by Sam Shepard
I find myself now, becoming suddenly enraged. A surge comes over me. Maybe it’s some serious entropy to do with the inevitable deterioration of brain and mind. Maybe something like the madness of Otis in the 1700s standing at his open window, hands clasped behind his back, staring down into the dark wet grass of the Commons, picking up a flintlock pistol from a delicately carved French end table and firing it into the Boston night. Maybe it’s like that. The Brits remain in rigid formation—eyes straight ahead, jowls firmly set, oily black bear fur hats, and their boots all polished.
Anyway, my plan was to carefully build a character, drip by drip, in the sense of sediment—the way it sometimes drifts to the bottom of a glass of river water before you take a cool long drink. It didn’t happen, of course. There was nothing “careful” about it. I don’t know what I was thinking.
I had room 329, ground floor, looking directly out at the stagnate waters of a small Hudson tributary. The town itself was conceived in the mid-1600s, burned and pillaged by the British in 1777, and littered with Dutch stone “rubble,” structures for grain deposit. This pathetic, side-of-the-road motel was built along the lines of a traditional Holiday Inn, lacking the slick green plastic veneer and welcoming marquee for deer hunters. Remodeling from twelve-by-twelve scaffolding took place daily. Construction workers in yellow hard hats and steel-toed work boots came and went from the restrooms marked “For Handicapped Only,” trailing hunks of plaster and dust. There was no laundry service, no restaurant. A potato chip machine that took several quarters, and one maid with a Latvian accent who never entered your room unless you hung a “Please Change the Linens” sign on your doorknob. Strings of gray junk hung like mushroom spores on the air conditioner’s grill. Black plastic boxes filled with rat poison nesting in the long weedy grass outside the window.
The very first element I snared for sure in my “character search” was “exile.” The sense of being “apart” as a way of life. How it comes to pass that a human is set adrift. Something intimately familiar. I was at it again. The Blackmail Girl seemed to have disappeared completely—fallen into the abyss. Most likely my inattention—lack of texting. Lack of feeling sensitive. I imagine. I don’t know. I had this in me. “Exile.” I knew it. There was no need for preparation. My whole life was a preamble.
Happenstance
“So you want me to believe that my miniature dead father visited you in a dream and asked you to thank me for allowing him to get a breath of fresh air?”
“I don’t want you to believe anything.”
“Are you just making this up?”
“Why would I do that?”
“To pique my curiosity, maybe. Cause me to think there’s some symbolism involved—things might mean ‘other’ things.”
“Don’t you think everything does?”
“No. No. I don’t, actually. I think some things are exactly what they are.”
“What?”
“Just events! Happenstance. Circumstance. Chance encounters. Moments in time.”
“ ‘Happenstance’? That’s an old-fashioned American word.”
“You know what I mean.”
“Do you think that’s true of us?”
“What?”
“ ‘Happenstance.’ An accident?”
Maybe she got embarrassed. I mean, I would if I were her. Calling up and telling me she had been recording all our phone conversations! I mean, talk about a total violation of trust and confidentiality. I wouldn’t even believe she was telling me that, at the time, it came as a complete shock. As though she had become an entirely different person. And then to turn the whole thing into a means of getting ahead in the world of fiction! What world is that? Still, I wondered about her. What was she really after?
—
What was I like at that age? Did I care what anyone might think? Did I care what anyone might wonder? What was I after? Putting out the garbage at Duke’s Cube. The sun not yet showing itself. The garbage trucks whining away down the block. The cats running for cover. East on Bleecker Street, past the old Village Gate, past the Gaslight on the corner, across town. Tommy Turrentine carrying his trumpet in a paper sack. The black elms of Tompkins Square Park. Dripping smell of Polish soup. Mushrooms and barley. Windows steaming from the inside. Someone with a white apron mopping the floor. And the crosstown bus with the driver already singing a hit from Porgy and Bess. What was I really after?
Keep walking. Something will crack. Some break in the night sky. Keep the river on your left. That’s her again, isn’t it? Slipping away. Some little smear of light. All you can see is the now-and-then shine of blue steel, the now-and-then glimmer of four-sided spikes. When you look straight up you think you see bushes or hills or is it trees on either side. Or are they huge animals? Something sleeping. The tracks were right here. How could I lose them? How could I be so careless? At the very least you should hear a train, don’t you think? In all this space—nothing to stop the sound. It should be on my right by now. I hope she’s gone when I get back. It should be on my right by now. I hope he is too, tell you the truth. Stop seeing imaginary things—beings, imaginary beings. That’s it! Are they inside or out? How far have I wandered from the boardinghouse? I’ve never lost track completely. Like this. There’s always been some guidepost, some sign, some rock, some stick. These beings seem completely indifferent to my progress. In fact I might just as well not be here at all as far as they’re concerned. I’ve tried talking them into banishing me entirely—then at least I’d be rid of them. Excommunication. But they don’t speak my language. They speak no language at all. They just hover and moan. Waver and blow. Like I’m not here at all.
