The English Major

by Jim Harrison

  Now in the night with my empty tablet before me I felt like it was early spring calving time and I was sitting out in the shed with a thermos checking and re-checking my mother cows for any birth difficulties. They were so patient in their discomfort and when one in labor leaned against me for solace I felt of some use in this world.

  It wasn’t until 4 a.m. after several cups of coffee and a glass of bourbon to calm my nerves that a small lightning bolt struck. I had been pacing the room, glancing now and then at a bookshelf full of the sort of riff-raff-books bought and abandoned by people on vacation, you know, “How to Make a Fortune by Cheating,” or “The Zen of Chocolate.” In the corner I discovered “Atlas of the North American Indian,” a Livingston Library book three years overdue. My moment of “Eureka!” came instantly. Each of our United States must have an Indian name for a tribe that originally inhabited the area. Simple as that. My skin fairly tingled and I poured myself an ample 4 a.m. nightcap to celebrate the moment. I walked out into the yard and looked up at the stars remembering Lorca’s line about “the enormous night straining her waist against the Milky Way.” To the south I could see the outlines of the Absaroka Mountains, the largest of which I intended to climb before Ad arrived in a few days. If not God I would be closer to these resplendent stars that seemed to be boring tiny holes in my head, a trepanation to ease the pressure of my own creation.

  I went to bed but my mind was whirling and then cranking like a Bach organ fugue. When I closed my eyes I would see mountains and stars, but also Cora my pet sow, Marybelle’s pussy descending toward my face, Lola carrying around a dead muskrat in her mouth as if it were a trophy, Viv screeching at me because I hadn’t learned a particular polka step, and then real horrors from the classroom long ago like trying to teach my bored nitwits how to diagram sentences and discuss participles or current events. They were assigned to watch Walter Cronkite every evening but rarely did so. And worse yet my one brief roommate, the poet, who would eat Franco American Spaghetti right out of the can and keep saying “The arts are a cruel mistress.”

  Obviously I hadn’t needed to drink an entire pot of coffee to create whatever, a neophyte’s mistake. At first light I went outside, sat in a lawn chair and listened for birds but these weren’t many with August being the molting season. If your feathers are changing and you can’t fly well, just shut up. Mosquitoes were biting me but I didn’t care because I was dwelling on the question of whether Michigan should be re-named after the Ottawa, Chippewa or Potawatomi. The last would be a little awkward on the tongue to be widely accepted.

  MONTANA REDUX V

  It was odd indeed to finally fall asleep at a time that I had been getting up as a farmer for twenty-five years. Through half-closed eyes I had watched the nuthatch storing seeds in the bark of a large willow and decided to call it Banker Bird as I have read that nuthatches will store as many as 300,000 seeds a season, dozens of times what they’ll ever need. Before I stumbled inside to bed to escape the mosquitoes I stared long and hard at the mountain I intended to climb when I woke up which would not be at dawn because it was already dawn. I was prepared to fail at mountain climbing because I knew vaguely there was more to it than wandering up a steep ascent. My dissipating thoughts of life in terms of victory or defeat came along willy nilly from a culture that pretended that life was far more solid than it actually was. The edges were actually blurred and moved along with the infinitely variable shape of a river.

  I got up at nine and ate a fried egg and pork steak sandwich. You don’t climb a mountain with a bowl of Cheerios for fuel, or so I suspected. I had a rare headache from my middle of the night pot of coffee and no aspirin at hand because as a man of moderate non-artistic habits I never had headaches. The pain transferred itself to a heartache when I crossed the Ninth Street Bridge and saw a girl jogging with a geezer like myself, likely her father or a man with secret powers which would mean vast wealth. The girl wore rose colored shorts and her butt and legs were beyond world class, so fine that my heart turned itself up a notch. I slowed down in order that my neurons might duly record this butt’s splendor and when I passed I noted that her cool, intense face signified a true “Belle Dame Sans Merci.” I had quickly become horny as a toad and called Marybelle on Onstar, receiving the message that her “boss” wouldn’t allow personal calls except at lunch or after six. Despite wanting to hear her sexy voice this amused me. When Robert was in the eighth grade he directed the seniors in a play mustering the authority of a drill sergeant. I stopped in the Livingston park and pretended to be looking for something in the front seat to allow the joggers to pass. The girl gave me a scornful smile as if knowing what I was up to. Her companion was soaked with sweat and wheezing while she was dry. Ad told me that he treats several older joggers who have lost inches in height from compacting hip and knee joints. He also said that no creature in nature jogs.

