I’d make a mistake. The figure who turned wasn’t Spider. Above shriveled lids and scrotum red hair slicked white brow and belly. Needle teeth snagged the thunder that erupted from behind the mountains as he threw back his head in doomed laughter. Naked on his dragon, he waved a black and silver hat over his head. Two ancient guns hung holstered at his hips, with milky handles glimmering. As his dragon reared (and mine danced back) I saw, strapped to his bare, clawed feet, a set of metal cages with revolving barbs that he heeled into his beast’s flank, cruelly as a flower.
Dazed, I punched rain from my eyes. But the illusion (with veined temples gleaming with rain) was gone. Gagging on wonder, I rode back to the rim of the herd.
It is in the lightning and the thunder of the elements that warm him so that he takes time to pause and to reflect. There is a dragon there. They do not hear, nor does he. The elements have rendered voice inaudible. There is a dragon there.
Hunce Voelcker, The Hart Crane Voyages
It is not that love sometimes makes mistakes, but that it is, essentially, a mistake. We fall in love when our imagination projects nonexistent perfections on to another person. One day the phantasmagoria vanishes, and with it love dies.
Ortega y Gasset, On Love
Exhaustion numbed me; routine kaged me. It had stopped raining almost an hour before I realized it. And the land had changed.
We had left the rocks. Wet shrubs and briars fell before the dragons’ claws. To our left, a strip of gray ground ran along with us, just down a small slope. Once I asked Stinky, “Are we following that funny strip of stone down there?”
He chuckled and sputtered, “Hey, Lobey, that’s the first paved road I bet you ever seen. Right?”
“I guess so,” I said. “What’s paved?”
Knife, who was riding by, snickered. Stinky went off to do something else. That was the last I heard of it. Three or four carts trundled by on the road before it struck me what the damn thing was used for. Very clever. When the next one came by, I remembered to stare. It was late afternoon. I was so tired all the world’s wonders might have bounced on the balls of my eyes without leaving a picture.
Most of the carts were pulled by four- or six-legged animals that I was vaguely familiar with. But new animals are not strange sights when your own flock might lamb any monster. One cart made me start, though.
It was low, of black metal, and had no beast at all before or behind. It purred along the road ten times the speed of the others and was gone in smoke before I had time to really see it. A few dragons who had ignored the other vehicles shied now and hissed. Spider called to me as I stared after it, “Just one of the wonders of Branning-at-sea.”
I turned back to calm the offended lizards.
The next time I glanced at the road I saw the picture. It was painted on a large stand mounted by the pavement, so that all who passed could see. It was the face of a young woman with cotton white hair, a childish smile, her shoulders shrugged. She had a small chin, and green eyes that looked widened by some pleasant surprise. Her lips were slightly opened over small, shadowed teeth.
THE DOVE SAYS, “ONE IS nice? NINE OR TEN ARE SO MUCH nicer!”
I spelled out the caption and frowned. Batt was within hollering distance so I hollered. “Hey, who’s that?”
“The Dove!” he howled, shaking the hair back from his shoulders. “He wants to know who the Dove is!” and the rest of them laughed too. As we got closer and closer to Branning-at-sea I became the butt of more and more jokes. I stuck closer to Green-eye; he didn’t make fun of me. The first evening wind blew on the small of my back, the back of my neck and dried the sweat before more sweat rolled. I was staring dutifully at dragon scales when Green-eye stopped and pointed ahead. I looked up. Or rather down.
We had just crested a hill, and the land sloped clear and away to—well, if it were twenty meters away it was a great toy. If it were twenty kilometers away it was just great. Paved roads joined in that white and aluminum confusion at the purple water. Someone had started building it, and it had gotten out of hand and started building itself. There were grand squares where cactuses and palms grew and swayed; occasional hills where trees and lawns ranged about single buildings; many sections of tiny houses shoved and jammed on twisting streets. Beyond, from glazed docks ships plied the watery evening through its harbors.
