by Sam Shepard
Two more darts are thrown at my father, who is still spinning. They both miss. One grazes his shoulder and clatters to the floor. One guy makes a yellow mark on a chalkboard. The third guy drops a dime in a Wurlitzer. This is about all I can remember.
Blackmail Girl Monologue
It’s me again. Only to remind you that your days are numbered. You’ve been found out. I guess you know that by now. I guess you don’t need me to remind you. It’s just the satisfaction I get at seeing you squirm. In my mind’s eye, as they say. Of course, there still is a way out for you—an avenue of escape. You can reconsider altogether. You can hand over the authorship to me entirely. You won’t be blamed for anything—any falsehood—lies—distortions of any kind. You will be left blameless. Entirely blameless. It was never your fault that you stretched certain “truths.” That you doctored certain events in order to give them “poetic justice.” That you jumbled others in order to give them a new impression of meaning and ongoingness. That you’re just as confused as you always were. You might ask me why I would be willing to take on such a deceit and I would tell you, plain and simple, that it’s my pleasure to join up with the old world. Avant-garde, if you will. The twentieth-century werewolves of forgotten lore. The ones who saved us from corporate nihilism. The ones who walk the mini malls, head down, fingering Molotov cocktails in their overcoat pockets and occasionally blowing themselves up. Just like the old days. Just like the good old days of yore.
I remember one time having a conversation with Felicity about the past. The past in general, as though we were suddenly in the throes of philosophy. It was, again, one of those times when she’d ostensibly come by to see my father and my father was, of course, not there. One of those times she was, again, sitting on the wicker chair with the tea balanced on her naked knees and her purse on the floor beside her. She told me she thought the past was the present. That was her idea: just like that. The past was the present. She just came out with it. With a straight face. It wasn’t every day we shared ideas like that, but evidently this was something she thought about all the time. She told me this moment we’re in right now that we call the “present” is actually becoming the “past” and we don’t even know it. “That means we’re all living in the future because we’re witnessing the present become the ‘past,’ as we speak.” I didn’t know what to say. I made up some excuse to go into another room.
Across the Desert Floor
I told her she had to go. I didn’t know why. Just came out with it. I made things up. You should’ve seen the shock on her face. Her incredulous green eyes. I told her I couldn’t stand her dog shedding black hair everywhere. (I made that up.) I told her I couldn’t stand her own wiry black hair with the white roots everywhere. In the sink. In the bathtub. In the shower. In the toilet. On the sheets, the kitchen counter. (I made all that up.) I really didn’t know why I wanted her gone.
She cried all the way down to the airport. Seventy miles across the desert floor. She had on a linen forties vintage dress that clung to her skin. Her legs were exquisite. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a ponytail, which gave her face a rictus of grief. Water poured down her neck. Something in me separated her pain from her attractiveness. I tried to rub the back of my hand down her smooth thigh, but she rejected me.
When we arrived at the boutique hotel on the desert floor, we had lunch. She checked into room 506. I tipped the valet guy five bucks. There was a Mexican wedding going on in the lobby. Women with frilly purple-laced petticoats and bougainvilleas in their bouncy hair. The men wore tuxedos and polished boots with pointy toes. They took lots of photographs with an old-fashioned Kodak flash attachment that lit everything up and made you feel blind for a second. She was accidentally in the background of every shot while she and the dog waited for the elevator. Still crying. Weeping. No one knew.
After lunch (watermelon salad and artichoke hearts), we went up to the tiny room on the fifth floor. She broke down again, once we got up there, and told me she couldn’t stand to stay in there all night long waiting for the plane the next day. I said that’s why I had asked her if she was sure she wanted to drive all the way across the desert floor to the hotel rather than wait at my place in the mountains overnight. She told me she hadn’t realized it was going to be so horrible.
We left all the baggage there and kept the room. I tipped the valet guy again, for nothing, just because I was nervous, I guess. He seemed suspicious of us.
