Nathan had hit Paula, but I’m not sure if that was true or as what everyone assumed. Living with Nathan seemed the same as being hit.
[...]
Nathan’s indifference to consequence: first he had it, then it went away, then it came back and killed him. It’s shape that makes a person’s life interesting. When Nathan ducked into my room, pulled down his pants, and set fire to his pubic hair, he seemed to do it without thought. It was just a crazy idea that had struck him. Then he left and the smell would hang there. You could almost see it as bits of black ash drifted down over my books and papers. I hated to brush them away with my bare hand. Nobody liked him for it. Burning the Black Forest was an absurdity without issue, except to the dean and those jocks who get excited by what they didn’t understand. It wasn’t a graceful action, but it was done with a kind of grace. It wasn’t the action of a guy who feels he must work sixteen hours a day to keep people from yelling at him, a guy who wakes up before the crows to think about mortgage payments, health insurance, life insurance, his kids’ college education, and how he’s going to pay for his retirement. Does Nathan’s son have any of that? Sometimes I hope he’s hairy like his father, just a ball of thick black hair. And when Nathan’s foot had swollen up to the size of a basketball, what did he think then? I imagine him sitting in his hut with the Indians hovering outside the door. He had a terrible fever and was sweating his guts out. There must have been flies all over the place. Was he afraid? I like to think he didn’t care. An ex-wife who hated him, a child he didn’t know, his foot as big as a basketball– I liked to think that Nathan didn’t even feel fear. That’s how he stays fixed in my mind: indifferent to consequence. It’s something we like to hear that other people can do. I mean, even if we can’t imagine it for ourselves, don’t we want to believe it’s possible?