Another time, Richard phoned Bruce from Japan on Erickson’s dime. (Even if the call wasn’t collect, most of Brautigan’s money had been borrowed from the bank.) He called Bruce frequently, often at ungodly hours of the night. “I’ve got a great idea,” Richard said this time.
“What’s that?”
“Land yachts.”
“Huh . . . ?”
“Motor homes,” Brautigan repeated emphatically. “Why don’t they call them ‘land yachts’?” No one remembered what the writer and the banker discussed on the morning of Brautigan’s last day in Livingston, but once Richard attended to the last-minute details, he and Cassaday drove over the pass to Bozeman, where Dave Schrieber, Brad Donovan, and Greg Keeler waited for them at the Western Café. Brautigan preferred simple American food. The Western, where ranchers and cowhands ate, was one of his favorites. Sean and Richard were running late. Everyone ordered big breakfasts. After ten minutes, when the food arrived, Brautigan said, “Well, we have to go now.” Their meals sat untouched on the table.
“I don’t think Richard paid for anything,” Cassaday recalled. On the road to the airport, Brautigan issued orders to everyone. He needed Clorets. He wanted a copy of the newest Enquirer. “Sort of a guerrilla action.” Everyone fanned out across the terminal while Richard checked in at the counter. They all planned to meet up at the bar. Sean got change, feeding quarters into the poker machine. He immediately had “two incredible hands” and won $13. Cassaday bought everybody a round while they waited for the plane to arrive.
Brautigan went to the men’s room. Sean suggested they page Richard, hoping to catch him “while he was taking a piss.” Schrieber went and placed the call. When Brautigan returned he was totally flustered. “I can’t understand it,” he said. “They called for me and there was nobody on the phone.”
Laughing, his buddies told Richard they were behind the prank, pushing a drink his way to make amends. Before long Brautigan’s flight was announced over the PA system. Richard handed Greg the mooning photo and dug into his pockets, pulling out a handful of Japanese coins. He gave them to Sean without any explanation. Keeler, Schrieber, and Cassaday watched Brautigan walk on board. They stood waving by the plate-glass window as Richard’s plane lifted off into the Big Sky above Montana. Richard never came back.
fifty-seven: the itch
ONE MORNING AFTER returning from his last trip to Japan, Richard Brautigan showed up on Bobbie Louise Hawkins’s doorstep. He fidgeted and stammered. “Does everyone in Bolinas have this crotch itch?”
“I don’t think so, Richard,” she said. Bobbie’s years of nurturing Richard as a friend/fellow writer/mentor gave her a unique perspective on his personality. (“You know how you can look at a person and almost see the shape of another person inside?”) To Bobbie, Richard was forever younger and smaller. She saw him always as no more than thirteen or fourteen; 120 pounds dripping wet. She addressed the waif within, asking, “What do you mean?”
More fidgeting. Bit by bit Richard disclosed that he had contracted something in Japan. He was miserable with it. The rash was “breaking out” and “incredibly itchy.”
“Well,” Bobbie said. “It sounds more like some kind of infection. You should use some medication. Have you been to a doctor?”
“I went to a doctor once in Japan.”
Bobbie Louise had the sudden sense of being in a conversation with her mother, who suffered from Alzheimer’s. “And what did the doctor say, Richard?”
“The doctor said I should use this salve.”
“Do you have this salve?”
“Well, yes, I have the salve.”
“And are you using it?”
“When I remember, I use it.”
“When you use it, does it help?”
“Yes. When I use it, it helps.”
“Well, then, I think, Richard, you should use this salve.”
“Yes. I should use it.”
Recalling this long-ago off-kilter moment, Bobbie Louise Hawkins lost her equilibrium all over again, the memory made even more distant by persistent disbelief. “This would qualify as a conversation,” she said, shaking her head at the dizziness of it all. “I would just be feeling bemused, like woooo!”
fifty-eight: the pitch
During the last summer of Richard Brautigan’s life, Donald Guravich, Joanne Kyger’s partner, spent a July night drinking with him in Bolinas. Guravich had met Brautigan only once before, years earlier at a party at Margot and John Doss’s place. What follows is a piece of found art, an exact transcription of the story as told by Donald Guravich.
