CHAPTER 5

Now the Senator could hear a voice quietly calling, Bliss? You hear me, Bliss? but was too weary to respond. His lips refused to answer, his throat throbbed with unstated things, the words starting up from deep within his mind and lodging there. He could not make them sound, and he thought, The circuit is out; I’m working with cables like those of Donelson’s lights, scenes go dark and there’s only a sputtering along the wire.

Yet his mind flowed dreamily and deep behind the purple shadows, welling from depths of time he had forgot, one short-lived self mysteriously surviving all the years and turns of face. Once I broke the string I whirled, I scudded the high places, bruised against tree-tops and building spires, snagged here and there for a time but always sailing. But once spring turned me turtle, I tried to sing—that’s a part Daddy Hickman doesn’t know. The old bliss still clung to me; childlike beneath my restlessness, stubborn. Liked the flight of birds then; cardinals streaking red across the fields, red wings on blackbirds and whistling quail at eveningtide. And metal-blue dragonflies and ladybirds in the dust, and catleaps in the sun. Black cat poised on hind feet like a boxer, waiting to receive a squirt of milk from a cow’s teat, the milk white on the whiskers and the flash of small pink tongue.

Inwardly he smiled. Where—Kansas? Bonner Springs, Kansas City, buildings black from the riots. No one would believe it me, not even for that flash of time and pleasure which I have denied on platform and in the Senate a million times by word, gesture and legislation. Now it’s like a remembered dream or screen sequence that—listen to the mockingbird up in his apple tree—that time-slain moment breathed in and cried out and felt ago. This Bliss that passeth understanding you never know, you Reverend H, but still a turn in the dance … Where am I?

Bliss? I say can you hear me, Bliss? You want the nurse? Just move your fingers if you do and I’ll get the girl.

Girl? There was a girl in it, yes. What else? There and then. Out there where they thought the new state a second chance for Eden … Tell it to the Cherokees!

What are you trying to say, Bliss? Take it slow, boy. I’m still with you. I’ll never leave now, so …

 … We were under the trees, away from the town, away from Donelson, Karp and the camera. There, how glorious to have been there. Below the park-space showed; shade here, sun there, in a dreamy, dappled mid-afternoon haze. We were there. High up the trees flurried with birdsong, and one clear note sang above the rest, a lucid, soaring strand of sound; while in the grass cicadas dreamed. For a moment we stood there looking down the gentle rising-falling of the land, while far away a cowbell tinkled, small across some hidden field beyond the woods. Milkweed ran across the ground. Imagine to remember—was it ever? Still. Thistle purple-blue, flowers blue, wisteria loud against an old rock wall—was this the season or another time? Certainly there were the early violets among the fallen pine needles—ago too, but that was Alabama and lonesome. Here she was close beside me and as we moved down the grassy slope the touch of her cool sweat-dampened arm came soft against me and went and came coolly again and then again as we went down the hill into the sun. Oh keep coming coming—Then through the sun into the dappled shade. How long ago, this comes comesa fall? Aches here, aches in spring like a lost limb refusing to recognize its dismemberment, no need to deny. Then too, but sweet. Coming just above my shoulder her glossy head, her hair in two heavy braids, and I seeing the small gold ring sunk snug in the pink brown berry of her ear. A smile dreaming on her serenely profiled face. And I remembered the Bliss years. He, Bliss, returned. (Laly was like ’lasses candy, with charm of little red socks in little girl’s black patent leather shoes on slim brown legs, her gingham panties playing peekaboo beneath a skirt flip as a bird’s tail, and her hair done up in tight little braids. Bliss loves Laly, I wrote in the sand where the ladybirds lived but the me preacher wiped it out. Then I wrote, Bliss loves you know who, and the preacher me wiped that away. So only Bliss and loves remained in the sand.) But she coming now was no Laly and I no preacher for a long time now and Bliss no more, though blissful beside her moving there. Saying inside my head, Touch me, touch me, touch me, you … And remembered the one phrase, “teasing brown,” and used it, feeling her cool bare flesh so thinly veiled with fragrant sweat against my short-sleeved arm and said aloud,

Are you one?

One what? she answered me, turning her face with her eyes dreaming a smile. What’re you talking about, Mister Man?

You, I said. Are you a teasing brown?

She laughed and I could feel her coming to me in waves, heavy around me, soft like hands pressing gently along the small of my back, sounding the column of my spine. I breathed her in, all the ripeness, all the sweetness, all the musky mysterious charm and the green afternoon approving. She smiled, her eyes turned up to mine, her irises soft as scuppernongs in their gentle, blue-white orbs.

It must have been some ole blues singer you learned that from, she said.

Maybe so, you’re probably right, but are you?

I’m brown, and that’s a plain fact for anybody to see, she said. And the full black eyes were on me now, softly laughing. But I’m not teasing anybody. I’m the country one, Mister Big-City Man. Mister Moving-Picture Man. You teasing me. Don’t you like brown-skinned folks?

Now just what do you think? I said.

I think a lot of things, she said, but—

She smiled again and the whole afternoon seemed to swing around her glossy head. I breathed deeply the blossoms and sunlight and there was a sigh in it. I thought, Here is the place to stay, grow up with the state, take root.… Yes, here. Come, come. She pointed:

You want to go down yonder under those trees? It looks to me like a fine place to lay the spread.

Yes, I said, swinging the basket in my hand. Yes, I want to go anywhere you say, Miss Teasing Brown, yes I do. He was trying to break out of my chest. Bliss, fighting me hard. But you’re looking at me, she said. Look down yonder where I mean, she pointed. See, under that tree with the blossoms.

A fine peach-fuzz of hair showed on her leveled arm, almost golden in the sunlight.

It’s fine, I said. Just the place for a time like this.

