Legends of the Fall

by Jim Harrison

  On the morning of his psychiatric appointment Nordstrom walked from Brookline to Cambridge. The fact of the matter was that in his arduous study of reality he had become a trifle goofy. He understood this and decided to go with it, as they say. It was a fine morning in early May and as he crossed Commonwealth he paused on the traffic island to study a jet liner passing above him on an approach to Logan. The silver plane looked lovely against the deep blue sky. He paused in Allston and ate an Italian sausage sandwich with green peppers and onions for breakfast. It was delicious with a cold beer and he exchanged pidgin Italian with the counterman who was trying to decide what number to pick for a dollar bet. As Nordstrom walked on he decided again that nothing was like anything else. One quantity could never technically equal another. No two apples on earth were alike, neither were the two cars at the stoplight, or any two of the three or so billion people on earth. He laughed aloud at the philosophical naiveté of these thoughts but that did not diminish their intensity. Neither were dogs, days, hours and moments ever the same. Finally, he was not the same as yesterday, and was at least infinitesimally different from a moment ago. When he reached the bridge near the business school he paused to stare down at the water dirtied by effluents and a heavy rain the day before. It was the Charles River and Nordstrom had always thought it lacked the charm of the· icy clear rivers of northern Wisconsin, though history buffs were quick to assure everyone that the Charles owned a great deal of history. Today Nordstrom had no opinions about the river. He just looked at it for a while. Of late he had become especially tired of pointless opinions and was trying to get rid of them. He would catch himself thinking as everyone does: too hot, too cold, too green, too fat, too spicy, ugly building, old slippers, loud music, homely woman, fat man. Not, he thought, that one couldn’t discriminate but it had grown boring to get in a dither over rehearsing opinions about everything. To the degree that he had gotten rid of this propensity he felt a bit lighter and more fluid. The trouble was that life, the world around him, had begun to seem more fragile, almost evanescent. For instance, he looked at the river so long he forgot what it was. An old lady pushing a shopping cart paused next to him and looked over the rail to see what Nordstrom was looking at: he said “river,” coming to what we think is our senses, and she continued on, a little alarmed.

  Nordstrom walked downstream along the embankment and sat down on the grass on the far side of the Harvard boathouse. There was an old man with a gray beard sitting on a bench with his trousers rolled to his knees, basking his shins in the sun. The old man was staring at a young woman in a sleeveless blouse, sandals and a loose green skirt, who had her back turned to the old man and Nordstrom, and was rolling a softball back and forth with her infant son. When she bent over to pick up the ball the breeze from the west would billow under the skirt and the old man stared at the back of her smooth thighs. The old man did not mind that Nordstrom had caught him at his voyeurism, and Nordstrom himself only felt lucky at this noontime vision. After a little while the woman and her son scampered across Memorial Drive and were gone forever. Nordstrom felt more aroused generally than sexually, though there was that too, but added was the feeling of good food, good wine or another perhaps stranger feeling, that of letting a beautiful trout go after you had caught it. He was amused at the easy sentimentality the woman’s thighs had brought over him.

  The hour with the psychiatrist went rather easily, with none of the raw moments he expected. The man privately thought of Nordstrom as somewhat of a religious hysteric without a religion who did not seem in the least harmful to himself or others. The psychiatrist was a Jungian and not at all cynical about what he recognized as a pilgrimage away from an unsatisfactory life. He questioned Nordstrom on the possibility that he might be burdening his mother and daughter by giving them the money. Nordstrom wasn’t particularly distressed by the question; he tended to be clinical about ironies, not forgetting their comedy and forgiving the often heartless questions they raised. The psychiatrist followed Nordstrom’s gaze out the window to a fully leafed maple that was losing the final remnant of early May’s pastel green. This hour’s patient had a stolidity that reminded him of the commercial fishermen near his summer home up in Maine. He had put no stock in the broker’s call—he treated the man’s wife and considered him a cruel nitwit behind the patina of Hingham manners. For some unanswerable reason the Boston area seemed the capital of exotic neuroses and Nordstrom’s problem had a refreshing tang of the ordinary.

  “What are your immediate thoughts?” the doctor asked, taken by the intensity of Nordstrom’s gaze out the window.