“WE WERE WORKING on what Richard had decided was going to be his best-selling series. So we were working up a pilot for that. There was a dinner here, and Richard came just briefly. He didn’t seem to like being around a lot of people at that point, so we sort of bailed after about an hour. He wanted to leave. We ended up going down to Smiley’s Saloon to pick up some beer, and we’d had some beer up here. Dos Equis and double shots of bourbon, Jack Daniel’s, and then on to the Bolinas Cemetery and the plot so far for this TV series set in Alaska: postcard shots of picturesque countryside, token glaciers, etc. Long shot, zoom in on Anchorage, the poshest building there, ‘Call of the Wild Firm.’
“This is the name of the series: ‘Timber Lawyers,’ starring unknown lead actor, black, unknown Hispanic sidekick, unknown Wasp tits ’n’ ass secretary. Big posh office, quiet and rich. Phone rings. This is the pilot movie. Follow tits ’n’ ass secretary to Rolls Royce and at least four minutes of Anchorage and then zoom to second commercial. It’s just totally visual at that point. That’s fifteen minutes of TV with no plot whatsoever. Then, back to following footsteps in deep snow. We see legs moving, no face. Who is that familiar mystery voice talking to his trusty dog somewhere behind him? Timberwolf.
“Then sounds of pickup truck rolling off the rim of the Grand Canyon. Camera follows legs to the face of disgusted Reggie Jackson. So he’s starring in the series—that was a brilliant hit by Richard, to get Reggie Jackson in on this. We’ll get lots of people watching it.
“Then we’re in the cemetery, and there’s this branch that breaks in the trees, off to the left of the truck as we finish the bourbon in the dark. ‘What do you think that is?’ Richard says knowingly. ‘Deer, at eleven-thirty,’ he says.
“And I say, ‘No, Richard, that’s wrong. You can have deer at eleven o’clock or deer at ten o’clock. There’s no such thing as deer at eleven-thirty. That gives you two directions.’
“And Richard says, ‘Smart deer.’
“Then we go back to Smiley’s for more beer. God, this goes on and on. More beer and bourbon to go, and we drive up the winding road to the Little Mesa. We drove up there and across, and we looked for a parking space and there’s none, so we start to descend and then Richard says, ‘This looks like a good spot.’ Which is the middle of the road, and we just stopped there. I think it’s around twelve at night at that point. So we stop in the middle of the road and turn off lights and engine. Then it’s back to the series.
“After Rolls Royce, fade, and commercial break, disgusted Reggie Jackson, who turns and says, ‘Again, Timberwolf? Again?’ So the camera zooms in on Timberwolf, a Chihuahua, as he falls over the lip of the footprint, this is in deep snow, and into its depths. Sound of pickup truck hitting bottom of canyon.
“‘Dynamite,’ says Richard. ‘Terrific.’ Headlights coming around the curve. On with our lights, engine. Down Mesa and then back to the same spot after a quick stop at Smiley’s for more beer and bourbon to go. ‘Millions,’ says Richard. ‘It’s worth millions.’ Discussion of Hollywood politics and protocol ensues, whether MTM will take it. Who’s in charge after the divorce. Realization that Japanese market should be tapped, hence, twenty-three-year-old hot Japanese singer zooms into series casting. She speaks only Japanese, is very beautiful, and there are no English subtitles for her. Cameo role with only three or four lines. She is a computer technician, has all the data, big monitor
s.
“Guy with flashlight turned off walks past pickup in middle of road. Switches on flashlight only after getting fifty feet away from us. Car headlights. Down we go. Smiley’s for more beer and bourbon and down more road to lagoon mouth. ‘I think we got it,’ says Richard. I agree. ‘The thing is, you don’t need a plot. Plots are nothing. It’s all visuals until you hit the commercials. The people who watch this stuff can’t read. Don’t confuse them.’
“And then back to Smiley’s, and we decide to stay there. I play pool and leave after an hour or so, and Richard stays on talking to Jim Hartz, I think, who was down there at that point. Richard would just go on. He must have known there was a certain point you just didn’t have the stamina to keep up with this.”
fifty-nine: the end
RICHARD BRAUTIGAN’S PLANE touched down at JFK, beginning the first leg of his final journey around the world. Living on borrowed time encouraged the rethinking of established life patterns. He wanted to rectify old wrongs. Instead of heading straight for Manhattan, Brautigan went to stay with his daughter in the apartment she shared with her husband in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Ianthe found his behavior “very sweet.” Richard made an effort to reconcile with Paul Swensen, who helped his father-in-law find the rare Western videos he enjoyed watching.
