every morning to
this old dame who spoke a little English. She wore a terrycloth
robe—maybe she didn't even own a dress—and a rag on her head and
house slippers because her feet couldn't stand shoes. We
double-tipped her every day and she smiled at us, and one day she
says to me, 'M'sieur, do you have fun in Paris?' I said I was having
a pretty good time. 'You must, M'sieur,' she said to me. 'It is
necessary.' Then she give me a very serious look, like a teacher
giving you the word, and she smiled. And I knew she was saying to me,
yeah, man, I got pain now, but I had my day long, long ago, and I
still remember that, I remember it all the time."
I'd been watching Jack have fun all day, first with
his machine gun and then his champagne and his Rabelais and his dream
of a purple mansion; but his fun was nervous, a frenetic motion game
that seemed less like fun than like a release of energy that would
explode his inner organs if he held it in.
We were climbing a mountain by this time, along a
two-lane road that wound upward and seemed really about as wide as a
footpath when it snaked along the edges of some very deep and sudden
drops. I saw a creek at one point, visible at the bottom of a gorge.
When you looked up. you saw mountains to the left, and you climbed
and climbed and climbed and then made a hairpin turn and saw a
waterfall cascading down the side of a great cliff.
"Get a look at that," Jack said, pointing.
"Is that some sight?"
And at another sharp turn he told Fogarty to stop,
and we both got out and looked back down the mountain to see how far
and how, steeply we had climbed; and then he pointed upward where you
could see more mountains beyond mountains. The stop was clearly a
ritual for Jack, as was pointing out the waterfall. It was his
mountain range somehow, and he had a proprietor's interest in it. We
made a cigarette stop as we entered Haines Falls, a store where Jack
knew they carried Rameses, his exotic, Pharaonic brand, and he
dragged me to the souvenir counter and urged me to buy something.
"Buy your wife a balsam pillow or an Indian head
scarf."
"My wife and I split up two years ago."
" Then you got no reason not to go to Europe. How
about a cigarette box for yourself or a pinetree ashtray?"
I thought he was kidding,
but he was insisting; a souvenir to seal our bargain, a trinket to
affirm the working relationship. He fingered the dishes and glassware
with their gaudy Catskill vistas, the thermometers framed in pine,
toothbrush holders, inkstands, lampstands, photo albums, all with
souvenir inscriptions burned into them, commemorating vacation time
spent in this never—never land in the clouds. I finally agreed on a
glass paperweight with an Indian chief in full war bonnet inside it,
and Jack bought it. Forty-nine cents. The action was outrageously
sentimental, the equivalent of his attitude toward that Algerian
crone or the deceased brother, from whom, I would later come to know,
Jack felt all his good luck had come. "All my troubles happened
after Eddie died," Jack told me in the final summer of his life
when he was learning how to die. Thus his replacement of the brother
with Fogarty had a talismanic element to it. Talismanic paperweight,
talismanic brother-substitute, talismanic memory of the Arthritic
Witch of Fun. And here we were in old talismanic Haines Falls, the
highest town in the Catskills, Jack said, and of course, of course,
the proper place for him to stash the queenly consort of his fantasy
life, the most beautiful girl I've ever known.
* * *
Jack said he once saw Charlie Northrup belly-bump a
man with such force that the man did a back-flip over a table.
Charlie was physical power, about six four and two forty. He had a
wide, teeth-ridden smile and blond hair the color and straightness of
straw, combed sideways like a well-groomed hick in a tintype. He was
the first thing we saw when we entered Mike Brady's Top o' the
Mountain House at Haines Falls. He was at the middle of the
this old dame who spoke a little English. She wore a terrycloth
robe—maybe she didn't even own a dress—and a rag on her head and
house slippers because her feet couldn't stand shoes. We
double-tipped her every day and she smiled at us, and one day she
says to me, 'M'sieur, do you have fun in Paris?' I said I was having
a pretty good time. 'You must, M'sieur,' she said to me. 'It is
necessary.' Then she give me a very serious look, like a teacher
giving you the word, and she smiled. And I knew she was saying to me,
yeah, man, I got pain now, but I had my day long, long ago, and I
still remember that, I remember it all the time."
I'd been watching Jack have fun all day, first with
his machine gun and then his champagne and his Rabelais and his dream
of a purple mansion; but his fun was nervous, a frenetic motion game
that seemed less like fun than like a release of energy that would
explode his inner organs if he held it in.
We were climbing a mountain by this time, along a
two-lane road that wound upward and seemed really about as wide as a
footpath when it snaked along the edges of some very deep and sudden
drops. I saw a creek at one point, visible at the bottom of a gorge.
When you looked up. you saw mountains to the left, and you climbed
and climbed and climbed and then made a hairpin turn and saw a
waterfall cascading down the side of a great cliff.
"Get a look at that," Jack said, pointing.
"Is that some sight?"
And at another sharp turn he told Fogarty to stop,
and we both got out and looked back down the mountain to see how far
and how, steeply we had climbed; and then he pointed upward where you
could see more mountains beyond mountains. The stop was clearly a
ritual for Jack, as was pointing out the waterfall. It was his
mountain range somehow, and he had a proprietor's interest in it. We
made a cigarette stop as we entered Haines Falls, a store where Jack
knew they carried Rameses, his exotic, Pharaonic brand, and he
dragged me to the souvenir counter and urged me to buy something.
"Buy your wife a balsam pillow or an Indian head
scarf."
"My wife and I split up two years ago."
" Then you got no reason not to go to Europe. How
about a cigarette box for yourself or a pinetree ashtray?"
I thought he was kidding,
but he was insisting; a souvenir to seal our bargain, a trinket to
affirm the working relationship. He fingered the dishes and glassware
with their gaudy Catskill vistas, the thermometers framed in pine,
toothbrush holders, inkstands, lampstands, photo albums, all with
souvenir inscriptions burned into them, commemorating vacation time
spent in this never—never land in the clouds. I finally agreed on a
glass paperweight with an Indian chief in full war bonnet inside it,
and Jack bought it. Forty-nine cents. The action was outrageously
sentimental, the equivalent of his attitude toward that Algerian
crone or the deceased brother, from whom, I would later come to know,
Jack felt all his good luck had come. "All my troubles happened
after Eddie died," Jack told me in the final summer of his life
when he was learning how to die. Thus his replacement of the brother
with Fogarty had a talismanic element to it. Talismanic paperweight,
talismanic brother-substitute, talismanic memory of the Arthritic
Witch of Fun. And here we were in old talismanic Haines Falls, the
highest town in the Catskills, Jack said, and of course, of course,
the proper place for him to stash the queenly consort of his fantasy
life, the most beautiful girl I've ever known.
* * *
Jack said he once saw Charlie Northrup belly-bump a
man with such force that the man did a back-flip over a table.
Charlie was physical power, about six four and two forty. He had a
wide, teeth-ridden smile and blond hair the color and straightness of
straw, combed sideways like a well-groomed hick in a tintype. He was
the first thing we saw when we entered Mike Brady's Top o' the
Mountain House at Haines Falls. He was at the middle of the
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