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II April
Residency
This is all sort of a blur to me now, but I'm working to drag it back up
out of the brain cells that remain as Richard's death chuffs farther and
farther into the past like a disturbing little black choochoo. I remember
one afternoon poetry reading with a huge audience and a formal evening
reading with a small audience. I remember going fishing with Richard for
the first time. David Schreiber, a novelist student went with us. He was
later to become another good friend of Richard. We drove out to an
irrigation dam on the West Gallatin between Four Corners and Gallatin
Gateway. Richard wanted to take some whitefish back to Akiko because she
had a wonderful way of fixing them with salt. It was an impromptu trip, so
we were waderless with fly rods and a few Wooly Worms. When we got to the
first hole, there was another fisherman down the way, and when he saw us,
he started darting toward our spot. "Look at his little feeties go," I
said. Richard loved that and repeated "little feeties." We beat the fellow
to the hole and he walked away with what Richard described as a crumpled
Charlie Brown smile." After a while, we only had two whitefish and Richard
was nervous because we had to get back for some sort of deadline (his
plane I think), and he wanted one more for the recipe to work. So I dashed
off through a deep snow bank, whalloped my wooly worm out on the water and
caught a large stupid whitefish. Richard was pleased and impressed.
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
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