Jubilee Hitchhiker (194 page)

The next morning after coffee, Richard and Sean got back to work, packing things in boxes. It began to look as if someone was really moving out. They worked at a leisurely pace, conversation preferable to backbreaking labor. Brautigan talked about wanting to have another child. He hoped to do a better job this time around than he thought he had with Ianthe. When she was a baby, Brautigan had almost no money. He got rich almost overnight. Richard believed his sudden fame got in the way of being a proper parent.

Later, they talked about ghosts. Brautigan told Cassaday the Pine Creek house was haunted by an Asian poltergeist. He'd never made such a claim before; owning a haunted house in Bolinas was sufficiently supernatural. Richard spoke metaphorically. The spirits of Akiko, Masako, Siew-Hwa, and Eunice lingered at Rancho Brautigan. He deserved “to be haunted.”

At one point, Richard claimed he hadn't published anything recently because of his divorce. He told Sean his settlement was structured in a way that permitted Aki to take his future earnings. This was a deliberate falsehood. Brautigan and his lawyers had worked very hard to separate his copyrights from any division of property. Richard was not publishing because no one was buying.

Around 7:00 pm, Toby Thompson stopped in to say goodbye. He'd been put off by Brautigan's drinking and “was afraid of getting roped into a really bad scene.” Toby found Richard “in a reflective mood,” a major move clearly under way. Thompson asked Brautigan why he was leaving the ranch.

“Its time has passed,” Richard said.

They talked about Brautigan's plans to sell the place. Richard offered Toby 15 percent of “whatever he could get for it.” Knowing Tom Brokaw was looking for a home in Montana, Thompson gave this notion some thought.

Because of his dead pony dispute with Marian Hjortsberg, Brautigan could no longer bring his treasured sporting equipment to her house for winter storage. The McGuanes were recruited as replacements. Richard called Tom to say he was bringing his stuff by. “He saw life in moments,” McGuane recalled. “The moment when I leave—when I leave my things—when I relinquish my pistol. The moment when I first walked into your kitchen. These things are all very charged.” Tom told Richard he'd be busy for awhile, working his colts out in the riding arena but he could come up later once he'd finished. Brautigan was unhappy at having to wait but had no choice.

Sean and Richard gathered up Brautigan's firearms (McGuane remembered it as a 30-30 rifle, a couple handguns, the treasured pump-action .22) and fishing equipment, along with his blue Smith Corona electric typewriter. Toby offered to prepare dinner, watching as Richard tied his tubed fly
rods together with a black ribbon, binding in a bouquet of dead flowers to finish the arrangement. Along with the rods, a couple rifles, and the .44 Magnum, Thompson noticed a small plywood box ceremoniously wrapped in layers of tissue paper.

Toby asked what it was. Brautigan watched with a bemused expression as Thompson peeled back the tissue and opened the lid. Inside lay an austere glazed clay urn.

“I'll be in there someday,” Richard whispered.

Toby shrugged it off as Brautigan and Cassaday hauled the stuff up to Barney Creek. It was late, and they found Tom McGuane working one of his cutting horses in a covered arena off to the side of his house. Sean hung back as Tom dismounted and walked with Richard out of the arena, across a little bridge into the front yard. McGuane found Brautigan “aloof, wounded that I didn't stop immediately, and I sort of charmed him out of it.” Tom remembered thinking “he was carrying something really big around in his head.”

Richard gave Tom a big kiss. “Don't worry, “he said. “I'm not really trying to kill myself.” Cassaday didn't take part in the conversation as they lifted Brautigan's typewriter, guns, and rods from the car, but he heard some of what they said. “It was just goodbye between two good friends.”

McGuane said something to Brautigan about his drinking. “Be careful,” he warned.

Richard promised to try, saying “he wanted to go back to Japan and was thinking very seriously about getting married again and having children.” He mentioned “a young girl that he had an affair with the year before. Perhaps marrying and having a child.”

Sean knew he wasn't a part of this, standing back as Brautigan handed McGuane the small wooden box. “I'll send for this when I need it,” Richard said.

They kissed farewell like brothers, and Cassaday drove Brautigan back to the home he was about to leave forever. Tom and Richard never saw each other again.

