The Tupelo family finally trundles off with all their gear toward the “smoking” room I had once coveted. Lashandra’s face is unsure what expression to make when she sees me pathetically standing there again. It’s a cross between smiling politeness and sheer terror at what she must see in my eyes. “Lashandra, hi,” I say meekly. She says nothing. “I was wondering if you could do me a favor, I—the storm is really bad out there. You wouldn’t believe it.”
“That’s what they were saying,” she says. “Those folks from Tupelo.”
“It’s unbelievable. Whiteout. I could barely see the hood in front of me.”
“They’ve got it on the news,” she says. “All the way down into New Orleans, I guess.”
“Really? Well—I couldn’t—I had to turn back around.”
“I still haven’t got any vacancy though,” she says.
“No, I know. I know that. But what I was wondering is—I have an old friend here. That woman—you know, that woman I was talking to before? That tall skinny woman with the red hair?”
“Right,” she says.
“I was wondering if you could give me her room number, because she offered to let me stay in her room and—”
“Well, we’re not allowed to give out the names of guests, sir.”
“No, I know. I mean—I know her name. Her name is Becky Marie Thane and and we used to live together in New York. Way back, I mean.”
“Well, I still can’t just give out the room number, sir. That’s our policy.”
“I understand that, but do you think I could call her, then, on the house phone? Would that be all right?”
“Sure. I can let you do that. Let me get you connected.” She slides the house phone to her, looks up Becky’s room number, punches it in, then hands me the receiver. I’m holding it to my ear, hoping Lashandra will stop staring at me and turn her back discreetly, but she stays right there, eyes boring into mine. Becky picks up.
“Hello,” she says, and the simple innocence of her voice starts me weeping and I can’t stop and Lashandra finally turns away.
These Recent Beheadings
These recent beheadings are just what we’ve always dreaded. We knew it was coming sooner or later and now it’s here. Ancient gleaming steel coming down like a message from the heavens on our exposed white necks. The kind of separation that terrifies us the most—losing our heads. The absolute shock of sudden separation. The body here, the head over there. And the mind desperately darting between them, trying to pull them back together. How did this happen? From out of nowhere. Seemingly. Nobody saw it coming. Nobody could predict this. Not in 1957, anyway, when Chevy came out with that great fin on the Bel Air, and Little Richard was just hitting his stride.
Classic Embrace
They were having a conversation about Marlon Brando in One-Eyed Jacks. He remembers that much. He can see it in some motel room with a fire, off the coast of Santa Barbara; the Pacific crashing outside their window. He remembers her saying: “Remember how he lied to the beautiful señorita with the red hibiscus in her hair?”
“Oh, that’s what it was—hibiscus?”
“Yes. That fancy red flower she wore just above her left ear.”
“Oh,” he must have said, “but what was the lie about? I don’t remember him lying.”
“Yes, don’t you remember, he tells her there’s something in her eye. Some little fleck of something. He makes that up and she believes him. She starts blinking just from him suggesting it. Then he unties the bandana around his neck and slides over close to her and starts gently poking at her eye with a corner of the bandana. And, as he’s doing this, he casually slips his arm around her waist and before you know it they’re locked in a classic embrace.”
“But that’s not a lie, that’s just plain old seduction,” he remembers saying, and just as he’d said that he remembers something failing in his eyesight; colors dissolving, shapes disappearing, the foreground suddenly receding into flat smoky sheets.
“Is that when you first noticed you might be going blind?” she says.
“Yes, I think it must have been. But I do remember that flower.”
“The hibiscus?” she whispers.
“Yes, I remember that flower hovering over her ear.”
“Like a spotlight, wasn’t it?” she says.
“Yes, but I don’t remember him lying, to tell you the truth.” They roll over toward the fire and he enters her from behind.
