“Wait here,” I said.
The first thing I saw in the front room was Bilbo the orangutan. A bullet hole was in his left temple. His head lay in a puddle of blood. He was dead. Murdered. On his face was this grin. The grin read pain, and through the pain he had seemed to laugh as if he had seen Death and Death was something else – surprising, beyond his reason, and it had made him grin through the pain. Well, he knew more about that, now, than I did.
They had gotten Dopey the tiger in his favorite haunt – the bathroom. He had been shot many times as if the murderers had been frightened. There was much blood and some of it had hardened. He had his eyes closed but the mouth had frozen dead into a snarl, and the huge and beautiful fangs protruded. Even in death he was more majestic than a living man. In the bathtub was the parrot. One bullet. The parrot was down near the drain, its neck and head bent under its body, one wing under while the feathers of the other wing were spread wide, somehow, as if that wing had wanted to scream but couldn’t.
I searched the rooms. Nothing was left alive. All murdered. The black bear. The coyote. The raccoon. All. The whole house was quiet. Nothing moved. There was nothing we could do. I had a large burial project on my hands. The animals had paid for their individuality – and ours.
I cleared the front room and the bedroom, cleaned up what blood I could and led Carol in. It had probably happened when we were in the movie. I held Carol on the couch. She didn’t cry but trembled all over. I rubbed and caressed her, said things ... Now and then a jolt would shake her body, she’d moan, “Ooooh, oooh ... my God ...” After a good two hours she began to cry. I stayed with her, held her. Soon she was asleep. I carried her to the bed, undressed her and covered her. Then I walked outside and looked at the backyard. Thank Christ, it was a large one. We were going from a Liberated Zoo to an animal graveyard overnight.
It took two days to bury them all. Carol played funeral marches on the record player and I dug and put the bodies in and covered them. It was unbearably sad. Carol marked the graves and we both drank wine and didn’t speak. People came and watched, peering through the wire fence; adults, children, reporters and photographers from the newspaper. Near the end of the second day I filled the last grave and then Carol took my shovel and walked slowly toward the crowd at the fence. They backed away, mumbling and frightened. Carol threw the shovel against the fence. The crowd ducked and threw up their arms as if the shovel were coming through.
“All right, murderers,” screamed Carol, “be happy!”
We walked into the house. There were fifty-five graves out there ...
After several weeks I suggested to Carol that we might try another zoo, this time always leaving somebody to guard it.
“No,” she said. “My dreams ... my dreams have told me that the time has come. Everything is near the end. We’ve been just in time. We made it.”
I didn’t question her. I felt that she had been through enough. As the time for birth neared. Carol asked that I marry her. She said she didn’t need marriage but since she had no next of kin she wanted me to inherit her estate. This was in case she died in childbirth and her dreams were wrong – about the end.
“Dreams can be wrong,” she said, “though, so far, mine haven’t been.”
So we had a quiet marriage – in the graveyard. I picked up one of my old buddies from skid row to be witness and best man, and again the passersby stared. It was over quickly. I gave my buddy some money and some wine and drove him back to skid row.
On the way in, drinking from the bottle, he asked me, “Knocked her up, eh?”
“Well, I think so.”
“You mean there were others?”
“Uh – yes.”
“That’s the way it is with these broads. You never know. Half the guys on the row have been put there by women.”
“I thought it was drink.”
“The women come first, then the drink follows.”
“I see.”
“You never know with them broads.”
“Oh, I knew.”
He gave me this look and then I let him out.
I waited downstairs at the hospital. How very odd the whole thing had been. I had walked from skid row to that house and all the things that had happened. The love and the agony. But for it all, the love had outdueled the agony. But it wasn’t over. I tried to read the baseball boxscores, the race results. It hardly mattered. Then there were Carol’s dreams; I believed in her but I was not so sure of her dreams. What were dreams? I didn’t know. Then I saw Carol’s doctor at the reception desk speaking to a nurse. I walked over to him.
“Oh, Mr. Jennings,” he said, “your wife is all right. And the offspring is – is – male, nine pounds, five ounces.”
“Thank you, doctor.”
