Chapter 19
June 2, 2009
Chapter Nineteen
Gently but with amazing speed my uncle Henry set me down on the battered but otherwise uninvolved asphalt pavement and ran toward where everyone else had been looking since Jasper Jenkins Jerome’s accidental and unfortunate but extremely forceful shotgun blast had thundered itself into Tecopa history: the bloody roadside where the now certainly lifeless and substantially headless Harliss Weatherby lay prone and spread-eagled in a pool of his own unintentionally sacrificial blood, and amid the small stones and sand and dirt and lizard tails and other desert whatnot all of us knew as the beginnings of the upswelling of Tecopa Hill, a place where so many people, things, and ideas had died and were buried, there to remain until they rust or rot, or forever and ever, amen.
An odd thing I had noticed while I was still in my uncle Henry’s arms was that his eyes, unlike all others (except mine—but do the curious wanderings of trilobite eyes really count during such essentially, tragically human moments as these?) had been scanning back and forth like a bewildered and frightened military radar between the now defunct Harliss Weatherby and his former friend and truckmate—alas, now his unwitting murderer—Jasper Jenkins Jerome. And just what did my uncle Henry see? Everything, of course. More than that, whether his guard was down during a particularly stressful moment (highly unlikely), or because he wanted me to see everything he was seeing the way he was seeing it (very likely), he was letting me read his mind as easily as if it were a simple children’s book.
* * *
Looking back now, almost 100 years after the fact, I realize of course that what my uncle Henry wanted me to see—in fact, what he wanted to sear into the core of my metamorphosing brain, right down to its painfully thudding medulla oblongata—was that there is no truth more complex than the simplest children’s book.
It worked.
Who could have known?
Who, indeed?
* * *
And what did I see through my uncle Henry’s all-seeing eyes and mind and heart and soul? That Jasper Jenkins Jerome was losing his hold on life as fast as Harliss Weatherby was losing blood; that Jasper Jenkins Jerome’s mind, his belief in a world where everything would, eventually, work out all right, had been blown to kingdom come just as surely as Harliss Weatherby’s skull and brains had; and that Jasper Jenkins Jerome—as he stood stock still and shocked into an upright coma by this calamitous result of his undeniably but inexplicably and only momentarily itchy trigger finger, his one foot on the ancient pavement and the other still in the Scene of the Crime which was once nothing more or less than a brand new shiny-black GMC pickup truck—was about to become a permanent nonresident of the planet, if he wasn’t one already.
* * *
That is what my uncle Henry saw and knew, and wanted me to know. He wanted me to remember forever and ever, amen, that there was no such thing as the solitary event, the only person, the number one.
So far I haven’t.
Not that it hasn’t been tough….
* * *
As my uncle Henry set me down and ran to the lifeless body of Harliss Weatherby, something else happened that frightened me so that my medulla oblongata took instant and complete control over the rest of me and directed that I scuttle with all possible haste, no matter how ungracefully, to the other, non-bloody side of the road and dive for subterranean safety. Hearing what I was then hearing, I gave in to what might be seen by many (myself included) as pure primordial fear; but then, my cocoa-induced metamorphosis had brought the physical entirety of me to the point of being only just post-primordial by then anyway.
What happened was the arrival of the most terrifying sound any of us had ever heard; even more terrifying than the shotgun blast that was still dully echoing off a few distant mountains. This was surly the sound—just the pure sound—of all the agony in the universe, collected together over all of time, no matter how time was measured, with Timex watches or stars. It began as a low moan I thought was some sort of strange wind blowing all the way down from Lone Pine up in the high desert, protesting the friction of sand and trees and jagged mountain ridges all the way. As it grew in volume, so did it grow in pitch, until it had gone—in just Timex-time seconds—from a low moan to a mournful wail to a scream to a siren screech that shattered the glass in both front windows of Frank Wineberry’s store into pieces only slightly larger than dust particles. And by then it had nearly deafened everyone except me; my medulla oblongata had saved me—I was finally allowing it to do that for me by giving in to its crude but unmistakable wisdom—by urging me to go underground, to be a great little survivor. Ironically, because of that, I was the only one, with the possible exception of my uncle Henry, who knew that it wasn’t just a moan, a yell, a scream. It was a fierce and angry fight against the inevitable. And because of the natural filtering effect of desert dirt and sand, I knew from where it had come.
