Day Out of Days (9 page)

Site of the Mormon exodus to Utah. Seventy thousand of them crossed the wide Mississippi here in 1846, fleeing the rabid mob. The righteous drove them out. One testimony on the side of a building in block letters: a woman who hangs all her straight-backed chairs on the wall, sweeps out her plain board house, closes up all the shutters, puts the broom back in its proper place, locks up the front door, and says good-bye forever to her blessed home-place. She turns west to face a sea of salt.

The European missionary sat hunkered down in a squatting position with the Huron tribesmen in a great circle around the bonfire. It was a posture he was unused to and instinctively felt put him at a disadvantage insofar as persuading the Indians into his point of view. Nevertheless, he bravely presented the notion that he was not one but two. When the warriors heard this they broke into wild laughter and started throwing sticks and dirt into the fire, which created a strange mixture of terror and resentment in the missionary’s chest. When the laughter subsided he pressed on with his contention. He patiently explained to the savages that this corporeal body they saw sitting before them was only an exterior shell and that inside him resided a smaller invisible body that, one day, would fly away to live in a heavenly domain. The Huron all chuckled and nodded to themselves as they knocked the ashes from their stone pipes into the crackling fire. The missionary felt deeply misunderstood and was about to get up and return to his tent in a huff when an old man next to him held him in place by the shoulder. He explained to the missionary that all the warriors and shamans present in the circle were well aware of these two bodies and that they also had “little people” residing inside them deep within the chest and that they too flew away at death. The missionary became excited at this new news and felt reassured that he and the tribesmen
were now on the same path. With renewed zeal he asked the old man where his people thought these little interior beings traveled off to. The Huron all laughed again and the old man pointed to the crown of a massive ancient cedar nearby that flashed in silhouette from the firelight. He told the missionary these “little people” entered the very top of that tree and descended into its trunk and branches, where they lived in eternity, and that was why he could not cut it down to make siding for his little chapel in the wilderness.

They say, these days, standing out on the rim of the Grand Canyon, the brightest lights in the night sky are not the stars in the heavens but the glow from casino neon in Las Vegas—one hundred and seventy-five miles away.

I try calling Luis again from the yellow pay phone. I’m yearning for some variation on the company I’m keeping but he’s still not there. A different woman from the first but with just as strong an accent tells me he’s down in Chihuahua now and won’t be back for at least a week. I tell her I thought it was Oaxaca where he was last and she says she doesn’t keep track of him that closely, he moves around a lot; then she hangs up on me just like the first woman did. These two must be something to behold.

