by Erik Storlie
At the end of the evening, a woman in a flowing white dress serves tea. We all sit silently on our folding chairs, cradling little white porcelain Japanese teacups, which she, one by one, dutifully fills.
Reverend Suzuki accepts our silence for a long while, then asks, with a wry smile, “Did you understand something from my talk? Maybe a little bit? Maybe my talk is not so bad?”
A young man with long, disheveled hair, tattered jeans, and a filthy plaid shirt slowly raises the hand that holds his teacup higher and higher. His hand is clenched, the knuckles white. Surprised, we all watch curiously. Then suddenly he smashes it into the faded hardwood floor. It explodes into shards that fly in all directions, skittering under our chairs into corners of the room. Everyone freezes.
The young man looks at Reverend Suzuki, an expectant half smile on his face.
Without a word, in a single smooth movement, Reverend Suzuki stands and walks out of the room.
We’re all still frozen, waiting for him to return, for someone to tell us what happens next. But nothing happens. The lecture is over. We file sheepishly out into the evening fog of Bush Street.
It’s an early morning, late in November. Lon and I have driven over the fog-shrouded Bay Bridge from Berkeley to sit zazen with Suzuki Roshi. We sit with several others on the balcony at Sokoji Temple on round black cushions. In the distance, out in the cold bay, great ships sound their foghorns. Quietly, softly, in bare feet, betrayed only by the rustle of robes and the squeak of the floor, Reverend Suzuki passes behind us as he makes his rounds in the middle of a forty-minute period of zazen.
Suddenly, with a whoosh of robes, he settles down behind me in the dim hall. With light, quick hands, he adjusts the position of my shoulders, aligns my neck and head. There’s a pause, as if he surveys his work. Then gently he lifts my elbows a tiny bit away from my sides. My hands are in the Buddha’s mudra, one palm atop the other, thumb tips touching. But I’ve been clutching my upper arms against my body. I feel gratitude—and like soft clay being worked by a potter.
It’s mid-December, a wet, cold Berkeley afternoon. Fog and low clouds race in from the bay, pushed by blustery winds. I’m walking slowly past Ludwig’s Fountain in the square between Sproul Hall and the Student Union, where only a few weeks ago four thousand students rallied against the university administration’s strictures on political expression. A few days later, at another rally, some eight hundred people occupied Sproul Hall. To our horror, hundreds were arrested by the Berkeley police and hauled away in police vans. We know now what the power structure is capable of—pure billyclub law. How distant they are from a generation truly dedicated to peace and justice.
But now, after a student strike and widespread faculty support for student demands, President Clark Kerr has offered concessions. Students have returned to classes. An uneasy peace prevails.
As I pass the fountain, I see Ludwig himself, a handsome, alert brown dog, the campus mascot after which the fountain is nicknamed. He sits at the feet of a pretty coed, who leans over him, scratching his ears.
I’ve just come from passing my M.A. orals. I’m shaken, ashamed, and sick at heart.
“What a miserable, disgusting performance,” a voice whispers in my ears. “How could you do so badly? So this really is the best you can do? A second-rater washed out of the Ph.D. program, going home with the M.A. as a booby prize.
“Well, what did you expect?” I think to myself. “How could even four weeks of crash cramming be enough? At least you’ve got the front bedroom redecorated.” I smile wryly, remembering the bold colors with which I’d outlined the major dates, figures, movements, and influences in English and American literature around the walls of the room in which Lon and I gave Striker his first acid trip.
“And what will Barney think?” Barney is the chairman of the American Studies program at the University of Minnesota. A dear family friend, he had steadily encouraged me to hang in with my studies—and had gotten me admitted to Berkeley in the first place. Just last summer, he and his wife, Lucy, had helped me find the mining claim near their summer ranch in the Bitterroots.
“And old Herling. He actually came through for me. He was trying to save my ass.” The other two examiners were profs I’d never had. They took sneering delight in showing how abysmally ignorant I was in their centuries. It wasn’t hard.
After the hour-and-a-half grilling was over, I waited in the hall, heart pounding, astonished and humiliated. Then Herling called me in.
