Free Collected Fictions by Gordon Lish

while Rupert lies beneath him, chest swabbed and bare to the scalpel—hell, I don't know, Buddy, but I know it'll be some thing. Some way none of us can predict, my firstborn will stalk my second, find a way to hurt him because my death robs him of chance to hurt me .
    "Look, there's nothing fishy in this, but I don't want to talk anymore—and besides, I'm calling from home and, with Maggie in the house, it's making me jittery—and I right now can't risk being jittery . I'll telephone tomorrow—around noon—so, for Christ's sake, be there. Because I gave Scharfstein my promise I'd come in and see him in the morning—the jerk thinks he can teach me how to die—and I plan to fly up to Hanover in the afternoon. I guess Mom wrote you that David started Dartmouth this fall—all the way from Texas to my brother's backyard! Buddy, he writes these letters to his grandmother that I cannot believe and do not believe—like a geometer, as if a geometer made them. It gives me the willies to see them, but Mom always makes sure I do. He writes to her! Does he write to me? Does he answer one goddamn letter? Anyway, that's where he is and that's where I'm going tomorrow to get it taken care of. Jesus, man, I've got to choose, don't you see—and I choose Rupert!"
    YOUR FATHER HUNG UP , Chap, with the delivery of that declaration. I didn't wait until the next day, though. I called him back right away—and this time I did get a piece of paper and a pencil—for no good reason, actually, but in moments of this kind one sometimes does things like this. I didn't say much. I didn't try to argue with him. I don't think I then knew what arguments to argue with —and I am not certain I know that even now. All I did know was that I had to try to stop him—not because there was in me a conviction that held him wrong —but only because there was a will in me to keep him from doing what he said. He did not answer right away, but when he did lift the receiver I immediately said, "Me again," and then I heard him say, "Mags, I've got a call and I need to talk in private. I'm sorry, but I need to," and then there was a moment's quiet and then my brother said, "Yes?" and I knew there was no arguing, nothing to do but state the livable range marked off by the mad logic of his assumptions.
    "I have one thing to say," I said, "and that's this. Let it rest for three months. They've guaranteed you three months, at least three months, so you can wait that long and then do it. Not saying you shouldn't do it—just saying you can wait the three lousy months. Not that I think you'll change your mind—or that I'm sitting here trying to get you to—but just that you're in this position where you can add three months to Chap's life with no danger to Rupert. The minimum they've given you is the minimum you can and therefore must give Chap."
    I was writing the numeral 3 again and again across the paper that I had pressed with the heel of my hand up against the wall. But the plaster, if that's what you call it, was making them all come out crooked, no matter how carefully I tried to control the pencil.
    Chap, your father said, "Yes," and then he hung up the phone. He hung up without one other word. But the word he had uttered left no doubt—it was said so I would know there was no doubt. My brother knew that I knew he would do it—that your father would give you all the life he could.
    That was the fourth of November.
    I began writing these sentences that night, last night—and as I write this sentence now, it is morning.
    I PROMISED A COURTESY , and this is it. I make this gesture to exist in the place of all the gestures I have not made. I am keeping every promise I have not kept. I am leading along to this courtesy everyone I have loved and ever misled.
    There is an American writer, a woman, the only American writer I read. She has not written many stories, so it is no great undertaking to read everything she has written, which she has let have a life in