I’d never been with a woman in that way before, especially an older woman, although Felicity was only about fourteen or fifteen at the time. She felt huge. I was lost in her body. Her breasts were immense and heaved like distant ocean waves inside her woman’s bra, which she must have “borrowed” from her mother. The floorboards were rock hard on my knees. The rag rug had slipped away and I swam on top of her, flailing as though I’d never make it to the other side. She began screaming and making those same noises she’d made with my father the first time. I thought sure her voice might carry for at least twenty acres. Over the heads of grazing cattle, frantic lizards. Her eyes were squeezed shut and she took big fistfuls of my hair. I kept praying my dad wouldn’t show up in the middle of all this. After days of her waiting for him, he finally shows up in the middle of all this! It was unbearable to imagine! I rode her like a pony trying to stay on. She slipped away, grabbing me between the legs and shoving me into her. It was an incredible mess. Cum all over the place. She jumped up suddenly, gathered all her clothes, and ran out the front door, half naked, then turned on the porch and ran back in, and got on top of me. I was still stretched out, bewildered. I thought she was going to crush me. The sheer weight of her. Her pelvic bone. I thought it was all over and here she was on me again except worse—more savage, more huge. Her mouth opened and I saw tiny animals escaping: tiny animals trapped inside her all this time. They flew out as though something might catch them and drag them back into imprisonment. I could feel them land on my face and crawl through my hair, searching for a hiding place. Each time she screamed the animals flew out in small clouds like tiny gnats: little dragons, flying fish, headless horses. They came tumbling out, scratching at each other. The amazing thing is that I stayed hard all this time. Even after ejaculating all over. I was hard as a stone salute. That must’ve been why she returned.
I avoided my father after that. I could see him at dusk in his rocker with a glass of whiskey and a glass of milk beside it, picking the shrapnel scars on the back of his neck and staring at nothing from the front porch. I kept thinking he somehow knew about me and Felicity. That she’d told him in a moment of panic. That she’d suddenly had a spell of “honesty” and spilled the beans. That’s why he was always staring off into the distance. It made no sense, though, that he hadn’t attacked me right away—as soon as
he’d found out. Why would he wait? He wasn’t a man who carefully calculated his actions. If he kicked me out, where would I end up? Bakersfield?
These were the kinds of things I thought of as I wandered farther and farther from the house. As it turned to night I kept a bead on the kitchen light. I stumbled through plow ruts and tried to keep to the very edge of the fields so as not to disturb seedbeds or crops already heading out. Our sheep heard me coming and bolted off in a burst of gray away from the wire fence. I saw his bedroom light switch on and knew he was brushing his teeth with the glass of whiskey resting on the porcelain sink beside him. It was the same room in which I’d watched Felicity bouncing on the mattress. The same room in which I saw her throw the Mason jar. A pure white owl dove at a field mouse, snagged it, then flapped away into the dark. What would I ask my father if I had the guts? Would I ask him who he is? Who he pretends to be? Would I ask him what’s on his mind? Does he “see” something? Does he “see” her and me? Does he think I might have fooled around with her behind his back? Got her hot and bothered? Caused those red blotches to emerge on her neck and face? Sweating. Caused her to drop her mother’s underwear on the tile floor? Does he think I might be the one she really loves?
Tiny Man at the Beach
‘They are at the beach now. Carpinteria or Ventura—very bright and hot. The ’49 Mercury is parked up by the highway, facing the pounding Pacific. All the windows are rolled down and the trunk is wide open. Salty air sweeps through it blowing sand against the whitewalls, half burying them. None of the miniature corpses are in evidence. Just the car—as though it has been abandoned in haste. No one’s around. Just wind. Wind again.
Down on the beach, far below the cliffs, the miniatures are all lined up on their backs in the sand, as though taking sunbaths, even though they’re all dead. Sea gulls circle above them, waiting for the chance to carry one of them off and tear it apart. The gangsters lie in a line right beside the corpses. They too look like they’re taking sunbaths, but they’re all still very much alive. Two of them have their shirts off and are applying baby oil to their dark olive skin. All the gangsters keep their felt fedoras on and all of them are wearing very expensive dark glasses, fashioned in Rome, with a brand name I can’t pronounce. None of them wear sunblock. They’re too proud of their Sicilian heritage to display white noses like a bunch of clowns in the circus. They’ve all taken their brogans off and their black silk dress socks. They wiggle their manicured toes in the sand and whistle at young girls strolling by. They call a group of girls over and show them the line of miniature corpses all on their backs. Taking the sun. The girls run away in horror, screaming, covering their noses, although the smell of death is very faint through the Saran Wrap. One of them runs toward the sea as though she’s about to vomit. All the gangsters, in fedora hats, laugh hysterically and slap each other’s high-fives so violently that one of them actually thinks he’s broken his wrist. A black waiter shows up in a tuxedo and white gloves, driving an electric golf cart. They all order mojitos except one, who orders a vodka tonic. The black waiter jumps back on his electric golf cart after writing down their order, and heads off toward the clubhouse. You can just make out the roof over a distant ridge where a group of slender palms are swaying.