A bee danced by as on a thread. I felt a suspension of time. Standing still, my eyes in the tree of blossoms, I let it move through me. Eden, I thought, Eden is a lie that never was. And Adam? His name was “Snake.” And Eve’s? An aphrodisiac best served with raw fresh oysters on the half-shell with a good white wine. The spirit’s there.… She arose she rose she rose up from the waves.

Mister Movie-Man, she said, you sure have a lot of sleep in your voice.

And her laughter was gay in the afternoon stillness, shaping and making the quiet alive. And suddenly I wanted to say, Hey, I’m Bliss! I’m Bliss again, but there’s hell in me. There was no alienation ringing in that laugh, so I joined her, startling the quiet. We laughed and laughed. I picked up a smooth stone and sent it sailing, a blossom bursting as it was kissed by a bee. Dreamer, I said, I’m full of dream—

And we came through the parklike space, into shade and out again, her cool skin touching mine. Touching and leaving and coming again unself-consciously, skin-teasing skin in gentle friction. Damn Bliss! And she was a fragrance mixed with the spicy odors of the parklike space broken by light and shadow. My purpose too. And I thought, Turn back now. Now is the time, leave her and go West. You’ve lingered long enough, so leave before complications. So I thought. But Bliss said, Come. Come. And I turned turtle and tried to sing. Suddenly she said,

Look!

And there beneath a bush I saw a white rabbit, its pink nose testing the air before its alerted, pink-veined ears. It watched us moving by, frozen beneath a flowering shrub.

That’s somebody’s Easter bunny lost out here in the woods, she said. I hope nothing gets him ’cause he don’t look like he knows how to take care of himself. There’s foxes and hawks out here. Even evil ole wildcats. Poor little ole thing.

And I was disturbed with memory. Sister Wilhite had nicknamed Bliss “Bunting” a bird. But some of the kids had changed it to “Bunny” a rabbit and this had led to fights. I had been lost too, in Atlanta—but later. I thought, He’ll be all right, innocence is its own protection—or would be in the snows. Hey, Rev Hickman, gospel truth or pious lie?

We went on, in the shade now, the light softly filtering the high-branched trees, her shoulder touching my arm and that wave of her enfolding me as cool mist clings to a hot hollow at twilight; my mind saying, No, this is enough; leave now. Leave the moment unbroken in its becoming. Fly before you fall, flee before you fail—And then I stumbled over the buried stone and heard her saying,

Watch out there, Mister Movie-Man.

And I felt her hand upon my arm and I could not breathe. Then we moved on and I fought Bliss for my arm to keep in its place against my side, denying that sweet fugitive fulfillment. And somehow there were three of us now, although only two were actually within the trees, Bliss inside me but still I felt the stranger following. Twice I turned but couldn’t see him. I should have run.

Pink blossoms were thick in the tree, the petals scattered broadside upon the grass, and as I breathed them in the fragrance mixed wildly with her own and that cool touching and going of her peach-brown arm sang in me like passionate words whispered in a dark place. Who spread the petals along our path, my mind asked, who arched this afternoon above our heads? And looking down at her feet twinkling in and out below her long, ankle-length skirt, I said, How beautiful are your feet in shoes, Miss Teasing Brown.

She stopped and looked at me full face, a question in her dark eyes.

You’re the tease, she said. I think you’re laughing at me, Movie-Man. Though he was part Cherokee my papa wasn’t no prince and you know it. You see, I know where those words come from.

I looked at her, suddenly cold, and from far back I could hear a voice saying, Reveren Bliss, do you preach Job? And I thought, Give Job back his boils, he deserved them as I saw the sparks in her eyes’ black depths. I said,

No, no I’m not laughing at all. To me they are beautiful, princess or no princess. And it doesn’t take a Solomon to say how beautiful are thy feet in sandals.

I don’t know about you, she said, I swear I don’t know about you, Mister Movie-Man.

There’s nothing to know, I said. I come like water, and like wind I go—only faster. I laughed, remembering:

You’re fast, all right, she said, kneeling and looking up past my head to the sky.

There’s not a cloud to be seen, she sighed.

That’s how it was, no clouds, only tall trees filtering the sunlight back across the clear space and the blossoms above. Standing there I watched her remove the cloth from the basket and begin spreading it upon the grass.

Why don’t you sit down and stay awhile, she said, patting a place for me.

I sat, watching with my chin resting upon my knees as her hands came and went, removing sandwiches wrapped in wax paper from the basket, placing them on the cloth.

These here are chicken, she said, and these ham, and these are Texas hots.

And there were boiled eggs wrapped in twists of paper like favors for a children’s party; and tomatoes, and a chocolate cake and a thermos of iced tea with mint leaves and lemon slices floating in it. She served with a gentle feminine flair of which I would have denied she was capable. I was on dangerous ground.

Do you like a drumstick? she said. Men usually like a drumstick, though we also have the breast.

I prefer the drumstick, I said. Do you know many men?

More than we have drumsticks. More than we have breasts too. She broke off.—What you mean, do I know many men?

Thanks, I said. It was crisp and flaky, a nice weight in the fingers. I mean beaux, I said.

Boy beaux but no men beaux. They all been boy beaux, Mister Movie-Man, and they don’t really count. Lord, I almost forgot the coleslaw. Here it is in this mayonnaise jar. Let me help your plate to some.

I watched her, thinking wildly, What would happen to this natural grace under coaching? With a formal veil placed between it and the sharp world and all the lessons learned and carried out with this native graciousness to warm the social skills? Not a light against a screen but for keeps, Newport in July, Antibes with the proper costumes. Saratoga. Could she fly right? With a sari, say, enfolding her girlish charm? What if I taught her to speak and not to speak, to parry in polished tone the innuendoes dropped over cocktail crystal? To master the smile in time that saves lines? With a diamond of a certain size on that slender hand. Or an emerald, its watery green in platinum against that peach-brown skin. Who blushed this peach?… Did the blight I brought begin in fantasy? There was a part in her black hair; her scalp showed clearly through.

