Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

by Tom Robbins

  “I did all I could.”

  “What was that? I never noticed you do anything—until it was too late.”

  “I set an example. That's all anyone can do. I'm sorry the cowgirls didn't pay better attention, but I couldn't force them to notice me. I've lived most of my entire adult life outside the law, and never have I compromised with authority. But neither have I gone out and picked fights with authority. That's stupid. They're waiting for that; they invite it; it helps keep them powerful. Authority is to be ridiculed, outwitted and avoided. And it's fairly easy to do all three. If you believe in peace, act peacefully; if you believe in love, act lovingly; if you believe every which way, then act every which way, that's perfectly valid—but don't go out trying to sell your beliefs to the System. You end up contradicting what you profess to believe in, and you set a bum example. If you want to change the world, change yourself. You know that, Sissy,”

  Of course Sissy knew it. Hadn't the world's greatest hitchhiker always operated on that premise? It's just that she had a brain and our brains are forever having fun with us by making us learn over and over what we've known from the beginning. The brain may have been unjustly criticized in this book, but you've got to admit, the brain has a weird sense of humor.

  And so it came to pass that Delores and Sissy became lovers.

  They shared the room adjacent to the Chink's, keeping close in case he needed anything during the night.

  In time, they found themselves needing something during the night.

  Delores slept on the left, Sissy on the right. Before long, there wasn't any middle.

  The bed never grumbled beneath them. Even the springs, tattletales by nature, resisted all temptations to squeak. The walls and ceiling auditioned each new position, apparently approving, for nothing cracked or fell. The little squeals that Delores's serpentine tongue pushed and pulled from Sissy's pipes, that Sissy's hitchhiker fingers beckoned from deep in Delores's throat, attracted no more attention from the hills beyond the fluttering curtains than the squeals of rabbits and mice. Sometimes four sets of lips would be smacking at once, but the edition of Amy Vanderbilt that Miss Adrian had left on the mantlepiece never once corrected them or turned up its nose. It was as if the world was absorbing their love, offering no resistance, but was lightly, softly breathing it in. Sighing “ah!”

  Or “ha!”

  But certainly not “ma!” Girl-love may have its place in the world, but as the bedsprings, walls, ceiling, hills and even Amy Vanderbilt must know, spit doesn't make babies.

  And so it came to pass that when Sissy discovered she was pregnant, her thumb pointed at the Chink. Figuratively speaking, to be sure, for she told him nothing of it, nor did she mention her condition to Delores or write of it to Julian (whose drinking problem had become so acute that the “beautiful people” now shunned him, leaving him to wheeze out the effects of civilization in the posthippie hangouts of the East Village).

  She concealed her morning sickness by pretending it was emotional, a physical manifestation of worry and grief, and no one was the wiser—except for a certain middle-aged woman who read palms and suffered trances in the drive-in movie outskirts of Richmond, Virginia.

  And so it came to pass that the Rubber Rose cowgirls were acquitted on all counts. They rode out of Mottburg in a horseback processional, triumphantly waving their hats at the townsfolk, among whom was Granny Schreiber, cheering.

  Back at the ranch, a meeting was called. In the bunkhouse, just like the old days.

  Big Red read the hands some literature from the Girls' Rodeo Association. “All-girl rodeoing is enjoying the greatest period of growth in its history. Only five all-girl rodeos were held in 1973—this year there were eleven.” The GRA poop sheet went on to tell how Gail Petska, twenty-five, of Tecumseh, Oklahoma, had earned $19,448 in 1973, bull-riding, calf-roping, barrel-racing and goat-tying.

  “I aim to cut into that pie,” announced Big Red. “And I wish the rest of y'all would consider coming with me. We'll work outta Texas, just like the whooping cranes.”

  “Goat-tying as a sport is a new one on me,” said Donna, “but with our experience us Rubber Rose podners ought to be damn good at it. You can count me in, but only if you'll help me agitate to end all-girl rodeos and get us back to competing with men again, equal, like it ought to be.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind,” said Big Red. “But we'll do it gently, like the Peyote Mother told us to.”

