The Fool's Progress

  Paw led me out to the barn, where Mother wouldn’t hear, and gave me ten whops across the rear with his belt. Not too hard. It didn’t hurt much. I had a copy of the West Virginia Farmer folded inside my pants. The old man said he’d given Will twelve licks because Will was two years older and should’ve known better than to let me climb on that train.

  Will got me on the way to school next morning, down by the macadam road where we waited for the bus. Little Paul watched and tried to pull Will off my back but that was a waste of time. When the bus finally came Will let me up. I picked the gravel out of my face, staunched my bleeding nose with my bandana and climbed aboard after Will and Paul. Duane Bishop, the driver, looked at my face but didn’t say a word. He knew better than to question Will.

  But I didn’t care. I was a hero for nearly a week.

  What’s more we got in the coal the next night, all of it, by team and wagon in the moonlight. Thirty bushels of good lump coal—about a ton and a half, Paw said. Enough to keep our house warm for the next four months, along with a few cords of oak and beech from the woodlot. The wood was free. Like the coal.

  One night in bed, after my train ride, our mother said to her husband, “He hung on to that train all the way to Sawmill. Seven miles in freezing cold. Then got off and walked home. At night. A ten-year-old boy. Who would you say is dogged now, Joe?”

  Joe Lightcap stared through the moonlit gloom at the ceiling and thought about it. After a while he said, “Lorrie, there’s dogged and there’s stupid. Will is dogged.”

  “I see.”

  Joe lay back and thought some more. “Henry ain’t stupid though. That’s what worries me. He’s in for a life of lots of complicated complications.”

  My mother smiled to herself. “At least it won’t be a dull life.”

  A pause. “Just what do you mean by that, Lorrie?”

  Another pause. “Only what I said.”

  3

  Henry Begins his Retreat

  A little time slippage here. I seem to have passed out, or on, so to speak, down to the kitchen floor. The clock on the wall says ten-thirty and sunbeams slant through the east window at an acutely discouraging angle. Well then, and what’s that puddle of stinking Freon under the refrigerator? Oh yes. A long night.

  There’s an awful shuddering noise driving toward the house from the southeast. Like giant blenders in the sky. Those heavy-duty military gunships again, trying to intimidate me. Twice a week they fly this route, directly over my roof. The walls vibrate, the windows rattle, the birds fall silent, the dog whines. Should load up the old carbine, sight it in on those evil motherfuckers. They pass over, rotors thumping, and fade.

  Time to get moving. All those miles to go. I rouse myself, rise to my feet, head throbbing with life and pain, and stagger into the bedroom. Pack what clean clothes I can find. Not many.

  Might as well leave the laundry for Elaine one more time. She can always give my underwear to her boyfriend, Dr. Schmuck. I stuff the sleeping bag and raincoat into a duffel bag, lug everything out and throw it into the back of the truck.

  Solstice the dog comes shambling up, eyes bleary and leaking, black coat dull, skin full of ticks, tail wagging with feeble hope. She’s dying of the valley fever. Lung fungus, a common and prevalent ailment in the hot dusty smoggy air of southern Arizona. Dogs or humans, everybody who lives here gets it; some die. I stroke her black head, pluck a couple of bloated gray ticks from her ear. “Didn’t get your Nizoral last night, eh?”

  Back in the kitchen I wad a pill inside a piece of cheese and take it to the dog. She gulps it down. The drug won’t cure her, it merely slows the progress of the disease, providing her with a longer lingering more-satisfactory death. But what else can a man do? Anyway she’s Elaine’s dog, let Elaine come and get her. Of course, being female, she prefers me. The dog I mean.

  Which reminds me, might as well give my dental hygienist one more chance. Surely she didn’t mean those harsh cruel things she said last night. Though I can’t remember exactly what they were, I recall the gist of the message: go away.

  I plug in the telephone and dial a familiar number—the tooth-and-mouth clinic where she works. After the usual delays and circumlocutions—I’ve introduced myself as Dr. O. Vincent Amore—the receptionist (that dense suspicious bitch) finally buzzes Melanie’s little cell. She is undoubtedly at work on a patient and there is no reason whatsoever why she should interrupt her work to answer the lunatic telephone—but she does. I’ve noticed that reflex everywhere now: people are trained, they are conditioned to jump when the telephone calls, always, anywhere. Everybody going around with trembling hands, the push-button smile, the forty-mile video stare in the eyeballs.

