The Ancient Minstrel

by Jim Harrison

  “Have you chosen your rooster yet?”

  “No, that’s the problem. Finding a father.”

  “So I noticed.” Liz the obstetrician was perpetually in search of a new man in her life. She was more than a bit stocky which didn’t seem to help. She kept a fireman and a carpenter on a sexual string by cooking grand meals for them. She knew very well that dieting might help but she was a fine cook and looked at food as the only compensation for her wretched life far from her homeland of Chicago. The town was a bit scandalized by her behavior but she was the best obstetrician around, and one of the few women in the field in the entire country.

  Catherine had gone on a three-day trip to Chicago with her the year before. It was hard to wedge in everything that needed eating from delicatessen food to outsize rib steaks. Catherine had to pass on the last dinner and it was a full week at home before she had fully recovered. That last evening alone had been lovely. It was April and stayed light fairly late. They had a small suite at the Drake and she could see wondrous Lake Michigan out three different windows. She had always meant to drive around it. She merely sat in an easy chair gazing at it until she slept.

  They sat and chatted, Liz explaining the technical aspects of conception from zygote to blastocyst. When the doctor mentioned eggs Catherine was visibly startled.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I haven’t thought consciously about my eggs since high school.” It unnerved Catherine to know that the eggs she hadn’t appreciated might now prevent her from having a baby.

  They laughed but Catherine felt a nonspecific unrest that continued as she drove home. Before she went into the house she fed the chickens a goodly amount of late afternoon scratch. She didn’t want to think about eggs so she naturally thought about eggs. She thought about eggs through a long sleepless night. At 5:00 a.m. she poured herself a big clear glass of wine and sat by the window and waited for the reassurance of dawn. Her father’s doctor called as early as was permissible to say her father had died in the night. She felt nothing. The death didn’t stop her from thinking about eggs and she was beginning to feel cursed so she took a very long walk at dawn. At the far end of the west pasture there was a good-size rock pile that reminded her of a heap of eggs from a distance. Eggs again. She thought of riding on the stone boat behind Grandpa’s team gathering rocks years before.

  On her way back to the house she admonished herself for this silliness about eggs. That helped as recognizing absurdity lightens its load. She pondered the brutal simplicity of the human body, at the same time its intricacy. Liz had said that her only religious feelings came directly from her work. How could it all be an accident? Catherine couldn’t relate. She had prayed back during the Blitz that a bomb wouldn’t land on her head and it hadn’t. It seemed fair to pray for others but not yourself. She had prayed back in Sunday school that her father wouldn’t hit Robert but that prayer hadn’t been answered. She had so dreaded his funeral that she was tempted to call the funeral home to say she was ill and couldn’t attend. No one would be there except the divorcée and a few old hunting friends, she had thought. Then she remembered that it was the opener for trout fishing and the weather was fair so those men would likely be fishing. It saddened her that her father had had so few people to draw around him.

  She was having a rough day and napped for a half hour after her long walk. Unfortunately a nightmare came with the long nap. She was in a great marble hall and the floor was covered with eggs. The floor was tilted slightly and the eggs were rolling slowly and gently toward an altar she must reach. She stepped on a few and the crackle under her feet was repulsive to her in her sleep. She slipped and fell and broke a dozen more.

  She awoke in a sweat and quickly dismissed the idea of making an egg salad sandwich for lunch. Farm people were forever trying to use up their extra eggs, even in their potato salad, but not today. She drew a chuck patty from the freezer and also a rib steak to thaw for dinner. The beef came from a prime steer they had butchered last December. The meat was wonderful and she split it with Clyde and his wife and children who were thrilled. Truly fine beef is out of nearly everyone’s range. Her butcher had space to hang the carcass for forty days which increases flavor and all the shrinkage is only water. She was still full of agita about eggs which gave rise to the idea of getting a hysterectomy and living and dying childless. Instead she called her travel agent and booked a plane passage to England for March, to see her putative lover. He certainly didn’t think of himself that way.

