It was then I took the leap into the wasteland, happy as Brer Rabbit in the briars. That long long, bloated epicene tract “The Waste Land” by Eliot — the slideshow of some snug librarian on the rag — was nothing, unworthy, in the notes that every sissy throws away. I would not talk to students about it. You throw it down like a pickled egg with nine Buds and move on to giving it to the preacher’s wife on a hill while she spits on a photograph of her husband.
I began on the Buds, but I thought I was doing better. The standard shrill hag at the end of the bar had asked me why I did not have a ring in my ear, and I said nothing at all. Hey, pirate! she was shrieking when I left, ready to fire out of Dallas. But I went back toward Louisiana, my home state, Dallas had sickened me so much.
Dallas, city of the fur helicopters. Dallas — computers, plastics, urban cowboys with schemes and wolf shooting in their hearts. The standard artist for Dallas should be Mickey Gilley, a studied fraud who might well be singing deeply about ripped fiberglass. His cousin is Jerry Lee Lewis, still very much from Louisiana. The Deep South might be wretched, but it can howl.
I went back to the little town in the pines near Alexandria where I grew up. I didn’t even visit my father, just sat on my motorcycle and stared at the little yellow store. At that time I had still not forgiven him for converting to Baptist after Mother’s death.
I had no real home at all then, and I looked in the dust at my boots, and I considered the beauty of my black and chrome Triumph 650 Twin, ’73 model, straight pipes to horrify old hearts, electricity by Lucas. I stepped over to the porch, unsteady, to get more beer, and there she was with her white luggage, Celeste, the one who would be a movie star, a staggering screen vision that every sighted male who saw the cinema would wet the sheets for.
I walked by her, and she looked away, because I guess I looked pretty rough. I went on in the store — and now I can tell you, this is what I saw when my dead eye went wild. I have never been the same since.
The day is so still, it is almost an object. The rain will not come. The clouds are white, burned high away.
On the porch of the yellow store, in her fresh stockings despite the heat, her toes eloquent in the white straps of her shoes, the elegant young lady waits. The men, two of them, look out to her occasionally. In the store, near a large reservoir, hang hooks, line, Cheetos, prophylactics, cream nougats. The roof of the store is tin. Around the woman the men, three decades older, see hot love and believe they can hear it speak from her ankles.
They cannot talk. Their tongues are thick. Flies mount their shoulders and cheeks, but they don’t go near her, her bare shoulders wonderful above her sundress. She wears earrings, ivory dangles, and when she moves, looking up the road, they swing and kiss her shoulders almost, and the heat ripples about but it does not seem to touch her, and she is not of this place, and there is no earthly reason.
The men in the store are stunned. They have forgotten how to move, what to say. Her beauty. The two white leather suitcases on either side of her.
“My wife is a withered rag,” one man suddenly blurts to the other.
“Life here is a belligerent sow, not a prayer,” responds the other.
The woman has not heard all they say to each other. But she’s heard enough. She knows a high point is near, a declaration.
“This store fills me with dread. I have bleeding needs,” says the owner.
“I suck a dry dug daily,” says the other. “There’s grease from nothing, just torpor, in my fingernails.”
“My God, for relief from this old charade, my mercantilia!”
“There is a bad God,” groans the other, pounding a rail. “The story is riddled with holes.”
The woman hears a clatter around the counter. One of the men, the owner, is moving. He reaches for a can of snuff. The other casts himself against a bare spar in the wall. The owner is weeping outright.
He spits into the snuff in his hands. He thrusts his hands into his trousers, plunging his palms to his groin. The other man has found a length of leather and thrashes the wall, raking his free hand over a steel brush. He snaps the brush to his forehead. He spouts choked groans, gasping sorrows. The two of them upset goods, shatter the peace of the aisles. The man with the leather removes his shoes. He removes a shovel from its holder, punches it at his feet, howls and reattacks his feet angrily, crying for his mute heels.
“My children are low-hearted fascists! Their eyebrows meet! The oldest boy’s in San Diego, but he’s a pig! We’re naught but dying animals. Eve and then Jesus and us, clerks!”
The owner jams his teeth together, and they crack. He pushes his tongue out, evicting a rude air sound. The other knocks over a barrel of staves.
“Lost! Oh, lost!” the owner spouts. “The redundant dusty clock of my tenure here!”
“Ah, heart pie!” moans the other.
The woman casts a glance back.
A dog has been aroused and creeps out from its bin below the counter. The owner slays the dog with repeated blows of the shovel, lifting fur into the air in great gouts.
She, Celeste, looks cautiously ahead. The road is still empty.
The owner has found some steep plastic sandals and is wearing them — jerking, breaking wind, and opening old sores. He stomps at imagined miniature men on the floor. The sound — the snorts, cries, rebuffs, indignant grunts — is unsettling.
The woman has a quality about her. That and the heat.
I have been sober ever since.
I have just told a lie.
At forty, I am at a certain peace. I have plenty of money and the love of a beautiful red-haired girl from Colorado. What’s more, the closeness with my children has come back to a heavenly beauty, each child a hero better than yours.
You may see me with the eye patch, though, in almost any city of the South, the Far West, or the Northwest. I am on the black and chrome Triumph, riding right into your face.
Fans
WRIGHT’S FATHER, A SPORTSWRITER AND A HACK AND A SHILL FOR THE university team, was sitting next to Milton, who was actually blind but nevertheless a rabid fan, and Loomis Orange, the dwarf who was one of the team’s managers. The bar was out of their brand of beer, and they were a little drunk, though they had come to that hard place together where there seemed nothing, absolutely nothing to say.
The waitress was young. Normally, they would have commented on her and gone on to pursue the topic of women, the perils of booze, or the like. But not now. Of course it was the morning of the big game in Oxford, Mississippi.
Someone opened the door of the bar, and you could see the bright wonderful football morning pouring in with the green trees, the Greek-front buildings, and the yelling frat boys. Wright’s father and Loomis Orange looked up and saw the morning. Loomis Orange smiled, as did Milton, hearing the shouts of the college men. The father did not smile. His son had come in the door, swaying and rolling, with one hand to his chest and his walking stick in the other.
Wright’s father turned to Loomis and said, “Loomis, you are an ugly distorted little toad.”
Loomis dropped his glass of beer.
“What?” the dwarf said.
“I said that you are ugly,” Wright said.
“How could you have said that?” Milton broke in.
Wright’s father said, “Aw, shut up, Milton. You’re just as ugly as he is.”
“What’ve I ever did to you?” cried Milton.
Wright’s father said, “Leave me alone! I’m a writer.”
“You ain’t any kind of writer. You an alcoholic. And your wife is ugly. She’s so skinny she almost ain’t even there!” shouted the dwarf.