Wood And Water

a short story

One year when I was very young, a long time ago, in the early days of the Great Depression, my husband, whom I loved as much as life, lost his employment and came home late in a taxi rather drunk. One of his friends had telephoned so I was aware but he said nothing himself, only that I should go up to bed and he would follow. Of course I did, you see, because that seemed to be what was wanted and we had even kissed and caressed. But instead he took a shotgun out to the garden and killed himself, from a pair of sporting guns my father gave us at the wedding. Naturally, having heard, I ran out and found him there like that. And so that year was the first year of my search for understanding.

Of course we were Episcopal, so that's where I began. Our bishop was a wise old widower, by everything that I had ever heard from him, so there I sat drenching a starched lace hanky in the tea parlor, myself entirely curled up inside the largest plush chair – and no doubt weeping as big an ocean as Alice did when she was down the rabbit hole – the worldly old gentleman patting my hand, mumbling from his trove of homilies, and a moment came when I must decide whether it was very smart to tell about the sex. I had rehearsed it several ways. I could not get it off my mind, you see, that my lover, whom I had even married, preferred murdering himself to having me. The utter bastard! I couldn't get that bit of it unstuck inside my brain. So, me there spying round the hanky at the bishop, bosom heaving.

Well, after that embarrassing misunderstanding there were the Catholics. Yes, I tried the Catholics. Our housekeeper took me. More than once. And Mass was beautiful enough; that big old cavernous cathedral in Boston with colored light and colored shadows too and incense and all the lovely mumbo-jumbo. But there was that great dripping corpse, and naked too, hanged up there. He looked sorry for everything all right – good and sorry – but dead, dead, dead. Too much of a good thing perhaps. No thank you.

But now that I had delved among the lower orders of society there was a lot from which to choose. That very autumn, on Tremont Street on a corner of the Common, coming out from lunch with some old sorority pals, where I had moaned and wept some more because inevitably the chit chat got around to men, there was a mission band tooting on their horns and leading passersby in hymns. I stopped and in a bit the traffic light changed so I went across. I wiped my tears and said: Why not? What's there to lose? After all, my dear old pals – and they undoubtedly all already thought me off the odd end anyway – they had been so totally obliviously insipid in the face of life's mysteries that now this smelly raggedy crowd lifting up their souls to Heaven were, to me, looking quite like all those heart warming Dickens characters. And there, shouting out the tunes, there was a young female minister.

Oh well, a spell of mopping floors and dishing macaroni to surly tramps was quite enough to wear most of the Homeric shine off that. Nothing in principle against it, certainly, but simply not my sort of job. No panache whatever. And then my new friend, the girl pastor – one night when the kitchen was closed and we sat together with coffee mugs and I confided all my deepest troubles. She finally had no answer except to say that all of it would be clear if I allowed faith into my heart. But faith in what? I was so damn earnest. In God's redeeming grace, she said. But redemption from what? What sins had I committed? I knew I hadn't done the bastard in! I had guilty thoughts, she said. So that was that. There was no credible guilt in me – in fact I had been betrayed and without reason – only anger and such as that. And it is a useful thing, not an evil thing, to ask hard questions; and certainly one must ask them from whatever place one finds oneself.

But meanwhile I had fallen in with others there. I was a young adventuress you see, prowling, on safari more or less – or a freelance Mata Hari perhaps – and there was a subversive cabal brewing among the mission's congregation. Mainly Mrs. Updyke and her husband Ed. They seemed to be gathering up a few other transients for a mission of their own. They always spoke in whispers. That's where I heard of Sister Amy in Des Moines. Good Sister healed by laying on of hands and there were countless miracles daily.

Have you ridden in a 1919 Packard? In 1931? Across half of North America? I was already then a veteran of a certain memorable night-long jaunt not long before – in the back of a dusty Packard full of Vassar girls and Harvard boys and truly nauseating gin – so I was quite prepared, relieved in fact, to buy this car which Mr. Updyke found for thirty-five dollars, instead of the embarrassing expenditure it would have been for luxurious Pullman tickets for our valiant little pilgrim crew. Des Moines! I scarcely knew the place existed. Paris would have seemed prosaic by comparison. I donned my traveling kit and leapt behind the wheel with maps in hand and off we bounced. I nursed that car as far as Henderson, Kentucky.

