The Joshua Tree
Original Fiction
This is a short story I wrote or rewrote at the start of the pandemic. It is necessarily dark, given the way the world broke just then. There are more curse words then I would use today, so it may not be suitable work work and it's not for children. We learn.
The 10 highway stretches across the width of Southern California like some great ribbon, wrapping up the best parts of the State. You can pick it up near the ocean in Santa Monica and ride out east, through Los Angeles and past the edge cities in San Bernardino and Riverside. The stucco of strip malls and home improvement stores will give way for a while and the rocks will turn so rusty red you’ll swear they were relocated from the set of a Hollywood western.
The stucco returns in the Coachella Valley and ends again past Indio. The rocks and the cacti return and you’re in the real desert now. You can ride the road out of California, past her borders into the Arizona wasteland through the sovereign nation of Texas into the great pillars of the American South and the below sea-level stench of the rotting corpse of Jefferson Davis, finally landing in Florida, that lawless banana republic home to pirates, smugglers, telemarketers and Christians quarterbacks.
We are not traveling nearly as far. About an hour East from the resorts and the indigenous casinos of the Valley was Joshua Tree, a shit-stamp town which served as the entrance to a National Park bearing the same name.
Joshua Tree National Park is heavily populated by a particular sort of yucca tree, twisted and gnarled and thought by early Mormon settlers to resemble Joshua, a spy who worked for Moses to explore the land of Canaan, who was known to reach both hands into the sky and pray. Dante, when writing his opus, saw Joshua along with a cast of biblical superhero’s waiting in heaven.
The pain of the beating I took rushes through me. I curse the blood in my veins because with each beat of my heart, with each lap that my blood took around my circulatory system, all of my wounds swell and ache and scream.
The rest stop near the gates teems with urine and snot and the societal tolerance for the feces of children makes me realize my own insignificance as an American male who has not reproduced. Without such propagation, the world now considered me and the other non-breeders like me as only serfs or leaches, existing only to provide resources to their families or depleting those resources that they felt should be allocated towards their children.
I have not furthered the cause of the tribe nor have I left it some great gift of innovation like the inventor of the terry cloth robe or the Internet. I bloomed once but only briefly and now I just wither, merely existing until I return to the mulch pile with the cactus flowers and the decaying Joshua Trees.
I can be counted upon for little now. The most desirable quality I offer as a citizen is malleability.
Step aside, step aside, and come inside. Take the ride.
Maggs pays the guard our entrance fee and smiles at his ranger hat. She drives through the entrance gates and slips another pill on my tongue.
The Joshua Trees are raving mad now, screaming at God in every direction.
Maggs navigates with familiarity and soon finds a secluded campsite. She eases her van close to a tree.
Joshua Tree sits in the Mojave Desert at the intersection of the warm lower Sonoran Desert and a freezing highland desert called the Great Basin. The boundaries are defined by the presence of the eponymous trees.
Maggs and I walk amongst these trees, she with determination and me feeling steadily high from the pills she is feeding me.
The rock formations grow tight around us and I notice colorful scrawls of chalk and paint and permanent marker.
I follow Maggs on a narrow path that soon opens to a wide trail and then into a vast expanse of desert. In the distance, rocks form great towers from the desert floor to the heavens.
The open space is alluring. In its emptiness I find everything that was missing. I imagine this place is a great graveyard and from the heavens drop all the things we have lost. Our keys and our lovers, our mother and father, all the blood we have spilled, and all of our dreams. Some great or lesser god either finds these or steals them from us and drops them through the aether. Thermo, mesa and strato - they rain down at neutrino speed, collecting particles of primordial dust and copper, becoming electro charged in the troposphere and turning invisible before they land out here in the desert along with the UFOs and dead celebrities.
I think if you wander that desert long enough you will recover all of those things we have once known.
Cap Rock in the park is home to a little grotto where a monument to Gram Parsons sits. Many of the rocks have been stolen by the same screaming graffiti found at Pere-Lachaise.
He is missed.
He is loved.
His words touched her soul.
Windows on a world, hollow now.
