supplies arrived. I enjoyed lying in bed, listening to him
moan and complain, then the excitement when he started
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
55
unpacking his gear. I suspected we wouldn’t be seeing him
for the rest of the day.
It was after ten when I finally got up, and I filled up the
bottle he’d given me and went out for a run. Out in the sun,
the heat was brutal, but the shade wasn’t bad. Every dog in
town raised a head to watch me, then went back to sleeping
in the shade of their porches. I got a shower back home,
pulled on my jeans, and went into the kitchen. The Original
was sitting at the table, drinking coffee. “Son, you feeling
hungry? Want a sandwich?”
“That sounds good. I’ll make them. What do you want?”
“I think we’ve got some sliced ham, and we’ve got some
Velveeta, if you want a grilled cheese.”
I studied the inside of the fridge. “Too hot for grilled
cheese. You’ve got some ripe tomatoes. That might go good
with the ham.” I made a big pile of sandwiches, left a couple
wrapped up in plastic for Jesse. “You want me to go get him
so he can eat?”
“I don’t think so. I’m too tired to deal with him today.
Let him stay out in the studio and play with his paints.”
“Have you seen his paintings?”
He nodded. “Yeah. He’s a genius, Lorenzo. A world-class
genius, a world-class pain in the ass, and it is just my luck
he was born into this family.” He took a big bite of his
sandwich.
“Jesse had this idea, about making the characters in the
cartoon more obvious, like caricatures. Thinks that will get
the point across. Makes it more likely for people to identify
with character types.”
He thought about it, his eyes distant. “Well, people do
recognize caricatures. They’re good for a laugh. It would be
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
56
easy to fall into the habit of making all your characters one-
dimensional, though.”
“I was thinking about
Doonesbury
. You know that
character BD? He wore his college football helmet—for what,
thirty years? But he was always a fully realized character.”
“It’s easier to do that with a comic strip instead of a
stand-alone. With a strip, you’ve got narrative. That helps
you develop character.”
“We don’t have so many newspapers anymore. I always
wanted to do a comic strip, so I could tell stories over time,
but most of the markets these days are for stand-alones.”
“I think you should go for what you want it to be, make
it as good as you can, then worry about finding markets.”
“Yeah, you’re right. I’m trying to think about too many
things at once.”
We ate our sandwiches in peaceful silence, then The
Original cut an apple up into pieces and we ate that for
desert. “You know, I was thinking about the military
cartoons out there.
Doonesbury
, he sent BD off to war. In
Jarheads
, those boys went off to war. Those were the only
two, though. The rest just had a lot of stale jokes about
peeling potatoes for KP and that tired, old officer-enlisted
shtick.”
I thought about it for a bit, eating my apple wedges.
There was enough funny in a war to make a comic strip. Wry
humor, but real. A strong sense of the ridiculous. More than
enough absurd. I hated to step into politics, though. I could
see how people would want me to come down on either one
side of the line or the other.
I sat up. Wait a minute. I could come down on the side
of the people sent to fight the war. I suspected they had a
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
57
perspective different from the strong right or the strong left. I
could do a comic with a unit at war, and in forty years, they
would probably still be at war. Somewhere. There was always
a war.
“Huh.” I stood up, put my paper plate in the trash can
under the sink. “Can I look at some of your books? I took
some out to the studio last night.”
We sat together on the porch, and I looked at cartoons
from his huge collection. Sometimes he would lean over and
point something out to me, but mostly he just sat with me
and let me think. The really good comics, they were subtle.
They had something to say. They used exaggeration and
caricature in a very quiet way. Most of the really good ones
were daily cartoons, narratives, the old-fashioned newspaper
comic strip.
It was coming clear in my mind, not any specific
content, but what I wanted to aim for. I felt like shadowy
building blocks were rearranging themselves in my mind,
and my cartoon was starting to take shape in my head. I was
pleased. More than pleased. Happiness, excitement were
bubbling up in my stomach. The old man and I, we fit
together. What he had to teach me was just what I needed to
learn, and his style, the quiet way he made a point and then
sat back while I thought about it, was perfect for me. Navajo
men and women, the elders, they taught this same way.
They told a story, and the story had a point, but the person
listening, they had to work out how that story mattered to
them. It was a subtle way of teaching.
Sadie came by, tripped up the porch steps, talking
about bringing umami to the bakery. Maybe she’d have
better luck with umami pastry, and she could sell them
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
58
through the café. Apparently only members of her immediate
family had been willing to try the Umami Dogs.
She was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and shorts with
sandals, and her legs were skinny as chicken legs. She was
probably naturally high-strung, but the frantic jitteriness,
the way she kept shivering and wiping her nose on her
sleeve, made me wonder if the man we had rousted in the
alley last night had been telling the truth, that Sadie had
called him to bring her some dope. He could have been out
in the alley, waiting for her. The Original was watching her
as she talked, his back getting stiffer and stiffer. I stood up
to give them some privacy. “I better go check on Jesse.”
“Did he get his supplies? I thought I saw the truck this
morning. I can’t wait to see what JC’s going to paint. Did you
see his last show, Granddad? Oh, of course you did. I’m
forgetting.”
