Where Three Roads Meet

Once upon a time, I've been told, we Stories kicked off with "Once upon a time," or some other such Square One formulation, and then took it from there: Leda lays egg, egg hatches Helen, Helen lays Paris, Greeks lay waste to Troy, et cetera. Or, closer to home, "My name is I've Been Told. I began two sentences ago with Once upon a time, and here I am: wide-eyed hatchling, old as the hills but clueless as to who and where I might be this time and what'll happen next."

Not quite so. If some of my plain-folks ancestors (and some not-so-plain ones who for one reason or another wore Plainness as a camouflage) began as if straightforwardly at their "beginnings," others equally venerable thought it best to start off in the middle of things: in medias res, as Coach Horace famously put it, not ab ovo with the egg abovementioned. Which fateful ovum, be it noted, wasn't really the Troy tale's Square One anyhow, since in order for Ms. Leda to lay the thing, Zeus-in-swan-drag had to lay Leda, and back we go, chickenStories may begin at their "beginnings," but their tellings commence where their Teller sees fit, and since all hands know the tale already anyhow (for what kind of loser would invent a brand-new story, and so distract the house with What'll Happen Next that they miss Teller's cool new riffs on the classic tune?), better start off in the next-to-last year of the War or the Wandering, and then with your left hand remind 'em of the Tale Thus Far while your right keeps the plot-pot bubbling toward full boil. You follow me?

Fact is, an old pro like Yours Truly can have it both ways: Once upon a time, e.g., there was a story that began not only in the middle of things but well past that middle, just a hop/skip/hobble from Climax and Curtain — and that story c'est moi, guys, and here's how I go, now that I've got myself cranked and more or less under way:

Who "I" am, see, is your world-renowned, ball-busting Myth of the Wandering Hero — but you can just call me Fred. Or Frank or Florence, Fiorello or Fiddle-Dee-Dee; I've used a thousand aka's, and none of 'em's me, so Fred'll do. Old-Fart Fred, let's say: the kind of Seedy Senior you might see straggling west along the shoulder of the interstate, long raggedy hair and beard, patchwork clothes like some displaced Robinson Crusoe's, all his earthly possessions in cruddy sacks slung over his shoulders, heedless of the SUVs and eighteen-wheelers roaring by, which aren't allowed to stop and offer him a lift even should they so incline. Which you can bet your bottom buck they don't, any more than you would — who, however, have been enough taken by the queer apparition at least to slow down, shake head, and wonder where in the wide world I'm coming from, and where headed and why, and how I got this way, and what I think of myself and the story of my life, and how I'll manage to scrounge my next meal out here on the eight-laner, and where I'll lay my flea-bit carcass down to sleep tonight. Thanks for that, Reader dear.

"Story of my life," did I just hear me say? And (somewhere back there) "I've been told…"? Boyoboy, friends, have I ever, a hundred hundred times over! Being told, you might say, is the story of my life and the life of my story; told over and over, whether by different tellers or by the same teller at different times and in different ways: straight up and slantwise, minimally and maximally, realistically and fantastically, comically and tragically — and as narrative or drama, in prose/verse/song, set in sundry locales at sundry "times" with sundry casts of characters, but under all those trappings the same old me, Same Old Story, starring same old Oedipus/Perseus/Odysseus/Aeneas aka Peripatetic Pete or Freaked-Out Fred, all of whom and a shitload more I've "been" and none of whom's me, as I may've mentioned already, inasmuch as I'm no really real person (granted, we all feel that way now and then) nor even "really" a Fictional Character like those hero types abovementioned. Fact is, friends, I'm a fucking fiction, know what I'm saying? Just an old-fart story, maybe the oldest in the books — but let's just call me Fred. If I seem to ramble here and there, that may be because I ramble here and there, as geezers will. Or it may be (Reader take note) that I only seem to ramble, while actually getting a bunch of that left-hand business done.

O.-F. Fred, then, whose Whole Story compriseth no fewer than four full "acts," although various of my tellers have contented themselves with just one or another thereof. If you know the drill already, skip this paragraph. If not, let me remind you that I "begin" (you know what I mean) with my star-of-the-moment's Unusual Conception (Mom a Royal Virgin, literal or figurative; Dad rumored to be a God, ditto) and Imperiled Infancy (Threat and Rescue, Wound and Scar — the last of those useful for later ID); his Obscure Childhood "in another country" (lit. or fig.); his eventual Summons to Adventure; his Setting Out with help of Helper (and/or magical Weapon, Token, Password), bound either Homeward or Bottom-of-Thingsward or both, and his loss of Way/Weapon/Sidekick/Whatever as he approaches or crosses the Threshold of Adventure, from Day-lit Waking World to Twilight Zone. Sound familiar? I should hope so, unless you were born yesterday (in which case, watch your back, kid, and keep your guard up). My Act Two? Obstacles and Adversaries! Riddles and Combats! Tests and Trials of every sort and size, overcome with help of re-found Helper or whatever else my guy lost back there at the Threshold. Descent to Underworld's dark heart; slaying of ultimate Dragon or Ogre; penetration of Mystery's innermost sanctum and/or of Captive Princess's. Sacred Marriage, is what I'm saying: mystical Illumination, consummate Consummation, Transcension of Categories, un-mediated Knowledge, and like that? No wonder (Act Three) the bloke often needs goosing out of bed and back on course: a Summons to Return home-baseward from the Axis Mundi, delivered just about one-eighty around the Heroic track from where he got his original marching orders. So back upstairs he goes, maybe with Ms. Pronged Princess in tow or some other souvenir from the Bottom of Things, and maybe shifting shapes and costumes en route to give pursuers the slip, so that when (Act Four) he recrosses through Customs to the World Upstairs, he may be either in drag or else so morphed by his Adventures Thus Far that the homeland-security folks draw a blank till he flashes his afore-established Scar or other unequivocal ID. Which done, he Routs the Pretenders, assumes his rightful place as his hometown's Chief-in-Chief (or founds a New Burg, either on a hilltop or, like a stop-at-nothing real estate developer, in a marshfill), lays down the Law, and rules the waves, so to speak — he having, so to speak, waived all the rules — for, oh, eight years or thereabouts? Couple of Olympiads, let's say, or U.S. presidential terms? Anyhow, until he wakes up one not-so-fine morning to find himself and his administration inexplicably Fallen from Favor with gods and parishioners alike: the old magic flown, his authority kaput. Nothing for it, tant pis, but Exile (voluntary or otherwise) from his City, and the lonely trudge toward his Mysterious Finis — most often in a Sacred Grove, so I'm told, on a more or less Magic Mountain or at least a Spooky Hilltop, not un-reminiscent of the Square One site of his Unusual Conception. Where his remains remain, nobody's certain, but several towns claim that touristical attraction. Some say the chap's not really dead, just taking a sabbatical leave from Heroing. Some swear that he'll be back, one of these days.

Heard that tune somewhere before, have you, luv? Then it should come as no surprise that after so many remakes and reruns I find myself "identifying," as they say nowadays, with my Protagonists: those serial slam-bangers from every age and culture who after a while amalgamate into one, and whose story becomes my story. Consider, s.v.p.: Mom a Virgin Queen and Dad a Maybe-God? You'd better believe it; how else did I get to be the Boss-Man Story I am, or anyhow was? Oldest in the book, first out of Ma Muse's womb and lord of the litter, sired by we-might-as-well-say Divine Imagination. And as for Imperiled Infancy and the rest, what tale's not in mortal danger till its testicles descend and it finds its voice? Which is to say, its Sidekick/Helper — in my case, the ablest yarnspinners on Planet Earth, whose words have been my Magic Passport. Obstacles and Adversaries? Try book burnings and other censorships, lost manuscripts and sacked libraries, whole civilizations destroyed or petered out, not to mention trivialization, Disneyfication, bumbling bards, and other such hazards. I marvel that I'm here at all! But upon my own Princess/Queen, the Muse of Archetypes, I've sired a worldwide web of Guys-Like-That tales, codified and commentaried by mythologers and pedants of every stripe.

