by Toby Olson
And in the dream he seemed to open his eyes as if they had been closed, and he turned his head slightly toward the horse and looked up into its face. And the horse’s eyes grew smaller, and through the smoke between the two of them the face of the horse began to change into the face of a woman. Melinda began to appear to him as he woke up. She was sitting on the floor beside the bed, at a level with his head, and between them, on the night table, was a steaming cup of tea. And he saw the oval of Melinda’s lips as she lightly blew the rising tea smoke across his face. Her mouth changed to a smile as his eyes came into focus. He had risen gently from his dream; it was the smell of tea and its touch against his cheek, insinuating itself into the dream without breaking it, that had awakened him. And the dream and what he might have chosen to call reality had come together like a kind of smoke net to lift him up. He had moved to his elbows, turning his head toward her. He had never come to himself so gently. And Melinda had seemed to know this, and that is why she smiled and did not speak for a while but only looked at him as the tea smoke lifted.
“Melinda, are you okay?”
“Yes, I’m fine. I’m ready to come out now.”
He wrapped the gun in the towel and put it in the suitcase and then he went to the bathroom. She smiled up at him from the dark water in the tub.
“Should I put the light on?”
“No. Leave it off, okay?”
He put his hands down into the warm water beside her body. “The towel,” she said. He pulled back and reached to her belly and lifted the wet towel off of it, wringing it out as he took it from the water and placed it in the sink. He took a dry towel, folded it, and put it over the edge of the tub. Then he reached into the water with both hands and arms to his elbows, sliding one arm under her back and the other under her knees. He knelt down on the floor and lifted her up carefully out of the water and swung her legs over the edge of the tub until she was sitting on the towel. He took another towel and draped it over her shoulders. She began to rub herself with the towel, and he took another towel and dried her legs and feet. Then he got up and stood over her, looking down at her matted hair, her huddled body. He steadied her with one hand on her shoulder. He pressed her after a few minutes.
“Are you ready?”
“Okay,” she whispered softly and with effort. She held the towel with a white hand across her breasts, and he reached under her again, making a chair for her. He lifted her and carried her into the other room and sat her down on the edge of the bed. The reflection in the glass doors had changed slightly. It was midday, and the light now brightened the foot of the bed. The glass doors were still opaque. He made sure she was steady; then he left her sitting and went over and pulled the drapes.
He returned to her and helped her recline on the bed. He took a blan-ket from the shelf in the closet and offered to put it over her.
“No. No thanks,” she said, raising her arm slightly. “But could you turn down the air conditioner a little? You can leave the blanket here.” She motioned to the bed beside her. He did these things. He bent over and kissed her forehead.
“I’m going out for a while. Do you want anything?”
“No, just a little rest is all.”
“Not long,” he said.
“Oh, I don’t think I’ll sleep.”
“I mean, I won’t be gone long.”
“Oh, I see. Okay.” She let her head down on the pillow and looked at the ceiling. He went to the door, opened it, and left the room.
THE MOTEL WAS A LONG RECTANGULAR BUILDING, WITH a brief aluminum awning running over a narrow sidewalk the length of it. At the far end was a slightly larger building, a restaurant, and in front of the restaurant were two banks of gas pumps. Across the wide gravel drive in front of the motel was the old highway, now a secondary road, and across that, beyond the shoulder that was lined with a few yucca, and scrub he could not identify, the desert began. In the distance were the low mountains, very distinct in the sun. It was hot and dry. Across the road from him, about seventy yards away (a half-wedge, he thought), there were two Indians in rough clothing working at a shallow ditch with shovels. Between the ditch and the road, two women sat on blankets with a few pieces of what looked like jewelry spread out in front of them. They were very close to the road, and when an occasional car went by, their loose, faded shirts stirred on their arms and around their necks and the corners of the blankets rippled.
