We stumble into a quaint little café, pretending to be ordinary polite citizens off on a little road trip; as though it’s the forties or something, back when whole families just piled into automobiles and rambled down the road for the sheer enjoyment of shifting scenery. We sit down at a table draped in a red plaid oilcloth with salt and pepper shakers in the shapes of a rooster and hen. There’s a big plate-glass window looking out over the old Spanish plaza. Everything seems quiet and peaceful even though John picks up the salt and pepper shakers and starts humping the hen with the rooster. Before we can even order coffee Dennis starts up on something and I can suddenly see that he’s in on this speed thing with John. Same symptoms but slightly more subtle. He starts in on a dream he’s been having where there’s this big-ass guy in shorts swinging from the ceiling of an old courthouse by his knees and then crashing to the tiled floor and just lying there, pretending to be dead. Just deliberately crashing like that. I’m not used to men telling me about their dreams. There’s something suspect about that for some reason. Women, I don’t mind doing that, but men is a different story. So long as he doesn’t start interpreting this dream, bringing in astrology and runic symbols and trying to draw parallels to his waking state, I can go along with it. I manage to order bacon and eggs with chorizo sausage and corn tortillas on the side between the gaps in Dennis’s musings. Actually, the only reason I’m tolerating this dream-recall of his is because he once related to me the details of his father’s suicide and I keep waiting for another spellbinding tale to come out of him like that one but so far it’s not happening. His father owned a hardware store up in Oregon, and apparently, one night after closing hours, he managed to rig up an ingenious pulley device with nylon cord and fishing line fastened to the triggers of a Browning over and under, enabling him to place his forehead directly in front of the black barrels and pull both triggers at once. There was little left of his father’s face. Dennis was ten at the time and remembers the community up there shunning him as though he were suddenly akin to the insane. Now John pops up again in one of the long pauses of Dennis’s dream. He says he suddenly realizes why he’s always liked crime novels so much. I was unaware he had any passion for the genre at all. He says it’s because he’s always identified with the isolated nature of the detective as a central character. The outsider looking in. He says that just before we entered this café here for instance, he had that same kind of feeling—that “outsider” feeling and his reaction was to immediately take on the persona of the Detective; turning his collar up, stuffing both hands deep in his pockets, keeping his eyes low to the ground while maintaining an acute awareness of the café’s interior. (I just assumed it was more goofy speed behavior.) Having adopted this new facade gave him confidence, he says, to enter the café and order a cup of coffee. He says he finds it much easier to play a role than to be himself since he has no idea who in the world he actually is. He was purchased on the black market back in the forties for six thousand dollars cash at the age of one from a Jersey City adoption agency. The Jewish couple who bought him said they picked him out for his little shock of black hair, dark eyes, and certain Hebraic features which they thought might eventually cause him to be mistaken for their own flesh and blood. As he matured, however, these characteristics became more and more exaggerated, taking on definite simian qualities his surrogate parents could never have predicted. His nose broadened and flattened out something like Rocky Marciano’s. His lips became full and pouty and he developed the habit of never quite closing them. His eyes took on the deep black sheen of an Italian Gypsy and his hair hung in shaggy ringlets with no bounce to them at all. On top of all this his general attitude toward the outside world veered far afield from his parents’ expectations. He was entirely without ambition of any kind. As early as twelve years old he would sit for hours on park benches and stare at the pigeons. He had no desire even to feed them. His only dream was to fall madly in love with a Spanish redhead and live with her forever in some remote village, taking occasional side trips by himself but always returning to her bed. He’s managed to achieve this and claims to be completely satisfied with his current situation. I have no reason to disbelieve him.
Dennis now comes up with this sudden revelation that this has to be the town where Alfred Hitchcock shot Vertigo. He remembers the tower. We’re looking directly at it out the plate-glass window. He remembers Jimmy Stewart’s climb up the winding stairs and the woman falling—or was it the man? Maybe that’s why I’m having these falling dreams, he says. Not me falling but someone else—like, you know, that guy hanging from the courthouse ceiling—deliberately crashing to the floor like that. I’ll bet that’s what it is, he says.
What’s what it is, I ask him as I unscrew the Texas Pete.
Vertigo! The movie. You remember that movie, don’t you? Jimmy Stewart and Eva Marie Saint.
No, it was Grace Kelly, John pipes up.
No, it wasn’t Grace Kelly, Grace Kelly was in The Birds, Dennis says.
That was Tippi Hedren, I interject over the eggs.
Oh, right, Dennis says. She was the mother of Farrah Fawcett, right?
Farrah Fawcett?
