His session with the healer was over. The man could tell that Alma was tired. He hoped his women friends brought something hearty for her to eat. After thanking her several times to indicate sincere appreciation, the man put ten dollars in the empty Hills Brothers Coffee can she had by the door. Then he left to get himself an early supper. The man could still feel the kneading and the warmth on his belly.
Once outside, the man noticed the neighbors across the road had hanging from a stick frame what looked like a skinned wolf, in order to cure and dry the meat in the sun. He wondered if this was the way beef jerky was once made. Flies buzzed around the dark red carcass. The man was both shocked and amazed, though he knew humans had hung meat out to dry for thousands and thousands of years.
The man headed south toward the store near the Santa Fe tracks for a beer, some V-8, and maybe a package of cheap hot dogs.
He slid the can of Old Milwaukee into a front pocket, drank the V-8, and ate three of the hotdogs out of its plastic container as he walked. The man decided to do some exploring by heading north beyond the healer's house and found an old, red brick high school. It looked to have been built in the 1930's but was still in good shape. Rural kids from all over the county, he surmised, were bused to the school.
It was Christmas break and high school was between semesters. The playground was empty except for a lone shot putter practicing throwing his small round ball of steel with a plug of lead inside to add weight.
The man had only been out of high school fourteen years, but it felt like decades. He had two sons and was newly divorced. His former wife had recently packed up and moved to Austin six hundred and sixty miles away and he'd been powerless to stop her.
His body ached for days missing his family.
The shot putter had mammoth arms and legs. As a skinny, non-athletic man, the boy's serious grunting and lunging from within the shot-put circle impressed him. He also was impressed by how far the boy could pitch the shot.
Why was he doing it? What in the world did he hope to accomplish?
The man watched the short, muscled boy against the backdrop of the amazing, magical Davis Range of mountains that were taking on a magenta tinge from the sun's slow descent in the West. The mountains stretched east and west filling up much of the sky, and made the work of humans seem puny. Alma's son went hunting in the Davis Mountains and sometimes killed a mountain lion. He had an old shed full of Indian artifacts.
Soon the man walked over to the vacant lot next to the healer's house. It looked like a vacant lot and was vacant in the sense that no one lived there, but three years ago a retired sergeant from the army, with little in the way of construction skills, had tried to build a cement, semi-underground, bunker home. The sergeant was worried about a widespread thermonuclear attack from the Soviets on the United States, and felt he might survive in this remote location.
Enough light was still held to the sky for the man to go inside the bunker. The sergeant's old mattress sat on rusting springs against a concrete block wall that had been plastered in white. On the plaster, right where the sergeant would lie in bed, he had made a painting, crudely executed with garish colors. The painting was of a well-endowed, curvaceous, naked woman. Maybe waking up to the image after a night's sleep gave the sergeant the strength to get up and keep going.
One morning early, about a year ago, the retired sergeant had come outside from a night in his hut and began to work over his new pickup with a sledgehammer. At first the neighbors thought the sergeant might be cannibalizing his vehicle for parts to use in building his house. He spent all morning slamming away, making a tangled mess of his truck, and continued doing it in the afternoon, without even taking a break for lunch.
Finally the man who ran the store called the county sheriff. They sent out a kind of paddy wagon. After some struggle they got the retired sergeant straight jacketed and hauled him off to a mental institution, all the way to Big Spring. The sergeant had been an outsider, with no relatives in the area, and the town never heard of him again.
This is what the man behind the counter at the store had told him on his second trip to Valentine. The story was still big news in the town.
The man did admire the work of the healer, but by the time he was back to the bunker in the vacant lot next to her house, his stomach was shooting out pains again. He opened the beer to see if some liquid might settle the pain. The healer had a high-pitched, melodious tone of voice that was surprisingly soothing, and was like the sound of running water. It was a kind of female Garrison Keillor voice. Keillor's public radio show Prairie Home Companion was broadcast from the man's home state of Minnesota.
He didn't know why, but the man felt good in the bunker, sitting alone on the sergeant's decomposing bed with the naked woman on the wall, drinking his beer slowly. The man decided to finish off the remaining hotdogs in spite of his stomach pains.
What ailed him, the man suddenly realized, couldn't be cured by either medicine or magic. Courtney, the woman he now was trying to love, she was a feminist, a hippie, and an optimist. She had once been a Christian fundamentalist. Her father was a former army air force lieutenant colonel and all through her childhood she had lorded over two younger brothers. She had three stepchildren and had divorced her alcoholic husband two years ago. She understood the tragedy of his loss and told him LSD might help him get a handle on things and even get him in touch with the divine.
He was impressed that Courtney remained so cheerful while burdened with raising three children on her own. Yes, he would court her and see what happened. It was his nature to give things a try, but in the end could he and this brilliant, amazing, and opinionated woman ever make a life together?
Why was he doing it? What in the world did he hope to gain from his labors?
Chuck Taylor, a Christian by disposition and culture, is a long time student, though intermittent, of Taoism and Buddhism. Inspired by friend and poet-mentor Lucien Stryk, Taylor lived in Japan from 1991-94 and traveled in Asia. He coordinates creative writing at Texas A&M University and is married to Takako Saito. They have a daughter named Lisa. His latest book is Li-Po Laughing at the Lonely Moon from Pecan Grove Press.