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Last Lines…

Raymond Charles Douglas, her lips said silently.
He hurried. (Simmons – Man Walking on Eggshells)

Montag’s novel is here.
I am grateful that he wrote it for me. (Bradbury – Fahrenheit 451)

As the gears of mainstream politics and economic crisis clash and grind above their heads, I would expect this realization to be the guiding factor in where mass movements turn next. (Mason – Why It’s Still Kicking Off Everywhere)

To sum up, over the centuries countless feet have trudged up the ramp which is the Donkey Walk leading from the dockside to the top of Redcliffe Parade: soldiers, sailors, sea captains, merchants, captives and tourists have all passed this way. (Lea-Jones – Bristol Curiosities)

as my sight
disappears
they vanish
as (Gladman – Newcomer Can’t Swim)

Can we get something to eat first? (Byrne & Gurr – Bristol Story)

For such a city it is worthwhile to invent a new expertise, an attentive, lively, profound discipline, with on-the-spot investigators, connnoisseurs of life-styles and living styles, stable visionaries, scientists of human nature who do not, like every stupid little provincial artist, allow themselves to feel superior to it, all of them wanting to learn the dance so they can defend it between the new banks of happiness. (La Cecla – Against Architecture)

Baseball is all I know. (Miller – The 5th Inning)

Footsteps on the air. (Le Guin – The Telling)

So we will leave Betty and Basil to their reminiscences as they swing across the Heath in the sunshine. (Hay – Murder Underground)

Wasn’t it odd?(Forrester – The Female Detective)

Tonight, I could still see Forever, but Forever was nothing to see. (Lansdale – Mucho Mojo)

Nothing ends, not even a trilogy; instead of ending, it opens wide, as wide as man is able. (Capek – Three Novels)

But, with the return of Robinson in Keiller’s work, we are recalled finally to Defoe himself in whom the figure of novelist, pamphleteer and radical combined to provide a lasting template for a future psychogeography in which literary endeavor and political activism are once again inseparable. (Coverley – Psychogeography)

He passed on unsuspected and deadly, like a pest in the street full of men. (Conrad – Secret Agent)

But it wasn’t blood — only strawberry juice. (Strugatskys – Hard to Be a God)

And now, in the shadowed half of the world, to sleep. (Woolf – Selected Essays)

My life will be the happier, turn out what it may, for these friendships, these pot-house nights, these evenings in the firelight of a studio, and these walks, two or three of us together talking from our hearts, along the Embankment in the Chelsea evening, with the lamps sparkling above us in the leaves of the trees, the river moving with the sweet noise of waters, the wings of youth on our feet, and all the world before us. (Ransome – Bohemia in London)

Yes, of course, except for writing, the only consolation. (Pamuk – The Black Book)

The waters have been taken away, the tide has gone out, but it will come back some day. I suspect if it does it will come with a roar. (Shannon – The Taking of the Waters)

The day and the night began again their round. (Soupault – Last Nights of Paris)

Force to its farthest limit the idea of the destruction of persons, and go beyond that limit.(Aragon – Paris Peasant)

‘Yes, I’d like to do that, but you’re always out, aren’t yer?’(Bucheta – In the Ditch)

The unexamined life is not worth living, but the unlived life doesn’t bear thinking about.(Wark – The Beach Beneath the Street)

and the great black hole where a moon ago I wanted to drown it is there I will now fish the malevolent tongue of the night in its motionless veerition! (Cesaire – Notebook of Return to the Native Land)

“In the end they’ll…,” he thought. (Dib – The Savage Night)

She turned and went on her way. (Holland – Floating Worlds)

He glanced round quickly and then ran after the column with smarting eyes. (Gurnah – Paradise)

Or would I try to convince her, tell her that together we could defend ourselves better from the evil of the world, or that the world was too risky a place to be wandering on our own, without anyone waiting for us at home, who worries about us when we don’t show up and who can go out to look for us?(Vasquez – The Sound of Things Falling)

It was a summer night: laughter fell softly: it was the sort of night that if you wasn’t making love to a woman you feel you was the only person in the world like that. (Selvon – Lonely Londoners)

Before he opens the door, he looks back at the wide front porch of the yellow house one last time, and the girl is putting out the candles inside the jack-o’-lanterns, one by one. (Kiernan – Low Red Moon)

He knew what those jubilant crowds did not know but but could have learned from books: that the plague bacillus never dies or disappears for good; that it can lie dormant for years and years in furniture and linen-chests; that it bides its times in bedrooms, cellars, trunks, and bookshelves; and that perhaps the day would come when, for the bane and the enlightening of men, it roused up its rats again and sent them forth to die in a happy city.(Camus – The Plague)

The hands aren’t moving, but he can wait.(Link – Magic for Beginners)

And, where the Hulk walks–he walks–alone! (Essential Hulk Vol. 1)

HEAT WAVE BREAKS! HAPPY DAY!(McBain – Cop Hater)

Stella.(Bruen – Taming the Alien)

Of how the Tower with its head amongst the lightnings became the wonder-sight of that mysterious world,– and strange indeed it seems to us that the most fairylike things in that land of Fairies should be a monument built by a Man. (Timlin – The Ship That Sailed to Mars)

In the brilliance of this desert, in the safe harbour of writing in quest of a language beyond languages, by trying fiercely to obliterate all the furies of the collective self-devouring in oneself, finding “the word within” again that, alone, remains our fertile homeland. (Djebar – Algerian White)

Hope is the beginning. (Ghosh – The Circle of Reason)

I felt her other hand against me, searching for my hand; then I felt her squeezing my fingers. (Gaines – A Gathering of Old Men)

You are no longer certain which side of the fence is the dream. (Morganstern – The Night Circus)

‘This is England,’ she said. ‘You can do whatever you like.’ (Ali – Brick Lane)

‘It’s all right now.’ (Hawken – The Dead Women of Juarez)

A thousand years hence, if men still exist, and are able to tell the truth, they will pay a similar tribute to the finest hours of the British Empire. (Peel – Along the Roman Roads of Britain)

The body was never found. (Allingham – The Tiger in the Smoke)

Control jumped. (Authority – Jeff Vendermeer)

Come in, Adam, and rest; it has been a hard day for thee. (Adam Bede – Elliot)

“The young man with spectacles,” said Mr. Dyson. (The Three Imposters – Machen)

Kandid got up, drew the scalpel from his blouse, and strode off to the outskirts of the village. (The Snail on the Slope – Strugatskys)

“I have a story for you.” (Yiddish Policemen’s Union – Chabon)

“O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him for ever.” (Father Potter of Peckham – Father Potter)

And Manhattan, before fading from our Universe, replies: “In the end? Nothing ends, Adrian. Nothing ever ends.” Oscar Wao, Diaz

To know Being, this is the final grace accorded from the mountain. The Livng Mountain, Nan Shepard

Thus did saints expelled from Britain a century before arrive in a place whence three centuries later trees of the wildwood would be felled to make kit houses for export to Longbridge. Time’s Anvil, Morris

There was a similar device on the River Calder near Wakefield. History of the Countryside, Oliver Rackham

The war was far from over Dragonfly Falling, Tchaikovsky

Away from here where nothing bad
ocurred, to where it really did Collected Poems, Patricia Beer

And everyone, including Fred, shouted…’HOORAY’! The Twits, Dahl

Disabled people’s lives depend on it. Crippled, Frances Ryan.