  Seven cowgirls in all agreed to move to Texas and hit the rodeo circuit. Kym and Linda had already decided to winter in Florida, working as waitresses, saving money for some new adventure. Six cowgirls had made up their minds to give college a try, including Mary, who was going to study archeology to put her Christian faith to the test of historical fact. Some of the hands thought they'd just knock around for a while, trying different lifestyles on for size—preparing themselves for the Fourth Vision.

  Outside the bunkhouse, two men were sitting on the corral fence. One was Elaine's sidekick, a thirty-five-year-old poet from San Francisco, who had been paying Elaine clandestine visits off and on since she'd been in Dakota. The other was an old friend of Debbie's from her Acid Atom Avatar days, a reformed LSD dealer who'd started reading the complete works of Albert Einstein and was learning to think (not reason, but think). Elaine and her sidekick, and Debbie and hers, wanted to run the ranch together. They planned to cultivate sunflowers and market the seeds.

  It was agreed. Elaine and Debbie would be granted trusteeship of the spread, but the place was also to be permanently maintained as a haven for the twenty-six cowgirls, should any of them ever need a safe place to retreat from the slings and arrows of outrageous whatever.

  Finally, the women voted to change the name of the Rubber Rose to El Rancho Jellybean. And that is how it is known to this day.

  There was one more item of business. Heather wanted to know who stole the picture of Dale Evans out of the shitter.

  119.

  ONE MORNING the prairie dogs looked out of their cellars and saw that Indian summer had skipped town. It hadn't even left a good-by note. The prairie dogs shrugged, shivered and ducked inside, hoping to get to sleep before winter began stomping around upstairs in its hob-nailed boots. That very same day, the Chink left, too.

  Sissy and Delores returned windblown from a walk to find him hobbling on a cherry stick, his belongings tied in a skin. Out in the chill, Sissy had confessed her pregnancy to Delores, and the two of them had agreed that the Chink ought to be informed. Now, here he was, his second day on his feet, preparing to flee the ranch. And not for Siwash Ridge, either.

  “I'm going to go back with the Clock People,” he said. “I kind of miss those fool redskins and wonder what they're up to. Besides, they need somebody like me to needle 'em and keep 'em honest. Anarchy is like custard cooking over a flame; it has to be constantly stirred or it sticks and gets heavy, like government.”

  “I just can't believe you're going to leave the butte,” said Sissy. But she could believe it. His bone had healed much more quickly than the physicians forecast, yet seeing him leaning on a cane, so drawn and pale, it was difficult to imagine him ever scurrying over the unpredictable architecture of Siwash Ridge again. What Sissy really meant was that she couldn't believe he was leaving her.

  “Easy come, easy go,” said the Chink.

  “Wow, you sure have a way with words,” said Delores.

  The Chink actually blushed. “I can't help it if I grew up in an antipoetic culture,” he said. “Language will be different when I'm with the Clock People, though. They're from an oral tradition. And I'm not talking about what you horny hop toads do in bed every night.”

  It was Delores's turn to blush. Sissy's turn, too. The walls had betrayed them after all.

  “Well,” sighed Sissy, trying to make her teardrops stay in their seats, “if the Clock People give you any inside information on the end of the world, drop us a postcard.”

  “The world isn't going to end, yo
u dummy; I hope you know that much.” He grew uncharacteristically serious. “But it is going to change. It's going to change drastically, and probably in your lifetime. The Clock People see calamitous earthquakes as the agent of change, and they may be right, since there are a hundred thousand earthquakes a year and major ones are long overdue. But there are far worse catastrophes coming . . .”

  “Inevitable?” asked Delores.

