The Kerr Construction Company

by Farmer, Larry

  The edge of Monument Valley was less than an hour due west of Shiprock. And now the fun began. Small paved roads narrowed into a one-lane graded dirt road. Miles of this allowed me near the table-like structures resting on red sand that were prominent in the John Wayne movies. Some of the structures looked like stalagmites.

  We were probably breaking some law if we walked up to these mesas. Somehow they were protected, or should be. Between that and being tired, we settled for a small rise of a sand-like dune near the dirt road we were on. I parked my van off to the side of it, sure we were the only human beings around in this heat, and positioned the van in such a way that we could sit at the back with the rear doors open and get a perfect view of the most scenic mesas. We imbibed over a quart of water, then a still-icy soda each, and just stared. That was enough. To just stare.

  “I’m part Cherokee,” I said to Carmen. “Not enough to lay claim to the heritage, but enough to feel proud. And I feel so proud even though this is Navajo country.”

  I glanced at her shyly, afraid I looked the fool. She nodded her head supportively, and returned to viewing the mesas in front of us.

  “I wish I knew a Cherokee song,” I continued, “or any Indian song, for that matter. I want to share this with whatever spirits might be hovering around, as more than a descendent of a white conqueror. But it’s okay to be white, too. Now I can make amends somehow, right here, right now, to my Indian side. And live in harmony. I guess. Even though that sounds so hippie.”

  She shook her head and looked at me mockingly. “You’re on a crusade, Dalhart. Still the Marine. You live in a van when you could be starting a career any of the rest of us would die for. It’s like you’re looking for yourself. But you’re so against our generation. You even still use the word ‘hippie.’ You’re so like them, though, you know? Not exactly. But this anti-materialism thing about you is. Yet you hate their lifestyle and politics. I guess the word is complex. You’re so damn complex, mi amour.”

  “I hope to have money someday, Carmen. I’m not a back-to-nature freak. People wonder what I’m doing here. Maybe it’s my upbringing. On the farm where I worked with my parents, we felt so productive. Me and all the families around and all the kids on those farms working them with their parents. The work was hard, and we’d complain or want better. But now America just wants out. Wealth is new to us. Yet another God-given freedom that we’re just not up to. We OD’ed culturally from it.”

  I looked at her sheepishly as if to apologize. “Sorry,” I said. “I get caught up in my thoughts. But can we talk?”

  “That’s why we’re here, Dalhart. It’s just the two of us. And the ghosts.” She laughed. “It’s time to get to know each other more deeply. Like some romantic job interview, you know.”

  “Yeah,” I said, smiling, relating to the way she put things. “Yeah.”

  She leaned over and kissed me on the cheek, then held my hand. “Go on,” she said. “You seem the philosopher. Got me a college guy here. Talk away. I like this. I feel deep all of a sudden.”

  “So,” I continued, trying to reconnect to my thoughts. “We work more for security and materialism than anything else. And we need entertainment so much. To the point of childlike. I’m not knocking the entertainment factor completely. I need entertainment and material things too. But what happens when someone goes to a party or gets drunk? They call it living. And to them it is. Suddenly they have a life, they think. Renewed energy. It’s like they’ve been resurrected from the dead. I never understood why. I was my proudest when I was on our farm, productive. When I had money I spent some of it. Even on entertainment. But it wasn’t my life.”

  “This is a bigger thing for you somehow than the way you were treated in the Marines by this generic group you’re calling hippies,” she commented.

  “Actually, you’re right,” I said, as I nodded agreement. “But it all seems so intertwined. To me it’s this party mentality so prevalent now with us that I’m reacting against. No depth to it. At least not anymore. Maybe there was for awhile, but not for long. It’s not just against Marines and the war and corporations going on. The times are against anyone that plays the game. Asian immigrants come over here now that read books. Rich white kids think them nerds the way they study and know math. They laugh or feel threatened by those that come over here to work for the life it provides. And the life most immigrants want is based on family and values, not drugs, sex, and rock-and-roll like seems to be happening to us now. And it’s the illegals from Mexico in the fields now that just want a life at all. My daddy worked in other people’s fields before he had his own farm. So did the Okies in California that everyone mocks for it.”

