Morning poems
/ page 256 of 310 /
Part 5 of Trout Fishing in America
© Richard Brautigan
WORSEWICKWorsewick Hot Springs was nothing fancy. Somebody put someboards across the creek. That was it. The boards dammed up the creek enough to form a hugebathtub there, and the creek flowed over the top of the boards,invited like a postcard to the ocean a thousand miles away.As I said Worsewick was nothing fancy, not like theplaces where the swells go. There were no buildings around.We saw an old shoe lying by the tub. The hot springs came down off a hill and where they flowedthere was a bright orange scum through the sagebrush. Thehot springs flowed into the creek right there at the tub andthat' s where it was nice. We parked our car on the dirt road and went down and tookoff our clothes, then we took off the baby's clothes, and thedeerflies had at us until we got into the water, and then theystopped. There was a green slime growing around the edges of thetub and there were dozens of dead fish floating in our bath.Their bodies had been turned white by death, like frost oniron doors. Their eyes were large and stiff. The fish had made the mistake of going down the creek toofar and ending up in hot water, singing, "When you lose your money, learn to lose." We played and relaxed in the water. The green slime andthe dead fish played and relaxed with us and flowed out overus and entwined themselves about us. Splashing around in that hot water with my woman, I began to get ideas, as they say. After a while I placed my body in such a position in the water that the baby could not see my hard-on. I did this by going deeper and deeper in the water, like adinosaur, and letting the green slime and dead fish cover meover. My woman took the baby out of the water and gave her abottle and put her back in the car. The baby was tired. It wasreally time for her to take a nap. My woman took a blanket out of the car and covered up thewindows that faced the hot springs. She put the blanket ontopof the car and then lay rocks on the blanket to hold it in place.I remember her standing there by the car. Then she came back to the water, and the deerflies wereat her, and then it was my turn. After a while she said, "Idon't have my diaphragm with me and besides it wouldn'twork in the water, anyway. I think it's a good idea if youdon't come inside me. What do you think?" I thought this over and said all right. I didn't want anymore kids for a long time. The green slime and dead fishwere all about our bodies. I remember a dead fish floated under her neck. I waitedfor it to come up on the other side, and it came up on theother side. Worsewick was nothing fancy. Then I came, and just cleared her in a split secondlikean airplane in the movies, pulling out of a nosedive and sail-ing over the roof of a school. My sperm came out into the water, unaccustomed to thelight, and instantly it became a misty, stringy kind of thingand swirled out like a falling star, and I saw a dead fishcomeforward and float into my sperm, bending it in the middle.His eyes were stiff like iron.
THE SHIPPING OF TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA SHORTY TO NELSON ALGRENTrout Fishing in America Shorty appeared suddenly lastautumn in San Francisco, staggering around in a magnificentchrome-plated steel wheelchair. He was a legless, screaming middle-aged wine. He descended upon North Beach like a chapter from theOld Testament. He was the reason birds migrate in theautumn. They have to. He was the cold turning of the earth;the bad wind that blows off sugar. He would stop children on the street and say to them, "Iain't got no legs. The trout chopped my legs off in FortLauderdale. You kids got legs. The trout didn't chop yourlegs off. Wheel me into that store over there." The kids, frightened and embarrassed, would wheel TroutFishing in America Shorty into the store. It would always bea store that sold sweet wine, and he would buy a bottle ofwine and then he'd have the kids wheel him back out onto thestreet, and he would open the wine and start drinking thereon the street just like he was Winston Churchill. After a while the children would run and hide when theysaw Trout Fishing in America Shorty coming. "I pushed him last week, " "I pushed him yesterday, " "Quick, let's hide behind these garbage cans." And they would hide behind the garbage cans while TroutFishing in America Shorty staggered by in his wheelchair.The kids would hold their breath until he was gone. Trout Fishing in America Shorty used to go down toL'Italia, the Italian newspaper in North Beach at Stocktonand Green Streets. Old Italians gather in front of the news-paper in the afternoon and just stand there, leaning upagainst the building, talking and dying in the sun. Trout Fishing in America Shorty used to wheel into themiddle of them as if they were a bunch of pigeons, bottle ofwine in hand, and begin shouting obscenities in fake Italian.Tra-la-la-la-la-la-Spa-ghet-tiii ! I remember Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed outin Washington Square, right in front of the Benjamin Frank-lin statue. He had fallen face first out of his wheelchair andjust lay there without moving. Snoring loudly. Above him were the metal works of Benjamin Franklinlike a clock, hat in hand. Trout Fishing in America Shorty lay there below, hisface spread out like a fan in the grass. A friend and I got to talking about Trout Fishing in America Shorty one afternoon. We decided the best thing to do witl:him was to pack him in a big shipping crate with a couple ofcases of sweet wine and send him to Nelson Algren. Nelson Algren is always writing about Railroad Shorty, ahero of the Neon Wilderness (the reason for "The Face onthe Barroom Floor") and the destroyer of Dove Linkhorn inA Walk on the Wild Side. We thought that Nelson Algren would make the perfectcustodian for Trout Fishing in America Shorty. Maybe amuseum might be started. Trout Fishing in America Shortycould be the first piece in an important collection. We would nail him up in a packing crate with a big labelon it. Contents: Trout Fishing in America Shorty Occupation: WineAddress:C/O Nelson AlgrenChicago And there would be stickers all over the crate, saying:"GLASS/HANDLE WITH CARE/SPECIAL HANDLING/GLASS/DON'T SPILL/THIS SIDE UP/HANDLE THIS WINO LIKE HEWAS AN ANGEL" And Trout Fishing in America Shorty, grumbling, pukingand cursing in his crate would travel across America, fromSan Francisco to Chicago. And Trout Fishing in America Shorty, wondering what itwas all about, would travel on, shouting, "Where in the hellam I? I can't see to open this bottle ! Who turned out thelights? Fuck this motel! I have to take a piss ! Where's mykey ?" It was a good idea. A few days after we made our plans for Trout Fishing inAmerica Shorty, a heavy rain was pouring down upon SanFrancisco. The rain turned the streets inward, likedrowned lungs, upon themselves and I was hurrying to work,meeting swollen gutters at the intersections. I saw Trout Fishing in America Shorty passed out in thefront window of a Filipino laundromat. He was sitting inhis wheelchair with closed eyes staring out the window. There was a tranquil expression on his face. He almostlooked human. He had probably fallen asleep while he washaving his brains washed in one of the machines. Weeks passed and we never got around to shipping TroutFishing in America Shorty away to Nelson Algren. We keptputting it off. One thing and another. Then we lost our gold-en opportunity because Trout Fishing in America Shorty dis-appeared a little while after that. They probably swept him up one morning and put him injail to punish him, the evilfart, or they put him in a nut-house to dry him out a little. Maybe Trout Fishing in America Shorty just pedaled downto San Jose in his wheelchair, rattling along the freeway ata quarter of a mile an hour. I don't know what happened to him. But if he comes backto San Francisco someday and dies, I have an idea. Trout Fishing in America Shorty should be buried rightbeside the Benjamin Franklin statue in Washington Square.We should anchor his wheelchair to a huge gray stone andwrite upon the stone: Trout Fishing in America Shorty 20 cent Wash 10 cent Dry Forever
THE MAYOR OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURYLondon. On December 1, 1887; July 7, August 8, September30, one day in the month of October and on the 9th of Novem-ber, 1888; on the Ist of June, the 17th of July and the IOthof September 1889 The disguise was perfect. Nobody ever saw him, except, of course, the victims.They saw him. Who would have expected? He wore a costume of trout fishing in America. He woremountains on his elbows and bluejays on the collar of hisshirt. Deep water flowed through the lilies that were entwinedabout his shoelaces. A bullfrog kept croaking in his watchpocket and the air was filled with the sweet smell of ripeblackberry bushes. He wore trout fishing in America as a costume to hidehis own appearance from the world while he performed hisdeeds of murder in the night.Who would have expected? Nobody ! Scotland Yard? (Pouf !) They were always a hundred miles away, wearing halibut-stalker hats, looking under the dust. Nobody ever found out. 0, now he's the Mayor of the Twentieth Century ! A razor,a knife and a ukelele are his favorite instruments. Of course, it would have to be a ukelele. Nobody elsewould have thought of it, pulled like a plow through the intest-ines.ON PARADISE"Speaking of evacuations, your missive, while complete inother regards, skirted the subject, though you did deal brief-ly with rural micturition procedure. I consider this a grossoversight on your part, as I'm certain you're well aware ofmy unending fascination with camp-out crapping. Pleaserush details in your next effort. Slit-trench, pith helmet,slingshot, biffy and if so number of holes and proximity ofkeester to vermin and deposits of prior users." --From a Letter by a Friend Sheep. Everything smelled of sheep on Paradise Creek,but there were no sheep in sight. I fished down from theranger station where there was a huge monument to the Civi-lian Conservation Corps. It was a twelve-foot high marble statue of a young manwalking out on a cold morning to a crapper that had the das-sic half-moon cut above the door. The 1930s will never come again, but his shoes werewet with dew. They'll stay that way in marble. I went off into the marsh. There the creek was soft andspread out in the grass like a beer belly. The fishing wasdifficult. Summer ducks were jumping up into flight. Theywere big mallards with their Rainier Ale-like offspring. I believe I saw a woodcock. He had a long bill like puttinga fire hydrant into a pencil sharpener, then pasting it ontoa bird and letting the bird fly away in front of me with thisthing on its face for no other purpose than to amaze me. I worked my way slowly out of the marsh until the creekagain became a muscular thing, the strongest ParadiseCreek in the world. I was then close enough to see the sheep.There were hundreds of them. Everything smelled of sheep. The dandelions were sudden-ly more sheep than flower, each petal reflecting wool andthe sound of a bell ringing off the yellow. But the thing thatsmelled the most like sheep, was the very sun itself. Whenthe sun went behind a cloud, the smell of the sheep decreasedlike standing on some old guy's hearing aid, and when thesun came back again, the smell of the sheep was loud, likea clap of thunder inside a cup of coffee. That afternoon the sheep crossed the creek in front ofmy hook. They were so close that their shadows fell acrossmy bait. I practically caught trout up their assholes.