Raven felt in her hands the awesome weight and responsibility of all that was not yet something, and she spoke into the abyss, shouting with unfettered triumph: in the beginning…In the beginning! Raven, Som Paris

Rethinking democracy as a system to support people as they try to live more humane and caring lives s the next step n our ongoing democratic revolution. Let’s begin. Now. Who Cares? Joan Tronto

“We’ll take in a quick bite at the Restaurant at the End of the Universe.” Hitchhkers Guide to the Galaxy, Douglas Adams

There are no shortcuts. No Shortcuts, Jane McAlevey

Or that Travis remained Co. to the end of the chapter–the children’s Co. never taking a wife unto himself? The Manchester Man, Isabella Banks

As the feminist movement aims at revolution in social reality, the feminist theoretical point of view must also aim at a revolution in knowledge. Each is indispensable to the other. Close to Home, Delphy

We only have to listen for it to reveal itself. Feminism, Interrupted Olufemi

Let it be yours. Cage of Souls, Tchaikovsky

Chief Inspector Chen was ready to go back to Shanghai. A Case of Two Cities, Qiu Xiaolong

I have only described what I have found. Always a Little Further, Borthwick

And they all drew in about their chairs and ate. The Quarry Wood, Nan Shepard

“Nay then, love!” expostulated the Major. “Don’t be so daft!” The Unknown Ajax, Heyer

“You already work for me, Chen Su Lin. And I have the papers to prove it.” The Frangipani Tree Mystery, Ovidia Yu

En attendant, however, he has completed his notes, which, we believe, will be at the service of any one who chooses to make them public without risk or expense to THE ANTIQUARY. The Antiquary, Scott

“I’m damned,” Yu said, shaking his head like a rattle drum. Red Mandarin Dress, Qiu Xiaolong

But more positively, we can all be part of the great unlocking of sustainable urban futures. Unlocking Sustainable Cities, Chatterton

It was like boarding a spaceship from the past. Polar star, Cruz Smith

“Leave Mao in Peace,” the retired cop said shivering, as if having swallowed a fly, “in heaven or in hell.” The Mao Case, Qiu Xiaolong

The rocks remember all. Let them speak. The Underlands, Nield

“I’ll meet you there.” Don’t Cry, Tai Lake, Qiu Xiaolong

For all the superficial unity implied by the certainty of Sin City’s visual style and by yet another book about the genre, film noir, like the subjects it depicts, is discontinuous and disunified strapped into and bound by a plot no one could predict, condemned to ride the streetcar until the last stop. Film Noir, Mark Bould

If you have come to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together. (Lilla Watson quoted in Eco-Sufficiecy and Global Justice, ed Salleh)

Ye are many–they are few. People Get Ready, Berry & Jones

In return for the privilege of breath. Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer

We know better now. The work we began, the cause we sponsored, the faith we held will all remain to be carried on, we hope, but abler hands than ours. The Hard Way Up, Hannah Mitchell  

So practice emergent strategy, yes, but only as much as you understand that it is a way to practice love. For this, for all of this. Emergent Strategy, Adrienne Maree Brown

“Yes, the world is too small–we will meet–we must meet–and then-” The Extraordinary Adventures of Arséne Lupin, Maurice Leblanc

Everyone looked up into the sky, and over the broad, vast land, silence reigned. Vagabonds, Hao Jingfang

Her beautiful arms were exposed, and the black lizard tattoo that was the source of her nickname seemed to writhe ever so slightly like a living creature desolate at the death of its mistress. The Black Lizard, Rampo

Half a year has passed since Shizuko’s tragic death, but Hirata Ichirō has still not appeared and my awful doubts about what now cannot be changed deepen every day.  Beast in the Shadows, Edogawa Rampo

Janet looked at Cat and laughed. And Cat, though he was still a little lonely and tearful, managed to laugh too. Charmed Life, Diana Wynne Jones

`And some one of us has it now, though exactly I don’t know. The Irish for No, Ciarán Carson

At last, reparations will move America from here to equality. (From Here to Equality, Darity and Mullen

Even when in doubt, we pledge to remain faithful to our political principles and steadfast in our commitment to revolutionary struggle and optimism. We are the Red Nation.  The Red Deal

Writing

hammett And the Fat Man

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I was back in Arizona taking care of my mom for a while, still Covid times, still so hot, so not much hiking. A lot of reading. For some reason I’m only now encountering classic Japanese crime novels and loving them. Possibly loving more the space of dialogue they create between them and the Western canon–particularly the locked-room mysteries of Christie, Carr, Doyle, LeBlanc, Poe, Chesterton etc–as they transcend it and do their own unique, rather more grisley thing. I mean some authors have even written footnotes to explain the references they are making. All the murderers (and detectives) are avid readers of detective fiction. You can tell who has done the evil deed by their book shelves (though sometimes secret book shelves, for obvious reasons). It’s awesome.

But in this mix I threw a Hammet and that turned out to be a spanner because then I read all of his novels again, despite the palpable lack of locked rooms. I still love them all apart from The Dain Curse, and not just because the procession of people of colour of various nationalities who feature as the not-so-bright and interfering hired help. Maybe mostly because of that, but I don’t like the structure either. Somehow it’s this novel reminds me of how much I hate the Pinkertons and his awful treatment of women, but those sit in tension always with all of his work.

Anyway, I don’t know that The Maltese Falcon is my favourite, but I love the baroque language of it. The description of Sam Spade is pretty good:

SAMUEL SPADE’S jaw was long and bony, his chin a jutting v under the more flexible v of his mouth. His nostrils curved back to make another, smaller, v. His yellow-grey eyes were horizontal. The v motif was picked up again by thickish brows rising outward from twin creases above a hooked nose, and his pale brown hair grew down from high flat temples in a point on his forehead. He looked rather pleasantly like a blond satan.

But really it is Gutman who is both impossible and sublime.

The fat man was flabbily fat with bulbous pink cheeks and lips and chins and neck, with a great soft egg of a belly that was all his torso, and pendant cones for arms and legs. As he advanced to meet Spade all his bulbs rose and shook and fell separately with each step, in the manner of clustered soap bubbles not yet released from the pipe through which they had been blown. His eyes, made small by fat puffs around them, were dark and sleek. Dark ringlets thinly covered his broad scalp. He wore a black cutaway coat, black vest, black satin Ascot tie holding a pinkish pearl, striped grey worsted trousers, and patent-leather shoes.

His voice was a throaty purr. “Ah, Mr. Spade,” he said with enthusiasm and held out a hand like a fat pink star.

Then I watched what Roy del Ruth (The Maltese Falcon 1931), and William Dieterle (Satan Met a Lady 1936) did to it feeling a bit sick to my stomach. But it made me realise a little better how noir was knitted together not just by authors like Hammet, but by John Huston who directed the classic version in 1941, and Humphrey Bogart who is not a man of v’s, yet finally played Sam Spade to perfection. And Peter Lorre of course. And Elisha Cook Jr. And Sydney Greenstreet. And everyone else is pretty good too.

I loved each of the films’ Gutmans to be honest, even when transformed to Madame Barabbas played by the brilliant Alison Skipworth. Sadly, I have yet to see the human match of Hammet’s passage, possibly my favourite character description in all of fiction. Bulbs rise and shake everytime he arrives on a page, and it is magical. I do love a man with bulbs that rise and shake.

