Loudermilk

by Lucy Ives

  Something happens.

  “Oh,” Marta continues, none too impressed by whatever the something is, “I’ll take that as a sign of your approval.” She sighs. Possibly she’s stretching. Her jewelry makes a sound. “Obviously, there is much to recommend this poem. It shows a staggering mastery of contemporary idiomatic speech and the many styles of lie in which we indulge, perhaps through a strange sort of necessity, to ‘get by,’ as it were, in the present-day U.S. Formally, if not thematically, it cites ‘The Waste Land,’ I suppose, the obsessive use of quotation. In a way there’s something a bit cynical about this—but you do take it somewhere else. I feel—exhaustion. Maybe a kind of dissociation? Maybe I prefer to think of the whole thing as a sort of golden bough, the poem as an offering for my entry into hell? Some late republican context for you! In any case, I love the language, the sick mania. The images! The thing about ‘sofas,’ yes, the banality but also the very scale of crimes of contemporary culture. Government as endlessly prognosticating talking head. Who are ‘they’? Who is ‘he’? Who is ‘I’? It’s a great treatment of the notion of propaganda and the mystification of agency that is so necessary to it. Now—” Marta coughs once, sharply, and then, with far too much warmth for Beans’s comfort, sighs again. “I do think there are a few points at which the lines sort of lag. For example, when we come to ‘Operational flexibility and social bravado,’ I think there’s a weak sort of vagueness and you aren’t doing yourself any favors. But you cut those two phrases and bring up ‘The / Old ways.’ You’ll have to change ‘had’ to ‘that,’ ‘taught cadets to be bullies, and I fought the team’s traditional kelly green,’ etc., but you get to keep the original sense. It’s even clearer, tauter, firmer.”

  There’s some silence.

  Marta asks, “Don’t you agree?”

  Loudermilk comes in: “I just wonder if what I’m writing is something that you or, uh, like, people can understand. Like, generally? I mean, this is all so good to know, not to mention, deep.”

  Marta does not take the bait. “Generally?”

  “I mean, uh, the, uh, creative side of this, you know? Like, are people going to actually care about my poem? I mean, outside of this place. Which of course is so wonderful.”

  “‘Are people going to actually care?’” Marta repeats. “People are—” she begins, but does not to know how to complete her sentence. “You are writing at a very high level, Troy,” she says.

  “Loudermilk,” Loudermilk corrects her.

  “I prefer Troy, if you don’t mind? It seems fitting somehow, for our age. Anyway, you can’t write for every reader. That’s not the point. You can only write for your best reader.”

  “Who’s that?”

  “A vital question.”

  “So, like, do you think you can help me find out?”

  “I’m already doing that for you, Troy.”

  “Oh, certainly!” Loudermilk is quick to agree.

  But Marta does not feel the same way Loudermilk feels about whatever it is they are currently supposed to be unpacking. “That is the point—of what, if anything at all, I am attempting to get across to you. Writing cannot be taught, and here is the reason why: You write, not to address the world as it is, but to create the world, all over again. Truly great writing does that. Truly great writing is not about the expectations or needs of contemporary readers. It’s not even really addressed to its own time. It shouldn’t be! It doesn’t need to be. This is the mistake so many of your classmates make, and I wonder if it’s not somehow encoded into the DNA of the workshop setting. Students come to this place expecting this, they think I can hold their hands, but this is not how things are. We do not write for one another—as or however much we may think that we are doing so. We’re not here to address one another. We’re here to confront something about humanity, to confront the fact that, as humans, we are fated to make things, and we are, meanwhile, the subjects of history. We each have two hands and this is, quite simply, what culture is! It’s where all the tragedies come from, but it’s also the source of great joy and mystery. I expect my students to be able to see past whoever’s sitting across the seminar table in front of them on a given day. We have to imagine that writing is an act of transhistorical communication, not a mere performance, and that’s what I most want you to understand! I need you for poetry, Troy. That’s why I summoned you here.”

  “You mean today?”

