Plow the Bones

by Douglas F. Warrick

  Gordon breathes for a long time. Then he says, “If I had a fly–whisk, I’d hit you with it.”

  Those beautiful eyes, so betrayed and bent and bruised, narrow. She would be sneering if she could. “You were wrong, you know. There is no such thing as enlightenment. There is no Zen. The Buddha burns here. Bodhi Dharma, too. Linji weeps in this place, somewhere above you in a chamber just like this one, wishing someone had told him the truth, begging for a chance to make it right. I could show you this. Would you like that?”

  Gordon shakes his head. “No. I believe you. It just doesn’t matter.”

  She spends a long time hurting him. She knows every secret. She can recite the entire script of his life, and does, punctuating each of his cruelties and stupidities and kindnesses and betrayals with burning and bleeding and pain. She scours him. And when she is done with this, she fucks him. She heals his cock, and she takes him into her, and he wants it, God, he wants it, he wants this with all of the substance that makes up his soul, even as heaving waves of memory and emotion and pain rip through him. But Gordon Dratch remembers to breathe.

  When she is done with him, she whispers in his ear. “We can do this forever. We are not restrained by time.” She takes his penis with her, severed and held by the stem in her hand, limp, conforming to the curvature of her palm, swinging.

  When she is gone, Gordon, his eyes narrowed, his charred lips smiling, shouts, “Speak! Speak!” and he does not stop shouting until his voice is raw and all he can do is breathe.

  §

  Witness Gordon Dratch experiencing eternity. This is zazen, this is meditation. Picture a lake of ice, and one drop of unfrozen water upon the ice. Now imagine the ice breaking. What happens to the drop?

  Picture a bell held in an old man’s hand in a room that stretches up to eternity and out to the same. Now close your eyes and hear the bell ring. You are nowhere. The only thing that is anywhere is the sound, the shatter–sweet forever noise, of the bell. Where does the noise end, and where do you begin?

  Witness Gordon Dratch closing his eyes in his little burning chamber. Witness Gordon Dratch, eleven–thousand three–hundred and eight years later, opening his eyes someplace else.

  Oh, thinks Gordon.

  This place — this new place — is made of gold. There is a golden carpet beneath Gordon’s folded knees, unspeakably soft, shifting beneath him to accommodate the tiny movements of the hairs on his legs and ass. There are golden walls and golden wallpaper. There is a golden window, somehow simultaneously transparent and opaque, which looks out into a golden world. There is a golden sofa, old and sprung, the kind of thing you find at a thrift store and spend hours in, letting yourself sink like a dropped rock into its deep–sea comfort. And against the far wall, sinking forever downward into a gold–black chasm and rising forever upward into a gold–black skylight, is a column of golden faces. It moves — twists, rises, turns, sinks, changes direction like a dancer, the way smoke changes direction, the way blood spilled underwater changes direction — and the faces shift, rolling over one another with a noise like wood being chopped (shhhunt, shhhunt, shhhunt), revealing themselves and concealing themselves.

  Gordon says, “I see. You’re Him.”

  One of the faces, one that looks like his father, drunk and dopey and sleepy–eyed, says, “I am,” and then is consumed in the rolling tide of other faces, and slips away up through the chute in the golden ceiling. Shhhunt.

  Gordon uncrosses his legs, takes a deep breath, closes his eyes. Jesus, he thinks, it would be so easy. I’m here. I’m home. Let go, Gordon, let go.

  Shhhunt.

  Some other thought slides like oil into Gordon’s head now, slides in and slides out again, not a flash, not a jump–cut thought, but a steamy dissolve in–and–out. Jehovah, the Blind Old Rapist. He says, “I don’t belong here.”

  Another face, this one looks like Annie — We all know how these things work. If you don’t get it by now, you’ve got bigger problems — says, “We made an exception.” And then, shhhunt, and Annie’s gone, sliding away beneath the hole in the floor.

