Back to Nature 1

Van Dyke and the gig.

Though the appointment book breaks off, and the journal has yet to take up the tale, I did turn in my materials, play my final juries and graduate. My studies with Hugo Norden came to a respectful end. Smith had been to the Eventworks Concert and his praise for the "Homefires Fantasy" was faint, but, coming from him, most welcome. He wanted to know why I didn't play it myself.
"It's a bit over my head, Mr. Smith."
"Yes, I s'pose it is."
He said this with a big grin on his face. I was touched that he'd shown up. He was out of his element in that auditorium full of crazies. I think he left after the Gharabekian.

As for the piano Jury, after it was over, I walked out into the street in the Spring of my final year, and, as had become a tradition after the nerve-wrack of the juries, I walked the perimeter of the town at a brisk clip. By the time I'd get back to my crib, the sun would be setting, I'd be sweating, and my head would be clear. The ZaZen.

I must have just squeaked by. I never had to do anything dramatic with the knowledge that the Dean was fucking Anderson Lee. Perhaps that wouldn't have worked anyway. But both of those men bent over backwards (well...not quite that far!) to see me off into the world with a diploma.

I remember, in the last week, taking that elevator ride with Gianini.
"Hi, Cal! It's Cal, right?"
"Yep. Yes, sir. Cal Hunter."
"So...Cal...have you given some thought to your plans after graduation?"
"Yes. I was thinking of maybe hiking the Appalachian Trail."
"My. That sounds adventurous. But I meant your work plans."
"You mean do I have a gig lined up?"
"Well, I thought you might consider a career. In Insurance."
We arrived at our floor. Over the many intervening years, I still find this insulting.

On graduation day, I had my mortarboard and my parents. In the photos, I look absolutely disheveled and dazed. My one solid plan was about to disintegrate.

Justin played the organ at the diploma-granting ceremony. He played some of the usual stuff, but as a recessional, in front of all of those parents and the rest of us, he smooshed out some clusters and uncorked a sick number from Albright's "Organ Book II."

Van Dyke and I had babbled about hiking the Appalachian Trail when school got out. The "AT" as it is known, stretches 2181 miles from Mount Katahdin in Maine to Springer Mountain in Georgia. To hike it all at once is called 'thru-hiking the trail.' Otherwise you're doing a sectional, or casual hike. I'd done my share of its woodland ways both as a weekender and as a sectional. Dan and I babbled about doing the whole thing in a thru-hike. The iChing had given us its apparent imprimatur. The usual way is start at Springer Mountain in Georgia in mid-May and end up on top of Mount Katahdin in Maine as far down the river of time as it takes you to do it. There are logistics. Food and supplies must be arranged for and packed. At 2181 miles, it takes time. The amount of time depends on your speed and what nature and fate dish out along the way. Records are continually being set, but we weren't thinking about records. The average thru-hike takes 5-7 months. We had between Mid-May and whenever, but I suspect we were aiming at a three to four month sprint. We were young and our ZaZen was at its zenith. (Even so, only 15-29 percent of the hikers that register in Georgia as thru-hikers report completion. This number has oscillated over the years.) Part of the babble was about the South to North or North to South option. We were closer to Katahdin than Springer. We could have planned to start in the summer heat of early June and hike south into the warm southern autumn. I had no other fixed plans. I was easy. Justin had the better packer gear. My stuff was ramshackle and still back in DC.. We babbled about mailing ourselves boots. It seems dubious to me, given the information now available on the Wiki that we could have pulled it off. Not in the casual way Van Dyke liked to plan.

It was a moot point. Van Dyke got a gig in some hot shit band in need of a replacement on the keys. A gig is a gig, so off he went on tour.

I decided, as a reward for all of that pointless babbling, to do a section as a solo. I can hear Justin now, as I recall it:
"I can't go."
"...(crestfallen look)..."
"But that's not to stop you. Just do it solo."

It was going to be a larger section than I'd ever attempted before. Van Dyke lent me his gear as a sort of consolation prize, having deprived me of his company and the prospect of a two thousand mile babble. This would not have been your stroll around the Fenway, folks. This would have been like a scene in Deliverance (Jame's Dickey's novel about machismo and foolishness), and about who was Burt Reynolds and who was Jon Voight. Thanks to the New Lost City Rambers for the deprivation; given what we've seen of Van Dyke and his effect on my judgement, that might have been, well, hopeless. Maybe. Who knows?

The solo hike.

And with this, I commenced my Journal. A brown cardboard covered 80 sheet spiral notebook that began with a packing list for a backpacking trip. The journal was Stevie's idea.
"You should keep a journal. You don't think your life is interesting?"
A curious way to put it. A backpacker thinks of keeping the weight down. But I'm glad I took that journal. And kept it. For 40 years.

[The journals no longer exist, or have not come to light. Given the Great Collapse, and the shuffling of much paper and loss of "data" - the "bits and bytes" meaning of this term is apocryphal, all vanished like the wind - these things are likely lost forever. But we -they- have these wikis and blog transcriptions. We -they- know that Hunter took his childish scriblings and thought well enough of them to lift them out, facelift them up, and blog them in his fictional memoir. But 40 years! That's a lot we have left to learn of. Even for the third person and the omniscient narrator, that's a lot that we can't know or see.] 

I've tired of transcribing lists.

I packed my pack and hiked around town with it on to test the fit. I tweaked it. It weighed about 44 pounds. It included Justin's two man tent. I stopped by the garage with it on. The others wanted to try it out.
"That thing is heavy!"
I felt the ego being stoked. I was going to put that thing on and head out into the wilderness of Massachusetts.

I decided, since Justin wasn't going and I was going to attempt an actual solo trip of some duration, breaking all my prior records, I'd better scale my planning down to something I could really do without dying trying. I'd skip heading up to Katahdin or down to Springer. Instead, I'd take a bus directly west to the Berkshires and start walking in the direction of New York, ie., south. I'd traverse Connecticut alongside the Housatonic River. (I'd be walking beside the scene of that great score of Ives in my boots, stocking up on alpha waves.) I'd graze the western edge of New Hampshire (pron., 'new hampsha'). I'd end up just Northwest of Manhattan in Harrison State Park, on Bear Mountain. I'd take the train in to New York City, hang out with the Nestlings, then beat it back to Boston on the train. Furthermore, the Cal Hunter planning committee (of one) decided that I wouldn't be a purist, a 'white blazer.' Some hikers of the AT make a point of not getting off the trail. The trail is marked by white blazes painted on trees and the like, anything suitably phallic or visible. In rocky areas, the blazes are underfoot on rock. It's the swampy areas where the blazes cannot be made permanent or visible; it's in these areas where one can go astray. You need to take a compass. (These days a GPS and some batteries.) Blue blazes mark the side trails, which head off to lean-tos - the three sided shelters provided and maintained by the clubs and marked on the maps, campsites (though any clearing can serve for back country camping), and roads which lead to towns. The purist, or those trying to make good time, will avoid these or use them only to avail themselves of the shelters.

The shelters, by the way, have their own logs invariably, in which hikers leave their marks, record their pithy observations, piss and moan, tell their tales of woe and joy.

[Cal did all of this, certainly, besides keeping his private journal. These logs are not all lost. The authorities did not chase the citizens into the hills, and the citizens did take to the hills. There was warring on the old trails, of course, but the practice of communal journaling never vanished. At first the citizens had their little electronic devices that connected them to their networks. They noted in the lean-to logs, which began to accumulate appendices, the onslaught of the Great Collapse. Over time, those inclined to journal took to preserving these collections. This is how we - they - Eve and Number Three - know what they came to know.] 

