Hook Man Speaks, page 4
"So you don't want me to come to your class?" I ask.
"I want to know why you want to come to my class."
I think for a second. "I want," I say, "to see them. Their faces and baseball caps and Mickey Mouse watches, their manicured fingernails and expensive tennis shoes, their fraternity shirts and high school class rings and rat-packed purses. In the daylight. In a normal setting. I want to see them breathing regularly and thinking sensibly and taking notes."
"Few, if any of them, take notes," Brautigan says. "But is that really what you want? Couldn't you do that sitting on a bench near the library?"
"I want to see them still," I say. "Motionless. Like models posing for a sculptor."
"And what about you? Do you want them to see you?"
"I want to sit among them. I don't want to stand out from them. So, in answer to your question, yes and no. I want to be seen and not to be seen. At the same time."
Brautigan taps his pen against his teeth. "I don't know what to say," he says. "We'll see."
When I tell you I read every word of every magazine I get, I mean it. How else could you account for me finding this item tucked under the change-of-address information in the most recent Texas Monthly? "Subscribers preferring scent-free issues," the copy read, "may call 1-800-NOS-SAFE."
Did I call?
I did not. I'm not entirely sure why, but I didn't. I memorized the number, of course. (I doubt I'll ever forget it. How could I? I couldn't tell you the starting date of any war in recorded history, but I can recite a litany of noisome telephone "numbers.") Even as I reached for my phone's receiver, it occurred to me that I might be making a grave mistake. I shut my eyes and pictured myself opening my mailbox to find a Gentleman's Quarterly reeking of nothing more than that same mailbox's steely innards, or worse, my mail carrier's gratuitous Brut.
By necessity, I avoided my phone for the duration of the afternoon.
1-800-NOS-SAFE, indeed.
When Dr. Brautigan doesn't show up for our morning appointment, I think nothing of it. We all have mornings that go in directions we never anticipated or desired. I wait around his office for an hour and a half, leafing through folklore periodicals, trying to imagine the tunes that accompany the ballads transcribed therein: "Tom Dooley," "Mary McCree," "Hinkey Poteet," "The Blue Fire Coal Mine Murders," "Lucy the Serving Girl's Secret." Finally, I wander to the lecture hall where Brautigan's survey class meets, figuring he'll show up there, at least. Students drift in like dazed shipwreck survivors. I sit at the rear of the room, watching the boys kick back in their seats, boots up on the row in front of them. The girls laze about in groups of two and three, sighing and pouting and doodling in spiral notebooks. After ten minutes of waiting for Brautigan, they grow restless and begin to gauge each other's patience with blank stares, raised eyebrows. Eventually one brave youth in a denim jacket rolls out of his makeshift recliner and lumbers to the door. Without looking back he leaves. Slowly at first, then in a tide of grins and whistles, they all follow the first cowboy's lead.
His Pied Piper routine is capped by my own disappointed and unwitnessed exit.
At home, my answering machine blinks to let me know I've been away too long. "Dr. Brautigan here," the recorder reports. "I was wondering if maybe you could come down to the police station and help me clear up a little problem."
Dear Dr. Brautigan: (the letter I wrote in response to his article began)
/ read with great excitement your recent piece in Harper's regarding the antics of the "Hook Man" character. I found your prose style fresh and straightforward and your method of organization and presentation entertaining without being lackadaisical.
It was with some concern, however, that I studied your observations on what sundry neuroses the Hook Man may possess that drive "him" to attack helpless lovebirds. You see -- and I hope you will believe me when I tell you this is not a joke -- I am the Hook Man and am in no way whatsoever like the psychological profile you fabricated. For one thing, my sexual history is hardly bizarre. I have never been "involved" with any of the deviant types you list. Furthermore, my adolescent family life was exceptionally normal and healthy. My mother and brother can and will attest to that should you need corroborating witnesses.
