The Joshua Tree Page 8

  wrong

  wrong

  and the

  evil

  even

  line

  Good, good, good that when one has it one can enjoy it. Not wrong, not resentful, not even for Pa. Each his own. The dried-up puritans, the reformers; not you, Lily.

  Perry, who talks so evenly, who accepts you, who makes no fuss about anything. Who is interested in your hell, and even, as the weeks pass, somehow seems to want it for himself. Your life, so bitter and empty and endless now, so remote from the smogged reality around you, he would call it the reality, he would learn from it. He would learn to suffer, he says, he would learn to be unprotected, exposed, the violent reality, primitive forces. His words, not yours, Lily, and you’ll never learn them for yourself. Nor did he.

  O Perry, Perry! Was there no way? What did it mean, where did you learn that lofty smile? Should I have hidden me from you? But I cannot hide, nothing.

  “One day, you’ll see, Perry. I’ll be waltzing in silks at the cotillion, right before your eyes, and I might or I might not let you cut in. I’ll be blackballing with the best at Burlingame. And I’ll live on the top of one of your hills, higher than anyone else.”

  Tocca Italian

  queens

  The smile, the deriding laugh. Turn from him, blindly. A cab, the meter clicking till the last dime is gone. Blindly down the empty streets, to the infernal trembling room, trembling from my sobs, from my breath that rushes in at the last moment of agony, from my heart that hardly stirs.

  Calmly, Lily, calmly. You will see him again, more than once. That day riding high in the piney hills, and you could see his dude seat for all his talk, and his stumbling for the pain when he dismounts. When he’d come for your tagliatelle you’d do on your electric plate, but only once to Ciro’s and with such sarcasm for aristocracy.

  A last time, you know it will be, even before you start that early morning. Vacation in the spring, you the weeks between quarters, he the whole summer. And he will take you home, on his way to Canada.

  Seven hundred miles. Dawn from the mountains, the sun rising out across the desert. Cajon Pass. And north, the dry salt-lake playas and the salinas, the yucca and the sage, the thundering double trucks and the house trailers and the campers, the filling stations signaling for miles and miles ahead. Granite Pilot Knob at the end of Cuddleback Arch. Bonanza country, Kern County, red mountains bored and scooped and streaked with the tailings, blacks and grays and yellows and greens, calico. Across the borax road.

  north up

  through the

  And mostly, except the moments – scene or mood, colors in the hills, desert flowerings, a word spoken straight, a grin from a truck driver – mostly the sense of ending, doom. Suffering, the sweet imminence.

  hole in the

  sky

  Coyote Holes, the Sierra Nevada climbing up behind the deerhorn cactus, signs to the petroglyphs. Lava cones and congealed black falls, half down the face of a precipice, never to arrive. The Cosos and the Panamints above Death Valley and the Inyos and the White Mountains. Dry pine and snow patches to the right, hazy, foreshortened in the slanting light. The Sierra to the left, picked out in the morning sun, spruce valleys, rock faces, snow fields glistening. Gold country, ghost towns. Camps and motels and Best Trout Fishing, animal farms and Kiss the Kobra & Rattlesnakes, trailer parks, ski lifts. Oldest living, highest point, lowest point, largest state, tallest tree. And still the glory of the Owens Valley remains.

  my

  failing

  Mono Lake, the high passes, the walls of rotary-plowed snow, the heater on your toes and the ice on your ears. The catsupped hamburger which no Italian, however aristocratic, could abide. Discreet disappearings to the Rest Room where no one rests – you prudes, you puritans, repressed, all all all is form. Though your eyes could smile still, O Perry, Perry, Perry.

  flight

  Devil’s Gate Pass and the long valleys, the opening range, down to Carson City. Reno, the unbelievable town, will you ever understand? The Nevada deserts, mile upon mile, salt flats, dry hills, a glimpse of the Cascades far off in California. Asphalt turning to dust. Antelope, the ranging cattle.

  Still you’re in your separate cubes, you and Perry, sealed off. Do the hours that reel out into the roaring wind bring you nothing, Lily? Can you not break loose, break him loose, or chink through somehow so at least he can hear?

  O listen, listen, listen, Perry! No blame, no forgivings, but accept me, wherever, or I can never see you again. Look, there, far off ahead and to the west, those are my mountains, black against the white evening sky. And this is my valley, leading in from the desert, and this, Perry, is my town, my Valley Hope. Further on, further on a bit to our ranch. But what would you there? This is not your route, and you would have left days before. You say nothing, you ask nothing, you hear nothing.

  parting

  They are waiting for us on the porch, against the yellow light of the open door. Fling out, almost falling, rush to them, rapture of embrace, joy filling and filling. Oh! but I shall never never leave again, nothing can make me.

  going

  the black

  Yes, this is Perry. Ma, Pa, my sisters. You’ve been waiting for us all this time? You must be starved too. Supper, oh! supper, my supper, it is, it is! Polenta, I smell it from here.

  suffocation

  Cornmeal mush spread hot on the marble table, the sauce and the cheese and the sausage in the center. Each his sector, seated round the table evenly, start together, the sausage the prize. Chattering, stuffing, shrieking, faces leaning into the disappearing circle.

