"A CLEARING IN THE DESERT"
Walking across the salt flats toward the barren thrusts of granite bordering them Rulon felt at home with himself. He hadn’t felt that for a very long time, if he’d ever felt it before. He relished the August sun burning into his back “Hundred and five in the shade,” they’d be saying back in Salt Lake. But here there was no shade, of course, not even that fleeting little dot of it that would be cast by a vulture flying overhead, circling, waiting for the trudging man to fall. He thought about looking up to see if there were any birds circling, if not a vulture some crazy gull thinking he might have a piece of bread, or chocolate, a peanut even to throw for it, whip it into the air so the bird could catch it on the fly. He’d enjoyed doing that, elsewhere, done it many times, but this was not the time. He’d come here to have the stage to himself, to be the only living thing in the world he could see, hear, smell, touch, or taste, so he didn’t look up or strain to hear and was content to smell, taste, and feel only the salt and the heat.
He’d thought about peeling off his clothes as he walked across the salt; then he could have felt at one with nature, stark and naked as the salt flats themselves, at one with the sun because it would be cooking his flesh while it was still on his bones. He had imagined that riding out from Salt Lake that morning. At first it had seemed like a good idea, an apt metaphor for what he’d wanted in throwing off his life to come back here to die, back to where he was born, full circle, going out of the world naked as he’d come in. Of course, there’d be big differences, too, but they’d be all for the better: being born amidst the blood, mucus, and other goo, the fouled wrappings, all the labored sweat and tangled, contradictory, ensnaring emotions of the birthing room, replaced by lying absolutely alone, baked clean by the simple, burning, uncaring sun, dying on a pure, dry, shimmering plain of salt in a world utterly indifferent to all life, including his. But he’d finally decided against stripping, feeling it was just too trite. Not wanting, either, to give a cheap thrill to the tourists at the Bonneville visitors center who’d doubtless been up on the viewing platform, binoculars in hand, watching him start his walk across the salt, wondering what kind of crazy he must be to be out here on a blistering summer day.
So, he kept his clothes on, felt the sun baking his back beneath his denim shirt, felt it moving into him not like a burning knife but as a scouring blanket that spread across him, drawing the fluids out of him, reaching down all the way to his bones to purify and claim him. That heat hurt so much but felt so good. He rotated his shoulders, flexed his biceps, closed and opened his fingers as he walked, so he could feel the sun more keenly as tissue moved across tissue, ligament on ligament, muscle on muscle opening every hidden space, welcoming in the cooking rays of heat. He walked steadily, neither fast nor slow, looking straight ahead or down, never side to side, never back, seeing only the white salt, gray granite, blue sky, the glare forcing his irises to close to the merest dots, feeling only the sun on his back, the heat coming through the soles of his shoes, and the sweat percolating through his skin as his body vainly tried to cool itself. Everything was as it should be.
Rulon had left Salt Lake while still in college, abandoning the U, as locals called the university, and Zion, as Mormons called their homeland, to “seek his fortune” elsewhere, “make his life” out there, or at least “find himself” somewhere. Not an unusual story, of course, not even unusual in its motivation: the son of a famous father—elder of the Church, governor of the state—overwhelmed by the expectations to measure up, feeling that he never could, escapes the pressure to stake out his own life elsewhere. Had he wanted to come back a great success? Stride into his father’s den and stare him down as the Senator from New York or the President of IBM, the Nobel laureate who’d cured cancer, something on that level? He wasn’t sure. He’d daydreamed scenes like that; what son of a too-famous father hasn’t? He’d even imagined different scenarios.
“Hi, dad. It’s Rulon. Long time, no see. No, don’t get up. I can’t stay. I’m just here to drop off this check for that remodeling project at Temple Square you’re chairing. This million should put you over the top.” Or just a phone call: “Dad, Rulon here. Dr. Young at LDS Hospital just called. Don’t worry; I’ll be on the next plane. We’ve developed something here at Hopkins that’ll have mom up again in no time.”
But he’d never felt that those daydreams were really his. Even then, he’d felt like he was doing what someone in his position was supposed to be doing. Not “supposed to” in the sense of “the right thing to do.” He’d moved through childhood and adolescence that way, been an Eagle Scout, lettered in both baseball and tennis, elected Senior Class President then Valedictorian at Skyline High, and a National Merit Scholar. He’d even gone into the Temple and been baptized for distant relatives long dead, just so they’d have a chance at heaven. He’d been the dutiful son, the handsome, athletic, blue-eyed, red-haired charmer, the Junior Achiever, everyone’s pride and joy. Been there, done that, and dreaming of one-upping your famous father wasn’t that sort of thing. It’s just the opposite, what you’re “supposed to do” when you fall from grace. Still, these opposites shared one crucial element for him: it felt like he was trying them on for size. Even with those rebellious dreams, he never felt he was creating them himself, finding there the expression of his “true self,” his “inner being,” his “personal reality”—all that sort of psychological stuff. No, it was like he was acting out the role of the resentful son, just as he’d played the good son, and no matter how much energy he spent throwing himself into either role, they always felt like they were produced by someone else, for someone else—clothes bought off the rack.
The story of my life, he thought, always looking for that life that would fit me like a glove, never finding it. Not that he’d been a total failure. Oh, he’d been that for awhile. He’d even enjoyed that life—for awhile. “Clean cut Mormon kid rubs the edges off in the gutters of New Orleans,” that was the label for that life. Leaving Salt Lake, he’d headed for the Big Easy, figuring it had to be as culturally and spiritually distant from Zion as he could get. He’d done all the “lost child” things there, all the things Eagle Scouts are not supposed to do, from dishes to drugs to sex. And it had been great! Dancing down Bourbon Street to the happy, pounding beat of the zydeco blasting from the Cajun Palace, then staggering back up the street, hurricane in hand or slurping beer, he’d throw the dregs on the religious fanatic--totally bonkers; the guy has to be completely God crazy—clutching his cross, ten feet high, at least, flashing “Repent! Repent! Repent!” right there in the middle of Bourbon Street. The fanatic would stare back at Rulon, some nights glaring, others pitying, and Rulon would always strut and dance, mocking and laughing at this demented fool trying to stem the tide of youthful exuberance and jaded age.
