Ash Wednesday

by Ethan Hawke

  “I don’t know, man,” I said, and then out of exhaustion I added, “Listening to you and the bullshit coming out of your mouth has fucked me up my entire life, and I don’t want to hear any more.”

  “Bravo,” the old guy said, finally giving his beard a rest and clapping his hands. Having this character as an ally didn’t make me feel any better.

  I remembered being fourteen years old and my father driving me back to my mom’s house—the same house that used to be theirs together. We had just spent the weekend goofing around and were both sitting inside that same yellow Plymouth Duster. He took the opportunity to inform me that the reason my mother and he had split up was that she’d begun sleeping with his best friend shortly after I was born. “I know it’s been hard for you,” he said, sitting there jiggling with the radio, “and I probably shouldn’t be unloading this crap on you, but your mom—man!” He shook his head, exasperated. “She’s what some men would call a project.” He looked up at me intensely and thumped me hard on the chest with his forefinger. “Watch your ass! Women, they don’t want to love you, they want to make you very small so they can fit you in their pocket.”

  “No, no, no, you’re misunderstanding me,” Steve said, sitting down next to me. “I’m not selling you any bullshit. My wife, man”—just mentioning her was stirring him up—“she’s a top-notch ball-buster. I should’ve never married her.” He reached into his back pocket and pulled out his wallet. “But she gave me these three little guys, so I guess she’s not all bad.” Inside his billfold he had a picture of three small boys. “These guys are great, but their mom—that’s another story.”

  “Why’d you marry her?” I asked, holding the picture of his kids. They were handsome blond boys, about two, five, and seven.

  “Can I see the picture?” the old guy asked from the corner.

  “No, don’t give him the photo,” Steve told me. “He’ll get his crabs and scabies all over it.”

  “Come on, let me see it,” the old guy said again, and I handed it to him. “Thank you,” he said, taking the photo.

  “All right, take a look,” Steve relented, “but wipe your hands first.”

  Next Steve took out a picture of his wife and stared at it. The picture was at least ten years old, but she was clearly an attractive woman.

  “I married her ’cause she’d scratch my head to help me fall asleep. I get headaches, you know? Real bad ones. And she started making these long faces every time one of her friends got an engagement ring . . . so you know? Whammo!” He slammed his fist into the hand with the photo.

  “How you doin’ over there, Long Arm?” he said, placing his face between the bars.

  “Relax,” the cop said, not looking up from the computer.

  “There’s a little tiny window in a man’s life,” Steve continued, turning back around to me, “when you’re actually a man and can do as you please, but the rest of the time you’re working for Mommy. Either yours or your kids’.” He paused.

  Sitting there, I vowed that if I got Christy back I would never allow her to become my mother. That was my job. Treat her like a woman and she would treat me like a man.

  “We’re men, we have peckers, we want adventure, to get drunk, fight, go to whorehouses—and there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s livin’; you gotta feel the blood move in your veins. My wife she holds her nose in the air like I’m a boy. But I’m not a boy.”

  “The lady doth protest too much,” the old guy quoted again from the corner.

  “Shut up, asshole,” Steve snapped. “Women are the protectors; we just protect the protector. We operate outside the family circle, like lions. We’re warriors, man, hunters and outlaws, and if you deny that inside yourself you’re livin’ half a life.”

  “Now you really sound like a boy.” The old man was scratching his beard again. The action seemed to give him an inordinate amount of pleasure. “We’re not warriors, we’re men of God, children of God, and if you can’t pursue a more noble action than fighting and fucking, you’re just gonna cause misery to yourself and everybody around you. Humility is the only thing worth learning. Shatter the ego. Dance in the perfect contradiction of life and death.”

  I noticed the old guy’s ankles, how swollen and disfigured they were. He wasn’t wearing socks, and the fungus and filth of his skin made my stomach queasy.

  “If you want to fight something, fight yourself.” He rambled on, getting more zealous as he spoke. “Everything that’s born dies, right? We all agree on that; the only thing we don’t know is when. Today, Ash Wednesday, is the day our Father set aside for us to acknowledge that our death is coming and could arrive at any moment.”

