Sam Shepard

by Day Out of Days

  “Don’t try to butter me up,” says the man. “You don’t even know me.”

  “I know you better than you know yourself,” says the head.

  “Who are you!” demands the man.

  “Never mind about that. Just keep following the road.” The man is wobbling badly. The cords in his neck are burning from the weight. His sides are heaving. He’s not used to this kind of labor. He’s grown accustomed to a soft, passive existence where nothing happens, nothing counts; where no single day ever stands out more than any other single day; where dreaming and waking all run together; where all the people in his life have disappeared and his main pursuits are napping and watching Mexican soap operas cast with dark-haired weeping beauties and the fantasies they evoke. He suddenly collapses under a concrete viaduct and drops the basket beside him. The head rolls out and comes to rest with the black gaping hole of the severed neck sticking straight up. The man stares into the hole, gasping for air, and listens to the voice of the head speaking very calmly: “We just need to make a right turn here, after the bridge, and then follow the irrigation ditch. It’s not very far.”

  “I can’t,” protests the man. “I’ve had enough now! I’m going to leave you here.” The head screams and begins to weep again and the sound of it makes the man’s whole body quake. He feels as though he’s been struck by lightning.

  “Don’t do that, please,” says the man. “I’m begging you. I can’t take it. I’ve told you that. The sound of your weeping and moaning reminds me of everything I want to forget. Everything I’ve put to death in order to go on.”

  “Then, finish carrying me to the lake,” says the head.

  “I don’t think I’m physically capable,” says the man. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that—I can’t.”

  “Then, turn me over at least,” says the head.

  “What?”

  “Turn me right side up.”

  “I’m not going to touch you,” says the man.

  “Just nudge me with your knee.”

  “What?”

  “Nudge me with your knee. I’ll roll right over.” The man musters his courage and nudges the black neck of the head with his knee and the head rolls over, right side up, just as the head implied. “Now put me back in the basket, please.”

  “I’m not going to touch you!” repeats the man. “You keep talking me into these things against my will.”

  “Are you afraid that if you touch me you might disappear?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” asks the man.

  “You might cross the line? Pass out and never return to your body?”

  “You’re the one with no body,” says the man.

  “Exactly,” says the head. “Now, just grab me by the hair and drop me back in the basket, please.”

  “No!” shouts the man. “I’m not grabbing you by the hair! It would be like taking hold of a handful of snakes.” Again, the head releases his doleful wail and, before the man even realizes what he’s doing, he’s snatched the head up by the hair and plopped it back in the basket.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” says the head. “I’m deeply grateful.”

  “You’re like a spoiled child,” says the man indignantly.

  “I’m like nothing you’ve ever come across,” says the head.

  “Well, it’s nothing to be proud of,” says the man.

  “Pick me up once more,” says the head. “And this time lift me all the way up to the top of your head and carry me up there.”

  “Are you crazy?” says the man. “I can’t possibly lift you all the way up to the top of my head. I could barely carry you on my hip.”

  “Yes, you can,” says the head. “Just make one tremendous effort. Make an effort like you’ve never made before in your entire life. As though it were a matter of life and death.”

  “I don’t have it in me,” says the man. “Those days are long gone.”

  “Stand up and give it a whirl,” says the head. “Be a man.”

  “Are you intentionally insulting me?” asks the man.

  “I’m offering you a chance to be.”

  “I’ve got nothing to prove,” says the man.

  “Then go away and leave me alone,” says the head abruptly.

  “That’s what I’ve been trying to do all along,” says the man. “Since the moment I met you.”

  “Do it,” says the head. “See if you can. Just walk away.”

  “You threatened me before. You said I would pay the price if I turned my back on you.”

  “There’ll be no repercussions,” says the head. “Believe me. Just walk away.”

  And now the man feels more alone than he’s ever felt in his life. A deep, crushing aloneness that presses down through his chest. It’s the very same feeling he’s been trying to avoid since he was a little boy. The feeling he shakes off every morning when he stumbles toward his toothbrush and every night when he clicks off the light. Without thinking, he reaches down and grabs the handles of the wicker basket and with a mighty heave swings the head up to his shoulder and then, with a final grunt, manages to place the basket on top of his head. He has no idea how he’s accomplished this all at once but feels suddenly all right about himself; as though the sun has just popped out from behind the clouds.

