Bruce McCandless III's Blog: From Here to Infirmity, page 3
November 15, 2018
Cyrenaica
Periodically I like to update my e-books, checking for any small errors, adding a line of dialogue or two, etc. And every once in a while I fall into a paragraph that reminds me how much fun writing can be. Like this one, describing a sand storm in North Africa that afflicts my gallant bunch of Marines: "Now the desert takes them in. A storm from the south brings a shoulder of sand half a mile high and as far across as the eye can see, advancing out of the wasteland like a yellow wall of surf. Locals call this phenomenon the simum—the poison wind. The fine dust sets the Christians’ teeth on edge. There is sand in everything, grit in all they eat. Palm trees rustle and shake in the tempest and the world is without form, as if all echoes of the Almighty’s ordering strictures uttered at and in creation of Creation itself have finally trailed off into corridors of nothingness beyond light and human hope and the motes and atoms and elemental stuff of existence, unbound at last, have devolved immediately into mere random movement now and for the rest of eternity hot and howling and corrosive to the touch. The Americans wrap cloth around their faces for fear of losing their sight to the wind-driven particles, and they move through the streets laterally, with one hand raised as if to ward off this prolonged and awful judgment of the sky."
October 6, 2018
Fearless: A Recollection
This is something I'm working on about my mom and dad--a memoir in one sense, a sort of cultural history in another...
From Chapter 11--NASA
At the age of 28, my dad was selected as the youngest member of NASA Astronaut Group 5 (sardonically labeled the "Original Nineteen," by John Young, in a reference to the “Original Seven”) in April 1966, along with, among others, Fred Haise, Vance Brand, and Stuart Roosa. According to space historian Matthew Hersch, my dad and his Group 5 colleague Don Lind were "effectively treated ... as scientist-astronauts" (akin to those selected in the fourth and sixth groups) by NASA due to their substantial scientific experience, an implicit reflection of their shared lack of the test pilot experience highly valued by Deke Slayton and other NASA managers at the time; this would ultimately delay their progression in the flight rotation.” I have a photograph of him in 1969, standing with Jim Irwin and Charlie Duke outside a Ramada Inn, lean and beautiful, an advertisement for adrenaline and aviator glasses. He wanted the world, and the world wanted him. He was five nine, slender, with dark hair and blue eyes, an aviator and an astronaut, brilliant and dashing. In that bad, frenetic era, at a time when the world seemed to be coming apart, torn by the hatreds engendered by Vietnam and racial inequality, the astronauts were establishment eye candy, rock-jawed and streamlined and unafraid. Americans were learning about the crimes committed and inspired by a down-on-his luck musician and would-be prophet named Charles Manson. Jimi Hendrix was playing Woodstock. Almost twelve thousand American servicemen would be killed that year in southeast Asia. But NASA forged ahead. In July of that year Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins visited the Moon, as John F. Kennedy had promised they would, and the country had something to celebrate again.
From Chapter 11--NASA
At the age of 28, my dad was selected as the youngest member of NASA Astronaut Group 5 (sardonically labeled the "Original Nineteen," by John Young, in a reference to the “Original Seven”) in April 1966, along with, among others, Fred Haise, Vance Brand, and Stuart Roosa. According to space historian Matthew Hersch, my dad and his Group 5 colleague Don Lind were "effectively treated ... as scientist-astronauts" (akin to those selected in the fourth and sixth groups) by NASA due to their substantial scientific experience, an implicit reflection of their shared lack of the test pilot experience highly valued by Deke Slayton and other NASA managers at the time; this would ultimately delay their progression in the flight rotation.” I have a photograph of him in 1969, standing with Jim Irwin and Charlie Duke outside a Ramada Inn, lean and beautiful, an advertisement for adrenaline and aviator glasses. He wanted the world, and the world wanted him. He was five nine, slender, with dark hair and blue eyes, an aviator and an astronaut, brilliant and dashing. In that bad, frenetic era, at a time when the world seemed to be coming apart, torn by the hatreds engendered by Vietnam and racial inequality, the astronauts were establishment eye candy, rock-jawed and streamlined and unafraid. Americans were learning about the crimes committed and inspired by a down-on-his luck musician and would-be prophet named Charles Manson. Jimi Hendrix was playing Woodstock. Almost twelve thousand American servicemen would be killed that year in southeast Asia. But NASA forged ahead. In July of that year Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Mike Collins visited the Moon, as John F. Kennedy had promised they would, and the country had something to celebrate again.
August 24, 2018
BOOK REVOLUTION NOW!
Proud to be on the advisory board of the Austin Public Library and happy to see the new central library getting such awesome press. Check out this link if you can: http://library.austintexas.gov/press-...
August 8, 2018
Austin Public Library
My friends know I'm a passionate library guy and serve on the board of the Austin Public Library Foundation. We are basically cheerleaders, propagandists, and fundraisers (and fund-givers!) for Austin and its several brain palaces. Couldn't resist sharing this little piece that was published recently in the Statesman by my friend and fellow board member Maya Smart:
The stunning Austin Central Library, already a finalist for the International Federation of Library Associations’ Public Library of the Year, leaped in prestige by winning LEED Platinum Building Certification this summer.
The award confirms that the space’s design and construction exemplify the utmost concern for human and environmental health. The library scored high marks for its green power, water-recycling systems, daylight use, views and community connectivity. Yet, we should feel challenged — not satisfied — by this last designation.
Renewable-energy use, efficient landscaping and wastewater technologies are built-in, but considerable effort is still required to create real community connectivity. That is, the kind of bonds among people that exist beyond the realm of LEED’s neighborhood density and pedestrian access targets. We’ve built an impressive library, but what must we do to ensure that the people come? Not just avowed bookworms, architectural tourists, and downtown high-rise dwellers, but the broadest swath of our community possible?
Early indications are promising. The library staff, led by director Roosevelt Weeks, have stepped up efforts to welcome and wow diverse library visitors. I witnessed it recently when I accompanied a group of 30 black and Hispanic kids from the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools summer program to the Central Library. Most of the kids hailed from underserved East Austin neighborhoods and hadn’t heard much about the library, let alone visited it.
Library staff greeted the bus and showed the awestruck guests every floor of the architectural wonder. In the special events area, the kids donned virtual reality headsets, learned to program tiny robots, experimented with electronic building blocks, and heard a story read by local author Willie S. Anderson. Staff also gave the students the low-down on getting books, homework help, and other resources through the library.
One small exchange exemplified the spirit of the visit.
“How many books do you think are in here?” a librarian asked, referring to the children’s section. The kids’ guesses ranged from 44 to millions. The truth was closer to 60,000.
“And who do they belong to?”
“The authors,” one shouted.
“The library,” another said.
“They belong to you,” she replied. “This collection belongs to you. Not just the books. The whole library. We just take care of them for you.”
The speaker, the statement, and the audience all struck me. I was happy to be present when the kids learned that libraries — even massive, glittering, “green” ones — are made for them. Though America’s public libraries have always professed a charge to serve all, they have a history of exclusion that mirrors that of the nation itself. Who counts as “the public” has been hotly contested. Witness the racial segregation laws that denied my maternal grandmother access to every branch in the Louisville Free Public Library system but one — the Western “colored” branch.
Years later, when my mother was born in 1946, less than a third of public library systems in the South reported serving African-Americans. That the majority couldn’t be bothered to provide even a bookmobile or segregated reading room conveys volumes.
For my mother, like her mother before, the Western branch in Louisville, Kentucky, was a haven. It spared her both the ignorance of having no library at all and the intimate indignity of entering the backdoors of white libraries to be confined to isolated colored reading rooms. The haven of that library helped her build the knowledge and skills that would carry her through graduate school and a career. At her retirement party, she quoted Walter Anderson, who said, “I read myself out of poverty long before I worked myself out of it.”
Everyone deserves that privilege. And in the Austin Central Library, standing with my own daughter, hearing a librarian’s declaration of inclusion, I saw a glimpse of the kind of community connectivity we should aspire to. It looks like caring people flinging the doors of our libraries wide open, intentionally ushering in new visitors, and making sure that they all feel at home.
The stunning Austin Central Library, already a finalist for the International Federation of Library Associations’ Public Library of the Year, leaped in prestige by winning LEED Platinum Building Certification this summer.
The award confirms that the space’s design and construction exemplify the utmost concern for human and environmental health. The library scored high marks for its green power, water-recycling systems, daylight use, views and community connectivity. Yet, we should feel challenged — not satisfied — by this last designation.
Renewable-energy use, efficient landscaping and wastewater technologies are built-in, but considerable effort is still required to create real community connectivity. That is, the kind of bonds among people that exist beyond the realm of LEED’s neighborhood density and pedestrian access targets. We’ve built an impressive library, but what must we do to ensure that the people come? Not just avowed bookworms, architectural tourists, and downtown high-rise dwellers, but the broadest swath of our community possible?
Early indications are promising. The library staff, led by director Roosevelt Weeks, have stepped up efforts to welcome and wow diverse library visitors. I witnessed it recently when I accompanied a group of 30 black and Hispanic kids from the Children’s Defense Fund’s Freedom Schools summer program to the Central Library. Most of the kids hailed from underserved East Austin neighborhoods and hadn’t heard much about the library, let alone visited it.
