Elise Blackwell - Grub

Sea Miss , Eddie’s first novel, had been published four years earlier to real acclaim. The critic who had named it to the Book Critics’ Circle of The Times had praised it for its intensity of language, gemlike images, and refusal to sacrifice character to plot. It was precisely this hailed unobstrusiveness of plot, Jackson was convinced, that accounted for the book’s paltry sales and the rejection of Eddie’s second novel, Vapor , by every major publishing house in New York. This serial rejection was, in turn, the cause of the writer’s block that Eddie referenced at the slightest inquiry into the status of novel number three, as yet untitled.

“He spends more time writing desperate query letters to tiny presses that publish only two books a year than he does on his new work,” Eddie’s wife had confided to Jackson.

Jackson knew that his friend was about to tell one of his most well-worn stories. Eddie was about to explain that it was while he was working on the third draft of Sea Miss that the idea of the young woman came to him— emerged from the images themselves , he would certainly say, from the language —leading him to what plot the book did contain and resulting in the change of title from Sea Mist .

Eddie had been his best friend since the first day of their first Iowa workshop, but Jackson was convinced he couldn’t hear the story repeated again without hurling himself over the protective gate and off the mountain top. He scoured the crowd on the patio for a less dramatic means of escape. He could excuse himself to the bar to purchase the next round of drinks, but a mental count of the contents of his billfold ruled out that option. He had just enough for two more of his own drinks, provided he had sufficient authorization left on one of his credit cards to cover the tank of gas back to New York.

“Look,” he said. “Look casually,” he emphasized. “Over your left shoulder, Eddie, just glance. That’s Andrew Yarborough.”

“Everyone says the Lannan Foundation and the Isherwood Foundation both call him for names. He got that experimental novelist who claims to write inside-out — whatever the hell that means — a grant for ten grand,” said Jennifer.

“Inside out?” Henry’s scrawniness made his head seem large, and when he tilted it Jackson almost expected it to fall off his neck. “I wonder if he means his process is inside out — how he goes about writing — or if he means the book itself. Interesting idea.”

“The guy thought it was a joke when they called,” Jennifer continued. “Thought one of his friends was playing a prank. They told him they had their ear to the ground and found out about his work. But it was Andrew Yarborough who passed along his name.”

“Ten grand,” Jackson repeated, thinking that was just the amount he needed to even his debts. “Based on what that guy writes and where he publishes, I assume that was considerably larger than his last advance. Now he probably thinks he has some sort of proletariat credibility, while it was really Andrew Yarborough.”

“I heard he introduced Nancy Sloan to his agent, and she got Nancy a six-figure advance for a collection. A collection set in Kansas, for godsakes.” Gesturing with her hands as though she wasn’t holding a mug, Jennifer sloshed beer on her pointed shoes.

Jackson handed her his napkin and smiled. “For the damsel in distress.”

“As I was saying,” Eddie commandeered the conversation. “It was while writing the third draft of my book, while reworking a description of morning fog over the ocean, that I realized that I was using, using without intending to, decidedly feminine language.”

He annunciated using without intending to slowly, with practiced emphasis, again raking his hair.

Jackson grabbed his escape. “There’s nothing I’d rather hear again than the story of the miss from the sea’s mist, but I’m just liquored up enough to seize the day. I’m going to throw my up-and-coming self in the path of Herr Yarborough. I hear he’s starting a new journal now that The Monthly has passed over to Chuck Fadge, so he may be in need of an assistant editor who shares his tastes in literature.” He set his empty glass on one of the knotty pine picnic benches. “Whatever those may be.”

Feeling his adrenalin rise, Jackson composed his pitch in the twenty steps it took to navigate the patio. He grasped Yarborough’s fleshy hand in greeting and then spoke quickly, tasting the fumes of his last gin. “I may be just the man you’re looking for, but I’m going to say straight out and right up front that I do not see any room for poetry in your new journal. None at all. Not now and not later. We — and I use the plural pronoun only speculatively, only as an act of optimism — we want to build a new kind a readership, a new circulation. Cultured but not old. Select but not small. Well-read but not poor.” And then, to make sure that Yarborough considered him in the right context and with proper affection, he added: “Wearing good shoes, not as dumb as shoes.”

The middle-aged woman who had been talking to Yarborough was not unattractive, but she flashed all the accessories of a neglected resort-town wife: crystal pendant, wide silver rings and bangles, and a fringed summer sweater dyed the precise blue of her eyes.

She moved her wine glass to her left hand and accepted Jackson’s handshake. “It’s such a pleasure to meet so many writers.” She squinted in an imitation of merriment. “I mean, this is what it’s all about, isn’t it? The camaraderie of a community of writers. The support, the feedback. How fabulous to feel as though one is normal, as though expressing oneself in words is a worthy thing to do. Noble even, or at least no worse than any other occupation.”

Jackson tasted the word noble in his mouth, then repeated it aloud. Impressing Yarborough was the most important move he could make in his career, he calculated, at least until he had actually written a book of his own. He looked steadily at the woman, feeling the old basketball-court thrill. “Let me guess. This is your first writers’ conference. You use journal as a verb. You call what you write creative nonfiction, but it’s really more a case of uncreative non-writing.” He pictured his smile as it looked in the mirror and produced it, his voice gaining volume. “I dare you to tell me I’m wrong.”

The crinkles that fanned from the corners of her eyes held for several seconds, but her mouth fell out of its smile immediately.

Jackson turned to Yarborough. “I guess they let in anyone who pays, but it really is time to outlaw people who have led uninteresting lives from writing memoirs.”

“Your name, young man. Remind me of your name.”

Forgiving Yarborough for not remembering his name, Jackson congratulated himself for taking a risk.

“Jackson Miller,” he said, “author of ‘Old Waldman’, the story from yesterday’s workshop. If things go my way, and I have every hope they will, you’ll be hearing my name a good deal in the next few years.”

“Not if I can help it, but, Jackson Miller, I guarantee you that I won’t ever forget your name again. And for your information, my wife is one of this country’s finest poets.” Yarborough took the blue-eyed woman’s elbow. “She’s won prizes you’ve never even heard of.”

Jackson cursed himself aloud as he pushed through the absurdly narrow doorway and into the crowded bar, seeking the only person who could restore his confidence after so serious a misstep.

He found Amanda Renfros at the bar, surrounded by a buzzing semicircle — men trying to catch her attention with louder voices, sharper or merely raunchier jokes, larger bills appearing to buy more rounds of drinks.