Hayduke Lives! by Edward Abbey

Author:Edward Abbey [Abbey, Edward]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7953-1742-2
Publisher: RosettaBooks
Published: 2011-05-20T16:00:00+00:00

21

Doc’s Return

Doc’s turn.

Pleading physical, mental, moral and nervous exhaustion (quite justified) and the need, in consequence, for a brief interlude of open space, clean air, stillness, solitude and spiritual renewal, he borrowed her little Suzuki Sepuku jeepette and headed for the desert. As any wise man must, in springtime, in the autumn of his soul, when the need is great. Where all the Hebrew prophets went to regenerate their visions, where the Indian shamans and Hindu mystics found their oracle, where the great Lao-Tzu was headed (Sinkiang) when the border guard detained him for long enough to write his tiny little open-ended giant of a book (the Tao Te Ching).

Told her he’d be back within four five days. But had to have that metaphysical break. She understood, his bonnie wife, and sped him on his way with kisses, homebaked cookies, flowers, a roasted turkey and a final farewell frenzied abbzuggian fuck that shook his teeth, wrung out his loins, fibrillated his heart and left a sweet golden glow of peace upon his mind.

Yes, he had observed a renewed zest for the sexual act (and amplified tenderness) in that woman of his, ever since her return, not long before, from her own vacation solitaire. Wherever that had really been. Doc never inquired into such matters, respecting her private need for whatever it was she needed on such occasions. Possibly an offstage lover? supplemental sex? Very well, he could accept it providing that she didn’t bore him with details, flaunt names in his face, do anything malicious or cruel. He knew that he was no great lover, never had been, and nearly twice her age could not hope to satisfy the legitimate animal desires of a healthy, wholesome, full-blooded woman. Doc despised the notion of what was sometimes called “open marriage”; to him such a practice seemed more dismal and lonely than no marriage at all. But he could understand and live with the idea (or so he thought) of Bonnie enjoying a secret paramour, male or female, so long as she kept it secret. I.e., in good taste.

So he thought. We civilized men — such bloody decent chaps, you know. Passion sublimated to the love and pursuit of intellectual titillation. Honest anger perverted into benign tolerance, joy degraded to mere pleasure, rebellion channeled into … legal procedures, genteel letters to the editor, the political process.

Somewhere south of Panguitch, not far from the Big Rock Candy Mountain, Doctor Sarvis pulled off the lonely highway for a few minutes of rest and recreation. Concealing himself behind a bush of purple sage, like a gentleman, he unzipped and peed upon a small anthill. The ants scurried forth howling with rage, feelers dripping, jaws spread for a bite of flesh.

Doc backed off in time, rezipped, removed a plastic milk jug, a plastic funnel, a can of WD-40 and a pair of gloves from the car, and walked to the yellow front-end loader parked nearby, first in a row of silent, giant, murderous machines, all of them spattered with what looked, at first glance, like dried blood.

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