Library staff greeted the bus and showed the awestruck guests every floor of the architectural wonder. In the special events area, the kids donned virtual reality headsets, learned to program tiny robots, experimented with electronic building blocks, and heard a story read by local author Willie S. Anderson. Staff also gave the students the low-down on getting books, homework help, and other resources through the library.
One small exchange exemplified the spirit of the visit.
“How many books do you think are in here?” a librarian asked, referring to the children’s section. The kids’ guesses ranged from 44 to millions. The truth was closer to 60,000.
“And who do they belong to?”
“The authors,” one shouted.
“The library,” another said.
“They belong to you,” she replied. “This collection belongs to you. Not just the books. The whole library. We just take care of them for you.”
The speaker, the statement, and the audience all struck me. I was happy to be present when the kids learned that libraries — even massive, glittering, “green” ones — are made for them. Though America’s public libraries have always professed a charge to serve all, they have a history of exclusion that mirrors that of the nation itself. Who counts as “the public” has been hotly contested. Witness the racial segregation laws that denied my maternal grandmother access to every branch in the Louisville Free Public Library system but one — the Western “colored” branch.
Years later, when my mother was born in 1946, less than a third of public library systems in the South reported serving African-Americans. That the majority couldn’t be bothered to provide even a bookmobile or segregated reading room conveys volumes.
For my mother, like her mother before, the Western branch in Louisville, Kentucky, was a haven. It spared her both the ignorance of having no library at all and the intimate indignity of entering the backdoors of white libraries to be confined to isolated colored reading rooms. The haven of that library helped her build the knowledge and skills that would carry her through graduate school and a career. At her retirement party, she quoted Walter Anderson, who said, “I read myself out of poverty long before I worked myself out of it.”
Everyone deserves that privilege. And in the Austin Central Library, standing with my own daughter, hearing a librarian’s declaration of inclusion, I saw a glimpse of the kind of community connectivity we should aspire to. It looks like caring people flinging the doors of our libraries wide open, intentionally ushering in new visitors, and making sure that they all feel at home.
August 5, 2018
A Prequel to Sour Lake
Sort of. One of the main characters in Sour Lake was the irascible Ranger Jewel Lightfoot, who shows up midway through the story to lend some grit to the makeshift team of townsfolk who have resolved to take on the creature that is murdering their fellow East Texans. My new novel In the Land of Dead Horses shows us how Sergeant Lightfoot came to know his true calling: battling evil in all its many manifestations in the American Southwest. Here's the first chapter, which--as you will see--doesn't feature Lightfoot at all. Instead we see the manifestation of darkness he'll find himself fighting. Enjoy...
In The Land of Dead Horses
1. The Mine
A Miraculous Discovery—Assessing the Trove—Complications Arise.
J. P. Kelso ran a hand through his greasy hair and allowed himself to savor half a slice of optimism. It was working. The rock was almost out. Ramon’s mules hadn’t been strong enough to budge it—not even with Paco and Norberto pulling alongside them. So Kelso had reluctantly reached into his wallet and sent two of the Mexicans off to buy a horse in San Luis, six miles to the west. The purchase cost him fourteen dollars and most of the day. The horse was a sway-backed old thing, gone in the teeth and ill-tempered to boot, but big and still plenty strong. And now, with the horse, two mules, and four men pulling—four men, because Kelso himself grabbed one of the ropes and heaved against the great weight—the stone was starting to move. It was a massive slab of limestone, cleverly wedged into a three foot-by-three foot aperture in the earth. A ton of dead weight. Maybe two.
But now it was shifting.
Gravel and dirt showered down around it. The mules stamped and danced and Ramon’s quirt snaked out to pop the flesh of the nearest animal. Ramon, tall and sullen, had a habit of whipping the animals. Sometimes it irritated Kelso, who had a soft spot for beasts, particularly horses.
Now, though, it seemed appropriate.
“Pull!” said Kelso. “Halar, goddammit!”
Paco grunted as he strained at the rope. He was a big man—the biggest Mexican Kelso had ever seen—and his fleshy shoulders shook with the intensity of his effort. Slowly, ever so slowly, the megalith shifted. It slid toward them. An inch, maybe. Now two. And coming faster. At last the rock stood up on one end and fell toward them in a cloud of dust. The sound was a god’s footstep, a distant thunder clap. The entrance to the little cave stood like a black eye in the side of the arroyo.
The men paused to consider their work. They’d spent three days trying to find the rock. They’d spent another two digging and hacking at the native brush to get to it, several hours hammering a set of steel pins into the boulder, and most of today attempting to pry and pull it from its resting place. It was clearly the right stone—the glyph was unmistakable, and matched the map—but it couldn’t have been any harder to move if it had been cemented in place. Kelso had seriously weighed the possibility of blasting it out, but dismissed this idea for fear of what the dynamite might do to the cave that was supposed to be hidden beyond the rock. And now they’d done it. The entrance was open, but he had no clear plan for what to do next.
Other than the obvious, of course.
Go in.
Paco and Norberto glanced at Kelso. Normally sedate, the Mexicans now seemed fully alert. Funny how the prospect of sudden wealth could boost a man’s faculties, thought Kelso. Only Ramon, their leader, remained reserved. Kelso blotted the sweat from his forehead. He wanted to say something enthusiastic and stirring, but the words eluded him. He was too damn tired. And too damned sober.
“Take the traces off,” he grunted, between gulps of warm water from his canteen.
“Ahora?” answered Norberto. The scrawniest of the Mexicans, further distinguishable by his ruined teeth and the wispy moustache that clung to his upper lip, Norberto was also the hardest to tolerate. He seemed unable to follow a direct order, and echoed every one of Kelso’s commands with a question. He was a skulker. An ingrate. A cutter of corners. Kelso was going to be glad to be rid of the skulking sonofabitch when they found what they’d come for.
“Si. Now. Let the animals rest.”
They sat for a while in the dust, contemplating the toes of their boots and waiting for their hearts to slow. The sun had set below the western rim of the little arroyo and the canyon floor, choked with achiote and mesquite trees, was shading from purple to blue. In a few minutes the sweat in their shirts would start to cool as the evening grew chilly. Kelso wasn’t going to wait for that. He’d never been able to sit still. Since the age of sixteen, he’d spent his life on the move, always searching, sometimes fleeing, perpetrator and victim both of a seemingly endless series of small scams and disappointments, from the frozen fields of the Klondike south through the teeming foothills of the Comstock in Nevada and now down into the harsh brown badlands of the Chihuahan Desert. Though he wasn’t always as honest as he might have been with his partners and investors, he nevertheless believed in his soul that treasures rested beneath the earth, just waiting for the man with sufficient energy, intelligence, and good fortune to find them. Most of the time, that man wasn’t him. But maybe his luck was changing. He was nearly destitute deep in the middle of nowhere, sweltering in the autumn sun of west Texas and surrounded by the gloomiest sons of whores he’d ever had the displeasure to work with. The Mexicans he traveled with didn’t even drink, for Christ’s sake. He’d never known a Mexican to refuse a tipple. And yet faith strengthened him still. He was John Patrick Kelso from County Clare, by way of the Bowery and a dozen more sordid neighborhoods to boot. But on the way up. Watched over by saints. IMPRESARIO OF THE UNDERWORLD, his business card said. MINER OF THE WORLD’S LOST WONDERS. TREASURE FINDER. He had a well-heeled client waiting for news back in Austin—a client who’d shown no qualms at all in funding his dig in the first place. Incredibly, the cave was right where the Mexicans’ battered old map had said it would be. And now it was open. So maybe it was his turn at last. Fortune and glory. Champagne and chocolates. Women stroking the soft skin on the back of his neck. The entrance to the cave loomed like an invitation. Or a challenge. Was it one more rat hole in a long line of ruined prospects? Or was it finally, after so many disappointments, the dark portal to his own prosperity?
There was only one way to find out.
“Listo?” he said at last. He stood and swatted the dirt from the seat of his pants.
“Si,” said Ramon. “But I enter first. Primero.”
Kelso shook his head at the absurdity of the suggestion. In truth, though, he might have guessed. Ramon was the undisputed ringleader of the three Mexicans. He was slender and observant, and he rarely spoke. He wore his long hair in a ponytail that fell to the middle of his spine. By some invisible but unquestioned authority his word was law. Paco and Norberto made sure he ate first. They carried his personal effects—two leather satchels and a duffel bag, the contents of which Kelso had never managed to see. Ramon had been carefully deferential to Kelso all during the trip. But he’d clearly had to think about it on several occasions. Now, perhaps, he was thinking again. The Irishman knew he had to respond decisively. “Not a chance. I’m first.”
“Nosotros carta, senor.” Ramon said this as if it settled the question. “Our map.”
“Your map. Mi plata.”
“Yours?”
“As far as you’re concerned, yes. I obtained the funds. I paid for the provisions. Therefore, it’s my expedition. I go first.”
Ramon glanced at his companions before he gave a small shrug. “As you say.”
“You’re damn right as I say. What about you, Paco? You ready?”
Paco remained impassive. In the twilight the big man’s mouth looked like a gash across his face. Kelso recognized this as his time-to-do business demeanor. In less focused moments he smiled easily, the better to show off the gold caps on his two front teeth.
Kelso wrinkled his nose and spat.
“Saints preserve us. I’ve had livelier company in a graveyard, so I have. There’s something dead in there, if you hadn’t noticed. Smells like Satan’s arse. Light the torches, amigos.”
