A Horse Named Sorrow

  Then Eugene showed me the whole town—for hours we walked—never saying a word, either of us. He was expert in gesture and smile and eye. He made me see the shapes of things. He showed me more green bridges and pointed out the lumber mills stinking of sulfur and sawdust.

  Near the university, there were coffee shops full of students amid somebody’s idea of wisdom—always gothic towers and big elm trees. And there were strip malls that didn’t bother looking smart; they were completely unselfconscious in fact, downright ugly and undignified as if to assert: commerce is stupid. There were gas stations and their machine thirst; bars and neon hunger; cement walls with names of juvenile delinquents and Fortune 500 companies all over them; markets full of the humility of vegetables—poorly shaped sweet potatoes, knobby squash, deformed carrots and turnips—and other things trapped in their tiresome sales pitches of packaging. We walked past chain stores lit up brighter when closed; saw cop cars and semis, eyes heavy-lidded in lizard-sleep behind the bowling alley; there were lost-looking high-rises scattered about, and little houses rotting in the rust and mold of decay. Eugene was like any small American city, only a darker green, full of the stains and residues of puddles never quite dried; the earth’s face puffy from crying and whimpering—like the grief of America, un scabbed-over, an ulcer that never completely heals and can’t dissolve and dry up like it would in California, where the sun erases everything.

  Cremation’s for California, I thought. This place wants the body, the soil. What if we’d spent our year of love in Eugene, Jimmy? I’d have had to lug the whole body back from where it came, in a shroud—in a little trailer behind the bike, I suppose.

  It grew late in Eugene, where the days do not disappear but pile up like timber to rot or grow fungus—or maybe just remember. And it began to rain again, though only lightly. And we kept on walking— even though we were dog-tired—because we were a kind of river by then. Eugene pulled up his sweatshirt hood, wraith-like, and then we found a boarded-up shop and we sat there on the sidewalk under its awning, watching the rain and the darkness commence. He sat as close to me as he could, pressed up against me, and I heard him hum. Just like that, saying nothing, humming and looking out into the rain. Then he rooted around in his pocket and pulled out a little wooden pipe, packed it, and in the Oregon rain, we got stoned.

  Eventually he took me out of the rain and into a drag show at some little gay club. It was funny and entertaining in the way men are when they have nothing to prove. There were tired, beat-up blonds, whose hands were way too big, singing Abba songs—“Dancing Queen” and “The Winner Takes It All”—and overweight brunettes with puffy hairdos attempting to mimic Madonna or Kate Smith, or both. The freedom of nothing left to lose.

  One of the drag queens came up to us. She had an enormous hawk like nose, and with her cheap banged-up heels, stood well over six feet. “Ooooooh, child, you got yourself a little white boy again,” she chided.

  Eugene and I both smiled embarrassed, and then the drag queen turned to me and said: “You know Sioux means ‘little snake,’ and his a in’t, so I guess he is n’t. Ha, ha, ha, ha, …” Then she disappeared into her bitchy reverie of laughter, preparing for her act, while I tried to square the riddle of what she’d said.

  Then thin, gangly Eugene put his arm around me, and I felt that special high school date feeling I’d never known but always longed for as we watched Cherrie Kee lip-synch “I Will Survive” (with all its heartbreaking dramatic pauses)—adding, when the music faded out: “—in spite of the white man!”

  Eugene gave me a little kiss as the crowd scattered toward the bar and tables. And then he put his finger up to signal for me to wait as he went off to the bathroom. I headed over to the bar to get a beer and was tapped on the shoulder from behind by Cherrie Kee. “Hi,” she said with a big smile. “Where are you from? Don’t get me wrong with all that white-boy stuff—I’m a performer.” She smiled coyly.

  I was always cheered at the sight of a drag queen, and I grinned like a chimp. I complimented her on her act and then told her I was up from San Francisco. She asked me if I’d met Eugene at the market, and I said I had, and then she asked me if I knew he was only nineteen and shouldn’t even be in this bar.

