DREAM JOURNAL

I shake awake in the driver’s seat of Q’s brand-spankin-new Buick LeSabre. Q is my wife, my second wife, my new wife, my sugar. She ordered the deluxe luxury model painted HoneyGold. A ray of light from above, and silver slivers flash across the metallic flakes of the wide long hood, like trout-turns back home. I surmise I’ve fallen asleep at the wheel. I am squinting in this bright light, so I put on sunglasses.

My left arm aches. I don’t dare examine the pain. Last time I did that—my left hand was gone.

I am in my new home—One-Way City, Texas—the #powerhouse of this great grease-griddle America, parked in front of a stud- and piercing-shop. I’m shirtless; my belly paunches above my belt and jeans. I am sweating, slick enough to slide right off the leather upholstery. Q is not with me, off warbling elsewhere. Q is a songbird, a siren. She is a singer in a band. She is always gone. I am always wrapped up in some adventure.

A shuttle bus parks broadside and boxes me in. The bus door opens; young female twenty-somethings disembark, all are dressed in the same thin, form-fitting gymnastics leotard. But no costume matches another in color; the women become a gradient chain, light refracted through prism. Some of them link to another by the arm, and the sleeves of their costumes blend into new exciting shades.

They clack across the pavement and into the store.

As the women seem to never end, I roll down the window and tip down my sunglasses in an effort to gain clearer vision. When I lift up my arm and rest it on the sill, I realize what has caused my pain: a tribal tattoo—geometric patterns of arrowheads and capping waves and black banded boxes—wraps from my wrist all the way up to shoulder. The webbing ends in a complicated seam above my pink protuberant nipple. I have never had a tattoo; as a rule, I don’t accessorize. Ma would kill me. Embarrassed, I quickly roll up the window and hide my arm.

The ceaseless women cease; the shuttle releases its air brakes and merges into traffic; and I shift the Buick into drive. But before I can move, a small old woman dressed in flapper getup opens the passenger door. She wears a string of white pearls that loop down to her lap, and has a peacock feather tucked into her headband. In one hand is her phone; in the other, a roll of cash. I remember her—she was the only one not in spandex, and the last one off the bus.

—You Uber?

Because I don’t like to disappoint people, I tell her that indeed, I Uber. And really, what with the new car and ink, I, nay, Q and I, we, need the money. In fact, I was telling Q last year that I was going to find a summer job to force me out of our dark and dreary apartment and away from its fridge full of vegetables. It is packed tight with leafy greens from crisper drawer to top shelf.

The woman sits down and fastens her seatbelt and laces the shoulder-strap behind her back. Otherwise, it would run right across her nose.

—What do you call this? The Queequeg Express?

—Exactly right, madam.

—Well, make like I’m Ahab and get me to 6413 Drum Street, fast.

I lie and tell her she’s in luck, I know just the place.

She makes a little huffy noise.

I nose that big golden American canoe out into the current. The Buick’s side mirrors graze parked cars on both sides of the tight road.

At the push of a button, the mirrors fold in like wings. The woman remains unimpressed. At the intersection, it takes me a six-point back-and-forth to make the corner out of the neighborhood. I’m feeling flustered. And when I’m flustered, I talk a lot prattle.

—Don’t worry. I used to drive eighteen-wheelers with loads of spuds, barley, cattle, and kentucky bluegrass sod all over three rural Idaho counties.

—So what? I’ve dined with swine all over the world.

—Lady, do you understand that I could operate any machine you see on or along the road? I’ve driven everything from a Mexican Backhoe to a Caterpillar. Weed-whackers included. My father always said I had greasy thumbs. You sound like you’re in a hurry, or I’d show you. What’s the rush?

—I am a self-made woman; I owe no man an explanation.

This big american sedan floats over every crack and fissure. Such comfort should be unattainable. We stop at red lights, go at greens, and buzz through the yellows, feeling no fear.

—Actually, I’m glad you brought up selfhood. I sometimes consider myself a self-made man.

—You WASPy boys with your elongated, grandiose WASPy roadsters! A financial exercise in phallic compensation! I wish you’d all drive off a cliff! Explain yourself!

I clear my throat:

—I’m from a farm in southeastern Idaho...

