Sue Ellen came out the door with provisions for the boys’ trip, setting the wicker basket on the wood plank porch and folded her arms and waited for her goodbye. Mick and Yeats finished packing gear into the small back end of the Bronco and exchanged hugs and words of love and hefted tand climbed into the rig. Floyd leaned on the door with both elbows and gave a few parting words of advice before patting the side as if sending a horse to pasture and the Bronco departed down the lane, between the vines, throwing dust into the air. Floyd and Sue Ellen watched until they were out of view and only when the dust had mostly settled did they turn for the house and routines they knew well.
………………………..
It was late afternoon when downtown Salt Lake became visible in the distance nestled against the Wasatch Range. The Temple steeples of the LDS Church loomed above the city claimed by Brigham Young in 1849, declaring that this desert plot, situated between a dead sea and a mountain range, was the place. The pioneers laid the city out in a grid of square blocks, numbered and named according to their proximity to Temple Square. The golden angel Moroni perched atop the highest spire, peered down upon this city of religious refugees as if in protection. “This is the place,” Yeats said, as the Bronco exited I-15 onto the downtown exit ramp. Mick picked his way through relatively light traffic past Temple Square in a northeast direction towards the University that sat in look out position over the city as if in physical mimic of the role of the professor – reminders and prognosticators of things to come. The Bronco pulled into a space across the street from a row of businesses that included the coffee house Glasnost West, a left of center joint situated across the street from campus, established in the 1980s Yeats guessed. They ordered coffees and considered their options.
“Ya know, these damn college kids.” Mick surveyed the room with disfavor. “So lulled into image, fashion, music, food, - desperate junkies. They study for what? To work at a bank? That doesn’t sound like the message of a $65 concert. And the Profs, they could be as pro-commie as you like, till it comes to their own personal comfort and convenience, their own paycheck and tenure. Then they’re as right wing as Dick Cheney. Not many willing to walk with Gandhi further than to paste up a poster. It’s the human condition. We have bucket loads of good intentions without the spine or gumption to back it up.”
“A few have.” Yeats said. MLK, Martin Niemoller, Siddartha, Emerson perhaps might make the list, and all the others that are the lights flickering in the darkness.”
“Any women make your righteous list there? Probably more women have that self-sacrificial conviction – it’s what being a good mother is all about.” Mick said.
“Yeah, womb love.” Yeats said. “Since when did you get philosophical? You pop off a couple shots overseas and think you see everything clear as Slim Pickens. You’re probably overcoming the effects of the tight pants they made you wear. It’s not as easy as dropping a few bombs and firing M-50s at the natives Reagan style to win the war against anything, much less global terrorism. Mission accomplished.” Yeats stood from his chair, dropped his hands to his side limply, pushing his chest out and drawled his best George W. Bush.
“Shit.” Mick said with a laugh.
“Like Kesey used to say, affecting change happens at a local level – by everyday people. If everyday people give up hope, give up their ideals, then.” Yeats looked for his next thought.
A bearded man with thick hairy arms, gold-rimmed spectacles and a worn green t-shirt, looked over from the neighboring table. He had an amused look on his face and put his book down to survey just what he had on his hands. “Ken-pour-me-some-kool-aid Kesey, huh? What do you know about that old rogue? He was quite an experimentalist and possessed more charisma than Kennedy and Clinton combined, and a hell of a wrestler to boot, but when it comes to socio-political commentary, how about Sam Huntington, Brezinski, or Putnam? What they conceded from not getting high as merry pranksters, they made up for with years of sober academic work. In the bibliography of either you?”
Mick and Yeats stared blankly, not sure what to make of this guy. He continued,
“How about we skip the international global concern. We’re so very good at constructing grandiose solutions to the world’s problems. Criticizing those responsible, yet so miserable at identifying our own culpability. At one moment we all but castrate the Israeli’s for their treatment of the Palestinians, or vice-versa, depending on your righteousness,” the bearded man laughed, “the next moment we treat the person right in front of us with the same existentialist disdain we just got through criticizing. Talk about arm chairing. Where’s your war?” The bearded man asked straight-faced, looking at both Mick and Yeats. Miles Davis’ Apollo at the Ritz played loudly in the café.
“The usual. Fighting the powers of corruption and injustice, and in his case,” Yeats gestured to Mick, “priority number one is winning back the beautiful woman. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m headed to poach a lecture - see if there is anything interesting being said at the U.” Yeats said.
