by KT Sparks
Martin nodded, coughed once more. He was okay. That’s why he was here right now and not at home warming up Banquet Salisbury Steak Dinners for his mom and Frank. He was okay here, away from Hyde Park, among the men who worked with their hands. Or pens. Or fried dough.
“So,” said Lattner, “headed back to school soon? Chicago, right? Fine school. Saul Bellow’s there, if I’m not mistaken. Bit over the top in their economics, but I don’t suppose you’re studying economics.”
“Political science,” said Martin, “but not anymore. I quit.” And Martin realized that, in fact, he would quit.
“Shame,” said Lattner. “What’s next for you?”
Martin finished his drink, caught one-handed the fresh mug Hank slid to him, drained half the glass, banged it down as he had noticed an old man at the other end of the bar had done, shot the whiskey, and slugged back the rest of the beer.
“Another,” he rasped. “And what’s next for me is poetry.”
“Capital,” said Lattner. “Next round’s on you. Not too many poets here in Pierre. An open market.”
“I’m a limerick man myself,” said Flip.
Martin wiped a tearing eye with the back of his hand. An eye tearing not with grief for his infirm mom or his newly aborted academic career. An eye tearing from the alcohol-infused stomach acid that had somehow lodged itself in his nasal cavity. Martin wasn’t much of a drinker. And he hadn’t had anything to eat since a bowl of Lucky Charms that morning. But he found he liked this drink, this boilermaker. It could well be the perfect drink. Had it been made with Coors beer followed by a shot of rotgut brewed in some Montana outlaw hidey hole, it would have even more fit his mood, his hunger, at the moment. But this was close to what he needed, damn close.
His third boilermaker arrived, and this time he dropped the shot glass in the mug with a splash that raised a cheer of “huzzah!” from Lattner and a “that’s the way” from Flip. Martin wiped the foam from his upper lip and grinned.
Two men, closer to Martin’s age than Lattner or Flip, pulled out stools on the long side of the bar around the corner from Martin. They both wore tight bell-bottoms and matching denim vests over button-down poly-blend monochromatic shirts, one mustard, one burgundy. Both had wet hair slicked back into tails that licked at their collars. One had a well-trimmed mustache; the other, a scar that ran across his right cheek. Their aftershave reminded Martin of the smell of cabs he had taken from the South Side to downtown Chicago: pine, cardamom, coffee, Lysol.
Hank brought the two men beers without either ordering. Martin noticed they didn’t get the whiskey shots and wondered if boilermakers were an old man’s drink. Martin motioned Hank for another round in what he thought was an understated flick of his finger but might have been a bit more because Flip snorted, and Lattner chirped, “Ride ’em, cowboy.”
“Cowboys,” Martin said to no one in particular as his fourth boilermaker arrived. “Cowboy poetry, to be precise.”
“Arthur Chapman,” said Lattner.
“Excuse me?” Martin said.
“You said, ‘cowboy poetry’ and then I said, ‘Arthur Chapman,’ who, if you know anything about cowboy poetry, is a cowboy poet. Perhaps the best known of the cowboy poets.” Lattner stood up, tapped the bar with one bony finger, and recited:
Out where the handclasp’s a little stronger,
Out where the smile dwells a little longer,
That’s where the West begins…
Hank deposited the next round in front of Lattner, Flip, and Martin, and Lattner bowed, arm stiff across his stomach, toward his latest beer. “These are on Martin,” he said. “The cowboy poet.”
Martin didn’t protest, just stared at Lattner, who bowed again, this time immersing his thin nose and rectangular mustache into the beer, like a perpetual-motion dipping bird sans red top hat.
“I don’t know that one. Arthur Chapman?”
“You don’t know Arthur Chapman? You don’t know the classic ‘Out Where the West Begins’? What”—he hopped back on his stool, mustache dripping—“do they teach in the Pierre public schools these days?” He cleared his throat, closed his eyes, poked Flip, who had put his head on his arms, and trumpeted:
Out where the sun is a little brighter,
Where the snows that fall are a trifle whiter,
Where the bonds of home are a wee bit tighter,
That’s where the West begins.
Out where the skies are a trifle bluer,
Out where the friendship’s a little truer,
That’s where the West begins.
