Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss

by Douglas Gray

  I hadn’t thought either of them had noticed me, but he suddenly turns in my direction for support. “Am I right?” he asks.

  “You’re right. I wouldn’t wear ‘em.”

  “See?” he says. “They’re too ugly even for a damn hippie. Can we leave now?”

  ~ ~ ~

  Saturday, May 13

  Ever since his return from New Orleans, I’ve been careful not to drink in front of Blake, not wishing to tempt him to break his pledge, procrastinate on the dissertation, and lose this opportunity to teach at Tulane.

  But I’m weary of the typewriter clicking 20 hours a day, weary of being on good behavior, and weary of Blake. The Widow has turned out to be right about him: sobriety has brought out his inner asshole.

  He’s on his way to becoming my worst roommate since freshman year, when the Housing Office randomly put me in Kincannon Hall with the kid from Eupora who used to brag about sex with his daddy’s livestock.

  But tonight Joan is treating him, and herself, to another sex break at the Holiday Inn, and I’m throwing a party for the trailer folk that he’s managed to alienate — Duck, the Widow, Septic System Man and the Herbicide Salesman. Hell, even Garrett’s coming by to sample my world-famous chili.

  I drop by the Jitney for two pounds of hamburger, yellow onions, tomato sauce, kidney beans, 3 Alarm chili mix and two jugs of Wild Irish Rose. Then it’s on to the liquor store on East University for a fifth of Jim Beam.

  Half an hour later, I’m lighting the range at the trailer, browning the hamburger and onions, and savoring my first mouthful of the bourbon, when Garrett appears at the door. He’s just back from Overton Square, and he’s arrived with treasure.

  “Rolling Stones,” he announces, pulling the album from a shop bag. “Exile on Main Street. Released just yesterday. I’ll bet this is the first and only copy in the entire state of Mississippi.”

  And a lid of Acapulco Gold.

  The album goes on the stereo, a joint gets rolled, the chili simmers hot and savory, its aroma mixing with the music and the smoke. The trailer park crew arrives. I alternate between hits of the joint and sips of the bourbon, and for the first time in recent memory, we’re actually enjoying a mellow night at the trailer.

  The chili is ready. We’re serving ourselves in oversized soup bowls supplied by the Widow, and taking our seats on chairs, the sofa, the floor when an unearthly howl fills the room. I’m thinking the demons are active again, but Duck corrects me.

  “That came from outside,” he says. “Go to the door, see what it is.”

  “What if it’s a dog?” I ask.

  “Still light out. They never show up until after dark.”

  So I open the door. It’s not a dog. It’s a cat.

  A big cat, maybe 20 to 25 pounds of what appears to be solid muscle rippling below a sleek coat of shimmering fur. All black, except for the eyes, which are the color of new spring grass.

  But, clearly, this is no ordinary cat. I step back, wordlessly, to let it in. Duck and the Widow rise to their feet as if in the presence of an unexpected dignitary who has deigned to visit us.

  The cat steps across the threshold and conducts an inspection of the room, weaving a path between our legs, surveying the furniture, lifting its nose a little in apparent disgust as it passes the spot where Flop sleeps on, oblivious. It enters the kitchen area and sits on the floor beside the range, gazing upward.

  “It must be hungry,” the Widow says. “Give it some chili.”

  I dish a few spoonfuls onto a plate and set the plate on the floor. The cat’s eyes meet mine. I feel foolish. Chili is not what it’s come for. The cat returns its gaze to the range, and that’s when I realize that his (I think it’s a he) head is tilted higher than the stovetop. He’s staring at the cupboard above the range. He’s commanding me to open it.

  I obey. The instant the door opens, the cat springs into the air, clearing the six-foot space between floor and cupboard, and lands with a snarl amid the cereal boxes, canned food and bottles of booze contained within, not toppling a single item.

  We gather close to see what’s happening, but quickly back away as the cat leaps out of the cupboard with something in his mouth. Something brown, and twitching.

  “It’s caught a mouse!” Garrett marvels.

  The cat returns to the trailer door, with the little creature clamped between his jaws. He looks at me, then at the door, then at me again. I let him out, to devour the mouse alfresco.

