The Joshua Tree Read online

  You’ll not think, not for the tiniest moment, and anyway it couldn’t possibly be, that anyone or anything could make you go away, leave where your heart’s so happy, where men are tall and can sit to the saddle, where everything reaches up joyfully into the air, where you can fly.

  shudder

  the

  Earth

  Tomorrow, tomorrow is dumped on you, a black suffocation. Your breath stops, you will not breathe again, ever ever ever. The tears are ice, the cold turns on you, you close, you hate, you curse your father who would so kill you. And he, who had said that he’s loved you, who’d asked you to come up with Stella some fine day and hand him the braided lead rope and stay for the rest of your life, he too, even he, would talk so, the reasons, the opportunities, the honor, the getting ahead, the never regrets, the being so proud, the new horizons, the duties and the oughts and the musts. Reasons reasons reasons, and the unreasons which stream from your eyes and your heart are weaknesses, to be noticed only by not noticing, by putting you on the bus, behind its black glass, in its stinking shuddering inferno, and driving off fast up the line of poplars where the mountains shade off the moon. Weaknesses, which must succumb to reasons.

  Here the moon shines in, tinted black.

  Sun

  is

  reason

  Let them be so sure, all rightful and satisfied. With the heavy boots that swing along unseeing and crush the little flowers. They’ll never know nor understand nor want to. But someday they’ll be sorry and they’ll want you back and they’ll want you as you were and they’ll ask for forgiveness – and never never will they have it.

  They’ll want you back, but you’ll not return. To Valley Hope? Why? With their prejudices, their country hick ways, their poverty, and they’ll never understand you, Lily. Let them go, like they want you to. One-horse backwater where nothing ever happens, ever. Never go back.

  antlers

  Changing buses, waiting in the candy wrappers and the gum spots and the piss smells and gassy fat bodies about you, waiting and you’re already there. San Valentino. You’ll get another room, an apartment with a kitchen and its own bath and Pa’ll just have to pay. You’ll put blond streaks in your hair, like Zena, and you’ll learn to smoke, and you’ll wear falsies. They’ll have to pay.

  stag

  so strong

  against

  the Sky

  Tight against the window, watching the freeway unwind, tight so as not to touch or feel the body warmth or even the existence of the arm in the aisle seat. The arm in the dirty rolled-up sleeve, inching toward you on every swerve. The arm with its freckle blotches and the little red hairs, with the fingernails all chewed down so the flesh swells over the ends. The rotten breath, leaning across you to look out at nothing. The wet stain soaking out from the armpit. The foulness that is man, and the weighing down on you and always the pressing of their ugly minds and bodies. But they’ll have to pay.

  mountains

  peaks

  so pure

  against

  the Sun

  All night the tobacco smoke seeps around you, settles on you in a film which you’d scratch off screaming with your fingernails if you could. All night in the slimy air-conditioned air. The morning breakfast stop, the women lining up, elbowing in ahead of you, for the stinking toilet. The grease and the rotten hamburger and the catsup dried blood on the counter. Fly specks thick on the fluorescent tubes. Outside, Lily, quick before the vomit. Stand in the valley wind, so cold before the dull sun gets in. Stand, Lily, look back at the mountains, and let the cold in, deep to the very center. That is what they want. And maybe you’ll freeze and you’ll never have to move again, to move on, pressing pressing pressing on you. Is that what they want?

  But Lily, Lily, it’s no use. I can see you clear from here, through the embracing sun drinking up the last few shining crystals of the night’s snow flurries, liquid in the desert air, far out across the sage. And you’re ugly, Lily, and you’re lying, you’re holding off the truth. Can’t you see, can’t you feel, isn’t there something wrong, letting first the brilliance and then the shadow overwhelm you? Or will you never learn this, not even now? Will you be torn apart?

  Move on, Lily, move on, the bus will carry you on, and somehow you’ll survive. Or maybe it’s not survival but death and birth. Is that what they wanted?

  On. The Valentine city, waiting for you, waiting to devour you, swallow you down without a hiccough.

  Nothing will be waiting for you, Lily, no one, and your tears are your own and they’ll run dry, tears of powder salt. And just then, just when you’ve stopped saying you want nothing nothing nothing and the breath comes into you strong and bitter and you look out along the low gray corridors of the bus station, just then he’s there. Still tall, slim to his boots that have never touched manure, neat to his long blond hair.

  You see, Lily, the meaning of the bitter breath? But no, you wouldn’t see, not now. Later later later. Now you stand there, simply stand there, you let him come to you. Nothing stirs about you, your hair is still, your heart is the ticking of a clock, your breast is made of bone. Perry, who’s somehow found out your bus, and it doesn’t matter how, Perry, above the rest, aloof, conserving.