Alpine, Texas
(Highway 90)
I would come untracked, is what it was. At least, that’s the way I see it. Now. In aftermath, so to speak. Disorient. For days it would come and go like that. Days and days. Wake up in some sheetrock room where the train shook the roof off. So close to the window you could reach out and lose your whole arm. Take your breath away. It did. Tucumcari. Kalispell. Abilene. Patriotic wallpaper. Blues and whites. Liberty Bells. Cracked plaster. Everything. Peeled right through to where you could see the old slats and newspaper insulation dating back to the late twenties. Those funny button-looking hats the gals all wore. Model Ts and pinafores. Headlines about the coming Crash. Was it a rendezvous or something? Some kind of secret meeting-up with someone? I wasn’t sure. Lost track of the reason for being there. Days spent trying to track down license plates. That one with the orange Grand Canyon for instance. Perfect clue. She must’ve been an Arizona gal. Who could tell by now? The way I’d just be wandering around looking for hints. Sometimes the faint sound of a bird was enough to tip me off. I’d head out across the ancient zócalo at dusk, crossing the broad Avenida Dolores del Río, following this song into the darkest night. But mockingbirds can fool you for sure. That’s their game. Confusion. Diversity. Magnolia melodies sweet enough to take you in completely. Total seduction. And they’re free of guilt to boot. No qualms at all about breaking your heart in two and tossing you out there to the dogs. Those dogs. Those mean little dogs. California. Texas. Baton Rouge. Wide range of melody lines, if you follow my drift. Very little loyalty though. That’s what I’ve found. Very little. Grackles, on the other hand, you can almost always count on. Very trustworthy bird for place and time. Wake up to a grackle and a wonderful certainty fills your aching bones. Calexico. Texarkana. One of those. Long-tailed screeching bravado in the face of another scorching sun. Brings all kinds of news. Breaking news, if you like. But losing track of people altogether—that’s the worst. The feeling. The ache in the chest. Completely emptied out. No people. Some, just gone forever now. You can’t help that. But the other ones. The ones still somewhere. Still somewhere else. What happened there? Where’s the string? If there ever was one. You can’t not believe in that. Still, some I must’ve just drove off. I admit. Must have. Why in the world would they want to stick around a burning bush? A flaming Chevy. Fire blowing out both my Anglo-Saxon ears. Fire blowing out my ass. Catastrophic. A devastating smoking heap. Some of the other ones just fled, I guess. Just ran off. Some came back but it was plain by then they’d never find in me what they were looking for. Plain by the look in their downcast eyes. Terrible disappointment that has no end. That I can see. No end in sight. And me still banging around these dusty streets searching for breakfast. At this hour. Slinking sideways between slat picnic tables, old bent ranchers, Open Road Stetsons; talking steers and heeling dogs, straight-up Christians praying over crispy bacon strips and runny eggs. You find a clean dry space on the plaid oilcloth across from two skinny Mexican kids so lost in love their hands are stuck with superglue. Black Aztec eyes turned inside out; blind to the nasty world, gorging on each other’s mouths while their pancakes turn stone cold.
All that time I’m referring to now. Careening around. Must’ve been working on something or other. Must’ve done some kind of job. That’s what it was. It dawns on me now. Down there in dusty Alpine waiting for a check. Guy’s name was Roberts Clay. Not a woman at all. They said I couldn’t miss him. Carried a big black hickory walking stick. And here it was three whole days and no show from this Mr. Clay.
Down to my last good pair of SmartWool socks. Staggering through the watermelon trucks. Could a matchbox ever in this world hold my clothes?
