Sam Shepard

by Day Out of Days

  How is it I got cast out here so far in this Kentucky wilderness? Was it horses or women? How did it come to pass that Mayan men are more a part of these snaking waters than my white flat feet touching bottom?

  Horse

  Dragging my dead gelding by tractor on a chain down to the deep ditch, crying like a baby. Thank God there’s no one on the farm right now. Just dogs, chickens, and cattle. Thank God for that. No one to see me like this, all grimaced up in grief; doubled over just about. The head of the horse bumping along over gravel and thick weeds; muscles of the neck flowing with every contour of land—flowing for the last time as they already begin to lock up. This great old gelding; son of Peppy San Badger, blood of King Ranch, carried me into the herd so many times; paralyzed cattle with his stare, rattled the bit in the ground. Now he’s going down in a black hole. Thank God there’s no one on the farm right now. Just dogs, chickens, cattle, and me.

  Descendancy

  Here I am again in the bright white glare of fluorescent tubes framing the cheap mirror of a two-banger motor home parked off Paseo de Peralta in the very town where my dad lies buried and my daughter was born. Here I am yet again in another movie, at my age, playing yet another military man, which I’m not and never will be but my father most certainly was and all his brothers and their father and grandfather and great-grandfather going back to the fall of Richmond and further back to Concord and Lexington and back some more to the Norman Invasion and pagans wearing calf skulls and Viking invasions and burials in longboats with dragon-headed prows. I don’t know how far back you want to carry this thing. What’s the point? Who are you hoping to find back there, anyhow? Some seer? Some diviner of destinies? And here they come again now, calling me on their walkie-talkies; banging politely on my metal door: ADs, Assistant ADs, assistants to the assistants of ADs. Making sure I’m ready. Suited up. Making sure I’m ready to be ready, just in case they’re ready. Any second now they might need me to step in front of the camera and portray this ongoing character in a decorated uniform with an aura of tired, grim determination in the face of hopeless odds. Where did I ever come up with an affinity for such a character, such a man? The arrogant jut of the jaw. The downcast scowl. And this terrible sense of impending doom? Was it from as far back as the steel seat of a Jeep in the Mariana Islands sitting beside my mother in monsoon rain? Was it in the back of my father’s neck where he picked compulsively at his shrapnel scars? Or is it somewhere deep inside the terror of being lost in the Great Basin at night with no lights and you’ve run completely out of gas? No use fishing in the dark. Put your costume on. Walk out there and face the music. Hopefully, some mask will appear. Someone from long ago, I might recognize. Something that might just tap me on the shoulder and invite me out of here. Believe me, I wouldn’t hesitate.

  Durango, Mexico

  He drives me out here to location. He won’t let me drive. It’s a matter of pride or union orders, I guess. I’m his guest, he says, and then he’s silent for miles. I don’t speak much Spanish so he stays silent. I can’t blame him. When I speak English he smiles and nods politely; relieved. I don’t know how much he understands. The miles click by. When I speak my stumbling Spanish a dark cloud crosses his face and a look of deep pity casts into his Indian eyes as though I were a “pobrecito”—one of the slab-sided dogs we go flying by; splashing mud on white sows and squealing gilts. We flash past stake trucks, broke down in the lava rocks, stacked high with sweet pine logs, flocks and flocks of swirling cowbirds like falling decks of cards. We head out into the pink Sierras in his beat to shit Oldsmobile, fenders flapping, and leave Mesquitillo’s bare dirt streets in the dust. The only car we pass is wheelless; jacked way up on wood Modelo crates. Naked two-year-olds peek out at us from behind fresh sheets, blowing in the high mountain air. The viejos here say they still remember Pancho Villa crashing through this very town on a plain bay horse; galloping toward a historical moment which he entirely staged for the American cameras. Clever bastard.

