Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

by Tom Robbins

  “How has it worked out?” asked Julian.

  “In all truthfulness, I don't know. Communications from the ranch have been few and far between. I've called Miss Adrian several times, but the phone's out of order more often than not—it's a rather remote region—and when I've reached her she's been evasive. I think the cowgirls have her intimidated. On top of that, there's that crazed hermit sitting up on his perch watching the place all the time. The old coot is probably working a Chinese hoodoo voodoo on the whole operation. Gives me the shivers. You can understand why I'm curious. And why I'd like Sissy to check out the scene. What do you say?”

  Julian answered for them. “Let us have tonight to talk it over,” he said. “We'll let you know in the morning.”

  The Countess wasn't used to being put off, but he agreed. With his monocle casting a harsh glint on the wallpaper, and his good-by mangled by the emery of animated teeth, he departed.

  Discussion between the newlyweds erupted almost at once—and for a while it went smoothly enough. They were quick to agree that the offer had merit. They'd been breathing the same air for nine months, night and day, and a short vacation would refresh them both. Sissy's boredom with her new, inactive life was the principal source of their friction. A modeling assignment, especially one as interesting and lucrative as this one, could be a tonic for her. And while she was away, Julian could have some people over for poulet sauté aux herbes de Provence (his speciality), and perhaps join a group at Elaine's. By all means, a short separation could have salubrious effects.

  It was when Sissy announced her intentions to hitchhike to Dakota that conversation took on a tin edge, and Julian foamed and wheezed. He couldn't understand it; he couldn't comprehend it; he couldn't fathom it; he couldn't (choose your synonym). It frightened him, saddened him, drove him to the Scotch bottle and even to the medicine cabinet to fondle his nail scissors theatrically (Having no facial hair, Indians seldom own razors). He unleashed barrage after barrage of his heaviest asthmatic artillery. But Sissy stood her ground, and next morning when the Countess phoned, Julian told him:

  “She's delighted to be of service. She'll leave on Sunday. She's starting early because (sob) she insists on hitchhiking. God, just when I thought she was getting over it. Those thumbs of hers, those unfortunate redundancies; they are of no significance, yet how they complicate our lives.”

  In the bedroom, sorting out her old jumpsuits, Sissy overheard the complaint. Slowly, she turned her hands in the mirror, like stems, like daggers, like bottles missing labels.

  They seemed the best part of her body, her thumbs. The substantial, uncomplicated part. No orifices riddled them; no hair hung from them; they secreted nothing and harbored no senses to satisfy. They contained no slimy entrails; ganglia did not adorn them; they produced nothing that might be compared with earwax, tooth decay or toe jam. They were but the sweet, the unadulterated, the thick pulp of her own life, there in smooth volume and closed form, complete.

  Trembling while she did so, and blushing afterward, she kissed them. She blessed her life.

  These thumbs. They had created a reality for her when only somebody else's crippled notion of reality, some socially sanctioned parody of reality, was to be her lot. And now they were about to transport her to the Rubber Rose Ranch.

  Out where tall birds waded in a lake named for her Siwash kin.

  Out where Smokey the Bear lay down his shovel to romp with more playful beasts.

  Out where starlight had no enemies and the badland wind no friends.

  Out where the boogie stopped and the woogie began.

  Part

  III

  Though from time immemorial there were girls upon the ranches who could ride wild horses, they did it under protest and did not pride themselves upon it. Even today, in the great cattle countries of the south, no woman rides except upon a journey, and I do not think that even in the United States that many women take part in steer-roping or rounding up the stock.

  —Sir Charles Walter Simpson

  32.

  THE BROWN PAPER BAG is the only thing civilized man has produced that does not seem out of place in nature.

  Crumpled into a wad of wrinkles, like the fossilized brain of a dryad; looking weathered; seeming slow and rough enough to be a product of natural evolution; its brownness the low-key brown of potato skin and peanut shell—dirty but pure; its kinship to tree (to knot and nest) unobscured by the cruel crush of industry; absorbing the elements like any other organic entity; blending with rock and vegetation as if it were a burrowing owl's doormat or a jack rabbit's underwear, a No. 8 Kraft paper bag lay discarded in the hills of Dakota—and appeared to live where it lay.

