The Joshua Tree Read online

  That is after the thirty days in the fishbowl with all their tests of how smart you are and whether you’re a criminal or not and whether you’re insane, all them psychiatrists. Gunther, the head psychiatrist, who was the good fellow, for all his language. Didn’t treat you at all like a crook.

  At first, with all that prison grub, you’d got all stopped up and that medical doctor fellow he’d told you just to eat more and something was bound to give soon, explode like. But you’d not taken much to that and you’d wait the day of the week when Doc Gunther would be there for your interview, he’d give you the laxative pills and bust things loose – you’d hear them at the dispensary all laughing, taking cover when you’d be around, for the explosion. Well, not so bad if’n they’ll laugh, even at you.

  freedom

  Young’s Hot

  prison

  Read and read you did, in the prison library, and they’d let you take books out. Poetry mostly, and you’d copy it out and copy it again into your script you’d been practicing from the manual, number-five pen point from that Weyerhaeuser store, paper store and such. And make up lines and maybe verses to go together.

  Painting, and printing on the silk, the valentines:

  walls

  To my Dear beloved Wife, comes this Valentine to Greet you once more With the best Human Love! Dad.

  And birthday greeting cards and Christmas, Mana, and June if she’s still there.

  But mostly the penning and the poetry.

  I’m Jamie Pope without a friend,

  I’ve laid me here, awate my end.

  The buzzards pass by in the sky,

  The coyotes, patient, howl goodby.

  My thurst is gone, no hunger more,

  The cold creeps slowly to my core.

  So when you find me I’ll have sped,

  And you’ll say, “Jamie, better dead.”

  My worthless name please carve in stone.

  “In life and death I lie alone.”

  Willy Spear

  What’s yours, what’s present, past, what’s copied from the books? Kind of runs together.

  They’re coming and coming in their campers and their low-slung cars that drag grease on the high points. Visitors, and sure you’d be hospitable, though the kids of now are mostly so undisciplined, can’t let them out of sight, nice folks and maybe they’ll come in and they’ll want a poem and you’ll get their address and maybe be copying one out for them later, depending on the circumstances.

  Softer with time, old Will, ninety years, and it’s nice, comfortable, to work over the words again, though that kid, he bent the point. Put them in their packages, in the pigeonholes of Mana’s desk, thumbed and the fingers get stiffer, and there’s not so much room on the page now. Pigeonholes like prison cells.

  fading

  floating

  forms that

  disappear

  Sit there, out over the Bay. Watch where the fog piles up, watch where the boats, the big ones, come steaming in, and the sailboats (more when the war’d finished) slicing up the Bay or drifting in the sun. Alcatraz and Treasure Island, the ferries. Over, down at the far end, a clear day, they’d say they could see the Moffett hangars where the blimps were and one got loose, ’forty-two, out of control and scraped the top of a hill way up north, stayed there for a night and then blew free with all the crew and they’d never heard more; to Mars.

  trickle

  away

  Sit there, out over the Bay. The Missis hauling water and the weeds coming in. They’re taking your cattle, Will, stealing, ’cause she can’t keep an eye out and no one to help, with the war. Like they’d burned up your mines when they’d took over all but your land for the Park. Government, no respect for the individual. Even good justice don’t set right with freedom.

  antelope

  bones

  Maybe General Patton, he’d help. Tearing up the desert with his tanks and his soldiers with the wooden guns, thousands. Patton, up by the gypsum camp, Palen Mountains, Little Maria Valley. Sit there on his porch, that house they’d give him, where he’d sit and practice desert war and want to know about this and that about the desert. Maybe he’d help. They sure knew how to do things with their tanks and their banging away at the Joshua trees. Thirty-five men a day they’d kill what with one thing or another, and he’d not care it seemed a grain. Send a soldier or two to help, maybe.

  Paroled, Goody Knight, as if it was some great favor, though you’d learned a lot and if it hadn’t been for the weeds, for the cattle, for the Missis all alone, sitting there, over the Bay. And you’d see her . . . Jenny, Jenny, where’d you be now, your fingers on the keys?

  my

  Treasure

  Paroled, and you’d be getting a pardon when Assemblyman Fein got interested and that statement from Crabble’s last wife. Crabble with his nine wives, forced him out of the L.A. sheriff’s office for cruelty to prisoners, Crabble who’d break any law that’d get in his way. Trapping quail, ripping up the Indian relics, stealing cattle, shot old Jack your best friend burro and you’d taken the bullet to the sheriff and it didn’t fit the rifle Crabble’d given them because he’d hid his own and given them his wife’s. She says all that later, and it’d get your parole and pardon, like you’d told them all along if they’d wanted to know the truth. Stealing cattle and you’d see the hides with the brand on his land. Shooting traps and the fence cut, and chopped down Christmas trees. Lying in wait, the ambushes, setting up a shooting range across the road to the Desert Lady, cahoots with Lodger, deputy sheriff of the county, San Bernardino. Will, who’d set the desert blooming, his lakes, his roads, and found gold a dozen times when the others had gone away. And you’d see from the photos of Crabble lying there, biting the dust, he’d his gun all cocked for the next shot, and the wound showed sure he’d been crouching to hide, ambush, and anyhow there weren’t no tracks where you’d be able to do that fixing up to hide a murder. And would Will be one for that kind of fixing?

  eyes

  that

  make

  the

  rain

  Back, and the Missis with her bonnet tied under her chin, and how sweet her smile and the eyes that seem to retreat with the years and you can see the hair is white so white and you’d been remembering it as brown and the long ruffle skirts sitting there on the donkey for the photographer on the beach, the three sisters, young Will with his beard . . . White, the crackling on the laundry wire, skeleton fingers . . . and she’d get the beard, and not much later the mustache. Five years, and the road’s as dusty and the bumps are the same, no, here the wash’d moved its course a bit, bad rutted. But the desert’s dying. Say it for that moment, Will, say it and let it lie. No more the wild hay to your belt buckle; the blackbush is taking over, the weeds are dry and bitter. No more the wild burros and the cows calling for their calves in the rocks; the sand drifts in, the Russian thistle tumbles in the wind. You’ll have said it to yourself, and that’s enough, though others, they’ll say it on and on. June, leaving, crazy old man. Not Helen, never, stick it out with the wind whistling dry and San Quentin far far off. Believe in it, in the desert, in Will. The kindling all laid, fixings for your favorite stew prepared, and tomorrow’d be good enough to see what’s to be done.

  go

  back!

  Tomorrow. Rush back from that land of treasure, Robin on my shoulder, no thought for the pains in my knees. Here, where the birds have silenced the coyote, where there’s light now in my window. Slow, move them slow and maybe they’ll ease up and maybe I can leave the canes hanging on the back of Mana’s chair. Light enough now, and there’s a lot to be doing.

  Today. Are these kitchen sounds? – ears are heavy, and the buzzing and the sheets are cool to the itching, hearing’s heavy, I know, I know. Kitchen sounds, and Mana’s not beside me. Four years, though, four years ago her time had come.

  now!

  now!

  Kitchen sounds. Lily, a little round face back of the oil lamp, or with that
skip in her walk when I told her we’d be going to the Desert Lady, and she’d kiss me like my cheek wasn’t old and rotting and stubbly and the aching gums, kiss me with her heart, not like June, in a hurry to move away. It must be Lily, who’d not stir herself these other mornings, Lily up and clattering and the stove kindled and roaring up the pipe and maybe I can feel the heat already, coming in through the living room. Lily.

  O Mana, why do you ache so, the hollow in my chest, your white hair flowing on the pillow that would

  always be clean then, why does the feel of you here hurt so?

  Shivering on the edge of the bed, here, spasm of shivering.

  Half dead with the stroke, to Banning, but the smile would come through, her sweet smile, and she’d raise her hand to you. And her time’d come, and she’d say “Good-by, my Desert Lord.”

  Sobbing so, an old man’s tears.

  my then

  Serrano Palms, their flat new graveyard, what does it have to do with Mana, with you? Mana who had always known she’d rest beside our children and old Will, here. They’d taken her there and you’d been in no kind of shape to say nothing. But you’d talked them ’round, County permit, brought her up here, nice carved, three handles a side, one on each end, lowered with the ropes into the hole you and Warren Hildebrand dug, Reverend Marcus and Mana’s poem and yours, and you’d covered her in, and you’d said good-by again.

  pulling

  pulling

  Hot cakes and the honey we’d found, Helen Jane, your hair so pretty brown like that to your shoulders, your face I’d give it a kiss, and if you skip like that and I can see you through that robe, and I’ll toss you on the bed and you’ll see, you’ll see.

  Pull them on, easier sitting on the bed. Shaking shaking so much. Damn! that pain shoots in my knees, canes for legs, cowboy Will. Coffee, real, you can smell the difference, eggs with tomatoes, her own invention, tasty, sitting with the table all set and she’s gone and found some flowers, in the Welch’s jelly jar. I don’t much hear what she’s saying, the sound’s nice and that’s what she wants me to know and I know it.

  my now

  filling

  Exodus to

  the East

  Sitting here, even after I’ve pretty much finished and Lily has the dishes in the sink. Sitting ’cause it’s easier, and I’ve never stopped working in my life, wouldn’t be right, look what it does to all these modern folk with nothing to do but mischief and dirtying around, sitting here while that twenty-two, good-for-nothing, can stand on in the corner there forever. Sitting here with the north light coming in on the table and the rocks and the lizards, a grain at a time as he flicks his tail. Robin, how long to fill the olla? With that pulling again at my shoulders, pulling, the gold again drawing me, like another sense, somewhere there by the stamp mill where I’d milled out two and a half million dollars in my time. Like dreaming of things that’ll happen after. Like years before it’d happened I’d dreamt of Crabble shooting at me and missing and then I’d got him. Or the hypnos’, New Hampshire, and the things it’d do. Like the Indian spirit light that burns nights, special nights, to the west where they’d camped through the ages. They’d laugh at me, the others, even Mana, but not my Lily, no, there are these things, and like I never was afraid and Ma said you was born that way, like I’d wheeled dirt for the Ditch and Dam Company in Nebraska, get dirt behind the dam to stop the leak, on a one-foot plank and it was a sheer drop of twelve hundred.

  all

  flows

  in

  Yuh, Lily, no one’s listened to old Will like you. Soon we’ll be going out, see what’s pulling at me, poke around, that gold there. Like you with your bighorn back in the rockpiles, and your sleeping under the stars, and all that sand and flowers, the wonders no one sees nowadays. Like that, like feeling something asking for you to come.