  Tulum, Mexico

  Early morning, the little Mayan man rakes the white sand in beautiful crosshatched strokes like a woven basket. He takes such great care with it you wonder what ancient sect of craftsmen passed this impulse down to him. He piles the seaweed and chunks of ragged plastic blown in from Cuba into neat little stacks then collects them all with a wooden wheelbarrow. His feet are wide and leathery like something from Diego Rivera.

  Slowly, the tourists begin to emerge from their pink cabanas hauling rubber rafts and tall mixed drinks down to the surf. They set themselves up in distinct camps, depending on language and culture. Some drop their tops. Others stay buttoned up clear to the neck. One of them is peeling badly and her husband slathers heavy-duty sunblock all over her back. She winces at his every touch.

  On the edge of the coconut palm grove a buxom Mexican woman lurks in the stripes of shade. She’s scanning the tourists with wild eyes, searching for any vulnerable single man. She reminds me of that fat woman from Fellini’s Amarcord who seduced all the young boys on the beach. What was her name? Serafina, maybe? She spots a ripe victim and approaches him quickly, almost tiptoeing through the crosshatch marks left by the little Mayan man. She asks the startled tourist, who is reading a Graham Greene novel, if he would like to go with her into the palm grove and get a deep massage. He shakes his head vehemently and rolls over on his belly, shocked at the interruption. One of the waiters from the resort spots the buxom woman and comes running at her, frantically waving a white linen napkin. He chases her off, back into the slender palms, as though she were a pesky seabird. Their tracks have ripped a violent swath through the perfect basket-weave. The waiter apologetically returns to the man reading the Graham Greene novel just as his slinky girlfriend heads toward him in a glistening purple bikini, carrying the New York Times. Little puffs of sand punctuate her every step. The waiter backs off, bowing and scraping. The buxom woman is still lurking, watching it all from a distance.

  Boca Paila, Mexico

  Why would he ever think, on arriving at midnight through sand and dank luggage, morning might miraculously bring some bright new shining faces to the plank breakfast table from as far away as Omaha, say, or maybe Saskatchewan, Tonopah, Del Rio? Is he finally getting that desperate for company?

  Must be all the white identical rental cars jammed up against the blowing palms; the crashing Caribbean repeating the same old song he’s just now beginning to recognize.

  Why would he ever think he’d become truly engaged talking “issues” with strangers when all they ever do is divide and separate along lines that real fishermen come here to get away from anyway? He would most likely draw a dead blank on every one and create a deep dark paranoia over the pineapple and cantaloupe.

  Anyhow, it’s clear they’re only here for the disposable photograph with some stunned world record Tarpon, a giant Jack or Permit. One of the bigger fellas obviously works for the Secret Service, although he thinks he’s anonymous. You can tell by his shaved neck, the automatic bulge in his Simms vest, and the puff in his concave chest.

  The top-heavy wives hang behind on the beach, reading historical novels and spine-tingling Grisham under lime green umbrellas. They’ve left nothing behind.

  Just lying here listening to my daughter smash mosquitoes in the next room; smacking her thigh. The waves are softer tonight; lapping almost. Wind has died down. Someone is playing repetitive Euro-disco nowhere music next door. All I can make out is the deadening bass line. My daughter’s mosquito smashing grows louder and more violent. Her torture is palpable. Her mother rolls over right beside me and yells out: “You can’t just slash away at mosquitoes! You have to be precise!” Her voice carries the authority of the Minnesota Boundary Waters. The smashing from my daughter’s room stops. Her candle goes out.

  Quintana Roo, Mexico

  Finally, the blind man and his companion sit down right next to me on the beach. I’ve been curious about them for days and now, here they are suddenly. It seems odd they should be so
close up when I’ve been observing them always from a distance; watching how the shorter man gently leads the blind man into the surf by the elbow then lets go of him once the waves begin to crash around their knees. They just stand there staring across in the direction of Hispaniola. Now, they turn and cross the white sand up the hill, back toward the restaurant; the blind man always behind holding onto the shorter man’s flowered shirt, very softly. Nothing desperate. Nothing urgent. I follow them and sit down directly across at a round table. I can’t help staring straight into the blind man’s eyes. He never wears dark glasses and his eyes are wide open, unblinking. They’re obviously synthetic eyes, like two large olives in a pale martini. I can see that these synthetic eyes are definitely not seeing mine. I look away quickly toward the green sea when his companion notices me staring. Far offshore the surf is breaking across the coral reef in a thin white line. The frigate bird soars high above, wings unmoving. What a creation.