  Now empty and leathery-wrinkled, the bag had been twice full. Once, long ago, it had borne a package of buns and a jar of mustard to a kitchenette rendezvous with fried hamburger. More recently, the bag had held love letters.

  As a hole in an oak hides a squirrel's family jewels, the bag had hidden love letters in the bottom of a bunkhouse trunk. Then, one day after work, the button-nosed little cowgirl to whom the letters were addressed gathered bag and contents under her arm, slipped out to the corral, past ranch hands pitching horseshoes and ranch hands flying Tibetan kites, saddled up and trotted into the hills. A mile or more from the bunkhouse, she dismounted and built a small fire. She fed the fire letters, one by one, the way her boy friend had once fed her french fries.

  As words such as sweetheart and honey britches and forever and always burned away, the cowgirl squirted a few tears. Her eyes were so misty she forgot to burn the bag.

  Back at the bunkhouse, in the twilight, her companions pretended they didn't know where she had gone or why. Big Red offered her a piece of homemade fudge and showed no surprise when she refused it. Kym, before retiring, smeared a fast kiss across her lips—very casual, as if she were brushing off a piece of lint. And Jelly, who'd been trying to plunk a carefree song on a hard-timed old Gibson, looked up at her and said, “You know, podner, you can tune a guitar but you can't tuna fish.”

  She was one of them now. God but it's good to be a cowgirl!

  33.

  THE OUTHOUSE RADIO WAS PLAYING “The Starving Armenians Polka.” Rain, a sudden downpour, a regular Dakota summer cloudburst, had trapped Bonanza Jellybean and Delores del Ruby in the privy. First Delores and then Jelly finished her business and pantsed up, but still they sat there.

  “Well, I'm not scared of a little rain,” announced Jelly.

  “Me neither,” said Delores, who would never admit to being afraid of anything.

  But neither made a move to leave. Instead, they stared out the door at the staircase of water that so resembled the one on which mermaids greet drowned sailors ("Would you like to come up to my room?” asks a mermaid, not much older than a cowgirl. “You bet, you bet,” glubs the excited sailor, silently thanking his hometown recruiting officer that he hadn't had the misfortune to die on dry land). The stairs of water hung there, in what used to be air, as if waiting for a midget submarine to slide down its banister.

  “Might as well brave it,” said Jelly, moving to the door. She was the ranch boss and had to set an example.

  “Right,” agreed Delores, the forewoman. “I don't know about you but I'm sure not sweet enough to melt.” She flicked her whip at a sweat bee that had also taken refuge in the privy. (Actually, she had been trying to wound not the bee but the photograph of Dale Evans upon which it had lit.)

  A meeting had been called in the bunkhouse that Saturday morning, a meeting that all cowgirls except those watching the birds were expected to attend, and over which Jelly and Delores had to preside. If the chief cowgirls hadn't stopped off, independently, to unburden their bowels (a habit that should be practiced by all presiding officers before they take the floor) and gotten trapped by a cloudburst, the meeting would now be underway. As Rubber Rose meetings went, this one was not likely to be unusual. Mary would complain that some of the cowgirls had been sleeping two to a bunk again, in
violation of the agreement that “crimes against nature” were to be confined to the hayloft. Debbie would say that she didn't care who lay with whom or where or how, but that the moaners, groaners and screamers ought to turn down their volume when others were trying to sleep or meditate (here and there a blush). Big Red would proffer an unsolicited testimonial as to the quality and quantity of Rubber Rose cuisine, a testimony in which each boiled potato, every dab of gravy, was described as smaller and less appetizing than the one before. And several of the cowgirls would voice their anxieties about the possible consequences of riding herd on the birds. But Jelly would pacify everyone, as usual, and by meeting's end there would be general smiling, hugging and expressions of solidarity. It promised to be a meeting with a familiar ring, but it had been called and therefore must be held. Jelly and Delores hadn't the right to delay it further just because it was raining Coke bottles and bananas. Let them take their soaking.

