HYEHYE
10:03 - 19 December 2004
The Last Great Spaghetti Western Airs on Television Tonight
It was quiet on the ranch of Ennio and Natale Morricone. The chalky brown clouds had broken up for once and the sun, long gone, cast a strange emerald glow over the ranch. It was still early, but after their excitement of the change in weather was spent, and after they tied the horses and washed their faces, the seven Morricone children were sent to bed. Natale sat at the foot of each of their bunks and spun the zampognari tale to them with passion. She prayed over them: “Though outlaws and rattlesnakes surround us, though coyotes and Protestants breath down our necks, thou art our safety forever. Amen,” and latched their doors quietly behind her. The two eldest girls, Flavia and Eva, looked at cross-stitching magazines and planned extravagant social events until it was too dark to see. All of the boys sat up on their pine-needle mattresses and told filthy stories to each other and tried not to fall asleep, their words drifting farther and farther apart. Mamma Natale let down her long hair and Ennio brushed it from behind. The dogs in the kitchen whimpered for biscuits and fell to dreaming under the tablecloth.
It grew quiet in the house of Ennio and Natale Morricone, but as the chicken coop was in slumber, and as the girls snored noisily, Davy and Ringo Morricone crawled out of bed, awakened by the sound of the newly-emerged stars. They stole out of the window in their boxer shorts and sleeping caps, taking great care in stepping around the Stag-horn cactus that grew around the house lest they should be pricked and found out by their howling. They padded excitedly to the stables and mounted Minster Skoal and Jim Janke unsaddled. As they rode out in their equestrian caprice, the shrubbery and yellow grasses creaked and sizzled into the black.
By the time Ennio had capped off his midnight sour mash and discovered that his two youngest sons were not in their beds, the paper moon was already sliding down its other horizon. Ennio scrambled madly to the stables and kicked up dust with his bare feet when he found two horses missing. With an acute parental vehemence, he shook Aldo and Paolo, the boys who were old enough to shave, and spoke urgently to them with his bristly face inches away; his black, wet eyes bulged when he reminded them of the coyotes. They strapped their chaps on hurriedly and soon all three were flying rick and rail through the plains with lanterns and six-shooters, leaving a cloud of dust suspended in the air behind them.
When Ennio found them, Davy and Ringo were sitting in the shadows under a cluster of fur trees wiping dusty tears from their cheeks in their underwear. Paolo and Aldo rode up from behind kerosene lanterns and dismounted, relieved in the midst of their father’s still smoldering ire. “Jim Janke and Minister Skoal ran to the caves,” Davy said, quivering, “and they got lost in the dark.” Ennio sat himself down inside his Wrangler’s on a dry heap of bramble and rubbed the side of his face seriously. It’s true that Ennio thought of stringing the boys by their belt loops to the hitching post and setting wasps on them. He had done it when he discovered Flavia had been secretly kissing Kit Capitani by the water trenches, a youth whose sad brown eyes and soft voice gave cause for Ennio to consider him morose and needy. When Ennio shook up the mason jar full of wasps and released them, Davy had whispered “They’re getting’ her all over, Pa!” and Pa said “Well, she hurt me all over.”
“What’re you boys doin’ out here anyway?” Ennio asked, pulling a cigarillo from a metal casing he kept in his breast pocket.
“We heard the stars singin’,” Davy said, though he sounded unconvinced of his own reasoning. The older boys looked at each other and shook their heads. Ringo looked questioningly at Davy. Ennio looked at his cigarette and lit it.
He said in a low, dry voice, “It must have been one hell of a choir up there to keep you awake all night. Were the planets singin’ too, Davy?” The boys wisely remained quiet and stared at their feet. The barking and lowing of coyotes reverberated from across the Sangre de Cristo plains followed by a single ghostly whinny that sounded so sad to Davy. He explained to his father how the horses had gotten spooked. Ennio took a long drag from under his mustache with his eyes closed. Davy pulled the night-cap over his eyes. Ringo wiped the snot from his nose on the back of his arm.
If The Morricone’s father had not been sneaking sour mash that evening, he might have remembered his cartography days well enough to realize that they were in the midst of a deserted Baptist encampment. Their lanterns shone like beacons around the camp, illuminating abandoned cabins and broken wire fences. The Baptists tried coming back there every few summers, insisting that it would be different this time, but coyotes would come and haunt them without fail, leaving bones and leather boots to dry in the ferocious heat. When the howling began, the boys agreed that it would be best to move on out back to the ranch.
