TAHLEQUAH, Oklahoma. June 1, 1991. Wild geese flying in formation above the limestone cliffs. Small farms and small neat pastures and grazing cattle. Stockades with horses, winding creeks. Woods with maple, spruce, oak, locust, and scraggly pines. Limestone formations. Tiny huts built into the sides of hills by masons from Ireland.
High wooded bluffs. Upon their ridges eagles nest in tall wind-sculpted trees. Everywhere the songs of birds: robins, orioles, sparrows, chickadees, crows, blue jays, bluebirds, larks. The long sad notes of the mourning doves.
Brown houses with scraggly pines, gangly colts born in the spring, winding two-lane asphalt roads, stones, barbed-wire fences. June 1991. The Tahlequah Little Theater is playing The Crucible by Arthur Miller.
On Muskogee Avenue the store windows are filled with manikins wearing fake Indian clothes. T-shirts printed with bastardized Indian designs. Jeans and braided belts and cheap leather boots. Sexy underwear in red and black and gold.
Town Branch runs through the town. It rises in limestone and ends in pasture. Northeastern Oklahoma State University looks down upon the town. Its music department is talked of in the area.
On Muskogee Avenue the town’s movers and shakers have gathered for their morning coffee at The Shak. They will pool information, gossip and surmise, wait for the day to deliver its surprises.
A block down the street is the Cherokee Museum. Between two and four on any weekday you will find Eagle Kingfisher holding forth on Cherokee history. He is telling someone now about the Five Civilized Tribes.
“Cherokee, Chickasaw, Choctaw, Creek, and Seminole. Some of us have lived to tell the story. I have no resentment toward any man. Once we tamed the horse and dog. Once we knew the secrets of the sacred fire. Once we worshiped the light as it lies upon the water. Someone must tell the old stories. If you hear them, you must tell your children, you must seal them in your heart.”
Doctor Georgia Jones, M.D., Ph.D., is driving to Tahlequah, approaching from the east. She is on her way to spend the summer teaching anthropology at Northeastern. There is a package of rice cakes on the seat beside her. She is drinking coffee from a plastic cup, eating the rice cakes, and composing a letter to her lover. He is the first man in years she has allowed herself to love. This is a very scary deal for a forty-six-year-old control freak.
Dear Zach, To think that the possibility of such tenderness exists and we don’t use it all the time, throw it away, squander it.
I’m sorry I ran off like this, but I had to. This is the reaction. The catharsis. Sure, you made love to me yesterday afternoon. Sure, when the heat was on, when you knew you had fucked up, you came through and made me come. About time. After all the blow jobs I’ve given you when you couldn’t get it up. Is it my fault they had the Gulf War? Did I discover nuclear fusion? The last straw was when you started faking orgasms while being fellated. So I’m getting away for the summer and hoping you will get your act together and come to your senses and have a life. So I can share it. I’ve done all I can do. The ball is in your court.
After you left me yesterday afternoon, and that’s typical, that you would leave right after the best sex we’ve ever had, to GO BACK TO YOUR WORK. Which is what, Zach? Sitting all day in front of a computer screen talking to other people who think we’re doomed? Anyway, after you left, I slept a long time and when I woke up I decided not to go after all.
Then I started thinking. At the rate we’ve been going I figure I’m getting one orgasm for every six thousand dollars you borrow from me to give to your causes. That’s pretty high. Not as much as Donald Trump is paying for his pussy, but too high for a woman with a good-looking body. You’ve got to admit I have a gorgeous body.
Well, I signed a contract with Northeastern and I need to get away so I’m going. I may go back to practicing medicine in the fall. Meanwhile I am going to stop worrying about you and take care of myself. I am going to rent a house, get it comfortably furnished, teach, meditate, give up coffee, and write you a lot of letters which I may or may not mail. Love, Georgia.
I will be happy. I will be happy. I will be happy. “What a piece of work is man, how noble in reason, how infinite in faculties, in form and moving how express and admirable, in action how like an angel, in apprehension how like a God! The beauty of the world, the paragon of animals . . .”
The world is a feast. A fabulous, rich treasure. Okay, eat a rice cake, look out the window, it’s summer and you’re autonomous and you’re free.
Georgia stuck a tape of Beethoven’s Sixth Symphony into the tape player. Autonomy, she decided. That’s a lot of bullshit. There’s no autonomy anywhere in nature. Nowhere in the physical universe, in animate or inanimate matter, not one case of autonomy exists. Everything is connected to everything else. God, I am so sick of being lonely and alone.
She drove into town and went directly to a real estate office. Two hours later she was moving into a partially furnished house near the campus. By five that afternoon she was at the Wal-Mart buying supplies. Dearest Zach, she composed as she drove home from the store. There is still light in the sky. Your favorite time of day, your favorite time of year. Tahlequah is pretty sad and dead. There seems to be a little theater of sorts. Signs of culture include T-shirts in store windows with imitation Indian designs. Lots of sad-looking fat people.
I’ll take Northern Europeans, thank you. I know, you hate that about me, but I don’t give a damn. I come from the culture that built Chartres Cathedral and gave us Milton and Shakespeare. I still think that’s better than eating dogs and making war on your neighbors every spring. Okay, we did that too, but at least it was to conquer territory.
The human race has taken so many dead ends. Cannibalism, Victorianism, communism, the present-day refusal to take AIDS seriously. At any moment the virus can mutate to live in the presence of oxygen and then it’s over.
Why do you think I quit practicing? I couldn’t protect an entire operating field and do my work correctly. I wasn’t thinking about risking my life for a bunch of dope addicts. Who needs it?
Of course the end was the child torn up by the bull mastiff. The owner of the dog was in the waiting room with the parents. They’re friends.
Excuse me, I’m not perfect. I miss you. The best thing for both of us is to quit seeing each other for a while. You’re going to have to choose between me and Armageddon. The good thing about me is that I’m here, now. Armageddon might not happen for five, ten, maybe fifteen years. Love, Georgia.