Mounds of Their Own Dung
The thing you remember most about feedlots is the smell—the smell way before seeing the actual cattle, usually Holstein crosses huddled in tight listless bands on top of mounds of their own dung. You imagine them sensing death—their future as frozen hamburger patties—but I could be giving them a prescience they don’t possess. Mornings in the San Joaquin always carry a mist. Its origins are mysterious, because there is hardly any moisture to speak of. No water except for the placid irrigation ditches: the giant rainbirds dripping; white transportable Plasticine pipes at the edge of rows of lettuce. We used to call it “Tule Fog” when we worked alfalfa, loading trucks with square bales in the summer. That was farther south, though, down around Chino, where there was more green and it actually rained a little.
I put it in my head that I could walk the seventeen miles to the feedlot on the fifth straight day that Felicity showed up and was, again, asking to see my old man who was never there. I invited her in, as usual, out of the blasting sun, sat her down, as always, on the wicker chair, and poured the usual jar of iced tea for her. She sat exactly the same way she always did—with her back straight and her spine not being supported by the chair at all. She set the little black purse on the floor and balanced the iced tea, in the same way—on her knees, which were always pressed together and very tan. I made up some excuse to go back into the kitchen and snuck out the back, making sure the screen door didn’t slam behind me. I ran for about a hundred yards, until my lungs ached, then walked in long strides down to Highway 5.
Meadowlarks trilled, then exploded out of a field of barley, landing on mesquite posts. Like Indians at the bus stop, they’d never look you directly in the face. Grasshoppers were everywhere and bottle flies would go smack in your eyes as though blind and suicidal. Crews of Japanese field hands were working strawberry patches in straw hats shaped like upside-down chocolate drops. A long line of giant bluegum eucalyptus marked the highway’s shoulder and cast shade out into acres and acres of summer squash.
I started making up in my head what I’d say to my dad when I got there. A sort of little raggedy monologue as I marched my way toward the blur of occasional cars, on their journey up to San Francisco or down to LA in a straight line. “She’s really desperate to see you, Pop. She wouldn’t come every day if she wasn’t. I mean—maybe you could just go down to the liquor store and give her a call. Or you could give me a message maybe and I’d tell her. Or a note. A note would even be better, wouldn’t it? She’d see you’d signed it and everything. It would almost be like talking to her. Maybe she’d imagine your voice even. Your face. As though you were actually talking to her. It might—I don’t know, it might ease her mind or—it might even make her feel better about you. You know? The whole situation. I think she really likes you. She does. The way she talks about you. I mean—I can’t stand it when she shows up looking for you and you’re not ever there. I don’t know what to do. I don’t. I mean, I don’t know what to do. Sometimes I try to talk to her but you know I’m not very good at that. I don’t know what to do. I make things up. I do.”
The hike to Coalinga was hot and dusty. I didn’t even attempt hitchhiking. They never stop when they’re going that fast, anyway. Occasionally, some old faggot insurance salesman. You can spot them right away. Driving alone. A bunch of suits and shirts on wire hangers behind him. His red balls hanging out his fly. I plodded on in the gravel ditch through disposable diapers, bottle caps, and used condoms. Crows and mockingbirds dotted the fence lines. Some guy in an old Massey Ferguson trying to be a “lone little farmer” holding out against the “Big Boys.” Signs about water rights and how the politicians were to blame for the lack of it. White almond trees in full bloom. Boxes of bees pollinating apricots. Now and then a roadside fruit stand selling figs and watermelon. I could hardly wait to get out of this place.
I started thinking about how Felicity might have found us. How come she could have just showed up here in this godforsaken valley. It became clear to me that Felicity was what you call “underage,” “jailbait,” or whatever. Older men used to use that term, “jailbait.” Something illegal like that or else they’d never have taken him away. The cops. My dad. We’d never have to have moved from that boardinghouse in the middle of the night like we did. He’d never have to have taken a job at the feedlot. He doesn’t even know how to ride a horse, anyway. He just drives a pickup. Up and down the rows of cows, bawling and waiting for alfalfa pellets. Maybe that woman in the long pink coat was Felicity’s mother and she had secretly followed us. I don’t know why. Maybe the two of them have a place here. Somewhere in town. And the mother sends Felicity out here every day. Day after day. Like some kind of bait. “Jailbait,” maybe that’s it. Why isn�
�t she in school, I wonder? It is summer. Not that her mother gives a hoot in hell about education. I can’t see her grooming Felicity for some fancy girl’s school back east or some Ivy League deal where they go on to “higher learning.” Not that Felicity would want that kind of thing, anyway. I don’t know.
