Daimon tried again. “Are you saying art exists even if it’s never seen?”
“Of course it exists.”
“But that makes no sense. Why make art if you don’t want people to see it?”
“That’s a different question. And I never said I didn’t want.” Benchere came off the grass. “I said it wasn’t necessary.” He wiped the soles of his boots on the blacktop, paused to consider whether it was worth saying more, then squared to the debate, offered this as explanation, “Whether or not what I build is seen or not seen has nothing to do with it being art.”
Daimon was beginning to wish he had all this on film, something he might review later and show others. He stepped back onto the pavement and asked for an example.
Benchere glanced back toward Jazz who was circling the pond but did not go in. He shifted sideways, said, “Alright,” and told Daimon to consider the Aurora Borealis.
“The Northern Lights?”
“What do you know about them?”
“They’re beautiful from what I’ve heard.”
“Beautiful right, and they existed millions of years before they were ever seen by man.”
“But the Northern Lights aren’t art. They’re a natural wonder.”
“Stay with me here.” Benchere asked Daimon next if he’d ever seen Stronghold? “Or the death masks of Frederick Delius? Or Sansovino’s Charity?”
“No.”
“Only a handful of people ever have, and yet that doesn’t change what they are. Do you get what I’m saying?”
Daimon struggled to keep pace, found talking with Benchere was at times like trying to wrestle smoke. “I get what you’re trying to say,” he answered. “But before the Northern Lights can be called anything they have to be seen. To say Stronghold is beautiful implies awareness. Beauty as a concept doesn’t exist without Man.”
“You’re wrong, Douglas,” Benchere used his heel to crush the mud that came from his boot. “You sound like the Florentines convicting Galileo. The world isn’t flat because you say so and beauty isn’t a concept dependent on anything. Beauty simply is.”
“A perception and nothing more.”
“Wrong again,” Benchere jabbed Daimon with his finger. “Perception is recognition. But to recognize something means it had to exist before. You can’t perceive what isn’t there.”
“And what’s there can’t be perceived unless someone sees it.” Daimon found this the flaw in Benchere’s argument. “When you describe something as beautiful,” he said, “you’re offering an impression. This is your assessment of the thing you see. Beauty’s in the eye, it’s not the thing itself.”
“You’re swimming upstream with that one.” Benchere shot back, “A thing is regardless of who views it.”
“It may exist but it can’t be acknowledged.”
“Who said anything about acknowledgement? We’re talking about what’s intrinsically there. You need to quit confusing the two.” Benchere lifted his right foot, flicked his ankle and sent dirt Daimon’s way.
Daimon dodged. At loggerheads, despite his best effort, he could not convince Benchere to abandon his claim. This idea of beauty and wonder existing on their own seemed more of an academic exercise, asserted as theory, while building a sculpture in the middle of the Kalahari was what? Who knew? Why go to the trouble? To what end? It made no sense.
Standing just off the sod, with the heat from the tarmac rising upward as if from some hidden furnace, Daimon recalled all he had read of Benchere as a vocal advocate for social and political causes. Why then go to Africa and build a sculpture for art’s sake and nothing else? “Is there something more to it?” Daimon asked again about the Kalahari. “Why fixate on an idea that seems completely self-indulgent?”
“Jesus,” Benchere tossed up his hands and told Daimon, “Stop thinking so much, you’re going to hurt yourself.” He called for Jazz then started around to the front of the studio. Naveed was inside talking with Julie, his arms behind his back as he leaned his head in closely. Julie smiled, then laughed and touched Naveed’s arm. Benchere reached the open door just as Naveed was whispering something new to Julie. He stopped and stared, thought of Marti standing in the same spot not so very long ago and the conversations they shared together.
Julie laughed again. Benchere stretched his hands, rubbed his chin, massaged his neck which remained stiff from the earlier weld. He felt what ached, what had settled there beneath the skin. Once, for a weekend, Benchere flew with Marti to Atlantic City. He left her briefly in the casino and went for a drink. When he came back to the floor, the carnival scene of lights and smoke and people chattering and hurrying about the room, the bells and cheers and groans from winners and losers, monopolized Benchere’s view and made it hard for him to find his wife.
