by Douglas Gray
Thursday, June 1
“It doesn’t look so bad,” the Man in the Quaker State Cap says to me, surveying the damage Alcott has wrought, the imprint of his fist all up the left side of my face. Over near the eye, you can even count individual knuckle marks. “My experience has been that the ladies find a few bruises kind of appealing.”
I suspect he’s being kind. It seems like everybody at Skeeter’s is being kind tonight. Blake and I have been welcomed back, after long absence, like prodigals in a parable. My companion at the bar buys me another Michelob and himself a Pepsi.
Tonight’s band – two guitarists and a chanteuse from Yazoo City – are on break, yielding the microphone to Blake, who is entertaining the audience with excerpts from his dissertation. At the moment, he’s reading a chapter about the tragic death of the Dauphin. The crowd seems noticeably moved.
“Poor little Dauphin kid,” the Man in the Quaker State Cap says. “I pity his bereaved momma and daddy. Just goes to show, even royalty’s no stranger to heartbreak. It finds us all in the end.”
The band returns, performing their version of “Empty Arms.” Blake buys the house another round. With him about to earn an assistant professor’s salary down in New Orleans, I guess he can afford to be generous.
I glance at my watch: 11:27. Blake has a meeting with his committee at 10:00 a.m. tomorrow I’ve promised Joan to deliver him personally. When I agreed, reluctantly, to drive him to Holly Springs this evening, it was on the condition that we’d be back home in the trailer by midnight. But Blake’s showing no inclination toward leaving. He’s probably going to make us stay here at Skeeter’s until closing-time.
I grit my teeth with anxiety each time Blake stumbles around the room from table to table with his precious box of 726 neatly-typed sheets of bond paper. His work of three years. His passport to the life of a college professor in New Orleans. His only copy, surviving moment by moment the perils of spilled beer pitchers and drunk patrons who’ve been known to throw up spontaneously.
So it comes as a relief when Blake tips over in a chair, falls to the floor, and doesn’t move again. Passed out. Skeeter himself helps me move his body to the parking lot, with the Man in the Quaker State Cap following behind with the dissertation held reverently before him.
I deposit Blake and the box in the back seat of my car and shake hands with Skeeter. “You boys come back real soon now, y’hear? Always welcome.”
The Man simply tugs at the bill of his Quaker State cap, kind of shy. “Peace, man.”
I drive away with my sleeping cargo through the sleeping neighborhoods of Holly Springs, out past the city limits, then to the Highway 4 / Highway 7 split, and past the signs to the Wall Doxey State Park. Blake starts muttering to himself, some kind of dream argument that he appears to be losing. Then he wakes up, with a snort.
“Where are we?”
“Heading home.”
“What time is it?”
“A little after 1:00 I reckon. We’ll be home in half an hour. Go on back to sleep. Big day tomorrow. You need your rest.”
Silence after that. I figure Blake has heeded my advice, passed out again. I drive on through the cool dark of Mississippi woodland and farmland, onto the Highway 7 bridge over the Tallahatchie River, through its boxy corridor of metal spans running parallel to the rusted trestles of the old Central Railroad bridge, over the river and onto solid ground again. I’ve just left the bridge behind when a commotion erupts in the back seat.
“Stop the car!” Blake screams at me. “Stop!”
“You gonna’ be sick?” I yell back. “Don’t puke in the car, man. Just hold on.”
I brake and bring the car to a squealing halt by the side of the road. Blake throws the door open and bails onto the pavement. In a second, he’s on his feet and running off into the darkness. I kill the engine and listen through the chant of the cicadas for the familiar sound of Blake being sick.
I continue sitting, waiting and listening for over a full minute. Nothing. Not a sound except for the insects. Something makes me turn to peer into the back seat: the dissertation is gone.
I leave the car in a hurry and run back toward the bridge, calling Blake’s name.
By the time I reach him, by a guard rail directly over the center of the river, Blake is tossing the last remaining pages of his dissertation into the air, where they flutter and drift downward into the water below. As I approach, panting from my feckless attempt to stop him from destroying his future, Blake tosses the empty box into the river and turns to me with a grin.
