About Clive Matson
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BIO
Clive Matson arrived on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1960, a fresh-faced adolescent with a blank notebook under his arm. He quickly fell in with the Beat Generation – his first event was a reading at the Tenth Street Coffeehouse, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Diane di Prima.
About Clive Matson
Clive Matson arrived on the Lower East Side of New York City in 1960, a fresh-faced adolescent with a blank notebook under his arm. He quickly fell in with the Beat Generation – his first event was a reading at the Tenth Street Coffeehouse, where he met Allen Ginsberg, Gregory Corso, and Diane di Prima.
“The atmosphere was stunning. People were aware that new ground was opening every day, and most of the Beat luminaries were in that one small café.” Matson had already traveled a long way from the avocado ranch in Southern California where he grew up. He had dropped out of the University of Chicago and hitch-hiked around Europe; his education in life was accelerating.
The proto-Beat Herbert Huncke became his second father, and Matson was captivated by John Wieners’ poetry and subsequently by Alden Van Buskirk’s. Diane di Prima published Matson’s first poems, Mainline to the Heart, and in the introduction John Wieners wrote, “One wonders about the nature of love in these poems. Are they vicious, or not?"Matson and his first wife Erin Black immersed themselves in sex, hard drugs, and psychedelics of 1960s Bohemian life. Eventually Matson became overwhelmed and returned to the West Coast. He worked for Taxi Unlimited, a producers’ cooperative in Berkeley; briefly for the Free Clinic and for MOVE (men overcoming violence); and learned the craft of printing from Clifford Burke at Cranium Press. Psychotherapy, Vipassana meditation, and twelve-step programs became fixtures in his life.
Space Age (1969) displays his psychedelic years, Heroin (1972) outlines his struggle with addiction, On the Inside (1981) continues the political sight of his communist grandparents, and Equal in Desire (1982) shows feminism instructing his own sexuality. In 1978, he got involved in workshops and found he could make a living teaching creative writing. He returned to school in the 1980s and earned his MFA in poetry at Columbia University. He has taught more than 3,000 workshops nationwide, and his how-to text Let the Crazy Child Write! (New World Library, 1998), honoring the creative unconscious, is being used by a number of groups around the world.
Matson co-edited, with the late Allen Cohen, the anthology An Eye for an Eye Makes the Whole World Blind - Poets on 9/11 (Regent Press, Oakland, 2002), which won the 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award. Earlier that year his seventh book, Squish Boots (2002), was placed, amazingly, in John Wieners’ coffin.
In 2004, a character in one of his unfinished stories began writing poems. His editor said, "Her stuff's junk," and Matson replied, "Get over it. They're not yours." Chalcedony's First Ten Songs (2007) obsess on sexual passion. The poems are an extension of Matson’s Beat training, as Chalcedony makes a vibrant call to body and spirit and earth through the sensory world. The poems continue in Chalcedony's Second Ten Songs (2009).
That Matson ultimately emerged drug-free and healthy gave him full appreciation for 1960s passion and honesty. These qualities are crucially important, he thinks, for the current era. “Coming to terms with my youthful, energetic voice has been a challenge,” he admits. “It helps that I hear, in these poems, both an urgent need to connect and full cognizance of the difficulties.”
Mostly Matson writes from the itch in his body, and says he always has. He likes playing basketball, table tennis, and collecting minerals in the field. He lives in Oakland, California, where he helps parent his teen-age son, Ezra.
Clive Matson's Resume
472 44th Street
Oakland, CA 94609
510.654.6495
clive@matsonpoet.comEducation
- M.F.A. Poetry, School of the Arts, Columbia University, 1989
- Undergraduate work, University of Chicago, 1958-59
Positions
Faculty in creative writing
- University of California Extension, Berkeley, California, 1985-present
- John F. Kennedy University, Orinda, California, 1993-1995
Creative writing workshops taught
(more than 3000), including Umbria, Italy, 2006; Oakland Adult Art Camp, 2000; Woodstock Art Guild, Woodstock, New York, 1989; Soledad Prison, California, 1983; Woodstock Art Guild, Woodstock, New York, spring 1989; Soledad Prison, California, spring 1983
Readings coordinator
- Poetry & Pizza, San Francisco, 1999-2010
- Cody's Books, Berkeley, California, 1979-81
Publications
Volumes of Poetry
- CHALCEDONY’S SECOND TEN SONGS (Minotaur Press, Pt. Townsend, Washington: 2009) 35pp
- MAINLINE TO THE HEART and other poems (reissued, Regent Press, Berkeley, CA: 2009) 92pp
- CHALCEDONY’S FIRST TEN SONGS (Minotaur Press, Pt. Townsend, Washington: 2007) 36pp
- SQUISH BOOTS (Broken Shadow Publications, Oakland, California: 2002) 69pp
- HOURGLASS (Seagull Press, Oakland, California: 1987) 53pp
- EQUAL IN DESIRE (ManRoot, So. San Francisco, California: 1983) 25pp
- ON THE INSIDE (Cherry Valley Editions, New York: 1982) 70pp
- HEROIN (Neon Sun, Berkeley, California: 1972) 35pp
- SPACE AGE (Croton Press, New York: 1969) 73pp
- MAINLINE TO THE HEART (Poets Press, Kerhonkson, NY: 1966) 29pp
Poems featured in 12 anthologies, including
- PASSIONATE HEARTS (New World Library, Novato, California: 1997)
- HANG TOGETHER (Hanging Loose, Brooklyn: 1987)
- LOVES, ETC. (Doubleday, NY: 1973)
- 31 NEW AMERICAN POETS (Hill & Wang, NY: 1969)
Poems published in more than 100 journals, including
- NIMROD, EXQUISITE CORPSE, HAWAII REVIEW, YELLOW SILK, NORTHERN CONTOURS, FACTOR (Mexico City), JEOPARDY, BERKELEY POETRY REVIEW, THE CENTENNIAL REVIEW, DALMO'MA, BLUE UNICORN, SILVER, INTREPID.
