Herbert Morris

Were it not for that photograph, disaster in its final stages, matchbox houses coming down, rubble of streets, uprooted trees, lives we somehow could not envision, removed from us and not our own, on distant coasts the fall of night, we might never have thought of Darwin, remembered what we had forgotten, nothing but desert at our backs, somewhere the light gone grey, gone green, the very texture of the air evoking strangeness in us, distance, deepwater harbor on the rim of an island whose aspirations, despite itself, assume proportions hemispheric, continental, set adrift in uncharted waters where a wind from the Timor Sea smacks of Celebes, of Java, celebrates archipelagoes for which no names have been devised, where rain runs green, and rocks dream gold, where every morning, on our tongues, we taste the raging of the dust gathering at abandoned stations and know, or come to know, the life, the littoral on which we wait, though not yet clearly its true name, not precisely its purpose with us; where, naked, night to night, inventing names for our nakedness, we lie suspended under the Equator between the wastes of self and weather, trying to learn ourselves, our names, what to make of this emptiness, this sense of absence which afflicts us, forgetting what we must remember, the great Australian coast spun out beyond our scrutiny in shales, corals, limestones, salt scrub, sand, discovery at every turn and, this far south, no turning back, latitudes of impossible dimensions bleaching the horizon, mapping what will not quite stay mapped, nothing but desert at our backs, nothing but darkness to advance on, night on the routes that enter strangeness more dangerously, in the evening, than we can bring ourselves to say, darkness and an interior for which, of course, there is no name except, unmapped, unknown, ourselves.

I like the story of the circus waif bought by the man-of-weights to be his mistress, Profit the demon dragging her to market and Lust the soul who paid in lire for her. I like the peculiarities of her faith, the startling quality of that innocence, kissing the hand that dealt her cruelty believing, poor and dumb, that this was love. I relish a destitution stripped to sing pure in a voice all passion and denial: such are the driven burning by their breath more than mere air allows and cold permits. I savor my own involvement and concern lest all the transformations seem unreal, lest love be painted water-sweet and classic rather than salt and anguish to the end. I like her squatting in the village road combing the dust for something of her own, coming away belonging and committed, roots to be cherished, stones she could befriend. And what I like the subtlest and profoundest is that the circus traveled grief to grief educating the waif into a woman loving and beautiful and fiercely proud. I think of the sense of fury in that road, stooping to scratch the earth out for a life somewhere awaiting finding in one’s name. I like that, and I like the word Expense. I think of the years together which they had, the strong-man working her into the act, that hint, despite himself, of some devotion. I like that, and I like the ring of Cost. Not in a root, or stone, but in a man she found a thing to hold her tenderness. I like her dedication after that, her saying, if she spoke, I live by this. And what I like pervasive and forever is that my eyes have wept the tale before, wanting the telling not so much as story but for the way the waif befits my life.

Running off with the boy at the gas station, yellow-haired, clear-eyed, with a pair of hands nothing, you understand, would prove too much for, is, it seems, a simple enough solution. Consequences never enter your thinking at the start. Whatever the implications of the act, of the speed with which you act, all one knows, and all one chooses to know, is summed in this: we are to be together. On River Road, the great elms overhead branch out to shape a tunnel which we race through as we make our escape, leaf-dappled, late, the avenue to what is possible, water on one side, deep woods on the other. The water’s depth goes down in feet and inches, but the depth of the woods is only guessed. Driving all night, deeper into the country, we pause at dawn, finding a roadside shack which serves us what we call a wedding breakfast, homemade raspberry tarts and lemon ices. I remember that first glimpse of him, sprawled over the body of a green coupé, feverish, rapt, all ardor, lean, committed, almost making love, it seemed, to the engine. The yellow hair hung down across his eyes, damp and limp with the sweat beading his forehead. Two arms lodged elbow-deep within the gearshaft, the hands, when you saw hands, the awesome gifts not of a boy who haunted the gas station but of a man for whom one understands nothing, in time, will be impossible, motor, transmission, fan-belt, valves, a life. Illumination from a single light bulb beat down across the muscles of his back. Beyond him, from the body shop, there leaked darkness to match those woods whose depth one guesses. Every night since then, since River Road and the tunnel through which, quite late, we fled, I find him sprawled over another chassis left to his care in a garage with one bulb by someone who knows what those hands can do, knows, or has heard, what can be worked with love, suspects (I am not able to say how) nothing will not be possible for him, passionate with attention, with concern, held by the task at hand as he is held by nothing in this life here, here, together, yellow hair in his eyes, light on his back. Knowing no longer what it is I want, flayed by the memory of what I wanted, the possible, the uses of the hands, the uses, later, deeper, of the body, I think of River Road turning to moonlight beneath the lyric hissing of the tires, moonlight becoming water, water woods, everything turning much too deep to guess, fragrance on all sides pinning us beneath it, sweet avenue to the nights stretched before us. It may come down to this: one’s choice of route. It may be that, at dusk, when the moon rises, when, for the thousandth time, the dark begins what it seems to know no end of beginning, the stars strung in the branches, River Road cut at an angle somehow penetrating the countryside of all we dream and long for, the heart of our location, of romance, two others, quite unknown to us, their crankcase worked to perfection, brakes fixed for endurance, their tires aligned to yield both speed and distance, bearings retooled to make good their escape, engine fitted to lead them down that route almost without their need to steer, to choose, set out this evening, late, on River Road, that avenue to what is possible, water on one side, deep woods on the other lovelier for the depths they would withhold, seeming to know precisely what the miles know, seeming to choose to go where the road goes. Knowing the risk involved now and the price of wild raspberry tarts and lemon ices, the sting, at dawn, of sour and sweet at once exotic to the tongues of two so young, two who have driven all night, running off, the spill of moonlight drenching River Road, the same fierce angle, the same penetration, I need to think again how deep the woods run (what lies beyond, of course, a myth, a guess), I need to weigh the cost of staying home.