Windwhistle Bone

by Richard Trainor

  Before he opened his mouth to utter this, Ram was aware he was on thin ice, and although he knew that the pomposity of what he said was inappropriate and sophomoric, he was unable to prevent it. He’d opened up the dam and was powerless in controlling the torrents that now roiled out of him. He was like someone out of a James M. Cain novel, who’s aware of his dire circumstances but is unable to do anything but choose the best option out of a series of bad choices.

  “At this year’s poetry festival in Refugio, you were described as a disruptive force. You had read a poem—”

  “—Called I Shot a Faggot in a Fern Bar," Ram interrupted before she could finish.”Yeah, I suppose it was disruptive. I was booed and shouted at, ‘you sexist pig,’ ‘fascist bully,’ etc. It worked, the poem, I mean. The reason that I chose to read it at that particular event was because of my antipathy to all these sects of personal psychodrama that have been springing up, for the most part, here in California. I’m sure you’re aware of them, probably belong to some of them," he half-whispered to the audience under his breath. “You know the ones I mean; the Midwives Guild, Senior Citizens for Sexual Freedom, Grand Order of Pederastic Druids, Lesbian Lifeguards for Holistic Health, all these special interest groups whose peccadilloes you’re supposed to be aware of and whose rights you’re supposed to respect. I find it hard to take that stuff very seriously because they insist on taking themselves so seriously and are so Goddamn pious about whatever it is they feel makes them so noteworthy. In the end, who cares if you sleep with a club footed giraffe? I don’t, and it’s my feeling that it’s a waste of time to be so obsessed with such cosmically trivial garbage. The poem was my attempt to take the mickey out of that attitude. In any case, I had a few drinks before I began reading and when, whoever they were—Transvestites for an Ecologically and Aesthetically Sound Enema, TEASE or whatever—started shouting at me, I wasn’t about to stand for it and I traded insults with them.”

  “It was reported you goose-stepped around the stage singing Deutschland Uber Alles and that you mooned the audience.”

  “Can I have some more tea?” Ram asked a stagehand. “Yeah, I did. I wasn’t asked back to read at next year’s festival and it’s probably just as well. I don’t enjoy doing readings.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know. It strikes me as being pompous and histrionic; as if I’d descended from Mt. Ida or I’m bringing the word to the faithful. Looking down at the audience, sometimes I’ll see these cow eyes looking back at me with a reverence that terrifies me.”

  “Why do you find that so terrifying?”

  “Because they’re looking in the wrong direction. I don’t write to set myself up to them as some demigod or authority. I write because it’s the only method that I’ve discovered that’s effective in relieving me of certain anxieties or ideas that demand expression. It’s sort of a purgative exercise… Like an enema, I suppose… If I could find some other avenue that could replace the function that writing has for me, then I’d probably pursue it because I’ve always had an ambivalent feeling about what to do after the creative process of writing has run its course. I don’t really care to read my work for the reasons I’ve already stated and I don’t rely on the money I get from publishing to live on. Can we change the subject?”

  “You live with the actress Vera Dubcek, right?”

  “Yes, but I won’t discuss her. That’s nobody’s business.”

  “I see. Perhaps you might tell us why you engage in the fripperies and follies as you call them.”

  Ram shot her a menacing glance and tried to swallow the bile. He took another pull on yet another gin and tonic. He’d lost count of how many he’d drank, at least six, and the combination of them and the valium he’d taken were starting to exact their toll. The studio rotated in an ellipsoid and an increasing sense of nausea began announcing itself in his stomach. He thought he might vomit. But the urge to terminate the interview with this gesture would garner him what? It would be just another ill-timed and unseemly incident in the ever-expanding oeuvre of bad behavior? Through a supreme effort of will, Ram was able to hold back the vomit and compose himself to answer, “I lost my train of thought.”

  “I asked you why you engaged in the fripperies and follies?”

  Seeing the pallor that passed over Ram’s face, visible even behind the makeup, Ms. Avoirdupois tensed in anticipation and raised her clipboard in front of her like a shield.

  “Yes, the fripperies and follies, I don’t know, to blow off steam, I guess. Maybe I do it to entertain my friends? I really don’t have an answer for that; maybe just to assure myself that I survived another day. I don’t know. What do you do for entertainment?” he asked her with a lurid grin. The audience exploded as the hostess blushed.

  Ram flopped back into the chair and rolled his eyes to the ceiling in disgust and disbelief with himself. Recovering, he sprang back to his previous posture on the edge of the chair and attempted to apologize by covering the hostess’s hand with both of his in a gesture intended to mollify her. But Ram misjudged the distance between them, and his hands pawed the air, nearly upsetting him from his perch. He looked down at his feet in utter dismay. Although laughter echoed throughout the studio, there was an aspect of uneasiness attending it. Trying to avoid any sudden movement which might exacerbate the nausea, Ram slowly raised his body, and within that moment, between his failed attempt at pacification and the time that it took to right himself, he somehow managed to regain his composure so that Ms. Avoirdupois now beheld a face that was regal and serene, instead of the besotted buffoon which she expected.

