Day Out of Days (2 page)

When the man bends over to pick up the head in the basket he discovers it’s much heavier than he would have imagined. It must weigh fifty pounds or more. Dead weight. The head laughs then quickly stops itself, not wanting to anger the man; not wanting the man to think he’s being made fun of. The man hoists the basket up to his waist and carries the head a few yards on his hip, like a mother would carry an infant, then sets it down, panting and gasping. The head laughs in spite of itself and the man becomes angry, just as the head had anticipated. “What’s so funny?” demands the man but the head won’t answer. The man immediately storms off feeling that he’s been the brunt of some joke. The head calls out again in the most heartbreaking, plangent voice the man has ever heard. It stops him cold in his tracks. “You promised me you wouldn’t make that awful sound again!” the man screams.

“I’m sorry,” says the head, “but it’s the only way to get your attention.” The man walks reluctantly back to the head and stops in front of it. He feels now that he’s hooked on this head. He stares down at it. The head is silent again. The eyes remain closed and squinting tight. There seems to be no life in the head at all. The man knows different. “How did you get separated from your body?” asks the man point-blank. This is the question that’s been haunting him.

“I was beheaded,” says the head.

“How?” asks the man.

“By a gleaming silver saber,” says the head.

“But who held the saber? Who brought it down on your neck?”

“I never saw it coming,” says the head.

“But you must have known it was coming,” says the man.

“Yes, but it didn’t help.”

“What?” says the man.

“Knowing. Knowing didn’t help.”

“So, you have no idea who it might have been?” asks the man.

“I have many ideas but it doesn’t matter now.”

“Don’t you want to seek your vengeance?” asks the man. The head starts laughing and can’t stop. “Don’t laugh at me!” screams the man. The head stops. “I can’t stand that,” says the man. “All my life I’ve been laughed at.”

“I’m sorry,” says the head.

“I can’t carry you, that’s for sure. You’re way too heavy,” says the man and the head begins to weep. Tears roll out of the squinting eyes.

“Don’t do that,” says the man. “I can’t stand it if you do that.”

“You’re my only chance,” says the head, trying to control itself.

“You’re way heavier than I expected,” insists the man.

“Just try lifting the basket up to your shoulder. It’s much easier that way.”

“I can’t,” says the man.

“You can’t or you won’t?” asks the head.

“I can’t.”

“You must,” says the head.

“Why must I? I don’t even know you! You can’t just start ordering me around. I’m doing you a favor!”

“You owe it to yourself,” says the head.

“What!” exclaims the man, turning his back on the head altogether. “I’m just walking along here on Highway 70, minding my own business, like I do every Sunday afternoon about this time, and I happen to stumble across a head in a basket and now you’re telling me what I owe myself! You don’t even know me!”

“All the more reason,” says the head.

“All the more reason, what!” shouts the man.

“All the more reason you should take it upon yourself.”

“I’m not following you,” says the man.

“You owe me your life,” says the head and the man freezes.

“What?” says the man.

“You heard me,” says the head. “If you walk away and abandon me, you will pay the price,” and now the voice of the head has dropped several octaves and taken on a gravity that is truly shocking to the man’s central nervous system. He can feel the highway tremble beneath him. His breath quickens and his mouth goes dry.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks the man, his voice quavering like grass in the wind.

“Turn your back on me and you will find out,” says the head. The man stands there staring up and down the nearly empty highway. He feels as though his knees are about to buckle. Far off, in the village he can hear the chimes of the Episcopal church playing “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” He knows the tune well. He remembers being a choirboy in that same church. A lime-green Camaro goes flashing by. Bald teenagers with snakes tattooed around their mouths are yelling insults at him out the windows. A bottle of Coors Light goes whizzing past his cheekbone. The man now begins to feel as though
he
is the abandoned one and not the head. He feels as though he could make the same terrible mournful moan that the head was making but nothing comes out. No sound at all, just a terrified rasping like a lost animal. The man wonders how he could be so suddenly separated from his former life, his former self. And then an even deeper terror wells up that he can’t remember ever having a former life. Who was he, first thing this morning after coffee, stepping out the door on the way toward this Sunday stroll?

“All right!” says the man abruptly, as though to shake himself out of this terrible doubt. “I’ll try it, I’ll try carrying you, just for a while,” and he hoists the head in the basket up to his hip again and then with a tremendous grunt heaves the basket up to his shoulder where he teeters precariously like an Olympic weight lifter. The head mimics the sound of a gigantic crowd roaring approval. It sounds absolutely realistic. The man has the impression again that
the head is making fun of him but proceeds nevertheless, weaving with the weight of it; basket on his shoulder going in the direction the head has proclaimed.

“You’re doing very well,” the head says sincerely. “I’m proud of you.”

“Don’t try to butter me up,” says the man. “You don’t even know me.”

“I know you better than you know yourself,” says the head.

“Who are you!” demands the man.