I took the elevator upstairs to the glass partition. There must have been a hundred babies in there crying. I could hear them through the glass. On and on it went. This birth thing. And this death thing. Each one had his turn. We entered alone and we left alone. And most of us lived lonely and frightened and incomplete lives. An incomparable sadness descended upon me. Seeing all that life that must die. Seeing all that life that would first turn to hate, to dementia, to neurosis, to stupidity, to fear, to murder, to nothing – nothing in life and nothing in death.
I told the nurse my name. She entered the glass room and found our child. As she held the child up, the nurse smiled. It was a tremendously forgiving smile. It had to be. I looked at the child – impossible, medically impossible: it was a tiger, a bear, a snake and a human. It was an elk, a coyote, a lynx and a human. It did not cry. Its eyes looked upon me and knew me, and I knew it. It was unbearable, Man and Superman, Superman and Superbeast. It was totally impossible and it looked upon me, the Father, one of the fathers, one of the many many fathers ... and the edge of the sun gripped the hospital and the whole hospital began to shake, the babies roared, lights went on and off, a flash of purple crossed the glass partition in front of me. The nurses screamed. Three fluorescent light fixtures fell from their chains and down upon the babies. The nurse stood there holding my child and smiling as the first hydrogen bomb fell upon the city of San Francisco.
A POPULAR MAN
twice around I’ve had the flue, the flue, the flu, and the door keeps banging, and there are always more people, and each person or persons believes that they themselves have something special to offer me, and bang bang bang goes the door, and it is always the same thing, I say
“WAIT A MINUTE! WAIT A MINUTE!”
I get into some pants and let them in through the door. but I am very tired, never get the sleep I should, haven’t shit in 3 days, precisely, you guessed it, I am going mad, and all those people have their special energy, they all have points of goodness, I am a loner but I am not that much of a crank, but it is always always – something. I think of my mother’s old saying in German, which is not precise, but which went something like this: “emmer etvas!” which means: always something. which a man never quite understands until he begins getting older. not that age is an advantage, only that it brings the same scene again and again like a movie madhouse.
it is a tough guy in soiled pants, just off the road, great self-belief in his work, and not a bad writer at all, but I am wary of his self-belief as he is wary of the fact that we do not kiss and lock arms and assholes in midroom. he is entertaining. he is an actor. he ought to be. he has lived more lives as one man than ten men have lived. but his energy, in a sense, beautiful, is finally wearing on me. I don’t give a fuck about the poetic scene or that he phoned Norman Mailer or knows Jimmy Baldwin, or the rest, or all the restly rest. and I see that he does not quite understand me because I do not quite excite to his preponderances. o.k. I still like him. he beats 999 out of a thousand. but my German soul will not rest until I find the thousandth. I am very quiet and listen but there is a huge boil of madness underneath me that must be kept care of finally or I will do it myself, someday, in an 8 dollar a week room just off Vermont Ave.
so there. shit.
so he talks. and it’s good. I laugh.
“15 grand. I got this 15 grand. my uncle dies. then she wants to get married. I am fatter than a pig. she’s been feeding me good. 300 a week she’s making, counselor’s general’s office, some god damn thing, now she wants to get married, quit her job. we go to Spain. all right, I’m working on a play, I’ve got this great idea for a play in my mind, so all right, I’m drinking, I’m fucking all the whores. then this guy in London he wants to see my play, he wants to put on my play, o.k., so I come back from London and what the fuck, here I find out my wife’s been fucking the mayor of the town and my best friend, and I face her, I say, ‘YOU LOUSY WHORE, YOU BEEN FUCKING MY BEST FRIEND AND THE MAYOR. I AM GOING TO KILL YOU NOW BECAUSE I WILL ONLY GET FIVE YEARS BECAUSE YOU ADULTURATED ME!’ ”
he paced up and down the room.
“then what happened,” I asked.
“she said, ‘go ahead and stab me, cocksucker!’ ”
“that’s guts,” I said.
“it was,” he said, “I had this big butcherknife in my hand and I threw it on the floor. she had too much class on me. too much upper-middle class.”
all right. so, all god’s children – he left.
