welcome and divinely sanctioned adventure. Mr. Shepherd's face was full of the vigor to be found in the hated. Mr. Shepherd was common, as are all human beings in a way; in a very particular way he was made up of his past, and all human beings, when they find themselves with other human beings, are made up of their past, their past is their true currency. And Mr. Shepherd said nothing even though he spoke many words, but his words could certainly not change the past, nothing could ever do that, the past was a certainty. And Mr. Shepherd paused, he stopped, he froze permanently, eventually, and the world as he came to know it was the taut fist waiting to meet a deserving something, and this was his face. His face was always a representation of these two things: the potential of triumph and the certainty of defeat. It was in such a world and in the care of such two people, Mr. Shepherd and Mistress Shepherd, that Mr. Potter, my father, for Mr. Potter was my father's name, grew up; that is to say, he attached himself to the world, attached himself to the world we all know, the world that is round and has an above and a below and an across, and an over there, and a just right near here and a beyond there and a how could such a thing be: a
mystery, something confounding, something that was beyond an explanation on which he could agree. Mr. Potter thickened. And injustice became so real to him it was like breathing, it was like oxygen, it was like standing up, it was like the blue that was the sky, it was like the water that made up the ocean, it was like anything that stood before him: always there, it had a right to be there, and its disappearance would mean a new order, and in that case where would Mr. Potter be? But Mr. Potter kept on, not through his own will, but he kept on growing, that little boy, and Mr. Shepherd hated him as Mr. Shepherd hated his own self and so too he hated all that was around him, but not Mistress Shepherd, he did not hate her, he did not love and he did not hate her, but why? And Mr. Potter grew up into a man, and that man became Mr. Potter, that man that grew up from Drickie, toiling through the perils of life, he was young, new, and foolish, and he survived all of this, the young and the new and the foolish, and then one day he was Mr. Potter and no one had made him that way, one day he knew himself to be Mr. Potter. And Mr. Shepherd taught Drickie how to drive and Drickieâwhose name was Mr. Potter eventually, and I came to know him by that name, Mr. Potter, and the name by which I know him is the way he will forever be known, for I am the one who can write the narrative that is his life, the only one reallyâdrove Mr. Shepherd to Shepherd's School, a
school for boys like Mr. Potter but those boys did not have a mother who had walked into the sea, and Mr. Shepherd hated the boys of the Shepherd School and he hated Mr. Potter more than that, and he hated himself even more, though he did not know it. And Mr. Shepherd loomed over Drickie in every way that could be imagined, for what else could he do; and the world in its entirety, and in every way imaginable, loomed over Drickie, for that is the way of the world no matter how it constitutes itself, it looms and looms, and Drickie became the opposite of glowing; he grew dull, like something useful made of a precious metal but forgotten on a shelf, he grew dull and ugly, in the way of the forgotten, and this is true: often a thing that is ugly is ugly in itself, and often a thing that is ugly is only a thing that is forgotten, kept from view and kept from memory, and often a thing that is ugly is not only a definition of beauty itself but also renders beauty as something beyond words or beyond any kind of description. And â¦
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