And by this time anyone on the surface who had not squeezed their eyes shut as they held their hands over their ears would know, also, just by looking.
Standing near the driver’s door of the pink and chrome Olds, as stock still as if she herself had been shot (though more cleanly) and stuffed in preparation for a continuing role as a female drug store Indian, was Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen, her eyes rage-red and streaming tears, her mouth a wide opening to the depths of Hell itself from where that sound surely must have come. And though it would have been easy for anyone there—anyone but my uncle Henry and me—to believe she was expressing pure, unrefined grief over the hapless Harliss Weatherby, she was not.
She was not, indeed.
She was expressing both rage and fear, over the past and the future.
And she wasn’t just screaming the sound of agony. But it was probably only my uncle Henry and I who knew she was actually yelling a particular, pointed word: she was screaming “No!”
Her rage was at the planet and all who were on it, and who had ever been on it, for it was certainly the planet and all who were on it who had, through omission or commission, helped Jasper Jenkins Jerome pull the trigger of the shotgun. He had not acted alone in a world where, as Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen and my uncle Henry and, of late, even I believed no one ever really acts alone. She was screaming “No!” at the planet and everyone who had ever been on it.
Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen was also screaming “No!” to my uncle Henry because she knew the planet and those who were on it, and she knew what my uncle Henry was going to do, and she was afraid. She was deathly afraid. She was afraid for my uncle Henry.
But to my uncle Henry, Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen’s Lone Pine moan—her window pulverizing wail—would make no difference. Just as he had to make his adhesive slurry because of what he saw in the world around him, and especially in Pearl Harbor, he had to do what he was doing, he had to continue doing what he had always done, and always at great cost.
I swam through the sand and popped up just enough above the surface on the other side of the road, the side where most of Harliss Weatherby could be found, that I got a close-up view of my uncle Henry. He was on his knees beside the victim, and had picked up Harliss Weatherby’s upper body enough to cradle it in his lap, and he was leaning over, cradling, enveloping that part of Harliss Weatherby that would be his head if it had not looked like a giant, overripe beefsteak tomato turned inside-out. My uncle Henry rocked this lifeless but almost lifelike candidate for planet departure gently while he muttered into what should have been an ear but was more like beet purée. And all the while my uncle Henry cried softly, not so much like he was grief stricken but that he was sad and tired.
So slowly that it was like star time almost in reverse, everyone—a single assemblage of people the number and likes of which Tecopa had never seen before—moved slowly and silently (any shuffling of feet being drowned out by Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen’s now echoing away “No!”) and almost gracefully, perhaps reverently, to form a large, benumbed, expectant but for who-knew-what, and even fearful half-circle around my uncle Henry, cradler, comforter, and mourner of Harliss Weatherby, of Jenkins Jasper Jerome, of all of us.
Now even the “No!” echoed away across the desert and was gone, and it was silent enough to hear the lizards breathe in the bright, hot sun. My uncle Henry held Harliss Weatherby even closer, wrapping up his torso and mangled head completely, enveloping it with his body. And among his constant but mostly inaudible (to me anyway, and I was closer than anyone) mutterings I did make out one word: “…believe…” I couldn’t tell if he said it to the former Harliss Weatherby, or to himself.
For what seemed forever—and quite possibly forever and ever, amen—the only movement anywhere in all of Tecopa and, for all I knew, the entire Mojave Desert, was my uncle Henry’s body rhythmically and mournfully rocking back and forth a bit, his nearly soundless lips whispering into what should have been Harliss Weatherby’s ear.
Then, quite unexpectedly (who could have foreseen; other than Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen, who actually knew?) something else moved—just slightly, giving most the idea they hadn’t actually seen it.
