by Robert Stone
“Gordon,” she sighed, “don’t be such an old schoolteacher.”
He watched her blood seep into his clothes as she undressed him. He could not believe how much of it there was.
“Rain,” he said to her.
“We’ll pray,” she answered. “And then we’ll sleep.”
He looked up into the storm and saw the black sky whirling.
“No!” he shouted. “No you don’t.”
His pants fell down about his ankles as he started to run. He kicked them off, bent to pick them up and ran off dragging them behind him. Lu Anne stayed where she was, watching him sadly. He ran to where she had left her own clothes and scooped them up. The clothes and the sharp stones around them were covered with blood.
The door of the building looked massive, but half of it came off in his hand when he pulled at the latch. Behind it, about four feet inside the building, the owners of the grain had built a serious door, secured with a rusty padlock. Walker huddled in the sheltered space between the broken false door and the true one.
Outside, Lu Anne stood in the hard tropical rain and shook her hair. The rain washed the blood from her wounds and cleaned the grass around her.
“Lu Anne,” he called. “Come inside.”
She stopped whirling her hair in the rain and looked at him laughing, like a child.
“You come out.”
He picked up his windbreaker and went after her. He was wearing his shoes and socks and a pair of bloodstained Jockey shorts.
“Come on, Lu,” he said. “Chrissakes.”
He advanced on her holding the bloody jacket like a matador advancing on a bull. When he came near, she picked up a stone and held it menacingly over her shoulder.
“You better stay away from me, Walker.”
“You are so fucking crazy,” Walker told Lu Anne. “I mean, you are, man. You’re batshit.”
She threw the stone not overhand but sidearm and very forcefully. It passed close to his bruised right cheekbone, a very near miss.
“Fuck you,” he said. He turned his back on her but at once thought better of it. He began to back toward the shelter with the windbreaker still out before his face, the better to intercept stones. When he was back in his shelter he discovered the whiskey in Lu Anne’s tote bag.
“Hot ziggity,” he whispered to himself. He took two long swallows and displayed the bottle to Lu Anne.
“Lookit this, Lu Anne,” he shouted. “You gonna come in here and have a drink or stay out there and bleed holy Catholic blood?”
He watched her pick her way daintily over the sharp stones toward his shelter.
“I’ll have just a little bit,” she said. “A short one.”
Walker was wary of attack.
“You won’t hit me with a rock, will you?”
“Don’t be silly,” she said.
“You almost took the side of my head off just now.”
“It was just a reflex, Gordon. You presented an alarming spectacle.”
“Panic in the face of death,” Walker admitted. “Obliteration phobia.”
“You were washed in the blood,” Lu Anne told him. “You’ll never get there again.” She reached for the bottle he was cradling. “I thought I was offered a drink earlier.”
Walker watched her help herself to several belts.
“What was going to happen?” he asked her.
“I guess we were going to die. What’s wrong with that?”
“Living is better than dying. Morally. Don’t you think?”
“I think we had permission. We may never have it again.”
Walker took the bottle from her and drank.
“We’ll begin from here,” Walker said. “We’ll mark time from this mountain.”
“Who will, Gordon? You and me?”
“Absolutely,” Walker burbled happily. “Baptism! Renewal! Rebirth!”
Lu Anne pointed through the rain toward the road they had climbed. “It’ll be all down from here, Gordon.”
“Christ,” Walker said, “you threw my coke away. I had at least six grams left.”
“Takes the edge off baptism, renewal and rebirth, doesn’t it? When you’re out of coke?”
“We should have some now,” Walker said petulantly. “Now we have something to celebrate.”
“Screw you,” Lu Anne said. “Live! Breathe in, breathe out. Tick tock! Hickory Dickory. You get off on this shit, brother, it’s yours. And you may have my piece.”
Walker took up some of their bloodstained clothing and placed it over Lu Anne’s wounds to staunch the bleeding. The rain increased, sounding like a small stampede in the thatch overhead.
“What about your kids?” Walker said.
