It was not a tasteful or reverent occasion, not something you’d want your wife or daughters to see. A man can down a quart of whiskey in subzero temperatures and still keep his feet, and when you are that drunk, you will say things that you wouldn’t care to see in print, but nevertheless I would hate to come to the end of my life and think, “I never ever once got drunk in the woods on a winter night with a bunch of guys who all knew the words to ‘Dead Flowers.’” And now I won’t.
We sang about Old Paint and Frankie and Johnny and somebody recited the famous poem:
Whenever Richard Cory went downtown,
The women on the streetcar looked at him:
He was a gentleman from sole to crown,
Clean shaven, his aftershave Royal Platinum.
And he looked terrific in a suit.
And he was always pleasant when he talked;
He certainly made the heads turn en route
To his office as he walked.
And he was rich, a man of style and grace,
And married to a beautiful woman named June.
And yet none of us wished that we were in his place.
We knew June and she was a Gorgon.
And one calm summer night, under the summer moon,
Richard Cory put a bullet in his noggin.
No big surprise, not if you knew June.
We got to feeling awfully close, hooked together, the fire blazing away, the whiskey doing its work. After the poem, a guy said, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way but I’m glad there aren’t any damn women here to look at us with disgust.” (LAUGHTER) Another guy stepped forward and said: “I have worshipped women all my life and avoided objectifying them and when in conversation with a woman have maintained steady eye contact and not eyeballed their you-know-whats and then the other day, a woman I know told me that she felt empowered when men stared at her breasts, and I said Oh really but maintained eye contact—‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘I have a fantasy that one day a man will reach down there and scoop them up like two Bosc pears and nibble on them’—Interesting, I remarked—‘A man who doesn’t enjoy looking at my bazongas is missing a circuit in the brain,’ she said—and so I glanced down at her and she whacked me in the chops and she said, ‘I knew you’d do that,’ which makes me think that maybe women have gotten more mileage out of feminism than they should’ve and maybe we could stop bowing whenever one comes in the room.”
A ripple of excitement passed through the circle: Guys were Speaking Out! Us! Saying things we wouldn’t dare say in polite society (i.e., women).
A guy with snow-white hair stepped into the circle. “Listen, you pineapples. I am no misogynist but I got to say, women are getting impossible to please these days. I’ve been busting my butt for years trying to keep women happy, and they’re madder at me now than before I started trying so hard. I quit playing poker and hockey and going deer hunting and took up painting watercolors, still lifes mostly, and tossing salads, and learned how to discuss feelings and concerns and not make jokes about them, and they’re still angry at me. A guy can’t win. Boys, let me tell you: most women down deep believe that everything that is wrong with the world is men’s fault and nothing you can do will ever change that. So don’t worry about it. Live your life.”
“Oya!” we all yelled.
A great big bearded guy stepped into the circle. “I sort of miss communism. When the Soviet Union fell apart it seemed like everything went slack and we gave up on manhood. Guys lost interest in guns and quit messing with cars. My son never gets under a hood. Instead he tries to understand his girlfriend and keep a close relationship. We’re selling out our manhood, bit by bit, one ball at a time, trying to buy peace and quiet, and you know something? It won’t work. Self-betrayal never works! I say nuts to sensitivity. Go ahead and fart. Go ahead.”
So we did. All at once. The fire flamed up blazing bright. It felt good. And right.
I realized right then, standing in that circle, that for thirty years I have been nudging women and pointing out dopey men to them so that women would know that I am no bozo or redneck. And here I was arm in arm with the very sort of guys I had always made fun of. I felt shame.
And then the head man of the S.O.B., the Big Burner himself, stepped into the circle, to talk about Bernie. He had been Bernie’s best friend and accountant.
“Bernie was a good guy who married a great girl, Jackie, who read Betty Friedan on their honeymoon and became a militant feminist, but that was okay by Bernie, he supported her in all that she did. They had four daughters, Susan B., Elizabeth Cady, Willa, and Betty. Bernie was a good dad and good husband, and the rest of the time he was a cement contractor. He had fourteen trucks pouring concrete. One winter when the concrete business slacked off, Bernie thought he’d maybe go ice fishing for a week with the old gang, play poker and tell some stories, have some laughs—though Jackie thought it was dumb beyond belief and gave him a hard time about it, so Bernie canceled the fishing trip—and then, on the day he had planned to leave, he ran into me on the street and told me how wonderful it would be to see the old gang again. ‘I haven’t gone fishing in fifteen years, but someday I hope I can get Jackie to let me go,’ he said. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I gotta cash a check before the bank closes.’ And he turned and five seconds later he was rubbed off the face of the earth by a gravel truck making a sudden left turn.
