by Leon Rooke
But what with that I begin to think all the bad luck I done have had since them few months back when I marry Carmelitta, and I tear off a board from the well, and calm myself, and get me some tar from the roof that the sun done made so soft it drink like the Pepsi Cola, and I walk a mile into the desert and write on it with tar THIS WAY TO THE WELL and point it out over the footsteps I just come and then I walk back and tear off another board and write on it the same and walk back out half a mile and plant it in the ground and point it to the well, and come back again to the grave of Helene de Troy and say to her, “Sweetheart, bet your ass, the next sonabitch come along, he’s for you,” and soon after that I strike out from that ranch of the St. Lopete for more of the parts unknown, naked as a body can be, with the sun baking the skin, but what to care I about that, who can feel a thing at all after he have the good buddy die like the snap of the fingers and comes so close to it hisself?
Dónde está mi Carmelitta? Gone. Dónde está mi Roseda? Gone, gone. My Helene de Troy? Gone, gone gone. In all this world sometime a man not want to go on – but he go. In the heart he cannot be made to lie down while in the legs he stand. Why? For the ace card somewhere must be in the dirty deck he dealt. For he like the dog which curl up when he fed and stretch hisself when he wake and bark the mouth when he see and howl the night when he lone and march the land when he must the need come to do. Ah, me! Life, it is like the shepherds of Lasteenkens say, un mal negocio. I say that to myself over by the grave where Helene lay deep in the earth with the dark pain on her face. The trouble, Helene, I say, it all come from the first mistake a man to make. All the others the child and grandchildren, niece and nephew of the first – abnormal, backward, scrawny-neck, mindless children bastard of the first. A man, Helene, I say, if he go back to the first mistake to stand a man forever make the more. Yes? He not do that he remain un tonto, un ass, un ignoramus, his life mezclado con impurezas. Vine al mundo, Helene de Troy, me muero, a man must to live smart between. That Carmelitta a good girl sure, I find her now again, start the life new.
I go now, Helene de Troy. Adiós, mine amiga.
And so I do. But it hard to get back to where you never been before. And the days latter I no nearer to where it was I go.
I walk for all the day and the night and then the days and nights to come, with no mind to time or where I go, with the head like it in the frying pan and the sand gritting between the legs and the hot earth done eat all the soles off the feet. After a while it like I got so light the wind, when the wind come up, blow me along, and when the wind die down I fall down and sleep. And it rain the rain pour over me, it drip down my face and slide the hair in my eyes and it fall over the body and sit on me in pools, and the sagebrush slap against my knees and the dust crowd my eyes and once with the eyes wide open I walk slam into the big cactus tree and think for a minute I have arrived in Dallas Texas.
I go on, go on. Through the rain storm and the dust storm and the howling yellow wind. On the feet and then the knees and then the hands and knees and finally I think on nothing but the head. Socorro! Socorro! I die of thirst, of hunger, of the rotting blood! But I only repeat what I heard in reply. Nothing, nothing, and the sun go down. Sorry, sorry, holy mother mine, no le tengo envidia a nadie. For finally I see it is in envy of all the pleasure in the world that is brought me down. Through the night in what sleep I can to find there is the great voice in my head commanding baja, baja, Gónzalez Manuel. Go down, go down. When the skin has melted away to bone then you stand up again. And so I struggle on, waiting for the day to come.
Unto it is one day I feel the earth change between my feet and looking down I see sure enough there it is, the highway USA, big trucks, shining lights, Howard Johnson and the swimming pool down the bend. But for the hour I stand and the nothing see – only the white highway swinging there. “Calm yourself, Gonzalez,” I say, evitar el olvido. Think clear. Now the civilization you back, this way and that, but make no mistake which way to go. One way is Carmelitta, wife and first mistake to find, that the way to go for sure but how a man to know which is which. Baja baja, the voice say in the head, and I shake it and knock it against the hand till it come clear and I can shout above the trembling heart: no, no! Gonzalez Manuel, he is going up. But for the hours I stand and none the traffic come, one dead highway it. I sit down and nap and am led to wonder in my mind how a man can travel on, through the elements, so to speak, of flesh and blood, sand and storm, without no food to eat for days at end and how especial he can do such a thing when he got no cause at all to move one inch from where he stand. And only after so long and the day turning to dust do I hear myself say: “Get up from there, my friend, play the cards. When you die you die in the shade, not let the bastard crow finish you off where you sit. Rise and go.” And so convinced I stand and go the center line of the highway USA and follow along the way it stretch forever with never the curve to take. Walk, walk, you trudge the walk, one two three four, hup-hup-hup the soldier way, down the miles, the hours, on to the morning come, hup-hup-hup, this America, USA towns the everywhere, some one come hup-hup, you had the good home but you left, you right, sound off, on two three.
But in the end with the morning light I find I come to the no place at all. There by the road is the sign which read to it I cry
PARDON THE INCONVENIENCE
ROAD ENDS AT THIS POINT
SCHEDULED COMPLETION 1972
OK, OK. I a downhearted, yellow wop but I a man no less. Play me the trick I play the one to you. In the matter of time I uproot the sign and turn it round and sink it in the earth again and pack it down and with the smut pot from the highway side write on the clean side for the travellers to see.