“I’ll be here.” Mick said.
“Maybe we can pick this up some other time?” Yeats said to the bearded man.
“Sure, I’m around.” The man said, and went back to his reading.
Yeats exited the coffeehouse with care for the incoming co-eds who looked ready to pose for catalogue fashion copy. He crossed the street onto the campus property that had a surprising array of ivy-strewn buildings for the mountain climate. Few students traipsed about but Yeats eyed a young woman coming his way on the single-track diagonal dirt path. He stopped her for directions and asked for the nearest interesting lecture. She said that she didn’t know any interesting lectures but pointed to the Humanities building with the Corinthian columns and broad sweeping granite stairs, observing that lecture or not it the building was worth investigating. Yeats agreed and entering the building found several other students heading for the same arched, cathedral style doorway that led into a large auditorium. He found a seat and chatted with the student to his right plying him with questions about who stood out as the best thinker and speaker on campus. “If you’re looking for a righteous lecture you’ve gotta’ hear this guy Horowitz. He’s brilliant. Wrote some famous books, gives phenomenal lectures, political science mostly, but they seem more like general knowledge: history, literature, religion, law all intertwined. He’s on sabbatical this semester but I hear he’s giving a public lecture this next Sunday night.”
Yeats departed early from that night’s lecture on the failures of the U.N. and why it must be reconstituted in the new era. He rejoined Mick at the coffeehouse. Mick was ready to go and knew where they were going. They headed north and east in the direction of the Olson farm beyond the city limits of Salt Lake. The land was increasingly swallowed by rambling neighborhoods that climbed up hillsides and north towards Ogden. Developments titled with the names of now extinct farms and threatened wildlife habitat, Elk Run, Elk Hill, Saltonstall Farm, Ute Passage Estates, and Open Meadows. The Elk were squeezed ever more each day as traditional migratory routes and grazing lands were paved over, the Saltonstall Farm was defunct as there were very few open meadows that remained in view. At this rate the brothers reckoned the only thing left of the elk, farming and meadows would be a commemorative subdivision named in their memory. Yeats suggested a more honest name such as The Elk Memorial Subdivision, The Previous Site of Saltonstall Farm, Ute’s Relocated, Open Meadows No More. “You ever imagine what this once looked like? Before all of this.” Mick gestured out the open window. In his mind he imagined Ute Indians riding painted ponies up into the hills. He imagined what they must have felt like when they saw the first signs of permanent white settlement, farmhouses, barns, windmills, corrals, silos, and crops, and eventually trains and then tractors, and much later, long after the demise, cars. Mick looked at lonesome dirt roads that snaked back through the trees up into the ridgeline that begged to be followed. Birds swooped and chirped. The wind rustled softly through the corn rows. Farmhands worked at stacking hay with pitchforks. Laundry was hung out to dry on a line. Dogs raced through the fields. A solitary man walked down a road and was greeted by a pick-up with an arm hanging out the window, stopping to share the day’s news before carrying on.
“What do you see Yeats?” Mick asked.
“I see grainy, black and white photographs laid over all this.” He waved his hand out the window as if shooing a fly.
“What?” Mick said.
“Yeah, pictures dating to the 50’s and 60’s wall-papered all over this reality. Little boys unwrapping toys under the Christmas tree - play horses and cows, model train sets. Kids playing in the sandbox with toy earth-moving equipment – toy bulldozers, cranes, Tonka-trucks, and backhoes. You know, what else are they going to do with their lives?”.
Both looked out the window at the passing landscape in real time. An earth-mover patrolled predator like over a freshly scraped hill, in the act of clearing open ground for home sites. The highway was torn up all around making way for new medians and turn lanes for future strip malls and franchise restaurants. On down a ways, Mick pulled off the highway into a field next to a row of bulldozers and earth-movers, laying in wait to grade the next field.
“Fuck it. Let’s assassinate this row of 'dozers.” Mick said.
“A little monkey-wrench operation?” Yeats said, energized.
The brothers hopped from the cab. Mick pulled a Leatherman from his belt and ordered Yeats to find a set of pliers behind the seat of the Bronco and to then climb up in the cab of each machine and find the hood release, and pull each one. Mick was back on the battle field. Yeats did as he was ordered and climbed up into the hulking machines and pulled the hood release. Within a few moments Mick lay siege to the wires within.