——land stolen from native squaws and hard-working tribeswomen!

—Born of goodly Mormon parents...

——without 63 wives, Brigham Young would only be ears and chin-hair!

—and have five sisters, all of whom were raised on the idea that you could marry more in a minute than you could make in a lifetime, and so they skirted chores and rarely came out to the fields. Once my oldest sister beat me with a broom handle until it broke and my father watched for me to see if I’d lose my temper, which I didn’t, didn’t even yelp or shed a tear, and now all of them own houses and have families, and here I am, some boy in your eyes ...

——so you’re the prodigal son of a wealthy, conservative, religious, land-owning man, you were once a Prince of a place!, and now you’re three-thousand miles away from the home place, playing chauffeur. Such a tough life you’ve lived! You’ve sold out your heritage and bastardized others, most recently the noble Maori tradition, all to spackle over your own existential fears. You are the postmodern man: hapless, neutered, solipsistic, helpless. You are a spoiled millennial brat addicted to Redbull and PornHub. You are either experiencing your first adolescence, or your second mid-mid life crisis. How many women have you ruined already? How many children? You’re General Custer reincarnate! You’re a conquistador... You sound just like my fourth husband ... Now, HE was a boy!

I realize, then, that I am parched and starved. The conversation has, for various reasons, served as a numbing agent for the tattoo. The flapper prattles on and on. Who knows, really, what she says? I look ahead at the various restaurant options. A brick building for TexMex tagged with purple aliens and blue spraypaint; four Subways; a shotgun house advertising comida italiana; three gut-trucks; and, luckily, through some trees, the Golden Arches. I slow down and shift the car into park but leave the motor running for the AC so the woman doesn’t boil to death, or dehydrate. I find my t-shirt on the car’s floor. I put it on, then engage the emergency flashers.

—So what do you do, Lady?

—It’s complicated, so I don’t expect you to follow, but I’m a connector. People come to me, and I connect them to other people and places and things.

I am hangry, like the wolf, because I do not know how to rebut the woman. I snarl and bark as I walk across traffic and under tangerine trees. Being inside the restaurant, however, calms me. I recall a time my father argued with my mother over not having meat for dinner. I was fifteen, cutting weight for wrestling. Sort of. Nothing too serious. Pre-season training. We were all eating chef salads. My father ordered me to accompany him to Eagle Rock, the nearest town with fast food, where he bought us six cheeseburgers and two super-size fries at the drive-thru and then we parked and ate every last seasame seed and half-fry. We dipped each bite in a pool of ketchup, twenty packets worth squeezed into a soda cup he’d ripped in half. We both puked it up on the side of the road before we got home.

I order a double-quarter pounder meal—large, to-go—and pour a Mountain Dew and, thinking of my passenger, fill a cup of water. Bag of grub. Back out the door.

But Peacock has the Buick wedged from white line to white line, stopping traffic completely.

I bump her across the bench seat, but her necklace catches on the gearshift and snaps—a hundred ivory balls clack like marbles across the dash and floor; a few roll into air-vents and rattle inside the defroster. She’s fallen over, and I don’t know if she’s hurt. She shakes, convulsing. I scooch over and tilt her up. She is laughing hard enough that she has tears.

—Get your grubby mitts off of me!

Honestly, I am unaware that I hold her at all. I let go, annoyed that she has misjudged my actions, angry for being clowned. No longer jovial, she irons out wrinkles with her hands. She opens the food bag and starts eating my fries.

—Why did you touch my car?

—More to the point, what kind of high-hatting spoops leaves a car parked in traffic with no explanation of where he’s going or how long he’ll be!

—Oh, woman! Are you so blind? I am not the Savior; I am his cousin, raised in the wilderness, wandering an irrigated desert that millennia ago was seafloor! I am as bitter and gnarled as sage grown in sulfur! I am stocky, like the bull calf, and have matted, unkempt hair, and jumpy eyes that always spy the downed fence, the open gate! I grub on processed meats and cheeses and tubers, never having tasted anything sweeter than a tomato! And even now, look at you, scarfing my fries, enjoying the fruits of my labor, and mistaking me for some dolt! Verily, my loins are girded in horsehair; I don’t want your sweetness—I am here to lick honeycomb! I have not come to cry repentance, but to cry, and cry, alone!