  “People feel sorry for him because he doesn’t talk, and not talking he hasn’t offended anybody yet. Unlike me,” she added sardonically. “We’re both from the reservation. I’ve been taking him up here since his father died when he was fifteen. A mean, motherfucking Klamath alcoholic who used to beat the shit out of him.” Ow. I felt a pang that made me wince. I lit Cherrie Kee’s cigarette, acting the gay Bogart, and she puffed quickly, continuing: “Wasn’t actually his father though, it turned out. Long story. He was a real prick.” She laughed. “Me and Eugene used to fuck around back when we were just kids, and his stepfather caught us once. I can laugh now: 69ing in the back of his pickup truck. Ha, ha, ha.” She glanced over her shoulder and saw Eugene coming. “Anyway,” she hurriedly continued, “be careful. He’s a heartbreaker, honey. He lives in his own world, always has, always will. There was a time when he even talked. As a little kid. Don’t get caught up in him.” And she looked at me with a mournful sigh, like she knew it was more than I could handle, but that it was probably going to happen anyway. She communicated all this in a microsecond, as Eugene was soon upon us.

  “Hi, Eugenee,” she suddenly blurted, smiling broadly now and hugging him and giving him a kiss on the cheek.

  His story. Just the beginning.

  I panicked around then (either from the pot or the confidences, I don’t know which), and excused myself to go to the bathroom—never a good place for peace or refection in a gay bar. Everyone’s watching: the big trough of a urinal, filled with bar ice, like a model runway for dick— everyone’s member in full view. I wished suddenly I could meet someone for fast, cheap sex, and we could slip out the back door and I could be done with the hold Eugene had on me. Get on my bike and go. Oh, Blessed Mother, I prayed, find me some other lonely boy. And sure enough, walking out of the restroom, I spied a dark, lanky boy and loitered to catch his eye. He smiled and I walked toward him, and then I sat next to him on the bench he occupied. And the usual questions, and how tired I was to answer. And I couldn’t help searching out Eugene in the middle of it all; he sat waiting for me quietly, looking patient and sure I’d be back.

  “You okay?” the dark boy inquired.

  “I gotta go.” And for some reason I hugged him, which confused him but touched him somehow too. These places were so cold, and yet so warm—fire and ice, and even the hardest hearts could shatter in an instant. And I thought just then: they’re much better broken.

  So I gathered up my weak-skinned collapsing pomegranate of a heart—gathered it off the beer-stained, cigarette-lousy foor I did—and smiling humbly, walked back toward Eugene, transfixed by his gaze. And when I reached him, I just let myself fall into him. And we kissed in a way that made those around us notice.

  I wanted to make him then in the worst way, and I wanted Jimmy to be with us, and thought: Let me just run home and get the bag. Or better yet, maybe we should go back there to the frat. What better place for gay sex?

  So we left, but Eugene wanted to go back to the river. After all, there was a full moon out and the rain had ceased. We went down by another path this time, all wooded and really smelling northwest soggy-leaves dirt-fresh after that rain. Eugene pointed out several slugs and, laughing, prodded them gently. Even their reaction to danger was glacial, and I marveled at how they survived at all, wondered how they managed to get up the energy to do anything.

  There were the same rotting logs, but in the moonlight they didn’t look the same. The logs weren’t rotting—mushrooms were being born. And Eugene isn’t a horse or a snake—he’s a bird. The owl of him, nestled away inside that hooded sweatshirt.

  He took my hand then and we went back along the path to the place by the river where we’d been hours ago eating the fruit, and he sat down there and pulled out his
pipe again and lit it up. I shook my head no when he offered it to me as I was still plenty stoned from before. He took a long hit and pocketed the pipe, looked out at the river, exhaling, and then turned to me and kissed me deliciously. And we got our hands in each other’s shirts—and the warmth there. The rain and dark had driven everyone away from the river, and though it was a bit cool, together we were warm—all the while our hearts beating, knowing our penises throbbed with the same warmth and rhythm. Wanting to confirm and see it happening, I pulled at his clothes, and we pushed ourselves together, shoving our hands into each other’s pants as we discarded our shirts (and the air cool from the rain made our skin goosefeshed, which just made us cling all the tighter, rubbing our chests together, back and forth).