  The Joshua flower from your Lily

  There’s a flower opening on that Joshua tree, Will, saw it this morning when I was out. Out before the primroses closed to sleep. Like fairies. The sun’s all stars on the frost, the wind’s given up, scratched enough for one night, scratching on the eaves.

  You cried Bonanza! in your sleep, Will, and I figured you’d struck treasure. Remember? You’ll see, there’ll be something there to look for today, and maybe it wasn’t there at all before. Something’s growing, I know it, being born.

  And how did you like the eggs I fixed you? You haven’t said a thing, what with all those tears in your eyes and that long-way look.

  Here’s Lily to make you skip.

  A sharp scythe and the sun on your neck, old Will

  old

  is

  young

  Young, light like the cottonwood seed floating on the air – the tree we’d planted together and she’d watered every summer till it had its roots well down – skipping here on the old linoleum. And the years haven’t quite caught me either, though maybe stiffened a bit, slowed some. Like our children in the golden days, as they’d race through the guest cabins – never really used, a resort in the ’twenties, dance pavilion, swimming, horses and hunting, dudes, but it failed, the desert didn’t just take to the idea, and maybe Will didn’t either. Racing to play tricks on their schoolteacher, to catch a butterfly, to hide from a bit of punishment.

  Parents, my brothers; only Willy, Jerry Dan, left. My sister, little Gracie, the last, Nebraska, the little girl in pigtails, a heavy hand on her shoulder from the dusty miller behind and his wife broad as the kitchen table, could that be my mother? And then in Pasadena, the old folks’ home, it was the year the Missis died. Gracie, seventy-five and her pigtails gone mostly bald, must run in the family. And she rich too with that lawyer husband from over near Scottsbluff. Ten years younger and she all ready to die, and she did ’fore long.

  undivided

  And brother Harris who came to San Quentin; went right through high school, nineteen twelve; three years was all they could keep me. And John Dan, worked for the Governor in Denver, had a ranch. Mother, she’d died in Pasadena and they’d carried her back to Nebraska and buried her next to miller Dan, good Orthodox to the end. They’d not made me one, nor a Christian, with all their murderous ways. Brahmins’d be superior and I’ll be going soon to India, just to see, just to see.

  O Mother

  devour

  Be ready for changes, working, never a day of nothing, like the old folks’ home. Changes, mutations, like geology with its forces and transitions, like some creatures living on into new conditions, the whale which was on land as they tell from the hind legs they’ve found. And man is nothing special except for the damage he does to all the rest and to himself.

  us

  Hector, the oldest, teacher, South Dakota; Latin, art, paintings he did so beautiful, and he so tall and handsome, and if only you’d be like him, Jerry.

  your

  children

  And Patience.

  And the others, eleven we were and all gone but Will.

  Will, me, preparing, with the ranch pulled together and everything here and they can have it if they’ll put up a museum or I’ll auction it off and anyhow, with the hundred and thirty-five thousand for selling the ranch to Tanker for after I pass on, I’ll have enough, when the bank gets itself unsnarled and if I keep them revenooers off, and I’ll be getting on.

  To the bottles shining on the Elbe, to India, and I’d like to be seeing that architecture of Rome, and Siberia, and Kov on the Volga, Patience with the yoke, the windmills.

  No hurry, the gold’ll be there, it’ll wait.

  Just carry this over and put it in the old ’dobe where it belongs.

  Chips, Crabble’s stone. Finished now.

  harvest

  My old truck, burlap sacks over the wheels to protect tires that have crumbled into black dust. The ore bin. The grindstone, bicycle seat to footpedal it, and the trickle can above – slice short, they’ll not be a stone bigger’n a cactus pear, a sharp scythe and the sun on your neck and Helen she’s bringing
a pail of fresh-welled water.

  gathering

  The ’dobe, needs a-fixing and plastering up some. Get to it.

  up

  the

  years

  the

  Shaman’s

  Rope

  Tires and the radiator that froze up, irrigation hose hanging on the rafters, bird’s nest built in its loops. That’s the cardboard suitcase that got bent when we’d a hurry and tied it too tight to the wagon getting to the hospital. My saddle, only the bare wood tree, with its high old-style bear-trap cantle and the pommel with slick fork for roping. The oak stirrup, ironbound. The best, that fellow who made that tree, ash, and I’ll get it made up again into a saddle when I get around to it. Bars sharp-withered for my thoroughbred. Wouldn’t fit your flat-back quarter horses of today. Be needing a good saddle soon . . . Pull him up! pull him up! Come down the rope. Burning hair and flesh, the squeal, and slice the sack, seeds into the bucket to fry tonight. Twelve hundred head. The desert blooming . . .