City Unseen, Ecologies, Writing cities

Jim Thompson on Verdon Nebraska and farming for the future

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Jim Thompson wrote deep, dark, violent, murderous noir, and then sometimes he wrote something very close to a love song to small towns, to farmers, to states like Nebraska that never get much love from anyone at all. At least not in print. Heed the Thunder is a number of things, but this is what I loved about it (not so much like King Blood, which brings these two together in a meditation on frontier and race violence).

This is a glimpse down a street I shall never see, homes I can’t walk into and a mix of architecture and old nostalgias in a place I have never been and a community I can only stretch to understand. A critique of capitalism and its creation of debt and its destruction of the soil. Unexpected, at least to me. A lovely reminder too, of the European traditions of thinking forward to future generations.

The road down which he drove was lined with houses which bore somewhat the same resemblance to each other as children with the same mother but different sires. There were New England houses, rich with gables and shutters; middle-Eastern houses with shingled turrets; porticoed southern houses. There were even one or two houses which showed chinked-in logs in their facades, which were, purely, except for their ambiguous additions, Western.

They were all different, and all alike. Whatever the home state or homeland that had inspired them, necessity and conservatism had forced them into a definite if elastic pattern. Roofs were strong, anchored and angled to defeat the wind. Paint had been applied generously and generously maintained; and colors ran mostly to blue and yellow and brown. Porches were either closed in or adaptable to closing. Foundations were thick and deep, and frequently extended a fractions of an inch outward from the house proper. Like a burial mound, at the rear of each residence was the grassy, cemented, or bricked hump of a cyclone hole. Nothing was flamboyant. To build markedly better than your neighbor was bad taste; it would create talk, arouse envy, and mark you with the mortal sin of extravagance. To build shoddily was as bad. In these close-knit communities, little of the inside and none of the outside of a man’s home was his castle. Erring in judgment, one might remodel or rebuild, but to do so was to repent before a public that would never forget.

To the outsider, the street might appear unchanging, but not to Sherman Fargo. The Methodist preacher’s wife had picked the grapes from her arbor. The gate at the Widow Talley’s place was hanging on one hinge. (Some of these dudes had probably probably worn it out.) Doc Jones was digging– (36)

Beyond his extensive descriptions of architecture and its relation to a small town community? A remarkable grasp of farming, of philosophy, of debt and capitalism, of the destruction of the land that would bring us to where we sit today amidst climate crisis. All of it written into a short dialogue between a German farmer and a salesman.

But I am not like the others, in this way: I do not make a practice of farming from one year to the next… Now, you say next year will be good for wheat. Maybe you are right—”

“It’s my sincere opinion, Mr. Deutsch, that this will be the biggest—”

“So. And maybe you are right. Maybe next year will be bigger, too, and the next, and so on for ten years. I plant wheat for ten years and every year I make big money and what do I have at the end of it? Nothing.”

“Nothing? How do you figure—”

“I would have no farm. The soil would not stand it. Now, you say you are not implying that I should plant wheat fo; ten years, but there is the principle, you see. The temptation to grab the immediate profit. And I cannot farm that way because I know it is wrong. I have a crop-rotation plan, and that is what I go by. That plan extends one hundred and sixty years into the future.”

The salesman so far forgot his tact that he guffawed. Or, perhaps, be believed that the farmer was joking with him.

“A hundred and sixty years!” he laughed. “Why, you won’t even be here then.”

The farmer nodded, slowly, staring at him. “That is right, Mr. Simpson. I will not be here.”

Simpson reddened. “Excuse me. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. It was just kind of—uh—so funny—”

“Yes, I suppose it is to show any thought for the people of one hundred and sixty years from now—our great grand-children and their children, shall we say.”

“Well, uh—”

“But look at it this way, Mr. Simpson. Suppose I merely plan to exhaust my land during my own and my children lifetime. It will be getting worse and worse all the time we are living from it, will it not? It will not go bad all at once. When we have lived half our lives, we shall only be able to take half as much from it as we could at the beginning.

“I guess you’re right about that.”

“Do you ever read any of the bulletins of the Department of Agriculture, Mr. Simpson?”

“well, sure,” lied the salesman, “I’ve read some of ’em.”

“There is one on dry-land farming in the United States—you should get hold of it. According to this bulletin, the farmer in this country can expect to receive a return on his vestment of about 3 per cent a year. That is from crops, livestock, everything. . .”

Simpson laughed again. He saw no possibility of making a e, and he was getting tired.

“Three per cent!” he scoffed. “Why, Mr. Deutsch, I can ow you farmers right in my territory that cleaned up—.”

“But this is for every year,” the German interrupted, ently. “The average for the bad and the good years. And I think it is a little bit high. It does not sound like a great deal, ut over a period of forty years it amounts to about sixty thousand dollars on an investment such as mine. And in one hundred and sixty years it amounts to almost one quarter of a million dollars—and this land will still be earning its 3 per cent one hundred and sixty years from now. . . But I am getting away from my point. If my land, at its flush, earns only 3 per cent, what will its earnings be over a period of forty years if its life is only that? About 1 per cent, eh—less than enough to exist on. And what will be the position of my children and theirs in this valley?” Simpson put the lines back around his neck and laid his hands to the plow handles. “I’ve certainly enjoyed this talk,” he declared. “I think it’s about time I was getting back to town, though.” Deutsch smiled, then laughed openly. (136-137)

He called and they came into the mirror of the window, seemingly fighting for remembrance even as he fought to remember them. They came brashly and shy, swaggering and halting and prissing, laughing, smiling, frowning, grimacing. Good, bad, and indifferent: the real people, the people of the land. And then they were gone, the last of them; and as he burned them forever into his memory, he pressed his face against the window and fought to hold the land:

The land. The good land, the bad land, the fair-to-middling land, the beautiful land, the ugly land, the homely land, the kind and hateful land; the land with its tall towers, its great barns, its roomy houses, its spring-pole wells, its shabby sheds, its dugouts; the land with its little villages and towns, its cities and great cities, its blacksmith shops and factories, its one-room schools and colleges; the honky land, the Rooshan land, the German land, the Dutch and Swede land, the Protestant and Catholic and Jewish land: the American land—the land that was slipping so surely, so swiftly, into the black abyss of the night. (297)

Thompson, Jim ([1946] 1991) Heed the Thunder. New York: Black Lizard.

Everyday

Lazy afternoon, Xlendi

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There is even now a mad crashing of cicadas. Their buzzing comes in waves from all sides, they are angrier here than at home, louder. As you approach they cannot leap to stillness but must wind down slowly, a whirr and a whirr and a whirr and a whirr. Then there is silence. They jump into a full blast of sound again, louder than before, but behind you this time as you pass. They bring me happiness, like the quick slender lizards that move so quickly to efface themselves in improbable cracks.

I love being surrounded by this sound of summer, sitting in front of the whirring of a fan and its odd mechanical rumble as it turns from one side to the other. But it is also odd, such familiar sounds yet so far from home. The glimmer of turquoise water just outside the window. Every now and then an echo of those everywhere-the-same sounds of families at the sea-side. The expected breezes off the sea non-existent. The skin on my neck itching and unhappy, the lazy slothfulness, the delicious mad consumption of books. The stirrings of a story or two, but no desire to write more than this. A scatter of maps on the low table along with a prized ticket to the Ħal Saflieni hypogeum for tomorrow, procured from the Citadel early this morning — I had all but given up hope of seeing it, with no pre-ordered tickets available. A freezer stuffed with frozen ravioli from the market in Victoria. Mark working at the kitchen table, but I cannot follow his example and work on my article. I just cannot. Fiction or nothing. The mention of a shame-faced crab in the Gozo natural history museum yesterday a new character for Whispering Truth, but no, I am in the mood to lazily think. To blog, the most effortless of writing. The older I get, too, the more afraid I am of forgetting.