“Jesus loves you,” said one of the crazy’s acolytes one night, thrusting a pamphlet at Rulon.
“He’d damn well better,” Rulon jeered. “I’m his spitting image.”
The acolyte just stared back, eyes blank, same infuriatingly sugary smile, arm still outstretched with the pamphlet: “Jesus Loves You! We Can Help!”emblazoned in electric blue on its warm pink cover.
“Don’t you know your Bible, buddy? God created us in his very own image, all of us, you, me, even the crazy with the cross. So Jesus has to love us, each and every one. If he didn’t, he’d be turning his back on God, turning away from his very own daddy.”
“We can help you,” the acolyte responded as Rulon danced around him. “Just open your heart to Jesus; that’s all it takes.”
“There’s always a price, always, always, isn’t there? There’s always something we’ve got to do, got to do, got to do to earn daddy’s love, right?”
“We need only open our hearts.“
“That’s still something,” Rulon quickly interrupted, glaring at the acolyte. “It’s never free, though that’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what the good book says. A love that’s always there, a love we can always count on—no matter what.”
“You can--“
“No, I can’t,” Rulon said, then danced off down Bourbon Street, laughing hysterically and chanting, “Can’t, can’t, can’t.” Then he stopped, turned back to look at the flashing cross and the acolyte—holding out his pamphlet to another reveler—cocked his head quizzically, thoughtfully to the side before bursting into laughter again, doing a quick little jig and resuming his dance down The Street, this time chanting, “Won’t! Won’t! Won’t!”
Rulon tried to imagine the look on his father’s face. If he could only see me now! A tarnished bit of flotsam on this jazzy, boozy tide. He’d transformed his sash of merit badges into a sling for carrying beer and tried to picture his father’s disgust, disappointment, anger, and despair, tried to find satisfaction there, fulfillment, validation, vindication. He tried to purchase his freedom with his father’s resentment at his son’s debauchery reflecting back on him no matter the distance. But instead, Rulon just woke up on The Avenue, having to roll out of the way before the St. Charles street car rand him down. His glove of youthful rebellion had no fingers. He looked at his hung-over buddies picking up odd jobs in the French Quarter’s restaurants, loose change in its gutters, AIDS in its shooting galleries, and felt like he stuck out all over. He was neither cool cat nor denizen of despair. Try as he might, and he tried mightily, he was still just a big boob of a Mormon thumb sticking out pink and awkward among these pale and darting spirits of the southern night. He moved on.
Remembering his mother’s soft brown eyes, warm and ever sympathizing, he packed away his father’s imagined wrathful glare and threw himself into doing good deeds. He went to Appalachia, claimed to have a college degree, and took a job teaching in-bred mountain kids that there’s a great wide world beyond their deep and narrow canyons. And he’d “done good.” In ten years, he’d taught 674 girls and boys how to read and write, spell and pronounce, even how to appreciate drama and literature. Some of his earlier successes were about to graduate from college.
He’d married, too, a mountain woman, but no hick, a widow with two sons. She was five years his senior but energetic, sweet, and a good cook, too. She needed a father for her sons and a husband for the community, just as he needed a wife and someone to turn the little house he’d bought into a home. It was a marriage of convenience, for both of them, but not merely that. At night, with the moonlight spilling through the window, bright enough in the clean mountain air to wake him, he’d lie there listening to her breathe, feeling the contours of her body pressed up against him, watching the play of the light in her blonde hair. He’d wonder if she knew he was awake and was pretending to continue sleeping so he could have this private moment appreciating her, knowing he was doing that. That’s what he did, when he felt she was awake watching, feeling, listening to him sleep.
This life had seemed to be the glove that fit, a second skin even—until last Thursday at The Stetson. He’d stopped by the bar to celebrate finishing the three-day seminar required of all teachers prior to beginning the new school year in two weeks. He was loaded up—fed up, too—with all the latest psycho-babble about the growing pains of adolescents—as if such hadn’t always plagued them—and with the new school superintendent’s obsession with “teamwork, teamwork, teamwork:” team-teaching, teaching the kids to work as a team, the parent-teacher team, the faculty-administration team, the education-business team, seeing the whole community as a team. If they’d only asked for volunteers to throw the superintendent out the window, he’d have gladly joined that team.
“You part of a team here, Whitey?” Rulon asked the bartender.
“What?”
“Y’know, a team. You and the other bartenders ever sit down with the owner to
identify your goals for the coming year, plan out how you’re all going to work together to reach them.”
Whitey just stared at Rulon.
“Write all that out on a big old roll of butcher paper, with felt markers, different colors for each of you, with arrows pointing here and there, all of them ultimately coming together to point to that greatest goal: success!”
“That what you have our kids do? … Jesus.”
“Kids? Hell, no. This is what we teachers have had to do the whole afternoon, ‘the capstone experience’ of three days of intense, high-powered, overpaid training, so we’ll ‘hit the ground running,’ all of us roaring drunk on the thrill of educating your kids.”
“Mine’ve all grown. I’m damn glad of that.”
“Did school teach them how to work in a team?”
“They learned to read and write, add up a bill so they won’t get cheated. That’s what counts.”
“But not to be a team.”
“What’s all this team crap?”
“That’s ex-actly what it is,” Rulon responded, holding up his beer bottle in salute, then draining it. “Such unvarnished truth deserves another,” he added, pushing the empty bottle toward Whitey.
“Coming right up,” Whitey said, whisking away the empty, grabbing and popping a fresh bottle, sliding it over to Rulon.
“You see there,” Rulon said with a smile after taking a pull on the beer, “we’re a team.”
“How’s that?” Whitey drawled, leaning back, the picture of the patient bartender.
“You open ‘em, I drink ‘em. My goal of drinking till I can piss all this teacher education snake oil out of my brain fits perfectly with your goal of earning a living here.”