We drove all the seventy miles back, across the desert floor to my place in the mountains, where we’d just come from. We drove in silence for a long while. Once, I asked her if her ears had popped and she told me they had. I repeated that I just needed a little rest, that I felt a need to be completely alone in order to write (but that was a lie too, because plenty of times before I’d been able to write in the midst of a roomful of people, back when I was nineteen or twenty).
We passed Bernalillo, where my father was killed, and I remembered a great café called the Range where you could still get green chili and eggs, but we’d eaten already. It was almost time for supper by the time we got back so we ordered paella to take out from a Spanish tapas place. Paella and a Diet Coke for her (I was already into the silver Tesoro by then). She decided to make a peach cobbler out of peaches that were going bad. I went into town to get the food. On the way back a bobcat sauntered across the road and disappeared into blackness.
We had to push all my writing to one end of the table to make room for the food. The grayish-blue Olympia typewriter (my pride and joy) went in the kitchen on the granite countertop. She got suddenly happy when she tasted the Diet Coke and smiled at me across the table in that most beautiful way she has. She told me she liked having dinner alone with me at the house. Just the two of us. She used the word “romantic” a lot. I told her I was going outside to light a fire.
She had, just the day before, established a link system of some kind in order to receive wi-fi. Now she could have ready access to all sorts of movies. (We were way out in the rural haunts.) After dinner she got undressed and pored through hundreds of movie ads on her laptop. She sat cross-legged on the bed with the computer casting a bright band of light across her exotic face. Her dog lay sound asleep on a horse blanket with the King Ranch brand woven into it. I was outside all this time trying to light a fire in the wind.
The wind was kicking up in every direction. My stick matches kept blowing out until one finally caught the edge of a brown grocery bag with the words “I’m Local” printed on it. The coyotes were howling in high-pitched screams, as though the wind were tormenting some nerve in their ears. The dogs joined in from the kitchen. I let them out and they went straight after unseen rabbits.
Much later, in the dark, I staggered into the bedroom, where she was still undecided about what to watch. Lots of movies came up on her screen: The 400 Blows, La Notte, The Magnificent Seven, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. Movies I saw in high school. I watched the ads go by, calling up times that I must have coasted through. Times that I barely remember being there for. I don’t remember what I was doing, who I was with. Inside myself maybe. Or outside. I told her I wouldn’t mind seeing the documentary on the Roosevelts. They always fascinated me as a kind of American royalty. Something plebeian and yet down-to-earth about them. Down-to-earth—what an expression. The narration for the Roosevelts had a condescending tone, but the still photographs in black-and-white were interesting. Amazing how the camera captures time without even trying.
Next morning I woke and sat straight up. I could feel her breathing beside me. It was completely black. The wind was still blowing slightly. The metal shutters clanged on the wooden window frame. When it got light we drove the seventy miles back across the desert floor to the boutique hotel again. She was dressed the same. I had the same physical reaction but I didn’t try to touch her leg. Her hair was pulled back in the same severe way. She looked straight ahead, out the window. There was something hieroglyphic about her. Regal.
At the hotel I tipped
the valet guy again and told him to come upstairs to 506, get the luggage, and then throw it in the back of the Chevy. He seemed more suspicious than before, but accepted the tip. I went and ordered us some room service breakfast while she took the dog up to the room and put the luggage out in the hallway. We had about an hour before we had to check in at the airport. We ate the omelet with red peppers and goat cheese—me sitting on the AC unit while she sat on the very edge of the bed with her legs crossed at the knees. One leg bouncing rhythmically, marking time. She stared out the fifth-story window while chewing slowly, the fork poised below her chin. She spoke almost in a whisper: “What a horrible little town. What do people do?” I said nothing. There was a tinted photograph on the wall of a fifty-year-old man dancing a Cuban rumba with a ten-year-old girl. She was dressed all in white. He had her bent backward from the waist and was holding her like he would a full-grown woman. “You’ll never get rid of me, you know.” She spoke without looking at me as she cut another mouthful of omelet with her fork. “I know your reputation for discarding women, but you’ll never get rid of me.”