It was my intention to avail myself of the blue blaze trails to re-supply in towns. My maps told me where the towns were nearest the trail heads.

The day came, June 14, 1977, when I boarded the bus for the Berkshires, with pack. It was a one way ticket, yeah. (Beatles song.) I had some time to kill at the bus station in Springfield, so I journaled. I described how it came to pass that I'd ditched the Cal Crib and moved in with Laird and Lucy. I only describe the effort to bring the place up to my own personal code, which is funny because I didn't think I had one a few chapters back. I don't describe the reason I moved out. Perhaps it was because Lucy went with Laird on the road, and somebody needed to hold down the fort in Boston. So I went on a housekeeping bender. Having done that, I headed for the bus. Presumably someone looked after the shadowy figures hinted at in the background: the long suffering cat population. Azu?

From this, I wing right in to another sex scene. I tell the tale of our sexcapade and love duet, hinting at the sequence of events prior to the final, last call of nature as the curtain fell. I had that habit of trotting up those stairs to the lair of the dykes for a bowl or two (or three) and chess. Zandra wasn't always around. She had the rhythm of her day/night job at Westland Foods and sometimes travelled. This left the henhouse unguarded, and me and Azu alone. We'd play a game of chess, talk of books, play records. We spoke distractedly of siblings and our past. On one such night, with Zandra gone, Azu spoke of being bored with the dominatrix. Slow on the up take, I stared into her big brown eyes. She took my hand and held it. I wondered what was on her mind.
"I propose we have an affair. I'm...I need an antidote for boredom."
"An affair as a pick me up?" 

She smiled. Her response was to move her hand from mine to the mop on my head. She got down on the floor before the chair I sat in, and I let my fingers explore her wild mane. At length she got back up. She knelt beside me, and kissed me. I kissed back. I fought back my tide of guilt. I wished I had a condom. I didn't want to be a father. When the record ended, she stood up. She took my hand and led me to the bedroom. Following, following, always following. She undressed quickly. I followed suit, disrobing. We kissed again. Not a word did she say about birth control. I lowered myself into bed beside her, following, following. She again took the initiative; I became aware that I was following and felt ashamed, a little, of my timidity. It read in my head as a certain detachment; isolation. Love the one you're with. I would have loved to take great pains and time to arouse her, know that she wanted me very much, and finger fuck her to climax. I vowed to do this next time, if there was a next time. The woman had other plans. She felt my cock for a moment, as if to assess the state of the affair. She had seen me undress; she knew that I was ready. Now she knew I was really ready, and she moved me over and lay atop me, anointing me with her oils. I was under her freaking out. Is she at all worried about pregnancy? She must know her clock well. Soon, she moved up slightly and took the bull by the horns. She guided and I glided. At this she gasped. She began to move in rhythm. I followed for awhile then slowed. She slowed along with me. As I lay still, waiting to make love stay as long as it might stay, she climbed off and turned away. She was soon asleep.

I soon retreated, as I relate in the Springfield bus station, confessing to my journal, and also to posterity (if there is one for me), to the parlor where we had sat. I took my clothes in tow. I dressed, save for a single sock... into which I poured the excess of my emotion.

I joined her in bed in the morning, but she very soon got up and dressed. I pondered the meaning of all of this, but could only come up with 'what the fuck?'

I eventually arrived at the place on the highway where the blue blaze crossed the road. I clambered off the bus in the late summer afternoon, and walked back to the spot. I found the blaze and the trail head and entered the woods. So green, so dark, so full of whispered promise! But I had work to do, and 'miles to go before I sleep.' It was a late start and I needed to find a place to camp before darkness fell. The first order of business was a climb.

Later, writing by flashlight in Justin's two man tent, I bitched about wanting to ditch the tent. Now that it was all set up and my sweat had dried, I was glad of its weight.

But hours earlier in life, as I scrambled up the hill and away from civilization, I found myself pouring sweat. I was soon soaked and panting. All that Za Zen! How could I be so out of shape? (I hadn't been doing step aerobics.) I began singing work songs at the top of my lungs as an energy mantra (drill, ye tarriers, drill), but then I found the white blaze, the AT proper, and entered into another steep, rocky climb. I decided to jettison my official flight plan and just get to the top of the hill and look for a place to camp. I was carrying the full weight, and some of that was water in a canteen. I would use these potables up, and eat my trail mix. But the damned tent, which weighed a lot, was not getting any lighter.

I found my clearing. Exhausted and hungry I set up the tent. Cooked some freeze- dried soup. I smoked a bowl, and broke out the flute. (Yes, I took a wooden flute. Very Thoreauvian.) The pipe worked well enough as an insect repellent while lit, but once I traded it for the flute, my abend-musik (evening music) was interrupted by a pack of blood-thirsty, music hating mosquitoes. I conclude, as I write by flashlight in the tent, away from the buzzing crowd that bite, despite the fact that battery power is a limited resource in need of conservation, that I need to get the hang of the little camp stove. (Van Dyke's Optimus 8.) "Fuckin' shit!" is not the ideal incantation to use for heating up a cup of water. It did work, though. I got it lit on the third try.

"Good night, sweet woods. I'll see you tomorrow, early."

Back to Nature 2

Calbraith Hunter, Acid Art, ex. 8

2.

My next report, June 15th, 1977, from the Mount Wilcox Lean-to, near Tyringham, Massachusets, describes the first full day of hiking, an effort to make up lost time and get back to the game plan.

I felt so guilty about creeping up steep slopes, puttering up slight grades "like a ninety-two year old athlete making a comeback," and guzzling my water! I was very concerned about hitting my mileage targets, about maybe securing a roof over my head as opposed to stars or tent. (The lean-tos are very appealing. Fellow hikers congregate there, and humanity offers friendship and other benefits.)

Did I stop to look at what I was walking in or on? The New England forests are resplendent in their robes of green and amber, with shafts of white and brown. The smell of the forrest is of musts and freshets, with the occasional tang of dung. The woods are sonically alive also, with rustles representing wildlife, and the birds all around, not to mention the insect life zooming in to both sing in your ear and make you swat.

The rhythm of the hike varies with the terrain. Climbing makes the arms swing out for balance. Descending and they are again in opposition to keep all one's weight above one's center of gravity. On the flat stretches, on the ridges, when one's work is done for a while, the pace is a steady swing, varying in tempo depending on one's mood or psychology from saunter to lope. As I say, I was in the mood to lope. Still, even though one can only take in so much "beauty of nature," and after you've established that, yes, you're out in the woods on a hike and your mind turns to other things, the path I walked was a cathedral of glory which I prayed to in my boots.

The journal records a certain amount of confusion about the mileages and the milestones. The fact of the historical matter is that I reached my destination way early. I took a lot of stuff on this hike, all of it deemed essential to my purposes as a biological organism and as an artist, but I seem to have forgotten my watch. I sat down in the aforementioned "glory of nature" still wet from my triumphant exertion, and described my itinerary and progress to the journal. I was able to do this because, as I describe the scene, the sun is nowhere near "busting its chops" to set. Though that great yellow orb is on the second half of its daily arc, I judge it to be no later than two thirty in the afternoon. Maybe three, at the latest.

