Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

“That’s him over there,” whispered Amy, pointing at a silver-haired man with a shiny blue suit and a leathery tan. The substance in his glass did not look like fruit punch. He was surrounded by several other men-an unusual occurrence for a male poet at a writers’ conference. Even Amy seemed to feel that the phenomenon warranted an explanation. “Those other men are also regional poets. That young one in the leather jacket is Carter Jute, and the gaunt, elderly one is Mr. Snowfield. And there’s the guy in the cowboy outfit who just invited us to his poetry class. I don’t know who he thinks he is.”

Rose smiled in the direction of Jess Scarberry, talking shop and, no doubt, chapbooks with the academic gentry of his field. “That,” she said solemnly, “is the poet lariat.”

Meanwhile, in the Poets’ Corner, John Clay Hawkins was smiling genially as the discussion of poetry went on around him. He had already sized up Scarberry as a con man poet, but he wasn’t particularly offended by him. After all, was an iambic pentameter sex life really so much worse than what poor old Snowfield did-using his lackluster lyrics to evade teaching freshmen, and as an excuse for pomposity with other members of his department. Young Jute, he decided, was going through a phase, probably on his way to becoming a William Faulkner clone. He had already acquired the drinking problem, and he seemed to revel in the inaccessibility of his work, as though being incoherent made him smarter than anybody else. Hawkins sometimes wanted to say to these people, “All babies are incoherent, but they grow up. That is the principal difference between an infant and a poet.” But he never said anything so unkind. Other people’s folly didn’t really annoy John Clay Hawkins; they all seemed very remote.

Mostly he was tired. His career as a poet had begun while he was in graduate school, when he had written a slim volume of poems commemorating the marriage of his former roommate, Norman Grant, to a cheerleader named Lee Locklear. The poems were tastefully obscure, so as not to resemble the bawdy limericks usually offered by groomsmen on such occasions. He had meant them as a gift, since he couldn’t afford so much as a shard of the expensive china pattern the couple had chosen, but the former roommate had been a literary type himself, and flattered by this poetic tribute, he had sent copies of Grant and Lee’s Union to The Carolina Quarterly and to various other prestigious Southern publications. The editors of those august journals, not apprised of the coming nuptials, assumed that the verses were a retrospective of the Civil War, and the verses were published to considerable acclaim in several magazines. The LSU Press brought out the entire collection the following year, and it won an obscure prize thanks to the presence of an LSU man and a Civil War buff on the panel of judges. After that, John Clay Hawkins found that people took it for granted that he wanted to continue being a poet, and to his surprise he found that he was rather good at it, so he kept writing. Long after Mrs. Lee Locklear Grant had dumped Norman Grant for a Wachovia Bank vice president, Hawkins continued to receive writing fellowships, and to spend a good part of his non-teaching time lecturing at various universities. After twenty years of unfailingly patient workshops and well-performed readings that people actually understood, Hawkins found himself enshrined in academic hearts somewhere between Robert Frost and Yoda, the Jedi Master of Star Wars. He bore beatification with quiet dignity, and went on writing simple, beautifully phrased poems about rural life. Sometimes, though, hearing the same old questions for the hundredth time that day left him feeling unutterably weary.

He turned to smile at a twittery woman who was tugging at his elbow. “Tell me,” she said, through Bambi eyelashes, “where do you get your ideas for a poem?”

An elegant woman also bent on speaking to him had overheard this remark. “Poets get ideas everywhere,” she snapped. “That’s what makes them poets!” Having thus frightened the church bulletin versifier out of the fold, the dark-eyed young woman offered her hand to John Clay Hawkins. “My name is Samari,” she purred. “I also write verse.”

“You must meet Carter Jute,” Hawkins murmured, recognizing an example of his colleague’s taste in women.

The woman ignored his ploy. “I especially wanted to speak to you. I have found the ranks of scholarly poetry to be rather a closed circle”-she glanced over at Jess Scarberry and shuddered delicately-“with good reason, perhaps. But I do think I have a special gift, and I’d like you to read my work and to suggest some places that I could send it.”