“Bernie was looking forward to being with us someday and someday we will join him in the clubhouse in the sky. He was a hard worker, a good husband and daddy, and he was a great pal, and in his memory we meet and toast him—may he rest.”
We raised our glasses.
“She got the house, the concrete business, everything, all that he’d worked so hard to build up, and you know? She didn’t share much of it with those daughters either. She sold the company for six million dollars to some jerks who ran it into the ground and she bought herself a penthouse in Manhattan where she holds fund-raisers for snooty big-ass liberals. That’s what happened to the life and hard work of Bernie, boys. His money went to people he couldn’t stand to be around and he never got to go fishing.”
We all leaned forward and spat on the ground.
“Well, here we are, boys, we are all losers, we’re drunk, confused, sad, and we smell like dead trout—but I loved him and I love all of you. Here’s to Bernie. Let ’er rip.”
And we drank a long toast and gave six long whoops, Eeeeeeee-ha!
By four a.m. there was little left to say and nobody in any condition to say it. So I went home. And ever since that night, I’ve tried to be more understanding of my fellow men. They are in a bind. Manhood used to be an opportunity and now it’s a liability to be overcome. Plato, St. Francis, Michelangelo, Mozart, Leonardo da Vinci, Vince Lombardi, Van Gogh—you don’t find guys of that caliber today, and if there are any, they are not painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel or composing Don Giovanni. They are trying to be Mr. O.K. All-Rite, the man who can bake a cherry pie, go coach girls’ basketball, come home, make melon balls and whip up a great soufflé, converse easily about intimate matters, participate in recreational weeping, laugh, hug, be vulnerable, then go upstairs and be passionate in a skillful way, and the next day go off and lift them bales into that barge and tote it. A hard life, all of it closely monitored by women.
Men adore women. Our mothers taught us to. Women do not adore men; women are amused by men, we are a source of chuckles. That’s because women are the makers of life, and we are merely an appliance. We will never carry life within our bodies, never breast-feed. Our role in procreation is to get crazy and howl and spray our seed and then go away and not frighten the children. I have to go now. The S.O.B. meet on the night of the first full moon of the year. See you then.
1.
EARL GREY
Thirty years later, people still come up and tell me they remember “Buster the Show Dog,”
a radio serial I wrote in the early Eighties, with Timmy the Sad Rich Teenage Boy and Father Finian and Sheilah the Christian Jungle Girl. “Earl Grey” was meant to be another serial but then I left the country for Denmark and forgot about radio and set out to be a great novelist, so when I picked up Earl a couple years later, I made him into a novel, howbeit a very short one.
Earl Grey flew to San Francisco to speak to the Tea Congress (“A Toast to Tea”) and stayed overnight at a four-star hotel and was awakened at three a.m. by some jerk singing Gershwin and looked for the phone to call the front desk and tripped in the dark and fell and broke his arm and was taken to the hospital where surgeons mistakenly removed his left lung, thinking he was a man named Ray, a very bad outcome indeed, but not so surprising to Earl. He was a middle child, the third of five kids, so he was accustomed to being misunderstood. His older brother, Vern, was prone to weeping and his older sister, Vivian, was a pyromaniac and his two younger siblings were bed wetters and teeth grinders and cat torturers, so his parents had a handful of trouble. Earl was sociable and polite and bright as a penny and because he required no special attention whatsoever, he was ignored by his parents. Once he was toilet trained (at age two) he was on his own. His dad, Bob Grey, was a conservative congressman from Georgia, the minority whip, and Earl grew up in Washington, a city of broad streets and granite plazas, full of curiosities, such as the Monument to Horses of the Civil War and the Museum of Ideas and the national headquarters of the Federated Organization of Associations. The Greys loved Washington and lived in dread of the next election, afraid that they might lose and have to leave their comfy home in Georgetown and go back home to Macon, Georgia, where Daddy’s daddy owned a pancake house. Daddy was a conservative Republican and his seat should have been safe, but he was something of a bon vivant and loved black-tie dinners and dancing the tango and drinking espresso in a little French café over the Post and the Times. He belonged to a madrigal ensemble. He read Proust. He was a civilized man and it was hard for him to get ginned up for campaigns and do what he had to do to get reelected, ranting and raving against Washington.