“See if you can’t find a socket wrench that fits the oil pan for these fuckers, and drain ‘em.” Mick said.
After completing the job they jumped back into the Bronco and drove past the now incapacitated machines, looking bright and shiny, just as they had before the sabotage. After a short way on the highway, they turned off onto a country road and no more than a mile down this gravel road, pulled into the Olson drive, scattering chickens as a dog came barking, as if this was the biggest news of the day. A wind-mill slowly turned chopping the sunset rays into pieces. Abigail Olson came out onto the porch wiping her hands across the apron front, as if interrupted from a canning job or dinner preparation. Mick and Yeats got out of the vehicle and Abigail hollered a warm hello to them.
“Mick, What a surprise! We were so thrilled to hear you were coming for a visit.”
“Hi Mrs. O.” Mick said.
“Come here, let me get a look at you. What’s it been? Four, five years? My lands.” Abigail said, and held Mick at arms length for inspection. Letting him loose she turned to Yeats.
“And you must be Yeats. I’ve heard a lot about you from Dani.”
“Pleased to meet you Mrs. Olson. I’ve heard a lot about you too.”
“Please, call me Abbey.” Abigail said, and repeated Yeats’ name aloud to herself. “That’s an unusual name.” She commented.
“My folks named me after the poet, as in: An aged man is but a paltry thing, tattered coat upon a stick …” He recited a verse and in mid-sentence was interrupted by Hirem Olson who broke through the door reciting where Yeats had left of: “Unless soul clap its hand and sing, and louder sing for every tatter in its mortal dress.” He looked at Yeats with a satisfied smirk as if to say: You best get up early in the morning to out-rank me young upstart. And then he said: “Got something against the aged and decrepit? You best watch your tongue son – all we got around here anymore is tattered coats. Idn’t that right Ab?”
In saying so Hirem gave Abigail a playful rear-end slap-pat.
“Hirem, say hello to Mick and his younger brother, Yeats.” Abigail said. She balanced her willful husband by bringing steady respectability to the Olson family through appropriate impeccability.
“Well of course it’s Yeats!” Hirem cried, driving right back to the poem where he left off: “Nor is there singing school but studying, Monuments.” Before he could finish Abigail cut him off. “Hi! The boy’s name is Yeats, say hello.” Hirem seemingly ignored the instructions, only to discover Mick.
“Well there he is. How’re you boy? It’s been a good while since we’ve seen you. What brings you down to us? Dani’s all but married off.”
Hirem sensed a look from Abigail.
“Well, Ab, I’m just telling Mick here how it is. No use keeping things a secret.”
Abigail invited the two to come in off the porch. The house was modest, well ordered, and clean. Old books lined the walls. There was a portrait of a long-bearded man prominently displayed and Yeats surveyed the wall before pulling a book from the shelf for inspection. With the book in hand he read the brass plaque attached to the portrait of the bearded man, saying the name under his breath, “Morton Saltonstall.”
Hirem was sitting in a chair in the far corner of the room under a reading lamp with a book open in his lap, observing Yeats inspect the room.
“Son, that likeness dates to the 1880’s. Ol’ grandpa Mort, maternal side. Interesting story Mort. A Boston Brahmin, liked to listen to Emerson and joined a Transcendental group that was buying a farm in Harvard to live the utopian life. He didn’t stay long, a falling out of sorts. Ended up in general disrepute, and, long story short, wound up making acquaintance with Joseph Smith while visiting Western New York. In time, Mort, especially educated in those circles, became Smith’s closest consultant and confidante. Came out with the first wave of settlers. Three wives. Always a conservative Mort.” Hirem said, stating the opposite character of Mort. “I come from the middle wife – the favorite wife too, it comes down. Elizabeth. Liza they called her. Middle is the way.” Hirem gestured with his hand turned on end, pushing it ahead like a fish wriggling upstream. Abigail broke the family history lesson by giving a call for dinner. The four gathered around the table and Hirem gave one of his typical brief, if surprisingly sincere prayers, “Sustainer, Nurturer, Nomenclator, we give thanks for all these provisions before us, the two wandering friends that made it to our table, and the lives and hands that provided food for this table. In thanks.” As the last word was off Hirem’s tongue Abigail gave the dinner directions. “Now, Mick, Yeats, please don’t be shy. Eat all you want, there is more where this came from. And I want you to know, you feel free to stay here with us as long as you need to. Our home is open to you.”
