by Chuck Kinder
You two will endure, Ralph, Lindsay said.
I can remember when our love for each other, Alice Ann’s and mine, and I know how corny this will sound, but it was so sweet and childlike and unconditional that loving each other was no harder than loving yourself. But I just don’t see how we can stay married to each other anymore. I don’t really know how I’m going to live without her after all these years, but I don’t see how we can live together without both of us going down the drain.
Those are among the most honest words you’ve ever uttered to me, Ralph. You owed me those words a long time ago.
This could be it, you know, Ralph said. —This could be our last chance, Lindsay.
We’ve been down that road, Ralph. But it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have let things get out of hand again. Now I have to live with that mistake, too.
It’s not your fault, Ralph said. —I know I’m just beating an old dead horse. Or old dead dog is more like it.
What I need to think about is Jim and me, that we, Jim and I, have to find a new place to live. I am utterly heartbroken about it. I feel undone right now, utterly. What will we do?
I’m not the one to ask, Ralph said. —That’s a question for your husband.
What question? Jim said. He was standing in the doorway with two shopping bags in his arms. He walked into the room and deposited the bags on the kitchen counter.
About where we’re going to live, Lindsay said. —I’m freezing in here, by the way. I’ve got goose bumps. Look at my arms.
Like somebody is walking over your grave? Jim said. —My old mountain granny used to say that about goose bumps.
I thought it was just me being cold, Ralph said. —Cold as a witch’s, you know, bosom, as they say. I thought I was getting a bad case of the old shakes and shivers, which are my usual first symptoms of the raging willies.
Our little landlady probably turned the furnace off again. Letting us know how welcome we are here, Jim said, and he turned the stove’s burners on and then lit the oven and left its door open. —I’ll go build a roaring fire out front directly.
What are we going to do, Jim? Lindsay said. —We can’t be out of here in a month.
Don’t sweat it, baby, Jim said. —I’ll take care of everything.
I don’t blame her one bit for throwing us out.
You’re right, I reckon, Jim said.
I hate to mention it, old Jim, Ralph said, but I’m about to faint from hunger. What did you get for supper, old boy? Something real quick and dirty, I hope.
Real quick and dirty and real American, Jim said. —Hot dogs.
Hot dogs! Ralph said. —I love hot hogs. Take me out to the ball game, that’s my motto. Buy me some peanuts and popcorn and hot dogs. Hot dogs are the best cure known to man for the raging willies. Hey, old Jim, did you pick up any, you know, hooch?
Yeah, Ralph, I got some hooch. But only for hummers, Ralph. I’m starting you on the hummer regimen as of tonight.
I can’t tell you how weary I am to the bone tonight, Lindsay said. —Jim, go ahead and fix Ralph something to eat. I’m going to go soak in a steaming bath for a while. Here in what used to be my home. God, but I always loved that huge old tub.
We’re gonna wait for you, Jim said. —Ralph can contain his fat ass for a while.
I can wait, Ralph said.
Okay, guys, I won’t be too long. I just want to lower what’s left of this debris I call myself into that wonderful old tub for a while.
Take your time, babe, Jim said. —I’ll get a fire going out front. Then I, for one, am going to repair to the deck for a spell. Check out that full, bloody moon. Have me a hummer or two.
Can I have a hummer or two, too, old Jim? Ralph said.
I’ll study on it while I’m building the fire, Jim said.
I need a hummer bad, old Jim, Ralph said, and placed his hand over his heart. —My heart is going a mile a minute. That little devil is banging around in there like there’s no tomorrow.
Lindsay stepped over and placed her own hand on Ralph’s chest. —You’re not kidding, Ralph. Maybe we should get you to an emergency room, hon. Jim, feel Ralph’s heart.
No way, Jose, Jim said.
I’m all right, Ralph said. —This is nothing new. Sometimes it bangs away like this even in those rare moments when I’m not on the edge of hysteria, or in some blind state of panic. I’ll tell you what’s really scary, though. Those times when my old heart just stops beating altogether. It jerks me from sleep sometimes. Or from what passes as my sleep, anyway. My sleep is a joke. I haven’t put together a good, solid hour of deep sleep since my early childhood. Back when instead of getting some good old regular childhood illness like the chickenpox or the measles or mumps or even polio, I came down with an acute case of the raging willies.
God only remembers why. Probably just the prospect of all those tomorrows stretching before me. And there’s no such thing as a vaccination or cure for the raging willies. So I’ll finally doze off. The next thing I know, I’m sitting bolt upright in bed with the sweats and shivers. Then I notice this deafening silence. Then it hits me. The sound that’s missing is the sound of my own heartbeat.
Target Practice
Jim and Ralph stood on a rooftop deck in San Francisco’s North Beach passing joints while they studied a fat full moon that moved palpably across a night sky hysterical with stars. They were waxing philosophical. They did not know that this would be the last time they would ever stand together on this deck overlooking the lights of North Beach and the dark Bay and a glowing Alcatraz Island beyond.
