“What man?”
“My Cocoa Puffs. Mine, Mine, Mine!!!”
“Now I’ve heard enough. You say one more word about Cocoa Puffs and it’s no more cereal of any kind, ever again!”
“But, it’s my Cocoa …”
“O.K. that’s it! I’m taking all the cereal back. No more cereal until you grow up!”
“Nooooooooooo!!!!”
Después de que ya murió tres bestias vimos atadas
y por el silencio se veía que estaban espantadas.
El soltarlas determina Pat Garrett y se sentó
y con dos finos balazos dos cabestros les cortó.
Billy pulled the rope on which his horse was tied,
a mare known for her beauty, bottom and speed.
One shot from Garrett’s gun and he felled her,
blocking the door and their chance to be free.
Los “Biles” al oir los tiros empiezan a cabrestrear
al caballo que quedó queriéndolo hacer entrar.
Garrett no permite esto pues toma una mira cierta
le dió atras de la oreja y cayó en mera puerta.
Garrett yelled, “How are you fixed in there, Billy?”
Bilito replied, “Pretty well but we have no wood.”
“Come out, Billy, collect some and be sociable.”
“Business too confining now; would that I could.”
Ya cuando nos levantamos del lugareite frío
pues por poco nos helamos con el estómago vacío.
El compositor se vió en grande tribulatión
al ver sus pies chamuscados pero no dejó la acción.
Garrett ordered a large fire built to warm us.
Bacon and coffee were roasted over the flames.
“Are you hungry boys?” he yelled to the “Billies.”
“Ate yesterday,” Billy said, “thanks just the same.”125
I find supermarket check-out lines especially confining. It’s bad enough being squeezed front and back by rude shoppers, but why don’t they make the registers wider apart? Adding insult to injury is the check-out girl with long chipped-red fingernails. Yes, the nails guide her blood-shot eyes while she lip reads prices off the clipboard, but then she has to punch in the numbers using the sides of her fingers in order not to break them. She licks her thumb often through smoke and coffee teeth to count money, separate grocery bags, or to paw food and tumble it aside. She pauses to flick tangled branches of black-rooted blond hair over her shoulder where it lasts a tense moment before snapping back. Youthful, plump and pimply, her body bursts out of a pair of white food-stained sweatpants and a sweatshirt that has been cut at the bottom in order to reveal a bread-dough underbelly housing a deeply sunken belly-button. Although the thought of even touching her revolts me, I am humbled by the realization that even if I made advances toward her, she would shoot me a look between gum pops that would freeze a bear after honey.
As I reach for the last Creme Filled Drakes Devil Dog, I feel a rude bump on my posterior. I turn and the devil bites my heart as I stare into the red-veined eyes of …
“Walter, you don’t mind if a senior citizen squeezes in front of you.”
Mrs. Moss wedges her cart in front of me and pulls a fistful of coupons out of her pocket book.
“My, you’ve enough to feed a small army,” she says.
“Just a few minor items. Meats and vegetables are on the bottom.”
She lowers her reading glasses to eye my cart. “Who are you throwing a party for, a bunch of five-year olds?”
Le tocó de centinela en la tarde en un barranco
de la puerta de la casa vió salir bandera blanca.
Dio aviso a los compañeros les gritamos que salieran
toditos nos dividimos mandados por veteranos.
Day turned to night and silent grew the birds.
The coyotes howled as the moon played dead.
Orange coyote eyes glowed in the woods,
but for one pair, the Devil’s, which were red.
A dos allí mancornamos a Rudenbaugh y “Bilito”
con una corta cadena les echamos candadito.
La tomada de estos hombres muy difícil parecia
pues vivos no los tomaban era lo que el “Bil” decía.
As the sun rose and the birds returned singing,
a white flag was seen waving out the door.
Glad was I for it is a bad business
to chase men down as if they are dogs.126
With Mrs. Moss preoccupied torturing a stockboy about a price, I turn my attentions to the cashier as she laboriously tallies my purchases. Blowing a bubble while reaching over for the next item, she reveals a fleshy cleavage. As a mental exercise, I ponder the weight of each mammilla—no less than two pounds each, I’d estimate.
