Although
the sun was almost directly overhead, the light from it came through the
window behind Augusta in a singular brilliance, silvering the looking
glass over the dresser. Despite its vigor, it was a light which seemed
to forecast the coming of clouds. The bedroom was still except for the
ticking of the ornate china clock on the mantel and her own motions. It
was warm, but Augusta scarcely noticed the heat.
The time had come.
Today she would make her first official appearance as the Poet Laureate.
"Oetry ith the
iritsong uh an," she said to herself, firming a lip against her teeth
and painting a brilliant splat of fuchsia in the approximate area. With
the tip of the comb she picked at her hair, fluffing its nestiness until
it floated like pale mist about the powdery moon of her face.
"What?" asked Carter,
her husband, who was sorting his fishing gear across the hall in the kitchen.
"What did you say?" Augusta was getting a first class case of the jitters,
of that much he was certain.
"I said, 'Poetry
is the spiritsong of man.' Does that sound right?" Stepping back from
the brass-framed mirror, she observed her reflection, which appeared to
her young and unlined, prettier than better vision would have revealed.
"What do you think? It's the opening sentence of my talk." Blue dress,
blue eyes, hair of silver-blue. Not bad, she decided.
"Sounds fine to
me," replied Carter without troubling to think. Thinking about poetry
made his head hurt, anyway. He did not understand the stuff, never would,
but he was proud of Augusta and tried to be supportive. Augusta was a
real brain, a former English teacher and a poet-a published poet
as the local media sometimes mentioned. There was a difference, he understood.
God knows, he had heard enough first hand about it.
"Well. But do you
truly like it? 'Poetry is the spiritsong of man.' Does it grab your attention?
Does it start your mind to clicking?" Augusta's voice had the reed-thin
quality which sometimes comes with age-she was almost 75-but she had trained
herself to project it. "You know, Carter, I'm a bit apprehensive. Not
about myself, of course." At meetings of the Longfellow Saturday Morning
Poetry Club, Augusta always read beautifully, without a trace of nerves.
"About Dawn Paulson and Max Burden. It seems unbelievable that I'm to
share the floor with those two."
Turning sideways,
she checked her profile, sucked her stomach flat. Weak girdle. She would
have to allow for it and contract her midriff throughout the entire program.
"They are weird, you know. People think that to be a poet, you have to
be weird. It's writers like Max and Dawn who fuel such notions. I'm going
to feel strange today not looking weird. When the audience sees me, they'll
think 'Who's she kidding? She can't be a poet. She's too regular.'"
"Now, angel, you're
worrying about nothing!" Carter comforted her. "You will be an inspiration
to all the youngsters." He was a retired service station manager, and
his shoulders sloped as if he were continually about to peer under the
hood of a car.
Sometimes it seemed
to him that Augusta was developing into a snob; he was not certain. Perhaps
it was only his imagination. "My advice is to forget about Max and Dawn.
You have no responsibility for them."
"I suppose you're
right. Still, they will be representing the poetry club and poets everywhere.
Do you know what the school calls this program?" She answered herself,
"It's called So You Want to Be a Poet?"
Carter chuckled,
"I can see it now. The Dream: To Be a Poet--kids trying to look
and act like Maxes and Dawns!" There were some knots in a fishing line
and he kept trying to untie them.
"Huh! Dream is right.
Being a poet is not that simple. Creativity in dress and lifestyle are
not sufficient qualifications." Augusta unsnapped a velvet box. Pinned
to its satin lining was a gold-filled emblem, tiny and beautiful, in the
shape of an open book imposed upon a wreath of green enamel laurel leaves.
"Ready?" asked
her husband, winding the extra line and fitting it into a compartment
of his fishing kit.
"Almost." Augusta
held the emblem with gentle fingers, an expression of delight brightening
her face. Suspended from the emblem by two short chains was a thin bar
on which the microscopic words Poet Laureate seemed to blaze. POET
LAUREATE! She had had the title for three weeks and thinking about it
still made her heart pound faster, her breath grow short.
Acquiring it was
the triumph of 45 years of writing, living and breathing poetry. It was
a reward for literary accomplishment and for sheer perseverance. Though
she had neither accomplished nor persevered without carefully directed
strategies.
She had developed
velvet claws during those years and recipients of her manipulations, fooled
by her gentle mien, often found their own situations descending in direct
proportion to the ascent of hers. Privately, Augusta justified her conquests
through subterfuge by reminding herself that she was, after all, only
making the best of a world-eat-poet environment-that she was but one among
many who in order to carry their banners forward were forced to modest
deceptions and maneuverings.
Through a judicious
combination of poetic and political industries, Augusta had defined her
position in The Longfellow Saturday Morning Poetry Club. Members of the
organization could be divided into three basic groups: those who had suffered
some degree of loss while being helped by Augusta; those who had not,
but were on to her and dealt generously with her as a precautionary measure;
and those who were novices, already in awe of the delicate arthritic bones,
the sweet hauteur with which she navigated.
Thus her relationship
with each echelon was one of power when, in rebellion against the governor's
appointment of a state poet laureate, the club decided to choose its own.
Although several names were considered, when the matter came to a vote,
she won by a satisfying majority.
POET LAUREATE.
Now Augusta anchored the medal on the left side of her dress and, turning
back the tissues of a tremendous millinery box, took from it an equally
tremendous blue hat, on the brim of which was stitched a profusion of
melon-pink roses. "Ah," she sighed for the delicious hat and, "Ah," once
more for the medal, which made a shiny jot beside her rope of pearls.