It was a fine thing that Aldo and Paolo brought six-shooters, because they were the only formal defense against the coyotes. There weren’t many, but they were full of piss and vinegar, and the skirmish lasted through a dusty and barbed wire night. Many men had died in coyote attacks in the Sangre de Cristo valley, and Davy watched as the lanterns broke and fell to the grass. It was a sad sound to hear gunshots and yelps in the darkness. All he had was a slingshot. Davy felt a violent blow to his back and a massive hand gripped him and hoisted him onto a pile of straw. The stars sang vixit in articulo mortis in aeternum.
Davy woke in a murky, brown dawn to Ringo pulling teeth from dead coyotes to collect in a small burlap pouch. Bodies caked in dried blood and dust were strewn out on the ground with their tongues hanging out. Ennio was wrapping his hand in flannel from barbed wire cuts. Aldo was holding sitting on a rock and eating a Saguaro cactus fruit. Next to him lay an enormous man in red long-johns with a bullet wound in his left shoulder. It had been dressed with flannel already and had stopped bleeding. He was coughing weakly and holding his bony fingers gingerly to his temple as if receiving a prophecy. He was dabbing an embroidered hanky to his nose while Paolo tried to untangle the bits of grass from his tremendous white beard. His tremendous grisly body trembled.
It was unclear who the man was or where he had come from, but it was almost certain that he had been bent double with Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever. He was too weak to walk and too crabby to ride bareback, so they slung him on the back of Applejack with two whole coyotes, wrote an inscription in the wall with a pocket-knife, and headed home. They would need the wisdom of a woman very shortly. It was a cloudy, western way back to the ranch. Somewhere an accordion was playing.
By the time they arrived in the early evening, the sky had turned dark with filthy brown and grey clouds, as if some foreign pollution had come by way of a dust storm. The girls went to skin the coyotes for dinner and Natale took one look at the enormous man and gasped. She immediately sent for a stool and a basin of warm mint water. It took all five of the boys to get him to the kitchen. Men that size didn’t come around those parts very often, and when they did it was usually some wealthy medic trying to sell tonics. It was decided that this was no ordinary merchant by the concern knitted across his brow and the strange glow he seemed to have about him in the candlelight; he might actually have been the type to receive prophecies as Jeremiah had received them from God.
“What are we gonna do, Papa?” whined Davy after the man’s feet were soaking in the water. Natale unclasped the top buttons of his red long-underwear. He was wearing a rosary and a musical pocket-watch strung around his neck.
“Is he conscious?” Ennio asked his wife, pulling up the man’s eyelids. He was not conscious, and his mouth hung open with his head back. He had liver spots on his balding head and a broad rash covered his chest. His slow breathing was raspy through his dry, flakey lips. He must have been very old, and it was a remarkable thing to live so long. There was talk about whether he was some sort of nomadic parish priest, a wealthy man who had been thrown out of his carriage by bandits, or perhaps a regular imposter. Paolo searched for a pectoral cross because he was convinced the man was the pope. The younger two boys were sure that he was some magical figure, perhaps a kind of fairy or wizard. Natale was in agreement, but Ennio was skeptical. Charlie Simms in Virginia City had run over a desert nymph in his wagon and had spent 14 dollars patching her up with liquor and gauze in his distillery only to watch her die of Scurvy two days later. Magical or not, Ennio did not want to spend 14 dollars on a man who would die in two days.
After supper, Natale brought the man a platter of food that she set next to his rocking chair. She stuffed his bullet wound with treacle and iodine and set a cup of Sazerac in his hand to warm his blood. The stinging sensation woke him and he drank with trembling pink lips. “Steady as she goes,” said Natale and closed the door behind her.
There was a dark cloud of anxiety over the Morricone household that night as the children laid awake in bed. There were no filthy stories or cross-stitching pamphlets that evening. Davy stared at the portrait of Davy Crockett on the wall and prayed for the man’s health. He had already started calling him Babbo Natale despite his brothers’ exasperated cries that he was not Father Christmas. Davy believed it, anyway, and he prayed harder. Ennio, Flavia, and Paolo sat at the kitchen table and spoke softly by candlelight. The man’s snoring was heard through the wall.