A not-bad career, in short, and over its long course each episode in turn has been the one that seemed most Me-like. Until recently that had been the Triumphal Reign bit, from which I would look back with proprietary satisfaction (and not a little headshaking relief) at those harrowing earlier installments — just as, in ages past, I'd looked forward, eagerly, to the episodes ahead, while feeling most akin to Endangered/Abandoned Tot, Fledgling Adventurer, Full-Fettled Dragonslayer/Princess-Penetrator, and Returnee-in-Disguise about to rout Pretenders and reclaim Throne. Each in turn, I say, has felt like Where I'm At; 'tis a symptom of encroaching old-fartity, I don't doubt, that a time came when I found it ever harder to see myself as Oedipus the Rex, Odysseus the Suitor-Slayer, Aeneas the Empire-Founder, the Ur-Tale Victorious. What I got to sensing instead was… oh, I don't know: something like a fidget in the audience? As if the old shtick were losing its shine, like one of those smash-hit TV sitcoms that's dulled its edge because it's become its own adversary: its own hardest act to follow, if you follow me. So many dead Dragons, routed Pretenders, punctured Princesses and newfounded Cities — who needed yet another? It wasn't the Perseuses and Aeneases I came to feel most akin to, but the Lears and Prosperos: "my magic all o'erthrown," my City urban-blighted and suburban-sprawled, my Laws crusted and clotted with niggling amendments and commentaries-on-commentaries. Budget deficits, creaking infrastructure, cabinet ministers and heirs at sixes and sevens, calls for impeachment, even, and the barbarians arming out in the boonies! So okay, you might say: Who doesn't sometimes feel like a stranger in his/her own house, her/his own skin? But with O.-F. Fred it was no longer "sometimes."

Truth to tell (and we myths do that, believe us or not, in our old-fashioned fashion), I got to feeling just about ready to hang it up, pack it in, bid the homefolks hasta la vista, and clear out of here; hobble offstage while I could still hobble, and hit the old road again, to wherever. There's that Hilltop I'd so often told or been told of, somewhere Out Yonder; maybe it was time for me to trudge thataway? But I couldn't help half wishing — just reflex, I suppose; long-established habit — that I could pull off one more Biggie before I bowed out; close my curtain with a bang. Problem was, even we big-boss mythic-wandering-hero-tale types can't dream up our own specifics and tell ourselves: We need a particularizer, a reorchestrator, an inventive sidekick/mouthpiece — in a word (dot dot dot) a Teller.

So, Reader/Listener/Fellow Traveler: You know now who I am and where I'm coming from, right? What in the storytelling business we call the Exposition. And you've learned where I'm at at the time I tell of and what my capital-P Problem is — my Ground Situation, if you will: "a more or less voltaged state of affairs pre-existing the tale's Present Action," as they say in Taletelling 101. So you needn't be in the biz yourself to guess what's supposed to happen next: the famous And then one day that shifts narrative gears from the general and habitual to the specific and different; the novel element, character, or turn of events that introduces what we old hands call the Dramatic Vehicle, whose job (pardon the tech talk) is to precipitate a Story out of that afore-established Ground Situation.

Ready? You couldn't be more so than was Call-Me-Fred, whose all-'round out-of-it-hood reaches the point (now it can be told) where he packs his Narrative Bags (a-moldering on the shelf for lo these many seasons) and bids family and disaffected citizenry bye-bye. Hits the figurative road, does Figurative Fred; slips incognito out of town, as it were, looking not unlike that Seedy Senior on the interstate afore-invoked. But he gets no farther than — oh, some Place Where Three Roads Meet, shall we figuratively say? Pauses there to scratch head/arse/whatever; sits himself down (on a handy rock-seat smack in the middle of that fabled intersection) to Consider — and here I sit yet, as if at a bus stop in mid-Nowhere, talking to myself whilst awaiting my Dramatic Vehicle. Back yonder, the once-impressive ramparts of my City, cruddy now from deferred maintenance. Somewhere off either thataway or this, that consummatory Hilltop where et cetera. And over thisaway or that? Don't ask me, folks; I'm a stranger here myself.

And then one day…nothing happened? Nah, that was yesterday. Too many yesterdays.

And then one day…a certain Who-Knows-Whom chugs up in as high-mileage a queer old brokedown buggy as ever clunked down the narrative road. Sees me sitting there a-twiddling my thumbs and asks me, Need a lift? Depends, says I, all the while giving him and his beat-up three-wheeler (yup) the once-over, as did he me: Where you bound for? I couldn't tell for sure, vis-à-vis that idling not-so-hotrod, whether it was some antique Real McCoy or a high-tech trike in rattletrap drag. No two ways about its idling driver, though: a graybeard geezer like Yours Truly, plaid flannel shirt and worn-but-clean blue jeans; one whose experience and know-how, if such he had, might or might not make up for slowed-down reflexes and loss of muscle.

Damned if I know, says he — maybe honestly, maybe not, as his expression included a twinkle among its seams and creases. You look like a fellow who's been around the block a time or two: I was hoping you could tell me which road leads where.

To which I heard myself reply, Check out our job descriptions, Stranger: Telling's not my department. Anyhow, if you and these wheels are what I take you-all for, and if I'm what it suits you to have me be, then we both know what lies ahead no matter which way we go.

By which I meant, of course, Complication of Conflict, Escalation of Stakes, and general up-ratcheting of Action toward Climax and Denouement. In a word, the usual.

"I swear," swears he, with sigh and headshake as if I'd said that last aloud instead of to myself (and speaking now 'twixt quote marks as if to keep that distinction clear): "Just thinking about all that hassle's enough to tempt a guy to say Screw it, you know?" Left hand still on the wheel, he scrabbles with his right through the junk on his buggy's floor. "Once upon a time I had me a six-pack in this old wreck somewhere. If I can find that sucker, I say let's set our butts down right here, pop ourselves a cool one, and shoot the shit a bit, okay? Let the Dragons and Princesses come to us for a change."

Says I, "Count me in, amigo" — no more quite meaning it than he did, was my guess — and I hauled over to his rolled-down window and stuck out my hand. "Name's Fred, by the way."

"Yeah, right." But gave it a squeeze. "Like mine's Isidore."

"Isidore?"

Grin: "Izzy for short — or Isn't he? You get the idea. And hey—" Opens half-stuck creaky driver's door with left hand while right holds aloft (like old Perseus brandishing Medusa's head, as I recall the scene) four-sixths of a pack of… uh, some cloudydark brew in unlabeled bottles with unmarked caps? Two of which — once he'd climbed out of his queer clunker and set himself and his trophy down on my bench-rock — he offed with the appropriate thingie on his Swiss Army knife. Then hands one bottle to me, a good fourth of it already foaming over from being either not chilled enough or not aged enough.

"Unlike you'n me, huh?" says he with stage wink behind his wire-rim specs, as if he could… well, read me like a book. "Some country boy's home brew, I reckon. Found it in that borrowed Vee-hickle. Here's to us?"

"Whoever that might be this time around. You leave your engine running?" For he'd made no move to turn it off.

Shrug. "More'n likely she'll run out of gas. Like us? But once you shut down an old fossil like that, who knows if it'll ever start up again." Raising his bottle, "You joining the party?" and takes a proper pull. As did I then, and resumed my place on the bench, the now two-pack between us.

Not a bad brew, considering.

"Thought you might think so. And on the bench pretty much sums us up, right?"

Speak for yourself, Isidore, said I to myself, there being evidently no need to speak aloud: Me, I've got an inning or two yet to play before I leave the field.

"Sez you," says he, but amiably, and adds, "Sez me too, pal. And like as not we're a brace of bullshitters, but I for one am in no rush to find that out."

Says you, pal, says I, likewise amiably: If I'm not mistaken, that's mainly why you're here.

"Mistaken you're not," allows he, and takes another pull of that yeasty world-temp brew. "No more'n half, anyhow. I'm here to find out where we go from here, same as you, but be damned if I'm in any hurry."

"Same as me" — speaking in quotes now, I see, same as he — and did same as he, and there we sat: Old-Fart Tale and ditto Teller, the one retold so many times that he doubts he has an encore left in him, the other having told so many that he doubts the same, but both with a half-assed hankering for Just One More before the narrative bar shuts down for keeps.

"Speaking whereof," says Mr. Call-Me-Izzy, and fishes out his handy-dandy again to uncap "what we can't rightly call our Last Drafts, can we now, seeing's how they're not on tap and you'n I are still in First Draft. If you follow me?"

Well, I didn't at first, but then did, sort of; enough anyhow to pick up on that follow me business and say, "This time you got the job descriptions right, bro: I go where you tell me, so I'm told."

"Beg to disagree." But cordial clink of bottles, swig of contents, and wipe of mouth on back of hand before declaring, "Seems to me it's you go and I tell you: tell the folks Out There where you went, and went next after that, and what did en route."

Says I, "Whatever" — whereupon Pal Izzy intones, "And there they sat, and maybe sit yet: two bumps on the narrative log. Seems to me," still him talking, "that like it or not, we're what they call made for each other?"

I considered that proposition. Whatever it'd been before, the landscape round about our intersection was a flat plain now, as featureless as—

"A Samuel Beckett stage set?" offered my—

"Self-Appointed Sidekick?"