What Jim had been waxing philosophical about was how a vanished race of ancient Indians, people who were once alive on the curved surface of this planet not unlike he and Ralph, had looked up into the night sky in wondering dread and awe, and that hope that beat so humanly in their ancient Indian hearts, and when those ancient Indians considered that fat pie of a moon up yonder what they saw was not some mirror-image ancient Indian man in the moon. Rather, what ancient Indians saw in the moon were creatures from nature that were symbols of hope and renewal, like a great leaping blue trout. Now, there’s the ultimate big one you can never really land but which can never get away either. Honest to God, old Ralph, ain’t that just the most satisfactory fucken leaping blue trout in the moon you’ve ever seen in your miserable life?
Well, to tell you the truth, old Jim, Ralph said, I don’t exactly see that blue Indian trout of hope in the moon you’ve been babbling about. To tell you the truth, I’ve always sort of seen something else in the moon, and not some man either.
Well, pray tell, Ralph, just what is it you see in the moon?
A goat.
A what?
A sort of goat, old Jim. Really. The shape of a goat.
A goat in the moon. Ralph sees a goat in the moon. Of course, Ralph does. Well, leave it to you, Ralph, to have as your personal vision of hope and renewal a smelly old goat.
Hey, there’s nothing wrong with goats. I had me a goat once as a sort of pet when I was a boy. I loved that old goat, too. Bert was that goat’s name. Bert the Goat is what I called him. Poor old Bert.
Why poor old Bert, Ralph?
Oh, poor old Bert the Goat got tangled up in his rope somehow one day, and somehow he fell over a big rock down in the field and hanged himself. It was a freak accident even for a goat. Bert was a real good old goat, but boy was he dumb. That didn’t make any difference to me, though. My love for old Bert the Goat was unconditional.
And sweet and childlike?
You bet it was. Will you please pass that joint, please.
Ralph, I want you to tell me, your best pal since the untimely demise of Bert the Goat, the truth about something. Ralph, were you, being a typical little rural-boy type, and Bert the Goat ever, you know, an item? Ralph, truthfully now, did you ever get to know Bert, you know, biblically?
No! No way, Jose! Never! Not even once! I already told you, Bert was a good goat. Bert would have never gone for any hankypanky lik
e that. And if there’s a goat heaven, old Bert is there right now.
Waiting for you, Ralph?
You bet he is. Old Bert the Goat would wait for me forever. Bert was a loyal type of goat. Jim, I just noticed you have your gun stuck in your belt.
Yes, I do, Ralph.
How come, old Jim?
Ralph, let me ask you something. Did you rat me out about Mary Mississippi to Lindsay?
Who? Mary who? What do you mean, old Jim?
When was the last time you screwed my wife, Ralph?
I never did that, Jim. You know, screw. We made love, but that was a long time ago.
Okay, Ralph, Jim said. —Think I’ll get me some target practice, Jim said, and took the gun from behind his belt. Jim aimed his .38 at the moon and fired. At the explosion Ralph gasped and jumped and stumbled backward across the deck.
Missed, Jim said. —The goat moved.
That’s against the law! Ralph gasped. —Shooting a gun like that in the city limits. You could get arrested or something.
Like I give a fuck, Ralph, Jim said, and pointed the .38 at Ralph.
Jim, what are you doing? You shouldn’t ever point that thing at anybody! That thing could go off or something!
Like this? Jim said, and pulled the trigger.
Ow ow ow ow ow ow! Ralph howled as he staggered backward and tumbled over a chair onto the deck.
Goddamn it, Jim said, and lifted his .38 as though to inspect it. —Looks like I forgot to load it all up. Wouldn’t you know.
That was an awful joke, old Jim, Ralph whimpered from where he sat on the deck. —I think I broke my arm. Really. In two, maybe three places.
What joke? Jim said. He stuck the .38 back behind his belt and fired up another joint as Ralph pulled himself to his feet. Ralph rubbed his arm as he rejoined Jim at the edge of the deck overlooking the Bay.
At that point in time Clint Eastwood was shooting a movie on Alcatraz Island based on a true-life book called Escape from Alcatraz. As a gift to the city Clint Eastwood permitted the huge klieg lights he had erected to burn continuously so that Alcatraz Island glowed throughout the night through the fog like some enormous anchored ghost liner of lights, or some distant luminous island city of spirits. Something about that haunting, spooky sight unnerved Jim, but exactly what? That illuminated island honeycombed with cells, cells opening onto forgotten, undiscovered cells.
Would you mind sharing that number? Ralph said.
So you believe there is a goat heaven, Ralph? Here, goat-dick. Don’t bogey it.
If there’s any justice in this world, there’s a goat heaven. I could use a hummer, too, old Jim.
And you put your faith in that?
Sure. You bet. Why not? I’ll put my faith in a goat heaven any day of the week. Goat heaven is an endless field of sweet green grass with no big rocks anywhere. And there are no ropes in goat heaven either. And if I watch my p’s and q’s from here on out, you know, wash my old paws before supper and clean up my plate and say my prayers before bedtime and not play with my, you know, thing in the lonely dark I’m probably facing for the rest of my natural life, and if I get off the sauce, and stay off, well then, who knows, maybe old Bert the Goat and I will be together again someday up in goat heaven.
Isn’t it pretty to think so, old Ralph? Jim said.
