Mr. Crown’s publishers have told him that they are not interested in cowboys. There have been too many cowboys for too long.
The yard boy is spraying against scale and sooty mold.
“I don’t need the money but I am insulted,” Mr. Crown tells the yard boy.
Mr. Crown goes back into the house. The yard boy takes a break to get a drink of water. He sits in the cab of his truck and drinks from a plastic jug. He sprinkles some water on the rabbit’s-foot fern. The fern sits there on the seat, dribbling a little vermiculite, crazier than hell.
The fern and the yard boy sit.
It is not a peaceful spot to sit. The racket of the construction on the gulf is considerable. Nonetheless, the yard boy swallows his water and attempts to dwell upon the dignity and simplicity of the moment.
Then there is the sound of gunfire. The yard boy cranes his neck out of the window of his pickup truck and sees Mr. Crown firing from his studio at the workers across the street. It takes the workers several moments to realize that they are being shot at. The bullets make big mealy holes in the concrete. The bullets whine through the windows that will exhibit the sunset. The workers all give a howl and try to find cover. The yard boy curls up behind the wheel of his truck. The little rushy brown hairs on the fern’s stalks stick straight out.
A few minutes later the firing stops. Mr. Crown goes back to the drawing board. No one is hurt. Mr. Crown is arrested and posts a large bond. Charges are later dropped. The house across the street is built. Still, Mr. Crown seems calmer now. He gives up illustrating. When he wants to look at something, he looks at the bay. He tells the yard boy he is putting sunsets behind him.
—
The yard boy and the rabbit’s-foot fern drive from lawn to lawn in the course of their days, the fern tipping forward a little in its green pot, the wind folding back its leaves. In the wind, its leaves curl back like the lips of a Doberman pinscher.
The yard boy sees things in the course of his work that he wouldn’t dream of telling the fern even though the fern is his only confidant. The fern has a lot of space around it in which anything can happen but it doesn’t have much of an emotional life because it is insane. Therefore, it makes a good confidant.
The yard boy has always been open. He has always let be and disowned. Nevertheless, he has lost the spontaneity of his awakened state. He is sad. He can feel it. The fern can feel it too, which makes it gloomier than ever. Even so, the fern has grown quite fond of the yard boy. It wants to help him any way it can.
The yard boy doesn’t rent a room anymore. He lives in his truck. Then he sells his truck. He and the rabbit’s-foot fern sit on the beach. The fern lives in the shade of the yard boy. The yard boy doesn’t live in the Now at all anymore. He lives in the past. He thinks of his childhood. As a child he had a comic-book-collection high of 374 with perfect covers. His parents had loved him. His parents had another son, whom they loved too. One morning this son had fallen out of a tree onto the driveway and played with nothing but a spoon and saucepan for the next twenty-five years. When the yard boy has lived in the past as much as is reliable, he lives in the future. It is while he is living in the future that his girlfriend walks by on the beach. She is wearing a long wet T-shirt that says, I’M NOT A TOURIST I LIVE HERE. The rabbit’s-foot fern alerts the yard boy and they both stare at her as she walks by.
It is a beautiful day. The water is a smooth green, broken occasionally by porpoises rising. Between the yard boy and his girlfriend is sand a little less white than the clouds. Behind the yard boy are plantings of cabbage palms and succulents and Spanish bayonets. The bayonets are harsh and green with spikes that end in black tips like stilettos.
Act but do not rely upon one’s own abilities, thinks the yard boy. He chews at his nails. The moon can shine in a hundred different bowls, he thinks. What a lot of junk the yard boy thinks. He is as lost in the darkness of his solid thoughts as a yard boy can be. He watches his girlfriend angrily as she sashays by.
The rabbit’s-foot fern brightens at the yard boy’s true annoyance. Its fuzzy long-haired rhizomes clutch its pot tightly. The space around it simmers, it bubbles. Each cell mobilizes its intent of skillful and creative action. It turns its leaves toward the Spanish bayonets. It straightens and sways. Straightens and sways. A moment passes. The message of retribution is received along the heated air. The yard boy watches as the Spanish bayonets uproot themselves and move out.
Shepherd
It had been three weeks since the girl’s German Shepherd had died. He had drowned. The girl couldn’t get over it. She sat on the porch of her boyfriend’s beach house and looked at the water.
It was not the same water. The house was on the Gulf of Mexico. The shepherd had drowned in the bay.
The girl’s boyfriend had bought his house just the week before. It had been purchased furnished with mismatched plates and glasses, several large oak beds and an assortment of bamboo furniture.
The girl had a house of her own on the broad seawalled bay that had big windows overlooking shaggy bougainvillea bushes. There were hardly any studs in the frame and the whole house had shaken when the dog ran through it.
The girl’s boyfriend’s last name was Chester and everyone called him that. He wore sunglasses the color of champagne bottles. Chester had wide shoulders, great hands and one broken marriage, on which he didn’t owe a dime.
“You have fallen into the butter dish,” the girl’s friends told her.
Three days before the shepherd had drowned, Chester had asked the girl to marry him. They had known each other almost a year. “Let’s get married,” he said. They had taken a Quaalude and gone to bed. That had been three weeks and three days ago. They were going to be married in four days. Time is breath, the girl thought.
The shepherd was brown and black with a blunt, fabulous face. He had a famous trick. When the girl said, “Do you love me?” he would leap up, all fours, into her arms. And he was light, so light, containing his great weight deep within himself, like a dream of weight.
The girl had had him since he was two months old. She had bought him from a breeder in Miami, a man who had once been a priest. The girl’s shepherd came from a litter of five with excellent bloodlines. The mother was graceful and friendly, the father more solemn and alert. The breeder who had once been a priest made the girl spend several minutes alone with each puppy and asked her a great many questions about herself. She had never thought about herself much. When she had finally selected her puppy, she sat in the kitchen with the breeder and drank a Pepsi. The puppy stumbled around her feet, nibbling at the laces of her sneakers. The breeder smoked and talked to the girl with a great deal of assurance. The girl had been quite in awe of him.
He said, “We are all asleep and dreaming, you know. If we could ever actually comprehend our true position, we would not be able to bear it, we would have to find a way out.”
The girl nodded. She was embarrassed. People would sometimes speak to her like this, intimate and alarming, as though she were passionate or thoughtful or well read. The puppy smelled wonderful. She picked him up and held him.