The Joshua Tree Read online

  Dust cloud hanging, a moving herd of cattle. Lope over, Willy, in clear view, though, and not against the sun. Could they use a hand? Heading west, they are, and that’s your direction, clear to Kern County, California, to the gold towns, pay fancy for any meat, though it’ll have come a long way without fattening.

  Lady

  Brahma

  melodious

  Cow

  The nights are long and hungry, Willy, the coyotes bark in close, the dogies cry, the herd is restless. Talk to them, Willy, sing to them, let them know you’re there. And keep your girth tight, for they’ve come a long way, makes them edgy, and the wind hot and dry and nervous. Sing the steppe songs, the river songs, the German harvest songs your mother would sometimes sing. Soft, the slow ones, the low ones, the sad ones of lost love. Move around them, slow, show against the night sky, and keep looking, Willy, out across the bottom land, up to the hills behind camp, and don’t look into the fire. Open country, rustling country, Indian country. Where to start them running and cut out a few would be so easy, and they’d skin you, Willy, and you’d be shamed wherever the story went. Show ’em, Willy, show ’em how they ride the herd in Nebraska, but don’t go over your time, don’t let the Dipper swing too low before you wake Black Jim. Slide off your saddle, hobble up, curl under your cougar, used to the stink from not knowing to cure it quite right though it’s soft, but not like hers. Dawn’ll be on you before you can roll over.

  So they give you the down-wind side every day. You’re the new one and they see some through the scraggly beard and the long half-blond hair. Pray for rain to lay the dust, for untracked grassland, or a change of the wind to come in from behind so no one need eat dust. But the east wind is scarce and fitful. Pray, but still it billows up, and it lays on you like hoarfrost on the juniper.

  unmanning

  Bawling, shaking the air, shaking the earth with a thousand hooves. Jostling, noses on the rumps, white eyes, and the young bulls mounting, lurching up, stupid, desperate for a plug they’ll never get. Watching and your pants are tight, Willy, and you’d be doing that . . . Black Jim and the bent cock from a heifer’s kick . . . Throw your knee over the horn, sidesaddle, that’ll ease it a bit, ease the heat in your eyes and cheeks, the twisting of shame in your heart . . . Mother, hogshead with the hair pulled tight: she with the dark waves of hair and the lips waiting . . . Saved.

  Monster

  desired

  fought

  slain

  Hunting day, they send you off with your stories of the white-tailed deer of Nebraska. But you know the antelope too, the pronghorn. Ride up ahead, fast, Willy, watch for the herds as you come over the rises, the high bouncing and the sentries. Circle wide on the down-wind side. Beyond the shoulder, on their line of browsing; tether, crouch to the top, slide over on your belly. Toward you, half a mile. Scarf tied to the muzzle, raise it, wave it slowly. They gaze and can’t resist. One then another then all start carefully toward you, picking their way, tugging mouthfuls of grass as if to hide their unbearable curiosity. The wind keeps up so they’ll not get your scent. Pick the fattest young one, careful, lower, aim for the heart. They’ll spring and fly like pigeons, but yours will fall.

  They’ll offer you a whiskey tonight.

  That was New Mexico Territory. By Arizona you’ve earned enough.

  Willy

  O Jenny, Jenny, come ride with me down to the river again; is this you Jenny now, with your golden honey hair and the eyes that smile at me and don’t turn away, come to bring youth to old Will, come to ride with me off for the wild honey? Helen, my Mana, from your window in the sky. Arizona, like the sweetest fruit of Eden in your heart, melting, singing in your blood. But she’ll see these tears that drop on the splotched twisted hand, hear the breath sob in you, your shoulders shaking. Grief, Lily girl—O Jenny by the river, O Helen under the stone with your name in turquoise from the Walapais.

  to win

  the

  Maiden

  the

  Treasure

  Arizona. Jerome. The Fashion Saloon. The girl with a red ribbon in her hair playing waltzes on the piano. Pulled into herself, high on her platform over the sweating hairy faces, looking for someone in her hands. Your glass stays full, the voices are like rain on a lean-to, and it’s not their laughter that makes your ears sting under your hair. How many years working cattle here, working in the mines, prospecting, rodeoing on the Fourth? How many saloons without feeling the sweat, the dust, the grease in your hair, the rips in the buckskin?