Lu Anne was looking up at the rain. She bit her lip and rubbed her eyes.
“Goddamn you, Gordon! What about your kids?”
“I asked you first,” Walker said. “And I told you about mine.”
“Mine, they’ve never seen me crazy. They never would. They’d remember me as something very ornate and mysterious. They’d always love me. I’d be fallen in love, the way we nearly were just now.”
Walker yawned. “Asleep in the deep.”
He arranged his windbreaker and his duck trousers to cover them as thoroughly as possible.
“Yeah,” Lu Anne said, and sighed. “Yeah, yeah.”
They settled back against the mud and straw.
“Things are crawling on us,” Walker said sleepily.
“Coke bugs,” Lu Anne told him.
For some time they slept, stirring by turns, talking in their dreams. When Walker awakened, he was covered in sweat and bone weary. He kicked the false door aside. The sky was clear. He sat up and saw the yellow grass and the wildflowers of the hilltop glistening with lacy coronets of moisture. On his knees, he crept past Lu Anne and went outside. The chubasco had passed over them. The wall of low gray-black clouds was withdrawing over the valley to the east, shadowing its broad fields. An adjoining hill stood half in the light and half in the storm’s gloom. Its rocky peak was arched with a bright rainbow.
Walker examined his nakedness. His arms, torso and legs were streaked with Lu Anne’s blood; his shorts dyed roseate with it.
“Sweet Christ,” he said. There was no water anywhere.
When he heard her whimper he went inside and helped her stand. She was half covered with bloody rags and her hair matted with blood, but her stigmatic wounds were superficial for all their oozing forth. She had been making her hands bleed as much as possible, the way a child might.
She came outside, shielding her eyes with her forearm.
“How’s your Spanish?” Walker asked her.
“I can’t speak Spanish. I thought you could. Anyway, what’s it matter?”
“Sooner or later we’re going to have to explain ourselves and it’s going to be really difficult.”
“Difficult in any language,” Lu Anne said. “Almost impossible.”
“How do you think I’d make out thumbing?”
“Well,” she said, “you don’t seem to be injured, but you’re covered with blood. Only people with a lot of tolerance for conflict would pick you up. Of course, I’d pick you up.”
“We’d better have a drink,” Walker said.
“Oh my land,” Lu Anne said when Walker had given her some whiskey, “look at the rainbow!”
“Why did you have to throw my cocaine away,” Walker demanded. “Now I can’t function.”
“It’s right back there somewhere,” she said, indicating the brush around the stone house. “You can probably find it.”
“It’s water-soluble,” Walker told her. “Christ.”
“I have never been at such close quarters with a rainbow,” Lu Anne said. “What a marvel!”
“You know what I bet?” Walker said. “I bet it’s a sign from God.” He went to the shelter where they had lain and sorted through their clothes. There was not a garment unsoiled with Lu Anne’s blood. “God’s telling us we’re really fucked up.”
<
br /> Lu Anne watched the rainbow fade and wept.
“What now?” Walker demanded. “More signs and wonders?” He held up his bloody trousers for examination. “I might as well put them on,” he said. “They must be better than nothing.”
“Gordon,” Lu Anne said.
Walker paused in the act of putting on his trousers and straightened up. “Yes, my love?”
She came over and put her arms around him and leaned her face against his shoulder.
“I know it must all mean something, Gordon, because it hurts so much.”
Walker smoothed her matted hair.
“That’s not true,” he told her. “It’s illogical.”
“Gordon, I think there’s a mercy. I think there must be.”
“Well,” Walker said, “maybe you’re right.” He let her go and began pulling on his trousers. “Who knows?”
“Don’t humor me,” Lu Anne insisted. “Do you believe or not?”
“I suppose if you don’t like my answer I’ll get hit with a rock.”
She balanced on tiptoe, jigging impatiently. “Please say, Gordon.”
Walker buckled his belt.
“Mercy? In a pig’s asshole.”