“Out where the dongs are a trifle longer, out where they pull a little stronger. Trifle, trifle, trifle, West,” said Flip, sitting back up. The two men to Martin’s left sniggered.
“Is that it?” said Martin.
“No,” said Lattner. “It goes on forever. Do you need a job, by the way? Maybe the Leader Telegram should start a regular poetry column. Cowboy poetry. Or maybe, for the local audience, angler poetry, or sailor’s poetry. Or small-town blowhard poetry.”
“Really? Of course,” said Martin. Lattner was probably kidding, but Martin was drunk, and Lattner’s nonsense was making more sense, at the moment, than anything he had studied at U of C.
“Bowling poetry,” said Flip and put his head back down.
“Ah, but can I trust an inexperienced college dropout who doesn’t even know ‘Out Where the West Begins’? How are you with limericks? Flip is always saying we ought to do a limerick column.” With one finger, Lattner fished for Flip’s latest shot and pushed his own empty glass back to Flip’s side. Without lifting his head, Flip said, “There once was a woman from NAN-tuckett.”
This was another sign, of course. That Martin had found someone who knew of cowboy poetry—who knew more than Martin did about cowboy poetry—in Pierre. He was in the right place. He was being called.
“What we ought to do,” said Lattner into the thinning hair on the back of Flip’s head, “is a multipart series on the life of Arthur Chapman, concluding on Sunday with an entire edition devoted to his poetry. ‘Out Where the West Begins,’ of course, but also, you know, the rest of them.”
“That’s a great idea,” said Martin, more loudly than he had intended. Flip snorted.
“And Martin will write it,” said Lattner and threw back Flip’s shot. “Martin will be my assistant, my muse, my journalistic journeyman, my literary…lug nut.”
“I will,” said Martin. “I will.”
“What about that other guy?” said Flip. “Greg, Greg? Greg Lugnut?”
“Greg Lange,” said Lattner, “is a muscle-bound moron. I’m firing him tomorrow.”
“He can sure write about basketball.” This from one of the denim-clad men, the one with a mustache not unlike Lattner’s, though more carefully trimmed.
“And you can’t,” said Flip to Lattner.
“Point taken,” said Lattner. “We’ll no longer cover basketball, though that will mean the end of the paper, as most of our readers only open the broadsheet for the PPHS scores. But no price too high for art. No price too high for cowboy poetry, right?” He gestured at Martin without looking at him.
“Another round?” said Hank.
“No,” said Martin.
“Of course,” said Lattner and Flip at the same time.
“No drink too many for cowboy poetry,” said Martin as Hank went to fetch their order.
One of the younger men looked toward Martin with bright eyes. For a moment, Martin thought maybe he had found an ally, the ally he knew he was to find in this bar, this bar of men who worked with their hands, the reason he knew he needed to come here this night, this night he had committed himself to cowboy poetry and a life of action.
“Is that Dr. Broad’s ring bowl?” the man asked. “Goddamn, you know I think my brother got the only good thing he ever put in th
at. A Swiss Army knife.” He looked at Martin. “My name is Todd, by the way.”
“I’m Eric.” The other man reached a hand across to Martin, which he took and shook without knocking over either of their drinks, perhaps his last graceful move of the evening. “And there’s no way there was ever a Swiss Army knife in there. I would have found it. I practically emptied that thing out every year looking for something that wasn’t a goddamn ring. Let me see.”
Flip grabbed a green ring from the bowl and pushed it toward Eric. “They didn’t have this kind of shit when I was a kid.”
“They didn’t even have shots, did they? Didn’t you all just get polio?” said Todd.
“Ignorant youth,” muttered Lattner, waving at Hank, though his mug was still half full. He swayed on his stool, or maybe Martin’s vision doubled.
“Some jewels, my good man,” said Lattner, though it came out “mush god-man.”
Eric laughed and tossed a handful of plastic at Lattner. A couple of the rings slid to a stop in the beer river winding its way between the bunched-up paper napkins scattered around Lattner’s drink. The rest of the jewelry bounced over the bar’s polished brass rim and skittered on the floor. Lattner jerked sideways off his stool and fell to his knees with a thud. He brushed at the peanut shells with outstretched fingers, mumbling about “sweeping once in a while.”
