XIV

Must Come Down

You can’t know how long you’ll last in a life so different from last month, or was it the month before? Like Tony Drury on a farm feeling fat and necessary, nurturing, weeding and pruning for growth. He watches plants grow, amazed at fundamentals. Inez tends the melons that can get you through a summer. She sweats like a ripe one at sunrise. He would measure happiness with another morning dew, but a Volkswagen rattles up the drive to the chicken coop. Kensho is the first visitor since the landlady.

He scans like God on the seventh day and nods as if it is good. He wants to garden. So three paths converge on a meditation of weeds and rocks until 90 proof sweat pours, and Tony sees that Kensho is better suited than he is to simple practicality. Why me? Why not him? “That’s bullshit,” he says aloud. The others laugh at old Tony, mumbling again. He smiles and bends back to it. He only challenges for truth. He’s the better match; he can leave any time. Kensho would jump into adobe love and blow another twenty years indentured to the mud. Tony Drury is saving his friend. He laughs now. They stare. Dirty and wet, he shakes his head. In a few hours he’ll hump Kensho’s rightful girlfriend, because he walked down a street one day and Kensho didn’t. He buffs two rows and feels better, because those in the dirt don’t worry like those who stay clean.

They knock off early and hit the tienda for a few beers, and Kensho stays for dinner. Plenty room at the rancho so he stays the night in quiet gratitude. Tony watches Inez watch Kensho, her eyes puzzled at the man heading out to the flagstones for the discomfort most available there. In awhile Inez proclaims the summit in whispers, as if sensitive to the needs of every man.

Breakfast is early, the morning clear again. Kensho says his Volkswagen can hold as much as a burro and cover the miles in no time. So if he has a list, he will fill it. Inez makes a list. He also wants to drive up the hill to see Heidi if he can find the way. Tony says it’s no cakewalk up there.

“I’m curious. She’s my friend.”

“No excuse required.”

“I won’t stay. I want to see … you know.”

“She likes it in her way. She thinks he plans to kill himself. It’s very melodramatic.”

“She’s wrapped up,” Kensho says with an air of knowing. “Charles will get tired and go away. He’s very strong. But she might need help.”

“He’s too strong to get tired. She goes for groceries and liquor. It’s the summer stock he always wanted to direct. Maybe you’re right. It’ll wear thin. He’ll be down soon. Nice pollo in the oven, some liquor by the fire.”

They walk outside. “I brought bottles,” Kensho says, showing his back seat full of plastic bottles.

“You’ll fit right in. Maybe you’ll like it. I didn’t. It’s dirty and mental and smells like shit.”

“Painful for you,” he says. “She’s your friend too.”

“I got the antidote.”

“Yes. You’re shameless like Charles.”

“Shameless? For what?”

Kensho cautiously smiles. “Love is hard to find.”

“Where are you looking?”

A cloud rolling down the road becomes a truck and comes up the drive. Heidi heads for the house. “Kensho. I’ll be right back.” Her pants hang like old skin, unsluffed.

“I brought bottles,” he says.

“Oh! Fuck bottles.” Inez offloads trash with efficient deference. Heidi cops her weekly shower, rifles her closet and medicine shelf and is back out with bandages, ointments and clean clothing. Kensho humps a fifty-pounder, beans. “Are you coming?” she asks him.

“Yes.”

“We gotta hurry. It’s crazy. He cut himself.” She demonstrates on her high thigh. “Tearing a bottle. It sliced him and it’s bleeding like crazy. I don’t think it’s the artery but I don’t know. I made a tourniquet above the cut. But it might be infected. He’s feverish.”

“Does he care?” Tony asks.

“I care,” she says. “I thought you’d care too.” She gets in and fires into a reverse brodie to the top of the drive where she gets out and pulls more trash from the cab—empties, bags and crud.

“That’s enough,” Tony says, sliding in. He calls over to Kensho, “We’ll need two cars in case we want to leave early.” Kensho nods or bows and falls in behind, opening his other door for Inez, who wants to play too. He nods at her, because love translates loosely between Anthony Drury and Inez Lucida Ruiz. “It’s shaping up like a party. You got enough sauce to entertain?” Heidi ignores him. Taco jumps in too like old times, but not, because he picks up vibes easy as the next guy, but what’s he supposed to do, stay home? He whines, and they’re off, up the road again.

“Aw, shit!” Heidi says.

“How indelicate.”

“I forgot the reefer.” She hits the brakes for another brodie, but he pulls a spliff from his pocket, so she doesn’t turn the wheel, so Kensho passes on the right but doesn’t roll into the ditch. Engulfed in another cloud she torches the joint and pulls hard for the difference it will make, for the cloud within a cloud.