  My mountain climb was a tad farcical. I definitely re-discovered my age. Though I had always been an habitual walker my weeks in the car had delaminated my legs. I had called the Chamber of Commerce at breakfast for information on the trail head and when I parked at Pine Creek I forgot my canteen of water because I was reading a sign that advised being careful about grizzly bears. Since they have the decided advantage I wondered how one went about being careful? I certainly wasn’t driving all the way back to town for an aerosol can of the recommended pepper spray.

  I walked upward for fours hours taking exactly fifty three brief breaks, holding on to trees for support. My legs jiggled, wobbled, and twitched of their own accord. My feet ached in their ankle high basketball shoes. I had a brief view of the end of the tree line when I turned around at four p.m. at which point two elderly ladies (about my age) whizzed by me smiling in their hiking outfits. It was painful to my shins to walk down and when I met two young men coming toward me who saw my grimace one quipped, “Buy a pair of hiking boots.” No shit. I stopped and stood under a small waterfall after laying my billfold aside. I forgot my billfold and had to return a ghastly hundred yards uphill to fetch it at which point it occurred to me that one of the young men reminded me of one of the three English Major classmates of mine at Michigan State who ended up committing suicide within a few years of graduation. I wasn’t the only one who took life and literature seriously.

  When I reached the Tahoe it was hot in the parking lot and I nearly gagged on the warm water of my canteen. My feet could barely work the gas and brake pedals. This was clearly the nadir of my trip though I didn’t realize on the way to town the worst was yet to come as I had so screwed up my leg muscles and tendons that I could barely fish for three days. I was famished and I drove directly to the Bistro which was across the street from the Owl Bar, first stopping at the bar for two quick vodkas on ice. I ran into the fishing guide who told me I looked like shit. I replied that I had tried to climb a mountain and he said, “Why” before turning his attention back to the barmaid.

  I sat at an outside table at the Bistro so I could smoke. Lo and behold my waitress was the beauteous butted jogger who had worn the rose colored shorts. It was early in the dinner hour and she wasn’t busy so we chatted. At first she seemed inexplicably daffy. For instance when I asked her about the health of her senior jogging partner she said he was “just another capitalist chiseler” who had recently moved to Montana, a Connecticut stockbroker who decided he would become a painter. She was the daughter of a miner from Butte, a union man, thus her old style anti-rich lingo that I hadn’t heard much of since my dad died. She was a student at the University of Montana in Missoula but in October she was headed to Guatemala to work in a Catholic mission for orphans. My heart leapt when she said she preferred older men like her dad but then she added that she disapproved of drugs, alcohol and sex. I ate a skirt steak and the best French fries of my life and a big glass of red wine while she dealt with three young business types two tables away. When one of them grabbed her arm she said, “Hands off cocksucker” and he blushed. They finished their drinks and left and when
she came back to my table she asked why I looked crippled when I had crossed the street from the Owl. I explained my mountain climbing misadventure and she said, “Good for you for trying,” adding that she had a friend that did massage therapy if my muscles got desperate. I couldn’t help but ask her why she was anti sex, drugs and alcohol and she said it was partly religious but mostly because everyone she knew had screwed up their lives with sex, drugs and alcohol. When I paid my bill and left a big tip she laughed and said, “Even you old guys get fucked up.” I looked over and her Connecticut stockbroker was glaring at us from the restaurant door. She whispered to me that he paid her three hundred bucks to pose nude and “he can’t paint shit.”

  On the short drive home I resolved not to go back to the Bistro and torture myself looking at and talking to the waitress, whose name was Sylvia. I needed to become a monk of my art and sketch out the new names of the states before Ad arrived in three days. At the rental I hobbled down to the river and felt a flash of rage that the rich bastard got to see Sylvia naked. I could barely draw a stick figure human but it wouldn’t hurt for me to buy a sketch pad and give it a try. For three hundred bucks I could buy myself a permanent memory that might somehow help my project. Ad had quoted Freud saying that sexual repression helped artists and writers create. Three hundred bucks was a lot of money but was it if it facilitated my art? I was looking at long days remodeling Grandpa’s house and it would be nice to have a beautiful memory. The theme in literature was called “carpe diem” which means “seize the day.” Another Latin phrase I could recall from my student days was “noli me tangere,” or “don’t touch me” which was the invisible sign on Sylvia’s pussy.

  I waddled back inside the house, grabbed the porto phone, and settled back in my La-Z-Boy chair. I called Sylvia and arranged to have a massage from her friend and also a posing session for the next morning. I asked her to bring along a sketch pad as I had left mine in San Francisco. “Have you ever owned a sketch pad?” she asked with bell clear laughter, then hung up after I gave directions. I was a crippled old goat sitting there remembering a line of Shelley’s that I loathed, “Upon the thorns of life I bleed.”

  I slept in the Lazy Boy from eight until two in the morning. I eased out of the chair with difficulty and crawled around the floor for a few minutes to relax my muscles enough so I could stand. Fuck mountains, I thought. This time I made two cups of coffee rather than a full pot. I laid out my ball points and my intimidating empty tablet. Unlike teaching and farming where the future was full day by day I felt a specific and wonderful freedom as I made a draft of alternatives for many of the state names. There was a problem that the Indians were there before the states and consequently slipped over the borders that were later established. I had to make critical choices in the end but right now it was important to keep it open ended. I had a glass of whiskey after an hour and exulted in the freedom of my mind at play. Thoreau had pointed out that a farm owned the farmer rather than vice versa but now I had gradually realized that I owned myself and could give myself to the highest calling, albeit late in life. I cautioned myself against the manic aspects of alcohol that might blur the fine lines of both art and life knowing full well that I wouldn’t have had the craw to call Sylvia if I hadn’t had the two vodkas at the Owl and the bottle of wine with dinner. I recalled that a prominent Michigan writer of Irish decent had said that alcohol was the writer’s black lung disease. I had been cagey with Sylvia, first ordering up the massage so she wouldn’t be spooked visiting me alone. I had never received a massage before and was a bit uncertain if it would be money well spent or was a stepping stone.

  I slept angelically from four a.m. until nine, had a light breakfast, showered, then sat down to wait, reading an article “Ten Easy Ways to Start a Conversation” in an old Reader’s Digest. They didn’t arrive at ten as promised. They didn’t arrive at 10:30 or 11:00. Finally at 11:30 the masseuse, Brandy by name, showed up with a collapsible, portable gurney and set up administering pain. She said Sylvia was running late because her mother who was a “perfect bitch” had showed up from Butte. Brandy had nice features but was Germanically masculine and large. The massage was overwhelmingly unpleasant but after an hour I felt much less like a piece of physical detritus. I was, however, a mud puddle of despair over not seeing Sylvia naked. Brandy teased me while we were having iced tea out in the yard saying that she had read in the New York Times that male monkeys will give up lunch in order to see photos of female monkeys’ butts. This was discouraging information about sexual slavery but then Ad had already given me this bad news.

  Finally at noon Sylvia came running up the driveway in her rose colored shorts. She handed me a tiny sketch book the size of a deck of cards saying, “I thought you should start your art career small. We’ll have to re-schedule.” I was stricken and she gave me a gentle hug. Her eyes were slightly puffy from crying. Off they went.

  MONTANA REDUX VI

  I stuck to home. The world was a dangerous place. I bore down on my art as if I were digging fence posts in reality.

  It was Friday morning before I could fish more than an hour and I would pick Ad up at the Bozeman airport in the evening. In the forty-eight hours since I had seen Sylvia not five minutes had passed without my thinking of those rose colored shorts but I had somehow managed to transfigure her into a modern Beatrice, an unapproachable young woman who had fueled Dante’s Divina Commedia as surely as pork had fueled our western movement to the mighty shores of the Pacific.

