Angry Buddhist (9781609458867) (31 page)

 

B
ombay Beach is laid out in a grid on the Eastern shore of the Salton Sea. Most of the homes are single story and some of them are trailers mounted on blocks. They are in varying states of disrepair and many appear forsaken. Some have been gutted by fire. Others collapsed from the weight of years and unremitting sunlight and neglect. Their yards, a mixture of gravel and sand, are strewn with bric-a-brac, rusted appliances, discarded tools, broken pottery. What surprises Jimmy is how many of the homes are fenced in, and the poignant implication that there is something inside these places worth protecting. Feral-looking dogs patrol nearly every yard and they growl at Jimmy as he walks past.

In the yard of a decrepit trailer an old man in overalls putters under the hood of a broken-down truck. His ancient wife wears a hair net and a floral housedress as she waters a row of clay pots. Neither acknowledges Jimmy as he drifts past. This is not how he remembers the town from when he was here nearly thirty years earlier with his two brothers and their father. The paint was fresh then, the people younger.

Because Dale wanted to come to Bombay Beach, Jimmy is here now. Could this be what his brother remembered when he talked about returning, this post-apocalyptic landscape of decay, ruin, and loss? Could this possibly have been what he recalled while he was locked away? Or did Dale remember the town as it was years before, the day they had all gone fishing here? Perhaps he just wanted to be someplace where he'd be left alone. But Jimmy notes with some irony that Dale would have been disappointed if he thought he was going to have a view of the water. Since the long-ago day the Duke family was here a high berm has been constructed around the western edge of the town to prevent flooding and it eliminated any view of the Salton Sea. Part of Bombay Beach can still be found beyond the great mound of earth but it's either under water or half-sunken in mud.

The sign reads
Beach Closed Keep Out
but Jimmy walks through the twenty-foot wide opening in the fortification. Beyond this point lies a parched plane of cracked mud stretching a few hundred yards to the shoreline. Jimmy thinks about the remarkable array of contingencies that have preceded this day. His preacher father who venerated a god in whom Jimmy could no longer believe. His brothers and their individual responses to their father's worldview; how one moved toward politics, one toward jail, both criminals. And how he, too, has joined them in the family business.

He thinks about the education he received, the books he read, the movies he saw and his exposure to the florid culture of modern America. The expectations he brought to work, to marriage, to life. Every experience he's had from his first tentative steps in his parents' house to his drive down here today. Every choice he's ever made, from getting up each morning to getting divorced to trying to do his job in an honest way. All of these things have combined to map the route that leads to now. This is what his teacher said: the past no longer exists, and the future is a chimera. There is only this moment and the act of inhabiting it fully, of being in it, not thinking, considering, reflecting, but simply
being
.

Jimmy doesn't buy all of that. He knows you can't shuck the past any more than you can say your family isn't your family. And the future is going to get here eventually if you just wait a few minutes. But he takes Bodhi Colletti's essential point: that he should try not to be beholden to the past or the future in a way that will distract him from the flock of white seabirds wheeling overhead, wings beating against the deepening blue of the desert sky.

Jimmy fills his lungs with air and he thinks about pride and striving and justice and the temporal nature of all of it and how none of these things contain any intrinsic meaning and how he has been defeated by attachment, whether to his family or his work, or his view of himself, and how he would dedicate whatever time he has left on this planet in the form that is Jimmy Duke to transcending his origins and conditioning and beginning anew, to freeing himself, to becoming a liberated being, one who has thrown off the shackles of the past and who will go forth in a new and openhearted way.

But if it were that easy, he already would have done it. Because no matter how much he concentrates on the exquisite desert nullity of his surroundings and absorbs their barren, fearsome beauty, no matter how much he strains to cast off the chains of the past and avoid prognosticating about the future in order to inhabit the eternal now, or how much he listens to his anger management teacher, or Bodhi Colletti, or spends times meditating over the
Book of Dogs,
no matter how much he does anything, the red rage that consumes him will not abate.

