The night the flood gates opened Buck was fiddling with the video
recorder. The big door, big enough to let a helicopter in, was rolled up
and he had just trained the camera on me, while he tried one set of lights
and then another. I was backed up against the wall that he had draped
with our only pair of blue sheets. They had white doves of peace on them,
doves carrying olive branches. Suddenly in from the darkness we heard
steps clacking and echoing, stumbling into this huge space that was our
still setless "TV studio," and a girl's voice, angry, talking, already
talking. Katy Neuman had her hands out like a blind person as she made
her way into the lighted area over the cable-laced floor. She was wearing
desert boots and jeans. Her face was streaked where tears had washed away
the grit. She was eddying around in the middle of a story she was telling
to the night, or to God, it seemed, more than to Buck or me. Certainly it
was imperative that she tell someone. Buck told her to slow down, stand
still, and look straight at The Desert Eye. ". . . these sleaze
bags standing around watching him, watching my granddad lying there, not
moving. Mom is antsy. She's into, you know, politics, and all these
characters, all these 911 grafters, are the opposition. I wanta tell you
about this, listen to me!" she cried when Buck flicked on the brilliant
light of a sun gun. "Go on, Katy," I urged, eager to both help Buck
and to calm the distraught child. "There they stand, the hours ticking
by, they stand studying, you know, the layout." Her voice is bitter and
angry, but at the same time, you could tell she relished the telling of
the story. "Like, there's the VCR and there's the TV, there's the radio
and the phone. It comes in the wall there and they can cut the wires as
they go out -- snip snip, any old time. I mean, these characters are
real sleaze. I mean, you know, like sugar-in-the-gas-tank types. And
they're all standing around watching. "Gramma is saying, 'His neck is
broke. His neck is broke. Can't you see? His neck is broke.' "They
stand there staring, stupid, not saying a thing. They just stand looking
at the ceiling, looking at the floor, studying what kind of lock's on the
inside and what kind of lock's on the outside. You know, the layout, like
they got their survey equipment buttoned up their ass. Leering at Mom
from time to time, and at Gramma. "Mom keeps yelling that they got to
get Granddad into a God-damned ambulance. "Gramma keeps shrieking, 'I
think he broke his neck.'" Katy's voice imitated a thin, high squeaky
voice: "'I think he broke his neck! I think he broke his neck!' "He
ain't moving. They keep asking him, him, mind you: 'Do you want to go the
hospital?' "Hell no, he don't want to go to no hospital. He's telling
them, the firemen -- this with his voice box and all -- rasp rasp, 'Hell
no,' gurgle gurgle, 'I don't want to go to no hospital.' I mean, that's
what he woulda said, except, you know, he don't speak well, can only form
'No' with his lips. I mean, it's been like two years ago he lost his
voice box and he don't speak much even when he's sober and standing on his
own two feet. "I guess he and Gramma got their talking done before
he lost his voice box. I mean, you know, they never did do too much more
than sit around and bellyache, ever since I can remember, drunk and
bellyaching. Talking about how this shouldn't be and that shouldn't be.
Talking 'issues,' as if their issues was going to make any difference.
You know, bellyaching -- for years. I can't remember that Granddad ever
did anything else. Dipping and bowing, waving around like a little tree
in a strong wind, shouting and complaining. Maybe that's why the good
Lord took his voice box in the first place, I mean, to give us a rest. I
mean, give our eardrums a little rest after all the sixteen years of
complaining I've had to listen to." "Katy, what's happened?" I asked.
I could see she was trying to pull too many things together. "What
happened tonight?" I urged, trying to get her to focus her attention, to
divert her before she said something she'd be sorry for. Buck held up his
hand for me to be quiet. "I never paid too much attention to it all
because, you know, I know what drunk means. It was always like maybe it
was the TV, just noise, going on and on, going on and on and on. You kind
of get used to it. Ain't so nice as a cat's purr, but it don't bother you
too much -- even if you're doing your math problems. Or I go out. Let
them have the house for complaining. I complain, too, but mostly to my
friends. What else are friends for if you can't tell 'em your
troubles?" Her eyes searched the darkness behind the camera, the
blackness that the three sun guns had created as Buck turned them on one
by one. He had aimed them first at the floor and then into her face but,
compelled by her story, she didn't seem to mind, not after the first one,
indeed, the light on her face made it seem as if she were telling her
story to the burning, incandescent desert sun itself. When she couldn't
see us, she went on again, recapitulating and circling again and again
around the story of her grandfather, like a buzzard looking for its
dinner. "So he's lying there, kind of flat out with a bent neck.
