Hayduke Lives!

  “Gay? You call them gay?”

  “Why yes, gay. You don’t think so? Look at them out there, prancing around and around like red savages, beating drums, laughing like idiots, howling at the moon, wrapping themselves in one fantastic tangle around that maypole. If these are revolutionists, they’re the happiest jolliest craziest ones I’ve ever heard of. Wasn’t it Emma Goldman who said, If there’s no dancing at the revolution I won’t come?”

  “Emma Goldman? I don’t recall.”

  “Maybe it was Jesus. Anyway …” Puff, puff, puff. “They’re happy now. But how many will actually show up at Erika’s body-heap demonstration? Bet you ten dollars to a dime there won’t be twenty-five.”

  “You’re such a cynic. Such a defeatist. Such a pessimist.”

  “Pessimist, yes. But a very wise man once said (I believe it was me), a pessimist is simply an optimist in full possession of the facts.”

  “Oh, bull. Bull-loney. You think she’s beautiful?”

  “Beautiful? Who? Whom?”

  “That chick that doll that — come on, you know who I mean. Don’t pretend you weren’t leering at her like everybody else. The men, I mean. Is she?”

  Puff. He considered. Carefully. “Not bad, not bad, in the conventional, cinematic, show-biz sense of the term. She’d make a nice Cosmo cover girl.”

  “Bet you’d rather see her in the middle of Playboy.”

  “Playboy? Not familiar with that — is it a periodical?”

  “Nobody loves a weisenheimer.”

  “You do, I hope. Where’s Reuben?”

  She stared across the moonlit meadow toward the bonfire, the lurid fifty-foot pole swirling with paper streamers, the dancing dark mass of human forms, the musicians bobbing on the stage. “Out there somewhere with Seldom and Susan’s kids. I hope. You think we better find them?”

  “Let them play a little longer. It’s a Kiddies’ Konvention. Susan’s with them.” He dropped his soggy cigar in the dust and ground it out. He drew her close. Lifting her chin, he kissed her, fair and square, on the sweet full rosy mouth. Withdrawing an inch or two, he muttered, “Baby, what say let’s me and you back off under the trees over there, like to show you my new tattoo.”

  “Yeah? You sure it’s me you want?”

  “Cynic.” He gazed into her violet eyes, dark and deep, lustrous and loving in reflected moonlight. “Listen, my love, my only one, there’s cover girls, there’s starlets, there’s sexpots and sexbombs and sleek blank blond bimbos everywhere, but not too many real women. Me, I’ll take the real woman anytime.”

  “You mean that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then shut up and take me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Talk talk talk — let’s have some action around here.”

  “Yes.”

  She squeezed his hand. He was trembling. She stroked his fine hair, his smooth cheeks, his tender ears. She locked her hands behind his neck, tugged him gently down a bit, kissed his thin prim stiff lips. He stood rigid, arms pressed to his sides. She caressed his shoulders, his back, feeling the tension in the muscles. Delicately, she led him farther out upon the point of rock, close to her sleeping bag rolled on its foam rubber pad, the pad resting on a nylon poncho. They looked down, down, down, into the hazy depths, through the mists of moonlight and shadow to the dim forms of trees a thousand feet below — Douglas fir, pinyon pine, Gambel oak, juniper, hackberry. Far beyond and much farther below, the great river glided through its inner gorge toward its mothering fathering androgynous sea.

  He stared into the wonder of the ages. She looked up at his youthful wonder.

  “Oh for so long I sink off you. …”

  He made no answer.

  She ran her fingers through his hair, felt the absurd pigtail with its rubber band, leaned her fair head against his chest, under his chin, and stroked and squeezed the muscles of his brawny arm.

  “You sink off me …?”

  He mumbled something unintelligible, words that caught and never quite emerged from his throat. Ziss silly poor boy: if only I could rub his back. He need massage. Good strong healthy Svenska massage. She kissed him at the base of neck. Slipped a hand up inside his shirt, caressed the hot bare skin of his lower back and waist. She thought of something else, pulled a tidbit from her shirt pocket, unwrapped a chocolate-coated truffle with one hand and held it to his lips.

  “Oral …”

  “Huh?”

  “I haff surprise for you. Open wide, plizz.”

  “Whah? What is it?”

