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| When Out West |
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| Walter Bjorkman is a writer residing in Maryland. He was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York, later tempered by two decades in Miami, Forida. This Collection of Stories is culled from his experiences in the streets of those cities and the roads of the world. The characters are composites of people from his life and imagination. |
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~ Contents ~ |
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People, Places |
Pretend You Don't Exist |
When Out West | ||||
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~ Links to my pages and community ~
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| To Fragments - Poetry | To Journey - Narrative Poetry | To Marzy Lives On - Stories | Visit MiPO - a Community |
~ Some Published Works ~
Contact Walter: wbjorkman@hotmail.com
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Jesse's Violin
Jesse walked out of the wood shop, her smock flittered with sawdust from the lathe. Her goggles were also covered, so she walked unsteadily as she shook her hair free before she raised them to her forehead. The fresh cut wood's odor brought her to the small basement where her father once shaped the furniture for their rooms. When her grandfather was in this country, he too would use the basement to work on the same violin, over and over, his now shaky hands once patterned for finer movements. As a boy and a man, he was a cobbler by trade, working the hobnails and lacing, but his passion was in shaping the instruments of sound whenever he could. The story was that he completed four instuments, for expense was as inhibiting as time and his self-taught meager skills. They were never played in a public setting, given as gifts for the nieces and children in hopes that these hands from the earth could somehow transform them into the delicate parlour room type.
Each attempt produced a slightly better product. His fourth was given to Jesse's mother; Jesse saw old photographs of when her mother played guitar as a teen in a traditional immigrant folk group, gramp's fiddle playing fitting right in. Her grandmother sang lead, and the crazy twins from the flat below filled out the group on bass and accordion. Jesse never could master the strings, nor did she have the wont; she was more intrigued by this hunched figure with his green visor, working the wood over and over on this his fifth try, the one he had been working for the last twenty years. Well into his seventies, staring down on the work table, hands trembling as he tried to position the bridge just right, then stringing, tuning and lifting into the folds beneath his neck, only to disappoint once again. He never gave even a sigh, just methodically placed it down, then turned his head to the overhead window to the alley. After a quiet minute or two, he either went back to the bridge, or at times disassembling the body - was it perhaps a misshape or improperly positioned piece that made his masterpiece incomplete? This went on month after month, four days a week. Jesse sat quietly, trying to make sense out of his gyrations, learning never to question the whys or whats that so desperately wanted to be heard.
By the time Jesse was twelve, grandma and grandpa moved back to the home country, to live out their days in the land of their birth. The fifth violin went along with them, and the olfactory memory of the lacquer, rosin and oils receded in her mind, replaced by the singular sawdust that came from her father's lathing and sanding of the next utilitarian piece. Her father worked as a foundation digger, working on future housing projects and bridges, deep in the ditch, trussing and smoothing the sides, shovel, saw and hammer his tools, preparing for the cement to be poured. His hands were big, calloused and thick, as opposed to his wife's father's delicateness. As he worked the wood, Jesse now became involved, his big stocky body and hands belied a patience and gentleness that guided her. His words were few, so when they came, they bespoke a weight of importance. Jesse rarely had to be told twice how to shape, connect, sand and finish. When she made a mistake, her father would say "that is why we will do it again" with such a tone that Jesse saw it as a treat, much like the sweet ones he brought home on payday for all of the family. This quality connected Jesse's grandfather to her dad, one working with sublime precision on one delicate, artistic piece of endeavor, the other applying a rougher hewn precision to many functional pieces.
As Jesse matured, these two approaches to a craft alternately wafted through her being, much as the aromas evoked two different mind pictures. Her direction was never certain; she always seemed to be treading where the girls of that day didn't go. Her choices for schooling were two, the neighborhood high school with all its traditional roles for young men and women, and a specialty school that was created by the city to offset the special schools that boys tested to get into, at the time not open to girls. Although most of the smarter girls opted for this school, the added curricula was mostly needlepoint and homemaking, the girls tested out lower on their PSATs than the Iowas that got them in.
So Jesse went to the local, preferring to throw up hoops after school than embroider them onto a quilt. During her freshman year her father went off to the hospital just before Christmas, only to come home on his birthday in February to die. Showing the patience from the years of his toil, he held on until the day of his 25th wedding anniversary in June. That summer Jesse mostly spent in the park, overlooking the harbor, letting the aromas of her father's work and his body wash her with a sadness that, except for the time on the hill gazing out at some of the completed structures her father had started, stayed inside her as she sleep-walked through the rest of the day. The patience that these aromas aroused were telling her that is "why she will do it again".
What could she do again? She couldn't relive those hours, first silently at the side of her grandfather, then in the arms of her father, molding the pieces that now stared back at her from around the house; they could only whisper instead "that's why you will do something new again". She continued in this stupor as her sophomore year began, her classmates inanities seeming ever more sophomoric. Maintaining her grades was not a problem, at least the hours in the books took her momentarily away from the gnawing of the aroma's riddle.
Every afternoon at four, from as far back as her memories went, she walked to the local candy store, to pick up the afternoon edition of the news to have ready for her dad to read when he got home. The bookie lifted his head from the racing Telegraph, looked out from the back and nodded as she placed the exact change on the counter. On occasion she also bought a pack of Camels if her father asked her. After his death, she did not stop this practice, so ingrained it was, it was sacrosanct. She didn't much read the paper, mostly sharing the exploits of the Dodgers that gave her father such joy, and often frustration. On his death bed she excitedly brought in the news that his favorite player just won the game. When he did not, could not, respond, she knew it was over.
On this day she didn't want to go, her malaise brought her to the conclusion that this was a worthless exercise, no matter how many times she put the paper on the table, she would never see her father turning the pages. One last time, in memoriam, and this time she would buy that pack of Camels that she hadn't in the year past. Nick the bookie, although knowing her dad was gone, wouldn't deny her purchase; she often wondered if he ever really knew what she was buying. As she returned, she sat down on a lamppost stand next to the Renkins milk vending machine, next to the Mobil station on the block behind her house. She opened the pack of Camels and lit one up, this time knowing to inhale as the match met the tip. When she was eight, she swiped one of the two left in the pack her father had left behind, went to the top of the stairs and tried to light up. The flame just sat at the tip, just charring the end, with no suction to draw it to the tobacco. Panicked, Jesse tossed the butt to the bottom of the stairs and fled to her room. Her mother, coming up from doing the wash in the basement, picked it up and told Jesse to wait in her room til her father gets home. After being told the events, he summoned Jesse to his chair and pronounced sentence - no sweets for her on this payday and next. Then he asked if she learned a lesson, she did, that if she were to swipe a butt, be sure it is when he has fourteen left in the pack, not just two, and to light it up at least a block away.
So now she had her own pack, sitting a block away, with her elbows on her knees, hunched over and gingerly putting the smoke to her lips. The daily news lay beneath on the ground, and a little sub-headline caught her attention. Something about the special schools being open to girls. She found the article on page four, two girls' sets of well to do parents sued the school board and got their daughters admitted to the one in Brooklyn. Starting the next school year the test would be open to girls, first for high schools, for the ones already denied, then phasing it in for eighth graders. She knew of the school, the few neighbor boys that made it in spoke of a massive place with engineering studies, workshops to yearly build and take apart a half scale house and a full sized Piper Cub. Foundries, machine shops, state of the art chemistry and physics labs. Jesse's mind raced with the possibilities, this perhaps her chance to do something new again.
As Jesse emerged from the wood shop, still sweeping the sweet dust from her clothes as she approached her locker, her thoughts wandered back to that lamppost stand, the Camels, the basement, her father's encompassing hands, her grandfather's ones seeking perfection. When she had approached her counselor to request the transfer, he had looked at her with a twisted smile and said that it might be a better place for her. Getting in was easy, she scored high enough, and the parents and most of the other girls would not even think of going to a school full of boys on the track to college and success. The projected quota was not even met.
Yet something was not right; for all the warmth the past two years of something new again gave her, the impetus to drive, the delight in design and construct, the hands molding from conception to completion, it was missing a piece.
| * * * |
Jesse made it into one of the better technical universities in the south, her ambition had been to take from her nurturing in the basement at her father's side, and these past two years in unexpected superior environs, to study architectural design and go on to produce high quality pieces from start to finish, imbued with her artistic bent, creating a fusion of her father's utilitarian work and her grandfather's design. Rather than spend the intervening summer doing what awaiting college students do, she decided to travel to her mother's homeland. Her grandmother had passed away during the winter, leaving to Jesse a sum that would enable her to visit for a short stay.
As she approached the sodded roofed house that had been there for centuries, the aroma of lacquer, rosin and oil came rushing back, she now nine years old, sitting at grandpa's side, observing the hands nimbly twist, shape and smooth, the hunched back, the green visor. When she entered, Jesse was met by a women that seemed to be grandma's sister. She was not, rather a neighbor payed by the retirement fund to see in, cook and clean for her grandfather. "Ah, you must be Jesse, your Grandfather is waiting, let me take your things and you can go directly to see him." Jesse asked if he was upstairs in his room. "No, he is where he has always been since your grandmother died, down in that dank cellar, it will kill him yet".
Jesse walked down the stairs, seeing his back hunched over the work desk, violin laid before him. He greeted her with more than the nod she remembered from the basement back home. As she approached his greeting, she noticed the violin was of a different color, and what seemed to be the one he had worked on for all those years discarded on a small pile of hay in the corner, stringless, pegless.
Jesse asked if that were not the case. Her grandfather looked up, well over eighty now, eyes seeming to be over one hundred. "Ah, yes, that one was no good from the start, but this one will be the best. This is Jesse's violin".
Jesse looked up to the half window to the meadow above her grandfather's head for a minute or two, then sighed.
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If I Make It In Time
Four hours still left on this shift, and nothing, no one on the streets looking for a lift. Damn!! Just covering my gas and with the forty-four cut I get out of the rest, I'll barely cover my food and room for the day. Tuesdays are always like this, at least Mondays you get the long weekend perps that call in sick to work and are weaning themselves from the booze by drinking more. Also the ones heading out of town for whatever reason. Wednesdays you got the B'way matinees and dinners after. Thursdays, well in this city, that's the start of the weekend. But Tuesdays, after eight, nothing. Don't know how the day guys make it, sitting in traffic at a dime a minute - I'll take the quarter a quarter mile anytime. Plus the fifty cent pop to start.
Short runs, one boozy nightspot up third ave, movie fare down second for some grub, right back from the restaurants to some club in the Village or West side, that's the way to do it, Friday to Sunday, non-stop feast of drunk-laced tips and great entertainment - I don't need off-Broadway, avant-garde action, I got it in my back seat. Get a long ride out to the boros, well looks good, but if you don't get one back - that's a push. Unless its the last one home, and its Brooklyn, or the one time guy who lost a C-note, glad I cleaned up the back seat that night.
Wait - a gaggle ahead in the middle of the street, waving me down - whoa what's this on a deserted Delancy. Ahh - the ladies of fine repute - must be five of 'em. Well, this should be something.
"Hey, boy, ever pay for it?" came through the open window. Geez, I got my mind crossed.
"For five at one time?" came from the other side as laughter sprung from the other three.
"Naw, do I look like I need to?" I lie, hiding that Chattenooga Choo-Chew night, my first ever of anything.
"Well, you gonna try it tonight!" from the first.
"And were gonna pay you!" from the other, as their talc and strawberry smell enters the cab just before they do.
"Hold on ladies, I can only have one up front, if the commission buncos on the street see it, I'll get busted. One of you is gonna have to sit on a lap."
"Boy, if we had any laps to sit on, we wouldn't need you. Dowtown dead tonight." from the first, who seems to be the leader of this worn pack.
The ones that tumble into the back are standard issue, the leader a big boisterous one, her brown skin more out of her clothes than in, a slitted emerald shiny dress, with the wide fish nets. Old school. The other three, one long and skinny in tights, one short and skinny in a mini, the last curvaceous in satin sweats. The boss lady has to be forty, trying to look thirty, the others thirty, trying to look twenty.
The front door opens and my first glimpse is the grey faux-fox fur hot pants on some decidedly not weathered legs. She slips in beside me, a lighter presence than the back door girls. Her midriff is bare, and she wears the same faux-fox in a halter top that covers ample but not over-sized breasts. Her face is lineless, soft complexion, her hair a natural brown, long and straight. She couldn't be over twenty.
My shoulder is whacked lightly three times with a purse.
"Hey boy! You gonna spend our dime lookin all over our newest edition, or gonna get us to some uptown freddies?" from the boss lady.
Alright, I'll turn the meter and get going - "Where to?"
Well, this will pay for itself, another freak sideshow, better than burning gas and getting nothing. The ladies in the back keep a round robin of words about how bad it is on Delancy, and looking out the windows to see if there is any action along the way. I half expect that if there is, they will pull the guy into the back seat and have a go at it right there. The girl up front is silent all the way.
Now, uptown to these ladies is one of two places, in Murray Hill on Lex, mid-thirties, or up by Needle Park on B'way around 72nd. Park Avenue madams, they are not, though faux-fox fur with some working over could possibly pull it off.
"Here! Here! Here!" boss lady yells right in my ear, purse at the ready if I don't pull over. "There's Sonya, she don't ever stay long if there's nuthin' to book!"
They tumble out as loud as when they got in. Faux fox just quietly says "thanks", as boss lady throws me a tenner for a four buck fare - wow, all this fun and money too.
The rest of the night picks up a little, get a good ride up to Inwood, and actually keeps me here, hopping from neighborhood bars. The working class kids don't seem to know its Tuesday. I edge my way back downtown, one a.m. already, gonna turn out to be an average weekday night, I can live with that. A few more on the upper west side - musicians don't have a normal work week, get a guy with a big bass going home from a gig to his place on West End. So now, head back downtown, hope to get one last one to take me to Brooklyn so not to go empty, its two in the morning, no sense staying out til four.
I'll cut down B'way, over to seventh through the Village, then Soho to Canal, fastest way, maybe get a straggler. Well, well, a woman in a long coat, way up here on 76th - great if its Brooklyn, man I hope not the Bronx. She got into the back, and as she steps up to get in, I see through the part in the coat - Ms. faux-fox!
"Clinton street in Brooklyn, please."
"No problem" I turn towards her.
"Oh, its you!" a little laugh from both of us.
"Brooklyn Heights??", my brows raised.
"No, the other way under the Gowanus towards the piers". That fit better, no state senators living down there.
"Ok. So Lex Ave didn't do it?"
"Oh, it was ok, I go to a coffee shop up here at the end of the night to meet a friend from home."
"Oh, ok" is all I say til we pass Dave's Corner on B'way and Canal.
"Ever been there? Best egg creams in the city and best dogs this side of Nathan's"
"Egg cream? What's that"
Uh oh. New in town, no doubt. Boss lady was right about 'newest edition'. I give a description, how you have to do the Hersheys syrup first, then the milk, then the seltzer, with just a slight stir, so it goes from thick dark brown at the bottom to frothy white at the top, so many places do the syrup last and mix it til the froth is gone, a crime. I shut up, letting it ride as we ride the rest of the way.
"Drop me at the corner", she is being cautious not to reveal her place; at least she learned something since she got to the city. She also secures her overcoat, to keep the faux fox fur from her neighbors. As she hands me the fare, with a small tip - no boss lady she - she asks "I leave at 2 am every night, same place, any chance you might be working B'way then?"
