Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization

  ~ ~ ~

  Across the highway she ate at a small, deserted caf?. The town was sleepy with ranchers, small shops and inactivity. She bought a tube of lipstick, some makeup, a thrift store dress and slip, a pair of high heels, pantyhose, cheap wire bracelets and a travel bag, then ambled about understanding that home was just a decision away. The only thing needed was to put her mind to it. At a secluded pay phone a fear gripped her after dialing Dedra's number and being told to "please deposit $3.20 for the first three minutes." She slammed the handset back into the receiver and walked away, almost running. Shaky legs carried her back toward the motel and, crossing a rail siding, there it was. Sitting idle on the tracks, Union Pacific 1994-the exact same engine she had seen in Austin. As before, crackling with an inviting energy. It was pointed in a westward direction and she dashed to her room, gathered clothes into the backpack, stuffed the invisibility suit and the day's purchases into the travel bag and flew back to the rail siding. This time she climbed the metal stairway with no hesitation and sat.

  And sat.

  Two hours later the machine still hummed away and she still sat. No crew ever showed up, and as the sun slid down the far side of the Rocky Mountains, she knew she would never learn its destination. Picking up her bags, she descended the stairway and trudged back toward the motel. A chill ran the length of her spine that had nothing to do with the dropping temperature. In the room she showered and changed into the new dress and slip, smoothed pantyhose up her legs, slipped heels onto her feet, applied makeup, slid bracelets onto her wrists and took a walk. Eating a sandwich at the diner, no one acknowledged her existence other than the waitress who eyed her suspiciously. Paying her bill, she decided not to ask about a job and left.

  Around midnight June was lying on the bed, trying once again to concentrate on the Wittgenstein. Failing, she counted her money for the third time and considered calling Dedra again. She remembered the second pouch. It was an easy decision to open it; there was no telling when she would make it home. Ripping the stitching, she poured the contents onto her lap: a folded half sheet of paper with instructions on how to contact JHH, and a small third pouch from which fell a necklace and a handwritten note:

  June,

  This was hers. I have treasured it as I have treasured her memory. It's yours now. Please wear it in good health and beautiful thoughts. 'Til we meet again.

  - JHH

  It was an elegant gold chain from which hung a flat, gold pendant of a painstakingly detailed Lunar Module. On its face, above the outline of the exit hatch, like a solitary teardrop, was embedded a small, sparkling diamond.

  Still dressed, she stepped into the heels, out onto the walkway and down to the edge of the parking lot. Surveying the dark town beyond, she yearned to walk to a corner lamppost and smoke a cigarette beneath its light. Back in the room she laid across the bed, closed her eyes and felt for the necklace on the nightstand, brought it to her neck, pulled the chain around and clasped it. The exquisite metal coldly tickled bare flesh and an acute intoxication made her get up. Lightheaded, she stripped completely and climbed inside the invisibility suit: feet into boots, hands into gloves, charge wires connected, the batteries still had hours of life. Before the bathroom mirror, she refreshed her makeup, stroked on the red color and pressed her lips together. Raising the hood over her head, she turned out the lights and walked through the door and into the night. Pushing the button on the energizer, a pulse of electricity rippled through the gold chain, the pendant and bracelets causing a delicate prod of sensation.

  The Union Pacific engine was sitting where she last saw it, the subtle glow of its control lights casting misty illumination within the cab. Stealing past it, there was not a soul in sight. A few blocks deep into town her pulse rate kicked up and she closed the distance between herself and the silhouette of a Chevy sedan. Hands wrenched the hood up and began disconnecting wires-one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight; then the coil wire and click, click, it was UP! The Lunar Module bounced against her chest and?clauktch. Hood shut. Her heart was pounding, the distributor cap dropped into her pocket, she moved on toward a truck parked in a well-lit driveway.

  My god. This was so easy.

  More vehicles, and a voice from somewhere said, "Stop. Just stop." It was a Herculean effort to turn around and go back. The pendant tingled back and forth across sweaty skin, bracelets glowed with warmth and, picking up her pace, wet, erect nipples completed the circuit against the humid inside of the suit. At the rail siding she stopped. The engine was gone. It pulled away in the hush of night? Electricity was teasing her body closer to apogee. She tried to reach the motel and clenched down on the urge to let out a scream. Legs turned to jelly and she would have collapsed in the street had she not reached out and wrapped herself against a lamppost. Her loins exploded in freakish waves of relief and juices spilled down her thighs.

  In the dark room she fell across the bed and emptied six distributor caps from her pockets. Still breathing heavily, the continuing flow of current sparked her on to another, less agonized, orgasm, and she clicked the energizer off, calming herself to the runway. "Omigod. Oh, oh, oh?oh?my?god. What have I done? What have I become?" Flicking on the lamp she stood and climbed out of the suit, hood, gloves, boots, bracelets, unclasped the necklace and placed it into its pouch on the nightstand. Drained, she pulled herself under the covers and yawned up at the ceiling. "This is too much. Gotta get home." Shutting off the light, she rolled over and was deeply asleep.

