ABOUT STEPHEN FOREMAN AND HIS BOOKS
TOEHOLD
PATRICK McMANUS: "This is a wonderful book -- authentic Alaska, deeply funny, and, as the title suggests, about life on its most precarious edge."
KIRKUS REVIEW
“Loners seeking solitude in the Alaskan wilderness find love, and a kind of family. In this colorful debut, Foreman introduces a cast of ornery misfits, each of whom has his or her own reasons for ending up in bleak Toehold, Ala. Lovely Mary Ellen, aka Mel, has been on the run since she was a teenager, fleeing a hateful mother who did her best to sever Mel’s only loving family ties. Cody adored his own mother, a flower child from the Haight, but he’s discovered he can’t be at home anywhere near other people. He prefers the silence of the wilderness or even of the carcasses he expertly mounts as taxidermy. Throw in a few other outsiders, such as Buddy, a former marine who abandoned civilization when his wife took off, vowing to “take his pension and move as far away as he could get and still be in the United States.” Add Native Americans, such as Summer Joe, back from a jail stint for bigamy, and the oversized bartender Sweet-ass Sue, and the small settlement of Toehold is complete. But, like a darker version of Northern Exposure, love blossoms even among these gruff types. The catalyst comes slowly and rather late in this novel, through one of Mel’s typical harebrained schemes. She advertises her rented trailer as the “Golden Bear Lodge” and herself as a hunter. She has, in fact, seen a magnificent golden-furred grizzly and dreams about making him her prize. But when an obnoxious Los Angeles film producer answers her ad, he sees only a scruffy town and a pretty chick. Although the producer remains an annoying stereotype, by the time this delayed action kicks in, Foreman has fleshed out his oddball cast. The ensuing developments basically concern Cody and Mel, but in Foreman’s assured prose the others’ stories come to life as well, for a denouement that flows as smoothly as the river. Oddball romance rich in local color.”
EXCERPT 1 -- TOEHOLD
“I’m here for the action,” Ray went on, “But I don’t want any hassle with it. Bottom line is: I come to the woods to find a little peace and quiet. If you can’t find peace and quiet in the boonies where the hell are you going to find it? Am I right?”
“No, you’re not,” said Cody as he made his way back up to the bar.
“Back off, Cody,” ordered Mel. “Let’s get movin’, Ray.”
“I might have something to tell your dude might save his life,” Cody said. Nothing he said sounded friendly.
“He don’t wanna hear it, and neither do I,” she said.
“Go ahead,” said Ray. “What do you have to say?”
“Good man,” said Cody. “Peace ‘n’ quiet. I’m with you there. Silence in the woods is somethin’ you hear very loudly. It’s the loudest sound there, but, see, you really don’t hear it too much, maybe two, maybe three times during the day. Dawn. Dusk. An hour before light. An hour before dark. You hear it then. It’s when the beasts of the day and the beasts of the night take each other’s place. If you’re still, you can sense them passing through a kind of cease fire zone as they exchange positions in the forest. So, y’see, it’s nearly, but not absolutely, silent. There’s still movement. Time goes by. The third silence is death. You can’t deny it. I’ve seen a lot of predators stalk their prey. They don’t necessarily carry death itself, but they carry the real possibility of it – death on the way, death to come – so they carry it in silence. That’s why a man can sense an animal watching him. You can actually feel the silence. Animals leave the area or stay still as my mounts. A victim – downed prey – is death-in-fact, and that silence is deeper than any. All of a sudden, there’s an absence of life in the forest. You can’t not pay attention to it, it’s so much there. This kind of silence – the third one – isn’t one of peace but of anticipation, an anxious kind, like a dark room when you don’t know what’s in it. Peace – the kind you’re talking about – is only when the woods is filled with the noise that most people love and accept as quiet."
EXCERPT 2 -- TOEHOLD
How Sweet-ass Sue Got to Toehold, Alaska
Sweet-ass Sue weighed eighteen pounds six ounces at birth, larger than a polar bear cub. Her mother complained throughout her entire pregnancy that she felt like she was carrying a cow. Sue was a full blood Athapaskan Indian with a frame like a refrigerator – big, very big, but solid. She was not Walmart Fat at all, just huge. If she had on a football helmet you’d mistake her for a nose tackle. She always wore her raven black hair in two long braids hanging down her back topped with a purple headband. People have a tendency to believe, when somebody’s so big, that deep down inside they’re really just a pussycat. Sweet-ass Sue gave the living lie to such bullroar. She had a heart, but you’d have to dig halfway to China to find it. People knew one thing about her for sure: they didn’t want Sweet-ass as an enemy. They weren’t totally sure they wanted her as a friend, either.
Sue was in her forties, so she just missed out on the time when female athletes were coming into their own. Even so she would have had a tough go of it because her sport of choice was football. So often Sue wished she had been born a boy, not because she wanted to sleep with other girls (which she certainly did not, high school gossip to the contrary) but because she wanted to compete in a man’s game at a man’s level. She considered it a cosmic misfortune that she had been super-sized at birth but handed the sex of a woman. By the time she was sixteen she was six feet three inches tall, weighed two hundred and fifty pounds with the sleek, muscular haunches of a draft horse, and she could bench press three hundred. So Sue decided to right a cosmic wrong and go out for the football team. She was bigger than any of the guys except for the star defensive end who had her by a hair. Still, the coach dug in and said no way. She was a girl; she’d get clobbered; he didn’t want to be responsible for what he considered child abuse.
