Desolation Angels: A Novel

  Irwin tried to assuage him thru the window but Gaines started crying. “An old man like me, you shouldnt leave me alone. Not like this especially not when I’m sick and cant raise my hand to find my cigarettes—”

  “But you were all right before Jack and I got here, you’ll be all right again.”

  “No, no, call Jack! Dont leave me like this! Dont you remember all the old days we had together and the times I fixed you up with those pawn tickets and laid money on ya—If you leave me like this this morning I’m goinna die!” he cried. We couldnt see him, just hear him from his pillow. Irwin called Simon to yell something at Gaines and together we actually ran away in shame and miserable horror, with our luggage, down the street—Simon looked at us whitefaced. We swirled around the sidewalk in confusion. But the cab we’d already hailed was waiting and the natural cowardly thing to do was just pile right in and head for New York. Simon came after, jumping in. It was a “Whoo” of relief but I never knew how Gaines got out of that particular day’s sickness. But he did. But you’ll see what happened, later …

  The driver was Norman. When we were all seated in Norman’s car he said the springs would bust before New York or even before Texas. Six men and a pile of bags and rucksacks on the roof tied all around with rope. A miserable American scene again. So Norman started the motor, raced it, and like those dynamite trucks in movies about South America he started rolling at one mile per hour, then 2, then 5, as we all held our breath of course, but he got her going to 20, then 30, then out on the hiway to 40 and 50 and we suddenly all realized it was just a long car ride and we’d just breeze on hiways in a good old American machine.

  So we settled down to the trip beginning with the rolling of joints of pot, to which the young Puerto Rican passenger Tony didnt object—he was on his way to Harlem. Strangest of all suddenly this big gangster Norman starts singing arias in a piercing tenor voice as he drives along, the which goes on all the way all night to Monterey. Irwin joins him from beside me in the back singing arias I never knew he knew, or singing the notes of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue. I’m so befoggled by all these years of traveling and suffering sadness I almost forget to realize Irwin and I used to listen to Bach’s Toccata and Fugue with earphones in the Columbia Library.

  Lazarus sits in front and the Puerto Rican gets interested in interviewing him, finally so does Norman realizing what a weird kid he is. By the time we get to New York three days and nights later he is sternly advising Lazarus to exercise a lot, drink milk, walk straight and join the Army.

  But at first there’s hostility in the car. Norman comes on rough with us thinking we’re a bunch of faggy poets. As we hit the mountains at Zimapan we’re all high and suspicious anyway on tea. But he makes it worse. “Now you all have to consider me the captain and absolute master of this ship. You just cant sit there lettin me do all the work. Cooperate! When we come to a left curve, we all together singing lean to the left, and vicie vercie with the right coives. You got that?” At first I laugh thinking it’s funny (also very practical for the tires as he explained) but no sooner we hit the first mountain curve and we (the boys) lean over, Norman and Tony aint even leaning over at all but just laughing. “Now the right!” says Norman, and again the same silly thing.

  “Hey how come you aint leaning!” I yell.

  “I’ve got my driving to think about. Now you boys just do what I say and everything’ll be fine and we’ll get to New York,” a little peevish now that someone had spoken out. I was scared of him at first. In my pot paranoia I suspected he and Tony were crooks who would just hold us up en route for whatever we had, which wasnt much though. As we went along and he grew more annoying it was Irwin (who never fights) finally saying:

  “Oh shut up”

  & all the car was cool thereon.

  23

  It even became a good trip and it was even almost fun at the border at Laredo to have to unpack all the incredible heap on the roof including Norman’s bicycle and show it to guards in steel rimmed spectacles who saw they had no chance to check everything in such a hopeless clutter of junk.

