Empty Bed Blues

Copyright © 2006 by
The Curators of the University of Missouri
University of Missouri Press, Columbia, Missouri 65201
Printed and bound in the United States of America
All rights reserved
5 4 3 2 1 10 09 08 07 06

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Garrett, George P., 1929–

Empty bed blues / George Garrett.

cm.

Summary: “Garrett’s eighth collection of short fiction

includes fifteen stories that blend fact and fiction, comedy and
pathos, and the voices of diverse characters while focusing
on the themes of love and death as well as the complexities
of human relations.”—Provided by publisher.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8262-1630-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
ISBN-10: 0-8262-1630-7 (pbk. : alk. paper)
I. Title.
PS3557.A72E46 2006
813'.54—dc22

2005032955

™This paper meets the requirements of the

American National Standard for Permanence of Paper
for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48, 1984.

Designer: Jennifer Cropp
Typesetter: Crane Composition, Inc.
Printer and binder: Thomson-Shore, Inc.
Typefaces: Baskerville and Copperplate

Publication of this book has been assisted

by the William Peden Memorial Fund

Contents

Prologue:

Independence Day

Feeling Good, Feeling Fine

A Story Goes with It

A Short History of the Civil War

The Misery and the Glory of Texas Pete

Tanks

Empty Bed Blues

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

Spilling the Beans:

A Letter to Linda Evangelista

105

Pornographers

117

With My Body, I Thee Worship

124

Heroes

147

A Perfect Stranger

155

Gator Bait

164

Epilogue:

My Life as a Home Movie

177

Acknowledgments

Versions and variations of some of these stories have appeared

in a number of literary magazines—

Archipelago, Blackbird, Five Points,

Meridian, The Sewanee Review, 64, Shenandoah, Virginia Quarterly
Review, Witness; and as well, in several books published since 1985:
The Old Army Game, Bad Man Blues, Southern Excursions, and Whistling
in the Dark. For some of the material used in “Ghost Me What’s
Holy Now,” the author is gratefully indebted to the scholarship and
textual acument of F. H. Mares in

The Memoirs of Robert Carey (Ox-

ford: Clarendon Press, 1972).

Empty Bed Blues is a work of fiction. All the characters, dialogue,

thoughts, and events are imagined and imaginary and are not in-
tended to resemble any actual conduct by real-life people.

Prologue

Independence Day

Time: Early in the days of the Great Depression. Place: Florida

East  Coast,  just  south  of  the  still-undeveloped,  still-unspoiled
Daytona Beach; a cottage in the dunes facing the sunstruck, breezy
Atlantic. Persons: Ourselves, kith and kin, mostly cousins and chil-
dren, camped there for a whole month. Also, from the only other
cottage  nearby,  a  group  of  pale  young  men,  Yankees  by  their
accent,  but  nice  and  quiet  and  neighborly,  though  having  some
odd habits like going to and from the beach in their bathrobes.

Then came the Fourth of July. We waited for dark with our

sparklers and Roman candles. Grown-ups, uncles and such, set off
rockets over the ocean. A ﬁne time until, all of a sudden, out on
the front porch of their cottage the young men appeared, stood in
a row, and, amid blooms of ﬂame and earthshaking, ear-shattering
noise, ﬁred off fully automatic tommy guns. Shooting at the sky in
happy celebration.

Couple of days later, our neighbors were gone. Lucky for them,

because soon after, here came the police and the FBI in many cars.

“You boys are too late,” my father told them, laughing.
They told us that the pale young men were the one and only

John Dillinger gang. They said we were lucky to be alive.

“Well, one thing for sure,” Father said. “They are all patriots.”
“And they had very good manners,” my mother added, “even if

they were Yankees.”

Feeling Good, Feeling Fine

A boy and a man in the park. Between them a wooden bat, a bat-

tered and dirty baseball, and one leather glove, well tended and
cared for, oiled and supple, but old, too, its pocket now as thin as
paper.

The boy and the man are sweating in the late afternoon light.

Lazy end of a long summer day. The park (no more than a rough
grass ﬁeld) is empty now except for the two of them. Somewhere
not far away a car horn toots, a dog barks, a woman calls her chil-
dren in for early supper.

“Come on,” the man shouts. “Knock it to me!”
The boy, all concentration, tosses the ball up and then swings

the bat to loft it high above the man. Who, skinny and raggedy as
a scarecrow, moves back and away and underneath the high ﬂy
ball. Spears it with the glove. Then throws it high back toward the
boy. The ball rolls dead, an easy reach from his feet.

“Let’s quit and go home,” the boy calls.
The tall man shakes his head and moves back deeper.
“One more,” he hollers. “Just one more.”
Crack of the bat on the ball, and this is the best one yet. A home

run ball in the fading light, almost lost in the last blue of the sky.
The man shading his eyes as he runs back and back until he’s
there where he has to be to snag it. Snags it. Then comes running
in toward the boy, grinning, a loping outﬁelder who has made the
ﬁnal catch of an inning.

You might think the boy would be pleased to have swung his bat

(the glove and the bat and the ball are all his) that well and
knocked the ball so high and far. But truth is the boy hates base-
ball. “It’s my least favorite sport,” he will tell anyone who asks.
Anyone except the man running toward him, his uncle, his moth-
er’s brother, who has recently come to live with them after several
years away at the state hospital.

Uncle Jack, he’s had a hard time of it. First time he went crazy,

his wife ran off with their two daughters, the boy’s cousins, to
California or some place like that and disappeared for keeps. Boy
doesn’t know it, can’t comprehend it even if he could imagine it,
but he won’t ever see that woman and his two cousins again. Uncle
Jack is living with the boy’s family for the time being, “until he has
a chance to get things straightened out,” the boy’s father explains.
When the boy complains about the hours spent—wasted as far as
he’s concerned—knocking fungoes and chasing ﬂys and grounders
with Uncle Jack, his father simply says, “Humor him, boy. He’s
good at it. Let him be.”

He ain’t that good, the boy sometimes thinks, but doesn’t say. Said

it once, though, and his father corrected him.

“Listen, boy, he’s rusty and he hasn’t been well. But believe me,

I’m here to tell you, he was some kind of a baseball player. A real
pleasure to watch.”

“Minor league,” scornfully said the boy, who can’t imagine anyone

settling for anything less than the top of the heap. If he liked baseball
enough to want to play at it, he would be in the majors or nothing.
He sure enough wouldn’t be happy with some old photographs in an
album and some brittle, yellowing newspaper clippings.

And if he was a crazy man back from the state hospital and had

a nephew who was required to humor him, the boy would never
pretend, let alone believe for one minute, that he was getting him-
self back in shape so he could join the New York Yankees or the
Washington Senators or somebody like that. Shit, Uncle Jack
couldn’t even play for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Uncle Jack now has the bat in one hand and the other arm

around the boy’s shoulders (the boy carries the glove and the ball)
as the two of them head for home in the twilight.

“You hit that last one a helluva good lick,” Uncle Jack says. “You

could be a real hitter if you put your mind to it. It’s all in the coor-
dination, and you have got that, all you could ever need.”

Feeling Good, Feeling Fine

Why, if he hates baseball, does the boy relish and rejoice in the

man’s words? Why, if his Uncle Jack is some kind of crazy person
and is fooling himself and everybody else, too, about what a great
ballplayer he was and thinks he still is, why does the boy automat-
ically accept and enjoy his uncle’s judgment? Why, if his uncle is
mostly embarrassment and trouble, someone to be ashamed of,
does the boy at this very instant, altogether in spite of himself,
wish more than anything that this tall, thin, raggedy, graceful man
was and is everything he ought to be or could have been?

(Years and years later, when this boy is a grandfather himself,

for reasons he won’t understand then any more than he does now,
he will tell his grandchildren, and anyone else who will bother to
listen to him, all about his Uncle Jack, who was, brieﬂy—but is not
all beauty and all great achievement as brief as the ﬂare of a struck
match?—a wonderful athlete, a baseball player much admired and
envied by his peers, someone who, except for a piece or two of bad
luck, would have been named and honored among the very best of
them. Someone to be proud of. Someone who once tried to teach
him how to play the game.)

They are close to home now. They have left the raw, wide ﬁeld

behind  and  are  coming  under  a  dark  canopy  of  shade.  Houses
with green crisp lawns, dark earth and, here and there, a sprinkler
pulsing bright water. Can see the lights of the boy’s house being
switched on downstairs. Can hear brieﬂy, before his father’s voice
calls out a crisp command, music playing on the radio. That will
be his sister or his little brother fooling around. Upstairs probably.
He is almost close enough to see through the lighted windows of
the dining room his mother and Hattie, the maid, who works late
and  long  for  them  in  this  Great  Depression,  setting  the  supper
table with ﬂat silver, napkins, and water glasses. For a little time,
the  short  walk,  more  of  a  stroll  into  gradual  dark,  he  has  been
almost content. Weary, sweated out, but feeling good, feeling ﬁne,
soothed by his uncle’s complimentary words. Conﬁdent that what-
ever he does from here and now to the end of his life will be and
go well. Even more: that he will be able not only to enjoy this feel-
ing  of  satisfaction,  of  joy,  really,  but  will  be  able  to  share  it  with
others less fortunate than himself.

What he cannot know, even as he and his uncle come across the

lawn and into the house and shut the front door behind him, what

George Garrett

he can’t know and will not choose to remember years and years
later when he rakes the bitter ashes of his life searching for even
one remaining glowing coal, is what happens next.

At the table his father (who includes the whole family, even

Hattie, in almost everything) will tell them about the long-distance
telephone call he received at his ofﬁce this same afternoon from a
doctor at the state hospital in Chattahoochee. The doctor has told
him that there is a new kind of operation on the brain that might,
just might, cure Uncle Jack for good and all. No more coming and
going, no more breakdowns and slow recoveries. It is a new thing.
There can be no promises or guarantees, of course. And, as in any
operation, there is always danger, there are always risks. But . . .

Everybody listens intently. (Except Hattie, who elects to slip back

into the kitchen quietly.) Everybody listens. And then before Jack or
anyone can say anything, his mother bursts into tears. Sobs at the
table, trying to hide her face with her hands, her shoulders shaking.

Later that evening the boy will see his father, for the ﬁrst and

maybe the only time, slap his mother full across her soft face, mak-
ing her sob again as they quarrel about what may be the best thing
for her brother to do. His uncle will settle the quarrel by freely and
cheerfully choosing to return to the hospital to undergo this oper-
ation. And—the boy and man would warn them then and now, if
there were some way, any way, if only he could—it went badly, as
badly as can be, leaving his uncle no more than half alive, a veg-
etable in that hospital for the rest of his life. The boy will live to be
an old man, will go to war and live through it, will learn all the
lessons—of love and death, of gain and loss, of pride and of regret—
a long life can teach.

But none of this has happened yet. Man and boy have spent a

long afternoon in the park together and, at the end of it, have
come home. They come in the front door. Jack grabs his sister, the
boy’s mother, and gives her a bear hug, lifts her in the air. The boy
goes to put the bat and the ball and the glove in the hall closet.
Over his shoulder he hears his sister and brother coming down the
stairs like a pair of wild ponies. Looking up, turning, he sees his
father, smiling in shirtsleeves, coming out of the living room with
the evening paper in his hands.

“Here they are,” he says. “Here come our baseball players just in

time for supper.”

Feeling Good, Feeling Fine

A Story Goes with It

Fade In

Insert: Berlin 1941

Ext. Berlin: Day

We establish the city scene, busy and prosperous, lively. Except for
a scattering of men in uniforms, there is no indication that there
is a war going on.
Ext. Military Staff Car: Day

We follow the progress of a military staff car weaving its way
through light trafﬁc.

The only sound we hear is music. Someone out of frame and off
camera is whistling a tune, a child’s ditty or a little folk song.

The sound of the whistling dissolves into a ﬂute playing the same
tune, as the car pulls up and parks in a space directly in front of
an imposing building (the Reich Chancellery), well guarded, with
ﬂags, including the swastika, ﬂying. A young junior ofﬁcer jumps
out of the front passenger seat and moves quickly to open the right
rear  door.  He  clicks  his  heels  and  salutes  smartly  as  a  medium-
sized,  middle-aged,  high-ranking  naval  ofﬁcer,  wearing  a  heavy,
full-length  overcoat,  steps  out  of  the  car,  tosses  a  vaguely  casual
return salute to the young ofﬁcer, and then moves briskly forward
toward the main entrance.

The young ofﬁcer has to hurry to catch up. Which he does just as
the guards at the entrance pop to attention and present arms.

Int. Chancellery: Day

To the continuing ﬂute music and the quick rhythm of their boot
heels, the two men march down a high-ceilinged hallway. They are
directed by another junior ofﬁcer, who leaves his desk to point
them toward a doorway.

Int. Map Room: Day

They enter the chamber to see a group of uniformed men, men of
high rank and importance, wearing dress uniforms, glittering and
beribboned. All but one, who is wearing the brown and simple uni-
form of a common soldier. (Which, after all, is all that he ever was,
a corporal, when he was a soldier.) All are gathered in close around
the map table, their backs to the door, listening intently to the man
in the plain brown uniform, who uses a pointer like a conductor’s
baton.

There is also present, close by the legs of the man with the point-
er, a small dog, a wirehaired terrier.

The dog reacts and barks once. All turn toward the door.

The music, that lively and cheerful little tune, dies instantly as if
cut off by a switch.

Close Shot: Hitler

Complete silence. Freeze-frame except for slight ﬁxed smile of
recognition.

Word had come to Admiral Canaris that the Führer wanted to

see him right away. Needless to say, Canaris dropped whatever it
was that he was doing at the time and hurried away to report to his
boss immediately.

This would probably have to have been in late December of

1941, Christmastime coming on, after Germany had declared war
on the United States, and close to the time when Churchill came
over to the United States to try to help Roosevelt persuade a doubtful

A Story Goes with It

Congress that we had to ﬁght the Krauts ﬁrst and then try to take
care of the Japs later. One at a time. All in due time. Europe ﬁrst,
Asia later.

The Führer had come up with an idea. He wanted to try it out

for size on Canaris. Canaris would recruit a dozen or so German-
Americans. These men would be trained as saboteurs, sent over to
America on a couple of submarines and secretly landed there.
They would then proceed to bomb some factories and buildings
and dams and so forth and so on and scare the living shit out of
the Americans, who may have sincerely believed that three thou-
sand miles of Atlantic Ocean would keep them snug and safe from
any real danger. He would show them a thing or two.

Hitler wanted to do this just as soon as possible. He would turn

over all the details to Canaris. Acting on a direct order from the
Führer, Canaris could then do pretty much anything he wanted to
or needed to. Just get it done. Spend a few weeks—a month or so
ought to do it—training these clowns in your basic sabotage (for
amateurs), then stuff them on the U-boats and dump them out on
the beach over there.

What do you think, Admiral?
Canaris knows exactly how to answer that question when it

refers to a project that has originated with the Führer, himself.
With afﬁrmative enthusiasm, that’s how.

Back then, in 1941, Canaris was still riding high in the hierarchy

of the Third Reich. He would—probably not to his surprise—rise
even higher. Meanwhile, even though he had his full share of rivals
and enemies, his apparent close and good relationship with the
Führer gave him the power and resources to do all kinds of inter-
esting things. Whenever he told somebody, anybody at all, that he
was acting on the direct orders of the Führer (which was, in fact,
true much of the time), they snapped to attention and shut up.

Thus Canaris replied to the Führer that it sounded like a ﬁne

idea, a really swell idea, a neat plan, to him and that he would cer-
tainly be able to take care of it right away.

Then get on with it, Hitler told him and waved him on his merry

way.

Canaris knew that it wouldn’t work. He knew it was going to be

a complete disaster from the get-go. Even assuming that he could
ﬁnd enough German-Americans to ﬁll the Führer’s requirements,

George Garrett

then what? Of course he couldn’t and wouldn’t depend on or trust
these people, but they wouldn’t learn anything of value, anyway.
More to the point, they could not possibly be trained and turned
into effective spies or saboteurs. They were all going to die.

And what if these people had sense enough to run off and forget

about the whole thing? Or if they turned themselves in to the
Americans? So what? Never mind. No harm done.

Still, Canaris thought, in the staff car on the way back to his

ofﬁce, there was deﬁnitely a plus side. For one thing, and always a
serious consideration, there was an excellent chance that Hitler
would now proceed to forget about the whole thing. As was often
the case, a brand-new and interesting idea would soon pop into his
head like a melody and take its place. Chances were good, really,
that nothing would ever come of this one. Canaris would have to
cover his ass, to be sure. Well, he would set things in motion and
then see what, if anything, came to pass.

Meantime, using the marvelous blank check of a direct order

from Hitler, himself, he took over some nice farmland to serve as
a special base and training camp, not just for the stumblebums
that he would be sending to their swift and certain deaths, but for
his own, much more serious intelligencers in the

Abwehr. This

secret base, with a wealth of equipment and training facilities,
could pay off in many other ways.

His people recruited some men who more or less ﬁt the Führer’s

requirements and then set to work, in a very casual way, training
them for their deadly mission. They all played at being saboteurs
during the daytime and partied well into the night. Everybody
might as well have some fun while they were at it.

And it could have gone along just like that indeﬁnitely, right up

until the end of the war, maybe, if the Führer hadn’t suddenly sent
for Canaris and asked how things were coming along on the oper-
ation, now ofﬁcially named Operation Pastorius.

This second conversation about the saboteurs would probably

have taken place in early 1942, say a month or so after the earlier
one. We know that Hitler was in Berlin during most of January of
’42. He probably met again with Admiral Canaris before the thir-
tieth, because on that day we knew for sure that Hitler was host for
a luncheon for a few close friends (not including Canaris) on the
ninth anniversary of his succession to power in Germany on

A Story Goes with It

January 30, 1933. We even know some of the things he talked
about at that lunch—rambling anecdotes about his days in prison
and some thoughts about his present puppet government in
Czechoslovakia. He doesn’t seem to have mentioned or referred to
his secret plan to send saboteurs to the United States.

Now then, please take a minute or two to consider that there

were terrible things taking place all around the globe, any number
of which—the war on the eastern front, for example, the back-and-
forth battles in North Africa, the Battle of the Atlantic, where
German U-boats were busily sinking hundreds of ships and maybe
winning the war—could have claimed the full and undivided atten-
tion of both the Führer and the admiral. It is hard to remember, it
requires an act of the imagination and maybe a fact or two, since
we, here and now, can’t quite be unaware of the eventual outcome,
that things weren’t going all that badly for the Axis or all that well
for the Allies in late 1941 and early 1942.

Out in the Paciﬁc, our huge ﬂeet (all but the aircraft carriers,

thank God) was mostly resting at the bottom of the sea.
Everywhere—Malaya, the Philippines, Indo-China, the East Indies,
the South Paciﬁc, the Japs were really kicking ass. It looked like
nothing in the world could stop them or even slow them down a
little.

As a result of the strategic decisions by Roosevelt and Churchill

to ﬁght and (if possible) to defeat the Germans ﬁrst, the Japanese
were going to be able to take over enormous amounts of valuable
real  estate  and  to  kill  or  capture  many  thousands  of  Americans
and their allies while they were at it. Consider that, living in a very
different world than our own, the American people, democracy or
not,  were  not  going  to  be  allowed  to  participate  in  that  strategic
decision or any other. Or, for that matter, even know that such a
decision  was  being  made.  We  would  ﬁght,  basically,  a  rearguard
action in the Paciﬁc, throwing away our assets piecemeal, holding
on  as  best  we  could  until  the  war  in  Europe  was  over  and  done
with.

Was this the right decision? Who knows? It was probably the only

thing we could do at the outset. We did not yet have the means to
ﬁght on all fronts. Surrender or a separate peace with the Japs
doesn’t seem to have been a serious option. These days somebody
might try to cut a deal, but not then.

George Garrett

How about the other side—Hitler’s decision to declare war

against the United States? Of course, he had a treaty obligation to
join with his ally, Japan. But, like most thoughtful leaders of that
era, and of ours as well, he was never wont to let some old treaty
stand  in  the  way  of  what  he  perceived  to  be  his  immediate  best
interests. Truth is (I think), Hitler knew that sooner or later he was
going  to  have  to  ﬁght  a  war  against  the  United  States,  anyway.
Sooner  the  better,  because  he  was  fully  aware  of  our  enormous
potential;  in  fact,  he  probably

overestimated it. Meantime, like

almost everybody then and since then, including the American
government, he greatly

underestimated the courage and resolve of

the American people, betting the farm that after he ﬁnished off
the Soviet Union, he could cut a favorable peace deal with Britain
and America.

Meanwhile, in late 1941, there is plenty going on, plenty of trou-

ble all around. In North Africa the war goes back and forth, like a
yo-yo,  but  whether  they  are  advancing  or  retreating,  the  Afrika
Corps  under  Rommel  are  clearly  the  force  to  be  reckoned  with.
Sooner or later, they could go all the way to India and link up with
the Japs, if the Japs don’t get there ﬁrst. No kidding. Meanwhile
the  Mediterranean  is  nobody’s  lake,  and  the  Atlantic  seems  to
belong to the German U-boats.

On the eastern front the Germans are in the suburbs of

Leningrad and Moscow, and by early December, deep into Russia
everywhere else, though they are soon to be driven back by some
Russian counterattacks. Trouble is, though, for the Russians, any-
way, they have already lost something like ﬁve million men killed
in action (and another three million captured) since the Germans
invaded in June. They have also lost many thousands of their
tanks and artillery pieces. If there is no real breakthrough by the
Ruskies, come springtime, the Krauts will surely rock and roll
again.

Of course, bear in mind always that nobody except the leaders

at the very highest levels among the Axis, the Allies, or anybody
else, certainly not the ordinary people, the “informed citizenry,”
knew anything about any of this. Like ourselves, they were at the
mercy of the press.

Lest the people should lose heart, it is a time for some bold sym-

bolic gestures, a little good publicity. The Brits are commencing to

A Story Goes with It

bomb some of the German cities late at night. No real harm done,
but it’s a thought, a beginning. They also make some little com-
mando raids on the Lofoten Islands (in late December) and man-
age to blow up some local radio stations and a couple or three ﬁsh
oil factories. Not a whole lot of big help (or much harm either) in
the overall, worldwide war effort, but at least it is a little bit of
cheery news for the stay-at-homes at the year’s end.

It also hinted, if it did not demonstrate or prove, that it was at

least

possible that the Allies might someday or other decide to come

ashore again on the European Continent. Maybe. . . . Folks at
home could take heart. Meanwhile, however, the Krauts were not
exactly quaking in their shiny jackboots.

And not to mention the irony, of which Canaris, as chief of

German military intelligence, would probably know all about as
soon as anybody else did, i.e., in April of 1942, of the Doolittle
Raid on Tokyo with sixteen B-25 bombers. Its purpose was essen-
tially identical to that of Operation Pastorius.

In any case, here the Führer was at it again, still harping on his

cockamamie scheme of carrying the war to America, in a symbol-
ic way at least, by means of the saboteurs. Like the Doolittle Raid,
it would serve chieﬂy as a little gesture to brighten up folks on the
home front.

When Hitler asked him how things were coming, what do you

think Canaris said?

He of course said that everything was coming along ﬁne and

dandy, right on schedule, my Führer. Just the way you wanted. Just
the way you told me.

Good, said the Führer. I’m very glad to hear that. And now I

want you and your people to stop farting around and get this oper-
ation under way. Do you understand me, Admiral?

Yes, sir.
I want the operation to take place immediately. You understand

that?

Yes, sir. Like immediately, if not sooner.
(Let me pause here long enough to say the chances are that the

Führer did not say “farting around,” because, as you may very well
know, Hitler suffered from serious ﬂatulence problems and was
more than a little sensitive on the subject. Moreover, I seriously
doubt that any of them talked the way I have them doing here. My

George Garrett

German, not used since my army days, is pretty rudimentary. So?
As long as we get the gist of it, who cares?)

You understand exactly what I’m saying to you, Admiral?
Yes, my Führer. I fully appreciate and understand and will take

care of it at once.

Even though I am the one telling you this tale, it’s really Eddie’s

story as he told it to me, and as I remember it, a long time ago.
Eddie, my old and good friend, is dead and gone now, I’m sorry to
say. We miss him. And so, for the time being, you are stuck with me,
with my voice and my version of what, once upon a time, he told me,
and as it was recorded at the time and has been preserved and main-
tained in my old man’s fallible and slowly fading memory.

I sincerely wish I could honestly claim the same thing for myself.

I have to admit that I have always had an almost irresistible urge
to sneak some hard facts into the never-never land of ﬁction. (As
witness this story here and now.) Or vice versa. I have demon-
strated a desire to take control and to shape real stories as it
pleased me to and all too often with no more than a casual ﬁdeli-
ty to the original facts. Eddie was fully aware of this bad habit of
mine and (I think) he was amused by it. From his point of view it
was more like a kind of clowning around than anything else. No
serious harm done. A grain of salt was in order.

Which leads me directly to confront another problem in this ver-

sion of the saboteur story. He talked and I (mostly) listened.
Regardless of my ambiguous reliability, I was seriously interested,
but not planning, not then or ever after, to “use” this material in a
work of ﬁction or in any other form or for any other purpose what-
soever. I wasn’t even aiming to remember it. So that what we are
dealing with here and now, all these years later, is only what I can’t
help but remember. Memory plays all kinds of tricks on all of us,
as we all know. All the more so when that memory has been
stashed away, lying dormant like my old black-and-tan hound dog
by the ﬁreplace, snoring away.

You know what Wright Morris is quoted as saying in a lecture at

Princeton? He said: “Anything processed by memory is ﬁction.” In
that sense, this is all ﬁction. In that sense, a lot of our “real” lives
is pure ﬁction. Even Eddie is a “character” as I imagine him. So?
So in honor of the late Eddie Weems and for the sake and memory

A Story Goes with It

of our long friendship, I hereby solemnly promise to tell you noth-
ing more or less than what I do truly remember. Except for little
things like imaginary dialogue (we already mentioned that they
didn’t talk like that). I plan to stick close to the facts, insofar as I
know what they are.

It was bound to happen. After lying dormant for many years,

our subject—the Nazi saboteurs who came to America in 1942—is
back in the press. Terrorism and the contemplated and controver-
sial use of military tribunals to deal with contemporary terrorists
have made the story brieﬂy pertinent at this writing. Somebody
somewhere, out there in the ranks of the altricial media, was
bound to remember those Nazi saboteurs of days gone by. And,
sure enough, my February issue of the

Atlantic Monthly arrived in

the mail, featuring an excellent piece, “The Keystone Komman-
dos,” by Gary Cohen—thorough and enhanced by photographs of
the saboteurs and of the military tribunal that tried them. Not
long thereafter (February 17), here came the

New York Times, check-

ing in with a full-page article and several relevant photographs—
“Terrorists among Us (Back in ’42),” by Andy Newman. Also avail-
able at roughly the same time was an article in the Coast Guard
magazine, the

Reservist (Jan.-Mar.), itself excerpted from a July

1997 “World War II Beach Patrol feature”: “Enemies on the Beach:
Sixty Years ago, an alert Coast Guardsman stopped hostile ene-
mies from infiltrating American soil.” These pieces inevitably
overlap somewhat, since the writers were using a lot of the same
primary materials, including various and sundry government doc-
uments now ﬁnally and fully available for examination, together
with the ofﬁcial trial transcript of the tribunal. In the

Atlantic, the

“In This Issue” editorial page and the contributors’ notes tell us:
“Gary Cohen (‘The Keystone Kommandos’) recently delved into
more than 3000 pages of trial transcripts at the National Archives
and the Roosevelt Presidential Library in Hyde Park, New York,
to unearth the story of their [the Nazis’] mission, capture and
trial.” And all three of these pieces, though adding some facts and
new information of their own, also, as they dutifully acknowledge,
owe a very large debt to the basic published book on the subject—
They Came to Kill: The Story of Eight Nazi Saboteurs in America (1962),
by Eugene Rachlis.

George Garrett

From Rachlis to Cohen and Newman and the U.S. Coast Guard

you can’t ﬁnd fault with any of these guys. They have deﬁnitely
done their homework and their duty and their delving; and, with-
in the limits and the ambiguous authority (and veracity) of the
available ofﬁcial documents, their versions are about as accurate
and authentic as can possibly be expected. To be sure, Eddie’s ver-
sion is a little bit different. You’ll see.

As luck would have it—and luck will have it all, after all, in the

literary life as well as real life, I had long since ﬁnished this ﬁction,
“A Story Goes with It,” and, in fact, already published a short ver-
sion of it in the

Sewanee Review, when there appeared on the scene

a new book on the subject. It is called

Saboteurs: The Nazi Raid on

America (2004), by Michael Dobbs. Mr. Dobbs, who is a reporter
for the

Washington Post, has done a wonderful job of assembling the

basic facts and digging out the important details. Like Eddie, he
actually  went  to  the  places  and  interviewed  the  people  he  could
ﬁnd. He writes, “My travels took me from the grounds of a former
Nazi  sabotage  school  in  Brandenberg,  Germany,  to  a  windswept
beach  in  Amagansett,  Long  Island;  from  Hitler’s  bunker  in  the
lake  district  of  northeastern  Poland  to  the  streets  of  Chicago,
where  the  saboteurs  played  cat-and-mouse  games  with  their  FBI
pursuers.” I learned a great deal from Mr. Dobbs’s book. Some of
it, both large and small points, ﬁrmly contradicts my own (Eddie’s
as  best  I  can  recall  it)  version.  Other  things  are  conﬁrmed.  It  is
hard to imagine a better factually correct version of this story than
Saboteurs; for all practical purposes it’s likely to be the last word on
the subject.

There is also a fairly recent study of the legal and constitutional

issues of the saboteurs and this trial by military tribunal:

Nazi

Saboteurs on Trial: A Military Tribunal and American Law (2003), by
Louis Fisher.

Meanwhile, for mostly impractical purposes, my story is a work

of ﬁction. If I were writing it in Turkish, I would use what is called
“the rumor tense,” beginning: “Maybe it happened, and maybe it
didn’t.”

After ﬁnishing some basic training (if you can call it that), at the

Abwehr farm, nine men are shipped off to Paris, carrying with them
large sums of American money along with maps and plans and a

A Story Goes with It

lot of forged identiﬁcation documents and so on. The plan is for
them to go to Paris (then under German occupation), and thence
to a German U-boat base on the French coast, where they can ship
out to America.

Plenty happens on the train to Paris. First of all, these guys get

all  drunk  and  rowdy  and  boisterous.  They  tell  other  people—
employees and fellow passengers, anybody who will bother to lis-
ten to them—that they are German spies on a top-secret mission.
When they ﬁnally get off the train in Paris, they somehow manage
to  leave  behind  them  the  whole  kit  and  caboodle  of  American
money,  ID  cards,  maps,  instructions,  et  cetera.  The  French  con-
ductor, who sometimes does a little part-time, amateur, after-hours
spying  on  the  side  for  the  Resistance,  picks  up  this  trash  and
immediately turns it over to his superiors. So the French know all
about  it  from  the  outset.  And,  indeed,  they  do  take  note  of  this
information. But you must always bear in mind that the French are
a lot more subtle and nuanced than we are. They will not be fooled
by anything so obvious as this. They ﬁgure it’s a dumb Kraut trick.
So they deep-six all the materials and don’t bother to mention it to
anyone else at the time or even (especially) later.

As for the saboteurs, they now have to wait around for a little

while, maybe a week or ten days, while a whole new package of
materials is put together by the

Abwehr and then brought to them.

They spend most of their time in Paris barhopping and sight-
seeing and chasing tail. And they continue to tell all kinds of
people, in public and private places, that they are highly trained,
heavy-duty German saboteurs getting ready to go to America and
to blow a whole lot of important infrastructure sky-high.

Naturally their behavior and their claims come to the attention

of the French and even of Allied intelligence, all of whom prompt-
ly disregard it as just one more boneheaded German trick.

One of the saboteurs manages to get himself a serious dose of

clap while screwing around in Paris. Lucky for him, he is scrubbed
from the mission.

The others, eight of them, now reequipped with the money and

papers and maps and plans, are taken down to a submarine base
and put aboard two U-boats there, lone wolves of the new Type 9.
At the very last minute, just before the subs slip out and away, here
comes a special motorcycle courier, driving wide open and practi-

George Garrett

cally airborne, with a special personal message to them from the
Führer himself.

This cheerful farewell missive advises them that while they are

at it, they should be sure to try to blow up a few Jewish department
stores in New York City. Ends with the Nazi equivalent of “Have a
nice day!”

The late John Edward Weems (born 1924) was, among other

things, a ﬁrst-rate journalist and writer. Beginning with

A Weekend

in September, an account of the great Galveston hurricane of 1900,
he published, by my informal count, some fourteen books on a
variety of subjects. Among them two ﬁne books about Admiral
Peary—

Race for the Pole (1960) and Peary: The Explorer and the Man

(1967); several books of solidly researched and well-written popu-
lar history—

The Fate of the Maine (1958), Dream of Empire: A Human

History of the Republic of Texas (1971), To Conquer a Peace: The War
between the United States and Mexico (1974), Death Song: The Last of the
Indian Wars (1976); another book or two about stormy weather—The
Tornado (1984) and If You Don’t Like the Weather (1986). One of my
favorites is a wonderful book about some early American rascals
and scoundrels—

Men without Countries: Three Adventurers of the Early

Southwest (1969). These three rogues were spies for Thomas
Jefferson—or maybe

against him. We’ll never know for sure. Here

Eddie  introduced  me  to  a  character,  James  Wilkinson,  I  would
love  to  turn  loose  in  a  wildly  picaresque  novel  or  a  movie  or  an
opera  or  a  comic  book  about  chicanery  and  hanky-panky  and
hocus-pocus  among  the  Founding  Fathers.  Wilkinson  was  an
American general at twenty-one in the Revolutionary War. Made
a  quick  fortune,  married  a  Biddle,  and  was,  in  the  words  of  the
book jacket, “an incorrigible double-dealer.” He was also, we soon
learn, a spy for Spain even while serving on the southwest frontier
as commander of U.S. forces there. Wilkinson was something of a
writer in his own right, covering his ass and his tracks in a three-
volume memoir—

Memoirs of My Own Times (1816). I plan to read it

some day if I live long enough.

Meanwhile I have Eddie’s book.
At one time Eddie was also an editor and the associate director

of the University of Texas Press. Which is how he happened to be
my editor and how I ﬁrst got to know him. While he was there,

A Story Goes with It

Texas published two books of mine—

The Sleeping Gypsy and Other

Poems (1958) and In the Briar Patch: A Book of Stories (1961). These
books were beautifully made—one won a design prize—and I was
and remain proud and grateful.

Some years later, in 1971, a little magazine called

The Mill

Mountain  Review did  a  special  issue,  “In  Appreciation  of  George
Garrett,” about my work. And, hey, that was ﬁne and dandy with
me.  I  can  enjoy  appreciation  as  much  as  the  next  guy.  It  was  all
very  nice  and  satisfactory;  some  poets  contributed  poems,  some
people  submitted  stories  or  essays.  Eddie  Weems  sent  along  a
loosey-goosey  sequence  of  anecdotes  (oddly  appropriate  to  this
piece  I  am  writing  more  than  thirty  years  later),  which  I  now
shamelessly quote:

Your recent request for “critical essays, poems, stories, memo-

ries,  anecdotes  and  whatever  else  comes  to  light,  all  concerning
George Garrett—his career, his work and himself ” left me bemused.
The  request  evoked  happy  memories  of  years  ago—most  of  them
funny, a few even hilarious (which I regard as an intrinsic compli-
ment to George Garrett), but at the same time hardly material for
critical essays, poems, or stories. Many of the happenings would, in
fact, be better kept in strictest conﬁdence between George and me,
rather than be used in any literary tribute to George. An instance
of this is the time when, as promotion and advertising director of
the  University  of  Texas  Press  (George  was  an  author  of  ours),  I
drove him from Austin to Fort Worth, where he spoke at a writers’
day  luncheon  at  Texas  Christian  University.  That  night,  while
returning to Austin after partaking festively of chocolate milk and
Jack Daniels (which does not represent depraved taste, as so many
people have believed), we had a ﬂat—just south of Waco. The tire-
changing process of ﬁtting those holes in the wheel to the lugs was
made  even  more  challenging  than  usual,  and  I  spent  ﬁfteen  min-
utes,  in  absolute  darkness,  trying  without  success  to  put  on  the
spare, while George stood by wondering what the trouble could be.
Finally he struck a match, and we saw our difﬁculty: I had been try-
ing  to  put  the  spare  on  backwards.  Now,  as  I  said,  these  remem-
brances would not make any sort of tribute to George, but I sup-
pose this one might: it commemorates his helpfulness. Had he not
struck that match I probably would have been there until sunrise
trying to put the spare on backwards.

As I said at ﬁrst, I had not intended to write a tribute to George

George Garrett

Garrett from these recollections of years ago, but the more I think
about them the more I see that they do illuminate George’s good
qualities, after all. There was, for another instance, the time I saw
his inherent honesty displayed—at a crowded bar-and-billiard par-
lor near the beach in Venice, California. I had stopped over in Los
Angeles (en route home from a university presses meeting at Stan-
ford University) to visit George, who was then in Hollywood writ-
ing the screenplay for “The Young Lovers” for Samuel Goldwyn, Jr.
We had sallied forth to the beach during the afternoon—it was one
of  those  days  of  unusual  Southern  California  heat—and  had  re-
moved ourselves to the bar-and-billiard parlor for several hours to
escape  the  blistering  sun.  Leaving,  we  were  already  outside  the
door before realizing we had left change for a ten-dollar bill on our
table, and we hurried back to retrieve the pile of money before the
waiter  thought  it  was  all  meant  for  a  tip.  Blinking  in  the  now-
unaccustomed dark interior and disconcerted anew by the din and
general confusion of the place (as well as the mist that seemed to
hang  over  everything),  I  nevertheless  thought  I  had  found  the
change, still on the table—bills and coins—and had just picked it up
when a group of mean-looking pool-shooters rushed toward us with
cues  and  bottles  in  their  fists,  shouting,  “Look!  They’ve  come
back—and  they’re  taking  our  money!”  After  I  had  dropped  their
change  and  quickly  picked  up  our  own  money  from  the  correct
table  George—exhibiting  his  usual  honest  appraisal  of  any  situa-
tion—said to me (after we had again made our exit), “That was their
money. We’re lucky to be alive.”

Not only is George Garrett honest in his appraisals, he is (as further

reﬂection shows me) without pretense or hypocrisy. I recall the time
when, many years ago, he spoke at a Protestant church-affiliated
school in Texas (a description that should indicate adequately the
rules  and  regulations  therein)  and  was  quartered  overnight  in  a
plush  guest  room,  one  of  several  apartments  maintained  by  the
school in its Bible building. That night he invited several of us to
partake  of  more  Jack  Daniels  (with  water  this  time,  considering
what we had endured after the chocolate milk) then, later, replaced
the empty bottle in the bag and tossed it in a trash basket. Weeks
afterward  I  heard  from  a  relative  associated  with  the  school  that
George had created something of a scandal. The janitor, apparent-
ly in his routine inspection of trash, had found the bottle and had
reported  its  presence  to  the  administration—a  fact  of  which  I
believe George is even now unaware. He had put the empty bottle
back in the bag, to save their feelings, but he would not hypocriti-

A Story Goes with It

cally or cravenly carry it outside and throw it in a large trash bin
some distance away, where its ownership probably would have re-
mained unknown, even to inspecting janitors.

Humility is another characteristic I have observed in George—on

one occasion during a visit to his home in Houston, where he was
associated  some  years  ago  with  the  Alley  Theatre  and  with  Rice
University.  While  I  was  there  the  mail  came,  including  the  latest
issue of the Princeton University alumni magazine. That publica-
tion carried a list of books by Princeton authors, and in this issue
mentioned  George’s  book  of  contemporary  poems,

Abraham’s

Knife—listed in a category entitled “Books on the Civil War.” I
reﬂected at the time that it required humility to laugh the way
George did, but on the other hand—he had not then been selected
by the Book-of-the-Month Club.

Now that I am caught up in these memories I could go on, but—

to  repeat—these  recollections  (and  some  few  George  might  add)
would be better kept conﬁdential. Instead, as a tribute, I have ded-
icated a book to be published later this year by Simon and Schuster
to  “some  men  in  the  world  of  books  who  have  been  encouraging
and helpful in past years”—to George Garrett and a few others. This
seems  much  more  appropriate,  mutually,  to  our  current  profes-
sional dignities than written recollections of much younger days—
or critical essays, poems, and stories based on those memories. The
book might sell only 1,018 copies (taking for an estimate the aver-
age sales of ﬁve previous books), but the dedication to a talented,
lively author is no less sincere. (174–75)

What has all this got to do with those eight saboteurs bobbing

and barﬁng their way across the wide Atlantic in the cramped and
stinking and highly dangerous little world of a submarine?