  “I mean today but also long before. I know you felt my call. It awakened something in you.”

  “I love it when you ladies take initiative.”

  But Marta keeps talking, saying something about measures of feeling, about excavating them, how the poet has to get a sense for something that she calls “mahss,” which she says is a German word, which she says does not mean the same thing as “mass” in English; that when making word selections, the poet has to weigh the “thingliness” of the word, the word’s “itness,” whatever this is, which is where Loudermilk switches off the MP3 recorder.

  Loudermilk gets up from his “desk” and strides around. He goes back to the desk.

  He begins to write something.

  Beans is, meanwhile, still processing Marta’s various pronouncements. An irrational thought keeps presenting itself: that it has been she all along who has been writing Loudermilk’s poems, in some not-insignificant sense—that she and she alone has willed all this into being, that Loudermilk, and the minion, and even Beans himself are mere sock puppets for some dialogic impulse the great Marta Hillary is attempting to work out.

  “Your boy Loudermilk has a sick, sick Land Cruiser,” Loudermilk intones, interrupting Beans’s despair. Loudermilk scribbles on. “THE JERKSHOP: A Novel,” he whispers reverently.

  But moving on from this anointed idiot: Beans is still here and sort of shakes himself awake and another excellent question is—not entirely a non sequitur, this—how did Anton Beans end up in this predicament? For Anton Beans has been working hard. Setting aside for the moment the matter of whether the institution truly deserves his heroism, Beans must ensure the Seminars are defended, that the program won’t become a breeding ground for unserious dabblers like yonder Loudermilk, who clearly want to dilute American literary art to so viscid and anodyne a consistency that it may at last be profitably branded, bottled, and purveyed via America’s proliferating upmarket health-food emporia, if not the soda machines at Panera Bread. Beans is, or so he believes, the only individual conscious enough to recognize the necessity of standing in the way of this eventuality, and it is for this reason that he has elected to take on the far-from-undemanding task of unmasking devious and captivating Loudermilk. And to accomplish this much-needed reveal, Beans must discover the diminutive minion.

  The minion is not in the place where the minion used to be, which is to say, within the confines of this surely condemnable shed where both Beans and lothario Loudermilk now find themselves, though of course mythomaniac Loudermilk can have no suspicion of the presence of a sleuthing Beans. Beans was surprised mid-snoop by the precipitous return of his devious colleague. The place isn’t really safe enough to have multiple exits. Beans had hoped—foolishly, he now sees—that by venturing into Loudermilk’s man lair he’d be able to find some trace indicating where it is Loudermilk has sequestered his little friend, who is clearly the true author within their arrangement. Loudermilk’s own bizarre, noisy attempts to “write” have convinced Beans that Loudermilk is, very definitely, not the poet. And not only this: he is impure. He’s writing, the philistine!, prose. Though of course Beans hasn’t found any material proof of the former presence of the minion. There have been no clues, no letters with forwarding addresses, no farewell notes, no forgotten belongings, nothing that appears to have touched the little guy. It’s tabula rasa. Loudermilk, for all his campy bro displays, is no fool. His cleverness may mostly be unconscious but it is, sadly, very, very real. This won’t be an easy case.

  Beans is about to sigh, but instead of sighing he catches his breath. Louderm
ilk’s heels have stopped tapping. The laughing and the whispers and the scratching of the pen have ceased. Beans hears what Loudermilk hears, which is a rapping, as of someone gently tapping, tapping at the shack’s front door.

  “Harumph!” says Loudermilk, in an anachronistic sonic frown. He shoves back his chair, pads off.

  Beans recognizes that this is his chance. Could he crawl out a window? Beans reflects gloomily that if he departs now he will do so without the information he has come to this cramped den of ambiguous iniquity to obtain. Also, he will exit with an antique prophylactic cemented to his head by what is surely the nonmetaphorical cement of Loudermilk’s spermatozoa. It will be, to say the least, demoralizing. Beans may never again have the emotional wherewithal to probe Loudermilk’s treachery. Loudermilk may—if Beans leaves him to his project now—get away with it.