Yes, well. As I was remarking, there were only the two roads forking oblique left and oblique right, straight to the bare horizon, at equal angles to each other and to the road behind — which once upon a time had led to and from Home Base, but now (when I glanced back that way), to my surprise, stretched likewise to the three-hundred-sixty-degree Out Yonder.

"From all of which one infers," inferred Sir Self-Appointed, "that there's been some Narrative Movement, shall we say? You're farther down the capital-R Road than you were before I drove up, and methinks that's because I drove up, in yonder bucket-o'-bolts Dramatic Vehicle."

"Do tell."

With conspiratorial elbow-nudge, "My job description, right? Who not only, in driving up, assumed ipso facto the role of Sidekick Helper, but in due discharge of that classic role supplied nonplused Hero with better-than-nothing Magic Potion plus handy-dandy Tool/Weapon/Whatever" — indicating in turn the now-empty brew bottles and the now-pocketed Swiss Army gizmo wherewith he'd earlier flipped their lids—"and ready-for-action tricyclical DeeVee. In return for which, thankee, you've got me Telling now a mile a minute, who just a few pages back was wondering whether I had anything left to tell!"

"And not only telling," I started to say, "but—"

"Taking words out of your mouth instead of putting 'em in? I know, I know: Forgive me that, man" — smacks me upside the near shoulder—"it just feels so damn right to be back in action again, you know?"

So I'm told, said I, unless he said it for me: Putting pedal to the metal on one of those DV contraptions can do that to a fellow. Been there myself.

"And time to go again!" cries he—exclaims, exuberates, whatever, up off our bench and on his feet. "Before old Lizzie runs dry."

Like us?

"Speak for yourself, friend — so to speak? And never mind job descriptions from here on out: We're in this together."

Mm-hm. In what, exactly?

Tugs my coatsleeve. "In medias res, man, soon's we climb aboard. You drive the Herocycle; I'll narrate the blow-by-blow."

Um…?

"Okay, okay: You drive; I'll narrate and navigate as needed. Nudge things along. Sidekick 'em, let's say."

Like for instance (we're in his not-all-that-Dramatic Vehicle now, his quote Herocycle, and I tell you this in parentheses because my dialogue quotes seem to've gotten left back on that rock-bench with our empties), which way do we go, S.K.? Can't flip a coin, unless you happen to have a three-sided nickel in there with your Handy-Dandy.

He cranes his stringy neck to consider, or at least to seem as if considering, our options in turn. Adjusts his specs. Then says, "Well, now: Seeing's how you came here from Back There," indicating the road that once upon a time led from my City, a bit east of north from our conjunction, "and I came out of Left Field yonder" — left from that city's point of view, and a bit east of south from said conjunction—"I reckon we should head out yonder on The Road Not Taken — at least not by us, at least not this time out. Off we go?"

My turn then to consider, as H.C. Lizzie idled erratically and I checked out her four-on-the-floor transmission, her mostly nonfunctioning dials and gauges, stiff steering, too-soft brakes, and what-all. Back There was everyone I'd ever been, for better or worse: not Oedipus/Odysseus/Perseus/ Aeneas & Co., but their stories (including old Don Quixote's, whose nag Rocinante was the four-legged equivalent of our sputtering, spavined three-wheeled Liz). Off yonder where she and her geriatric driver had rattled in from, if we take him at his word (and what else is he, Mr. S.K. Izzy, if not his words?), was every tale he'd told to date — no doubt including a few variations of Yours Truly in one getup or another, if he was like most of his ilk. Why rerun old footage from any of those once-upon times? What's more (you can do this on your watch dial, Reader, if you don't happen to have a compass on your Swiss Army knife), inasmuch as Where I'm Coming From lay more or less north-northeastward — five minutes past the hour, say, at the 1 on your analogue watch? — and where he came from lay south-southeastward at the 5 (or twenty-five past), Road #3 stretched out due west, straight into the sun just now approaching set at a quarter till: fit hour for our game's last quarter, and mine. No capital-H Hilltop in sight over there beyond the 9 on your watch dial, but "Maybe that's what makes the thing Mysterious," offered we-know-who: "Shall we go have a look?"

By way of reply I shifted Liz into first, eased out her cranky clutch, stick-shifted into second, and — so I'm being told! —floored that mother.

2

How come this part's labeled "2," some sharp-eyed nit-picker's bound to ask, when what went before it wasn't labeled "1"?

Time was, I could answer back, when "Fred" and I minded such p's and q's, but we're past that nowadays. Fact is, however (I might point out in my capacity as the guy's faute de mieux Teller this time around), that inasmuch as he, for one, couldn't've known there'd be a Part Two till he hit Lizzie's pedal and landed us on this side of yonder space-break, he couldn't've bloody known that where we were before was Part One of anything, could he now, mate? So just maybe it's Symbolically Appropriate, as they say, for Part One to stand unlabeled as such; and just maybe some of us with a card or two still up-sleeve knew that all along.

Further questions?

Needn't've asked, I guess: There's always one eager beaver with hand in air. How's that? You're wondering why the "I" in "1" was Call-Me-Fred, the Old-Fart I've-Been-Told Story, but here in "2" it appears to be Call-Me-Izzy, the Sidekick Teller?

Well, since you've asked: You may recall F. and me a-hassling each other a bit about "job descriptions" back there in "1"? What the issue came down to was, does he do what I say, or do I merely say what he does? 'Twas a tricky enough matter back when "he" was Odysseus and "I" was one of Homer's bards: The sly guy finally gets home not because it occurred to me to make it happen, but because (as the whole house knew) that's how his story'd always gone, which "Homer" most memorably arranged so that hacks like "me" could invoke Ms. Muse to sing you the news (through us) with whatever riffs and flourishes we saw fit. Got that? Later on, when "he" becomes Aeneas, say, and "I" become Virgil, the game changes: Within the stretchable bounds of Roman folk tradition, A. does what he does because V. was inspired not only to dream up his doing it, but to write those imaginings down for all time in good Latin hexameters that are in large measure A.'s marching orders as well as V.'s artful report thereof: "I sing of arms and the man," goes Maestro Virgil's written score, not "Sing, O Muse," et cet. Come then to a "he" who's e.g. Don Quixote and an "I" who's Don Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, everything "he" does he does because "I" say so: Although I pretend I'm just reporting the news from La Mancha, D.Q. shoots exactly the shots I call, exactly as I've seen fit to invent those shots and call 'em. Things don't get truly dizzy-making again until you get an "I" who's Mr. Mark Twain, say, and a "he" who's young Huck Finn telling his own story first-person—i.e., as an I! "You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer," etc. Yet even that comes down to a fairly simple division of labor, finally, between Author/Teller and Narrator, doth it not? Twain "records" Huck's report of what-Huck-did-because-Twain-imagined-and-put-into Huck's-words-Huck's-doing-so, right? Or, to put it another way, Author tells Reader Narrator's telling-to-Reader of Tale-made-up-by-Author.

A tad vertiginous, sure, but no problem! Nor any question who's finally in charge. But now — fasten seat belts, folks — suppose First-Person Narrator of story to be not only its principal character, but It: the Story itself, telling us itself itself! Who's in the driver's seat now, I ask you, leapfrogging space-breaks and barreling us westward lickety-split through a landscape thus far featureless perhaps for want of Narrator's supplying us with its features? Moreover, since Setting is an ingredient of Story, as are accessory characters like Yours-Truly-as-Sidekick and Dramatic Vehicles like three-wheel Lizzie, how can "I"-the-Narrator of "Me"-the-Story differentiate himself from them/us in order to tell you us (except, I suppose, as "I" might tell of "my" toes and fingers, "my" hopes and fears, "my" self…)?

Well: "I," for one, get dizzy just thinking about such things, and so while "Fred" was shifting our buggy's gears from first toward third, I took the opportunity to do the same with him, narrative-point-of-view-wise. It's still his been-told story being told, mind, and he's still It, but I'm telling you the sucker from here on out, at least this part of it/ slash/him; otherwise we'd all go around in such who's-in-charge-here circles that the three of us would likely keel over from narrative vertigo, and old Story's story'd disappear up its own asshole: a Mysterious Consummation for sure, but not likely the one Fred has in mind.

