The Metaphysical Ukulele (7 page)

“I don't have any paper,” Chet said.

Marcel stood from his chair, eyes locked on Chet. “You need money now?”

“It ain't do I,” Chet said. “It's how much.”

Marcel reached into the drawer. “Will fifty thousand hold you?”

“I'll try,” Chet said, pocketing the bills.

“Call me when you have a hundred pages,” Marcel said.

Chet left the office. He trotted down the narrow stairs and into the streets of Paris. This block was deserted and mysterious, dark and cold. He walked the length of the cobbled road. At the end, he paused to watch the flow of the boulevard, where he was greeted by a trickle of white faces, their eyes blank or sinister. Every pair took the time to wash over him once. The sun nestled behind a cluster of afternoon storm clouds. He turned against the stream of traffic and let Marcel's proposition roll around in his mind.

He'd written for politics and race, for love of women and love of writing. He'd been praised and attacked. He'd been paid just enough to hover around broke for a dozen years.

Now he'd write for money.

As he approached the metro, he remembered the con he'd sold to the house band for a ukulele. He'd go home and start there. See if he could raise some of these tens into hundreds.

Ukulele Fallout

1. Healthy and Optimistic

Richard Brautigan's ukulele fell suddenly from the sky on a sunny October day. It landed in Washington Square Park on the North Shore of San Francisco, not far from the Benjamin Franklin statue.

The first to approach Richard Brautigan's ukulele was a homeless wino. He watched the ukulele fall from the sky while eating a sandwich he had been given across the street at Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral. The sandwich fell out of the wino's hand, occupied what sky remained between the hand and the grass of Washington Square Park, and, like Richard Brautigan's ukulele, took its place among the poplars and cypresses, the sandboxes and sprinklers and tennis balls saturated with dog spit in the park. The wino picked up his sandwich and continued to eat.

A jogger also saw Richard Brautigan's ukulele fall from the sky. She jogged over to the fallen ukulele.

The wino reached Richard Brautigan's ukulele at the same time the jogger did. He regarded the jogger. She wore a pink jogging suit made completely out of watermelon sugar. The wino could not help noticing the outline of her
sports bra through her watermelon sugar pullover.

The jogger spoke first. She said, “Did you see Richard Brautigan's ukulele fall from the sky?”

She was aware of the nebulous proposal attached to asking a Washington Square Park wino to validate her perception of reality.

The wino nodded. He breathed a sigh of relief that he had not been the only one to see Richard Brautigan's ukulele fall from the sky.

He was aware of the nebulous proposal attached to trusting a woman in a watermelon sugar jogging suit to validate his perception of reality.

At exactly this moment, the patriarch of poetry on San Francisco's North Shore raced to the scene. He ran swinging his left arm and holding his Greek fisherman's cap tight to his head with his right hand. His Walt Whitman beard crawled over his shoulder like a pet marmot. He caught up to the wino and the jogger. He was out of breath. His lack of breath forced him to place his hands on his knees and take several deep breaths. Huff. Puff. Huff. Huff. Puff.

Richard Brautigan's ukulele sat in the grass among the three, glowing and presidential like it was Winston Churchill.

The jogger and the wino watched the patriarch of poetry on San Francisco's North Shore huff and puff until he finally spoke.
Huff.
“It's Richard Brautigan's Ukulele!” he said.
Puff
. He reached to touch it.

The wino gently touched the patriarch's arm. “Don't,” he said. “It might be ice cold like the outer space it came
from.” The wino feared that the patriarch's fingers would stick to the ukulele and never unstick, as if they had touched a comet itself.

The patriarch huffed. He shook off the wino's arm and reached closer.

The jogger touched the patriarch's arm more firmly. “Don't,” she said. “It might be red hot from entering the atmosphere.” The jogger feared that the patriarch's fingers would be scorched by the ukulele, as if they had touched a fallen meteor.

The patriarch puffed. He shook off the jogger's hand and stood. He said, “We are not naïve waifs, here. We can seek to know the unknowable!”

Still, he abandoned any attempt to touch Richard Brautigan's ukulele.