  “Unless the human race can bring itself to abandon the goals and values of civilization, in other words, unless it can break the consumption habit—and we are so conditioned to consuming as a way of life that for most of us life would have no meaning without the yearnings and rewards of progressive consumption. So I'd say yes, inevitable. It isn't merely that our bad habits will cause global catastrophes, but that our operative political-economic philosophies have us in such a blind crab grip that they prevent us from preparing for the natural disasters that are not our fault. So the apocalyptic shit is going to hit the fan, all right, but there'll be some of us it'll miss. Little pockets of humanity. Like the Clock People. Like you two honeys, if you decide to accept my offer of a lease on Siwash Cave. There's almost no worldwide calamity—famine, nuclear accident, plague, weather warfare or reduction of the ozone shield—that you couldn't survive in that cave.”

  “Okay for us,” said Sissy, “and okay for the Clock People, but what about the rest of the world, the millions who aren't even aware of the dangers, let alone the alternatives? We should probably be working full-time educating the masses and trying to mobilize them for survival.”

  “No, no,” said the Chink. He was leaning heavily on his cane. “Survival isn't important. What matters is how you survive. Every long-term survival plan conceived by our think tanks and scientists and social strategists involves variations on totalitarianism—anthill- or beehive-type societies. Well, insects are good at survival; better than any other creatures, for sure. That's because in the insect world there's no individualism whatsoever. Insect life is rigid and predictable; the bug psyche is concerned with absolutely nothing but survival: survival of the colony, the hive, the swarm. I think it's better that mankind dies out than resorts to a totalitarian survival lifestyle. We should take as our model the whooping crane rather than the termite. Let's go extinct if we must, but let's go with some dignity and humor and grace. Antmen and beewomen aren't worthy of survival.”

  The Chink reached out and caressed Sissy's thumb. The left thumb. The transcontinental whopper. So slow was his movement that she didn't even flinch. “Survival itself is of no concern to me, but here's something I do find interesting. Suppose that in the next twenty to fifty years a series of overlapping natural and manmade disasters wrecks our social structure and eliminates most of the human race. The probability of this is high. Only small, isolated groups would survive. Now, suppose that you, Sissy, were among the survivors—and if you exercise your option to reside in Siwash Cave, you would be among them. And suppose that you bear children . . .”

  With that, he removed his wrinkled yellow hand from Sissy's perpetually pregnant appendage and began to caress her temporarily knocked-up belly. His eyes were smiling. My God? Did he know about that, too?

  “Suppose that Madame Zoe's prophecy comes true and you bear five or six children with your characteristics. All in Siwash Cave. In a postcatastrophe world, your offspring would of necessity intermarry, forming in time a tribe. A tribe every member of which had giant thumbs. A tribe of Big Thumbs would relate to the environment in very special ways. It could not use weapons or produce sophisticated tools. It would have to rely on its wits and its senses. It would have to live with animals—and plants!—as virtual equals. It's extremely pleasant to me to think about a tribe of physical eccentrics living peacefully with animals and plants, learning their languages, perhaps, and paying them the respect they deserve. It's just fun to consider, that's all.”

  Sissy squeezed his hand. It felt like a wedge of stale cheese. “Fun is fun,” she said, “but how am I going to be the progenitor of a tribe when I'm living on an isolated ridgetop with Delores?”

  “That's your problem” said the Chink. “Actually, I'm not much more concerned with tribal situations than I am with mass populations. Most groups are herds and all herds are a mess. Debbie and those other misguided kids try to pigeonhole me as another Oriental boohoo. They couldn't be more wrong. The various Oriental philosophers have at least one thing in common: they take the personal and try to make it universal. I hate that. I'm the opposite. I take the universal and make it personal. The only truly magical and poetic exchanges that occur in this life occur between two people. Sometimes it doesn't get that far. Often, the true glory of existence is confined to individual consciousness. That's okay. Let us live for the beauty of our own reality.”

  Abruptly, the Chink pulled his hand from Sissy's stomach. He cleared his throat. “Kaff.” And rolled his eyes until they looked like a couple of beans that had just got the word they were being transferred to Boston. “Listen to the way I'm babbling. That dynamite must have loosened one of my transistors. Don't pay any attention to me. You've got to work it out for yourself. The westbound choo-choo leaves Mottburg at one-forty. I want to be on it. Will you drive me to the station?”

  When the authorities dropped charges against Delores—apparently seeking to wash their hands of cowgirls forever—they had returned the peyote wagon. The women decided to take it to town; after all, the new jeep (a gift from the Countess Foundation) belonged to the ranch and the ranch was now in the control of Elaine and Debbie. Delores drove, Sissy and the Chink beside her holding hands.

  Fighting a nasty wind all the way, the serpent-encrusted camper made it to the station with only five minutes to spare. The train was already in. “Schedules!” said the Chink. “Ironic how I have to follow timetables in order to get back to the clockworks.” His expression was one of admiration. “Don't ever bet against paradox, ladies. If complexity doesn't beat you, then paradox will.”

  Inside Sissy's burning ducts, teardrops were running, not walking, to the nearest exit. “But what about your clockworks?” she asked, sniffling.

  “My clockworks? Why, I'm carrying it with me. Aren't you?”

  He gave the women kisses of equal duration, although Sissy got a bit more tongue. Then he turned and limped across the loading platform.

  Watching him hobble onto the train, Sissy was struck by how small and frail he had begun to look. Delores was weeping now, too.

  In the doorway of the railroad car, the Chink suddenly spun, tore open his robe and shook his pecker at them. “Ha ha ho ho and hee hee,” he sniggered.

  The old goat.

  120.

  WITH SISSY AND DELORES snug in the cave, the ranch in good hands, the Chink rewinding the Clock People, the Countess carrying out pans of afterbirth and Jellybean roping clouds on the prairies of Paradise, things seem to have settled down for those entities whose adventures this book has chronicled.

  We might conclude that Even Cowgirls Get the Blues has reached maximum entropy, were it not for one unexpected ongoing unsettling phenomenon: the behavior of the whooping cranes.

  Following its flight from Siwash Lake, the crane flock stopped at its Aransas wintering grounds but briefly. Hours before the commencement of a gala celebration to welcome the big birds home, they took to the air again, leaving the Secretary of the Interior, the Governor of Texas, the Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce and thousands of patriotic bird-lovers in the lurch.

  Continuing southward, they rested in Yucatán for a while, then flapped on down to Venezuela and lunched on leopard frogs in the swamps of the Orinoco. In Bolivia, their droppings fell on a revolution. Over Paraguay, they stained the cathedrals of Asunción. Attempts by Latin-American scientists to get close to them invariably resulted in their moving on. They veered into Chile, maybe to pay tribute to the assassinated poet Pablo Neruda; next stop, Patagonia.

  In the U.S. and Canada, many people were aghast. The head of the Audubon Soc
iety began to make noises that his fellow birdmen identified as loon and cuckoo. Was it the aftereffects of the peyote diet, or something at once more mysterious and more ominous that was making the cranes act so? Naturalists argued in laboratories and conference rooms—and the whoopers, crossing the Atlantic toward Africa, paid a call to the South Sandwich Islands.

  After several of them were shot down by Congolese poachers, the United Nations passed a unanimous resolution making harming the cranes a prison offense in every country in the world. Just in time, too, for soon the great white flock was traveling through heavily populated regions. The whoopers ruined a beach in the south of France, upstaged the famous pigeons at St. Mark's in Venice and are said to have looked picturesque wading in the Thames.

  The birds moved on—and are still moving. Nobody knows where they'll turn up next. Their whoops, greeted with religious fervor along the Ganges, could barely be heard above the horns and squealing tires of Tokyo traffic. At this writing, they are believed to be somewhere in the interior of China, where poems about cranes (non-whoopers, of course) once were produced at the rate of a thousand a day. But precious few crane poems are written in China anymore.

  Is the most spendid and sizable American bird searching for a new home, scouring the globe in quest of a place where it can be private and free? That is one theory. Naturally, legends have sprung up around the travels of the whooper. In Burma, a woman claims to have had sexual intercourse with one of the cranes. Shades of Leda and the Canadian Honker.

  Perhaps the whooping cranes carry a message, bearing it far and wide. A message from the wild to the wild-no-more. Is such a thing possible?

  All's possible. And all's well. And since all's well that ends well, are we to conclude that this is the end?