Natale reasserted her concern that the man might be magical in some way. Paolo agreed that while there had been some unexplainable lights and fires in the skirmish, there was no need to associate this man with them. Paolo did not believe in magic, and though Ennio could be persuaded, he could not be convinced against the reality of hardship on the plains. Times were hard for ranchers, and another mouth to feed and take care of would be unfavorable. The last time a doctor had made a house-call had been after Eva was recording herself with a video camera catching rattlesnakes and had been bitten. It had cost $10 plus 8 pounds of refined sugar. That was all Ennio chose to remember at that moment. Natale recalled only how her Eva was still alive, albeit with two unsightly holes in the back of her heel. Ennio and Paolo both consented that in the end, the only option was to shoot him. After all, he was fatally ill and a drain on resources. The mother’s wisdom declared that no such decision would be made that night, and so it was decided that it would be in their best interest if they kept the stranger in the stable for the time being, at least until he recovered and they could figure out what to do with him.
In bed, Davy remembered Jim Janke and Minister Skoal whinnying in the night, and a great sadness fell over him. They were such lovely beasts, he thought, and he missed their shiny coats and senses of humor. He remembered how he and Ringo had stopped by the fur trees to relieve themselves when the howling had spooked them away. He remembered how Santa Claus had looked that morning, so pale and helpless. It was obvious to him that the man in red underwear was the Claus because Davy could see it shining in his eyes, even when they were half-closed. Why had such things come to pass? Friendly beasts and Father Christmas should not have to stumble on hard times. They’re innocent thought Davy, and at the same time he hoped they were innocent and rolled over in bed.
Ringo was younger than Davy and, as children are often convinced by irrational arguments for men’s’ identities as Santa Claus, stole out to the stable to observe Father Christmas. Ringo’s socks padded his feet as he climbed over pitchforks and tires until he could see Santa through slits in the adjacent pen. He was slouched against the wall smoking a Luis L’Amour Robusto. Ringo would probably have dismissed this notion altogether if it had not been for Davy’s unyielding faith in the man. He knew he had unyielding faith because before he left the room, he had heard Davy whispering prayers to Davy Crockett and the Virgin Mother, asking them to look down on the ranch and have compassion. Ringo gathered his courage and whispered across the hay.
“Hey, Mister!” and the man took the cigar from his mouth and looked in his direction. Ringo poked his head out from over the pen walls, “Are you Santa Claus?” After a moments consideration, the man clenched the cigar back in his teeth and said nothing, rubbing a balm on his irritated skin. Ringo retreated to the solace of the shadows and gathered some stray pinecones which he threw at the sick man, demanding sweets and gifts. The pinecones stung Santa’s rash and he tried getting up, but began coughing and crouched down because his legs were too weak. A strand of silver spittle swung from his lower lip and stuck to his beard as he muttered what sounded like Italian cursing. He stumbled on his own great weight and remained motionless, face-down in the hay. Ringo left in a cloud of dust with his heart pounding. There were no gifts this Santa Lucia had to offer. There were no Christmas bells at his side, no magical powers at all. Davy’s faith had not been well placed.
The morning found Father Christmas wrapped solely in a white sheet, playing the banjo on a wicker chair by the stove. There was a smell of mesquite smoke and cinnamon rising all over the house, and the sun was just emerging. Eva and Paolo had gone out back and were opening the stables watching the horses and ponies gallop out in the field in the dusty white sunlight. Santa plucked the strings in harp-like tones, his beard and white hair shampooed and tucked neatly behind his ears. Natale and Davy watched him from a slit in the doorway, noting that his rash was gone and his face had a deep red glow about it. If he was a member of the Sangre de Cristo curia, it was by divine sanction rather than through the seminary. He appeared holy and glad in that morning light, and both Davy and his mother were both amazed at the miracle that had taken place through the evening. Or at least Davy was amazed, thankful that his prayers had been looked on with kindness. Mama Natale was shocked, mostly, and took the wagon to town, wondering about the reality of miracles the whole way.
