Novel

Friday, March 4

When Brew was a senior in college he went to Washington, DC, for the annual meetings of the American Anthropological Association, of which he was a member. He rode up in a car with two other students and crashed on the floor of their hotel room.

He was looking for a job, like everybody else at the convention.

That is, he had applied for a fellowship to several graduate schools, and wanted to show his face to the faculty members whose way was paid because they were interviewing students and other faculty members and floating their own CV out there to see if they could do any better on the job market.

This freaked Brew out. He got drunk and showed his ass.

It was the first time alcohol had ever interfered with his doing something important.

Always before, he would stay sober long enough to do what he was supposed to do, then get drunk, but this time, he showed up drunk.

One of his professors, who was counting on Brew to make her look good, was very disappointed with his performance, but another professor, who wasn't, told him that graduate students were under a lot of pressure, and explosive drinking was perfectly normal.

He did get two offers, plus the one he accepted, at Florida State, but deep in the back of his mind he knew that the first professor was right and the second professor was in denial because he had a drinking problem himself. Although he did not yet know the term in denial.

In retrospect, Brew should have seen that if he was uncomfortable interviewing for a fellowship to graduate school, he would not fit, as an academic, because it was one interview--one audition, with your career riding on the outcome--like that after another, first to pass your written exams, then your orals, to get a dissertation research grant, then write and defend your dissertation, to get a teaching job, at a good school, then start publishing papers in good journals, to get tenure, to get promoted to full professor, to have students you mentored.

You would have to find a mentor, to coach you through the process.

Brew didn't have a mentor. He was a lone wolf. A rogue cultural samurai, roaming the back roads, with his sword, his kimono, his sandals, and little else.

Shoot it as a western. A samurai flick. A noodles restaurant movie.

A buddy flick, like Sideways. Him and Brenda.

He took a University Fellowship to FSU and switched his area of specialization from the history and philosophy of anthropological theory to dirt archeology, so he could stay at FSU and dig with Brenda, Swiss Family Two Dirt Archeologists.

Don't know dirt from horse shit.

The last time Brew went to Tallahassee, he drove over from Point and Shoot for a conference on anti-drug coalitions: how to found them, how to strengthen them, and tips for writing grants to fund them.

President Bush was president, and Brew learned that letting faith-based organizations apply for grants to do substance-abuse or mental health work was a way to get black preachers to become Republican, and deliver black votes, and that No Child Left Behind meant that schoolteachers had no time to do anything but teach the FCAT test: if it wasn't on the test they wouldn't teach it.

He did get to see the drug czar, who was a retired military officer, a general, maybe.

Those retired generals are going to solve our drug problem, our education problem, and our mental health problem, picture George Patton slapping the shell-shocked soldier in the field hospital and calling him a coward.

Now, Brew was footloose and fancy free.

Well, not fancy free. He was spoken for.

But he was footloose. He had given himself an LDA grant. He was going to a small press conference in Tallahassee.

He could get there when he pleased, stay as long as it suited him, leave when his feelings were hurt, or he felt snubbed.

No grant writer job to drive to. No weekly status and progress report to file. No time sheet to fill out and sign.

He felt like Martha Stewart getting out of prison.

Note: Martha Stewart got out of prison March 4, 2005.

He could write about what he saw, and relate it to what had happened to him in the past, to get him to this point, where he had a room of his own and an income of $3,000 a month, between his grant and social security.

He had a book coming out. The first book of a series. He had finished the second book. He wrote it in 17 days. He saw that 17 days in this book would take him to March 19, the Homegrown Powwow at the Big Chief Visions garden, or yard. Maybe he'd make this book 19 days, and end it on March 21, give himself time to write about the folk art and Americana music and vernacular writing powwow.

He could show how folk art and Americana music and vernacular writing were related.

If Root Doctor came from the printer in time, he could sell Root Doctor and the Dread Clampitt CDs Dread Clampitt and Wrack & Ruin at the powwow. He would have new product to sell.

Americana music, Brew wrote Americana writing. Jakeleg and for the nonce. Ephemeral. I love a parade. The foot-race in Raintree County. Lee Marvin, running barefoot. Flash Perkins runs again!

Brew wasn't the hero, John Wickliff Shawnessy, he was the foil, Orville "Flash" Perkins.

Curses, foiled again. Bitter literary also-ran.

He didn't need money, fame, all he needed was time to write and a place to do it, and he had those now.

Slim McElderry had always told him he had everything he needed, and now it was true.

What can they do to a man who has everything he needs?