the poet's secrets

It’s late, Li Po, but I’ve some questions, as the moon rises behind a veil of mist, shapely

yet demure: How did she guide your pen? And

how many lovers did your verses win you?

Were they wealthy, were they married? Who
was your favorite? Did she ride you, with her robe loosely tied round her pale, plump belly, until she smiled like the young moon?

I beg you, Li Po-- share your secrets with me.

On The Road

On a spring morning in 1974 I bungeed a sleeping bag over the rear fender of my R60/2 and packed my saddle bags. A toothbrush, an extra pair of jeans, two hits of acid, and enough hand tools to meet almost any mechanical need. I was bound for Alaska, to work on the pipeline. 

It was the impulse of Ishmael for water, of Dean Moriarity for asphalt. The communion of the highway: this is my engine, this is my oil. The harmony of twin unbaffled exhaust pipes. The living, galloping creature between my legs. The meditative anonymity of the interstate.

No, that’s all a lie. I was lonely.

The details of the journey are tangled with other cross country ramblings.  A few crystalize through the fog of the decades. The turbulence from a car hauling trailer that knocked me halfway across my lane. A brief stop on Bourbon Street, where the offering of sensual pleasures promptly delivered me back to the saddle. Deep into that deep black night, the blacktop string line from Lafayette to Lake Charles. Nothing distinguishable except the white line along the shoulder, and the illusion of continuously descending for 60 miles. Manic rush hour traffic between Dallas and Ft Worth. Most of all, the shimmering of Santa Fe, coming into view, as night fell while rounding the toe of the Sangre de Cristos. Where I stopped for a visit, and stayed 6 years.

SHAME

I REMEMBER THE GIDDY DELIGHT at hearing the news that Nixon had resigned. It was with some friends--new friends--for I was new to New Mexico. Mostly guys from Boddy’s Honda, where I went to work the day after landing in Santa Fe. Nixon had given us the claim of Peace With Honor, which gave Vietnam no peace, and gave America no honor. It took 30 more years, and the nearly 60,000 names carved in black granite, to at least honor those who struggled and died in Vietnam.

August of 1974 was a good time for me, in good company, and in a good place, to celebrate. Santa Fe, bustling and growing--but still human in scale. And human in character. To walk any street--or to drive on any two-lane--was to make eye contact and wave to the ones you crossed paths with. On a walk after sun-set, when the air instantly chills, you could feel the adobe walls radiate back the sunshine they had absorbed through the afternoon. There was camaraderie in the bike shop.

And the city's setting--like God on the eighth day had scooped a great bench out of the west slope of the Sangre de Cristos--so that He could sprawl on it, languidly, and meditate on the sunset beyond the Jemez.

Tonight, however, there is no giddy delight for me, not after officialdom’s (but not its chief official's) acknowledgment of the end of this shameful administration. I am among friends even if not in their physical presence, in a community that is warm, if not human scale. The great majority of the community is pleased at this outcome. But then I think of so many communities where the majorities and minorities are reversed, where this news brings them sadness.

My delight is tempered by shame, that our country could do this to itself. Like the shame of Peace With Honor, the rancor that Make America Great Again generated fills me with shame. Like the Vietnam Wall, it will take us a generation for the rancor to dissipate.

That day in August of ‘74 was a happy day, in a happy time. On the run--from a wife and child, a family, the law--but mostly from myself. I had nothing but a competent tool chest, a strong motorcycle, and a loyal girlfriend. Shame had not caught up yet. Today, I stop at every stop sign. There is nothing material that I lack or long for. I live with my soulmate. But my country is sick--and I feel sick for my country's sake.

Secret Wishes

 

IF YOU COULD PROWL the forest, so stealthy,
that you would not arouse a browsing doe—
or linger by slow waters, to gaze upon Diana bathing,
yet not stir her wary hounds—
and if only you could stand so silent, that you could hear the clouds collide—
if only wings would sprout, from where your arms are swinging,
then you could leave your cares along the path
and with the eagles fly. 