There’s music and singing coming from the mission chapel so we head over there. We’re just leaves in the wind. We pass a very Teutonic-looking tourist in a neck brace and a fringed Davy Crockett jacket who’s trying to figure out his Kodak Instamatic. John stops and helps him with it. John is very good with cameras, I must admit. He loves fiddling with them, the lenses and straps and stuff. He’s a natural with cameras. The tourist guy is overjoyed that a total American stranger has stopped and gone out of his way to help him. He’s very impressed with John. I think he must be German or Dutch or gay or something. Very strong accent and he’s wearing those weird European sandals that buckle up the ankle and look like they’re made out of phony leather. And on top of that he’s wearing them over a pair of thick army-green wool socks. It’s funny but I’ve found you can actually pinpoint where people come from by the sandals they’re wearing. Like Mexicans, for instance,
prefer those huaraches with black rubber soles made out of old tires. Pakistanis generally like those flimsy jobs with the leather loop around the big toe. I’ve gotten pretty good at identifying nationalities that way. Stereotyping. Of course, you’re bound to make a mistake now and then. John looks like he’s finally solved the problem with the man’s Kodak and the man is extremely grateful, trying to give John money and bowing and scraping, hauling out twenties and tens but it seems like he doesn’t quite know the difference in the denominations so he’s just holding out fistfuls of money but John won’t take it. Deep down, John is basically a very honorable guy. He has what you might call true moral fiber although it beats me where he came up with it. He’s done a lot of reading and he once attended a Krishnamurti lecture. I think it was actually a series of lectures out in Big Sur somewhere. I’m not sure. Now Dennis is telling John that he should accept the money from the German guy; we could use it for gas and cigarettes but John still won’t take it. So now the German guy tries giving the money to Dennis but Dennis says he wasn’t the one who fixed the camera. The German keeps insisting, shaking the money up and down in both fists, so finally Dennis pockets forty bucks of it and hands the rest back to him. Then John starts yelling at Dennis to give the forty bucks back so Dennis pulls it out and tries handing it back but now the German refuses to take it. He throws his hands
up and steps back as though saying, “A deal’s a deal.” Now John really goes ballistic and starts screaming at the German, “Take your money back you stupid fucking Kraut! What’s the matter with you?” People are turning to stare at us now from across the plaza. Peaceful people on vacation. “Do you think Americans are all on the take? Is that it? Huh? Do you think we’re incapable of generosity and goodwill? Or is it your historical racial guilt that’s causing you to treat me like some lowlife beggar?” The German keeps smiling and nodding and thanking John then turns and walks away, just like that, leaving Dennis with the forty bucks still clenched in his outstretched hand. John snatches up the money and goes running after the guy, yelling insults all the while, but the man keeps right on walking, ignoring John and taking snapshots of the mission and the tower where Alfred Hitchcock shot
Vertigo
. Finally, John just throws the money at the German’s sweaty back, yelling more insults about the Third Reich, then stomps back over breathlessly to where we are. I’ve never seen him in such a state. He’s trembling now and spitting at the ground. Quite a little crowd has gathered to watch this altercation, but now, seeing that it’s not going to develop into physical violence, they disperse. Dennis says we should go and pick up the money that John’s thrown away. The German’s making no move to retrieve it and we could really use it for the miles up ahead. It’s ridiculous to leave good money lying in the dirt, he says to John. John’s eyes are glazed over as though he’s about to throw up. It’s the principle of the thing, John pants, as we watch two little Mexican kids in shorts and bare feet go running across the plaza and snatch up the forty bucks. Dennis yells at them but they just run off as fast as little ponies. Dennis isn’t about to chase them. He’s in terrible shape. We’re all in terrible shape. I don’t know how we got this way. We used to be young and vigorous; now we’re standing here like a bunch of desperate winos or something. How does this happen?

We wander our way into the little Mission chapel where all the singing is coming from. Kids are running up and down the aisles
laughing and giggling while the old people stand singing “Glory, glory, hallelujah” in Spanish. We try to sing along but our Spanish isn’t that hot and religious hymns never turned me on anyway. Nobody seems to mind that we’ve just walked in and joined their ceremony even though we’re strange-looking gringos with bloodshot eyes. Maybe they’ve just grown numb to the presence of tourists in their town. Or maybe they possess true Christian spirit. Doesn’t seem like they care one way or the other. Nobody’s trying to control the kids either. They just keep running wild up and down the aisles. The priest doesn’t care. It’s great. The women all have these snow white embroidered pañuelos on their heads. The men hold their straw Western hats in front of them with both hands, heads bowed and eyes open; eyes wandering around as they sing almost mechanically. It’s beautiful, though, the singing. Even though I’m not normally moved by religious hymns. There’s a beauty to the whole simple event of it. A few of the older men have their eyes tightly shut and their lips are moving silently; speaking to the Lord, speaking very personally. No sound, while the singing surrounds them. Then the singing stops and the people all sit back down in the wooden pews. It strikes me that this moment and this repetition has been going on for centuries; praying, singing, sitting, praying, on and on like that. And here we are with nothing to hang our hats on. The kids settle down and group up with their parents and families. The priest steps up to the altar in front of a huge golden crucifix. It looks like it was dipped in caramel like a candy apple from the county fair, the whole agonized Christ and the cross and everything, as though the real Christ were suffocated under layers of goo like those ancient victims from Vesuvius. The priest adjusts the gooseneck microphone at the podium, obviously uncomfortable with technology and even slightly irritated by it. The mike makes a growling sound. The kids giggle. They remain right in the moment. No one reprimands them. Then the priest has a little coughing attack right into the microphone. He stifles it and apologizes. The kids think this is hilarious. Even some of the
elders find this funny. The priest looks embarrassed and adjusts his stiff collar. Dennis leans over to me and says in a hoarse whisper: I wish I’d have been raised Catholic, don’t you? I love all this stuff. I have no idea what he means and I’m not going to ask. We leave the little chapel just as the priest gears up for his sermon.

