Elephant Bangs Train

by William Kotzwinkle

  The woodcutter walked in the snow, breathing in the cold crystal of the night. His steps carried him to the rear of the castle, to a room lit by the glow of several lamps, in which the head of the mastodon sat, like an icon.

  He entered the room, wherein was working a taxi-dermist from Poplova who'd arrived that afternoon. The massive head rested on a table, tusks curling in the lamplight, and the old man was painting the skin of its head with translucent fluid. He saluted Bulnovka, and lifting the lip of the mastodon, pointed inside.

  'Buttercups,' he said, and extracted a small yellow flower from the great row of teeth.

  Marie

  MARIE COBBINSKI picked up her dress. We could see her legs, Ducky Doodle, Ralph Jenkins, and me. A summer wind blew through the room. Paper birds flapped on the window. Life was sweet, we were young, teacher was in the hall.

  'Ya, ya!' yelled Ducky Doodle. 'Last day in second grade!'

  The meadow tossed its perfume. A serpent danced in the sunlit grass. The earth was turning.

  'I wore my tap shoes today,' said Marie. Intoxicated, we stared at her knees.

  'Higher, please,' said Ralph Jenkins.

  Marie rose from her seat and stood before us in the aisle, blonde, beautiful, if a bit too full in the nose. She smiled shyly, tugged her dress up higher. Open-mouthed, we stared. The class was sailing airplanes. We were hidden in delight, beside the papier-mâché mountain in the corner.

  'Show us your panties, Marie,' suggested Ralph Jenkins. Ducky Doodle drummed on his head. I said, 'Oh, Marie.'

  Swept up in our admiration, she twirled in the sunlight, as a flower opened inside her, and the wind dived in the window, beguiling her. Unable to resist, she showed her panties.

  Our souls reeled. The distant ages wheeled into view. Ducky the Jester stood on his hands. Ralph Jenkins wiggled his ears. Our princess skipped down the aisle, holding up her dress with two fingers. The lilac bush beat on the windowpane. How nice her black two-shoes tapped.

  'More panties!' yelled Ralph, wet-mouthed, calling the toast.

  Over the seven hills of the valley came the summer goddess, trailing her veils. Marie bent over, threw her dress up from behind.

  Her panties were as white as Christ's linen, pure as the summer, filled with promises, sweet, untouched by vacationing boys. We buzzed around her, drawn by her delicate essence, her petalling prepubescence. She danced, we sang, teacher was forever down the hall, splashing in the fountain.

  The clock ticked and jumped. We had the answer. It was Marie Cobbinski, Ducky Doodle, Ralph Jenkins, and me. We cut the moorings, sailed away, out of the classroom and into the air. There, in the sky, the trapeze: I am swung from it, she catches me, we hang, suspended. I gaze into the face of love, uncertain if I am Ralph, or Ducky, or me, when suddenly, we are upended. The high wire is broken, the team is falling.

  'What is going on in this room?'

  Marie's eyes crossed, she bit her lip.

  Standing in the doorway was the teacher, a musty old bird of gloom, eggs petrified inside her. Cackling, she ran to her perch in front of the room.

  Ducky and I wheeled in front of Marie. She pulled down her dress. Teacher didn't see the panties, she was scratching in her nest. 'Marie Cobbinski, get to your seat immediately!' she said, and charged down the aisle with a ruler.

  Marie ran to her seat. We stood frozen beneath the beak of the hoarfrost bird. 'How dare you!' she shrieked, snapping Ducky Doodle by the braces. 'Hey, hey,' was all he could say. 'How dare you interrupt this class with your—' She smacked Doodle on the head. '—antics! Now sit,' she said, and catapulted him down the aisle.

  She turned to me. There were the little people in the village under the mountain, working with their rakes and shovels. 'Who do you think you are?' she asked.

  'Nobody,' I said.

  'That's right,' she said. 'Hold out your hands!'

  The ruler came down. There was a fire in my palms. I looked up. Taking my head in her claw, she clamped me in my seat.

  Ralph Jenkins stood alone, wet-mouthed and surprised. The class laughed. Ralph was a dumbbell. He'd catch hell.

  Head trembling, she went for him, past the open window. The wind caught her hair, waved it aloft. 'Oh,' she said, touching her bald spot. 'Why do you torment me?'