FULL SPEED AHEAD
NO LIMIT HERE
and tear down the barricade and stand back to admire the work I do. Good, good! Helene, one more for the you, maybe I get one too.
With enough of that visiting for one day I leave the highway myself and go off into the desert the other way and keep my course to I can not stand no longer or walk another step. In the night I dream of poor Carmelitta and how I could use the alligator shoes myself now and I dream that night that the mad wolves of Lasteenkens come up and lick my face clean and bring me meat in the jaws and the big dog come up with the little barrel around his neck to give me water to drink. In the morning I am not surprised to wake with the fever and the thirst and the bare legs trembling and the hot flashes. There is the burrs in my head and the red bruises on the skin like the road map to El Paso and the stink to my hide like I nine days dead. The sun shines and the earth bake and the body burn but after a time the fever it settle in like for the long ride and I rise and walk through the desert with the feet sinking in the sand up to the ankles and who knows how long I go that time, finally, before I come upon the monastery with the boys and men coming out from the gate and falling over the walls racing toward me with they hands in the air and they faces flushing, crying words like, “faith!” and “He’s come back, he’s here,” and a dozen women I think then falling on they knees to kiss my feet and looking up at me with the face of love, more of it there than ever I see in my life, beating Helene de Troy when the fruit of the loins burst forth or even Roseda when she bite the orange and watch the John Wayne in San Miguel, or Carmelitta when she put herself in the alligator high heels under the wheel of the American-Detroit US of A car and drive off from me for never to see again. They look up at me and kiss and wash and kiss my feet with they lips and dry the feet with they hair and lips and stroke my bare hot legs and run they hands over my buttocks and generally marvel at my body like they can not wait themselves to get alone with the proper hold on me and I recall that moment with they hands on me all the faces of the women who done made up the choice spots in my life and I yield to they touch now and look down on them and say, “Suffer little children to be removed,” and I think on that message a minute and then try again to get the thoughts straight and the mouth familiar with the sounds, and look on the excited faces once mor
e, and have it straight this time and I raise the hands as I have seen it done and I say, “Children, children, I am come home,” and that is all I know of the day for I fall in my tracks right on top it seem of the soft bed of sighs and weepings and body flesh of the soft hips and loose breasts of the men and boys of the monastery all at my feet and reaching with they hands to hold me there, I not knowing in all the world of my mind when a man can rise again from such a fall.
HERE COMES HENRIETTA ARMANI
A. Three One-Sentence “Once Upon a Time” Henrietta Armani Stories.
1. It came to Henrietta Armani, once upon a time, that she was not the same person Henrietta Armani had been, once upon a time.
2. The sound of two hands clapping is not the same as that of two toes tapping, whereas, once upon a time, they were one and the same, according to Henrietta Armani.
3. Henrietta Armani wrrittes aa sttorry likke thhisss & callls ittt “EEEro” bbbutt therrre iis nnno “onccce uppponnn aaa tiiiime” inn hherr stttory, only little apple trees.
B. A Two-Sentence Story in Appreciation of the Cinematic.
1. Henrietta Armani lost herself in the movie, eating popcorn out of a box held between the knees of a second person Henrietta Armani refused to call by name, this arising out of principles vaguely formulating in her head. She did not think of him as a pleasant companion.
C. A Three-Sentence Story, One of Them Foreign.
1. When Henrietta Armani arrived home from the movies some dark person seated in the darkened room Henrietta Armani was forced to pass through in order to find herself in her own room said to whoever it was the dark person in the darkened room he (or she) thought it was (or might be) he (or she) was saying this to, “Who goes there?”
¿Quién va ahí?
D. A Multi-Sentence Story in Which the Key Word Is “Door.”
1. Henrietta Armani was intensely distressed and embarrassed that the room she entered possessed a doorway but the doorway possessed no door. It seemed to Henrietta Armani when she entered her doorless room that a darkness entered with her, which was darker than the darkness already in residence; in daylight this did not happen; i.e., the light did not brighten when she entered the doorless room – which failure, Henrietta Armani reasoned, must have something to do with the kind of person she was.
Yes. Henrietta Armani thought this even as she piled heavy boxes in the doorway, these boxes held together by baling wire which she now had no more of because the baling wire had vanished from her room while she had sat in the darkened movie theatre with an unnamed person.
Why did the house in which she now resided have no electricity? When she had rented the room a radio had been playing. She distinctly remembers. The room may or may not have had a door.
E. A Henrietta Armani Story Composed of Brief Declarative Sentences, with Footnotes.
1. Henrietta Armani, alone in her room, says, “I will.”1 She says, “I will not.”2 She says, “Why are you pestering me?”3 She says, “I hate you.”4 She says, “I wish you would drop dead.”5 She says, “I am such a lunatic.”6 She says, “Don’t tell me I can’t, if I want to.”7 She says, “This carpet is filthy.”8 She says, “That is the strangest thing.”9 She says, “I am eating an apple.”10 She says, “I applied today for three jobs.”11 She says, “What went with my money?”12 She says, “Do you have a parakeet?”13 She says, “You are an everlasting pill.”14 She says, “I refuse to tell you where I live.”15 She says, “I did not like it either.”16 She says, “Tomorrow I will try again.”17 She says, “If you do not like it you know what you can do with yourself.”18 She says, “Don’t you just wish that was so!”