  The wind was whipping keen in the Rio Grande Valley, I felt great. We were in Texas again. You could smell it. The first thing I ordered was ice cream softies for all of us, nobody objecting at all. And we rolled to San Antonio in the night. It was Thanksgiving Day. Sad signs announced Turkey dinner in the cafés of San Antone. We didnt dare stop for that. The American road restless runners are terrified of relaxing even a minute. But outside San Antonio at 10 P.M. Norman was too exhausted to go on and stopped the car near a dry riverbottom to nap in the front seat while Irwin and I and Laz and Simon took out our sleepingbags and spread them on the 20° frosty ground. Tony slept in the backseat. Irwin and Simon slithered somehow into Irwin’s new Mexican-bought blue French sleepingbag with the hood, a slim bag and not even long enough for their feet. Lazarus was to get into my Army sleepingbag with me. I let him get in first and then slithered in where I could work the zipper over my neck. There was no way of turning over without a signal. The stars were cold and dry. Sagebrush with frost, the smell of cold winter cow dung. But that air, that divine Plains air, I actually fell asleep on it and in the middle of our sleep I made a motion to turn over and Laz went right over. It was strange. It was also uncomfortable because you couldnt move at all except to turn over en masse. But we were doing all right and it was Norman and Tony who couldnt stand the cold in the car who woke us all up at 3 A.M. to resume with the heater on the run.

  Motley dawn in Fredericksburg or someplace which I’d crossed a thousand times like.

  24

  Those long droning runs across a state’s afternoon with some of us sleeping, some of us talking, some of us eating sandwiches of despair. Whenever I ride like that I always wake up from a nap with the sensation that I’m being driven to Heaven by the Heavenly Driver, no matter who he is. There’s something strange about one person guiding the car while all the others dream with their lives in his steady hand, something noble, something old in mankind, some old trust in the Good Old Man. You come out of a drowsy dream of sheets on a roof and there you are in the Arkansas piny barrens zipping along at 60, wondering why and looking at the driver, who is stern, who is still, who is lonesome at the controls.

  We arrived at Memphis in the evening and ate a good meal at last in a restaurant. It was then Irwin got mad at Norman and I was afraid Norman would stop the car and fight him in the road: some argument about Norman being a pest all the way which was really no longer true: so I said “Irwin you cant talk to him like that, he has a right to get sore.” So I established in the car that I was a big bumbling bullshitter who didnt want fights for any reason whatever. But Irwin wasnt mad at me either and Norman became silent on the subject. The only time I ever really fought a man was when he was socking my doubled-up buddy Steve Wadkovsky against the car at night, beaten but kept beating him, a big guy. I rushed in and engaged him across the road with rights and lefts some of which connected but all light like taps, or slaps, to his back, where his father dragged me off in dismay. I cant defend myself, only friends. So I didnt want Irwin to fight Norman. Once I got mad at Irwin (1953) and said I’d kick him in the pants but he said “I can beat you up with my mystic strength,” which scared me. Anyway Irwin doesnt take any bull from anybody, while me, I’m always sitting there with my Buddhist “vow of kindness” (vowed alone in the woods) taking abuse with pent up resentment that never comes out. But a man, hearing the Buddha (my hero) (my other hero, Christ is first) never answered abuse, came up to the sighing Bhagavat and spit in his face. Buddha is reported to have said: “Since I cant use your abuse, you may have it back.”

  In Memphis Simon and Laz the brothers suddenly engaged in horseplay at the gas station sidewalk. Annoyed, Lazarus gave Simon one push and sent him skittering half way across the street, strong as an ox. One big Russian Patriarch Push that amazed me. Laz is six feet tall and wiry but as I say walks bent over, like an old 1910 hipster, rather like a farmer in t
he city. (The word “beat” comes from the old Southern countryside.)

  In West Virginia at dawn Norman suddenly made me drive. “You can do it, dont worry, just drive, I’ll relax.” And it was that morning I really learned how to drive. With one hand on the bottom of the steering wheel I somehow managed perfectly all kinds of curves right and left with going-to-work cars squeezing in on a narrow two lane. For the right curve the right hand, for the left the left. I was amazed. Everybody in the back seat was asleep, Norman talked to Tony.

  I felt so proud of myself that I bought a quart of port wine in Wheeling that evening. That was the night of nights on the trip. We all got high and sang a million simultaneous arias as Simon drove grimly (Simon the old ambulance driver) clear to Washington D.C. at dawn, over a superhiway thru the woods. When we rolled into town Irwin yelled and shook Lazarus to wake up to see the Nation’s capital. “I wanta sleep.”

