Pages from a Cold Island (19 page)

And as I now lay in my bed, in my
mother’s
house, at Alexandria Bay on the St. Lawrence, which I like to think of as the cold top of the world, I found myself saying to the television,
“
Oh, dear, dear Gloria,
relax, do relax
. They say your man McGovern is the most decent man in the Senate. I suspect he is, and yet every time you and those disaffected souls he
’
s surrounded himself with open your mouths you bury the poor slob that much deeper. We yokels don
’
t un derstand your smugness, your certitude, the militant, celery-like curves of your spines, and what we don
’
t understand makes us afraid, turns us off, and worse, will end with that benighted yo-yo Nixon
’
s getting into a position of power.
”
Then suddenly I thought, Look, Gloria, you want to do something meaningful with your life? Get Friedan and the rest of those meatballs, rent a bus, pack some picnic lunches, go to Wellfleet on the Cape, bow your heads at Edmund Wilson
’
s grave and pay homage to one of the century
’
s great men! Do anything but what you
’
re doing. What I
’
m imploring of you, dear, dear Gloria, is that you help me see your man McGovern as a man for whom I
’
d interrupt my love-making. You won
’
t do so until you and his follow ers become a lot less brassily strident, until I detect in your demeanors at least a tacit admission that, like Ms. Germaine Greer, you too are becomingly vulnerable and might yet find yourselves the victims of love.

8

Kramer
’
s Pharmacy is at Boonville, New York, in the northernmost part of Oneida County. Across the street and but paces to the northeast sits the lovely, white-columned limestone Hulbert House, the hundred-and-sixty-year-old hotel I have in fantasies dreamed of buying, restoring to some kind of rustic splendor (fourposter beds, Boston rockers. Franklin stoves, and pine wash stands with wash basins of milk glass), settling comfy down (doubtless with, as McBride has said, my writing tablets and vodka bottles) at a great old pine harvest table near the mammoth limestone fireplace in the dining room, and thereupon letting the world go by. And the world would go by.

South of Boonville the main highway, Route 12, veers to the east and goes round the village so that the traveler gets no glimpse of Boonville other than the backs of some houses and commercial buildings fronting the highway at what—because the village is so small it might all be deemed outlying—one hesitates to call
“
outskirts
”
; as much as we
’
d like to, we cannot dignify the village with
“
outskirts.
”
If, however, one bears west and enters the village proper and proceeds down Main Street and passes the Hulbert House, he can turn hard right into Schuyler Street and in a matter of moments he is out of Boonville and traveling north on Alternate Route

Almost immediately he will have left Oneida County and passed into Lewis County, then almost as quickly he will have moved up and into Talcottville, where if he is not speeding to get to—well, as an example—Alexandria Bay and the Thousand Islands resort area, where I
’
m play ing necrologist and putting down this
“
elegy,
”
he will be able to get a glimpse of Wilson
’
s stone house. From the rise on which the stone house sits, the road dips almost immediately, crosses the very narrow bridge spanning the Sugar River, then rises up the twisting and treacherous northern approach to the brid
ge. If the traveler safely nego
tiates this unfortunate twisting rise he comes to Locust Grove and Potters Corners (here the road to the west leads to Constableville, where Wilson often dined at the hotel in the Parquet Room) and up into Turin, where they ski and where Wilson, in the off-season when the skiers weren
’
t in rowdy residence, often drank at the Towpath Lodge and chatted with its owners, Klaus and Mignonne Heuser. From Snow Ridge one motors to Houseville and up into Martins-burg (all I ever think of moving through these hamlets is interminable and harshly inclement winters and illicit sexual mores among towheaded inhabitants), and at the latter one begins a miles-long descent into the idyllic, shaded, brick and clapboarded village of Lowville, the county seat of Lewis County, where one again picks up the main Route 12 north to Watertown, Lake Ontario, the Thousand Islands, and Canada.