Well, along about that same time, the late ﬁfties or early sixties,

Eddie and his agent cut a deal with a major commercial publisher
for  a  book  about  the  Nazi  saboteurs.  What  happened  next  was
that, even before Eddie had ﬁnished up his extensive research, the
Rachlis  book  came  out.  Out  of  the  blue.  And  Eddie’s  publisher
soon  decided  there  really  wasn’t  enough  interest  to  justify  two
books  on  the  exact  same  subject.  As  Eddie  understood  it,

They

Came To Kill had sold the paperback rights up front for a lordly
sum. There was also a movie sale and so forth. Not much left over,
slim pickings (if any), for ole Eddie’s book. The publisher, surpris-
ingly enough, offered him a pretty good deal to just drop the book

George Garrett

and the subject. They didn’t have to, but nevertheless, they said he
could keep all of the large advance. Moreover, to sweeten things
even more, they also proposed that they would pay him something
more than that, a kind of “kill fee.” In return he would give them,
as their property to use or abuse as they saw ﬁt, all his notes and
as much of the manuscript as he might have already written. His
agent characteristically advised him to take the money and run. It
had all been a kind of assignment, anyway. Eddie was always a pro,
ﬁrst to last. Win a few, lose a few. He needed the money, and he
had plenty of other subjects he was interested in working on. So
why not?

The downside was all the time and energy and effort he had

already spent on it. Eddie went far beyond the version available
from the trial transcript and such government documents as he
could get ahold of at the time. He had traveled over to Germany
and France and all across America searching for and interviewing
people who were involved in the story one way or another.

As for myself, I had been interested in the story of the Nazi sabo-

teurs for a long time, ever since I was a teenager (1942) living in
Florida, mostly, that year, in an old house, a shack really, set in the
sand  dunes,  facing  the  Atlantic  Ocean  near  what  is  now  called
New Smyrna Beach. It was called Coronado Beach then. We could
sit in our rocking chairs on the front porch and watch the Coast
Guard patrol the beach every evening. We saw all kinds of wreck-
age  and  great  gobs  of  oil  and  even  sometimes  dead  bodies  that
washed  up  on  the  beach.  We  witnessed  some  ﬁreﬁghts  involving
planes,  Wildcats  from  a  nearby  airport,  and  German  U-boats  as
tankers  and  freighters  tried  to  run  safely  north  or  south  close
along the Florida coast. Jacksonville Beach, (Ponte Vedra), where
one group of four of the Nazi saboteurs came ashore from a sub-
marine,  was  north  of  where  we  were.  But  we  heard  all  about  it,
long before we were ever able to read anything in the papers or in
the  magazines.  We  took  it  to  be  yet  another  rumor,  only  one
among many. We saw no reason to doubt it. There were already
stories that German sailors, captured or killed, were found to have
receipts  from  grocery  stores  and  even  ticket  stubs  for  movie  the-
aters in Daytona, St. Augustine, Cocoa Beach, et cetera, all up and
down the East Coast.

A Story Goes with It

Why doubt the possibility of some saboteurs?
One of my sisters remembers going to a beach party up at

Jacksonville Beach along about the same time that the saboteurs
(we later learned) were supposed to have come ashore. On the way
back home, they got stopped at several checkpoints. They had to
prove their identity and submit to a search of the car. My sister
and her friend thought it must be something to do with the abuse
of gas rationing. We only had an “A” card, three gallons a week. But
the police and soldiers offered no explanation of the checkpoints.

And something else. I knew a woman who was a newspaper

reporter. She told me how she had gone up to Jacksonville Beach
to see some of the evidence against the saboteurs after the whole
thing was known, namely some supplies and explosives that they
were supposed to have buried when they ﬁrst landed. The FBI was
there to show off the stuff, to let reporters take some pictures, and
to  answer  any  questions.  What  troubled  her  a  little  was  the  fact
that the shallow hole in the sand was obviously very recently dug.
Like maybe an hour or so before the reporters arrived. You can tell
a thing like that easily in soft beach sand. Moreover, the materials
were all brand-new, and some items looked to be American-made,
not German at all. Surprise, surprise? Well, not really. Everybody
knew  better  than  to  ask  too  many  questions  about  anything  in
those  days.  Information  was  carefully  rationed,  doled  out,  man-
aged, manipulated (as they say). Like meat and sugar and leather
and gasoline. Bear in mind that the ﬁrst photographs that showed
dead American corpses were allowed to be published in 1943 or
1944. The president is said to have asked that some photographs
of American dead should begin to be published in the magazines
so that the public could get used to the idea before D-day. Remem-
ber, too, that we were years ﬁnding out the details of exactly what
had  happened  at  Pearl  Harbor.  We  were  told  it  was  bad,  but  we
had no idea just how bad it had been until much later in the war.

So, sometime in the late 1960s, as I recall, I asked Eddie Weems

to tell me something about the Nazi saboteurs of 1942.

Have I already mentioned that Eddie and I were drinking?

Bourbon on the rocks, I’m sorry to say (or am I?). We did a lot of
that in those days, and I guess I could tell you a thing or two.
However, I only mention it here because it is one more factor in

George Garrett

the veracity of this story. Eddie was telling me his version, not for
posterity or publication, but because I had asked him to.
Meanwhile I was listening and sipping some good whiskey and
enjoying the story for its own sake and nothing else.

Oh, all right, since you asked, a couple of quick bourbon stories.

Like the time I went up to Austin for the publication of

In the Briar

Patch. We had a party at Eddie’s house. All kinds of people, friends
of Eddie and Jane, showed up. Two were honored and prominent
Texas men of letters, men I had admired for most of my adult
years but never imagined getting to meet in person—J. Frank
Dobie and Walter Prescott Webb. It was wonderful to meet these
men and to talk to them for awhile. It was only years later that I
heard (I still don’t know if it’s true, but . . .) that Dobie and Webb
had quarreled and that they never went to any place socially where
the other one was likely to be. Only for Eddie Weems would they
turn up together. That says something about Eddie Weems.

We had a ﬁne old time, to be sure; and on the morning after,

hungover, but still young enough to be cheerful, I dropped by the
Press  to  see  Eddie  and  to  make  my  manners  to  Frank  Wardlaw,
director of the Press. He and Eddie were going to drive me out to
the airport. I brought along a bottle, and we sat in Frank’s ofﬁce,
laughing  and  scratching  and  talking  trash  and  taking  some  hits
until  it  was  time  for  us  to  go  to  the  airport.  Got  there  (safe  and
sound).  It  was  a  terrible-looking  little  airport.  Parking  lot  empty.
Tall grass growing everywhere. Not much activity that we noticed.
We still had some time to kill. So we sat in the car talking and tak-
ing some more pulls on that rapidly dwindling bottle.

About that time a man driving a great big grass mower (a bush

hog?) came alongside, cutting a swath of tall grass near where we
were parked. He cut down a couple of rows of grass and weeds and
then pulled up right next to us and cut his engine so we could at
least hear each other.

“You boys waiting for an airplane?” he asked.
“Yes, sir. Going to ﬂy out of here to Houston in about ﬁfteen

minutes.”

“Well, sir, I don’t reckon you’re going to make that ﬂight and

there won’t be another one coming along right away, either.”

“How come? If you don’t mind my asking.”

A Story Goes with It

“Not at all,” he said. “This here airport has been closed up tight

for the last ﬁve years ever since they built the new one across town.
I think you might have better luck if you drove over there and wait-
ed.”

“Much obliged.”
It was then that one of us, probably sharp-eyed Eddie, noticed

that the roof of the terminal was all caved in and there was a chain
and a huge padlock on the front door.

Or, another tale selected from among many, there is the time

Eddie, as a world-class expert on storms of all kinds, was hired by
the

Houston Post, also in 1961 I think, to go down to Galveston and

cover a hurricane that was headed there. He was to go down and
weather the worst of the weather and call in his copy (if he could).
On the way down, Eddie swung by my house in Houston and
picked me up to come along with him as company. I was given a
camera and some bogus press credentials, and we headed off into
the teeth of the storm (as they say).

Eddie wanted to rest his eyes a little and maybe to take a brief

nap. So we switched off. I was driving and Eddie was stretched out
in the backseat of my old Rambler. He was snoring away like my
old hound dog. The road was open and empty (ofﬁcially closed).
The rain was hard and horizontal; the wind was high.

I am peering into it, squinting, leaning up close to the wind-

shield, cocking my head, and keeping time with the windshield
wipers, driving along at a crawl.

Here comes a Texas State Trooper blinking and ﬂashing his

lights. Pulls me over. Parks and comes around to my window and
raps on it. I run it down.

“May I see your license and registration, please, sir?” he asks

politely. “And if you don’t mind my asking, just what the fuck do
you think you are doing here?”

“Going to Galveston, ofﬁcer.”
“No, you ain’t, sir. This road is closed to civilian trafﬁc.”
“We’re not civilians. We’re from the

Houston Post.”

“Got any press credentials?”
“Sure. Only he’s got them all with him.”
Eddie, curled up in the backseat like a bull seal or a walrus, is

still snoring away.

“He’s the reporter, and I’m the photographer.”

George Garrett

“How would I know that?”
“Well, sir,” I tell him. “Here’s my camera. . . .”
It does indeed say “Property of the

Houston Post” on it. I wouldn’t

know how to take a picture with it if my life depended on it. Which,
thank goodness, it doesn’t.

“Okay, buddy,” the trooper allows. “What about him?”
I am struck with sudden inspiration. We do, after all, have a

copy of Eddie’s book on the great Galveston hurricane,

Weekend in

September, sitting on the front seat. It has a nice picture of an unmis-
takable Eddie Weems on the jacket. I hold it up high so the troop-
er can see for himself. He peers at the picture and then at Eddie.

“That is John Edward Weems, ofﬁcer. He wrote the book on

hurricanes.”

Trooper thinks about it, then suddenly waves us on our way.
“If he don’t wake up soon, he ain’t going to write another book

today.”

I am off and running, laughing and scratching.
After a while ole Eddie wakes up and stretches.
“Everything okay?” He asks.
“Everything is copacetic, ﬁve-by-ﬁve.”
Lucky for us, it turned out not to be quite so bad as everybody

had  expected.  It  was  a  powerful  storm,  though.  When  we  ﬁnally
got to Galveston, the place was pretty much evacuated and aban-
doned except for (as ever and always) cops and ﬁremen and rescue
workers.  We  looked  around.  Eddie  talked  to  a  policeman  or  two
and  took  some  notes.  Then  he  drove  around  looking  for  some-
thing familiar, found it, it seemed, and pulled up and parked right
in  front  of  an  enormous  birthday  cake  of  a  Victorian  mansion.
There were some pale lights, candles probably, from inside.

“What next?”
“We wait right here,” he told me.
So we sat there in the car, pelted by the heavy rain, our car win-

dows  fogged  over,  ourselves  passing  the  bottle  back  and  forth
while  we  waited.  For  what,  I  wasn’t  sure.  The  end  of  the  world
maybe. Maybe a half hour or forty-ﬁve minutes later—not a long
time, but long enough for us to get ourselves somewhat inebriat-
ed—a couple of police cars came sloshing along through the rising
water,  together  with  a  bus.  They  pulled  into  the  driveway  of  the
big house, and a couple of cops in wet and shiny slickers clumped

A Story Goes with It

up the stairs and pounded on the front door. We kept busy wiping
the windows inside, trying to see.

Shortly the front door opened, and here came a line of young

women, all of them dressed in bathrobes, running for the bus, with
the cops, like a brace of sheepdogs, herding them along.

“I knew it!” Eddie said. “I knew damn well this is exactly how it

would be.”

He put on the car lights and got out and stood there in the rain

watching. Some of the young women did a kind of double take
when they saw Eddie standing in the light and waved at him.

“Hey, Eddie!” somebody called out. “Hey, Eddie! What are you

doing here?”

He neither waved nor answered.
“They’ve got me confused with somebody else,” he said to me.
After the cops and the bus drove away, Eddie got back in the car,

wiped off as best he could and took a couple or three major swal-
lows of bourbon, the latter, as he explained to me, so he wouldn’t
end up catching a bad cold. As for what we had just witnessed, he
had nothing to say except this: “Bastards! Wouldn’t you know they
would keep them waiting until the very last minute to be evacuat-
ed. It’s a damn shame.”

We drove around until we found a phone booth, one that still

worked.

“Wait right here in the car,” Eddie said, taking his notes (already

well soaked with rain) and the bottle with him. The light in the
booth didn’t work, so he had me to jockey the car around where
the car lights could do the job. I watched him putting coins into the
phone, then talking to somebody. Talked awhile, then hung up.
Took another pull from the bottle and walked slowly back to the car.

“Let’s go home,” he told me. “Back to Houston. It’s all over.”
“What do you mean? What happened?”
“I called in and dictated my story, and they took it all down care-

fully and read it back to me. Then they ﬁred me. Bill Hobby ﬁred
me in person.”

“Why did he do that?”
“Beats me,” Eddie said. “It was a hell of a good story, too—how

they evacuated the best whorehouse in Galveston in the big mid-
dle of a hurricane.”

George Garrett

To the best of my recollection (as witnesses always say in court-

room  dramas),  I  have  only  told  Eddie’s  version  of  this  saboteur
story a couple of times before now. Both times that I told it, dif-
ferent  occasions,  were  at  the  same  place—evening  on  the  front
porch of my house in York Harbor, Maine, overlooking the York
River. In the evening, that river, with its moored lobster boats and
sailboats  and  large  and  small  pleasure  craft,  rising  or  falling
according to the tide, glistens with a ghostly light like a wet black-
snake.

Anyway, I told Eddie’s saboteur story (separately) to two old

friends—John McPhee and David Slavitt. McPhee seemed to like
the story and said so. Slavitt liked it, too, and wondered out loud
if he could maybe make a piece of ﬁction, a novel, out of the

sub-

ject, creating his own version and not exactly using Eddie’s version
or anybody else’s.

I couldn’t think of any good reason why not.
Slavitt, a brilliant and proliﬁc poet, novelist, story-writer, critic,

and translator (author of more than eighty books at this writing
and more are in the pipeline), gave the story of the saboteurs his
own inimitable twists and turns.

Ringer (1982) tells its own story,

based, as he allows in his “acknowledgments,” on Rachlis’s

They

Came to Kill (1961), but also clearly and boldly a work of ﬁction. “I
have merely extended the truth into what I hope is a plausible and
entertaining story.” He used few of the details from Eddie’s ver-
sion (as remembered and told by me), but he was wonderfully
faithful to the

spirit of Eddie’s unwritten story. On the one hand,

Ringer is  a  fast-paced,  page-turning,  classic  thriller  deftly  plotted
and  enhanced  by  the  usual  required  ingredients  of  sex  and  vio-
lence,  murder  and  mayhem.  Just  as  it  is,  it  would  make  a  swell
action  movie.  In  his  blurb,  Richard  Elman  called  it  “a  movie  in
words.” If Eddie’s version calls for the Coen brothers,

Ringer might

be perfect for Tony Bill.

On the other hand, there is a gracious plenty of “comic relief,”

of slapstick and pratfalls.

Ringer is a Shakespearean mix in the way

that Eddie’s version is a mix (and, if you insist, as mine is here and
now. As, alas, real life is.) Slavitt produced a very clever, original,
and complex piece of work. Playing fast and loose with many of
the facts, he nevertheless managed to follow the true history fairly
closely. The biggest change in Slavitt’s version was to make the

A Story Goes with It

mission a double-barreled plot. The saboteurs, all of them hope-
less and hapless amateurs, are supposed to blow up Jewish depart-
ment stores in New York City. That is their one and only suicidal
assignment. Among them, however, and unknown to any of them
until late in the story, there is the “ringer,” a real professional, a
hit man by trade, who has the special assignment of murdering
Albert Einstein. This leads up to a wild final sequence in Prince-
ton during the annual Princeton Reunions, where, among other
things, two men in Princeton Tiger costumes pull each others’
tails and shoot it out on stage in front of a large crowd of drunken
alumni.

I have to believe Slavitt put that in as a little thank-you tip of the

hat to me—I went to Princeton, as did John McPhee, who was a
class behind me. Slavitt also has a character who is a master
sergeant, my old rank, by the name of Garrett, who appears brieﬂy
and is celebrated for his “style of invective.” Never mind. We have
our little private jokes from time to time.

I have read most of Slavitt’s books but somehow had not read

Ringer until right now, right in the big middle of doing my own ver-
sion. There probably have been others, too, but so far

Ringer is the

only work of ﬁction that I know of about the Nazi saboteurs of
1942. You ought to read it sometime.

From here on Eddie’s version of what really happened in the

saboteur  story  differs  signiﬁcantly  from  all  other  accounts  that  I
know  of.  If  there  is  any  truth,  or  even  a  serious  probability  in
Eddie’s  version,  then  you  wouldn’t  expect  the  people  who  were
involved—the  Coast  Guard,  the  FBI,  the  president,  the  attorney
general, the Supreme Court, et cetera, to conﬁrm it unless they got
caught  and  had  to.  Otherwise  they  almost  certainly  would,  as  is
the habit and wont of all governments, large and small, local and
global, have attempted to cover it up as much as possible.

Real people with real names were duly honored with medals

and with public praise, J. Edgar Hoover among them, for the bold
and efﬁcient way they dealt with the challenge of the Nazi sabo-
teurs. People have had buildings and streets named after them. Let
it be. Let them all rest in peace. From here on, with the exception
of some of the dead saboteurs and maybe a few others, I won’t bad-
mouth anybody.

The Jacksonville Beach landing went well, everyone agrees. No

George Garrett

problem. The four men who landed there scattered at once and
didn’t get caught until later on.

The other group landed on Long Island.
On the quiet and foggy night of June 13, 1942, near midnight,

four saboteurs paddled a rubber boat towards shore. They wore
German uniforms so that if they were captured while landing, they
would legitimately be taken as prisoners of war, not spies. Army or
navy uniforms? Nobody can agree on that now. I, myself, prefer to
imagine them (why not?) in regular

Wermacht uniforms with those

heavy and distinctive German steel helmets. Who knows?

As luck would have it, they paddled right up to a pier that was

part of the Amagansett Station of the U.S. Coast Guard. Happens
there  was  a  Coast  Guard  seaman  there,  too,  out  on  patrol.  This
seaman  was  a  kind  of  a  discipline  problem  and  was  pulling  this
night patrol duty as a punishment. He saw the four men paddling
up to the pier and snubbing a line on a cleat there. He pulled out
his .45 pistol and pointed at them. The four men dutifully raised
their  hands.  The  sailor  stepped  over  to  a  ﬁeld  telephone  that
directly contacted the duty ofﬁcer at the station.

“Sir,” he said, “I got me four guys down here, all dressed up like

German soldiers, tying up to our pier. What you want me to do
about them?”

“What I want you to do, you little shit, is to hang up that phone

and get your ass out on beach patrol immediately. And if you ever
call me again with some kind of a crazy story like that, I will per-
sonally see to it that you stand a court-martial.”

(Or words to that effect.)
“Yes, sir.”
Hangs up the phone. Puts pistol back in its holster. Waves polite-

ly to the four men in German uniform, who are just standing there
trying to make up their minds whether to run for it or give up. Not
a word but waves his friendly hello and goodbye and then hops off
the pier and starts walking away along the beach. Just as he was
told to do.

The four men pull the rubber boat and their other gear up

under the pier and just above the high-tide line as marked by sea-
weed and ﬂotsam and jetsam. They proceed to shed their uniforms
and bury them casually in the sand. They settle down to catch
some shut-eye while waiting for dawn.

A Story Goes with It

While I was writing this story, I got in touch with my old friend

Allen Wier, a gifted novelist and story writer. Allen and I had once
made a tour of Texas colleges reading from our new books—
Allen’s

Departing as Air and my novel The Succession. One of the

places we went to was Baylor, where Allen had gone to school.
Baylor is in Waco, which is where Eddie Weems was living at that
time. I think Eddie was working at Baylor. Now I asked Allen for
any recollections he might have of our time with Eddie in Waco.

He replied, and I’ll be quoting from his letter to me dated June

3, 2002.

“When we got to Waco, we stayed at Eddie and Jane Weems’s

house. Eddie drove us over to Baylor for our reading. After the
reading, Eddie piled us into his car . . .”

Politely Allen avoids the subject of the reading itself. Baylor was

and is a very strict and straightlaced place. Good school, but kind
of strict. Allen is too polite to remind me that all three of us, he
and Eddie and myself, having had a few drinks to prepare for this
important occasion, were reeking of alcohol. People left in good-
size clumps and crowds even before we had been so much as intro-
duced or read a word out loud. A bad scene . . .

“After the reading, Eddie piled us into his car, winking and grin-

ning. He wouldn’t tell us where we were headed, just that he had
something to show us. We drove all across Waco in the dark and
stopped in front of one of those big metal buildings they erect in
about a week. This one was blue metal, and there was a big neon
sign—I think it was ‘The 500 Club,’ something like that—pink neon
lighting up a large parking lot full of pickup trucks and Cadillacs
and Lincolns. Eddie sat there grinning as if we were parked in
front of the Taj Mahal.

“ ‘Just last week,’ he told us, ‘a fellah rode his horse inside.’
“Remember, George, you and I had to catch a red-eye ﬂight very

early the next morning on a ‘Git-along-little-dogie’ airline, en route
to Abilene Christian College, I think. And we were already pretty
bushed—ten readings in eight days (or was it eight readings in ten
days?). Anyway, ole Eddie herded us into that big blue metal build-
ing where rock-and-roll and strobe lights pulsed steadily, and there
were all these nekkid girls everywhere you looked. That place
must have had four or ﬁve little stages and a stripper or two on
every stage.

George Garrett

“Several of the dancers waved and hollered at Eddie as we

walked in. Once we were seated at a table, a girl in a French maid’s
outﬁt came and took our drink orders. Eddie was handing out
credit cards and big smiles in all directions. It was as if we were cel-
ebrating birthdays or one of us was ﬁxing to get married the next
day.

“Eddie paid for ‘table dances’ for both of us, and in my memo-

ry he hired two or three girls to dance for each of us at the same
time. Our little black cocktail table was crowded with women
undressing up close and personal.”

One thing I do remember, Allen, was this. At some point a very

good-looking  young  woman,  beautifully  and  expensively  dressed
(hat and gloves too as I choose to recall), a creature of “real class,”
came in accompanied by a tall, handsome, well-dressed man. He
looked  like  a  young  corporate  executive.  All  the  girls  crowded
around to greet her warmly. Turned out, or so it seemed, she was
a  former  dancer  at  the  500  Club  who  had  recently  married  the
man she was with. She introduced him all around. And then they
sat down at a table. After a little while, one of the naked dancers
beckoned to her to come on up to the stage. Laughing, she jumped
up  from  the  table  and  joined  the  dancers.  Danced  for  a  few
moments in all her ﬁne new clothes, then suddenly began to shuck
off those clothes and become another naked dancer. I remember
her wedding ring, a big diamond that she had proudly shown off
to  her  friends,  glinting  in  the  light.  The  expression  on  her  hus-
band’s face was . . . well, ambiguous, uncertain. I couldn’t rightly
guess whether he was pleased and proud or utterly dismayed.

Did the dancing wife know Eddie Weems? I don’t know. Why

not? She should have. Everybody else did. I think we would have
noticed only if she

hadn’t known Eddie.

“I remember looking at you and your head was nodding with

pure fatigue. I thought we might turn out to be the ﬁrst men in the
history of the 500 Club to fall asleep during a table dance.

“Finally, after Eddie had signed plenty of credit card slips and

spread plenty of goodwill, we convinced him we couldn’t take any
more fun that night, and he drove us home, where Jane got up and
welcomed us back and then, more than good-naturedly, got up
again along about two or three hours later to make us coffee before
Eddie drove us off to the airport, clearly sad to see us go.

A Story Goes with It

“I hope that Jane will see this story as a tribute to Eddie even if,

as I like to think, those nekkid girls are now angels up in heaven,
waving and dancing and delivering drinks on the house all around
the clouds.”

I am sorry to report that Jane Weems has also died since then.

She was always an angel to put up with him and us, too.

I am not going to tell some of the other versions of this story so

that you can then compare and contrast them with Eddie’s
account. Sufﬁce it to say, they give a picture that, in general and in
many details, is much more serious, more dangerous than Eddie’s
account.

Since, as indicated, the other versions, though excellent, are uni-

formly based on ofﬁcial government documents and data, the
actions taken (or not taken) by the FBI, the Coast Guard, the
Justice Department, et cetera, are inevitably shown in a favorable
light.

As soon as the saboteurs were caught, they were given the bene-

ﬁt of a speedy military tribunal, convicted, and six of them were
executed soon thereafter. There was no particular value at the
time for the U.S. government to portray them as a bunch of clowns
and stumblebums. Best that they should be presented to the gen-
eral public as extremely dangerous and diabolically clever Nazi
agents.

(Here a word or two more may be in order. My friend, Richard

Dillard, poet and novelist and coauthor of the screenplay for
Frankenstein Meets the Space Monster, tells me that Hitler’s political
party was originally called Naso, for National Socialists. The word
Nazi was originally used by the opposition and means something
like “buffoon” in English. For some reason they began to call

them-

selves Nazis. At least that’s what Dillard says. And it was no joke by
1941, though you would have to admit that a movie/musical like
The Producers returns things to their original mint condition.)

Best that the Americans should not be complete clowns either.

And the relatively quick roundup and capture of the eight sabo-
teurs should not be attributed to dumb luck, but rather to the
always alert, dedicated, and determined efforts of the Americans,
especially Mr. J. Edgar Hoover and his band of merry men over at
the FBI.

George Garrett

So, four German saboteurs came ashore in uniform near a Coast

Guard  station  on  Long  Island.  They  immediately  encountered  a
Coast Guardsman, but nothing came of that encounter. Whatever
took place, they were not taken into custody. They rested awhile,
smoking  German  cigarettes  (leaving  crumpled-up  cigarette  pack-
ages  behind)  and  drinking  some  German  schnapps  (also  leaving
the empty bottle behind), and changed back into civilian clothing
(leaving  the  German  uniforms  behind)  and  just  disappeared.  As
did the submarine that had brought them there.

Focus now on George John Dasch, the eldest of the saboteurs

and  the  leader  of  the  group  that  landed  on  Long  Island.  When,
early  on  the  morning  of  June  14,  they  scattered  and  made  their
separate ways, by public transportation, into New York City, Dasch
used a public telephone as soon as possible to call the FBI ofﬁce in
New York. The people he talked to there were surprisingly polite.
They listened to him, then told him that this news was so vital, so
important,  that  he  should  take  it  directly,  and  in  person,  to  the
director of the FBI in Washington, D.C.

Dasch realized that these people thought he was nuts. The only

way he could stop the mission cold before a lot of people were hurt
and  some  infrastructure  (as  they  call  it  now)  was  damaged  and
destroyed would be if he did exactly what they had suggested and
went on down to Washington and tried to see Hoover. If he went
in person to the New York ofﬁce, that person (himself) would prob-
ably  ﬁnd  himself  locked  up  somewhere.  Then—worst-case  sce-
nario—let us say that the mission succeeded. Would the FBI agents
in New York City be happy to learn that Dasch wasn’t crazy after
all and that he had been telling them the truth, the real “skinny,”
from  the  beginning?  Would  they  let  their  future  careers  in  the
bureau  be  jeopardized?  No,  siree.  What  would  be  jeopardized
would  be  the  life  of  one  expendable  George  Dasch,  who  would
ﬁnd himself on the bottom of the East River, or maybe even the
Hudson, wearing huge concrete shoes.

To allay suspicions, Dasch met with the other saboteurs as had

been planned, reconﬁrmed their immediate future plans, then
took a train to Washington. Got there. Found and went to Hoover’s
ofﬁce and asked for an appointment.

“And what is the nature of your problem, Mr. Dasch?”
He explained, brieﬂy, that he had some extremely urgent and

A Story Goes with It

sensitive information that he could deliver only to the director,
himself, personally. He then took the chair that the receptionist
offered him and began to catch up on his magazine reading. If this
were a story of research rather than mere ﬁctive memory, I would
probably tell you what he might have been reading in the maga-
zines. People came and went from the inner sanctum. Dasch wait-
ed calmly and read those old magazines.

From the beginning, from the day he was recruited by the

Abwehr for this mysterious mission—and Dasch was the very ﬁrst
person  they  picked—Dasch  had  planned  to  betray  the  operation.
He  was  delighted  when  they  accidentally  landed  at  the  Coast
Guard station. Alarmed but pleased when the sailor drew down on
them.  Sincerely  disappointed  when,  for  some  reason,  that  sailor
simply let them go. But Dasch was ever an optimist. Always look-
ing for the silver lining. Thus the response of the New York ofﬁce
of  the  FBI  to  the  news  that  a  gang  of  German  saboteurs  was  in
town, while disappointing, was helpful. For one thing, it meant his
luck  was  holding.  Suppose  he  had  stupidly  gone  straight  to  the
ofﬁce  and  made  his  declaration  then  and  there.  Go  ﬁgure.
Meanwhile  their  funny—ha-ha—brush-off  (“This  is  really  impor-
tant. You must report at once to the director in person.”) told him
something about the culture of the FBI, itself, namely that these
agents  had  not  much  respect  for  their  boss.  That  it  popped  into
their minds so quickly (“This looks like a job for Superman!”) also
indicated  to  Dasch  that  it  was  probably  just  the  kind  of  thing
Hoover  was  looking  for  and  would  go  for.  They,  the  N.  Y.  guys,
were betting the store that an obvious loony like that would never
get  into  Hoover’s  ofﬁce.  And  even  if  he  did,  it  would  be  a  good
joke, and one he couldn’t pin on them, at Hoover’s expense.

They were dead wrong on every count.
Dasch did get to see Hoover. (“You got ﬁve minutes. I’ll give you

ﬁve minutes and the clock is already ticking, pal.”) It took two full
days of just sitting there reading and being calm, cool, and col-
lected before he had his chance.

But it didn’t take ﬁve full minutes to convince J. Edgar that this

was really hot stuff. It did take a little longer to convince him that
it was all or mostly true.

Dasch suggested that Hoover should call up his agents in New

York City and tell them to haul ass out to Long Island and to check

George Garrett

directly  under  the  pier  of  the  Coast  Guard  station  for  any  signs
that  maybe  some  Nazis  had  been  camping  out  there  recently.
Dasch  was  taking  a  chance  or  two,  to  be  sure.  He  did  not  tell
Hoover that he had already tried his luck (and failed) with those
New York guys. So Hoover would not begin by chewing them out
but  instead  would  issue  crisp,  loud  orders,  thus  indicating  they
were  at  least  still  on  the  payroll  and  more  or  less  in  his  good
graces. There was no percentage in their

not ﬁnding the evidence.

There was every incentive to locate some if they could.

Note that Dasch didn’t suggest calling the Coast Guard, which

might have been quicker and more efﬁcient: “Hey, guys, run on
down and take a look underneath your own pier and see if you can
ﬁnd some Nazi regalia and stuff from the other night when they
landed there, okay?”

The United States Coast Guard had no incentive whatsoever to

ﬁnd any evidence that a bunch of Nazis had been hanging out over
at their place. Note that Dasch was also betting that the Coast Guard
had not found anything yet, on their own, in the two and a half days
since the saboteurs had ﬁrst encountered the sailor. He was betting
that they hadn’t found anything because they hadn’t bothered to
look yet. He could have been wrong, but what-the-hell, he couldn’t be
in a whole lot more trouble than he was already. Right?

Dasch goes back to his chair and his limp magazines.
Hoover catches up on some paperwork.
After a while, an hour or so, the phone rings, and in a trice (as

they say), George Dasch is the man of the hour.

Hoover is so happy he takes Dasch out to dinner at a ﬁrst-class

Washington  restaurant  (Harvey’s?)  where  they  can  get  a  good
piece of steak. Hoover already guesses that he is going to have to
depend  a  great  deal  on  the  kindness  and  goodwill  of  Dasch  to
catch  and  convict  the  rest  of  this  gang.  He  has  already  guessed
Dasch’s weakness and so devotes some time to praising the guy as
a great American patriot who has done his country a service above
and beyond the call of duty.

Rolling up the rest of them, except for one case, is no big prob-

lem. Thanks to Dasch, the government has complete information
on all the others in both groups and on where they are supposed
to be and what they are up to.

A Story Goes with It

Everybody but one, Herbert Haupt of Chicago, at twenty-one

the youngest of them, is taken into custody. They, the New York
FBI, have Haupt under close surveillance. He has been making a
lot  of  phone  calls  from  various  phone  booths,  and  they  think
maybe he has some contacts that Dasch doesn’t know about or
anyway  hasn’t  yet  revealed.  Trailing  him,  several  agents  follow
Haupt  to  Penn  Station,  where  he  buys  a  one-way  ticket  to  Chi-
cago  and  boards,  aptly,  the  Twentieth  Century  Limited.  So  do
they.

They don’t tell anybody else what they are doing except the peo-

ple in the New York ofﬁce.

In Chicago, Haupt hops in a cab and the FBI agents do likewise.
“Follow that cab!”
Haupt’s cab goes directly to his home address, where (to their

knowledge) his mother lives. He goes in. The FBI guys settle in for
a long wait after explaining to the cabby what rights he doesn’t
have and what happens to uncooperative cab drivers in wartime.
But they don’t have to wait long, anyway. Here comes young Haupt
backing his mother’s old Packard out of the attached garage.

“Follow that car!”
Haupt goes downtown and parks near the federal building.

They follow him inside. A couple of them ride up with him in the
elevator. Elevator stops and opens, and Haupt hops out and opens
a frosted glass door marked “Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

“Jaysus, and Jay Edgar! What the fuck is going on?”
It looks really weird to our New York boys.
What they don’t know won’t help or hurt them now. Seems that

a  month  or  so  ago  a  draft  notice  for  Haupt  arrived  home  in  the
mail. (“Greetings from the President of the United States!”) Being
in Germany at the time, he missed it. Since then a second notice
followed  by  a  stern  warning  have  come.  The  warning  informed
him that unless he checked, by a certain date, with the FBI, a war-
rant for his arrest would be issued. He is already a day or two late.
So what happens is that he tells the Chicago FBI people that he
has been out of the country, mostly in Mexico, but that he is back
for  good  now  and  will,  of  course,  report  at  once  to  Selective
Service.  They  tell  him  not  to  sweat  it.  “Thanks  for  coming  by.”
Leaves,  pulling  the  door  to  quietly.  Smiling.  Whistling  a  happy
tune while waiting for the elevator. Maybe it is the same tune we
heard back at the beginning.

George Garrett

These New York guys are really bafﬂed and unsure now. They

phone home for instructions, and their ofﬁce tells them under no
circumstances to deal with or say anything to the Chicago FBI
ofﬁce. Just keep that Nazi kid under tight surveillance and wait for
more instructions.

Cut to the end of the chase. What happens next is that Haupt,

following orders, checks into a Chicago hotel.

Fade In

Ext. Drake Hotel: Day

A shot of the Chicago hotel. We hear the sound of someone
whistling the tune we ﬁrst heard in the opening scene of this story.

Zoom In

A  moving,  over-the-shoulder  shot,  following  a  group  of  unidenti-
ﬁed  men  in  suits  and  hats  as  they  brush  past  the  doorman  and
hurry  across  the  lobby  toward  the  bank  of  elevators  where  they
have to wait.

Cut To

Int. Hotel Bathroom

Here is Haupt taking a bubblebath and happily whistling his heart
out.

Camera PULLS BACK, leaving him and moves into bedroom,
where we see the New York FBI men tiptoeing around very quiet-
ly and going through Haupt’s luggage and papers.

Cut To

Int. Hallway

Elevator stops and disgorges the unidentiﬁed men in suits who
cautiously tiptoe down the hall, pausing in front of a doorway. One
motions and another one nods and moves to be in position to kick
down the door. They then produce pistols. At some signal the door
is kicked down and they burst into the room, guns drawn, ﬁring.
The New York FBI boys shoot back. Both groups are shooting and
missing and shouting “FBI! FBI! FBI! Drop your weapons! Drop
your weapons!” Suddenly they recognize that they are all, for bet-
ter or worse, FBI agents.

A Story Goes with It

They stand there and look at each other sheepishly. Lucky nobody
was hurt. As it dawns on them what has happened, they turn as if
synchronized to look at the bathroom door.

Cut To

Bathroom

Haupt in tub, terriﬁed and slathered with soap foam, slowly raises
his hands in surrender and, for no good reason at all, begins
whistling that tune again.
Dissolve

If they ever do a movie of Eddie’s version, that could be, in the

hands of the right director, a dynamite scene.

Now, ﬁction or no, alas, it all gets a little bit serious and compli-

cated as things will sometime do. What begins in farce, a few
laughs, ends in something like tragedy with a stage littered with
corpses. Only six dead bodies in this case (same as in Hamlet, if
you care to count Rosencrantz and Guildenstern). And they are all
saboteurs.

You can see it all for yourself. Headlines, a fair and speedy mil-

itary tribunal, followed by a speedy appeal that is lost in the
Supreme Court, followed by a fair and speedy execution by means
of the electric chair in the D.C. jail on August 8, 1942, a little less
than two months after they landed. Justice moved more swiftly in
those days. Read the versions based on the tribunal transcript. Get
the facts there. Eddie’s version of the end game doesn’t differ
much from the ofﬁcial one except that in the latter, our brilliant
and steadfast FBI guys are shown to be right on top of things from
the get-go. They have saved the nation.

And the lesson to all Americans from the president and all our

fearless leaders on down is that we are safely in good hands.
Everybody (except the six saboteurs) gets something good out of it
besides the praise of a thankful public. Hoover gets a special
medal.

The two saboteurs who weren’t electrocuted didn’t make out

quite  as  well  as  they  might  have.  Dasch  was  under  the  under-
standing  that,  having  betrayed  the  operation  and  been  a  fully
cooperative  government  witness,  he  would  be  acquitted  or,  any-

George Garrett

way, given “a slap on the wrist.” He was told to expect a presiden-
tial pardon. What he got instead was thirty years in the slammer,
effective  immediately.  He  was  cuffed  and  carried  away  from  the
tribunal.  Clearly  Hoover  didn’t  want  anybody  running  around
free as the breeze who knew the whole truth about the sequence of
what  was  called  a  SNAFU  in  that  war  (Situation  Normal  All
Fucked Up). Dasch covered for them in his testimony, somewhat to
his own disadvantage. But one day he might well change his mind
and tell another story. Hoover might, wisely, have preferred to exe-
cute him with the others. He could have. But he had at least some
sense  of  loyalty.  How  much  harm  could  Dasch  do  to  him  or
national security from deep in bowels of a federal penitentiary?

Because they felt they needed to have two witnesses for the sake

of the tribunal and appearances, the government also used anoth-
er man, one whom Dasch “turned” for them—Ernest Burger, an
American citizen who had served in the National Guard once
upon a time. In a busy life, he had also been a stormtrooper in the
Nazi party in Germany and a private in the

Wermacht. On top of

all that, he logged more than a year as a political prisoner in a con-
centration camp for bad-mouthing the Gestapo.

Burger got thirty years, too. His understanding was that later

on, and as soon as possible, he would quietly be set free.

In his excellent and informative

Atlantic piece, Gary Cohen

writes:  “Dasch  and  Burger  spent  some  six  years  in  U.S.  Prisons
and then were deported to Germany in April of 1948.” Dasch told
Eddie, in an interview, that there was no kind of new hearing or
anything,  no  warning  either.  Just  suddenly,  in  the  middle  of  the
night,  some  FBI  guys  came  to  his  cell,  gave  him  a  set  of  civilian
clothes,  and  put  him  on  a  plane  for  Germany.  He  was  widely
known and hated in Germany as the Judas among the saboteurs.
According to Gary Cohen, Dasch had a hard time of it but lived
on until 1992. He adds this fascinating sentence: “Late in his life
Dasch  befriended  Charlie  Chaplin,  who  was  living  in  nearby
Switzerland,  and  the  two  men  compared  notes  on  how  J.  Edgar
Hoover had ruined their lives.”

Eddie didn’t know whatever became of the other one.

I have on my desk in front of me right now a book about espi-

onage during World War II—

The Shadow War (1991). Okay, so I did

A Story Goes with It

do a little reading and research, but not all that much. It lies open
to page ﬁfty-seven, where there is a black-and-white photograph of
Admiral Wilhelm Canaris. He is in uniform, though most of his
uniform is concealed within a large, dark, heavy foot-length over-
coat with shiny little epaulets on the shoulders. And he is wearing
what we would call a visored garrison cap, replete with “scrambled
eggs” on the visor. He is walking along, hands behind his back,
looking across at the camera. There are two other men, one on each
side, walking with him, wearing

Wermacht uniforms—no overcoats,

riding  britches,  high,  and  highly  polished  riding  boots.  They  are
identiﬁed  in  the  caption  as  “two  key  aides”—General  Erwin
Lahousen, head of sabotage, and Colonel Hans Pickenbrock, chief
of espionage. Canaris looks to be very serious, more so in the con-
text  of  the  caption,  which  tells  us  that  “a  grim  Wilhelm  Canaris
trudges to Adolf Hitler’s ofﬁce on June 30 to explain the collapse
of Operation Pastorius.”

Trudges, that’s a nice associative touch. Sets

the tone. Only in truth the three men just seem to be walking slow-
ly along.

Trudges is a pure judgment call. “Grim” is also. Serious, as

already said, yes, indeed, but poker-faced, really. They don’t look
specially sad or troubled. Maybe if we could only see his eyes,
which are in the shadow of his visor, we would know better. . . .