The sound was unmistakable. It was the sudden deep drumming of hooves. The pack animals were running. Leaving.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They weren’t hobbled?”
“Just tied, jefe,” said Norberto. “But they don’t go far, I think.”
“You’d better hope not. We’re gonna need ‘em to haul off whatever we find in here. Let’s take a look.”
The entrance to the cave was so small that they had to crawl for several yards, but it led to a narrow passage that was almost five feet tall. The passage proceeded gradually downward. Holding his torch directly in front of him, Kelso couldn’t see more than a few feet forward. He heard the commotion before he could spot it, and was therefore startled when a swarm of bats came churning past them, all frenzy and confusion. Kelso ducked and pulled his chin to his chest. The skinny man at the rear of the file dropped flat on his stomach. Kelso looked back and couldn’t help but laugh.
“Need to change your trousers, Norberto?”
The Mexicans either didn’t get the joke or didn’t think it was funny. Perhaps they were too busy surveying the cave. Just a few yards further in, the passage opened up into a rectangular chamber, roughly the size of a rich man’s library and at least thirty feet from floor to ceiling. Variations in the darkness indicated there were gaps in the rock that formed the roof of the cave. Against the near wall of the chamber stood two piles of bones, many of them broken. Two bronze helmets lay nearby, alongside an ancient halberd.
The torches flickered in a sudden draft. Silence hung like a shroud from the distant ceiling of the cavern. The smell of bats and bat shit and foul water weighted the air. And beneath it, like the piers of a crumbling house, the stench of death.
“Mother of God,” Kelso whispered. “What is this place?”
*
Near the far end of the chamber stood what looked, at first glance, like a row boat hewn from an outcropping of the native rock. Kelso moved toward it, stumbling over the remnants of a wooden shield as he did so. Squinting in the gloom, he used the torch to inspect the images carved into the stone. Once he’d focused, he recoiled involuntarily from the bizarre iconography. Strutting demons held daggers as they drove tiny human figures in chains before them. A snake coiled around the legs of a naked woman, its monstrous head looming directly above her, its mouth open wide as if to swallow her whole. A creature with the body of a man and the features of a bat held a severed human head as if to display it as a warning to any viewer who should happen upon the scene in the long centuries to come.
The Irishman realized with a shudder that he was looking at something unbelievably strange and old. His Catholicism had been beaten into him many years before by a grandmother who was fond of lashing him with a leather strap as she recited the names of the saints. It was her voice he heard now, screaming at him to look away, to hide his eyes. The dark doings of pagans, she shrieked. Abominations in the eyes of the Lord! But something about the pictures held Kelso in place. Lurid and unsettling as they were, it was several minutes before he could break the stares of the figures that gazed out at him from the carvings, cold and implacable, amused at his horror, frozen forever in their acts of carnage.
It was the odor that brought him back. The smell of mortality, rank and cloying, like an invisible poison in the room. A voice in the back of his brain suggested he get back to business and out of this temple of shadows as quickly as possible.
Kelso’s vertebrae crackled as he straightened to examine the wall of the cavern in front of him. Unlike the other walls, which were rough and unfinished, this one had been planed to geometrical perfection, and elaborately sculpted to mimic the facade of a massive palace, with columns and doors, a symmetrical roof line, and a giant throne carved into the rock. A stack of weapons—spears, staffs, and a pair of strangely shaped clubs—stood to the right of the throne. A mound of skulls rose at its foot. The wall receded into darkness where it joined with the cavern ceiling, but every foot of it seemed to have been decorated with the intricate carvings. Kelso realized he was gaping. A scrap of burlap drifted away from his torch and the Irishman followed its path to the floor. This brought him back to the contents of the little boat. But it wasn’t a boat, he realized. It was a sarcophagus, fashioned so that the halves of each end curved to meet the other like the bow and stern of a ship.
Kelso took two steps forward and gazed down into the sarcophagus at the figure of a man—or what might have been a man at some point in the past. The mummified corpse was naked but for a black loincloth around its midsection and a crown of beaten gold encircling its head. Age and decay had eaten away the thing’s features, leaving the face looking grotesquely angular and vaguely threatening, with pronounced cheekbones and enlarged nasal sockets. Through some trick of the arid environment here on the eastern outskirts of the Chihuahuan Desert the eyes were intact and open, though yellowed and sunk deep in their sockets. The lips were drawn back in a grinning rictus of death, exposing age-darkened teeth filed to sharp points. The figure’s arms rested beside it on what Kelso guessed was some sort of soft scrim or sheet, though it looked almost as if the material was fastened to the mummy’s inner forearms. The hands lay open and unlined, ending in long black fingernails. The lid of the sarcophagus, also cut from solid stone, lay broken in pieces on the far side of the vessel.
Looting bastards, thought Kelso. They’ve been here before me. Such was the case in Egypt. After centuries of theft and plunder, there was precious little left in the tombs of the pharaohs to be carried off. But if looters had been active here in central Texas, they’d missed something important. Kelso’s attention drifted to the dark jewels in the cadaver’s crown.
Finally.
Treasure.
He was two feet away from a fortune. After all these years of dirt and doubt and dismay it was suddenly right here in front of him. His heart was pounding in his chest. He felt tears start in his eyes. He reached for the diadem without quite realizing what he was doing. Just before he could touch it, though, his arm was seized and held by a dark brown hand.
Paco.
The Irishman chuckled. He’d jumped a foot at the unexpected contact. But the big man’s grip was powerful, and the next thing Kelso felt was a surge of anger.
“You daft brute. What are you—?”
He raised the torch with his other hand and glanced at the men around him. They were contemplating the figure in the sarcophagus with rapt attention.
Almost devotion.
“Who gave you leave,” said Ramon, “to steal from a god?”
It wasn’t the shock of hearing Ramon speak his suddenly unaccented English that raised the flesh on Kelso’s forearms. It wasn’t even the words he spoke, which made little sense to the Irishman. It was the realization that the three Mexicans who were his only company in this underground chamber were gazing at him with unmistakably bad intentions, their dark eyes glittering in the flickering light of the torches. It was the sense that he’d misjudged his companions, and that this misjudgment was going to be awfully difficult to remedy.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” said Kelso. “And what manner of mischief is this?”
The Mexicans were silent.
“Let’s not louse this up, boys. Hermanos. We’ve come too far. You want a bigger share? It can be arranged. This stuff—” Kelso gestured at the weapons and stone statues around them—“will bring a fortune back east. It’s got to be five hundred years old. My client has already offered...”
“We don’t give a damn about your client.”
Kelso tried to work up a companionly chuckle. He’d been in tight spots before, and he knew the drill. He had to keep talking, first of all. Nothing terrible could happen as long as you kept talking. “Aw, hell. Neither do I, if you want the truth of it. He’s got the soul of a bookkeeper, that one. So let’s forget him and get down to brass tacks, as they say. Is it the gold you’ll be wanting? Hey. Listen. You fancy the crown?”
Ramon shook his head.
“There is only one thing we want from you, Senor Kelso.”
Paco placed one of his huge hands on Kelso’s shoulder.
“It is a great honor,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Norberto chuckled behind him. He was so close that Kelso could feel the little man’s breath on the back of his neck, sticky and warm, like an unwanted kiss.
“But maybe,” he whispered, “you don’t like it so much.”
Kelso wondered if he was going to throw up. But he persevered.
“I’m not opposed,” he insisted, “to any reasonable offer.”
To this statement he added a wink.
*
Say what you will about the Irish. Centuries of madness, mud, and starvation have toughened them up. They don’t die easy. Paco stood six feet four and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. Despite his great bulk, he and Norberto had trouble pinning Kelso’s arms to his sides. When they finally did, the Irishman flailed so violently that he extinguished one of the torches. His screams were an assault all their own, piercing and pathetic. Finally, though, the Mexicans managed to spread the Irishman out on a large, flat rock just a few feet from the sarcophagus. Norberto shattered his knee caps with a chunk of limestone, which ended the kicking, though it did nothing for the noise. Paco finally shoved a wad of burlap into his mouth, which lowered the volume considerably. And now Ramon fished into his woven bag and brought out a thin knife unlike any J.P. Kelso had seen before. The handle was fashioned of wood, elaborately curved, like a question mark, and the blade was hewn from jagged dark stone. The Irishman fought even harder when Ramon ripped open his waistcoat and shirt, and he shrieked and sobbed through whatever invocation Ramon spoke to the skies that couldn’t see them, the heavens beyond the rock roof that hid them from the world.
Ramon, Kelso thought—insofar as he was still capable of thought. Of course. He knew he’d been the leader all along. The man with the mysteriously acquired map. The man with the silent comrades, the muscle, willing—at Ramon’s bidding—to do as the gringo commanded. He’d been watchful, Kelso recalled. As patient as a spider. But no more. Now Ramon’s face was flushed with victory and anticipation. He nodded at the Irishman as if they were partners in an enterprise of secret and terrible significance, and this was when the swindler realized his run of luck had finally expired. He started singing then, an old song, as Irish as the green fields of Mayo. Of course it didn’t sound like a song. Beneath the burlap stuffed in his mouth, Kelso’s ballad sounded more like the cries of an angry baby. Ramon paused, momentarily puzzled. He exchanged glances with his companions. Then he reared back and raised the dagger over his head. The gag popped out of the Irishman’s mouth at that same moment, and the cavern filled with the ancient music of fear and misfortune as overhead, in the darkness, a storm of bats filled the air with the voiceless panic of their sudden flight.
