over a year apart. how do we stand it? do you suffer it too? it’s raining tonight. can you believe it? middle of winter and it’s raining. who needs seattle?

the press has a new address. please check the inset pages if you’re prone to write or send material. i sincerely apologize to those who did write and got responses months after the fact. we’re also on-line, if you can believe that. e-mail address is on the inset too. i can’t decide if that’s exciting or not; this new information paradigm. e-publishing for majenta is in the works but some time off yet. [Ed: some time, as you now know, became nearly four years]

it’s 1995, tra-la! after a year at this we were becoming so conventional around here that i forgot my own… je ne sais quois? annoying eccentricities. so out with the capital letters! they are evil, EVIL! sorry, the laudanum and lithium are having a hell of a tug-o-war with me.

the good thing about being back in taos is that i can tell taos stories without having to explain everything.

i’ve thrown a lot of stones in this column. let me refresh you. the sub-titles of this column have so far been: talk slash suicide, who will watch the watchmen, psycho new age aquarian hose bag cracker bitches, and thomas paine will buy me my first beer in hell. i don’t live in no glass house. i wasn’t worried about who caught the flak. i knew it wouldn’t be me or anyone i particularly cared for. i learned something about throwing stones lately. so this time i’ll digress. i think i’ve got to go after myself.

i’m not proud of this story, you must realize, but i also have to tell it. perhaps you’ll understand why.

i was in a high school band (autumn moon for those of you who actually heard us nine years ago). we sucked really. or rather i sucked—being the vocalist—the music was pretty good for a bunch of teenagers. we only played a couple real gigs, one in front of a real crowd, maybe two hundred people by the last song (in these hours of violet skies).

we were opening for the boheims. one of whom asked my live-in girl friend out on band trips regularly some years later. ah, don’t things just come full circle without even trying? anywho, the point is: i can’t sing in front of a friend or even a band of guys i don’t know. but in front of two hundred people, i sang okay, you know? and i’ll tell you how that works. there was this night, working on one of klein’s plays or something, and i was in the t.c.a. by myself. as a teenager i was rather enamored of pink floyd’s the wall. i got up on the stage and closed my eyes and i sang; filled up the auditorium (like i would do in woodward hall my freshman year at u.n.m. when the janitor would leave the top door unlocked after one a.m.). the song at the t.c.a. was comfortably numb. after i had just dropped off the last note i opened my eyes to see becky hopper sitting in the fourth row in the dark staring at me. she said, “that’s the most beautiful thing i ever heard.” i thought i was alone.

when you’re in front of two hundred people you’re alone. i’m telling you this story because now it’s in your hands—so i’m alone and i can tell you anything, i can admit anything. and i can tell you something i haven’t been able to tell any one person.

i’m ranch-sitting. it’s very nice up here. lots of coyotes, magpies, and deer and such. my only real duty is to feed the horses. the deer come up in herds and eat the hay as soon as it’s down for the horses. they also break the electric fences which leads to my only real chore. i have to fix the fence every time the deer break it, or the horses might split and then i’ve got problems.

oh, it’s novel enough at first. “hey! lookit that! there’s deer right over there!” but then they don’t run when you walk up, or even run up to them. they just wait for you to leave so they can break the fence and get some free grub. pretty soon they seem more like flies. “get outta here!” you yell but they don’t care.

i had a hard day at work, went home, started writing, thinking of everything that was good in life. i played with my cats; i felt alive regardless of the world around me. feeding time rolled around. i went out.

there were lots of deer. i was still fighting a bad mood. i picked up a rock and was going to toss it at the nearest deer. but it was just a yearling so i hissed at it instead and dropped the rock. i even barked, that usually works.

i got the hay and started giving it out. a bunch of deer had congregated almost out of sight in the dark. that’s the mark of the herbivore, persistence. i was pissed off that i’d have to get up early to fix the fence if they all came through so i bent over to pick up a rock. it was frozen to the ground. so i kicked it. it took five or six tries to get it loose which made me even more angry. impotence of any variety is a pisser.