We made love like a couple who hadn’t seen each other for quite some time. Not like two people who were saying good-bye, perhaps forever. Not like two people who couldn’t get along and had decided to call it quits. She screamed so violently I thought maybe the valet guy might hear her down on street level and grow even more suspicious when we reappeared for the car.
We got dressed. I got the leash on the dog while she brushed her hair and put fresh gloss on her lips. We went down to the lobby. I got change for a twenty to tip the valet guy yet again. He looked at me funny when I gave him the tip. I was right. I knew I was right.
We arrived at the departure entrance for United, and my heart was pounding for some reason. I gave her some money to get a luggage cart. There was a long line of them, all strung together like you see at the Safeway. We hugged and kissed as I loaded the luggage on the cart. There were no tears. No hysterics. Her dog got suddenly excited and started leaping all over her. There were no tears at all.
I drove back the seventy miles across the desert floor, alone. I was glad to be alone. I had no thoughts one way or the other. No remorse. The sky was full of airy white clouds. The sky, powder blue behind them.
I went straight to the house. I wanted to believe I’d done the right thing. I’d asked her to go so I could be entirely alone to do my work. I washed some clothes that were lying on the floor. I put fresh birdseed in all the feeders. I chopped kindling. I pruned fruit trees. I transplanted plants. I made iced tea. I washed dishes. I made the bed. I couldn’t get to work on my writing. Nothing was stopping me, but I couldn’t get to work. I called my oldest friend in El Paso—no answer. I called my ex-wife in New Orleans—no answer. I called my first wife in LA—no answer. I called my long-lasting girlfriend in New York—no answer.
I woke up at 3 a.m. Ink black. The wind had stopped. The dogs were asleep in the kitchen. I felt there was somebody else there with me. I listened.
Diné Kid
The bright, bright southwestern sun splashing all the white cars in the parking lot. The hoods doubly hot with internal combustion and solar heat. A Denny’s on the very edge of Grants, New Mexico, squashed between 40 West and some Shell. Dry weeds, black plastic stuck to them, trying to blow free. Shabby chain link surrounding all this. What chance does beauty have to sneak in?
I’m in some side booth behind a frail man with his chubby wife, his back to me. A straw Western hat folded in the Sonoran style (taco side fenders). Deep track marks above his cheekbones say he uses oxygen all night. Just over his shoulder I see her at a distance. Just the back of someone. Voluptuous—curvaceous—looks to be about thirty but when she turns slightly sideways it’s more like forty. Tight white pedal pushers and leather sandals. T-shirt with a Harley skull. She’s covered from forehead to toe in tiny, purple tattoos—more like totems than machine-made designs. Small swallows, hawks, lizards, and moons in all phases. She turns and her face is much older than I thought—at least forty-five, maybe more. But her body’s so young. She has a boy with her. A crippled Indian kid with an aluminum walker. Heavyset. Maybe twenty-two. Butch haircut. Glasses. His eyes never leave her as she helps him into the booth, parks the walker outside, and takes him by one tortured arm. Gets him to sit, then slides in beside him closely. He smiles at her. There’s nowhere else in the world he’d rather be. She opens the colorful Plasticene menu and stares at photos in color of waffles and eggs and whipped cream. He never takes his eyes off her although his crooked hands open his own menu. He lies across the table. Both arms limply out in front of him. Useless. Helpless. He cradles his head in one elbow and smiles up at her. She continues to study waffles and pancakes. “I want to move in with you,” he says. She smiles but keeps studying the menu. “I want to move all my stuff in with you and sleep in the same bed. Can I?” he says. She smiles and reaches out with one hand. She places it softly on his butch haircut and strokes his head with her long green fingernails, just like you’d put a horse to sleep. Her eyes never leave the menu. Her eyes close. She rests her head on his shoulder.
Son of a Just Man
“So, when you left me—”
“I never left you.”
“Okay, when you went away—heading west.”
“I never left you.”
“Don’t be dramatic.”
“I want to be clear.”