"Well, hard to tell, I get carried all over the place, but if I am around, I'll look for you. I'm off tomorrow."
"Good, some cabbies are real freaky, you know?"
"I know, my roomate is one also." She gives a chuckle.
"By the way, my name is Fiona"
"I'm Walt"
"Night"
"Good Night"
On my day back on Thursday, I get stuck out in Queens late at night, and then there is the mad weekend, no way to control that, and Monday is a day off.
So here it is Tuesday, and the hooker thing is in my mind. On the weekend, when it got slow, I had a few more, looking for better corners, so that's when I realize I have the hooker run to ease over the lulls, no one else is doing it. 1:30 finds me on the upper west side, so I don't hustle, and pass B'wy and 76th right at 2 a.m. Sure 'nuff, there is faux fox fur, in the same overcoat, flagging me down.
"Hey, good ta see 'ya" came out, with a decidely not NY accent.
"Yeah, I was in the area, so I gave a look see."
She hops in and we cruise down B'way, this time we exchange a few words , just about the weather, chance of another garbage strike, nothing personal. As we approch Canal, she asks if we could stop so she could try one of those egg creams I went on about. We do, and share a dog, then she breaks the cabbies' plexiglass wall.
"Can I ride up front the rest of the way, that's allowed, no?"
Well, it is allowed, but now I am wondering what that is about. I'm not, I think, trying to be a 'protector', and I'm not about to be her 'savior', getting her to quit the life. Hell, I'm a working the bowels of NY to feed myself, and I've probably seen a lot worse than her. So, cautiously I say "OK".
"That was great - chocolate milk with fizz!" All of a sudden its two adolescents in the school cafeteria. We chat a bit more, she likens the Brooklyn bridge off to the right to a building, being of granite face, and thinks it would be cool to live inside of it. Now she wants me to take her to her door. Yes, she is pretty, and leads a life of sex, but I don't think I want her that way, I don't know what I want of this, I'm just enjoying it.
Over the next six weeks we manage to hook up once or twice a week, stopping everytime at Dave's Corner for our midnight treat, her sitting in the front all the way. The conversation is all about NY, and the things we do when out and about. She is slowly becoming more of the city, but not so much that she is losing her fresh feel. We enjoy the same things - Central Park, the Village, the museums, but never once do we ask each other to go along. About the only personal thing she reveals is that her friend up on B'way is going back home, she isn't saying where. I am steering clear of my past also.
Now what, a letter from the Dept of Social - what did I do now. A job offer - from a test I took, not even a formal interview - thank civil service! I'll milk this, for sure.
The next to last night, Fiona is there. I am looking for her for the past few days. She seems the most cheerful ever. We stop at Dave's and she dives into her egg cream, I am sipping mine. Gotta tell her, but so what, this is a couple of hours a week, each of us doing all sorts of things the other hundred sixty.
"Fiona, I got a job for the city. Gonna be working over on east fourth by second ave, a caseworker for the dept of relocation, working with old timers, winos, junkies & unwed mothers."
She was silent for a bit.
"Sounds like a step up from the likes of me" a laugh with a knife's edge.
"You gonna drive at all?"
"No, be too much, also gonna take grad Ed courses at Brooklyn College a few nights a week."
"Well, that's it I guess" , she shrugs indifference.
Man, now its silent all the way back. She isn't looking out the window as usual, I want to say more, but to what end. Ah, its best, cut it right off, been good, move on.
"Well, here we are" as I pull up in front of her place.
"Walter, get out!"
"What?" I had stopped collecting her fare the third time home.
"Just get out, and stand here", she points to the sidewalk.
Well guess I have to, I step out, Fiona grabs each of my biceps at a distance, crushing in a vise, and stares into my eyes.
"My name is Christine. Christine Peterson", telling herself as much me.
She pulls me to her, a quick but deep hug, pirouettes, walks briskly to the stoop, with no pretension of ever meeting again.
As she climbs the steps, its not the faux fox fur of Fiona, its the back of the long coat of Christine. Christine Peterson.
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No One Thought
No one thought that Cheryl Zimmerman would ever do this. She had just completed the paperwork for admissions, got the loan secured, adjusted her hours at the Flat Bottom Shanty to enable her to go. The rambling cottage they lived in was paid for long ago by Gramps, though that bastard Cory had tried to get a loan on it. She never signed the papers, never did. He almost beat her for it, but couldn't, not out of caring, just too damn interested in self-protection and promotion.
Cheryl had a group of people. The community was close knit, though not local but extending from one coast to the other. We would all come and go, stopping to rest in this green haven for her generous ears and pies, both culled from the bramble out back. She had a way of likening everybody's stories of disaster and joy in their their lives to the sights and sounds she witnessed in the days and nights when no one was there. No Pollyanna, more a soothing balm of rhythms and harmony; when we left our stomachs were huckleberried and our souls were chrysalized.
So Cory would not lay a hand on her, the reaction would be universal and swift. He could not afford an arrest, what would it do to his image? It was bad enough that he lived in this beat up old house with this beatific woman, the people in his outside world would never understand. He didn't understand either, though it must have been that he too was enchanted by her beauty and calm when they first met. She was all wrong for him, a salt of the earth, while he was meant for the finer things.
Cheryl doted on and adored her two children, they somehow were growing in her likeness, not Cory's. Most likely because he was never there, just stopping in between his flirtations with the outside world she only heard about from us. She didn't want the turmoil, the ascensions, the downfalls, her hideaway suited her fine.
"Here comes funny-runnin' Rick" I hollered as her eldest came cajoling down a hillside, arms straight down his leg sides, never swaying, his gait more a swift waddle. Cheryl laughed, and he was forever branded. Later that same night, perhaps in response, Cheryl tapped me and said "look at Amy, she sure has sleepy arms" as her youngest tried to roll out the pie dough. And so it was, Cheryl's two forever 'Sleepy-Armed Amy' and 'Funny-Runnin' Rick'.
Cory had no license for this nonsense. Whenever he came into town, he threw enough money on the table to pay the bills until the next time, but that was the extent of his involvement. So when Cheryl could abide by it no more, she simply barred the door, pinned with her two thesis:
To Cory
You are free to go
I am free to live
Cheryl
Cory grabbed the note and ran, he knew this was the only document he would ever see that would relieve him of any obligations.
Now, a year later, with her resources drying up and only the pittance she took home from the Shanty, she had to do something. Dallas, Chalky and myself were the ones that confided in her the most. Her story-telling was legend amongst us. Each one could recall the times we would slump in on our visits, and Cheryl would listen, then relate some seemingly unrelated tale of the crickets telling the temperature by the speed of their cricking, or the huckleberry branches growing through the undergrowth to reach that spot of light in the dark woods. They uplifted, enthralled and enlightened us, and we left satiated with her delights.
So we urged her to do what no one thought Cheryl Zimmerman would ever do. The three of us decided we would throw together whatever we could monthly, if she would take her talents to the local college. That and her tips from the Shanty would carry her through. She didn't at this point have the disposition to put the words down, so Chalky got the idea for her to submit an audiotape with her application. The registrar passed it on to the Lit department, the head was blown away, he was a devotee of the oral tradition. She was offered full scholarship of the modest fees to this country academy, the loan would not be needed.
On my most recent visit, a full eighteen months after Cory fled the coop, as Funny-Runnin' Rick and Sleepy-Armed Amy drifted off, Cheryl was quiet, and more tactile than ever. Her first class started in a week, and amid the excitement of the adventure, she leaned her head to my shoulder and said "You all have been so great, it looks like it will work out, I just wish I could tell myself a story" as her eyes started to nod. "I'd like to come around a bit more, not just when I need your encouragement," from me, "would that be OK?". "That would be wonderful".
| * * * |
The three envelopes were neatly arranged on the desktop, addressed and stamped. To Chalky, to Dallas, to me. Next to them were three sheets of thick paper, only one with any writing on it, to me. Just three words and a comma.
Dear Best Friend,
Cheryl Zimmerman did what no one ever thought she would do, found with her body slumped on the desk, empty pill bottle at her side.
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Elsie's World
"PLEASE DO NOT CUT" read the sign hung on the dime store plastic flowers in the dime store plastic vase on top of the Beidermeier dresser from the mid-19th century. It was the first thing I saw as I entered Elsie Gnadl's apartment. I didn't know what to expect when I knocked on the door, and this sight did not clarify anything.
"Mr. Bjorrrrkmann?" rolled out of Elsie's mouth, the Germanic R, the short A and the double N leaving no doubt this woman of seventy-five had not left her country totally behind. "Please come sit."
"You haave to go see this woman, for all we know she might have died years ago and is sitting in her rocker like Mama Bates, all bones and dust in a tattered shawl." Ron, my boss' boss, spoke these words in a hustler's patter, trying to spark my sympathetic side. His boss was coming down hard on getting these stragglers out, so they could rent at market value.
"Yes, you must, Walter, it's in her best interest" came from Phyllis, my boss, who was trying to cover her laziness in front of Ron.
"OK, I'll give it a look see" I finally answered, becoming aware that I would have to go all the way to the upper east side, and could get a good long Central Park lunch out of it with an Italian hero from Trinarca's picked up along the way. The rest of our clients were in areas throughout the lower east side and the Bowery, and in classic city planning they threw poor Elsie in with us, rather than the other office just across the park from her.
The file only had the bones:
Name: Gnadl, Elsie Marital Status: Widow
Date of Birth: 1898 Rental Status: Original tenant
This was followed by about fifteen attempts by previous caseworkers over the twenty years to see her, dwindling down as the years passed, every time no answer.
Our office was on the third floor of a converted dime a dance hall, on the second floor were the 'administrators', actually landlords of some of the worst slums in the city that would pop in every now and then to process the rents and steer the downtrodden tenants to their own buildings, where no one with a choice would rent. So I went down to see how Elsie pays her rent, turns out a son or nephew mailed a check once a year for the whole year from someplace in Illinois.
I didn't want to give just a half-hearted attempt as it seemed my precursors did. So first step, the White Pages, and there it was, Gnadl, E. MH 6 - 7982, still with the old letter exchange, it was there all along. I found out later that Elsie never answered the door unless she had an appointment. She did answer the phone, and she was polite. When I mentioned I was from the city, she was ever compliant. We set up a meeting for the next day at ten a.m.
* *
*
I walked across the angular parquet floor, the only part of the apartment that came close to matching the strength and comfort of the Beidermeier dresser. The rest of the place, a sofa, two stuffed chairs, coffee table and the kitchen set were 1950s, not just from the bargain outlets of these days, but the bargain outlets of those days. Even back then they were cut-rate. The walls were Honeymooners' faded grey, probably hadn't seen a brush in decades. Across from the sofa was a largish picture of some undetermined seascape, hastily done, a very expensive frame that drew the eye more than the painting. Above the lone end table was a small sepia picture of a man in military dress, too stained to determine the type of uniform, also in a similar frame. Overhead was a sturdy chandelier, which if not for the dust and grease, would match the dresser's presence.
"It vas the boys" Elsie said. She stood erect in the room, projecting a grandeur that these rooms lacked.
"Excuse me?'" my face seeking explanation.
"You look at my flowers. It vas the boys that cut them. They break in at night when I am out and cut the flowers and so I get the beautiful fake ones. Then they cut those, so I put the sign. Now they don't."
Dying houseplants and coming apart plastic, in the eye of this beholder become hooligan house invaders at night, yet polite enough to obey a request. But in her eyes, it was all true, she seemed to want, to need, the attention from the imaginary boys.
"They make fun of me ven I leave, shouting 'you're it' ven I go."
Kids playing tag after school become playground bullies. I don't know if she wanted them, but this mild delusion had to come from somewhere, something that happened in her life, and reinforced a need of some kind.
I let this all pass for now, to engage Elsie's world with her at this point would be too consuming, for my first order of business was to explain to her the situation, the housing rights, the stipend she could receive.
"Zo, I must move now?" I tell her no, nothing is planned for these buildings yet.
"Zo, why they send you?" displaying a surprising clarity that I couldn't disagree with. I just said we wanted to see how she is doing, that all is OK.
"Iz not all OK. I go out now at night after the boys go home, the day I am "The Prisoner of Second Avenue!"
Well, another surprise from this seemingly cloistered woman. A modern reference from the modern world, so well applied to her circumstances. I asked if it would be alright to stop in next week, I wanted, needed to come back, her depth of manner and intentional sarcasm towards herself made her all the more alluring. But this was enough for today. As I left, pulling on my knee length black overcoat, I had to ask.
"Where do you go at night, to work, or shopping?" "Work?" She gave a disdainful snort.
"I go to films. Late night revivals at the Coronet, Baronet. Sometimes I take bus cross park to Thalia. I pick up food on way home. But not zo much now, the money is going." I can't be sure if she actually goes or just replays the films in her head. This woman just got a whole lot more complicated.
* *
*
Nancy and I had our second date for Thursday night. I was curious over this encounter with Elsie; I couldn't tell if her delusions were grounded in fact or the onset of dementia. So, on a hunch, I suggested we go see Cries and Whispers by Bergman, playing up the street from the Baronet.
"Why are you always looking around, Walt. I can't keep your attention?"
My glances became more furtive, but Mrs. Gnadl was nowhere in sight. I had filled Nancy in on Elsie, it was quite the talk at work that I confirmed Norman's mom had no rival.
As we came out of the theater, give and taking over the film, a shadow across the street skulked next to the long wall. It was draped in a cloak like garment, careful and slow in its steps. Overhead the marquee read Jules et Jim, a re-release of Truffaut's 1962 classic. The transformation was stunning. As soon as the figure passed below the lights, the head covering was removed, the figure stood tall, the strong-boned profile was back lit by the movie poster, in alignment with Oskar Werner's Austrian visage, both contrasting the soft translucent Gallic features of Jeanne Moreau emanating from between them. It was Elsie. After a moment of inhaling the beckoning air, she strode regally and purposefully towards the box office, at home in a world she had to know from her birth.
My next appointment with Elsie was Monday,
* *
*
Monday warmed up even more, so an old light sweater was all I needed. As much as I was looking forward to a wafer thin cut prosciutto sandwich, blanketed with pickled garden veggies, consumed in the bucolic sheep meadow, I looked forward more to seeing Elsie. Over the night spent alone, the mystery of her came back to my thoughts. The dream was eerie - a shrouded one-dimensional hag transforming slowly to a proud aficionado of the silver screen of the past, then becoming one of the figures on that screen coming to life - playing all the roles, first those of sadness and loss, then those of love, pleasure and triumph.
"You must come in and talk, Mr. Bjorrrkmann", Elsie almost chirped. "I have news for you."
I sat down on one of the chairs, Elsie planted herself gracefully on the sofa.
"What news do you have?" She looked up at the small picture on the wall beside her, chin high, shoulders square.
"I have a man in my life, I am not alone anymore!" My brows raised, which she quickly noticed.
"It's true, I saw him. He came to me last week, wearing a long, elegant black topcoat, not the ragged thing you are wearing." She looked down, "He never would." At this point I felt shamed into almost believing her.
"What was he here for?" trying to see if this had any truth, or if I could bring her somewhat back to it. Maybe Ron made a follow-up, which he occasionally does to make sure visits are done.
