Gentlemen Read Online Free Page A

not what was in the barrel. Reedy thought it was a joke or something and didn’t say anything, but after a while you could tell that Haberman was waiting for him to respond.
    â€œI can’t,” Reedy said.
    â€œWhy not? You say it’s watermelon.” He circled it again. “Come up here and have some nice watermelon.”
    And now Haberman was sort of glaring at Reedy, like he was angry at him for saying it was watermelon. Reedy looked over at the barrel. He’d guessed a jug of water.
    â€œIt’s not a real watermelon,” Reedy said, and you could see he was sort of uncomfortable now. The way Haberman did that, switched from smiling and joking to angry, so that you knew he wasn’t really joking in the first place, it could creep you out if you were on the receiving end of it.
    â€œWhat is it then?”
    â€œIt’s a word…”
    â€œNo!” said Haberman. It was almost a shout, and Reedy sat there squirming in his seat as Haberman went on a long coughing jag from the stuff he’d kicked up in his lungs. When he was done, he picked up like it hadn’t happened.
    â€œThat is not wrong, Mr. Reed, it is merely redundant.”
    Reedy gave him a blank look.
    â€œMr. Benton has covered that, I believe. I asked what else it is. What else is it?”
    Reedy just kept beaming that blank look, and Haberman broke out into a smile again. So now it’s like he wasn’t really mad. He was a strange dude. He looked at me, and I probably had half a smile on, because it’s funny if this stuff isn’t happening to you, and I knew what he was going to say, anyway.
    â€œIt is an idea.”
    He looked around after he said it like he expected us all to fall out of our chairs from the sheer amazingness of this. When we didn’t he just went on.
    â€œIt is not a real watermelon. It is a guess, Mr. Biron’s guess. Maybe there is a watermelon in the barrel, and maybe there isn’t. In fact, I will tell you that there is not. If you were to come up here and attempt to lift this barrel, you would know that whatever it is that’s in there, it is far too heavy to be a watermelon. So there is no actual watermelon, either in the barrel or on the board. So what does that leave us with?”
    Haberman’s pace was picking up, so we knew he was going to answer his own question without risking one of us getting it wrong.
    â€œIt leaves us with the idea of a watermelon. Mr. Biron hit the barrel. He thought about what he heard, what he felt, and it seemed to him like a watermelon. Is that fair to say?”
    He looked at Max, who nodded and said, “Yeah.”
    â€œPerhaps you even pictured a watermelon, with that green, mottled rind, and that classic ovoid shape?”
    Max didn’t know what at least a few of those words meant, and I knew one and not the other, but he shrugged and said, “Sure.”
    â€œThat is what we have here: a word signifying the idea of a watermelon. In fact, we have many words signifying many ideas. Not all of them can be right. Actually, little secret here, none of them are. Though one is close.”
    He didn’t look at anyone in particular when he said this, so we didn’t know who was close.
    â€œBut the ideas are still there. The sand that Ms. Bialis may have imagined running through her fingers, may haveremembered from a trip to the Cape, it is up on this board. We have, let’s see, fourteen ideas up on the board, and though none of them match the contents of this barrel, they are all, in their own way, just as real.”
    I was looking at the barrel and thinking, Christ, if that’s the point he wanted to make, he could’ve used a Dixie Cup, a Dixie Cup with something wrapped in a napkin, and we could have flicked the side with our fingers. Haberman paused to cough up more lung butter, then continued.
    â€œIf I were to tell you what’s in this barrel, not show, but just tell, would it