I said, The chicken is wonderful. How’d you get it so flaky?

I cooked it till it was done, she said. She made a face at me. How’d you learn to make moving pictures?

Oh that’s a secret, I said.

Frying chicken is a secret too, she said.

I laughed. You baked the bread too. Is that a secret?

Uh-huh, sure I did. Most folks do their own baking in this town—only that’s not a secret.

It’s almost as good as the chicken, I said.

Thank you, Mister Movie-Man. It’s right nice for you to say so. But I won’t believe you unless you eat a lot. There’s plenty and I expect a man to eat like a man.

And suddenly I had dressed her in a pink sari, swathing her girlish form in Indian silk, a scarlet mark of caste on her forehead, and me in tails and turban of immaculate white observing her with pride as now her head goes back with gay burst of laughter, her throat clean and curved and alive and as alive as a robin’s, following some polished shaft of wit. No, the turban a mistake for me but the sari for her, yes. Gold brings out the blue of blue eyes. A gold turban for me. Walking her along Fifth Avenue with all the eyes reacting and she no flapper but something more formed, more realized, more magically achieved, and the crowds’ imagination whirling like these blossoms tossed in a whirlwind and blown in the million directions of their hopes, hates, fancies, dreams, and we, she and I, become all things to all minds, drawing out their very souls, their potentialities set athrob by the passage of our forms through their atmosphere, sending them ever seeking for some finer thing. Angels and swine and bearers of divers flags and banners becoming more and less than themselves in the vortex of our ambiguity.… Thoughts like these while before me she nibbled a chicken wing undreaming of my wildness. Ah, my fair warrior, my cooing dove, we’ll create possibility out of rags and bones and hanks of hair; out of silks and satins and bits of fur, out of gestures and inflections of voice and scents orchestrated funky-sweet; with emphatic nods and elusive sympathies and affirmations and every move to all of them a danced proclamation of “I believe you can, I know you can; we can in faith achieve the purest dream of our most real realities—look upon us two and be your finest possibilities.”

Why are you looking at me like that? she said.

And there she was again, before me with her warm, high-cheeked face tilted to one side in question, the fine throat rising out of the white blouse, brown, be-peached, as alive and expressive as any singing bird’s. She wore a small gold watch pinned to her waist and her napkin was tucked there and I said, I was dreaming. Did you realize that you make men dream?

Her mouth became a firm straight line beneath her smiling eyes.

You sitting here eating my fried chicken and can tell me you’re dreaming? And her head went back in girlish pout. You give me back my something-to-eat this very minute!

But it’s all part of the dream, I said. You and the blossoms and the lunch and the weather. All we need is some cold watermelon or perhaps some peach ice cream.

She arched her eyebrows and shook her head. Now just listen to him. Sounds like he wants everything. I can’t figure you out, Mister Movie-Man, she said.

What do you mean?

The way you talk sometimes. Once in a while you sound just like one of us and I can’t tell whether you mean it or just do it to make fun of me.

But you know I wouldn’t make fun of you. You know I wouldn’t….

I hope not, she said, but you do sound like us once in awhile, especially when you get that dreamy look on your face….

I haven’t noticed, I said. I just talk as I feel.

Well, I guess you feel like us—every once in a while, I mean. Can I ask you a question?

Anything at all, Miss Teasing Brown, I said.

She smiled and lowered her sandwich. Where’d you come from to here, Mister Movie-Man?

From different places back East, I said.

Oh, she said, I kinda thought so.… You not from Chicago?

Never been there, I said. And looking at her nibbling the sandwich, her soft eyes on my face, I thought of some of them. We had had a rough time, coming through all of that cloudburst of rain, having to avoid the towns where I might have been recognized and the unfriendly towns where the oil rigs pounded night and day, making the trip longer and our money shorter and shorter. Getting stuck in the mud here and having engine trouble there, the tires going twice and the top being split by hailstones the size of baseballs and almost losing all of the equipment off a shaky ferry when we crossed a creek in Missouri. Still, there was some luck with us—my luck or maybe Karp’s—I have always honored my luck—and we managed to keep the film and the equipment dry and the patches and the boots held on the tires until we reached her town. But on our way, moving through the Ozarks and the roads steep and rocky and having to push the car out of ruts and Karp complaining of ever having left the East and complaining, as we strained and sweated in the mud, against all the goy world and all our troubles were goy and our journey goy and goy our schemes; complaining all the way of what we did and now several times a millionaire with air immaculate and still complaining only now more pious. But then along the way Donelson goaded him on: Why the hell, Sweet Jesus, did you ever leave Egypt and all those spades? Why didn’t you stay and lay Pharaoh’s second-best daughter and make another Moses? Put your back into it, Jew boy. Act like a white man for once.

And having to step between them … What would she have made of it, the glamour she longed for locked in such grubby circumstance? Driving them as I was driven and some towns suspicious and others without the proper places to work and the people uninterested or the days without sun and the long hot stretches of green green green with no thoughts beyond continuing and little shade—Amen! Then back there in the town where Hickman had taken me long ago, a stop on the endless circuit and Donelson trying to get permission from the warden to shoot scenes (We cain’t use them we’ll sell them to Griffith or Zucker, he said) but getting nowhere. We were lucky they didn’t keep us there, what with that cross-eyed bass drummer recognizing Donelson and dropping his cymbal and yelling Hey Rube! from the bandstand and how were Lefty Louie and Nick-the-Greek? How do you know them? I said. Lester Donelson said, Places where I’ve been there’s always a Lefty Louie and a Nick-the-Greek. And in the hotel the whores were all so ladylike, with high-style airs and comic bitchery and the bellhops black—except for the fat, bald-headed, full-lipped captain whose pale, milky skin was so dense with freckles that he looked like a white man who’d rusted in the rain three days after drowning. He had our number when we first walked in, though how much of it I couldn’t tell, but when I looked at him the spots seemed to detach themselves before my eyes and move to a tango rhythm across his broad expanse of face—da de dum dum—and back again. His eyes casing me as though to say, I know and you know that I know, so what are you going to do about it? I slipped him a five we couldn’t afford and I swear those spots returned each to its alloted place—muy pronto.

