Denis Johnson - Tree of Smoke

In a tavern on Central he met a chubby adorable Pima woman who called herself a half-breed. She took him out to the desert on the reservation way east of town and they sat on the hood of her rattletrap Plymouth in the cooling dusk while the sky turned a nothing-colored shade of blue. They hit it off fine, he and this warm-hearted woman with a brown front tooth in her happy Eskimo face. Short and fleshy. She was in actual point of fact spherical. She took him home to her shack east of Pima Road, just inside the reservation, and within days he married her in a ceremony conducted by a wizened old cretin who claimed to be a medicine man. Houston and his new wife lived in bliss for two weeks, until her darkly, poisonously silent brother showed up and moved in. While she napped one afternoon Houston took six dollars and six cigarettes’ from her Plymouth’s glove compartment—six, his lucky number, and lucky for her it wasn’t in the double digits—and rode back to the Deuce on a bus. Did he need a lawyer? He doubted it. The woman had burned her way into his heart, but two weeks hardly counted. He didn’t intend to complicate the adventure with a divorce.

After October, after the rainy season, many mornings in Cao Quyen came with sunlight before the inevitable dull afternoon —he thought sometimes of a remark of Jimmy Storm’s: “Ain’t no sky in the tropics” — and with this gift came certain regions of beauty into the villa’s eastern rooms, solid-looking slats of light between the louvers upstairs, the kitchen filled with pinpoint reflections among the utensils, the murky office’s shutters fiercely outlined, also the large rectangular vents near the parlor’s ceiling: flat, stark planes like a painter’s small exercises in perspective … And then the afternoon’s perpetual, uniform, businesslike illumination from overcast skies sank his soul. In the morning he saw it-options always waited open. By afternoon he couldn’t take steps, the ground was gone, doubt had dissolved it.

Mrs. Diu said, “Lady to see you, Mr. Skip.”

He rose from the desk, entered the parlor, and encountered a female stranger, freckled, brown, stringy, in a white blouse with front pockets, a man’s khaki trousers, and he said, “Kathy,” before he realized he knew her.

In Damulog she’d had none of the flushed and frightened—hysterical, or haunted—leaning, overheated look of so many jungle missionaries.

She had it now. One hand gripped the rim of a peasant’s conical hat— the nong la. He took it from her and set it on the coffee table in the parlor and she followed it to stand there a little out of breath, keeping her hat near.

“I was told about a Canadian.” “I can get us some tea. Would you like some tea?” “Is it you? You’re the Canadian?” “Speak up, now, ma’am. Tea or no?” “How about some of that incendiary compound you drop on the vil

lages?” “I’m, I’m —I’m all out.” “I might have known. I did know. AID! Del Monte! Canadian! What

else? Toronto Symphony Orchestra?” “Seventh-Day Adventist.” “All of you, oh, my Lord. You’re too laughable to laugh at.” “I’m translating the Bible, I’ll have you know.” “It isn’t funny.” “Don’t you think I’ve caught on to that? I lost my sense of humor a

long time ago. Now, will you have tea with me, Kathy? Or isn’t this a so

cial call.” “I’m calling on a Canadian.” “But socially, right?” “Yes. I’ll bet you’ve got honey.” “No. Condensed milk, the sugary stuff.” “No honey?” “Nothing like that.” “No? Maybe you thumbed your nose at McNamara. Is that the one?” “The Secretary of Defense?” “Yeah. He must’ve put you in exile as a punishment, huh?” “I like it here very much.” “You spies are always so perky and so chipper.” “Have a seat.” With all that had come along to disillusion him, the

dismal realities of his work, it lit up his heart to be called a “spy.” She sat on the edge of a chair and looked around wildly. “All right, now,” he said, “tea.” “How are things in Canada?” “Come on. Please.”

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to say. I’m just, I’m quite simply—I’m angry.” She got up without any purpose in her face. “I’m leaving now.” As if getting the idea from having expressed it, she went quickly through the entry and out, slapping her hands onto the bicycle she’d parked out there and kicking at its kickstand, a black bicycle.

“Kathy, come on, wait,” Skip called, but he didn’t go after her. She’d said she was angry. He didn’t think she very often felt any other way.

He sat on the divan and leaned forward, elbows on his knees, looking at the magazines on the coffee table—Time, and Newsweek, a cover photo of two black American Olympic athletes raising the single-fist salute of the Black Power Movement. In Mexico City, he believed, but didn’t know, because he’d stopped reading them.

Back she came. “I never heard from you.”

He waited until she took hold of the large chair facing him, dragged it a little distance away in a show of dissent, and sat down on its creaking rattan. “Well?”

“Well, I sent a few cards.”

“I wrote a slew of letters. I even mailed a few. Do you know why I cut off communication?” “I hope you’ll tell me.” “Because when Father Carignan died —did you know he died? Of

course you know he died—because news came to us that the priest near Carmen had drowned, and you were the one who brought the news to the diocese, and we were together three weeks, as lovers, and you never mentioned it!”

“Didn’t I get a letter from you a year ago? A long time after the priest, the business there, the drowning.” “It took a while, but I finally figured it out: liars aren’t worth talking to.”

“Maybe not,” he said. “But I appreciated the letters.”

This seemed to give her pause. “You never really answered. Cards don’t count.”

“Maybe I didn’t want to lie.” True, but not truly the reason for his silence. He’d thought her letters crazy. “Or, well, no—letters are hard. That’s closer to the truth.”

“A phony Canadian talking about truth. Incidentally, what name do you go by?”

“Skip.” “Skip who?” “Benęt. But mostly Skip. Still Skip.” “Alias Benęt wants to talk about truth!” “We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves. As you once

said to me yourself.” “I don’t remember ever saying that, but it’s certainly true when it

comes to somebody like you, it’s certainly true in your case.” “So then—you’ll stay awhile.” She glared, eyes watering. Her wrath went out of her in a gusty sigh,

and he could tell she was glad to see him.

As for the spy, he was thrilled, his hands shook with joy. He found Mrs. Diu and asked for tea, fruit, bread, returned to his guest to say, “Just two minutes,” and went back to hang around the kitchen, terrified of facing Kathy without things to eat and drink, while Mrs. Diu prepared them. He brought the tray himself.

She too appeared suddenly shy. “This dog,” she said, “just wanders all

around.” “That’s Docteur Bouquet. He used to own the place.” “He acts like he still does.” “He’s reincarnated.” “Really. He sure picked the wrong country to be born a dog in.” “But I’d say just the right household.” “He’ll end up in somebody’s chopsticks.” “I think he’s too old now.” He started to scratch the dog and realized it would dirty his fingers.

“Hey,” he said, “I can’t really ask you to stay. I’m not in a position to en

tertain. Not at all. Not these days. Buried under work.” “What?” “Well, that’s insane.” “Yeah. It is. I mean to say—” “I thought I was rolling with it, but I guess I’m in a panic here.” “Do you want me to stay, or do you want me to go?” “I want you to stay.” He fumbled and dropped a small baguette, and Docteur Bouquet