Indeed, while I've got the mike, so to speak, with your permission I'll just fill in a few blanks and maybe redo a detail or two? To begin with (excuse the expression), Mr. Hero-cycle-Driver's name isn't "really" either Fred or I. B. Told, any more than mine is "really" Isidore/Izzy/S.K./Et Al., except insofar as all of us turn into the stories that we tell ourselves and others about who we are. Which, no doubt, we all do, more or less. For while it may be true, as has been wisely said, that "the story of your life is not your life; it's your story," it's also true that our stories have "lives": They grow or shrink in their recollection and retellings; they add or lose details, whole episodes and characters even, as they age — and that's before we get to their ever-shifting slants and interpretations, by "ourselves" and others. Some are stillborn, some short-lived; others are all but immortal (not to say interminable), enjoying or anyhow living serial lives, multiple simultaneous lives, lives resonant with avatars and reincarnations…

But never mind all that, for now: A story that'll serve as Fred's and mine here in Part Two of "A Story's Story" happens to be that of——which, the way I tell it, goes something like this:

——'S STORY

Open any fair-size Anglo phonebook to the B's and you'll find a handful of entries last-named Blank. The word is, after all, just a from-the-French version of the more common English name White or German Weiss, with the added connotation, perhaps slightly negative, of that color's absence rather than its presence. In any case, one doubts that Blank, Dr. Shirley M., D.D.S. thinks of herself as any sort of absence, any more than Weiss, Stanley B., C.P.A. regards himself as particularly pale; most last names mean something, but most bearers thereof are indifferent to, if not ignorant of, such significance.

Name a Blank kid Phil, however, and he's in for trouble. Yet that's what Michael and Madeline Blank of State College, Pennsylvania, saw fit to dub their firstborn in the Eisenhowerian early 1950s: Philip Norman Blank, his first name Mike's late dad's, the second Maddy's née.

O comparatively innocent American time and place! Two cataclysmic world wars already history, the Korean War fought to armistice, and the Vietnam tarbaby only just beginning to attract U.S. fingers. The nation's traditional hard-liquor culture was in salutary mid-shift to wine, and although most folks still poisoned their lungs and others' with cigarette smoke even in college seminar rooms, such heavier-duty narcotics as heroin and cocaine — just beginning to be a problem in large-city ghettos — were all but unknown on American campuses and small-town streets, where even marijuana was uncommon. Redbaiting, witch-hunting, blacklisting, and loyalty-oathing there was aplenty, alas, in the same anticommunist political fever that piously inserted "under God" into the Pledge of Allegiance; the military-industrial complex flourished as Cold War supplanted hot, and the rest of the economy did all right too, though over everything hung the nightmare possibility that the U.S.-Soviet arms race could trigger nuclear apocalypse. But most Americans felt reasonably easy despite the new black-and-yellow Civil Defense signs on public buildings, the occasional neighbor's armed-and-provisioned bomb shelter, and vague though well-founded worries about radioactive fallout from atomic weapons testing.

No youngster, anyhow, was liable to lose sleep over such matters, especially at such remove as central Pennsylvania's Allegheny-nestled "Happy Valley," where the land-grant college after which the town was named (not yet a university in those days) turned out the commonwealth's next generation of engineers, foresters, agriculturalists, business administrators, "home economists," and schoolteachers in a farm- and forest-surrounded community whose chief employer was the ever-growing academic institution, and whose student population nearly matched its non-. A peaceful place, State College PA, except on football weekends: solid tax base, good public school system, and virtually full employment; no super-richies on the one hand and few dirt-poors on the other; enough input from faculty, students, and resident alumni to preserve it from acute small-town parochialism, and a freedom from urban problems that went far toward compensating for its geographical isolation and any lack of sophisticated big-city amenities. All in all, a good venue for raising children, and the Blanks — Maddy herself an elementary-school-teaching alumna of the college before and after her pregnancies, Mike a civil-engineering alumnus employed by the County Roads Commission — were more than content to raise theirs in its tranquil neighborhoods of laurel and rhododendron, its avenues of not-yet-blighted American elms.

Happy enough offspring of a happy enough couple, sturdy little Philip and baby sister Marsha, who came along two years later: like their parents, neither exceptional — physically, mentally, psychologically, or characterologically — nor deficient, except by comparison to the exceptional. No problems in the campus nursery school or the public school kindergarten; only in first grade did young Phil Blank's schoolmates, perhaps prompted by classroom exercises instructing all hands to Fill in the blanks, pick up teasingly on his name.

"They call me Phil-up the Blank!" he complained to his parents one brilliant late-September Saturday, as the family's "pre-owned" Oldsmobile wagon climbed through hem-locked hills toward a state-forest lakeside picnic. "And sometimes just Phil the Blank, like I'm not there! Billy Marshall calls me Phil N. the Blank! I hate them!"

Dad's advice: "Forget it, pal. Teasing's part of every schoolkid's routine."

"Just remember how it feels," suggested Mom, "if you're ever tempted to tease somebody about their name or appearance or whatever."

"Your first and last names both are names to be proud of, son."

Mock-indignant Maddy then, "Not the middle?"

"Middle too!" her husband amended, and patted his wife's near knee. "For sure!"

"Did Grandpa get called Phil-up and stuff?"

Speaking to his son's image in the rearview mirror, "Not that he ever mentioned."

And Madeline, with a knowing small smile at her spouse, "Grandpa Phil was never one for mentioning things."

Their son then and there decided "I hate my name!"

"No!"

"I hate my name, too," offered four-year-old Marsha, who until that moment had never thought about her name.

"No you don't." Mom. "It's a lovely name."

"Is not." But in fact, like most people, she had no particular feelings about her name — her first name, anyhow — but simply accepted it as hers. As for Blank, while Marsha would be spared the degree of schoolmate teasing about it that her brother was subjected to, she wasn't sorry to abbreviate it to a middle initial nineteen Septembers later, upon her marriage.

Young Phil, however — although by second and third grade his classmates' jibes had become mere idle reflex — found himself unable to shrug off the twinge of dissatisfaction he felt at every roll call, every form that required him to fill its Name-blank with his Blank name. Neither popular with nor disliked by his fellows, he did his best not only to blend in but to… not disappear, quite, but to draw as little attention as possible to himself and thus to his awkward name, which by fifth grade he was determined to change as soon as he became "his own man": perhaps when he left home for college? Even before then, when pupils from the area's several neighborhood and township elementary schools came together in Centre County Junior High and High School, he experimented with P. Norman Blank and Norman P. Blank—"Norm for short," he informed his classmates, entreated his parents, and threatened his sister. But while his new teachers and classmates readily obliged, and his family did their best, most of his old classmates either forgot or declined to use his new name, and a few explained the old tease to their new comrades. The unhappy result was more rather than less attention to the tender subject; by the spring of his freshman high school year he was, for the most part, back to being called Phil Blank.

"Whoever that might be," he said to himself in effect, if not necessarily in those words; for as the CCHS class of '71's hormones kicked in and cranked up the ambient sexual voltage, and numerous of his schoolmates took their behavioral cues from the still-modest contingent of long-haired dope-smoking war-protesting hippie undergraduates over at the university (as the college became in the 1960s), Phil/ Norm found it ever more difficult to decide who exactly he was, and to dress and behave accordingly. What he felt, but couldn't quite articulate even to himself, was that while one's name is not one's self (any more than one's life story is one's life), his peculiar name was a major determinant of his identity — whatever that might be. Its implicit directive—Fill blank! — led to both hyper-self-consciousness and abnormal self-uncertainty. The selves of his classmates seemed to him bone-deep and plain as day: Billy Marshall the taunting, newly hippie pothead and wannabe rock musician; Elsa Bauer the shy but not un-self-confident, really cute, and almost friendly sophomore class secretary, etc. His own self, on the contrary, seemed to him improvised, tentative, faint, and fluid: a masquerade. An act.

"Now, don't you worry," his mother worried when, in a moment of what had become unusual closeness between her son and anyone, he attempted to confide to her some of the above. "It's just a stage you're going through, honeybun. We all go through stages at your… you know…"

"My stage?"

And not long after, "Now, don't you worry, son," his dad embarrassed him by advising, which meant that Mom had blabbed the whole thing. "One of these days you're going to be somebody. That'll show 'em!"

"Yeah, right."

Kid sister Marsha — who in most respects seemed both to herself and to Philip to be the elder sibling — rolled her self-possessed eyes, but refrained from comment.

As if prompted by the conjunction of an act, a stage, and be somebody, in his latter high school years the young man found himself drawn to theater in general and the school's Drama Club in particular. Alas, although he tried out for a number of productions, it was apparent early on, to him and to the drama coach, that he had no notable thespian gift (compared, say, to Elsa Bauer, whose shyness miraculously vanished when she played another). He managed a few member-of-the-chorus roles — which, on reflection, he found more to his taste anyhow than being one of the play's principals. Even more he enjoyed sitting in the audience in a darkened hall and losing, in some film or stage play, the self that he'd never quite found.