* * *
Of course, they actually had. And I knew what they had seen. Because, at last, I was beginning to understand my uncle Henry, and even understand the cocoa.
Although, I still didn’t understand why Bobby Sue Bessmer had to leave the planet….
* * *
Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen saw it too—she knew it was coming and was looking for it—and she ran through the semi-circle of people, pushing and shoving and crying, until she fell to her knees next to my uncle Henry.
“No-o-o-o…” she sobbed, as she tried with what little power she had left to pound on my uncle Henry’s back, though between her spent strength and his intense focus on Harliss Weatherby, it did no good.
“No… Please no… They will know. You will die….”
Then she slowly stood, quietly sobbing.
My uncle Henry’s tight embrace of Harliss Weatherby eased just enough for him to turn and look up at Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen. He was crying, and he was smeared with blood from the fountain which had once been the head of Harliss Weatherby.
“I had to,” he said to her, almost pleading, tears streaming down his face and mixing with the blood. “It was my fault. I had to.”
Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen looked down at him and said as simply, as matter-of-factly as if she were noting the time for no particular reason, “You will die.” Then, standing as still and vulnerable as tall, dry prairie grass on a hot, windless day, she brought her hands to her face and began to mourn as quietly as twilight.
But she did not leave my uncle Henry’s side.
My uncle Henry turned back to Harliss Weatherby, embraced him tightly once more so that his semi-heedlessness was hidden from us all, and then stood, blood-soaked and bone tired, next to Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen.
* * *
Long before all the shotgun ruckus, long enough before that I was still stuttering, my uncle Henry and I were doing what we two often did—sitting near a small campfire outside his trailer in the middle of a desert night, following the calm but almost sacred and almost always silent ritual of poking sticks in the fire, exploring some of the rooms in Hell from a safe distance.
He turned to me suddenly—but not unexpectedly; such sudden turns had become the norm by then—and, with an impish bit of a grin, said,
“Great things—truly great things—seldom happen in great places. Little things happen in great places. Great things happen in little places.”
Instead of my usual “Huh?” I asked, “L-l-l-little p-p-p-p-p-places like h-h-h-here?”
“Yep, little places like here.”
“W-w-w-why?”
“Less chance of the story getting messed up. At first, anyway.”
“Oh….”
He looked around at the profound darkness just beyond our little fire and said, satisfied, “Yep, this is the perfect place for great things to happen.”
“G-g-g-g-great t-t-t-t-things?”
“At least one. Maybe more.”
Who was I to argue?
Who, indeed?
* * *
With the suddenness of a rude awakening, Harliss Weatherby, sporting a full head of gray hair—but then, it had been gray for years—and, more to the astonishing point, a full head underneath that gray hair, propped himself up on his elbows, and looked around in wary confusion, first at the small gathering around him, then down at his supine body, and then up at my blood-smeared uncle Henry and his kind, twinkling, dorky smile.
“What th’ Hell…?” was all he could muster at the moment.
“Almost,” replied my uncle Henry, honestly.
Forgetting he was not standing next to the shiny black GMC pickup truck, but was instead lying in desert dust and dirt surrounded by a stunned-to-silence group of people, some of whom he knew—or not realizing it, for the moment anyway—Harliss Weatherby scanned my uncle Henry’s bloody shirt and hands and face with alarm.
“Good God, boy! You hurt?”
“Only a little,” confessed my uncle Henry, almost sheepishly.
Stands-in-the-Grass Larsonsonnen, who had only seconds before stopped her crying and soft moaning, clung strongly to my uncle Henry’s arm—whether for support or to support I was not certain—but she was looking into Harliss Weatherby’s full, complete, and, except for confusion, undamaged face, greeting his return to us with a slight, calm smile.
* * *
“The problem with the great things that happen in little places,” my uncle Henry had continued as we had sat by the camp fire so long ago, “is that almost always the great thing turns the little place into a great place—so great, that it sometimes eclipses the great thing, and it’s the newly great place people come to revere.”
“Uh h-h-h-huh….” I was sorta following him. Sorta.