Two sleepless nights, a boiling radiator and two flats had been dealt with already in good order, but then there was a muddy snow. It slid us sidelong down a long steep hill while I was wrestling with that Charybdian transmission shift lever and the wheel and brakes. Perhaps actually it's merely that I was so sore and tired by then; I remember that my arms were positively wooden from the shoulders down and there's no need in Christendom to talk about my bum. It happened so slowly, one of those nightmares where you're stuck in tar and nothing does to help, but actually that slow. Then there was a rending snap like bone and we dropped tail down in the ditch.

I'm quite sure Mrs. Updyke sang out, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow!" Loudly.

And Mr. Updyke certainly complained, presumably to Heaven, "Damn axle broke."

"Don't worry;" I may have cried like a perfect imbecile; "I have money."

And just down the road a little farther on, with its snowy tin roof gleaming in the bright morning sun, one of nature’s marvels called the Clear View Cafe was then beheld by all. Miraculous. True salvation. There were other cars round about the place and smoke was flowing from the stovepipe. There was distinctly a smell of cooking grease. That smell especially reminded me of wonderful frosty mornings at father’s fishing camp. It was a large rustic cabin with the sign stuck up above the porch in front. Clear View Cafe! We all climbed out, I hid my pistol in the pocket of my coat and we slogged in.

Well, to make it very brief, an extremely comely man – in a weather beaten outdoors way, you understand, and maybe thirty-five or so – he had a long apron on and his arm extended full of plates – he paused in going to and fro while we were standing there inside the door. You must understand that he moved like a professional dancer. And this tall well-proportioned extremely competent and intelligent appearing and altogether toothsome fellow with gleaming hazel eyes and fashionably pomaded hair – that was the fashion then you know – he called out to me rather loudly above the other voices – I was in the lead of course – and the fellow said exactly this: "Hens eggs, sweet potatoes, corn pones, buttermilk, and mountain coffee. Seventy-five cents a plate if you can pay and if you can't then you can work instead. Nobody's left here hungry yet this week." That Middle South accent was like a damn meadowlark or something. And the sodding bastard grinned at me.

Well, being a truly perfect twit – young widow and all that – I struck a kind of pose and waved and shouted for everyone to hear; "Yes! We will be paying!" To make a favorable impression. You understand, I was walking on as female lead. Astaire tangoing with plates, you see. I was quite naturally, on the instant, smitten simply arse over kettle. I understood instinctively that his tuxedo jacket was hanging on a peg out back. Look here; suppose one found oneself somehow transported magically to the wings at a Broadway show and then Astaire, from center stage, suddenly beamed that big smile of his directly in one's direction. And the script was obvious; he could have had me on the floor with no more ado than perhaps a friendly handshake. Ye gods, how randy are the young! Bless me, I began to dream of pillow talk.

Well, to make it brief, I was very sorely disappointed by the ease with which our difficulty sorted out. Mr. Updyke was asking round at once and found a car for sale that would get our pilgrim crew through to Des Moines and no mistake. They'd fetch it there and we'd be on the way again within an hour or two – at any rate by afternoon – and they would take the wretched Packard off our hands as well. My secret heart was broken by the news. And then it didn't help a bit when my fingertips touched Mr. Astaire, his elbow, while he was setting down our plates, and I gazed up in his eyes and felt as though he looked into my inmost soul like I was that rippling pool in those obnoxious Renoir lily pictures. Shivers absolutely everywhere. You know, everywhere. I definitely understood that I could tell him absolutely everything. And the peculiar thing, looking at it now, is really that I could. By some odd coincidence, he was a very fine man.

I knew that about him the moment when he pulled a chair out at the table just near ours, firing jealousy in my secret heart. He sat there and began speaking quietly with someone else. It was a poor woman with a baby. I didn't listen to the conversation – in fact, I couldn't stand to at first and then would have been embarrassed to be listening – but it was obvious enough that she was very poor indeed and had been weeping. He touched the baby's cheek and everything. Whatever had been said, he got a little trembling smile from her at least. And then, to everyone's surprise, certainly to mine, the fellow fetched a violin and removed his apron with a bit of ceremony, so to speak, and sat himself in a nearby corner and began to play a quite beautiful melody. I think it may have been Debussey.

Tears welled from eyes, you may be sure. I think they must have run down from my chin. I was not the only one who simply sobbed.

That tune and another one and a third. And he lifted up the mood with each one until the last – perhaps one of those Appalachian fiddle things – many were smiling and clapping to the time, myself as much as others. It was as fine a piece of magic as you would ever wish. Another tune like that and someone might have cleared away some of the furniture to dance. I might have tried a turn with Mr. Updyke. But then the fellow laid the violin down in his lap and – he was seated close by, you see – looked about and he announced there were some chores out back which "needed doing" as he said, then looked at me directly. Perhaps I might lend a hand, he asked quietly, if I had a mind to.

