Vandal Love

by D. Y. Bechard

  He finished the night in a highway motel and started again the next morning and again drove through the day, through the Canyonlands and Rockies, the high slow interstates, dark pauses in windy passes for coffee. Then south to Las Vegas, New Mexico, and finally a fishhook sketched on the map: back west to Santa Fe, north on 84 through the dry, red broken lands.

  It was late in the afternoon when he stopped at a casino surrounded by a mostly empty parking lot in a dusty excavated bowl. He got a room in the hotel. Afterwards, he found the pay phones and called Peggy. Over the years, they’d spoken only when it concerned Harvey. He asked for his address but didn’t tell her where he was. She said she’d called to see if Harvey was still on a vow of silence, but the man he lived with had said he’d gone. François didn’t want to betray his worry, but he’d never heard of a sadhu and judging by Peggy’s faltering description of what the man had told her, she hadn’t either.

  She sighed. I don’t know what he’s doing, but he isn’t even answering his emails.

  François got the address and said goodbye. He went to the bar for directions. A doorless entranceway gave onto a conference chamber. Dozens of slinky young women in evening gowns and heels were taking their places at tables while an older woman spoke in a French accent. The bartender told François, when he’d elbowed against the bar and asked, that it was a two-day workshop in etiquette and social graces for the Miss New Mexico contenders.

  Out here?

  Scenic, the bartender said, and inexpensive.

  François didn’t want to get distracted, but when he passed the doorway, a cold breathlessness took his chest. Looking at the slender shoulders, the artificial bosoms, he wondered if he’d ever gone beyond wanting this. The girls smiled at nothing apparent, their skin tight with stupid youth. The immensity of the country still buzzed within him like feedback behind his eyes, and it was impossible to believe in dying. How could he put everything right in one lifetime? He had so many images of those he’d loved, of himself when love was such a bright thing, Ernestine or his hopes for Harvey.

  In a fumbling sweat he went to the car. The asphalt of the parking lot radiated the day’s heat.

  The trailer park wasn’t far. There, the strange withered man invited him in and served him tea like that he’d once endured with Peggy. But the walls of books impressed him, so much learning and, in a sense, hope. Perhaps there were answers here for even his sickness.

  Harvey’s gone, Brendan Howard told him. It had grown dark out. The trailer roof ticked as it cooled. Good luck finding him, and by the way, he’s called Sat Puja now.

  Afterwards, François drove aimlessly. He followed narrow roads with cattle guards, past clusters of trailers or the occasional garage with stripped cars parked bumper to bumper. This was another’s land and truth. He’d realized coming here that only the highway was familiar, like a river depended on for sustenance. How far had he come since his first journeys? What could he teach? What if sameness settled about you like dust and you never found the secrets, never grew wise in anything but waiting? Perhaps he’d passed a poverty of spirit on to Harvey. He’d given him no dreams of the land. For years he’d thought he’d lost the family strength in translation. But that or blaming Peggy could go only so far. There had been the tenderness François had tried to abolish within himself, and so perhaps Harvey was living out the cycle. What had François known of his mother anyway? His father? He recalled only landscape. He was impressed that his son had come to such a place. He drove, slowly turning bends, the red earth rising up ahead as if the headlights were splashing the hills in blood.

  The day after Sat Puja had stayed up until dawn, the night’s emotions lingered. Not only the radio but Andy’s talk had carried him into another world. A few times Sat Puja had asked about Juanita, and Andy had told stories, sadly hesitant and pausing often to tug at the strands of his moustache. He explained that when she’d found out she was pregnant, she’d set off after her boyfriend.

  She thought she could walk down the highway and find him. Maybe she just wanted to get away. I wouldn’t blame her.

  Andy later explained his plan to go to school for computers, open a computer-repair shop, maybe even become a programmer. He told Sat Puja that he would finance it all by selling LSD. Because the LSD market had fallen off, there was pretty much no competition as far as sales went, heroin having taken the field.

  It’s like being a small business owner, he said. The money’s okay.