The Benjamin Franklin statue in the park lorded over the scene. His shadow stretched over the quartet of wino, jogger, patriarch, and Richard Brautigan's ukulele like a WELCOME sign.

The patriarch was reminded of Kafka, who had learned of America by reading Benjamin Franklin's
Autobiography
. Or perhaps not. Perhaps the patriarch had simply read about that somewhere.

He distinctly remembered a line from Kafka or someone quoting Kafka, and revised it and said it aloud as if it were a thought completely original to himself. He said, “I like Richard Brautigan's ukulele because it is healthy and optimistic.”

2. A Kind of Class

Mrs. Derfuss read to us about Richard Brautigan's ukulele every afternoon, just after recess. We would sit cross-legged on the linoleum kindergarten floor, forming a half-moon around Mrs. Derfuss, waiting for the day's story about Richard Brautigan's ukulele. It was the reward for a day well-spent. We behaved ourselves through color recognition, through exams identifying squares and circles and rectangles, through oral instructions and shoe-tying and sharing exercises. We even blew up the inflatable letters A-P and R-Z without squeezing the air hole to make fart noises.

(Q was a different issue altogether. We'll get to Q later.)

Richard Brautigan's ukulele never disappointed us. It didn't matter what Richard Brautigan's ukulele did. It could fight off the snake that was terrorizing a colonial family. It could dress up as a bear and go on a picnic. It could chase tigers around a tree until they turned into melted butter. It could simply be a mischievous boy with a mother always screaming, “No, Richard Brautigan's Ukulele!” It didn't matter. We loved the stories.

One of the boys in the class could not walk the balance beam. Without walking the balance beam, he would never get the check mark next to his name that allowed him to advance to first grade. First graders were all masters of the balance beam. This mastery allowed them to complete all the balance beam activities that first grade demanded. But one of us could not walk it. We stood around the playground
of Lewis Carroll Elementary watching one of us step up to the skinny end of a two-by-four, take two steps, teeter, windmill his arms, and tumble onto the damp playground grass. Mrs. Derfuss told him, “Think of Richard Brautigan's ukulele.”

This boy started afresh on the balance beam. He said to himself, “Richard Brautigan's ukulele.” He took a step. It worked. He kept his balance. He said it again, “Richard Brautigan's ukulele,” and took another step. Success! With every step, he said, “Richard Brautigan's ukulele, Richard Brautigan's ukulele, Richard Brautigan's ukulele.” All the way across the balance beam.

This boy liked to do his thinking out loud.

When he completed the balance beam without falling, we all cheered and slapped him on the back and told him that Richard Brautigan's ukulele couldn't have walked the balance beam any better than that. Holy cow!

Mrs. Derfuss rewarded his success with a PayDay candy bar.

Some of us troublemakers learned the power of Richard Brautigan's ukulele at that point.

At lunch time the next day, one of us snuck up behind Chuck Ernst. One of us waited until he took a sip of milk, then shouted, “Richard Brautigan's ukulele!” Chuck laughed so hard that milk came out of his nose. All of us other troublemakers loved this. We took turns sneaking up behind our classmates, waiting for them to sip their milk, then
screaming, “Richard Brautigan's ukulele!” The results were mixed. Only Chuck Ernst could be relied on to laugh and shoot milk out of his nose every time. After six consecutive shouts followed by six consecutive nasal-dairy eruptions, Chuck decided to go thirsty.

That day it rained and recess was held inside. We played with little wooden trucks. One of us had the idea to write RICHARD BRAUTIGAN'S UKULELE on the side of the truck with a crayon. We were just now learning to write and only knew how to write capital letters. Lower case would come later. We didn't know how to write the letter Q because the school didn't waste their money on Qs. They told teachers to just hold up the O and cross the bottom of it with an I. It didn't really work. Perhaps that's why none of us really learned how to keep quiet. Though sometimes we could keep oiuiet.