“Thanks Mrs. O.” Mick said.
The tablemates ate and talked with ease, discussing the pertinent and impertinent alike. Any table where Hirem Olson sat was never a quiet one. Any table where Yeats sat was not a quiet one either, and if Mick found his stride, which was known to happen on occasion, it would be a difficult table to get a word-in edge wise. Abigail, though not a wall flower, said very little. After a time she began clearing off the table and brought a round of coffee to the three who were content to whittle away at issues yet unresolved and stories untold. After some time Abigail decided it was time for bed and excused herself with some final directions. “Mick, I’ll put you in Dani’s room, if you don’t mind, and Yeats, you can stay in the guest cottage.”
“You know how to use an outhouse son? Two-holer deluxe. Don’t try usin’ both holes at once. You’re a poet, you’ll find your way around all right. How ‘bout a smoke? Join me on the porch?” Hirem said, his words came in rapid fire.
“Sure Hi, I’ll join you.” Yeats said.
The two stood on the front porch and Hirem pulled out a metal cigarette box from his breast pocket and selected out two hand-rolled cigarettes. The evening was tranquil, interrupted only by the chirp of crickets, perhaps telling another encrypted verse from the universal epic poem that went on night after night without end. With one match Hirem lit the cigarette that hung from Yeats’ mouth followed by his own. The smoke had the sweet scent that Hirem referred to as sweet-tea, good for his glaucoma.
“So, uh, you lived out here a long time?” Yeats said, blowing his cloud into the breeze.
“All my life, except that is, when I was back east at school. Family passed this property down over four generations. Homesteaded well over a hundred years ago, original settlers to this valley. Family had a good bit of property. Though, most of it has been sold off by now and the family has moved on. To Salt Lake, then Nevada, mostly California and some beyond. Scattered to the wind.” Hirem said, followed by a muted whistle in imitation of the wind.
“Mick said you run a hardware store.”
“Yeah, it’s been a good thing for many years, but looks as if we’re going to close the doors. New Kinder-Mart coming to town, and I expect we just won’t compete. I can’t hardly blame the customers. The prices are unbeatably low at Kinder-Mart, and with big families and all it’s a hard thing to refuse. Besides, I’m old enough to retire and the girls don’t want to take over for their old man. Hell, Dani’s smart enough to join the ranks of the Kinder clan. What do you say we inspect your barracks?”
The two walked across the yard to a small cottage. Hi opened the door and lit a kerosene lamp. “There’s your bed. Extra quilts if you need them. Washbasin and wood-stove. I like to keep it rustic. More reliability and romance that way. Hit the rack or come on back to the house, up to you, but I’m beating the sandman to bed. Roosters will be crowing before sun up.” The two finished their cigarettes, said adieu and parted for bed.
The next morning, a Sunday, Hirem, Mick and Yeats sat at the table waiting for breakfast by talking and drinking coffee. Mick forecast the day for the Olsons, relaying that he and Yeats were going to town that afternoon. “You’ll have the morning free for me to introduce you over at the meeting-house.” Hirem said, with a smirk.
“Yeats is going to a lecture at the University and I thought I’d go out and say hello to Dani. Before that, we’ll probably just hang around the house. No offense Hi, but I don’t go for organized religion and public prayers.” Hirem knew as much, and if it weren’t for his friends, he wouldn’t have much use for Church either.
“Going out to see Dani huh? Abb, is Dani home tonight?” Hirem hollered to Abbey in the other room. She hollered back.
“I don’t know Hi. I know she and Chad are going to some kind of Ward function this afternoon. I think Chad leaves on business this evening. She should be home working in the garden, if I know Dani.”
“Mick, I can’t say I’m against a little honest competition for Dani. I’m still not sure about this Chad.”
Abigail chided Hirem for his frankness from the other room. Hirem gestured at Mick and yelled back to Abbey, “Well, I can’t say I’m certain about this one either.”