There are other photos of Canaris in

The Shadow War. In a full-

page  portrait,  from  a  certain  angle  (again  he  has  just  turned
towards the camera), Canaris, with his garrison cap on but now set
well above the large, heavy-lidded eyes, looks quite a bit like Eric
von Stroheim. Remember him? Without a cap on he looks quite
different—silky silver hair and heavy silver eyebrows, a good-looking
man of early middle age, handsome, yes, yet somehow also non-
descript.  In  photographs  with  others—Himmler,  Goebbels,  his
longtime  rival  and  enemy  Reinhard  Heydrich—Canaris  is  a  trim
man of medium height and, always, that pleasant poker face.

The

Shadow War describes him as more than a little eccentric: “A pill-
popping hypochondriac who wore heavy winter clothing year
round [that, if true, may explain the heavy overcoat he wore on
June 30], Canaris harbored an irrational dislike of tall people and
those with small ears” (p. 4). This sounds more like some kind of
a joke originating from the bored

Time-Life editors, who had to put

this book together, than conﬁrmed fact. Those guys, the editors,
try to make something out of “his rumpled uniform, eccentric

George Garrett

mannerisms, and lisping voice” and point out that he “fretted
obsessively over the health of his pets.” They also quote him as say-
ing: “My dachshund is discreet and will never betray me. I cannot
say that of any human being.” Who knows? Maybe he and Hitler,
a couple of certiﬁed dog lovers, had that to talk about. In any case,
a lot of people who know enough to have a legitimate opinion
regard Canaris as the great spymaster of World War II.

I have also on my desk

Master Spy (1952) by Ian Colvin, who

argues  that  Canaris,  while  not  actually  working  for  or  with  the
British, was a kind of secret ally of theirs, strongly favoring them
over  the  Russians  and,  towards  the  end,  even  the  Führer,  and,
from  time  to  time,  giving  the  British  some  information,  serious
aid, and comfort whenever he could get away with it. Colvin makes
a strong, if, ﬁnally, inconclusive, case.

Some people speculate that Canaris cooperated with the Brits to

help set up the assassination, in May 1942, of Reinhard Heydrich,
who, among other things, was SS Deputy Protector of Bohemia-
Moravia. It is entirely possible, but there are no conﬁrming docu-
ments. Very few documents concerning Canaris survive. He lives
only in the memory of a few very old men.

I am perfectly willing to write off that heavy overcoat in the big

middle of June on the assumption that the comment on Canaris’s
sumptuary eccentricity is factually correct—that he wore winter
clothing all year-round. I have to admit that I haven’t yet found any
other evidence of that except for this photograph. But let it be. I
do have a couple of other minor problems with the June 30 pho-
tograph and its caption.

The saboteurs, all but Dasch, who was still free until early July,

were ﬁnally caught and in custody by June 25. Thanks to the eager
(if  supremely  self-serving)  efforts  of  J.  Edgar  Hoover,  the  news
about the saboteurs and their capture was in all the American and
Allied newspapers beginning June 27. Certainly Canaris, the old
master  spy,  himself,  would  have  been  fully  aware  of  that  much.
Whether or not Hitler, who was busy concentrating on the eastern
front  that  summer  of  ’42,  would  have  known  (or  cared)  much
about it, one way or the other, on or before June 30, I wonder. . . .
I’m thinking that Canaris was bringing him the news in person on
June 30. That’s what was happening. Which would have been the
right  (smart)  thing  to  do.  And  whatever  may  or  may  not  have

A Story Goes with It

happened at that meeting, if it, in fact, ever took place, we don’t
know. In any case, we don’t hear from any other sources (and they
are plentiful) that the Führer was particularly upset at that partic-
ular time or angry at Canaris. Canaris came and went (if he, in
fact, came and went) without getting into any big trouble with
Hitler, at least at that time.

His troubles were yet to come.
Don’t fail to consider this—that the events, just as they had been

played out, actually served both sides. Hoover was out to prove
that we could defend ourselves from any kind of sneak attack, not
counting Pearl Harbor. The Germans, on the other hand, had suc-
ceeded in planting the idea, at least back home, that they could
come ashore whenever and wherever they chose to. Meantime the
U-boats were still out there sinking American ships by the dozens,
lots of them within sight of the lights of New York City.

It is entirely possible that Hitler congratulated Canaris, in June

of ’42, for successfully mounting Operation Pastorius, even though
it had failed.

Fade In

Ext. Rastenberg Airﬁeld: Day

A small airﬁeld amid pine woods of East Prussia

Long shot as light airplane, a Storch, lands and taxis towards a
camouﬂaged building. A staff car appears and picks up a single
passenger from the airplane. Car drives off quickly on a dirt road
into the surrounding forest.

Close Shot: Admiral Canaris.

He is sitting in the backseat, holding a well-stuffed briefcase in his
lap. He removes his cap and pats his sweaty forehead with a hand-
kerchief. He looks genuinely anxious.

Title: “January 31, 1943”

Admiral Canaris is being driven in a staff car from the airﬁeld to
meet with and report as ordered to the Führer at the Führer’s
headquarters—the

Wolfsschanze. He hasn’t got the slightest idea why

the Führer wants to see him today. It could be any number of

George Garrett

things. So many problems these days. Things seem to be falling
apart bit by bit in North Africa and more so on the eastern front.
The bad news of that particular day is the loss of Stalingrad and
the surrender, by newly promoted Field Marshal Paulus, of the
German Sixth Army there, more than 90,000 men (of which only
about 5,000 will live to return home many years later). The worst
single defeat in German military history.

Canaris is not looking forward to talking with the Führer.

Canaris, an intelligencer after all, will already know something
about how the Führer is holding up these days. Not very well. He
will know what the great tank general Guderian will soon discov-
er and later report. Of course, both men will be and were shocked
because they had not, in fact and ﬂesh, seen Hitler or talked with
him in a while. Here’s how Guderian would describe him: “His left
hand trembled, his back was bent, his gaze was ﬁxed, his eyes pro-
truded but lacked their former luster, his cheeks were ﬂecked with
red. He was more excitable, easily lost his composure and was
prone to angry outbursts and ill-considered decisions.”

Canaris arrives and is ushered at once into the Führer’s ofﬁce.

To the surprise of the admiral, it is very calm and quiet there. No
glittering  generals.  Not  a  lot  of  the  usual  yelling  and  screaming
going on. No phones ringing off the hook and no clerks and mes-
sengers  coming  and  going.  Hitler’s  favorite  dog,  the  Alsatian
Blondie,  is  there  but  does  not  bark  at  the  admiral.  It  is  quiet
enough that Canaris can hear someone nearby, out of sight, idly
pecking away at a typewriter. Maybe writing a poem.

A few years later, in the early ’50s, while I was a soldier stationed

at  Linz,  Austria,  I  witnessed  the  return  of  some  of  these  men,
those  who  had  somehow  or  other  survived,  from  the  infamous
Soviet  Gulag.  Still  later,  maybe  a  decade  after,  I  wrote  a  story
based on the experience—“Whistling in the Dark.” It includes, as
its ﬁnal scene, the moment when two men, American soldiers, a
sergeant  (myself)  and  a  corporal,  are  pulling  duty  as  Courtesy
Patrol.  After  lunch  in  a  country

gasthaus, they drive a jeep into

town and park at the railroad station.

Now then, full of good food and beer and full of goodwill toward

humankind, one and all, our two soldiers have driven into town
and parked their jeep in a reserved space and are taking a stroll

A Story Goes with It

around the

Bahnhof. They will check the papers of a few GIs who

are arriving and departing. They will caution a soldier or two to
button up a shirt pocket or tighten up a necktie. And they will
watch the trains come and go. The weather is really ﬁne and
dandy, couldn’t be better. Nice and warm and getting warmer with
the afternoon. The air is scented with springtime. Or is it the little
bouquets of ﬂowers so many people seem to be carrying? The girls
are in their light dresses already. Splendid, if a little pale from win-
ter. Sap stirs in the limbs of the sergeant and the corporal.

Unusually crowded today. They are separated by the crowds. No

matter. They will meet up sooner or later on one of the platforms
or back at the jeep.

Alone, I stroll, not strut, out of the great barn of a building

(most GIs call it the Barnhof) into the sunlight on a platform.
People, crowds of them, smiling and jabbering, waiting for a train.
Even if my German were good enough to understand more than a
few rudimentary phrases, I could not hear what they are saying.
Somewhere nearby, though I can’t yet see it, a brass band is play-
ing cheerful oompah music. Deafening and delightful.

Must be a local holiday of some kind. Now I am closer to the

band. I see the middle-aged musicians, their cheeks chipmunking
as they play. I am standing close by the huge bass drum, which
keeps a steady rhythm.

The band members are of an age that would allow them to have

played all through the war. I wonder if they did that.

Now, even as I hear the shrill scream of the train whistle, I see

all the faces in the crowd turn toward the track, where a train is
coming slowly, with sighs of steam, easing into the station. To my
amazement I see their faces, all of them, change entirely in a wink
of time. A moment ago they were animated, smiling. Now each
mask of ﬂesh is anxious and searching. And, as if at an order, they
all begin to cry. I have never been among a huge crowd of weeping
people before. Sobs and tears all around me. Stunned and lost, I
feel, out of empathy (and perhaps out of a military reﬂex), tears
well up in my own eyes. I am one of them; I am one with them,
though I do not know why.

Now many in the crowd are holding up enlarged photographs,

placards with names printed large on them. Like some kind of
grotesque parody of a political rally.

George Garrett

The doors open, and out of the train, helped by porters, many

of  them  with  crude  canes  and  crutches,  here  come,  one  after
another,  a  ragged  company  of  dazed,  shabby,  skinny  scarecrows.
They  are  weeping  also,  some  of  them.  Others  study  the  crowd,
searching  with  hard  looks  and  dry  eyes  for  familiar  faces.  The
band is deafening. Next to me the bass drum pounds and pounds
in tune and in time with my heart.

In time, very soon, in fact, I will learn that they are the latest

contingent of Austrian veterans from the eastern front, returning
home from Siberia. The Russians are moving slowly, in their own
inexorable, patient, glacial fashion, toward a treaty here in Austria
(as I will learn much later), if not a war ﬁrst. Part of that movement
is to let some of the scarecrows who have somehow managed to
survive until now come home.

But here and now I know nothing of that and care less. I see a

homecoming of the defeated and the wounded. Some greeted with
great joy, with ﬂowers and embracing. Some, as always, alone now
even at home—though I see schoolchildren have been assigned the
duty of making sure that everyone gets a greeting and some ﬂow-
ers.

I stand there knowing one thing for certain—that I am seeing

our century, our time, close and truly. Here it is, and, even among
strangers, I am among them, sharing the moment of truth,
whether I want to or not.

An American sergeant stands in the swirling crowd with tears

rolling down his cheeks. He will be gone from here soon, ﬁrst
miles, then years and years away. But he will not, because he can-
not, forget this moment or himself in it, his share of this world’s
woe and joy, the lament and celebration of all living things.

Fade In

Ext. Staff Car: Day

The car follows the twisty road through the forest.

Int. Staff Car: Day

Close Shot: Admiral Canaris

He seems comfortable and quite alone in the backseat. Straightens
his cap.

A Story Goes with It

Allows himself a little smile. Suddenly begins to whistle the tune
we heard in the beginning and when Herbert Haupt was taking a
bath in the hotel in Chicago.

Ext. Staff Car: Day

The tune continues, grows louder as the car arrives at the airﬁeld . . .
Dissolve

Hitler paces up and down, back and forth. He is mumbling

something. Canaris listens very closely, and what he thinks he
hears is: “Twelve loyal Germans . . . twelve loyal Germans . . .”

Canaris doesn’t have a clue.
“Very sad,” he says, ﬁnally. “It’s a very sad thing, my Führer.”
“Sad? It is a fucking disaster, a complete and utter disaster, and

it will never ever happen again. You and I must make certain that
it can never happen again.”

“Absolutely, sir. We won’t allow that.”
Just then Admiral Canaris ﬁgures out what’s going on around

here, what the Führer is talking about. And it ain’t Stalingrad or
the war in Tunisia. It’s those wacko saboteurs again. Canaris had
by now forgotten all about them. After all, six of the eight were
executed by the Americans way back in August of 1942. Maybe
that fact was really slow in getting to and arousing the Führer’s dis-
tracted attention.

Canaris has to be mildly pleased with himself for ﬁguring it out.

After all, there weren’t actually twelve of them, only nine if you
count in that lucky guy who caught the clap in Paris. And, as far
as Canaris knows, they were, all of them, Americans, not Ger-
mans, loyal or not.

“Never again,” Hitler repeats for emphasis.
“No, sir. Absolutely not. Never again.”
“Admiral, I want you to prepare and to send out many more mis-

sions to America. I want waves of saboteurs to be landed on their
shores. Use Jews and criminals only from now on. This is my direct
order to you. Do whatever is necessary to accomplish this goal.”

“Yes, sir.”
“I have complete trust and faith in you.”
“Thank you, sir.”
“That’s all.”

George Garrett

Canaris salutes and exits quickly and smartly.
He isn’t happy, not exactly overjoyed by this latest assignment.

Still . . . it’s another vague and ongoing project, again all under the
protective angelic wings of a direct order from the Führer. Canaris
ought to be able to use that for all kinds of interesting purposes.
Meantime, my friends, he can do exactly what he, in fact, does. He
obeys Hitler’s instructions (more or less) to the letter. And no, he
doesn’t send any more teams to America, and the Führer never
mentions that crazy idea again. But Canaris does manage to round
up a large number of prominent Jews, culled from concentration
camps and thus saved from almost certain death. The reader is
reminded that in January of 1942, one year earlier, it was Canaris’s
enemy, Heydrich, who proposed the

Endlosung (Final Solution) at

the  famous  Wannsee  meeting.  Only  recently,  at  this  writing,  we
have the beneﬁt of a book by Steven T. Katz of Boston University,
Rescued from the Reich: How One of Hitler’s Soldiers Saved the Lubavitcher
Rebbe (2005),  which  points  out  that  from  the  earliest  days  of  the
war Admiral Canaris tried to protect Jews. Here we learn that the
Lubavitcher  community  in  America,  together  with  lawyer
Benjamin  Cohen,  Justice  Louis  Brandeis,  and  Secretary  of  State
Cordell Hull, asked Admiral Canaris to help them save the life of
the rebbe, who was in occupied Poland in late 1939 and early 1940.
We also learn that Canaris sent out a rescue party of

Abwehr sol-

diers, under the command of a Major Ernest Bloch, to rescue the
rebbe  and  his  family  and  get  them  safely  to  Sweden.  Bloch  suc-
ceeded, facing down the SS. How Canaris got away with all this,
we do not know. We do know that Canaris maintained the charade
of the training camp at his secret base. And nothing changes when
Canaris,  himself,  is  dead  and  gone.  The  endless  and  pointless
training  program  for  his  once  and  future  Jewish  and  criminal
saboteurs goes on and is still in progress in April of 1945 when the
Russians arrive and capture the base.

A good place, give or take, to end the movie of it. Fading or even

irising out on a full close shot of the silver-haired admiral sitting
there whistling away like a delighted child.

If this were a movie, the admiral wouldn’t have anyone to tell

that this is a melody that he hasn’t heard or even thought of since
childhood.

A Story Goes with It

No! That’s not true.
He remembers that he has heard Hitler whistling the selfsame

happy tune on more than one occasion, back in better times.

Did you know that Hitler was a wonderful whistler?

Only it does not, in fact, all end there. Ends not so nicely. The

whole world knows that the admiral was implicated and involved
in the plot to kill Hitler in 1944. He could have ﬂed to safety but
did not. And the British did not come to his rescue in his hour of
need.  He  was  arrested,  tortured,  and  then  held  until  early  1945
when he was secretly tried before an SS court-martial. Just before
the  end  of  the  war  on  April  9,  1945,  he  was  suddenly  stripped
naked in his cell (there are witnesses to that), put in chains, and
dragged away from his cell to a crude homemade gallows, where,
with  the  aid  of  an  iron  collar,  which  slowed  down  the  effects  of
strangulation, he was hanged until he was dead. The process took
a little more than half an hour.

Eddie Weems was a great big guy, huge really. Did I mention

that? No, and I didn’t mention that he had served in the U.S. Navy,
either. He was a handsome man, at least six and a half feet tall,
probably more, and as big and wide as any pro football player. He
had once been a serious jock in his own right back when he was in
college. His father was a coach. And Eddie always tried to keep in
some kind of shape, and to keep his weight down, regularly jog-
ging before that became such a trendy thing to do with your spare
time. While he was working at the Press in Austin, he would often
skip lunch and go over to the track, which was inside the football
stadium. He would put on his sweat clothes, drive over there and
park, then lumber, steady and slow (and, as indicated, very large),
around and around the track until he had worked up a good sweat
and racked up a couple or three miles.

One day he was jogging around the track, all alone that day . . .

well, not quite. They were working on the stadium, making some

George Garrett

1. “Hitler was a beautiful whistler. While I played he’d recline and whistle

the melody, tremolo. How he enjoyed those Pudding Club scores!”

—Ernst (“Putzi”) Hanfstaengel, quoted in

Harvard Magazine, July–August

1974.

repairs and replacing some seats and so forth. Very noisy. Nobody
else running on the track, though. All by himself. Eddie took his
sweet time, ran his couple or three miles, and then started for
home to shower and change. He heard the sound of a lot of sirens,
fairly close by on the Texas campus. Thought it must be a big ﬁre
or something. Switched on his car radio to see if there might be
any news.

There was some news all right. Very excited news. Somebody

was up on the tall tower in the middle of the campus shooting peo-
ple. Killing and wounding a good many.

What dawned on Eddie, well before he reached the safety of

home and his own driveway, was that he had just spent the last half
hour or so, a huge, heavy guy slowly running around and around
the track, as an absolutely perfect moving target for the shooter up
on the tower. A couple of people on the other side, well beyond the
far side of the stadium, had been hit. He would learn that later in
the next day’s morning paper. From the tower, through a telescop-
ic sight, Eddie would have been very much like a large tin duck in
a carnival shooting gallery. Surely that man on the tower—
Whitman was his name, wasn’t it?—who proved himself to be a hell
of a good shot, if nothing else, must have sighted in on Eddie,
focused on him, followed him as he jogged along, and then never
ﬁred a shot at him. Why? Who knows? Maybe it was just too easy.
No sport in it. Maybe the sight of that big old guy thumping his
way around the track pleased or amused the shooter.

Eddie had no answer at the time.
I don’t, either, here and now.

Fade To Black

In memory of

John Edward Weems

A Story Goes with It

A S

HORT

ISTORY OF THE

IVIL

This has been a magniﬁcent epic. In God’s name,
let it not terminate in a farce.

—General John C. Breckenridge

Well might the dead who struggled in the slime

Rise and deride this sepulchre of crime.

—Siegfried Sassoon

Note: Like many other Southerners, I had blood kin on both sides of the

War. These anecdotes and fragments are, then, excerpts lifted from the writ-
ten words of two of my kinsmen: Toomer Porter of Charleston, South Carolina,
an Episcopal minister and, during the War, a chaplain in the Confederate
army; and Colonel Oliver Hazard Palmer, a lawyer who became the com-
manding ofﬁcer of the 108th New York Volunteers.

RESCIENCE

Toomer Porter—Charleston, 1861

Walking on the Battery,

I met Colonel James Chestnut

(formerly a Congressman):

A Short History of the Civil War

“These are troublous times,

Colonel,” I told him. “We are at

the beginning of
a terrible war.”

“Nonsense!” he said.

“There will be no war.

I will drink all the blood
shed in this war.”

CTIVE

UTY

Colonel O. H. Palmer—Maryland, 1862

The work is severe and the privations unimaginable.

It is not strange
that Regiments soon melt away.

This suffering must be remedied or the Army will disappear

like June frost
or wax before a ﬁre.

If anyone thinks there is fun being in the Army,

he is making a very great mistake.

HORT

ATIONS

Toomer Porter—Charleston, 1861

Some old bills from Klinck & Wikenberg

(grocers):

Champagne, madeira

sherry,

pâté de foie gras,

French green peas, sardines and Spanish olives,
formed the staple of soldiers’ fare.
Time came soon enough when a lone sweet potato

would have been pure luxury.

OMMAND

ECISIONS

Colonel O. H. Palmer—Antietam, 1862

I went directly to Richardson

in the rear and reported to him
the condition of my men.

I asked why in God’s name the reserves
were being allowed to remain in their safe position
when humanity required that they should advance

at once and relieve my men.

He replied as follows:

“To tell you the truth, Colonel,
the General is dead drunk.”

SCAPE

Toomer Porter—Warrenton, Virginia, 1862

Looking at some distant hills,
I suddenly saw a line of bluecoats

emerging from the near horizon.

I was wearing Confederate uniform,
so I struck off for a nearby ravine

until I was out of range.

As I did not wish to be captured

and go to a Northern prison,
I did some good dodging.

IGHT

HOW

Colonel O. H. Palmer—Fredericksburg, 1862

We had about 150 guns and the scene

was terriﬁc & sublime in the highest degree.
It seemed as though all the artillery of heaven

had been let loose. The whizzing

George Garrett

A Short History of the Civil War

shrieking & crashing
of shot & shell were intensely exciting,
magniﬁcent & appalling. . . .

LAUGHTER

Toomer Porter—James Island, South Carolina, 1864

As the fog lifted

the Federals made a second assault.

The cannon poured shot into their ranks.

The parapet was lined with men who knew how to shoot

and we were on their ﬂank
concealed and dealing death.

It was awful.

I walked towards the edge of the woods,

took my stand in a cotton ﬁeld.

Bullets were coming uncomfortably close,

too many to be pleasant.

Colonel Hagood crawled out of the thicket
and asked me what I was doing there.

“Waiting,” I said. “To see what I can do.”
“I order you, sir, to leave.”
“Well,” I replied. “You are not my Colonel
And I will not obey you.”

We both laughed.

OOMED

Colonel O. H. Palmer—Fredericksburg, 1862

Broken & shattered companies, regiments & brigades
falling back. . . . Dead & wounded ofﬁcers and men
being borne to the rear in blankets,

on the shoulders of their comrades. . . .

one here with one arm
another there with one leg
moaning and swearing.

A poor fellow trying to save

the half of him not shot away

would disappear in fragments of solid shot
or amidst the smoke of an exploding shell.

It was a sorry sight.

OLY

OMMUNION

Toomer Porter—Columbia, South Carolina, 1865

You would have to be placed

in like condition of us

to understand the meaning of
the ﬁrst Communion after

that dreadful night.
The sun shone down
on a blackened desolate city
and a brokenhearted people.

After all we had endured
at the hands of the enemy
we could still go to this feast

of love where all wrath
and bitterness must be left behind.

Thou has stricken us, Lord.

But we will not believe
Thou has forsaken us.

PEECH

Colonel O. H. Palmer—Falmouth, Virginia, 1863

Remember always that you are ﬁghting
to maintain and to perpetuate

the free institutions bequeathed us by Washington
and his compatriots—that the eyes of all

liberty-loving men and women are upon you,
that their prayers are constantly ascending

to Heaven on your behalf.

George Garrett

A Short History of the Civil War

Afterwards Lieutenant Colonel Powers

apologized for the absence of applause,
saying the men were all in tears and could

not manage to raise a cheer.

ERMON

Toomer Porter—Charleston, 1865

My text is from Isaiah, thirty-eighth chapter:

Set this house in

order:

I urged the hearers
to turn their backs on the past,
not to waste energy on vain regrets,
but to realize they were on a wreck.

To save life they must build
out of the materials at hand
a raft to bear them to shore.

ECONSTRUCTION

Toomer Porter—Charleston, 1865

A burly black man,
armed and wearing
United States uniform,
guarded the front door.

“You can’t go in there,” he said.
“Why not? This is my house.”

“No it ain’t.

Belongs to the Freedman’s Bureau.”

“Does it?”

(His accent told me that he was
one of our island Negroes.)

“Look here, darkey, this is my house
And if you don’t get out of the way,

then I will make you.”

ISERY AND THE

LORY OF

EXAS

ETE

And then there are those stories that become a kind of common

property that, in the absence of anything more than myth and
memory, we can freely choose to believe or doubt.

Here’s one of those, a story I ﬁrst heard in the Downtown

Barber Shop when I was maybe ten years old and have heard ever
since, most recently when I went back home for a visit after many
years and was taken to be a stranger in my own hometown.

Way back in the bitter days of the Great Depression our town

couldn’t afford to maintain a real police force. They kept cutting
budgets, and pretty soon they got down to a single constable. Then
they tried to make do with what they called in those days a “day
marshal,” a guy who was on duty (and on salary) only during day-
light hours. After sunset it was anything goes.

Pretty soon they couldn’t even afford to pay for a day marshal.
What to do?
There were some—jokers to be sure, but not completely kid-

ding—who thought maybe there might be a future for our town as
a sort of sanctuary for criminals, common and otherwise. A free
city, kind of like some of those pirate communities in the Carib-
bean way back in the days of big-time piracy. But, as the more
sober citizens were quick to point out, what moderately successful,
self-respecting criminal would want to come and live here?

Well, in the end, they decided to keep the position of day mar-

shal but to ratchet down the credentials and requirements as well
as the pecuniary rewards and fringe beneﬁts.

They advertised, as widely and cheaply as they could, for a low-

rent  day  marshal.  The  only  application  they  got  came  from  an
eighty-ﬁve-year-old  gentleman,  a  retired  sheriff  from  Wild  West
days.  He  was  mainly  interested  in  the  climate  here  because  he
thought it might help his arthritis—his “misery,” as he called it.

So the old fellow (everybody called him Texas Pete, but not to

his face) tottered around town during daylight hours, wearing a
nice, clean khaki uniform with a big, shiny, ﬁve-pointed star badge
pinned on his shirt pocket. And he strapped on an antique, single-
action, black-powder pistol, a big old .44 hog that looked to be too
heavy for him to lift out of his holster, let alone to shoot somebody
or something with.

Everybody in town liked the old gent. They really did. Every-

body was on their best behavior. We were almost crime-free.
People behaved themselves so as not to cause him any trouble or
aggravation. The town elders were absolutely convinced that they
would never be able to hire a living lawman as cheaply as that.

Well, then, one ﬁne day, it being the high season for such things

in the U.S. of A., a gang of bank robbers came driving into town
in a souped-up four-door Ford that would outrun anything in town
or the county either, assuming anybody would be foolhardy enough
to chase after them. They parked right in front of the old Sunshine
Bank and Trust Company, the only bank left in town in those days.
One sat at the wheel with the motor running while the other three
went in to rob the bank.

So there they are, right in the middle of robbing the Sunshine

Bank,  when  here  comes  our  day  marshal,  old  Texas  Pete,  stum-
bling  and  tottering  along  the  sidewalk,  headed  in  the  general
direction  of  the  bank,  aiming,  apparently,  to  deposit  his  pitiful
monthly check. He’s about ﬁfty yards away from everything when
all of a sudden the outside alarm goes off—

Clang! Clang! Clang!

He stops walking and puts on his thick old glasses and peers

from under the shade of his wide-brim hat and sees, sure enough,
the three bad guys, guns and loot in hand, come out of the bank.
He raises his left hand in admonition and starts tugging at his pis-
tol with his right. “Halt in the name of the Law!” he says in a thin,
quavery, but nonetheless audible voice. Almost matter-of-fact. Like
it is something he has said before in dim days beyond recall. And,
quavery or not, it has some ghostly authority to it.

George Garrett

Now the bad guys can’t believe this whole scene. They think it

is funny as a whoopee cushion. And they start laughing loud and
shooting at him as fast as they can. Bullets are zinging and rico-
cheting all around him while he keeps tugging at that old pistol of
his. He ﬁnally pulls it free of the holster, cocks it (you have to cock
those single-action jobs for each and every shot), takes it in both
hands, points it, aims very carefully, and pulls the trigger.

WHAMMO!
There is this tremendous explosion and then a cloud of smoke

all around him. And one of the bad guys is down and dead as can
be from a shot directly between the eyes.

By the time this dawns on the other perpetrators, he has already

managed somehow to cock the pistol and shoot and kill another
one. With one shot right between the eyes. Hands up and we sur-
render from the last two, the driver and the other guy. They can’t
quit quick enough.

Some thoughtful person calls the undertaker to come and pick

up the stiffs, and the day marshal deputizes a few men on the spot.
And they march the two survivors off to the pokey. Which hasn’t
been used in so long that they have to get the lights and water
turned on.

Never mind. The word goes out and spreads like wildﬁre in the

criminal community.

You better stay away from that place, I’m telling

you. They have got some kind of a Hoot Gibson policeman there who can
blow your head off with one shot at ﬁfty yards. And he will sure enough do
it, too. I mean to tell you, this fella is some kind of a cold-blooded killing
machine. You want to do yourself in? You want to die quick and young? Just
go down there and try to knock over the Sunshine Bank.

Now, you know and I know that criminals tend to exaggerate,

especially when they are describing the power and the glory of the
lawmen who have managed to collar them and send them away to
the cooler. You have to believe that the man (or woman nowadays)
who  took  you  down  was  not  much  shy  of  being  Superman.  And
locally, the myth is just the opposite—how this helpless old-timer
somehow pulled it all together long enough to stop the only bank
robbery we ever had. Because that was, in fact, the beauty of it all—
that  there  has  never  been  another  bank  robbery  in  our  town.
Throughout  the  rest  of  the  depression,  banks  all  over  the  South
were being held up so often they barely had time to conduct normal

The Misery and the Glory of Texas Pete

banking business. Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, Machine
Gun Kelly and Pretty Boy Floyd, all of them and many more. But
not here. Not as long as the old guy was still alive. Not as long as
the story outlived him.

The man who tells it to me, taking me for a stranger, is, like

many another American of our end-of-the-century era, more than
a little disillusioned with how things have turned and are turning
out.

“From Wild West to sensitivity training,” he says. “From pio-

neers to pansies in one generation.”

Then he says: “Poor old Texas Pete, he put in for the price of the

two bullets, and they turned him down ﬂat, arguing that they didn’t
authorize the use of the pistol for anything but decoration, any-
way.”

“Is that a fact?” I say.
“Take my word for it.”

George Garrett

ANKS

It began with an act of violence—a tank accidentally driving into

and over a cluster of soldiers in sleeping bags. At dawn a tank, sud-
denly  and  hugely  out  of  nowhere  looming,  out  of  mist  and  half-
light. A terrifying shape. I don’t know, never will, if any of those
poor guys woke up enough in their sleeping bags to see and com-
prehend  what  was  ﬁxing  to  crush  and  to  kill  them.  A  tank  is  so
noisy. They must have heard it coming, but they had been up all
night  in  some  kind  of  training  exercise.  If  they  did  wake  up
enough  to  see  it,  then  the  last  thing  they  saw  in  this  world  was
monstrous.

That’s where I was going to begin my story, this story, when it

ﬁrst  happened  and  I  thought  about  writing  a  story  about  it.
Beginning  with  the  deafening  noise  of  the  tank’s  engine  and
treads. Then a view of the soldiers all zipped up in their sleeping
bags  as  the  dark,  cold,  enormous  shape  of  the  tank  appears  and
plows through the little bivouac.

Somebody among them must have heard it, seen it, and escaped

it just in time. Bound to have.

Open with noise and misty dark. Then the tank as seen from the

point of view of the soldiers. One of them is awake and shouting
to  no  good  purpose,  his  voice  lost  in  the  sound  of  the  roaring
engine.  He  scrabbles  and  writhes  his  way  to  escape.  Then  looks
back  at  the  wide  treadmarks  in  the  soft  earth  where  he  was  just
moments before.

Leave him there gagging and weeping as others come running

from all around. . . .

When William Styron published

The Long March, a ﬁne, clean,

strong piece of work, one of his best, I could have done a dervish
dance and died on the spot. I really admired

The Long March, even

though it was spooky how it shadowed what had happened to me
and what I had wanted to write about. Both stories take place dur-
ing  the  time  of  the  Korean  War.  Both  take  place,  though,  in  the
United States. Both involve reservists recalled to active duty and
training for combat. Both stories begin with an act of violence. In
the Styron story, some mortar rounds fall short of their target and
kill several marines. The story I wanted to write begins, just as it
did  in  fact,  with  a  tank  driving  over  some  sleeping  soldiers  and
killing them. Both of these stories then turn from the violent pro-
logue  to  others,  not  directly  involved,  who  are  making  a  forced
march back to base.

About the tank and the dead men, we don’t hear or know any-

thing at ﬁrst. We will hear all about it later or at the end of our
long march. But, even so, just as in the Styron story, it will haunt
and shadow us all day long.

We are a ﬁeld artillery battalion of an understrength U.S. Army

Reserve division. We are doing two weeks of summer training at
Camp Drum near Watertown, New York. There are two divisions
training  here,  ourselves  and  the  New  Jersey  National  Guard.  I
think  that  they  were  the  Eighty-eighth  Division.  The  bad  scene
with  the  tanks  and  one  tank  driving  right  over  sleeping  soldiers
involved troops from the National Guard.

(Guess who was the commanding ofﬁcer of that division at that

time. General Schwarzkopf, the

father of Stormin’ Norman. And

guess where Stormin’ Norman’s daddy went that summer. Answer:
Iran. Look it up some time.)

In those days both the reserve and the National Guard were still

chieﬂy composed of veterans of World War II and (already) Korea.
Most  everybody  did  it  for  the  money  and  the  beneﬁts.  At  least
that’s  what  they  all  said.  It  wasn’t,  yet,  a  ticket  to  freedom  from
full-time  active  duty.  Joining  the  reserve  or  the  National  Guard
didn’t spare you anything in those days.

I was just back from a couple of years of active duty overseas in

Trieste and Austria. I was a married graduate student at Prince-

George Garrett

ton, and I needed the money, needed every nickel and dime I
could get. I had come out of the army as sergeant ﬁrst class, a nice
swaggering kind of rank. Together with the next rank, master ser-
geant, it was better than being anything else except maybe a ﬁeld-
grade ofﬁcer.

We met in an armory near Trenton, New Jersey, one night a

week (drawing a full day’s pay for those two hours) and for two
weeks of summer training.

We were a pretty good outﬁt. Everybody had seen service over-

seas. A lot of them, especially old-timers from World War II, had
logged a lot of combat hours. We had one sergeant who had been
captured by the Krauts at Kasserine Pass. Our ﬁrst sergeant had
been bayoneted by a Jap and lived to tell the tale and to show a
huge, pink, swollen scar, chest and back, in the shower.

The old guys weren’t much for spit and polish, but they knew

everything that could ever be known about and done with our
basic weapon—the 105-millimeter howitzer.

Styron’s story, as I recall it, centers on two young marine

infantry lieutenants and their commanding ofﬁcer, who is some
kind of a shithead. There isn’t much sense of the outﬁt from their
point of view. A couple of candy-ass second lieutenants. What do
they know about anything?

When we got up that day, had reveille and breakfast in the ﬁeld,

we found out what was scheduled for the day. A speed march. We
had been ﬁring our howitzers on the range for a few days. Now we
were going back to camp. Instead of riding back in trucks, we were
going to hike it back. (

Hump is the Vietnam word for it, and I guess

is more accurately poetic than

hike.) I seem to remember hearing

some of the ofﬁcers arguing among themselves at breakfast. I was
hunkered down blowing on my canteen cup, breathing the sweet
steam of fresh coffee and waiting for my cup to cool, when I heard
them, nearby and oblivious to me, complaining about the speed
march. Seems it was the colonel’s idea. Or, anyway, somebody had
dared him or challenged him, and he took the dare.

The fuck did I care? I was young and strong, in good shape, still

in my twenties. Had done this kind of thing many times, within
months of here and now. I was able and ready. I had in my pack a
pair of women’s nylon panties. Nothing better to wear for a speed
march. Regular underwear got creased and snarled up and would

Tanks

chafe and rub blisters. And I never went anywhere, especially in
the ﬁeld, without my little can of footpowder and a thin, tight pair
of nylon socks to wear underneath the heavy GI socks for a hike.

There may have been other tricks of the trade (I know I dis-

carded everything except essential equipment so my load would be
as light as I could make it), but I can’t remember them now.

When I came to write the story, I would have to make something

out of myself as a character. Not something nice. There would be
this guy, see, much like myself, a sergeant ﬁrst class just back from
active duty overseas. He would have earned his stripes at a leader-
ship school. He would be what we used to call

sharp. He would

know a lot of things. He would be highly and quietly contemptu-
ous of all the old-timers and their old wars and wounds. He would
be especially contemptuous of the red-haired ﬁrst sergeant with
the bayonet scar. That contempt would be, he thinks, because the
ﬁrst sergeant is so soft and easygoing. A pussy is what our sergeant
ﬁrst class would classify him. Never out loud, of course, and never
by any sign or twitch on his well-trained poker face. Truth is, the
ﬁrst sergeant likes him, thinks he is a good soldier and a good guy.
Which only adds coals to the younger man’s contempt.

What the younger man will not admit to himself is that the fuel

for his contempt for the ﬁrst sergeant is rivalry. He wants to be ﬁrst
sergeant of the battery. Deeper yet, he would like to have been
wounded, himself. Nothing like those ugly bayonet scars but some
nice little nick he could show in the shower or maybe show off to
some girl when the time came.

Our real colonel, the battalion commander, was a great guy and

one of the ﬁnest ofﬁcers I ever served under. He was a big, tall,
good-looking guy, going to fat now but impressive. Black hair and
a big smile. He treated all his subordinates with respect and with
trust. The latter is a very rare thing in the army or any other hier-
archical or corporate organization. You can’t trust too many peo-
ple too much because they may let you down, and then you are in
more trouble than they are. But the colonel, whose name has now
gone from me for good, could take the heat. The buck stopped
with him. He was the same with us regardless of the pressure on
him. Same in success or adversity. A whole man and a fearless one,
really.

My young sergeant ﬁrst class might not, probably

would not,

George Garrett

appreciate him for what he was (though I think he would have
learned enough about leadership to sense that the colonel was a
genuine leader; he might even have envied that), but he would, at
least at the outset, respect him and want to win his notice and
approval.

Our colonel, the real one, the big guy, was a heavy boozer. I

could tell after a mile in the hot sun that he would never make it.
He didn’t seem to know that. He insisted on

leading the battalion.

Up front about ten yards or so. Sure, he didn’t have to carry a ﬁeld
pack or anything extra except his steel helmet and his M2 carbine.
But there was a lot of him, and he really was not in shape for it. A
mile or so and his tight coveralls (he wore World War II coveralls,
zipped up the front, not fatigues like the rest of us) were wet and
soaked with his sweat. After another mile or so, he was bright red.
Couple more miles and he turned purple, a dark, grapy purple
color. And he was breathing hard. But he kept moving and grin-
ning, leading the pack, which was beginning to stagger and stretch
out behind him. Old-timers ﬁnding out the hard way that they
couldn’t hack it anymore. Or, anyway, giving up before they had to
learn any bad lessons about themselves.

He was good about breaks. Ten minutes every hour.
Everybody sprawled out like dropped rag dolls at roadside.

Himself not taking a break but moving up and down the line,
encouraging the guys, calling for the medics to get a move on if
somebody had acquired bad blisters.

I was feeling okay. No way you aren’t tired and muscle-weary.

But you are still young and blessed with quick recovery.

During the break I sat by the road and watched the colonel,

wondering if he would make it. Guessing that he would not.

My sergeant ﬁrst class will come to the same conclusion, but

with very mixed feelings. He will be somebody who is always made
uncomfortable by the clash of contradictory feelings but is never-
theless often possessed by them. His ideal will be pure and simple
feeling, single-mindedness. But mostly he will be more complicat-
ed than he wants to be. Pity is beyond him, of course. That would
be simple enough but contemptible. And, no denying it, there is
always some pleasure in observing someone with power and
authority failing, fucking up. At the same time, because he thinks
the colonel likes him, thinks (and hopes) the colonel can see him

Tanks

for what he really is and can be—a likely choice for ﬁrst sergeant—
he wants the colonel’s authority, credibility, self-respect to be undi-
minished. What good would it do to have a big loser on your side?

He will sit by the side of the road and watch the purple-faced,

sweaty, grinning, brave old colonel in his tight coveralls and will
want to warn him. To look after him. To make sure the colonel
makes it all the way.

What if the old fart falls over dead?
I forget what happens in the middle of the Styron story. Details

are long gone. I do remember being impressed that the writing
and the accumulation of details are so good that the march back
to base assumes an urgency, some real suspense.

That is the whole line of any march story, whether it’s a speed

march or a forty-year trek in the wilderness. There is a destination.
There are many difﬁculties (demons and dragons, outer and
inner) to overcome before arriving at the ﬁnal destination.

Styron’s two lieutenants do, indeed, make it back, more or less

in one piece, to the bachelor ofﬁcers’ quarters.

So did our outﬁt. So did the colonel. He led us ﬁrst to last. We

ended up in a little shady grove of trees not far from our barracks.
Took off packs and helmets. Propped our weapons, M1 riﬂes and
carbines, on the packs or against tree trunks. Lay there in the hot
shade, breathing hard at the very end, sweat turning the dust on
our faces and bodies into a thin, muddy coat.

