Marathon Cowboys (8 page)

supplies arrived. I enjoyed lying in bed, listening to him

moan and complain, then the excitement when he started

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55

unpacking his gear. I suspected we wouldn’t be seeing him

for the rest of the day.

It was after ten when I finally got up, and I filled up the

bottle he’d given me and went out for a run. Out in the sun,

the heat was brutal, but the shade wasn’t bad. Every dog in

town raised a head to watch me, then went back to sleeping

in the shade of their porches. I got a shower back home,

pulled on my jeans, and went into the kitchen. The Original

was sitting at the table, drinking coffee. “Son, you feeling

hungry? Want a sandwich?”

“That sounds good. I’ll make them. What do you want?”

“I think we’ve got some sliced ham, and we’ve got some

Velveeta, if you want a grilled cheese.”

I studied the inside of the fridge. “Too hot for grilled

cheese. You’ve got some ripe tomatoes. That might go good

with the ham.” I made a big pile of sandwiches, left a couple

wrapped up in plastic for Jesse. “You want me to go get him

so he can eat?”

“I don’t think so. I’m too tired to deal with him today.

Let him stay out in the studio and play with his paints.”

“Have you seen his paintings?”

He nodded. “Yeah. He’s a genius, Lorenzo. A world-class

genius, a world-class pain in the ass, and it is just my luck

he was born into this family.” He took a big bite of his

sandwich.

“Jesse had this idea, about making the characters in the

cartoon more obvious, like caricatures. Thinks that will get

the point across. Makes it more likely for people to identify

with character types.”

He thought about it, his eyes distant. “Well, people do

recognize caricatures. They’re good for a laugh. It would be

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56

easy to fall into the habit of making all your characters one-

dimensional, though.”

“I was thinking about
Doonesbury
. You know that

character BD? He wore his college football helmet—for what,

thirty years? But he was always a fully realized character.”

“It’s easier to do that with a comic strip instead of a

stand-alone. With a strip, you’ve got narrative. That helps

you develop character.”

“We don’t have so many newspapers anymore. I always

wanted to do a comic strip, so I could tell stories over time,

but most of the markets these days are for stand-alones.”

“I think you should go for what you want it to be, make

it as good as you can, then worry about finding markets.”

“Yeah, you’re right. I’m trying to think about too many

things at once.”

We ate our sandwiches in peaceful silence, then The

Original cut an apple up into pieces and we ate that for

desert. “You know, I was thinking about the military

cartoons out there.
Doonesbury
, he sent BD off to war. In

Jarheads
, those boys went off to war. Those were the only

two, though. The rest just had a lot of stale jokes about

peeling potatoes for KP and that tired, old officer-enlisted

shtick.”

I thought about it for a bit, eating my apple wedges.

There was enough funny in a war to make a comic strip. Wry

humor, but real. A strong sense of the ridiculous. More than

enough absurd. I hated to step into politics, though. I could

see how people would want me to come down on either one

side of the line or the other.

I sat up. Wait a minute. I could come down on the side

of the people sent to fight the war. I suspected they had a

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57

perspective different from the strong right or the strong left. I

could do a comic with a unit at war, and in forty years, they

would probably still be at war. Somewhere. There was always

a war.

“Huh.” I stood up, put my paper plate in the trash can

under the sink. “Can I look at some of your books? I took

some out to the studio last night.”

We sat together on the porch, and I looked at cartoons

from his huge collection. Sometimes he would lean over and

point something out to me, but mostly he just sat with me

and let me think. The really good comics, they were subtle.

They had something to say. They used exaggeration and

caricature in a very quiet way. Most of the really good ones

were daily cartoons, narratives, the old-fashioned newspaper

comic strip.

It was coming clear in my mind, not any specific

content, but what I wanted to aim for. I felt like shadowy

building blocks were rearranging themselves in my mind,

and my cartoon was starting to take shape in my head. I was

pleased. More than pleased. Happiness, excitement were

bubbling up in my stomach. The old man and I, we fit

together. What he had to teach me was just what I needed to

learn, and his style, the quiet way he made a point and then

sat back while I thought about it, was perfect for me. Navajo

men and women, the elders, they taught this same way.

They told a story, and the story had a point, but the person

listening, they had to work out how that story mattered to

them. It was a subtle way of teaching.

Sadie came by, tripped up the porch steps, talking

about bringing umami to the bakery. Maybe she’d have

better luck with umami pastry, and she could sell them

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through the café. Apparently only members of her immediate

family had been willing to try the Umami Dogs.

She was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt and shorts with

sandals, and her legs were skinny as chicken legs. She was

probably naturally high-strung, but the frantic jitteriness,

the way she kept shivering and wiping her nose on her

sleeve, made me wonder if the man we had rousted in the

alley last night had been telling the truth, that Sadie had

called him to bring her some dope. He could have been out

in the alley, waiting for her. The Original was watching her

as she talked, his back getting stiffer and stiffer. I stood up

to give them some privacy. “I better go check on Jesse.”

“Did he get his supplies? I thought I saw the truck this

morning. I can’t wait to see what JC’s going to paint. Did you

see his last show, Granddad? Oh, of course you did. I’m

forgetting.”

