If All Else Fails (3 page)

When you got an
idea it came to you slowly, and I could see it coming for years, like a poet with promise or a
street improvement. I was your ship in a bottle and you kept stuffing messages into me. You had
missed out on the black football player but you were flexible. You told me that you were going to
take me home to meet your parents.

In the next breath,
you offered me a warrant for my arrest in the form of a marriage proposal. I agreed because my
vocabulary was limited. Besides, you paid the rent, eighty-five a month, no pets.

The next morning,
you began dressing me for the journey. You made me wear the moccasins that were too tight and put
plastic bead chokers around my neck. You made me wear the medicine bag you bought on sale at
Macy's. You
were specially insistent
that I look as much like the me of me that was me.

On the drive over,
as your car swerved through the back streets you once cruised in high school, I tried to hide in
your shoulder. I, being culturally shy, sought soft asylum but your arms were busy driving. There
was no place for me to hide. You were filled with a grim determination that made you seem like a
scientist counting drops of blood in the teeming cells of a corpse.

You were assaulting
the temple. I was your blasphemy. Your parents were the high priests. And we went to see where
they worshiped. ,

Your father was in
the backyard, aggravating crabgrass. The house looked like a house. It sat in an endless row of
houses. All of those houses looked like houses too. Your mother came to the door to meet us and
she looked like your mother.

She screamed with
delight when she saw you. She bent over backward to smile at me and the smile ricocheted off the
floor. She yelled like a football coach and your father, perhaps thinking the worst, came running
into the house, still carrying his garden trowel.

How many years
since they saw you last, I never knew; but your father threw his arms around you and would have
picked you up like a little girl his arms once held if you hadn't pushed him away. Their bones
were frail and their eyes filled deeply with tears. Their eyes were like tiny music boxes,
spilling each tear like a musical note.

They swept us into
the living room, cutting the air in front of our path with quick, surprised gestures. The way
they looked at you was the way people in family albums look, camera shy, frozen at some awkward
moment and pose, in front of a world that moves somewhere outside the frame of the
photograph.

You steered me
ahead of you like a shield, aiming me like
a weapon at the look in their eyes that remembered a little girl with yellow hair and
blue eyes. You held me up against them and you said, "This is the man I am going to
marry."

And your father was
so glad to see you, he shook my hand and tried very hard to listen closely enough to catch my
name. Your mother moved her lips together in a tight line and then smiled. She pulled me to her
and hugged me like her arms ached.

When she let me go,
my fingers had nowhere to go on the ends of my hands and I flopped loosely before them, smiling
Like an idiot, bobbing my head up and down for conver­sational apples.

Your mother whirled
you away to show you something that existed only as an excuse to talk to you alone. Your fa­ther
smiled at me fearfully. His eyes studied my accessories. The silence grew between us until
suddenly as if a spring had snapped, he began speaking in rapid-fire sentences, spit­ting out
thoughts Like Links of varnished sausages. We rap­idly discovered that we could talk about
anything but each other.

My answers were as
vague and as agreeable as his ques­tions. Your mother appeared at the doorway and called him
away. Your father excused himself and went into the kitchen with a glassy look on his
face.

I sat there
uncomfortably and couldn't help overhearing you arguing with them. You were yelling, using
phrases like social imperative, genetic-upgrading, cross-cultural rein­forcement, and rear-end
alignment. Your parents spoke not a word. You mistook this silence flowing within them as
dis­approval and your voice rose in pitch and became trium­phant. You sensed their untutored
dissent and it spurred you on. Your lecture was footnoted with swear words that once entertained
troopships. You sensed victory in sweet denial. But they took you by the arm, one on each side,
and together, the three of you, the two of them silent, you trium­phant in martyrdom, came toward
me.

Your father put his
hand on my shoulder and looked me in the eye. He said, "If my daughter loves you and wants to
marry you, then we welcome you into the family."

That was the last
time I ever saw you. Your parents ap­proved of me and you never forgave them. You never came back
to the apartment to pick up your things. Your father called me twice to see how we were doing.
Maybe he called again after that but I don't know. I had to leave when the rent came
due.

I went back to the
museum where I first met you. I searched all the abstractions for you. I thought I saw you in the
classical period. Just a glimpse but when I got closer it was only a stone woman a long-dead
Greek had given wings. I touched the statue's marble face and let my fingers scrape the smooth
surface of the wings.

The statue had your
face. It had your marble eyes. I climbed across the rope barrier and stood beneath your stone
wings. The shadow of your wings fell across my face like a cold satellite in the sky.

I climbed up the
stone folds of your garments and looked into your cold eyes. I saw it in your eyes, a song, a
martyr's song that said, "The fire next time." You never gave up. Those cold eyes of yours were
out there somewhere, looking for a Negro. Looking for a Negro to tuck under your stone wing. With
any luck, an ugly one.

And all my statues
have stone wings.

It was black,
black, and he turn all ways like a stuck snake and people all around saying they ain't have no
work. It came for him that six week go by and he ain't working and he just saying hell about it
all over.

He owe everybody.
He is bird naked and they knows it. He got a dime for the white trader and ten dollars for the
old man who works the chin game on the next tourist who comes round the bend. And, too, he owe
ten-dollar credits to old man name Backet 'cause it caught up with him and the last time he went
there Backet showed him how to go out the same door he come in, only faster.

"You son of bitch!"
yells Stonecloud, sitting down like poleaxed ballerina in the street. "You could have waited till
the tourist season! You know I'm good for it, you old prod­uct of stale dog heat!"

But Backet, he
remember flush time last year but it don't make him soft. And he don't give him nothing to drink
and tell him to go out and die like the dog he is or pay.