  I turned to look at her for emphasis. As if to highlight what I was going to say next. “Do you know why the Japanese bombed us at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941?”

  “We were a threat to them in the Pacific,” she answered.

  “Yes, but why December 7? It was a Sunday morning. It wasn’t because it was a Sunday and we’d all be in church, or relaxing on the beach away from our duties on our day off. It was because Sunday morning comes after Saturday night, and the good old G.I. could be counted on spending what little money he had on getting drunk. Getting drunk to the point of stupor. Totally unprepared to recuperate and fight the surprise attack taking place. Escapism is so engrained in most of our society. Including through religion. Rather than just relate to life and solve problems. Before our generation came along, people used discipline in their lives to overcome escapism. They sensed something better, or were taught there was something better, so they tried to discipline themselves and others to get to that something better. But they never really made the connection. Just had the concept of it. Our generation got rid of the discipline and the ideology.”

  “Sorry, Dalhart,” she said with a grimace. “But you sound like a hippie.” She saw my demeanor change as soon as she said it. “Just joking,” she chirped, to pacify me. “You’re just so disgusted with things.”

  “I identified with some of the rebellion of my generation in the beginning. But that rebellion also, to most of those doing it, just turned into a party. To me, some of that early rebellion was a breath of fresh air. There was a conformity around in the fifties and early sixties to the point of becoming a robot. I’d just as soon leave the straight jackets for those that are crazy, but we were programmed a lot when we were growing up, to the point where it often felt like a straight jacket for all of us. So I got off to some of the questioning going on in the sixties and the creativity that exploded from it. But then my generation conformed again. Questioned things just enough to adapt to the new thought and conformed to it. Now it’s just demands, no questions going on. I guess I’m exaggerating, but I’m not sure.”

  Carmen stared off toward the mesas as if absorbing the conversation. It was hot, with little breeze, so I retrieved more water from the ice chest.

  “I brought my tape cassette player,” I said as I returned the water bottle to the melting ice in the chest. “Do you like country music?”

  “Some of it,” she replied. “Not the hillbilly stuff too much, though.”

  “I have folk music mixed with it on the tape I brought.” I pulled out the cassette player from my backpack that I kept my things in. “The modern ones, not Woody Guthrie.”

  “You do?” she asked. “Rita Coolidge is my favorite singer. Do you have her?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Monument Valley is so sparse,” I commented as I sat back down beside her. “So…what’s the word? Not barren, though it is barren. It’s lonely. But proud. It knows something. It’s like Stonehenge, except God made it, not us. That’s what probably draws me to it the most. Like the monks retreating to the desert for a life of devotion and contemplation.”

  “I never met anyone like you,” she said.

  “Is that good or bad?” I asked.

  “What the hell do you think? Why else am I here sweating to death looking at sandstone? I want to get t
o know you. See what rattles my chains for you.”

  I nodded that I liked her answer. I studied her for a moment and couldn’t resist. I kissed her tenderly on the lips, then let it linger to feel her warmth. She kissed me back more deeply and we held it as if in celebration of the moment. We then leaned apart enough to look one another in the eyes, releasing, in the process, one of our arms in order to each touch the other’s face with our fingertips.

  “I like the sad songs on this tape,” I said, just above a whisper. “I like the thought of them even more now that I’m with you. And feel the loneliness I feel so often, but mixed with fulfillment now from being with you. I especially like the tearjerkers. The lonely heartaches. This place gets me in the mood. It allures loneliness here. I love how it seeps to the bone marrow. It’s a chance to get to know ourselves here. To hear ourselves think. I even love the pain of loneliness. As long as you’re here to reassure me. To cling to pain is self-destructive, but it’s cleansing to ride the flow it’s on. And now you’re riding it with me. I feel so secure.”

  She looked at me to tease. “That’s some heavy stuff there, cowboy.”

