Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss

by Douglas Gray

  “Priest-like? What do you mean by that?”

  “No consecrating my Wild Irish Rose, slipping communion wafers into my box of Ritz crackers. No Stations of the Cross in the hallway.”

  “I’d forgotten how bitter you are about the Church.”

  “Hey, I sent a letter the Pope himself, and he wrote back. Even he agreed I have good cause.”

  I give Leo directions to Campground Road.

  “My trailer’s in the middle, on the hill. It’s the one that has a milk crate for a doorstep.”

  “How will I recognize the camp?” Leo asks.

  “You’ve seen Breughel’s painting of hell?”

  “Of course.”

  “Just look for that,” I say. “You can’t miss it.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Thursday, June 22

  I’ve once again run out of clean clothes, so I bag all my dirty things for a trip to the laundromat – all except, of course, the clothes I’m wearing, which consists of an only slightly filthy pair of jeans, once-worn socks, and Ashley’s Chairman Mao t-shirt.

  Remembering the abuse I suffered the time I wore this t-shirt to campus, I pull a rumpled shirt from the laundry bag to wear over it.

  Not a single visitor stops by the Museum all day, so I close at 3:00 and drive to the laundromat on East University, manage to stuff everything into two machines, throw in some Tide and punch quarters into the slots. I have 40 minutes to kill while the load is washing, so I decide to drive to the Buddha and buy some carryout fried rice for supper.

  Jimmy is reading a Chinese newspaper, feet up on the cash register table, when I enter the dining room. He shouts my order into the kitchen. As he starts to ring me up, we notice a young boy lingering outside the door to the parking lot.

  He’s a white kid, blonde, wearing a blue ball cap with the bill twisted to one side. If he had an eye patch, he could be Bazooka Joe’s doppelgänger. He’s peering inside, but it’s such a bright afternoon that he’s likely not able to see anything except the glare of his own reflection.

  As we watch, he scowls, takes a step backward, unzips his fly, pulls his little wizzer out, pees against the glass, and runs off while zipping himself back up.

  Jimmy thinks this is the funniest thing he’s ever seen. He’s still laughing when Ho steps through the swinging door to the kitchen with my order in a little cardboard box, saying something harsh to Jimmy as she does so but instantly falling silent as she sees me.

  The scorn that I’m accustomed to from her surfaces only for a moment, replaced by an expression that I can only interpret as bewilderment.

  Her eyes widen. Her mouth falls open. She looks at Jimmy and says something that sounds like “Mao?”

  And now I grasp the source of her surprise. Without thinking, I’d thrown my dirty shirt into the wash. She can see Ashley’s t-shirt.

  Ho turns back to me. “Mao!” she says.

  She takes a step toward me. I take a step back. She advances again, and again I retreat. In two more steps, she has me backed into a corner. Another step, and she lays her hands on me.

  This, once more, is the hour of my death.

  To my shock, though, her touch is gentle. She’s patting my arms, saying “Mao, Mao.” She spreads one wizened hand and places it directly on my chest, over the leader’s portrait. “Mao good man,” she says. “Good man.”

  This seems like a good moment to leave. I begin to reach for the container of fried rice, but Ho snatches it away as she barks some kind of command to Jimmy.

  “She wants you to eat more,” Jimmy translates. “She’ll add anything you want to the rice – beef, chicken, pork, shrimp. Anything you like. No charge.”

  I’m confused. “Why is she doing this?”

  “She really likes Mao. She thinks you must, too.”

  Ho utters another sentences.

  “She says you’re too thin. From now on, you come here whenever you want and she’ll feed you.”

  Ho takes my arm, leads me to a booth, nodding and smiling the whole way across the dining room. “Chicken,” she says. “Pok. Shlimp. Beef.”

  “Pork,” I say.

  She eases me into a chair, pats my head, smiles. “Pok,” she says. “Mao good man. Good man.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Friday, June 23

  Dr. Stevens is annoyed, and I can guess why. “Aren’t you going to answer that goddamn phone?” he demands.

  I’m in the Museum watching Dr. Linen’s spirit hovering behind the display case with the red figure pelike of the satyr. The phone has been ringing off and on for over two hours now.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “People keep calling. There’s nothing I can do.”

