There
are certain men who women find irretrievable, gone over into a kind of
nightmare where strength and beauty attract as honey does the bee.
They know what being crushed is.
They’ve drunk too much coffee.
Circumcised, shaking in too many meaningless
ceremonies, excruciating their pain, driving them endlessly bending from
self-love; they have withdrawn to correct it.
They are made of feathers, children’s voices, and
the sound of difficult breathing. They sit listening to each of the lights: the
kings and queens who drift past cities, the saints who bleed above uncharted
seas. At times these men and women slip into the warrior show. They catch fire.
The survivors of this bizarre attachment become even
quieter like wind rippling light.Then, they bathe in a true picture of their
condition. They hide their fire, solidly enclosed, a sweet science.
For
Richard Dwyer, K.O. and Stephanie…
Moonflower……….
1
G.I.V.E.………..
47
The
Last Killing …….………………….. 149
CHAPTER
I
Saturday
- Christine climbs down the steps to her garden and unravels like a snake.
I can see her lashes closing down over her
dark green eyes. I stand in front of
her while she
undresses,
unbuttoning her pants, letting the blue denims slide down her legs to the dirt
floor.
I kneel and grasp her ankles as she struggles
to lift her slender feet. My hands
travel to the waistband of her butterfly patterned underwear, and I slide them
down her coltlike legs.
Lying
down in one another, we are surrounded by a large wooden fence. "Become gentler," I can remember
her saying on one particular brutal afternoon.
And yet, I will nibble on her
flowers,
undisturbed, for an hour or so.
I
love watching her masturbate.
Suppressing cries, rolling over on her stomach, with
her
right hand she'll touch her buttocks.
Turning to me and letting her tongue slip out to caress her painted
lips, she'll moan quietly and say, "Fuck me good."
I
enter her house. She has her childlike
drawings and bulletins of the latest events
taped
to the walls. "Christine," I
say, "are you home?" I can
hear the shower. I walk down
the
hall and open the bathroom door. She is
bending over, a full moon. A white
terry cloth lies on the tile floor. "Am I disturbing you?" I ask.
"Not
at all," she says, "I was hoping you'd come back."
Her
face is between her legs. Her body is
tan and blonde. My cock is aching to break
out
of its skin.
"Take
off your clothes and come on in," she says, "the water's warm."
"Did
you plan this?" I say.
"Don't
be stupid. C'mon, I'm not going to stay
here all day."
She
lifts her head up and turns to me, and puts her hands on the porcelain tub.
My
clothes are off and I'm coming toward her, brushing her erect nipples, kissing
her
neck,
easing my way into her. Our movement is
slow and circular. The steam from the
shower
creates a sauna. She keeps looking over
her shoulder. With a net I'm chasing
her,
driving
her, across a rain soaked field. I think
I might never catch her. I'm right.
Sunday
- I call her. I thought I had been
dialing Bishop, my psychiatrist. She
says
that
what she was doing was trusting; she was trying to trust. That I should look at it that
way,
too. I tell her I love her. She says I don't like her tender, soft
parts. I say that isn't true.
She says, "You don't like the cracked
part, that's the tender part. It's the
same thing." My god, are we crazy!
I
have to reply. I say, "I thought
you said you didn't want to lose me?"
She
says, "I meant that."
Then
she starts to cry. She says she is
sick, and she has too much work to do.
She
is
crying when she hangs up.
I
quickly dress and drive to her place feeling yes, I can see her again, and
offer my
help:
rub her back, make tea (but she drinks coffee in the morning), buy her
groceries, fix
the
bathtub handle (for the hot water).
When
I arrive, I park at the top of the hill; there is a parking spot in front of
her
house. I look up at her window. There is a tall, young man, with black hair,
sitting in the living room. I watch him
for a minute, shrug my shoulders, and leave.
Sunday
afternoon - This is my chance. My
chance to prove how much I love her; cracked tenderness, romantic clown, sheer
energy, that she is. I must hold fast
and be calm. I walk the three levels of my house, through the terraced garden
of rose bushes, and a wild backyard, around the orange and the lemon trees near
the mint growing in the corners.