“Better out than in, they say. I’m feeling fine now.”
“What have you done?” I scream.
“I’ve decided I don’t want to be a professor after all,” Blake says, stumbling about. “That was a terrible idea. I want to be a dentist.”
Maybe something can be salvaged. I leave Blake at the railing and dash to the end of the bridge, down an embankment of concrete pilings, and wade knee-deep into the cold, strong water of the Tallahatchie.
It’s no use. I can retrieve a few handfuls of paper, but they’re already ruined, while the rest of the dissertation is being swept downstream, away toward the Yazoo River.
I clamber out of the water and up the pilings, back to the bridge. Blake is gone. I shout his name time after time, straining after each call for an answer. Nothing, only the drone of locusts and a chorus of frogs somewhere off in the marsh.
I begin walking back to the car, and receive another nasty surprise. It’s gone as well. My car is gone. Blake and my car are both gone. Together, obviously.
The drunk bastard drove off in my car, and it’s a 15-mile trek back to the trailer. Nothing to do except begin walking. Maybe I’ll get lucky and find a ride to hitch.
There’s a half-moon out, enough to illuminate the road. Enough to illuminate the hills and the fields and the trees on either side. Enough to illuminate the lone figure twenty yards away, the one who’s standing there without moving, the one who (I now realize) has been here the whole time, watching this event play out.
Raven Bright. I’m not startled to see her. Not even surprised. It’s as if I almost expected to find her there.
“You caused this, didn’t you?” I shout to her, without approaching. “Well, I hope you’re happy at last. Now maybe you’ll leave that poor son of a bitch alone. Maybe you’ll leave all of us alone.”
She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t even move. I begin walking. When I glance back over my shoulder, fifty or so paces down the road, she’s gone.
Part 10. The Machine
June 2 - July 14, 1972
Friday, June 2
“No need to be nervous,” Dr. Costello says kindly, noticing my emotional state. “This isn’t your oral defense.”
I’m sitting at the head of a long conference table in the History department office, facing four professors. They’ve given me coffee, which I sorely need, but my hand shakes as I try to raise it to my lips.
“Just having a bad flashback to the time I defended my masters thesis, last year up at Virginia.”
Dr. Lombardo, Blake’s department chair, finally bustles in, 20 minutes late.
“Sorry,” he says. “This meeting has been rescheduled so many times, I got confused.” He drops a ballpoint pen and a yellow legal pad onto the table, takes the empty chair and turns to me with robust professionalism. “Let’s get started. I’d like to know why you chose the Tennis Court Oath as the topic of your dissertation.”
“Dave,” Dr. Costello advises, “this isn’t Blake.”
Dr. Lombardo turns to him. “It isn’t?”
“No. Just take a look at him.”
Lombardo looks at me. “You’re not Blake?”
“No, sir.”
“Who are you, then?”
“This is Mr. Medway,” Costello says.
“Medway? I’ve never heard of him.”
“I’m Blake’s roommate,” I explain.
Lombardo turns with an appeal to his colleagues. �
��Where is Blake? I was under the impression that we’re meeting this morning for his oral defense.”
“He’s gone,” I say.
“Gone where?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “He took my car last night, left me stranded on Highway 7. By the time I was able to thumb a ride back to town, he’d packed all his things in his own car and left town.”
“Without defending his dissertation?”
“There is no dissertation,” Costello says. “Blake destroyed it.”
“Destroyed it?”
“He tossed it off the bridge up at the county line,” I report, “threw everything into the Tallahatchie.”
“Just like Billy Joe McAllister,” Costello adds.
“Who?” Lombardo asks. “Is that another one of our students?”
“I was too late to stop him. Now he wants to be a dentist.”
“Was he drunk?” Lombardo asks.
“Of course he was!” Costello says. “We’re talking about Blake, after all.”
“But,” Lombardo says, looking genuinely bewildered, “that means he’s ruined his professional future. I don’t understand. Why could he choose self-destruction?”
“Again,” Costello repeats, “we’re talking about Blake.”
Dr. Davies speaks up. “Good riddance, I say. A waste of all our time and effort, if he’s just going to throw away a tenure-track position at Tulane like that.”