In fact, he rather smiled and nodded to indicate he wished I would accept the invitation. Being such a twit, of course I gasped and glanced about to see if any others saw the possibilities that leapt to mind for me, or saw the blush that rose into my face. A private assignation! But somehow no one seemed to pay the least attention.

Just right out back, he reassured me; wood and water for the kitchen.

In fact I would have leapt into his gentlemanly arms except that there was not the slightest hint of Eros in his manner. Or perhaps more so because of that. Not that I would have minded in the least a blanket in the woodshed (a sort of thing which had occurred before a time or two with fine enough results) but let's be practical. Contraceptive practices were awkward at the time and I had brought along none of the requisites. This romance was going nowhere, or not at least today. Romance? What sort? Some different kind than I had known perhaps, a thing which needed time and space and exploration before one paid respects to Mother Nature. And anyway, there was a definite responsibility to get those pilgrims to Des Moines and that responsibility was mine. There was a job to do, a hard one, a task I did not relish in the least, but a job that suited my capacities and to which my word was given. But with this man perhaps there could be pillow talk before – or else without – the fuss and bother of the rest.

In short, I fairly leapt up to my feet and followed through the room, out through the steaming kitchen – there were others there with whom he spoke – and to the woodpile and the pump in the yard out back. It was all melting snow and forest mountains, a distant view of fog shrouding the forest valleys you see, and a brilliant sky with a breeze and birdsong and birds at wing. The place fairly pierced one to the heart with every glance. The place was breathtakingly beautiful in fact. There is no art or poetry for that.

Me stopped there like a post, gazing rapturously round, he said, "Pretty, ain’t it?" But his voice to me was so much of the place that I could scarcely recognize the words and had to shake myself awake to answer "Yes!"

But he had brought along a wheelbarrow with an ax and several buckets and, all the more keen to impress now, I snatched up the ax when he had scarcely set the barrow down. There was the woodpile and the block. With a manner of expertise I asked, "They want it stove size?" and he answered yes. He did take out the buckets and hang one on the pump but really then just stood by to watch how well I'd do. That made me angry but happy too; his care for my safety, you see. What right did he have to care? And the first chop went very properly – we smiled at one another because of that – but by the third or fourth I could scarcely get the billet balanced up on end because my arms were sore again. My swing went wild and actually knocked the billet flying out among the trees. That was embarrassing but so spectacular we both laughed.

"Where have you come from?" the fellow asked.

So I leaned on the ax. I laughed again and nodded and answered, "Boston."

"Could it be you are a mite worn out?"

"I'll do the buckets."

That was better anyway. One of those things you don't remember until you find yourself there again: the way those old large water pumps seem like a human being when you operate them. Of course the parts are misarranged – the arm sticking out behind the person's head and so forth – and one can't decide if they are vomiting, urinating or perhaps lactating – but the gush sounds so much like stomach noises and that squeaky sigh when you pump the handle up and down is unmistakably a human voice. It occurs to me now that it must have seemed unmistakably erotic at the moment. It must have done. Here I was working to make it squirt, and doing so repeatedly, you see. I certainly did feel as though my husband had made me out to be a whore. With a whore a man can choose yes or no without owing any explanation. In any case, I know that's when I finally broached the topic.

I remember that I'd just pumped a very vigorous gush that overflowed a bucket and splashed around my feet. I was throwing my whole body into the job actually. So I lifted that one from the hook and swung it over to the barrow and there I was facing this new man, just as he had swung and then was pulling out the ax.

There may have been an unpleasant tone in my voice perhaps. "I suppose you're a minister of some sort?" I asked. "You act like one." Perhaps in fact it was dripping sarcasm.

But he laughed again; that gentle comely laugh. He was apparently quite used to people's tumultuous emotions. He shook his head and said, "Me? I get called a preacher now and then but it never stuck. Most people, if they like me well enough, just call me Cousin Jack."

"And people tell you things about their lives and you give them answers?" That came out of me as nothing short of a snarl or a demand.

He shook his head again and said, "Generally the best thing I can say is just the same thing Joe Louis says. You know Joe Louis?"

That was a bit of shock. Yes, of course I'd heard of him but I was of the same stupid opinions which my class held on race. Still, I must have heard someone at some time voice a thought that the great Negro sportsman was being cheated. So there was some inkling that the case might be in some way pertinent. I said I knew of him. What did Joe Louis say?