  “Somesing mos’ ex-quis-eet, darlink. Open lips, plizz.” A joke occurred. “Open little hatch.” She unsnapped her cowboy shirt, pulled up her EF! T-shirt. She wore no bra. Naturally. (Support them pectoral muscles.)

  He did not open his mouth. She brushed his lips with the bit of chocolate. No good Mormon can resist chocolate. His tongue came out to taste. She lowered the bait, he bent down to follow, she lowered it further. His head was now below her chin. She clutched his hair with her strong right hand. Again she touched the delicious trifle to his mouth. His lips parted. Her right breast was bare, the nipple like a rosebud, erect and eager.

  “Open wide, my Oral, I pop it in.”

  He opened wide. She arched her back, elevating her firm young mammaries to his face, to the moon, and popped it in.

  “Don’t bite, my luff. It melts in mouth.”

  “Well sheet,” he growled, “just a lot of fuckin’ goddamn bullshit if you ask me. One thousand kooks is all I saw.” The horses shuffled through the pine duff, soft plopping iron shoes scuffing dust that floated like molecules of matter, nothing in particular, Lucretian atoms, on the slanting moonbeams. “Am I right, pardner? What’d you think?”

  The other, up ahead, riding his old gray mare (once a silver stallion), mumbled something vague that sounded like “Good kids. Bunch of nice kids havin’ fun.”

  “Yeah? Well, maybe. But they sure the fuck ain’t gonna stop GOLIATH by layin’ their bodies on the line. You and me know what’ll happen. The construction goons will beat up a few girls and skinny little hippies while the cops watch. Then the cops will arrest the girls and hippies.”

  “For what?” asked the old man leading the way. Slow and cautious. Dark out there in the woods at two in the morning, moon setting low. And Freddies prowling the forest.

  “What for? Come on, Jack, you been there. They arrest you for anything. Anything. Disturbing the peace. Obstructing Giant Earth Mover traffic. Hanging flowers and sticking stickers on the dragline bucket. Damaging private property. Any old thing will do, anything to make more trouble, give the cops an excuse to manhandle some good-lookin’ women, make the demonstrators pay fines and hire lawyers and serve time in the county slammer, same old fuckin’ crap, you know the story. You ever in your life see a situation so bad the cops couldn’t make it worse?”

  No reply to that question. No reply needed.

  They rode on, almost silently, through the pine and the aspen, the fir and the spruce. Hearing nothing, seeing nothing, smelling nothing suggestive of the enemy, the man in the rear continued aloud with his train of thought. “After the cops and the troopers drag ‘em all away, and everything is quiet, and the dust settles down, and the fuckin’ dragline crew decides to take a break in the shade, pop some beers and celebrate, that’s when we make our play.”

  “At the Neck?”

  “The Neck is the place.”

  “Only me and you?”

  “With a little help from my friends.”

  “Friends? You got friends? You?”

  “Hard to believe, maybe. But it’s true, pardner. I ain’t got many but they’re all I got and they’re all we need.”

  “The Gang.”

  “That’s right, Grandpa. That fuckin’ old gang of mine.”

  They rode on, falling again into silence. They listened, watched, sniffed the currents of the air for trace of woodsmoke, gun oil, gasoline fumes, diesel smoke, Freddy’s Forest Ranger eau de cologne, Sm
oky Bear. The old man peered intently ahead with one good eye, remembering the route, alert for any sign of something new. After a while, not slowing, he turned in his saddle, looked back and said,

  “How’d you like that filly with the long mane and the high-set tail? Good hindquarters, too.” Pause. No answer. “Pretty good points all over, wouldn’t you say?”

  His gold tooth gleamed in a grin; his bright glass eye glinted with what, in the moonlight, could pass for wit.

  The younger man merely shrugged his ursine shoulders. His face, shadowed by the brim of a greasy leather sombrero, revealed no expression of emotion. “A woman’s only a woman.” He pulled a cigar from his vest pocket, shucked off the wrapper, stuck the cigar in his teeth. “A good cigar is a smoke.”

  But he did not light the cigar. He chewed it. They rode on, into the dark. The moon was down.

  25

  Love Proposes to His Wife

  Zip! Zap!

  “But Dudley … what would the neighbors think?”

  Pssst! Fssst!

  They stared at each other in the blue glow from the bedroom window. A poor vague light but sufficient for him to perceive the anxiety in her eyes, the tremor on her lip.

  Zit! Zat! Zick!