"He invited me to the cinema. We went to Thursday's late showing of Jules et Jim by Truffaut." Now I knew this was a creation, but why did she feel the need? The shrouded to proud figure I saw that night was alone, though when transformed, she seemed to be in a crowd of friends, perhaps it was her loneliness.
I steered the conversation to her physical needs, and she slowly let the matter go. She had mentioned that she was running out of money, so I asked if she doesn't get widow's benefits from social security.
"Ach, there is no sense in that, why would anyone pay me for that." She dismissed it with a shudder that seemed to come from deep down in her hips. I managed to get her to agree to meet me at the social security building on Wednesday at 8:00 a.m., she knew where it was, halfway to Balducci's where she got her food.
I then departed for the park with my sandwich, my mind not knowing what to make of all this. It wasn't until I remembered I was wearing my Barney's overcoat on the first visit.
I . .WAS . . HER . . NEW . . MAN.
Phyllis, fresh from her gerontology seminars at Columbia, insisted I had to disengage. I could not maintain a working relationship if she had this fixation. I had to agree with this professional assessment, but in private I did not want it to end before I could learn all there was about enigmatic Elsie. It was agreed I would do the social security visit, as she only trusted me, then hand her off to another co-worker, Betty.
Wednesday came, I waited nervously in front of the SSA building, and 8:00, 8:10, 8:20 came and went, no Elsie. I gave it another twenty minutes, then headed to her building, knocked on the door. No answer, she doesn't answer unannounced visits.
* *
*
I decided to see if I could track down whoever was paying her rent. It was almost as easy as finding Elsie's number. The envelopes had a return address, and a Mr. Gnadl was in the directory. I made the call, nervously trying to explain these events to an uncaring nephew who could buy off her memory.
"Oh, we were waiting for this day, we expected it to be soon." I was taken aback.
"I call her twice a week, Tuesdays and Saturdays, in the summer we have her out here for August, and we visit her in New York on Thanksgiving for a week. Put her up with us at the Waldorf." George Gnadl was the opposite of what I imagined. When I mentioned the social security, he told me she doesn't need it, she has a fund from her husband who made a mint selling jewelry in the city, anytime she needed money he sent it. He couldn't convince her to leave the shabby apartment.
"She doesn't ask for any money. She sells off the antque furnishings she has, replacing it with the crap in there." And so, the 'running out of money', just the dresser left, the one piece she held on to, along with the picture frames.
When I related her fantasy about me, he said that it was time.
"You know, this all started just three years ago, when she came home and found my Uncle hanging from the chandelier. It's been slowly downhill since."
* *
*
It was only a few days later that Elsie's nephew and his wife came to get her. It was decided that Phyllis and Betty would be there, it wouldn't be wise for me to go. Her nephew told her that they wanted to see her more often and lied that she would stay with them for only a month. Elsie was pleased.
As they were leaving, she turned to her nephew, while caressing the sepia photograph.
"Please leave your address and phone number with this lady", pointing to Phyllis. "My new man might come calling."
* *
*
Ron, Phyllis, Betty and the rest came up with some wild explanations for it all. Was her husband a Nazi war criminal that hung himself as the network closed in? Or were they the persecuted ones, and the nightmare horrors of what he saw drive him to it? Did he rip off some South African diamond sellers, or Mafia buyers, and did they set it up to look like suicide?
As for myself, I'm not really sure if I want to find out. It was Elsie's world, from the plastic flowers in her Second Avenue prison, to the proud patron of the arts she becomes amongst her friends of the screen. I was merely fortunate enough to have had a glimpse of it.
Shouldn't any memories that remain be left to her, her new man on her arm?
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Pretend You Don't Exist
1. There Was a Name
Klara awoke earlier than usual, her younger brother Ivar saw to that. Though separated by only a few years, they were ages apart. Ivar liked to play when he wanted to and work only when he had to, which is normal for any ten year old. At least that is what Klara told herself as Ivar was prancing around her bed, making the sounds of some sort of creature in distress.
"Våkne! Våkn opp! Kjære søster!" Ivar cried between grunts and moans, slipping back into their native tongue. Ivar also tended to forget that the whole family was supposed to speak only English when at home.
"Mor vil at du skal komme til låven akkurat nå!"
"Snakk English, Ivar!" Klara rumbled from under the cover she had pulled over her head, forgetting herself in her drowsiness. "You know we must speak English only to get ready for our move to America." "Now why does mother want me at the barn?"
"Kua er i ferd med å føde! Mooo, moooo!" Ivar bellowed, ignoring Klara's command, while imitating the expectant cow.
They were waiting for this moment for the last few weeks. Their aging milk cow somehow conceived out in the pastures, and with the gestation period of nine months ending, Ivar was excited, for this was his first to see. Klara had witnessed a calving over at the Solvik farm some years earlier; she had been excited also at that time, but the bloody experience left her hoping she would never have to witness one again. This was important, though, and it needed to be successful. Tante Hedvig had declared that the calf would be a bull calf from the way that the old cow was carrying. No one could remember if Hedvig was ever correct, she always proclaimed that she was after the fact, having guessed both ways. This time she was adamant, a bull calf it would be, which would bring much more at the market across the fjord, finally giving the family enough for the steamship voyage to New York.
Ivar and Klara's mother, Hannah, was standing at the barn door, dressed in her shrouded black, tapping her cane rapidly against the wood wall. Klara was surprised to see her outside. When their father, Haakon, left for Canada, Hannah, not yet aged at thirty-two, developed a mysterious malaise that left all the farm work to Klara, and when in the mood, Ivar. Hannah didn't wear black to mourn Haakon's departure, Klara never remembered a day that Mother wore anything else. From her bedroom door Klara could hear the suddenly healthy voice.
"Ivar, Klara, come here now! It is time!"
"English, Ivar" Klara whispered, for it was Hannah that made the rule, her way of presaging their escape to the new world, having already joined her husband in her dreams.
"Yes mother, we are coming." Klara quickly pulled on her work pants, coat and always muddy boots. They scampered down the hay strewn path, the moon lighting their way. The early spring sun would still only be out for a handful of hours later in the day, also having to rise above the mountains to the east; now its low passage below the horizon gave everything a golden sepia hue.
"There is trouble, it doesn't want to come out." Hannah shakenly muttered to them, but Klara knew the words were only meant for her. Hannah always let Ivar do what he wanted, and always expected Klara to do what Hannah wanted.
"Take a rope, tie it around its legs, then you and your brother pull." Even in her despair, Hannah would not let a word of Norwegian out, for fear that if she did, she would ever remain on this farm. Klara dutifully did as told, with difficulty, and as the old cow was emitting previously unheard noises, she shouted for Ivar to grab the rope behind her. However, Ivar had ducked behind the wall, cowering at the messy sight. So Klara pulled alone with all of her might. Nothing was happening, then slowly the torso began to emerge, and finally with a last strong pull, the calf plopped out, recoiling Klara to the ground.
During the cleanup, as Hannah beseeched and prayed "It is a bull, is it not, Klara? Hedvig is always correct, a bull?" Klara saw.
"Mother, it is not. It is a girl." not knowing the English for kvige.
Hannah hung her head low and started slowly up the path to her bed. She turned and said "Children, you did well. We will have to find another way" as Ivar now stood grinning slyly beside Klara, taking half the credit, not knowing his mother's deep hurt.
As the next few years passed, Klara's original enthusiasm for going to America began to wane. When the calf was born and turned out to be a female, Klara wished they could just butcher it on the spot and have beef, veal, for supper. Their diet was chicken when one stopped laying, but mostly the fish, haddock in summer, cod in winter, that abounded in the fjord surrounding their island. On holidays they would slaughter an aging sheep, of which they had a few, mutton being the meal, not the sweet taste of young lamb, those would be sold. Klara fantasized that when they arrived in America, she knew the streets would not be paved with gold, but she saw her supper plate lined with beef every afternoon. She only had it once, in a restaurant on her confirmation day, in Molde, the town of one thousand on the mainland, the same day they saw Father off to Canada. A cow for milk and a bull for breeding were far too valuable to be used for food. She remembered the taste as the best thing ever, so when on the new world's sod, it would be beef, beef and more beef. Fish, chicken and old tough lamb would never again cross her lips.
In spite of the hard work on the farm, there were many hours when she could do other things. The weekly ferry ride on Saturdays over to Molde, from their island of only eighty souls, was her escape, an exciting day's adventure to market their eggs and purchase supplies. One day while there, she saw an advertisement for a correspondence secretarial school in Oslo. It only cost a few kroner a month, and Hannah allowed her to keep a few from the sale of their eggs, for Hannah realized that Klara was becoming a young woman and needed some things of her own. Klara could graduate at seventeen, and there was a need for assistants in Molde, especially those fluent in English. Molde was growing, with limited electricity, a grammaphone store and even had a few automobiles now, the craze that had swept America.
The young men in Molde also took notice that Klara was coming of age. They mostly snickered when the raw, ragged farm girls came into town, but Klara took care to dress in her best, and a young regal air surounded her wherever she went, belying her upbringing. Now almost fifteen, two years removed from the calving, one young fellow took particular interest in her emergence. He purchased eggs and the occasional slaughtered chicken from her, for Stillson's market on the main street. It was no use in trying to sell fish, even the townspeople fished for their own, and the commercial boats came in with plenty for export. Klara only knew of him as the young Mister Stillson, their conversation always proper and polite, even as his eyes had a more intimate design. Klara went on these errands with increasing confidence, becoming as cock-sure in public as she was becoming back home. She had four last names in her young life, for the custom amongst farmers was still to take their names from the name of the land they worked. She was born inland as Pedersson, near the Swedish border, hence the Swedish spelling. Then it became Karlslanden as they moved towards the coast, lured by the sea's bounty. The land they bought on the island of Aukra was known as Hjertvik, so they adopted its name. However this became a point of confusion as the original farm owners kept that name as they retired to a home in the small village of twenty by the ferry. So Haakon picked the name Bjørnsund, after the area where he most successfully caught fish, the Bear Sound. Klara had become Klara Bjørnsund, a name that she loved, recited in private and wanted to keep forever. Having it while still young, along with her farm-toughened body, now vivacious, knowledgeable and daring, made her feel complete.
A few weeks after Klara signed up for the school, she heard the unscheduled clopping of hooves coming up the road. It was the young Mister Stillson, a wide if sheepish grin on his face. He hurriedly dismounted, and gave a courtly bow as he removed his hat.
"Kjære Miss Bjørnsund. I know du snakke English on farm, please accept if I do so not well in my attempting."
"You seem to do fine," Klara hid her bemusement. "But what brings you out to our island on a workday?"
"As du kanskje kjenner, Onkel Lars is postmaster. He notice package for you from Oslo. He did not think you want wait for, ah, Lørdag to for it."
"Saturday, Mister Stillson."
"Oh yes, pardon, Saturday."
"Well thank you, Mister Stillson, I am happy you did, but to leave work . . ."
"Oh, I have Tirsdag afternoon off, was just to read Ibsen. Then Onkel Lars brought package, tell me to bring."
"Tuesday, Mister Stillson, it is Tuesday in America."
"Oh, yes. Tuesday" Stillson blushed.
"I need go back, is eight kilometers to ferry. May know each other by Christian names, if I ask?"
"Yes, it will do. I am Klara, Klara Bjørnsund" rolled out with her new sense of permanence, then with her new boldness, "What is yours?"
"Ivar, Ivar Stillson."
Klara let out a laugh so boisterous that afterward she had to apologize. The images of her brother hiding behind the wall as the calf was being born, running from work whenever possible, intruding into everything of hers with no regard, hair always a muss, food always on his cheek, could not be further from the presence of this thoughtful, industrious and intelligent young man at her feet.
"Do I say or do something to laugh you?"
"No, nei, nei" Klara smiled. "I just thought maybe Onkel Lars wanted you to bring this to me for another reason, perhaps to see me." She flirted for the first time ever.
Ivar blushed again at this boldness, but couldn't stifle his own. "Perhaps I bring it again next Tirs . . ah, Tuesday, bring lunch. Do you like røkt sild?"
"Smoked herring? Why Mister Stillson, Ivar" first pouting at the thought of more fish, then the smile returning at his misnomer in her mind, and finally leaping at the opportunity. "Does your father have any salted beef in his market?"
"Saltzed bif?" Ivar tried to pronounce.
"Saltet storfekjøtt" Klara said, eyes wide with hope.
"Ah, saltet storfekjøtt, salted beef, yes, yes of course. I will bring some with flatbrød, we will use fresh smør from your farm." Ivar bade goodbye and rode off with a picture of Klara and himself enjoying an afternoon lunch a week ahead. Klara had visions of this new Ivar also, enjoying together beef with butter on flatbread, speaking and teaching English, doing lessons from the school. There was no need for America now.
For the next year, as America seemed to move farther away, even to Hannah, Klara and Ivar spent their Tuesday afternoons this way, he only missed coming when the fjord was too dangerous to cross. They also made sure to see each other on her Saturday excursions, over a fresh, rather than salted, beef smørgasboard at the market, courtesy of Ivar. When the weather was cold, they would huddle inside the barn as Hannah gazed from her bedroom window, seeing her young self in Klara, but never losing sight of leaving this life for the shore across the sea. The lessons Klara were taking consisted of much more than dictation and shorthand. The proper assistant needed to be well versed in the world, so she studied literature, history, geography, even mathematics and some science; this added to her growing sense of self in this land, a job perhaps waiting and even the only new name she would want, Klara Stillson.
Her Father Haakon had supplemented the farm income as a cobbler before he left for Canada, but over there he worked as a logger near the Maine border. It was hard work, and after paying for food and rooming, little was left. So he took his skills at working leather and expanded them to repairing the lumberjack's saddles and harnesses as well as their boots, and was able to put away a little.
* *
*
Klara was excited. She was turning sixteen on Tuesday! Ivar, now her beau, promised a special treat for her when he visited. She couldn't wait as he rode up, school package in its usual box, another larger one astride his horse, what could it be?
They gave a little peck on each other's cheek. Ivar dutifully gave her the schoolwork, pretending to ignore the other package. Before Klara could force his attention to it, he also handed her a thick letter.
"This also arrived today, from your Father it seems, I thought it important, so I should bring it along with me" his English far better from Klara's tutoring.
Klara took the letter and yes it was from Father. The envelope read:
To: Bjørnsund Family
Gjetvik, Aukra, Norge
From: Haakon Bjørnsund
233 46th Street
Brooklyn, New York, USA
Not Canada.
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3. While The Iron Is Hot
"Pastor Ted has asked me to move with him to a condominium on Miami Beach." The words through the receiver had Clara's youngest, Roald, sit down in stunned silence.
"Well, not move with him, he has a place there that he uses only on vacation, and has offered for me to live there, rather than stay empty. There is an extra room for him when he would come down."
This made a little more sense to Roald than the first statement, but still didn't ring quite true. Pastor Ted was twenty years Clara's junior, he had been her children's youth pastor thirty years earlier before recently becoming the head pastor of the iconic Norwegian-American church up in Brooklyn, after many years as the secondary in a church out in Seattle.