“Well, Mr. Storlie, I can congratulate you on passing this oral examination. You have now completed the master’s degree in English here at Berkeley. But I must say, too, that neither my colleagues here,” Herling ducks his head nervously toward each, “nor I, for that matter, feel able to recommend you for our doctoral program at this time.
“You may, of course, prepare further and sit again for this exam. A stronger performance could change our minds.” He glances expectantly at his colleagues, but neither offers encouragement. One stares out the window and twiddles his fingers. The other, slumped in his chair, faintly smiles.
“Thank you, Professor Herling,” I say. “I’ll consider retaking the exam. I’m not sure what I should do.”
“Of course, Mr. Storlie. This will require some thought on your part. Let us know what you decide. You’ll have to reschedule for some time spring semester, at the latest. Good luck, then.”
I glance again at the other two. They don’t look at me. “Fat chance of passing a second exam,” I think. “They just want to be done with me. And why not? Can I blame them?”
Herling opens the door for me and steps outside. He shakes my hand somberly. His eyes seem sad. Then he quickly steps back inside.
“Why did you hate him so?” I wonder. “Couldn’t you have gotten to know him better? What is he thinking? What are any of them thinking? The campus just exploded. Surely they’ve seen it coming.
“I know they know I’ve been anything but the usual graduate student for the last two years. Yet no one’s ever talked to me, asked what’s going on with me, asked whether things are okay. No one’s discussed my plans here since the year I arrived—and even then, not much.
“Well, they know that you’re a goddamned freak. Why should they mess with another burned-out hippie grad student? Am I worth their time? You’re just a piece of ‘damaged goods,’ just what the chairman of the English Department at Minnesota called Jim Wright when he was fired a few years ago. Yeah, you’re damaged goods. Jim drank too hard, of course. But at least he’s a poet. What are you?”
As I walk down Telegraph toward my car, the scene that a short year ago signaled liberation from the dull, dead, dryness of academia and middle-class American life suddenly looks tawdry and cheap. There is the usual knot of hip young people dressed in a riot of colors in front of the Café Mediterranean, some sitting on the sidewalk, some standing. An ancient VW microbus, painted in wild, psychedelic swirls, leans crazily at the curb.
As I pass them, I suddenly notice the dirt-encrusted feet of a young woman standing on the sidewalk. She wears huge gold earrings and Gypsy robes covered with red, blue, and green patches. And I notice the gritty tracks of tears down the dusty face of a toddler who stands next to her, clutching up with both desperate hands and arms, saying over and over, “Up, up, up.”
With an exaggerated, wide smile, she talks loudly and intensely to two male companions with shoulder-length hair, glancing down occasionally to intone, “Later, Sibyl, later, baby. You’ve already been bothering Mommy enough.”
“What’s gone wrong?” I think.
I head on down Telegraph past them toward the car, mind returning uneasily to my own dilemmas. “I’ve got to go for the Ph.D. or the draft board will have me. And it’s hopeless here. Maybe Barney would get me back into American studies at Minnesota. He recommended me for Berkeley, and now I’ve let him down, too.”
And as I open the door to the station wagon, I’m wondering, “What should I tell Celeste?”
/> It’s early evening, six weeks later, in January. Lon and Striker pick me up at the airport. I’ve just flown back from spending Christmas at my parents’ home in Minneapolis. I didn’t bring Celeste. Angry and disappointed, she spent her Christmas alone at 556.
While in Minneapolis, I asked Barney if he’d help me get into the American Studies Ph.D. program at Minnesota. He agreed. I’m a student again.
Striker is no longer living at 556. He’s found a girl and a place of his own. As we head up the freeway toward the city, he asks, “How’s Celeste doing?”
“I don’t really know,” I say. “I haven’t talked to her since I left before Christmas.”
Lon glances over at me but says nothing. Striker whistles and laughs. “Whooee. You got some big trouble coming. She spends Christmas alone, and now she doesn’t even know you’re back! Why didn’t you call her, man?”
“Oh, geez,” I say, rubbing knuckles into my forehead, “I don’t know what the hell I’m doing. Except I know I’ve got to go back to Minneapolis for the Ph.D. to stay out of fucking Vietnam. And I know the Berkeley scene is over for me.”
