Desolation Angels: A Novel Read online

  And the new moon, brown, sinks early yonder by Baker River dark.

  My life is a vast inconsequential epic with a thousand and a million characters—here they all come, as swiftly we roll east, as swiftly the earth rolls east.

  8

  For smoking all I have is Air Force paper to roll my tobacco in, an eager sergeant had lectured us on the importance of the Ground Observer Corps and handed out fat books of blank paper to record whole armadas apparently of enemy bombers in some paranoiac Conelrad of his brain—He was from New York and talked fast and was Jewish and made me homesick—“Aircraft Flash Message Record,” with lines and numbers, I take my little aluminum scissors and cut a square and roll a butt and when airplanes pass I mind my own business although he (the Sgt) did say “If you see a flying saucer report the flying saucer”—It says on the blank: “Number of aircraft, one, two, three, four, many, unknown,” reminds me of the dream I had of me and W. H. Auden standing at a bar on the Mississippi River joking elegantly about “women’s urine”—“Type of aircraft,” it goes on, “single—, bi—, multi—, jet, unknown”—Naturally I love that unknown, got nothin else to do up there on Desolation—“Altitude of aircraft” (and dig this) “Very low, low, high, very high, unknown”—then SPECIAL REMARKS: EXAMPLES: “Hostile aircraft, blimp” (bloop), “helicopter balloon, aircraft in combat or distress, etc.” (or whale)—O distressed rose unknown sorrow plane, come!

  My cigarette paper is so sad.

  “When will Andy and Fred get here!” I yell, when they come up that trail on mules and horses I’ll have real cigarette paper and my dear mail from my millions of characters—

  For the trouble with Desolation, is, no characters, alone, isolated, but is Hozomeen isolate?

  9

  My eyes in my hand, welded to wheel to welded to whang.

  10

  To while away the time I play my solitaire card baseball game Lionel and I invented in 1942 when he visited Lowell and the pipes froze for Christmas—the game is between the Pittsburgh Plymouths (my oldest team, and now barely on top of the 2nd division) and the New York Chevvies rising from the cellar ignominiously since they were world champions last year—I shuffle my deck, write out the lineups, and lay out the teams—For hundreds of miles around, black night, the lamps of Desolation are lit, to a childish sport, but the Void is a child too—and here’s how the game goes:—what happens:—how it’s won, and by whom:—

  The opposing pitchers are, for the Chevvies, Joe McCann, old vet of 20 years in my leagues since first at 13 age I’d belt iron rollerbearings with a nail in the appleblossoms of the Sarah backyard, Ah sad—Joe McCann, with a record of 1–2, (this is the 14th game of the season for both clubs), and an earned run average of 4.86, the Chevvies naturally heavily favored and especially as McCann is a star pitcher and Gavin a secondrater in my official effectiveness rulings—and the Chevvies are hot anyway, comin up, and took the opener of this series 11–5 …

  The Chevvies jump right out ahead in their half of the first inning as Frank Kelly the manager belts a long single into center bringing home Stan Orsowski from second where he’d gone on a bingle and walk to Duffy—yag, yag, you can hear those Chevvies (in my mind) talking it up and whistling and clapping the game on—The poor greenclad Plymouths come on for their half of the opening inning, it’s just like real life, real baseball, I cant tell the difference between this and that howling wind and hundreds of miles of Arctic Rock without—

  But Tommy Turner with his great speed converts a triple into an inside-the-park homerun and anyway Sim Kelly has no arm out there and it’s Tommy’s sixth homerun, he is the “magnificent one” all right—and his 15th run batted in and he’s only been playin six games because he was injured, a regular Mickey Mantle—

  Followed immediately back to back by a line drive homerun over the rightfield fence from the black bat of old Pie Tibbs and the Plyms jump out ahead 2–1 … wow …

  (the fans go wild in the mountain, I hear the rumble of celestial racing cars in the glacial crevasses)

  —Then Lew Badgurst singles to right and Joe McCann is really getting belted (and him with his fancy earned run average) (pah, goes to show)—

  In fact McCann is almost batted out of the box as he further gives up a walk to Tod Gavin but Ole Reliable Henry Pray ends up the inning grounding out to Frank Kelly at third—it will be a slugfest.

