Americana

by Don DeLillo

  “What was that all about?” I said.

  “He likes to read off some of the names they got scratched on one of the monuments over at the San Jacinto battleground cemetery. War with the Mexicans. Sam Houston. Army of the Republic of Texas. He likes to leave out all the foreign-sounding names.”

  “Plain talk of the plain people. Only a youth but a youth with a song. Only a poor native son but a son with a hymn in his heart. Dirt farmer and banjo player but all Texas is my home and I am not a stranger unto it.”

  “He’s warming up now,” Clevenger said.

  “If you can’t pronounce a man’s name, that man is a stranger; and if he don’t look you in the eye, he runs with danger.”

  “Nothing but hell, ain’t he?”

  “Soft white underbelly. Spread those words around and tell those good neighbors of yours to keep the ball rolling. Tell them you heard those words from out of the mouth of Tom Thumb Goodloe, the midnight evangelist, twenty-six years old and on his way to the glory road. Now what are those words? Those words are soft, white and underbelly. Spread them around, friends. We’re too soft and too sweet and we got to bear down on all those people that blaspheme our Christian nation with their catcalling and their jibbering like an Islamic sect from out of the motion pictures. We got to blitz them, friends. We got to send our linebackers. Keeryst Jesus was not a stranger in his own land. He spoke the lingo. He ate the grub. He felt right at home. Now our fine engineer, Mr. Dale Mulholland, signals me it’s time to do some singing and I ask each and every one of you out there to join along with me, right there in your beds or in your kitchens fixing a late snack or what all you’re doing. Will you come to the bower? Those that know it raise their voices with me. Those that don’t, should. But first we have to pause so’s I can read this commercial message.”

  I didn’t know what was so funny but Clevenger was driving all over the road and punching the steering wheel in glee. I changed stations, a wave of exhaustion coming over me as I slipped down into the seat. Ten minutes later a Spanish-speaking disc jockey signed off in a blur of static and a few seconds after that another voice traveled across the long night.

  “Fools, pretenders, pharisees and knaves. Beastly here with the final hour of ‘Death Is Just Around the Corner.’ Some philosophical patter. Some strolls down lobotomy lane. An occasional pocket of dead air. It’s just occurred to me, like jukes and jingoes, that you won’t be needing my special form of truth much longer. Drugs are scheduled to supplant the media. A dull gloomy bliss will replace the burning fear of your nights and early mornings. You can look forward to experiencing a drug-induced liberation from anxiety, grief and happiness. Endoparasites all, you’ll be able to cling to the bowel-walls of time itself. But I shall be missed. Pills and magical Chiclets are no substitute for the transistorized love which passes between us in the savage night. I pale with sickly forethoughts. But onward, chloroformed brutes, into the mysteries and mayhems. I ran into an old friend today, Lothar Nobo, the former George Jefferson Carver Eleanor Roosevelt III. No doubt the news has reached even the most barricaded among you that Lothar Nobo is currently the nation’s chief spokesman for black manhood and pride, pending release of next month’s top forty. I first met Lothar last year on the J. Edgar Hooverplatz in West Berlin where we were both attending the international book-burning fair. If I recall, he made a few rather demeaning statements to the press concerning the private parts of our esteemed head of state, H. C. Porny. But I don’t want to talk about that. Suddenly I prefer to discuss more gentle matters. Enough of obscenity. My life is being overwhelmed by redeeming prurient value.

