A few people didn’t, couldn’t, or wouldn’t believe that I had stopped cold turkey. How did you do it? they would ask. My answer was simple, completely honest, and unsatisfactory. By not drinking anymore, I would say. A true lie.
When interviewers came to ask me questions I would become a little cranky and a little disappointed in myself for my brand of vanity. I voiced complaint that they were taking up my time, but was simultaneously pleased by their attention. I would retreat, become oddly literal, understandably I thought, anti-jargon, even anti-intellectual, slipping into some deeply held, perhaps self-conscious, probably a bit disingenuous, certainly indulgent way of thinking that art could only derive from a place of innocence, naïveté, if that was not a contradiction, of pure mind. One nice enough woman from Artforum, an amply smart person, with almost a lisp, inquired about the use of letter stenciling in some of my early paintings.
“Why did you always use the same typeface in the stenciling? What does that style of letter mean to you?” she asked.
“I used those stencils because those were the stencils they had at the hardware store.”
“But that particular typeface in all of them, why?”
“That’s the way the stencils came.”
“But if you had wanted a different look, would you have been averse to cutting your own stencils?”
“Why would I do that? They had them at the hardware store.”
“Then you like these the best,” she said.
“Yes.”
“But why?” she wanted to know.
“Because that is the way they came.”
“Do you use these stencils because you like them or simply because that is the way they come?” She was becoming annoyed, I thought.
“That is what I like about them. I like them because they came that way.”
1979
“Or what?” I asked once we were back in the Caddy. “Be on time or what? He’s going to leave without us?”
“I take it you don’t like him,” Richard said.
“He’s a fucking asshole. I don’t know if you noticed that. We can’t actually go out into the countryside with this racist idiot.”
“I think he can help me find my brother.”
I said nothing. Of course Richard was right; I also believed the asshole would be able to find Tad. I did not tell Richard that I was not convinced that his brother was worth finding.
We drove the congested streets forty minutes back to the hotel, where he parked the Caddy right in front. He checked in, tossed our bags into the corners, and we lay on our backs on the same bed and stared up at the nonfunctioning ceiling fan. I imagined the tick it might have made if it worked.
“I think it just moved,” Richard said.
“Nope. If it had moved I would have felt it. I didn’t feel anything, so it didn’t move.”
“It moved a millimeter.”
“I would have felt it.”
“We should go out and find some food,” Richard said.
“I’m too hot to eat.”
“It’s not hotter than where we came from.”
“It feels hotter.”
“Maybe we should go out and get drunk.”
“No, I don’t think that’s wise. We’ve got to get up at six so we can meet Custer at seven. I don’t want a hangover when I’m dealing with a homicidal maniac. To say the least, I don’t trust him. Hell, I’m afraid of him. He might drive us thirty miles out of town, shoot us, and take the money.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.” Richard sighed. “I won’t take the money. I’ll tell him he’ll get it when I get my brother.”
“Listen to us. This is one fucked-up situation. You read fucking Old English. I’m a fucking painter.”
“Sorry.”
I felt suddenly like shit. “Hey, you’re my best friend. I’m here because I want to be. Okay?”
“Thanks,” Richard said. “I know this is some shit.”
“But you’re right though. We really need go out there and find something to eat. If we are going out with Attila the idiot in the morning, then we had better have some strength.”
We dragged ourselves down the stairs, out and down the street to a small fish stew restaurant where we ate undercooked bread, black beans and rice, and fish stew. Richard drank a beer.
“At least the food is good,” I said.
“I thought a Cadillac was supposed to have a smooth ride,” Richard said.
“That would be on a smooth road. A paved road.”
Richard tore a tortilla in half.
“Richard, are you sure you want your brother back?”
He stared at me.
“I didn’t mean it like that. But what are we really doing here? Are we saving him?”
Richard drank from his bottle of beer.
“Forget that I said anything.”
“Kevin, he’s my brother.”
“I know.”
“You really don’t have to come tomorrow. I’d understand.”
“But I am here, aren’t I?” I raised my water glass in a toast. “To finding your brother.”
He waited a beat then tapped my glass with his beer bottle. “Thank you.”
As we lay in bed that night, I couldn’t sleep. I thought that was a reasonable enough response to the situation. Richard slept fitfully, also a reasonable response. The voices outside on the street never ceased. Music played from a bar somewhere. I looked for at least one voice inside my head that might talk me out of continuing with this insane business. I suppose the mere search for such a voice actually constituted one, but it was either too faint or too unpersuasive, or I simply wasn’t listening. Regardless, I did have the thought that the sheets might as well have been soaked with blood instead of our sweat. I was in this now.
I must have slept for at least a few minutes because my brain decided to dream. I assumed it was a dream, but it may well have been one of those internal voices that I so wanted to hear. I woke up disturbed, but unable to recall the events of the dream. If I had remembered the dream it would probably have involved slow drowning, certainly not flying, and there would have been a little three-legged whiskey-colored dog in it. But that’s only if I could have dredged it up. The feeling left with me when I did awake, when I did open my eyes to stare at the unmoving faded wood fan blades, was that I was as much immersed in a dream as ever.