“Damn fool,” Dr. Schreyer agrees, turning on Costello. “You should have drummed him out of the program after the first year, Dave. It would have been best for everyone. You were always too tolerant of his antics.”
Costello flinches at the accusation.
“I wouldn’t be too hard on Blake,” I say. “I don’t think he was in control of his actions.”
“Because he was drunk,” Schreyer says.
“No. Because I think he was under somebody else’s control.”
~ ~ ~
Saturday, June 3
Becky will leave for summer break and home tomorrow morning. Her father’s scheduled to arrive this evening, probably late because he has a golf tournament down on the coast today. He’ll spend the night at the Holiday Inn, and then tomorrow, right after church, he and Becky will load her things into his BMW 3.0 CS, and return to the ancestral manse outside Gulfport, where her extended family of near and distant relatives will coddle her through the summer in an effort to re-inculcate her in Junior League values.
Becky promises me, over a last supper of meat plus three at Grundy’s, that she intends to spend the time reading Simone de Beauvoir and Betty Friedan, staying up late in the night to compose scandalous poems, and writing letters to the editor of the Gulfport newspaper that they’d never dare publish.
We set off for one last stroll around the Square. Oxford is full of cars with out-of-county and out-of-state license tags belonging to parents who’ve come either to take their children home or to attend tomorrow’s commencement ceremony in the coliseum.
Garrett spots us as we pass under the window of the Ohm and calls us up to join a party. Clamor, Miss Fairchild, Cindy and Andrew are already here. The shop is crowded. Clamor latches onto Becky and passes her a scrap of loose leaf paper with a phone number scrawled on it.
“Glad I found you before you left. Here’s the name of my friend on the coast. He’ll get you set up, already expecting your call.”
“What’s that?” I ask.
“Claire Marie’s dealer friend,” Becky says. “You certainly can’t expect a girl to spend two and half months in Gulfport without getting stoned.”
She finds a spot on the waterbed, stretches out on her back, and takes a toke the next time the joint passes her way. Her blouse comes untucked from her pinstriped bellbottoms that she probably had to buy from the girls department of Nielsens, baring a skinny hollow of tummy and ribcage, and a sweet little bellybutton.
More footsteps on the stairs, preceded by voices that we identify as belonging to Nick and Suzie. They’ve brought young Samuel with them, strapped to Nick’s back in an old army surplus backpack with holes cut out for its head, arms and legs. We all commence to oooh and aaah in a stoned orgy of admiration as the proud parents bask in the reflected glow of their genetic masterpiece.
“Damn, I want one of those,” Clamor says. “Which one of you boys wants to knock me up? Step forward. Don’t be shy.”
“May I borrow him?” Becky asks.
“I’m not sure what you mean,” Suzie says.
“Just for a few minutes.”
“What do you want him for?”
Becky whispers the answer in her ear. Suzie listens, smiles, and passes the baby to her, wrapped in a tie-dyed comforter.
Becky gestures for me to follow. We descend the steps together, and turn left onto Van Buren. I suppose that she’s leading me to the Nickelodeon on some errand or other, but Becky stops short of Dottie’s storefront and enters the Gathright-Reed drugstore. I follow her to the drug counter in the back of the store where old Mr. Reinhart, Oxford’s dyspeptic pharmacist, watches our approach.
Becky sidles up to the counter at an oblique angle, managing to keep Samuel out of sight. “Do you remember me?” she asks Mr. Reinhart.
“Yes, miss. You were in a few months ago. We had a conversation about morality, as I recall.”
“That’s right. You wouldn’t fill my prescription for birth control pills.”
“I don’t believe young girls should be given permission for licentiousness. You’re too little to be dating, much less sleeping with boys. I said the same thing to the lady professor you brought in to scold me that afternoon. There’s more to life than sex. You both should be ashamed of yourselves.”
Ah-ha! So that’s the mysterious errand that I drove Becky and Dr. Goodleigh to back in March. Either before or after the pregnancy scare, Becky tried to get the pill. When Reinhart wouldn’t dispense it, she persuaded Dr. Goodleigh to sic him.