“Never mind about that. Just keep following the road.” The man is wobbling badly. The cords in his neck are burning from the weight. His sides are heaving. He’s not used to this kind of labor. He’s grown accustomed to a soft, passive existence where nothing happens, nothing counts; where no single day ever stands out more than any other single day; where dreaming and waking all run together; where all the people in his life have disappeared and his main pursuits are napping and watching Mexican soap operas cast with dark-haired weeping beauties and the fantasies they evoke. He suddenly collapses under a concrete viaduct and drops the basket beside him. The head rolls out and comes to rest with the black gaping hole of the severed neck sticking straight up. The man stares into the hole, gasping for air, and listens to the voice of the head speaking very calmly: “We just need to make a right turn here, after the bridge, and then follow the irrigation ditch. It’s not very far.”

“I can’t,” protests the man. “I’ve had enough now! I’m going to leave you here.” The head screams and begins to weep again and the sound of it makes the man’s whole body quake. He feels as though he’s been struck by lightning.

“Don’t do that, please,” says the man. “I’m begging you. I can’t take it. I’ve told you that. The sound of your weeping and moaning reminds me of everything I want to forget. Everything I’ve put to death in order to go on.”

“Then, finish carrying me to the lake,” says the head.

“I don’t think I’m physically capable,” says the man. “It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that—I can’t.”

“Then, turn me over at least,” says the head.

“What?”

“Turn me right side up.”

“I’m not going to touch you,” says the man.

“Just nudge me with your knee.”

“What?”

“Nudge me with your knee. I’ll roll right over.” The man musters his courage and nudges the black neck of the head with his knee and the head rolls over, right side up, just as the head implied. “Now put me back in the basket, please.”

“I’m not going to touch you!” repeats the man. “You keep talking me into these things against my will.”

“Are you afraid that if you touch me you might disappear?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” asks the man.

“You might cross the line? Pass out and never return to your body?”

“You’re the one with no body,” says the man.

“Exactly,” says the head. “Now, just grab me by the hair and drop me back in the basket, please.”

“No!” shouts the man. “I’m not grabbing you by the hair! It would be like taking hold of a handful of snakes.” Again, the head releases his doleful wail and, before the man even realizes what he’s doing, he’s snatched the head up by the hair and plopped it back in the basket.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” says the head. “I’m deeply grateful.”

“You’re like a spoiled child,” says the man indignantly.

“I’m like nothing you’ve ever come across,” says the head.

“Well, it’s nothing to be proud of,” says the man.

“Pick me up once more,” says the head. “And this time lift me all the way up to the top of your head and carry me up there.”

“Are you crazy?” says the man. “I can’t possibly lift you all the
way up to the top of my head. I could barely carry you on my hip.”

“Yes, you can,” says the head. “Just make one tremendous effort. Make an effort like you’ve never made before in your entire life. As though it were a matter of life and death.”

“I don’t have it in me,” says the man. “Those days are long gone.”

“Stand up and give it a whirl,” says the head. “Be a man.”

“Are you intentionally insulting me?” asks the man.

“I’m offering you a chance to be.”

“I’ve got nothing to prove,” says the man.

“Then go away and leave me alone,” says the head abruptly.

“That’s what I’ve been trying to do all along,” says the man. “Since the moment I met you.”

“Do it,” says the head. “See if you can. Just walk away.”

“You threatened me before. You said I would pay the price if I turned my back on you.”

“There’ll be no repercussions,” says the head. “Believe me. Just walk away.”

And now the man feels more alone than he’s ever felt in his life. A deep, crushing aloneness that presses down through his chest. It’s the very same feeling he’s been trying to avoid since he was a little boy. The feeling he shakes off every morning when he stumbles toward his toothbrush and every night when he clicks off the light. Without thinking, he reaches down and grabs the handles of the wicker basket and with a mighty heave swings the head up to his shoulder and then, with a final grunt, manages to place the basket on top of his head. He has no idea how he’s accomplished this all at once but feels suddenly all right about himself; as though the sun has just popped out from behind the clouds.

“Now we’re going to look like a man with two heads staggering down the highway,” says the man to the head. “One on top of the other.”

“We
are
a man with two heads,” says the head brightly from his lofty perch.

“No,” says the man. “We’re two separate things. You don’t belong to me. I just found you by the side of the road. Don’t forget that.”

“Whatever you like,” says the head. “Keep straight ahead. I can see the lake from here.”

“What’s it look like?” asks the man.

“Flat. Green. Absolutely peaceful.”

“Is it what you were hoping for?” says the man.

“We’ll see when we get there,” answers the head.

I now have an almost constant swirling chatter going on inside my head from dawn to dusk. I never could have foreseen this when I was five, playing with sticks in the dirt, but I guess it’s been slowly accumulating over all these sixty-some years; growing more intense, less easy to ignore. I wake up with it. I feed chickens with it. I drive tractors with it. I make coffee with it. I fry eggs with it. I ride horses with it. I go to bed with it. I sleep with it. It is my constant companion.