  Gordon stands. The golden carpet pricks his feet, but it feels good, like how sometimes lying on the scratchy carpet in front of the TV on Saturday mornings used to feel good. He walks to the couch, sits down. It’s as perfect a sinking couch as any he’s ever sat in, and for a moment, Gordon feels tears prick his eyes (it’s been so long, oh, oh, it’s been so goddamn long) and childish, thankful joy possesses him, swallows him whole. He accepts the joy, swallows it, becomes it, and moves on. It’s become instinct. It’s like driving a car, riding a bike. Zazen is a forgotten instinct suddenly reclaimed. You don’t attain enlightenment. You remember it.

  He looks at a face that looks like the cop that found him drunk in his car outside of that Speedway so long ago, blurred into slopped paint by his remembrance, and says, “You can do that?”

  The cop–face says, “I can. You know that, Gordon.”

  Shhhunt.

  Gordon thinks, Faggot Christ. Jesus died for his own sins, not mine.

  “Why?”

  Gordon’s gold–faced mother, the newest mask in this procession, looks puzzled. Her eyebrows furrow and her lips pull to one side. “Because you win, Gordon. Because you proved your point.”

  “I had nothing to prove.”

  The faces laugh. All of them. The room (the room? Ha, that’s good; try the world, try the universe, try the slippery formless outside–the–eggshell–of–all–existence space, try everything, more than everything, so much everything that it might as well be nothing, and yes, try nothing while you’re at it) is filled up like a water balloon with the noise of endless voices laughing together in perfect harmony. It scares Gordon. For just a moment, it almost ruins him and he thinks, A living mind would break. A living person would go mad if they heard that sound. That sound is the true name of God.

  “Oh, my Gordon,” says a face like Bodhi Dharma, golden mouth set, golden eyes staring, those eyes people used to say could bore holes into mountainsides. “That’s true, now. There is no enlightenment. There is no Zen. This is the closest you’ll come.”

  It’s true, of course. Christ. It sits hard in Gordon’s chest, a lead fist between his ribs. Give up, he thinks. You win, Gordon. It’s time to quit breathing.

  And he thinks, Jesus died for his own sins.

  He says, “I am so angry at you.”

  Shhhunt, like a liquid slot machine, like a piston, like no other thing Gordon has ever seen, and, no, please, no, this face will ruin him, this face will eat him alive, this face will be worse than a thousand eternities in Hell, but here she is, goddamn it, staring, smiling, her golden eyes wet with golden tears, and Liz, his pretty Lizzer with one crooked tooth in her perfect smile, says, “I know. I forgive you for that.”

  Gordon Dratch’s anger slides away. He can feel it clinging to him, grasping desperately for purchase as it is sucked into ether and made into gold. And then it is gone. And Gordon cries like a child.

  Shhhunt.

  No, He can’t do that. He can’t give her back to him like that and pull her away again. It isn’t fair. It isn’t right. Please, he wants to keep her there with him just a little while longer, please!

  Liz’s face is gone. And Gordon Dratch stops breathing.

  There is no time in this place. And so Gordon Dratch does not know how long he has been curled up, sunk into the golden couch with his head on the armrest, watching the faces of the endless totem pole change, feeling sleepy and sad and satisfied. Forever, maybe. Maybe he has never been anywhere else. He can sleep now, if he wants. He can stay awake and speak to any person his heart desires, call up their shining face and pretend that it really did belong to them, that he was talking to someone other than Him. There is no suffering.

  None but the small silent sadness, less than microscopic, planted in his skull like a tiny seed.

  The pillar shifts, shhhunt, and the face staring back at him, mouth slightly open, witnessing the wo
rld through half–closed eyes, is unfamiliar. Almost. Gordon knows the way the lips twitch, the way the muscles in the cheeks tense and relax. Not visual memory, but something higher. He knows how it feels for those lips to twitch, for those cheeks to relax, for that jaw to chew, for those eyelids to flutter and close. Those lips once said, “I don’t believe in God, anyway,” and, “I’m really happy this way,” and, “Lizzer, I love you,” and, “It’s sort of liberating, if you can accept it.”

  This is the face of Gordon Dratch. And to Gordon Dratch, this face means nothing.

  Zen is a forgotten instinct suddenly reclaimed.

  Gordon says, “Oh, God. I think you just made a mistake.”

  His face says, “Gordon, I don’t make mistakes.”

