A Horse Named Sorrow

  I thought of how nice it would be to have a dog fetch it and bring it to me, perhaps a friendly raccoon; a bird of prey could pick it up in its talons and drop it off. Couldn’t it have broken free in the wreck and ricocheted off the tree into my arms?

  Wishing.

  It was at least ten feet away. Ten feet was forever. Ten feet right then was as far as Buffalo was from San Francisco. Ten feet was the fucking moon.

  Maybe it’ll be a warm night.

  Wishing.

  Wouldn’t it be nice to have a stick, or a lasso, or a harpoon, or really long arms … And we could be happy …

  For a long time, I just looked at it.

  Asking instead of wishing,” Louis had said. “That’s what crying for a vision is about.”

  Does anybody know what crying for a vision is really all about? Lights, please.

  Well, if I was Linus, what I needed right then was my blanket. And it was ten feet away. I could ask.

  “Great Spirit, help me get to that tree.” Praying to somebody else’s God—Jesus Jimmy, Mary and Chief Joseph … all the Buddhas … Thor, … uh, Diana, Innanna, Krsna, Rama, Isis. I ran down the checklist from my spiritual wanderings in the great midway of alternative religions that was San Francisco. Whoever’s on call, for God’s sake! (Oh him. He’s the one I left out—the one who’s not real keen on letting cups pass.)

  At least I’d be moving downhill. Yelping and barking, I dragged myself, clawing at the dirt, roaring through the pain, my knuckles tearing on stone and brambles. Stopping to rest, another wall passed through me, which this time felt like cement, about two feet thick. I groaned and shivered. I’d moved three feet.

  Fuck. I gotta do it again. And again. And then probably one more time. I should get there by next week.

  I wondered how close I’d come to Buffalo. Buffalo, Wyoming, like some mocking joke, had teased me with that highway sign, promising just ninety-seven miles. But the real Buffalo—hell, that was another two thousand miles down the road. Who cares? If I don’t die, I’m going home. Jimmy’s already headed downstream as it is. Better luck next time, eh Jimmy? I looked at the purple bag, near-empty now, a sad wrinkled sack, the testicles of it drained of all life, its contents sprinkled like powdered sugar on the stone and sagebrush, and the rest of it running down the creek—salmon in a stream, sure thing, Jimmy. And a tear rolled down my cheek.

  For the next three feet I sang out to meet the pain head-on. And no 1969 pop tune would do. I sang punk: Why don’t you dance with me?! I ain’t no limburger!

  Whoosh. This time the wall of pain was a solid steel door passing through me. I clamped my teeth, shuddered, and breathed deeply.

  Four more feet to go. I can’t do it. Whatever song would do now?

  God Save the Queen!

  Whatever it was that time—granite, iron, I don’t know. But it didn’t pass through. It came down like a hammer; slammed me like a fly to the wall, and I was out.

  Some hours later I awoke shivering, the air cool and damp and dark. I was leaning slightly toward my good side, and I looked over to see how close I was to the bike. Very, but not quite. I was able to reach out for the sleeping bag, but couldn’t quite get hold of it. I went for the stuff sack’s string that hung down into the spokes. I just kept stretching, then pulling my arm back and to my chest and stretching it different ways, bending it at the elbow, moving it around, trying to limber it up, breathing into it like they’d taught me in yoga. If I could make it just a tad longer …

  “Ahhhh!” The pain got me again. I’d stretched and felt a harpoon pierce my leg. But after the harpoon had gotten through threading me like a needle, I noticed I had my hand on the stuff sack string, and I clung to it for dear life, even as I felt the pain begin to emerge again. I roared as I worked my index finger into the loop of it and yanked.

  The bag flew over and hit me in the head as I passed the 2001 monolith.

  “Yes, yes,” I whimpered in sado-masochistical bliss, breathing heavily.

  Now I had to get into it. And no Jimmy to help me. So I told myself:

  “Okay, Shame, unzip it.”

  “Take a breath.”

  “Now, unzip it all the way.”

  “Okay, good.”

  “Take another breath.”

  “Now, drape it across yourself.”

  I couldn’t see getting into it—it being a mummy bag, a disturbing analogy considering. I lay my head back in a rather prickly shrub. How had I slept in this state? I looked up into the branches of the cottonwood, the underside of its leaves shimmering silvery in the moonlight.

