Back in Juarez, dipping down into Mexico out of luck. Getting so drunk in the bars that my arm would just fall off there like a hostage and give up… and eventually I could look around the room and see things for what they were. I would start to stare hard and long at fellows until I could see their veins and their veins became light. The best of fellows, well their veins were light and the worst of fellows were dim and shady. Nothing was what it was, just light and night. And I would move like a moth to the light and carry on so, just listening, looking, smelling and take it in and the dim would come out of nowhere stabbing about jagged tooth and angled. It really would disturb me…
I thought I could die here in Juarez, just start bleeding out my nose, shitting my pants… melting into the ground that needed water, needed me. And I could be reborn. Like I been born once and didn’t see this all and I needed to be born again and really take it in, with all that I learned and all.
I always thought that when kids see me, they see a Christmas tree. Nothing but light.
My gums were bleeding awful bad which made me think about fruit and to maybe stop chewing, made me think about the old books I read about the old sailors and scurvy. But nothing mattered down in Juarez, you could lose an arm down and Juarez and still win a fight, you could lose a fight down in Juarez and still win your light. It was all about getting dark, before seeing the light I guess. But I left before I seen them both.
He pulled a pair of panties out of the dresser, and of course he pulled them against his olfactory system and announced everything that he could smell. He was making pictures of who was there. Who used to be and what they ate. He could smell what she ate and the smell of hard work and what she used to clean and hide herself with. He did this and felt the guilt. He felt a pleasure between himself, he felt something else… a lonely feeling, as if the husband was out in the kitchen and he would have to explain himself and he wished that the man was there and that he had something to explain. A confrontation. But he had nothing, he had free range. So he kept on going.
He noticed there were no fire arms, no ammo, a wood stove, but no wood. “what happened here?”
There was a cake, fresh with white sugar frosting, which read ‘happy birthday Emily’ without a bite, or square or nothing taken out of it so he moved on…
The sun was against him and getting hotter and he thought about getting back to shit, and how shit needed water more so than he would ever know. He could make this happen, everything else was second.
He slowley unravelved the clover hitch of leather from the dried wooden post and walked shitgoose towards the water, about half way there she could smell it and started to salivate like a rabid dog… panting, he kept calming her until about 100 ft out she broke loose and just ran to the water.
He chased after her for a bit, then slowed, then ran the final bit after catching his breath… he knew it was dangerous for a horse to drink too much when thirsty, that the kidneys would give, and that he would have to pull her away. And he doubted his strength, but he did catch her by the ears and talk into them and managed to pull her away. he didn’t talk to her though, he communicated with her, it took everything he had with in him… he thought a lot and tried to put these thoughts into her mind… “baby we got to go, come with me, we can come back, we will come back, trust me” but he never wanted to come back. He wanted to explore.
Eventually shitgoose relinquished her strength and he walked her back towards the stagnet water that she couldn’t drink. It took about 30minutes and he hoped that her mind would understand the water and the thirst and be ok with it…
She was ok with it. He clover hitched the leather against the post outside the post office and the bar, next to the stagnate water and decided to walk in.
In Kansas the land rolled out a million miles a second… at that crop and looking out at it you couldn’t think about all the work. There was so much work hard work. The smell of corn husk banking inside of your nose. In the off fields there was haying and it was hot itchy work that tore up your arms so you wore long sleeve which made you hotter. But there weren’t people around and you had the earth to yourself and it made you think like you could do it… your house, your storm shutters, everything seemed loaded and precise a perfect band of music moving forward to having a wife, a Midwest buauty queen that you could make love to and have other human beings that had your name….
He stood about 15 mins out in the sun, looking at the town. He stepped on a scorpion that was running around his boot probably looking for shade and he got indifferent to its stupidity…
There was paper, and he wanted to draw what he was looking at… about 100 years from now people would figure out how to catch something like this but he couldn’t figure it out that way,, all the same… a journal maybe, a letter, a picture that I draw of all these weird things. For my mother in Kansas… so he drew.
(a picture)
So then he went back into the town, now that it was safe and he could really get down to what happened her and he was hungry, thirsty, he couldn’t imagin what his hourse felt like like… “let us take”
Post office: the letters that he opened and read were so personal but nothing much telling about what was going on.
He spent much time trying to make it look like what it was, adding the knots of wood to all the beams that strung them self all up and down the street. The sun was hard because it was always moving and he wanted to draw what he first saw but it changed though out the day. He decided to draw morring. A new beginning.
The people came back some how, they were in and out and had faces ordering bread from, the bakery… sending mail… talking to each other on the side of the street about the sun the heat. There was a little girl wearing a dress and a large sun hat that protected her so and see moved out into the middle of the town and spun and spun around. Her dress musical and skipping beats her beauty an eye watering water bug…
And he woke.
I can only know what I would do in this circumstance, in this place of no understanding… there is no one here, but they left in such a rush, and I have my reign and curiosity… never had much, and now I have a whole town. I got a horse, a whole town I say… I looked for paper, so I went to the post office. I looked for paper even though I cannot draw and be all that creative, but I can at least capture this a little. Sort of sketch it out, the town the rough edges.
Letters with stamps, all these names and all these stamps, all these words going nowhere. He rang the bell. Then he rang the bell again. Nothing happened. He walked around Oak Island and made his way back into the shuffle room. He started pulling mail out of the boxes… looking at the address and they all read the same.
Buttdale.
So whatever, he started to open the mail…
Dear Katherine,
It is wild out here, like nothing we have ever seen. I have to get a gun. I want to get a rifle because it reminds me of a kid shooting possum and birds and I feel like it makes sense, but I think I also have to get a pistol. Something to walk into the saloons with and let them know I am credible. You have to see the shady men, I feel so out of place and I don’t know which way is up. I am going to buy a rifle and keep it on the hip of shitgoose, thank god I have a good horse, and she will keep me free. I don’t want to be taken advantage of. You should see this place; it is like nothing back east… I feel like a foundry. I am casting my own future.
Shitgoose kept stopping, or trying to stop and graze and he kept rearing her head up and pulsing on. I have to get her something to eat, some down time. It is weird how much horses eat. It is weird how much they drink. If you put them in a field that is all they do, they eat all day long, their heads are never up, always down on the ground. They are not like dogs, and you can’t throw them some bacon… apples yes, bacon no. god it has been a month since I have seen an apple, and orange. The foods they eat out here are so weird.
Shitgoose kept stopping, or trying to stop and graze and he kept rearing her head up and pulsing on. I have to get her something to eat, some down time. It is weird how much horses eat. It is weird how much they drink. If you put them in a field that is all they do, they eat all day long, their heads are never up, always down on the ground. They are not like dogs, and you can’t throw them some bacon… apples yes, bacon no. god it has been a month since I have seen an apple, and orange. The foods they eat out here are so weird.
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