In All The World Only One

“Ahtah, Johnny Dog don’t you dare, put that down right now!”

“Quanah, you heard me.”

“Jimmy, No.”

“Quanah Parker!”

“Bea Bea, come ‘ere girl.”

“Christ what a Goddamn menagerie this is.” I thought to myself.

“Bebes,” I said addressing all of them. “You can’t have dead things! We’ve been over this.”

And with a jolt I took the perfectly vertical pitchfork from of the bail of bright green alfalfa, where it temporary made its home, scooped up the little lifeless carcass of a slain rat and carried it to the wall where property line meets street. The small decomposing brown body stunk to high Heaven and rested precariously on the end of two pointed tines, flies swarmed over its mauled little head relentlessly and the dog’s mouths drooled from the Riverside heat and from their dashed desires.

My dogs LOVE dead things - lizards, mice, rats, squirrels, bunnies, opossums, frogs, birds and even skunks. They love not only to chase and catch them, and to play with their destroyed bodies, but they love the actual act of killing them too.

I’ve watched them, on several occasions delight in the taking of life o’ vermin. I’ve watched my Australian cattle dog, the most ferocious of the group, in blissful rapture as he meticulously devoured a nest of baby rabbits. The rabbits were only a few weeks old and living in a comfortable little pile of hay in my father’s horse trailer. And as my dad reached for the pitchfork, just as I did today, he yelled for the dog. Johnny Dog (an all black dog, named after Mr. Cash) sat at the foot of the trailer and readied himself for action. One by one my father and my loveable dog played a game of bloody catch. My dad tossed the baby bunnies slowly into the air and my dog (a well practiced catcher) snapped up, mangled, and then ate each little lightly fuzzed body. The other dogs, more gentle in nature (border collies are thinking dogs and not so vicious as the direct decedents of dingos), stood in awe watching this, and when every last rabbit was devoured and a pile of a few bones and fluff lay at Johnny’s paws they had a new found respect, or perhaps fear for ol’ Johnny Boy.

I tossed the rat over the vine covered chain link fence as I did almost daily with lizards only a few short months ago, and as the pitchfork rose into the air Quanah let out one last ditch attempt bark in his busy little high pitched, high strung voice, that I knew was meant to emote annoyance. For a dog who thinks he rules the world and who has just had the opposite demonstrated, annoyance is among the most graceful of rebellions I suppose. Johnny was more forceful in his anger and jumped to lightly bite my hand, and as I knew it must have been his kill in the first place I stopped to pet/console him. He barked at me and stared into my eyes with his glossy brown pools of bitterness, which have a tendency to bulge when excited. He made it clear that he did not appreciate my gesture, but after a sufficient amount of ear rubbing and cooing with my face close to his, he forgave me.

I guess if the dead things didn’t smell so bad and if I didn’t think they would end up making the dogs ill, I would let them have them to bat around and chew on for a while, like a mother would let a baby teethe on its dirty little shoes, (like they seem to always love to attempt trying) if only she didn’t fear the “germs” would in some way hurt the child. Its hard to say, perhaps in this “sanitized for your protection” kind of world the instinct to over react to anything deemed “dirty” just can’t be avoided, despite the pleasure it may bring. Or on the other hand maybe it is a good thing that there is someone (with or without a pitch fork) to dispose of those dead and dying rats, who bring only disease and stench.

Shit, Lord knows I could use someone to police my attempts at holding on to the dead.

I search for a seat away from everyone else, I prefer to be on the top level because the view is better and not so claustrophobic and I figure if the train crashes I’ll have a better chance of being killed by the fall than by falling debris and for some reason I find comfort in that. I get lucky and find an isolated corner. There are two rows of seats that face each other to allow passengers the choice of riding forward or backward. I decide to ride backward, I want to see what I’m leaving behind instead of looking at where I’m about to go, but neither location really holds much interest for me anymore. I get seated just in time, and the train lurches forward, I sit there for a second reading my magazine but I start to get a little motion sick from riding backwards and reading at the same time, so I put the magazine on top of my lap and I don’t pick it back up again for the whole trip, I just sit there starring out the window.