It was like a little island in the middle of nowhere. Like we were

survivors of a shipwreck, tossed up on shore in the shade there.

I had my eyes on the colonel. Who ﬁnally allowed himself to sit

down,  back  ﬁrm  against  the  trunk  of  a  pine  tree.  Nobody  was
watching him except me. Very slowly, gingerly, he began to unlace
and remove his combat boots. I noticed his hands were shaking a
little,  his  ﬁngers  trembling.  When  the  ﬁrst  boot  was  unbuckled
and unlaced, he very slowly, carefully eased it off his foot. Held the
foot lightly in both hands and bent close to look at it. I could see
that the soles were bloody; the blood had soaked through his reg-
ulation GI socks. Blisters had broken and bled, and he had walked
(how  many  miles?),  leading  the  battalion  all  the  way  home  on
bloody feet.

And now I think for the ﬁrst time how the pain of his bloody feet

George Garrett

came alive and swept over him. He knew what had happened and
what he had done, and the pride went out of him like a long sigh.

I saw his large, jowly face, a hurt moan beneath the gray and

black of his thick, close-cropped hair, begin to change. As if it were
wax in heat. Too close to ﬂame. Begin to change and melt.

That colonel (and I knew it and so would my character) had been

a captain and a battery commander in the Battle of the Bulge. Had a
battery of 155-millimeter howitzers and they were ﬁring support at
a distant and unseen enemy when suddenly a bunch of Kraut Tiger
tanks came barreling into the battery area. Came out of nowhere
from all sides. Pure killing machines killing everything moving.
Killed most of the battery and wounded the captain. Desperately
wounded, unable to move, he somehow lived to see the tanks drive
over his men, treads gorging mud a few feet from himself.

In his hurt and stricken face there at the end of our speed

march, I could tell he was suddenly alive in that old nightmare
again. I could see and feel all of it as vividly as if I had been there
and could remember it, too.

And then suddenly he was shouting at the top of a cracked,

hoarse, voice, begging for one of the medics to come quick. To
please come. To help him. Please . . . !

Falling completely apart at the tag-end after holding himself and

all the rest of it together for so long. Suddenly now becoming an
old man in pain and surprise beyond all bearing.

I could not look anymore. Turned away from him. Tried to busy

myself with my own sore feet and stiff legs.

In the story I was someday going to write (and never did until

this moment), my sergeant ﬁrst class would not, does not turn
away. He looks directly into the pain-riddled eyes of his colonel.
Both of them sharing now the vision that has haunted the edges of
consciousness all day—those great dark shapes, towering and terri-
ble in vision, of the tanks, rearing and lunging out of the woods
and brush, bringing death to those sleeping soldiers this selfsame
day. For a moment they can share this vision, can share this death.

The sergeant ﬁrst class is possessed by mixed feelings still, as

always. But one of them, one of those feelings, anyway, is very
close to the stab and thrust of love. He has forgotten the ﬁrst
sergeant, his imaginary rival, and his ugly bayonet scar. Probably

Tanks

MPTY

LUES

Twelve Customers Gunned Down in
Convenience-Store Clerk’s Imagination

—Headline in the

Onion

Crime? You want crime? Okay, I’ll give you crime. But not

exactly (I bet) what you were thinking about when you said you
wanted to hear all about crime. Crime and punishment.

Now let’s get some things, the underbrush, cleared out of the

way. We live in a crime-ridden country in a crime-ridden age. If
you pause to consider all the laws on all the books, all the things
that are (technically and in fact) deﬁned as crimes, from, say, jay-
walking to serial rape-murder, then we are probably all of us guilty
criminals one way and another. If we include all the

inside stuff, the

heavy stuff of head and heart, if we are to be held responsible and
judged for all we have thought and felt like doing (if we weren’t so
scared of getting caught), we are all criminals in that sense, too,
one way and another. Just glance at the Bible or maybe the

Book of

Common Prayer, in any version up through 1928, and you’ll see
exactly what I’m talking about.

There is no health in us. . . .
The indifferent dead (

vive l’indifference! ) are maybe a sort of an

exception in that they are no longer able to commit any crimes,
worldly crimes at least. Their criminal days are behind them.

Ghosts don’t and can’t do anything to hurt living people, much as
they might like to. Sure, ghosts can scare the ever-living wee-wee
out of living persons, but they can’t actually

do anything harmful

to anybody who is still alive. Let’s suppose that we passed a law,
make it a federal law, making bad behavior by ghosts a felony or a
misdemeanor or something. How would we manage to enforce
that aforesaid law? Not that that kind of problem has ever troubled
serious lawmakers very much.

But enough of deep philosophy and on with the show-and-tell.
When you are thinking about crime, you probably are thinking

(I  assume)  about  things  like  mugging  and  murder  and  mayhem,
about  dramatic  crimes  of  violence,  about  crimes  of  senseless
absurdity  like,  say,  hey-let’s-go-and-knock-over-a-7–11.  And  while
we are at it, baby, let us rip off a half-decent set of wheels and go
to  California  or  some  sunny  place  like  that.  Or  let’s  deal  some
dope and get rich. Or white-collar crime. Let’s do a little insider
trading. Or maybe we can run a scam on some of the senile folks
in  a  nursing  home.  Let’s  rip  off  their  life  savings  so  we  can  buy
some classy threads and go eat snails in a four-star restaurant.

This story—which really happened to a friend of mine, though

I’ve changed some of the names and some of the sordid details just
in  case  he  should  happen  to  pick  up  this  book  somewhere  and
start  reading—is  more  about  the  comedy  of  crime  than  anything
else. The comedy of crime? You may not have thought of it quite
that way. But there are plenty of books and movies based on the
comedy of crime. I guess my all-time favorite is Elmore Leonard’s
Get  Shorty. Next  to  that,  neck  and  neck,  is  a  great  Italian  movie
called

I Soliti Ignoti (shown over here as Big Deal on Madonna Street),

to which Woody Allen made what they nowadays call an

homage in

Small Time Crooks. Anyway, my point is that plenty of crime is basi-
cally comic. Of course, it probably wasn’t like a comedy to my
friend. I never asked. I never laughed about it in front of him,
either. These things are all a matter of context and point of view.

Part of the comedy is the context—the world of academe. There

is, of course, plenty of crime in academe. In fact, I can’t imagine
any worse bunch of criminals than some of the administrators and
colleagues I’ve worked for and with over the years. But, be that as
it may, I’m not about to tell you some story about crimes commit-
ted solely for the sake of tenure or an ofﬁce with windows and a

George Garrett

better parking place. It’s just that this story took place in an aca-
demic environment, your basic town-and-gown

milieu. And, let me

admit it right up front, tenure was indeed involved yes, sir, periph-
erally at least. Marvin was up for tenure, but you needn’t concern
yourself with that. It was his problem.

More to the point, Marvin was horny. Profoundly horny. More

than usually horny. Even for him. Partly this was because (I guess)
his girlfriend, who had never been too free and easy, anyway, had
recently broken up with him. Katie was a neat little blonde chick,
an actress by inclination and trade, who once upon a time had a
couple of spots on TV sitcoms and was hoping to get back into
that game just as soon as she could swing it. Meantime she was
working for our drama department and, for a little while, shacked
up with ole Marvin. He claimed she had a great little tight ass and
perky breasts.

Perky, that’s the very word he used. Which may be

the case, who knows?, but he was seeing her through the eyes of
love.  When  she  dumped  him,  he  was  heartbroken,  brieﬂy,  and
soon ﬁrmly horny. His condition was aggravated when he discov-
ered  the  back  pages  of  that  otherwise  wonderfully  entertaining
alternative  newspaper—the

Onion. On the back page, under

“Adult” he found ads (and phone numbers) for exciting and spe-
cialized phone sex: “Horny Housewives,” “Horny H.S. Seniors,”
“Barely Legal Coeds,” “Sex-Starved Old Women.” Since he could
charge these calls to the departmental budget (at least he

thought

he could; actually it was a crime because we are a state university),
he thought, why not?, he would see if it helped.

It didn’t. Not much. True, he was able, at ﬁrst, to gain the sense

of “Release!” that they promised. But it was kind of embarrassing
and too expensive. Marvin was a bit of a tightwad, even about
things like sex that are very seldom fully cost-effective. As long as
it was going to cost him, he ﬁgured, why not hire a “real” woman
and enjoy a “real” experience.

Big mistake, Marvin.
He goes downtown to a half-decent singles bar. Meets a cute lit-

tle number named Carla—dark hair, big boobs, wide ass, kind of
chunky, but ﬁt and trim—buys her a couple of drinks. Drinks a
couple or three, himself. (Otherwise he might have been thinking
a little more clearly.) He’s thinking that they are getting along just
ﬁne together. Talking about Clinton and the Oval Ofﬁce, which he

Empty Bed Blues

had found, at least with Katie, can, under certain circumstances,
be a turn-on.

Sooner, rather than later, the lady is ready to leave, to go some-

where  else.  She  lives  with  her  mother  and  his  place  is  too  small
and totally out of control, so they go off to a cheap motel. Once
they’re  inside  with  the  air  conditioner  rattling  and  humming  its
old familiar tune, she lets him know, politely but ﬁrmly, that this
is not amateur night. She’s a pro and expects to see some money
up front before she so much as unbuttons a button or unzips a zip-
per. Hornier than ever, he hands her the money, sits down to take
off  his  shoes  when  Wham!  Bam!  Lights  and  loud  voices.  Rude
remarks in the imperative mood.

It’s the cops!
She’s a cop!
Next thing he knows he is in the archetypal police station.

Where  (in  the  presence  of  the  aforesaid  Carla  who  makes  some
remarks about his inadequate anatomical equipment) strip search,
ﬁngerprints,  mug  shot,  booking,  and  then,  clad  in  a  set  of  the
county’s  ill-ﬁtting  orange  coveralls,  he  is  placed  in  a  dingy  room
dominated by an obviously one-way mirror. Just like on television,
he allows himself to opine.

It gets worse when the shock wears off. Dawns on him that perky

Katie will laugh her little blonde ass off and say

I told you so, or

something like that. This will probably be in the local paper to the
delight of his enemies and the shame of his friends (if any). And
there goes tenure. Just when it seemed within reach and grasp.

Representing the power and glory of law and order, Carla, now

cuter than ever in her neat blue police uniform, comes in. Offers
him a cigarette and lights it for him. Marvin doesn’t smoke. Quit
cold turkey a decade ago. But right now it tastes wonderful. And,
anyway, it might be rude to refuse.

Carla asks him if he has been read his Miranda rights. He can’t

honestly remember. So, just in case, she reads them all over again.
Carla has a husky, sexy voice. Listening to her read Miranda, he
feels a little stirring in his loins. Half wishes he were still naked as
a jaybird so he could show her that her initial and somewhat con-
temptuous judgment call was really unfounded.

Then she quietly explains to him what is going to happen to

him. Most likely he will get off with just a modest ﬁne. It is, after

George Garrett

all, a ﬁrst offense, and, as he will see soon enough, the county lock-
up is overcrowded with serious criminal types. His lawyer, any old
lawyer, can get him out on his own recognizance sometime tomor-
row.

The only bad part, she tells him, especially for a university pro-

fessor like you, is the public embarrassment. To begin with, it’s
been a slow night, slow for the newspaper business. For sure they
will make a big deal out of it and probably a big joke, too. Chances
are that it will be picked up by some other papers in the area. And,
of course, Channel 4 will give you some serious attention. Sorry
about that. . . .

“Oh, God!” he hears himself saying. “What can I do?”
“Well,” she says. Then: “Well, maybe there is something.”
Maybe, she suggests, his weaknesses can be turned into positive

strengths. It seems (

if only he had known!) there is a racket, a call girl

ring, right here in this nice little academic town. The law enforce-
ment folks have had bad luck in trying to get enough evidence to
shut down this operation. Or—and here Marvin begins his ele-
mentary education in crime and crime ﬁghting in contemporary
America—at least to

control the whole thing. Not just to control the

market  in  high-priced  pussy,  but  also  to  share  in  the  inevitable
proﬁts accrued. If the Powers That Be (top-level town and county
government)  can  keep  this  criminal  activity  under  control  while
allowing an uncontested monopoly and keeping the partners/per-
petrators  out  of  jail  and  trouble,  then  they  (the  Powers  That  Be)
surely deserve a modest piece of the action.

Does Marvin understand all this so far?
More or less.
More or less is enough. More or less is all that anybody under-

stands about anything, including brain surgery and rocket science.

“What does all this have to do with me?”
She is not ready, not quite yet, to deal with Marvin’s particular

problem. First she wants to explain some of the beneﬁts, the all-
around  beneﬁts,  deriving  from  this  “. . . operation.”  Everybody
understands  (more  or  less)  that  the  buying  and  selling  of  sexual
pleasure  (“Release!”)  is  not  going  to  cease  and  desist  until
Judgment Day comes along to separate the sheep from the goats.
Until that Day comes along, the commerce, legal and illegal, of sex
will continue regardless of all laws and regulations, preaching, or

Empty Bed Blues

punishment. The Powers That Be, with the law enforcement folks
as their active agents, have an obligation to the community. They
must keep the lid on (as they say), or they will be sooner or later
replaced by other Powers That Be; and, in addition to losing their
limited powers and their modest privileges and prerequisites, they
will ﬁnd themselves deprived of various sources of income, earned
and unearned.

The obvious and practical solution to something like this call

girl ring is to bring these criminals (by which she does not mean
the hardworking women, but rather the entrepreneurs who are the
executives of the industry) into the tent. Better they are in the tent
with  us  and  pissing  outside  than  vice  versa.  What  can  motivate
them  to  join  with  us,  the  representatives  of  the  community  at
large? The answer is several things. Several things at once. First, of
course,  the  end  of  their  business,  at  least  locally.  Likewise  the
prospect of jail time. Nobody wants to go to jail for even a few min-
utes after watching

Oz and other such shows on TV. It’s a matter

of carrot and stick.

Ever the good student, Marvin wonders what the carrot can be.
Good question, Marvin.
Suppose the law enforcement folks and the Powers That Be, hav-

ing accumulated a gracious plenty of evidence, enough to send
everybody involved, at all levels, off to the slammer, just suppose
these forces of law and order were to offer the criminals a deal. We
don’t send you to jail. We don’t even close down your lucrative and
lively activities. In return for a certain kind of discretion on your
part, we allow you to continue. Suppose we allow

only you to con-

tinue. Suppose, that is, we give you a monopoly on expensive com-
mercial pussy in town. Anybody else tries to get into the act and
the business and we run them out of town or haul them into the
courthouse.  What  we  have  to  offer  you,  then,  in  return  for  your
good behavior and a negotiable percentage of the proﬁts, is secu-
rity. And, if you have a taste for irony, some of that, too. The law
enforcement folks become your very own security. To be sure, the
law  enforcement  people  have  every  right  to  share,  directly  and
indirectly,  in  your  proﬁts.  Exactly  how  much  and  precisely  from
what source—Powers That Be or you guys—can be negotiated. Like
any old contract.

“Capisce?”

George Garrett

“Carla, I am a little shocked, ‘taken aback’ would be more like

it, by what you are telling me. I do understand, more or less. But
what I do not understand is what any of this has to do with me.

“I mean, okay, so I tried to solicit you for some sex. Money

changed hands and the cops came in and busted me before I could
even begin. . . .”

“Professor,” Carla said quietly. “I have just given you an

overview, a sense of the Big Picture. Now let’s go micro, down and
dirty. We have got you by the balls and would very much like to
squeeze them and encourage you to join with us and help us out.
Not a big thing. Call it one small step for mankind. We need to
catch ourselves a call girl and put a little heat on her. Are you
game?” They need to catch a live call girl, more or less in the act.
And then put the squeeze on her, sweating her until she is ready
and willing to rat out (as they say, at least on TV) her colleagues
and superiors.

Maybe, if Marvin agrees to help them in this matter, they can

manage to misplace and lose his paperwork and can make sure
that his good name and the nature of his indiscretion do not
appear in the morning papers or anywhere else.

And wouldn’t that be nice?
While Marvin is allowed (brieﬂy, brieﬂy) to think about all this,

Carla adds a little spice to the bubbling sauce.

“You know, Marvin, I’m really sorry about all this. I mean you

seem like a pretty nice guy. We might even get to be friends, down
the road a little. . . .”

Looking at her large, ﬁrm breasts swelling against her police-

woman’s blue shirt, Marvin feels yet another stirring of the loins
(his) as he smiles a wan smile and agrees at last to cooperate with
law enforcement in any way that might be helpful.

Before we go any farther with this I’m going to need to tell you

a little more about Marvin. Not that we were close buddies. Put it
this way. I had known him pretty well for awhile. We both came to
work at the university at about the same time. But we weren’t real-
ly rivals and I didn’t have anything serious against him. That
made me one of his precious few friends. A lot of people at the uni-
versity didn’t take to Marvin. They thought he was a wise ass and
they didn’t wish him well. I was at least neutral, and that neutrality

Empty Bed Blues

allows me to maintain a little more objectivity than most people
trying  to  tell  this  tale  could  honestly  claim  to  possess.  I  did  not
wish  his  misfortunes  on  him.  Believe  me,  it  did  not  give  me  a
whole  lot  of  pleasure,  perverse  or  otherwise,  when  troubles  de-
scended on him like a cloud of gnats or mosquitoes aiming to eat
him alive. Sure, I laughed at the time. That is the truth, and I’ll be
the ﬁrst to admit it. But I did not, as so many others most certainly
did,  rejoice  and  offer  up  libations  of  thanksgiving  to  whatever-
gods-may-be for bringing him down to his knees.

Quite aside from personal feelings and ideals of good behavior,

there is another very good reason for me to pause here and to tell
you a little something more about Marvin. As anybody who writes
some ﬁction will be glad to tell you—and, truth be known, both
Marvin and I have written and published some ﬁction from time
to time—if whatever happens to a central character, a protagonist,
is to have any meaning or implications (read:

resonance), above and

beyond the simple recitation of a sequence of happy or unhappy
events, if the story you are telling is to have any claim to or hope
of engaging a reader and involving the reader’s feelings, then you
have  to  know  and  to  share  a  little  bit  of  information  about  the
aforesaid central character before he or she steps forward into the
big middle of whatever shitstorm you have prepared for him/her
to face and (maybe) to endure. Of course, it is very easy to overdo
this,  trying  too  hard  to  create  sympathy,  even  empathy  for  this
character when he or she may not be entitled to any sympathy at
all. And that, my friends, next to a shrugging passivity on the part
of  many  a  modern  ho-hum  protagonist,  is  one  of  the  most  trou-
blesome  problems  with  a  lot  of  contemporary  ﬁction.  Losers  are
ﬁne and dandy, and so are many kinds of antiheroes, but somehow
or other we have to generate a certain amount of engagement, if
not really sympathy, with them.

Well, allowing that I am somewhat limited by the fact that, even

if you don’t know it and have to take my word for it, Marvin, or
anyway the character by that name in this story, is “real,” there is
and was a real version of my character Marvin. To that extent the
story I’m telling is “true,” a piece of reportage, though only a very
few people on this planet will be able to judge the authenticity and
accuracy of my version.

What do you need to know about Marvin? Well, even if he is, by

George Garrett

trade, a professor, he isn’t your stereotypical intellectual. Sure, he
can act like one if he has to. (We all can.) But when it comes to life
in the academic world Marvin is really more of a hustler, a gifted
con  artist.  You  might  be  surprised  how  many  people  working  in
our colleges and universities—and bear in mind that there are now
in America more college professors than steelworkers—are in it for
what  they  can  get  out  of  it.  Really  dumb,  you  think,  having  in
mind their (usually) very modest salaries. But don’t forget that the
admittedly  inadequate  salary  is  often  paying  for  not  much  more
than  twelve  or  ﬁfteen  hours  of  work  in  an  average  week,  if  that
much. And the fringe beneﬁts, health package, and pension plans
are pretty good. Compared to real life in the real world, it is not a
hard row to hoe. On top of which you, as professor, are invited to
enjoy the privilege of high moral self-esteem for (apparently) sac-
riﬁcing  conventional  worldly  rewards  for  the  sake  of  an  ancient,
honorable, and dedicated profession.

Like a lot of academics, Marvin liked to imagine that he could

have been a successful stockbroker or a lawyer or an entrepreneur,
if he hadn’t freely given his life to teaching.

As for the other basic things. Marvin wasn’t bad looking—medi-

um size, good teeth, blue eyes, and a nice head of dark hair. Kept
himself trim and ﬁt playing tennis and, once in a while, a round of
golf. Was—and I would guess still is—a natty dresser within the fair-
ly lax sumptuary limits of the professional style. Somewhere along
the way he had learned to play the piano a little, well enough to
accompany his colleagues and their spouses and signiﬁcant others
in the cheerful and raucous singing of old show tunes late in the
evening at the tag end of parties just before people started falling
down or getting into arguments.

Marvin had been married a couple of times. No children. That

was  a  disappointment,  but  he  had  hopes  of  some  day  marrying
wisely and well and even having a family. Hopes that one day he
might  write  a  reasonably  successful  book.  He  had  written  two
books  already,  not  scholarly;  but  in  spite  of  trendy  topics,  good
timing, and good reviews, they had both bombed out.

Don’t think that some of his academic colleagues didn’t see the

silver lining of his troubles.

“Cheer up,” they said (not to him but to one another). “It will

give him a good subject to write about.”

Empty Bed Blues

Maybe it will.
Are you sympathetic yet?

Moving along smartly with Marvin, then.
Setting up a call girl to be caught in the act turned out to be a

little more difﬁcult than you might think. The arrangement, made
by Carla and her colleagues, involved, as is usually the case, rig-
ging  up  Marvin’s  own  bedroom  with  audio-visual  aids.  He  knew
where the cameras were placed and where the audio “bugs” were
located. But he could not tell for certain whether and when they
might be turned on. This made Marvin very nervous in his own
bedroom.  It  also  made  him  more  than  a  little  boring  to  his  aca-
demic colleagues when he got on the subject of privacy in America
in the electronic age. At the same time, of course, we had no idea
why this subject had suddenly become an obsession with him; and
so it was assumed that Marvin was getting a little crazy, “touched”
as the old-timers put it. Life went on. Marvin showed up to teach
his  classes,  keep  his  appointments,  and  meet  with  committees.
People tried to keep him as far away as possible from the subject
of privacy.

Meanwhile Martin was trying, under pressure, to do his bound-

en duty. To be brief, it took him a while to make contact with a
working call girl who was not suspicious of him and his motives.
Finally, though, one came to his apartment. The cops hid in clos-
ets and the bathroom, ready to rush out yelling and shouting and
reading Miranda rights as soon as Marvin and the victim got
(more or less) undressed and some money changed hands. Trouble
was, in this case, long before Marvin and the call girl arrived at a
legally deﬁned transaction, the young woman revealed herself to
be the daughter of the chairman of the history department. The
best that could come from this situation was that the two princi-
pals agreed (scouts’ honor) not to tell on each other.

Truth is, it wasn’t a complete waste of time. This young woman,

believing she could probably trust Marvin, agreed to recommend
somebody else, a call girl colleague with no known academic con-
nections or interests.

The cops were a lot less than happy about this new turn of

events, but they were willing to be patient for a little while longer.

During that time, the time between call girls, Marvin went out

George Garrett

with Carla a couple of times, the second of which ended in his less-
than-private  bedroom  where  Carla,  good  cop  always,  refused  to
admit or deny that their antic frolics were being recorded for pos-
terity or at least for the general amusement of any and all down at
the  jolly  police  station.  Carla  was  lively  and  lots  of  fun,  and
Marvin didn’t worry about making a spectacle of himself until the
morning  after  when  Carla  got  dressed  and  went  off  to  work.  He
then seriously considered disabling the cameras or, anyway, eras-
ing or changing the ﬁlm. But he lacked the necessary mechanical
expertise to do so.

The rest you probably know about or, anyway, may vaguely

remember  if  you  happened  to  read  our  local  or  regional  news-
papers. How a big, blowsy, no-nonsense blonde came to his apart-
ment  and  fell  into  the  trap.  A  definite  deal  was  made.  Money
changed hands. Some clothes shucked off and soon after (not soon
enough  as  far  as  Marvin  was  concerned)  cops  came  charging  in
from all directions and arrested the blondie (let’s call her Darlene)
and took her into custody and away.

Marvin may have believed that his task was over and done with,

that he was (as they say) home free. If so, he believed that only
brieﬂy before things took an unanticipated turn. First, Darlene
was in every way a lot tougher than Carla and the police had imag-
ined or planned on. No deals. No plea. “Try me in court,” she told
them. “We’ll see how it turns out.”

“What’s going to happen, honey,” Carla told her, “is that if you

don’t cooperate with us, you will certainly spend some time
behind bars.”

“Fine,” Darlene said. “I can use a vacation, anyway.”
On top of Darlene’s unexpected recalcitrance there were the

mechanical  difﬁculties.  What  mechanical  difﬁculties?  you  ask.
Well, it seems that the video cameras and audio devices, while not
a  complete  and  utter  failure,  were  not  quite  adequate,  in  and  of
themselves,  to  prove  a  case  against  Darlene.  But,  as  Carla  told
Marvin, not to worry. We have other options.

“Like what?”
“Like you, Marvin.”
Which is how, like it or not, Marvin ended up testifying in open

court as a witness against Darlene. Kind of ironic, you might say,
since from the beginning his whole plan and purpose was to keep

Empty Bed Blues

out of the paper and save his good name. Nothing he could do
about it though. Grin and bear it.

Only there was more to bear than you might think. Because

Darlene insisted on testifying on her own behalf. She surprised
everyone, probably her own lawyer, by cheerfully and openly
admitting that she was a call girl and that the evening with Marvin
was strictly a business proposition.

“I have never pretended to be anyone or anything other than

what I am. But even if I am guilty of breaking the law—and that’s
ﬁnally up to the ladies and gentlemen of the jury and nobody else,
there are limits to what I will do. And one thing I will never, ever
do, no matter what, is to rat out somebody else to save my own
skin and reputation, like that college professor sitting over there
(

witness indicates Marvin) and grinning like a jackass chewing bri-

ars.”

“You used the words

rat out,” her lawyer said. “Would you kindly

deﬁne that?”

“You mean say what it means?”
“Correct.”
“To

rat out is to tell on somebody else for the purpose of saving

your own sweet ass. I would never do that, not ever, not even to
him, the college professor.”

“Thank you.”
The jury took about forty-ﬁve minutes to acquit the call girl.

Please bear in mind that it takes roughly ﬁfteen minutes to move
the jury from the court to the jury room and roughly the same
time to return.

Ergo: the jury deliberated about ﬁfteen minutes

before arriving at a verdict.

It took a young reporter for the

Daily Paper less time than that to

see that there was a story there that might be a ticket to bigger and
better things in his journalistic career.

Later in the same week I helped Marvin pack his U-Haul trailer

and stood out in the street and waved farewell as he drove off in
search of a new and improved life.

You may be wondering, by now, exactly where I ﬁt into all this.

If you are, I don’t blame you. Was it D. H. Lawrence who said
“trust the tale and not the teller”? Or was it the other way around?

After some years, marked by lumps and hard knocks, in this ﬁc-

George Garrett

tion game, I would strongly advise you not to trust anybody very
much. Greet the teller and the tale both with a healthy skepticism.

In my case, this particular story about my friend “Marvin,” you

would be well-advised to keep in mind that I have made some seri-
ous effort to present the image of myself as a fair-minded fellow,
sympathetic to my “friend,” certainly not relishing his general dis-
comfort, objective on the whole, and not myself involved very
much. Keeping my distance. All well and good. But did you guess,
some of the more cynical among you, anyway, that I might be con-
cealing or, anyway, disguising my story by so tightly focusing on
his? From the very beginning, the more experienced (read: cyni-
cal) among you will have asked yourselves the basic question that
always ought to be asked of any narrator and/or character, ﬁction-
al or factual or a little of both. Namely:

What’s in it for him? What is

his angle? Your truly experienced (cynical) reader knows that
nobody ever does anything at all (or leaves anything at all undone)
for any reasons other than dedicated self-interest. Knows, too, that
it is almost always a matter of simple self-interest to deny this and
to profess its opposite. People keep saying

ad nauseam: “All I want

to do is leave this world a little bit better place than I found it.”
Hitler probably said that, too, to his pals in the bunker in April of
1945. Our president, Bill Clinton, said exactly that, or its equiva-
lent, from many a podium many times. And it was probably (if you
ask me, which you didn’t) what he would say to Monica Lewinsky
sometimes in the Oval Ofﬁce when she was too busy and preoc-
cupied to answer back and say the same thing on her own behalf.

But let us not get into any arguments about politics. Let us agree

to disagree, bearing in mind always that politicians, by basic deﬁ-
nition, are one and all creatures of pure and absolute and pas-
sionate self-interest.

It was more a matter of Providence than any planning on my

part that when Marvin’s hopes for promotion and tenure were so
rudely  dashed,  mine  somehow  were  enhanced—the  old  seesaw
effect. Look at it this way. The truth is, and I’ll be the ﬁrst to admit
it,  that,  judged  objectively,  Marvin  deserved  tenure  a  lot  more
than  I.  But,  even  so,  he  will  be  happier  somewhere  else,  a  new
place where his story is less likely to be known and bandied about.
A fresh new start for Marvin. He may even be grateful. All in due
time.

Empty Bed Blues

Not so long ago I ran into Carla. She was in her full police-

woman’s uniform and on duty. But she took time out to have a cof-
fee with me at the new Starbucks across the street from the uni-
versity. She told me that she still hears from him once in a while.

“It’s kind a shame,” she said. “Most of the people you meet in

my line of work—the bad guys I mean, not the cops—are really no
fucking good. Marvin may have had his problems, but he was a
gentleman of the old school.”

“You could say that.”
Meanwhile Katie and I are making a good life together. She’s

still teaching in the drama department, and I don’t think
Hollywood will be calling her away any time soon. We are reno-
vating a wonderful old house a few blocks from the university. She
is everything I ever wanted, blonde on our blue linen sheets, and
everlastingly—what was Marvin’s word?—“perky.”

George Garrett

HOST

HAT

’

OLY

ART

: W

INE

ALKING

Being herewith some notes and observations upon various and sundry topics
as spoken by Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth, at the dinner table. Recorded
and responded to at this time, summer of 1626, by his young clerk, John
Howland, late of Oriel College, Oxford.

How coaches are now becoming the very plague of London and

Westminster and will soon enough be the ruination of them. How,
even worse, coaches have caused much decay of the roads and
highways of the kingdom.

Streets of the City not built and never intended for the trafﬁc of

coaches. How there were none at all . . .

“. . . or damned precious few of them, truly; for it is said that

Queen Mary had a coach for a time when she also had a Spanish
husband and wished to please him . . .

“. . . until Queen Elizabeth had one, and a ﬁne little coach it

was, low to the ground and all aglitter with gilt and gold. More to
be seen than any other purpose. Handsome and devilishly uncom-
fortable too.”

How the Queen acquired her coach, together with a tall and

haughty Dutchman, fellow by the name of Boonen, as he recalls,
in 1564 or ’65 or thereabouts.

That the Queen wished for the coach to be the privilege of herself

alone. But that once she had gotten hers and ridden out in public

in it, why—and no doubt she should have guessed the truth of
this—it was all but foreordained that, little by little, coaches would
become the fashion.

All the more so since the Queen wished to discourage others

from having and using them. Paradox of the intense pleasure of
the forbidden.

How her Court seemed to be able without difﬁculty to discern

which of the Queen’s preferences and rules and restrictions were
more to be taken as teasing challenges than as true commands.

“Any who confused the two would learn the difference soon

enough and loud enough. To their great embarrassment and acute
discomfort. From the Queen’s own lips . . .”

How well before the time of her death every gentle lady in and

around the verge of Court, and, indeed, also half of the wives and
even the doxies of rich merchants of London, must have their very
own coaches to be seen and admired and envied while going to
and fro.

That then King James came and much preferred to go about by

coach. But more for safety and a measure of privacy and some dis-
tance from the rabble than to be seen. For he soon came to hate
and to fear the English crowds. Especially the City mobs.

Here the Earl pauses to tell me that throughout most of her

reign, until the very last of it, the Queen rejoiced in the presence
of large crowds around her.

“She drank excitement like strong wine. Sometimes she seemed

drunk on popularity.”

And again:
“The Queen could warm herself, body and soul, by their cheers

and applause. Warmed as if by a blazing bonﬁre. And the crowds
seemed to sense how she was moved by them. And this, in turn,
was a thing that excited them all the more. It became to be more
like lovemaking than love . . .”

How she was always most angry when too few people appeared

to see her whenever she passed by.

“But never mind all the times gone by, lad. See it clear as it is.

The streets of London, except, perhaps, for broad Cheapside, are
simply not suited to coaches. They crowd and clutter the narrow
way. It is the damned coaches that have made so much noise and
clamor and confusion everywhere.”

George Garrett

Still and all he has to admit that he cannot in truth complain too

much. For, no denying, it is his coach that makes it possible for
him to go around and about in all kinds of weather. Without the
use of it, at his age, he would be strictly conﬁned to his own house.
To the choice of garden or gallery for his pleasure.

And yet, he tells me, it was a much different world in those days

when all the great men, even the greatest of them, had no choice
but to walk on foot or ride on horseback like everyone else. They
were seen and known on sight by many. And these newcomers, the
great men of the latest generation, are strangers to the people now.

“Believe me, lad, it is much easier to hate and imagine the worst

of those who are very seldom, if ever, seen and are known in ﬂesh
and blood to only a very few. True enough, your great lord may
lose a kind of mystery through too much popular familiarity. But
they stand a good chance to gain goodwill in the place of it. And
goodwill may prove to be most precious in the long run.”

Later he says to me:
“There are too many in this new age of ours who prefer to be

strangers to those whom they govern and rule. Well, sir, they may
come to regret it. All in due time.”

And again:
“Look you, when those who rule over us are strangers, like

absent  and  indifferent  landlords,  then  you  must  remember  that
their goodness and honor and virtue are as well concealed as any
of their vices. And that is a condition which can prove more trou-
blesome to the health and welfare of the kingdom than the sum of
all their vices together. For, lad, in this late age of the world, may
we not assume, nay, we must assume it always, that vice and cor-
ruption  go  merrily  along,  hand  in  hand,  with  every  kind  of  gov-
ernment.  And  it  is  ever  so  much  easier—and  much  more  enter-
taining—to  imagine  vices  than  virtues.  Therefore  the  coach  will
prove to be more convenient for a vicious man than for a virtuous.
And  since  it  is  true  that  in  most  men  virtue  and  vice  are  well
mixed, when they ride together, side by side so to speak, it is gen-
erally assumed that they are one and the same. And not even the
most  cheerfully  vicious  men  can  afford  to  be  credited  with  no
virtues at all.”

Then: “Where was I?”
Wine and age work together to cloud his mind.

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

“Coaches, sir,” I say. “You were speaking of the novelty of coach-

es.”

“Ah, yes. Well, then. Still a novelty to me, though old as the

world to you. So be it, then. Let us talk of more important mat-
ters.”

How now that we have wars again to ﬁght, there is too much talk

of courage and of cowardice by swaggering young fellows who
have not yet demonstrated even a propensity toward either. Un-
tested, they have yet to prove they know the difference between the
two.

That the beginning of understanding is to learn that to be coura-

geous is not the same thing as to be entirely fearless.

How much has been said (albeit privately, secretly) concerning

the cowardice of our late King James. Well, it is true, no denying
the  King  was  always  a  fearful  man.  Much  more  so  than  merely
prudent  or  cautious.  His  padded  doublet.  Careful  protection  of
every  kind  for  himself.  No  wonder.  Not  surprising.  Consider  the
dangerous life he had to live in bloody, murderous Scotland.

But to be fearful, even fearfully prudent, is nevertheless not at

all the same as to be a coward.

That it was a very grave mistake for so many, friends as well as

enemies, to have taken him to be a coward.

“What these fellows overlooked—and, yes, so did I in my igno-

rance—was that even if he had been so often in danger that he was
all twitches and winces, like a dog or a child who has been beaten
too often, still it should never have been forgotten that he had ever
and always managed to prevail. Not even witches had managed to
overcome  him.  Sooner  or  later,  against  all  the  odds,  he  had  suc-
ceeded  in  everything  he  attempted.  Always  in  Scotland.  And  up
till  the  last  of  his  days  and  reign  in  England.  Sooner  or  later,  in
spite of all kinds of shame and humiliation, he was able to over-
come his enemies.

“What can wounds of shame and humiliation possibly mean

when, in the end, all things are transformed into victories? Victory
heals all wounds. It is the ancient Scots tale of Robert the Bruce
patiently learning this lesson from a spider spinning a web.”

He says this: That the king’s great conﬁdence in himself, in his

own stratagems and ideas, conﬁdence in himself alone, his (yes)
arrogance and his rigid certainty, these very qualities which sur-

George Garrett

prised so many Englishmen (who somehow expected that a hard
life had taught him to be humble more than anything else) can be
seen to have been inevitable when you now pause to consider, as
no man did then, not even the wise and subtle Cecil, that James
had never failed at anything.

On account of that he never had any good reason to look for

anything other than victory and success in all of his endeavors.
Danger, fear, shame, humiliation, even the continual presence of
his unquenchable anxiousness, these things were only the price
that had to be paid to gain the fulﬁllment of all his hopes.

That therefore it had been a mistake for anyone to imagine, as

many had done, that this king could ever have been frightened
into a change of mind and heart. A great mistake to suppose that
he could be turned away by fear from whatever he willed to do.

“Now, boy, this is wine talking and no more than that. And if

you ever choose to repeat one word of what I have been saying
here, I shall deny it. And you will regret it. But . . . what real harm
can be done? Most all of these people are dead and gone now. The
rest, and I shall be among them, will follow them into silence soon
enough.”

Went on then to speak somewhat concerning all the plots and

conspiracies against King James. Especially after he came here to
rule in England. How, one and all, they always seemed to work to
the King’s favor and advantage.

“I will tell you this—and then deny it with my next breath. That

I could never seriously believe very much of that business of the
papists and their Gunpowder Plot in ’05. It was, to my simple
mind, altogether too perfect, too reasonable, too conveniently dis-
covered and exposed. I thought then, as I think now, that it served
little Cecil (who was newly Earl of Salisbury that same year, was he
not?) very well indeed. And most of all it served the King. For he
was given thereby, at one stroke, all good cause and sound reasons
to disregard any promises or arrangements he may have made ear-
lier with the papists.

“And the shadows of that plot made me to think again of the Bye

and the Main Plots, in his ﬁrst year in England. How many ques-
tions still remain unanswered. What beneﬁts it conferred upon
Cecil and the King to have Lord Grey and Cobham, and your kins-
man Ralegh also, removed from the scene.

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

“No man will ever know the whole truth of any of it, I suppose.

But, lad, these plots and their fortunate discovery had all the signs
of the same kinds of plots which old Burghley and Walsingham
had discovered (or provoked, as the case may be) in the Queen’s
time.

“Well. I have already said much too much. Enough to have been

hanged for it. So let me add this much more and then be done with
it. And pray you to forget it.”

That he had looked into the chronicles and accounts of the

King’s history in Scotland. That he could only conclude, without
either prejudice or judgment, that in every plot or conspiracy con-
cerning him, beginning indeed with his father’s conspiracy to mur-
der the Queen’s Italian secretary, David Rizzio, even before James
was born, and including the very strange death of his father in yet
another plot, with (yes!) gunpowder, in all of them there is some
great mystery. In all these events, from that night in his mother’s
womb to that Tuesday afternoon when the Earl of Gowerie and his
brother sought to kill the King in their own tower (after which the
King held special service every Tuesday of his life to thank God for
deliverance), in all of these are too many things which are not
known and can never be known and must be taken on faith.

That no man, not even Machiavelli, another Italian, could have

been clever enough to concoct and design them all. Yet who in
either myth or history had ever been so fortunate? Even Achilles
had his heel.

At the very least, any skeptic would have to admit that all the

evidence seems to prove that God Himself loved his servant James
Stuart very much and very well. And that Providence served to
steer him directly toward everything he ever hoped and wished for.

“At least until his stratagem of the Spanish Match failed utterly.

Until his dream of being the Peacemaker of the world collapsed
into a war. Then many things suddenly went wrong. So much that
had been sweet turned bitter on his tongue.

“Ah, well, we are told again and again in Holy Scripture how we

shall all come to taste deep of sorrow and regret before we are
allowed to leave this world.

Man that is born of a woman hath but a

short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down like
a ﬂower; he ﬂieth as it were a shadow, and never continueth in one stay. In
the midst of life we be in death.”

George Garrett

Then (to the half-dozing servant, a man nearly as old as himself,

standing by the sideboard with the wine and the cups): “Quick,
man! Pour out some more wine for this scholar and myself before
I begin to preach my own obsequies.”

Then (to me, smacking his lips as he tastes the wine, his eyes

brightening): “Where was I? What was I speaking of?”

“You were speaking on the subject of fear, sir.”
“Ah, yes. To be sure.”
That the late King James may well have been a fearful man but

no kind of coward. Less of a coward, in truth, than many more
fearless men. For as above argued, he had never had any reason to
discard his hopes, seeing how all things served his turn. Whether
by Providence or his own designs or something of both is no mat-
ter.