THE CABINET OFDOCTORCALIGARIOnce water bugs were my field. I remember that childhoodspring when I studied the winter-long mud puddles of thePacific Northwest. I had a fellowship. My books were a pair of Sears Roebuck boots, ones withgreen rubber pages. Most of my classrooms were close tothe shore. That's where the important things were happen-ing and that's where the good things were happening. Sometimes as experiments I laid boards out into the mudpuddles, so I could look into the deeper water but it was notnearly as good as the water in close to the shore. The water bugs were so small I practically had to lay myvision like a drowned orange on the mud puddle. There is aromance about fruit floating outside on the water, aboutapples and pears in rivers and lakes. For the first minuteor so, I saw nothing, and then slowly the water bugs cameinto being. I saw a black one with big teeth chasing a white one witha bag of newspapers slung over its shoulder, two white onesplaying cards near the window, a fourth white one staringback with a harmonica in its mouth. I was a scholar until the mud puddles went dry and then Ipicked cherries for two-and-a-half cents a pound in an oldorchard that was beside a long, hot dusty road. The cherry boss was a middle-aged woman who was a realOkie. Wearing a pair of goofy overalls, her name was RebelSmith, and she'd been a friend of "Pretty Boy" Floyd's downin Oklahoma. "I remember one afternoon'Pretty Boy' camedriving up in his car. I ran out onto the front porch. " Rebel Smith was always smoking cigarettes and showingpeople how to pick cherries and assigning them to trees andwriting down everything in a little book she carried in hershirt pocket. She smoked just half a cigarette and then threwthe other half on the ground. For the first few days of the picking, I was always seeingher half-smoked cigarettes lying all over the orchard, nearthe john and around the trees and down the rows. Then she hired half-a-dozen bums to pick cherries be-cause the picking was going too slowly. Rebel picked thebums up on skidrow every morning and drove them out tothe orchard in a rusty old truck. There were always half-a-dozen bums, but sometimes they had different faces. After they came to pick cherries I never saw any more ofher half-smoked cigarettes lying around. They were gonebefore they hit the ground. Looking back on it, you mightsay that Rebel Smith was anti-mud puddle, but then you miglnot say that at all.
Part 4 of Trout Fishing in America
© Richard Brautigan
THE AUTOPSY OF TROUT FISHING IN AMERICAThis is the autopsy of Trout Fishing in America as if TroutFishing in America had been Lord Byron and had died inMissolonghi, Greece, and afterward never saw the shoresof Idaho again, never saw Carrie Creek, Worsewick HotSprings, Paradise Creek, Salt Creek and Duck Lake again.The Autopsy of Trout Fishing in America: "The body was in excellent state and appeared as one thathad died suddenly of asphyxiation. The bony cranial vaultwas opened and the bones of the cranium were found veryhard without any traces of the sutures like the bones of aperson 80 years, so much so that one would have said thatthe cranium was formed by one solitary bone. . . . Themeninges were attached to the internal walls of the craniumso firmly that while sawing the bone around the interior todetach the bone from the dura the strength of two robust menwas not sufficient. . . . The cerebrum with cerebellumweighed about six medical pounds. The kidneys were verylarge but healthy and the urinary bladder was relativelysmall. " On May 2, 1824, the body of Trout Fishing in Americaleft Missolonghi by ship destined to arrive in England on theevening of June 29, 1824. Trout Fishing in America's body was preserved in a caskholding one hundred-eighty gallons of spirits: 0, a long wayfrom Idaho, a long way from Stanley Basin, Little RedfishLake, the Big Lost River and from Lake Josephus and theBig Wood River.
