Jonathan Davis SAD COWBOY I A cowboy with yubitsume finger sits low at a red bar seat. He views refracted light through the bottom of a crystal glass; it’s cut in the style known as the Lone Star Cut, the state cut. His lens outside is a lone star. Out the window is Edwards Plateau land from its southwest corner. Ashe juniper, honey mesquite, oak trees. The semi-arid region is lined by transparent streams that well up from underground, the Edwards Aquifer, caves and bats. Indian-blanket wildflowers stroke a sky of dappled altocumulus. Sick at heart, he regards the bursting desert sunset through wet eyes. Irregular clouds continue passing above, the time out of joint. ‘Are you ready to go on? You’ve got a couple hours until showtime,’ a young lady obscured by waggling camcorder says. ‘I have not art to reckon my groans,’ the cowboy poet replies. Analog televisual snow under a mounted taxidermic longhorn skull in a craftsman off the rollercoaster 38th Street in southwest Hyde Park. The pattern is random. The dot-pixel static enraptures me, because I have become lost in thought, staring off into space. No signal is coming in, and so radiated electromagnetic noise is being picked up by the TV antenna. Austin, Texas, 1996. I was watching The Show With No Name. Underground variety clips played on public-access. Ephemera. Unruly local callers-in. Circulated obscure cult favorites of the video underground. Music, culture, oddities. It was during banter between the hosts and a caller that I saw the cosmic microwave background radiation and thermal noise appearing in a subtle way, almost as though there all along. Spectral visitation, visual and auditory echo. Jonathan Davis 2 I do not know why I lost connection. I became lost. In my memory, I was this way for perhaps several minutes when I heard a voice. It was female, and familiar. I heard the voice different nuff I knew was unaccountable to the room and anomalous-like. First I muted the program with the tacky plastic button on the remote. Then I smoothed my hair and looked round. I unmuted and monkeyed with the volume awhile until deciding it weren’t that I were crazy. Through my television or of some extratelevisual plane had the voice come, I dunno. I climbed the roof and checked the new Digital Sky Highway satellite dish. Nothing. I was involved in a horrendous incident when in single-digit years caused by an adult patriarch resulting in trauma and disfigurement. Still stitched and in PT unable to walk, I was riding passenger with a relation when Hank Williams was introduced me by cassette. Vanilla hillbilly music—and the soul! It had a picture of the man in creamwhite Nudie suit with blue musical notes and staff stitched in relief, with his tan felt cowboy hat tipped back enough to display the face of the star so he could emote in that earnest and theatrical style of the day. Though I was but a boy, it sure spoke to me. I too had felt haunting pain. A few short years later. I heard Hank over a 50,000 watt clear-channel border blaster operating from Mexico. This was during summers in the Mex of Tex-Mex down south when shipped off due to being trouble to my parents. The hot little transistor pulled me in, and the music reordered who I was before it put me back material. The antenna farm hummed far away. A 500k amplifier driven off a special 50k transmitter. Twenty 100,00 watt tubes with water cooling from an outside cooling pond of distilled water. Pyrex tubing with high-voltage DC and the works out there in the desert. The signal was so intense, it obliterated anything Jonathan Davis 3 within fifty kilocycles of the station’s frequency path. Ranchers claimed they could hear it playing through their barbed-wire fences at nighttime. The musical purr, the vibration. A boy underneath a large pecan tree, pecans littered beneath. Many cattle couchant enjoying the shade of the tree and the boy’s company. A waft of grape Kool-Aid smell on the air from Texas mountain laurels. I was trouble and so sent to work the ranch summers. I bailed and hauled hay, monitored and filled feeding troughs, worked clearing land and building barbed- wire fences. Hot, sweaty, dirty. A familiar notion someone was calling. I thought of someone I didn’t yet know, someone I dreamed to meet one day out there in the world. I saw a swirling yellow rose on a backdrop