  “Excuse me, I meant to apologize for being a wise ass. I missed… I know I sometimes get out of hand, and it’s usually a situation in which it’s just harmless revelry among friends. I tend to get over-exuberant when I’ve had a little too much of the craythur. But, perhaps exuberance is just my way of excusing my obnoxiousness and it exempts me from being responsible for my actions. As I said, it’s usually harmless fun, but there have been some nasty and embarrassing incidents that I’ve either initiated or been a party to. Why is that? Maybe I drink too much. I’m sure that’s part of it. But it goes deeper than that.”

  As he rambled on, Ram realized he was approaching that danger zone of intoxication where he became overly garrulous and confiding, which would then inevitably lead to tomorrow’s drunk, when he’d attempt to murder the remorse and shame that would accompany the hangover he was now concocting. He was as certain of this as a chemist is combining one atom of sodium with two atoms of oxygen to produce sulfur. Unable to control himself, he spewed on like a fire hydrant with an exploded valve.

  “I really think it has something to do with my seeming incapacity to deal with reality, whatever that is and whatever that means.”

  The laughter from the claque was now subdued. Listening closely, one could detect scattered moans and sighs, perhaps offered in sympathetic embarrassment; although it was unclear who they were embarrassed for or sympathetic to: themselves, the hostess, or Ram?

  “So I have difficulty dealing with this amorphous thing, reality, and that’s probably why I drink so much and then go off on these dopey maneuvers. My brain is crammed to the gunnels with information that I find impossible to make any sense out of. Am I properly hip? Do I own the right car? What about my vitamin intake and proper nutrition? Am I sexually satisfied? Or satisfying for that matter? Is there a god, and if there is, why doesn’t he do something about all this mess? Is the universe expanding or contracting? At what rate? Will Johnny Carson renew his contract? What about the fishing rights of the Klamath Indians? What’s the next American city scheduled to explode? What happened to John Lennon? Is life a war of attrition, an exercise in ennui punctuated by brief moments of the tragic and absurd? Or is it more like when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie that’s amoré? Is there life after death? Is there life during life? Is my woman getting ready to leave me, and if so, is she going to take our prize Burmese cat, Torquemada? I�
��m constipated with all this shit that’s probably meaningless, yet I find I’m continually being inundated by it; if not by the television, then by the radio, or by well-meaning friends at parties or meetings where the aforementioned topics are passed around with the cocktails and cocaine. There’s no escaping it. I’ll be driving up north on the coast, in one of those little towns like Gualala, and in the midst of that splendor, my mind will seize on something dreadful like the monster earthquake that we’re supposed to get sooner or later. Or I’ll contemplate what the sky looks like after the missiles start raining. Or, less cataclysmic, I’ll begin humming a tune and realize that it’s a jingle from the feminine deodorant spray. These things that I mentioned are but a few of the nagging questions that grate on me and have the power to shake me from my reverie and wake me to the terrifying aspects of”reality" that we’re all so privileged to enjoy in this fair land of ours… Perhaps my escapades have something to do with the worm-like fear and revulsion that grabs me by the throat whenever I become aware of my own fragility, but then again, maybe I’m just over dramatizing and rationalizing and the real reason I act like I do is because I’m just an asshole."

  “Well, we’ve just about run out of time. I was wondering if you might read one of your poems, Mr. Le Doir?”

  The question ricocheted around his brain. Read? Now? Why hadn’t she asked him earlier? Certainly, he had given readings in states of greater derangement, but he couldn’t help but suspect that the hostess had pre-meditated this whole scenario and wished Ram to reach the unmanageable condition he now found himself in so she could expose her viewing public to the archetypal obsessive artist she was parading Ram as. Whatever her motive, Ram seemed to be trapped, skewered by the stereotype that he abhorred yet had done nothing to dispel. It was as though he’d walked into a minefield and, instead of exercising caution, had done his utmost to step on every explosive device that lay not only in his path, but also on the periphery. Now there was just one left, and with an attitude of what the hell abandon, Ram jumped both feet forward in a self-annihilating finale.

  “Certainly, you don’t mind if I read sitting down do you?”

  “Not at all, however you feel comfortable.”

  Ram looked about in search of the manuscript of Damaged Goods that Rogers had instructed him to bring. Searching under his chair, he nearly toppled onto the carpet that was only a shade or two darker than the cyanotic hue of his own complexion.

  “Mr. Le Doir? Mr. Le Doir?”

  Ram looked up from his search and beheld the hostess fixing him with an unctuous smile. She held his manuscript out to him as though it were a dead mackerel that had sat in the sun too long and was giving off an odor.

  “I was wondering where that disappeared to. Did you have it all this time?”

  “We’re running out of time, Mr. Le Doir.”

  “I’ll just be a second.”

  As carefully as his condition permitted, Ram withdrew his glasses from his jacket pocket and, with great ceremony, fitted them on his face. They helped somewhat and decelerated the motile nature of the words in the manuscript dancing about the page like Mexican jumping beans in a methedrine frenzy.