Down in Pine Creek, Toby Thompson found almost no food in Brautigan's kitchen. He threw together an improvised meal, “scrambled eggs, sautéed hot dogs, some peppers, and a can of Dinty Moore beef stew.” When Richard and Sean returned, they gathered for this simple fare, washed down with tumblers of George Dickel. “It was a real sacramental kind of meal.” Brautigan seemed “tremendously touched” that Thompson had cooked his dinner. He kept saying thank you, glancing over at Toby, who thought he looked “so ethereal.” Thompson felt deep sympathy for Richard “because the phone didn't ring that night. Nobody came to see him that night—his last night in Montana.”

After rinsing their dishes in the sink, the trio headed through the darkness to Brautigan's studio out in the barn. They climbed the bare wooden stairs angling from landing to landing up to the rafters, a single bare bulb lighting their way from above. Toby asked Brautigan how many books he'd written. Richard thought for a second or two. “Ten,” he answered.

They set to work in Brautigan's small boxlike writing studio, the spectacular mountain view shrouded by night. Richard sorted through his papers, making stacks of thirty or forty pages at a time on the simple white wooden slab desk. “Taxes,” he'd say, separating the documents he wanted to save into a new file folder and tossing the discards onto the floor. Brautigan reorganized all his files in this manner, putting what he wanted to keep into boxes (correspondence, legal matters, manuscripts), throwing the rest onto the growing trash heap at his feet.

A man who previously had preserved every scrap of paper however insignificant, Richard now ruthlessly discarded everything he once would have treasured. Letters from Masako and
Takako Shiina, early drafts of unpublished poetry, fan notes, correspondence with other writers, Mr. Yamaguchi's autographed soup recipe book—all went onto the floor, along with financial statements, tax returns, canceled checks, uncorrected galley proofs for
So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away
, assorted snapshots, birthday cards from his daughter, and an assortment of junk (foosball tournament posters, a menu from the Old Norris School House Café, a 1978 program for the District 10-C basketball tournament in Livingston, a calendar from Van's IGA, numerous contracting and plumbing receipts, and the operating instructions for a Maytag Model DE407 washing machine).

Toby Thompson stood back watching. Behind him a soft cloth sculpture of several three-foot-long trout hung on the wall. In a way, it felt like witnessing a man destroy every trace of his recent emotional past. “[Richard] was talking about death,” Toby recalled. “Death was in the air.” Like a potlatch, Brautigan gave Thompson his personal things throughout the night: a pen from the Wrangler (“The Most Literary Bar in the USA”), copies of his work (a second edition of
Galilee Hitchhiker
, foreign translations of his novels), inscribing each in an evolving narrative of letting go.

Richard came across copies of recent work. “Here's one for Montana,” he said and read “The Lost Tree,” a story of vanished love, about revisiting the tree where he and Masako had so often consummated their passion.

“This one's for Japan,” Brautigan said, reading the poem “Night Flowing River.” Proud of the work, he mentioned it had been printed in Japanese and posted on newspaper kiosks all over Tokyo.

“Has that ever been published?” Toby asked.

“Well, no. Not in English,” Brautigan said. “This is the only English version of it.”

“Can I have those?”

“Sure.”

Thompson told Richard he was connected to the
Washington Review of the Arts
in D.C. He thought he might be able to get the two pieces published. After finishing in the studio, Brautigan, Cassaday, and Thompson returned to the main house for another drink. Once again, just like five months earlier in Tokyo, Richard had misplaced the manuscript of “The Fate of a West German Model in Tokyo.” He started poking around among the packing boxes.

“Look for a little green notebook,” he calmly instructed Toby. “Kind of important.”

“What's in it?”

“The new novel.”

Thompson was shocked. Holy shit! he thought. The house was full of junk. Richard didn't seem all that concerned. Toby knew he'd be going out of his mind if his book had been lost. After a search, they found the notebook under the sofa around 1:00 pm. Toby was heading back to Livingston. He planned on staying another week in Montana to finish the Peter Fonda story. Brautigan told him he'd rented a room at the Murray for the month. Thompson was welcome to use it and save some money. They embraced at the door. “It was quite touching,” Toby thought, heading back toward town.

