The Ancient Minstrel

by Jim Harrison

  The master himself was to be called “Sky Blast,” his idea, and he came from San Francisco. He appeared one day in Ann Arbor, supposedly to visit an old girlfriend, and took up wearing his traditional black robes around campus. Sky Blast also loved zoos and it was at the Detroit Zoo where he came upon his idea of howler monkeys to which we are related though not nearly so closely as to chimpanzees. The master’s contention was that we were primates who began life howling. Mona was amused by this but found the howling unbearable compared with the traditional silence of meditation. Certain sopranos in the group were absolutely shattering. The howling was considered a privilege and on specific days only a few righteous students were allowed to howl and the others had to remain silent. There was one day of total silence per week and Mona wondered if they’d become suspicious if she attended only on those days. Security was taken to the utmost because early on there was an interloper who wrote a parodic exposé and played a recording of the howling when he was interviewed on a local radio station. Practice was early every morning after Margaret Ziegler served them a Tibetan breakfast. If you wanted to be holy no one could compete with Tibetans. Mona said the food was edible if you brought your own hot sauce. This was against the rules but members did it anyway.

  During Mona’s first dokusan, a private meeting with Sky Blast, he had asked her to arrange her robes so he could see up under them. The same old, same old, she thought but did so out of a sense of humor. They were interrupted by his lover Margaret, who glared at Mona’s loose robes. Mona noticed later that Margaret was still peeved when she demanded that Mona peel extra potatoes for the communal dinner. Sky Blast said that he had been mourning for Tibetan refugees and needed to see bare thighs to save his spirits. He got an eyeful as Mona rarely wore undies. After that he managed to brush up against her suggestively several times. Ziegler’s son, Michael, was obviously the lout of the group. His sister had to keep an eye on him or he would drink schnapps.

  Sunderson reported in to Ziegler, limiting what he had to say, and told him of the plan to infiltrate. Ziegler was anxious and wanted him to drive down that evening but Sunderson was tired and had a plan with Barbara early the next morning. The first and last sex with her hopefully would be memorable.

  Marion had returned during his phone call with Mona and chuckled incredulously when Sunderson filled him in. They had caught six fish in all and drove hastily home and made a fish chowder with potatoes, salt pork, and onions. You poached the fish first to have a stock. Diane usually served it with a pat of butter on top and then you watched it melt patiently. You rounded it out with some half-and-half and a dash of Tabasco.

  They watched part of a pro football game but it was dreary and low scoring and they were drowsy so they made it an early night.

  Weather permitting Barbara intended to come over early in the morning to weed and Sunderson spent a restless night brooding about Marion’s lecture and his morning plans. He wasn’t quite sure he could say to himself that sex was over for this short life. He was okay when he was still married to Diane but cutting that cord he became a nutcase. Could he deny himself beauty? Of course. Jail or prison would be particularly unpleasant for an ex-lawman.

  Nevertheless, as agreed he left the back porch door unlocked for Barbara then waited all night for the click with a mixture of dread and anticipation. First he heard her pull up on her bicycle then walk softly and slowly up the stairs. She stood in his open doorway, smiled, and pulled off a sweatshirt and down with the shorts. Now she was nude. She sat gently on his bare chest and said, “This little bear went to market,” and tickled his penis with her bare hand. She leaned over and gave him a rough French kiss, straddled his cock, and put it all the way in with a gasp.

  “I think I love you more than my boyfriend.”

  “Don’t say that.” He held her back by her elbows thinking that this wasn’t necessarily a good thing. Marion’s words drummed in his ears. “You better pick on someone your own age.”

  She rolled into a crunch. “Do me like a dog. I read that people did that.”