  Sat Puja understood Andy’s wisdom, his nobility in wanting to save his family. Andy talked about rebuilding the house so that Juanita could raise her baby somewhere nice. The conversation stirred so many emotions in Sat Puja. He wanted to snap out of his entire life, to wake up and be someone stronger. He considered that Juanita might like the ashram’s calm.

  The next morning, after Jamgoti had taken the LSD, Juanita was in the kitchen again. She smiled at him but received no attention. He stomped outside, and though Sat Puja wanted to linger and talk, he had a sense that he’d begun something that needed finishing. Juanita looked at him quizzically as he hurried out.

  You know, Jamgoti told him once he’d caught up. I didn’t really come for God the way others did, but you didn’t either. It’s true what I said that time. You came to run away. You don’t even have the courage for insight, which is what I have, even if it isn’t necessarily about God or religion or anything, all of which is rather barbaric.

  Sat Puja nodded. He sensed Jamgoti’s fury as if by radar and avoided his gaze, all the while trying not to dispel the memory of Juanita’s.

  Jamgoti explicated his thoughts with furious rationale: the renewed popularity of Eastern philosophies that had more to do with stress than any desire for wisdom. His passions had never implied the daily gruel of the follower’s life, therapy raking a garden until the master gave you a word or two. Emotion and desire, he said, those are the source of man’s power. Even the master knows that. When was the last time you saw the meek do any inheriting?

  He ranted, surefooted, and walked for so long into the desert that Sat Puja doubted anything had been on the Q-tip. They’d travelled far, vaguely aimed away from all landmarks, the river lost to sight, the sounds of the highway gone.

  Sat Puja again found himself swept up by Jamgoti’s conviction. Everything he believed was suddenly infiltrated by doubt. But what do you do, he asked, when life is … is terrible?

  Jamgoti chuckled. You ask your old man for cash.

  Sat Puja stood against this desert with its old sea dreams and sand winds. He wasn’t made for this, didn’t want more than a little piece of the world, meek indeed. He knew that no one moment was ever as in the pictures of enlightenment his mother used to give him. Artists and storytellers had made saints and gods by freeing them from time’s routine. The master had said something like this. There had been poetry in the way he’d talked. He’d said the ascetic’s life was a rose pressed beneath glass, a snapshot of the ocean at its loveliest swell. Sat Puja could picture Jamgoti, Donald again, sitting in one of the future’s many backyards, with orange trees and wrought-iron lawn chairs, smoking big cigars and drinking something aged in a medieval cellar and telling, to the sound of hearty big-money laughter, the wily details of his mystic youth.

  Jamgoti had begun pacing in a circle, still talking—something about absolute truth, how seeking it now was like the first land dwellers heading back for the sea, for a single element in which to live. But in mid-stride he paused and widened his eyes. He touched tentatively between his legs.

  Jamgoti, Sat Puja said.

  Who? Jamgoti asked, startled. He scuffed down awkwardly. Jesus, he said, you got to be where I am. Beads of sweat ticked along his skin. He touched the dust with his fingertips as if testing the plush of a bed.

  Sat Puja joined him, and neither spoke, both staring off. On that shield of blasted earth, he sensed the continent beneath them. The distance was crag after crag like breaking waves, reaching back, he imagined, to the ocean that had brought
his first ancestors. What was more ancient than raising a family, than living simply and well? Was this the love that kept you from enlightenment? He wanted to sacrifice something. The sun had become unbearable, unpleasantly near, their shadows dissolving, and what he felt now was anger so new and strange he sensed it like a second self sitting down within him. They weren’t far from Los Alamos, the dreams and intentions of that age. Men had come here to test their ability to destroy. He could almost understand that. His memory of that violence in the hills remained strong, paw prints a shade redder than the dust.

  What’s all this talk about returning to the old ways? Jamgoti said suddenly, appearing to have regained his composure. People are always talking about how things were better before. But back then the real good times were slaughter. You went to a nearby village and killed and raped and looted, and you remembered those moments as the greatest of your life. Think how far we’ve come. We’d be afraid of our ancestors. They’d be like animals. Just read the Old Testament. Beasts!

  He stood and stumbled down along the hillside, tracing everything, pinching pleasurably his own reddening skin.