Mission San Juan Capistrano
It’s a weird shirt, this one. Makes me feel like a little boy again—too small and tight and pink. It’s a handmade shirt. My mother made it and that’s a sure tip-off to the kids in school that you haven’t got any money. I’m a little boy no longer but when I put this shirt on that feeling revisits me. It’s not the same shirt as back then. I’d never be able to get that one on. But this one has haunting similarities and casts the same spell over my upper torso. The chest feels vulnerable and bony. My neck sticks up like a chicken. The arms poke out. My entire being is up for grabs. I’m somewhere between six and nine. An older woman is clutching my hand. A linen handkerchief dangles from her wrist, tucked into her watch-band. The coastal breeze blows her black lace skirt around my shoulders. I’m sure it’s my grandmother. I recognize her Iroquois hands with the bulging veins. I have the same thumbs as her. We were born on the same day in the sign of Scorpio. She showed me once in the sky—how the tail reaches clear out across the entire Mojave. The deadly tail. Pigeons are flapping all around our heads, trying to land on our shoulders and arms. We’re feeding them corn out of paper cups. The Spanish fountain is trickling. Brass mission bells chiming a mournful dirge. The war is certainly over, but where was it? Distant islands? Across the sea? I don’t know my father at all. I’ve maybe seen him twice. Both times he was in a khaki uniform and smelled like bay rum. People pet me on the head as they pass by, like I’m a little animal. I’m entirely under the spell of affection. My whole body tingles from it; voices, movement, laughter, the smell of Pacific salt. Everything touches me in this way; straight through the skin. I am an animal. At night I sleep with my eyes wide open. Nothing escapes me. Not one sound. Bugs hitting the screen. My grandmother shuffling to the sink for her glass of water. The spotted dog moaning at the back door, wanting to get in; making the sound of loneliness.
It’s a weird shirt—too small and tight. It sends me back to when I ran around in a completely different body and the unknown was much bigger.
Pity
the Poor
Mercenary
I cut his face off meticulously. That’s all I have to say. Just doing my job. They told me they wanted the face as proof of the pudding. Trouble is it’s not the same as skinning a walleye or a yearling buck. The human being is different. More curves and twists. The musculature, connecting tissues of the epidermis—not the same at all. Plus, all I had at my disposal was a Victorinox stainless steel jack-knife with a four-inch blade. Sharp as a razor but nonetheless—had to force the idea of butchering out of my mind and just get on with the business at hand. There’s never any use complaining. You just have to go ahead and get the work done and get on with it. I decided the best method of preservation was to dust the inside of the face with baby powder and salt, then roll the paper-thin skin into a loose roll. I bound the whole thing up with blue rubber bands, like the kind they use for holding broccoli and carrots together. I have to admit, the procedure was pretty much experimental since I’d never had to tackle this kind of thing before. Used to be they’d take you at your word. Why would you lie? You didn’t take a target out, he’d come back to haunt you. That’s for sure. No doubt about it. But this particular outfit claimed they needed concrete proof. Concrete.
Let me start again. Let me just start by saying, I fully expect to get paid for a job well done. That should be well understood right off the bat. Everyone does. No one goes blithely into something like this without expecting compensation—especially a job of this magnitude and scope. I mean, there have been others where you get half in advance and then the other half on delivery. And by “delivery” I don’t mean bringing in a man’s face, I mean just your good word that you left his head in a ditch by the side of the road or tossed it in a lake or something. And they’d for sure believe you. Why would you lie about something like that? Your reputation is on the line. And, back in the day, that’s all you had to go on—your good word and your reputation. But now—these days—look at these jokers. No ethics of any kind. Outrageous—For them to suddenly renege and back out, denying any connection—trying to completely divorce themselves from any knowledge—I mean—Let me just say, I never would have volunteered for an assignment of this kind if there hadn’t been a big score guaranteed on the back end. I mean, the skinning of a man’s face—Are you kidding? If verification is what they were after, what’s the matter with good, old-fashioned photography? The black-and-white Polaroid. I’m no Stieglitz but, hell, I can take a damn snapshot: “Before” and “After.” I mean, look, when we took that creep out of Chad back in ‘95, that’s all they needed back then. A plain old snapshot; “blip,” he’s sitting there stupid, staring into the lens with his arms bound back, obviously still in the land of the living and then—”blip,” his eyes go black and there’s a hole in the bridge of his nose big enough to jam a cigar—lights out. I got the fat paycheck on that one, believe you me. No questions asked. But this—It’s beyond embarrassing.