THE MESSAGE Last night a blue thing, the smoke itself, from our campfiredrifted down the valley, entering into the sound of the bell- mare until the blue thing and the bell could not be separated,no matter how hard you tried. There was no crowbar bigenough to do the job. Yesterday afternoon we drove down the road from WellsSummit, then we ran into the sheep. They also were beingmoved on the road. A shepherd walked in front of the car, a leafy branch inhis hand, sweeping the sheep aside. He looked like a young,Skinny Adolf Hitler, but friendly. I guess there were a thousand sheep on the road. It washot and dusty and noisy and took what seemed like a longtime . At the end of the sheep was a covered wagon being pulledby two horses. There was a third horse, the bellmare, tiedon the back of the wagon. The white canvas rippled in thewind and the wagon had no driver. The seat was empty. Finally the Adolf Hitler, but friendly, shepherd got thelast of them out of the way. He smiled and we waved and saidthank you. We were looking for a good place to camp. We drove downthe road, following the Little Smoky about five miles anddidn't see a place that we liked, so we decided to turn aroundand go back to a place we had seen just a ways up Carrie Creek. "I hope those God-damn Sheep aren't on the road, " I said. We drove back to where we had seen them on the roadand, of course they were gone, but as we drove on up theroad, we just kept fellowing sheep shit. It was ahead of usfor the next mile.I kept looking down on the meadow by the Little Smokey,hoping to see the sheep down there, but there wasn't a sheepin sight. only the shit in front of us on the road. As if it were a game invented by the spincter muscle, weknew what the score was. shaking our heads side to side,waiting.Then we went around a bend and the sheep burst like aroman candle all over the road and again a thousand sheepand the shepherd in front of us, wondering what the fuck. Thesame thing was in our minds. There was some beer in the back seat. It wasn't exactlycold, but it wasn't warm either. I tell you I was really embarrassed.I took a bottle of beer and got out of the car. I walked up to the shepherd who looked like Adolf Hitler,but friendly. "I'm sorry, " I said. "It's the sheep, " he said. (0 sweet and distant blossomsof Munich and Berlin!) "Sometimes they are a trouble but itall works out." "Would you like a bottle of beer?" I said. "I'm sorry toput you through this again. " "Thank you, " he said, shrugging his shoulders. He tookthe beer over and put it on the empty seat of the wagon.That's how it looked. After a long time, we were free of thesheep. They were like a net dragged finally away from thecar. We drove up to the place on Carrie Creek and pitched the tent and took our goods out of the car and piled them in the tent. Then we drove up the creek a ways, above the place wherethere were beaver darns and the trout stared back at us likefallen leaves. We filled the back of the car with wood for the fire and Icaught a mess of those leaves for dinner. They were smalland dark and cold. The autumn was good to us. When we got back to our camp, I saw the shepherd's wagondown the road a ways and on the meadow I heard the bellmareand the very distant sound of the sheep. It was the final circle with the Adolf Hitler, but friendly,shepherd as the diameter. He was camping down there forthe night. So in the dusk, the blue smoke from our campfirewent down and got in there with the bellmare.The sheep lulled themselves into senseless sleep, one followinganother like the banners of a lost army. I have here a veryimportant message that just arrived a few moments ago.It says "Stalingrad. "
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICATERRORISTSLong live our friend the revolver !Long live our friend the machine-gun! --Israeli terrorist chantOne April morning in the sixth grade, we became, first byaccident and then by premeditation, trout fishing in Americaterrorists. It came about this way: we were a strange bunch of kids. We were always being called in before the principal fordaring and mischievous deeds. The principal was a youngman and a genius in the way he handled us. One April morning we were standing around in the playyard, acting as if it were a huge open-air poolhall with thefirst-graders coming and going like poolballs. We were allbored with the prospect of another day's school, studyingCuba. One of us had a piece of white chalk and as a first-graderwent walking by, the one of us absentmindedly wrote "Troutfishing in America" on the back of the first-grader. The first-grader strained around, trying to read what waswritten on his back, but he couldn't see what it was, so heshrugged his shoulders and went off to play on the swings. We watched the first-grader walk away with "Trout fishingin America" written on his back. It looked good andseemed quite natural and pleasing to the eye that a first-grader should have "Trout fishing in America" written inchalk on his back. The next time I saw a first-grader, I borrowed my friend'spiece of chalk and said, "First-grader, you're wanted overhere." The first-grader came over to me and I said, "Turnaround." The first-grader turned around and I wrote "Trout fishingin America" on his back. It looked even better on the secondfirst-grader. We couldn't help but admire it. "Trout fishingin America." It certianly did add something to the first-graders. It compleated them and gave them a kind of class "It reallt looks good, doesn't it?" "Yeah." "There are a lot more first-graders over there by the monkey-bars." "Yeah. " "Lets get some more chalk.""Sure." We all got hold of chalk and later in the day, by the end oflunch period, almost all of the first-graders had "Trout fishingin America" written on their backs, girls included. Complaints began arriving at the principal's office fromthe first-grade teachers. One of the complaints was in theform of a little girl. "Miss Robins sent me, " she said to the principal. "Shetold me to have you look at this." "Look at what?" the principal said, staring at the emptychild. "At my back, " she said. The little girl turned around and the principal read aloud,"Trout fishing in America.""Who did this?" the principal said.That gang of sixth-graders," she said. "The bad ones.They've done it to all us first-graders. We all look like this."Trout fishing in America.' What does it mean? I just gotthis sweater new from my grandma. " "Huh.'Trout fishing in America, " the principal said."TellMiss Robins I'11 be down to see her in a little while," andexcused the girl and a short time later we terrorists weresummoned up from the lower world. We reluctantly stamped into the principal's office, fidgetingand pawing our feet and looking out the windows and yawningand one of us suddenly got an insane blink going and puttingour hands into our pockets and looking away and then backagain and looking up at the light fixture on the ceiling, howmuch it looked like a boiled potato, and down again and at thepicture of the principal's mother on the wall. She had been astar in the silent pictures and was tied to a railroad track. "Does 'Trout fishing in America' seem at all familiar toyou boys?" the principal said. "I wonder if perhaps you'veseen it written down anywhere today in your travels? 'Troutfishing in America.' Think hard about it for a minute." We all thought hard about it. There was a silence in the room, a silence that we allknew intimately, having been at the principal's office quite afew times in the past. "Let me see if I can help you," the principal said. "Perhapsyou saw 'Trout fishing in America' written in chalk onthe backs of the first-graders. I wonder how it got there."We couldn't help but smile nervously. "I just came back from Miss Robin's first-grade class,"the principal said. "I asked all those who had 'Trout fishingin America' written on their backs to hold up their hands,andall the children in the class held up their hands, except oneand he had spent his whole lunch period hiding in the lavatory.What do you boys make of it . . . ? This 'Trout fishing inAmerica' business?" We didn't say anything. The one of us still had his mad blink going. I am certainthat it was his guilty blink that always gave us away. Weshould have gotten rid of him at the beginning of the sixthgrade. "You're all guilty, aren't you?" he said. "Is there one ofyou who isn't guilty? If there is, speak up. Now. " We were all silent except for blink, blink, blink, blink, blink.Suddenly I could hear his God-damn eye blinking. It was very muchlike the sound of an insect laying the 1, 000, 000th egg of ourdisaster. "The whole bunch of you did it. Why? . . . Why 'Troutfishing in America' on the backs of the first-graders?" And then the principal went into his famous E=MC2 sixth-grade gimmick, the thing he always used in dealing with us. "Now wouldn't it look funny, " he said. "If I asked all yourteachers to come in here, and then I told the teachers all toturn around, and then I took a piece of chalk and wrote 'Troutfishing in America' on their backs?" We all giggled nervously and blushed faintly. "Would you like to see your teachers walking around allday with 'Trout fishing in America' written on their backs,trying to teach you about Cuba? That would look silly, wouldn't it? You wouldn't like to see that would you? That wouldn't doat all, would it?" "No," we said like a Greek chorus some of us saying itwith our voices and some of us by nodding our heads, andthen there was the blink, blink, blink. "That's what I thought, " he said. "The first-graders lookup to you and admire you like the teachers look up to me andadmire me, It just won't do to write 'Trout fishing in America'on their backs. Are we agreed, gentlemen?" We were agreed. I tell you it worked every God-damn time. Of course it had to work. "All right, " he said. "I'll consider trout fishing in Ameri-ca to have come to an end. Agreed?" "Agreed. " "Agreed ?" "Agreed. ""Blink, blink. " But it wasn't completely over, for it took a while to gettrout fishing in America off the clothes of the first-graders.A fair percentage of trout fishing in America was gone thenext day. The mothers did this by simply putting cleanclothes on their children, but there were a lot of kids whosemothers just tried to wipe it off and then sent them back toschool the next day with the same clothes on, but you couldstill see "Trout fishing in America" faintly outlined on theirbacks. But after a few more days trout fishing in Americadisappeared altogether as it was destined to from its verybeginning, and a kind of autumn fell over the first grade.
TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA WITH THE FBI Dear Trout Fishing in America, last week walking along lower market on the way to worksaw the pictures of the FBI's TEN MOST WANTED MEN inthe window of a store. the dodger under one of the pictureswas folded under at both sides and you couldn't read all of it.the picture showed a nice, clean-cut-looking guy with frecklesand curly (red?) hair WANTED FOR: RICHARD LAWRENCE MARQUETTE Aliases: Richard Lawrence Marquette, Richard Lourence Marquette Description:26, born Dec. 12, 1934, Portland, Oregon170 to 180 poundsmuscularlight brown, cut shortblueComplexion: ruddy Race: white Nationality: American Occupations: auto body w recapper, s survey rodarks: 6" hernia scar; tattoo "Mom" in wreath onight forearmull upper denture, may also have lower denture. Reportedly frequents s, and is an avid trout fisherman.(this is how the dodger looked cut off on both sides and youcouldn't make out any more, even what he was wanted for.) Your old buddy, PardDear Pard, Your letter explains why I saw two FBI agents watching atrout stream last week. They watched a path that came downthrough the trees and then circled a large black stump andled to a deep pool. Trout were rising in the pool. The FBIagents watched the path, the trees, the black stump, the pooland the trout as if they were all holes punched in a card thathad just come out of a computer. The afternoon sun keptchanging everything as it moved across the sky, and the FBIagents kept changing with the sun. It appears to be part oftheir training.Your friend, Trout Fishing in America
Part 3 of Trout Fishing in America
© Richard Brautigan
SEA, SEA RIDER
The man who owned the bookstore was not magic. He was not athree-legged crow on the dandelion side of the mountain. He was, of course, a Jew, a retired merchant seamanwho had been torpedoed in the North Atlantic and floatedthere day after day until death did not want him. He had ayoung wife, a heart attack, a Volkswagen and a home inMarin County. He liked the works of George Orwell, RichardAldington and Edmund Wilson. He learned about life at sixteen, first from Dostoevskyand then from the whores of New Orleans. The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards.Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars.Most of the kooks were out of print, and no one wanted toread them any more and the people who had read the bookshad died or forgotten about them, but through the organicprocess of music the books had become virgins again. Theywore their ancient copyrights like new maidenheads. I went to the bookstore in the afternoons after I got offwork, during that terrible year of 1959. He had a kitchen in the back of the store and he brewedcups of thick Turkish coffee in a copper pan. I drank coffeeand read old books and waited for the year to end. He had asmall room above the kitchen. It looked down on the bookstore and had Chinese screensin front of it. The room contained a couch, a glass cabinetwith Chinese things in it and a table and three chairs. Therewas a tiny bathroom fastened like a watch fob to the room. I was sitting on a stool in the bookstore one afternoonreading a book that was in the shape of a chalice. The bookhad clear pages like gin, and the first page in the book read: Billy the Kid born November 23, 1859 in New York City The owner of the bookstore came up to me, and put hisarm on my shoulder and said, "Would you like to get laid?"His voice was very kind. "No, " I said. "You're wrong, " he said, and then without saying anythingelse, he went out in front of the bookstore, and stopped a pairof total strangers, a man and a woman. He talked to them fora few moments. I couldn't hear what he was saying. He pointedat me in the bookstore. The woman nodded her head andthen the man nodded his head. They came into the bookstore. I was embarrassed. I could not leave the bookstore becausethey were entering by the only door, so I decided to goupstairs and go to the toilet. I got up abruptly and walkedto the back of the bookstore and went upstairs to the bathroom,and they followed after me. I could hear them on the stairs. I waited for a long time in the bathroom and they waitedan equally long time in the other room. They never spoke.When I came out of the bathroom, the woman was lying nakedon the couch, and the man was sitting in a chair with hishat on his lap. "Don't worry about him, " the girl said. "These thingsmake no difference to him. He's rich. He has 3, 859 RollsRoyces." The girl was very pretty and her body was like aclear mountain river of skin and muscle flowing over rocksof bone and hidden nerves. "Come to me, " she said. "And come inside me for we areAquarius and I love you." I looked at the man sitting in the chair. He was not smilingand he did not look sad. I took off my shoes and all my clothes. The man did not say a word. The girl's body moved ever so slightly from side to side. There was nothing else I could do for my body was likebirds sitting on a telephone wire strung out down the world,clouds tossing the wires carefully. I laid the girl. It was like the eternal 59th second when it becomes a minuteand then looks kind of sheepish. "Good, " the girl said, and kissed me on the face. The man sat there without speaking or moving or sendingout any emotion into the room. I guess he was rich and owned3, 859 Rolls Royces. Afterwards the girl got dressed and she and the man left.They walked down the stairs and on their way out, I heardhim say his first words. "Would you like to go to Emie's for dinner?" "I don't know, " the girl said. "It's a little early to thinkabout dinner. " Then I heard the door close and they were gone. I gotdressed and went downstairs. The flesh about my body feltsoft and relaxed like an experiment in functional backgroundmusic. The owner of the bookstore was sitting at his desk behindthe counter. "I'11 tell you what happened up there, " he said,in a beautiful anti-three-legged-crow voice, in an anti-dandelionside of the mountain voice. "What?"I said. "You fought in the Spanish Civil War. You were a youngCommunist from Cleveland, Ohio. She was a painter. A NewYork Jew who was sightseeing in the Spanish Civil War as ifit were the Mardi Gras in New Orleans being acted out byGreek statues. "She was drawing a picture of a dead anarchist when youmet her. She asked you to stand beside the anarchist and actas if you had killed him. You slapped her across the faceand said something that would be embarrassing for me torepeat.You both fell very much in love. "Once while you were at the front she read Anatomy ofMelancholy and did 349 drawings of a lemon. "Your love for each other was mostly spiritual.Neitherone of you performed like millionaires in bed. "When Barcelona fell, you and she flew to England, andthen took a ship back to New York. Your love for each otherremained in Spain. It was only a war love. You loved onlyyourselves, loving each other in Spain during the war. Onthe Atlantic you were different toward each other and becameevery day more and more like people lost from each other. "Every wave on the Atlantic was like a dead seagull draggingits driftwood artillery from horizon to horizon. "When the ship bumped up against America, you departedwithout saying anything and never saw each other again. Thelast I heard of you, you were still living in Philadelphia. ""That's what you think happened up there?" I said."Partly, " he said. "Yes, that's part of it. " He took out his pipe and filled it with tobacco and lit it. "Do you want me to tell you what else happened up there?"he said. "Go ahead." "You crossed the border into Mexico, " he said. "Yourode your horse into a small town. The people knew whoyou were and they were afraid of you. They knew you hadkilled many men with that gun you wore at your side. Thetown itself was so small that it didn't have a priest. "When the rurales saw you, they left the town. Tough asthey were, they did not want to have anything to do with you.The rurales left. You became the most powerful man in town. You were seduced by a thirteen-year-old girl, and youand she lived together in an adobe hut, and practically allyou did was make love. "She was slender and had long dark hair. You made lovestanding, sitting, lying on the dirt floor with pigs and chickensaround you. The walls, the floor and even the roof of thehut were coated with your sperm and her come. "You slept on the floor at night and used your sperm fora pillow and her come for a blanket. "The people in the town were so afraid of you that theycould do nothing. "After a while she started going around town without anyclothes on, and the people of the town said that it was not agood thing, and when you started going around without anyclothes, and when both of you began making love on the backof your horse in the middle of the zocalo, the people of thetown became so afraid that they abandoned the town. It'sbeen abandoned ever since. "People won't live there. "Neither of you lived to be twenty-one. It was not neces-sary. "See, I do know what happened upstairs, " he said. Hesmiled at me kindly. His eyes were like the shoelaces of aharpsichord. I thought about what happened upstairs. "You know what I say is the truth, " he said. "For yousaw it with your own eyes and traveled it with your own body.Finish the book you were reading before you were interrupted.I'm glad you got laid. " Once resumed the pages of the book began to speed upand turn faster and faster until they were spinning like wheelsin the sea.
