And there is no blood in Autumn Cannibalism.
Autumn Cannibalism depicts a plastic couple in intimate embrace in the act of eating each other. Although the features are not uniformly rendered—the hands detailed, the heads leavening into each other like rising bread—the anthropophagy is clearly a function of sexual intimacy. The man pinches a doughy inch from his lover’s waist while spooning cream from the breast region (although there is no breast here, only a white enameled flatness) while the woman’s left arm dangles about his neck, her hand languidly holding a knife. The knife cuts into the torso of the man, which presents itself as a loaf of bread. Although perhaps my description of the anatomy is lacking, the cyclical nature of love—one’s feeding and feeding, the plastic ability of the bodies to nourish as food, the constant flux of the forms, the flow of man into woman, their rendering as a single, spiraling form—should seem more familiar.
Or maybe it doesn’t, this elemental desire, the lovers reduced to ingredients and appetite.
15
My mother’s ranch was north of Gallup on Route 666. The property seemed marked off at random. To my untrained, unenlightened eye, there seemed no purpose to having claimed this particular chunk at all. There was a log cabin of the prefabricated, Sun Valley type. The rough-hewn logs and wraparound deck were calculatedly rustic, just as the gleaming steel, heavily applianced kitchen was calculatedly convenient. I sat on the porch swing, which offered an endless view of uninterrupted land.
“How much do you think this place is worth?” I asked the realtor. She was Indian, but more Mexican than Navajo.
“A lot, to the right buyer,” she smiled. “It may not seem like much to you, but there are some Anasazi ruins about a quarter-mile north of here.”
“On the property?”
“Just inside the property lines.”
“Are we going to have problems selling it?”
“What kind of problems?” asked the realtor.
“Legal problems,” I said.
“The Anasazi are all gone, and so far there hasn’t been any interest from the Navajo or Hopi, so we should be all right.”
The realtor went inside to check the condition of the bathrooms. Johnny was waiting by the car talking to the handyman, a huge Indian who could have been forty or a hundred years old. When he saw that the realtor was gone, he came up on the porch and sat with me.
“This place freaks me out,” he said.
“I thought you’d be all spiritual and one with this. I thought you’d bring out your drum, maybe set up a sweat lodge...”
“Here? No way. This is Anasazi. In Navajo, that means Ancient Enemy.”
“No. It means Ancient Ones. Your ancestors.”
“You’re going to tell me who my ancestors are?”
“I’m just teasing you,” I said. “So what’s so scary about the Anasazi?”
“Well, they left in a hurry and no one knows where they went or why.”
“A drought?”
“There was a drought, but there had been other droughts.”
“War?”
“Maybe. But the Anasazi were organized. They could have put up a good fight.”
“What do you think?”
“I’ve heard that the Anasazi ate their enemies. I think that’s a Hopi thing, but there’s been all kinds of digging around here, and I guess they think the same thing.”
“‘They’ being the archeologists?”
“That’s right.”
“What a funny place for my mother to look for God.”
“Some people,” said Johnny, “think the cannibals were rebels from Mexico. They just came up here for a while and messed around. Ate a few Hopi. Ate a few Dineh. Made some good man corn. Wrecked a civilization. Headed back south.”
“And who were these Mexicans?”
“I don’t know. Just a bunch of people-eating freaky Mexicans.”
“What do you think, Johnny?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I think it came from within. I think the Anasazi were so fucking civilized that all the animal was building up, and then it bubbled over, and took the whole nation out.”
“When a thing becomes its most extreme, the seeds of its opposite are planted.”
“Just like that,” said Johnny. “Just like that.”
* * *
I made Johnny drive back from the Hidalgo. The light was bothering me again. I wore my sunglasses and had Johnny’s jacket wrapped around my head, but little slivers of light—that gorgeous R. C. Gorman plague of brightness—filtered through it all. I could feel the blood vessels expanding in my head, my blood pulsing against the walls of my cranium, and knew I was in for a bone-shattering, membrane-splitting migraine.
“Can you pull over somewhere and get me sinus medicine and a bottle of Excedrin?”
“Katherine, there’s nothing out here,” said Johnny.
“When will there be something?”
“Not for another hour.”
I groaned, then inched over closer to him. I rested my head against his shoulder and pulled the jacket over my head. Johnny put his arm around me.
“Try to sleep,” he said.
I woke up in my motel room. Johnny had taken off my shoes and there was a sweating pitcher of water on the bedside table with a clean glass. The curtains were pulled shut and a blanket had been thrown over the curtain rod to keep the room extra dark. My headache was gone. I drank three glasses of water and lay back down, exhausted. I didn’t have the strength to drive back to Maine.
For dinner that night Johnny opened a can of refried beans, which we ate with fresh tortillas and some spicy chicken that came wrapped in foil.
“Where’d the chicken come from?”
I asked. “Lady up the street.”
“The married lady?”
Johnny nodded.
“It’s very good,” I said.
“That’s why she has a husband.”
“Her spicy chicken?”
Johnny nodded. “What are you thinking?”
“Me?” I shook my head. “I’m wondering how the hell I’m going to get back to the East Coast. I can fly, but then what do I do with my car?”
