plan, to just make it happen by sheer force of will, might
very well backfire. But I didn’t know what else to do.
“Make it so,” I said, quoting Captain Jean-Luc Picard
and pointing down the long, dusty road back to Marathon.
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“Failure is not an option.” I wondered if a street map of San
Francisco would look anything like the Borg.
I got back about midnight, and the lights were off in the
studio. I washed a couple of strawberries, set them beside
Jesse’s bed. He was sleeping like a baby seal that had been
clubbed in the head. I wondered if The Original had drugged
his coffee.
The house was still asleep when I got up and went for
my run, but there was coffee brewing in the kitchen by the
time I got back. I jumped in the shower, noticed a stack of
clean boxers and T-shirts on the little dresser in my room.
Somebody had done laundry while I was out roaming the
back roads of West Texas. Jesse was in the kitchen, looking
into the cabinets. “I got everything on your list, including
bok choy, which the grocery store had labeled as collard
greens.”
“Thanks, Mary. I ate two sweet strawberries this
morning before I even got out of bed.”
“Gary sent you something, a riata. Some sort of a
rawhide whip, or rope. I’ve got it down in my room.”
I brought the bag back, set it on the kitchen table, and
he pulled it out and looked at it. “Will you do me a favor?”
“Probably.”
“I want to take a picture of this wrapped around your
waist. Can we do that this morning? It’s for the Grievous
Angel.”
“Sure.”
“Let’s have cereal with berries, okay?”
“I think it’s your turn to cook, and I’ll take whatever you
want to feed me.” I sat down at the table, unfolded the paper,
turned to the comics.
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He looked over at me, gave me a little pinch next time I
looked up. “How was Gary?”
“Good. He told me you painted him looking lonely and
miserable on the steps of a bookstore in the Castro.”
“He was one sad little puppy, let me tell you. Kept
looking around, wondering where all the girls were.”
“He said Sam might not realize he’s the
old
boyfriend.”
“What?”
“Is he still managing your money, Jesse?”
“Yes, he is.”
And that’s none of your business.
He didn’t
say it, but his eyes were suddenly pissed off. “You can be a
big-balls devil dog in the bedroom all you want, Mary, but
you’re not running the rest of my life.”
“Are you two living together?”
“No, I told you we split up. Why? You have a reason not
to believe me?”
“I never slept with three in a bed before. I thought he
might not like it if I kicked him in the head in the middle of
the night. With my new cowboy boots.”
“The boots are done? Oh, let me see.” Jesse ran back
down the hall, came back with the boots, singing that old
Nancy Sinatra classic and walking the boots through the air.
I thought he was doing a pretty good job of avoiding my
question, and I decided to let it go. Have some strawberries
in my cereal and enjoy the morning.
Jesse poured a couple of bowls of cereal, sliced up the
strawberries, and put half on his cereal and half on mine.
Then he sat down on my lap and ate his berries, and then he
ate mine. One after the other, right out of my bowl, looking
right into my eyes with a
don’t fuck with me
look on his
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pretty face. Then he hopped off, poured the skim milk, and
handed me a cup of coffee and a spoon.
Interesting. So, if I bring up Sam before breakfast, I can
expect to get my strawberries taken away. He rinsed the
bowls in the sink when we were done eating. “Come on, grab
your boots and your whip, cowboy. We’ve got work to do.”
He put me up against one of the blank canvases. I tried
to get a look at what he’d been working on, the Grievous
Angel, but he had it covered with a long piece of butcher
paper. “I’m trying to keep the dust off,” he said, seeing my
look. “As fast as the acrylic dries out here, it still gets dust in
the paint when the wind blows too hard. Mary, when you got
that shrapnel in your chest, do you remember what it looked
like?”
“Yeah, I do. Black metal, and the edges looked twisted,
almost ripped. It wasn’t shiny, more like a dull black matte.”
I closed my eyes. “The weird thing was it was smoking.”
“What?”
“The metal was hot. I could see the smoke rising, and it
sort of burned the edges of the wounds. That’s why I didn’t
bleed to death. The other guys were screaming, because the
metal had fallen on them, burned their skin. But I looked
down and all these pieces, they were sticking out of me, and
the steam was rising.”
He was sitting in his chair, pale down to his lips.
“Jesus.”
“Okay, so what do you want me to do? Put it around my
shoulder?”
He shook his head. “You need to strip down. The riata
around your waist. And your boots. Your tattoo, the one on
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your arm. Can you see it if your arms are stretched out like
this?”
I pulled my T-shirt off, stretched my arms out, then put
my hands behind my head.
“Okay, good.” He was taking pictures of my upper arms.
“Jeans off, and let’s see how the riata looks.”
I pulled off my jeans, then put the cowboy boots back on
and wound the riata around my waist. He stood there, one
hand on his hip. “Is this the way you wanted it?”
He pointed at my boxers. “I think you forgot something.”
“Jesse, for Christ’s sake!”
“The rawhide needs to be against your beautiful brown
stomach, zo-zo. That’s why I picked it out. The Grievous
Angel is not wearing striped poplin boxers.”
“If you sell nude photos of me wearing cowboy boots and
a whip, I’m going to have the shortest career as a cartoonist
in the history of the world.”
