Skinny Legs and All (16 page)

“Where?”

“They’re in there. There’s a can of beans that’s been sitting on my shelves for years. I swear, I’ve moved with those beans three different times. Guy in Seattle gave ’em to me when he graduated from the art school. Before that, they sat on his shelf for years. Those poor beans are so old they’ll probably give you crude oil instead of gas.”

“They’re not here.”

“Well, I don’t . . .”

“I know what happened to ’em. We left ’em in that cave.”

“No.”

“Yeah, we did.”

“Beans, too?”

“Yep.”

“Are you sure, Boomer?”

“’Course, I’m sure. I have a photogenic memory.”

CAN O’ BEANS WATCHED
the last tangerine peel of dusk swirl down the drain behind the mountains. It was completely dark now. It was time.

When he/she considered that Painted Stick and Conch Shell were the sole surviving oddments from the great Temple of Jerusalem, they seemed all the more precious and wondrous, and he/she felt all the more sorrowful to part company with them. For one thing, there were many questions left unanswered. For another, there was a unique and perhaps momentous adventure under way from which he/she was now excluded. Ah, well . . .

There was plenty still to be thankful for. What was a can of beans but a pawn in the game of consumption? From field to factory, from market to household, from cook pot to lunch plate, the destiny of a can of beans was as sealed as it was simple. Ultimate destination: rust heap and sewage pond. Yet, he/she had managed to escape the norm, to taste a freedom unimagined by others of his/her “lowly” station. Moreover, were the lives of most humans really any better? When humans were young, they were pushed around in strollers. When they were old, they were pushed around in wheelchairs. In between, they were just pushed around.

The thick veil that shields a being from the transformative and tricky light of liberty, from the dizzy incandescence of self-determination, that veil had been briefly parted for Can o’ Beans. Obviously, freedom’s glare is too bright for many. They panic when any sudden gust lifts the hem of the brocade. Eyes blinking frantically, they’ll cling with their last broken nail to the protective folds of social control. A few, among them Can o’ Beans, bask in the glow. It warms them in hidden and unexpected places that might have been forever dark and cold.

Of course, like the cliché moth courting the trite candle, the lit-up libertarian runs a constant risk. Is it not finer, however, to sizzle whole in the flame of freedom than to slowly stew to pieces in one’s own diminishing juices, constrained and constricted before the veil? Can o’ Beans thought so. Out of the sauce pan and into the fire! That was this can’s credo. Were it not for the burden that he/she would surely be to the others, he/she would tackle the road to the Middle East
regardless
of his/her handicap! Alas . . .

They made a sled for Can o’ Beans out of aspen bark and loops of grass. Painted Stick pulled it. When a rock, log, or steep incline blocked its path, Conch Shell pushed from behind. Lying back, its wound open to the moon, the bean can let itself be dragged, bumpy mile after bumpy mile, until, toward dawn, the band of objects arrived at a weedy churchyard on the outskirts of a small Wyoming town.

“Fare you well, Can o’ Beans. Thank you for your sage counsel regarding this bizarre land of yours.”

Painted Stick, so charismatic, so primal, so difficult to know. Good-bye.

“The Goddess shall monitor your fortunes, dearest noble vessel.”

Conch Shell, lovely siren, still nurturing, charming, offering hope. Good-bye.

“See ya in the funny papers, perfesser.”

Not if I see you first, vulgar fellow, but persist in your candor and enthusiasm. Good-bye.

“Boo-hoo-hoo.”

Spoon. Brush those sentimental globules from your elegant ladle. Goodbye, Miss Spoon.

Since it was Painted Stick’s intention to lead his party beyond the village before daybreak, the good-byes were not drawn out. From the weeds beside the little whitewashed church where they deposited Can o’ Beans, he/she watched his/her erstwhile companions bounce, toddle, and scurry along until they disappeared, one by one—Spoon last, looking back through her tears—into a ditch. The ditch was running with snowmelt, littered with filthy newspaper, shreds of tire rubber, and beer cans as empty as the bean can surely would be soon, but the small pilgrims let themselves be swallowed up by it as though it were a glory road. Oh, strange are the routes to Jerusalem!

"WE’RE HERE ABOUT THE MIRACLE,
Bud,” said Verlin.