  Perry, can’t you, can’t you?

  your

  gentle eyes

  OK, you can’t; but try, be funny, be embarrassed not at us, at you. Not like that, Perry, closed off, the motions, remote, studying. Look, it’s us, it’s me, me you rescued once. But it’s you to be rescued. It’s me, can’t you hear me, won’t you?

  across the

  smoky room

  So tall he’d be, high on our biggest horse, and I’ll show him how to ride with his shoulders steady and his hands light and high, his heels down, back on the saddle, with his blue blue eyes and his long hair beneath the curling hat. And I’ll teach him about polenta and how to laugh and what is family and what is love. And he’ll teach me something, that other world, where everything is possible and there is nothing you cannot have.

  But: “Must leave this afternoon, must get on.”

  One night, a morning in the bee house, and exercising the stallion who must be kept in now. His eyes slide down and to the side. He has left you, Lily.

  Your eyes will fill with tears, Lily, your heart and your breath will stop. Again, again. His eyes will only slide away. Otherwise might he suffer?

  blue

  ’tween

  High on the mountain table, high where it tips into the sky, a horse is racing, all honey white, racing with a girl lying lightly on his back. All dressed in a silver robe shining like dew, her hair the yellow heart of a lily. Her face in his flying mane, her body resting so gently, like a moonbeam, on his withers and loins. Her toes stretch out bare on his croup. Her arms lie almost around his neck and her fingers are twined in his thick wild coat. They leap like one, high over the flowering blue sage and the wild grass, ever higher into the black sky. Beneath her she can feel his wings spread out and with great slow sweeps carry them on up into the sun.

  white

  and

  black

  She does not look below, she does not think of the earth they have left. On and on they fly and the air is so clean and sweet and the light so cool. Their bodies seem one. The wings seem to spring from their very soul, rushing and rushing in the wind, the great feathers snapping, the muscles so pure.

  His ears are turned ahead, pointing eagerly. His head is thrust forward, his eyes so black and true. From his nostrils, sucking sucking, blows warm foam.

  From her heart she cries out to him so gladl
y, “On and on and over the sun!” The words blow back to her heart and they are cold like flecks of ice.

  The foam blows back, ever more. And it is red and burning hot.

  She opens her fingers in his hair, rises to her knees, tears mixing with the foaming blood. She raises her arms in the glistening tunic, she catches the wind and is torn free.

  finish, Lily

  don’t let

  the birds

  Slowly she turns, resting on the air, her face to the sun, her back to the earth. Above, beyond, so white against the arch of the sky, is her horse, still with the great wings beating, the hoofs prancing on. Even from the widening distance she can see him, as she hadn’t need to see him before, in every detail, and she can see that his ears are wildly back and his eyes turn white in fear. There is heaviness in his muscles, but on and on and on he races.

  sing yet

  Ever higher, smaller, a shining point, a star fixed in the black sky, following, following the sun.

  She, slowly she turns, slowly she falls away. And now the air that presses on her is in her face, drying her tears which have washed clean the blood. She is facing downward, her features in the shadow. Her robe, now brown and coarse, it cups the air. Toward the earth. Turning turning beneath her, coming to her, she to it.

  The desert, stretching pink and red and yellow on and on, spinning past. Then pale greens, black volcanoes, the far wrinkled sea. The great outer ring, warm desert colors, cool plains and mountains, the warms again. And an inner ring, the dazzling white of the salt playas with balloons of heat rising from them, and tight beside it the narrow green strip of wheat fields and corn and fruit trees. Changing to blue lakes and dark green forests and there the miles and miles of spring hay fields.

  Just beneath her, slowly turning too, the mountaintops, shortened and softened, bare in the velvet of the fir. And the high plateau, the Landing Place, ever bigger. Quite gradually she settles down, the earth comes to her, circles. The center, the flowering blue sage and the wild grass. Her wings enfold them, they reach up and receive her. Her flowers, her snow-brush, the wild peppermint, the tiny blues bending under the weight of a bee.

  that

  complaining

  kitchen

  pump

  Holding; the ancient home, the earth

  Wild flowers leaning in a jelly glass, Welch’s, flowers that came in the evening. Some close, some wilt; others survive, proud sun, spring rains. Leaning out over the oilcloth, over his twisted hands that lie on the black pages of the album; sympathy, tears drop on his wrists.

  Dry desert; twists, blacks, the pine planks, suffering.

  Dry sobbing; faint in the still between harsh breathing and the rush of the night wind.

  I the home – my voice.

  I, collecting you, protecting you, holding you, weeping with you. Lily, new tears, new presence, clear heart in the dark beyond the lamplight. Old Will, tears of time, the silent shaking of his shoulders, trembling the floor, renewal of courage.