“Oh dear,” Lu Anne said. She walked away from him toward a rock against which he had left the whiskey and helped herself to a drink. When she had finished drinking, she froze with the bottle upraised, staring into the distance.
“Did you mention a pig’s asshole?” she asked him. “Because I think I see one at this very moment. In fact, I see several.”
Walker went and stood beside her. On a lower slope, great evil-tusked half-wild pigs were clustered under a live oak, rooting for oak balls. A barrel-size hog looked up at them briefly, then returned to its foraging.
“Isn’t that strange, Gordon? I mean, you had just mentioned a pig’s asshole and at that very moment I happened to look in that direction and there were all those old razorbacks. Isn’t that remarkable?”
Walker had been following her with her faded bloodstained army shirt. “It’s a miracle,” he said. He hung the shirt around her shoulders and took hold of one of her arms. “The Gadarene Swine.”
Dull-eyed, she began walking down the hill. Walker started after her. She tripped and got to her feet again. He followed faster, waving the shirt.
“Lu Anne,” he shouted, “those animals are dangerous.”
She stopped and let him come abreast of her. When he moved to cover her with her shirt, she turned on him, fists clenched.
“Who do you think it was,” she screamed, “that breathed in the graveyard? Who was bound in the tomb?”
Walker stayed where he was, watching her, ready to jump.
“You don’t think that filthy tomb person with the shit for eyes, you don’t think he saw who I was? Answer me,” she screamed. “Answer me! Answer me, Walker, goddamn it!”
Walker only stared at her.
She threw her head back and howled, waving her fists in the air.
“For God’s sake, Lu Anne.”
“Talk to me about Gadarene Swine? Who do you think it was, bound in fetters and chains? Where do you think I came by these?” She pointed around her, at things invisible to him. “Don’t you torment me! Torment me not, Walker!”
“C’mon,” he said. “I was joking.”
Her lip rolled back in a snarl. He looked away. She turned her back on him and went to a place beside the house where the mud was deep and there was a pile of seed husks, head high.
“Jesus,” she cried, “Son of the Most High God. I adjure thee by God, that thou torment me not.”
“Amen,” Walker said.
She clasped her hands and looked at the last wisps of rainbow. “I adjure thee, Son of the Most High God. I adjure thee. Torment me not.” She buried her face and hands in the pile of chaff. After a moment, she got up and went up to Walker. She seemed restored in some measure and he was not afraid of her.
“You’re a child of God, Walker,” she said. “Same as me.”
“Of course,” Walker said.
“That’s right,” Lu Anne said. “Isn’t it right?”
“Yes,” Walker said. “Right.”
“But you can’t take the unclean spirit out of a woman, can you, brother?”
She touched his lips with her fingertips, then brought her hand down, put it on his shoulder and looked at the sky. “Ah, Christ,” she said, “it’s dreadful. It’s dreadful we have spirits and can’t keep them clean.”
“Well,” Walker said. “You’re right there.”
“No one can take it out. Man, I have watched and I have prayed. And I’ve had help, Walker.”
“Yes,” Walker said. “I know.”
“If you don’t believe me,” Lu Anne said. “Just ask me my name.”
“What’s your name, Lu Anne?”
“My name is Legion,” she said. “For we are many.”
For a minute or so she let him hold her.
“Is it all right now?” he asked.
“It’s not all right,” she said. “But the worst is over.”
He was delighted with the reasonableness of her answer. He went to get himself a drink. When he returned Lu Anne was lying in the stack of seed husks.
“Well,” he said, “that looks comfortable.”
“Oh yes,” she said, “very comfortable.”
He lay down beside her in the warm sun and buried his arms in the seeds.
“Downright primal.”
“Primal is right,” Lu Anne said. She laughed at him and shook her head. “You don’t know what this pile is, do you? Because you’re a city boy.”
She sat in the pile, sweeping aside the seed husks with a rowing motion until the manure it covered was exposed and she sat naked in a mix of mud and droppings, swarming with tiny pale creatures that fled the light.
