by Roman McClay
His anger began in his endocrine system, it seamed and raced out to his arms like forked lightning, the thunder booming next in his jaw as it pushed forward in solidarity with his flexing shoulders, triceps and forearms. His gloves shrank down into his hands and seemed a second skin to them now; ridging and folding like a vascular spider-lightning from wrist to fingertip as his far-away feet dug further into the hard pack under the mud.
He looked up, effecting the raising of his soiled chin and saw the lights of the main house at a 1 o'clock position. He felt that Fitzgerald paradox of holding two opposite ideas in the same mind: he wanted to pull that goddamn van into port now that he saw the edge of the sea and the harbor alike; but he felt this other certainty, he thought that if he could only stay here, stuck but advancing in lock-step with his brothers, unspeaking but in full communion with them, voracious for more power in himself and his brethren but sated with his body and its capacities and capabilities and believing in the strength and competency of his comrades as well; if he could only remain here in this state of group-toil and milieu of wet soil and always have his mind like a nest feathered with the endogenous opiates of endorphins and work; labor so hard on the hands and shins and the skin in between that the mind too was lubricated with a sweat that refused to seize or equivocate or suffer from doubt; if here in this space if not this time or maybe this time but not this space, he could live, well, then he could, in fact live.
That he would go to work jobs a thousand times harder, more brutal, and without the comfort of decent men at one’s flank, that he would push well passed his timid dream, and into something darker, more terrible and more true, would not just been unthinkable to him then, he would have not comprehended it, he had not the body nor mind to understand anything about work yet at all. But he had desire for it; for that nebulous thing that made life hard and worth it all at once.
The van then fell in a valley of a few inches; the ropes absorbed and gave off waves as the tension released again; they shuffled to use their feet to give their torsos the forward positions to lean in and take up the slack.
And then Lyndon thought of the barn, just for a second, the bed, the boxes, his lamp, the nails on the lumber that boxed them all in. His deck of black cards, the Texas Ranger badge from his father, the casing from a 7.62x39mm round, and the books that backdropped these trinkets with hard backs like everything else he admired, they stood up like soldiers, like Praetorian guards awaiting his return to his war-tent behind the wall the Romans would not cross; and the Greeks would never even see. It all appeared to him as if all parts of that same feathered nest in his head; and he luxuriated in the comfort of objects and the phenomenon their existence imbued in his muddy mind. And that settled his dialectic and he strove harder now to pull that ship of a van into harbor as if time moved in fact forward and his brain could thrive in states of both work and rest, in the middle of trial and the end of error and the moments when nobody knows where you are.
III. 2020 e.v.
He awoke from a dream; words said to him as lament and homily. What god had spoken it; what demon had transcribed? he asked himself as he wiped his face in a mundane manner, as if he thought of nothing at all at dawn; as if he was content to be just this flesh.
He arose and made coffee and ate 10mg of narcotic analgesic, it had a name, a proper name did it not? he thought. But he couldn’t quite recall. He held it under tongue; dissolving while the coffee brewed. His pupils would constrict from the opiate, as the light would soon come over the eastern ridge and illuminate the world.
He lit two candles. The narrow container-home glowed autumnal orange all throughout, the darkness outside was total, except the manifold stars above which only the scorpions used to navigate now. He stared out the clear glass garage door to the north and witnessed the dippers and their flunkies; he then remembered his gazing at the south before bed that night; the Orion of the southern skies in winter, just above the millions of lower mountain pines and Birch and Aspen. He was at 8,760 feet , he said to himself to make sure; and to the south was lower, uninterrupted wildness for the entire 180 degrees . Only Taos , which he could see the peak of, was above him in that direction, he assured himself .
But as he stood facing north this AM, the Spanish Peaks rose above him to over 13,000 feet; and the constellations, the Poisson distribution above them too. It was randomness made to look a pattern, the trick of all intent , he thought as if he had thought it 1,000 times already, but only now saying it this once.
