Why Are We in Vietnam?
Chap Ten
Listen, did you know, creep technician, about the superconductivity of metals at absolutely low temperatures? yeah, fab, you get down at three degrees or four degrees of absolute zero (and that’s the zero, man—lower you cannot go) guess what—there is five metals, no more, which become super superconductors. Take a ring of Thallium, that soft shit, put it at 240° abs. for absolute, run a bar magnet through the middle of the ring, run it out again, and the current that’s induced won’t stop running around the ring for months. So, employ your new knowledge, take a cunt, put her near Absolute Zero, work up a ring of troth (this is a wedding, you nut) composed of Old Thallium, Mother Mercury, Lemuel Lead, Timothy Tin, or Ike Indium, any one of those soft spooky witch metal elements will do, cool it till it’s as cold as that beauteous cunt out near Absolute Zero, and then, man, hold your hairy jewels, cause a shock is coming up, why you just take and run and plunge your dick through the near absolute zero ring, zing into that gone ice snatch, whoo-ee! whoo-ee! pull it out before you rock stone ice pinnacle prick. You just set up a current, man, is going to keep that cunt in charge for months. Whoever said your gong was not a magnet? Oo la la, Françoise, your trou de merde is inoubliable for it is like the Camembert my mozzaire used to make when we were young, Boonkie.
Fuck this noise, why is D.J. hovering on the edge of a stall? Make your point! But D.J. is hung because the events now to be recounted in his private tape being made for the private ear of the Lord (such is the hypothesis now forging ahead) are hung up on a moment of the profoundest personal disclosure, in fact, dig, little punsters out in fun land, D.J. cannot go on because he has to talk about what Tex and him were presented with there all alone up above the Arctic Circle, and that’s where the root of the hangnail grows, it all happens faster in the Arctic C, there’s gathering of ionization on those polar caps, those auroral regions are electric, man, more ground charge than the rest of earth, cause the messages are coming in, the M.E.F. (Magnetic-Electro Fief—don’t forget) is charging the joint by night, those ice ass pinnacles of the Brooks Range are vibrating to the modulations of the waves, a crystal oscillator is every mountain has got ice on its tip, and there’s lots of mountains and lots of ice, pick up on this—the boys, you will remember, dear grassed-out auditor, have just finished cooking their breakfast, and aware of game all about them, half-clean themselves from the walk, half-fouled with the emanated nauseas of medium assholes and Rusty high-grade asshole, disillusioned with Big Luke’s Cop Turd copping out on the big game hunter’s code and oath, and just in a general state of mixed shit, for the walk up to here has done them only a minim of good. They have not cleaned the pipes, not yet. They are still full of toilet plunger holes seen in caribou, and shattered guts and strewn-out souls of slaughtered game meats all over the Alaska air and Tex feels like he’s never going to hunt again which is not unhorrendous for him since he’s natural hunter, but then with one lightning leap from the button on his genius belt to the base of his brain-pan he gets the purification ceremony straight in his head, and announces to D.J. that they gonna wrap their weapons and lash them in a tree, and then they going to walk through the forest and up to the peak with their Randall bowies, and their binocs, and packs, but nothing to protect themselves with except the knife. They each know even as he says it that this is how you get the fear, shit, disgust and mixed shit tapeworm out of fucked-up guts and overcharged nerves. But D.J. is in a grab for your dick competition snit that he didn’t think of this first, so says, “Let’s leave the Randalls behind, too.”
And Tex replies, “A man can’t go without a knife.”
“Do it or don’t do it,” says D.J., “but don’t finger fuck yore ass.”
Man, this is striptease shit. “Then we don’t take our binocs,” says Tex.
“Then don’t take our packs.”
No sleeping bags.
No food.
No compass.
Man, they got some of that mixed shit out of them already. About the time they cache all belongings, they own clean fear now, cause they going to live off the land. And they as light as if they lost gravity. D.J. could take a ten-foot spring. If it wasn’t cold ass this morning, he’d be ready to go naked. Oh, that country looks big and mean up ahead.
