Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (20 page)

“That's not exactly true,” said Jelly, slowly, forcefully. “That's not exactly true. The System has no demand for them; you're right about that. But there is a demand—and that demand comes from the hearts of little girls.

“Cowgirls exist as an image. A fairly common image. The
idea
of cowgirls prevails in our culture. Therefore, it seems to me, the
fact
of cowgirls should prevail. Otherwise, we're being ripped off again. I mean, isn't that the way religions mess people's heads around: beautiful concepts without anything factual to back 'em up? When I was a kid and I was told that this role I'd been allowed to love so much was impossible to attain, wow, did I get mad! And I've been mad ever since. So I decided to try to do something about it—to satisfy my own inner needs and to show society it couldn't get away with making me love something that didn't exist.”

Unable to restrain herself, Jelly lay her hand atop the ovoid mound Sissy's thumb made under the cover. It was warm. “How about you, Sissy? Did you want to be a cowgirl when you were small?”

“Can't say as I did. But you have to understand, I was rather a special case.” What would Bonanza Jellybean think were Sissy to disclose that she had wanted to grow up to be an
Indian?
Take um heap many scalps beside um sky-blue waters. “It's funny. I once hitched a ride on a camel in Afghanistan, but I've never been on a horse in my life.”

“We'll take care of that. You're at the Rubber Rose now. But let me confess something to you before you start thinking I'm another Tad Lucas. Until last year, the only thing I'd ever straddled was the Shetland ponies at the Kansas City Zoo. And a man or two, of course. But I'm a cowgirl. I've always been a cowgirl. Caught a silver bullet when I was only twelve. Now I'm in a position where I can help others become cowgirls, too. If a child wants to grow up to be a cowgirl, she ought to be able to do it, or else this world ain't worth living in. I want every little girl—and every boy, for that matter—to be free to realize their fantasies. Anything less than that is unacceptable to me.”

“You're political, then?” Sissy had been learning about politics from Julian.

“No ma'am” said Jelly. “No way. There's girls on the Rubber Rose who
are
political, but I don't share their views. I got no cowgirl ideology to expound. I'm not recruiting and I'm not converting. Whether or not another girl chooses the cowgirl path is immaterial to me. It's a personal matter. I'm willing to help other cowgirls; to make it easier for them than it was for me. But don't get the notion I'm trying to create a movement or contribute to one. Delores del Ruby makes a big fuss about cowgirlism being a force to combat cowboyism, but I'm too happy just being a cowgirl to worry about stuff like that. Politics is for people who have a passion for changing life but lack a passion for living it.”

Beneath Jelly's dollbaby grip, the Sissy plasma, like a swarm of red bees, followed its charted currents in the thumb's interior passageways. Jelly pressed lightly upon this hive, in which such quantities of blood were buzzing, and gave its owner a look that even upon the countenance of a cowpoke could only be called sheepish. “Did that last comment sound too profound to be coming outta my mouth? It's not original. It's something I picked up from the Chink.”

“Really? The Chink, huh? I've gathered that you sometimes speak with him. What else have you learned from the Chink?”

“Learned from the Chink? Oh my. Ha ha. That's hard to say. We mostly . . . Uh, a lot of his talk is pretty goofy.” Jelly paused. “Oh yeah, now that I think of it, the Chink taught me something about cowgirls. Did you realize that cowgirls have been around for many centuries? Long before America. In ancient India the care of the cattle was always left up to young women. The Indian cowgirls were called
gopis
. Being alone with the cows all the time, the
gopis
got awfully horny, just like we do here. Every
gopi
was in love with Krishna, a good-looking young god who played the flute like it was going outta style. When the moon was full, this Krishna would play his flute by a river and call the
gopis
to him. Then he would multiply himself sixteen thousand times—one for each
gopi
—and make love to each one the way she most desired. There they were, sixteen thousand
gopis
balling Krishna on the river bank, and the energy of their merging was so great that it created a huge oneness, a total union of love, and it was God. Wow! Quite a picture, huh? When I repeated this story to Debbie, she got so enthused she wanted us to call ourselves
gopis
from then on. We discussed it at a bunkhouse meeting, though, and decided '
gopis
' sounded too much like 'groupies.' Well, we don't need that. We got enough static, with the folks around Mottburg calling us sluts. And lesbians.”

Sissy's thumb twitched. Jelly swallowed hard. They gazed into each other's eyes, Sissy trying to tell how Jelly felt saying the word, Jelly trying to ascertain how Sissy felt hearing it, and as they gazed, soft little shocks danced between them, like drunken oysters strutting along a harp string.