THE LAST YEAR THE TROUT CAME UP HAYMAN CREEKGone now the old fart. Hayman Creek was named forCharles Hayman, a sort of half-assed pioneer in a countrythat not many wanted to live in because it was poor and uglyand horrible, He built a shack, this was in 1876, on a littlecreek that drained a worthless hill. After a while the creekwas called Hayman Creek. Mr. Hayman did not know how to read or write and consideredhimself better for it. Mr. Hayman did odd jobs for yearsand years and years and years. Your mule's broke? Get Mr. Hayman to fix it. Your fences are on fire? Get Mr. Hayman to put them out. Mr.- Hayman lived on a diet of stone-ground wheat andkale. He bought the wheat by the hundred-pound sack andground it himself with a mortar and pestle. He grew the kalein front of his shack and tended the kale as if it were prizewinning orchids. During all the time that was his life, Mr. Hayman neverhad a cup of coffee, a smoke, a drink or a woman and thoughthe'd be a fool if he did. In the winter a few trout would go up Hayman Creek, butby early summer the creek was almost dry and there wereno fish in it. Mr. Hayman used to catch a trout or two and eat rawtrout with his stone-ground wheat and his kale, and then oneday he was so old that he did not feel like working any more,and he looked so old that the children thought he must be evilto live by himself, and they were afraid to go up the creeknear his shack. It didn't bother Mr. Hayman. The last thing in the worldhe had any use for were children. Reading and writing andchildren were all the same, Mr. Hayman thought, andground his wheat and tended his kale and caught a trout ortwo when they were in the creek. He looked ninety years old for thirty years and then hegot the notion that he would die, and did so. The year he diedthe trout didn't come up Hayman Creek, and never went upthe creek again. With the old man dead, the trout figured itwas better to stay where they were. The mortar and pestle fell off the shelf and broke. The shack rotted away. And the weeds grew into the kale. Twenty years after Mr. Hayman's death, some fish andgame people were planting trout in the streams around there."Might as well put some here, " one of the men said."Sure, " the other one said. They dumped a can full of trout in the creek and no soonerhad the trout touched the water, than they turned their whitebellies up and floated dead down the creek.
TROUT DEATH BY PORT WINEIt was not an outhouse resting upon the imagination. It was reality. An eleven-inch rainbow trout was killed. Its life takenforever from the waters of the earth, by giving it a drink ofport wine. It is against the natural order of death for a trout to dieby having a drink of port wine. It is all right for a trout to have its neck broken by a fishermanand then to be tossed into the creel or for a trout to die froma fungus that crawls like sugar-colored ants over its bodyuntil the trout is in death's sugarbowl. It is all right for a trout to be trapped in a pool that driesup in the late summer or to be caught in the talons of a birdor the claws of an animal. Yes, it is even all right for a trout to be killed by pollution,to die in a river of suffocating human excrement. There are trout that die of old age and their white beardsflow to the sea. All these things are in the natural order of death, but fora trout to die from a drink of port wine, that is another thing. No mention of it in "The treatyse of fysshynge wyth anangle," in the Boke of St. Albans, published 1496. No mentionof it in Minor Tactics of the Chalk Stream, by H. C. Cutcliffe,published in 1910. No mention of it in Truth Is Stranger than Fishin',by Beatrice Cook, published in 1955. No mention of it inNorthern Memoirs, by Richard Franck, published in 1694.No mention of it in I Go A-Fishing, by W. C. Prime, publishedin 1873. No mention of it in Trout Fishing and Trout Flies, by JimQuick, published in 1957. No mention of it in Certaine ExperimentsConcerning Fish and Fruite, by John Taverner, published in 1600.No mention of it in A River Never Sleeps, by Roderick L. Haig Brown,published in 1946. No mention of it in Till Fish US Do Part, by BeatriceCook published in 1949. No mention of it in The Flyfisher & theTrout's Point of View by Col. E.W.Harding, publishedin 1931. No mention of it in Chalk Stream Studies, by CharlesKingsley, published in 1859 No mention of it in Trout Madnessby Robert Traver, published in 1960. No mention of it in Sunshine and the Dry Fly, by J. W.Dunne, published in 1924. No mention of it in Just Fishing,by Ray Bergman, published in 1932. No mention of it in Matchingthe Hatch by Ernest G. Schwiebert, Jr,, published in 1955. No mentionof it in The Art of Trout Fishing on Rapid Streams by H. C. Cutcliffe,published in 1863. No mention of it in Old Flies in New Dresses byC.E. Walker, published in 1898 No mention of it in Fisherman'sSpring, by Roderick L, Haig-Brown, published in 1951.No mention of it in The Determined angler and the Brook Trout,by Charles Bradford, published in 1916. No mention of it in WomenCan Fish by Chisie Farrington, published in 1951. No mentionof it in Tales of the Angler's El Dorado New new Zelandby Zane Grey, published in 1926. No mention of it in The Flyfisher'sGuide, by G.C. Bainbridge, published in 1816. There's no mention of a trout dying by having a drink ofport wine anywhere. To describe the Supreme Executioner: We woke up in themorning and it was dark outside. He came kind of smilinginto the kitchen and we ate breakfast.Fried potatoes and eggs and coffee. "Well, you old bastard, " he said. "Pass the salt. " The tackle was already in the car, so we just got in anddrove away. Beginning at the first light of dawn we hit theroad at the bottom of the mountains, and drove up into thedawn. The light behind the trees was like going into a gradualand strange department store. "That was a good-looking girl last night, " he said."Yeah, "I said. "You did all right. ""If the shoe fits....." he said. Owl Snuff Creek was just a small creek, only a few mileslong, but there were some nice trout in it. We got out of thecar and walked a quarter of a mile down the mountainside tothe creek I put my tackle together. He pulled a pint of portwine out of his pocket and said wouldn't you know." "No thanks," I said. He took a good snort and then shook his head, side to side,and said, "Do you know what this creek reminds me of?""No," I said, tying a gray and yellow fly onto my leader."It reminds me of Evageline's vagina, a constant dreamof my childhood and promoter of my youth.""That's nice," I said."Longfellow was the Henry Miller of my childhood," hesaid."Good," I said.I cast into a little pool that had a swirl of fir needles goingaround the edge of it. The fir needles went around and around.It made no sense that they should come from trees. They lookedperfectly contented and natural in the pool as if the pool hadgrown them on watery branches. I had a good hit on my third cast, but missed it. "Oh, boy, " he said. "I think I'11 watch you fish. The stolenpainting is in the house next door. " I fished upstream coming ever closer and closer to thenarrow staircase of the canyon. Then I went up into it as ifI were entering a department store. I caught three trout inthe lost and found department. He didn't even put his tackletogether. He just followed after me, drinking port wine andpoking a stick at the world. "This is a beautiful creek, " he said. "It reminds me ofEvangeline's hearing aid. " We ended up at a large pool that was formed by the creekcrashing through the children's toy section. At the beginningof the pool the water was like cream, then it mirrored outand reflected the shadow of a large tree. By this time thesun was up. You could see it coming down the mountain. I cast into the cream and let my fly drift down onto alongbranch of the tree, next to a bird. Go-wham ! I set the hook and the trout started jumping. "Giraffe races at Kilimanjaro!" he shouted, and everytime the trout jumped, he jumped. "Bee races at Mount Everest !" he shouted. I didn't have a net with me so I fought the trout over tothe edge of the creek and swung it up onto the shore.The trout had a big red stripe down its side. It was a good rainbow. "What a beauty, " he said. He picked it up and it was squirming in his hands."Break its neck, " I said. "I have a better idea, " he said. "Before I kill it, let meat least soothe its approach into death. This trout needs adrink. " He took the bottle of port out of his pocket, unscrewedthe cap and poured a good slug into the trout's mouth. The trout went into a spasm. Its body shook very rapidly like a telescope during anearthquake. The mouth was wide open and chattering almostas if it had human teeth. He laid the trout on a white rock, head down, and someof the wine trickled out of its mouth and made a stain on therock. The trout was lying very still now. "It died happy, " he said. "This is my ode to Alcoholics Anonymous. "Look here !"