  “Honey pie, don’t you worry none about them. They think what I tell ‘em to think. And when. Am I Bishop this here goldang ward or hain’t I? Huh?”

  Snick! Snack! Snap crackle pop!

  “You’re Bishop, Dudley, but isn’t that, I mean, you sure that won’t raise a ruckus up in Salt Lake? Them Elders hear about it they might excommunicate.’ ‘

  Blip!

  “Naw. They wouldn’t dare. They know doggone well half the men south of Panguitch got plural wives. Like right here in Hotrocks. Look at that dang jack rabbit Smith, for one. And all them people straddlin’ the border at Short Crick. Not to mention Glen Canyon City and Old Pariah and Stocktank and Feedlot and Greasepit and Dipstick and Landfill and Flyspeck, what about them? And Page, Bluff, Mexican Hat, Kanab, Escalante, Boulder? And Herkin, Springdale, La Verkin, Mesquite, Fredonia? They wouldn’t dare. They’d lose half the Dixie membership roll. And Moab and Hanks ville and Green River and Blanding. Blanding! Gawd that Blanding now, there’s a cesspool of sin and sex and drugs and AIDS and incest and sodom and gonorrhea if I ever heard. Teenage mothers. Putative fathers. They got actual Indian grave robbers livin’ in that town. Talk about ghouls. Their own Bishop a pot collector.”

  Zap! Clapp!

  “We’re talkin’ about polygamy, Father.”

  “Yeah I know, Mother, and that’s my point, there’s plenty things goin’ on in the canyon country lots worse than a man takin’ a second wife. That Smith with three, two of ‘em half his age, look at him. Anyhow you think them Council of Twelve give a hoot in Hell —”

  “Dudley!”

  “— what anybody does down here? They sure as shootin’ don’t. Wasatch Front, that’s all they care about. Wasatch Front and their doggone foreign missions in Norway and New Zealand and Patagonia and Gawd only knows where else. We don’t count for old cowshit in their eyes.”

  “Mister Love!”

  “Pardon my French, Mother, but gosh all golly them square-headed stuff-shirted dingdong dickless old farts up in Provo and Salt Lake make me sick sometime. How come there’s a million a half people livin’ up there and not four thousand in all of Alkali County? Only county in Utah with world’s highest birthrate that’s a-losin’ population. Some kind of Wasatch Front International Communist Sahara Club Federal Government United Nations environmental-extremist conspiracy if you ask me. Get the U.N. out of the U.S. Get the U.S. out of the U.N., we should of done it years ago.”

  Fsssst! Fiiist!

  “Now now, Dudley, don’t get yourself all excited about them United Nations again. You know what it does to your blood pressure. Did you take your digitalis today?”

  “Yes, Mother, I took my digitalis today gawddamnit.”

  “Father!”

  “Sorry Mother. But gee whiz …”

  “Anyhow it’s illegal.”

  “What’s illegal?”

  “Bigamy.”

  “Bigamy? Who’s talkin’ about bigamy? We’re talkin’ about polygamy.”

  “What’s the difference?”

  Zip! Zip zip zip!

  He smiled with tolerant condescension. “Oh come on, woman. Bigamy means two wives. Polygamy means two or more. Anybody knows that. Bigamy is a terrible sin. Polygamy is what them Hebrew old-timers Abraham, Jacob and Isaac and then Joseph Smith and Brigham Young done.”

  “You got a third in mind too, Dudley?”

  “Huh? What? Naw, Mother, just the one.” He smiled at the thought. “Two’s plenty for your old Dudley. You know that. Don’t forget my leaky valve.”

  “Just a-wonderin’ where-all it’s been leakin’, Dud. What’s her name?”

  “Not that valve. Heart valve. What’s her name? You really want details, Mother?”

  She stared out the bedroom window, through the blue glow of Love’s bug-zapper toward the dry pale beetle-infested leaves of the Chinese elm, the neighbor’s blue-glaring mercury vapor yardlight, the distant but pervasive radiation of the uranium mill south of town. No stars available. No moon. Technology hath vanquished night and sometimes the Bishop’s wife regretted that particular conquest in the onward march of progress. Though she’d never dare say so aloud. Not in Hotrocks. Not in Utah. Not in America the Beautiful.

  “How come that bug-zapper don’t kill them elm beetles?”

  “What?”

  “Seems like the more bugs that thing electrocutes the more bugs we get. Like maybe we’re a-breedin’ a tougher smarter breed of bug.”

