Excerpts from Looking for Canterbury

[1]

On the wall above his desk was the reproduction of the Chaucer portrait (commissioned by Hoccleve) familiar to anyone who has ever cursed having to read that great poet in school in the Middle English.  The light from Harry’s gooseneck lamp picked out the various details—the thick nose of the rather portly man, his full lips and dark, hooded eyes.  Geoffrey Chaucer’s hair was close-cropped, exposing his ears, and his mustache and forked beard were in the fashion of his day.  Garbed in black hood and gown, a pen case dangling from his neck on red strings, he gazed toward the left in apparent deep thought.  Beyond the window in Harry’s study, a sickle-shaped  moon shone palely above his little stand of apple trees.  He was reading the part in The Canterbury Tales  where the Host describes his wife as a blabbing nag:

                        “I have a wyf, the worste that may be:

                         For thogh the feend to hire ycoupled were,

                         She wolde hym overmacche. I dar wel swere

                         What sholde I yow reherce in special

                         Hir hye malice?  She is a shrewe et al.”

            Harry Baylor the butcher rubbed his eyes and turned the page.  He could identify with that.  It was well past midnight yet he was reluctant to join his wife Selene. They hadn’t spoken to each other in a week; the air crackled with accumulated  tension.  Harry feared what he might do with his hands if they quarreled once again.  Selene might just as well have been the Host’s spouse, he thought.  Harry shut the book.  The house was still;  his house.  He had helped supervise the construction and  spent thousands of dollars over the years to keep it in showcase condition.

            Finally, she called to him from across the hall:  “Come to bed, Harry.”

            “I’m coming.”

            “It’s late.”

            Harry Baylor the butcher stared at the ceiling, which faded in and out!  Killing!  That was what it was all about!  The figures in loose-fitting black pajamas stole like phantoms across the strange landscape.  A shell exploded in the dark, flinging skin and burning blood into his face.  AAAIIIIII!  His best friend, Eddie Phipps, his guts spilling into Harry’s lap, moaned, “Take me home….I want to go home.”  All around them, the shrieks of the wounded and the dying pierced the night.  Harry raised his knife to grapple with the gook who was suddenly upon him.  He awoke screaming drenched in icy sweat.

            “There….there….”  His wife cradled him in her arms until the fit subsided.  “Talk.  Talk to me.”

            “Nothing to say.”

            “Talk to me, Harry.  I’m not a mind reader.  What did you dream?”

            “Nothing.’

            “Nothing.  Why do you keep shutting me out?  All these years;-- you’d think the night terrors would stop.”

            “You never leave Nam.”

            “You keep saying that.  I’m your wife, Harry.”

            “I know that.”

            “You can’t go on forever blaming Vietnam for your failure to meet your responsibilities….”

            Harry bristled: “Responsibilities….”

            “As a husband.”

 [2]

            He was a split fucked-up Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress syndrome.  It if wasn’t for the support group, he probably would have killed himself  long ago.  What they needed was a pilgrimage to their own Canterbury of the heart’s desire in a setting more conducive to their own  emotional and spiritual salvation than the space they rented above McGarrity’s Restaurant and Bar on East 23^rd Street.   E. G. Hammaker,  who had served in Nam in Intelligence and, as a therapist, was coordinator of the support-group rap sessions, applauded the Prof’s  notion.  It would , he said, “distance” them from the  “analyst-patient” relationship; by telling stories on the road much as Chaucer’s pilgrims did, they would reveal a great deal about themselves without feeling cornered or humiliated.