There is a panoramic view, from the living
room, of the San Bruno Mountains, a railroad
yard,
the San Francisco International Airport, and the Bay. I sit on the edge of the pool
table. Will I fly away? I see a jeep parked at the
top of her hill. I recognize it. It is the same jeep that Christine's uncle
let her drive in the desert. She loves
the desert. Loners, old women, with
pull-down poker lamps above their tables who wear green poker shades; tough and
eccentric desert people.
That
jeep is ours. She's driving. I'm sitting next to her. We've returned to the desert in search of
food, she and I.
Monday
afternoon - Bishop is tall, blonde, with the battered, mashed-in face of an
alcoholic;
his eyes are bright diamonds, a cocaine blue.
How innocent it sounds. What
emotional
junkies we are. I like talking with him because he sympathizes with me, but he
doesn't believe me.
He knows or thinks he knows that I'm
suffering from some egotism, a delusion; he thinks
I
really don't understand reality, the reality of human life, and so, I can't
love. He doesn't understand that I'm
being controlled by something other than myself, some force that is making a
farce out of my existence. I keep
monitoring my thoughts, sifting through, looking
for
the image, but I know when it comes. I
can feel it.
I
enter his office - stereotypical. He
looks like he's sorry for me. I feel
great. He
says
you look like you should be leading a Russian circus with Russian bears
following you.
"The
Christians and the scientists are dead," I say. He likes that. It's safe
ground.
I show him the letter I received this
morning.
Saturday Evening
Dear
Bill -
I
am sorry for the negative things I said to you. It takes away from all the nice and
special
things that happened to us, with us, for us.
It is not so much that something was
wrong
between us, not looking for something else, but open to it if it happened, I
guess.
Somehow
I felt that what you wanted was a playmate and I was that. It never occurred to
me
that you were looking for a more permanent kind of relationship. You told me that you
didn't
want to live with anyone until you had a lot of money, and then you wanted
children,
etc. I knew I couldn't be the person you would
want. If things weren't exactly what I
wanted,
I
didn't worry about it. If I was sad, I
wrote notes which I never sent, because I didn't think that's what
"we" were all about. Looking
back at it, I feel like I gave you my best love and attention and let you know
me. That I didn't do what you wanted, I
am sorry - but we hadn't made that kind of commitment - we had never even
mentioned living together. Even now, I
don't think you would want to be saddled with that kind of responsibility.
The
qualities you admired in me at the start now make you angry. I can't be made
to
feel guilty and hurt because I didn't do what I didn't even know you
wanted. I must feel
free
to do what I feel is best. But I am
responsible to you - if you want to talk to me I will be available, without
fear. I had hoped we could be friends,
work together and whatever happened. I
understand your hurt and I am sorry. I
cared and still care very much for you and I know that you know that.
Sunday Morning
Right
now I don't have anymore to add to the above and preceding except that it was
good
talking to you yesterday and I still mean it about talking more if you want to.
I
don't want to sever all connections with you - but I do feel that I need to find out
what
the other thing is all about. And I want to send you this book since I finally
found it. And I'm glad that you
brought
the Tomato Soup writings back. Love,
C.
The
Tomato Soup writings are her diary, which she had given me a few weeks
before. I had
been
tempted to keep them. The book is
Malamud's The Natural.
"There
it is," he says, "it's all verbalized. Do you accept that?"
I
nod my head and watch his eyes, very blue.
Inside there, it looks like someone's lost at sea. He says, "Have
you seen your wife?"
"No,"
I say. I pause.
He
looks at me. He must think I'm a fool
to think I'd tell him the truth.
He
nods.
"What
the fuck do you think you're doing?" I ask.
Without
blinking an eye, but slouching, he says, "Trying to understand you."
"Fuck
off," I say, and, once again, leave.
He expects it. He just says,
"See you
later."
CHAPTER II
There
are greater, less explored realities.
Psychiatry has had its two deep sea divers.
The rest, and all the divergent movements,
are pale imitations, piranhas living off the Freud-
Jung
creation. For the past twenty years,
the great field has been extrasensory, human
telepathy,
interstellar communication, Chardin's Alpha & Omega, the revealing common
unconsciousness:
In short, Jung's world.
There
is an obsession in our culture with drugs, with books that speak of life after
death. People die knowing these things. They spill their blood to the Greater Truth,
for it
is
the only sacrifice the God will accept: the complete transformation of human
reality. To
go
beyond this narrow plain of war and religion. Bishop is a fool, but I will
continue to work on him until he breaks through the mask.