He walked around the slots, past the tables for roulette and craps and blackjack. His search triggered his imagination, caused him to see everything as a wilderness; the layout foreign, each turn leading him to something infinitely more regressive and unexpected. It was all harmless at first, and yet the longer he went without being able to find Marti the more troubled he became. Where was she? What had happened? He went so far as to think that he had maybe somehow invented her, that everything was a figment, his feelings a dream with its own face and heart and history. What if she didn’t actually exist? What if everything was a creation he had conjured out of thin air?
The prospect unnerved him. How could Marti not exist when everything Benchere felt was so obviously real? Was it even possible for these emotions to survive on their own? Didn’t love require some physical host in which to take hold? Or was the opposite true, that love – like art and beauty – existed independently and people were destined to spend their lives searching out a place for it to root?
When Benchere did at last find Marti, sitting there at one of the far slots, her hand exercising the lever, her face a study in sweet concentration as the lights off the screen illuminated her cheeks, Benchere experienced a great wave of relief and let out a loud, “Aaaahh!”
Daimon caught up, held his camera against his side so it wouldn’t swing and bang into his hip. He looked at Benchere, at Julie and Naveed and back again. A plane lifted off two runways down and a white tail trail of smoke appeared in the sky. Benchere grabbed a towel from near the door and began wiping the mud from Jazz’s paws and belly. Finished, he tossed the towel into the studio. Daimon was set to resume their earlier conversation, but something in Benchere’s expression caused him to stop. He avoided asking more questions, spoke instead in supportive terms, did not mention Marti but said rather, “Whatever you’re up to, I’m still looking forward.”
“Are you?”
“Sure. Cinéma vérité. We’ll figure it out as we go.”
Benchere pushed his sunglasses back, stared at the sky, the blue of it there beneath the smoky scar not yet faded. Cued by Daimon’s confidence and keenness, he said in reply, “The trick to figuring things out there Douglas, is not getting too far in front. Circumstances change more often than not and consequences extend well beyond our ability to predict them.” Benchere pulled the keys from his pocket and shook them for Jazz.
Daimon watched Jazz run to the car. He understood Benchere’s latest pearl was meant as a caution, and yet, having filmed in Xinjiang and Chechnya and other hostile places, he wasn’t concerned and repeated, “I’m still looking forward.”
“Ha now!” With his back turned, crossing the tarmac, Benchere waved his hand and said, “Fair enough. For the record though, Dennis, we’re all looking forward. It’s a conditioned response. Unavoidable. We do it even when we think we’re not.”
4.
INSIDE HIS TENT, BENCHERE SITS LATE. THE OTHERS IN camp are asleep, or nearly so. Jazz stretches and settles down. The lantern is dimly lit. Benchere looks at the light for the longest time, stares until the glow becomes the only thing he can see. He reaches then and turns it off.
STERN IN THE morning stands atop the hill, watches for sign
s of life below. Far to the north, in South Sudan, air raids blast the hillsides, flatten Abyei, displace more than 100,000 people. In Nigeria, in the Central African Republic and Chad, rebel forces clash with government troops. Humanitarian groups, including the British agency Oxfam, have packed and fled. Rather than report these incidents, the press prefers to issue updates on Benchere’s project. They cover his story from the perspective of his celebrity, offer suggestive narratives, fuel the public’s curiosity while pretending to fill a need.
“Reporters,” Rose says.
“Lazy lot.”
“Good for nothing.”
“Good for a laugh.”
“I blame this whole socialist network.”
“Social,” Stern corrects.
“Say what?”
“It’s social, not socialist.”
“Ahh,” Rose takes the binoculars from Stern, gives a wry smile and leaves it at that.
A MONTH BEFORE setting up camp in the Kalahari, Harper flew to Africa in order to finalize logistics. An experienced traveler, Harper rented a plane in Maun and flew himself to Kalkfontein. From there he drove south toward Tshane. Directions to camp were mapped, drivers hired and equipment rented from the list Benchere provided from his previous visit.
