Desert Syntax

Pam said the man asleep on her living room couch had walked out of the desert. There burns a sun that never rises.

“The desert?” I approached the couch across the coarse beige padding of whose arm the man’s bare feet were slung. There roars a never-breaking storm. I folded at the waist down toward the couch arm, the feet.

Grains of sand sparkled golden in the crannies of the man’s soles. Sometimes one comes out of the desert, it’s true.

Straightening up away from the feet I looked out the window of Pam’s living room at the desert. A sun warms the dunes from underneath. “Just walked out?”

Pam said he’d opened up the back door which was unlocked because she’d just come in from checking on the rabbits she’s got in a hutch out there. “Just opened up the back door and came in and said something and when I didn’t understand what he’d said he made a gesture and lay down on the couch and went to sleep.” Sometimes a conqueror comes, or one with a message.

The desert glistened gold in the window like a sea of grease congealed. The smell of the man’s feet rose up from the couch arm, smell of sweat and sand and toughened skin and, you know, feet. Roils there a flood that never rises.

“Didn’t understand what he’d said?”

Pam said, “He talked in that desert way, that way where the words are mostly what you’d expect but they stick them together all wrong, back to front and inside out.”

The man went on sleeping and smelling. What else to say? I cast about, flailing.

“How’s the rabbits?” I said.

“Rabbity as hell,” said Pam. “Breeding like, you know. They love the air out there, the warm dry air that drags itself out of the desert and across the land and sky like a big old snake belly dragging itself across everything.”

Throbs a loin that never slackens. I looked out the window and there they were: lust-tense, land- and sky-tense, the rabbits out in the hutch twitched their little noses.

I turned from the window and Pam was smiling. She stood over the couch arm, man feet, moving her hands. Stroking the air, the warm snake belly, and smiling.

“A gesture?” I said.

“Oh yes,” she said and moved her hands: nothing like stroking any belly, more like a snap, snapping her fingers against her thumbs like crab claws or like two long-jawed mouths saying nonsense, yak yak yak, blah blah blah. “Then he just laid down on the couch and went to sleep.”

“What do you think he meant by it?” Crabbed long-jawed mouths saying nothing.

“Oh, some desert thing. Some old secret mystery from out in gold grainy nowhere beyond the house and the lawn and the driveway and the hutch and the bunnies and the plumbing and all the things we know.”

“Plumbing, sure. Where’s that drain you wanted me to take a peek at?” I’d come to Pam’s house for a reason, after all. She beckoned, led me out of the living room across the coarse beige carpet of a hall to a bathroom with a toilet where no water was.

“I flushed,” said Pam, “and it just all went away.”

I laughed, said, “That’s the idea: it all comes out and it goes away someplace and you never think about it again.”

“The water too, though,” said Pam, “the water never came back. That part’s supposed to come back, yeah?”

Roils a flood, roars a storm. “Let me get my tools.”

I went out from Pam’s house to get my tools from my truck and the sky hit me. The big sky out there close to the desert towered so incomparably I had to stand on the edge of Pam’s driveway, one foot on the concrete and one on the grass, had to stand there just gaping upward into the top of everything, half driveway half lawn, the sun a yellow-white smear like someone wiped sick fire on a big blue empty page. Sometimes a comet comes, a harbinger. I felt a prickling at the nape of my neck like fear if fear was grains of sand dragged on a wind out of the desert to tap and prove me, if fear was nothing but gold grains threading the air in a needling tappity tap.

I lowered my eyes. The sky so towering all over out there I almost couldn’t find my truck where my tools were, my red truck lost in so much blue, lost in high blinding tower or labyrinth of grainy wind I put my hands out to feel for truck or tools but felt for a moment only grain-veined air, for just a moment I groped and wheeled and stomped, half on driveway and half on lawn but which half where? Was the foot on my left my left foot or was it the other? Two halves not fitting or sticking together, coming apart all wrong, an inside-out mirror.

Lids squeezed my eyes. A mouth opened, wailing. Mine. Red truck, gray tools, where? Nowhere. Black only under lids, and around the black the blue, and through the blue the gold, threading. Sometimes a needle comes.

