Strange Cowboy (20 page)

God, oh god, the herky jerky Jesus.

Yes, and there was grass then, and a fertile soil, and a sun that seemed to burn inside
me, downward through my wife and through the earth, upward through my spine and through
the skies and into heaven, retrieving to my senses flavors of the air, of iron and
of seed, the wild, ripe slough of the food a child of ours might one day feed on.
We drove. We rolled our windows down, shut our eyes and said that nothing must be
finer than a sage scented rain; we sat inside the pickup cab and said that nothing
must be truer than our lacquered skies in winter. We said lacquered. We really looked
back then, said no to smooth, and yes to lacquered, of another sky said frazzled,
of other skies said yes to royal, and to frisky, and to tangerine. We drove to Soldier’s
Butte to see the sun eclipsed; in the back end of the pickup laid a palette down of
straw where we could spread our bedrolls out and watch the stars fall, or the moon
wax, while the crickets played and coyotes called across the blackened mesas. We walked.
We packed our bedrolls on our backs and camped. We remarked the tender petals, walking,
touched our naked fingers to the thorn and made a tea of bitter peaches. I showed
her where the sweetest onions grew in slim, green stalks. We picked them. We ate them
raw. We wrapped them up in foil with butter and with salt and pepper, buried them
beneath the glowing coals and cooked them. There was little rain. There was little
water. There were pools, hot pools, sulfury and mud-bottomed, ancient, steaming shallows
we would drive out through the falling snow to sit in, simmer in the seeping heat
up to our necks.

“Can you see me?” said my wife.

“Yes,” I said, “can you see me?”

“Yes,” she said, she saw.

She said
yes
, too, when I asked her if she felt it when I touched her underneath the water, said
yes
when in the Roxy, for the first time, I asked her did she hear me tell her that I
loved her, said
yes,
when on the old, long, plain road cutting straight off through our basin, I proposed
to her that we be married. We were married. A justice of the peace presided. My mother
bore us witness. No grudge. It’s just my mother missed the pomp and holiness of church.
That man, my mother said, that justice, it’s just she did not trust him. Did I remark
his dirty collar? It’s just my wife, my mother said, had I remarked the thickness
of her ankles? She said that she respected my attraction to my wife. She did not disallow
my wife her verve and perk.

“She’s a very perky girl,” my mother said, “cute, I like her. But how much do we really
know about her inner character? It speaks volumes, her fighting tooth and nail against
our church.”

My mother wanted me to know she would do everything “within her power” to assist us,
anything at all, just give a holler, said my mother, I knew her, she would be there.
We had her blessings. We joked, my wife and I, before my wife’s conversion, about
my mother’s blessings, sat down at the gift my mother made us of my papa’s cardboard
suitcase, which we covered with a checkered cloth and spooned our lentil soup from,
saying, Bless this suitcase, bless these lentils, bless you, Mrs. Dahl, your blessings.
We were poor, felt blessed, burned candles, stretched and squandered, cousined debt
and improvised. We stopped the threshold with a folded towel when the freeze came.
My wife dressed up our rotty wooden drainboard with a sheet of plexiglass and labels
cut from canned tomatoes, peas and beets. I etched blooming, May Day figures on
the frosted windowpanes. Together, we copied out incantatory shopping lists on scraps
of paper bag.
Beans, rice, ramen, beans, potato, rice, potato, ramen, ramen, ramen, ramen, ramen,
ramen, corn.
Two-for-one. Fifty percent more. Ten Percent Less. By and by we were progressed,
employed, promoted, went from seeing ten-for-a-dollar, to eight-for-a-dollar, to four-for-a-dollar;
for a dollar, by and by, we saw very little. We bought a table at a tag-sale. Sat
in chairs. We brought in placemats, forks, and bars of scented soap by sixes. We accumulated
little tins of ringshank nails and drywall screws, afforded for ourselves insurances
to cover losses of our lives, our health, our telephone, humidifier, vacuum. We traded
in my yellow pickup for a brand new Olds, cracked the oilpan on a roadrut half a day
by foot from home.

And where was home? And where was Italy? A walk away? A flight? A dream? Where were
we, I asked myself, and in which direction were we headed? Upward, I remember thinking,
inward, downward and apart. South, the day the oilpan cracked, by foot, by noon, by
a marchstepped walk and shadowless degree between familiar ranges. What happened was
I felt the pan crack on the rock right through my feet and I said, Uh-oh, and I watched
the pressure drop, saw the heat rise, felt the engine seize and understood the Olds
would not be for the ocean. Plans, vanishing schemes of us on the open road, postcards
of ourselves embracing happily across our waiting nation. I laid my head down on the
steering wheel. I saw the prairies burning on the floormat. I saw Chicago fall, heard
the blues wind down on Beale Street, watched the steeples and the leaves recede as
if behind a wall of tired water from New England.