“Why not take up soccer?” he said. Sue pointed out that their school had no soccer team to which the coach threw up his hands and insisted, “No can do.” Then he pulled his sweat pants out of the crack of his ass, took a sip of his diet Pepsi, and said could she excuse him, he had a practice to prepare for. Sue never had been one to take no for an answer, she decided this called for drastic measures. How to prove that she had the stuff to play football? When she finally thought of a way, she knew somebody was going to get hurt, but she didn’t think it’d be her. Whatever. Sue was willing to take that chance. This kid had guts for days!
“Stop thinking,” she said to herself. “Get to it.”
And she did.
At lunch the next period, in the cafeteria in front of the entire school, she knocked the tray out of the defensive end’s hands and told him to watch where the fuck he was going. He didn’t know what to do.
“Are you gonna apologize or what?” she demanded.
“You bumped into me,” he retorted.
“You calling me a liar?” She went right up in his face. Then she pushed him.
“You better cut this shit out,” he threatened.
“Why? You gonna hit me?” she said.
“You’re a girl, goddamnit,” he squealed totally confused about what the hell was going on here.
“I think you’re a pussy,” she replied.
“What the hell are you?” he said.
“You calling me a pussy? Huh? You insulting my sex? Huh?”
He was completely bewildered, and then she smacked him across the face. “Does that feel like pussy, asshole?” she taunted. “Does it?”
“Let her have it,” shouted one of his teammates. “She’s asking for it.”
“Yeah, kick her ass,” yelled somebody else.
“He can’t,” Sue yelled back. “He’s afraid of a girl. He ain’t nothing but a pussy himself.”
At that, the poor kid lost it and punched Sue so hard she fell backwards into a table. The rest of the students expected to see blood and tears. What they got instead was a smile on Sue’s face. “Is that your best shot?” she wanted to know. “You didn’t kill me with it, and you’re going to remember that mistake for the rest of your life,” at which point she charged head first, speared him in the belly, and landed two hard shots to each side of his jaw before he hit the floor. Later, in the nurse’s office, he didn’t remember anything after the charge. The school still refused to let her play football. In fact, the administration refused to let her continue as a student. They kicked her out and wouldn’t let her back in the door. Not that she gave a shit. As soon as she came of age, Sue joined the Coast Guard and struck out for what she hoped would be more interesting than watching TV and chewing whale blubber.
It was there that she got her nickname and met the love of her life.
***
The Coast Guard wasn’t as interesting as she thought it might be. Sue found herself wishing she had joined another branch of the service, the Navy or Air Force, so at least she could have gone some place exotic. Her first tour of duty was in the Aleutian Islands which, as far as she was concerned, was a serious dearth of imagination on the part of the bonehead who made the decision to station her there. Stationing an Alaskan Indian in the Aleutian Islands. Come on! Where’s the brains in that? So, Sue put in for a transfer to Key West because she heard it was a happenin’ town, only she got shipped to Mobile Bay off Alabama instead. Shore duty. Perfect. A six foot three inch woman of color in the redneck capital of the world. Sue was in a world of misery. She thought of going AWOL, someplace in the Arctic that didn’t have a name. How would they ever find her? She decided they wouldn’t and was damn close to taking off when a chunk of pure, unadulterated happiness came her way.
Each day when she got off work Sue would head for the gym where she’d bench press herself into near catatonia. Then she’d go outside to the track and run for miles. After all that, it didn’t matter to her where she was. She’d sleep until reveille the next morning.. One day, after her workout, she climbed into the stands on the side of the track to stretch her tired legs out in the late day sun. Hey, now! What…was…that? Hercules in a sweat suit? Oh…my…God. There, walking into the center of the infield, was the biggest guy Sue had ever seen. Taller than she was. Heavier by seventy pounds at least. Bulked. Ripped. Gorgeous, so gorgeous she had to turn her head away. It was like looking at an eclipse of the sun. He did eclipse the sun. He eclipsed everydamnthing in creation. And he was a man of color though she couldn’t tell his country of origin. All she knew was that in about three seconds she wanted to go there. With him. Now. That very instant.
She watched as he took off his sweat suit and stood there in shorts and t-shirt. He made Mr. Universe look like a famine victim. Was he even real? Was he some kind of special effect? He leaned over, unzipped a ballistic cloth bag he had carried onto the field with him, and took out a steel ball the size of a cantaloupe. As he hoisted it in one hand to his right shoulder and drew a half-circle in the dirt with the left toe of his Adidas, Sue realized what it was: a shotput. She watched mesmerized as he tucked the shot next to his chin, held his left arm straight out and up from his shoulder, whirled his massive body like the Tazmanian devil, and launched the shot. It sailed like a cannon ball fired from a frigate. My God, the torque in that man’s body! The graceful immensity of it all. Sue watched him work out all the rest of that afternoon and the next, never failing to marvel that such bulk could move so fluidly.
