Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

The fact that Scarberry neither had, nor wanted, any male followers was evident from his books, which all had titles like Shadows in the Mist or Rivers of Memory, and from the poems they contained, which were all variations on the idea that the poet was a lonely wanderer occasionally seeking refuge from the cruel world in the arms of love. His photo on the back of each book showed a pensive Scarberry, wearing a sheepskin jacket and leaning over a saddle that had been placed atop a split-rail fence. The biographical notes said that the Poet had been a working cowboy, an ambulance driver, a tugboat captain, and that he was an honorary medicine man of the Tuscarora Indian tribe. His most recent occupation-literary con man and jackleg publisher-was not mentioned.

Scarberry cast an appraising glance around the hotel lobby, sizing up the livestock at what he liked to think of as a literary rodeo. During the weekend he would bulldog a few heifers, rope and brand some new Scarberry fans, and collect enough of a grubstake to keep himself in Budweiser and wheat germ until the next conference.

As he approached the registration desk, he remembered to walk a bit bowlegged, suggesting one who has left his horse in the parking lot. He hoped the twittery ladies near the potted palm had noticed him. When he finished registering, he would go over, personally invite them to attend his workshop (“The Poetry of Experience”), and graciously allow them to buy him dinner.

“May I have a new name tag?” asked the tall young woman at the conference registration table. The fact that she had just torn the old one in half suggested that this was not a request.

Margie Collier’s felt tip pen poised in midair while she checked the registration form. “We spelled it right,” she declared. “Connie Maria Samari. S-a-m-”

The woman winced. “I only use one name,” she said. “Just Samari.” Samari… a lilting word that conjured up images of Omar Khayyam and jasmine-scented gardens, but prefaced by Connie Maria, the word sank back into an ordinary Italian surname, containing no romance at all. With all due respect to her Italian grandmother, Connie Maria felt that being called Samari would be a definite advantage to her career as a poet.

With only a small sigh (because she was used to humoring eccentrics), Margie Collier took out a new name tag and obligingly wrote SAMARI in large capital letters. “There you are,” she said with a friendly smile. “I suppose you write Japanese haiku?”

Samari’s response was a puzzled stare, until half a minute later, when enlightenment dawned. “That is not how my name is pronounced!”

* * *

Several ego-encounters later, Margie Collier looked up at a registrant, who had signaled her presence simply by the shadow she cast on Margie’s paperwork. The awkward-looking young woman in an unflattering black plaid suit looked faintly ridiculous clutching a vase of red carnations. Margie found herself thinking of Ferdinand the Bull. “Those flowers will look nice in your room,” Margie remarked, hoping that the woman wasn’t planning to tote them around during the conference. She looked in the collection of Poet badges just in case, though.

“They’re not for me!” said the young woman, blushing. “They’re for John Clay Hawkins. For his room, I mean. I’d like to pick up his name tag, too, if I may.”

Margie frowned. “Are you his wife?”

“Certainly not! I am his graduate student. My name is Amy Dillow, and I also have a name tag. Dr. Hawkins will be arriving sometime this afternoon, and I wanted to make sure that his room is ready, and that the copies of his books arrived, and I’ll need his name tag and a copy of the schedule.”

When Margie Collier, still trying to make sense of this, did not reply, Amy sighed with impatience. “Dr. Hawkins,” she explained, “is required reading.”

By whom? thought Margie, but she only smiled, and began to search the desk for the requested items. Some people thought that being rude was the first step to becoming a writer. She found Hawkins’s name tag-not surprisingly-filed in the Poet section. Really, she thought, these male poets seem to attract groupies like maggots to a dead cat. She couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Margie’s husband, a football coach at the junior high, often said that writing-and reading, for that matter-was women’s work, and secretly she agreed with him. Give her a middle-linebacker any old day, instead of these peevish, sensitive artistes that didn’t know spit from come here. Her idea of a real writer was Deidre Bellaire, who was just as sweet as peach jam, and she outsold those poet types by ten thousand to one, so that ought to show them, with their literary airs!

The first scheduled event for the Unicoi Writers’ Conference was a get-acquainted cocktail party, in which all the attendees met in the Nolichucky Room and either asked or endured the Writers’ Conference Litany: What name do you write under? Where do you get your ideas? Should I have heard of you? Outside, a raging thunderstorm lent the appropriate literary atmosphere to the setting. Rose Hanelon decided that the next person who came up to her and said “It is a dark and stormy night” was going to get a cup of punch in the face.

Now she had retreated into a corner, clutching a plastic cup of lukewarm strawberry punch, with nothing but a glazed smile between her and a plot summary. She had long since lost the ability to nod, but the droning woman had yet to notice. Every so often she would pat her crimped brown curls. (As if anything short of barbecue tongs could have moved them, thought Rose). “And then,” said the aspiring author, prattling happily, mistaking silence for interest, “the heroine gets on a train and goes to New Hampshire. Or do I mean Vermont? Which one is the one on the right? Well, anyway, meanwhile, the hero has decided to go mountain climbing on a glacier. Do they have glaciers in New Hampshire? Well, it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s ever been there. So he goes to a psychic to, you know, see if it’s going to be okay-what with his wooden leg and all, and-”

“Excuse me,” said Rose. “Could I ask you something? If I give you two eggs, can you tell me if the cake will be any good?”

The narrator blinked. “What? The cake? What cake?”

“Any cake,” sighed Rose. “You can’t judge a cake from two eggs, and you can’t judge a book from a plot summary. A bad writer can ruin anything. Just write the book and shut up.” She stalked off in the direction of the hors d’oeuvres, but her way was blocked by a bearded man in a fringed buckskin jacket.

“Hello, little lady,” he beamed at her in a B-movie twang. “You wouldn’t happen to be an editor, would you?”

“Why do you ask?” Her eyes were glittering, the way they always did when people said words like shorty or pulp fiction.

“Why, I just happen to have a new chapbook here that is Rod McKuen and Kahlil Gibran rolled into one. I’m Jess Scarberry.” He paused, waiting for cries of recognition that were not forthcoming. “I’m going to be doing a reading from it at eleven tomorrow. Why don’t you come?” He beamed at a serious young woman in horn-rimmed glasses who was standing near Rose. “And you, too, of course, ma’am.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Rose, edging past him as she reached for a cheese cube. Jess Scarberry wandered away in search of other victims.

When he was out of earshot, Amy Dillow snickered. “I can’t believe he thinks anybody will come to his stupid reading,” she sniffed. “John Clay Hawkins is lecturing that hour on the poetic tradition.”

“Really?” Rose wondered what else was going on at that hour. Flea-dipping seemed preferable.

Amy nodded, eyes shining. “He’s been published everywhere! Even the Virginia Quarterly Review. And John Ciardi once called his work well-crafted.”

“That silver-tongued devil,” murmured Rose.

“I’m doing my dissertation on Dr. Hawkins,” Amy confided. “I think Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin are just too overdone, don’t you?”

“Well, that’s because people have heard of them,” said Rose. “I suppose you’d have a better chance of getting a professorship as a Larkin scholar than as a Hawkins expert. Still, it must be useful to be able to discuss the symbolism of the poetry with its author.”

Amy looked shocked. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that! What would he know about that? He just writes them. It’s up to us scholars to determine what they mean. But I do see quite a bit of Dr. Hawkins. I’m sort of working as his volunteer secretary, too. I just hate to see him wasting his time on anything but his Muse.”

Rose grunted. “I wish somebody felt that way about mystery writers.”