That, speaking of Fortune and mysterious Providence, it does

often seem to him now that this very age, his own life and times—
time of the Queen, time of King James, and now the bright times
yet to be of our good and young King Charles—has itself been writ-
ten and printed like a book. One which he has been reading even
as he has experienced it. These times being as much of a book, a
story, as any of those old chronicles and ancient histories we were
all raised up on. As much as so much Holy Scripture is. And this
book, his lifetime, inevitably teaching the selfsame incorruptible
lessons again and again and again.

Which is to say (“Forgive me, lad, for lecturing to a scholar on

these simple things”) that we must seek continually to live always
and only by the little trinity of faith and hope and charity. Because,
in truth, all other things and goods being only perishable, we have
no other honest choice.

“As the preachers say (until we yawn and doze in their tedious

faces) all else is vanity, vanity, vanity.”

That the longer a man lives the more he will be taught this.

Though he may freely choose to ignore it. Though he may live and
die without ever taking the lessons of this world to heart.

Because it is very hard to see and to bear the truth of it in the

steel looking glass of oneself. Yet easy, oh, easier by far, to see it in
the lives of others.

Take, for instance, one among the many who have come and

gone in his times, little Robert Cecil. Whose father carefully saved

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

and left to him greatness of ofﬁce and, as well, Theobalds which
was, then, surely (for great Audley End and Hatﬁeld were not even
yet begun) all in all, the ﬁnest house in the kingdom—the Queen’s
own palaces included. Except maybe for Hampton Court; and
that, after all, was Wolsey’s dream. And if old Burghley left him no
great fortune, still he left him very well situated, with every oppor-
tunity to ﬁnd the means to preserve his station and to raise him-
self even higher yet.

“And God knows he did so. Managed by skill and sleight of hand

to serve the Queen even while likewise serving her successor (and
himself ). Brought the King to this throne. Served him well. Scat-
tered and destroyed the King’s enemies. And, of course, his own as
well. Came soon enough, early in a life’s span, to the nobility. To
even greater and more lucrative ofﬁces, to honor and fortune.

“To building. . . . Have you been yet to see the new Exchange by

the Strand? That’s his doing. Why, the old Royal Exchange in the
City  is  pale  and  poor  beside  it.  And  also  great  Salisbury  House
there  in  Westminster.  And  the  house  at  Hatﬁeld.  Traded  off
Theobalds,  gave  it  to  the  King.  Then  built  himself  a  better  and
grander  place  there  at  Hatﬁeld,  close  by  the  ancient  Hall  where
Queen Elizabeth had lived when she was young.

“You must see it for yourself. You must have an occasion to see

great Hatﬁeld House before you go running away to India or
Virginia or wherever your restless spirit moves you to go.

“If you are able to admire the harmony and splendor of great

houses—and why not, lad, for the brick and marble and glass, the
plaster and ﬁne woods are, in and of themselves, innocent enough
and speak not truly of the vanity of man, but rather of the wonder
and richness and variety of God’s own Creation?—why you will be
startled with delight that such a place can be. And if the works of
man (though they be wrought with the materials of God) please
you not, then go outside into the gardens. And see the wonders
gathered there by the genius of his gardener—Mr. Tradescent.

“Boy, I do believe I could save you from a plain, drab life as a

Puritan simply by showing you that house and those gardens.

“Well, you can see, can easily imagine, how I envied him his good

fortune. And how I hated him for all of the injustices, real and per-
haps imaginary, which I conceived he had worked upon me.

“A word more about injustice, boy.

George Garrett

“I know, I know, I

know what Holy Scripture tells us, especially

under the New Law, and how far we fall short of it.”

(How far we have come already. Here we have already passed the

Second Sunday after Easter as we move through the days toward
Whitsuntide.  And  I  know  that  what  is  on  his  mind,  even  at  this
satiated,  winey  moment,  is  the  Epistle  for  that  Sunday.  Which,
together  for  once,  we  heard  preached  on  from  the  great  cross  at
Paul’s Church. Namely the second chapter of the First Epistle of
Peter. I am now somewhat amused, and touched, for he has trou-
bled  himself  to  memorize  a  piece  of  the  passage.  Perhaps  out  of
simple vanity, to prove to me that he can still ﬁsh up words from
his memory when he wishes to. Taking these words not from the
King’s newly wrought translation, but from the old Bishops’ ver-
sion as it is to be found in his own

Book of Common Prayer.)

“For what praise is it, if when ye be buffeted for your faults, ye

take it patiently? But if and when ye do well, and ye suffer wrong
and take it patiently, then there is thanks with God. For hereunto
verily were ye called.”

(

And I interrupting, continuing the text, but choosing, as ever, to turn to

the wholesome Geneva version.)

“. . . For hereunto ye are called. For Christ also suffered for us,

leaving us an example that we should follow his steps. Who did no
sin, neither was there guile found in his mouth. Who when he was
reviled, reviled not again. When he suffered, he threatened not,
but committed it to him that judgeth righteously. Who in his own
self bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we being delivered
from sin, should live in righteousness by whose stripes ye were
healed.”

He, the old man, frowning. Wrinkling his face. For it was rude

of me to interrupt him in that fashion. Vain for me to show him a
caper with my own memory.

“You and your Geneva text!” he says. “You and your Oriel

College memory. But . . .” (

a sudden grin as of triumph) “you chose to

ignore the last verse of it. On purpose, as I do believe.”

(Then the two of us together, smiling, repeating the verse and, yes, in his

Common Prayer words for it, a duet like two windy recorders playing a
melody in identical pitch and tune.)

“For ye were as sheep going astray, but are now turned unto the

shepherd and bishop of your souls.”

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

(His laughter.)
“Bishop, bishop, bishop! Ah, how you precise fellows hate the

word,” he says. “Well, judging by the bishops we have, I can scarce-
ly blame you. Where was I, say, before I began to show off my
memory?”

“At the life and death of the Earl of Salisbury, sir.”
“Well, I confess to you (it is no news at all to the Almighty) that

I most unchristianly rejoiced in heart and soul when he died (and
died in great pain and sorrow too) in the springtime of 1612. I do
confess how I went at once, upon receipt of the good news of his
demise, directly to my privy. Where, if nowhere else, I could be
alone. Where I could, and did, empty my bowels (as if upon his
head) and laugh out loud, as well as inwardly, at the ﬁnal justice of
it all.

“I confess, also, how I joined my own voice in the huge choir of

the voices of those who now felt free at last to abuse him in death.
We who had so hated and feared him in life. It gave me peace and
a deep content to hear and to pass on the news that he had been
snatched from this vale of tears by nothing more extraordinary
than the French pox.

“Which was, to be sure, a lie, and we knew it even as we said it,

yet felt the better for saying it whether we believed it or not. Can
you understand that?

“Well, then. It has been fully ﬁfteen years since then. And much

has changed for better and much for worse. I am older, somewhat
richer, and not a bit wiser or better. Cecil, beneath his noble and
expensive tomb, is no more than a little pile of bones now. Like a
large dog’s, I suppose. No more. Hatﬁeld House and the gardens
there are a wonder to behold. Better indeed than he ever saw
them; for he was stone dead before the building and planting were
ﬁnished.

“I am deeply pleased whenever there is some occasion for me to

go and be there. I ﬁnd it soothing to my spirit. And now also—hav-
ing laughed my laugh at his expense in the stinking air of my
privy, chieﬂy rich with the stink of myself—I envy the man nothing.
Instead I ﬁnd myself strangely grateful to him. On account of what
he imagined and made and had to leave behind.

“Do you see what the wine and I are trying to tell you? How it

calls for no prophet, how it is simple and easy enough to read the

George Garrett

lesson of the Fortunes of others, friends and enemies alike, if you
happen to be fortunate enough yourself to live and to see what has
become of them. But Providence is another matter altogether.
Darker, more mysterious by far.

“I think of the Queen. Dying in silence, after many days of

silence. Unable or unwilling to speak. What did she see or under-
stand that struck her mute?

“Or our poor King James. He died, you know, with his whole

mouth  frozen  grotesquely  open  (as  they  say  and  I  believe).  As  if
struggling to speak. As if trying perhaps to scream, perhaps to cry
out  the  truth  of  what  he  perceived  in  all  his  ﬁnal  pain  and  ﬂux.
Shame and humiliation. This man of many words could make no
sound to the world’s ears except the gargle of his phlegm and of
the juices that were drowning him. He may have seen and under-
stood  something  as  terrible  as  the  head  of  the  Medusa.  Turned
him to stone, it did.

“It is the wine that makes me say these things. Together with all

the arrogant habits and prerogatives of my old age. But, still, I con-
fess to you that I sometimes wonder.

“Does God Himself laugh out loud, rock His jeweled throne

with laughter? Does He rattle the windowsills of heaven when He
looks down and sees the enormities, the intricate follies and self-
deceptions of our works and days?

“Cannot God laugh (sometimes) like a man? Must He always

and only weep over us?”

I am compelled to remind him that Jesus is described to us as

weeping. And that there is no mention of his laughter anywhere.

“Ah,” he says, “it is true. Still, I cannot forget the laughter of

Abraham and his wife, Sarah, when the angel of the Lord told
them that they would have a son and as many descendants as the
stars in the sky.”

That this world is to be taken, as the Scripture says, like unto a

ﬁeld. Where corn and grass are grown and cut down for harvest
and planted and grown anew. How there are seasons of this world.
How there are crops to be harvested. And how sometimes the crop
is rich and abundant. How at other times the harvest is poor.

“What I am saying, boy, is that it is now my old man’s judgment

that there was truly a wonderful harvest of Englishmen in the
Queen’s time. That great men were many enough to seem to be

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

common. That in those days she could have thrown an apple or a
tennis ball at her assembled Court and would have struck a wor-
thy man.

“Then came the next generation and surprised us, as we sur-

prised ourselves, to discover that good men (never mind great
men) are few and rare. King James could not have done much bet-
ter than he did. If he had ﬁred a cannon, loaded with chain shot,
point blank into his assembled Court, most of the bodies they
gathered up in buckets would not have been worth the price of the
gunpowder it took to dismember them.”

That we have witnessed a thin harvest of mankind for many

years now. But that he has hopes that things will now change for
the better.

“For it will soon enough be in your hands, lad. And I have hope

and faith in the young. For we have a young King now, too. I know
him well. He’s grave and honest and courageous. Given time, he
should surely grow in wisdom and stature. It will be in the future
that true English hearts will be found. And at last the past will van-
ish like a puff of smoke in the wind.”

That one of the advantages of old age (“and they are few, lad,

very, very few”) is that it becomes possible for one old man to jest
with another concerning things which might have been too private
and too painful to speak of before.

How Sir Ferdinando Gorges has often teased him about his wild

ride up the North Road to Holyroodhouse in ’03. How Ferdinando
has called it an antic thing to do and named it “Carey’s Ride from
Bedlam to the Bedchamber.” Saying: “Robert, I could understand
it better if you had fallen and broken your head

before you decided

to ride to the King. But you say you fell on the last day of the three.
Which puzzles me no end.”

How he has countered with mock dismay that Ferdinando is his

friend.

“Look, you,” I have told him, “I have seen what becomes of your

friends. Essex was your friend. Next Ralegh. Sir, when you now
profess friendship to me, I have a picture of my own head on the
point of a pike above the gate of London Bridge. Some barefoot
lad from the country, here to make his fortune and to become
Lord Mayor of London, will look up and wonder who is that hand-
some fellow there?”

George Garrett

“Why then,” says Ferdinando, “I shall have a man of my own to

stand there to answer any questions. ‘That’s all that’s left of old
Robert Carey,’ he’ll say. ‘A silly fellow who once walked all the way
from London to Berwick in eleven days.’”

That, speaking of jests and such, it is more often through them

that we shall learn something of the true nature of others than
through even the most exhaustive accountings of their words and
deeds.

“Here is a story of King James which tells me much. One which

I heard him say with my own ears. It was early in his reign, and he
was complaining of the crowds that gathered to trouble and pester
him wherever he went. ‘What do they want from me? What is it
they want? I ask you!’ he said. ‘Why, sir,’ says a gentleman of the
Court, ‘they wish to see and to admire your face.’ ‘Then, God’s
wounds, they will,’ the King replies. ‘They shall see my face. And
I shall pull down my breeches and let them admire my arse, too.’”

How the best of the jest is that the King truly meant it. And how

the fops of the Court knew it, too. And were in a study as to how
they could politely dissuade the King from exposing his bare arse
to the people of England.

How the wit of the old Queen could at times be quite as coarse

as her cousin’s. But with a certain difference. And with a woman’s
sort of satirical edge.

How this concerns Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford. Who was a

proud, insolent, and treasonous knave if ever there was one. Much
hated by all but a few. And many rejoiced in this story.

How the Earl, upon a certain ceremonious occasion at Court,

with great ﬂourish and ostentation did make a deep bow to the
Queen. The grace and effect of which being lost by the fact that he
did let ﬂy a loud fart, heard by all in the Presence, at the deepest
moment of his bow.

How the Queen laughed out loud ﬁrst and then the whole Court.
And how the Earl was furious, half-mortiﬁed with embarrass-

ment. How he left the Court and went off to travel on the
Continent for some seven months.

“To give the air a chance to clear, as it were.”
How on his return the Queen did welcome him warmly. And

just as he knelt at her throne, she suddenly burst out laughing
again.

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

George Garrett

“Oh, my good lord!” the Queen cried out. “I had clean forgot

the fart. From then until this moment.”

That one of the results, call it lucky or unlucky as the case may

be,  of  the  peace  of  1604  which  Cecil  and  King  James  had  made
with  Spain  has  been  the  increase  and  plentitude  in  England  of
these  well-fortiﬁed  Spanish  wines.  Wines  that  set  the  blood  to
trilling  like  a  ﬂock  of  birds.  Tongues  to  lufﬁng  and  wagging  like
sails in the wind.

“Perhaps this, our new and latest war with Spain, will put an end

to it, though I sincerely hope not. I should sooner lose a war with
Spain (as we may, lad, as we may very well) than to give up my
Spanish wines.

“But no matter. I have stored enough in my cellars to last much

longer than I will. It is likely to be the best part of my estate.”

That he not only hopes, but also surely expects me to forget

every word which has been said here as soon as we rise from table
and leave this room.

That I solemnly promise to do so.
“Indeed, sir, you can depend on it.”

ART

: A F

ACE FROM A

REAM

Being the prayers and dreams and memories of Robert Carey in old age.

Oh, Lord, my God, open mine eyes and enlarge my heart with true under-

standing of Thy great mercies, that thou has blest me withal, from my ﬁrst
being until my old age.

Now they are beginning to vanish. It is as if they were stepping backward,

as if on tiptoes, into the shadows and stealing away from me. Slowly and
surely. . . .

Whose face can that be?
He is saying these words to himself. Not aloud. He is mouthing

the words, tasting them, testing them. They seem to be referring
to something he was dreaming of a moment or two before now. A
sleep and a dream from which he was awakened to ﬁnd himself
saying words without making a sound. What he may have been
dreaming he cannot remember.

Well, there is no one else in his bedchamber to whom he could

be speaking. No one else here except the young servant boy asleep
on a pallet in the dark corner nearest to the chamber door. That
boy groans something wordless from the deep place of his own
dreaming. And then he begins to snore like an old dog by a ﬁre.
There is no ﬁre, no coals in this chamber.

Moon has long since passed over. And gone down. Could it be

any darker in a tomb? He thinks that he can understand why all
those old pharaohs of Egypt, and so many other heathen and
pagan kings and emperors, ordered that some or all of their ser-
vants should be buried with them. In a tomb, in the dark of the
grave that he must soon enough come to inhabit, he would ﬁnd the
groans and snores of this young oaf to be deeply reassuring. He is
reassured even here and now. He smiles to himself. Tries to imag-
ine the look on that lout’s face if he were to be told that it was his
bounden duty to be entombed with his master—Robert Carey, Earl
of Monmouth.

There! Again! The same or another imaginary or remembered face. An

angry and startled face. Whose? To whom does that face belong?

Soon, he tells himself, the last pitch of darkness will begin to

thin out. Will slowly and surely become simply gray. Then gray
will begin to change and to fade away allowing for the gradual
arrival of the softest hints of rose and pink at the edge of the win-
dow. Next will come the cock of his kitchen garden to crow his ﬁrst
doodle-doo of the new day. Birds in the trees of the park and in the
gardens will begin to tune and sing. Closer, just beyond the small
leaded panes of the window he will hear the soft, repetitive ﬂute
sounds of the mourning dove.

And then, suddenly, there will be a fanfare of all the trumpets of

the rising sun.

The sun very seldom, if ever, ﬁnds him asleep enough to be

taken by surprise. He sleeps little, in ﬁts and starts, after midnight.
Never has.

Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord; and by thy great mercy

defend us from all perils and dangers of this night.

When he did doze, easing into a sleep awhile ago, there were still

some patches of gold, faint tatters of moonlight caught in the
chamber. And his servant, asleep or not, made not a sound. The
old Earl lay still, curtained against chill, and softly ﬂoating in his

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

four-poster bed. Thinking that he had just heard the sound of an
owl. Believing that if he were to lie there, keeping himself perfect-
ly quiet and still, breathing ever so lightly, he might very well hear
that owl again. Some men do fear the owl, the sound or the sight
of  it,  as  an  authorized  messenger  of  deaths  and  disasters.  Well
now. He has listened for and listened to owls for more than half a
hundred years (as he can remember). And still and all death has
not  come  scratching  his  sharp  ﬁngernails  at  the  door.  Not  yet.
Meantime,  the  inimitable  hoot  of  an  owl  in  the  night  can  be  a
great comfort to a man lying half-awake and with nobody to talk
to.

And so he lay there content, patiently waiting for the sound of

the owl and feeling with pleasure the warm, smooth, clean texture
of linen sheets, these all freshly washed and sunned and aired in
this exceptionally ﬁne weather. His sheets are not so ﬁne as were
those of Leicester, each with its proud crest and initials embroi-
dered in the corner. But Leicester is long gone now and those ﬁne
sheets are only rags or have fed the avaricious moths, together with
the dozens of damask tablecloths and napkins Leicester kept here
in this castle of Kennilworth. Well, these of his own are ﬁne
enough and clean enough to please a man who once upon a time
and often slept on cold ground with only the wide, turning sky and
the bright stars for his ceiling.

He has not yet allowed himself the luxury of forgetting how that

was.

He felt the linen sheets he was lapped in. And he breathed the

undeniable and subtle scent of lavender from sheets and pillows.
He much prefers that scent to the saffron that so many folks use
nowadays. Lavender, the mere whiff of it, carries him back to the
lost time of the old Queen. He can feel himself to be ageless and
bodiless, without any aches and pains to his name. . . .

He waited for the owl and soon fell asleep. Fell directly into that

dream from which he has only just now safely returned. He was
speaking intently to someone in his dream. Or perhaps he was
talking only to himself

That face, though!
He remembers that now. Indeed can here and now see, in his

mind’s eye, a thin, pinched, bony, crow-trodden, scarred, blue-eyed
face. Fair haired. Wearing a bloody bandage like a cap on his head.

George Garrett

Whose?
Who is it?
Cannot remember.
Well, he could slip into sleep again if he chose to. If he would

close his eyes and breathe in again the sweet scent of lavender.
Which, if it truly can, as they say, calm and tame a wild and fero-
cious lion, then why not, ‘an it please you, an aged and irascible
Earl?

He could, but he will not. Instead he will stare into the dark, lis-

tening for any sounds at all. He will wait for the rising of the sun.
He has rested himself long enough. He can think of nothing else
he is eager to dream about; and, no purpose or point in denying it
any more, something or other in the dream he was set free from
has left him troubled and uneasy.

Yesterday was a memorable good day. Early he was on horse-

back.  In  the  heat  of  the  morning,  before  dinnertime,  he  and  his
new young scholar walked and talked in the garden. The garden is
much improved now that they have repaired the rusty pipes that
make Leicester’s fountains dance. After a fashion. In the heat of
the morning he and this young man stood in the cool mist of the
playing  fountains.  Talked  about  this  and  that.  About  everything
under the sun: how it is, how it was, how it may be. They contin-
ued  talking  until  they  were  invited  to  come  to  the  table.  Talked
through  dinner  and  afterward  with  their  sweet  wine  and  cheese
and fruits and nuts. Continued their conversation until it was time
for the Earl to rest himself a little while.

Then, after his nap, he went out with some of the others to the

shady green, a place shadowed from sunlight by the castle’s walls,
where they could play at bowling. And the Earl, who has not lost
all his skill at it, made and won some wagers. Won some money
from them.

Supper was excellent. He ate lightly (as he mostly does these

days), yet still enjoyed his ﬁll of a good fresh green sallet rich with
herbs, a whole poached and stuffed pigeon, cooked in a rich sauce
of berries and fruit, and then a fat capon perfectly prepared with
its own sauce of wine and oranges. He ﬁnished it off with a dish of
cold Italian cream and some almond tarts. And all of it washed
down by the best malmsey he has tasted in some time.

Everything was so well and so delicately cooked that he cannot

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

now justly blame his bad dreams on bad digestion. Not that he
would admit to that in any case. Lest he should then be persuad-
ed of the need of purging. Which, he is sure, would kill him. These
foolish doctors of medicine, with their purges, will kill a man long
before his time comes.

When he dies let it not be from purges and medicines. Let it be

from an excess of malmsey. Let it be by a surfeit of cold Italian
cream.

He wonders if Leicester (who, rumor has it, was a master of

many poisons) ever served his guests at this castle that dish. And
if they, one and all, summoned up the courage to eat it at his table.

Well, no doubt it was worth a poisoning.
He can picture the surprise written on an otherwise blank face,

an imaginary someone from those days gone by, someone or other
who has just surmised that his serving of Italian cream is the last
sweet thing that he will ever eat.

There now!
That face again!
The face from the dream returns. Now the eyes are bulging and popping

with  surprise  and  outrage  and  something  indeﬁnably  more.  The  eyes  are
clouded  over  with  the  sudden  and  shadowy  knowledge  of  death.  And  not
death  by  poison.  Nor  the  look  of  a  man  who  has  just  now  been  sliced  or
carved or stabbed with an edge or length of sharpened steel. No. This fellow
is hanging by his neck. Strangling and going blue and blank in that face.

It is not the hanging that overcomes the man’s face with anger

and astonishment. You can tell he was born to hang and knows it.
Knew it, anyway, until a few minutes ago. The only serious ques-
tions of his fate and destiny were when and where he would hang
and who would hang him and for what.

But there’s more. There is the look of a man who has been badly

tricked. He has been cozened in some fashion. And all of a sud-
den, at one bright moment which happens to be his last, this man
knows it.

Very satisfactory for the trickster.
And now it comes clear (like a face reﬂected in a clear, calm

stream) to the Earl whose face was troubling his sleep.

It’s a fellow by the name of Geordie Bourne. A Scotsman (what

else?) and a thief from birth and a great and naughty reiver of the
East March.

100

George Garrett

(Queen, herself, and bless her memory, sent him up there in the

’60s to the Border country to bring a little peace and quiet even if
it took ﬁre and sword to do so. As it truly did. He was young and
foolish and fearless in those days and maybe, he thinks now, she
sent him there to be rid of him hanging about and coasting her
Court and importuning her and the others for advancement.)

Geordie was taken intact after a bloody little ﬁght in some for-

saken corner of the East March, captured alive by Carey’s men.
Geordie fought bravely enough, as always. But it was a poor ﬁght-
ing place and there were, for once, too many against him and his
men.

A close friend of Sir Robert Ker, this Geordie was. Ker sent

word to Carey that he would do a great deal and would be willing
to give much to save Geordie’s hide and hair. Adding to his plea
the promise that if some means were not found to save Geordie’s
life and liberty, why, then, Ker would take pleasure in bringing ﬁre
and sword and utter destruction to the English side.

Well, sir, we shall see about that.

As David the King once sang:

Up, Lord, and help me, O my God; for

thou smitest all mine enemies upon the cheek-bone; thou has broken the teeth
of the ungodly.

Carey’s aim and purpose at the time was to make some mischief

for Ker. To teach him something or other. To shame him, if could
be. So he called together a jury. Which promptly found this
Geordie guilty of March-treason. For which the penalty was death.

Then Carey waited to see what Ker might do. Wondered whether

to hang the man or not.

Determined to go and see the fellow with his own eyes, ﬁrst,

before deciding. For he and Geordie had never so much as met or
seen each other, as far as Carey knew, face to face.

Years later Carey would write his memory of that visit. Here is

what he wrote:

When all things were quiet and the watch set at night, after sup-

per about ten of the clock, I took one of my men’s liveries and put
it about me. And took two other of my servants with me in their liv-
eries. And we three, acting as the Warden’s men, came to where

101

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

this Geordie Bourne was kept and were let into his chamber. We sat
down by him and told him that we were desirous to see him be-
cause we had heard he was stout and valiant and true to his friends.
And that we were sorry that our master could not be moved to
spare his life.

Then they talked for a while. And, sooner not later, Geordie,

being a true reiver to the inmost marrow of his bones, could not
stop himself from telling them the story of his life.

“He told us that he had lain with at least forty men’s wives, some

in England and some in Scotland. That he had killed seven
Englishmen with his own bare hands. And that he had spent and
devoted his whole lifetime to whoring, drinking, stealing, and tak-
ing deep revenge for the slightest offences.”

Geordie asked them if they might send him a minister of the

Gospel to comfort his soul. Not that he was suffering in great fear
and trembling. No, just in case Ker could not manage to free him
and things really came down to his hanging.

Carey later wrote: “I was so resolved that no conditions whatso-

ever should save his life. And so I ordered that at the opening of
the gates on the following morning he should be carried to his exe-
cution. Which accordingly was performed.”

I rode out myself to bear witness to the hanging. Which, no

doubt, was the likely cause of the memorable look that seized com-
mand of Geordie’s face at the moment of his rough demise.

Outrage and fury that he had been tricked into the confession

of a lifetime of mortal sins and heinous crimes. Confession (brag-
ging if you prefer) not to three common and simpleminded ser-
vants, as it seemed, but to the Warden of the East March, himself,
that same man to whom so many (and especially Sir Robert Ker),
on both sides of the Border were busy making representations of
the excellent character and well-earned good reputation of the
aforesaid selfsame Geordie Bourne, and of all the sound reasons
why such a creature of such decent Christian character and excel-
lent repute should justly be spared.

Oh, the truth is that it took considerable effort not to have

laughed out loud at the very moment our eyes met and Geordie-
boy recognized me for who I was and who I had been and showed
plainly that he did so in the last living expression on his face.

102

George Garrett

103

Ghost Me What’s Holy Now

Lord, that would have been altogether ill-mannered and

unseemly, would it not, to laugh in and at the face of one you have
both condemned and hanged?

God’s wounds, the poor fellow was much surprised, though, was

he not? About as much as any man can be.

So was Ker surprised. And, if anything, even more outraged and

angry. Well, he had enough time to cultivate his rage. I never knew
a man so angry about anything as Ker was concerning the sad end-
ing of the life of Geordie Bourne. You would think that Ker seri-
ously believed Geordie Bourne had any chance at all to die with
his boots off in a comfortable bed.

In the end, though, Ker and I became friends. After a fashion.

It took some time and some doing. We ﬁnally shook hands upon
it, and we even drank a toast to the memory of the late Geordie
Bourne.

But that is another story. And another tale I cannot tell to the

young Oxford scholar who patiently listens to me. Who, in his
ignorant youth and high puritanical seriousness, will not be able
to understand the lighthearted spirit of it. Best not to mention or
to tell that one. Best to write it down on paper and be done with it.
Else Geordie may continue to come uninvited into my dreams.
And so might others, too.

Lord, if half of the men I had to hang (for their own good and

for the good of the Borders) were to rise up and return to people
my dreams, my nights will be more crowded than the Court at
Christmas.

And such ugly faces! Such wonderful, rough hewn, everlastingly

ugly faces. . . .

For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain: he

heapeth up riches, and cannot tell who shall gather them.

The Earl thinks it might be profoundly rude and unseemly even

now to laugh out loud in the privacy of his bed and bedchamber.
Yet he cannot suppress the urge of it any more.

His laughter ﬁlls the room. It startles his snoring servant boy

awake.

And so begins another summer’s day.
Hears the cock crowing and, more gratifying since it conﬁrms

his sleepy ﬁrst impression, he can hear a whole crowd of crows in

the woods beyond the park crying out in a choir of furious voices.
Meaning, usually, that the presence of an outsider, owl or hawk,
has roused their ire.

The sun is rising, and he can delay and procrastinate no longer.
Time has come, sir, to tune or to play the lute. One or the other.
Time has come to write down his life story, as well as he can

remember it. To write it now or to forget it.

The pens are sharpened. There’s a full inkhorn and plenty of

good paper and ﬁne sand ready for plenty of blotting.

No more excuses or diversions will be allowed.
Robert Carey, Baron of Leppington and Earl of Monmouth, will

this morning, after he has pleasured himself with a full breakfast,
begin to write down his memories from a long and busy life.

He will begin, as is the oldest custom for these things, with a

prayer.

. . . And give me of thy grace to call in mind some measure of thy great and

manifold blessings that thou has blessed me withal. Though my weakness be
such and my memory so short, as I have not the abilities to express them as I
ought to do, yet, Lord, be pleased to accept this sacriﬁce of praise and thanks-
giving.

104

George Garrett

Spilling the Beans

A Letter to Linda Evangelista

Dear Ms. Linda,

I can safely be almost certain that you don’t know me or any-

thing about me. I am counting on it. Yes it’s true. I could always
be wrong. Assuming that you had the time and energy and inter-
est, during the prime of your supermodel life, to read a book now
and then, once in a great while; assuming that then or now, you
might  actually  spend  time  and  energy  reading  anything  except
contracts, model releases, and slick fashion magazines with limit-
ed text and plenty of pictures (some of them of you and your face
sometimes, though less and less these days, on the cover), then I
have to allow that it is highly improbable but just faintly possible
that you might have heard of or even read some of a book called
Poison Pen (1986). Maybe you were killing time (pardon the expres-
sion), browsing in a bookstore. (Do you ever just throw caution to
the  winds  and  browse?)  The  shiny  black  book  jacket  might  have
caught  your  attention.  If  that  happened  you  would  have  discov-
ered that I am the (pardon the expression) protagonist of the book.
My name is Towne . . . John Towne. Good friends, of which I have
a couple, tend to call me Jack. In that particular book, mishmash
that it was and is, I wrote some poison-pen letters to people who
were,  at  the  time,  prominent  for  this  and  that.  Celebrities,  in  a
word,  many  of  them  once  famous,  household  names,  and  now
dead  and  gone  to  glory  or  wherever.  People  like,  for  example,

105

George Wallace and Timothy Leary and Truman Capote. And
others getting on in years but still more or less alive and remem-
bered, at this writing at least. People like Ursula Andress and Jean
Shrimpton and Hugh Hefner. All of whom are easily old enough
to be your grandparents.

The longest and strangest letter in that whole book, however,

was not written by me at all. It is the work of my hapless author. It
is addressed to the great and obsessive love of his life—Christie
Brinkley. He poured out his heart and soul to her. Needless to say
she didn’t answer or reciprocate. Maybe she will some day, but it
hasn’t happened yet.

Well, one thing you can say about time, Linda, is that it really

ﬂies.  You  are  still  pretty  young  and  may  not  have  really  noticed
that yet. But you will. You sure enough will. Believe me. Do you by
any chance happen to remember that ad for Kenar a few years ago
where  they  posed  you  in  the  middle  of  a  group  of  seven  elderly
Italian (maybe Sicilian) women, time-ravaged and wrinkled? Four
are standing in the back and three and you—yourself cross-legged
in black stockings and a sleeveless wisp of a little black dress—are
sitting in slightly battered straight chairs, one of which is empty.
I’m guessing it’s supposed to be some kind of joke. Beauty and the
Seven Beasts, maybe. Or maybe it’s meant to be on the sardonic
side  like  Hamlet’s  “Get  thee  to  a  nunnery”  remarks  to  poor
Ophelia.  But  any  way  you  choose  to  take  it,  the  joke  is  on  you.
Because those old gals in their shapeless black dresses have char-
acter and strength in their faces. You look, as you often do in your
unsmiling photos, like you have just smelled something really, real-
ly bad. Anyway, the old women know and we know and you ought
to know that time will do the same to you. You’ll be mighty lucky
if you end up looking half as good as any of them.

But pay no attention to me. I’m only kidding. There is always

the off chance that you will be beautiful forever—as long as you are
alive that is. Even with the best undertaking and embalming, dead
folks start looking bad pretty soon. Even if you end up as old and
as ugly as the red rear end of a big-ass baboon, you will always be
able to remember that once upon a time you looked just ﬁne,
thank you, that once upon a time people called you beautiful. You
can always curl up and look at some old pictures of yourself.
Which is something most people can’t or won’t do.

106

George Garrett

Anyway, Linda, to get on with this letter and to make a long

story short, after

Poison Pen appeared and then vanished, time

ﬂapped leathery wings and ﬂew away. Time passed and my author
went and got old on me. At this writing, he is more than seventy
years old, a fact he would rather hide from you. Christie Brinkley
went and got older, too, got married a few times and even had
some babies. She doesn’t look too bad yet. You can see her, togeth-
er with movie star Chuck Norris, advertising exercise equipment
on cable TV and smiling, smiling, smiling. Some set of swell teeth
on that woman. Hey, you don’t suppose there’s anything going on
between them, Chuck and Christie, do you? They act more like
old friends on TV than lovers. Maybe there is more to it, though.
Who knows?

Over the years, one thing and another and the heavy weight of

an obsessive (one-sided) love, a real yoke if there ever was one, has
lifted off the author’s shoulders. Christie went her way and we
went ours. The only Christie that grabs his attention these days is
your buddy, Christy Turlington. Recently he read somewhere that
she wants to study creative writing. Does she? If so, more power to
her. My author actually teaches creative writing, but I don’t know
if I can honestly recommend him as the ideal mentor. Maybe
Gordon Lish. . . ?

As for me, I didn’t go anywhere much or change much either as

the years shufﬂed on by. There are, to be sure, many obvious dis-
advantages to life (and death) as a ﬁctional character. I could go on
and on about the subject, maybe moving you to tears by rehears-
ing the sorrow and the pity of it all. But you can easily imagine
most of the pains and problems and issues and disappointments.
Not the least of which is the almost complete absence of free will.
Whether I am willing to admit it or not, most of the time I have to
be and to do whatever my author wants. More to the point, I have
to be and to do what he wants even when it challenges ordinary
credibility and violates the sacred and sanctiﬁed rules and princi-
ples of contemporary literary criticism and contemporary literary
fashion. (In a sense, we are both

fashionistas, Linda.) All of which

means—think about it, go ﬁgure—I not only can’t save myself, but
also that I can’t come to his aid either. I end up having to take the
blame, together with my ignorant author, for whatever he has
made me do or leave undone. That is really and truly unfair.

107

Spilling the Beans

Please, ma’am, note the irony of it. I am composed, in fact and in
any ﬁction that I ﬁnd myself involved in, of the ﬁgments and frag-
ments of his conscious and unconscious obsessions. He may think
that he is freer than I am. If so, then that is purely and simply a
delusion.

Some of this may not seem so strange or unfamiliar to you, for

there is a sense in which a real celebrity, especially a supermodel
like yourself without any known or noticeable talent for anything
else (I could be wrong—I saw once a picture of you playing, or at
least holding, an accordion), could be called a ﬁctional character.
In that sense, I have an author, and you have photographers who
create you. But let us defer discussion of that complex subject (do
celebrities have any reality other than their celebrity?) until later
on when we get to know each other better. Meanwhile, as the Brits
say, not to worry. Always remember what Gertrude Lawrence said:
“I am not what you would call wonderfully talented, but I am light
on my feet and I do make the best of things.” There are disadvan-
tages and disappointments aplenty when you are only a ﬁctional
character. But

entre nous, Lady Linda, there is deﬁnitely a plus side

as well. Unlike celebrities, many ﬁctional characters—all except
those unlucky enough to get stuck in a (pardon)

bildungsroman—

don’t tend to age much. Imprisoned between the covers of a book,
for better or for worse, they usually remain at whatever age their
author has assigned them. Forever and ever. In the nineteenth cen-
tury a ﬁctional character was often required to live out a whole life
and had a very good chance of ending up dead. But in late-twentieth-
century ﬁction, especially in the metaﬁction so many authors keep
fooling around with, a character can drink deep at the fountain of
youth and stay young forever.

But none of this can be of serious interest to you, Linda. If you

happen to be reading this letter. You have your own ﬁsh to fry.

Cut to the chase. What am I doing here? What the hell am I up

to? Has my author brought me back to life so I can write one more
poison-pen letter? Not exactly. It’s a temptation, though. I could
easily exercise my limited free will and ignore all his wishes and
instructions and have myself a little fun at the expense of the two
of you. I have actually seen you, on ﬁlm, TV, and video, lose your
temper over next to nothing and then to tiptoe swiftly to the sheer,
shrill edges of a major tantrum. And doing my basic research for

108

George Garrett

this letter, I have read in various places that you are thought to be
a difﬁcult and temperamental person.

The fact is that I’ve read a lot about you. I enjoyed the photos of

you in that Sante D’Orazio book—

A Private View. You looked pret-

ty good, though I have to confess that some of the others, babes
who bared all, looked better. But at your level it’s all a matter of
taste, anyway. I read a good deal about you in Michael Gross’s
Model: The Ugly Business of Beautiful Women. About how you married
Gerald Marie (after he dumped Christine Bolster) and all that. Did
you see what, among other things, Bolster had to say about you?
“She’s very whiny. I can’t stand her.” I showed that to my author,
but it didn’t discourage him at all. He is in love. On some days he
thinks everything about you is neat.

I have done my dead-level best to try to ﬁnd out more about you.

Problem is, there’s so much “raw” material, I hardly know where
to begin. And there is no end to it. Mostly I have had to conﬁne
my close studies to the materials given to me by my author. I’m not
sure  that  he  is  giving  me  things  that  will  lead  to  an  honest  and
accurate  portrayal.  Everyone  knows  that  you  have  been  on  the
cover  of  many  magazines  for  many  years  (especially  in  the  early
1990s) and even more often been featured in articles and promi-
nent advertisements in print and TV. One of his students, aware
of the author’s unseemly obsession, gave him an album of a whole
lot  of  the  off-the-wall,  highly  colorful  ads  you  did  with  Christy
Turlington for Chanel. The author passed these on to me together
with a small suitcase full of old magazines with you, in a variety of
hairstyles and colors, on the cover of (and/or featured in) a wealth
of magazines:

Cosmopolitan, Allure, Elle, Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, People,

Time, Newsweek, American Photo, even the New York Times Magazine.
His special favorite is the

New York Times Magazine for December

22,  1996,  which,  illustrating  the  headline—“How  Breast  Cancer
Became This Year’s Hot Charity”—features you completely topless
but deftly covering your teeny-tiny boobs with your left hand and
arm.  Wow!  He  also  let  me  look  at  his  “Linda  Evangelista  1998
Calendar,” by Peter Lindbergh, showing you in a diversity of odd
poses and strange clothes, including a couple of months, October
and  November,  cross-dressing  in  a  masculine  coat  and  tie.  The
author points out to me, just in case I missed it, that you sort of
vanished for a while until recently, when

Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and

109

Spilling the Beans

Interview magazines have resurrected you (somewhat) as an older
and wiser person. Is that right? Have you learned a lot of lessons
over the years? Anything you’d care to share with others, real or
ﬁctional?

After all my research, I conclude that I could probably (pardon)

arouse some kind of a reaction from you with one of my poison-
pen letters. On the other hand, I am aware that you have earned a
reputation for being litigious. I read “The Model and the Maid,”
by Theodore Pappas in

Chronicles (October 1996), all about you

and  your  successful  lawsuit  against  Jean-Marie  Le  Pen  and  the
National Front Party of France. You scored 80,000 French francs
on that one. By the way, Pappas really kicked butt (yours) in that
article. I couldn’t top it if I tried. And I really would rather not be
sued. Of course, I don’t know if it’s possible to sue a ﬁctional char-
acter. True, ﬁctional characters can and do sue each other in works
of fiction, but I am not sure at all, even in America, land of the
bottom-feeding lawyer, that a “real” person can sue an imaginary
one. Or vice versa. I feel certain that somewhere out there there’s
a lawyer willing to try it out on a contingency basis. But I have my
doubts that it would hold up in court. Maybe if it was a jury trial
with sufﬁcient diversity, but surely not in an appellate court. You
could always sue the author, even if he is, as he is, as innocent as
Adam before he listened to Eve and ate the apple. You could do
that (I mean you could sue, not that you could or should eat more
apples), but it would deﬁnitely be a big waste of time. My author
doesn’t  make  enough  money  or  have  enough  assets  to  justify  all
the  expense  and  trouble.  Let’s  suppose  you  won  the  case.  Then
what? What would you ever collect from him? What is it that they
say—you  can’t  get  bread  from  stones  or  a  pint  of  blood  from  a
bunch of turnips?

