Jubilee Hitchhiker (119 page)

Brautigan “went racing all around town and found somebody to put a plaque on the stock of the gun,” Valdène recalled. The little brass oval was engraved with the words “Big Fish.” Richard gave the shotgun to Jim Harrison in celebration of a recently caught trophy brown trout. Before the catch-and-release ethos became universal, Dan Bailey's Fly Shop in Livingston hung signboards on the walls, bearing the silhouettes of their customers' fly-caught trout weighing over four pounds. These were known as “wall fish.” When Harrison earned his own spot on the wall, Richard started calling him “Big Fish.” Soon after, Brautigan wrote a story he titled “A Gun for Big Fish.”

Jim was a frequent recipient of Richard's spontaneous generosity. When Harrison published a new book of poetry,
Letters to Yesenin
, with Dan Gerber's Sumac Press, Richard sent him
The Collected Poems of Yesenin in the Russian Language
, the joke being that Jim didn't read Russian. Enclosed with the book was a big picture of a wrecked freighter christened the
Yesenin
in the poet's honor, suggesting if Harrison kept at it, someday he too might have a tramp steamer named after him. Jim acknowledged Richard's deep love of literature. “I mean,” Harrison observed, “this is a guy that spent a lot of time in the library.”

The Indian summer days remained warm and crystal clear. It cooled off quickly once the sun went down. The nights grew chill, perfect for long conversations around a wood fire under the pines, whiskey glasses in hand. Harrison and Brautigan talked about collaborating on a Jack Spicer project. Richard urged Jim to read Ishmael Reed, especially his poetry collection,
Chattanooga
. The second week of October, Richard took his 228-page typescript of
The Hawkline Monster
into Livingston to be photocopied. He ordered four complete copies, three wrapped for postal shipment. His last task on the book was typing the dedication: “This novel is for the Montana Gang.”

On October 17, Brautigan signed a “contract for deed” for the Pine Creek property. At first, Richard bought only the house, the barn, and ten acres, but as time went by, to protect his privacy, he acquired the surrounding lots, two south along the road up to the tree line bordering an irrigation ditch at the top of the hill, another back behind the barn. Eventually, Brautigan owned a total of forty acres, which he insisted on calling his “ranch,” although a working spread in Montana, one large enough to earn a meager living, would run several hundred acres at the very minimum.

Ianthe arrived toward the end of October on her first trip to Montana. Unlike his absentee practice with guests and visiting girlfriends, Richard actually went to the airport to greet his daughter. In 1973, the main terminal at Gallatin Field was a small cinder-block building. There were no Jetways, and portable stairs were wheeled out for arriving and departing flights. Ianthe remembered glimpsing her father from the plane window, seeing him waiting on the tarmac, his fine blond hair blowing in the afternoon wind. From the start, Ianthe was “enchanted” by Montana, impressed by “its sheer magnificence and the size of the mountains.” The shy, skinny thirteen-year-old felt equally drawn to the rambunctious Montana lifestyle her father and his rowdy friends enjoyed at Pine Creek.

Ianthe liked the storytelling best of all. For as long as she could remember, her father and his friends “got together primarily to tell each other stories.” As a child, she spent many long hours listening to the fanciful tales of poets and artists. In Montana, she found herself in the company of wondrous word magicians. “Jim Harrison told his tales in a very laid-back style that I loved,” she wrote, years later, in her memoir. “Tom McGuane used his deep dramatic voice to hold everyone [. . .] When my father told a story, he would usually get excited and his voice would rise in the air, leaving the last word to collapse into laughter.” At night, after a delicious trout dinner prepared by Jim and Guy, snug in her cabin bed, she was “lulled to sleep by the fluid sounds of their voices drifting in through the open window from where they sat nearby on old battered picnic tables.”

Each day became a new adventure for Ianthe. Jim Harrison gave her fly-casting lessons on the lawn beside the cabins. Richard worried that she might hook herself in the eye. After a couple long afternoons of instruction, Ianthe admitted that she wasn't cracked up to be “a fisher person.” Even so, she accompanied her father and his angling buddies on outings to the Firehole River in Yellowstone Park, and to a series of beaver ponds on upper Mill Creek where Richard like to fish for pan-sized brookies. The highlights of her Montana trip, aside from time spent at Chico Hot Springs, all revolved around social events. Particularly memorable were a big cookout for many guests under the pines at the lodge and a party at Tom and Becky's where, when no one was paying attention, she got drunk for the first time on the Calvados left over from the Key West seafood pig-fest. She had never before noticed that her father “drank a lot. Everyone drank, but he seemed to go one step farther.” Ianthe slugged down her first surreptitious sip “in an attempt to understand him.”