Please do not think that I am chastising you for your mistakes. I am only trying to help you better understand your own research. Indeed, I am flattered by your interest and would be happy to help you in any way I can.
Sincerely,
Leonard Gage
(The Hook Man)
My money comes from the settlement with the lawnmower company, of course. It wasn't much to begin with, and dwindles perilously, wasted on a life of skulking and magazine perusal. But it lets me live, if somewhat frugally, in a world of leisure. And when I need to bail a friend out of jail, I can do so. Actually, Dr. Brautigan is the first friend I've had reason to rescue from the calaboose. (I've known other friends, certainly, but can count no criminals among their ranks.)
"Says you could explain," the detective mumbles, nodding at where Brautigan sits slumped in a straight-backed chair, wearing his Hook Man getup. The plastic hook, preserved in a see-through evidence bag, rests amid a collage of coffee-stained Styrofoam cups and tattered sugar packets. "Says you could explain why it is we found him loitering in the oleanders at City Park. Says he's a scientist or something."
"Professor," Dr. Brautigan corrects.
"Right. Professor. Says he's doing research." The detective notices my own hook and pauses. "That real?" he asks, gesturing.
"Genuine article," I admit, thumping the table so the cups and sugar packets and fake hook all bounce.
My first time.
It's a national, possibly universal obsession, firsts. The first man to do this. The first woman to do that. The first hog to swim the Mississippi. First dogcatcher to apprehend a zoo-wayward anaconda alone. Guinness has made a name for himself cataloguing firsts. People risk their lives and souls for his attention, for one line in his thick, ridiculous book. "My first time." The beginning of a titillating and most probably embarrassing story told over cocktails to someone the teller doesn't know well enough to tell anything to. "My first time." The point of too many movies starring too many hard-bodied nobodies shown on cable television, Friday nights, just past prime time: The Last American Virgin, Private School, Losin' It, Corky's Hot-Tub Adventure, My Favorite Weekend, Ski Patrol IV: Moguls!, Mommie's Italian Chauffeur, Dad's Swedish Masseuse, Beach Shak Summer, 555-LOVE, Flesh Flood, Initiate This.
My first time?
Suffice it to say diere was one. Although I can't for the life of me remember it.
Rosemary's brother showed up unexpectedly.
He answered Rosemary's door one day when I went over for dinner. "Can I help you?" he asked from behind the chain.
Confused, I faltered. "Rosemary? Uh, is she here?"
"Yes, I'm here," I heard her say. "Good God, Duncan." The man was pulled back, the door unchained and reopened. Rosemary beamed at me. "Hello."
"Hey," I said, uncertain if I should stay or leave.
"Well, come in," she boomed, happily. "I want you to meet my brother."
Duncan, it turned out, was the family's black sheep. He appeared unexpectedly from time to time, bursting with stories of his life as an itinerant blackjack dealer. He'd left home immediately after Lee High graduation to attend gaming school in Las Vegas and since then had been employed by casinos and backdoor card clubs across the nation. Over a six-pack of Shiner he told me he himself had never gambled. "Not once," he insisted. "Not on anything."
"You know the odds too well," I ventured.
"Hell no. No such thing as odds. I'm the world's most unlucky man. Why stir up misfortune?"
At the time, Duncan was traveling from Atlantic City to an Indian reservation somewhere "out West."
"Thought I'd pop in for a stay. Catch up on old times and all that. Say, what happened to your hand?"
"Accident," I said.
"No duh. You're not by any chance the feller that got his hand chomped by a Doberman while robbing an old lady's house, are you?"
"What feller would that be?"
"You know. That feller. You've heard the story, surely." Rosemary came in with a bowl of queso and a bag of corn chips. "Oh, boy," she groaned. "Here come the stories. Duncan gets the best dumb gossip from around the globe," she explained.
"People have to do something while they piss away their dough," Duncan argued. "How do you think I learned my sister was the Kentucky Fried Rat Lady? I've heard about her in every gambling town I've worked. You're Colonel Sanders's worst nightmare, the bane of every working mother north of the equator." He leaned over to pinch Rosemary's cheek.