I told my wife, I said, “I’m sorry.”

I spoke at my lap. I said that we could buy some records, maybe string some beads
up in the doorway, have a little Mardi Gras in Winnemucca. If we thought we were so
hungry for a Binez now, I said, then think of this time next year.

But my wife said, “Shall we?”

“Shall we what?” I said.

“Walk,” she said. “Let’s walk.”

And then it happened, while we walked, that I recalled my mother’s Rome. But I do
not think it can have been the sun or dust, not the desert-Rome I was recalling, but
rather possibly the real-life Rome my mother knew that she would never get to. A photo
of a ruin, a drawing of a rumor, a marbled dream my mother felt was cracking in the
heart she wedded to my father in the real-life desert. Rome, the capitol and glory
of my mother’s faith: she never knew it, neither capitol nor faith; my mother’s glories
passed in heaps of wool and broken eggs and crosses and a string of beads she worried
at our kitchen table.

Did I see glory? Lapsed? Lapsing? In my wife I saw a dime dress, past its second prime.
A dry wind blew. The road was graveled. The hoppers lifted at our feet and clicked
off through the sagebrush. I never saw the rock. In its prime I think I might have
never liked the dress, yet in its second prime my wife inspirited the dress with lines
whose early motion passed beyond the comprehension of its maker. The dress breathed,
it ebbed and surged forth with my wife, the certitude with which her body said it
would bring back into itself the satisfaction of its most uneasy wants. But the dress
was past its second prime. It thinned in patches. The fabric seemed to drag at her,
hang excessively groundward, as if it had been wetted, and wrung, and worn, and wetted,
wrung, and worn and was fatigued, stressed, as if the dress would like to lie down
now, fold
up on itself, reflect. I recall the dress had given to my wife some semblance of a
limp. We paused, and I recall her seeming to have shrunk down into herself, her mouth,
and when she stepped out of her sandals I could see by the force she had contrived
to gather at her mouth that I should not object; leaving back her sandals was a gesture
she intended. Panties, too. She stepped out and left her panties back behind her,
and her brassiere, her necklace, her bracelets, her earrings, her finger rings—excepting
for her wedding ring—and by and by, her dress.

Here was a hot, high sun, a hard ground and a long way off to any certain water, and
my wife, a tenderfoot, I thought, not immodest, seemed bent on ruined feet and spectacle,
on making of herself to passing innocents a living proof of what could happen to a
man and woman ventured too far off alone together in the desert. Yet who passed? Who
could be so innocent? Snakes and ravens, rabbits, buzzards, toads—these passed, these
witnessed, and what could they have made from us? Enough, apparently, enough. Whether
by the toad, or by the raven, I felt myself to be rebuked, judged and fairly sentenced
to the same defrocked and joyless march in which I saw myself preceded by my wife.
I wanted to follow her, feel what she felt; I thought that I might find myself absolved
there underneath our dry, blue noon in sex.
Maybe I would get some.
Somewhere in me was a cheerful voice assuring me that what this needed was our getting
laid.

But she did not wait. I paused to take my boots off, and my shirt, my pants and underpants,
my socks, and there she kept on walking. Myself, I looked back each time I paused
toward our car. I looked at my chest, my belly and my feet. I watched out for my wife,
receding slowly on the road before me. Poor car, I thought, poor wife, poor me. We
were never to be fixed. We left the car,
my wife and I, and my wife left me, and we never were returned. Not completely. Not
yet. Not to each other. We reserved ourselves, perhaps had been reserving something
of ourselves since we began to recognize the price of berries bought in winter. I
ran to catch her, and even as I ran I felt I should be leaving back my things behind
me, just as she had, though neither my things nor myself seemed much to be within
the focus of her caring. She cared about beans. She was talking about beans, in any
case, caringly, when I caught up to her, a bowl of beans, raw beans soaking in a bowl
that rode on the floor of a car she must have ridden in before me. I walked beside
her, short of breath, listening over myself, wondering what all I missed from Rome
to beans, how she’d talked herself out of her clothes, and through that hardness at
her mouth and into the face I liked to think a priest might see of a girl at first
communion. Sweet girl, pagan cheek, a moistened tongue on which to bed the transubstantiated
body of our savior and our lord, Christ Jesus.