“Branning-at-sea,” Spider said, beside me. “That’s it.”
I blinked. The sun laid our shadows forward, warmed our necks, and blazed in the high windows. “It’s large,” I said.
“Right down there”—Spider pointed; I couldn’t follow because there was so much to look at, so I listened—“is where we take the herd. This whole side of Branning lives off the herding business. The seaside survives through fishing and trade with the islands.”
The others gathered around us. Familiar with the magnificence and squalor below, they grew silent as we went down.
We passed another signboard by the road. This time the Dove was shown from another angle, winking through the twilight.
THE DOVE SAYS, “THOUGH TEN ARE NICE, NINETY-NINE OR A HUNDRED ARE SO MUCH NICER!”
As I looked, lights came on above the twenty-foot-high face. The huge, insouciant expression leaped at us. I must have looked surprised because Spider thumbed towards it and said, “They keep it lighted all night so passersby can read what the Dove has to say.” He smiled as though he were telling me something slightly off-color. Now he coiled his whip. “We’ll camp down on the plateau there for the evening and go into Branning at dawn.” Twenty minutes later we were circling the herd while Batt fixed dinner. The sky was black beyond the ocean, blue overhead. Branning cast up lights of its own, sparkling like sequins fallen on the shore. Perhaps it was the less violent terrain, perhaps it was Spider’s calm, but the dragons were perfectly still.
Afterward, I lay down, but didn’t sleep. Along with Knife I had mid-watch. When Green-eye shook my shoulder with his foot, I rolled to standing; anticipatory excitement kept me awake. I would leave the herders; where would I go next?
Knife and I circled the herd in opposite directions. As I rode I reflected: to be turned loose by my lonesome in the woods is a fairly comfortable situation. Turned loose among stone, glass, and a few million people is something else. Four- fifths of the herd slept. A few moaned towards Branning, less bright than before, still a sieve of light on the sea. I reined my mount to gaze at the—
“Hey up there, Dragonman!”
I looked down the bank.
A hunchback had stopped his dog cart on the road.
“Hi down there.”
“Taking your lizards into Branning at dawn?” He grinned, then dug beneath the leather flap over the cart and pulled out a melon. “You hungry, herder?” He broke it open and made to hurl me half.
But I slung down from my mount and he held. I scrambled to the road. “Hey, thank you Lo stranger.”
He laughed. “No Lo for me.”
Just then the dog, looking back and forth between the man and me, began to whine. “Me. Me. Me hungry Me.”
The hunchback handed me my half, then ruffled the dog’s ears. “You had your dinner.”
“I’ll share mine,” I said.
The hunchback shook his head. “He works for me and I feed him.”
He broke apart his piece and tossed the piece to the animal, who drove his snout into it, champing. As I bit into my melon, the stranger asked me, “Where are you from, Dragonman?”
I gave him the name of my village.
“And this is your first time to Branning-at-sea?”
“It is. How could you tell?”
“Oh.” He grinned over a crowd of yellow teeth. “I came to Branning-at-sea a first time myself. There are a few things that set you off from the natives down there, a couple of points that make you different—”
“Different?”
He raised his hand. “No offense meant.”
“None taken.”
The hunchback c
huckled once more as I took a sweet wet mouthful.
“What’s diamond here is dung there,” he pronounced sagely. “No doubt the Dove said that at one time or another.”
“The Dove,” I said. “She’s La Dove, isn’t she?”
He looked surprised. “The Lo, La, and Le is confusing here. No.” He scraped the rind with his front teeth and spun it away. “Diamond and dung. I gather it worked in your town like it did in mine. Lo and La and Le titles reserved for potent normals and eventually bestowed on potent functionals?”
“That’s the way it is.”
“Was. It was that way in Branning-at-sea. It’s not the way it is now. So little is known about difference in the villages that nobody gets angry at being called such.”
“But I am different,” I said. “Why should I be angry? That’s the way it is.”
