You Play the Black & the Red Comes Up Up (12 page)

THE FLESH IS MASTER

A
ll my mind would let me think of was that Mamie had gone to Santa Barbara to organize a new Encampment of the Ecanaanomic Front and wouldn't, be back that night. I kept thinking that. My mind wouldn't let me
stop think
ing about it.

When I got into the car with Sheila that night I drove up the shore and then turned right and went over Topanga Canyon, swinging the car round the curves where it drops off straight down at the edge. Then I kept on across the San Fernando Valley and on until we got to the San Fernando mission with all the long arches by the
camino real.

It was quiet there in the night and Sheila seemed to like it. You could walk under the arches on the adobe bricks that were there just the same as they'd been laid there a h
un
dred and fifty years ago.

We walked there, and Sheila started making out we were

Spaniards, and that the mission fathers were walking there, and that on the road outside there were horses with bells on going past, and Californios on palominos with saddles studded with silver and with bells on the stirrup leathers that hung to the ground almost, and Indians going past barefoot carryings baskets of grain from the
milpas
and grapes for the wine presses.

She told me all that. The way she talked you could almost think it real and when we got out on the road, there out under the moon-shadows of the pepper trees, I got the shivers, because I could almost hear the bells tinkling.

She was always imagining like that, and she would make it very real. When we started the car again I went real slow, because she said we shouldn't drive fast.

"We shouldn't go any faster than the old dons traveled on the
camino real,"
she said.

"I bet no one ever thought of a thing like that outside of you," I said. "Everyone else goes skyhooting on the concrete."

"That's very sad," she said. "If I could be Governor I'd not let anyone drive past the mission faster than four miles an hour."

It made me laugh, because I was thinking of Sheila being Governor.

I said, "Shall we go home?"

"Do you want to?" she said.

"No," I said. "It's a swell night."

I didn't have to be home.

"Won't your mother worry?" I asked her.

She didn't answer for a long time. Then she said, "She's away visiting."

"Where?"

"On Lamport's yacht."

I stepped on it and we went on humming along the roads, miles over the flat long roads between the palm trees, and then up along by the railroad and through Saugus and then clim
bing up through the Bouquet Can
yon, and up the winding road and under the live-oak trees and into the hills by the reservoir, with the jack-rabbits and the mice skipping across the road in front of the headlights, and once a deer standing still and plain in the headlights, standing by the side of the road and not frightened.

We went on until we got to a jerk town and I had to stop for gasoline. A little old bird came out after a while. He had been asleep. He said:

"Do you want a cabin?"

"No, just some gas," I said. "Fill her up."

"Where you headin' for?"

"Up north."

"Well, you got a long trip," he said. "There's no place to stop this side of Bakersfield. I got some good cabins."

"I don't want a cabin. I just want a tank full of gas."

He filled her up and we s
at there. Sheila didn't say any
thing. We drove out of that town with the dust flat on the roads and got way up on top of a mountain until my ears popped from the change in height. Then I stopped the car. We looked a long time at the
valleys. There was only a half
moon, but the valleys were clear as day

We waited, then finally I said:

"What do you want to go round with a punk like me for?"

She said, "You could make anything of yourself if you wanted to. You could be something."

That sounded just like Mamie. She was always after me to be something; but I couldn't ever be anything but myself as I am. I don't know how.

I was thinking that, and Sheila said:

"You are like music by Debussy. I don't know what piece. Perhaps he never wrote it."

I didn't know what to say. I don't know anything about classical music.

She turned on the car radio. I didn't think she'd get anything but there were some all-night stations on playing records. She got some music finally and we listened to it. It wasn't hard to take. It was very noble and big and sort of uncomfortable. It went on for a long time, and Sheila sat there staring straight ahead, and sitting very tense. When it was over she shut the radio off.

"Leave it on," I said.

"No, that's enough," she said.

"Was that this Debussy?"

"No," she said. "That was Wagner."

Then she told me it was the Prelude and Love-Death from Tristan, and how this Tristan went on a ship to bring to England the bride for his brother who was king, and how Tristan and the girl fell in love.

She sat there. I don't know what it was, but all of a sudden I took hold of her face and kissed her.

Kissing her wasn't like doing it to anyone else. It was like being a kid again and feeling that your chest is going to burst and that you can't breathe fast enough for your heart. I kissed her and she lay there with her head back on my arm. Then I drove back to the gasoline place and the old bird got up again and I got a cabin.

Sheila didn't say anything. She went in to the cabin and I drove the car round the side to park it. When I got in she was standing still in the middle of the floor. I kissed her, but she didn't kiss me. I tried to think, but I couldn't. I went to the door and stood a while.

I said, "If you want to go home, let's go. Now!"

"Do you want to go home?" she said.

"I wasn't saying what I wanted," I said. "I said, do you want to go?"

"We can't," she said. "I am chained to my body and you are chained to yours. I thought we could escape them, but we can't."