of prickly pear cactus. I took a drink water while my knees wobbled and eyes yodeled a blue cry. A hard-edged bluesy feeling, no end to the desert I’ll cross. I see a billowing wispy shape, but before I recognize seeing, nothing. II 2009. I am twenty-one. I saw her at Shangri-La first time. The Violet Crown aglow. It was Armadillo Races night, so you know it were gon be all get-out. Figure I’d be drunk, so I set the hasp unlocked on my garden gate. I paid for my one-dollar ticket with the number written on back and placed my bet. I was fixinuh get myself some firewater when I saw her. Then my little racer set to runnin’. He made his dash across the turf to the line undistracted. My bet was largest on little #3, so I was ushered forth from the crowd and held to testify on that microphone held by the announcer whether I would keep the money, or go for pocket, what’s in his, like behind door #2 or some kina thing. The crowd yelled out various decisions I might make. I was feeling ballsy, so I went pocket. They cheered in anticipation. He asked me, Jonathan Davis 4 Left, right, or back. I said left. More cheering. Well then wouldn’t you know, I won just about prize-and-a-third for a total of $117 that was in his Skoal-ringed left Wrangler pocket. I groomed my hair and smiled under the spotlight. I gave my molasses haw-haw into the microphone. I looked and saw her looking back at me. She made eyes. My mind unspooled all in romantic thought as some brisk up-tempo jukejoint song kicked on. Lum dragged me to meet a fresh pint to my lips, and though quick I made to look once more, she was gone. Man some things are chance. Like real chancy. Like I mean what I mean is I got a ride from Lum and he said like, ‘Kay, so, a left here,’ and all I really heard was queso, and so home, I rode my racer from Hyde Park to Barton Springs for some at El Alma and that’s when : I’m eating queso fundido and having a margarita when I see her down the bar. She is pretty and looks smart. I like how smart is the look in her eyes. She knows things, the kind of woman whose presence causes men to straighten and present themselves without realizing. They elevate their natures by her visage and actions. You could trace the wake of impression. If she lends her approval of one, they are ennobled. I saw in her countenance the guarantee of a deep, rich inner world, that she is keen, smart, and kind. She sharpens light like crystal. —I think we met eyes last month, at Shangri-La? I placed top bet, won a race, and lost sight of you before I had the chance to say, um, Hi. Her face is silhouetted by the El Alma sign, neon, hanging by chains, a spikey goldenrod sun rising and visible by half, four stripes of red bullnose, the middle reading El Alma in vaguely Arabic emerald-green letters, and at the bottom, glowing with warm invitation: CAFE Y CANTINA in mellow yellow. Jonathan Davis 5 —It’s you, she said. I remember. I wanted to say hi to you, too, she said. Hi. My friend dragged me away. There was another party or something. I’m Sophia Anne. —My name’s Wesley, he said, brushing back his hair. It’s the oddest thing, how I ended up here. Small exchange of coy glances. A mosaic of social doings on the rooftop patio. —Maybe it’s a good sign, she shrugged, smiling. Brown almond eyes. Crooked white umbrella over his head. —Can I buy you a drink? he asked. She swirled the melting ice of her glass and made thinking eyes. She flicked the straw. —I have to meet someone for a thing pretty soon, but… —Okay, sure, he wrinkled his mouth, straightened. Another time? —Here’s my number, she took his phone in hand, navigated, typed deftly. —Au revoir, he swept his hand in like a casual wave, twisted a heel and split. She smiled at his shy charisma as he made leave of the scene. It would be wholly insufficient to say ‘burning with passion’ after five dates, ten. He was aflame and betrayed by all formerly defining independence possessed. The fibers of his heart now enmeshed with another, he could see no life apart; she the same. They had sleepovers, picnics in parks, took trips together—met each other’s friends, shared histories and plans for the future, coupled. They were caught in the high of early infatuation, everything pink and red. Time seemed to take new shape. —Such is my largesse, she jested. —Clearly I’m in such awe of you.