He was, like the rest of his household, an indifferent secular agnostic who gave next to no thought to that noun or its modifiers. The Blanks celebrated Christmas, but observed no Sabbath, prayed no prayers, belonged to no church, and seldom spoke of religion. Son Philip, from age fourteen on, masturbated with about the same frequency as his male classmates, but had no way of knowing that. Managed a few dates in his junior and senior years — one with Elsa Bauer, who permitted him a ceremonial goodnight kiss but was already bespoken (by Billy Marshall) for the senior prom. Attended that function with Betsy Whitmore instead, a pleasant though plump and plain classmate of Marsha, who arranged the date. Neither partner much cared for dancing, but dance they duly did, a bit. Afterward, in the second seat of Billy's parents' two-tone green '69 Pontiac four-door, for appearances' sake they shared a reefer of marijuana and went through the motions of making out (he was permitted to squeeze his date's ample breast, under her blouse but not under her bra, and even briefly, with his other hand, to cup her crotch, under her skirt but not under her pantyhose—"And not a whit more," she seriously joked), to the distracting accompaniment of more vigorous grunts, moans, sighs, and thrashings in the vehicle's front seat. Betsy presently remembered a 1 A.M. parental curfew not previously mentioned; her date "called it an evening" too, forgoing the ritual sunrise breakfast at the class president's house after the all-night party at So-and-So's folks', out past the university's experimental farms.

"Talk about filling in the blanks!" Billy Marshall boasted next day re his and Elsa's front-seat shenanigans. Four years later, like several other high school classmate-sweethearts who elected to stay on at the local university instead of "going off" to college, that couple married, found suitable employment in the area, and raised their own brood in Happy Valley. Betsy Whitmore, however — with whom Phil more or less enjoyed one further date during the summer after his graduation — moved to Michigan with her family soon after, and the young pair did not maintain contact.

Philip himself, having done editorial and layout work on the staff of his high school newspaper, summer-jobbed as an intern with the county's Centre Daily Times and, without seriously considering alternatives, matriculated at "State" in September. His father had suggested a major in Business Administration as most likely to help a fellow without particular ambitions at least to earn a decent living, but did not protest his son's choice of General Arts and Sciences instead: "It's your life, not mine." His mother mildly approved: "Keeps your options open till you find yourself, you know?" Marsha rolled her eyes. Brother and sister were not at all close, but neither was there sibling rivalry or other ill will between them: Their relation was prevailingly cordial and passively affectionate, if somewhat stiff on Philip's part. She was not unhappy when after his freshman year he moved out of the house into the college dorms; but she defended, against her parents' complaints, his junior-year decision to change his name to Philip B. Norman. "Relax," she advised them. "At least he decided something."

For as a "Stater" herself and adjacent dorm resident by that time, she happened to know that her brother had experimented halfheartedly with changing not only his name and academic major (from General A & S to Pre-Law, then to Business Administration after all, and finally back to General), but his sexual orientation as well. "Hey, Norm," she telephoned him one football weekend after happening to catch sight of her brother and his College of Forestry roommate holding hands in a booth in the Corner Room Restaurant on College Avenue after the Syracuse game, "are you gay these days or what?" Unalarmed by her question, he guessed he maybe was: "Not a word to Mom and Dad, okay?" More surprised and amused than dismayed, "Not to worry!" Marsha assured him, and added, "Better gay than nothing."

But that "stage" lasted no longer than one academic term, whereafter "Phil Norman"'s briefly Significant Other found a roommate/lover more to his liking, and Philip himself became involved with a Poli Sci ex-lesbian as tentative about her sexuality as was he re his. In this same period — between spring break of his junior year and graduation time for the class of '75—ever-cheery Madeline Blank succumbed to metastasized uterine cancer, and her comparatively impassive but now-devastated husband to an evidently self-inflicted deer-rifle shot to the head not long after, in the same state park where the family had often picnicked in Philip's and Marsha's childhood. With a competence that he'd scarcely been aware of possessing, Phil made the arrangements for his dad's cremation and (per deceased's written request, in a terse note found on his body) the discreet dispersal of his ashes along the county roads to which he'd dedicated his working life.

Postponing his baccalaureate for one term, the young man then oversaw the settlement of Michael Blank's uncomplicated estate. Their father and mother having both been only children, Philip and Marsha were the sole surviving family members and equal heirs to their father's modest bank accounts, life insurance benefits, and property. The six-year-old station wagon went to Marsha, as Phil had his own car already; the proceeds from the family house (the sale of which Phil arranged through a local realtor who lived on their block), added to the rest of their inheritance, provided brother and sister with ample funds to rent small but comfortable and convenient apartments near the campus, to purchase whatever supplementary furnishings they needed after dividing their parents' belongings, and to support them comfortably through the remainder of their undergraduate studies and graduate school as well, if they elected to "go on."

Much shaken and saddened, though less than griefstricken, by the loss of their parents, and feeling as much at home in the college town where they'd lived since birth as they'd felt in the house itself, they went on with their not-unhappy lives. Marsha's senior-year high school boyfriend, who'd done his first two college years in upstate New York, transferred to his hometown campus to complete his degree in Electrical Engineering as she completed hers in Education, and eventually moved in with his reignited old flame. Like Mike Blank and Maddy Norman (and Billy Marshall and Elsa Bauer), the couple married not long after their commencement and found employment in the area. Philip — who shortly after graduation re-changed his last name from Norman back to Blank and took a job in the university's public information office — reverted as well from an ambiguous bisexuality to less and less sexuality of any sort: To their mutual old acquaintances, "Nor-man nor woman," Billy Marshall joked, "equals Blank."

And blank his life might be said to have been, by many people's standards and sometimes his own, over the century's ensuing decades: a competent if undistinguished career in various of the university's administrative offices; one more sort-of-relationship, with a female office-neighbor several years his senior, whose rebound from an acrimonious divorce presently impelled her far from the region where her ex-husband chose to remain, and ended the affair — Phil's final experience of other-than-solitary sex, and on the whole an enjoyable one, for him at least. Occasionally he lunched with old acquaintances or administrative colleagues; most Sundays he dined with his sister and brother-in-law and their three children, whose uncle he was pleased to be despite his natural aloofness. Sometimes with them, more often alone, he attended varsity athletic events and university-sponsored concerts or theater productions. For exercise he walked the campus or the town's so-familiar neighborhoods; in the long Allegheny winters he sometimes worked out in the college gym. Most evenings he was content to dine alone in his apartment (later, his condominium in a new development north of town), read news-magazine articles for an hour or so, and then watch television or some video recommended by Marsha. If asked, he would not have characterized his life as unhappy, while acknowledging it to be far from full; but no one asked, and he himself, from his thirties on, gave ever less thought to such questions. His sister took vacation trips with her family, as did Billy and Elsa Marshall — to Florida, Maine, California, Hawaii, Europe. Philip's job sometimes took him to the university's branch campuses in sundry Pennsylvania counties and, less often, to meetings and conferences in Cleveland or Indianapolis, Ann Arbor or East Lansing; his vacations, however, he preferred to spend at home.

"Doing what?" Marsha's husband asked her once. His wife rolled her eyes, shook her head: "The Sunday Times crossword puzzle, maybe? Filling in the blanks, as Billy Marshall used to say."

In his late fifties, to Marsha's surprise and somewhat to his own, Philip elected to take early retirement. With his university pension, the dividends from sundry annuities, and his considerable savings, he would scarcely notice the reduction in his annual income. "Lucky fellow!" most of his child-raising, tuition-paying acquaintances agreed. "But what are you going to do with yourself?" his sister made bold to ask him.

A quarter-century earlier, Philip might have responded, "Do with whom?" But over the decades he had lost interest in that question. "Whatever I damn please, I suppose," was his mild reply.

For an academic year or two thereafter (time's main measure in small towns with large universities, even among the non-academic), he experimented, dutifully if less than enthusiastically, with various activities recommended for new retirees by the appropriate campus office: joined an alumni tour group for a week's visit to London; tried to interest himself in such hobbies (he'd never had a hobby) as contract bridge and Elderhosteling; volunteered briefly (the retirement-office people were big on volunteering) in a Head Start program designed to help black inner-city youngsters overcome their academic disadvantages, but directed locally, faute de pis, at their poor white Appalachian counterparts. But London overwhelmed and the game of bridge intimidated him; "at his age" he took no pleasure in learning complicated things from scratch and going places with groups of strangers. And while he pitied the young hillbilly left-behinds, he had no knack for motivating them to attempt what they themselves evinced little interest in. By the end of his first retirement year he looked forward to none of those activities. Midway through his second he dropped them all and settled into a routine of reading front to back the Centre Daily and New York Times through breakfast and beyond, then going for an extended walk if weather permitted or pottering about the condo if it didn't; perhaps lunching in town (sometimes with ex-colleagues), doing afternoon errands, or strolling the vast campus a bit. At five, back at the condo, he took a glass of red wine on his small screened porch or before the gas fireplace, then sipped another while preparing and eating his simple dinner. And finally — unless there was some interesting public lecture or other university event on the calendar — he settled down among his parents' furniture in his tidy living room to entertain himself with magazine or library book, television or desktop computer.