He stayed under the awning and walked the length of the sidewalk, past the two cars in front of other rooms, the two air conditioners fixed in the window casements, humming. He walked across the few feet of gravel and entered the restaurant. There were a dozen or so formica tables along the windows, facing the old highway, and a long counter. He sat on a swivel stool and ordered coffee. A girl of about sixteen got it for him. He heard a car on the gravel behind him, and a middle-aged man in Western clothing, who had been sitting at a table near the door, went out. Along the counter to his right sat two men ; one looked to be a truck driver; the other was an Indian. The Indian looked his way and smiled. Like the men working across the road, he wore a faded chambray shirt and khaki pants. A red polka-dot handkerchief circled his head, tied in the back with two tails that touched his neck. The truck driver was bending over a plate of eggs and home fries; he gave his attention to his eating and did not look up. Pinned on the wall behind the counter, above the coffeemaker and glass shelves with pieces of pie on them, were a few post cards, a dollar bill in cellophane, and a small photograph of the restaurant taken from across the highway. He could make out two figures in the picture, a man and a woman about to enter the door. In the left corner of the photograph, standing at the end of the building, was a tall, erect man. He was facing into the camera. His figure was hazy and slightly out of focus, but he looked something like the Indian down the way.
He stirred his coffee and thought of the way the one had moved in behind him. The other was on the couch before him, sitting, hips at the edge, legs spread, and he was on one knee between them, touching her waist and breasts, biting her carefully, looking at her, putting his fingers in the sides of her mouth. Richard reclined in the orange chair watching; he was naked also, and the shadow push of the dim lights elongated his compact body, forcing the angles; he looked like a wasted El Greco, one arm on the back of the chair behind his head, his smile, the slant of cheekbone and dark hair. A small, plastic, crescent moonlight, with a face with little red eyes, sat on a shelf above Richard’s head, and music was playing. He felt the tips of her fingers, her nails, on the small of his back, down over his buttocks, as she moved in behind him; she nipped his leg. The legs of the one he was in came up to gather his hips. The music was Santana, Little Feat, and the Doobie Brothers, various driving and loping popular pieces to which the three of them adjusted their movements. But really it was the two of them: he was in the middle, and though treated as he imagined a god might want or a man of wealth and power, it was the two smaller creatures who had control.
The one behind him squeezed something and ran cool fluid on him; he felt a thin line, delicate, but with a gravity like mercury, run down his inner leg, some gathering at his anklebones; the other one squealed and talked. He pulled her hair, held handfuls of her flesh; her heel bumped down his spine. For all he knew, the one behind him, in her somewhat mechanistic approach, could have brought the gun with whatever container held the cool liquid, could have placed them on the floor beside his foot. Andthen she could have caressed his flanks with one hand and taken the gun in the other, and what he felt of metal and thought was rings or hard nails or the edge of some instrument would be the barrel touching the delicate meat there. She could have been moving his passage toward some emblematic action as the other urged him on. And when he exploded or arrived some place they knew of, or almost arrived there, she could have pulled the trigger, and he would have seen the final eyes in the plastic moon before he saw snow.
He came back to the cup in his hands, lifted it, and finished the coffee. Then he took t
he yellow check to the cash register at the end of the counter. He dug in his pocket and brought his hand out; in his palm was some change and two white golf tees. He picked out the amount of the bill and handed it to the girl. Then he turned and left the restaurant.
He walked on the crunching gravel past the two cars and toward his own. It was very hot and still, the sun at its apex, and he could see that the two men across the road had quit working and were drinking liquid from a gallon jar. They were talking with the women, who had turned halfway from the road and were looking at them. One of the men saw him looking and nodded. The two women turned to look but gave no sign.
The light on the trunk lid made him squint, and when he opened it it took him a few moments to focus on its contents. There was a suitcase, a garment bag, and a couple of blankets in the bottom. On top of the blankets was a wide-brimmed plantation hat. He took it out and put it on. Shielded from the sun, he felt much cooler. He lifted the blankets and put them on the suitcase. Under them were the heads of four golf clubs sticking out of the canvas mouth of a narrow, white Sunday bag.
