Word: desertion
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...Congress sigh for the murdered sigh for the murderers sigh for the young lovers on the stand sigh for the comedians sigh for the poets sigh for the broken autos sigh for the sticks and clubs sigh for the rich sigh for the poor sigh for the desert and the ocean murmuring and empty sigh for an ancient sigh for the unwed mothers sigh for the artificial energy sigh for happiness for sadness sigh for sentimentality sigh for stoicism sigh to the stars of the invigorating horoscope sigh for the diffuse and for the single minded sigh for your gray...
During the dry desert autumn of 1909, a troublesome Paiute Indian named Willie shot the father of the Indian girl he wanted to marry. Willie was not a criminal according to Paiute custom; under tribal law, the theft of a girl constituted marriage. What followed, however, had nothing at all to do with custom...
Willie and the girl, Lolita, lit out for the Mohave Desert. He could normally have hidden on tiny reservations until the trouble blew over, since Indian killing was a matter of little concern to the white community. But at that time, it happened that President Taft was making a cross-country tour, followed by a bored and weary press corps looking for a story to break the whistle-stop monotony. They found what they wanted in Riverside, Calif...
About an hour after we left the curio shop the car began to get hot and sputter. The girl repeated her dislike for it. It finally died in the middle of the desert. The upper radioator hose had a leak and the car wanted water. I flagged down a diesel driver who took me about fifteen miles to the next gas station. I bought some electrician's tape and a waterbag which I filled. After waiting quite a while. I got a ride back to the car, fixed the hose, and refilled the radiator. The car started again...
...that trippy theorizing and intellectual speculation about death is, after all, pretty shallow compared with the feeling you get at the most unlikely moments that you, too, are going home to that big ocean one of these days. With that intense witch of a girl, surrounded by that awesome desert and those miles and miles of highway, and those screaming blasts of air pushed into us by the cars that wouldn't stop. I was in a new world, and I had no use for cosmologies you wear on your shirtsleeve...