November Grudge

The trees are bending over
The cows are lying down
The autumn's taking over
You can hear the buckshot hounds
Someone's crying in the woods
Someone's burying all his clothes
Now Slam the Crank from Wheezer
Slept outside last night and froze
--T. Waits/K. Brennan

This month makes ice on the sidewalk for a man to slip on, it makes the sun bloody and the moon cold, collars up, people turn away from each other. Before it was here it made her, and she was over the sea and we were together in a park and at a museum, next to a canal in Holland, on a bus or on a train together, always together. After that, I was back here and she was out there, so what to do about that? I used a typewriter then a lot and typed and typed, sending lots of letters, opening hers, but still I was here and she was there. The typing wasn't enough: I had to get out there, I had to get away from here, I thought so anyway.

So I did, and it wasn't at all the same. I did everything wrong, I said something else wrong, I was in the wrong mountains in the wrong month with the wrong attitude and the wrong woman. So that was that, I was out in the streets of Flagstaff with a return ticket, Phoenix to Washington D.C. But that plane did not leave for three days, so I got a room at a hotel, The Spur, and found a bar. Then another, and another, there were quite a few bars for such a small town next to an interstate. Pabst Blue Ribbon, $1. There were pool tables and some sympathetic people, and Indians begging for money but I had nothing but stories that they didn't want to hear so I gave them nothing and didn't feel bad about it. I was still young enough then to feel sorry only for myself.

Eventually even that gets old so I wound up bored at the end of a bar just staring at the mirror, and I heard a sound. Two guys had fallen off their stools and were rolling around so I went over there to see the show and it turned out they were just brothers, twins actually, beating each other up, but in a nice way. They got thrown out so I followed them and hung out with them the rest of the night. I don't recall their names; they were slavic though and they had just finished six months fishing in Alaska and had driven down there, on their way to somewhere else. One brother was very obnoxious and would keep insulting people everywhere we went until we all got thrown out of each bar and came full circle back to the original bar. By then a whole new set of people were there so they let us back in. Obnoxious brother passed out so we carried him out to their van, got some bourbon and cigars, and talked for a while. Obnoxious brother came to and he was more agreeable somehow, odd fellow.

They were OK guys actually, they bought me some food at a coffee shop and after I threw that up I said goodbye and made my way back to The Spur hotel over the ice on all the sidewalks in November. I fell many times, the traffic just went on by, it was not very uncommon it seemed for a man to flop his way down a street at night on the ice in Flagstaff, so long as he stayed out of the road.

In the morning I realized I had just enough money for the bus fare back to Phoenix and a little to spare. There was an old drugstore there with the stools where you could sit and have coffee, so I went in there and drank the coffee and watched TV. Everyone knew each other. A dwarf in a cowboy hat came in with his girlfriend, she was regular sized. They sat down next to me and began to argue, but not in a terribly loud way or even very vociferously, it seemed more like a pattern of relating that soothed them, along with the coffee and the general company. She kept saying he had bitten her and he kept denying it and she kept offering to show him the marks of her injuries, and he kept denying it, shaking his dwarf head that was inside a cowboy hat. Round and round it went, on and on, a calliope from hell just for me it seemed. I was beginning to feel like I might be going insane so I got up out of there and left them, still talking about the biting.

I settled in at the bus station and spent the next couple of nights there, sleeping on the molded plastic seats with one hand on my luggage. I didn't get much rest, it was uncomfortable. There was a water fountain and people would leave newspapers and magazines so I had something to read. The Arizona Republic. People. I read it all, then would read it over again, just to keep the mind from going out the window, I knew if I didn't keep it on something other than circumstances it would just go out and never return to me.

Finally the bus arrived, I got on and we pulled out, down the side of the mountains to Phoenix. The bus terminal was nowhere near the airport, I hadn't planned on this part. She was supposed to drive me, her, that person. I caught a taxi and didn't ask how much, when we got there I paid him all the paper money I had, $8. The fare was $12, but he took what I had. I had missed my flight so they booked me on the next one and I had a quarter, a dime, and some pennies on me but I was on my way back. There was plenty to read in the airport and then I was in Atlanta connecting to Virginia and I felt better to be in the eastern time zone. No one was wearing cowboy hats anymore and there were people still wearing shorts and I felt OK although I was very hungry. No dwarves, no biting. Talk about football and stock prices, I listened to people talk about things like that and it was better than food. In a few hours I was back in Virginia and everything was fine. But I haven't been back to that part of Arizona since then, almost twenty years ago. Every time November rolls around on the calendar I feel a little off, I think it was from that time. I always get my bearings, but it definitely throws me off just a bit. I was born in this month; this month made me but it made some other things in me that I don't really like very much, so I do hold a grudge.