Jubilee Hitchhiker (159 page)

Lesson number 1: “Never touch a gun unless you know or determine that it is loaded.” Ken checked the cylinder, and sure enough, the piece was armed and ready. He felt that this was “the introduction to the sacredness of Montana. Where guns meant something. Because this was how battles were fought, heroic battles. This is the West.” What Brautigan had in mind was something more than a simple history lesson. He envisioned literary ritual sacrifice.

That evening, Brautigan brought a bootleg Hungarian edition of
In Watermelon Sugar
out from the main house, along with a can of Campbell's tomato soup. “Look what they've done to the back cover,” Richard demanded. “They made me look like a hippie Joe Stalin.” Brautigan set the
paperback book on a cottonwood stump, propping it up with a fork from the kitchen. He placed the soup can in front of it. Brautigan took the first shot from the back porch. The tree stump stood thirty or forty feet away at the far reach of the light. The weapon of choice was a .45 automatic. Richard squeezed one off with a loud roar that made Kelley jump.

Brautigan missed the stump. Next, it was Ken's turn. Kelley didn't like guns. Richard told him not to shoot “from the safety of the porch.”

Brautigan led Ken into the darkness. “He decides this is where the Indians would do it,” Kelley recalled, “and he said, now, just aim and fire.” Ken didn't know what to expect. He raised the pistol, snapped off the safety, sort of aimed, and pulled the trigger. KA-BOOM! The weapon's report and recoil stunned him. He “felt something weird.” He was covered with a wet red fluid running down his face and dripping off his nose.

Shocked, Kelley looked at Brautigan. “He was bleeding with a smile on his face.” Ken had hit the target, and he thought the bullet ricocheted and struck Richard. He felt an instant flash of horror, “truly gargoylian,” before realizing the Campbell's can had exploded on impact and sprayed tomato soup all over him and Brautigan. The next morning, Kelley collected the shattered can and bullet-punctured paperback, putting them in a plastic bag he kept for the rest of his life. “I was enough of a cultural historian,” he said, “to know I should have that.”

Kelley had passed some unwritten test, and Brautigan agreed to a formal interview.

On the first of August, the two men sat down with a tape recorder running and drinks in hand. They began by talking about poetry.

“I love John Donne,” Richard said, his voice unnaturally precise.

“Byron?”

“Too fucking romantic,” Brautigan shot back. “Blake I love,” adding emphatically after a pause, “I love Milton.” Lapsing into “Imperial Mode,” Richard made a solemn pronouncement. “I have tremendous problems with Byron, Keats, and Shelley.”

Ken Kelley changed the subject, posing a typical journalistic query: “Who's your favorite writer of the twentieth century?”

“I'm too old for that question,” Brautigan demurred.

“Favorite Shakespearean play?”

“
Hamlet
.”

As the conversation continued, Richard loosened up, further expounding his personal opinions about modern literature. “Hemingway is the best short story writer in America,” he declared. Asked about books he liked, Brautigan listed
On the Road
;
They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
;
As I Lay Dying
; Fitzgerald's Pat Hobby stories; and
The Sea Wolf
. Richard called Jack London “an extraordinary writer,” immediately pronouncing
Martin Eden
to be even better than
The Sea Wolf
. Flannery O'Connor and Henry James were two writers Brautigan didn't care for.

The discussion turned to Richard's recent teaching stint at Montana State, an experience he hoped to repeat, only next time he wanted to work with grade school through high school students. “One week,” he said, “get in and get out. I'm going to teach William Carlos Williams, the early Eliot. I'm going to teach Stevens.” Kelley ended by asking Brautigan what he thought of certain popular modern writers. Richard said he hated Carlos Castaneda and didn't like Gabriel García Márquez. “I'm not interested in neurosis,” he said. “I'm not interested in dramatic epics. I'm interested in specific information.”

Within days of Ken Kelley's interview, Richard and Nancy Hodge, along with their three-and-a-half-year-old son, Aaron, arrived in Montana for a short stay with the Brautigans. Around this same time, Fumio and Mieko Wada, Richard and Aki's friends from San Francisco, also came to visit. An immediate party celebrated the arrival of the guests. Jim Harrison, staying at the Pine Creek Lodge, and Becky Fonda joined in the fun. The festivities began at Chico Hot Springs. Nancy Hodge remembered that “they played pinball and drank at the bar, and we swam.”

