Trout Fishing in America (27 page)

“If it's all right with you,” Charley said to Margaret's brother. “She'll be buried in that tomb we've been working on. They finished it this afternoon.”

“That would be perfect,” her brother said.

“It will be dark and there will be no sound, but I think we can take care of everything.”

“Yeah,” her brother said.

“Fred, will you go and tell the people in the town about the funeral? Some of them might want to go. Also alert the Tomb Crew about the funeral. And see if you can find some flowers.”

“Sure, Charley. I'll take care of it.”

“It's our custom to brick up the rooms of those who lived here when they die,” Charley said.

“What does that mean?” Margaret's brother said.

“We put bricks across the door and close the room forever.”

“That sounds all right.”

P
AULINE AND
Margaret's brother and Charley and Bill, he had the bricks, and I went to Margaret's room. Charley opened the door.

Pauline was carrying a lantern. She put it down on Margaret's table and lit the lantern that was there with a long watermelon match.

There were now two lights.

The room was filled with things from the Forgotten Works. Every place you looked there was something forgotten that was piled on another forgotten thing.

Charley shook his head. “A lot of forgotten things in here. We don't even know what most of the things are,” he said to nobody.

Margaret's brother sighed.

“Is there anything you want to take with you?” Charley said.

Her brother looked all around the room very carefully and very sadly and then shook his head, too. “No, brick it all up.”

We stepped outside and Bill started putting the bricks in place. We watched for a little while. There were tears in Pauline's eyes.

“Please spend the night with us,” Charley said.

“Thank you,” Margaret's brother said.

“I'll show you to your room. Good night,” Charley said to us. He went off with her brother. He was saying something to him.

“Let's go, Pauline,” I said.

“All right, honey.”

“I think you'd better sleep with me tonight.”

“Yes,” she said.

We left Bill putting the bricks in place. They were watermelon bricks made from black, soundless sugar. They made no sound as he worked with them. They would seal off the forgotten things forever.

P
AULINE AND
I went to my room. We took off our clothes and got into bed. She took off her clothes first and I watched.

“Are you going to blow the lantern out?” she said, leaning forward as I got into bed last.

She did not have any covers up over her breasts. The nipples were hard. They were almost the same color as her lips. They looked beautiful in the lantern light. Her eyes were red from crying. She looked very tired.

“No,” I said.

She put her head back on the pillow and smiled ever so faintly. Her smile was like the color of her nipples.

“No,” I said.

A
FTER WHILE
I let Pauline go to sleep, but then I had my usual trouble sleeping. She was warm and sweet-smelling beside me. Her body called me to sleep as if it were a band of trumpets. I lay there for a long time before I got up and went for one of the walks I take at night.

I stood there with my clothes on, watching Pauline sleep. Strange, how well Pauline has slept since we have been going steady together, for Pauline was the girl who went for the long walks at night, carrying the lantern. Pauline was the girl I wondered so much about, walking up and down the roads, stopping at this place, this bridge, this river, these trees in the piney woods.

Her hair is blonde and now she is asleep.

After we started going steady she stopped her long walks at night, but I still continue mine. It suits me to take these long walks at night.

I
WENT TO THE TROUT HATCHERY
and stood there staring at the cold undelightful body now of Margaret. She lay upon the couch and there were lanterns all around. The trout had trouble sleeping.

There were some fingerlings darting around in a tray that had a lantern by the edge of it, illuminating Margaret's face. I stared at the fingerlings for a long time, hours passed, until they went to sleep. They were now like Margaret.

W
E WOKE UP
an hour or so before sunrise and had an early breakfast. When the sun came up over the edge of our world, the darkness would continue and there would be no sound today. Our voices would be gone. If you dropped something, there would be no sound. The rivers would be silent.

“It's going to be a long day,” Pauline said, as she put on her dress, pulling it over her long smooth neck.

We had ham and eggs, hashbrowns and toast. Pauline cooked breakfast and I offered to help her. “Is there anything I can do?” I said.

“No,” she said. “I've got everything under control but thanks for the offer.”

“You're welcome.”

We all had breakfast together, including Margaret's brother. He sat next to Charley.

“This is good ham,” Fred said.

“We'll hold the funeral later on in the morning,” Charley said. “Everybody knows what they have to do and we can write notes if anything out of the ordinary comes up. We just have a few moments of sound left.”

“Ummmm—good ham,” Fred said.

P
AULINE AND
I were in the kitchen talking when the sun came up. She was washing the dishes and I was drying them. I was drying a frying pan and she was washing the coffee cups.

“I feel a little bit better today,” she said.

“Good,” I said.

“How did I sleep last night?”

“Like a top.”

“I had a bad dream. I hope I didn't wake you up.”

“No.”