Someone says calm down. How can I?
It's an exquisite, heartbreaking afternoon. The sounds on the street, the car horns, the whistling of
children, birds, the large dog barking, its
mouth
agape: an orchestrated symphony of domesticity...a pleasure to listen to from a
distance.
My concern is for the lower vibrations.
I must keep myself in tune to the humming that one cannot hear, to the
invisible engine that one knows is there.
Does
Bishop realize that what he thinks and feels is the community, the
intermin-gling emotions of what his group is thinking? The feeling of the forest is coming from the
forest, from the inhabitants of that mind.
Tuesday
morning - Sometimes, it's difficult to get moving in the morning. I
like to lie around, in the early winds, catching those slow, cold
explosions from the approaching sun. I
like to stand on the stairs above the garden, especially after a rain, and let
all the
fragrance
seep into my body. It's a sexual
fatigue the plants and trees feel after a strong rain.
I've
got my light blue jeans, maroon sweater, and not quite matching levi jacket on.
I'm wearing buckle-over dress shoes, and a
Russian hat. Liz, the blonde,
hook-nosed
bartender,
from a bar I frequent, the Mauna Loa, brings down black coffee and scrambled
eggs. She says, "I've got an appointment at
10:00. I'll see you later."
"Wait
a minute," I say.
"Oh
no," she says, bending and giving me a kiss. "I'll see you later."
"All
right. Bye."
I
watch her walk up the stone stairs. She
has trouble closing the gate, but she finally
does,
and leaves.
Rain
clouds have appeared. I have to take
the eggs and coffee inside. Someone has
come
and is standing near the orange tree. I
can't make out the form. It's trying to
say
something. "You are loved by her. You must act on it." Slowly, it vanishes. Patience,
somehow
patience was what this was all about.
CHAPTER
III
Tuesday
night - Life in the city, the bee into the various beehives. The hummingbird
in
the garden of delights. The smoke, the
ground haze that surrounds us. The
drugged beauty. The dance of changing
partners, and the constant money exchange for services rendered. Sleep in the city is fitful without
sex. If not sex, certainly
alcohol. The tensions
are
too continuous. There is no rest, no
peace in the city.
I
hear the grove of eucalyptus being rustled by the wind. I've always heard it, and
the
sound and sight transfixes me. It's as
if I made the sound, when I was born, and will make it, again, when I die. A creaking.
In and out. An almost leathery
sensuality. A gentle
passing,
like the sound of ice melting. I see Christine tonight. I feel there was hope for us. We talk, turning in the bed, aching. All night long, holding each other. I can't fuck her. She can't let me back in.
"Remember,"
she says, "you feel right."
She nods her head. Indicating
she still feels that way? I tell her
I’ll wait one month before leaving. I
want to live with her. Have us become
successful. Business, lovewise. Gently understanding the feelings. In response, I write her
this
letter: "Even now you don't think I want to be saddled with the
responsibilities. Are we joyous
people? Do we believe in love and
experience, work and the healing of wounds (old
wounds)? Of course, we do, of course, we are. If only I could have pulled off the road,
and
spoken
to myself about the depth of my feeling, about my desire. If only I could have
spoken
to myself and resolved the conflict."
I think she says she hates me and she loves me.
I arouse all those feelings. Basically, she doesn't like me. So what am I to make of that?
I continue.
The car is burning; I have to jump out.
My feelings unwind slowly. I
wake up
to
myself. I have lost (for the moment); I
went to the station, but the train had left.
I look
at
it go away. I run after it; I run. I restart the engine. I love you.
I wait for you. For the
train
that you are on. Return. But I'm in the past, aren't I? I have become
another memory,
almost
a fantasy.
CHAPTER IV
Wednesday
morning - It's curious how weird I can become.
People begin moving across the veranda.
There's no end to them. Their
faces are smiling; they all believe and are attached to God. They have a general, and he mutters something
about topping, and, as one, they halt the march. They break their lines and stretch out. A few lie on their backs to catch
the
morning sun; others sit in circles and talk.
