Damned If I Do (18 page)

Geometric shape

If we place above this Adam’s attempt to offer the Pythagorean Theorem, then we see a ladder of sorts, which we might consider bounded on either side by some associative thread:

We can well imagine how this disability of Adam’s can prove frustrating. Especially when he attempts to, say, summon help to his burning house, he being capable only of directing the firefighters to a house near his or to one that looks much like his, his meaning becoming twisted in his frantic efforts, much as our meaning often twists.

Meaning
is difficult enough without metaphor and metonymy. But imagine Adam undertaking to say something subtle and metaphoric. His meaning will not only fall short, but might, in fact must, be misconstrued by misdirection. His ladder of meaning breaks:

And depending on the situation in which his attempt is made, his broken meaning can accept (un)intentional connotational import, which we’ll call
contextual clutter,
and so looks like this:

That
new
meaning cannot be denied (whether acquired randomly or designedly), but it was not, in fact, Adam’s intention to make that meaning. Too heavy for his initial chain, the new meaning falls off and becomes an attempt at meaning all its own, which might in turn be defended, regretted, or repeated, and certainly twisted.

The picture is yet another familiar one. I submit that it is an accurate and even a final representation of meaning. This is the stuff of meaning. Meaning is what we are and we are meaning. Meaning is molecular.

The Last Heat of Summer

1 September

There was nothing outside our town to warn you of its coming. One second you weren’t there and the next you were. It was more than a post office and more than a village, but it had no sprawl, it had no outskirts. The town huddled close together for protection, the desert everyone loved promising to kill any stray. There, on spring afternoons and evenings when the dropping sun washed the sky pink, my friend Errol, a Kiowa Indian, and I would go out into the countryside and follow the tracks of coyotes. We saw the animals frequently and, in the course of watching them, had discovered several dens in the hills south of town. We dreamed of finding a lion’s den, but never even saw a lion. The coyotes must have known we were there, staring at them from adjacent ridges through our fathers’ field glasses, but the coyotes never seemed to care, casually letting their pups out to play in the cool air.

Early one evening Errol and I were sitting behind a boulder and watching two coyotes at the waterhole. The clouds that had formed above the mountains to the east never came closer and we could see that it was raining over there. Another coyote appeared suddenly, strolled close and then attacked the male, biting at its hind legs and drawing blood immediately. The wounded animal yelped but didn’t retreat, the crimson soaking through his fur. Our eyes were pressed hard against the rubber cups of our glasses’ eyepieces.

“Did you see that?” I asked Errol. I could tell by the way he didn’t answer that he had.

The animals launched into each other again and if not for the stream of blood from the one’s leg we would have been unable to tell them apart. While they tore at each other, the third coyote remained un-involved and actually seemed to enjoy her drink from the hole. Bites yielded yelps and even though we were some seventy yards away we could hear the growling and snarling. Then one animal lay motionless, the one with the bloody hip. I could see its chest heaving with difficult breaths. The attacking coyote trotted off and soon the female followed.

“Is he dying?” Errol asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What should we do?”

“What can we do?” We studied for another minute or so. “Let’s get closer.” I looked at Errol and saw that he was unsure. “Not too close, just closer.”

In order to get closer, however, we had to climb down a steep slope covered with loose pebbles and for a second the waterhole was out of our view. When we could see it again the injured animal was gone.

“I want to see the spot where he was on the ground,” I said.

“Why?”

“I want to see if he left any blood.”

“That’s crazy.” Errol stuffed his binoculars back into the case, being sure to apply the lens covers. “What’s the big deal about coyote blood?”

“I just want to see it, that’s all.”

So we walked through the prickly pears and purslane to the waterhole and there it was, on the sand by the water and some of it on a bleached piece of wood, the blood of the coyote. It was everything I hoped it would be, real.

1 September

Errol and I spent most of the afternoon packing the gear for the camping trip we would be taking with our fathers into the mountains north of Taos. It was not even fall yet, but there had already been snow up in Wyoming and Colorado and so we knew that the nights could be very cold. I was eager to try out the new sleeping bag my father had bought me. I pulled the blue bag out of its teal vinyl sack and let Errol feel the thickness of the fiberfill. He said something about maybe it being too heavy and it crossed my mind that he might be jealous. “I don’t know,” I said, “I’m getting pretty big now. I think I can manage it.” It was an unintentional comment on his size; I knew that it bothered him that I had shot up a couple of inches over the summer while he had remained the same height. I felt immediately guilty for having said it and I tried to gloss over it by saying, “You might be right though. Some of the trails are mighty steep.”

“Yeah, well, I can take the cold,” he said.

We cleaned off the campstove and closed it, rolled the bottles of white gas up in a couple of thick towels.

“My father says he’s sure we’ll see a lion this year,” Errol said.

“A lion?” The idea excited me.

“He said there is much talk of a cat around Questa. He said it killed a bunch of sheep and a dog, I think.”

I whistled out a breath.

“My father said if we find some sign we’ll track it and then we can see it.”

“That would be something,” I said, even though his talking was sounding like bragging, but I was more interested in the cat. I genuinely hoped his father could track the thing.

“Kiowa are great trackers,” Errol said.

“I know.”

1 September

After Errol went home that night I sat in the den where my mother and father were playing gin. They sat on the sofa and used the coffee table for the cards and I sat on the floor in front of the televsion and watched some kind of spy movie. My mother was wearing a yellow dress with red flowers on it and her hair was pulled back to show her round face and its delicate features, her full lips painted red against her brown skin. Looking at her made me happy and I felt warm, being full of the roast beef dinner we’d just had. My mother laughed a lot and it sounded as if she was winning and my father pretended to be bothered by it all, but I could tell he wasn’t. In the movie a man was chasing his double, a man who looked just like him except that he had a scar on his chest. They were on a train and the bad guy kept making everyone think he was the good guy and doing and saying rotten stuff so that they all came to hate the good guy. My mother told my father that she was going to miss us while we were up in the mountains and said she wanted us to be careful. My father and I told her we would be and when I turned back to the television, the train had wrecked and I didn’t know which spy was the good one.

1 September

My mother was a stalwart believer that breakfast was the most important meal of the day, and especially today, as we were setting out for the wilderness, she fed us well. We had oatmeal and eggs and pancakes with fresh berries. My father read the newspaper and whistled out a breath, said something about the government that neither I nor my mother heard and then put down the paper.

“So, we should be back early on Thursday,” he said and then shoveled in a spoonful of oatmeal.

My mother looked at me. “You be sure to change your underwear. I know how you boys get out there. And brush your teeth.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

The sun was pouring in through the window over the sink and the zinnias my mother had cut and brought in from the garden were glowing. My father was wearing his favorite flannel shirt and I had on one very much like it. We tried to eat everything to please my mother.