In The Land of Dead Horses
1. The Mine
A Miraculous Discovery—Assessing the Trove—Complications Arise.
J. P. Kelso ran a hand through his greasy hair and allowed himself to savor half a slice of optimism. It was working. The rock was almost out. Ramon’s mules hadn’t been strong enough to budge it—not even with Paco and Norberto pulling alongside them. So Kelso had reluctantly reached into his wallet and sent two of the Mexicans off to buy a horse in San Luis, six miles to the west. The purchase cost him fourteen dollars and most of the day. The horse was a sway-backed old thing, gone in the teeth and ill-tempered to boot, but big and still plenty strong. And now, with the horse, two mules, and four men pulling—four men, because Kelso himself grabbed one of the ropes and heaved against the great weight—the stone was starting to move. It was a massive slab of limestone, cleverly wedged into a three foot-by-three foot aperture in the earth. A ton of dead weight. Maybe two.
But now it was shifting.
Gravel and dirt showered down around it. The mules stamped and danced and Ramon’s quirt snaked out to pop the flesh of the nearest animal. Ramon, tall and sullen, had a habit of whipping the animals. Sometimes it irritated Kelso, who had a soft spot for beasts, particularly horses.
Now, though, it seemed appropriate.
“Pull!” said Kelso. “Halar, goddammit!”
Paco grunted as he strained at the rope. He was a big man—the biggest Mexican Kelso had ever seen—and his fleshy shoulders shook with the intensity of his effort. Slowly, ever so slowly, the megalith shifted. It slid toward them. An inch, maybe. Now two. And coming faster. At last the rock stood up on one end and fell toward them in a cloud of dust. The sound was a god’s footstep, a distant thunder clap. The entrance to the little cave stood like a black eye in the side of the arroyo.
The men paused to consider their work. They’d spent three days trying to find the rock. They’d spent another two digging and hacking at the native brush to get to it, several hours hammering a set of steel pins into the boulder, and most of today attempting to pry and pull it from its resting place. It was clearly the right stone—the glyph was unmistakable, and matched the map—but it couldn’t have been any harder to move if it had been cemented in place. Kelso had seriously weighed the possibility of blasting it out, but dismissed this idea for fear of what the dynamite might do to the cave that was supposed to be hidden beyond the rock. And now they’d done it. The entrance was open, but he had no clear plan for what to do next.
Other than the obvious, of course.
Go in.
Paco and Norberto glanced at Kelso. Normally sedate, the Mexicans now seemed fully alert. Funny how the prospect of sudden wealth could boost a man’s faculties, thought Kelso. Only Ramon, their leader, remained reserved. Kelso blotted the sweat from his forehead. He wanted to say something enthusiastic and stirring, but the words eluded him. He was too damn tired. And too damned sober.
“Take the traces off,” he grunted, between gulps of warm water from his canteen.
“Ahora?” answered Norberto. The scrawniest of the Mexicans, further distinguishable by his ruined teeth and the wispy moustache that clung to his upper lip, Norberto was also the hardest to tolerate. He seemed unable to follow a direct order, and echoed every one of Kelso’s commands with a question. He was a skulker. An ingrate. A cutter of corners. Kelso was going to be glad to be rid of the skulking sonofabitch when they found what they’d come for.
“Si. Now. Let the animals rest.”
They sat for a while in the dust, contemplating the toes of their boots and waiting for their hearts to slow. The sun had set below the western rim of the little arroyo and the canyon floor, choked with achiote and mesquite trees, was shading from purple to blue. In a few minutes the sweat in their shirts would start to cool as the evening grew chilly. Kelso wasn’t going to wait for that. He’d never been able to sit still. Since the age of sixteen, he’d spent his life on the move, always searching, sometimes fleeing, perpetrator and victim both of a seemingly endless series of small scams and disappointments, from the frozen fields of the Klondike south through the teeming foothills of the Comstock in Nevada and now down into the harsh brown badlands of the Chihuahan Desert. Though he wasn’t always as honest as he might have been with his partners and investors, he nevertheless believed in his soul that treasures rested beneath the earth, just waiting for the man with sufficient energy, intelligence, and good fortune to find them. Most of the time, that man wasn’t him. But maybe his luck was changing. He was nearly destitute deep in the middle of nowhere, sweltering in the autumn sun of west Texas and surrounded by the gloomiest sons of whores he’d ever had the displeasure to work with. The Mexicans he traveled with didn’t even drink, for Christ’s sake. He’d never known a Mexican to refuse a tipple. And yet faith strengthened him still. He was John Patrick Kelso from County Clare, by way of the Bowery and a dozen more sordid neighborhoods to boot. But on the way up. Watched over by saints. IMPRESARIO OF THE UNDERWORLD, his business card said. MINER OF THE WORLD’S LOST WONDERS. TREASURE FINDER. He had a well-heeled client waiting for news back in Austin—a client who’d shown no qualms at all in funding his dig in the first place. Incredibly, the cave was right where the Mexicans’ battered old map had said it would be. And now it was open. So maybe it was his turn at last. Fortune and glory. Champagne and chocolates. Women stroking the soft skin on the back of his neck. The entrance to the cave loomed like an invitation. Or a challenge. Was it one more rat hole in a long line of ruined prospects? Or was it finally, after so many disappointments, the dark portal to his own prosperity?
There was only one way to find out.
“Listo?” he said at last. He stood and swatted the dirt from the seat of his pants.
“Si,” said Ramon. “But I enter first. Primero.”
Kelso shook his head at the absurdity of the suggestion. In truth, though, he might have guessed. Ramon was the undisputed ringleader of the three Mexicans. He was slender and observant, and he rarely spoke. He wore his long hair in a ponytail that fell to the middle of his spine. By some invisible but unquestioned authority his word was law. Paco and Norberto made sure he ate first. They carried his personal effects—two leather satchels and a duffel bag, the contents of which Kelso had never managed to see. Ramon had been carefully deferential to Kelso all during the trip. But he’d clearly had to think about it on several occasions. Now, perhaps, he was thinking again. The Irishman knew he had to respond decisively. “Not a chance. I’m first.”
“Nosotros carta, senor.” Ramon said this as if it settled the question. “Our map.”
“Your map. Mi plata.”
“Yours?”
“As far as you’re concerned, yes. I obtained the funds. I paid for the provisions. Therefore, it’s my expedition. I go first.”
Ramon glanced at his companions before he gave a small shrug. “As you say.”
“You’re damn right as I say. What about you, Paco? You ready?”
Paco remained impassive. In the twilight the big man’s mouth looked like a gash across his face. Kelso recognized this as his time-to-do business demeanor. In less focused moments he smiled easily, the better to show off the gold caps on his two front teeth.
Kelso wrinkled his nose and spat.
“Saints preserve us. I’ve had livelier company in a graveyard, so I have. There’s something dead in there, if you hadn’t noticed. Smells like Satan’s arse. Light the torches, amigos.”
The sound was unmistakable. It was the sudden deep drumming of hooves. The pack animals were running. Leaving.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. They weren’t hobbled?”
“Just tied, jefe,” said Norberto. “But they don’t go far, I think.”
“You’d better hope not. We’re gonna need ‘em to haul off whatever we find in here. Let’s take a look.”
The entrance to the cave was so small that they had to crawl for several yards, but it led to a narrow passage that was almost five feet tall. The passage proceeded gradually downward. Holding his torch directly in front of him, Kelso couldn’t see more than a few feet forward. He heard the commotion before he could spot it, and was therefore startled when a swarm of bats came churning past them, all frenzy and confusion. Kelso ducked and pulled his chin to his chest. The skinny man at the rear of the file dropped flat on his stomach. Kelso looked back and couldn’t help but laugh.
“Need to change your trousers, Norberto?”
The Mexicans either didn’t get the joke or didn’t think it was funny. Perhaps they were too busy surveying the cave. Just a few yards further in, the passage opened up into a rectangular chamber, roughly the size of a rich man’s library and at least thirty feet from floor to ceiling. Variations in the darkness indicated there were gaps in the rock that formed the roof of the cave. Against the near wall of the chamber stood two piles of bones, many of them broken. Two bronze helmets lay nearby, alongside an ancient halberd.
The torches flickered in a sudden draft. Silence hung like a shroud from the distant ceiling of the cavern. The smell of bats and bat shit and foul water weighted the air. And beneath it, like the piers of a crumbling house, the stench of death.
“Mother of God,” Kelso whispered. “What is this place?”
*
Near the far end of the chamber stood what looked, at first glance, like a row boat hewn from an outcropping of the native rock. Kelso moved toward it, stumbling over the remnants of a wooden shield as he did so. Squinting in the gloom, he used the torch to inspect the images carved into the stone. Once he’d focused, he recoiled involuntarily from the bizarre iconography. Strutting demons held daggers as they drove tiny human figures in chains before them. A snake coiled around the legs of a naked woman, its monstrous head looming directly above her, its mouth open wide as if to swallow her whole. A creature with the body of a man and the features of a bat held a severed human head as if to display it as a warning to any viewer who should happen upon the scene in the long centuries to come.
