Cosmo
Susi Klare
Cosmo was the guy who pulled over in a faded VW van after my fifty-six Chevy ran out of gas between Abilene and Sweetwater. They were having a gas war along that stretch of highway, and I was holding out for under twenty cents a gallon. This was 1971, a time when such things were still possible. Anything was possible so long as you got out of Texas, away from Dallas, where the threat of all eternity in hell was the glue that kept your parents from divorce, and Bill Bradley’s idea of a date was spinning out the rear tires of his red Mustang on roadkill to see how high he could flip a dead cat. Not even a movie, and you’re supposed to let him take you parking? You’re supposed to get in the back seat?
I wanted completely out of Texas.
Cosmo had crazy hair, a full dark beard, and eyes like St. Francis. But most of all, Cosmo had California license plates. I grabbed my things and left the Chevy for dead.
***
One of Cosmo’s guides told him to take me to a certain canyon in Northern Arizona. A place you had to drive through bare bones desert to find, miles and miles of dirt road, until you came to a handful of beat vehicles parked at an edge where the earth dropped off. Down below was a river lined with plush pockets of green. A steep scramble from the rim, and we were on a path through sycamore and cottonwood trees, prickly pear and mesquite, rocks and sand. And a sweet balm in the air, a fragrance as hard to catch as butterflies.
About a mile or so into the canyon, we heard mysterious music. Something flutey that drifted in and out. A few more twists in the river and the canyon narrowed. We climbed up the narrow along its right edge, around a deep bend, and then we were above the source of the music. We looked down on a deep pool of green water. A group of naked men and women were out like starfish on a slab of rock below. On the other side of the pool, a naked guy with long braids pulled himself up a sunburnt cliff, fingers and toes.
We worked our way down. Naked people smiled at us as if they weren’t naked. Across the water, the cliff guy came down through the air head first. He vanished into the pool. I stood there and held my breath, watching for him to surface. On the water the orange canyon wall reassembled its fractured face. No one else seemed worried. Long breathy modulations floated high and low, echoed from faraway, so you thought there was another and another and another flute.
Cosmo was busy trying not to tip over while he took off his pants. The diver pulled himself back up the cliff, fingers and toes.
The flute player was on a ledge, a bit above the rest of us. She was how I wanted to be. I decided then and there to stop shaving my armpits. She sat perfectly naked with her legs crossed and her back straight, her head turned to the side, fingers smooth and elegant on a wood flute, eyes closed like the Blessed Virgin Mary on a holy card. She had her lips to the hollow wood, but the whole canyon was her instrument.
I took off all my clothes too. I undressed naked before the eyes of strangers and pretended this was normal.
***
They lived in caves along the river. Geronimo himself, they said, hid from the army in one of the caves. Now these people were make believe Apaches. Like I said, this was 1971, a time when such things were still possible.
All the good caves close to the water were taken, so Cosmo and I moved into a cave at the end of a dry side canyon. Nothing but rocks. No water, no sound of water, only the complicated song of a canyon wren. You had to climb up about ten or twelve feet to get to the cave, but after you’d done it a few times you knew where to put your fingers and toes.
As far as I knew, no one ever came along the jumble of boulders that led to our cave. Or if they did make it far enough to look up at its dark mouth, they probably turned back when they heard what we were doing. What we were doing, according to Cosmo, was healing our second chakras.
Cosmo didn’t want me to call it fucking, but after twelve years at Saint Monica’s Girls School you can’t help but talk like that once in awhile. I told Cosmo once how good he was at fucking, and his eyes went limp, along with everything else, until whatever it was had passed through him like gas pains. Then he was back with me, his scraggly-haired face over mine, his St. Francis eyes tame and wild at the same time. The deeper Cosmo loved me, the more I blubbered for fear he’d leave.
There’s nothing to make you so worried as being loved like that.
***
Our cave was behind where there had once been a waterfall. It had been carved by water or humans, probably a combination of both. We had a convenient smokehole near the entrance. Above the cave the old watercourse smoothed into a dry wash, clotted with dark runty juniper. You could drop dead juniper wood down the hole directly into the fire pit at the entrance.
The cave had a front room where we did all our living, a middle room that was too dark for anything but storing our backpacks, and a tunnel you had to crawl through on your belly while you tried to not think about flash floods. You tried especially hard to not think about snakes. You wormed your way along an uphill grade through cool invisible sand until you were in a darkness so black your eyes would never adjust. And if you went against all instinct and pushed onward to the end of the tunnel, you ended up in a domed chamber big enough for a dozen or more people. The Inner Chamber.