[3]

            There was $116,364 in their account.  In all fairness to his wife,  Harry decided to draw out exactly half or $58,182.  He drew the money out payable to  “Cash,”  endorsed the check,  and handed it to the teller.  She asked to see his identification.  He showed her his driver’s license, and his credit cards (Master Card, Visa and American Express).  She asked him how he wanted the money; she had a Meryl Streep bump nose.  “Fifty-eight  in thousand dollar bills,” he said, “the rest  miscellaneous.” Wallet heavy on his thigh, he left the bank glancing in all directions to make sure Selene had not observed  him.  How much  more real your money seemed when you could see and feel it stacked in greenbacks!  The 9:25 a.m. to Manhattan was filled with executive types in custom-tailored suits reading Barron’s and The Wall Street Journal.  The click of the wheels on the tracks serenaded him with a song of celebration.  Free! Free!  As Harry watched the commuters board the train, he was stunned to recall there were 58,182 names inscribed on the wall of the Vietnam Veterans War Memorial in our nation’s capital.  It was a sign from heaven!  His plan was good!  It had to be!  He would invite his six support group friends.  But he would have to work fast.  Already the logistics had begun to assume staggering proportions in his mind.  Where there was a will there was a way.

[4]

             “Just a minute, just a minute!” he shouted  “One more thing.  About the tales you tell.  Some of you, I’m sure, have already started to invent them in your mind.  I say, ‘invent’ because I’m not big on rules, but there is one thing we should observe—and that is , the stories you tell will have nothing to do with Nam.  We’re trying to leave Nam.  Right?  Why tell stories about it when we’ve already heard them from each other—over and over again..  The thing is to make like Chaucer.  Right?  Create!

[5]

There was a mild commotion inside the pie crust, cinnamon and egg yolks.  Owls were noted for their acuteness of hearing; it was as if Monica’s shrill voice had unnerved Julius.

“Thus food,”  Harry hurried on, trying to set the proper tone for the climactic event of the evening, “meant far more to them than mere eating.  What is this but a world of shows?  Nothing is as it seems.”  He started cutting around the circumference of the pastry.  He could feel their expectations rising.  They wanted miracles.  He would give them one!  Was he not a master showman?  Harry Baylor cut one-quarter round the pie then toward the center, extremely careful not to touch the creature tethered within.  He lifted the upper-crust portion:  there was an agonizing pause.  Was the owl afraid to emerge?

[6]

“I’ll bang on the elevator door.”  King beat the air with his fists.  “Come on, you bloody oafs.  Call this service?  My maintenance costs me an arm and a leg….oh Christ, oh Christ--what if they never come?”

“They’ll come, Burgess,” Prof Dorsett soothed.

“What’s wrong with him?” Miriam said.

“He’s having an episode,” Dr. Hammaker said, “Let him act it out.”

Burgess King sank to the ground, hands knit contritely.  “Dear God,” he quavered, “forgive me—I have sinned.  I promised her to remain faithful and I broke my promise.  I couldn’t help myself;--Lord, you  made me this way.  But I promise, get me out of here and I will never again break a promise.  Talk to me….”  No response.

King resumed beating the invisible door with his fists.  “Jesus—this wood is hard.  Bamboo.”

King confronted his fellow pilgrims.  “Stop grinning at me.”

“Who’s grinning at you?” Hermann Bodd said.

“Goddam gooks smirking at me in my tiny cage.  I’m stuck in an elevator in Hanoi.  I’ve gotta get out.”

“I don’t want to hear about Hanoi,” Harry Baylor said.

King roundly gestured as he spoke: “My bamboo cage.  Too narrow to lie down in….not high enough to stand up in.  Ho Chi Minh is getting his pay-back.”  King wiped his brow.  “Hot….hot….drenched in—oooooh, my achin’ back….”

[7]

Monica broke from the group and climbed onto the sculpture, ensconcing herself  in Alice’s lap amid her friends in their bronze wonderland.  She waved at Harry and Harry waved back.

“Dame Alice!” he called to her.  “Dame Alice in Wonderland!”

“I can just see the Wife of Bath with Alice in Wonderland,”  Miriam muttered.  Then to Harry:  “What a grandstand play for attention.  That sculpture is for children!”  The male Pilgrims drawn by Monica’s  flamboyant gaiety, admired her from the base of the sculpture.

“Isn’t this great?” she said.  “I feel like a child again.”