“The shock yesterday was something. I don't know. I just didn't expect things to turn out this way, but they have, and I guess there's nothing we can do about it.”

“That's right,” I said. “Just take things the way they happen.”

Pauline turned toward me and said, “I guess the funeral will—”

M
ARGARET WAS DRESSED
in death robes made from watermelon sugar and adorned with beads of foxfire, so that the light would shine forever from her tomb at night and on the black, soundless days. This one.

She had been prepared now for the tomb. We moved in lanterns and silence about i
DEATH
, waiting for the townspeople to come.

They came. Thirty or forty arrived, including the editor of the newspaper. It is published once a year. The schoolteacher and Doc Edwards were there and then we started the funeral.

Margaret was carried on the Escutcheon we use for the dead, made from pine ornamented with glass and little distant stones.

Everybody had torches and lanterns and we carried her body out of the trout hatchery and through the living room and out the door and across the porch and down the steps of i
DEATH
.

T
HE PROCESSION
moved slowly and in total silence down the road to the new tomb that now belonged to Margaret, the one I had watched them building yesterday, putting the finishing touches on for Margaret. It was getting warm as the sun climbed higher in the sky. There was not even the sound of our footsteps or anything.

T
HE
T
OMB
C
REW
was waiting for us. They still had the Shaft in place and they started the pump going when they saw us coming.

We turned the body over to them and they went about putting it in the tomb. They've had a lot of experience doing that. They carried her body down the Shaft and put it in the tomb. They closed the glass door and started to seal it up.

Pauline, Charley, Fred, Old Chuck and I stood there together in a little group and watched them. Pauline took my arm. Margaret's brother came over and joined us.

After the Tomb Crew had sealed the door, they turned the pump off and removed the hose from the Shaft.

Then they harnessed up some horses with ropes to the two pulleys that were hanging from the Shaft Gallows. Ropes went from the Shaft Gallows to hooks in the Shaft itself.

That's how they get the Shaft out.

The horses strained forward and the Shaft was pulled free from the bottom of the river and was lifted up onto the shore and was now half-hanging from the Shaft Gallows.

The Tomb Crew and their horses looked tired. Everything was done in total silence. Not a sound came from the horses or the men or the Shaft or the river or the people watching.

We saw the light shining up from Margaret, the light that
came from the foxfire upon her robes. We took flowers and threw them upstream above her tomb.

The flowers drifted down over the light coming from her: roses and daffodils and poppies and bluebells floated on by.

I
T IS A CUSTOM HERE
to hold a dance in the trout hatchery after a funeral. Everybody comes and there's a good band and much dancing goes on. We all like to waltz.

After the funeral we went back to i
DEATH
and prepared for the dance. Party decorations were put up in the hatchery and refreshments were prepared for the dance.

Everybody got ready in silence. Charley put on some new overalls. Fred spent half an hour combing his hair and Pauline put on high heel shoes.

We could not start the party until there was sound, so that the musical instruments would work and we could work with them in our own style, mostly waltzing.

P
AULINE AND
Al together cooked an early dinner that we had late in the afternoon. It was very hot outside, so they prepared something light. They made a potato salad that somehow ended up having a lot of carrots in it.

P
EOPLE FROM THE TOWN
began arriving for the dance about half an hour before sundown. We took their Mackinaws and hats and showed them into the trout hatchery.

Everybody seemed to be in fairly good spirits. The musicians took out their instruments and waited for the sun to go down.

It would only be a few moments now. We all waited patiently. The room glowed with lanterns. The trout swam back and forth in their trays and ponds. We would dance around them.

Pauline looked very pretty. Charley's new overalls looked good. I don't know why Fred's hair looked as if he hadn't combed it at all.

The musicians were poised with their instruments. They were ready to go. It would only be a few seconds now, I wrote.

 

This novel was started May 13, 1964 in a house at Bolinas, California, and was finished July 19, 1964 in the front room at 123 Beaver Street, San Francisco, California. This novel is for Don Allen, Joanne Kyger and Michael McClure.

 

R
ICHARD
B
RAUTIGAN
was born January 30, 1935, in the Pacific Northwest. He was the author of ten novels, nine volumes of poetry, and a collection of short stories. He lived for many years in San Francisco, and toward the end of his life he divided his time between a ranch in Montana and Tokyo. Brautigan was a literary idol of the 1960s and early 1970s whose comic genius and iconoclastic vision of American life caught the imagination of young people everywhere. Brautigan came of age during the Haight-Ashbury period and has been called “the last of the Beats.” His early books became required reading for the hip generation, and
Trout Fishing in America
sold two million copies throughout the world. Brautigan was a god of the counterculture, a phenomenon who saw his star rise to fame and fortune, only to plummet during the next decade. Driven to drink and despair, he committed suicide in Bolinas, California, at the age of forty-nine.