The Keillor Reader

by Garrison Keillor

  It wasn’t only tealessness that cursed the prairie, Earl thought. The land was bleak and windswept, and religion offered little comfort. Christianity taught that humanity is worthless and vile but that if we agree to hate ourselves God will forgive us. Earl longed to leave; he wrote numerous letters to his dad at the Hoover Institution, which were answered by an assistant who thanked him for his interest and passed along the congressman’s best wishes. Earl struggled through the Platt public school, where his love of tea made him a target for cruelty, and boys drew pictures of him wearing a dress, with snot pouring from his nose, and a petunia sticking out of his butt.

  But Earl couldn’t survive a day without tea. To him, tea represented civilization and kindness. He found a book in the Platt Free Lending Library, Wild Teas of North America, and from it learned to make dandelion tea, sassafras, rhubarb tea—each one delicious and comforting. Sandy thrived on the teas he made, became lovelier and more self-assured. “They are even better than a high colonic,” she said. Her color improved. She let her hair hang loose and kicked Butch out of the trailer and made him sleep in the truck. When he begged to be allowed back, she told him to stick his head in the toilet and flush it.

  Butch hung around the Spud for two days, groveling and begging, and Sandy wouldn’t give him the time of day. Butch told Earl, who was washing dishes after school, “You don’t get what you want in this world. Keep that in mind. People are no damn good for the most part.”

  Earl said, “Butch, that is a coffee philosophy. I could make you a cup of tea that would change your way of thinking. This tea could turn on the porch light in your eyes. If you drank tea, Sandy would love you to pieces.” Paula, her back to them, snorted.

  “Truck drivers do not drink tea,” said Butch. “It does not happen. Only thing that could put a light in these eyes would be if Sandy pulled up her dress and gave me the green light. And that’s not going to happen either.”

  TEA BULLETIN. TWENTY-SEVEN PERCENT OF ALL LONG-HAUL TRUCK DRIVERS NOW DRINK TEA, EVEN GUYS HAULING STEEL BEAMS, CARS, EVEN HOGS AND STEERS. MORE AND MORE, THEY REQUEST TEA AT TRUCK STOPS AND TELL THE WAITRESS HOW TO MAKE IT CORRECTLY. THE TEA MUST ALWAYS BE PUT IMMEDIATELY INTO THE BUBBLING, BOILING WATER. FRESH LOOSE TEA, NOT A TEABAG.

  For a few years, Earl kept checking the Personals section in the Platt Pilot, hoping to see: Lost: our beloved son Earl Grey, at a restaurant. Call home, honey, and we’ll come and fetch you. We love you so much. Mom and Dad.

  But no such ad ever appeared, only ads from men seeking younger women: Married Guy, 57, seeks single woman, 18–19, must be a real looker; pert and perky, and have a thing about bulky fellas who don’t say too much. Send photos.

  “Your folks’re sure missing a good thing, not watching you grow up, honey,” Sandy told Earl six years later, when he was twenty-one. It was January and the arctic winds swept the frozen tundra and moaned in the weather stripping around the front door of the Lucky Spud and whistled in the chimney. It was cold and dark and a heavy pallor hung in the air, the aroma of burnt coffee.

  And then a beautiful thought occurred to him: I don’t have to stay. I can go. (Middle children often suffer from stationariness as a result of being crunched in the middle with siblings on either side, and many of them take years to realize that free choice is an option—that a person can, if he wishes, have a will of his own, decide things, and act.)

  Earl withdrew his savings from the Platt State Bank, $420, and arranged a ride with Butch, who was hauling a load of soybeans to San Francisco.

  “God bless you, Earl Grey, for making my life a lot less dingy,” said Sandy, and they had a last pot of tea together. It was delicious. So calm and good.

  “I had no idea my life would turn out to be so rotten,” Butch told Earl as they cruised west in the big rig. “Back when she drank ten cups of java a day, she was the lovingest woman you ever met, and then she quit. If I ever meet the man who turned her on to tea, I’d knock his block off.” Earl dropped off to sleep, and when he awoke, the truck was in Palo Alto, parked in front of the Hoover Institution, a Spanish-mission edifice like a California bank.

