Butterfly in the Typewriter

by Cory MacLauchlin

  In October Toole offers a similar Ortiz anecdote of ridiculousness. When Tennessee senator Estes Kefauver visited Fort Buchanan, there was rumor he would visit Co. A. Upon hearing this rumor, Sgt. Ortiz issued orders for a reception.

  The closed mess hall was opened and our very confused mess sergeant cooked hundreds of doughnuts and cookies for Kefauver. The doughnuts would be taken to the orderly room for Sgt. Ortiz to sample them (“Thees doughnuts ahr too brown!”); then, when the perfect result was achieved they were set out on beautifully set tables on great trays. At noon it became clear that Kefauver was not going to show; Capt. Gil de la Madrid and Sgt. Ortiz sat disconsolately, viewing the piles of cookies and doughnuts as the mess Sgt. munched on the fruits of his labor. Finally Ortiz said to me, “Take thees to your people!”

  Sgt. Ortiz captured Toole’s interest as a uniquely conflicted character. Much like Ignatius Reilly with his plastic cutlass, Ortiz wields his swagger-stick authority to a futile end, where, despite his desperate attempts, he gains neither respect nor reward. In fact, Ortiz may be the most unsung hero of Toole’s advent as a novelist. After his dealings with Ortiz, Toole’s letters spark with narrative sensibility. He begins to focus on character development and situational humor. And while he did not begin to draft Confederacy until 1963, he clearly reveled in describing his commanding officer. Like Bobby Byrne, Ortiz was a bold literary character in the flesh, providing Toole with much material.

  Ortiz also provided the pathway for Toole’s shift in perception of Puerto Rico. With his promotion and his entertaining interactions with Ortiz, Toole looks about Puerto Rico and finds it charged with eccentricity, much like New Orleans:What a mad universe I am in at the moment. However, the politics and intrigue are fascinating in their way—and I have intelligent and very witty friends with whom the evening can often be spent savoring all of this.

  For the first time in his letters from Puerto Rico, he references his friends. The loneliness of midsummer had lifted. He had earned a promotion, taken on new responsibilities, and assumed a position of leadership. “This is all very wild and strange and dreamlike,” he writes.

  Throughout September, he continued to document the hilarity of conflicts between Company A and the Puerto Rican officers:Our immediate superiors, all of whom are Puerto Rican, are wild and excitable and unpredictable and the combination of English instructors and Puerto Rican cadre is an uneasy alliance full of sound and fury and improbably funny happenings. The incident of the missing lawn mower wheel was magnified so greatly that it almost split Co. A asunder.

  Indeed, Company A seemed to actualize the farces found in sitcoms like Hogan’s Heroes or Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. The instructors followed peculiar orders from Puerto Rican officers concerned about the appearance of the base. They sanded the paint off the wood handles of trench tools and then repainted them light brown. They erected makeshift scaffolding to paint the ceilings of barracks. And when the instructors could not find a place to hide their contraband during high-level inspections, they filled army trucks with their bottles of liquor and highball glasses and drove them around base. But perhaps the most ridiculous of moments came during the somber procession of burial detail, when four soldiers would escort the deceased to the grave. Upon command, they were to turn right and shoot their rifles into the air. As Anthony Moore tells, “We botched up these routines so badly.” On one occasion, one of the soldiers heard the command to turn right and, instead, turned left and knocked the rifle out of another soldier’s hands. On another burial detail, an instructor from Company A accidentally knocked the helmet off the soldier next to him with his rifle as they turned. But these foibles pale in comparison to the time four soldiers, standing stoically over the fallen soldier, watched as a Puerto Rican wife, overcome with grief, jumped into her husband’s grave and was then awkwardly pulled out from the earthen tomb.