  This cannot be permitted. Certainly not at Marta’s school.

  Anton Beans mentally reassumes the position.

  He hears another voice. It isn’t, all too predictably for what seems to be Beans’s inordinately poor luck regarding all things Loudermilk, the minion. It’s a female. At first Beans hears tone rather than discrete words. It seems like she’s building up to something? They draw nigh to the door of Loudermilk’s boudoir/writing atelier.

  A girl says, “It’s very you.”

  “That’s not so unusual. Now what was it you wanted?”

  “Oh my god, Loudermilk, testy much? Let’s just take a moment to celebrate the fact that we’re here, together and alone? I notice, by the way, that you have a bed.”

  “No.”

  Beans initiates a secular prayer. It seems that this is the voice of Marta and Don’s teenage daughter. Beans either has primary information or is about to learn more about this young woman than he has ever wanted to know. Perhaps both. Also, his right side is entirely numb.

  “Loudermilk, you’re very shy today.”

  “I am not shy.”

  “No offense, but given our track record, you do seem pretty shy.”

  “This is a house I happen to share, Lizzie.”

  “Since when is sharing a thing you do? Also, what happened to Harry?”

  “He’ll be right back.”

  “I totally believe you.”

  “OK, great, well, I’m glad we got that settled. Let me know how your art project goes. Or better yet, don’t.”

  “Loudermilk, I know you’re not really this mean. I came over because I want to tell you something. Don’t you want to hear what it is?”

  “No.”

  “No? It’s really important. I have this idea, and I was thinking, like, maybe you want in?”

  “Hmm, let me check. Nope!”

  “You haven’t even heard what it is!”

  “Do I need to?”

  “Yes, because it’s totally amazing and I promise you will be sorry if you miss out.”

  “Thanks for letting me know!”

  “Loudermilk, I’m serious. Like, because”—this girl Lizzie is whispering now—“you’re a great artist and I for one happen to really know this. I know. I’m sorry but I know about you and Harry. I’ve been around a lot of poets, I mean, really a lot, and I know what you guys are doing. I mean, unlike a lot of people I’ve talked to Harry. I know who he is. I know who you are! And I don’t care! Honestly! You’re an artist, too! A great artist. Like I’m an artist, a great artist, I hope, and I thought we—”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Loudermilk is impassive. “You and I are not going to collaborate on your latest papier-mâché princess crown. You saw this house, where I do my important writing, and now—”

  “But you don’t do any writing, Loudermilk.”

  Beans is not able to help himself. He’s lost track of his body and even where he is, in the sponge cake of this saga. And, quite simply, he farts.

  It might be audible.

  “What was that?” Loudermilk demands.

  Beans clenches up.

  “Ew,” says Lizzie Hillary. “You farted, Loudermilk. And, FYI, you didn’t write those poems.”

  Beans silently exalts the random benevolence of the universe.

  “I heard that, too, and yes, yes, I did.”

  “No, no, you didn’t, Loudie-Lou. Harry’s the one who writes those poems. I know that. Listen, anyways, it really doesn’t matter to me who does what. It’s like my mom always says: ‘It doesn’t matter who’s writing the poems. It’s that they get written.’ And, I think, I mean, you’re an artist.”

  “I’m a poet, Lizzie. I’m a very good poet. I’m about to change the entire game.”

  “Stop it! This is so dumb, Loudermilk. I mean, maybe you’ll change the game, but don’t forget the fact that I get you. I totally get all of this. We’re like peas in a pod, you’ll see.”

  “That’s nice, but no one’s going to see anything, because you’re leaving right now. Actually, both of us are leaving. A rotten egg just shat itself.”

  “Actually, I’m not.”

  “Yes, yes, you are.”

  “No, no, I’m not. Loudermilk, don’t you get it? You made me do this. You’re the artist, like, the artist and the muse! You make me do things. That’s what artists do. I can’t stop now. I’ve never been this inspired. I’m so totally, I don’t even know, I mean, everything you do is amazing. Who even cares about poetry? Loudermilk, I’m in love with you.”