  “Hello,” she says, bless her sweet heart.

  “Hey, how’s my oral masseuse today?”

  “Oh. It’s you is it. Sorry, Henry, I’m busy right now.” And indeed I can hear at her elbow the gurgling of a human mouth wedged open with plastic shoehorns. “Goodbye—” she starts to say.

  “Don’t hang up. This is important, Melanie. Just give me thirty seconds.”

  “I’m watching the clock.”

  “How about lunch with me today. At the regular place. Shrimp cocktails, frozen daiquiris, Coors beer, whatever you want.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Melanie, you haven’t cleaned my teeth for three months.” Gland calling out to gland for love, for unity.

  “Henry, I can’t.”

  “What do you mean you can’t?”

  “I mean I can’t. I’m going with somebody else now, Henry.”

  “Melanie!”

  “Well Henry, I didn’t hear from you in weeks. Months, really. Life goes on you know. I mean you can’t expect people to just keep waiting for you, you know, week after week. I mean—you know.”

  “Sweet Melanie.”

  “I’m sorry, Henry. But I’m not really sorry. You’ve got your stockpile. Call Gloria. Call Alice. Call Annie. Call Pamela. Call Heather. Call Whatshername. You’ll make out, you always do.”

  “Melanie…”

  “Got to go now, Henry.”

  “What about my teeth? Who’s gonna floss my teeth?”

  “Put them in a glass of Lysol.”

  “Melanie—!”

  “Stick your head in too and soak for thirty minutes—goodbye.” Crash.

  The silent hum of eternity comes across the line. Dial tone. I hate that noise. I unplug the phone and resume packing the half-ton Dodge Carryall. A 1962—best truck Detroit ever made. A panel truck, solid, ugly, honest. Most of my camping gear is already on board: five-gallon water jug, fuel, Primus cookstove for rainy weather, foam-rubber pad, tarp, grub box full of canned goods and potatoes and jerky and salami, the iron grill, skillet, Dutch oven, ancient pots and pans black as sin from a thousand campfires. Rifle and shotgun mounted in the rack, unloaded but functional. Old greasy Navy wool blanket, a saddle blanket, even a bridle: souvenirs of a previous job. Just the sight of that familiar well-used honest practical equipment makes me feel better, eases the crablike pinch of pain somewhere behind the biliary ducts, near the liver and the pancreative gland where a man measures out, hour by hour, the number of his days.

  I mean our days on Planet Earth, best damned planet in the whole queer cosmos. Why I wouldn’t trade one morning in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada or the Allegheny Mountains of Appalachia for a complete eternity in Yeats’s gold-plated Byzantium, Dante’s polyurethane Paradiso or T. S. Eliot’s Ivy League Heaven.

  Got to get back to Will and the farm. Go home for a while. Back to the hills and the woods and the crick and the dogs. Get my hands on something hefty again. Like an ax handle. Get out of this foul city and don’t never come back. Return to the myth-infested hills of ancient Appalachia.

  The dog keeps watching me as I trek in and out of the house, carrying my few and portable possessions. She knows I’m leaving. I lean down and give her a pat on the dry muzzle, the lean bony head. “Sorry, old girl.”
br />   I’m leaving the house with books and papers when the military helicopters come a-thundering toward my roof again, not more than a hundred feet above. Once again (temper temper) Henry loses his temper. I rush to kitchen, plug in phone, dial another well-known number.

  The sweet simpering voice of an Airperson, Technician Fifth Grade, responds: “Corporal Drew Information Office Davis-Monthan Air Base Arizona National Guard may I help you?”

  “Major Fleming.”

  “Sir?”

  “Wanta talk to Major Fleming.”

  “May I ask who’s calling please?”

  “General Henry Holyoak, Special Project Consultant, SAC.”

  “Yes sir. Just a moment sir.” Sound of busy signal. “Could you hold the line for just a moment sir, Major Fleming is on another line.”

  “Yes, I could hold the line for a moment, but”—the three gunships bashing through my air space, rattling the crockery in the cupboard shelves—“I prefer not to. Get me Major Fleming, Corporal, this instant, at once, or your sweet ass is hamburger.”