The sun streaming through the kitchen window is about to hit me, forcing movement into a cool shower. My legs are finally the colour they have been most of my life, before I moved to England. They are fully mine, but still forced into retreat.

Walking, Writing

Elizabeth Gaskell’s House, Plymouth Grove

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Longsight is a vibrant neighbourhood whose vibrance, as far as I can tell from my short sojourn here, is almost entirely contained within the walls of the local churches and mosques and community centres. I often see people spilling out into the sidewalk, children laughing, families strolling happily to or from an event. It is both lovely and quite lonely, for these are not open gatherings. There are few places to eat that are not fried chicken or take-out. There is nowhere to buy a great big cup of coffee the way I like it. There are few markets. There are many students, and furniture and bags of their rubbish now that they are gone.

It is hard to tell quite where Longsight ends and Victoria Park begins and the address says this is actually Rusholme – there’s a great blog on some of these changing boundaries here.  All I know is that on my walking route to the city I often walked past Elizabeth Gaskell’s old house on Plymouth Grove, and it feels like it’s still Longsight so the contrast is quite something. We finally managed a visit. It was built in about 1838 as one of Manchester’s early suburban developments, planned by architect Richard Lane.

The Gaskell’s moved into the house in 1850, and the booklet notes they had chicken and ducks, a much larger garden, a cow in a neighbouring field. Hard to imagine. Harder to imagine paying £150 a year, but I know that was a lot of money then. So many people have been in this house. In 1851, Charlotte Brontë described it as

A Large, cheerful, airy house, quite out of the Manchester smoke.

There is a floorplan! I love those, I keep thinking I will write my murder mystery one day.

There is a lovely picture of the drawing room as it once was — this room sat empty for a long time as they couldn’t afford to furnish it. I quite loved knowing that too. Ah, the days of living within one’s means. And five servants.

Along with Charlotte Brontë, Charles Dickens was a regular visitor, Jane Eyre? The Pickwick Papers? Marvelous. John Ruskin was here too, and Harriet Beecher Stowe (but she leaves me fairly unimpressed as I mostly raged through Uncle Tom’s Cabin).

This is where Elizabeth Gaskell wrote Cranford (1851–53), North and South (1854–55) and the biography of her friend, The Life of Charlotte Brontë (1857). I had never heard of that one, how?  She’d nearly finished Wives and Daughters when she died in 1865. Her family remained in the house until 1913, when her daughter Meta (Meta!) died. The campaign to preserve it was unsuccessful, the furniture sold off. But so much work has gone into restoring it as close to its original condition as possible, it’s lovely.

There are visiting cards on a salver in the entry hall (visiting cards! Cartes de visites!), people in the 1860s actually swapped portraits of themselves on small cards. These tidbits are partly why I love visiting places.

That of Elizabeth Gaskell herself.

I love these, I am suddenly possessed of a desire to collect.

The morning room is ‘designed to catch the morning light’. I like it when things do what they are supposed to, I rather want one that is not where I sleep, as at present. A study, where William Gaskell could work on his sermons (they are working on building a list of books the Gaskells owned to repopulate it).

I didn’t take many pictures, but this is the dining room, set up as if Elizabeth Gaskell were writing here. I quite loved that.

Elizabeth Gaskell's House

Elizabeth Gaskell's HouseThere is a brilliant and unexpected collection of Dürer prints Meta had collected that hang in the stairwell. Gaskell was also a keen gardener, and while the back garden has lost its former glory, I particularly love the way they do the front of the house, it is a joy to walk by. Upstairs a small look at how Manchester was then, and how much it has changed. This is the third place the Gaskell’s lived in this area, the other two are long gone. I am glad this is still here, and well worth a visit.

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Struggle & Movement, Writing

Frank’s Bar Always Did Need a Woman’s Touch

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Joe Arpaio’s been in the news so much, finally getting a little bit of what is coming to him I thought I’d share this and got permission. I wrote it for Southwest Noir, edited and with art by Vince Larue, which you should totally buy. When Steven Seagal is in the news I’ll share it again. Not that this is about them. It’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve ever written to be honest, though I still don’t like the ending. I should probably let everyone write their own.

Clock said over an hour ‘til dawn. She could feel the light coming, knew that warmth followed. She could feel things waking in the stillness. Sad to break it with footsteps crunching across the gravel, keys jingling in her hand, the roaring of the truck. Excitement walked with her, streaked through her sleepiness. Sat tingling between her ribs. She always forgot just how fine, how very fine the earth felt this early.

The coffee smelled so damn good.

Lena didn’t care for mornings most days, but damn she loved these early starts. Heading out far out into the desert. These mornings that came with extra adrenaline, heightened awareness because water runs weren’t no simple hikes. Never knew what you were going to find, who you were going to see. Made you nervous all this bat-shit crazy militarization of the border. Made you feel righteous too, doing something about it. She smiled at Rosita beside her. Pulled out of the drive. They headed south and west through nearly empty streets towards the border.

She hugged the highway’s curves. Saguaros took form and the world brightened and glowed all along its edge. The sky looked like the inside of their abalone shell, some wisps of cloud like sage smoke. Dolly Parton sang let it shine. They turned off on the dirt track and Lena wrestled with the gears. Rosa opened one gate, and then another. Both now sat closed behind them. Nervousness sang in the air and in their shoulders, but they saw no one. First drop off point, and they loaded up their backpacks with jugs of water. It pulled heavy against their shoulders.

“Lista?” she asked.

Rosa nodded, grumbling. “I wish water weren’t so damn heavy. I wish they’d get the tanks up here already.”

“Shit,” Lena said. “Me too. Bill keeps saying soon.”

“Couldn’t be soon enough.”

They walked, came to the place they had been shown months ago and had been returning to regularly since. Dropped off their water for those who were thirsty, sick, lost, dying here in the desert driven by desperation to leave homes and families and everything familiar, driven by walls and drones and agents to avoid safer trails, traditional wells. Driven to carry their dreams in life and death struggle among desert stones.

Lena wondered if this water might have saved Rosa’s brother. She always did as they stood there hand in hand. Her grandmother’s peoples had been massacred for these lands. Her father’s people drowned in sea water or suffocated in containers trying to get to them. Rosa’s dehydrated and mummified in deserts. Now they stood and thought about Hector, the heat already beginning to rise, the cicadas about to begin their chorus. Every time they did this, Lena wished she could believe in God. She knew it would make it easier, most of the people who left water like this did. Her and Rosa though, they just couldn’t manage belief no more. It was like a hole inside them. They turned and walked back to the truck, more drops to make.

But someone waited for them.

Crouched down the other side of their truck. Stepping out as the two women approached, and Lena could see that one of the two had a rifle in his hands. White men. Not border patrol. Standing there between them and the truck. Bandanas over the lower half of their faces because they’d probably seen one too many Westerns.
“Shit,” she said under her breath. Rosita’s hand squeezed hers tight. But they approached with heads held proud, as though masked vigilantes were as smart as dogs in leaving the fearless alone.