But they got to take a backward step. Cause their ass is freezing half to death. You ever count on the weather in Brooks Range, kiss your own fever blister, mister (you know how you got it) that weather is like a bitch with hot and cold water running in her bush. Right now it’s running icy shock cold. They push up not two hundred yards after we left them caching their gear, going through the boreal-montane, not two hundred yards through a forest getting skinny in its Arctic birch and alder, hardly a black spruce left, and squat, they at the edge, they at timberline again, and the ridge of the hill they been climbing is there, bare, twenty yards ahead of them, and they top that, and look down on a long valley, more forest, and then ahead to the beginning of a range of snow-topped mountains, bare-ass peaks, bare as the bald head of an egg, bare and white as the crest on a wave, and more mountains behind them, and more behind, like an arrow across the morning blue shooting for two hundred miles or more across mountains no man ever saw from the center, only from the air, and nothing but snow, even now in September nothing but snow, land as white as a desert and deserted, just peaks. And it rings back at them like a stone on a shield, no, better block that metaphor, drop it altogether, Lady Ethel, it rings back like a finger wet on the rim of the best piece of glass on Park Avenue, New York, yeah—D.J. ain’t been East for nothing—those mountains are a receptacle, man, a parabolic reflector, an avatar, a bowl of resonance, listen to the boys totter just at the icy look of them, and they know they got to go back a little on their newfound principles, they got to take a bedroll and grub, their pup tent, the matches, a rope, shit, they can’t go clean, they even take the binoculars, but mixed shit does not flow in again to the reservoir of their heart because celestial mechanics is built on equations and going with nothing into the forest is not necessarily more loaded with points of valor than going with rudimentary bag and forage yet without arms into mountain snow. September, and that land ahead is white as a sheet! So they still clean, and lost thirty minutes pulling down lashed gear from the tree and lashing it up again to keep grizzer from cleaning them out before they return, but now they really off, they up over the ridge, down into the forest draw, and climb up again, and one hour and twenty minutes later they are on the edge of the snow, that same snow which looked to be near as an arrow shot away. But now the sun is out, and it is hot, man, up to 65° and more which is hot in that snow and the dazzle is like sunlight on the water.
“That dazzle,” said D.J., pushing into the sluggish kind of mealy new wet powder, not fluff, not sludge, just a bit of going heavy, three inches deep here, no more, here at the beginning of a snowfield, one thousand miles wide (or near to that) and two hundred miles north across the mountains onto tundra again, “that dazzle,” said D.J., “is like sunlight on water.”
“Shit,” said Tex.
“Yeah, man, it’s like the dazzle on the water outside of Herod’s court in Caesarea, ever hear of that?”
“Shee-it,” said Tex.
“Well, you ain’t no I.Q. competitor.”
“Fuck, I ain’t. I compete you in anything.”
“Never mess with me, ignoramus.”
“Why,” said Tex, “tell me about Herod and his fuck hole in Caesarea. When you done I’m gone to do a Caesarea up your ass.”
“You ain’t seen the day you was strong enough to unzip it out of your pants around me, pussy kisser.”
“Pick the dingleberries out of your teeth. Who was Herod?”
“Herod was a royal goat fucker, you cock-sucker.”
“I,” said Tex, “never sucked a cock in my life, but I’m going to make you the first. I’m going to suck your cock and bite it off and send the bloody abomination to your momma.”
“Oh, man, you’d be a cha-cha faggot
if you wasn’t so ugly.”
Hey, hey, is this the way they really talk? And at sixteen and seventeen. Well, yes, they is geniuses, D.J. been telling you. And all that pederastic palaver? Hell, yes. They is crazy about each other. They even prong each other’s girls when they can, but fear not, gentle auditor, they is men, real Texas men, they don’t ding ding ring a ling on no queer street with each other, shit, no, they just talk to each other that way to express Texas tenderness than which there is nothing more tender than a flattened pan-fried breaded paper-thin hard-ass Texas steak. And don’t forget those French fries and the dead fly in the red crud rim of the bottle ketchup, not to mention the citric acid in the salad dressing—we ain’t got those gut bucket skillet flat Texas ass stomachs for nothing. Listen, fellow Americans, and D.J. here to tell you, don’t get upset by the boys’ last dialogue, they so full of love and adventure and in such a haste to get all the mixed glut and sludge out of their systems that they’re heating up all the foul talk to get rid of it in a hurry like bad air going up the flue and so be ready to enjoy good air and nature, cause don’t forget they up in God’s attic, that country way upstairs, Brooks Range here, to say not too far from Mount Michelson, that’s a mount, and so fret not those of ye who live for the quiet of Sunday on our quiet streets, those boys would not talk that way to your daughter or your sister, no, sir, they would just ruminate privately a little, and do their best to fuck her.
Yeah, and now they don’t talk for half an hour, and just walk along climbing in the barest parts of the snow which is three inches and two and not too bad, but for the drifts where it is foot and more, and then Tex, all quiet and cool, puts a light grip of a hand on D.J., and whispers, “Shut up, now, there’s a wolf on the ridge.”