Harrison and Valdène departed before the end of October, heading for Jim's place in Lake Leelanau, Michigan, for the start of grouse season. Harrison immediately dashed off a couple typed letters to Brautigan. Already missing the convivial Pine Creek fraternity, he lamented, “So I suspect I shouldn't have left Montana when we were having so much fun. Fun must dispel all residual calvinism and be sought damning the cost. Laughter. Booze. Fishing. Sweet oysters [. . .]”

The Michigan bird hunting had been fine until the rains started, and they shot seven one afternoon. This prompted praise for the gift Ithaca .20-gauge. “I will always treasure the shotgun. It's neat. In the pantheon of gifts it's up there with a flyrod and three hymens.” Guy left Lake Leelanau for Philadelphia once the shooting got rained out. The bad weather compelled Jim upstairs to his writing studio to resume work on a projected screenplay. He agreed with Brautigan's assessment: “You were right. We must carry our griefs alone like a hair ball or blood clot. In the dark night of the soul it's always Peoria.”

Ianthe left for California around the same time the boys departed. On his own again, his novel off in the mail, Richard looked for possible venues for shorter pieces. Throughout October, he stayed in mail and phone contact with Helen Brann, hoping to facilitate just such an assignment. McGuane, Harrison, Hjortsberg, and J. D. Reed all supplemented their literary incomes by freelancing for
Sports Illustrated
. This struck Brautigan as an enticing proposition. Through his agent, he proposed articles on hunting and basketball to Patricia Ryan, the text editor at the Luce publication. Although Pat found “the notion of Brautigan on basketball intriguing,” the magazine already had a staffer working on a piece about the SuperSonics, and she regretfully declined. Ryan did offer Richard a
Sports Illustrated
assignment, which included a guarantee, and he promptly had Helen Brann submit “A Gun for Big Fish” to her.

Richard had lots of time to think about the house he bought. Every time he walked through the empty rooms, he considered the renovations he wanted before he moved in. Brautigan gave Peter Miller a call and asked him to come to Montana and have a look at his new place. Richard made arrangements for Miller to fly to Bozeman on the first weekend in November.

It was snowing when Peter arrived. “God, this is cold,” he thought. Brautigan showed him around the Pine Creek property, and Miller agreed it had tremendous potential. It was the wrong season to begin a big construction project. Richard and Peter agreed to meet again in the early spring and finalize their plans.

Richard Brautigan left Pine Creek at the end of the first week in November, flying out of Bozeman on a $139 Frontier flight that routed him through Salt Lake City to New York. This time he stayed for two weeks in room 1207 at the Fifth Avenue Hotel, 24 Fifth Avenue. The rate was $23 a night. A lot of Richard's time in the city was spent hanging out with Bob Dattila and eating expensive meals at The Palm. Harrison wrote, after his return to Frisco, hoping he “had a Gotham gala, replete with girlbum stew.” Brautigan likely got together with Carol Brissie, who had been out in San Francisco during July, when Brautigan treated her to a memorable scampi dinner at Vanessi's.

Brautigan discussed market strategy for
The Hawkline Monster
with Helen Brann. She wanted a $75,000 advance for the hardcover and quality paperback rights, with a guaranteed first printing order of twenty-five thousand copies. Richard would retain the approval of dust jacket design and ad copy accorded him in his previous S&S contract. All this sounded fine to Brautigan, who
asked his agent about having Simon & Schuster bring out a new collection of his poetry. Helen thought this was an excellent idea. She advised waiting until after they made the
Hawkline
deal before proposing it.

Brautigan left New York on November 21, taking an American Airlines flight to San Francisco. Ensconced again on Geary Street, he got back in touch with Jayne Walker, and they resumed an on-again, off-again relationship. She often met him at Enrico's, where he spent almost every late afternoon drinking with his buddies before heading next door to Vanessi's for dinner. Walking down Broadway alone always seemed “quite a trial” for Jayne. It was a neighborhood of strip clubs and topless bars, and she feared people would assume she was a hooker.

