Revenge of the Lawn, the Abortion, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

by Richard Brautigan

  The ducks are always a flock of fat mallards just in from Canada.

  Sometimes I walk through the little town of Elmira and everything is very quiet because it's so early in the morning and God forsaken with either rain or cold.

  Whenever I walk through Elmira, I stand and look at the Elmira Union High School. The; classrooms are always empty and dark inside. It seems as if nobody ever studies there and the darkness is never broken because there is no reason to ever turn the lights on.

  Sometimes I don't go into Elmira. I cross over the black wooden fence and go into the marshy field and walk past the ancient religious shed and follow the river down to the lake, hoping to hit some good duck hunting.

  I never do.

  Elmira is very beautiful but it is not a lucky place for mc to hunt.

  I always get to Elmira by hitch-hiking about twenty miles. I stand out there in the cold or the rain with my shotgun, wearing my royal duck hunting robes and people stop and pick me up, and that's how I get there.

  "Where are you going?" people say when I get in. I sit beside them with my shotgun balanced like a scepter between my legs and the barrels pointing up at the roof. The gun is at an angle, so the barrels point toward the passenger side of the roof, and I'm always the passenger.

  "Elmira."

  Coffee

  SOMETIMES life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you; it stimulates all the organs.

  I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but as time goes by I have found out that it makes sense in its own limited way. I'll tell you what I mean.

  Yesterday morning I went over to see a girl. I like her. Whatever we had going for us is gone now. She does not care for me. I blew it and wish I hadn't.

  I rang the door bell and waited on the stairs. I could hear her moving around upstairs. The way she moved I could tell that she was getting up. I had awakened her.

  Then she came down the stairs. I could feel her approach in my stomach. Every step she took stirred my feelings and led indirectly to her opening the door. She saw me and it did not please her.

  Once upon a time it pleased her very much, last week. I wonder where it went, pretending to be naive.

  "I feel strange now," she said. "I don't want to talk."

  "I want a cup of coffee," I said, because it was the last thing in the world that I wanted. I said it in such a way that it sounded as if I were reading her a telegram from somebody else, a person who really wanted a cup of coffee, who cared about nothing else.

  "All right," she said.

  I followed her up the stairs. It was ridiculous. She had just put some clothes on. They had not quite adjusted themselves to her body. I could tell you about her ass. We went into the kitchen.

  She took a jar of instant coffee off a shelf and put it on the table. She placed a cup next to it, and a spoon. I looked at them. She put a pan full of water on the stove and turned the gas on under it.

  All this time she did not say a word. Her clothes adjusted themselves to her body. I won't She left the kitchen.

  Then she went down the stairs and outside to see if she had any mail. I didn't remember seeing any. She came back up the stairs and went into another room. She closed the door after her. I looked at the pan full of water on the stove.

  I knew that it would take a year before the water started to boil. It was now October and there was too much water in the pan. That was the problem. I threw half the water into the sink.

  The water would boil faster now. It would take only six months. The house was quiet.

  I looked out at the back porch. There were sacks of garbage there. I stared at the garbage and tried to figure out what she had been eating lately by studying the containers and peelings and stuff. I couldn't tell a thing.

  It was now March. The water started to boil. I was pleased by this.

  I looked at the table. There was the jar of instant coffee, the empty cup and the spoon all laid out like a funeral service. These are the things that you need to make a cup "of coffee.

  When I left the house ten minutes later, the cup of coffee safely inside me like a grave, I said, "Thank you for the cup of coffee."

  "You're welcome," she said. Her voice came from behind a closed door. Her voice sounded like another telegram. It was really time for me to leave.

  I spent the rest of the day not making coffee. It was a comfort. And evening came. I had dinner in a restaurant and went to a bar. I had some drinks and talked to some people.

  We were bar people and said bar things. None of them remembered, and the bar closed. It was two o'clock in the morning. I had to go outside. It was foggy and cold in San Francisco. I wondered about the fog and felt very human and exposed.

  I decided to go visit another girl. We had not been friends for over a year. Once we were very close. I wondered what she was thinking about now.

  I went over to her house. She didn't have a door bell. That was a small victory. One must keep track of all the small victories. I do, anyway.

  She answered the door. She was holding a robe in front of herself. She didn't believe that she was seeing me. "What do you want?" she said, believing now that she was seeing me. I walked right into the house.

  She turned and closed the door in such a way that I could see her profile. She had not bothered to wrap the robe completely around herself. She was just holding the robe in front of herself.

  I could see an unbroken line of body running from her head to her feet. It looked kind of strange. Perhaps because it was so late at night.

  "What do you want?" she said.

  "I want a cup of coffee," I said. What a funny thing to say, to say again for a cup of coffee was not what I really wanted.

  She looked at me and wheeled slightly on the profile. She was not pleased to see me. Let the AMA tell us that time heals. I looked at the unbroken line of her body.

  "Why don't you have a cup of coffee with me?" I said. "I feel like talking to you. We haven't talked for a long time."