Dark, it was ten times black, outside his parallel compound of boxes. These were his, yes? he asked and answered all at once. The coffee gurgled and the pill dissolved and he poured it black into his early-morning maw, the white nub of the pill dotting that vacant drink with the medicinal pain relieving goodness in the eye. He gulped more and more of the black coffee; none of it amalgamed with any of the white pill now. The mouth was clean and the blood now began to absorb what it could extract from the stomach. He felt empty as if never once yet filled. He thought of food and thought this was what the emptiness prodded.
He ran the hot water of the bathroom sink, the faucets black, the sink hewn concrete, the drain black as well. He cupped his hands in the flickering light of the candle wick’s flame, his face in the mirror; just barely there. He was certain of each thing, and yet repeated it anyway. He felt no embarrassment, he liked to be grateful this way.
The water was hot and overflowing in his hands as he brought it to his face and breathed it in his nose; like the Muslims he thought, clearing the nose of devils that crawled in there at night . He raised his face and let the warm water drain onto his chest and the concrete floor beneath his bare feet. He blew his nose of the devils and wiped his face with a black towel hanging on the half wall of the concrete shower stall.
He had built this house with his own hands, like Thoreau , and for less than $60,000 in materials, he recalled. The fixtures, again, he thought, all black, the appliances all dark black or grey; the fridge black stainless steel along with the range hood vent and cooktop too . An asymmetrical 9-point European-mount mule-deer buck head hung above the grey plates and black bowls; two female bear skulls flanked the rack and shadows were cast from below; the ceiling was jagged and black in a moving dance. He remembered the taking of each animal except that cat by the bathroom sink, he thought insignificantly.
The walls painted grey, the windows framed in raw steel square-tubing. Nothing was any other color; except the toilet which was white: a square, European commode with a soft close lid and black handle and hidden water line. The walls were studded with smaller skulls and bones of coyotes and foxes and one male black bear and one half of one mountain lion skull; the rest had been blown to shards with the .45 P+ load he used -he now recalled- to shoot it in the face.
Photos in triptych were set in sections like graves, lineages of families maybe, they all marked some time in his life. He kept track of space and time. He remembered things men said with fidelity. He was forced to re-hear the words of women with incredulity. He had been here two years, he thought and checked it off. Did he always do such inventory? he asked himself.
These black framed photos glowed in the albedo of the candle light. They were recursive, often containing artifacts in the images of items he now placed upon the walls. He had so few things from his previous life, but what he did have was documented in these photos, the coyote bones from Turkey Creek Canyon in one of the oldest photos he still had, were themselves hanging in the shape of the Othala , but now they lived next to that photograph that held their image from 20 years ago .
He passed each morn, the femur and tibular bones crossed into a diamond, the hip and metatarsals past the X bottom of the ancient rune. He assumed his ancestors had learned to write from such metaphors of the crossed wolf. He adjusted to the dark. He moved towards things that allowed him to rest.
He was swaddled in tight black boxer-briefs that gripped his waist like two hands around man’s common neck, as Panzram would ha
ve liked. The legs, thick like tree trucks striated with each muscle group discreet, outlined, announced like a butler might do of some guest in some 18th century vestibule. The legs -his legs , he said in his head as if someone demanded proof- were hemmed in by the constricting underwear; his manhood peaked and centered like the burial mounds around his home. He stared now at the floor. This was his body, he thought again.
He wore a black, ribbed, wife-beater that hugged him tightly like young girls used to do. He had no living humans in his life now and had resigned himself to never being with a woman again; right? That was right , he assured.
He didn’t hate women, he just saw them for what they were: a drug, a drug of choice for him in younger selves, and for most men still today. They weakened him, and he no longer could afford that weakness; he was no longer strong enough for that type of war. He thought that 999 out of 1,000 times. That 1,000th time he’d think them not drug; he’d think they were goddesses. Thus , he’d think, just as dangerous . Twice so, he’d re-think and swear them off with almost no malice at all.