“It was a two-tiered thing,” according to Ken Kelley. “There was the official party and the unofficial party. The official party was to welcome the Hodges. That was held in Chico.” Richard and Nancy left the hot springs early with Aki because they had to get their son to bed. Things got rolling when the others returned to Brautigans' house. Tony Dingman warned Kelley that “word is spreading there's a Richard Brautigan party, and anything could happen because he doesn't do this very often.” Before long, a variety of scruffy locals arrived, looking for a good time.

Ken's “unofficial” party included playing a game of Go with Akiko and a one-legged Vietnam vet acid dealer on crutches. Kelley swallowed a tab, assuming Brautigan had done the same. Before his memories of the event grew “more and more psychedelic,” Kelley clearly recalled being humiliated by Aki at the Go table. “She was, ‘I beat you again, ah hah hah hah!'

“Great,” Ken said. “I was hoping all of us could play an American game like Ping-Pong.” Pent-up emotions boiled over. Ken resented Akiko for demanding he work in her garden. His ensuing diatribe included repeated use of the word “Jap.” Aki fled in tears into the kitchen. Brautigan watched the entire episode, saying nothing to Kelley in the moment.

Ken staggered outside, tripping under the stars, while the Hodges' “official” party continued on another wavelength in the kitchen. Unlike the journalist, Dick and Nancy did not drop acid. Neither did their host, in spite of what Kelley believed. Brautigan preferred his enlightenment straight from the bottle. By midnight, booze had taken him to a new level of satori. Richard had a thing about perfection, whether crafting a line of prose, reviewing a contract, or concocting his spaghetti sauce. Earlier in the evening he'd regaled his attorney about the craftsmanship and harmonious beauty of a pistol owned by a friend. A phone call had been made, and the loyal pal drove the acclaimed gun over to Brautigan's place for everyone to examine and admire.

Around midnight, while the group in the kitchen debated the merits of heading into town before the bars closed versus calling it a night and simply going to bed, Richard declared Dick Hodge had to cement their friendship by shooting into the ceiling with the perfectly crafted pistol. Hodge declined. He didn't like guns and wanted no part of drunken six-gun shenanigans. Brautigan insisted. If Dick wouldn't fire the revolver, he'd do it himself.

Hodge grew politely aggressive with Brautigan. Dick never drank much and was the most sober person in the house. Little Aaron lay fast asleep in the room directly above their heads. “I love you, you know,” he told Brautigan, “but I really don't want to shoot this gun. I don't want to wake my son.” Richard still didn't get it. Tony Dingman and the pistol's owner had to wrestle the weapon away from him, removing the bullets.

“The next morning, Richard Brautigan was all apologies,” Nancy recalled. “He was all over me for an hour the next morning about how sorry he was.” Ken Kelley beat a strategic retreat earlier, heading across the creek to the Hjortsbergs'. He introduced himself with effusive Irish charm. Soon, he was begging for asylum. “Look guys,” he said, “give me a break. Please help me. You won't even notice I'm here. I'll sleep outside.”

Aki came over a bit later, seeking sympathy from Marian. “Oh, that monster Richard,” she wailed. “That monster, Richard.” Akiko had already confided in Nancy Hodge, who arrived soon after to go riding with Marian. Afraid of horses, Ken Kelley hung around the barn overhearing mutterings about bondage while the women saddled up. That evening, Dick and Nancy discussed moving in to the Hjortsbergs', but there was no more room at the inn. Kelley was already ensconced on the couch in the library alcove next to the spare bedroom where Gatz's mother stayed.

Brautigan “comes over, very grandly” Kelley remembered, “to show this is just a big cosmic joke.” Richard proposed “a joust,” a Ping-Pong tournament to be held in his barn. He stewed over Ken's racist comments to Aki: an insult demanding revenge. Brautigan's wife had been a junior high school Ping-Pong champion. Kelley challenged everyone to play the game. A public humiliation seemed in order. Richard asked Ken to oversee the construction of a regulation-sized Ping-Pong table and provide a spaghetti dinner for the spectators and participants. Kelley pleaded poverty.

“So,” Brautigan asked, “how much money have you got in the bank?”

“Quite a curious question,” Kelley replied, “but I'll answer it: $12,000.”

“All right, then,” Richard said. “You can afford it.”