Gurgling, not moving, Gramma bitching. They're standing there, and the
time is passing. Mom's getting hysterical. She's telling them he needs
to go to the hospital, and Gramma's screamin': 'I'm a nurse, damn you, I
kin see with my own two eyes: he's got his neck broke. Ain't no one lie
that still unless they cain't move and he ain't moving. He hasn't moved
so much as a little muscle since he fell down there head first trying to
tie his shoe lace. He fell straight over. I saw him,' she says, 'he hit
his chin, bent his neck back, snap, and lay there sideways.' "When those
dumb creeps arrived -- 'Dumb creeps,' that's what my mom calls them --
they just turned him over and his neck goes crunch, and Grandma starts
hollering at them. 'Don't move him! You damn well better know what
you're doing to move a man that broke his neck! You ain't taking no
precautions,' she's yelling fit to be tied. "'Don't move him, he
needs to be put in a body brace,' she's crying. I mean, like she was
losing her puppy. I mean, they been quarreling for years. I never got
the impression there was much love lost between them, and I think she's
drunk now, too. I even think she's getting drunker, for she walks out of
the bedroom every once in a while, and when she comes back her grey hair
sticks out all around, like she's been in a high wind. She's got tears on
her face hollering at those guys who are, as Mom says," Katy opened her
eyes wide and whispered, "The Enemy. "That's a situation and a half,
too," she snorted. "I mean, you got to understand the politicking that
goes on in this town. I mean, Mom says -- not to me, mind you, but I hear
her on the phone hour after hour after hour, so I know all about the
politics of this little burg -- everybody is sleeping with everyone else.
The fireman with the police chief's wife, and the police chief with the
water commissioner's daughter, you know what I mean. I mean, I don't
listen too close, but she can cite you chapter and verse about who's
sleeping with who. The local politics around here is so sleazy that you
can't watch anything more sleazy on TV. I mean, it ain't just the medical
squad that's a total loss, the whole town is a loss. I mean, it might
even be dry as a bone soon. Not for lack of water, mind you, but for
politics. "We got lakes under us, Mom says, and rivers running right
through the ground, but the local Bosses and their cruddy pals is drying
it up, channeling everyone's water right through their inseams. Lining
their pockets. Really lining them. I think I can even tell you how
they're doing it. I mean, I don't know about politics from nowhere and I
don't care right now, but you know I will care one day, when I get old
enough to have babies and bills. "I been to the meetings, too. I mean,
you never saw such meetings as we have here, not on TV, not in the movies,
you just don't see what we got here. I mean, name calling. Red in the
face! The Board president screaming, his eyes bugging out, his -- well
you know -- spit spraying. I mean, I sat down in the first -- well no,
the second row once and his spit come flying right out and hit me in the
eye. He's shouting wild and mean at anyone who's disagreeing with him. I
mean, you have to see the whole thing to believe it. He's screaming and
shouting and the secretary's shouting -- she controls things. I mean, she
controls things! And she's cuckoo as they come, sitting there shouting
down almost anyone who has a word of sense to say. That's what my mom
says. They got the money going through their pockets and they don't
listen to no one. They just holler them down in those meetings. "And
she says -- I mean, I'd like to ask my poly sci teacher about it, but of
course I don't dare -- but she says, that Board don't answer to no one.
Don't answer to nobody, not the voters, not the county, not the state,
nobody, not even the president. I mean, I don't think that's what we're
taught in poly sci, but that's what she says is true. They don't answer
to nobody, not even to their God-damned grandma. They shout and that's
the law. You fight it. I mean, my mom and her girlfriends, they fight
and fight, they talk on and on, I mean, they talk even more than my gramma
and grandpa bellyaching. They say it's an illegal form of government.
They're trying to get this stopped and that organized and Lordy, oh Lord,
its more dramatic than a Movie of the Week. I mean, you have to see it to
believe it. "They're all dopers you know. I mean, some of them.
