(no subject)
Aug. 10th, 2005 07:50 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
zarahemlaSometimes I have no idea what crack I'm smoking. I still have to get out a Rory/Jess (UGH!! ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
winter_baby, will you write it for me?) for the gilmore girls ficathon, but I saw the episode last night with her and Logan making out at the vow renewal, and I so want to write something about how he has a fetish for girls who wear suits. ;)
Anyway! This is formosca, and she probably won't even understand it, because who the hell besides me even READS Cormac McCarthy, much less has to fanfic about it? I don't even understand myself sometimes.
So, yeah.
My site is down; I do believe that Cyberpixels has, without notice, absconded with my money and quit doing business. They better not be charging me any more, is all I have to say. Not to mention that my bank account will be shut down in 3 weeks, ha ha. So for now, I guess if you want my fic, you have to scrounge around on the internet for it. Sorry. Drop a line if you have a webhost you like, that's, you know, cheap and stuff.
Title: Hell of an obituary
Author: Zara Hemla (shutupmulder@yahoo.com)
Fandom: The Border Trilogy (Cities of the Plain)
Rating: R
Summary: Lacey has to follow it back, to find out what happened. Occurs after the events of "Cities of the Plain." For the free verse ficathon.
Hell Of An Obituary
by Zara Hemla
//It's a telegram to the gut, and at our spoons of watermelon
we sit idle, mooning about a revolution.//
On Sunday is when he sees the obituary. His father hands it to him without comment and picks his hat up and leaves the breakfast table. As he stomps out the door Lacey stares without speaking at the three spare lines of text.
JOHN GRADY COLE, 19, killed in Juarez, Mexico. Funeral will be held on Tuesday morning in Dallas.
Dallas of course as John Gradys father has decamped there and his mother has sold the ranch. And the last letter Lacey had from him was six months ago and only mentioned the outfit he was working for and the beautiful horses on the spread.
Lacey sets the paper down carefully next to his plate. He pushes his chair back and he goes out to his father and they finish putting the hay up in the morning and riding fence in the afternoon. Evening comes and he is at a crick by himself when the sun is going down and he slides down off of Blackie and crouches down as if gutshot and cries into the water, gulping like a child and staring at a big rock in the crick, how the water goes around it and around and around.
***
Lacey does not go to the funeral. He is not sure where in Dallas it might be and there is no point in seeing John Gradys waxen face and slick, funeral-combed hair. Also there is no point in facing John Gradys father and saying how John Grady asked him to go down to the new outfit with him to help him break horses. And how Lacey'd said no, no thanks, because of two reasons and one was his father and all the help around the ranch. But the othern was the girl in Mexico and how last time they had been together the girl had come between them.
Also there was the little matter of prison. Lacey'd known at the time how John Grady drifted souther and souther, meaning to get himself as close to Mexico, or into it, as possible. And Lacey had, at the time, had no intention of ever entering Mexico again. Mexico was where the boy had been shot by soldiers. And where the worst beating of Laceys life had occurred. Nosir, not going back there.
But what had happened in Juarez? Lacey cant forget it. Was it like what the boy had gone through? Lacey still sees at night sometimes the way they had dragged that boy out to the flatland and shot him. Had it been like that? Or was it something else, something even uglier, something that maybe John Grady had brought on himself?
He cant forget. He cant stop thinking about it. And so in spite of all the swearing he had done three years ago he talks to his father and saddles his horse and digs out the letter that John Grady had sent him.
McGovern. Thats the outfit. And it is near Fort Bliss. Lacey swings into the saddle and heads south.
***
It takes him two weeks to find McGoverns outfit and meet Billy Parham. Parham is perhaps ten years older than Lacey and very serious like McGovern himself. When Lacey asks about Juarez Parhams mouth tightens up for a moment before he starts to talk. Cowboys way is not to talk about your friends. But the story that Parham tells, between scuffs of boots at the bunkhouse floor, is not a surprise.
It was a whore over to the White Lake in Juarez. An epileptica. Understand?
Lacey doesnt understand exactly but he nods. Go on.
Epileptica, says Parham, crudely mocking what Lacey now sees is a seizure. Pretty but stupid. Had a pimp name of Eduardo. The pimp wanted the girl too -- here Parham pauses and spits -- or at least he wanted what he couldnt have.
Did John Grady pay for her?
A few times that I know of. He advanced a hundred bucks off McGovern to have her. He said -- he was gonna marry her.