  She looked at me and wheeled slightly on the profile. I stared at the unbroken line of her body. This was not good.

  "It's too late," she said. "I have to get up in the morning. If you want a cup of coffee, there's instant in the kitchen. I have to go to bed."

  The kitchen light was on. I looked down the hall into the kitchen. I didn't feel like going into the kitchen and having another cup of coffee by myself. I didn't feel like going to anybody else's house and asking them for a cup of coffee.

  I realized that the day had been committed to a very strange pilgrimage, and I had not planned it that way. At least the jar of instant coffee was not on the table, beside an empty white cup and a spoon.

  They say in the spring a young man's fancy turns to thoughts of love. Perhaps if he has enough time left over, his fancy can even make room for a cup of coffee.

  The Lost Chapters of Trout Fishing in America: "Rembrandt Creek" and "Carthage Sink"

  THESE two chapters were lost in the late winter, early spring of 1961. I looked all over for them but I couldn't find them anywhere. I haven't the slightest idea why I didn't rewrite them as soon as I realized that they were gone. It's a real puzzler but I didn't and now eight years later, I've decided to return to the winter that I was twenty-six years old, living on Greenwich Street in San Francisco, married, had an infant daughter and wrote these two chapters toward a vision of America and then lost them. I'm going back there now to see if I can find them.

  Rembrandt Creek"

  REMBRANDT Creek looked just like its name and it was in lonely country that had very bad winters. The creek started in a high mountain meadow surrounded by pine trees. That was about the only real light that creek ever saw because after it had gathered itself from some small springs in the meadow, it flowed off into the pines and down to a dark-tree-tangled canyon that went along the edge of the mountains.


  The creek was filled with little trout so wild that they were barely afraid when you walked up to the creek and stood there staring down at them.

  I never really went fishing for them in any classical or even functioning sense. The only reason I knew that creek was because that's where we camped when we went deer hunting.

  No, it was not a fishing creek for me but just a place where we got water that we needed for our camp but I seemed to carry most of the water that we used and I think I washed a lot of dishes because I was the teen-ager and it was easier to have me do those things than the men who were older and wiser and needed time to think about places where deer might be and also to drink a little whiskey which seemed to aid thoughts of hunting and other things.

  "Hey, kid, take your head cut of your ass and see if you can do something about these dishes." That was one of the elders of the hunt speaking. His voice is remembered down trails of sound-colored hunting marble.

  Often I think about Rembrandt Creek and how much it looked like a painting hanging in the world's largest museum with a roof that went to the stars and galleries that knew the whisk of comets.

  I only fished it once.

  I didn't have any fishing tackle, just a 30:30 Winchester, so I took an old rusty bent nail and tied some white string onto it like the ghost of my childhood and tried to catch a trout using a piece of deer meat for bait and I almost caught one, too, lifting it out of the water just before it fell off my nail and back into the painting that carried it from my sight, returning it to the Seventeenth Century where it belonged on the easel of a man named Rembrandt.

  "Carthage Sink"

  THE Carthage River came roaring out of the ground at a fountainhead that was like a wild well. It flowed arrogantly a dozen miles or so through an open canyon and then just disappeared into the ground at a place that was called Carthage Sink.

  The river loved to tell everybody (everybody being the sky, the wind, the few trees that grew around there, birds, deer and even the stars if you can believe that) what a great river it was.

  "I come roaring from the earth and return roaring to the earth. I am the master of my waters. I am the mother and father of myself. I don't need a single drop of rain. Look at my smooth strong white muscles. I am my own future!"

  The Carthage River kept this kind of talking up for thousands of years. Needless to say: Everybody (everybody being the sky, etc.) was bored up to here with that river.

  Birds and deer tried to keep away from that part of the country if they could avoid it. The stars had been reduced to playing a waiting game and there was a dramatically noticeable lack of wind in that area, except of course for the Carthage River.

  Even the trout that lived there were ashamed of the river and always glad when they died. Anything was better than living in that God-damn bombastic river.

  One day the Carthage River in mid-breath telling about how great it was, dried up, "I am the master of my .. It just stopped.

  The river couldn't believe it. Not one more drop of water came from the ground and its sink was soon just a trickle dripping back into the ground like the runny nose of a kid.

  The Carthage River's pride vanished in an irony of water and the canyon turned into a good mood. Birds suddenly flew all over the place and took a happy look at what had happened and a great wind came up and it even seemed as if the stars were out earlier that night to take a look and then smile beatifically.

  There was a summer rainstorm a few miles away in some mountains and the Carthage River begged for the rain to come to its rescue.

  "Please," the river said with a voice that was now only the shadow of a whisper. "Help me. I need water for my trout. They're dying. Look at tie poor little things."

  The storm looked at the trout. The trout were very happy with the way things were now though they would soon be dead.

  The rainstorm made up some incredibly elaborate story about having to visit somebody's grandmother who had a broken ice-cream freezer and somehow lots of rain was needed to repair it, "But maybe in a few months we might get together. I'll call you on the telephone before I come over."