“That’s what you’ve been back to school to learn?”
“And you taxpayers paid for it. Wanting the very best, the most up-to-date teaching techniques for your young-uns, you footed the bill to transport us, feed us, and put us up at the State University for three whole days of higher education. Now here I am, the result of your tax dollars at work.”
“I want mine back,” Whitey laughed.
“So do I,” Rulon agreed, “so do I.”
Whitey moved down the bar to serve another customer. Rulon stared across the scarred bar into the brown-veined mirror behind, watched himself drink his beer, wondered if everybody grasped their beer the same way, touched it to their lips the same way, tipped it back the same way. And if not, what did the differences tell us about each other? What did the way he drank his beer say about him? Was how he grasped his beer bottle in a class with his tea leaves, life line, and un-dotted i’s?
What a crazy idea, he thought, but he couldn’t help continuing. What about the way he parted his hair? That he was clean shaven? Why no sideburns? What about the blue shirt? Why wasn’t it white? And button down—that had to say a lot. But what?
This is weird, he told himself, starting to realize his bemused tone overlay a bed of fear, a bed he’d risen from before, then locked far back in the darkest corner of his memory, wanting never to revisit it, knowing that if he did he could never rise from it again.
“Ready for another?” Whitey asked, returning.
“You grew up here, Whitey—right?”
“Born and raised.”
“Ever live anywhere else?”
“Nope.”
“Ever wish you had?”
“Nope. What I see on the tube, Boone’s the place for me.”
“You’re content?”
“You’re not?”
Rulon stared past Whitey, surveying his image in the mirror again. “I guess not,” he finally said, “or I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”
“Sue Ellen’s a mighty fine woman.”
“I know that,” Rulon said, glaring at himself in the mirror now, trying desperately to resist what he saw there, stop what was happening there, keep the feeling welling up behind his eyes, that feeling he hadn’t known for so many years, since leaving New Orleans, keep it from flooding back into his life, drowning that life.
“Mark and Luke, too. I know they’re not yours, but you’re raising them. Their being good kids, that’s a reflection on you, something you can be proud of.”
“Yeah, right,” Rulon answered, distracted, having barely heard. The eyes in the mirror were now locking his. He wanted to pull away but couldn’t. The feeling was pouring over him, flowing more and more a torrent from his own mirrored eyes back into him no matter how he tried to prevent it. He gave up, resigned, feeling the void between himself and the life he’d believed was his, the life that had seemed to fit him like a glove, feeling that void grow and grow until every point of contact, every last one was broken. He looked in the mirror, knowing the image there was what was real, what was sitting on the stool the mere appearance.
“You okay?” Whitey asked.
“No,” Rulon sighed, looking down at his hands cradling the beer, able to break free of those mirrored eyes now that he’d acknowledged their truth, now that they’d taken his life and repossessed his soul. “No, I’m not.”
“Want me to call someone? A doctor? Sue Ellen?”
“I’m heading home,” Rulon said, then paid his bill and left the bar, Whitey wondering if he should alert Sue Ellen, deciding this, whatever it was, was between husband and wife.
Next day, Rulon had the family on the road to Salt Lake. Sue Ellen had long bugged him about meeting his family; he’d told her now felt right. She’d quizzed him for more, wanting a serious reason why they should cancel their annual visit to the cooling breezes of the Outer Banks and spend these final days of his summer break driving across the hot plains of the Midwest to the even hotter Utah desert.
“It just has to be now,” was all he could say. “It’s one of those gut feelings, something you just know.”
She gave up pressing him. That night, once he heard her gentle snoring he stopped feigning sleep to feel and watch and hear her sleeping. The contours of her body felt as they had all those other nights and her breathing was the same familiar flutter. The light sparkled on her hair, moving gradually from crown to the tousled ends on her shoulders as the moon moved past their window—just like all those other nights. But tonight what he saw was not the warm golden hues of her hair so close it moved when he breathed; what he saw was the cold, silver light of the distant moon spreading its blanket between him and her, illuminating them both, making her visible to him but etching the distance, no matter how small, between them.
The eye grasps only at a distance, he remembered from somewhere, it cannot see what touches it. Was that the story of his life? And: if you have to work at it, it’s not you—that had to be the moral of his story. But why tonight? What had been so goddamn different about tonight? He’d gotten drunk before, ranted at the incredible stupidity of administrators before—without losing his life. Was it all that talk about being a team? Is that what this is: some subliminal curse that fraud of an educational psychologist planted in the brains of those he saw seeing through him? But he knew, deep down, that nothing like that, not even a serious Freudian option, could be the answer, for even in asking answerable questions he was deluding himself, trying to make out that life was comprehensible so he could hide, cowering but safe, within that most reassuring of beliefs. But it was a lie. The horror was that no matter how carefully he hid his feelings of isolation, of being not only not at one with others—whatever team they might be—but not even one with himself—the life he’d made for himself—those feelings were still there, lurking, waiting to ooze out from the abyss, forcing even the most resolute of lives loose from its mooring to float like a flimsy cartoon adrift on a spreading oil slick, not for some reason, just at any time. That’s how fragile our lives are, how powerful our separation from them, how futile our efforts to bridge that miniscule gap. No matter how hard we work at it—even precisely because we’re working so hard to make life a success, carve out that life we can stand up and be proud of—just because I’m working that hard, it will never be … me. It will always be only that person I’m trying to be.
He gazed at Sue Ellen in the moonlight yet a moment longer, on the verge of tears, of screaming. Then he turned ever so slightly, so their bodies no longer touched, not wanting to wake her, wanting not to disturb her.