  Dollars, nuggets, a bit of gold dust. Mustache waxed, your hair like silk, long almost to the collar so’s Jim Roberts – the sheriff, come down from Montana – asks “You Billy the Kid?” A hat from that old cougar skin, new suit of duds from the General Store, pistol belt polished, and a big cigar which’ll make you sick if you don’t mind. Bit of silence when you enter this time, except for a few who don’t see you, and the piano – gentle and soft, a love song must be.

  “William, just William, M’am, and I’d like to buy you a drink, if you’d be caring.”

  Before the last chord dies.

  O Jenny, Jenny, long since gone, by now, I’d know, or are your eyes still full of those candles and lips still getting set to speak to Willy boy, the kid?

  “Jenny, William, and I wouldn’t be caring, for all your kindness.”

  sacred

  “I’m not much for drinking myself, M’am, Jenny, for the truth of it. Would you mind for me to sit here for a spell to watch you play?”

  Dance

  “As you’d like. What would you hear, or watch?”

  “Whatever comes, M’am, I’m sure will do just as well.”

  And she sings too, like a hermit thrush in the moon. Annie Laurie, and you’d like to cry, astraddle back-to on your chair with your chin on your fist to hold in the trembles.

  “You won’t clap for me, William?”

  “No M’am, Jenny, it would not do justice to you. I’d like for you to try my mare, though. Tomorrow morning, perhaps? She’s the most beautiful creature alive; barring you, that is of course. For me I’ll get one of Clark’s horses, W. A. Clark, you know, he owns the mine. Will you come, M’am?”

  “Oh! but I’d love to. But is she mild, will you show me how, and we won’t go too far?”

  too

  night side

  dark side

  desert

  shadows

  O Jenny, Jenny! You’d hold the stirrup for her and she’d swing up so light, and she’d laugh like a mourning dove if you touched her, turn all over red. And soon she’d be riding like an Indian, college education and all, and you’d teach her bareback with a hackamore and she’d ride low, bent forward with her hands so steady, like a boy, her dark hair flying behind. Scandal, the other women, buckboards or sidesaddles in their great dresses. Mornings: you’d got put on the night shift at the stamp mill. And you’d get her a pretty little rifle all laid in silver by the Walapais, and you’d take her out for antelope one long day, and you’d wave them down till they were right up on you, and she’d pick well and catch him nice and be so scared and trembling and delighted. And she’d leap to you and throw your hat away and kiss you so strong on the forehead.

  But it’s down by the river bank like as not you’d end up, after the long ride down and a run in the desert, or climbing up into the Tuzigoot pueblo. The Verde River, at the foot of Cleopatra Mountain. And maybe a bit of bread and antelope sausage and beer. The river bank in the reeds and the willows with the cotton flying in the spring air. Never did touch her, didn’t even know how, except with your eyes when she wasn’t looking and sometimes when she was. She’d laugh and she’d ask about the Omahas or the cougar or the bottles on the Elbe. Or she’d be lost, all turned into herself, her eyes with a distant inner look, sad and a thousand miles from you.

  O

  sucking

  heart

  Take her hand, Willy, tell her who you are, not who you wish you were. Be you, Willy,
or you’ll just be her image, to disappear who knows when in the desert sunlight. Or you’ll lose her – the fear sits cold in your stomach – to search again in her hands on the keyboard, to look for another paper cowboy, Boston scrapbook. It’s untamed she’d want you, it’s your world she’d go to, but solid, not an image.

  How would you know all that, she not showing you, you who’d thought you’d spat on Denver’s Brown Palace because they wouldn’t let you in?

