clean, and then I’d be able to get to work again.
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I picked up the phone, called The Original. Jesse
answered the phone, and my chest got so tight I nearly
couldn’t speak. “Jesse, let me speak to your granddad.”
“Mary, please….”
I didn’t answer. He waited a moment, then handed the
phone over. “Lorenzo? You okay, son?”
“Yes, sir, I’m fine.”
“Why don’t you come on back home? Jesse has
something he wants to say to you.”
“No. What I’d like to do is this, if it’s okay with you.” I
was pleased that my voice sounded strong, determined. “I’m
going down into Big Bend. I’m going camping for a while. You
think Jesse will be done with his paintings in two months?
So I can come back and we can finish what we started with
the comic?”
“Yes. I’ll make sure he’s done. You have everything you
need?”
“I’ll get it. I have my mail forwarded to your house. Can
we just leave it for now? If there is some sort of emergency,
I’ll be in Big Bend. The rangers will know where I am.”
“You come home whenever you’re ready, Lorenzo.”
“I don’t want to see him.” I heard him suck in his
breath, like I’d punched him. “I’m sorry, but I just can’t.”
“I understand.” His voice was gruff. “You call me, check
in, okay? So I know you’re alive.”
“Yes, sir.”
I bought a camper, a little sixteen-foot Bambi Airstream,
just big enough for one. It took almost half of the money I’d
saved. I filled up the pickup with supplies, hooked up the
camper, and drove back down the length of Texas. I cut
across to Terlingua, so I could go into Big Bend without
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passing through Marathon, and drove as far as I could go in
the park, down to the Rio Grande campground. It was cool
and green next to the river, and I found a site back away
from everyone, under a broad, shady tree.
I spent the days hiking, the afternoons stretched out in
a hammock, asleep, and the nights staring at the ceiling,
loving Jesse in my memory. It seemed like my mind wouldn’t
let him go, wouldn’t let me push him away until I had
remembered every minute in his company, every time he’d
let me taste him, the way he nuzzled under my arms, or the
way his shoulders felt when I slung my arm around him and
pulled him close. And I had to see his face a million times,
his face handing me a condom, saying,
please, zo-zo,
reaching for the hem of his shirt and pulling it over his head,
sliding his hand down into the waistband of his boxers. A
million times, and I thought the memories were going to
burn right through my chest, leaving gaping, smoking black
scars on my skin. But when I finally woke up, gasping like I
had a rock sitting on my chest, I’d touch my skin, find
nothing had changed.
I remembered driving back from Lajitas with my new
boots, thinking I was going to win him, and we were going to
live and love happily together for our entire lives, and make
beautiful art, and there was just no option for failure. Well,
things didn’t always work out, did they? I kept telling myself
that, and it felt like something in my head was tied up,
gagged, ready to get loose and run, screaming, all the way
back to Marathon, fast as I could go, throw myself in Jesse’s
arms and beg him never to leave me. I’d tell him he could do
anything to me and I’d still love him, he could do anything….
And that’s when I’d put my shoes on and go out for a run,
and I’d run until I was as empty as I had ever been. But then
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I had to lie back down at night, stare at the ceiling and
remember Jesse’s face, and it started all over again.
I had been down at the campground a couple of weeks,
and I’d had a bad night. I took a long run, and when I came
back, Jesse was there, sitting on the back end of his
granddad’s truck. There was a bag of groceries on the picnic
table, and a stack of mail. I walked over to the camper,
pulled a towel out, and ran it over my face and neck. “What
are you doing here?”
At least he didn’t say he’d come to bring me food and
mail. “I need to talk to you.”
I sat down at the picnic table, pulled some strawberries
and bananas out of the bag. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He was looking at my feet, like he
wasn’t sure how to start. “Mary, I need to try to explain what
happened. It’s got me all tangled up. I can’t sleep, trying to
think how things got out of hand. I don’t know how to fix
this.”
“Are you talking about you and me? Or your painting?”
“The painting, both. I don’t know. You and me, that had
nothing to do with the painting. Don’t listen to what Sammy
said. He was just being a fuckhead. I wasn’t sleeping with
you to talk you into being my model.”
“Well, I’m happy to hear that. But I never thought you
were.”
He looked up, met my eyes. He hadn’t been sleeping. His
eyes were haunted, and his face looked thin and miserable.
“So, you feel like you need to explain something to me? I
don’t think so.” I stood up, dismissing him. “I let you take
photographs of me. I wasn’t thinking, but if I had been I
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would have known what you were going to do with them. It’s
fine, Jesse. It’s done. Don’t worry about it.”
He didn’t move, and his face looked worse now,
something dark and frantic in his blue eyes. “Please, please
let me explain.” His voice was a whisper, and my eyes filled
with tears before I could stop them.
“Do me a favor, okay? Just go off and have a happy life,
and enjoy your success. I think that
Death of a Grievous
Angel
is brilliant. Painful and brilliant. Don’t think about me.
Don’t let the way I feel about this bother you, okay? It’s not
your fault I thought there was more going on between us.
There’s nothing to salvage here, Jesse, between you and me.
But I’m glad your painting is a success.”