“Hey, man, that’s okay, take her with you,” says Striker. “She’ll go. Just play my man Otis, that cut I put you on to when you two had that little fight last fall. Put on ‘Try a Little Tenderness.’ She’ll dig what it’s about.”
I’m silent.
“Yeah, man, you don’t want to,” says Striker finally, sadly. “I dig, I wouldn’t either. There’s nothing in it for a guy to get tied down that bad. I’m just glad I don’t have to go in there and tell her. She’s a nice chick. I mean, she’s not just one of these dumb broads hanging out on Telegraph. But that’s life.”
“What about Reverend Suzuki?” asks Lon. “And acid? Are you still going to do it once a week, like Leary and Alpert? You saw what an incredible place they were in at their talk at the Crystal Ballroom. We can get there, too. Man, we’ll burn our karma. I know you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do, Erik, but this is the chance—the chance for the big one.”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely. I know that’s where it’s at. But I’ve got to keep on track with the degree, or it’s the front lines. You know that. Farmer and I will have to do it back in Minneapolis. We’ve agreed to do it every week. And this time there’ll be no screwing around with diddly little side trips, meth and smack and shit like that. That stuff is nowhere. It’ll be one long, pure path to liberation.”
“Man, oh, man,” says Striker. “That’s all just a little bit too far out for me. But I guess you guys know what you’re doing. And the Reverend is cool. Lon took me over to hear him a few weeks ago. But sometimes I worry about you guys. That’s powerful shit.”
“Listen,” I say. “For sure, you guys have to come out to the Bitterroots right away in the spring. I’ll be there as soon as the quarter is over at Minnesota in June. Farmer says he’ll make it out too. We’ll get ourselves on track at the mining claim. The cabin is amazing. And you won’t believe the incredible wilderness out there. It’s perfect.”
We cross the Bay Bridge in silence, lights in the East Bay winking on, the bay itself a dark pool. Lon pulls up at 556. A single light burns in the living room window. I wrestle an army surplus duffle bag out of the back seat, then lean in and say, “Well, thanks for the lift. I’ll call you guys tomorrow. I’ve got a month before I have to leave. We can drop acid a bunch of times. And Striker, you really got to see the mountains, too. I mean it.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, man,” he says. “No question. It’ll happen. Just watch your step inside there, now. I’m glad it’s you, not me.” Striker gives a low chuckle.
I shut the door. The car drives down the dark street back toward the bay, and I slowly climb the front stairs. I let myself in the front door and find Celeste sitting on the couch in a long, red terry cloth robe. The lone floor lamp illuminates her, the rest of the room retreating into shadow. She glances up, then returns her eyes to her lap. I see that she’s quietly, determinedly knitting a piece of blue material.
“Hi,” I say tentatively, “how’s it going?”
“Thanks for asking,” she says. “I didn’t know when you were coming back. I didn’t even know whether you would.”
“I told you I would,” I say. “Barney let me into the Ph.D. program at Minnesota.”
She glances up again, her dark face clouded, bitter. Saying nothing, she returns her attention firmly to her knitting. The needles click angrily together in the chilly, dark room, and sighing, I drop the duffle in the entry, move across the room, and sit down gingerly in the chair opposite the couch.
I think of the warmth and excitement that filled this room only weeks ago. Now it’s cold, drained of life. Between us is Miscorski’s girl’s walnut coffee table. Regretfully, I notice nicks, scratches, and white water rings marring the lustrous brown grain. I know they weren’t there when I borrowed it in the fall.
“Listen, Celeste,” I begin hesitantly, “I don’t want to hurt anybody . . .”
“I’m not ‘anybody,’” she says evenly. “I thought I was your woman.”
“I know, I know,” I say, “but everything’s got to change. It is changed. I’ve got to go back to Minneapolis and go for the degree, or I’m drafted. I can only stay here a month or so, until spring quarter begins at Minnesota.”
“And you don’t want me to come along,” she says with quiet finality, not looking up. Her brown fingers work dexterously with the blue yarn. The needles click. Her nails glint under the lamp.
“Well, you know it’s not that exactly, it’s . . .”