Later in the afternoon, after several hours of general reading, including from the stacks of yellow National Geographic magazines that lined the wall from 1933 onward, Mick and Yeats headed for Salt Lake. Mick dropped Yeats at the U to attend the Horowitz lecture. Inside the lecture hall the crowd noisily waited. The MC had came to the microphone and began talking over the assembled audience, lauding the credentials of the great Professor Jerry Horowitz. “A man featured on the cover of TIME magazine titled, “Far Out and Still Here!” with academic exploits too numerous to list. Recent nominee for a Pulitzer with his newly released book Still Widely Wandering. Not only an academic and consummate scholar, but also a gifted artist, a respected activist and organizer, and the regional pinochle champion and Wasatch County Fair blue-ribbon winner for exotic gourds ten years running.” There was applauding and stamping of feet, as if a great band were being exhorted for an encore performance. The MC went on, “Horowitz is an experimental and prolific shrimp farmer in the waters of the Great Salt Lake, where it is said living things cannot survive, an achievement that Professor Horowitz is rumored to be most proud of. People of the Land, I present to you Dr. Jerry Horowitz!” As with all Horowitz lectures, a musical score preceded Horowitz’s entrance.
The house lights dropped and the crisp, rasping strings of a fiddler filled the darkness. A spotlight shot onto the stage and emerging from the shadows the fiddler pulled the melancholic notes of Stille Nacht with his bow, the song that had been played Christmas morning 1914, by a lone and nameless fiddler on the trench strewn Western Front of World War I. As the fiddler played with bent elbow and dropped head swaying with the feelings of the notes, Horowitz appeared from the shadows, smoking a pipe and standing with one hand on the lectern, eyes closed as if soaking in the fiddler’s sweet- sorrow tune. The piece finished in dramatic fashion and Horowitz gathered himself behind the lectern, checked his notes, scanned the crowd, rechecked his notes, cleared his throat and began the lecture without so much as a glance at the notes on the lectern. Horowitz wore a dark shade herring-bone tweed jacket with a navy blue v-neck sweater underneath, drab olive cargo pants and red suede trainers.
“The birthday of a Middle-Eastern peasant. Summoned by the music of the lone soldier-fiddler, the soldiers from both sides crawled from their holes at the sound and made momentary peace on the frozen mud of Flanders under the star-filled sky. Music, the language and balm of the soul. If everything we have is what we can see and make sense of then we are truly lost in the cosmos. Thinking must be in cooperation, mutually informed by the heart and with the emotions. The Enlightenment made the emotions unfashionable. This is why music is always a prologue to my lectures. Music – a beautiful protest through sensuality, the light in the darkness when the rational has lost its way. Music – the language of the soul. For most if not all of these soldiers this musical Christmas cease-fire was the only redemptive act in the apocalypse of the Great War. It subverted the bellicose slogans and suggested that the men fighting and dying were more than proxies for governments, more than expendable pawns in the futile war of European nobility. The Christmas truce was a candle lit in the darkness of Flanders that flickered briefly, surviving only in memoirs, letters, song, drama, story, and hearts. Cigarettes were offered as make-shift peace offerings between the opposing trenches as each side tentatively crawled from their respective protected position, near frozen by the Continental winter. Humanity was laid bare with a momentary subversion of the power-intoxicated politicos and deranged imperial dictators that still roamed Europe. The opposing sides exchanged and venerated one another as mere fellow human beings. Beings. The proletariat, the people, are united, whether they know so or not, made subservient through nationalism, ignorance, fear and impoverishment. The nobility of largesse united too in the commodity of men for wealth.
The subject for this evening’s comments, if you are the titling kind, is what the dehumanizing effects of mega-corporations are and how the impact of global trade will cripple our humanity. To anchor my comments in reality, I will be using the locally venerated Kinder-Mart as a case study, our backyard villain and alpha-dog of discount stores and the alpha-dog of the tax-credit dog bowl too. The phenomenal growth of this particular corporation has been supported by taxpayers in many states through economic subsidies, all the while oppressing the family-run businesses that were once the backbone of American commerce.”
Horowitz grew increasingly animated and used his hands for emphasis, moving them as if he were a conductor of a large symphony, his voice rising and falling with the actions of his hands. “Sweetheart deals given to Kinder-Mart and similar corporations – abound. Family owned grocer Red McCleod saw the sales of his store in Hamilton, Idaho plunge as soon as the Kinder-Mart super-center opened on the edge of town. McCleod’s family had operated in Hamilton for seventy-five years, weathering every economic downturn, including the Great Depression. But Red couldn’t compete with Kinder’s prices and lost half his business overnight. Red boarded the windows of his store in a matter of months. Red’s story is being played out in thousands of communities across America today. Some say Red and others like him simply are not to fit to compete in the new global era of business. Others say that this new era of business has forgotten the same lesson humanity has forgotten many times before. Human-beings are not a commodity to work as slave labor under fluorescent lights of retail hell or the cloudless sky of hell building pyramids. When will we have compassion and a notion of proportion?”