Walker had brought back “a fair amount” of saffron from Spain. “Richard was immediately struck by the brilliance of my move,” she said. He knew saffron was worth its weight in Kryptonite in the States and yet relatively inexpensive in Spain. Brautigan became obsessed with acquiring some of the uncommon spice. To that end, he proposed a trade to Walker. He would give her a signed copy of
The Octopus Frontier
, already a rare and desirable early Brautigan title, in exchange for some of her saffron.

“Richard would never have signed a book for me because he was so completely paranoid about letting anybody sell his signature,” Walker recalled. Brautigan had been “horrified” to learn that some of his old friends were selling his letters now that he had become famous. A bargain was struck. Richard had “a very clear idea in his mind of what the book was worth on the market because he always kept track of stuff like that.” They measured out a quantity of saffron in his kitchen, “not that much really,” and Brautigan signed a copy of his book for Jayne. A couple days later, he phoned her in Berkeley, furious because he had just learned the true value of his saffron and discovered it wasn't worth as much as a signed copy of
The Octopus Frontier
. Walker refused to renegotiate the trade. “A deal is a deal,” she told him.

At the end of November, Helen Brann mailed Brautigan a $500 kill-fee check from
Sports Illustrated
, which had rejected “A Gun for Big Fish.” She was trying the story next with
Esquire
. A week later, Brann sent Richard his new Simon & Schuster contract for
The Hawkline Monster
. They settled upon a $50,000 advance for hardcover and quality paperback rights, with a straight 15 percent royalty on the hardcover edition. Helen added a clause stipulating a full-page ad in the
New York Times
within one month of publication. Along with the book contract, Brann enclosed copies of an exclusive agreement with her new agency for Brautigan to amend as he wished. Richard made a few changes, eliminating the agency's control over “ideas” and “recordings” and striking out all language entitling Brann to deduct expenses such as postage and telephone calls from his account. In his own hand he added, “You will handle the magazine sale of my poetry only at my discretion.” After a week of scrutiny, Richard signed both documents and mailed them back to Helen in New York.

Helen Brann wanted to move forward with plans to market the motion picture rights for
Hawkline
. She had entered into an arrangement with theatrical agent Flora Roberts to represent that side of her business. Roberts, a Bronx-born New Yorker, had worked as an assistant to legendary Broadway producer Kermit Bloomgarden before becoming an independent agent in the early 1950s. Among her long-term clients were Ira Levin and Stephen Sondheim. Roberts sent a manuscript copy of
Hawkline
to film director Peter Bogdanovich for his consideration.

All in all, 1973 had been a very good year for Richard Brautigan, ending on a fiscal high note when Helen Brann sent him a check for $45,000 in December, his advance from Simon & Schuster for
The Hawkline Monster
. In a mood to celebrate, Richard took his daughter and Anne Kuniyuki on a trip up to Mendocino over Christmas. They stayed at the Sea Gull Inn, which provided a pleasant refuge from the cold, foggy weather. Ianthe was sick the whole time, coughing continuously on the drive north. She believed because Anne worked as a professional nurse, she would take care of her. Things didn't work out that way. Ianthe thought Anne was very nice, “but she was no healer.”

1974 began on a prosperous note. In January, Brautigan received $15,000 from Dell, the third of his contracted annual advance payments for his three-book deal. Helen Brann wrote that
Esquire
was taking “A Gun for Big Fish,” enclosing a check for $900. Another January letter came with $250 from
Mademoiselle
for Brautigan's recent seven-part poem, “Good Luck, Captain Martin.” Simon & Schuster offered a $20,000 advance for Richard's new poetry collection. They did not want to publish the book until September of 1975 to avoid any sales conflict with
Hawkline
. Jayne Walker sent him a telegram at the end of January offering to cook “a fine dinner” for his birthday. Brautigan quickly accepted.

A letter from Jim Harrison came that same month. Jim had “had a wonderful time with [
Hawkline
] last night between midnight and three, the best hours of any day, the first untainted hours. Boy did I ever want to fuck those Hawkline sisters.” Harrison thought it his favorite of all Brautigan's books, and ventured that Richard might have a hit on his hands. “It is metaphysical fiction and then some [. . .] It is so opposite, and vitally, any naturalistic ideas of fiction while copping their best techniques.”