  “Well, this is as far as you go, I guess. Hope you enjoy your family. See you around,” said Butch, anxious to get going. Earl climbed down from the cab and a moment later the big rig pulled away and disappeared over the hill.

  TEA LORE: TEA IS A PART OF FAREWELL CEREMONIES IN MANY CULTURES MORE ADVANCED THAN OUR OWN. AMERICAN MEN DREAD EMOTIONAL GOODBYES AND WILL WALK AWAY FROM A MARRIAGE AS IF GOING TO THE CORNER STORE FOR A PACK OF SMOKES. IN OTHER CULTURES, PEOPLE SAY GOODBYE BY SITTING DOWN AND ENJOYING A LAST POT OF TEA TOGETHER, RELISHING THEIR COMMON HISTORY, NOT AFRAID TO SHED TEARS, EMBRACING, FACING THE FUTURE BRAVELY.

  The Hoover Institution was locked. He pushed the buzzer and a voice came over the intercom: “State your name, your business, and whom you wish to see.”

  “My name is Earl Grey, and I am here to be reunited with my father, Congressman Grey,” said Earl, looking into the intercom speaker as if it had eyes he could appeal to.

  “The congressman is gone,” said the voice. Earl asked, “Where?” The voice said it did not know, nor did it know when he would return. Furthermore, it said, he had never mentioned a missing child.

  Earl asked if he could leave a message for his dad. “Go ahead,” said the voice.

  “Tell him,” said Earl, “to go and get stuffed.”

  When he found out once and for all that he was abandoned, Earl Grey was free to go and make his own life. And he did, with one stroke of good fortune after another. He met Malene Monroe, who was then singing with the Tommy D’Orsay Orchestra, and he made her a pot of Earl Grey tea that cured her croup and enabled her to go on and record “Tea for Two.” His royalties from that paid for three years in Sumatra, where he perfected his tea blend. He set up shop in London, developed a nice accent, and when he arrived back in America in 1970, people assumed he was English nobility, and sales of his tea took off. He became a multimillionaire.

  But success didn’t affect him. He knew that middleness is an inner quality and you carry it all your life, in all circumstances. A middle child can become a star, stand on a stage in a gold lamé suit with six spotlights trained on him, and people in the audience will be looking at the band, the third saxophonist from the right, and thinking, “He reminds me of somebody, but who? A guy who was at my wedding . . . But which marriage? The third, I think. Was he one of the caterers? Was he Barb’s brother?”—meanwhile, the middle child has performed the Sextet from Lucia, all six parts, but his essential middleness deflects the crowd’s attention to the decor, the candle in the lamp on the table, the waiter—doesn’t he remind you of someone who was in a movie once?

  Earl and his folks were almost reunited on a cable TV show called Bringing It Home many years later. His mom and dad were living in Miami and the cable network flew them first class to New York City, where Earl’s headquarters were. Earl rode the subway to the studios, only to find out that his father had a headache and he and Mom were not feeling up to seeing Earl, and that rather than cancel the show, his parents would be portrayed by actors. The host of the show, a smiley man named Brant whose hair was as big as a breadbox, introduced the actors, who came out with tear-dimmed eyes and threw their arms around Earl, who hugged them back but only a little. He was forty-seven now and owned six homes and was in excellent health and his parents just didn’t matter that much, and besides the actors were nothing like his mother and dad. They wore wigs and they spoke in very fakey Southern accents.

  Brant grinned like a house afire. “Earl Grey,” he cried, “today your tea business has made you a multimillionaire, your name known around the world. Wouldn’t you have to agree that maybe, just maybe, your being left behind in North Dakota may have been the best thing that ever happened to you?”

  “No,” Earl said, “of course it wasn’t. Don’t be ridiculous. It is criminal for parents to aband
on a child, and though I forgive them, I know that my parents deserve to be given long prison sentences.”

  The actor playing his dad said, “What kind of a nutcase are you to say that about your own parents?”

  “Narcissists make lousy parents and mine were two of the worst. They had children for one reason, personal vanity, and they used us as props, and hadn’t the faintest idea who we were.”

  Brant did not blink. He looked at “Mrs. Grey” and said, “He’s quite a boy. You must be very proud of him.”