The trip had gone fine. Mark and Luke really were good kids, enduring even the endless boredom of Nebraska without throwing tantrums. He had certainly wanted to. They’d arrived late yesterday, and his parents had welcomed him, Sue Ellen, and the boys like it was Thanksgiving. They’d had a fine family dinner, and Rulon’s mother had sided with him in begging off having “that talk” with his father until the next day, after he’d had a chance to rest up from the long drive. Then this morning, he’d gotten up early, kissed Sue Ellen, told her he wanted to get something he’d left in the car, and driven off for the salt flats. He would’ve stopped by the boys’ room to see them one last time, say something to them, leave them with some fatherly pearls of wisdom to live by, a last caress and bear hug, so they’d know he wasn’t like their real father, who’d abandoned them, so they’d always remember him fondly, realizing that he hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t been running away from them and whatever it was he owed them, but had no choice but to go. That’s what he was supposed to do—that Boy Scout meaning of the word again—and what he’d wanted to do, ached to do, but if he’d done it, done anything like it, they’d have realized he was leaving, and he’d have never gotten away. His parents were decent people; they’d do the right thing, embarrassed again by his falling short, they’d see Sue Ellen and the boys well cared for. What a luxury, parents like that!
Hours had gone by. His clothes were drenched, in spite of the desiccating desert air. He felt like the sweat was bubbling out of him. He already felt pounds lighter; felt good. But he had to get to those granite outcroppings, had to find a place where he could stretch himself out, open himself up to the full furnace blast of the sun. A place where he’d be hidden from view, for by now his father, always decisive, would have sent the police looking for his car. Parked at the Bonneville visitor’s stop. They’d find him with the helicopters, no doubt about that, but if he could delay that for the day, just the one day open to the sun’s full glare would be enough to do the job.
Was he getting delirious? He’d expected to see scenes from New Orleans, Boone, even his high school days as he trudged through the heat. Wasn’t your life supposed to unroll before your eyes as you left it behind? It wasn’t happening. Misshapen black spots floated before his eyes as he stared into the salt’s glare, that’s all. He felt his skin drying out, tightening. It felt like a cleansing, all the fats and oils sloughing off, even the flow of sweat ebbing as his body gradually moved to match the brittle purity of the salt, the brilliant clarity of the air, the unblemished radiance of the sun. Finally, he passed a granite outcropping he was able to put between him and the road with its prying eyes. He stretched out on the salt, glad that he had kept his shirt, for surely his skin would’ve fried, the pain too bright to bear, if he’d lain naked on the burning salt. He spread his arms wide, breathed in the boiling air, felt it baking him from inside as the sun was from outside. Driving out this morning he’d hit on an idea, an explanation, a piece of one anyway, a first step toward understanding why he was here. Now, feeling the salt soften ever so slightly as what little sweat he had left dampened it, allowing his body to settle into it just that fraction that reassured him he was in the right place, he mulled it over.
He’d never shared a passionate love. He had never known what it was like to have his life so deeply, thoroughly, intimately, inextricably entwined with another’s that she would quickly wither and die without him, as he would without her. Oh, he’d known youthful, physical passion, all right, even been good at it in the hot beds of New Orleans nights. There’d even been one girl who’d wrung him out as totally as he’d exhausted her; that morning they’d both sworn they could never be with anyone else. But they’d both moved on, maybe not to equal flights of sexual fantasy and physical exhaustion—at least he had never made it there again—but not to anguished suicide over lost love, either. He’d never even found out if her name was really Tanya.
And he’d had “a mature relationship,” made a life day-in and day-out with a good woman—a truly good woman—who cared for him, was supportive, strong when he needed it, critical when he needed that, too. Life with Sue Ellen was what “the good life” was supposed to be after the hormones stopped racing. He acknowledged that, accepted it without even the shadow of a doubt or challenge lurking in the farthest recess of his mind. Yes, that’s what life was supposed to be—but an all-consuming, life-fulfilling passion, that it was not.
Rulon felt his hair stiffening from the salt--his salt—crusting on it as his sweat dried up. He luxuriated in the feeling. Most people, he thought, figure that a passionate love, a love that creates a life shared from head to toe,, is only an adolescent fantasy then a longing left as those youthful hormones ran their course. There mistake—was mine, too—is focusing on sex when passion is so much more, is away of living, a way of embracing everything. Passion, that’s the glue that bonds us to life by tossing doubt aside, by going beyond reflection, by disregarding all those nagging questions to stand strong and sure on what we feel absolutely, beyond reason, is real. Never having been consumed by such passion, not for a year or a month, not even a week, that’s what had left his life so empty, so unfulfilling. That’s why he’d always felt it had never fit.
At least that was the idea he’d come up with this morning, leaving the city behind, heading for the desert, and it still felt right. Maybe that’s why it felt so good cooking out here in the desert heat, a heat that wasn’t limited to a few frantic, spasmed minutes but the spreading, all-absorbing heat of a ball of fire that has been there and will be there for eons and eons—a heat you can count on. Just the opposite of passion, which you can’t make happen; that being the ultimate sin of pride, believing that you could create the passion that made you whole, that you could create your own salvation. Llike those feelings of isolation, passion simply does or doesn’t occur, at any time, for no reason. It’s like—no! it is—God’s love, he remembered, our salvation unearned, undeserved—which is to say, utterly irrational—the absolutely free gift of life eternal, in every moment.
So, here, now, in this desiccating place he was acknowledging, accepting that lack of a consuming, fulfilling passion for his life by embracing the opposite extreme. Here he felt he fit. Away from the prying eyes, the challenging eyes, those critical eyes he could spread out and be welcomed into a scene that was so alien that in its indifference to human life it freed him from the burdens of that life. The salt did not care if he had talents left undeveloped, education wasted, or ideals he had not measured up to. The granite set no rules for him to follow, no dreams to grasp, no responsibilities to fulfill. The sun was baking him dry, but it cared not at all whether he lived or died. Out here, utterly alone, he had nothing to strive fore and didn’t have to reflect on, worry about whether he should be striving, should be content with what he was--whatever. Here, that miniscule but absolute distance from his life born of reflecting on it was percolating out, drying up, and disappearing into the brittle, shimmering air. He could just be only himself at last. He’d never have that thrill of an enveloping, life-fulfillingpassion, but he would achieve the opposite grace: escaping all those mid-points, all those efforts doomed to incomplete success, all those zones of gray into the absolute freedom of being totally alone in an alien world.