Look, I can understand full well how you must feel about people

going around and bad-mouthing and saying critical things about
you. But that is just one of the things that public ﬁgures, celebrity
icons like you and ﬁctional characters like me, have to learn to put
up with. So don’t expect any pity from me. Understanding, yes.
Sympathy? No. So some people in print have nailed your sweet,
expensive (“we don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day”) hide to
the barn door. So to speak. It isn’t fun.

You should see the kind of stuff I have to put up with. Check it

110

George Garrett

out sometime. When

Poison Pen came out, a whole lot of critics and

book reviewers got on my case and in my face. I never claimed to
be a Captain Ahab or a Huck Finn, not Bech or Rabbit Angstrom
or Zuckerman, either. I have been featured in half a dozen short
stories as well as having starred in the widely reviewed but little
read novel—

Poison Pen. Most of the people who reviewed that silly,

sophomoric book found something or other nice to say about my
author, but they seldom if ever spoke well or kindly or gently of
me. In fact, they called me everything bad and negative and insult-
ing you can think of. And yes, ma’am, Miss Linda, it can hurt your
feelings. How would you like it if the

New York Times Book Review

called you “a low-life crank?” The

Chicago Tribune identiﬁed me as

“a lecherous, misanthropic failed academic.” The Norfolk Virginia
newspaper (the

Pilot?) called me a “pervert.” Somebody named

Madison Smartt Bell wrote in the

Village Voice that I was “an excep-

tionally sleazy picaro.” (I won’t pause to explain to you what

picaro

means except that it isn’t a dirty word like maybe it sounds.)
Probably the strongest and meanest judgment (it would be a clear
case of slander if I were a real live person) appeared in the
Greensboro News in a review by the poet and novelist Fred Chappell,
who described me as “a loathsome, racist, sexist, crude and grue-
some creep.”

My author just laughed. He was grateful, too, for all the atten-

tion he was getting and because he, himself, was treated with a
modicum of respect. Here is how the

New York Times Book Review

elected to characterize the author: “He is a well-respected writer
with a prestigious academic position—he’s Henry Hoyns Professor
of Creative Writing at the University of Virginia.”

“How do you like them apples?” my author asked.
“Listen here,” I replied, head up and eyes dry and unblinking.

“I cannot and will not concern myself with the half-baked and half-
ass opinions of every minor regional writer in America.”

(That was intended to make my old author feel bad. Because he

isn’t half as well known as Fred Chappell.)

The word

creep hurt a little, even considering the source.

But please excuse me for all this brief digression. And I hope

and pray, sincerely, that you will not misconstrue this document as
just another poison-pen letter. Try to think of it as a kind of per-
verse love letter. Written to you by me, but written in behalf of my

111

Spilling the Beans

author. Who is either too shy or too chicken to write you a love let-
ter himself. Think of it as an updated version of “The Courtship
of Miles Standish” or maybe

Cyrano. Did you ever read either one

of those, in school maybe? More likely you know of the latter
because different versions have been on the tube.

Anyway, what happened, see, is that the author, ever alert and

vigilant, read somewhere that

Witness magazine, a magazine he

likes a lot because, from time to time, they have published some of
his stuff, is planning an issue dedicated and devoted to the subject
of love in America. Or something like that. He thought about it for
a while and then said to me:

“They won’t have any trouble getting a lot of good material for

an issue like that. You can bet your sweet ass on it. Love is a sub-
ject everybody thinks he/she knows about and has experienced.
But I will also bet you that nobody, not a living soul, will deal with
one of the most common and pervasive forms of love in late
twentieth-century America. By which I mean the often passionate
and always obsessive love of celebrities.

“I am not talking about this in a crude and literal sense. And I

am not talking about actual stalking and all that, though I’m sure
it does happen. But that is a kind of derangement. And I am not
really talking about being a dedicated fan, somebody who is over-
whelmed with unstinting admiration for somebody else’s talent or
gifts. To be a dedicated fan is, ﬁnally, to

like someone, even if that

someone is a stranger. The kind of love I’m thinking of and talk-
ing about has nothing to do with liking or even with the conven-
tional ways and means of love. It is, rather, a total surrender of the
self, not to another self, but to an image or icon. It is fundamen-
tally religious. It’s the kind of love that once upon a time and not
so  long  ago  was  dedicated  to  God  or  to  a  multiplicity  of  lesser
gods. In a strictly secular society like our own, God doesn’t enter
into  things  at  all.  Only  in  prayers  and  sermons  and  services  of
many  kinds,  maybe  one  day  a  week.  It’s  the  golden-calf  idolatry
that we have come to love.”

“What does all this have to do with Linda Evangelista?”
“Wait. Wait a minute. Just give me a chance to work this out,”

he told me. “Once upon a time, we had nobility among us, kings
and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, all that
kind of thing. We were required by law and custom to honor and

112

George Garrett

obey them. And we couldn’t help admiring them. All that bright-
ness and beauty. All that health and welfare. We couldn’t help
admiring and envying them. Nobody asked us to love them. Or, to
be more accurate, they could be loved, but not for their power and
glory.

“Now we have created a new kind of nobility, the nobility of

celebrity. And we are expected, if not explicitly required, to love
them.

“Are they not godlike in their almost absolute immunity from all

our rules and regulations and worldly issues? They are beyond the
limits of law, beyond the boundaries of vice and virtue. Look at
O. J. Simpson. Look at Dennis Rodman. Look at Bill Clinton.
Look at Martha Stewart. Our bounden duty is to love them and to
honor them without question or reservation.

“What do you think about that?”
“You’re asking me?”
“Who else?”
“I think it sounds like a crock of shit. I think it sounds like you

are losing your marbles. Rapidly. But who am I to argue or com-
plain? You are the author.”

“Fucking-A, I am, and don’t you ever forget it. But what if it were

the other way around? What if you were really the author and I
was only a character?”

“I don’t have to answer that. And I won’t. But I will tell you this

much. If I were the author, things would be different. Very differ-
ent.”

Well, Linda, we went on and on, back and forth. Like an old

married couple. And maybe that is the image for it. Sometimes, I
guess,  authors  love  their  characters,  and  characters  love  and
admire  their  authors.  In  an  ideal  world,  that  would  be  the  case.
And maybe that would be an interesting subject to consider. But
we  didn’t.  We  just  continued  to  argue  about  this  metaphor  of
celebrities as the greater and lesser gods of our times and whether
or not, because of the simple fact of their celebrity, these people (if
you can call them that) justly deserve our love. Finally he disclosed
to  me  his  hidden  agenda,  his  real  and  true  purpose.  Which  was
that  he  wanted  me  to  help  him  compose  a  love  letter  to  you.  I
would  write  it,  and  he  would  edit  it  and  sign  it.  He  was,  he
claimed,  too  enchanted  and  enamored  to  do  himself  or  you  any

113

Spilling the Beans

justice. His idea was that I would write you and tell all. I would, as
it were, spill the beans in the context of a work of ﬁction that
would be published (dream on) in

Witness magazine. I tried to

explain to him that even if everything worked out according to his
scheme, it is extremely unlikely that you would ever be reading
Witness and run across any love letter that I might compose for
him.

Now, lucky Linda, permit me to confess, to level with you and

say that I can’t for the life of me ﬁgure out what it is he sees in you.
If I were screwing around with supermodels, which I am not, I
would probably be more of a Kate Moss or maybe a Niki Taylor
man. If it was my fate to be shipwrecked on a desert island with a
supermodel, I would prefer to share the simple life with say, Cindy
Crawford. You can understand that, can’t you? I can’t imagine any
scenario whatsoever in which it would be jolly fun and games to be
a castaway with you. I would try to make the best of it if it were just
you and me and the coconut palms happily ever after. Question is:
would you try to make the best of it, too?

Getting back to you for a minute, I see in the Theodore Pappas

article that somebody named Mats Gustafson praised your “beau-
tiful nostrils that tilt another way, and a mouth that angles in a
third direction.” Pappas butts in and comments that this makes
you “sound like one of the extras in Tod Browning’s ﬁlm

Freaks.”

If you ever saw that movie—I have a number of times; it’s a great
one—you would be, as they, say, deeply pissed. By the way, Pappas
quotes me by name in the same article. I may end up some day
being a celebrity, too. Then look out, world!

Let us return to the purely physical. I have read, here and there,

that  some  of  the  other  supermodels  praise  you  for  your  knees.  I
have examined your knees in many photographs, and I can’t tell if
they  are  kidding  or  not.  I  don’t  know  that  much  about  knees.
Somewhere  I  ran  across  a  picture  of  your  bare  ass  (by  Steven
Meisel, I think, though I’m not sure). You were backstage putting
on or taking off some clothes in a hurry. I know something about
asses, and your ass wasn’t much. Not surprising, though. You skin-
ny supermodels (with a very few notable exceptions) were not cre-
ated for your basic meat-and-potatoes, T-and-A male appetite. All
that aside, I have to admit you have really great teeth. And gums
to die for. Has anyone mentioned your gums to you lately?

114

George Garrett

Let’s leave love, at least love between you and me, out of it from

now on. Fair enough? I don’t have a clue what it is with my author
and you. As I mentioned earlier, he is old. And old guys have to
take what they can get. They are at the mercy of their dying bod-
ies. Maybe for some weird reason you are like a dose of Viagra to
him. Who knows?

Time is still ﬂying. Time is always ﬂying. I have got to pull my

act together if I’m ever going to write that love letter for him. This
isn’t it, in case you were wondering. This is just a preliminary con-
tact, a little foreplay, a “go-see,” as you models say. I’m not betray-
ing him. I’m like announcing him.

During all this time, I have been thinking about his crackpot,

cockeyed vision of America as a huge nation of celebrity lovers
(starfuckers without portfolio or hope of redemption), peasants
worshipping their sleazy lesser gods. And I think he may be right
about some of it. It seems to me self-evident that as a Godless peo-
ple we need something to love and to worship. In the absence of
God (who has gone only He knows where), we are left with noth-
ing but you people. People like you.

It could be worse. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that we

human beings (or in my case a ﬁctional version of a human being)
are given at birth something like a trust fund, only so much love
to possess and to share with others. Except for saints, all of us have
the same capital asset of love, all the same, whether we are rich or
poor, worthy or needy, beautiful or plain as pig tracks. Then it
would follow, wouldn’t it, that the love we squander on the gods
and devils of celebrity (or, in the case of you people, the love you
squander on yourselves) is lost forever; and all too soon we won’t
have much, if any, to give to each other even when we want to? In
the scheme of things, our “real” world would soon become a love-
less place, a desert island without good company. And people like
you would become more and more like me—ﬁctional characters
living in a ﬁctional world.

Maybe all the above has already happened. Maybe there isn’t

any true love left in America for the literary magazines to have
special issues about. Maybe, like one of Job’s messengers,

I alone

have escaped to tell thee.

But I wouldn’t want to end this introductory letter in what might

turn into a real and sustained correspondence on a gloomy or

115

Spilling the Beans

downbeat note. My author is full of shit, a loser headed for—as if it
were an allegorical destination—Oblivion. But he’s happy. And
that’s what really matters, isn’t it, the ability to be happy and alto-
gether self-deceived? As for you, Linda, I read “The Fall of the
Supermodel” by Joel Stein (

Time, November 9, 1998), which depicts

the end of your era. Someone I never heard of is quoted as saying:
“Nine years ago, you couldn’t get more glamorous than going back-
stage at a Versace show. Now you see Amber Valetta at a Beastie
Boys concert with no make-up on and her hair back. They’re not
like goddesses anymore.” Sad. Hard cheese. But, then, we don’t
have to tell my author, do we? It can be our little secret.

Oblivion is out there waiting for us one and all. I like to think

it’s  a  small  town,  Disneylike,  with  neat  green  lawns  and  picket
fences  and  front  porches  with  swings—Oblivion,  California.  Or
maybe  it’s  a  ghost  town,  plagued  by  dust  and  tumbleweeds—
Oblivion, Oklahoma. See you there, Linda.

No, seriously, I have enjoyed talking to you. I don’t get out of my

book very often and seldom have the occasion to meet somebody
new.

If you feel like writing back, please don’t hesitate. Just send a let-

ter or a postcard to me, John Towne, c/o

Witness magazine. They’ll

send it along to me.

Sincerely,

John Towne

P.S. I know you’ve tried every known color for your hair. Which
color do you like best?

116

George Garrett

Pornographers

Listen to this, will you? Here I am talking to the sheriff of Quincy

County, a lean, good-looking guy name of Dale Lewis, curly, pepper-
and-salt  hair,  carefully  cut,  dressed  in  a  neat  khaki  uniform  and
wearing  designer  glasses.  (There  goes  your  old  stereotype.  He’s
New  South  all  the  way.  Uses  the  word

nuance as if he owned it.)

Here, believe it or not, verbatim (and slightly edited) from my tape
machine, is what he is telling me:

“There is no escaping the moral climate of the modern world. It

comes here, too, of all places, in all of its twisted fury and madness.
Maybe  there  was  a  time  a  long  time  ago,  long  before  my  time,
when  you  and  I  could  just  sit  here  at  a  great  distance  from  the
throbbing  heart  of  things  and  thank  the  good  Lord  for  all  our
blessings and the difference. Let those Yankee cities go ahead and
drown in their own cesspools. We could sit right here in safety and
virtuously point and say ‘I told you so.’ But not anymore. We have
our  very  own  cesspool  cities  now—Atlanta,  Miami,  Birmingham,
Jacksonville,  Houston,  New  Orleans  (though  New  Orleans  was
always a place of corruption, from the earliest Spanish and French
days; New Orleans was Third World before that was either a term
or a concept). And all of the plagues and diseases of the times have
been visited upon us. . . .”

Joey Singletree is the name, and true crime is my game. You

know what I mean. I hover in thin air like a lazy buzzard waiting
for a meal. World that we live in, sooner rather than later somebody

117

will shoot up a school yard or an abortion clinic. Someone will tor-
ture and murder a couple of kids or some old lady living alone.
Sooner rather than later there will be another abduction and rape.
Something maybe to raise the eyebrows a little. Something that
may turn out to be good material and I can get at least an article,
maybe even a book out of it.

It’s a living.
Downside is that they don’t pay a whole lot for this kind of stuff

unless it involves celebrities or bona ﬁde public ﬁgures or a novel
gimmick. And the talk shows are killing the market. How can the
printed word compete? Beats me.

Anyhow, I was tired of the hustle. Up to here with all the usual

urban sex and violence. And I joined together an idea and a yearn-
ing: the yearning being to get back home to Florida and soak up a
little sunshine and get paid for it; the idea to see how crime is play-
ing out in the boonies, the heartland. Is it better or worse out
there? Either way I’ve got a little story.

So I put together a half-ass proposal, part of which follows:
“These days the world comes galloping at them whether the peo-

ple in the heartland like it or not. How do they deal with all that?
How do they live with it?

“To be sure, this is all small potatoes when measured against the

slaughterhouse of this dying century or against the life and times
of crime-ridden urban America. Where, other than vigorously pro-
tecting a few of the rich and the famous, the police are mostly
reduced to keeping more or less accurate statistics on the crimes
being committed all around them and hoping to stay healthy and
to live long enough to collect their ample pensions. When I was liv-
ing in Brooklyn, my crummy and expensive little apartment was
repeatedly burglarized, picked clean of everything but the cock-
roaches. A cop ﬁnally came around to look. His best offer was to
sell me a little printed copy of a prayer to St. Christopher.

“It has been open warfare out there in urban America for half a

century, and the people, like combat veterans in all the wars, have
become accustomed to it. Atrocities, acts of terrorism and extra-
ordinary violence, are shrugged off, are viewed as part of the basic
price for contemporary civilization.

“The numbers show that provincial America is not immune any-

118

George Garrett

more. Not safe from atrocious crimes, not from drugs, not from
AIDS, not from any of the habitual sorrows of Fat City.

“I have an idea that this news cheers up, warms the hearts of the

folks who are stuck in urban America. It lifts their spirits to hear
stories of sick stuff in the deep boonies.

“Maybe there is a story there. Maybe there is an audience for it.”
My editor, a bright young hustler (originally from Nashville,

Tennessee, though you would never guess it now) and self-
promoter known as “Sparky” (chip off the block of “Old Sparky”)
to his few friends and many enemies in the publishing world, re-
sponded to my proposal with a fax to my agent: “Frankly, I think
this is a heavy-breathing, bullshit proposal. But it has some faint
possibilities—provincial sex and violence and racism and plenty of
corny local color. All kinds of the right stuff. I can’t see how even
our boy Joey could screw it up too much. So, as long as you peo-
ple are not even thinking about serious money, I can’t see any real
harm in going ahead with it. Let’s have lunch at Daniel’s (your
treat) and work out the sordid details.”

Deborah, my agent, wisely urged me to take what I could get.

“Don’t piss it away,” she suggested. “You are not likely to get any-
thing better right now. But don’t make a lifetime labor of love out
of it. Just get down there, have a quick little look around, ask a few
questions, then sit down and write it. Sparky is not looking for art.
Art is for kids. And they are not looking for truth and beauty,
either—at least not from somebody like you, Joey. The most they
are hoping for is a little fun and games. Maybe a chuckle or two, a
tear in one eye if you get lucky.

“What I am counseling is—don’t fuck up this time, capisce?”

All of which is by way of introduction to the story of the Little

Princess of Paradise Springs, Florida, though, strictly speaking,
she is from Quincy County since she and her family lived well out-
side the city limits in a mobile home.

And here is the sheriff, Dale Lewis, telling it to me in his own

words: The Little Princess, blonde and blue-eyed with skin like
fresh cream, looked like a movie star. Like she could easily grow
up and be one. Like she already was one. A truly beautiful little
girl, maybe twelve years old. She attended Quincy County

119

Pornographers

Elementary School. Which is where this story begins. Because it
was there that she kept falling asleep, dead, deep asleep, in the
classroom. Her teacher and the school nurse ﬁnally decided it was
something more serious than a bad habit and took her over to the
emergency room of the hospital. Where the doctor examined her
and concluded that she was exhausted and also that she had prob-
ably been sexually abused by someone.

The Little Princess said nothing. No complaint. No cooperation.

Wouldn’t answer any questions.

Following procedure, then, the county sent a social worker out

to where she lived to evaluate the situation. Social worker didn’t
come  up  with  a  whole  lot.  Seems  that  the  Princess  had  a  whole
family—menagerie would be more like it—living out there in that
gloriﬁed trailer. Brothers and sisters, cousins of various kinds, an
aged  grandfather,  various  and  sundry  “uncles”  who  came  and
went,  and  her  mother,  who  may  or  may  not  (no  good  evidence)
have been turning tricks with the “uncles.”

County looked into it a little more closely and came to the ten-

tative conclusion that the real means of support for this whole fam-
ily network was the Little Princess. That what she was doing was
starring in some pornographic movies that somebody was making,
probably over in Gainesville.

That was the best educated guess of the county.
Wasn’t a whole hell of a lot we could do about it. I won’t bore you

with the complexities of evidentiary details except to point out that
we would have had a terrible time, almost impossible, of convicting
anyone in the absence of a statement or admission from the
Princess. Unless and until we could actually catch some real people
in the act of making one of these movies. Sounds easy, but it’s not
so easy if the criminals are moderately careful and about half smart.

Not so easy, either, if you have a plate full of local duties and

obligations and limited resources.

Well, we ﬁnally came up with a guy (one of the “uncles”) that we

were fairly certain was running the whole operation. But, my
friend, it has been a long time and a whole lot of Supreme Court
decisions since “fairly certain” has been enough to bring anybody
to trial, let alone to convict. That may have changed just a little bit,
time will tell, since the professional feminoids have discovered the
evils and dangers of pornography. We’ll see about that.

120

George Garrett

Meanwhile some months went by. Every so often the Princess

would be taken to the emergency room and then admitted to the
hospital for a little rest and recuperation. Then, as far as we could
tell, back on the job. All at night, of course. Among other things,
the Princess wasn’t getting enough sleep.

What was happening was that the Princess would get worn out

and strung out and then check into the county hospital, like a
health spa, to recover her youthful bloom. Under the circum-
stances, the hospital should have been getting a piece of the action.
Points on the gross of the movies she was making.

Anyway, the hospital ﬁnally got tired of the whole thing. The

hospital administrator and a couple of the doctors called me to
come and talk about it. They wanted something done. I patiently
explained the legal problems to them.

Isn’t there anything at all you can do? they asked.
Sure enough, I said. I can do a number of things. But none of

them are legal.

Like what?
You don’t want to know. You don’t need to know. And I don’t

want to hear one word from you all about it, even at second- or
thirdhand, even hearsay. You are ready to have this stopped? I will
stop it for you.

You aren’t going to kill anybody, are you, Sheriff?
Probably not. Not unless I have to.
About a week later, they (and everybody else) could read in the

paper  the  curious  story  of  the  man  who  was  found  dozing  and
dead drunk, sitting at the wheel of a stolen car in a rest area out
on the interstate. He had enough alcohol in his system, together
with serious traces of cocaine, to be embalmed. He was carrying a
concealed weapon, and he had a bunch of highly illegal weapons—
sawed-off  shotguns  and  submachine  guns—in  the  trunk,  together
with enough drugs to open his own pharmacy and enough stolen
goods and valuables to start a jewelry store. He had no logical or
coherent explanation for any of it. He got a fair and speedy trial.
And then the son-of-a-bitch was sent off to Raiford for forever and
a  day,  thus  ending  the  ﬁlm  career  of  the  Little  Princess,  but
improving her general health and well-being.

What happened to the Little Princess?
I was afraid you would ask that, the sheriff says. The correct

121

Pornographers

answer is—God only knows. It is more or less of a free country, and
those folks packed up and moved on. Moved out to the West
Coast, I heard. Where she probably has resumed her movie career
and is hoping to be discovered some ﬁne day and to become the
next Kim Basinger or Michelle Pfeiffer. And who knows? Maybe
she will.

After my interview I jot down the following observation about

the sheriff in my notebook: “He looks a little bit like Kevin
Costner, if Costner had harder angles and edges. The etched lines
around his pale blue eyes seem to come from a squinting but
unblinking vision of terrible things.

“What about him? Is he tried and true, a force for moral order?

Not quite. Not hardly. I know for a fact that he is on the take.
Nothing big time. Just a little of this and a little of that. Waiting for
the big one, the drug deal, to come along. I know, too, that Dale
Lewis has a terrible temper and has been known to vent it on the
ﬂesh and bones of rogues and rascals who fall into his hands for
care and keeping. Who dares to blame him? There are scumbags
everywhere these days. He prefers to encourage them (especially
those of the colored persuasion) to keep on moving, far beyond the
boundaries of Quincy County. Keeping the peace. As they say.”

Reader, you may be wondering how come you never read my

piece about child porn in the provinces. What happened was I got
a fax from Deborah. It went like this:

“Joey, here is good news and bad news. Sit down in a nice, com-

fortable chair. Then read and digest what I have to say here. And
then—

and only then—give me a call so we can discuss the details.

“Let me get the bad news out of the way ﬁrst. It could be worse,

though you may not see it that way at the moment. First things
ﬁrst. Stop whatever you are doing with the piece about the Little
Princess. Fact is you do not have a magazine anymore to publish
it. They have just been purchased by a multinational European
communications company. The story will be in tomorrow’s

Times.

If you still read the

Times and haven’t gone native on us. . . . First

thing these rich Eurotrash are going to do is to cancel all the ongo-
ing contracts. They are dropping everything, including your little
masterpiece.

“Joey, the best I can do for you is maybe to ﬁx it so you will get

122

George Garrett

your full fee, not just the kill fee, for this one. The deal is, you quit
the project right now. They will ‘own’ the project, for whatever that
may be worth. Not much. Anyway, you send them something, any-
thing you’ve got—notes and draft pages, if any. Just something they
can stick in their ﬁles. Where they will be buried and forgotten.
Send them the stuff and I will get you your check. And that will be
that.

“Now the good news. Sparky? Funny you should ask. This sud-

den corporate development caught our boy completely by surprise
and unprepared. Pants down around his ankles. He is out of the
business, at least for the time being. Tells me he has an old friend
(you  can  believe  that,  a  friend,  if  you  want  to),  former  college
roommate  who  owns  a  little  gourmet  restaurant  up  in  Portland,
Maine. Our Sparky will soon be working there as a waiter while he
tries  to  get  his  act  together.  A  lot  of  people  in  the  business  will
probably be making the trip up to Portland in the summer season.
For  all  the  pleasures  of  Maine  and  the  special  pleasure  of  being
waited on by Sparky.

“Truth is, if you have enough enemies in this business you can

always survive. People in publishing need somebody to hate, some-
body who is (probably) a worse person than they are. Sparky will
ﬁnd a new niche for himself all in due time. I’m betting everyone
that he’ll be back at the Hamptons by the following summer. Back
again and more obnoxious than ever.”

I pack my bag and head for the airport. Back to Brooklyn. Hear

my prayer, St. Christopher.

And you, little blonde girl with blue eyes, Princess of down-

home porn, I wish you luck in all your adventures. One way or
another, we are all in the same line of work. The least we can do is
admit it, from time to time, and hope for something better.

N MEMORY OF

James Whitehead

123

Pornographers

With My Body, I Thee Worship

Somewhere locked into another time and another place and, as

a matter of fact, locked in the upstairs bathroom just in case. Late
afternoon, after school. The other kids (he guesses) are all out and
about and away doing all kinds of different things. Doing whatever
kids do after school and before supper. His mother has gone out to
the grocery store and to do some errands. She will be back in
maybe an hour or so. His father will get home from work at just
about the same time, unless he should happen to come home early
for some reason or other. A thing that has happened but is not
likely to.

The whole house is very quiet, seems empty for a while. He is sit-

ting close by the window and can smell the sweet odor of freshly
cut grass. Sam, the black man who takes care of all the yards on
this  block,  will  have  mowed  the  lawns  today.  The  boy  loves  the
odor of newly cut grass. So does everybody else. He can hear a dog
barking  in  the  near  distance,  most  likely  a  block  away  and  most
likely that black-and-tan hound owned by Mr. Fishman (we all call
him  “Fishbait”)  the  undertaker.  A  big  old  house,  always  looking
freshly painted, a spooky place where there are usually a number
of dead people lying around, waiting for whatever happens next.
And  from  the  tree  right  outside  the  window . . . almost  close
enough from where he’s sitting to touch, he could easily squeeze
through the window and safely jump out and catch onto the near-
est limb. He has done that plenty of times. From that very same

124

125

With My Body, I Thee Worship

tree, a mockingbird is right now trying on some new voices and
making up some new songs.

Otherwise it is so quiet that he can hear the soft machine hum

of the refrigerator in the kitchen downstairs. That’s a newfangled
thing, the refrigerator, replacing the great big icebox and the great
big iceman and his huge tongs, the man who used to come by
every couple of days with his horse and wagon. In those days, so
many things—ﬁsh, fruit, bread and bakery goods, scissor sharpen-
ers, et cetera—used to come to them by wagon.

The boy could doze off happily ever after and never wake up.
Mustn’t waste precious time, though.
There he is, surrounded by his magazines, that secret cache that

includes battered old standbys of that era like

Beauty Parade, Peep

Show, Eyeful, Chicks and Chuckles, Frolic, and the one that he acquired
with the greatest duplicity and personal difficulty—

Modern

Sunbathing: The American Nudist Picture Magazine. Truth is, the acqui-
sition of all these items was, in those days, as you can well imag-
ine, a somewhat complicated and tricky process. Stuff like that was
against  the  law.  You  didn’t  just  walk,  boldly  and  brazenly,  into
some  corner  drugstore  and  buy  them  right  off  the  newsstand.
They weren’t even on the magazine rack at Ivy’s Drug Store; and,
even if they were, Doctor Ivy, the tall and solemn pharmacist for
whom this boy used to make bicycle deliveries of prescriptions and
other things like lemon-ammonia Cokes to soothe pregnant neigh-
borhood housewives, Doctor Ivy won’t let kids linger and loiter at
the  magazine  rack,  anyway,  or  fool  around  with  even  any  of  the
boring grown-up magazines. Doctor Ivy won’t let kids even touch
or  ﬂip  the  pages  of  the  pulp  magazines  like

Weird Tales and True

Detective.

This boy got his magazines, at the beginning at least, the way

some years earlier, way back then even before sex arrived in his
life, he got his good shooters and marbles—by barter and trading
off this and that. Borrowing, too. This was all well and good, but
he was unable to put together a real and really interesting collec-
tion like he has now. He is proud of the wealth and variety of his
collection of dirty magazines. He has enough of them so that he
could take them with him (and he would do that, too) if he were
ever cast ashore on a remote desert island. That’s a situation that

he sometimes imagines, though he seldom pictures himself as liv-
ing all alone on some island. Usually he has to share the island
with one or more cheerleaders or airline stewardesses or even
teachers (he likes older women).

He has to share the real house and his real life with his family.

He has cleverly managed to keep the sex magazines hidden from
and unknown to Petey, his little brother (who wouldn’t be interest-
ed or know what to do with them anyway), and his two older sis-
ters, who would certainly run and tell on him in about one minute
ﬂat. And then his magazines would end up in the incinerator in
the backyard, nothing but white smoke. Gone with the smoke and
the frigging wind. The fear of just that haunts him always, even in
his moments of greatest, most intense pleasure. In fact, it seems to
heighten that pleasure more than a little to pretend to himself that
any time, like right here and now in the quiet house, might easily
be the last time.

“As I understand it,” Esther said, “you look at these magazines

and then you make up stories about the women in the pictures.
Then you play with yourself, for as long as you can, until you have
to come. Is that correct?”

“Who told you all that stuff?”
“Don’t forget, I’ve got an older brother. I know a lot of different

things about boys. Well?”

“Sort of,” he admitted. “I mean more or less.”
“Could I watch you do it sometime?”
“That’s not nice. I couldn’t do that.”
“Am I your good friend or not?”
“Sure you’re my friend, Esther.”
“

Good friend!”

“Okay. Okay. Good friend.”
“Wouldn’t you do anything for a good friend?”
“Anything within reason.”
“What’s unreasonable? I mean, you do it all the time, don’t you?

Completely on your own?”

“That is completely different.”
“It’s dangerous any way you do it.”
“Dangerous?”
“My father told my brother; I heard him say that it can rot your

126

George Garrett

127

With My Body, I Thee Worship

brain and kill you. And even if it doesn’t kill you outright, it will
give you terrible headaches and hickeys and pimples and grow
hair on the palms of your hands, and then everybody else will
know exactly what you have been up to. There is no way you can
keep it a secret.”

“It isn’t a secret. I just don’t want to do it in front of you.”
“Just one time,” Esther said. “Just do it and show me how it

works, and then I’ll quit bothering you about it.”

“What if I don’t?”
“Let’s don’t think about it that way, in those terms.”
“What happens if I don’t do it?”
“One thing that happens,” Esther said, “is that I will quit steal-

ing my brother’s magazines for you. I mean, I feel very guilty
about it already. If he ever ﬁnds out he will beat you up.”

Afterward Esther told him that it was really nice of him to prove

his friendship and manhood and to share the experience with her.
The only thing she complained about was the woman whose pic-
ture he had selected (“She is so unbelievably

tacky!” Esther

exclaimed.) and the story he made up to go along with it. “I can
invent a lot better story than that.”

“I’m sure you can,” he said. “But the story isn’t the most impor-

tant part of it.”

“It ought to be.”
“But it isn’t.”
Before this was going to be all over and done with, she would be

selecting all the pictures for him and then making up the stories,
which were more like case studies lifted right out of Kraft Ebbing’s
Psychopathia Sexualis, to go along with them.

It took a lot of the fun out of it.

Picture this. It is an orgy, your basic Roman orgy is in progress.

Right out of the movies. Lots of good-looking people of all shapes
and sizes, clad in scanty and diaphanous (Love that word—
diaphanous! It always turns me on!) clothing, if any clothing at all,
lying around on pillows and couches, eating bunches of grapes
and turkey drumsticks, drinking wine, lots of it, out of great big
old goblets. Trim and topless teenage waitresses, all oiled up and
shiny, with nice new tits, are sashaying around, pouring more wine
from pitchers, serving food and hot towels, sprinkling rose petals

and spraying perfumes and all that. Musicians are playing soft and
sensuous music. There are some really great-looking nude dancers
jumping around. And there are jugglers and acrobats, ﬁre-eaters
and all kinds of clowns.

Speaking of clowns . . . I am a slave boy just about my own age—

ﬁfteen maybe, though more likely my

real age of fourteen and a

half. Your (my) assignment for this evening is to be “in attendance”
for a proud and beautiful Roman lady of the nobility. The noble
ladies have been awarded teenage slave boys for the occasion.
Kind of a door prize. They get to keep you, if they want to, when
it’s all over. Meanwhile you are there, along with some of her own
basic entourage, to anticipate and cater to her least and idle
whims.

You are wearing only a snug little loincloth which is basically a

gloriﬁed jockstrap. They handed you a big fan and right now you
wave it back and forth slowly and gently, cooling the air around
her and her handsome and musclebound young boyfriend.
Probably a gladiator. . . .

All in all it’s not too bad. Except you have to be careful. You have

been warned by your supervisor that if, for any reason, you hap-
pen to get a hard-on and she notices it and makes a complaint, you
will surely be punished. Most likely will be whipped. Whipping is
a serious business in ancient Rome. And, you know it, and it doesn’t
have to be said, she (they) can do anything she wants to do with
you. You have got next to no civil rights. Not way back then. She
can arrange for you to be “ﬁxed” and turned into a eunuch. You
sure don’t want something bad like that to happen to you.

At some point, while you are still busy fanning the air, the lady

touches your arm lightly, as light as the brush of a butterﬂy’s wing,
and tells you to go and ﬁnd an empty chamber in this villa, some-
where she can go to relax and “freshen up.”

You go and hurry to ﬁnd such a place, a small, well-lit, and well-

furnished chamber. You report back and then lead the way for the
lady,  who  leaves  all  of  her  group  behind  except  for  her  personal
servant,  a  slave  girl  just  about  your  own  age,  give  or  take.  She’s
very  pretty,  too,  though  not  much  in  the  boob  department.  And
kind of smart-aleck and snotty.

The lady then sends the girl back to the central orgy to get some

more wine and stuff. Then, to your surprise, the lady simply steps

128

George Garrett

out of all her scanty, diaphanous(!) clothes and, buck naked, lies
face down on a couch. You try not to look because you are already
feeling a little stirring and shifting movement under your loin-
cloth. But you can’t resist sneaking a peek. And, no doubt about it,
she is really something for a grown-up and mature woman.

She says that she wants a good back rub, maybe even a full mas-

sage. At that moment the slave girl reappears bringing some wine
and body oil and perfume for her mistress.

You have never done this before in your whole life, but you have

no choice. You do the best you can while the slave girl fans her.

By now, of course, you have acquired a gigantic, champion erec-

tion, a huge and major hard-on. You can’t help it. You keep on
massaging the lady and hoping that she won’t notice. But the slave
girl notices and gets the giggles. The lady asks her what’s so funny.
The girl just points and keeps on giggling. (Like they will.) The
lady (wow! great tits!) rolls over, sits straight up and looks all mad
and mean. She orders me to take off my jockstrap. I do so, and my
dick pops out like a jack-in-the-box and stands at attention. It’s as
big as I’ve ever seen it.

“Shame on you, slave boy,” she says.
“Please forgive me, Lady. I couldn’t help myself.”
“Well,” she says, “I suppose you will have to be punished for

this.” Then she turns to the girl: “Go fetch the leather strap.” Then
to me: “Come a little closer. Don’t be afraid. I like little boys. Isn’t
it just amazing how Mother Nature works?”

“Yes, ma’am.”
The girl comes back with a big fat leather strap that looks like it

will really smart.

“I am not going to complain to the supervisor,” the lady says.

“Not yet, anyway. I’m going to let my slave girl, Puella here take
care of things. But ﬁrst . . .”

Puella is grinning like a gooney bird, and I think she will take a

lot of pleasure out of whipping my bony arse. She motions for me
to bend over and grab my ankles and assume the position. But
before I can do that the lady says: “Wait!”

She says it would be really a shame to waste such an elegant

erection. She says Puella seems to be enjoying things a little too
much. She says she wouldn’t have noticed anything amiss if Puella
hadn’t started giggling and carrying on. Therefore, before Puella

129

With My Body, I Thee Worship

gets her turn with the leather strap, she has to take care of my
problem in an expeditious and efﬁcient manner. The lady orders
her to kneel down in front of me, facing me, and deftly using both
hands, Puella begins. . . .

Before we go any further with all this, it is necessary to make a

personal disclaimer. I have been happily married to a wonderful
woman for many years (more than ﬁfty years in fact) now. And I
plan to stay that way. I want the reader—and my wife, too, if she
ever accidentally runs across this story somewhere—to understand
that I am not reporting. It isn’t factual, my friends. It’s ﬁction. In
this context, and on the strength of what you have already read so
far, you are entitled to conclude that I have a dirty mind. To which
I answer: So what, if, in fact and in real life, I behave myself most
of the time? Try not to be so judgmental.

“You all are Jews, aren’t you?”
“What?” Esther said.
“You and your family are a bunch of Jews.”
“Well, yes, I guess so.”
“All of you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your brother, he’s one too?”
“I guess so. I don’t know what he really believes.”
“He can’t believe much if he collects all these dirty magazines.”
“What about you?”
“I’m Christian. That’s different.”
“Jesus was a Jew.”
“That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. Jesus was the found-

ing father of Christianity. He wrote the Apostles Creed and the
Nicene Creed. How could he be a Jew at the same time? Answer
me that one if you are so smart.”

“Let’s drop the subject.”
“I have his picture on a calendar. He’s got blond hair and blue

eyes.”

“Let’s talk about sex.”
“Suits me.”

130

George Garrett

131

With My Body, I Thee Worship

Earlier, reader, I was talking about the boy and his magazine

collection and his perversely pleasurable fear that he would some-
how lose his collection. That, in truth, as you will soon enough see,
since this is a short story, not a novel, is exactly what will happen
to him in the foreseeable future. And it will be worse than he has
imagined or prepared for. Isn’t it always worse than we ever imag-
ine?

In the future the whole story will be a lot funnier than he was

capable of guessing in the tumultuous years of his adolescence. As
a young man, boy no more, he will discover that if he tells his story
right, straightforward, it will make some women laugh. And he
will soon learn the validity of that old folk-saying: “A maid who
laughs is half taken.”

Actually, it was a girl his own age who helped him most in build-

ing up his collection of sex magazines. Her name (as you may have
noticed already) was Esther—Esther Something-Or-Other, a Jewish
name. A dark little girl, then, a genuine exotic amid all the blonde
and blue-eyed giggly southern girls of the Cherokee Junior High
School,  each  and  every  one,  except  of  course  Esther,  a  potential
cheerleader. Esther was small and sad-eyed and serious and skinny
and, overall, more than a little mousy. She was plenty smart enough
and did okay in class. She could—and that’s how it all started—help
you a lot with your homework. He needed all the help he could get
and so he was always nice and polite with her. Just being friendly,
you  know.  He  never  thought  of  her  as  a  girl  like  the  other  girls
whom he simultaneously despised and longed for and lusted after.
She was more like a buddy. He even got to like her that way, as a
buddy. She would help him with homework and he would, in turn,
be nice. He would go to the cafeteria to eat lunch with her when
nobody else would. Maybe he might buy her a popsicle or share
his okra and tomatoes (which he hated, anyway, though he never
let  on)  with  her.  On  Valentine’s  Day  he  sent  her  a  secret  and
anonymous valentine. Of course, she had to know exactly where it
came from. Who else in the world would send Esther a valentine?

At that age and at that stage this boy was something of a jock.

He could really pitch a softball. During gym period, and some-
times after school, he would be pitching, and Esther would be
standing there at the edge of the ﬁeld, not cheering him on exactly,

that wasn’t her way. Silent and serious and plain and unnoticed by
others (sometimes she seemed to be almost invisible), watching
over him with a kind of pride, he could feel it, as if he were her
secret boyfriend or something. As if he were doing it all for her, in
her honor. He might easily have been embarrassed. After all, she
was such a dog, you know. But for some reason it didn’t bother
him. He really liked her as a friend.

He would tell Esther almost anything. What harm? She didn’t

talk  much  or  long  with  anybody  else.  Not  to  his  knowledge.
Anything he told her, even deep secrets, would probably be safe.
He  did  not,  however,  tell  her  anything  much  at  ﬁrst  about  his
secret sex life. He knew better than to tell her which ones among
the  horde  of  freckled,  blue-eyed  girls  that  he  hated  and  loved  so
much he would give anything to be able to fuck—if he knew exact-
ly what that was. Someone had warned him (maybe one of his own
sisters) that women/girls don’t like to listen to you talk about the
other girls that you have the terrible hots for. “Don’t ever bring up
the  subject,”  they  strongly  advised.  “And  always  speak  well  and
warmly about your mother and your sisters.”

Then something changed. Some kid loaned him a dirty

Andy

Gump comic book. When he was walking along with Esther to the
bus stop—she came and went from school on a yellow school bus
while he lived close enough to walk—he dropped his books and
hers. He was carrying her books. That was considered good man-
ners at school. He dropped the books, and out on the cracked side-
walk ﬂuttered the

Andy Gump dirty funny book. To his surprise and

embarrassment she scooped it up and looked at it silently and
solemnly. Then she broke into a ﬁt of bright laughter. He realized
he had never seen her laugh before. She had good teeth and was
almost pretty (he would have said “about half decent” at that age)
when she was laughing.