  She was getting forgetful as if she were far older than she was. She had reserved a puppy and then neglected to pick it up at the owner’s. She knew she should have waited until she got home from England to get the pup but she also knew the owner wouldn’t tolerate further delay. She had read altogether too much on the subject of puppy raising and she knew she should be present for the first few weeks to properly imprint it but then she wanted a dog not a science project. She would have accepted her father’s Belle but he had left the dog to a sporting friend.

  When she got to the dog owner’s house the pups were in a small pole barn to protect them from rain. The mother wagged her tail in friendly greeting but Catherine’s choice, a male, rushed out as if to tear them apart. He was defending his two little sisters, or so he thought, against humans. The man picked him up and gave him a little shake, then held him for a minute. He handed the dog to Catherine and he growled lightly then flopped back in her arms and closed his eyes, another male sucker for a hugging.

  “I’ve been calling him Hudley or Hud. You know, after the movie when Melvyn Douglas says to his son Paul Newman, ‘Hud, you’re no damn good.’ Of course now he’s your dog so you can call him what you like.”

  “I think Hud is a good name,” she said. She was a little embarrassed because the dog was getting a tiny erection.

  “He never does that with me,” the man laughed. “It’s interspecies love.”

  Hud resisted being put in the crate for the ride home and wailed when they were in motion. About a mile down the gravel road she pulled over and let him out. He scrambled into the front seat and glared as if to say, “This is where I belong.” She could already see he wasn’t going to be easy though he sat on the front seat like a gentleman, short of snarling at some cows they passed. At home she fed the chickens which he ignored. The owner had had chickens and said that he had been trained to leave them alone. The exception was that the rooster strutted up and pecked him in the ass. This meant war. Hud growled and attacked. The rooster escaped by flying over the fence and landed at the edge of the water trough. She grabbed the pup, swatted him on the ass, and said, “No” loudly. He lay in the dirt obviously feeling wronged. She took him to the pump shed attached to the back door of the house which she had planned as his quarters. There were several old blankets and pillows arranged in a corner. She fed him a large bowl of puppy chow which he wolfed then arranged him on his bed. He promptly went to sleep as if he had done a long day’s work.

  She made her own dinner of fried breaded pork steak with cayenne and garlic in the flour. It was a distinctly lower-class dish which she had always loved. She also made broccoli in penance but did it Oriental style which made it nearly edible. Later that evening she was rereading some Evan S. Connell when Hudley starting howling on the back porch. She went out and said, “No” and slammed the door. Soon enough he resumed his howling and she called the owner in desperation. He admitted that all the pups had regularly slept on his daughter’s bed. “You’re going to have to gut it out,” the owner insisted, and he would finally learn to sleep alone. The owner put Catherine on the line with his daughter which led to nothing. The daughter finally said, “What’s wrong with Hud sleeping with you? You aren’t married, are you? He wants companionship. Don’t you?” Catherine let that one pass. The pup howled intermittently until midnight when Catherine quit reading and decided on bed. Tomorrow she would take Hud on a very long walk and tire him out. She would ex
haust him and then he would sleep normally.

  The minute she got into bed he started the worst howling yet. She figured he had seen the crack of light under the door of the dining room go out. She lasted only about ten minutes until she went out and got him and plopped him on the bed. He had an air of victory and she thought you asshole. It might be difficult to have a male houseguest. He snuggled up against her chest uncomfortably like a baby. He was immediately asleep and in the morning was in the same place snoring softly. She eased out of bed and he quickly followed her into the kitchen. She made herself two boiled eggs and cracked two for Hud which she mixed with his puppy chow to give him a shiny coat, as the puppy book encouraged. He ate his breakfast in seconds and slumped down in the blankets of the pump house and fell back asleep. Evidently the place was good enough for naps. She tiptoed out and went to the kitchen table and read poetry for half an hour, a long-held morning habit. She was currently reading an anthology of Chinese poetry. She had long loved Chinese poetry because it soothed her in a way other poetry didn’t. For instance Auden but especially Wallace Stevens could trouble her. Read them in the morning and then you had to carry the puzzle with you all day.