My bride.

My wife.

She said, “My feet turned blue. That’s because the beans were black. I didn’t care,”
she said. “The top was down. It was hot. My feet were burning up on the floorboard
and he told me—he was just a boy—he said,
Stick them in the beans
! I thought we must have looked so wild, waved at anybody passing. I thought with
the wind that it would look to anybody we would see like we were screaming. Of course,
we
were
screaming, yelling, anyway. That wind would come around and box your ears and then
you couldn’t hear and then you could, and when you heard yourself you started laughing.
We could have died. The car was rusted almost out. Some junker from Wisconsin. Had
three-on-the-tree. We laughed at that, too. Almost anything, we laughed at. Or we
cried. The world seemed
like a broken wire then, like anything I touched would give me a fantastic shock.
Once I ran away from him, through a field. I felt like I felt when I was little, being
chased, wanting to be caught and tickled. There were dandelions. When he caught me
he loved me. The dandelions were taller than we were. I think he might have been asleep,
on top of me, and I was watching over him at those dandelions and it made me cry to
see them scatter when the wind blew. Another day, before that boy, and after, I would
have known better than to cry. There would be some part of me I held inside to keep
me back from laughing. Nights, or days we stopped and walked around to take some time
with what we thought was pretty, he would wash my feet. Creeks and lakes and rivers,
sinks and motel baths until he’d got the blue out. Sometimes, even when he washed
my feet, or we were lying out at night and being quiet, still it felt to me like he
was screaming. I thought if he would ever stop that he would break into a million
pieces. He was for me, I thought. He was for me to keep from stopping, and if he ever
stopped, and broke apart, then he was for me to pick his pieces up and put him back
together. We ate those beans. Cooked them one night all night long, in a silver thrift-store
pot, over an open fire. Was that love? I hardly knew him. We always drove so fast,
never with the top up, always with our hair down. Nut-colored hair, that was him.
I knew him in bits of eye and teeth. That’s where I saw myself. Broken wires. How
much more was there to know? Who could I stand to love better? Only that was never
really what a person wanted either. I was too afraid. We wanted too much to live.
We didn’t want to die of it. Sometimes, I thought another kind of man would come to
me, less breakable, more quiet, and that would be the man I’d want to live with. A
man who figured miles-per-gallon. One who set-aside. If you wanted orchids, then he
bought you
orchids, and if your feet were hot, then he rolled the windows up and turned the AC
on, said he’d have the radiator looked at. When I met him, I didn’t know it then,
but I was on my way back home. I had been as far away as I would go. I didn’t know
anything. What I wanted. Mr. Set Aside, if maybe he just once would not have showed
up Fridays on my porch step with the flowers I had asked him for on Wednesday. Somehow
if you ask for an orchid and you get an orchid it’s like getting socks. He made me
fat. Around my heart, a human being’s purest muscle, if anybody cut me open, he would
have seen a half-inch casing grown around my heart of fat. I thought I would drown
in my own fat. If I had thought to ask him once to let me be alone, and he had left
me alone, I think I would have drowned for good, or hanged myself, or stuck my tongue
in a socket just to feel what I had felt when I was living. I was dying. That’s how
I stopped wanting. I asked him would he take me for a drive, and rent us a convertible.
I told him about those beans. I was mean, but I was exciting myself. Maybe if he would
have hit me. But he understood. He must have thought I wanted understanding. He took
me to the shore. I was dry. I said I wanted him to kiss me so he kissed me. I told
him to love me, but I was dry. He pushed away at me anyway, had his pants around his
ankles and his elbow jabbing in my shoulder and his hand down there to help himself
until I told him stop. So he stopped. I did it for myself and said for him to watch
me. Take a lesson. I let him know that I was thinking of my feet, and dandelions,
and then I said that I was ready, and so here he came and didn’t seem to mind it that
the name I used for him was never his but was the boy’s. A dog had more desire. I
could have been a whole lot kinder to a dog.
I understand,
he said. And you know I think he did. That man was a murderer. He drowned me. He
was good to me. In the end I
think he got all he was wanting. He was pretty old. I was too pretty for him. He caught
me out, and then I left him. Coming back, I made myself some rules. Rule number one
was that I wasn’t back to stay. I thought that I might stay until I could remember
better what I missed and left here wanting. Hardly long enough to rent, I thought.
And if I meet someone, I told myself, then another rule must be to leave him just
as soon as I start telling myself he’s good for me. If it’s understanding he is giving
me, then I don’t want it. I thought I wanted it, understanding. I thought I partly