Clara was crystal clear about the details. In a few months, Pastor Ted would have her belongings shipped down. She would pay him out of her social security benefits and the SSI supplemental payments, for although she worked for fifteen years after her husband's passing, increasing the widow's benefit she received, it still didn't come up to the minimum income level, so SSI kicked in. After her husband Axel died, her nephew Arvid got her a job in a thirty-three story office building on Third Avenue in Manhattan where he was chief engineer. She worked as a matron, taking care of supplies in the ladies' washrooms. She also continued to cook and serve for swanky parties out in the semi-mansions of the mob-connected on Shore Road and the brownstones of politicians in Brooklyn Heights, but that was all off the books. Those evening jobs had helped get the family through the hard times, when the men could only sit on the stoops or in the park with beer and card games, talking about the work they couldn't get.
The church in Brooklyn had recently added Spanish language services. The neighborhood, largely Scandinavian when Clara first arrived in 1924, had an influx of Puerto Ricans during the 1940s and 50s, but during those first years, they, mostly Catholic, went to the storefront churches under the Gowanus Expressway, which for so long was the rock-solid line between the neighborhoods. As the Latin immigrants had children and the population grew, so did their need for other places to worship, the storefronts could not handle the influx. Pastor Ted, upon his return, continued an outreach program started by his predecessor, Pastor Monster, even in the face of opposition at first from some of the old-timers; there was less resistance by many of the Latinos in converting to Lutheranism. The church was convenient, had two chapels, a building for sunday school classes and offices with a hall with a stage and full kitchen below, boy and girl scout troops, and a basketball court out back. So that is how this church, founded in the 1880s with the first big influx of Scandinavians, that had just started English services when Clara first came over, now had English, Spanish and Norwegian services, and served hot dogs, panakakke and ropa vieja together at their fests.
Clara could not understand this original resistance by some of her friends. She had always been open to change, how else could she exist? From the Germans staging raids in WW I when they had to hide for weeks at a time in the small hut up the in the hills where they took the sheep to graze, through her father leaving for Canada, when she had to become the farm's sole provider due to her mother's malaise and her brother Ivar's childishness; leaving the farm and her mostly forgotten beau to come to New York; going from her first day exposure to the now modest jazz of Paul Whiteman's Whispering to Elvis and the Beatles, she had come to learn that change is what happens. She also was one-eighth Spanish. Her great-grandmother was from Spain, ship-wrecked on the rocky fjords during an ice-storm, and in the mid 1800's, it was not so easy to return home. The church also had missionary outposts in Africa, and during the Forties, Clara was a camp counselor for children from Harlem. The church taught love and equality of all souls, so accepting the new church-goers was just natural to her. The only time she said the harsh words "Ti stille! Hold kjeft!", "Be quiet! Shut up!" that she heard from her mother Hannah on Ellis Island that day, was when any of the bigoted men said anything disparaging about the Italians, Greeks or Blacks. She would add "We are all the same people in God's eyes."
The biggest change to her was one of the smallest on paper, and it was the one hardest to reconcile. All of her official public life, be it a library card, checking account, paycheck, leases after she had to sell the house, were in the name Clara Bjornsund, later Clara Bjorkman after her marriage. In private, to letters back home and cards to her family and friends in the USA, she always signed Klara Bjørnsund, the name she had proclaimed hers forever before she left Norway, later Klara Bjørkman, her husband Axel underwent the same bastardization of his name that same year at Ellis, or just Klara.
* *
*
After his mom hung up, Roald sat down to think. It all seemed so improbable, this Miami Beach thing. Yet, there was some logic to it, there was no sense in letting a condo stay empty all year, and Klara would be near her son. A few years earlier, she had lived with him, his wife and child for two years in Miami, as she recuperated from third degree burns over 30% of her body, from a kitchen accident. Klara was living in a senior apartment building, right across 4th Avenue from the church, when it happened. Her oldest, Olav, was over with his wife for a spaghetti dinner. Her daughter-in-law Kirsten just lifted the steaming pasta pot off the burner while Klara, always used to doing the work, was bending over the trash in the narrow kitchen. Just as she stood up, Kirsten swung the pot around to drain the water in the sink, they collided and the still boiling water spilled all down Klara's back and side. The pasta was the worst, for the water ran off, but the noodles clung to her skin, searing deep marks into it. Klara went into shock, almost died in the ambulance.
Roald would have to rub ointment over the purplish bumpy marks every night for that first year Klara spent in Miami, and she had to sleep in the easy chair, the pressure of her weight on a bed was too much. As he did so, he often thought of the family. His folks wanted two children, they waited until after the depression and WW II to start a family, for financial reasons, although they married in 1932 when Klara was twenty-four and Axel thirty-four. Odd, Roald was also thirty-four when he got married, and his bride twenty-four, in 1982. Axel died on their 25th wedding anniversary in 1957, so that made it 25 years later that Roald got married. He would not even be around if the first Olav hadn't died one hour after birth. Klara's pregnancies were hard, perhaps because they were later in life. The first Olav died, two years later, the second Olav was breech, but managed to survive, and seventeen months later, Roald didn't want to come out, much like the calf back in Norway. The doctor didn't use a rope, but he did have to help push him out with his knee to Klara's abdomen.
* *
*
"Mrs. Bjørkman, it is so very good to see you again after so many years." Ivar Stillson extended a polite hand. He still had a fresh look to him, posture straight and body still slim.
"I heard about Axel four years ago, my condolences. My Marta passed on two years ago, it is difficult at times, is it not?"
Klara stood silent for a short while. Her mind raced back to those Tuesdays and Saturdays on the farm and in the market, his broken English, the salted and fresh beef smørgasboards, the antics of brother Ivar, and her first flirtation with this Ivar Stillson.
"Why Mr. Stillson, I believe we established long ago that we could use our Christian names, as you put it. Did we not, Ivar?"
"Oh yes, Klara, we did, my pardon." Ivar reverted to the blushing young man of thirty-nine years ago.
"What brings you to Hjertvik today? Do you run the market in Molde by now?"
"Oh, Onkel Lars, you might remember him, he is still doing well, ninety this past February, saw this newspaper article about you visiting after so many years, and thought you might want to see it right away."
"Yes, of course I remember Onca. Are you sure he didn't send you here for another reason? Perhaps to see me?" This repeat of Klara's first little flirtation broke the ice as they both laughed knowingly.
"Well, shall we go into town? There is much to see, so much has changed. Stillson's market has now expanded, we have a full restaurant and markets up and down the coast from Trondheim to Bergen. If you are hungry, we can have a meal. I am afraid the special today is grilled reindeer or salmon, not roast beef."
Klara gave a laugh. "Oh, over all these years, I am able to eat fish again. I had to, we could afford a roast now and then, but Axel and Ivar would go out and catch flounder for free, so we had to make do."
"Ah, brother Ivar, my namesake. How is that rapscallion?"
"Oh, he has settled down somewhat. He is seeing in to my children, Olav and Roald while I am away. They are sixteen and fourteen now, so they can stay alone, but Ivar drops in. I will tell you about his incident with wife Margrit, and his lost night out, as we dine on the salmon."
Ivar led her to his Cadillac, and they drove off to the ferry over the now paved road on which Klara first heard the hooves of Ivar's horse as he brought her the first school lessons that day. They boarded the ferry, now equipped for cars, although the occasional horse drawn dray with a raw farm girl could still be seen on it, and went to Stillson's Market, sat at a table outside. Ivar had put on a glimmering white jacket, Klara was wearing a blue dress that Roald gave her as a travel gift. Passersby turned their heads as they spoke English, recounting the years gone past, not her lessons, eating salmon, not beef.
* *
*
Now, thirty years after Klara's visit back home, Roald went up to the Norwegian old-age home in Brooklyn that Klara lived in, to visit for Thanksgiving. He was wary to bring the Pastor Ted thing up, but Roald had called him and confirmed that it wasn't true. Pastor Ted passed it off as a touch of senility, perhaps he mentioned the condo to Klara, but it was occupied by his mother, who he visited on vacation. Klara obviously got things mixed up.
"Mom, I spoke to Pastor Ted about Miami Beach"
"You didn't! That was between you and me!" Klara was abashed, realizing she had just woke up before that phone call, repeated a dream she had, a dream of a man in her life after so long. She quickly changed the subject, embarrassed at her previous confusion.
"Roald, can you get down the photographs while I visit the nurse? I would like to look at them with you when I get back." She left for down the hall to the nurse's station to get her weekly checkup.
Roald took down the three albums, he had seen these photographs many times before, but loved looking at them, particularly the ones together with his Dad, and the earlier ones before he was born. There was his Dad on ice skates, in a suit and tie! There Klara and him together on the roof, she in a sun dress, he in open-collar white shirt and baggy pants, suspenders and spats. Mom alone, in a studio shot, in Flapper dress and string of pearls. The group shot of the family band, Klara on guitar in headband, Bestemor Hannah, in the middle as their lead singer. Bestefar Haakon on one of the violins he had crafted, brother Ivar's friends, the crazy twins from downstairs on another violin and guitar, and Ivar's future wife Margrit as the harmony.
Roald turned the pages to Klara's trip back home. There were a few with her standing next to a well dressed, handsome man, labeled Ivar, she fifty-four, he perhaps a few years older. Roald remembered a few mentions of her childhood boyfriend, so that was him. He felt the page, inside the sleeve was a thin envelope with a letter inside. He peered down the hall, Klara was still waiting, safely alone he read the letter:
Kjære Klara,
I must tell you that I enjoyed your visit immensely. I was very saddened when you returned to Brooklyn. I began to think. I loved Marta dearly, but you have always been special to me. When you first left for the United States in 1924, I was heart-broken for years, I could not find it in me to respond to the few letters you sent. You obviously had to forget the past, and me also, and moved on with your life, as I eventually did.
I will be forward, just as we were back then. I propose that you come live with me here in Norge, for us to wed. We are not so old yet. As you have learned, I have been quite well off these past years. Olav and Roald can have the finest education in University in Oslo when they finish upper school, perhaps even Uppsala in their father's country Sweden, you know it is considered among the best in the world. As for us, there is no need to work, you have done enough of that in your life.
Please respond, I must declare now, I have held my feelings all these years.
Respectfully.
Ivar
Roald was taken aback, he had never heard of this. Obviously his mother never accepted, but why not? When Klara returned, he decided to be bold and ask.
"Mom, this letter fell out, I couldn't help but read it."
Instead of avoidance, or the denial that he expected, Klara turned to him.
"Yes, it's true, Ivar did propose." She looked happily to her son.
"Perhaps I should have said yes. But one thing I learned from your Bestemor is that once you have found your place, it is best to remain. Did you see the picture of the band again that you love?"
"Yes"
"Well, you couldn't tell to look at it, but when she was back in Hjertvik after Bestefar left, she took to bed all day long, didn't do anything, and she was young! When she came to America she woke up and became the dynamic woman you see here. You and Olav were so happy and fancy-free back then, all your friends here, your schools, sports and music. I could not take you from all that." Klara leaned back and sighed. "Perhaps I should have, but that is done, I don't think you boys would have been happy, so I said no. I did stay in touch with Ivar through the years after, until he passed on three years ago. Now, please put the pictures back, I don't feel up to it. Besides, it is time for supper downstairs, we are having roast beef!"
Roald started to return the letter to the envelope, but he stopped to read some words on the back of the letter, in his mother's hand.
"Don't worry I'm not looking at you, gorgeous and dressed in blue. I know it drives you crazy when I pretend you don't exist, when I'd like to lean in close and run my hands against your lips . ."
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When Out West
1.
Potato Astronomy Discovered
"Gary the Beekeeper can
get us up to Boulder Creek, should be a good starting point." Eddie yelled out
the back door to Sid, who was splashing his pits from a tin wash bucket. "What's
in Boulder Creek that takes him there?" Sid just got in a few days earlier and
was not familiar with the haunts of the house dwellers.
"Well, there's a
boulder, and a creek good for a dip, but more to Gary's concern is that there
have been reports of swarming in the area, and he wants to net one to start
another hive."
"Hey, Eddie, did anything ever come of the JFK incident,
where I was supposed to pick up that 60 pounds of eucalyptus honey of his, to
get to friends out on the Island to sell? As soon as I saw what happened I made
tracks back to the parking lot."
Gary the Beekeeper had shipped the
honey, all in one large jar, back east just after Eddie arrived a half year
earlier. The handler left it for last to load onto the belt that took it to the
top of the baggage carousel, as a result it rose alone, hovered on the
precipice, then tumbled of its own free will down the incline, uncushioned by
surrounding luggage. It met the luggage at the bottom just as the glass, inside
the admittedly flimsy carton, shattered apart, slowly oozing the syrupy golden
liquid onto the conveyor belt, where it acted like glue. By the time the
expectant passengers arrived, they were met by the sight of their bags all
lumped together, looking like an inverted bee hive, and a suspicious looking Sid
buzzing away.
"Yeah. Matter of fact, Gary didn't get in trouble at all.
Actually got paid by Pan Am for the honey at retail price, plus legal fees and
some extra, and the passengers got paid for the damage. Seems the baggage guy
had failed a few drug tests, they never canned him, and he never should have put
it on the carousel, being freight, so they knew they couldn't win in
court."
"No foolin'? When I skee-daddled, those were some mean looking
passengers."
"Well, that's why Gary the Beekeeper is expanding, with the
extra bucks. Thinks he can make a go of it with so many cutting out sugar.
Anyhow, we need to be ready in about an hour."
There was a plan, of
sorts. Sid had to get back to Brooklyn, but in no hurry, and Eddie was mostly
hanging out, taking whatever odd jobs the tribe could find - trash hauling, a
stint fixing up a dormant chicken ranch, and playing music and attending to
writing, in a fairly successful attempt to leave the memory of Little Paula back
in New York behind. He figured an adventure would further heal and give him
fodder for future musings.
Once they rose into the hills, the fog of the
sea faded behind them. Gary the Beekeeper dropped them off beside a particularly
large redwood, where they could lean back and stick out a big toe instead of a
thumb, if they desired.
"So, Eddie, when we gonna see you back? How long
this excursion gonna take?" Gary liked having Eddie around, he would help with
the beekeeping.
"Who knows? Maybe I'll wind up in Canada for good
anyway", Eddie recalling his almost forced departure to the north rather than
off to kill-or-be-killed in Nam. "I can start a maple syrup company to go head
to head with your honey business. Can't be much harder laying back watching sap
ooze than it is laying back watching bees come and go. Sid here once built his
own telescope at the Museum of Natural History. He can make money laying back
looking up at the stars. Couldn't get three better laid-back jobs." Sid and Gary
gave the requisite groans at the pun, Gary headed off to the meadows, and the
other two looked expectantly down the road.
It was never hard to get a
ride on the northen side of the beautiful Monterey bay. Hitching was a form of
public transportation, free of course, that was the point. Everytime the house
dwellers ventured out in their old '55 Dodge truck, they would pick up as many
as could fit in beside them and in the cargo bed. It usually provided
entertainment for all, swapping backgrounds and stories, music and doobies, even
books and sometimes places to stay. The problem for Sid and Eddie was that they
were looking to get up to Canada, spend some time camping on Vancouver Island,
then ascend the Canadian Rockies and take it from there. The usual local rides
would hinder this, and the quixotic nature of the rides could take them well off
their course, perhaps willingly to never return.
