Part 2 (2/2)

”Peter Blood, bachelor of medicine and several other things besides, smoked a pipe and tended the geraniums boxed on the sill of his window above Water Lane in the town of Bridgewater,” Sabatini's novel begins. Don's imagination seized upon the teasing phrase ”and several other things”; often, he employed similar vague wording to add humor to his work or to parody traditional descriptions: ”Kevin said a lot more garbage to Clem,” or, ”The countryside. Flowers.”

Sabatini plays complex narrative games. In the novel, his nameless teller steals accounts of Blood's tales from a second source, which has been plundered by a third writer, who attributes Blood's deeds to a different hero altogether.

In Overnight to Many Distant Cities Overnight to Many Distant Cities, Don's love of Sabatini finally came clean in a pastiche of the pirate's sagas. In reading ”[my] Captain Blood,” you ”are reminded, I hope, of the pleasure Sabatini gives you or has given you,” Don said. ”The piece is in no sense a parody, rather it's very much an hommage hommage. An attempt to present, or recall, the essence of Sabatini.”

Like the original, Don's Blood is a sad, solitary figure, quick with rapier and wit, and given to aesthetic rapture. He imagines throwing captured women into the sea, ”fitted with life jackets under their dresses,” so he can delight in the patterns they would make ”floating on the surface of the water, in the moonlight, a cerise gown, a silver gown...”

At story's end, Blood paces his s.h.i.+p's foredeck alone, worrying. We're told: ”The favorite dance of Captain Blood is the grave and haunting Catalonian sardana sardana, in which the partic.i.p.ants join hands facing each other to form a ring which gradually becomes larger, then smaller, then larger again. It is danced without smiling, for the most part. He frequently dances this with his men, in the middle of the ocean, after lunch, to the music of a single silver trumpet.”

Always, Don insisted that humor was his only mode of seriousness. Sabatini first showed him this trick, smuggling social jibes into his work beneath the action or the jokes. Take, for example, Don's ” sardana sardana” reference: In Spain, under Franco's repressive regime, all traces of Catalonian ident.i.ty, including the dance, were banned, but the sardana sardana often erupted in the streets of Barcelona, an a.s.sertion of freedom and justice. In Don's story, the dance carries serious weight in an otherwise lighthearted list of details. often erupted in the streets of Barcelona, an a.s.sertion of freedom and justice. In Don's story, the dance carries serious weight in an otherwise lighthearted list of details.

When he was asked in a Paris Review Paris Review interview to name his influences, Don slipped in Errol Flynn. ”Why Errol Flynn?” J. D. O'Hara asked him. ”Because he's part of my memory of Sabatini,” Don replied. ”Sabatini fleshed out. He was in the film version of 'Captain Blood,' and 'The Sea Hawk.' He should have done 'Scaramouche,' but Stewart Granger did it instead, as I recall.” Don's quibbling reveals how important the pirate movies were to him, how much delight he took, as a child, in Captain Blood. When he said he hoped his swashbuckler would remind readers of the ”pleasure Sabatini gives you or interview to name his influences, Don slipped in Errol Flynn. ”Why Errol Flynn?” J. D. O'Hara asked him. ”Because he's part of my memory of Sabatini,” Don replied. ”Sabatini fleshed out. He was in the film version of 'Captain Blood,' and 'The Sea Hawk.' He should have done 'Scaramouche,' but Stewart Granger did it instead, as I recall.” Don's quibbling reveals how important the pirate movies were to him, how much delight he took, as a child, in Captain Blood. When he said he hoped his swashbuckler would remind readers of the ”pleasure Sabatini gives you or has has given you” (italics added), he recalled another of Sabatini's charms: his wistfulness. Don bared his given you” (italics added), he recalled another of Sabatini's charms: his wistfulness. Don bared his own own nostalgia here, reaching back for an elusive childhood joy, but the quality is present in Sabatini. At the end of nostalgia here, reaching back for an elusive childhood joy, but the quality is present in Sabatini. At the end of Captain Blood Captain Blood, the adventurer's strongest desire (aside from securing his lover) is to return to the simple beauty of his past. He will not be able to do so. ”I had counted upon going home, so I had,” he says, sighing. ”I am hungry for the green lanes of England. There will be apple-blossoms in the orchards of Somerset.”

The final scene of The King The King, Don's last book-on one level, a swordflas.h.i.+ng adventure fantasy; on another, an elegy for vanished innocence-echoes Sabatini. The n.o.ble knight Launcelot lies beneath a tree, dreaming of his love, and of quiet, intimate pleasures, joys the reader knows he will never again grasp. Two onlookers, who can somehow see into the dream, marvel: ”What a matchless dream!”

”Under an apple tree...”