I didn't want to go near her. I turned my back and looked out of the window. I could see how dirty the panes were.

"I wish I could put myself in a drawer and let someone else get inside my useless body and walk around in it," she said.

"Let's go, then," I said.

"No."

I turned round and she was kneeling down beside a stove low on the floor. Then she asked me for a match.

I gave her a pack and she lit the gas in the stove. She knelt on there.

"Now I am a vestal virgin lighting a fire."

I didn't say anything.

"Be very patient with me," she said.

"Let's go if you want."

"I didn't know it would be in a place like this that I would become a woman."

She looked round, then she put her hands out toward the stove, only it was like she was stroking the warmth. She smiled and looked very happy. It was like she was glad it was all happening. I knew it was happening but I couldn't do anything about it. It was like being clipped on the button and going on fighting and making all the motions and knowing you're making them but not being able to do anything about it.

"Because I, Sheila, do love Richard," she said.

She wasn't saying it to me. She was saying it to herself by the stove.

I went back to looking through the window. I didn't know what to say. I heard her moving and when I turned round she was standing up and she'd taken her dress off. While I was watching her she sort of dropped her shoulders and her things dropped down from her and lay in a circle at her feet. I always remember how they looked in a little ring round her feet and the gaslight from the stove shining on them and her standing there. And then I went to her and kissed her, and
s
he smiled, but like she was worried and said:

"Why do men seek me as a sanctuary? They tremble, and I can't stand their suffering."

"You mean you're only sorry for me, then?" I said.

"I am sorry for all men," she said. "But the others I am sorry for and send away. You I am sorry for and I let you come. That's how I know I love you."

If ever I wanted to do anything, it was to walk away, but I didn't.

"YOU GOTTA EAT, TOO."

A
fterward, down at the pier, I made up my mind. I'd never see Sheila again. I planned that the next time I crossed the boulevard and she would be waiting I'd walk up to the car and say hello, and then go home instead of driving around with her. Because now she was like all the rest.

I planned it all out and had everything set, and I wasn't going to let myself slip. It was funny, but I got to thinking then that Sheila wasn't all the crazy things my mind had made up about her, but she was just a girl like anyone else. And I didn't want to see her any more.

I had it all planned out, that even if she begged I wasn't going to see her any, more, and I'd explain that it was better for both of us if she'd just keep away from me.

I had it all planned out, but when we closed down and I went down the pier, her car wasn't anywhere around.

It wasn't there the next night, either. I hadn't figured on her dropping me like that, and I began to worry. I wished she would show up so I could tell her it would be best for her not to see me any more; but she didn't come.

That got me so worried that instead of not wanting to see her any more, I got to wanting to see her worse than ever. Finally I couldn't stand it any more, so I got a bus and rode down to Palos Verdes and went to see her. I really meant to tell Sheila, but before I could start talking she just went over to the piano and began playing. I didn't ever know anyone could play a piano like that, filling the room with music and filling all the house with it so it was like as if we were deep under it like being under water and swimming. And that made me feel she was just like she'd been before.

So I never told her that it would be best for us if we never saw each other any more.

That evening the sky was very red. You don't often have clouds in California, and so the sunsets never look like anything much. But that night there were clouds, and the sun was going down fast; so we sat looking at it from the porch. And then finally there was nothing but the eucalyptus trees showing up against a faint glow and the evening wind started to come in from the ocean.

So we went inside.

"We'll stay here and be comfortable," Sheila said.

I never felt right sitting in her house, ever. So I said, "Wouldn't you like to drive somewhere?"

"I'm tired tonight," she said. "Why don't we stay here?"

I was thinking about that, then she came over and kissed my forehead and stroked it.

"I can't help it," she said. "I don't always have as much energy as you. You are always so full of strength. But I'll go if you like."

"No," I said. "It wasn't that. What about your mother?"

"She's away."

"She's always away. Where does she go?"

Sheila laughed, then she sat down on the rug by my feet.

"Poor Mother," she said. "You see, it isn't easy for us to understand; but she's the modern generation. It's hard for us to understand what that was like. They were all young when the war was on, and I suppose that made them very serious. Then when the war was over at last, they just had to let off steam, and they became the modem generation. All sorts of concepts were tumbling and shattering, and so they were rather helpless in it
all. It's hard for us to under
stand how it was; but if you did understand Mother and what her life had been like, you'd forgive her. That's what we've got to do. Forgive them all."

"That sounds cockeyed to me," I said. "Forgiving your parents."

"Nonsense. It's just as human for a child to forgive its parents as a parent to forgive its children. Wouldn't you want our children to forgive us for all we've done?"

I didn't know how to think about that. So I just sat there, and I stroked her hair. It was so shiny and smooth I could feel it sliding under my hand.

"No," she said. "That makes me stop thinking. Don't caress me. Let's talk."