Aki did not travel east with Francis Coppola. She journeyed west instead, flying home to Japan during the second week in May. Her first few days were spent recovering from jet lag at her parents’ home in Yokohama. Brautigan sent a number of small gifts for the family with her. Fusako Nishizawa, Akiko’s mother, wrote him a thank-you note, her first handwritten letter in English, reworked six times, addressing Richard as “Dear my third son.” Shocked by the exorbitant price of fish in Japan (“my appetite immediately going away”), Aki enjoyed vegetables from her mother’s garden, homemade sushi, and fresh bamboo shoots, a delicacy unknown in America.
Akiko traveled up to Tokyo in mid-May, staying at the home of her friends Yoko and Hiroshi Yoshimura. On her first night in the city, Aki stopped by a bookstore in Roppongi, pleased to find they stocked her husband’s books. Trout Fishing was in its eleventh Japanese edition. The next day, she had lunch with Tom Mori, Brautigan’s agent in Japan. Akiko also met with an editor at Japanese Playboy to discuss publishing Brautigan’s short stories. They were sent to the magazine by the Tuttle-Mori agency.
On the twenty-first, Akiko got together with poet Shuntarō Tanikawa in Shibuya. He brought along the second volume of his complete poems and gave it to Aki. Walking through “the endless stream” of the crowded district, they both confessed to feeling “almost dizzy” from the swarm of people. Aki found Shuntarō a “really beautiful man.” They met to discuss Richard’s wish to write an article on Shuntarō. Brautigan also hoped someday they might give a lecture together. Akiko asked about Shuntarō’s planned contributions to the CoEvolution Quarterly, an offshoot of the hugely successful Whole Earth Catalog. Former “Merry Prankster” Stewart Brand, the creator and editor of both the Quarterly and the Catalog, had contacted Brautigan four years earlier, asking him to contribute commentary on a recent article the magazine had published about the feasibility of space colonies. Richard declined the first offer, but agreed to help this time around.
Akiko explained to Shuntarō everything her husband told her on the phone, and he seemed pleased, saying he would gather selections of his collages for “the visual message” CoEvolution had requested. For safety’s sake, Shuntarō asked Aki to hand carry the material back to the United States with her rather than send them by mail.
The next evening, Akiko dined at an excellent sushi restaurant with Akira Yasuhara, an editor at the literary magazine Umi. During Richard’s last trip to Tokyo he had spent an evening drinking with Yasuhara’s boss at The Cradle. Akira offered Aki a business proposal. Umi wanted to publish a long work of fiction by Brautigan. Yasuhara suggested In Watermelon Sugar as an example of the length he wanted.
The editor also offered to arrange a meeting with Mieko Kanai, a thirty-two-year-old poet and short story writer Richard admired. Kanai published her first story (“Love Life”) at age nineteen. Rabbits, her collection of fantastic tales, came out in 1976. Brautigan was intrigued by Kanai’s habit of always wearing large dark sunglasses whenever she was seen in public. Richard told his wife he wanted to have a conversation with the young writer.
Brautigan planned on going to Key West, but in mid-May, Helen Brann phoned with news that Targ Editions, a letterpress publisher of fine hand-bound signed limited editions, wanted to bring out a collection of Brautigan’s recent short stories. The offer was $1,000 total payment for a single edition of 350 copies. The money would be paid upon delivery of the complete manuscript. The stories were already written. Richard had only to pick and choose the ones he wanted.
Targ Editions had been founded the previous year by William Targ, upon his retirement as editor in chief of G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Targ’s illustrious career in publishing spanned more than three and a half decades, highlighted by his purchase of The Godfather for a $5,000 advance after two other publishers turned the book down. Mario Puzo’s novel became the most profitable work of fiction ever published by Putnam’s. Targ was first drawn to Brautigan’s work as a book collector, not as a publisher. He wrote Sam Lawrence early in 1970, asking for a copy of the new Delacorte edition of Trout Fishing. Targ started reading Brautigan and found his writing “pretty hypnotic [. . .] He is an original and the stuff reaches out to you. A touch of Whitman is there, too [. . .] A most happy encounter.”