  “What the hell was that about?” Garrett asks.

  We’ve no sooner returned to our meal and conversation when the cat howls outside again. We let him in. He returns to the stove and silently commands me to reopen the cupboard door. He springs, snags another mouse, and carries it outside.

  By 10:00, he’s completed nine forays into mouse territory. The mice have long since abandoned the cupboards, seeking shelter behind the refrigerator or under the couch, or trying desperately to outmaneuver their predator by running intricate patterns across the open space of kitchenette, living room and hallway.

  But this cat is a mouse-killing machine. This is the Achilles of mousers, and my trailer is his plain of Ilium, a mousey massacre awash with blood, scattered with corpses, a panorama of savage tableaus, fear and suffering and tragic mortality, death closing the eyes of so many mice as they supplicate before their killer and plead for mercy.

  Useless. His savagery knows no bounds. Pity cannot touch his heart nor sympathy sway his single-minded prosecution of terrible Fate, whose instrument he has become.

  My guests, full of chili and wine and good cheer, eventually depart, leaving me alone, the last to bear witness as the cat makes his final departure at 2:30 in the morning. He casts one glance over his shoulder before vanishing, black into the black night, and seems to give me a nod – but a nod of what?

  I’m left with death and a riddle, and sit staring through the dark emptiness of the open door until dawn.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sunday, May 14

  I haven’t slept, too stirred up by our mysterious cat to even think of rest. At dawn, I decide to drive into campus for breakfast. The Ole Miss cafeteria’s glazed donuts, metallic coffee and carbonated orange juice would make a perfect start to a new week after a sleepless night.

  Seven o’clock is a safe hour to be here on a Sunday. The fraternity boys and sorority chicks are still collapsed unconscious on floors, stairways, back porches, car seats and sidewalks all across campus. The faculty are either still sleeping or dressing for church. Around noon, they’ll begin arriving with their wives and children for the weekly family outing to campus, a parade of Sunday dresses and seersucker suits.

  But for the next few hours, the cafeteria is safe ground for fringe dwellers and outcasts of the college, and the dining hall is already full of them by the time I arrive: scruffy independent boys from the nearby run-down dorms (Garland, Mayes, Gerard, Lester), foreign exchange students, computer science majors, members of the Black Student Union, potters and painters and sculptors who’ve spent all night in the studios of Bryant Hall, assorted hippies at loose ends. This is our time to emerge and share a bit of fellowship before retiring to the underbrush when the dominant life forms of Ole Miss re-emerge.

  I’m not surprised to find Clamor here amid a beggar’s banquet of miscellaneous ragged folk incongruously assembled around the table usually occupied by Dr. Giordano’s crew. She waves for me to join them. She has news.

  “Suzie went into labor last night. Nick and the sheriff rushed her to the hospital in the squad car. No word yet.”

  “I didn’t know she was due so soon,” I say.

  “A week overdue, actually,” Clamor tells me.

  “Is giving birth like a library? Does she start in incur fines for being overdue?”

  A guy wearing a pinstriped shirt with an open collar across the table seems to be taking an interest in our conversation. He gives me a look like he thinks he should know me. I have a sense that I should know him, too.

/>   “Are you Medway?” he asks.

  I nod. He reaches a hand across the table in a power shake.

  “Jerome Baker,” he says. “I understand you’ve been trying to get in touch with me.”

  “Our notorious author,” I say. “The man of the hour. Are you coming with us to Clarksdale? We could sure use your testimony.”

  He’s a big guy whose horn-rimmed glasses somehow make him look even bigger, a considerable intelligence matched to his considerable physical strength, but he answers my remark with the look of a shy teenager and glances away.

  “We all need to talk,” Clamor says to us. “Come on, Jerome. Time for the truth. You can trust Daniel with your secret.”

  Clamor separates us from the herd, leading Jerome and me toward a far table in the back corner of the room, out of earshot. I pick up my tray and follow.

  “Prepare to be amazed,” Clamor says.

  “I apologize, man. I didn’t mean to put you on the spot back there,” I say to Jerome. “But you know, we’ve all been trying to reach you – Dr. Evans, the attorney, me.”

