by Jack Cady
Friday was when everybody talked about other places.
This Friday Mrs. Keeper told them about children who live in Spain. She showed pictures of dancers. She showed a man swinging a red cape, and the picture of a cow with horns.
“Bloody bastards,” Henry the rabbit said, “Bedad.”
“Your label,” said Gruff, and not unkindly, “says ‘made in Hong Kong’. Hong Kong is no longer a British protectorate. So let’s can the ‘bedad’.”
“Jolly well right,” said Candace to Henry. “Kindly can the ‘bedad’.”
“Topping good suggestion,” said Waterbury.
“Splendid, really.”
“Unless,” said Gruff, “you Feel like a tweed rabbit. In which case it is self-expression.”
“Smashing,” Henry said, but he did not say ‘bedad’, and it never said it ever again.
“Because,” said Gruff, “in the case of the missing . . . ”
Claymore, self-expression of a crude sort is at the bottom of the mystery.” Gruff attempted to look stern, but then sniggered. “There is such a thing as poetic license, and then there is licentious license.”
Jerome was so interested in Spain that he almost did not hear Gruff. “Claymore?” Jerome said.
“Muchacho,” said Gruff. “Pay attention. Our time is no longer much.”
“A flamingo dancer,” Sally said. “With a long red dress and red flowers in my hair.” Sally’s eyes were looking straight at Mrs. Keeper, and Sally’s eyes were dreamy.
“Flamenco,” growled Gruff. “Gringa.”
“From those bleeders who brought you the Inquisition,” said the stuffed rabbit Henry. “The Armada. The Popish enterprises . . . ,” and then Henry stopped talking because he saw that no one heard him anymore.
“Pretend,” Gruff said with an absolute roar, “that you are a bull fighter.” Gruff made snickety-snick noises. They were the kind of noises that Jerome’s father made at Thanksgiving. Jerome’s father went snickety-snick with a knife when he sharpened the carving knife on a stone stick.
“Pretend,” Gruff said with an absolutely bigger roar, “that Mrs. Keeper’s flowery satchel is a bull.”
Jerome looked at Mrs. Keeper’s flowery satchel. It seemed to be moving a little.
“Take this sword,” Gruff roared, and then went “snickety-snick, snickety-snick.”
“Oh help,” screamed a voice from Mrs. Keeper’s flowery satchel. “Oh, don’t, oh, please.”
A fat gray streak rapidly turned into a fat gray bubble as it fled from the flowery satchel and rolled over and over across the floor. It screamed as it rolled.
“That,” said Gruff, “is the fattest and most wanton looking mouse I have ever seen.” He turned to Henry. “May I present Claymore.”
“Henry isn’t talking anymore,” said Candace. “But yep, that’s our Claymore. That’s our boy.”
The first grade had not been so relieved since Peter Rabbit got away from Mr. MacGregor’s cabbage patch. Everybody had to pet Claymore. Nobody heard Claymore yelling. Claymore was yelling, “Don’t hug me, for God’s sake don’t hug me.”
“If they hug him he’ll urp,” Candace predicted.
“Serve him right,” said Waterbury. Then Waterbury began to complain. “Serve them right if they get urped on. It seems that they no longer hear me.”
“Ah,” said Gruff, “and here is the prodigal himself.” Mrs. Keeper sat Claymore back on the table.
“I owe it all to sloth and greed,” Claymore said happily. He rolled on his back. His tummy was so round that even if he raised his head and his tail, he could not see the tip of his tail. “I owe it mostly to greed,” he explained with a good deal of satisfaction, ”but sloth has its place and should receive some credit.”
“You fell into Mrs. Keeper’s satchel. That accounts for the muffled scream,” said Candace.
“Scared hell out me,” said Claymore. “Then I realized I’d fallen square onto a cheese sandwich. Potato chips on the side.”
“And so you stayed there,” said Waterbury. “Riding back and forth between school and Mrs. Keeper’s house.”
“A moveable feast,” said Claymore. “I coulda et forever, man. Mrs. Keeper didn’t miss a crumb. She kept that satchel loaded.”
