On the other side of the bookshelf, I see his shoes, those ultra-white tennis shoes. Levi’s straight-leg coming down onto the white laces. Suddenly I have a sense of the whole big of him, all at once, as if he were a ghost. A blast of aftershave and his body. New red potatoes in a shovelful of earth. Just like that he passes into me then back out again. At the same time, in the aisle on the other side of the bookshelf, I know all this is also happening to Hank.
Below us, on the wide plywood bottom shelf, there’s a huge pile of my book, blue and aqua and moss green. Next to my pile, a huge pile of Hank’s book, orange and red and sunny yellow.
Remainders. Seventy-five cents a copy. Hundreds of them.
We walk along the bookshelf, Hank on his side, me on mine, our shadows on the cement floor doing that. At the end, at the intersection of a wider aisle, under the lightbulb, our shadows merge into a two-headed hunchback, festering, low, and lonely.
Hank Christian, you’d figure his eyes would be blue, but they aren’t, are dark, almost black. The efficient line of Roman nose. Above the square jaw a bit of cleft. Hank’s sweet lips are a smile, but really there’s no smile in his smile.
“Hey Gruney,” Hank says. “What’s up?”
As if the last four months haven’t even happened. Hank the Ghost gone back into himself. One day he’ll pull back in so far he’ll disappear. Fucking straight guys, man. Basic training. Always keep that female ass covered.
My breath, how I’m out of it. My pounding heart. Christ, I’ve never been able to hide a thing. But Little Ben is doing his best. To stand and not run. And it shows. As soon as Hank sees Little Ben, Hank’s smile becomes a real smile.
“I’ve missed you,” I say.
“My pile’s bigger than yours,” Hank says.
“What?”
“The remainders,” Hank says. “My pile is bigger.”
“Seventy-five cents,” I say. “Fuck.”
“Been looking all over town for a copy,” Hank says. “Couldn’t find a one. That’s because they’re all here.”
“Ursula Crohn call you?” I say.
“Yeah.”
“So,” I say, “did you have a book party?”
“No,” Hank says. “You?”
“No.”
“Well, the upside is,” Hank says, “my twenty dollar bill is going to buy more than one book.”
“I thought I’d at least see it on a shelf in St. Mark’s,” I say.
“Or here at the Strand,” Hank says. “Upstairs, I mean.”
“I even looked up at Columbia.”
“Nothing?”
“Nothing.”
“Congratulations on the Times review,” Hank says.
On the cement floor our shadow stretches. A two-headed hunchback who’s been long asleep. Stretches so far it almost splits in two. Then there it is, here it is, one of those moments in your life that lasts so long you don’t know how you survive it.
“Jeske said France bought your book,” Hank says. “And it’s going paperback.
“Gallimard,” Hank says. “Fucking great.”
Little Ben inside me scrambles for some words to say that can be true.
“It’s a cult hit,” I say.
“Fuck that cult shit,” Hank says. “When you’re good and when you’re different it scares people.”
This long moment. Hank hasn’t had one review. I know it and he knows I know it. If I say one word the wrong way, we’ll be a globbed up bottle of A-1 Steak Sauce stuck in the back of the refrigerator forever.
“Thanks,” I say. “That means a lot to me.”
“That first night at Ursula Crohn’s,” Hank says, “I heard it.”
“Hank,” I say, “I’m sorry about that night at the Spike.”
“What did you do?”
Hank’s black eyes are way too much. On the cement floor, the two-headed hunchback is two different shadows.
“I’m not sure,” I say. “But that’s always been my trouble. I don’t know when to stop, I guess.”
One shadow each at the bottom of our feet. Still the moment. The lightbulb right above our heads. Bright lightbulb light with the insides that you can see. Books in a basement, the smell. The smell from my armpits. Hank’s Mennen stick. Red potatoes and earth. Fuck.
“Getting any writing done?” Hank says.
“Nah,” I say. “How’s Olga?”
Laughter inside Hank, how it jumps up in his chest.
“She threw me out,” Hank says. “Literally, she threw my clothes and shit out the window. My computer and printer were sitting on the front steps.”
“What the fuck?” I say. “What happened?”