  “Oh, that’s a real upper,” Steve muttered under his breath.

  “It’s uplifting if you listen,” he snapped. “We carry that truth with us so that we can engage in life more deeply and with a richer sense of gratitude. Dust to dust,” he proclaimed. “The word of the Lord is the spoken teacher. Death is the silent teacher!”

  Finally there was quiet in our cell for a moment. I hoped the conversation was finished.

  Steve looked over, staring at me with an almost melancholy expression. “What are you, almost thirty?” he asked me, after a long beat.

  I nodded.

  “Fuck, buddy—YOU’RE IN THE PRIME OF YOUR LIFE!” he whined. “You shouldn’t’ve gotten married. What are you, crazy?” He leaned in front of me, his blue eyes bright and pleading. “Go out and score as much as you can. Shoot the moon. This old dude’s right: We all get older. Believe me, cowboy, it’ll happen to you too. I used to take off my shirt every chance I got. I mean, I had abs for miles”—he sucked in his gut and punched himself hard with both hands twice in his fat belly—“and chicks would drop for me. Now I leave my shirt on even while I’m screwing. Look at me, I’m falling apart.” He stood in profile and let his gut hang. “You’re a good-looking pup, panties will drop for you, but it’ll stop. I shit you not; it will stop. Go out there and get some ass, cowboy, quick as you can. Listen to the old man, someday you’ll be dead. But”—he paused, forcing me to look in his eyes—“don’t ever let them see what you got inside, in here.” He thumped his hand against his chest. “That’s you, baby, don’t show it to nobody. They’ll use it against you and burn you alive. Trust me on this one.”

  “Give your heart to everybody you meet,” the old man chimed in quietly. “The rest is pretense.”

  “Super, so you go sit up there in heaven and hock luggies down on the rest of us, good for you. We’re livin’ on earth, OK?”

  “I’m on earth right now, but when I go to meet my heavenly Father, I hope he will say, Bruce, your entry fee has been paid.”

  “McNally,” the cop called from behind his desk.

  “Yeah, boy.” Steve spun around.

  “Does Arizona mean anything to you?”

  “FUUUUUUUUUUCK.” Steve gave out a Comanche death cry that shook the foundation of the building. “You can’t do that, man. You said I was good to go! You can’t go back on your word like that. You can’t do that!”

  “Oh, yes, I can.” The heavyset cop smiled. “Looks to me like you should sit down. You’re not going anywhere. Except maybe back to Arizona.”

  For a full minute Steve looked out in dumbfounded silence. The back of his red head was perfectly still. Then slowly he turned around.

  “Don’t look at me!” he yelled at us. “Don’t either one of you two motherfuckers look at me.” He kicked the bench I was on and threw himself down on the floor to sit with his head buried in his hands. Turns out he had escaped from a correctional facility outside of Phoenix two weeks earlier.

  For the next five hours I sat there waiting.

  Ever since I’d met Christy I seemed to have lost all my friends. I didn’t want to, I loved my friends. I loved drinking and talking about ass, bowling, driving fast, basketball, chatting up eighteen-y
ear-old girls with their heads full of air; I loved all that with a passion.

  I just loved Christy more.

  I wondered if I would really be able to be a faithful husband. I hoped so. One day at a time, I figured, like an alcoholic.

  She told me she loved me after the second time we slept together. We were lying in bed watching the Knicks like we always used to do. “I love you,” she blurted out. I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing. It seemed so kamikaze. We barely knew each other.

  Finally the officer called my name and opened the door to the cell. A court date and a fine had been set for the speeding. Officer Parks let the illegal concealment charges slide, partly because of the unspoken alliance between the military and the police and partly because he was a good old boy who didn’t want to harness me down with a felony. The gun was confiscated. It was an old Colt of my grandfather’s but it was no big deal. I didn’t want the damn thing anymore. My car was waiting for me in a lot on the other side of town. And I had been formally discharged from the U.S. Army, the conditions of which were still outstanding. All I could think about was getting back to Christy.