  Recognizing the wealth of comical situations, Toole used his letters as a narrative workshop, refining his comic timing and style in short accounts of life at Fort Buchanan. In one such story, Toole tells of a dance party organized for visiting sailors and airmen. Earlier that day, Toole had led the visiting officers on a tour of the base and San Juan. In the evening they attended a dance. Much like the episodic events in Confederacy , Toole’s rendition of the story focuses on situational humor and escalating tensions between social classes:Friday night there was a dance for the guests at the pavilion of the Army-Navy beach—and toward the end of the dance a great wave crashed into the pavilion drenching everyone. Several people climbed trees when they saw the wave coming—and, as it washed back out to sea, it carried with it several shoes and caps. The girls for the dance were recruited from the San Juan YWCA—and a motley crowd they were. Several of the “girls” were near forty and some were extremely chocolate in “colour.” Needless to say, the airmen and sailors were somewhat dismayed and many of them stayed in the men’s room throughout the “dance.” In addition to this, it seemed obvious that a few of the YWCA girls were rather identifiably prostitutes. After the wave struck, the outraged YWCA girls began to scream volubly—and somewhat dangerously, I thought—in Spanish, calling down the wrath of God upon the Army for bringing them to this dance. It took almost 15 minutes for our Puerto Rican bus driver to get them quiet, but not before one of the YWCA girls had tried to strike him. The San Juan YWCA must be a very special branch of that organization. At any rate it was an evening that continually verged on the brink of hilarity.

  Shades of this scene parallel the climax scene in Confederacy where Ignatius, a veritable tsunami of flesh, strikes the Night of Joy club. In the commotion the “fortyish latin” b-girl with halitosis demands payment for champagne. The tensions between her suggestive advances, her grotesque physicality, and her demands mimic the YWCA women on the beach.

  Other glimmers of Ignatius also shine through some of his 1962 letters. When Toole informs his parents that he lost his Tulane ring, he confides that his attachment to this token of his past affects him both emotionally and physically. But instead of recognizing the lost ring as misfortune, he points an Ignatian finger at Puerto Rico as a place of violence and disease that threatens his bowels and his life. “Actually, it’s a wonder I haven’t been stabbed yet or paralyzed by intestinal diseases on this insane little geological mountain top protruding from the Caribbean.” Of course, Ignatius would have never ended a letter as Toole ended this one. “I love you both and miss you a great, great deal,” he wrote. Then again, Ignatius had never been so far away from New Orleans.

  In the fall of 1962, Toole settled into his role as head of Company A and became content with his place in the army. Markedly distinct from his summer correspondence, in September he nonchalantly ends a letter with, “I have no complaints.” At the end of September, he writes to Fletcher, who had gone to Florence, Italy, to run an English language school. Toole still complains about the heat, but explains how the shared boredom he and the instructors suffer bonds them closer together. Like a band of fraternity brothers, they plotted to disrupt a production of Macbeth at El Morro in San Juan, in which one of the instructors was performing. “We are to begin with cocktails early in the afternoon,” he writes, “and much later to proceed to the fort in a fleet of air-conditioned taxis. And so, with such plans, we pass the time. . . . ” He later reports to his parents that he rather enjoyed the play. And for the first time since he arrived in Puerto Rico, the end of his service was in view.

  He ends his letter to Fletcher expressing his hopes of leaving the army by the summer of 1963. But he also acknowledges that Fidel Castro, quite literally, loomed in the distance. Having recently toured the missile facilities armed with nuclear warheads at Ramey Air Force Base, Toole found the “terrifying” weapons and the “disquietingly spirited manner of the proprietors of the missiles and jet bombers gave him pause,” even to his “desensitized tropical psyche.” Assuming the country would not be throttled into nuclear war and “barring a complete paranoid breakdown on the part of Fidel Castro,�
� he would be home in one year.

  With his thoughts turned toward home he requested that his parents write him more frequently. He wrote letters to friends in Lafayette and New York. And as he felt the pangs of longing for New Orleans, he received word that his father was ill with shingles. In another rare moment of sentimentality, he writes home,Dear Dad,

  Mother wrote me that you are suffering from shingles, an infection which I know is extremely painful. Because you always enjoy such good health, I was especially surprised to hear of this. The illness is obviously the result of too much work, anxiety, and too little food and rest. Please take care of yourself for the sake of mother and me.