  Everywhere I walk, I see the flowering of my nightlong labors. Now that history has absolved me, and with a vengeance, I think I’d like to go very far away—to the Aran Islands, to the Sahara, to some village high in the Himalayas. There to situate my stale body and well-paid mind against the wild dogs of nature. Sea, desert and mountain. What neo-saintly El Dorados of solitude. What amazement on my face when I emerge from my earth-covered wickiup to see not the diffident old gents and waxy ladies of Sixty-fourth Street but some tall Mephistophelean yak shambling through the snowdrifts. I spin my Harry Winston prayer wheel. Or I stand above the furious sea, urbane man of Aran, spitting in my own face. Temporal salvation. Alone, I might be able to sustain a serious thought or two. Pure mathematics of the desert. To be gone from this radioactive puddle. My skin is getting dry and flaky. My tongue is coated with isotopes. My extremities, all of them, are turning blue. All secrets are contained in the desert. Lines intersecting in the sand. Where you are and what you are. Bedouinism in all of its bedpan humor. Buckmulliganism in its bowl. An Irish Arab lives in my inner ear, announcing news, weather and sports. He is Jesuit-educated and wears the very best that dogma can buy. Speaking of clothes, all the eunuchoid trend-spotters out there might be interested to know that when I saw Lothar Nobo on Fifty-third Street this afternoon, right outside the Museum of Modern Commerce, he was wearing a braided Sassoon lion’s mane, a speckled leopard-pelt jumpsuit, and a pair of king cobra elevated shoes. The shrunken head of a former Oakland policeman was dangling from the love beads around his neck. Lothar and I shook hands warmly and then he gave me the latest black power sign, locked pinkies and thumbs down, a form of greeting prevalent among the members of a nomadic tribe in south central Algeria who worship the mystical eye on the back of American dollar bills. Without further comment I’ll now read the note which Lothar handed me at that time. Quote. I would like to take this opportunity to remind the white rapist imperialist power-hungry genocidal warmongers that they have exactly twenty-four hours to get out of Africa, Asia, South and Central America, the West Indies, Australia and New Zealand. Failure to comply with this order will result in a worldwide orgy of bloodshed that will make World War II seem like a Quaker picnic in New Harmony, Indiana. Unquote. Jungle and desert being built, rhetoric by rhetoric, in the dark crack of the dawn. Hammering out those bronze names. Also known as: Ahmed Abu Bekir. Halil Rassam. Shafik Bey. Imam el-Mahdi. Kwame Mwanga. Majid Said. Hassan Karami. Rashid Nimr. Muhammad Lateef. Mustapha al-Attassi. Dugumbe Ujiji. Ismail bin Salim. James Lumumba. Abdul-Rahman Alami. Yakoub Mahmoud. We were sailing along on Shafik Bey/ when a noise from off the port bow/took our breath away. My little ineffables, my trolls and trogs—you think there are noble sounds in these names of the desert. Bulrushes and scimitars. My bosom lightly trembles with the laughter of the angled Saxon. Which is what I am. Triplicate flesh of the graded sequence. Extract of the terminal afterthought. File child registered in the provisional substring. Picture transmitted by numerically shaded values. Standardized implementation of the coded tabulator. I am the inconceivable Mandrake. And I see we have to pause now for a recorded announcement of crucial importance to everyone within the sound of my voice. In the meantime, don’t do anything detrimental to the national incest.”

  * * *

  The test track was a nine-mile circle in the desert. It was sunrise and we were parked on an overpass watching the trucks and cars move beneath us. Clevenger said they rolled twenty-four hours a day, six days a week, all kinds of weather. Every so often one of the drivers falls asleep, he said; goes barreling off the road; turns over six or eight times; burns to death. Trucks don’t bounce as much as cars but seem to burn better. Then he said it was time to be checking in at the office but first he took a turn around the track, nine very hasty miles, his final burst for the wire, speedometer quivering at 117. I wondered why he had come out here before going home.

  In the office he showed me some schedules and gave me a brief run-down of the operation. He had twelve more or less steady employees; four were white, two black, six Mexican. The workload was informally organized in such a way that the Mexicans did most of the driving, the blacks most of the tire-changing, the whites most of the balancing and measuring as well as the checking of air pressure, temperature, tread loss and the rest. I told him I wanted to drive and change tires and he seemed to look at me in anger at all dumb-ass n
orthern guilt and innocence, although his head did not move the slightest, nor his eyes; it was just the way it seemed. He checked his mail then and we did not speak for a long time. The cars and trucks went by and the land ran dead flat up to a bank of blue mountains far off. I said it looked like rain.