No more pain.
Music.
You were the soundtrack to my life.
Thank you.
This memorial had become an important stop on rock and roll’s version of the Santiago road along with Renton and Fremantle.
Maggs lights us clove cigarettes.
The burning in my lungs feels good now.
“What’s your deal with Parsons?”
“Not my deal. Not originally. My father’s.”
“A big fan?”
“Obsessed. And obsessed with his death.”
“He overdosed.”
“Maybe. But he knew it was coming. His death. He willed it I think. To die out here, in the desert.”
“Quite the hero.”
“Gram did it on his terms. So did my dad.”
“Your dad overdosed?”
“No. He was more direct. Revolver. Took the back of his skull off. I found him.”
“Holy shit. But why?”
“Why not? What else is there? All this pain. All this misery. We’re all going to die anyway.
Wouldn’t you rather be the one to flip the switch instead of hooked up to tubes and pumped with poison drugs?”
“I don’t know. It’s the one question, isn’t it?”
“He left a note. To me. He asked me to take his body right here and burn it. I was just a little kid. What a fucking asshole. But I was going to try. I hid the note in my underwear after I read it and before I started screaming. When I showed it to my dad’s brother and asked him to help me he hit me and told my mother. They locked me up at home and wouldn’t let me go to the funeral. The next time I saw my father he was only grass and a copper plaque for a headstone.”
“What happened to your uncle?”
“He started sleeping with my mother, which was bad enough. When she was too drunk to do it, he came for me. He was my first. The last time we had sex, I waited until he passed out in my bed and I tried to cut his thing off with my pocket knife. It ripped the flesh but I couldn’t lop it off. He started bleeding and screaming and he broke my nose. I left and never looked back.”
“Bullshit.”, I say.
“I bear my soul to you and you call bullshit?”
“I don’t buy it. You would have cut his junk off the first time, not the last.”
“Touche, Mr. Man.”
“So what’s the real deal?”
Maggs looks at me like she is considering me. Considering how far I’ll go with her.
Considering if I am worth the effort to tell the truth.
“When my dad – did it, everything just stopped for me. I wanted to follow him. So I just sort of shut down. My mom didn’t know what to do, not really. I’ve been telling that story about my Uncle for so long, I guess I sort of believe it. He did start fucking my mom. But he never touched me. He tried to be a dad, really, but I wouldn’t let him. I hated him for being there. I hated him for being alive when my dad was dead.”
“So what happened?”
“Nothing really. The Uncle had some bucks, so when the two of them didn’t know what to do with me anymore they sent me to boarding school in Ojai. I wanted to go though. There was no fight or anything.”
“Boarding school, that makes sense.”
“How?”
“The clove cigarettes, some of your affectations, preppy girl stuff.”
“Screw you. Anyway, those boarding school bitches were a lot more street than you give them credit for. Crazy stuff.”
“Like pillow fights?”
“More like heroin and prostitution.”
“Swear?”
“Truth. But I’ll never touch that shit again. I mean, you think you’re disconnecting but it’s bullshit. Eventually you still feel all of it. All of the pain. You’re just too high for anyone to notice.”
“And your mom and uncle?”
“I was gone, so he moved her back to Florida. Then he caught her fucking a neighbor. Instead of blowing his brains out like my dad did, he just sent her packing. She works on a cruise ship out of Miami.”
“Fucking wow. But I still don’t get the whole Parsons connection here.”
“After Gram died his stepfather came out of the woodwork and wanted to take his body to be buried in New Orleans. Apparently in some attempt to cash in on his estate. So his coffin is being loaded on to cargo plane at LAX and fucking two of his boys steal the fucking thing right from the airport and bring it here.”
“Holy shit.”
“I know. Cool right? They soak the whole deal, pouring five gallons of gas into the casket and toss a book of matches inside. Boom boom! Roman candle. A huge fireball lit up this place.”
“Did they get away with it?”
“They ditched the cops, the article said because they were ‘not encumbered by sobriety’, I love that, but they eventually got charged with stealing the casket and had to pay a ticket.”