  She sailed towards Ralph, a Chinese dragon kite, red-faced and terrible, flapping her horny tail. 'I'll teach you,' she said. Ralph ran to the window, tried to fly, it was too late. He searched the sky, hoping to jump the room, but the summer goddess was playing with other boys in the valley, boys on the loose and miles away. The magic was ended. The dragon kite descended like a goblin from the moon.

  Beating her bony wings, she nested on him, pressing his head into her ribs, burying him in her paper gown. He was doomed, he was going under. He tried to save himself. He yelled the secret.

  'Marie Cobbinski showed her panties!'

  The earth stopped, the wind died, the dragon kite collapsed into an old woman. Far away in the next county, the summer goddess shuddered, fell to the grass.

  'Yeah, yeah!' screamed Ralph Jenkins, unable to bear the silence he'd created with the enormity of his curse.

  I looked at Marie. Her head was down. She was crying. The class was laughing. They would sing, we saw your panties.

  'Marie, I'm ashamed of you,' said the teacher. She walked slowly to the front of the room, climbed wearily on to her perch. So this is how it ends, she thought. This is how they leave me.

  Follow the Eagle

  JOHNNY EAGLE climbed on to his 750-cubic-centimetre Arupa motorcycle and roared out of the Navaho Indian Reservation, followed by the Mexican, Domingo, on a rattling Japanese cycle stolen from a Colorado U law student.

  Up the morning highway they rode towards the Colorado River, half-drunk and full-crazy in the sunlight, Eagle's slouch hat brim bent in the wind, Domingo's long black moustaches trailing in the air.

  Yes, thought Eagle, wheeling easy over the flat land, yes, indeed. And they came to Navaho Canyon where they shut down their bikes. Mist from the winding river far below rose up through the scarred plateau and the air was still.

  Eagle and Domingo wheeled their bikes slowly to the edge of the Canyon. Domingo got off and threw a stone across the gorge. It struck the far wall, bounced, echoed, fell away in silence.

  'Long way to the other side, man,' he said, looking at Eagle.

  Eagle said nothing, sat on his bike, staring across the gaping crack in the earth.

  Domingo threw another stone, which cleared the gap, kicking up a little cloud of dust on top of the other cliff. 'How fast you got to go—hunnert, hunnert twenty-five?'

  Eagle spit into the canyon and tromped the starter of his bike.

  'When you goin', man?' shouted Domingo over the roar.

  'Tomorrow!'

  That night was a party for Johnny Eagle on the Reservation. He danced with Red Wing in the long house, pressed her up against a corner. Medicine Man came by, gave Eagle a cougar tooth. 'I been talkin' to it, Eagle,' he said.

  'Thanks, man,' said Eagle and he put it around his neck and took Red Wing back to his shack, held her on the falling porch in the moonlight, looked at the moon over her shoulder.

  She lay on his broken bed, hair undone on his ragged pillow, her buckskin jacket on the floor. Through the open window came music from the party, guitar strings and a drum head and Domingo singing

  Uncle John have everything he need

  'Don't go tomorrow,' said Red Wing, unbuttoning Eagle's cowboy shirt.

  'Gitchimanito is watchin' out for me, baby,' said Eagle, and he mounted her, riding bareback, up the draw, slow, to the drumbeat. His eyes were closed but he saw her tears, like silver beads, and he rode faster and shot his arrow through the moon.

  'Oh, Johnny,' she moaned, quivering beneath him, 'don't go,' and he felt her falling away, down the waving darkness.

  They lay, looking out through the window. He hung the cat's tooth around her
neck. 'Stay with me,' she said, holding him till dawn, and he rose up while she was sleeping. The Reservation was grey, the shacks crouching in the dawn light.

  Eagle shook Domingo out of his filthy bed. The Mexican crawled across the floor, looking for his sombrero, and they walked across the camp to the garage where the pickup truck was stowed with Eagle's bike.

  Eagle pulled the cycle off the kickstand and they rolled it up a wooden ramp into the back of the truck, then slid the ramp in the truck, roped it down, and drove quietly off the Reservation.

  They went down the empty highway, Domingo at the wheel, Eagle slouched in the corner by the door. 'Why you doin' this, man?' asked the Mexican, not looking at Eagle.