***
The closest thing Sue had heard thus far in the way of sexual endearment was that fucking her was like hanging onto the steering wheel of a runaway eighteen wheeler truck on a steep downhill grade with no seat belt. Men did not whisper sweet nothings in her ear. They begged for mercy. Ultimately, as far as Sue was concerned, they were a bunch of little itty bitty things, not worth the time or effort. If she had lived in Japan she would have hung out with Sumo wrestlers, but it seemed she wasn’t going to get any further than Mobile. OK, she was tough; she could live without it…until the day the man who put the shot walked onto that field. She lost her breath; her heart crumbled like a cookie; her legs went weak. On the third day he walked over to her and said, “Hi, sexy.” By the time those three syllables crossed his lips she belonged to him heart, soul, and all the good parts in between.
He was a full-blooded South Sea Islander, a Samoan, which accounted for his size. She didn’t know it, yet, but her lover to be was hung like a whale. Once they were intimate, which was two steaks and six beers after they met, she took to calling him “Moby Dick,” and he took to whispering “Sweet Ass” in her ear. When they coupled from behind he said her ass looked like a big, beefy heart. He’d explode into her like a broke loose fire hydrant which set off a chain reaction of orgasms that put them both onto a new planet. When he came he’d kiss her hard on the spot where her ass met her spine, then he’d whoop and cry out, “Oh, Lord, thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” His name was Manny, and he was the love of Sue’s life. They became inseparable, like a brace of matched Percherons in a field with no fence.
***
Manny was the type of man who always went for the gold, no matter what he did. The thing about the shotput was that he intended to compete in the Olympics, intended to break the record and make his name, then open a gym and eventually a chain of gyms in southern California. He and Sue would be equal partners. Maybe they’d call their place “In the Buff” or “Buff It Out.” They discarded the names “Gym Dandy,” “Butt Factory,” and “Venus Envy,” though Sue kind of giggled with the idea of calling it “Moby Dick’s,” maybe have a logo of a giant sperm whale on their business cards, but Manny wanted to keep that monicker just their little secret, well, maybe not so little but only theirs nonetheless. He truly was a sweetheart, her sweetheart. “Old Faithful” she sometimes called him for a change of pace.
***
The thing about sudden death is: it’s so sudden. One instant the person is there, and the next nanosecond he isn’t. There’s the body. It’s still warm. There’s sweat on the brow. The person still holds whatever it was he was holding when he died unless it rolled from his hand in which case the object was still there, was just that second held in his hand which still has the shape of the thing. Maybe the eyes remain open, but they don’t see you anymore, those eyes that were always filled with you. Where did the person go so quickly? Why did they leave their loved one so empty, so scared, so desperate, so all in an instant so achingly alone?
***
Even though she adored him, Sue was not the type of woman to always sit in the stands and watch her man do his thing. Manny sensed this (and, if he hadn’t she would have eventually told him), and one day at practice he strolled over to where she sat and said, “Come on, doll, I’ll show you how.” He was having a little difficulty catching his breath, but he’d really been working out hard. The trials were coming up, and Manny intended to intimidate the competition from the first toss. He’d been beating the record all week long in practice, and he was ready for war.
They walked side by side to the throwing circle, bumping hips as they went, playing around. He picked up the sixteen pound shot and was showing her how to hold it when, seemingly out of the blue, he said, “Sue?”
“What, babe?” she answered.
He fell to the ground beside her and was dead by the time she knelt down. The autopsy showed that his heart was simply too small for his body. It was congenital, was always only a matter of time. Who knew? For Sue, the love of her life had come and gone. The rest was just marking time.
Sue’s was a big-shouldered grief. Everybody thought she was really tough about it, but Sue knew that if she uttered even a single syllable she’d cut loose a black hole of Hell and sorrow. She’d swallow herself up. Grief kept her moving like a vagrant hopping freight trains. It took her to the end of the world but not beyond, for her sense of ultimate survival was as big as the rest of her. It stepped in at the right time. She stopped at the edge and settled. If ever there was a place with a chance that somebody big as Sue might pass through, that place was Alaska. She thought, Toehold. Some time or other you’ve got to take a stand, and where does matter.
WATCHING GIDEON
PATRICK McMANUS: "Watching Gideon is the best novel I've read in a long while. Foreman so completely captures honky-tonk men and women and assorted hustlers of the 1950's variety, it is downright eerie."