"It's getting late,"
said Carter, entering the bedroom. In his plaid shirt and tan, billed
cap, he looked outdoorsy. Like a sportsman in a whiskey advertisement,
but cluttered. Burdened down. The complete angler, arms so taxed with
accessories that only careful management kept him together. He could scarcely
wait to get to the lake, Pineharp Lake, a fisher's paradise some distance
away in Tate County. "All set?"
"Be with you in
a minute, dear." She gave the hat a final push at the top to establish
it and ran it through with a pearl-tipped pin.
"I'll wait in the
car," said her husband, reversing his direction in the doorway. The bamboo
pole caught against the jamb, and he cursed, backed up, and began again,
slanting everything just so, stopping outside and re-shifting. He worked
it out so that one trip to the car, though slow, sufficed.
"Poetry is the
spiritsong of man," the image in the mirror repeated, smiling approval.
Poet Laureate. The title had a lovely cadence. Augusta said it
slowly, listening to its truncated melody. She envisioned herself taking
poetry to the people. She would demonstrate its beauty, the creative miracle
of poetry, its function in changing social values.
From the walnut
desk, she collected the note pad containing her speech, three slender
books, and a bronze plaque. She took down from the closet shelf a capacious
tapestry pocketbook.
At that moment
Carter honked the car's horn. She hurried, taking cautious half-steps,
restricted by the medium height heels, the girdle, her years.
A blast from the
horn, then a couple of taps. "You quit that, Carter Tanglewood!" She teetered
across the grass. A short squared-off woman; at a glimpse perhaps not
a woman at all but some sort of plump-chested fowl; a teal balancing an
outrageous blue halo on its head.
Braking
quick and close, weaving for a better position in the line-up, Carter
directed the car along the streets with the aplomb of a younger man. He
drove as if it were a child's game, making split-second decisions automatically,
part of his brain focusing ahead to Pineharp. "Good day for fishing,"
he said, raking the ashes of his cigar against the open wing window. "If
it don't rain, they oughta be jumping down there!"
He had the cane
strapped to one side of the vehicle where it pointed ahead like a knobby
finger, aquiver with vibration.
"Are you sure you're
going the right way?" She was as nervous as if she had never addressed
students before.
"Of course," he
said. Trust him; he could read a map. Crestmont was the nice school just
north of the expressway.
"Well." It was
a favorite word of hers. She had a way of breaking it up, distributing
it in fractions as if it were longer. Now she bent it in half slowly,
the two warm sounds almost a purr, an indication of her pleasure that
she would at least be in a good neighborhood.
He squashed the
tip of the cigar on the rim of the ash tray, where it continued to cling
tenaciously, resembling the remnants of the corpse of some animal.
"Three copies
of your book?" The spent cigar permeated the car's interior with an odor
not unlike the musk of a skunk. "Why three?"
"Two are for gifts."
She met his challenging glare, aware that he was against such give-aways--he
had invested fifteen thousand dollars in the volume's production. "And
the third is for me, for my readings today," she finished lamely. Christ,
what did he expect from her poetry? Book-of-the-Month sales?
He grunted. Paying
to get a book published! It should work the other way around, he thought.
"It's a nice gesture:
a token of appreciation to the principal and to the young woman in charge
of the program, that Miss Erskine." On his sleeve, the placating hand.
"Besides, it's good publicity, dear."
"Uh-huh!" Carter
snorted, a low-class, derisive, country-boy sound which she detested.
Although she was furious, she said nothing. Let him soak in silence, she
thought.
Meanwhile, he computed
that there were still seventeen copies of Solitude and Clatterings
on a counter at The Book Niche. Seventeen of the twenty Augusta had supplied
so hopefully a month back. That twenty was just a bump on the mountain…
Lifting the cigar,
Carter rotated it, eyeing its smatters as if he might resurrect it. He
could not understand why the book was not selling better. He dropped the
stub into the ashes and shoved the tray shut. "What you need," he said,
breaking the quiet, "is one of those autograph parties. That's what you
need."
He noticed the
iron sign identifying Crestmont High School just in time to swerve into
the parking lot. Across the pebbly asphalt on an open hill rose the main
building, an imposing structure of orange brick with massive panels of
glass buttressing the entrance. It was otherwise windowless along the
front, as if designed for the strict separation of the inside from outside.
Young pines and immature plantings of shrubs relieved the harsh landscape
only slightly, and Augusta, intimidated, came to a standstill at the base
of the broad steps. "Well, now," she muttered, her eyes following the
handrail up.
Carter, steering
her by the elbow, felt her stiffen then and spotted Dawn Paulson and Max
Burden already there, standing as if showcased just within the entry.
"Calm down," he
said.
"What?"
"Calm down."
"I'm calm! I'm
calm."
At the top of the
steps he handed over her supplies and asked her if she had enough money.
Yes, she said. Certainly preoccupied. Yes she had the cab fare home.
"Good luck with
the fish!" she called, eyes following him back down, pursuing as he left,
discovering as if for the first time the tender circle of scalp he had
tried to disguise with loose weavings of gray hair.
On
the dais the poet presents himself, a prelude to his work, a concrete
extension of its imagery. When he unbends, it is from the outside in.
He is himself first and later his poem.
Here, then, externally
are the poets: Augusta, her smile too sunny ( a flash of cyanide
for the other two); exchanges with them as slick as oil on a wet street.
Max, rather (rawther, he would say) mysterious; anchored by an
oversized mustache. He is a man reminiscent in appearance of Peter Lorre,
solid and compact as a chopping block; his diction, British with Southern
whiplash. And Dawn, her dye-bottle-black hair churned into a frenzy
of singed curls. Dawn is a thinbladed stick of a woman, a witchdoll, who
wears dollar store specials with great flair.
Continued
on Page 2
