A Guitar and a Pen

by Robert Hicks

  Well my father hadn’t said anything as yet but I could tell he could’ve said plenty. He got up slow and said, “Look, this whole thing’s getting out of hand. It’s nothing to get excited about.” He said it was just a natural rock, and it didn’t seem to him there was anything anybody could or should do about it. If you didn’t like it, he said, you shouldn’t pay any attention to it.“I didn’t ask anybody but Earl Bright to come see it, and no one has to see it that doesn’t want to,” he said.

  A man got up and said, “How can we ignore it when that image of a leering strumpet is always over our shoulder? What kind of thing is that to show our kids?”

  I didn’t know what a strumpet was, but I agreed with him— it was a pretty hard thing to ignore. My father stood there, working his jaw like he does when he’s about to blow up about something, but he didn’t, and he said, “Well, let me know when you decide what to do.” We stomped out of the church.

  After that there were a lot of articles in the Herald about it, which my father read out loud to my mother, and it looked like they were hearing about it all over the state. More people than ever came to see it since the meeting, and the kids were always sneaking over to take a look. My father read us where a board of censors was studying it and that they weren’t allowing any more pictures to be taken. One minister said it was made by God and couldn’t be bad and we should leave it like it was, and some others followed him up— ones my father called “crackpots”— and tried to start a new religion about it. He said the nudists were claiming that it was proof that God was on their side, and that Billy Graham said it was proof that we were all going to hell.

  Then one day a bunch of men and women came storming up in pickup trucks, and the men had guns. A man got out of the first pickup and I saw it was the man that had said that about the rock being a slap in the face, and he came up to my father and said, “Leonard Tipton”— which sounded funny because no one ever calls my father Leonard— “Leonard Tipton, since you refuse to do anything about this, we’re taking matters into our own hands!” And he wheeled around and went blustering back to his pickup before my father could say anything. They all pulled out and went down the road to the rock, and pretty soon all the people started pouring out of there, and one of them told my father that the men with the guns had made them leave, and had set up a guard around it.

  My father went into the garage and got the jeep, and I jumped in, and we drove to the rock. The men were standing pretty far from it with their guns, and my father pulled up the jeep.“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he said. I looked at the rock and saw that they had taken a great big canvas tarp and covered up all but the head of the woman. It really looked silly, I’ll tell you, with that grinning head sticking over the top of the tarp. I’m not sure it didn’t look worse than before. And they had the tarp staked down at the sides so it wouldn’t come off. I thought it looked funny enough, but the men guarding it were serious, so I didn’t laugh or anything. My father didn’t say anything, he just put the jeep in reverse and we wheeled out of there.

  Well the thing was up before the state council for about a week, and we weren’t too popular around then. My father said the people were acting like idiots, and he quit talking to them and they quit talking to him. My mother said that maybe even if he was right, he ought to be sympathetic with the neighbors’ feelings and tell them he’d do whatever they wanted him to do about it.

  He said, “Oh, for Christ’s sake, Alice, they’ve completely lost their senses. They’re making this thing into some goddamned monster or something.” Then he laughed and pointed to the newspapers.“Or if they’re not doing that, they’re practically worshipping it!”

  He said, “It’s only a rock!” and she said, “Oh, Len, do you always have to be so difficult?” and I said, “What’s so only about a rock?” and they sent me to bed.

  Well, we didn’t have to worry about it for long, because some men from the state came up in trucks and one of them showed my father some papers and they drove back to the rock. They set up a bunch of dynamite and commenced to blast that rock until it didn’t look like much of anything, and believe me, that was a show. So I guess that’s about all there is to it and there’s nothing there anymore. And everyone feels a little better. But when you think about it, and I don’t guess I’ve thought much about anything else since they started making the fuss over it, that was some rock all right.