  “YOU’RE NOT IN LOVE WITH ME!” Loudermilk screams.

  The front door bangs.

  Then it bangs again, softly.

  Which leaves Anton Beans alone.

  Thirty-Eight

  In Advance of the Broken Arm

  Never let it be said that Anton Beans is not persistent. What Beans realizes next is not that he needs to get out of the house, because this is something that he already knows. He needs to get out, and also he grasps, with the same monomaniacal swiftness native to the well-tuned Beansian brain, that Loudermilk has not departed with the aim of leading his lady friend in an elaborate high-impact LARP. No, though indeed Loudermilk may live his life as if each new day dawns upon an ever more outlandish and arbitrary improv scenario, Loudermilk is not under any illusion that his life is either a game or a show—or, for that matter, a realist novel. Loudermilk does what he does because he has to, and not because he believes, at base, that any of this is fun.

  Beans, currently dissimulating himself behind a set of mildew-infested laurel bushes, is about to benefit. And the reason Beans is about to benefit is that Loudermilk, whom he can perceive striding off into the near distance on long, khaki-encased legs, has a very serious bee in his bonnet and the name of this bee has got to be Harry, the minion, the little friend. Beans pops back out from behind one particularly spotty shrub and sprints up the block, taking cover again on the south side of a mailbox. His heart pounds and his stomach sloshes. Loudermilk, and Beans, are fast approaching the heart of the Grecian quarter.

  Loudermilk apparently finds a certain solid-looking sorority to his liking. He stops at the edge of its lawn, pivots. Beans creeps closer. Beans gets behind a white Focus. He observes, across the Focus’s back seat, Loudermilk’s steely progress. Loudermilk is, from what Beans can discern, the opposite of delighted.

  Though, to be fair, Beans reflects, it is difficult to say just what it is that the minion has done wrong. Is it that the minion has committed unspeakable carnal acts with somebody living on the inside of this sex-segregated mansion? Given the minion’s previously observed proclivities, not to mention the kid’s obviously crippling anxiety disorder, that seems unlikely. Beans’s eyes narrow. Loudermilk is going around the back of the building. Beans skips out from behind the budget vehicle, skitters across the lawn, throws himself behind the tumescent trunk of a convenient oak.

  Beans observes from beside this helpful quercus as something relatively, though not entirely, unexpected occurs. Loudermilk, with the assistance of a rusty fire escape that whinnies with his weight as if alive, is scaling the rear of the
sorority. Beans curses himself for having neglected to provision himself with a camera on this particular fact-finding mission. Surely this act on Loudermilk’s part is the epitome of what is forbidden in this intransigent social sphere!

  Anton Beans recognizes that it will not be possible to imitate Loudermilk’s choice of route without running an inordinately high risk of being observed, as well as of having the fire escape collapse under the weight of Beans’s hypermasculine, if pleasingly rounded, physique. Loudermilk continues to ascend. Anton Beans grits his teeth. He recalls third-grade gym class, when he had made a name for himself as a wall-climber to be reckoned with, an inspired negotiator of ceiling ropes and ramparts. Though this was a long time ago, and though the Beansian corpus has met with a certain amount of expansion over the intervening years, Beans believes that the ability to convey your body weight vertically by means of your own arms and legs has to be enough like riding a bicycle that, once learned, it’s something you never forget.

  Thirty-Nine

  Their Penultimate Encounter

  Harry is having better days these days than he has in a long time. It may have something to do with the solitude. Or maybe it has something to do with the contrast between the new solitude and what he can recall now of the minor hell that was the experience of living constantly in Loudermilk’s shadow.

  Loudermilk’s shadow was long and reeked of stale semen.

  Which is why Harry’s metaphorical soul descends drearily into the literal soles of his Converse when Loudermilk’s face abruptly appears in his window this unseasonably warm March afternoon, interrupting Harry’s view of the two pines.