Mark Thomas Deming
Act 1
Call it a day and call me
Willow Boy. Make the sky
the color of slow yellow road
and us the Kool-Aid blue
of my hands across you now. Find us
awash in the red infinitude
of a brown-bag zinfandel and slide
us through the curves in a silver
hulk of bumper hurtling towards Bovill.
We pretend we’re two fat boys
out for an easy afternoon ride
and I call you Chet which, to me,
sounds like a thousand acres of green spring
flannel on your back. We’ve
got four wheel drive but we won’t need it.
---Your fingers plowing my thighs.
Scene:
So Chet, I really must ask, was it you
who called Uncle Custer a martyr
in the days when Montana McCarthyism
killed Brautigan and Trout Fishing in America
went extinct, some say, for the best?
What about the Battle of New Orleans?
Nobody called Johnny Horton a pinko.
I’d like to meet the man who would, although
Jackson lived. I’d like to meet the man who’d say
Johnny Horton wasn’t more or less Trout Fishing
in America himself. But enough
of these foggy windows. Have I told you
of my latest dream? I bought you daisies,
like the yellow one you left me in a book.
The heads dropped off. Every one. I scooped them up
and carried them in my hands to your door.
Act 2
I no longer call you Chet. You
are not a fat boy. You are
The Lady of the Lentils, not because
of a soup you ate, but because you
were sown, grew, and were harvested,
and then you became the earth.
We danced that fall like glory bawling
on the breeze that blew your hair into
my mouth as we waltzed. Winter
blew into us that night and we drank it
and it made us wild. From then on you understood
why you call me Willow Boy. We are drunk
and have been since lunch. We have
always been drunk and we have always been
wild it has always been winter.
You snow on me every morning.
Soliloquy:
Lady. This I where we saw the elk
melt to the fringe of blizzard, where
you snorted the panting musk
and I dreamed war paint
on your sharp nipples. It is you we see
through this clouded glass, alone
in a void of wild field, dancing
in wailing winds. What is it
I say to recover you when I land
spinning in the ditch, drunk at the roadside
pointing back to where we know we’ve been
and will never remember being? Here,
in these canyons of ice
and the cold voices of pines, run
the drums that pounded in Utah
the day I discovered our bones.
Act 3
We sit at a table in Fuzzy’s Pub
in a town called Deary, not because
it looked like a nice place, but because it somehow
lured us, and not because it was the founder’s
last name, but because I would call you Deary
if I didn’t already call you The Lady of the Lentils.
We drink Heidleberg Beer which you’ve never
heard of and which I once substituted for fruit
in my diet for a year. On the wall is a poster
of two nondescript animal heads with a caption
saying: Optical illusion? Move and watch them
follow you. The bathroom door has no lock
but we don’t care, after all, we just peed
on the side of the highway. If we stay too long
we’ll become RV owners. I tell you I was once in love.
You move us to the sunny booth. It is night.
Scene:
Yes, one more, but I’m tired. Also, I have
no money, but we’ve got each other,
and if that won’t pay the bill, I’ve got a credit card.
These animals are either illusions or someone
has stolen their wildness and given it to the Salvation
Army where it will be made into soup. Yes,
I believe they’d follow us there too if they knew
the door wasn’t locked. Yes, I believe in chaos but only
in specific instances. This is something else.
Fate maybe–but not the fate they’re singing in this new country
pseudo-twang. This one’s a quarter’s worth of Ernest Tubb
and I’ll waltz across Texas with you but only if you grow wild there.
This air is cold but I’m glad we’ve left. I’m glad
you call me Willow Boy because I grow wild here,
down near the river, in the shade of the old cottonwood,
and tonight we’ll meet in the ancient rain.
As the curtain closes, we are still dancing.
A howl echoes through the theater.
It is still night. It is still winter.