Poetry chapbooks
- TOWERS DOWN with Diane di Prima (Eidolon Editions, S.F.: 2002)
- SHAVED AT DAWN with John Oliver Simon (Aldebaran Review, Berkeley, Calif.: 1984)
Fiction
- “Cache” in TULANE REVIEW (Tulane University, New Orleans: spring 2005)
- “Guards” in WORD 60 (New York School of Visual Arts: fall 2004)
- “Asbestos” in SANTA CLARA REVIEW (Santa Clara College, California: fall/winter 2003)
- “Search” in SOUNDINGS EAST (Salem State College, Massachusetts: fall 2000)
Essays, including
- “Remembering John Wieners,” in MONTESSART REVIEW no. 7, ed. Calder Lowe: fall 2003)
- “Membrane Porous” in THE SPIRIT OF WRITING, ed. Mark Waldman (Tarcher, L.A.: 2001)
- “Going Public” in POETS & WRITERS vol. 25 no. 2 (New York: March/April 1997)
- “Robert Duncan and His Audience” in EXQUISITE CORPSE #57 (Baton Rouge, LA: 1996)
- “Mapplethorpe: The Censorship of the Senses” in CULTURE CONCRETE (S.F.: 1992)
- “Breath of Inspiration” (PRESUMPTIONS, Berkeley, California: 1987) 15pp
Nonfiction Volume
- LET THE CRAZY CHILD WRITE! Finding Your Creative Writing Voice (New World Library, Novato, California, 1998) 257 pp.
Readings
More than 2,000 poetry readings given, 1964-present, including 60 with musicians
Drama
- NOBODY'S BUSINESS, full-length, Marin Theatre Co., workshop production July 1996
- SPIKES, one act drama, Marin Theatre Co., workshop production October 1995
- CACTUS, full-length comedy, The Nat Horne Theater, workshop production Sept.1989
Editorial
- AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND - Poets on 9/11 with Allen Cohen (Regent Press, Oakland: 2002)
Provided developmental work on more than twenty volumes, including
- CHINA DREAMS, Isabelle Maynard (University of Iowa: 1997)
- GOD'S CARESS, Charles Cohen (Oxford University Press, New York: 1986)
- LAMI, Alden Van Buskirk (Auerhahn Press, San Francisco: 1964)
Awards
- Best Writing Teacher, Best of the East Bay 2006 (“Arts & Culture,” EAST BAY EXPRESS, Berkeley, California: May 3-9, 2006, p. 34)
- 2003 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles National Literary Award (with the late Allen Cohen) for the anthology AN EYE FOR AN EYE MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD BLIND - Poets on 9/11 Columbia University Graduate Writing Fellowship, 1987-88
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REVIEWS
Clive Matson’s recent re-publication of his sixties classic Mainline to the Heart is a celebration of two things: passion and poetry... Written, incredibly, when Matson was only twenty-three and twenty-four years old and subsequently published by Diane di Prima’s press, Mainline evokes the vicissitudes of a young man living in New York City who is seeking love, using drugs, and exploring his feelings in free verse that is supple, many-layered and suggestive. This poetry belongs to the legacy of the Beat generation.
By Marc Hofstader in The Book Stacks
Clive Matson, Mainline to the Heart, Regent Press, 2009 (originally published 1966)
Clive Matson’s recent re-publication of his sixties classic Mainline to the Heart is a celebration of two things: passion and poetry. Written, incredibly, when Matson was only twenty-three and twenty-four years old and subsequently published by Diane di Prima’s press, Mainline evokes the vicissitudes of a young man living in New York City who is seeking love, using drugs, and exploring his feelings in free verse that is supple, many-layered and suggestive. This poetry belongs to the legacy of the Beat generation. One can hear this in every line:The Hustler, it’s over
& I walk out
to lights on the street.
The self is hip, aware, an adventurer and, above all, a poet. He seeks ecstasy:Now I dig myself.
& forget myself.
Go out for air and
the desert street is white with
radiance
from the sun.
He also acknowledges the tawdry and stained aspects of existence:I wake up blue and a little sick,
light a first harsh cigarette and
stumble into last night’s pants.
He is open about his drug use:Opium today.
My brain is loaded.
Put down
the spike, wipe a red dribble
oozing out the hole in my arm.
He is in love with sex:I like to think you’re a
lioness with that loping,
straddle leg walk
& breasts free, bouncing and rubbing
against the flowered sheath—
I watch out the corner of my eye ga-ga.
He has a girlfriend, but isn’t unaware of other women’s charms:Well Babe I’d die almost
without you & I know
you’d feel the same but
I’ll shrivel up without some
new young love &
today I saw
your blue eye roving.
He expresses his experiences with the implication that he is expanding the envelope through deliberate sexual and drug experimentation in the tradition of Rimbaud. But many people were experimenting thus in the sixties. What makes this self special is his ability to put the new knowledge into words. The verse skips around on the page, visual effects creating emphases that would not exist if each line began at the left margin:Who took the clouds from the sky!
Since when is death pretty &
things alive and sparkly:
twing-twanging
in some continual sex act.Here the isolation of the typically slangy “twing-twanging” makes us hear it as if it were music.
This young poet describes his life with remarkable authority and beauty:The first day
I go out into a beautiful world. Of color &
light
where each tree & building & person
is beautiful!