  I am here: to contain, to store life, to give it its place. To be there, within the reach of habit, the familiar. Familiar to the recesses of the heart, to the search of the memory; light to the eye of the soul. To receive.

  Who else to comfort you, to embrace your pain, to answer? Me that you reconstructed, warm around you. I reach back, old Will, far back, and you are the inheritor. Your secret valley of the high desert, secrets reaching deep into the earth at our feet. Crumbling adobe, mud and sticks, hide tents rotting in the sand, barricaded caves in the ringing rocks.

  Place, that is what you found. And do we sob for that, for those distant pains that led us here, for the sufferings of the search? Or is it that we can see no farther? Are the cyclings ending, are we the last, Will? No inheritor?

  Willy; Spider Woman, give Earth’s Treasure

  impatient

  blackness!

  Who’d shake me so, who’d make old eyes blink so, who’d want to tell me of the end? Lot to remember, lot still to do, and they’ll be taking it over when I leave, won’t they? Their Park, their museum, they say. Old Will won’t be forgot. Why’s that an end, why do you tell me still that this place ends? Why do you shake me still?

  Have I cried, have I dripped tears here on my wrists? They’re wet when I wipe at my eyes and cheeks. Here, this little brown photo, now that I can see good. The soft dark hair, the eyes, the lips that seemed always half ready. What moves behind the lamplight, what eyes are wet with tears?

  Did you weep for me Jenny, as my hoofbeats died, did you play your waltz some sadder that desert afternoon? Did you mean for me to hear it?

  Jogging off after the sun; young feller, sad at the mouth. Best look ahead, young Willy, plenty to see up ahead. On where there’ll be the Walapai tribe, high in the wild country, the red country, the pine country. They’ll take you, Willy, they’ll make you a brother and give you a name and you’ll ride bareback and whoop after the antelope for a second shot. Speare, you wrote it, ’cause the Court Clerk said so. Thieving, judge said, damn half-breed, till your brothers came whooping on their horses, hundred’r more, and said you’d with them, no thief, and plenty of trouble if you’d be kept a piss-time more. Ride off with them, hair all tied behind, maybe a feather too.

  Chloride, Arizona. Ride in, running, on the Fourth, you and your Walapai friends, fat from the summer hunting. You’ll loosen the dust at the Half Moon Saloon. You’ll pay down your fee from the hides you’d sold. They’ll cheer and whoop you when the announcer shouts out “The Indian!” Your riata’ll whistle, steer-tying, and maybe and maybe not you’ll get a piece of the prize.

  barbarian

  hordes

  we,

  crushed

  against

  the Baltic

  That’s them, the Walapais and me, foreman took the picture when I went down there – over from Needles – to get turquoise for the tombstones. Still keep going, they do. I knew them well, back in the ’nineties. Good people, good friends, loyal, honest. Savages! Who’d be calling who? It was a Garden of Eden, America – who knows the debt we’re in? Colonel Chivington, at Sand Creek in Colorado; the Cheyennes, just remnants of them, camped, treaty with the United States, he orders “Shoot them at daybreak. The only good Indian is a dead Indian. Women and children too, nits breed lice.” And he was a preacher once. Shot’m down, every last one. The women pulled their dresses right up, over their heads, to show they were females, but he shot’m all.

  Whitsuntide

  slay

  Scalping. Y’know who did the first scalping? Back in Virginia two ladies were kidnapped by the Indians. Some good reason too, probably. Lived high, on maple sugar and all the meat they wanted, said so later. Stole some knives, slit the throats of their guards, sliced off their scalps, escaped. And they were paid for the scalps. First time anybody’d ever thought of scalping.

  the Wild

  Man

  of straw

  Yuh, good people. Sober, protected their women, sort of instinct toward the female. Kept the family small, like the quail won’t lay eggs in the bad years. Have some sort of herb medicine to take when they don’t want children, squaw told me of it, don’t know just what it was. Just one wife.

  night

  We were all gentle once, in this Garden of Eden. Cave man was naked and he wasn’t ashamed. Fruits and nuts and maybe eggs, but never thought of eating meat. Then the ice moved down from the north and he didn’t want to leave home for the south, so he took the warm skins from some animals he’d trapped. Threw the meat away, but his dogs ate it, and he got the idea too, though his teeth aren’t made for it.

  snarls

  down

  by

  We’d never hunt but what we needed. Here too. Leave the bighorns and the wild burros and the deer and the cats, leave them for the Indians if they wanted’m. We had beef cattle; why take another life? Hills here, up in the high desert, were full of those wild burros. Then they came along, rounded them up, slaughtered them to feed t
he foxes, fox farms down in the valley, still going I’d reckon.

  the

  river

  That’s how it is, Lily girl. Here, let’s have some grub, corn heating. Mind it in a cup? All I got. Spoon’s over there. Saltines? And there’s a good bit of your watermelon left still.