Johnny rolled himself another tortilla and was about to bite it, but handed it to me, and then began fixing himself another. “I’ve never seen the sea,” he said.
“Do you want to see the sea?” I asked.
Johnny thought for a minute and then he nodded.
The next morning the real estate agent came by with a stack of papers for me to go over. I suggested a couple of East Coast publications where she might try advertising. The whole meeting took twenty minutes. Johnny and I went outside to see her off.
“Wait a minute,” she said. “I found a box in the crawlspace. It’s your mother’s.”
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s taped shut. Here,” she said, “it’s in my trunk.”
The box was about the size of a microwave and heavily sealed with brown paper, postage tape, the kind you have to wet to use. I shook the box. The contents rattled.
“It’s heavy.”
Johnny nodded and handed me a pair of scissors.
“Do you really think I should open it now?”
Johnny shrugged. “Is it a big deal?”
“Maybe not.” I set the box down on the desk. “It’s the only thing she left in the house.”
“Are you sure it’s for you?”
“Why didn’t she throw it out?”
“Maybe she forgot.”
“Maybe,” I said.
Johnny’s eyebrows came together in an uncharacteristically thoughtful way. “Or maybe she gave the Hidalgo to you and in the attic is a sealed box, also for you.”
I shook the box again. “It almost sounds like shoes.”
Johnny extended the scissors.
I inhaled. “I have a bad feeling about this box.”
“Then don’t open it,” said Johnny. He got up from his chair and headed for the doo
r.
“Where are you going?” I asked.
“Put my stuff in the car. Check the oil. Check the tire pressure.”
I picked up the scissors. “Don’t you want to see what’s in the box?”
Johnny thought for a moment. “No.”
“Come back here,” I said. “Come back here right now and sit down.”
Johnny sat down across from me and broke into a wide smile. “You’re weird, you know that?”
I nodded, not as amused as I should have been, and took the first tear at the seam of tape where the two lengthwise flaps of the box met. An odd musty odor wafted out of the slit. I saw Johnny pull back. I cut the tape at the cross-ends of the box. Carefully I lifted a flap. I nodded to myself, then closed it.
“Well?” said Johnny.
I laughed to myself then smiled knowingly at Johnny.
“What’s in there?” he asked.
“Why don’t you take a peek?”
“Just tell me.”
“I’ll do better than that.” I reached into the box and pulled out a skull. “It’s human,” I said, which was obvious. “And the back’s smashed in. Look.”
“Fuck,” said Johnny.
“Not only that,” I peeked it into the box, “I think we have a complete set, not that I’m an expert . . .”
“Bring it back,” said Johnny.
“Bring it back?”
“The bones. Bring them back. Or you’re going to have all kinds of bad shit happening.”
“The bones...”
“They’re fucking cursed.”
I dropped the skull into the box. “You think they’re Anasazi?”
“No, man. I think they’re Hopi.”
“Well, I’m not bringing them back.”
“Why not? What are you going to do with them?”
I closed the box carefully. “I think it’s a message from my mother.”
“Goddamn,” said Johnny.
“What?”
“Couldn’t she write you a fucking letter?”
“I should call her,” I said. I closed the box over.
“Damn straight,” said Johnny.
I dialed directory assistance. “The Quincy Home in Quincy, Massachusetts,” I said. I let the operator connect me for the additional charge and waited on the line. My heart quickened and for a moment I thought I’d hang up, but Johnny was looking at me in a supportive way and before I knew it there was someone on the line.
“Hi. I was wondering if I could speak to Alice Shea.” Saying my mother’s name was almost eerie.
“Alice? There’s a Margaret O’Shea.”
“No,” I said, annoyed. “Alice. Alice Shea.”
“Is she a relative?”
“My mother,” I said. I heard the clicking of a computer keyboard.
“She’s not here now. I think she was discharged.”
“Discharged?”
“Or transferred. Her record hasn’t been updated for quite some time.”
“Where would she go?”
“I don’t know, Ma’am. I’ve only been working here for two weeks. I still haven’t quite got the hang of it.”
I was silent.
“This is your mother?”
“Yes,” I said, annoyed by the tone of her voice. “Is there someone there who knows what she’s doing?”
“Maybe you could call back at two? That’s when Nancy comes on. She’s been here for a long time. She should know.”
I remembered Nancy. I remembered her gratuitous hand-squeezing. I always suspected her of eating all the chocolates I brought for my mother.
“All right. I’ll call back,” I said.
I had a hard time convincing Johnny that it was okay to drive with the bones in the car. Perhaps I didn’t manage to convince him of that. I think what I said was that we had the bones, we had to deal with them. We had to find out whose (and who) they were. We had to give them a proper burial. Anything short of that would be sure to anger someone’s ancestors, was sure to bring on a plague of sores and drought and woe. I also wasn’t convinced that my mother would have an answer for me. I didn’t doubt that she knew where the bones came from, but she was not very forthcoming on a number of things. I was beginning to wonder if the bones had been left there by her because she had nowhere to take them, no place to bring them out to. I didn’t voice any of this to Johnny. I was still trying to make it seem normal.