“Daddy’s got to say some mean things, children,” said Mrs. Grey, “otherwise we’ll have to live in Georgia and attend church and have clunky furniture and no art on the walls.”
For the campaign, they rode around in the back of a pickup truck, dressed in Sears outfits, and Daddy spoke out for the American flag, the American family, the American family dog, and railed against the State Department for selling out our country’s vital interests abroad, mopping his brow with a red bandanna, sipping from a Dixie cup. And in November, Daddy got reelected and the Greys made a final appearance at the victory rally and the next morning they took off the dumpy clothes and made a beeline back to Washington, glad to be done with the filthy business for another two years. They put on their nice clothes, and talked normally, and Daddy resumed his lovely life of grace and elegance. And young Earl resumed his life as an invisible middle child. Sometimes Daddy called him Timmy. His mother hardly knew he existed.
INTERESTING FACT: TODAY EARL GREY TRAVELS MORE THAN TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND MILES A YEAR, SEEING TO HIS FAR-FLUNG TEA BUSINESS, APPEARING AT CHARITABLE FUNCTIONS, AND WHEREVER HE GOES, PEOPLE GET HIS NAME WRONG OR MISTAKE HIM FOR SOMEONE ELSE.
In 1956, Daddy had a real stinker of an opponent, a bullet-headed, red-necked, carpet-chewing radio preacher named C. J. Buzzhardt, who accused Daddy of losing touch with the common man and being part of the Washington establishment. He crisscrossed the district in a cheap, wrinkly suit yelling, “Where’s Grey, the big phony? Why’s he afraid to show his face in Georgia?”
Mrs. Grey told Daddy to get down to Georgia and rip into the State Department, but Daddy had a tennis tournament to play in, and early September was when his madrigal group gave its big recital at the Folger Library, so it wasn’t until October that the Greys trooped down to Georgia to do their business.
They forgot to bring Earl. He was standing by the car, about to climb in, and his mother said to him, “You be sure and mow the lawn every week, Hector, that’s what we pay you for.” Earl’s eyes filled with tears, he turned to blow his nose, and away they went without him.
So he spent the next six weeks with the housekeeper, Anna Tin, a nice Sumatran lady who took excellent care of him. In Sumatra, a middle child is treasured as a living keystone, a bridge, a bond, a fulcrum, a vital link.
Meanwhile, down in Georgia, Mr. Buzzhardt ran circles around Daddy on the stump, campaigning on the slogan “Honor America and Send a Real Man to Washington,” and he flew hundreds of flags at every appearance, outflagging Daddy by a ten-to-one margin. He spread rumors that Daddy had only one testicle, smaller than a dried lentil, and he found photos of Daddy singing in his madrigal group, wearing a foofy shirt with chin ruffles, his mouth open in a prim oval for a falalalala.
One hot night, in Marietta, at a debate on a flag-draped platform in the courthouse square, when Congressman Grey was waxing hot and heavy about the pinheads in the State Department and how, if elected, he’d clean them out of there and replace them with God-fearing folks with a farm background, it was not going over well with the crowd. The congressman was pretending to be stupid, but Buzzhardt was genuinely stupid and voters prefer what’s genuine. And suddenly Buzzhardt jumped up and strode to the podium and hollered, “What you got in that Dixie cup theah?” And he snatched it from Daddy and sniffed it and yelled, “Tea. And not sweet tea, no suh, but oolong.”
“Oolong?” the crowd murmured.
“Oolong!” yelled Gerald K. “This peckerwood is standing up here sippin at tea from a foreign country. Not American tea. Oolong!!!! Well, la-di-da. Ain’t we fine?”
Everyone laughed and laughed, and Daddy was dead.