Mercy! My eyes opened, saw a wooden structure: a box on legs, mesh-fronted. Inside, things twitched. Damned if I hadn’t wandered sky-blind all the way around into the backyard where the hutch gave harbor to Pam’s lust-addled rabbits. What twitched were nothing but bunny parts, ears and noses and all. Drunk on relief, I laughed. My wind-chapped, laugh-stretched lips split and spilled blood which I reckoned to be no loss. Blown grains stuck to my bloody chin, I kept laughing.

“What’s the big joke?”

I turned from the hutch toward the house where Pam, on the concrete patio, tapped a slippered and impatient toe. “What’s the big secret joke out here?” she said.

“Just some rabbits.”

Tappity tap, Pam’s toe. Throbs a loin. “You see any rabbits?”

Back to the hutch I turned, looked close, stopped laughing. Not rabbits but parts: ears and noses, tails and feet, living bits engorged and twitching full of life stuck together all anyhow, adding up to what whole who can say but zero bunnies, none at all. A mind, mine, tottered, reeled. What precincts was I wandering, what tower or labyrinth?

Laughter, Pam’s, from behind. The joke was all on me. Laughter swelled from the hutch’s life-swarm breeding eternal, pullulating, and behind the hutch, around and below, the desert’s glow and churn of dunes ever still yet shifting in the wind. Gold needles stitched my spilling lips.

“How about that drain?” said Pam.

A weight dragged my hand and damned if it wasn’t my toolbox dangling all full of implements. Must have found the truck after all, wild red luck in a blue whirlwind, luck of the blind. There spins a coin that never settles. I left the lust-glutted hutch, carried my tools toward the house.

I opened the door Pam had let fall shut, went in, said something about plumbing, sure. Welters a whirl unflushed, unflushable. Something about a drain and a smell that filled the living room where stood a couch across whose arm lay slung feet of a man who slept and in sleep smiled, his mouth I mean smiled and smiling moved as in speech. Feet smell, mouth smile, both floating in air, and my hand all heavy with tools I stood, my face stuck with grains, my steps gold-spotted with sand I must have tracked in. The desert? Dunes warm, sun under burning ever. Air rank with foul and far-fetched vocabularies of feet and silent speech, I sickened, folded at the waist. Bits of me I felt yearn for the come-apart, the pullulation.

“Don’t you go yakking on my carpet!” Tappity tap, toe impatient on beige. “How about it?”

“Drain, sure.” I swallowed, followed. Past couch, past arms, past feet and bits, past windows full of gold clot and bunny shreds. Sometimes a workman, yes, comes, puts things right. All things in that house stood awry, out of true, so close to the desert lived Pam I never knew how she could stand it. The things that happen out there at night, they say, things that come out of the gold-heavy darkness, grains stuck to the soles of their stinking feet they come with eyes lidless gold-flecked staring, with mouths full of sand and words out of order they come, a swarm, a horde, conquerors, sick smear of comets, miserly dark all around.

“Come into this goddamn bathroom and fix my goddamn drain!”

“Sure, Pam,” I mumbled through lips sewn close with gold thread, “my heavy hand and grainy face are at your service.”

I followed along, hall coarse beige, haunted by sleeper-stench. Foul air moved against me like red lips whispering words all inside out, back to front, and worst was now I could all but draw sense from the rank, speechless silence that prodded me, nose knowing more than ears hear.

“Hey Pam, smell that, the gilt air scribbled with secrets?”

“Who smelt it spelt it,” said Pam, impatient to get my tools into her bathroom to quench her dry drain and be done with me.

Hall coarse beige I trod golden, who tracked? “Who tracked these steps’ sand, Pam?” That hall stretched longer than halls ought to extend, our trek drawn out ductile as gold pulled thin between fingers. “Hey Pam! Who walks here with us?”

“Zero companions,” said Pam.

“None at all?”

“Only some man, some desert type walked out wandering, comet or conqueror coming as harbinger yakked up some far-fetched message all over my living room.”

