Jubilee Hitchhiker (160 page)

In the morning, the wrecked Ping-Pong table provided novel breakfast conversation. “It didn't look like anything you'd ever seen before,” Ken Kelley recalled. “It was a giant rubble.” When Aki observed the destruction, she took a piece of white chalk and drew a circle around the wreckage, like a cop outlining a homicide victim. Greg Keeler came over later, and Richard said, “Pardon the mess. We had to deal with a rude houseguest this morning.” Brautigan told Keeler he'd thrown Kelley out because he'd broken Akiko's favorite lamp.

Ken related a different story, claiming he wasn't sleeping in the room when “the little Japanese toy lamp” was broken. “It got knocked over by somebody I'd never met,” he whined, “so because I wasn't sleeping there to protect it, and should have been, that was my fault.”

Richard and Nancy Hodge left early that day, driving off to the Bozeman airport with their son. Later in the afternoon, Ida Hjortsberg, Gatz's mother, came to the back door, with a large shard of shattered Ping-Pong table she'd found in the woods while hunting mushrooms with her five-year-old grandson, Max. “Does this belong to you?” she asked. Akiko accepted the fragment, knowing her husband had hurled it out into the cottonwoods, possessed by his incomprehensible demons.

Soon after the Hodges' departure, Jimmy Buffett showed up in Montana. The Brautigans were recovering from houseguest overload, so he stayed at the Pine Creek Lodge with Jim Harrison.
Richard and Akiko planned a dinner party to welcome their friends. Aki prepared a huge pot of borscht, one of her specialties, slaving in the kitchen for most of the day. Harrison, Buffett, and their group arrived very late, long after most of the other guests had already eaten. They'd spent the day floating the Yellowstone with a fishing guide and lost track of time, often the case when the trout are rising.

Brautigan was not pleased. He watched the late arrivals, silently furious, as Buffett wandered about his kitchen, drawling, “Hi, I'm Jimmy,” to everyone he encountered. After wolfing down a couple bowls of borscht, Harrison, Buffett, and their entourage abruptly departed for Chico Hot Springs. Richard and Aki “felt snubbed.” Cleaning up after the last guest departed, the Brautigans decided it might be a good time “for a sort of second honeymoon.”

The next morning they booked a room at the Bozeman Holiday Inn, heading over the hill in the evening for dinner with Greg and Judy Keeler. The Brautigans arrived at the Keelers' with Richard “sullen” and in full “Imperial Mode.” The previous evening's perceived insult remained foremost on his mind. It was all Brautigan could talk about, “before, during, and after” the dinner. Richard repeatedly whispered, “Hi, I'm Jimmy,” muttering “popular culture” as a disgusted assessment.

Later in the evening, Brautigan instructed his wife to go on ahead to the motel room “and prepare your body for me.” Aki complied, but not without a sardonic dismissive rolling of her eyes. The night wore on. Richard, unable to let go of the perceived Buffett/Harrison snub, kept returning to the topic, over and over again. He called this “tracking.” Keeler wondered if his friend believed the process of repetition might somehow “exorcize” his demons.

Close to midnight, after hours of “tracking,” Brautigan announced it was time to drive over to Pine Creek and “settle some business.” Greg Keeler had grave misgivings about this endeavor but fell dutifully into line, chauffeuring Richard over Trail Creek Road in his Mazda station wagon. Outside cabin number 2 at the Pine Creek Lodge, Brautigan instructed Keeler to “push this cabin with your car. I want it moved.” Although he was a Buffett fan and hoped someday to meet Harrison, Keeler complied, easing his car up against the log structure and giving it a little bump. “Now flash your lights and honk your horn,” Richard instructed. When Keeler hesitated, Brautigan did it for him, having immediate second thoughts about his act of retribution. “These guys are big and can be pretty mean,” he said. “They could sue me for all I'm worth. Quick, let's go to my house and hide on the floor.”

Back at Rancho Brautigan, supine in the dark kitchen, they lay staring at the ceiling while discussing the impact of Japanese films on Richard's work. Around two in the morning, Brautigan remembered his wife waiting in a room at the Holiday Inn and suggested a return to Bozeman. As a conciliatory gesture, the delinquent husband had Greg stop at Denny's and ordered fried shrimp to go. “She loves them, and they should be a perfect peace offering.” The order took so long, they both had a burger and fries while waiting. Keeler dropped Brautigan off at the motel at some ungodly hour, wishing him good night and speeding off toward home.