They might have gazed until the cows came home, except that, in addition to the cows' being lately deceased, a whistle pierced the sunlight just outside the window.

“That couldn't be Krishna, could it?” smiled Jelly. “A bit shrill for a flute. Just our rotten luck.”

She walked to the window and exchanged hand signals with someone outside. Turning to Sissy, she said, “Gotta run now. Delores says I'm needed. Somebody's here. Maybe it's the Countess.” She fast-drew her six-shooter, spinning it expertly in her kewpie fingers. “Sissy, cowgirl history is about to be made. I'm damn glad you're here to witness it.” With her gun-spinning pinkies, she tossed a kiss and was gone.

A sneeze travels at a peak velocity of two hundred miles per hour. A burp, more slowly; a fart, slower yet. But a kiss thrown by fingers—its departure is sudden, its arrival ambiguous, and there is no source that can state with authority what speeds are reached in its flight.

44.

WHEN HER SWALLOWS HAD FINISHED
Capistranoing
,
Sissy hopped out of bed. From the window, she could see cowgirls gathering in a circle. Someone or something was in the center of the circle. Sissy performed an abbreviated toilet, zipped herself into a red jumpsuit and hurried outside. It didn't bother her much that she didn't know what to expect. She never had.

What was in the center of the circle was a goat. Billy West, Mottburg's three-hundred-pound midnight rambler, had dropped it off as a sample. There were plenty more goats where that one came from, said Billy West. For the cowgirls, a discount price of twenty dollars a goat.

Debbie was scratching the animal's ears. She was hugging it. “I'm like Mahatma Gandhi,” she said. “I'll never be without a goat again.”

“It's cute,” said Kym. “Way cuter than a cow.”

“Goats are always testing you,” said Debbie. “They're like Zen masters. They can tell instantly if you're faking your feelings. So they play games with you to keep you true. People should go to goats instead of psychiatrists.”

“It's so loving,” said Gloria. She cut in on Debbie, gave the beast a hug.

“Goats are the ultimate male and female,” said Debbie. “Watching a pair of goats is understanding what the male-female trip is all about. Every couple ought to be given a pair of goats when they get married. There'd be no more need for marriage counselors.”

“Look at those playfully wise eyes,” cooed Heather.

“When can we get more?” inquired Elaine.

“Oooo! It licked me!” squealed Gloria.

When she tired of watching the goat, Sissy started back to her room. She thought she might hitchhike the wallpaper or something. But Jelly caught up with her. “Looks like we're gonna become goatgirls,” she said.

“Will that make a difference?” asked Sissy. “A difference to your fantasy, I mean.”

“Not a speck,” said Jelly. “It's like the gourmet the Chink told me about who gave up everything, traveled thousands of miles and spent his last dime to get to the highest lamasery in the Himalayas to taste the dish he'd longed for his whole life, Tibetan peach pie. When he got there, frostbitten, exhausted and ruined, the lamas said they were all out of peach. 'Okay,' said the gourmet, 'make it apple.' Peach, apple; cows, goats. You understand?”

Sissy thought that it must have something to do with the primacy of form over function, thus approximating her own approach to hitchhiking, wherein an emotional and physical structure created by variations and intensifications of the act of hitching was of far more importance than the utilitarian goals commonly supposed to be the sole purpose of the act. She was still thinking it over when Jelly said, “Say, there's a sexual reconditioning class in five minutes. Some of us are gonna crash it. To pass on some helpful information and correct some misconceptions. You like to come along?”

The S. R. building was of rustic exterior. It could have been a blacksmith shop. Inside, there were thick rubber mats and harem cushions all over the floor of a single, dimly lit room. At the rear of the room, partly concealed by a brocade curtain, was a flush toilet, gleaming in porcelain ostentation like one of the Countess's incisors. At the front there stood a long, low table, upon which was displayed a harvest of vials, bottles, boxlets, spray cans and ointment tubes, as well as a pair of dainty pink rubber apparatuses that looked like the twin nieces of an enema bag. Approximately a dozen women sat upon the floor, facing the table. Half of them were noticeably overweight, several were as skinny as light verse and appeared to be as burned-out as old sparkplugs although a few of the women seemed to Sissy to be quite attractive and in no need of the Rubber Rose Ranch's ministrations. Sissy wondered what lemons her destiny would have to suck before she might find herself a client of a place such as this.

