The Tokyo-Montana Express

by Richard Brautigan

Then I asked him about television on Death Row. He told me that they have a television set for every three cells and the men have remote control devices in their cells so they can change the channels if they want to. There are earphones for the sound and they can watch movies all night on Channel 7.

  He told me that the men were influenced by the advertising on television and will suddenly start ordering a certain product from the canteen after it’s been advertised on television.

  I had an immediate vision of the prisoners of Death Row all ordering brand-new Fords from the canteen.

  “What’s the favorite food on Death Row?” I asked. Mr. Park called a guard on the telephone.

  “Uh-huh. Mexican food. And steaks. They get steaks twice a week.”

  After a while Warden Wilson came in and we all sat around and talked about Death Row, capital punishment, the courts, the gas chamber, rich people and poor people and the difference between them when they start murdering other people and what happens then. It’s all been repeated a billion times and we repeated it once more.

  But I found the tamale loaf that was going to be served Thursday for dinner on Death Row far more exciting than the fact that ninety percent of the prison administrators in the country are against capital punishment.

  I was by now holding the menu in my lap, and even then, as we talked about Death Row, I knew the menu was my equipment for a perfect vision of Death Row. I knew that I could go a long way on the menu, and that’s what I planned on doing.

  Associate Warden Park showed me a “good” book to read called The Death Penalty in America, but it did not look nearly as interesting as the roast leg of pork on Tuesday.

  Finally, I took my menu and left. I was no longer curious as to how many Death Rows could stand on the end of a needle. I wanted to know something else. Returning to San Francisco on the bus, I cradled the menu gently in my lap and carefully planned its future.

  That evening a friend came over to my house. He’s an aspiring Hollywood scriptwriter and he was looking for someone to type a manuscript of his, so he could sell it to the movies and become rich and famous and invite me to come stay with him in LA, and think the good thoughts while floating around in his new swimming pool.

  Before he found a typist, we were sitting in the kitchen drinking dark April-like bock beer. It was not by accident that I showed him the Death Row menu. It was time for the menu to go to work. I just handed it to him and said, “Take a look at this.”

  “What do you have there, Richard?” He took a look at the menu and it did not please him. His face tensed and became a nervous gray. “That’s the Pop Art that hurts,” he said.

  “You think so, huh?” I said.

  “Yes, it’s sick,” he said. “It’s like that sculpture. You know the kind that has drawers full of dead babies.”

  The menu was lying in front of him on the table and it said that for breakfast on Saturday the men on Death Row would have a

  California Orange

  Cornflakes

  Plain Omelet

  Crisp Bacon

  French Toast

  Maple Syrup

  Toast—Bread—Oleo

  Coffee—Milk

  My friend’s reaction to the menu assured me that I was on the right track. This menu was a very powerful and strange experience. I must find other things that it can do, I thought.

  The next day I showed the menu to some poet friends of mine. They are gentle poets who live in an old Victorian house surrounded by trees and sometimes they do not have enough food to eat. We were all sitting in the kitchen.

  One of the poets looked at the menu very carefully for a long time and then said, “It’s frightening, obscene and disgusting.”

  The other poet looked at the menu and said, “Look at all that food. I love crisp bacon. I haven’t had any bacon in a year. Look at all that food. The men up there must really get fat. It’s like nailing the goose to the floor and then feeding him to death. Why don’t they give this food to a poet?”

  “Because a poet didn’t kill anyone,” the other poet replied.

  Ah, to journey with a Death Row menu through the streets of San Francisco and to nurture its expanding vision, its search for new reality in a tired old thing.

  I carried the menu in a Manila envelope past innocent and unassuming people going to the store to buy halibut steak for dinner and then to fall asleep while watching television on Channel 7.

  I visited another friend. He works at night and we had a cup of coffee together. We gossiped and got caught up with our lives and then I said, “I want to show you something.”

  “Sure.”

  I took out the menu and handed it to him. Ile read the menu and his face changed from a sitting-here-having-a-cup-of-coffee face to a very serious face.

  “What do you think?” I said.

  “It’s so stark, so real,” he said. “It’s like a poem. This menu alone condemns our society. To feed somebody this kind of food who is already effectively dead represents all the incongruity of the whole damn thing. It’s senseless.”

  I looked clown at the menu lying there on the table and for dinner Tuesday the men on Death Row were having

  Spaghetti Soup

  Beet and Onion Salad

  Vinaigrette Dressing

  Roast Leg O Pork

  Brown Sauce

  Ground Round Steak

  Mashed Potatoes

  Cream Style Corn

  etc.

  And this to become senseless? How could beet and onion salad condemn our society? I always thought we were a little stronger than that. Was it possible for this menu to be a menace to California if it fell into the wrong hands?

  I spent the day showing the menu to people, curious and travelling all over San Francisco and leaving in my wake the food for seven days on Death Row.

  Finally, I ended up at the house of a friend who is a straight-A student at San Francisco State College. His daughter was playing on the floor. She was wearing a very beautiful striped shirt.

  She was reciting her letters from an alphabet book while her father read the menu. He read it slowly and with precision. Actually he was hunched over it.

  “S is for Santa Claus.”

  She is a bright little girl four years old and looks like Clara Bow come to visit us again in child form.

  “It’s a menu,” her father said, after he had finished reading the menu. “And a menu is the description of a meal that never existed.”

  My friend is an intellectual who takes a fierce but quiet pride in the use of intelligence. He’s pleased by his brain.

  “It’s not a salad,” he said, pointing at a salad on the menu. “It’s the obligation of a salad to be fulfilled.”

  “I guess you can look at it that way,” I said.

  His wife came home from work. She works at a hospital and she looked tired. The day had been very long. I showed the menu to her. As she looked at it, her mouth twitched and her face grimaced. “Horrible,” she said. “It’s horrible. Just horrible,” and handed it back to me as if it were something vile, pornographic.

  After a while the little girl put her alphabet book down. She was tired of it. As a kind of sad finale, she said hopelessly, “N is for Nest up in the tree.”

  Her father and I were talking about the menu. We had a long conversation about reality being twice removed from the menu. It was a long and deep conversation where the menu became a kind of thought diving bell going deeper and deeper, deeper and deeper until we were at the cold flat bottom of the sea, staring fish-like at the colored Easter eggs that were going to be served next Sunday on Death Row.

  The Convention

  Last week I saw two Japanese dwarfs on the same day, maybe an hour apart, walking along the same street. They were a perfect study of random chance, an example of how life is completely out of control.

  You never know what is going to happen next.

  I have always been fascinated by dwarfs. Whenever I see a dwarf, it almost takes my breath aw
ay. To me they are like watching magic. Many people think that dwarfs are like little children. That is one of their first thoughts, but not one of mine.

  I can never imagine a dwarf ever having had a childhood. I think they were born just the way they are and are actually about sixty years old. I believe they were that old when they were born and learning how to talk was not a problem because they already knew how.

  When I say these things, I am very carefully telling what I think. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I know that they are feeling, compassionate human beings who have to deal with extraordinary problems. I would never dare take that away from them.

  But still they are magic to me…

  Maybe there was a convention of dwarfs in Tokyo and I saw the entire convention an hour apart from each other.

  In Pursuit of

  the Impossible Dream

  I don’t know why I think she should be at home with her child. They have as much right to walk around as I do, perhaps even more. A child needs to get out of the house, not stay indoors until it becomes the faded water of a child.

  But still…

  I see her on the street more times than often, always with her child. She is about thirtyish and I think some kind of European. She has fading good looks, her edges are turning in, and a tooth is missing. I don’t know why she doesn’t replace the tooth. It’s not that she’s poor. This is a good neighborhood and she doesn’t look out of place.

  I have a couple of teeth missing, too, and I certainly can’t blame her for it. Why don’t I replace my teeth? So as you can see, there is more here than meets the eye.

  Her child is a very animated little girl who is always cheerfully dressed and clean as a whistle. There’s no reason for me to get upset when I see them, and who am I to judge how often and how long they can wander around outside?

  But still…

  I see them half a dozen or a dozen times a day and I can guarantee you that I do not go out looking for them. I don’t set the alarm clock. I don’t carry around a timetable and I certainly do not use a stopwatch!

  But still…

  I wonder how many times I don’t see them. Of course I know that life is not easy, it is not what we planned, and I must not forget that whenever I am seeing them, they are also seeing me.

  The Old Testament Book

  of the Telephone Company

  We all have adventures with the telephone company that could be right out of the Old Testament: things along the line of the Red Sea engulfing and drowning the pursuing Pharaoh’s army, except all you wanted to do was call a friend and say hello. You did not want to drag Moses and his people back into bondage in Egypt.

  That was not your intent, you keep telling yourself. You just wanted to make a long distance call to a friend. “Hello, Mike, how’s it going? Are you happy in Cleveland?”

  I have nothing but troubles with the telephone company: getting calls through, wrong billings, broken and distorted service. “Hello? Hello?” desperately whining into a void at the other end of our star system.

  I even have lots of trouble getting a telephone in the first place, so that I can have all the rest of the problems. “You mean, I can’t possibly have a telephone put in until the year 3009? That’s ridiculous! I want to speak to your supervisor.”

  Then I speak to the supervisor who assures me that a mistake was made regarding the earliest installation date for a telephone being the year 3009. The supervisor promises me that I will be able to have a telephone in 2564.

  “That’s not soon enough. I want to talk to my friends and relatives while I’m still alive. Give me the manager!”

  “Hello,” the manager says, in a Saint Francis of Assisi voice.

  I tell him about talking to one person who told me that I wouldn’t be able to get a telephone until the year 3009, and then talking to another person who said 2564 was the earliest I could get one.

  I continue ranting and raving, driven crazy by the telephone again. I tell the manager that I will have been dead for hundreds of years before the telephone is put in and that you can’t talk after you’re dead, and even if I could talk after I’m dead, I wouldn’t have anybody to talk to because all my friends would be dead.

