Works and Days
Chapter Seven
Cowboys and Poets
“...For we are all dust!” Ted Weirbach finished, stamping three times on the tabletop, and then stepping down and collapsing on the ground. Chayne wondered for a minute if he was dead or not, then the poet got up with a Buddha smile and Elaine applauded him wildly.
“And now you’re turn,” he said to Elaine.
“Oh, I can’t.”
“Oh, you must.”
Elaine blushed. “Well... alright.” Elaine shuffled around in her papers and finally cleared her throat to read from one of the sheets:
“Often when I am sitting
with the baby in front of
the television,
I wish that I could run.
Oh, my oh how I think of the sun,
and sometimes I think of blowing
this whole house to kingdom come.
And that is because
I hate to do the dishes.”
Elaine paused, and at last they clapped, Chayne not daring to look at Faye or Russell. Chayne was wondering why the hell Faye had thought up such an idiotic idea as the Artistic Society when Elaine was saying, “That was from my angry period, right after I’d had Tiffany. I’m not sure that it was very good—”
“No,” Faye said. “It was full of... emotion. It was honest.”
“It was very real,” Russell added, nodding sagely, and Chayne kicked the boy under the table.
Diggs remained politically silent, and Chayne suddenly caught Ted’s eye. A laugh almost burst from the other man’s mouth, and biting his lip, Ted Weirbach turned away.
“I used to think I wasn’t very good either,” Ted began. “It took a lot of encouragement, a lot of stroking of the ego to get me to the place where I could even dare to publish, and then when I sent my work out it was amazing how easily I was picked up.”
“Was it that way for you, Mr. Kandzierski?” Elaine asked.
“Chayne’s never needed anyone to stroke his ego,” Faye said.
“And you have?” Chayne eyed his friend sourly.
Faye closed her mouth, aware of having overstepped a line and Chayne said to Elaine, “and no, neither Faye nor I had Mr. Weirbach’s fortune.”
“But then I guess it’s not really about fortune,” Diggs threw in.
“Good point,” said Chayne, who hated talking about writing and would rather just do it.
“Uh,” Ted said, “I really like your stuff. What I’ve read.”
“Thanks,” Chayne, who was always surprised anyone had read him blinked.
“Would you care to read something for us?” Ted asked, blinking.
“Absolutely not,” said Chayne and there was a knock at the door.
“It’s open,” Chayne shouted from the kitchen, but Faye got up to answer it, and a few seconds later said, “Chayne, there’s a new member of the club.”
Russell’s jaw dropped to see, clutching his portfolio, a brightly beaming Chuck Shrader.
“Is this the poetry thing?” Chuck Shrader asked, looking around the kitchen.
“Yes it is,” Faye replied, offering her hand, and Chuck took it.
“Russell, we keep running into each other.”
Chayne looked to Russell.
“He’s dating my mother,” Russell offered, and everyone looked from Russell to Chuck.
“Well, that’s it, Russell. I guess you’ll have to take my class next semester.
“I’m Chuck Shrader,” Chuck Shrader told everyone else.
“Make yourself at home,” said Chayne. “Let me get you something to drink.”
“Oh, that’s alright.”
“We’ve got coffee? Juice?”
“Ah,” Chuck looked around and put down his portfolio. “Coffee. Coffee.”
Chuck was just standing there, so Chayne said, “Well, there’s the pot. Cups are in the cabinet.”
Chuck found himself a cup and the cream, and at Chayne’s guidance the sugar, and finally sat down while Ted said, “Maybe you’d like to read something of yours?”
Chuck shook his head.
“Don’t be nervous,” said Elaine.
“Oh, I’m not,” Chuck told her. “I mean, it’s not that I don’t believe in myself, I brought my stuff with me. Just, I’m not one of those poets that has to have an audience and make a performance all around me.”
Chayne cleared his throat and look at Ted, then said, “Well, you might as well read something because Faye produces psychology books, Russell doesn’t write any sort of poetry to my knowledge. I don’t feel like reading aything and Diggs… Diggs, why the hell are you here?”
“I’m just here for the ride,” said Diggs, and Chayne shrugged.
“Well,” Chuck frowned from one side of his mouth, looking uncomfortable, said, “Okay,” and began scrambling in his portfolio for something.
He cleared his throat and began.
There’s not going to be a soul to thank me for these dreams
I’ve kept
I did not make them up
they fly on in
the din of weeping princesses fills this tenement
the lament of the drunk outside
becoems mine
whisky and wine
while I sit—while I lay on my back
naked—tracing shadows alone’
four in the morn—and light another
cigarette
ah—forget it!
you think the writing life is easy
how’s it easy?
