The Shepard Zone

SAM SHEPARD. Jeez. Life's a living hell because of Sam Shepard.

Your sister's in love with him. Your mother's in love with him. Jessica Lange, for Pete's sake, that blonde-haried, brown-eyed, gorilla-yer-dreams, even she's in love with him.

Your girlfriend says to you: "Why can't you be more like Sam Shepard?" She buys you denim jackets, refuses to wash your bluejeans, pickles your tongue with shots of tequila. "Why don't you buy a lasso?" she suggests. "Buck broncos, for Christ's sake. Dip snuff, do chaw, go smokeless, anything."

You explain that men who use chewing tobacco suffer higher incidents of lip and gum cancer.

"Be a man," she pouts, hands on hips, cowgirl-style. "What's a little bleeding? Besides, I like yellow teeth. I think they're, ya know, sexy."

Just for her, you take to dipping. She's happy. Gets you a ten gallon hat. Enraged, you slap her in the face. "Oh, Sam!" she exclaims. She likes you even more.

Next day you go to kiss her and she kicks you in the groin.

"Wha'?" you moan, breathing deeply, slowly. "Wha'd I do?"

She laughs and struts away, brushing make-believe dust off the seat of her bootcut corduroys.

"Hmmph!" she snorts. "You can take it, cowboy. Jes' go on back to your filthy c-countess. I ain't never wan't see you ag'in!"

You wonder where she picked up the Midwestern accent, consider chasing after her. And what's all this countess business?

"The hell with it," you say, climbing into the cab of the four-whell drive Chevy Ram she made you buy, tossing a handful of oats and alfalfa to a U-Haul full of haggard-looking thoroughbreds. "I don't need her. I don't need anybody."

You pop Merle Haggard into the tapedeck, pound your fist and sing along: "Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to marry. Take me back to Tulsa, I'm too young to wed thee." For some reason you start thinking about your girlfriend's neck. You've been singing along, having a good ole time, then you start to cry just thinking about your girlfriend's neck. "Her neck," you sob, flipping on the wipers. "Oh, man! I miss her...lousy...n-neck!"

It's an ordinary neck. But you miss it all the same.

A mile out of town you turn on the radio. The bulletin's half over before you realize who it's about: "...star of Fool for Love, nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in The Right Stuff, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Buried Child and the Cannes Film Festival for Paris, Texas, a man who's been called by some the next Eugene O'Neill, by others the Hollywood heir apparent to the late actor James Dean, Sam Shepard, today, got his hair cut."

It's all hype, you know it. But in between Yosemite Sam-style half-swallowed profanities, you can't help wondering whether he got it cut below the ear or in a more fashinable high-and-tight. Static swallows the remainder of the newscast; you reach the city limits, and the radio swells back on: "...late-breaking news, folks...(some annoying feedback here)...it was...fizzle, fizzle...a high and...(more bothersome static)...tight."

You swing into an all-night clip joint and hand a drunken-looking barber five dollars and your bottle of Jack Daniel's.

"Make it quick, Old Man. I've got a date with my girl." You listen to him swing from the bottle and feel a white sheet flutter down around your neck. You look at the sheet, the curious bloodstains.

"Been cleanin' fish on this sheet, Old Man?"

"Don't fish," he answers. You're the only one laughing.

"Don't fish, eh? Then how you explain those snapshots of your boy and you with all them pretty trout?"

It's comfortable in the chair, and he's a good barber. He takes his time cutting, and only begins to speak after you've settled down. You're practically asleep when he starts; his voice has a familiar, paternal tone to it. You find it so relaxing you don't even notice the huge tufts of hair he's subtly cut out. As he talks you feel your scalp bleed, but it's all right. Everything's, somehow, strangely familiar...

"My son. Well. He liked to fish. Sunday mornings I'd drive him to the creek and sit and watch. Wouldn't fish none myself, though. Didn't know how. I'd just sit there, with my bottle, and sometimes fall asleep. It was nice, I guess. You didn't have to do nothing. Once we saw this little girl fishing across the water from us. She was a pretty thing, and my boy couldn't take his eyes off her. There was a woman on the shore of the creek behind her. She wasn't fishing, though. Not this lady. She had a portable radio, and a bottle of Jose Cuervo, and an old faded blanket, all yellow, like a cactus flower. One day I looked at her, and she didn't turn away. So I went over and talked to her. And the next week we were married. In Reno. By a Mexican. Name of Juan Carlos. But we got tired of each other, and the more our love faded, the more the love between the kids grew. They were crazy about each other. Always messin' around. Like two goddamned puppies; you know how kids are. When she finally left me I blamed the body. Took him into town and cut off all his hair. Left his head barren as the floor of the Mojave. Whole time in the chair the boy didn't say a word. Even admired himself in the double mirror afterwards, stuck out his chin like a cowboy star. When I finished he took a piece of Bazooka Joe from the mason jar, popped it in his mouth, and stabbed me with his fishing knife. Had a right, of course. Been my father, I'd gone for the jugular."

You've paid him by then, and you stand before the wall-length mirror, wondering whether to wax it. The old man takes down the picture of his boy, puts it in your bloody hand.

"They've forgotten their old man, all right. But I want to be forgotten. Who's gonna mourn me when I'm in the ground? Nobody. N.O. Body. And I guess nobody's all I need. But you can have the picture. I'm tired of the whole business. Take the picture, son."

It looks good on the dashboard of your truck as you pull away from the lot. A mile from your girlfriend's house you stop at a ditch to wash your bloody head. When you look up you see your girl across the water drinking tequila, a broken fishing pole in her hand. "Darlin'!" you cry. "I've come to take can't never leave each other!"

She starts to cry as she wades into the water: "Eddie!" she hollers, though your name isn't Eddie. "We're connected! For life! Ain't nothin' gonna tear us apart!"

You take her in your arms. You reach to kiss her. But just as your lips at last meet hers you feel that familiar knee stealing homeplate.

"Tobacco!" she spits, smacking her lips. "You and your goddamn chewing tobacco!"

She doesn't do nothing 'cept watch you as you drift down the drainage ditch. Floating, you can see an old man on the shore, touching up his hair with a two-bit comb, jawing on a wad of fresh Bazooka Joe.

"Connected," he says. And takes a swing of JD. "Connected," he says. Don't you know it.