I only went back there once, and I got out as soon as I’d lit a candle and searched for anything that could come out and bother us in our sleep, anything moving or dead.
Cosmo, on the other hand, went back there on a regular basis.
Cosmo crawled into the Inner Chamber to meet with his guides.
***
They told him to stop talking. He said he didn’t know for how long, then not another word. At first I went along with it, his St. Francis eyes said enough. And in the dark of the night I’d answer to his body. I answered as wild and true as those silver fish in the canyon when they’d shoot out of the water to strike at the moon.
But I couldn’t let it be.
“ Why won’t you talk to me, Cosmo?” I said. We were on our backs alongside the mouth of the cave, between our zip-together sleeping bags, waiting for the sun. Cosmo, the one closest to the edge, was watching the ragged patch of sky you could see from inside the cave. He said nothing.
“ You think I should stop talking too? Is that what you’re saying?” I propped myself up on one elbow, tried to insert myself between Cosmo and whatever was so interesting outside. It was a faraway hawk, lit up from underneath. Red tail. I dropped back to my side of the bed and curled in on myself, my back to Cosmo, hawk, sunrise.
“ Tell me you aren’t trying to fuck with my head,” I said.
***
One hot day the sun stalled in the middle of the sky. A bunch of us were at one of the river’s few sandy beaches when someone showed up with a watermelon so big it filled his backpack. A gift for the tribe, he said. Afterwards, I went in the waist deep water with an older guy named River Dancer. River Dancer had a gray ponytail, but his face was shaved smooth, and his chest was twice as built as Cosmo’s. He splashed water on my front, then wiped watermelon juice and sticky sand from my cheek, my chin, my breasts. His hands were touching certain places too soon for me to know how I felt, but his alpha eyes dared me to act like this was normal.
Cosmo was in the middle of a seed spitting contest. He stood on the beach, a stick in one hand, a piece of watermelon in the other. He drew a line in the sand and Laurel declared him the winner.
Back in our cave, watching the evening go purple, I said to Cosmo, “Is it because of River Dancer? Is that why you still won’t talk to me?”
Silence but for the scrabble of the ringtail who lived in a hole beneath us.
“ Tell me you’re not burnt out on me,” I said. “Tell me you wouldn’t rather be with Laurel.” Laurel of the celestial flute. Laurel in whose presence I always said or did something clumsy. Laurel, the Goddess of Cool.
“ You’re just trying to make yourself dark and mysterious to attract women, aren’t you?” I couldn’t shut up. “How long will it be before your guides tell you to worship at the altar of Laurel’s body?”
Like drowning in quicksand. The more you thrash, the deeper you get sucked in.
“ You’re mad at me,” I said.
“ You’re trying to punish me for something,” I said.
“ You’re abandoning me,” I said.
Cosmo sat there under starlight and stone, and his head went back and forth – no, no, no – after each thing I said. Down canyon an owl hooted.
And even though I didn’t believe all the things I was saying, once I said them, I had to act as if I did. I unzipped our zip-together sleeping bags. I made our bed two separate things.
Cosmo watched with his St. Francis eyes. He didn’t say a word.
***
Then one day he did. For no reason at all, other than his guides said it was time to start talking again. I was gathering water jugs and dirty dishes to take to the river, when Cosmo crawled out from the tunnel after a night in the Inner Chamber. He stood on the edge and looked down at the seared boulders below.
“ You ready for a swim?” he said. Like the last couple of weeks had never happened. Like I hadn’t gone off on a supply run with River Dancer and stayed gone until way past noon the next day. Like nothing in the world mattered but crossing those hot rocks to the green river below.
We left our dishes under the sycamore tree near the entrance to our canyon and hiked upstream toward the source of the river. Springs gushed from cracks in the dry earth. Beyond this spot the main canyon widened into juniper desert, but here was where the green things started. The shrubs and grasses and cottonwood and sycamore trees. And that certain something that drifted the air with its smell so sweet you’d spend the rest of your life sniffing the wind.
We filled our jugs, then went down to the first good pool. I swam under Cosmo’s legs, stood on my head underwater, scissor-kicked the sky. Cosmo floated me on my back, his head blocking the sun. His hair was twisted black snakes, haloed in silver light. Inside the halo his face was dark and biblical.
Later, when we were on our backs in the sand, I asked Cosmo, “What if your guides told you to fuck Laurel?”
“ My guides would never tell me to fuck anyone,” Cosmo said.
“ You know what I mean,” I said.
A grasshopper clattered. It’s a sound that, until you know better, goes off like a rattlesnake. I rolled over to my belly and propped up on my elbows. I kept an eye on the edge of the dry grass.