William Targ collected the early first editions of a writer he called “the sanest of all living authors.” In a short time, he had amassed almost ten little books, along with Brautigan’s phonograph record, “a delight.” When Richard moved from Delacorte to Simon & Schuster in 1971, Targ wrote Michael Korda, one editor in chief to another, requesting a signed first edition of The Abortion. Eight years later, Helen Brann mailed a one-page Targ Editions contract to Richard Brautigan after appending a single added clause stipulating the author retained “final approval of the galleys of the work” and that Targ’s published book would “agree in every aspect with the text as supplied by the author.”
Richard selected twenty stories written in 1977 and 1978. He took his time. A month went by before he mailed them to his agent for submission to William Targ. Brautigan then returned to work in earnest, writing new short stories based on his notebook observations. “I didn’t do much writing on the book,” Richard later observed, “until the spring of 1979.”
When Akiko returned to San Francisco from Japan early in June, Richard read her the beginning of a new novel based on his childhood in the Pacific Northwest. This was a project he’d attempted years before but “got nowhere with it.” While selecting the stories for William Targ, Brautigan made a fresh start. Thus far, he had written fewer than two thousand words. “I was influenced by the introspective style of the Japanese ‘I’ novel,” Brautigan later observed, “and started writing [. . .] in that style.” The working title was “The Pond People of America.”
Aki listened closely as her husband read his new manuscript. Chapter 4 began, “In April it was spring and I began my discovery of the ponds, which led me step by step down the road to the pond people and into their camp and into their pond houses and into their pond furniture and everything pond.” Akiko gave careful consideration to what she heard and “suggested that the material should not be written in the form of an ‘I’ novel, but as an American novel, that the material demanded an American approach.” Brautigan later stated, “I thought her suggestion a good one, so I converted the beginning of the novel to an American novel, which took changing only the first few pages of the beginning.” Richard never showed his work in progress to Aki again.
Brautigan came up with another title. Early in June 1979, he started writing the first draft of “So the Wind Won’t Blow It Away,” incorporating much of the work already done on “The Pond People.” He based his new title on a song he’d heard over and over the previous summer. “Dust in the Wind,” by the soft rock group Kansas, had peaked at number 6 on the charts. The song’s chorus was about everybody being only dust in the wind. The intimation of mortality struck a sympathetic chord within Richard. He heard it echo in his imagination when he wrote an epigraph for the new novel: “These events are only being recalled to preserve a little more of our original American dust.”
Brautigan set the draft aside to concentrate on his final story selections for William Targ. Seymour Lawrence came to San Francisco on business around the middle of the month. The Brautigans took him out for drinks and dinner on his last night in town. Aki gave Sam a number of beautiful Japanese postage stamps, not realizing that he was a serious collector, making her spontaneous gift all the more delightful to the publisher. Not long after, Richard assembled twenty stories, dividing them equally between Japan and Montana. Most were less than a page in length. He called the little collection The Tokyo–Montana Express and dedicated it to Richard and Nancy Hodge. Less than a year later, Brautigan could not remember when he first came up with the title. Did he think of it at the time of the Targ submission, or was it earlier? “It is difficult to judge the precise time of creative inspiration,” he observed, “because so many years of though
t go into writing and nobody knows how the human imagination works anyway.” Richard had Akiko sign the Targ Editions agreement as a witness and mailed it off to Helen Brann along with the selected stories.
Brautigan’s agent sent the whole package on to Targ by the end of June. He read the stories immediately. They exceeded his “highest expectations.” Targ felt it was “a delightful book” and thought the title “an inspired one.” Four days later, the little volume was in production. Targ assigned Leonard Seastone of Tideline Press to handle the typographical design and letterpress printing. He hoped to have finished books ready for mailing by the first of December.
David Fechheimer was getting a divorce and had moved out of North Beach. A friend, Swiss filmmaker Barbet Schroeder (Barfly, Single White Female), introduced him to German director Wim Wenders (The American Friend; Paris, Texas; and Wings of Desire), who had come to San Francisco to develop Joe Gores’s novel Hammett, into a film with producer Francis Ford Coppola. Fechheimer and Wenders shared an apartment on Lyon Street. The detective had been contracted to write a biography of Dashiell Hammett, but Lillian Hellman refused to talk with him and the project remained in limbo. Fechheimer had already researched the first thirty years of Hammett’s life (pre-Hellman) and had been hired as a consultant on the Wenders-Coppola film.