  Eagle's hat was over his eyes. He slept a little, nodding with the bounces in and out of a dream. His head dropped against the cold window. The truck was stopped.

  Eagle stepped down on to the silent mesa. My legs shakin', he thought and went round to the back of the truck, where Domingo was letting down the ramp. Eagle touched the cold handlebars of the bike and stopped shaking. They wheeled the cycle to the ground.

  'I know a chick,' said Domingo. They pushed the ramp to the edge of the canyon. '—with a fantastic ass—' They faced the ramp to the misty hole, bracing it with cinder blocks. 'She live down in Ensenada, man, whattya say we go down there?'

  Eagle climbed on to the bike, turned over the motor, breaking the morning stillness. He circled slowly, making bigger circles until the motor was running strong, then drove over to Domingo at the edge of the ramp.

  'Buena suerte, amigo!' shouted the Mexican over the roaring engine.

  'On the other side!' called Eagle, and drove away from the ramp, fifty, a hundred, two, three, four hundred yards. He turned, lined the bike up with the ramp. A white chicken fluttered in his stomach. Domingo waved his black hat.

  In neutral, Eagle gunned the big Arupa engine, once, twice, and engaging first gear spun out towards the ramp.

  The sun was rising, the speedometer climbing as he shifted into second gear, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty miles an hour. Eagle burned across the table land towards Navaho Canyon, into third gear, ninety, a hundred, had jumped twelve cars on this bike, had no job, saw Domingo from the corner of his eye, was going one twenty-five and that was it as he hit the ramp and sailed his ass off into space.

  The cycle whined above the mist, floating like a thunder clap, and Johnny Eagle in his slouch hat rode lightly as an arrow, airborne in the glory of the moment as a sunbeam struck him in his arc of triumph, then his sunset came upon him and he saw the flaw in his life story, one fifty, man, not one twenty-five, as the far cliff for which he hungered came no closer, seemed to mock him through the mist, was impossible, always had been, and his slouch hat blew away.

  Don't go, Johnny.

  He strained to lift his falling horse, to carry her above the morning, to fly with her between his legs, rupturing several muscles in his passion and then as he fell for certain just clung sadly with the morning rising up his asshole, poor balls groaning Johnny Eagle, falling down Navaho Canyon, the geological formations quite apparent as the mist was clearing from the rock.

  'SO LONG, MAN!' he shouted, with quite a way to go, falling like a regular comet, smoke and fire out the tailpipe as the bike turned slowly over, plunging through the hollow entry. Jesus Christ my blood is boiling there goes the engine.

  He fell quietly, hissing through the mist, dreaming it was still dawn on Red Wing's red-brown thighs.

  Johnny, don't go. O.K. babe I'll stay here.

  But he saw the real rocks rushing past him.

  I uster dance. Neck down in the fender. She held me in my screwloose, Johnny Eagle, be my old man, babe I'm crazy and mus' go to Gitchegumee.

  Down in Ensenada man

  Domingo falling to the barroom laughing with his knife blade bloody, my look at that terracotta there like faces in the Canyon, Sheriff you kin let us out now, won't do no harm. There goes my shoes man where am I.

  A fantastic

  Water like rock. Thousand fist pound my brain out. Crack me, shell me, awful snot death crap death hunnert bucks that bike death cost me black death o no Colorado do not take me.

  Yes I took you Johnny Eagle

  Wham the arrow crossed the morning. I am shot from out my body whoooooooooooooo the endless sunrise.

  Some time later a fledgling eagle was hatched by an old white-headed fierce-beaked queen of the Canyon. She pushed the little eagle into space where he learned to soar, crying kyreeeee, high above the morning, turning in the mist upon the wind.

  And Domingo, riding down to Ensenada, to see the girl in Ensenada, crossed the border singing

  He saw Aunt Mary comin' an'

  He duck back in the alley

  The Doorman

  CHARLES SAT by the window, watching. Outside the buildings made faces. Look Charles we are old and cracked. On the street below the stone people moved slowly and Charles watched them six thousand years.

  'Lift your feet,' said Mother, riding on her rag stick.

  'I'm talking to the buildings,' said Charles.

  'No, you're not, dear, lift your feet so Mother can clean.'

  Charles lifted his feet like a good person. Mother waved her rag stick at the dirties who lived on the floor and they flew up in the sunlight. One was named Susan and one Betty Ann and Carol too, dirty girls make sissy and cucky.