I stare into the glass almost hoping it will hold some secret just for me, some mystery that only the people who choose my seat are privy to, but all I notice is my own vague reflection and the dim glare cast by the lights inside the cabin. I put my hand to the glass almost expecting to find some comfort in its touch, like I’ve mistakenly done with a multitude of men I barely know for so many years, but just like the men all I feel is cold. As I take my hand off the window I look deeper at the glass I see little fingerprints, way too small to belong to an adult. I start obsessively wondering about the child who sat in this seat before me. Where was it going? Who was it with? Did it stand on the seat excitedly and point to the locations whizing by and yell cheerfully oblivious things like “Hi Kitty!,” addressing non-existent felines or did it smush its whole hand and maybe even its face against the glass reveling in its coolness and finding pleasure in the dirty little marks left behind? Or did the child just touch the glass and find only cold, and no comfort like I. Little drops of rain begin to lightly dot the window and as they freckle my vague reflection and the mysterious child’s fingerprints I start to cry.

I start crying so hard that I’m embarrassed even though there’s no one else in the compartment with me. The tears fall quickly down my cheeks and onto my unread magazine and it almost looks like the actress on the cover is crying too. I’d like to think she and I are crying for something worth while, for some greater cosmic tragedy - injustice, hunger, discrimination, war, but I know better. I’m crying for myself. Crying because my life is such a mess, crying because I know I just ruined a perfectly good friendship for absolutely no reason, crying because Los Angeles represents an old life and an old Ann, both of which I’ve grown to hate, consumed by people that drove me crazy in a city now so dead to me I never again wish to call it home. I couldn’t believe how ugly situations got and how quickly they got there, I was wishing, now more than ever, that the glass and the locations beyond it held some answers for me, but crying even harder when I kept remembering they didn’t.

The morning was grey and the scenery was desolate. Relentlessly filthy industrial landscapes lining the tracks, stacks of pallets, dirty boxes, broken machinery, dingy dwellings in desperate need of refurbishing and brightly colored walls adorned by all sorts of paint jobs, but none of them legal. I felt my heart sink into the pit of my stomach, hitting bottom and splashing up another onslaught of tears flooding my eyes. I knew the feeling well, it was the same one I had the last time I met with betrayal, it was the same sickness, the same frail starvation, feeling like my body had been drained of every good emotion, every shred of confidence and in its place an emptiness and a myriad of questions, all beginning with the word why. Why did it go down like this? Why did he tell me this is what he wanted when he didn’t? Why was he not happy about it? Why is this so difficult? Why do I have such bad luck? I felt another wave of illness and I told myself perhaps it was just hunger, knowing full well that it was regret. I knew I had made the same mistake I always make - trying to make other people happy at the risk of my own well being. Perpetually wearing my heart way too close to my sleeve and my cunt way too close to my heart and I knew in the pit of my rapidly sinking stomach that this was the end of the end, there was no lower I could fall, time to finish liking the salt out of my wounds instead of pouring more into them and time to get my life back…one chapter ends and another one begins.

I had the absolute pleasure of hanging out with Marisa and her roommate, Elsa, early on Saturday night as they baked up a storm of awesome holiday cookies, with the delightful company of Chris Lea and Ms. Poppy, the little one Marisa has helped to raise for the past 3 years.

As I seem to have a knack for doing with all little kids in the 2-6 age range (probably because that is secretly my maturity level), Poppy and I bro-ed down, I shared my love for Prince with her, she shared her love for The Grinch Who Stole Christmas with me, we decorated a tree, ate a few cookies, it was really good times.

But as I struggled to make 4-year-old conversation (I’m a little out of practice), I asked Poppy what she wanted for Christmas she said a new goldfish, because her last one, Dorothy, died. She then asked me what I wanted and I made something unmemorable up, she proceeded to go around the room asking everyone what they wanted, and when she asked Marisa, the most awesome, truthful answer came out, “I want a husband, Honey.”

I didn’t think much of Marisa’s answer, other than it being super cute and funny and all, until I relayed the story to D over drinks and he asked me, “So is that what you want - a husband for Christmas? Of course my knee jerk response was to say “No!,” but the more I think about it, I wonder - is that what I want?

I mean I do enjoy all the perks relationships have to offer (ie. a good support system, someone to wake up with in the morning, consistent companionship, best of all, crazy condom-free sex that you can’t really have in casual relationships because you’d probably be branded a freak, etc.) and in former years I was quite good at the whole logistics of girlfriending, you know being nurturing, loving and fostering the growth of an “us” instead of just a “me.” - But a husband? That’s a serious commitment.