“You fellows think we’re the stagecoach carrying payroll to Yuma?” Lena asked them. She stared at the big one, knew she knew him. Didn’t know from where. Those little piggy eyes; that long mullet tied back in a ponytail. Damn. She knew him.

“A fucking comedian,” the man said, rolling his eyes. “Now what’s a fucking pair of comedians doing way out here?”

Lena bit back another wisecrack. “Hiking,” she said. “It’s a beautiful place.”

The silence dragged out a moment or two. The men looked them up and down.

“You wouldn’t have been dropping off water for no illegals now, would you?” the other asked. A gravelly voice, unpleasant, old. Wrinkled around the mean blue eyes. Retired law enforcement she guessed.

“Because why would a nice pair of ladies be doing something like that?” Pig-eye asked. “Why would they betray their country like that? Except maybe it’s not their country. No, maybe it’s not. Maybe they got some kind of allegiances to a foreign power. What do you think, Abe?”

“They might, George, they just might. Though I hate to call any woman a bare-faced liar.”

“I know Abe, but look at ‘em. And this water in the back of the truck here is definitely for some illegals. I bet we’ll find a pile more of it just over this ridge.”

“I wouldn’t take that bet.”

“You never been much of a gambler, Abe.”

Law Enforcement smiled, they could tell from the light in his eyes.
“Only ever bet on a sure thing, George. But I hate to think of what will happen to them if we’re right.”

“I know,” said Pig-eye. He pulled a large knife from some kind of buckskin sheath complete with fringe and beads, tried to nonchalantly pick at his nails. Fucker was playing both cowboy and Indian.

“Are there some hidden cameras round here, or what?” Lena snorted. “If you’re done teaching us a lesson, we’re just going to head on home now.”

Rosa squeezed her hand so hard it hurt as they took a step forward.

“Don’t you bitches move,” said Law Enforcement. His voice cut the morning like barbed wire.

They stopped.

Pig-eye had become even squintier, face like tomato above the bandana.

“Funny, you talking shit like you’re the ones armed.” He pulled a bottle of water out of the back of their truck, ripped his knife up on through it like he was gutting a fish. It looked a hard way to eviscerate a harmless bottle of water. Still, that was a sharp knife.
He pulled out another bottle. Having learned something maybe, he stabbed this one near the top. Water spurted out and he pointed it at them. The thin stream hit Lena before dying away, spent. She worked hard not to flinch. The asshole had aimed at her breasts, and now he smiled.

“Not bad for an old lady,” he said.

Her free hand clenched into a fist. The light in his eyes slimed over and fell as he leaned into their truck, methodically stabbed each bottle of water one by one. Watched their faces. Water sprayed over the edges and dripped from the bed along the tailgate, released the scent of desert rain. Lena’s heart beat uncertain between uplift and rank fear.

Pig-eye straightened

“If you’re done there, George, we got some more wetback supplies to spoil,” said Law Enforcement.

“I’m done here,” said Pig-eye. “But what are we going to do with these two?”

Law Enforcement spat. “Don’t rightly know,” he said. “Maybe they’re illegals too. Can’t take no chances now, can we? We’ll just tie ’em up and leave ’em here while we think on it. Maybe send back the patrol.”
Lena saw now that plastic handcuffs dangled from his belt.

Pig-eye took a deep breath. Leered as his hands moved down past his gut to hook into his belt. He rocked back, looked from handcuffs to women to handcuffs. His aim seemed to be suggestion; Lena’s lip curled as his eyes glinted dark at her over his puffed cheeks. Something about him said money smug, not like the other one who just looked mean and old and boiled down into leather with skin as dark as hers but burned that way by the sun. Unnatural colour. She figured he’d be meeting the cancer soon, if he hadn’t already.

“Move it. Over there.” Law Enforcement snapped. The two women walked to stand beside the truck. Rosa’s hand trembled in hers now.

“Take off your shoes and socks and throw ’em over there.” The women stared at him, and his hands tightened on the rifle. They bent down and did as he said.

“Pat ’em down, George.”

Pig-eye grinned wider, moved over to paw them. Lena drew a breath and tried to hold it until he was done, shoulders squared and head proud and rage boiling in her heart. She had to take a few breaths. He groped and pawed and she bottled down the boiling. Play it smart, girl, play it smart. Her keys now jingled from his finger and he launched them out into the desert. They flashed towards the morning sun, fell out of sight with a jagged sound of metal on metal.

“You’re sure quiet,” Pig-eye said as he came to Rosa. “Bet you don’t speaka-de-English so good”. His hands fumbled at her breasts, and her knee came up square into his balls. Bent over double, he stumbled back to lean against the truck, a thin whine emerging from beneath the handkerchief. Lena smiled even as Law Enforcement cursed them for bitches. Stepped forward and brought the butt-end of the rifle to connect squarely with the side of Rosa’s head. She collapsed in place. Lena stood frozen a moment, smile stuck in rictus to her face. Half turned, fists raised, only to meet Law Enforcement’s rifle butt driven into her stomach, driving breath from her. She fell to her knees beside Rosa, stones cutting deep.

Rosa groaned as consciousness returned, came to hands and knees. Raised a hand to her head.

“On your feet,” rasped Law Enforcement.

Supporting each other, the women stood. Pig-eye had almost recovered, but he waddled not walked. He walked up to Rosa and slapped her hard, deliberate. First across one cheek and then the other. She half fell into Lena as Pig-eye finished his search, slipping her lighter into his pocket.

He cuffed them, then. Standing too close with his smell of sweat and expensive cologne. His fat fingers caressed even as he closed the cuffs meaning to hurt. He cuffed them one to the other, then forced them back to their knees and used the second pair to cuff Rosa’s other hand to the truck. The thick plastic dug into their wrists.

“I wouldn’t struggle too much, ladies,” grated Law Enforcement. “You don’t want those cuffs tightening any more or they could get dangerous.”

Lena stared at the horizon with the fury inside of her, pain radiating from her stomach as she struggled with every breath.

“Now think about what you owe this country, and the sanctity of its borders.” Law Enforcement’s voice had razor edges. “Because it don’t owe you or those wetbacks nothing, and good Americans like us just won’t tolerate your aidin’ and abettin’ those filthy criminals bringing their drugs and their diseases over here.”

Pig-eye traced the line of blood his ring had left across Rosa’s cheek before moving to stand over their shoes. “We won’t take these too far,” he said. The women watched silently as the two men walked away from them, up over the ridge. They clearly knew where the water was stored.

“Fuckers,” spat Lena. She rearranged herself more comfortably, came to a cross-legged position, her free hand holding her stomach. She could hear herself breathe.

Rosa settled down beside her, bloodied lips worked to fluently curse gavachos in a low tone. Both sides of her face was swelling and blood rolled down her right cheek. Blood collected at her hairline. She spat more blood onto the ground.

Lena’s heart broke looking at her, and she held Rosa’s hand tight tight.

“My head is ringing,” Rosa said.

“They hit you hard, those mother fuckers.”

Lena studied the cuffs. Law Enforcement had been right, struggle risked tightening them.

“Why’d they take our goddamn shoes?” Rosa suddenly whispered.

“Fuck if I know,” Lena whispered back. “Pa’ chingar mas.”