And that wolf is a sight. He’s a white wolf and he weigh in at one hundred and plus and plus, just a long big high beast of a white police dog the size of a Dalmatian and more. And that wolf is doing nothing, he’s just running along the ridge, and taking a bound now and then and his big white fur goes up in the air and separates just as lithe and quick ass from the snow. There’s times you can see nothing more than a mouth, nose and eyes, black outline black as paint, two ovals, two green-gold eyes, black stub of a nose, air so clear you can see the shine in the cavity of the black nostrils, and then the mouth, black outline, red gums, red as cut-open flesh, and white teeth, fangs. They suddenly aware they got no gun, and this wolf not much beyond one hundred yards away on the ridge is alert to something, could it be them? and they raise hackles and try to hold them down, cause those hackles are transmitting waves, and oh, shit, that wolf just turned, he’s putting his radar on their waves, whoo, he’s zero on them, can’t see, but can sense, he takes one step their direction like feeling the pulsing up of the field—what they giving off, murder or a meal? He can’t determine, so here comes another step. Animal murder is near. Everything is all silent suddenly. Nature is just as timid shit as a slum street—the boys did not know before how silent silence could be, thought it was silent in the snow, but there had been sparrows, yeah, scutterings of squirrels, yeah, white snow mice, sounds all over, now none. Each of those boys rings up the voltage in their resolve, like let that fuck wolf try to come to them, and they will give him a time, they thinking of how to kick his nuts in, choke his throat, dig into his ears with their fingers, push through his eyes to his brain (that is if he is biting one and the other does the rescue) man, they’re fired, and that electric fire goes off them. Two waves of murder, human and animal, meet across the snow in a charge as fantastic and beautiful as Alexander Nevsky, thank you very much, and wolf stops dead, knocked on his psychic ass, what a pity psychic struggle cut no ice with silver iodide or movies be cheaper to make: that wolf slides off them and goes ambling down the ridge, no longer leaping and swinging at how loose, hippy-dippy, juggler balls and ass he is, no, the wolf he older, he been put down, that’s no good for any presumptive continuer of his own species.
But the D.J. wave and the Tex Hyde wave which Lupo II decided to slide away from has gone wave zinging into the air where Mr. Lobster with wings, Thing with a claw, E Pluribus, old man Eagle fuck, yeah old man Eagle comes a zooming down out of the air in plummet, gray feather mass, white neck, black head, black claws, black as teakwood, man, whoo-ee, what a drop, the boys they practically clapping, he comes from five hundred feet right down like Magnum Lightning Zero down to the back of Lupo II who turns just in time, opens those teeth, wheels, stands on hind feet, swings two forelegs, left right, cuff, cuff, and M. Lightning Zero, our eagle, hereafter MLZ, thank you, splats into a flat out, wings out, hovers, like an eagle, man, wings arched and fluttering just a tickle to stay in place above the wolf, he just gliding in the air one spot, his claws like lightning, zap! zap!—they miss each other, wolf and eagle, but that opening of the wings to brake out from the plummet when Lupo II took his wheel, turn, and fight, oh man, it was a shock to the heart, cause death stood out in those wings, if you’d been a bug in the shadow of those wings you’da called out, “Bury me clean, Armageddon is here.” And D.J. thinks just once of his dad, and eagle story he told him and knows MLZero is going for the eyes, and wolf he’s just going for the meal, and in comes MLZ and L II stands him off, miss and miss, and again they try, wolf giving a sobbing scream like, “I’m going to kill you, mother-fucker.” And old Magnum LZ he got a screech like a den of hooknosed women when one of their pocketbooks is missing, so it’s sob and scream, and attack and parry, come in on a shot, brake, claw air, veer off, do a spin back, and Mr. Wolf like a boxer picking off horseflies in the air, cuff, cuff, coot, coot, suddenly it’s bullshit and bullshit, cause they each missing the other, old eagle he staying just out of range, Magnum Z. Lightning that’s all the fuck he is, Tuckerman, and finally they done, and M.Z. Lightning humps his wings and heads on down the air carrying on like a crow, and L II nominating himself as winner, sets on his hind end and lets up a call which starts low, calls in all the beasty guts for miles around, tells them of the taste of fresh game, goes up higher than a coloratura into ascents of panic and power and warning and a call to the mountain ring and then tries to hit High E above High C for nothing, to show he’s a virtuoso, and fails to make it, good for him, and slides all down into bronchitis again and the smell of his own shit ass wolf hide in a hole in hibernation not so far away. And the boys understood every sound of it. And if Tex had had a gun, he would have imitated every sound of it. But they don’t have a gun and once again they feel just as clean and on-edge and perfect as would you, sedentary send-in-terror auditor of this trip, when you, sir, are about to insert the best piece of cock you ever mustered up into a cunt which is all fuck for you, and your nose is ozone you so clean and perfect, well, they feeling like that every instant now, whoo-ee! whoo-ee; they can hardly hold it in, cause this mother nature is as big and dangerous and mysterious as a beautiful castrating cunt when she’s on the edge between murder and love, forgive the lecture, Pericles, but the smell is everywhere, the boys are moving on smell, snow smell, better believe it, good here, not so good there—move along, this is sweet, hold up, rotten shit around the bend, some clutch of mice, no more, but their scamperings set up the wrong scratchy little tickler cymbal along the snow fluff and make some smell go wrong somewhere else, something like that. Man, it’s terrifying to be free of mixed shit. And they got the unfucked heaven of seeing twelve Dall ram on an outcropping of snow two miles away across two ridges, and those Dall ram solemn head and light foot make their way down a slope, heading into valleys for winter and for feed, it’s a procession, and through the binocs they are so white and their horns, oh, man, the underside is yellow golden rosy color that gives D.J. twiddles in the gut (twiddles being of course nothing but mother-of-pearl butterflies in cameo, Sir Lancelot) and the sun is on that snow and space! man. You could be Cleopatra on a barge and twenty galley slaves, and the sun on the water is a feather in your nose. Olé, olé.