I liked the way RICHARD BRAUTIGAN'S UKULELE looked on the side of the wooden truck. I found a nearby lunch bag. It belonged to Cherie Swain. Cherie Swain's mother was a flight attendant and she packed Cherie Swain's lunches in surplus airsickness bags. We would have teased Cherie about this if any of us had ever been on a plane and knew what an airsickness bag was. Since we hadn't ever been on a plane or learned what an airsickness bag was, we simply thought Cherie carried fancy bags that didn't leak. I wrote RICHARD BRAUTIGAN'S UKULELE on the side of Cherie Swain's lunch bag. While I was there, I decided to take one bite out of Cherie's sandwich. It
was ham and cheese on white bread. Cherie's mom added a little relish as a special treat to the sandwich. I thought about taking another bite, but I didn't want to be selfish. I carefully wrapped the sandwich back up in plastic wrap and stuffed it in her RICHARD BRAUTIGAN'S UKULELE lunch bag.

Pretty soon, we all had crayons and we wrote RICHARD BRAUTIGAN'S UKULELE on every surface we could find: linoleum floors, wooden desks, brick walls, chalk boards, red playground balls, the white rubber toes of Albert Welch's Chuck Taylors, Tiffany Henderson's white vinyl belt, all of the artwork adorning the walls, even Mrs. Derfuss's poster charting all of our kindergarten progress. The words looked good splayed across the room in multiple colors. They completed the room, and gave it a kind of class.

Mrs. Derfuss did not read to us about Richard Brautigan's ukulele that day. Instead, she gave us soap and water and rags and buckets and we scrubbed crayon off the walls and floor and rubber balls and Tiffany Henderson's belt. Mrs. Derfuss used big inflatable letters to teach us a lesson. She held up the letters and told us that we'd never get another story until we learned how to mind our Ps and OIs.

3. The Deeds

Before long, the crowd at Washington Square Park had gathered around Richard Brautigan's ukulele. The jogger had been squeezed out. She hopped on one foot, then another, but could no longer see Richard Brautigan's ukulele. Too
many broad backs stood between her and the fallen object.

The wino had also been squeezed out. He did not hop. He ate the rest of his free sandwich and stared at the pink watermelon sugar jogging suit.

The patriarch quoted bastardized passages from
The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster
. “Richard Brautigan's ukulele laughs at us from behind our teeth wearing the clothes of fish and birds,” he said. “Richard Brautigan's ukulele is a dish of ice cream tasting like an operating table with the patient staring at the ceiling,” he said. “I watched a man in a café fold Richard Brautigan's ukulele as if he were folding a birth certificate or looking at the photograph of a dead lover.”

The crowd grew gradually restless and panicked.

This being Washington Square Park, the possibility hung over all of them that Richard Brautigan's ukulele could conjure up the tigers that once lived in Washington Square Park. The tigers were literate and polite. They had beautiful voices and liked to quote from
Moby-Dick
. They really were fine tigers.

But they were tigers. It was in their nature to eat people.

The crowd feared that Richard Brautigan's ukulele would conjure up these tigers. Some of the crowd would be eaten by the polite tigers with the beautiful voices. Some would only learn mathematics from the tigers. They would go through life believing that eight times eight is fifty-six.

The patriarch added to the agitation of the crowd. He said, “A trout-covered wind blows through Richard
Brautigan's ukulele.”

A first grader weaved through the crowd. She wore a lovely orange sweater that her grandmother had given her. The words “Trout Fishing in America” were written across the back of the sweater. She slid between knees and hips until she approached Richard Brautigan's ukulele.

Enough time had passed for the comets of outer space to warm and the meteors whizzing through the atmosphere to cool. She picked up the ukulele and played a few notes.

With a voice as beautiful as a young tiger's, she sang these words:

In Richard Brautigan's ukulele the deeds were done and done again as his life is done in Richard Brautigan's ukulele
.