I launch into a description of the source of my anxiety about my location on the planet: I hiked into a town (Tryingham is very near the trail) to mail my post cards. "Greetings from effing nowhere!" I had a batch of ten, all addressed to the various members of the cast of characters, now all spread out all over the place doing their living large. A woman in her front yard in that town told me, guessing, that it was ten thirty in the morning. Then, I met a fellow hiking north who told me that I could expect to run into a fire tower two miles further on. I was expecting a hike of some seven miles to reach my destination, the lean-to. Well, the dude's distance judgment was way off on the under side, because I hiked and hiked, no fire tower to be seen. I couldn't figure out why that two miles was going so slowly! I picked up the pace, walking at a trot like a mouse on a wheel. Whumpity, whumpity. I met another fellow also hiking north, and he said,
"oh yeah. That fire tower is about two miles off!"
"Hey," I thought, "this thing doesn't go any faster."
I'm judging distance now by degree of shoulder cramp.
If I couldn't make my day's quota over and over, I'd be late for the party in New York.
That I was actually, um, walking to.
But BOOM. There was the fire tower. Which I had to climb.
Ah! The beauty of New England! I look out at the spread of green in the afternoon light for about five minutes. Then BOOM, down I go. Gotta book it!
Just on the other side of the fire tower mountain, there was the lean-to.

The evening and the morning were the second day. The next: Jug's End, 14.5 miles hence.

No one else was at the lean-to. I slept the sleep of the damned tired.

3.

On my third day out, I had the epiphany that I was seeking. I was shaping up fast. I'd been eating and drinking down my supplies and my load was lighter. I had slept late, and arrived late at the Jug's End spring. I had walked into a beautiful sunset, and was suddenly filled with peace and harmony. My life was exactly as I wanted it to be. I was free, and out on the trail. The questions that had been troubling me now resolved; it was a cadence in the key of optimism. I had my gifts, of that I was sure. I had the need to employ them with those that had nurtured (and tolerated) me all along. I'd walk on to New York and persevere with the ballet score. Perhaps Rod and Xenia would stage a premier down the road. Perhaps, on the other end of this hike, a career would be launched.

[And that is how it happened.]

My thoughts turned also outward; a rarity. I thought of my place in the world, but also of the world's place in the cosmos. I thought of the cosmic scheme of things, of the dance of life and harmony within nature.

For the moment, I was safe in nature's arms. The Jug's End spring water tasted like it had flowed out of Eden and into my mouth. I filled my canteen to the brim. I spread my tent out on the naked earth and slept like a baby under the stars, lulled to sleep by the susurration of the rivulet.

The evening and morning were the third day.

I decided, the next morning, filled with the holy light, to walk only as far as the Massachusetts-Connecticut line. I would camp in Sage's Ravine.

Friday, June 17th, 1977.

I'm holed up in my tent, waiting out the rain. Even dinner was cancelled. I snacked that afternoon on trail mix. In my journal, to fill up the time, I plot the course of the rest of my week. The appointment book is back!

A fellow hiker, solo female, joined me in this clearing, and hastily pitched her tent. I poked my head out to see what the rustle of fabric was about as it blended in with the clatter of the rain on tent wall. She didn't look my way. She was a soggy monkey, close cropped hair. She disappeared inside her dome.

While I wrote, the rain stopped and the sun came out. Sunshine, girl, I'm going to pencil you in!

When I re-emerged to pack up, she was long gone. Those dome tents are easy up and down.

"All about me, in this thicket of flowering rhododendrons, laurel bushes, and the varieties of trees of all ages and therefore sizes, both conifer and deciduous, are the incredible patterns of nature. The patterns on leaves, the patterns of growth - above the timberline, as I saw that morning atop Mount Everett (no, NOT Everest!), scrub pines, and in the ravines, the tall pine stands, spruce groves, all exemplify and and parallel the repeating, yet endlessly varied patterns of nature. And yet! man - myself, a man - , is a part of of this pattern and within it. I can see the areas where men congregate and (I can see that) the types and varieties of men that congregate where they do as analogous to the ways in which every aspect of this forest is organized: within certain tolerances, random factors are the control element."

Thus writes our boy Cal, as he sits among the evergreens in the glade of inspiration. I let his ancient words stand. I could make it shorter, but I can't make it sweeter.

[Thanks for not editing. We agree. Continue on...
please.] 


"This beauty of nature is a great solace to me. Its lushness, softness, capriciousness, and constancy; all paradoxes meet here. Discipline and impeccability make it possible to enjoy."

I got it that I had to have my shit together to do this. But I missed that the paradoxes can swamp the boat, kill the millions, and wipe out the civilization. Ah well, civilizations come and go. Do I think that I myself will live to see another day? I sometimes feel like someone is looking over my shoulder as I write. No, not just the Facebook feed, and the email thread, and the stats counter. It is the hot breath of what is to be. What becomes of us? Ashes to ashes, dust to dust? (Annie Lennox song.)

The evening and morning were the fourth day.

Saturday, June 18th, 1977. (His eventual wedding day, out in that distant island of time!)

Thundershower in the afternoon, again holed up in the tent. A spit away from his daily destination, where there is, it turns out, no lean-to, and no place to camp.

Sunday, June 19th, 1977.

Waking up to find the weather still overcast. "Everything, including myself, is wet. Onward."

4.

At Red Mountain LT in Connecticut.

"There was a lot more to Saturday than just the afternoon and evening thunderstorm, although that was the main feature at the time I made my entries for that day."

I woke up in a very soggy tent that Saturday morning, having endured a night of heavy rain and the drama of thunder on the mountain. I packed up the sopping gear and climbed to the highest point in Connecticut. "Four hundred feet," proclaimed the geological survey marker atop the trapezoidal cement tower. The tower itself was 50-60 feet high, and that, of course, had to be climbed. Which I did, as soon as I put down my pack and took off my eyeglasses.

Three people had spent the night on this peak: a fellow, his friend, and the friend's girl friend. The fellow allowed as how he'd been up the tower many times, and that the hard part was getting down. I found it not that hard, unless muscle tension threw off the balance. The friend and his girl climbed the tower after me, bringing me my flute and my eyeglasses. The fellow on the ground called up that you could see New York, Connecticut and Massachusetts from up there. The view I saw was apolitical, lacking the markings of the map, and partly shrouded in a mist.

The next part of my trek was joyous. I forgot I had my pack on and I caught up with the boy scout troop I'd been hearing about for the past two days. They were sprawled all over the road where the AT comes out off Lion's Head and onto the farmhouses and residential area going down into Salisbury.

In Salisbury, I bought the groceries I needed and had a milkshake at the local ice cream parlor.

The afternoon's hike was "not as breezy"as the morning's. (I'd added weight in town.) I mused often (to myself) how true it was that Connecticut was 'scenic.' But the woods were dark, this afternoon, and underfoot a mix of rich black earth alternated with a mix of pebbles, boulders and pine needles. This characterized the ground over which I hastened.

The storm broke right after I encountered a man out on a day hike - a scientist from Yale working on particle physics research - and I hiked in the rain with him down to his car, where we took shelter. We sat in his car munching cherries and chocolates, exchanging occasional comments, but the conversation was stiff and never took wing. He drove me to where the trail took off into the mountains again. I spent the late afternoon scrambling up a slippery, rocky mountainside.

Sunday was exquisite. The woods dried out. I walked to Red Mountain and crashed with two fellows that kept me chuckling - one a thru-hiker GAME (Georgia to Maine) named Jim, and the other an ex-army working man bad-assed-nice-guy fellow who called me Ken, and whose own name I forgot.

The evening and the morning were the next couple of days.

Monday, June 20th, 1977.

Picnic table just past Mohawk 1 LT, Connecticut.

"Approaching Cornwall. I'll mail the next back of the post cards, "greetings from the mastery man," in that town. A gorgeous day. No clouds, birds singing, hot sun, pleasant breeze. Dig it! Gotta move on now."

