A Moveable Famine (23 page)

When I got to the co-op, Hester was instructing Stavrula how to choose the best mushrooms. “They should look like they can bounce!” she said. It was the first time I had encountered Stavrula. She had avoided me, wanting to forget our Iowa past. Hester continued packing mushrooms into bags, quickly weighing and marking them as Stavrula stared in admiration. They conspired and giggled, laughed and whispered. They were like a couple from a foreign country who did not expect to be understood by others.

Hester said, “Are you here to replace your potato?”

“I still have it,” I said.

“Want to help?”

I scooped coconut granola from an aluminum garbage can into one-pound bags. At three, when the co-op closed, I stood around waiting and not waiting for Hester, but when she saw my indecision, she walked over and said, “Last night was nice, but I’m having dinner with Zoe.” She nodded toward Stavrula who counted the money.

“Her name’s Stavrula,” I said.

“No longer,” Hester said. “She’s starting anew.”

“This is a local neurosis,” I said. She said she would call me. When I walked away I remembered I didn’t have a phone.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY

POST-ELLIOT TAKES PHOTOS—BLACK MIRRORS—A STOPPED WATCH—AN ANAL HISTORY OF PROVINCETOWN—MONT BLANC—CRAZY COWBELL—CREELEY GOES TO JAIL—MY GIRL

I
knocked on Hester’s door before Creeley’s reading. I could hear music and talking and I wished I hadn’t come, but it was too late to turn around—I’d be caught on the stairs. The door opened slowly, just barely, and Hester peeked through the crack. All I could see was white, her white face above a white dress, but more, white shoes. A nurse’s uniform.

“I have company,” she said.

“Another time,” I said and ran down without touching the railing.

Kurt barely managed his short introduction, listing left and right, squinting at his index card. After a day of Haffenreffer Private Stock and Old Mister Boston, he was not often seen at night. Creeley graciously thanked his host and told stories and reminisced. He exaggerated the sounds of some poems, reading the ending line:

Oh love, where are you leading me now?

and then reading it again:

Oh love, where are you leading me-now, men-ow, meow!

Hester never showed up.

Jeanne had taken the job of manager of the Bull Ring because it came with a large apartment, and she threw the party for Creeley. Porter had hired Post-Elliot to take pictures for next year’s brochure, and he blinded everyone with flashbulbs. Wayne invited us to his room to see his artwork: Jockey shorts dabbed with flaking day-glow orange paint hung from the tips of fishing rods. A joint dangling from his mouth, Wayne waved one of the poles very somberly, saying, “We do not surrender, but want peace.” Jeanne stood in the doorway next to Creeley and shook her head. Hankard said, “I find that people who talk with cigarettes in their mouths are seldom modest.” Hankard’s cheeks remained dark no matter how often he shaved, and he shaved often, making a study of it. We all knew he used straight razors, preferred badger brushes to boar and loved bay rum. He poked his chin in Jeanne’s direction, beckoning her to touch his cheek, and when she pronounced it smooth, he grinned and stroked it himself.

Creeley circled a bottle of tequila on the dining room table like a wrestler trying to get a good angle on his opponent. Then he swooped, grabbed it, took a big slug, and backed away again as if it might retaliate. He did this several times before wiping the sweat from his forehead with a red bandana. I wondered what happened to Hester and I turned to the door at any sound from that direction. And I wondered why she had been dressed as a nurse. I tried to talk with Kurt who sipped from a bottle of gin he kept in his overcoat. I asked him about the piece Creeley read on the sculptor Marisol, but his body had drifted into a mushy plane, and he did not slur his words as much as words slurred his tongue. His eyes rolled toward the ceiling and he gently chopped the air with the side of his hand, swallowing and stuttering until he gave up trying to talk, shook his head, put his arm around my shoulder and smiled.

Page laid a broomstick on the table so that its bristles hung over the edge. Then he raised his boot high, trying to flip it and catch it in the air, but he kept missing and the broomstick crashed to the floor again and again. The poets marked by death, Stephen and Barry, brought a case of their home brew. Jeanne and I sipped the vinegary beer, but when we put the bottles down, foam rose in continuous volcano-like spurts, flowing onto the table and floor. Stephen and Barry said in unison, “Too much yeast!” and clanged their bottles together in a toast to their failure. Post-Elliot caught the moment.