  His resistance folded. He was on her with particular gusto, thinking that he was the happiest man on earth for the time being. Her back was radically muscular from gymnastics and she revolved herself below the waist aggressively. “Do that thing you did the first time on the sofa,” she said. He knew she meant to go down on her which he did. She had a delightful whimper but then he heard the back gate of the garden open and Barbara’s mother call out for her. She was off the bed and deep into the closet in a trice. His heart hammered and he opened the window and answered. The upshot was that she was driving down the alley and had seen Barbara’s bicycle at the back of his garden. Was she here? “No,” he yelled. “She must have walked downtown with a friend. She’s working here later.” “Tell her to call when she shows up. Okay?” Barbara’s mother continued down the alley in her blue Chevy. Barbara came out of the closet and laughed at his limp dick. “You aren’t turned on by my mother?” She blew him then while giggling. “My boyfriend wants this every day. It gets boring.” It worked and they returned to eating then dog style.

  There was a very brief moment of shame, again a recall of Marion’s lecture. If it didn’t stop now when he was sixty-six when did it stop? It couldn’t continue, could it? In Blake’s terms what are the actual limits of desire? He had no philological knowledge of what constitutes it. After the prom in high school his date Missy Carling had fallen asleep drunk on a friend’s floor and he had shamefully lifted her frilly prom dress for a look. They were steady dates but other than simple kissing she wouldn’t allow a touch, and he couldn’t help thinking if he were still the star linebacker and not a lowly wrestler she’d feel differently. When swimming they would wrestle a little but the water diminished the sexuality of the act while lifting her dress was explosive, even more so than the tight swimsuit photos of Janet Leigh in Life magazine which had him chewing his fingers painfully. Once after a workout he was resting on a wrestling mat and Missy stood over his head in her scanty cheerleader outfit. He was keenly aware of her exposed body in all of its glory. As a senior she had abandoned him in favor of the star basketball player who had taken the team to the state semifinals. This made him burn with rage. He got in a fight with the guy who was unfortunately tough. The coach made them put on big, puffy sixteen-ounce gloves. The fight was declared a tie when Sunderson had hit him in the gut until he puked on the sidewalk outside the gym door. Missy watched the fight and was so disgusted she said she would never speak to him again, and she didn’t until graduation day when she gave him a French kiss and said that he had always been the best kisser. She went off in the fall to Brown University on a big scholarship and ended up marrying a rich guy which had always been her ambition as the daughter of a poor biology teacher. The wedding was in Marquette but he hadn’t been invited, he thought because he was at Michigan State. The basketball player was invited but then he went to the University of Michigan which was thought to be a step up and played star quality basketball there.

  More than forty-five years later his temples still burned at the memory of lifting her prom dress. Lust didn’t seem to go away. According to Marion, the curdled lust for Missy was still haunting him. You could feel practically sick with it. He had with Barbara wearing the T-shirt and sliding it up so that the prime rump was on display. That was as tough on his system as the time he’d made love with Mona in Paris. It was right after the rock ’n’ roller left her for the young girls and Sunderson had been overwhelmed by her advances, he told himself. Diane had been angry but had eventually forgiven him because she knew Mona had used every hook and crook to seduce him and when it came to sex nearly all men were fools, him especially, which she’d learned from his slavish sexuality in their marriage. Now sexually sated with Barbara he, of course, could think of giving up sex with her.

  He did however feel a remote tickle over the idea of anal sex, which he’d read about but done only once in college. Accordin
g to his reading Brazilian girls considered it a birth control measure. But what if he were careless with Barbara and they ended up at the ER with a Beethoven chorus singing shame before a squad of police showed up?

  He shivered and turned Barbara over on her belly. “Don’t even think about it,” he said to himself. He put the tip of his cock there.

  “Don’t even think about it,” she said. “This coach over in Duluth did it there to a girl. She ended up going to a hospital that night. Think of explaining that to my parents. The coach had five kids and went to the same Catholic church as the girl’s family. My aunt goes there and told me.”

  The story hit uncomfortably close to home. He asked what happened. “Nothing,” she said. “They prayed a lot over her sore butt with the priest.”

  “What would your dad do?”

  “Get out his deer rifle. He’s real religious. He would shoot you square in the head, that’s for sure. I might try it tomorrow with lots of lotion.”

  Sunderson was back to thinking of the seven deadly sins with the help of her dad’s rifle. He wasn’t coming close to her tomorrow. He’d be on a long hike in the woods if he could pick up a true friend from the dog pound.