The Irishman realized with a shudder that he was looking at something unbelievably strange and old. His Catholicism had been beaten into him many years before by a grandmother who was fond of lashing him with a leather strap as she recited the names of the saints. It was her voice he heard now, screaming at him to look away, to hide his eyes. The dark doings of pagans, she shrieked. Abominations in the eyes of the Lord! But something about the pictures held Kelso in place. Lurid and unsettling as they were, it was several minutes before he could break the stares of the figures that gazed out at him from the carvings, cold and implacable, amused at his horror, frozen forever in their acts of carnage.
It was the odor that brought him back. The smell of mortality, rank and cloying, like an invisible poison in the room. A voice in the back of his brain suggested he get back to business and out of this temple of shadows as quickly as possible.
Kelso’s vertebrae crackled as he straightened to examine the wall of the cavern in front of him. Unlike the other walls, which were rough and unfinished, this one had been planed to geometrical perfection, and elaborately sculpted to mimic the facade of a massive palace, with columns and doors, a symmetrical roof line, and a giant throne carved into the rock. A stack of weapons—spears, staffs, and a pair of strangely shaped clubs—stood to the right of the throne. A mound of skulls rose at its foot. The wall receded into darkness where it joined with the cavern ceiling, but every foot of it seemed to have been decorated with the intricate carvings. Kelso realized he was gaping. A scrap of burlap drifted away from his torch and the Irishman followed its path to the floor. This brought him back to the contents of the little boat. But it wasn’t a boat, he realized. It was a sarcophagus, fashioned so that the halves of each end curved to meet the other like the bow and stern of a ship.
Kelso took two steps forward and gazed down into the sarcophagus at the figure of a man—or what might have been a man at some point in the past. The mummified corpse was naked but for a black loincloth around its midsection and a crown of beaten gold encircling its head. Age and decay had eaten away the thing’s features, leaving the face looking grotesquely angular and vaguely threatening, with pronounced cheekbones and enlarged nasal sockets. Through some trick of the arid environment here on the eastern outskirts of the Chihuahuan Desert the eyes were intact and open, though yellowed and sunk deep in their sockets. The lips were drawn back in a grinning rictus of death, exposing age-darkened teeth filed to sharp points. The figure’s arms rested beside it on what Kelso guessed was some sort of soft scrim or sheet, though it looked almost as if the material was fastened to the mummy’s inner forearms. The hands lay open and unlined, ending in long black fingernails. The lid of the sarcophagus, also cut from solid stone, lay broken in pieces on the far side of the vessel.
Looting bastards, thought Kelso. They’ve been here before me. Such was the case in Egypt. After centuries of theft and plunder, there was precious little left in the tombs of the pharaohs to be carried off. But if looters had been active here in central Texas, they’d missed something important. Kelso’s attention drifted to the dark jewels in the cadaver’s crown.
Finally.
Treasure.
He was two feet away from a fortune. After all these years of dirt and doubt and dismay it was suddenly right here in front of him. His heart was pounding in his chest. He felt tears start in his eyes. He reached for the diadem without quite realizing what he was doing. Just before he could touch it, though, his arm was seized and held by a dark brown hand.
Paco.
The Irishman chuckled. He’d jumped a foot at the unexpected contact. But the big man’s grip was powerful, and the next thing Kelso felt was a surge of anger.
“You daft brute. What are you—?”
He raised the torch with his other hand and glanced at the men around him. They were contemplating the figure in the sarcophagus with rapt attention.
Almost devotion.
“Who gave you leave,” said Ramon, “to steal from a god?”
It wasn’t the shock of hearing Ramon speak his suddenly unaccented English that raised the flesh on Kelso’s forearms. It wasn’t even the words he spoke, which made little sense to the Irishman. It was the realization that the three Mexicans who were his only company in this underground chamber were gazing at him with unmistakably bad intentions, their dark eyes glittering in the flickering light of the torches. It was the sense that he’d misjudged his companions, and that this misjudgment was going to be awfully difficult to remedy.
“Sweet baby Jesus,” said Kelso. “And what manner of mischief is this?”
The Mexicans were silent.
“Let’s not louse this up, boys. Hermanos. We’ve come too far. You want a bigger share? It can be arranged. This stuff—” Kelso gestured at the weapons and stone statues around them—“will bring a fortune back east. It’s got to be five hundred years old. My client has already offered...”
“We don’t give a damn about your client.”
Kelso tried to work up a companionly chuckle. He’d been in tight spots before, and he knew the drill. He had to keep talking, first of all. Nothing terrible could happen as long as you kept talking. “Aw, hell. Neither do I, if you want the truth of it. He’s got the soul of a bookkeeper, that one. So let’s forget him and get down to brass tacks, as they say. Is it the gold you’ll be wanting? Hey. Listen. You fancy the crown?”
Ramon shook his head.
“There is only one thing we want from you, Senor Kelso.”
Paco placed one of his huge hands on Kelso’s shoulder.
“It is a great honor,” he said, his voice a low rumble.
Norberto chuckled behind him. He was so close that Kelso could feel the little man’s breath on the back of his neck, sticky and warm, like an unwanted kiss.
“But maybe,” he whispered, “you don’t like it so much.”
Kelso wondered if he was going to throw up. But he persevered.
“I’m not opposed,” he insisted, “to any reasonable offer.”
To this statement he added a wink.
*
Say what you will about the Irish. Centuries of madness, mud, and starvation have toughened them up. They don’t die easy. Paco stood six feet four and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. Despite his great bulk, he and Norberto had trouble pinning Kelso’s arms to his sides. When they finally did, the Irishman flailed so violently that he extinguished one of the torches. His screams were an assault all their own, piercing and pathetic. Finally, though, the Mexicans managed to spread the Irishman out on a large, flat rock just a few feet from the sarcophagus. Norberto shattered his knee caps with a chunk of limestone, which ended the kicking, though it did nothing for the noise. Paco finally shoved a wad of burlap into his mouth, which lowered the volume considerably. And now Ramon fished into his woven bag and brought out a thin knife unlike any J.P. Kelso had seen before. The handle was fashioned of wood, elaborately curved, like a question mark, and the blade was hewn from jagged dark stone. The Irishman fought even harder when Ramon ripped open his waistcoat and shirt, and he shrieked and sobbed through whatever invocation Ramon spoke to the skies that couldn’t see them, the heavens beyond the rock roof that hid them from the world.
Ramon, Kelso thought—insofar as he was still capable of thought. Of course. He knew he’d been the leader all along. The man with the mysteriously acquired map. The man with the silent comrades, the muscle, willing—at Ramon’s bidding—to do as the gringo commanded. He’d been watchful, Kelso recalled. As patient as a spider. But no more. Now Ramon’s face was flushed with victory and anticipation. He nodded at the Irishman as if they were partners in an enterprise of secret and terrible significance, and this was when the swindler realized his run of luck had finally expired. He started singing then, an old song, as Irish as the green fields of Mayo. Of course it didn’t sound like a song. Beneath the burlap stuffed in his mouth, Kelso’s ballad sounded more like the cries of an angry baby. Ramon paused, momentarily puzzled. He exchanged glances with his companions. Then he reared back and raised the dagger over his head. The gag popped out of the Irishman’s mouth at that same moment, and the cavern filled with the ancient music of fear and misfortune as overhead, in the darkness, a storm of bats filled the air with the voiceless panic of their sudden flight.
July 22, 2018
Herbert Huncke Doesn't Live Here Anymore
Just got back from a long weekend in New York City, where I lived and worked for several years after law school but hadn’t visited in almost two decades. A place as insistent and sprawling as New York stakes a large claim in a person’s psyche, I think, and indeed there were places in the city I chose not to visit, simply to avoid the mnemonic thunderstorms that surely would have followed me around afterward. I generally enjoyed the trip, though Manhattan seems more crowded and expensive than ever, and my ability to cover long distances by foot—important on those long between-the-avenue blocks—has diminished markedly. Some high points: Broadway (Pati and the girls and I saw an unheralded show that was nevertheless almost criminally joyous and entertaining); Bryant Park, thronged with sun-worshipping mid-towners; Central Park (on a gorgeous breezy day it stood as a sort of living, shimmering tree museum, resplendent and magnificent, obviously lovingly maintained); the food (astonishing, if pricey); the New York Public Library (and its fascinating current ‘6os-flavored exhibition, “You Say You Want a Revolution”); and of course the unbeatable people watching, featuring a never-ending cast of humans of every size, shape, and ethnic group under the sun. (I talked to three cab drivers on the trip, young men from, respectively, Bangladesh, Mali, and Egypt, this last individual a Coptic Christian who relayed his satisfaction with the progress his fellow worshipers have made in establishing churches not only in New York but now, he said, every state in the union.) Low points: the subway (decrepit and baleful again, after a sort of mini-renaissance in the 80s and early 90s); the Brooklyn Bridge (it might have been easier to swim across the East River, such were the crowds on the span); and not being able to see anyone at the wonderful school where I used to teach, Saint David’s, due to what seemed like a pretty comprehensive rehab/expansion project. I’m back in Austin now, and despite, or perhaps because of, the 103-degree heat, it feels like home. I’m older now and set in my ways and I’m pretty sure I couldn’t live in NYC again. But hey, I’m glad—and maybe a little proud—I did. There’s no other place like it.
March 12, 2018
Luis Alberto Urrea
My friend David Marwitz sent me this little interview of the Mexican writer Luis Alberto Urrea. It's from the New York Times, evidently--see link below--and I wanted to share it with all my Goodreads friends. If anyone can relate, you all can!
