Joyce Oates - I’ll Take You There

Disfigured by the surgery Hildie had said. There was a horror in such a statement. The jarring word disfigured . For Hildie it was an unusual word, uttered with clinical detachment.

Another day, not long before my father's dying, I was very restless, I drove out to the Green River campground a few miles from Crescent. Here I hiked along a bizarrely striated rock terrain stained to the hue of dried blood; terrain that lifted slantwise from the earth like a humped, hunched shoulder; I followed a deep, narrow gorge; out of the shadowed depths of the gorge a chill, rank, sulphurous odor arose; what horror it would be, to slip and fall into this narrow gorge; though I tried repeatedly, I couldn't see to the bottom. There was some mystery here I felt compelled to explore though I wasn't wearing hiking boots and hadn't remembered to bring along a bottle of water. I'd been warned by Hildie's friends in the Rendezvous Cafe not to go into the canyons alone, but I didn't intend to stay long.

By space the universe encompasses me like an atom; by thought…

I couldn't remember the rest of Pascal's words.

Pascal's boast! For all of philosophy is boastfulness, at bottom. The proclamation of atoms. The stammering of thinking reeds.

And how indifferent it was to such wisdom, the world. The world entering through the eyes, and through feet, fingers, touch. This dry brilliant air. The vast sky overhead. I will remain here in the West. Now he's called me here. It must be for a reason . I wondered if my father had loved the West. Or had he only just fled here out of despair with his life in the East. America was atoms in the void; atoms moving in a continuous stream; touching, and ricocheting; rebounding into space. For much of his life my father had been a laborer. Working with his hands outdoors. I wanted to think such a life had been his choice. As my life, a life of the mind, was my choice. But now his poor body was wearing out, like an old piece of farming equipment. The junked tractor in my grandfather's hay barn, covered in dust.

But only fifty-six. Too young!

In the flatter, less treacherous terrain in which I was now walking, shading my eyes against the glaring sun, vegetation was sepia-colored, bleached like bone; here was sagebrush, a dusty gray-green; the predominant color of the rocky earth was a dull rust-red like the blood-veined interior of the eyelid. I'd begun to feel winded, as if I were hiking up a mountainside. My head ached and swirled but I couldn't turn back just yet: there was such silence here, and such promise; a powerful spirit had taken possession of this space, and I was both fearful and eager to enter. Faint voices called to me comfortingly, unless they were jeering. Now he's summoned you here. Must be for a reason ! In this landscape objects had a surreal significance as in a Dali painting. Distances and proportions were confused. I saw a shimmering blue flame on a hillside and when I drew closer, it became a broken jug. I saw a sculpture of pale twisted shapes and when I drew closer, it became the bones of a jackrabbit. I saw a white pony grazing in sagebrush near a dry creek and when I drew closer, it became something manmade like plywood or Styrofoam. I saw the boy in the T-shirt reading the stars are there to show us how far our wishes can go and when I drew closer, it was a confusion of sunlight on rock. Beneath a rock formation was a gorgeous burst of crimson, like peonies, that, when I drew closer, became something cheaply plastic. Human heads and hands that were rocks or debris, rags weirdly puffed up with sand like scarecrows. My vision narrowed as if I were wearing blinders. A pulse beat at my temple. When I saw the rags, I stood for a long time staring; I didn't dare come closer, for fear of seeing something ugly; the previous night at the Cafe, a man who'd come over to sit with Hildie and me had told us of discovering a corpse on his ranch years ago, the mutilated body of a young Ouray Indian girl. There's dead folks all out there. The place to dump 'em. The ones nobody reports missing .

In waves of heat on a bluff there emerged the profile of a female shape like Hildie Pomeroy's; hunched and tense like a bow drawn tight; a deformed human body, yet unmistakably human; when I came nearer, I saw that it was a rock formation at least twenty feet in length. Yet, in my wavering vision, it had seemed the size of a woman. I saw that rock, like sand, and water, was comprised of ripples and waves; I saw that vibratory currents were the fundamental structure of nature; as in sexual passion we're caught up in such currents that beat impersonally through us, using us; using us, and discarding us like husks. Spinoza said we yearn to persist in our being. Yet more powerfully, we yearn to persist in our species' being. Feeling again the excitement of the casual drifting eyes of the man who'd slipped into the booth the night before with Hildie and me. His name was Eli? Unless I'd heard wrong, his name was actually Leo. I'd been so tired, my eyelids heavy, not thinking clearly, and not hearing clearly, for the noise in the Cafe was loud, laughter and raised voices and TV sports and I'd waited hours for Hildie to announce that it was the right time to see my father, except it had not been the right time all that day, he wasn't ever fully conscious and when conscious he'd been hallucinating. In the Cafe, I'd drunk two glasses of beer. I'd eaten barbecued meat and french fries and washed my sticky fingers in the women's room that smelled of backed-up drains. Hildie had asked point-blank if I'd ever been in love and I said yes I had; had I been hurt, Hildie asked, watching my face closely as if to determine if I told the truth, and I said yes, with lowered eyes, yes I'd been hurt. Hildie touched my wrist with her crimson fingernails-"Well, hon, don't let it happen again. The bastards!"

And later there came Eli, or Leo. His drifting assessing eyes. A rancher, Hildie called him. He'd asked me if I would like a ride back to the Economy Motel since he was going in that direction and I thanked him and explained I had my own car. A few minutes after I'd shut and locked my door in the Economy Motel there came a knock at the door and I opened it, though leaving the chain latch on, and it was Eli, or Leo, asking could he come inside, and I told him no; no, that isn't a good idea; asking then could he see me the next night, and politely I told him no; asking when could he see me, he'd like to see me, and quickly I told him no, no I can't, I'm here in Crescent because of my father, my father is dying please understand. After a pause the voice came, embarrassed-"Sure, I understand. I'm sorry."

In Crescent, I could become pregnant. Return to the East and have my father's child. That would balance the injustice, wouldn't it.

The interior of my eyelids throbbed. I hadn't realized my eyes were closed. I was breathing through my mouth like a spent boxer. I wondered if in the sun a blood vessel might swell and burst? An aneurysm? Waves of unreality moved upon me like cartoon clouds. My forehead and the nape of my neck were clammy with sweat. Perplexing unreality : there was a grandiloquent German term for this sensation that Vernor Matheius had once read aloud to me out of Heidegger's cobwebby prose, we'd laughed together at the word. Perplexing unreality ! It's all around us, Vernor said, bulging his eyes in a mimicry of paranoia, terror. Vernor had astonished his adoring professors by abandoning his Ph.D. dissertation and quitting philosophy altogether and enrolling in law school at the University of Chicago; we'd lost contact; I wouldn't hear from Vernor for twenty years; by which time he would have become a nationally prominent figure associated with the Children's Defense Fund in Washington, D.C. Perplexing unreality ! I laughed aloud in this silent stony place, wiping moisture from my eyes. I saw my own bones bleached white in the sun, a shimmering spectacle in the distance like a work of art. I saw my hat, my broken sunglasses, my long-sleeved shirt and shorts puffed with sand. I told myself Turn back now. Don't hurry, and don't panic. You're not lost .