Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss

by Douglas Gray

  At some point, this meeting seems to have spiraled out of control.

  Dr. French, who’s apparently been lurking in the hall, pokes his head through the door. His body is pushed the rest of the way in by Glass and Suminski. He flashes Alcott a sick smile. “What’s going on here?”

  The man is busy rolling up his sleeves, revealing massive, simian forearms. “I’m just about to teach these little bastards a lesson.”

  “No, no no no no no no. No need for that. Let’s all just simmer down.”

  “Unless you want to get hurt, you’d better leave,” Alcott warns.

  Suddenly Amy’s at Alcott’s side, stepping in front of him, her back to us, her body between him and the students. Both hands on his forearms, firmly pressing them back by his sides. She’s saying something, soothing him with words we can’t hear. She gathers his coat and leads him from the room.

  Dr. French is left facing us alone. He takes a moment to collect his composure before saying, “That’s enough for today. Why don’t we agree just to forget this unpleasantness?”

  “Does that mean you’ll release the magazine?” I ask.

  “Medway!” he says, apparently not having noticed me before. “I should have known you were behind this. Look at all the trouble you’ve caused.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Saturday, March 11

  I wake, disoriented, to the Eisley Brothers on the stereo.

  “But if you leave me a hundred times,

  A hundred times I’ll take you back.

  I’m yours whenever you want me.

  I’m not too proud to shout it, tell the world about it, ‘cause

  I love you, yes I do….”

  Sunlight pours through the little, un-curtained window in my room. The trailer has two bedrooms. The smaller one is closer to the kitchen-den, with one corner adjacent to the heating oil furnace that roars like a small jet engine all night. The larger room is at the end of the hall, the back end of the trailer, next to the bathroom. That’s Blake’s room. I’m in the smaller one. It’s cozy and cheery enough, and for the first time in two years I am sleeping on an actual bed.

  Actually, it’s more accurate to say that the room is a bed. Someone managed to maneuver a queen-size mattress and spring set in here. It fills the entire space, with maybe nine inches of clearance at the foot and on either side. This, Blake tells me, had become the witch’s room after they’d stopped sleeping together. She’s left behind a psychedelic patchwork comforter that looks like a detail in a Gustav Klimt print. I wake snuggled under it, quite comfortable.

  My watch says the time is 10:47. Blake is either up ahead of me, or never went to bed, because he’s sitting at the kitchen table, typing his dissertation, exactly where I left him last night. The 400 plus completed pages on the Tennis Court Oath are stacked neatly in a stationery box left of the typewriter. A ream of typing paper sits on the right, beside an empty coffee cup and his favorite Flintstones tumbler. The tumbler contains gin and tonic on the rocks, and is dripping condensation on the Formica tabletop.

  “It’s so nice to have music again,” Blake says, as I put a sauce pan of water on the stove and reach for the jar of Taster’s Choice. “The witch took her stereo with her when she left. There’s been nothing to listen to except the rats.”

  “We have rats?”

  “The Duck says they’re just mice, but he’s not fooling me. Hey, maybe we should try to find a cat someplace.”

  “We could steal one from Pharmacology. They experiment on cats over there.”

  “Let’s do it. Right now. Teach those bastards a lesson about mistreating poor defenseless animals.”

  I throw a shirt and some loafers on. It’s a bright day, temperatures somewhere in the low 50s, I’d guess. Once I’ve turned south on Highway 7 towards town, Blake decides we should swing by and pick up Joan on our way, maybe stop for some lunch before we steal the cat.

  “For godssake, let me cover up,” Suzie protests when Nick answers the door to let us in.

  We’ve interrupted a portrait session. Suzie grabs a bathrobe and dashed for the kitchen.

  “A pregnant mother is nature’s most perfect form,” Nick informs us.

  “I said when we got married that I’d never pose nude for him,” Suzie says, returning modestly covered. “But now . . . well, anything to get Nick behind a canvas again. What are you boys up to?”

  “We’re going to steal a cat to help us with our rat problem. Is Joan around?”

  “In the shower.”