At the end of his trip, Harper came back through the desert, crossed the border east of Aminuis, detoured into Namibia and the Windhoek Hotel where he planned to unwind before flying home. The Windhoek was an oasis supported by high-end safaris and wealthy adventurers. A casino ran off the lobby. Harper won $416 drawing ten to his jack and queen. He made friendly talk with a woman from Walvis Bay who joined him in his room for a nightcap.
Shedding clothes, they fell into bed where the woman gagged and suddenly became sick. Harper leaped up, helped her to the bathroom before she could barf on the sheets. The rapid onset of her affliction seemed suspicious. Harper imagined someone in the casino spotting him win the cash, and slipping him and the woman an emetic, waiting now to enter the room and rob him. A goddamn tsotsi. Worse has been done for less.
In the bathroom, Harper held the woman’s head as she puked fetid chunks. “Fuck me,” he cursed, then laughed to himself at the supplication. The woman groaned and wiped her mouth. Harper assessed his own symptoms, found that he was fine. As a precaution, prior to traveling, he took all the preventative medicines; Avloclor and proguanil, mefloquine and Malarone. If not an emetic, he hoped the woman’s illness was simply a bad meal, not dysentery or malaria, an infection from the bilharzias in the water or a reaction to a parasite. He went to the sink and rinsed his face. The water was cool. He was tempted to drink but knew better. Even at the Windhoek, Africa unfiltered was not a good idea.
He sat down beside the woman and stretched his legs. The air smelled sour. He thought about the days ahead, about returning to Africa and helping Benchere with his project. When they first met, more than twenty years ago, Harper was running junkets out of TF Green for Kelly Transport, doing jumps to Boston, Connecticut, Philly and New York. Benchere was newly flush, his sudden celebrity fattening his wallet. Harper flew him up and down the coast, drank with him on overnight stops. They became buddies, shared a certain anarchistic sensibility, began hanging out in Tiverton, in Providence and Warwick and New Bedford, where Harper confided his idea to open his own charter business.
Benchere made a few calls. Coastway Community Bank agreed to loan Harper the capital for a Piper Saratoga if Benchere co-signed the note. All these years later and Harper still had the plane. HighLine Transit now included a Douglas DC-3, a King Air C90B, and a Cessna Caravan 675. Three HighLine pilots handled cargo and passenger transport, each licensed for single and dual props, multi-engine and piston/turbine. Harper flew the larger crafts himself, was FAA and JAA certified, planned on using the Douglas to ferry supplies for Benchere into Botswana.
The woman called Harper’s name in a voice that sounded like a sick cat’s whimper. Harper heard her stomach growl. The discs of her spine were visible through her flesh as she hunched over. She shifted from her knees and put her bare ass on the floor. Harper wished he had some paregoric to offer. He helped her up and left the bathroom as she took care of new business.
Tomorrow he intended to fly home, would return in a few weeks with Benchere. As much as possible, all the arrangements for the desert were set. Harper found his cigarettes and the open bottle of Rhum Clément, smoked while waiting for the woman to finish. The chain on the toilet rattled and soon the shower ran in the bathroom. Harper scratched at his nakedness. “Crazy this,” he considered the story he’d tell when he got back to the States. Everything served as a prelude to something else. He turned the handle on the door, tossed his cigarette into the toilet and gave himself up to what remained of his evening.
ZOOIE ON TOUR. Road warrior. The 23rd of 27 gigs. All 8,000 miles covered in a GMC Savana. After playing the Acoustic Café, Zooie drove down I-95, parked at a rest stop near Bridgeport. Tomorrow she would play DeSoto’s in West Virginia. Small venues. On her own, six months after Marti died, she was learning to create distance.
The toilets at every stop smelled of Sanizide, Clorox and urine. In order to save money, Zooie slept in her van. Safe enough she told Benchere when he called and offered to pay for her lodging. A Motel 6 was better than the side of the highway, Benchere said but Zooie refused. Intractable. A Benchere trait. She had her father’s spirit, an artist’s resilience and preference for adventure over practical concerns. Physically she was more her mother, a slender spring curved through the hips and shoulders, her hands animated as quicksilver. When she spoke her words gathered speed, and when she laughed her eyes stayed wide and watchful.