  “Robin Hood. That maple reminded me of Robin Hood. When I was twelve a friend and I built a tree hut in a maple and played Robin Hood. Then my friend quit the game in favor of throwing a baseball against a barn in hopes of becoming Hal Newhouser. I was hurt because we had made cuts in our arms and become blood brothers. So I moved the hut so no one would know where it was but my father caught me hauling lumber and told me to build in a beech, not a maple, because lightning never strikes a beech for some reason. But I said that a beech doesn’t have enough foliage to hide anything. My dad said then you’ll have to take your chances and that when he was young he always wanted to build a hut at the bottom of a lake so he could look out the window and see fish.”

  “Do you still enjoy fantasies about being Robin Hood?” Nordstrom had made a long pause and the psychiatrist wanted to continue this interesting train of thought.

  “Oh god no. I don’t think about being anyone. I don’t have that much imagination. Young boys admire outlaws because they don’t have to do anything except what they want to. Outlaws pull a job and then just sit around at a hideout cleaning weapons, you know? Every day they simply do what they choose and make a good living at it, at least that’s the childhood notion. Outlaws think the law is full of shit which is not an unpopular suspicion. But to be honest I thought today of Robin Hood’s girl friend, Marian or Miriam? Up in the hut I had two photos, one of a woman’s front and one of her back. That’s what we used to call it, front and back. I paid three dollars for these pictures as a nude was hard to find and three dollars was a lot of money. This woman I saw bending over down by the river reminded me of Marian or Miriam because she wore a green skirt. I used to be a little amazed in my hut knowing that Marian or Miriam had a front and back by natural law and very probably Robin Hood had taken advantage of the fact.”

  “Did you have a fantasy about the woman by the river?”

  “No, not really. Again I’m not too imaginative and then I like to avoid fantasies so that it’s more of a surprise when it happens. Sometimes it’s a little difficult when you see a lady as lovely as today. Maybe it’s a simpleminded oddity of mine. I noticed the other day that if I forget to wind my watch I am always interested in the exact time the watch stops. I remember the year when I stopped finding pennies in my pocket that were older than myself. I was thirty-three. I feel a little silly taking up your time, though I’m paying for it. To be frank, I became tired of this money thing when my wife left me. I started to look at it coldly. I loved her terribly and then it all disappeared, especially for her and not so much for me. I thought my ambition ruined us though hers helped in the ruin. It’s such an ordinary story. I didn’t so much lose faith in it all as I totally lost interest.”

  “What are you interested in now?” The psychiatrist interrupted another of Nordstrom’s long pauses. “Oh Jesus I don’t know. My dad who died in October always said he liked to look things over. Maybe that’s what I want to do. I might take a long trip. I sort of came to life again last July and it’s been pleasant. Most days I’m quite excited about living for no particular reason. I’ve taken to cooking rather elaborately. ”

  Nordstrom stared at the psychiatrist for a full minute and smiled. “In the evening I dance alone, most often for two hours. Sometimes I just jump around, you know?”

  * * *

  May floated along easily. Nordstrom’s replacement arrived from Chicag
o. There was a modest dinner honoring his departure with many in management finding reasons not to attend. There was a fine set of luggage for Nordstrom. A tearful Ms. Dietrich got drunk and had to be sent home in a cab, her plans for the evening awry and the concealed lingerie bought for nought. Nordstrom ended up in Dorchester after a tour of honky-tonks and played poker until dawn with a group of men from the shipping department. He made the long walk home at daylight, a dim and misty morning with the Atlantic palpable in the air, the breeze causing only the slightest tremor in the leaves. He felt a nagging compassion in quasi-dangerous Roxbury for an old black man lying in a pool of bloody vomit watched by sparrows. A block later it was a diseased tree that upset him, trying to remember in puzzlement why Jesus killed the fig tree. When you got past the surface civilities of even a state religion you weren’t far from the tom-toms. The long gray empty street was a different sort of river. He could whistle and make his own music, despite the flavor of gin in his sinuses. An old dog followed him for a block and he paused to allow it to sniff his pant leg.

