“You mean besides the fact that you’re a hundred fucking years old?”
“Besides that,” said Norman.
“I outweigh you by about a ton, I’m a foot taller… I’m quicker and blacker.”
“What else?”
“That’s enough.”
“It’s not the size of the dog in the fight, it’s the size of the fight in the dog,” said Norman.
“Sounds like something a small dog made up,” said Clarence.
Norman noticed the blood on his forearm and licked it away. “Maybe I’ll be the first person to catch AIDS from a mosquito,” he said.
“Could happen,” said Clarence.
They fished and smoked and sweated for a while. A heron flew by, its wings flapping in long, lazy strokes.
“I’ll tell you who I could take,” said Norman.
“Who’s that?” Clarence asked.
“Cormac McCarthy.”
“The ‘Pretty Horses’ guy?”
“Yeah,” said Norman. “Pretentious bastard. Too good to use quotation marks. What the fuck is that? Is he some e. e. cummings lowercase cocksucker or what?”
“I don’t know,” said Clarence.
“I’d kick his skinny Texas ass from here to El fucking Paso. And don’t sit there and tell me I couldn’t.”
“Would you wear those blue sunglasses when you did it?”
“What difference does that make?” asked Norman.
“Well, they’re kinda faggy looking. Might add to the humiliation factor while you’re kicking his ass. Have to tell his friends he got a beatdown from a hundred-year-old man with mosquito-blood AIDS wearing faggy blue sunglasses. That kind of thing could be a deal breaker down in Texas.”
“I’ll wear the glasses,” said Norman.
Clarence opened the cooler and took out a Heineken. He offered it to Norman.
“I’ll take a brown bottle, please,” he said.
Clarence tossed him a bottle of Bud. Norman twisted off the cap and dropped it into the boat, where it lay with six others.
“You like white women?” asked Norman.
“Some of them,” replied Clarence.
“You guys,” began Norman, “and by ‘you guys’ I mean black guys, specifically famous black guys, seem to go nuts for white women.”
“That’s how you see it?”
“Yes it is.”
“That’s been your observation?”
“Yes.”
“All the famous black guys you’ve seen were with white women?”
“Enough so I’d remark on it,” said Norman.
“Forbidden fruit,” said Clarence.
“No shit. I figured that part out on my own. But beyond the obvious, I don’t get it. I mean I’ve been with a lot of white women, and most of them are incredible cunts.”
“How many?” asked Clarence.
“What?”
“How many white women have you been with?”
Norman sipped his beer. “Eleven thousand,” he said.
Clarence lowered his glasses and peered over them. “Even?” he asked.
“Last Tuesday at the Checca Lodge in Islamorada… remember the little cocktail waitress, Babbette?”
“No shit?”
“Who knew she was a reader?” Norman smiled. “I’d been stuck on ten thousand nine hundred ninety-nine for over four years.”
“Is that a fact?” said Clarence. He started blowing smoke rings. It was still, so they hung in the air a long time before slowly losing their shape.
“Four years and a week, to be exact,” said Norman.
It was quiet for a while. Clarence caught a fish. Norman worked the net. They brought it to the boat, removed the hook, and released it.
“Were you pissed when Springsteen went out with that other band?” asked Norman.
“I wasn’t thrilled about it.”
“I know my opinion doesn’t count, I am a hundred years old after all, but without you guys it’s just another band with some decent songs. There’s no magic there. Plus he had that big black guy singing with him. That had to sting.”
“Listen,” said Clarence, “if it wasn’t for Bruce there’s no way I’m fishing in the Keys with Norman fucking Mailer, now is there?”
“No way in America,” said Norman.
Both men laughed.
“Shit,” said Clarence. “I can’t worry about things I can’t control. I’m on a spiritual path to enlightenment.”
“Good luck with that,” said Norman.
“You’re not spiritual?” asked Clarence.
“Hey,” said Norman, “I’m for whatever gets you through the ‘four o’clock in the morning’ of your soul.”