  Her good intentions double-crossed her again. She walked Hud on a long circular route out through the pasture. She estimated she had walked him five miles in two hours before he collapsed on the ground. It took a few minutes for her to figure out that he wanted to be carried which was awkward though they made it to the rock pile for a rest. He saw a black snake and he was immediately enraged, pursuing the snake until it disappeared within the rocks. She yelled, “No.” There were no rattlers on the farm but enough in the rock cliffs two miles behind it that she wanted to discourage any interest he had in snakes. Many people had lost small dogs to rattlers though a big dog could usually withstand the bite of a western diamondback. Her father had always carried a small .22 pistol loaded with magnum BB shot to plug them in the head but then she didn’t want to kill anything. It made more sense to train the dog to keep away from them. He ignored the cows, probably thinking that they were too large to be understood. It was quite funny when curious cows followed him until he was batty with anger. The cow and puppy were nose to nose with the cow ignoring the snarls with no idea that she might be under attack from a thirty-pound puppy.

  They were still a mile from home when Hud nestled in the grass demanding to be carried. He truly was still a baby, she thought, picking him up in her arms. When she reached the water trough she dropped him in because he was soiled from rolling in the dirt and manure in the pasture. He was furious paddling around growling. When she lifted him out and put him down he ran into the barnyard and rolled in dirt and chicken shit until he was suitably soiled and smelled interesting on his own terms. She knew that a daffy woman in the county seat had an obedience school for dogs and it was obvious that Hud should be enrolled. She got him in the pump house and washed him off with two wet, hot washcloths telling him, as he growled out of dislike for being washed, that if he was going to sleep with her like any male he couldn’t be a stinker. When she was little her brother Robert screamed and cried when Mother washed his hair. Now Robert was doing three to five in the Deer Lodge prison. She had gotten him a good lawyer but he had been impertinent and insulting to the judge, not a good idea. She remembered with amusement the story of an old cowboy down the road who had been arrested for drunk and disorderly yelling at the judge, “Kiss my ass you bald-headed son of a bitch. Come down off that bench and I’ll kick your ass all over the courtroom.” He did extra time but was much admired by the many louts in the area.

  Hud slept off his hike and Catherine made a beef stew with a lard crust. Her grandmother had taught her the crust for stews, pie, and her signature chicken potpie which Catherine hadn’t quite mastered and often craved. The only ones that had come close were in Jewish delicatessens in New York City. She would treat herself to one when she had the New York City blues from too little sunlight and too many people. Another option when she was feeling lethargic was to take the subway with her Jewish roommate down to Houston Street and go to Russ and Daughters for half a dozen pieces of herring then walk awhile, then down the street to Katz’s for a monster corned beef, tongue, or pastrami sandwich. Compared with Katz’s they simply didn’t know how to make a sandwich in Montana.

  A month later she had her hired man Clyde come in the kitchen for a meeting. He was nervous and fretful so she put his mind at ease explaining that she had to go to England so it would be better if he stayed in the house rather than his wife since she now had Hud who could be unmanageable. He had been a champ in his obedience classes but saw no application of what he learned there to his life at home. He had killed a woodchuck out by the barn and hidden it in a very thick grove of lilacs in front of the house. She had tried to crawl in to get the woodchuck away from him but failed. The woodchuck stank and Hud seemed prepared to run with his prize. Right now she was irked at the way Hud was fawning over Clyde’s leg as if he were a long-lost cousin. It was an absurd case of male bonding. Clyde said that he would be glad to stay here and look after Hud and then they took off for a stroll around the barnyard.