  I heard a car go by. “Hey!” I shouted.

  Is this what I was going to do? Yell from twenty feet down a culvert every time a car went by? They’d never hear me. And they sure couldn’t see me. I remembered the road then, how it had banked around the curve, obscuring any view down into the creek. I hadn’t even known there was a creek down here until I was airborne over it. The hell with my Heys! then. I oughta be saying “Hoka hey,” and to myself.

  The realization of that began to grow in me as I considered it. How’s anyone ever going to find me? Even if Eugene and Louis had ended up on this road, they would have had no reason to stop. I realized then that I was going to have to climb that hill if I hoped to survive. Crawl it. There was no other way. And if each three feet equaled a concrete wall, I’d be taking on a small city.

  Something else hit me then. The wind. And I heard it then for the first time, whistling and hollow, blowing down the canyon. Ghostly. Me and death giving each other the too-long look.

  I inhaled fear; I exhaled hope.

  What did that Buddhist dude say? Beyond fear and hope—something like that.

  Sounds like a good place to me. But what was it—where was it? What were they getting at? It’s hopeless, so there’s no need to be afraid?

  I really needed to understand that just then.

  But I was getting more terrified by the minute. I’m likely going to starve to death, in pain, right here, while the world just floats right on by above me like these cloud herds of buffalo. But as I looked up for them, I saw the clouds were gone, and the night was full of stars. Far away. As far away as the road. Too, too far.

  Everything is hopeless, the Buddhists droned on—all you got is right now.

  Easy for them to say on their zafus.

  I needed a pillow. If I was going to die miserably, I wanted to be comfortable doing it.

  A pannier bag would do. I got up on my right elbow and looked for them. One was smashed between the bike and the tree, out of reach, while the other had been flung down toward the creek. And it was wet. Not from the creek either. Bleeding it was. Shit, that’s the malt liquor. Et tu, Crazy Horse?

  I looked at empty Jimmy then, swinging in the hopeless wind, royally purple in the moonlight. Purple as old blood, the journey done. My pillow, my comfort. Empty and gone.

  The bike had hit the tree sideways and it was bent into a boomerang, so that even though the back of the bike had been within my reach, the front of it was ninety degrees away, down across some rocks and hanging over the roots and boulders above the creek. Out of reach. And all those strings hanging on it. Poems never written. All those stories. Now they’re prayers, eh Jimmy?

  Not wishes, but prayers.

  I looked at my hand then, all scraped and dusty dirty. And there were the nail-polished fingernails from Eugene. God, was that just a day or two ago? It suddenly felt like years. Long, long ago.

  So much for right now.

  I wished I were back there.

  Wishing.

  What did Louis say about those colors? Sacred colors of the Lakota. The four directions. You call those when you cry for a vision. And this … shit, this is it.

  You ain’t no different from anyone else, Blue Truck. And sometimes if you don’t go out and cry for a vision, it comes crying for you …

  I was growing feverish and thought I’d actually heard his voice and looked around for him. Then I looked ha
rd at my nails again.

  He said to ask.

  I don’t want to die screaming, or whimpering.

  Ask.

  All I got left.

  “Great Spirit, if I’m gonna die, I’d like your help.”

  But how does that serve anyone but me? And I didn’t know who I was talking to besides.

  “Great Spirit, sir … uh, ma’am … I humbly ask you how I might serve my people from this rather compromised position.” And it occurred to me then that even if I died I could at least leave some semblance of how to do it right, and if nothing else the Buffalo Bee or whatever it was could run a story that said a young man got himself into a bad situation and yet he died with dignity by … going beyond hope and fear?

  I didn’t want to die.

  Ask.

  “Great Spirit, can you help me get out of here and show me how to be in the world? Show me how to serve?”

  I held up my hand then, looked at the chipped, dirty nail polish, and called the four directions as my witness: yellow pinky for the east, and pointed my arm to Buffalo; white index for the north (I swung my arm left up the creek); red for south (and toward the tree I pointed); black for west (and over my shoulder went my hand, reaching back toward San Francisco). And me the thumb right in the center.