Richard did not call Helen Brann during his brief stay in the city. He’d made his peace with her. Future publishing deals were Jonathan Dolger’s job. Richard never got together with Dolger either. Unlike his long friendship with Brann, there was nothing social in his connection to Dolger. The two men met in person on only a few occasions, several times in New York, twice more in Frisco; always strictly business.
Brautigan’s trips into Manhattan were all in search of fun. On his last day, Richard visited Tony Dingman on the set of The Cotton Club. The picture was over budget and behind schedule. Mario Puzo’s original screenplay was rewritten as a rehearsal script by William Kennedy (Legs; Ironweed) in eight days. Gregory Hines, one of the cast, claimed “a three-hour film was shot during rehearsals.” Director Francis Ford Coppola took all the budget and script trouble in stride, making no mention of his problems as he chatted amiably with Brautigan between takes. Three lovely dancers walked past them. “Francis, do you have fire insurance?” Richard asked out of nowhere.
“What are you talking about?” Coppola didn’t have a clue.
“Well, you’re going to need it,” Richard said, “because these girls are going to set this place on fire.
“Reel ’em in,” Tony Dingman thought, listening on the sidelines. “A real fisherman!”
Brautigan started drinking early that day. Feeling no pain, he walked with Dingman down a hallway behind the soundstage and encountered Gwen Verdon, who played Richard Gere’s sister in the film. “Gwen, I’d like you to meet Richard Brautigan,” Tony said, introducing them. “And Richard, this is Gwen Verdon.”
A long pause followed. Brautigan stood looking at her. A second passed, two, three, four seconds . . . five seconds. “Damn Yankees!” Richard said at last.
Dingman loved it. “The master of delay.”
Inspired by watching make-believe Hollywood evocations of Harlem in the 1920s, Brautigan headed uptown. Back when Duke Ellington’s orchestra was the house band at the actual Cotton Club, a fancy speakeasy where black entertainers performed for all-white audiences, the Harlem Renaissance had already begun, providing a national audience for gifted writers such as Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Countee Cullen, and W. E. B. Du Bois. Richard knew this intriguing literary history and wanted to see firsthand where it had all actually happened.
By the time Brautigan got to Harlem on that chill October evening, he’d had a couple more drinks and felt no pain strolling north along Lenox Avenue, conspicuous in his absurd woolen cap with the little pompon on top. He caught the notice of two passing black men looking for a good time on a Friday night. “Hey, you in the Elmer Fudd hat!” one called in a threatening manner. Gripped by fear, Richard smiled, a goofy gesture of friendship.
“Man, leave the dude alone,” the angry fellow’s companion said. “Anyone who wears an Elmer Fudd hat is all right with me.”
The two black men walked away, laughing at their unexpected encounter with the tall stranger capped by a cartoon character’s sky piece. How Brautigan spent the rest of his only night in Harlem became lost in the boozy fog of long-forgotten benders. The next evening, nursing a killer hangover, Richard boarded a transatlantic flight to Amsterdam. He arrived on a Sunday morning and dragged his sorry ass to the Hotel Jan Luyken, housed in three converted mansions on Luykenstraat, named, like the hotel, for a seventeenth-century Dutch engraver.
Jack Kerouac’s thirty-one-year-old daughter, Jan, sat in the hotel’s breakfast room with her companion, Milo, when Brautigan came lurching in, wearing jeans and a red T-shirt emblazoned with a Montana logo. Suffering from jet lag, Richard slumped at a nearby table, burying his head in his hands, “muttering something about a bottle of whiskey.” Jan and Milo started a conversation with the disheveled stranger. Brautigan told them about his close encounter in Harlem. When finished, he pulled his funny hat from his back pocket. “So, you see,” Richard said, “this hat saved my life.”
Kerouac left Milo alone with their new friend. Brautigan wasted no time before buying a bottle of whiskey and getting Milo “thoroughly plastered.” When Jan returned early in the afternoon, she found them both unconscious on her hotel room floor. Richard, Milo, and Jan started hanging out together. She made no mention in her memoir, Trainsong, of the time Brautigan encountered her father passed out under a urinal in a Big Sur bar. Perhaps he never told Jan that story. When Richard related the episode to Greg Keeler, “he seemed to light up—as if passing out under a urinal was . . . one of the top things a guy could do.” Jan Kerouac estimated that Brautigan consumed at least six quarts of whiskey over the next three days before his scheduled poetry reading. In the end, she thought Richard had drunk himself sober.