  Dogs really know how to run down here. Away from gasoline-driven demons. Maniacs on bikes. Still, the movement never stops. The night. Squealing, flat-bellied girls on their purple spangled cell phones. Screaming with delight. Disfigured dolls hanging off the hitches of pickup trucks. And always the overripe pregnant ones from out of the skinny alleys, babies in each hand, ice cream running down their arms. Behind them, in a grass palapa, something’s being sacrificed to the Gods of Wind. Maybe it’s a new white goat brought down from Mérida. Maybe it’s something from an entirely different time. Only one thing’s certain. It never stops.

  Land of the Living

  “It’s just amazing how friendly you become when you’re on Zenax,” she says. This is after we’ve been standing in the long snaking customs line for over an hour in the torrid Cancún heat. We’re being herded, shoulder to shoulder, with all the other Minnesota “snowbirds” frantically fanning themselves with their immigration forms.

  “I know,” I say to her. “I’m amazed myself.”

  “You’re amazed?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “Why should you be amazed?”

  “Well, I feel this friendly person coming out in me and I wonder if maybe that’s my real nature. You know—the real me.”

  “Well, what is it that’s changed exactly?”

  “I’m on Zenax.”

  “I understand that,” she says. “But what is it that makes you more friendly than before you took the Zenax?”

  “Well, I’m not a particularly unfriendly person, am I?”

  “Not now, you’re not.”

  “No, I mean, I don’t ordinarily think of myself as a sullen, bad-tempered kind of a guy.”

  “I didn’t say sullen.”

  “Well—”

  “You don’t usually go out of your way to be chatty. Let’s put it that way.”

  “Chatty?”

  “You’re chatting about the weather with total strangers. You never do that. Not as long as I’ve known you.”

  “Well, I thought it was kind of remarkable, don’t you?”

  “What?” she says.

  “The weather. The change. The extreme difference between here and St. Paul in a matter of just three and a half hours.”

  “That’s why people come here from St. Paul. The change in the weather. That’s why we’re here.”

  “Yes, I know that, but it’s still remarkable, isn’t it? A hundred and five here and minus thirty back there.”

  “Never mind,” she says, and turns toward the slow-motion overhead fan.

  There’s a group of elementary-school teachers from Duluth right in front of us who suddenly burst into singing “When the Bear Comes over the Mountain” in perfect unison with no attempt at harmony. I guess the pulverizing heat and the waiting have tipped them right over the edge. The Mexican officials in SWAT Team uniforms look on in stony silence, arms clasped behind their backs, black Mayan eyes unmoved by this Nordic display of bravado. Our teenage kids have slumped completely to the concrete floor, heads propped on their backpacks, surrendered to the heat. They’ve stopped volunteering any conversation.

  “Actually, I’m just glad to be alive,” I blurt out after standing there awhile in a kind of stupor, hypnotized by the schoolteachers’ ditty.

  “You’re glad to be alive?” she repeats in astonishment. “Is that what you just said?”

  “Yes, I am. Just like Arnold Palmer.”

  “Arnold Palmer?”

  “Isn’t that what he says these days? Now that he’s ancient; hobbling down the fairway. ‘I’m just glad to be here. Just glad to be alive.’ That’s what he says when they run up to him with microphones and TV cameras, you know, for those golf show interviews. Even when he’s having trouble with his putting, his swing. Isn’t that what he always says now?”

  “I have no idea. I thought he was dead.”