The sun came up when no one was looking. We woke up buzzed, anxious, anything but happy and eager. We decided not to shower after I suggested that it seemed pointless to enter a bloodbath with clean underwear.
“Are you going to ask me some stupid question like are you ready?” I tied my second boot.
“Nope.”
“Good.”
“At least it’s a little cooler,” Richard said.
I nodded, walked across the room, and looked down at the empty street. “For a while anyway.”
We left the hotel room, walked down the stairs and through the deserted lobby. On the hood of the Caddy we found a pile of dog shit.
“Tall dog,” Richard said.
I grabbed some newspaper out of the gutter and knocked the shit off the car. “Do you get the feeling we’re not welcome here?”
The boat’s engine hesitated and then turned over, startled the neighborhood dogs. We drove away. I cracked open an orange and we shared it on the way.
“Scared?” Richard asked.
“Too stupid to be scared. Really, what’s the worst thing that could happen? He shoots us and stabs us and chops off our heads. That doesn’t scare me. We live on Baltimore Avenue in Philadelphia.”
Richard nodded. “Good point.”
A beautiful woman crossed the street in front of us. Her dress was pastel pink, almost white.
“She’s off to work,” I said. “What do you think she does?”
“No uniform. No briefcase. I think she works in a bank. What do you think?”
“Hotel maybe.”
“Okay,” Richard said.
“So, are you going to marry Linda?”
“Who the fuck knows? I’m not ready to marry anybody. And would she want to marry me?”
“Well, there’s that.”
The door of the Bummer’s trailer was propped open with a broken cinder block when we arrived. The one-man army was dressed in the same T-shirt he was wearing the day before or at least one exactly like it. He stood leaning in the jamb holding a battered metal ice chest.
“Good morning, ladies,” he said. His smile appeared almost genuine.
We stepped toward him.
The Bummer stepped down and put the chest on the ground. “Put this in the backseat. And be fucking careful with it.”
That made me nervous.
“What’s in there?” Richard asked.
“What do you think is in there?” Before Richard and I could say anything or think to say anything, he said, “It’s beer. Just beer. Gotta have beer. Just put the chest on the backseat.”
I picked up the chest.
“Boom!” the Bummer shouted.
I dropped the chest and hopped backward.
The Bummer laughed. He pulled open the lid of the chest. “Beer.” He slammed the lid down. “What did you think was in there? Explosives? Guns?” He turned and walked back into the trailer.
I picked up the chest.
Richard looked at me and shrugged. The situation was not getting any sweeter.
It became even less sweet when Sergeant Caligari reemerged from the trailer holding an M16 and what looked like a .45-caliber pistol in a shoulder holster. “Here are the guns,” he said. He paused to enjoy the looks on our faces. “These are my fuckin’ guns. Don’t touch them. Those are my beers. Don’t touch them. Y’all understand?” He lit a cigarette, laughed, and then pointed northeast toward the hills. “We’re going up there.”
“And you need guns?” I asked.
“Oh, yeah. Always need guns.” The Bummer walked to the Caddy and pushed his rifle through the window into the backseat. He opened the passenger-side door and pushed forward the front seat. “There’s a war going on in this country, boys.” He climbed into the rear. “Put that chest right here beside me.”
I did.
Standing at the open driver’s-side door, Richard said, “I want to know where we’re going.”
“I told you, girlfriend. We’re headed for them thar hills.”
Richard and I got into the car. Richard cranked the engine and steered us onto the rutted road.
“Enjoy this good road while it lasts,” the Bummer said. “While you boys were snoozing or whatever you do at night, I was already hard at work. Heard me a rumor about a gringo looking for coke up near the volcano.”
“Somebody just shoved a handwritten note under your door in the middle of the night,” I said.
“Pretty much.”
The pop of a beer can being opened made me jump. I glanced back at the Bummer.
“Don’t worry, boy, we ain’t in Mississippi. It’s hot like Mississippi, but it ain’t Mississippi.” He lounged with the M16 across his lap. The rifle scared me. He scared me.
A skinny, rib-showing dog took his time crossing the road in front of us and Richard slowed the car.
“Run that motherfucker over,” the Bummer said.
Richard did not do that.
“Ricky, you’re going to come to a fork in the road up here. Veer left.” The Bummer closed his eyes and seemed to drift into sleep, a beer can in his left hand, the right draped over the gun.
Richard and I didn’t speak. We veered left onto an even rougher dirt road. The big car bottomed out more than a few times. We looked out at the land. We moved from brown to green, from low to high.
Finally, I broke the silence. “I like green.”
“What?” Richard said.
“The color green. I like it. I don’t use it much. Can’t control it. The Mona Lisa is wearing green and so you know she’s not nobility.”
“Is that right.”