  “Here we are, this one is called Plea Bargaining with the Drowned.”

  It was the poem that Ram had composed in Orcas for Jaime, a stark piece, unsentimental with a dirge-like meter, a hymn to death and dissolution, with images of dead horses and earth-dwelling gypsies contrasted against the modern high-rises edged against the skyline of Barcelona which seemed to mock them and display contempt of what occurred in their shadow.

  Ram was able to summon forward the remnant of sanity that was left him as he read the poem in its entirety without a dropped accent or misplaced emphasis, the clarity of his voice ringing through the studio like vesper bells from Montserrat. In that moment, all the previous buffoonery, the wisecracking, the maudlin apologia and attempts at grandiose self-rationalization were dispelled and reduced to cinders. This was, for Ram on this day, his redemption.

  When he finished reading, the audience was momentarily hushed. Then they exploded in applause, whoops, and cheers. Ram sat with his head bowed toward the manuscript in an attitude of both defeat and gratitude. When he looked up and nodded a brief acknowledgment, an expression of commingled pride and relief was discernible on his face. In closing, Ms. Avoirdupois displayed her respect by insisting on shaking Ram’s hand.

  Rogers was waiting for Ram in the oversized alcove that served as a dressing room. He was silent as he assisted Ram in removing the makeup that the perspiration had caked onto his face in ridges. Sitting on the stool, Ram looked up at his friend with a dazed look and mumbled, “So much for that, pretty bad, huh?”

  Rogers smiled stiffly: “No, it wasn’t really that bad.” They both stared at one another, Ram in his woebegone aspect, Rogers with his encouraging deceit. But the absurdity was too preposterous to ignore. Unable to maintain the solemnity any longer, they burst into laughter.

  “I thought you were going to puke on that poor lady.”

  “I nearly did. The only thing that saved me was more hair of the dog.”

  They drove back to town with the top-down on Rogers’s vintage Jag. They rode in silence, but the mountain curves began to take their toll on Ram, and at Graham Hill Road, he whispered: “Pull over, Peach.”

  Rogers kept the Jag running on the shoulder while Ram vomited from the passenger side. He remained seated in the car but was turned ninety degrees with his feet resting on the pavement and his head between his legs. He remained like that for ten minutes until the eruptions issuing from him had turned from the multicolored projections of that morning’s salsa omelet to bits of cloudy mucus.

  “Feel any better?”

  “Yeah, I think I’ll be all right now.”

  Rogers shot a quick glance at Ram after they pulled back onto the freeway and nearly became ill himself. Ram had lost all his color. This wasn’t the red-faced Ram after a few healthy, sun-past-the-yardarm cocktails, or the greenish around the gills Ram in the midst of a dead reckoning stupor. He was the color of a jellyfish. The blue veins on his closed eyelids, the only contrast to the opacity of his face, served to further reinforce that image.

  “You sure you’re alright?”

  Rogers received no reply.

  “Ram, Ram? Oh, fuck. God damn him.”

  When Ram came to again, he felt the sense of disorientation that comes from waking in alien rooms. As the blackness cleared, he saw through the curtain windows the familiar grounds of Vizcaino Memorial Hospital. The last sensation that he had before losing consciousness was a searing pain that came from something ripping inside of him. As he was attempting to reassemble the fragments of the debauch that had led him here, a nurse looked in on him. After asking Ram how he felt and whether he needed anything, she told him that there was someone to see him.

  A mass of flowers surrounded by a garland of fresh garlic preceded a shape into the room. From behind the display, Vera’s head popped out like a jack in the box and she inquired, “How’s my baby Werewolf?”

  Chapter Eight

  Ram heard the phone ring twice and then go silent as the answering machine came on in the bedroom, listening to see if it was Vera or Peach, the only calls he’d agreed he would take. It was neither, just the magazine editor from San Francisco who’d been calling of late. Ram listened to the message asking him to return the call, then took two teaspoons of the chalky medicine prescribed for him and looked at the clock on the living room wall. It was three o’clock, and Vera would be home soon to check on Ram before she began her shift at The Teacup.

  He had been out of the hospital almost a month now, his stomach began to heal, his mind starting to clear from the pollutants that had contaminated and driven it the past few months. Autumn was coming, and Ram was beginning to feel whole and inside his own skin again.

  After his release from the hospital, Vera took Ram home and nursed him for a week until she was confident he could manage by himse
lf. During that week, the phone rang nonstop as friends called Ram to comment on his television appearance. Vera screened all calls and conveyed the messages to Ram. Mad Michael and Tomas were temporarily declared personae non grata. The only guests allowed in the house were Phil, Peach, and Tor, who’d come down on business to oversee the Endymion accounts with Fran and came by Refugio one night for dinner with Ram and Vera before returning to Orcas. “You’re making quite a name for yourself from what I understand, Ram,” Tor said.

  Ram rolled his eyes and sipped his Calistoga water. “If that’s what you want to call it, I guess.”

  Tor looked at Vera, who returned his gaze, then said, “He’s a great poet, Tor, but it’ll be an even greater accomplishment if he can survive his own self torment.”