ALL IN A DAY Chapter Two: The Butterfly Wings Of Fate

Dirty Ed, my best buddy at Autoville, had sold me his R50/2. It was a decision that molded the next ten years. The frame of the Beemer was black, and the tank was rattle can blue. Eddie called it The Bruise. And bruised I was, after wrecking it. And after rebuilding it, and then blowing the engine, and rebuilding it again, I quit VW’s and went to work for Cycle City, a BMW dealership.

For me it was the golden age of turning wrenches. I had found a home. Here’s a snapshot of my family:

Fritz, the owner. Tall and Teutonic, even with his black hair. The ultimate gearhead.
Mrs. Fritz, blonde and petite. She kept one eye on the books, and the other on Fritz.
John, the parts man. Avuncular, with a pronounced limp--a memento of an unpleasant encounter in Belgium. He had the parts book in his head.
Dan, the shop foreman. Shortest of the personnel. He stood by the dutch door of the service area, at a lecturn which held the schedule. Dan wore this weird grin when he bragged about how he could cover a football field in seconds with his twin gats, aboard his HUEY.   
Ray, mechanic. A graduate of Metropolitan Delivery Service, which operated a fleet of BMW mounted couriers. I could write another book about Cheryl, who also rode for Metro. Ray went on to become a cabinet maker. There is a pattern in that, yet to be revealed.
Pete, mechanic. A big hulking country boy, from somewhere down county. PG County, astride DC, was indeed country. George Wallace For President painted across barns, de facto segregated schools...
Kevin, a mechanic. He lived with two women, April and May. Or maybe May and June.
Jim, prep guy. With his cowboy mustache, he could have played the narrator in The Big Lebowski. The oldest guy in the shop, who uncrated and set up new bikes.
Others, including a two stroke guy, a larcenous part timer who liked wine and reds, and various helpers. In every bike shop there is some kid who works for peanuts, whose responsibilities seem to be doing burnouts and wheelies on customers’ bikes the length of the parking lot.  I hung out with some of these guys, and others I met, working on their bikes. Pete, for example. At his home one evening, he got me high and gave me a headset, and put on a new album. Linda Ronstadt, round my door, the leaves are turning. I almost wept. And Kevin. Pleasing two women is difficult, so Kevin asked me to go out with April, May and himself. We heard some music and went back to their place to get high. Kevin went to bed with April, and left some coke for May and me. She had dark hair and dark eyes. She could have been named June. I really can’t recall. It was bitter cold, and a long two wheel ride home. We snorted the coke. She asked, is there anything I can do for you? But I had not been able to find a way to talk to her, really talk. So I bundled up and left. I had an Air Force style coat with a fur collar, so the ride home was really not that bad.  

But back to the shop. While test riding bikes after tune ups, Kevin challenged me into a race. We blasted off, weaving through traffic, engines screaming. Way back we heard a siren. We flew back to the shop, and Kevin made it up the ramp and out of sight before the cruiser came around the corner. Not me. It hardly made a difference, however, because I had already racked up enough points for revocation, with several to spare. A whole nuther story.

In the shop, the radio was tuned to WHFS, where all the disc jockeys were freaks. On the late afternoon show, artists like Jesse Colin Young, Lowell George, and Leo Kottke would drop in and perform.
By that time the mechanics were usually stoned. Once I ate a fingertip sized piece of hash for lunch, which seemed to have no effect. I was assigned to overhaul the engine of some little bitty two stroke. I got the engine ready to pull. Disconnected the cables, linkage, exhaust and drive chain. Finally I removed the mounting bolts--but I had forgotten to disconnect the fuel line. As the engine swung to and fro from its little rubber hose, dribbling gasoline, it left glittering tracers in its path. That might have been the only time I was too stoned to work.

But this story is supposed to be about pain. No pain was felt after eating the hash, nor on almost any other day. But there was some pain I avoided.

There was something about Beemers that was problematic at high speeds. I think it might have been something to do with the axial rotation of the crankshaft. Anyway, as I was by that time the top mechanic, I got the new R75/5 from a highly regarded customer, who complained about a wobble above 100 mph. I checked out everything I could think of associated with stability: wheels, tires, steering bearings, alignment. Then I put on my jacket and helmet and took the bike out for a test ride.

