The Tokyo-Montana Express (3 page)

My bartender friend put the cork back in
and sealed the bottle with a very sturdy wax that he had with him because he is
also a calligrapher and uses a seal to sign his name in wax on the beautiful
words that he makes. It was a professional job of bottle sealing. I took the
bottle home drunk and happy.

A few weeks later I brought it to Japan
with me to throw into the sea where it would drift with the tide and maybe all
the way back to America and be found three hundred years later and be quite a
media curiosity or just break against a California rock, the pieces of glass
sinking to the bottom and the released messages floating a brief lifetime before
becoming an indistinguishable part of the tide’s residue stranded anonymously
on the beach.

So far, so good, except that I forgot the
bottle this morning because I was thinking about the sleeping Japanese squid
fishermen and walked out of the apartment where I am staying here at Ajiro with
friends who had rented a boat, so that we could take the bottle out a long ways
and throw it into the sea and then do some fishing.

My Japanese friends liked the story of the
bottle and looked forward to their part in its voyage. When we arrived at the
dock and the waiting boat, they asked me where the bottle was.

I looked very surprised and had to say that
I had forgotten it, but the truth was that the bottle was with the sleeping Japanese
squid fishermen. The bottle was on a table beside all their beds, waiting for
the night to come, so that it could join their constellation.

The smallest snowstorm on record took
place an hour ago in my back yard. It was approximately two flakes. I waited for
more to fall, but that was it. The entire storm was just two flakes.

They fell from the sky in a manner
reminiscent of the pratfall poignancy of Laurel and Hardy who, come to think of
it, the two flakes resembled. It was as if Laurel and Hardy had been turned
into snowflakes and starred in the world’s smallest snowstorm.

The two flakes seemed to take a long time
to fall from the sky with pies in the face, agonizingly funny attempts to maintain
dignity in a world that wanted to take it from them, a world that was used to
larger snowstorms, two feet or more, and could easily frown upon a two flake
storm.

After they did a comedy landing upon snow
left over from a dozen storms so far this winter, there was a period of waiting
as I looked skyward for more snow, and then realized that the two flakes were a
complete storm themselves like Laurel and Hardy.

I went outside and tried to find them. I
admired their courage to be themselves in the face of it all. As I was looking
for them, I was devising ways to get them into the freezer where they would be
comfortable and receive the attention, admiration and accolades they so
beautifully deserved.

Have you ever tried to find two snowflakes
on a winter landscape that’s been covered with snow for months?

I went to the general area where they had
landed. I was looking for two snowflakes in a world of billions. Also, there
was the matter of stepping on them, which was not a good idea.

It was only a short time before I gave up
realizing how hopeless it was. The world’s smallest snowstorm was lost forever.
There was no way to tell the difference between it and everything else.

I like to think that the unique courage of
that two flake snowstorm somehow lives on in a world where such things are not
always appreciated.

I went back into the house, leaving Laurel
and Hardy lost in the snow.

When one thinks of San Francisco, one
does not think of snakes. This is a tourist town and people come here to look
at French bread. They do not want to see snakes in San Francisco. They would
stay at home in the rest of America if the loaves of French bread were replaced
by snakes.

But visitors to San Francisco may rest at
ease. What I am about to relate is the only San Francisco snake story that I
know.

Once I had a beautiful Chinese woman for a
friend.

She was very intelligent and also had an
excellent figure whose primary focus was her breasts. They were large and well
shaped. They gardened and harvested much attention wherever she went.

It is interesting that I was more attracted
to her intelligence than I was to her body. I find intelligence in women to be
an aphrodisiac and she was one of the most intelligent people I have ever
known.

Everybody else would be looking at her
breasts and I would be looking at her mind, which was architecturally clear and
analytical like winter starlight.

What does a beautiful Chinese woman’s mind
have to do with a story about snakes in San Francisco you are probably asking
about now with a rising temperature of impatience.

One day we went to a store that sold
snakes. It was some kind of reptile gardens and we were just walking around San
Francisco with no particular destination in mind and we happened upon this
professional den of snakes. So we went in.

The store was filled with hundreds of
snakes.

Every place you looked there were snakes.

Alter you noticed, and I might add very shortly
after you noticed the snakes, you noticed the smell of snake shit. To my
recollection, which cannot be taken as gospel if you are a serious student of
snakes, it smelled like a sinking dead lazy sweet doughnut about the size of a
moving van, but it somehow was not bad enough to make us leave the place.

We were fascinated by this dirty
snakehouse.

Why didn’t the owners clean up after the
snakes?

Snakes don’t want to live in their own
shit. They’d sooner forget the whole God-damn thing. Go back where they came
from in the first place.

The dirty snakeshop had snakes from Africa
and South America and Asia and from all over the world lying there in shit.
They all needed one-way airplane tickets.

In the middle of this snake horror there
was a huge cage full of very calm white mice who would all eventually end up as
the smell in that place.

The Chinese woman and I walked about
looking at the snakes. We were appalled and fascinated at the same time by this
reptilian hell.

We ended up at a case with two cobras in it
and they were both staring at her breasts. The heads of the snakes were very
close to the glass. They looked just like the way they do in the movies but the
movies leave out the smell of snake shit.

The Chinese woman was not very tall, 5-1 or
so. The two stinking cobras stared at her breasts that were only a few inches
away. Maybe that is why I always liked her mind.

The confidence that he got by being
selected all-state in football lasted him all of his life. He was killed in an
automobile accident when he was twenty-two. He was buried on a rainy afternoon.
Halfway through the burial service the minister forgot what he was talking
about. Everybody stood there at the grave waiting for him to remember.

Then he remembered.

“This young man,” he said. “Played
football.”

These mountains of Montana are
endlessly changing, minute to minute, nothing remains the same. It is the work
of sun and wind and snow. It is the play of clouds and shadows.

I am staring at the mountains again.

It is the time of another sunset. This one
is muted. I expected to watch a different sunset when I left the house and came
out here to this room sitting in the top of a red barn with a large window
facing the mountains.

I expected a clear sharp sunset, analytical
in its perception of this the first snowy day of the autumn down here in the
valley:

…October 10, 1977.

We went to sleep last night with it
snowing, hut now the sunset is changing again, minute to minute, taking on a different
character. The mute quality is giving way to a vague sharpness like a knife
that can cut some things but can’t cut other things. It can cut a peach but it
can’t cut an apple.

There was a great old woman who used to run
the taxicab company in town which was only a little more than one cab. You
might say that the whole cab company was one cab+ and not be far from the
truth.

Anyway, last year she was driving me out
here and high white clouds had gone into partnership with a sharp June sun and
their business was rapid, dramatic light changes going on in the mountains.

We were of course talking about ice ages.

She liked to talk about ice ages. It was
her favorite topic. She finished saying something about ice ages by changing the
subject to the light patterns going on in the mountains.

“…ice ages!” she said, dramatically
bringing to an end the conversation about ice ages. Then her voice softened. “These
mountains,” she said. “I’ve lived here for over fifty years and maybe looked at
the mountains a million times and they’ve never looked the same way twice.
They’re always different, changing.”

When she started talking about the
mountains, they looked one way and when she finished talking about them, they
looked another way.

I guess that’s what I’m trying to say about
this sunset.

“Different, changing.”