“So I can’t earn salvation, merit it, claim it as my due—so what!” he whispered through cracked lips at the sky, the sun, the salt, at everything that was there, unlistening, to everyone who might have listened but were not there, who had been left behind, comfortably, securely asleep. I can reject that whole project, create my own damnation, embrace it, revel in it, make it mine, make it me. Not even God can steal that from me. “Your cross to bear for making us incomplete, … free.” He sighed. He was at peace.
He’d thought about peeling off his clothes as he walked across the salt; then he could have felt at one with nature, stark and naked as the salt flats themselves, at one with the sun because it would be cooking his flesh while it was still on his bones. He had imagined that riding out from Salt Lake that morning. At first it had seemed like a good idea, an apt metaphor for what he’d wanted in throwing off his life to come back here to die, back to where he was born, full circle, going out of the world naked as he’d come in. Of course, there’d be big differences, too, but they’d be all for the better: being born amidst the blood, mucus, and other goo, the fouled wrappings, all the labored sweat and tangled, contradictory, ensnaring emotions of the birthing room, replaced by lying absolutely alone, baked clean by the simple, burning, uncaring sun, dying on a pure, dry, shimmering plain of salt in a world utterly indifferent to all life, including his. But he’d finally decided against stripping, feeling it was just too trite. Not wanting, either, to give a cheap thrill to the tourists at the Bonneville visitors center who’d doubtless been up on the viewing platform, binoculars in hand, watching him start his walk across the salt, wondering what kind of crazy he must be to be out here on a blistering summer day.
So, he kept his clothes on, felt the sun baking his back beneath his denim shirt, felt it moving into him not like a burning knife but as a scouring blanket that spread across him, drawing the fluids out of him, reaching down all the way to his bones to purify and claim him. That heat hurt so much but felt so good. He rotated his shoulders, flexed his biceps, closed and opened his fingers as he walked, so he could feel the sun more keenly as tissue moved across tissue, ligament on ligament, muscle on muscle opening every hidden space, welcoming in the cooking rays of heat. He walked steadily, neither fast nor slow, looking straight ahead or down, never side to side, never back, seeing only the white salt, gray granite, blue sky, the glare forcing his irises to close to the merest dots, feeling only the sun on his back, the heat coming through the soles of his shoes, and the sweat percolating through his skin as his body vainly tried to cool itself. Everything was as it should be.
Rulon had left Salt Lake while still in college, abandoning the U, as locals called the university, and Zion, as Mormons called their homeland, to “seek his fortune” elsewhere, “make his life” out there, or at least “find himself” somewhere. Not an unusual story, of course, not even unusual in its motivation: the son of a famous father—elder of the Church, governor of the state—overwhelmed by the expectations to measure up, feeling that he never could, escapes the pressure to stake out his own life elsewhere. Had he wanted to come back a great success? Stride into his father’s den and stare him down as the Senator from New York or the President of IBM, the Nobel laureate who’d cured cancer, something on that level? He wasn’t sure. He’d daydreamed scenes like that; what son of a too-famous father hasn’t? He’d even imagined different scenarios.
“Hi, dad. It’s Rulon. Long time, no see. No, don’t get up. I can’t stay. I’m just here to drop off this check for that remodeling project at Temple Square you’re chairing. This million should put you over the top.” Or just a phone call: “Dad, Rulon here. Dr. Young at LDS Hospital just called. Don’t worry; I’ll be on the next plane. We’ve developed something here at Hopkins that’ll have mom up again in no time.”
But he’d never felt that those daydreams were really his. Even then, he’d felt like he was doing what someone in his position was supposed to be doing. Not “supposed to” in the sense of “the right thing to do.” He’d moved through childhood and adolescence that way, been an Eagle Scout, lettered in both baseball and tennis, elected Senior Class President then Valedictorian at Skyline High, and a National Merit Scholar. He’d even gone into the Temple and been baptized for distant relatives long dead, just so they’d have a chance at heaven. He’d been the dutiful son, the handsome, athletic, blue-eyed, red-haired charmer, the Junior Achiever, everyone’s pride and joy. Been there, done that, and dreaming of one-upping your famous father wasn’t that sort of thing. It’s just the opposite, what you’re “supposed to do” when you fall from grace. Still, these opposites shared one crucial element for him: it felt like he was trying them on for size. Even with those rebellious dreams, he never felt he was creating them himself, finding there the expression of his “true self,” his “inner being,” his “personal reality”—all that sort of psychological stuff. No, it was like he was acting out the role of the resentful son, just as he’d played the good son, and no matter how much energy he spent throwing himself into either role, they always felt like they were produced by someone else, for someone else—clothes bought off the rack.
The story of my life, he thought, always looking for that life that would fit me like a glove, never finding it. Not that he’d been a total failure. Oh, he’d been that for awhile. He’d even enjoyed that life—for awhile. “Clean cut Mormon kid rubs the edges off in the gutters of New Orleans,” that was the label for that life. Leaving Salt Lake, he’d headed for the Big Easy, figuring it had to be as culturally and spiritually distant from Zion as he could get. He’d done all the “lost child” things there, all the things Eagle Scouts are not supposed to do, from dishes to drugs to sex. And it had been great! Dancing down Bourbon Street to the happy, pounding beat of the zydeco blasting from the Cajun Palace, then staggering back up the street, hurricane in hand or slurping beer, he’d throw the dregs on the religious fanatic--totally bonkers; the guy has to be completely God crazy—clutching his cross, ten feet high, at least, flashing “Repent! Repent! Repent!” right there in the middle of Bourbon Street. The fanatic would stare back at Rulon, some nights glaring, others pitying, and Rulon would always strut and dance, mocking and laughing at this demented fool trying to stem the tide of youthful exuberance and jaded age.
“Jesus loves you,” said one of the crazy’s acolytes one night, thrusting a pamphlet at Rulon.
“He’d damn well better,” Rulon jeered. “I’m his spitting image.”
The acolyte just stared back, eyes blank, same infuriatingly sugary smile, arm still outstretched with the pamphlet: “Jesus Loves You! We Can Help!”emblazoned in electric blue on its warm pink cover.