* *
*
"I'm in Love" Sid
announced as they were dropped off, and Eddie knew why, and it all happened in
the last two hours. Instead of the expected guy with a beard down to his naval
driving a cloth-sided plastic-windowed jeep, or earth-mothers in a beat up old
van, their first 'official' ride was much, much
different.
"Vrrrrrooooooom" was the first thing they heard immediately
after Gary the Beekeeper dropped them off. Long raven hair was the first thing
they saw, streaming back in the wind from the porcelained face as the open top
BMW came around the bend beneath the green canopy above, slashing through
flickers of sunlight. The nascient wanderers could just gaze upon the beauty
combined, the merging of the sensualities of woman, nature, and a fine-tuned
expensive car they were supposed to disdain. To their surprise, the lovely Sami,
a Sansei-American beauty behind the wheel, pulled over. A large tubular shaped
package with some smaller cubed ones occupied the front seat beside her, so when
when she said, no, rather enticed, "come in", Sid and Eddie were compelled to
comply and got in back.
"Hi, guys, I'm Sami, how far are you going?" Sami
inquired, mostly to Sid as he was in the caddy corner seat to her. Sid thought
he answered, though the reply was only in his mind "As far as you will take me."
He thought his mouth was moving, and perhaps it was, but no sound came out.
Eddie sized up the situation, and to save Sid the embarrassment, he answered
before the spittle started to drip out the side of Sid's ahumniah-huminah
mouth.
"Hi Sami, I'm Eddie, I'm headed to Canada. Don't mind the dummy
beside me, I'm a ventriloquist, do all his talking for him, and I take him with
me in case I get a gig."
"Ahma, ahma Si-Si-Sid" finally came out. "What's
in the package?" he quickly got his voice back, as he was very familiar with the
peculiar shape.
"It's a telescope I built. I'm a grad student in
astro-physics at San Fransisco State. Headed up to see a guy, Bob Ferguson, in
Sonoma. Met him in a drama class, but he is an AA as we call it, an avid
amatuer. He has an idea of forming a society up there to open up astronomy to
the public, especially kids. He asked a group of us students to come up and
check out sites for his long term dream of a public use observatory. Its a
pipe-dream, but the viewing is good in the hills there, so we said why not? But
I guess I'm boring you guys. Upshot is I can get you as far as five miles south
of Santa Rosa."
Sid was triple-stunned by this turn of events, all that
beauty, and she shared his not so secret ambition. Sid went to Columbia, majored
in poli-sci and had actually been in ROTC, as a way to hang on to his student
deferrment, then quit six credits shy of a degree due to his growing
disillusionment with politics, with all that happened over the last four years,
going from hope to dope. That was how he found himself in his current
predicament, about to be drafted and trying to pull a bureaucratic ruse by
moving back and forth between Brooklyn and California, delaying until '72, when
his lottery number would be safe from call-up. All the while he started to turn
his head to the universe, and all its mysterious forms.
But rather than
sitting there stop-mouthed, he jumped right in and he and Sami had a
conversation about big-bangs and black holes and double-star systems the rest of
the trip.
* *
*
"Sid. SiD.
SID!!!!!" Eddie tried to get attention from the unmoving, mute body of his
friend, after his declaration of Love, now gazing off to the raven-haired BMW
getting smaller in the distance.
"That's all very well and good, Sid, but
in that endless stream of talk, did you think to get her last name and number?"
Eddie brought him back to earth from whatever universe Sid was in. "No, you
didn't. I didn't know how to bring it up, me being the third wheel on that
bicycle of mutual admiration. She waited for you to ask when we got out. But
nooooooo, you didn't, head up in the stars."
Sid awoke. "Well, how hard
can it be, female astro-physics grad student, SF State, Sami." he memorized for
future reference.
* *
*
Their next ride was
with the required beard down to navel, cloth-sided, plastic-windowed jeep driver
that you couldn't leave California without. Cheech and Chong hadn't made their
doper movies yet, but Eddie in retrospect years later was sure this guy was
hired as a consultant.
"Hey Man, whereya goin?" This took twice as long
to say than normal. Eddie didn't bother to explain, he just pointed north and
said "Thataway".
"Cool man, I'm goin' thataway too. Well no, I'm stopped
here sayin' 'I'm goin' thataway too' but once I stop talkin' and start goin', I
can go thataway too. I'm Hank, but people call me Henry."
Henry had this
peculiar driving style. On the open road, where the limit was 55, he drove at
30, eyes peering constantly off to the right, into the woods. In the small towns
along the way, where the limit dropped to 30 for a half mile, he sped up to 55,
eyes straight ahead, slowing down again when the limit raised. An hour into the
quiet trip, Henry doing his thing, Sid lost in the silent memory of Sami and
Eddie totally perplexed by Henry's driving, they discovered why.
"Hold on
guys, I gotta stop." Henry pulled over to the side and got out. Eddie figured,
OK piss break, nudged Sid out of his reverie, and they climbed out to behind a
couple of trees. Henry kept going, deeper into the woods.
"Hey Eddie,
think Hank's abandoned us?"
"Well, if he has, he left the keys in the
jeep. I say we give him five minutes, uh wait, this is slow-joe I'm talking
about, fifteen minutes, if he's gone, we got wheels for the trip" Eddie joked.
He stole a five-cent candy bar when he was five years old; after he ate it and
hated it, he told his Mom, some innate internal guilt machine making him do so,
and she promptly had him go back and pay ten-cents, a whole week's allowance
back then. Never stole again.
Henry came back out after fifteen on the
dot, dried green leaves draped over his arms. He placed them down, crumbled some
up and loaded a big old briar pipe that was in his back pocket. Eddie and Sid
refused his offer, but at Henry's urging, did take a half-pocketful for future
use.
"Pal of mine, Frank, though people call him Francis, told me to look
for two trees that crossed like an upside down 'V' next to a big boulder that
looked like a turtle, but I forgot the mile marker. Saw a lot of trees like an
upside down 'V', but no turtle boulders next to 'em. One tortoise boulder, but I
know the difference." Henry was fast-talking now, and actually more lucid with
every puff. Seems he acts stoned when he isn't, and acts straight when he's
stoned. "Well, he's got a lot of plants growing over a few acres in an old
abandoned vinyard, good cover, and he hung some out to dry a week ago. Said 'be
my guest'."
Henry's driving became excellent, and he got the travelers
five hours all the way up to Redwoods National forest, north of Eureka, where
Eddie and Sid decided to stop for the night.
"Well Henry, been fun. You
driving through the night to Portland?" Eddie asked.
"Uh, no, I need to
be in Santa Rosa, that's where I'm going" came out at a snail's pace again, the
effects worn off. Eddie realized that was five miles from where Henry picked
them up.
"Henry, for your own good, do us a favor. Light up a bowl before
you leave, uh no, make that two, and keep that pipe lit all the way back
thataway", Eddie pointed south.
"Far-out, man"
* *
*
"This Sami really got into you, hey
Sid?"
"Sure enough"
They decided to smoke up some of the leaves
Henry gave them, and leave the rest behind for some future campers, not wanting
to be on the road vulnerable to a bust. The forest was in a no-fire mode due to
a long drought, only propane and sterno allowed. They had picked up a sterno and
a few potatos at a stand that catered to campers, on a tight budget. As Eddie
started to cut them up into tiny pieces, Sid objected.
"Man, make them
bigger, I want to be able to bite into something"
"Not gonna do that Sid,
and I'll tell you why. Remember that forty day trip I took with Little Paula out to
San Fran and back last year?"
"Yep, what's that got to do with the price
of potatos?"
"Well same situation, fire lockdown, in South Dakota on the
way back. I insisted I wanted big pieces, Little Paula thought small would be
better suited, to cook thoroughly on the sterno. I wouldn't relent, first time I
ever went against her wishes, ever. Well they sat there, not boiling, and they
sat there until the flame went out, and never softened up into the middle. Worst
meal we ever had. We got over it pretty quick but soon after we got back, we had
more tiny incidents like that, each one not ceding to the other, all minor
stuff. And soon she wanted for us to back off a little, see other people, and
the rest is history, why I am here now."
"And the moral of this tragic
tale of woe is . . .?" Sid dramatically and stonedly recited.
"Dunno,
maybe be a little more adamant in what you want when it feels right and more
concilitory when it doesn't? I really knew at the time her idea was better. She
should have insisted and I should've relented . . ." Eddie trailed his words
off, slipping back into the morose mode he had so well shed the last
months.
"C'mon Eddie, let's get on down to that clearing by the river,
its a moonless night, should be great star gazing." Sid, knowing his buddy so
well since they were seven years old, knew Eddie would get out of it if they did
something else. So they put the potatos aside and headed on
down.
* *
*
"I found my perfect
potato" Sid declared, the first words from either of them after they returned to
camp. Hardly any words were spoken at all for the hour they were down by the
river, except the occasional "wow". It was a moonless night and there was no light
from any city, town or highway at all, crisp dry cool night, high elevation. It
was the most spectacular sky that either had ever seen. Even in September, a
sluggish month for meteors after August's Perseids, they saw a few from the
Delta Aurigid shower, a normally minor event. They were spectacular, if far
between. If it weren't for the cold, they would have stayed there all
night.
"Uh, the potatos?" Eddie, still fuzzy headed from the viewing.
"They're over on that flat-topped rock, if a critter didn't snatch
them."
"No, I mean I found my Potato, with a capital P, sliced and diced
in just the right way!"
"Huh?"
"If this draft ruse works and I'm
not killed in Viet Nam, I'm gonna do whatever it takes to go back and study
astronomy. Even get an advanced degree. After first Sami, then this phenominal
view, its what I want to do, its what I always considered doing, but didn't have
the guts, today just made me realize it. And your tale of Potatos and Little
Paula."
* *
*
Sid never got Sami,
but he did eventually do exactly what he said, though a long time later, after
working as a package handler in a post office transfer station in Jersey to pay
the way for the undergraduate degree; getting loans and scholarships and working
as an assistant prof to pay for the rest. He indeed found his Potato. Eddie is
still searching for his.
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2. Sooz And
Sid
In a Brooklyn bar, in
late August of 1971, Sid had troubles. He was soaking up the suds with two
friends. "Guys, I pulled 117 in the draft lottery, they're gonna call me up in a
few days, I'm dead."
Fred, who always lucked out, had drawn 364, next to
last, safe. "Man, too bad buddy."
Mitch, exempt as a Conscientious
Objector, commiserated. "Yeah, sucks."
The three sat there, not knowing
what else to say, Sid couldn't do the Canada thing, too many reasons to
stay.
"Effin system" Sid moaned.
"Yeh, effin' system" from
Fred.
Then the light bulb. "Work within the system - use bureaucracy!"
from Mitch. "Move!" "Legit!" "To our bud Eddie out in California!"
They
worked out that Sid flies out there immediately, walks into the draftboard and
tells them that he has moved.
"Then, when Eddie gets your notice, you
mosey into the draftboard here and tell them 'No work in California, I moved
back'." Mitch always had ideas.
"Yeah, then each time they gotta ship
your records back and forth. By the time they get back, Bingo, its '72, they're
saying the cut will be around 80 next year, and you're safe!"
Maybe the
combined twelve years of college and student deferrments weren't wasted, it
sounded fool-proof on paper, but this was beer-soaked bar napkin paper, so
things couldn't be all that easy.
* *
*
"Scccrrrrrrreeeeeeeeeeeeecccccccccccccch!
The '69 Chevy Impala,
grey-black smoke pouring out of its tailpipe, came to a crunching stop on the
top of a hill fifty miles to go on the road to Portland, the smoke mixing with
the fog and remnant's of brush fires that, with the burnt rubber, gave the air
the smell of Secaucus if it had farms. Sooz looked over her shoulder from the
driver's seat to the two shadows she passed about 200 feet
back.
"What'cha think Gertie? Should we go back for them?"
"Ehh,
Sooz, think they're like freaks, wasn't sure if they even were guys at first.
Thought we were goin' into the city for some big studs, not skinny freaky gawd
knows what. "
"Ever do one, Gertie?"
"Do one what?"
"A
hippie. I did one once, everyday for a week."
"No way - eccch, was he
dirty and smelly, they don't wear Brut, or any after-shave, or even deodorant, I
heard. And where'dja meet him? Down by the roadhouse, you didn't go down there,
didja?"
"Naw, you know my brother knows a few, for the pot, I mean
Richie's not a freak, but he likes to get stoned. Anyway, this guy, he actually
was good, I mean it wasn't just slam, bam; he went down on me."
"Sheesh!
Sooz, that only happened once for me, 'member Chuck? His first time, I tole him
he hadda, he never did it again."
"Well, this guy liked to do it, didn't
wanna stop. But he hadda go back to Arizona, or someplace. Never saw him
again."
Gertie stopped to think. "Alright, let's take 'em, as a backup.
If we can't find any real guys before we dump these off, I'll give it a go, if
they're not too freaky."
Sooz gunned the Impala into reverse and
screeched back to Sid and Eddie, who had just about given up hope for a ride and
were about to snooze down in the ditch at the side of the road.
"Hop in
fellas", Sooz and Gertie's voices mixed with "you would cry too if this happened
to you" coming out of the AM oldies station.
Sid and Eddie got in the
back, Sooz popping into forward just as Sid got his foot in the door, shutting
it as they tore off.
"Where ya goin' guys?" Gertie asked as blasé as she
could be while picturing swirling tongues.
"Uh, Sid here is headed back
east, and I'm going back down south of San Fran, but thought we'd take in
Vancouver and the Canadian Rockies on the out of the way."
"We're goin'
ta Portland for the night, lookin' for some fellas to hook up with, so wese can
take ya that far" Sooz took command, snapping her gum. "You guys ok with oldies,
I could change it to FM if you want, look like you're FM guys."
"Anything
is fine with us" Sid replied, trying to see Sooz over Gertie's puffed up, teased
hair.
Eddie and Sid looked at each other, saw the dice from the mirror,
hula girl on the dash, capri pants and shiny dacron tops on the bodies,
bee-hives, smelled the gum. Sid leaned over to Rich and whispered "What are we,
in a 10 year time-warp?"
Sooz switched the channel anyway. After a
commercial to the Pepsi Generation, "I remember holding you while you sleep . .
. bring it home baby make it soon." That was a little better, although it was
pop-rock, not the blues or underground stuff Sid and Eddie were into. Harrison
and Ham traded some good slide work though, and maybe it was telling them
something.
Now, Sid and Eddie were not averse to doing some time-sex
traveling, after all it was four years earlier that they popped their cherries
in Chattanooga, along with Fred, on the same night, with the same woman. She had
a bouffant and leopard-skin patterned bra and panties, but it wasn't so far
removed in time then, and she was older, from that time. She also charged, this
could be a freebie. Had to be - Sid and Eddie were as poor as their torn
jeans.
As the asphalt ribbon became the main strip leading into Portland,
bars and clubs started to appear at the side of the road. At each one, Sooz
would turn into the parking lot, drive around and she and Gertie would size up
the guys hanging outside.
"Ehh. Bikers, they're just hippies with only
half their teeth and beer guts. Sheeeet, real hippies, we got two in the back."
Gertie wasn't reticent to assess the attributes loud enough for Sid and Eddie to
hear. "Look, some nervous kids, we could break 'em in Gertie, but they might go
cryin' home to mama."
After about a half-dozen of these, with no success,
they reached downtown.