  “Hello, thought I’d give you a lift.”

  Emptiness

  “Hello, Perry, I expected you, my suitcase is over there.”

  The corridors are hollow to the click of your heels. The air-conditioning sucks at the heat.

  created

  “Nice trip down?”

  “Thank you, Perry.”

  by loss

  That was when it was, just at those words: thank you, Perry. A concidence, a moment of resolution when all the jiggling stops, frozen, all motion stops, it drops in place? Or hadn’t you, Lily, already done it, already stopped the motion, already engaged yourself to Perry and known that he had too?

  of substance

  Lily and Perry, engaged. Short, pretty, the great green eyes, glimmering still. Tall and strong, elite, the quiet easy way. Engaged, and you’d never touched, never met, never communicated. Together, for refuge.

  required

  for building

  Heaven

  A keeper, to hold you in escrow; your empty body plays out its role. Perhaps a man intensely self-alive, charged with the supremacy of each moment and each thought, could not have held so much. And perhaps he never knew what it was he held. And now it’s too late. Had he to die that you might live? You’ll not know, it will not come to you at all until now, out here riding over the hot sand and into the hidden valleys. Only now do you know what happened there in San Valentino, in the bus station, in the roar of the sports car, in the dusk under the dull orange city sky, in the rock band beat that bangs your solar plexus, in the hot smoke bitter in your throat, in the sheets that wad and turn slowly brown.

  Get on with it, Lily, as it will be done. The feather bleach, the bouffant, the nets and sprays and tinsels. And the shopping shopping shopping, through the acres, the miles, the unending searches, with him always there accepting, dazed but accepting. And on and on.

  It’s all jumbled together, like through the porthole of the laundromat. Nothing is apart.

  oh!

  Bribes to get the course papers written, but it’s only right because you’re a girl, and anyhow who doesn’t?

  let

  me

  sleep

  The hi-fi turning turning in the dark rooms where shapes move alone untouching or in clutching weary pairs. Where liquor, bring your own, sloshes from glass to glass and you’ll stop caring which is yours, the community of embalmed germs. Where shapes slouch to the furniture pushed against the walls, the never-ending walls, or to floors, so tired, in ones and twos, to murmur and fumble, or to the bedrooms where the rhythms change in the dark and you’ll feel nothing at all as you pass by.

  The crib sheets for the exams, so finely done at such a price. He doesn’t seem to mind, and maybe you’ll still need
help when you go out to Ladies; there’d be any number. The honor system.

  The letters you never write home, for there’s nothing left to say except, somehow, don’t come and thank you for the money, send more. But you don’t really need it; he doesn’t seem to mind and you’ve forgotten how.

  The tobacco smoke indelible in your hair. Light another so’s not to notice – and it trembles in your yellow fingers and it tingles sick in streaks along your arm and catches at your heart.

  It’s all so gay, and you’d love to, you’d love to, and if only they wouldn’t touch you at all. Call him, if they start again. Perry, that’s your role. Such a very good party, so different, just graduate students, mature; the new records, and she ye-ye’s like a dream. And someone will ask you to do the tarantella, and, “No, but not tonight.”

  They clear the floor and they have your record and your feet move heavily on the floor and your head absorbs the cheering and they catch you just in time.

  Your fingertips that prickle and the sun that’s too bright and coffee coffee that’s all you want. Your head all emptied, pressed by the vacuum.

  teeth

  my

  teeth

  Racing off in his little red sports car, he so solemnly gay, with the top back and the wind blowing your hair forward, just the right effect. Off to the city, somebody’s brother, and it will be such a good party. Pink eyes soft about you in the marijuana smoke, the quiet slow motions, the sweetish smell, the gentle conversations, the melting of the sexes.

  falling

  like

  tears

  Entrance fee: your pill box properly punched SMTWThFS, one, two, three, four. The lunar box, Perry has it all poked out to get you in. “Abort (Shithouse) Abortions!” pinned on the bathroom door. You hardly shiver.

  The passion-cooking types, the special delights. Rehydrated dips on the Ritz, casseroles where everything becomes nothing, the gallon jug of red wine, the rebaked half-baked bread sponging up squirts of garlic juice and margarine painted on, salad just swimming in Six Selections Mix, frozen goodies, the cooky jag, ice cream made last year from the back of the freezer, real honest percolated coffee with the powdered uncream and who wants Sweeta?, real brownies from the aluminum foil tray you can get at the Klassy Katch.

  The elevators, down and down and down.