The next day, Richard and Aki pulled up in front of the Keelers' home on Linley Place. Greg watched as she slammed the brakes, sending Richard's head thudding into the dashboard. Greg had a vision of Akiko bouncing the “measly shrimp [. . .] off his face and chest, one by one” as he begged for forgiveness. Richard stopped by the Keeler's place just long enough to tell Greg his wife had been pulling the dashboard stunt all morning.

With the house quiet after all the guests had gone, Brautigan returned to the novel still called “So the Wind Won't Blow It Away.” Richard planned a mid-September trip to Japan to continue working on his sequence of short stories. When the Tokyo office of the International Communication Agency (or ICA, later renamed the United States Information Agency), learned of Brautigan's travel plans, they invited him to participate in a program conducted under the auspices of the American Embassy.

Anxious for work in hand before his author left the country, William Targ wrote Brautigan in August, asking where to send the limited edition's colophon page for signing. Targ finally spoke on the telephone with Akiko near the end of the month. The next day, he mailed 350-plus colophon pages to Montana in a beat-up tan attaché case. Richard and Aki took it with them when they left for San Francisco before the end of the month.

Brautigan worked steadily on his novel, finishing a first version at the end of August. On the title page he typed, “This is a very rough draft and will be rewritten extensively. It is not publishable in this form.” On September 5, Brautigan received a special visa from the Japanese Consulate-General permitting him a 120-day stay in Japan “for cultural activities.” Akiko assisted him in getting this and wanted to accompany her husband on his trip to her homeland. Richard convinced her she wasn't allowed to leave the country because she'd applied for American citizenship. Aki didn't know if this was true. An obedient wife, she swallowed her hurt and anger, staying home on Green Street. Always a professional regarding work, Brautigan sent the signed colophon pages back to William Targ before taking off for Japan.

The day of his departure in mid-September, Richard phoned Helen Brann, telling her he planned to be out of the country for three months. Brautigan did not share this information with his wife. Akiko found out about his plans weeks later from her family in Japan. She wrote to Richard the first week in October: “Is it true that you gonna stay in there until the end of the year??? Zeeeeeee!! This means (Oh NO!) Not with joy,” hardly the words of a contented spouse. A mutual friend observed Brautigan “was so naive” and “didn't feel it was necessary to change his way of living around women.”

This was Richard Brautigan's fourth trip to Tokyo. He had been there every season but fall and was looking forward to experiencing a Japanese autumn for the first time. He would have to wait. Mid-September remained hot and sultry. Richard resumed his old habits in Tokyo, moving in to a room on the thirty-fifth floor of Keio Plaza and heading out to The Cradle every night.

During his first couple days in the city, Brautigan visited his in-laws, promptly writing Aki that everyone was taking good care of him. He asked his wife if she missed him. Not that Richard lacked for company. Bruce Conner had been invited to Japan by the ICA to host a presentation of his short experimental films. He arrived for a month's stay. Brautigan got him a room on the same floor of his hotel. “They gave him a good price,” Conner recalled, “and I got the same kind of price.”

Richard offered a bit of advice about what to expect as a first-time foreigner in Tokyo. “When you go to Japan, Bruce,” he said, “just imagine how people would relate to you if you were a giant cactus on roller skates rolling down the sidewalk.”

Conner felt this attitude provided “an excuse for Richard to be a little obnoxious.” Brautigan brought his friend to The Cradle “many times,” reintroducing him to Takako. Bruce observed that
the bar “was like in a way a second home for [Richard]. He expected everybody to speak English. He didn't make any effort to speak Japanese other than, at most, two dozen tourist phrases, and he pronounced them just horribly.”

Brautigan claimed “it didn't make any difference,” confiding to Conner that “the proper behavior in Japan is that it doesn't make any difference what you do in Japan. You are a barbarian in their eyes.”