It was a moonless, late autumn evening, already dark. I got on the two lane leading into town, where I could open up the throttle. Rush hour traffic was streaming toward me, but inbound was clear. At about 125 mph, I took my hands off the bars--no wobble. At that instant, a few hundred yards ahead, an oncoming car pulled into my lane to pass, nearly blinding me. In a nanosecond I grabbed the bars and whipped over to the right. I might as well have gone blind. All I remember is slinging gravel, then slowing down and finally stopping on tall grass. Miraculously I was upright, and the bike was intact.   

It’s only after the event that you feel the residual adrenalin, your triphammering heart. The next morning I rode back to the site, and realized I had shot past between two closely spaced road signs. Like Odesseus sailing the treacherous straits, my own Athena had guided my path. My tire tracks stopped at the edge of a drainage ditch--invisible in the dark.

She has intervened several more times since that evening, allowing me to tell you these stories. 

ALL IN A DAY, Chapter One: Colors

Work saved my life. Even through the misery and loneliness of a collapsed marriage, and no matter how hung over, no matter how stoned, I showed up for work. Work got into my blood.

My first full time job was as a porter at Autoville, the local VW dealership. A regular task was putting new cars up on the rack and shooting them with undercoating. I had just dropped out of art school, and here was a pot or acid enhanced tableau of liquid sunlight pouring through the skylight, igniting the cadmium yellow drums, and highlighting the treaks of burnt sienna compound slopped on the sides of the drums.

From time to time, that lucidity was tempered by someone spraying brake drums with compressed air. The asbestos dust lingered for hours, bringing to mind Wolfflin’s Principles, and his concept of “the intervening atmosphere” that distinguished the Northern masters from the Renaissance Italians.

Nevertheless, I was promoted to be a mechanic. We were paid flat rate, and being the junior member of the team, I was fed the shit work. Oil changes, mufflers, front end alignments. The gravy jobs--brakes, overhauls, went to the old hands.

To adjust front end alignment, you used a spring loaded telescoping bar that had rulings etched where the inner tube slid by the outer tube. To read the condition you placed the bar between the front wheels, located at about 8:00, and then rolled the car forward until the bar was at about 4:00. The difference was the toe-in. To make the adjustment, you raised the car and turned a threaded coupling on one of the tie rods, in or out, depending on the condition.

It’s not necessary that you followed that; here is what is important.

Working flat rate, speed means money. To save a few seconds, I would only raise the car high enough to scoot under it on a creeper. It was not unusual for the coupling to be frozen to the rods. They needed to be busted loose with WD-40 and vise grips.

It came to pass that I was on my back, fighting a severely frozen coupling, and working the vise grips tighter and tighter. I positioned the jaws and with all my might gave a squeeze--but I caught the web between my thumb and forefinger in the vise grips.My hand was trapped up in the wheel well, firmly attached to the tie rod.   

You can imagine the agony. But the car was so low that I could not bring my other hand around to release the vise grips. I had to hollar above the cacophony of 19 other mechanics, the chuck chuck of the oil filling pumps, the revving of engines, the Merle Haggards and Bob Dylans on the respective radios.

(Peace meets Grease, as we would say. Meyers, another longhair who crashed at my apartment, was the recipient of a 30” spliff made of lawn clippings wrapped in a newspaper. The greasers gave a chorus of laughter. Meyers laughed, too. We all wore the same blue uniform.)

Finally someone heard me--mercifully, someone with a light touch on the lift valve--and provided the clearance I needed to release the grips. Another opportunity for the greasers to break into laughter.

Injury like that was the norm. Almost every day I would skin a knuckle on the sheet metal shrouding that enveloped the air cooled engines. One little slip, changing a spark plug, produced a flap of flesh and a dribble of blood through the dull grime that coated your fingers and hands. Vermillion on burnt umber. Little scalloped scars, scars on scars, scars on scars on scars. 

Something Of Value

Something Of Value

 

 

I PULLED MY TRUCK into the driveway, and Pat’s Tornado swerved in behind me.  Lurching out of his car, the bill of his hunter’s cap hit the doorframe, knocking it sideways across his head.  He did not seem to notice.  As he staggered toward the stoop, still singing ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone, I began to realize the magnitude of his condition.  I was drunk, but Pat was at the edge of oblivion.  Annamarie appeared in the doorway.

