Koan of the Southwest

I was spending some time in Utah several years ago when I had one of those visceral experiences that shock a person briefly into reality.

Our long-haul from Seattle had seen us exit the string of temperate rain-forest hugging the Pacific Northwest coast and enter the flat, dry plains that I imagined made up the American interior from Spokane to Chicago. We spent an evening in the lakeshore town of Coeur d'Alene and drove through the high, pine hills of the Idaho panhandle.

In western Montana there had been short bursts of late-afternoon lightening and then brush fires. The fires followed us along the highway for miles. We drove through Missoula and what I remember most is a series of anti-Meth billboards that had been mounted throughout the city. They hinted at incredible depravity. I pointed them out to Dane, who was driving.

“Let's get the fuck out of Missoula,” said Dane, and we moved ever faster East and South.

The last hours of the trip took us across eastern Idaho. We drove through the long hours of the morning, and I don't think that sunlight would have revealed much that was hidden by darkness.

When we reached Salt Lake City it was still early morning, but the sun had begun to illuminate the tips of the mountains in the West. We reached the housing unit where Dane would be living, but instead of falling asleep we made coffee and unloaded the truck. We watched television and talked some and waited for the city to wake up.

Dane told me that Salt Lake City is the MILF capitol of North America, beating Los Angeles and Miami handily. This was, he said, because of the Mormons, who married young, birthed young, and generally did a good job staying away from the things that were bad for them. I had noticed that there were no Meth billboards in Deseret.

It meant, unfortunately, a whole city of 'look, don't touch,' and, for whatever reason, the gentile girls never seemed to measure up to their blond and indoctrinated sisters. It got to be maddening, said Dane. Fruit from the Tree of Knowledge on every street, in every Safeway. I commiserated.

When it got late enough in the morning, we went to see Dane's parents.

I read somewhere that settling by the Great Salt Lake was an act of desperation by Joseph Smith and the early church. The prophets were wandering West across dangerous territory, escaping an increasingly unfriendly US federal government. They were victim to Indian attacks and plagued by sickness. Finally, with high mountains ahead of him and a group of followers bordering on mutiny, Joseph Smith received a vision from God.

This, he saw, was God's chosen land for His prophets. The soil was no more bountiful than the hundreds of miles that they crossed reaching it, and the lake turned out to be a fetid and lifeless inland sea, but this was where the young church stopped to establish its capitol and powerbase.

From the backyard of the house where Dane grew up you have to credit Joseph Smith his choice. Those same high mountains that blocked the Western advancement of the prophets stand tall and sharp, contrasted (at least, the summer days I spent there) against a cloudless sky of blue. The sky, when it is free of clouds, never reaches that hue of pure jet in Oregon.

However, it was not in the backyard but in the kitchen that I met Kubota. Kubota, the killer, who gave me my moment of clarity on such a beautiful morning. He was an enormous orange- striped Tom cat of middling years. He moved slowly, but with purpose, and displayed the kind of absolute content that only cats-- and even very few of them-- are able to achieve and maintain.

It was uncanny. A smile is a uniquely human facial expression, but I would have sworn Kubota wore one the entire time he occupied our attention in the kitchen. Dane picked him up for me and flipped him nimbly on his back before cradling him in his arms. The cat moved his own muscles not an inch, but began to purr hardily and gazed up at Dane. This, said Dane, is our own personal bodhisattva.

I didn't know what a bodhisattva was, and said so. Dane explained. 'Bodhisattva' was a Buddhist term for a soul who has achieved enlightenment and access to Nirvana (eternal serenity, escape from the cycle of death and rebirth), but forsakes bliss to return to the world of pleasure and suffering until he has helped each of the unfathomable number of souls here achieve the same state.

It looked like Kubota had his work cut out for him, I said, but looking at the enlightened one, he didn't seem to mind. His huge green eyes were reduced to happy slits like a Japanese anime character, and his impressive cat-belly heaved outward with each purring breath. I saw how he'd received his title; he really did look like old carvings of the Buddha made orange and feline.

I patted Kubota's head and he gave me a friendly look. When Dane put him down he wandered slowly into the hall and then down the stairs. We made more coffee; we were still very tired from the all-night drive.

Dane and his parents had catching-up to do so I took my coffee to the backyard to look at the mountains. I had been out there for several minutes when Kubota came traipsing out the open sliding--glass door. He stood on a sunny patch of the concrete patio and sniffed the air. Then he lay down and began the task of cleaning himself. Belly aside, the little bodhisattva's tongue reached the inside of his inner-thigh with ease.

“Little ballerina,” I said.

He looked up periodically and sniffed the air. It was a fine summer morning and he appeared to be enjoying it as much as I was. If you enjoy imagining scenes, imagine: two bachelors, newly met, happy with the circumstances we found ourselves in. It was a fine morning.

Then there was an alarming thud, and things livened up.

A bird-- small, brown, non-descript-- had flown directly into the glass sliding door, and now lay on the concrete patio, stunned. If circumstances had been just a little different, the little bird simply would have lain there a few moments before gathering itself together and flying off, probably wondering to itself what that had been all about.

Circumstances weren't different; Kubota killed the bird. He was faster than I was, and when the little bird hit the ground he lost not a moment. He had it in his mouth before I'd registered the situation. The bird, a moment ago flying without concern, was now making a weak chirping noise. Its head was in the vice-grip of Kubota's jaws.

It was a strange moment. Kubota, chubby and domestic, looked fully ridiculous with the little bird hanging from his mouth. At the same time, he held himself as though perfectly at home with the situation. I wanted to save the little bird. It had been pretty awful luck to hit the glass door right next to a cat.

I moved towards Kubota. I supposed I could get the cat to drop his meal. Failing that, I'd pull the bird from his jaws.

I've heard that cats play with their food before execution, but seeing me coming towards him, I think Kubota decided to skip this step. Before I'd raised and lowered my first foot Kubota had begun breaking the bird's neck. He did this by swinging his own head first rapidly to the right and then to the left. The bird's head was held tightly in Kobuta's mouth, but his body hung free, and when Kobuta shot his head either to the right or to the left, the momentum carried the bird's body onward at an unnatural angle.

With each swing came a little snapping noise from the bird. I don't think that it was dead after the first swing, but it certainly was after the fourth or fifth.

It was very suddenly done. The chirping had stopped and the dead bird hung limp. Somehow, I expected Kubota to look ashamed. He didn't, of course. For what it's worth he didn't drop the bird and walk away, the way that I've heard that cat's will-- killing simply because they are made to kill. Instead, he began to pluck away the bird's feathers, one at a time.

This was a slower process. With each feather plucked there was a little less bird, and a little pile of fluff formed next to the corpse. I wondered if there was even any meat underneath all of those feathers, or if Kubota would go on plucking to uncover nothing but air.