His arms -he took inventory, using his PGC- they were 19” in diameter, rounded at shoulder and bicep, angular at trap and tricep; his forearms had muscles that seemed to be boils, like rolling sharkfins just below the surface of pale seas, narrowing to normal wrists; wrists he felt were too narrow, choke points, bottlenecks, as he imaged the cuffs going on them soon. He saw them come off though too. His hands, hammerheads, bent and cupped like dystonic articulations. His knuckles ended these arms and the conversation 9 out of 10 times.
Black tattoos marred him in ways that seemed total, he saw, heavy; he looked as a hieroglyphed stele , a bearded Assyrian with giant fish as headdress and iron-knives within their waistbands. His black beard shaped to a point at the chin, was 6” long now and wet with water, he wrung it out with a twist. His face no longer itched below.
His knuckle-bones were ossified and augmented from growth achieved by beating on things harder than himself; which, he knew, most of the world still was. Scars ran like cross roads in each direction and some looked as starbursts from glass or metal or bone that had punched back at him. His brow was furrowed with one deeply incised white line across his meridian, and it seemed a hatchet scar, a wound that immediately ended at his forehead bone, angry and deep but un-eroding and never going any deeper. His brow was Hawthorn’s, No , of thunder, and not the devil could make him say, yes .
The narcotic took 14 minutes to show itself in his mind and body; he began to feel the onset of mild euphoria as the caffeine potentiated the analgesic. Any reduction in corporeal pain counted as euphoria now. He was still in more pain than most, and thus he ambulated as if he had rocks in his shoes, notes slipped between each joint, a mouth hiding the secret of an uncomfortably ornate plan. Sometimes he felt half a playing card jammed between C6 & 5 of the spine .
He passed the rows and rows of books he had lining his northern wall; the shelving had been built into the drywall when he constructed it, to save the 4” of space in his narrow home. It was 40 feet by 8 feet wide and 8 feet high, right? Yes, a shotgun of a home , he thought. A bundle of wet dynamite of a man looked around with just the eyes, his neck remained under his head, and it remained in one place.
Space was at a premium and so architectural tricks like the countersinking shelves allowed his wide shoulders to pass the hall from bedroom to bathroom to kitchen without scrapping at all if he centered himself. It all made sense; his mind did not feel out of place at all.
There were images -just as it should be- of Draco and Mickey Knox, paintings by Klauba of Ahab and Fedallah stacked in vertical; photos of himself and his Zendik Farm comrades from 1998 and ‘99; there were photos of pages in books he’d lined and darkened and annotated from works that spat out occulted things and odd warnings and levity heard below the gallows; words that swaddled him as tightly and comfortingly as his under clothes. Words often as black as the cotton closest to his skin.
He finished his coffee, added a tight t-shirt in grey around his 46” chest -he had the coder measure it- and upright cobra of a back and tucked it into black cargo pants that he rolled the cloth of up to his knees. He pulled socks, black and wool, up to just below the cuffs, his all-black shin tattoos of Hunter Thompson and Hitchens peeked out as if behind masks now.
He threaded the shoulder holster with his aching arms, the black leather made by Galco , contained his sub-compact .45 by Springfield Armory . It held two extra Wilson Combat magazines on his starboard side. Each name rang in his head and another silent check was placed next. Did he always think so specifically? he asked as he continued to dress and armature himself.
It fit close to his ribs and under his armpits and he forgot it was there three seconds after it was affixed; like a glass eye, or a whalebone leg he’d wear that rig all day -every day- until someone could forcibly remove it from him.
He sat down to lace up his work boots, now mottled brown over the black from dirt and dust and construction muck, the laces hard and brittle.
His hair was shaved high and tight until a messy mop of Mohawk top ran and vivisected his Scottish head; oh, yes, 96% Norse-Scot the DNA report had said, and 4% Neanderthal; with the MAO-A short-chain allele , he recalled as if for the first and one thousandth time as well. It was a tangle nest of dark hairs that paid rapt attention to the borders of the shaved sides. It looked like a Hadrian wall with Romans on one side and the Highlanders on the northern one. The ancient Norse looked as if they lived in the roots eager to fight the winner.