  He reached his apartment in two hours, took a shower and made a cheese omelette which he washed down with a slug of white wine. He went to bed but couldn’t sleep. He made a pot of coffee and leafed through his diary with disinterest. “Saw pretty girl at Crane’s Neck Beach. She had extraordinarily large feet. She will no doubt spend the summer burying them in sand out of view. The cruelty of genes. That classmate with the huge dick who was the secret envy of all in the locker room after gym class was teased to a shamefaced idiot. Now a bachelor driving county snowplow and gravel truck nicknamed Dork.” Nordstrom paced the apartment and saw the girl across the courtyard stretching in her shorty pajamas. He got a hard-on that more closely resembled a toothache than something pleasant. He regretted that he found self-abuse so unsatisfactory. He leaned out the window and breathed deeply, his cock nudging the sill unpleasantly. She smiled and waved. He waved back, his heart thumping. She stretched and retreated into the darkness of her apartment. He sighed and went back to the kitchen and turned on the radio. An unnamed man sang “Don’t Say Mañana Unless You Mean It,” and Nordstrom longed for the Caribbean though he’d never been there. Joe Carioca or something. He’d rent a small apartment, drink rum and cook seafood. The sun would be hot, the water blue. Despairing of sleep he pulled a bottle of Montgomery Calvados from the cupboard and began to write.

  May 78: Holy Christ I can’t sleep and it’s nine in the morning. Drank more than I usually do in a week or so but not sedated. It’s because I’m usually awake now and I don’t like these old man’s unchangeable habits. I used the same shaving lotion for twenty years. Walked from Dorchester in a trance. Old drunk Negro grieved me, made throat well with tears. Wrote Henry a note asking him to please accept Dad’s fishing tackle and deer rifle. Cot a picture postcard back that said “thanks Henry” and that was all. Asked Mother to have him looked after if he takes ill. Hard drinkers go fast sometimes. Dad said that once to Henry out on the lake and Henry said nobody is born and nobody ever dies. Dad said, “Henry, you are full of shit to the sideburns,” and we all laughed. I have not forgotten the idea that he might have been serious. Read in The New Yorker how this man walked thirty-five days into the Himalayas facing numerous perils to see a snow leopard and never saw one. He saw many tracks and spoor, though. Saw a bobcat once from the tree hut. Also a badger snorting along. The bobcat floated. I made a noise and he did a three-sixty like Thompson and vanished. Bobcats are always ready. Called my summer friend the Sephard to arrange graduation dinner party for Sonia. He suggested the Village restaurant where I saw that girl. But he said she was back to dancing and no longer worked there but should he invite her as a lark to thicken the stew of the evening? I said of course and sent a check leaving the menu to his good taste. Thinking of her now puts heat into my stomach. Felt like I’d levitated when the money was gone but now the feeling is gone and there’s no sensation but a slight lightness. Are we truly allowed to start over? We’ll see, as Dad used to say. I’m so hopelessly slow to change. All those years with Laura and the gradual deadness and then three years of true deadness. Then the lucky break which I am not interested in comprehending for fear still that it might disappear. I have just lit some dope Sonia left me, like an antique hippie, in hopes it will rest my brain. She thinks it’s good for me though I don’t do it more than once a month. Can’t ever remember wanting a woman so much. Deranged by fatigue. They are the best thing there is for better or worse. My heart aches. It would be good even now to have that older black woman in the Green Bay whorehouse on that obligatory trip in high school. I hugged her and wanted to smooch which she thought was funny. Girl in green dress on river bank was heartless. Now I am what they call stoned. The apartment is almost packed. The storage people are coming. On Tuesday after Decoration Day now called Memorial Day for reasons I forgot. Decorating graves on a warm day. Now an image of Laura again. Almost can smell her. That summer in pine board cabin by a creek in Montana with Sonia playing in the yard. The creek was loud but soothing. She was making coffee, wearing only her underpants. She tied up her hair and washed the sleep away at the sink. She stretched. Sunlight from the window on the back of her legs.