The life of feeling is celebrated in this poetry in such a way that it is inseparable from the life of verse. It is through poetic expression that passion finds its utmost meaning. This poetry itself is a “mainline to the heart”. Drug use, sex, love, the city are all transformed by verse into a beautiful, passionate, legendary vision. This kind of innocent romanticism may seem almost quaint to our more knowing but less hopeful age, but we can still learn much from it. It is a foundation from which to build, and a reminder that gadgets and bandwidths are not sufficient to construct a life of meaning.More Reviews of Mainline to the Heart
The Compulsive Reader
One thing clear to me is the deep voice running beneath the poems that speaks to the awareness of experience humans share with each other. It’s a sexy collection and like talking with your lover, it conveys an interest in pleasure and at the same time an honesty that is willing to share what is most heartfelt.Jacket Magazine
The daring honesty and chaos of a drug- and sex-saturated life revealed, the starkness of the sexual frankness must have captured the eyes and ears of those liberated souls of that flower era, if it can still be remembered as such.Creatively Rooted
The poems stay within the mind for a long time after reading those. The emotions ooze from each page. A book worth reading but not for those who like everything nicely tied up.Boston Area Small Press and Poetry Scene
...the language is intense and beautifully crafted, the work of a seasoned writer. And yet Matson maintains a rawness, a nakedness, to the imagery.Poetry & Ideas
Mainline to the Heart presents Clive Matson in full flight, as Sixties as they come, that is to say sex to jazz's backbeat, guys & gals, drugs, the Beat merging with the Hippy thing. It contains or assumes the bits of attitude which'd one day declare as Punk.Rain Taxi
Matson’s work is, to adapt Ezra Pound’s phrase, news that has stayed new. These are poems that can still startle, even shock; they are also poems that can make us grieve and see something of the beauty and richness that isn’t so much in spite of the “disease” that is life but because of it.Interviews with Clive Matson
Interview at Savvy Verse & Wit
Interview and Reading at Blog Talk Radio (PODCAST) -
POETRY
I MAKE LOVE TO THE WORLD
(SONG TWENTY-SIX)
(From the forthcoming book of Chalcedony songs.)Ashes of burnt roses, ashes of broccoli,
ashes of hydra, ashes of proton plasma.Grass pushes two green waves
up the hill. Wind's tiny hands
roam angles on your face.I make love to the world.
Oak trees: ashes.
Scattered boulders: ashes.
Sheep skin: ashes.
Pitted iron wheel: ashes.I MAKE LOVE TO THE WORLD (SONG TWENTY-SIX )
(From the forthcoming book of Chalcedony songs.)
Ashes of burnt roses, ashes of broccoli,
ashes of hydra, ashes of proton plasma.Grass pushes two green waves
up the hill. Wind's tiny hands
roam angles on your face.I make love to the world.
Oak trees: ashes.
Scattered boulders: ashes.
Sheep skin: ashes.
Pitted iron wheel: ashes.The sun goes out in a flash. For half a half
second the hills all around light
green.Later the sky streaks itself
with a meteor. Then unstreaks.You're not dusted with ashes.
Ashes filter through our illusion skin
from inside.
Through my head my parents dance
and behind them a stream of ancestors.Teenager leans over a glass counter
and I exhale. Mist condenses into signs,
how to caress the world.
How to become a man.This is a trust issue and trust
issues
between worlds mostly unseen.
How to see what is?
How to ratchet this poor sight?
Horn honks and from a car window
a stranger waves. His palm cuts
the air into head-size chunks.
Homeless lady talks and why not?
Her lips outline a swash "S."
Cat's paws appear overnight
musty red scatterings on sand.
Rusty rebar by a clear
grocery bag, bent at right anglesLook at the picture!
Your eye sockets frame a picture
that reveals every thing
precisely
in place every
moment. Furry texture
the visual of the conjoining buzz.
I make love to the world.
Orange poppies rise into triangular valleys
in flurries. Dudleya's yellow-pink stalks
dot clefts in a rocky cliff.
This is a perfect view of the world.
This is dewachen.
This is walking in beauty.
This world is a beautiful place.Thunderhead grows white puffs and
when you turn back
lightning crashes.
How strange this is all ashes.Grandmother points to imprints
of worn soles in footpath dust.
Orphan child trucks through a rain of ash,
fists clenched. In-chocolate youths laugh
and look away, their bodies humming.
Ashes of the big bang.
Ashes of 10,000 trillion novas.I make love to the world.
How easy when orange warblers
sing in pine branches.
How easy when earth moves
and the sky blanches.
How easy
when you stroke soft ashes
on my chest and I throat lyric
tones of my ashen song.Song Twelve
(From Chalcedony's Second Ten Songs
You don't know how much you're loved!
You don't know
how every cell stokes this fire
and pours out slow heat, how my thoughts
round the corners of yours, how without thinking
these mouth muscles
shape your words with you.You don't know how much you're loved.
That hummingbird poised at its hydrangea,
flitting curiously,
the cat at your feet,
how it follows your legs' motion
and times its leap into your lap,I look through their eyes.
See with their hearts.I sneak spies on invisible paws
into feathery currents. My soul
infiltrates the air
along dirt tracks
and under rooftops and through doorway cracks.Am I jealous of your pen
in hand?
Jealous of your salad pine nuts
and jalapeno chicken?That cumin spice and nutty flavor
I've savored already with my raptor tongue.
I level the crunch with my teeth.I stretch so much I sense
how your fingers grasp the fork
and how steel caresses your fingers.You don't know how much you're loved.
Do hinges know how much
they're loved by the door?
Does the wall know how much
it's adored by rafters?
If sky didn't have earth, it would be
atoms scattered through space!I wake and warm to your recent words.
Match their temperature and step buoyant
to the window. My reply
goes out through the pane.Cool zephyrs wend around trucks
and sooted buildings and greet you,
"Hello, how are you?" "Hello, I'm here."You don't know how much I love you.
This parallel frosting, this goopy vibration
would be too much
if you did, these eyes
looking into your air pedestal
from all sides!