“Wow. Rock and roll.”
“Fucking love man. Rock and fucking love. Can you imagine? So, will you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Burn my body.”
“Darlin’ I don’t know if you’ve noticed the obvious age difference here, both in years and in miles, but by the time you die a nice, peaceful and natural death I will be deep worm food.”
“So you don’t want to be cremated.”
“I’m Catholic. We don’t do that. We’re coming back.”
“Like Jesus.”
“Exactly like him. Now imagine if he was just a pile of ashes.”
“Whatever. Promise you’ll do it.”
“Seriously?”
“No fucking around.”
“Fine, whenever the grim reaper shall deem to darken your doorstep, I will Parsonize you.”
“Right here.”
“Right here.”
“On this spot.”
“So help me God.”
At night we make a campfire in a circle of rocks outside of the van. I heat bottled-water water in a metal pot over our fire and cook the dehydrated food Maggs had picked out at the supply store.
I think about Maggs as a little girl, finding her dad dead. A suicide. Bits of brain and skull sprayed against the ceramic tile surrounding the bathtub.
I rub my temple with my index finger. I think about a television actor on a forgotten show who had accidentally killed himself on the set by firing a blank into his temple. The gun was a semi-automatic with a slide on top. The actor didn’t know that it still moved like a real gun and when he held the pistol tight against his temple and fired, after announcing in dramatic fashion that he was ending it all, he slid the muzzle into his skull with the great force of gunpowder. The impact crushed his skull at the temple and he dropped dead.
I read about his funeral and the article described the square patch of skin that the mortician had affixed to the actor’s head to cover the hole.
Ever since I read that I have constantly rubbed my own temple while thinking about the patch of my own skin a mortician will affix to my head I ever shoot myself.
Would he use glue? What kind of glue do you use on skin? It doesn’t have to hold that long, does it?
Maggs gives me another pill after we eat corn chowder and then she roasts marshmallows. I try and recall how often I have been taking them. My memory has grown soft and hazy at its edges. My legs feel as gooey as the burnt marshmallows we are popping into our mouths.
Suicide would solve so many things. Prison and money and all of the pain I felt in my body just then. There is life insurance. My parents would be taken care of.
These are the things I hold onto while considering ending my own life. I tried to cling to them like rocks at the bottom of an imaginary river. I hope the rocks are heavy enough to pull me under and let the water fill my lungs.
The pain meds are in full swing and everything sways with her body and the van sways too. The fire burns weakly outside and casts a warm orange glow through the tinted plastic windows.
There is no sound. I can’t hear Maggs. I can’t hear our bodies. The van moves up and down on its old springs but I can’t hear metal bending under the weight of our bodies.
I want to pull Maggs into me. To never let her go. To feel that warm and safe and perfect forever.
“I need to tell you something.”
There are statements made prior to a conversation, that are fundamental indicators that rain is about to come.
I am silent, hoping she won’t say whatever is on her mind. In our silence, I realize all at once why we are here, together on her air mattress in her van. Her father’s suicide delivered her to her Uncle and that delivered her to me. She is seeking, I don’t know what, from a stranger. A beaten and broken stranger. I wonder how many of the other women I’ve slept with were there for the same reason. Or maybe Maggs just wants to get off.
Maggs shows me her gun.
“What the hell?”
“Do you remember this?”
“Yeah. But I’m too high to take it away from you.”
The silver barrel shines in the glow of the dying fire. She is not menacing. She isn’t pointing the gun at me or waving it around. I can see the chipped wood handles of the pistol.
“This was it. This was the gun he used.”
“Why are you showing it to me?”
“Because it’s why we’re here. Well, why I’m here. But I needed your help.”
“With what?”
“I’m going to do it here. Well, I’m going to do it in the spot so you won’t have to carry my body or anything. All you’ll have to do is strike a match.”
“Simple.”
“Exactly.”
“Where does that leave me? The body of a young dead girl. That I‘ve burnt to destroy the evidence. I‘m probably already a fugitive at this point.”
“You promised.”
