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XIX
Goodbye Bolinas
When Judy, Chris, Max and I visited Bolinas in early August, Richard
wasn't prepared for the whole family. When he called, I had just indicated
that I was coming, but our car was broken down and in a shop in San
Francisco, and Judy and the kids didn't want to sit around my brother's
house and wait, so I drove my brother's car, and they came with me. When
Richard came down the hill to meet me, his mouth literally dropped open.
But he adjusted quickly and we went up to his house.
Though it was a wonderful old redwood place sitting up on a hill,
disguised by trees and blackberry bushes, the interior was depressing as
hell. Richard had shut off all but two or three rooms for living. In the
barren fireplace were a few shreds of burned newspapers. Next to that, the
usual unmade bed, a ripped-up naugahyde sofa, a table full of letters
asking publishers to please pay him, and a cardboard box full of wadded-up
twenty dollar bills. Richard said to Judy, "Now I'm going to show you some
California hospitality." Eventually, that meant that we were going to eat
Dutch treat cantaloupe and tuna fish sandwiches on the deck. Judy and
Richard both ruffled at each other a little but got along pretty well
considering. Richard asked the boys if they were Trekies. They said they
were, so he sat them down in front of a dismal little TV to watch "Star
Trek." Earlier, he had been keeping very close tabs on the Olympics. He
was really in the USA, USA spirit and even said USA USA a few times.
Richard was always proud to be an American. On his back porch in Montana,
sometimes he would look off over the mountains and say (in Imperial mode)
we are Americans. We are THE Americans. He gave us a little talk on ho
good television was getting and seriously discussed what improvements
shows like "Remington Steel," The A Team," and "Scarecrow and Mrs. King"
were. He said he had several projects going and that he was optimistic
about several things that he was awaiting news on, including screenplays,
books, etc.
When Judy and the kids went for a walk, he started telling me a little
about his childhood which he had seldom discussed before. He said that he
had been the leader of a gang of teenagers that did a lot of damage. He
said that if only the school he had attended had cared more about his
mind, things might have been different, land they might have saved the
county a lot of money. He then said that his main problem with school had
been dyslexia. When he had been in Japan that spring, he and some Japanese
friends figured it out. I thought a while and figured there must be some
truth in it. Whenever I saw him write checks or notes, it was as if he
were squeezing gold out of lead. The writing was cramped and wiggly and an
obvious effort. His professional writing is also deceptively simple,
though the ideas and style are much more complex than the immediate facade
lets on. He said, "Just think of all the money my childhood community
would have saved in vandalism and bringing me to justice if they had tried
to figure out my problem and done something about it." Then I said, "But
maybe if you had been cured we wouldn't have gotten all of your books."
And he said, "Or maybe they would have been better." I shook my head.
Richard had always been exceptionally intelligent and was always
surprising me with what he had read and what he knew about --in detail.
But he was a slow reader; thus, all of that knowledge must have come at a
high cost of time and concentration. Richard once told me that he never
finished high school, but McGuane told me that before he shot himself, he
propped up his high school diploma, his reading glasses and a copy of All
Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace next to him.
When Judy and the kids returned, we sent them off exploring and Richard
took us on a walking tour of Bolinas. He kept saying, "Look how beautiful
it is." And it WAS beautiful: long stone paths going down hills of gardens
and trees, panoramic vistas of the coastline, seagulls whirling and
shrieking. As all of this went on around us, Richard said, "I'm happy." I
said, "Let me get a tape recorder." And he went back to Imperial mode. But
I think he actually was happy. I think maybe he had made a decision though
he kept confusing his future plans, at one time acting like he was going
to stay in Bolinas, at another, asking me to start the wheels rolling on
another teaching stint at Montana State. He gave me pictures and tokens to
take back to his other friends in Bozeman: one pewter corn on the cob
holder for Brad, a booth snapshot of himself for Scoop and Schrieber, a
request to call for Sean. Looking back, I guess maybe he was saying
goodbye. I don't want to think about that.