“A doomed enterprise, nonetheless,” said Gruff. “Mrs. Keeper is no longer stuffing herself during recess. You may have been too busy to notice, but for the last two days nothing new has been tossed into that satchel.
“I knew what had to be happening,” Gruff continued.
“Your reputation preceded you. There are no mouse holes in the cloakroom, so you could not be hiding. I trusted your greed to keep you close to your supplier. The only time I was thrown off was when you ate the cookie crumbs.”
“Why?” asked Candace. “It looks like he’ll eat anything. In fact, it looks like he has.”
“Because he would have had to stray from the sanctuary of Mrs. Keeper’s flowery satchel,” Gruff said.
“Goody-two-shoes Annabel swept up those crumbs when she went to the supply closet for chalk,” said Claymore. “I didn’t give a hang for those crumbs.”
“Zounds,” said the stuffed rabbit Henry. “That’s my last word. You’ll hear no more from me. Zounds.”
“And so it ends,” said Gruff. “And it ends well.” He turned to the fish tank. “Ebb and Flow and Waterbury, worthy thanes. Candace,” and he turned to Candace, “Our rudder in some heavy seas . . . .”
“Cliché,” said the stuffed rabbit Henry. “That’s my last word. You’ll hear no more from me. Cliché.”
“And stout hearted Henry,” Gruff said. He looked about. Mrs. Keeper was smiling. Claymore was holding his tummy and groaning. The first grade looked like the red sparkles one finds on a Christmas cookie. The first grade was busy listening to Mrs. Keeper.
Except for Jerome and Sally. Jerome and Sally were whispering. Tomorrow was Saturday. Jerome and Sally were planning to get up at daylight and go to the secret fort. They were planning to practice all day. Surely by night, they would be the world’s best flamingo dancers.
Epilogue
Since it was so late in the year, after Thanksgiving, the days were short. By the time Mr. Keeper got around to cleaning up the first grade classroom the sun was a red glow in the windows. Mr. Keeper moved around the classroom in the dim light. He was too stooped to be a young man, but he moved too easily to be an old man. He emptied waste baskets. He swept. He brushed the chalk board. He sprinkled food for Ebb and Flow and Waterbury. Mr. Keeper’s shadow got more and more invisible as the darkness grew. Mr. Keeper did everything so easily that anyone watching him would say that he loved the classroom.
Mr. Keeper finished just before his shadow sank all the way into the dark floor. He looked around to make sure he had done all of his work. Then he went to the front of the classroom and picked up Mrs. Keeper’s chair. He brought the chair back to the animal table. He sat in the chair and watched the animals.
“When I asked you here,” he said to Gruff, “I didn’t know whether it would work or not. As one poet to another, I must say that you are a magnificent bear.”
“No I’m not,” said Gruff. “I’m not cuddly and I’m not nice. I’m not a very good bear at all.”
“The bear we needed . . . ,” Mr. Keeper murmured.
“Not a good bear,” said Gruff, “and not a good teacher. I’m not even sure I’m a good poet. “
“Ah hah, “ said Mr. Keeper. “I know what ails you. A big job just completed. It is what the sainted Conrad called ‘revulsion in the face of the completed fact’. In other words, you’ve got the blues.”
“Times like this,” Gruff said helplessly, “you want to call them back and explain what you really meant.”
“That’s teaching,” said Mr. Keeper. “Brother, that’s teaching, that ain’t only poetry.”
“Hurts bad enough to be poetry,” Gruff muttered.
“Take it from an old hand,” said Mr. Keeper, and he looked fondly th
rough the darkening windows to the dark trees beyond. “You don’t teach them a thing they’ll remember. They are busy growing up, busy with happy and unhappy things like baby brothers. By tomorrow half of them will not even remember you. What they will remember is that when they were kids there was somebody who stood for something. A few will even remember what that something was.”
“Poetry.”
“Don’t crap me with poetry,” Mr. Keeper said. “Poetry is nothing but life and love on the hoof. A poet ropes it and takes it and shapes it. What are you, a nihilist?”