Jeanne invited seventy-year-old Spooner, a Southern woman who lived in the Bull Ring. No matter the weather, she walked the beach in a bathing suit. She had beautiful legs, which had caught my attention one day as I sat at my table with the blind half drawn over my picture window. I saw the legs go by and raised the shade to find my gray-haired neighbor. This evening she showed off those legs in a short skirt.

“Creeley, Creeley,” she called, and the poet came politely toward her.

“What’s your favorite spa?” she drawled, sipping a cup of tea.

Creeley scowled at the floor and then grinned, “I haven’t been to many, but I did go to Baden-Baden years ago.”

“I mean baseball, football, golf?”

“Oh,
sport
!” Creeley said.

“How did Baden-Baden get its name?” Porter asked.

Kurt seemed to know the Baden-Baden answer but fell forward trying to cough it out.

“Kurt, Kurt,” Jeanne said softly, steadying him.

“Is his name Kurt-Kurt?” Spooner asked, as if uncovering a key to the conversation.

Post-Elliot bragged about capturing Kurt in his nonverbal state, and Porter reminded him to take photos without drinks, dope or drunken behavior. Stephen and Barry were in Wayne’s room painting nautical images on the frames of mirrors they planned to sell to summer tourists. Hankard, the only sober one, walked with his hands folded behind his back, saying nothing.

Page yelled, “Did you see that?” He had caught the broomstick.

Everyone missed it, but Post-Elliot got it perfectly.

Jeanne and I talked about the books on her shelf: Kenneth Patchen, William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky. She had come to P’town straight from managing a restaurant in New Jersey, and her tastes were not academic. She asked me if I would like to have dinner sometime, that she would make spaghetti carbonara. Jeanne was level and steady, unlike Hester. And plain, unlike Hester. She wore denim jackets and white blouses with multi-colored hand-stitched beads across the chest. She was usually in a cotton dress with a paisley pattern. At our first meeting, Hankard had asked her where she got the chicken-chasing skirt. She ran every aspect of the Bull Ring, taking reservations, doing the laundry and she was still able to write poems. I couldn’t link her to Wayne, who seemed totally disoriented. We sat on the bed, looking at a catalogue of drawings by Patchen, when we heard a ruckus in the bathroom. Kurt had passed out on the toilet, thwarting Page’s desperate need to relieve himself of home brew. Porter and I maneuvered Kurt against the sink and pulled up his pants.

“There’s no beer left and the liquor stores are closed,” Jeanne said. I escorted Kurt to the couch as Porter dialed the local cab company.

“Have one of your drivers drop off a case of beer at the Bull Ring,” he said, adding, “and a couple of pizzas.” He explained that the cab company kept a supply of booze and pizzas for after hours.

Jeanne put on disco music and Creeley danced with Spooner to “Love Train.” Spooner was now saying everyone’s name twice and leaping on the grass rug. Jeanne stood at the edge of Wayne’s room where the poets marked by death had a new idea for the mirrors. She motioned me over. Wayne’s dope-sick stare beamed at their plan to make the mirrors unique. They would paint the glass black. Barry had been reading Fernando Pessoa who said that god gave us the gift of not being able to see our faces. He looked up from the mirror in his lap, which he tortured with a brush, and said, “The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart,” and his friends nodded at this truth.

“I don’t have enough black,” Wayne lamented, checking his tubes.

“You can paint them any color, can’t you?” Jeanne said. “As long as it’s opaque.”

Wayne leaned forward in his squeaky chair and said, “I love you.” His earnest eyes extended to everything and everything he saw shook with significance. The poets marked by death got hungry and left for the kitchen. I inspected the smudged mirrors and Wayne said, “Not being able to see yourself. Think about it. It’s a gift.” He asked if I wanted to get in on it, but I joined the crowd, leaving Wayne holding a painted mirror, looking deeply into his nonreflection.

