Last Call (2 page)

so the following foot marks

don't show

              Cephas

said You mean

whoever did that stomp

it was after he'd already been knocked down?

Clovis said

Unless she can walk around in the air

stomping on heads, you know

a better way?

Billy said

If it's a point

needs to be made

or a trailway to be commended

it might as well be stated proper

so the muckling effort

doesn't need to be repeated

Cephas

said Well that might be right

Clovis said Yep

ever footstep in this drought

raises a genuine cyclome or leaves a print

sometimes permanent

and that's not blowing smoke

or preacher talk

and Cephas said Godamitey's mama

aint it the truth?

4

Juan Diego Mendietta

unloading a case of Pabst's Blue Ribbon beer

into the ice cooler at the Dew Drop Inn

heard a voice

saying A woman who walked in air

left a footprint on the face

of Marvin Penny

that could be seen clearly

with one's own eyes

that night

he told Father Gutierrez

the things he heard but the Padre

shook his head sadly and said No my son

these are the words of a fool

drunk on bootleg beer

you must try to remember

milagros almost never occur in Tejas

where there are too many gringos

for the Lord's work

so

Juan Diego Mendietta

went home in despair

his hope of imparting a miracle's appearance

shattered like his youthful dreams

of making love to Hooter Hagins

but he told his wife Eva who some said

was de la familia de las brujas

while he ate the tacos she made for him

what he heard spoken clearly

who told

her sister Maria Calvones

who told her cousin Isabel Ramones

who cleaned Onella Penny's house

every Monday from nine en la manana

until la hora de cuatro in the afternoon

who went to the Penny casa

the next morning even though it was a Thursday

and knocked

when he

opened his door he said

You aint posta be here today yet

it aint Monday is it?

she screamed and pressed her hands to her cheeks

the indelible print of a foot

clearly visible on Marvin Penny's face

!Madre de dios! she screamed

he said What the hell?

but Isabel Ramones turned and ran

down the calle shouting

!Es un Milagro! !Un Milagro!

               soon

votary candles appeared nightly on the porch

of Onella and Marvin Penny's home

which he removed and threw

into the garbage barrel in his dusty back yard

until Onella stopped him saying

You leave those goddam things

right where they are and he said

Yes dear

entonces

for a decade the casa de Penny

became a flickering shrine to the miraculous

footprint of the Virgin seen by many

including Juan Diego Mendietta

who was said to be the first witness

and Isabel Ramones who gave the miracle

confirmation

and it came to pass

at last Onella died of consumption

and el viejo Marvin Penny grew old and sacred

the hairs of his head white as snow

and en la tarde when he went

into his dusty yard

to sit in the warm sun and remember

all those events of his life

that never actually occurred

la gente would come to his house

to sit at his knees and view his face

where at times

when the light

shone from the exact right angle

a small perfect footprint

could been seen by a select few

who were chosen to be witness

and the paisanos would touch his shoulders

and the denim fabric of his clothing

whispering to him

beseeching forgiveness

Son

your mama who is admittedly a hair trigger weeper

walked all the way down to the barn to tell me

she is genuinely and purely exasperated to tears

with your sitting in here on your bed alone

for three days now wrapped up in divine and superfluous

thought over God knows what and that I

should unleash and afflict upon you a stampede

of accumulated wisdom in order to provide incentive

and momentum for possible confession and redemption

or in other words what in the world is the matter?

your mama really wants to know the cause of your pesteration

Willy John said Nothing's wrong Daddy

I have to make a project in indigenous sculpture

for my Physical Art thesis and I'm trying

to come up with a mental design and materials

with not a lot of luck so far that I can speak of

Behold a wonder said a poet

you were named for once beneath a time Son

out behind the very barn where I have been piddling

all morning rests a considerable bevy of red bricks and paving stones

off to the starboard side used cinder blocks and dead concrete forms

on the larboard side a minor subaltern deity's ransom

of worn out farm equipment my daddy put out for years

wondering if there would ever be any use for it

before the Second Coming or the Russian bomb

inside the barn seven sacks of ready-mix concrete

along with arc and acetylene welders and even a soldering iron

I would be just as happy as a crow

that found a dropped plate of communion wafers

if you could utilize that indigenous scrap material

so that it would seem I had a purpose all along

for my years of unrequited salvage, separation and stacking

You got any ideas about what it could be?