Although, the gravity of the union is the draw, right? The fact that it is (theoretically) forever, and because it is so substantial a commitment you can take bold action that you might not be able to do successfully otherwise like co-habitation, buying a home, having children, and anything else that it takes the security of knowing your partner will be around for a while to do. So I guess a part of me does want all that stuff and a part of me does want it now - A home, a family of my own, a dog, etc.

But what I don’t want is to jump into a relationship with all these expectations and wishes in mind, only to find out that this desperate desire for stability is really making me “put the cart before the horse.” I fear if I were to have a husband now (and this is probably a large portion of the rational as to why I don’t even have a boyfriend) I might just use him as a means to an end, when ideally I want to be crazy enough about him that he is the end, and the kids, home and dog are all gravy.

It has always seemed to me the happiest families I know are the ones built upon a solid marriage, with an almost fairytale love story at its core. Sadly, it takes the wonderings of a four year old to make me come to this conclusion, which is probably the most romantic thing my cynical head has thought in a long time.

In 1985, I was 6 years old, I wore a 6X dress size (meaning extra large, for those of you w/out kid-stuff knowledge), my father was a race horse trainer, my mother a house wife and my 15 year old brother a pain in my ass. I remember not really liking my life. My parents were always at each other’s throats (sometimes literally) or my father was out of the house with an ETA for his return a mystery. We lived in Buena Park California, a stones throw from Knott’s Berry Farm, in a middle class neighborhood I always had the feeling we couldn’t quite afford.

I was an “old soul” type of child, 6 going on 36, I spoke with an adults’ vocabulary, not knowing what half the words I was saying really meant, I insisted on blow-drying my little bebita hairdo every single day, and when they would take me to the beach I would sit on my towel refusing to get “dirty” in the sand or water. I was a depressed child, for reasons I still can’t really put my finger on today, as evident by my mother’s favorite story to tell from my youth… One time she was walking by my bedroom and she saw me sitting with all my stuffed animals around me quietly sobbing. She asked “What’s wrong Ann?” I said, “Nothing, I’m just sad.” She said “Well, would you like a Popsicle?” Surely thinking that a treat would cheer me up. I replied “No, I would just like to be left alone please.” (Well, at least I was polite in my solitude.)

I didn’t really like much of anything in those days, not even dance, which made no sense to me, and they made me wear tights, and I hated tights. But there were two things I very distinctly remember having a fondness for. One was a Disney cartoon in which Goofy or someone was stranded on a desert isle and he is chased on to the beach where an animated crab plays boogie woogie on a piano which washed ashore. I knew I liked that part of the cartoon. I also liked my parent’s small record collection. Three of the records were mine. I had Cinderella and two other short story albums (with tales like King Midas, Rip Van Winkle, Rapunzle, etc). In the “grown-up” set, which my brother seemed to favor, there were records with stories I couldn’t quite fully comprehend, but I knew I liked them. A few Marty Robbins albums (with ballads about the old west, reminiscent of all the Clint Eastwood movies I would be forced to watch, and my favorite song of the time - something about a white sports coat) also, among my favorites, a Johnny Cash album with his rendition of Sunday Morning Coming Down on it. Not knowing much about music, a subject that I still profess to know very little about, I knew, as sure as I was standing there, that that was a damn good song.

Later that year my family moved to Riverside California, my parents became Dairy Queen franchisees, my brother remained a pain in my ass and I became a “latch key kid,” riding the Blue Bird home from school each day. I still thought I was an adult and I still displayed signs of loneliness, so my parents again enrolled me in dance, my father became as he likes to say, “the bus” and “hauled” me and my next-door neighbor to the dance studio three times a week, a pattern that would continue for over a decade.

Really the only time I spent with either of my parents were on those rides with my father, in his single-cab Chevrolet truck, which he would exchange every three years, for a similar make vehicle, just in a different color. We had only three standard destinations we would be bound for - school, dance class or “the barn,” where he kept his horses.

The trips to school I always disliked, they were short trips, and let’s face it, I had to go to school, which always sucks, and at that age you actually care what other’s think about you, to the point where it can sometimes rule your life. I remember asking my father, probably more like yelling at him, in my pre-adolescent angst, to remove his cowboy hat when he dropped me off, as it “embarrassed” me. He of course refused and said “Anna, this is who I am, so you better learn to deal with it. In fact, this is who we are so don’t let it embarrass you, that is no way to live.” Even beyond the hat thing I just never really cared for the trips to school.