The general looks off into the distance. His
wife
has sent him a nagging letter. She says
he's been away too long. Goddamn woman,
he
thinks
to himself. This journey may be a
delusion, but I must do it. "Do
it, do it," the
general
says, hardly visible, staring madly out of the shadows. The creatures, hearing him,
stand
and walk back into line, leaving the sun and their circles. Why is he so obsessed?
Why
are they so obedient?
No
one wants to buy the ping pong table, but I have sold the pool table, my car,
metal
desk and filing cabinet. The fuse has
been lit. I'm leaving this shattered
kingdom. To Bishop, I have given my
papers. To my wife, Barbara, my
appreciation and respect. I don't
want
to think about Christine: smiling, frowning, waiting, serious, businesslike,
expectant, gone from my life, a kind of poetry, a delicate strength, a
projection of my feelings. I feel
there
is more to say about this. I am moving because I do not want to repeat the same
cycle. I am hungry. I do not
want
to become an old cigar, or plain brown shoes.
I'm diverging. Like a falcon, I
must
circle
closer to the quarry.
CHAPTER V
Wednesday
morning - Stars are roots. I replay one
of our sex scenes; She moves into
my
bedroom and strips, removing her shoes, and then her pants.
"I'm
here," she says.
Startled,
I turn to her pretty legs.
She
says, "I'm here to get fucked."
Now,
she could say it, a stroke of independence.
She says it again, "I'm here to get
fucked."
"All
right, I will."
I
walk nakedly with a stiff hard-on pulling me along. She drops to the floor.
"I hope this satisfies you," she says, tilting her head back. "Does it?" I slip her panties off, and kneel with
her. Separating her, I unravel her.
"Oh,
Bill," she says.
"I
miss you," I whisper.
Wrapping
her legs around me, she says, "I know."
CHAPTER VI
Wednesday
afternoon - I walk to the road above my house.
I'm not really possessive.
I just want to make sure, when I lose
something, that I haven't been ripped off.
Drifting,
from
moment to moment, without checking and balancing, is an escape from the depth.
For
instance, the man I call my old man was given a blueprint of his contract, yet,
chose
not to believe it. He told me the
story, at least twenty times.
They
had been on their second honeymoon, a winter in Northern Canada. I was two
years
old at home, with my grandmother. Great
time, he said. Skied, fooled around,
you
know. On the sixth day they were riding on a land
bordered by tamaracks. Anne, my
mother,
talked about the possibility of an avalanche.
The horses became skitterish.
The old man heard moans, human sounds, coming from somewhere up the
lane. He jumped off; she held the
reins. He walked toward the sound. The old man said he was scared, but he
turned
to
pure fear as he saw the unfortunate soul, all too human, caught in a bear trap,
his mouth
agape,
his blood frozen. He cries at night
when he dreams of that cold uncomprehending
stare.
Sometimes I feel like telling him that the man in the trap is him, his
contract, but I
think
it would break his heart. In a lot of
ways he's innocent, well protected, a good sport.
There
is a wild bed of roses growing on top of the hill. I am not in tune. As I
look
upon
it, I become aware of the struggle.
Inside, there is a world. So,
there is a world outside. They are not
in tune. I've stopped thinking. I know because there is a creek that runs
alongside the road, and now I can hear its glib gliding sounds. It's true,
though. From each of these
confrontations, the tree that is me grows a little
more,
the soil becomes enriched by the psychic blood that flows through the trunk and
into
the
roots. The blood is like paint and
winds its way through the trunk and into the roots.
The
paint winds its way into a discernible form, a painting which vibrates and
sends out
messages. The picture is called Tenderness. I will not hide from my tenderness.
I
call Bishop. He says that I've been in
this lush, vibrating California pit too long.
He's drunk.
He's got a woman he fucks but doesn't love, a child he loves but cannot
see, and a wife whom he is indifferent to.
He doesn't smile much.
CHAPTER VII
The
happiness I feel at this moment is the result of a small glass of beer. My father
sits
across from me on his yellow recliner.
We are surrounded by sun. The
magnolias turn.
He
nods. "Where are you going
now?"
"I
think I'd like to drive a cab, or maybe I'll get back into commercials but I
won't be able to do that stuff for about a month. Can you loan me $500 until I get going?"
"I
don't know. How much do you owe me
now?"