A Place Called Sickness

The old woman and her daughter were sitting on their porch when Mr. Langkjaer drove up their road for the last time. The old woman, Regina Cline O'Connor, leaned heavy on the right arm of her white rocking chair and craned her neck for a better look at Mr. Langkjaer's shiny Ford ambling down the leaf-strewn driveway. A peacock blocked his path. The Ford slowed to a pace that questioned the very notion of the word motion. It seemed as if forward could shift into reverse without any demonstrative change in progress. The peacock would not hurry. The Ford could not inspire a greater pace in the fowl. The peacock knew his privilege on the farm. Other drivers had confronted the birds, coming close enough to run their tires over the long tail feathers. This was a crime that Mr. Langkjaer knew he could not commit. The old woman's daughter, Flannery, prized her peafowl more than the chicken she had trained to walk backwards two decades earlier. Flannery claimed the eye at the peak of the peacock's tail feathers was the eye of the Almighty come forth to deliver divine grace. Regina doubted it. Regina felt that her daughter simply liked the odd birds, Flannery being an odd bird herself.

Flannery the odd bird did not look up to watch the approaching Ford. She continued to plunk away on her ukulele. Regina found the music to be grotesque. It had its roots in old-time gospel and the Appalachian picking of Regina's childhood, but something else had crept in, something Regina had heard vibrating around the Negro cabins on the back forty acres. The kids of Flannery's generation called this music bluegrass. Regina knew better. She knew jazz when she heard it. Flannery's tiny fingers bounced about the strings and fret board. Regina shook her head. Where was the absolution? Where was the word of the Lord in this racket?

Mr. Langkjaer parked the Ford adjacent to the front porch. He stepped out of the car and brushed the wrinkles off his gray flannel suit. The old woman watched every move. He raised his fedora and nodded. Regina nodded back. He started up the brick path to the porch. The profile of his face was a crescent moon on the wane. What her daughter saw in this Danish textbook salesman was beyond anything Regina could quite possibly comprehend. The man called his sample book with the tables of contents for the textbooks he sold his “bible.” Mr. Langkjaer never called the real Bible at all. He strolled with no greater pace than the peacock had shown earlier. Neither man nor bird, thought Regina, knows a mortal sin from a can of Shinola. Both of them wear their pride like a birthright. “I best see about dinner,” Regina said. She stood from the rocker and walked inside.

Flannery played her bluegrass ukulele to the beat of Mr.
Langkjaer's footsteps, slowing the rhythm as he walked the brick steps leading up to the porch. He opened the screen door without a word. Flannery set the ukulele down and said, simply, “Erik.” She gathered her courage. Her day's first challenge would be her rise from this chair. The lupus in her blood threatened to kill her, and the adrenocorticotropic hormone she'd been taking for the past three years leached the marrow from her hip bones. When she stood or when she lay flat, she felt that her life could contain perhaps as much future as it had past, that tomorrows could outnumber yesterdays. When she bent to sit, or rose to stand, she felt that she'd aged three years for every one she lived. The process of standing took her from a twenty-nine-year old girl to an eighty-seven-year-old woman. She bent to stand for Erik. The pain coursed through her. She wobbled for a second on her feet. Erik engulfed her in a hug that was perhaps more supportive than romantic.

Elements of the Old South continued to live at the O'Connor dairy farm. Regina's brother had dubbed the land “Andalusia.” White tenant farmers continued to work the front twenty acres. African Americans—“Negroes,” as Regina called them in her more diplomatic moments—worked the back forty. The house itself, while far from the plantation mansions of old, retained the thick white columns and broad front porch of a bygone era. An ancient magnolia from a time when Milledgeville was capitol of antebellum Georgia shaded the house. Every noon, Mrs. Freeman, the white
wife of the tenant farmer on the front twenty acres, cooked a formal dinner. If only Regina and her daughter were present, then the two ate with four empty dining room chairs. If company were present, leaves could be inserted into the table and up to six guests could join. Mrs. Freeman dined by herself in the kitchen, and only after the O'Connors and their guests were finished.

The ghost of a ham haunted today's dinner. The black-eyed peas had been slow cooked with the ham bone. Ham fat flavored the collard greens. Even the lard in the cornbread contained hints of salted pork. The main dish, of course, was the best and heaviest part of the ham: its butt end. Mrs. Freeman doled carefully measured spoonfuls of the beans and greens onto the plates of both Regina and Erik. The portions, like the plates that contained them, were small. Flannery's doctor had placed her on a no-salt diet, so she could not join Erik and Regina in the ham-haunted dinner. Mrs. Freeman served her a bland vegetable soup. Flannery scooped the wilted collards out of the thin broth with a wry smile.