I was entering into the heart of the heart. We'd been poring over the scores of Charles Edward Ives, and had been to 'symphony' to hear the concert. But I was fast approaching the river, the Housatonic. Ives' great orchestral set, the "Housatonic at Stockbridge" lingered in my young ears and mind. In the "Essays Before a Sonata," Ives wrote his heart out about getting the art out. The magic, the excitement of a home run (insert team and ballpark here) can't be expressed 'by a nice fugue in C major.' Yes, but the 'grandeur and simplicity of the New England Church' could. What was I walking through, if not the grand, simple New England church of woodland wonders? How did Ives express the Housatonic? How far away was Stockbridge? The Ives piece, the final section of the third orchestral set "Three Places in New England," sets a poem by Robert Underwood Johnson. 

"Contented river! In thy dreamy realm--
The cloudy willow and the plumy elm:"...

Not so far that I can't hear in mind's ear that dreamy score that rises from the mists into wedges of dense sound (and fury), the struggles of humanity to harness nature to its ways and means. In so doing, the connection between humankind and its benefactor and host has become lost to the mind of those who toil on heedlessly, endlessly, needlessly. In that disconnect lie the seeds of a downfall, a disappointment. Ahead, for mankind, lies disaster. For this nature, this river, this forest will only exist in placidity for so long. Every rustle just out of earshot marks another being waiting to pounce, waiting to either outlast the human throng or go extinct. And mankind, at the top of the food chain, thinking itself not atop, but astride and in control, is sawing away at the trunk furiously, soon to fall. And, just as in the Ives score, the river will reemerge, placidly flowing out from under that welter of dissonance. Nature, a part of which man also is, is designed to throw off the offending burdens and right itself. Into the discard pile we will go. 

...Ah! There's a sensitive ripple, and the swift
Red leaves--September's firstlings--faster adrift;..

[He's speaking the truth here, plainly and without error. Isn't that what you seek, Third person? An awareness in the artist that something is amiss? Eve, do you not love this man now all the more for what he knew while walking, before all of that writing? Has there not been some progress made here? A pilgrim's progress? Is this not the prodigal son heading home? Or is it just some twenty year old on the way to a party?] 


Eve of Brattleboro butts in as editrix: 

He camps tonight in a pleasant grove of pines... No, my husband says, let the man have his say! He is not a finished writer yet, not the voice he will become, but here he arrives at the crux of his stroll, strolling in a time before our present time of endless strolling. Let us relish this snapshot of the years before the Collapse! We have so few, so very few, to go on!

"Tonight's camp is beside the river in a pleasant grove of pines. Played my flute and am smoking a bowl of tobacco. I've decided not to hike down to Bear Mountain. All hikers who've been through the New York and New Jersey sections say that it's mostly paved interstates and backwoods logging roads, mixed with an occasional tract of woodland. That means, then, that wherever that lean-to might be (Mountain Brook), from there it's only 25.7 miles to Pawling, where I now plan to take the train into New York City."

This meant abandoning for the most part the regimen of the day's hike and lazing around for a few days, enjoying the last few mountainous areas before the suburban sprawl to the south. I smoked my pipe. I played my flute, I took in the beauty all around me. I contemplated rather than exerted. I dropped my pace to a saunter. It was a fitting way to finish this trek. I confess I missed my friends in New York and longed to be there with them. They were my past; but also, they were my future. To the outstretched arm of my destiny I now began to stroll. I was looking back over my shoulder to the life in Boston that had formed me (or at least informed me), and to that life I would briefly return for its coda. But the journey I was on had a destination and I was taking it step by step, not in much of a hurry to be out of the woods. I always loved the woods. I still do.

The evening and the morning were the seventh day, on which he rested.

[Presumably, Cal dawdled the rest of the week, taking that time to camp out and walk the 25.7 miles to Pawling. It would not do to be in New York too soon, as the party there had a date certain. There is an apocryphal story that Hunter used to like to tell of being stuck on a stretch of suburban road for hours by a snarling cur that was guarding its turf. It came running up and sat before him, down on haunches, fangs bared, growling its warning. Cal was forced to put down his pack and wait. Each time he picked up the pack to move forward, the dog commenced again to snarl. This standoff lasted the better part of an afternoon. Eventually, the owner of the dog returned and put the animal inside. The owner was a comely Up State New Yorker, her summer dress wrapping the willows of her form and her tresses flowing down her back, neck and covering her breast. She smiled beautifully and broadly at the now bearded and sweat-stained man who smelled of wood smoke and male musk. She was guarded solely by her dog. She invited him in, promising to draw him a bath. She quaintly bowed and curtseyed. Keeping her eyes on him all the while. In fact she could not help but keep an eye; she could not look away. It was as if she were seeing a ghost. Cal himself felt the hair stand up on the back of his neck. If this were Eve, he'd never know it. If this were Guinnevere, it was David Crosby's woman, and he'd best be getting on. She had her dogs and cats, and this was not his yard. There was death up ahead, just around the corner. Not just for her, but for all who sauntered here. This was where Hunter saw the future and it chilled him to the bone. Although he told often of the dog, he never spoke of the woman.]

The Curtain Falls Part 1

Calbraith Hunter's Journal, edited by the Third Person and Eve 
Editor's note: it seems the appointment book was insufficient and Hunter took to journaling. The document contains a jumble of entries, some exceedingly mundane. The treasures in the mud are telling. He doesn't make a scholar's work easy.

Sunday, July 3, 1977

Heidi came by for breakfast this am. Pancakes, tea. She’s gotten to a fairly low energy level working all but two days of the week at Pine and Print in the Prudential Center. Muzak blues have got her down. Well sir, we frisbeed not far from where I burnt to a crisp writing (last entry), reading (“Dune”) and sunning (plus trop!) in the fen-park across from the Museum of Fine Arts. She initiated me into the charming, delightful, etc., Rose Garden, and we kept up a marvelous rapport all morning. I did a lot of inspired babbling, anyway. Returned to 60 Fenway, blew some dope, lapsed into finger twining, stroking. Like bringing a cat out of a hiding place – (brute force only turns it into a spastic fur ball) – Heidi reacted favorably to gentle patient stroking etc., [note:  the writer is only able to try one technique per sitting]. Invested so much energy, (I) slept ‘til Laird and Jimmie woke me at 4:30…

July 4

Black men walking on ball bearings own this jungle street.
Wanna love my white skin and the green American blood
Money right out of my
Allotted six cubic feet of body space.
Pimps, harlots, junkies
Of assorted national origins
Have their fingers in the great cheesecake
And I have the cakewalk blues…

July 8

Last night Kaji Aso told us that Pragmatism was nonsense. What this means is uncertain, and most likely it means nothing. He asked if all men are different and I tossed out the remark that we’ll never know. (Solipsism.) It didn’t bring down the house, but it felt good to say.

The music. Good experience.
We read “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and the Vivaldi  d minor concerto – which I know as Bach’s a minor transcription for four harpsichords. (“A fresh batch of Vivaldi manuscripts roasting in the fireplace.”) Pretty piss-poor music making, but nevertheless rewarding. Some progress was being made. In any case, I discovered that I can sight read well enough to enjoy myself. Why haven’t I been involved in this sort of thing from the beginning? I’ll go back next week, or before. Two pianos at the studio and much valuable experience to be gained.

July 15
NYC

stoned stoned stoned
and staring at the guitar
the accompaniment is the muted mechanism
of vehicles and tools
men at work
New York City cranking itself up again
For another grizzly day
The guitar is troubling me
The lady is asleep
Yet it bears mute testimony
To the spirit of song’s antidote
The space shot clock
Lies and so does the genie on the roof
But I taught the one facing her
To sing the correct hour.