Far too much.Turn down the volume?
Slow the telepathic flood?
No way.
Not possible to dam
the cistern that unleashes a frothy tsunami
that demolishes walls of the love house
and envelops everything
in sudden balmy oxygen.Aromic haze fractals out my fingers
up from the one pregnant touch
of inside labia
and skin under foreskin.You stand and stretch and I
; sigh and sway, bounce
and smile at your feet with joy
while the underworld riots.You don't know but the breeze
knows
and exults with every twist and glint.
The air carries prints of my heart
as accurate as fresh snow.
This is its job.Excerpts from Mainline to the Heart
Teardrop In My Eye
Fuck you, Huncke.
Leave me
hung up for junk, waitingalone in a dark room candles
you lit burn down in.
They unwind curls of smoke
like incense I remember we offered
weeks ago.
It is Nostalgia.I treat you mean
and I get what's coming
down on Lonely Street.
I walk amid cold winds,
leaves
rustle
while I blow.
No one to hold my hand.Tompkins Park ~
a violet night sky looms,
one icy star in it. Is it
Venus?
And on 3 sides
fountains I see thru squinty eyes
squirt white geysers like cocks:
streetlamps seen thru tears.Wish you were here
& cruise empty benches
for the familiar body.
What's the use.Turn a corner, God
I'm relieved! Gone the terror.
No more hairy lump between thighs or
mornings he slunk away
thru dawn's pale blue light as
as I reach long arms
for hugging.
& grasp a rumpled blanket.I hoped for joy.
Why did he go?
This affair started with a smile that
opened caverns in his skull
When he gave me a blue china bowl.
For weeks afterwe took off
together jiving our way along
for outer space as
only we can. Will we
space out once more.Have I got heart for it,
Now I'm free I can
go to Chatham Square a vulture,follow the fading rumors he left
behind with me. & these memories
I would live again.My Love Returned
The Moon rises
ass heavy: on the wane.
Wish it was full.I dream &
a huge bat wing arcs over skeleton buildings
and dips to touch ruby pinprick traffic lights
on the street's horizon in mute salute,when I take in another block
the black wing blacks out the lights
and I know it is the Vampire,
my love returned
in the city calling me to bed
with faint irresistible siren
over the cool line of telepathic desire
or echoing "could be" to my needbroadcast live out dewy eyes, glib tongue
and come-on slouch for months.How does she know? How the seasons change
and my veins hold new blood for her to suck now,
new blood I can bleedover the white & untried bed
and my teeth are white and sharp to eat with.
Now I brim over with come to shoot in her,
I flap my jaw
and smile goofy at strangers
in the fullness of it.
Glad I'll kill myself
& build a life with her. Glad
I'll gaze into the wide blue eyes
I cannot fathom.Not Christine not Huncke
not Martha could take her place.
I loved each and let each loose
the beautiful face no matter or
how strong my yearning ache,
Cut off
at dangerously hot by a circuit breaker
or fanned to blistering flame so
she turned cold shoulders in disgust,Useless to give my all when it's already given
to end lying anguished mornings on the same wrinkled sheet,
some yellow belly demon inside calculating
to save me for the One
or can I love at all?Hear dark silence for the answer
& I've torn up the map, all highways
lead to the same dead end where
I see no exit
away from the Horror,
why not embrace it.Love is possession
and we possess each other on a bone level
I don't understand but we keep
a dim promise of happiness alive
or magic descends from the ceiling
& days light up now and then like sparkling incense,I do what I want with her
as nuptial joy lifts toward bliss
that can not come true
and will carry me
thru boredom, fighting, anguish
the same scene repeated endlessly
1966, 1969, 1975 as
over the years
Time binds us tighter together
in orbit around our asteroid or lovely room
where we are each other's parasite
and no friend in sight,
where we'll die
within the same few seasons fatally wounded
our better half destroyedor God insert the drug, body, faith
can bridge to the old dream she devours
& I love a spirit of the Dead.Excerpts from Squish Boots
Molecule Daisy
Mostly empty space, this molecule,
and I am standing on it.
A skeleton on the median,
fleshless and clean. Its support:
one molecule at pelvis, one at heel,
one at skull. A spray of grass
pokes through the ribcage.
I am doing one good thing,
balance check: going shopping.
A dollar in my pocket.
On a thin sidewalk of yellow leaves
people walk by, not looking.
Maybe if I smile at this one.
Maybe if I look away.
Any twig, flower or bit of dust
could fall out of the sky and
scrunch! I'm one bug squashed
through earth. Sieved by a sieve.
Roam the body: legs move,
insides work, back flat,
balance check. Float on a
miniscus of good feeling.
A gutter-grate rattles: bony
fingers twist at the bars.
A skeleton tries to climb up
from below, with a brown
string and three tomatoes.
Here comes a thought! Kick it
before it pulls me down.
Torn duct tape, holding flat
a printed yellow sign ~ away.
The bank and office building tilt.
Is this a backflip into the street?
Turn head to an angle. There.
Level stays level.
The world's skin is one molecule
thick and I've got it
between my toes. Don't trip.
Molecule meets molecule.
An upside-down world underneath the street,
balance check. Cherry pits, a working
elbow, burp, old carrot smell. Garbage
eats itself because it feels bad.
Dismembered daisies clutter sidewalks.
He loves me, she loves me not,
she loves me, he loves me not.
The world's skin is a thin
scatter of yellow petals.
Air goes in the lungs gently.
Don't breathe it out your back.
Keep below the asphalt! You cemetary
crawling with spiders and bones,
one molecule away. Balance check.
Mosquitos come from the river
with probosci extended. Molecules slurp.
Maybe if I smile at the next
face. Maybe if I say "Hello."
One toe on the sidewalk, balance
check. One toe on a molecule.