Farrah Fawcett is not the daughter of Tippi Hedren, John says. I’ve been away from the cinema for some time, I admit, but I’m almost positive that Farrah Fawcett is not the daughter of Tippi Hedren. She’s the mother of somebody else very famous but it escapes me right now.
I thought it was Farrah Fawcett, says Dennis.
No, you’re mistaken.
Well, who is it then? says Dennis. Who’s she the mother of?
I’m not sure. It’ll come to me, says John.
Why don’t you guys go take a walk around the plaza while I finish my breakfast, I suggest.
All right, good idea, says John and off they go out the door, the two of them. Just like that. It’s like they’re totally suggestible. All you have to do is suggest something and they go along with it. Like if you said to them, why don’t you both go climb that Alfred Hitchcock tower out there and push each other off, they’d probably go along with that too. They’ve got to be stoned out of their minds.
Both of them. I think maybe Dennis is on some of that Purple Owsley acid or maybe just mushrooms. I saw him plucking something colorful out of the cow shit by the side of the road when we stopped to take a leak. I can tell by the way he’s walking—all slow and disoriented, carefully observing the smallest dumb thing. Like stopping dead in his tracks to watch a paper cup go blowing across the bandstand. I can see them both now out the plate-glass window as I chew on my tortilla. How did I get to be the observer in this bunch? The outsider of the outsiders. Now they’re both squinting against the sun, shading their eyes with their hands and walking slightly hunched over with their collars up, like they’ve just been released from a very dark place into the light of day. Like two ex-convicts actually; two guys who have just recently spent some very serious time in stow and don’t have a clue how to behave in society anymore. My arrogance is beginning to take its toll on my stomach but I’m having a hard time switching to tolerance with these two. I don’t know why I end up judging them all the time. I thought we were just going to roll on down the road and let everything happen. Like the days of old.
Brain Fever
There was definitely some inbreeding going on way back there between the Bateses and the Fiskes; the Dodges and the Smiths. You can see it clearly in the 1400s then trailing back deep into the Dark Ages; the Ferrers and the Lyons, Norman horsemen; the Walkers too (“those white barbarians,” as Benjamin Franklin was wont to call them). They were fucking each other’s cousins. It’s plain to see in the family tree. They were all mixing it up. In Thoroughbred parlance the polite term for it is “linebreeding.” You’d be hard-pressed to find a racehorse these days without at least one ancestor repeated in the first four generations. The popular superstition about this in human practice is that it leads to domestic violence, bad teeth, and insanity. Now, the polite term for “insanity,” back
in the day, was “brain fever.” It shows up again and again in the annals of my ancestry: “succumbed to brain fever, 1636, in transit to America aboard the schooner Peregrine. Fell into a feverish spell and wandered off into the woodlands, believed captured by the Narragansett. Burned at the stake for furies of the mind, conversing with devils in most unintelligible tongues.” It’s enough to make you wonder.
Tops
Things like these—lost fragments, almost: At sixteen, working for Tops Chemicals, loading buckets of chlorine in green flatbed trucks; did I, for instance, connect the raging sting in my eyes at night and the jaundiced tone my hands had turned with swimming pool hygiene and bikini moms? I doubt it. I had no idea either, for instance, that the acres of exotic flowers next door carried a name like bird of paradise. Who dreamed that one up? And how these cut flowers brought top dollar in L.A. after running all that way by train at night through Santana wind in pitch-black boxcars to be opened up to the morning dew by Mexican vendors then sold for the shady patios of the super-rich Wrigleys and Rich-fields. I was an innocent kid, as they say; skinny as a whip. Dogs came out to meet me. Grown women smiled and waved from porches. I had no clue they kept right on watching through their kitchen windows as I cut down across the orange groves and hopped the tracks of the Union Pacific.
Things like these just come floating in these days. Uninvited.
Thor’s Day
(Highway 81 North, Staunton, Virginia)
What was that all about last time, anyway?
What last time?
In the Cracker Barrel. Denton. When you broke down for no apparent reason.
I can’t remember.
You don’t remember suddenly bursting into tears after you ordered those blueberry pancakes? You don’t remember that?
No—No, I do remember but I can’t remember why.
Totally embarrassing. Everyone staring. The whole place went silent.
I remember. I remember now.
Well, you should remember. It was only three days ago.
Is that all?
That’s all.
Seems longer.
That’s all it was.
How long have we been on the road, anyway?
Too long. I can’t stand this. I really can’t.
It’s not all that bad.
It’s bad.
Do you think we should go our separate ways?
Ha. What would you do without me?
I’d be all right.
What would you do?
I’d be fine.
You’d be fine. You can’t even order pancakes without blubbering into your napkin. What’s become of you, anyway? You’ve fallen completely apart.