Hank, the way he holds his cards so close to his chest, I didn’t figure at all on what he says next.
“She found some fuck poems I was writing to this girl at work,” Hank says, “and she went all Latina Bitch on me.”
“What did you do?” I say. “Where are you living? Is she okay?”
“Olga’s fine,” Hank says. “She has a tradition of righteous indignation to fall back on. I’m living in Brooklyn. Third stop on the L Train. With Mike Yamada. You remember him from Jeske’s class?”
“He’s just got a story in Esquire,” I say.
“That’s him,” Hank says. “You doing any book tour?”
“Idaho,” I say.
“Idaho?” Hank says.
“Got a gig in Pocatello,” I say. “Maybe even Boise if we want.”
“We?” Hanks says, “Who’s we?”
Hank’s black eyes, something in there. Adventure.
“My brother Ephraim,” I say.” Remember him?”
“The Indian?”
“Native American,” I say.
“Yeah,” Hank says.
“He’s giving you and me a book party,” I say, “in his sweat lodge. He’s invited both of us.”
“He don’t even know me.”
“He loved your book,” I say. “He knows you well enough.”
“He read my book?”
“Will they let you off at work?”
“Can we sell any books?” Hank says.
“We’ve got two hundred books right here,” I say.
“I can only afford twenty of them,” Hank says.
“You’ll sell twenty books then.”
My friend, Hank Christian, is here again. In the basement of the Strand, under the clear lightbulb with the inside filaments, holding his body that way. His chest pushed up and out, his shoulders down, flexing his biceps.
“Can you lend me some money?” Hank says.
“The bank gave me a credit card,” I say. “Can you believe that? Five hundred dollar max.”
Hank’s smile. The way his eyes look at me, Atlas shrugs and I’m pulled away from planet Pluto where I’ve been stuck. Back into the free breathing air of mother earth in a basement in New York City.
“Fuckin’ A, man,” Hank says. “I’ve been searching for an excuse to get out of this fucking town.”
TWO WEEKS LATER, Hank and I are in the friendly skies. He’s got the window seat and I’ve got the aisle. An empty seat between us. We’ve each got a backpack and we’ve each checked one suitcase. In the backpacks are our clothes. In the checked suitcase Hank has twenty-two books, in mine is twenty-four. If we sell them all at ten dollars apiece we’ll pay for the trip.
1988, Hank Christian and Ben Grunewald. We’re there in our bodies while it’s happening, of course. We feel the magic, the freedom, the adventure. But we have no idea. How events can fuck you up, make your soul, finally bring you to your knees. That’s the kind of journey we are on. We can sense it. But all we know what to do is drink beer on the plane. I smoke a cigarette while we go over our pages. Hank asks for more ice cubes and flirts with the stewardess. Hell, I’m Big Ben. Even I flirt with the stewardess. Even she can tell we’re going for something big.
Idaho.
It ain’t New York.
In New York we ended up in a pile in the basement. But
in Idaho we’re going to read and people are going to sit in an audience and listen to our sentences. The following day, Friday, there will be a book signing at the university bookstore. Then Friday night, a reading at the Blind Lemon, a beatnik bar in the Sixties that’s still there on Center Street. The bartender, Wilbur Tucker, still reads from Howl, from On the Road. He’s larger than life, Wilbur, and looks like Papa Hemingway. In the middle of the bar scene, eight o’clock sharp, Wilbur rings the fire bell those four times the whole bar shuts up. And he reads: I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. He reads: because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to love, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn…
Idaho.
Wilbur Tucker is going to ring the fire bell again. But this time he’s ringing it for Hank Christian and Ben Grunewald. He’ll be ringing that bell for me.
In Idaho too is my brother Ephraim’s sweat lodge. For Hank that’s nothing short of The Last of the Mohicans. And something we haven’t planned on at all. Old friends of mine in Boise, Reuben and Sal and Gary, have invited us to travel up into the mountains, to a ghost town called Atlanta, where we’ll be reading in the original Old Town Hall.
Idaho.
A beatnik bar. A sweat lodge. A ghost town. Go west, young man.
Idaho. Anything you can possibly dream of.
Now, twenty years later, those two young men, what was in store for us, I’m just beginning to comprehend.
