Tom Robbins - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

Everything became scrambled. You rocked each other in cradles of sweat and saliva, until you could see nothing. You imagined her in a bride's trousseau, pictured her a mare. Did you ferment, the two of you? You smelled like it. Fans of funk and fever opened and closed, chins were aglisten with the juice of kissing. You rocked and rocked, your thumb swacking her belly in rhythm, adding to the excitement — hers and yours.

Eyes closed, or maybe only glazed, you pictured her tight young whatdoyoucallit in your mind. Hair by dripping hair, it gaped before you. Your own clitoris felt as swollen pink as a bubblegum cigar. Oh these things were made to be loved!

Suddenly, you were weeping. Noisy breaths bucked out of you. You called “Jelly Jelly” when you intended only to murmur “mmmm.” It didn't matter. Jellybean couldn't hear you. She was screaming. Hysterical from the scalding hot softness of girl-love.

Criminey, how that filly can come, you thought, after your own spasms had subsided. At the same moment, Jelly was wondering how a city apartment house could possibly contain your sex cries. For Jelly, too, was at rest. Only gradually did you both realize that a third auditory ingredient had mixed with Jelly screams and Sissy groans — a brasher, wilder sound, though obviously the work of the same composer.

Sticky fingers were pulled from melons. Soaked inside and out, the two of you sat up. There came that noise again, only louder, more eerie. Had your hairs, short and long, not been so damp they might have stood. It was a mighty trumpeting, a whoop such as the World might have made on the day it was born.

It was then that you ladies, your rosy bodies imprinted with patterns of crushed leaves and stems, looked to see a squadron of white satin airliners circling Siwash Lake, a flock of birds so grand and giant and elegant that your hearts squeezed out eternity's toothpaste.

50.

DESCRIBE THE WHOOPING CRANE ( Grus americana ) in twenty-five words or less.

The whooping crane is a very large and very regal white bird with long black legs, a sinuous neck and a thrilling trumpetlike voice.

Okay. I'll grade that a C.

Only a C? May I try again?

Go ahead.

The most spectacular of our native wading birds, the whooping crane stands about five feet tall and has a wingspread of nearly eight.

No improvement, I'm afraid. Still a C.

One more try?

Be my guest.

Imagine Wilt Chamberlain in red yarmulke and snowy feathers . .

Hold it. You're assuming that the reader knows who Wilt Chamberlain is. Many people don't follow basketball and wouldn't understand that Wilt signifies size and strength and arrogance made palatable by grace.

I give up. The whooper enters one's spirit the instant it enters one's senses. It is perfect radiant sky monster and I cannot describe it.

Better. Make that a B.

51.

"PAIUTE INDIANS called the crane kodudududududu ,” said Sissy. “Isn't that a funny name?"

Jellybean was delighted. “Say it again,” she urged.

“ Kodudududududu . Six dus. Kodudududududu .”

They both laughed.

“You know a lot about Indians, don't you?” asked Jelly. She brushed dead cherry leaves from her panties before stepping in.

“A little,” said Sissy. She was slower getting into her undies because of her thumbs.

“And birds, too. I can't get over the way they let you walk up so close to 'em. Whoopers are supposed to be really skittish. 'Specially when they're migrating.”

“Maybe they've never seen a human being nude before. We're different when we're naked. But I do have a way with birds, I guess. I told you about Boy, only parakeet to ever flag down a Diesel rig.” Sissy looked at Jelly's popover tits as they disappeared into glossy shirt of cactus sunset design. In the looking, her blue gaze grew solemn. “I understand a tad about Indians and birds,” she said softly, “but I don't know if I understand what happened up there.”

Jelly's eyes snagged Sissy's, elevated them. “Something nice happened up there.”

“Yes,” admitted Sissy. “It was nice.”

“Do you feel bad about it?”

“No, oh no. I don't feel bad. I feel. . different. Or maybe I don't feel different; maybe I feel like I should feel different.” She was thoughtful. She zipped up. “Have you had sex with girls much before?”

“Only since I've been at the Rubber Rose. Between Miss Adrian and Delores, every eligible male's been scared away from here, and there's usually trouble of one kind or another if we fool around with the hicks in Mottburg. That leaves your fingers or other women, and at least half the cowgirls on the ranch have been in each other's pants by now. There's not a queer among 'em, either. It's just a nice, natural thing to do. Girls are so close and soft. Why did it take me all these years to learn that it's okay to roll around with 'em? It's 'specially good when it's somebody you really like a lot.” She hugged Sissy and sugar-doodled a few kisses around her neck and ears.

A pair of smiles rode across the Dakota hills.

Perhaps a person gains by accumulating obstacles. The more obstacles set up to prevent happiness from appearing, the greater the shock when it does appear, just as the rebound of a spring will be all the more powerful the greater the pressure that has been exerted to compress it. Care must be taken, however, to select large obstacles, for only those of sufficient scope and scale have the capacity to lift us out of context and force life to appear in an entirely new and unexpected light. For example, should you litter the floor and tabletops of your room with small objects, they constitute little more than a nuisance, an inconvenient clutter that frustrates you and leaves you irritable: the petty is mean. Cursing, you step around the objects, pick them up, knock them aside. Should you, on the other hand, encounter in your room a nine-thousand-pound granite boulder, the surprise it evokes, the extreme steps that must be taken to deal with it, compel you to see with new eyes. And if the boulder is more special, if it has been painted or carved in some mysterious way, you may find that it possesses an extraordinary and supernatural presence that enchants you, and in coping with it — as it blocks your path to the bathroom — leaves you feeling extraordinary and supernatural, too. Difficulties illuminate existence, but they must be fresh and of high quality.

To the obstacles that had conspired to prevent Sissy Hankshaw Gitche, white female Protestant of South Richmond, Virginia, from attaining normality, from filling a responsible and orderly role, from operating as a productive, well-adjusted contributor to the human community, now must be added friendship with Bonanza Jellybean. Whether this latest obstacle was to elevate Sissy or nudge her toward the breaking place, as a certain straw is reported to have done to a certain burdened camel, was impossible to judge from her smile, for it was simultaneously gladdened and apprehensive. It is of little or no value to analyze mental states such as this. The kingdom of formal ideas will always be a weak neighbor to the kingdom of thrills, and Sissy was a princess of thrill. Blood bunched in her head like grapes in a wig. It sang there like a popular ballad — even though the only radio station in the area played nothing but polkas. Jelly had promised to come to her room that night, with marijuana and new positions. If those prospects excited her, she was also excited by the memory of the whooping cranes, a sight all the more breathtaking because of the knowledge that those huge, elegant fugitives were so few in number and perched so precariously on the brink of total extinction. No heat, no agony, no bloody struggle, but a band of exquisite creatures (for which the world has no replacement) poised coolly — defiantly! — on the winking eyelid of doom.