A Horse Named Sorrow (32 page)

Wisher.

I'll be here for a while most likely, I realized then. Probably through the night—and then some. Probably the rest of my life, which wasn't looking long at all. Short.

However long it was going to be, I'd need to get my sleeping bag to stay warm. I leaned up again on my elbows, breathing deeply through the pain, and scanned the wreckage for it.

“Motherfucker!” I cursed; I'd heard him honking. They always honked, those trucks. Like mooing cows. I took it as a warning, like always, stayed as far right on the shoulder of the road as I could. But he kept honking, and then I was airborne. He must have clipped me. There must have been someone coming the other way. I tried to re-imagine the shoulder, how much room there'd been. It was a curve, definitely a curve, so a truck would play it safe, swing wide outside. One man's safety is another man's danger. How Vietnam of him.

Oh, what did it matter?
The only thing that mattered was that he was somewhere getting help. Fat chance. It must have been midday when he hit me, if that. And it's got to be going on seven or eight—the sun's setting. They'd have come by now.

Of course I didn't get his plates! And what would it matter? Why am I asking myself stupid questions?!

I located my sleeping bag, right where it should be. I always carried it on the rack that extended over the back wheel of the bike, and it was still attached by the bungee cords I'd used to secure it. A big blue ripe piece of fruit, just out of reach.

I thought of how nice it would be to have a dog fetch it and bring it to me, perhaps a friendly raccoon; a bird of prey could pick it up in its talons and drop it off. Couldn't it have broken free in the wreck and ricocheted off the tree into my arms?

Wishing.

It was at least ten feet away. Ten feet was forever. Ten feet right then was as far as Buffalo was from San Francisco. Ten feet was the fucking moon.

Maybe it'll be a warm night.

Wishing.

Wouldn't it be nice to have a stick, or a lasso, or a harpoon, or really long arms …
And we could be happy
…

For a long time, I just looked at it.

Asking instead of wishing,” Louis had said. “That's what crying for a vision is about.”

Does anybody know what crying for a vision is really all about? Lights, please
.

Well, if I was Linus, what I needed right then was my blanket. And it was ten feet away. I could ask.

“Great Spirit, help me get to that tree.” Praying to somebody else's God—Jesus Jimmy, Mary and Chief Joseph … all the Buddhas … Thor, … uh, Diana, Innanna, Krsna, Rama, Isis. I ran down the checklist from my spiritual wanderings in the great midway of alternative religions that was San Francisco. Whoever's on call, for God's sake! (Oh
him
. He's the one I left out—the one who's not real keen on letting cups pass.)

At least I'd be moving downhill. Yelping and barking, I dragged myself, clawing at the dirt, roaring through the pain, my knuckles tearing on stone and brambles. Stopping to rest, another wall passed through me, which this time felt like cement, about two feet thick. I groaned and shivered. I'd moved three feet.

Fuck. I gotta do it again. And again. And then probably one more time. I should get there by next week.

I wondered how close I'd come to Buffalo. Buffalo, Wyoming, like some mocking joke, had teased me with that highway sign, promising just ninety-seven miles. But the real Buffalo—hell, that was another two thousand miles down the road.
Who cares
? If I don't die, I'm going home. Jimmy's already headed downstream as it is. Better luck next time, eh Jimmy? I looked at the purple bag, near-empty now, a sad wrinkled sack, the testicles of it drained of all life, its contents sprinkled like powdered sugar on the stone and sagebrush, and the rest of it running down the creek—salmon in a stream, sure thing, Jimmy. And a tear rolled down my cheek.

For the next three feet I sang out to meet the pain head-on. And no 1969 pop tune would do. I sang punk:
Why don't you dance with me?! I ain't no limburger!

Whoosh. This time the wall of pain was a solid steel door passing through me. I clamped my teeth, shuddered, and breathed deeply.

Four more feet to go. I can't do it. Whatever song would do now?

God Save the Queen!

Whatever it was that time—granite, iron, I don't know. But it didn't pass through. It came down like a hammer; slammed me like a fly to the wall, and I was out.