“Burns a sun, Pam?”

“Spins a coin, peon. Now unparch my drain and get your mumbling ass out of here.”

Pam’s bathroom I entered, sanctum, tiled wall’s belly shiny above a porcelain navel. I set down my box, snapped latches, pulled my tools out. So many implements, each to its purpose. Pam looming behind in the doorway I started to work: thrust trusty snake down dry darkness to scrape along vacancy where water wasn’t. Unquenched toilet throat took tool, snagged, tugged and rustled. “What you been putting down there, Pam?”

Thick with desert sleeper’s fragrant murmurs, the air spun my words and broke them. Roars a storm!

Pam: “Come again?”

I came again: “What you been cramming down this dark throat?” The words again crumpled to nothing, sucked dry by smiling lips afloat.

“Speak up, mumbler!”

“Never mind, mistress.” Throat-thrust snake plied I in silence as air’s split lips dragged themselves across my prickled neck, kissed rank secrets down ear-whorls to tap my drums.

Something caught in the shitter’s throat. I yanked and the snake hissed up, shining clots in its coil. Paper? Crumpled bits of gold-scribbled paper? Dried-out globs of grease or grainy piss congealed? “What river’s been flowing through you, Pam?”

She leaned close, murmurous, moving her hands: “Keep digging, cowboy.” Skin, sand, sweat, the smell of her. Kept, I dug.

Snake-hiss on porcelain gave a cadence to my labors. Plunge, yank, shake gold from coil, plunge again. So rhythmically working, my hands seemed creatures unto themselves, no appendages of mine but gone free into some beyond acrawl with loose parts, mapless labyrinth of bits emancipated. Fingers traced light and delicate patterns as flicking the snake’s coil they scattered grains on tile, scored lipped air with sigil tracks. The gesture my fingers made, snap snap, jaws yak, throat opens, closes, opens again. What words blurt up from Pam’s shithole? I folded down, ear and nose close, porcelain shell’s rank breath whooshing like no ocean ever, like echoey patter of parts on tile, clacking teeth and bones of what army upwelling from under the house, under the dunes, grainy legions of the invisible sun.

Piss, shit, sand, sweat, skin, stench aswirl, and slumbrous murmurs adrift, and scuff of tough feet on coarse beige as someone staggered from the living room down the hall, unseen sleepwalker come to gaze down from a high tower onto my humblest, most unworthy plumbings. Hunched over darkness, I felt shoulders tense, mine, tense and tighten in fear like Atlas awaiting what blue burden. Felt hands from behind grip shoulders, fingers work flesh.

“Let me loosen you up.” Felt hands squeeze, release, squeeze, long-jawed mouths’ toothless gums mumbling my tightness, speaking into me, summoning bits up from deep like turning a glove inside out, left hand turning right, hey presto!

Sighs rippled air. “Yes, that’s the spot.” Right there.

Fingers worked parts loose as the snake hissed and plumbed. Throat coughed up legions, grains in shining phalanxes asprawl like gold dice on tile. Air swarmed with grains, words, gold needles pricking, swirling and stroking, whispers and howls, sighs and ejaculations, mercy! Mercy! At last in gouts of bits unbound we Pam and me and all wandering desert creatures came apart all together all over the bathroom, whirled red all together in sand-flower sprays of eyes, hands, feet, arms, tongues, jaws, claws, tools, towers and mazes, ears and throats and twitching noses. Storm, sun, flood, loin, the desert in all its aspects clenched our bits in its fist, shook them and cast them in flowing gold cloudburst to the miserly drain’s dark harbor. Luckiest of throws! Another house flushed and gathered. The desert always wins.

Well then. Any last words? All words last, coiled and kept in the snake belly. Burns, roars, roils, yes, the desert, its vortex widening, its golden lips dropping secrets like coins spinning ever farther out from what origin or to what purpose who can say. Sprawl out bigger is just what the desert does. A conqueror comes, it’s true. Hear that? Tappity tap at your door, air’s tongue on your eardrum. Someone has a message for you.