  CHAPTER

  IV

  The world does not suffer fools gladly, thought Nordstrom at four in the morning in a corner suite seven stories up in the Carlyle Hotel in New York City. He sipped bourbon with not too much relish. He was half waiting for the phone though unwilling to take the initiative himself. There was no getting a jump on reality. He had imagined the day otherwise, which is okay if you’re by yourself and in control. You only approach total control in the toilet, Nordstrom thought and laughed. Outside the toilet there were bound to be surprises and not all of them pleasant. Some of them left a vacuum in the stomach as if one were falling off earth backward. Something that will inevitably happen anyway. Now he wanted Laura to call but knew she wouldn’t. And he wouldn’t call her. Sonia and Phillip and Laura had just dropped him off in a cab. There was an abyss he had almost forgotten between what his heart wished would happen and what would probably occur in the hours that came toward him before sleep.

  The first surprise was seeing Laura at all. No one had told him but then he hadn’t bothered to inquire. There she was sitting beside him, having flown in from Paris. He hadn’t seen her for nearly four years. During the studied banality of the ceremony and the reception afterward, Nordstrom thought that a whole world was occurring behind your back and it was best to be on your toes. She looked very good though he felt it only as a surface impression rather than in his stomach. When graduation was over they took a cab down from Yonkers to the Pierre where Phillip and Sonia were staying with Laura before they would all leave the next day. They talked and then Nordstrom made a bad move caused by his inherent sentimentality. Safely pinned in the pocket of a linen sport coat was fifteen thousand dollars in one-hundred-dollar bills. It was for the BMW he had promised Sonia seven years ago in their Los Angeles den. He had made inquiries and it was recommended she fly up from Florence (Phillip already pronounced it Fee-renz-ee) and buy the car in Munich. The gesture brought the room to a halt and he felt very clumsy and old-fashioned, say like Sid, the owner of the delicatessen to whom he had bequeathed his whole wardrobe in a touching moment. He wanted to travel light. They all went at him at once and he felt insufferably gauche: Phillip said an expensive car might provoke violence given the troubled state of Italian politics. Laura said no one cares about cars. Sonia said he had already given everything away and they wouldn’t need a car in Florence. Nordstrom retreated to the bathroom and felt no control. He didn’t feel as hurt as he felt misplaced with what remained of his sense of family. Sonia and Laura embraced him when he came out of the toilet and there was a sudden shockingly sexual urge toward both of them. They would disappear tomorrow and it was the lust brought on by death. Phillip broke the strange mood by snapping a photo of the “charming” family.

  A further surprise came at the restaur
ant. The waitress-dancer he had so looked forward to meeting had a sort of feral coldness about her when they met, and now, seated at the far end of the table between the Sephard and Laura, she regarded the table with an unmistakable hauteur though she couldn’t have been much older than the graduates and their dates. She was plainly a woman of the world with Levantine features tending toward thinness, and whatever warmth she might have was well concealed. Nordstrom was pleased with the meal (a galantine of duck, mussels steamed in white wine, striped bass baked with fennel, leg of lamb that had been boned and butterflied then stuffed) but the crowd was giddy and drinking too much to concentrate on food. They all had plans. They were excited to a degree almost equal to Nordstrom’s excitement about having no plans. The raw point of the evening was that everyone, through the graces of Phillip’s mouth, knew that Nordstrom had given away all of his money and was going on a long trip. In fact, he thought, they had a certain advantage over his future as he wasn’t at all sure about the trip—departure day three days hence—though the sheaf of tickets was back in a leather folder at the hotel. But it was the fact of his giving the money away that made him, in their eyes, a monkish wild man off on a pilgrimage. He was appalled. He knew most of them from last summer in Marblehead but he noted that he had become radically changed in their eyes. The girl next to him assumed he was going to India and expressed disappointment at his itinerary. He had thought of them previously as au courant and rather far to the fashionable Left but now they seemed to stand decidedly more than himself as smack-dab in the middle. He remembered how so few of the sixties’ radicals did anything so rash—say not pay their taxes—as to actually end up in jail for their beliefs. It was a hoax in that most of them seemed to own boutiques now. There was something amusing here that couldn’t quite be traced. Everyone is just fucking around as usual, he thought. If I were home, which no longer exists, I’d be dancing now. He began to get an inkling that the point was to be dancing in your brain all of the time when his daughter who was seated next to him sensed his bleakness, squeezed his hand and kissed him on the ear, saying please come visit. He felt the intensity of her concern and nodded yes.