She asked him if she could borrow the funny book if she

promised to bring it back tomorrow. He said sure, why not? What
else was he going to say?

So she took it with her as she ran to catch the school bus.
In the morning she came to him with some bad news and some

good news. The bad part was that she had been caught reading the
comic book. She told them that she had found it in the girls’ lock-

132

George Garrett

133

With My Body, I Thee Worship

er room. She stuck to her story, and her parents took

Andy Gump

away from her with dire warnings and admonitions.

The good news was in a brown manila envelope carefully let-

tered “Algebra Homework.” In that envelope there was a copy of
Beauty Parade, a magazine he had never yet seen, only heard of,
together with a note from her, also carefully printed out: “I ﬁlched
this from my brother’s extensive personal collection. You can keep
it. He will never miss it. And even if he does, he won’t be able to
do anything about it. / Love XXX / Esther.”

This part will end badly later on. Or, if you prefer and are a

stickler for factual accuracy, you could argue that it hasn’t really
ended yet since the old man, who was the young boy at the begin-
ning of the story, still remembers it as if it happened only mo-
ments ago. Whether it will end when the old man, thus the young
boy as well, is dead and gone, or when, at last, living or dead, his
ﬁle of memory is nothing but trash and dust in the wind, remains
to be seen.

“Okay, kid, I’m not going to argue with you. I want my copy of

Peep Show, the one with Betty Page on the cover, back. Right now!
And I want the March issue of

Sunbathing for Health magazine. You

can keep the rest of them.”

“I already told you. I don’t have any of your magazines. And I

don’t know what you are talking about.”

“All right, you little piece of

dreck, I’m ﬁnished with talking. Give

me back my magazines or I’ll break your goy nose and knock your
teeth out!”

(We had learned a lot of our dialogue style in the western movies

at the Rialto on Saturday mornings.)

“Turn me loose, you big bully! . . . Okay! . . . Okay! You can have

the

Peep Show back! I don’t have Sunbathing for Health! Honest!”

“You ruined my

Peep Show, you little shit. It’s got sticky spots all

over it.”

“Don’t blame that on me. That’s the way it was when I ﬁrst got

it.”

“All right, shithead, get ready. I am now ﬁxing to knock you

cross-eyed.”

And he did that, too, right then and there. Gave the boy double

vision and a bloody nose and then pedaled off, a mile a minute, on
his fancy bicycle.

He forgot about his

Sunbathing for Health, ha! ha! ha!

The old man remembers the end of the scene differently, as old

people so often will do. In his latest version, yes, he received a
bloody nose, but he also knocked the bigger boy down and then
chased him away down the street.

“Come back and ﬁght me like a man, you rotten Jew bastard!”

he remembers yelling at his ﬂeeing enemy. “Hitler is right about
you guys!”

Context is really important, even in memory. He would want to

explain now that in the early 1930s nobody knew all that much
about Hitler except that he came on the shortwave radio once in a
while and yelled like a loony—you couldn’t understand a word he
said—and said bad things about Jews. So? So did the boy’s father,
especially after he lost his job.

Most of the really good magazines came from Esther and thus

from the collection of her brother. Soon, however, the boy had
built up a pretty good collection of his own, enough so that he
could swap and trade around and constantly improve it.

Surely that boy, still in the upstairs bathroom on a school day

afternoon where we left him, thinks that Esther’s big brother, that
big  cowardly  Jewish  bully,  must  have  missed  them.  Must  have
noticed something amiss well before he hopped onto his bike and
rode  halfway  across  town  to  ambush  and  confront  the  boy.  How
could he not miss them? He probably would have come to know
them  quite  well  by  then,  those  particular  women  posed  in  their
wild and wicked underwear and their skimpy bathing suits (they
call  them  swimsuits  nowadays)  or  even  sometimes  in  occasional
and shadowy glory, completely bareass stark naked. The brother
would wonder what had become of Betty Page and Diane Webber
and Lili St. Cyr and all the others. Surely he would have suspect-
ed Esther, but, as she said, what could he do about it? Who would
he go and complain to—his parents?

Esther must have told on the boy. Probably because they had

that dumb argument about Jesus.

134

George Garrett

135

With My Body, I Thee Worship

Once upon a time.
When? Well, he can’t be sure now. Except that it would have to

have been sometime before Sam (that’s Esther’s brother) beat him
up.

One time, then, Esther missed her regular school bus home.

The next one she could catch wouldn’t come for an hour. He felt
responsible for her for some reason. So he decided to wait there
with her. But not here on the schoolyard. He shared a candy bar
with her and took her to a special place he knew about where they
could even smoke cigarettes if they felt like it.

A couple of blocks from the school there was a swampy place

(what  they  call  “wetlands”  nowadays)  full  of  mud  and  reeds  and
cattails and stuff like that. If you knew and followed a little path,
there  was  a  dry  grassy  spot  in  the  middle,  well  out  of  sight.
Nobody  could  ever  ﬁnd  you  unless  they  just  somehow  stumbled
onto it. And you could hear anybody coming long before they ever
got there.

That’s where he took Esther and where he lit up a Lucky Strike

cigarette (stolen from his mother’s green pack). Coughing a little,
they passed it back and forth, he inhaling, she pufﬁng.

“Would you let me take a look at your thing?” she asked him

politely.

“What? What did you say?”
“Would you mind showing me your thing?”
“Thing?”
“You know—dick, prick, peter, cock, pee-pee. Could I just look at

it for a minute?”

“I don’t know, Esther. I don’t think so.”
“Why not?”
“That might not be right.”
Then she reminded him again about all the magazines and stuff

she had copped for him. And she reminded him that she had
taken the whole blame for the

Andy Gump funny book. And, that

favorite argument of hers, how real friends do not keep secrets
from each other.

“It’s not like a secret,” he said. “I mean, It’s just there and all. It’s

not a big deal. It’s just that I’m not sure. . . . Oh, nuts, go ahead
and have a quick look if you really want to.”

He unzipped his pants. He was embarrassed that it wasn’t a

whole lot bigger, but she didn’t seem to mind. At least she didn’t
say anything. She looked at it with serious, scientiﬁc interest and,
he thought, genuine curiosity.

All around them it was almost perfectly quiet except for a light

breeze teasing and rustling the reeds. A bluejay squawked.

He felt himself begin the swell and stiffen. At least, he remem-

bers thinking at the time, that is better than if it had decided on
its own to go limp and shrivel up as sometimes they will do in em-
barrassing situations.

“That is really something,” she said.
“Thank you very much,” he replied, not being able to think of

anything else appropriate to say.

“Would you mind if I touched it?”
“Damn right I would.”
“Why not?”
“No way.”
“I just want to see what it feels like.”
“Absolutely, positively not. I don’t like other people messing

around with my dick. I draw the line.”

“I am not other people,” Esther said.
“I’m a basically shy person,” he said. “Can’t you see that?”
“You are not shy. Besides you already pulled it out and made me

look at it.”

“I did not. I didn’t make you do anything.”
“All I want to do is just touch it. Is that too much to ask?”
“What will you do for me in return?
“Wait and see.”
He didn’t and still doesn’t know a whole lot about Jews, and

that’s a fact. Except never try to bargain or outsmart one. You will
lose every time.

“All right, all right,” he said ﬁnally, “But be careful, will you?”
She laughed that bright pretty laugh of hers and gave him a

friendly squeeze. Then he shrank back to limp normality and
zipped up his pants.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” she said, standing up now, brush-

ing off her skirt. “I better go now. I don’t want to miss the last bus.
See ya, kiddo!”

That could easily have been the end of things between them. But

136

George Garrett

it  wasn’t.  Esther  started  waiting  for  the  last  bus  on  purpose.
Usually  they  didn’t  go  anywhere  or  do  anything  much  except
maybe to sit at one of the outdoor tables on the playground and
drink a Coke or something. But other times she would persuade
him,  usually  as  a  dare  (he  could  never  resist  the  challenge  of  a
dare),  to  go  back  to  their  secret  place,  where  they  could  smoke
some cigarettes and fool around, sometimes a little touching and
feeling but mostly having long boring conversations about life and
death and love and sex.

Summer came along and the school year ended. He was sent

away to the North Carolina mountains to work as a junior coun-
selor at a summer camp. Fell instantly head over heels in love with
a big girl, a senior counselor who could really play basketball. The
only times he ever so much as touched her were when he acciden-
tally (on purpose) bumped into her ass on the basketball court. All
he ever got out of it was just one more erection and some improve-
ment in his layup and his hook shot. Not to forget or to ignore the
heavenly daydream he allowed himself, picturing the two of them
taking long, steamy, slithering, soapy showers together. This clean
fantasy was inspired by the fact that the boys’ and girls’ showers
were right next door to each other and you could hear the water
splashing on the bodies on the other side of the wall. Some of the
boys made holes in the wall to peep at the girls (the girls must have
known it). But the boy, as a junior counselor, covered over those
peep-holes with thick tape. Besides, he didn’t want to share his fan-
tasy with anybody else.

During the summer Esther sent him a couple of funny post-

cards. But he didn’t answer. He wanted to be faithful to his new
and mostly imaginary girlfriend. By the end of the summer Esther
had moved away or something. He never saw or heard from her
again.

Life is like that, he thought. People just disappear out of your

life. And in the same way, then, they pop up out of nowhere again.
Or else, like Esther, they don’t.

By the time he knows this truth, or anyway believes it to be so,

this boy in the bathroom, a teenager whose habits are becoming
obsessions, will be grown up, elderly even, another old geezer full
of sophistry and spurious wisdom, itself the result of delusional

137

With My Body, I Thee Worship

experiences,  declining  sensory  capacity,  bad  memory  and,  alas,
undiminished appetites. The old guy thinks now (alone in his own
bathroom or wherever else he happens to be) that maybe he never
really lost sight of or touch with Esther. Because ever after that he
has had (enjoyed) a special place in his heart dedicated and devot-
ed to sex-crazed Jewish women. Whom he still thinks of (and will
until  his  dying  day)  as  dark,  mysterious,  and  wholly  exotic.  You
might  wonder  why  he  wouldn’t  have,  by  the  same  token,  been
obsessed  with  (as  they  call  them  nowadays)  African  American
women. Maybe he was a racist to the core, though the real reason,
he told himself and others, was that black girls, the ones he met,
anyway,  were  exactly  like  the  southern  white  girls  except  for  the
color of their skin. They talked and acted pretty much the same.
According to his view, Jewish women would do all kinds of lively
and interesting things that Christian girls, regardless of race and
color, would never dream of doing.

Since the boy grew up, and after the war went to college on the

GI Bill, he later became a writer by trade . . . not a very successful
or  important  or  inﬂuential  one,  “a  lesser  ﬁgure,  but  a  ﬁgure  no
less” one critic called him, you can think of him (if at all) as being
maybe  like  the  ﬂip  side  of  Philip  Roth.  Sometimes  he  thinks  of
Roth  as  an  up-to-date  version  of  Esther’s  brother,  the  big  bully
Sam. Of course, Sam was deeply southern, more of a redneck than
a rabbi. That fact doesn’t prevent him (our narrator) from having
a vision of Roth as the guy speeding away on a bicycle, laughing
his ass off after beating him up and taking back most of his mag-
azines. As a writer, the old boy doesn’t like to depend on stereo-
types too much. He has learned that the humongous black guy in
the  seat  next  to  you  on  the  airplane  always  turns  out  to  be  an
investment banker or a brain surgeon or a nuclear physicist and
not a ballplayer or a rap musician. They can ﬂat-out fool you. And
so it is with Jewish women. He has found that the ones he got to
know,  perhaps  unconsciously  culled  from  the  herd,  have  had  a
more intellectual interest in sex, all of its limitations and possibil-
ities, than any other women of any other group or class or caste
that he has so far ever encountered. According to him, they like to
discuss  sex,  to  talk  about  it,  before,  during,  and  after  and  even
sometimes  instead  of  the  real  distinguished  thing,  the  old  tango
dance, the ancient art and craft of coupling up. They like to talk

138

George Garrett

and talk about it. To analyze it. To consider what can be seen and
what cannot be seen or known except on the mutual honor system.
Out of intellectual curiosity more than anything else, they like to
be bravely empirical about it. They like to try out everything they
have ever heard of and see if and how it works. Then, above all
else, they like to talk about it. Such pillow talk with or (increas-
ingly) without the pleasure of cigarettes. Sometimes they indulged
in uninterrupted discussion right in the big and frenzied middle of
the act itself.

Maybe, he has thought, they justify themselves by turning cop-

ulation into a kind of seminar.

Let us leave that boy enjoying the pleasures (as he imagined

them then) of a Roman orgy.

And let us rejoin the old geezer who has come back to his home-

town and home place to see about selling it now that Petey is dead
and gone, now that everyone except himself is long gone, scattered
across the wide, diverse and more or less United States.

He is willing to skip the Roman orgy. Instead he is, prime of life,

the  middle-aged  pilot  of  a  chartered  jet  plane  ﬂying  across  the
remote South Paciﬁc. It’s a fashion shoot, swimsuits, to be done on
an uninhabited island. There are some very expensive models on
board—people  like,  you  know,  Cindy  Crawford  and  Christie
Brinkley  and  Elle  McPherson

et al. Ones like that. Maybe even

Linda Evangelista?

(Please bear in mind that in pornography everybody is always

young and fair, whatever age you imagine them to be, as in a fairy
tale.)

So okay. Naturally they crash and everybody except himself and

the expensive models is instantly dead meat. Because of some nav-
igational problem it will be a long, long time before they are locat-
ed and rescued, if ever.

There is enough to eat—ﬁsh and clams and coconuts and bread-

fruit—and plenty of fresh water too. Only, they soon discover, the
water has something in it, a mysterious something that affects the
models like a powerful aphrodisiac. They are wildly horny and
can’t control themselves.

You can see why he wasn’t all that successful as a writer. Plotting

was always a weakness, among other things. You can also see

139

With My Body, I Thee Worship

(which he can’t) how little he has changed from the teenage kid he
used to be, the one whose idea of a good time was a run-of-the-mill
Roman orgy.

Leave the geezer on the island and leave the kid at the orgy and

let’s go to the Indiana Writers’ Workshop one summer in the late
1970s or early 1980s, give or take.

It was a very hot summer in Bloomington, though chilly from

the powerful air-conditioning in the Indiana Union. And there was
also the blonde and chilly, admirably skinny poet from New York
City. Who told the geezer (and others on the staff) that she earned
her real living—and it wasn’t a bad one either—by writing letters
and replies concerning sexual matters and mores for

Penthouse

magazine and its kissing cousin,

Penthouse Forum. Chances are you

have seen both of them, and others of their kind, at, for example,
airports all across the land. However, if your experience is any-
thing like that of the geezer or mine, you will never actually have
seen anyone step up and buy a copy or read one. Anyway, anyone
born and raised in the deep Depression in the South and only a
couple of blocks away from Ivy’s Drug Store and the formidable
Doctor Ivy, will never have the nerve or the resolve to support insa-
tiable curiosity and to step up to the cash register and the moth-
erly, gray-haired woman behind it and buy a copy.

Then what?
Well, this chilly and pretty and wonderfully skinny and terribly

serious poet was kept very busy turning out material for her
employer. There were, of course, she explained, guidelines, limits,
parameters, areas of special interest and concern, based more on
the ﬁndings of Dr. Kinsey than those of Masters and Johnson,
more inﬂuenced by the early work of Kraft-Ebbing than the late
night thoughts of Dr. Freud.

Even so it was a demanding job, “taxing,” as they say. She car-

ried around a handsome little notebook, cloth-bound as he
remembers, though it might as well have been leather or, for that
matter, human skin with a bold tattoo. From time to time he would
see her open it and begin to write in it with her gold Mark Cross
ballpoint pen or, once in a very great while, with a large, fat Mont
Blanc fountain pen. Ideas would pop into her head, and she had

140

George Garrett

141

With My Body, I Thee Worship

to be ready to capture them then and there before they vanished
forever like the morning dew.

She explained to the geezer and others on the staff that, as a

consultant,  she  didn’t  actually  have  to  write  the  stuff.  They  had
their own skill-people (not a poet among them) to do that. All she
had  to  do  was  to  come  up  with  interesting  and  somewhat  kinky
notions  that  might  capture  the  interest  and  attention  of  the
Penthouse professionals and then could be “phased in” to the letters
and the

Forum. Among these professionals the “burnout” rate was

high. They needed a little help, somebody who could graze and
browse fresh ﬁelds and pastures new. The skinny blonde New York
poet explained that the deadline for her next (pardon the expres-
sion) submission was hard upon us. Very soon she was going to
have to ﬁre off her latest anthology of pornographic ideas. Either
that or else to forego a large piece of change, a signiﬁcant chunk
of her income.

She, too, she confessed, was beginning to suffer from porno

burnout.  Would  they,  could  they,  her  newfound  buddies  and  fel-
low staffers, come to her aid and comfort by sharing any ideas, be
they  ever  so  “off-the-wall”  (she  would  be  the  judge  of  that),  that
popped into their heads? Would they please focus their attention
on  the  erotic?  Think  of  it,  she  suggested,  as  one  small  step  for
pornography and one giant leap for poetry. Or was it the other way
around?

In the particular case of our hero, she explained that even

though

Penthouse was not intended for senior citizens, it could not,

in good conscience and in the name of full and objective coverage
of the subject matter, completely ignore “geezer sex.”

“Besides,” she added with a smile and a polite little pat on his

old butt, “geezer sex, as I understand it, is primarily a masturbat-
ing experience, isn’t it?”

“So they say.”
Naturally our old boy set out, in spite of the odds against him,

to seduce this young woman. There was, for instance, the fact that
she had with her, also on the staff of the conference, a young,
handsome, sturdy, and justly suspicious husband. He was sensitive
(another poet) and highly observant. So the geezer’s whole cam-
paign had to be conducted on an intellectual level.

“What do you think?”
“I think it all depends,” he said.
Who could resist her challenge?
Almost everybody else on the creative writing staff, that’s who.
Meanwhile he wasted the entire conference concentrating on

sex, trying to think of things that would make her sit up and take
notice, raise her nicely plucked eyebrows and gross her out.

Mostly when he checked in with his latest inventions and fabri-

cations, she didn’t even bother to open her notebook. He was
greeted with shrugs and yawns.

“I read a story of yours one time in a smarmy skin magazine,”

she told him.

“Bully for you.”
“The one about the voyeuristic kid who gets caught by the girls

while window-peeping at the Soviet Union’s Olympic Women’s
Crew.”

“So?”
“More masochistic drivel. Why do you write crap like that?”
“You really want to know why I wrote that story?”
“I guess so.”
“Somebody told me about what Mark Twain said about

Tolstoy’s

War and Peace.”

“What did he say?”
“That Tolstoy forgot to include a boat race.”
“Oh,” she said. “That explains the title, anyway.”
“A Boat Race for Leo Tolstoy.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“Listen,” he said. “Would you mind if I asked you a personal

question?”

“Depends.”
“Are you Jewish?”
He couldn’t shock her, but he shocked himself mildly when he

began to think that maybe the whole thing—collecting other peo-
ple’s fantasies—might be a hoax. That in fact she didn’t work for
Penthouse. That it could be a kind of “gotcha” game, the point of
which was to be the exposure of her colleagues as a motley crew of
dirty-minded fools. But that didn’t seem to be worth all the effort
and aggravation. He began to think she was doing all this to assist
with the basic libidinous arousal of her sensitive-poet husband. To

142

George Garrett

put it politely, maybe he could only become aroused with the aid
and comfort of other people’s fantasy lives.

He felt like he ought to do everything he could to help him.
She, on the other hand, soon seemed genuinely interested, in a

sort of scientiﬁc way, in the ways and means of geezer sex. How it
is almost always based on fantasy adventures. Young, and we imag-
ine  ourselves  enjoying  erotic  events  with  “real”  people.  These,
however, proved to be less interesting than their reappearance in
the context of the combined ﬁctions of memory and fantasy. Then
memory  is  eventually  jettisoned  in  favor  of  pure  fantasy,  as  the
geezer  (any  old  geezer)  reinvents  his  own  lost  adolescence.  Soon
we are back to basics: Roman orgies, shipwrecks on desert islands,
Arabian nights in the harem, aliens from outer space on a mission
to  kidnap  neat-looking  babes  from  the  malls  and  country  clubs
and beaches as in the famous cult ﬁlm

Frankenstein Meets the Space

Monster.

None of the above materials, raw or reﬁned, would do much for

her. She and her perverse husband had long since played out every
basic erotic scenario known to modern American man and woman.

He urgently needed some new material, something a little dif-

ferent.

So he shared the lemon Jello story with her.

If the old guy weren’t so involved in the story of his later life, he

might at least have alerted the boy to the fact that a car, his father’s
old Ford, had just pulled quietly into the garage. That his old man
was home an hour or so early. That the explanation was that he
had just been laid off work. Which was really a bad thing to hap-
pen to anybody in those grim days.

The boy is too busy at the Roman orgy. And the geezer is too

wrapped up in oddball memories to worry much about the boy.
And the father is feeling so down, so whipped, that he makes no
more noise than a ghost as he climbs the stairs, planning to use the
upstairs bathroom (where the boy is, now and forever, and so is the
geezer more than half a century later). For whom the dead and
gone father is, in fact, a ghost.

When I ﬁrst got out of the army and went to grad school on the

GI Bill, Anne and I were newlyweds, and they put us in these old

143

With My Body, I Thee Worship

converted barracks called Veterans’ Village on the edge of the
campus. My best friend was a guy from down home who had been
in the army at about the same time I was and was discharged at
roughly the same time and got married about the same time, too.

We used to take turns driving each other over to school and the

library and leaving the other car—each of us had a smoky, beat-up
old heap that had seen much better days—for the wives. The rou-
tine was that whoever was driving picked up the other one early—
the library opened up at eight a.m.—and we spent the whole day
supposedly in the bowels of the library. Then we went home for
supper.

One day I picked him up, and he seemed kind of down,

depressed and gloomy.

“Anything wrong, Jim?”
He shrugged and looked away. I waited and offered him a ciga-

rette. We were still happy, heavy smokers back in those days.

He took a couple of puffs. We pulled into the parking lot and

found a place. He started to get out, the door halfway open, then
changed his mind.

“Listen,” he said. “Could I ask you a serious question?”
“Anything.”
“Frank, have you ever made love to a woman in a bathtub full of

lemon Jello?”

I took a deep puff and blew some sophisticated smoke rings to

keep from breaking up and laughing out loud. This fellow was not
what you might call a joker. I had to believe he was serious.

“No, I haven’t. Never. But I have certainly heard of it.”
“You have?”
“Yes, indeed. It’s a fairly common practice as I understand it. Of

course, different people prefer different ﬂavors. I’ve heard that
lime and raspberry are the most common favorites, but lemon is
right up there.”

Pause.
“Why do you ask?
“Well . . . you won’t laugh at me, will you? And you won’t tell

anybody either?”

“You can count on me, Jim.”
Seems that he and his new bride, Cindy, had had an argument

144

George Garrett

145

With My Body, I Thee Worship

this morning. He had wondered how she felt about doing it in a
tub  full  of  lemon  Jello.  Instead  of  discussing  it  rationally,  Cindy
had  lost  her  temper.  She  told  him  that  was  the  sickest  thing  she
had  ever  heard  of,  that  he  was  some  kind  of  a  sexual  pervert  in
urgent  need  of  psychiatric  care,  and  that  she  would  rather  be
divorced or even dead than to do anything like that or even to talk
about it.

“The lady doth protest too much,” I said helpfully. “Sounds to

me like she’s really interested.”

“Do you think so?”
“You never know about women and what they really mean.”
“You can say that again.”
“I suggest that the two of you sit down. Have a quiet drink

together and discuss the problem. Tell her that it’s a common prac-
tice among many loving married couples and see what she thinks
about that.”

“Thanks, Frank. . . .”
After a long day in the library we met up again in the parking

lot. Jim seemed a lot more lively and cheerful than he had in the
morning.

“Would you mind stopping by the grocery store for a minute on

the way home?” he asked me.

“Sure thing.”
I double-parked with the engine running (hufﬁng and pufﬁng

smoke) while he ran inside. He emerged grinning broadly, as they
say, and carrying a large case of lemon Jello. No word of explana-
tion necessary.

I dropped him off at his front door.
“Thanks for everything, old buddy.”
He hefted the box and started to go inside.
I couldn’t miss this. I had to see it play out. Drove around the

block in less than a minute, parked where he probably wouldn’t
notice me or my car, and waited.

Didn’t have to wait long.
First, I heard some yelling. Two voices, his and hers, in a loud

duet that didn’t sound anything much like something from

Cossi

Fan Tutti. Followed by the sight and noise of the front door of his
apartment ﬂying open. And here came old Jim, backing up, partly

bent over, dodging something. Some

things. Plural. Packets of Jello,

lemon Jello, came sailing outside, some of them hitting him, oth-
ers falling on the sidewalk and on the walkway.

It was sad to see all that good Jello go to waste.
Matter of fact, it didn’t. Next morning he put the whole reassem-

bled case of Jello packets into my car trunk, and that was that. We
never mentioned it or referred to it again.

Anne and I ate a lot of lemon Jello for dessert. Plenty of protein

there. After a while we came to like it, Anne and I. And some-
times, for old times’ sake, we will still indulge ourselves in a bowl
of it for luck or for love. Never did try it out with Anne (or anybody
else) in a bathtub.

I’ll tell you who did, though. And in so doing conﬁrmed my sus-

picions. You guessed it—the intensely skinny blonde poet from
New York City. She said it was “all sticky and icky” and not any
fun at all.

I asked her if her husband felt the same way about it.
She replied that men are completely crazy and not to be trusted.
I can see how she might have felt that way.

146

George Garrett

EROES

The Browning Automatic rifle, model of 1918, is an air-cooled, gas-

operated, magazine-fed shoulder weapon . . .

Smell my ﬁngers.
What?
Smell my ﬁngers. Try and guess what I’ve been doing.
Fuck you, man. You smell your own fuckin’ ﬁngers.
Wait a minute. Hey, I’m not kidding around. I’m serious.
So am I. If you want somebody to sniff your stinking ﬁngers, you

better go ﬁnd somebody else.

Don’t be chicken. Come on.
Forget it.
It’s nothing like that.
Like what?
What you think. I dare you.
You dare me what.
I double-dog dare you that you can’t smell my ﬁngers and guess

what it is. Guess what I’ve been doing.

Okay. Tell you what. Make me a bet and I’ll do it. I got a good

nose. Very sensitive.

Ugly. What you got is a big, fat, very ugly nose.
I didn’t say good-looking. I just said good.
All right. I got ten dollars says you can’t smell my ﬁngers and

guess what I was doing before I came here.

You got yourself a bet. Gimme.

147

So?
Gun oil. And bore cleaner. That’s what. You owe me ten bucks.

How did you think I could miss that? How the hell could I ever for-
get it? You been cleaning guns. Pay me up.

No problem. Double or nothing you can’t guess what I was

thinking about. Who am I thinking about right now?

No way. No bet.
Go on. Take a chance.
You just tell me.
Hero.
What?
I am thinking about Floogie the hero. Flat-Foot Floogie . . .
He was a hero all right. You can’t take that away from him.
I’m not taking anything away from him. Or anybody else.
You can’t even if you wanted to. They gave him his medal and

that’s that.

Posthumously.
So what? That’s the way it’s supposed to be. The big medals go

to dead guys. Mostly.

Yeah. And they can have them, too.
You can say that again.
Neverthefuckinless, whenever I clean weapons, I always get to

thinking about the BAR. And that starts me thinking about ole
Floogie. I remember him every time. Know what I mean?

Sequence and Method of Field Stripping

Steps in stripping will be taken in the following sequence:

a. Cock the piece.
b. Remove gas cylinder tube retaining pin.
c. Remove gas cylinder tube and forearm (let mechanism forward easily).
d. Remove trigger guard retaining pin.
e. Remove trigger guard.
f. Remove recoil spring guide and recoil spring.
g. Push hammer pin through hammer pin hole in receiver.
h. Remove operating handle.
i. Remove hammer pin.
j. Remove hammer.
k. Remove slide.

148

George Garrett

l. Push bolt guide out.
m. Remove bolt, bolt lock, and bolt link.
n. Remove bolt link pin and bolt link.
o. Remove ﬁring pin.
p. Remove extractor and spring.

In those old days, not all that long ago in our lives, the ones who

were  there  and  lived  to  think  about  it  and  to  tell  about  it,  back
when  the  BAR  was  still  a  basic  infantry  weapon,  one  to  a  riﬂe
squad, as I recall, well, in those days the BAR was viewed as a kind
of  a  punishment.  Was  assigned  to  some  fuckup  or  loser  or  eight
ball. And if, by some weird chance, there wasn’t any one such in
the  squad—and  that’s  hard  to  believe  or  imagine,  but  I  guess  it
could  happen—then,  of  course,  the  privilege  of  the  BAR  went  to
the smallest and weakest man in the squad. Because the BAR was
genuinely heavy, see? Big and heavy and hard to carry and a per-
fect bitch to keep clean. And then there was all that ammo for it
that you had to carry. I am telling you, it was no fun to be a BAR
man. As long as there was somebody in the squad with a BAR, you
could feel better off than somebody else.

It wasn’t hard to feel a lot better than Floogie, most of the time.

Big, tall, skinny guy with white-blond hair. Looked like some kind
of an albino. An albino wino. I mean goofy-looking. Clumsy as a
bear cub. Couldn’t do much of anything right. Couldn’t make his
bed right or lace up his boots right. Couldn’t keep in step. Every
step he took he bobbed his head like an old chicken. Always in
some kind of trouble. Got his squad and the whole platoon in trou-
ble.

If you think Floogie was hopeless, you should have seen his

brother.

I didn’t know he had one.
Not in our outﬁt. He might have been. But somebody with some

pull or maybe a dynamite sense of humor got him assigned to spe-
cial duty as the driver for a major general at Fort Campbell.

So?
The thing is, the brother was exactly like Floogie. A total basket

case.

I wouldn’t let Floogie behind the wheel of anything. I wouldn’t

let Floogie have charge of a wheelbarrow.

149

Heroes

This brother of his couldn’t drive for shit. And he proved it on

the ﬁrst day on the job. He run the general’s jeep off the road and
into a deep ditch and put himself and the general directly into the
hospital. In traction and all wrapped up in bandages. I went to see
the guy, and there he was, all trussed up, and laughing his ass off
because they were ﬁxing to put him out of the army as soon as he
could get up out of the bed.

Probably on a lifetime disability pension, too.
Hey, it was line of duty, right? He was entitled.
The dumb brother goes home with a limp and a couple of little

scars and a lifetime pension.

Floogie and the rest of us get our sad asses shipped off to Korea.
Quit complaining. I’m not the chaplain.
The whole thing is, once an eight ball, always an eight ball.

Floogie  was  exactly  the  same,  a  total  and  complete  fuckup  from
beginning to end, all up and down the Korean peninsula. Now he
wasn’t chicken. You have to give him that. He was too dumb to be
really scared. Mostly he had his mind on ways to get out of work
and to stay off dirty details. You can’t blame him for that. The ﬁrst
time you had to put together some kind of a shit detail, the ﬁrst
person  you  would  think  of  was  Floogie.  If  he  hadn’t  gotten  very
smart  about  making  himself  scarce,  he  would  have  met  himself
coming  and  going  from  dirty  details.  But  he  was  always  there.
Where can you go hide in the middle of a riﬂe squad in a riﬂe pla-
toon  of  a  riﬂe  company  in  the  stinking  big  middle  of  stinking
Korea with all kinds of dinks and slopes coming at you from all
directions,  day  and  night?  And,  besides,  he  was  toting  the  BAR
and all that ammo. He couldn’t get very far if he had to.

Nevertheless, he got very good at becoming and being invisible.

Come  some  dirty  detail  and  you  couldn’t  ﬁnd  old  Floogie  any-
where. And another thing. He was lucky. Pure lucky. We lost guys
all  of  the  time.  Mortars  and  mines.  Fireﬁghts.  People  got  their
asses shot off all around. But not a nick on Floogie. What’s funny
is, if he had lived, he wouldn’t have even gotten the Purple Heart.
The other guys thought he was a freak. But Floogie, he was like
immune  or  something.  He  started  believing  it  himself.  The  unit
would be under ﬁre, heavy ﬁre. Every swinging dick would be try-
ing to ﬁgure out a way to shrink and to climb completely inside of

150

George Garrett

his steel helmet. And Floogie would get up, stand straight up and
just stroll along in full view to ﬁnd a better ﬁring position. Then
he would set up his BAR and start shooting. After a while he got
pretty good with that BAR. It didn’t come natural to him, but you
do something enough times and you start getting good at it.

General Data

Weight of riﬂe, 15 pounds, 8 ounces.
Weight of magazine, empty, 7 ounces.
Weight of magazine, ﬁlled, 1 pound, 7 ounces.
Length of barrel, 24 inches.
Overall length, 47 inches.
Sights graduated to 1,600 yards.
Caliber bore, 0.30 inch.
Gas port from muzzle, 6 inches.
Rate of uninterrupted automatic ﬁre (cyclic rate), 600 shots per minute.
Chamber pressure, 47,000 to 50,000 pounds per square inch.
Muzzle velocity, about 2,680 feet per second.
Habitual type of ﬁre, semiautomatic.
Head space limits, 1.937 inches to 1.943 inches.
Length of recoil spring, 15.5 inches.

I missed out on all that. I was already out of there, in Japan, in

the hospital.

I almost forgot about all your troubles.
I’m pretty easy to forget about.
Hey, it was better that way. A lot of people came and went, you

know.

Tell me about it.
We were falling back as fast as we could. Running half the time.

The gooks were right behind us. Nobody could kill enough of
them. They just kept coming. We killed them, and then more
came.

One evening, just about dusk, we got orders to relieve some out-

ﬁt on a hilltop not too far off the main road. We were to go up and
relieve them and to hold onto that hill unless and until we heard
otherwise.

151

Heroes

It could have been worse. Those guys had already dug their

holes and were in them. We could switch off easy and quick and
quiet, ﬁx things up our own way a little and then settle in. A few
little shit details to take care of. But mostly just settling into the
new position for the night. With any kind of luck at all maybe a
good night’s sleep for a change.

Very late, it must have been past midnight, the word was passed

to pack up very quietly and get ready to pull out of there. No noise.
The gooks were pretty close out there somewhere to the front. And
we were going to try and fool them and pull out. Pitch dark and no
noise at all. We had to leave quite a lot of our stuff behind. We
came down the hill very slowly and got to the road and then head-
ed back south. Hiking. Breathing hard and sweating in the stink-
ing dark.

Hadn’t gone very far before we started to hear bugles and shouts

and then all kinds of hostile ﬁre coming in on the position we had
just pulled out of. They were pumping all kinds of stuff in there.
The sky was lit up with explosions and tracers. Wasting all of it.
Getting themselves all psyched up for an assault. And we were
long gone.

Some of the guys couldn’t help laughing in the dark. Dumb

fuckin’ gooks.

Then they blew the bugles again, and we knew they were start-

ing their assault.

Surprise! Surprise! Ain’t nobody home.
But then there came clear across the dark the absolutely, posi-

tively unmistakable sound of a BAR ﬁring on full automatic.

“Floogie!” the sergeant—remember old Zyder?—said. “We left

Floogie.”

“We couldn’t have. No. Where’s Floogie? Anybody seen

Floogie?”

Somebody was ﬁring and ﬁring, sometimes on full automatic

but mostly on semi. And the sound of the ﬁring was moving
around like he was moving around the position.

More bugles and then some quiet. The gooks seemed to have

pulled back a little from the hill. They pumped up a couple of ﬂares.

Then we halted in the dark by the sides of the road. And the

CO—that would be Captain Freer—came trolling up the road look-
ing for Sergeant Zyder. “What the fuck is going on?” the CO said.

152

George Garrett

“Who’s ﬁring that BAR?” “Floogie,” Zyder said. “And from the
sound of it he’s giving the gooks ﬁts up there.”

Long pause. Deep breathing.
“Oh, shit,” the CO ﬁnally said. “What do we do now?” Zyder

said: “Hey, let me take a few guys, a detail. And we’ll go back and
get him.” The CO thought about it for a minute. You can give him
that much. “No way,” he ﬁnally said. “No way at all. I am not going
to lose anybody else. He was probably asleep somewhere and the
gooks woke him up.” “Probably,” Zyder said. “And now he’s up
there holding onto the hill all by himself.” “Only he may not know
that yet,” somebody else said. “Floogie probably thinks we’re all
still there with him.” “He’ll ﬁgure it out soon enough.”

“Let me just take a few guys back up there.”
“No way,” the CO said. “We’ve got to keep moving.”
Column started up again, heading down the road on both sides.
Bugles again and then a whole lot of ﬁring.
Old Floogie was really cooking with that BAR. I don’t know

where he found the ammo for it, but he did. And then we were
beyond where we could hear it good anymore, although when we
looked back, we could still see light and ﬂare and a lot of ﬂoating
tracers . . .

So Floogie, the dumb fart, sneaked off when we ﬁrst occupied

the position and fell asleep and never got the word when the out-
ﬁt pulled out of there.

That’s about the size of it.
All of a sudden, there’s nothing but bugles blowing and all kinds

of incoming shit and pretty soon Chinamen everywhere. And
Floogie says,

What the fuck, I might as well be a hero.

I don’t think so. I think he woke up and didn’t know at ﬁrst that

we were gone. He just did what he’s here for. Probably didn’t
notice anything much—he would be scared shitless anyway—until
the gooks fell back to regroup. Then I can picture Floogie crawl-
ing around the position in the dark. Feeling for his buddies and
not ﬁnding anybody. And then there would be the ﬂares and the
bugles again and the yelling gooks.

He could have run right then. A lot of guys would have hauled

ass.

Floogie would be deeply pissed off. He would think we left him

behind on purpose. That’s the way he was.

153

Heroes

Yeah. Like paranoid, right?
Something like that. Anyway. He would be up there talking to

himself and shooting at gooks until they ﬁnally got him.

So what ﬁnally happened, see, was the next morning, early, ﬁrst

light, they sent us back to that position. And we didn’t have to take
it back or anything. The gooks had pulled back during the night
to the high ground north of our hill, and they were dug in there.
We went back to the position. And I’m here to tell you, there were
dead Chinamen everywhere you looked. We spent a couple of days
just digging a hole big enough and deep enough to hold them all.
God only knows how many he got before they got him.

How?
How what?
How did they get Floogie?
Grenade. At least that’s what it looked like. He was sure enough

very dead no matter what. Still had hold of his BAR, though.

I heard they put him in for a Congressional.
Fat chance.
Well, it was worth a try. And he got a medal anyway. Can you

believe it?

You know when I got back to the States, I went to see his folks—

his mama. His old man was dead. She looked exactly like ole
Floogie, you know? It didn’t look as bad on a woman. The broth-
er was there, limping around. And they took me down to a park
where there was a monument with all the dead guys’ names on it.
Floogie’s name was there. It was weird to see his name on a stone.

I would rather be almost anything but a dead hero.
Even if you was Floogie?
Even that. Maybe especially that.

. . . The riﬂe is fed from a magazine having a capacity of twenty car-

tridges. The riﬂe can be ﬁred effectively from all positions prescribed in TR
150–30. It is capable of being ﬁred at the rate of 150 rounds per minute.
The rate of ﬁre, however, which gives the best results in the normal case is 40
to 60 shots per minute, semiautomatic . . .

from War Department Training Regulations No. 320–25 (March 25,

1925).

154

George Garrett

A P

ERFECT

TRANGER

I will sing for you sweetly, although
You pluck out my beard by the roots.

I was way down in Tuscaloosa, far from home, living alone in a

two-story, white-frame house that they call the Chair House, which
is  assigned  to  visiting  writers.  It  was  set  in  a  little  patch  of  pine
woods  with  a  couple  of  other  more  or  less  similar  houses.  All
around  the  patch  of  woods  was  an  enormous  parking  lot  for  the
university. Truth is, though, it was a remarkably quiet place (you
might as well have been in the real deep woods) except on football
weekends, when hundreds, maybe even thousands, of trailers and
motor  homes  and  other  big  RVs  of  all  kinds,  ﬂags  ﬂying,  lights
pulsing, horns tooting and beeping and playing the ﬁrst few notes
of  the  Alabama  ﬁght  song,  arrived  to  park  in  the  parking  lot,
cranking  up  their  generators,  breaking  out  their  grills,  hibachis,
and barbecues, and settling into a cheerful, smoky encampment.

Huge and looming over everything, the stadium is only a few

short blocks away.

Nobody warned me that these folks were coming. This was a

local joke, part of the initiation for whoever was living in the Chair
House during the football season. I woke up early on the ﬁrst Sat-
urday morning to the whole house shaking and a steady humming

155

noise all around me. Woke, jumped up, and went to the window
and saw, in all directions, the enormous parking lot ﬁlled with
throbbing vehicles.

Same thing for every home game.
During the week, though, the place was very quiet, even lone-

some. This is a story of that lonesomeness.