The shocks on the Savana absorbed little of the road’s rough patches. With her were two guitars, an air mattress and pillow, a 34-inch Louisville slugger, one cow bell and a box of her first CD: Closed Exits. Of the 750 copies pressed Zooie had sold 212. She did radio interviews in each new city, gave her CD to station managers with the hope of getting airplay. Quid pro quo. They invited her for drinks and to see what else she had to offer.
All the miles between gigs were a meditation. On the dashboard, Zooie taped a photograph of Marti. Last week in Pittsburg, slightly drunk, she scratched Marti’s name on her arm using the end of a spare guitar string. Each letter appeared on her skin in a puffy pink pattern, settled there for days, traced over until the mark began to scab. Zooie took a picture of her arm and sent it to Kyle who texted in reply, warned against infection.
Just outside Stamford, Zooie’s cellphone rang. She checked the number then let it go to voicemail. Daily now, Pete Rayne called and tried to coo in Zooie’s ear. A trust fund poet, aspirant of Auden and Ashberry, peddler of promise, Zooie’s ex was forever boasting of the verse he’d write, the books he’d publish and teaching jobs he’d get. Tired of the chatter and lip service claims, Zooie ended the affair. In acapella, she sang Roy Orbison’s It’s Over. Rayne could not believe. Convinced everything would be alright once Zooie got home, he tracked her tour on a map of the east coast, asked each time he phoned, “How’s the weather? Is there still a chance for Rayne?”
DEYNA IN THE desert paces past the northernmost beam of the sculpture. Bare shouldered, her skin browned, she turns after thirty yards and studies the placement of the foundation deep beneath the shifting surface sands.
KYLE SLEPT AT Cloie’s, huddled on a mattress sunk in the center. The springs squealed whenever they made love. Sweating and clinging afterward, folded together and wrapped about as if dropped from a great height, their breathing settled into a binary loop of soft sighs, became synchronized as they drifted off.
In the morning, Kyle showered first. Cloie wore a cotton slipover with spaghetti strings, her skin the color of soft aspen wood; a mixed shade, her mother from Caracas, her dad from Cranston. Cloie’s eyes were deep set, intelligent. Native to the south side, the Gabriel Projects, Roger Williams Middle School and South High, Elmwood and Broad Street, RI Hospital, Thurbers, Prairie and Pavilion Avenues
, Cloie aspired to a particular matriculation. Concentrating on the prize, she earned PELL grants and a scholarship to Brown. A grad student now in Public Policy, her doctoral thesis on the Providence Plan, she met Kyle last winter at a fundraiser for CWRI – Community Works Rhode Island. Kyle flirted with her until she let him buy her a drink. She waited two weeks before kissing him, then said, “Your tongue tastes like cardamom.”
The sun through the window lit half the apartment’s floor. Kyle came from the shower and toweled off in the warmth. Tall like his father, more leanly muscled, his arms and legs a taut stretch of jute rope, his hands large and wet hair brushed back, Kyle worked as a project specialist at Maeur Development. His degree was in Urban Planning, his area of interest the reclamation of South Providence. Single-minded, he looked to wrestle the streets toward repair. Like Marti, Kyle believed in function and form, was more pragmatic than Benchere and Zooie. He met regularly with the City Planning Commission and the Department of P&D, discussed strategies for building better housing, better schools, an efficient infrastructure and reliable revenue stream.
Shortly after 8:00 a.m., Kyle left the apartment and took the stairwell down. The walls inside the Gabriel Project were green with red and yellow lettered graffiti, the trash a mix of pop cans and empty bags of chips, cigarette butts, cotton and tinfoil and burned matches. The heat remained inside the apartments like a sour steam. Kyle crossed the grounds and headed toward his car. A few men were already out front, waiting for a breeze. They watched Kyle pass, saw him each morning now in his suit and tie and said as he got near, “Who you here for, Chief? You sure you’re not a cop?”
Kyle laughed and cut across the cement. Sniffing the air as if some scent had him on high alert, he asked, “You smell that? It smells like updog.”
The others looked at one another, then back at Kyle and said in unison, “Updog? What’s updog?”
Benchere in Wonderland Page 4