Quanah, Texas
Dogen’s Manuals
The Story of Ruffian Machado’s
Border of a Dream The Legacy of Conquest
Goodbye to a River
4 Plays by Tom Murphy
Dictionary of Spoken Spanish
Under the Volcano
Nineteen Elastic Poems
These are some of the indications of my current, scattered state. I’m looking at them point-blank.
Pea Ridge Battlefield, Arkansas
My second great-grandfather, Lemuel P. Dodge, had his left ear blown off right here, in the battle of Pea Ridge, 1862. I have a picture of him, back home in my kitchen, sitting in profile, legs regally crossed at the knees, dressed in his Confederate uniform. A thick gauze bandage, bulging at the ear, lashed around his head. Both hands gently rest in his lap atop an ornately engraved sword and scabbard. His nose is a nose I recognize down through my father’s side. Uncles and cousins. His red beard and hair. His ice-blue eyes like some Christian martyr. (The tintypes of the day may have accentuated these features for the vanity of the sitter.) It’s the ghoulish white bandage that confuses the formality of the pose, as though honor and raw violence have no real business sitting side by side. “Six salvos of Federal artillery—eighteen rounds of rifled solid shot smashed broadside into the massed rebel columns.” Horses exploded. Riders cut in half. Blood of the body. Pride of the mind. The only sound right now in this ancient open field is a lone mockingbird sitting on top of a yellow round bale. His tail twitches with every change in the melody line.
San Juan Bautista
(Highway 152)
Some things do come back: we stopped in San Juan Bautista and tried to call Luis Valdez from a pay phone (long before the days of cells). I barely knew him but this was his town and we were passing through so—A woman with a heavy accent answers, says he’s in Oaxaca but try later, he might be back later. She says this as though he’s just down at the Quik Stop buying cigarettes. Later? I say. What do you mean, back later? Oaxaca’s a long way off isn’t it? Oaxaca’s in Mexico, we’re in northern California. She hangs up as though I’m some kind of prankster. John now is talking nonstop and has been for the last two hours. Part of the reason I wanted to stop and make this call was just to get out of the car and away from his ranting, but here he is, still carrying on. Now it’s about Ansel Adams and his light meter techniques. As though I gave a shit. Just running off at the mouth about apertures and stops, regardless of the immediate situation; the fact that we’ve stopped the car now and we’re out in the light of day in this bright town and something new might be just around the corner. He just keeps right on yakking about Ansel Adams. I, myself, was never a huge Ansel Adams fan if you want to know the truth. Too precious about the landscape for my taste. I mean I respect the landscape as much as the next guy, don’t get me wrong, but I’m not going down on my hands and knees to it
. I’m more into faces—people; Robert Frank, Douglas Kent Hall, guys like that, but John, he can’t stop gushing. I think he’s on speed again is what I think. In fact I’m sure of it. Unmistakable behavior patterns: dry mouth, smacking his lips all the time, twitching his neck around as though trying to adjust something; hunching his shoulders up and scratching both forearms at the same time. These are dead giveaways, if you ask me. He promised me and Dennis he wouldn’t bring any of the shit along but I’m sure that’s what it is. What else could it be? He’s got a hidden stash somewhere in the Chevy. He’s done this before. No honor. Another telltale sign is the constant switching of subjects with little or no regard for what’s just come before or what might follow. As though he doesn’t even need a listener. Just willy-nilly random whacked-out associations, shifting blithely in midstream like we’re a couple of tourists walking through his inner landscape. Just as an example; now he’s talking about lying—that’s his subject for the moment: the Art of Lying, he calls it; the myriad forms of self-deception on the liar’s part. A liar who doesn’t even realize he’s lying as opposed to one who does. Ultimately, he says, there’s really no difference between the Intentional Liar and the Unintentional one since neither of them is capable of seeing the entire context in which their lying takes place. And then he says this: “They are blind to the repercussions of their fabrications.” He actually says that. I stop dead in my tracks and look into his twitching eyes. I have the urge to kick him in the ass but I don’t want to start this trip off on a sour note.
Sam Shepard Page 4