EXCERPT 1-- WATCHING GIDEON
"One bright day, shortly after Seaman First Class Jubal Pickett returned home to Natchez, Mississippi from the war, he and his son, Gideon, going on three, went for a walk. Gideon wrapped his chubby little hand around Jubal’s trigger finger and lurched along beside his father with happy determination. It was during this period of time that Jubal had his dream. In his dream, he and Gideon were walking together across a meadow somewhere in Yugoslavia when artillery shells began exploding all around them. Jubal didn’t know what they were doing in Yugoslavia since his tour of duty with the Navy ended early with a sucking chest wound at Pearl Harbor, but that was his dream and there they were. In the instant, without thought, without hesitation, Jubal threw himself on top of his son to protect him with his own body as the shells screamed around them. In actuality, Jubal’s dream was so real he leapt out of bed and cracked his head against the bedside table on his way to the floor. In real life, he would die for his child, and Jubal knew this like he drew breath. The thought came to him that the Old Testament Abraham was one sick son-of-a-bitch. He, Jubal Pickett, loved his son so much that he’d never dare harm him. “Wouldn’t give you a nickel for him, wouldn’t take a million,” Jubal would say with a fond wink in Gideon’s direction. As far as Jubal was concerned, a man who’d kill his own son wasn’t but scum. Anybody’d do that to his own kid ought to be spread-eagled on top a hill of fire ants with corn syrup poured over his skin and his eyelids held open with cactus needles. The day Jubal realized this was the day he stopped believing in the benevolence of any God who would ask such a thing."
EXCERPT 2
"Jubal came from a long line of horse traders, boatmen, roustabouts, roughnecks, and thieves sometime late in the 18th century. His people, originally from the Scottish highlands, found themselves in the blue grass country of what would one day become the state of Kentucky, yet they were not bumpkins, peasants, yes, but canny and shrewd. The progenitor of the family, a man named Sid Pickett, came over as an indentured servant, but he learned horse-trading from his contract master, bested him with cunning deals on the side, and bought his way out before the end of his servitude. An astute observer, he noticed that boats, as opposed to horses, didn’t kick, bite, excrete, or eat, and so he became a member of a breed known up and down the Mississippi River as “Kaintucks”: hard, wild frontiersmen who trusted no one, who drank, fought, and built flatboats that they floated down the Mississippi River loaded with goods. They’d sell their commodities at Natchez, sell the boat for lumber, stuff the cash in their pockets, and walk home along the Natchez Trace, four hundred and forty miserable miles of footpath from Natchez, Mississippi through a little corner of Alabama and on up to Nashville, Tennessee.
Not surprisingly, bandits considered the Trace a mother lode of opportunity. They were merciless men who took the hard earned cash of their victims with impunity, and thought no more of plucking a person’s life than plucking a blade of grass.
More than once did Sid Pickett fight his way out of an ambush, but only once was he bested. Two men waylaid him and took his money. They’d gotten the jump, and they’d hurt him, but they hadn’t killed him, and that was their mistake. He managed to escape and flee, however, and instead of continuing home, George circled back and tracked them down. One of the robbers had walked deeper into the woods for a little privacy. Pickett waited until the man dropped his leggings and squatted, then he bludgeoned the unsuspecting bastard from behind with a stone the size of a land turtle, and damn near tore his head off his neck. He came up behind the other one, too, hammered him with a blow to the back of his neck, and tied the stunned bandit’s hands in front of him before the thief could figure out what was happening. Then Sid grabbed his hatchet, chopped off both his hands, took his money, and left the poor wretch howling in the woods. There was a dark side to Sid Pickett. He conceived of revenge in tragic proportions."
NON FICTION -- Moby Bear
Some years ago, my wife and I lived on a small place in the Bitterroot Valley of Montana, on a rise at the base of Ward Mountain. We had sixty acres, six chickens, two horses, a garden that yielded radishes the size of peas, one outhouse, and no telephone. A skunk got the chickens, people in Hollywood forgot who we were, and the house we lived in was so tiny we bumped our heads on the bedroom ceiling. But we were newly in love and learning to live together. Other people had hardships. We had adventures. Our place backed onto two million acres of the Bitterroot-Selway Wilderness, and every animal that lived on the continent lived in our backyard. We rode the same trails as the elk herd, knew where the old whitetail buck hid in the swamp, watched grouse drum in the springtime, and coyote pups pogo along behind their mothers. At night, we'd soak in the hot springs and see every star in the western sky. We even had our own bear.
Judging by the weathered condition of the wood he had clawed on the trunks of trees, he (I always thought of this bear as "he") had lived on the place a lot longer than the two of us; and, judging by the height of the claw marks (A bear stands up on his hind legs to claw a tree), he was a pretty good size for a black bear. My guess was six feet standing straight up. I had no quarrel with him. In fact, I was happy to have him as a neighbor. He kept to himself, which is what bears do, and for years I never even saw him. Oh, I'd see his sign all the time: large rocks flipped over to get to the ants and grubs underneath, fresh claw marks on the trees, pieces of hair pulled off when he crawled under the barbed wire fence, scat the size of softballs. I even heard him once in awhile on the ridge north of the house. He sounded like he had a fierce stomachache, and I imagined he must be getting old to make such a noise, more like a groan than a growl. I always kept a lookout for him, though, especially when I was hunting deer. Sometimes I'd come close. He'd be around or had been around, but he was too sly to be seen. Very few creatures possess the extraordinary sense of hearing and smell that a bear does. The closest I came that I know of was one afternoon when I decided to deliberately look for him. An Athapaskan Indian once told me that if you're hunting a bear the bear knows it, and that evening at dusk I came to believe that the statement was true.