  Say it, Willy.

  “You’ll soon be knowing all there is, Jenny, of horses, and hunting, and this hick life. When I’ve experted my mine, my Breyfogled claim – night-shifting with Clark so’s they won’t suspect—a bonanza, no mistaking. I’ll give a ball for you in your Boston, Young’s Hotel you say? and the Governor’ll call on me to beg for an invitation.”

  “A ball’s one thing, and the Governor will probably be Irish. But a cowboy on Beacon Street . . . !”

  Mother

  Monster

  still

  unslain

  And of course she laughs and laughs, the wind moves through her hair, her eyes put you in a cage, on view. If you’d crush the laughs from her . . . but the sky closes down on you like a hood, closes in till all you see is her long dirty fingernail poking at an ant in the weeds. Her hand stops quite suddenly, reaches behind to her saddle she’s been leaning against, takes her little rifle from her saddleboot. Sitting still, with her ankles crossed and her knees spread wide in her long split skirt . . . O Willy! why weren’t you there? . . . she cocks her elbows on the insides of her thighs – the ache and the loathing—and before you know it she’s got the rifle up against her cheek, her lips on the silver, her finger curled in, white with the pressing. Look up, Willy, along the black barrel, out across the river, to the sage beyond, to a lone buck pronghorn— springtime, and the bucks separate. Oh no, Jenny! He leaps high with the explosion, twists, falls kicking on his back, screaming as the dust rises.

  “Now you’ll take me home, Willy.” While the sage still shudders around him.

  “I’ll be fording over to pack him up first, M’am.”

  “I’m sick of antelope and I must be getting back. Saddle and take me now.”

  “Then you’ll not have learned, and it’s not something you learn, got to grow up with it. Beacon Street in the desert.”

  But you can’t laugh. Ford over, high to your stirrups, spring thawing in the mountains. Heave him, more’n a hundred pounds, onto the haunches, tie two hoofs under the belly with a thong. Back and she’s silent as ice.

  Her songs that evening are gay, from the music halls of New York. The mill would crush your skull.

  Or again, Willy, other days, high on Cleopatra, out over the Coconino Plateau. Pancho Villa’d be packing water in soon, with the spring waters drying up, that’d be his trail along the shoulder. The black teeth of the Superstitions. Lost Dutchman’s Mine. Go, Willy, better a pack burro than ladies’ rifles, up into the mountains where no one returns.

  “I’ll be going soon, Jenny. Be getting along. You’d be going too. I’ve saved up some, can help on your fare.”

  my

  Hecate

  hungering

  “I’d come, Willy, if you’d but ask me. I know where you think I belong. Oh, forgive me forgive me, dear Willy. I’ve to learn, I know now . . . How could I leave the desert? Where’s the choice? Can’t you see the courage it takes? To stay and go on with my cowboy?”

  for

  sacrifice

  “The courage is in going back, like in me not buying Beacon Street . . . And I’m not your cowboy, I’m Willy.”

  Willy who, though, Willy who?

  You’ll sit no longer by her side up on the platform of the Fashion Saloon; no longer watch her ahead, flat to the mare’s neck with only a blanket and a hackamore, or jogging straight in her little saddle with her elbows in and her hands so high. And always her hair moving, flowing like dark brook water. Or hear her laugh so controlled, turning from your eyes, or tell you of the romance of freedom and space. This is who you are, she says, with your buckskins and your cougar hat and your shooting eye and your pistol draw and your hair bleached blond to your shoulders and your beard trimmed like the scouts. No longer, Willy.

  too

  joy

  down by

  the

  river bank

  She’ll not know. Better. Swing through the doors once more, quietly, behind heavy boots and voices. Sit in the shadows of the afternoon sun coming through the blue smoke and falling at her feet. And she’s playing the waltzes again. Are those tears on her cheeks, does she know? But she never looks up, and you stay back. Your skin is dry and hot, your stomach is filled with sand, your throat blocks your breath.