Save by natives like myself this alternate route isn
’
t much traveled, and I suspect few have traveled it for my motive: hoping to see a car in Wilson
’
s front yard and thereby draw sustenance from the knowledge that Wilson was once again in residence and still putting down words. To upstaters the alternate route—we call it the
“
high road
”
—is known to be four miles shorter, a good deal less pa trolled by state police, and hence in our journeys to and from Utica, where one picks up the New York State Thruway and comes together with what I
’
ve always insisted is
“
the rest of the world,
”
we feel we can make better time and travel with immunity from speeding tickets. As I am most familiar with the road I have often traveled it at a break neck and lunatic seventy miles an hour, braking only at the hamlets, the insidious approaches to Sugar River, and at Wilson
’
s stone house.

On a brilliant blue Sunday morning in early July, three weeks after Wilson
’
s death, I was standing in front of Kramer
’
s Pharmacy in Boonville, leaning my elbows on a parking meter, and looking across the way at
“
my
”
hotel, the Hulbert House. At nine-fifteen the sun was already relentless, the humidity oppressive, and I was upset by a number of things and growing more uneasy by the moment.

Driving down from Alexandria Bay I had stopped at Wilson
’
s stone house, empty now, and to my sorrow had discovered Wilson had at long last lost his battle with the State of New York. For a number of years he had fought the State
’
s attempts to eliminate those treacherous approaches to Sugar River. To do so entailed building an elevated widened span across the waters and for the bridge
’
s southern approach it would be essential to take a large piece of Wilson
’
s sloping front lawn. Wilson had retained counsel to put his case. Over the years I
’
d read some pieces in local newspapers about the controversy, and I
’
d been told by John B. Johnson, editor and publisher of the Water-town
Time
s
, that in a majestic snit Wilson had once come to his Watertown offices and tried to get him to enlist the rhetoric of his editorial pages in behalf of saving Wilson
’
s lawns. I don
’
t know what briefs Wilson
’
s counsel invoked, or the case Wilson put to Johnson. No doubt Wilson took the position that America On The Move could goddam well stay on the main road where it belonged; probably Wilson felt the already harassed taxpayers
’
dollars were being used to duplicate a perfectly good main highway; perhaps, with Johnson, Wilson even became chummily provincial by pointing out that the alternate route was used only by natives—that is, used by
“
us,
”
Wilson and the rest of us.

But Wilson had lost th
is, perhaps his penultimate bat
tle; the State had forced its right to eminent domain; and on this hot Sunday morning on the soft scarred earth above the Sugar River the bulldozers sat at Sabbath idleness. To accommodate the bridge
’
s southern approach a large sec tion had been taken from Wilson
’
s front yard. The stone house now sat somewhat astonished-looking almost atop the highway, and workers had built a white cement curb nearly as high as a cottage
’
s picket fence on the east and north sides of the house. In
Upstate
Wilson had rued the hoodlum motorcyclists and snowmobilers cutting kitty-corner across his yard and ruining his ferns, and if for nothing else one had to be grateful that the curbs would now prevent this. The house looked run down, its trim badly needed painting, and I knew if the house were to be saved someone—how I wished it could be me!—would have to spend considerable money and begin immediately. From the amount of work already completed on the bridge
’
s approaches and the tons of earth moved to support them, it was apparent that in the last days of his illness Wilson had to put up with not only the rain but the noise of the bulldozers. It was a pathetic irony. It couldn
’
t have escaped Wilson that the bur
eauc
racies he had fought all his life could not be thwarted in their
“
missions
”
(what one would give for his dying words on those bulldozers and that white cement curb!). In the end, at Talcottville, not only couldn
’
t Wilson flee that America with which he had been on distressing terms for so long but in the name of a concept he deplored,
“
progress.
”
that America had brought its earthmovers and concrete within spitting distance of his doors.