  He smiled. “Never did know a woman could understand ec-lectricity.”

  “I’m not talkin’ about volts, amperage, wattage or electrodynamics. I’m talkin’ about natural selection. Evolution.”

  “Mother!”

  “Well you been takin’ up cursin’ lately, why can’t I say that word?”

  “Let’s not try to change the subject. Her name is Miss Dick. She’s a rangerette in the BLM.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Oh? Oh, about thirty-five, forty, I reckon.” Liar; he knew very well she was barely thirty.

  “That’s too young for you, Father. She’ll kill you. And then what about the will? What about your eleven children? What about me? We been married nigh onto twenty years, Dudley, and now you talk about a second wife. You bored with me already? And does she get part of your estate — our estate — when your heart gives out tryin’ to keep her … satisfied?” He failed to answer. “Father, you’re too old to take a young wife.”

  “She ain’t young.”

  “Too young for you. You’re an old man.”

  His manly pride was stung. Too old? he thought. Me, too old to do it anymore? Guess I done all right out there on the slickrock. Took a while but I done it, by Gawd, I got it up and I put it in the dock and I made her happy. I think. Didn’t hear her complain none anyhow. Anyhow, like ol’ Seldom says, if I ever get too old to get it up I’ll turn the girls upside-down and drop it in. Like a plumb bob.

  “Nothin’ to say, Dudley?”

  “Huh? I got plenty to say.”

  “Like what?”

  “Like don’t you worry none about that will. Ain’t gonna make no changes in the will. She understands that. She ain’t marryin’ me for money. Why, with that goldang equal rights and affirmative action law (that tain’t a law a-tall) she’ll be state bureau chief inside five years. You know how it is these days. If you ain’t a woman or a Nigra or a homo or a Jew or a Meskin or one-sixteenth Chippewa or better yet an illegal lesbian alien from Haiti in a wheelchair with a disadvantaged I.Q., you ain’t got a chance in government work. That girl she’s on the fast track to the top. Equal rights? What about equal rights for us native-born free white and twenty-one plain old-stock Gawd-fearing native Americans? It’s Communism, Mother, that’s what it is, Communism, and we might
as well all go back to Siberia now. Makes me so gawddang mad …”

  “Easy Dud, easy.” She put her tender hand on his hoary-haired chest. “Heart’s beatin’ too fast, Father. Try to calm down now. You sure you took your digitalis?”

  “Yes I’m sure I took my digitalis. So don’t you worry about Rangerette Dick and the estate, she ain’t gonna touch it. Not that she wants it. Everything we got goes to you and the kids. Anyways I don’t mean to kick the old bucket or cash in my chips or settle the bill or meet my maker or ride an ol’ paint with our faces to the West for a while yet, Mother, why you so interested in that anyhow? So don’t fret.”

  They lay in bed holding hands, watching the blue glow of the insect killer, listening to the erratic, intermittent buzz and snap and zit of tiny executions. The faces of eleven children, framed in gilt, looked down upon the large comfortable if sagging conjugal bed. Eleven sweet and innocent kids, all girls, each and everyone with the face of Daddy, the brains of Mother. Talk about the handicapped, the disadvantaged! Though Mother had been showing signs of cerebral independence lately. Evolution. Natural selection. Electro … electro what? Where’d she see them words, he wondered, drifting toward slumber. Has this woman been hangin’ around the library lately? Never did trust that new librarian we got now. She’s Mormon, of course, but too young for a dangerous position like that. And she didn’t even go to Brigham Young. Went to Utah State. In Logan. Hotbed of beer drinking and anti-Christ and atheism and English majors. …

  His sweet drifting languor was broken by the one question he dreaded most, that he hoped would never come.

  “Dudley … you still love me?”

  “I sure do, Mother.” He squeezed her hand. “More than ever.”

  “Then why do you need a second wife?”

  Silence. Painful silence. Because every bull needs a bunch of cows? every rooster a flock of hens? every stallion a string of mares? The truth was too crude, too brutal, too obvious, too simple to be grasped by the fine subtle intuitive mind of the human female. What’s more he loved the ranger and she loved him, sort of. The truth was not good enough. Not adequate. However, Bishop Love had anticipated this heartbreaking question from his loyal and loving and long-time wife and he had prepared an answer. Now was the time to try it out and hope for the best: