An understatement. He was the local state trooper, all crisp creases and barrel chest. First thing he did when he saw the wreck was put his hand on his gun and order us up against the car to be frisked. No small talk for this guy—it was just us and him and wind. “No explanations now, gentlemen, I’ll determine what happened here.”
“Lucky thing,” we told Debra. “He wants to know what we’re all about, so we tell him, writers. Wants to know what we write, so we tell him that too—and it’s like we’ve said the magic words. ‘Writing a book about religion.’ He invites us to hang out with him in his cruiser while we wait for the tow truck and he just starts telling us stories. Says go south, down to Chimayo, and there’s people who eat dirt because God blesses it, and he says, truth be told, he’s one of them. Go north, he says, Crestone, they have Buddhas in a monastery there. That’s what he says. ‘Big, fat Chinese Buddhas.’ Then he says, ‘I’ll tell you something strange. Really strange. I was out here other night, right here, for another accident, just about this spot.’ ”
If we’d been paying attention, we probably would have noticed that Debra had gone pale and that Greg the devil was sort of chortling. But instead we just kept talking.
“He says right where we were, car did the same thing. But a total wreck—a grandmother and her granddaughter. Grandmother’s dead on one side of the road, and apparently the kid was sitting there by herself on the other before the cop got there. Right where we were.”
Finally Debra spoke. “She wasn’t alone,” she said. “I was there.” We both kind of half-smiled, not sure how to take this claim of magical omnipresence. Debra shook her head, a quick little dismissal this time, and then she told us a story.
It was opening night of the show, 1:30 in the morning, Debra’s cruising home in her beat-up Toyota, replaying in her head the applause of earlier in the evening, when something interrupts. “I saw it before I knew what it was,” she said. “It was a half-moon, bright, and I saw a dark mass. I was almost past when I thought, That’s a car wreck. There were people there. There weren’t any ambulances.” She screeches to a stop and throws the car in reverse and goes back to see if her eyes had been deceiving her. No. A car, upside down, some kind of big American monstrosity. A body beside it. And a little girl, squatting by the wreck, holding herself and rocking. Debra gets out. The body—it’s a woman.
“Oh my god,” says Debra.
“Nan went through the windshield,” says the little girl, her voice so cool and unemotional Debra knows she’s in shock.
Nan’s head looks, simply, broken. In place of her stomach there’s a basin of blood. And yet she’s alive, trying to move her head, trying to speak.
“What did you say?” we asked, waiting for the witch’s wisdom.
“What did I say?” Debra’s eyes went wide again, not with magical wonder but with the amazement one reserves for talking to fools. “I said the stupid things you say when you don’t know what else to do.”
She strokes Nan’s cheek and tells her it’ll be okay, and in her heart gives up on her, and goes to the child, rocking, and asks her what has happened. The girl says she has a classmate who was in an accident, but all that happened was that she broke her leg. That’s the interesting thing about accidents, says the girl. Sometimes, people die; sometimes, they do not. You could see it right there. Nan had died. She had not.
Debra sits down in the sand, gathers the little girl to her, and waits on the side of the road.
“Did you try to use magic?” we asked.
“What? What? Hop on my broom?” She laughed—a harsh, embarrassed sound. “There just wasn’t anything I could do. I didn’t even have a cell phone.”
“Kind of weird,” we said, “how we crashed in the same spot the next night and survived.”
“You’re right. Interesting…”
“Total coincidence,” we said.
“I don’t think so.”
Greg the devil flicked his lighter, held the flame by his face, and in his most demonic baritone, said, “Spo-o-o-ky!”
It was pretty funny.
I will read the writing for the king, and tell him what it means…MENE: God has numbered the days of your reign and brought it to an end. TEKEL: You have been weighed in the scales and found wanting. PERES: Your kingdom is divided…
DANIEL 5:26-28
Then the king gave the order, and they threw Daniel into the lions’ den.
DANIEL 6:16
Daniel
BY EILEEN MYLES
IN the second year of the good girlfriend we spent Xmas with her family. It was a horrible Xmas; her stepfather, the doctor, had many children and many grandchildren and they all hated him because his mother had died when he was young so he had the bitterness of a man who grew up without sweetness—so in the face of adversity in the lives of his children he would judge them harshly and cast them out. He was a rich man who kept assembling a family again and again, and the next family would fail him and he would judge them, and so on.
The girlfriend I had at that time was good, very good, and so was her sister. So these women had never been cast out by the doctor, and their own mother, who had died a long time ago, had been a peacemaker among the wives and the children and the grandchildren, and she had helped the doctor with his heart toward all of them but now this mother was dead.
Still all the children and the grandchildren would return to the old doctor’s house for Xmas because this was the house they had known, and now the old doctor had a new wife. And she would probably get all the money when the old doctor died but the habit had been established in the time of the loving wife, the good girlfriend’s mother, that everyone would come on the holidays to the home of the old doctor, but now it was not a loving home and the holiday was really not such a great one. The doctor’s house was large and outside were many trees, but the house was not cared for. There were small animals dying in the walls, and you could smell their death and the trees crashing around the house and the heart of the old doctor was very bad and everyone watched and waited for his house to crumble and his heart to stop and his things to be distributed among the children and the children’s children though each in their heart suspected the new wife would get everything and so everyone sat around the holiday table that groaned with turkey and cranberry sauce and beans and they would think, Those candlesticks are mine and This is my chair and That painting on the wall is mine, but everyone thought these things in silence and the tone of the room was sad. The good girlfriend’s mother was buried outside.
My own name is Daniel, I am a poet, I came to the house of the old doctor that Xmas because I was then part of the heart of the good girlfriend so it was important I take this journey with her. She wanted to see the old doctor, and her sister would also come and their mother’s mother would journey there and at the house all these women would go to the mother’s grave and we did. The mother was buried behind a bush under a tree.
It was illegal of course in Long Island to put human remains in the ground of your own land, but the old doctor had a lot of land and had lived there for a very long time and no one would question anything he would do.
So it was sad, the spot where the good wife was buried, the weirdness and the wrongness of burying a woman’s remains on private property, like a dog’s. But the doctor’s power was very great, and everyone drank deeply of red wine at dinner that Xmas Day, and I, Daniel, do not drink wine or any other spirits. Nor did the good girlfriend drink. But her mother’s mother was herself a good woman and yet she did drink a lot of the wine and her son was a man named Nick. He also drank a lot.
And this Nick, who was the good girlfriend’s uncle, was strange and had lived in the house since the dead woman had married the doctor many years ago, in the childhoods of the girls, during the reign of Jimmy Carter.
Nick had done something bad in the land that President Carter had come from—the South. As a young man Nick had committed a crime in his land and he came north and joined his sister and the two g
ood daughters and their stepfather. Nick was a chef. So he cooked for them all in the house and he took care of all the animals. There were horses and dogs and hens.
No one knew what his crime had been but he lived in this way, a man in hiding; the legend was that when Nick was young, even before his crime, he had loved a woman but his mother and his sister got in the way of the love, they stopped him from becoming full and complete, this was the story.
So perhaps he was a man who had never grown up, was partial, was spoiled even before he committed the crime which he did in the South, and now he lived in the doctor’s house and would sometimes speak for the doctor on the phone when the good girlfriend would call.
Think of how anger spreads in a man when he is not grown whole and he leaves his home and is in exile, it makes of him a thief. Now because Nick spoke for the doctor when the good girlfriend called the house—to the point where she sometimes would not recognize his voice—she would go: Is that you, Nick? You-Nick, that became his name and he was the prince of the servants of the house.
You-Nick was the good girlfriend’s friend when she was quite young because she lived in the children’s side of the house which was separated by a great door from the loving mother who sadly lived on the other side of the house with the doctor once she became married to him.