July 20
Penn Station, NYC

Waiting for the train to Boston, about to resume my trip north for the last time in awhile. These are the as advertised final days in old Beantown. They will center, if plans hold up, around nostalgic re-visits of old haunts, plus a few new things.  (Azu?)

The moon boils my blood and I'm horny as hell. It took some doing to control my desire for Jimmy France and Xenia. But they are weird sisters and I a weird brother.

I dream of Heidi. Oh, if only she would suddenly give up on clinging to a misunderstood mish-mash of Yoga and Zen, her fear of ruining it for a non-exisitant Mr. Right, or even a ‘right moment!’ I’ve known her to turn down many a ‘right moment.’ Not ‘right’ enough, I guess. Only twenty-two days to go, and not enough time to start from scratch. I’ll have to be clever and charming, forget about it, and jerk off. (Azu? A more sophisticated form of jerking off? Mutual masturbation?)

July 23
(Working at the Westland Avenue Parking Garage.)
This is it, the famous as advertised last night of “Pops” (Boston Pops, the popular music summer program given by the BSO under Arthur Fiedler.) – no more concert business beyond this point. No more 8:30-10:00 PM breaks for Brigham’s (ice cream) and homework and bullshit. Just six hours every night of pure low energy garage sitting. Maybe I’ll get to work the car wash some, what an eye-rolling thrill. Slept really late today – ‘till 3:00 PM, productive trance state working mentally over the ballet scenes. Went to visit the dykes at 5P, smoked a joint and a half mostly by myself. How my cells thanked me for satisfying their desire for dope! Well. Not quite that dramatic.

Zandra told me all about her troubles at the Westland Food Shop, says she can’t hack getting more than one set of orders. I tried to be supportive. Perhaps she can turn this situation to her advantage, I opined. Lord knows, though, Lamont Dixon (the garage foreman with the John Wayne swagger) has got me hoppin’ mad from time to time. Azu came home from work at 5:10 or so, talked about her hot day of frame and mounting peddling at the art supply shop (Open Door on Boylston). Smoked dope pretty heavily.

I came into work pretty buzzed, grabbed the broom and took a seat over by the car wash. Soon Lamont noticed me and cracked up. I stood and solemnly named myself King Make-a-buck-or-two of the car wash, sweeping my arms dramatically to indicate the extent of my domain. Soon Steve came over and leaned on the control box. Then Alpo sat down in front on the floor, with Lamont moving in closer, but still standing off to the side.

I commenced a big speech (seeing as how I now had an audience) about the psychological and genital goo binding Z and A together. I didn’t expect that it would last more than a few more years. Lamont’s bass voice interjected, “’till they get out of school!” This brought down the house and ended my public speaking engagement. All of this is a deflection, a way of letting the air out of the balloon slowly, lest it pop. I feel very guilty about that particular 'affair.' I wish Zandra no ill. Plus, if she catches me out, she'll likely tear my eyes out. Azu is, it seems to me, very careful about her revelations, about her presentations, and about her public affect. It may have been a fluke, that evening of steamy lust overcoming her (not coming over her)! It also deflects the facts of the matter from the prying interest of Stevedore, whose interest in Azu is also manifest. But that dude is married! (Does that ever seem to really matter much? It's a sexual zoo out there!)

July 25

A busy few days. Kicked off the doldrums season at the garage by working well and easily on the first forty-five bars of music for the new ballet. Ripped off an eight pack of Pepsi from the back room of the inner sanctum.

Went out to Molly’s Irish Pub with Harrison Saturday night.

Sunday, I survived another chapter in the Flighty Heidi tale – another bemused failure. I’m looking in the wrong basket for my eggs in this case. Two meals, some ball throwing, Aso scene back biting, sex talk, dope, and she danced and lecture/demo’d about energy levels. I really wanted to make passionate love to her, at last, after all this time, once and for all. But she climbed into an upside-down asana, her breasts flowing against her arms, her head serene and well-placed, her buttocks skyward, her perfect callipygian beauty making me tremble like a leaf, unable to move or even breathe. No ping, no ida, just frozen solid with the ache of desire. She has so much on display, whether she likes it or not, knows it or not. Does she know? If she does, she’s deliberately killing me with torturous teasing. If she doesn’t, I’m at some weird museum, looking at a glass case marked ‘do not touch.’ The ache of my desire spreads out, makes my abdomen ache, makes my legs ache, makes my head ache. It is all I can do to speak. I can’t speak. Speech is way up there, up in the upper air, above the water line. I have drowned. Did she say good-bye? When I came to my senses, it was to the sound of water dripping in the kitchen. Heidi was long gone. I realize that I can never spend another minute alone with this woman again. I don’t have the courage.

Spent this day hanging out with Azu. We went square dancing in Copley square in the evening. In the afternoon, we had chess. I blew another one, due to very poor concentration.  I lost my position and my queen. Studied Ninkovich to dig myself out of this chess morass. I’m hooked now, I may as well try to win a game. Azu's big brown eyes have met my blue gaze back. Neither of us can look away. She takes my hand. She leads me to her bedroom. I follow, follow, follow. She, the zipless fuck, is out of her jeans and reclining in bra and panties. I keep my clothes on, my arousal straining at the fabric. I lay down beside her, and those long fingers of mine find the wellspring of her desire. After a time, she arches her back. We are together in silence in the twilight. The twilight moves on to gloom. Her chest rises and falls. At length, she reaches for my buckle. I help her out with this. I ask,
"are you sure?"
She nods.
She guides my hips and helps me find the way. I am still, just being.
In a moment she gasps.
Come again?
She pushes me away, and turns to the wall.
I need to be assured that she's ok, not weeping.
She's asleep.
I pad out, grabbing my pants.
In the other room, I pause in the dark with a sock.
This is the way out. The only way.
The second time is a repeat of the first, and not a charm.

July 27

Played some Frisbee w/Justin in the fen park today. Flighty Heidi ran by, and waved her fingers. On the second time by, she asked us to join her. When we refused she acted disgusted. Justin is, as usual, poker-faced. 

July 28

Does Heidi (Flighty Heidi) realize how chaste we really are? How basically and beautifully faithful and monogamous and even traditional we all are? Maybe it’s just me! I am guilty about every impulse. I'm determined to record here, accurately, just how lost I am. If she’s a Flighty Heidi, I’m in fucking fear of flying. I stroke and pet until the woman arches her back and gasps, or grant her every wish as zipless guiltless fuck, and then I slink off into the other room, wait for sleep's signal to float in on snores from the bedroom I’ve abandoned. When the woman is asleep, I beat off into a sock. Within our agreed upon understandings and expanded notions of the ethics of attraction, we are faithful to ourselves - however we line up (or don't line up) with the morality of our parents. William Burroughs this just ain’t.

Heidi runs by again. We’re knee deep in Frisbee tossing. I think of another day, earlier in the Spring. I saw Heidi out on her run. Why she’s still even speaking to me, I’ll never know. The Walden Pond thing would’ve been it for me. Instead, though, she comes running up smelling all blonde and clean, and says “boy, running sure loosens my bowels. It’s better than coffee!” In some part of my head, where the bell is not keening, I think that the correct response to this is to offer to let her use our toilet. But Heidi is already running off, grinning, yelling, “gotta run!” I’m sure, now, that she means that literally. I’m once again speechless. I’m staggering on shaking knees back to my little shit hole basement apartment.

How did this whole thing, that had such promise in the beginning, go so badly off the rails?

July 29

Kaji Aso’s was particularly rewarding, the Flighty Heidi aside. (She was in a bad mood, announced that she was tired, and said she wanted to play the Gershwin.) I played the ‘cello part. I have already forgotten the name of the piece, actually. It is an ‘easy’ composition, rhythmically vital, part of the posthumous catalog, a compositional experiment.