“You got something on your mind wise guy?”
I look up into the smudged eyes of the cashier.
“Why no, I was checking prices.”
“I know what you were doin’. Ain’t that called sex harrassm’t. Hey Mac!”
A barrel-chested man turns his moustache toward us. “What now?”
She yells out, “This wise guy is sex harassin’ me.”
From behind, Mrs. Sweaty Sideburns jams her cart into me. “Yeah, he looks like the type.”
“This is outrageous, I did no such thing.”
“What have you done now, Walter?” Mrs. Moss pipes in.
The mustachioed manager moves in.
“Why Mrs. Moss, you’re my next door neighbor, you can vouch for my character.”
“I’ll do no such thing. As far as I’m concerned you’re an amoral slouch and I wouldn’t put any outrage past you. If your dear parents were alive to see you now, it would surely kill them. Now apologize to the young woman, so we can all get on with our lives.”
“I’m so sorry. No harm was intended. It will never happen again. Please forgive me.”
“Listen up, creep,” says the manager. “This time we’ll forgive you, but I don’t ever want to see your fat face in here again. You got that?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Now apologize to Mandy.”
“Mandy?”
“Yeah, me, you pervert. Say you’re sorry.”
“Mandy … Allamanda?”
“What’s this guy talking about? You nuts or something?”
“No, please, please, forgive me. I’m so sorry. I’ll never come back. I’ll never burden this fine establishment with my foul presence again. Please accept my sincerest apologies. By the way, I need these items delivered.”
From behind, I hear the voice of Black Bart, “Mommy, mommy, there’s the man who touched me!”
“We gave our word that we would not fire into them. They came out with their hands up, when Barney Mason, a damned old no-good trouble-maker, said, ‘Let’s kill the son-of-a-bitch, he is slippery and may get away.’ He raised his gun to shoot the Kid, when me and Lee Hall threw our guns down on him and said, ‘Just try that you dirty dog and we’ll cut you in two.’ That clipped his horns.”
- James East127
Chapter Seventeen
Safe again. Hot shower clean. Fresh clothes. Noon. Creeping up the side of my building, Dawn fingers her way to my window softly like a swain scratching a lover’s back. It’s well past my bedtime, yet somehow I’m calmer than I’ve been in days. An amber glow warms the room as I settle back comfortably into a padded chair and think of my beloved Allamanda.
The eye of the storm no doubt. Four hours before zero hour. Four hours to kill. Yet, strangely, I am not nervous. It all seems so inevitable. Like a death sentence.
Could it be the fresh blood pumping through muscles that had long lay dormant like a recharged battery in an old car after being taken out for a long-awaited spin? Could it be relief after a highly stressful yet successful hunt, the thrill of the kill, the taste of the spoils, the fluffer-honey-nutter-Hershey bar sandwich splashed with a liberal dose of raspberry syrup all washed down with a coconut-fu
dge milkshake? Regardless, I lay a blank page before me, take pen in hand, and imagine my one true passion, the love of my life, the angel sent by the heavens to save my soul: Allamanda.
Closing my eyes tightly, I call upon the muses to deliver a divine vision.
Allamanda,
I have seen your flower
in picture books, but never
have I beheld one more lovely
than the blossom of your eyes,
black as a thousand midnights,
rising to meet mine.
“The posse drew up to the old hospital when we were set upon by Manuela Bowdre who had already heard of her husband’s death. She waxed hysterical upon seeing Pat Garrett and pounced upon him like a panther scratching and kicking and generally misusing his person. She aired her lungs in a local Spanish that I am sure I am grateful not to have understood. She had to be pulled off which was no easy chore considering the care that had to be taken for she was in the family way.”128
I read my words of love back and feel my heartbeat quicken. Thusly inspired, I get up and rummage around the library for books on flowers. Behind a pile of newspapers, I find them. In the last book, Plants A-Z: The Complete Handbook of Plants for Home or Garden, I locate exactly what I need. The flower is more beautiful than I could ever have imagined.
Neither have I smelled
the buttercup-yellow bloom
of the Allamanda Cathartica,
but if that scent merely hints
at the sweet fragrance
which whispers your passing,
never could I enter your garden
without swooning in ecstasy.