  Sat Puja knew that Jamgoti was right again. He considered this wisdom, then got up quietly. He crept away in the direction from which they’d come, following along washed-out lines.

  By the time Sat Puja had passed through the rugged hills below the ashram, the flesh of his face and neck and arms was bright and hot. He’d pulled his shirt over his head, amazed at how far they’d gone and beginning to understand what would happen to Jamgoti under that sun. He considered going back. He’d never done anything like this or wanted to. The decision seemed as monumental as the one that had brought him so far from home. Instead, he avoided the ashram green, cutting across the arid landscape until he found the sandy arroyo, which he followed to the Dry Branch.

  Brendan Howard wasn’t home, but Sat Puja knew where a key was hidden under a chunk of amethyst in the garden. He let himself in and went into the bathroom. His clothes were ruined. He put them in the trash, then showered and combed the knots from his hair. Sunburn outlined the bones of his face. He stared at this new self. It was as if he’d suddenly appeared and stood where he was now standing and stared. This face was stronger than anything he’d known, bright as war paint.

  Not long afterwards, Brendan Howard came home. Sat Puja was in one of his bathrobes. Brendan Howard didn’t appear surprised. Sat Puja said he would like his room back, which was fine—agreed to with a teacherly nod.

  And you should know, Brendan Howard told him, your father stopped by last night.

  Sat Puja struggled to take a breath. It made sense—he could see it—his father coming to drag him away. From beneath the kitchen counter Brendan Howard had produced a bag of repudiated possessions. Sat Puja found his extra robes. He dressed quickly, tied a tall turban and tugged at the hairs on his chin.

  Where are you going? Brendan Howard asked as Sat Puja opened the door.

  To the ashram. To meditate. I have to be ready.

  In a rare premonition of his own, Brendan Howard handed him a sheaf of mail forwarded by Sat Puja’s mother. In case you don’t end up keeping the room after all, he said.

  Meditation proved impossible. Sat Puja waited in the gazebo. A breeze stirred and died. Cottonwood leaves blinked against the sky. A few passing members of the ashram saw him and looked twice. He slowed his breath, attempting to focus away fear, the day’s end lit in a flame of suffocating neurons. He thought of Juanita, and briefly it seemed that a translucent figure hovered in the sky. Oddly, his longing no longer felt so desperate. Just sitting here now, seeing the sunlight disperse, he sensed that something was finishing and being let go. The figure shimmered and faded. He gazed out at the golden dome and the desert. What was it? he wondered.

  From across the green, François approached. The sun had become a warm flower setting far below, as if to the south. Sat Puja was surprised to notice how short his father actually was.

  François sat and took a breath. There was softness in his gaze. Sat Puja recalled his father’s face from long ago, on a winter day, snowflakes in his hair, on his lashes as he came in the door tired from a day at work, the disappointment of a home where no one longed for his return. Still, his eyes had been bright. Had it been love or courage or hope?

  I’m proud of you, François said when the ritual silence had expired. If I could go back, I’d probably be right here with you.

  From the way he said this, Sat Puja sensed the power of the land around them as he had the first time he’d seen it.

  A wind strove and faded and picked up again. A few strands of cranky music sounded from the nearby hotel, something like overturned trash cans, a live band tonight.

  So what are you planning? François asked.

  Sat Puja admitted he wasn’t sure but did so in that practised deep, wise-sounding voice, as if this was just a business decision to be made. I’m in love, he added, trying this on. He described Juanita, that she was pregnant and that he wanted to give her a good life.

  Pregnant, François said and smiled.

  It’s not mine.

  Oh … I see. But she’s in agreement.

  I haven’t talked to her yet.

  About this?

  No, at all, Sat Puja admitted.

  François furrowed his brow but agreed that this was just a detail. I’ve been through similar situations, he said. It’s not easy.

  Having shared with his father that he was in love, Sat Puja felt noble.

  Listen, François finally told him. I may be dying.

