Thirteen seconds is about as long as it takes to settle into the driver’s seat of your car, buckle up your seatbelt, and turn the key in the ignition. It’s about as long as it takes to eat three French fries, if you’re eating them one by one. It’s about as long as it takes to carry a bag of garbage to the curb from your front door.
Thirteen seconds is the average amount of time the average person spends washing his or her hands after using the bathroom. Please keep in mind that the average person’s hands are, on average, laden with bacteria that can be deadly to the very young, the very old, and those with immunodeficiency conditions. Thirteen seconds is not enough time to kill deadly bathroom germs. This is why there has been a nation-wide campaign promoting good hand-washing practices. Perhaps you’ve seen the posters? “Don’t be Dirty-Count to Thirty.”
It takes less than thirteen seconds to say this: “The chief problem with being a moral individual is the fact that we live in an amoral universe.” It may be helpful to adopt this perspective as you read the rest of the story.
Perspective is all about looking: who is doing the looking, and who is being looked at. Who is the seer, and who or what is the seen object? This kind of narrative theory sounds simple, but it can get tricky. Sometimes it can pose very serious problems for very serious students- students who are interested in getting it right. In the interest of helping out these scholars, should they happen to be reading, here’s a hint: for the most part, you and I will be doing the looking, and the object we will occasionally be looking at is Franklin Murdoch in the last thirteen seconds of his life.
Tick Tick
Morning broke with a snap of fiery sunrise that felt like the sting of an elastic band. The members of the firing party, standing five paces away from the post, their backs turned, were from Franklin’s own battalion. Each man was busy trying to pretend that his rifle was the lucky one the officer in charge loaded with the blank. That way, each man reasoned, his rifle was just a noise-maker, as harmless as a party cracker at a child’s birthday. There was a little white circle of paper pinned to Franklin’s chest. Shining.
The Assistant Provost Marshal was there, looking pleased with himself for organizing the festivities. Franklin’s NCO was there, too, looking constipated. There was an officer, petting his pistol like it was a springer spaniel, and a sergeant there just for fun-he didn’t even get to shoot anybody. He was an invitee by obligation only. Everybody was there. It was a regular blow-out.
And Franklin was there, too.
Franklin handed over his identification and his pay book to the NCO who said in a gravelly voice, “Yep, this is Murdoch. Deserter Extraordinaire.”
There was a stretcher, in case Franklin couldn’t make it to the post on his own two legs. He didn’t need it, though. Franklin was no coward, despite all evidence to the contrary. He kept his eyes wide open as the blindfold was tied.
You show up just as the last knot is cinched.
Good timing, and welcome.
Now that there are more guests, Franklin gets into the spirit of his own party. In a low voice, sweet and warm, he starts to sing. Unbeknownst to any of the other party-goers, the fragmented song he sings will resurface in the mouth of a 1960s traveling-troubadour-folk-singer who some people-people high on drugs, naturally-will think is Jesus Christ, reborn.
“‘Twas in another lifetime, one of toil and blood, when blackness was a virtue, and the road was full of mud…in a world of steel-eyed death, and men who are fighting to be warm…I bargained for salvation an’ they gave me a lethal dose…”
The song will be recorded in September 1974 and become part of an album released by Columbia Records to mixed reviews in mid-January 1975. The songs will be about love and pain, love and pain, and the album title will have something to do with blood and railroads. Eventually it will be considered one of the greatest albums of all time. Franklin, if not for the unpleasantness he currently finds himself embroiled in, would first hear the song on a rainy February evening. Franklin, then seventy-six years old with arteriosclerosis and erectile dysfunction, would hear the song on his eldest grandchild’s record player and proceed to scream bloody murder: who was that curly-haired bastard who stole his song, the one he wrote in the war? But Franklin, if all this happens, will be a war veteran, the kind people make allowances for. Don’t worry about him, his grandson will tell his friends as the record spins. My granddad’s kind of crazy.
Luckily we won’t have to worry about any of that. The NCO has seen to it, though the singing is starting to piss him off. The APM is all shook up (“wahoo hoo, hoo, hey, hey, yeah, yeah”). The riflemen are unnerved. The medical officer wishes that he had sedated Franklin. The sergeant is worried: all the singing is bad for morale. Even Franklin knows he is burning up a lot of 4/4 time. You and I, though, we like the song. We just sit back and listen.