“There it is,” she told Walker. “The pigshit at the end of the rainbow. Didn’t you always know it was there?”
“You’ll get an infection,” Walker said. He was astonished at what Lu Anne had revealed to him. “You’re cut.”
“Out here waiting to be claimed, Gordon. Ain’t it mystical? How about a drink, man?”
When he bent to offer her the bottle she pulled him down into the pile beside her.
“I had a feeling you’d do that,” he said. “I thought …”
“Stop explaining,” Lu Anne told him. “Just shut up and groove on your pigshit. You earned it.”
“I guess it must work something like an orgone box,” Walker suggested.
“Walker,” Lu Anne said, “when will it cease, the incessant din of your goddamn speculation? Will only death suffice to shut your cottonpicking mouth?”
“Sorry,” Walker said.
“Merciful heavens! Show the man a pile of shit and he’ll tell you how it works.” She made a wad of mud and pig manure and threw it in his face. “There, baby. There’s your orgone. Have an orgoneism.”
She watched Walker attempt to brush the manure from his eyes.
“Wasn’t that therapeutic?” she asked. “Now you get the blessing.” She reached out and rubbed the stuff on his forehead in the form of a cross. “In the name of pigshit and pigshit and pigshit. Amen. Let us reflect in this holy season on the transience of being and all the stuff we done wrong. Let’s have Brother Walker here give us only a tiny sampling of the countless words at his command to tell us how we’re doing.”
“Not well,” Walker said.
“Yeah, we are,” Lu Anne told him. “We’re going with the flow. This is where the flow goes.”
“I wondered.”
“Yeah,” Lu Anne said, “well, now you know.”
“I suppose anything would be better than this,” Walker said, but he was not so sure. He had come chasing enchantments. After all, he supposed, he would as soon be blessed in pigshit by Lu Anne as in holy water by some sane woman’s hand.
“I’ll tell you what we can do now that we’re here,” Lu Anne suggested. “We ca
n have a pigshit fight. How’s that sound?”
“That’d be fine,” Walker said.
For a while they exchanged handfuls of pigshit, heaving it toward each other in an increasingly halfhearted manner.
“This is the scene they left out of Porky’s. The pigshit fight scene. We should have one in The Awakening.”
“When you’re washed in the blood,” Lu Anne said, “the shit is sure to follow.” She looked down at her bare breasts, fondling them. “And milk. But I have none and never will.” She held each breast between her filthy fingers and squeezed her nipples. “I should have tits all around,” she said. “I should have seven like a dog.” She lay back resting her head and shoulders in the chaff; her lower body stayed in the muck. “I wish they could take me out for fertilizer with the pigshit. I’d be worth more as fertilizer than I ever was as an actor.” She sat up, looking at Walker with cool curiosity. “What’s with you, Gordon? What you all seized up about?”
Walker tried to compose himself.
“I’m a little tired,” he said.
Walker saw her gaze sweep past him toward the top of the road. When he turned he saw two Mexicans in the green uniform of the tourist police. One of them was holding a shotgun pointing in their direction—not quite aiming it, but coming close. Both of the policemen wore expressions of profound melancholy.
“Hi, you all,” Lu Anne said to them.
A cluster of little brown children were at the foot of the posada stairs waiting to watch them as they passed. Walker led the descent, holding Lu Anne by the hand. Both of them stared straight ahead, affecting a sort of blindness. A woman shouted from the kitchen and the children scattered to conceal themselves.
The woman who had shouted came out to be paid. She had the physique of the valley people; dark and round with high cheekbones and bold intelligent eyes. Her husband was hiding in the kitchen.
Walker gave the woman fifty dollars. She raised her chin and lowered it.
“Ochenta,” she said. Walker gave her the extra thirty dollars without complaint. It was good, he thought, to be in a place where people knew what they needed.
When she had been paid, she backed away without turning, her eyes downcast. The afternoon sun streamed in through the open front door and it seemed to Walker that she was avoiding the shadow Lu Anne cast.