“I don’t know that I did. But I’ve been thinking. What if I want to go with you?”
“How do you mean?”
“Flip my own switch. With you.”
Maggs put another pill on my tongue. We fell asleep wrapped around each other like lovers.
I only wake up because of the heat in the van. I could have kept sleeping. Forever. But the sun is burning too brightly. I find Maggs reading an old paperback copy of Mrs. Dalloway.
“How long have I been out?”
“It’s past noon. Are you hungry?”
“No, I feel sick.”
She puts a pill on my tongue and hands me an open bottle of Gatorade. “Come on. I want to show you something.”
We hike back to Cap Rock.
“So I’ve figured it out.”
“Figured what?”
“How we can do it. I’m making a long fuse. From rope. And that way we can light the gasoline after. Five gallons like Kaufman used. We‘ll pack lots of twigs and tinder all around to be sure.”
“After?”
“After we’re gone.”
“And how do you suggest we do it?”
“I thought it had to be with the gun. But it doesn’t, not really. I’ve got tons of those Oxy’s I’ve been giving you. We’ll drink some tequila and go to sleep. Like Gram.
“I need to think. I need to take a walk.”
I spend the afternoon alone with the Joshua Trees.
I do not care if I die. But I find myself carrying about Maggs. She is so young. She has yet to bloom and life hasn’t given her that chance. If I do it with her, that makes me a murderer. But if I leave her here she’ll do it anyway.
I stop and drop my knees on the desert floor and I cry.
I walk so far off of the trail that nothing looks familiar. I am hungry. I have not eaten. I finish the Gatorade too quickly. Pain returns to my body.
A tree appears to burn in the distance. I try to walk on it but it remains on the horizon, always out of reach.
I begin to feel hopeless. I want to lay down. I can do it like that. Do it right here. Let Maggs find her own way. I will lay on the desert floor and die and wither under its sun. As I lay down beneath a Joshua Tree the tree bends over as if to stare at me.
“You’ve been looking for me.”
“You kept moving.”
“I didn’t. What do you want?”
“I want to know the way.”
“Depends where you are going.”
“Out of this wood.”
“I can show you, but then you’ll have to do your part.”
“What’s that?”
“Do what you came here to do. You promised her.”
“Show me.”
All of the Joshua Trees come to life, their limbs no longer twisting toward God but pointing to a rock formation, a familiar one. Their brethren on the hill wave at me, showing me the way, as promised.
Pumped with adrenaline, I still do not believe what I have seen. My feet glide over the desert and I move effortlessly for a short time.
Soon though, my legs grow heavy and my stomach aches so severely from hunger that I am doubled over.
I sit down again to rest and catch my breath and the small rocks in front of me turn into bread. I may be hallucinating but the bread is real in my mouth and my hunger subsides.
I have reached the campsite by nightfall.
“Oh my god I thought you left me.”
“Listen, I need to tell you -”
“Shhhhh. Sit. Here drink this.”
Water. Beautiful water, the elixir of life. Beautiful, warm and life giving. I finished the liter.
“Maggs, I’ve seen things.”
She puts two pills on my tongue and kisses me hard on my mouth. We kiss as the pills fall down my throat.
“I’m so glad you’re here. I was so scared you’d left me.”
She hands me a blue Gatorade. I slam that down.
I sit in the chair thinking about all I have seen. I call for Maggs to come over to me because
I feel too weak to walk to her van. For her. I need to tell her.
She emerges from the van with her face painted with white stripes of makeup, like a native warrior.
“What do you think?”
“Maggs, I saw something in the desert today and we can’t do this. We need to go back. But you’re coming with me. You can stay with me. ”
“What did you see?”
“The devil. He showed me the way back to you and gave me food. But he made me promise to do it. To kill myself with you.”
Maggs was laughing.
“Baby, you’re so cute. That’s the Gatorade talking.”
I stare at the empty Gatorade bottle on the ground.
“What did you do?”
“Experience baby. To get ready. And I just amped it up for you with a little something, so you really need to calm down baby.”
“You what?”
