Adrian Pearson - Cow Country

“No you ….”

“No, Charlie, you ! Those other days are over!”

“Oh, right,” I said and threw my duffel bag over my shoulder. “I almost forgot.”

Tired and hungry from the exertions of our respective journeys through time and space, she and I stood before the cafeteria entrance under the breathless banner welcoming us to the event.

“That’s a nice banner,” Gwen said.

I nodded and thanked her.

“And I like your costume,” I said.

“I am Hiawatha.”

“Yes, I know. It’s big of you. I mean, I really appreciate you coming tonight.”

“My pleasure.”

And here she laughed:

“An amazing pleasure indeed!”

“You mean figuratively , of course?”

“No literally. Room 2-C was everything I’d hoped it would be.” Gwen was still holding the door gingerly and waiting for me to enter. “But it was also a lot of work. It is never easy to overcome long-held prejudices — to be open to new experiences — and this took quite a bit of exertion on my part. But it was certainly worth the effort. I am exhausted but exhilarated. I feel newly enlightened. The world has just become a slightly more complicated place. And boy am I hungry …!”

With these words the two of us entered the cafeteria where the Christmas party was already approaching its climax.

* * *

By the time I stepped into the Christmas extravaganza on March twentieth, the formal festivities had concluded, fine liquor was flowing like milk and honey, and the many faculty and staff of the college, dressed in rich and elaborate costumes, had taken to milling about the packed room with their various drinks in hand; or sitting at the crowded tables; or lying atop the massage benches over by the poinsettia display. The room had been decorated exactly as I’d envisioned, and seeing all the pieces in their rightful places I rejoiced as if it were my own personal triumph: in the far corner was the stage; on the stage was the Christmas tree; next to the tree was a rocking chair for Santa; behind the chair was an elf’s house; and protruding from this house was a chimney. Around the perimeter of the room countless stockings were strewn about, one per attendee, with each employee’s name written lovingly in glue and glitter. Meanwhile, dangling from the very center of the room, and spinning just as slowly and relentlessly as the world itself, was a disco strobe casting a million pieces of reflected light around the cafeteria. The wet bar was buzzing. The roulette table was crowded. Along an entire wall of the cafeteria one could take in the enormous tri-colored flag of incipient democracy — all thirteen stripes and forty-seven stars — while on the wall immediately across from it, occupying the same amount of space but with less unity of purpose, was this flag’s perfect converse: the diverse quilt of nationhood representing the lesser polities of the world.

In the lively and chaotic scene I took heart that our faculty and staff had turned out in costume and were mingling in unprecedented historical combinations: a southern plantation owner with his northern industrialist counterpart; a brakeman and a strikebreaker; a dowager and a missionary; even John Jay and Alexander Hamilton appeared to have made amends at a busy table where they were now bemoaning the subtleties of query-writing and the hopelessness of finding a reliable literary agent. From one historical era to the next I witnessed the progeny of a future now past. The robber baron and the indentured servant. The carpetbagger. The racketeer. A woman in whalebone bodice. The tarred and feathered scalawag. A slave driver with a whip. The pilgrim. The pioneer. A Sandanista. One of the reference librarians had painted a scarlet “TBD” across her cheek, while another followed behind her bearing a cardboard pillory. A sharecropper was driving his ox. A flapper danced the Charleston. Two behavioral scientists performed in blackface. Even the cross-dressing horticulturist had gotten into the act by impersonating a straight-laced and very dignified presidential candidate. Inspired, I headed to the men’s room with my duffel bag where I slipped into my own costume for the night: the jeans and boots and chaps and Stetson hat that would mark me as a New Mexico sheriff on patrol. When this was done I took out the holster and cinched it around my waist. Then I pinned my sheriff’s badge to my shirt. Delicately, so as not to release the safety from its locked position, I slipped the borrowed pistol into the holster.

“Just be very careful with that!” Ethel had told me when I informed her of my latest costume idea. She was lending me an antique pistol that a beloved grandfather had bequeathed her in his will. “A loaded gun is no joke, Charlie. I don’t care if it is Christmas! I don’t care how much unity and goodwill you’ve assembled in that cafeteria…!”

“Don’t worry,” I said. “Your pistol will stay right here in my holster. It will not go off — I promise!”

“Well, you know the rule…never point a firearm unless you intend to use it!”

I laughed into the mirror.

“No really,” said the creative writing instructor to Maude. “If you bring that condom to the laundromat, it damn well better get put on…!”

I washed my face and took another pill. Now my costume was complete. I was ready for the masquerade that I had spent so much of my life planning. Taking it all in, I felt the joy of a plan coming together and the relief of a legacy that was finally finding its fruition. At last I could see the fruits of the seeds that I had planted. The pulp of my tireless preparations.

“And what are you supposed to be?” Stan asked me in front of the mirror. Behind him I could see the bathroom door closing to the party outside.

“What am I supposed to be? Why something entirely, of course!”

“No, not that. I meant the costume.”

“Oh that. I’m a sheriff. From New Mexico. And you?”

“He’s a cuckold,” said Ethel. “But a good one!”

And she gave her husband a playful kiss on the cheek.

“That’s great, Stan. It’s great that you can have a sense of humor about such things.”

“What else can I do? And besides — it’s okay now. Ethel and I are back together. And with the restraining order hanging over him, that bastard Luke can’t even poke his toe out from behind the bar he’s tending!”

I nodded and made my way through the crowd with my duffel bag.

On one side of the room was Rusty and his team of animal scientists dressed as cowboys. On the other side sat Gwen and her fellow neophytes in Indian attire.

Gwen laughed out loud when she saw me in full costume.

“Let me guess…” she said. “You’re a sheriff!”

“Correct.”

“From Arizona?”

“Not quite. That would be premature. I’m from New Mexico.”

“I see. That’s probably prudent. And you know what all of us are, right?”

She pointed to the side of the cafeteria where her acolytes were sitting.

“To the casual eye,” I ventured, “it looks like all of you are dressed as a gathering of native peoples….”

“You’re close…!”

“An antediluvian village?”

“Closer…!”

“I give up.”

“We’re Indians. Get it, Charlie? Indians !”

“I get it. Though there is definitely some irony in that. And besides, you shouldn’t call them Indians anymore, you know. They’re now more rightly referred to as American Indians, or even better, Native Americans ….”