  “Anybody who tries to predict the weather in Texas is either a stranger or a damn fool.”

  “Right,” I said.

  A man stood by the window drinking something hot from a paper cup and Clevenger went outside to talk to him. I called Warren Beasley at his home.

  “For our cash jackpot of $840,000, can you identify the man or woman who was playing third base for the Philadelphia Phillies at the exact moment that James Mason walked into the sea to save Judy Garland’s career?”

  “I don’t talk money without my lawyers,” he said. “Who is this?”

  “David Bell. I heard the show a couple of hours ago. I’m down here in the middle of nowhere. I thought you were kind of unfunny there with the black militant thing. Why shouldn’t they have whatever names they want? Did I wake you up?”

  “I couldn’t sleep,” he said.

  “Anyway it was good to hear a familiar voice.”

  “I agree with you. I listened to it myself. Cheered me up considerably.”

  “I don’t get you, Warren.”

  “It was on tape. I’ve been taping for the last three or four months. Doing it live was too much strain.”

  “I should have known,” I said. “I really should have guessed. We’re all on tape. All on tape. All of us.”

  “Sorry, Tab, if I upset that delicate circuitry of yours. But it’s really more practical this way. I can tape a couple of shows at a time and take a day off now and then.”

  “It was better the other way, Warren.”

  “Only in the ontological sense. But I have to admit I haven’t had one good night of solid sleep since I went over to tape. I think that’s my wife’s fault more than anything else. The first four were insomniacs. Consequently I slept like a baby all those years. My metabolism is based on subtle polarities. But the current bitch is always in the sack. She’s like a serpent asleep in warm water. I’m helpless against this kind of power. And when I finally doze off for a few minutes I get the tapeworm dream, which I haven’t had in years. Listen, Tab, come on over and have a couple of bloody marys with me. We’ll sit by the bed and watch her sleep. She does a certain amount of finger-diddling every morning about this time. If you get over here real fast you’ll be able to see it.”

  “Warren, I’m not home. I’m in goddamn Texas.”

  “When did this happen?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I left about five weeks ago. I don’t even have a job anymore.”

  “Look, she’s starting.”

  “Goodbye,” I said.

  I went outside and Clevenger introduced me to two white men named Lump and Dowd. He said he’d get the women as soon as Peewee showed up. We went around to the garage. A small dump truck stood in the center of the concrete floor and dozens of tires were stacked against the wall. All over the place were weighing and measuring devices, rags, jacks, tire-irons, carburetors, rims, hubcaps, exhaust pipes. Lump carried in two cases of quart bottles of beer; he carried them one on each hip, a hand gripping the far edge of each wood and iron case. He and Dowd sat on a tire. Clevenger sat on a fender of the dump truck. I leaned against a bare section of wall. We started drinking. It was seven o’clock in the morning.

  We drank straight from the bottles. The beer tasted awful at that hour of day but I said nothing and kept drinking. The others were drinking about twice as fast as I was. Dowd chugged half a quart and then said he’d best be getting outside for a kingsize piss and everybody laughed. We drank beer for about an hour, each of us in turn drawing laughter by standing in the huge square of the open garage door and pissing onto the gravel outside. When my turn came, there was both laughter and applause as if by this act I had joined them in some mythic union. I found myself pleased with their benedictions. Peewee showed up with a fifth of bourbon and we started passing the bottle around. Through a window I could see the cars and trucks circling the track, headlights off now. Clevenger went to the wall phone and spoke very softly and evenly for no more than ten seconds before hanging up. Dowd lowered the garage door.