  “Great Spirit, help me out, brother; I don’t know what I’m doing.” And I thought of old Rumi poems I used to jabber when I was Tammy Faye and Jimmy was losing his patience:

  Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

  I have no idea.

  I looked over at the empty purple bag. I’d never known how to love him proper. I did want something back. “Show me how to love the world, Great Spirit.”

  I didn’t want to die whimpering, but I whimpered then as my sad little life ran by me like the water in that creek, trickling by, off to nevermore. I cried—for the failure of it all, for the pain in my leg, for the terrible circumstance I was in; I cried for Jimmy and all he’d been through, for my father and my mother, for all the hollow-eyed boys at ACT UP meetings, pleading “no more.” I cried and I cried, and I cried until I cried out.

  I’m tired of being lost. Can I go home?

  Help Mr. Wizard.

  No more wishing.

  I was burning with fever by then and looked up at the constellations, twinkling, me muttering: … just ask … the stars…

  I fell asleep and dreamed. And I dreamed I was in the sauna at the YMCA and every boy who I’d ever been with came in, one after the other (a very big sauna, a stadium) with towels around their waists: there was Alejandro and Tran, Peter, Eddie, Yau, Tom, Mark, Larry, José, Deshawn, Sven, Henry, the Sages, Catnip, the Fennels, Willow, Gingko, Ginseng, Lars, Lawrence of course, the numerous nameless frat boys from Wheeler Hall, and the legions of anonymous guys from wherever, ad infinitum. Next came my mother, a larger towel to cover her breasts, and in her arms, which she had folded before her, she held the framed photo of my father, who suddenly smiled and said, “Hi, Seamus.” That got me. Doc Pinski came next, in all his rotundness, followed by Julie, Sam, Tanya, a whole crew of ACT UP guys and girls, my friends from the road—Ralph, Carl, and Ellen; the church lady and the dickering farmer from Idaho; the Marine from INEL; all the waiters and waitresses, hotel maids and receptionists; Mandy from the Y and all the little kids too—Miguel and Carlos, Mo and Ivan and Alice and Eustacia, so sweet in their little gym towels. Even Cavanaugh lurked in, and stood in the corner.

  Finally Jimmy, his nostrils flaring, horse that he was. My heart leapt. My man, my groom, my best friend, my love. My relation. I’d never cried in a dream before.

  Jimmy.

  And then I woke briefly, the sun shining straight into my eyes … midday. … I’d survived the night.

  I was thirsty.

  I fell back into the dream of all my relations. I’d forgotten to call them, but they’d come.

  I was back in the sauna and I was looking for Jimmy. But it was so hot in there, and there were so many of us, and he’d been way on the other side, and I was tired and thirsty and felt like falling. I needed something to drink. If I could just kiss Jimmy, and feel the cool night air of his mouth … if I could just kiss him, it would slake my thirst.

  “Jimmy,” I muttered.

  But he wasn’t there, and all the white towels turned to snow and then a big white sheet on the rickety bed on Guerrero Street, and I was with Jimmy, naked, and he held his finger to his lips and pointed at the ceiling. And a movie of our whole life together played there. There he was on the platform as the movie began, and me finding him. We rode the train to San Francisco and Chief Joseph was sitting on the BART train a few seats down. He held his finger to his lips as well. I watched our life in silence—stern looks from Tanya, sweet smiles from the twins, the many embraces of James Damon Keane. The sun rose and fell quickly over San Francisco and Mount Tamalpais, the fog rolled in and out, and Jimmy grew thinner and more peaked, and I grew sadder. And then I turned my gaze from the ceiling screen to look at Jimmy naked next to me and he was a skeleton. I woke with a start and it was night and the cottonwood was a green Virgin Mary and it told me to go back to sleep, and I did.

  And Jimmy wasn’t there.

  Then I was on a gray-white horse riding across what looked like a vast salt plain. I rode faster and faster until it was hard to move and the salt thickened, first to white mud and then to white stones and finally, it was bones—bones two or three feet deep. And it hurt as they rose around me and nicked my shins, and the horse could barely move through them, the bones pressing against us, dense and sharp and unforgiving. The horse was snorting and struggling and sinking as if in a current that was too strong. And all the while that mahjong sound of bones rattling and spilling everywhere.