Thank you suh! he said. It’s awfully white of you.

He knew all right, and he knew someone important too, selling white women and bootleg whiskey to the leading white citizens and the drummer trade and to a few not-so-leading black ones who slipped in unctuously wearing starched waiter’s jackets with the buttons missing. Yes, suh! and donating good sums of money to the Afro-American Episcopal Missionary Society and to a finishing school for young black upper-class ladies in Baltimore. He had it made all right, with certain complications of adjustment it’s true, but made. He could have taught us all. Should find the bastard, make him a career diplomat. Chief of Protocol. He trained them all to Southern manners. Smarter than most men in the House—any house. I kept away from him while we waited for sun and opportunity in that town in which he appeared to be the only one with a capacity for fantasy. Dominated by those high gray walls and the freedom of both those inside and out seemed to be measured in days marked off on the calendar. I’m number so-and-so and I know my time and knowing my time I know the who-what-why-wherefore of me. No dreams, please. Well, so much the worse for you.… We tried everyone from the Chamber of Commerce to the bootleggers and no one interested in backing us in bringing a little poetry to the town. We almost starved, broke and cooking beans in our room, patching and pressing with a secret iron borrowed from one of the girls until her pimp threatened Donelson and I was forced to do once more that which I said I’d never do again. But we were hungry and the memory of Eatmore came to the rescue. That was long ago. Grant and forgive us our agos. Amen. We left before dawn, half drunk and unwashed and our bills unpaid, slipping into the damp streets by the baggage entrance, past seven stacks of pulp magazines abandoned by the drummers—Argosy, Blue Book, Ace and Golden Book being saved by the baggage man for the kids in his neighborhood—agent of cultural baggage—doing what he could to keep them reading, stopping on the outskirts of the town as the light grew and buying cheese and crackers in a lamp-lit general store where the men on the road gang bought their lunch. That smell of hogshead cheese, that greasy counter, that glass case with trays of dull penny candy. John Deere plows set in neat bull-tongued rows on a side of the porch and the boxes for benches the barrels the drums the baby crib, well used from its yellow pad a string of pecans strung end to end for a teething toy was dangling; that great crock of lye hominy setting on the counter looking white and sinister and garnished by a single blue-tailed fly yet making me twinge for home—Hickman? There were shelves of prison-made shoes and peg after peg hung with prison-made harness—Donelson, I said, shoot those horse collars hung round the walls, they’re frames for portraits of future Presidents. Yeah, he said, I know a few bastards who’d look pretty natural with their heads stuck through one of those; the mayor, the mine owners, the Chamber-Pots-of-Commerce gang. And near Holdenville getting those shots of the motorcycle circling the overflow embankment around the storage tank in the refinery yard, leaning toward the parallel and his eyes like set points of madness behind his goggles, bent low close over the handlebars, roaring as though intent upon circling there forever … MOVIE TYCOONS VISIT CITY was the headline and there we were looking out from page one, my arms across their shoulders and all three looking dashing and devil-may-care, each with goggles on forehead and each with an air of potency, mystery. The camera in the foreground. It made it easy and I kept things simple, a pageant dedicated to the founding of the town with all the old-timers parading past the camera on horseback, or in buckboards, then sitting before the courthouse in funeral parlor chairs and an Indian or two in the background. Shot everything from low angles to make them tall and imposing, and the fire engines I made a half-block long. Holdenville, yes, the weather was fine and Holdenville couldn’t hold us. No, but what we made there was lost in Ponca City. Roustabouts, Indians, 1001 ranch hands, and Wild Bill Tillman in the flesh in a white suit and white Stetson and astride a white horse every hour of every day in the streets. Yes, but in the middle of a roaring circus who has time for silent scenes? Donelson went wild in the town, getting hot on the dice and winning a thousand then losing our stake before they cooled him off. Then when he asked to see the dice they threw him into the street. There was hardly enough money for gas then Karp to the rescue, found a cousin who helped us on our way. And what a cousin, walking around in a blanket, a bullet-smashed derby, and a necklace of rattlesnake buttons, selling snake oil and mustard plasters. Morris, the Osage Indian Jew, of whom Karp disapproved. Listen, Morris said, here there’s no minyan in fifty miles so what if I temporarily joined another tribe? And let me tell you something, wise guy: I been scalped like the best of them!

I wanted him to join us but Karp was against it. But what a town, everything in our grasp: gunplay and Indians, dance-hall girls, cowboys and gamblers, gunmen, bandits, rustlers and law officers, the real frontier atmosphere and Wild Bill acting himself right off a circus poster. But it was all too real and when we set up the camera on the street they gathered around, looking from everywhere. Then, understanding, they knocked us down and fifteen .45s were looking us dead in the eye.

What’s the big idea, I said.

What’s your name, the one-eyed one said.

We told him and what we were about.

Pictures, he said. We don’t need any dam’ pictures around here.

Maybe you don’t but other folks do, Donelson said. We’ll put this town on the map.

Map? the one-eyed one said. We don’t want it on any goddam map. You want to ruin everything?

We’re trying to help, Karp said. We can help it grow.