Eric took more rings and other toys out of the bowl and lined them up according to color. “Why so many green?” he said.
Lattner rose back up, almost whacking his head on the underside of the bar. “Photosynthesis,” he said.
The evening loped on unsteadily. Another boilermaker that Martin didn’t remember ordering showed up, and Hank removed the last one that Martin didn’t remember drinking. A woman with short black hair and a low-cut orange T-shirt advertising the Star Bright Brushless Carwash walked behind Todd, grabbed a bunch of his hair in a fist, and kissed him hard.
“Marry me,” the girl said.
Flip stumbled backwards toward the men’s room. Lattner pulled Flip’s abandoned stool close and lay a shoulder on it, his head held rigid, his eyes unblinking and aimed at Martin’s mid-torso. More people pushed into the bar. The two old men who had been there when Martin came in were long gone. Martin recognized some of the newcomers, high school classmates, his year and the one or two after. The mostly men, mostly former members of the PPHS swim team, gathered around one of the booths, their noses still capped white with zinc, still wearing their “Horn of Plenty Beach Lifeguard” shirts from the afternoon shift. They were at the end of their summer breaks from University of Michigan, Michigan State, or the other regional state schools that everyone said were just as good. Each new entrant to the booth was greeted with yelps and gargles, as if the greeters were still underwater. A harried Hank carried pitchers of beer, two at a time, to their table.
The other guys—the ones who didn’t finish high school, or who finished but just barely and started immediately at the gas station or road construction jobs they would hold for the next fifty years, if they were lucky—gathered around Todd and Eric. And Martin, for Dr. Broad’s rings had made him a valued member of the young working man set. Women too. Girls Martin remembered from high school, smirking through sex-ed in tenth grade because, as was well known, they had already done it. Pompon squad girls who worked now as cosmeticians-in-training or waitresses at The Seashore, Pierre’s other bar, the one with ferns, a kids’ menu, a Christopher Cross-dominated soundtrack, and no one drinking boilermakers. Girls with big breasts and full lips and hard red nails. Girls who smelled of french fry grease and gasoline and saltwater taffy. Martin leaned into one’s side now, snuffled at her cleavage, and offered her a green ring.
The swimmers’ table had girls too, but they were younger, or younger looking, mannish shoulders propping up Izod collared shirts, straight-legged blue jeans or faded gym shorts, green-tinged hair brushed back straight. Some had lifeguard shirts of their own. They sat on the boys’ laps and checked their watches and eyed each other with the air of people who had someplace else to be.
A microphone squawked somewhere up near the front of the bar, Hank rumbled something, and a guitar started twanging at what might have been “Cat’s in the Cradle.” At some point, Hank switched from the plastic mugs to red plastic cups. Martin lifted his drink and hummed along with the guitar, now plinking doggedly at “Let’s Hear it for the Boy.”
“So you sing too.” The breath in his ear smelled of ash and bourbon.
Julie.
His last memory of her, that night at Jimmy Sneedle’s just four months ago, was of the top of her head, her straw-blonde hair parted almost down to the scalp, and the smell of bleach, of pinion smoke from the scented candles in the dining room, of mold from the leak in the back of the billiards room. He felt his dick harden. Again, cowboy poetry had brought him this.
“He is a singer, and a dancer, and a poet,” said Lattner.
“Oh, I know,” said Julie. “I’ve seen him perform.”
He hadn’t remembered she had green eyes. Or that her face was as round as the moon.
“Poetry? You’ve heard him perform cowboy poetry?” said Lattner.
“That too,” said Julie.
Martin grabbed the last handful of rings from Dr. Broad’s bowl, which had ended up in front of him on the bar, though it must have traveled some distance before, since everyone he could see was festooned with cheap jewelry. “Marry me,” he said to Julie. “Or blow me.” And he rained the flashing green down on her.