"Alright guys, we're going to a club we know. Got
any money?" Sooz kinda made it sound like the only way they were gonna hang was
if the guys would pay the way, their last shot.
"Naw, that's why we're
hitchin'. But, hey - there's the City Forest we heard about. Allowed to sleep
overnight, where we're gonna stay." Sid leaned over and put his hand on Sooz's
shoulder. "You gals wanna join us, why bother fishin' all night when we got the
goods right here ?" Sid couldn't believe what he just said, it must've been the
hairspray fumes.
"OUT!! GETTA OUTTA HERE RIGHT NOW YOU CHEAPASS FREAKIN'
HIPPIES, SCREW IN THE WOODS? WITH YOUSE? THINK WE EVEN WANNA TOUCH YOUSE?"
Gertie was apoplectic at the thought of bugs nesting in her beehive, swirling
tongues nothwithstanding.
Both Sooz and Gertie started pushing the guys
out as best they could with one arm, whacking them with the other, giggling all
the time. Sid and Eddie tumbled out of each door, but as Sooz burnt rubber,
Sid's leg got caught up in the door and he got pulled along the ground for about
twenty feet, wrenching his knee socket in every direction.
When Sid got back to Brooklyn, the knee flared up and he had to have it drained and pull out a few tiny cartilage fragments.
* *
*
The bureaucratic ruse
didn't work. Sid had to report for his physical on December 20th, they missed by
12 days.
The induction letter arrived on Christmas Eve. It stated that
due to the temporary injury to Sid's knee, he was to wait two months for it to
heal, and report his status to the draft board at that time.
In
1972
Free and clear. Turned out Sid did score with Sooz
afterall.
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3. Victoria
Victor
They
fought the Law and the Law lost
"Have you ever been in
Canada?" The border crossing guard took a sudden turn in his questioning.
Previously it had been "What is the purpose of your visit?" "Recreation." "How
long do you intend to stay?" "One week, at most." Eddie hoped Sid was responding
the same, they had gone over their story prior to being plucked off the ferry
into Sydney, Vancouver Island, BC, Canada. Besides, it was true, they were
looking to recreate but not longer than a week, at least not in
Canada.
The problem was that they went over their story at the tail end
of a mescalin trip. They hadn't intended for it to be this way, so far on their
journey they had been overly cautious over mixing any substances and the law.
Now they both were on the tail end of the tail end, selected to be inspected,
separated, and Eddie had what little remained of the stash in an inner pocket of
his backpack, inside a toothpaste box with the toothpaste tube in
it.
* *
*
"Oh, its the
jaywalking!" Eddie whispered to Sid as they were being led up the stairs from
the basement of the hardware store by the Seattle motorcycle cop. The guy was
huge, only two steps above them, but they stared straight into his puffed-sided
pants, not the small of the back of a normal sized person. They were rousted by
his enormous hands plopped on their shoulders as they looked at a shelf. "Step
outside. Now. Follow me."
Sid glanced at Eddie with a look that said "Of
course its the jaywalking, idiot, and shut up your mouth, I can't believe you at
times, you need to learn how to behave in public." It worked, Eddie got it. They
obsequiously went outside and faced his interrogation.
"You boys know you
crossed in the middle of the street?" The officer's voice was as stern as a
catholic priest admonishing errant choir boys.
"Oh, were from New Yawk"
Eddie put on the accent he knew but didn't possess, forgetting to shut up. "We
do dat alla time, only way ta geddaccross da street." Sid was aghast, but wisely
shut up his glance. The cop was taken aback a little at this non-chalant
response. After a long pause "Well, this isn't New York, we don't do that here
in Seattle." "What are you doing in Seattle anyway? Long way from New
York."
Eddie thought of using the old Henny Youngman line "Well,
everybody's gotta be someplace", but decided better, they couldn't afford to be
frisked. Sid figured that Eddie started this fine mess, let him finish
it.
"We were just shopping for camping supplies, batteries, twine. We're
headed up to Anacortes on the five AM bus. Here's the tickets, see?" Eddie
pulled out the previously fortuitously purchased tickets from his pockets and
held them up in front of the cop like a Jehovah's Witness offering
tracts.
The cop looked closely and confirmed, then decided it wasn't
worth the bother. "You know, I could hold you for a judge on the jaywalking, and
as its eight PM on Friday, you wouldn't see him until Monday. But since you're
getting out of town, just get to the station, wait for your bus, and we won't
have any trouble. Don't let me see you in the morning."
Eddie and Sid
obeyed contritely, thanking the officer, who non-sequitered with what could only
be construed as a scripted you-have-to-say-this line. "Enjoy your stay in
Seattle." Sure, Eddie thought, instead of a meal and a movie, we get rousted,
then need to sit in a grungy bus station all night. At least they got unintended
free batteries, no one thought of stopping the guys in the presence of a
cop.
"Eddie, I gotta piss, real bad." Sid squirmed as they were half-way
to the station.
"Just hold on, about a mile to go."
"I can't." Sid
ducked down an alley, Eddie a few paces behind.
"Man, who can't behave in
public now." "Ahhhhhhhhhhhh!" was the response.
As they emerged from the
dark cover of the alley, there was Officer Gotcha, but he was pre-occupied
dry-humping a meter maid against a light pole.
"Officer!" Eddie called
out, as if they were old war budddies. "Took a wrong turn down the alley,
thought it was Boren Ave. Typical New Yawkers" as he slapped his
forehead.
* *
*
It took most of the day
to get to Seattle from Portland. The trip was uneventful, but it was a lot of
only a couple of exits at a time trips strung together, people on their way to
work, out for lunch, going home at the end of the day. And so it was they got
into town at seven PM, a bit of previously unknown tiredness nestling into their
bones. Sid suggested they get the bus tickets, for while it was only about
eighty miles to Anacortes, where the ferry departs for Vancouver Isle, it was
through many small towns and he wasn't confident the day wouldn't be repeated.
Eddie agreed. They managed to get some good shut-eye in the bus staion; in the
PA in New York they would have been mugged, stripped naked, sexually abused and
made to recite the hare krishna, if they closed but one eye.
"I think, in
spite of it all, I'd rather be the yellow bug" Sid proclaimed.
"I don't
know, Sid, the red one is the mean mother, only the brown one keeps trying to
get by her, nobody's gonna top her, she got it made, she established dominance."
They had decided the red bug was female after staring for the last two hours at
the picnic-style table top in the campground in Anacortes.
This was after
staring at the incredible islands and fjords off the coast, dark blue rising to
dark green rising to sky blue and turquoise, irradiated by yellows and reds of
the rising sun.
"We gotta finish this stuff off before the border, we
can't cross carrying anything and we can't toss it" Eddie reasoned and Sid
agreed. They were brought up to waste not, want not. So at dawn's first light
they divied up one tab, two more expected to be finished before the ferry to
Vancouver departs.
The three bugs of different types did a dance for the
two hours. Both Eddie and Sid agreed they wouldn't want to be the brown bug, who
constantly tried to get past the red one, only to be had at, bitten or stung and
retreating. The yellow one tried to invade the red one's space just once, got
bit, and hied it to the corner, just ocassionally glancing over, but never
trying again. They tried to make the scene in front of them into a stage play, a
metaphor for life, trying to find deep meaning infused by the artificial and
false insight of the altered state.
"They're just stupid bugs, I don't
want to be any of them" Sid declared, clearing his eyes, looking at his watch.
"We gotta cut camp now if were gonna make the boat. And I'm still trippin' a
bit, we cant drop anymore, guess you gotta ditch it, Eddie."
Eddie
agreed, he too was still under the influence, so he went to the side of the
water, but couldn't bring himself to do it. He made a fake pitch of his hand and
palmed the two tabs into his pocket, where he felt a few grams of the leaf they
got from the stoner in Northern California. "Man, I forgot about that" Eddie
thought. As they packed up, Eddie slipped both into the toothpaste carton, out
of the sight of Sid.
* *
*
"Yes, I have been to
Canada as a matter of fact." Eddie saw an opportunity. The two border guys that
pulled them out of the exit line for further examination were the Bud Abbott-Lou
Costello, Jerry Lewis-Dean Martin, yin-yang of customs guys. Eddie got the
Costello/Lewis one, hadn't a clue. He wasn't sure where that fit in on the
yin-yang thang. Eddie couldn't figure out really why they were picked out, they
were too obvious. If he were the border guy, he would have pulled over the
silver-haired granny, probably carrying kilos of stuff in her
girdle.
"Where and when, on what occasion"?"
"1964. A church
convention in Detroit. My buddy Mitch and I went over the bridge to Windsor for
a dinner of onion soup in a French restaurant. We stayed three hours." Eddie
didn't mention that he was the Youth League president, Mitch the organist and
they ditched a seminar after Eddie had introduced Odetta to the 16,000 attendees
from all over the country in Cobo Arena. They had the soup, but also two bottles
of wine, the Canadian waiter not caring about age, and went back and tried to
ravish the nice Lutheran girls, unsuccessfully.
Then the fatal flaw,
innocently and friendly from Lou yin Lewis. "Oh, what religion are
you?"
"I don't think that's required information for entry into Canada or
is it? I know it isn't for the US."
Eddie had him on the canvas. "Uh, no,
no, no I didn't mean . . ." his voice trailed off. "Are you in posession of any
produce?" he backed off.
"No sir" Eddie replied politely, wondering if a
few grams was considered produce.
"OK, take your bags and proceed to the
gate, have a pleasant stay in our Canada."
"Phewwwwwww" Eddie exhaled to
himself, didn't get searched one bit. He waited about twenty minutes before Sid
appeared.
"Jeez, good thing we weren't carrying. My guy was a real
bad-ass. Went over everything in my pack, turned out pockets, opened shampoo,
the whole deal. Had me strip to my skivvies, he was real pissed at coming up
empty. How'd yours go?"
"Uh, he was kinda nice actually. And about that
not carrying . . ."
Safely on dry land, Eddie and Sid waked about a mile
from the ferry before starting to hitch, wanting to get far away from any
custom's eyeballs. The first car that came by was Bud and Lou, getting off work,
with Bud at the wheel.
"Lookoutlookoutlookout!" Sid yelled as the car,
coming up to the curve they were standing at, wasn't curving. Sid stuck out his
arm and pushed Eddie into the ditch at the side of the road as he tumbled down
into it. At the last second the car swerved back to the road, Bud snickering
like Snidely Whiplash. Eddie stuck his head out.
"Yeah, have your fun.
But we got ours!" fist shaking to the sky, half in anger and half in victory.
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4. Chili Con Cara
"His face is falling into the serving platter" Sid observed as the waiter approached their table.
"Guess he had a hard day's last night" Eddie guessed as his face was buried in the local newspaper, looking for the weather report.
"No, look, I mean his face is actually falling off his face. Look."
Eddie peered up and saw the guy, and it was true, it was as if Madame Tussaud had made a likeness of him and left his head too close to the radiator.
"Kinda like the guy back at the Dyker lunch counter, only this guy wins the droopy prize."
The waiter's cheeks, jowls and nose sagged down about a second face-length. After he dropped off the next table's food and came to take their order, Eddie was hard pressed not to hold out his plate under it, in case it decided to just all slide off right then and there, it only had to be a matter of time. The guy had slicked-back black hair and a pencil thin mustache - or was it stitches that held the whole thing in place? When he carried a tray, it was balanced on his right open palm, his wrist and elbow each bent at ninety degrees under it, his left arm the inverted mirror-image trailing behind him. His stride was low to the floor, long gliding steps that never straightened. Put a zoot-suit on him with a watch fob, and except for the falling face he would have been right at home in 1940's LA or NY.
"Look here, Sid, it says the average rainfall for September on Vancouver Island is only one point oh five inches. Says it right here. We had that much in between sneezes. Geez, in Brooklyn we get four point oh five in September, but I've never seen anything like this."
Eddie pointed this out because they were wet. Their campground was wet. Their clothes were wet. Their sleeping bags were wet. Their tent was wet. Their wet was wet. Instead of fighting it out, Eddie and Sid gave in. They bundled up the load, wrapped it all in the tent and hauled it the two miles to a laundromat in Victoria, gave the lady a few extra bucks to take care of the whole mess, and took to this restaurant.
"Man, did you see if the waiter has his whole face on? This chili seems a bit waxy." Eddie couldn't help himself. "Maybe its all this rain, like he's the wicked witch of the west or sumthin'."
It didn't matter, they hadn't been able to cook the last two days so the 'chili con cara' as Eddie called it, was just fine. The laundromat lady wanted four hours, minimum, so Sid and Eddie dashed the two blocks to a nearby movie theater, Bond double, Goldfinger and Thunderball. After a rollicking good time, they emerged to see the sun shining brightly, but ditched any notion of re-camping, the ground was still running rivers of mud.
* *
*
"Want some pop?"
Sid was soon to find out the wherewithall of this Little Old Lady from Nanaimo. Unlike her Pasadena relative, Nanaimo was just barely 'crawl granny, crawl granny, crawl granny' crawling up the two laner from Victoria to her hometown, where the ferry to the mainland departed, maxing out at twenty-five miles per hour. Her face was curled up in a knot. Eddie and Sid were her first pick-up on the ride. She told a convoluted story about how she and her daughter-in-law drove into Victoria for a day of shopping, they separated, the little old lady wanting to do other things. When it came time and place to pick her up, no daughter in law, so she headed back home cussing her out the whole way.
As white water vapor constantly exited from her hood into the early night sky, with a line of cars about a half mile long behind her, she would stop to pick up and drop off anyone that was hitching, repeating the story for each one, mouth vulgarizing up a notch each time, face knotting up two. Eddie and Sid heard it four times. Every time it was the same, that no-good in law just blew her off, and now she has to go explain it to her son!
Sid took the 7-up bottle that was offered and took a whiff first - pure gin! The pieces fell into place. Granny must have split to get loaded in a bar, forgot the time and street corner, stranding her daughter-in-law seventy miles from home. People were different up here north of the border. No one behind her honked or cursed out the window, they just waited for the rare opportunity to pass her, never more than two at a time could get by on the narrow winding road.
Sid and Eddie didn't have any problems getting rides, their shaggy looks blended in with certain lumbery types that worked up here, so Mr. and Mrs. Stright-laced were used to it. They also were almost unanimously against the war, a few even asked Eddie and Sid if they were indeed dodging the draft. Sid was, not via Canada but bureaucracy, Eddie had already beat it with his supposed gimpy knees, so their answer of "Well, yes and no" was right on.
* *
*
"Acceptez-vous le Seigneur comme votre Créateur?" The driver, as wide as the front seat and as short as it too, croaked out in French, his face as imposing as a granite cliff.
"Ah, acceptez-vous, do you accept. Ah, le Seignor, uh the mister, yeah like Senor in Spanish. Votre, wait Latin , our, creator" Eddie was translating by the seat of his pants, having taken German in school. "Do you accept the mister, comme. Eh, coming, commie? Do you accept the commie mister, communist! Has to be, as our creator?"
"Nah, I'm apolitical" was the best he could answer.
"I think he means 'Do you accept the Lord as your Creator?" Sid finally chipped in, having had four years of French, but he just wanted to see what Eddie came up with.
"Well, I'm agnostic, that's religiously apolitical." Eddie reasoned.