In my pilgrimage south to bid Wilson adieu—from what I
’
d read every other writer in America was going to Miami to rub elbows and sip martinis with Ms. Steinem and Mr. Mailer and to articulate the cause of Senator George McGovern—I
’
d come to Boonville to meet Mrs. Mary Pcolar (puh-K
Ó
L-ar), Wilson
’
s last great
“
passion.
”
Dur ing the week Mrs. Pcolar worked at Kramer
’
s Pharmacy. It
’
d been there she
’
d first met Wilson a dozen years before, and she
’
d suggested the drugstore as our obvious meeting place. But it was now approaching nine-thirty, and she was already half an hour late. I was wondering if we
’
d under stood each other correctly, and recalling what the state had done to Wilson
’
s yard I was growing more restless by the moment. To kill time I bought the New York
Sunday
Time
s
; in the book review I read Wilfred Sheed
’
s n
ice rem
iniscence of Wilson; in the back of the review in
“
The Last Word
”
Wilson was himself represented by a piece he
’
d writ ten for
The New Republic
in 1928,
“
The Critic Who Does Not Exist.
”
In it he ca
lled for some enlightened criti
cism of contemporary writers, a chore that at his death he himself had not undertaken for years. It was too hot to read in the car, so I read sitting on the cement steps leading into the pharmacy. On finishing these articles I got up, brushed the dirt from my pants, balanced the fat
Time
s
on the con vex top of a mailbox, and placed my elbows on a parking meter and waited.

Almost everyone who entered the store came out with the Sunday newspapers, but only a few had the
Time
s
, most of them having bought the Rome and Syracuse papers and the New York Sunday N
ews. One woman with le tags sig
nifying she was down from Lewis County pulled up and parked, went in, and came out with the
Time
s
, three or four crossword-puzzle magazines, and a carton of Pall Malls, obviously literate and in for a leisurely day.

I said,
“
There
’
s a wonderful piece about Mr. Wilson on page two of the book section.
”

Startled, she said,
“
Pardon?
”

I repeated myself, adding,
“
You know Mr. Wilson—
the writer
from Talcottville.
”
To my embarrassment the woman said,
“
Oh?
”
Then she giggled self-consciously.

Up and down the pavement behind me a stupendously moronic-looking girl kept walking back and forth, back and forth. She had on dirty beige hip-huggers and a cerise tank shirt under which she wore no bra, allowing her sturdy, youthful and provocative tits to sway back and forth. Her hair was lank with dirt. She was cross-eyed. Her comings and goings behind me were so aimless, and so obviously did she have great pride of hip movement and such devoted affection for her own swaying, pulpous tits, that one couldn
’
t doubt she was the town fuck and an idiot into the bar gain. For years I
’
d been cognizant of her in these upstate villages, the girl who ripens at eleven and by thirteen has the farm boys taking her out into the pastures, settling her on her knees among the cowpies, and jamming their up-country throbbing pricks into her jaws.

To me there was something obscenely inappropriate about her, something that clashed hideously with the
“
sacredness
”
of my pilgrimage, and I tried to concentrate on
“
my
”
hotel across the way. But the Hulbert House also looked run-down. I thought that if I were ever coming into that mysterious patrimony that would allow me to restore it, I
’
d have to come into it soon, and in exasperation I walked across the street, turned my back on the hotel, and watched the front door of Kramer
’
s for Mrs. Pcolar. In
Upstate
Wilson had included a picture of her, her husband George, and her children. I
’
d studied the picture and was sure I
’
d have no difficulty recognizing her. It was getting on to a quarter to ten, the sun was high and the humidity stifling, abominable for that time of morning in that part of the country. And I was tired, anxious and irritable.

In a big styrofoam container on the back seat of a borrowed Pinto I had provisions for a magnificent picnic and I prayed the heat would not wreak its despoliation. The night before I
’
d filled two Mason jars with water and put them into the freezer but that morning discovered the expanded ice had cracked both of them—and these ac cursed jars had been sold for precisely this purpose!—and to keep my delectations cool I had to settle for the cubes from a single tray (naturally only one was full) dumped into a plastic bag. Unable to sleep but a wink (I
’
d been as nervous as if I were
going to meet The Great Man him
self!), my picnic got altogether away from me. To pass the hours from two a.m., w
hen I gave up all hope of sleep
ing, I prepared four big chicken breasts with Shake
‘
n Bake only to discover that this took less than forty-five minutes. In the pantry I then found two boxes of premixed ingredients, one for banan
a bread and another for a choco
late marble coconut cake. For the bread, one had to add a splash of milk and two medium-sized bananas. I put in six small bananas, then mixed up everything in the electric blender for an hour until the texture was as lubricious as a cheerleader
’
s cunt. As
both the bread and the cake de
manded the same oven temperature I could have baked them simultaneously, but to kill time I did them separately. On completion the bread looked a masterpiece.