“Again, that’s the way it was in Branning. Not the way it is now. A third time: diamond and dung. I just hope your backwoods ways don’t get you into trouble. Mine got me half a dozen thrashings when I first got to Branning-at-sea, fifteen years ago. And even then the place was much smaller than it is now.” He looked down the road.
I recalled what Spider had said about titling herders. “How does it work now?” I asked. “I mean here? At Branning-at-sea?”
“Well”—the hunchback hooked his thumbs under his belt—“there are about five families that control everything that goes on in Branning-at-sea, own all the ships, take in rent on half the houses, will probably pay your salary and buy up those dragons. They, along with fifteen or twenty celebrities, like the Dove, take Lo or La when you address them in person. But you’ll find some pretty non-functional people with those titles.”
“Well, how am I to know them then, if their obvious functionality doesn’t matter?”
“You’ll know them if you run into them—but it’s not very likely you will. You can spend a lifetime at Branning-at-sea and never have to Lo or La once. But if you go about titling everyone you meet, or bridling when someone doesn’t use a title to you, you’ll be taken for a fool, or crazy, or at best recognized as a village lout.”
“I’m not ashamed of my village!”
He shrugged. “I didn’t suggest you were. Only trying to answer your questions.”
“Yes. I understand. But what about difference?”
The hunchback put his tongue in his cheek, then took it out. “At Branning-at-sea difference is a private matter. Difference is the foundation of those buildings, the pilings beneath the docks, tangled in the roots of the trees. Half the place was built on it. The other half couldn’t live without it. But to talk about it in public reveals you to be ill-mannered and vulgar.”
“They talk about it.” I pointed back to the herd. “I mean the other dragon drivers.”
“And they are vulgar. Now if you hang with herders all the time—and you can spend your life that way if you want—you can talk about it all you want.”
“But I am different—” I began again.
Having told me once, his patience with me and the subject ended.
“—but I guess I better keep it to myself,” I finished.
“Not a bad idea.” He spoke sternly.
But how could I tell him about Friza? How could I search if our differences were secret? “You,” I said after embarrassed silence. “What do you do at Branning-at-sea?”
The question pleased him. “Oh, I run a little meeting place where the tired can sit, the hungry can eat, the thirsty can drink, and the bored can find entertainment.” He ended his pronouncement by flinging his red cape back over his misshapen shoulder.
“I’ll come and visit you,” I said.
“Well,” mused the hunchback, “not many herders come to my place; it’s a bit refined. But after you’ve been in Branning-at-sea for a while and you think you can behave yourself, come around with some silver in your wallet. Though I’ll take most of it away from you, you’ll have a good time.”
“I’ll be sure to come,” I said. I was thinking of Kid Death. I was journeying down the long night. I was searching out Friza. “What’s your name and where can I find you?”
“My name is Pistol, but you can forget that. You’ll find me at The Pearl—the name of my place of business.”
“It sounds fascinating.”
“The most fascinating thing the likes of you have ever seen,” he said modestly.
“Can’t pass that up. What are you doing out on the paved road this late?”
“Same as yourself, going to Branning-at-sea.”
“Where are you coming from?”
“My outland friend, your manners are incredible. Since you ask, I come from friends who live outside Branning. I brought them gifts; they gave me gifts in return. But since they are not friends of yours, you shouldn’t inquire after them.”
“I’m sorry.” I felt slightly rankled at this formality I didn’t understand.
“You don’t understand all this, do you?” He softened a little. “But when you’ve worn shoes a while and kept your navel covered, it will make more sense. I tell you all this now, but a year in Branning-at-sea will jack up my jabber with meaning.”
“I don’t intend to stay a year.”
“You may not. Then, you may stay the rest of your life. It’s that sort of place. It holds many wonders and its wonders may hold you.”
“I’m passing,” I insisted. “The death of Kid Death is at the end of my trip.”
