The Joshua Tree Read online

  you’d leave

  they’d leave

  the

  meaning?

  The schoolhouse, fading in the light, a tricycle still standing ready in the sand. Behind the giant mesquite, rich in the graveyard of their pets. Weathered frames and a tight roof, stuffed now with old schoolbooks and toys we’d bring up from Banning. Ghosts. Nine children, with the neighbors miles off by Ram Springs. Their private school till San Bernardino took it on for a time. The Swenson girl from Sweden to teach, TB and you cured her up and fattened her to two hundred pounds with the spooned cream and the steaks you could cut with a fork.

  Good life, good for children, right way to bring them up, it’ll stick with them . . . You’re alone, old Will, and where’ve they got to?

  cling

  to the

  earth

  Ancient

  Claws

  Children, and they’d know the meaning of work, they’d be racing through stubble field and swinging on the apple trees, helping Mana and Dad with the preserving and the jerky-drying. They’d be off adventuring, maybe bring back a big black turtle – you’d bring them up to the lake every time you’d find one other parts, for they’d not be indigenous to the high desert here – for a special supper. Turtle’d soften Dad however he’d been storming; good meal, the best, like a cow’s stomach, full o’ vegetation, three or four different kinds of meat in a turtle and sometimes they’d be full of eggs, like birds’ eggs, and Johnny Chuckawalla Wilson used to live on them. Or they’d be climbing over Jack the burro like he was granite. Jack, who knew you as well as the Missis and’d cross you just that far, no further. Jack, your friend, raised him, castrated him when he’d be so horny he’d be on a jenny, her neck with his teeth, rape her out of season, only time you’d knowed of animal rape, so maybe a woman could be raped though the female lawyer claimed she couldn’t: “Come out, Judge, in the back room, and try if you can.” Though a lot of animals’ll jack off, horses and burros they’ll reach right ’round and finish off with their tongue.

  Or they’d found an Indian olla back in the rockpiles in a cave, taken you up there. Half full of quartz chips and sand from dropping off the ceiling of the cave, the rotting of the rock, to give an idea of how long it’d been waiting to be found. Watch a lizard move across the ceiling and flick his tail and knock down one more grain into the olla pot.

  Or an Indian skeleton buried all doubled up in an olla under Sombrero Rock. Big one, wrapped in palm leaves, hands tied under his knees so’s he’d fit in, and everything he’d owned buried with him, his bow of the strange wood you’d never seen these parts, and his beads and bowls.

  my

  heavenly

  Jerusalem

  salvation

  And the visitors, “emigrants” Scotty would call them in Death Valley where he’d be a-building at his castle now and you’d hear of it. Visitors from all over, kind of getting a name for yourself. And you’d be putting up another cabin or two and maybe thinking of a swimming pool.

  Mattresses, piled and heaped on the old iron beds lined up rusty in the yard, cabins kind of knocked in, no need now for the double-holer you’d put up second time out over the wash, and all them road signs put up by the auto club out in the desert.

  The Palm Springs Riders, hundred and fifty of them, in the ’twenties. Flew in fresh trout from Montana. Knocked down Joshuas to build a corral. Mexican dancing girls. Trucked in the tents and the Ladies and Gents. Set it all up in the flat below Third Lake. Real live cowboy Will for local color, they said, and it didn’t sit so good.

  Still you see the corral logs.

  my

  Treasure

  to

  be

  saved

  Still you find arrowheads, specially after a rain when they’ve been washed clean of the dust and the sand.

  Still it’s your land and no one will come without you let them.

  Like that Milton Hitter fellow who claims your black steer’s his, or rather Branton’s, and he’d got you so mad when he’d come up to the ranch that they’d had to hold you down. New Year’s Day, that makes it nineteen thirty now, another year and you’ll wonder if Mana’s been draining the chicken well for holiday dinner. Today would be the day that Hitter just might try something. Put a sign up

  HITTER KEEP OFF

  by the Desert Lady where he’d been running cattle and stole yours.

  Be over that way, Will; Hitter like to be along. And there’s repair work to be done at the mine. And up he drives in that touring car with a crowd of others, women too, and he pulls down that sign and comes on in. Black and red inside your head for the rage, crack like a rock split open. Rifle up and he moves like to draw and you shatter his arm and turns and runs and you can get him sixteen more times wanting to but one’s enough and he won’t be coming back and you’re still the best shot in that country . . . Tail is flicking, Willy, flicking . . . Chicken roasted right and just to mention, with the applesauce, you got Hitter good and he’ll not be back.

  “Sheriff’s here, Will, like I told you he’d be. I’ll care for the children while you’re away.”

  Judges and lawyers and surveyors because what county were you standing in? And somehow, like lacking evidence, the whole thing just kind of disappears after a piece . . . Not the next time, old Will, not so easy.