Tick Tick Tick
A little while ago, Franklin Murdoch had two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-fourteen seconds left. This is a number considerably greater than thirteen, but not anymore pleasing an amount-not from Franklin Murdoch’s point of view, anyhow. It was an important moment in time, nonetheless: it was then that Franklin finally got an audience with God.
God had been rather difficult to get in touch with lately. In fact, He’d been totally incommunicado. God, Franklin reasoned, was obviously very busy with the war. Besides, everyone, no matter how omniscient, needs a break now and again. A recent study indicates that overworked employees are less productive, and you can’t argue with that.
“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name…” Franklin was confident that God would come through this time. Why, not that long ago (…Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done…) Franklin had put his hands over the bloody slop of Conway’s arm that was not really there anymore (…on earth as it is in heaven…) and Conway had screamed “Holy Jesus, Goddamn Motherfucker, Holy Christ! Motherfucking Mary, Mother of God!” (…give us this day…) and the blood and the sharp bone and the gristle of fat and stringy muscles and tendons had stuck to Franklin’s own arm-which was still there, Franklin was pretty sure, and thank God for that!- in a soupy paste of meat (…our daily bread…) and gore, and he had seen Conway’s eyes roll back into his head (…forgive us our trespasses…), even as Conway still shouted out “Jesus Christ, you Goddamn Motherfucker!” (…as we forgive those who trespass against us…) and in the end Conway had cried as the medic had prepared to amputate (…lead us not into temptation…) and Murdoch had bravely not looked away (…but deliver us from evil…) and had been given some sort of medal or ribbon for his part in the whole mess (…for Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever and ever…), and even now he could still hear Conway crying like a baby that he didn’t want to die; and please, God, he didn’t want to die (…Amen.).
Somehow, out of the disorienting eddy of blood and dirt and shells and fucks and oh shits, God managed not only to hear Conway’s obscenity-laden prayer, but also to answer it and save his life. Nothing could be done about the arm. God is a miracle-worker, not a magician. At least Conway still had his life, thanks to God. No other explanation for it, really, the medical men said. A goddamn miracle.
So Franklin Murdoch prayed in his own little hour of need. He was hopeful and his cell was quiet: there wasn’t nearly as much noise to filter out as there had been when Conway was calling Jesus a motherfucker. Franklin reasoned that his prayer was probably going straight through to God, loud and clear. Plus, a ribbon, or a medal, whatever it was, should count for something, too. And the fact that he didn’t use foul language, that should also help his cause, Franklin thought.
“Sincerely, your humble servant, Franklin Murdoch.”
And then, with two-thousand-seven-hundred-and-fourteen seconds to go, Franklin opened his eyes, looked down, and saw between his feet a Chinese fortune cookie.
It was an impossibility. It had no business being in the spartan cell, yet it was there. It was a beautiful tawny half-moon of salvation. Amidst the cigarettes and the bottle of brandy and the last meal of dry potatoes and lumpy gravy, it had appeared to him in that desert of deserts, appeared out of nothing as a sign. It was a one-hundred percent, reliable, certifiable, goddamn miracle.
Franklin gently picked up his crunchy, sugary little marvel, cradling it in both hands as though it was a little piece of God, Himself. Franklin said a prayer of thanks, and then he cracked open the cookie and read aloud its message of deliverance.
“Confucius say: Never eats an any thing bigger than you head.”
He now had two-thousand-six-hundred-and-seven seconds left, and in the passing of that one minute and forty-seven seconds, Franklin Murdoch, if he had been paying attention, had learned this: God had been letting a lot of things slide lately, including the quality of English language translations from the Wong Phat Fortune Cookie Company of Qinghai, China.
Tick Tick
Poor Franklin. It really is a shame, if you stand back and take in the whole picture. He is tall and still, his face and hands very white and almost waxy. Except for his breath making bloated clouds of condensation as he sings the last few notes, you’d think he was dead, or at least that he was an escapee from Madame Tussaud’s. But that is not the case. We already know what kind of escapee Franklin is.
My goodness, though, doesn’t he look waxy? Those men holding the guns should save their bullets and just put a wick in Franklin and let him quietly burn himself out. But then where would the fun be in that? And those gun-holding men do look awfully smart in their uniforms; too bad Franklin is blindfolded. Someone is whispering orders and the men are raising their rifles. Their mothers, I’m sure, are very proud.
Maybe Franklin’s skin just knows that he is going to die in about five seconds, and it’s trying the whole “death thing” out, seeing if it can play the part convincingly. That way, when it comes time to make Franklin’s story into a summer blockbuster, Skin can play Itself and make enough money to officially retire from the daily sweating-stinking-breathing-shedding-healing-containing that is its nine-to-five (and to-nine-again) job.