I cut through the willow swamp that bordered the property because I knew he used it from time to time. It was always wet, and on a couple of occasions I actually saw tracks in the mud. They would be fresh, but not fresh enough. A truly fresh track in a swamp would have the water trickling back into it. That day, right there, right then, water was trickling into a print of his right front paw. He had been there within seconds, and I was right behind him. Another track was just a few feet ahead. More mud lay beyond that, but the tracks stopped there. It looked like he veered off over a carpet of broken willow branches. That would leave no sign. Smart bear. He had his radar switched on. I crossed the willow carpet as carefully as I could to avoid snapping a stick, each twig being a potential firecracker of sound. What helped to smother the noise I made was a fifteen foot waterfall which ran off the top of our back pasture. The falls tumbled down wildly over two uprooted trees, and I exited the willow swamp at the base of it. This was a place I visited often. It was a place of peace for me, one where I could sit upwind for great stretches of time and, cloaked by the unruly water, simply watch what came by. Once a whitetail faun passed so close to me I could have touched it, and once I watched a mink hop across the stream.
With the wind in my face and my footsteps muffled by the grass, I climbed the hill next to the falls. At the top of the hill was a copse of pine and aspen. On the other side of the trees was a small clearing, and, on the other side of that, a trail used by elk to take them through the forest and back up the mountain. I crossed the clearing and stopped by the trail. The day was well into dusk by then, time to turn around and head back. In a minute, I said to myself, in a minute. It was so quiet. I listened carefully. I wished my ears were as powerful as those radio receivers deployed to pick up transmissions from deep space.
I knew he was there. By this time it was too dark to see anything except the gray and black shapes of the bushes and trees. And, of course, he was black. He could have been any one of these. He was out there, and all his senses were trained on me. It made me uneasy. You don't want to get too close to a bear, and you don't want one to get too close to you. I didn't move. I thought, "I'll give him time to get away." It wouldn't take him more than a few seconds to clear out, and then I could head back to the house. I waited, didn't move, waited some more. "He must be beyond me by now," I thought. Bears just don't hang around when a human's in the vicinity. So I took a step back towards the house, back in the direction from which I had just come. That step triggered a roar so loud it sounded as if it had been slammed into my ears from stereo headphones turned to full volume. The sound was everywhere, followed by a noise such as the chomping of jaws would make, a sure sign of aggression in a bear. This time I located the sound in front of me. What this meant was that all the while I thought I was tracking him, he had circled around behind and was tracking me. He didn't need to let me know he was there. I swear I think he did it on purpose. He was warning me to back off. I did what he wanted. I retreated backwards a few steps then circled widely to my right as far as possible away from where he was.
The next day a neighbor drove over in his ancient pickup and asked me if I'd had any trouble with bears lately. Frank was an old curmudgeon who herded sheep and lived alone in a trailer about a mile away. One had taken a sheep a couple of days ago, and last night it actually came up to his front steps.
"Want to see somethin' crazy?", he asked.
He took a beer can from the cab of his truck.
"Lookit this," he said.
The beer can had a large hole poked in the top.
"It was that goddamn bear," he continued. "I left a six pack on the front steps when I went out to check the sheep, and that goddamn bear poked holes in the cans and drank up all the beer."
Of course, I didn't believe him, but he had five more empty cans with claw punctures on them that he swore was proof. I told him about my encounter with a bear that same night, and Frank was certain it had to be the same one. This bear was dangerous, he said. It'd lost its fear of men and somebody'd better shoot it before something serious happened.
The next morning there was a fresh pile of bear scat outside our living room window as if a bear had stood there watching us. My wife said she didn't think there was anything to worry about because we were inside and he wasn't, but I said to her to imagine that, to a bear on the other side of the glass, we looked to him the way meat wrapped up in cellophane looks to us. I didn't really believe this and neither did she, not really. It was still spooky, though.
A couple of days later Frank came by again and reported that this time the goddamn bear took his trailer door off its hinges, broke into his refrigerator, and drank another six pack. Frank was in town playing poker at the time. He wanted me to come over and see the damage for myself. Damn if there wasn't a broken front door, claw scratches on the refrigerator, and a mess inside. Frank was going to start sleeping with a twelve gauge shotgun loaded with double ought buckshot. I began to wonder whether, in fact,.we did have a problem on our hands.
The next couple of days were uneventful, that is, if any day spent in country as exhilarating as Montana can be called uneventful. What I meant was there’d been no sign of bear, and there were no calls from Frank of any more trouble. That evening I took my wife to Missoula to catch a flight to New York, but when I got back it was another story. As my headlights swept by the porch, they spooked a bear at the front door. When the lights hit him, he ran and disappeared behind the house. I barely got a glimpse, but there was no doubting what it was. He hadn't broken into the house, but he was about to. The top screen on the screen door was clawed to shreds. When I went around the back of the house I saw that he had broken into the garbage bin, had literally torn the lid off and scattered garbage everywhere. I spoke to Frank the next day, and he reported that the bear had broken into his storage shed and eaten a bag of oats.
