Day Out of Days by Sam Shepard Page B

fleeing the rabid mob. The righteous drove them out. One testimony on the side of a building in block letters: a woman who hangs all her straight-backed chairs on the wall, sweeps out her plain board house, closes up all the shutters, puts the broom back in its proper place, locks up the front door, and says good-bye forever to her blessed home-place. She turns west to face a sea of salt.

Little People
    The European missionary sat hunkered down in a squatting position with the Huron tribesmen in a great circle around the bonfire. It was a posture he was unused to and instinctively felt put him at a disadvantage insofar as persuading the Indians into his point of view. Nevertheless, he bravely presented the notion that he was not one but two. When the warriors heard this they broke into wild laughter and started throwing sticks and dirt into the fire, which created a strange mixture of terror and resentment in the missionary’s chest. When the laughter subsided he pressed on with his contention. He patiently explained to the savages that this corporeal body they saw sitting before them was only an exterior shell and that inside him resided a smaller invisible body that, one day, would fly away to live in a heavenly domain. The Huron all chuckled and nodded to themselves as they knocked the ashes from their stone pipes into the crackling fire. The missionary felt deeply misunderstood and was about to get up and return to his tent in a huff when an old man next to him held him in place by the shoulder. He explained to the missionary that all the warriors and shamans present in the circle were well aware of these two bodies and that they also had “little people” residing inside them deep within the chest and that they too flew away at death. The missionary became excited at this new news and felt reassured that he and the tribesmenwere now on the same path. With renewed zeal he asked the old man where his people thought these little interior beings traveled off to. The Huron all laughed again and the old man pointed to the crown of a massive ancient cedar nearby that flashed in silhouette from the firelight. He told the missionary these “little people” entered the very top of that tree and descended into its trunk and branches, where they lived in eternity, and that was why he could not cut it down to make siding for his little chapel in the wilderness.

They say, these days, standing out on the rim of the Grand Canyon, the brightest lights in the night sky are not the stars in the heavens but the glow from casino neon in Las Vegas—one hundred and seventy-five miles away.

Lost Art of Wandering
(Highway 152,
continued)
    I try calling Luis again from the yellow pay phone. I’m yearning for some variation on the company I’m keeping but he’s still not there. A different woman from the first but with just as strong an accent tells me he’s down in Chihuahua now and won’t be back for at least a week. I tell her I thought it was Oaxaca where he was last and she says she doesn’t keep track of him that closely, he moves around a lot; then she hangs up on me just like the first woman did. These two must be something to behold.
    There’s music and singing coming from the mission chapel so we head over there. We’re just leaves in the wind. We pass a very Teutonic-looking tourist in a neck brace and a fringed Davy Crockett jacket who’s trying to figure out his Kodak Instamatic. John stops and helps him with it. John is very good with cameras, I must admit. He loves fiddling with them, the lenses and straps and stuff. He’s a natural with cameras. The tourist guy is overjoyed that a total American stranger has stopped and gone out of his way to help him. He’s very impressed with John. I think he must be German or Dutch or gay or something. Very strong accent and he’s wearing those weird European sandals that buckle up the ankle and look like they’re made out of phony leather. And on top of that he’s wearing