Fechheimer did not introduce Wim Wenders to Richard Brautigan. They probably met at Enrico’s, where Wenders frequently hung out. Tony Dingman was at the bar every night and likely provided the connection. One evening, Brautigan invited Wenders home for dinner. They took a cab to Green Street where Aki (“Akiko-san”) prepared an excellent meal. There was a lot of drinking. Richard got “especially” drunk, according to Wim.
At one point, Brautigan brought out a copy of the German translation of Trout Fishing, asking Wenders to tell him if it was any good. Wim looked at the opening pages and let Richard know what he really thought. Wenders “found the translation a bit clumsy, or formal.” His opinion angered Brautigan. From Wenders’s point of view, “it all became a big blur in his mind.” Richard started insulting his guest as if he’d been the translator. “Soon I was the ugly German in general,” Wenders recalled, “responsible for the war and the Holocaust.”
Before Wenders comprehended what was happening, Brautigan stood in front of him, aiming a rifle. Very frightened, Aki negotiated an opening so Wim could make it to the stairs. “I remember a pretty steep staircase,” he said. As Wenders made his way to the front door, Brautigan stood above, aiming at him, drunk and confused. Wim thought that Richard “in some other operatic way” was in total control “holding the gun steady.” Aki stepped in front of Wim, and Richard lowered his weapon. Wenders “literally escaped” out the front door. “I was scared shitless!” he remembered.
The Brautigans returned to Montana in time for the Livingston Roundup, the town’s three-day Fourth of July rodeo. Tom and Cindy Olson, a young couple who built a log home overlooking the Yellowstone at the far back end of the subdivision behind Richard’s place, had been house-sitting for the writer and his wife. They met Brautigan a couple years earlier when they rented the parsonage of the Pine Creek Methodist Church across the road from the Hjortsberg’s house.
Cindy’s younger brother, Sean Gerrity, also camped out at Brautigan’s, bunking in a VW microbus. He had done odd jobs for Richard the previous summer. Brautigan asked the Olsons to stay in his house before he came back, sweep up the mouse droppings and cobwebs, maintain a lived-in feel. They moved out before Richard and Akiko arrived. Aki was distraught. She had looked forward to having some company.
Brautigan’s protective jealousy around his wife had grown into paranoid fantasy. One day, he accused Sean of wanting to screw Akiko. Gerrity came close “to decking him.” On another occasion, Richard made the same accusation to Greg Keeler. “You want to fuck her,” Brautigan raged, “and I’ll tell you why you want to fuck her. Because you want to fuck me. I am a famous writer, and you want to fuck me, but you are afraid of such things, so you want to fuck my wife instead.”
By the middle of July, houseguests started showing up. Tony Dingman was the first to arrive. Not exactly a guest, Tony helped with the shopping, cooking, and driving and served as Richard’s in-house drinking buddy and literary sounding board. A week or so after Dingman’s arrival, Ken Kelley made his first trip to Montana, rewarded for his diligent undercover work in Shasta County. Richard and Tony picked him up in the afternoon at the airport in Belgrade. On Brautigan’s instructions, Kelley brought along two expensive bottles of Calvados. They drove back to Pine Creek just before sunset. Dingman took off soon afterward. He was having a fling with a local girl who lived across the road and no longer spent his nights at Richard’s place.
Brautigan poured himself and Kelley a large glass of Calvados (Ken thought it tasted like “turbocharged ambrosia”) leading his guest on a walk through the woods behind his house. Richard wanted to show Ken something he called “really sacred.” They followed game trails meandering between the cottonwoods toward the setting sun, a golden nimbus of newly hatched gnats whirling above their heads. Knowing Kelley hailed from Custer’s hometown in Michigan, Brautigan spun tales of the Indian Wars as he led Ken onto a narrow bench overlooking a number of ancient teepee rings on the Hjortsbergs’ property.
“Richard is turning himself into an Indian,” Kelley recalled, “dancing on the warpath.” Brautigan launched into an impassioned diatribe about freedom and gun rights and the Constitution, wanting Kelley to understand he was now in God’s Country and had left effeminate, liberal San Francisco far behind.