I’ll be fine.
Stop saying that! What has happened to you? Has somebody died or something? Somebody you’re not telling me about? Some dog, maybe?
Nobody’s died. Nobody recently, anyway.
Then what is it? What in the world could be so tragic?
I don’t know. It just comes over me.
What does?
A black cloud.
Oh, stop. I’m not falling for your poetics. Just try to control yourself while we’re having lunch. I want to eat in peace.
• • • • •
Do you want to sit by the window?
Yes. I like to look out on all the parked cars.
How’s this?
Good.
Which side of the table do you want?
I want to be able to see all the parked cars.
Fine. I’ll sit over here, then.
Don’t you want to sit next to me? Side by side, like we used to?
No. I want to sit over here. Across from you. So I can keep an eye on you.
In case I break down again, you mean?
Exactly.
You don’t trust me.
It’s not a question of trust.
We always used to sit side by side.
That’s not entirely true.
Back in Roswell, we used to.
That was a long, long time ago.
Seems like yesterday.
Your sense of time is out of whack.
We always sat side by side in Roswell so we could hold hands and touch each other’s thighs.
Will you please stop with this! Now, what do you want to order?
What do they have?
The same thing they always have.
Do they have those pancakes? Those blueberry pancakes?
You’re not ordering those again.
Why not?
Because they make you break down and weep for some mysterious reason you don’t understand.
It wasn’t the pancakes.
What was it then?
I told you, I don’t know.
There’s got to be a reason.
There is. I just don’t know what it is.
How can that be? How can that possibly be?
• • • • •
Is today Thursday? Yes. I think it is.
Then they must have chicken and rice. That’s what it says: “Thursday Special—Chicken and Rice.”
Is that what you’re having?
I don’t know.
Well, make up your mind. The waitress is heading over here.
Do you know where “Thursday” comes from?
What?
“Thursday.” The word, the day. Do you know where it comes from?
I have no idea.
Druids.
Is that a fact?
Yes. “Thor’s Day;” the day of thunder. The Thunder God.
Thor? I thought he was Norwegian or something. Viking. He wasn’t a Druid, was he?
No. He was a god.
And they worshipped him? The Druids?
They worshipped everything.
That can’t be right.
They worshipped the oak.
The oak?
Yes.
The tree? The oak.
Yes.
And why was that?
It was the tree most struck by lightning.
Fine. Are you having the chicken and rice or what?
It was the tree Thor chose to strike and set on fire.
Where in the world is the waitress?
It was the tree the Druids climbed in white robes and cut the mistletoe from with golden daggers.
I can’t believe they leave people just sitting here like this.
They thought the mistletoe was a message from Thor.
I’m going to find the waitress.
No! Don’t go!
I’ll be right back.
Please, don’t go!
Oh, stop it. I’m coming right back.
Please!
Oh, my God! What’d I just tell you about this? This is exactly what I was talking about. Now you’re trembling.
Just don’t go.
Let go of my wrist!
Please!
Let go! You’re hurting me!
I’m sorry.
You’ve punctured the skin. Look at that!
I’m sorry.
I’m going out to the car.
What? Why?
I’ll wait for you in the car.
I thought you wanted to have lunch.
Not anymore. I’m not hungry.
Please. Come on. I want to have lunch.
Let me just tell you something—and the only reason I haven’t come out with this before is that I didn’t think you could handle it. I was afraid you’d break down again, but now I see that it’s just impossible to keep this going—this—especially after what you’ve just done to my wrist. I want you to know that I think we’ve … come to the end of our days together. And that’s the short truth of it. We’ve come to the end. What else is there to say?
What am I supposed to do now?
You said you’d be fine. That’s what you said: “I’ll be fine.”
I was just saying that.
I can’t go on with this anymore. I really can’t. Look what you’ve done to my skin.
It’s like an animal’s been chewing on it. Look at that! Look at this blood! It’s all over the place.
I’ll get some ice.
No! You’ve done enough damage already.
Here, take this napkin. Wrap it around your wrist.
No!
Oh, here comes the waitress. Finally. Here she comes. Over here!
I’ll meet you in the car.
Over here, miss! We’d like to order!
I’m going out to the car.
No, the waitress is coming. Look! Here she comes.
I’m going out to the car.
No!
• • • • •
I’m sorry, sir, but I didn’t see you sitting over here in the corner. All tucked away.
That’s all right.
Would you like to hear about our specials today?
No.
So, you know what you want then?
Is it too late to order the blueberry pancakes?
Cracker Barrel Men’s Room
(Highway 90 West)
Sam Shepard Page 5