And this fellow did a kind of dancer's slow boxing move, dodging from a punch, that was so full of grace it seemed to linger in the air and I couldn't breathe to see it. He said, "Roll with the punches. Just roll with the punches."

But I had to cast my eyes around the sky and distant hills. I cried, "Impossible!" He was silent for a moment so I looked at him again and then went on, "There are some things one simply must try to understand. You cannot let them slip away."

Yet still he stood there silent, looking straight in my eyes and waiting.

"All right, Cousin Jack!" I cried. "How's this one: My husband blew half of his head off with a shotgun just because he'd lost a job. Damn it all! My family is still rich! And he did it where I would go find him. What kind of man would do that?"

Looking level in my eyes, he answered with a little nod, with his lips pursed and "hmm", really just acknowledging that he had heard and seen what was described and understood.

Then I must put my hand before my mouth to say the rest but my head felt clear – quite like I stood up with my head up above the fog I had been wandering in – and I pronounced it very clearly. "And he did that instead of coming into bed with me! What kind of man would do that? To me!"

Then there was a most particular sensation, the first time I had ever felt a thing like this, a thing which one feels very seldom. It was as if there were some sort of lantern light, quite soft and gentle, emitted from his eyes or from his face that shone through mine and shone around inside from place to place while he was carefully examining inside of me, examining everything I was and everything I'd ever known or seen. It feels as though you are a book with turning pages. It felt as though gentle fingers carefully touched me everywhere to find out what I was, arousing nothing, while tears were pouring from my staring eyes. That moment passed. Then, seeing I was steady still, he nodded once again and then appeared to descend very deeply into thought.

And, to my extreme surprise, still lost in thought, he then went back to chopping wood. And not mechanically, but tending closely to it all. I could not go back to work then. I was entranced. I stood and watched him. The ax came down to chunk into the wood and he would lean to pull it loose then bend to toss the pieces by and set another in its place. The movement and the rhythm seemed to help him think. And now and then he breathed another "hmm" as if some pieces of the puzzle locked together in his mind. What sort of reasoning was being done? To me it seemed past imagining. Half a dozen sticks he must have done like that while I stood waiting.

At last he stopped and leaned his weight on the ax again. He looked me in the eyes again and said, "It might be that your husband was scared of you."

That was stunning. I'm sure I shouted, "What! Afraid of me? For what? I was a gentle wife! And passionate!"

But he simply stood up to my outrage. The astounding fellow said, "Yes, that's what I mean particularly. It may be he was scared of feeling shamed. Shamed in his own heart, by his own lights. You probably know this already, but manhood is a peculiar thing. A fellow can't do manly business properly unless he's proud, so there would be another shame. It may be he was scared particularly of feeling shamed when he was in the bed with you, when you were being gentle with him."

I burst out into sobs and must have leaned against the cold iron pump to keep from sinking to the ground and may have tried to kick it, hit with my fist, but that was idiocy and soon I threw another bucket on the hook and threw my body back into the work. The damned coward, you see. To be quite frank, I was shouting obscenities for a while until that seemed to be a weak and stupid thing as well. And, to be quite plain about the scene, one must point out that I was rather famous among my female college pals for the wealth of obscenities learned by being a sportsman's daughter. But be that as it may, I subsided into silence eventually except that sighing squeak and the liquid gush as I thrust the handle up and down and certainly something of a grunt when I swung each of the heavy buckets back into the barrow.

And Cousin Jack was chopping then again until he paused to speak. "Of course, doing it where you would find him; that does seem mean."

I stopped and felt frozen still as ice and held my breath.

He said, "But of course, maybe he wasn't thinking too clearly."

Now, that did it for me. I'm sure I sagged. All the strength was gone from my limbs and I sunk down sitting on the muddy ground. Poor Bill! The poor sodding bastard. What had he gone through in his short stay on earth? My mind seemed to be suddenly full of every moment when I'd ever looked at him. What had I been to him besides a playmate? I'd been the love of his life, a great attainment, a thing he must be worthy of. I'd felt all that myself and known he felt it too. And he had slaved at that sodding job he hated just to prove his worth. But then my other voice again: The coward! He'd left me here alone to face the wreck and ashes of his death. Could I forgive him that? No, no matter how I tried, because I was myself and I was here alone. Forgiveness? No. That would have been destruction to myself. That would have meant that he was right to turn away.

