The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy (31 page)

Jackson led us out to the basketball hoop. I liked the continuity. Every pet the Appelmen had owned for the past quarter century was buried here, from the beloved thirteen-year-old golden retriever Honey to Pico de Gallo, the carnival goldfish who had begun floating upside-down a record six minutes after being released from his baggie. I liked that the bodies stayed together while the condiment souls went up to the great refrigerator door in the sky. I liked that it gave a weight, a history, to every pet, even the ones whose lives and deaths hadn’t inspired any great love at all.

I gave the coffin to Jackson.

“I got the shovel,” he said. “But I thought I’d wait to dig until you guys came.”

“Let’s take turns,” said Elizabeth.

I shrugged and nodded agreement. I’d kind of wanted to do the whole thing. I’d had this vision of myself out there alone, digging the grave, drowning my grief in sweat.

But Baconnaise was tiny. This would not be an ordeal. Elizabeth bent down with the trowel and then Jackson did, and then he handed it to me, and the black loamy soil gave way easily to the blade. This was the most fertile land on earth. With those three swipes we had a grave, and I put Baconnaise’s coffin inside.

“Say something,” Elizabeth said to me. But I couldn’t.

“Wait,” said Jackson, and pelted inside. He brought out his edition of the
Cantos
. By the looks of it, he’d barely cracked the spine. He passed it to me. “Read something.”

“Which part?”

“You think
I
know?”

Elizabeth looked at me. “You know.”

I knew.

“What thou lovest well remains,”
I read,
“the rest is dross/What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee/What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage / Whose world, or mine or theirs/or is it of none?”

Jackson lifted the trowel and began to cover Baconnaise with dirt. “He was an excellent gerbil.”

“He was valiant,” said Elizabeth. “He was a hero.”

I was glad they were speaking, because Baconnaise deserved more than Ezra Pound. Philip Larkin’s thing about the
Cantos
being too literary—that was bullshit. But even if Pound’s poetry was made out of being alive, it was still art that came from life. It wasn’t life. And when you die I bet that you want real life, pure real life, eulogies that are unpoetic and messy, smeared with tears and truisms, clichéd as hell, the kind of stuff a person means.

“He was good and kind and brave and true,” said Jackson.

“He was loyal,” said Elizabeth.

“He was a real friend,” I said.

Then, over the rise that separated the backyard from the front, appeared Luke. We turned at his footsteps.

“I thought you’d be burying him now,” he said. I couldn’t tell whether he was sheepish or just keeping his voice down, his confidence at a low simmer, because of the circumstances. “You always bury your pets at sunset.”

“Yeah,” said Jackson.

Nobody else said anything. Luke came to stand with us, looking down at the small patch of disturbed earth. That was all there was. The next rainfall would merge that soil with the
soil around it, and soon the grass and weeds would grow in their Minnesota riot, pushing into his body with their roots.

“Thanks, Baconnaise,” said Luke.

“Thanks, Baconnaise,” we echoed, and the four of us turned and walked back to the house.

Much of the information about Ezra Pound comes from John Tytell’s excellent biography,
Ezra Pound: The Solitary Volcano
. The Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County provided essential resources; I am (literally) indebted.

I am grateful to many people for their generosity, patience, and good company. These include my parents, Ellen and Charlie Hattemer; my siblings and first readers, Spencer, Derek, Lucy, Emma, Rebecca, Peter, and Henry Hattemer; and my friends, colleagues, and students. Sorry, everyone, for stealing your lines. Many thanks to Heather Daugherty, Michael Trudeau, Artie Bennett, Kelly Delaney, and the whole team at Random House. And my deepest thanks to my agent, Uwe Stender, and my editor, Erin Clarke, who have offered such incisive suggestions and expressed such remarkable enthusiasm. I am surrounded by people as kind as they are smart, as insightful as they are funny, and I am very lucky.

Kate Hattemer, the oldest of eight siblings, grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. She attended Yale University and taught high school Latin in Virginia before returning to Cincinnati, where she now works as a bookseller.
The Vigilante Poets of Selwyn Academy
is her first book. Visit her on the Web at
katehattemer.com
.