Some hours later I awoke shivering, the air cool and damp and dark. I was leaning slightly toward my good side, and I looked over to see how close I was to the bike. Very, but not quite. I was able to reach out for the sleeping bag, but couldn't quite get hold of it. I went for the stuff sack's string that hung down into the spokes. I just kept stretching, then pulling my arm back and to my chest and stretching it different ways, bending it at the elbow, moving it around, trying to limber it up, breathing into it like they'd taught me in yoga. If I could make it just a tad longer …

“Ahhhh!” The pain got me again. I'd stretched and felt a harpoon pierce my leg. But after the harpoon had gotten through threading me like a needle, I noticed I had my hand on the stuff sack string, and I clung to it for dear life, even as I felt the pain begin to emerge again. I roared as I worked my index finger into the loop of it and yanked.

The bag flew over and hit me in the head as I passed the 2001 monolith.

“Yes, yes,” I whimpered in sado-masochistical bliss, breathing heavily.

Now I had to get into it. And no Jimmy to help me. So I told myself:

“Okay, Shame, unzip it.”

“Take a breath.”

“Now, unzip it all the way.”

“Okay, good.”

“Take another breath.”

“Now, drape it across yourself.”

I couldn't see getting into it—it being a mummy bag, a disturbing analogy considering. I lay my head back in a rather prickly shrub. How had I slept in this state? I looked up into the branches of the cottonwood, the underside of its leaves shimmering silvery in the moonlight.

I heard a car go by. “Hey!” I shouted.

Is this what I was going to do? Yell from twenty feet down a culvert every time a car went by?
They'd never hear me. And they sure couldn't see me. I remembered the road then, how it had banked around the curve, obscuring any view down into the creek. I hadn't even known there was a creek down here until I was airborne over it. The hell with my
Heys!
then. I oughta be saying “Hoka hey,” and to myself.

The realization of that began to grow in me as I considered it. How's anyone ever going to find me? Even if Eugene and Louis had ended up on this road, they would have had no reason to stop. I realized then that I
was
going to have to climb that hill if I hoped to survive. Crawl it. There was no other way. And if each three feet equaled a concrete wall, I'd be taking on a small city.

Something else hit me then. The wind. And I heard it then for the first time, whistling and hollow, blowing down the canyon. Ghostly. Me and death giving each other the too-long look.

I inhaled fear; I exhaled hope.

What did that Buddhist dude say?
Beyond fear and hope—something like that.

Sounds like a good place to me.
But what was it—where was it? What were they getting at? It's hopeless, so there's no need to be afraid?

I really needed to understand that just then.

But I was getting more terrified by the minute. I'm likely going to starve to death, in pain, right here, while the world just floats right on by above me like these cloud herds of buffalo. But as I looked up for them, I saw the clouds were gone, and the night was full of stars. Far away. As far away as the road. Too, too far.

Everything is hopeless, the Buddhists droned on—all you got is
right now
.

Easy for them to say on their zafus.

I needed a pillow. If I was going to die miserably, I wanted to be comfortable doing it.

A pannier bag would do. I got up on my right elbow and looked for them. One was smashed between the bike and the tree, out of reach, while the other had been flung down toward the creek. And it was wet. Not from the creek either. Bleeding it was. Shit, that's the malt liquor.
Et tu, Crazy Horse?

I looked at empty Jimmy then, swinging in the hopeless wind, royally purple in the moonlight. Purple as old blood, the journey done. My pillow, my comfort. Empty and gone.

The bike had hit the tree sideways and it was bent into a boomerang, so that even though the back of the bike had been within my reach, the front of it was ninety degrees away, down across some rocks and hanging over the roots and boulders above the creek. Out of reach. And all those strings hanging on it. Poems never written. All those stories.
Now they're prayers, eh Jimmy?

Not wishes, but prayers.

I looked at my hand then, all scraped and dusty dirty. And there were the nail-polished fingernails from Eugene.
God, was that just a day or two ago?
It suddenly felt like years. Long, long ago.

So much for
right now
.

I wished I were back there.

Wishing.

What did Louis say about those colors? Sacred colors of the Lakota. The four directions. You call those when you cry for a vision.
And this … shit, this is it.