"He's a menace," said Frank, and I had to agree. "We gotta stop him before it's too late," Frank added. Yeah, yeah. I agreed again, but this was not something I really wanted to do.
Reluctantly, the next day, I set an ambush. I thawed out a lake salmon I caught earlier in the spring, wrapped it in bacon, put it in a bucket, and poured molasses over it. This was Godiva chocolate to a bear. I chambered my Ruger, thirty ought six, single shot rifle with a two hundred and twenty grain hand load. It was a deadly accurate piece, and a bullet like that in the right place would pretty much stop anything around. I took the bucket out to the swamp and set it down where I'd have a clear lane of fire, then I climbed a hill opposite the target area and sat down with my back against a tree. That way my outline would be broken up, and my scent would be over the bear's head. I put the rifle on my knees and waited. It was early afternoon, an unusually sunny and hot day for October. I knew I'd probably have a long wait ahead of me, but my idea was to get into position way before anything knew I was there. I was comfortable, too comfortable, and warm, too warm, and I proceeded to fall asleep. My eyes grew heavy, my head dropped to my chest, and I was out of there. When I woke up about an hour later, the bucket was overturned, and the bait was gone. Did this bear have enough sense to wait until I actually fell asleep, or was this just some kind of uncanny coincidence? The truth was I was dealing with a very sly critter. You have to admire a bear like that.
The next day I mixed another concoction of raw salmon, bacon, and molasses, put it in the same spot, and climbed back up to my tree. The day was a little cooler, and I purposely underdressed to keep myself alert. I sat and waited, and waited, and waited, an hour, two hours, going on three, and suddenly there he was. One second the clearing was empty, and the next he was in it. He simply materialized with his nose in the food bucket. He was an awesome animal, bigger than I had imagined, three hundred pounds or more, and his thick, black hide seemed to flow as if it were underwater. It glistened in the sunlight like an oil slick. The bulk of him was staggering, so much strength, so much mass. I saw no reason to kill such an extraordinary animal except that he had trespassed into the human sphere and so, according to the accumulated wisdom of men in the woods, he had become dangerous and therefore had to die.
I did not like having been chosen the executioner. It was like getting an order to be on a firing squad. Even as I lifted the rifle slowly to my shoulder I wished I were somewhere else. Even more, I wished the bear were somewhere else, somewhere way back up in the mountains where he could mosey around without a bounty on his massive head. But, at that moment, I didn't think I had a choice, so I centered the crosshairs just back of his shoulder and eased off the safety. He was sideways to me, an easy shot, two pounds of trigger pressure away from instant mortality. His snout was still in the bucket. What would he know? One minute his mouth would be full of something delicious, and the next one would be oblivion. Chances were he'd die happier than I would. Just squeeze the trigger, bucko, and save your neighbors a lot of aggravation. But, I didn't want to, and I could not. He took his snout from the bucket and looked up in my direction. I'm sure he didn't see me because bears don't see very well. It was simply a reflex reaction, a quick check of the territory before he finished his meal. He put his snout back in the bucket, snuffled around, and ambled off through the thicket. I snicked the safety back on, retrieved my bucket, and returned to my house. Frank would have had a major heart attack. I made myself some supper, and went to bed early. About three o'clock in the morning somebody pounded on the front door. It was Frank, and he was whirling.
"I got him, goddamnit, I got him, " he hollered. "Y'gotta come up to my place and see this!"
I climbed into my truck and followed him. All the way to Frank's place I wavered between relief and sorrow. His lights were on, and, sure enough, there was the body of a bear sprawled across his front steps. Frank had baited him with cans of beer, and he had taken the bait.
"Got him right in the middle of a can of Bud," Frank crowed.
And he had. Except that this bear was smaller than the one I had seen that afternoon, and this one was cinnamon colored. Also his teeth were worn down, and he was kind of skinny, an older bear and none too healthy, the sort of bear that would trespass for any kind of a meal. He was not the one I had baited into the swamp. I stayed up the rest of the night helping Frank skin out the bear. Frank offered me a roast as soon as he had the butchering done. I just didn't want to disappoint him. I said yeah, great, but I really didn't want one.
MEMOIR IN PROGRESS -- The Education Of A White Boy
MORGAN STATE AND THE UNITED STATES MARINE CORPS
Two songs, both hymns, and only two have the power to bring me to tears: We Shall Overcome and The Marine Corps Hymn. Each branch of the military has its own song. Only the Corps has a hymn. Its third and final stanza follows.
If the army and the navy
Ever look on Heaven's scene
They will find the streets are guarded
By United States Marines
The Marines. The Chosen Few. The Righteous. . Heaven's Own. Those Pearly Gates: Our celestial Duty Station. In boot camp on Parris Island we sang it every night as the last thing we did before hitting the rack. When we sang it we ascended. We filled our lungs with air, and we ascended. Seventy-five testosterone fueled boots -- Uncle Sam's Misguided Children -- reporting for duty. We were invincible. That's what they told us. That's what we believed.