Or maybe Franklin is already dead-the life sucked out of him by something other than a speeding bullet. In case you haven’t guessed, Franklin is no Superman. He is very, very average. One can safely assume that his hands are rife with bacteria.
There’s nothing I can do. I’m only following orders.
I was very clear on that.
If I could be responsible for Franklin, I’d treat him right. I’d send him on a Carnival Cruise until his nerves got better, and maybe give him a week or so at Disneyland. There ain’t nothin’ that cures the blues better than a few trips around Space Mountain. I’d let him drive fast cars and get him even faster women. I’d let him fuck them on the first date and not even make him pay for dinner. I’d give him a job as a proofreader at a publishing house. Imagine it: each day Franklin loses himself in any number of fictional worlds, looking for errors. If he finds any, he fixes them. Those worlds become error-free.
But I’m already helping Franklin out. Without me, he wouldn’t even have been resurrected for these thirteen seconds. And he knew right from the beginning what he was getting himself into. No matter what, though, I’m still not responsiblefor all of this. It’s no mistake that Franklin is standing here as the sun shines, struggling now to come out from behind leaden clouds and a black shroud of mist-it’s his own fault he’s here, blindfolded; that’s what the Field General Courts-Martial concluded.
Don’t shoot the messenger.
Tick Tick
Five-million-three-hundred-and-ninety-nine-thousand-one-hundred-and-fourteen seconds ago, Franklin Murdoch was somewhere else entirely. I can’t tell you where, exactly-that is Classified Information. I know that’s frustrating, but believe me, it’s an absolutely vital matter of National Security. Plus, if I tell you anything more, it won’t get through the censors, and who knows what will happen to me if I try? He was walking, I can tell you that, but I can’t tell you where from, or where to.
He was imagining a huge meal-a plate of bloody roast beef dripping in gravy, caressed by mashed potatoes, kissed lightly by green peas. He saw squash blushing an embarrassed orange as he brought it to his glistening lips. Strawberry-rhubarb pie, steaming, pink filling oozing onto the delicate white plate. It was a meal, Gentle Reader, which was obviously much bigger than his head. In that moment the foodstuffs in Franklin’s mind were so real, he felt that he could taste them with the whole of his skinny, sagging, painful, sorry being.
Franklin stopped walking. He looked down at his hands, which were downright filthy. He unshouldered his gun and placed it carefully on the ground. He wiped his hands on his pants. Then, very slowly, he turned around and started walking in the opposite direction.
I can’t tell you which direction that was either (see above), but believe me, it was a dangerous direction-more dangerous than the original direction, even considering that the original direction had far more bullets and explosions and scared and angry people than the one Franklin actually chose. Again, I can’t tell you exactly where the new direction took him, but I can tell you this: the new direction led exactly to where he is now.
Tick
Fiction does funny things to people. People like you and me, for example. If we met in real life, we’d chat over coffee and have ourselves a perfectly charming afternoon. But since we’re meeting on the page, things are different. We are implied. I am the implied author and you are the implied reader. We have been transformed into narrative masks. Franklin wears a mask—a blindfold. I bet you a dollar that he doesn’t give a damn about any mask other than that one.
I know I can come on a bit strong. You can feel me everywhere in this story; I refuse to blend into the background, or hide behind a coat rack, or a flower arrangement, or a post stuck in the ground, or a little circular piece of white paper, for that matter. So out of fairness, I figure if you can feel me, I should let Franklin feel me, too. Give him a good feel of a real red-blooded girl before these next seconds pass. Franklin is an okay guy. You’d know that if I had told you more about him. Who knows? Maybe I’d have let him get more than just a feel, if things had been different. I’m a sucker for a man in uniform. And I think it’s important to support the troops.
I’m sorry if you haven’t had fun. I know that a good story is supposed to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. This story only has thirteen seconds. It’s also well known that if a story is to be a tragedy, it must be of a certain amplitude. Very shortly, Franklin will have no amplitude. He will be flatline. Besides, a tragedy must represent something that is worthy of our serious attention as readers, and let’s be honest: no one cares about Franklin, and this story is about hand-washing, large meals, time, and waxiness.
But time marches on, and everybody loves a parade. Franklin only has a few seconds left. That should be enough. You came here to be entertained, and there is a spectacle to see. It was nice to meet you. Open your eyes.
Tick
Tick