Mick drove southwest from Salt Lake across the Jordan River into the setting sun towards the village of West Jordan. It was late in the afternoon and bugs squashing on the windshield made it difficult to see. The shadows shone long and slanty from the desert landscape vivid in the dust-filtered light. Mick pulled up to a hunkered and rounded adobe house with deep windows that looked like sunken eyes. The shoulder-high adobe wall circled the yard and was decorated with bright tile mosaics that sparkled in the late sun that hovered a finger above the jagged-blue horizon line. Dani crouched near the wall in the back of the garden, her arms and legs bared in cut-off jeans and white tank-top. She was every bit the ravishing woman that Mick knew from years before.
The bumper of Dani’s pickup was tagged with an array of stickers: Be the Change You Wish to see in the World and CASH on the bumper. Affixed to the rear window was the Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, HOWL if you love City Lights Bookstore, NOLS, National Public Radio, the likeness of Jerry Garcia in bright palette, and Practice Humility. Mick came to the gate and looked over. Amherst had an effect on her.
“Know where I can find a good mechanic around here? She seems to be running a little rough.” Mick slapped the hood of his truck to indicate the problem vehicle.
“Mick?” Dani said, wiping loose strands of hair from her eyes with the back of her hand. Her mother had called to say Mick was in town and coming out, but she didn’t know just when, and regardless, his voice was a surprise after all of these years. She stood up out of her squat to welcome the long-lost visitor stepping toward the gate with a strange unsteadiness to her legs. She was at once excited yet tentative. There was history here and the tension was palpable. Sheboygan barked on the porch of the house and came running down to the gate. Mick opened the gate and stooped to greet the dog he knew as a pup and was licked rapturously as if it had been only days since the two had seen one another.
“I was over at your folks’ place. Hi and Abbey mentioned you were living out here. I thought I’d come out and see how you were getting along.” Mick said.
“How long have you been back?”
Dani was a bit taken aback and stumbling for words, yet somehow graceful in the awkwardness, a quality of graceful manner inherited from her mother. Before Mick managed to answer, Dani fired the next question:
“And you’re living where?”
She was confused, concerned and unsure about anything regarding Mick. Where he lived, where he’d been, where he was going and why he was here in her front yard after so many years. Mick fidgeted and fumbled for words. “I returned from overseas a month or so ago and Yeats and I, we left California a few days back to visit Mom and Pop Fitz for a few days, and just sort of kept going. Found ourselves in Salt Lake.”
Mick was not one to be discombobulated, but he had become so with Dani.
………….
Bespectacled Horowitz wrapped up his lecture by saying, “The modern consciousness is dependant in great part on the thought of Friedrich Hegel, who in the early nineteenth century taught that the history of humanity is a history of inexorable progression from smaller to larger forms, from simple to complex organisms, irrationality to rationality. Every realm of thought, from theology to economics, from physics to politics has been influenced by Hegel’s notions of progress. Marxism, for example, with its theory of economic progress from feudalism to bourgeois to communism, is Hegelian in origin. Many still cling to the Hegelian belief that newer, bigger and more complex is better. Hegelianism is a hard habit to break. It may be the particular gift of this young century to see the betrayal in the Hegelian idea of human progress, by way of experiencing the downsides of complex bureaucratic institutions that turn like rusty gears. I predict it shall be the task of this century to dismantle and dissolve many of the institutions which have dominated us in the previous enlightenment-driven centuries. The wisdom that we must seek lies in the power of this short, prophetic phrase, by E.F. Schumacher: ‘Small is beautiful.’ I’ll leave off with those words, naturally I assume there are some questions – and I’m happy to give a stab at them, and know this, as a favored friend of mine was fond of saying, ‘Anyone who takes this lecture seriously will be shot, and anyone who does not take it seriously will be buried alive by a Mitsubishi bulldozer!’”
Horowitz stood patiently at the podium, waiting for the first question from the audience. As usual there was a brief lag before the first questioner roused the fortitude to approach the microphone, and as usual, after the first question broke the ice, dozens came pouring down in a deluge of wonderings and calls for specifics. After fielding several comments that began to sound more and more alike, Horowitz allowed for one last true question before calling it quits, pointing with a smile to a familiar looking face in the front row.