The footnotes:
1 “I bet you will change your mind.”
2 “You always do.”
3 “Why don’t you calm down?”
4 “Did I ever say I wanted to marry you?”
5 “Be nice.”
6 “We all have troubles.”
7 “What does that mean?”
8 “I suppose that’s my fault also.”
9 “What? What is the strangest thing?
10 “I distinctly heard you say, ‘What is that noise?’”
11 “You won’t get them.”
12 “You are always flying off somewhere.”
13 “Don’t be silly.”
14 “Ditto, sweetheart.”
15 “Who wants to know?”
16 “The movie?”
17 “The doorman will not let you in.”
18 “I could have the police lock you up.
F. Another Henrietta Armani Story Beginning with “When.” The Saddest Story.
When Henrietta Armani went to the bar on Amsterdam Ave. she sat first at the bar and then in a booth, with no action at either. She sat at the bar again, and the barperson who of course was interested in her said, “You again.” After saying pour me another of what I had the other times, Henrietta Armani said, “What is the saddest story you ever heard?” To which the barperson, a decent sort who had been deserted as a child, of course said, “My own.”
“Tell it to me,” Henrietta Armani said, and the barperson would have done, each night of his many nights behind the bar had been waiting to do so. But the pool players wanted coins for their tables. An officious person on another stool at the long bar wanted a scotch and soda. A beer keg was foaming over.
In the absence of the barperson’s sad story Henrietta Armani told herself her own story, which was not the story her brain wanted to hear, although her body was content to have Henrietta Armani struggle through it. “It will have you in tears,” Henrietta Armani said to no one.
“Everyone I know is dolefully waiting out the hours.”
She did not know who said this.
Afterwards, the barperson appeared again, saying, “I do not like to see your head on the table.”
“Which table?” asked Henrietta Armani. She was again in a booth, and did not know how she had got there. The barperson’s voice was a nice voice which conveyed no malice.
Henrietta Armani said to this nice voice, “I do not wish you to think I am alcoholic,” being quite amazed to discover that not a single person was paying her the smallest attention.
“What is this?” she asked, and when she turned her head to examine the one thing, which was on the table beside her two hands along with the other thing, the other thing of its own volition lifted up and dribbled its contents down her throat, which was both a magical and an exasperating experience.
“Since my divorce,” Henrietta Armani said, “I trust no one. But I trust you.”
The face she said this to, someone passing, said, “You should eat something.”
She was sick for a great while and did not in the least mind.
G. A Continuation of Henrietta Armani’s ‘Saddest’ Story
Henrietta Armani walked down a long hall covered with grit and through another door marked with the notice DO NOT ENTER – only to discover behind the forbidden door a deserted kitchen containing two stainless steel tables with numerous gleaming objects of a practical nature hanging above the tables.
That is what she saw once she saw them.
Before this sighting she had to determine which of the many switches on the wall on this side of the DO NOT ENTER door worked to illuminate such gleaming objects, since, until that moment, the room, her head and its body, had all been wrapped in total darkness.
She switched this one switch off and on for a good many minutes, out of purest pleasure, because her own ex-husband, Mr. Demented, had once hung perhaps this very sign outside the door he went through each day or evening, after saying to the still air, “I must go and compose myself.”
This had transpired in a certain house, one vividly locked in her mind, which she believed had been located in the country. Willow Run were two words which seemed to her to sound familiar.
If she had on her person now a road map, she bet she could find it.
Each evening she had driven a car, the blue car, with her dau
ghter strapped into the daughter’s back safety seat, to meet the 6:15 train from the city. Where she had parked there had been a sign which said PICK UPS ONLY. Her daughter in the back safety seat would throw her toys and she would retrieve them and return the toys to her daughter to throw again. She could hear herself saying things like, “We must not spoil our supper,” and “You must be a good girl.” Sometimes, “We must be good girls.” One thing she often had said, and sometimes still did say, was, “This weather, I don’t know, it is so bucolic.”
It would be nice, she thought, and a composing thing to do, to hang a sign around her own neck, to hang it as that one had hung around his doorknob or as that other one did, not hanging, but nailed to a stick in the grass. Inasmuch as this sign hanging around her neck would be a thing which people must pay attention to. The sign would say, HERE COMES HENRIETTA ARMANI.
Her mother had only been comfortable with strangers, which was another thing she told herself she must think about this evening before she gave up the ghost and took a taxi home, assuming a taxi would take her there.
In her purse was the address, but where was her purse?
For that matter, where were her shoes?
On one of the several gleaming counters was a bowl of soup, Chicken Godiva, which someone had left for her, the note beneath it saying, “For you, Bubble Head.”