  It was noon and they were famished when they go out of bed, him with an aching prostate gland. He made them hamburgers from frozen patties, not a preference but all he had on hand.

  “Fucking makes you real hungry,” she said nonchalantly. They dozed on the sofa for fifteen minutes and then she went out and attacked her weeding. She despised the man Sunderson was working for and referred to his daughters as “rich bitches” and their brother as a “nerd” and a “dweeb,” slang he wasn’t familiar with. Later she took a shower and had a quarrelsome call with her mother concluding, “No I am not dressed properly. I’m showing Mr. Sunderson my bare ass. Old men like to look at bare asses.” She slammed the phone down. “With Mother everything is propriety. Though my wicked aunt told me bawdy stories about her when she was in high school. Evidently she fucked the football coach on a junior camping trip.”

  Later that afternoon Sunderson made a trip to the grocery for some Stouffer’s mac and cheese of which he always ate two packages, and then at the bar he ran into an old friend and his family sitting in the corner with a menu for the Italian place down the street trying to figure out if they could afford dinner. This embarrassed Sunderson with his ample pension and secret money from blackmailing the rock ’n’ roller’s rich mother. He supposedly saved the kid from a sex abuse charge for which he had received fifty grand. Little did she know that the charge she paid to protect him from was just a mixture of rumors a college friend at the LAPD had told him. They had been watching the rock musician hard but didn’t have anything that would stick. And here Sunderson was chasing his tail about sex while millions were unemployed including his friend. His educated wife worked checkout at the supermarket while he was one of a legion of out of work computer programmers and a fine angler. Their son Billy had Down syndrome but their daughter Wendy was a straight-A student headed in the fall to Kalamazoo College on a big scholarship. When Billy saw Sunderson he brayed and aimed his finger around the room shouting bang-bang in honor of Sunderson’s former profession. His sister calmed him down. Sunderson lied and said he had just won two hundred bucks in the lottery and wanted some greaseball lasagna so let’s all go to dinner. He could tell that the mother didn’t believe him but everyone was suddenly happy. He had a quick double and off they went. It was a chilly evening and he had a sense of winter approaching although the day had been pleasant.

  Later that evening with considerable prostate discomfort he called another fishing friend who was a doctor. He told Sunderson to stop fucking so much. Sunderson lamely replied that he didn’t know you could fuck too much. At dinner he had sat next to the attractive, flirtatious daughter and managed to get excited and sighed in despair. She was the daughter of a friend, he reminded himself. He slept poorly that night waking again and again to Barbara’s delightful odor on the bedclothes. He thought over and over of his teen desire to become a Maori warrior in New Zealand where there was also a great supply of brown trout. By morning he had decided to control his obsessions by traveling more, even to New York City again to spend a week at the Museum of Natural History with several trips to Katz’s delicatessen. When he was growing up his father would occasionally make him Jewish-style pickled tongue in a stone crock which he loved.

  He decided to fly to Ann Arbor and rent a car, rather than make the laborious drive, and soak his wealthy client with the expense. He didn’t want to face the airport twice so he bought a one-way ticket and thought he’d go fishing on the way back. He arranged to meet Mona at Zingerman’s where he always had a brisket sandwich with extra hot horseradish, an inevitable gut bomb but sacrifices must be made. Mona proudly announced she had bought him a pile of used janitorial supplies at a yard sale. A man must have a professional mop. That morning Barbara had dropped by for what she called a “quickie” which his prostate scarcely needed. He suspected that her athletic abilities promoted her sexual energy. He would need a long trip to simply recover.

  He checked into a small suite at the Campus Inn where he slept twenty minutes to handle his sandwich, then drove over to the church basement to unload the supplies of his new craft. There were long neat rows of zafus and zabutons, Zen sitting cushions that Sunderson thought very uncomfortable. He had sat on the one Diane owned that she kept stored in a closet and had fallen crudely off to the side which meant to him that he wasn’t built for meditation. They packed the janitor stuff in a coat closet. Sky Blast and the Ziegler girl came in the basement door with her carrying a heavy load of groceries. He wasn’t the grocery-carrying type and wore a look of seedy reverence in his black robe, the slack look of “Isn’t life wonderful” that one sees in nickel orientalists to whom the universe is a spiritual playground. Mona introduced them.