  “Steal a cat?” Joan says when she emerges from the bathroom. “I thought you were going to work on the dissertation all weekend.”

  “I can scarcely write about French history in the middle of a rat infestation. That’s more like living French history. We’ll die of the plague by mid week. A cat is our only hope.”

  “Have you worked out a strategy?” Joan asks in the car. “You can’t just walk into the Pharmacy building and grab a cat, you know.”

  “She’s right,” I say. “We need a plan.”

  “Let’s get some lunch and brainstorm. You know what I’m in the mood for? An oyster po’ boy.”

  “Where can you get one of those?”

  “Overton Square.”

  It’s the first sunny, warm weekend of the year in Memphis, and Overton Square is thronged. We wait almost an hour for a table at the seafood place. Blake whiles the time away with three beers, orders another when we’re finally seated, and downs two more while we eat our po’ boys.

  Joan keeps trying to cut him off, but by the end of the meal he’s deliriously drunk. I watch Joan watching him, lines of tension deepening around her eyes and mouth as the afternoon progresses. She catches him as he trips along the sidewalk, in search of another bar.

  “We should get him home,” I advise. “Can you manage him alone? I’ll fetch the car and pick you up at the Triangle in five minutes.”

  I’m loping through the crowds along Cooper, wending my way back to where we parked, when I catch sight of a face I’ve seen before. I stop, double back, and discover Alfalfa loitering with a scruffy assortment of freaks gathered by a lamp post.

  “Woah, man. Far out,” he says, recognizing me. “Hey, listen, sorry about the way I bailed on you folks down there.”

  “You robbed us.”

  “Not ‘cause I wanted to. I needed cash and something to hock. I had to get out of there quick. I was on the run, man.”

  “Why? Did the devil find you at last?”

  “No, man. I mean, not the devil himself. But one of his helpers. It was some scary Russian cat, broke in while I was there alone. Found me and warned me not to let anyone know I’d seen him. He made threats – and I could tell they weren’t just threats. He meant them. Rattled the shit out of me, so I high-tailed.”

  “A Russian? Stocky guy with white hair? What the hell did he say to you?”

  Alfalfa just shakes his head, as if scared even now over his chance meeting with Skoll.

  “Listen,” I say, “I’m going to get my car so I can pick up some friends. I’ll be back in two minutes. Three minutes, tops. Wait right here! We can find someplace quiet to talk. Will you stay?”

  He nods okay. I run the rest of the way to the car, but when I drive past the spot where he was supposed to be waiting, Alfalfa has already disappeared.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sunday, March 12

  I wake sometime between midnight and dawn to the sound of Blake’s typewriter. I’m impressed by his recuperative powers. Joan and I had to carry him to bed only a few hours ago, unconscious after half a liter of gin. But here he is, back at work on the dissertation in the middle of the night.

  I doze off and wake again to sunlight through my little window. On my way to the bathroom, I observe that Blake’s door is half open, exactly as we’d left it after dragging him to bed. Blake appears to be lying in the very position we placed him in, as well, still wearing the button-down shirt, khakis and socks he had on.

  The trailer runs on pro
pane – furnace, stove, water heater. The shower is instantly hot, the water pressure strong. I stay for a long time, soap up, shave, and shampoo twice before finally willing myself to leave this wet little paradise.

  But as I shut off the water, reach for a towel and open the shower curtain, I spot a message written by fingertip in the fog of the bathroom mirror:

  “GET OUT!”

  I puzzle over the words until they vanish from the mirror surface, get dressed and slide the bathroom door open. Blake lies still unconscious where he was before, unmoved.

  Once the saucepan of water is on the burner for my first cup of Tasters Choice, I amble over to Blake’s typewriter to see what he was up to during the night.

  “GET OUT,” the page spooled around the paten reads. Then below those words, a carriage return and thirteen repeated lines looking like this:

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  GET OUT

  I make my coffee, put John Wesley Harding on the stereo, and am singing along with Dylan while reading Herodotus when Blake stumbles into the room.

  “Did we steal a cat?” he asks.

  “That was the plan. We never got that far.”