“They gave me two hundred thousand dollars for it.” I
suspected, bitterly, that he was going to spend all of it trying
to save his junkie cousin. “I’d give every penny back, if I
could just find a way to explain to you…. I was just trying to
paint my cowboy angels, Mary. That was all. And then you
got too real, you got into my head, I smelled you and tasted
you and it changed, I was painting you, the real you, and I
got madder and madder, and next thing I knew, I was
painting those twenty-dollar bills on that cross.”
I sat down again. “Jesse, I get that. I understand what
happened.”
“Then why did you leave? Why are you still so mad?”
“Because when you figured out what was going on with
your painting, you didn’t tell me. You knew what that
painting was turning into. You knew exactly how good it
was. And you carefully weighed what was more important,
and decided not to tell me. You didn’t want me to try and
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stop you. You taped paper over it every night, Jesse, so I
wouldn’t accidently see it.”
“Okay, yes. I did. Yes, yes, and yes. I did everything you
said. Are you going to forgive me?”
I stood up again. “Nothing to forgive.”
“Bullshit!” He lost his cool then, got up and hammered
me in the chest with his fists. “You’re gonna make me suffer
and suffer for the rest of my fucking life? What happened to
I
love you?
And
I love you again?
Oh, right, you didn’t really
know me, did you? You were just in love with some
symbol
of
me. And when you got to know the real me, when you got
down to the bones, you got in your truck and ran away from
me as fast as you possibly could. Who did you think I was?”
I grabbed his fists, held him off. “Stop it. You sound like
an idiot. You never had to live with the consequences of your
choices, before now?”
He jerked free, then put his arms around me. I didn’t
move. “How can I have turned your beautiful heart to stone?
Tell me that. Because I can’t bear to think I’ve hurt you this
much.”
“You used my uniform, Jesse,
my uniform
. It’s like a
little piece of my soul. You never served. You don’t
understand what it means to be a Marine. You stole that
from me and used it to make a point in a piece of art.” I let
him hold me, and just for one moment, I put my arms
around him, held him so tightly I squeezed a little grunt out
of him. His neck was salty and damp in the heat, and I
touched his skin with my mouth. “Please leave me alone. I
can’t stand this.”
And his arms fell away. He stared up at me, those
stormy blue eyes full of tears. He wiped a tear off my face
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with his thumb. Then he got back in his granddad’s pickup
truck and drove away.
A week later I pulled my camper up to the Chisos
Mountain Basin and found some new trails to run. I almost
thought I was getting worse, the longing for Jesse so strong
in my chest, I started waking up in the night, my heart
racing and the breath wheezing out of my throat. This had
happened just after I’d been hurt in Iraq, too, and the
counselor had said,
panic attacks, nothing to worry about,
they’ll go away.
I was doing everything I could think of not to
turn into some head case, but Jesse was still pounding
through my veins like an infection in my blood, and I
thought more than once how easy it would be to just go to
sleep and not wake up. That would be peaceful, quiet, and
the pain would be gone. There were lots of ways to kill a
man, lots of ways for a man to die. When I’d spent too much
time dwelling on that and scared myself, I went down to the
camp store and called The Original.
“Sir. I’m just calling to check in. Is everything okay there
in Marathon?”
“No, son. No, it’s not. Jesse’s gone. He tore up his
canvases, left them all in a pile for the trashman. Then he
kissed me good-bye and got a ride out of here, and I haven’t
heard from him since.”
“How long has he been gone?”
“Three days. He got word about this magazine cover,
and he was happy. Then he put his head down on the table
and cried, said you’d never forgive him now.”
“What….”
“The painting. It’s gonna be on the cover of
Time
Magazine. They’re doing some article about if the country is
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letting down the vets coming home, and somebody saw the
painting up in New York.”
“Jesus! The paint is hardly dry on that thing!”
“You’ve been gone more than a month, Lorenzo. Come
on back now, okay?”
I hesitated. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, but I’m
scaring myself,” I admitted. “I’m not right. I can’t sleep….”
“Son… please. I would take it as a personal favor if you
would find your way back here. I miss having you around.
I’m afraid for Jesse. I know it’s not your problem, or your
fault, but I’ve never seen him like this. Maybe it’s time for
both of you to just settle down a bit and….”
“Okay.” I could hear the worry in his voice, and I hated
to think some of that was my fault. “I’ll come in the morning.
If Jesse calls, you can tell him I’m coming back, and I’m….”
“Thank you, Lorenzo. I don’t know what he’ll do, if you
can’t find it in your heart to forgive him.”
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Chapter Twelve
I WENT back to The Original’s house, and we tried to get
back to work. After a week of drawing crap, we both gave it
up. Jesse’s absence felt like a gaping wound. I ran too long
every morning, and the old man started sleeping late, and
evenings, we sat together on the porch, and it was all we
could do not to cry. I thought about giving it up, going back
into the USMC. At least there I knew the rules. At least there
I was too busy to stare out into the desert, watch my dreams
blow down the street like tumbleweeds.
The old man got an envelope in the mail when I’d been
back two weeks, and inside was a drawing and a letter. The