"I need one more drink, and I picture some little cantina,
tiled counter, neon beer signs, old calendars of bullfighters,
and busty girls, and saints.
I decide to look for a place like that.
But as soon as I'm back in my car,
I spread the city map and drive to the address
on Billy's driver's license.
What a neighborhood-- weeds, dust, peeling paint.
Everyone living here could be senile.
Billy has a unit in a barracks-like structure.
The walls show rusty drips from the coolers on the roof
and black widow webs shroud the windows and the doorways.
Billy's key works the lock.
Inside it's hot and stale, the air seems low on oxygen,
and I can see, slowly turning, my palms pressed to my thighs,
that my brother left on life not even a fingerprint.
The sheets and towels, dropped socks,
tossed underwear, look grabbed from thrift shop racks.
On the dresser, a clock, a rusted razor blade,
a bank statement--
balance around 60 bucks.
I catch the old perfume of his sweat and crouch
to look beneath the bed.
Only a hoe and a shovel, blades crusted with soil.
The telephone's dead and the phone book seems never used.
Billy isn't listed in it.
Harry Buck is.
En route, I stop at Billy's bank.
I want him back, but it's too late for us.
That 60 bucks is all of him I can keep.
And it's easy-- our handwriting is very much the same.
En route?
En route where?
I'd like it to be Harry Buck's place.
I imagine his home a monument to art and money, a Windsor
palace, a Taj Mahal, surrounded by lawns and gardens.
When I ring, I imagine Buck himself,
in his motorized wheelchair, answering the door.
Crippled or not and 80 at least, he's handsome and gallant
still.
'Well,' he says, 'I know you.
You're Bud Bach, the artist.'
I want to tell him Billy's dead and that I'm feeling terrified.
I want to ask the old commissioner how a man can
live so long and well.
But as we're shaking hands, I just say, 'My pleasure.
I happened to be in town.
Alexander Resnikoff suggested I say hello.'
At Alex's name, Harry Buck twinkles.
'Please,' he says, 'come on in.
Tell me what you're painting these days.'
We sit, as I imagine it, in a room the size of a gym--
terracotta with floral splashes, Buck
lounging in his wheelchair, me on a sofa so vast that I
feel like an afterthought.
I'm not painting anything new, but I tell him
about my last show.
Then I discuss my Apache research, which is turning up
some fascinating--
I stop.
There I am, position of honor over the fireplace.
The buffalo faintly steam.
Where they've broken the ice with their hooves to drink,
slivers of it are smeared with mud.
In the foreground, behind a rock,
two braves wait there a moment.
The elder, with just the start of a fatty waist roll,
has a cautionary hand on the young one's shoulder.
And Harry Buck smiles, 'Of course--
of course your painting is in my home."
Then he asks, 'Why are we sitting inside?
It's the kind of day that may never come again.'
Buck leads me through the house, out
to a sunny flagstoned courtyard awash in bougainvillea.
A many tiered fountain feeds an ornamental pool,
where old, slow goldfish flirt their tails like negligees.
'Shall we have some wine?'
Wheelchair whirring, Buck passes back and forth
between patio and house.
No maid?
No butler?
Who else lives here?
As he brings burgundy in glasses, comes again
with a board of cheese, I understand
that we're truly alone.
I remind myself, don't do anything on impulse.
And then I have to smile, because I'm telling him,
'it turns out to be a honeymoon.'
With what relief I hear those words--
whatever is waiting for me.
Old age, non compos mentis, and what comes at the end
will wait a little longer.
'Splendid!' Harry Buck cries.
He pours, then hands me a glass.
He raises his own, 'To many years of joy.
I'd love you to tell me about the person.'
And I try--
I try to conjure Harper's charm, I try to evoke his tenderness.
For the rest, no need to speak.
I see Buck understand it from the wealth of his experience--
smiling and nodding, letting his eyes close.
For such a man, the dream of men is a lullaby.
I imagine, in the shadow of the fountain,
a disk of trembling light, the sun off Harry Buck's
wristwatch, bouncing with his heartbeat.
Buck may already be asleep.
Look how his white head has fallen.
So my eyes closed, too.
And now, I can see my masterpiece--
Harper, Alexander, Harry Buck, Billy, and myself.
I see us with arms raised and hands joined.
I see our faces, young and shining,
fearless in the firelight, while floating
upward, high above the campfire, smoke reaches for the stars.
But that's just what I imagine.
I don't go to Buck's house.
He might not be there, or he might be hideously decayed
and nothing would be as I've painted it.
Instead, I'm en route to the mall.
On our drive up to Phoenix, I'll break the news to Harper
that he's got to find another home.
As for me, I know I've got to get myself back to work.
I've been thinking about a pow wow piece that
should be really excellent.
There are galleries in Sedona and Scottsdale,
in Santa Fe and Salt Lake, that still might be interested.
I'm there, in my new painting, already
home, as I weave through the mall's parking lot,
up to the doorway, where Harper waits,
with arms full of packages, eyes full of love."
Thank you.
[APPLAUSE]