Spending time in a bar with Brautigan provided Conner with another insight into Japanese customs. “They have a different attitude toward drunks,” he recalled. Drunks were taken care of kindly. No one roughed them up or tried to steal their money. “So, this is heaven for Richard.” One evening, his role as Brautigan's drinking buddy backfired on Conner. Richard had a fearsome capacity for holding his liquor. Trying to keep up with him was an exercise in futility. Out for a sushi dinner with Brautigan and some of his Japanese friends, Conner made the mistake of attempting to match him drink for drink.

By the end of the meal, Bruce was sloshed. When the bill arrived, Richard asked Bruce if he'd like to help pay for the dinner. Deep in his cups, Bruce offered some pocket change. Richard felt this to be an insult to his friends but bottled up his indignation until later that night when they were back at the Keio Plaza. He phoned Conner's room in a fit of fuming anger, threatening to come and beat him up. Drunk enough to take Richard at his word, Bruce slid his security lock into place just as Brautigan came lurching in a fury down the hallway. Unable to gain entrance, Richard hurled himself at Bruce's door, cursing and screaming. He kicked and pounded with his fists, creating an enormous disturbance.

Bruce Conner thought being in Japan with Brautigan “would be a splendid opportunity. I could make contact with people through Richard and [he] could show me things about Japan.” Conner and Brautigan had planned back in San Francisco to work on a screenplay together. After making a number of short experimental movies, Bruce wanted to direct a feature before he turned fifty and “felt that because of Richard's involvement it would be easier for me to see about getting funding for the film.” Living on Brautigan's floor in the hotel seemed ideal to Conner. “This is great,” he thought. “We'll have breakfast together.”

Things didn't work out that way. “I didn't see [Richard] for days at a time,” Bruce remembered. “He'd lock himself into his room, saying he was busy writing. Or he had an appointment, or he was doing an interview, or I couldn't get him at all.” Conner kept busy. Brautigan had introduced him to people he knew, and Bruce worked with a film crew he'd organized before his arrival. Every time Bruce mentioned the screenplay project, Richard said, “Oh, I don't want to talk about that now. I've got other projects.”

Brautigan finally found time to talk with Conner about their proposed script. Bruce recalled “his premise and concepts of the film were so completely the opposite of any ones I had because what Richard came up with was a bunch of guys planning a bank robbery and virtually everything was taking place in one room. There were seven or eight people, and all they did was sit and talk and play cards and drink. All of the humor was verbal. All of the action was verbal.”

After several meetings that went nowhere, Conner said, “Look, Richard, there's nothing really here to do a movie about.” Bruce had a concept he thought might save the day. The idea was to focus on the artificiality of filmmaking. A boom mike would hang down in the middle of a scene.
Actors might talk directly back to the director. The clapboard marking each shot would not be edited out of the final cut. Both men wanted Robert Mitchum to star. Conner proposed having the bank robbers plan to meet at a movie theater. The final scene would show Mitchum standing in a queue outside under a marquee bearing the picture's actual title. The lead actor turns to the camera and delivers a final line: “This better be a good movie.”

Bruce championed this concept. They had a beginning. They had a punch line. Richard couldn't grasp a visual approach, remaining locked into his dialogue-heavy structure. Bruce gave up. “I think you ought to write it as a book,” he said.

On a warm Monday evening, the first of October, Brautigan presented a program he called “My Life, My Book,” at the Tokyo American Center under the auspices of the recently reorganized United States International Communication Agency (USICA), a branch of the State Department established to promote educational and cultural exchanges between the United States and foreign nations. A week or so earlier in September, he gave a similar presentation at the American Center in Sapporo, his wife's birthplace, on the northernmost island of Hokkaido.

Takako Shiina was in the audience along with several members of Aki's family. Richard brought Akiko's mother a special present from Hokkaido. After the American Center reading, Mrs. Nishizawa wrote her daughter a four-page letter describing Richard's “lecture” as “unique, humorous and delightful, with dignity.” She enclosed a clipping from the
Weekly Asahi Magazine
about the event.

The next night became Bruce Conner's turn to take the stage at the American Center. Both Richard Brautigan and Takako were in attendance. The films screened included
Cosmic Ray
(1961),
Take the 5:10 to Dreamland
(1977),
Mongoloid
(1978), and Conner's most recent production,
Valse Triste
(1979). After the screening, Takako took Richard and Bruce to an old traditional Tokyo sukiyaki restaurant. Bruce Conner assumed that Takako Shiina was Richard's girlfriend.