the mystery guests in my mind
suppose you had asked me about the sources of my stories and poems and I had invited you in. you step in warily, and it takes you a moment or two for your eyes and ears and nose, your tongue and your skin to adjust. as soon as they do, you recognize that we have stopped after a daylong ride - your muscles ache with the unaccustomed feeling of a horse between your legs, and the small of your back is a little sore from working with the horse's walking most of the day. nearby, a shallow river runs, providing a comforting background noise. over to the right at the edge of the campsite, Cook has set up the chuckwagon and the cookstove. he has started preparing us steaks and potatoes. a boy and a girl around ten or eleven are dancing around him and the cookstove asking questions we can't hear, but then we can't hear his answers either. the wranglers have taken our horses, removed their gear from them, and are letting groups of them exercise in the corral before they feed and water them. most of us have seated ourselves on camp stools in singles or clusters around the edge of the campsite, although some have retreated into the shadows under the trees. scattered among the folk or in clusters, you recognize poets you know and men and women you know are poets even if you don't recognize them. some of the poets are talking to each other, some of them are ignoring the rest of us, and a few mingle. you know, although you don't remember quite how, that each person who wants it has a drink, coffee, cold water, hot water (since I can't drink coffee), beer, whiskey, Irish whiskey, even a couple of glasses of champagne. and then you begin to notice the mystery guests. an elegant young woman in a nineteenth century riding dress drifts among us, talking to no one, or at most a few words and a disparaging smile. her hair is done up under a hat with a veil, not a hair straggles, not one. she wears gloves that come up halfway to her elbows. you don't know her, because I don't. no matter how many days we ride together, I haven't spoken to her yet. a nineteenth century sailor looks a little askance at us, at you and me, I mean. an eighteenth century pirate with a parrot wastes several attempts to get the elegant young woman to talk, then shrugs and finds someone else to annoy. the pirate carries a scimitar, I think. I haven't asked. a loudmouthed, raucous salesman has started a dice game. I hope he recognizes that most of the guests are armed. an early twentieth century London middle class man probably wonders how he found himself among us. he sometimes reads from a small book, which could be a poetry book. Lauren Bacall, or a doppelganger, sits apart, almost in the shadows, and observes the rest of us. a small smile plays on her face. a cowboy from the Old West watches her for a while, then tries his luck in the dice game instead. a man with a 1950s haircut wears jeans and a plaid Western shirt. a circle of thirty-ish-year-old women have set up their own campfire. they talk animatedly but we can barely hear them. a boy stands by the corral and watches the horses. a young man from today looks lost, talks to no one. a soldier watches us all alertly. I think he's exasperated to be without his body armor. a young woman from the 60s or 70s stays in the shadows. she watches the rest of us suspiciously, I think. you probably have half a dozen left to catalog when Cook hollers "Supper" and everyone lines up except the boy and the girl who were asking him questions. they become his auxiliary servers. we notice that different people in the line require different amounts of personal space, that the elegant young woman still speaks to no one. that the lost young man has tried conversation with three different young women. no one rebuffs him exactly, but no conversation ensues. Cook must've expected you, the number of steaks comes out exactly right. as we eat you study the characters and ask, "do they ever talk to you?" most of them, eventually, so far. except the elegant young lady, she only smiles, and not very often.
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