  The manager—anyway, he says he’s the manager and I have to believe him—listens sympathetically. “Yes,” he says, understandingly. “I know,” he says, soothing as a mint. “By the way,” he says, affectionately. “Where are you calling from now?”

  “A telephone booth,” I say.

  “It’s snowing hard outside,” he says, compassionately. “You must be cold and uncomfortable. This is the worst winter we’ve had this century.”

  “I am cold,” I say.

  By now I think I’ve made a new friend.

  “What is the earliest I can get a telephone?” I ask, my voice calmed down by the elixir of his kindness. “I need one right now,” I say. “There are people standing outside this booth who want to use the telephone. One of them has a hook for a hand and there’s a young man with a tuba that has furry ants crawling all over it. I think the ants have little teeth. These people look hostile, especially an old woman who is carrying what appears to be a razor-sharp umbrella. When can I have a telephone in my house?” I plead, all self-respect long gone.

  “Because you’re a special case,” he says, softly, “I’ll put down the year 2305 and I’ll make that a rush order to make sure that you get it. But if it’s a decade one way or the other, don’t let it bother you. When will you be home, so we can put the telephone in?”

  The old woman is now circling the telephone booth with her umbrella. It looks as if it could take the head off a charging rhino with one quick stroke.

  “What about the old lady?” I whisper.

  “Make friends with her,” he whispers. “New acquaintances can provide stimulating company. Now, when will you be home, so that we can make an appointment for your new service?”

  “That’s 327 years in the future,” I say.

  “Between 8 and 12 in the morning or 1 and 5 in the afternoon?” he continues.

  “Maybe she doesn’t want to be my friend,” I whisper.

  “I don’t know why that should be,” he whispers back. “You’ve got a marvelous personality. I already like you.”

  Breakfast in Beirut

  This was not always my line of business. Once I travelled extensively throughout the world and my travels often took me to Beirut.

  I used to love having breakfast in Beirut. There was a German restaurant near the hotel, and I would go there every morning and have breakfast; sauerbraten, red cabbage, and hot potato salad. Then I would have a double-order of Wiener schnitzel.

  I would drink three bottles of beer with breakfast and finish with a piece of apple strudel and a glass of schnapps. It is always a good idea to start the day off with a hearty German breakfast in Beirut.

  Another Montana School

  Gone to the Milky Way

  Everything was there but the school. There were yellow signs on the road telling approaching motorists to drive carefully because there was a school nearby.

  On the signs were silhouettes of a boy and a girl carrying books under their arms. The signs were designed to inspire careful driving, so that the children attending the school would grow up to be responsible citizens. Too bad there wasn’t a school there.

  I think of all the people who have slowed down and driven carefully but never saw the school and wondered where it was at and a lot of them probably thought that they just didn’t see it, that it was their fault: How could I have missed the school?

  It was very easy because the school wasn’t there. I used to drive past there all the time on my way fishing up the valley and there would be the school and children playing outside at recess or they would be inside learning how to count and who the tenth President of the United States was.

  Two years ago I didn’t go by there for a few weeks, maybe it was a month and when I drove past I was very eager to go fishing and didn’t p
ay much attention to the school. I just assumed that it was there because it had been there for years and schools just don’t get up and walk away.

  When I drove back later that evening in the last stages of twilight, I noticed something was different as I went past the school but tricked by the hypnosis of memory and a firm belief in reality, I almost saw the school but something was different about the school and I couldn’t quite figure it out.

  There was something wrong with the school, I kept thinking off and on for the next few weeks, but I still couldn’t figure it out. I had no reason to drive up that way, so it remained a small mystery in my life.

  Then I went fishing again up that way and this time I looked very carefully at the school and it of course was gone. The school had been taken someplace and I still have no idea where, and I don’t know why they moved it.

  So now the signs are still there cautioning people to drive carefully because there is a school nearby. I wonder why they didn’t take the signs with them when they took the school.

  Maybe they forgot the signs or they didn’t need them any more, so what we have here is the case of a missing school. I hope that it’s still on this planet and not taken totally away.

  Four People in Their Eighties

  I have been reading a book here in Tokyo about Groucho Marx. The book describes his life and wit when he was in his eighties. I read a few pages at a time. I skip around the book and lie in my hotel bed and read about Groucho Marx as an old man. Then I look out the window at a Times-Square lit section of Tokyo called Shinjuku. I have a little Groucho and a little Shinjuku. It makes an interesting balance and interlude for my life here in Tokyo.

  A couple of weeks ago a Japanese poet came and had lunch with me, Ile was in his late forties and we talked about a great many subjects; Western movies, poetry, the difference between Japan and America, literature, Montana weather, writers that we liked and other things that interested us.

  I liked the poet’s intelligence. It was quick and honest. At one point I had finished saying something and then there was a pause and I could feel that he wanted to say something that was very important. He was looking at the words in his mind very carefully before he made them real by speaking.