“Yeah, Professor, I’m on board with what’re saying, you know this train of resistance bound for glory, but how do we get out of the last station? I mean, does the movement work itself out, work itself in – practically? How do the ideas get out of this room and into my life, our lives – into our world?” Yeats stayed standing after his question and waited for the answer from the Professor. This was the guy he had met at the coffee house the first day to Salt Lake.
“The movement, the confession, the conviction of purpose, continues.” Jerry said, and gestured like an Indian sage in sign language, palm down, arm thrusting slowly forward, eyes following the extended arm into the crowd. Horowitz was momentarily entranced.
“Through every person, at a local level, wherever that is, whether a garbage truck driver, a department store sales clerk, a lawyer, or an age-group track coach, the movement continues, incrementally, steadily, one choice, one human at a time. Stalwart growth from the grassroots on up. Moment by moment, bit by bit. And it will take a lot longer than you wish, gravely long, generations even. We’ve got to endure, embracing the adversity and diversity that is sure to come.”
…………
Mick and Dani were sitting silently on the front porch. A palpable awkwardness hung in the air, the sky lit yellow by curling clouds fringed in pink against the darkening band that was the Eastern horizon that uncovered the nights avant-garde of flickering white stars. It was summertime in the desert and the crickets had their chirp.
“Would you care for something to drink? But gosh, I don’t know if I have anything to offer. Maybe a glass of water or herbal tea?” Dani said.
“Beer?” Mick said.
“I could probably find a forgotten one in the back of the fridge.”
“A little lax in your observances are you Dan? You want to take Sheboygan and drive out to Antelope Island?”
Dani grew uncomfortable with the question.
“I don’t know Mick. I’m ... It’s just that - it’s.”
“Come on. We’ll figure it out, it’s easier to do when you’re moving.”
Mick grabbed Dani by the hand.
………………
The auditorium exits spilled with an enthusiastic crowd full of energetic conversation imparted by the Horowitz lecture. Yeats overhead a couple of activist-intellectuals discuss what they called an after lecture party. Yeats, pinned in next to them amidst the pressing bodies of people bottle-necked at the exit door made out that the party would be at the Keating mansion and that Horowitz would be there. He knew he had to find a way to be there too.
A couple of hours later Yeats approached the front door of a very large white-with-pillars house on a winding road just up the hill from the University that overlooked the city lights that glowed yellow-orange in the steep distance below. A doorman in casual dress greeted Yeats in front of the four-paneled front door festooned with a carved chain of foliage and brass boar-head knocker. Yeats wrongly assumed he could fast-talk his way in as he had so many times before on similar occasions and was surprised to see the doorman holding a clip-board with the names approved for the gathering. He could see checks in red ink next to some of the names, presumably those who had arrived. Yeats craned to look at the sheet and the doorman pulled the clip-board to his chest and informed Yeats that it was an invite only affair hosted by what he referred to as ‘The Foundation,’ and that it was without question, time for him to leave. His parting line was a bit amateurish and self-important Yeats thought. “How do we know who you are? You could be a spy from the Feds or the LDS Gestapo.”
Yeats conceded easily not wanting to make an impression so he could get a second shot at the party, and so left without another word. His second plan was already formulating in his mind. He jogged down the hill to the liquor store he had seen on the way up, advertised in reddish-pink neon letters. The letters in Liquor flickered in a uneven pattern. The store windows were black, the door was locked, and a sign in front indicated that the store was closed on Sundays. Yeats silently calculated to himself. Bars were open Sundays weren’t they? He ran a block further down the street to the only establishment in sight, The University Hill Pronghorn Drinking Establishment, it advertised itself as a private club, accompanied by an official looking state certificate in the window. Yeats didn’t know what this meant and entered the dimly lit bar. Pool was played towards the back and a football game glowed on the TV above the bar. Yeats approached the bar and waited. Eventually a man with a towel over his left shoulder appeared and without enthusiasm looked Yeats’ way.
“I’d, uh, I’d like twelve bottles of beer – to go.” Yeats said, pointing to the door.
The bartend had his back turned and didn’t seem to hear what Yeats said. When he did turn around he showed a put-out expression as if you’d just told him to take out the trash.
“Got yer credentials?” The bartend said.
Yeats grabbed for his wallet and produced a California license.
“Drinking credentials. Pronghorn membership.” The bartend said, pushing back the license.
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