Regina said, “Mr. Langkjaer, I expect you plan to take my daughter for another of your famous rides?”

Erik chewed the dry cornbread until it formed a paste in his mouth, then washed it down with sweetened iced tea so full of sugar that it was more syrup than beverage. He cleared his throat. “Well, then, there, Mrs. O'Connor.” Erik kept his white cloth napkin close to his mouth to keep the corn bread crumbs from spreading. “I don't know how
famous these rides are or what they're famous for, but your daughter has shown me a great deal of the world around Milledgeville, and I look forward to her further tutelage.”

“And I expect you don't have a chaperone to take with you,” Regina said.

“No,” Erik said. “No chaperone.”

Regina corrected Erik in her mind:
No, ma'am. I have no chaperone
. Erik scooped a forkful of black-eyed peas into his mouth in what he thought was a friendly manner. He had no way of knowing the offense he caused with his lack of a “ma'am.” Erik Langkjaer had learned to speak English in a Danish elementary school. The English was an English dialect. Colloquialisms of the American South were unheard. Never had the word ma'am been uttered that far north of Copenhagen.

Flannery, for her part, had fought this battle with her mother many times. Neither side ever declared victory. There was no point in fighting one more time, and in front of Erik. She ate her salt-free soup and said all she could through her silence.

Regina knew about this Mr. Langkjaer, though. Flannery did not know men. Regina did. She'd married Flannery's father. And it taught Regina an important lesson. Men leave. All men leave. It's in the nature of a man to leave. Her husband Edward had left without having to go anywhere to do it. He didn't even bother to get out of bed to die. He just lay right there in their marriage bed, soul gone to heaven and corpse chilling Regina when she awoke.
He could blame the lupus, sure. Flannery would blame that same silent killer. But he left, sure as the day is long. And so would this Mr. Langkjaer. As sure as the pointy nose on his crescent moon of a face, he'd leave. She didn't know for certain that this was the last time he'd visit. She sensed it would be, though.

After dinner, the old woman chaperoned Erik and Flannery as far as the front porch. Flannery carried her ukulele in her right hand and held Erik's elbow with her left hand. The longer she continued the adrenocorticotropic hormone treatments, the more her joints seemed to creak, the more her bones seemed to disintegrate. If Erik had much walking in mind, Flannery would have to subtly suggest a walking stick. Twenty-nine years old may be far too young for a girl to need a cane, but Flannery knew that the hip needs what the hip needs. She leaned on Erik's elbow as lightly as she could while walking down the steps. If Erik noticed, he said nothing about Flannery's heavy hand. He pointed to a strand of flowers surrounding a nearby red oak. “Your geraniums are lovely.”

Flannery smiled. Bless Erik's heart. He couldn't tell the difference between a bush and a tree, much less between geraniums and chrysanthemums. He did know Flannery's stories, which was more than Regina could say. For Regina, the fact that Flannery wrote short stories was something short of a scandal, but more than an embarrassment. She would never understand what kind of lady would think so
much of herself to think that her daydreams needed to be written down and typed up and sent out into the world. It was nothing short of indecent.

Erik trafficked in fiction. He travelled from university to university, selling these daydreams in textbooks and anthologies. He knew the daydreams Flannery would share, and he knew the first one. It had been a little story named “The Geraniums.” And so, on Flannery's front yard, any flower must be a geranium. Even if it was this deep into fall and geraniums never survived that first October cold snap. Even if autumn blooms with that deep yellow had to be a chrysanthemum. Flannery said, “It's not so literal.”

Erik helped her down the final step and onto the brick walkway. A peacock bellowed. Erik winced. No matter how many times he'd heard these fowl cry, they always sounded like a wounded child to him. “What's not so literal?” he asked.

“The geraniums,” Flannery said. “You can know me a little from my fiction, but I don't tell the whole story.”