But then Jack asked me, while I was sitting there curled up and pounding at the soft earth with a fist, "Do you have to be the judge?"

And I answered something like: "Yes! A person needs to judge." A strong person needs to judge, one who hopes to go through life as themselves, for that is how one makes oneself distinct from others. That is a way to live through pain, by saying you are something else besides. At that time I did not see another way to do so.

But Jack, still resting leaning on the ax, replied to this effect: "You don't need to judge the trees or birds or hills."

And that absurdity was so absurd that I began to laugh. There was some sense in it somewhere, or so there surely felt to me to be even then, and yet it was so far beyond my understanding then that he may as well have quoted Cyrano De Begerac about the moon. I must have felt some sense of riddles, riddles everywhere. I know that I was laughing very loudly simply at the rank mad carnival of life – for which the only sane response will always be rude laughter – and I was somewhat even splashing in the mud by then until he came and took my hands and helped me up.

He even held me round the waist to hold me up, his arm pressing on my breast or visa versa, and he even reached to brush the leafy mud off my behind. And that was quite acceptable because in fact I rather felt as though we had made love. But that only took a moment and in the moment afterward we still held each other. Or it might really be confessed that I was clinging to his arm. So right beside my ear then, he spoke. It may have been a whisper but also had the sound of words being carefully chosen. He said, "I'm not – not necessarily – looking for a woman right now." And then he also said, "Anyway, I'd likely guess you're passing through on important business."

I nodded then I shook my head and here's what came from my mouth: "No, I am not necessarily looking for a man – right now." Certainly my body was demanding him to a degree which I found personally amazing, even one must say shocking. Certainly the physical activities and sensations were a thing to fill one's imagination. There might have been a victory in it too, psychologically, a cry of independence from my troubles. Perhaps even some forgetfulness of the other male body with whom there had been so many exotic pleasures so many times. I may have trembled. But truthfully I wasn't ready for that sort of thing. What sort of weak and needy lover would I be? I’d be a beggar. A sensation one must call disgust and horror rose in me with that thought, a deathly fear of being stupid with him, a fear of clinging and demanding.

And so I did the opposite exactly. I turned in his arms, shoved back from the embrace and grabbed him by his coat's lapels. I would have shook him if I’d had the strength. But what to say? Then, looking in his face, there was a kind of clarity one can't describe. I mean, I saw a clarity in him. He stood there quite as open to my searching as I had been to his before, but inside of him – where I felt full of thundering contradictions – inside of him one saw a sort of bright and open sky.

Ah! So! There was his magic power! In a way beyond my comprehension then, by means of some riddle which slid from my grasp immediately, at least I saw that somehow there can be unlimited powers of vision and understanding. Understanding: yes. Now, there’s what I wanted more than sex.

The fists with which I gripped his clothing struck his chest repeatedly, pretty solidly, and I was quite demanding. "How can you see things so clearly? How is it possible to see inside the skins of things so deeply? How is it done?"

His hands were on my shoulders and his fingertips suddenly pressed into my shoulders even hard enough to bruise, in a positively electric excitement at this question, and a fascinating look of wonder filled his face. But to answer he simply pointed toward the nearby trees. He quite urgently whispered, "Look! Look there!" I looked where he was pointing.

There was some sort of brightly colored bird hopping round among the branches, among the heavy bending leaves and dripping snow, you see, but it then chirped and seemed to merely twitch its wings and vanish. So I was staring at the empty space where a living thing had been before.

Of course this pierced me to the heart – I must have sighed or cried out something with the shock – but he whispered just as urgently, "All right. And now the light! Open your eyes wider and let the light through!"

Oh, frustration beyond measure. Yes, I saw the light. In the hanging water drops it was glimmering every color of light and darkness. It was glistening in the sunlit crystals of the little heaps of snow. I could smell infinity, the moist and burning light. It flashed out of the falling drops and wove a sort of web of jewels, just like the Buddhists say, before me and around me from the very air which tasted on my tongue with every breath. I could have reached and touched the universe with fingertips or held the source and sum of everything nestled for a moment in my hand. But there seemed to be no solid substance to it. Try as I might, I could not hook into it with my eyes to pull it inward through my eyes into my skull inside this bag of quivering skin. My treasured rage was a solid thing which filled me, and the fear which, of course, I now felt was the heat which set the anger boiling like lava. There was no room inside of me for light.

Oh, youth is wasted on the young. I was so earnest, such a simpleton as well. Bless the child I was. That year, with all that boiling stuff, I could have simply let the universe come flashing out from me to find itself. I could have let it through flashing outward instead of in. But what are years to spend? The learning is the treasure.