  Bracing themselves for a tall drink of water, straight, no chaser, they were poised in the shithouse doorway when all at once they saw a barefoot cowgirl—Debbie it was—run across the yard in her karate robe, jump on the Exercycle that was rusting in the weeds and begin pumping the pedals furiously in the yammering rain. “My sacred crocodile!” exclaimed Delores. “She's flipped.”

  But, ho, in a minute others followed Debbie, everyone of them, in fact; the entire bunkhouse load of them, some thirty young cowgirls, squealing, giggling, naked or near naked, all full of dimples and hormones. They slid and rolled on the wet grass, pushed each other into the mud that was forming by the corral fence, chased one another in and out of the thick folds of rain draperies, stamped their cute feet in puddles and did bellyflops into the overflowing horse trough. The downpour became a crystal chandelier, they its flickering candleflames.

  Boss rancher and forewoman eyed each other in astonishment. The hands called to them. Jelly felt minnows flash in her bloodstream. She undressed quickly. More reluctantly, Delores stripped down to her viperskin underthings. Together they dashed into the warm rain.

  The cowgirls frolicked until, as suddenly as it had come, the rain went away. Play ceased. The sun placed its horns in their dripping curls. They were panting like puppies as they leaned against one another or picked clods of mud from one another's hair.

  “I move that the meeting be adjourned,” panted Elaine.

  Debbie seconded the motion, and tacked on a Zen proverb: “At the end of the endless game, there is friendship.”

  “What the heck did she mean by that!” asked Heather, who made use of the privy while Jelly gathered up her clothes.

  Jelly studied the tired and sopping cowgirls walking arm and arm back to the bunkhouse. “Just that in Heaven all business is conducted this way,” she explained.

  34.

  WHILE BONANZA JELLYBEAN was cross-state in Fargo, closing the goat cheese deal, she stopped at a rummage sale and picked up a gang of old dresses and hats. The cowgirls were trying them on in front of the bunkhouse mirror. Kym mugged in a floppy pink chapeau that looked like a cross between a strawberry chiffon pie and a bloodhound. Using up her mirror time, Jody palpitated in a frilly green kimono. Delores inquired sullenly if there was anything in black. Elaine and Linda . . .

  Wait. Wait a moment, please. Even though we agree that time is relative; that most subjective notions of it are inaccurate just as most objective expressions of it are arbitrary; even though we may seek to extirpate ourselves from the terrible flow of it (to the extent of ignoring an author's plea to “wait a moment, please,” for a moment, after all, is a little lump of time); even though we pledge allegiance to the “here and now,” or view time as an empty box to fill with our genius, or restructure our concepts of it to conform with those wild tickings at the clockworks; even so, we have come to expect, for better or worse, some sort of chronological order in the books we read, for it is the function of literature to provide what life does not. In light of that, then, your author is calling “time out” to inform you that those events described in the opening chapters of Part III, as well as most of those reported in the various Cowgirl Interludes of Parts I and II, occurred after Sissy Hankshaw Gitche had come to the Rubber Rose and gone again.

  Conditions at the ranch were a bit different when Sissy arrived for her modeling assignment back in September 1973. Ostensibly, Miss Adrian was still in charge then, the Rubber Rose still functioned as a beauty ranch and the number of cowgirls there was no more than fifteen. Drastic changes had been made, to be sure, in the Countess's original plans for the spread, but it was not the same configuration of appetites nor had it the same mood or significance as the place about which the author has been sporadically writing.

  If he has confused you, the author apologizes. He swears to keep events in proper historical sequence from now on. He does not, however, disavow the impulses that led to his presentation of cowgirl scenes out of chronological order, not does he, in repentance, embrace the notion that literature should mirror reality (as the bunkhouse looking glass mirrored young cowgirls in old clothing, whatever the continuity). A book no more contains reality than a clock contains time. A book may measure so-called reality as a clock measures so-called time; a book may create an illusion of reality as a clock creates an illusion of time; a book may be real, just as a clock is real (both more real, perhaps, than those ideas to which they allude); but let's not kid ourselves—all a clock contains is wheels and springs and all a book contains is sentences.