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AFTER TURNING WRENCHES for four years back east, and in Santa Fe for Boddy’s, and then the Kawasaki dealer, and some anything-that-rolls-in-the-door auto repair shop, I’d had it with the oil and grease, the brake dust and exhaust fumes, the bone deep slices in every knuckle—and most of all, the grimy stains that no soap, no solvent would wash out of my hands.

 

A classified ad sought carpenters in White Rock.  I contacted old man Sandoval, the SnapOn dealer, and met him out at his house in Arroyo Seco.  I carried in a carton with a couple of air wrenches, an air chisel, and some other tools I knew I wouldn’t be using again.  I walked out of the house with a battered Skil Model 77, a wellworn leather tool belt, and some odd chisels and planes.  No money changed hands, and each of us thought he got the better of the other.

 

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NEXT DAY, I put the tools in my truck and hauled myself across the Rio, and up the highway that scales the rugged slopes of the Pajarito Plateau.  The Sandias and the Sangre de Cristos panned in and out of view as I negotiated the switchbacks.  Up on the flats, a trim young jogger loped along the road that ran to Los Alamos.  A fox, half hidden the brush, watched his progress.  Beyond the fox, the terrain rose to the Jemez. 

 

A little ways down the road, this tentative wilderness gave way to a convenience store.  I stopped and bought a quart of grapefruit juice and a bag of barbecue chips.  Another hundred yards, and suburbia spilled out to the east.  This was my turnoff.  At first, I missed the street named in the want ad, and wound down the lane all the way to the rim of the plateau.  The land fell off more than two thousand feet to the Rio.  I heard a plaintive wailing, almost like a child.  A thousand feet below me a string of geese were working their way south.

 

I probably took the longest possible route back along the coiling lanes to La Senda, and found the house.  It was a timberframed structure, with slumpblock walls and great glass panels.  Sitting on a rolling five acre lot, surrounded by stubby piñons, its form was ranging and aggressive--a prairie style house in the high desert.  A carpenter was nailing up cedar shakes on a curved section of wall. 

 

I pulled into the driveway.  A lanky, weatherbeaten man was standing nearby with a clipboard in his hand and a roll of drawings under his arm.  He wore tooled leather boots with pointed toes, and a straw hat with the brim rolled up on the sides, so the front also came to a point.  I got out of the truck and asked him if he knew about the job offer.  With his free hand, he took the cigarette out of his mouth. 

 

“You carpenter?”

 

The right answer was no.  The biggest thing I’d ever made using a hammer and saw was a plywood camper shell for Annamarie’s Datsun.  But I was pretty good with motors and transmissions—how much harder could this be? 

 

I glanced over at the building.  Even though it was chilly, the carpenter who was nailing up the shakes had taken off his shirt.  I flashed back to when I was in school, and Linda was pregnant, and I got that summer job working at the library.  It was the main branch, and my job was opening cartons of new books and gluing the envelope under the back cover.  A new wing was being added to the library, and I would look out the window of the dingy storeroom and watch the guys tiptoeing across a run of open joists carrying sheets of plywood, out under the open sky.

 

“I’m pretty good with wood,” I replied.

 

He peered into the truckbed.  “Ah see ya use a worm drive,” he said, nodding at the Model 77.  “Anything else is a piece a shit.  Kin you start now?  Ah’ll give ya four-fifty.”

 

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IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE, and we had knocked off early to drink a beer.  We got our regular table at The Fat Man's, and Pat launched back into his life in western Massachusetts, weaving his spell on me again, while outdrinking me two to one.  After a few rounds, the other guys shoved off, but Pat and I stayed for another few pitchers.

Pat Maloney was older than the rest of us.  Having served a formal apprenticeship as a joiner, he took a paternal interest in our work, teaching us how to sharpen a chisel or plane iron, testing the edge by shaving the hair on his forearm.  Using hand tools, he could layout and cut a mortise and tenon joint with machinelike precision, probably as fast as someone using a router and power saw.  He mesmerized us with stories of living and working on a pheasant hunting resort, raising the birds, maintaining the incubators and coops, guiding the hunters.  He described an idyllic existence.