“You must recite for us,” said Lattner, grabbing Martin’s hand and tugging him away from Julie, who was picking plastic off the front of her shirt. Yes, Martin thought. Yes, he must perform. Recite cowboy poetry and have sex with Julie Newport because that’s how it went. He was back in the arms of the range, the wide-open range, and he would shed this Martin skin, this Martin death-tainted skin of failure and unearned superiority and loneliness, and he would recite cowboy poetry. He would recite cowboy poetry in this bar, in The Silver Dollar, and he would recite poetry in Elko and in Wickenburg. He’d recite on the Chisholm Trail while sitting with Beaufort and the hands from the barn. And Ginger. He would recite cowboy poetry and drink whiskey and have sex and marry Ginger and father ten round babies, who in this drunken fantasy, were Mexican.
As honest as the hawse between my knees,
Clean as the wind that blows behind the rains,
Free as the hawk that circles down the breeze!
“How’s your mom?” shouted Julie as Lattner led Martin past her and toward the microphone and the shriveled man with a long white ponytail in a Grateful Dead shirt cowering and crooning behind it.
“Dying,” Martin roared back. “Dying, almost dead, thanks for asking. Dying, as we all are, buzzard fodder and bleached bones in the desert sun.”
Martin started taking off his shirt before he got halfway to the microphone. He yanked at it so hard the last two buttons popped off, one pinging onto the bar in front of his eighth-grade biology teacher. He felt his breasts rolling independently, like the pistons on a locomotive, spattering bystanders with droplets of sweat. He kept moving while unbuttoning his Wrangler’s, paused to step out of them, and bellowed:
Through progress of the railroads,
our occupation’s gone;
we’ll get our ideas into words,
our words into a song,
The diminutive guitarist held his hands up, as if being mugged, and called to Martin, “Whoa there, guy, slow down! It’s cool, it’s cool.”
Martin squinted at the tie-dyed little man. All those colors on him. All that pointless music in his fingers. He needed cowboy poetry. Like Martin, like Lattner, like Flip and Todd and Eric and Julie. Especially Julie. Like everyone in this bar, in this pathetic town, in the world. They all needed cowboy poetry. And Martin had it. Martin had it to give.
He felt such a ne
ed to be naked, a need like he had never known before. To be naked before God and the good people of Pierre and The Silver Dollar and Julie Newport and cowboy poetry. No scrap of foul cloth would stand between him and the words that would save him, save them all. They would see, they would know. They would witness the life-giving verses writ large across his naked loins.
First comes the cowboy,
he’s the spirit of the West;
hf all the pioneers I claim,
the cowboys are the best.
We’ll miss him in the round-up,
it’s gone, his merry shout,
the cowboy has left the country,
his campfire has gone out.
He dropped his Fruit of the Looms and turned to the crowd.
Letter to the Editor, Pierre Leader Telegram
August 26, 1985
Maybe Mayor Vernon should have waited a few days before “spouting off” about how great a place Pierre is for families (Mayor Tells Chamber Downtown is ‘Super-Duper-Kid-Friendly’, August 20, 1985). If he had, like me, been walking his miniature schnauzer on Main Street in the vicinity of The Silver Dollar Saloon at 11:30 p.m. on Thursday, August 22, he would “right this minute” be issuing an apology to every parent who happened to hear his misleading address.
At that very time, with that very dog, I witnessed a “drunken mob” pouring out of the said tavern, singing, screaming, and vomiting. The most shocking part of the spectacle—even to me at the “ripe old age” of seventy-four (think of the scars it would leave on “our youth!”)—was the leader of this parade: an obese man, entirely and utterly “buck naked!”
When President Reagan was elected, he promised us “morning in America.” To most of us “family men,” that meant the end of “free love,” “women’s lib,” and “the counterculture.” “Good riddance” to it, I say. It will be a “sad day,” if night in downtown Pierre becomes known for debauchery, and worse.
Gordon Ziemke
[ed. note: I was a member of what Mr. Ziemke has termed a “drunken mob” outside The Silver Dollar Saloon on the night of August 22. He has many of the salient facts of that fine evening incorrect. The gathering was less of a bacchanal than a symposium in the style of the ancient Greeks, complete with epic poetry recitation and other elevating entertainment. And, yes, one of the key participants—“Obese” is inaccurate. I would have said “tremendous”—was nude, exactly as heroes were depicted throughout the Hellenistic Period. Also, Gordo, I printed your letter as you typed it, but next time, be warned, I’m charging by the quotation mark. “Sincerely,” BL]