Tag: Yo Ivanhoe

Those days were an iron wagon loaded with rocks that we dragged through muddy fields with our teeth.

You were a magnificent burning boat that would not sink.

We were as prepared as anyone could be who was facing a long night like that. We had, at any rate, been preparing for it for decades. There had been tests –test after test, many of them grueling and sprung on us almost completely unawares– and drills and close calls and false alarms.

We were all familiar –achingly familiar– with that urgent walk through the darkness and humidity of nights just like this one, from which we’d finally emerge, perpetually stunned and blinking, into those long hallways of brutal light and blinding white walls, into the maze of that place, a maze that seemed constantly to be shifting and expanding and spiraling ever higher.

On nights like that, that building, that complex, would feel as vast and silent as a library in the worst and most inscrutable sort of nightmare, yet there were reminders everywhere of what the place was up to and how crowded it was with battered pilgrims in all manner of distress.

It was always astonishing to me how a place so full of suffering could be so hushed. The rising and falling of helicopters was a dull thrumming that you felt mostly in your feet. The hallways were zealously lacquered to such a sheen that you’d find yourself almost tip-toeing like a cat burglar to avoid the squeak of rubber or the clatter of heels.

Sometimes, like that night, that morning, it felt like a holy place. There were saints everywhere, plaster mostly, with disturbingly abject or imploring looks on their faces. The image of Jesus strung up on the cross repeated itself again and again; again and again you encountered the grief of Mary.

Most of the sufferers, hidden away behind white doors with whispering pneumatic releases, were in the hands of the most reprehensibly competent sort of unbelievers.

That night, that morning, you were somewhere in that maze, wired and plumbed like a man who was going to be electrocuted and saved in the same instant.

We knew when we once again retraced our steps that morning that this time we would not be coming back for you. We knew that you were ready, even if we were not, for a long journey for which you would require no shoes, no wallet or driver’s license, no comb, razor, or shaving cream, none of the things, in fact, that we would carry away with us in plastic bags.

You and I had driven across the country together, east and west, and across Canada. We’d sat in the bleachers at spring training ballparks. You were always so happy, so eager, so utterly prepared to be amazed.

Now that’s a pretty swing.

That is one beautiful bird.

Isn’t that something?

We stood together one night on a dark beach in Florida, where astronauts had recently been blown from the sky. We saw the lights of boats in the distance, trolling still for wreckage. You shook your head and said, “It’s hard to even imagine,” but you were already a marked man, and the way you said it I could tell that it wasn’t, in fact, so hard for you to imagine at all.

If you could see me now –and I like to think that you can– you’d know that I’ve already lost so much of what you gave me.

(Four short years.)

(Four long years.)

And you’d know –I know you know– that I’m going to get it all back.

I hope that your voyage, wherever it has taken you and whatever it has entailed, has been as eventful and full of wonder as the life you lived, and that the muffled clanging of that battered bell you lugged around, rattling behind your ribcage all those years, is now just a receding memory. I like to imagine you’ve seen some astonishing things, and that you are living now in some version of one of the old comfortable stories that you believed in so passionately.

It gives me pleasure to think that you are at peace, and even greater pleasure to know that you lived, so fiercely, so gently, and that you were mine and ours, and that I belong to you still, and always.

–Image copyright Rocky Schenck

Right now, right this moment, you’d like nothing better than to sit staring at the splendid moon floating in a shallow cloud-saucer of skim milk right outside your window. There’s a nice breeze, and surely memories are moving on it. Pleasant memories, I’ve no doubt, if you could manage to sit still long enough to investigate them.

You don’t have time to sit still, but you should find the time. Because you should know this: it’s creeping up on you. One day in the hardly distant future you’ll go to sleep or you’ll fall down and you’ll never get up.

If you’re lucky, you’ll end up aboard a slow boat going up some fog-swept river in light that looks like late autumn dawn. It’s just that there won’t be any sun rising, no moon, no planet beneath your boat, no bottom to the river.

You’ll get used to it. Trust me: You’ll be in a better place. Your days in front of the television will be over, but you won’t even notice that. So many of the things you think you’d miss you won’t even remember.

I have it on good authority, though, that you’ll still remember plenty of good things; it’s just that for the most part they won’t be anything full-blown or fleshed out.

You’ll get little touches and taps from that old place you once inhabited with so much desperation, joy, confusion, or whatever; the feel of someone’s hand touching the small of your back or brushing the hair from your forehead; a finger tracing your closed eyelids or your lips; your legs tangled up with those of another; a whisper at your ear, the bark of an almost recognizable laugh, and the sensation of your nose right up against the back of a sleeping dog’s ear.

Once a year, on a fine day in the spring, you’ll see clearly something or someone precious, and you’ll be allowed to shed real tears for the life you left behind. It’s a sort of holiday in that place, and most people learn to look forward to it.

The rest of the time, I’m pretty sure, you’ll feel perfectly contented.

The night doesn’t move at all. It doesn’t budge. It’s like it drops from out of nowhere, and all of a sudden I’m splayed in total darkness on the floor thinking about goats. And I know that it’s going to just squat there over me, to the point where I can’t move and can barely breath until the light makes its appearance.