His teeth were barely shown just then as he grimaced and worked his jaw, he didn’t speak much these days he felt; and his old injury to mandible ached in the sitting state; this was why his voice seemed untested yet. The dentine were white, porcelain from veneers; one tooth, his leeside incisor was -or would be - he thought as he looked in the mirror for the tooth made matte grey with titanium; a solid high-test tooth added at the gum after losing it in a fight with a bear of a cat; a half-mad mountain lion with paws as large as most men’s heads not long from when they exited the womb.
The mirror was too dark, to gaze at his tooth, but the memory was clear; the memory of that cat by which he had been beat near to death; she had punched and clawed Blax so hard in the mouth that the weakest link -that eye tooth- had crumbled at the gum line; remaining intact everywhere but the root. It took three jacketed hollow points from his sidearm to put the cat down in the dark; a temporary victory over the feline instantiated but not the Platonic form in the skies; he was no match for nature and he knew it. More cats would come, he thought.
His face was now further scarred unnaturally he was certain as the memory unfurled -unlike the natural cleave in his brow- from the leeside eye down to the lines that would appear if & when he smiled; he’d worry about that later, he thought. It was a white livid scar jagged like a coup de foudre , and like all scars it came in fact from that bolt from beyond. Cherchez le femme , he had said when the doctor examined his own sutures; he heard his own voice ring in his head. He -as the memory tumbled in what he thought was again and again- had had that feral female animal attack him as he slept outdoors the first summer at elevation and the doctor asked what had sliced him so. Cherchez le femme, he had said again. The claws had hooked the brow and tore one line deeply down; the others scored him lightly.
The other talons barely scraped by, but for the first month it looked like tally marks on a prison wall, missing only the final 5th and oblique scrawl. Lines of four red scabs ran down his face, stayed for weeks, but only one remained as a permanent scar. He walked toward the mirror again as the light improved and his pupils dilated too.
The physician had commented on decent suture work while he cleaned the wound with saline again and offered to re-stitch if the patient wanted. No , he had said, he was here for the anti-biotics and for them to test the dead animal -he had came into the ER with over his shoulder- for rabies. The doctor had run a saline drip with amoxicillin and done the blood work while the patient w
as unconscious and in that intervening time the rabies test had come back negative.
The hospital had called the game warden and he had come to remove the thing; it was a mountain lion, a smallish, female, and it had all but its head when he brought it to the hospital. That -the head- he had removed before driving the two hours from his compound. The cat had been shot in the face with his .45 and lost half of this and its skull; the rest he had placed in a bucket and would remove the skin and flesh upon his return.
It weighed 65 pounds, without its head and the loss of a pound of blood; which had soaked his shirt as he wore it like a shall. The ER nurses had been aghast but once he explained the rabies test, they forgave him the beastly manner in which he arrived, his own face a red mess, his countenance even meaner than his meager bodily aspect, limping not from the attack but from tripping over a rock in the darkness of the night after he had shot the goddamn thing.
He looked -he recalled- like the last of the grislys in settle Missouri; like some stupid or unlucky trapper in the Yukon. Bearded, besotted in blood and effluvium from the forest, uncouth and unconcerned with niceties. He knew why people were polite and engaging in small talk; it was to assure others that they were civilized; once that was established a man then, and only then, could be more revelatory.
But, he didn’t give one fuck about any of that. He would command their help by dint of their Hippocratic oath, he wasn’t begging for help, he was demanded it as a member of the Rousseau community, as tenuous as that membership might be.
Storms had begun at dawn when he arrived at the Trinidad Hospital. Lightning bolts like roots of the tree-of-life fractured and explored the vascular sky; dark still above and light below as the dawn sun grew up like a seedling. The thunder waited even longer as if to hide itself and the God beyond; the corposants hung in the air like planets or suns or meteors held in place by God’s own malice, holding them all by the tail, toying with the bestiaries -the heavenly bodies- He had created in a moment of pique those millennia ago.