  Steve didn’t even look up as I stood up and moved out. The bearded religious dude in the corner waved. Stepping out of there, I was hell bent on spending the rest of my life figuring out a new, more accurate definition for being male. I didn’t want to be a monk or an outlaw. There had to be a middle way.

  In the waiting area of the sheriff’s department, I dialed Christy’s dad and the hospital: no luck at either place. I switched to Plan B: Go directly to the hospital. I called a cab, stumbled outside, and waited.

  There was no activity whatsoever in my brain as I sat on the front steps of the police station. It was now about four in the afternoon and the sun was still bright. Looking up at the clouds, staring into the sun, I sighed. Everything was so different from what I thought it would be.

  When I was nine I shot a bird, a red-tailed hawk sitting on a telephone wire in our front yard. I started thinking about that. Squeezing the trigger slowly, I popped him square in the chest. He didn’t fall. His talons had instantaneously clasped the wire, and he hung there upside down. I promised myself right then that I would never kill another living thing. Holy shit, I was glad to be out of the army. I didn’t ever want to kill anything. I’d be the first guy down in a war. That dead hawk hanging in the sunlight was what I thought of whenever I thought of love. So much regret.

  As my taxi pulled up, I stood and started down the steps. Before I reached it I saw Christy step out, pay the driver, and turn around. She looked up at me, just as surprised as I was looking down at her. We were about twenty paces apart. I could barely see with the ten thousand thoughts racing through my mind. She shrugged her shoulders and gave me a faint smile, placed both her hands on her belly, and without speaking nodded her head yes.

  Floating down the front steps, a fresh gust of wind at my back, I felt new, like one or maybe all of us had been resurrected.

  Acknowledgments

  In the creation of this novel there are so many people to whom I am indebted. First off, for his conversations and ideas, the playwright Keith Bunin; my editor, 2x going, Jordan Pavlin, for cutting out all the boring parts; my staunchest ally, Jennifer Walsh; also I must thank her husband, Patrick, for his friendship; Bryan Lourd, for his unflinching support; everybody over at Knopf and Vintage, particularly Sonny Mehta and Marty Asher; Dr. Gae Rodke, for the medical tutelage (not to mention for delivering both my babies); Jann Wenner for his early encouragement and advice; Patty LaMagna, Angela White and Sam Connelly; the late Thomas Merton and Allen Ginsberg, for the inspiration; Quentin Tarantino, Greta Gaines, Frank Whaley, and Jason Blum, for listening as the story unfolded; Richard Linklater, for meeting me down in New Orleans; Charles Gaines; John Starks; Spencer Tweedy, for his insight into the nature of dogs; my family, most notably Leslie Green Hawke, Howard and Mary Green, Bronwyn Hopkins, Patrick Powers, Sr., Patrick Powers, Jr., Heather Powers, James Gay, and Matthew and Samuel Hawke; and of course, Bob, Nena, Ganden, Datchen, and Mipam Thurman. I am so grateful to you all.

  And finally, Uma, Maya, and brother Levon, without whom there would be nothing.

  A Note About the Author

  Ethan Hawke is best known for his starring roles in the motion pictures Dead Poets Society, Reality Bites, Gattaca, Before Sunrise, and Training Day. He was the cofounder and artistic director of the Malaparte Theater Company, based in New York, and is the author of the novel The Hottest State. He lives in New York with his wife and two children. He is thirty-one years old.

  ALSO BY ETHAN HAWKE

  The Hottest State

  THIS IS A BORZOI BOOK

  PUBLISHED BY ALFRED A. KNOPF

  Copyright © 2002 by Under the Influence Productions Corp.

  All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Distributed by Random House, Inc., New York.

  www.aaknopf.com

  Knopf, Borzoi Books, and the colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Hawke, Ethan, [date]

  Ash Wednesday: a novel / by Ethan Hawke.

  p. cm.

  1. Absence without leave—Fiction. 2. Automobile travel—Fiction.

  3. Unmarried couples—Fiction. 4. Pregnant women—Fiction.

  5. Soldiers—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3558.A8165 A93 2002 813´.54—dc21 2002020811

  Ebook ISBN 9781400040117

  v3.0_r1

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