I understand, believe me, that it’s a seriously disordered state of affairs.

Night falls, and I’m paralyzed, and once it rises up off me I’m for damn sure going to be trapped in a worthless stupor all day long. It’s what happens, I guess, when a man loses his grip on the planet and ends up on the floor.

That part of the whole thing is harder to understand, how something like that can happen to a man. It does, though. People let go, and no matter what anyone tries to tell you, gravity and the solid earth will only allow a man to fall so far.

If things were the way they should be, a man would fall not down, but up, and would drift right off the planet and into darkest space. As it is, though, they eventually have to dig a hole to allow you to go where life wouldn’t allow you to go except by way of manual labor or tired metaphor.

Or the better way: they put you in an oven and let you go up in smoke. Have you ever seen the smokestacks of a crematorium? That gray smoke rising into the sky is men falling up out of this world.

On the first cool nights in late summer the old tribe of mountain giants would dig themselves out of the dirt and come down into town to watch the strippers.

This was an annual occurrence that had been going on since the go-go bars first opened sometime in the 1950s. By the late years of the 20th century the pilgrimage –if in fact you could call it that– of the giants was attracting news media and tourists from all over the country.

The giants would come down off the mountain and plod across the long valley south of town. Sometimes they would come alone or in random groups of five or six; other times, and more and more frequently as their visits took on the quality of a ritual, they would make the trek en masse, upwards of thirty giants, dirty and immense and randy as rabbits, parading right down the main street of the town.

Some of the giants would bring kittens or puppies (and even the occasional lamb or chicken) as offerings to the strippers. It was widely reported that they stole these animals on their way across the valley, where there were ranches spread out for miles between the mountain ranges.

In the early days of their yearly appearance there had been some notable skirmishes between some of the local cowboys and the giants, but these never ended well for the cowboys. Someone, you might recall, made an awful movie on the subject, a film that played pretty loose with the truth. I can happily report that no cowboys were ever actually killed during these dust-ups. They sustained some pretty serious beatings, and egos were no doubt bruised, but they eventually learned to let the giants have their fun.

And they certainly did have their fun, but for the most part, I always heard, they comported themselves like perfect gentlemen with the dancers. There was inevitably some hanky panky, of course, yet even the upshot of that unimaginable business (and I can tell you that it wasn’t just the strippers involved; many of the local gals were smitten with the giants as well) was something of a boon to our little community. You’ll find evidence for that as you’re coming into town, on the prominent sign that documents Prentice’s long run of gridiron dominance: Nineteen state high school football championships and counting.

Look around and tell me what you see?

I see the usual things, the too-muchness. I see the fuzzed scrim of darkness falling, the green world receding beyond the window screens.

I see, everywhere I look, patterns and textures, sprawling across the upholstery of the furniture. The geometric chaos of the rug beneath me. I see the comfortable jumble of color and type aligned on the bookshelves.

I see a red-and-white checkered rocketship, three midgets, prosthetic eyeballs beneath a shimmering bell jar, and a fat, stainless steel clown with a bright glow settled on his belly like the moon resting on the surface of a lake.

I see Nancy and Sluggo out for a stroll beneath an old wooden sign that reads, in fading red block letters, “BOOKS.” I see a blind rabbit, a monkey wearing a fez, and the skeleton of a bat. I see three grinning donkeys conjured from a schizophrenic’s nightmare.

I see long-dead baseball players, baby bottles crammed with astronauts and entire families of little people, and a blonde go-go dancer trapped in a cage with a paralyzed, slate-gray bird. I see beetles, a skeleton riding a white horse, and an elf with a gaping hole where his stomach should be. He has swallowed a handful of keys.

I see a dancing mouse wearing bright trousers.

What do you hear?

I hear David Bowie, howling so loudly that he is rattling everything I see.

And how do you feel?

I feel hungry. I am counting on a bag of radishes to keep me alive.

The man who ran the Giant Wash was an obsessively neat character, inordinately conscientious, officious even. German, he seemed, like someone stepped right out of one of August Sander’s portraits.

I’d heard it intimated that he lived with his elderly mother somewhere in the neighborhood, but this may have been mere speculation.

Customers were always running afoul of the Giant Wash man. The neighborhood had seen better days, and a good percentage of the clientele were beleaguered, hardscrabble types. It was a minor miracle, really, that the man was able to keep the place so spic and span and the machines in such good working order.

He’d clearly been at it for a long time, and seemed to know how to take apart and put back together every machine in the Giant Wash. Half the time when I went in there he would have the dollar bill changer completely dismantled; he’d be muttering sourly and dispensing change with his greasy hands.

The Giant Wash man’s mantra, which I heard him bark at customers on countless occasions, was “Respect the machinery!” There was a hand-lettered sign above the detergent dispenser that read, “Laundry privileges may be revoked at any time, for any reason!”

I saw some incredible scenes in that place, but the Giant Wash man never backed down, and I can testify that laundry privileges were, in fact, routinely revoked.

It had to be the best-run laundromat in America, and I loved it for its close proximity to my apartment and for the fabulous theater that played out there everyday.