“I hear you,” said Clarence.
The sun was directly overhead. Clarence put on a straw hat he got in Puerto Rico many years ago. Norman poured beer over his own head.
“You working on anything?” asked Clarence.
“Yeah,” said Norman. “I’m fooling around with a thing… a book.”
“What’s it about?” said Clarence.
“God,” said Norman.
Grandmother
Clarence
My grandmother was blind. For a large part of my childhood she raised me when my parents were at work. She was tough on us kids. She used me as her eyes when she wanted to spank my brother Bill.
“Lead me to him,” she’d say to me.
She’d put her hand on my shoulder and I’d have to take her to my brother, despite his silent pleadings not to.
“Don’t run in the house,” she’d always say. “You’ll fall and cut your leg on something.”
I think I heard that so many times that I unconsciously made it come true. I was running around the house and knocked a glass off the table. It broke, and I got a severe cut on my knee.
I went to the hospital and they stitched it up. When it healed I was left with a pretty horrifying scar. My knee felt and worked fine, but it looked like hell.
This turned out to be a life changer.
I got drafted. This was in the day when they told you to “bring your suitcase” when you reported to the draft board. I was headed for Korea until the doctor saw my knee. He took one look at it and told me to go home.
Thanks, Grandma.
The Legend of Big Sur, 1982
This next story is another work of fiction surrounding a truth. One night in Mr. Chow’s, Nick Roeg did tell a version of the horrifying story contained within the piece to Harry Nilsson and me. The mitigating factor, and the reason we’ve fictionalized this one, is because Nick might have made up the whole thing. —D.R.
Do you know who he is?” Miki Dora asked Clarence, while pointing to the tall man wearing the huge cowboy hat. The man with the hat was sitting near the fireplace across the room.
“No,” said Clarence. “I barely know who you are.”
“His name is Richard Brautigan,” said Miki. “I just finished reading this book he wrote called The Hawkline Monster, and it was fucking great.”
“What’s it about?” said Clarence.
“Hit men, twins, monsters…”
“Sounds good.”
“Remind me to give it to you after dinner,” said Miki. “We’ll get him to sign it.”
“I don’t want to bother the guy,” said Clarence.
“Bother him?” said Miki. “Look at the poor fuck sitting there by himself drinking alone. He’s so freaky tall, and with that fucking hat he scares people. Nobody wants to make eye contact with him.”
“He is odd looking,” said Clarence. “Not that we’re not strange ourselves.”
They were in the dark dining room of the old Big Sur Inn. It was raining hammers and nails outside. The road to the south was closed because of the Devil’s Slide moving again. If you didn’t want to be in Big Sur you needed to head north now. Neither Clarence nor Miki had to be anywhere in the near future.
“How’s the wine?” asked Miki.
“Good,” said Clarence. “Re
al good.”
Miki had ordered the wine, asking questions about it in French. He’d spent some time over there, he said afterward. It tasted expensive, and Clarence was already wondering how they were going to handle the check and they hadn’t ordered their meals yet.
He’d run into Miki earlier that day. Clarence had been enjoying an ambrosia burger on the deck at Nepenthe.
“Big Man,” Miki said, extending his hand. “I’m Miki Dora. I’m a surfer, among other things.”
“How you doing, man?” asked Clarence. He always said that.
“Better now,” said Miki, sitting down. “I don’t know anybody in this place.”
“Neither do I,” said Clarence.
He had rented a car in San Francisco and was taking his time driving down the coast to Los Angeles. Bruce and Danny had told him how beautiful Big Sur was when they played a date for a bunch of naked hippies at the Esalen Institute down the road. He’d already checked in and gotten situated in a house on the grounds of the Ventana resort, and he was enjoying the place. Even though the rain killed the views he’d heard about, the place did have some kind of magical feel to it. It was good. It felt like a special place. The quiet here was almost a tangible thing. It seemed to have weight.