Now we find ourselves ambling down to the rodeo grounds, having nothing better to do. Whatever happened to our jobs? Didn’t we once all have jobs? John was working in a Mexican delicatessen making up breakfast burritos with white rubber gloves on. Dennis was working as a dogcatcher. And I had something connected with the Highway Department, mowing the medians. What happened? Did we all just up and walk away from being responsible adults? It’s a mystery to me. We still have a lot of miles to cover down to Los Olivos but there’s no deadline. There’s nothing like having no deadline. John and Dennis are much better at it than I am. They seem to be able to totally accept the mutable nature of things whereas I’m always looking for an objective of some kind, somewhere down the road. John has actually become an artist at doing nothing; totally satisfied with just being here and not worrying about the next thing coming up or stewing about something in the past you can’t do anything about anyway. The Lost Art of Wandering, he calls it. He’s put a title on it so as not to confuse it with plain old indolence. That’s what his stepfather always accused him of, he says—laziness. He’s told me that since he was about thirteen years old he’s had the distinct sensation that he’s been living in his own past and observing it, as though he were already dead. Kind of like that narrator guy in
Our Town
. I admire that about John even though I don’t quite get it. He comes up with some profound shit sometimes.

We encounter a strange glass display booth in front of the rodeo stands with an earthquake seismograph inside it. The whole thing is sitting on a kind of Greek pedestal as though it were commemorating something historical. There’s a handwritten sign on the glass that reads:
OUT OF ORDER.
We’re in earthquake country. I
forget that sometimes. I forget lots of things these days then suddenly something will come back, some thought or something, almost like a picture in my head that gives me this whole feeling about pieces of the past. A past I never lived in. Like, for instance, that book
Two Years Before the Mast
by Richard Henry Dana—what a book that was. This aristocratic New England Yankee guy who sets off on a sojourn around the Horn in a three-masted schooner clear up the entire coast of early California and writes this detailed diary at a time when Spain and Mexico owned the whole damn thing. The Hide and Tallow Days they called it where they’d toss dried-out cowhides off the cliffs down to the beach from the mission near San Luis Obispo to the schooners waiting in the cove below. Stiff cowhides sailing hundreds of feet through the blue Pacific air so they wouldn’t have to carry them down the steep incline where even burros couldn’t make it. Things like that just break my heart.

Writing to his London superiors in 1771 regarding the Appalachian border and the impossibility of keeping Scotch-Irish settlers east of an imaginary line running down the spine of the mountains; the very last English governor of Virginia, the Earl of Dunmore, wrote:

“My Lord I have learnt from experience that the established Authority of any government in America and the policy of the Government at home, are both insufficient to restrain the Americans; and that they do and will remove as their avidity and restlessness incite them. They acquire no attachment to Place: But wandering about seems engrafted in their Nature: and it is a weakness incident to it, that they Should forever immagine the Lands further off are Still better than those upon which they are already settled…. they do not conceive that Government has any right to forbid their taking possession of a Vast tract of Country, either uninhabited, or which serves only as a Shelter to a few scattered Tribes of Indians. These notions, My Lord, I beg it may be understood, I by no means pretend to Justify. I only think it my duty to State matters as they really are.”

Squawking magpie. Brilliant light. The past gone past. The past gone by. Kit Carson’s grave site on the back side of town. Forgotten, by the kid’s slide. Ragged chain link. Old Kit at fifty-nine. My passport keeps falling to the ground like a dead blue leaf. Slipping away. This brilliant sight. Golden shaking poplar. Great cottonwoods. Shaking in the sun. Trembling like the tremblers of old. Navajo. Feathered helmets. Puma skulls. This brilliant light of day. Indifferent to sunken graves. Molding stone. Weathered away where you can’t even read the names. Metal plaque honoring the hero. The scout. The man who crisscrossed the country by mule. Whose dying words were in Spanish. Graffiti knife slashes across Kit’s neck. As though he’d feel a thing. As though a vengeance could still hold power in this bright corner of buried bones and no feeling; absolutely still except for the twirling golden leaves.