The woman checks the food bag and says, over-dramatically,

—Tell me how you really feel.

Then

—What, no nuggets?

She sounds just like X. That was something she'd say sarcastically, pouring it on, after I'd ranted. She'd say that, and sometimes I'd laugh at myself, and calm down. That changed, towards the end. I'd only get more focused, and argue her into a chicken-wing.

—Do you really think my father’s only son is a vegetarian?

—You jack-nastyI I bet you count diet soda and masturbation for exercise!

I shout, shifting from reverse to drive, aligning the car, and speeding ahead.

—These roads were built for King Ranch livestock! It’s herd migration—get on a path, stay on the path! Alongside every road are bogs and hungry gators!

—This heap drives like a mattress.

I review the Buick. Naked threads appear from the seats. The leather has deepened in shade and wear. It is darker, dingier, and there is weird play in the steering wheel. The Check Engine light is on steady. Deep breaths, I think, but don’t do.

—Lady, I’m sorry for raising my voice, but I didn’t say you could drive.

—I’m not the type that waits for directives.

She unwraps my burger, remove the buns, rolls up one patty, and finishes it in four bites. She asks me, again, how much longer.

—Up here, I’ll turn left and then go straight for a while, then another left.

—That’s why I don’t ask questions; no one gives a straight answer.

—Would you rather me bleat and bear my soul?

—Fool Boy, do you expect me to lean over and wail with you? I have three daughters. One’s a Painter, one’s an Accountant, and one’s a Lawyer. They are a continental pain in my ass. But they handle my investment portfolio and legal proceedings. The artist has rendered me in over thirty self-portraits, all while experiencing different psychotropics and other mind-addled states. They are the fodder of nightmares, and I find every single one breathtaking in its own particular way.

—I recently dreamt that I’d rolled my old farm pickup into a ditch and, in the crash, had my left hand severed clean off.

—Did you find it?

—It was in a pile of garbage alongside the road, about fifty feet from the crash.

—So you went to the doctor...

—No, I picked it up and placed it against my bloody stump, and tendons fused, skin regrew, and, though there was a pink wound that was raised and tender around my wrist like a cicatrix watch, I regained total control. The hand worked just fine. I spent the rest of the time going around Jay County, running into my friends and family. There, everyone knows everyone else. People go to church with my father, and so they nod hello to me. It’s a stoic and friendly place. With every person I met, I felt an overwhelming desire to roll up my sleeve and show them what had happened to me. My miracle hand. But I never did. Not once. Never showed a soul. I was ashamed, or something. By the time the dream ended, the scar had totally disappeared.

I wrote it all down and emailed it to an online psychic. She thought it showed my capability and resilience; the power to heal.

Peacock disagrees. She says,

—The dream merely showcases your inability to experience anything alone.

—Once, on the farm, this was back when I was 22, I got into an accident with an auger. I almost lost three of the four fingers on my left hand. The blade stopped at the bone. Sometimes, when I’m smoking, I fold down my pinky, ring, and middle fingers and imagine what it would be like if the metal had gone all the way through. I stare at the L-shaped claw. I hold the L up to my sweaty forehead, as if I’m in Junior High, when we did this to stand for LOSER.

—You smoke? Why didn’t you say so earlier?

From her loose blouse, Peacock produces a skinny, bedraggled joint, and a lighter. She puffs thrice before passing.

I take a few drags and then coast the car to the edge of the road. The woman is holding her left hand in L shape and staring at her wrinkled knuckle. So I say,

—Excuse me, but I have to drain the main brain. I will return in seven minutes, tops. Please keep the flashers engaged and the doors locked.

I walk around the corner to a new-build, four-story townhome with corrugated steel siding. This row looks like my father’s granaries along the Jay train tracks. I knock on the door and stand on the welcome mat that reads Furry Friends Preferred.

My mother answers. She is wearing a purple Sunday dress with a full apron, and is as barefoot and short as she’s always been. From inside, the waft of cold air and pot roast. She looks me over and then calls me by my full name, emphasizing all seven syllables, something she does when she’s righteously peeved.

—Shame on you! Your body is a temple!

