Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

by Sharyn McCrumb

  Mostly he was tired. His career as a poet had begun while he was in graduate school, when he had written a slim volume of poems commemorating the marriage of his former roommate, Norman Grant, to a cheerleader named Lee Locklear. The poems were tastefully obscure, so as not to resemble the bawdy limericks usually offered by groomsmen on such occasions. He had meant them as a gift, since he couldn’t afford so much as a shard of the expensive china pattern the couple had chosen, but the former roommate had been a literary type himself, and flattered by this poetic tribute, he had sent copies of Grant and Lee’s Union to The Carolina Quarterly and to various other prestigious Southern publications. The editors of those august journals, not apprised of the coming nuptials, assumed that the verses were a retrospective of the Civil War, and the verses were published to considerable acclaim in several magazines. The LSU Press brought out the entire collection the following year, and it won an obscure prize thanks to the presence of an LSU man and a Civil War buff on the panel of judges. After that, John Clay Hawkins found that people took it for granted that he wanted to continue being a poet, and to his surprise he found that he was rather good at it, so he kept writing. Long after Mrs. Lee Locklear Grant had dumped Norman Grant for a Wachovia Bank vice president, Hawkins continued to receive writing fellowships, and to spend a good part of his non-teaching time lecturing at various universities. After twenty years of unfailingly patient workshops and well-performed readings that people actually understood, Hawkins found himself enshrined in academic hearts somewhere between Robert Frost and Yoda, the Jedi Master of Star Wars. He bore beatification with quiet dignity, and went on writing simple, beautifully phrased poems about rural life. Sometimes, though, hearing the same old questions for the hundredth time that day left him feeling unutterably weary.

  He turned to smile at a twittery woman who was tugging at his elbow. “Tell me,” she said, through Bambi eyelashes, “where do you get your ideas for a poem?”

  An elegant woman also bent on speaking to him had overheard this remark. “Poets get ideas everywhere,” she snapped. “That’s what makes them poets!” Having thus frightened the church bulletin versifier out of the fold, the dark-eyed young woman offered her hand to John Clay Hawkins. “My name is Samari,” she purred. “I also write verse.”

  “You must meet Carter Jute,” Hawkins murmured, recognizing an example of his colleague’s taste in women.

  The woman ignored his ploy. “I especially wanted to speak to you. I have found the ranks of scholarly poetry to be rather a closed circle”-she glanced over at Jess Scarberry and shuddered delicately-“with good reason, perhaps. But I do think I have a special gift, and I’d like you to read my work and to suggest some places that I could send it.”

  As often as this trap had sprung shut on him, John Clay Hawkins had not yet devised a foolproof way to get out of it. He tried his first tactic: the Aw Shucks Maneuver. “Oh, I just buy Poet’s Market every year, and send ’em on out to whoever seems to like my sort of work,” he said modestly, studying the tops of his shoes.

  “Yes, but you’re a name,” Samari persisted. “I’m not. It would really help if you’d recommend it. Then I could say that you told me to send it to them.”

  Hawkins studied the jut of Connie Maria Samari’s jaw, and the sharklike glitter of her eyes, and he recognized the Type Three Poet, the Lady Praying Mantis. In relationships she eats her mate alive, and professionally, she is as singleminded as Attila the Hun. Struggling would only prolong and embitter the encounter. Worst of all, he actually had to look at her work. A simple “Send it to Bob at Whistlepig Review” would not satisfy her. She wanted a diagnosis based on a reading. “Well, bring it along later,” he sighed. “I’ll be in my room-406-after eleven. I’ll look at it then.”

  As she moved away in search of other prey, Hawkins remembered that he had also promised to have drinks with Jute, Snowfield, and Scarberry after eleven, and he had promised interviews or consultations with two other novices. Fortunately, Hawkins was a night person, and his lecture wasn’t until eleven the next morning. Surely, he thought, there must be quicker forms of martyrdom.

  Rose Hanelon, who went to bed with the chickens (exclusively), had been sound asleep for several hours when the pounding on her door called her forth from slumber. Groping for her eyeglasses and then her terry cloth bathrobe, she stumbled toward the door, propelled only by the thought of dismembering whoever she found when she opened it.

  “Miss Hanelon?” An anxious Margie Collier, looking as if she’d thrown her clothes on with a pitchfork, fidgeted in the doorway. The sight of a glaring gargoyle in a dressing gown did little to calm her. “Did I wake you?” she gasped. “I mean-I thought you writers worked late at night on your manuscripts.”

  “No,” said Rose between her teeth. “I’m usually out robbing graves at this hour, but it’s raining! Now what do you want?”

  “I’m sorry to disturb you, but since you are a mystery writer, we thought-Oh, Miss Hanelon, there’s been a murder!”

  “How amusing for you.” Rose started to close the door. “These little parlor games are of no interest to me, however.”

  “No! Not a murder game! A real murder. Someone has killed John Clay Hawkins!”

  “That is too bad,” said Rose, shaking her head sadly. “He wasn’t my first choice at all.”

  Eventually Margie Collier’s urgency persuaded Rose that the matter was indeed serious, and her next reaction was to ask why they had bothered to wake her about it, instead of calling the local police. “They aren’t here yet. Besides, we thought they might need some help,” said Margie. “The people at this writers’ conference are hardly the criminal types they’re used to.”

  “No, I suppose not. They’re the criminal types I’m used to.” She stifled a yawn. “All right. Give me ten minutes to get dressed. Oh, you might as well tell me about it while I do. Save time. What happened?”

  Margie sat down on the bed, and modestly fixed her eyes at a point on the ceiling while she recited her narrative. “About midnight, a woman named Samari went to Dr. Hawkins’s room to show him her manuscript-”

  “I’ve never heard it called that before-” Rose called from the bathroom.

  “She’s a poetess.” Margie’s tone was reproachful. “She knocked, and found the door ajar, and there he was, slumped in his chair at the writing table. Someone had hit him over the head with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

  “Was it empty?”

  “I believe so. There wasn’t any spilled on the body. Ms. Samari came and got me, not knowing what else to do.”

  “An empty whiskey bottle.” Rose wriggled a black sweater over her head. “Dylan Thomas would probably approve of that finale,” she remarked. “There. I’m ready. If you insist on doing this. I’ll bet the police shut down this show the minute they get here.”

  “Maybe so,” said Margie. “But that won’t be until sometime tomorrow. The storm is too bad to take a boat across. And they won’t risk a helicopter, either.”

  “What? We’re stuck here? What if somebody becomes seriously ill?”

  “I asked the hotel manager about that. He said there’s a registered nurse on the staff. Actually, she’s the dietician, but in an emergency-”

  “Never mind. I guess I’m elected. Let’s go investigate this thing.”

  Margie brightened. “It’s just like a mystery story, isn’t it?”

  “Not one that my editor would buy.”

  Although Rose Hanelon wrote what she liked to call traditional mysteries, she was well-versed in police procedure, first of all because she read widely within the genre, and secondly because the townhouse adjoining hers belonged to a police detective who liked to talk shop at his backyard cookouts. He particularly enjoyed critiquing the police procedurals written by Rose’s fellow authors. With no effort on her part, Rose had assimilated quite a good working knowledge of law enforcement. She wondered if it would serve her well in the current emergency. Probably not. People had to cooperate with po
lice officers, but they were perfectly free to ignore an inquisitive mystery writer, no matter how knowledgeable she was about investigative procedure.

  “Do you think you’ll be able to solve the crime?” asked Margie, who was scurrying along after Rose like a terrier in the wake of a St. Bernard.

  “I doubt it,” said Rose. “The police have computers, and other useful tools for ferreting out the truth. Paraffin tests, ballistics experts. If Joe Villanova had to use his powers of deduction to solve cases, he’d be in big trouble. He’s a police officer; lives next door to me. He’d probably arrest me for even trying to meddle in this case. Too bad he’s not here.”