The driver, who turned out to be a priest, picked them up just before Fraser Canyon, nicknamed "God's Valley", on the west side of the Rockies. And it was indeed spectacular, incredible peaks, lush valley bottom, clear waters, transcendent skies, but Eddie stayed religiously apolitical.
"Look, there are very few places on earth not man-made that one would call ugly" Eddie preached to the preacherman and Sid. "We call it all beautiful, spectacular, serene, mellow, fluid, astounding, God's Gift, all positive images. And it makes sense. As we became sentient as a species, what kind of creatures would we be if we thought our total environment was ugly. An alien might, but think how it would put a kibosh on exploration, the daily joy of life needed, the will to continue to live in this ugly world, it would be counter-productive to survival. Let's see, the poet would recite: 'I think that I shall never see, a poem so revoltin' as a tree.' So of course we think it beautiful, it had nothing to do with God even if there is one and created it."
"Eddie, your reasoning is, is, is . . " Sid tried to find the words for convoluted and obtuse, but then thought long and hard about what he just heard.
"Is what?"
"Is beautiful man."
"Acceptez-vous le Seigneur comme votre Créateur?" was all the Frenchman with the granite face could say.
* *
*
Case Study: Drug smuggling to the United States from Canada
Suspects: Three late teens from Calgary.
Suspected Accomplices: Two young adults from New York and California, possibly for distribution.
Scenario: The three teens stopped for driving with a thoroughly cracked windshield in Revelstoke, BC. on the way to Seattle via Vancouver. Taken into custody. Eldest teen, suspected as ring leader, released in custody of father, a lawyer that flew in his private helicopter from Calgary to post bail. Car searched, five kilograms of high grade marijuana discovered in trunk. Decision made to release other two suspects after two nights, keep under surveillance with hopes of finding source.
Two young adults picked up by bridge over Columbia river. Seen stopped near turnoff to Banff, at midnight, apparently watching herd of 200 migrating Caribou.
The flashlight was swinging to and fro on this dark Calgary suburban street, in front of the house of the kid whose father bailed him out. Eddie and Sid could not believe how stupid these idiotic grinning faced kids were. Their story was told as the four ascended the Rockies from the west. It was obvious, except to them, that they were released with the goods in the trunk to be followed. Sid and Eddie made sure they didn't indulge as the kids were doing. And now, they pull up to their buddy's family home with the goods still there, under Sid and Eddie's backpacks. All the while, their idiocy was mirrored by the grins on their faces.
The swinging light was accompanied by the sound of metal swinging in the night.
"Step out. Hands against the side of the car." The four were patted down.
"Who are you two?"
"We hitched a ride in Revelstoke, on vacation, from the US." from Sid, in a just the facts ma'am mode.
"Pop the trunk." The second Mountie shone his light into the trunk, probably just to make sure a drop hadn't been made.
"Can't believe it bro, we got let go again!" the one idiot said.
"Yeah we're solid. Tomorrow, early morning, we cross over to Montana and make the run to Seattle. Out of our way, but worth it." from the other idiot.
"Guys, there's a campground in High River, we'll get out there, leave us out of this. And if I were you, I'd head back home and keep that stuff for yourself for the next however long." Eddie tried to clue them in, to no avail, just the same idiotic face always smiling back.
* *
*
"Look, its Nixon. On our tent roof." Sid wasn't seeing things, Eddie saw the face also. They had split the last little tab, not wanting to be in possession of anything when the morning came, on a mild buzz. The figure on the roof tent was cast by the shadow of the hot dog on a stick being roasted over a candle in the middle of the tent, but to them it was evil personified calling them home. Paranoia. But reasonable paranoia. The masters of war were after them to kill for peace, the law had been all over them all through Canada, why shouldn't the face of the biggest Dick of them all be hovering over them like an angel of death?
* *
*
"Wow!" The morning sun was just breaking through the overhead leaves, all a lemon color. The day was warming, the air fresh, the birds and animals stirring. Sid and Eddie stretched their bodies, feeling elated, reborn, enthusiastic for the next leg, somehow cleansed of the face shadows that followed them the last six days in Canada. "And on the Seventh Day, He played!" Eddie the religiously apolitical soul exhuberated. Even the stares of the farmers in the old high ceiling diner didn't damper their spirits.
No more falling, knotted, granite, idiotic or Nixonic devil faces to mess up their minds, they were free again.
And then, within an hour they had been picked up by Laurie, a pleasant granny-dressed student in a van, headed back to Tufts in Boston, happy to have company, everything was good.
"I'm gonna play a song from the group Its a Beautiful Day, do you mind?" "Perfect! For it truly is" Sid exhaled.
The sounds of "There's a girl in my room and her face on the wall with no eyes" came from her portable tape player.
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5. Private Death In Venice
Hidden
sylph of filmy veils
Truth
behind the dream is veiléd
Eddie was lost in these words as he lifted the white wrapped drug to his lips. He was freaking out and figured a Marlboro would somehow make the guy driving the Buick in the seat next to him go away. He already had inched as close to the door on the right and as far from the driver on the left as he could.
"Is it OK if I grab a smoke?" Eddie asked as politely as he could, voice shaking.
"I like to smoke, not with cigarettes, but with the chicks. You like chicks, don't you? I like hot chicks."
Eddie had to get outta here, but how? He already told the guy he was headed into Salt Lake City for the night, and on this desolate run from Pocatello, there were no excuses outside the door.
"I'm going to Salt Lake City also, to have a hot time, you like to have a hot time?"
Those were the first words spoken by the guy, a few years older than Eddie, a handsome but decidedly strange man, when he picked Eddie up outside of Idaho Falls. Eddie should have crapped out in Pocatello; who goes to Salt Lake City to 'have a hot time'? Unless he meant the weather; after all, everything exciting is banned in Utah, except for having multiple wives in the privacy of your own compound.
* *
*
The day started out on the wrong side of the road to begin with. Sid and Eddie had been driven by a young lady all the way from High River, Alberta to Yellowstone Park, even stopping off for a night at an old friend from Brooklyn, now at a military camp in Bozeman, who just had a newborn with his new wife, and was about to be sent to Viet Nam in a few weeks.
"Eddieeeeeeeeeeee!" Roger screemed through the receiver when Eddie called to see if it was OK if Sid, Laurie and himself could come by. "You have to stay for the night, we'll cook you up a great dinner!"
Roger took a different route over the past years since he last saw Sid and Eddie. His mouth dropped to the ground when he saw these two old roundball buddies in long hair and beards, with this earth-momma type woman in a granny dress at his door. The evening was spent in stony silence, just the required pleasantries exchanged over sausage and spaghetti, not the back-slapping memories expected. Roger's wife cuddled the newborn so tightly and frighteningly when reluctantly showing her off, the guys knew enough not to ask to hold her. When the trio left in the morning, it was relief on both sides, Roger at his CO not having seen the shoddy bunch, and the shoddy bunch glad they managed to avoid politics and the war, it was best to leave the memory of old camraderie intact.
Now it was 3 PM on this grey mid-September afternoon, the cold settling in. Laurie dropped Eddie by the side of the road at Yellowstone Park's west entrance. She was headed back to Boston, so it looked like Sid had a ride all the way to Brooklyn, although that changed when Laurie asked for gas money in Toledo, Sid had none and was given the boot.
All of a sudden, a light snow started to fall. Damn! Eddie and Sid already knew they had dressed too lightly for this trip, but always had a warm ride or the heat of the two of them in the tent and sleeping bags at night. Eddie considered just rolling himself in the tent, not bothering to pitch it, a little ways into the woods; there were absolutely no cars on this road from the park to West Yellowstone, tourist season had passed.
A normally sparkling Airstream Silver Bullet in the sun, now faded into the grey of the landscape, appeared from behind.
"They ain't gonna stop" Eddie thought. "Not Mr. and Mrs. America for this wayward soul." But they did, perhaps having pity for the shivering fool. Eddie hopped in, and when the Mister and Missus saw him, the silence of the previous night at Roger's was repeated. For the drivers, they couldn't get to Idaho Falls soon enough, where they dropped Eddie off and he met this ominous fellow.
* *
*
Wraith
of wraiths, dim lights dividing
Purple,
grey, and shadow green
The smoke trailed up over Eddie's head and out the crack in the window, if only it could carry him with it, out of this nightmare.
"You can close the window if you are cold. I don't smoke, but I like to be in a smoky room. With hot chicks."
The deliberately slow-spoken words are always tinged with a foreboding, making it even more chilling, the way a wraith might speak to Eddie, just prior to his demise. Everytime Eddie got lost in the smoky haze of the purple, grey and shadow green memories protecting him, the voice came again.
"Yes. A hot time in the City. With Hot Chicks. Even if I Die trying."
Did this spector add "And take You with Me"? Eddie heard it, even if unspoken. His thoughts turned to the early black and white Twilight Zone episode, The Hitchhiker. Only everything was topsy-turvey. Instead of an increasingly nervous young lady driving cross-country noticing a sinister man at the side of the road, and no matter how fast or how far she drives, that same insistent hitchhiker reappears, it is he, an increasingly nervous young man hitchiking cross-country, the same sinister driver stopping to enter his thoughts at every turn.
On top of the oddly-phrased and ominous words, there was an empty boat trailer rattling behind the Buick, a bone-chilling sound effect. Who doesn't unhitch an empty boat trailer before driving two hundred miles into Salt Lake City to have a hot time in a smoky room with hot chicks? What plan did he have for that boat trailer? Did it involve the Hot Chicks? Or Eddie? Were he and them, these Houris dancing, intergliding, about to meet their fate by this Wraith of wraiths and dream of faces?
* *
*
The first music Eddie ever wrote on his beloved Favilla guitar was a few years earlier, to Ezra Pound's Nicotine: Hymn to the Dope. It was a bass-driven drone of merely alternating E minor and G major, the stressed words evoked by the tempo and how he thumbed the bass strings, growing faster and louder, droning stronger until it reached its final crescendo, where Eddie had it suddenly drop off into barely audible notes, with whispered stretched-out words of the last half stanza:
So thou
my mist-enwreathéd queen
Nicotine, white
Nicotine
Riding
engloried in they hair
Mak'st
by-road of our dreams
Thy
thorough-fare.
* *
*
Pound's body was dying half a world away in Venice, to live but fourteen months, his travels both physically and spiritually just as far away from Eddie, or so Eddie thought. When Eddie first read the early Pound, he was taken by the mixture of the pre-Raphaelites and Provençal period still embodied in his work, although he ostensibly cast them aside, creating this modern imaging. Eddie had later found out about his influence in shaping poetry for the remainder of the century with his subsequent works and his support and promotion of others, ushering in moderism. But for now, this early hymn to the healing powers of nicotine sufficed.
"I will stop now, I want to fill up for the return, in case I have reason to not be able on the way back, after I have a Hot Time."
The stranger pulled into a gas station in the center of town, and Eddie took the opportunity, grabbing his backpack and rushing off down an alley, trying not to think why this guy wouldn't be able to stop on the way back. He found the only hostel in Salt Lake a few blocks away. Before signing in, he went around back to have another Marlboro, making sure he couldn't be seen from the road.
The dizzying nicotine helped his mind wander from his harrowing escape. He knew it would be a long time before he ever became friends with Roger again, if ever. Sid was back to Brooklyn on his draft-dodging ruse, and Eddie himself got out, beating the physical. Pound himself became antiwar, but anti-war in the one war Eddie thought justified, against Facist repression and genocide. Pound, already near sixty years of age, spewed anti-Jewish venom on the radio in Italy, then was interned first in Italy and then brought back to the US to be coddled in a hospital in DC, having plead insanity, clearly his own ruse.
"Maybe I'm really the insane one" Eddie spoke to the stoop railing. "Will I become old and bitter and hateful, something I never could forsee, because I can't just accept everything as it is, because I see things others veil from their eyes and minds?" Getting swiftly back to his like-minded friends in Capitola became paramount.
* *
*
Ezra Pound, associated with the east coast, London, Paris and Italy, was born in Hailey, then the Idaho Territories, just over the Craters of the Moon from Idaho Falls, where the maniac had picked Eddie up.
Ted Bundy, it was later revealed, dumped his victim's bodies in Idaho and Utah, but starting in 1973 or 74, two years after Eddie's ride. The stranger almost certainly wasn't Bundy, Eddie was sure as he looked at the news article of his execution in early 1989. Then, this: 'When talking to his lawyer the day before his execution, Bundy said that his first attempt to kidnap a woman was in 1969, and implied that his first actual murder was sometime in the 1972-73 time frame'. Edie lit up a Camel this time.
Nicotine, my
Nicotine
Some
would set old Earth to rights
Thou I
none such ween.
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6. She Really Got Me Now
Eddie was standing on the outskirts of Salt Lake City, getting hot, thirsty, tired and pissed off.
"If I see one more damn pair of horn-rimmed glasses go by me with a mannequin wife in the seat next to him, trying not to look at me . . ." he raised his fist to the one cloud in the sky that danced around the sun but never wanted to pass in front of it. Sure, why does he deserve any shade.
"And the damn glasses are square glasses, for the squares that wear them, so their square mannequin wives don't have to look in their eyes, lest they see lust, which they won't anyway. And they are solid black square eyeglasses so there is no mistake the squares that wear them are white, which is a relief to their square mannequin wives who can't look in their eyes. And their two tiny square clones in the square back seat in the boxy square car, that can't look in their square father's eyes either, and won't look at me neither, wearing the same square black glasses at the age of three squared, nine. And, you, cloud, I swear you are changing your shape to be square as you not block the sun - if I could look directly at the sun, I'd probably see that it's square right here in gaddamm Utah, a square state in shape, even the cutout in the northeast where Wyoming juts in is square!"
"Whew, glad I got that off my chest, I feel better now." Eddie apologized to the sky, which wasn't square.
He had been on the road for three weeks, and except for up in Salmon Arm BC, he never waited more than two hours for a ride, even in the middle of nowhere. Here it took him five hours just to get from the downtown of a major city, with the one hippie that was allowed to live in the city, the Mayor's son, and now finds himself outside the town line, with no one stopping for him.
It probably helped before that Sid was with him for most of the trip, guess most people think that psycho-hippie hitch-hiking murderers don't travel in pairs. But Sid and Eddie parted a few days ago in West Yellowstone, Sid back to Brooklyn while Eddie was headed back west.
* *
*
The night before Eddie managed a spot on the floor of the hallway of the overcrowded youth hostel, the only one in the city. The travellers there were mostly not square, but they had no cars, the few that did were headed east, most others travelling by bus or train. Except for the guy who had dibs on the TV, Frank. For some reason, he was a square local who was staying there, and he wanted to see Flip Wilson get dressed in drag and act silly. Everybody else wanted to see a rerun of the Smothers, it was the one with the Beatles Revolution performed on it, but square Frank had dibs. Eddie wondered if this was how he got his kicks - walk down the block from his house, check into the hostel early so he can piss off us wanderin' gypsies by hogging the TV, watching Flip Wilson and Hee Haw.
"Hey Frank!"
"Yes, you are Eddie, right?"
"Yeah. Hey Frank, do you get your kicks by walking down the block from your house, checking into the hostel early so you can piss off us wanderin' gypsies by hogging the TV, watching Flip Wilson and Hee Haw?"