i got it in hand. not a big rock you understand but what i’d call a stone. there were seven or eight bucks and does in a clump, i figured i’d hit one for sure and they’d all panic and run. i swung my arm and there was that moment. what zen is supposed to be like. before i even let go i knew the aim was super true. i knew that rock was gonna connect before it left my hand. it didn’t feel like doom, it felt like expertise; like majik.

there was a thunk of flesh catching stone, not a crack of granite on bone, just a thump. the deer ran and i was pleased. i was just turning around to distribute the rest of the hay when i saw it.

there was a little lump in the snow eighty feet away. and you know what? my brain put it together against my hopeful ignorance before my heart could force blood through it twice.

i ran desperately to where the fawn lay; kicking, trying to stand. i fell in the snow beside it. i held it still and put one hand under its head. i checked its face for blood. even in the dark i could see there wasn’t a mark on it. so my panic subsided. i’d just stunned it and i could wait till it felt a little better. i’d keep it calm and warm as long as it took.

i petted her side. after a couple minutes i decided to move her off the snow into the barn where she would be warmer and less shocky. i carried her in carefully. set her down and ran to get a flashlight to examine her a little better. no sweat. my first job was for a vet. i’d handle it and i’d be more careful about throwing stones. consider myself warned, you know.

when i got back a minute and a half later she was dead. i didn’t believe it of course. i put the light in her wide empty eyes, her pupils stayed fully dilated, bottomless like dried up wells. i felt for breath, nothing. i looked her head over in the light, not a mark, just a thin pink ribbon of tongue lolling out.

i went on auto pilot. i picked her up again. carried her to edge of the woods where the coyotes would at least benefit. it’s funny, you know, this thing called flesh. i was as careful with her as when she was just alive. my arms were aching by the time i got to the woods. but i was slow and gentle. setting her down under a tree, expecting a disney turn of events somewhere in my soul. i guess i thought she’d just start kicking again and get up and run away. you know what? dead is dead. she just fucking lay there under the pinon in the new moon darkness. this fantastically beautiful line of her back into her neck; so scythian. art appreciation knows no bounds of sanity. good thing for me.

i walked back to a waiting bed calmly, until i got halfway there. i fell on my knees on the frozen mud and couldn’t move, cry, or process thought for the longest time. i’m unaccustomed to shame. since i escaped home and the age of sixteen i haven’t really been ashamed of anything. when i thought, when i think, of that fawn lying dead by my hand i feel shame. not because i killed a deer. if i went hunting i’d pull the trigger, i’d eat my share. i kill every time i go to wendy’s for a burger. the issue isn’t killing an animal for food. because that is right and good, that is the order of things from amoebas to jaguars. it’s why i sport canines. the issue is that i murdered a child out of annoyance. the issue is that i lashed out with no thought. the issue is that i chose violence casually without believing i was being violent. for no reason did this fawn die. not to feed me, not to clothe my children, not to protect my crops, or even adorn a wall.

i walked out to her the next morning before the coyotes and crows had found her. what struck me in the daylight was her perfect black hooves and clean fur.

i get to remember those hooves forever now. and a brave telling of a coward’s tale isn’t alchemy.

i want to tell you something about throwing stones. there is only one possible result of violence, it’s pain—there is only one valid reason for directing violence at a living being: murder. what are the chances that i could’ve killed a deer with a little rock from that far off? well, the chances are exactly one hundred percent ’cause it happened. and the only real shame i’ve felt in ten years comes from the fact that i should have known that before i pried that rock out of the frozen soil. i’m telling you because i know that a lot of you are holding stones of your own, or thinking about picking them up. and if i can help anyone to avoid feeling the way i’ve felt the last two weeks then maybe i’ll be able to sleep again. and maybe i can save one of you from your own perfect black hooves.