I went back to bed. I was merely dying. nobody was interested. I wasn’t even interested. the chills came over me again. I couldn’t put enough covers over me. I was still cold. and my mind too – all the human adventures of the mind seemed like con, like shit, it seemed as if the moment I were born I had been plopped in among the batch of con-men and if you didn’t understand the con or play the side of the con you were dead, out. the con had it sewed, had it sewed for centuries, you couldn’t bust the seams. he didn’t want to bust the seams, he didn’t want to conquer; he knew that Shakespeare was bad writing, that Creeley was fear; it didn’t matter. all that he wanted was a small room, alone. alone.
he’d once told a friend he had once thought had some understanding of him, he’d once told his friend, “I have never been lonely.”
and his friend had responded, “you’re a god damned liar.”
so, he went back to bed, sick, was there an hour, the doorbell rang again. he decided to ignore it. but the ringing and the pounding began with such violence that he felt it might be something of importance.
it was a young Jewish lad. quite a good poet. but what the hell?
“Hank?”
“Yeah?”
he pushed through the door, young, energized, believing in the poetic-hoax – all that shit: if a man is a good human being and a good good poet he will be rewarded somewhere this side of this side of hell. the kid just didn’t know. the Gugg’s were already set for those already comfortable and fat for sucking and lurking and teaching English I or II in the dull universities of the land. everything was fixed for failure. soul would never overcome con. only a century after death, and then they’d use that soul out of con to con you out of con. everything failed.
he came in. young, rabbinical student.
“ah, shit, it’s awful,” he said.
“what?” I asked.
“on the ride to the airport.”
“yeh?”
“Ginsberg gets his ribs broken in the crash. nothing happens to Ferlinghetti, the biggest schmuck of them all. he’s going off to Europe, to give these 5 to 7 dollar readings a night, and he doesn’t even give himself a scratch. I was on stage with Ferlinghetti one night and he tries to upstage a man so bad, with tricks, that it’s pitiful. they hissed him, finally, they caught on. Hirschman pulls a lot of that shit too.”
“don’t forget, Hirschman is hooked on Artaud. he figures if a man don’t act crazy he ain’t a genius. give him time. maybe.”
“shit,” says the kid, “you gave me 35 dollars to type up your next book of poems but there are too many. JESUS CHRIST, I didn’t think there would be so MANY!”
“I thought I had given up writing poetry.”
and when a Jew says Jesus Christ you know that he is in trouble. so he gave me 3 dollars and I gave him ten, and then we both felt better. also he ate half a loaf of my french bread, a blessed pickle and left.
I got back in the sack and got ready to die, and for good or bad, good boys or bad boys, writing their rondos, flexing their two-bit poetic muscles, it does get tiresome, so many of them, so many of them trying to make it, so many of them hating each other and some on the top, of course, not deserving to be there, but many on the top deserving to be there, and so the whole thing a tear-down, a rip-down, up and down, “I met Jimmy at a party ...”
well, let me swallow shit. so he got back into bed. and watched the spiders swallow the walls. this is where he belonged, always. he couldn’t bear the crowd, the poets, the non-poets, the heroes, the non-heroes – he couldn’t abide by any of them. he was doomed. his only problem in doom was to accept his doom as kindly as possible. he, I, wee, thee ...
he made it back to bed, trembling, cold. death like the side of a fish, white-colored water of lisping. think of it. everybody dies. that’s perfect except for me and one other person. fine. there are various formulas. various philosophers. I’m tired.
all right, the flue the flue, natural death of rustic frustration and not-caring, and so here we are, finally, spread in bed alone, sweating, staring at the cross, going mad in my own personal way, at least it was my own, those days, nobody bothering me, now it’s always somebody at the door, I don’t make $500 a year writing and they keep knocking at my door, they want to LOOK at me.
he, I, went to sleep again, sick, sweating, dying, really dying, just let them leave me alone, I don’t give a damn if I am genius or idiot, let me sleep, let me have one more day my way, just 8 hours, the rest can be yours, and then the bell rang again.
you’d think he was Ezra Pound with Ginsberg trying to suck his dick –
and he said,
“wait a minute, let me put my pants on.”
and all the lights were on, outside. like neon. or prostitute tickling hairs.
the guy was an English teacher from somewhere.
