Kidd shrugged. “Yeah. A little.”
“We been drinking,” Jack continued his explanation, “all afternoon.”
“And it’s night now.” Frank grinned.
“This God-damn city. If you wanna stay drunk, it sure is the place to come. You can buy drinks at the God-damn bars and you don’t have to pay no money. Or anything. And anyplace you go, people always got stuff to smoke or to drink. Jesus.” He burped. “I gotta go water the garden. Be back in a minute.” He stepped away and headed for the john.
Kidd felt a wave of disorientation, but the phrases he’d prepared before broke through: “You been looking out for nature boy?”
“He’s sort of looking out for me,” Frank said. “We’re both army deserters. Him, a little more recently. Only I think Jack’s getting homesick.”
Kidd swallowed. “For the army?” And felt better.
Frank nodded. “I’m not. I left about six months ago. Happy I’m here. I’m getting a chance to write again, and it’s a pretty together place.”
“You,” and, at the reiteration, he felt toward Frank sudden, surprising, and total distrust, “write poems?” So he smiled.
Frank smiled back and nodded over his glass: “Well, I’ve been sort of lucky about getting things published, really. The book was just an accident. One of the west coast little magazines puts out good editions of people who contribute. I was lucky enough to get selected.”
“You mean you have a book?”
“No copies in Bellona.” Frank nodded. “Like I said, even that was an accident.”
“You been writing a long time, then.”
“Since I was fifteen or sixteen. I started in high school; and most of what you write back then is crap.”
“How old are you now?”
“Twenty-five.”
“Then you’ve been one for a long time. A poet. I mean it’s your job, your profession.”
Frank laughed. “You can’t make a living at it. I taught for a year at San Francisco State, till I went into the army. I like to think of it as a profession, though.”
Kidd nodded. “You got a lot of poems in magazines and things?”
“Three in the New Yorker about a year ago. Some people think that’s my crowning achievement. Two in Poetry, Chicago, before that. There’re a few others. But those are the ones I’m proud of.”
“Yeah, I used to read that magazine a lot.”
“You did?”
“It’s the one that used to have the little curlicue horse a long time ago? Now it just has funny pictures on it. I read it every month in the library, at school. For years.”
Frank laughed. “Then you’re doing better than I am.”
“I seen the New Yorker” Kidd said. “But I never read it.”
Frank’s expression changed slightly and noncommittally.
“And I’ve never published any poems at all,” Kidd said. “Anyplace. I’ve only been a poet a little while. A couple of weeks. Since I came here. You probably know a lot more about it than I do.”
“About getting things published?”
“That too. I mean about writing them, though. It’s hard.”
“Yes, I guess it can be.”
“It’s about the God-damned hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Frank laughed and rubbed his young beard. “Sometimes. You’ve…only been writing—poems, for a few weeks? What made you start?”
“I don’t know. What made you?”
“I suppose,” and Frank nodded again, “I had to.”
“Do you—” Kidd paused a moment, considering the theft—“do you find Bellona stimulating, making you produce work?”
“About as much as anyplace else, I guess. Maybe a little less, because you have to spend so much time scuffling, you know? I was working on a few short things. But I lost my notebook a few weeks back.”
“Huh?”
Frank nodded. “Since then I haven’t written anything. I haven’t had time.”
“Hey, you lost your notebook!” Discomfort broached fear. “Christ, that must be…” Then his feelings centered. Kidd leaned over the bar. “Hey, can I get the notebook! Huh? Come on! You want to give me the notebook, please!”
“All right,” the bartender said. “All right, I’ll get it. Simmer down. You guys ready for another—”
“The notebook!” Kidd knocked the counter with his fist.
“All right!” Sucking his teeth, the bartender pulled it from the cage and flopped it on the bar. “Now do you want another drink?”
“Oh. Yeah,” Kidd said. “Sure.”
Besides blood, urine, mulch, and burn marks, there were rings from the bottles he had set haphazardly on the cover. He opened it in the middle. “…This isn’t yours, is it?”
Frank frowned. “You found this?”
“Yeah. It was in the park.”
Geoff Rivers
Arthur Pearson
Kit Darkfeather
Earlton Rudolph
David Wise
Phillip Edwards…
Kidd looked over Frank’s shoulder and read the listed names, till Frank turned the page.
“Hey, what you doin’?” Jack said behind them. “You showing Frank here your poetry writing?”
Kidd turned around. “Just this notebook I found, filled up with somebody’s journal.”
“Frank’s pretty smart.” Jack nodded. “He knows about all sorts of shit. He taught history. In a college. And he cut out on the army too.”
“Lots of us have,” Frank said, not looking up. “The ones with any sense go to Canada. The rest of us end up here.” He turned a page.
“You been having a good time?” Jack put his hand on Kidd’s shoulder. “This is the place to have a good time, you know?”
“Fine time,” Kidd said. “But I haven’t seen you around. Where you been staying?”
“Stayed on a few days with Tak.” Jack’s hand rose and fell. “He kicked me out after a week when I wouldn’t let him suck on my peter no more.”
Across the bar Loufer, his cap low on his ears, still talked earnestly with Fenster.
Jack’s hand fell again. “They got girls in this city! Frank knows this whole house. Full of girls. Real nice girls. We was over there, and…” His grin widened toward ecstasy. “They like Frank a lot.” He screwed up his face. “I think that’s ’cause he’s growin’ a beard and things. Or maybe taught in a college.”
“They liked you okay,” Frank said, still not looking up. “They just didn’t know you.”
“Yeah, I guess they just didn’t know me well enough, yet.”
“Say?” Frank looked up now. “You wrote all this—?”
“Yeah—well, no. I mean most of it was written in there when I found it. That’s why I wanted to know if it was yours.”
“Oh,” Frank said. “No. It’s not mine.”
Kidd turned from under Jack’s hand. “That’s good. Because when you said you had lost your notebook, you know, I just thought…”
“Yeah,” Frank said. “I see.”
“We’re gonna go out and look for some more girls,” Jack said. “You wanna come along?”
“Jack thinks there’s safety in numbers,” Frank said.
“No. No, that’s not it,” Jack protested. “I just thought he might want to come and help us look for some girls. That’s all. Maybe we can go back to that house?”
“Hey, thanks,” Kidd said. “But I got to hang around here for a while.”
“The Kidd here’s got his own old lady,” Jack said in knowing explanation. “I bet he’s waiting on her.”
“Hey, I’m…sorry it’s not your notebook,” Kidd told Frank.
“Yeah,” Frank said. “So am I.”