Steve Katz - The Compleat Memoirrhoids - 137.n

I spent the money I earned, that I didn’t turn in to my household, usually at Birdland, where once I went five nights in a row, skipping school, to worship from the peanut gallery at the piano of Bud Powell, my creative idol. Every breath he took at the piano went into his music. Pee-Wee Marquette, the redoubtable little person with a big voice, master of ceremonies and doorman for that fabled club, exclaimed at the door, “You back again, peanut?” He let me in every time though I was obviously under age. I heard and saw Charlie Parker there, Dizzy Gillespie, Lester Young, Slim Gaillard, Billie Holiday, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Lee Konitz, Sarah Vaughn, Max Roach and Clifford Brown. I was very lucky to live in New York. These great artists astounded and moved me. I pledged in my heart to make with my writing an art that was as moving and full in its freedom and formal elegance as these masters did every night at Birdland. I would dedicate my work to these artists who gave me everything. My work, for whatever it is worth, is dedicated to them.

Our problem was that we had to move the heavy old cast-iron cook-stove we had stored at Phil’s in Dunvegan to the site I had fixed for it in our clearing. This was on the western shore of Cape Breton Island. From the Banks Road, the closest to our place, access was by a mile of newly cut foot trail. It would break our backs to carry so much weight. It would be hernias galore. The other option was bad enough — load the stove into Phil and Rudy’s fourteen-foot aluminum boat. It was painted red. It had a twenty horsepower Evinrude outboard. You get some strong men to lift the stove into the boat and drive it the fourteen miles from their beach to ours. Then it would be a matter of heaving it up the steep bank to our site. We had myself and Richard and Rudy and Phil and Bob Fiore, whose film, Winter Soldier , was one of the pillars of post-war Vietnam protest. He was also, my kids would always say, the strongest man they ever saw. We had in common a foolhardiness derived from unfamiliarity with the sea we were riding. Fishermen would have warned us against it since the waters and winds were changeable and unpredictable.

The weight of the stove sank the boat down practically to the gunwales. Only two of us could ride with it. I leaned on the stove. Rudy kept one hand on the stove, the other on the rudder. Rudy had already published Nog, and was working on the great script for Two Lane Blacktop . Phil helped us push off, and supervised the operation. This was way before Einstein On The Beach , before he became an icon of contemporary music. He decided not to come. Rudy and I made our way down the coast with the stove. It was stupid and dangerous. The others went by car and down the trail. We were lucky. The sea remained calm. No wind. A slight change could have sent us to the bottom — stove, Rudy, Steve. We pulled safely into my beach, and the gang was there.

We wrestled the stove out of the boat and carried it to the edge of the cliff. My kids like to remember Richard, who slammed a door of the stove on his hand, and ran yowling down the beach. This was when he was making his amazing, equilibrated, gravity pieces out of lead, before he became the king of Cor-Ten steel, the greatest sculptor in the world. We stripped what parts we could of the stove, and carried them up separately, then trussed the bulk of it with rope, anchored it to some trees at the top, and slowly inched it up the cliff. Bob Fiore and I did most of this work. I couldn’t have done it without him. His sheer power heaved it over the tough spots. We got it to the top, and carried it to the location where I had laid down some railroad ties and settled the stove onto the ties. Though I had just eyeballed it, had hardly thought about it beforehand, the stove came out nicely level. Such was our fool’s luck. No one got hurt. Nobody drowned.

On the next day I stood on the stovetop and drove poles into the ground. My kids, and Jingle, and myself, nailed driftwood boards to the poles, to make walls, which became a comfort when the cold winds blew, to stand between the warm stove and the wall. The roof was driftwood, covered with heavy tarpaper, and a hole for the galvanized stove pipe. Soon Jingle was cooking. The oven was great. Tamale pie, Indian pudding, blueberry crisps. We boiled some lobsters we dragged out of the sea. We brought in beer and wine. Everyone came down our trail, carrying kids, for a party, such a party as the art world has never seen before, and will surely never see again.

“You’re stowing away, right?” The words fell from my mouth. It was three A.M. I was working for an outfit that hauled college students aboard Italian ships, this one the Vulcania, from New York to Southampton. No one said it, but I think it was a USIS operation. I had just got the advance from Holt for Peter Prince and I was on my way to Istanbul, to Israel, to Italy. It was a long crossing on a slow ship, eleven days from New York to Southampton. On the way the kids got to take seminars in the various cultures they were about to visit. My official title was Assistant Shipboard Director. My duties were mostly as night security officer. I was assigned to patrol the corridors at night with the Sergeant-At-Arms, do bed checks in the dorm rooms, and deal with any conflicts. I spoke Italian, so I could be liaison with Captain and crew, and Aldo, Sergeant-At-Arms. Aldo was an undersea demolition expert, once with the Italian navy. He was handsome, well put together. Every night he’d get stranded in the room of a Midwestern Catholic men’s college, the boys on their way to some Vatican sponsored retreat. I was on my own after that — open every door, say hello, don’t spoil the fun.

This was the first night out of New York. Three A.M. I spotted her in the lounge, curled up in an easy chair. “Stowing away?” I repeated.

“O wow,” she said, uncurling and sitting up. “I felt you walking there.” She stretched and yawned like a cat. “I probably needed you to know. I sent it out to you.”

“I’m the cop on this ship,” I said.

“This is so far out. Wow.”

She told me her name was Teri. She was one of those acid waifs of the Sixties. She was traveling light, wearing very little — some baby-blue leather Capezios over black mesh stockings, dark blue micro-mini, black mesh panties, see-through red net blouse. The backs of her wrists were soiled from rubbing the heavy make-up around her eyes, smeared now to make her look like a tired clown.

This was my first big decision in my official capacity. “You can go down and sleep in my cabin for tonight,” I said. There were two beds. Unlike my usual self, I had no interest in jumping on her. I felt no lust, nor was there anything paternal. With my modest success, and an understanding wife, I was indulging in a respite from family. If I had a desire to protect anything, it was my curiosity about the girl’s situation.

By the next evening she had organized her scene, found new accommodations in the cabin of a Dutch couple, managed to get some other clothes. She made a lot of friends very quickly. Most people thought she was part of the staff, the activities organizer. When she checked back with me again, she told me her whole story. She had been communicating by ESP for a couple of years with a guy in London. She wouldn’t say who it was. To connect with him she always dropped acid. In their last exchange he told her to get on this ship and sail to Southampton. Compliance was her part of the game. I doubt she could have told him to do anything. He instructed her to bring no money, and to leave her passport. It was a tough story for me to digest, but here she was, a stowaway. What was my official position? What kind of cop was I? Every hour she gained in shipboard notoriety.