  “Yes,” the actress said. “He has brought so much happiness into our lives.” And Earl realized that his accusations would be edited out of the program and that in the final cut he would appear to be a loyal and grateful son. He was a middle child, easily ignored, and there was nothing he could do about it.

  2.

  DON GIOVANNI

  My bread and butter was the good people of Lake Wobegon, but writing about good people is an uphill climb. Their industriousness, their infernal humility, their schoolmarmish sincerity, their earnest interest in you, their clichés falling like clockwork—it can be tiring to be around them. One wants them for neighbors, of course. But a dinner party with the righteous can be a long three hours. And so a man who was well brought up is naturally attracted to people who sit slugging down whiskey, blowing clouds of smoke, reminiscing about misspent lives—and without contrition! Alcoholic adventures cheerfully recalled, lubricious nights, ingenious larceny and graft, laws scoffed at, justice avoided, authority bamboozled. Scripture tells us not to sit in the seat of the scornful, but I have enjoyed sitting near those seats, close enough to catch what they have to say and to admire their adventurous spirit.

  Marriage is the deathbed of romance, says the old seducer through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Figaro, my friend, a man owes it to himself to stop and consider the three advantages of the single life.

  One, if you’re single, you can think. Two, you can act. Three, you can feel.

  You put your money in the bank and you land great bargains from auctions. You come and go, you eat when you’re hungry, you stay up late, you get drunk as it pleases you, and you have two or three terrific lovers who visit when you invite them and stay about the right length of time.

  Enjoy yourself. That’s what we’re here for.

  Some men should have two lovers, some three, it depends on the man, said the Don. Never limit yourself to one: monogamy leads to matrimony, and marriage, my boy, is pure struggle. Of course the single life has problems—having two lovers is a scheduling problem, and three is a real test of a man’s organizational ability, and yet those are the very problems a man hopes for, Figaro. Living alone in a cushy old apartment with your friendly housekeeper coming on Fridays to put a shine on things, the corner laundry delivering clean clothes on Wednesdays, and your girlfriends dropping in on various evenings, each of them crazy about you, eager to please—you know how accommodating young women can be when they want to be. Think of having three like that at once, their eyes alight at the sight of you, their lips moist, the flush of desire on their cheeks. Sound good? My, yes. The Don smiled at the thought.

  “No woman would accept such an arrangement. You would have to lie to her,” said Figaro.

  Yes, certainly, said the Don.

  “To lie to three women at once? To keep inventing stories about where you went? Is that nice?”

  The girls who share my bed want to share my life, said the Don, and that would leave me no life at all.

  “But to be so selfish—what if everyone were? What if your parents had been?”

  I am selfish, Figaro, because I have a larger capacity for pleasure than other people do. Pleasure is only a hobby to them and to me it is a true vocation: the joy of eating a sumptuous meal in the company of a sharp-tongued woman who secretly adores me—who argues with me and ridicules my politics and my ideas, the things I don’t care about, and who, in a couple hours, will lie happily next to me, damp and drowsy, smiling—this is to me the beauty of the male existence. As for my parents, what they did wasn’t my responsibility.

  • • •

  Figaro had dropped in to see his old friend at the Sportsman’s Bar in Fargo, where the Don was engaged for three weeks to play the piano. Figaro had moved to Fargo with Susanna shortly after their marriage, and he had not laid eyes on the Don since the lothario had attempted to seduce Susanna on their wedding night—one of those cases of mistaken identity in dimly lit places, so Figaro bore no grudge.

  The Sportsman was an old dive near the Great Northern yards where the switching crews liked to duck in for a bump of whiskey on their coffee breaks. It was not a place you would bring a woman, Figaro thought, and any woman you might find in there you wouldn’t want to know better. The little marquee out front said, BBQ BEEF S’WICH $1.95 HAPPY HOUR 4–6 TWO DRINKS FOR PRICE OF ONE D G’VANNI IN HUNTERS LOUNGE NITELY.