left here because I wasn’t being understood. I know I had a bad feeling I was getting
too old for myself. I didn’t know what flavor gum to chew. I know I wasn’t ready yet
to switch my lipstick. Any girl I saw in town I went to school with I would try to
duck. I could see them, if I saw them, how they looked at me like they were sorry
for a girl who didn’t know that it was time to get her hair cut. All-the-best-boys-here-are-happy-men-and-married-and-I’ve-got-one—that’s
what you could see them saying by their hands when they were picking through the peaches.
Maybe it was me, but the question I kept hearing was,
Where’s yours?
I paid two months rent here, and if there had been a place in town a girl could get
a ring hooked in her nose, I would have got one. Some days, I would tie my hair in
pigtails with those silly bands. I wore boots and played at being cheerleader. I felt
good. I was remembering how home could make a person feel her least familiar. I liked
having those women wonder had their best-boys-happy-married-men been happier some
night with me. I thought I was ready to leave. But then I packed, and then I couldn’t
finish packing. I wondered would I always feel like I was being pushed. What if I
wanted to stay? I thought I might be being silly. I got all turned around inside myself,
decided to try wanting not to want what I thought I wanted. A person who he
did and didn’t understand me? What was that? I stayed put. Where would I go? Who could
take me? From where I sat, I was seeing too much cardboard. A full box, an empty box,
a bad smell from a skinny, oatmeal colored carpet. What I learned of moving was you
had to learn all over where to go to buy your stamps or find a ripe tomato. I thought
I saw how a person came to never knowing which drawer was the one she kept her scissors
in. And I didn’t want to spend my life on spackling someone else’s picture holes.
And I thought how anywhere you went the people there would never care so much for
you as they could care about each other. Anyway I liked it here, in the desert, didn’t
I? I took drives at night, all by myself, way outside of town, on the other side of
any mountain, where you couldn’t see a single light except what light you saw out
in the sky. I’d stretch out on the roof of the car, or on the hood if it was cold,
and I would think and just remember. I did like those fires. I didn’t care much for
the pep squad, but when we stacked those palettes and we got them burning up as high
as they would go, that was something I could watch with feeling pretty lucky. I felt
different. I saw a picture of myself a little older then and gone away, maybe walking
somewhere in a city. Maybe I was sitting in a room with fifteen other girls, waiting
to be interviewed for a position, and I could likely know I was the only one of us
who ever saw a fire burn so high and far away as I had. I told myself that I had two
good feet, good skin. I had strong arms and a lovely bust. There were worse places
to be. I don’t know what awful thing I thought had happened to me that I didn’t want
to ever be here. I love the sage, the smell of it. I love how dark it gets and bright
and thick the stars shine. I thought some nights if I could make myself simpler to
myself, narrow myself down, if I could make myself as simple as a star. Wouldn’t I
find what I wanted? Didn’t people still
have something jump inside them when they really saw a star? If I could make myself
that simple thing, I thought. If I had a diner I could go to, maybe Grace’s place,
if I could go to Grace’s every Sunday afternoon and have her say my name as like she’d
practiced it inside her head and waited all week long to have me hear her say it.
But then I lost my sight of what a simple thing might be, or I never had it, or I
was afraid to be so small and all alone, lost-feeling, up there in the dark, if that
was me down here, a simple, lonely light of all the others. I didn’t trust myself.
Not that small of a self. Something knocked in me, I couldn’t hear myself and wanted
out. I couldn’t be so small, I thought, I was a mistake, I thought I was my parent’s
fault, anything they might have fed or told me, what clothes they sent me off to school
in. I felt buried. Too filled in. It came to me to blame my sex. Things filled me
in, between my legs, my mother, felt like, and my father, gum and pigtails and those
pompoms and that bowl of beans—I couldn’t stop them—that boy, I thought if I could
be a man, have a stick between my legs, then I could trust myself to be much simpler.
I could take myself in my hand and point myself in the direction I wanted to be headed.
That would be my one want, nothing could come in enough to upset it. I would be all
out. Except I wasn’t. I was all unsteered. The stars, when I remembered I was looking
at the stars, they came out to me all blurry. I was crying. I let myself. I made myself.
I couldn’t see. I hoped I wanted to be here. I said,
I hope, I hope, I hope, I hope.
That was a simple thing. It wasn’t much. It helped me to cry. Some night, one night,
I knew that I would never leave here. I hoped. I told myself if I could know for certain,
then that would be enough. I was here. I hoped that that was what I wanted.”