Part 2 of Trout Fishing in America
© Richard Brautigan
ANOTHER METHOD OF MAKING WALNUT CATSUPAnd this is a very small cookbook for Trout Fishing in Americaas if Trout Fishing in America were a rich gourmet andTrout Fishing in America had Maria Callas for a girlfriendand they ate together on a marble table with beautiful candles.Compote of ApplesTake a dozen of golden pippins, pare themnicely and take the core out with a smallpenknife; put them into some water, andlet them be well scalded; then take a littleof the water with some sugar, and a fewapples which may be sliced into it, andlet the whole boil till it comes to a syrup;then pour it over your pippins, and garnishthem with dried cherries and lemon-peelcut fine. You must take care that yourpippins are not split.And Maria Callas sang to Trout Fishing in America asthey ate their apples together.A Standing Crust for Great PiesTake a peck of flour and six pounds of butterboiled in a gallon of water: skim it off intothe flour, and as little of the liquor as youcan. Work it up well into a paste, and thenpull it into pieces till it is cold. Then makeit up into what form you please.And Trout Fishing in America smiled at Maria Callas asthey ate their pie crust together.A Spoonful PuddingTake a spoonful of flour, a spoonful ofcream or milk, an egg, a little nutmeg,ginger, and salt. Mix all together, andboil it in a little wooden dish half an hour.If you think proper you may add a fewcurrants . And Trout Fishing in America said, "The moon's comingout." And Maria Callas said, "Yes, it is." Another Method of Making Walnut Catsup Take green walnuts before the shell is formed, and grind them in a crab-mill, or pound them in a marble mortar. Squeeze out the juice through a coarse cloth, and put to every gallon of juice a pound of anchovies, and the same quantity of bay-salt, four ounces of Jamaica pepper, two of long and two of black pepper; of mace, cloves, and ginger, each an ounce, and a stick of horseradish. Boil all together till reduced to half the quantity, and then put it into a pot. When it is cold, bottle it close, and in three months it will be fit for use. And Trout Fishing in America and Maria Callas pouredwalnut catsup on their hamburgers.PROLOGUE TO GRIDER CREEKMooresville, Indiana, is the town that John Dillinger camefrom, and the town has a John Dillinger Museum. You cango in and look around. Some towns are known as the peach capital of America orthe cherry capital or the oyster capital, and there's alwaysa festival and the photograph of a pretty girl in a bathing suit. Mooresville, Indiana, is the John Dillinger capital of America. Recently a man moved there with his wife, and he discoveredhundreds of rats in his basement. They were huge, slowmovingchild-eyed rats. When his wife had to visit some of her relatives for a fewdays, the man went out and bought a .38 revolver and a lotof ammunition. Then he went down to the basement wherethe rats were, and he started shooting them. It didn't botherthe rats at all. They acted as if it were a movie and startedeating their dead companions for popcorn. The man walked over to a rat that was busy eating a friendand placed the pistol against the rat's head. The rat did notmove and continued eating away. When the hammer clickedback, the rat paused between bites and looked out of the cornerof its eye. First at the pistol and then at the man. It was a kindof friendly look as if to say, "When my mother was young shesang like Deanna Durbin. " The man pulled the trigger. He had no sense of humor. There's always a single feature, a double feature and aneternal feature playing at the Great Theater in Mooresville,Indiana: the John Dillinger capital of America.
GRIDER CREEKI had heard there was some good fishing in there and it wasrunning clear while all the other large creeks were runningmuddy from the snow melting off the Marble Mountains. I also heard there were some Eastern brook trout in there,high up in the mountains, living in the wakes of beaver darns. The guy who drove the school bus drew a map of GriderCreek, showing where the good fishing was. We were standingin front of Steelhead Lodge when he drew the map. It wasa very hot day. I'd imagine it was a hundred degrees. You had to have a car to get to Grider Creek where thegood fishing was, and I didn't have a car. The map was nice,though. Drawn with a heavy dull pencil on a piece of paperbag. With a little square for a sawmill.
THE BALLET FOR TROUT FISHING IN AMERICAHow the Cobra Lily traps insects is a ballet for Trout Fishingin America, a ballet to be performed at the University ofCalifornia at Los Angeles. The plant is beside me here on the back porch. It died a few days after I bought it at Woolworth's. Thatwas months ago, during the presidential election of nineteenhundred and sixty. I buried the plant in an empty Metrecal can. The side of the can says, "Metrecal Dietary for WeightControl, " and below that reads, "Ingredients: Non-fat milksolids, soya flour, whole milk solids, sucrose, starch, cornoil, coconut oil, yeast, imitation vanilla, " but the can's onlya graveyard now for a Cobra Lily that has turned dry andbrown and has black freckles. As a kind of funeral wreath, there is a red, white andblue button sticking in the plant and the words on it say, "I'mfor Nixon." The main energy for the ballet comes from a descriptionof the Cobra Lily. The description could be used as a welcomemat on the front porch of hell or to conduct an orchestraof mortuaries with ice-cold woodwinds or be an atomicmailman in the pines, in the pines where the sun never shines. "Nature has endowed the Cobra Lily with the means ofcatching its own food. The forked tongue is covered withhoney glands which attract the insects upon which it feeds.Once inside the hood, downward pointing hairs prevent theinsect from crawling out. The digestive liquids are found inthe base of the plant. "The supposition that it is necessary to feed the CobraLily a piece of hamburger or an insect daily is erroneous. "I hope the dancers do a good job of it, they hold ourimagination in there feet, dancing in Los Angles for TroutFishing in America.
A WALDEN POND FOR WINOSThe autumn carried along with it, like the roller coaster ofa flesh-eating plant, port wine and the people who drank thatdark sweet wine, people long since gone, except for me. Always wary of the police, we drank in the safest placewe could find, the park across from the church. There were three poplar trees in the middle of the parkand there was a statue of Benjamin Franklin in front of thetrees. We sat there and drank port. At home my wife was pregnant. I would call on the telephone after I finished work and say,"I won't be home for a little while. I'm going to have a drinkwith some friends. " The three of us huddled in the park, talking. They wereboth broken-down artists from New Orleans where they haddrawn pictures of tourists in Pirate's Alley. Now in San Francisco, with the cold autumn wind uponthem, they had decided that the future held only two directions:They were either going to open up a flea circus or committhemselves to an insane asylum. So they talked about it while they drank wine. They talked about how to make little clothes for fleas bypasting pieces of colored paper on their backs. They said the way that you trained fleas was to make themdependent upon you for their food. This was done by letting themfeed off you at an appointed hour. They talked about making little flea wheelbarrows andpool tables and bicycles. They would charge fifty-cents admission for their flea circus.The business was certain to have a future to it. Perhaps theywould even get on the Ed Sullivan Show. They of course did not have their fleas yet, but they couldeasily be obtained from a white cat. Then they decided that the fleas that lived on SiameseCats would probably be more intelligent than the fleas thatlived on just ordinary alley cats. It only made sense thatdrinking intelligent blood would make intelligent fleas. And so it went on until it was exhausted and we went andbought another fifth of port wine and returned to the treesand Benjamin Franklin. Now it was close to sunset and the earth was beginning tocool off in the correct manner of eternity and office girlswere returning like penguins from Montgomery Street. Theylooked at us hurriedly and mentally registered: winos. Then the two artists talked about committing themselvesto an insane asylum for the winter. They talked about howwarm it would be in the insane asylum, with television, cleansheets on soft beds, hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes,a dance once a week with the lady kooks, clean clothes alocked razor and lovely young student nurses. Ah, yes, there was a future in the insane asylum. Nowinter spent there could be a total loss.