“People tend to forget what happened—that it was miraculous, or wonderful, or just kinda neat—and what it might mean for them, but they don’t forget where it happened, and who was there. So they transfer all the miraculous, wonderful, neat qualities of the ‘what’ to the ‘where’ and the ‘who’. And you know what happens?”
“W-w-w-w-what h-h-h-h-happens?” My uncle Henry wanted me to say that; I already knew the answer.
“The ‘where’ becomes miraculous, ‘holy’—and sometimes the ‘who’—and the ‘what’ gets left in the dust. Sometimes literally.” The stars paused for an instant. “And it happens once again.”
“W-w-w-what h-h-h-hap-p-p-pens on-n-n-nce a-g-g-g-g-gn?” I knew though. I really was a good student, even if I was only a neophyte trilobite.
“Humanity misses the point,” my uncle Henry said with both a matter-of-factness and a sadness that made his statement sound almost as soft and lonely as the small camp fire in the vast desert night.
“Humanity misses the point,” he said again, even softer and perhaps even more resigned to the truth of it. The stars restarted their usual wheeling.
I used my stick to poke the hot base of the fire, and a tiny room in the ember-and-charcoal maze of Hell blazed brightly, frightening me a little.
* * *
“What th’… What th’….” Harliss Weatherby was looking around and seeing more than my uncle Henry, blood-spattered before him. He was beginning to see everyone, and realize how quiet and stunned they were as they stared at him and my uncle Henry. He was getting very close to seeing there was a great big point here, and he was just as close to missing it.
In fact, he did miss the point. He thought the blood stains all over a good deal of my uncle Henry were my uncle Henry’s, and not his own.
And of course, they were, weren’t they?
* * *
On the other hand, who’s to know where one person’s blood stops and another’s begins? Or why?
Who, indeed?
Certainly not poor, confused, and only recently once again actively involved Harliss Weatherby. He was still trying to get his bearings and figure out how he had moved all the way from the shiny black GMC pickup truck to his present position at the base of Tecopa Hill—a journey of at least twenty feet—without remembering a step.
Not The Reverend Jerome Farthingword, who had fallen to his knees before my uncle Henry in a stunned, profound and, perhaps for the first time in his life, truly (though somewhat syphilitically) reverential but rapturous silence—that is, the second time he fell to his knees; the first time his left kneecap came down squarely and forcefully on one of the small, pointy, but otherwise anonymous rocks that lie partially above the surface of the desert, a part of the seemingly random desert whatnot, giving immediate though only momentary rise to both The Reverend Jerome Farthingword and a high-pitched “yelp” that might have come from a coyote nearby.
* * *
Have such rocks been strewn aimlessly through the ages by the soulless desert designers, or do they lie patiently waiting for the occasional but sincere and spontaneous genuflection as a test of the kneeler’s commitment?
Was the iceberg in the Titanic’s path a coincidence, or was the meeting prearranged. So far, no one has fessed up, but there is probably time yet.
* * *
Probably not Jasper Jenkins Jerome, who was at that very moment struggling with the possibility that he was more glad that he was not a murderer than the fact that Harliss Weatherby, his truckmate, was still firmly and animatedly anchored to the planet, all parts and pieces in fine and functioning shape.
Possibly Toots O’Brien, who at least realized that whatever was happening probably obviated any further need for him to be Irish.
Possibly Selinia Nevada, one of whose strong gifts was foreseeing—though she had not, even in her wildest peyote experiences, foreseen anything like this at all, which, had she considered it more deeply (as surely she would and did later), she would have realized the signs had been all around her for some time—and, of course, for sounding like silver bells at every utterance, no matter how unexpected, unnerving, perceptive, or banal.
Perhaps Frank Wineberry and Bubba Holstein, whose lives had been so amicably intertwined ever since the unintentional commingling of Packard and pavement pebbles.
Probably Tom Twoflags because he had seen it happen before with the return by my uncle Henry of his parents from who-knows-where.
No doubt Buzz believed everything he saw because he knew from years of experience that he saw things others did not, so was very accepting of the unexpected, almost anticipating it. Being so recently reacquainted with a perfectly restored pink-and-chrome ’57 Olds, why should he not believe just about anything?
