The English Major

by Jim Harrison

  “Cliff, you look like a turd struck with a meat ax,” Viv said loudly, waking me with a start. She was pretty trim in a blue suit though her new hairdo was mounded higher than my last night’s Italian meal.

  She went to the window and waved at the departing clients in their silver Mercedes.

  “These folks bought five Petoskey condos on spec. My commission will be a cool hundred grand,” she crowed. I reflected that this amount was my net worth not counting my Tahoe.

  On the way to Petoskey for lunch Viv gave me the startling news that she had bailed Ad out of a mess in Las Vegas. He had tapped out his credit card gambling and a whore he was with had beaten on a slot machine with a high heel doing real damage. Viv had bailed them out of the slammer because she thought it wasn’t proper for a doctor to be in jail.

  At the Chinese restaurant in Petoskey Viv said, “We grew in different directions” which seemed to me a unique description of her fling with Fred. Viv tore into a beef and vegetable stir fry rattling on about the subtleties of her low carb diabetic diet. Frankly, she looked better than she had in ten years and my mind whirled at the thought of her thousands of powdered donuts and Pepsis (when I took her returnable deposit cans to the store I got to keep half the money). She had two tablespoons of my white rice and squeezed her eyes shut with pleasure after which she stared at our Chinese waiter and asked, “Is it true Chinese men have small weenies.” I answered that maybe there was a weenie website she could find on her computer and she said, “Probably.”

  After lunch she drove me to her house which was rather lavish but she said she had got a real deal bidding in a bankruptcy sale. All the rooms were carpeted in white except the kitchen and all the furniture and walls were also white. I started sneezing wildly from the wooly perfumed smell. “This house will never smell like cowshit and it’s strictly no smoking, kiddo.”

  I took a nap on the screened front porch while she went back to work for an hour or so. I reflected that I had driven like a maniac for this questionable welcome. I dozed intermittently, fearful of the upcoming trip over to the farm which she was insisting on so I could face reality. I glanced through the glass doors of the porch at the house’s white interior, definitely my least favorite color. Once again my antic neurons gave me a glance of Sylvia’s pubis. I mused on the accidental nature of the sexual contacts of my life. Babe at the diner when we were both mischievously lonely, then the haphazard typhoon of Marybelle, a climatic accident. And way back when with Vivian who acted like she was in great demand which I even doubted at the time. She was a true American girl, a little loud and boisterous, a 4–H girl whose heifer had won at the county fair, a straight C student who only pretended she read the books I gave her, but all and all likeable, and there also was the idea that I had no frame of reference to talk smoothly with the few city girls I dated.

  We drove over to our old farm and I wept like a baby stung by a bee. My attached shed was gone and the barn was painted bright red. The orchard had been bulldozed and seeded and surrounded by white board fences a la Kentucky. The house had been razed and an enormous brick dwelling was being built in its place and where the chicken coop had been there was a brick stable with seven box stall doors with horses looking out and at least fifty workmen bustling around the place. We drove on down the road and stopped by a marsh where Viv embraced me and patted my back as if I were a baby needing to be burped.

  “They’re putting a couple of mil into that place,” she said.

  “I hope maggots eat their brains.” I was still sniffling.

  “That’s unlikely what with embalming fluid. When the going gets tough, the tough get doing. Now that you’ve seen the raw meat on the floor you have to start a new life at your grandpa’s place.”

  I dropped Viv off at her house because she was making us a candlelit fried chicken dinner. I headed toward grandpa’s thinking about a work schedule for my project but also stopping at the humane society dog pound and picking up a pup. Of course writers and other artists have varied work habits but I thought I remembered that Thoreau chose early morning after a stroll. Not a day had passed in the four months since Lola had died that I didn’t think of getting another dog since I hadn’t been without one since college. It was anyway certain that I wouldn’t be able to bring a dog into Viv’s new place. Robert had said with a laugh that Viv was hanging out with “the movers and shakers” in the area whoever they were and I would steadfastly avoid them.