That's big money, even in our little bitty town. You got habits, you got
to support them. I mean, support them good. There's factories and
refining joints. I mean, there's a lot of kids at school who got habits,
lots of habits. I tried it myself once or twice. I didn't tell Mom,
she'd shit her panties if I told her, but I did try it. But you know
what? I ain't interested. It's not that much fun, and Jesus, where do I
get thirty bucks? I mean, I haven't seen thirty dollars for just a habit
in my whole life. "I mean, Gramma and Grandpa, they weren't poor. Not
poor, but they had -- Jesus here I am speaking like they're dead. They
have a habit. Alcohol's a real habit. Look what's happened to the poor
old guy lying there, still mad as a hot green pepper, just lying there
turning green and red and green again, trying to shout through his little
old voice box. Lost it to cancer, you know. Mom says he's probably got
cancer of the liver, too. Cheer roses." Again Katy paused. Whipped her
head this way and that, like a frantic rabbit caught in headlights. Buck
said softly from behind the camera, "What happened then?" Her eyes flash
red as she stares right into the sun gun to the right of her face, stares
right into it as if it were what had spoken and not Buck at all, and she
smiles sweetly, flirtatiously. "Well, I suppose I should start back at
the beginning. Or maybe someone else should tell you this story." She
blushes. "It ain't pretty, but it is funny." She laughs. "You never
know," she speculates, "if his neck is really broke, it might cure him of
his habit. "I mean, are you going to drink with a broken neck? Seems
like the liquor might just come jetting out the sides of your neck, you
know, where all them funny little bones go to make up the spinal column.
Can't you just see the beer, or Jack Daniels jetting out. Making the room
smell awful, like it often does anyhow, with all the liquor that's been
spilt around the house over the years. I mean, my mom keeps the place
clean, except for their room, which is Gramma and Granpa's own private
province. I painted them a sign once that said just that: 'Private
Province.' They spend all their time in there. It's actually two rooms,
one a bedroom and the other's got a couch in it. They sleep there and
drink there and watch TV, especially when Mom has company in the other
part of the house. The other part where she now keeps closing the doors
to. "I mean, first one guy and then another, they all got to go in
there and have a drink of water, a cup a coffee. I mean, they been
hanging around a couple of hours already and they keep sneaking off for a
pee, more coffee, more water, in our part of the house. Mom keeps
trailing them into the kitchen. I know she thinks they're out spying,
casing the joint. Taking the opportunity! Here they are in The Enemy
camp and they're counting it real lucky and taking advantage while we're
all staring at Grandpa gasping. "You could hear their radios cackling
outside, too. I mean, they pulled that old paramedic fire truck right up
unto the lawn, you know, 'cause the front door is a good walk from the
driveway. I think they did it out of spite. Not destructive, mind you,
just arrogant. Never mind Mom's petunias, and little plants. Just drive
right up. They walk out every once in a while and, cackle cackle cackle,
they use that radio: 'Hello, hello, we're at Neuman's, the old man's
wacko. Naw. Maybe. Sure. Sure. Sure.' I got long distance hearing.
They don't know I could eavesdrop from the moon. "Then they decide to
move him!! Oh Jesus. They got some kind of permission or something. Two
of the creeps bring in a thing that looks like a cage. "'You going to
put him in a neck brace?' Gramma hollers. 'You don't know diddly-squat
about how to put no God-damn man in a neck brace.' "They just moved on
in, like super-cop. Now that they're moving, got something to do, they
move like a couple a clowns on TV. They don't say nothing. They've quit
talking to Gramma. They act like she isn't even there. Not there, you
know, some crazy old loon of a drunk Gramma. Ignore her. She's a nice
old gal in her way, but they ain't giving her the time a day. "'I'm
going to tell the Sheriff,' she screams, and then the Sheriff comes, and
he don't listen to her neither. He goes into the kitchen to have a cup of
coffee, cases the joint. "He talks to Mom. He may not be so bad. But
he's in their pockets, you know what I mean? He keeps his job by being
right there, living in their pockets. He tries to get out, they slap him
down. You know, like you got a frog in your pocket when you were a kid
and you slap it down. "Anyway, there they are on their knees, the two
biggest guys, Sam Giorno, and 'Dummy' Green, the Sheriff's son. They
take this cage and divide it in two. Gramma is screaming: 'Don't you
lift him, don't you lift him!' So they lift him, letting his head dangle,
and, oh Jesus, he's trying to shout through his little old voice box. Mom
is screaming and Sindy, from next door, is screaming, too. She come in
just a little while before. She's a fire ball with a shaven head. I
mean, she shaved her head a while ago for the heat, maybe even a couple of
months, and she's all fuzzy-headed now. Now she's here, she's talking and
talking and telling 'em what to do, she talks more than Gramma, maybe,
certainly as much as Mom, and she's one of our political figures. Our
side. Jesus, she's always going down to the meetings and she shouts as
much as they do. She's got a real loud voice, and a cute face, kind of
round and pink and she shouts. She can shout so loud people actually
listen. I mean, I've seen it, people stop and they turn around and listen
-- even for five minutes. But she don't know nothing about medical
science, so she's kind of hung up in shouting even though she doesn't know
what to shout about. Mom and Gramma are shouting, too, telling 'em how to
put the neck brace on. "It's painful to watch. I mean, they're
handling him like a sack a dough. I mean, you get to wondering if they
would handle their side the same way, even if he was some old alcoholic.