 

 

T
he long-fingered rays of the sinking sun stream through the girl's bedroom. Barefoot in a baggy sweatshirt and shorts, Brittany Duke sits cross-legged on the bed with a laptop. In a few minutes she will eat dinner with her family who will remain oblivious of their chronicler, the gimlet-eyed teenaged observer of peccadilloes and portent who has been filing reports on the Internet. She reads what she has written one last time, changes a word; adjusts a punctuation mark. Here is the text:

 

http://WWW.DESERT-MACHIAVELLI.COM

11.7 – 5:12
P.M.

The Machiavelli is about to go on a much-needed vacation cruise but before he packs the sunscreen, sandals, and Speedo, some final thoughts about the epic contest we have just witnessed. Mary Swain will be back, of that you can bet your fancy boots. Whenever times are uncertain and people are fearful, there are those who are eager to exploit fear for personal gain. I'm surprised she didn't win on Tuesday. Like General MacArthur, she shall return and she'll look a lot better than he did. As for Randall, I wrote some nasty things about him, a few of which I might, after several vodka martinis, admit I regret. Because he is not that bad. There, I said it. No one is entirely governed by malevolence. And no one is entirely governed by virtue, either. That is the point you Blogheads, you fans of the food fight American politics have become. We are flawed citizens, fallen creatures, trapped in the muck while reaching ineptly for the heavens. My fellow Americans, we are awful, really. Petty, shortsighted, greedy, foolish, and humorless. But we're beautiful, too: generous, kind, bright, hopeful and amusing. Yes, we occasionally invade the wrong country. But we also invented punk rock. I'll leave you to sort that out. So the next time you rant and rave about how you despise the worthless bastards in Washington, remember this: when you see their faces you are looking in a mirror.

 

The girl believes it to be a vivid and satisfying end to the story she has been telling. Perhaps one day it will all go in a book. A car door slams and Brittany glances toward the window. Her uncle is headed for the house.

Jimmy stands at the front door while the maid looks him over. A moment later Kendra appears behind her, drawn and wearing sunglasses. Her face is expressionless. The maid silently slips away.

“What are you doing here?” Kendra's voice is a rumor from the back of her throat. Her face remains immobile. Jimmy always made her for a second-rate performer, but now he sees she's not bad. Or maybe she's taking tranquilizers.

“You mean why am I not still locked up?”

She doesn't respond to this. He asks where Randall is and Kendra tells him to wait, he's on the phone. She indicates he should sit in the living room but he tells here he'll stand right here.

When Randall appears his shoulders sag as he moves toward Jimmy. His face is ashen, his eyes red-rimmed. They're so close he can smell Randall's aftershave, spicy with a hint of wintergreen. There is a brief moment where Jimmy sees himself bringing his hands to Randall's throat, pressing his thumbs into his larynx and squeezing until he drops to the floor.

Randall embraces Jimmy, whose arms remain at his sides.

“I was on the way to the airport when I heard the news,” Randall says. “Turned around and came home.”

“I'm glad you're here,” Jimmy says, giving nothing.

“I feel terrible,” Randall says. Jimmy lets this hang in the air. He begins to tremble. His chest expands as he closes his eyes and tries to rein himself in. When he opens his eyes again, Randall is saying, “Got him out, got him a job, an apartment.” Then he releases Jimmy from his embrace and steps back. He looks at his younger brother as if he expects a pat on the back or a sympathetic nod, but Jimmy gave at the office. “I watched out for him all his life.” At this Randall begins to sob, gently at first, but then he allows his feelings free reign and his body shakes with a representation of grief. Jimmy takes this in, waiting for the performance to play out. Whether it is real or manufactured doesn't matter. The mewling, the tear-streaked features, the familiar signposts of mourning must be performed for this audience of one.