“Sadie, sit down. Let’s talk.” His voice was tired and sad,

but she sat down on the top step. She must have known

what was coming. She wrapped her arms around her knees,

dropped her head.

I walked down the steps. “Sadie, I’ll see you later.”

“Yeah, sure, um… Granddad, what’s his name again? I

can’t remember.”

Jesse was moving around the studio like a whirling

dervish. At first I thought he was dressed in a bunch of silk

scarves, then I realized he had them draped over his arms

and shoulders and was hanging them up from one of the

rafters to flutter in the breeze. When he hung the last one

up, he was wearing boxers and nothing else. His side of the

studio was arranged with the huge blank canvases in a

circle. There were eight of them, with some spares along the

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59

wall. He had been telling the truth—they must have been ten

feet tall, probably five feet wide. They formed a sort of

barrier, separating the sides of the studio, and the scarves

made another line. “We could have just put some masking

tape down on the floor,” I said, and stuck my head between

the scarves.

“Hey, where have you been?”

“Having lunch with your granddad, and then we looked

at cartoons on the porch. I made you a couple of ham and

tomato.”

“I’m hungry. I didn’t realize I’d missed lunch.”

“Sadie’s talking to him on the porch.”

He must have heard something in my voice. He went on

alert, his back snapping stiff and straight. I thought he was

going to look just like his grandfather when he was eighty.

“Why? What’s wrong? What did she say?”

“Jesse, you know she’s using. Maybe she can get some

help if she admits it.”

“No, she’s not.” He looked tired, cranky as a toddler, his

face moving from worried to scared. “You don’t know her.

You don’t know anything about it.”

“No, of course I don’t. Oh, wait. Where did I grow up?

On the Navajo reservation? What would I know about people

using.”

“Shit.” He pushed open the door.

“You’re wearing boxer shorts.”

“So what? It’s ninety-four degrees out here.” I ignored

him, went to my couch, and lay down. Then I moved the

other direction, gave him my back, so I could look at the

quiet empty walls of my half of the studio. I could hear him

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cursing behind me, but he pulled on his jeans and T-shirt

before he went back to the house.

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61

Chapter Six

I TOOK up my watercolor pad and worked on the cartoon I’d

done of the bar fight in Alpine. I used the markers and

colored in Jesse’s pretty honey-colored hair, stormy blue

eyes, even gave his red sneakers some sparklies on the

shoestrings. Some green on the pool table, and the beer

bottles got a bit of amber. I took his advice and sketched in a

little Confederate flag on the back-jeans pocket of the

cracker who’d tried to roust him. I felt a little chill, looking

down into that guy’s dumb, brutal face. Jesse might have

really been in danger. Those two guys, they could have hurt

him, badly. They were looking to hurt someone. Now I

wished I had done a little more damage to that dumb

redneck’s face so he’d remember next time.

I hung the cartoon up on Jesse’s side of the studio, then

I peeled out of my jeans and T-shirt and lay back on my

couch, enjoying the fans overhead. Jesse was right: it was

over ninety in here, but he’d lowered the blinds so it was

dark, and it was cooling off with the breeze.

I woke up an hour later, and there was a little cooler

next to my couch, full of ice and a couple of beers. I looked

at them. Shiner Bock again. Pinned on my bulletin board

was a sketch of me sleeping. He’d drawn my hair sticking up

like a little kid with a cowlick, and it gave me a comical look,

like I was five years old. He’d put a little devil dog tattoo on

my cheek.

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62

I guess that meant we’d made up. I could hear him over

on his side, but I decided to let him work. I visited the head,

then sat down at my desk. Let’s sketch out a platoon, I

thought. This is my platoon, and they needed to be good for

forty years. No, fifty years. We’d need a medic. We’d need a

team leader. That would have to be me. Trying to take care of

a platoon was the funniest job in the Marine Corps. Jesse

would have to come along, or JC3, maybe, now that DADT

was history. We’d need a radioman and a gunner. Infantry

platoon, no question about that. I made some preliminary

sketches, toyed with names. I worked for a couple of hours,

and it was dark by the time The Original came in and leaned

over my desk. He studied my sketches, grinned at the sketch

of me sleeping, then went over to Jesse’s side of the studio.

“You boys have to strip down because of the heat? I can

rig up one of those portable air conditioners if you want.”

“I’m okay,” Jesse said. He stuck his head through the

scarves. “You want air conditioning, Mary?”

“I’m good.”

The Original came back through the scarves, swatting at

them irritably. He gestured toward Jesse’s side. “Good

cartoon. I like how you colored his sneakers. Looks just like

him. You boys ready for some supper?”

We got dressed and met at the kitchen table. The

Original was cooking steaks in an iron skillet, on top of the

old gas range. “Here you go, boys.” He put a plate down in

front of Jesse, must have been nearly sixteen ounces of T-

bone. His eyes got big, and he reached for the ketchup. The

T-bone that was put down in front of me was even bigger, its

sizzling edges flopping over the side of the plate. I looked

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over at Jesse, gave him a
wtf?
look, but he just grinned at