Novel

Sunday, March 13

Brew was feeling better, after a week of being slightly down, from caffeine withdrawal.

He had temporarily lost his joie de vivre.

He had even begun to doubt the wisdom of organizing his book the way he had organized it, with alternating chapters named Novel and Diary, and a chronological account of how he had come to see the close connection between, or among Americana music, folk art, and vernacular writing, ending with a flourish by reporting on the homegrown powwow at Big Chief Visions' yard, or either snapping off the book and putting the powwow in another book, his next book, as he did with the Florida Literary Arts Coalition small press conference.

The FLAC conference wasn't about how can we, as small presses, get books people want to read out to them, it was about how can we, as small presses associated with university writing programs, get more grant money to publish books nobody but people in university writing programs, as students or instructors, wants to read.

Brew no longer expected to receive a grant.

But that left him free to ridicule the people who did. Who fought for them. By excluding people like Brew.

People like us, who answer the telephone.

Bukowski listed his phone number.

It was Friday.

Brew was going to clean the house today.

Then he might go to a matinee. To see the new Bruce Willis movie, Hostage.

Last time he cleaned the house, mopping the floors made his back twinge. He wasn't used to using those muscles.

For supper he would heat up a tomato gravy he made and cook fresh pasta. Spaghetti was always better the second day.

Also, this weekend he was going to help Brenda plant pole beans.

And he might have to go to Howard's Creek to get roofing tin. They didn't do that last weekend.

Brenda said if he didn't feel like writing he should get some exercise. Go to the beach with a green crab net and red Vidalia onion sack and bring home speckled-speeder crabs, surf clams, and cockle shells. Make scungilli marinara out of left-handed whelk.

Stalking the blue-eyed scallop. In St. Joe Bay.

He and Brenda watched The Story of the Weeping Camel last night.

Tonight they'd watch The Motorcycle Diaries.

Brew ate lunch at a Popeye's. It reminded him of Tucker. A Popeye's was near his apartment, and sometimes, on a weekend, he ate there.

He had a two-room apartment. The living room had a small sofa, a reading chair, and a good light. There was a desk to put his computer on and a place for a telephone. That's where he wrote, with his back to the television set.

In Lilburn, he didn't have a television set, but he bought one in Tucker, to watch the weather on the evening news, and to watch rented video tapes. When you ride a bike to work, you pay attention to the weather.

Soon Balder would be home, Brew would give him his car back, and ride a bike to work.

The other room had a double bed, a kitchenette, and a table to eat at. He cooked most of his meals at home.

Well, he cooked supper. Breakfast and lunch he ate at the factory, or at a restaurant, on the weekends.

Brew took his laundry to a laundromat in a shopping center near his house that had a drop-off service.

On Fridays, after work, he would get a medium pizza and a small pitcher of draft beer at a Magic Mushroom near his house. That's a chain of pizza restaurants in Atlanta.

He'd watch a rented movie and drink a six-pack of beer at home, Friday night.. Most Saturdays, Brew would go to a matinee, eat out Saturday night, and read, or watch a movie, at the house.

He didn't drink beer on Sunday night, or on work nights. But he did drink beer on Friday and Saturday nights, or at parties with his co-workers.

Brew went to maybe three parties with his co-workers, whom he got along with okay, although he didn't really have anything in common with them. Many of them were Republican, owned stocks, and thought they were free-market capitalists, rather than proletarians. Brew thought he was a proletarian. A working-stiff.

In a strike, his co-workers would be expected, as salaried personnel, and members of management, to cross a picket line and continue working, doing the union members' jobs.

Luckily, while Brew was there, the union didn't strike, because Brew would not cross a picket line. If it cost him his job.

For years, he didn't eat table grapes, and he would not drink Coors beer.

A quiet life.

Most nights and weekends Brew wrote on his books.

When Balder went overseas, he gave Brew his computer, which had a hard drive and a modem, so Brew was online, at home.

He didn't have his own web site yet, but he had email, and could surf the Internet. He had retired the old Colt Commodore he wrote so many books on, an 8088 with two 5¼" floppy disk drives and a dot-matrix printer. He now had an inkjet printer and a 3.5" diskette drive, to carry work back and forth to work with.

He wrote on his books at slow periods at work.

He kept up with his work assignments, but in his spare time, instead of goofing off, he wrote.

Balder flew home from Okinawa and got discharged.

Owen was playing at a bluegrass festival in Elba, Alabama. Brew and Brenda picked Balder up at the Panama City airport, in his car, and they all drove to Elba, to see Owen.

Owen and Jean were living together in Athens, where they had moved, from Johnson City, when she graduated from college, and took a job in Athens. Jean was on the band bus. She would meet Owen's relatives and picker friends. And Balder.

Did she meet Balder before he went overseas? I don't remember.

Anyhow, it was a good festival, the James King Band played well, Owen and Balder picked around the campfire. Balder had kept his mandolin and guitar chops up.

Balder's old band friend, Matt, had gotten out of the Marines and was going to Georgia Tech. He was a Georgia native, and did not have to pay out-of-state tuition. He was on the GI Bill.

He bought a house near the campus and was fixing it up, renting the rooms out to other students to pay the mortgage.

He invited Balder to come up and live with him, help him fix the house up for his room rent, draw unemployment for six months, live in Georgia for a year, to establish residence, then go to Georgia Tech on the GI Bill as a Georgia resident. Also, they would revive the second-line band they had formed in New Orleans, Back Azimuth, and play gigs at fraternity parties and college bars around Georgia Tech.

So Balder drove Brew back to Atlanta, saw Matt's house, signed up for unemployment, in Georgia, and decided to do that.

Now Brew rode his bike to work every day, in any weather, and Balder would drive him to Wewa, to see Brenda, on long weekends, or to Athens, to see Owen and Jeannie.

Also to Panama City for funerals.

Granny Brown died.

Owen and Balder played fiddle and guitar at her funeral. They played "When Sorrow Encompasses Me Around."

Granny would have liked it. There was always music in her life. Sacred music, mostly.