  “Thank god. I can’t stand cats. What did we do?”

  While he douses his head under the kitchen faucet, I summarize the events of the day: the trip to Overton Square, his argument with the clerk at Stuckey’s on the way back, getting booted from the Ritz in the middle of Harold and Maude, crashing the party on Tyler Avenue, the drinking contest with Garrett.

  “Any of this sound familiar?” I ask.

  He shakes his wet head. “Complete blank.”

  “Do you remember getting up in the middle of the night to do some typing?”

  I show him the page in the typewriter.

  Another shake. “I didn’t write that.”

  “Then who did?”

  “The witch.”

  “The witch was in here?” I ask.

  “She didn’t have to be in here to do that. She just had to will it done and her demons typed it for her.”

  “Demons can type?”

  “You’d be surprised what demons can do. What?” Blake turns defensive under my skeptical glare. “You don’t believe me? I’ve warned you how powerful she is, and how she loves to fuck with people’s heads. If I were you, I’d start trusting me.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, March 13

  “That isn’t what happened at all,” I complain to Bert Sheets, the Daily Mississippian’s current editor-in-chief.

  Today’s edition carries a three-paragraph account of Friday’s meeting under the headline “Student Magazine Release Blocked.” Ace r

  eporter Kimberly Jones wrote the story, recounting how the committee ruled Barefoot inappropriate for publication by a majority vote. She added a quote from Alcott, expressing his concern over the immorality of our age, and one from French, thanking the committee members for their service in resolving this distasteful controversy.

  “Your reporter wasn’t even there,” I grouse. “The committee was tied, three to three, until Alcott counted his own vote twice. Then he threatened to beat up Dr. Glass, and challenged the students to a fist fight. That man’s a maniac.”

  Bert shrugs. “It’s not an important story.”

  “This is a censorship case. What if the administration started trying to censor the newspaper?”

  “That would be different. We’re protected by freedom of the press.”

  “So are we.”

  Bert answers with a sneer. “First Amendment rights don’t extend to so-called artistic expression.” He makes little air quotes with his fingers. (I hate it when people do that.) “Don’t try to compare yourself to legitimate journalism. A bunch of acid head English majors decide to put out a magazine, fill it with obscenities, and then scream freedom of the press when their own department puts a stop to it. You jokers are nothing like us. Really, the comparison is insulting.”

  “Gee, Bert, two years ago, you would have been salivating over a story like this. But that’s when you were still a crusading journalist. Now you’re a sycophant to the Lyceum.”

  “Trying to impugn my journalistic integrity isn’t the way to win my cooperation, Medway. Nice try, though.”

  “I think I understand. Protecting your career, aren’t you? You don’t want to suffer Garrett’s fate.”

  “Don’t compare me to Garrett either.”

  “That would be unfair,” I agree. “Garrett had guts. He wasn’t afraid to expose the Lyceum’s dirty tricks, or make fun of them when they richly deserved some ridicule. And look what happened to him: all the promising internships vanished, all his contacts with the major papers turned sour. He was supposed to be writing for the Atlanta Constitution. Instead, he’s a clerk for the Carroll brothers. Lesson taken, Bert?”

  “You’re wasting my time,” Bert says. “You’re wasting your own, too.”

  “Obviously. But at least now I understand what I need to do to get this story out. I need to go see Uncle Bedford.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Tuesday, March 14

  I knock at Mr. Duck’s trailer a little before 6:30 to report my morning discovery. It takes him more than a minute to open the door, squinting through sleep-heavy eyelids. He listens, nods, retreats into the dark of the trailer and returns a moment later in loafers and a terrycloth bathrobe. “Let’s go see her,” he says.

  He lets me lead the way, though the corpse is only ten yards or so from where we stand, and completely visible from his own stoop.

  “You’re right,” he says when we arrive. “It’s a cow. A dead cow. Right here in our driveway. Kind of blocks the flow of traffic, don’t you think?”

  “Maybe the wild dogs killed it.”

  He prods a flank of the poor creature with the toe of his shoe, examining. “No, that would have made a commotion we would have heard, for sure. She didn’t die here.”