“You think those fools are really gone? Where’d they even come from? I didn’t hear no truck.”

“Me neither.” Lena frowned. “They’re smart, looking to catch people up here. It must be back down the road a ways, which means they’ll be back, or maybe they’re walking up to the next drop off. Maybe they’re just getting off watching us from behind some rocks, sadistic mother fuckers. We gotta get out of here.”

“There’s a release mechanism on these chingaderas,” said Rosa. “But we need a pin or something. We don’t got a pin, do we.”

“Nope. You got an extra lighter they didn’t find?”

“Nope. You?”

“Nope. We’re fucked.”

“Jodidas.”

“Fregadas.”

“Shit.”

“We shouldn’t have left the rifle in the truck, huh.”

“Nope.”

“Still, you don’t expect two crazy vigilante crackers to jump you in the middle of the desert, do you. Even out here.”

“Shit, we got careless. But you recognize that big dude?”

“I think so. If he’s who I think he is, I been wanting to punch that pendejo in the gut for years now. Getting him in the balls was pretty good too.”

“He’s gotten a lot fatter, no? I’m still not sure, you’d think he’d have better things to do.”

“My wrists hurt.”

“I know, mine too.” Lena sighed. Twisted to look up at the sky. “We’re going to be fucked when the sun reaches us.” Her eyes returned to study the plastic bracelets cutting into their skin.

“Won’t be long,” Rosa whispered. Lena laid her head on Rosa’s shoulder, still staring at their hands.

“I know this is all Hollywood and shit, but I bet my glasses would work a little like a magnifying glass.” Lena looked up. “They might melt that way, no? How much shit have we melted in the truck over the years leaving it in the sun?”

“Maybe.” Rosa said. She was crying now, trying hard not to but crying all the same.

Rosa smoothed back her hair with her free hand, tried to smile. “Don’t hurt to try.”

The sun hit them sudden and hard, harsh, unrelenting. Heat rose in waves from the ground, cooked them like an oven, sucked moisture out of skin and breath. Lena chose two little pebbles from the ground.

“Here, suck on this. It will help you feel less thirsty.”

“Oldest trick in the book.”

“Girl, who needs new ones?”

Lena held her glasses over the plastic ring fixing them to the bumper as steady as she could. Heat radiated from the metal, it hurt to be so close. To stay so close.

The sun hurt.

Lena could feel her skin burning.

“I hate the desert,” whispered Rosa. The blood had dried dark and scabby, and her skin was burning around it. “This is what my brother must have felt before he died.”

“I know, baby, I know. But ain’t the desert’s fault. Humans are what’s fucked us.”

“Shit, it’s the vultures will be fucking with us soon. They’re circling already.”

“But not over us.” Lena squinted into the sky. “Hopefully just some road kill. Bet those vigilante motherfuckers swerve to hit ground squirrels might’ve crossed the border by mistake.”

Rosa sighed. “Assholes.”

The sun hurt.

“It smells like death,” Rosa whispered into the silence, and Lena realized it did. Strong. The vultures circled.

“Tell me a story, Lena.”

“Oh man, a story?”

“Anything,” said Rosa. “Any nice happy story.”

“I don’t think I can tell a nice happy story right now.”

“Please?” asked Rosa. “I just got the shit beat out of me by two white dudes. I need a happy story.”

“Shit,” said Lena, eyes shifting. Stayed silent a little while, thinking. Her gaze suddenly landed on her feet, white and smooth and soft, tucked under the truck so they didn’t burn as much as the rest of her.

“All right, I got a happy story.” She took a deep breath, smiled when Rosa smiled back at her and shut her swollen eyes the way a little kid would.

“I’ll tell you about when I was little, well. Tell you about how the rains came once upon a time, the monsoons. Those were different days, magical days, you know? Those days when we were little in the desert. And the biggest storms always started with a tiny little black cloud, like a smudge of charcoal. That cloud had to be sitting over Cat Mountain, or the rain wouldn’t be for us. But when it was our turn that black cloud would sit there in the middle of a great blue sky, so small I could block it out with my little thumb. The sun would be shining like this, hotter and hotter. You feel the sun, Rosa?”

“Mm,” said Rosa. “It’s burning me, this pinche sun.”

“Well, imagine the other clouds, they would come along, from East and North, South and West the other clouds would come. Dark and black they’d come. We’d all be humming like the energy in the air, storm energy. Like the spirits coming up from the earth, coming down from heaven to make our whole sky dark, hide our hills in mist and then all of a sudden the rain came. We’d watch it move across the desert like a curtain. We’d watch it coming like a wall of water. And then it would come. Imagine it Rosita, dark and misty and the air full of rain.”

Rosa licked her cracked lips, her smile grew.

“This rain pounded on the roof until we couldn’t hear talking. It pounded against the sliding glass windows so we couldn’t see outside. Then the sound of it changed, cuz the hail had come, and the winds, so strong they knocked down powerlines. The lights would go out, all at once, and we got to light candles and sit around in the rain dark. The lightening would flash, and we’d count the seconds until the thunder sounded so we’d know where the center was. We counted that storm center moving towards us, moving and moving until the lightening and the thunder came together. Crack!”
Rosa jumped. Laughed and caught her breath with pain at the same time.

“Crack! So loud our ears would ring. We’d sit there in the dark like we’re doing right now, sit there warm and dry listening to that storm blowing outside. To the hail beating against the windows, little balls bouncing across the ground.

“Then we counted the seconds as the storm moved away, counted the seconds until the hail stopped and the rain came less and less, counted the minutes until we were allowed outside. Finally dad would say we could all go out. Then there’d be no time for shoes or coats. We’d run outside barefoot.”

“Shit,” said Rosa. “No shoes? Really? You?”

“Shut up, yes me. All of us. We’d burst out of the sliding glass door, dance out of the sliding glass door and run on bare feet to try and look out and see the wash beneath our house, see how high the water was. Always that wash flooded with that little cloud over Cat Mountain. We’d run down our little path without our shoes, so excited we didn’t care about those sharp desert rocks, walking right over all those spines and thorns the rain’d made all soft. We ran and ran, and the rain made the desert smell like life. Like the creosote was breathing. Breathe deep Rosa, deep. Can you smell it?”

Rosa smiled. “You know I can smell it. All our damn water leaked out under the damn truck.”

Lena squeezed her hand. “We’d run breathing this air in in gulps, and we only stopped when we got to this little grassy bank and we could watch the crashing water. It was taller than we were, that flood. It drowned the acacias that grew on the little island in the middle, it covered the rocks we always used as spaceships. It roared down the wash full of mud and crests of white water that swirled along the banks. It left thick dirty foam behind it. The sound of it filled the whole world. Imagine that much water, Rosita. Can you hear it roaring in your ears?”

Rosa nodded.

“We couldn’t play in it until the next day when there’d be just a trickle left, full of water bugs. There’d be little blue butterflies all along the ground where it was still damp. Like the butterflies here, these ones.”

Rosa opened her eyes again, really saw the butterflies. “They’re beautiful, Lena.”

“I know. We’d walk up the wash to the old dam; the water made pools up there big enough for swimming, us being little and all. Cattails grew there. The desert would fill up with red-spotted and spade-foot toads, climbing out of the earth when the rains came. Had their babies. We’d catch them and hold them squirming in our hands, dry and just cool to the touch, the perfect size to nestle into our palms so we could feel the beating of their hearts against our skin. We once went up to the damn at just at the right time to find hundreds of baby ones, the size of my thumbnail, leaping across the ground to escape our shadows, so that we couldn’t walk all scared we’d crush them.”