  The next day which was of course August 17, 1921 a lot of people, townspeople and such, drove out in their cars and looked at the former river and shook their heads in wonder. They had a lot of picnic basket? with them, too.

  There was an article in the local paper with two photographs showing two large empty holes that had been the fountainhead and the sink of the Carthage River. The holes looked like nostrils.

  Another photograph was of a cowboy sitting on his horse, holding an umbrella in one hand and pointing into the depths of the Carthage Sink with his other hand. He was looking very serious. It was a photograph to make people laugh and that's exactly what they did.

  Well, there you have the lost chapters of Trout Fishing in America. Their style is probably a little different because I'm a little different now, I'm thirty-four, and they were probably written in a slightly different form, too. It's interesting that I didn't rewrite them back there in 1961 but waited until December 4, 1969, almost a decade later, to return and try to bring them back with me.

  The Weather in San Francisco

  IT was a cloudy afternoon with an Italian butcher selling a pound of meat to a very old woman, but who knows what such an old woman could possibly use a pound of meat for?

  She was too old for that much meat. Perhaps she used it for a bee hive and she had five hundred golden bees at home waiting for the meat, their bodies stuffed with honey.

  "What kind of meat would you like today?" the butcher said. "We have some good hamburger. It's lean."

  "I don't know," she said. "Hamburger is something else."

  "Yeah, it's lean. I ground it myself. I put a lot of lean meat in it."

  "Hamburger doesn't sound right," she said.

  "Yeah," the butcher said. "It's a good day for hamburger. Look outside. It's cloudy. Some of those clouds have rain in them. I'd get the hamburger," he said.

  "No," she said. "I don't wan: any hamburger, and I don't think it's going to rain. I think the sun is going to come out, and it will be a beautiful day, and I want a pound of liver."

  The butcher was stunned. He did not like to sell liver to old ladies. There was something about it that made him very nervous. He didn't want to talk to her any more.

  He reluctantly sliced a pound of liver off a huge red chunk and wrapped it up in white paper and put it into a brown bag. It was a very unpleasant experience for him.

  He took her money, gave her the change, and went back to the poultry section to try and get a hold of his nerves.

  By using her bones like the sails of a ship, the old woman passed outside into the street. She carried the liver as if it were a victory to the bottom of a very steep hill.

  She climbed the hill and being very old, it was hard on her. She grew tired and had to stop and rest many times before she reached the top.

  At the top of the hill was the old woman's house: a tall San Francisco house with bay windows that reflected a cloudy day.

  She opened her purse which was like a small autumn field and near the fallen branches of an old apple tree, she found her keys.

  Then she opened the door. It was a dear and trusted friend. She nodded at the door and went into the house and walked down a long hall into a room that was filled with bees.

  There were bees everywhere in the room. Bees on the chairs. Bees on the photograph of her dead parents. Bees on the curtains. Bees on an ancient radio that once listened to the 1930s. Bees on her comb and brush.

  The bees came to her and gathered about her lovingly while she unwrapped the liver and placed it upon a cloudy silver platter that soon changed into a sunny day.

  Complicated Banking Problems

  I have a bank account because I grew tired of burying my money in the back yard and something else happened. I was burying some money a few years ago when I came across a human skeleton.

  The skeleton had the remains of a shovel in
one hand and a half-dissolved coffee can in the other hand. The coffee can was filled with a kind of rustdust material that I think was once money, so now I have a bank account.

  But most of the time that doesn't work out very well either. When I wait in line there are almost always people in front of me who have complicated banking problems. I have to stand there and endure the financial cartoon crucifixions of America.

  It goes something like this: There are three people in front of me. I have a little check to cash. My banking will only take a minute. The check is already endorsed. I have it in my hand, pointed in the direction of the teller.

  The person just being waited an now is a woman fifty years old. She is wearing a long black coat, though it is a hot day. She appears to be very comfortable in the coat and there is a strange smell coming from her. I think about it for a few seconds and realize that this is the first sign of a complicated banking problem.

  Then she reaches into the folds of her coat and removes the shadow of a refrigerator filled with sour milk and year-old carrots. She wants to put the shadow in her savings account. She's already made out the slip.

  I look up at the ceiling of the bank and pretend that it is the Sistine Chapel.

  The old woman puts up quite a struggle before she's taken away. There's a lot of blood on the floor. She bit an ear off one of the guards.

  I guess you have to admire her spunk.

  The check in my hand is for ten dollars.

  The next two people in line are actually one person. They are a pair of Siamese twins, but they each have their own bank books.

  One of them is putting eighty-two dollars in his savings account and the other one is closing his savings account. The teller counts out 3,574 dollars for him and he puts it away in the pocket on his side of the pants.

  All of this takes time. I look up at the ceiling of the bank again but I cannot pretend that it is the Sistine Chapel any more. My check is sweaty as if it had been written in 1929.