  This poor old thing. This poor, deluded, mindless thing who existed before there were any faces to add to its golden surface, before forever began. This thing who fashioned a universe in three days and filled it with life so it wouldn’t have to feel so alone anymore. It just wanted to be believed in. It just wanted to be obeyed. And still it has not removed the arrow from its arm.

  Witness Gordon Dratch finally understanding compassion.

  He gets up from the couch, feels the regret, the longing to be back there, curled and comfortable forever and ever, he swallows it, accepts it, becomes it, breathes it. He stands close to the golden pillar, so close that his toes stick out over the edge, dangling above the unending mineshaft, so close that he can see the infinite faces swimming away from him down in the darkness a million miles away.

  Gordon Dratch’s golden face says, “What are you doing, Gordon? Don’t you want to sit back down?” What is that? Is there anger in that voice? Is there fear?

  Gordon reaches out and places his hand upon his own cheek. He says, “What a shitty ass–wiper.”

  “Stop this. Sit down.”

  Gordon says, “I am so sorry for this. I can only imagine how much it hurts.”

  The face, contorted now with anger, one golden vein (and hey, Gordon knows that vein, he’s had to massage that place on his temple with trembling fingers more times than he can recall) pulsing, says, “I gave you this place as a gift. I do not have to allow you to keep it. I do not want to, Gordon, but I can send you back.”

  Gordon smiles a little. He says, “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. I know. But,” and he runs a finger over those lips, down around that jawline. “This face isn’t mine. This isn’t me.”

  “Please.” Fear this time, hot and uneven and undeniable, rippling through the entire room. “Please. I love you.”

  Gordon says, “I said that to someone a long time ago. And she told me I was wrong. She was right about that, I think.”

  More faces now, swimming up to cluster around this one, this not–his–face, trying to overlap it, to cover it, to carry it away, shhhunt, shhhunt, shhhunt, but the face of Gordon Dratch, the face of this stranger, the face of this person who never existed, can’t escape. It is held there by Gordon’s gentle fingers, pinioned in place while the other golden masks lock up around it, cramped into expressions of identical terror and rage.

  “YOU ARE GORDON DRATCH. YOU WERE GORDON DRATCH FROM THE MOMENT I CONCEIVED OF YOU AND YOU WILL BE GORDON DRATCH FOREVER. YOU CAN’T ESCAPE YOURSELF.”

  “Are you familiar with the concept of a bodhi satva?” says Gordon (no, not Gordon, not anymore, not really ever). “Someone who opts out of Nirvana so they can continue to be born and to live just so they can lead others to enlightenment?”

  The faces scream.

  “It’s a Tibetan thing, mostly, and there’s really no equivalent in Zen.”

  A crack runs through the golden world, a fissure that runs out from the bottom of the God–Totem’s mineshaft and spiderwebs its way over the floor and the ceiling, opening up the world like lightning.

  “But I think…”

  “SIT. DOWN. NOW.”

  “This must be what they meant.”

  There is a shattering of ice, the sound of a bell being rung in a cathedral.

  §

  In the final era, there is an empty room in My Father’s House. A place where a crack runs through the center, like a nasty bump on a bad stretch of blacktop. There is a golden window, cracked, the golden glass a mosaic depicting nothing at all. Witness the God–Totem.

  Shhhunt. Shhhunt.

  The faces are silent. Their golden eyes glance around the room, confused, hurt, frightened. The eyes of children left alone.

  Shhhunt. Shhhunt.

  They slide. They swim. They move over the surface of the piston with their mouths open. He wishes His memory was not so complete. He wishes He could forget. And so the faces slide across almost every inch of the God–Totem, wishing and wondering.

  Shhhunt.

  There is just one spot where the faces do not slide, do not dare to slide for fear that the memory will be activated, will be relived with all the clarity and confusion it held in the moment it occurred. One blank spot, one place where a face used to be, a face that is gone. Just a blank, colorless place, an empty canvass drained of certainty and form, leaving behind only the blank, joyful possibility of emptiness.

  Shhhunt.

  Shhhunt.

  Shhhunt.