  Yuh, yuh, yuh. Forgive old Will, Lily girl, can’t let’m go or I’ll be suffering so’s I couldn’t walk more. Corns, terrible. That big rasp file, there on the desk, in the cubby hole with all them poems. Poems, they kind of rub the corns off your heart. Basketball sneakers, comfortable, and these socks, plaid, Mana knit, sticky. File them a spell, and that little bottle there by the jelly.

  Curads, to patch the bleeding cracks in these callused twisted fingers.

  Itching terrible under the checked hat.

  Alcatraz

  San Quentin

  No, we’ll leave the oven door open to heat us up some, the old Majestic. That there’s the Alcazar – Alcazar Range and Heater Co., Milwaukee, Wis. – bottled gas, but haven’t used it since the Missis left. Gas icebox too once, and electricity, but the generator’s a trouble and a racket.

  holy

  gas

  The wind’s back rattling in the roof. Seems to shake the house too, rattle the empty Cactus Cooler cans. Coffee, orange juice, Ovaltine. There by the door where three layers of linoleum are worn through. Simmering, simmering, whatever it is on the back of the stove. Wilson’s Certified Pan-Size Bacon, a good box for the trash. There’s no need being too fussy about the dishes as there’s only old Will to use them. Newspapers and the knife to cut them and the paste to paste them in the books: prehistoric man, geology, history, Armageddon. Flashlight batteries, good to have a few dozen, emergencies, and the oil wick she sometimes misses being trimmed. Cutty Sark Whiskey, square-rigger on the open-sea calendar of nineteen sixty-seven . . . Bawling in the hold, sailing the sea to America . . . Deer antlers, Robin’s, and the rubber boots for the snow.

  Joshua fire

  Wind’s right, there’s a black cloud front moving up, and it’s cold enough to snow tonight.

  Elements, Lily; the slaying and the sowing

  Calabria.

  fire

  air

  water

  earth

  Black clouds, the lightning, the fire that consumes the forest, the wind and hail and storm, flooded in the yellow waters, the trembling of the earth. Why these four, these ancient four elements of existence? . . . Old Will, my friend, this tiny yellow circle of peace under the oil lamp . . . A testing, to the underground, to the archetypal roots.

  Of course, Colin, yes of course.

  Words to things that were better left alone. Of course, though, best agree.

  rebounding

  How broad his chest, with its thick hair, how lofty his words, and sure his step, and strong his hand! To feel him stirring when your thigh is thrown across him in the dark. “Bom, bom!” you’d say to each other, with you
r nose tucked under his chin.

  rock

  Chthonian demons, thanatic forces, the Erinyes, the furies.

  walls

  The multiplicity, the fracturing: the unity; the joining.

  His tests. Whatever.

  Lily, little Lily, where light means dark, where dark means light. Lily, carried on by the inner force, strong as the muscle of the earth, though you’d tremble and cry and laugh on nothing, nothing at all. It’s so clear: breathing, the pulse.

  And the dreams; Colin, he would ponder them.

  He’d wake in the morning and tell how he’d sifted the soil with his fingers, found a bit of petrified bark, then a fossilized insect all perfect, a little ancient jade figurine of a charging bull. He’d tossed the figure to his father, that impossible rational man who wouldn’t touch the naked truth, tossed it to him as proof of his art, his life’s work writing. And a horn broke off when his father fumbled, and was lost.

  He’d struggle and struggle, sitting cross-legged naked there on the sleeping-bag in the morning sun coming down through the spruce trees, about what it meant: A profoundest self, found in the very earth, ancestral, the creative source; damaged, thrown thoughtlessly to the arch-enemy of art and the irrational. Speak not to the deaf, that is to spend yourself uselessly – limited time, limited strength – speak true and to those who would hear.

  and love

  But of course, of course, Colino. Have I not said this to you so many times?

  And why should he even bother to dream such a dream? So slow, so slow, so far behind, but maybe he has to be, male, to fix in himself and in his art.

  Kiss him, bite him; he’ll climb down quick enough, just watch.

  dewdrop

  That’s you, Lily, a petal floating dry on the storming sea. Or at times the sea itself.

  on his

  lily

  You had gone with Colin, to your origins, where the myths meet, where the dance entered into your soul. The Mediterranean. You had touched, there was no turning aside. Constellations that coincide, joy among the furies, unity, the smashing of opposites. The mountains and the villages and the towns, the truth.

  Be gentle with me, my Colin, I am so innocent, I trust you so, and I have told you who I am but have you heard me? Wait for me yet a while.