Georgia men didn’t drink oolong tea, it was strictly for fruitcakes, pantywaists, college perfessers, and hermaphrodites. Buzzhardt held up the picture of Congressman Grey falalaing and said, “You folks intendin to vote for a poof and a priss and a pansy? I say ole oolong has been in Congress toolong!” and that was that, the election was over. Daddy was swamped by a large margin, and the family slunk back to Georgetown, heartsick and bitter.
There was Earl, dazed with pleasure, having been adored all the long summer. “What’s wrong?” he asked.
“We got our butt kicked,” said his mom. “And it’s your fault. Why weren’t you there?”
TEA FACTS: BELIEVE IT OR NOT, EARL GREY TEA IS NOW THE MOST POPULAR TEA IN GEORGIA. IT OUTRANKS BOURBON AMONG MALES BETWEEN TWENTY-FIVE AND SIXTY AND IS STEADILY GAINING ON COCA-COLA. IT IS THE FASTEST-GROWING BEVERAGE IN THE ATLANTA AREA.
The Greys did not return to Georgia. They spent a last Christmas in Washington and in January, Daddy took his remaining hundred thousand in campaign funds and they motored west to California, where Daddy would have a job at the Hoover Institution, thinking about great issues. They stopped in Minneapolis, where he delivered a speech on campaign reform at the Stassen Institute, and the following afternoon they stopped at the Lucky Spud restaurant in Platt, North Dakota, for lunch, and half an hour later they went off and left Earl there.
The Spud specialized in mashed potatoes: there were twenty-four varieties on the menu, including the Big Cheesie, White Cloud, Land O’Gravy, Tuna Whip, and the Elvis Parsley. Earl, a slow eater, ordered a Big Cheesie and a White Cloud and sat and savored every bite, while Daddy paid the check and went to the car with Vance and Vince, and Mom, who had been in a sour mood for months, said, “Hurry up, Earl. I mean it,” and disappeared with Vivian and Vera. Earl finished up the last four bites in a big hurry, but when he ran out the door, the car was gone.
The waitress tried to comfort him. “They’ll be back in a jiffy, snuggums, just you wait and see. Here. Have some more spuds.” But the family never returned. Never called, never wrote, never filed a missing-child report.
They cruised on to Palo Alto, enjoying the scenery, without a peep out of his brothers
and sisters as to the empty spot in the backseat. He had taken up so little room in their lives, being polite and quiet and considerate, so why should they notice his absence?
And if they had reported him missing to the police, the police would’ve asked, “What does the boy look like?” and the Greys would’ve looked at each other and said, “Now, what did he look like? He was medium height, wasn’t he? Didn’t he have brown hair? I seem to remember that it was brown.”
TEA FACTS. EARL GREY TEA HAS BEEN USED AS A WATERCOLOR WASH BY NUMEROUS PROMINENT ARTISTS TO LEND A RICH BUT SUBTLE BROWN TONE TO THEIR WORK, BUT EARL’S HAIR IS, AND ALWAYS HAS BEEN, STRAWBERRY BLOND.
So Earl grew up in Platt from the age of fifteen. He was raised by Sandy, the waitress at the Lucky Spud, who lived with her boyfriend, Butch, in a trailer behind the café. It was crowded and Earl slept on the sofa and was often awakened by Sandy and Butch arguing. They drank quite a bit and she’d yell, “Get your hands off me. I’m not in the mood.” And Butch’d say, “You used to like it when I did that,” and it was nothing that Earl cared to hear. He attended Platt High and did his homework sitting at the café counter among old guys grousing about the government, the weather, fishing, farming, and their wives, who sat and chain-smoked, eyes straight ahead, saying nothing.
• • •
One day Earl saw a package of Sumatran tea on the shelf of the Platt Piggly Wiggly supermarket and bought it and back at the trailer he made a pot of tea for Sandy and himself and she was an instant convert. She was dizzy with pleasure.
“I feel like a new woman,” she said. “I have to wonder if the reason people here are so mean isn’t that they drink too much coffee. Coffee makes you want to go out and kick the dog and throw trash in the creek. Tea brings out the best in people.” North Dakotans, she said, prefer their coffee bitter with a rainbow of oil slick on top. That’s why they were the way they were, proud of their guns, owners of vicious dogs.
The Keillor Reader Page 21