The Bushwacked Piano

10

C. J. Clovis stood on a bench in Sacajawea Park at Livingston, Montana, haranguing an audience composed of cranks and drifters not unlike himself, on the subject of bat towers. Bats in Clovis’ description were tiny angels bent on the common weal, who flittered decoratively through the evening sky ridding the atmosphere of the mosquito. Now the mosquito to Clovis was a simple pus-filled syringe with wings. Was that what you wanted your air filled with? If so, never mind bat towers. If not, contact Savonarola Batworks, Incorporated, poste restante, Livingston, Montana.

“Dear Governor Wallace,” wrote Ann to the famous Alabaman. “As an American artist, I would like to offer my condolences for your deceased wife. Rest assured that your darling Lurleen awaits you in Hillbilly Heaven. Sincerely yours, Ann Fitzgerald.” Ann was constantly ready to lace into rednecks and right-wingers.

The clear shadow advanced across the parquet floor of her bedroom. She had been in the room since dawn making marks on the floor, every hour on the hour, numbering the shadow’s progress to indicate the time. An imperfect plan, she thought, but I’ll always be able to glance at it in August and know quelle heure est-il. I never come except in August. She sings “Stars Fell on Alabama” in a quiet, pretty voice. Her attitude toward Governor Wallace begins to soften.

Her thoughts of Payne are sporadic and persistent; there has been a pattern. Thoughts of love upon waking in the morning. Thoughts of deprivation then fulfillment on the great unwobbling pivot just before lunch. In the late afternoon, she often thinks of him with anger. Why does he act like that? In the light of the present household tensions, which are terrifically nonspecific, Montana itself begins to pall and subsequently the West, America and so on. As the features of the world recede, Payne is left high and dry like a shipwreck in a drained reservoir. Ann longs to move longingly among his waterlogged timbers, carrying the key to his sea chest. Angelfish, Beau Gregories, tautogs, lantern fish, sergeant majors, morays, bullheads, barracudas, groupers, tunas, flounders, skates, rays, sea robins, balao and narwhals gasp on waterless decks as Ann runs through Payne’s bulkheads.

Payne walked across the town to the railroad station where he had left the car. The wagon remained at Bangtail Creek; he hoped not very seriously that it hadn’t been vandalized. Underneath the trees on the long lawn beside the station, Pullman porters took the air, chatting with each other and with conductors over the noise of steel-wheeled wagons trucking luggage into the station. Payne wanted to ride the Northern Pacific to Seattle, sitting with Ann in the observation car; perhaps jotting in a pigskin diary: My Trip.

I sometimes see myself, thought Payne, in other terms than standing on the parapets with my cape flying; but not all that often.

Payne did not carry a pistol and tried not to limp.

Payne watched Clovis eat. Clovis was a nibbler; not the kind that doesn’t like to eat but the kind who tantalizes himself and makes the food last. Between nips, Clovis described the deal he’d made to build a bat installation in the top stage of an abandoned granary. Payne was to do the building by way of preparing himself for larger projects. It was to be called either a “Bathaus,” a “Batrium” or a “Battery”; but, in no case, a “Bat Tower”; the latter being reserved for the all-out projects of Clovis’ dreams.

The bat installation was being constructed for a prosperous rancher/wheat farmer whose wife liked to shell peas outside in the evening. She was allergic to 6-12 and Off.

“What if these towers draw vampires?” Payne inquired without getting an answer. Clovis nipped and nibbled, occasionally touching the merest tip of his tongue to a morsel and re-examining it before popping the whole item down his gullet.

Payne watched him. He was draped over his bones. The appliance was the only thing that seemed alive. A morbid air radiated from the man, a certain total mortality that made Payne think rather desperately of Ann.

“What are you gulping for?” Payne asked Clovis, who was swallowing air.

“I am filling my air sac.”

“Why?”

“Oh, because despair is my constant companion, I guess.”

Payne thought: what?

“I didn’t see any mention of it in the Yellow Pages.”

“What’s in them Yellow Pages is between me and the phone company,” said Clovis.

“Okay.”

“So don’t throw the Yellow Pages in my face.”