He got the oddest look. “I tell you, woodsboy,” he admonished, “forget rough herders’ talk. Don’t swear by nightmares to your betters.”
“I’m not swearing. The redheaded pest rides with this herd to plague Green-eye and me.”
Hunched Pistol decided that the oaf (who was me) was beyond tutoring. He laughed and clapped my shoulder. That vulgar streak in him that had first prompted him to open conversation came out again. “Then good luck to you, Lo Dirty-face and may the different devil die soon and by your hand.”
“By my knife,” I corrected, drawing my machete for him to see. “Think of a song.”
“What?”
“Think of some song. What music do they play at your pearl?”
He frowned, and I played.
His eyes widened, then he laughed. He leaned against his wagon, slapped his stomach. The thing inside me that laughs or cries laughed with him awhile. I played. But when his humor was past my understanding, I sheathed my machete.
“Dragon driver,” he explained through his laughter, “I have only two choices, to mock your ignorance, or assume that you mock me.”
“As you said to me, no offense meant. But I wish you’d explain the joke.”
“I have, several times. You persist.” He examined my puzzlement. “Keep your differences to yourself. They are your affair, nobody else’s.”
“But it’s only music.”
“Friend, what would you think of a man you just met who, three minutes into the conversation, announced the depth of his navel?”
“I don’t see the point.”
He beat his forehead with his fingers. “I must remember my own origins. Once I was as ignorant as you; I swear, though, I can’t remember when.” He pendulumed between humor and exasperation faster than I followed.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t see the pattern in your formality. What I do see I don’t like—”
“It’s not for you to judge,” Pistol said. “You can accept it, or you can go away. But you can’t go around disregarding other people’s customs, joking with the profane, and flaunting the damned.”
“Will you please tell me what customs I’ve disregarded, what I’ve flaunted? I’ve just said what was on my mind.”
His country face hardened again (hard country faces I was to become used to in Branning). “You talk about Lo Green- eye as if he rode by you among the lizards and you hail Kid Death as though you yourself have looked down his six-gun.”
“And where”—I was angry—“do you think Green-eye is? He’s sleeping
by the coals up there.” I pointed up the rise. “And Kid Death—”
Fire surprised us and we whirled. Behind us in flame, he stood up and smiled. As he pushed back the brim of his hat with the barrel of his gun, red hair fell. “Howdy, pardners,” he snickered. Shadow from grass and rock jogged on the ground. Where flame slapped his wet skin, steam curled away.
“Ahhhhhh-ahhhh—ahhhh-eeeeee!” That was Pistol. He fell against his cart, his jaw flopped down. He closed it to swallow, but it fell open again. The dog growled. I stared.
The fire flared, flickered, dimmed. Then only the smell of leaves. My eyes pulsed with the afterimage and rage. I looked around me. Pulsing darkness moved with my eyes. Behind it, on the rise by the road, the light from the road lamp brushing his knees, was Green-eye. He rubbed the tiredness out of his face with his fist. Kid Death had gone to wherever he goes.
The cart started behind me.
Pistol was still trying to get seated and at the same time guide the dog. I thought he was going to fall. He didn’t. They trundled away. I climbed up to Green-eye’s side. He looked at me . . . sadly?
In the light up from the road, his sharp cheekbones were only slightly softened by wisps of adolescent beard. His shadowed socket was huge.
We went back to the fire. I lay down. Sleep pawed my eyes down and the balls beneath my lids exploded till dawn with amazing dreams of Friza.
The Dove has torn her wing so no more songs of love.
We are not here to sing: we’re here to kill the Dove.
Jacques Brel, “La Colombe”
Jean Harlow? Christ, Orpheus, Billy the Kid, those three I can understand. But what’s a young spade writer like you doing all caught up with the Great White Bitch?!
Of course I guess it’s pretty obvious.
Gregory Corso, In conversation
I
think of people sighing over poetry, using it,
I
don’t know what it’s for …