He pulled the bag free and leaned it against the car’s bumper; it had been resting on a canvas tarp that covered the odds and ends of clothing and household goods which filled the trunk’s bottom. Tucked in the fender well was a gunny sack with a number of golf balls in it. He took the sack out, glimpsed the bulk of the two matchboxes in a pillowcase wedged up behind it, and put the sack on the gravel beside the clubs. He felt somebody behind him and turned around.
“Hi,” said the Indian from the restaurant. “You like this place?”
He was not sure if there were any layers in the question, but the Indian had a very open face and his smile was not forced, so he answered him directly.
“Not much,” he said.
“That’s good, I don’t like it either. You play golf?” The Indian was eyeing the clubs and the gunny sack. Close up, he looked older than he had seemed in the restaurant. His face was heavily lined from the sun, and he looked well worn. He was about mid-fifty. His teeth were uneven but very white, and his eyes were clear and sharp.
“Yeah, I play a little.”
“I have a relative in golf,” the Indian said, “name of Frank Bumpus, back East, but they call him Wingfoot. He owns a golf course. You headed back East? I see your plates.”
“This is a rental car. Where is your relative? “
“Name of Seaview Golf Links, on what they call the Cape there, in Massachusetts. You headed back East?”
“If I get there,” he said. “If I get there I’ll look him up. What’s your name?”
“Right, look him up. Bob White, relative from out West. What you gonna do now?”
“Well, I thought I’d go over across the highway and hit some balls out in the desert.”
“I don’t play golf,” the Indian said.
“Right,” he said. He reached down to pick up the two bags, but the Indian was not finished yet.
“Tell you what,” the Indian said. “How many balls you got in that bag you gonna hit?”
“About a hundred.”
“Tell you what, who’s gonna get those balls after you hit ‘em?”
“I am,” he said.
The Indian looked off across the highway at the two men who were back at work and the two women. A car had stopped, and the women were showing the jewelry to an old couple who were standing together in front of the blankets. The working men had shed their shirts; their bodies were lean but rounded and not muscular. They were sweating heavily, the bands around their heads very dark with moisture. Their shovels shooshed in the heavy sand. Their hands spread along the shovel shafts as they cast it out. They were up to their thighs in the ditch.
“I could use just about two dollars and fifty cents,” the Indian said, still looking off across the road. “Tell you what, I’ll get those balls after you hit ‘em.”
“Fine,” he said. “You want the money now?”
“Nope,” the Indian said, and he moved to the trunk of the car and picked up the clubs and the gunny sack. “Where you wanna go? “
“Over there, I guess.”
The Indian walked a little behind him as he crunched across the gravel toward the highway, heading for a place about a hundred yards from where the men and women were working, a place that would put the restaurant windows out of eyeshot. Though the highway was empty for miles in both directions, they stopped at the near side of it before they crossed. He had seen a place on the other side where the desert started a little below the shoulder of the road, a spot that would be protected from the vision of any cars that might pass.
“Is that you in that picture in the restaurant?” he asked.
“May be,” the Indian answered. “Don’t remember it though.”