“And those loony signs you had signed your name to in that alleyway off Gratiot Avenue.”

“Yeah, what’s wrong with them?”

“They’re unpatriotic!”

In a single violent motion, Clovis pulled the little pistol from the back of his waist band. Payne snatched it away and shot holes in the tires of the Hudson Hornet. “You want to hurt me?” he said. “There! Now my Hornet won’t go any place!” His voice broke.

“I didn’t mean a thing …” Clovis was upset now.

“You didn’t? You pulled that pistol!” Payne’s throat ached and seized. He thought he was going crazy. Bangtail Creek beside them roared like an airplane. Mayflies and caddises hatched from its surface and floated toward the stars. Two hundred yards above, it formed its first pool where a coyote made rings in the water around his nose.

The noise of the creek had prevented this small member of the dog family from hearing the argument.

Later, they went over to the Dodge Motor Home and watched Johnny Carson. Ed McMahon infuriated Clovis and he yelled at the television. The guests were Kate Smith, Dale Evans, Oscar Levant, Zsa Zsa Gabor and Norman Mailer, the artist. Johnny smiled with his eyes but not his mouth; and did all these great deadpan things. The big thing was that his outfit really suited him to a “T.” Then they watched the Late Show: Diamondhead; beautiful Hawaii, very complicated, very paradoxical. They actually had cowboys. But what held your interest was this unique racial deal which was dramatized by Yvette Mimieux falling in love with a native who was darkskinned. It occurred to Clovis that since the Johnny Carson show was taped, it was possible Johnny and his guests were home watching the Late Show too.

“Is there no longer any decency?” Clovis asked.

Payne went back to his wagon to sleep. He could see, hanging in the unnatural pallor of moonlight, a heavy flitch of bacon. Vague boxes of breakfast cereal, dull except where their foil liners glittered, stood next to uneven rows of canned goods. Frying pans hung by pots hung by griddles; and in the middle of all these supplies, next to a solid sewn sack of buckwheat, a radiant Coleman lantern with a new silk mantle began to burn down for the night.

When they awoke, Payne made breakfast for the two of them over his camp stove. The deep balsamic odor of the back country surrounded them. Payne noticed the unseemly slouch the Hornet had on its slumped tires and viewed his own pathology with a certain historical detachment.

“These Little Brown Bats are starting to give me a pain in the ass,” Clovis said.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“Probably nothing. I had an idea I could make a go with this Yuma Myotis; but its natural range is too frigging southerly I believe. I have seen the bastards in mine shafts as far west as Idaho; but I don’t know.” He was quiet briefly. “I’m not starting on an exotic God damn bat breed at this point in my life!”

Payne tried for an intelligent remark. “The thing is, you want something that can really scarf bugs.”

“Oh, hell, they all do that. I could take a Western Pipe-strel and have the little son of a bitch eating his weight in June bugs night after night. This here is a question of style, a question of class. I want a classy bat! And I don’t want something that has to be near running water or has to live in a narrow slot or within two miles of eucalyptus or that sucks the wind for rabies. What’s the difference. The Little Brown is okay. That goes for the Silverhaired. But no one is going to pretend they’re class bats by a long shot.”

“What’s … a class bat, for instance?”

“Well, no Myotis! That’s for damn sure!”

“What then?”

“Almost anything, Payne, for God sake. Leafnose, there’s a nice bat. Western Mastiff: that sonofabitch will curl your hair to look at him close. The Eastern Yellow is a good one. The Pallid, the Evening, the Mexican Freetail, the Spotted, the Western Yellow.” When he paused, Payne handed him his breakfast on a paper plate. When his voice came again it was mellifluous and sentimental.

“I once owned me a Seminole bat. He was mahogany brown and he looked like he had the lightest coating of frost over him. He weighed a third of an ounce at maturity and was a natural loner.”

“Did you name him?”

“Yes I did. I named him Dave.”

“I see.”