Erik nodded. They moseyed down the brick path to Erik's Ford. Erik opened the passenger door for Flannery. She and her ukulele settled into the front seat. Erik shut the door behind them and sauntered over to his own door. Time seemed to run at a slower pace on these Milledgeville autumn afternoons.

Flannery guided Erik down the various dirt roads, through farms and fields, pecan plantations and second-growth
southern pines that locals looked at as lumber more than trees. For someone who never drove and seemed to lose more mobility every time Erik came to visit, Flannery knew every back road of this county. She could navigate him directly into the gothic past and the hidden beauty. Forget country. This place was a whole different planet from the Denmark Erik knew as a boy. He gawked and asked questions, amazed to find that Flannery could name every tree and distinguish the tupelos from the poplars, the loblolly pines from slash pines, the sweetgums from the black walnuts. Flannery could tell the story of the old white man trudging along the road, lugging a wood box of carpentry tools and Erik could even believe that Flannery knew the old man and that the story was real.

For her part, Flannery kept thumbing through the book of samples that Erik called his bible. She noticed Emily Dickinson's poetry was finding a home in more and more anthologies these days. Just ten years ago, when Flannery attended the Georgia State College for Women, Dickinson was little more than a footnote in literature classes. Flannery had learned about Dickinson from a history professor, of all people. Helen Greene. The very same woman who had introduced Erik and Flannery. “You selling more Emily Dickinson these days?” Flannery asked.

“You know we don't sell individual authors,” Erik said. He stole a glance at Flannery. Her gaze was still locked on the bible. In moments like these, when her smile didn't push up the cheeks that were swollen by hormone treatments,
with her glasses off and no sense of eyes upon her, Flannery was something like a beautiful young woman. Erik may not have been in love, but he was aware that Flannery was a woman and he wanted to kiss her. Instead, he turned his eyes back to the dirt road in time to swerve around a startled squirrel. He added, “You're a little bit like that Emily Dickinson.”

Flannery clenched her jaw. “How so?”

“Living out your days in your family home, watching over your mother in her old age…”

“My mother is not that old.”

“…writing these enigmatic little pieces about God and redemption. You could be the twentieth century's own little virgin poet.”

Flannery whipped not only her gaze but her whole body so that she sat facing him across the bench seat. Erik had never seen such speed, such agility out of her. He wondered if he'd said the wrong thing, if she might pounce upon him. She glared at Erik, perhaps wondering the same thing. Instead, she produced her ukulele and began to strum a few simple chords. “Greensleeves,” she said. She played through the chord progression. It sounded somewhat soft, but she played with enough force and confidence to be heard over the wind flowing in through the windows. She strummed as she said, “Every Emily Dickinson poem can be sung to the tune of ‘Greensleeves.'”

And, to prove her point, Flannery sang first about a narrow fellow in the grass and second about a visit from
death, all while playing the same simple chord progression. When she started into “Wild nights, wild nights!” in that notoriously thick Southern accent of hers, Erik slowed the car to a crawl and parked under a stand of hickories. He listened to Flannery sing about the wild nights that could be their luxury. When she stopped, he said, “With your permission, I would like to kiss you.”

Flannery, of course, was no Emily Dickinson. She would not hide behind a curtain and listen to music in another room. She would not lock herself in her room when a suitor came calling. She may not be the most experienced romantic in Baldwin County, and she may be a devout Catholic, but she would not be defined as the twentieth century's own little virgin poet. She spoke softly. “You have my permission.”

Erik closed his eyes and leaned in. Later, he would read Flannery's fictionalized version of this kiss. She described the adrenaline that surged through her, the same type that enables a girl to carry a packed trunk out of a burning house. But for Erik, all he felt was awkward. Flannery didn't know how to position her lips, so he ended up kissing her teeth. He grazed his hand softly across her ribs. He could feel the crumbling bones underneath her wool coat, each rib jutting like the ridges in the dirt roads they'd ridden along. The teeth. The ribs. Flannery's sickness flooded through Erik. Where he wanted to feel love, he felt death.