“ The only reason you’re with me is because your guides said so,” I said. “What’s to stop your guides from telling you you’d be better off with someone else?”
“ Well, they wouldn’t unless that was the right thing to do.” Cosmo put his forearm over his eyes. His armpit had dark hair and the only white skin on his body. I wanted to burrow my face in there.
“ What’s to stop your guides from lying?” I said. “What if you’re delusional?”
That night I zipped together our zip-together sleeping bags. I’d been with River Dancer, but only once, and only to get back something I thought Cosmo had taken from me. I even had it worked out, what I’d say if Cosmo ever asked me about that night. I’d tell him that my guides told me to fuck River Dancer.
***
Cosmo’s guides told him to stop eating the food we’d carried in on our backs. After a few days of nothing but the watercress we picked downriver, his breath smelled like something a dog would roll around in. And he was already too skinny.
Then Cosmo stopped wearing clothes altogether. He found an old blanket that a long ago flood had left tangled in the branches of some thorny shrubs. It was dirt colored and pressed into solid brittle folds when he pulled it free, but turned out to be faded pink once it was washed in the river. Cosmo carried the blanket with him everywhere. Dark skinned and emaciated, he could have been a model for National Geographic.
Along with his blanket, he started carrying a crooked stick with a fork lashed to one end. He used it as a walking staff, fork end up. Or he’d squat on a rock in the river like someone who’d never known furniture, his eyes fixated on the water, his fork poised like a spear.
You’d see him on his back in the sand, waving his arms and legs. And you’d want to go cover his nakedness. You’d want to take his faded pink blanket and at least cover his cock with it. You’d close your eyes, but you could still hear him laughing, or whatever those sounds were. You might think of hyenas. You might think of crows. You might see Nurse Ratched holding out a straight jacket.
And when all you could hear were the loose sounds of mourning doves and water, you’d open your eyes, and there would be nothing but the imprint his body had left in the sand.
***
On the evening of the full moon I made what had used to be Cosmo’s favorite supper. Barbecued beans and creamstyle corn, the two cans mixed together in one pot, you don’t even have to heat it. He lay wasted on our zip-together sleeping bags and wouldn’t eat any. I took it out on the ledge near the mouth of our cave and ate the whole pot myself.
Cosmo crawled off, dragging his blanket, into the Inner Chamber.
Someone had given me a few dried peyote buttons for the full moon. Hard dirt colored clods. I used the tip of my Swiss army knife to clean out the warty bumps on top. The warts released a white fluff that was supposedly strychnine. I made a small fire and brewed some of the buttons in a tea. It tasted so nasty I vomited.
The last supper.
Barbecued beans and creamstyle corn. I knelt on the edge and watched corn ooze down the rock. Next I tried to swallow broken bits of peyote like pills. I managed to get a few rough dry pieces down with spoonfuls of peanut butter.
Dusk turned into night. The moon came up over the east rim. I left the cave and headed down in the moonlight toward the river. The rock was warm and friendly under my naked feet, and my feet knew each boulder and stone by its fit. My feet knew what the rocks knew, remembered how it feels to be shaped by water. I made it to within sight of the sycamore tree that lived at the junction to our canyon. She stood alone and rippled her smooth white arms like a belly dancer.
Everything. Everything under the moon was alive and moving in the perfect way for what that thing was. All I could do was drop to my knees and weep for all the times I walked right by and missed it.
You’d think it would make a difference. You’d think that once you’d caught God in the act you’d wake up more holy.
I woke up naked and sweating on top of our zip-together sleeping bags with the sun hot and high, licking the edge of our bed. Cosmo was crouched by my feet and trembling faster than a rattler’s tail. He looked so buzzed that I pulled back when he reached to touch my hand.
I sat up and put on my cutoffs and yellow t-shirt. Cosmo’s eyes were just too much. “What is going on with you?” I said.
“ White light,” Cosmo said. “You don’t see it?”
I looked outside and the rocks were bright enough to hurt your eyes, but that’s how it got around this time of day, especially from inside the cave.
Cosmo’s eyes were all pupil, explosive wet black.
It turned out that Cosmo was blind. Or rather the opposite of blind. Instead of darkness, Cosmo saw only light. He had to feel his way around the cave with his hands. He bumped into rock. He couldn’t find the water jug. He saw me though. Or rather my shape. He said I was made of light. I moved my hand in front of his face, and he could follow its motion. I asked him what he saw. “Diamonds,” he said. “Diamonds streaking with light.”
I put the water jug in Cosmo’s hands and he drank. He needed to cut his fingernails. They were cracked and dirty.