“Oh, the hat! I almost forgot the hat. Don’t be silly,
Mary. Nothing I do is going to hurt your career.”
He handed me an old US Cavalry hat, which I shoved on
my head, then I stepped out of my boxers. “Shit.”
He gave a low wolf whistle. “Robert Mapplethorpe is
crawling out of his grave right now, slouching toward
Marathon on zombie hands and knees.” He studied me.
“Okay, put your arms out to the sides, like you’re hanging
from a cross. Palms out.”
I listened to the flash, stared up at the rafters. I was
going to kick his ass for this. He came closer, adjusted the
rawhide so the end of the whip dangled down next to my
cock. “Now put your arms up behind your head, like Saint
Sebastian, waiting for the arrows.” More clicks and flashes.
“Okay, now spread your legs. I want to get the boots.”
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This went on for a lot longer than I was interested in
putting up with, and I finally pulled off the hat and rested it
down over my groin. “Enough.” He got one last picture of the
hat, resting between my legs, and then he put the camera
down and picked up my boxers.
“Here you go, zo-zo.” He was suddenly contrite, like any
boy who had eaten all the strawberries, then talked
somebody into nude photographs.
“You,” I said, pointing at his chest, “are the most spoiled
brat of a man in the history of Marathon, Texas, and San
Francisco, California. I have a good mind to turn you over
my knee and paddle your butt, but I think you’d enjoy it too
much.”
“Santana today,” he said, and cranked up the volume on
the CD player. “
Supernatural
!”
I love Carlos as much as most hot-blooded American
men, but after four hours I had to go into the house and
shove some cotton balls in my ears. It was too hot to work,
anyway. I was falling into a pattern down here: run early, get
to work, and break off about two. Sleep in the heat of the
afternoon, with a nice fan blowing on me, then get up and
work again in the evening. The Original woke me up about
six for supper. “I’m having a hard time with the girl,” I told
him.
“How come? You must have worked with lots of girls in
the corps.”
“Yeah, but they were mostly support staff. I mean,
combat infantry units are still pretty gender-specific, no
matter what Congress says we should be doing.”
“Better just leave ’em support, then. It won’t work if you
try and force somebody into your company.”
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“That might be a good narrative thread, though. What
happens if they put a girl in the unit against the wishes of
the platoon leader. Bound to cause lots of interesting
conflict.”
He yelled for Jesse out the back door, then went out and
banged on the studio door. Jesse came in the house five
minutes later. “Sorry, Granddad. I wanted to get the paper
taped up over the painting. It looks like we’re gonna have a
storm tonight.”
The Original had made a blueberry pie for dessert, and
Jesse looked at it for a long moment, the beautiful purple
juice bubbling up through the crust. “What happened?”
The old man sighed, lifted slices with an old-fashioned
silver pie server. He looked at me. “An old family tradition.
We fix a good pie so we can share bad news.”
Jesse pulled his piece over to him and waited until I had
mine before he took a bite.
“Sadie checked herself out of that rehab. They don’t
know where she is. She must have got a ride, but they don’t
really know.”
“Aren’t they supposed to watch her? I mean, she just
leaves, nobody knows….”
“She’s twenty-three, Jesse. They didn’t have any reason
to have her committed, so she could go if she wanted.”
“But they don’t even know who picked her up?”
“I suspect you know that better than anyone else. You
were the only person Sadie would talk to about this
boyfriend of hers.”
Jesse shoved a piece of pie into his mouth. “I can’t talk
about it, Granddad.”
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“All right, son. You just remember I’m here, you need
some help. Make sure Sadie knows too, that I would never
judge her. She can always come home.”
After the old man had left the kitchen, Jesse slung a
cup towel over his shoulder. “I’ll dry. Fuck. That is bad news,
and I had such a good day today.”
“You don’t think she’s in any danger, do you?” I filled
the dishpan, squirted lemon soap in the hot water.
“He tried to get her to make a porn film a couple of
months ago. I sent her down here, then I came down,
thinking I could keep an eye on her.” He took a plate from
me, dried it off. “Oh, I came to paint too, but I just thought it
would be better if we got out of Dodge, you know? She’s
getting a little bit erratic.”
It seemed to me Sadie was a lot erratic and plenty old
enough now to be running her own life, and not letting her
big, strong cousin tell her where to go. But what did I know.
I knew enough to keep my mouth shut.
“You play the guitar, Mary?”
“Nope. I’ve never been musical. I like music, though.”
“I played when I was younger. I listened to Carlos
Santana and Yo-Yo Ma play ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’
today. Made me want to sit on the porch after supper and
sing.”
“I’ll sit with you.”
We looked at each other across the kitchen, the smell of
blueberry pie and lemon bubbles in the sink, washing dishes
together. I liked him. I liked his company. I wanted to sit on
the porch with him after supper and listen to him play the
guitar for the rest of my days. What was I going to do when
he went back to San Francisco? What was I going to do if he
didn’t invite me to go along?
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He hung the dishcloth over the handle on the oven to
dry, went back to his bedroom and came out with the guitar.
He sat on the top porch step, and I took one of the rocking
chairs. He played an old classical guitar with nylon strings,
and the sound was muted and gentle, old Spanish songs and