Robert Creeley and Gregory Corso were among the poets gathered in Amsterdam for the One World Poetry Festival. Bob and his wife, Penelope, had been living in Berlin on a Dodd Foundation grant with their young son, Will. The Creeleys had not seen Brautigan in two years, since their trip with him to Toronto. Bob found Richard in bad shape, “drinking more than brandy, having all the bleak aftermath of a very sad relationship.” The Creeleys considered Brautigan “very affectionate and very dear,” believing all his problems stemmed from his divorce. “She took the toilet paper, she took the doorknobs,” Bob recalled. “I mean, hell hath no fury.”
The readings were held at the Melkweg (Milky Way) club, a nonprofit organization founded in 1970 in an abandoned dairy on the bank of the Lijnbaansgracht, a “dingy canal street,” in Jan Kerouac’s opinion. The Creeleys, along with Jan and Milo, accompanied Richard to his reading. They had a hard time finding the place, not all that far from the Hotel Jan Luyken.
The Melkweg audience comprised a mixed bag of European youth, “Dutch, Germans, Italians, French, Danish.” Jan Kerouac called them “punks and generic bohemians.” She thought Brautigan looked “terrified” when he came on stage, “hangdog, terminally sad.” Richard read “Night Flowing River.” The crowd listened in rapt silence to Brautigan’s elegy of an ant crawling under a mourner’s shoe. “You could hear a safety pin snap in a punk’s ear,” Kerouac wrote in her memoir.
After ending his poem, Brautigan fell silent. “More!” the audience shouted. Richard shrugged and said “he didn’t have any more.” The outraged crowd chanted, “Brautigan! Brautigan!” Richard waited for silence. “Shūji Terayama would be insulted if I read any more,” he said. “The Japanese like things simple—short and sweet, like haiku.” Then Brautigan left the stage with the audience shouting in outrage. The promoters thought he “was just trying to cut short his responsibility to the festival.” Robert Creeley saw things differently. “He wasn’t kidding,” Bob recalled. “It was true.” Brautigan had no more to give.
When the weeklong One World Poetry Festival ended on Sunday the twenty-third, Richard stuck them with an “incredible” phone bill. Jan Kerouac and Milo drifted off into the rest of their lives. Robert Creeley returned with his family to Berlin. When Creeley said goodbye to Richard in Amsterdam, it was for the very last time.
Brautigan’s hotel stood just across from the Van Gogh Museum and the world-renowned Rijksmuseum. Richard visited both places. His first trip to Amsterdam lasted only another three days after the poetry festival ended. He met a thirty-five-year-old half-Spanish/half-Korean woman in a grocery store. She’d traveled up to the Netherlands from Majorca, largest of the Balearic Islands, to get an abortion and “score some dope.” The woman recognized Brautigan. Smitten as always by anyone tuned into his celebrity, Richard followed the woman back to Spain, flying down to Palma, Majorca on the twenty-sixth.
Richard never revealed the name of this mystery woman. He didn’t identify her in his notebook journals or in conversations with friends when he talked about his travels. Brautigan wrote no poetry for his mixed-race femme fatale. Richard’s poems in the final months of his life concerned death, not love. The trip to Majorca launched a three-month meandering hegira that Brautigan described in a letter to his daughter as “bumm[ing] around Europe [. . .] sort of free-fall style.” He said he should have done it twenty-five years ago.
The same Wednesday Brautigan departed for Spain, half a world away in Billings, Montana, one of his most cherished dreams began unraveling. Gatz Hjortsberg, leaving soon for London where Legend had resumed production, finished his draft of the Hawkline screenplay and sent two copies express mail to Universal. They arrived in Universal City on Friday. Mike Haller and Michael Chinich, the studio exec assigned to the project, worked late into the night in the Black Tower’s copy center, printing scripts. Several were left on Thom Mount’s desk before the two men took off for the weekend.
Jubilee Hitchhiker: The Life and Times of Richard Brautigan Page 146