  Then suddenly the two pitchers become locked in an unexpected brilliant pitching duel, racking up goose egg after goose egg, neither one of them giving up a hit except one single (Ned Gavin the pitcher got it) in the second inning, right on brilliantly up to the uttermost eighth when Zagg Parker of the Chevs finally breaks the ice with a single to right which (he too for great super runner speed) unopposed stretches into a double (the throw is made but he makes it, sliding)—and a new tone comes in the game you’d think but no!—Ned Gavin makes Clyde Castleman fly out to center then calmly strikes out Stan the Man Orsowski and stalks off the mound chewing his tobacco unperturbed, the very void—Still, a 2–1 ballgame favor of his team—

  McCann yields a single to big bad Lew Badgurst (with big arms southpawing that bat) in his half of the eighth, and there’s a base stolen on him by pinch runner Allen Wayne, but no danger as he gets Tod Gavin on a grounder—

  Going into the final inning, still the same score, the same situation.

  All Ned Gavin has to do is hold the Chevvies for 3 long outs. The fans gulp and tense. He has to face Byrd Duffy (batting .346 up to this game), Frank Kelly, and pinch hitter Tex Davidson—

  He hitches up his belt, sighs, and faces the chubby Duffy—and winds up—Low, one ball.

  Outside, ball two.

  Long fly to center field but right in the hands of Tommy Turner.

  Only two to go.

  “Come on Neddy!” yells manager Cy Locke from the 3rd base box, Cy Locke who was the greatest shortstop of all time in his time in my appleblossom time when Pa was young and laughed in the summernight kitchen with beer and Shammy and pinochle—

  Frank Kelly up, dangerous, menacing, the manager, hungry for money and pennants, a whiplash, a firebrand—

  Neddy winds up: delivers: inside.

  Ball one.

  Delivers.

  Kelly belts it to right, off the flagpole, Tod Gavin chases, it’s a standup double, the tying run is on second, the crowd is wild. Whistles, whistles, whistles—

  Speedboy Selman Piva is sent out to run for Kelly.

  Tex Davidson is a big veteran chaw-chawin old outfielder of the old wars, he drinks at night, he doesnt care—He strikes out with a big wheeling whackaround of the empty bat.

  Ned Gavin has thrun him 3 curves. Frank Kelly curses in the dugout, Piva, the tying run, is still on second. One more to go!

  The batter: Sam Dane, Chewy catcher, old veteran chawidrinkbuddy in fact of Tex Davidson’s, only difference is Sam bats lefty—same height, lean, old, dont care—

  Ned pitches a call strike across the letters—

  And there it comes:—a booming homerun over the center-field barrier, Piva comes home, Sam comes loping around chewing his tobacco, still doesnt care, at the plate he is mobbed by the Kellies and the crazies—

  Bottom of the 9th, all Joe McCann has to do is hold the Plymouths—Pray gets on on an error, Gucwa singles, they hold at second and first, and up steps little Neddy Gavin and doubles home the tying run and sends the winning run to third, pitcher eat pitcher—Leo Sawyer pops up, it looks like McCann’ll hold out, but Tommy Turner simply slaps a sacrifice grounder and in comes the winning run, Jake Gucwa who’d singled so unobtrusively, and the Plymouths rush out and carry Ned Gavin to the showers atop their shoulders.

  Tell me Lionel and I didnt invent a good game!

  11

  Great day in the morning, he’s committed another murder, in fact the same one, only this time the victim sits happily in my father’s chair just about on Sarah Avenue location and I’m just sitting at my desk writing on, unconcerned, when I heard
of the new murder I go on writing (presumably about it, he he)—All the ladies have gone to the lawns but what horror when they come back just to sense murder in that room, what will Ma say, but he has cut up the body and washed it down the toilet—Dark brewing face bends over us in the gloomdream.