  “Now we’re going to look like a man with two heads staggering down the highway,” says the man to the head. “One on top of the other.”

  “We are a man with two heads,” says the head brightly from his lofty perch.

  “No,” says the man. “We’re two separate things. You don’t belong to me. I just found you by the side of the road. Don’t forget that.”

  “Whatever you like,” says the head. “Keep straight ahead. I can see the lake from here.”

  “What’s it look like?” asks the man.

  “Flat. Green. Absolutely peaceful.”

  “Is it what you were hoping for?” says the man.

  “We’ll see when we get there,” answers the head.

  Chatter

  I now have an almost constant swirling chatter going on inside my head from dawn to dusk. I never could have foreseen this when I was five, playing with sticks in the dirt, but I guess it’s been slowly accumulating over all these sixty-some years; growing more intense, less easy to ignore. I wake up with it. I feed chickens with it. I drive tractors with it. I make coffee with it. I fry eggs with it. I ride horses with it. I go to bed with it. I sleep with it. It is my constant companion.

  Sometimes I’m casually talking to people; looking them earnestly in the eye; just people in town, down at the Jot ‘Em Down grocery store buying the Racing Form, dog food, half-and-half; wondering if they too might have a constant chattering going on inside their heads. We could be talking about anything; the breakdown of the gray filly in the Kentucky Derby, the rising price of corn; it doesn’t matter, I continue to wonder the whole time. I have no idea what it’s really like with other people. Actually, I have no idea what it’s really like with me, when you get right down to it. I’m fishing in the dark.

  Sometimes, though, I can clearly hear voices I don’t recognize at all. Strangers. I’ve never heard them before. Voices conjured from water running in the sink, gurgling coffee, pissing in the creek, bacon frying, distant moaning highway trucks. They just appear; volunteer themselves, uninvited. I’m eavesdropping like—listening at the door to another room. Sometimes, they drop way off into the background and vanish. Something else takes their place. Some tone comes up. Some rhythm or other. Some tune. Sometimes, pure silence and my heart sings. Just like that it can happen. You’re standing there in a blue field and everything suddenly stops. Miraculous. Then it all starts up again. Churning away.

  Williams, Arizona

  (Highway 40 West)