A dollar in my pocket,
going to the market.
Walking on a daisy petal bridge
above a boneyard. Don't fall in.Shadow Traffic
Animals and trucks
move around in my body.
You don't know what they are.
I don't know what they are.
A gorilla with peaked head,
ship's anchor with barnacled chains,
yards of cowshit on a flatbed,
a snake ball, getting fuzzy.
Fuzzier. If they were clear
I could shoot bull's eyes,
or direct traffic over-under
at the cloverleafs.
Shadows rumble through bottom
groin and center chest. They move
through each other without pain.
Each one carries a load.
I don't know what they are.
You don't know what they are.
Clear and I could ride
a hayload into the meadow.
Clang out a cherry-red shovel
on the portable anvil.
No one could match the speed.
"We are finding that emotions
at some level enter into most
of what happens during the day."
I'm walking in a wool and pigment
forest or maybe the city dump,
or a mall getting landscaped.
I don't know. You don't know.
Knee deep then neck high
in gray water, from the roof?
Peptides flowing over the top
of the expanding liver?
You don't know. I don't know.
I am a clear glass pane
with thoughts and actions
written so clearly
they are not written at all.
Can you see your next act?
You think your next thought
without looking. Without looking
I do my next act.
Animals and trucks
move around in my body. -
FICTION
"Mayday, it's Mayday!" mutters Tony to himself, and a crisis is the last thing he wants. His watch reads three o'clock and he looks at the mesa again, a mile away. There are cactus spires all along the skyline but nothing moving. His father is not there. No blue jacket, no tan shirt, no tiny figure in brown pants scrambling up the rocks. Tony watches through the binoculars for fifteen minutes. No George.
Here's a sample from one of Clive Matson's short story collections.
Search
"Mayday, it's Mayday!" mutters Tony to himself, and a crisis is the last thing he wants. His watch reads three o'clock and he looks at the mesa again, a mile away. There are cactus spires all along the skyline but nothing moving. His father is not there. No blue jacket, no tan shirt, no tiny figure in brown pants scrambling up the rocks. Tony watches through the binoculars for fifteen minutes. No George.
Everything starts speeding up. Tony scrambles around the heaps of rock at the diggings, picking up a water bottle, the first aid kit, his wool cap and down vest. Anything for warmth. His father may be hurt so badly it would be crazy to take him out of the desert this late in the day. Better to bed down between sheltering boulders and keep him warm until morning. Bring the dropcloth. That would work as a small blanket. Tony stuffs his blue daypack almost to bursting.
"What the hell," Tony grouses, "did the old man do?" They are sixty miles from help. Two mountain wise coots and something went wrong. By the time Tony was nine his father had taught him about the desert, but after that he almost stopped talking. And no more trips. Tony carries a picture from those early days: his father with a wry grin on his face, leaning against a Willie's. The jeep was stuck in sand halfway up the hubcaps. And now, twenty years later, Tony invited his father back to the desert. For Tony this is a caring gesture, but look. George hardly broke his silence in two whole days, and now something has happened. He did not make it to the mesa.
Tony bangs the dust out of his gloves and pulls them on. He takes one final glance around the prospect. Upslope from the dirt piles and boulders a fluorescent pink marker flutters from a mesquite bush. Behind it, in the background, rocky peaks cascade all the way to the horizon. Tony turns away from that glorious view and looks back at the mesa. Its dark mass looms above a stack of granite hills, and there is nothing moving. "Okay, Dad, I'm coming after you."
George took off on his own at one thirty. The plan was for him to wave his jacket from the flat topped mountain in an hour. Tony had looked him in the eye and said, "If we miss each other at two thirty, let's try again at three." The mesa might be more than an hour away, and the old man is not so fast. "Fifty eight," George had bragged last night, in the middle of a long silence, scrunching his eyes and tipping his bald head back, "and strong as a horse." But he wasn't. And if they didn't make contact at three o'clock? " I'm coming after you," Tony had said.
Tony heads out. He clambers up a granite boulder carved by ancient floods into hollows and bumps. He surveys the slope ahead. Nothing. His blood pounds and his belly is sinking. If it's a sprained ankle, okay, provided he finds George before dark and they make it to camp. A broken leg or worse and they are in trouble. Though he could make a litter out of cardon ribs. Tie a dozen sticks together from one of those dead cactus spires and he would have a platform to put his father on. He could drag him out, all the way back to the truck. Okay, but how to bind the sticks? The nylon cord is back at camp, an hour the other side of the prospect. Maybe he could pull some fibers out of a live cardon. Or use the straps from his daypack. He could even rip up his shirt. Still the truck would be two days away and the going slow. He would have to carry their water. They could both die.
Up a small ridge, down the crest, into a wash and there in the sand are his father's bootprints. "I'll trail you!" Tony says, and he is Davy Crockett, eyes squinting and arms akimbo. He scans the whitish gray sand. He can do this. He is in shape and he knows how to breathe. Big breaths in motion, not stopping, and his legs sing power. Power. Sing power even as they tire, more air pumps in more power and keep breathing. Keep moving. His boots crunch in the fine gravel.
He must be catching up. "Mayday, Mayday!" Bring the fellow out to his old stomping grounds and then have to rescue him. What a reversal. Tony will have to show what kind of a man he has become, and do that under pressure. He may have to exhaust himself, perhaps dangerously. He feels a tug along the backs of his legs: hamstrings. He slows a little. For now, find the footprints. Tony rounds the next cardon, this one with thirty foot arms reaching into the sky, but there are no fresh marks in the ground. Then, by a low, prickly cholla cactus, he sees a heel indentation and a toe hole dug deep, squirting sand over the soleprint. George on the move.