  I wake up in the morning at seven and my mop is still drying on the rock, like a woman’s head of hair, like Hecuba forlorn, and the lake is a misty mirror a mile below out of which soon the ladies of the lake shall rise in wrath and all night long I hardly slept (I hear faint thunder in my eardrums) because the mice, the rat, and the two fawns befawdledawdled all over my place, the fawns unreal, too skinny, too strange to be deer, but new kinds of mystery mountain mammals—They cleaned out utterly the plate of cold boiled potatoes I laid out for them—My sleepingbag is flat for another day—I sing at the stove: “How coffee, you sure look good when you brewin”—

  “How how lady, you sure look good when you lovin”

  (the ladies of the North Pole Snow I heard sing in Greenland)

  12

  My toilet is a little peaked wood outhouse on the edge of a beautiful Zen precipice with boulders and rock slate and old gnarled enlightened trees, remnants of trees, stumps, torn, tortured, hung, ready to fall, unconscious, Ta Ta Ta—the door I keep jammed open with a rock, faces vast triangular mountain walls across Lightning Gorge to the east, at 8:30 A.M. the haze is sweet and pure—and dreamy—Lightning Creek mores and mores her roar—Three Fools joins in, and Shull and Cinammon feed him, and beyond, Trouble Creek, and beyond, other forests, other primitive areas, other gnarled rock, straight east to Montana—On foggy days the view from my toilet seat is like a Chinese Zen drawing in ink on silk of gray voids, I half expect to see two giggling old dharma bums, or one in rags, by the goat-horned stump, one with a broom, the other with a pen quill, writing poems about the Giggling Lings in the Fog—saying, “Hanshan, what is the meaning of the void?”

  “Shihte, did you mop your kitchen floor this morning?”

  “Hanshan, what is the meaning of the void?”

  “Shihte, did you mop—Shihte, did you mop?”

  “He he he he.”

  “Why do you laugh, Shihte?”

  “Because my floor is mopped.”

  “Then what is the meaning of the void?”

  Shihte picks up his broom and sweeps empty space, like I once saw Irwin Garden do—they wander off, giggling, in the fog, and all’s left are the few near rocks and gnarls I can see and above, the Void goes into the Great Truth Cloud of upper fogs, not even one black sash, it is a giant vertical drawing, showing 2 little masters and then space endlessly above them—“Hanshan, where is your mop?”

  “Drying on a rock.”

  A thousand years ago Hanshan wrote poems on cliffs like these, on foggy days like these, and Shihte swept out the monastery kitchen with a broom and they giggled together, and King’s Men came from far and wide to find them and they only ran, hiding, into crevasses and caves—Suddenly I see Hanshan now appearing before my Window pointing to the east, I look that way, it’s only Three Fools Creek in the morning haze, I look back, Hanshan has vanished, I look back at what he showed me, it’s only Three Fools Creek in the morning haze.

  What else?

  13

  Then come the long daydreams of what I’ll do when I get out of there, that mountaintop trap. Just to drift and roam down that road, on 99, fast, mebbe a filet mignon on hot coals in a riverbottom some night, with good wine, and on in the morning—to Sacramento, Berkeley, go up to Ben Fagan’s cottage and say first off this Haiku:

  Hitch hiked a thousand

  miles and brought

  You wine

  —mebbe sleep in his grass yard that night, at least one night in a Chinatown hotel, one long walk around Frisco, one big Chinese two big Chinese dinners, see Cody, see Mal, look for Bob Donnely and the others—few things here and there, a present for Ma—why plan? I’ll just drift down the road looking at unexpected events and I wont stop till Mexico City