Damn stubborn fool. Lacey shakes his head, unsurprised. John Grady had been like that. Somehow, he had been the marrying kind, the old honorable breed of cowboy that wanted to take care of whores instead of just fucking them.
Nineteen years old and already an old man, says Parham. Lacey and him share a long look and Parham seems to understand everything without talking, which Lacey appreciates.
Slowly, Parham continues: There was ... the man who ran the pimp. Who ran the White Lake. He warned me it would come.
That the pimp would fight John Grady for the girl?
Yeah. Told me to keep John Grady away from her. Which I hope you dont blame me for.
Lacey smiles bitterly. No one could keep John Grady from being where he wanted to be.
He was a stubborn sumbitch.
Yeah.
It came out this way: John Grady went to get the girl and didnt get her -- Eduardo had cut her throat and dumped her in the river. John Grady went to the police and saw her dead body and then he went after Eduardo.
They met in an alley, says Parham, and sliced each other to ribbons. John Grady survived him but not for long. He only lived a few minutes after I got there. His gut was tore through.
Oh, says Lacey. He looks around at McGovern's clean bunkhouse, thinks about asking for a job. He isnt no miracle horsebreaker but he could get a solid job if he wanted. Could work off John Gradys hundred dollars and then go home.
They took him back to Dallas, says Parham reflectively. He looks guilty and sad and Lacey realizes that Parham blames himself. Probably blames himself for John Gradys dog-stubbornness, for not knowing how to stop a blind love for a sick, stupid whore.
I want to see her, he says to Parham. Where is she?
Parham looks surprised. But why, he asks. How come?
Lacey thinks about it for a minute. Then he says, maybe I want to see if I'll fall in love with her too. He stares at Parham until the man drops his eyes. Parham nods slowly after awhile. You were boys together, he says. I understand you wanting to see her.
* * *
Lacey eats with the hands in their spare bunkhouse, remembering the food he and John Grady used to eat on the long trips driving cattle on Don Héctor's outfit. How the sun would glare down on their tinware and how their spoons would shake in their tired fingers. It seems like years ago that time when they were boys.
When darkness falls Parham starts up an old pickup truck and they rattle down the road into Juarez. The old Mexican town looks soft in lamplight, all its edges blurred. Lacey looks hard, watching the walls as if hed be able to see a bloodstain.
She still works at the White Lake, says Parham. She has a kind of . . .
Notoriety?
Uh huh. She is a kind of legend here now. I have heard the local women call her a bruja. They say she tells the future in her fits.
Lacey has no reply. This idea of witchery is profoundly Mexican and something he wishes to avoid. He stares out the trucks dusty window until they reach the White Lake. It is an old building, sagging about the corners. A group of three cowboys is staggering out of it with their boots stomping tattoos onto the porch boards. They are singing a song in Spanish.
Lacey suddenly feels like crying again so he shoves the truck door open and begins to walk up to the building. He hears Parham behind him and together they push through the doors into the room.
Someone is playing a tune on a very old piano. There are -- of course -- mirrors everywhere. Everything that isnt occupied is dusty but most every place is occupied. Men everywhere are groping women and cuddling women and slapping down money on the bar to take women upstairs.
Dont misunderstand. Lacey has been in his share of whorehouses and slapped down his share of money on the bar. This scene is not something that frightens him or upsets him but still he is hit by the profound tawdriness of it. Then he notices a girl in white who is staring at him -- no, at Parham -- with a stricken look on her face.
That's her, says Parham, again unnecessarily. Lacey has known her -- the witch, the epileptic -- from the moment he saw her.
She is not beautiful or even good looking but she does have a lot of very black hair and an innocent expression that John Grady would have found appealing. Her dress makes her look like a bride. Lacey hates her. He walks up to her without waiting for Parham who is saying something behind him.
How much, he says to her. How much.
Que? She looks very confused and Lacey curses, biting off the words. He fumbles in his pocket for his money.
How much. How much. He shoves the stack of pesos at her and she says something, looking at him.
What are you *doing*, he hears Parham say as she counts a handful of coins out and gives him the rest back. Cleareyed she looks at him and motions with her hands. He follows her upstairs and behind him hears Parham tell the bartender to give him a drink while he waits for his fucking crazy friend.
This is a hell of an obituary, he says at Laceys back but Lacey forgoes a reply.
* * *
Upstairs in a little room there is no window, only candlelight, and Lacey is drowning in the stale Juarez air. He sits on the bed and jerks with his chin.