Another punched in heel followed by a trail of footprints, one after another and looking strong. What could have happened? The terrain is not difficult. And the mesa looms close ahead. Is his father playing a trick on him? The guy is so hard to talk to. Tony had hoped he could make contact here in the desert, but no. For an hour last night his father had stirred the campfire, muttering to himself, his big wrinkly face glinting dark red. He tinkered with his pack, he fiddled with his sleeping bag, he grumbled when Tony spoke to him. Only when Tony said he looked strong had George responded. "Strong as a horse" and less talkative.
Inconceivable that he's playing a joke. Their lives are in the balance. And George never joked around. A couple of guys at school used to talk about their fathers' pranks. News to Tony. One boy had woken up in the middle of the night with his three pet rabbits out of their cage and in bed with him, chewing on his pajamas. He had laughed and screamed and finally got them back in their cages. His father was watching TV. "They told me you were lonely. They wanted to get in bed with you." The boy had cried and they had wrestled a while. Then his dad had tucked him back in and made him a cup of hot chocolate. They had dealt with each other. Tony wouldn't know how.
And Tony would give anything to be back at the prospect. He could be digging out an aquamarine, making a find and sharing it with his father. The next section of vein could be rich. Levered up, it might show rust red clay, outlines of quartz and feldspar crystals in a pocket as big as his hand. Tony would brush with his old whisk broom and scrape with a knife. A clear, sparkling blue beryl would stare through the muck. He is due for a fine crystal. Overdue. But there has been almost nothing, only a few small pieces. The vein may turn out barren after all.
His father had hung around for the morning while Tony dug. Then George got antsy. He took off for the mesa. And now Tony trails him, mesquite rustling as he pushes through, watching the ground for his tracks. Cholla cactus! Look out. Those yard high clusters of spine balls will split apart and stick on the surrounding bushes. The live cactus is bluish green and unmistakable, but the old spine balls weather, turn brown and blend in with the brush. Hard to spot. You could jam your knee into one. They are six inches across. His father pointed out the danger twenty years ago, when Tony was a boy. They were a week in this desert and his Dad was so smart looking, his face leathery against the sky. He could read the plants and the rocks and the weather and animal tracks. Tony had adored his father.
But Tony does not like these bootprints. They are too competent. The prints march out of a shallow canyon, widely spaced and heading straight for the mesa. And brown lava, a broad rocky cap on the mesa, is not far away. Tony cannot imagine why his father was not on the summit by two thirty. Let alone by three o'clock. He must have gone on, thinks Tony, without waiting for a signal from me. Tony shouts up the mountain, "You asshole, old man! Are you worth all this? Do you know what this is like?" But Tony hears his voice echoing. What if his father heard those words? And what if he can't? He could be down, unconscious, with a broken ankle or gashed shin. Or worse. And yelling is no way to start the long trek out. Two days to the truck, rationing water, doling out aspirin and pulling his father through the brush on a bunch of cactus ribs.
"Okay old man, I'm on my way. Hang on." Tony booms the words up the slope. But with his next strides he mutters, "I want to be home. Sleeping. Or soaking in the tub. Anything but this." Suddenly he is striding up the lava cap of the mesa. The tall cardon thin out and small agave thrive, everywhere, yard long sprays of broad, stiff, spine edged leaves in clumps. And the bootprints disappear. Disappear! Tony studies the ground: dark chocolatey rocks, from pebbles to fist sized to skull sized, all jumbled together and no smooth surfaces. No sand. No bootprints and no chance of prints. Tony kicks a rock and goes on.
He had kicked a rock twenty years before, for sure. He and his father had been at an old mine in the mountains and Tony had been walking up the trail playing soccer with stones. One was the size of his eight year old fist. Smoky gray and drab. "That's not a pretty rock," he had said aloud and kicked it. But his father had picked it up, turned it in the light, and shown him the six sides. They were dull, it was not a fine crystal, but it had an elegant shape. Quartz. Two inches long with a point on the end. Held at an angle you could see the light glinting through it, a clear, steely gray. That was the beginning of Tony's passion. That crystal changed how Tony looked at rocks.
His father had picked up an old manzanita root on that trip, too. It was in a gully. How many dozens of years had it washed down the arroyo? It was lumpy and waterworn. To Tony it was a grungy old stick. Until his Dad carried it home, washed it off, oiled it and set it up over the fireplace. Hung it by a fishline. "That's my objet d'art!" he exclaimed one evening. Tony stared at it, not knowing what the phrase meant. The root did not look like any kind of "dart." But he stared at it, and all at once he saw it as colors and shapes. It became more than a stick. He became able to see things as shapes and colors.
But Tony is not thinking about art now. He is scared. Words start in his gut and push up his throat. He starts singing, "It's just another day in Paradise." He wills his father to have made it to the top, down the far side and around to camp. He hopes George is building a fire now, chuckling. He's like some of Tony's friends. People who disappear. Tony has been chasing after people like that for years. And he feels nasty. Why had his father stopped talking when Tony was a kid? He does not know. And he doesn't know how to find out. "It's just another day," he sings. He has to keep moving. He is the rescuer, and he's crying. He wipes tears across his cheeks and they dry instantly in the wind.
Hard wind blows across the escarpment and still there are no footprints. Tony yells at the top of his lungs, "Yo, Dad! Where are you? Make a noise!" He continues up the slope, and when he can no longer see the spot where he last yelled from, Tony shouts again. "Hey, Dad! Tape yourself!" His father has the marking tape. Why is there no fifty foot streamer, fluorescent pink, streaming in the wind? He must be out of sight and out cold. Unconscious. Tony feels crazy. He booms his voice, prolongs the name, "Hey, Dad!" hits the "oo" sound in " Where are you?" and then trounces the last word, "Make a noise!"
