Butterfly in the Typewriter (25 page)

While Toole's writing had provided him relief, it also caused him to retreat from the social atmosphere of Fort Buchanan. He became further detached from everything and everybody. He donned dark sunglasses when off duty and seemed to avoid the carousing at the officers' club or the bars in San Juan. In pictures taken during a large picnic at Fort Buchanan, he appears as a blurred, sunglassed figure, moving unnoticed through crowds of people, like Burma Jones in
Confederacy
. Toole describes himself as a tragically humorous character in a picture he sent to his parents:

By June he fell into a slump similar to the previous summer; however, his upcoming discharge offered him encouragement. And he still took pride in the recognition the army continued to offer him: he was promoted to Specialist Fifth Class. The army placed laurels upon his brow every few months. But more importantly, the promotion may have sustained him during a particularly bad cycle of trainees. With a decrease in instructors, Toole returned to teaching, while maintaining administrative duties. His writing suffered. And the trainees were more colorful but also more brazen compared to the trainees a year prior. He writes to his parents,

The image offers humor, but his jest clearly springs from frustration. He had endured disrespect and insubordination, uncharacteristic of army discipline and unusual for Toole who had enjoyed popularity as an instructor. On one occasion during the cycle, “a ball of paper flew through the air” and hit him on the head. Toole insists on the hilarity of the situation but then, once again, generalizes the incident as representative of Puerto Rico. “What a frightening civilization exists on this island: ignorant, cruel, malicious, infantile, self-centered, undependable, and very proud withal.”

As he commanded less respect from the trainees, his relationship with the instructors of Company A soured as well. Toole had earned
their trust as a superior who protected them from the authoritative whims of their commanders. They saw him as a fair and honest sergeant. But on one occasion his actions resulted in the downfall of his reputation. As Kubach recalls, one evening he and Toole walked into the Company A office and found Private First Class Bob Morter slumped over a desk with a large, empty bottle of pain killers next to him. All signs indicated Morter had tried to commit suicide.

Most of the instructors recognized Morter as a troubled individual. Some instructors in Company A recalled Morter drinking himself into oblivion all too often. And his mannerisms signaled to them that he was homosexual, a substantial personal challenge in both the military and civilian society of the early 1960s. While the instructors of Company A maintained a relaxed attitude toward Morter's behaviors, the group of young men periodically chided him, as he seemed marginal from the group, never quite fitting in. Whatever haunted Morter, his struggle culminated one evening as he sat alone in the Company A office.

As head of the company, Toole should have called an ambulance upon seeing Morter's limp body. While Toole was not particularly fond of Morter, he also knew that a suicide attempt would tarnish Morter in the eyes of the military and increase his suffering. He delayed calling the authorities, hoping Morter might revive on his own. After some time passed and Morter remained unresponsive, Toole called the ambulance. Morter survived, but the instructors questioned Toole's reason for delay.

Kubach maintains that Toole was trying to protect Morter from further embarrassment. But the rest of Company A found Toole's hesitation disturbing; they interpreted it as a chilling indifference to human life. According to Tony Moore, one instructor asked, “Why would Morter do something like this?” Toole dismissively and unsympathetically responded, “Why does Morter do anything?” Moore recalls a group of instructors in Company A convening one evening to decide if they should report Toole's delayed response. For many of the men, Toole had violated their trust and failed to fulfill his duty as a leader. But they also remembered that he had made their lives in Puerto Rico more pleasant than it might have been without his leadership; he often protected them from the tirades of their superiors. Moore suggests that their sense of appreciation prevented the group of instructors from
pursuing official action, but they had lost respect for Toole. According to one account, to settle the score, several guys roughed up Toole one night outside his private room. But it resolved nothing. As Kubach recalls, “Everything really went downhill for him after that.”

The incident prompted Toole to reflect over some hard-learned lessons. He writes a cryptic letter to his parents on June 30. Even his mother likely had difficulty making sense of what provoked such introspection.

As a leader, he had faltered. Once again, his daydreams of home offered consolation:

In the summer heat, deviant trainees and military politics burdened him, but fortunately in late June his writing resurged. It was the glimmer of his future after the army. He reported this development to his parents and detailed his precise purpose in returning home:

He finally proclaims unrestrained belief in his talents and his creation. While returning to Columbia University was the more conventional road toward a life in academia, he chose an uncertain path, leading to either his dreams of authorship or nightmares of rejection. But in several letters, he returns to his reasons for moving back to New Orleans, as if he needed to repeatedly justify his decision, perhaps even to himself. Despite his attempts to idealize his visions of home, requesting gold-framed pictures of his mother and imagining quaint disagreements with neighbors, moving back to New Orleans came with substantial peril. After years of independence, two of which he had excelled in the military, he would once again live under his parents' roof, and once again he would answer to his mother. From his letters, he appears purely motivated by his literary aspirations, but his apparent need to validate his decision calls this premise into question.

The Tooles still struggled financially. Ever since he garnished his army paycheck for their benefit, he felt obligated to help them. If he negotiated between his sense of filial duty and his own desires, the publication of his novel offered him an exit plan and the possibility of financial security. His decision to move back home required both faith in his talents and faith in his plan to free himself from a life bound to his parents.

 

Thelma Toole in the year of her marriage, 1927. Her son requested she send this photo in a gold frame to him while stationed in Puerto Rico, where he wrote
A Confederacy of Dunces
. (Personal Collection of Joel Fletcher)

 

John Toole circa 1919. He enlisted in the Marines at the end of World War I, although he never left the country. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

“The Beauteous Babe,” as Toole's mother often referred to him. From the moment he was born, she noted how he was bright-eyed and observant. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

From an early age, Toole took an interest in automobiles. His father was a car salesman, and his mother proudly claimed “Kenny Boy” could name the makes and models of cars at the age of two. When he was five, his father let him drive around the block with a friend, unattended. His mother was outraged. (LaRC, Tulane University)

 

A rare picture of father and son. John Toole lifts his “Kenny Boy” to the sky. (LaRC, Tulane University)