Now, to get the full ﬂavor of what follows, you need to under-

stand that I hate the telephone. Did hate it, anyway. Hated answer-
ing it. Hated talking on it and into it. Hated listening to it. Hated
even to watch other people talking on the telephone or their cell
phones—smiling,  frowning,  making  faces  as  if  the  goddamn  ma-
chine  could  somehow  transmit  facial  expressions  and  reactions
and  body  language.  Besides,  I  grew  up  in  the  Great  Depression,
where we learned to talk fast and loud, shouting when it was long
distance.  Where  we  had  party  lines  to  worry  about.  Where  you
dialed or cranked the operator to place a call. When her title was
“Central.”

So, anyway, early one morning the phone rang and rang. Finally

I stumbled and staggered out of sleep to answer it.

Hello. (A woman’s voice, young-sounding, soft and husky, maybe

even a little urgent.) Is this a dorm?

No, it’s not.
A fraternity house?
No, ma’am.
Is it somebody’s ofﬁce?
No. Not exactly.
Well, this is a university number, isn’t it?
I guess so. It’s a house that belongs to the university.
Oh, that’s good.
Maybe you have the wrong number.
How could I?
Aren’t you trying to reach somebody?
It’s all right. You’ll do just ﬁne.
Who are you calling?
Listen, you don’t have to tell me who you are, she said. That

might spoil things.

What things?
Just talk to me. Talk to me.
What about?

156

George Garrett

157

A Perfect Stranger

Anything.
Like what?
Are you alone?
Yes.
What are you wearing?
Huh?
What have you got on?
My undershorts.
Jockey shorts or boxers?
Boxers.
How old are you?
I could hear her breathing. My ﬁrst thought was that somebody

or other in the English department, or maybe one of my creative
writing students, was pulling a joke on me. Maybe they were tap-
ing this conversation and would play it for general amusement at
the next party.

How old are you? she asked again.
I’m too old for you, honey.
Note that I did not simply tell her the simple truth, knowing that

she would hang up on me. Did I want her to keep talking? I hon-
estly don’t know.

Are you over forty?
You better believe it.
Shit . . . ! Then: Are you some kind of a student?
No.
A teacher?
Sort of. I’m just a visitor. A visiting teacher.
Oh, a visitor. . . . Then: Listen. Just talk to me. Please. Say any-

thing you want to. Anything. Just talk and keep on talking for a lit-
tle while. It won’t be long. I’m almost there.

Almost where?
Please . . . !
Hey, thanks anyway, I said. You have a nice day.
And I hung up and then walked into the bathroom and took a

good look in the mirror at the ruined stranger’s face I have some-
how earned and probably deserve. I shrugged and set about the
business of putting myself together for the coming day.

I wondered if she might call back. Not bloody likely. If it was a

real call and not a joke, then most likely she had just punched out

the  university  preﬁx  and  then  the  last  four  numbers  without  a
thought or scheme. Chances are she wouldn’t even remember what
the numbers were. It would be better (for her), more fun that way.
On  the  other  hand,  maybe  she  would  remember  the  number  she
had  just  called.  If  the  phone  rang  again  soon,  would  I  answer  it?
And if it turned out to be the same woman, what would I say to her?

Would I apologize for hanging up on her?
After all, it wasn’t such a bad thing she was asking for—just for

me to talk to her for a little while. All that was asked was that I talk
about anything at all for a little while to somebody, a perfect
stranger who, for whatever reason, felt she needed to hear a voice
(evidently, but not deﬁnitely, a male voice). In a way it was ﬂatter-
ing, even vaguely exciting to be chosen, even if by blindest chance,
as the brief answer to her need and pleasure. She could easily have
hung up on me when she learned I was just an old guy, far beyond
forty, in boxer shorts. She clearly wasn’t happy about it. Who
would be? But she had the decency not to hang up. She had better
manners than I did. That’s for sure.

Not counting spouses and true lovers, who in real life, your

whole real life, who among all the people you have ever known,
would even think about calling you and asking you for nothing
except the sound of your voice to give them some kind of pleasure
and satisfaction?

And what if the roles were reversed?
What if you, yourself, were in a state of desperate, lonesome

need and began to punch out numbers blindly, randomly, hoping
against hope to hear the voice of a young woman who would pos-
sess the power to offer or to deny you pleasure?

It was surely something to think about. All of it.

Scenario:

Girl calls and he answers. In an instant he realizes exactly what

is going on, and then he is able to say all the right things she wants
to hear, leading her gently, deftly, inexorably to an ecstatic peak.
Her ﬁnal line would be the sublime cliché:

Oh, God, I never knew it

could be like this!

She, having punched the numbers by chance and having expe-

rienced remarkable fulﬁllment, now directly demands to know his
number.

158

George Garrett

What can he do?
Does he tell her?

Scenario:

He gives her his number but not his name. She promises to call

again soon. Which she does. Over a little time, fairly soon in fact,
they begin to know each other, to feel free and open with each
other. She tells him the things to say that please her most. Knowing
this much, he is able (if and when he wants to) to intensify, to max-
imize or minimize her experience. Or, anyway, so it seems.

They are soon oddly dependent on each other. The great dan-

ger, of course, as in real life, is that the drama of the situation will
lose its raw edge of suspense, that it will gradually become routine
for both of them.

Maybe she tells you that you have a rival, probably a younger

man with a lovely voice and a highly active imagination. Who
sometimes, though not always, can give her more pleasure and
excitement than you can.

Soon you ﬁnd that you are jealous of him whether he really

exists or not. If he doesn’t, well, then, you are equally or maybe
even more jealous of the idea of a rival in her mind, now ﬁrmly
planted in yours.

In a serious effort to compete with this real or imaginary rival

you concentrate and focus on the creation of outrageous fantasies.
Thus you soon develop a truly dirty mind. You look in the mirror
and recognize that you are being corrupted (or, as the case may be,
are corrupting yourself) and will soon enough be totally depraved
and corrupt if this relationship continues.

You decide to break it off for the sake of the two of you.
We simply can’t go on talking on the phone like this, you say in

your signature cliché.

Scenario:

Soon you are both equally involved in the playing out of the

experience. And one thing leads to another. You tell her your
name, your real name. She tells you hers. Both of you agree that
meeting in fact and in the ﬂesh will probably be a bad thing. Too
many variables and unknowns. Too many things can go wrong.
Better to keep things just as they are.

159

A Perfect Stranger

Suppose even ideal circumstances. Suppose you did meet, and

she turned out to be wonderfully attractive, and she was not
repulsed, turned off by your age and your appearance. Even so, it
wouldn’t be the same. You are only right for each other on the tele-
phone, two bodiless, ageless voices. Reality adds nothing but trou-
ble and complexity to the experience.

Say that you were able to meet under ideal circumstances and

that you fell in love in reality. Then you began to live together. For
a while you might be like any other couple, but soon you would
probably lapse into your old, original ways.

You buy a battery-powered ﬁeld telephone from army surplus.

You can call each other from different rooms. The downside of
this is that when the ﬁeld telephone rings, there can be no excit-
ing, suspenseful doubt about who may be calling. And doubt, even
for a brief instant, is half the fun.

Next you buy lots of different kinds of phones—cellular phones,

car phones. Both of you have your own phones with unlisted num-
bers known only to each other. Both of you have unlisted phones
unknown to each other.

Sometimes you wake in the middle of the night, and the space

next to you in your queen—or king-size bed is empty. You tiptoe
carefully in the dark, following the sound of her whispering voice.
She is whispering remarkable, memorable things to someone else.
Man or woman? Does it matter? Isn’t a voice on the phone ﬁnally
androgynous? And what if no one is there listening at the other
end?

Whether you elect to meet and then end up being together or

not, you both have to work hard to create signiﬁcant erotic diver-
sity. Both of you practice foreign accents, impersonations of living
and historical characters. And you make up voices for made-up
characters.

Sometimes, for the joy of it, you cross over. She pretends to be

you, and you pretend to be her. Both of you simultaneously become
other people.

After a while, you have a hard time remembering who you real-

ly are. If you really are anyone.

She won’t tell you.

160

George Garrett

Scenario:

Suppose that you meet in fact and ﬂesh but do not take to each

other. She is disgusted at ﬁrst sight by what the years have done to
you. And you ﬁnd her unattractive, beyond repair.

Still, nobody else can give the good phone voice that she does.

When voice is the sole reality, the most reﬁned form of desire and
satisfaction, then who cares about the real or imaginary body from
which that voice emerges?

In fact, isn’t it oddly exciting to know that a beautiful voice tran-

scends its humble origins? Back in the old days, men often fell in
love with telephone operators. With the voice of Central. He can
readily understand that now.

What if—just for the sake of argument—she really is a student or

somebody  in  the  English  department  whose  intentions  are  mali-
cious and humiliating? How would you feel if all these conversa-
tions were being recorded to be played back in some public or pri-
vate  way?  Would  you  feel  betrayed;  or  would  you,  instead,  ﬁnd
some  added,  unexpected  nuance  of  pleasure  knowing  that  from
then on, your shared words, her voice and yours, were being cap-
tured? When she called again (if she should ever call again), would
that serve to inhibit you?

Would you be angry and ashamed or strangely grateful?
Would you invent things to shock your students, your col-

leagues, the world?

When you go to class, across that vast parking lot and the cam-

pus, you see hundreds of young women coming and going, too.
Which one is she? Is it that one or another? How can you ever
know for sure?

All of which leads to another question.
Consider that, in fact, I am by craft and trade a writer. Suppose

the man in this story were a writer also. How would the phone calls
affect him?

Maybe he would become a full-time pornographer. Out of the

habit and experience of making up erotic stories for the telephone,
he could, slowly but surely, ﬁnd himself unable to create any other
kinds of stories except those designed for this sole and speciﬁc pur-
pose and for this interacting audience of one.

161

A Perfect Stranger

But wait a minute. All his premises and scenarios are based on

the assumption that only one young woman is involved. Maybe
that isn’t so. She could have a roommate. She could have more
than one roommate. She could even be a member of a sorority or
club, a group where the members, from time to time, use the tele-
phone to enhance their private lives and pleasure. There could be
a whole telephone harem out there,

Or—why not?—his ﬁrst and only caller (so far) may have been a

pledge in her sorority. Part of her initiation might be to call up a
perfect stranger and get him to talk to her on her own terms.

Here that part of him that is a literary critic speaks to him in an

inward and spiritual voice:

Forget the whole thing. Forget it. This is the kind of story that Robert

Coover might write but not you.

Robert Coover is a twit. He never thought of this one. He never even imag-

ined anything like it.

But he could have, easily enough, says the smug critical voice. You are

such a victim of factual reality. You would never have thought of it, either,
if you hadn’t actually answered a real phone on a real morning in Tusca-
loosa. And now that’s all you can think about. You ought to be ashamed of
yourself and all your obvious limitations.

Fuck Robert Coover, you say out loud to the critic within you. And

fuck you, too.

See what I mean? the inner voice answers.

Reality:

I discover that I automatically wake up every morning. I get up

out of bed and go sit in an old armchair near the phone. I wait in
vain for the phone to start ringing.

What will happen when I ﬁnish up my job here and go home to

Charlottesville?

How will I explain my new habits to my wife of many years?
More to the point, how will she react to this whole story?
From her point of view one could justly argue that I have been

uniformly unfaithful, in principle if not in fact, ever since the ﬁrst
phone call.

162

George Garrett

163

A Perfect Stranger

Scenario:

It turns out to have been my wife all along. She calls and clever-

ly disguises her voice and fools me. To the extent that she engages
me in this ongoing ﬁction of the phone, she has to come to terms
with the idea that I am sharing an intimate experience with some-
one else. Worse, it is somebody I don’t even know. Worst of all, it
is somebody she doesn’t know. From her point of view (and I am
only guessing, not planning to ask her), a three-way conference call
might be better. During which she can at least monitor my verbal
behavior. Or, anyway, add her own running commentary to all of
it.

What next?
You buy an answering machine to screen your calls. You buy

some pajamas and a nice bathrobe. You wait. Sooner or later
someone will call.

How can the story end? Only with the end of me as a living body

or a mindless one aged beyond the fringes of memory. Either way,
the anticipation, which is all that I have really and truly possessed
since the ﬁrst and only phone call, will fade and ﬁnally cease and
desist even as I do.

Or will it?
There is always another possibility. I shall ask here and now,

before it’s too late, to be buried like Mary Baker Eddy with a tele-
phone in my grave. At the least, then, old hypocrite reader, from
time to time, a drunk or a desperate person will accidentally dial
or punch the number. And the phone in my grave will ring and
ring.

You, reader, passing by the cemetery in the dark middle of the

night, will be startled by the sound of a telephone ringing among
the silent tombstones. You will hurry along to wherever you are
going.

And I won’t hear it, or even care one way or the other until, as

my faith assures me, I will wake on Judgment Day and reach for
the phone. Who will be calling me? Whose voice will I hear then?

N MEMORY OF

R. V. Cassill

ATOR

AIT

Everywhere I go these days, I hear people—and I mean good

people, too, well-meaning and intelligent, speak up and speak out
against cynicism. And so would I. Except that, seriously, I don’t
agree with them.

Whenever I do, in fact, respond, when I choose to speak up, too,

I hear myself calling for

more cynicism. To my surprise, if not to my

shame, I hear myself saying things like this:

“We must teach and encourage our children to be deeply and

sincerely cynical. Otherwise they will be lost victims in the savage
world we have made and are giving over to them.

“Those who profess to be alarmed about the power and preva-

lence of cynicism in our time are really and truly (and maybe only)
concerned that others will be able to see through the pathetic,
shabby veils of their dedicated self-interest and self-aggrandizement.”

Now is that a cynical thing to say, or what?

As he remembers it now, the boy couldn’t have been in the sixth

grade yet, for in the picture of himself that is part and parcel of the
memory he has and holds, he is still wearing short pants. That was
the family custom in those days—to change over from shorts to
long pants, from child to boy, at the beginning of sixth grade at the
Delaney Street Grammar School. The custom may have been dif-
ferent in other families and in other places and at other schools,
maybe even at other schools right here in his hometown. How

164

165

Gator Bait

would he have known at the time? His world, at least the one out-
side of home and family, was mainly composed of the raw, lightly
grassy playground (with squeaky swings, rust-jointed seesaws, and
a jungle gym) and the sweat-smelling, fart-stinky world of class-
rooms within the brick school building, that world and, as well, the
dangerous zone of half a mile from school and playground to the
quiet, shady block called Phillips’ Place, a dead-end street running
down to the edge of a lake, Lake Copeland, where he lived.

“My Lord, it’s all still there and pretty much the way it was!” he

exclaims to his grandchildren more than a half century later. Here
he is, brieﬂy showing them around some of the old places and the
old house, if it’s still there, on Phillips’ Place. He had to stop for a
trafﬁc light by the school. At that same corner, when he ﬁnally was
in the sixth grade and still years before there was a trafﬁc light
there, he had been a patrol boy with his blue overseas cap, a sash,
and a badge and the power to hold up his hand and stop all trafﬁc
so that the schoolchildren could safely cross. Sometimes Ofﬁcer
Rogers, a real policeman, was there, too, but most often he was all
on his own.

Stopped a moment, waiting for the red light to change, he

watches a shrill swarm of black children (not a white face among
them, as far as he can tell) playing on what seem to be the same
old swings, seesaws, and jungle gym.

The days he is remembering were in the midst of the deep and

bitter season of the Great Depression and still very much the old
world of

de jure segregation. Remembering now what he will not

tell or try to explain to his grandchildren from Pennsylvania, not
so much out of any sense of guilt or shame or of indifference as out
of . . .

complexity, that word we so often hide behind these days

when something under discussion or debate demands more than
a sound bite of serious attention.

Will not tell them, not now anyway, how Velma, the maid, and

Joe, her husband, who did plumbing and odd jobs, and their sev-
eral children lived in a little house (itself long gone now) set behind
his house. How they always ate breakfast together so Velma could
cook for all the children at once, then hurried off, books and pen-
cils and lunch bags in hand, a block or so all together in the same
direction as a group, like a little team or something, except there

were no integrated teams then, until Velma’s children turned off
on a side street and headed for what everyone called the colored
school, half a mile away in another direction.

It was, as was ever and always for any child, purely and simply

the  way  of  the  world.  The  world  was  whatever  it  was,  not  to  be
deeply questioned or much changed, improved or destroyed, loved
or  hated,  except  in  small  and  separate  and  speciﬁc  parts.  World
was  a  huge,  mysterious,  grown-ups’  game,  and  it  was  our  (his)
necessity, not merely duty, to discover the rules of that game and
to  abide  by  them  or  else  to  be  punished,  wounded,  or  even
destroyed on account of his unacceptable and unholy ignorance.
Thus they could eat breakfast together, the same breakfast, at the
same  kitchen  table,  with  Velma’s  children  (he  has  long  since,  in
ﬁfty-some years forgotten their names, though he can still vaguely
see  their  more  or  less  interchangeable  faces);  could  have  carried
exactly the same sandwiches, cookies, and pieces of fruit in their
lunch bags. They could and did freely play together, a lot of the
time in the pine woods behind the house or along the spooky and
swampy edges of the lake, where he and his brothers would some-
times tease Velma’s boys with scary tales of savage alligators in the
lake. World said that all colored people were scared to death of alli-
gators. So why not? Once they made one of them, the youngest—
was  he  named  Willie?—cry  from  fear;  and  then  Velma  made  a
stern, sad face and said she was “disappointed” that they would try
to  frighten  her  little  boy.  And  they  solemnly  and  sincerely
promised not to do anything like that again, an oath which, for a
fact, they honored for quite a while, at least until that time when
they  stumbled  onto  the  nest  of  a  real  live  alligator  who  snapped
and  came  at  them.  And  they  ran  like  a  wild  wind,  yelling  and
shouting like a bunch of crazy Holy Rollers all the way back to the
house and the safety of the kitchen. That Velma’s boys, even little
Willie, beat them home from the lake did not necessarily conﬁrm
the  truth  about  colored  people  and  alligators,  because  Velma’s
boys  could  always  outrun  them  anyway.  At  least  for  short  dis-
tances.

Of course, it wasn’t all funny. There was a time, he remembers,

when some boys from over in the colored neighborhood, which
was not all that far away, came to play and fool around at the lake.

166

George Garrett

167

Gator Bait

Neither he and his brothers nor any of Velma’s boys were around
at the time and only heard about it later. One of those colored boys
fell into the lake. None of them could swim, so the others ran all
the way back to their own neighborhood to get help instead of
coming directly to any of the houses on Phillips’ Place. By the time
they returned, the boy was dead, and the ﬁre engines came, and
the ﬁremen pulled his dark, glistening body out of the water and
tried to revive him.

It remains something that the man can now see in memory as if

he had, in fact, been there.

They could and did play together in the woods and by the lake,

but, it was understood and strictly observed, not in the park near-
by, where the white boys played baseball or tackle football in sea-
son and where, in the words of the tough and trashy white kids—
the ones who were barefoot, wore overalls, and “borrowed” sand-
wiches and cookies at school lunchtime or else went hungry—“no
niggers allowed.” No girls either.

Nigger. That was a word he wasn’t

allowed to use, though sometimes, playing in the park, he used it
along with the other guys just to sound as rough and ready as they
were. That was where he picked up another taboo word—

fuck.

Which, in innocence, he used at the supper table once and earned
a memorable spanking with his father’s leather belt.

The light will change in a second or two, and he will drive on a

couple of blocks and then turn right into Phillips’ Place to let them
see the old, white-frame, two-story house, recently painted by who-
ever owns it, looking kind of spiffy, his father would have said. No
longer a little green island shaded by live oaks and almost sur-
rounded by tall and shadowy pine woods. Now fully “developed,”
all the casual space occupied with newer houses, crowded togeth-
er cheek by jowl. And the lake is now as tame and safe and private
as a swimming pool. Except it is too polluted for swimming.

“We used to climb all over those big old trees. We had a won-

derful tree house in one of them,” is all that he will think of to tell
them before turning around at the dead end. Talking about the
enormous live oaks, bearded with Spanish moss and twice as old
or even more than he is and likely to live more than twice longer,
too, unless a hurricane should rip and tumble them or some fool
should decide to cut them down in order to widen the narrow lit-

tle street by a few feet. The town itself has lost more than a hun-
dred of these magniﬁcent trees to progress.

He is driving his politely bored and quietly restless grand-

children to Disney or Universal or Sea World or maybe the Space
Center on the East Coast, wherever it is they really want to be.
Probably it will be the latter, a little distance, an hour or so from
where they already are. For it is during that ride, while the chil-
dren doze off, that he will start to remember the story that began
with a picture of himself still wearing short pants. . . .

It would have to have been a Saturday morning, a day when his

father didn’t usually go to work at his downtown ofﬁce. When he
did choose to go to work on Saturday, he would take one of them,
one of his brothers or himself, along with him. While his father did
things with papers on his big shiny desk and sometimes talked on
the telephone or, every once in a while, rang a little electric bell for
a uniformed boy about his own age, give or take, to come and pick
up a telegram and take it back to the ofﬁce of Postal Telegraph or
its rival—Western Union. Once in a great while, he entrusted his
own son, whichever was with him at the time, to deliver the text
directly  to  the  telegraph  ofﬁce.  This  boy  especially  liked  that,
imagining himself in the splendid blue of Postal or the brown of
Western Union. Jog-trotting several blocks into the heart of down-
town.  Bringing  urgent  messages  that  would  soon  enough  set  the
wires humming and at some distant place have a boy like himself
pedaling  furiously  on  his  ofﬁcial  bicycle  to  deliver  good  or  bad
news to somebody.

His father would do some work in his private ofﬁce, and the boy

would have the freedom of the rest of the ofﬁce used by his father’s
two secretaries and also the other room with all the law books in
bookcases all around and a large table where, he was told, his
father would meet with important clients and discuss business.

So much that he didn’t know or understand then. He knew his

father was a lawyer, evidently a good one, popular with some peo-
ple  (especially  the  plentiful  poor,  both  black  and  white)  and  dis-
liked by many others (especially the Country Club people), though
not  even  they  would  openly  express  their  feelings  about  him
because  he  was  feared  as  much  as  he  was  respected.  He  was,  in
fact, a powerful man and a dangerous enemy. He was, as this old
man knows now and could not possibly have imagined then, some-

168

George Garrett

thing rarer than all of the above. He was also a good man. His
goodness was the source of much of his power and the reason that
the others, those who came up against him, in the law courts or
anywhere else, feared him.

“Think of him as a little bit like Gregory Peck in

To Kill a

Mockingbird,” one of his brothers said when it came time to return
and to bury their father. “Only with balls. Peck was a pussy. Daddy
would have won that case. He won tougher ones than that. He was
the best.”

Because he was the best, he had plenty of well-to-do clients will-

ing to pay top dollar for his services and thus willing to support his
addictive habit of

pro bono work.

“The most amazing thing,” his brother continued, “was that

even though he took a lot of cases for indigent black clients, he was
never, ever named, not out loud at least, as a ‘nigger lawyer.’ Not
by anybody.”

Adding: “Not by anybody who planned to keep his full mouth-

ful of teeth and a straight nose.”

On this particular Saturday morning, like the others when his

father went to work on the weekend, they would go into town, a
mile or so at most, hang around the ofﬁce, where he could play
with pencils and yellow pads and the big old typewriters and paper
clips, all the

stuff of an ofﬁce, while his father did his work. Along

about noon his father would usually quit and take him down the
street to Riddle’s Drug Store, where—for a dime, equal to the boy’s
weekly allowance—he could enjoy a chocolate ice cream soda.
After that treat they would walk home together, his father some-
times whistling if the weather was good and he felt he had accom-
plished something.

The walking part, going along the sidewalk to and from the lit-

tle ofﬁce building, always embarrassed the boy. That was because
of his father’s bad limp. Badly wounded in the Great War, he had
been left with one straight leg (might as well have been made of
solid wood), a couple of missing ﬁngers, and some ugly scars on
his face. The boy’s older brothers told him that their father had
been a big hero in that war, that he had (buried in a bureau draw-
er) some medals and ribbons to prove it. That proved, then and
now and forever, that he was absolutely fearless. This, to the extent
that it was true or, anyway, perceived as an uncontested fact, only

169

Gator Bait

added to his father’s aura of invincibility. That much he knows
now. Then it also added to the boy’s embarrassment.

His father was not a joiner in any case and never belonged to

any of the veterans’ groups—the American Legion or the VFW. As
far  as  he  knew,  his  father  only  spoke  of  the  war  with  one  other
human being—a Canadian man who played the organ and was the
choirmaster at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church. Can’t remember his
name,  either,  anymore.  (Names  are  lost  and  forgotten  ﬁrst,  they
say.)  But  his  father  always  had  the  greatest  respect  for  the
Canadian soldiers. “They were the best I ever saw,” he said. Once
in a while he and the Canadian would talk in low voices about the
Great War. Whatever they were saying made them laugh a lot.

They walked past the school, past a row of elegant old houses,

including the home of the county judge with whom his father
often joshed about this and that. Usually, it was about the latest
“reversal” (whatever that was) he had achieved at the expense of
Judge Copperthwaite.

“I’ve lost count how many times I’ve reversed that old boy,” his

father said.

At the ofﬁce, after the exciting elevator ride up to the seventh,

and top, ﬂoor, while ﬁddling with his keys, his father told him that
in a little while a couple of clients would be coming and that he
should be very quiet while they were there. It wouldn’t be for too
long.

Maybe as much as an hour later, he witnessed, through the par-

tially  open  door  to  the  conference  and  library  room,  the  two
clients  arrive  and  be  ushered  into  his  father’s  ofﬁce.  They  were
both  light-skinned  colored  gentlemen,  very  well  dressed,  from
shiny shoes to careful hair. They spoke carefully, too, with an alien
and  indeterminate  white  man’s  accent.  By  voice  alone  he  would
have guessed that his father was the black man of the group. They
also had a small, slightly yippy little dog, a yellow dog on a leash,
with them.

His father ﬁrmly shut the door to the conference room. But the

boy knew that if he stood close, ear to door, he could hear most of
what was being said in the ofﬁce.

Now, driving east toward some kind of tourist trap with his

grandchildren, the boy, who has come to be an old man, himself,

170

George Garrett

171

Gator Bait

longer-lived than his father, cannot begin to remember all the
words spoken in his hearing. Cannot replicate the text of the con-
versation in his father’s ofﬁce.

No matter.
It went something like this:

They said that they had heard nothing but good things about the

lawyer. That he was highly respected by everyone, even his ene-
mies; and that in the black community he was like some kind of a
household god.

One of them, chuckling to indicate that it was only supposed to

be a joke, chided him for taking business away from some of the
Negro lawyers who were not as well trusted as he was.

Lawyer dropped the small talk and told them he had examined

the materials, such as they were, that they had sent him. He said he
had some serious questions that they, or somebody, would have to
answer. He had also read the press clippings with full skepticism
bordering on contempt for the ineptitude and inaccuracy of the
press, especially in complex legal matters. He went on to say that
though he hadn’t yet made up his mind, he was already inclined to
take the case. That it was certainly a tough one, but that there was
a faint chance he could win an acquittal or at least he might be able
to save the defendant from the electric chair.

One of them (man with dog?) allowed that except for one south-

ern sheriff, who seemed to take his sworn duty pretty seriously,
there wouldn’t be a problem and they wouldn’t be here now.

How’s that? His father asked quietly. The boy knew that some-

thing had annoyed his father, sensed that his father was edgy with
sudden suspicion when he spoke so softly, controlling himself.

Well now, the man told him. You people don’t usually let a case like

this come to court at all. I’m surprised they didn’t hang the fellow in the ﬁrst
twenty-four hours.

His father:

Sheriff, that one, anyway, is a good man. Predictably does his

job and does it well. Bear in mind that with his pathetic salary, he will never
own a pair of shoes as nice—English aren’t they?—as yours. And a case like this
one could cost him his job and, more than that, cost himself and all his fam-
ily dearly in days to come.

Man said,

I didn’t run for public ofﬁce.

Father said,

Good thing, too.

Other man:

Please don’t misunderstand us. We are fully aware of your

position and we understand and appreciate the position and problems of the
Sheriff . . . Jackson, isn’t it?

Father:

Johnson.

Other man:

Whatever.

At this point the two visitors began to talk about money. Boy

couldn’t understand much of it at the time; and though he knows
some things about money now, he isn’t quite sure what transpired.
He imagines that they showed his father a cashier’s check (“You
can have it in cash if you want it.”) for a large sum of money. He
heard his father whistle and laugh out loud.

That’s a whole lot of money for a country lawyer, his father said. But

let’s not talk about the money just yet. Let’s talk about the case. I’ll lay out
my approach for you and you can decide for yourselves whether you want me
to represent you or not.

Not us, one of them said. We want to hire you to represent the defendant.

We don’t want to be directly involved.

Then you have a problem. You are paying for it and so he must believe that

you all are responsible for him.

Who knows what he knows? The poor man is retarded.

From here on memory is cloudy, partly because the words and

terms were beyond the boy. Partly because he was bored and
thinking ahead to an ice cream soda. Partly because there was a lit-
tle gray-and-white bird, a mockingbird, outside, hopping on the
windowsill, singing a variety of tunes.

What happened was his father briskly went over the details of

the case, a particularly vicious rape case, outlining, in a general
way, the strategy he would develop. Laying out the limits of his
defense.

“You are something else,” one of them said. “I believe you could

save his ass, for whatever that’s worth, like that. I’m impressed. But
that’s not exactly what we had in mind. We see the case like this. . . .”

And they outlined a plan of their own, rich with legal jargon,

whereby they would like to see the man defended.

“That is kind of an interesting idea,” his father told them. “It

will absolutely guarantee that this man dies in the electric chair.

172

George Garrett

173

Gator Bait

No doubt about it. We do it your way and the man will die. Sorry.
I won’t do that for you.”

From here on the two men did most of the talking, more or less

in unison.

That he was clearly a ﬁrst-rate lawyer in every way. No doubt.
But that they would not even consider his ideas for how to han-

dle the case.

That they would be paying him a very large sum of money—bet

it’s the biggest you have earned so far in your lifetime—not to show-
boat and show off what a brilliant litigator he is, but to do it their
way, exactly the way they wanted it done.

In which case your man is dead meat, his father told them.
That, yes, that is exactly what would happen and exactly what

they wanted to happen.

I don’t think I understand you. Would you be so kind as to say it again?

What they said was something very much like this, allowing for

the fact that it was, of course, more delicately expressed than the
boy would have been able to remember.

How they represented a very large organization (

initials meaning-

less to the boy) that was devoted and dedicated to the enhancement
of oppressed people all over the world.

How the defendant was probably guilty as all get-out.
How, in any event, he had nothing, nothing at all, to contribute

to our society or to the world.

How, thanks to the power of the press, his fate now mattered,

had some meaning.

How, by dying in Old Sparky, the electric chair, he would prob-

ably do more for his people and more for social justice than any or
all of us sitting here in your ofﬁce today.

How it might have been better in the long run if he had been

lynched at the outset as he very likely would have been if there had
not been that unusual sheriff who was willing to risk everything to
protect the man and to do his duty.

How saving his life, though it might be just, and even possible,

was not a serious option.

How, in short, they wanted to pay a lot of money to a very good

lawyer to lose the case with some style and plausibility.

How you, sir, have been to Great War, in the thick of it, and must

know more than most of us how little a single human life (especial-
ly a deformed and disabled one) matters in the grand scheme of
things. To weigh the life of a retarded rapist against the goals and
legitimate aspirations of a whole people, is to try to balance a feath-
er against a wealth of gold ingots.

How, ﬁnally, though there may not be other lawyers in this state

who are as gifted and can do as well as he can, nevertheless, there
is a gracious plenty of attorneys who will jump at the chance to
earn that kind of money and notoriety. Not to mention the possi-
bility of an ongoing retainer from their distinguished organization
to handle various and sundry kinds of business for them for many
years to come.

How the only embarrassment they felt was in having to tell him

these obvious facts of life.

After all that talking, it was very quiet for a minute or two, a long
minute or two. Then or later, he pictured his father with his face
turned to one side, head resting on the cool surface of his desk.
Something he had seen his father do before.

One of them spoke ﬁrst: “Sir? Are you all right?”
“No, I am not all right. Not at all,” his father began, clearing his

throat and talking softly, though soon his voice would be much
louder, on the edge of a yell or a shout.

“I want you two to stand up and walk right out of my ofﬁce.

Goddamn you both to hell and your little yellow dog, too! I want
you to leave here and now and never come back again. I don’t
want to ﬁnd you around here or even to hear that you are in the
vicinity. I want you out of this town and out of my life before I can
count to ten, or I will throw your sorry asses right out of the win-
dow. And then I will piss all over your grave.”

He did not have to begin counting to ten because they were

already out of the ofﬁce, down the hall, and to the stairway (unwill-
ing to linger and wait for the elevator to come) mumbling to each
other and the little dog yipping and yapping.

Then he heard his father sobbing in his ofﬁce. Sobbing, as he

had never heard him and never would again. Sobbing out of rage
and frustration and helpless sorrow for the fallen world.

He waited until the sound stopped. Looked down from the win-

dow where the mockingbird had been before and saw the two men

174

George Garrett

jump into a big shiny car (Cadillac?) in the parking lot and take off
down Orange Avenue driving fast.

In a moment or two his father opened the door and came into

the conference room. He looked all right, a little puffy around the
eyes, but otherwise very much the same as usual.

He did not mention what had just happened, not then, not ever.

Instead he looked his youngest son up and down and smiled at
him.

“Let’s go get ourselves an ice cream soda, huh?”
Took two steps toward the elevator and then turned and looked

at the boy again.

“Long as we are down here, let’s go over to Morrison’s Mens’

Store and buy you a half-decent pair of long pants.”

“But, Daddy, I’m not in the sixth grade yet.”
“Fuck the sixth grade!” His father laughed out loud. “Fuck ’em

all, son. The time has come.”

Years later, when my father died and we all came home from far

places for the funeral, we found that he had left behind a letter for
each one of us. Mine was based on the fact that, as a child, I had
loved Tarzan movies and stories about exploring in Africa. For a
while then I talked a lot about growing up and going to Africa and
having all kinds of adventures there.

I had forgotten all about that brief phase of my life until I read

his letter to me.

Here is part of what he wrote to me:

I have never been a real explorer, but I have traveled my own way

in spirit—a way that no one else could wholly follow or accompany
me upon or fully understand—unless you do. So, in a sense at least,
I am an explorer myself.

And that is what I want you to be—an independent minded man,

following your understanding as far as it will go and then faring on
beyond the marches of your conscious mind, trusting without limit
to your true instincts. It is that journey that ultimately will be your
African adventure, your trek into the unknown.

I want you to reject all conformity to the standards and conven-

tions that does not square with your own consecrated ideals—reject
them not to lower yourself below them but to elevate yourself above
them. Stand for the truth, have convictions and the courage of

175

Gator Bait

them. Be yourself and fear no one. And then you will have all the
danger and tribulations and all the glory of your African adven-
ture.

Strange, he didn’t even mention the Great War, but, then, he sel-

dom did so.

What a legacy!
As for myself?
Well, now, that is another story, one with its own odds and ends,

its predictable ups and downs. I have lived a long and not unevent-
ful life, but I have not (yet) lived up to his passionate example or
his brave expectations.

Still, how grateful I am for that challenge. How deeply I cherish

the example of his pride and hope.

176

George Garrett

PILOGUE

IFE AS A

OME

OVIE

Once upon a time—long before the coming of video or digital

cameras and all such like—I bought a little eight-millimeter movie
camera and a roll of black-and-white ﬁlm for it. It was a birthday
present  for  my  wife.  We  took  it  with  us  as  we  moved  about  and
traveled here and there over the next few years, but we never real-
ly used it. Never even unpacked it from the original package until
we had settled into Maine and were working there. We were living
in a beautiful old (1780) house facing on the York River, and when
summer ﬁnally came around, we discovered that we had a whole
lot of friends, old and new, who came to visit us there. When they
left, my wife would remember our little movie camera and the roll
of  ﬁlm.  It  was  never  planned.  Just  happened  that  way.  Someone
would be leaving. We would remember the camera. Out from its
place  in  a  dark  closet  came  the  camera.  Then  my  wife  and /or  I
would take pictures of them saying good-bye as they packed their
bags  in  the  trunks  of  their  cars.  There  was  a  lot  of  hugging  and
cheerful  farewells.  Our  guests  then  climbed  into  their  cars  and
waved  goodbye  as  they  drove  away  up  a  little  hill  to  the  road  to
Kittery.

By the end of that summer we must have had a dozen brief

ﬁlmed sequences of people packing up and departing. Everybody
was quite cheerful about it, but, as you can imagine, the overall
effect was kind of sad, and all the more so since everybody was

177

smiling and smiling. We would never see each other again, not, at
least, in this ﬁlm.

One day something happened to change our inadvertent cre-

ative habits. Nobody was leaving that day. A bunch of us, family
and guests, were all sitting around on the high porch watching the
gulls and cormorants and crows wheeling and dealing and the tide
swiftly running out, causing the lobster boats to pull hard on their
moorings. We heard the sound of music coming from somewhere
not far upriver. It was getting louder. We stood up and looked all
around. Lo and behold, here came a speedboat pulling behind it
several shapely water-skiers, young women in identical bright and
colorful swimsuits. There was another boat coming behind them
with a little jazz band tootling away.

“Quick! Get the movie camera.”
My wife found the camera and moved out to photograph the

water-skiers as they came toward us and passed by, and then, even
better, what we now saw was coming along behind them and the
band. Namely, a lone man in a wetsuit high in the air, hanging
onto a huge kite that was being pulled by yet another speedboat.
Soaring brightly in the vivid air.

None of us had ever seen a kite like that.
As he passed by our house, he had to let go of the line attached

to the boat that was pulling him, so as not to collide with the
bridge over the river, Route 103 to Kittery. The man with the kite
turned loose, then sailed, brieﬂy and beautifully, past us, then
slowly glided to a soft landing in the water just out of view.

If we ever found out, then or later, what was the purpose of the

occasion, I can’t remember it now. It happened and afterward we
settled back into our habitual routine. Somebody was always leav-
ing. We would remember the camera and hurry to photograph yet
another farewell.

As luck would have it, we used up the last of that ﬁlm to photo-

graph ourselves leaving, too.

Couple of years later, I was somehow or other involved in a stu-

dent ﬁlm festival where a lot of young and would-be ﬁlmmakers
showed their wares and presented each other with prizes and
awards. One of the categories was for eight-millimeter silent ﬁlms.
I persuaded one of the judges (an old buddy) to slip in our ﬁlm,
now hastily entitled “Waving Adieu, Adieu, Adieu” (which is the

178

George Garrett

real title of a real poem by the real poet Wallace Stevens) in the
competition.

The lights blink and fade. Judges sit solemnly at a long table,

armed with yellow pads and little penlights with which to scribble
notes and apercus. There is a small but eager audience of student
ﬁlmmakers and their friends and fans.

And away we go.
Saw several nicely executed ﬁlms before “Adieu” came up for

ofﬁcial consideration. Then what did we see? We saw people, per-
fect strangers, packing their cars with luggage and, one after
another, leaving. Then suddenly, without warning, out of some
heavenly nowhere, a row of beautiful women ﬂashes past. Followed
by a (silent) jazz band. Followed in turn by a man and a kite in the
sky ﬂying.

And then the ending. It shows me packing the car and leaving,

too, shooting the last shots through the back window of our car.

I was impressed. My wife is quite good with a camera, and the

ﬁlm  looked  smoothly  edited,  even  though  it  wasn’t  edited  at  all.
And I was impressed, too, to hear the judges discuss the ﬁlm and
its  multiple  layers  of  meaning.  How  life  is  nothing  more  or  less
than  a  series  of  goodbyes,  punctuated,  once  in  a  great  while,
maybe once in a lifetime, on a roll of ﬁlm, by some extraordinary
event or bright and purposeless occasion—unheard music accom-
panying an unearned sense of joy.

Take your trendy nihilism and shove it was assumed to be the subtext.
Lucky for me, and for everybody else, “Adieu” didn’t win any

prizes.

If this were not a “true” story, that’s where it would appropri-

ately end, with “Adieu” maybe taking second or third place in its
category. But the truth is, there isn’t any ending to the story, not
yet. Truth is that not long after the student ﬁlm festival we (I) mis-
placed the ﬁlm and the camera, too. Can’t ﬁnd it anywhere to this
day. May never ﬁnd it again, though I’m not ready to give up just
yet.

Meanwhile we can always rewind and play it in memory if and

when we want to.

And so can you, reader, now that we have shared the story with

you.

179

Epilogue: My Life as a Home Movie

About the Author

George Garrett is Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at the
University of Virginia. He has spent almost ﬁfty years at work as a
literary craftsman writing and publishing poetry, short stories, nov-
els, and literary criticism. Garrett ranks among the most successful
southern  writers  of  the  twentieth  century;  his  stories  have  been
widely anthologized and have earned numerous awards, including
the PEN/Malamud Award for excellence in short ﬁction. He was
Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2002 to 2004 and was awarded the
Lifetime Achievement Award from the Library of Virginia in 2004
and  the  Cleanth  Brooks  Medal  from  the  Fellowship  of  Southern
Writers in 2005. He resides in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Document Outline