“Shit, I’d like to see that.”

“Me too, even just one more time. We’d walk up and down that trickle of water in the wash. Until we were all tuckered out.”

“Poor you.”

“Naw, those were my favourite times. But look at my feet now, dude.

I used to run around barefoot all the time and now they’re all soft and useless like some old city girl. So the moral of the story is, that you’re the one who’s going to have to go look for our shoes.”

“Shit,” said Rosa, laughing. “That was nice, right up to the end. But I didn’t ask for no moral.”

“You get what you get.” Lena smiled.

The sun hurt. Climbed the sky. They curled up small as they could, hid their faces.

Lena still held her glasses steady as she could, arm aching, watched that small point of light from beneath her lids.

“Maybe this is some wishful thinking, but seems like maybe this plastic melting shit is going to work.”

“Oh man, I think you’re right,” said Rosa. They stared anxiously at the spot of light on the white plastic.

“Not for a while though.”

They sat still, quiet. Waiting. Burning.

“It smells like death,” Rosa whispered into the silence.

“I know.”

“You think those two mother fuckers are coming back?”

Lena frowned. “If they do, it better be after we get out of these cuffs.”

The minutes dragged on and on.

The sun rose. It hurt.

Cicada song filled the world. Lena could feel the heat rising from her own skin, radiating out an angry red colour. She could feel her lips cracking and her eyes locking into a squint. Flesh shrivelled as the water was sucked out of it, the sweat drying even as it beaded along her skin. Muscles ached from holding position, and red welts burned along her forearms from touching the metal bumper. She struggled to hold the glasses in place, her arm like lead and her muscles knotted and screaming.

The sun peaked directly above them. Began to fall. She worked at the plastic circle now, almost melted through. It came away and she closed her eyes and breathed and said a prayer in thanks. Opened her eyes to find Rosa still praying.

Slowly they helped each other rise, joints creaking, skin feeling like it would tear as it stretched into new position.

Rosa stumbled, and Lena half caught her. They almost fell. The world dipped around them and Lena saw lights, heard static.

“I don’t feel so good,” Rosa whispered.

“We just need to get to that water in the truck, beautiful. We’ll be all right.”

They hobbled in joyless hurtful dance up the slight trail of burning cutting rocks. Stood at the top and saw a wreckage of water bottles amid blue butterflies. Their shoes and socks thrown up into a mesquite.

“Bastards,” said Rosa viciously.

They awkwardly half-climbed half-waded into the shrubby tree, still connected by the other set of handcuffs. Emerged with footwear and deep bleeding scratches across their forearms and their legs. Pulled socks on over bleeding feet with a gasp, and then shoes. Laced them with difficulty. Made their way back to the truck silent but for their angry breath, cracked and swollen lips in straight lines.

“Right,” said Lena. “Keys.” It hurt to walk. They followed the memorized trajectory, found them glinting beneath a cactus.

Back at the truck Rosa pulled her bag up from under the seat. “You know how we were going to see if there was time to drop by Nana’s this afternoon because she’s been bugging me about those roses?”
Lena suddenly grinned back. “You brought the pruners!”

“I did!”

“Cabron, the first bit of luck we’ve had all day! I just hope they work.”

With effort and more pain they did. Lena rubbed the angry ridged line the plastic had left in her skin. They drank silently and with great concentration the two gallons of emergency water stashed behind the seat. Sighed. Leaned against the truck. Smiled. Top of the world for a minute, two. They’d left a little water to wash the blood off of Rosa’s face. It stained the ground but the butterflies didn’t mind.
Rosa grabbed the rifle from behind the seat. Loaded up the clip from the glove box. Smelled the air with an ugly twisting of her face.

“Let’s find whatever’s dead. Dios permite, it’s just a cow.”

They drove slowly a short distance back along the road, hopped out and walked painfully the short distance to where the zopilotes circled.

Found a man. Vultures with wingspans his length watching the women with bright eyes as they hopped deliberately away. Red beaks, red like ocotillo blossoms. He no longer had eyes.

Lena stood, one hand over mouth and nose and the other clutching Rosa’s. Rosa suddenly sagged into her, a great animal cry of rage and grief emerged from her. Grief and rage. It rolled from Rosa in a terrible echoing and fell from Lena’s eyes in great drops of salt. They doubled over around it and let it shake their shoulders, rob them of air. Lena buried her face into Rosa’s mane of graying hair, held her tight. The birds watched them, curious, unable to understand. Hungry.

“Y la revolucion?” whispered Rosa.

“I am ready, but I don’t think it is ready for us.”

“I don’t want to die before the border comes down.”

Lena chuckled in spite of herself. Still sad. “Some things you don’t choose, mi reyna.”

They stood, one at his head and one at his feet.

“Abuelito,” said Lena. “Forgive us that we will not be moving you with much respect.” Tears dripped from her chin, splashed on what was left of his face.

The nightmare journey back to the truck was not at all respectful. Rosa threw up, and then they drove away, his body in the truck bed staring up at the forbidden sky. His smell covered their hands, their clothes. Ignacio Gutierrez. 65. Born in Jalisco. Pictures of children and grandchildren. A few clothes in a backpack. No water left.
They turned a corner and Lena had to hit the brakes, face to face with a massive truck souped up on big wheels. She thought she recognized it from its excessive headlights and small-dick-compensation. Caught proof in fragmentary bandit faces staring down at them before Rosa threw open the door and lifted the rifle to her shoulder. The windshield exploded as the truck swerved and came to a halt beside them.

Rosa ordered them out of the cab and they came. Pig-eye shook, but Law Enforcement looked like a coiled rattlesnake.

“Take off your bandanas, cobardes. Might as well be hoods, no? But I guess those would get too hot during the daytime.”

They removed their bandanas.

“Assume the position,” Rosa said. Her laughter grated. The men turned and put their hands on their truck.

“Not there, go over to our truck pendejos. March.”

She watched them march down the barrel of her rifle. Watched their faces fill with disgust.

“What the fuck is that,” said Pig-Eye, choking on the smell.

“Not what,” corrected Rosa. “Who. The question you should be asking is who did we kill with our borders and our free trade agreements and our targeting of wells and destruction of water and our nasty vigilante ways.”

Lena got Law Enforcement’s rifle from the gun rack, a pistol from the glove compartment, the knife from Pig-eye’s belt. Placed them on the ground at their feet and Law Enforcement cursed bitches under his breath. Patted them down and removed three lighters, two wallets and a Swiss Army knife. She checked the wallets had ID, smiled, and threw them on the front seat of her truck.

“We were coming back for you, we wouldn’t have left you there in the desert,” said Pig Eye, his voice greased. His teeth flashed too white and straight in his face.

Rosa ignored him. “The answer to your question is Ignacio Gutierrez. 65. Born in Jalisco. Father of three children, grandfather to five children. A working-man’s hands. You say a prayer for his soul.”

“What shall we do with these vigilantes then, when their prayers are done?” asked Lena.

“Kill ‘em?’ Rosa responded, always the hopeful one. “Break their faces?” Her hand rose to feel the welt across the side of her head.

“Shit,” grinned Lena, “I feel that little bit of Apache in me rising.”