  “No wake up! you’ll never see Washington again probably! Look! The White House that big white dome with the light! Washington’s monument, that big needle in the sky—”

  “Old mint,” said I as we rolled by it.

  “This is where the President of the U.S. lives and does all his thinking about what America’s going to do next. Wake up—sit like this—look—big Justice Departments where they rule on censorship—” Lazarus looked out nodding.

  “Big empty Negroes standing by mailboxes,” I said.

  “Where’s the Empye State Building,” says Laz. He thinks Washington is in New York. In fact he probably thinks Mexico is a circle around.

  25

  Then we go barreling to the New Jersey turnpike in the eye-dry morning of transcontinental automobile horror which is the history of America from pioneer wagon to Ford—In Washington Irwin has called the Poetry Consultant of the Library of Congress to ask about Raphael, who hasnt arrived yet (waking up the man’s woman at dawn) (but poetry is poetry)—And as we drive the Turnpike Norman and Tony up front with Laz are both earnestly advising him about how to live now, how not to goof, how to get a hold of himself good—As for going in the Army Laz says “I dont wanta be told what to do” but Norman insists we all have to be told what to do, but I disagree because I’m just like Lazarus about the Army or the Navy too—(if I can get away with it, if he can, by diving into the night of the self and becoming obsessed with one’s own solo Guardian Angel)—Meanwhile Irwin and Simon are now completely and finally exhausted and sit erect in the back seat with me (all’s well, toot) but with their heads fallen down sweaty and suffering on their breasts, the mere sight of them, of their weariness-slicked unshaven sweaty countenances with lips poofed in horror—Ah—It makes me realize it was somehow worth it to leave the peace of my Mexican Moon Roof to go yungling and travailing across harsh folly world with them, to some silly but divine destination in some other part of the Holy Ghost—Tho I disagree with their ideas about poetry and peace I cant help loving their suffering sweaty faces and disheveled heads of hair like my father’s hair when I found him dead in the chair—In the chair of our home—When I was absolutely incapable of believing there was such a thing as the death of Papa let alone mine own—Two crazy boys exhausted years later heads down like my dead father (with whom I’d hotly argued also, O why? or why not, when angels gotta yell about something)—Poor Irwin and Simon in the world together, compañeros of a Spain of their own, bleak parking lots in their brows, their noses broken with greasy … restless philosophers with no bones … saints and angels of a high assembly from the past in that post I held as Babe of Heaven—Falling, falling with me and Lucifer and Norman too, falling, falling in the car—

  What will be the death of Irwin? My cat’s death is a claw in the earth. Irwin a toothbone? Simon a brow? Grinning skulls in all the car? Lazarus has to join the Army for this? The mothers of all these men pining away in shaded livingrooms now? The fathers horny handed buried with shovels on their breasts? Or printer’s ink fingers curled over rosary tomb? And their ancestors? The aria singers gulping earth? Now? The Puerto Rican with his cane reed where herons hay graves? The soft dawn wind off Carib doth rustle Camacho’s oil flutter? The deep French faces of Canada staring forever in the ground? The Singers of Dawn Mexico hung up on corazón (heart), no more ope the high barred window serenade handkerchief girl lips?

  No.

  Yes.

  26

  I was about to come across a belly of wheat myself which would make me forget about death for a few months—her name was Ruth Heaper.

  It happened like this: we arrived in Manhattan on a freezing November morning, Norman said goodbye and there we were on the sidewalk, the four of us, coughing like tuberculars from lack of sleep and too much resultant concomitative smoking. In fact I was sure I had T.B. And I was thinner than ever in my life, about 155 pounds (to my present 195), with hollowed cheeks and really sunken eyes in a cavernous eye bone. And it was cold in New York. It suddenly occurred to me we were all probably going to die, no money, coughing, on the sidewalk with bags, looking in all four directions of regular old sour Manhattan hurrying to work for pizza night comforts.

  “Old Manhattoes”—“bound round by flashing tides”—the deep VEEP or VEEM of freighter stack whistles in the channel or at the dock. Hollow eyed coughing janitors in candy stores remembering the greater glory … somewhere … Anyway: “Irwin, what the hell are we gonna do now?”