  Spider

  And always men, to your green eyes like bugs to the headlights, stuck glued or glancing off, to some promise you never thought you gave. The young ones, stumbling or sly. The PhD’s and assistants, maneuvering for position, the sophisticated remark, the intricate gamesmanship, even already the stupid envy of those younger. The older ones who somehow always would slip in, temporarily attached (some wide-eyed girl), ununderstood, the superior slant of the head, ready to pounce on any immaturity, their thirst for a second life, deeply ashamed.

  weaving

  life

  Everywhere you take your knitting, click clicking away, in the psychedelic shoulder bag, the gossamer cashmere yarn. Perry and your knitting, always with you, your safe-conduct across the Styx, past the reaching reaching figures, the obscenities and the drugs and the intense melancholy of youth. Detached, cold; sought.

  weaving

  the web

  of

  death

  Everywhere the knitting, the scarf. Your favor for Lancelot. Yard upon yard, and you see it wrapped about him and streaming far out behind his MG. With your lettering, almost finished now, between gay white flowers at each end it’ll be LILY OF THE VALLEY. Sometimes you whirl it around you when you dance your tarantella, and you hear their admirations and you hear their “Where is your valley, Lily, when may we visit it?” And you understand?

  Night upon night: you have no home.

  white

  horse

  wing

  It was all a shadow dance; why could you not see it, Perry, why could you not save her and yourself? Who were you, that would never say no, that would stay there every night, hour upon hour, you who never danced or drank or smoked or talked but in answers? You who never saw the sun now but through the smog, who never were touched by your Lily and only watched and watched as her green eyes faded, as her feet were ever heavier, as the glimmers died. How you must have suffered! But you too, though, surely you were seeking the shadow dance also for yourself. What were you unable to release, even back as far as that awful day at Valley Hope? Best not to ask, you’d say, enjoy yourself, Lily, that is all I want. Was that your way to love her, or did you know it was all but shadow? You, her keeper, she might have loved you one day, when she was ready to receive her soul. And you yours.

  the

  sky

  It is his birthday today, the Santa Ana’s blowing, the sky is almost clear. Round and round him you wrap the finished scarf. The day has finally come. Finally, do you feel freed, is there a moment when perhaps you’ve touched? But still his eyes are so soon turned aside, and yours, so faint with the lack of hunger, can they look at all?

  fly

  the

  sun

  To fly up and over the mountains, free of the choking air. Free and on to the desert, where you had first talked. Shining in the pure sun, on and spinning on. Does something stir inside you, is there still the faintest flicker to start the pulse again? Is your laughter opening, can your feet dance again high over your head where the music spins?

  Streaming behind him is his banner, snapping in the wind. And somehow, for perhaps an instant, is not there a light in his face, radiant at the end of that gaily colored scarf?

  A sharp cry, his hands to his throat, he is gone.

  blood

  foam

  Forever you look at that empty seat, the black leather holding his shape, the wheel slowly turning, the silence rushing past. Forever the cry hangs there where his hands had clutched for his life, where the shadow had swept across him. In the instant you know, and there’s no unknowing, Lily. You know the absoluteness, death the plucking of a flower, by you, as clear as the voice of the lark in the desert racing past. Past belief, past understanding, only the knowing. You know that you love him.

  the

  whirling

  earth

  There, where his hands were, slowly the wheel turns, ever so slightly. The car is lurching, throwing dust, crashing through the cholla. Stopped. There, in his racing-tread tracks, the torn end of the scarf, torn, THE VALLEY, the flowers all crumpled, the long end wrapped on the racing hub. Back, at the foot of a barrel cactus, torn, OF, LILY, the crumpled flowers. His blond hair in the sand, the blue eyes wide at the sky, his lips parted to the sun straight overhead. His body lies so straight and tall. You cry his name, and you love him so, and you throw yourself to him, and you kneel above his head, and you hold his pale cheeks between your hands. How easily his beautiful head moves to your touch . . . No touching, please . . . how warm is his skin, how the light shines in his eyes.

  Lean to his lips, how strange, all upside down, you would kiss him and he will wake to take you finally in his arms. Yet you would not know how to kiss, and he would wake to laugh at the shame of your innocence.

  the

  dust

  the

  flowers

  Look up, Lily, you must. Can’t you see? It is not enough that somewhere behind you know already, you’ve seen already. Those gentle shoulders, that long slender back, the narrow thighs, the heels in the boots that would never wear spurs, stretched so carefully, his heart to the earth, stretched out under the sun. His patient hands resting by his sides, breast down, face straight up to the sky – twisted around. Oh God! unwind it, release him, oh Perry Perry! The gay flowers unfold, one by one, and, quite as if he would have it so, his head turns slowly away, do his eyes close?, his face so slowly from you, down, a hollow to receive him, down into the sand.

  (hang down

  your head

  and cry)

  Look up and see, oh Lily,

  Look up and see and cry.

  Loose
him, his neck so tortured,

  Let him turn from the sky.

  Face to the sand, he’ll rest there,