Living Memory
1
As the years passed by and their lives set off in different directions, Jim and Ralph would always attempt to tie one up on some pretext or other at least once or twice a year, usually for a trip together somewhere, when they would draw deeply from each other’s memories and rehash half to death each shared event or disaster from the old days, and marvel time and again at all the dirty deeds they had gotten away with or for which they had come to forgive each other.
The final trip they took together began, fittingly enough, in San Francisco late one August. Jim had been on sabbatical leave that year from the Eastern university where he considered himself in deep disguise as a deputy professor. He had spent that year more or less bumming around, even hitching back and forth across country, perhaps in some final effort to recapture what he could of some romantic, rudderless, vagrant vision of himself. As Ralph had a new collection of stories out, he agreed to give a series of readings around the Bay Area to promote the book, as though at that point in his career any book of his needed promotion. The plan was to tie up in San Francisco, and Jim would carry Ralph’s coat while he knocked off the readings, and then they would head East together, pretending that they were outlaw authors on the lam like in the old days, making the perfect clean getaway in Ralph’s brand-new BMW. Ralph had standing-room-only crowds at each of his readings. He would read a few poems first, and then a story he had only recently completed based on the protracted death of Chekhov, which, as it turned out, was the last story Ralph ever wrote.
Ralph and Jim arrived in Iowa City early in the evening of their third day of cross-country driving. Although he had never lived there long, in many ways Iowa City felt like a hometown to Ralph, a sort of hometown of the spirit, for it was there that he felt as though his life had been released into significance as a writer, and where, for better or worse, he and Alice Ann had drifted firmly into that mythology that had carried their marriage forth for so many more years. They had been young and full of hope when they had first arrived in Iowa City, but while hunting for what they thought was the beginning of their real life together, they had merely figured out ways to inhabit their daydreams.
Ralph and Jim had taken a room at a large, new motel at the edge of Iowa City, and then Ralph suggested that they drive into town for dinner at a joint called the Mill, which Ralph described as being a big smoky barn of a bar and family-style restaurant popular with the young, hip faculty and students, and where Alice Ann had once waited tables in another lifetime. The grub at the Mill would be decent sturdy fare and plentiful and cheap, was what Ralph promised. At the Mill they would be able to get huge platters of spaghetti loaded down with fat meatballs, Ralph promised and, with any luck coming their way at all, laid. The joint would undoubtedly be packed with the current crop of young, hungry, would-be famous writers of tomorrow, bevies of horny writer- babes just clamoring to fuck their way to fame. Ralph had given a highly successful reading in Iowa City just a few months earlier, and because of the current critical and popular-press attention being given to his new book, Ralph was as hot as the old proverbial firecracker on the literary front. If he, old Running Dog Ralph Crawford, proclaimed high and low as the American Chekhov, could not get his load lightened in Iowa City, that hotbed of naked ambition and brazen, hungry heir-apparents, then he might as well pack up his pecker and go home to Momma, for what would be the worth then of fame for any man? Jim thought that this was a splendid idea. For surely simply being Ralph Crawford’s sidekick meant that he, too, might get a shot at cheap romance in Iowa City.
Before they ate, though, Ralph wanted to drive around Iowa city for a spell and wax nostalgic. A light rain had come up as Ralph took Jim on a tour of a town transformed by nostalgia, where the wet night streets shone purely with the lights of the past. Ralph drove them out to a small trailer-park at the western edge of town, where out front there was a ramshackle motel and tiny restaurant, which appeared to be closed up. Off to the right among a strand of stunted pines were a half-dozen little frame cabins, also apparently boarded up and nearly overgrown with wild shrubbery and vines. When Ralph and Alice Ann had first come to Iowa City, they had rented one of those tiny cabins, number 6, for a couple of weeks while trying to arrange for student housing on campus. They had left their daughter with Ralph’s mother in California until they got settled, so they were really alone together for the first time in ages, except for the fact that Alice Ann was pregnant again. But that didn’t frighten them, for they were green and fearless in the face of the future. They felt as fixed and steady in their course as those stars which were as fat as fish in the vast Iowa night.
Sure, the facts of thei
r lives didn’t match the myth they had begun to make of their marriage, but those two weeks of pure, wondrous, abandoned six-and-seven-course sex in that shabby cabin fed the fantasy of their lives for years to come. There, deep in the heartland, they took new heart in themselves. They refound the freshness in themselves, and they were never more certain that they would offer each other solace and companionship forever, and that over the years their faithfulness to each other would become legendary, and that they would be able to submerge fully in their perfect passion forever. Night after night, Alice Ann would come into Ralph’s arms an illusion, like the future, of untouched territory. My green, growing girl was just what Ralph would call Alice Ann, and press his face into her only slightly as yet bulging belly, as they lay on that old, violently creaky metal bed, night after night in the hot Iowa dark, the steam rising from their wet, slick flesh, after having once again made the most amazing abandoned love of their lives. Even the cockroaches running across the nighttime linoleum sounded like creatures transporting themselves joyfully into new lives, and the faint, cross-fading voices on the old radio in the corner sounded like whispery calls of encouragement from that beyond we call the future.