“A confused bear,” Gruff said. “A bear with a call, and tomorrow morning early a bear who is headed out to some burg on the other side of the state. Farm town. Class in trouble. “
“Lot of Mexican farm laborers over that way.”
“I got a little red cape,” said Gruff. “Got a goddamn Zorro hat with silver trim. Got a book of Spanish poetry.”
“And got the blues,” said Mr. Keeper.
“Who learned what?” Gruff looked at the fish tank. “Hey, fish.”
There was no answer. The fish were eating fish food.
“I learned something,” Gruff said. “I learned something about humility. Not at all sure that’s a good thing for a poet to know.”
“Think it over for a few years,” Mr. Keeper said.
“Meanwhile, you said ‘a class in trouble’. Was this class in trouble?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“The teacher was in trouble,” Mr. Keeper said. “Just as much trouble as you’ve got now, and for a lot the same reasons.”
“Gotcha,” Gruff said. “That helps. Maybe that’s why I’m headed to the apple and alfalfa belt.” Gruff took off his red beret. He handed it to Mr. Keeper. “Yours is kind of fadey,” he said apologetically. “Plus I’ve got that Zorro hat. “
“We’ll trade,” said Mr. Keeper. He pulled his faded hat from his pocket and passed it to Gruff.
“This hat is full of cigars,” Gruff said in an amazed voice. He sniffed. “Fresh cigars.”
“For the road,” Mr. Keeper said.
The Girl in the Orange Hat
In San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park there is an outdoor amphitheatre where a band plays every Sunday in fine weather. My wife and I always attend the concert.
It is a good place. The program is a mixture of classical, folk, show tunes and pop. It does not require great commitment from the listener, serving me as a leisure time before the inanities of the coming week at the gallery. There I will sell noisy art to noisy people, and only occasionally put a dearly bought painting in the hands of someone who respects the work.
A good place. Sea gulls make slanting wheels in the air, squawking and white against a flat and unfathomable blue. There is sound and color; the band, people’s chatter, and occasional individual performances on sitar, guitar or flute. Street people come wearing tiny brass bells, beads and round eyeglasses. They tinkle past.
The bandmen’s uniforms are black with gold trim and their instruments are gold. The band shell is washed gray concrete. It is framed by the silver and green eucalyptus which rise more than two hundred feet to intercept the wheeling gulls. A concession sells popcorn and hotdogs. There is a picnic smell. It is a large city’s aspiration to our memories of small-town bandstands and Saturday nights.
My wife and I bring a blanket to sit on the lawn near one of the high-splashing fountains. Except on very hot days it is a sensual pleasure to be warmed by direct sunlight. We watch each other. At thirty (eight years younger than I) my wife is both beautiful and beautifully proportioned. I can imagine her living in some antique time, sacrificing flowers to Mayan gods. When she dozes on the blanket I sometimes sketch her. Children gather and often wake her with cries:
“Hey, neat!”
“Hey, mister. Draw my dog.”
The rest of the people are more sophisticated. They do not trouble us. When my wife wakes it is never to loss. We watch the diversity of people who pass. My wife is a poet. You would easily recognize her name. She is a watcher, a creator whose need to express sometimes confounds me. There is a troubling undercurrent in some of her work. Fear, perhaps, or shyness. At other times she internalizes the world and writes of it indignantly. Her best work is courageous, but sometimes she uses only the courage of compulsion.
Many people at the concerts are old. Pensioners. They sit on benches beneath carefully pruned sycamores that stand in long rows to form a canopy of leaves. Some tourists come, attracted from the nearby Japanese tea garden. Many families attend. There are always girls looking for husbands and men looking for girls. They are shy on these days, perhaps because the band evokes a sense of earlier days which held the strictures of thou-shalt-not. They glance covertly at each other and seem trying to bolster their courage to express mutual longing. The wiser or more desperate girls have pet dogs on leashes. The dogs are good emissaries. Marriages are surely arranged by poodle, dachshund, and beagle.