AS SOON AS I’m out of the plane, just as my foot lands on the first step of the stairway down to the tarmac, my lungs breathe in the sagebrush and high mountain air. The Idaho night, the wind against my bare arms, as soon as the wind is in my ears, my body remembers something I’ve forgot. That other thing about Idaho. Idaho is home. Home is family. All those years I’ve been trying to get away.
My big sis, Margaret, has been in Bernie’s Lounge drinking margaritas all night with her boyfriend, Kevin. There they are, she and Kevin, standing in the newly built bright Pocatello airport with red helium balloons floating off them.
“Hurry up!” Margaret yells. “Bars close in an hour!”
By the time Hank and I get our bags, even though drinks are more expensive, our best bet is just to stay there in the airport lounge. We’re all in a padded corner booth, Margaret and Kevin and Hank and me. Margaret and I sit as close as we can get and still be brother and sister. Red balloons bobbing all around us. We’ve all ordered margaritas, except for Hank, who orders Coors, but I have something to say about Coors.
“Harvey Milk,” I say.
“Budweiser, then,” Hank says.
Margaret looks good. Those big dark brown eyes. Bette Davis eyes. Down deep inside them the sadness she always hopes I can see. It’s her birthday tomorrow. Forty-five years old. She’s just got a perm and her hair is a little too chestnut brown but close enough to her real color. Looks like she’s just walked off the golf course. Mary Tyler Moore in Ordinary People. She’s smoking a Virginia Slim. Ever since I was in the seventh grade, and Margaret was a sophomore, she and I have been smoking. I’d just recently quit with the AIDS scare and all, but I’d just had a cigarette on the airplane, and it’s my book tour and I’ve already slipped, so fuck it, when I see Margaret light up, I bum one off her and light up too.
Idaho.
This is what we do in Idaho. Smoke. Our father smokes, our mother smoked. Movies we watch, Rock Hudson is smoking, Doris Day is smoking, Brando, Natalie Wood, James Dean, Warren Beatty, Montgomery Clift. Smoke. In high school, only Mormons don’t smoke and Mormon ain’t cool. Light up a cigarette and you’re a man. Light up and you’re a gorgeous woman.
A carton of Virginia Slims is what I’ve bought for Margaret’s birthday. She smokes over a pack a day. Switched from Marlboro to a healthier cigarette.
When she was a girl, Mom told Margaret she wasn’t pretty so she had to be clean. After that, Sis kind of disappeared. That’s what Margaret is doing when I look over at her that night in the airport lounge. She’s holding out her Virginia Slim so Kevin can light it. She inhales deep, in her throat too, as if she is swallowing the smoke. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, her fingernails manicured, her Weight-Watchers body slim, her blouse, lightly starched white and sleeveless, her khaki shorts pressed, her legs tanned, her white white Keds. She exhales. Somewhere underneath all the smoke is my sister.
Dad always said, when I was a kid, if Margaret told me to jump, I’d ask how high. Margaret’s three years older and for my first seven years she was all I had. Out there twelve miles north of town, on a square one hundred and sixty acre farm, all there was, was Mom and Dad and Margaret and me, the Catholic Church, and all the chores we had to do. The pigs, the chickens, the hundred head of cattle, spring planting, fall harvest, and all the fucking work that’s in between. Sis had girlfriends at school, Betty and Fergi, but never could spend time with them when it wasn’t school because we lived so far away and because of our chores. And boys. Boys were cruel to Sis because she was ugly and fat, she thought, and not popular and didn’t have any boobs. No one to talk to. I was the only one who listened. I was her best buddy, her confidant, her stand-in girlfriend, and at Catholic youth dances, when the boys didn’t ask her to dance, I asked her. It was my best pleasure asking my sis to dance. I couldn’t stand it if she felt lonely. Pretty much all the time Margaret felt lonely. With my mother it was the same way. She was lonely, too. My mother, my sister. Those females and their faraway look. But Mom had Dad and all Sis had was her little brother. Me. The one she’d say jump to and I’d say how high.
