Philipp Meyer - The Son

I want to know everything. The way a child learns the world by tasting it… I want to take every part of her into my mouth; I find myself wondering about her former lovers, how she was with her sisters, her father, her mother, who she was at university, where the separate parts of her come from.

I AM UP before the light and she is still sleeping, relaxed, her hands thrown behind her head, face to one arm, her knees leaning in as if she has fallen asleep on a beach… I watch the sun brighten as it touches her, the smooth skin along her neck (a red mark I clumsily left), an ear, the hollow behind her cheek, her chin (slightly pointed), her lips (slightly chapped), while her eyes, which are nearly black except for a few flecks of gold, flicker in a dream. Without waking, she realizes I am not lying next to her and she reaches for me and pulls me over.

Still the shadow has not appeared. Have begun to look in all the dark places, out of the corner of my eye, but… nothing. Pedro — I can only recall his face as a younger man, and Lourdes, too, as a younger, more beautiful woman, as if, in my mind, they are aging in reverse.

JULY 23, 1917

A rush of air from the north, high of eighty degrees. We wake up alert and clearheaded — we must be outside. As there is an unspoken agreement about spending any time near the Garcia land, we pack a basket into the Chandler and head for Nuevo Laredo. As I drive, she encourages my hands to wander; we make a brief stop along the way. I consider the fact that I have never done this before — never made love to a woman outside the confines of a bedroom. I wonder if she has, feel briefly jealous despite my former sentiment about her old lovers, but the feeling passes and I am content again.

When we reach Nuevo Laredo the ugliness of the city is somehow overwhelming.

“This will not do,” I say.

“We will make it beautiful for everyone else,” she says. She leans her head against my shoulder.

We are looking for a cantina (or hotel, she reminds me) but as we approach the plaza de toros there are several drunk Americans, well dressed, calling loudly after the Mexican girls; one of them stares into the car, says something to his friends about María. I nearly stop to have a word, but she tells me to keep driving. We make another slow circle through the town, past the Alma Latina, where a trio of mariachis sit with no one to play for, and then somehow our eyes seem to catch on all the congales, and we decide instead to drive along the river.

After we have put a good distance between us and the city we stop where a small hill affords a good view over the savannah. There is an old long-armed oak with soft grass underneath.

We are lying on a blanket, looking out over the endless land and sky, when María says: “I like to imagine this at the beginning of time, when the grass was very tall and there were wild horses.”

“Horses have only been here a few hundred years,” I say.

“I prefer to forget that.”

“It’s buffalo you would see.”

“Except there is little to like about a buffalo,” she says. “What is the point of a buffalo?”

I shrug.

“But you prefer them. Okay, I will imagine buffalo instead, though they are hairy, smelly, inelegant, and have horns.”

“They belong here,” I say.

“In my mind, the horses do as well. And if the horses do not, I do not. And if I do not, you do not. In your world there is nothing but buffalo and sad Indians.”

“And then a gallant Spaniard appears on horseback. And shoots them.”

“It’s true. I’m a hypocrite.”

I kiss her neck.

“My father thought there were still mustangs here. He said he often saw their footprints, without shoes.”

“It’s possible,” I say.

“I used to dream about them.”

I think of all the mustangs we shot. But Pedro had done it too. Everyone had done it.

I look around. At the bottom of the hill is a stream that feeds the Rio Bravo. Along the water are persimmons and hackberries and pecans, cedar elms. I can hear green jays calling.

We lie and make love in the sun, despite the fact that we can see, in the distance, the workers moving in the onion fields along the river. María finds them picturesque; I can’t help feeling sorry for them.

“Are you sure you want to be with me?” she says. “I think you would prefer a revolutionary.”

I kiss her again.

“I am just old and sentimental,” she says.

“Younger than me.”

“Women age in dog years.”

I look at her.

“Even me,” she says. She shrugs again. “But for now I think our wine has gotten hot.”

She stands and walks down the hill to put the bottles in the stream. I worry she’ll catch a goathead, but her soles are tougher than mine. I watch her disappear over the hill, her small hips swaying, the scars on her back, her hair curled on top of her head.

When she is gone a few minutes I guess she might be relieving herself, but when she still doesn’t return I decide to find her, consider putting on my boots, don’t, then make my way through the tall brown grass, worrying about snakes and burrs and thorns. I find her lying in the creek. Her hair is loose and streaming around her, the stones white beneath her. I take three or four bounding steps and then she looks up.

“I have always liked being outside,” she says.

She pats the water as if it is our bed. I lie down in it. I notice how white and freckled I am, tan only at the arms, scraggly hairs everywhere… but then that feeling passes.

We lie as if we are the first people on earth, or the last, the sun coming down on us, the water cold, our every action of the utmost importance, as if, like children, we know that no one else really exists.

Finally we climb the hill to the blanket. The sun dries us and she curls against me and falls asleep. There is nothing missing. I wonder if I have ever been this happy and then I wonder again about my father, if he has ever felt anything like this. Even as a young man, I cannot see it. He is like my brother, a gun aimed squarely at the world.

Our commission ran out in 1860. The state was split over secession, with the cotton men and everyone who read their newspapers in favor, and everyone else against. But the Rebels needed Texas; without our cotton, beef, and ports the Confederacy could not stand.

That summer, Dallas burned. As in any conspiracy of prophets, a series of miracles surrounded the fires. The first was that all the buildings had been empty — not a single soul hurt — though an entire block had been torched. The second miracle was there were no eyewitnesses. The third and final miracle was that even though there was nothing an Abolitionist liked better than the sound of his own voice — every time an oxcart or soapbox caught fire in Kansas, a dozen Free-Soilers would turn themselves in, hoping to be hanged for their crimes — no soft sister came forward to claim the Dallas fires. The cotton men had burned their own buildings to bring us into the war and before the sun came up the next day, their newspapers were blaming escaped slaves and Yankees, whose next step would be to burn all of Texas, right after they got done raping all the white women.

By the end of summer, most Texans were certain that if slavery was abolished, the whole of the South would Africanize, no proper woman would be safe, amalgamation would be the order of the day. Though in the next breath they would tell you that the war had nothing to do with slavery. It was about human dignity, self-governance, freedom itself, the rights of the states; it was a war to keep us free from the meddling hand of Washington. Never mind that Washington had kept us from becoming part of Mexico again. Never mind they were keeping the Indians at bay.