  “Oh, but you’ve written so many mysteries!” said Margie. “I’m sure you know quite a bit.”

  “I can tell you who I want to be guilty,” Rose replied. “That’s what I do in my books.”

  “Do you want to examine Mr. Hawkins’s body?”

  “No. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t want to get hassled for tampering with evidence. Let’s just go and badger some suspects, shall we?”

  Margie nodded. “I asked the hotel manager to put the poets in the hospitality suite.”

  “I hope they didn’t bring along any manuscripts,” muttered Rose. “The very thought of being cooped up with a bunch of bards gives me hives.”

  “It seems strange, doesn’t it, to think of poets as murder suspects. They are such gentle people.”

  Rose Hanelon raised her eyebrows. “Have you ever been in an English department?”

  The door to the hospitality suite was open, and the sounds of bickering could be heard halfway down the hall. “I think we should just conduct a memorial service in Hawkins’s scheduled hour tomorrow,” Carter Jute was saying. “It would be a nice way to honor his memory. I wouldn’t mind conducting the service.”

  Jess Scarberry, the poet lariat, sneered. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind, Sonny, but remember that I’m also scheduled to do a reading at that hour. You’re not taking away my audience for some phony displays of grief.”

  Connie Samari, mothlike in a red-and-black polyester kimono, toyed with her crystal earrings. “I suppose we could all write commemorative poems in honor of John Clay Hawkins,” she murmured. “Read them at the memorial service.”

  Snowfield held up a restraining hand. “Just a moment,” he said. “I think that I am the obvious choice for regional poet laureate, now that Hawkins has shuffled off the mortal coil. In light of that, the hour ought to be spent introducing people to my own works, with perhaps a short farewell to Hawkins.” He shrugged. “I don’t care which of you does that.”

  The poets were so intent upon their territorial struggles that they did not notice the two self-appointed investigators watching them from the doorway. What, after all, was a trifle like murder compared to their artistic considerations?

  Amy Dillow, Hawkins’s graduate student, glared at the upstarts. Two spots of color appeared in her pale cheeks, and she drew herself up with as much dignity as one can muster when wearing a pink chenille bathrobe and bunny slippers. “I am appalled at your attitudes!” she announced. “John Clay Hawkins was a major poet, deserving of much greater recognition than he ever received. The idea of any of you assuming his mantle is laughable. I will conduct Dr. Hawkins’s conference hour myself. I have just completed a paper on the symbolism in the works of Hawkins, and it seems logical to read that tomorrow as we pause to consider his achievements.”

  Rose Hanelon strode into the fray, rubbing her hands together in cheerful anticipation. “Well, this won’t be hard!” she announced. “It sounds just like a faculty meeting in the English department.”

  The poets stopped quarreling and stared at her. “Who are you?” Snowfield demanded with a touch of apprehension. He didn’t think any major women poets had been invited to this piddling conference. Anyway, she wasn’t Nikki Giovanni, so she probably didn’t matter.

  “Relax,” said Rose. “If anybody called me a poet, I’d sue them for slander. I’m not here to replace Caesar, but to bury him. He was murdered, you know.”

  Amy Dillow sighed theatrically. “Now he belongs to the ages.”

  Margie Collier, ever the peacemaker, said, “Why don’t I get us some coffee while Miss Hanelon speaks to you about the murder. We thought it might be nice to get the preliminary questioning done while we wait for the police.” She hurried away before anyone could raise any objections to this plan, leaving Rose Hanelon alone with a roomful of egotists and possibly one murderer.

  The poets sat down in a semicircle and faced her with varying degrees of resentment. Some of them were sputtering about the indignity of being a suspect in a sordid murder case.

  Rose sighed. “I always find this the boring part of murder mysteries,” she confided to the assembly. “It seems to go on for pages and pages, while we listen to alibis, and tedious contradictory accounts of the deceased’s relationships with all present. And in order to find out who’s lying, I need access to outside documents detailing the life and loves of the victim. Obviously, I can’t do that, since we’re stormbound on this island.”