Later that evening, we bought Dutch treat pizza. He asked the boys what
kind they wanted, and they said, "anything but anchovy," so he ordered two
anchovy pizzas from a guy who made them in his house down the hill. We
took them over to Bob's (the guy whose boat didn't work) in Stimson Beach.
He and his wife were obviously preoccupied with the Olympics and a new
baby, but we made polite conversation, ate the pizza and watched the sun
set on the Pacific. I forgot to say that it took us an hour to find the
house in the hills above Stimson Beach, so we spent the usual amount of
time in confused driving. I sometimes called Richard the Pershing II in
the past because it was so damned hard for him to get off the pad. Finding
Bob's house was no different. Anyway, when it got to be about 10:30, we
asked Richard if we could take him home because we had to drive all the
way back to Berkeley on Sir Francis Drake Blvd. Richard was glassy-eyed
and fading by then. "Don't worry," he said. "You know me. I'll always find
a way home." And that was the last I ever saw of him.
Saying
Goodbye to Richard (Bolinas--August, 1984)
I call from a phone booth
and seconds later
there he is to show me up the hill,
shocked that I've brought Judy and the boys
but not mentioning it.
"Are you Trekkies?" he asks the kids
and scoots them in front of a T.V.
where Spock and Kirk
have just beamed up.
the room is his typical poverty:
a few newspapers in the fireplace,
an unmade bed,
a torn naugahyde sofa,
a box of crumpled twenty-dollar bills.
Soon they will find him
beside the bed
with his borrowed pistol;
reading glasses,
ALL WATCHED OVER
BY MACHINES OF LOVING GRACE,
his high school diploma,
(which he said he never got)
propped on a table near him;
his answering machine
slowing to an obscene drawl
while his friends in Montana call
and he lies dead for two weeks.
But now he tells us of his house,
redwood and over a century old.
It could be the best view in town
if the trees and fat blackberry bushes
were cut back to show the Pacific.
"But that way," Richard says,
"people could see my house from the street!"
Then "Come, today you are my special guests."
So for lunch we have tuna salad sandwiches,
cantaloupe and gin--Dutch treat.
Judy is nervous and bored,
so he takes her on a tour of the upper rooms:
servants' quarters, secret passages--
all shut off to save heat downstairs,
leaving them to the ghost of a Chinese girl,
a thirteen-year-old servant
who died in the harbour a century ago.
Richard says he's in love with her,
but we've already guessed.
From a chest in her room,
he gives us gifts to take back
to friends in Montana:
picture booth self-portraits
with things about Auschwitz
scribbled on the back
and one pewter corncob holder.
He confesses to us
things that don't need to be confessed:
In his teens he led a gang of thugs;
just recently, he and Japanese friends
figured out that he's dyslexic.
"If my high school teachers had known,
maybe I would have liked school--
I might not have terrorized my community.
Think of lall the money
they could have saved.
Think of how much better
my writing would be."
I say no,
but he's not listening.
Already the gin is almost gone,
so it's time for a tour of the town.
He shows us a small ramp to the sea
where a Japanese man stood the day before,
casting out the same distance every time
and catching a bucket of perch.
"He cleaned their clocks."
A seal drifts across the jetty
to Stimson Beach. He stops
and takes a leak on a neighbor's shrubs.
We walk down a steep path
of flowering bushes while rare sun angles
the evening. He turns to me and says,
"I'm happy." At the foot of the hill,
he doesn't seem so happy any more.
"What kind of pizza do you like?"
he asks the boys.
"Anything but anchovy."
Soon we are intruding on his friends
down the beach with two large anchovy pizzas
and more gin.
They are watching the Olympics on T.V.
with the sound turned low
so their newborn can sleep.
Richard looks at the screen
and chants, "USA, USA."
By 10:00, Judy and the boys have had it,
so I ask the usual "Want a ride?"
"No thanks, you know
I always find my way home." |
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