Some dumb old alcoholic. "I can't watch anymore, so I go look out the
window at the marigolds. I think about God. You know I think about God
sitting out there in that blue blue sky. The sky is always blue out here
in the desert, always blue and clear and bright and sunny. I mean, its
gloomy in that room, you'd think it was a tomb. But outside it's blue,
and I think about God and I start to talk to Him. But I really don't know
what to say. "Help him get better? I mean, how bad is he? And as
long as I'm wishing should I wish him off the booze? Then what would he
do? What would Gramma do? So I don't continue the conversation. I stop
talking to God. I just look at the blue sky I decide it probably isn't
worth it, talking to God, I mean." "Katy," I cried. I wanted to stop
her. I wanted to hold her in my arms. "I mean, it's all fucked-up."
She over-rode me. "I mean, I'm only sixteen and I can see it's all fucked
up. So God, don't you think--? He doesn't care, doesn't give a shit.
So why talk? Just more jaw flapping. Why talk at all? So I turn around
and lean against the window, and I just fold my arms and I watch the
scene. I mean, it's a scene. I mean, I know that normal people don't
live like this. Do they? "They're fiddling with the straps, and they're
doing the buckles, and they even look a bit gentle, trying to get the old
man's head straight enough to clamp it down. And then they get done.
They stand up and they don't know what to do. I mean, these two big guys,
they really kind of fill up the room. "So another pee, and another cup
of coffee. Are they just going to leave him there? Put that brace on him
and leave him there? On the floor? "Gramma said: 'Don't put him on
the bed! Don't put him on the bed!' She hollered about that for half an
hour. I keep wondering if she thinks he shit, or she. . . Well, I know
you're not supposed to move an injured man unless you know what you're
doing. But you'd think these dingo medics would know something.
"Later on the ambulance arrives from Yucca seventeen miles away.
Seventeen miles in three hours. You know, that's not too swift. He fell
down about four o'clock and they're getting there after we should have
eaten dinner. Mom says it's because she's who she is and they don't give
a shit about serving the public. You on the wrong side, you ain't public
anymore, you're just the wrong side. Know what I mean? You lose your
identity and you are The Wrong Side. Mom's convinced they're really
dragging this out because she is The Opposition. I mean, it's hard to
tell who wants what done. But I think they need to take the poor old fart
to a hospital. Which hospital? I don't know. Don't they come from a
hospital? I don't know. So I turn and talk to God a little more. "And
when I look again they're taking the neck brace OFF! I know there's been
some talk and some radio-ing and clumping back and forth behind my back,
and when I turn around the ambulance guys are taking the brace off. I
can't believe my eyes, so I go have a cup of coffee. "I talk to God a
little more out there in the kitchen. You know about other stuff, about
my boyfriend. I have a donut. When I come back in -- I mean, I did
hear the commotion and the engines, and I come back in and they're GONE!
They're all gone except Mom and Gramma and Sindy and me. And Granddad is
still lying there on the floor -- not moving. With no brace." She
paused. "Katy." I want Buck to stop the camera. I feel he's
treating her like a butterfly pinned on black velvet. Buck waves at me
to be quiet. "How'd this all start?" he says to Katy. "Well, I was
just coming home from school, just walking up the street. We don't much
have paved streets here, that's also part of the greed and corruption my
mom says. They take our taxes -- we got taxes and taxes and more taxes
right up your you know what." She kinda starts laughing and doing a
little jiving. She's feeling the light now, performing. Her tears are
dry. "Taxes. But they don't spend the taxes on the roads. I mean, the
town's got 4,000 people and maybe three paved roads. "As a cousin of
mine from the city said, said when she come to visit us -- we're driving
up one of the paved roads, full of pot holes and chuck holes and rocks and
gravel and sand and, you know, desert shit, and I say: 'This is one of the
few paved roads in No Palms.' And she says real cute like, 'This is
paved?' "I mean, you could just see the little old question mark a
waving there at the end. 'This is paved?' And we laugh and laugh. So
they don't squander the taxes on paving the roads. They don't do that.
"So almost any place you walk out here you walk on the sand, the dust.