When the boom box blasted “Bennie and the Jets,” Wayne hopped from his room, playing the guitar and accompanying himself with percussive sounds made by jumping on boards he had strapped to his feet. Springs nailed to these platforms lofted him into the air. The boing-boing of his bouncing almost kept time with his strumming. When the song ended, Creeley asked Porter to take him into town, and he left to wait in the parking lot. Porter was worried about Kurt, whose face had widened, thickened and fallen. He couldn’t move his mouth, much less his legs. Porter and I thanked Jeanne and walked Kurt down the stairs. Creeley held out his hand to Kurt, introducing himself to the man who had introduced him but who now was unrecognizable.

“This is Kurt?” Creeley said, astonished.

“Yes, it is. We’ll get you home, my friend,” Porter said. Post-Elliot’s flashbulb ignited the asphalt.

When the cab arrived, the poets marked by death retrieved the pizzas and beer. Porter paid the driver and asked him to take Kurt to Cottage Street. We pushed him into the backseat, where he smiled straight ahead, and I wondered how he would make it up the path to his house, over those giant zucchinis and vines hard to navigate even in sober light. I stared at Kurt through the cab window. He did not look like a man, but like something I’d seen before, something strange I’d seen recently, right here in Provincetown. And then I got it. He had become one of his wife’s papier-mâché sculptures, the last dog to shit on her lawn.

The three of us started downtown, but Post-Elliot called me from the deck and I asked Porter and Creeley to wait. When I got to the top of the stairs, Post-Elliot had a crazed face.

“See my watch?” he said, holding out his wrist.

I examined the dial.

“What time does it say?”

“Nine twenty,” I said.

“That’s right,” he said. “And what time is it now?

“Twelve thirty.”

“See what I mean? My watch stopped when Creeley walked in!”

“Come on,” I said.

“The exact second!”

“I have to go,” I said.

“It started again when he left.”

“It’s a coincidence,” I said.

“It could get worse!” he called after me. “It could get worse! Next time it could be my heart!”

At the window table in the Fo’c’sle, Creeley talked nonstop. When he went to the bar, I told Porter that he must have taken speed. He returned with six bourbons, two of which he downed immediately. He began to clap his hands together as hard as he could. They sounded like gunshots, but in the Fo’c’sle, no one noticed.

“I have to start some action,” he said. “I was in Toronto a few months ago, they took me to a really dull place, no one talking, no one dancing. I wouldn’t stop clapping. I had blood blisters on my hands.” His one eye was wild and happy at the thought and he held out his palms.

Vince rumbled over. Porter made the introductions and Vince said, “You know what I’m working on now?
An Anal History of Provincetown.
About all the assholes I’ve met!” His big laugh showed his brown and gold teeth. “Corso is the opening chapter.”

“Is Gregory in town?” Creeley asked

“Getting fucked fore and aft!” Vince said.

“I’d like to see him!” Creeley seemed almost sober at the prospect.

The rich scent of coconut announced the arrival of Jay Hankard. The emollient he had run through his hair gleamed even in shadow, the result of brushing his fragrant mane for hours while sitting on a sawhorse in the Center’s parking lot. Standing by our table, he seemed both totally out of place and perfectly at ease. Porter invited him to sit and Creeley placed one of his drinks before him, nodding. Vince lit a pipe and chocolate-flavored tobacco merged with Hankard’s perfume.

“Corso’s made a nest for himself at the Old Colony,” Vince said. “Right now he’s at a table wrapped in a blanket.”

“Let’s finish these drinks and go!” Creeley said. “Go!”

Hankard slid Creeley’s offering back to him and left to get a beer. He jumped when the football-loving barfly sang at the top of his lungs, “Miami Dolphins! Miami Dolphins!” as the jingle came on the jukebox. He was trying to drown out a loud fisherman who was yelling at the captain of a dragger that he served lousy food to his crew.

The men at the bar were at war and at peace at the same time, just as we were living in a summer place in winter. Conflicts, internal and external, abounded. When Hankard returned to the table, he took out a black pen with gold trim the size of a cucumber. All eyes turned to it. “It’s a Mont Blanc,” he said. He didn’t pronounce the two syllables as much as snort them in French so they sounded like two honks from a goose. He started to write in a moleskin notebook with ink he called “Ebony Green.” The whole production annoyed Creeley who said Joseph Cornell made great art out of bric-a-brac from thrift shops and Ginsberg wrote poems at his kitchen table.