  XXIX

  "A woman's dress should be like a barbed wire fence:

  serving its purpose without obstructing the view."

  -Sophia Loren

  Unseen or not, the moon prevents no one from doing what they have to do or being who they have to be. Fear is the only thing that has such power.

  The new moon = new hope, if you're lucky.

  The full moon = the next hope, if you're lucky.

  And if you're not lucky?well, you're just not lucky. The fool thinks that he or she is the only one who is truly unlucky because the world turns on the very principle of the missed connection: the almost, the utmost near miss.

  The utmost near miss = the musings of women affected by lunar tides, unseen burials, pulled forever by favorite things.

  Between fits of duty and starts of insurrection, the last tin soldier pilfered nuts, bolts, materials from one of the inactive Lunar Rovers. Resisting the urge to cannibalize the other machine, he spent the rest of the day walking through the warehouse. He proved his points to all who challenged him and to the general who had doubted his ability to disappear under the eyes of accepted technology. The general, though a good man, did not understand that a delicately classified lunar mission had set down on what is still called the "dark side" by those who only acknowledge the obvious.

  There are furrows of history and there are furrows of entrenchments. Outside of either lie interpretations of what it all means. Outside of that, interpretations are subject to social level, magnitude or enlightenments that decree the state of war or the world or man's place in all of it. In hope there is always the capacity for something akin to peace. In peace there is always the capacity for yet another war. If "hell" is a universal concept, it exists for all who would accept it or be overrun by it. A modern dogma insists that there are no atheists in the trenches but JHH had learned this was not so, for where else could a man's capacity for disbelief be stronger? Whatever a man disbelieves must here stand or fall, and when those skepticisms fall they will need to be replaced with something else-something more sensible, and the last thing that made sense was any god that urged men to kill one another.

  In the trenches was precisely where atheism could thrive.

  Sitting in the bell of the Saturn V engine, he held June's underwear and remembered the warmth of her body and the sound of her laugh. The day before, he discovered the bra decorating the cockpit of the B-17. All he wanted was to hear from her and learn that she was alive and had gott
en home-or somewhere-safely. He would have to wait and find out per his own instructions, at least til the quarter moon. He could do it, he told himself. Time to go, he rose and pushed the panties down into his pocket. Lights out, doors locked, alarms activated, he climbed behind the wheel of the Jeep.

  "?in any case, the moon."

  And there it was, the first visible sliver hanging low in the desert sky, its grey disc hiding a bitter secret from all who are brave enough to not be fooled by the lights that blind. The last man standing shut his eyes, hit the start button and looked ahead, driving toward the place he called home. The shadows of night would soon drape thin veils against the skin of an earth hoping to once again believe in itself, and small silences would sprinkle the world like a fine dust. He bounced away from the warehouse praying to a goddess he hoped would never ask him to fight, never ask him to pray, while he was losing the ability to care as well as the will to do something about it. Which syndrome was this, and how many syndromes ran rampant through the hyphenated, distillated psyches of an America that called itself modern and enlightened? Which support group should now be sought? Individuals attempt to hide behind everything they feel the need to hide. Critical mass makes a whole damn bigger bunch of fools cancel out the whole damn mess before percentages and probabilities can sway the question or the answer in any direction whatsoever. Who can even talk about a conclusion when the world is shouting at the top of a virtual black lung, the one lung it has left?

  Deep in the night, the sparking crown of neon buzzed away in the empty living room. It was warm, the doors and windows were open, stacks of stealth gizmos had been unloaded from the Ford and piled on the table below the clock. Spilling into the mess was an assortment of distributor caps. In the garage he sat behind the wheel of the No.7 Cobra and next to him were scissors and cut rags of flannel. Thinking of the day he showed June the Titan missile silo, he remembered her reaction to being told she was looking at a nuclear warhead. It was funny how she wanted to run away on feet and legs that were incapable, and it was funny how he claimed they had "?all been deactivated. Nothing to worry about." Sipping on a cold root beer, he let himself laugh. It was the only lie he had ever told her and he felt guilty. He might eventually have a reason to go back out there and disarm the damn things and deactivate the launch mechanisms for which only he knew the passcodes. Today, weighing the justifications of secret photos from the moon, he didn't care.

  A candle burned on the engine bulkhead. June's underwear hung from the roll cage of the cockpit. Her presence had stirred him to resume work on the car-a project that had fallen dormant-and it might help him find the strength and the rest of the parts he needed to finish it and drive away from where the heart loads bullets of spiritual suicide. On JHH's highway there would always be six snakes dancing. Like the dreams of Captain Ahab, they would follow the clues of a countless number of Pegasus spinning, kites escaped from hands that held before the mast, Mercurys tumbling to catch up to them. The seventh snake would carry him forward to stretch out hands, to grasp a buffeting world, to join the other six snakes laughing and hissing a song that the rest of the world could not outrun, and the mongoose would be lulled into potent serenity.