“Don’t you know your Bible, buddy? God created us in his very own image, all of us, you, me, even the crazy with the cross. So Jesus has to love us, each and every one. If he didn’t, he’d be turning his back on God, turning away from his very own daddy.”
“We can help you,” the acolyte responded as Rulon danced around him. “Just open your heart to Jesus; that’s all it takes.”
“There’s always a price, always, always, isn’t there? There’s always something we’ve got to do, got to do, got to do to earn daddy’s love, right?”
“We need only open our hearts.“
“That’s still something,” Rulon quickly interrupted, glaring at the acolyte. “It’s never free, though that’s what it’s supposed to be. That’s what the good book says. A love that’s always there, a love we can always count on—no matter what.”
“You can--“
“No, I can’t,” Rulon said, then danced off down Bourbon Street, laughing hysterically and chanting, “Can’t, can’t, can’t.” Then he stopped, turned back to look at the flashing cross and the acolyte—holding out his pamphlet to another reveler—cocked his head quizzically, thoughtfully to the side before bursting into laughter again, doing a quick little jig and resuming his dance down The Street, this time chanting, “Won’t! Won’t! Won’t!”
Rulon tried to imagine the look on his father’s face. If he could only see me now! A tarnished bit of flotsam on this jazzy, boozy tide. He’d transformed his sash of merit badges into a sling for carrying beer and tried to picture his father’s disgust, disappointment, anger, and despair, tried to find satisfaction there, fulfillment, validation, vindication. He tried to purchase his freedom with his father’s resentment at his son’s debauchery reflecting back on him no matter the distance. But instead, Rulon just woke up on The Avenue, having to roll out of the way before the St. Charles street car rand him down. His glove of youthful rebellion had no fingers. He looked at his hung-over buddies picking up odd jobs in the French Quarter’s restaurants, loose change in its gutters, AIDS in its shooting galleries, and felt like he stuck out all over. He was neither cool cat nor denizen of despair. Try as he might, and he tried mightily, he was still just a big boob of a Mormon thumb sticking out pink and awkward among these pale and darting spirits of the southern night. He moved on.
Remembering his mother’s soft brown eyes, warm and ever sympathizing, he packed away his father’s imagined wrathful glare and threw himself into doing good deeds. He went to Appalachia, claimed to have a college degree, and took a job teaching in-bred mountain kids that there’s a great wide world beyond their deep and narrow canyons. And he’d “done good.” In ten years, he’d taught 674 girls and boys how to read and write, spell and pronounce, even how to appreciate drama and literature. Some of his earlier successes were about to graduate from college.
He’d married, too, a mountain woman, but no hick, a widow with two sons. She was five years his senior but energetic, sweet, and a good cook, too. She needed a father for her sons and a husband for the community, just as he needed a wife and someone to turn the little house he’d bought into a home. It was a marriage of convenience, for both of them, but not merely that. At night, with the moonlight spilling through the window, bright enough in the clean mountain air to wake him, he’d lie there listening to her breathe, feeling the contours of her body pressed up against him, watching the play of the light in her blonde hair. He’d wonder if she knew he was awake and was pretending to continue sleeping so he could have this private moment appreciating her, knowing he was doing that. That’s what he did, when he felt she was awake watching, feeling, listening to him sleep.
This life had seemed to be the glove that fit, a second skin even—until last Thursday at The Stetson. He’d stopped by the bar to celebrate finishing the three-day seminar required of all teachers prior to beginning the new school year in two weeks. He was loaded up—fed up, too—with all the latest psycho-babble about the growing pains of adolescents—as if such hadn’t always plagued them—and with the new school superintendent’s obsession with “teamwork, teamwork, teamwork:” team-teaching, teaching the kids to work as a team, the parent-teacher team, the faculty-administration team, the education-business team, seeing the whole community as a team. If they’d only asked for volunteers to throw the superintendent out the window, he’d have gladly joined that team.
“You part of a team here, Whitey?” Rulon asked the bartender.
“What?”
“Y’know, a team. You and the other bartenders ever sit down with the owner to
identify your goals for the coming year, plan out how you’re all going to work together to reach them.”
Whitey just stared at Rulon.
“Write all that out on a big old roll of butcher paper, with felt markers, different colors for each of you, with arrows pointing here and there, all of them ultimately coming together to point to that greatest goal: success!”
“That what you have our kids do? … Jesus.”
“Kids? Hell, no. This is what we teachers have had to do the whole afternoon, ‘the capstone experience’ of three days of intense, high-powered, overpaid training, so we’ll ‘hit the ground running,’ all of us roaring drunk on the thrill of educating your kids.”
“Mine’ve all grown. I’m damn glad of that.”
“Did school teach them how to work in a team?”
“They learned to read and write, add up a bill so they won’t get cheated. That’s what counts.”
“But not to be a team.”
“What’s all this team crap?”
“That’s ex-actly what it is,” Rulon responded, holding up his beer bottle in salute, then draining it. “Such unvarnished truth deserves another,” he added, pushing the empty bottle toward Whitey.
“Coming right up,” Whitey said, whisking away the empty, grabbing and popping a fresh bottle, sliding it over to Rulon.
“You see there,” Rulon said with a smile after taking a pull on the beer, “we’re a team.”
“How’s that?” Whitey drawled, leaning back, the picture of the patient bartender.
“You open ‘em, I drink ‘em. My goal of drinking till I can piss all this teacher education snake oil out of my brain fits perfectly with your goal of earning a living here.”
“That’s what you’ve been back to school to learn?”
“And you taxpayers paid for it. Wanting the very best, the most up-to-date teaching techniques for your young-uns, you footed the bill to transport us, feed us, and put us up at the State University for three whole days of higher education. Now here I am, the result of your tax dollars at work.”
“I want mine back,” Whitey laughed.
“So do I,” Rulon agreed, “so do I.”