  The women arrived half an hour later. There were three of them, all Mexican. The young one wanted to know where Danny Boy was and Clevenger told her Danny Boy was in jail minus his right eye. Dowd took the fat one into the cab of the truck and she got on her back and pulled up her dress. His knee slipped off the seat and he fell over her leg and down under the dash. We were all laughing. He crawled out onto the running board and dropped to the ground, laughing and vomiting, one foot still hooked to the running board. Lump walked right over him, then opened his pants and got on top of the woman. Clevenger took off all his clothes, stepped back into his boots and told the young one to sit inside a truck tire that was standing against the wall. As she lifted her dress he got on his hands and knees and put his head inside. Peewee had the other one against the bare wall, dress up, biting her breasts which were not uncovered and trying to work his way into her. I dragged Dowd over to the back of the truck and when I was sure no one could see what I was doing I kicked him hard in the ribs. Then I finished off the bourbon and poured part of a bottle of beer on Lump’s head and he laughed and kept going. Peewee began sliding down the woman’s legs. Over Clevenger’s rump the young one looked at me, picking her nose. Peewee was on the ground, curled around the other one’s legs, biting, his pants not quite off. Lump came out of the cab, took off all his clothes and picked up a quart of beer. Clevenger came out from under the dress and got on top of the fat one in the cab. He told her to take off her dress but she wouldn’t and he began to laugh. Lump threw the bottle at a wall. I saw Dowd crawling past and I helped him to his feet and pushed him toward the young one. He fell over halfway there. She was still in the tire and Lump went over and put his head under her dress. I kicked Dowd. Peewee had the other one’s shoes off and he was putting one of her feet inside his pants. She looked down at him and laughed and then he laughed and she dropped on top of him and they lay together laughing and pulling each other’s hair, biting, rolling from side to side. I couldn’t get the garage door opened and I leaned my head against it, feeling myself falling and waiting to hit, wanting to, but somehow still standing, the door cold on my cheek. Clevenger was slapping me on the back and repeating the words soft white underbelly over and over. I turned and saw the fat one pouring beer all over Dowd. Peewee was standing now with a length of pipe between his legs and they all laughed. The young one was still inside the tire. Lump pissed against the wall. Dowd got up and put his arms around the fat one and threw up again. She punched him in the face, twice, hurting him, and everybody laughed. Peewee was out of his clothes now and he crawled over to the young one and put his head under her dress. Clevenger told me to watch out for the fat one. Her cunt had teeth in them. The fat one and the other one sat on the running board sharing a bottle of beer. Dowd, on the ground again, said it was time he was getting his. He lurched toward the two women, tried to get up, lost his balance and hit his head on the edge of the bumper. Lump was standing in his own piss. I went over to Peewee, grabbed his ankles and pulled him away from the young one. I dragged him along the ground on his belly and face. Clevenger poured beer on him. Then I went to the girl sitting in the tire, pushed her dress up around her hips and buried my face between her legs. Her thighs parted and then closed, wet against my ears, and I tried to put my tongue higher into her, feeling again as though I were about to pass out. She was patting my head. Someone pulled me away from her and I crawled toward the fat one, trying to take off my shirt, just my shirt. Clevenger got to her first and they went to the back of the truck and after a while managed to climb in. The other one pushed me to the ground, straddled me, unbuttoned my shirt and took it off, and began taking off my belt. I could see Dowd. He was still out but
there was no blood. The woman had my cock in her hand and she was trying to put it inside her. I pulled her down to me and kissed her and she let go finally and just lay on top of me, moving from side to side and licking my face. Then she straddled me again and I realized she was pissing all over my belly and chest. She got up finally and sat on the running board and drank some beer. I pushed myself up to my knees and fastened my belt. Then I threw up. Lump was under the young one’s dress. Peewee was on the ground smoking a cigarette. I crawled over to him and asked for a drag, although I hadn’t smoked in several years. We sat next to each other sharing the cigarette. Clevenger eased himself down off the truck, took off his boots, got dressed and put on the boots. The fat one stood in the back of the truck and the other one handed the bottle up to her. Clevenger made a phone call. Lump came out of the dress and pissed all over Dowd. The young one sat inside the tire.