  “Don’t I know it? And don’t you suppose there was a reason I keep dodging you people? A good reason?”

  Jerome gives me a moment to reply, but I can’t think of anything to say.

  “I know you all believe you’re waging some kind of war for free speech and racial tolerance, and all your hippie shit, and that I ought to help,” he says. “And it’s not that I don’t want to. But the truth is that I cannot go into court and testify.”

  “Why not?”

  “What do you suppose the first thing the lawyer’s going to ask if I take the stand? The very first question?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “The lawyer’s going to say, ‘Well, Mr. Baker, are you the author of the story in question?’ Then I’m either going to have to perjure myself, or admit that somebody else wrote it.”

  “Somebody else?”

  “I am not the author of that story.”

  This takes a moment to sink in. “Do you mean you plagiarized it?” I finally ask.

  “Hell, no. What do you take me for? No, man. Listen. Late last fall, Amy Madigan came to me, and told me she was trying to put together a student magazine. She told me all the stories that had been submitted were pure crap, and that she hadn’t gotten anything from any black students. She said she had a little science fiction piece she’d written and asked if I’d be willing to let it be published under my name. I read the story, thought it was cool, and said okay.”

  Clamor was right in her warning. I’m amazed. “So you’re Amy’s front? Why would you agree to do that?”

  “Amy’s a friend. I’ve known her most of my life. We both grew up in Crowder. Also, because she’s cool.”

  “Good lord,” I say.

  “So you grasp my dilemma,” he says. “I refuse to swear a false oath, and I’ll never betray a friend’s confidence, especially not one who’s on the verge of a once-in-a-lifetime career opportunity.”

  I do see it. If Mr. Morality in Literature knew the true authorship of that story, he’d cut Amy loose.

  But there’s still one thing I don’t understand. “Why would she write a story told from the point of view of a foul-mouthed post-apocalyptic black guy?”

  “It’s called a persona,” Clamor says. “You majored in English. You should know what that is. Anyway, it’s what cousin Amy does all the time, invents narrators who are totally unlike her. She doesn’t much like herself, in case you’ve never noticed. I think pretending to be somebody else is therapy for her.”

  “Haven’t you read Monastery of Horses?” Jerome asks. “Most of it’s told from the perspective of a hemophiliac deaf-mute.”

  “How very southern,” I say.

  “She understands her market,” Jerome points out. “If you’re from Mississippi, readers expect you to be grotesque.”

  “Although that’s never much of a stretch for any of us,” Clamor observes.

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, May 15

  I have to take wide path around another dead cow and try to keep upwind of it on my walk down to the trailer.

  The Widow Woman is resting on a lawn chair in her front door, watching me. “The Duck is gone,” she tells me. “Took one look at that carcass, and decided he’d had about enough. Put the cap on his pickup, loaded the bed with some of his things and told me that we’re welcome to whatever’s left behind. He’s gone to join the Guru Maharaj.”

  “Who’s our landlord now?” I ask.

  “Don’t know. Duck was talking about selling the place, but there’s no telling whether the deal went through. Maybe nobody. Maybe we’re like some kind of independent state now. You want a beer?”

  She fishes around in the ice chest and finds a Falstaff for me, very cold.

  “Well,” I observe, “the newly formed Independent Republic of Campground Road has its first crisis to attend to. How do we get rid of the cow?”

  “I phoned Duck’s friend with the backhoe. He wants $50 for the job.”

  “You have $50?” I ask.

  “Hell, where would I get $50? You?”

  “No.”

  “I suppose we could take up a collection,” the Widow suggests.

  “Let’s get it from Blake instead.”

  Joan is out, but Blake is working at the typewriter, his eyes rimmed red from sleeplessness and eyestrain. I decide to skip the preambles.

  “We need that cash the Duck gave you, the refund on the rent,” I tell him.

  “Why should I give it to you two?” he mutters, sullen, not looking up.

  “Because you didn’t come by it fairly,” I say. “You know as well as I do that nobody from the camp fired on us. It was either my man Skoll or some wandering maniac. Duck didn’t owe you a refund for anything.”

