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Farther Along by Donald Harington
The tissue or, not to mince the issue, toilet paper, is
the sole luxury I permit myself, and that sparingly,
using scarcely more at the nether aperture than at
the higher, the bung than the maw, packing on my
back, each semi-annual seven-mile hike back from
the village, as many rolls as I can carry, and they
being so downy light I can bear a half-year’s supply,
six rolls to a cellophane package, twelve packages
bound and tied and piled high above my shoulders
in a heap like Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s load, although
some loafers along the road are bound and obliged
to make a crack or two I overhear: “That feller
shore must bowel off ever hour on the hour,” or
“Naw, it’s a durn sight cheaper than cigarette papers.”
They don’t know me, nor do they realize that I use
almost as much of the tissue at one opening as at
the other. Children point and giggle, and call me
The Giasticutus, which, I have learned, is a huge
mythical bird of prey who carries off large articles
on its back — when I hear that, I obligingly flap
my elbows like wings and wish I could fly. Dogs
bark, or they bark at least once, and if they bark
twice it is tentative, hesitant - Ralph? - for my own
dog has begun snarling at them in a low frequency
foreign and mythical to them, because they, all of
them, are hounds, blue tick, black and tan, redbone
and mixed glut of mutts, and my dog is purebred
German Shepherd, the only one of that breed, as
far as I know, in the entire county. He is black and
gray. I am tanned and gray, but on the winter trip
of the semi-annual hikes to town, January 18th, my
birthday (the summer trip is made July 18th), we
both of us are sometimes all white with snow on
the way in and back, snow camouflaging the tissue,
and there are no loafers or children or dogs along
the way to quip or point or bark.
My comb, around which I fold the tissue, is
clean, because I rarely use it, usually twice a year,
before going to town. As a result, I still have a full
head of hair, albeit fast graying, whereas I had expected
by this age—forty-three—to have acquired
my father’s smooth baldness of the forecrown. I am
convinced that baldness comes from daily combing.
A comb is meant for playing and I daily play mine,
although the dog doesn’t appreciate it and leaves our
bluff cavern to hide in the woods far out of earshot
until I’m finished. I sit while playing; perhaps I sit
altogether too much, which may account for my
hemorrhoids, which in turn may account for half
of my indulgence in toilet paper, since I cannot
use leaves, sticks, moss, corncobs, and have no
newspapers, let alone Sears or Wards catalogs, but
it has been my routine, ever since I came here six
years ago, to work one day out of the week and rest
the other six, which is turning it around on God. I
don’t recall what Thoreau’s habits were. But unlike
him, I’m not trying to prove anything, or, if I once
was, whatever it was, whenever, it has been proved
long since in these six long years.
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