You ain't no different from anyone else, Blue Truck. And sometimes if you don't go out and cry for a vision, it comes crying for you
…

I was growing feverish and thought I'd actually heard his voice and looked around for him. Then I looked hard at my nails again.

He said to ask.

I don't want to die screaming, or whimpering.

Ask.

All I got left.

“Great Spirit, if I'm gonna die, I'd like your help.”

But how does that serve anyone but me? And I didn't know who I was talking to besides.

“Great Spirit, sir … uh, ma'am … I humbly ask you how I might serve my people from this rather compromised position.” And it occurred to me then that even if I died I could at least leave some semblance of how to do it right, and if nothing else the
Buffalo Bee
or whatever it was could run a story that said a young man got himself into a bad situation and yet he died with dignity by …
going beyond hope and fear?

I didn't want to die.

Ask.

“Great Spirit, can you help me get out of here and show me how to be in the world? Show me how to serve?”

I held up my hand then, looked at the chipped, dirty nail polish, and called the four directions as my witness: yellow pinky for the east, and pointed my arm to Buffalo; white index for the north (I swung my arm left up the creek); red for south (and toward the tree I pointed); black for west (and over my shoulder went my hand, reaching back toward San Francisco). And me the thumb right in the center.

“Great Spirit, help me out, brother; I don't know what I'm doing.” And I thought of old Rumi poems I used to jabber when I was Tammy Faye and Jimmy was losing his patience:

Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing?

I have no idea.

I looked over at the empty purple bag. I'd never known how to love him proper. I did want something back. “Show me how to love the world, Great Spirit.”

I didn't want to die whimpering, but I whimpered then as my sad little life ran by me like the water in that creek, trickling by, off to nevermore. I cried—for the failure of it all, for the pain in my leg, for the terrible circumstance I was in; I cried for Jimmy and all he'd been through, for my father and my mother, for all the hollow-eyed boys at ACT UP meetings, pleading “no more.” I cried and I cried, and I cried until I cried out.

I'm tired of being lost. Can I go home?

Help Mr. Wizard.

No more wishing.

I was burning with fever by then and looked up at the constellations, twinkling, me muttering: …
just ask … the stars
…

I fell asleep and dreamed. And I dreamed I was in the sauna at the YMCA and every boy who I'd ever been with came in, one after the other (a very big sauna, a stadium) with towels around their waists: there was Alejandro and Tran, Peter, Eddie, Yau, Tom, Mark, Larry, José, Deshawn, Sven, Henry, the Sages, Catnip, the Fennels, Willow, Gingko, Ginseng, Lars, Lawrence of course, the numerous nameless frat boys from Wheeler Hall, and the legions of anonymous guys from wherever, ad infinitum. Next came my mother, a larger towel to cover her breasts, and in her arms, which she had folded before her, she held the framed photo of my father, who suddenly smiled and said, “Hi, Seamus.” That got me. Doc Pinski came next, in all his rotundness, followed by Julie, Sam, Tanya, a whole crew of ACT UP guys and girls, my friends from the road—Ralph, Carl, and Ellen; the church lady and the dickering farmer from Idaho; the Marine from INEL; all the waiters and waitresses, hotel maids and receptionists; Mandy from the Y and all the little kids too—Miguel and Carlos, Mo and Ivan and Alice and Eustacia, so sweet in their little gym towels. Even Cavanaugh lurked in, and stood in the corner.

Finally Jimmy, his nostrils flaring, horse that he was. My heart leapt. My man, my groom, my best friend, my love. My relation. I'd never cried in a dream before.

Jimmy
.

And then I woke briefly, the sun shining straight into my eyes … midday. … I'd survived the night.

I was thirsty.

I fell back into the dream of all my relations. I'd forgotten to call them, but they'd come.

I was back in the sauna and I was looking for Jimmy. But it was so hot in there, and there were so many of us, and he'd been way on the other side, and I was tired and thirsty and felt like falling. I needed something to drink. If I could just kiss Jimmy, and feel the cool night air of his mouth … if I could just kiss him, it would slake my thirst.