An Unfortunate Woman. Richard Brautigan
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found myself on a streetcar, carrying in my mind directions from a now forgotten origin, riding toward a misplaced Chinese movie theater in Canada. It would have been easier if the theater had been in Chinatown. It’s a logical location.
When I got to the theater, it was showing two American motion pictures. One does not normally go to a Chinese movie theater to see American movies. Also, would it be out of line to think that a Chinese movie theater should show Chinese movies?
Coming attraction posters indicated that some Chinese movies would be shown in the following weeks. I couldn’t wait, which was probably a good decision, because next week I was back in San Francisco. The Chinese movies coming to Canada next week would never have done me any good.
What else did I do in Toronto?
I had a very bitter affair with a Canadian woman, who was really a nice person. It ended abruptly and badly, which was totally my fault. It would be convenient if one could redesign the past, change a few things here and there, like certain acts of outrageous stupidity, but if one could do that, the past would always be in motion. It would never settle down finally to days of solid marble.
I remember waking up with her that first morning after I spent the night at her apartment and she said, “It’s a beautiful day here in Toronto and you’re with a nice Canadian girl.”
It was.
She was.
January 30, 1982 Finished.
I don’t know why I wanted a photograph of me and a chicken in Hawaii. Obsessions are curious things, and they can’t help but make a person wonder.
It rained on and off the morning the photograph was taken. There had been a storm the night before, and it was still continuing to rain the following morning. Frankly, I didn’t think the weather conditions would permit a photograph to be taken, but the person who took the photograph was optimistic. They had also located the chicken.
I don’t know how easy it is to find a chicken in Hawaii, but I was impressed. I am of course not talking about a chicken that is wearing an outfit suitable for a frying pan.
I’m talking about a living chicken, feathers and all.
The photographer called up on the telephone.
“Let’s try it,” he said.
“Trying it” meaning the actualization of one man’s fantasy.
What had concerned us was getting caught in a monsoon-like downpour that would also affect available light, because the photograph had to be taken outside to show the presence of Hawaii.
There would be no reason for the photograph of me and a chicken if Hawaii was not a character in the picture. I wanted to have the picture framed and hanging on the wall of my ranch in Montana.
People would visit me there and maybe one of them would ask about the curious photograph of me and a chicken, hanging interrogatively on the wall. Perhaps they would sense there was a story behind the photograph. It would be fascinating to see how they would verbalize their curiosity. Maybe they would say, “Interesting photograph,” and if they got no response: “Where was it taken?”
“Hawaii.”
“Is that a chicken?”
“Yes.”
“Is there a reason for that photograph? Is that some kind of special chicken?”
Now I would see how determined or not determined they were.
“No, I just wanted to have a photograph of me and a chicken taken in Hawaii.”
Where in the hell could they go from there? Where could you and I go from there if we were suddenly placed in that position? I haven’t the slightest idea what I would do. I’d probably change the subject or go into another room. I don’t think it would be a very good idea to fall helplessly into silence and just stand there staring at a photograph of somebody and a chicken taken together in Hawaii, waiting to be put out of my misery.
Of course it’s a retreat, but it beats still standing sort of dumbfounded in the front room, staring at the photograph of an idiot holding a chicken in Hawaii.
It was beautiful back in the mountains behind Honolulu, lush and provocative like an airplane ad flying you to a well-documented and predictable paradise.
There were a lot of chickens running free to choose from and soon I was holding one of them in my hands and the photographer was snapping away. We were worried that there wouldn’t be enough light, but it turned out that the light was no problem.
The chicken was very quiet in my hands, probably wondering what was going on. Having its picture taken definitely wasn’t part of this chicken’s everyday routine. Not many tourists want to have photographs taken of themselves holding chickens in Hawaii.
The chicken was very quiet and serious in my hands. Oh, God, that chicken was serious! After the photograph was taken, I put the chicken down. It walked slowly and bewilderedly away, feathers downcast.
Last week after I got off the train in Berkeley and walked home to the house where the woman had hanged herself, I saw a cat walking across the street in front of me.
Having nothing better to do and being a mammal myself, I said hello to the cat. “Hi, kitty,” I said, and then to really put the greeting across, I added, “Meow.”
The cat that was hurrying across the street slowed down at the sound of my greeting and then continued slowing down, coming to just standing there looking at me.
I said, “Meow,” again with the cat looking at me.
I passed out of the cat’s sight as I walked around the corner and started up the hill toward the house where the woman had hanged herself about a year ago.
After she hanged herself, her husband left everything just the way it was the day she committed suicide, and still very little of it had been changed. 1980s Christmas cards were still on the mantel, but the thing that really got me was the kitchen and I will go into it in detail later on. The dead woman’s kitchen demands its own time and attention and this is not that time.
As I walked up the hill toward the house, I was thinking about the cat that I had said hello “meow” to and cats in general and my intelligence soon found a single focus.
Cats don’t know that people are writing books about them that are splashed all over the best-seller lists and that millions of people are laughing at books filled with cat cartoons.
If you were to show a book full of cat cartoons to a cat: Frankly, it wouldn’t give a damn.
February 1, 1982 Finished.
I tossed the bottle of tequila across the street in Ketchikan and the young Alaskan state legislator caught it without hesitation, effortlessly, maybe because he liked to drink tequila.
It was a wonderful drunken night in Alaska.
Before I launched the bottle toward him, I said, “Here, catch, wild legislator.” That’s what I had taken to calling him, though we had just met that evening.
A group of us funnying and laughing wandered through the streets of Ketchikan, one of the most beautiful towns I have ever visited.
Ketchikan flows like a dream of wooden houses and buildings around the base of Deer Mountain, whose heavily wooded slopes come right down to the town, beautifully nudging it with spruce trees.
The population of Ketchikan, 7,000, and the integrity of the town is virtually unspoiled by a form of style and architecture that could be described as “Los Angeles.”
There is no endless street of franchise restaurants and automobile-oriented business. There are no shopping malls to flagrantly disrupt the simplicity of commerce. When people want to buy something, they can just walk down to the store.
So much of America, even what were once unspoilable beautiful towns, look as