At break, I made several comments relating to what was said, but my remarks did nothing to tie loose ends together. One woman, in particular, was very tired of the endless “pragmatism, morality, goals, ethics” discussion. It has, in fact, gone on the entire time I’ve been hanging out at Kaji Aso’s. Well, no big deal. I’m going to NYC next week, and so will have to say goodbye to all of this.

[Ed. Note. This entry is almost, but not quite the last mention of Heidi Walker in the journals. She called Hunter in Sioux City, Iowa in late January of 1978. (Vii. P47.) She proposed coming out to Sioux City and doing a life-sized sculpture of Xenia. He sarcastically remarks that she was likely to “prick-tease” the rest of the 'nestlings,' but that she was always welcome, if only for a few days. It apparently never happened.  Did he hear from her again for the many years betweeen this journal entry and the later "blog?" There is no evidence that he did. ]

August 1

After all, what was I doing here but showing her the marks in my hands and the wound in my side, that she might marvel at my half erection? It is another pitiable attempt to soothe a very sore spot, to confront the most confusing and vital aspect of the other world. I pass an afternoon of almost tangible torpor. She has something to say, but no. It slips back, unsaid. Grant me the composure to at least contain the unspeakable. No, nothing unspeakable here, simply nothing to say. She is no great prize by the world’s yardstick. She is thick at the waist, hair in sweat-soaked ringlets, eyes staring out of a small, angular face, measuring my strength and bearing with unblinking gaze. A rivulet inches spasmodically down my back, bespeaking my ache, the dull heat and the longing that brings no peace. Let the axe of lust fall where it must.

A splash of fiction, aimed at parsing the episodes with Azu.

August 2
Westland Garage, evening.

The moon on the wane, the past twenty-four hours have been a smoking piece of time. Carl Jung kept me up until 4:30 AM the morning of the first, doughnuts and milk until 5:30. A sleepless night. Combination of factors: humid, hot weather, insomnia, pure fascination with the book itself: “Memories, Dreams, and Reflections.” Of particular fascination is the chapter on Jung’s meeting, friendship (or, more accurately affinity) and ultimate disillusionment with Freud…

To crank myself up for work on the car wash from 8 AM to 6 PM, I did an orange speed (amphetamine). The day crew and I held down the Lamontless (and at times overly Winstonful) fort. I began blowing coke bottles and tuned up a diatonic (seven-tone) scale with old Mr. Chen’s help as bottle washer and audience. Then I went straight back to the Jung.

Thunderstorm in the late afternoon. It shut down the car wash just in time for the speed to wind down, enough that I could appreciate nature's outburst, and the respite from nothingness that it offered. Bill and I smoked a joint right out in front, digging the sounds of rain and ‘grokking the scene in fullness.’ As soon as the roach was subdued, Steve arrived, and then Azu came by on her way home from work. At 6:10, I punched out, promised Steve I’d be back, and went up to the dykes’ for manic babble. Also on offer up at Z and A’s was more marijuana, and homemade Jewish good for cuts and bruises - and cases of the munchies – Chicken Soup, lesbian-style. Azu then prodded me into a game of chess. I was still smarting from the fifteen game beating I took opposite Steve Harrison. This time, facing the less experienced Azu Raveh, I won.  It was a weird game, though. I saved myself from a nearly fatal attack on my king with a sudden back rank mate. Very dramatic, a blessing, a relief to stop thinking for a moment and just look at A’s big brown eyes as a friend and sometime lover, not another chess fiend, but the whole game was miserably inefficient.

The Curtain Falls Part 2

August 4

So, after chess, I bade the dykes a good evening and ran down the yellow carpeted stairs at a brisk clip to re-join Steve in the Garage. I also wanted to get home for some dim reason. Perhaps I felt an urge to play the harpsichord for a while.  I had, after the afternoon joint with Bill and the obligatory joint upstairs with Zandra and Azu, had enough pot to stone St. Stephen. Steve, of course, wanted to smoke more. I was certain that more dope would turn me into a complete zombie. Another layer of anxiety concerned getting a phone call off to Mara Monetti. I wanted to see her just one last time. Mara’s line was busy. Steve went to the store for ice cream. The rain started up again. Shorty Zinn came in like the gray ghost that he is, for his usual evening shift, and set up a chair facing the gas pumps and the street. He lit his cigar.

A fellow and his family of six in a shit box pulled up to the pumps. I was not punched in, but I thought, “what the hell,” I’ll help out and pump it. Shorty said that he’d just as soon sit where he was, on account of the rain, and he’d be happy to watch me do it. So off I went, out into the drizzle, cocky, half-cocked, but fully crocked, maybe even totally cooked. Just so posterity is clear about my state of mind, I can declare that I was no longer really in Massachusetts.

The dude in the driver’s seat seemed to have a dark complexion in the glare of the mercury vapor light and rain, and he was certainly in need of a shave. He didn’t strike me as the sort of person who was going to buy a lot of gas at Winston’s “low gas prices.” I asked him what he wanted, and I could have sworn he said, “fill it up.”
“Cash or Credit,” I ask
“Cash.”
“You know, sir, we’re pumping at 71.9 per! Is there a limit? Some people who’ve asked for a fill up stop at $10 when they realize the expense.”
He said, “no.”
Had I used the King’s English incorrectly in my dazed and confused state?
Did the dude even speak English? Well, he had said, “fill it up” without an accent.
So I filled his tank until the handle clicked. It came to thirteen bucks for eighteen point one gallons of no lead. I was thinking all the while, this guy is nuts. So I go to the driver’s side, out into the street and rain, and ask him for thirteen dollars. Please.
He hands me a five.
“Whoa! This is a five!”
“I said ‘four bucks.’
“No, you said, ‘no’.”
“Huh?”
“I asked you for the limit. You said ‘no’.”
“Four bucks,” he simpered.
“I need eight dollars more, or I’m gonna have to get my manager.”

A glance in the direction of the Garage, and I could see that Shorty, backlit in the big doorway, was now standing. He could see the deal going south. I looked down at the wet street and then back into the rolled down window of the beat-up dark green shit box car. A spark of panic shot visibly through the man; his wife began to fidget in her seat.

“There’s a big difference between ‘four’ and ‘thirteen.’ It comes to eight,” I say now, my voice developing a less certain tone.

I held out my hand for a moment, but I wasn’t getting through. The fellow looked distressed. He turned and spoke in an inaudible murmur to his wife. I could see that the kids in the back seat were asleep, stacked against each other like sacks of groceries. A family outing to the big city ran low on gas. Better ‘fill up’ before heading back out, or up, or down. He looked up at me, pleadingly, silently, one last time. I began to withdraw my outstretched hand. It had developed sort of a mind of its own. I felt my face flushed and hot. I was just beginning to tremble. Doing a lot of that lately. My hand, on its own orbit, was into my pants pocket, feeling around for…

…ah there it is! My wallet. Fishing it out of pocket. I have always kept it on my ventral side, with most of the bills in my shoe since I was pick-pocketed on the bus to/from Harvard square in year one of my education. It’s now in my hand, and I use the other hand to fish out a single. I now hand the single to the man. He takes the bill. He gives me a confused look.

“Your change sir,” I mumble. “Sorry about the confusion. You all, uh, have a good night.”

I step back, the car starts and pulls away rapidly. For just a moment there, I am Mark Twain. I have fucked up, I have made good. I am the guardian of civilization, of smooth relations between peoples, of harmony, understanding, truth, justice, and the American way. Only for a fleeting moment does this whole transaction make sense to me. Then: my head explodes with the realization that I now must walk back into the Garage and pay my employer for the gas I have just pumped. The books and the little numbers on the pump have to match up.