  Mother, I know, will nurse you excellently. She seems quite distressed over the illness—as well she should be. I am only sorry that I am separated from you at so great a distance.

  Please rest. In your next letter I will hope to hear of some recovery.

  I love you very much, Dad, and I hope and pray that this painful infection passes. You have always been so good, so kind to me that it hurts me to know that you are in pain.

  Most of his letters from Puerto Rico are addressed to both of his parents. This is the only letter in the Toole Papers addressed solely to his father. He clearly pitied him to the point of his own pain, as he states. The letter is touching and sincere but remarkably incongruent with the impressions he gave of his family and what others observed of them. He imagines a breadwinning father tragically fallen ill with his devoted wife tenderly caring for his every need. Thelma took care of her husband for many years. But Toole’s heartwarming domestic image shares a closer semblance to the family dynamic of his friends from Lafayette, the Rickelses. Distance and longing has a strange ability to reconstruct the real into an ideal. In late October 1962, Toole decided he wanted to go home for Christmas.

  In November his leave request was approved. And by then his parents had gained financial stability, whereas Toole lacked enough money for airfare. He repeatedly requested that they send money for the plane ticket, which after some delay, they eventually did. Once his tickets were booked, the cool weather approached, and he frequented the beach. This time he viewed his surroundings in a positive light, enjoying the clear water and interacting with fellow beach-goers. Perhaps calmed by the ideas of returning to New Orleans or the comforts of his home, he patiently waited for his leave.

  In good spirits he writes to Fletcher on November 29, 1962, humorously depicting himself in the way that he so often characterized Sgt. Ortiz:Over my private telephone I contact headquarters, switching people here and there, waiting, listening, planning. I’m sure I will leave my duty here a completely mad tyrant whose niche in civilian life will be non-existant. In its own lunatic way, this is very entertaining. I also enjoy posting edicts on bulletin boards; the last paragraph of my most recent proclamation reads:

  “Further action will be taken against habitual violators of these regulations.”

  But joking aside, he ends his letter with a sincere assessment of his accomplishments in the army:After a year in Puerto Rico (as of 25 Nov), I find that the positive aspects of that year outweigh the negative. Although this seems a great cliché, I can say that I have learned a vast amount about humans and their nature—information which I would have enjoyed having earlier. In my own curious way I have risen “meteorically” in the Army without having ever been a decent prospect for the military life; but I feel that my very peculiar assignment has been responsible. The insanity and unreality of Puerto Rico itself has been interesting at all times that it was not overwhelming.

  He would soon be back in New Orleans. It had been one year since he arrived at Fort Buchanan. Within that time he continually grappled with the “madness” of Puerto Rico. In the summer he found the island loathsome, as he endured pangs of loneliness and reports of his parents’ financial woes. By the end of the year, he was confident in his place within the army. He observed and commented on Puerto Rico with less deplorable damnation, appreciating the characters and stories unfolding every day at Fort Buchanan. And at the end of 1962, he beamed with pride as he returned home. He had left New Orleans a draftee, unknown to anyone at Fort Buchanan. He returned, twelve months later, Sergeant John Toole, U.S. Army.

  Toole arrived in New Orleans on Saturday, December 22. The Christmas holiday was in full swing; carols played on the radio, families hung tinsel on their Christmas trees, and shoppers strolled along Canal Street marveling at the displays. But unlike the snowy scenes in the department store windows, New Orleans was no winter wonderland. As was typical for the winter months in southern Louisiana, cold rains drenched the city throughout the holiday season of 1962. But Toole had so yearned for his return home that even the winter rains may have signaled to him welcomed relief from army life.