“De veras?”

“Yes. But then we’d probably end up in jail and that’d kill me too.”

“Might end up there anyway,” Rosa said. They came closer, thoughtful in the silence. Lena explored the contours of her rage.

“I just want to kill them.” Rosa’s eyes had never left the two men, and her fingers twitched on the rifle.

“Me too,” Lena said.

A shot rang out, splitting the heavy air in two.

“Fuck Rosa, what the…”

“Just scared ‘em a little.” Rosa grinned. Levered in another round. Raised her voice. “That blow to the head’s making me see all double,” she called, firing again. “This is fun, Lena. You’re missing out.”

“At least shoot at their goddamn truck, not ours.”

Rosa ordered them back to their own truck. Lena looked down at the shiny semi-automatic she’d taken from Law Enforcement. Picked it up and sent a dozen bullets into the tail gate. The men fell to their knees, arms protectively over their heads now. Pig-eye had pissed himself.

“Shit, this thing’s a fucking disgrace,” she said with disgust. “No skill required at all.” She laid it back down on the ground. Turned back to Rosa.

“Well, we got two problems,” she said, her voice low. “We got two bad guys need picking up and some retribution, and one good guy needs burying. Third problem is that really, we don’t want anyone in authority to know anything about us. Right?”

“Right.”

“Right.”

Lena whispered her thoughts to Rosa.

Rosa pondered them, fired off another bullet with a chuckle, nodded.

She ordered the two men to remove their shoes and throw them into the desert. Ordered them to move Don Ignacio into the back of their own truck. It was real awkward and took some time. Once Don Ignacio was settled, Lena ordered Pig-eye to lie face down in the back of the truck. She could tell the metal burned his skin. Grabbed his ponytail with distaste but with a joyful light in her eyes. He twitched angrily.

“You got that rifle pointed at his balls?” she called out to Rosa.

“Gift to the world to shoot those off,” Rosa replied.

Pig-eye lay very still as Lena hacked at his hair with the knife. It came away like a greased worm in her hand. Her eyes met Rosa’s and they both looked at it.

Rosa’s lips twisted.

“Cabron, now you can say you’ve actually scalped someone,” she said. “All these white European immigrants, done invaded our lands, and you finally get to scalp one.”

Lena threw it onto the floor of their own truck, wiped her hands over and over again on the front of her jeans. Ordered the vigilantes to sit on either side of Don Ignacio, ankle to ankle, hands on their heads. Lena cuffed each of them to the dead man, cuffed their ankles and wrists tight tight. Cuffed Pig Eye’s free wrist to the gun rack, pretending she could smell his nasty urine over the smell of death. Swung down, grabbed the keys from the ignition then returned to Lena’s side. The keys jingled and flashed silver in her hand. She didn’t throw them into the desert.

The women stared at the vigilantes sitting there in the back of the truck with Ignacio Gutierrez between them, his head fallen forward onto his thin chest hiding the wreckage of his face.

“I hope he will be ok,” Rosa said, crossing herself. “I hope he is enjoying just a little this payback. You think he’ll be ok?”

Lena bit her lip. “Maybe we should cuff Law Enforcement to the truck too. I don’t trust him not to disrespect the dead while trying to free himself. You?”

“Hell no. But we need them to keep the vultures away from Don Ignacio.”

She’d never forget the panic on Pig-eye’s face.

“They got their free legs, no?”

Lena nodded, cuffed his other hand, jumped down from the truck bed and put an arm around Rosa’s shoulders. They turned to go.

“You’re just going to leave us here like this?” Pig-eye’s fear made Law Enforcement wince.

“We could kill you instead.” Rosa smiled.

Lena’s lip curled at Pig-eye’s whine. She took a few pictures with her phone. “We’ll let the police know where you are. You say anything and I’m sure our friends at Channel 5 will enjoy this little story, you being who you are, and they’ll have your ID’s as proof of course. We’ll leave it there unless you want to start something. It’d be real embarrassing for you, I’m sure, to drag it on further than that. We can do old and frail real well.”

“Fuck you,” said Law Enforcement.

“No,” said Rosa with a huge smile. “Fuck you.”

Back in the truck, back on the highway, Rosa used her foot to nudge the ponytail on the floor with disgust.

“What the hell are we going to do with that?”

Lena smiled a great golden smile.

It looked real nice, their trophy. Mounted on a piece of painted plywood, hung in legendary ceremony over the back of Frank’s bar.

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Intersections, Writing

Grandma’s Story: Trinh T. Minh-Ha on Storytelling and Truth

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Grandma’s Story is the final chapter of Woman, Native, Other: Writing Postcoloniality and Feminism by Trinh T. Minh-Ha. My favourite chapter I confess because it opened up horizons, and also sang with the words of Leslie Marmon Silko among others, whose words I have always loved.

It is written beautifully, interspersed with stills from film, the language difficult, rewarding. It works to overflow, expand, burst open the limits of Western intellectual thought the way that stories do without trying.

Why this battle for truth and on behalf of truth? I do not remember having asked grandmother once whether the story she was telling me was true or not. (120)

It is a language of possibility, of what is still unknown (and there is so much we don’t know).

If we rely on history to tell us what happened in a specific time and place, we can rely on the story to tell us not only what might have happened, but also what is happening at an unspecified time and place. (120)

It is a language of the interstices, freed from boundaries.

On the one hand, each society has its own politics of truth; on the other hand, being truthful is being in the in-between of all regimes of truth. Outside specific time, outside specialized space. (121)

And it is bigger than we are.

Truth does not make sense; it exceeds meaning and exceeds measure. It exceeds all regimes of truth. (123)

Above all, it is not ours, but builds on and also builds our communities and our connections.

Storytelling, the oldest form of building historical consciousness in community, constitutes a rich oral legacy, whose values have regained all importance recently, especially in the context of writings by women of color. (148)

And so we repeat our stories, tell them as fragments of the whole and as the whole itself, always changing as living things change, depending on circumstances, depending on who is speaking and who is listening, depending on many things that cannot be separated out. It is this unity in flux, this complex fluidity that can embrace the world and our place in it in multiple different ways that renders useless so many conventions of western fiction separated so starkly from western academic work or philosophizing.

But it is particularly difficult for a dualistic or dualistically trained mind to recognize that “looking for the structure of their narratives” already involves the separation of the structure from the narratives, of the structure from that which is structured, of the narrative from the narrated, and so on. It is, once more, as if form and content stand apart; as if the structure can remain fixed, immutable, independent of and unaffected by the changes the narratives undergo; as if a structure can only function as a standard mold within the old determinist schema of cause and product. (141)

This chapter struck me so forcibly after reading Barbara Fields on race and ideology, which forced me once again to confront the ability of people — most problematically white people — to maintain widely contradictory beliefs about others, often completely at odds with lived experience. This embodies the power of certain narratives shoring up power and privilege, as well as the inability of dualistic thinking to really grapple with them, the need to look in many places for a way of communicating that can build the world we hope to see.

Minh-ha also describes a very different way of working within the wider community, of relating to others. Imagine how much more powerful the kind of story embodied by theorising could be if this were true, as it should be true of all those who are in the struggle to transform the world:

I memorize, recognize, and name my source(s), not to validate my voice through the voice of authority…but to evoke her and sing. (122)

And transform the world we will.

Each woman, like each people, has her own way of unrolling the ties that bind. (148)

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