  Sat Puja’s thoughts fled with his breath. He couldn’t see it, his father dressed so young. François explained, and Sat Puja tried to make his lungs work. He wanted to be brave, matter-of-fact, like his father. He thought of everything he’d learned, meditations and prayers, but it all suddenly seemed silly. What his father had told him felt impossibly private. It demanded silence. Sat Puja’s eyes filled with tears.

  You’re sure?

  Yes. Actually. There’s no doubt about it.

  Some unnamed bird called and wheeled in the cooling metal of the sky. Land stretched, folded on distance. Wind, after the heat of day, was as if there had been no wind before. There were the hidden fragrances of night, the cool of a dry summer evening, the quiet of dark divides.

  This is a good place, François told him.

  The remaining sunlight had turned the world golden.

  Within this quiet they heard concerned voices, sandals slapping tiles as a young woman in white ran along the ashram path. Others had gathered in doors, one man with a warrior’s turban holding a cell phone and shaking his head, his hand covering his mouth as he spoke. He was staring at Sat Puja and François.

  Sat Puja, the young woman said. Jamgoti’s dead. The police just called. They want you to stay here. They’re going to want to talk to you.

  Already four dark cars were filing into the parking lot. Two men climbed from each. For a moment they stood there, eight big shadows, like pictures of moose in police uniforms Sat Puja had once seen. He expected them to come charging on all fours. He could barely breathe.

  When François looked at him, it was with eyes that knew everything. He whipped off his money belt and pushed it into Sat Puja’s hands.

  Run, he said and grabbed his elbow and hauled him up.

  They stumbled down the hills from the ashram, caught in the thrill of fear and complicity and love. François waved his arms to create a diversion, shouting Run! as he split off, parallel to the police, who now stomped along beside him.

  Junipers rose from shadow. Footpaths crossed naked stone. François’s feet glided on the brittle earth. He knew this decision was perhaps among his worst, but he’d felt too full of love. He whooped with joy. Though his son might be innocent, he was better off guilty.

  The police were above him, running fast with choppy strides, when François stopped to dance around in the dirt. He held his arms out like those of a drunken master imitating the crane. Th
ere would be no more false dreams, no frozen heads or new confused bodies grown centuries from now.

  The police thought they had him, but he raced off with an ancient speed and soon disappeared.

  That evening there was yet time for contemplation. The percussive rhythms of ranchera began at the hotel terrace as, at the ashram, a murmuring crowd of men and women in white robes gathered. They came out past the dead fountains and overgrown meditation gardens dating to their settlement’s first innocent days. They stood together before that dusty expanse of dissolving slopes and deep gullies. But there was nothing to see, only the dry, unnamed crags at sunset, the light resonating within silence.

  François was the first to find the highway. A semi slowed, air hissing in the brakes. He ran to the door. The driver nodded and asked where he was going. North was all François said. He held himself still, jittery, trying to catch his breath. He considered what would be next.

  He’d been sitting a while, the radio buzzing with lonesome tunes, when he glanced over. In the light of the dash, he noticed that the trucker was wearing a teddy beneath his T-shirt, the outlines of strained and sweaty lace showing through, frilly on the shoulders but heart-shaped where his belly met the steering wheel.

  At first Sat Puja could hardly run. He stumbled, wanted to fall down and curl up, a high-pitched squealing coming involuntarily from his throat. He’d have been caught had François not made the diversion. Finally he’d controlled himself until he was only yipping and panting. Soon his robes turned brown and made for good camouflage. He still hoped to reach Juanita. He recalled how pride had lit his father’s face like a crystal. It felt like a shared secret. Though Sat Puja’s lungs were drawing into a searing knot, he commanded his body and made it run.

  The dark world muscled, branches striking, cactuses at his shins like snakes. He had on the hip pouch with his passport and ID. He’d shoved the mail and money belt deeper into the pockets of his robe and was wheezing. An image came to him of Jamgoti crying beneath a violent sun, his reason having abandoned him at last, destroyed by so much light. Sat Puja had been innocent to think that anyone was strong enough to survive that. Within the knowledge of what he’d done was terrible calm. For the first time he had no choice but to be himself. What else was there? Just this life, to await rebirth, to live and be born again a little better.