There is a lonesomeness present. Not lonely. I always believe that the people will be lonely again on Monday morning when they return to their jobs through the big-city traffic. No. Lonesome, which I take to mean as not being at home and not being on loving ground. A great number of people in San Francisco were reared hundreds or thousands of miles away. The westward migration is larger than ever. I look at them and wonder why they came; their only tie to Cleveland or Wheeling, the telephone cables across the Rockies, the familiar handwriting on a letter. Then I think that they had no notion when they came of walking through a park on Sunday, walking through murmuring crowds where their singleness has a Goya starkness; the effect of unmasked sunlight flooding white concrete. They pre-empt the scenery.
Worse, the families are that way. They come together, men and women and children, with dogs and an occasional cat. They move privately and speak of private matters. There is no sense of community. Instead, there is fragmentation so that the crowd becomes units of one with feet that point outward and lips that speak away. I feel these things generally. In the specifics they are not always true. Sometimes there is a special occasion, Irish-American day, Hungarian day. Then there is a feeling of community that makes the starkness of the alone people a special painfulness to watch.
It was that way with the girl in the orange hat. She is a tall girl of slight figure who is eternally twenty-eight because she has not dared to become older.
When we first saw her we were sitting on the lawn. I was sketching. The girl came down steps leading in the direction of the art museum which houses the Brundage collection. The collection is a proud mix of good and bad. See it if possible.
She came slowly, magnificently postured. At first I did not see. My wife directed my attention.
“Look,” she said, “Sacagawea. I love her.” My wife’s inheritance is a mix of Mexican-Spanish-Indian. Enough to help her beauty. Enough also to make her conscious of the beauty in either distinct or modified racial traits. She looks for particularity of beauty.
“Sacagawea was probably short and fat,” I told her. “She had white babies.” I regretted my speech. My wife’s enthusiasm was registering as I spoke. Perhaps the sunlight made my mind lazy. I tried to call it back.
“The lower lip . . . .”
“Is perfect,” she told me. We have been married long enough for her to know what constitutes apology. A gift for understanding. Men place trust as well as speak of it when they marry. I understand good fortune.
The girl was splendid. Her heritage probably lay in North Carolina or Oklahoma, if Cherokee. If not, then Creek or from one of the tall and beautiful peoples of the Northeast. I have seen it before, but seldom, the serenity implied by features. Rounded high cheeks, deep eyes, and an unusual small excessiveness about the mouth that is not sensuous but hints of thrill. A classical nose, a fine forehead, she would be a fit subject to be painted by genius. A second rate painter would tremble.
Her hair was black. Soft, long and black. It was the classical notion of Indian hair a
nd she had been good enough to leave it that way. Her color was frail white. Translucent. Third generation. Fourth generation.
“By Indian parents, by parents the same,” my wife murmured. “Look at her walk, it didn’t come from the avenues.”
And it did not. The posture did not come from schoolyard playgrounds where tall girls stoop to their self-consciousness. There was absolute fluidity in the walk. It was as smooth as the joyous movement of an otter.
The girl did not seem joyous. There was a passive reserve. It was not until she passed near and we saw her eyes that we pondered interior questions. Her eyes were dark and intense, eyes that I saw as filled with brooding and confusion. If she painted I would know. The deep things come out and rough up the conception. Even Renoir. The girl passed and was soon lost in the crowd, although for a time we could trace her by the flash of her orange knit dress and the small orange hat low against her dark hair.
“It is necessary to love,” my wife said as we walked from the park to find our car. She seemed trying to remain detached but her voice was sad. “We all feel what that girl knows, or most do who have learned to sense as well as think. It’s cruel to be alone.”
“You always know too much.” I smiled and dug for my keys, watching her because she was speaking and because she is beautiful. Her hair is also long. Her hair is dark; deep, and it fills my face when I love her. It fills my mind when I think of her.
“You don’t have to meet someone to know them,” she said.
She pleases me with story telling. It is her gift.
We drove across Geary, then California, and through the Presidio. There are easier ways to get to North Beach but none better.
“She is more than thirty,” my wife said. “She was raised in a small town or near a small town where there was no one except family. It’s possible she did not enter school at the proper age. Maybe that still makes her afraid.”
“Why?”
“Maybe she had nothing to wear. Perhaps there was no school. There may have been discrimination.”