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IV Attack of
Thistles
Anyway, that night when Richard and Tony came over for the first time,
Tony left as Richard slipped into the Imperial mode and the booze began to
dwindle. Schreiber came by with a half-a-fifth of Canadian and left that
with us. Later, Richard asked me to come over and stay at his place that
night. Judy said, "Fine, just don't kill yourselves on the road." Over the
next few years, she would amaze me with her patience and tolerance, even
though it wasn't long before she made sure that Richard didn't have much
to do with her own life. It was late when we got to Pine Creek (the
community where he lived on the Yellowstone. Aki was asleep and so was
Tony. That night Richard talked a lot about his land. He had forty acres
with a house (a log cabin built shortly after the Civil War and in this
century stuccoed over wand completely remodeled when Richard moved in), a
huge red barn with electric milking machines that still worked in it, a
chicken house (sans chickens by the time I arrived), an outbuilding where
a skunked lived behind the barn, a guest cabin (where Richard frequently
slept), several abandoned old cars rotting beside the barn (Richard and I
spent many an evening lying on the hood up against the windshield of an
old Ford Victoria watching the sun set and talking about things that
seemed immensely important at the time) and a spring running through the
property, (later, the source of much unwarranted water-rights anguish.)
Richard's studio was in the top of the red barn, and we had to walk
through lots of pigeon shit to get there for private readings or aimless
ramblings. After describing much of his property, Richard led me out into
the yard. Morning was coming up over the Absorokas just east of his house,
and I felt really honored to be in the confidence of this big, funny,
disturbing man. Out in an open place, he pointed south and said "My land
goes to the road over there then to the line of trees beyond it." He
pointed west to where they were just starting to build a new house and
said, "And it goes to where they're starting to develop things over
there." He pointed north to a fence and said, "And that's the border
between my place and the Hjortsbergs' property." There was no need to
point east because the East River Road ran right in front of his house
where the property obviously ended. After pointing in all these
directions, he said, "I think the cat's in the bag and the bag's in the
river. I think I'm safe. They can't get me now." I was a little surprised
about this last part because I didn't know at the time who THEY were and
how THEY could possibly get one of the most famous living writers in
America. "But there is one thing," said Richard with a kind of scary look.
"The fucking thistles. They're taking over the whole place." Richard had
hired a man to battle the thistles, but that, apparently, wasn't doing the
trick. From dawn until the sun started to get hot, we dashed around his
land ripping up Russian thistles, beating their roots against fence posts,
and stomping them to a pulp until our hands were too torn up to be of use
any more. When I got back to Bozeman that afternoon, Judy looked at me and
my hands and shook here head.
Gorgo's Brautigan Stories Index
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