"About
$1,700.00."
"If
you want to know the truth, Bill, I think you're wasting your life."
I
stand. The old man tries to look tough,
but age has softened his face leaving his
brown
eyes tender and domesticated.
"You
think I could have been a pro, eh?"
Wistfully,
he says, "Everyone thought so. You
were the best end in the country,
Bill."
"It
was your dream," I say, "not mine."
He
doesn't like that.
"It
just shows how irresponsible you are."
I
smile. "Right."
I
can see him over sixteen years ago, on a cold evening, bowing down in his
bedroom,
and saying a "Hail Mary" for the team. Then, he rose from his knees to climb the
stairs
and knock on my bedroom door.
"Come in."
"Would
you like to share a brandy with me?" he asked shyly.
"I'd
love to," came my voice from the other side. "I'll be there in five minutes."
"Fine. I'll see you downstairs."
Carefully,
he closed the door.
His
brandy was excellent. He boasted it was
his only drinking weakness. Above the
television,
in a Blackburn portrait, a boy was shoeing a horse.
I
accepted the snifter. He sat across
from me, in a chair, and sipped the deep amber
colored
wine. I can remember I felt like
telling him that this was all a joke, that he shouldn't
take
it so seriously but I knew he'd think I'd gone completely crazy.
"I
know what you're thinking," I said.
The
old man moved forward.
"What?"
"You're
worried about the game. You're
wondering what happened, aren't you?"
"That's
what's been on my mind, yes."
"All
right. Let me tell ya. I was tense. It's true. I, also, felt disoriented. Now, what
blows
my mind is your taking one lousy performance so seriously. I'm fine.
The team's fine.
We had a let down. We don't feel good about it.
But it happened. We don't think
it will
happen
again."
"I
think it will."
"What?"
"I
can't say, this is a delicate subject.
You're a football player, maybe, a great one.
You should just stick with it. You know?"
"I
know what you mean."
"You
know...good. There's plenty of time for
women. You've got to stick with
it."
"That's
up to me, I think."
The
old man nodded his head.
"Alright." He raised
up. The brandy glass in hand,
a
red Pendleton on his back, he turned to the fireplace.
"You
know, I love you," he said.
"I want the best for you."
Against the fire he,
looked
like a monk.
I
looked clearly at the brandy, at its silken texture. I touched it, raised it to my lips.
I looked up.
"I love you, too," I said.
I
felt the old man was crying.
"What's really wrong?"
I asked him.
He
kept his face from me.
"I
don't know."
I
watched the left side of him. He looked
bloated.
I
left the brandy on the table and came up to him. I touched him on the shoulder and
said,
"I love you."
He
said, "Go on."
I
turned and left the room, flickering a deep orange and red.
"C'mon,"
I say, "I'm hurting; I need your help.
Goddamit!"
"I've
got room for a truck driver. You can
have the job.
"I
can't work with you."
I
feel like we're aching there in the sunlight, linked like two dogs in heat,
needing
someone
to throw water on us.
"You're
a fool," I say.
He
peers up from beneath his baseball cap.
As I pass by, he stares at me.
He says,
"Don't
hurt yourself, Bill."
After
quitting football, I got up to 320 pounds.
It took three years. I
hitchhiked
down
to a fat farm in Raleigh, North Carolina.
I don't think I've ever had a happier time.
To the majority of the people there, the farm
was home. They felt no pressure being
ugly,
obsessive,
or disgusting. They fucked each other
with care, and love. Once a month,
around
midnight,
three or more of us would sneak out to an all night Denny's and eat a dozen
eggs,
a
pound of bacon, pancakes, and hamburgers.
Back home, getting into bed, we'd pop a water
pill,
and shed the pounds. When I left three
months later, I weighed 240 and attributed the
loss
to a steady diet of fucking, and an ample supply of water pills.
There's
nothing I can do to prevent all this from happening. Nor do I have any desire
to. I am receiving pictures from the past, or
the future, and occasionally, I can feel, but not
see,
all the steps in the movement, all the moves in this chess game have been
played out.
I am a hunter who looks for an opening, a
clearing, a clarification of will, a demonstration
of
clairvoyance. A madness is growing in
me.
On
top of Russian Hill, a fire is blazing.