We don’t need any help. We don’t want no growing. Get up on your knees.

He pointed the pistol.

We looked into their miscellaneous faces and did what he said.

All right, One-eye said, from now on you three cockies are going to be known as the three monkeys …

Why you—Donelson began, starting up.

One-eye moved without bending. There was a flashing arc of movement and at the smackcrunch of impact Donelson sprawled in the dirt, his cheek flaming with the red imprint of a .45’s long barrel.

Now shut up, Rebel, One-eye said, and you’ll keep healthy.

God damn you, Donelson said, scrambling to his knees. But this time I grabbed him, holding on.

Shut up, I said, we’re outnumbered. Can’t you see that?

Now you’re talking, One-eye said, glaring down. And don’t you forget it! Outnumbered, outgunned and outmanned!

He grinned, shaking the whiskey to an oily foam, his thumb over the bottle-mouth. And you, he said, dowsing whiskey on Donelson’s head, I now baptize Mister Speak-No-Evil. So from now on keep your big cotton-pickin’ mouth shut tight as your daddy’s smokehouse!

Then, pouring whiskey on Karp’s bowed head, he said, And your buddy here is named forthwith, like the lawyers say, Hear-No-Evil.

Out of the corner of his swelling mouth Donelson’s voice came harsh and violent. All right, Israelite, he said, Where’s your goddam cunning now? Why don’t you blow your fucking horn!

Karp looked straight ahead, kneeling there in the dust, his face calm, his eyes tragic and resentful yet resigned. As though the world was affirmed in the pattern of his forefathers’ prediction. So he was prepared to die a stranger in a strange land, resigned before even this random fulfillment of prophecy. The goyim were repeating once more their transgression against him….

I shook my head feeling the hot splash of whiskey soaking my skull. My eyes stung as it coursed down my face and I suppressed a scream, holding my breath. And I seemed to be walking under water and I no longer saw them there above me. For I was in the kingdom of the dead, tight and enclosed. Back in the box …

Don’t appear to like it much, someone said and laughed.

And you, One-eye said, I name See-No-Evil.

I could see him then, his collar band held with a brass button, his rotten teeth, his drooped lid, stepping back and the others no longer threatening but laughing. My knees were aching but I could see very sharply now. The hair that showed on his knuckles, sprouted from his ear, his flared nostrils.

All right, boys, One-eye said, let ’em up.

We got up and I picked up the camera and folded the tripod. A drop of whiskey had splashed the lens and I polished it away with the end of my tie. I looked—Donelson’s face was bright red and twitching as he watched One-eye take a drink and pass the bottle around. One-eye stuck the pistol in his waistband and rocked back and forth on his heels, smiling now and his missing eye giving his face the look of a battle-scarred, shell-shocked tomcat. Then the bottle came to Donelson, paused before him, and before he could open his mouth I said,

Drink up. Go ahead.… Then Karp took it, even though he didn’t drink.

Now you got the right idea, One-eye said. You’re getting the hang of how to live in this town. This here’s a good town, you monkeys; the best town in the West. All you have to know is how to live in it. So I says: Go drink yourself some whiskey. Go diddle yourself some broads—we got all kinds from all kinds of places. Fact we got Frenchies, we got Poles, we got Irishers, Limeys, Eskimos, Yids, and even a few coal-shuttle blondes. That’s right, and the price of poontang ain’t high. So go shack up with a few and change your luck. We know the kind old Rebel here cottons after, don’t we, boys? Let him sleep with Charleston Mary and he’ll start to winning with the dice. What I mean is, enjoy yourself. Why, there’s money laying around on the streets in this town. You can do most anything here as long as you can outdraw and outshoot the ones who don’t like it. So like I say, you can do anything only don’t let us see you poking that goddam piece of machinery at us. You understand?

We get it, Donelson said. But tell me something….

What’s that?

What time would you say it was?

Time? One-eye said. How the hell would I know? In this town we make our own fucking time….

Mister Movie-Man, she said, you dreaming again?

Not now, I said. Time is a juxtaposing of pains and pain hurts even after the object is gone, faded.

You better not be while you’re eating. But you were gone somewhere, flew right away from me. Or maybe you were thinking about the picture?

No, I said. Only about you. You make a very nice picture.

She looked a question, her head to one side. I sure hope I can act like you want me to, she said. I really never thought of being in a picture before but now I sure want to be able to do it. Will there be any fighting in it?

Some, I said.

And horses?

I’m not sure about that, I said. But there’ll be love scenes….

You mean I’ll have to kiss somebody?

Sure, that’s part of the love scene.

But in front of all those folks … and with his girl looking? She’s angry with me already—

There’ll be many more folks to see the picture, I said.

But that’s different, she said. I won’t be there….

Don’t worry about it, I said. I’ll teach you how it’s done. Now was the time to begin and I put down my sandwich and moved. I saw her large eyes and suddenly I ceased to dream.

You just work in the contest and win, I said. I’ll take care of the rest. I was disturbed.

Oh, I will, she said. I’ll raise more money than all the other girls put together. You’ll have to give me the best part….

Yes, I said, the best is yet to be, but you girls will have to work hard. Stir up the interest of everyone. Karp insists that we have the full cooperation of the community….

Which one is Mr. Karp, the one with the camera?

No, that’s Donelson. Right now Donelson is doing the shooting. Later on I’ll take over. Karp is the other one.

Well, he won’t have to worry because everybody is interested already. Two clubs are planning dances and another one—well, they’re going to give a barbecue. Is Mr. Karp the boss?

Boss? No, he’s just a partner like the rest of us. We’re the three partners. What other plans do you have?

We’re still thinking up things to do. We plan to give a combination hayride and trip-around-the-world.

What’s a trip-around-the-world?