Writing his final novel, Don tried to erase the decades, and cus.h.i.+on himself once more in his earliest reading delights.

If New Yorker New Yorker stories offered one set of models for a writer, Hemingway supplied another. He ”taught us all,” Don said. To O'Hara, he admitted that Perelman and Hemingway were paired in his mind, suggesting that he discovered them around the same time, in the 1940s; more than this, he could see that Hemingway's writing affirmed the ”amazing things” in Perelman's prose, obviously not with the same intent, but in musical terms. From Hemingway, one learned ”wonderful things about...sentence rhythms,” Don said, ”and wonderful things about precision, and wonderful things about being concise. His example is very, very strong.” stories offered one set of models for a writer, Hemingway supplied another. He ”taught us all,” Don said. To O'Hara, he admitted that Perelman and Hemingway were paired in his mind, suggesting that he discovered them around the same time, in the 1940s; more than this, he could see that Hemingway's writing affirmed the ”amazing things” in Perelman's prose, obviously not with the same intent, but in musical terms. From Hemingway, one learned ”wonderful things about...sentence rhythms,” Don said, ”and wonderful things about precision, and wonderful things about being concise. His example is very, very strong.”

Attuned to structural matters from his father's architectural practice, Don could see that music was storytelling's skeleton, connecting writers as apparently diverse as Hemingway and Perelman. Don absorbed a lot about music during this period, listening to jazz records, taking up drumming. A good sentence needed a beat or a variation from a beat, just as a musical phrase did. Hemingway's music was inescapable: It was getting hot, the sun hot on the back of his neck.Nick had one good trout. He did not care about getting many trout.Now the stream was shallow and wide.

The repet.i.tion of plosive sounds-t's, d d's, and k k's-in ”getting,” ”hot,” ”trout,” ”neck,” ”Nick,” and so on, does the time keeping; variations save the phrasing from dullness and emphasize Nick's experiences. The line ”getting hot, the sun hot” bores down on the reader, the recurring ”hot” as relentless as the sun; the hammering beat of ”one good trout” underscores the solidity of Nick's achievement. At the end, the rolling l l's and long vowel sounds of ”shallow” open the pa.s.sage up-a widening river-particularly after the regular rhythm of the preceding sentence. The final d d in ”wide” circles us back to where we began, with the plosives, as though impelled by an eddying stream. in ”wide” circles us back to where we began, with the plosives, as though impelled by an eddying stream.

As a high school student, Don followed Hemingway's example on the page and off. For a while, Hemingway worked as a journalist, so Don pursued journalism by working on the staff of the St. Thomas Eagle Eagle. He appears in a photo of the group, dated 1947, with a piece of tape stuck comically to his face. The editors.h.i.+p rotated among students. Just as Don was set to take his turn, the priests who oversaw the publication pa.s.sed him over without explanation. He was reminded of the incident that got his father expelled from the Rice Inst.i.tute. The priests considered Don too irreverent, too iconoclastic, to be trusted with the school's staid paper. What made the snub even worse was that Don's talent was undeniable: He had recently received Honorable Mention, Junior Division, for a short story (now lost) in a Scholastic Magazine Scholastic Magazine compet.i.tion. compet.i.tion.

The Eagle Eagle disappointment, and his teacher's charge of plagiarism, infuriated Don. He looked around his school-a place ”surrounded by oak trees, almost on the banks of Buffalo Bayou,” says his friend Pat Goeters. ”The bayou was the habitat of turtles, water moccasins and occasionally skinnydipping boys who wanted to have the rep of being tough guys.” Don saw weary instructors mired in routine, boys worrying about their acne. disappointment, and his teacher's charge of plagiarism, infuriated Don. He looked around his school-a place ”surrounded by oak trees, almost on the banks of Buffalo Bayou,” says his friend Pat Goeters. ”The bayou was the habitat of turtles, water moccasins and occasionally skinnydipping boys who wanted to have the rep of being tough guys.” Don saw weary instructors mired in routine, boys worrying about their acne.

One day at a bus stop, on his way to school, he met a Lamar High School student named Beverly Arnold (nee Bintliff). Her father was involved with real estate and had developed a tony new residential neighborhood in north-west Houston. ”I started dating Don,” Arnold recalls. ”I was going to First Methodist Church. He was a good Catholic, but he would accompany me on some Sunday afternoons when I went to the teenage activities at church. He was the first boy to kiss me, there at the bus stop. When you're fifteen, you know, everything's romantic. Bintliff). Her father was involved with real estate and had developed a tony new residential neighborhood in north-west Houston. ”I started dating Don,” Arnold recalls. ”I was going to First Methodist Church. He was a good Catholic, but he would accompany me on some Sunday afternoons when I went to the teenage activities at church. He was the first boy to kiss me, there at the bus stop. When you're fifteen, you know, everything's romantic.