Lets see what he was getting, he says and she takes off her white dress. She is thin enough that he can count her ribs. Thin like a child. She watches him with her hands relaxed at her sides and then says something else in Spanish.
I dont speak Spanish, he says. So just shut up.
She says something else but when he doesnt reply she seems to give up. Just stands there.
So what was he paying for. I wonder, says Lacey. What did he want to keep. He motions to her and she turns around slowly. She is dark skinned and her nipples are brown and her hair is long and shes nothing he has not seen before.
But then the young look of her is gone it fades off her face and suddenly she looks to Lacey like a saint from a church. Young in years but old in experience and seen more than a regular person could fit in a lifetime. She just closes her eyes and stands there and waits.
John Grady, says Lacey. Was my brother. She opens her eyes and looks at him. They are brown but have gold in them too.
Su hermano, she says. Mi marido. Then she says something else that he does not follow. Its a long speech and he lets her make it and when shes done he stands up and holds out his hand.
I dont hate you, he says. I thought I would hate you.
She smiles at him then and says again, Hermano, taking his hand and squeezing it. As he leaves and closes the door he hears the slow creak of her sitting on the bed and the soft sound of her crying.
* * *
Parham is waiting downstairs. On the ride back to the ranch Lacey can tell he wants to ask but doesnt want to hear the answer.
I didnt hate her, Lacey says to him. I wanted to but I didnt.
Thats good, says Parham. Lifes too short to hate people and besides none of it was her fault. John Grady would have her of course in spite of everything. By the end she barely mattered.
I know, says Lacey. He was a good man but sometimes so stupid.
Yeah.
Parham invites him to stay in the bunkhouse overnight and have breakfast with the hands again and Lacey accepts. Its good to be with working men again and this is a life that Lacey understands.
Thank you, he says to Parham, who nods.
--the end--
winter_baby, will you write it for me?) for the gilmore girls ficathon, but I saw the episode last night with her and Logan making out at the vow renewal, and I so want to write something about how he has a fetish for girls who wear suits. ;)Anyway! This is for
mosca, and she probably won't even understand it, because who the hell besides me even READS Cormac McCarthy, much less has to fanfic about it? I don't even understand myself sometimes. So, yeah.
My site is down; I do believe that Cyberpixels has, without notice, absconded with my money and quit doing business. They better not be charging me any more, is all I have to say. Not to mention that my bank account will be shut down in 3 weeks, ha ha. So for now, I guess if you want my fic, you have to scrounge around on the internet for it. Sorry. Drop a line if you have a webhost you like, that's, you know, cheap and stuff.
Title: Hell of an obituary
Author: Zara Hemla (shutupmulder@yahoo.com)
Fandom: The Border Trilogy (Cities of the Plain)
Rating: R
Summary: Lacey has to follow it back, to find out what happened. Occurs after the events of "Cities of the Plain." For the free verse ficathon.
Hell Of An Obituary
by Zara Hemla
//It's a telegram to the gut, and at our spoons of watermelon
we sit idle, mooning about a revolution.//
On Sunday is when he sees the obituary. His father hands it to him without comment and picks his hat up and leaves the breakfast table. As he stomps out the door Lacey stares without speaking at the three spare lines of text.
JOHN GRADY COLE, 19, killed in Juarez, Mexico. Funeral will be held on Tuesday morning in Dallas.
Dallas of course as John Gradys father has decamped there and his mother has sold the ranch. And the last letter Lacey had from him was six months ago and only mentioned the outfit he was working for and the beautiful horses on the spread.
Lacey sets the paper down carefully next to his plate. He pushes his chair back and he goes out to his father and they finish putting the hay up in the morning and riding fence in the afternoon. Evening comes and he is at a crick by himself when the sun is going down and he slides down off of Blackie and crouches down as if gutshot and cries into the water, gulping like a child and staring at a big rock in the crick, how the water goes around it and around and around.
***
Lacey does not go to the funeral. He is not sure where in Dallas it might be and there is no point in seeing John Gradys waxen face and slick, funeral-combed hair. Also there is no point in facing John Gradys father and saying how John Grady asked him to go down to the new outfit with him to help him break horses. And how Lacey'd said no, no thanks, because of two reasons and one was his father and all the help around the ranch. But the othern was the girl in Mexico and how last time they had been together the girl had come between them.
Also there was the little matter of prison. Lacey'd known at the time how John Grady drifted souther and souther, meaning to get himself as close to Mexico, or into it, as possible. And Lacey had, at the time, had no intention of ever entering Mexico again. Mexico was where the boy had been shot by soldiers. And where the worst beating of Laceys life had occurred. Nosir, not going back there.