  And his eyes following mine, never losing contact with them. He was already way inside me. I tried to do the same back but my eyes weren’t like his. They were somehow lost and always looking, confused by words said or unsaid.

  Off came our pants, and we let each other pull down the other’s underwear before we reached for the cocks and held our fists around them as we kissed. And how we kissed and shared the innocent boyhood of nipples, biceps, bellies, thighs, fanks, and hands. I marveled at his skinny orange physique (a rust being?), and at the extreme blackness of his hair in the three places on the Y of his male body. Him all black and orange like Halloween and night fire and the day when the veil between the worlds is thinnest. My own private Great Pumpkin—but a skinny little pumpkin, in his case. A sweet potato.

  And his eyes: big white moons behind the green, green spirals that never looked away from me while we worked the pleasure up and out of each other. The smooth gnarled hardness of his slender, silent cock, the furious aggression in lips and a tongue that never spoke. We worked like well-oiled, heavy-geared, high-horsepower machinery together, laboring to produce the same thing: the want and the giving, the violence and the peace, the work and the play of it, all mixed up and become enormous in affirmation, like of course the universe is expanding, and this is the center—our shooting cum a birth of stars across our bellies, cooling and thinning and reminding us that entropy trumps it all in the end. Eh Jimmy?

  Because Jimmy was there too—up in the branches of the cottonwood tree. The moon.

  Jimmy wanted me to live. And living is what me and Eugene just did—the gravity and the entropy of it, the warping of space and time, the Magellanic clouds of our hearts cracked wide open and spilling stars.

  Eugene held me close and hard, smearing our seed together on our bellies, his hands on my buttocks, my hands on his. We fit. And we held each other a long time like that, nibbling each other, smelling like the heady pollen of chestnut trees. And I didn’t want to let go; I wanted to stay with him. Eugene, who wasn’t afraid.

  “Come back to the frat house with me,” I implored.

  Eugene laughed at that, and I explained why I was staying there. And then we got dressed, Eugene beating the dirt and pine needles from his discarded sweatshirt. I saw the smallness of his orange butt then as he struggled into his jeans. I wanted to fuck him next time; I wanted to fuck him until his tongue spoke again. I wanted to climb inside him; I wanted him to climb inside me; to fuck me until the heaviness and grief shot out of me—I wanted to make love with Eugene in that divine gay way that makes a Möbius strip of love. A kind of love a straight person can never know.

  I grabbed him and kissed him again once we were dressed, in gratitude. And he pulled me close to him. And for a while there was just that and nothing else. No sound, no nothing. Just him holding me, me holding him.

  Then we started up the hill, out of the trees—up from underneath— and into the parking lot. At my bicycle, he kissed me and smiled, and then he climbed onto the handlebars, while I tried to balance and get the bike moving. He couldn’t talk, but he could laugh, and his laugh was as low as the groans of the bad plumbing on Guerrero Street.

  We weaved crookedly down the empty streets of Eugene back toward the university.

  Fortunately, back at the frat, it was late enough, and a school night, so there was no one in the TV room where the kegs were, and we were able to steal into the house undetected, have a few beers, and make out on one of the ratty couches. In time, I showed him my little encampment. We sat on the sleeping bag, and that’s when I told him I wanted to show him something. And out came Jimmy in his pretty little purple velvet bag with the gold tassels. I unwound the ties and told Eugene, as he peered into the darkness inside: “This is Jimmy.”

  And then I spilled the whole tale. Well, the short answer anyway.

  He put one hand on my shoulder and looked at me and nodded. I started to cry a little bit and fell into him, and he held me like a friend.

  And Eugene had condoms, and more pot, and we stripped again because we knew what we needed to do, and we didn’t care about any frat boys. We only knew we had messages for each other—messages that we delivered enthusiastically for the next several hours with our mouths and eyes, and with our penises: me inside him, and he in me, sharing the Möbius magic. How he looked at me when he came, his eyes penetrating to the back of my skull where he drew his graffiti in bright colors right on my bones. He didn’t need to speak any words and I didn’t either—and that was a first. Chatterbox faggot, I’d never really had anything to say. What really needed to be told was communicated in silence.