  “Yes sir.”

  Another delay. Then the familiar sandpaper voice. “Major Fleming speaking.”

  “Major Fleming?”

  “Yes sir.” A pause. “Is that you again, Lightcap?”

  “That’s right, Fleming, this is Henry Lightcap speaking to you through the miracle of the telephone and you know why. Your dirty stinking helicopters are flying right over my house again, Fleming, making one hell of a racket, and I want it to cease and desist. Immediately.”

  “You’re talking to a major in the Arizona National Guard, Mr. Lightcap.”

  “Yes? So? Well you’re talking to a private first class retired in the United States Infantry and I’ll have to insist on the usual courtesies here. Get your goddamned helicopters out of my backyard. The noise is driving me and my dog insane.”

  “That’s the sound of freedom, Mr. Lightcap.”

  “No, it’s the sound of tyranny, Major Fleming. The same noise you hear in Russia, Poland, Afghanistan. Tyranny, I say.”

  “They sound different over there, Mr. Lightcap.”

  “Tyranny is tyranny.”

  “Over there they sound like Communism.”

  “Yeah? Well here they sound like hell. Like bats out of hell, Major Fleming, and I’m sick of it and if they come over one more time I’m getting out the old M-16 and shooting them down.”

  “You do that, Lightcap, and we’ll napalm your house.”

  “You do that, Fleming, and I’ll collect the insurance and sell the lot for a 500 percent capital gain. I’ll be a modestly wealthy man.”

  “I’m taping this conversation, Lightcap.”

  “So’s the FBI, Fleming. You’re in trouble.”

  “Maybe. We’ll see. The CIA’s on my side.”

  “Well now that you and your boys got run out of Vit-nam by a bunch of raggedy-ass rice farmers in black pajamas, what little country you gonna jump on next, Fleming? Can’t you find something tinier than Vit-nam? Why not Easter Island, Fleming? Or how about Tobago? Trinidad?”

  “This is very entertaining, Lightcap, as always, but I do have work to do. Goodbye.” He hangs up on me. The helicopters are gone now, anyway. Peace has returned, except for the usual permanent background rumble of truck traffic on the Interstate, freight trains on the Southern Pacific, fighter jets screaming over the University of Arizona.

  Work to do? Yes, I still have to call Cardamone and the welfare office. I’m already two hours late.

  “Lou, I can’t make it today. Got the flu or something.”

  There’s a long silence on the other end. He says, “That’s all right, Henry.”

  “In fact I need a four-week leave. With or without pay, I don’t care. Make it six months.”

  Another long pause. I hear Lou’s labored breathing. He takes a deep breath. “Henry—do you really want to be a public welfare administrator?”

  “Lou, that’s a tough question. Can you give me some time to think it over? About six months, maybe?”

  A brief pause this time. “That’s what we thought, Henry. Your final paycheck will be in the mail Friday.”

  “Shove it up your ass.”

  “We’re phasing you out, Henry. You know you’ve been late or absent thirty-two times in the last three months. We’re going to have to let you go, Henry.”

  “Take your job and shove it.”

  “Have to do it, Henry.”

  I unplug the phone.

  Now what? What now? I gulp down four aspirins in a slug of cold coffee. How to burn out your stomach, quick. But I have no choice, this hangover is murderous. And not a drop of booze left in the house; I think I even emptied the last of Elaine’s cough syrup a couple nights ago. Anyhow truck’s loaded, we’re ready to go. First to the bank to clear out checking account, then to the Dirty Shame Saloon for a fast lunch, then—then on to the winding asphalt trail for Everyman’s Journey to the East.

  I dash off a brief warning note to Will.

  Dear Will,

  Will you potbellied baldheaded bastard I’m coming home. Leaving today. It’ll take me a week or two because I’m visiting some friends on the way but I’ll be there. So dont say I didnt warn you. And why am I coming home? I am coming home to rescue you, old brother, from that museum display of 19th Century Americana you’re making a fool of yourself in. Before the Pittsburgh suburbs overrun you completely. You & your comical draft horses & yr organic horseshit & yr bugriddled potato patch & screwworm milk goats & corn-borer cornfield and all those cute little Foxfire hippie Mother Earth nature nixies pitching their tents in yr barnyard. Well, anyhow, I’m coming home for a while. Help you guard the place. Lightcap’s Last Stand. We got to draw the line somewhere Will and maybe Stump Crick is the place. If it aint already too late.