“Why, bless your souls. Come right in.” Buddy Winkler was so flattered that he forgot, as quickly as he had noticed it, his
Christian Wives
hard-on.

“Yes sirree,” Patsy chimed in, eyeballing his protruding fly but resisting commentary on it, “I reckon you heard about the miracle?”

Buddy’s eyes narrowed with disappointment and suspicion. “Now what is it that y’all are talkin’ about? What kind of miracle? Where?”

“A religious visitation,” Verlin explained. “Out there on the Chesterfield road somewheres.”

Strongly conflicting emotions seized Buddy Winkler. On the one hand, the possibility of a religious miracle right there in the county excited and encouraged him. On the other, he had to worry whether this alleged visitation might not steal the thunder from his own recent vision—and the mission it had generated. He was hoping that Verlin and Patsy, his congregation and, if the Voice of the Sparrow Network approved, his radio audience, would soon be moved to support that mission with their personal checks.

Now, here Verlin and Patsy were telling him that some woman had folks in a tizzy because for the fourth night in a row, her neighbor’s porch light was casting the shadow of a bearded man on her standup freezer.

“It’s on the local news,” Verlin said. “Ever’ preacher in the area’s been out there. We thought sure they woulda called you.”

“Phone’s broke,” said Buddy. “I think one of them rabbis put a whammy on it.”

“That’s a crying shame,” said Patsy. “We thought you’d of been on this miracle like a hobo on a ham sandwich.”

It was nearly ten at night by the time they found the woman’s house, but more than sixty people were milling about her carport, which was where the freezer stood.

“It’s him,” proclaimed somebody in a loud whisper. “It’s Jesus!” Buddy, however, was of the opinion that the shadow looked more like Willie Nelson.

“Or else Castro,” Verlin suggested. As for Patsy, she said, none too softly, “When the Good Lord shows up, we may rest assured it is not gonna be on a major appliance.”

SHORTLY BEFORE ELEVEN O’CLOCK
that morning, cars, dozens of cars, began pulling into the churchyard. Can o’ Beans was elated. What splendid timing that there would be a wedding on his/her very first day at the church! If his/her luck continued, he/she might be clattering behind a honeymoon car by noon.

With effort, the bean can stood upright. The dent in its side threw it off balance, making walking difficult, but it wobbled toward a more conspicuous spot near the front steps, where it might attract the attention of someone requiring its services in the nuptial parade.
I wonder if they’ll have a can opener on them?
thought the container. Never had it imagined that it might form the words “can opener” with such positive anticipation. Fatalistic calm, yes, but hardly glee. Yet, here it was, practically longing for the singing blade. Now that its fortunes had come to this, now that the greatest opportunity in the history of canned vegetables had been lost, it was anxious to play out its hand, to embrace the fate to which, prior to gaining mobility, it had been equanimously resigned. Can o’ Beans turned a complete circle, hoping to get a look at the bride. A thin orange rivulet of sauce, like a thread from a volcano’s bloomers, unfurled from the vent in his/her side, alerting the antennae of nearby ants.

It was then that the hearse drove up. Followed by the military Jeep carrying the color guard.

Can o’ Beans staggered back into the tall weeds and lay down again. Forty yards away, mourners would be laying down for all eternity, or at least for a sufficiently long time, a local boy who’d let his young body be punctured and splayed by the insatiable can opener of the Middle East.

"WE COULD CROSS OVER
into Canada,” Ellen Cherry proposed, “and come down into New York by way of Montreal.”

“Nah,” said Boomer. “Them people up there call their cheese
fromage
.” He made a poison-bottle face.

“I see your point,” she said, humoring him. “
Fromage
, indeed. That’s enough to keep
me
away from the snack table.”

“Sooner or later,” said Boomer, “I’d like to ease this baby into Chicago.”

Ellen Cherry glanced out the galley window. It was quite dark now, but several people were still studying the roast turkey. The people wielded flashlights and behaved as if they were inspectors from the Center for Poultry Abuse.

“Why Chicago?” she asked. She knew that it wasn’t the Chicago Art Institute that was beckoning him. Ellen Cherry knew that her husband wasn’t licking his muscular chops over the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art.

“Well, I’d kinda like to see where they held the Saint Valentine’s Day massacre.”