You-Nick lived on the girls’ side, the children as well as the food and the animals of the house all being in his charge and he would ask the girls about their feelings and act in loving ways toward them, particularly toward the good girlfriend who was the older of the two. And You-Nick began to go into her room in the night. Once he had become drunken he would go to her room on the dark side of the house and many many ticklish things would be done.
This being of course the same house we now spent the holidays in, the tone of the house was bad and I did not drink of their wine. And my girlfriend’s family did not accept me as a man. Daniel is not wealthy, they think, and yet he is content to write his poems and travel with the women on holidays. For these reasons the old doctor’s family cannot accept Daniel. And yet I could not be cast out because still I was the girlfriend’s guest. And I did not drink of the wine.
But the mother’s mother drank it and You-Nick always drank of the wine and the doctor drank like a man of wealth and power and so did his new wife. Like people who perhaps do not know each other in their hearts, not minding it, they talked mostly about the things they owned and were making larger and also of what they were reading in the paper.
This new wife had already made one change in the house. She had men come and make a pink bathroom for herself in the doctor’s house which was similar to the bathroom in her own house she had lived in before she married the doctor. For this reason she became known as the pink wife.
All this was in the second year of the good girlfriend. The great tree shook outside the window, it would fall on the house, the doctor’s heart was bad, and these people that year were reading in the paper about Woody Allen. He had gone to high school with the pink wife. And so she intermingled her own greatness with his. And when Woody Allen took his lover’s daughter to lay with him, the doctor and his wife laughed and drank the wine and everyone seemed to think it was okay (“Good for him!”), and they displayed a clipping of Woody Allen and the girl on the refrigerator and the good girlfriend felt deeply sick since the same story had occurred here—I, Daniel, am speaking of the many many ticklish things in the dark of the house—and so I tried to comfort her yet I also sat in the bathroom and trembled and prayed to the God I knew and the great tree was dying outside.
Accordingly all the presents that were exchanged that first Xmas felt like the great many things slipped in with the coffins of the dead. The doctor himself was soon covered in scarves and gloves, and a very fine blue sweater was given him by the good girlfriend and her sister.
I did not see these events truly, for still I sat in the bathroom shaking. Daniel, Daniel, my girlfriend called so that I would come and join them.
I asked the God I knew for the courage to be there and a great peace suffused my insides and I was emboldened to leave the bathroom and go sit down and watch the living corpse of the old doctor smile and laugh and open gifts and I saw the many leaves of secret feeling of the family covering him: the books and the scarves and flattery and tickets to recitals of great music in New York. This last one was given to him by the pink wife, who would just go and hear the cymbals and horns with someone else if the old doctor suddenly keeled over and died. All the gifts were intended to come back to the giver when the old doctor died so I felt fortified in my conviction not to give gifts in this house.
And I sat there on the old dark hairy rugs with the good girlfriend, who did now have a present for me, which she had some men deliver to the house.
I opened the long and enormous box which turned out to hold a telescope. Which was good because a poet does like to look at the stars.
Isn’t that nice, drawled You-Nick, then walked outside to have a smoke, and the new wife whispered something to the old doctor.
Sam, the doctor called to one of his many grandchildren. Help Daniel get his wonderful telescope up. Sam was one of those geeky guys—he had the telescope up in about a minute. The great telescope now pointed outside. So tell us what you see, Daniel, demanded the new wife. I asked God for some courage and I stepped up to the eyepiece.
I see a great tree, I said, and everyone laughed. It’s not doing so well, I said, wiping my lips, for my mouth was dry.
Tell us something we don’t already know, pushed the pink wife. Sam, will you take a look? And he leapt to the charge, shoving me aside. The geeky Sam made a great production of focusing and adjusting the metal beast. He turned to the family and shrugged. I see birdshit all over your cars.