***
I worked my way down the river, calling up into caves, trying to find anyone. Most of them had moved north to places like Oregon and Colorado. It was godforsaken hot. I had to go all the way to the bend with the deep green pool before I found the few who were left. I told them what was happening to Cosmo.
“ I think he’s delirious,” I said. “I was afraid to leave him alone.”
A man named Ahimsa said, “He’s got his sixth chakra wide open. That can be dangerous. Like walking around without your skin on.”
I nodded my head like Laurel and the others were doing, as if I had a clue what they were talking about. “And he hasn’t eaten anything in over two weeks,” I said. “Do you think maybe…?” I looked at their faces, hoping someone else would say the rest. No one did. “Maybe he should, I don’t know, see a doctor?”
***
I couldn’t get Cosmo’s van to start, so River Dancer drove us to Flagstaff in his house truck. I didn’t know what to give them for a last name when we took Cosmo to the emergency room. They said it would take some time. They said they didn’t know how long. They said they needed to admit him into the hospital for observation.
They said there were several possibilities.
River Dancer was headed for Colorado. He said Colorado would be cool after Arizona. He said he’d take me with him, if I wanted to come. He drove me back to the canyon and waited for me on the rim while I went to the cave. I grabbed my things and left Cosmo’s van for dead.
***
I woke up the next morning to roosters and a distant baby crying. I was still in my cutoffs and yellow t-shirt on top of River Dancer’s bed in his house truck. We’d driven late into the night and landed at someone’s place near Sedona, but I’d been too wasted to go inside and say hi to whoever lived there.
Now I got up and walked through a dirt yard scattered with toy parts and tricycles, past a faded blue school bus with broken windows, and into an old adobe house. Inside was cool and dark. A woman with her hair in two long braids stood in the kitchen with a baby on her hip. She turned from the stove and asked if I’d like some tea. She said her name was Dawn, and the baby was Sundance. Her two older kids were still in bed sleeping. So was River Dancer.
“He’ll probably be crashed out till noon,” she laughed. “You know how he is.”
I made myself sit there and drink peppermint tea until Dawn went to change the baby’s diaper. Then I snuck out before I’d have to meet any more of River Dancer’s kids or girlfriends or wives.
I hitched back to Texas and settled for Bill Bradley and his red Mustang.
***
I called the Flagstaff hospital from Dallas. This was two divorces later, around the mid-eighties. I was hoping something might still be possible. But without ever knowing his last name, that far back? Forget it. Then the woman on the other end lowered her voice and said, “Honey, are you hunting some man who left you with a baby?”
“No,” I said.
I’d never had any babies, but that was none of her business.
She went on in her secretive voice, “Because I happen to know for a fact that the state will get involved if it’s a deadbeat dad.”
“Cosmo would never abandon anyone,” I said. I hung up the phone.
***
My search engine tells me there are 597,000 matches for Cosmo. In only the first dozen or so you come up with a Cosmo who raises red worms, Cosmo’s cult movie site, Cosmo the tango master.
I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I tell myself that the one man who didn’t piss on my heart could just as easily be some scraggly old bum lost in conversation with himself. Waving his hands in front of his face to make some point. Dirty hands with broken yellow fingernails. One of those men you cross the street to avoid.
I tell myself to forget Cosmo, the whole idea is impossible.
***
I keep having this dream. In the dream there’s a faux old west ghost town on the rim of the canyon. Behind the false store fronts, it’s a tourist trap shopping mall. There are no other people in this dream, no clerks, no customers. I’m alone, wedged between racks of clothes, or crammed against a glass counter full of Indian jewelry. I’m spinning the earring display – turquoise, silver, bear paw imprints, wolves howling at the moon. Not what I want, where is the canyon? I fight my way through the clutter, enter a long empty corridor, weathered wood creaking under my feet. I follow it to the end of the mall, open a small door and here is a flight of rickety wooden stairs. I go down the stairs, down into the canyon. Nothing is as it should be, the river bank is mowed lawn with picnic tables on slabs of cement. The river runs through a concrete channel, flat and straight between concrete spillways.
“ I’ve had this dream before.” This is what I say to myself in the dream. In the dream I remind myself that I’ve had this dream again and again and again. Only this time, I tell myself, this time it’s not a dream. And I try to find my way back to the cave, but nothing is as it should be, and I grow weary, I give up. And now come the tears, the sobbing and shaking. In the dream I don’t even try to hold myself together. In the dream I just fall apart. And I weep like nothing I’ve ever known. Until I wake up in my bed with dry eyes and thank god that it’s only a dream.
This happens every few months, year after year after year. Different details, but always the same dream. And I never make it back to our cave.
The thing that gets to me about this dream is how it keeps tricking me into believing that it’s real.