“Yes, you made your views quite clear,” Becky says. “But I wanted you to see the results of your actions.” She sets Samuel on the counter. “Let’s go, honey,” she says to me.
She takes my arm and we turn to leave.
Mr. Reinhart starts sputtering behind us. “Wait! Wait! Miss! Young lady! You can’t leave your baby here!”
Curious customers gather around as Becky and the Mr. Reinhart begin to spar – Becky arguing that a pharmacist who refuses to dispense drugs prescribed by a physician must accept legal and moral responsibility for the ill effects on the patient; and Mr. Reinhart arguing that, no, she cannot leave her baby with him. Uh-uh. No way. Not my – Mr. Reinhart’s – responsibility. Take your little bastard and leave. Goddamn hippies. Immoral heathens. Sex-craved social deviants.
In the grip of righteous indignation, he fails to consider that Becky couldn’t possibly be the mother of this child, unless her gestation period has been somewhere under three months.
Shortly thereafter, we’re walking arm-in-arm back up Van Buren, reeling hilariously back to the Ohm. Even the baby’s laughing. We stumble together up the stairwell.
“You’re so damn funny,” I say, without thinking, “I could kiss you.”
She gives me a sideways glance and a smile. “It’s a mystery to us all why you haven’t already done so,” she replies.
So I do.
~ ~ ~
286. More Guns than the Armory (Sunday, June 4)
I thought that beer batter pancakes, cooked on a skillet I’ve borrowed from the Widow, might cheer Joan up. But they don’t seem to be having the intended effect, sitting there on her plate with a dollop of tepid margarine and a puddle of Mrs. Butterworth syrup congealing around the stack.
She nibbles absent-mindedly on an orange slice and sighs. “Why do I always make such poor choices with men?” she asks, not for the first time this morning.
“All men are bad choices,” I say. “I tried to warn you at the baby shower. No man ever constitutes a ‘good’ choice. If I were a girl, I’d certainly
opt to be a lesbian. How about I fry an egg for you? Really, you need to get something in your stomach.”
I wait for a reply that never arrives. My new copy of Honky Château is playing on the stereo – the stereo Melissa gave me and that Blake thoughtfully left behind when he fled town. The music doesn’t seem to have any cheering effect on Joan.
“Come with us,” I urge her again. “North Carolina’s beautiful this time of year. It’s only Clamor and me – plenty of room in the bus. You’ll love Tatyana’s goat farm. No men there, either – except for me of course. Being around other women will do you good.”
“I need to stay, in case Blake comes back.”
“You can’t stay here alone. Between the dog packs, the demons, and the dealers every night in Duck’s old trailer, this place isn’t safe.”
“The Widow’s alone.”
“But she’s got more rifles than the National Guard armory. Nobody messes with her. Come on. If Blake comes back, the Widow can call us up there. I’ll leave her Tatyana’s number.”
Joan peels another slice from the orange and raises it to her lips, where it hovers unbitten, as if Joan’s already forgotten about it.
“If I can’t stay here and I don’t come with you,” she asks, “then where can I go?” She places the orange slice on the plate and looks at me full in the face. “Not to the commune. James is there now. Not back to Suzie and Nick’s place. There’s no room for me anymore. I have no place to go, Daniel!”
~ ~ ~
Monday, June 5
Dr. Goodleigh is leaving for Turkey on the 15th, so I promise to return a day or so before her departure.
“Truth is,” she says as she gives me the key, “I wish you’d just move in for the summer. I’d feel better having someone actually living here, to look after the place.”
“Stay with Melpomene and the gang for two months? I’d never make it out alive.”
“From what you’ve been telling me about that lovely trailer camp, I wouldn’t expect you to make it out of there alive, either, if you stick around too long.”
I’ve arranged to swap my car for Garrett’s bus to drive to North Carolina, which provides enough room for the painting supplies I’ll need at Tatyana’s place.
“Do you have five bucks?” Garrett asks when I stop by the commune. “We’re taking up a collection.”
“A collection for what?” I ask.
“We’re going to buy Cindy a monkey.”