  'Help me with your father,' said Mother. Charles stood up, turned around six times and walked to the chair in the living room, where Father was snoring birds out his nose.

  'Lift his feet up.'

  Charles lifted up the feet, and Mother made the dirties fly.

  'I am the stove,' said Charles.

  'No, you're not, dear, put Daddy's feet down.'

  'Yes, I am a greasy stove.'

  'Charles, I cleaned that stove this morning with Ajax,' said wipe-me-mommy. 'Did you find dirt on it somewhere?'

  'Dirty! Cucky and sissy!' Charles ran into the bathroom and slammed the door six times.

  'What's going on?' shouted Father. 'I'm trying to rest my eyes!'

  'Charles, do you have to sissy?'

  'Sissy!' shouted Father. 'He's thirty-five years old!'

  'He's sick.'

  'I'm sick, too. Of your sissy.'

  'Charles, what are you doing in the bathroom? Do you want me to help you?'

  The door opened and he was not alone.

  'Is it number one or number two, Charles?'

  'One o'clock two o'clock.'

  'Come along, dear, you don't have to do anything.' His hand stuck in her arm, the fly was caught. Mister Horrible walked alongside whispering Why don't you kill her, Charles?

  'Help!' cried Charles. Yes, bash her head in kill her. No said Good Nobody, bite Mister Thumb, bite bite bite

  'Charles, you'll bite your thumb off!'

  I am a meat market.

  'Are you all right?'

  'I'm dead.'

  'No, you're not, dear.'

  'You know,' said Father, 'this place is a zoo.'

  'It's time you were awake, Anthony, you've got things to do.'

  Charles is buried in a dark place uptown. The lights are out except one candle. There are no airplanes, not even the mayor.

  'I don't have to do anything,' said Father. 'I work all week to pay the rent on this looney bin.'

  'Why don't we all have a nice cup of tea?' said Mother, and cups came out of her hand.

  Charles sat down three times. This cup, hello, is cracked, and so the movie came on. The cowboy shot in the air. The girls behind Charles giggled. Charles is cracked, they said. He crawled away under the seats through the popcorn.

  'Charles, get off the floor.' Father's upside-down face came looking.

  'Cracky popcorn.' How did I get under the table.

  'Sit up, Charles, it's our favourite English breakfast tea.'

  Yes, sit up, Charles, that's a good lunatic. Look a
t the faces in the ceiling.

  'I read in the barbershop,' said Father blowing in his tea, 'popcorn is first in pernicious effect on the human body.'

  'You spend too much time at that barbershop.'

  'I suppose I should cut my own hair.'

  'Have a biscuit, Charles.'

  'Gobble, gobble.' Stuff it, up your nose, in your ear.

  'Eat your biscuit nicely, darling, you're not a savage.'

  Get out of the kitchen, Charles, she's trying to poison our monkey. Stand up, push back chair.

  'What do you say, dear?'

  'Ankle bush.'

  'You say excuse me.'

  'Yes sir.' Into the living room with Mister pig snake rooster, what do you say, excuse me. The chair is breathing. Executives like yourself use our credit card anywhere.

  Into the bedroom the quiet Mommy room. Oogly boogly nighttime squeak noises come from under here. Squeak squeak oh squeak squeak Anthony squeak squeak I love squeak you squeak

  'Charles, come out from under there! Anthony, Charles is under the bed.'

  'Maybe he's tired. I'm tired.'

  'Charles, you'll get all dusty, though God knows I cleaned under there this morning.'

  I am a chair.

  'Go on, Charles, get out. Mother has to dress.'

  Marching marching one two three to living Vietnam room marching round and round

  'Relax, will you, Charles, and let your old man pull himself together.' The old man and the couch were stuck together. Charles rode on a ball which grew larger, then smaller, then crushed him.

  Thump thump thump thump

  'What the hell goes on in this house!' Father devils came out with little forks, blue and red, let's have a birthday party Charles is five.

  Thump through the wallpaper thump down the lane thump you are magic thump here comes Mother.

  'Charles, stop banging your head against the wall.'

  'I work like a dog all week,' said Father, 'and on my day off, him.'

  'Charles, how would you like to go the store for Mother?'