  The actor wakes up. It’s 6:45 a.m. Mountain Time according to his Indiglo Timex. He’s staring at the sun-faded color blowup of the Grand Canyon mounted above the TV in a cheap frame. The picture’s warped. The wall i
t hangs on is phony pink adobe. Actually, it’s sheetrock with pink crud smeared on it like curdled Pepto-Bismol. The “Fun Things to Do in Williams” brochure propped up by the lamp on the bedside table, accompanied by yet another dizzying helicopter view of the deep gorge, reminds him that he has spent the night at the “Gateway to the Grand Canyon.” The giant sun is just beginning to burn through the one window. The High Desert peeks in; yucca and candelaria. Now he remembers. He’s on his way to L.A. to finish up some looping on a film he shot last summer. A film he cares nothing about anymore and can’t remember why he wanted to do in the first place. A film he can’t even remember the title of. Is that true? It must be, he says to himself. Yes, it’s true. I can’t remember the title. I have no idea. No inclination. He swings his very white legs out from under the Navajo print blanket and just sits on the edge of the mattress staring out the window for a while. He’s trying to adjust. His eyes. His breath. He sees a low red bluff in the distance turning slowly to blaze orange. A crow flies languidly past. He pictures the same old route he’s always taken east to west; down through Kansas City on 35, cutting across to Wichita, down to Tucumcari, picking up 40 West, paralleling the fabled and long-abandoned Route 66—the highway he grew up on. The highway that shaped his youth. He stands slowly, hoping his trick knee doesn’t suddenly give out on him. He remembers the last news item on TV before he fell asleep. It just pops into his head. A very attractive blonde reporter with flashing teeth all excited about Special Forces closing in on Osama bin Laden somewhere near the Hindu Kush. Supposed sightings of an extremely tall figure dressed as a woman, riding a donkey over the mountain pass. Very biblical. Suspiciously vivid. They were sure they had him cornered. The CIA had reliable contacts, they said. They’d infiltrated the villages. He walks to the TV and flicks it on then heads to the narrow bathroom and throws water on his face. His face—He can’t stand his face anymore. Pathetic—no longer young. A self-pitying shroud around the eyes and forehead. Widow’s peak receding dramatically. Teeth (which never were his best asset) have grown gray and his disappearing gum line gives them the aura of wax fangs or an Appalachian miner’s mouth. There’s a stale breath stench too, which is a bad sign, he thinks. (He’s always looking for signs.) He wonders if maybe it’s an indication of some deeper internal disorder; something to do with the liver or lower intestine or maybe worse. What could that be? He shudders to think. There’s a sharp voice from behind him that makes him jump and turn around. A punctilious female voice. He turns off the water to listen then remembers he’d left the TV on. He listens while he brushes his teeth, bearing down on the plaque ferociously. A woman is being interviewed by Larry King. What is it about Larry King’s voice, he asks himself, that’s so irritating? Something nasal in the treble clef. King is asking some hotshot woman reporter if it’s true that she got a face-lift because a rival news network had offered her a better position if she improved her looks. She confesses that she went along with this proposition and doesn’t regret it one bit. She likes her new face, her new career. He turns the water back on. He spits in the sink, rinses, and turns the faucet off. A semi roars down Highway 40, right outside the window. He goes back to the TV; changes channels searching for the bin Laden story but finds nothing but daytime talk shows, soap operas, cooking shows, Christian gospel shows, shows featuring pathetic victims of their own bad judgment, weeping and shameful screaming shows, repentance shows, violent cartoon shows, NASCAR shows, pornography shows, Spanish-language melodramas with gorgeous Mexican women in catfights shedding real tears, gay wrestling shows, knife collectors’ auction shows, cheap-jewelry shows, Bible history shows, fat-people shows, diet shows, dog grooming shows, big-game shows with Cape buffalo being blown away on Texas ranches and crashing into the Brazos, motocross shows with spectacular wipeouts, flying burning metal in slow motion, windsurfing wrecks, deliberate car crashes into buildings and brick walls, gas fires blazing but nothing at all about a mysterious tall figure dressed as a woman riding a donkey across the Hindu Kush—the most wanted man on the face of the earth. It makes him want to quit show business altogether.

  Duarte

  Didn’t we once have a freak show in Duarte? Wagons and rings. Right out on Highway 66 where the aqueduct begins. I remember the deep elephant smell. Peanuts in shells. The Petrified Man. Fat people poking him with pins. Only his eyes moved. The Two-Headed Calf. (Always a standby.) Bearded Lady Midget. Fetus in a Bottle. Human. Suspended. Drifting in strings of gooey yellow. Everything is coming back to me now. In Spanish.

  Didn’t we once have a Gypsy consultant in our linoleum kitchen? Is that what we called her? No. Couldn’t have been. My dad believed in her, though. Before God. Before Mary. Poring through glossy High Desert brochures. Salton Sea. Preposterous mock-ups of golf courses seen through the irrigated mist of Rain Bird sprinklers. Jerry Lewis and Sinatra were supposed to appear. Him chain-smoking Old Golds. Shaking from whiskey. On the edge of which desert, he wanted to know. He got it confused with the Painted one. She couldn’t say. Wouldn’t. Why be so mysterious, I wondered. It’s only land. Her pink bandana. Sulfur smell. Rubbing sage oil into her bony wrists and all the turquoise bracelets clacking like teeth. That was her, all right. Whatever we called her. Watching her through an open door collect her burro hobbled out in the orchard, chewing rotten avocados, pissing a hole in the dried-up leaves.

  Wasn’t there once a tall gray piano player too? Gentle. He came in a bright blue suit, haircut like a Fuller brush; played “Camptown Ladies” all through the night of Great-Aunt Gracie’s death then later hanged himself in a Pasadena garage alongside his Chrysler sedan. I remember that now. Told stories of how Gracie was quite the Grande Dame; dated John Philip Sousa back in the day; seduced a Lumber Baron with her Blue Plate Special and captured hawks on weekends down in the Arroyo Seco. Everything’s coming back to me now. In tiny pieces.