We shall overcome
We shall overcome
We shall overcome some day
Deep in my heart
I do believe
We shall overcome some day
We Shall Overcome was sung like a benediction at the end of meetings during the early years of the civil rights movement when Black and White together would form a circle, put our arms around each other's shoulders, sway gently, and sing out with all our hearts. Regardless of how the day went it ended in love and hope. We had purpose. We had goal. We would make the world a better place. We had been called.and we accepted.
Both hymns continue to fuel the courage to stand tall in my own way for my own beliefs because when something is right you feel it deep down in your guts, and if you don't do anything about it you are a coward and you must live as a coward forever. What the Marine Corps taught me, and then what the civil rights movement taught me was that my beliefs, if I held them, meant that I had to act on them. I had to bear witness. If I didn't deep in my heart I would know that I was a coward. I could never live that way in peace.
Throughout my years at Morgan I was still in the Marines and would be until graduation. I finished active duty then served my reserve commitment with a combat engineer battalion in Baltimore: reconnaissance training at Little Creek, Virginia; amphibious warfare training on Vieques (then a naval bombing range; now an elegant resort); explosives at Courthouse Bay, Advanced Infantry Training at Camp Lejeune, other places, other things. It didn't kill me, and I'm the better for it. For six years I stayed Marine Corps ready, a stretch that happened to coincide with the burgeoning civil rights movement. About that same period of time, maybe a little earlier, Rosa Parks stood tall in refusing to move to the back of the bus, I, a slick sleeve grunt, stood on that parade field at graduation from Parris Island with the full knowledge that I would not desert my friends or the creed I worked so hard to earn.
The Marines taught me, "Remain calm. Return fire." The civil rights movement taught me, "Remain calm. Remain calmer."
I didn't do much. I regret I didn't do more. But I did what I did, and I'll do it again if called. At 74 my body is weaker, but my convictions are stronger. Fear I felt when younger has gradually disappeared. To quote John Garfield at the end of Body and Soul, "What're you gonna do, kill me? We all die."
I had never planned to stay there. I certainly had never planned to go there. After all, only colored people went there. But I was white. And it was in the south. The fifties were only yesterday. My Uncle Frank cringed when he heard their music. "Goddamn jungle..." he'd mutter. OK, since I had never planned to go there, and I had never planned to stay there, what was I doing there and why had I stayed? In the Spring of 1962, Morgan State College, Baltimore, Maryland, had a student body of 2,600 students, all but two of them -- a nun and one eccentric co-ed -- Black. For a Jewish boy coming of age in this era there were three non-negotiables: circumcision, Bar Mitzvah, and a college diploma, preferably in law, medicine, or orthodontia. These three were existential imperatives. The Hebrew trifecta. Without them a male child would not exist as a Jew.
I should have had my college diploma in 1962 having graduated high school in 1958. though I tripled my degree of difficulty by flunking out three times. I got an A in English, a C in philosophy, and an F in everything else, including ROTC and phys. ed., rebelling against authority being one of my strong suits. Given this, reasons still remaining murky, I enlisted in the Marine Corps. Once on Parris Island my Drill Instructor bellowed in my face, "What’re you doin in my Marine Corps, maggot?" "Sir, it's safer than being at home, sir!" The words just came blurting out. Home life had been precarious to say the least. My mother designated it a free fire zone. Any object that could be used as a weapon – baseball bat, hanger, cane, hairbrush, knife – was if she could get close enough. Once she went after my brother with a baseball bat. He jumped out of the way, and she split the top of a vanity. Anyway, my DI's expression was one of utter disdain. "Get outta my sight, maggot!" he sneered.
I trained as a combat engineer, and now once again walked civilian streets with few skills except how to booby trap an anti-tank mine and freeze while a sand flea crawled in my ear. What now? I thought about going back on active duty, but authority -- remember that one? -- still not my strong suit. What else? Drug store clerk? Produce manager at the chain grocery? Custodian at the local public school? Jews didn't do these jobs!
A neighbor, a white woman, worked in the Dean's office at Morgan and suggested I give it some thought. Dean Whiting, Dean of Students, was a reasonable man. Call him. I did, and without any memorable thoughts on a hot June day found myself crossing the quad to the administration building. Its bright white Grecian columns blinded me. I remember squinting to see and the feeling of my legs climbing the steps. Once inside the coolness of the interior settled around me. Summer school had not yet started. The halls were empty. I was probably wearing desert boots so my crepe soles made no sound. Neither did anything else. The quiet of an empty warehouse. Where was the dean's office? OK, there it is. Straighten up. Let's do this.