I yelled and cursed all the way down the floor to the register. Then I grabbed my time card and jammed it into the clock. Ca-chunk.

August  5

So. I bought some little weasel nine bucks worth of gas. I should have kept the whole five, or at least negotiated for it. There was an epilogue, a coda: Steve got back with his ice cream. I was still purple with rage. I still hadn’t gotten through to Ms. Menotti. I demanded a violent Frisbee game. "Let’s take some paint off ‘a some ‘o these nice cars." Steve balked, holding up the ice cream bag. I told him the story. I got a literal kick in the pants. Well, fuck! I paid for my mistake. My once-stocked wallet is now bereft of bills. Eight, nine bucks takes me four hours to earn in this joint. I simply couldn’t have done it otherwise with a clear conscience.  (Yet, I occasionally eat too much, smoke too much dope, sleep too late, and enjoy the company of women without any deep desire for real attachment. Which of the deadly sins are these?) Steve ate his ice cream. I was fairly cranky. I kept refusing the proffered pipe. I finally got through to Mara and we set up a meeting at her place for 1:30 PM on the sixth of August. Steve dragged me, literally, down the floor as I emerged from the office, and put the pipe to my lips. This guy is a starker! A big gorilla, a bear of a man! I sucked and blew meekly. We both allowed as how we must initiate a policy of writing to those we love. After some violent Frisbee throwing, I was unsure of my nature; animal, mineral or vegetable. I was sure of my fatigue and sour mood. I retired to my apartment after Lamont came in and broke up the party. Justin and Lucy were in the kitchen on their way to the bedroom. I crashed after satisfying my harpsichord urge some.

August 7

(I’ve now caught myself back up to yesterday. The time machine is still very warm.)

I got up early-ish (yesterday) to go to the bank, have coffee and a bowl with Justin, and a slice at Charlie’s. Then it was 1:30 and I was walking somewhat surreptitiously towards Mara’s. If my friends could see me now! They've all heard this song to death.

Mara had no intention of sitting with me alone in her apartment. What did I expect? We went out to Radcliffe Yard and saw the first half of a dance performance. Harvard was as muggy as the rest of the world, and the heat in the gymnasium where the performances were held was enough to wilt concrete. The dances themselves were varied. I recall the second and last ones only – the first choreographed by a member of Merce Cunningham’s company and the last piece, with music by Phoebe Snow, choreographed by the Gypsy Queen. The instructions in the programs indicated that the whole audience (about 100-150 people) was to get out of the gym and head for an adjacent theater for the next batch of works. I used this opportunity to split for work. It was 5:00 PM. An hour’s preparation would be better than a last minute scramble to get to the Garage. After the previous days’ nonsense, I was determined to go to work in a more focused state of mind.  I left Mara to join the rest of the audience in the cool of the theater, and called “see you later, then!” as I hurried down the corridor. I'll likely never see her again.

But let the record show that just being near that woman makes me high. She doesn’t blur the light like a Fresnel. She focuses the beam, like an ellipsoidal reflector. After four years of obsession and friendship, my first dancer is still my favorite. I cannot help that. Her illumination is undimmed. Losing the light of my life is difficult. I was able to tear off the band-aid in a single flash. Under the patch, there’s the pale skin and a thin, longish scar. I will never forget her.

Work turned out to be riveting…, one of the most elaborate confusion finales ever witnessed within the walls of the parking garage and car wash at forty-five Westland Avenue. It was about twenty minutes of pure Rossini-style razzle-dazzle.  So get comfortable in your seats. Get your opera glasses focused. Put that program in your lap, because the lights are dimming in the house, the orchestra is starting the overture, and the curtain is going up on…

“Jeff Takes a Hit”

Lamont, Steve and I began the evening with the usual banter, trips to Westland Foods, and other small tasks. Lamont left early, at about 7:35. Laird had called and asked about chess and Frisbee. I suggested that he grease the wheels and bring by a joint for Lamont. But Lamont had split by the time Laird arrived. I was playing, and losing, my sixteenth straight game of chess with Stevie. This ad hoc tournament had been played over the three separate nights that we had worked together of late. First Justin stopped by on his way to something or other, and then Laird showed up and began to pass around that J I’d asked him to bring. So much for working straight. All of this questionable activity was going on right up front with Mrs. Wilson, Hoover, or whatever Westland Ave.’s female guardian’s name is, looking on from her swank flat across the street. You could plainly see the curtain drawn back and the shades cracked a little.  This drew a sotto voce “she’ll tell Wilson anything” from Stevie, which was amplified later in the evening during our bull sessions. On this particular evening the topic was a freewheeling comparison of notes on the subject of “employees, mercenaries, ‘doing a good job,’ and ‘pushing karma around’.” But I’m getting ahead of myself. Then Justin joined us again, bearing a six of Budweiser. Beers were rapidly distributed. A second joint was passed around. Laird and Justin took a board in the office and played two speed games. Justin lost both. During these games, they smoked yet another doobie. Does this begin to seem a bit excessive? “Nothing exceeds like excess!”

My game was finally going in the right direction out front – my 18th against Harrison. God! How I longed for a win! But it's a game of skill, not chance. I just suck at chess. While we were playing, a pair of passing dudes challenged Steve to a game of chess. They were being very aggressive about it. One of ‘em, embarking on a vicious kibitzing campaign, leaned in over my shoulder for a moment, slammed his fist into his palm, and yelled, “I thought you knew how to play this game!” I had just lifted a piece to make a move. “Hey. What can I say,” I said, “he’s already beaten me seventeen straight!” I snapped my piece down on the board. “Check!”

One of the pair says “c’mon” to nobody in particular. His compatriot pivots around to Stevie’s side of the board, saying “he’d be back to whip somebody’s ass later.” A beauty in bright pink tights, a prostitute, in her late twenties, claims to be able to play. She stands close by, sputtering mildly about the game. Soon there is a small crowd gathered around watching us play. Stevie and I were both working on dispersing the crowd with subtle hints, trying hard not to damage a lot of the tender feelings concentrated in violent, armed street people. Our body language and put-offish replies to questions did the trick. But my concentration slipped – I fucked up and lost a much needed rook. It was downhill from there.

Al Poole’s wife called and asked me to remind Poole to bring home some ice. Was there even any ice left in the ice machine? There was. Justin and Laird emerged from the office. Laird sits down at the table where Stevie is clearing the gore and setting up the pieces again. Another opening commences. Justin’s got the Frisbee and was jerking it in my direction, making like he wants to toss it with me. I’m seeing this out of the corner of my eye. My gaze is directed at the chess game, but as I look up toward a flash of something nearby out in the street, I see an amazing thing unfold.

Some asshole drunk, trying to pull up to the pumps, drives his shit-box green Chevy into the no lead pump. Boom! The pump leaps aside. It tosses its glass cookies all over the street and the hood of the car.  Stevie and I are stunned motionless for a moment. Poole drove in while we're still staring at this disaster, and, miraculously, I remember to remind him about the ice. Stevie suggests one of us go get Lamont. One of us is going to have to go out and try dealing with the driver. I could see that it was that tall, mustachioed black man whose dog once pissed in the Garage after Lamont had let loose with one of his deep baritone “get the fuck out of here!” blasts. He's the dude that sings standards from the forties and fifties in a resonant, if whiskey-burnt voice. The last time he did this, it was during the first hour of the afternoon shower, the day I worked the car wash with the day crew (August 1). He'd started in on one of those old tunes about doing it in the rain as he strolled by in the rain. Now, the stewed old boy had driven a shit box into Winston’s pump. I’m not sure which building Lamont’s in, so I’m on my way out to the street to see what I can otherwise do.