  I was fishing in the side channel near the house but wading cautiously as my old legs had not quite recovered full mobility. I felt a modest glow because the fifty states were falling into shape and I had made a fine chicken soup for Ad using a whole barnyard chicken I had bought at a health food store, a full head of garlic, fresh corn, sage leaves, and two tomatoes that were vaguely suspect. Montana is definitely not a garden state except for those with private gardens. Ad talks a good game in terms of international cuisine but is too impatient to cook well. In separate years at deer camp when it was his turn to cook he served us rare pork roast and chicken bloody at the joint and no one was happy after a cold day in the woods.

  I caught a small rainbow about a foot long and was on the verge of slipping it back into the water when I heard a voice from the willow thicket behind me. It was Sylvia.

  “Don’t let it go. I like to eat fish.” She was actually breathing hard and sweating but then the temperature was at least ninety.

  “Do you ever stop running?”

  “I started running when I was twelve to get over my mom. I’m twenty-one now and still running and mom is still mom.”

  “What’s wrong with her?” I walked toward her with the fish feeling the not very curious urge to lick the sweat off her body.

  “Gambling. Poker machines in bars. Slot machines. Lottery tickets. Bus trips to Las Vegas. We lost our junky home in Butte. Dad kicked her out and now he lives in an apartment with my brother. I came over to see if you want me to pose?”

  “I’m not so sure it’s a good idea. I mean I feel embarrassed about the whole thing.” Now I was standing in front of her with my blood rushing into my face as if I were twelve years old and had been caught jerking off in the Lutheran church.

  “I could use the money. That’s why I was crying on Wednesday. Mom stole 600 bucks I hadn’t put in the bank.”

  “Okay,” I said, with my brain becoming lime Jello with chopped bananas. On the walk to the house I was tongue tied and answered questions with difficulty when she wondered what I did for a living. When I said I was a retired farmer she was delighted because her grandfather on her mother’s side was a farmer from Big Sandy, Montana. I also admitted to teaching school for ten years which brought on a yawn. As we neared the house and zero hour I became simultaneously giddy and goofy. I was on the verge of buying a permanent memory and I didn’t want terrorists to attack before she took off her clothes. The purity of my lust, however, was a tiny bit tempered by worrying about her mother�
��s bad behavior. Nasty relatives are always entering our deepest male fantasies.

  “In the green morning/the cult of love is possible,” I said, quoting a poem, as she opened the door and bowed me into the house.

  “Not with me buster,” she said glancing around, “I don’t see your easel! You’ll have to settle for sketching.” She tossed me the little sketch book from the kitchen counter. She was laughing. “The rules are that you can’t come closer than ten feet or I’m out of here.”

  “Sometimes I wonder what desire is? It’s a burden, a gift, and a curse all in one package.” I was at the dining room table fiddling with the sketch book, writing ART on the first page, then looking up as she quickly shed her clothes.

  “You might be a farmer but I bet big money you were an English major in college. I know a bunch of them in Missoula and they always give you that high-minded bullshit when they’re trying to get in your pants.”

  She had me by the gizzard. Ad had said that with certain women you’re more likely to go all the way if you only talk about spiritual matters or that sort of thing. She was now totally nude and making flowing movements on the living room rug which she said were part of her “tai chi routine,” a way of taking advantage of the time during the boredom of posing. I was blinking my eyes, treating them as apertures while I took mental photos for future use. When the November storms hit Northern Michigan and I was looking out the window and watching the driven snow slanting sideways across the landscape I could close my eyes and see nude Sylvia. I hadn’t seen all that many nude bodies in my life but this was by far the best including magazines. Unfortunately the light in the house was growing dim and I felt dizzy enough to lay my head on the dining room table. I was blacking out because I had forgotten to breathe. She rushed over but my eyes were so blurred I could barely make out her pubis, belly button and the pink nipples on her apple breasts, McIntosh apples not big Wolf Rivers.