“It is that I’m a negro, isn’t it, Erik?” she says flatly. She looks up slowly, then full into my face. “You don’t want to bring me home to your parents, to your hometown. Of course, you were willing to write me in Kansas City and invite me out here, have me live with you. That was fine. But that was all.”
“Well,” I say, “we’re both away from home. Would you move in with me if we were back in Kansas City?”
“Yes,” she says simply, looking back to the knitting, her flying fingers. “And it’s because I love you. But you were just looking for a replacement chick, a replacement for Lisa. She couldn’t take your fucked-up scene anymore, so she moves out of her own place to get rid of you, and you write an old high school girlfriend from Unitarian church camp. We were such liberal Unitarian youth. And she’s dumb enough to come.
“Perfect for you. Groovy. Because now Erik can dude around Telegraph Avenue and show off his negro mistress, his negress.” Her final ss’s hiss, and I shiver. “And now it’s not convenient. Now, it’s over.”
“Oh, God, Celeste, can’t you see? It’s not that you’re black, it’s not that at all. It’s just that I just don’t know, I don’t know where all this is going, or whether . . .”
Suddenly she buries her face in her knitting and tears come, tears that won’t stop. Shaking, her shoulders rise and fall with her sobs, and I want to help, do something, but I’m paralyzed. I can’t think. I can’t touch her. Then I just want to be somewhere else, far away.
I listen for long minutes, and finally I can’t stand it. “Celeste,” I say firmly, “it’s not that you’re black. Be sensible. It’s not that.
Celeste’s sobs subside. She continues to sit with her face buried in her knitting. But she’s listening.
“It’s that I don’t want to have such a big commitment. I can’t have such a big commitment. Maybe I should want it. Maybe I should be ready. Maybe I don’t feel enough love for you. I mean, I really like you, I like you a lot, you know that. What is love exactly, anyway? Do you really know what you mean when you say you love someone? You know, we’ll still mean a lot to each other. Things like this happen, you know.”
Slowly, she stands. She observes me quietly for a few minutes, then turns and walks out of the room. I hear the bedroom door softly, firmly close with a click.
Restless, dissatisfied, feeling misunderstood and sorry for myself, I roam about the living room. Miserable, I si
t down on the couch and rest my head against the cushions.
Suddenly Celeste is standing in the entry to the living room, still in her robe. She looks at me and says quietly, “You know what, Erik? You’re a bastard. You’re a goddamned selfish bastard. I’m glad I don’t have to live with what you are!” She turns and walks slowly back to the bedroom. Again, I hear the door close with a click.
It’s summer now, late June 1965. I’ve driven the old Studebaker wagon from Minneapolis and am staying a few days with Barney and Lucy at their ranch in the foothills of the Flute Reed Mountains. I’m getting up the nerve to move alone out to the old derelict cabin that lies some miles away in the wilderness. In a week or so, Lon and Farmer will arrive.
Last summer, a year ago, when I visited the ranch on my way back to Minneapolis from Berkeley, Barney told me about the cabin. He’d seen it abandoned on one of his Jeep trips up Flute Reed Creek. After checking at the county seat, he learned it was to be auctioned that fall for back taxes. As no one had done the annual assessment work, the mining claims on which it sat had apparently lapsed years ago.
I continued on to Minneapolis that summer, but in the fall Barney went to the auction and bid on the cabin for sixty-five dollars, then sent me the papers to sign. I was a miner!
Now, this summer, my first job is to stake two twenty-acre mining claims around the cabin. Gleefully, Barney loads a gold pan, a pick, and two shovels into his car and drives me and Alice and Harry, his two oldest kids, out to the claim.
“But where should I dig?” I say worriedly. “The Forest Service booklet says we’re supposed to have a discovery hole with valuable mineral showing.”
“You and the kids just dig a hole somewhere likely,” he counsels. “You can take care of the details later.” The kids and I look for some place that ought to have gold under it. We pick a dry wash a few hundred yards off in the woods and excavate the requisite one hundred cubic feet of dirt. We’ve now gone through the motions required by the 1872 mining law.
Barney has stayed behind to admire the cabin and the privy. They caught his eye in the first place because of their sweeping views of the Flute Reed peaks, ten miles across the basin.