“Sadie, sit down. Let’s talk.” His voice was tired and sad,
but she sat down on the top step. She must have known
what was coming. She wrapped her arms around her knees,
dropped her head.
I walked down the steps. “Sadie, I’ll see you later.”
“Yeah, sure, um… Granddad, what’s his name again? I
can’t remember.”
Jesse was moving around the studio like a whirling
dervish. At first I thought he was dressed in a bunch of silk
scarves, then I realized he had them draped over his arms
and shoulders and was hanging them up from one of the
rafters to flutter in the breeze. When he hung the last one
up, he was wearing boxers and nothing else. His side of the
studio was arranged with the huge blank canvases in a
circle. There were eight of them, with some spares along the
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
59
wall. He had been telling the truth—they must have been ten
feet tall, probably five feet wide. They formed a sort of
barrier, separating the sides of the studio, and the scarves
made another line. “We could have just put some masking
tape down on the floor,” I said, and stuck my head between
the scarves.
“Hey, where have you been?”
“Having lunch with your granddad, and then we looked
at cartoons on the porch. I made you a couple of ham and
tomato.”
“I’m hungry. I didn’t realize I’d missed lunch.”
“Sadie’s talking to him on the porch.”
He must have heard something in my voice. He went on
alert, his back snapping stiff and straight. I thought he was
going to look just like his grandfather when he was eighty.
“Why? What’s wrong? What did she say?”
“Jesse, you know she’s using. Maybe she can get some
help if she admits it.”
“No, she’s not.” He looked tired, cranky as a toddler, his
face moving from worried to scared. “You don’t know her.
You don’t know anything about it.”
“No, of course I don’t. Oh, wait. Where did I grow up?
On the Navajo reservation? What would I know about people
using.”
“Shit.” He pushed open the door.
“You’re wearing boxer shorts.”
“So what? It’s ninety-four degrees out here.” I ignored
him, went to my couch, and lay down. Then I moved the
other direction, gave him my back, so I could look at the
quiet empty walls of my half of the studio. I could hear him
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
60
cursing behind me, but he pulled on his jeans and T-shirt
before he went back to the house.
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
61
Chapter Six
I TOOK up my watercolor pad and worked on the cartoon I’d
done of the bar fight in Alpine. I used the markers and
colored in Jesse’s pretty honey-colored hair, stormy blue
eyes, even gave his red sneakers some sparklies on the
shoestrings. Some green on the pool table, and the beer
bottles got a bit of amber. I took his advice and sketched in a
little Confederate flag on the back-jeans pocket of the
cracker who’d tried to roust him. I felt a little chill, looking
down into that guy’s dumb, brutal face. Jesse might have
really been in danger. Those two guys, they could have hurt
him, badly. They were looking to hurt someone. Now I
wished I had done a little more damage to that dumb
redneck’s face so he’d remember next time.
I hung the cartoon up on Jesse’s side of the studio, then
I peeled out of my jeans and T-shirt and lay back on my
couch, enjoying the fans overhead. Jesse was right: it was
over ninety in here, but he’d lowered the blinds so it was
dark, and it was cooling off with the breeze.
I woke up an hour later, and there was a little cooler
next to my couch, full of ice and a couple of beers. I looked
at them. Shiner Bock again. Pinned on my bulletin board
was a sketch of me sleeping. He’d drawn my hair sticking up
like a little kid with a cowlick, and it gave me a comical look,
like I was five years old. He’d put a little devil dog tattoo on
my cheek.
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
62
I guess that meant we’d made up. I could hear him over
on his side, but I decided to let him work. I visited the head,
then sat down at my desk. Let’s sketch out a platoon, I
thought. This is my platoon, and they needed to be good for
forty years. No, fifty years. We’d need a medic. We’d need a
team leader. That would have to be me. Trying to take care of
a platoon was the funniest job in the Marine Corps. Jesse
would have to come along, or JC3, maybe, now that DADT
was history. We’d need a radioman and a gunner. Infantry
platoon, no question about that. I made some preliminary
sketches, toyed with names. I worked for a couple of hours,
and it was dark by the time The Original came in and leaned
over my desk. He studied my sketches, grinned at the sketch
of me sleeping, then went over to Jesse’s side of the studio.
“You boys have to strip down because of the heat? I can
rig up one of those portable air conditioners if you want.”
“I’m okay,” Jesse said. He stuck his head through the
scarves. “You want air conditioning, Mary?”
“I’m good.”
The Original came back through the scarves, swatting at
them irritably. He gestured toward Jesse’s side. “Good
cartoon. I like how you colored his sneakers. Looks just like
him. You boys ready for some supper?”
We got dressed and met at the kitchen table. The
Original was cooking steaks in an iron skillet, on top of the
old gas range. “Here you go, boys.” He put a plate down in
front of Jesse, must have been nearly sixteen ounces of T-
bone. His eyes got big, and he reached for the ketchup. The
T-bone that was put down in front of me was even bigger, its
sizzling edges flopping over the side of the plate. I looked
Marathon Cowboys |
Sarah Black
63
over at Jesse, gave him a
wtf?
look, but he just grinned at