Reality is bending again. I move toward her but am frozen in time. The world rapidly grows smaller around me. I am Antaeus I think, Dante’s giant that carries him across the flames and to the floor of the ninth circle of hell. That makes sense to me. The world has not grown smaller, I am a giant.
“Don’t worry. I took some too. I thought it would be fun. Now relax.”
She pushes me onto the ground and is crawling on her stomach in the dirt towards me. She is grabbing at my and snapping her hands open and closed like lobster’s claws.
I push her off and she persists. Then, I launch my foot against her and she flies away from me, sliding across the dirt and the gravel on her back.
“You freak!”
I scramble to my feet and Maggs runs to the van, returning with her gun. She fires and I can see the lead melt as the bullet sails past my head.
I run and she fires again. This bullet grazes my shoulder and I now I can feel the blood trickle down my arm. The shot knocked me to the ground but I am back up and I am struggling to keep moving.
“You liar. I’m going to kill you anyway. And then I’ll do me and burn this whole park. I’ll handle what no man ever could.”
Maggs fires a third and a fourth time. The bullets ricochet off of the rocks around me as I disappear into the night. I am alone in the darkness.
I am afraid to be lost again. I am afraid of dying in the desert. I am afraid of the devil.
I sit beneath a tree, trying to get small again. Being a giant will not help me to hide in the desert. I wonder if Maggs will come and hunt me down. The trees breathe in unison with me and intermittently wave their arms.
In a minute or maybe an hour I hear another gunshot in the distance.
I think she’s done it.I am no longer afraid of her, but for her and I run back towards the campsite to find her. The trees are howling at me now, screaming at me for breaking my promise.
As I near the trail to the campsite a great fireball erupts, illuminating the desert and silencing the trees. This is the great holocaust proceeding a nuclear winter. The fire keeps burning brightly and the world along with it.
I keep moving. Traversing rocks to get to her. To see what was left of her.
And suddenly, I am falling.
Headfirst. Crashing to a rocky death as a fire began to rage above. I am conscious in this instant before my death, fully understanding that this is how I die.
Just as suddenly, I stop. I am not dead. I can feel the bones in my leg break and my ankle disintegrate.
My foot wedged between two boulders and I am suspended in mid-air. I swing like a sailfish on a hook. Pain shoots everywhere. Blood runs down my leg and rushes to my head.
I can smell the smoke from the fire. Tufts of ashes float through the air. I realize those ashes are Maggs. The fire heats the sap within the Joshua Trees and they begin to explode. It sounds like Afghanistan.
The devil comes to me on conversation.
“You didn’t keep your promise.”
“You don’t exist.”
“You’re here, aren’t you?”
“Piss off.”
“I can free you. One last time.”
“No.”
“You’re going to die here.”
“I’m going to die anyway.”
“What is it you want most?”
“A rope.”
“Besides that.”
“I want my life back.”
“Yes. I know. What if I give that to you? You get it back. Everything. None of this happened.”
The voice is seductive. Like the promise of a new relationship or sunshine on a shitty day.
“What do you want?”
“Replace yourself. There are others. You convince them to do what you could not. Just three others. As a price.”
I can see the whole world beyond the desert laid out front of me. All of its countries and all of their people. I can see their lives playing out on television screens and I wonder which three of them he wants me to kill.
“Piss off. I’ll go alone.”
I asked a particularly religious friend once if she prayed. She told me she thought we all did, all the time.
I find a prayer deep inside of myself. I do not ask to be saved.
I ask for acceptance. For whatever fate will bring and whatever consequences of the choices I’ve made.
I pray for peace for Maggs.
Hanging from those boulders with my upside down view of the world, I can see the Joshua trees reaching their arms towards the sky, praying towards the heavens or God and looking at the Joshua trees pointing the way, I am certain for the first time that God exists. Man or woman, Christian, Muslim or Jew there is someone out there, bigger than us, bigger than this world, this life and certainly bigger than the problems I have found of my own making.
I think of Dante sliding down Satan’s back and leaving hell, emerging beneath a clear sky shining brightly with stars.