During that time, he met Rosa, a sophomore at Amherst.  When she got pregnant, she dropped out, and moved in with him for a while, in his gamekeeper’s apartment above the workshop.  But she left him behind to have the baby, back with her family in Santa Fe.

Pat followed her out west to marry her, but soon grew uncomfortable in what to him was an alien environment.  He could not persuade Rosa to move back east, so he left her, and began a pattern of wandering back and forth across the country, in and out of the lives of his wife and daughter.  Pat was a pendulum that swung between the people and places he loved, repelled from one pole by the unbearable burdens of marriage and fatherhood, and from the other by the desperate forces of loneliness and sentiment.

Our mutual oscillations coincided in White Rock.  Pat was already working on the project when I got hired, but it took a while to get to know him.  For one thing, I was canned a day after I started.

I was a disappointment to the man who assumed I was equal to the merits of my tools.  That first day on the job, he assigned me to frame out for a big bathtub within the circular walls.  While the shirtless carpenter pounded on the walls from the outside, I struggled to resolve the interplay of arc and rectangle.  It was a task for a top notch, experienced mechanic, and by the end of the day I had maybe two illfitting boards nailed up.

The next day, the foreman walked in and watched me struggle for a while.

“Son, yer buildin a house, not a pie-anner,” he advised.  By the end of the day, he’d let me go.

“Ain’t gonna fuss with a check, son.”  He pulled out his wallet and peeled off three twenties.  “S’more than ya earned, but don’ worry bout it.  Good luck.”

A few despondent days later, I got a call from Orlando, one of the carpenters.  “Where have you been, dude, we need you.”  It turns out that the carpentry contractor had been fired, the day after they fired me.  The owner of the house—Cal O’Ryan—a physicist at the lab—was taking over finishing the project.  He had gotten the names of the carpenters from the subcontractor before he sent him packing, and apparently knew nothing of my limitations.

Nevertheless, it was back up the hill for me.  Someone else had finished the bathtub frame, so I fell in helping the best I could, humping materials, rerouting extension cords, retrieving tools dropped from above.  At some point, I was working with Pat, who was installing a wood cap on top of a parapet—a continuation of the curved wall that was my earlier downfall.

Pat had divided the half circle into twelve segments, but he couldn’t figure out the angle of the joint where the segments met.  He tried determining the angle by eye, and cut out the segments.  When he set them in place, the last one would not fit.

I started to explain to Pat how to calculate the cut by dividing angle of the arc by the number of segments, and he started getting annoyed.

“Here, dammit,” he swore, and handed me his pencil.  Then he began taking the tools out of his apron, handing them to me one by one, and when I could not hold anymore of them, and they started falling to the deck, he took off his hat and threw it down and started to walk away.

“Pat, wait a minute, let me just lay one out for you.”  It took me a while, because I needed Pythagoras to work out the length, and I couldn’t remember the square root algorithm.  (but oh how clearly I remember Nancy Swope, who sat on my left in Mrs. Byers’ math class.  She wore these button front blouses, and when she would lean forward, I could steal a glimpse of heaven between the puckers of the fabric.  It was a wonder I passed the course.)

Nevertheless, I worked it out close enough so that when Pat cut out a new set of caps, all he had to do was trim the ends that met the main wall of the house.  It was cherry.  Cal noticed, and gave Pat a compliment on the work that afternoon.  From then on, Pat and I were tight.

We worked together through the autumn, and under his tutelage I gained some skill.  He had a tender side, too.  Once—it was the day before Thanksgiving—I was nailing up blocking inside a closet, using a brand new twentytwo ounce Estwing.  As I began the swing of the hammer, its claw caught for a moment on a stud behind me.  I remember watching the hammer head, with its razor sharp waffle pattern sparkling, as it wobbled by on its way to my ring finger—which I had not yet learned to tuck behind my thumb when holding a nail.

It seemed like the hammerhead just tagged the fingertip, but it tore a nice flap of skin loose.

“Damn,” I cried, and dropped my hammer.  Pat noticed, and went out to his car to get a bandaid.  By the time he returned, it was red beneath the fingernail.  The pain was excruciating.

Once again, Pat went back to his car, returning with needle nose pliers and a tiny brad.  He put the brad in the pliers and heated it with his lighter until the tip started to glow.

“Gimme your hand,” he ordered.  I gave it to him.