The sun is sinking. Three forty five, three fifty, closing on four o'clock. And Tony is near the top. He stops, takes great gulps of water and pulls his down vest out of the pack. He's been sweating right through his clothes and wind turns the moisture icy. He's freezing. On with the vest and he starts again, pushing off a rock and his ankle begins to turn. Tony falls quickly. Deliberately. He goes down before the ligament can stretch and clunk! he hugs a boulder. With his chest. He is shaken but not bruised. And the ankle is not hurt. Back up, he starts for the summit again. This had better be worth it. Wherever you are, Dad, did you see that? I am your competent son. Reflexes, body awareness, the rescuer survives. He chants under his breath, "The rescuer survives!"
He is on top. Abruptly. The cacti shrink down to small sizes, in a few yards the boulders give way to soft red earth and the ground is flat. Flat for a half mile. Tony scans the horizon. No George. And no bootprints nearby. What now, look for him over the mesa's edge? To the left and right, among the tumbled boulders? Yes, a dangerous possibility. First, mark the spot where Tony came up. He finds a dried agave flower spike, six feet long, and leans it into a diminutive cardon. It's as obvious as a flag. But wind blows the stick right down. Tony crams it between the trunk of the cardon and its fat, upthrust arm, and now it stays. The father of the eight year old would approve.
Tony sets off to the north, rushing, watching for bootprints. The boulders are scary, huge, and he has to climb down until the lower slope is in view. Then yell. The rocks are steady and they do not tip. Good. The rescuer survives. But it is dicey, scrambling over the boulders, yelling, then back up the escarpment. Across another hundred feet and over the cliff again. Cannonball the words. Then back up and down again. Tony has no time. Wind in his face, bright sun at a slant and panic closing on his heart. Camp is an hour from the prospect. From here maybe an hour and a half. Down the mountain and cross country, through a torturous route of boulders and gullies and cacti. He has to leave in a few minutes, at five. With or without his father. Dark at six thirty and he can do the last fifteen minutes in twilight. Leave at five, that's the limit. And if there is no George by then, big trouble.
Tony hikes back to the agave marker. A hundred feet past it he starts on the southerly cliffs. The sun is two fingers' width above the horizon and he needs to get out alive. He is singing again, "It's just another day in Paradise" and he's disgusted. Some present for his father. Bring him back and he gets lost in the desert. But Tony keeps going. Wind pushes wet tears around his face. He clambers over the mesa's edge and booms out the words. "Yo Dad! Where are you? Make a noise!" And there is an answer. An answer!
From the camp? His father's down in the valley! Tony scrambles over the next hump in the escarpment, his heart racing. He perches on a boulder the size of a small truck. His eyes jump around. "Hey Dad!" More boulders, cacti and mesquite but no blue jacket and no pink tape. Nothing visible. "I hear you but I don't see you!"
A murmur floats up.
Louder. "Yo Dad! Where are you?" Louder yet. "Make a noise!" Tony turns his head sideways, fixing from an angle. Some other sounds drift up. Three distinct syllables, were they "Yo! Yo! Yo!"?
"Oh my god, my god," Tony whispers and he is swimming in a thin, warm breeze. "He's okay. Maybe he's okay. Maybe he thought I gave a sign and he went on." But Tony hadn't given a sign. He had held his arms rigidly down. He hadn't even twitched at that two thirty contact, when he scanned the mesa with his eyes from far away. Tony feels tricked. He twists his face into a mean scowl. What a wretch. Then relief floods back. Everything is changed, it's all right! George is okay. George is safe. Maybe.
He starts down, straight for the main wash hazy in the distance. The shallow ravine turns through low ridges that angle past the camp. But a rock twists underfoot and he goes down again. Sideways. It happens too quickly for him to avoid being hurt. He grabs a prickly bush. "God damn fucker!" He feels pain stab at his ankle. He would damn well smash a rock into his father's skull. Blood and gray matter would pulse out.
But Tony is all right. In a few moments the funny bone jangling in his foot subsides. He flexes it and the ankle seems okay. He negotiates the next boulders slowly, carefully. The rescuer survives. But if he doesn't pay attention, especially now, he may not make it back to camp. A broken leg here and he would have to drag himself out with his elbows. George would have no clue where to find him. You are right, Dad, wherever you are. Even when the emergency is over, you still have to think. Tony imagines the lecture on survival, his father to the little boy. Or is this a real memory? The leathery skin on his father's balding head and a demanding glint in his eye. Think! George would have said, think! And Tony has risen to the task. But his father may not comprehend how hard it's been. This rugged mesa and a missed signal.
Tony is worn out, and the light is fading. Down the wash, across a talus slope and then pick up the trail from camp. It looks easy, but the top slopes of the badlands are all he can see. When you get into that country it gets complicated. The steep, pretzel like ups and downs and sideways are hidden. Still, all Tony has to do is keep his balance. And keep breathing. A steady stride. No surprises.
Tony tries to guess what his father will say. He might think nothing has happened, at least nothing that was a problem. Or he will make Tony the problem. But Tony will say how difficult the afternoon has been. Close to disastrous. And if Tony sticks to his guns, his father may walk away without talking. And in the morning his father might apologize. For being cranky. But cranky is to that silence what an ant is to a molehill. Or to the mesa where Tony was scrambling his heart out. Or to this steep, screwy wash. He has to be careful. He keeps grabbing the mesquite for balance, and it is prickly. The main branches are nearly smooth, but the thin ends have thorns sticking out at angles. They snag his skin right through the gloves.
He and George are two people in the desert and they must take care of each other. But has George ever taken care of him, since he was nine? No. Not once. Then Tony does remember one time, much later. He had dropped out of school. He did not want to be a student. He hung around the house for a while. His father wasn't talking to him then, either. Not to his teenage son. But one afternoon he took him out for a ride. "Get in," and that was all he said. He had a sporty car, a Ford coupe, old but still fast, and he headed for the mountains and turned onto a side road. Dirt. It twisted and turned, going up steeply. His father took the corners fast, sliding and recovering. Controlled skids, or semi controlled. He would go with the changing angle of the slide, aiming the wheels at the next corner. Clouds of dust billowed behind them. The whole while his father had said nothing.