Just look in on any married woman on February fourteenth
, she thought. But she said, “What else?”

“The hospital where Dutch Schultz died.”

“Oh, right, Dutch Schultz. Wasn’t he the boy who saved the community by sticking his finger in the dike?”

Boomer looked at her as if she had referred to their dinner as macaroni-and-
fromage
.

“Sorry, hon. Guess I was thinking of a different story. You’re obviously talking about ’Dutch Schultz and the Silver Skates.’”

Boomer took a long, long swallow of beer.
She must be getting her dot
, he thought. Ellen Cherry called her period her “dot.”
She gets like this right before her dot.

For all practical purposes, we’re going to leave them now, Boomer Petway and Ellen Cherry Charles, we’re going to leave them in a North Dakota trailer park, ringed by overstuffed midwesterners with flashlights; leave them finishing supper at the Airstream dinette, Boomer thinking that if her “dot” was coming on he’d better hurry and sweet-talk her into the sack, since she was protective of the sheets once the monthly pot began to percolate (talk about your Valentine’s massacre); Ellen Cherry thinking, wondering, if now that she was married and moving to New York, was she going to suffer more, or less, for her art—and if she suffered less, would she paint less, or more; and if she suffered more, would she paint more, or less; and if she painted less, would she paint better, or worse; and if she painted more, would she paint worse, or better, and did it matter so long as she wasn’t waiting tables?

We’re going to leave our newlyweds sitting there, thinking their private and, perhaps, all too disparate thoughts, and, except for a brief overview, when we catch up with them again more than a year will have passed, and their lives will have taken unexpected turns.

These pages were never meant to be a chronology of their travels across America, but rather a revelation of their indirect but indisputable link to Jerusalem, old and New, a city far from our shores, far from our life-styles, yet, it could be argued, a city in which each of us psychically dwells: Jerusalem, sacred and terrible, bloody and radiant, the most important town in America.

Suffice to say, their trip afforded them both pleasure and edification. With Boomer at the wheel, they continued to zigzag, to meander, at a pace that allowed them leisure for sexual intercourse with each other (time out for her “dot") and social intercourse with their countrymen. They did, by the way, visit Chicago, where Ellen Cherry executed a tiny painting of the street corner where the gangster John Dillinger was gunned down (Dutch Schultz, it turned out, died in New Jersey) and presented it to Boomer as a wedding gift. He shed a couple of muscular tears. Then he took her dancing.

At journey’s completion, in Manhattan, they had telephoned her parents and reported that all across the continent, folks seemed to be talking about just three things: AIDS, the Middle East, and the Final Four. AIDS was a fatal, as yet incurable, disease. The Middle East, although capricious in its daily ups and downs, seemed to be firmly connected somehow in people’s minds with “the end of the world.” The Final Four was the culminating event of the postseason collegiate basketball tournaments (then under way), and by its very name—it logically might have been dubbed the Top Four or even the First Four—conveyed, not unlike AIDS and the Middle East, a sense of finality, entropy, apocalypse, something forcibly drawing to a close. Thus, the newlyweds concluded, America had termination on the brain like a tumor. Endings, happy or otherwise; exits, dramatically correct or not; climaxes, not to be confused with orgasms, dominated their thoughts. Their minds were on end, so to speak.

“Bud’ll be pleased as punch,” said Patsy.

Verlin got on the line. “How’d that, what do they call it, DuraTorque suspension system, hold up?”

“Like ridin’ on mashed potatoes,” testified Boomer.

“Figures,” said Verlin.

Speaking of the roast turkey, wherever they stopped it, coast to coast, onlookers had invariably inquired, “What’re you selling?” “Who do you represent?” “What company are you doing this for? Armour’s?” “Are we on TV?” It was a sad commentary, but people simply could not accept that the giant entrée was not an advertising gimmick, a promotional stunt.

“They don’t get it,” complained Boomer. “Can’t they comprehend that not ever’thing’s done for a paycheck? That sometimes you just make a thing ’cause you wanna see how it’ll turn out, ’cause you have a feeling in your gut that it oughta be made?”

Ellen Cherry regarded him then with something barely short of admiration. She regarded him in the cardboard ray of newfound optimism.
This bozo might be capable of understanding art, after all
, thought she.