Part 10 of Trout Fishing in America
© Richard Brautigan
WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA PEACEIn San Francisco around Easter time last year, they had atrout fishing in America peace parade. They had thousandsof red stickers printed and they pasted them on their smallforeign cars, and on means of national communication liketelephone poles. The stickers had WITNESS FOR TROUT FISHING IN AM-ERICA PEACE printed on them. Then this group of college- and high-school-trained Com-munists, along with some Communist clergymen and theirMarxist-taught children, marched to San Francisco fromSunnyvale, a Communist nerve center about forty miles away. It took them four days to walk to San Francisco. Theystopped overnight at various towns along the way, and slepton the lawns of fellow travelers. They carried with them Communist trout fishing in Ameri-ca peace propaganda posters:"DON'T DROP AN H-BOMB ON THE OLD FISHING HOLE I" "ISAAC WALTON WOULD'VE HATED THE BOMB!" "ROYAL COACHMAN, SI! ICBM, NO!" They carried with them many other trout fishing in Amer-ica peace inducements, all following the Communist worldconquest line: the Gandhian nonviolence Trojan horse. When these young, hard-core brainwashed members ofthe Communist conspiracy reached the "Panhandle, " theemigre Oklahoma Communist sector of San Francisco, thou-sands of other Communists were waiting for them. Thesewere Communists who couldn't walk very far. They barelyhad enough strength to make it downtown. Thousands of Communists, protected by the police, marcheddown to Union Square, located in the very heart of San Fran-cisco. The Communist City Hall riots in 1960 had presentedevidence of it, the police let hundreds of Communists escape,but the trout fishing in America peace parade was the finalindictment: police protection. Thousands of Communists marched right into the heart ofSan Francisco, and Communist speakers incited them forhours and the young people wanted to blow up Colt Tower, butthe Communist clergy told them to put away their plasticbombs. "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would that men shoulddo to you, do ye even so to them . . . There will be no needfor explosives, " they said. America needs no other proof. The Red shadow of theGandhian nonviolence Trojan horse has fallen across Ameri-ca, and San Francisco is its stable. Obsolete is the mad rapist's legendary piece of candy. Atthis very moment, Communist agents are handing out Witnessfor trout fishing in America peace tracts to innocent childrenriding the cable cars.
FOOTNOTE CHAPTER TO "RED LIP"Living in the California bush we had no garbage service. Ourgarbage was never greeted in the early morning by a manwith a big smile on his face and a kind word or two. Wecouldn't burn any of the garbage because it was the dry seas-on and everything was ready to catch on fire anyway, includ-ing ourselves. The garbage was a problem for a little whileand then we discovered a way to get rid of it. We took the garbage down to where there were three aban-doned houses in a row. We carried sacks full of tin cans,papers, peelings, bottles and Popeyes. We stopped at the last abandoned house where there werethousands of old receipts to the San Francisco Chroniclethrown all over the bed and the children's toothbrushes werestill in the bathroom medicine cabinet. Behind the place was an old outhouse and to get down to it,you had to follow the path down past some apple trees and apatch of strange plants that we thought were either a goodspice that would certainly enhance our cooking or the plantswere deadly nightshade that would cause our cooking to beless. We carried the garbage down to the outhouse and alwaysopened the door slowly because that was the only way youcould open it, and on the wall there was a roll of toilet paper,so old it looked like a relative, perhaps a cousin, to the Mag-na Carta. We lifted up the lid of the toilet and dropped the garbagedown into the darkness. This went on for weeks and weeksuntil it became very funny to lift the lid of the toilet and in-stead of seeing darkness below or maybe the murky abstractoutline of garbage, we saw bright, definite and lusty garbageheaped up almost to the top. If you were a stranger and went down there to take an in-nocent crap, you would've had quite a surprise when you lift-ed up the lid. We left the California bush just before it became necessaryto stand on the toilet seat and step into that hole, crushingthe garbage down like an accordion into the abyss.
THE CLEVELAND WRECKING YARDUntil recently my knowledge about the Cleveland WreckingYard had come from a couple of friends who'd bought thingsthere. One of them bought a huge window: the frame, glassand everything for just a few dollars. It was a fine-lookingwindow. Then he chopped a hole in the side of his house up onPotrero Hill and put the window in. Now he has a panoramicview of the San Francisco County Hospital. He can practically look right down into the wards and seeold magazines eroded like the Grand Canyon from endlessreadings. He can practically hear the patients thinking aboutbreakfast: I hate milk and thinking about dinner: I hate peas,and then he can watch the hospital slowly drown at night,hopelessly entangled in huge bunches of brick seaweed. He bought that window at the Cleveland Wrecking Yard. My other friend bought an iron roof at the Cleveland Wreck-ing Yard and took the roof down to Big Sur in an old stationwagon and then he carried the iron roof on his back up theside of a mountain. He carried up half the roof on his back.It was no picnic. Then he bought a mule, George, from Pleas-anton. George carried up the other half of the roof. The mule didn't like what was happening at all. He lost alot of weight because of the ticks, and the smell of the wild-cats up on the plateau made him too nervous to graze there.My friend said jokingly that George had lost around two hun-dred pounds. The good wine country around Pleasanton in theLivermore Valley probably had looked a lot better to Georgethan the wild side of the Santa Lucia Mountains. My friend's place was a shack right beside a huge fire-place where there had once been a great mansion during the1920s, built by a famous movie actor. The mansion was builtbefore there was even a road down at Big Sur. The mansionhad been brought over the mountains on the backs of mules,strung out like ants, bringing visions of the good life to thepoison oak, the ticks, and the salmon. The mansion was on a promontory, high over the Pacific.Money could see farther in the 1920s and one could look outand see whales and the Hawaiian Islands and the Kuomintangin China. The mansion burned down years ago. The actor died. His mules were made into soap. His mistresses became bird nests of wrinkles. Now only the fireplace remains as a sort of Carthaginianhomage to Hollywood. I was down there a few weeks ago to see my friend's roof.I wouldn't have passed up the chance for a million dollars,as they say. The roof looked like a colander to me. If thatroof and the rain were running against each other at BayMeadows, I'd bet on the rain and plan to spend my winningsat the World's Fair in Seattle. My own experience with the Cleveland Wrecking Yard be-gan two days ago when I heard about a used trout streamthey had on sale out at the Yard. So I caught the Number 15bus on Columbus Avenue and went out there for the first time. There were two Negro boys sitting behind me on the bus.They were talking about Chubby Checker and the Twist. Theythought that Chubby Checker was only fifteen years old be-cause he didn't have a mustache. Then they talked about someother guy who did the twist forty-four hours in a row untilhe saw George Washington crossing the Delaware. "Man, that's what I call twisting, " one of the kids said. "I don't think I could twist no forty-four hours in a row, "the other kid said. "That's a lot of twisting. " I got off the bus right next to an abandoned Time Gasolinefilling station and an abandoned fifty-cent self-service carwash. There was a long field on one side of the filling station.The field had once been covered with a housing project dur-ing the war, put there for the shipyard workers. On the other side of the Time filling station was the Cleve-land Wrecking Yard. I walked down there to have a look atthe used trout stream. The Cleveland Wrecking Yard has avery long front window filled with signs and merchandise. There was a sign in the window advertising a laundry marking machine for $65. 00. The original cost of the mach- ine was $175. 