“We were having them fitted for irons at the black smith in Fort Sumner when an old Indian woman who called herself Deluvina Maxwell came in. She would only speak to Sheriff Pat Garrett and told him that she had been sent by Maria de la Luz Beaubien Maxwell to ask that he allow the Señora and her daughter to say goodbye to Bilito.
“Out of respect, Pat did agree, but he took care to have the Kid shackled by the leg to Dave Rudabaugh, another of the desperados we had captured that day, and me and Lee Hall marched them lockstep to the Maxwell hacienda.”129
Allamanda,
shall I compare thee
to your flowered namesake?
Your smooth olive skin
is surely softer than any petal.
Your torso curves more supply
than the stem of any climbing vine.
Your raven-silk hair
sways in the breeze lighter
than any leaf, yet your roots
flow deeper into the earth
than the thickest of flushed foliage.
“The old Indian woman left us in the foyer to get Señora Maxwell. She came in dressed formally and took the Kid’s hand in greeting. She asked us into the living room. Being full of trail dust, we begged off. Her daughter Paulita came in and hugged the Kid in tears. Señora Maxwell pleaded with me to free Bilito long enough to go into a private room with Paulita so they could talk awhile. I told her how very sorry I was, but this I could not do. Escape may not have been on their minds, but to release the Kid for any reason would not be a wise thing to do at all.”130
Would that I
could pluck your pedicel
and hold you in my arms for
eternity—yet I dare not,
for I can only gaze
upon your expansive grace
and allow your presence to fill me
with the benign light of silence.
I look over my handiwork and like a silly little child, feel a tear well up my eye. It drops upon the page.
“The lovers embraced and she gave Billy one of those soul kisses the novelists tell us about. It being time to hit the trail for Vegas, we had to pull them apart much against our wishes for as you know, all the world loves a lover.”
- James East131
An overwhelming fatigue overtakes me. I look up at the clock: 2 p.m. If I don’t go now, I may never go, and I must go. I’ll wait in the park on my favorite bench, the one hidden within a wooden nook, far from prying eyes. It’s been too long since I last ventured there. It will strengthen me to my task.
My palms are so sweaty, I have trouble getting on a new set of latex gloves.
Chapter Eighteen
The Manchild and I have set up camp in my great-grandfather’s hospital room.
It’s well lit, but we go about building a fire anyway. It’s my job to collect wood as Billy scouts out the perimeter. I have trouble finding kindling but finally make a pile from old scraps of broken furniture. Billy lights it using a flint and shortly we set down to a dinner of dried beef and beans. I get up to pull great-grandfather’s bed closer to the fire. Billy says, “What’s the point, he only wants to die anyway?”
“But Billy,” I reply, “What if you were an old man, wouldn’t you want to be closer to the fire?”
“If I was an old man,” he says, “I would want to be dead.”
I hear a snap that sounds too far off to be a spark from the fire, but before I can look over, Billy has pulled his six-shooter and is firing into the darkness as he leaps out of our circle of light. Bullets whiz overhead. I rush to my great-grandfather. As I reach his bedside, I feel a sharp pain like a red hot poker twisting into my chest.
“Great-grandfather,” I gasp, collapsing on his bed.
“You are a fool trying to save me,” he laughs. “I’m already dying and now you can join me.”
“B-b-but,” I stutter, “but what about Billy?”
“Billy? Ha! Billy’s been dying a long time too. We ’ve all been dying, my boy. Bout time you got on the train.”
“But I can’t, being alive is all I’ve got left.”
“Being alive ain’t all it is cracked up to be now, is it son?”
Death—blood-choked lungs gasp for air. The head grows light with suffocation. The body stiffens growing numb with cold. The heart painfully measures each beat in time with the slowing of breath until there’s no air. Then everything stops, heart, lungs, and I feel myself rising off the ground. My body begins to swirl about the room as if battling death like a fish pulled out of water. This time I refuse to relax. I don’t care if I’m just dreaming. Dizzy beyond sense, I flail my limbs against the whirlwind, tumbling over in a seasick spin. The wind howls past my ears, barking like an angry wolf.
