• • • • •
We drove in silence from the St. Paul airport when we finally made it back to the house. The kids took off immediately to visit their friends in the neighborhood. The dogs were glad to see us. The canary flitted from one side of its cage to the other, causing its little brass bell to tinkle. The house felt cold and we turned the thermostat up to 75. We hauled our carry-on luggage up the stairs to the bedroom and dumped it on the floor. My cell phone started ringing and blinking in the middle of the bed. Right where I’d left it.
Screened-in Porch
He would smoke his black-market Cohiba on the screened-in porch right below her bedroom window and read The Quarter Horse News under a lamp spinning with moths on those warm prairie nights when Harleys roared up and down the river and teenage girls squealed from every passing coupe.
She would yell down to him that the smoke from his cigar was coming up through her open window and couldn’t he go smoke the damn thing somewhere else and he would yell back, no, he was happy right where he was and if it bothered her so much she should close her damn window or go read in the kitchen.
Then she would start banging the hardback book she was reading on the hardwood floor, right next to her bed, right above his head and he knew it had to be something by Zola because Zola was all she read and he knew she read Zola because she knew Zola was way, way above his head.
Then, after a while of this: her banging the book; him blowing more smoke; he might wander off into the night, just out of spite; out of reach, across the dark lawn, trailing blue smoke over his stiff shoulders, and let the screen door slap behind him and maybe once glance back up at her yellowish light, remembering when she used to wonder if he was ever coming back and the terrible thrill of causing her to ache for his return.
Clarksville, Missouri
(Little Dixie Highway)
We stop along the Mississippi and walk down to a yellowish limestone monument dedicated to the flood relief volunteers of 1973. There are two hashmarks on the stone indicating the height of the floodwaters to have been over five feet. We climb up on the stone and sit, watching a family fish down along the bank of the mighty river. The man has a long line of purple monofilament wrapped around a Coke bottle which he keeps tugging and coiling while the woman fishes with a cheap, light spinning rod—the kind you can buy at Walgreens or Kmart. The kids dance up and down the shoreline throwing sticks and laughing wildly while their parents work with grim hard-set faces. They are obviously not fishing for pleasure. The woman almost lands what looks like an ugly pink carp but it pops off her line just as she drags it out of the water. She makes a dash for it but she’s grossly out of shape and the fish escapes. She throws her arms up and turns to her husband, appealing for sympathy but he’s got his hands full hauling in an even bigger and uglier carp. It splashes around in the shallows with its sucker mouth pumping for air and its big eye staring at the bright world. The woman makes a mad dash for the fish while her husband keeps tension on the line with the Coke bottle. She keeps trying to seize the carp by the neck but it squirms loose and flops back into the water. One of the kids runs up to his mother and hands her a long plank board which she grabs and proceeds to bash the fish over the head with, causing the line to break. The carp swims lazily off back into the black waters of the Mississippi with the kids chasing after it laughing hysterically. The man throws his hands up but makes no sound and starts wrapping the Coke bottle again with the slack line. The woman shrugs her shoulders and returns to her spinning reel; casts the heavy treble hook out far and hands the pole to her daughter. The man just stares off across the wide water. They’ve grown accustomed to bitter disappointment.
We ate together in small dark cafés lit by strings of electric chiles, facing out to the poor street; ribby dogs dodging handmade explosive motor scooters. Great smell of frying tortillas.
We strolled together down the white long beach past turtle eggs that hadn’t hatched, pink plastic doll arms faded in the blazing sun, barnacled spike high heels washed in from Cuba or some distant pleasure ship.
We swam together in the green sea, rain beating us in the face, arms wide open to the tall black column cloud, her broad Midwestern smile.
Where are we now?