  As I’m saying this, the ringing stops.

  “Nothing you can do? You can answer it, for godssake. It’s part of your job.”

  “Actually,” I correct him, “it isn’t. I’ve studied the job description for Ole Miss office workers carefully. Nobody’s revised it since like 1872, so it doesn’t mention telephones at all. It does say something about signing for telegraph messages when they arrive by horseback courier – which I’ll be more than happy to do if one ever arrives.”

  The ringing resumes. Dr. Stevens storms into Goodleigh’s office and thunders an “Hello?!” into the receiver. He’s back a minute later with a note handwritten on a slip of paper.

  “That was somebody named Mrs. Foster, reminding you that her Cub Scout troop is scheduled for a Museum tour next week.”

  “I already know that. It’s marked on the calendar. Why would she call just for that?” I wonder aloud.

  “She’s confirming the appointment. It’s something adults do,” Stevens answers. “You wouldn’t understand.”

  “When you were in Turkey,” I ask, before he has a chance to leave, “did you visit any of the prisons where they hold American drug runners? I’ve been hearing a lot about them. They sound like pretty bad places to end up.”

  “I don’t suspect you need to worry about landing in a Turkish prison,” Stevens says. “A Turkish mental ward, though . . . that’s a distinct possibility. Really, Medway, you’re a mess. Have you considered seeking professional help?”

  “I’ve been seeing Dr. Valencia for almost ten months.”

  “Valencia? Everybody knows he’s useless. You might as well talk to your feet.”

  “I know. But he has some machine that he keeps dangling in front of me.”

  “Valencia’s machine?” Stevens asks. “You don’t mean that Russian box?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.”

  He shakes his head. “Take my advice: steer clear of that Russian box. I’ve heard some bad things about it.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Saturday, June 24

  Brother Leopold has settled into the trailer, and shows no signs of leaving. But he’s making himself agreeable by introducing me to some really great liquor that he “borrowed” from the order before driving off to find himself.

  Tonight it’s a twenty-one-year-old bottle of single-malt Scotch with an unpronounceable Gaelic name. I’d forgotten how well priests drink. Not that I begrudge them that. Alcohol is easier to procure than women are. Every priest out there who takes a vow of celibacy, preferring drink to sex, lessens the competition for me.

  Of course, I have to keep reminding myself that this particular lucky celibate slept with Joan, which is much more than I’ll ever be able to claim.

  Our conversation has – inevitably, I suppose – turned to the subject of Tamburlaine. Tucked away in enforced contemplation for the past year, Leo’s ill-informed about the latest developments in the legend. So, out of courtesy, I fill in the gaps: Tamburlaine’s rumored role at Attica State and the attempted Wallace assassination; James’ shortwave radio and the number stations; Sheriff Claprood and the late night troop movements.

  “Our sheriff is a true believer,” I say. “Of course, Garrett thinks the whole thing is bullshit.”

  “What do you think?” Leo asks.

  “He’s rea
l. I’ve met him. He’s just not what everybody thinks he is.”

  “You met Tamburlaine?” Leo sounds skeptical.

  “Back in January,” I explain. “One night during Christmas break, he showed up at the Tyler Avenue commune during a rainstorm. I invited him in for coffee, then served him a tv dinner, and then we sat up most of the night drinking wine and smoking some pot. He told me his whole story.”

  Flop, sprawled on her back on the floor, farts.

  “Do you think we could continue this outside?” Leo suggests. “Away from the stench?”

  I haven’t heard any dogs since returning from North Carolina. It seems like a safe enough suggestion. We sit on two plastic lawn chairs the Duck left behind.

  “Tamburlaine’s just a guy,” I continue. “His real name is Aaron Eccles. He was a theater major up at Macalester College in Minnesota when the whole thing started. The college was staging a performance of Marlowe’s Tamburlaine the Great one night back in April of 1968. In the middle of the play, news reached the theater that Martin Luther King had been assassinated.

  “They decided to stop the production, out of respect. Eccles was playing the lead role, and he stepped forward – still in costume, of course – and delivered a speech, totally impromptu, about how tired he was of his heroes being murdered in the streets, how it was time for us to arm ourselves and begin a great revolution to liberate America from a corrupt imperialist, capitalist system.