In any case, you'll understand, this spiritual exercise was utterly exhausting. I was holding down the rage and fear with all my strength and meanwhile also reaching out to try and seize the universe. Good thing I'd had a solid meal. Good thing the fellow held me up. But finally I must shake my head, despairing of it.

And he said, "You'll get it." There was a most surprising mixture of respect and compassion mingling in his lovely voice.

Would I? Ever?

"Yes," he said, "because it's easy when you finally get it figured." And he said, "You're not scared of it."

"It's beautiful!" I cried. Were people frightened of it? Yes, of course I understood at once that's why there are so many lies about it, people saying they can sell it to you in a package and that kind of thing. But that was not this fellow's line of merchandise at all.

And so of course I took another look at him. I'm sure I pushed away to arms length to look him up and down. There I was now come to my senses in this world again, yearning for a universe, and leaning on this most amazing person who had simply pointed toward everything which at that moment I was capable to see. Perhaps the best, he had let me show myself to me. He had stood up to the rage without a flinch. He had stood up to the possibilities of what some lunatic might do there in the yard behind the kitchen. Ye gods! For all he knew, I could have murdered him. In actuality, to tell the truth, some preposterous moon-struck widow might have left a perfectly innocent fellow lying in a pool of blood for all which one can say about it now. Some different fellow than he was, perhaps I might have done.

But none of that was in his face or in his manner. There was simply concern for me written all over him, in his hands that held my body firmly and the way he leaned his head and knit his brows and searched my face for any sign of pain. Well, then, was there some possibility that I would be like that some day? Me? Me as Florence Nightingale? One thinks not. Scarcely. If me, why not Napoleon or Julius Caesar? But him. Him! What a decent chap! Not Launcelot at all but really more of Chaucer's knight in fustian tunic. Yes, I must come back here some day and tup him well, just for proper courtesy if nothing else. Damsel in distress, and all of that!

And so of course I asked him then, "What is it like to live without fear?"

"Oh . . ." he said, "there's still some things I'm scared of."

"No," I said, "not like it was before."

"No," he said, "not like it was before."

"You have to tell me."

"Oh . . ." he said again, "There's nothing to it. You really want to know? What it’s like?"

What frustration! What was the magic formula for living as he did? How does one walk about the world immersed in wonder? I fairly shouted, "Tell me!"

"Well . . ." he answered finally, "the best that I can say is something from a book I have. I could show it to you sometime."

"Talk!" I demanded.

"Oh, well, see there’s a little story. It’s in China . . ."

"China!" no doubt I screamed.

"Yes, and at the end what it says is this . . ." He glanced about the place there where we stood. Did he mean to indicate the place and time – this world – or was he watching out for spies eavesdropping on the secret? With a smile which started very small but grew across his face as though it snuck from hiding somewhere, he spoke slowly, maybe savoring the words. "Before you let the light go through, you chop wood and carry water. Then after you let the light go through . . ."

So he was laughing nearly. He glanced about the place again and gestured to prompt me to complete the thought.

And so I had to smile with him about the obvious. Directions for a fearless life of knowledge of the beautiful? The alchemical formula by which to transmutate your soul from gross to gold? The recipe for worlds of wonder?

I rather grinned and nodded really vigorously because I was struggling to force the words out past a laugh. "After you let the light go through, you chop wood and carry water."

Chapter two:

Bohos – that was grand. We really tried our hands at everything you can imagine. Unfortunately, my paintings were horrid. Bert Stein – he was a friend of mine – you must have heard of him; they have some of his things at the Boston – the homosexual cowboy painter. He tried to break it to me gently. He said that it was true the compositions were "jejune" but the coloring was interesting. They were atrocious. But amateur theatricals, that’s where I made my mark. Naked dancing! Bert and I and some others – was it Dottie? – there was Ike of course – we did a send-up of Rites of Spring once at a Hollywood garden party. Of course I produced and directed and danced the lead. I even got the orchestra stripped off to their undershirts at least. Hilarious. What an entrance! Silk scarves and peacock feathers! That was a riot. Of course we drank too much and smoked bales of marijuana. There were some suicides and auto crashes. There were some botched abortions. It was the Great Depression and independent artists didn’t eat. We were a bony orphan crew but childish fun was free. Actually of course, my parents kept on sending that allowance and my friends all waited for those lovely telegrams. First thing each month, we had a feast. That was California in the thirties.