  “It’s the cowboy in me, actually,” I explained, “that loves all this. That’s why I prefer loneliness to being a part of a crowd. But I need to share it with you. Hank Williams is the king of country music loneliness, but I pity the girl who broke the heart of Roy Orbison in his song ‘Crying.’ He knew beauty she could never imagine. But you know that beauty. It’s there in you. You share it with me right back. And Dick Van Arsdale wrote about a lonesome tumbleweed. I love the way Joan Baez sings it. And Kenny Rogers when he sings ‘A Stranger In My Place.’ Loneliness and heartache are peaceful. And sharing it with you, it’s even fulfilling.”

  “You’re like a poet,” she said. “With all this coming out in you, I’m so glad we came here.”

  We lingered in our mood brought on by the desert scene accompanied by the music as if the songs were a musical score to our feelings as we remained in our embrace. When the tape finished, we lingered yet longer in the depth of the silence until the last of the shared loneliness poured out of us.

  “Let me change the tape,” I said. “Do you like classical music?”

  I broke our embrace to change the tape before she could answer.

  “On this tape,” I explained as if I was a master of ceremonies, “is Beethoven’s ‘Für Elise’ and ‘Moonlight Sonata.’ And I have Pachelbel’s ‘Canon in D’ and Vivaldi’s ‘Four Seasons’ and Schubert’s ‘Unfinished Symphony.’ I leaned back against the wall of the van as she leaned back against me, sharing my embrace. I stroked her cheek softly with my fingertips as we let ourselves be swayed by the music and the feelings that flowed while we caressed.

  “It’s religious,” she said. “I never liked classical music until now, but it seems religious, really, in this majestic setting we’re in.”

  She looked back toward me as best she could. I kissed her on her neck.

  “Are you religious?” she asked. “You talk about how religious you were. Are you still?”

  “Yeah,” I said, “but in a different way.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I was brought up believing the Bible literally,” I explained.

  “And now you don’t?” she asked.

  “When I was in the eighth grade, a friend of mine was killed on his motor scooter on his way to school. We heard the announcement on the speaker in the auditorium just before class. We immediately started praying for him. I’m from the Bible Belt, and we wondered among ourselves if he was in heaven or hell. We were scared just at the thought that what if somehow it was the worst case. The thought gnawed on me. By the time I was a freshman in high school, I didn’t believe in hell anymore. Not like in the Bible anyway. Eternal fire for sinners. My friend’s death made it personal. If he owed accountability in some way, that was between him and God. But I couldn’t see God doing that to anyone, much less to my friend.”

  “Not even to Hitler?” she asked.

  “Not even to Hitler,” I replied. “Surely, Hitler had hell to pay, but not like that. Then I started questioning other things.”

  “I don’t know what I believe,” she said, clutching my hand possessively. “But I believe. God is too beautiful not to believe in.”

  I nodded to assure her.

  “My favorite story in the Bible,” she continued, “is where that girl, I think it was Mary Magdalene, went to the Pharisee’s house.”

  “Simon the Pharisee,” I added.

  “She wasn’t invited,” Carmen went on, “and it was like Jesus was there as a status symbol for this Pharisee. What I love about the story is that she wasn’t invited, and she felt so unworthy, but she just had to see Jesus. I feel that way a lot. Especially after the divorce. Like I need to crash some Pharisee’s party to see Jesus and beg for forgiveness.”

  “What happened with your marriage?” I asked.

  “We were so immature,” she explained. “Partying, good times, fun. Go out. That’s no reason to marry. He was a life-of-the-party kind of guy, and good looking. He made me feel special. He was just out of the Army. On drugs. I wasn’t on drugs, though. Anyway, he knew how to please a girl. Including sexually. Except that sex to him seemed like just another drug. I wanted out of Gallup and he seemed cool. I met him through my sister. He’d been in the Army with her husband. We double-dated once and hit it off. My sister’s husband was from Albuquerque.”

  “And all that fun wasn’t enough?” I asked, to fill in the blanks.