  Old men with their little coffees trembling under the blue lights, cards slapping violently on the crowded table in the corner, the water running and running from the twist tap where the wine glasses and the grappa glasses would be washed with a wipe of the finger. The glass door on its metal frame stuck half open letting the Apennine air flow in. Quiet children drawn thin like death, sores on their lips, their swollen knees, moving on ancient errands. Two strangers, apart, at an unsteady table with a marble top, two hot vermouths in their silver holders, two bits of southern lemon rind floating yellow in the dark steaming liquor.

  open

  in the

  sand

  His hands open, palms up, toward you across the table. “They will always be extended to you, Lily; whenever you have need.” And as he says this his eyes are on you, so tender. Slowly, slowly, Colin, I’m terrified. And a dog comes in, her teats all hanging down, and you are so afraid, and oh! keep her away!

  You here, little Lily, how, what sense does it make, where is Valley Hope? Oh Pa! you love him so, as you look at this lemon peel, and he has thrown you away and you have lied so to him, and now, because you cannot have this Colin, because somehow it is against the rules, and it is a too different world, you would go straight to home and would curl up in bed beside your Pa where there are no dogs, teeth snarling, no extended hands on the white marble, no long unknowns climbing before you.

  may

  bud

  be

  flower

  be

  Yet could you leave those hands, could you leave him, climbing ever higher on his mountain, beyond all reach? Why must you?

  Your hands, they’re so plain and smooth and what have they touched and what have they done? The holding off, the no, and the joy of being such a little girl. Must you give it all away? They have all made you suffer so, and all you would do is go home, stay there forever.

  fruit

  A tear drops off your chin and lands on the lemon peel.

  With that tear the first light touch of the village church bell, then the steady heavy blows throbbing in the night air, vibrating in the bottom of your lungs. The bar is silent, breathing stopped, faces all turned up and out into the dark. Lights drive up the dark street, stop at the bar. An Army truck.

  Prometheus

  Empedocles

  A fire, in the pine forest, may circle the village, heading for the grain fields where the June harvest is piled up to wait for the thresher. Scrambling, racing cars and trucks. The stubble scratching your ankles, stumbling in the black across the field. Red light against the night mist, the terrible roar. And there the wall of soaring flames, the exploding pines, the heat on your cheek a mile across the fields still.

  Your hand meets Colin’s.

  Black figures against the flames, the shouts and Italian curses, the sirens and the trucks rolling like ships across the furrows and the old man whose job it is to nightwatch the stacked grain, tears streaming down his face, shining in the light, held by his cane from collapsing on the plowed earth.

  The wind changes, sharp, a breath of relief across the land. The fire burns back on itself, consumes itself.

  Being shown, being spared.

  Next day begins your trip into the mountains, another meeting with demons.

  Long roads, dust in the resinous air. A bus labors by, though they’d said you’d gone to the end of the line. An hour further, the road ends in a group of stone houses. Mule trails now, for the woodsmen, for the mountain villages beyond.

  companion

  for the

  The spruce forests, the pastures, the brooks. A dog barking furiously at you, at your heels, yet your fear has lessened. You come up to a woman in black sitting on a stump in the dark forest with her white sheep about her, her dog silenced.

  Night

  Sea

  crossing

  Grazing, against some absurd law and of course of course you’ll tell no one, and there’s a good short cut up that way and more or less along the ridge to the next village, my village, and you can tell them Giuseppina sent you to them and go with God.

  You leave her, yet are with her, and you look back and she’s still sitting, knitting, black among the white sleepy sheep, and a sunbeam drops straight like a tree trunk in the thick pollen. She knows.

  You’ll camp in the spruces by a little pond. He busies so and is so intense, when there seems so little to do, for all you have is on your backs. But it is sweet to have him care for you and boil the rice and the coffee and you are so very tired. Then the fire is embers and the sky is stars through the great trunks leaning in on you in a circle. And you are in his arms, gentle, tender, patient arms, as if you’d always been there. This, your first night together. The stars sing to you, the stars sing in you . . . Pa’s low voice, the hurting hand, his trembling – pity on him; San Valentino, the blind tearing in you – hate fading.

  Back and back into the mountains. So proud that your legs are strong and can carry you, striding, where he would. That your shoulders are strong and he’d only growled a little and had such love in his eyes when you gave him the melon you had carried for two days hidden at the bottom of your pack after he had weighed everything to the ounce to spare you.

  O Ziggurat

  Tooth

  of the

  Earth

  And often in the distance now you see the great snow peaks before you, he with no concern, you with a trembling in your heart. Finally you are on the edge of the forest and the mountain is quite on top of you. The last village, so remote, so stony and gray, echoing its narrow stepped alleys with donkeys’ hooves and the bells on the sheep coming in for the milking. They give you grappa and bread and their cheese
and coffee and are offended that you would pay and are so delighted that you can speak their language and no one can remember a foreigner having been there ever before. You sleep in the school, one room. A floor can be so soft when you are tired.

  Next morning they give you a walking-stick, a shepherd’s crook, and bid God be with you.