The author, most recently, of the novel “The House of Broken Angels” loves poetry and avoids objectivist fiction: “I run screaming when I see an Ayn Rand book creeping up the alley looking for victims.”
What books are on your nightstand?
It’s a siege. If we can extend the image of “nightstand” to include the floor and the chest of drawers across the room, we might be approaching my unfortunate bibliomania and occasional trashophilia. What do we mean by “books”? Because every time there’s a David Bowie-themed magazine from Britain, I can’t help myself. That’s on the floor, you see; however, on the nightstand, I am more respectable and proudly keep my Dylan Jones biography of dear Bowie. Along with Natasha Trethewey’s “Thrall,” “The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons” (both massive volumes), Neruda’s odes, a few Harlan Ellison collections and the luminous wonder that is Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s “Mozart’s Starling” (which we stumbled on in Strasburg last summer and could not resist). All of this will be swept away in a joyous frenzy once I get my hands on the new James Lee Burke novel. Er, and maybe — I’m just saying — a “Hellraiser” comic. Right beside my copy of “Fire and Fury.” Because Pinhead is surely coming for our president, and I want to be sure I know what’s in store for him. I like to think that poetry outweighs demons on my nightstand.
What is the last great book you read?
Mark Twain’s “Roughing It.”
What’s the best classic novel you recently read for the first time?
“Pedro Páramo,” by Juan Rulfo. In the original Spanish. It’s one of those guilt-books so many Mexican lit lovers know they should read, but flee — kind of like English speakers do with “Under the Volcano” (a personal favorite). I was always afraid of the Spanish: “Too hard, too hard,” the chorus of doubt cried. I was certain that my father’s ghost would appear, smoking his old Pall Malls, and mock me for not understanding Rulfo’s brilliance. Well, Dad — I didn’t! Not all of it. But let’s get this straight: I’m just gearing up for a final go at “Moby-Dick.” I’m sure that St. Cormac will bless me.
What is your favorite book no one else has heard of?
This is an unfair question — I want to lodge a complaint. I love books with titles like, “How Do You Spank a Porcupine?,” “Arnie, the Darling Starling” or “The Bat in My Pocket.” These books I hold as my secrets; they’re like lost kittens I bring home. Some of them grow up to be wolverines, but nevertheless I love them and care for them. Here are three, out of scores of excellent titles: “Under My Elm,” by David Grayson; “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating,” by Elisabeth Tova Bailey; and “When Wanderers Cease to Roam,” by Vivian Swift.
When do you read?
I read most often in bed as part of my attempted sleep ritual. But I spend a lot of time reading on planes and in hotels, too. My eyes are a constant struggle for me — bad vision getting worse. So the act of reading grows more difficult, yet more precious. I think it is becoming part of my devotions. I often tell students that writing is prayer — well, ditto reading.
What moves you most in a work of literature?
The spike of revelation entering me. When I see us anew. See the world more brightly. When I couldn’t have written that. When I laugh out loud or cry. It’s hard to get me there with your typing, friends. I would like to return to a less scabbed-over “professional writer” era. How astounding it was to discover Thomas McGuane and feel the world transformed forever after. I am always open to the convulsive transformation. Bring on the duende!
Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?
I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery. I run screaming when I see an Ayn Rand book creeping up the alley looking for victims.
How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time, or several simultaneously?
Books are like chocolate. Can’t eat just one. I flip back and forth, or interrupt one for another, but feel codependent to that abandoned book and mount a heroic ride to save it against all odds after I’m done cheating on it with Dave Robicheaux or Mary Oliver. Oh, and since you asked: PAPER PAPER PAPER.
How do you organize your books?
Alphabetically. Though the collection spreads like a flood and then all bets are off. All the poetry is in one place. The rest are in many shelves all over the house.
What kind of a reader were you as a child?
Voracious. Word drunk. I came out of Tijuana — in that era, it wasn’t easy to find books. My mom was a spectacularly misplaced New York City socialite fallen on magical realism strange times indeed. But once she got me into the United States, she took up arms against her newfound poverty and bestowed on me her greatest gift (aside from that Stingray bike in 1965) — a library card. It took us two bus rides to get to downtown San Diego from the barrio where we lived. It was a sacred ritual: Woolworth’s for a hot dog and a visit with the pet parakeets and goldfish. Then away to the public library, where I maxed out my kid card every Saturday. I thought I was rich. I was rich. I never stopped haunting libraries all through my boyhood. Imagine my shock when I discovered Ambrose Bierce. But what really hypnotized me was Ray Bradbury. I was the border rat expert in Bradbury. He was the author who taught me to reread stuff as often as I wanted. “Double your pleasure,” as the commercial said back then, “double your fun.” I felt that all would be revealed in his stories.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
I would invite Lin-Manuel, because Lin-Manuel Miranda. And Mark Twain, because he needs to hear some rap. Guest of honor: Ursula K. Le Guin, forever. When the boys get too rambunctious, I will just bask in those looks she gave, and I would give anything to hear her say, “Oh, come on” one last time.
What do you plan to read next?
What have you got?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/bo...
The author, most recently, of the novel “The House of Broken Angels” loves poetry and avoids objectivist fiction: “I run screaming when I see an Ayn Rand book creeping up the alley looking for victims.”
What books are on your nightstand?
It’s a siege. If we can extend the image of “nightstand” to include the floor and the chest of drawers across the room, we might be approaching my unfortunate bibliomania and occasional trashophilia. What do we mean by “books”? Because every time there’s a David Bowie-themed magazine from Britain, I can’t help myself. That’s on the floor, you see; however, on the nightstand, I am more respectable and proudly keep my Dylan Jones biography of dear Bowie. Along with Natasha Trethewey’s “Thrall,” “The Complete Poems of A. R. Ammons” (both massive volumes), Neruda’s odes, a few Harlan Ellison collections and the luminous wonder that is Lyanda Lynn Haupt’s “Mozart’s Starling” (which we stumbled on in Strasburg last summer and could not resist). All of this will be swept away in a joyous frenzy once I get my hands on the new James Lee Burke novel. Er, and maybe — I’m just saying — a “Hellraiser” comic. Right beside my copy of “Fire and Fury.” Because Pinhead is surely coming for our president, and I want to be sure I know what’s in store for him. I like to think that poetry outweighs demons on my nightstand.
What is the last great book you read?
Mark Twain’s “Roughing It.”
What’s the best classic novel you recently read for the first time?
“Pedro Páramo,” by Juan Rulfo. In the original Spanish. It’s one of those guilt-books so many Mexican lit lovers know they should read, but flee — kind of like English speakers do with “Under the Volcano” (a personal favorite). I was always afraid of the Spanish: “Too hard, too hard,” the chorus of doubt cried. I was certain that my father’s ghost would appear, smoking his old Pall Malls, and mock me for not understanding Rulfo’s brilliance. Well, Dad — I didn’t! Not all of it. But let’s get this straight: I’m just gearing up for a final go at “Moby-Dick.” I’m sure that St. Cormac will bless me.
What is your favorite book no one else has heard of?
This is an unfair question — I want to lodge a complaint. I love books with titles like, “How Do You Spank a Porcupine?,” “Arnie, the Darling Starling” or “The Bat in My Pocket.” These books I hold as my secrets; they’re like lost kittens I bring home. Some of them grow up to be wolverines, but nevertheless I love them and care for them. Here are three, out of scores of excellent titles: “Under My Elm,” by David Grayson; “The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating,” by Elisabeth Tova Bailey; and “When Wanderers Cease to Roam,” by Vivian Swift.
When do you read?
I read most often in bed as part of my attempted sleep ritual. But I spend a lot of time reading on planes and in hotels, too. My eyes are a constant struggle for me — bad vision getting worse. So the act of reading grows more difficult, yet more precious. I think it is becoming part of my devotions. I often tell students that writing is prayer — well, ditto reading.
What moves you most in a work of literature?
The spike of revelation entering me. When I see us anew. See the world more brightly. When I couldn’t have written that. When I laugh out loud or cry. It’s hard to get me there with your typing, friends. I would like to return to a less scabbed-over “professional writer” era. How astounding it was to discover Thomas McGuane and feel the world transformed forever after. I am always open to the convulsive transformation. Bring on the duende!
Which genres do you especially enjoy reading? And which do you avoid?
I am addicted to poetry, but the truth is I cannot pass up a good hard-boiled mystery. I run screaming when I see an Ayn Rand book creeping up the alley looking for victims.
How do you like to read? Paper or electronic? One book at a time, or several simultaneously?
Books are like chocolate. Can’t eat just one. I flip back and forth, or interrupt one for another, but feel codependent to that abandoned book and mount a heroic ride to save it against all odds after I’m done cheating on it with Dave Robicheaux or Mary Oliver. Oh, and since you asked: PAPER PAPER PAPER.
How do you organize your books?
Alphabetically. Though the collection spreads like a flood and then all bets are off. All the poetry is in one place. The rest are in many shelves all over the house.
What kind of a reader were you as a child?