Richard and Sean got little if any sleep that night. Early the next morning, Cassaday drove Brautigan into Livingston. Their first stop was the Mint Bar, where Richard bought a pint of whiskey. After a couple snorts, Brautigan felt ready to conduct his business. A visit to his real estate
agent topped the agenda. For inexplicable reasons, Richard brought his telephone into town and left it with the Realtor. Next they headed for the First Security Bank. Sean waited outside in the car while Richard went in to finesse the rough edges of his dwindling line-of-credit loan.

Brautigan went to see Bruce Erickson, the bank's president, who had signed off on his loan. Bruce liked Richard, having had long experience with his eccentricities. Once, Brautigan came to see him and said, “I've really got to show you something.” He led Erickson out of the bank's back door into the alley and they turned right, walking half a block to Callender Street. Another right turn and a half-block stroll took them to the corner of Second Street, where they turned right again and walked to the front entrance of First Security. Nothing happened. No interesting new sights were seen. Just another ordinary day in Livingston. Brautigan wanted to share his fascination with the mundane.

Another time, Richard phoned Bruce from Japan on Erickson's dime. (Even if the call wasn't collect, most of Brautigan's money had been borrowed from the bank.) He called Bruce frequently, often at ungodly hours of the night. “I've got a great idea,” Richard said this time.

“What's that?”

“Land yachts.”

“Huh . . . ?”

“Motor homes,” Brautigan repeated emphatically. “Why don't they call them ‘land yachts'?” No one remembered what the writer and the banker discussed on the morning of Brautigan's last day in Livingston, but once Richard attended to the last-minute details, he and Cassaday drove over the pass to Bozeman, where Dave Schrieber, Brad Donovan, and Greg Keeler waited for them at the Western Café. Brautigan preferred simple American food. The Western, where ranchers and cowhands ate, was one of his favorites. Sean and Richard were running late. Everyone ordered big breakfasts. After ten minutes, when the food arrived, Brautigan said, “Well, we have to go now.” Their meals sat untouched on the table.

“I don't think Richard paid for anything,” Cassaday recalled. On the road to the airport, Brautigan issued orders to everyone. He needed Clorets. He wanted a copy of the newest
Enquirer.
“Sort of a guerrilla action.” Everyone fanned out across the terminal while Richard checked in at the counter. They all planned to meet up at the bar. Sean got change, feeding quarters into the poker machine. He immediately had “two incredible hands” and won $13. Cassaday bought everybody a round while they waited for the plane to arrive.

Brautigan went to the men's room. Sean suggested they page Richard, hoping to catch him “while he was taking a piss.” Schrieber went and placed the call. When Brautigan returned he was totally flustered. “I can't understand it,” he said. “They called for me and there was nobody on the phone.”

Laughing, his buddies told Richard they were behind the prank, pushing a drink his way to make amends. Before long Brautigan's flight was announced over the PA system. Richard handed Greg the mooning photo and dug into his pockets, pulling out a handful of Japanese coins. He gave them to Sean without any explanation. Keeler, Schrieber, and Cassaday watched Brautigan walk on board. They stood waving by the plate-glass window as Richard's plane lifted off into the Big Sky above Montana. Richard never came back.

fifty-seven: the itch

O
NE MORNING AFTER returning from his last trip to Japan, Richard Brautigan showed up on Bobbie Louise Hawkins's doorstep. He fidgeted and stammered. “Does everyone in Bolinas have this crotch itch?”

“I don't think so, Richard,” she said. Bobbie's years of nurturing Richard as a friend/fellow writer/mentor gave her a unique perspective on his personality. (“You know how you can look at a person and almost see the shape of another person inside?”) To Bobbie, Richard was forever younger and smaller. She saw him always as no more than thirteen or fourteen; 120 pounds dripping wet. She addressed the waif within, asking, “What do you mean?”

More fidgeting. Bit by bit Richard disclosed that he had contracted something in Japan. He was miserable with it. The rash was “breaking out” and “incredibly itchy.”

“Well,” Bobbie said. “It sounds more like some kind of infection. You should use some medication. Have you been to a doctor?”