Nosir

you go out there and stare at it for a while

if you need lessons on that talent I'm available for instruction

I'll bring along a chair if it takes too long

drawing up a mental plan of opportunity

to endure and prevail as the other man

you were named after once said

build your sculpture any way you want it

as long as it looks good from the kitchen window to your mama

as a monument for the rest of her life

to your teenage years and when you are done

we will call it the Statue of Limitations

until a better title comes along

anytime during construction you think it's gone wrong

give the word I'll knock it down with the tractor

you can start again until you get it right

Willy John built three, tore down the first two

finally settling on a tower amalgamated between an obelisk

and a Babel ziggurat, a spiral of plough shares

fenders and motor covers, tractor seats and steering wheels

a corn planter, spring tooth harrow and flat cultivator

manure spreader, deep trench, disc cultivator and windrower

all manner of painted and rusting equipment

conjoined invisible in the warp and woof, the new body

arose from a blood red brick base

and a gathering of barbed wire strung against

an open side like it emerged from the skeleton

of an overlooked and dying chthonic deity

an androgynous Texas god resurrected and ascending from the barnyard

straining against gravity's death clutch

and his father's terrible acrophobia

grasping upward into nothing more than still air

building materials so heavy and bundlesome that at last

Willy John devised and constructed a fifty eight foot derrick

with a block and tackle pulley system to hoick up

a John Deere engine block a magically and technically impossible

six feet above the rig: a great skull atop the megalith

a pair of steel irrigation pipes protruding

like massive horns upward from the sides

after the last arc weld lightning burst

the final acetylene flame, the penultimate binding smear

of cement, wrap of bailing wire, spit and glue

he brought his parents to stand beside the barn

and view the Monument to the South Plains

rising from the abandoned feed lot

and his father trembled, his mother wept

as if she were viewing the birth of a new grand child

before the great sculpture soughing with the wind's movement

marking the pathway trace of light's footfall

on the near horizon a ripening field of cotton

and behind, knee deep in the white foam of crop

three scattered pump jacks, their rise and fall

like the distant shapes of migrant pickers

working their slow way through the half mirage

My Lord, he said, Willy John, that thing's alive

I have not wasted my life

— Richard Shelton, “Desert Water”

Genesis 17:7

1

Oncet when I was a boy

a walking man come

to town twicet every year

folks didn't know who he was

name him Uncle Abe

said he was lost and wandering

in his own mind

a harmless old thing just passing by

carried this paper bag in his hand

no child nor cat can not find out what's in

I sidled him in the gravel road said

Mister Man, what you got in that paper sack?

he turnt round looked me up and down

like a rooster hypnotized

by a line in the sand

said Master Boy, I'll tell you what I brought

but you answer me first one thing

you say how many years your mama's got

I told and he said Not enough

tell me your grandmama's home

I said she aint she's dead and gone

2

he said

I was a almost whole live grown up boy oncet

like you walking along soon

had me a paper sack of store bought candy

going down the road

after work at the cotton gin

girlchild womern on her poach call me say

Mister Man, what you got in that possible sack?

come here show me right now

patted beside her where for me to set

I come to her she say What you bring?

I shook all over

she was beautiful as churchhouse sin

I felt as ugly as the real thing

she eat a piece without asking

I known deep in my paper sack it was

one chocolate covenant hiding to be last

pretty soon we almost racing

eating that candy so fast

she lay one smiling piece on her tongue

with her finger say Come here

put her mouth on mine

she pass me that seed

take it back and again

till the covenant was gone

then so was she

all but the memory

I had me one wife, son

four good chirren grown up

left and gone

but never nothing

like that day since come along

now I got
hope
and
mebbe

and then whatall time's left

this paperbag of sweet candy

with one covenant

for her somewhere waiting

if I'm so blessed

3

he told me his story that day

again every time since twicet a year

till the day he didn't come here

I never stopped remembering

the promise I made

to never have to say

I got no more of my life to waste

I still try to look

down every street

at every porch

every old walking man's face

every shadowed place

4

oncet mama say

Don't you be shiftless boy

don't you daydream your life away

pretty soon you be walking lonesome

empty head and pocket

like that crazy Uncle Aberham

kicking rocks down the gravel road

I said Oh Mama Mama

don't even promise that might be so

it's a whole live world

inside that lucky man

you and all the rest of this town

don't even know

one sweet covenant

you caint never understand

I'll buy that sculpture from you

It's not for sale

but you deem it a sculpture

Everything's for sale and yes I do

Not everything

Yougn about name your price

I won't sell it but I also

can't sell it, it's not mine

Whose is it?

My son made it

I suppose he owns it

or my wife

or even my daddy the original provider

maybe we all do

or maybe none of us

maybe it owns itself

What would you do with it?

I'd move it over to my place

If you could get it there

It wouldn't fit

it was made to be right here

Maybe I could make it fit

Ign hire a way to get it there

Maybe you couldn't make it fit

then it would be neither useful nor ornamental

about like an erection on a mule

They say you got a way with words

They

Yep

The great arbiter of all knowledge

opinion and attitude in the known world

extending to the Texas borders

Pretty much

some say furthern that

You caint tell me you couldn't use the money

even if you are a retired perfessor and all

No I can't tell you that

But you won't sell it

Why do you want it so much?