But the drives to dance or the barn, were longer across-town trips with a much more enjoyable destination, and with an added incentive - music. My father would play music unlike anybody else’s parents that I knew. In the rotation were Marty Robbins (Gunfighter Ballads), Johnny Cash (The Sun Years), Patsy Cline (Greatest Hits), Elvis (Greatest Hits), The Highway Men, Fats Domino (Greatest Hits), Jackie Wilson (Greatest Hits) and some newer (at the time) country artists like Crystal Gail and George Strait. I knew every word to every song by heart, I knew the order the songs came in and I loved to sing along

My father never seemed to mind my horrible voice, although on occasion, after a really bad rendition of something he might say “Guerra, why don’t you let them sing it?” But he knew that I loved the songs, and I knew that he loved the songs, and we both knew that the music was a necessary part of the enjoyability of our daily treks together.

Being a gauche disproportion girl, made of all legs and freckles, with bad teeth and a love for my father’s music, I never really felt like I would be winning any popularity contests anytime soon. But I came across as sweet and articulate, and I remained shy and quiet enough to stay off of everyone’s radar in the way of taunting, and managed to forge a few friendships.

Moving ahead to 1995, I am fifteen years old, my parent again sense I’m growing lonely, they buy me a black dog for my birthday, an Australian Cattle Dog (who is to this day still the craziest animal I’ve ever met in person). I name him Johnny Doggin Cash Moreno. The “Doggin” is Moreno family slang for dog, derived from my mispronunciation as a child, and the rest of the name’s origins is evident.

My brother, now 24 years old, is no longer a pain in my ass, and I consider him almost a friend. He lets me tag along with him to two types of events baseball games and all ages concerts, our favorite artist, of course, the man in black. That year we saw Johnny Cash play 6 different county fairs in California, and twice at Knott’s Berry Farm.

Tony (my brother) and I schlepped ourselves up and down the state, all for the sole purpose of hearing ol’ Johnny sing us some songs and tell us some stories, and we couldn’t get enough of it. Our companions in this endeavor were the usual county fair-going types; the farmers, the patriots, the fogies, the Bible beaters, and the like. Amidst the less that glamorous surroundings, I was always the youngest fan in the crowd, and could never really understand why what I thought to be one of the greatest living singer song writers and storytellers was relegated to playing county fairs, and not even drawing that large of a crowd while he did it. But that all soon changed.

Johnny released the CASH album, and suddenly my brother and I found ourselves headed to Los Angeles where we saw Johnny play with relatively unknown artist Beck, to a full house at the Pantages Theater (big time for a 16 year old kid from Riverside who is used to seeing June Carter kick her shoes off on stage from the bleachers of some God forsaken county fair). So it was in this sea of L.A. hipsters that our taste in music instantly became validated by pop culture, and our travels seemed strangely and uniquely cool.

Throw in a few cross country trips with my brother in which the music of Johnny Cash made up the bulk of our traveling sound track along with a couple of pilgrimages, to Hendersonville and Memphis, and you’ll begin to understand mine and my families long standing love affair with the music of the man in black.

Later in life I found others who had a similar affection for Mr. Cash’s music; my last boyfriend, a man almost, paralyze by the death of his larger than life father (a truly remarkable person), would turn to Johnny’s music for solace anytime he needed to feel the depths of the human experience, whether it be remembering and reminiscing about his dad, or drinking whiskey alone after he and I had one of our typical knock-down drag-out fights.

Turning to the stories of Mr. Cash, is not a phenomenon I feel to be unique to just those I know, but rather something that is probably done all over the county. But, it does act as a particularly poignant remembrance to those living in the plastic paradise of Southern California, Johnny’s stories remind us of the American heartland which most of us seldom or never see, of the downtrodden of this nation and of the raw emotions we all try so hard to contain in order to function in “civilized” west coast society.

I offer this drawn out story solely in support of my closing statement, as I consider myself in the very purest way to be a bit of a authority on the topic of Johnny Cash, his music and the slice of Americana they both represent. I know the music and biography of Mr. Cash pretty well, I have been to the birthplace of the music, and the death place of the man who created it. I recognize his stories to be an important part of the soundtrack of my life and of the lives of those dearest to me, his voice as that of working class America and his legacy to define and redefine a substantial part of this country’s musical lexicon. And it is with full confidence in my understanding on this subject that I now say…

Reader, Walk The Line is a damn fine film, and whether you are a Johnny Cash fan or not, you would be remiss to not see it in the theater.

Although my brother disagrees with me (he hasn’t exactly outgrown his ability to be a pain in my ass)