"That's not me." Rosemary sighed. "You know the truth."
Duncan took a long sip of beer. "Truth is, the truth's a deadly bore. Always a disappointment. You can bet on it."
Brautigan's wife has driven the kids over to Corpus Christi for their spring break. They're staying in a neighbor's condo.
"It could have been worse," Brautigan whines. "I could have gone out and had an affair."
"That wouldn't have gotten you arrested," I say.
"No charges were pressed," Brautigan mitigates. "And everyone believed I was just doing research."
"Not me. I know what you were doing."
There is a long pause. Brautigan doodles on his pad. Finally he says, "I'm afraid I'll do it again."
"This town isn't big enough for the both of us," I drawl.
My freshman year, my homeroom was homeless. That is, we didn't have a regular classroom to call our own. Instead, our teacher, Mrs. Holloway, held court in the massive theater that took up more than an eighth of our WPA-built school but hadn't been used in a number of years due to rotted planks on the stage. (Rumor had it the auditorium was condemned by a former principal immediately after he was fitted for casts on both legs, broken after plunging through the stage floor while delivering a dramatic reading from A Christmas Carol the day before Winter Break. He -- allegedly -- had just finished a sniveling redneck rendition of Scrooge's poorhouse rant when, crash, down he went. Students and teachers, ill-read, uncaring, mistook the accident as part of the performance, departed amidst a smattering of applause. When the janitor found him late that afternoon, the principal, confusing his salvation with the Ghost of Christmas Future, begged for another chance.) Each morning Mrs. Holloway, wary of the stage, stood at the front of the auditorium and begged us to remain seated and quiet for the duration of our stay with her. Then she walked to the back of the auditorium and read detective novels while my peers ran wild in the aisles. It was not difficult to get up on the stage, despite a fence of hastily erected barbed wire, and if careful, one could trod the area without fear of broken limbs or impalement. I would venture to say that, of the twelve girls in my homeroom, five of them lost their virginity to Buzz Henry in the upstairs dressing room of that auditorium. While the rest of us studied and copied homework due in the next class, Buzz was led -- very willingly -- into that lofty nest to perform the act he'd allegedly perfected in sixth grade with a nymphomaniacal cheerleader from the nearby Junior College. The girls were not competitive or catty in their use of Buzz. Strangely, they seemed to have worked out some kind of schedule by which they abided. We'd hear them sometimes, their faint moans haunting the dank and shadowy room like a forgotten phantom (or feverish principal), ecstasy muffled by the molding velvet curtains and cooing pigeons nesting high in the rafters. When the vocal demonstrations were especially operatic, I would turn to see if Mrs. Holloway had noticed, if she'd vacated her world of dames and private dicks long enough to sniff out the drama being performed above and in front of the entire homeroom. But, despite the giggles and whispers and occasional "Attaboy, Buzz" from a fellow footballer, Mrs. Holloway remained oblivious. On mornings when Buzz was allowed a period to rest, according to the schedule's odd calendar of celibate holidays, the rest of us prowled the stage like cat burglars. Alone usually, we'd run into one another in the dark, start, then continue creeping from one shadowy corner to the next. I firmly believe we all wanted to play hide-and-seek but were afraid to suggest the game, for fear of being branded a child, though that is precisely what we were.
The day I climbed the stairs to the upper dressing room, curious to see what the mysterious seraglio contained (a mattress, a couch, a pillow-filled gondola, what?), it was raining. It drummed the roof above me, growing louder as I climbed higher and higher into the cobwebs and shadows. The wooden stairs creaked and trembled beneath my tentative steps until at last I stood in front of a wooden door whose knob had been pulled out. Resisting the urge to bend down and look through the hole before entering, I pushed the door wide and, like the hero of some preposterous melodrama, strode through the doorway, chest stuffed full of air, head held high, ready for anything.