She asked around the general store about a tall fat man as she gathered brown sugar and back corn. The general consensus was the man had stayed at the St. Vincent de Paul Society for a few day earlier in the week. A homeless gentleman in a wide-brimmed hat and a priest had seen him wearing blankets and handing out bitter coffee to winos. There were rumors galloping around that he was some sort of patron saint for the Sangre de Cristo plain, that he had been through the stations of the cross. Some had heard him singing vespers by moonlight. He had performed miracles among the wretched and despised carpet-baggers wandering the saloons. A few insisted they had seen him slouching by the grain mill, coughing and wheezing like a rusty tractor with bits of straw and rat feces tangled in his beard. Natale picked up a pound of jerky and some bitter coffee grounds.
She arrived back at the ranch late in the afternoon and found her husband perched outside on a stool cleaning the rifle that normally hung over the hearth. Ringo, Davy, and Paolo stood next to him. She told him about Babbo Natale at St. Vincent de Paul performing miracles and being kind. She told them of the miracle that had taken place in the kitchen early that morning. Davy nodded excitedly. Ennio, Paolo, and Ringo looked at each other dryly. Ennio told her that the man was still tied up in the stable outside, that his hair was neither washed nor combed. She and Davy ran to the stables and found it to be true. Santa looked up at them wearily and gave the low moan of a sick man. “He’s getting’ worse by the hour,” said Ennio gravely. “I reckon we’ll have to shoot him”.
It was a good thing that Ennio Morricone had not needed to shoot sick cattle for some time, because the rifle’s barrel was clogged with scorpion eggs and could not be used to shoot Santa Claus right out. He left it sitting in the water trough during dinner, hoping the scorpions would float out.
Of course, the more humanitarian Morricone’s suggested that the man should be shot. He was an imposter, an infected imposter who was fit for dying anyway. They did not listen to Davy’s remarkable memories of Santa playing banjo in the kitchen. They did not listen to his insistence that he had a spark of magic in his eyes or that Santa had told Davy himself that he was the Father of Christmas. Babbo Natale is a child’s myth they would say and you are no longer a child. It was true that Davy was growing older and, in fact, he had relinquished his belief in fairy-tales in general after he discovered wily old Coot Sanders putting a nickel under his pillow after having lost one of his molars. It seemed almost a necessary process of developing as a successful young rancher or merchant to not believe in foolishness. “Foolishness,” is what Paolo had said between mouthfuls of potato and peppers.
“But it’s not foolish,” cried Davy at the dinner table.
“Santa would not get Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, Davy. Just because he’s fat and has a white beard doesn’t make him a fairy,” said Paolo. It was agreed on, except by Davy and Natale, that there was no need to attribute magical assets to an decrepit idler wearing red long-johns. They would shoot him after dinner lest the fever spread to the rest of the house.
When Ringo had told Davy about how the man didn’t answer to Santa Claus, Davy had felt a strange sort of doubt. It had seemed obvious that there was a magical figure in the midst of their house, a miracle in itself, but that morning had filled Davy with misgivings. Of course Santa wouldn’t reveal his identity so easily. If he had, Ringo would have thrown pinecones at him all night and demanded sweets and outrageous gifts upon his recovery. If Santa had claimed who he was just like that, Papa might have kept him tied up in the stable forever to exploit him. Davy decided before dinner that all the doubts of his family were sad things, and that the mystery was greater by far. But it was too late for such hope.
Ennio had dried and plunged the rifle already and was walking towards the stable with a lantern. The seven children and Natale came up from behind and huddled around the lantern in their boots and plaid shirts. The night was clear again, but there was no moon. Ennio pushed open the cedar door to the stable with a creak. There was a pile of hay matted down in the corner. The light cast long shadows from rakes and saddles suspended from the ceiling onto the hay where two untied ropes were resting limply. The stranger was not there, and there was a general holler of fear. Paolo and Aldo whipped out their six-shooters and Ringo grabbed his sling-shot. They began to scour the stable, throwing up hay and wooden planks. Eva and Flavia managed to find lariats to tie up the man with if he should charge at them from some concealed shadow. Paolo was the first one to find a white garment under a pile of gravel in a wheelbarrow, accompanied by a musical pocket-watch with the emblem of a crucifix on the front. Davy noticed that one of the horses was missing, but not wanting to heighten the frenzy, mentioned it no one. He stepped outside in the cold Midwestern stars and saw a figure turning the bend way off in the distance, silhouetted against a grove of yucca plants. It was Santa Claus, as naked as a jay-bird, ambling away on the horse slowly towards the mountains. Under the barely-visible half-light of the stars, he sang Deo gratias, deus absconditus, spero melior!