But what had happened in Juarez? Lacey cant forget it. Was it like what the boy had gone through? Lacey still sees at night sometimes the way they had dragged that boy out to the flatland and shot him. Had it been like that? Or was it something else, something even uglier, something that maybe John Grady had brought on himself?
He cant forget. He cant stop thinking about it. And so in spite of all the swearing he had done three years ago he talks to his father and saddles his horse and digs out the letter that John Grady had sent him.
McGovern. Thats the outfit. And it is near Fort Bliss. Lacey swings into the saddle and heads south.
***
It takes him two weeks to find McGoverns outfit and meet Billy Parham. Parham is perhaps ten years older than Lacey and very serious like McGovern himself. When Lacey asks about Juarez Parhams mouth tightens up for a moment before he starts to talk. Cowboys way is not to talk about your friends. But the story that Parham tells, between scuffs of boots at the bunkhouse floor, is not a surprise.
It was a whore over to the White Lake in Juarez. An epileptica. Understand?
Lacey doesnt understand exactly but he nods. Go on.
Epileptica, says Parham, crudely mocking what Lacey now sees is a seizure. Pretty but stupid. Had a pimp name of Eduardo. The pimp wanted the girl too -- here Parham pauses and spits -- or at least he wanted what he couldnt have.
Did John Grady pay for her?
A few times that I know of. He advanced a hundred bucks off McGovern to have her. He said -- he was gonna marry her.
Damn stubborn fool. Lacey shakes his head, unsurprised. John Grady had been like that. Somehow, he had been the marrying kind, the old honorable breed of cowboy that wanted to take care of whores instead of just fucking them.
Nineteen years old and already an old man, says Parham. Lacey and him share a long look and Parham seems to understand everything without talking, which Lacey appreciates.
Slowly, Parham continues: There was ... the man who ran the pimp. Who ran the White Lake. He warned me it would come.
That the pimp would fight John Grady for the girl?
Yeah. Told me to keep John Grady away from her. Which I hope you dont blame me for.
Lacey smiles bitterly. No one could keep John Grady from being where he wanted to be.
He was a stubborn sumbitch.
Yeah.
It came out this way: John Grady went to get the girl and didnt get her -- Eduardo had cut her throat and dumped her in the river. John Grady went to the police and saw her dead body and then he went after Eduardo.
They met in an alley, says Parham, and sliced each other to ribbons. John Grady survived him but not for long. He only lived a few minutes after I got there. His gut was tore through.
Oh, says Lacey. He looks around at McGovern's clean bunkhouse, thinks about asking for a job. He isnt no miracle horsebreaker but he could get a solid job if he wanted. Could work off John Gradys hundred dollars and then go home.
They took him back to Dallas, says Parham reflectively. He looks guilty and sad and Lacey realizes that Parham blames himself. Probably blames himself for John Gradys dog-stubbornness, for not knowing how to stop a blind love for a sick, stupid whore.
I want to see her, he says to Parham. Where is she?
Parham looks surprised. But why, he asks. How come?
Lacey thinks about it for a minute. Then he says, maybe I want to see if I'll fall in love with her too. He stares at Parham until the man drops his eyes. Parham nods slowly after awhile. You were boys together, he says. I understand you wanting to see her.
* * *
Lacey eats with the hands in their spare bunkhouse, remembering the food he and John Grady used to eat on the long trips driving cattle on Don Héctor's outfit. How the sun would glare down on their tinware and how their spoons would shake in their tired fingers. It seems like years ago that time when they were boys.
When darkness falls Parham starts up an old pickup truck and they rattle down the road into Juarez. The old Mexican town looks soft in lamplight, all its edges blurred. Lacey looks hard, watching the walls as if hed be able to see a bloodstain.
She still works at the White Lake, says Parham. She has a kind of . . .
Notoriety?
Uh huh. She is a kind of legend here now. I have heard the local women call her a bruja. They say she tells the future in her fits.
Lacey has no reply. This idea of witchery is profoundly Mexican and something he wishes to avoid. He stares out the trucks dusty window until they reach the White Lake. It is an old building, sagging about the corners. A group of three cowboys is staggering out of it with their boots stomping tattoos onto the porch boards. They are singing a song in Spanish.
Lacey suddenly feels like crying again so he shoves the truck door open and begins to walk up to the building. He hears Parham behind him and together they push through the doors into the room.