  Seeing a traffic jam up ahead in the road along Walloon Lake I made a quick detour. It was obvious what happened. There were two ambulances on shore and a flotillas of boats out front with two big water ski boats in bad shape from a collision. Bert and I used to do orchard work on a farm up the road and at lunch break we’d sit on the hillside and watch the rich kids zipping up and down the lake. When there was an accident Bert would say, “Maybe another dummy out of the gene pool.”

  I didn’t spend much time at Grandpa’s but my heart swelled with pleasure at living in this remote place, a forty acre bushy pasture forming a clearing in the dense hilly woods, a perfect place for my art. Viv had thought the Indian’s shabby hut to be unlivable and had sent some workmen over to get the kitchen ready, and organize a makeshift sleeping quarters in the small dining room. The back two bedrooms were pretty much burned down and were separated from the dining room with tacked up Visqueen plastic. I’d have to see if there was a way to get the burned odor out of the air. All in all I felt suddenly damned fine about my prospects. Out front there was still a rope hanging from a maple limb that used to hold a tire swing grandpa and my dad had built for me and Teddy. I unloaded my stuff, including the jigsaw puzzle which I put on the Formica kitchen table that was a nice shade of yellow. Viv had put a six-pack in the fridge and I toasted to my new life with a can of beer. There was also a stack of frozen diet dinners in the fridge’s freezer compartment which a new dog might enjoy.

  On the way home I stopped by the dog pound just as it was closing for the day. I was drawn to a pup that was a collie-shepherd cross but then it was sitting there with its shaggy old mother and I wondered if I had the craw to separate them. Chances are the mother would quickly end her life in the gas chamber. On the way down the road I was pulled this way and that by the mother and pup and by the time I reached Viv’s I could see I’d have to take both. After all, the mother would help babysit the pup and maybe the attractive young woman attendant at the dog pound would become well disposed to me. She filled out her Levis and t-shirt real nice and maybe she would come out for a visit. And so on with the fantasy so that I nearly hit one of Viv’s pink flamingos lawn ornaments when I pulled into her drive.

  The fried chicken was fine indeed though I was put off by the patchouli odor of the scented candles. When I came up to the back steps I could hear Scheharazade but she was kind enough to turn it off. There were no mashed potatoes and chicken gravy because Viv said she couldn’t bear to see me eat them when they were forbidden to her. She drank a glass of vodka with lemon because it was “low sugar.”

  After dinner we sat out front on a porch swing, about the only piece of furniture she saved from our old home. She showed me some diabetes diet cookbooks and suggested that I should come over once a week and cook her dinner but I would have to adapt the recipes. My pot roast with onions or rutabaga but no potatoes. Mexican chile with no beans, spaghetti and meatballs with no spaghetti. I was agreeable partly because I was drinking a large glass of vodka having pushed aside a syrupy California wine that had cost her seven bucks. I impulsively slid a hand down her blouse and felt one of her large tits. She blushed and glowed but pushed my hand away saying we might work into it as time passed. She tweaked my trousers and said, “I think it’s cute that your dick still gets hard for me, Cliff.”

  She got up to make me a sobering cup of instant coffee and while she was away I thought how nice it would be to go to Guatemala with Sylvia and work in an orphanage but that was unlikely as peace on earth. I needed to buy dog dishes and food, a crowbar
and hammer, a scythe to cut the weeds around Grandpa’s house, sell the Tahoe and buy a used pick-up. Dawn would find me at my kitchen table making decisions on re-naming the states, and then setting up a bird feeder. I shook Viv’s big soft hand and drove home in the summer twilight with a mellow heart.

  I was up at first light with a trace of dawn visible through the east kitchen window. I drank half of my coffee on the rickety back porch most of the floorboards of which I’d have to replace. I set off for a stroll with an imaginary dog at my side, my trousers soon wet to the knees with dew. I saw an indigo bunting flitting around a dogwood bush, possibly a bird name not to be changed. I seem to be with the mute Indian inspecting a fox burrow in the southwest corner of the pasture. A jersey milk cow is following us. I look back at the bungalow which is catching the light of the orange rising sun. Grandpa is drinking his coffee with a splash of Four Roses whiskey for his heart. Teddy sits in a puddle in the driveway. Dad is digging earthworms in the corner of the yard so we can catch bluegills to fry up for lunch. And here I am fifty years later, an old body bent on a new life.