  “Well, he was an actor, the audience was primed from having spent the past hour watching one of the most violent plays ever written, and Eccles’ speech was so impassioned that it set off a small riot. Students poured out of the theater and spread the word to the dorms and study halls about what was going on. The quad erupted in protests. Cops had to be called in, a couple of dozen arrests were made, and there was some vandalism. The sort of thing that happened a lot in ’68.”

  “Apparently, that wasn’t the end of it,” Leo observes.

  “Not by a long shot. The accounts of the riot in the local press and the college newspaper got several key facts wrong. They reported that somebody named Tamburlaine had incited the mob, as if he were some kind of mystery figure, an outside agitator. Meanwhile, a bunch of students who’d been in the theater and were stoned out of their minds at the time began spreading rumors of all sort of strange things that happened during the riot, that Tamburlaine had summoned walls of flame to shield kids from the cops and whatnot.

  “But the kicker was a graphic art student who’d been there was inspired to create a comic book hero called ‘Tamburlaine the Revolutionary’ or some such nonsense, investing him with all manner of super powers and giving him a magical talisman that was the source of his strength. It got serialized in at least a dozen underground newspapers across the country.

  “The poor bastard Eccles didn’t want any of this attention. Pretty soon the cops were sniffing around into his personal business, and then the FBI got involved and discovered that Eccles hadn’t shown up for a draft physical the summer before. Now they were after him, too. Eccles tried to escape to Canada, but for some reason he couldn’t cross the border, so he’s had to live as a fugitive ever since. Meanwhile, the legend just grows and grows. All he wants to do is get lost, but every other hippie in America is out on the road trying to find him.”

  It’s dark in the camp yard. Leo’s silent. For a few moments I suspect he’s finally passed out. But I’m wrong.

  “A stranger shows up at your door and tells you a story. You believe it?”

  “I’m always inclined to believe a good story. Well told, of course. I’m going back in. The mosquitoes out here are worse than the smell inside.”

  Leo rises when I do. We thread our way through the dark, back to the trailer. A surprise awaits as I open the door. The living room has been cleared of everything except Flop. The couch has been pulled into the narrow hall, my stereo moved to the kitchen table, the little coffee table set atop the range.

  Leo is understandably alarmed. I attempt to set his mind at ease.

  “This is perfectly normal. The demons are back. They’ve been on their best behavior the past couple of nights. I thought having a man of the cloth staying here might have settled them down.”

  “Demons? What do you mean demons?”

  “One of the former tenants was a witch,” I begin to explain. “But that’s a story for another night. Help me drag the couch clear so we can get to our rooms.”

  ######################################################

  Author's Note: Wasted Year originally appeared in daily installments as a blog narrative at https://www.wastedyear.com

  About the Narrator: Daniel Medway is the worthless scion of a proud old Mississippi family that sorely wishes he’d stop mentioning the relationship.

  Declared “a waste of a placenta” by his daddy on the day of his birth — a prediction that proved eerily accurate as the years unfolded — Daniel will probably best be remembered for writing some poems that James Dickey (briefly) liked one night on a drunken tear, the Great Harpoon Incident, and the miles of microfilmed evidence the FBI once gathered on him.

  After squandering all of his early promise in the pursuit of Jim Beam, pretty women, and the perfect stereo system for his complete collection of the Fugs, Daniel recently unearthed a dog-eared copy of his daily chronicle from August 1971 to August 1972 — what he’s since come to regard, affectionately, as his most wasted year.

  He hopes this release of these chronicles will serve as an expression of remorse for all the damage he’s managed to do in this world. Former acquaintances might prefer a more personal expression of regret, but if he started making individual apologies at this point, there would be no end to it.

  He also hopes you’ll enjoy Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss.

  About the Author: Douglas Gray earned a Bachelors degree in English and a Masters in Classical Languages from the University of Mississippi before receiving a doctorate in English Literature in Texas and moving to Ohio to pursue a teaching career. He currently serves as Chair of the Communication Department at Columbus State Community College. His collection of poems, Words on the Moon is available from Mid-List Press.