Led by Debbie, the cowgirls set right to work. “There's only one excuse for ever douching,” Debbie informed her captive audience, “and that's to cure an irritation or infection. In which case, you want to be real careful about what you slosh on the inflamed tissues. There are eleven herbs or natural substances suitable for douching the vagina. These are: fennel, fit root, slippery elm, gum arabic, white pond lily, marsh mallow . . .”

“Marshmallow?” asked one of the more obese ladies, incredulously.

Debbie was earnest. “Marsh mallow or
Althaea officinalis
is a pink-flowering plant that grows in marshy places. It's an excellent medicinal herb, a fact that's often obscured by the sweet white confectionery paste that can be made by boiling down its mucilaginous roots. Now, where were we. Marsh mallow, wild alum root, uva ursi, fenugreek, bayberry bark . . .” Debbie clicked off the herb names, but the fat woman was no longer listening. Her eyes had glazed over as she pondered the pleasures of a marshmallow douche, losing her conscious mind in toffee whipped-cream molasses visions of vaginal delight.

Somewhat later in the lecture, Delores grabbed a can of Dew spray mist from the table and slung it in the air. Jelly drew her six-gun and tried to blast it before it hit the floor. She missed, but the class got the point. The shot brought Miss Adrian running from the main house, where she'd been delayed while attempting once again to phone the Countess in Washington, D.C. She arrived in time to hear:

“There isn't a man alive, unless he's some masochistic chemical fetishist, who'd dip his genitals in benzethonium chloride, and any woman who sprays hers with it is a dupe.”

Thinking of the ranch's image, thinking, too, perhaps, of Delores's whip and Jelly's pistol, Miss Adrian struggled to restrain herself. “Girls,” she said. “Girls.”

“Just a minute, ma'am,” urged Jellybean. “We're almost through. We got one more little piece of pertinent info to pass along. A vivacious lady like yourself might find it interesting.” She bade Miss Adrian stand aside, then turned to the audience.

“Now as Debbie has already mentioned, not only is a woman's natural essence nothing to be ashamed of, the truth of the matter is it's a positive thing that works in our favor. Here's a little self-celebration I bet you ladies never thought of. What you do is reach down with your fingers and get them wet with your juices. Then you rub it in behind your ears . . .”

“Behind your ears???”

This brought the class to full attention. It even brought the fat lady back from marshmallow land. It brought Miss Adrian to the edge of a dead faint.

“Yeah, behind your ears. And a dab on your throat, if you want. When it dries, there's no whiff of low tide about it at all. It's a wonderful perfume. Very subtle and very mischievous. Men are attracted, I guarantee you. Why, in Europe women have been using it for centuries. That's why Neapolitan girls are so seductive. You don't believe me, do you? Here, I'll prove how nice it is.”

Jelly slipped her hand up inside her skirt and began priming the essence. Before she could complete the demonstration, however, Miss Adrian, pale and shaking, began to blubber. She was raving about something, but nobody could understand her. She made a sudden lunge for Jelly's gun, but Jelly, who was getting pretty good at the fast draw, whisked her hand out of her crotch in time to ward off the older woman's gambit. The cowgirls figured it was time to retreat.

Tittering and jabbering, they went to the stables and saddled up. Jelly and Big Red helped Sissy mount a calm mare. They rode eastward for two or three miles, to where the hills began leveling off into prairie. The breeze in the grasses made a sound like a silk-lined opera coat falling to the floor of a carriage. Continuously. Except that the breeze in the grasses was actually the breeze in the asters, for wherever the party trotted or looked, the ground was wiggling with asters, yellow-eyed and purple-petaled, like daisies wine-stained after an orgy of the gods.

More than one cowgirl thought of old high school English Wordsworth, him wandering lonely as a cloud that floats o'er vales and hills, when all at once he saw a crowd, a host, of golden daffodils. But these asters were no crowd, and no host, either: they were a planet, a universe, a goddamned
infinity
of flowers. Who'd have thought that Gary Cooper's prairie; Crazy Horse's prairie; the westward ho the wagons! prairie; the hard, flat belly of America prairie became in September such a garden of gentle blooms? Everywhere, asters waved as if practicing the art of waving. The purity of the movement gave Sissy's thumbs the Big Itch, but the cowpokes were stilled by the solitary sweep of the spectacle, and they, all of them, rode back toward the ranch with a papery noise of peace in their minds, asters of the heart forcing their way to the light.