  APPENDIX

  I’ve been home for a month and things have been up and down which so apparently is the nature of life, at least on earth. I get up at four a.m. and work on my new calling until about eight and then proceed with the house remodeling. The scent of the fire is still there but I’m getting used to it in the same way that we learn to accept widespread political malfeasance. I checked the Richardson biography out of the Harbor Springs library and was quite startled to discover that Ralph Waldo Emerson was emotionally a much livelier fellow than he presents himself in his austere essays.

  I’ve only been seeing Viv once a week but she has definitely been a cross to bear. She can’t stop fibbing to herself and me. I cooked her a dinner of diet fajitas the other evening and when I went to the toilet to pee she definitely put a chunk of butter in the pan with the onions, peppers and beef. Later when I took out the garbage at her request I noted illegal (for her diabetes) empty packages of English muffins and Oreos. At least there was no sign of powdered do-nuts or Pepsis.

  Lothar has been quite a problem. Though the original Lothar was a male I gave the name to the female pup because she was beige colored and strong. My favorite Sunday morning comic strip as a kid was Mandrake the Magician. Mandrake’s beautiful wife was named Narda and his powerful Afro-American henchman who was invincible was named Lothar. Lothar was my first hero and I wanted to be a huge strong black man when I grew up. Dad was patient in explaining to me that this wasn’t possible. He himself wanted to be Charley Chan but we couldn’t change our colors anymore than a Holstein cow could become a Guernsey. This was a harsh lesson. All of us starlings can’t become ospreys.

  Lothar has developed the unfortunate habit of flopping on the floor and sinking her teeth in my pant cuff so that I have to drag her around the kitchen floor when I make my morning coffee. Oddly enough she detaches her teeth when I pour my first cup at which point I let her out to pee. She yaps furiously at the outside world and pees on the porch. As I’ve said I’ve been getting up in the dark at 4 a.m. to work on my art. Tragedy struck little Lothar a scant week after I brought she and her mother home from the dog pound. I named the mother after my mother’s cousin Edna who was also extraordinarily top heavy on her spindly little legs. After a few days with us Edna the dog developed a severe salivary gland infection which required surgery and five trips to the vet before her lungs filled with fluid and she became a heavy dog corpse. I kept Lothar in the car while I buried her mom behind the Indian’s shack. The total bill from the vet was $2700, close to the amount spent on my trip west. Vets have become as expensive as human doctors. I thought I should stop at the dog pound and tell them of Edna’s passing. The pretty young woman seemed totally unconcerned, saying “Win some, lose some.” She was doing one of those number puzzles called Sudoku and didn’t meet my glance. She was still wearing the attractive trousers that pulled up tightly in her pubis and I had simultaneous thoughts of sex and dog death.

  The next evening when I cooked meatloaf and succotash for Viv at her request, I told her the dog story including the cost and she said, “Poor Cliff and his mutts,” as if I were a third person. She stuffed a greenback in my front pocket to help with the bill. She was distracted by a pending sale of a beach house in Harbor Springs for two million and furious that her commission had been negotiated down to fifty thousand. It was hard to be sympathetic. Evidently real estate was the contemporary Lost Dutchman Mine only it was found. On the way home I checked Viv’s gift and it was a twenty, not much of a dent in my vet mudbath.

  A few days later I let out a victory cry from the porch at dawn when I finished re-naming our fifty states. Even as a neophyte I felt that tingling epiphany shared by many in the history of the arts. I was humble but this was a far cry from Marybelle’s verbal abuse about the project in Wyoming or Sylvia jokingly tossing me a teeny-weeny pad to sketch her body. Thoughts of Sylvia’s bare butt were sullying my exalted art thoughts so I took Lothar for a stroll around the forty acres. I saw an indigo bunting, a possible good omen, and then Lothar was bitten on the nose by a now rare blue racer snake. This was likely a coincidence. I mean the sky was also blue so how far can I go with the shades of blue in a bird or a snake? Lothar squealed from her nose bite and circled around the snake for a new angle of attack. She was furious when I grabbed her and hauled her away. Luckily she plays so hard for brief periods that her naps are very long.