  And then I saw a huge shadow approaching across the endless horizon of bleached white bones, and something came down from the shadow and seized me and pulled me up, up. And I strained to look up and see, and there was Eugene, who had sprouted huge black wings from his shoulder blades, and he was smiling his kind, crooked smile, and I whispered his name as we rose.

  I tried to ask him where he was taking me, but the words came slow like a record at the wrong speed. I wanted to say it didn’t matter, that I’d go, no matter where it was. I was lost and I’d go.

  But it was hot, so hot, and then I saw the sun—the sweet sun—and called out to it by its name: Jimmy!

  And I was blinded by it. And then Eugene let me go.

  And I fell.

  Hot and blind and shedding and snapping.

  And falling.

  And I awoke again to the sun in my eyes, my forehead on fire.

  After a while I slept again, and I was a burning thing flying through the sky, through cloud herds of buffalo, intent on the earth. I was a meteor, a mass of lava, sweating and throbbing and hot and heavy as stone. And I looked down and below me was Idaho and I was coming down, and all I could see was the sagebrush desert with a blue truck in the middle of it and Louis under the hood. I was the blackberry pie in the sky falling to create the Craters of the Moon! I tried to yell a warning to Louis but no words emerged. Bam!—and I hit the earth hard. Bam!—and it felt like those doors that I’d passed yesterday, like interplanetary kidney stones.

  I awoke to dusk and strained my head to see my throbbing leg, purple and burning like a mass of lava. And then I slept again and I was a bird flying above the lava—a bird on unsure wings. And the lava cooled and was Craters of the Moon again, but something more. It wasn’t lava now, but a thing that once lived and was now dead—an enormous buffalo, on its side, a stream of blood, like a river—a river from underground, the very one Eugene and I had made love alongside in the cave—flowing crimson into the sagebrush nowhere that was scattered with bones. And the river flowed through them, soaking them red, inundating and running through them as they piled up, clacking in the babbling stream—and I could see the gray streak of Jimmy’s ashes in the bloodwater, and I followed it.

  Jimmy.<
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  And then the blood river ran faster and the bones piled up into cataracts, and pretty soon there were larger things in the riverbed—white metal wreckage: washing machines and refrigerators, dryers, ovens, and then there were cars, all bone-white as ghosts: Jeep Cherokees and Dodge Dakotas, Winnebagos, Impalas, Mustangs, Pintos, Falcons. And there were people struggling to get out of them as they filled with blood. They were the Edward Curtis chiefs from the book: Red Cloud and Dull Knife, Sitting Bull and American Horse—and another in the shadows I couldn’t quite see—shaking the door handles, banging on the windshields. Like horses that have fallen and can’t get up.

  All submerged in the red tide.

  And the water filled with all sorts of things, and when I tried to make them out, they all turned into salmon. And we were on the crest of a great wave, some of the salmon flying out in front. Into sagebrush nowhere. And then out in the distance I saw hundreds of 2001 monoliths in a long snaking line, which as I got closer I saw were dominoes, thousands and thousands of dominoes, receding into the sagebrush forever ahead of us. And on the white circles of the dominoes were the faces of my queer brothers, ashen, emaciated, some covered in lesions, some peaceful, some raging, some demented, oblivious, asleep: Kyle and Vance, Gavin and Josh, Mark and Henry, half the boys I’d just seen in the sauna, ACT UP people and legions of others I’d never known, but who I’d seen on the streets of San Francisco. Even Thomas and Franco, my brothers for the love of Jimmy.

  The salmon flung themselves ahead of the bloody tide, hitting the first domino, and when it fell and went under, the next and the next, and so on. All of those faces falling. And then there were butterflies and birds slamming into them, locusts and grasshoppers, flies and frogs. All of those faces and all of those dominoes swallowed by the red wave. The din of them falling, so fast and heavy, pounding—like wild horses, buffalo, rain, drums, clacking mahjong pieces.

  I covered my ears, closed my eyes.

  Then the river of blood no longer flowed, but was like a great sea and it was rising all around me, boiling and rising. And I had to tread water or I’d drown. But I couldn’t keep my head up. Something was pulling me, pulling me by my left leg, pulling me under, back down. I struggled, flailed with my arms, swallowing great gulps of blood, my tears gray and ashen, muddying the bloody flood.