Nurse Nancy would lead me to my mother, but what if she had nothing to do with the bones? At least I would know that and knowing, at that time, was more important to me than anything, including what dim room my father had chosen to deposit the living remains of my mother.
At the second of my colleges, Simpson, a women’s college, I had taken a pre-Columbian art course with a man named Barry Buster Parkinson. Barry Buster thought I had a real gift when it came to writing about art. He appreciated my jargon-free papers, the “pop” aspect of my approach to art history. For my final project, I made a hundred-fifty-pound replica of a monumental Olmec head out of aluminum foil, and received an A for the term. I was sleeping with Barry Buster at the time, but I don’t think this influenced the grade. I was also sleeping with Lou Walsh, the geology instructor, and I barely managed a C.
Barry Buster and I had parted on good terms. He found my departure from the school mind-boggling and seemed to hold himself personally responsible. He was a very moral guy, other than the occasional sexual dalliance at his wife’s expense. He told me that if I ever needed him, I should feel free to call him and he would be glad to assist. He probably meant letters of recommendation, but I’d never needed any of those. I called the Simpson art history department from the motel desk while Johnny watched on, keeping a good six feet between him and the box of bones.
The secretary’s voice rang through the receiver.
“Gail,” I said. “It’s Katherine Shea.”
“Katherine! How are you?”
“I’m actually in a bit of a bind.”
“How can I help you?”
“Well it’s really not that big of a deal. I just need to speak to Mr. Parkinson.”
“Barry’s in Mexico.”
“What’s he doing there?”
“He’s putting together a show. It’s going to travel around.” Gail made it sound like he was a producer for Lost in Yonkers. “He’s at the Anthropological Museum in Mexico City.”
“Really?”
“He’s taking pictures of pots, those cute little pots that look like animals and stuff.”
“Do you have a number for him there?”
“I have a home number for him. You can talk to Gaia.”
Gaia was Barry Buster’s wife.
“Okay. Give me the number.” I pretended to write it down. “Thanks so much, Gail. Listen. I’m hoping to be in Pritchardville in the next few months, and I promise I’ll stop in and see you and the rest of the Simpson gang.” The Simpson Gang. I had no idea who they were, nor did I have any intention of ever setting foot in Pritchardville again.
“Well?” said Johnny.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Let’s get going. I’m sure I’ll think of something.”
* * *
Within the hour we were driving down to Albuquerque. It was two in the afternoon by the time we got there. Johnny drove over to the University Quarter and parked behind the Frontier Café. I went to sit in a booth and he got lunch, cinnamon buns and fresh-squeezed orange juice. The crowd at that time was made up of college kids of the funky variety getting breakfast, all tattoos and piercings, contrived hair, and bare arms and bellies. I lit a cigarette.
“Are you sure you want to go to Maine?” I asked.
Johnny nodded. “It’s not like I won’t be back,” he said.
After lunch we drove over to the airport. Continental had a flight to Newark that left at four. I didn’t want to know how much it was. There was a long line of people at the Continental counter waiting to check in for an earlier flight to Los Angeles. At the Aer
omexico counter two attractive women were gossiping in Spanish, slapping each other playfully. There was a poster of a stepped pyramid deep in jungle greenery hanging behind the counter. Also one of an immaculate powder-white beach. And another of a bowl of soup in which a coy langostino beckoned to me with a slender claw.
I returned to Johnny. I held my ticket in my hand. Johnny looked at it.
“Mexico?”
“I thought of something,” I said.
“Where are the bones?”
“I checked them. I didn’t want to take them through the scanners.”
“You sure this is a good idea?”
“No,” I said. “I’m rather convinced that it’s a bad idea.” I didn’t even have my passport, but apparently one only needed a driver’s license to go to Mexico. “There’s an hour until my flight. Let’s get a beer.”
I ordered Carta Blanca and Johnny had a Coors Light. I gamely squeezed some lime into my beer. “You ever been to Mexico?”
“Juárez.”
“Any fun?”
“I got drunk and then someone beat up my friend.” Johnny laughed. “My friend said that someone was me. The margaritas were thirty cents apiece.” Johnny took a cigarette out of the pack and put it in my mouth. He lit a match for me. “Why are you going?”
“Cheap margaritas.”
Johnny shook his head. He looked at me long and hard. “Be careful, Katherine. I got a bad feeling about this.”
Johnny gave me a rib-cracking hug at the gate. I had a moment’s panic when I thought I might be doing the wrong thing by leaving him. He was so strong. Johnny fished in his pockets and found a pack of pseudoephedrine and a bottle of Tylenol. “For the headaches,” he said. I don’t know when he bought them.
There were about fifteen people on the entire aircraft, which could easily have transported one hundred. I thought of drug operations, covert smuggling schemes. How else could an airline survive? The flight attendant offered me some chicken enchiladas and my choice of white or red wine, or champagne. I asked her if she had any tequila. She smiled and headed back up the gangway to the cockpit. I heard a belt of hearty male laughter and the clink of glass. Then she came back my way with a half-empty, unmarked bottle of the golden liquor. She poured me a double shot into a plastic cup and smiled.
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