  For most of his vacation, he relaxed in his parents’ apartment on Audubon Street, content with homemade meals and a comfortable bed. He received several invitations from friends in Lafayette, but, as he confessed to Fletcher, “Nothing would lodge me from the comforts of home.” On a few occasions he ventured out to reconnect with his beloved city. Wandering about his hometown, reminiscing the past, and pleased with his year in the service, he likely grappled with a looming dilemma. In eight months he would be discharged. But the future was uncertain. He could teach or continue graduate studies, each option a worthy pursuit, although neither one closer to his dream of becoming a fiction writer. In the past his responsibilities of work and school, along with his own insecurities had stifled his muse. Since the age of sixteen when his novella The Neon Bible lost the writing contest, he mostly kept his attempts at fiction and poetry to himself, sharing occasionally with his mother. But his winter trip home may have reminded him of his ambition to write a true New Orleans novel. He was always intrigued by the stories taking place every day in New Orleans, with its panoply of characters much like the city: proud and desperate, opulent and decomposing, all at once. But no writer had yet captured its essence, at least not the New Orleans that he knew.

  The few surviving letters that document his winter visit to New Orleans indicate an introspective journey, where Toole would once again find that spark of inspiration he’d found stargazing in Mississippi in 1954. He had never really recaptured that energetic spirit, despite his attempts at writing. This time his eye would turn toward his hometown in all its conflicted complexity. The accounts of his interactions with the few friends he visited suggest something was shifting in Toole. In a letter to Fletcher that recounts his visit home, Toole exhibits the sensibilities of a fiction writer, one who not only narrates an intriguing moment, but also explores the composition of the moment, such as characters and plot. His observations in this single letter indicate traces of material found in Confederacy.

  Toole details a visit he made to Bobby Byrne, his unforgettable colleague from Southwestern Louisiana Institute, which was now University of Southwestern Louisiana. Welcoming Toole into his New Orleans home, Byrne stood dignified and sloppy, refined in elocution, and ridiculously dressed. Toole writes to Fletcher,I also paid the ritualistic visits to the Byrne home (coffee, Aunt May, Mama et al) where, of course, little has changed but the pot of fresh coffee and chicory. Bobby’s worldview weathers humanity’s derision and apathy. He does, however, begin to appear old. Both he and his brother received holiday visitors in long nightshirts and slippers with rather haughty formality, and Bobby was, as always good for a dogma or two.

  Toole must have recalled this moment when he wrote the first chapter of Confederacy. Dressed in his “monstrous flannel nightshirt,” Ignatius greets Patrolman Mancuso as he and Mrs. Reilly converse over coffee and chicory. Like Byrne, Ignatius prefers the comforts of his nightshirt, disregarding decorum in the presence of company. Ignatius also has a worldview that “weathers humanity’s derision and apathy.” And throughout the novel he offers countless dogmas, as he revolts against the Modern Age. While Toole had spent nearly a year observing Byrne at SLI, Toole’s return to New Orleans may have reminded him of
Byrne’s potential to be made into a character for his novel.

  Continuing his rounds of SLI faculty in New Orleans, he spent an afternoon with Nick Polites, who was home from Chicago to see his family. His aunt, the librarian at SLI, Mario Mamalakis, was also visiting for the holidays. In Toole’s account of the visit, he observed the unique chemistry between the Polites family members: Polites is still spreading his own peculiar brand of fatalistic gloom as he continues to thrust upon the thorns of life and continues to bleed quite articulately. Although I saw him only briefly during the holidays, he quickly and efficiently categorized the horrors of Chicago, New Orleans, and life. The robust positivism of Mario and of his mother are hilarious counterparts to his breathy futility and negativism. And I was fortunate to visit with all three one Sunday afternoon.

  Toole recognized the way in which the opposing personalities created humorous tension. He applied this rule of opposites to Confederacy as well. Every negative character has a positive counterpart, and while the negative characters (Lana Lee, Mrs. Levy, Ignatius Reilly) appear to be atop the wheel, even when they do not see themselves as such, by the end of the novel the positive characters (Burma Jones, Darlene, Miss Trixie, Mr. Levy, Irene Reilly) have ascended. And the tension between the character personalities generates the movement of the plot—just as it stirred the conversation in the Polites home, much to Toole’s amusement.