The red Texaco star was not so high against the sky as the Crazy Mountains behind it. What you wanted to be high behind the red Texaco star, thought its owner, was not the Crazy Mountains, or any others, but buildings full of people who owned automobiles that needed fuel and service. Day after day, the small traffic heading for White Sulphur Springs passed the place, already gassed up for the journey. He got only stragglers; and day after day, the same Cokes, Nehis, Hires, Fanta Oranges, Nesbitts and Dr. Peppers stood in the same uninterrupted order in the plastic window of the dispenser. Unless he bought one. Then something else stared out at him, the same; like the candy wrappers in the display case with the sunbleached wrappers; or the missing tools on the peg-board in the garage whose silhouettes described their absence.

That is why Payne coming at the crack of dawn, rolling a herd of flat tires, pursuing the stragglers all over the highway, seemed unusual enough that the station owner helplessly moved a few imperceptible steps toward him in greeting. “Nice day.”

“Yes it is.”

“Right in here with them uns. Blowouts is they?”

“Yes.”

“I see that now. I hope they can be saved.”

“They’ll have to be.”

The man worked furiously taking the tire off the rim of the first. “That’s one puncture!” There was a rattle; he fished around. “This tire has been shot!”

“Yes, sir.”

The man looked up bemused and went to the next tire.

“What kind of recaps is these?”

“Six-ply Firestone Town and Country. Self-cleaning tread.”

“This here’s been shot too.”

“Yup.”

The man stood, turning his sweating forehead into the corner of his elbow. “I ain’t going no further.”

“What do you mean?”

“What do I mean?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that there has been a shooting here.”

“I just want my damn tires fixed.”

“Just fix em, heh, no querstions asked? Like ole Doctor Mudd fixing Booth’s leg? Let me ask you this. Have you ever read yer history? Let me ask you that.”

“No.”

“Let me give you a little background then.”

“I don’t want any background. I want these tires fixed.”

“I don’t move without an explanation.”

The two men were desperate. Payne had nowhere else to turn. The station owner was dealing with his first customer in some time. Payne initiated the detente.

“I shot them myself,” he said.

“That’s all I needed to hear.” The man wiped his hands on a brick-colored rag. “In fact that’s just plain more like it.” He commenced putting a hot-patch on the first tire. “Honesty is the best policy,” he added.

“Oh fuck you,” Payne inserted.

“You can say that if you want now. I got no quarrel with you. But when you come in here and want me to start fixing what is plainly the results of a shooting why, you’re starting to eat in on my professional ethics.”

“I’m going to start screaming.”

“I am not going to a federal penitentiary in order to protect a dollar and a half’s worth of repair biness.”

“I’m going to yell fire.”

“What do these go to?”

“They go to a Hudson Hornet.”

The man finished and charged Payne three dollars. Payne told him he thought he had been protecting a dollar and a half’s worth of biness. “Rate went up,” said the man, “with complications of a legal nature.”

“That Hornet,” he said, “was quite an automobile. Step down in if memory serves. Had quite an engine. Put your foot in the carb and she’d go apeshit to get off the line.”

“Yeah only mine doesn’t go apeshit no matter where you put your foot.”

“She get you over the road?”

“Barely.”

“That’s all you want,” said the owner, racking his mind for a pun about going over the road barely.

“One day,” Payne said, fantasizing aggressively, “I’m going to have me a Ford Stepside pickup with the 390 engine and a four-speed box. I want a stereo tapedeck too with Tammy Wynette and Roy Acuff and Merle Haggard cartridges.”

“Sure, but that engine. You crash the dude and it’s all she wrote.” The owner though had picked up on Payne’s fantasy. He wanted the same truck, the same stereo cartridges.

“I want to put the cocksucker on 90. I want to go to British Columbia. I want music on the way.”

“You do have something there.”

The station owner helped Payne take the tires out of the garage. Payne gave them a roll and the tires raced each other down the incline, peeled away and fell in overlapping parabolas to stop near the pumps. Payne rounded them up and got them all going at once, running and yipping around them like a lunatic. When one tried to streak away, he booted it back in line sternly.

By the time he had ridden herd all the way back to the camp, he had named the four tires: Ethel, Jackie, Lady Bird — and Ann.

It was good to have such spirits today. He had bluffs to call.