This put the by god
fix on Stonecloud 'cause he hungry and dirty, and looking all ways up and down, he don't see
nothing to come. His shoe got a big hole in it like it laughing at him and the cold rain is
chilling him on the body like a reptile dream.

"Lousy head hunker!
I rich as hell in tourist season!" Spit­ting old language of sparks and grumbling, he got up
and
began walking down the street. Up
above, with him not even having to look, he knows is the sky and it is being all wrong and the
season is six maybe seven week yet. And he know from empty pocket to empty pocket it no use to go
down to the port and wait for no ships to come. The charter ships with the green people wouldn't
be coming roaring out of the sky no way until the rains be got to stop. He know that like a
toothache on a callus on his soul. It such a hungry.

"That Backet, he
wait till I rich. Come tourists, I biscuit and gravy rich. I am virtue of Cadillac, full
four-wheeled and pocket heavy. Come tourists, I rich. I dog bark on his old man, Backet and
business." And he mutter to himself all time think the dog will be on the other roof like or not
when he rich.

As he walking on
down the street all time disgusted the sky seeing him so fly unzipped in the attitude, come
pouring out rain like eternal vigilance. It raining so hard it bounce hitting down.

"Oh lousy of all!"
moan Stonecloud feeling the bounce bounce of rain seeping down into his wet underbeing. Noth­ing
but for to keep on walking on past the stores, keeping the sharp eye for someone who owes him
something. But he find no one and it rain all over and his shoe laughingly tak­ing in water like
an old-time-fashion tax collection.

He stop in front of
a newsstand to duck under the awning and get out of the wet but government boy with plastic straw
dangling out of liquid concentrate of beefsteak dan­gling out of shirt pocket come banging up to
the counter like a angry hornet. He drop a handful of newstapes on counter and gives with the eye
like he asking maybe are you selling tickets to the RESURRECTION already. And gov­ernment boy
begin yelling as he is government, "Hey, you! This ain't no flophouse!"

So what happen is
Stonecloud shout right back and scorch
air with hot language and, 'cause he proud, he take a credit out of his pocket. It is his
lucky credit he won in a tumbling game that time he had many year ago, when he had chance to win
that funny boy in the three-day game in Aztol's ga­rage. He chicken out and refuse to bet last
credit and old Aztol, who all time thinking the pretty boy is woman as is all players but old
Hawkfoot who put up same for stake, win bet and funny boy, much to roar of roars when he find out
he been tacked up in sun and let to dry. So ever after, as he had had old Aztol beat, he had kept
lucky credit as protec­tion against funny boys. So now he take lucky credit and smash it, and
protection it provide, on counter like it being a fly to get smashed. And he grab up a newstape
and walk away with back up like a picket fence and head held high.

Course he get out
of sight of newsstand and government boy, he curse the saints of painted donkeys and the eggs of
their grandmothers and go all tight in face on account he don't have no newstape reader, so
newstape is worth having like hickey from poison snake. So he pitch newstape into street when he
is sure someone is looking at his extra extrav­agance, and newstape it get sucked up into rotors
of a pie wagon and goes into shreds. All which reminds him he is hungry enough to eat cookbook
and he hit head like a drunken burglar who has shut jimmied wall safe on his
shoe­laces.

He look and he look
into his memory and he can't re­member even one name of who owes him something. He spend so much
time try to forget who he owe money to him­self that he forget if anybody owe him.

So he stop in front
of a travel agency and drip rain and go to looking in at the moving window pictures. All the
planets are there in pictures with edges. Every picture has smiling green people or some kind of
other color people he don't even know name of, not mattering to him much, though, as once you see
one kind of color people they all look pretty
much alike. All these smiling people sitting around and run­ning and jumping and kidding
around in the bushes which are placed just so, so little kids can't come see who or how they are
kidding around. No worry on their faces and all the time acting like a nest of ants in a
sugarbowl. He think they tell each other too many jokes or been all hit in the head too many
times as he is surprised to see so much kidding around in one place. He chuckle in the neck and
think wicked that they have all caught the old IT in the middle and limp bow-legged, and it go up
and make oatmeal with lumps of their brains. But still they eat all the time and dance and kid
each other like it won't fall off from too much kidding around and it is all hell
depressing.

And it all disgust
him and he go down the street collect­ing a lake from his shoe comedy routine, flap, slosh, flap,
slosh, all the much hotter than before. He is feeling by now as hot as nine wicked cats in a dark
room.

Now Stonecloud
never steal. He gamble. He play loose with an ace. He drink like a parched horse, he chase women
when he got enough money to slow them down. He never steal. He never catch a woman who don't want
caught and he never steal.

So he go by a
storeful of shoes and he almost break a leg trying to walk past it by standing still. He look
through the front window like a guilty cat with feathers on his breath. He catch himself on the
throat and pull himself away and push himself on down the street, but his legs not convinced and
he know it.

The first step away
from store he takes he hit a puddle and he feel the splash through his shoe clear to his lap. It
is rain, cold rain like a funny boy's kisses, and his feet getting cold numb from hip on
down.

So he suck in his
bird-feather breath and he spin around like gravity pulling down an old sock and is pulled back
in front of the store windowful of shoes and burn slowly. All
the time he is thinking he could be beautiful from the feet
up.

The automatic clerk
is hunched on a table like somebody's old appendix operation. His eyebulbs are unlit and his
speaking crack dangles open like a bear snore. Stonecloud pop goes the weasel his eyes at the
temptation. There is sign on robot clerk showing how busy like a buried coffin is shoe store. The
sign say: FOR SERVICE, PLEASE ACTIVATE SWITCH 3 ON FRONT OF ROBO-CLERK. THANK YOU.