  The Itaewon Eschatology Show

  SHE SIPS HER COFFEE LIKE a lady, and then downs her whisky like a champ. Her name is not Alice, but that is what I call her, because her Korean name is hard on my tongue and she doesn’t like to hear me mispronounce it. Her hair is brown, the kind of brown that you call black until you get close enough to her to get it caught on the sides of your mouth, close enough that in the morning, you find strands of it on your pillow. But the lights in this place, strung high, blue and red, they make her hair look blonde. Christ Jesus, they lie to you.

  She says, “Don’t go to Itaewon.” Her English is good. Much better than my Korean. She tells me this on the nights when she’ll be working.

  And I tell her I won’t. Even though I will.

  Those are the only words we share at dinner. I keep turning to the waiter and saying, “Yugio.” And he keeps coming over.

  I keep saying, “Coffee.”

  And he keeps saying, “커피?”

  And I keep saying, “Whisky.”

  And he keeps saying, “위스키?”

  And we drink our 커피 and our 위스키 until eleven. And then it’s time for her to go home and for me to go someplace else.

  §

  I meet Kidu in front of the place where the taxis gather like fat blue fish, lazy and overfed. He has a beer in each hand. One for me, and one for him. From the torso up, he is dressed like a clown. His waistcoat is purple, his felt porkpie hat is red, and the tails of his black and white checkered jacket are long enough to brush the sidewalk. The tails will look better when he straps on the stilts, more natural. He pulls his cigarettes out of one pocket of his jeans and sticks one between his painted lips. In the dark like this, the white and black greasepaint makes his face look like an inkblot.

  When he gets close enough to me, he plucks the cigarette out of his mouth, cocks his head to one side and buzzes his lips. He sounds like a kazoo.

  “Cute,” I say. “I thought we were getting dressed in Itaewon.”

  “I got it out of the way,” he says. “You’ve got the stilts?”

  Both pairs are sticking out of the top of my backpack, stark and obvious like the stolen bones of some enormous and forgotten animal, and I know he can see them, so I don’t answer.

  We hail a cab. Kidu tells him where to go. When we are together, Kidu talks, and I am silent. When I am with Alice, it’s the same way. In Korea, I don’t ever have to talk to anyone.

  §

  Once at dinner, Alice told me, “It isn’t like the States. It’s not something that nobody does; it’s something that everyone does. Women expect it. Men don’t even think about it, they just do it.”

  “That’s just so fucked up,” I said.

  She wrapped a piece of barbequed p
ork in a piece of lettuce and slid it into her mouth, occupying that space so that she wouldn’t have to respond.

  “You’ll get hurt,” I told her. “Don’t you have a pimp or something?”

  “I have a boss,” she said. “A female boss, by the way. Not a pimp. Some girls have pimps. I have a boss. I’m not a slave.”

  That was the first time I ever talked to Alice about what she does for a living. We haven’t talked about it since. Alice is just this girl I know. A girl with whom I’ve had sex a handful of times — silently in my bedroom, the window open, letting in the sound of a language I can’t understand and she can, because when it’s closed the streetlight catches on the frosted glass and turns the window into a sparkling eyeball — because it was something to do, and because we like each other enough to do it. She lives in Itaewon six days a week, and spends the other day in Hopyeong with me. I’ve never paid her. It’s not serious.

  §

  We get out of the cab in Itaewon and dump our empties on a ledge outside a restaurant. The streets are jammed with people. The nightlife here is maybe thirty percent native. Everyone else is a lost boy, a wandering girl. During the day, this place is a multicultural center, packed to the gills with Africans and Brazilians and Iranians and Japanese and Greeks. They open restaurants and barbershops and bars. They build communities. Sometime before I was born, they found their way to Korea and carved a groove into her face where they could hide, a clubhouse from which they never had to go home. At night, it’s overrun with English speakers, lost in a strange and magnificent country, frightened by the alien traditionalism of the towns where they work and live, desperate for a slice of home where the other expats on the street are common enough to be ignored. This is Foreign Town, a filthy Epcot Center, a small–world–after–all that smells like fried food and cigarette smoke. Nobody stares at me here. They all stare at Kidu, because he’s dressed like a clown.