Instructions for a Funeral by David Means

Author:David Means
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux

EL MORRO

You see, some goddess or something lived in this lake, back when it was freshwater, and then she got tired of the place and fled north and took most of the water with her, and now these natives make yearly barefoot pilgrimages down to this muddy hole and dip leaves into the brine and lick them the way you’d lick a lollipop, or something like that, he said, and he continued talking while the desert slid past, slowly, it seemed, because the horizon was so far off and only things that were close zipped by, and she tried hard to avoid looking at the edge of the road, keeping her eye as far out in the desert as possible, letting him go on with whatever subject was at hand. There were four main strands that formed the litany of his thinking. First and foremost was drugs of all forms and types, their histories and medicinal uses, and their abused uses, on which he was even more of an expert—in particular acid, marijuana, and crystal, his favorite topic and his favorite drug. He talked about drugs as they left his cabin, east of Santa Cruz, all the way down the Pacific Coast Highway, through Los Angeles and out to Palm Springs.

On the way through Joshua Tree, where there was nothing but bare land and a few trees, as far as he could see, he shifted course, and began talking about native culture and native history, his words bent and twisted through his claim (false) that he had native blood, just a generation removed, and that he was related to one of the AIM leaders, a total sellout who could be seen on occasion in bit movie roles, one of those silent Indian types, you know, with the furrowed brow and the hawk eyes, who scrutinize the horizon with the slightly bemused expression you get when you’ve been betrayed so many times you’re no longer betrayed. Eventually, he fixed on the Zuni Pueblo tribe (My true passion. I mean that), and went on for hours, his voice light and airy as he altered history to please his ear, until the Zuni were not only worshippers of deep pits, navels (Yes, fucking navels!), in which their souls and histories were prefabricated, but also stargazers who could see the future with ninety-nine-point-nine-percent accuracy. He talked about a holy seer named Don Juan. Not the fake one, who had supposedly helped Carlos Castaneda along the road to a cosmic experience back in the sixties (Not! Not! Not! he said, slamming the wheel), but, rather, a true visionary named Juan, a Yaqui elder who really knew his shit. (He wasn’t a Zuni, but, God damn it, he should have been one!) As he continued talking, his voice trapped in the car, she searched the landscape for trees and tried to tune out his voice, to reduce his words to background noise, like the slipstreamed air coming through the open window.

He talked about birds, his key

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