“Yelp!”
I’m shaken awake by a high-pitched bark from the ugliest of tiny beasts—the puppy! Attached to its leash, my focusing eyes make out the familiar pair of stiletto heels, spinach-veined ankles, bony black-leotard legs, fluffy shirt, floppy hat—the anorexic!
“Yelp, yelp, yelp!”
From my prone position on the bench, I instinctively sit up at the shock and so scare the puppy that its face changes from snarling confidence to absolute fear. It darts behind the anorexic and circles around her legs, yelping and whining, hopelessly tangling her in the leash. She tries to step out, trips slightly, and her hat topples to the ground. She reaches to snatch it up, stumbles over her heels, and reaches out to regain her balance. As she looks to see what’s in front of her, her eyes rise to meet mine. For that moment in time, the kind that lasts an eternity, both of us are aghast at the other—I for what is about to fall into me, she for what she is about to fall into. Both our eyes not only meet, but picture our fate and neither of us are overwhelmed by fear, or any other emotion, save one, and for both of us it’s exactly the same—repulsion!
Then the moment is gone. Somehow she regains her balance, straightens up, and puts on her hat. Stepping out of the tangled leash, she walks off dragging the yelping pup.
Repulsion? Yes, I am repulsed by her, but in that moment of absolute truth, it was undeniable—she was repulsed by me! I repulsed her! I feel my heart pump and sputter, my temperature heat up, my blood pressure rise to a boil. My clothes stick to my skin as a cold wind sends a chill up my spine and through my pained shoulders. An ugly knot forms in my back and I squirm snap
ping it out with a painful pop. In spite of my short nap, I feel like melted lead hardening on arctic ice. The wind picks up. Fallen leaves swirl about my ankles. Helios bears his teeth leaving bite marks upon my retinae.
To awake in the middle of the day, how unpleasant.
I realize I’m clutching a heart-shaped box of Russell Stover Hand Dipped Chocolate Truffles to my chest. Now I remember. A gift for Great-grandfather (half-priced after Valentine’s Day). Great Gods, what time is it? I check my watch, 4 p.m.—zero hour! I must rise and walk, leave the safe refuge of the park, cross the ugly car-exhausted street, and get there before visiting hours are over, but somehow I can’t move. I feel, as Alexander the Great must have felt, when, at the very same age as I, he finally halted his undefeated soldiers at the banks of the river Nile, thus ending the undefeated and uninterrupted march of the largest army in the history of mankind to that date. With all of Europe, Persia, and Asia behind and the African continent stretched out before him—the last conquered kingdom at his back and a new unconquered one in front—Alexander did not attack, not because of fear or indecision, not because of poisoning or sickness, but simply due to the sheer weight of his own body. He died shortly thereafter.
With every muscle in my body straining, I finally stand.
Billy ‘the Kid’ and Billie Wilson, who were shackled together, stood patiently while a blacksmith took off their shackles and bracelets to allow them an opportunity to make a change of clothing. Wilson scarcely raised his eyes and spoke but once or twice to his compadres. He was glum and sober, and not in very good spirits. Bonney, on the other hand, was light and chipper and was very communicative, laughing, joking and chatting with bystanders.
“You appear to take it easy,” the reporter said.
“Yes! What’s the use of looking on the gloomy side of everything? The laughs on me this time,” he said.132
As I enter the lobby of the nursing home, I’m overcome with revulsion and want to back out right away. People walk about absorbed with purpose. I feel as if any one of them could knock me over and then with a complete sense of justification ask me why I got in their way. If they eyed me with suspicion and asked what I was doing there, I’d be unable to answer. But what fills me with the most dread is the old people, some shuffling by, others pushed in wheelchairs by bored nurses, all with faces drawn and sagging, misery etched in the folds of skin, glistening bald patches, liver spots, shaking hands. The citrus smell of ammonia fails to hide the sour, dank smell of rotting flesh and I haven’t even entered through the doors into the main ward yet. I instinctively breathe slower as if, by slowing the intake of oxygen, my body can filter out the death and disease, and combat the germs that enter.
Billy’s Blues Page 12