Whitey moved down the bar to serve another customer. Rulon stared across the scarred bar into the brown-veined mirror behind, watched himself drink his beer, wondered if everybody grasped their beer the same way, touched it to their lips the same way, tipped it back the same way. And if not, what did the differences tell us about each other? What did the way he drank his beer say about him? Was how he grasped his beer bottle in a class with his tea leaves, life line, and un-dotted i’s?
What a crazy idea, he thought, but he couldn’t help continuing. What about the way he parted his hair? That he was clean shaven? Why no sideburns? What about the blue shirt? Why wasn’t it white? And button down—that had to say a lot. But what?
This is weird, he told himself, starting to realize his bemused tone overlay a bed of fear, a bed he’d risen from before, then locked far back in the darkest corner of his memory, wanting never to revisit it, knowing that if he did he could never rise from it again.
“Ready for another?” Whitey asked, returning.
“You grew up here, Whitey—right?”
“Born and raised.”
“Ever live anywhere else?”
“Nope.”
“Ever wish you had?”
“Nope. What I see on the tube, Boone’s the place for me.”
“You’re content?”
“You’re not?”
Rulon stared past Whitey, surveying his image in the mirror again. “I guess not,” he finally said, “or I wouldn’t be asking, would I?”
“Sue Ellen’s a mighty fine woman.”
“I know that,” Rulon said, glaring at himself in the mirror now, trying desperately to resist what he saw there, stop what was happening there, keep the feeling welling up behind his eyes, that feeling he hadn’t known for so many years, since leaving New Orleans, keep it from flooding back into his life, drowning that life.
“Mark and Luke, too. I know they’re not yours, but you’re raising them. Their being good kids, that’s a reflection on you, something you can be proud of.”
“Yeah, right,” Rulon answered, distracted, having barely heard. The eyes in the mirror were now locking his. He wanted to pull away but couldn’t. The feeling was pouring over him, flowing more and more a torrent from his own mirrored eyes back into him no matter how he tried to prevent it. He gave up, resigned, feeling the void between himself and the life he’d believed was his, the life that had seemed to fit him like a glove, feeling that void grow and grow until every point of contact, every last one was broken. He looked in the mirror, knowing the image there was what was real, what was sitting on the stool the mere appearance.
“You okay?” Whitey asked.
“No,” Rulon sighed, looking down at his hands cradling the beer, able to break free of those mirrored eyes now that he’d acknowledged their truth, now that they’d taken his life and repossessed his soul. “No, I’m not.”
“Want me to call someone? A doctor? Sue Ellen?”
“I’m heading home,” Rulon said, then paid his bill and left the bar, Whitey wondering if he should alert Sue Ellen, deciding this, whatever it was, was between husband and wife.
Next day, Rulon had the family on the road to Salt Lake. Sue Ellen had long bugged him about meeting his family; he’d told her now felt right. She’d quizzed him for more, wanting a serious reason why they should cancel their annual visit to the cooling breezes of the Outer Banks and spend these final days of his summer break driving across the hot plains of the Midwest to the even hotter Utah desert.
“It just has to be now,” was all he could say. “It’s one of those gut feelings, something you just know.”
She gave up pressing him. That night, once he heard her gentle snoring he stopped feigning sleep to feel and watch and hear her sleeping. The contours of her body felt as they had all those other nights and her breathing was the same familiar flutter. The light sparkled on her hair, moving gradually from crown to the tousled ends on her shoulders as the moon moved past their window—just like all those other nights. But tonight what he saw was not the warm golden hues of her hair so close it moved when he breathed; what he saw was the cold, silver light of the distant moon spreading its blanket between him and her, illuminating them both, making her visible to him but etching the distance, no matter how small, between them.
The eye grasps only at a distance, he remembered from somewhere, it cannot see what touches it. Was that the story of his life? And: if you have to work at it, it’s not you—that had to be the moral of his story. But why tonight? What had been so goddamn different about tonight? He’d gotten drunk before, ranted at the incredible stupidity of administrators before—without losing his life. Was it all that talk about being a team? Is that what this is: some subliminal curse that fraud of an educational psychologist planted in the brains of those he saw seeing through him? But he knew, deep down, that nothing like that, not even a serious Freudian option, could be the answer, for even in asking answerable questions he was deluding himself, trying to make out that life was comprehensible so he could hide, cowering but safe, within that most reassuring of beliefs. But it was a lie. The horror was that no matter how carefully he hid his feelings of isolation, of being not only not at one with others—whatever team they might be—but not even one with himself—the life he’d made for himself—those feelings were still there, lurking, waiting to ooze out from the abyss, forcing even the most resolute of lives loose from its mooring to float like a flimsy cartoon adrift on a spreading oil slick, not for some reason, just at any time. That’s how fragile our lives are, how powerful our separation from them, how futile our efforts to bridge that miniscule gap. No matter how hard we work at it—even precisely because we’re working so hard to make life a success, carve out that life we can stand up and be proud of—just because I’m working that hard, it will never be … me. It will always be only that person I’m trying to be.
He gazed at Sue Ellen in the moonlight yet a moment longer, on the verge of tears, of screaming. Then he turned ever so slightly, so their bodies no longer touched, not wanting to wake her, wanting not to disturb her.
The trip had gone fine. Mark and Luke really were good kids, enduring even the endless boredom of Nebraska without throwing tantrums. He had certainly wanted to. They’d arrived late yesterday, and his parents had welcomed him, Sue Ellen, and the boys like it was Thanksgiving. They’d had a fine family dinner, and Rulon’s mother had sided with him in begging off having “that talk” with his father until the next day, after he’d had a chance to rest up from the long drive. Then this morning, he’d gotten up early, kissed Sue Ellen, told her he wanted to get something he’d left in the car, and driven off for the salt flats. He would’ve stopped by the boys’ room to see them one last time, say something to them, leave them with some fatherly pearls of wisdom to live by, a last caress and bear hug, so they’d know he wasn’t like their real father, who’d abandoned them, so they’d always remember him fondly, realizing that he hadn’t wanted to go, hadn’t been running away from them and whatever it was he owed them, but had no choice but to go. That’s what he was supposed to do—that Boy Scout meaning of the word again—and what he’d wanted to do, ached to do, but if he’d done it, done anything like it, they’d have realized he was leaving, and he’d have never gotten away. His parents were decent people; they’d do the right thing, embarrassed again by his falling short, they’d see Sue Ellen and the boys well cared for. What a luxury, parents like that!