“What are you, a lawyer now? Clarity? Language? When you drove down to Nashville to visit that woman with the big ass, then continued on Highway 40 toward Little Rock, Fort Smith, Oklahoma City in that perpetual daze of not-knowing, in that hapless state of being led by the cock—”
“What about it?”
“Did you ever once think of why it was you might have happened to ask me to marry you?”
“No.”
“No.”
“No, I didn’t.”
“Did you think your asking me to marry you might have caused me to think about the future? About domestic bliss. About front lawns and bedroom linens?”
“No.”
“About rings and bells and barbecues with the relatives?”
“No.”
“No, of course not.”
“I didn’t.”
“Did she get herself waxed for you?”
“Who?”
“The woman with the big ass from Nashville! Did she get one of those Brazilian jobs or did she leave a little strip of fuzz?”
“A little strip of fuzz?”
(Long pause here as he slowly turns his head and stares out at the dreary, overcast day that reminds him of Donegal, in the north of Ireland. The soft, light rain descends at a slant and coats the naked peach trees with a milky film.)
“What would you be doing right now if you were alone?”
“Right now?”
“Yes. If I wasn’t here.”
“Pretty much the same thing as I’m doing right now when you are here.”
“Nothing would change?”
“I don’t know—a certain ‘state of mind,’ I guess. What’s the matter?”
“You would be thinking about something else, maybe?”
“No. Feeling. Feeling something else.”
“What would you be feeling?”
“I wouldn’t be so concerned about you. Your presence. Distracted by your presence, I mean—”
“You’re concerned about me?”
“Well, you know—you’re on my mind all the time. You’re—always moving around—one room to another. Ideas must cross your mind. Ideas about me. Silent ideas. You must think—”
“What?”
“You must think: ‘This is not my home. It’s his home. He lives here but not me. I am a visitor. A visitor in his life.’ ”
“How does that change the way you feel?”
“It just does.”
“How?”
“I don’t really want to talk about this.”
“Why?”
�
�I just don’t. It makes me tense in the chest. In the throat.”
“Why?”
“You sound like a kid, a little child. ‘Why? Why? Why?’ all the time.”
“I’m interested. What would change if you were alone?”
“I just told you.”
“You didn’t. You told me nothing.”
“I told you—I just don’t know how to explain it. Something would change. That’s all I can say. Some—feeling. Some—sense of things. Some—”
“What?”
“I don’t know! I guess there would be an absence—a missing. Something incomplete.”
“Really?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I feel incomplete all the time. I don’t know if it’s a person I miss or—”
“What?”
“A time. People from the past.”
“Dead and gone?”
“Some?”
“People you never knew?”
“Maybe.”
“Maybe your parents?”
“No, they’re alive.”
“You don’t miss them, then?”
“Not in that way.”
“What way?”
“Like you’ll never see them again. Gone for good.”
“Yeah, I guess. You don’t need them, then?”
“Yours are dead, aren’t they?”
“Yes. They’re dead.”
“So all you have are memories. Photographs.”
“There’s this one where my mother must be around eight or nine and it’s late summer. Alder trees are in leaf behind her. Gooseberries are full of fruit. She’s wearing a little white lace dress with a big scalloped collar, knee-length socks, patent leather Mary Janes with straps at the ankle, and a knit cap with her bangs pushing through. Her head is cocked to one side with a tiny smile that looks as though she’s embarrassed about being photographed—about being witnessed. She’s standing in a gravel driveway next to my great-grandfather, Frederick DeForrest Bynon. ‘Bynon’ means ‘son of a just man’ in ancient Welsh, which is what he is, a Welshman. Frederick is the father of my mother’s mother, Amy. He is very tall and distinguished with a full white beard and mustache, dark three-piece suit, a pair of wire bifocals hang on a chain from his neck over a high-collared dress shirt. His left arm dangles a flat-crowned straw hat by the brim and his shoes are freshly polished. It could very well be a Sunday ‘go to church’ day. Who knows if they’re going or coming? At the top of the photograph in faded longhand it reads ‘Dunbar—August 1, 1921.’ And at the bottom in the same hand, ‘Grandpa and Jane Elaine in Driveway.’ ”