As often as this trap had sprung shut on him, John Clay Hawkins had not yet devised a foolproof way to get out of it. He tried his first tactic: the Aw Shucks Maneuver. “Oh, I just buy Poet’s Market every year, and send ’em on out to whoever seems to like my sort of work,” he said modestly, studying the tops of his shoes.

“Yes, but you’re a name,” Samari persisted. “I’m not. It would really help if you’d recommend it. Then I could say that you told me to send it to them.”

Hawkins studied the jut of Connie Maria Samari’s jaw, and the sharklike glitter of her eyes, and he recognized the Type Three Poet, the Lady Praying Mantis. In relationships she eats her mate alive, and professionally, she is as singleminded as Attila the Hun. Struggling would only prolong and embitter the encounter. Worst of all, he actually had to look at her work. A simple “Send it to Bob at Whistlepig Review” would not satisfy her. She wanted a diagnosis based on a reading. “Well, bring it along later,” he sighed. “I’ll be in my room-406-after eleven. I’ll look at it then.”

As she moved away in search of other prey, Hawkins remembered that he had also promised to have drinks with Jute, Snowfield, and Scarberry after eleven, and he had promised interviews or consultations with two other novices. Fortunately, Hawkins was a night person, and his lecture wasn’t until eleven the next morning. Surely, he thought, there must be quicker forms of martyrdom.

Rose Hanelon, who went to bed with the chickens (exclusively), had been sound asleep for several hours when the pounding on her door called her forth from slumber. Groping for her eyeglasses and then her terry cloth bathrobe, she stumbled toward the door, propelled only by the thought of dismembering whoever she found when she opened it.

“Miss Hanelon?” An anxious Margie Collier, looking as if she’d thrown her clothes on with a pitchfork, fidgeted in the doorway. The sight of a glaring gargoyle in a dressing gown did little to calm her. “Did I wake you?” she gasped. “I mean-I thought you writers worked late at night on your manuscripts.”

“No,” said Rose between her teeth. “I’m usually out robbing graves at this hour, but it’s raining! Now what do you want?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but since you are a mystery writer, we thought-Oh, Miss Hanelon, there’s been a murder!”

“How amusing for you.” Rose started to close the door. “These little parlor games are of no interest to me, however.”

“No! Not a murder game! A real murder. Someone has killed John Clay Hawkins!”

“That is too bad,” said Rose, shaking her head sadly. “He wasn’t my first choice at all.”

Eventually Margie Collier’s urgency persuaded Rose that the matter was indeed serious, and her next reaction was to ask why they had bothered to wake her about it, instead of calling the local police. “They aren’t here yet. Besides, we thought they might need some help,” said Margie. “The people at this writers’ conference are hardly the criminal types they’re used to.”

“No, I suppose not. They’re the criminal types I’m used to.” She stifled a yawn. “All right. Give me ten minutes to get dressed. Oh, you might as well tell me about it while I do. Save time. What happened?”

Margie sat down on the bed, and modestly fixed her eyes at a point on the ceiling while she recited her narrative. “About midnight, a woman named Samari went to Dr. Hawkins’s room to show him her manuscript-”

“I’ve never heard it called that before-” Rose called from the bathroom.

“She’s a poetess.” Margie’s tone was reproachful. “She knocked, and found the door ajar, and there he was, slumped in his chair at the writing table. Someone had hit him over the head with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

“Was it empty?”

“I believe so. There wasn’t any spilled on the body. Ms. Samari came and got me, not knowing what else to do.”

“An empty whiskey bottle.” Rose wriggled a black sweater over her head. “Dylan Thomas would probably approve of that finale,” she remarked. “There. I’m ready. If you insist on doing this. I’ll bet the police shut down this show the minute they get here.”

“Maybe so,” said Margie. “But that won’t be until sometime tomorrow. The storm is too bad to take a boat