I found our fool struggling with the door handle, very fucked up, stinking to high heaven. He got out of the car and asked me to “fill it up!” I suggested that he go sit in the office and cool out, to wait for Lamont to get down. Scheft came in, and while I was getting his car out of the way, the drunk wandered off across the street. Stevie gets down after putting Poole’s car away, and then he’s off, crossing the street, ducking traffic, heading for Lamont's apartment.

At this point I had to ask Laird and Justin to leave since Lamont will be over and he’ll be calling the police. He’ll also be making a speech about how there was some way we could’ve prevented this fuck up if only we weren’t so stoned and –god forbid - drunk. Yes, two beers are enough to get me pretty fucked up, I’ll admit. Laird expressed his regret at having to abandon the chess game. He knows all about all things business related, and knows that games must wait. So with friends gone, beer cans hidden, chairs and table out of the way, beer breath doused by one of Winston’s Pepsis, Lamont’s arrival on the scene – swaggering in like John Wayne as always – was a tad anti-climactic. He didn't make the speech I'd anticipated, but went right about the business of talking charge of his kingdom. I had driven the green Chevy into the Garage. The bum talked to L, then disappeared.

When the police showed up, Lamont sent me up to 79 Westland where the bastard lives in tawdriness under the auspices of old man LeBrun. Walking up the street, it hits me that this is where I started out in this town, that first day, audition day. I strolled purposefully over the very spot where "Huntington Munroe the Third" had hit us up for bus money. I walked at a brisk clip in the summer evening nodding at the prostitutes I'd always seen but never known in the biblical sense. I walked past the building where sweet Xenia had leaned over me so that I could see down her blouse in attempt to bring me out of my funk. She was promptly invited, by Rod, to stop doing that with wave of his hand and shake of his head. And after that, she came out as a dyke before I could ever get another look. Ah, all of this is coming to an end, I thought, as I followed the path of my errand to old man LeBrun's.

I open the outside door. Marble, dinginess and room tone.

Standing in the vestibule, ringing the bell. Dog barking. (The bum’s dog?) The old man comes to the door. I ask for the lanky, mustachioed black man with the resonant voice.

“We got no black people in the building,” says LeBrun.
‘Horseshit,’ I think. ‘No prostitutes either, I'll bet. Like the vestibule isn’t green.’

I thought I’d try one more tactic.
“Do you own a car,” I ask?
“Yes.”
“What make?”
“Ford wagon.”
Well, that leaves him out entirely.
It turns out the car belongs to a person in Brockton. Fade to black.

The Curtain falls as our hero walks back in the summer swelter to the scene of these crimes.

Coda

Albany, inside the tent, delicious Fall day,
September 25th, 2526

I'm dabbling with the twig and berry juice.
Dangerous.

We're not supposed to be using these materials for just any old thing. We're supposed to "speak truly and plainly" and all of that. Blah, blah, blah. It's OK to express an opinion, to speculate, but somehow, it's not OK just to make stuff up about real people that once walked the earth. There's supposedly some sort of line. Either something is fiction, or it isn't. If it isn't you speak plainly; if it is, you make that clear.

I ate too many blueberries and had to come in here to recuperate from the intestinal blowout. I slept for a little while, but in my head the voices wouldn't let me stay asleep.

To toe the line, and not get my husband in trouble, here's the plain truth: unless new materials come to light, the Hunter Narratives end inconclusively. We know more than we did before, but there's still a trailing off. At these big music festivals, you hear all sorts of stories. One I heard today, sitting with a lovely young man who captivated me with compliments, was about old Bach. It's said he dictated one last work to his son in-law. "Before Thy Throne I Now Appear." How old Bach lay there, turning somersaults in his mind! The young man speculated on the new Hunter materials, how they tail off like the "Art of Fugue." That's a bit of a stretch, I think. The "Art of Fugue" ends with its own spooky majesty. The Hunter Narratives also end without a conclusion. It's the beginning of a life, not the end of one. It is said that you can set anything to music, even an ancient list of names and numbers. I believe this. I can imagine the results to be boring. Many find the Hunter works boring. Many enjoy the narratives for their forthrightness, the vividness of the portraits, and some enter into a relationship with the music from that.

I guess my imagination wants it all to go on endlessly. Maybe the narrative ends with more like a pole vault. It's just up in the air at the moment, and more information will come to light and we'll have cleared the high bar and landed in a whole new pile of shit.

In the meanwhile, I can guess where it ended up. I have the voices in my head that I can't turn off so easily whispering secrets about the end. They dictate this final Chorale Prelude across the span of five hundred years. Before my throne he now appears.

Obviously, Hunter turned in his materials and graduated from music school. He probably needed to blow off some steam so he hit the bus and took the hike. On the hike, on his back in the wilderness, out on some rocky ledge in the mountains, he too heard the voices. He could see the endless stars in the clear air. He could feel how small all of his life struggles were. He would figure out the next step. He'd be leaving Boston and heading West.

It seems clear that he changed apartments in the span of time between the end of the appointment book and the beginning of the journal. He wraps up life in the Cal Crib and moves in down the street with Lucy and Justin.

What prompted the commencement of a journal? Perhaps he finally got the idea that his life was itself enough of a tale in demand of telling. The style of the journal writing differs from the later narratives collected from 'blogs' and 'copies' from 'print-outs' from 'hard-drives.' It is more exuberant, it is more florid, more clumsy and it tells of things in the order of life as it is experienced. It's a mix of poems, fragments of fiction, and a record of events. What we have is but a fragment. My husband (and I) feel sure we'll find more. Former centers of population are just beginning to be pushed into. There's all sorts of junk under the weeds. Archaeologists are forever digging and sifting and they have our interests and concerns at heart. Meanwhile, I have my imagination. I hear him whispering. (It's not hallucination, it's conjecture.)

There were many long goodbyes, and a few short ones. In the end, they stood around in the alley behind the buildings where they'd all hung out and everything had happened. Shuffling their feet, some wept. The "automobile" -that storied ancient conveyance we've outgrown and recycled- was loaded up with possessions and stood ready for the trip to points South, then West and beyond. It was Laird and Cal at last, freed from the Boston orbit. Boston itself, the city, the sights and sounds of people and things in commingled craziness, has impressed itself on his tender psyche with the same symbolic weight that it has always held. Even though it is now mostly rubble, many ghosts still sleep there.  He reflects that this city is now to be a memory for him, where once it was full of promise. As he walks to that 'car,' and opens the door and gives the nod to Laird, his voices, his internal dialogue, seek surcease from the awe of future prospects in recounting the failures and triumphs of life as a music student in Boston. 

Eve.

Epilogue

No 'keel to breakers' or 'bellied canvas'
just a rusted-out royal blue detroit prairie schooner
bald uniroyals on pavement.
Goodby Mary Baker Eddy's
concrete tit
steeples, spires
seabirds and city lights
cream-pie and baked beans
sex, son of sam
on the cross bronx expressway
noise, gritty teeth and nose
coffee, chess
and King Kong.
No sooner had the taste of the last steamed crab
melted on our tongues like the late summer day
than the tired Applachians receded in the distance
another uprooted memory.
Pizza parlors
Dairy-Queens
suburban sprawl
patios, pools
better homes and gardens
fences spreading out
vivsecting the billowing land
containing the cows
and rendering finite the infinite fields.
From our swart ship, the past bobbing in a wake of mile markers
guzzling coffee while an epic pauses long enough to note
the fertile decay and moist ferment of the new season.


Ken Beck
10-27-1977