Dean Whiting wore a sport coat, tie, and really gentle smile. His office was full of books. I felt at ease in a way I never feel in a room without books. I don't trust you unless there's a stack of books on the floor beside your chair as well as your bedside table, preferably, each one about something else. I can't remember the details of our conversation but the upshot of it was that he allowed me to enroll in two courses for summer school, both English, I'm sure. The idea was that if I did well he would consider me a provisional student meaning I'd be allowed to enroll in a regular semester for four courses, twelve credits. We'd go on from there, see where we're at, what we'd do. Well, I knew exactly what I was going to do. I was going to ace those courses, all six of them, because, of course, since Morgan was a colored school it was an easy school. I'd score good grades then transfer to a good school, a white school. That was the plan. However, when the time came for me to transfer -- I had scored five A's and one B -- something had changed. I didn't consider myself politicized (I doubt I even thought about it), but Rosa Parks had refused to stand up, Negro college students from North Carolina had refused to leave a white lunch counter, and Malcolm was called Malcolm on campus even though most of the Morgan community did not yet want a separatist nation. Martin Luther King was Martin. Most students at Morgan were working towards a piece of the American pie, conservative dress – sport coat, tie, not a pair of jeans anywhere. Everybody carried a briefcase, coeds carried pocketbooks and wore white gloves when appropriate. Sometimes you’d see a co-ed sporting a Jackie Kennedy pill box hat perched perfectly and the faculty, all of whom had attended schools like Harvard, Stanford, Chicago, and Yale, returned to the community and dedicated themselves to help their folks do just that. The campus was vibrant in ways I had never before experienced. Black Power hadn't yet appeared but it was on its way. Stokely was making himself known. Black Power, when it finally surfaced, made perfect sense.
The true magic of it all was Morgan's faculty. Encyclopedic knowledge delivered with the passion of a preacher. The profs were hungry to do it, and the students were hungry to get it. TED Talks didn’t exist at the time, but had they it would have seemed that every lecture was a TED Talk. I was beginning to know things, and the more I knew the more I wanted to know, the more I did know, those delightful subtleties that come with rigorous, creative thought. I read James Baldwin's "Another Country" and understood it. Morgan was not an ideological campus -- it was an intellectual and creative one -- still, I read slave narratives, was introduced to characters like Marcus Garvey, writers like Ralph Ellison, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, Charles Chestnutt-- the entire Harlem Renaissance -- James Weldon Johnson's brilliant, "God's Trombones", and Chaucer's tales; the poetry of Phyllis Wheatley and that of Emily Dickenson; Richard Wright, Bigger Thomas, Hawthorne, Hester Prynne; the art of Romare Beardon; the frescoes of Giotto; the music of Scott Joplin with a whisper of John Cage. The point is: I learned twice as much as I would have at a "good" school.
The point is: I stayed, grew, and graduated.
A Fulbright was awarded.
Graduate school at Yale was next.
I did just fine.
A GIRL I ONCE KNEW AT MORGAN
I remember her walk. I'd be sitting in the student union when she'd come in, smile, and walk over to me. She had a wonderful walk -- slow and easy, fluid, without a hint of effort. She'd walk over to me and then we'd sit there and talk, about nothing much. We just talked. Talk was easy, too. It was January of 1963, and I was in rehearsal for the first performance of my first play. She was in the Ira Aldridge Players, the school's drama society. Now that I was sort of a playwright, so was I. I don't remember what she did in the group nor do I remember how we met, but being in the club broke down barriers, and we began to talk. Her voice sounded so pleasant with just a hint of a southern accent. She was slender and very dark. I was Jewish and pale as a biscuit. We must have had crushes on each other, but I remember being with her was like a slow canoe ride across a lake rather than the turbulence of shooting whitewater. I don't remember being on guard for rocks, but I must have been, and she must have been, too. After all, it was 1963 in a southern city. She was Black, and I was White. You can fill in the blanks, but I'm here to tell you it was innocent and pristine. We were still children of the fifties.
Somewhere in here Dr. Turpin told me he'd made arrangements for the play to be produced in New York. The Ira Aldridge players, cast and crew, would be headed for the bright lights of Off-Broadway on stage at the Columbia Teacher's College way uptown but New York City nonetheless. Marion and I would be hundreds of miles from our hometown. I doubt that was lost on either of us. This is what I remember: nothing about rehearsals or performance but a taxi ride with Marion Tyree down to Greenwich Village to see Jean Genet's "The Blacks" with a young actor named Louis Gossett. Another couple shared the cab with us: a friend and fellow student from Morgan, another Marine, Reg Kearney, and his date, a coed from Barnard. I still don't know how he managed to pull that one off in the limited time we were in the city, but he did. Reggie had hit the trifecta: she was zaftig, white, and Jewish. Reggie was in heaven. We were all in the back seat, so I sat as close to Marion as I'd ever been. I cautiously put my arm around her, and she settled in. Nestled in. It was a small move and gentle, and felt so right. After the show (which was electrifying) we walked to a restaurant, and, for the first time, we held hands, right there, out in the open, we held hands. At first I thought every set of eyes in New York City was on us, and then I realized none of them were. We held hands and walked to the restaurant, and I was happy. I was a produced playwright, and I was holding hands with Marion Tyree.
When Marion’s grandchildren were grown she told them about me. “He was a white boy,” she said. “No, grandma, no,” they screamed. “And he was Jewish,” she said. “Grandma, no,” they yelped in disbelief. Then came the kicker.”And he was a good kisser, too,” she said, and laughed when they squealed and went wide-eyed. “Oh, no, grandma, you didn’t!” “Yes, I did,” said Marion, totally delighted with their reaction. She and I still talk by phone once in awhile, although we haven’t seen each other since those days at Morgan. Still, Marion Tyree remains one of my most treasured memories.