  “Didn’t?”

  “Died someplace else, then some asshole dumped her here.”

  The Widow has spotted us and is crossing the gravel path to join us. “Another one, Duck?” This is the first time I’ve seen her in daylight. The Widow is sinewy, dishwater blonde, intense blue eyes, pale. Probably in her late 30s, but a handsome woman in her way.

  “Another one. It’s a mystery to me why folks around here think I’m responsible for the dead livestock of Lafayette County.”

  “What do we do with it?” I ask.

  “Let’s review our options,” Duck answers. “We could put up a sign on Highway 30, ‘roadside attraction.’ Come see a dead cow for a quarter. Get your picture taken with it for an extra dime.

  “Or we could just leave her, let the vultures take care of her. But that would bring us more wild dogs, and the stink would be pretty intense for a couple of weeks.

  “I could put an ad in the paper, maybe some flyers on telephone poles saying ‘Found: Dead Cow,’ and see whether anybody shows up to claim her.

  “We could try to flush her down the toilet, but she’d probably clog it.

  “We could rustle up a giant shoebox and bury her under the willow tree. Cows like willows. She’d probably be happy there.

  “We could wait for Jesus to wander by and raise her from the dead. Or I could call my friend Henry to bring his backhoe and offer him $25 to bury her in the ravine along with all the other ones. I reckon that’s what I’ll have to do.”

  “Poor old thing,” the Widow says. She bends to stroke its brow. “Rest,” she says. “All your trials are over now. You boys help me pray for her,” the Widow commands.

  By now we’ve been joined by the Septic System Man from the trailer closest to the ravine, the Herbicide Salesman from the trailer by the roa
d, and Duck’s assistant Rusty, who’s returned from the Trappist monastery and appears to be the only person out here with a proper name.

  “You really want to pray for it?” I ask.

  “Think you’re too good to pray for a cow? I’ve buried five husbands, which makes me really appreciate life. Every soul that passes draws a little bit of light from the world with it. You have to pray, so the dark doesn’t take over.”

  “Cows don’t have souls,” Rusty says.

  “For once, I have to agree with Stupid here,” Duck adds. “The notion of an animal soul is romantic sentimentalism.”

  “Schopenhauer wrote that they do,” the Widow counters.

  “Schopenhauer,” Duck mocks. “Next you’re going to start quoting Nietzsche. Listen, all of western philosophy supports the exceptionalism of human souls as opposed to any concept of an animal soul. That’s been the conclusion of everyone from Plato to Descartes.”

  “Yeah,” the Septic System Man adds, “remember in the Phaedo when Socrates tells Cebes . . . ?“

  She cuts him short in mid-sentence. “Goddammit, don’t you ever quote the Phaedo to me again! I mean it. You know how much Plato pisses me off.”

  “Well, Thomas Aquinas wrote . . . ,” Rusty starts to say.

  The Widow spits on the ground. “No Church Fathers either, thank you very much. If I want to learn anything about the nature of the soul, I wouldn’t ask a gang of monotheists.”

  “The Buddhists don’t believe animals have souls,” says Herbicide Salesman.

  “Buddhists don’t believe humans have souls, either,” Duck says. “That’s another illusion of the ego. There’s no soul as such, only Buddha nature, which permeates all phenomena equally.”

  “But what about when the monk asked Zhaozhou if a dog could have Buddha nature?” Septic System Man posits. “Zhaozhou shouted ‘Wu!’ at him. ‘No!’”

  “Oh, give me a break,” the Widow complains. “Of course he didn’t mean ‘no.’ Do you think that Zhaozhou ever gave a straight answer to any question? He said ‘Wu!’ because the question itself exposed the monk’s misunderstanding of Buddha nature.”

  “I respectfully have to disagree with you there,” Septic System Man replies.

  Duck grunts. “Well, we can stand here all day and argue about it, but this cow isn’t getting any fresher. I’ve got a call to make.”

  He returns to his trailer. A minute later, only the Widow and I are left standing vigil. “I’ll help you pray for it,” I say.