  “Arnold Palmer? No. He’s very much alive. He’s an icon.”

  “Whatever,” she says and turns away again.

  “Well, it’s true,” I continue. “I’m thrilled to still be here; back in the ‘land of the living.’”

  “I didn’t realize you’d left us,” she says.

  “Well, that’s the way I always feel when I’ve survived an airplane trip.”

  “Survived?”

  “I always feel like I’m actually going to die when I get on an airplane. Like this is it, the end of the line; inevitable. Then, after we land and get back on dry land it feels as though I’ve lived through a kind of certain death and come out the other end. That’s why I take Zenax and that’s why I say I’m glad to be alive.” She stares at me a second in absolute bewilderment, as though she’s looking into the face of a total stranger, then turns back to the long stale line of humans in limbo.

  “My God,” she says. “What is taking so long with this customs thing? We’ve never had to wait this long before. What the hell is going on?” Just beyond the singing schoolteachers (who’ve now taken to doing the song in rounds, like Campfire Girls) is a somber couple I recognize from the Lindbergh Airport back in St. Paul. The man: in a wheelchair, somewhat older than the woman; late fifties maybe, blanket across his lap, a plaid scarf around his neck in spite of the stifling heat, and an odd alpine-style hat with a little brush sticking out of the band. The woman (his wife?) stands behind him, very erect, hands propped at the ready on the gray grips of the wheelchair, as though assigned to a permanent grim vigil. She is plainly pretty in a Midwestern open-faced, innocent way; wearing a light linen suit and white pumps—not exactly the expected attire for Yucatán beach life. The two of them seem completely detached from the goings-on: the silly singing; the constant fanning of everyone around them which has now become some kind of communal gesture of contempt for the Mexican bureacracy. Nothing seems to ruffle the couple’s deep stoicism. Now and then, the woman slips a white handkerchief from her pocket and gently daubs the man’s forehead and the corners of his mouth, although I can’t make out any moisture. He doesn’t seem to be suffering the consequences of a stroke or neurological disorder but rather a much longer and slower debilitation. Whatever it is, it’s clearly taken its toll on the two of them.

  Now, finally, the line begins to trickle forward. We prod our kids up off the floor and shove the luggage down through the roped-off alley-maze toward the customs inspectors. The abrupt, unexpected flow of the line seems to have caught the schoolteachers up short. They’re scrambling for their baggage. The austere couple rolls silently on. The man’s pale head slowly tilts upward, drawn by the tropical sunlight blasting through the tall arched windows of the main terminal. Each window frames an absolutely motionless palm tree outside. Heat waves brand themselves across the glass in vapored sheets. A single green parrot desperately wings its way from one palm to the next as though he might not make it; as though the savage heat might drop him flat in midflight.

  • • • • •

  We find ourselves crammed into a red Jeep Wrangler with a flapping canvas top. (The much larger Chevy Suburban I’d reserved having been
let go due to our delay in the customs line. Mexico waits for no man.) My son immediately drops off to sleep, his six-foot-plus rail-thin frame crunched up in back with the luggage. Our daughter leans her head against the pipe roll bar, a T-shirt wedged between the steel and her soft temple. Thick jungle air pours across her face. My wife has gone completely silent now, staring up at a gigantic billboard of nearly naked brown twins coyly concealing their perfect breasts behind icy bottles of Corona. “Have you got a girlfriend?” she asks me out of the blue.

  “A girlfriend?” I say, checking to see if our daughter may have overheard this but she too has been put to sleep by the heat.

  “Yes, that’s right. A girlfriend,” my wife repeats.

  “Where did this come from?”

  “Don’t act so surprised. You could very easily have a girlfriend and I’d never know it, would I? How would I know?”

  “I’m sixty. Those days are over.”

  “Lots of young women are attracted to that these days. It’s become chic or something.”

  “Attracted to what?”

  “Older men. Men of influence.”

  “Men of influence?”

  “Don’t laugh. You know what I’m talking about.”