  Fraternally, Henry.

  PS: I’ll be coming alone, as you might expect. Just me and my fleas. Give my love to Marian and to Mother and tell them not to worry about me, I’m alright, it’s the world that’s dysfunctioning and I mean that literally.

  I stick the letter in an envelope, the envelope in my shirt pocket. Wanhope—melancholia—of Cerberus and blackest midnight born—clutches me in its venomous grip. But only for a minute. I pull on my best cowboy shoes, the pair with the pointy toes for kicking snakes and the undershot heels caked with old horseshit, and that makes me feel better. What I always really wanted to be, like most American boys, was a free-lance cowboy. Not a real working cowboy, of course, not one of those red-nosed leaky-eyed runty little half-breeds with the two-digit I.Q.s that actually do the actual tedious chores on a cattle ranch, but a movie-type cowboy driving a white Lincoln convertible from rodeo to rodeo.

  But that’s not true either. What I really want to be when I grow up (if I live that long) is a hunter. I mean a hunter. Not a recreational shootist, for godsake, but an honest-to-God hunter in a small band of buddies pursuing the sacred game across the desert-plain and into the forest while our tough loyal women wait for us in wigwams back at the home camp under the red cliffs of—of where? Southwest Africa? Utah? The Wind River? Mount Olga and Ayers Rock? Most anywhere will do but here—where we are.

  Desperate phrases. How can I even think such things?

  Seeking guidance, I raise my eyes to the Jesus calendar by the fridge, relic of a visit to El Rapido Tortilla Factory in oldtown Tucson. Some mocker named Lightcap has tacked it on the wall next to a replica of one of Modigliani’s reclining nudes—rosy nipples, flat belly, dark eyes, neat little tuft of pubic hair nestled between the thighs and a savory trace of sweat under the upraised arms. The calendar, rather different, bears on its cover a representation of an effeminate Aryan blond-haired blue-eyed soft-featured Jesus Christ—Christ as the Bearded Lady—revealing with one hand his bleeding heart (like a narcotics agent showing his badge) while the forefinger and index finger of his other hand, the right, point directly upward. One Way. To the ceiling, the cracks in the plaster, the bowl of the light fixture black with f
ried insects, and beyond. Toward the eternal.

  Truck is loaded, ready to go. What about Fred the cat? Fred is gone, hunting songbirds. What about the goldfish? I dump them in the birdbath outside. They’ll have at least a sporting chance until Fred finds them or the curvebill thrashers or the sparrow hawks or the saguaro elf owls. A fighting chance: what more does anyone have?

  Time to go. I sit down and write my farewell address to Elaine:

  Darling Elaine,

  I dont blame you one bit for walking out on me. I deserved it and so did you, after putting up with my antics for—what is it?—three long years. I was unfaithful to you but never in my heart, sweetheart, only down below. How often? I didnt count. Who with? Nobody you ever knew. But no matter what I was doing I was always thinking of you. And why did I do it? Well—one million years of primate biology is kind of hard for one man to repeal, on his own. Thus the lies, the sneaking around, the deception, thinking you’d never know. But of course the woman always knows, sooner or later. “They can smell it on you,” as Harrington warned. Yes, I know, there’s something wrong with me. Is there no cure? Surgery: whip it out and whack it off. Or maybe old age and debility, though you can’t count on that. “He old but he aint dead,” as Chuang-tzu said of Lao-tzu. And even if I’d been faithful as a dog there was that other question: How to live? How? Ever since your father made the down payment on this house I’ve felt like a rat in a maze. Trapped in the old cash nexus. He made the down payment—but I had to meet the monthly. You know I couldn’t do it, Elaine. Couldn’t keep it up or even get it up anymore. We must simplify our lives, my darling—simplify! simplify! like Jesus said. Write to me c/o Will, RFD, Stump Creek, W.Va., Zip Unknown.

  So long,

  Henry

  PS: When you sell this shabby little shoebox of a house, as no doubt you will, remember me. The equity ain’t much (about $20-25,000 now?) but whatever you get I could sure use my share of it. Whatever you think is fair. My debts are many, I have nothing, the rest I leave to the poor. Goodbye.