The Head Reflects
It’s too bad but had I been whole; had I not been completely cut off as I was—as he found me in the ditch—we might have become great pals. Who knows? There seemed to be some immediate affinity there. But then again, I wasn’t looking for friendship. My situation didn’t allow it. A beast of burden was all I needed. Sad to say. That was it. Someone to simply get me from here to there. Selfish. Yes. But this was a desperate predicament I found myself in. A predicament I could have no more foreseen than one can name the date and place of one’s death. Nights, I’d stare up at the sea of sky, searching for some sign in the heavens, some omen maybe. But from my odd position sunk deep in the ditch, only shards of galaxies revealed themselves: Tail of Scorpio. Leg of Pegasus. Orion’s familiar belt. Nothing whole and clear, telling a story in three parts. Nothing so neat as that. Just fragments falling. Shooting stars. Satellites methodically tracking their looped orbits. Even sounds seemed broken and cut off from their source. Ducks winging in the dark with no destination. The whipping of wings. Opossum crashing blindly in the brush. For what? Once, a brindle bitch came by and sniffed at my severed neck then licked both my eyes but trotted off without so much as a nibble. Searching for fresher meat, I suppose. It wasn’t the aloneness that gnawed away at me so much as the limbo. Not knowing where I’d wind up. Some orange Dumpster headed for the Ozarks maybe. It was right about then that the frail thought of friendship visited me in the ditch. I could feel it scratching around deep in the place where my chest used to be. The absence of a body is not something you get used to right away.
Bernalillo
In the summer of 1984, my father was killed in a small New Mexican town where the wide dusty streets are sunk three feet below modern sidewalk level. At the turn of the twentieth century this piece of city planning was designed to protect women in full skirts from the torrents of red mud cast up by buckboards and mules. Stumbling backwards out of the Cibola bar, my father tumbled off one of these high curbs directly into the path of an oncoming El Camino with neon blue lights silhouetting the lowered chassis. The anonymous driver never stopped. The bartender called the Albuquerque ambulance. When they loaded my father’s mangled body on the gurney they asked him if he knew his name. “Just Sam,” he said and then died right away. Ever since then I’ve had a stark terror of being blindsided by cars.
we sat around in rosy candlelight
exchanging tales of riptides
swimming too far out toward the reef
towed away in panic
underwater nightmares
breathless women
leaping off the fishing boat to take a leak
two hundred feet
of black Caribbean
straight down
all the while monster waves
crashing
just outside
green screens
white little crabs
frozen
poised sentinels
beside their tiny holes
translucent claws
raised to the salty air
and the razor-thin slice
of moon
just hanging there
Black Oath
I understand you’ve made giant strides toward your rehabilitation.
Who told you that?
I’ve heard it through the grapevine.
That’s a song.
Well—
Did they say I’d repented? Down on my knees? Taken the oath?
They said you were behaving yourself.
That’s nice.
Not biting anyone’s ear off.
That’s already been done.
Spitting in anyone’s face.
God forbid.
You are interested in gettin
g out of here, aren’t you?
The outside is the same as the inside.
You can’t be serious.
Try me.
Well, I was hoping we might come to some understanding.
Hope is for politicians.
I remember Paul very clearly. When he knew he was dying and you could see it in his eyes. Invited me into his tiny room. No more than eight by ten. Asked me to sit there with him. Just sit. And he sat very straight, in a straight-backed chair, hands on his knees; eyes calmly cast toward the floor. Asked me about my horses. That was the first thing. Wanted to know all about my horses. Said it was a good thing to follow your “passions,” as he put it. “Passions.” Said he remembered one day, riding. One day, years ago, sitting in some saddle. One moment when he felt himself to be. The subtle touch. The horse responding. The sensation of it. The power. Four days later Paul was dead. I counted them. Each and every one.
Things You Learn from Others
How to stop tucking your T-shirt into your underpants. How to drink from a cup without drooling. How to eat with a fork and not your hands. How to dry yourself off inside the shower so you don’t get the floor wet. How to tie a half-hitch. How to make sure the disc plow overlaps the tire tread. How to tell when a colt is back at the knee. How to drive with one eye shut when you’re skunk drunk. How to sleep all night in a ditch. How to sharpen a knife with a stone. How to gut a deer. How to read the flight of hawks and owls. How to release a greyhound in tall grass when you see the seed heads move in a silken wave. How to blindfold a spooky horse with burlap. How to do nothing but listen when someone wants to do nothing but talk.
What you don’t learn, though, is how to protect others from your own manifestations of cruelty and malice which you’ve learned so insidiously through skin and blood and find impossible to shake free from no matter how much you’d like to be thought of as a decent, wholesome person.
Rape and Pillage
Let’s go rape and pillage. You want to?
What? Have you lost your mind?