  “We can afford to pay you very little.”

  “I’m volunteering because of my curiosity about Zen. My ex-wife was a practioner and it seemed to do her a lot of good.”

  Sky Blast looked at him with a trace of cynicism then let out with a shattering howler monkey screech that startled Sunderson witless. He was answered by Margaret in the kitchen who was equally loud.

  “We are cleansing the dead air,” Sky Blast announced with pretension. Sunderson went into the kitchen to help Margaret unpack the groceries. She was a big girl with a reasonably shaped fanny. It was strictly vegetarian stuff with lots of fruit, vegetables, juice, and not a trace of the pork sausage he valued so highly. There were also big bags of a Tibetan cereal called tsampa. He would have to make his own breakfast before he came to work. Michael Ziegler the lout was making eyes at Mona, who regarded him as one does a dog turd.

  “What are you doing?” Sky Blast barked.

  “Helping with the groceries.”

  “That’s women’s work,” he said.

  Margaret served them a cup of tea at an aluminum table. Sky Blast had seemed to notice Sunderson’s glance at her butt.

  “You may find my approach to zazen a bit unorthodox but I received a dispensation on the top of Mount Tamalpais last year that our age will be undergoing a resurgence of the natural world in our time. Howler monkeys are our primate predecessors. We must honor them. I am fascinated by the oneness of all living things.”

  “Me too,” said Sunderson for lack of anything else to say.

  “Good. Then we’ll get along. Call me Roshi Sky.”

  “Fine by me, Roshi Sky.”

  “See you at five tomorrow morning.”

  Sunderson wasn’t enthused about getting up that early except to go fishing though he rather looked forward to howling like a monkey. People of this ilk kept trying to help you “get in touch with yourself.” He wasn’t at all sure that this was a pleasant idea though he knew in his heart that he had to put a stop to things with Barbara however late in the game it was. H
e vowed as punishment that he would have to go to that mind doctor if he screwed her again. Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, they used to say.

  He was up before daylight and fried two good-sized sausage patties. He had read that mountain climbers were never vegetarians. Of course he had no intention of climbing mountains but he liked the solidity of the idea that pork rather than cereal could get you up Everest.

  In the church basement the rows were three-quarters full of meditators and Sky Blast glowered at the late arrivals from the kitchen, finally making a mighty howl which the others joined. Sunderson started tentatively with not much more than a squeak. Sky Blast came up behind him and told him to use his lungs completely as if he were a monkey singing opera. He did so and found it oddly satisfying like yelling at his sister Berenice when he was young. As he glanced into the kitchen it occurred to him that Margaret must eat a lot of vegetables to get an ass that big. Down the row her brother Michael’s face seemed fixed permanently in a smirk. He was a heavy cross for Margaret to carry. Sunderson learned that he was a football player and allowed to eat a big steak at a restaurant every night for dinner. He was also the only man allowed to date outside the group. His father had given him a new yellow Corvette for making the team. He had a black girlfriend and would say loudly that he preferred “dark meat.”

  Of all the howlers Sky Blast was the loudest, obviously playing to his strength. Mona’s voice was the most penetrating. It was high and clear and if there had been any actual animals in the area they would be frightened witless. Latecomers said that even with the soundproofing any strays or dogs being walked fled the area posthaste. When Sunderson was a child he was friends with a local Ojibwa family and once at a powwow they asked him to join in their chanting and singing. He recalled what a wonderful sensation it was to chant at drumbeats during a full moon in August. There were northern lights that evening which made it even more eerie. His friend’s father told him that the song they had sung was about summer waning in August. The next dawn he and his friend went out and caught a big pail of bluegills and perch and there was breakfast around the campfire of fried fish cooked in massive iron skillets. He had a crush on a pretty Indian girl who thoroughly ignored him except once were they were playing hide-and-seek and in the woods she kissed him impulsively.