Someone is playing a tune on a very old piano. There are -- of course -- mirrors everywhere. Everything that isnt occupied is dusty but most every place is occupied. Men everywhere are groping women and cuddling women and slapping down money on the bar to take women upstairs.
Dont misunderstand. Lacey has been in his share of whorehouses and slapped down his share of money on the bar. This scene is not something that frightens him or upsets him but still he is hit by the profound tawdriness of it. Then he notices a girl in white who is staring at him -- no, at Parham -- with a stricken look on her face.
That's her, says Parham, again unnecessarily. Lacey has known her -- the witch, the epileptic -- from the moment he saw her.
She is not beautiful or even good looking but she does have a lot of very black hair and an innocent expression that John Grady would have found appealing. Her dress makes her look like a bride. Lacey hates her. He walks up to her without waiting for Parham who is saying something behind him.
How much, he says to her. How much.
Que? She looks very confused and Lacey curses, biting off the words. He fumbles in his pocket for his money.
How much. How much. He shoves the stack of pesos at her and she says something, looking at him.
What are you *doing*, he hears Parham say as she counts a handful of coins out and gives him the rest back. Cleareyed she looks at him and motions with her hands. He follows her upstairs and behind him hears Parham tell the bartender to give him a drink while he waits for his fucking crazy friend.
This is a hell of an obituary, he says at Laceys back but Lacey forgoes a reply.
* * *
Upstairs in a little room there is no window, only candlelight, and Lacey is drowning in the stale Juarez air. He sits on the bed and jerks with his chin.
Lets see what he was getting, he says and she takes off her white dress. She is thin enough that he can count her ribs. Thin like a child. She watches him with her hands relaxed at her sides and then says something else in Spanish.
I dont speak Spanish, he says. So just shut up.
She says something else but when he doesnt reply she seems to give up. Just stands there.
So what was he paying for. I wonder, says Lacey. What did he want to keep. He motions to her and she turns around slowly. She is dark skinned and her nipples are brown and her hair is long and shes nothing he has not seen before.
But then the young look of her is gone it fades off her face and suddenly she looks to Lacey like a saint from a church. Young in years but old in experience and seen more than a regular person could fit in a lifetime. She just closes her eyes and stands there and waits.
John Grady, says Lacey. Was my brother. She opens her eyes and looks at him. They are brown but have gold in them too.
Su hermano, she says. Mi marido. Then she says something else that he does not follow. Its a long speech and he lets her make it and when shes done he stands up and holds out his hand.
I dont hate you, he says. I thought I would hate you.
She smiles at him then and says again, Hermano, taking his hand and squeezing it. As he leaves and closes the door he hears the slow creak of her sitting on the bed and the soft sound of her crying.
* * *
Parham is waiting downstairs. On the ride back to the ranch Lacey can tell he wants to ask but doesnt want to hear the answer.
I didnt hate her, Lacey says to him. I wanted to but I didnt.
Thats good, says Parham. Lifes too short to hate people and besides none of it was her fault. John Grady would have her of course in spite of everything. By the end she barely mattered.
I know, says Lacey. He was a good man but sometimes so stupid.
Yeah.
Parham invites him to stay in the bunkhouse overnight and have breakfast with the hands again and Lacey accepts. Its good to be with working men again and this is a life that Lacey understands.
Thank you, he says to Parham, who nods.
--the end--
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-10 02:31 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-30 12:55 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-10 02:48 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-10 05:38 pm (UTC)Would you like me to add this to the
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-30 12:54 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-16 01:47 am (UTC)WRIIIIIIIIITE IT. The power of ME compels you.
And I would totally dig that Rory/Logan fic. That suit thing was really cute.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-30 12:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-28 02:34 pm (UTC)That's all, in case you're wondering who the hell I am and why I friended you.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-30 12:52 pm (UTC)Glad to have you aboard! Yes, my webhost betrayed me and so for now there is no site :( And no, I was dead serious when I wrote "Mercy." I can't believe you read it, I wrote it so long ago. I did love that series so.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-08-30 01:21 pm (UTC)I'd been looking for other Spender stuff but there isn't much, so then I was looking for yours but the site was down so I didn't find out if you wrote any more. Fortunately for me I saved them all those years back and through the many hard drive crashes and date losses, they seem to have survived. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2005-09-16 06:39 am (UTC)HOLY CRAP! That is awesome!
Uh yes, indeed, I did write some more Spender. Let me think ... I did a parody where he was a big dork, and ooh, I did a couple more. Since I love that icon so much, I'll repost them in the journal.