  Happily, your author is not under contract to any of the muses who supply the reputable writers, and thus he has access to a considerable variety of sentences to spread and stretch from margin to margin as he relates the stories of our Thumbelina, of the ranch a douche bag built and—O my children, cock your ears to this!—of the clockworks and its Chink. For example:

  This sentence is made of lead (and a sentence of lead gives a reader an entirely different sensation from one made of magnesium). This sentence is made of yak wool. This sentence is made of sunlight and plums. This sentence is made of ice. This sentence is made from the blood of the poet. This sentence was made in Japan. This sentence glows in the dark. This sentence was born with a caul. This sentence has a crush on Norman Mailer. This sentence is a wino and doesn't care who knows it. Like many italic sentences, this one has Mafia connections. This sentence is a double Cancer with Pisces rising. This sentence lost its mind searching for the perfect paragraph. This sentence refuses to be diagramed. This sentence ran off with an adverb clause. This sentence is 100 percent organic: it will not retain a facsimile of freshness like those sentences of Homer, Shakespeare, Goethe et al., which are loaded with preservatives. This sentence leaks. This sentence doesn't look Jewish . . . This sentence has accepted Jesus Christ as its personal savior. This sentence once spit in a book reviewer's eye. This sentence can do the funky chicken. This sentence has seen too much and forgotten too little. This sentence is called “Speedoo” but its real name is Mr. Earl. This sentence may be pregnant, it missed its period. This sentence suffered a split infinitive—and survived. If this sentence had been a snake you'd have bitten it. This sentence went to jail with Clifford Irving. This sentence went to Woodstock. And this little sentence went wee wee wee all the way home. This sentence is proud to be a part of the team here at Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. This sentence is rather confounded by the whole damn thing.

  35.

  THE TROUBLE with seagulls is that they don't know whether they are cats or dogs. Their cry is exactly midway between a bark and a meow.

  No such ambivalences exist in the Dakotas. The Dakota sky is all of one piece; the Dakota wind is nothing if not direct; the Dakota dust suffers no identity crisis; the whooping cranes that sojourn twice each year in the Dakotas (where gulls don't dare to fly) know precisely what they are—their inimitable whoops attest to that.

  As one might expect of such singular, straightforward, no-nonsense territory, the topography of the Dakotas is almost uniformly flat. Vast vistas of arid grassland
s, open and unmodulated, thirsty and exposed, as level and smooth as a child's back before the first slouches and pimples set in, stretch from horizon to horizon like the most lonesome old chord on God's harmonica. Neither from danger nor boredom is there a place to hide. No Pan ever chased a tittering nymph across these solitary plains.

  At the western edge of the Dakotas, however, the monotony of the landscape, now gradually tilting toward the Rockies, is interrupted by a topographical turmoil so harsh and wild that humans, with a sense of morality that must amuse amoral Nature, have seen fit to call it the Badlands. The Ziegfeld Follies of erosion, the badlands flaunt their geological naughtiness in tall, towerlike buttes—heaping layer after layer of tormented rock and soil toward the sky—and sculptured canyons so deep and chaotic they can break a devil's heart.

  (In writing about the Dakotas, it is easy to speak of gods and devils, just as in writing about spiritual matters, it is wise to ignore them.)

  Between the forlorn prairie pancake and the eerie badlands ruins, there lies a narrow band of humpy hills, green and pastoral. Less than two miles wide in places, this band seems gentle and friendly in comparison to the physiographic excesses on either side of it. Small lakes glimmer in its hollows, and groves of trees are fairly common. To be sure, it collects a full share of summer scorching and winter blizzards; the near-constant Dakota wind extends it no special privileges; thunderstorms as righteously aloof as a B-52 pilot over an orphanage bomb it heavily with raindrops and hail; tornadoes have its number in their little black books and sometimes call. Nevertheless, if it is not quite an oasis, the ribbon of rises is definitely Dakota's sweeter streak. The hills are carpeted with midlength prairie grass. Cows have a tooth for this grass, as the buffalo did before them, and because the soil here is rich in lime, it provides the calcium that grazing animals need in their forage. Thus, the Dakota hills are partitioned into cattle ranches.