The Canadian geese have had their say, pronounced the doctor. Thank you, my dears, that was lovely. Now how about some more wine, and some pie, he called into the kitchen, to anyone. And the house was filled with servants, and everyone was his.
Incredibly, in the third year of the good girlfriend, she wanted to return to Long Island. She wanted to go to Long Island because certainly the old doctor would die this year—she knew it, and her sister knew it, and the wives and the many grandchildren all knew and saw the same thing: The great tree might fall. And her sister had moved to California since the last year and she also wanted to go to the doctor’s house. It might be the last year my sister and I can spend Xmas together in the house of the old doctor, my girlfriend said, and if you are truly in my heart you must also come to Long Island with us.
I watched TV the night before Xmas. There was a nature show on the glowing tube. I watched a lion devouring its prey. A beautiful golden lion with reddish hair. In its jaws was some little brown bear, later a screaming hyena. I, Daniel, was sprawled on my red couch transfixed by this spectacle of something living—a breathing, pulsing creature—being devoured. What is it to be in the jaws of a lion, how must it feel to be eaten!
In some ways I knew. All day I had been buying gifts. Though I had insisted for weeks and months I would not go to Long Island again—because last Xmas had made the good girlfriend so miserable—the doctor and the new pink wife were crazy, they ignored the good girlfriend, and You-Nick was creepy and covetous toward her. The good girlfriend understood all this, she agreed. But still she had to go, and her sister was going, and because this was “a relationship,” I had to go too.
I got in my car and I drove to the east, slowly crawling among a great many cars on the L.I.E., still thinking about that lion, and I got there on Xmas Eve.
The doctor’s oldest and first daughter lived in the North and she had three sons. All of these were men grown and this daughter herself shared her bed now with some alcoholic wretch named Frank, who’d had an affair this year and the oldest daughter left him. And then her mother, the old doctor’s first wife, a great ancient woman with wild hair who herself had wealth (and owned a great many dogs which she trained), this woman sent her firs
t and oldest daughter on a boat trip so that the daughter would forget her pain. That daughter was now looking at distant water and warm sun and meanwhile this woman owned a dog. A big blond golden named Lundy. An old dog of about twelve years who was spending that Xmas at the doctor’s house since its owner was away.
My girlfriend had arrived at the doctor’s house with our own dogs the night before. The three dogs met and intermingled. Yet something was amiss.
On Xmas Eve the youngest pup couldn’t sleep. He kept looking out the window at the moonlit night, pacing the room, jumping on the bed, jumping off. He was driving the older one crazy. And Lundy, the oldest and largest animal of the three, the one owned by the doctor’s first daughter, was roaming freely around the house. Sometimes sleeping outside our door. I could hear his mammoth breath. We took the dogs on a walk the next morning, which was Xmas Day. All three had blazing red velvet bows around their necks. You-Nick, the animal keeper, had done this. Rosie was pissed. And this was my dog and Rosie was of nine years then. And yet she had seemed at least two score and ten the day she was born. Rosie’s eyes were not the same as God’s, yet they were always so sad and forlorn because Rosie knew we were all compelled to do the completely wrong thing and she had to watch. So she accordingly scowled around the perimeter of the field in a red velvet bow, and Hoover the puppy then began doing something interesting, which was warning I, Daniel, something bad was about to happen. Hoover was part shepherd part chow and in keeping with this nature he began herding me away from the dog Lundy.
Hoover! laughed the good girlfriend, for as many times as I would try to chat Lundy up, this orange puppy Hoover would cut me off at the pass. I think he’s jealous, the good girlfriend teased. Hoover thinks you’re his, she said, squeezing my arm.
Then the girlfriend and I went for a run. On that same Xmas morning. The paved hills gleamed black in the daylight of the neighborhood in which she grew up. There’s where I went with Mariah Carey, sang my girlfriend, and we ran past an old red high school. The warm black hills challenged us, were hard on our legs, and we began to fight:
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