HE HAD BEGUN TO REMEMBER THE PARTICULAR TEXTURE of the Tea Dream often recently. When she was sitting or occasionally standing beside some structure, holding it for support, he’d feel himself slide into a kind of awakening, a clarity that rendered most of the rest dreamlike. That she was dying before his eyes, and would certainly do so soon, were the words; and that he might stay alive beyond her was another consideration. But the experience, the flavor of the dream transition, had to do with immediacy, and it did something for him, though he couldn’t say what that thing was. He couldn’t say he liked it, but he thought that might be a good, if trivial, way to put it. He would be sitting beside her on a couch in some place or other, and he would begin to feel, in small increments, the intricate mechanisms of her body working with the cancer; he’d feel it in her skin temperature, the brush of hair tips against his arm, the tentative rhythm of her pulse, but mostly it was her breath that got to him. It had a smell, not jasmine, but sweet and close to that, like subtle exotic tea anyway. And when she dropped her head to his shoulder and he felt her breath pushing against his cheek, he’d smell and feel it at the same time. And then her smell was touch to him, and when he’d get up to get her water or something, and they were in different parts of the room or in other rooms or she was in the backseat of the car and he was driving, he felt that in smelling her he touched her, was attuned in some way to her. The alveoli in her lungs, the small wet sacs, were the place where blood, breath, and cancer systems joined. He imagined them as little sacred chambers in which, like intricate arguments, the elegant battle took place. It was a systems battle, an attempt, in those small globes, for the three energies to dovetail and link, and with each small failure a small accommodation was made. And she was running out of accommodations, so that each new one became more crucial. She knew the result would be her death, but this, in its way, freed her to live in the elegance of the struggle. At least, this was the way he saw or imagined it at times. She was very much alive now, all the time, and he was jealous of her. And yet he was grateful to her, for the inhaling of her. He wanted her often; he had great lust for her. He didn’t want to cure her. She seemed the healthy one.
THEY CROSSED THE ROAD AND THE SHOULDER BEYOND it and moved over and down to where the desert floor began. They moved to the left a little, locating a place that was fairly flat: slabs of shale, with a thin layer of sand blown away from them in various places and some seed spill from the road’s shoulder that had sprouted into feeble grass. The Indian put the gunny sack and the clubs down, leaning the clubs against a low rock so that the heads were elevated slightly off the ground. He stood back a little and looked out into the desert. The sun was still high but a little over their shoulders now; the hard lines of their shadows had begun to cast shade to their left. There were a few giant saguaros staggered out in the distance ahead of them and a few barrel cactuses in the spaces between, some clustered and some loners. This and the very spare brush and the sand was all there was from there to the distant mountains.
“I mark that one at about two hundred yards, that big one almost three,” he said, not looking back at where the Indian stood.
“You know, this will take a while.”
“Big one’s two city
blocks, about,” the Indian said. “I got a while.”
He glanced back sharply, and then he shrugged at the Indian’s way of measurement and at his resolve. He reached into the gunny sack and took out a small grasslike mat, a piece of Astroturf. In a corner of it, a small one-inch length of thin hose stood up. He found a flat place and spread the mat out. He reached back to the gunny sack and pulled it over to the right of the piece of turf. Then he lifted the closed corners and let the balls flow out onto the sand. The balls gleamed in the sun. A few had red stripes around them. Some were cut. Others were marked with black paint. The clubs in the Sunday bag were only of fair quality. There was a driver and a fourwood and two irons, a three and a seven. The woods had black, composition heads with red inserts and gold screws; their grips were dark red.
The irons had black grips, were noticeably step-shafted, and came from another set. He took a light-blue golf glove from his back pocket and put it on, pushing between his fingers to snug it up. Then he took the four-wood by its head and pulled it free of the bag. He turned it around and used it to poke one of the balls onto the middle of the piece of turf.
He took his stance, his feet square to the ball, toes slightly outward for stability, knees bent. With his right hand he pushed his hat down on his head. He looked out across the desert, and then he addressed his attention to the ball. The club head rested on the turf; his hands, at crotch level, held the grip. He moved his hands slightly to the left, bringing them an inch in front of the ball. Then he began. The club head moved back from the ball as the shaft came up in the sun and lifted; the shaft paused for a moment, hanging parallel to his shoulders in the air above him. Then it moved over and downward, coming through to the ball and back over his shoulder from the other side. There was a small sharp click a moment after he had hit. The ball lifted in a low trajectory from the mat. It kept rising until it peaked about forty yards above the desert, and then it gradually sank, and then it hit into the sand. It rolled about ten yards and came to rest on a straight line out from where he had hit it, about halfway between the two large saguaros. It was very easy to see against the desert floor.