  It was one of the better days of my life. I worked hard all morning, and for lunch shared some celebratory pork steak with Lothar who aggressively rends the meat with her baby teeth. After a fine nap I took Lothar for a long walk in order to exhaust her so I could go back to my remodeling without her playful intervention. During our walk she chased a wasp that had bitten her to exhaustion. I left a spade back by a seep near a tiny creek in hopes of uncovering a spring for a bathing hole. I have given up trying to stop Lothar from eating the worms in my spadefuls of dirt or the little frogs she jumps in the creek. It’s certain that she is never going to be a pretty girl what with her overlarge head and shoulders. The vet had guessed that her mother might have been a lab and bulldog mix but Lothar’s father was probably a larger mongrel. By evening I was quite tired and gave up the idea of driving to town for a few drinks and a look at the Saturday night ladies. Everyone knows the country roads are dangerous on Saturday night with the rich summer riff-raff swerving around at high speed in the expensive cars. Instead I had chicken soup in which I had chopped too many jalapenos and discovered again that a stiff single drink on the porch on a summer evening can be like going to the church of your “self.”

  In my twilight bedtime I looked at my card table desk with pride, the stacks of books and papers that they called “research tools” back at Michigan State University. And there in a cleared area was my list of the states and their new names, not that the states were gleaming in the gathering dark. I thought perhaps I should try to find an actual typewriter at a yard sale. I certainly wasn’t going to get suckered in on the computer craze and the shitstorm of emails people eat up their time with. I knew that an artist must stand alone off to the side of contemporary fashion.

  Unfortunately I was to discover that renaming the birds of North America was a much more volatile project. I joined a small group of birdwatchers very early one morning only to discover that the arts can be a cruel mistress indeed. I had seen on the post office bulletin board a notice of a meeting of a birding group and decided to go in hopes of meeting an amiable woman. I showed up at the Round Lake Preserve, a Nature Conservancy property at 5:30 a.m. There were a half dozen women in the parking lot, all of them older than me except for a retired teacher of Spanish from Detroit who attached herself to me like a decal. She was in her mid-fifties, named Mara, and had the unfortunate habit of sprinkling her monologues with Spanish phrases so that I never knew what she was talking about. The ladies all wore that rather eccentric sporting garb of birders and I
felt shabby with my cheap binoculars. We tromped around for an hour with the birding uneventful because most species were quiet during early August molting. I announced that I had seen a yellow warbler, but as a newcomer to the group it was apparent that I lacked credibility.

  The hideous denouement came out on the dock where we were all glassing a distant mother loon and her two nearly grown chicks. By this time everyone was pretty friendly and I was enjoying a vague feeling of desirability. The only untoward event had been when Mara had slipped near a large garter snake, then screeched and clutched at me in fear. My hand had inadvertently touched her breast and she leapt back giving me a cold stare as if I had done it on purpose. I couldn’t think of anything to say. Anyway, we were out on the dock and they were all behind me and I stupidly began rattling on about my art project of renaming the birds of North America. I recited a couple of dozen of my name changes including “the banker bird” for the nuthatch because it saves so many more seeds than it can eat, “the beige dolorosa” for the brown thrasher, the “Reubens” for the robin and so on. Far out on the lake the loon gave her lovely quavering call and I paused in my speech hearing a squeaky, keening sound behind me. I turned and all six of them had a look of horror as if they had found themselves standing in a sandbox chock full of dogshit. Norma, their leader, swung her hawthorne cane narrowly missing my nose. I stepped back barely saving myself from falling off the end of the dock. They hurled epithets at me like “pig”, “fool”, “you’re disgusting”, then turned and marched off the dock like storm troopers. It was certainly obvious that they didn’t want me to change the names of the birds of North America.