“In Chinese, blue and green are the same word.”
“In Vietnam, too,” the Bummer said from behind us. “Confused the shit out of me until I figured it out. Look at the green sky.” He closed his eyes again. “Drive until you can’t drive.”
Richard mouthed the words “I’m sorry.”
As we continued up I noticed clouds collecting just to the east, huge cottony clouds that were flat on the bottom as if they were sitting on a glass table. The trees changed from live oak and dogwood to pine and cedar. The road became more twisted until I lost all notion of east, west, north, and south and it became not only rougher, bumpier, but also more treacherous, narrow, narrow enough on some turns to create doubt as to whether our boat of a car would fit.
“Those clouds look bad,” I said.
“That’s all we need, for this road to get wet.” Just as Richard finished his sentence huge raindrops hit the windshield. Then it was raining.
“Stop the car,” the Bummer said. I hadn’t known he was awake. It bothered me that he was awake.
Richard skidded the car to a rest.
“Out,” the Bummer said.
“Are we here?” Richard asked.
“Just get out.”
Richard got out. So did I. The rain was falling hard.
“Open the trunk,” the Bummer said as he pulled himself out of the car.
Richard tossed me a panicked look over the hood.
“Why do you want me to open the trunk?”
The Bummer reached back into the car and took the keys from the ignition. He walked to the back of the car. I was encouraged by the fact that he had left the M16 in the backseat, though he still wore the holstered pistol. “Rocks!” he shouted as he opened the trunk. “Big ones.”
We stood there.
“Listen, my pretty motherfuckers, if we don’t weigh down the back of this beast she’ll fishtail all over the fuckin’ place and we’ll end up down there.” He pointed over the cliff.
I looked down and I felt as if I was seeing the drop-off for the first time. From Richard’s expression I could see the same was true for him. We found large rocks and loaded them, the rain beating down on us the while. It stopped just as I slammed shut the lid.
The Bummer fell into the backseat again. “Well, let’s get going.”
Even with the much-needed weight in the rear, the Caddy still swung wildly on the fresh mud in the very next curve.
“I understand it now,” Richard said. “Got to brake before the curve. Before the curve.”
“Sounds right,” I said. I looked into the backseat. The Bummer seemed again to be sleeping.
“He asleep?” Richard asked.
“Who knows.”
The sun came out, but the road remained wet. We came to a stretch of road that straightened out under a canopy of trees.
“Are those monkeys?” Richard asked.
There were spider monkeys, dozens of them, swinging through the branches above us.
“Toto,” I said.
“Don’t say it,” Richard said.
For some reason, as we rolled along under that strange awning of limbs and chattering primates, I thought of the paintings that had been haunting me. Not only my own, but those of others, my influences, mainly expressionists, but also the cubists. I recalled Kafka’s complaint about some poem, saying that it was just so much screaming and that was where I thought I had landed. It was a wretched place to be at such a young age. I of course had plenty to scream about and yet nothing at all. I didn’t deserve my screams and yet there were my paintings, boisterous, strident, stormy maybe, rough, angry, and, finally, undisciplined and arrogant. And so, quite in keeping with my self-indulgence, I began to slip into my familiar pit of self-loathing. I realized how tired, how afraid I was.
“What is it?” Richard asked.
“Nothing,” I said, it being bot
h true and false. “These monkeys make me think of Rousseau.”
“Painter or philosopher?”
“Very funny.”
We drove on for an hour.
We crested a hill and there was a gentle slope in front of us, the road lightly wending through ocher grass. The colors brought me around. A cantina sat at the side of the road ahead of us.
The air rushing through the car was considerably colder now. I rubbed my arms as I didn’t have a jacket.
A beer popped open in the backseat. “You’re going to want to stop here,” the Bummer said.
House
A painting has many surfaces. To say that a painting is like a story is a pedestrian utterance, not altogether untrue, but uninspired, though that hardly stops people from making such invidious and unwarranted comparisons. The painting that was my life was static, hardly a story at all, moving but with no moving parts, changing but without alteration. The shapes in the painting were unique elements in unique situations, I knew that, but I never pressed that thinking beyond my canvas. The shapes were organisms with volition and a desire for self-assertion. But the shapes could push back and every shape possessed a color.
Every bowl of cereal I ever poured was the same color but no bowl was ever the same. That might or might not be a true thing about colors. Or perhaps about bowls of cereal. Regardless, Heraclitus, I had poured a bowl of sugary cereal for my sixteen-year-old daughter. Her name is April and though I loved and love her very much I never liked her name or the month.
April was beautiful because she was my daughter, but being an artist and being able to step outside myself to see, I saw that she might be seen as plain, though I liked that look, thought it more interesting than the word plain. She had been ignoring me all morning, but when her brother made his exit from the kitchen she actually looked at me. As startled as I was by this simple connection, I was not surprised by her telling me that we needed to talk. Linda was out at her Pilates class and so we were alone.
So Much Blue Page 5