  never

  to

  forget

  Move on, Willy, you’ll find out. When you’ve walked down Beacon Street and they’ve held a ball for you at Young’s Hotel. When you’re back again on the desert and the sun burns in your blood and your water cache’s stolen and you may not make it to the coyote well you know in the purple shadow at the foot of the mountains. When you’ve been with them famous people at Scotty’s, been honored at the Desert Inn, inspected the Tank Corps with General Patton. When you’ve been behind bars, year after year, or when you’ve worn still another pick down to a nub on the desert rock . . . The cold bites in on you, your boy lies dying on his cot . . . When you’re back from a day of moving the herds, castrating, branding, Helen with the hot water on and the copper tub, the steaks charring and the fresh corn and the cherries from your own trees. Your Eden in the desert mountains. When the sun lowers in the simmering, the cool sets in, the earth tips back and back, and from high among the ’olinas on the side of a granite pinnacle shines the ancient Indian light, steady, silver. When you’re curled in the lizard’s sun by the Joshua tree with the breeze talking softly to you in the piñon.

  You’ll know, Willy.

  Now, without knowing, you must go. No burro, no grubstake, no lone figure winding up into the No-Come-Back Mountains. Her ticket took it all. Your mare, saddlebags full, your rifle – like when you took off from Nebraska to see them never again. Never to see you again, Jenny? Choices, dammit! And they leave you bleeding

  Out into the sun. Unwind the same horsehair hackamore, the bridle for working cattle tied to the saddle, swing up. Through the swinging door the music stops. Lift her with your heels and your hand straight into a run. Do you hear those hooves in the dust, Jenny, that would set you flying by the river, that would lead up Cleopatra into the sky? Fading into the afternoon sun, Jenny. Rickety Jerome left lonely in the desert.

  White line of sky on the dark horizon, mare’s ears turned forward, expecting.

  spirals

  Faded line of oilcloth, canes hooked on the edge to dangle into the dark between my knees, against the white line, turned forward; the black of my lap, crotch, fly buttons shiny. Ai! but my neck is broken. Close your eyes, old Will, your neck will be numb.

  spiraling

  time

  Two soft white fingers, still against the shiny black wood cover turned down over the keys, closed on the waltzes. Turn back, Willy, take the hand that would wait for you still. Soft and warm. Pressing lightly, her thumb caressing on your knuckles, moist, old Will, and you feel the tears drying, tightening, on your cheeks. Colin’s girl, she has come to be with you: Beacon Street and the Fashion Saloon, the telegraph office in Los Angeles, the window in the sky. Here with old Will.

  climb up

  Willy

  up the

  years

  Lily girl, must forgive an old man, dozing a bit, eyes kind of water. Yuh, that’s me, Coso Springs, hadn’t cut my hair yet. I’ll show you, got a lock of it in another book. Nope, before I met the Missis – that’s what you were thinking, I’d guess. Do you mind bats? Fledermaus, eighty-five years ago. Get in the hair, they’d say. Not true, sonar to sort of see in the dark, won’t touch you. Little feller lives here with me, now that I don’t
trouble with the electric plant, in the corner there over the sink. Cloth there’s to shade the light so’s he’ll know when it’s time to go bug-hunting. Still, night too he’ll often come in, chink under the eaves, perhaps to check on old Will.

  Presences

  Hooked on the rafter, squeaking squeaking, how much can you hear? Familiar, the vague light, the nodding shadow. New for the night another shadow, jiggling, still. Hot smells, cool smells, bugs drawn by the light to scoop up now and then in the tail pouch, munch on later. Peace and feeling and why not? Rejected there, accepted here. The part, the whole. Sleepy in the warm air, swinging in the currents in and out the chink, bat sounds outside hunting in the night air, creaking branches, flapping paper in the wind. The rasping of the Joshua tree where the owl lives – dangerous, however musky the bat, when other food is scarce.