Sirens arch through the city heading for
what
is probably Macondary Lane. From the
spark, the entire city could burn.
Visions of
grandeur.
The red trucks stamp it out and cones of smoke drift toward the Bay.
I
have been there before. The last time I
was unsuccessful. This time I will
complete
the
process. I have the feeling I created
this situation and have done it many times.
Each
time
failing to complete it. This time I
know I will not fail.
What
is the purpose of it all? Wouldn't you
like to live and let live, to build on the
old,
create from the new, survive and raise your young? If so, it is within your grasp by
disarming
and learning to share. Too simplistic.
The
fact is that is not what you want.
People the world of your imagination, with
your
desires, crown it with your dreams, and the phantasmagoria that arises would
put any
single
genius' portrait of hell to shame. The
true picture of man is in Sappho, Aeschylus,
Bacon,
Balzac and Melville. Obsessed with power,
a gabby mouth, a desire for salvation,
a
cunning unmatched in creation, he walks about glum or smiling, repeating old
worn out
phrases,
which he knows will enable him to pass by unnoticed, and undisturbed.
I
might have a drinking problem. I should
go to Triple A and get towed away. I
close
my eyes, and picture the painting, Yradsgil, A Tree of Life. It's a masterpiece of light
greens,
whites, browns, and greys. The tree is
the center. There is an unmistakable
fish in
the
left hand corner. The rest is shapes
and half-forms, a Rorschach. It hangs
in my wife's
living
room. I see a white tiger hurling
itself through the upper branches. In
the upper left,
looking
toward the nearest frame, a sea horse, and to the right, four legs tucked under
him,
sitting
on a branch, a smiling ram. Above the
ram, a strange creature with a large moose's
face,
but without the antlers or hair, and with a patch over one eye, and a long,
flaccid penis
lying
on its back. I think it is somehow
connected with scholarly work and manipulative
desires. At the roots of the tree, above the fish, is
a football, and a host of half-creatures in
the
process of being born.
At
the top of Market Street, before the tram enters the tunnel, I slip out the
front
door,
and walk up 17th Street, away from Christine's and head for the view on Twin
Peaks.
It's a climb and I'm out of shape, but
reaching the top, standing below the Benign Protector,
the
crucible through which all our visual information blows, I get the microcosmic
flash, the
profusion
of parks, the deep, orange towers of the Golden Gate.
At
the end of Market Street, I can see the World Trade Center, one of the few
survivors of the 1906 earthquake. We don't need a war to keep us on our toes. Though right
now,
from here, it would be nice to see the planes and the troops, the underground
against
the
overground, maybe the smokers versus the nonsmokers in an old fashioned
destructive
action.
I've
calmed down enough to smoke. I light it
in the wind. In a '56 Chevy, two white
kids
in their late teens pull up alongside me.
I'm sober enough to sense trouble.
I look over
at
them, and unzip my coat. They're
"good times" kids, punks riding the 50s crest of
nostalgia
and aggression. I want them to know I'm
no one to fuck with. The one driving,
a
younger version of the "Fonz," rolls down his window and says,
"Eh, man, you got a
match?" I look at him. He doesn't seem too frightened.
His buddy raises a can of Coors.
With
the left hand I scratch my beard.
"No, I ain't got no light," I say. "Sorry."
The
driver nods and rolls his window up. I
don't want to turn my back on them, and
I
know they're not going away. I begin
walking backwards. I'm tempted to blow
their tires
apart. The passenger opens his door, stands up and
walks to the back of the car.
"Hey,"
he yells, "you got a couple of dollars we can borrow? We're almost out of
gas."
That
does it. I take the .32 out and point
it at him.
He
panics. "Wait a minute," he
says.
"Tell
your friend to get out of that fucking car." The young "Fonz" ducks. I can't do
it. I fire two shots into the air. The passenger falls behind the fender, and I
run for the hill
adjacent
to the Television Tower.
I
watch them take off. From where I am,
it looks like they'll go off the road, but they
make
it down. I wonder if they'll head for a
bar, or go home.
I
feel trapped, but safe. This has
suddenly become my territory.
"Who’s next?" I
yell
to the pastel rows, the jigsaw puzzle of cheap Mediterranean style housing.