"I'm outta here, gotta be somethin' to do in this town." Eddie muttered at Frank's blank stare. And there was. A few blocks down, in the heart of the city, a lone marquee shone squarely above the town square. It was showing the very antiwar, very bawdy, very anti-square film Catch-22. Eddie caught it when it first came out over a year ago with Little Paula when it was first-run at the Baronet, he thought, in Manhattan. "Took this long to get out to the boonies, but at least it made it" Eddie thought aloud. "Maybe there is hope for this burg."
"How much?" Eddie asked at the square box office, the kind that's detached from the theater itself.
"Just what it says on the sign, $2.00", the teen with square zits and square black glasses said, pointing to the square sign above his square head.
"I'm afraid I only have these rectangular dollar bills, will they do?" Eddie plopped them on the square counter as the teen then looked away from him, the alien roundhead that Eddie was.
The square lobby was empty, and in the theater only one other soul, the Mayor's hippie son that was to be Eddie's ride out of town the next day. Well, it is Sunday evening and this is a religious town, Eddie thought, they are probably all home getting a square meal.
The movie was just as fun the second time around, especially because it was serendiptitious. Filled with two .15 cent popcorns - at least things were cheap here - Eddie headed out after the show, satisfied and fed. He noticed the sound of a crowd outside, maybe the late show is getting business, after Sabbath sundown?
"There's one of them, and look he is a freak!" "Yeah, that's the guy I saw go in." The crowd was walking in a picket line, square not round, carrying square placards above. They were protesting the "moral decay" that movies like Catch-22 brought to their fair city, and apparently had it in for the owner for a while.
"He might be that pervert owner Jack's kid, I heard he had a longhair." "Could be. Let's see."
The crowd started closing in on Eddie, with perhaps not harmful, but definitely not friendly intentions.
One of the placards accidently came close to Eddie's eye, causing him to startle.
"Sheet! Get that friggin thing outta my face."
Eddie couldn't help himself. He thrust up his hand and the placard hit one squarehead head on. This enraged the crowd. As the Mayor's son slithered away against the wall, they rushed Eddie, who started to high-tail it down the block. Every few steps one would get him square on the ass with their square placard, yelling "Go, home" but never cursing, causing Eddie to hop every fourth step or so. This went on for the whole block until the crowd saw the owner Jack come out and they turned their ire on him.
Eddie wimpered back to the youth hostel and found his place on the hallway floor under a blanket in a fetal position, just hoping he wouldn't be stepped on during the night.
* *
*
"Eddie, they look like thousands of penises, or would that be peni?, marching in rows right at us!"
Little Paula's eyes looked wide like the canyon below her.
"Thousands of peni, marching in rows, layered in pink and yellows, with a red crowned top, much like the real thing, marching towards me."
"Well, to me they look more like chess pieces" Eddie replied as he looked out on Bryce Canyon's formations. "But even so, if they look like penises to you, it would be peni if the singular were spelled p-e-n-u-s," Eddie whipped out his college Latin like Little Paula did his penis that first night, "that would be a matter for Clark, your shrink, not me."
They both laughed at the thought of Little Paula returning to her shrink and telling her about this vision. Eddie and Little Paula were in southern Utah heaven just over a year before Eddie's later sojourn, during their forty day car trip across country. Glen Canyon, Zion National, colorful Georgia O'Keefish pastels all around as they tumbled in embrace on their nightly camp ground, and during the day hours too.
"I wrote a poem, about how we got here, do you want to hear it?" Eddie cooed. Little Paula snuggled up next to the fire, "Please do, Sir Edward."
"Ahem". "I call this 'Desert Wine" by Eddie Favilla". Eddie's pen name, a take on Eddie Rickenbacker (a guitar name) and his own Favilla brand guitar.
"Sweat dripping between our
breasts
Sun mercilessly bearing
down
Among arid
sands
The only wind the open
windows
An oven sucking up our
moisture
Lips
cracking
Land fades into sky, no
horizon
Muted colors all of
neutral tones
Desert
hallucinations
Water gone, swirled
down hours ago
Still half a day until
relief
Wishing for night's
cold
A rusted house off to
the left
One lone truck turns in
as I pass
Swerving us in dust to
nowhere
Desolation looked us in
the eye
Stranded, bruised,
dehydrated
No energy to
try
You summoned me to
power
With a salt dry
kiss
On my dry salt
lips
Fatefully we drove
onward
Staring desperately for
salvation
Seeing only crackled
clay
Running on empty bodies
and tank
Then a transforming
sight
Rising hills of
hope
Soft willowy trees on a
bank
Of pure turquoise
waters
Nakedly we plunged
in
As the sun lowers
obligingly
We refresh our burnt
skin
And float gently in
relief
Sweetwater enters our
pores
Muscles untense in soft
currents
Our kisses wet
again
A rustle from the far
bank
Two denizen otters
slide down
And swim along with
us
Twirling their bodies
like ours
Then give a knowing
look
And laugh at
Our Innocence"
Little Paula, so called to differentiate her from her best friend Big Paula, listened tenderly, then twirled her body around his again, just like they did before.
* *
*
Now six months later, Eddie and Little Paula twirled their bodies together, for likely the last time, at the Port Authority bus station in Manhattan. Little Paula wanted to cut back, go a little slower, perhaps see other people. She reasoned that they were still young and if they were meant to be, it would happen anyway. Eddie agreed with the latter, but could not abide by the rest. He could not see more than one person at a time, it wasn't in his nature, and he couldn't bear to be around while Little Paula did.
His job was a futile exercise working for the welfare department, only cutting too small checks for those who deserve it, and too big ones for those that didn't, and telling all they would have to be on an endless waiting list for any additional services. Now, suddenly, nothing was holding him down, so off to his old college buddies who had moved earlier to sunny Cal-i-for-nigh-yay.
Their last kiss was not the one Eddie remembers, his visions are of the first night, and the southern Utah embraces.
And so it was six months later that Sid flew out to see him and they decided on this adventure.
* *
*
After his rant at the sky, Eddie realized he really didn't have anything against the good peolple of Utah. They were quirky, yes, but doing their own thing, not intentionally hurting anybody, and wasn't that a part of what this whole changing world was about? Hell, a lot of them are conscientious objectors to the Nam war.
But their distrust just increased his frustrations. This adventure had been a catharsis, building on the times he shared with the tribe at the house just up the street from the ocean, playing music all night, fixin' the place up, working odd jobs, skinny dipping, writing stories and poems. He kinda half-purposely remained celebate, turning down the next door neighbor's naked advances, while playing with her two kids in the pear orchid out back as she sun-bathed and beckoned him. She was married anyway, Eddie got behind a lot of the openess of the times, but he was a one-woman guy. He respected the other guy's one woman, even if the guy was screwing around. He thought he was over Little Paula, at least in the present, with so much leading to other places away from her.
With a deep breath, Eddie picked up his weary thumb and faced the road again. The square cars with glasses passed him by, a steady stream of eyes straight ahead. Then, a long-tressed young woman in a flatbed came to a halt 20 yards ahead of him, looks like his luck was changing. He started to jog forward, but it wasn't to be, she was just making a u-turn. As he turned in frustration again, a VW microbus pulled up alongside and a head popped out:
"Climb aboard, friend."
The inside was set up as temporary living quarters, with the platform bed, some mattresses on the floor, and a dresser for their belongings. The windows were heavily curtained. It was occupied by two guys and two young ladies, the ones up front were a couple, Eddie wasn't sure at first if the others next to him in the back were.
"What's your handle, friend?" from the driver. "Eddie, good. Say Eddie, open the top drawer and get me one of those already rolled."
"Whoa, pal, there's enough in here to keep the whole Haight goin' for a week!" Eddie's eyes bugged at the drawer filled to the brim.
"Grab one for yourself, if you have the mind to" from Joey, the driver. "There should be some already rolled up."
Now Eddie and Sid had not partook of much on the road and didn't carry any after they used up theirs in Canada just before crossing to back to the states, wisely determining that their vulnerability to being stopped by the law was not worth the reward.
"OK, I'll have a few hits" Eddie relented, figuring if stopped, he could cop out as a hitchiker.
The beginning of the ride through Utah was uneventful, passing through the salt flats, endless off-white ground and whitish-blue sky the only colors. The couple in the back were mostly asleep, though not in each other's arms.
"So Ed, where you from and how far you going?" Joey asked in his distinct New York accent. Eddie didn't have one, people were always surprised when they learned he was from Brooklyn.
"I'm in Capitola, about 80 miles south of the bay, but originally from Brooklyn."
"No kidding, I'm from Rockaway Beach. How'd you wind up in California?"
"I moved out to hang with my old college pals after I broke up with my gal. Then my buddy Sid flew out and we decided to hitch up to Canada and back down through the Tetons. He headed back home."
"Tough break with the woman, I know what that's like. Who broke it off?"
"Little Paula did."
"Huh? Waaait a minute. Does she have a friend called Big Paula?"
"You're not tellin' me", Eddie said in disbelief, "You know her?"
"Know her - she was my first girl in high school, and I was her first guy! No shit, how effin a coincindence is that!"
"Wait wait, wait wait, wait wait. Can't be. Gotta be, someone else." Eddie staccatto-ed out.
"My Little Paula said her first guy ever was Joe Forte from South Philly, a younger cousin of the singer Fabian. That isn't you, is it?"
"Naw, I'm Joey Brunesco, but thaaat's her, fella - we didn't go all the way, but we almost did. I hooked her up with Joe, my uncle is a distant relative of Fabian."
Eddie's ears started to shut down as Joey began recounting past experiences he and Little Paula had back in the day. All he could think of was that of all the VW microbuses in all the deserts in all the United States, I hitchhike into his. Finally Eddie had to break it off.
"Joey, that joint kinda wore me down after standing in the desert sun the last half day. Think I'll join the sleeping beauties in the back." He excused himself and squeezed in.
As Eddie was trying to drift off, he felt a hand on his thigh and lips on the nape. Taken aback, he started to pull away.
"Don't worry, I'm not with him" she motioned to Van Winkle, "I'm not with anybody but you right now."
They screwed throughout Utah, Eddie wasn't breaking his code, and it was good. It was a re-catharsis that freed him from the ropes to the past that Joey unwittingly tied him in. Utah gave, took away, and gave back again.
* *
*
A year later, after Eddie returned to Brooklyn with hopes of a job that made sense, he and Little Paula got together for six months. The relationship never reached the peaks of before, but didn't hit the abyss either. Little Paula was teaching high school, and instead of working the summers for extra pay, she travelled on her own to any exotic place she could, a result of the sense of exploring Eddie gave her on their cross country trip.
Eddie got from her that she was right, if it was meant to be, it would happen. And it wasn't and didn't. They remained occasional friends, Little Paula visited him down south once, and put him up when he visited Brooklyn upon his Mom's passing away, twenty five years later.
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Margrit's Best Friend
Tante Margrit was getting used to this. It was late, and her husband Ivar was not home yet, working again into the night, digging the foundations for the Levittown Housing Projects in Long Island, just over the border from Queens. Margrit couldn't object too much. After the depression and WW II, when it was mostly the women taking cleaning and cooking jobs to support the family, it was good to see their still not old men back at it, instead of drinking beers on the stoop or in the parks, bemoaning their lack of work. It was also good to get them out of their hair for a bit.
Levittown was the first ever planned suburbia, and there was a need for it. As the economy took off after the war, the educated professionals thrived, and wanted to spend their money on a place with a little greenery for their families, away from the swelter of the city. The prosperity spilled down to the immigrants such as Ivar and his sister Klara's husband Axel, providing as much work as they wanted. The pay wasn't great, but with the double shifts the wives could finally stay at home to see to their families.
Margrit was a bit flighty, to use a kind word, but in a sometimes calculated way. A few years later when they got a phone, she would call up Klara, and if either of her very young nephews answered, would ask how the weather was where they were, just four miles away. If it was August, and the boy would say "Hot, Tante Margrit" Margrit would tell them "Oh - we just had six inches of snow here." In January, the reverse - "It snowed six inches yesterday, kindygarden is closed" was followed by "Oh - its so hot here, I have my bathing suit on." The nephews believed every word.
She also was the one who played Santa all those years, none of the kids ever knew, she was that well disguised and an actress, deepening her voice so well, her belly laugh shaking the walls and putting the requisite awe in the kiddies.
This made her a perfect fit for Ivar, well known for antics of his own.
After a while, having her husband gone so much, Margrit got bored, so she went looking for a pet. But, it couldn't be any pet, this was Margrit. She chose a myna bird, with her ever-skewed logic that she could have conversations with it, even though it would just repeat what she said.
Now, to tell the truth, those nights Ivar didn't show up weren't always because he worked a double shift. He liked to toddle every now and then, stopping in every two weeks or so at The 19th Hole, a bar a few blocks from the house, near the Dyker Beach golf course. He could cover the pay issue, for math was not Margrit's strong point, and he was good at coming up with reasons - extra union dues, work clothes, etc. They didn't have a phone yet, so he couldn't call.
But Ivar knew Margrit was pretty shrewd in life matters, behind the ditzy facade, so he came up with an elaborite ruse for those nights. He didn't want to be on the town in his mussy workclothes or cart them around; there were women at the bar, and even though he never strayed, he did like to flirt. So he would change at work, and he kept extra dirty clothes in a sack that he snuck to outside the back door in the morning, to don when he got back home, Margrit safely asleep upstairs. If she awoke upon his entering, there he was in the mud of the soon to be suburbanites.
One Thursday, the night Ivar would use to dally, Friday, payday being too obvious, Margrit needed to do laundry again. Mondays and Fridays were the normal days, but it had rained all week and she couldn't finish on Wednesday. As she went out to the clotheslines in the backyard, she saw the sack and thought to herself "Oh, that Ivar, so silly, why didn't he just tell me he had more laundry." So she washed them and hung them out to dry.
That evening, Ivar ran into an old friend, and the usual four or five short beers turned into six or seven tall ones. The result was that he stayed out a few hours later, and his head was a few turns dizzier. As he came home, he searched for the sack of dirty clothes, but they were nowhere to be found. "I musha lef dem in the foyer by mistake" he thought. Ivar slurred his thought-words as well when tipsy.
As he entered the foyer, still in his glad-rags, he heard Margrit stir through the creaky floorboards above. "Uh-oh, gosta hide, cant gosh back out, she'll hear the door close." So he started to crawl to the kitchen table, which had a long cloth over it, down to the floor. Through the moonlight from the window, he saw Petey, Margrit gave the myna a parrot's name, and Ivar thought fuzz-headed again, "Oops, better cover my bases."
He lifted a finger to his lips and whispered to Petey "Shhhhhhh - don't tell Margrit Ivar's under the table."
Margrit came down the stairs sleepy-eyed, looked around, saw nothing, and started to head back upstairs. "Good", Ivar thought, peeping out from the cloth, "It worked!"
Margrit gave a turn before heading upstairs and called "Ivar, is that you?"
"Sqwaaaaaaaakk!! Don't tell Maaaaagrit Ivar's under the taaaaaaaaable!"
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~ Links to my pages and community ~
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| To Fragments - Poetry | To Journey - Narrative Poetry | To Marzy Lives On - Stories | Visit MiPO - a Community |
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Copyright by Walter Bjorkman, an Off the Wall Production, 2009
Contact Walter: wbjorkman@hotmail.com
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