“That burger working?” asked Miki.
“It’s delicious,” said Clarence.
Miki had ordered one along with several beers, but when the check came his wallet was down in his car. Clarence paid, and Miki said he’d make it up by buying dinner. The guy was funny and charming, so Clarence went along with it. Miki was one of those people who rode giant waves in Hawaii when he was younger, working as a stand-in on films like Ride the Wild Surf back in the ’60s. It was hard for Clarence to get a fix on what the guy had been doing since then.
Back at Ventana before dinner, Clarence called his friend Jefferson Wagner down in Malibu. Zuma Jay was the only surfer Clarence knew. After the usual catching-up bullshit he put it to him.
“Da Cat?” said Jay. “No shit? You’re actually with him?”
“I was at lunch and I’m supposed to meet him for dinner,” said Clarence.
“Watch your wallet,” said Jay.
“I already got stuck for lunch,” said Clarence.
“The guy you’re with is a legend,” said Jay. “His name has been on the wall at the ’Bu for twenty-five years. They sandblast it off and somebody puts it back up the next day. Nobody has seen Miki for years. I heard he was in jail, and then I heard he was in France, and then I heard he was in jail in France. Nobody has a fucking clue. The guy is part man part myth.”
“I’ve got over a million dollars in certificates of deposit,” said Richard Brautigan.
Miki Dora immediately ordered a bottle of cognac.
“Good for you,” said Clarence.
“I’m going to need every penny of it,” he said. “How do you want me to make this out?”
He was holding a pen poised over a beat-up copy of The Hawkline Monster that Miki had gotten from his car. It got wet in the rain, and the dust cover, featuring an old Victorian house, was bumpy with droplets.
“To Clarence,” said Clarence.
“What do you need a million bucks for so bad?” asked Miki.
Brautigan signed the book and looked at his signature for a long time, then closed the cover and handed it to Clarence.
“I’m on the run,” he said. He was pretty toasted, having killed a full bottle of wine while he had dinner alone.
“From what?” said Miki, who apparently had some experience at being on the run.
“I think I killed Nicolas Roeg last night,” he said.
“Who?” asked Clarence, realizing that was not the first question he should’ve asked.
“Nick Roeg,” said Brautigan. “He’s a British film director. He did Don’t Look Now and The Man Who Fell to Earth.
“Oh, yeah,” said Clarence. “The one with David Bowie.”
“Right,” said Richard.
“That was a weird movie,” said Clarence.
“Yes, strange and beautiful,” said Richard.
“I didn’t see it,” said Miki.
Again it occurred to Clarence that they were burying the lead and ignoring the murder confession they just heard.
“You killed him?” Clarence asked.
Brautigan lowered his head and nodded. He had never taken the tall, flat-brimmed hat off, so the act of tilting his head forward took up a lot of space.
“Yes, I think so,” he said.
“What do you mean you think so?” asked Miki, pouring the cognac into snifter glasses. He put more into Richard’s glass than the others.
Richard sighed and picked up his snifter. He took a long drink then put the glass down. The flames in the fireplace were reflected on the lenses of his round glasses.
“We were in San Francisco last night,” said Richard. “We’d met for a drink in the lobby bar of the St. Francis Hotel where Nick was staying. He’s an incredible storyteller, so one drink led quickly to another and another, and pretty soon time doesn’t mean anything anymore and we’re barhopping in the Tenderloin and God knows where else. At some point I guess we had enough, ’cause we were back at the hotel in the living room of his suite. He actually had been reading Trout Fishing in America.
“I love fishing,” said Clarence. “But I’ve never been trout fishing. Is that a book I should get?”
“Yes,” said Richard. “But it’s not really about trout fishing.”
“Hold it,” said Clarence. “It’s called Trout Fishing in America but it’s not about trout fishing in America?”
“Right,” said Richard. “It’s a novel. I wrote it.”