  Kris Kristofferson

  Born in Texas and raised in a military family, Kris Kristofferson was a Golden Gloves boxer who graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Pomona College in Califorina and earned a Rhodes scholarship to study literature at Oxford. He then served in the army as an Airborne Ranger helicopter pilot, achieving the rank of captain. In 1965, inspired by songwriters like Willie Nelson and Johnny Cash, he moved to Nashville to pursue his music.

  Kristofferson achieved remarkable success in the early 1970s, writing such songs as “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Help Me Make It Through the Night,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” and “For the Good Times,” all chart-topping hits that helped redefine country songwriting. By 1987, it was estimated that more than 450 artists had recorded Kristofferson’s compositions. The three-time Grammy winner has recorded twenty-six albums, including three with pals Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Waylon Jennings as part of the Highwaymen, and his current CD, This Old Road.

  Kristofferson has also acted in more than fifty films, including the Blade trilogy, Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Fast Food Nation, Dreamer: Inspired by a True Story, and A Star Is Born, for which he won the 1977 Golden Globe for Best Actor.

  Kristofferson is a member of the Country Music Hall of Fame, winner of the prestigious Johnny Mercer Award from the Songwriter Hall of Fame, and was honored with the American Veterans Association’s “Veteran of the Year Award” in 2002. For Kristofferson’s seventieth birthday in 2006, his friends and admirers gifted him with a tribute CD, The Pilgrim: A Celebration of Kris Kristofferson. In 2007, Kristofferson was honored with the Johnny Cash Visionary Award from Country Music Television. You can visit his Web site at www.kriskristofferson.com.

  The Care and Treatment of Camp Cooks

  Bob McDill

  Amoment before, Spoony Odom had stood up from his place at the kitchen table and started toward the door. Dinner was over and the only duties left were washing the dishes and utensils, something Spoony never participated in. At the door he paused momentarily to untie his apron, as if he had forgotten it until just that moment. Then Beagle noticed him standing there, looking back at the men seated at the long kitchen table, waiting for recognition.

  “Magnificient dinner, Spoony!” Beagle called out.

  “Oh, thank you,” the camp cook said, his face flushing.

  “Yes, that one was over the top!” Beagle continued.

  “Oh, you don’t mean that,” Spoony said.

  “Those New Orleans chefs can take a backseat to you,” Deacon Bidwell added. He pushed his chair back from the table to accommodate his broad stomach.

  “You’re all too kind,” Spoony said, fumbling with his apron strings.

  He was a small man, perhaps a size or two smaller than the other club members, with fine silver-gray hair that he kept carefully combed. His facial features were well proportioned and almost delicate.

  “By golly, you should open a restaurant!” the Deacon declared. The Deacon was always the first one to sit down for dinner and the last one to leave.

  “Oh, go on,” Spoony returned, turning a little red.

  “No. I’m serious. You’d have people lined up around the block,” the Deacon said. He had begun scraping the last of the chocolate mousse out of a pot on top of the stove.

  Finally, when every compliment that could be thought of had been delivered, Spoony turned and left the kitchen. While the club members washed dishes, he sat alone by the fire in the TV room, sipping a tiny cup of espresso.

  The Old River Rod and Gun, Bloody Mary Society and Gentlem
en’s Club wasn’t the largest hunting camp around, nor did it offer the best shooting and fishing. But it had something no other club had. It had Spoony Odom. Among camp cooks, he was a legend. Spoony was no chili-and-beer man. Not by a long shot. He followed the New Orleans and European styles in culinary matters. He was a maker of sauces and stocks, a saucier. He had a flair for presentation. And he was a genius with desserts. Spoony was not a hired chef. With the stingy dues we paid at the Old River, we could never have afforded such a thing. He was a club member and cooked simply for the love of it, and, of course, for the adulation he received.

  His menus were based on what was fresh and seasonal. Waterfowl were favored during the winter months and quail and dove (if enough could be collected) in autumn. In summer, he specialized in the fish that were plentiful in our reservoir. A camp favorite was pan-seared bass with maître d’hôtel sauce. Simple side dishes of rice pilaf and sliced tomatoes with fresh basil usually accompanied it. He often paired this treat with a crisp chilled Chardonnay.