But.
There was nothing much. A window through which filtered bluish light. A dozen or so stove-sized wooden boxes. Several balding mops and brooms. Some crudely drawn set pieces: a sitting room, window looking out on a snowy hill; an Old West saloon; a jungle clearing, monkey eternally swinging down from a banana tree; Grecian columns; a ship's wheel manned by a fading chalk navigator, sopping from the storm against which he leaned. In the center of the room, a chaise lounge, wine-colored, springs blooming from its seat like rusting daffodils -- Buzz's altar, no doubt -- balanced on three legs. Condoms littered the floor, as did de-labeled pint bottles of Jack Daniel's, long empty. A bird's skeleton rested on a bed of its own feathers. This was no seraglio, no Turkish harem strewn with scarves and elephantine silk pillows. This was grim. This was dilapidation itself.
I turned to go, but the boxes caught my eye. There was writing on them that seemed to speak to me, almost summon me. Careful to avoid the shriveled rubbers, I crossed the room to investigate. "A NOBLE EXPERIMENT," one box read. I opened its top and rustled through a pile of time-yellowed lab coats and a convict's striped shirt. The box next to it, labeled "LAST NIGHT ON KRAKATOA," contained a number of grass skirts, innumerable coconut shells, a wildly feathered headdress and an eyeless stuffed parrot. "CHERRY TREE? WHAT CHERRY TREE?" held four pairs of seven-league boots, a pink dress the size of a circus tent, thirty-six powdered wigs, and a little hatchet, its rubbery blade painted a bright gold. "FANGS FOR THE MEMORIES" was furnished with a thin black cape, a brass candelabrum, an enormous rubber rat (its snout beginning to crumble), and fourteen bloodstained white nightgowns. The writing on the last box was different from the simple block lettering on the others. In elaborate calligraphy, someone had written "JOLLY ROGER FOLLIES."
Among other things, of course, the box contained it.
It.
It, a crescent moon.
It, a midget's scimitar.
It, a silver-plated croissant, ill-conceived boomerang, serious question mark.
It, tarnished, but not rusty beyond hope.
It, mounted on a leather sleeve, looking comfortable even at first sight, even there, in that dingy love shack, even in pigeon-shit-tinged light and air, even so looking like a part of me, missing and restored by luck, by Jove, by fate.
It was love at first sight.
Duncan had a briefcase full of scratch-off lottery tickets from across the country. Since he didn't gamble, they were all untouched. "I give them out to people I meet around. You know, in restaurants, at laundromats. Here," he said, handing me one. "Try it." I looked at the ticket. It featured a square of silver latex imprinted MATCH THREE next to a cartoonish pirate straddling a treasure chest leaking strands of pearls. The chest rested on a bed of doubloons whose sparkling was represented by three lines radiating from the edges of certain coins, like the sun's corona stylized by a seven-year-old. The pirate, of course, had a green-orange-yellow parrot on one shoulder, a patch over his right eye, and (surprise) a hook on his left hand. Behind the pirate, a tiny ship, its cannons, crow's nest and death's-head flag just barely distinguishable, floated amongst flea-sized whitecaps. BUCCANEER BILLIONS, the top of the ticket read in scarlet Barnum letters. "You may already be a winner," Duncan teased.
I scratched at the dull silver area with the tip of my hook until it was revealed that I had won nothing.
"Too bad," Duncan said. "You had two twenty-five thousands, though. What it was, was: it almost was." He sighed. "That's the way it always is."
Brautigan's office is darkened, shades pulled to reduce the glare off the framed diplomas, citations and pictures of Brautigan -- sunburnt, mosquito-bothered -- posing next to Aztec pyramids.
"I don't know if I would have done anything," Brautigan says. "I think I just wanted to sit out there, watching it get dark, imagining what it would be like to jump out and scare somebody. But would I have actually done it? If somebody had pulled up, radio blaring Ravel, Tchaikovsky --"