Back at the house, Akiko performed her own war dance. She and Kelley did not get along. Ken thought of her as “Witch Woman.” The problems started when Kelley was shown to the upstairs bedroom. He suffered from a bad back and found that the bed “sagged terribly.” When Ken placed the mattress on the floor for support, Aki objected. “This isn’t the hotel, you know,” she said. Kelley slept instead in a hammock on the back porch. “I wanted to wake up under the Montana sky,” Ken said. “I didn’t want to be confined.”
Kelley awoke the next morning, and the first thing he saw was the Hjortsbergs riding their horses down the gravel road past Brautigan’s big red barn. He didn’t know who they were at the time. Later, Richard told him about how Gatz had called to let him know the house next door was for sale. “If it hadn’t been for Gatz I wouldn’t be here,” Brautigan said. He also praised Hjortsberg’s writing, loaning Ken a copy of Toro! Toro! Toro! “almost like handing me the Gideon Bible. Here’s this little gem.”
Akiko showed Ken her garden. “I had to earn my keep,” Ken recalled. “I had to weed her garden.” He looked her straight in the eye and said, “I certainly don’t want to trample on your turf here. I’ll stay out of your way, and you don’t have to feel threatened by me. We can just pretend to be friends.” He thought they’d made a deal.
Later, Brautigan escorted Kelley into his separate sleeping quarters, where he housed his firearms. To Ken, it looked like “a dungeon in the woods. There was something military about it. There were a lot of guns on the walls, sort of an armory.” Richard wanted to expound further upon the previous evening’s Code of the West. He handed Kelley a gun, “a pistol. A big one. A long old-fashioned Wyatt Earp kind.”
Lesson number 1: “Never touch a gun unless you know or determine that it is loaded.” Ken checked the cylinder, and sure enough, the piece was armed and ready. He felt that this was “the introduction to the sacredness of Montana. Where guns meant something. Because this was how battles were fought, heroic battles. This is the West.” What Brautigan had in mind was something more than a simple history lesson. He envisioned literary ritual sacrifice.
That evening, Brautigan brought a bootleg Hungarian edition of In Watermelon Sugar out from the main house, along with a can of Campbell’s tomato soup. “Look what they’ve done to the back cover,” Richard demanded. “They made me look like a hippie Joe Stalin.” Brautigan set the paperback book on a cott
onwood stump, propping it up with a fork from the kitchen. He placed the soup can in front of it. Brautigan took the first shot from the back porch. The tree stump stood thirty or forty feet away at the far reach of the light. The weapon of choice was a .45 automatic. Richard squeezed one off with a loud roar that made Kelley jump.
Brautigan missed the stump. Next, it was Ken’s turn. Kelley didn’t like guns. Richard told him not to shoot “from the safety of the porch.”
Brautigan led Ken into the darkness. “He decides this is where the Indians would do it,” Kelley recalled, “and he said, now, just aim and fire.” Ken didn’t know what to expect. He raised the pistol, snapped off the safety, sort of aimed, and pulled the trigger. KA-BOOM! The weapon’s report and recoil stunned him. He “felt something weird.” He was covered with a wet red fluid running down his face and dripping off his nose.
Shocked, Kelley looked at Brautigan. “He was bleeding with a smile on his face.” Ken had hit the target, and he thought the bullet ricocheted and struck Richard. He felt an instant flash of horror, “truly gargoylian,” before realizing the Campbell’s can had exploded on impact and sprayed tomato soup all over him and Brautigan. The next morning, Kelley collected the shattered can and bullet-punctured paperback, putting them in a plastic bag he kept for the rest of his life. “I was enough of a cultural historian,” he said, “to know I should have that.”
Kelley had passed some unwritten test, and Brautigan agreed to a formal interview.
On the first of August, the two men sat down with a tape recorder running and drinks in hand. They began by talking about poetry.
“I love John Donne,” Richard said, his voice unnaturally precise.
“Byron?”
“Too fucking romantic,” Brautigan shot back. “Blake I love,” adding emphatically after a pause, “I love Milton.” Lapsing into “Imperial Mode,” Richard made a solemn pronouncement. “I have tremendous problems with Byron, Keats, and Shelley.”
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