  “I thought it was. I loved it. For awhile. Had the time of my life. Until he’d get stoned and want every other chick around. I’m not possessive. I thought I wasn’t, anyway. But I felt like an old shoe. I came home. We’re poor, but even my life in Gallup is better than that. My mom loves me. My mom raised me better. I didn’t want her kind of life in Gallup, but I wanted something she gave me. It’s so easy to take love for granted. I took my mother and how she loved me for granted my whole life. She’s such a simple woman, and we’ve always been poor. So I decided I wanted more than her kind of life. But this brought it home. She didn’t do everything right, but when someone loves you, it seems right anyway. I was desperate for love and appreciation when I came back home. I went to church with her, and the priest talked about Simon the Pharisee, with Mary Magdalene crashing his party to see Jesus. It was like in a movie or a sermon. You know, the way the message seems just for you. So I don’t go to church much, but I want that, what the Bible talks about. I want to crash somebody’s party and wash the feet of Jesus with my tears and wipe them away with my hair. I want something he has.”

  She looked back towards me momentarily with a shy smile before turning back around. “You deserve the corn coming out of me now,” she said with a grin. “You brought me here, and this is what it’s doing to me. So, there you go. The corn’s your fault.”

  “That’s what I want out of life too,” I said to reassure her and share her mood. “When I first started questioning the Bible, I decided I didn’t believe all that about the Garden of Eden, or Jonah and the whale. But then, yeah, like you said, there’s just too much beauty. Too much meaning. I don’t care anymore if it’s literally true or not. It touches me. My favorite story in the Bible is when Jacob wrestled the angel. Maybe it was God he wrestled. It turns out the ancient Hebrews used a lot of puns. Adam means man, for instance, which is derived from Adamah, which means earth, like dirt, not the planet. Israel means one who wrestles with God.”

  “Are you serious?” She looked up at me, once again showing disbelief. “It means that, it’s not just a name? What does Eve mean? Do you know?”

  “Eve is more of a modern translation. In the origin of the name she was called Khava, which means life. I guess as in the giver of life.”

  I felt her body turn rigid. “This blows my mind,” she huffed. “How do you know all this stuff?”

  “I like knowing the origins of things,” I said. “It gives me more perspective.
Not just learning a story or memorizing a text. Some depth. Some meaning to it. So, the ancient Hebrew did it for a reason. All the more reason to not take it as history as much as truth.”

  “Now what the hell does that mean, Dalhart?”

  “History isn’t the issue,” I answered. “The soul is the issue. It can be historically accurate or not. Who cares either way? The meaning is the issue. The meaning is the truth that’s laid out for us. But here’s Jacob, and he cheats his brother out of his birthright, he flees, he marries the wrong girl, he waits to get the girl he wants, then he wrestles with an angel and won’t let go even after his hip is dislocated. I adore that. The passion and the struggle. The determination. The spiritual truth behind it all. That’s the important stuff. That’s the meat to it.”

  Carmen nodded her head approvingly. “I love that we met,” she said. “I want to believe it really is cosmic. Fate or something. Why aren’t you a priest?”

  “I’d rather be a cowboy.”

  I turned the music off for us to watch the sunset radiate on the glowing sandy redness. Soon the shadowy mesa structures lay under the stars.

  “We’re going to make love tonight, aren’t we, Dalhart? We knew it even as we planned our excursion. Soul to soul and heartbeat to heartbeat stuff, though. That’s what you had in mind. It’s your style of laying claim to me. And it worked. I’m your woman. You’re what I want.”

  ****

  “I got a feeling you’re one of those guys that meditates, McIlhenny,” Ira said as he lit up a cigar while driving down a dirt road. “You can roll down the window if the smoke gets to you, suck your ass.”

  “I meditate at night,” I answered. “I have to put up with you and this job.”

  “I knew you probably did something weird like that. I bet you do yoga, too.”

  “No yoga.”

  “Listen, numbnuts. So what the hell you doing here? You don’t fit. It’s not that you’re so damn stupid. You’re the smartest guy I ever met, at everything but construction. You on some quest? Looking for your head?”