That’s when you ride to different parts of town and go to different houses and in each house they have the food of some country—like Mexico for instance, and it’s all decorated like a Mexican house and the boys and girls who give that part of the party will be dressed in Mexican costumes. And when you get there you buy the food and they give you some drinks and you can dance and have a good time. Then after a while everybody piles into the hay and the wagon goes to another house and there they’ll find another country and another party. It keeps going on just like that.

That’s interesting, I said, but you want to work hard on the popularity contest.

I mean to, she said, I really have to have that part. I like plays and things, they kind of take you out of yourself.

They do, I thought, and you have no idea how far.

Some English people were here last year and they put on some wonderful shows. With nice scenery and music and everything. You couldn’t always understand what they were saying but it sounded so fine. Like listening to folks sing some of that opera music in a different language.

Did many folks go to see them?

Quite a few, she said. I went every night. A lot of folks did.

That’s very good, but where’d they give the plays?

They gave them in the school auditorium. There’s a stage there and they brought their own scenery for one of the plays. But you know something, Mister Movie-Man?

No, what?

When you listened to them real close you could see scenery that wasn’t on the stage. They said the scenery and you could see it just as clear. You really could.

That’s right, I said. Sometimes you can. But that’s with a certain kind of play, movies are different. Everything has to be seen or scene. You’ve got good ears though. I touched where the gold wire entered the soft lobe of her ear. She watched silently. Watched my hand.

Thank you, Mister Movie-Man, she said, and have another drumstick….

I thought about the contest and all their plans. A thousand would get us to the coast and help us get a start.… Going to what nation in what territory? And this time I’d let Karp hold the cash, he was practical and more dependable than Donelson. He was down in the business district picking up a few dollars at his jeweler’s trade. He could make a watch from the start, give him the tools, the metal and the lathe….

What will the story be about? she said.

I haven’t decided yet, I said, but I’m working on it.

Well, I’m sure glad to hear that.

Why?

Because I saw your friends taking pictures all over the place. What were they doing that for?

Oh that, I said, they’re just chasing shadows, shooting scenes for background. Later on when we start working we’ll use them, splice them in. Pictures aren’t made in a straight line. We take a little bit of this and a little of that and then it’s all looked at and selected and made into a whole….

You mean you piece it together?

That’s the idea, I said.

Well tell me something! she said. Isn’t that just marvelous? Just like making a scrap quilt, I guess; one of those with all the colors of the rainbow in it—only more complicated. Is that it?

Just about, I said. There has to be a pattern though and we only have black and white.

Well, she said, there’s Indians and some of the black is almost white and brown like me.

I looked up the hill, hearing the distant cowbell. Far above us the black and white coats of the herd lay like nomadic blankets against the close green hill, and higher still on the edge of the shade, two young bulls let fly at one another, head-on into the sun. They must have jarred the hill like thunder.

Where’d I hear?

A long time ago. I could see them back off and paw the earth preparing to let fly again. What was I doing here when there was so much to be done? Movement was everything. I had to move on, westward. How would I plot the scenario with these people? What line would engage them, tie them up in an image that would fascinate them to the maximum? Put money in thy purse, the master said. I needed it.

What time is it? I said.

She looked into the trees. A pink petal clung to her hair. About two-thirty, she said.

Two-thirty, I said. How can you tell without looking at your watch?

By the way the shadows slant against the trees, Mister Movie-Man.

By the shadows? Why don’t you use your watch? Doesn’t it run?

Sure, it runs, listen….

I lowered my head to her blouse, hearing it ticking away. It was a little past two-thirty but she was close enough. She wore some faint scent—a trace of powder. I looked at her. There was no denying the charm of her.

You’re right, I said. I wish I could do that….

You could if you would stay in one town long enough, she said. Don’t you have a watch?

I had it stolen back East, I said. I had pawned it in Newark.

Look, Donelson said, What’s the plot of this thing?

We won’t plot it, I said, we’ll make it up as we go along. It depends upon how much dough they can raise. I’ll think of something. Just shoot anything interesting you see.

Play it by ear, you mean? Karp said. With this little film we have?

That’s right. By ear and by nose, by cheek and by jowl, by the foresight and the hindsight, by the foreskin and the rearskin, by the hair of my chinny chin chin and my happy nappy!

We stood in the street beneath a huge cottonwood tree, the camera resting on a tripod near the curb. For once there was no crowd. Sunlight, clear and unhazed, flooded the asphalt, and the odor of apple blossoms drifted to us from a pair of trees in a yard across the street. I could hear the bounce-rattle-scrape as a pair of little girls tossed jacks on the porch of a small house that sat behind a shallow lawn in which a bed of red poppies made bright red blobs in the sun. Beside me Donelson was rolling a Bull Durham cigarette and I fought my irritation under control. He was arrogant and impatient and he had no discipline. If I didn’t guide him every minute he’d waste the film and antagonize the people. I’d look at the day’s shooting and there would be nothing more than a jumble of scenes, as though the rambling impressions of an idiot’s day had been photographed. With Donelson it was gelly, gelly, gelatine all day long and all images ran to chaos, as though Sherman’s army had traumatized his sense of order forever. Once there was a sequence of a man whitewashing the walls of the slaughterhouse which stood at the edge of the town near the river, and this followed by a flock of birds strung out skimming over a stretch of field; then came shots of the courthouse clock at those moments when the enormous hands leaped across the gaps of time to take new positions but ever the same on the bird-fouled face, then a reversed flight of birds, and this followed by the clock hands whirling in swift reversal. Donelson ached to reverse time, I yearned to master it, or so I told myself. I edited a series of shots, killing time. The darkness between the frames longer than what was projected. Once there was a series consisting of a man and a boy and a boar hog, a cat and a great hairy spider—all shot in flight as they sought to escape, to run away from some unseen pursuer. And as I sat in the darkened hotel room watching the rushes, the day’s takes, on a portable screen, the man seemed to change into the boy and the boy, changing his form as he ran, becoming swiftly boar and cat and tarantula, moving ever desperately away, until at the end he seemed, this boar-boy-spider-cat, to change into an old man riding serenely on an old white mule as he puffed a corncob pipe. I watched it several times and each time I broke into a sweat, shaking as with a fever. Why these images and what was their power?