  Blake rolls a fresh sheet of paper into the machine and resumes typing, without an answer.

  “And because we’ve got to get that cow in the ground by sundown,” I add. “If we don’t, its guts are going to explode in this heat, the stench is going to be unbearable, every wild dog in Lafayette County is going to descend on this spot, and you won’t be able to finish your dissertation for all the noise and the stink.”

  Blake thinks this over. “I’m not just going to give you that money.”

  “Lend it to us, then.”

  He shakes his head. “I’ll buy your stereo. Fifty’s a fair price, and I’ll need a good system down in New Orleans.”

  “All right,” I agree, struggling not to reflect on what I’m agreeing to. “It’s yours.”

  Blake reaches into the pocket of his jeans – jeans he hasn’t changed out of in a week or more – and fishes out a wad of sweated-up bills that are as shapeless and damp as canned spinach.

  “You were a lot nicer when you were a drunk,” the Widow observes on our way out.

  “I was a fool when I was a drunk,” he answers.

  “Heaven has a soft spot for genuine fools,” she says. “Like all my late husbands. But it doesn’t have much use for assholes.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Tuesday, May 16

  I’m in no special hurry, after work, to get back to the trailer, so I decide to drop by Tyler Avenue and inquire after Suzie’s Saturday night delivery.

  The place turns out to be packed, but not with celebrants of any nativity. The people milling about the front porch, crowding the parlor and thronging the kitchen constitute James’ latest entourage, a contingent that seems to have grown significantly since his triumphant return as political martyr from Chapel Hill.

  Having somehow lost more weight – I checked myself on the penny scale at Gathright-Reed last week, 105 pounds – I’m able to slip between bodies in the crowd, and discover James displaying a page from a spiral notebook to the throng as if it were the Shroud of Turin, a page scrawled over and over in pencil with a repeating set of numbers:

  “39, 5, 57, 76, 50, 55.” And a date on the top of the page: “May 14, 1972.”

>   “And as you can yourself witness,” James is saying, “these are the numbers I recorded Sunday evening on the short-wave set, in a three-minute burst over a previously unused frequency that fell completely silent after the 15th repetition.”

  “What in the hell are they?” I ask.

  James seems less than pleased to discover me in the audience. “Those are the latitude and longitude of Laurel, Maryland. Certainly, even you must grasp the significance of that broadcast.”

  I have to admit I don’t. “Sorry,” I say.

  Garrett materializes by my side from someplace out of the crowd. “Sunday night,” he prompts. “A message about something going down in Laurel, Maryland.”

  “You haven’t heard about the shooting,” James says – an accusation, not a question.

  “What shooting?”

  “George Wallace.”

  “My lord! Wallace shot somebody?”

  “No, idiot. Somebody shot Wallace. In Laurel, Maryland.”

  “Poor son of a bitch,” I say. “Is he dead?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “It’s not irrelevant to Wallace!”

  “What matters,” James says, impatient, “is that the station broadcast the latitude and longitude of the shooting over 12 hours before it happened.”

  “James thinks it’s Tamburlaine again,” Garrett says.

  “I know it was Tamburlaine. We’ve got all the wire service pictures. The man in the hat was there.”

  “It was a campaign rally. Half the people there were wearing silly hats.”

  “Why would Tamburlaine shoot George Wallace?” I ask.

  This question really ticks James off. “Tamburlaine didn’t shoot Wallace! Nobody’s saying that. They caught the guy who shot him. But Tamburlaine knew it was going to happen, and he sent those numbers out over the radio to warn us.”

  “Lot of good that did for Wallace,” I observe. “Tamburlaine moves in mysterious ways. Why didn’t he just get on the radio and say, ‘Hey, listen up – some asshole’s going to gun down George Wallace in Maryland tomorrow’? Or even better, why didn’t he put a phone call into the cops or to Wallace’s campaign warning them?”

  James answers with a glare.

  “I’m just saying, the approach seems kind of indirect and inefficient. And anyway, how could Tamburlaine know that Wallace was about to be shot if he wasn’t part of a plot to shoot him?”

  “Get out,” James says. “Nobody wants to listen to your ravings.”