# Read the first page of Percival Everett by Virgil Russell by Percival Everett

Read the opening of Percival Everett by Virgil Russell by Percival Everett free, no signup. A man visits his aging father, who is writing the son's imagined novel.

- Page: https://uncovered.ink/read/percival-everett-by-virgil-russell-percival-everett
- Genre: Literary fiction
- Year: 2013
- ISBN: 9781555970659
- Read it blind (cover and title hidden): https://uncovered.ink/?b=9781555970659&s=read-page
- Buy: https://bookshop.org/a/125786/9781555970659
- Borrow: https://search.worldcat.org/search?q=9781555970659

## The opening

Let me tell you about my dream, my father said. Two black men walk into a bar and the rosy-faced white barkeep says we don't serve niggers in here and one of the men points to the other and says but he's the president and the barkeep says that's his problem. So the president walks over and gives the barkeep a box and says these are Chilmark chocolates and the barkeep says thank you and reaches over to shake the president's hand. The president jumps back, says what's that? And the barkeep says it's a hand buzzer, a gag, get used to it, asshole.

And that was your dream? I asked him.

As best I can remember. And I’ve written something for you. He looked at my face. Not to you, but for you. It’s sort of something you would write, if you wrote. Here it is:

And yet I continue to live. That was how my father put it, sitting in his wheelchair, the one he could not move around by himself, his right arm useless in his lap, his left nearly so, held up slightly just under his sternum, his new black Velcro-shut shoes uneven on the metal rests, this side of his face, the side near me, the left side, sagging visibly, his voice somewhere between his throat and the back of his tongue. And yet I continue to live. I had suggested that the salt my mother was sprinkling liberally over his food might not be the best thing for his high blood pressure, even though at his age, in his condition, who could really deny the man the simple pleasure of too much salt, but my mother snapped at me, saying, I’ve been taking care of him for a long time. My first thought was how true that was in so many good and bad ways. That was when my father spoke, making a joke and a comment and reminding me that in the vessel that looked something like him there was still the man I knew. And yet I continue to live, the right side of his mouth turning up in as much of a smile as his nerve-starved face would allow, and I laughed with him. My mother had not heard what he had said and even if she had, it would have been lost on her, but she reacted to our laughter, and that reaction was what it would have been if she had heard his comment and had understood, it would have made no difference, none at all, as she became angry, insecure, and jealous that we were sharing anything.

My father was depressed, it took no genius to see that, sitting there all day long in that room in what they call an assisted living facility, pressing his button and waiting for the orderly to come hook him up to a lift to take him to the toilet, pressing his button because the nurses were late getting him ready for bed and he was falling asleep in his chair, pressing his button because there was nothing else to do but press the damn button.

I was depressed too, seeing him that way, then leaving to live my own life far away, knowing his condition, knowing his sadness, knowing his boredom, and depressed because I could for days on end live my life without feeling the horror of his daily existence.

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