And Donelson had sung, “Oh, while I sit on my ass on the ass of my ass a curious paradox comes to my mind: While three-fourths of my ass is in front of my ass the whole of my ass is behind.” Oh, Donelson, that impossible Donelson. That bad boy with his toy. Sometimes I wondered if any of it had meaning for him beyond the joy of denying the reality of all that which he turned his lenses upon….

From the walk I was listening to the dry, rhythmical, bounce-scrape-scrape-bounce of the knucklebone jacks and ball of the two little girls continuing, when suddenly from behind us a dark old fellow wearing a black Cordoba hat, a blue denim jacket and a scarf of fuchsia silk wrapped around his throat moved stiffly past on a fine black seven-gaited mare. Small and dry, he sat her with the stylized and monumental dignity of an equestrian statue and in the sun-slant the street became quite dreamlike. His leathery hands held the gathered reins upon the polished horn of a gleaming cowboy saddle and his black, high-heeled boots, topped by the neat, deep cuff of short tan cowhide riding chaps, rested easy and spurless in the stirrups as he moved slowly past as in meditation, his narrowed eyes bright glints in the shadow of his hard-brimmed hat. Donelson started to speak but I silenced him as I watched with whirling mind, filled with the sight and listening now to the mare’s hooves beating with measured gait through the bright suspense of the afternoon—when suddenly a little boy in blue overalls exploded from between two small houses across the street and ran after the horseman, propelled by an explosion of joy.

Hi, there, Mister Love, he yelled. Make her dance, Mister Love, I’ll sing the music. Will you, Mister Love? Won’t you please, Mister Love? Please, please, Mister Love? clapping his hands as he ran pleading beside the mare’s flank.

Dance her, Mister Love, he called, and I’ll call the others and we’ll all sing for you, Mister Love….

Well, I’ll be goddam, Donelson said beside me. What does the little bastard mean, he’ll sing the music?

He means what he says, I guess, I said.

And who the hell is that, the Pied Piper on a gaited mare?

The children were singing now, following alongside the arch-necked mare as she moved, the old fellow holding his seat as though he were off somewhere in an elder’s chair on a church platform—or on the air itself—watching the kids impassively as he stroked the horse’s mane in time to its circus-horse waltzing.

There, I said, now there’s something we can use. We could use that man, I said.

Donelson looked at me. So write a part for the nag and the kids, he said. You decided all of a sudden to make it a horse opera? He laughed. Now, by God, I’ve seen everything, he said.

No, I said. I was looking at the children move; some were waltzing in a whirl along the sidewalk, their arms outstretched, shouting and singing. They went past the houses, whirling in circles as they followed the dancing mare. A dog barked along a fence and through it all I could hear the first little boy’s pure treble sounding high above the rest.

Suddenly I looked at Donelson—Why the hell aren’t you shooting? I said, and saw his mouth drop open in surprise.

No film in the camera, he said. You told me to shoot exteriors of that mansion up in the north section of town. I forgot to reload. Besides you know we’re short of film.

And all this happening right before our eyes, I said.

Maybe we could get them to run it through some other time, Donelson said. With a few chocolate bars and cones of ice cream you could buy all the pickaninnies in town. Though God knows what the horse and rider would cost. That old bastard looks like weathered iron. D’ya ever see anyone like him?

No, I said, and it’ll never happen like this again. How often do I have to tell you that you have to have film in the camera at all times? We don’t have the dough to make up everything, we have to snatch whatever passes, and in places like this anything can happen and does.

I cursed our luck.

A woman came out to stand on the porch of one of the houses shaking her head and hugging her body as though she were cold.

That Love, that ole hoss and those chillen, she said. They ought to put them all out in the meadow somewhere.

What is his name? I called.

That’s ole Love, she said. That’s ole Love New.

Then another voice spoke up and I became aware of an old woman sitting in a rocking chair on a porch two houses away down the street.

That’s him all right. He’s just the devil hisself and he’s going to take those chillen off to Torment one of these days. You just mark my words.

She spat into the yard. Calling hisself an Indian and hound-dogging around. The old black tomcat. She spat again and I saw the snuff flash brown through the sunlight then snake across the bare yard to roll into a ball, like quicksilver across the face of a mirror.

Find out where the old fellow lives, I told Donelson. I watched them dancing on past the big cottonwood tree, the glossy horse moving with ceremonial dignity, its neck beautifully arched, and heard the children’s bright voices carrying the melody pure and sweet along the air. They were coming to the corner now and suddenly I saw the old man rear the horse, the black Cordoba hat suddenly rising in a brisk salute above his white old head, freezing there for a moment, the mare dancing a two-step on her well-shod hooves. Then, as he put her down, I could hear the hooves ringing out on the road as he took the corner at a gallop, the children stringing after, cheering.

Damn, Donelson said, where do you think he comes from? Is there a circus in town?

Only you, I said. Only us out here without film.

We found Karp with one of his faith who ran a grocery store. They were discussing politics. We drank a soda and went back to the hotel to discuss the film. So how do we start? Donelson said. With a covered wagon? There must be enough of them rotting away in barns around this town.

Or how about an Indian attack? Karp said. Enough of them look like Indians to make things go fairly well….