There'll be a flat strip and the rocks are hurled back so you can tell
it's a road. And if you walk along at the edge of the road you can see
the beer bottle line when you go by the empty lots, you know, from the
road to as far as the human arm can throw, beer bottles, nice brown broken
beer bottles. And they all have dogs, lots of dogs, 'cause red necks love
to scream at their dogs: 'Come in here you Gawd damned son of a bitch!
Lie down! You hear me! Lie down! Gawd damn it.' So yap yap yap, you
walk along the dirt roads you dodge a hundred dogs, and the kids ride
their bikes there, scrunccccch! trying to make the tires squeal in the
dust, and the cars go by. Not too many cars. Not out here on the city
streets. But the highway's a real Indianapolis Speedway. "There's a
marine base out there another dozen or so. So those fellows, those
jar-heads, have to get from the city, you know, Palm Springs, to the base.
They fly through here like we were the halfway mark on a bird's flight to
the south pole. Whiz whiz. You stand down at the highway a moment you
get dizzy. Even right in the middle of town -- they got signs posted "45
mph." But whiz whiz. Nobody'd think of stopping so you just got to wait.
You wait until they've all gone. Whiz whiz whiz. Then you can cross if
you're lucky. "Anyway, so I was walking home with my friend -- who
lives on up the hill in a real small shack, one of them homesteading
shacks, been here a long time. Lots of homesteading shacks around here.
We're talking and laughing, and throwing a couple of stones, and up ahead,
you know, it's up a little rise, not quite a hill, but up there's Grandpa.
"I mean, there he is swaying like in a high wind. He's always swaying.
I mean, he would have made a fabulous tango dancer, it seems to me,
because sometimes he sways way back. Maybe he was a tango dancer.
Anyway, up there, outlined against the blue sky, you know, waving like a
flag, there he is on the rocks a little above the drive. "That
God-damned ambulance had to climb the rocks. But everything out here's
got four-wheel drive. "So there he is in the yard. I mean, it's what?
-- four o'clock. Sunshine. Blue sky, kids coming home from school and
there he is, his pants down and fumbling around with his thing. You know,
trying to piss into the wind. I mean! "You know, I try not to see. I
turn my back and we're laughing and I can tell Sally, my friend, she don't
mind seeing. She's looking bug-eyed and I've got my back to Granpa and
I'm not seeing. I mean, I seen Granpa piss before. Why do I want to see
it now. But then, you can't walk backwards forever, and it don't make no
difference to me anyhow. I mean, it's Sally I want it to make a
difference to, but she's seeing and snickering. So I turn around, too,
and I see and there he is, waving the family jewels in the breeze. I
mean, you can almost feel the drops, he's shaking and finishing. Another
little squirt. It's like that saliva coming down on you at one of those
political meetings. "Men are always spitting and shitting. Peeing out
in the yard. God! They whip it out every chance they get. Like you're
supposed to be interested or something. And now. I mean, now. I get
mortified. There he is, his pants way down, and he's -- I swear to God --
he's squatting to shit. I mean, you know men pee in the yard, but in the
front yard!? I can't believe he's going to shit. Well I can't really
tell. I think he's squatting to get his pants. I mean, you know he's
like one of those gyration dolls, weaving around, you don't rightly know
what they're doing. Weaving around, weaving around. The wind's blowing.
The marigolds are bright as can be. I look at the blue sky. I think
about God just for a moment, looking down on my grandpa out there naked as
a jaybird. I mean, he's got a tee shirt on, but that doesn't cover much.
And his pants way down around his feet. And I guess he's just trying to
get them up but he can't. I mean, he teeters. So he got a hold of his
belt. It's all pulled out almost and he's shuffling toward the house.
"I challenge Sally to a run and we run screaming by the house right
over the little hill and start down the other side. And Grandpa doesn't
even see us. He's going shuffle shuffle, holding his pants by the belt
and gaining on the front door. I stop and look toward the hills and I
think: God, let him get inside. I mean, he is humiliating me. I mean,
he isn't humiliating me, he's humiliating me in front of my friend. Even
if she looks and laughs. She snickers. She's going to tell the other
kids. God, I hate kids. "He got inside. . ." Kathy Neuman's mother
had come in. "Katy!" she commanded. Katy stopped talking. Mrs.
Neuman hustled her daughter out of there without so much as a hard
stare.
Jan Haag may be reached via e-mail: jhaag@u.washington.edu
Former Website address was: http://weber.u.washington.edu/~jhaag
Complete novel, approximately 80,000 words
Jan Haag is a novelist, poet, painter, textile artist, and former Director of National Production Programs for the American Film Institute.