No validation
this permanent vacation from the world
anyone else knows
And now again—I know love—which is to say I get laid
and curl up in the window
hands wrapped around ankles—to watch the rain roll
down on Reilly Street
I see one man below
—walking slow—to spite the storm
I learn
I learn the secret—life is lonely
No—only some of the time
When you came over the loneliness melted away
you said--you said putting your hand to my cheek—
give me your lonely—your tired—your poor!
thrust them into the door!
And in the dark I thrust them all night
My God! The door was so tight!
I imagine that a world was made in that explosion
I can’t imagine how you held me, my body tossing
the next morning your hand touching—
that spot—that bone—that place on my hip—
your arm tossed over me
your breast there to feed me.
And I thought and I thought
now there’s nothing else
Now—
I am really naked
and she understands me
And the bus rolls below on Reilly Street.
They were all quiet. Chayne only heard the ticking of the clock. His mouth was open a little. He hadn’t heard anything beautiful in a really long time, though he’d seen much beauty today. Chuck looked around. At last Faye spoke, seriously, reverently, as she seldom did.
“Thank you, Chuck.”
Russell only hoped that the poem had been written before Chuck met his mother, and he kept on thinking, “We live on Breckinridge Avenue, not Reilly Street, not Reilly Street.”
“Can I get you another drink?” White Boy asked as he swayed with Sharon.
“Are you trying to seduce me?” she joked.
“No! No!” He thought she was serious. “No, you’re just a beautiful lady and—”
“What?”
“I said you’re a beautiful lady.”
“It’s been a long time since a man’s said that to me.”
“Maybe you’re hanging around the wrong men.”
Sharon chuckled and shrugged as much as she could while slow dancing.
“Maybe you’re right.
“I don’t even know your name,” Sharon told him.
“My name’s Robert.”
“Robert,” Sharon considered it. “Yes, that’s a nice name. Robert, I think I will let you get me another drink.”
After all they were free. He walked her over to the bar and asked what she wanted. Sharon tried not to think outside of herself or she would laugh at this whole situation. What would Chayne say?
“Here you go,” he served her the martini.
“You drink these often?” he asked her as they sat at the bar.
“No, but my son talks about them a lot. I don’t think he drinks them either, but he always puts them in his stories.”
“You’ve got a kid?”
“Yes,” Sharon nodded, smiling. “Yes. We all live in Michigan. With my husband.”
Robert bawked, and then said, “This is the man who doesn’t tell you you’re beautiful?”
“Not for a long time. My son actually tells me though, but he’s my son, so how can I believe that?”
“How old is he?”
Sharon laughed, suddenly realizing that not only was she young when she’d had Chayne, but that Robert had no idea how old she was.
“Probably older than you! He’s thirty-five, a professor and a writer.”
From the way his mouth opened and his eyebrows shot up over his shades, Sharon was sure that if she could have seen his eyes, they would be popped wide open.
“I’m twenty-three,” he confessed sheepishly.
“Well, I’m fifty-seven. Robert, let me see your eyes.”
Obediently, Robert took off his shades.
“You have very nice eyes.”
They were wide and almond shaped, very blue.
“You should show them more often.”
He blushed and made to put them back on, but Sharon’s hand held Robert’s down.
“Now your hat, so I can see your hair,”
It was gelled and parted, gold white, shaved at the sides and Sharon said, “See, I would never have known you were attractive if you hadn’t shown your face, Robert... Robert who has no last name.”
“Robert Keyes, Sharon....”
“Kandzierski.”
Robert’s eyes squinted.
“It’s Polish. My husband’s father was white—to make a long story very short—”
“No, no,” he said. “What’s your son’s name?”
“Chayne.”
“Get out!”
“You know him. Know of him?”
Robert nodded and quoted.
Against all the pain I’ve seen and the knowledge that there is certainly something wrong
I hear the galaxies hum another song,
against the anguish and the pain I look into the stars at night
in them and in the sun and in the air is God’s own whisper—
there is a greater, greater “Something Right”
“Did Chayne write that?”
As happened now and again, she was embarrassed to know her son so little.
Robert said, “He did.”
“And you memorize poetry?”
“I do lots of things,” Robert smiled. “You don’t really know anyone at this reception do you?”
Sharon laughed and admitted, “My friends and I just wandered in here. We had no idea it was a wedding.”
“Sometimes I feel like I just wandered in here too, and this is my family.”
Sharon hadn’t considered until now that he must be related to the wedding party.
“The groom’s my brother.”