  “Dont worry, we’ll ring Phillip Vaughan’s doorbell just two blocks away on Fourteenth”—Phillip Vaughan aint in—“We could have camped on his wall-to-wall French translation rug till we found rooms. Let’s try two girls I know down here.”

  That sounds good but I expect to see a couple of suspicious sandy uninterested Dikes with sand for us in their hearts—But when we stand there and yell up at cute Chelsea District Dickensian windows (our mouths blowing fog in the icy sun) they stick their two pretty brunette heads out and see the four bums below surrounded by the havoc of their inescapable sweatsmelling baggage.

  “Who is that?”

  “Irwin Garden!”

  “Hello Irwin!”

  “We just got back from Mexico where women are serenaded just like this from the street.”

  “Well sing a song, just dont stand there coughing.”

  “We’d like to come up and make a few phonecalls and rest a minute.”

  “Okay.”

  Minute indeed …

  We puffed up four flights and came into the apartment which had a wooden creaky floor and a fireplace. The first girl, Ruth Erickson, stood greeting us, I suddenly remembered her:—Julien’s old girlfriend before he got married, the one he said had Missouri River mud running thru her hair, meaning he loved her hair and loved Missouri (his home state) and loved brunettes. She had black eyes, white skin, black black hair and big breasts: what a doll! I think she’d grown taller since the night I got drunk with her and Julien and her roommate. But out of the other bedroom steps Ruth Heaper in her pajamas yet, brown sleek hair, black eyes, little pout and who are you and what for? And built. Or as Edgar Cayce says, builded.

  But that’s all right but when she throws herself in a chair in such a way I see her pajama bottom I go mad. There’s also something about her face I never saw before:—a strange boyish mischievous or spoiled pucky face but with rosy woman lips and soft cheek of fairest apparel of morning.

  “Ruth Heaper?” I say when introduced. “Ruth who heaped the heap of corn?”

  “The same,” she says (or I guess she said, I dont remember). And meanwhile Erickson has gone downstairs to fetch the Sunday papers and Irwin is washing in the bathroom, so we all read the paper but I cant keep my thoughts off the sweet thighs of Heaper in those pajamas right there in front of me.

  Erickson is actually a girl of tremendous consequence in our Manhattan now who heaps lots of influence with phonecalls and dreams and plots over beers to cupid up people, and makes men guilty. Because (making men guilty) she is an irreproachably sensitive open lady tho I suspect her of evil motives right off. Bu
t as for Heaper, she has wicked eyes too, but that’s only because she’s been spoiled by her self made grandfather, who sends her like Television sets for Christmas for her apartment and she’s not impressed at all—Only later I learned she also walked around Greenwich Village with boots on, carrying a whip. But I cant see that the reason is congenital.

  All four of us are trying to make her, the four coughing ugly bums of their doorstep, but I can see I got the upper hand just by staring into her eyes with my hungry want-you campy “sexy” look which nevertheless is as genuine as my pants or yours, man or woman—I want her—I’m out of my mind with weariness & goop—Erickson brings me a darling beer—I’m going to make love to Heaper or die—She knows it—She however starts singing all the tunes from My Fair Lady perfectly, imitating Julie Andrews perfectly, the Cockney accent and all—I realize now this little Cockney was a boy in my previous lifetime as a Boy Pimp and Thief in London—She’s come back to me.

  Gradually, like always the case, the four of us boys get to use the bathroom and shower and clean up suitably somewhat, even shaves—We’re all going to have a gay night now to find some old friend of Simon’s in the Village, with the happy Ruths, walk around in cold lovely New York winds in love—Oh boy.

  What a way to end that horrible trip up.

  27

  And where’s my “peace”? Ah, there it is in that belly of pajama wheat. That naughty kid with shiny black eyes who knows I love her. We all go out to the Village streets, bang on windows, find “Henry,” walk around Washington Square Park and at one point I demonstrate my best ballet leap to my Ruth who loves it—We go arm in arm behind the gang—I think Simon is a little disappointed she hasnt chosen him—For God’s sake Simon give me something—Suddenly Ruth says just the two of us oughta go up and hear the whole album of My Fair Lady again, meet the others later—Walking arm in arm I point to upstairs windows of my delirious Manhattan and say: “I wanta write about everything that happens behind every one of those windows”