”Don was brilliant even then. His vocabulary was overwhelming,” she says. ”He wrote me a love letter that said, 'Someday I want to grow up to be a musician or a writer.' And he said, 'I will always love you but I will also always want to be a writer.' ”

Another letter he sent her, along with a dozen Easter roses, reads: Baby: This note is a summary of how I feel about you. If I ever want to back down, which isn't likely, you got it in writing.You're a good kid. I like the way you stand up for me, whether I need it or not. I like the way you look. You are pretty, did you know?I think about you more than I should; its bad for my hard, cynical journalists mind, which I hope to have some day. I like to be with you, which is bad for the don'-give-a-darn att.i.tude I want too.To use a broken down expression-you get the idea.I feel real good about you. I have felt that way for the last couple of weeks; perfectly content. Everything in the world changes, they say. I hope we can keep this. If it is up to me, we will.And remember, you have all my love.Don Pictures of Don at the time show a tall, long-faced boy, laughing uproariously, or squinting wryly even in serious moments. At school he wore a bow tie, a pressed white s.h.i.+rt, and wool pants. In one photo of a teenage swimming party, he looks casually a.s.sured, easy in his body.

Arnold introduced him to her friend Alafair Kane (nee Benbow). ”We ran around in a little crowd,” Kane says. ”Don would have parties at his house. He liked to dance-always a lot of fun, very friendly, a very happy personality.” Benbow). ”We ran around in a little crowd,” Kane says. ”Don would have parties at his house. He liked to dance-always a lot of fun, very friendly, a very happy personality.”

Arnold and Kane recall that he played a horn of some sort-trumpet, perhaps. ”I never heard him play the drums,” Arnold says, ”but Alafair's family had a trap set in their playroom, and he'd go over and perform for them.”

Pat Goeters, a year ahead of Don at St. Thomas, and editor of the Eagle Eagle, met Kane and fell in love with her, he says. Through her brother Sam he met Don, and that's how Don came to write for the paper. ”Recruiting writers among a school full of testosterone-crazed boys wasn't all that easy, but compared to actually getting their copy on deadline it was a snap,” Goeters says. He asked Don to contribute a column, ”Around and About.” At the time, Don's style was a ”Damon Runyan ripoff,” Goeters says. He and Sam considered themselves the serious writers, and Don a bit of a ”lightweight,” but Don's column was funny and entertained their cla.s.smates.

Another friend, Carter Roch.e.l.le, met ”Bo-that's what we called him back then[because] his family lived across the street from my cousin, Mac Caldwell. I spent quite a lot of time in Don's home. He had his own upstairs room-his 'garret'-and even had his own phone extension and portable typewriter, pretty big stuff in those days. We pa.s.sed many an evening there with other friends, making up story lines, talking endlessly about writing (he had already decided that he would be a writer for The New Yorker The New Yorker), listening to jazz on his record player. He was already very well informed about jazz and was an early admirer of Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Stan Kenton. It seems to me that Mrs. Barthelme usually had to break up our klatches in his room or we would have gone on all night.”

Roch.e.l.le says the ”Barthelme family was comfortably situated and solidly cohesive.” Roch.e.l.le's mother and father had both pa.s.sed away, so he lived on his own in an apartment, and worked after school. ”Twice that I recall, Don ran away from home and holed up in my place,” he says. Eventually, ”his father came and pulled him out.”

Don nursed his grievance against the priests for denying him the Eagle Eagle editors.h.i.+p. One day in February 1948, Pat Goeters went looking for Don. ”I found him slouched against the pale green glazed tile wall in the steamy hall outside his home room. I was there to pick up Don's monthly column,” Goeters says. editors.h.i.+p. One day in February 1948, Pat Goeters went looking for Don. ”I found him slouched against the pale green glazed tile wall in the steamy hall outside his home room. I was there to pick up Don's monthly column,” Goeters says.

The boys exchanged their usual greeting. ”Wh'say, Brer Pat?” Don said.

”Wh'say, Brer Don?”

”What tar-baby say?”

”Tar-baby ain't sayin' nothin'.”

”We both wore white, oxford-cloth b.u.t.ton-down dress s.h.i.+rts with cuffs turned twice, faded jeans with no belt, white socks and run-down brown penny loafers,” Goeters says. ”If they had made this the school uniform only about three students would have had to partially modify the way they dressed. Don wore horn-rimmed gla.s.ses which he frequently adjusted on his nose and a perpetual sardonic smile.”

Don said to Goeters, ”Thinking about going to Mexico. Wanna come?”