  14

  I have a book up there, confessions of ex communists who quit when they recognized its totalitarian beastliness, The God That Failed the title (including one dull O awfully dull account of André Gide’s that old postmortem bore)—all I have, for reading—and become depressed by the thought of a world (O what a world is this, that friendships cancel enmity of the heart, people fighting for something to fight, everywhere) a world of GPU’s and spies and dictators and purges and midnight murders and marijuana revolutions with guns and gangs in the desert—suddenly, just by tuning in on America via the lookout radio listening to the other boys in the bull session, I hear football scores, talk of so-and-so “Bo Pelligrini!—what a bruiser!! I dont talk to anybody from Maryland”—and the jokes, and the laconic stay, I realize, “America is as free as that wild wind, out there, still free, free as when there was no name to that border to call it Canada and on Friday nights when Canadian Fishermen come in old cars on the old road beyond the lake tarn” (that I can see, the little lights of Friday night, thinking then immediately of their hats and gear and flies and lines) “on Friday nights it was the nameless Indian came, the Skagit, and a few log forts were up there, and down here a ways, and winds blew on free feet and free antlers, and still do, on free radio waves, on free wild youngtalk of America on the radio, college boys, fearless free boys, a million miles from Siberia this is and Amerikay is a good old country yet—”

  For the whole blighted darkness-woe of thinking about Russias and plots to assassinate whole peoples’ souls, is lifted just by hearing “My God, the score is 26–0 already—they couldn’t gain anything thru the line”—“Just like the All Stars”—“Hey Ed when you comin down off your lookout?”—“He’s goin steady, he’ll be wantin to go home straight”—“We might take a look at Glacier National Park”—“We’re goin home thru the Badlands of North Dakota”—“You mean the Black Hills”—“I don’t talk to anybody from Syracuse”—“Anybody know a good bedtime story?”—“Hey it’s eight thirty, we better knock off—How 33 ten-seven till tomorrow morning. Good night”—“Ho! How 32 ten-seven till tomorrow morning—Sleep tight”—“Did you say you had Honkgonk on your portable radio?”—“Sure, listen, hingya hingya hingya”—“That does it, good night”—

  And I know that America is too vast with people too vast to ever be degraded to the low level of a slave nation, and I can go hitch hiking down that road and on into the remaining years of my life knowing that outside of a couple fights in bars started by drunks I’ll have not a hair of my head (and I need a haircut) harmed by Totalitarian cruelty—

  Indian scalp say this, and prophesy:

  “From these walls, laughter will run over the world, infecting with courage the bent laborious peon of antiquity.”

  15

  And I buy Buddha, who said, that what he said was neither true nor untrue, and there’s the only true thing or good thing I ever heard and it rings a cloudy bell, a mighty supramundane gong—He said, “Your trip was long, illimitable, you came to this raindrop called your life, and call it yours—we have purposed that you vow to be awakened—whether in a million lifetimes you disregard this Kingly Heeding, it’s still a raindrop in the sea and who’s disturbed and what is time—? This Bright Ocean of Infinitude sails many fish afar, that come and go like the sparkle on your lake, mind, but dive into the rectangular white blaze of this thought now: You have been assigned to wake up, this is the golden eternity, which knowledge will do you no earthly good for earth’s not pith, a crystal myth—face the A-H truth, awakener, be you not knuckled under the wile of cold or heat, comfort or unrepose, be you mindful, moth, of eternity—be you loving, lad, lord, of infinite variety—be you one of us, Great Knowers Without Knowing, Great Lovers Beyond Love, whole hosts and unnumberable angels with form or desire, supernatural corridors of heat—we heat to hold you woke—open your arms embrace the world, it and we rush in, we’ll lay a silver meeting brand of golden hands on your milky embowered brow, p
ower, to make you freeze in love forever—Believe! and ye shall live forever—Believe, that ye have lived forever—overrule the fortresses and penances of dark isolate suffering life on earth, there’s more to life than earth, there’s Light Everywhere, look—”

  In these strange words I hear every night, in many other words, varieties and threads of discourse pouring in from that evermindful rich—

  Take my word for it, something will come of it, and it will wear the face of sweet nothingness, flappy leaf—

  The bullnecks of strong raft drivers the color of purple gold and kirtles of silk will carry us uncarried uncrossing crossable no-cross voids to the ulum light, where Ragamita the lidded golden eye opes to hold the gaze—Mice skitter in the mountain night with little feet of ice and diamonds, but’s not my time yet (mortal hero) to know what I know I know, so, come in