I
look out over the water. It has become
dark. Slowly, I climb down the
mountain.
At the Twin Peaks bar, I call Christine. She answers; I hang up. "Take a chance," I say, and begin
moving toward her place. My heart is
pounding; tears stream down my face.
Why
this
emotion? I catch a glimpse of myself in
a parked car. I look insane. From a hill above her house, I watch her in
a chair reading. I don't think anyone
else
is
there. I climb over the back
fence. Standing on top of her stairs, I
look down on her garden. She is growing
greens, mints and lettuce, amid the flowers.
A bust of a woman with a Harpo Marx wig sits near the bottom of the
door. It is locked, but the window
opens easily.
What
does it matter that she has redecorated her kitchen, or what book she is
reading.
I unzip the jacket and place it cautiously
around the arms of a chair. When I walk into the living room, she looks
up from the book and doesn't bat an eye.
She doesn't register fear or surprise as I point the .32 at her.
She
sits in the chair with a yellow bandanna around her neck, wearing a black and
white
cowboy shirt, and a pair of Levi’s. No
shoes. Her legs are tucked underneath
her.
There
are three neatly rolled joints on the table at the base of her lamp. Vibrating,
in
back of her, the diamond lights of the city look like so many stars.
"T'ai," she says, "fast and clear as a mountain stream. You know, I was just thinking about you when
you walked in."
I
pull the trigger. It sounds like the
Earth’s sighing.
SAVAGES
CHAPTER
I
"Dearest
Marilyn, I can see you walking in the fresh morning grass. With your right foot you'll find a small
rock; your toes will curve around it; to lift it and fling it into a blackberry
bush.
I
cannot hide from my sorrow. I am bound
on all sides by this past winter's snow.
The patterns and traps of Washington, the
feelings of remorse, what are they but to enslave
us,
to keep us here. Now, I am being
followed. Someone, if I am not very
careful, will
murder
me. I dream every night that I am
flying to you. I want you with me in
this time of
trouble. What am I waiting for? I will go to you.
I
loved your sun, your water, your tent, your dreams; why haven't I returned
sooner?
My hands go up; I got lost in a whirlpool, without
a memory, in a fantastic country of my
own
making.
But
finally, out of necessity, I am planning my trip back to you. I am leaving
tomorrow. I want to talk with you, see you, kiss
you. I think if only I can let myself
into the
warm
folds of your country, again, I'll be safe.
“I'll
be arriving on the 22nd, 7:00 o'clock - Amtrack, Oakland.
Love, Joe."
She
folded the letter and slipped it into her back pocket. She sat in the grass,
drawing
her legs toward her, tilting her head toward the light.
The
note of desperation puzzled her. Six
months ago an article in Newsweek hailed
him
as one of the country's leading therapists.
Newsweek had spoken of him as a realist, a
man
in touch with practical solutions.
There was a hint, in the article, of Joseph's political
ambitions
which she found alien to her knowledge of him.
Possibly that, the political
pressure,
plagued him. She jumped the two feet
into the shallow brown water and began
walking
toward the road.
Like
a bird arranges and rearranges its feathers after a rain, her feelings and
thought
reconstructed
themselves. His power to make her
believe in what he said, to feel for him,
attested
to her affection. Watching the light
play in the trees, she knew that was what she
liked. Little black Joseph, gentle and strong,
placing himself in her so she could not forget.
Once
she had described a place, a jar that someone had given her. She said she lived
in
the jar. On one level were flowers,
another pots and pans. She lived at the
bottom of the
jar
on a floor coated with raspberry jam.
"My
God," he exclaimed, "do you really?"
She
said, "Yes," her soft brown eyes laughing.
"Don't
you feel trapped in that jar?"
"I
feel secure."
He
had nodded.
The
sweet smell of cherry blossoms brought her back. Sliding over rocks she felt the
snakelike
turns of the creek. She moved onto the
grassy bank.
Across
the Bay, in Japantown, the streets were lined with the signs of festival.
Lights,
plastic flowers, parades, and demonstrations of ability exploded into
sight. In the
spirit
of the season she turned her body into a tent, an old Japanese custom.
If
one could appreciate the little things in life, the grains of soil at the
bottom of the
grass, strife and conflict would evaporate. To become absorbed by life was its secret.