  XXX

  "Peace on earth would mean the end of civilization as we know it."

  -Joseph Heller

  Optimism.

  She hadn't given up yet.

  The sky never gave up. It was still crawling like a brooding infant toward the next empty bottle, unobtainable breast. A girl who called herself June marched along the road's shoulder and looked up. Halting by a sign that said NEXT REST AREA 42 MILES, she walked out to the center of the road and sat. The road has its own sound. Like breathing. Like desire awakened by a drumbeat or a chorus coming from a place you can't make out. The enticement of a shapely idea in a mist or against a drawn curtain, you think you can see that which invites you closer. The skeptic accepts only what is seen. The optimist knows there must be more, and knows that life is to continue seeking it.

  The backpack and bag dropped behind her and she reached down to her feet, unlaced, pulled stubborn boots off, did the same with thick socks, rubbed lint from the bottom of hot, moist soles. Hair clung to forehead and sweat tickled down her neck, her back, her chest; bra and underwear were soaking wet and the coveralls laid heavily against arms and legs. Not one car in either direction for hours. The afternoon sky was an exhilarating blue, a single silver insect crawling across it in a straight line to a faint sliver of moon. All through the fields, neither creature nor mouse. Not a snake in the house. Stretching her body back against the flatness of highway, her thumb clicked the energizer button. Spine crackled like a transformer in an overworked amplifier and eyes stared at a multitude of broadcast frequencies; stations somewhere, way off?way up?way out?so much bright static, so much desire. She turned a head and pressed an ear against the ground, a song filtered up into her nervous system; to the right, a faint sound in the underbrush. She turned her head toward it and listened, placed the other ear against the ground, turned her head back toward the sky and heard it again.

  The blacktop rumbled beneath her like the deck of a freighter swaying side to side by mere nautical inches, urging forward through a lullaby of waves. The silver insect disappeared. She knew it was still there, in flight, and that the ship sailed on. The swarm of a critical mass of thoughts, voices, impulses buzzed in closer. Has anyone ever been able to sum up this life; as we live it; then, now, tomorrow, yes? No. Was any of it so damned important? Why try to tie holy little thoughts together in a neat little package? Aunt Maggie would demand it be wrapped in colored paper and topped off by a correctly knotted bow to be saved and pressed into a book in memoriam for dear Uncle Kevin. Ahh, the sweet bother of the dearly departing fucked-up families.

  The old families knew better. Life was the constant struggle. In the toppling of an old gravestone, with only deaf ears to fall upon, it would always provide the perfect argument that never ended. It would always serve to prove the most basic physics of men, of women, of high pop flies, of divine cows laughing through the heavens. How can there be lights glinting facets of diamonds, the moon obscured by clouds, resisted by nature, unseen by the distracted eye, sailing toward the next dark new one leaving the echoes of whispers of voices. Yes. Closet hopes, secret marriages; following faces fading in the light. Yes. The days keep falling one behind the other, like a deck of cards being shuffled, then cut.

  Oooooh. Myyy. Godddddd. Yesssss!

  An old Ford howled past her head, missing by inches. "Huh?"

  She clicked the button and snapped upright into the quiet of an afternoon that was just as she left it and herself in the middle of the road before passing out, and in both directions-nothing. Not a soul, not a sound. A mind is a terrible thing.

  She thought she heard a train.

  Stretching up, moisture dripped down her skin and she moved herself and her bags off the road and sat back against the pole of the rest area sign. Eyes closed, she heard the tiny commotion in the brush again. When it stopped, she grabbed a water bottle from the travel bag and drank. She unzipped the backpack and reached in, pulling on some stubborn thing that fought back, and then it gave. Like the girl who pulled out a plum, she came up with a distributor cap. It was black, an eight-cylinder, traces of engine soot on its shell. At arm's length it was offered in the bright light of either a sacrifice or an ascension. She knelt in the gravel at the base of the pole, set it down and reached again into the open pack. This time she brought forth a small piece of red cloth. Rolling the swatch across diagonally, she stuck it into the coil terminal, dropped the water bottle into a pocket, grabbed on socks, shoes, zipped up and hefted her bags.

  "God????dammit!" She sniffed at her armpits and laughed. Somewhere there were a million legs dancing?somewhere?yes. And somewhere up ahead?a shower?and soap?and deodorant. Yes. Deodorant! And there had to be a telephone. Yes. A telephone.

  June faced down the road and moved on. Behind her a sm
all noise broke from the brush and slithered near the black cap, sniffing it with its tongue. It coiled around the object, and the faintest of all possible breezes moved the threads of the red flag.