I was watching the little boy in blue overalls who had been left by the others. He had suddenly become a centaur, his back arched as he waltzed horse-style to his own Taaa ta ta ta taaa ta ta, back between the houses. At that age I preached Job, boils and all, but I didn’t dance, and all his losses my loss of mother …

What about doing the Boston Tea Party, Donelson said, with these coons acting both the British and the Beantowners. That would be a riot. Make some up as Indians, take the rest and Harvard-up their talk. Even the camera would laugh. Too bad we can’t film sound. We could out-do the minstrels ’Lasses White and all. I understand enough of them around here are named Washington and Jefferson and Franklin—put them in powdered wigs, give them red coats, muskets, carpetbags …

Some are named Donelson too, I said, watching the smile die out on his face.

So why not, he said. I’d feel awful bad if my folks didn’t get their share.

No, I said, it’ll be a modern romance. They’ll have dignity and they’ll play simple Americans. Good, hardworking, kindly ambitious people with a little larceny here and there.… Let’s not expect to take their money and make fools of them while doing it.

What! And how the hell are we going to make these tar babies look like God’s fair chosen creatures?

That’s your problem, Donelson, I said.

God’s going to turn you into a crow for that.… Who? You, that’s who.

You must think you’re a magician, Donelson said. Sometimes I have the feeling that you think you can do anything with a camera. So what’s the romance all about? What’ll we call it?

The Taming of the West, I said, or The Naming of the Baby, or Who’s Who in Tamarac …

That’s enough, Donelson said, I’ll get it bye and bye.

Donelson, I said, we can shoot the scene right here. See, the lights should shine from above there, at an angle, cutting the shadow. And the leading lady will move through just as the hero comes into the door….

Okay, okay, but who’s going to play the part?

Never mind, there’s bound to be some good-looking young gal in this town who’ll be anxious to play it. There’s bound to be plenty of talent here. I have a hunch.

Donelson looked at his glass. Say, he said, what you say they call this drink?

Black Cow.

You sure it isn’t white mule? From the way you’re talking I’d think so.

You just wait, you’ll see.

I’ll have to wait but we’d better get something going quick, because the dough is going fast. Go West, young man, where the pickings are easy—that’s still the best idea for us.

We’ll go West but for the while we’ll linger here.

So we’ll stay, but what about a script?

She smiled, her head back, and I could see the sweet throbbing of her throat. Thinking, Time—time is all I need to take the mountain. But now her mind was on the sheerest shadow she hoped to be upon the wall. I looked into the trees, the shadows there. Blossoms … fall.

He had called me to him on a bright day….

I would like to have seen you when you were a little boy, she said.

That was a long time ago, I said.

Did you have a happy childhood?

I looked into her serious eyes. She was smiling.

It was blissful, I said.

I’m happy. I’m very happy because now there’s something sad about you, she said. Something lonesome-like.

Like what?

She turned to rest on her elbow, looking into my eyes.

I don’t rightly know, she said. It’s something moody, and in the way you look at me sometimes. Do you feel sad?

No, I said, I just have a lot on my mind these days.

Yes, I guess you do, she said. Must be a lot on your hands too, judging from the way it’s wandering.

I removed my hand. I’m sorry.

And is your hand sorry?

Yes.

Then give it here.

I gave it and she looked at me softly, taking my hand and holding it against her breast.

I didn’t mean to be mean, she said.

I came close now, breathing the fever, the allure playing about her lips, her quick breath.

Please, I said, Please….

You’ll be good to me? Really good? Her eyes were frightened, the whites pale blue.

Oh yes, I said. Oh yes!

Ho, all that the seed for all that became the seed of all this, the Senator thought—hearing, Bliss? What are you trying to tell me, boy? Want me to get you the nurse?

Tell? Ah yes, tell … How she looked when I took her there in the shade, beneath the flowering tree, that warm brown face looking past my head to the sky, her long-lashed eyelids dreamily accepting me, the stranger, and lifelove the sky—What? Who? Fate? All creation, the rejected terms I fled?

Mister Man, she said, you’re making me a problem I never had before.

What kind of a problem?

She teased me with an elfish smile, then for a while she seemed to dream.

What is the problem?

Well, I’ll tell you the truth, Mister Movie-Man—I’m so country I don’t know where the long nose you have is supposed to go….

She laughed then, placing the tips of her fingers there, tweaking my nose. Her own was barely flatter than mine and I was provoked, sweetly. My face suspended in her breath, the moisture came and I went through, upon the sweet soft lips I rested mine….

Bliss?

 … And I could tell you how I drew her close then and how her surrender was no surrender but something more, a materialization of the heart, the deeper heart that lives in dreams—or once it did—that roams out in the hills among the trees, that sails calm seas in the sunlight; that sings in the stillness of star-cast night … The heart’s own that rejoins its excited mate once in a lifetime—like Adam’s rib returned transformed and glorious. I can tell you of her black hair waved out upon the grass with leaves in it; the demands of her hand, soft and soothing, with the back of my neck in it; her breath’s sweet fever inflaming my face. Even after all these years I can tell you of passion so fierce that it danced with gentleness, and how the whole hill throbbed with silence, the day gathering down, ordered and moving radiant beneath the firm pumping of our enraptured thighs, I can tell you, tell you how I became she and she me with no questions asked and no battle fought. We grasped the secret of that moment and it was and it was enough. I can tell you as though it were only an hour past, of her feel within my arms, a girl-woman soft and yielding. Innocent, unashamed, yet possessing the necessary knowledge. How I was at rest then, enclosed in peace, obsessionless and accepting a definition for once and for once happy. How I kissed her eyes, pushed back the hair from her smooth forehead, held that face between my palms as I tried to read the mystery of myself within her eyes. Spoke words into her ear of which only then I was capable—how the likes of me could say, I love, I love … And having loved moved on.