“Buk?”
“yaah. I’m sick man. flu. real contagious.
“are you having a tree this year?”
“I dunno. I’m dying right now. little girl in town. but I’m very sick now, contagious.”
he stands back and hands me a six pack of beer, arm’s length and then opens his latest book of poetry, autographs it to me, he leaves, I know that the poor devil can’t write, never will, but that he is hooked on some lines that I once wrote somewhere that he never will.
but it isn’t competition; great art is not competition at all, great art can be govt. or children or painters or cocksuckers or anything at all.
I said goodbye to the man and his 6 pack and then opened his book:
“... spent the 1966-67 academic year on a Guggenheim Fellowship in studying and doing research at ...”
he threw the book into the corner of the room, knowing that it would be no good. all the awards went to the already-fat who had the time and knowledge of where to get an application form for a motherfucking Gugg. he’d never seen one. you didn’t see them while driving taxis or working as a hotel boy in Albuquerque. fuck.
he went back to sleep.
the phone rang.
they kept beating at his door.
that was it. he didn’t care anymore. among all the sounds and sights, he didn’t care, he hadn’t slept for 3 days or 3 nights, hadn’t shit for dinner, and now it was quiet. as close to death as you could without being an idiot. and being one close. it was great. soon they went away.
and across the christ of his rented ceiling came little cracks and he smiled as the 200 year old plaster came down onto his mouth, he breathed it in, and then choked to death.
FLOWER HORSE
I stayed up all night with John the Beard. we discussed Creeley – him for, me against, and I was drunk on arrival and brought some beer with me. we discussed this and that, me, him, just general talk, and the n
ight went. around 6 a.m. I got into the car, it started, and I rolled down out of the hills and ran it down Sunset. I made it in, found another beer, drank that, managed to undress, get into bed. I awakened at noon, sick, leaped up, into clothing, brushed teeth, combed hair. looked at sick face lolling in glass, quickly turned, the walls spinning, got out door and made it to car, headed south for Hollywood Park. harness.
I put a ten on the 8 to 5 favorite and turned to walk out and see the race. a tall young kid in a dark suit ran toward the window trying to get in on the last minute action. the bastard must have been 7 feet tall. I tried to get out of the way but his shoulder caught me right in the face. it almost knocked me out. I turned, “you rotten crazy son of a bitch, WATCH YOURSELF!” I screamed. he was too intent on the betting, he couldn’t hear. I walked up to the ramp and watched the 8 to 5 come in. then I walked out of the clubhouse and into the grandstand portion and got a cup of hot coffee, no cream. the whole track looked like a psychedelic wavering.
5.60 times 5.18 bucks profit, first race. I didn’t want to be at the track. I didn’t want to be anywhere. sometimes a man must fight so hard for life that he doesn’t have time to live it. I went back to the clubhouse, destroyed the coffee, sat down so I wouldn’t faint. sick, sick.
with a minute left I slid back into line. a little Japanese guy turned to me, put his face into my face. “who do you like?” he didn’t even have a program. he tried to peer at my program. these guys can bet ten or 20 bucks at a race but they are too cheap to buy a 40 cent program which also contains the past form of the horses. “I don’t like anybody,” I rather snarled at him. I think I got through to him. he turned around and tried to read the man’s program who stood ahead of him. he peered around the man’s side, tried to look over his shoulder.
I made my bet and went out to see the running, Jerry Perkins ran like the 14 year old gelding he was. Charley Short looked like he was asleep in the bike. maybe he’d been up all night too. with the horse. they ran in Night Freight at 18 to one and I tore up my tickets. the day before they had run in a 15 to one shot and followed it with a 60 to one. they were trying to send me to skid row. my clothes and shoes looked like ragman Sam. a gambler will blow it on anything but clothes – booze is all right, food, pussy, but no clothes. as long as you aren’t naked and have the green they’ll let you bet.