Was he bored? Of course he was, now and then, though not acutely. Anyhow, he was accustomed to the feeling and didn't much mind it; wasn't overly bored by boredom. Depressed? He had his ups and downs, neither of much amplitude; was and had prevailingly been of placid, equable disposition. Lonesome? Not especially, nor reclusive either, just solitary. On any stroll or shopping errand, he would likely exchange cordialities with one or more familiars; if he had no real friends, he had old acquaintances aplenty, some dating back to kindergarten. Happy? Not particularly, but (as afore-established) not unhappy either: more or less content.

And so we find him — one fine mid-May afternoon shortly after the university's spring commencement, when the wholesale exodus of tens of thousands of students leaves the town and campus spookily evacuated until various summer programs kick in — driving his high-mileage chalk-white Toyota Corolla out toward a nearby shopping plaza after lunch, with the aim of picking up a few groceries and maybe a DVD to spectate over the next two evenings, there being nothing listed in the TV Guide of much interest to him. Who can say why, upon reaching the plaza, he canceled his turn signal and drove on past the entrance? Perhaps with the object of replenishing his wine rack first, at the state liquor dispensary a bit farther on? Reaching it, he slowed and resignaled, but once again didn't stop; found himself continuing north another dozen miles through assorted hill and valley villages until the state two-laner T-boned into Interstate 80, which from that point crosses central Pennsylvania, east to New York City and west to Ohio and beyond. On some impulse beyond his articulating, he turned west, set the Corolla's cruise control to (as it happened) approximately the speed matching his age, and, under a fair-weather cumulus-clouded sky, steered through Allegheny hills green with young deciduous leaves, old hemlocks, and newly sprouting farm fields, without wondering (as if on cruise control himself) where he was going or why, or for that matter who it was, exactly, at the wheel.

Not having planned an extended drive, he hadn't topped off the car's fuel tank. Already by exit 22 (Snow Shoe), just a couple of dozen miles along the interstate, its gauge showed barely enough gas remaining to get him back home. He registered that datum, but drove on. He had with him no water bottle or other refreshment, and felt some thirst, but drove on. Not far from where I-80 crosses the winding headwaters of the Susquehanna's West Branch — which loops north and east from there up to Williamsport before commencing its long run south past Harrisburg and down to Chesapeake Bay — in a forested stretch between exits for Clearfield and Du Bois, the Corolla's four-cylinder engine sputtered dry. Fortunately, there was scant traffic just then on that stretch of highway; moreover, he happened to be on a downgrade, with enough momentum to give him ample time to steer out of the traffic lanes without obliging others to slow down or swing out to pass. His foot still uselessly on the accelerator of the stalled engine, he coasted down the wide shoulder until the slope bottomed out and the Corolla rolled to a stop without his having pressed the brake pedal. So as not to endanger vehicles approaching from behind, he activated the hazard flasher, but didn't bother to shift to Park or switch off the ignition. From the roadside woods a lean brown rabbit ran onto the highway shoulder just before him. It paused, sat up on its hind legs, regarded the unmoving vehicle, and scuttled back.

Now I'm in for it, one imagines Phil Blank supposing as he sits there conjuring scenarios of interrogation by the state Highway Patrol: questions to which he can no more anticipate his response, if any, than he could say just who the "I" is who's "in for it": the creature named by the name on his Commonwealth of Pennsylvania driver's license and the Toyota's registration card, who already now needs to pee, but can't decide whether to exit his car and discreetly wet the ground on its passenger side or simply to stay put and, sooner or later, wet himself. In short, to do nothing — not unlock the car doors or lower its driver-side window or speak or even turn his head when the patrol person or whoever eventually appears. To take no action beyond Taking No Action, and let whatever might happen, happen.

PART THREE: THE THIRD PERSON

Fred "I've Been Told" Story: Question, please?

"Self-Appointed Sidekick" Izzy-the-Teller: Yes?

F. "I.B.T."S.: So what happened next?

"S.-A.S.K."I.-t.-T.: Next? Nothing.

Fred: Whatcha mean, nothing? Something has to happen next! Something always happens next!

Izzy: Nope.

Hitherto Unmentioned Female Third Person [speaking from rear seat of Herocycle: a mid-fortyish, probably once-slender woman, she, bespectacled and bright-serious of expression, clothed in gray sweatshirt, blue jeans, and once-white walking shoes, straight black hair cut short in helmet style]: May I clarify? In Real Life, as it's called, something always happens next: the unlikely pants-wetting, the Highway Patrol car, the sister alarmed that her brother's gone missing, various embarrassing and troublesome consequences for poor-fuck Phil — whatever. In Fiction, on the other hand, that's not the case: Phil's story ends when it's finished, and its ending isn't necessarily conterminous in either direction with his imaginable lifespan.

I.: You got that right, ma'am: Next page would be blank, if there were one. Which there isn't.

F.: Much obliged for the fill-in. And who might you be, by the way?

H. U.F.T.P.: Third wheel on this Mythmobile, maybe? Go figure. Question for Teller?

I.: Be my guest — though I've a hunch it's we who're yours.

T.P. [waving off that consideration and tapping sheaf of manuscript pages in left hand]: Two questions, come to think of it. First off, in the lead-in to " — 's Story" you declared, and I quote [finds relevant page in aforementioned sheaf]: "A story that'll serve as Fred's and mine here in Part Two of 'A Story's Story' happens to be that of——…" But I, for one, don't see the connection. Your Phil Blank was never capital-A Anybody: His life and career were just a series of halfhearted attempts to address the teasing imperative of his name, if I may so put it. Pathetic, maybe, but hardly heroic. Fred here, on the contrary — if I may call you that, sir?

E: Shrug.

T.P.: Fred's career has been an unparalleled success worldwide for going on three millennia…

F.: So I've been told.

T.P.: No culture in sight without some version of you! And your sidekick Izzy-the-Teller here's no Phil Blank either. Granted [brandishes paper-sheaf], he and/or his capital-A Author have filled blank pages by the ream with the words and sentences of made-up stories, some of which've been more successful than others, shall we say, with critics and reviewers and us Mere Readers—

I.: Why, thankee there, ma'm'selle. And welcome aboard, as always.

F. [to T.P.]: So that's who you are! Okay, I get your "third wheel" thing.

T.P. [to both]: What I don't get is how " — 's Story" is you-guys' story. That's my First Question.

F. [to Isidore]: Hey, I don't get that either, Iz, come to think of it.

I.: First Question perpended. Be it noted, by the way, that Feckless Phil there didn't decide to do nothing: His story ends with his inability to decide. You had another question, I believe you said?

T.P.: Did and do. We Mere Readers had expected that once your so-called Ground Situation was established and this so-called Dramatic Vehicle got under way, plot complications would promptly follow, in the form of capital-O Obstacles and capital-A Adversaries, you know? But simply barreling westward like this down a straight flat narrative road is mere Action; it gets us nowhere, capital-P Plotwise. I'm reminded of the distinction in classical physics between Effort and Work: We're chugging along, but nothing's getting done. So my Second Question is, What gives?

It seemed to Fred that he'd heard of those distinctions — Action versus Plot, Effort versus Work — somewhere or other a long while back. They struck him as reasonable, and having no reply to their passenger-or-host's objection, he considered pulling off the road and parking the Herocycle/Myth-mobile while the three of them discussed the matter. Maybe imperturbable Izzy had another six-pack stashed somewhere, to lubricate the discussion? Just then, however — as if their vehicle itself were given pause by Ms. Mere Reader's observation — its engine balked and quit, as had Phil Blank's Corolla's, and like that identity-challenged fellow, they coasted to a halt.

But Izzy the Teller, far from sharing Fred's concern and Reader's puzzlement, seemed merely amused. With a left-handed palm-up gesture at their situation, "Voilá," he said to the pair of them. "Any further questions?"

"Not till I've thought through these ones," said Fred with a frown. "Seems to me we're as out of gas as poor-fart Phil there."