Hours had gone by. His clothes were drenched, in spite of the desiccating desert air. He felt like the sweat was bubbling out of him. He already felt pounds lighter; felt good. But he had to get to those granite outcroppings, had to find a place where he could stretch himself out, open himself up to the full furnace blast of the sun. A place where he’d be hidden from view, for by now his father, always decisive, would have sent the police looking for his car. Parked at the Bonneville visitor’s stop. They’d find him with the helicopters, no doubt about that, but if he could delay that for the day, just the one day open to the sun’s full glare would be enough to do the job.
Was he getting delirious? He’d expected to see scenes from New Orleans, Boone, even his high school days as he trudged through the heat. Wasn’t your life supposed to unroll before your eyes as you left it behind? It wasn’t happening. Misshapen black spots floated before his eyes as he stared into the salt’s glare, that’s all. He felt his skin drying out, tightening. It felt like a cleansing, all the fats and oils sloughing off, even the flow of sweat ebbing as his body gradually moved to match the brittle purity of the salt, the brilliant clarity of the air, the unblemished radiance of the sun. Finally, he passed a granite outcropping he was able to put between him and the road with its prying eyes. He stretched out on the salt, glad that he had kept his shirt, for surely his skin would’ve fried, the pain too bright to bear, if he’d lain naked on the burning salt. He spread his arms wide, breathed in the boiling air, felt it baking him from inside as the sun was from outside. Driving out this morning he’d hit on an idea, an explanation, a piece of one anyway, a first step toward understanding why he was here. Now, feeling the salt soften ever so slightly as what little sweat he had left dampened it, allowing his body to settle into it just that fraction that reassured him he was in the right place, he mulled it over.
He’d never shared a passionate love. He had never known what it was like to have his life so deeply, thoroughly, intimately, inextricably entwined with another’s that she would quickly wither and die without him, as he would without her. Oh, he’d known youthful, physical passion, all right, even been good at it in the hot beds of New Orleans nights. There’d even been one girl who’d wrung him out as totally as he’d exhausted her; that morning they’d both sworn they could never be with anyone else. But they’d both moved on, maybe not to equal flights of sexual fantasy and physical exhaustion—at least he had never made it there again—but not to anguished suicide over lost love, either. He’d never even found out if her name was really Tanya.
And he’d had “a mature relationship,” made a life day-in and day-out with a good woman—a truly good woman—who cared for him, was supportive, strong when he needed it, critical when he needed that, too. Life with Sue Ellen was what “the good life” was supposed to be after the hormones stopped racing. He acknowledged that, accepted it without even the shadow of a doubt or challenge lurking in the farthest recess of his mind. Yes, that’s what life was supposed to be—but an all-consuming, life-fulfilling passion, that it was not.
Rulon felt his hair stiffening from the salt--his salt—crusting on it as his sweat dried up. He luxuriated in the feeling. Most people, he thought, figure that a passionate love, a love that creates a life shared from head to toe,, is only an adolescent fantasy then a longing left as those youthful hormones ran their course. There mistake—was mine, too—is focusing on sex when passion is so much more, is away of living, a way of embracing everything. Passion, that’s the glue that bonds us to life by tossing doubt aside, by going beyond reflection, by disregarding all those nagging questions to stand strong and sure on what we feel absolutely, beyond reason, is real. Never having been consumed by such passion, not for a year or a month, not even a week, that’s what had left his life so empty, so unfulfilling. That’s why he’d always felt it had never fit.
At least that was the idea he’d come up with this morning, leaving the city behind, heading for the desert, and it still felt right. Maybe that’s why it felt so good cooking out here in the desert heat, a heat that wasn’t limited to a few frantic, spasmed minutes but the spreading, all-absorbing heat of a ball of fire that has been there and will be there for eons and eons—a heat you can count on. Just the opposite of passion, which you can’t make happen; that being the ultimate sin of pride, believing that you could create the passion that made you whole, that you could create your own salvation. Llike those feelings of isolation, passion simply does or doesn’t occur, at any time, for no reason. It’s like—no! it is—God’s love, he remembered, our salvation unearned, undeserved—which is to say, utterly irrational—the absolutely free gift of life eternal, in every moment.
So, here, now, in this desiccating place he was acknowledging, accepting that lack of a consuming, fulfilling passion for his life by embracing the opposite extreme. Here he felt he fit. Away from the prying eyes, the challenging eyes, those critical eyes he could spread out and be welcomed into a scene that was so alien that in its indifference to human life it freed him from the burdens of that life. The salt did not care if he had talents left undeveloped, education wasted, or ideals he had not measured up to. The granite set no rules for him to follow, no dreams to grasp, no responsibilities to fulfill. The sun was baking him dry, but it cared not at all whether he lived or died. Out here, utterly alone, he had nothing to strive fore and didn’t have to reflect on, worry about whether he should be striving, should be content with what he was--whatever. Here, that miniscule but absolute distance from his life born of reflecting on it was percolating out, drying up, and disappearing into the brittle, shimmering air. He could just be only himself at last. He’d never have that thrill of an enveloping, life-fulfillingpassion, but he would achieve the opposite grace: escaping all those mid-points, all those efforts doomed to incomplete success, all those zones of gray into the absolute freedom of being totally alone in an alien world.
“So I can’t earn salvation, merit it, claim it as my due—so what!” he whispered through cracked lips at the sky, the sun, the salt, at everything that was there, unlistening, to everyone who might have listened but were not there, who had been left behind, comfortably, securely asleep. I can reject that whole project, create my own damnation, embrace it, revel in it, make it mine, make it me. Not even God can steal that from me. “Your cross to bear for making us incomplete, … free.” He sighed. He was at peace.