Jimmy remains stoical. He feels a slight tremor in his right leg. It's difficult to remain composed while Randall enacts the role of grieving brother. Now Jimmy feels the red tide rising, the slow rage percolating, sending his blood coursing through his veins at a higher and higher velocity. His hands ball into fists. Several moments pass, during which the leaky politician makes a show of composing himself. There is no traffic behind them on the street. The sun is touching the mountains now. Indian summer is over, the heat gone until next year. Randall's sobs slowly abate then cease altogether, and he takes out a handkerchief and blows his nose. Jimmy would like to break that nose, drive the bone into his brother's soft brain. Randall's lips, barely moving, curl into a rueful smile and he says, “I did everything I could.”

Jimmy has another urge: he wants to applaud but does not believe his brother would understand the meaning of the gesture. Instead, he gathers his roiling emotions, draws him close and whispers: “You're full of shit.”

Randall reacts as if slapped, pretends to be stricken. He takes this moment to mutely express shock, outrage and deep hurt that this is what Jimmy has concluded. The brothers stare into each other eyes, neither breaking the stony gaze.

“At a time of such great sorrow, that's what you're thinking?”

“What I'm thinking is you should be the one laid out in a box.”

“Don't turn a family tragedy into something it doesn't need to be,” Randall says. His voice is no longer marinated in self-pity. The familial warmth is gone. “It's just us now, just you and me.”

“That's right.”

Randall's body stiffens when he feels the barrel of the gun in his ribs. This is not what he has been expecting. He opens his mouth but no sound emerges. Is he going to apologize, to unburden himself, to come clean before the avenger, flesh of his own flesh? The thought arises in Jimmy that now would be a good time to talk about what happened with Darleen, to finally get that out of the way, a last piece of business. But the idea quickly vanishes, swept away by wave of emotion equal parts anger and sadness and deep longing for a past he wishes were different, and a brother he wishes was someone else.

Please don't beg me not to do this, Jimmy thinks, because we are beyond everything we have already accomplished or left undone, beyond the parts we have enacted and the selves we thought we knew.

His mouth barely moving, Randall begins to speak in a dry whisper: “I didn't know what Dale was doing. You can accept that or not, I don't care.” Randall's body is still. He makes no move to get away from the gun. There is no longer any fear. “I wasn't going to watch you take him down. It would have been wrong.”

Breathe in, one, two.

Jimmy feels the crook of his finger on the trigger. An impulse to squeeze remains, but it is not as intense as he had imagined it would be at this moment because now he sees Randall floating into the desert sky and toward a bank of autumn clouds. Jimmy wants to wish him well, to be unburdened. His body relaxes, his heart rate settles, the tremors ease.

Breathe out, three, four.

He walks away from his brother, away from the bright house with the clean lines and the large windows overlooking the mountains. He hears the door close behind him and he is glad. In the gloaming, a breeze kicks up. It is cool on his face. He needs to make some phone calls before heading to the office where he will attempt to sort through this mess. Then, like a ragged refugee in flight from a burning village, he turns for a final look. Beside a drawn curtain and half in shadow he sees Brittany's uninflected young face. They regard each other impassively for a moment in silence and in stillness before Jimmy walks toward his truck. He wonders if she saw what just happened, wonders if she watched with the same non-attachment he is so assiduously slouching toward. He has no idea if the struggle ever ends, or if the end arrives when the struggle ceases.

 

 

I would like to thank my wife Susan, my first and best reader, for her patience, mindfulness and understanding of Bud­dhism. I lift a glass to my agents Henry Dunow and Sylvie Rabineau for their acumen and encouragement. And another to my editor Kent Carroll for his deft way with a red pen. Sylvie Mouches, my perspicacious French publisher, was remarkably helpful in bringing this project to fruition. I want to express deep gratitude to my friends Barry Blaustein, John Coles, Rae Dubow, Griffin Dunne, Sam Harper, Lindsey Lee Johnson, Tom Lutz, John Tomko and David Ulin for reading multiple drafts and offering valuable suggestions. My thanks to my brother Drew Greenland for his insights. To Dr. Ed Chung for his medical expertise. To Bruce Bauman and Steve Erick­son for steering this novel toward Europa Editions. To Larry David for the great blurb. And finally, to Allegra Greenland and Gabriel Greenland, for all they so effortlessly provide.