“Fuck the book and the trout,” said Miki. “What about the fucking murder?”
“It wouldn’t be murder,” said Richard. “Manslaughter maybe, but not murder. We were so drunk…”
“So what happened in the hotel room?” said Miki, refilling Richard’s glass.
“At some point we began to argue,” said Richard.
“I would’ve guessed that,” said Clarence.
“Let the man tell the story,” said Miki.
“And the argument became physical. I know we were punching and kicking each other and rolling around on the floor. It was bad. Then everything goes black. I can’t remember what happened next.”
“So why do you think you killed him?” said Clarence.
“ ’Cause when I woke up the room was covered with blood. There was blood everywhere. On the walls, the floor, the furniture. It was like a horror movie. I had blood on my hands and my clothes.”
Nobody said anything for the next few moments. They all drank.
“Was he dead?” Miki finally asked.
“He wasn’t there. There was no body. I must’ve taken it out and disposed of it.”
“Maybe not,” said Clarence. “Maybe you passed out, or he knocked you out, and he left.”
“No,” said Richard. “The bed was torn apart and the sheet was missing. I wrapped him in the sheet and probably threw him into a Dumpster.”
“You’re right,” said Miki. “That’s probably what happened. So now we’ve got to figure out how to get you out of the country.”
Clarence noticed the use of the word we right away. “We?” he said to Miki.
“Not you, man,” said Miki. “I’ll deal with this.”
“I’m a big fan of your music,” said Richard.
“Oh, thanks,” said Clarence.
“I’ve got all the albums,” said Richard. “I think Born to Run is one of the greatest albums ever made.”
“So do I,” said Clarence.
“Well, ironically,” said Miki, “you apparently were born to run ’cause that’s what you’ve got to do now. How difficult will it be for you to access the million? We’re going to need it and we’re going to need it fast.”
“I don’t know, man, maybe I should just turn myself in,” said Richard.
“Fine,” said Miki. “An
d you’ll spend the rest of your life getting butt-fucked every day by a guy who looks like Clarence. No offense to you, Clarence.”
“None taken,” said Clarence. “I wouldn’t want that, either.”
“Let me make a call,” said Richard. “Where’s the phone?”
“There’s a booth out front,” said Miki, pointing toward the front window.
“I’ll be right back,” said Richard.
He stood, swayed a little, then made his way to the front door, listing to the left all the way. He turned up his collar, opened the door, and stepped out into the rain.
“Jesus, what a story,” said Clarence.
“Awful,” said Miki. “A tragedy, really.”
“Yeah,” said Clarence.
“You must’ve made a fortune by now, huh?” said Miki.
“Nah,” said Clarence.
“How’s it work?” asked Miki. “Do you get a salary or a piece of the records or a piece of the gate or what?”
“I get a salary,” said Clarence.
“Too bad,” said Miki.
“I’m not complaining,” said Clarence.
“You get the same money the drummer gets?” asked Miki.
“I don’t know,” said Clarence. “Everybody negotiates their own deal.”
“I shoulda learned to play the fucking guitar,” said Miki. “Got to be easier to pick up than a surfboard.”
“What’s that like?” said Clarence. “I mean riding those huge waves?”
“It’s a rush,” said Miki. “You got a credit card?”
“Yeah, why?” said Clarence.
“In case we can’t get Brautigan to pick up the check, I’m broke. I think somebody stole my wallet.”
“Is that right?”
“Yeah. I feel bad about it ’cause you got lunch, but what am I gonna do?” said Miki. “I’ve been riding a streak of bad luck. They busted me for kiting checks, but it was bullshit. Fucking judge just didn’t want me to be so free.”
“Right,” said Clarence, wondering how much the cognac went for.
“Brautigan’s a fucking millionaire. He’s good for dinner.”
“I hope so,” said Clarence. “Assuming he’s not shooting himself in the phone booth.”
“He’ll be fine,” said Miki. “He’s just a little shook.”
Big Man Page 13