—Ma, listen, this isn’t what it looks like. I’ve been reading about the Carthaginian empire. I guess I got curious. Henna. And sharpie. Come on, Ma, you know how I get. It rubs right off.

I go to the kitchen sink where she keeps a pumice stone. I wet it and rub my left forearm until the skin peels away and the ink and blood blur. I blot my arm with napkins and change the subject.

—I have something to tell you, Ma, but I’m scared it might offend you.

—I’ve lived with your father for 36 years.

—I might have to kill off you and Dad.

—Oh, that’s okay. We’d understand. How do we go?

—Small-plane accident as your fly back from Lewiston, somewhere in the River of No Return wilderness area, likely at the bottom of Hell’s Canyon, during a lightning storm. Dad didn’t factor the weight of the organic wheat seed into his overall load.

—For your dad, fine. He’s been promising a plane-wreck since the Eighties, but you’ve got mine all wrong. I want to pass right here in my front room, surrounded by my children and grandchildren, all of us singing primary hymns. Do that for me, and I’ll love you forever.

—Ma, let me be honest, I did this arm-art to commemorate dad’s mission to Auckland, if you really want to know.

—It makes my only son look ugly. I hate it. And it’s made you lose your manners. How come you haven’t yet introduced your friend?

Peacock sits, perched, at the breakfast nook.

—This is my fare. I stopped for directions. We are late for some such thing.

Ma says,

—It’s nice to meet you. We find your city pleasant and charming.

Peacock says,

—Thank you, but I’d never live in this septic system.

Ma says,

—Tell me, what did you think of my only son?

Madam Peacock chews her lip.

—Maybe he’ll turn out, with decent women influences. As for the ride, two-stars.

Ma:

—Did he give his little John the Baptist speech?

Peacock:

—Ha! I thought that was was Piggy from Lord of the Flies!

Ma says,

—You’re staying for dinner.

—Ma, I’m on the job. I'm broke.

Peacock pulls out a roll of cash, sets it down, gambler-style, on the table.

That settled, my mother turns to me and explains:

—Your sister has locked herself in the bedroom. She and her husband and child are not acclimating well. They are demonstrating in hunger strike. Go, talk her out of this, and take a little paper encouragement.

My mother hands me a stack of hundred-dollar bills, bound with a shamrock paperclip.

—And wake up your father! And put on one of his shirts! I don’t want your youngest sister or your brother-in-law or nephew to see you like that! You bet Q won’t be pleased, and X, well, X would have twitched a flip! And trim those nostril hairs! I can see right up there and it makes me nauseous! You should think about other, shorter people occasionally! And hurry! Supper is almost done!

Once I’m upstairs and out of her sight, I count the money. Enough scratch for three months rent! I pocket it and take off my shoes. I hear my sister's wails and her husband’s snotty sobs. The baby, it seems, must have a wet diaper, because it isn’t happy either.

So strange such sadness could come from a change in latitude.

Sly and light, I bypass the sister problem and sneak into my parent’s bedroom.

My father is in his hospital bed. Propped up at a forty-degree angle, he doesn’t have on his shirt, and his left arm in a sling. A big tuna-can bruise over his left eye and all around it. His top left lateral incisor is broken, gums inflamed. He gives me an emphatic thumbs-down.

—Shit, Pops! You go down? Did I do this to you? Is this, somehow, my fault?

He struggles to talk but asks:

—This is just a dirtbike spill. Don’t tell your mother; she thinks I sold the motorcycle. And would you mind texting Lou? Tell him I’m not going goose-hunting.

—I can’t say.

—You got a punctured lung? What else?

—Lots of stuff but let's not worry about that. Right now, I need my meds.

I go into his bathroom and see, on the counter, a Halloween-sized candy bowl full to the brim with pills. Norcos and Oxys and Extended Release Adderall, Vicodin, white round ones and blue and yellow in pastel. It is enough to stop me in my tracks, drop down, and do the Electric Worm. But no--that was a former me. So I just say no. It helps that I’m a little stoned. I take a handful of pills out to my father and he selects the one he wants.

—A drink of some sort, too.