Brautigan wanted a spaghetti feast like the one Kelley hosted for fifty people at his Larkin Street flat the night they met five years before. Ken said he'd make enough to feed everybody.

The next morning, Kelley enlisted Sean Gerrity to take charge of the Ping-Pong table project. They went to the hardware store in town and bought a sheet of three-quarter-inch plywood, several two-by-fours, brushes, cans of green and white paint, everything they needed, before setting to work in the barn. Knowing Brautigan's perfectionism, they double-checked the accuracy of their measurements, making sure their plans conformed to rule book specifications. Sean and Ken finished the table in a day. “It was perfect,” Kelley recalled.

Avoiding the construction project, Richard Brautigan took Aaron Hodge fishing at Armstrong's Spring Creek. His parents, Aki, and the Wadas all went along, “a whole entourage,” turning the event into a picnic. “It was just wonderful,” Nancy Hodge recalled. “That was something Brautigan did spontaneously. He was the one that suggested taking Aaron.”

Akiko spent the afternoon shooting photographs. Richard wanted to teach his wife to fish and had bought her a seven-and-a-half-foot Scott fly rod, a Hardy Lightweight reel with a five-weight double-tapered line, and a pair of chest waders. Aki thought the baggy waterproof boots were very funny, like something a clown would wear, and she did not bring them to the spring creek. Aaron was having a wonderful time in Montana, excited about his first fishing trip. Neither Dick nor Nancy knew or cared anything about trout fishing. Richard knelt beside Aaron, carefully explaining the knots and which fly was the best. “He did everything for Aaron, step-by-step,” Nancy said. “He was just a sweetheart.”

Aki recorded it all with her single-lens reflex Nikon. Richard made the cast for the little boy and set the hook on the strike, handing Aaron the rod. The kid thrilled to the electric action of the fight. Brautigan helped him play, land, and release the trout. Richard Hodge thought of it as his friend's “idea of perfection. Richard wanted to catch the perfect fish and take it through like a little set piece.”

The next afternoon's Ping-Pong tournament provided drama performed on a bigger stage. Everyone gathered in the cavernous redwood barn, and the teams were selected. Aki, Sean Gerrity, Ken Kelley, the Wadas, Marian Hjortsberg, and the Hodges all signed up for a round-robin
elimination contest with quarter- and semifinal rounds. Richard Brautigan did not play. He appointed himself the judge of the event. One round of the semifinals pitted Ken against Aki, a true grudge match. “It was vicious playing,” Kelley recalled. In the end, Mrs. Brautigan prevailed.

The final game for the championship matched Richard Hodge against Akiko. Brautigan wanted his wife to win. “He didn't like a loser at all,” Aki recalled. “So, I have to be his hero all the time. As a wife, as a secretary, or the friend. I have to be perfect for him.” It was not to be. Akiko lost to Dick. Richard, acting as an impartial judge, called the final point against her. Aki's loss put a damper on the spaghetti party.

Greg and Judy Keeler came over from Bozeman with Dave Schrieber. They brought along a bright, attractive MSU student as a date for Tony Dingman. When Greg first arrived, he spotted Ken Kelley in the living room and thought him “a loud smart-ass.” Keeler, “still fascinated with the newness of knowing Richard,” didn't notice his host's sour mood. Richard seemed playful, bouncing two-hundred-pound Greg on his lap “like a baby.” A little later, Brautigan took Keeler and the MSU coed up to his barn-loft office and gave them “a wonderful but sad reading” of “Shrine of Carp,” one of his recent Japanese stories.

The trouble started after serious drinking got under way. Brautigan, insulated by the private sanctuary of booze, refused to talk about his wife's defeat in the recent round-robin tournament. Late in the night, when the Wadas and the Hodges had gone off to bed, Richard staggered out to the barn with an ax. Accompanied by Dave Schrieber, he laid waste to the offending Ping-Pong table, smashing it into splinters.

After revenging himself on an inanimate object, Brautigan returned to his house. He found his .45 and threatened to shoot a hole in the floor. “Richard, there are children sleeping upstairs,” Aki protested, trying to stop him.

“It's my floor, and I'll shoot it if I want to,” Brautigan raged. In the end, he was talked out of indoor gunplay, “so the kids could sleep in peace.” Schrieber gathered up all the ammunition he could find and snuck it out of the house, and all the survivors (not including Richard) went over to the Hjortsbergs' for a hot comforting sauna.