Voracious. Word drunk. I came out of Tijuana — in that era, it wasn’t easy to find books. My mom was a spectacularly misplaced New York City socialite fallen on magical realism strange times indeed. But once she got me into the United States, she took up arms against her newfound poverty and bestowed on me her greatest gift (aside from that Stingray bike in 1965) — a library card. It took us two bus rides to get to downtown San Diego from the barrio where we lived. It was a sacred ritual: Woolworth’s for a hot dog and a visit with the pet parakeets and goldfish. Then away to the public library, where I maxed out my kid card every Saturday. I thought I was rich. I was rich. I never stopped haunting libraries all through my boyhood. Imagine my shock when I discovered Ambrose Bierce. But what really hypnotized me was Ray Bradbury. I was the border rat expert in Bradbury. He was the author who taught me to reread stuff as often as I wanted. “Double your pleasure,” as the commercial said back then, “double your fun.” I felt that all would be revealed in his stories.
You’re organizing a literary dinner party. Which three writers, dead or alive, do you invite?
I would invite Lin-Manuel, because Lin-Manuel Miranda. And Mark Twain, because he needs to hear some rap. Guest of honor: Ursula K. Le Guin, forever. When the boys get too rambunctious, I will just bask in those looks she gave, and I would give anything to hear her say, “Oh, come on” one last time.
What do you plan to read next?
What have you got?
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/08/bo...
January 27, 2018
Memorial Service
My dad died unexpectely just before Christmas. He was buried with military honors in the United States Naval Academy cemetery on January 16, 2018. Here's what I said about him at his memorial service.
Bruce McCandless II
Memorial Service Remarks
On behalf of the family, thank you for joining us today to honor my father. My dad was baptized in this chapel. He married my mother, the beautiful Bernice Doyle McCandless, in this chapel in 1960, and a year later I was baptized here. Some of you joined us when we memorialized my mother in the chapel after her death in 2014, and now, four years later, we gather to remember Bruce McCandless II. This was a special place for him, and he would have been honored and gratified to know that you’re here.
You've heard a bit about his career as an astronaut. About the Shuttle flights and the MMU and his remarkable analytical gifts. I want to talk about Bruce McCandless II as a person. And as a father.
My dad came to visit us in Austin for New Year’s last year in Austin. He was 79 and he hadn’t been getting around too well, so I thought maybe we’d spend a quiet night indoors. Play some scrabble or Mexican Train. Drink some very mildly spiked eggnog. But that wasn’t to be. Turns out he’d bought tickets to a show that New Year’s Eve. So he and I drove down to my office and parked in my garage. His hip was bothering him, so we flagged down a pedicab, and soon we were barreling down the streets of downtown Austin with reggae music blaring from the pedicab driver’s boom box and fireworks barking and blossoming red and green overhead. We spent the evening drinking Lone Stars and listening to Willie Nelson sing about beer halls and last calls and blue eyes cryin’ in the rain.
But that was his MO. He was always like that. He always had something he wanted to do; somewhere he wanted to go; an ancient geological feature—Willie Nelson, for example—he wanted to see. He was eighty when he died, but he told my stepmother, Ellen, that he was aiming for one hundred. He drove out to the middle of Nebraska last August to make sure caught the solar eclipse in its weird and potentially mind-altering totality. He’d been to China once already, where he’d walked the Great Wall, but he was anxious to go back.
I have many memories of my dad. And there were lots of things I admired about him, but this may be the most important of all: The way he always kept moving. The way he looked forward, not back, and was eager to find the next great challenge or curiosity and chase it. Study it. Embrace it. And this was true even after he retired from the astronaut corps. Even after he hit seventy-five, and his hip was hurting, and the roar of jet engines from his youth finally caught up with his hearing. He never asked for any special consideration. He never asked for anything other than an opportunity. He just kept going.
Tennyson wrote a poem about Ulysses, that wandering mariner, that captures something about my dad. In it, Ulysses has won. He’s home, and he’s done everything he ever wanted to do. And yet he realizes, as he considers the familiar sights around him, he’s in need of the sea again. So he addresses his comrades. He calls them to action, and what I want to leave you with are his last words.
My shipmates,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
Bruce McCandless II
Memorial Service Remarks
On behalf of the family, thank you for joining us today to honor my father. My dad was baptized in this chapel. He married my mother, the beautiful Bernice Doyle McCandless, in this chapel in 1960, and a year later I was baptized here. Some of you joined us when we memorialized my mother in the chapel after her death in 2014, and now, four years later, we gather to remember Bruce McCandless II. This was a special place for him, and he would have been honored and gratified to know that you’re here.
You've heard a bit about his career as an astronaut. About the Shuttle flights and the MMU and his remarkable analytical gifts. I want to talk about Bruce McCandless II as a person. And as a father.
My dad came to visit us in Austin for New Year’s last year in Austin. He was 79 and he hadn’t been getting around too well, so I thought maybe we’d spend a quiet night indoors. Play some scrabble or Mexican Train. Drink some very mildly spiked eggnog. But that wasn’t to be. Turns out he’d bought tickets to a show that New Year’s Eve. So he and I drove down to my office and parked in my garage. His hip was bothering him, so we flagged down a pedicab, and soon we were barreling down the streets of downtown Austin with reggae music blaring from the pedicab driver’s boom box and fireworks barking and blossoming red and green overhead. We spent the evening drinking Lone Stars and listening to Willie Nelson sing about beer halls and last calls and blue eyes cryin’ in the rain.
But that was his MO. He was always like that. He always had something he wanted to do; somewhere he wanted to go; an ancient geological feature—Willie Nelson, for example—he wanted to see. He was eighty when he died, but he told my stepmother, Ellen, that he was aiming for one hundred. He drove out to the middle of Nebraska last August to make sure caught the solar eclipse in its weird and potentially mind-altering totality. He’d been to China once already, where he’d walked the Great Wall, but he was anxious to go back.
I have many memories of my dad. And there were lots of things I admired about him, but this may be the most important of all: The way he always kept moving. The way he looked forward, not back, and was eager to find the next great challenge or curiosity and chase it. Study it. Embrace it. And this was true even after he retired from the astronaut corps. Even after he hit seventy-five, and his hip was hurting, and the roar of jet engines from his youth finally caught up with his hearing. He never asked for any special consideration. He never asked for anything other than an opportunity. He just kept going.
Tennyson wrote a poem about Ulysses, that wandering mariner, that captures something about my dad. In it, Ulysses has won. He’s home, and he’s done everything he ever wanted to do. And yet he realizes, as he considers the familiar sights around him, he’s in need of the sea again. So he addresses his comrades. He calls them to action, and what I want to leave you with are his last words.
My shipmates,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me—
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads—you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'T is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
December 7, 2017
The Trail Guide
Here's a recent reading I did in connection with the release of the 2018 Texas Poetry Calendar. The poem "May" was originally published in the calendar, and was later incorporated in Carson Clare's Trail Guide to Avoiding Death, under the title "School." The second poem is the concluding poem in the Trail Guide.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q79WK...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q79WK...
May 9, 2017
Cyrenaica Post-Script
OK so The Black Book of Cyrenaica is out in the world at last, for better or worse, and getting some very kind comments and reviews. Those who have read it might find the following notes--initially appended to the story as an epilogue--interesting:
Yusuf Vartoonian’s reign lasted only a few more years. When Britain’s defeat of France at Trafalgar freed up her fleet for increased action in the Mediterranean, King Yusuf’s days of piratical glory were numbered. He tried to make up for the lost revenue by increasing the nation’s slave trade with the west, but the difficulties of transport from the interior to the northern coast of Africa, combined with growing abolitionist sentiment in Europe, eroded his profits. In 1811 his sons raised an army to depose him. His witch consort failed to warn him of the plot and in response, Yusuf had her executed. Her head was encased in lead and cast into the sea. He himself disappeared not long afterward. His fate is the subject of North African legend. While few of the stories agree on the particular means of his death, all report that it was unpleasant.
Glorious, improbable, and never formally authorized, Malcolm Weston’s expedition lives on in footnotes. Historians and geographers still find it difficult to explain how an American with no experience in the desert was able to find water in the brutally dry expanse of the Western Desert—something even his native followers were unable to do.
Weston received a hero’s welcome on his return to the States. Civic proclamations celebrated his deeds, and he was offered a parade through the City of Hartford. But the general—as he insisted on calling himself ever afterward—was reluctant to accept such accolades. He consorted with anger and alcohol, particularly a mixture of sherry and rum called flip that was popular in those days. He sought but never obtained repayment of the money he personally expended on the Libyan Expedition, and he called on President Jefferson and the Republicans to apologize for abandoning America’s Arab allies and the good people of Derna. He picked fights with Congress and wrote long letters to the local newspaper. The general’s friends grew embarrassed. He died alone. In his will he requested that he be buried face-down—the only position, he said, in which his sleep was not interrupted by nightmares. He did not specify the nature of the nightmares that plagued him.
Lemuel Sweet served in the Marines for another four years. He married in 1809 and shortly thereafter left the Corps to become a schoolteacher in Breedlove, Vermont, a town noted chiefly for the quality of its cheeses. He held this post for the rest of his life. When he died, he was survived by four children—all girls—and nine grandchildren. In 1822 he published an account of his service in the Marines, with special emphasis on his part in Weston’s Libyan campaign. This publication, which he called The Black Book of Cyrenaica, was unusual in that in contained an attestation notarized by a local justice of the peace. It was also unusual in that it drew the attention of local clergymen, who roundly condemned it as a work of unhealthy imagination and pagan influences. In 1824, quite possibly in response to such criticisms, Sweet attempted to buy back and destroy all copies of the Black Book. Until recently it was said that no copies of this history survived.