Back in the bathroom, I put away the pills and look for a cup. There isn’t one, so I make a bowl with my hands and fill this up with water and quickly go over to Pops. He is the type of man who drinks out of creeks and brags when he doesn’t get Beaver Fever. Pops puts the pill, ten milligrams of Lortab, onto his tongue, leans up, and drinks, like a horse, from my hands until the water is no more.

—Flush the rest. I don’t need that crap. We gotta plant spuds tomorrow.

—Dad, you’re in One-Way City! You need to rest! Relax! The spuds will plant themselves!

—I see you’ve already forgotten everything I taught you.

To prove I haven’t, I ask about the planting conditions, and my father and I discuss the weather history of the Snake River Basin from 1954 to current day. After about twenty minutes of this, Pops explaining the abnormal thaw of ’95, I go into his closet and put on one of his white long-sleeved button-up shirts, the Uniform of the Priesthood.

—What happened to your arm?

—Ma wanted me to dress up for a Family Home Evening lesson. Missionary work in the Polynesian Islands.

—I mean the blood.

The left sleeve is maroon and pink and fuchsia--the open wound from the pumice stone oozing through the fabric. I shrug and say nothing.

—What is it you left home for to do again?

—I convey, I accompany, I transport. A to B. B to A. It’s gratifying work, really, the same satisfaction you must feel when you finish planting a field, or filling a cellar.

—Keep that. It looks good on you. I don’t want it back anyhow.

—It’s too big.

—Don’t look a gift-shirt in the mouth.

—Right.

—Come to work with me tomorrow. We need to swing past the FSA office, then we’ll get Molinas. Or Tom's Gyro's. Or Morenitas. Or Mongolian Grille ...

My father continues listing his favorite eating establishments, so I know the pill has taken hold. I go back down the hall. It is as still as an empty tent. But downstairs, there is the commotion of people seating themselves around a long table. I edge across the hardwood in my socks. At the ornate front door, I reach out for the knob, and the oak is smooth. No handle. I cannot leave. I set down my shoes and return to the kitchen.

Everyone is seated at the table: my sister and her brood, Madam Peacock and her children and grandchildren, Ma. Everyone but my father, and me. There are our open seats—the two spots on the piano bench. I sit down for the prayer, and my mother blesses the food then proceeds to be thankful for over four generations of ancestors.

At amen, it is chaos, forks and knives clanging. I reach for the butter and my sister snaps. When it’s all over, there are no leftovers for my father and me. The table is carnage: remnant lettuce shreds, gravy driblets, smashed potatoes, fat-flecks, corn-silk, dozens of dinner rolls (torn in half), so many naked cobs. Most of the women, the ones wearing pants, have unbuttoned the top button and lay catatonic among the mansion’s many couches. Those in dresses take throw-blankets and fill the floor.

I make my way quietly, backwards, to the stairs ...

Ma, from the mantle, where she’s curled in front of the fireplace, fuzzy slippers:

—Hey! Dishes, Mister!

So I march into the kitchen and break all the dishes. I chip them on the granite countertops; I drop them onto the Spanish tiles of the floors. A scree field of ceramic and glass crunches beneath me. Silverware gets tossed into the mangled recycle pile. I am salty, pragmatic, sweaty; there is no celebration or aplomb. No discussion. I clomp around the kitchen, slamming cabinet doors, intent on putting everything in its place. No one stirs except Peacock, who crochets a sock, and harrumphs.

Upstairs, I blow through my parent’s door. My father is mumbling off his favorite non-caffeinated sodas, working down from Fresca. Then to a Frito-Lay kick. Doritos. Fritos. Sour Cream and Onion.

—Pops, tonight, I’m springing you. We’re eating out. I got wheels.

I sprint across the room, and punch out a window. A large shard of glass falls like a guillotine and lops off my left hand.

I get a clear look at my stump. As clean a cut as any, more obsidian than rusty saw mill. I’m not worried. I’m up to date on my tetanus shots.

Oh well. It worked as long as it worked, I think.

I scoop up Pops and put him over my shoulder. He wasn't heavy, just a hefty old boy. But then, I suppose, so am I. I take three long steps to the window hole. I warn Pops to hold tight and keep his mouth shut. But he doesn't. He's mumbling about gravy fries, all the way down.