Abigail Bessemer believed with the belief of a child: unquestioningly. But questions about her mother’s still recent departure from the planet were beginning to whirl in some far corner of her exceptional mind like the spiraling, twinkling early coalescence of dust and energy into, ultimately, a star, an exceptional star, in an exceptional universe.
Surely Thelma Tomato, through whose veins ran effervescence that was even now causing he red hair and wide green eyes to sparkle, even in the bright desert sun.
Certainly “Buddy” Blox because he saw through two good—and real—eyes and had real muscles in his arms, not pulleys and cables and such and because he had looked to my uncle Henry for meaning—some would say salvation—since that day long ago in Long Beach, California, when the two of them met and drank boilermakers together. “Buddy” Blox, at this moment, never felt more alive, or more afraid.
* * *
I— I knew there was more to come. Much more indeed. I also knew we—Tecopa—were near the end… and the beginning. It really is all one big möbius strip.
* * *
It occurred to me that not one of all there assembled had blinked since the thunderous, forever-echoing shotgun blast (echoing through both space and time, in all directions) and all that followed. We were stuck in star time, each in our own way trying to mentally or soulfully digest what we had witnessed on a sun-bleached roadside in a desert still baking, not nearly done; but my uncle Henry, like any good conjurer, knew acutely we all needed a good blink and a bit of misdirection, so he smiled his dorky, loving smile and, using his hands to brush the dried blood off his shirt as if it were nothing more than dust and sand and other constantly blowing airborne desert whatnot, spoke to us all in the calmest, most assured voice any of us had ever heard. From anyone. Anywhere. Anytime.
“Well, we have a pink-and-chrome ’57 Olds, and a driver to put it through its paces, so what do you say we all hop in all these vehicles”—more actually functional vehicles Tecopa had possibly seen above ground and ready to go all at once since Frank Wineberry had first opened his store; my uncle Henry really was very good at bringing things together and making them stick—“and let’s head down to Silver Lake Dry Lake Bed for the big test of The Great Talc Project? OK?”
Suddenly, it was party time with Selinia Nevada providing a peppy tune of jingling silver bells accompanied by Toots O’Brian tapping out a downbeat with his anvil hammer against the floor of the bed of one of the brand-new shiny-black GMC pickup trucks. My uncle Henry rode the shotgun seat in Buzz’s pink-and-chrome ’57 Olds, while Tom Twoflags and his parents tumbled into the back of the long, black limousine with the recovering—from kneecap barking, but sadly not from syphilis—Reverend Jerome Farthingword, probably to discuss theology. Frank Wineberry and Bubba Holstein had already headed out westward on the Old Spanish Trail Highway to pick up route 127 south. Not wanting to be left behind, and somewhat desperately in need of a party at the moment, I dove subterranean and picked up speed rapidly, easily pushing rocks and shale and sand, fossils and creosote taproots and the occasional lizard tail and all manner of underground desert whatnot around my quickly hardening and almost aerodynamic (terradynamic?) smooth, hard shell, then pulled back on the stick, so to speak, as “Buddy” Blox might have done in his flying days, to dramatically and almost joyously pop from the surface of the ancient but still baking desert, turn a quick double-flip, and land on my back securely—and with a bit of aplomb—in Thelma Tomato’s lab as she and “Buddy” Blox sat in the edge of the box of the other brand-new shiny-black GMC pickup truck. She smiled and sparkled at my trembling antennae and beady bug eyes and, smiling, said not without a little aplomb herself, “Well, hello!”
“Hi,” I rasped as best I could. And we were off.
* * *
I could not help but wonder, though, even as we laughed and sang our way east to 127 south: did everyone remember or purposely forget that 127 south, the road to Silver Lake Dry Lake Bed and the Big Test of The Great Talc Project was named—long before it was christened State Route 127; and to everyone familiar with the area (and that is not many) it is still called—“Death Valley Road”?
Who knows?
Who, indeed.