Lemuel Sweet's account of America's conquest of Tripoli is no doubt fanciful and exagerrated. In Sweet’s defense, however, the lost city of Zerzura is a subject of long-standing legend in the Middle East; he didn’t make it up. Stories of “lost” civilizations, or groups of people, such as the one he posits may have inhabited Zerzura, are in fact not uncommon. Generations of Americans grew up believing that a tribe of western Indians was descended from a group of ancient Welsh explorers who got themselves lost on the new continent and were thus unable to sail home with news of their discovery.
While this tale proved to be a fabrication, others are harder to dismiss. For example, members of the Kalash tribe of Pakistan describe themselves as descendants of Alexander the Great, and have the distinctive language and religion to support the claim. They are of course the basis for the “Kafirs” described in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King.” Similarly, the Khevsureti peoples of eastern Georgia are said by some to be the remnants of lost “Latin” crusaders, Christians in chain mail bedecked in crosses who for centuries would descend from their isolated mountain home in response to a summons from the King of Georgia in times of national emergency. Both of these curious “pocket” populations are dying out rapidly, though their legends will doubtless live on.
As for the supernatural presence in the book, it is of course true that the Bible relates the story of Jesus casting out a demon, or demons, from the men of Gadarenes. Sweet cites this tale three times in his journal, indicating that it was much on his mind during the expedition. And the Koran (Sweet calls it the “alcoran,” as was the custom of the day) mentions the djinn, or "hidden," on more than one occasion. Are demons djinn, or vice versa? Sweet never says—probably because he never knew. He is also careful to note that in his last meeting with Colonel Ladendorf, he believes he was under the influence of laudanum. This means that by his own admission, he is not a reliable narrator for the most important segment of the narrative—his final encounter with Ladendorf, and Ladendorf’s capture by the army of ghostly crusaders who came to take the emerald ring back into safekeeping.
Certainly it’s possible that Colonel Ladendorf was a traitor, or a spy, and that he and Donald MacLeish betrayed General Weston by sharing intelligence with the temporarily ousted Governor of Derna. Perhaps they conspired to kill Sweet in order to prove to the Governor that they had in fact committed the most conclusive renunciation of their loyalties to the expedition. Beyond this—and with all due respect to Lemuel Sweet’s notarized attestation—it is impossible for a rational man to go.
The fates of the other Marines in the Derna Expedition are unclear. In fact, historians disagree on whether there were seven or eight Marines assigned to General Weston’s army in the first place. Only one other figure associated with the mission resurfaces, briefly, in history. In 1827, the United States Congress voted to appropriate four hundred acres of land in Kentucky to a veteran of Weston’s campaign who was long thought to be lost in North Africa. His name, according to the Congressional Record, was Donald Ailes MacLeish. One contemporary newspaper account describes him as a large man who was missing most of his left ear and two fingers from his right hand. It was also said that the man’s eyes were a curious shade of yellow, probably on account of a prolonged battle with jaundice during a period of captivity among the Mahometans, who were said to have used him harshly.
Donald MacLeish occupied his Kentucky freehold for only a year. He admitted that he found no pleasure in agrarian pursuits. He was a restless sort, a rambler, always curious. He was heading west, he told his neighbors. Something about the Indians. The big man was said to dislike them. America should never rest, he said, until they were driven from her shores. If this meant war, he said, so be it. He for one was ready for a fight.
Yusuf Vartoonian’s reign lasted only a few more years. When Britain’s defeat of France at Trafalgar freed up her fleet for increased action in the Mediterranean, King Yusuf’s days of piratical glory were numbered. He tried to make up for the lost revenue by increasing the nation’s slave trade with the west, but the difficulties of transport from the interior to the northern coast of Africa, combined with growing abolitionist sentiment in Europe, eroded his profits. In 1811 his sons raised an army to depose him. His witch consort failed to warn him of the plot and in response, Yusuf had her executed. Her head was encased in lead and cast into the sea. He himself disappeared not long afterward. His fate is the subject of North African legend. While few of the stories agree on the particular means of his death, all report that it was unpleasant.
Glorious, improbable, and never formally authorized, Malcolm Weston’s expedition lives on in footnotes. Historians and geographers still find it difficult to explain how an American with no experience in the desert was able to find water in the brutally dry expanse of the Western Desert—something even his native followers were unable to do.
Weston received a hero’s welcome on his return to the States. Civic proclamations celebrated his deeds, and he was offered a parade through the City of Hartford. But the general—as he insisted on calling himself ever afterward—was reluctant to accept such accolades. He consorted with anger and alcohol, particularly a mixture of sherry and rum called flip that was popular in those days. He sought but never obtained repayment of the money he personally expended on the Libyan Expedition, and he called on President Jefferson and the Republicans to apologize for abandoning America’s Arab allies and the good people of Derna. He picked fights with Congress and wrote long letters to the local newspaper. The general’s friends grew embarrassed. He died alone. In his will he requested that he be buried face-down—the only position, he said, in which his sleep was not interrupted by nightmares. He did not specify the nature of the nightmares that plagued him.
Lemuel Sweet served in the Marines for another four years. He married in 1809 and shortly thereafter left the Corps to become a schoolteacher in Breedlove, Vermont, a town noted chiefly for the quality of its cheeses. He held this post for the rest of his life. When he died, he was survived by four children—all girls—and nine grandchildren. In 1822 he published an account of his service in the Marines, with special emphasis on his part in Weston’s Libyan campaign. This publication, which he called The Black Book of Cyrenaica, was unusual in that in contained an attestation notarized by a local justice of the peace. It was also unusual in that it drew the attention of local clergymen, who roundly condemned it as a work of unhealthy imagination and pagan influences. In 1824, quite possibly in response to such criticisms, Sweet attempted to buy back and destroy all copies of the Black Book. Until recently it was said that no copies of this history survived.
Lemuel Sweet's account of America's conquest of Tripoli is no doubt fanciful and exagerrated. In Sweet’s defense, however, the lost city of Zerzura is a subject of long-standing legend in the Middle East; he didn’t make it up. Stories of “lost” civilizations, or groups of people, such as the one he posits may have inhabited Zerzura, are in fact not uncommon. Generations of Americans grew up believing that a tribe of western Indians was descended from a group of ancient Welsh explorers who got themselves lost on the new continent and were thus unable to sail home with news of their discovery.
While this tale proved to be a fabrication, others are harder to dismiss. For example, members of the Kalash tribe of Pakistan describe themselves as descendants of Alexander the Great, and have the distinctive language and religion to support the claim. They are of course the basis for the “Kafirs” described in Rudyard Kipling’s “The Man Who Would Be King.” Similarly, the Khevsureti peoples of eastern Georgia are said by some to be the remnants of lost “Latin” crusaders, Christians in chain mail bedecked in crosses who for centuries would descend from their isolated mountain home in response to a summons from the King of Georgia in times of national emergency. Both of these curious “pocket” populations are dying out rapidly, though their legends will doubtless live on.
As for the supernatural presence in the book, it is of course true that the Bible relates the story of Jesus casting out a demon, or demons, from the men of Gadarenes. Sweet cites this tale three times in his journal, indicating that it was much on his mind during the expedition. And the Koran (Sweet calls it the “alcoran,” as was the custom of the day) mentions the djinn, or "hidden," on more than one occasion. Are demons djinn, or vice versa? Sweet never says—probably because he never knew. He is also careful to note that in his last meeting with Colonel Ladendorf, he believes he was under the influence of laudanum. This means that by his own admission, he is not a reliable narrator for the most important segment of the narrative—his final encounter with Ladendorf, and Ladendorf’s capture by the army of ghostly crusaders who came to take the emerald ring back into safekeeping.
Certainly it’s possible that Colonel Ladendorf was a traitor, or a spy, and that he and Donald MacLeish betrayed General Weston by sharing intelligence with the temporarily ousted Governor of Derna. Perhaps they conspired to kill Sweet in order to prove to the Governor that they had in fact committed the most conclusive renunciation of their loyalties to the expedition. Beyond this—and with all due respect to Lemuel Sweet’s notarized attestation—it is impossible for a rational man to go.
The fates of the other Marines in the Derna Expedition are unclear. In fact, historians disagree on whether there were seven or eight Marines assigned to General Weston’s army in the first place. Only one other figure associated with the mission resurfaces, briefly, in history. In 1827, the United States Congress voted to appropriate four hundred acres of land in Kentucky to a veteran of Weston’s campaign who was long thought to be lost in North Africa. His name, according to the Congressional Record, was Donald Ailes MacLeish. One contemporary newspaper account describes him as a large man who was missing most of his left ear and two fingers from his right hand. It was also said that the man’s eyes were a curious shade of yellow, probably on account of a prolonged battle with jaundice during a period of captivity among the Mahometans, who were said to have used him harshly.
Donald MacLeish occupied his Kentucky freehold for only a year. He admitted that he found no pleasure in agrarian pursuits. He was a restless sort, a rambler, always curious. He was heading west, he told his neighbors. Something about the Indians. The big man was said to dislike them. America should never rest, he said, until they were driven from her shores. If this meant war, he said, so be it. He for one was ready for a fight.
From Here to Infirmity
Thoughts, drafts, reviews, and opinions from Bruce McCandless, poet, amateur historian, bicyclist and attorney. I'm partial to Beowulf, Dylan, Cormac McCarthy, Leonard Cohen, Walt Whitman, Hillary Man
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