  One Night in the Long-Ago

  What happened, now? Are you telling me that this whole history of catastrophes is the result of one night in the long-ago?

  That’s what I understand.

  The father came home late and smashed every window in the house with a claw hammer? Is that it?

  That’s what I heard.

  Ripped the front door off its hinges and then set fire to the backyard?

  So the story goes.

  The son then snuck out one of the broken windows, under cover of dawn, with a few books in a paper sack?

  So they say.

  Stepping over the unconscious, bleeding form of his father he then jumped into a Chevy and never stopped driving the rest his life?

  That’s it in a nutshell.

  You’d think he’d be over it by, now, wouldn’t you?

  You’d think.

  Indianapolis

  (Highway 74)

  I’ve been crisscrossing the country again, without much reason. Sometimes a place will just pop into my head and I’ll take off. This time, down through Normal, Illinois, from high up in white Minnesota, dead of winter, icy roads, wind blowing sideways across the empty cornfields. Find myself stopping for the night outside Indianapolis, off 78, just before it makes its sweeping junction with 65 South to Louisville. I randomly pick a Holiday Inn, more for its familiar green logo and predictability than anything else. Plus, I’m wiped out. Evidently there’s some kind of hot-rod convention going on in town, although I seem to remember those always taking place at the height of summer, when people can run around in convertible coupes with the tops down. Anyway, there are no rooms available except for possibly one and that one is “smoking,” which I have nothing against. The desk clerk tells me she’d know in about ten minutes if there’s going to be a cancellation. I’m welcome to wait, so I do, not wanting to face another ninety-some miles down to Kentucky through threatening weather.

  I collapse into one of the overly stuffed sofas in the lobby, facing two plasma-screen TVs in opposing corners, both tuned to the same “reality” channel showing reruns of surveillance footage from convenience-s
tore holdups: teenagers in hooded sweatshirts, one hand holding up their baggy jeans while the other pumps nine-millimeter slugs into screaming victims, who claim they have no access to the safe. I ask the desk clerk if she can please turn the TVs off, or change the channel, but she says she has no control over any of it. The TVs are on some kind of preordained computer system, much like sprinklers in Los Angeles or security garage lights everywhere else. I ask her if she can at least mute the sound so I don’t have to listen to the agonized groans of the victims or the raging insanity of the gunmen, but she says that she has no control over that either. I pick up a travel magazine off the glass table and leaf through it, pausing at every picture with a bikini-clad woman lounging beachside holding tall icy cocktails and staring smugly at the camera. The screams and groans and gunfire from the TVs keep repeating in looped cycles and soon lose all sense of being connected to murder. I find myself anticipating the next scream the way you would a familiar lyric in a pop song. (Here comes the high, shrieking temper-tantrum sequence just after he pops off a spray of four rapid shots.) I’m not sure how long I hang there in limbo in the lobby but it feels like way more than ten minutes.

  A tall, skinny woman in a cloth Pat Nixon-type coat and a blue bandana comes through the revolving doors, pulling a small suitcase on wheels. She smiles at me as she passes and I feel immediately sad for no reason that I can put my finger on. She pauses at the desk to get her key, then continues on toward the elevators, giving me a quick glance over her shoulder as she disappears down the hallway. Again, I felt this little stab of melancholy, or maybe emptiness, maybe that’s it. I stand and stretch, then walk over to the desk and ask the girl if she knows anything more about the cancellation. Not yet, she says, but reassures me that the possible guests will be calling any second now. They’re coming in from Tupelo, Mississippi, everything depends on the weather, she says. I return to the squashy sofa and collapse again. (Isn’t Tupelo where Elvis was born?) I notice the yellow spine of a National Geographic at the bottom of a stack and dig it out. The feature story is titled “The Black Pharaohs—Conquerors of Ancient Egypt.” A man who looks very much like the young James Earl Jones is depicted on the cover; muscular arms crossed over his chest, with a leopard-skin cape, thick gold necklaces, and a gold-leaf skullcap with two shining falcons on the crown, staring stoically out. I am flipping through the glossy pages when I feel a tall presence beside me and a high-pitched female voice saying my name with a question mark behind it: “Stuart?” I turn to see the same skinny woman in her cloth coat but without the suitcase.