  There are three rules concerning the care and treatment of camp cooks: Rule 1: No matter what the cook does or says, he’s treated with groveling courtesy; Rule 2: The cook is never asked to perform any task other than cooking; Rule 3: The cook’s food is never, ever criticized. We followed the first rule to the letter at the Old River. As for the second, we had no choice in the matter. Spoony knew his rights. If anyone had suggested he do something as mundane as help wash dishes, he would have been horrified. And as for painting or carpentry, it was out of the question.

  But I did see the third rule violated once. Dawn had broken clear and cold over the marsh that Saturday morning. Duck hunting had been good that season and old blind No. 7 was filled with hunters. The night before, Spoony had put together a culinary masterpiece. It had begun with leek soup. The next course was grilled mallard breast with plum sauce, served with porcini mushroom risotto and wild mustard greens. It was all accompanied by a hearty Beaujolais. Dessert was New Orleans bread pudding. Obviously, Spoony felt he hadn’t had enough praise the night before.

  “How was the dinner last night, fellows?” he asked innocently.

  Beagle decided to take the ball. He was a lawyer. If anybody could lay it on, it was Beagle.

  “A magnificent repast, my friend!” he said.

  “But what did you really think?” Spoony queried.

  “A culinary masterpiece!” Beagle added.

  “Really? Was it as good as usual?”

  “Each one is more magnificent than the last,” Beagle said, summing up.

  “Well, I really want to know if there was anything amiss,” Spoony said, dragging out the discussion.

  “You do?” Pinky Lipscomb asked. Pinky removed his porkpie hat and pushed back a shock of red hair as if gathering his thoughts.

  “Of course,” Spoony said.

  “Well . . .” Pinky stammered.

  “What is it?” Spoony asked.

  “The soup was, was . . . a little salty,” Pinky squeaked.

  A collective gasp arose from everyone present.

  “What?” Spoony asked, not sure he had heard correctly.

  “The soup might have been a little salty,” Pinky repeated.

  There was a second gasp.

  “Oh, boy. Now you’ve done it,” the Deacon whispered from the back of the blind. And he had. Spoony turned as cold and silent as the South Pole. For the rest of the morning, he looked off at the horizon as if he were searching the sky for ducks. When spoken to, he was curt and sullen. After reconsidering, Pinky apologized, saying he’d been wrong about the soup.

  “No, no,” Spoony snapped back.“I’m sure you’re right. I suppose it was terrible.”

  By cocktail hour his mood hadn’t changed. At seven he was sitting alone in the TV room and had made no move to start dinner. If it hadn’t been for the hundreds of new ducks that had poured into our fields that afternoon on the heels of a cold front, he might have left the club in a huff.

  The rest of us huddled in the kitchen.

  “Well, what was I supposed to say?” Pinky asked, defending himself.

  “You know how Spoony is,” the Deacon scolded.“Why did you have to open your big pudding hole?”

  “Well, he asked us, didn’t he?” Pinky whined.“He wanted to know if anything was wrong.”

  “Since when did you become a soup expert, anyway?” the Deacon continued.“When you joined this club, you didn’t even know what a leek was.”

  Finally the group came to a decision. They decided that I was to be their spokesman.

  “You’re his friend,” the Deacon pleaded.“You can talk to him.”

  I was not aware that I was Spoony’s friend, that is, any more or less than the other members. After all, Spoony was a difficult man. But off I went, representing the whole membership, knowing that a lifetime of canned chili and saltines might lie ahead of us. When I entered the TV room he was sitting in his favorite chair staring at the fire.

  “Evening, Spoon,” I said in a cheerful voice.

  “Evening,” he said sullenly.

  “It’s getting on towards dinnertime, Spoon,” I hinted.