There’s a video my cousin converted from eight millimeter. Most of the video is dead relatives, but there’s this one segment that I can’t stop watching. It’s of me and Margaret sitting on the cement steps of a front porch. Sis is maybe eight and I am five. She’s wearing that plaid coat with her red scarf and I’m in my bomber hat and the jacket with a belt that were two metal links across the waist. Sis has her arm around me. Me, Little Ben, sitting in close to my sis, her arm around me, and we are holding hands. The way we sit, the way we touch, everything about our bodies is saying we are safe, this is my little brother, this is my big sister. I’m protecting him because he’s mine. I’m the only one she has.
When the camera pulls back, I am surrounded by women. My mother and all her sisters. Great beauties, all of them. The noise they make, magpies or crows, they all talk at once. My five-year-old eyes don’t know what to do, who to look at first. Tall, glamorous, my aunts with the Veronica Lake swirl, with snoods, with penciled-on eyebrows and shoulder pads. Katharine Hepburn, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Gene Tierney, Rosalind Russell. It’s 1953 and these are the women who worked the nation through the war. And the war has given them something back. In their Catholic hearts, film noir is just meeting the Virgin Mary.
THE AIRPORT LOUNGE, in the booth, Margaret and I, hip to hip, are still two kids sitting on the cement steps. We’re not holding hands, but the way we talk makes Hank look up and watch. Hank’s across the table from Kevin. They’re talking straight guy talk. The smile, the distance, the autonomy, the polite regard, the kind of talk that’s always about things or events, sports on the radio that sounds so exotic when I hear it. But whenever I try, I sound the way I always sound when I try – like I’m trying too hard. Kevin’s in his orange ISU Bengal cap. He’s got an alligator on his shirt. Ten years ago, living in Chubbuck, Margaret’s man wore a cowboy hat and beat her with a pitchfork. You’ve come a long way, baby.
All those red balloons bouncing up around us. The cocktail waitress has got the big Eighties hair and earrings that are holograms all the way down to her shoulders. A hint of cleavage. Lots of space between her teeth on top. She looks familiar. I think maybe a girl I went to high school with. She wasn’t popular. Future Homemakers of America. Becky maybe. She doesn’t remember me either. She smells of Halston.
“Last call,” she says.
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“Three more margaritas,” Kevin says, “and a Bud.”
Hank raises his hand, tries to pass on the beer.
“Oh come on,” Margaret says. “How often you get a book published?”
Then to the waitress: “We’re celebrating,” Margaret says. “My brother, Ben, and his friend Hank Christian here are famous authors. They’re reading tomorrow night at the Blind Lemon. You should come.”
What Margaret says next she says like she’s still just a kid.
“And it’s my birthday!”
We all take Margaret’s cue. We toast our glasses, we all yell:
“Happy Birthday!”
OUTSIDE THE AIRPORT lounge, it’s the wind. The Idaho wind that’s always there. The sky is black and stars are bright as flashlights. The yellow moon, three-quarters full, the man in the moon has no left cheek. Beyond the runway lights, miles and miles stretch out into darkness in all directions. High desert plain, coyotes, sagebrush. Just due south, giant sprinkler robots roll huge wheels over the ground, their high arcs of water sprayed onto the earth of the Michaud Flats. Just beyond, it’s Magic Valley. Its square, irrigated fields are third crop alfalfa, are stubbled wheat fields, J.R. Simplot potato vines waist high, and acres of barley dark amber almost rust.
Inside the airport lounge, so many margaritas, so many dreams. Tomorrow friends from high school and university will come to the ISU bookstore for Hank and me to sign their books. And the reading at the Blind Lemon, Wilbur Tucker will ring the fire bell, his voice saying Hank’s name, my name out loud for all my home town to hear. Ladies and Gents, Pocatello’s own Ben Grunewald.
Hank, my buddy Hank, him and his book, right alongside me.
So many dreams. May as well have been dreaming of parades and marching bands. The mayor giving me the key to the city. But more than anything. Although I didn’t know it then. Not like I do now. More than anything was the moment in the spotlight at the Blind Lemon, standing in the spotlight in front of all those people, and the best dream was that my big sister was in the audience, Margaret, sitting there so happy and proud that I, her little brother Benny, was standing up there in that spotlight.
I Loved You More Page 15