  And dozing off, I thought about my father, forever silent, and the erasure that was Jimmy’s embrace, and about my mom. I’d never been able to get her to say anything of real import. I knew her through the records she played in her grief, hummed to me over the bars of the crib—the voice of my father:

  La, la, la, la, la, la … la, la, la, la, la. …

  When the light of the white misty morning woke me, I startled, for Eugene was gone. And I had no idea when he’d left. Granted, the sleeping bag was awkward for two, and he likely woke up feeling confined, but I was dismayed to think he’d gone without a goodbye. I was leaving, after all. Forever. The thought that I’d never see him again and hadn’t even said goodbye made my heart sink.

  I hurried to the bathroom, but he wasn’t there. And then to the kitchen, where I came face to face with four frat boys drinking coffee and eating corn fakes.

  “Anybody seen Eugene?” It came out before it occurred to me that they’d have no reason to know who he was—or for that matter, who I was, or whether I was referring to the town or a person. They just looked at me; I smiled disarmingly and retreated to my camp.

  Pull.

  I remembered then Jimmy’s words about giving love and not asking for anything in return. We’d had a wonderful time, me and Eugene. Be like Jimmy, then; ask for nothing in return. I’d lost my father and Jimmy—I could lose a boy I’d just met. I could pull.

  I packed up quickly, yanking a string off the threadbare couch and pulling a strand of the carpet up as well for good measure, tying them both to the bike. And when I had my rig all ready to go, down on one knee I went, Catholic blessing myself, thanking the Buddhas and saints for this campsite just like Jack Kerouac taught me to via Japhy Ryder in Dharma Bums.

  And I thanked Eugene too. The place and the boy.

  Hell, he couldn’t have said goodbye anyway. And what’s goodbye besides? Jimmy never said it either. Goodbye’s just a bag of dust.

  31

  I had to call the morgue and his family both. The Government Pages, I guess? Sure enough. I took a deep breath.

  “City Morgue, County of San Francisco. May I help you?”

  “Hi, uh, my boyfriend died . . . and uh, . . . I don’t know what to do about it.”

  “Are you his power of attorney?”

  “No . . . I don’t think so.”

  “Who is?”

  “I don’t know about that stuff.”

  “Hmm, I see. Are you in contact with his family?”

  “No.”

  “Do you know how to reach them?”

  “I can try.”

  “We’ll send someone
out. You work on locating his family. In the meantime, give me whatever info you have. His full name?”

  I wanted to say: “Chief Joseph. He’s like the most famous Indian ever and he didn’t want to fight no more forever.” I pulled instead: “James Damon Keane, and he’s from Buffalo, New York, and that’s where his family is. And I have his credit card and all that. He doesn’t have a license or anything. Just a credit card.”

  “And what’s your name?”

  I wanted to have his then; I wanted to say I’m Seamus Keane, his widow, or maybe Ms. Joseph, his number one squaw. “I sure loved Jimmy,” is what I said. “I sure loved him.” And I came apart right there on the phone.

  “How old are you, honey?”

  She ended up coming out with the guy in the morgue truck, and she sat there with me and listened. Sweet Monique, a big black lady who did the pulling for me, until I could get ahold of the rope of this life once again and do it myself.

  Like a barge, life. Pull, pull, pull. Where are we all going? Where are we going, Jimmy?

  Back the way we came.

  “You want me to deal with the family?” she entreated consolingly.

  “No, that’s okay, but we gotta cremate Jimmy; he’s gotta be here with me for a while. I’m gonna have to talk them into it.”

  Monique looked worried. “Did you say he needs to stay here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He can’t stay here. We gotta take him in. It’s the law.”

  “Can I visit?”

  “I don’t know. I suppose. No one’s ever asked me about visiting the morgue unless the police are doing it, or somebody has to identify someone. You already know who he is.”

  I got a worried look on my face, pleading. “You just gotta keep him there at least three days. It’s like a Buddhist thing with him.”