I eventually moved to a different part of town, however, and I noticed when I happened to drive by there the other day that the Giant Wash is now some kind of fancy coffee shop.

By the time I got to the River Park, Jurosz was gone. An hour or so earlier I’d encountered a couple of tweaked out ranch hands at the Taco John’s in town, with Jurosz’s beat-to-shit little trailer attached to the hitch of a pick-up truck.

There was no mistaking the trailer, with its corroded aluminum and faded punk rock stickers. The tweakers told me they’d been hanging out down by the river and had bought the thing from a guy for two hundred bucks. The guy, they said, had a big fire going, and was burning everything he could get his hands on, like he was in a hurry.

I knew that Jurosz had never been a guy with the ability to get his hands on much or to hold on to whatever he did manage to get his hands on, but these two characters said they’d seen him toss armloads of clothing, books, and cassette tapes into the bonfire. They said the guy looked pretty wasted.

That guy, I told them, was a good friend of mine. I proceeded to dial Junosz’s cell phone number, at which point one of the tweakers said, “Dude threw his phone in the river.” The other guy gestured to the dog in the bed of the truck and said, “Boomer there went right in and tried to retrieve the phone, but he was shit out of luck.”

The fire was still smoldering when I arrived. There were a couple of Mexicans who had a trailer just around the bend from Jurosz’s site. I walked down there and asked them if they had any ideas what had become of him and they both shrugged.

There was an envelope containing two hundred dollars and a photo of Jurosz’s old girlfriend Deena –she hadn’t been around at this point for at least five years– nailed to a tree right next to where the trailer had been, but otherwise there was no sign of Jurosz.

A couple days after a group of rafters discovered his body washed up on some rocks downriver I received a postcard from the guy who had been one of my oldest friends, and whose struggles had brought me west in the first place. “I had a soul once,” the message on the card read in Jurosz’s almost obsessively neat and microscopic handwriting. “I didn’t sell it or give it away. I didn’t exactly lose it, either. One night, I guess, it just up and left me for a better, more handsome man who didn’t spend so much time alone.”

I packed my bags, loaded up my truck, shoved a Buddy Guy tape in the deck, and headed back east.

Just like that I wasn’t in Montana anymore.

It never ceases to amaze me how quickly a man can change direction, how easily he can erase entire portions of his life and who he once was. People he allowed himself to love. Moments and nights that at the time must surely have seemed like magic and wholly unforgettable.

I’m also always astonished by how much room there is in this country to run. All a guy really needs is the assurance of more nights, reliable darkness, and a road atlas lousy with places to hide.

Seriously, it never ceases to amaze me.

A horse emerged from the woods, sleepwalking through the fog, its eyes literally closed. The hooves of the sleepwalking horse were long and yellow and curled like the toes of elf shoes.

There was lightning in the blue windows of a treehouse, where scientists were hunched in the dark over their secrets, boiling the world down to a fluorescent ochre dust. Great shocks of thunder boomed in the sky beyond the fog and shook the treetops. Birds, concussed by the thunder, fell from the trees like dull-thudding fruit, landing on their backs.

Seven men sat huddled and miserable in a trench that was slowly filling with water. The words one of the men was trying to read to comfort his trench mates bled on the page and were carried away by the rain.

Every story, it seemed, was either forgotten or in the process of being forgotten. One of the men tried in vain to recall the lyrics to a single Bob Dylan song and, thwarted in this attempt, eventually settled for a few tentative fragments of a nursery rhyme.

Soon enough, they knew, they would all drown.

The men took turns trying to remember and describe their mothers’ smiles.

From somewhere above them, an amplified and vaguely familiar voice stumbled again and again through the alphabet.

Lord, open my heart, said Moses, and give me the courage to surmount this hardship. Untangle my twisted tongue, that I may speak, and be understood.

—The Koran, 20:26-28

I’m still standing outside the Yukon Club, wearing that ridiculous hat, teetering in the bright sunlight. I can barely stand up. I have to think hard about it, how necessary it is that I remain standing.

I am wobbling, my body, the world beneath my feet.

Somewhere in me, in a sad and besieged little pocket of truth, I wish that I wasn’t like this, that I had not let another morning bring me to this corner in the sun, with everything so unfocused. Through that little pinhole of light in my mind I see myself, grim, aware that I am muttering, that I will never get home, not today, not this morning. I am so sorry.

Someone gives me a wide berth, veers well around me on the sidewalk, gawking. I have to hold my arms up and out, for balance. I move, carefully, almost in slow motion, lost as shit. An occasional fucker hoots from the blurred confusion of the street, laughter flung from car windows.

I am not going to get home, not today.

It has come, finally, to this. I am not so gifted. I am going to fall. There is nothing I can do now to stop it.

I am not fucking around.

I am going down.

Thales, the son of Examyas, has met a harsh fate in his old age. He left the court of his house at night, as he was wont, with his maidservant to view the stars, and as he gazed, forgetting where he was, he came to a steep slope and fell over. Thus the Milesians lost their astronomer.

–Letter, Anaximenes to Pythagorus, in Diogenes Laertius’, Lives of the Philosophers