  “Perhaps we could tell the police that Hawkins committed suicide,” said Carter Jute. “That would protect us all from notoriety, and it’s very correct in literary circles. Hemingway, Sylvia Plath.”

  “We could blame it on Ted Hughes,” said Rose sarcastically, “but that wouldn’t be true, either. You’ll find that the police are awfully wedded to facts, as opposed to hopeful interpretation. They will investigate the crime scene, get fingerprints off the bottle, and that’ll be that.”

  “Surely the killer would wipe the fingerprints off the murder weapon?” said Snowfield. He reddened under the stares of everyone else present. “Well, I’ve read a few whodunits. After all, C. Day Lewis, the English poet laureate, wrote some under the name of Nicholas Blake.”

  “Never mind about the murder!” said Carter Jute. “What are we going to do about Hawkins’s time slot tomorrow?”

  “Yes,” said Rose. “Why don’t you discuss that among yourselves? And while you do, I’d like to read that paper on the life and works of John Clay Hawkins. Do you have it with you, Ms. Dillow?”

  Amy Dillow stood up, and yawned. “It’s in my room. I’ll get it for you. But why do you want to read it now?”

  “It helps to have a clear idea who the victim was,” said Rose.

  “Oh, all right.” She shuffled off in her bunny slippers. “I haven’t proofed it yet, though.”

  In the doorway she nearly collided with Margie Collier, who was returning with a pot of coffee and seven cups. She set the tray on the coffee table, and beamed at Rose Hanelon. “Have you solved it yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Rose. “It’s easier on television, where one of the actors is paid to confess. Real life is less tidy. This lot haven’t even decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour yet.”

  “Well, you could read John Clay Hawkins’s last poem,” said Margie. “The one he was writing when he died.”

  “He was working?” said Rose.

  “Yes. I looked at the paper under poor Mr. Hawkins’s hand when we examined his body. Of course, we can’t remove the actual paper from the room. I’m sure the police would object to that, but I did make a copy while I was waiting for the hotel manager to arrive. Would you like to see it?” She fished a sheet of hotel stationery out of the pocket of her robe and handed it to Rose.

  “Read it aloud!” Snowfield called out. The others nodded assent.

  “Oh, all right,” grumbled the mystery writer. “I knew you would find some way to turn this into a poetry reading.” Holding the paper at arm’s length, she squinted at the spidery writing, and recited:

  There’s this guy.

  his name is Norman

  and he’s sitting in a white room.

  he’s sitting in a white room,

  but you might as well call it

  white death.

  Norman is holding death like

  a white peach to the windowr />
  and turning,

  turning death

  like the dial of a timer

  in the white light of the sun.

  death begins to tick.

  Norman puts death down

  and stares with his white eyes

  at the white wall.

  his shadow is white and moves

  without him around the white room.

  then death goes off.

  She lowered the paper and blinked at the assortment of poets. “That is the most stupid and pointless thing I have ever read. Do any of you bards get any meaning out of that?”

  Jess Scarberry shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, these professor types don’t have to make sense. If you don’t understand what they write, they reckon it’s your fault.”

  Snowfield scowled at him. “It seems clear enough to me. Hawkins was obviously contemplating his own mortality. Perhaps he had a premonition. Keats did.”

  Rose Hanelon rolled her eyes. “Keats had medical training and symptoms of tuberculosis. I’d hardly call that a premonition. I should have thought that if Hawkins foresaw his own murder, he’d have gotten out of there, rather than sit down and write a poem about it. Still, with poets, you never know.”

  “Who’s Norman?” asked Margie with a puzzled frown.

  “A metaphor for Everyman,” said Carter Jute.

  Connie Samari snickered. “Everyman. How typical of the male poet’s arrogance! And I think that poem stinks!”

  “I expect it’s over your head,” said Snowfield.