Goeters wasn't terribly close to Don at this point, but the idea appealed to him. He shared Don's frustration with the school's tight views of literary expression. Besides, he didn't really believe Don was serious. ”But if it was a dare, I wasn't going to be left out,” he says. He asked Don, ”How'd we get there?”

”Hitchhike, I guess.” He ”sounded impatient,” Goeters says.

Don insisted that they stop at a drugstore on Shepard Drive to buy pencils and notebooks. Then he left a note for his folks: ”We've gone to Mexico to make our fortune.” He was two months shy of his seventeenth birthday.

Goeters says that Alafair Benbow was the only person to whom they bothered to say good-bye. She doesn't remember this.

Between them, the boys had thirty dollars. A trucker took them from Houston to San Antonio, where they spent the night in a downtown Y. The next day, they hitched a ride to Laredo, on the Texas-Mexico border. The driver took the car through customs; as he did, the boys, and the other pa.s.sengers from the car, walked across the international bridge. On the other side, Don and Goeters hooked up again with the driver. In Mexico City, the man sheltered the boys while they looked for work. A pa.s.sage from Don's story ”Overnight to Many Distant Cities” (an earlier version of which appears in a piece called ”Departures”) recounts-mostly accurately-the whole affair: In Mexico City we lay with the gorgeous daughter of the American amba.s.sador by a clear, cold mountain stream. Well, that was the plan, it didn't work out that way. We were around sixteen and had run away from home, in the great tradition, hitched various long rides with various sinister folk, and there we were in the great city with about two t-s.h.i.+rts to our names. My friend Herman [Goeters's first name] found us jobs in a jukebox factory. Our a.s.signment was to file the slots in American jukeboxes so that they would accept the big, thick Mexican coins. All day long. No gloves.After about a week of this we were walking one day on the street where the Hotel Reforma is to be found and there were my father and grandfather, smiling. ”The boys have run away,” my father had told my grandfather, and my grandfather had said, ”Hot d.a.m.n, let's go get 'em.” I have rarely seen two grown men enjoying themselves so much.

Details from ”Departures” suggest that the driver who helped the boys clear the final checkpoint may have been a black jazz drummer, steering a big Hudson. He was traveling with a white songwriter and his Hawaiian wife. Don described what happened at the border: ”My friend Herman and I changed all the money we had into one-peso notes with a fifty-peso note on the outside of the wad. We showed the wad to the border officials demonstrating that we would not become a burden upon the State. We had learned this device from the movies.”

He went on: ”After the second border checkpoint had been pa.s.sed, the car stopped at a house and everybody got out to change the tires. The drummer and the songwriter pried the tires off the rims. Herman and I helped. Copper wire, hundreds of feet of it, was wound round each of the rims. Our friends were smuggling copper wire, a scarce item during the War. The benefits of leaving home were borne in on us. We had never met any absolutely genuine smugglers before.”

”Don insisted that we should visit the Mexico City Herald Mexico City Herald, the English language newspaper, and try for a job as staff writers,” Goeters recalls, but nothing came of this attempt. The boys sent telegrams to their families, saying they were fine.

Don's father and his dad flew to Mexico City to find the boys. Once there, they engaged all the street photographers they could find. The photographers made their living taking pictures of tourists, but apparently none of them had snapped the boys. The Barthelmes checked into the Hotel Reforma and waited until Sat.u.r.day night, when the kids, if they were here, would probably head downtown, looking for action. Sure enough, Barthelme spotted them right away. ”Bo! We're sure as h.e.l.l glad to see you boys!” he called across the crowd. ”Hi, Pops,” Don said sheepishly. Goeters had never met Don's family, so he worried when Don ”was willing to talk to these two older men and go back to their hotel with them.” The men had ”obviously been drinking.” Though Don called one of them ”Pops,” this was a ”term he often used in imitation of jazz musicians to refer to almost any male.”

Eventually, Goeters grasped the situation and followed Don and the ”two weaving Americanos” back to their hotel for a ”strained reunion.”

The following morning, the men flew home, with the runaways in tow. Ultimately, the Mexico adventure turned out to be ”more just the end of childhood than the beginning of something,” Goeters says. He felt Don was ”ready to be found and brought back home.”

Despite this and the cheery spin Don put on the incident in his stories, this episode increased the tension with his father. Goeters returned to St. Thomas to finish the term so he could graduate (having lost both the Eagle Eagle and Alafair Benbow), but Don refused to submit again to the priests' authority. His parents finally agreed to let him transfer to Lamar High School, a public facility near the affluent River Oaks neighborhood. and Alafair Benbow), but Don refused to submit again to the priests' authority. His parents finally agreed to let him transfer to Lamar High School, a public facility near the affluent River Oaks neighborhood.

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