No, come on. One last time. What do you say?
Absolutely not! We gave that up. What’s become of your short-term memory?
What? When?
Promises. Pledges. Resolutions.
Oh—those.
It was only day before yesterday—We swore on a stack of Bibles.
You swore.
So did you! I was your witness.
That wasn’t me.
I was right there, holding your skinny hand as you wept for mercy and forgiveness. Don’t lie to me.
That’s all in the past.
Two days ago!
So?
Don’t be a fucking idiot! You want to start all that up again? All that—torment.
It was fun! Come on.
No! It wasn’t fun. It was torture.
It was fun torturing others. You have to admit.
Don’t make me sick.
Poking their eyeballs with fiery sticks.
Stop it!
Drawing and quartering.
Get away from me! Go walk on the other side of the field. I don’t want to be anywhere near you.
You’ll miss me.
Ha!
You will. You’ll be walking over here and I’ll be walking over there and you’ll look across the wide field and yearn for my company. Wait and see.
Don’t be stupid.
You will. You know you will. All the fun we’ve had over the years.
It wasn’t fun! Get that out of your thick head. Fun is—Ferris wheels and cotton candy. I know what fun is.
All the dizzying ecstasy of absolute power. The debauchery. Looting things you’ll never use.
All right! That’s it. I’m going to go walk on the other side of the field and you stay here. You stay right here in your reverie and I’m going over there.
It’ll be just the same.
What will?
The same as if I walked over there and you stayed over here. You’ll still miss me. You’ll still look across the field and yearn for my company.
Stop following me! You’re worse than a dog.
I am a dog.
You’re insane is what you are. Out of your tree! Doesn’t that give you any kind of pause? The slightest little twinge of remorse?
What?
That you’re nuts! That once in the long-ago you might have had a glimmer of hope, a quick stab in the dark at sanity and self-respect. But no! You turned your back on it and walked away toward the roaring furnace. Never to return. Doesn’t that make you wonder a little bit?
About what?
About what you’ve become!
I’m exactly where I want to be. Right by your side.
Stop following me!
Well, what’re we going to do; stand around like a couple of fence-posts? I thought you wanted to take a walk.
I wanted to take a walk in peace! By myself. Alone with my thoughts.
How can you be alone with your thoughts?
Never mind. You’re impossible. You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to tie you to that sycamore with my belt. That’s what I’m going to do. I’ll hang you from the thickest limb.
Oh, so now you’re going to do me in? Is that it?
No, I’ll hang you so your feet just barely touch the ground. Just enough so you can get periodic relief.
Oh, thanks very much.
Maybe I’ll stone you like the good old days. Rocks and walnuts.
See? You can’t give it up.
I’ll keep you just barely alive. Hanging on by a thread.
What’s the purpose of that?
Until you beg and twitch for mercy!
That’ll never happen.
You’ll see.
I’m tougher than I look.
You’ll see. After three days your stomach will be eating your backbone.
I’m not buying into this transparent repentance of yours.
Of mine?
Of yours.
We confessed together!
Confessed? What am I now, Catholic or something?
Stop following me! Get away! Go somewhere else.
Now you’re hurting my feelings.
What feelings?
See?
I’m not talking to you anymore. I’m going to continue on my walk. You’re going to continue to follow me. You’re going to continue to hound and harangue me, like you always have, but I’m going to completely ignore you.
That’s not possible.
You’ll see.
What will you do for inspiration?
You’ll see.
Wait up!
should he head North
to her
climb into bed
with her
and would that make him soon forget
these morning nightmares
and random walks through woods
where he discovers nothing once again
but more of the same superstitions
traces of empty sagas
that don’t work for luck
or anything else
you can put your finger on
would running up there
to her
straight North on 39
erase all that
or just create a whole new set
of lawless circumstances
he’d soon regret
and set him wondering why he’d ever left
the sweet sweet sunny South
stay
he said to himself
in the voice of a man
in the voice of a man inside his chest who told him in stern tones
things were already changing
for the worse
and it was far far better
to stay right there
sitting in his faded armchair
than to risk the road again
and all its bitter disappointments
stay
and tough it out
between the cattle and the moon
but what if she goes off
and gives up the ghost
of him
forever
falls off the face of the earth
Sam Shepard Page 17