At the time Tony could make nothing of it, but now it looks sort of caring. His father was paying attention to him. Maybe he valued Tony's company after all. And Tony felt okay. He feels okay now, too. He is off the mesa, the wash has flattened out and he's making good time across the talus slope. He finds the trail to camp, no problem. An easy mile and the tent should be in sight.
But when Tony spots the camp's marker, thirty feet of pink tape draped on a cardon, he gets anxious. As if decades, not hours, have passed since losing sight of his father. And whatever George says may be a surprise. Any sort of prickly stuff could be scraping around his mind. That could be him by the trail, too, that gray area more solid than the feathery bushes. Tony strides up and it's George all right. Standing in the twilight, bare-headed, erect and feisty.
Oh man!" Tony takes off his hat and gloves, and slaps them on his thigh. A cloud of fine mesquite leaves, pollen, and dust rises in the dim light. "Am I glad you're here!" Tony has made his supreme effort and there'll be no desperate measures. No hauling an injured man out through the forest. "And you're all right, aren't you?"
The old man has a small fire burning in the clearing behind him. His faces scrunches up. He turns a long stick around and around in his hands. "I heard you calling and calling," he accuses, " way off somewhere." The stick is laced with diamond-shaped holes. A cardon rib, twisted and battered by the elements. "What did you think you were doing?" He bangs the stick into the ground.
Nice try, thinks Tony. Is that his plan, a good defense is a strong offense? Tony glowers down at his father's wrinkled pate and waves at the ragged skyline. "I was looking for you. All over those cliffs." His sleeve drags through the air like a tattered flag. The fabric is punched and ripped by thorns. He looks like a veteran of the desert war.
"No!" George bangs the cardon rib into the ground again. His eyes are popping and he looks away. "I went right where I said I was going."
Sure, says Tony, and how was he to know? But his father stands there banging the stick and glaring at the ground. Tony sighs. His old man is angry, and why? Tony tries slipping off the daypack, but it's stuck to his back with sweat and dirt. He sits down on a low boulder by the fire and pulls at the straps. He bends forward, tugging and twisting. If he pulls any harder his body will split down the middle. Goddamn pack. Finally one strap slides off, then the other. He groans.
His father is still banging the stick. Like a defiant kid, thinks Tony, for Christ's sake. The old man is as guilty as sin, and he's not even looking at Tony. This guy has been practicing for twenty years how not to talk. Better shove at him, thinks Tony. Even if he's a solid wall. Otherwise he is going to ask me what's for dinner. "I didn't see you signal."
His father flexes the cardon rib with his hands. "Didn't see me signal?"
"No," Tony fixes him with his eye. "I spent the last three hours scrambling over those cliffs. Looking for you." The stick breaks and his father throws it on the fire. Tony flinches. "I thought you had busted an ankle."
"That's ridiculous." His father angles another stick between a rock and the ground. He lifts his leg, jams the stick with his boot and it snaps.
"What was I supposed to think? I didn't see you."
"You must have seen me." George throws the two pieces on the fire. Bang. Sparks slither up into the air and go out. "I waved up there. Big sweeps of my jacket. "
"When?"
"Two thirty." He glares at Tony and then turns back to the fire. He speaks distinctly, "You could not have missed it. "
"Did you see me wave back?"
Whap. Another stick broken. "You went back to digging."
"You didn't see me wave back!"
"I didn't have to!" Another stick goes on the fire. Bang. More sparks slither up and go out.
"The deal was, if I didn't wave, I didn't see you." Why the hell doesn't the old man get it? "So I thought you had gotten hurt." Did Tony put himself at risk, up and down the mesa, just because his father thought he didn't need a return signal?
But George's voice rumbles, "That's not true." The words are barely distinct and he moves to the other side of the fire. Tony can no longer see him. Whap and more sparks.
"That's all you're going to say?" Pause. "It's not true? "
Silence.
"Talk to me, you asshole."
No answer.
Tony groans. If the old man doesn't want to talk, what more can Tony do? Murder him? He leans his arms on his knees. His legs feel like lead. He feels like lead all over. And he still has to eat. He will not sleep on an empty stomach. Not with this sour, aching feeling.
His father is a faint outline the other side of the fire. Tony asks the darkness, "I suppose you're hungry?" I suppose, he thinks, you'll answer that question.
No, the gravelly voice answers back, he ate sandwiches. The fire roars.
Tony lifts his hand to his head. He watches it come up slow motion. That's it, he thinks. No more talk. I get to zombie walk through the evening by myself, cook up some noodles and chicken oregano sauce. Push the spoon into my mouth. Chew and swallow. Again and again, and then clean the pot. Take off my boots and pull myself into the sleeping bag. Forget everything.
In the morning his father will reappear and say something conciliatory. He might ask if Tony found any good beryl crystals. Or maybe, "Too bad you made that long hike." At most. As if it would make up for his wild scramble up the mesa and all that yelling. As if it would change those years of silence. Or George might say nothing.
Tony pushes himself into his mummy bag, shivering. His belly is warm though, he'll be comfortable in a minute. And the stars are beginning to brighten overhead. Maybe there'll be some meteors tonight. There's the Dog Star, surrounded by filaments of almost black space, and the Archer is coming up over the mesa. Yeah, yeah, his father taught him about the stars, too. Tony's young mind had marvelled how they seem to work together, vast, complicated, responsive.
And distant, Tony thinks, fucking distant. Next time, he thinks, if there is a next time, I won't even try to talk. So forget about why he won't deal with me. I'll drop a boulder on the old man.