“Now look away.”

Then he poked the brad through my fingernail.  Blood spurted from the little hole, but the pain immediately subsided.

“All set,” he said.  Now let’s get back to work.”

 

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I CALLED UP from the driveway, “Hey Annie, I brought Pat Maloney with me.”

 

“I see.  Is he coming in, or is he just going to stand there singing?”

 

Then Pat saw her in the doorway, hands on her hips.  Immediately he fell silent and stiffened up.  He straightened his hat out and hitched up his trousers.   

 

“Pat, come on in.  This is Annamarie.”

 

We clambered into the little trailer house.  I gave Annamarie a peck on a stony cheek.

 

Pat greeted her.  “Mrs. Wolfe, how do you do?  ‘Sa pleasure to meecha.”  Pat knew we weren’t married, but called her Mrs. Wolfe anyway.  Annamarie grimaced but let it go.  She asked him, “Pat, can I fix you a cup of coffee?”  I was about to have a cup myself.”

 

He cocked his head toward her and raised one eyebrow, and replied, “No, but I’ll take a beer if you have one.”

 

I groaned audibly.  “Pat, for crissakes...”

 

At those words, Pat’s head sank.  The corners of his mouth pulled down, and the twinkle in his eyes vanished.  “That’s right.  Enough is enough.”

 

We sat down, me on the couch, and Pat in a chair on the opposite side, near the door.  The little trailer house was so narrow, our knees were almost touching.  Annamarie brought in some coffee and sat down next to me, about as far away as the little couch would permit.

 

So I started telling her about our plans to subcontract the carpentry work for the Gant house.  Pat began to beam again.  Some force filled his sagging body, and his arms and head became animated again.  He rambled on about the plans for the house, how it would be even greater than O’Ryan’s.  About our partnership, and the beginning of creating an enduring relationship.  Through it all, he kept using the term, “something of value.”

 

But there was something incongruous about it all.  One minute, he seemed stupefied; the next, he was actually making sense.  But I was in no condition to explore the issue.  I felt even drunker than when I had arrived, and Pat’s remarks rolled in my head like the shifting baubles in a kaleidoscope.

 

Then he talked about how proud his wife, Rosa, was of these prospects.  He wanted to introduce me to her.

 

“I want you to meet Marcella, too.”  Marcella was his daughter.  “Smart girl; she’s going to Saint Johns.  Beautiful, too.  I think you would like her.”

 

Annamarie was sitting with her arms folded across her chest and legs crossed.  Except for the slow flexing of her elevated foot, she could have been carved out of a block of stone. 

 

But I was in another world, imagining the lovely Marcella.  Somewhere in the background, I remember Pat comparing his knockout of a daughter with Annamarie, my Annamarie, who took fierce pride in the severity of her looks; somewhere deep in my suppressed consciousness I knew I should be outraged.  But instead, I just sat there, lapping it up.  Annamarie sat in silence.

 

Finally I told him it was time to wind it down, and he got up and went out to his car.  Annamarie was still on the couch, still crossarmed and crosslegged, but she had turned her head away, gazing out the south window at the desert beyond.

 

I started to say something, knowing there was nothing to say.  Then I looked out front and noticed that Pat’s car had not moved.  He had passed out behind the wheel.

 

So I got up and went outside.  Then I opened the drivers side door and shoved him over, and drove him back to Santa Fe.  Pat rode slumped against the passenger side door, his right arm extended, and his head on his shoulder.  The sun was setting, turning the snow on the Sangre De Cristos a salmon color.  He lived all the way on the other side of town, somewhere way out Agua Fria.  Annamarie followed us, and drove me back.  By this time, the sky was black, and snow on the mountains was luminous.  I chattered lamely, pretending it was all in good fun, a few drinks, a crazy old guy, no?  Maybe she even believed me, a little bit, anyway.

 

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I DON”T KNOW how many years, after it was all over with her, it took me to realize what I’d lost, or how much pain I caused.

 

Why couldn’t I have said to Pat, “Listen up, old man.  Annamarie is my woman, and I’m her man.  She is beautiful to me, and I don’t give a damn what you think.”

 

It was because I was not a man, not then.  Annamarie, I am weeping.