Beaming, Izzy nodded and voilá'd his left hand again.

"What I suppose," then supposed Mere Reader from the seat behind them, "is that Izzy told us the Phil Blank story while we rattled westward just to fill the blank till the Next Thing happens—and to get another story told, in the same spirit as Fred's racking up the DV mileage just for the satisfaction of being on the move again."

Fred: That about says it, for me anyhow.

Izzy: Smiles knowingly while waiting for Third Person to continue.

F.: That's a line of dialogue?

I.: Why not? If Miz Fellow Traveler here can speak the words " — 's Story," as she managed to do twice or thrice a few pages back, then I reckon I can speak third-person stage directions. [To F.T.P. Mere Reader (speaking the words "To F.T.P. Mere Reader"):] You were saying?

In narrative format again, "Asking, actually," that personage replied. "Your left-handed response to my First Question, I take it, is that the Herocycle's running out of gas like Phil Blank's Corolla just as I posed my Second Question effectively answers my First, namely: In what sense does his story serve as Fred's-and-yours?"

Applauded Izzy, "A two-handed voilà encore!"

But "Now just wait a mothering minute," objected Fred. "Maybe he and we both eventually ran dry, but up till then (as has been noted) our stories are different tales for sure. Phil's fate might resemble Izzy's, in his role as my tuckered-out Teller du jour; if so, tough titty for him, and better luck next time out. But it sure as shootin's not my story. Am I right, Miz Mere?"

Declared Izzy before that entity could reply, "You're right as far as you go, chum — but as far as you go is right here. Point being that unless we fall by the wayside earlier on, right here's where we all end up: by the wayside. What's more—"

Eagerly interrupted here Mere Reader, "What's more, Fred dear, as I'm just now beginning to appreciate, our ambidextrous Izzy might be getting more work done with those left-handed voilàs of his than we've been giving him credit for."

F.: Yeah? How's that?

"Fred's Self-Appointed Sidekick beams," here beamed that very fellow, "and with his right hand" — which now held, instead of the Swiss Army knife, a capped fountain pen—"bids our keen-eyed, not-so-Mere Reader to say on."

Adjusting with one forefinger a lick of her helmeted hair, "Yes, well: Speaking of herself in third person like Maestro Izzy, what she's just now remembering is that this buggy — which, by the way, since I'm its Wheel Three, I presume you guys to be Wheels One and Two of, in whatever order? — that this buggy, I was saying, isn't just the so-called Hero-cycle: It's also Fred I've-Been-Told's story's Dramatic Vehicle, right? As was established back in what we're calling retrospectively Part One, and unlike Phil Blank's Corolla in Part Two, which was just a lowercase vehicle."

F. & I. [more or less in unison]: Ergo?

"Ergo, guys, when ours ran out of gas just as I happened to be complaining in my Second Question that this I.B.T. tale is overdue for a capital-C Complication to turn the screws on its capital-C Conflict and advance its ditto-P Plot, what that Arresting Vehicular Coincidence amounts to — what we have on our narrative/dramaturgical hands right here right now — is nothing less than dot dot dot…"

"By George!" cried Fred. "A bona fide, gen-you-wine Complication!"

"Georgina," corrected now-demure-but-not-displeased-with-herself Ms. Reader, this time adjusting her rimless specs. "Just doing my job, fellows."

"And doing it well indeed," commended wire-rimmed Izzy.

Heartily agreed old Fred, "Good show!" And to his frontseat-mate then, "So?"

"So let Mademoiselle Lectrice read on," smoothly suggested that personage. "Next paragraph of this story, please, my dear? Followed by the next after that?"

"Uh, excuse me?" Looking around her rear seat, then the forward one, and the itemless landscape round about. "What next paragraph?"

"The one you just recited to us'll do, I suppose, that went Uh, excuse me, et cet? Followed by this one that I'm speaking and you're just now reading. On with our story, s.v.p.?"

Unless his head-nodding was a senior moment, Protagonist Fred seemed to find this proposal agreeable. Ms. Reader Georgina, on the contrary — having retrieved that earlier-flourished script-sheaf from under her butt, where she'd secured it back when their vehicle was speeding along, and fumbling now through its latter pages — protested, "What story? What next paragraph? Last time I looked, this thing here ended with the end of '——'s Story.'"

Maybe look again, suggested Izzy. She having so done, "Okay," Ms. puzzled G. acknowledged, "so now it ends with my asking you what in fact I was just about to ask you: How can I read what hasn't been written down yet? What's going on here?"

"Seems to Fred and me you're doing just fine." But he offered her the capped fountain pen. "Care to give this gizmo a try?"

His idea of a joke? she challenged him — her speech, for a change, paraphrased instead of quoted directly. In the first place, "Izzy," not she, was the self-declared Teller of this so-called tale; let the cobbler stick to his last! And in the second place, even if she were inclined to take over his job, which she most decidedly was not, these manuscript pages (although they now extended as if magically to the parenthesis in progress) were written on both sides of each sheet, leaving not a blank scrap for her to write on — or, come to think of it, for him or anybody else to write on! "Hey, now…?"

"Complications left and right!" Fred marveled. "Seems to me the lady has a point there, Iz. And that this out-of-gas story of ours is moving right along, even though we-all aren't. Who's driving?"

Acknowledged unruffled Isidore, "A point she'd have, friend, were't not that the pair of you seem to've forgotten our little Narrative-Point-of-View review back in Part Two. Wherein, be ye twain reminded, 'twas pointed out that while this 'I've Been Told' story both is Fred and is about Fred, its Teller this time around is Yours Truly — most explicitly so in Part Two, but at least arguably so in Parts One and Three as well, Teller having merely shifted narrative POVs between acts like a quick-change artist."

"Excuse me?" here objected bright-eyed but still mystified Georgina-the-Reader, who'd been listening attentively to this spiel, her chin resting on the back of her hands, which rested in turn on the inexorably lengthening script, itself resting now atop the front seatback. "It seems to this Mere Reader—"

"And right she is again," affirmed Izzy. What perhaps (with her indulgence) wanted clarification, he went on, was the term Teller, which comprises more than one aspect. For just as a Story is not its Teller ("Fred's not Izzy, is he?"), so also its Teller — in the sense of its Narrator, anyhow — is not its Author, their job descriptions being quite different even when, as here and there happens, Author and Narrator are two functions of the same functionary, or pretend so to be. Teller-in-the-sense-of-Author invents and renders into language either the story itself — its characters, setting, action, plot, and theme — or (as in present instance) some new version of a pre-existing story. Teller-in-the-sense-of-Narrator then delivers Author's invention — renders his rendition, so to speak — whether as a story character himself, like Present Speaker, or as a more or less disembodied narrative voice. Or, for that matter, as an embodied narrative voice, back in oral-tradition days when tales were literally told or sung, passed along from bard to bard instead of printed for silent perusal by individual Georginas.

"Sigh," sighed Fred. "Those were the days."

"Not for us quote individual Georginas they weren't," objected she. "You can 'Sigh,'sighed Fred all you want, but for us Mere Readers these are the days: Go at our own pace! Reread any passage we particularly enjoy or maybe don't quite understand. Skip ahead or check back; start or stop or hit Pause anywhere and anywhen we damn please — couldn't do that back there with Homer and Company! But we're off the subject, guys, which is, and I quote [reads aloud from current last lines of script]: 'Reads aloud from current last lines of script: Is Izzy our Author, or isn't he?' Who's writing this pedantical crapola? Is there a fourth wheel on this wagon?"

"Plus, How do we get the sumbitch rolling, Perfessor? adds Old-Fart Fred," adds Etc., tapping his bony chest. "How do we get me rolling?"

Instead of replying directly to those questions, imperturbable Izzy brandished again that afore-flourished fountain pen. "Notice it's capped, chaps: That's its point, one could say. Here fished forth to make the point that I myself am no more than Fred's willy-nilly teller du jour, not his author nor yours nor my own. Who our Author is, who knoweth? Not we Mere Fictional Characters! All we know is that while quote real people in the quote real world may do things out of their more-or-less-free will, all we MFCs have is the semblance thereof, while in fact we do precisely what Mister/Miz Author seeth fit to write that we do. Even Ms. Reader, once she entered this tale as its Georgina-the-Mere-Reader character, checked her own volition at the door: She may think she can exit our script anytime she wishes, but if she does, it's because Author decided to send her packing. End of speech, it says here."