  When Figaro stepped into the gloom, through the cloud of beer and smoke and grease he heard someone playing “Glow Worm,” and recognized the Don’s florid glissandos, the tremors and trills, the quavers and dips, the big purple chords rising, the mists, the Spanish moss, the grape arbor in the moonlight, the sighs, the throbbing of the thrush. The Don sat all big and glittery at the keyboard in the rear of the deserted room, in an iridescent silver jacket that picked up every speck of light from the 60-watt spotlight overhead. The silver threads went nicely with the Don’s flowing bleached-blond hair and the gaudy rings on his fingers, chosen for maximum sparkle. Six rings and six chunks of diamond, a ruby-studded bolero tie, a silver satin shirt with pearl buttons, and silver-and-turquoise earrings.

  He looked much the worse for wear, Figaro thought, as if he had been living in these clothes for a number of days, including some rainy ones, but he was full of beans, as always. He told Figaro he would soon be back in New York, where a big recording contract was in the offing, a major label, large sums of cash that he was not at liberty to disclose—he rubbed his fingers together to suggest the heavy dough involved—the people were secretive types, you understand, said the Don.

  “And you? How are you? Have you found a wife yet?” asked Figaro.

  The Don laughed. It was their old joke.

  Marriage looks very appealing until you are in the company of married people and then the horrors of the institution cry out to you, said the Don. Married guys can’t go nowhere. There always has to be a plan, a list of errands, a system, a destination. Alone, your life is intuitive, like poetry. With a woman, it’s a form of bookkeeping.

  “So—how long are you in town?” asked Figaro, trying to change the subject, but the Don had more to say.

  And a married guy is responsible for everything, no matter what. The guy alone is responsible for every day of marriage that is less than marvelous and meaningful. “Why don’t we ever make love anymore?” That is the number 2 all-time woman’s question in the world. Number 1 is “Why don’t we ever talk to each other?” Now, there’s a great conversational opener. You’re ensconced on the couch, perusing the funny papers, sipping your hot toddy, feeling mellow and beloved, and she plops down full of anger. You take her hand.

  “My love, light of my life, my interest in you is as vast as the Great Plains. Please. Share with me what is in your heart so that we may draw close in the great duet of matrimony.”

  But she doesn’t want to converse, of course, she only means to strike a blow. “Humph,” she says, standing up. “I know you. You are only saying that.”

  That is marriage, Figaro. A boy’s constant struggle to maintain his buoyancy.

  “Some of what you say, I suppose, is true,” said Figaro, “but a guy needs a wife, someone who cares if you’ve collapsed in the shower with your leg broken.”

  Well, your chances of collapsing in the shower are sharply improved by being married, the Don said. Marriage is a disaster for a man, it cuts him up and broils his spirit piece by piece,
until there is nothing left of him but the hair and the harness.

  An unhappy man with heavy eyelids appeared in the doorway to the Lounge, hands on hips, chewing a mouthful of peanuts. He appeared to be an owner or manager of some sort. “You on a break right now, Giovanni? Or is the piano busted?”

  The Don turned with the greatest disdain and said, “Oh. Cy. I thought it was you.”

  “I hired you as a piano player, Giovanni, not a philosopher. I’d like to hear less thinking and more tinkling. A word to the wise.” The man turned and disappeared.

  The Don looked down at the keyboard, plunked a couple notes, got up from the bench, and motioned to a table in the corner. “We can sit there,” he said.

  “A life without a woman is the lonesomest life I can imagine,” Figaro said with a sigh. “I would be miserable without Susanna.”

  Life is lonesome, said the Don, and lonesome isn’t bad, compared to desperate. But of course a man should not live without women. Luckily, marriage is not a requirement. Nobody needs monogamy except the unenterprising. Hungry women are everywhere! Lonely housewives who advertise on recipe cards pinned to a bulletin board in the Piggly Wiggly—wistful ladies at the copier, putting flesh to glass, faxing themselves to far-off officedom—fervid women sending out e-mail invites—hearty gals working out on the weight machine who drop a note in your street shoes—cocktail joints along the freeway, wall-to-wall with women whose lights are on and motors are running!—Figaro, they’re out there! Free. No legal contract required. What could be better?

  Figaro shook his head. “The life of a libertine ends badly,” he said. “You get old, your teeth turn yellow, you smell like a mutt, and you have to pay women to look at you. Much better to marry, to be faithful, to build a deeper partnership that will hold together through the terrible storms of old age.”