Sometimes I’m casually talking to people; looking them earnestly in the eye; just people in town, down at the Jot ‘Em Down grocery store buying the
Racing Form
, dog food, half-and-half; wondering if they too might have a constant chattering going on inside
their
heads. We could be talking about anything; the breakdown of the gray filly in the Kentucky Derby, the rising price of corn; it doesn’t matter, I continue to wonder the whole time. I
have no idea what it’s really like with other people. Actually, I have no idea what it’s really like with me, when you get right down to it. I’m fishing in the dark.

Sometimes, though, I can clearly hear voices I don’t recognize at all. Strangers. I’ve never heard them before. Voices conjured from water running in the sink, gurgling coffee, pissing in the creek, bacon frying, distant moaning highway trucks. They just appear; volunteer themselves, uninvited. I’m eavesdropping like—listening at the door to another room. Sometimes, they drop way off into the background and vanish. Something else takes their place. Some tone comes up. Some rhythm or other. Some tune. Sometimes, pure silence and my heart sings. Just like that it can happen. You’re standing there in a blue field and everything suddenly stops. Miraculous. Then it all starts up again. Churning away.

The actor wakes up. It’s 6:45 a.m. Mountain Time according to his Indiglo Timex. He’s staring at the sun-faded color blowup of the Grand Canyon mounted above the TV in a cheap frame. The picture’s warped. The wall it hangs on is phony pink adobe. Actually, it’s sheetrock with pink crud smeared on it like curdled Pepto-Bismol. The “Fun Things to Do in Williams” brochure propped up by the lamp on the bedside table, accompanied by yet another dizzying helicopter view of the deep gorge, reminds him that he has spent the night at the “Gateway to the Grand Canyon.” The giant sun is just beginning to burn through the one window. The High Desert peeks in; yucca and candelaria. Now he remembers. He’s on his way to L.A. to finish up some looping on a film he shot last summer. A film he cares nothing about anymore and can’t remember why he wanted to do in the first place. A film he can’t even remember the title of. Is that true? It must be, he says to himself. Yes, it’s true. I can’t remember the title. I have no idea. No inclination. He swings his very white legs out from under the Navajo print blanket and just sits on the edge of the mattress staring out the window for a while. He’s trying to adjust. His eyes. His breath. He sees a low red bluff in the distance turning slowly to blaze orange. A crow flies languidly past. He pictures the same old route he’s always taken east to west; down through Kansas City on 35, cutting across to Wichita, down to Tucumcari, picking up
40 West, paralleling the fabled and long-abandoned Route 66—the highway he grew up on. The highway that shaped his youth. He stands slowly, hoping his trick knee doesn’t suddenly give out on him. He remembers the last news item on TV before he fell asleep. It just pops into his head. A very attractive blonde reporter with flashing teeth all excited about Special Forces closing in on Osama bin Laden somewhere near the Hindu Kush. Supposed sightings of an extremely tall figure dressed as a woman, riding a donkey over the mountain pass. Very biblical. Suspiciously vivid. They were sure they had him cornered. The CIA had reliable contacts, they said. They’d infiltrated the villages. He walks to the TV and flicks it on then heads to the narrow bathroom and throws water on his face. His face—He can’t stand his face anymore. Pathetic—no longer young. A self-pitying shroud around the eyes and forehead. Widow’s peak receding dramatically. Teeth (which never were his best asset) have grown gray and his disappearing gum line gives them the aura of wax fangs or an Appalachian miner’s mouth. There’s a stale breath stench too, which is a bad sign, he thinks. (He’s always looking for signs.) He wonders if maybe it’s an indication of some deeper internal disorder; something to do with the liver or lower intestine or maybe worse. What could that be? He shudders to think. There’s a sharp voice from behind him that makes him jump and turn around. A punctilious female voice. He turns off the water to listen then remembers he’d left the TV on. He listens while he brushes his teeth, bearing down on the plaque ferociously. A woman is being interviewed by Larry King. What is it about Larry King’s voice, he asks himself, that’s so irritating? Something nasal in the treble clef. King is asking some hotshot woman reporter if it’s true that she got a face-lift because a rival news network had offered her a better position if she improved her looks. She confesses that she went along with this proposition and doesn’t regret it one bit. She likes her new face, her new career. He turns the water back on. He spits in the sink, rinses, and turns the faucet off. A semi roars down Highway 40, right outside the window.
He goes back to the TV; changes channels searching for the bin Laden story but finds nothing but daytime talk shows, soap operas, cooking shows, Christian gospel shows, shows featuring pathetic victims of their own bad judgment, weeping and shameful screaming shows, repentance shows, violent cartoon shows, NASCAR shows, pornography shows, Spanish-language melodramas with gorgeous Mexican women in catfights shedding real tears, gay wrestling shows, knife collectors’ auction shows, cheap-jewelry shows, Bible history shows, fat-people shows, diet shows, dog grooming shows, big-game shows with Cape buffalo being blown away on Texas ranches and crashing into the Brazos, motocross shows with spectacular wipeouts, flying burning metal in slow motion, windsurfing wrecks, deliberate car crashes into buildings and brick walls, gas fires blazing but nothing at all about a mysterious tall figure dressed as a woman riding a donkey across the Hindu Kush—the most wanted man on the face of the earth. It makes him want to quit show business altogether.