She should be so lucky, commented the referred-to MFC — who, however (she went on to say), like the story she'd made the mistake of getting involved in, was going nowhere, at least not until she had an Isidorean answer to Fred's question: How do we get this out-of-gas jalopy up and running? If, as appeared to be the case, their real magical weapon/tool/whatever was not Izzy's Swiss Army knife but Author's uncapped pen, and if (as would appear to follow) the Mythmobile's ultimate fuel was the Ink of Inspiration, so to speak, then how do we get that pen filled and flowing — or, to change metaphoric implements, how put some fresh lead in the old pencil? Are we not back where we started in Part One, at the Place Where Three Roads Diverge, awaiting some refueled Dramatic Vehicle?

With the smile of one who knows something his questioners don't (or who would be seen as such), Izzy set down the manuscript, pocketed that pen, and turned up his palms. The sun, which would have long since set had Author not apparently lost track of time, resumed its setting. O.-F. Fred turned his What Now? visage from one to the other of his cycle-mates — of whom only determined and resourceful Georgina, it would appear, had the presence of mind to reach over the front seatback at this point, fetch up the script, move its top page (the most recently read, which at the time had ended with her saying, "End of speech, it says here," but now extended through the present paragraph) to the bottom, as she and Izzy in turn had done with the pages they'd read before it, and thereby expose to view the "new" page beneath, subheaded "4. The Fourth Wheel." From which, she being after all our Reader, in the belated sunset's long last light, she read aloud what follows this colon:

4. THE FOURTH WHEEL

Author speaking, more-than-patient Reader, in order to declare — at the risk of seeming uncooperative or coy — that it matters not a whit to "Fred" 's story who its author is, as long as the job gets done. Which is (as "Izzy" pointed out a while back at some length indeed) to "craft" the thing, as they say nowadays: to put it through its dramaturgical paces, goose it along through serial/incremental complications to its climax and denouement, possibly enlightening but at least entertaining you: "holding [your] attention," says the dictionary, between your presumably more mattersome affairs. Whether I've so done and am so doing isn't for me to judge — except when I role-shift from Author to Reader-of-what-I've-authored,^* about which I confess my feelings to be mixed. Who wouldn't rather read a straight-on story-story, involving colorful characters doing interesting things in a "dramatic" situation, instead of yet another peekaboo story-about-storying? Why not one in which "Fred," for example — whether or not he may be said to represent the timeless, ubiquitous Myth of the Wandering Hero — is first and foremost a palpable presence on the page? A prevailingly likable, though curmudgeonish, once-upon-a-time super-achiever, say, now on his next-to-last legs: an ex-hard-driving CEO, maybe, or even — why not? — an ex-president of the USA (quite a few of those around nowadays), who did world-altering things while in office and is chafing so at the relative impotency of retirement (especially as he abhors and fears his incumbent successor) that he concocts a last-hurrah scheme, crazy-sounding but just possibly bring-offable, to (etc.)? This with the aid of "Izzy," as his career-long adviser and former White House chief of staff likes to be called: a now-also-geriatric master manipulator who, in their joint prime, virtually told "Fred" what to say and do (or, rather, how most effectively to say and do it, Fred himself being nobody's puppet), and who not only, like his boss/colleague/advisee, much misses his role in the wings and prompter's booth of power, but finds Fred's proposed spin on what was actually Izzy's last-hurrah plan so almost certainly disastrous that he resolves for the nation's and the world's sake to quietly derail while appearing to copilot it, excuse the split infinitive and mixed metaphor?

Et cetera? And as for "Georgina"…but forget it, Reader: The above-sketched is Another Story, which you're free to shift roles and take a shot at authoring yourself, so to speak, if something like that's what you'd rather read than this. Having borne with me, however, while I fetched that trio and their formerly three-wheeled whatchacallum from the Place Where Three Roads Meet or Diverge, depending, through the three episodes leading to their apparent present impasse, permit me to declare (what Iz seems to have been quite aware of and Georgina to have come to realize) that while their Dramatic Vehicle has been stalled for many a script page now, "Fred" himself (I mean this I've-Been-Told Story's story) has been moving right along.

It is, in fact, all but told. For was it not you yourself — I mean, of course, Georgina the Mere but Sharp-Eyed Reader — who pointed out that her sudden appearance (in Part Three: The Third Person) in order to question the relevance of " — 's Story" was itself a complication of Fred's story? And that her subsequently invoking the distinction between Action and Plot, together with her observation that merely chugging westward was not equivalent to Getting Somewhere, was the next complication after that, leading as it did to the Herocycle's immediate out-sputtering and the threesome's (apparent) ongoing impasse, et cetera, et cetera, right through Izzy's revelation of — rather, his leading Georgina to discover for herself — the ever-incrementing nature of their script, even unto the still-moving point of Author's pen? As tidy a series of Complications as ever rode the up escalator toward Finale! There remains only the business of Climax, Denouement, and Wrap-Up to complete the classical curve of dramatic action and Author's self-imposed assignment — a task just at this point interrupted, he imagines, by impassioned female grunts and groans from the rear seat of the Dramatic Vehicle: "Yes. Yes! Yes!" Their source is our Regina (the former Georgina, her name here and now changed by authorial fiat, she being the very Queen of Readers), so excited by the realization that their impasse has been only apparent — that in dramaturgical fact they've been not merely expending Energy but accomplishing Work — that to her happy embarrassment she finds herself climaxing indeed: "Yes!"

Izzy winks at Fred and with a gesture invites the old warhorse into the back seat with their so-aroused mare. But Author objects to Story's ever taking the back seat in its own Dramatic Vehicle: Instead, with a few strokes of his pen he transports transported Regina into the buggy's front seat with Fred and shifts Izzy-the-Sometime-Teller into the rear beside his authorial self.

"Yesyesyes!" moans Regina (an ejaculation not easily moaned, but she manages it), and makes to place Fred's gnarled but still handy right hand where her gnarl-free left has been busying itself. Waggish Izzy nudges Author and (behind his own right hand) suggests, "Her mons veneris for his Mysterious Hilltop Consummation? Let's do it!"

But Author decides to have Fred content himself with declaring to his ardent seat-mate that while her invitation to literal intercourse between Story and Reader flatters and honors him, he in turn honors and respects both her and his patient family back yonder, who have put up with and loyally supported him through the mattersome chapters of his Regnancy, Fall from Favor, and Departure from the City — yea, even unto his fast-approaching Mysterious End. Too grateful is he to all hands to dishonor them and himself as well with Protagonistic infidelity at this late stage of their joint story (as an early Complication, he allows, it might have been interesting indeed — but that would've been Another Story).

"Ah! Ah! Ah." So moved is Regina by Fred's profession of love for and loyalty to his household (R. is, after all, along with her other adjectives, the Faithful Reader), she finds herself once more auto-orgasming: Climax enough, Author here submits, for this story's story. Sometime-Teller Izzy, while skeptical of that submission, obligingly offers the so-moved Third Person, over the seatback, his own hand for her possible employment. Regina gives him a not-unfriendly mind-your-own-business look — as much as to say, "It's stories that turn me on, buster, not their tellers or authors" — and returns her admiring attention to our Hero.

Whom, however, she discovers to be no longer in the seat beside her; nor has he shifted to the rear with his Enablers. The Mythmobile's driver's door is open; the driver himself, it would appear, has vanished into the circumambient dark. Her hand still in place but no longer busy, "Fred?" the lady calls plaintively. "Freddie?"

As if from out of sight on the road's far side, "Gotta go now, ma'am," that old fellow's voice comes back. "Much obliged for the lift, guys. See you around. Maybe."

"Fre-ed?!"

But she understands the fitness of it, does our savvy Reader, sweetly disappointed but dramaturgically fulfilled; the fitness too of her not knowing whither trudgeth her aged admiree: back homeward or farther westward, none knows where. Upon that matter, should they discuss it, she and Izzy will disagree, Regina preferring to imagine Fred's ultimate Consummation in the bosom of his family, in the heart of their once-excellent city, Isidore inclining to a more mysterious, indeed unknown and unknowable finale somewhere out yonder — indeed, perhaps not even down the road after all, but off it: somewhere trackless, out beyond that far shoulder whence last we heard his voice.

Author himself refrains from tipping the scales either way. Enough, in his opinion, to have Regina recollect, aloud, that the Ur-Mythic script includes the possibility of our Hero's being, at the end, not really dead, but rather transmigrated to some Elsewhere — whence, in time, he will return…

"Isn't that so?" she demands of us back-seaters — and, without waiting for our opinion, calls fretfully across to where she last heard his voice: "Freddie? Isn't it so, hon? That we'll meet again someday, somewhere?"

To which, from a remove more distant than before, one barely hears his ancient voice reply (by Regina's hopeful account), "So I've been told."

Or perhaps (as Izzy will prefer to tell it), "So: I've been told."