“Back in the action,” he says, bracing with one hand, holding Taco with the other, hoping Kensho sees her coming. Up the road to nowhere they accelerate with purpose, getting closer all the time. She slows when the road narrows, so he lights the joint again to slow her some more. Stoned to the gills will best suit arrival at Camp Crud. He offers Taco a hit but Taco blows his nose at it. “Dare to keep your dogs off drugs,” Tony says, but both Taco and Heidi are in no mood for humor.

Charles waits front and center with a reasonable Lawrence Welk: “Welcome! Welcome! Welcome to another fabulous show. We’ve got a great one lined up for you this a week, so sit back. Relax. And we’ll be right back.” He hobbles around Kensho’s car. “You got bottles.” Kensho squints at the dazzling truth: Charles looks like Lon Chaney fresh from make-up—sleep crusting down his cheeks, neck skin peeling away over bumpy splotches. “Bottles …” Effusing funky bliss for bottles and the people who brought them, Charles comes on like bad acid. He ambles uphill to the junk piles on either side of the path. A pile of rags sits in the middle with two wet spots for eyes.

“Jorge!” Tony calls, flinging coins.

“He’s not Jorge!” Charles yells.

“Yeah, yeah.” Tony says. “And Cotton ain’t a monkey.” Charles hobbles down for bottles.

“That’s not help.” Heidi says.

“What is?”

“We have to get him out of here. I just …” She just doesn’t know how.

“What? Check him into Stanford psychiatric?”

“No. That’s too far away.”

Charles wallows in bottles. Inez knows what to do. She carries the new bottles to the junk piles and piles them near the old bottles. The piles are cardboard, burlap, metal scrap, wood, rubbish and many plastic bottles. The interiors are supported with sticks and boards, each with room for a person to sit. The smaller one is decorated with a dead scorpion in a beer bottle, red cloth strips, bottle caps and broken glass sprightly displayed among other totems of mental disturbance. Tony sits inside for the feel of it. Taco declines with another whine.

The other apparent pyramid is bigger with livelier décor. Rhonda sits inside looking not so good, her scuzzy patina a testament to what love comes to. Accepted at last by the man of her dreams, she coos, “I knew I’d come to grief in, believin’ in a thief in the night.”

“Good morning, Rhonda. You always loved the outdoors.” She stirs, hopeful as a chronic romantic. Can this be it, fulfillment at last? Maybe love will conquer all; maybe blueberries are on the menu.

“You came without a warnin’ and left before mornin’…” Her singing lends a lovely air to the set. A bonfire will best end this show. It’s run too long.

“She’s supposed to help,” Heidi says. “She’s gaga. What a bitch.”

“Hey. She’s singing.”

Charles gimps up with an armload of plastic bottles. He drops a few but doesn’t mind. He can go back and pick them up. He drops the rest and holds one up. “Isn’t that the way it goes?” he asks.

“Damn near every time,” Tony says. “Just when you thought you had it dicked.”

“Yeah,” Charles agrees. “In front of you all the time. Just when you thought you’d have to … Just when you thought you … You know. Like you said.”

“Yes. I know.”

Charles is very pleased, waxing over new bottles. “They’re stronger than you think, if you get the caps. Amazing, the caps. No caps … Oh, hell you can use them. But with caps … Watch.”

“Yes. Amazing. With the caps,” Tony says. Charles limps away. Heidi fritters; Tony doesn’t get it. Kensho gets it. He brought the caps. Charles ambles like the prisoner of Zenda on freedom Sunday, laying bottles side by side in two rows. He walks on them, grinning. They crunch.

“It bothered me at first. But the shape they want. They hold it. They know. You mash them into who they want to be. And the caps!” He places the new bottles on the piles.

“I am impressed,” Tony says, thinking old Charles might flare off after all, wishing him God speed.

Charles works with happy eyes. “Insulation,” he says. “They keep you warm. When it’s cold. You know me. I wouldn’t kid you. Would I?”

Heidi laughs. Tony says, “You must be feeling good. Warm nights now, with insulation.”

Charles nods vigorously and confides, “And! Combustability. Fuel cells, every one.” Jorge coughs.

“You’re off your rocker, Chuck,” Tony says. Heidi frowns. Kensho shakes his head. Inez looks down. Charles turns as Tony says, “It’s air. You want combustion, you need gasoline. These things might melt, but you want to roar. Don’t you? You need gasoline. We can siphon some. It’s hell on the first pull, but it’ll bring your color up.”

“Oh, you …” Heidi grumbles, like she never heard a bluff called.

“Yes,” Charles gasps. “You’re right.” He sees the bet and calls, “Gasoline!”

He seems eager, honest and sincere. Well, if a guy goes honestly crazy it’s best over quickly. Tony doesn’t come out and say so, but he feels certain that everyone understands.