  Catherine took a hasty shower and noted in the bedroom’s full-length mirror that she was becoming a little thin. That wouldn’t do because she knew Tim didn’t like skinny women. It was a week before her departure and she vowed to load up on fatty pasta recipes. When she saw a pregnant woman at the grocery she was shot full of jealousy. She came home and put a pork shoulder in a pot of marinara sauce with lots of garlic to slow cook so that the meat and fat would soften making a wonderful pungent sauce for rigatoni. She had learned the recipe from a rather tubby red-haired Italian in New York who worked as a chef. He was an energetic lover but she had to ditch him because he drank too much and she had the horrid memory of her parents. She stuck to modest amounts of wine herself, white in the summer and red when the weather cooled. She naturally worried about addiction. Look at her miserable brother and drugs. He had merely stepped across the abyss of his parents’ alcoholism to narcotics.

  Chapter 9

  When she landed at Heathrow via Chicago her grandfather was waiting with the same big Jamaican driver from his job. She was tired but quite happy. On the way to his home they stopped at the Tube station where she had spent the Blitz so she could take a look. All the memories depressed her though she was now over thirty and that had been when she was twelve. A memory returned of a man holding a knife to her and making her blow him in a dark corner one day while the night guards were off duty and her grandparents were away. She gagged on his penis then vomited after he ejaculated. She had told no one and tried to repress the memory, not wanting to cause more trouble than they already had. Now when she saw the dark corner again she felt cold sweat rising to the skin of her forehead.

  She had a pleasant five days with her grandparents who looked awfully old and she promised to stop back after she visited Harold, Winnie, and Tim. Her grandmother understood but her grandfather worried that she would break her heart over the amputee. She rented a car and drove out to Cornwall with no difficulty on a beautiful sunny day. Grandmother had made her a brisket sandwich with horseradish, one of her favorites, and she pulled off on a side road and ate while staring at a field of just-sprouted oats on the side of the road and horses on the other including some rambunctious fillies to whom her stopping was an important event. They ran up to the stone fence and she touched their little noses and warm necks. She was thrilled to the point of shivering. She had talked on the phone to Clyde who had had no trouble with Hud. His behavior had been perfect except he had killed the rooster after it pecked at his face. The rooster was an asshole like all his predecessors so Catherine didn’t really care. She would get another one when she needed chicks. Hud had run into the lilac thicket with his kill but Clyde had retrieved the rooster and stewed it. He told her that while he was growing up in a big poor family his father had a connection for cheap roosters, and as a little boy he’d l
earned to pluck them. They were a tad gamier than hens but certainly edible, especially stewed with biscuits on the side.

  She spent a couple of days at Harold and Winnie’s, all the while staring at Tim’s place a mile down the road. She had confided in Winnie who was sympathetic. “The point is if you can afford a baby,” Winnie had said. “Why have a husband when they love to act like they don’t have wives when they’re away?” She finally called Tim early the next morning. He hadn’t answered her last two letters but she knew it was hard for him. The phone rang six times before he picked up and she thought of him shuffling to answer it on crutches. He sounded melancholy indeed but said this was a good day to visit because his parents would be away for their annual quarrel with the tax assessor.

  She put on a short skirt in hopes of sexually intriguing him but then it seemed too obvious and in the end she went for a skirt that was a little longer. It was nearly a half hour walk. Her feet got wet and she had to wind her way through two thick hedges and crawl over an awkward stone wall. Their sheepdog came out halfway and happily greeted her after a single bark. He bore a striking resemblance to the dog years before who thought he was Tim’s guardian. All the way on her walk she became more and more angry about the irrationality of war. The more than eight hundred thousand casualties at Verdun. A whole generation of young French had passed on and England also came close to losing a generation. She had grown up in the shadow of the two world wars and she sometimes could not bear to read the poets. “I have a rendezvous with death” indeed. Millions died.

  Tim was shy and withdrawn at first as she sat on a swing on the back porch. His arm stump fitted in a slot on the crutches and one of his legs was pegged. She sat facing him listening to the chattering birds and sipping coffee and trying to use her bare legs to advantage. He relented and they made their way into his bedroom. In the next six days they made love a couple of times a day. His parents at first pretended not to notice her presence and then welcomed her warmly. On her last day he looked at her oddly.