  “Oh, I won’t be cooking tonight,” he answered.

  “Why not, Spoon? If it’s Pinky, I can— ”

  “Oh no,” he interrupted.“Just don’t feel up to it, you see.”

  I passed the bad news on to the others. That night each of us made himself a cold sandwich. The big table in the kitchen looked strangely bare with only cheese, sandwich meat, and a few other things dotting its long surface. Spoony’s chair, normally the one closest to the stove, was conspicuously empty. Only the week before, he had prepared his goose and sausage gumbo. The smell and taste of it was still fresh in my memory. The roux had been rich and dark, the sausage spicy, and the goose succulent. There was a salad of baby greens and fresh watercress. Two loaves of hot french bread were passed around the table.

  That year turned out to be above average for duck hunting. Spoony continued to show up at the club every weekend but he went nowhere near the kitchen. He cleaned his birds carefully as always and put them in the freezer. The Deacon claimed that he had seen him eating a turkey on brown bread sandwich in his car. Beagle tried to appeal to his vanity.

  “A man of your great talent, my friend, has a duty to his companions and to his club— indeed to the world!”

  But Spoony claimed that he had lost interest in cooking. He went on to say that thirty years devoted to the pursuit and perfection of a single art were probably enough. Furthermore, he was now considering taking up the five-string banjo. Some of the members actually began considering staying home with their families on weekends. Finally Beagle came up with a plan. It was a long shot, but it was all we had. We cornered Pinky and laid out the details.

  “I’m just not comfortable with this,” he said, protesting.

  “Why not?” Beagle asked.

  “Well, for one thing, its not honest.”

  “I wouldn’t quite call it dishonest,” Beagle said.

  “But I’d be telling a lie.”

  “I wouldn’t quite call it a lie,” Beagle added.

  “Look. I won’t say Spoony and I are close or anything, but it just wouldn’t be right, making up this cockamamie story and all.”

  “Think of the members,” the Deacon pleaded.

  “No. I really don’t think I can do it,” Pinky said.

  “Look,” the Deacon demanded, “you can fish, can’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you can lie.”

  “Okay, okay,” Pinky said, holding up his hands in surrender.

  He found the camp cook in the kitchen, ceremoniously packing his spices into a cardboard box.

  “Spoon?” he began carefully.

  “Yes?” Spoony answered.

  “There’s something you ought to know,” Pinky said.“I’ve been telling some of the fellows and, well, you see . . .”

  “What is it?” Spoony asked impatiently.r />
  “I’ve sort of run into a rough patch,” he said.

  Spoony stared at the label on a bottle of coriander and said coolly, “Oh? What kind of rough patch?”

  “It’s my health, Spoon.”

  “It’s your heart, isn’t it?” Spoony responded.“I’ve told you before, all you fellows eat too much fat.”

  “No, no, it’s not my heart,” Pinky said, pausing for effect.“I’ve been hiding this from you and the other members. But I can’t hide it any longer. It’s my brain.”

  “Your brain?” Spoony asked, looking up.

  “Yes, you see I’ve been diagnosed with a . . . disorder.” He looked at Spoony carefully, trying to judge his reaction.

  Spoony was caught off guard.“Disorder?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Well, h-h-how bad is it?” Spoony stammered.

  “I’m afraid it’s pretty bad. Soon I’ll have to surrender most of my mental faculties,” Pinky said, as if reading from a medical textbook.

  “Oh,” Spoony said, his eyes growing wide.

  “Yes. And then I’ll be . . . well, you know.”

  “Well, how long do you have?” Spoony asked.

  “Not long, I’m afraid,” Pinky said, gaining confidence.“You see, once the symptoms start, it’s just a matter of— ”

  “What symptoms?”

  “Loss of sensory integrity.”

  “What?”

  More sure of himself now, Pinky went on.“All the senses start to short out. You know: hearing, smelling.”

  “I’ve never heard of anything like that,” Spoony said, suspiciously.