00. Quite a saving. There was another sign advertising new and used two and three ton hoists. I wondered how many hoists it would take to move a trout stream. There was another sign that said: THE FAMILY GIFT CENTER, GIFT SUGGESTIONS FOR THE ENTIRE FAMILY The window was filled with hundreds of items for the en- tire family. Daddy, do you know what I want for Christmas? son? A bathroom. Mommy do you know what I want for Christmas? What, Patricia? Some roofing material There were jungle hammocks in the window for distant relatives and dollar-ten-cent gallons of earth-brown enamel paint for other loved ones. There was also a big sign that said: USED TROUT STREAM FOR SALE. MUST BE SEEN TO BE APPRECIATED, I went inside and looked at some ship's lanterns that were for sale next to the door. Then a salesman came up to me and said in a pleasant voice, "Can I help you?" "Yes, " I said. "I'm curious about the trout stream you have for sale. Can you tell me something about it? How are you selling it?" "We're selling it by the foot length. You can buy as little as you want or you can buy all we've got left. A man came in here this morning and bought 563 feet. He's going to give it to his niece for a birthday present, " the salesman said. "We're selling the waterfalls separately of course, and the trees and birds, flowers grass and ferns we're also sell- ing extra. The insects we're giving away free with a mini- mum purchase of ten feet of stream. " "How much are you selling the stream for?" I asked. "Six dollars and fifty-cents a foot, " he said. "That's for the first hundred feet. After that it's five dollars a foot." "How much are the birds?" I asked. "Thirty-five cents apiece, " he said. "But of course they're used. We can't guarantee anything." "How wide is the stream?" I asked. "You said you wereselling it by the length, didn't you?" "Yes, " he said. "We're selling it by the length. Its widthruns between five and eleven feet. You don't have to pay any-thing extra for width. It's not a big stream, but it's verypleasant. " "What kinds of animals do you have 7" I asked. "We only have three deer left, " he said. "Oh What about flowers 7" "By the dozen, " he said. "Is the stream clear?" I asked. "Sir, " the salesman said. "I wouldn't want you to thinkthat we would ever sell a murky trout stream here. We al-ways make sure they're running crystal clear before we eventhink about moving them. " "Where did the stream come from?" I asked. "Colorado, " he said. "We moved it with loving care. We'venever damaged a trout stream yet. We treat them all as ifthey were china. " "You're probably asked this all the time, but how's fish-ing in the stream?" I asked. "Very good, " he said. "Mostly German browns, but thereare a few rainbows. " "What do the trout cost?" I asked. "They come with the stream, " he said. "Of course it's allluck. You never know how many you're going to get or howbig they are. But the fishing's very good, you might say it'sexcellent. Both bait and dry fly, " he said smiling. "Where's the stream at?" I asked. "I'd like to take a lookat it. " "It's around in back, " he said. "You go straight throughthat door and then turn right until you're outside. It's stackedin lengths. You can't miss it. The waterfalls are upstairs inthe used plumbing department. " "What about the animals?" "Well, what's left of the animals are straight back fromthe stream. You'll see a bunch of our trucks parked on aroad by the railroad tracks. Turn right on the road and fol-low it down past the piles of lumber. The animal shed's rightat the end of the lot. " "Thanks, " I said. "I think I'11 look at the waterfalls first.You don't have to come with me. Just tell me how to get thereand I'11 find my own way. "All right, " he said. "Go up those stairs. You'll see abunch of doors and windows, turn left and you'll find theused plumbing department. Here's my card if you need anyhelp. " "Okay, " I said. "You've been a great help already. Thanksa lot. I'11 take a look around." "Good luck, " he said. I went upstairs and there were thousands of doors there.I'd never seen so many doors before in my life. You couldhave built an entire city out of those doors. Doorstown. Andthere were enough windows up there to build a little suburbentirely out of windows. Windowville. I turned left and went back and saw the faint glow of pearl-colored light. The light got stronger and stronger as I wentfarther back, and then I was in the used plumbing department,surrounded by hundreds of toilets. The toilets were stacked on shelves. They were stackedfive toilets high. There was a skylight above the toilets thatmade them glow like the Great Taboo Pearl of the South Seamovies. Stacked over against the wall were the waterfalls. Therewere about a dozen of them, ranging from a drop of a fewfeet to a drop of ten or fifteen feet. There was one waterfall that was over sixty feet long.There were tags on the pieces of the big falls describing thecorrect order for putting the falls back together again. The waterfalls all had price tags on them. They weremore expensive than the stream. The waterfalls were sellingfor $19.00 a foot. I went into another room where there were piles of sweet-smelling lumber, glowing a soft yellow from a different colorskylight above the lumber. In the shadows at the edge of theroom under the sloping roof of the building were many sinksand urinals covered with dust, and there was also anotherwaterfall about seventeen feet long, lying there in two lengthsand already beginning to gather dust. I had seen all I wanted of the waterfalls, and now I wasvery curious about the trout stream, so I followed the sales-man's directions and ended up outside the building. O I had never in my life seen anything like that troutstream. It was stacked in piles of various lengths: ten, fif-teen, twenty feet, etc. There was one pile of hundred-footlengths. There was also a box of scraps. The scraps werein odd sizes ranging from six inches to a couple of feet. There was a loudspeaker on the side of the building andsoft music was coming out. It was a cloudy day and seagullswere circling high overhead. Behind the stream were big bundles of trees and bushes.They were covered with sheets of patched canvas. You couldsee the tops and roots sticking out the ends of the bundles. I went up close and looked at the lengths of stream. Icould see some trout in them. I saw one good fish. I sawsome crawdads crawling around the rocks at the bottom. It looked like a fine stream. I put my hand in the water.It was cold and felt good. I decided to go around to the side and look at the animals.I saw where the trucks were parked beside the railroadtracks. I followed the road down past the piles of lumber,back to the shed where the animals were. The salesman had been right. They were practically outof animals. About the only thing they had left in any abun-dance were mice. There were hundreds of mice. Beside the shed was a huge wire birdcage, maybe fiftyfeet high, filled with many kinds of birds. The top of the cagehad a piece of canvas over it, so the birds wouldn't get wetwhen it rained. There were woodpeckers and wild canariesand sparrows. On my way back to where the trout stream was piled, Ifound the insects. They were inside a prefabricated steelbuilding that was selling for eighty-cents a square foot. Therewas a sign over the door. It said INSECTS
A HALF-SUNDAY HOMAGE TO A WHOLE LEONARDO DA VINCIOn this funky winter day in rainy San Francisco I've had avision of Leonardo da Vinci. My woman's out slaving away,no day off, working on Sunday. She left here at eight o'clockthis morning for Powell and California. I've been sitting hereever since like a toad on a log dreaming about Leonardo daVinci. I dreamt he was on the South Bend Tackle Company pay-roll, but of course, he was wearing different clothes andspeaking with a different accent and possessor of a differentchildhood, perhaps an American childhood spent in a townlike Lordsburg, New Mexico, or Winchester, Virginia. I saw him inventing a new spinning lure for trout fishingin America. I saw him first of all working with his imagina-tion, then with metal and color and hooks, trying a little ofthis and a little of that, and then adding motion and then tak-ing it away and then coming back again with a different motion,and in the end the lure was invented. He called his bosses in. They looked at the lure and allfainted. Alone, standing over their bodies, he held the lurein his hand and gave it a name. He called it "The Last Supper."Then he went about waking up his bosses. In a matter of months that trout fishing lure was the sen-sation of the twentieth century, far outstripping such shallowaccomplishments as Hiroshima or Mahatma Gandhi. Millionsof "The Last Supper" were sold in America. The Vatican or-dered ten thousand and they didn't even have any trout there. Testimonials poured in. Thirty-four ex-presidents of theUnited States all said, ''I caught my limit on 'The Last Supper.'''
December 30
© Richard Brautigan
At 1:30 in the morning a fart
smells like a marriage between
an avocado and a fish head.
Coffee
© Richard Brautigan
Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee
affords. I once read something about coffee. The thing said that coffee is good for you;
it stimulates all the organs.
I thought at first this was a strange way to put it, and not altogether pleasant, but
Love Poem
© Richard Brautigan
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
Chapel Deacon
© Ronald Stuart Thomas
Who put that crease in your soul,
Davies, ready this fine morning
For the staid chapel, where the Book's frown
Sobers the sunlight? Who taught you to pray
Anonymous Drawing
© Donald Justice
A delicate young Negro stands
With the reins of a horse clutched loosely in his hands;
So delicate, indeed, that we wonder if he can hold the spirited creature
beside him
Korean Mums
© James Schuyler
beside me in this garden
are huge and daisy-like
(why not? are not
oxeye daisies a chrysanthemum?),
The Neighbor
© Marge Piercy
Man stomping over my bed in boots
carrying a large bronze church bell
which you occasionally drop:
gross man with iron heels
The Transfiguration
© Edwin Muir
So from the ground we felt that virtue branch
Through all our veins till we were whole, our wrists
The Morning Half-Life Blues
© Marge Piercy
Girls buck the wind in the grooves toward work
in fuzzy coats promised to be warm as fur.
The shop windows snicker
flashing them hurrying over dresses they cannot afford:
you are not pretty enough, not pretty enough.
The Cat's Song
© Marge Piercy
Mine, says the cat, putting out his paw of darkness.
My lover, my friend, my slave, my toy, says
the cat making on your chest his gesture of drawing
milk from his mother's forgotten breasts.
What Are Big Girls Made Of?
© Marge Piercy
When will women not be compelled
to view their bodies as science projects,
gardens to be weeded,
dogs to be trained?
When will a woman cease
to be made of pain?