“You’re sensational,” Burgess King said.

“You’d think she’d act her age,” Miriam murmured to Harry.

Monica reached down and playfully tweaked the right ear of the March Hare.  Her eyes met Harry’s.  It was the perfect moment he thought for her to tell her tale:--she had them in thrall, a captive audience.

[8]

The soul food arrived in large white boxes, which they proceeded to distribute.  She reached into her handbag to pay for it and they gibed:  “Put your money away!  Don’t you think we know how to treat a guest?”

Each opened his box with ceremonial care and blissfully inhaled the pungent odor of the contents.  They all began to eat;  they rolled their eyes in gustatorial delight and rotated their hands on their stomachs.  Consumers, Janet  Simmons thought, that they’re good at; they know how to consume.  They were arguing now about how to cook collard greens;  a few said they preferred  with beef, but the purists  insisted scornfully, that with pork was the only way to make it savory.  The social worker nibbled at her food; she felt like one of those missionaries who is invited to dine with cannibals and is determined not to offend them.

“That’s chitlins honey,”  Bullet-Eye said, with some affection.  “Y’all like chitlins?”

“Fine,” she said.  Pig’s intestines. Ugh.

They were all watching her.  Food, she knew, made a statement:  Accept us,  eat our food.

[9]

WHEN I FELT THE SURGE OF ADRENALINE, IT JARRED POOR EDDIE’S GUTS LOOSE AND THEY FELL TO THE GROUND.  THAT WAS WHEN THE BRAIN CHANGE CAME….HOW’D YOU LIKE THAT, SELENE?  IS THAT WHAT YOU WANTED TO HEAR FROM ME WHEN I AWOKE IN A COLD SWEAT AND YOU HELD ME IN YOUR ARMS?  TALK TO ME….TALK TO ME….HAH!  AIN’T THEM SOME APPLES?  NOW WHO’S NOT COMMUNICATING?

[10]

“Whatever,  show them—show them—your back.  Late that night I spotted you in the hotel swimming pool but you didn’t see me.  What are those purple lesions called?  Caputi’s ….”

“Kaposi’s,”  Hammaker coldly corrected.  “Kaposi’s Sarcoma.”

“Yeah, yeah!’

“Commonly associated with acquired immune deficiency syndrome.”

“Huh?  Whuh?  Yeah….AIDS!  You FAGGOT.  What do I have to do?  Tear it off?”

Harry Baylor woke from his trance to see Bodd start towards Hammaker as if to rip off the Pardoner’s costume.  His first reaction was to jump up and intercede.  But then Hammaker took them all by surprise; with a strength far beyond the brawny Bodd’s, he locked him in an adamantine embrace and planted upon his mouth a kiss that seemed never to end.  The other Pilgrims, Harry Baylor included, watched with fascination and alarm.  All Harry could think of was, you bastards, you’ve demolished my Chaucer gala.  The ruination of his quest for an American Canterbury was too painful to contemplate; he fled back into his Nam-haunted isolation.

[11]

Harry nodded to the man whose left sleeve hung limp:  “Welcome, brother, the vet said, his chest covered with medals.  His right hand shook Harry’s.  “This your first time?”

“Yes.”

“I come here almost everyday.  It grows on you.  Not like most memorials—it has a real warm feeling.  I feel perfectly at home here.”  Now this was home for Eddie, too, a place where he was honored as a hero and a patriot, not scorned because he had participated in America’s only defeat.

“Good to see you, brother,” Harry said.  “Good luck.”

Harry and Monica moved on.

“So many names,” he said.  “I never dreamed there were so many names….Phillips….Phillips….Phillipson….Phimister….Ah, here it is!”

EDWARD S. PHIPPS

Harry saw reflected in the polished granite his face and Monica’s.  His fingers lovingly traced the letters in Eddie’s name. “Thanks for everything, Eddie.  It should have been me, not you, ole buddy.  You were bettern’n me.  You were so brave.  Whereas I was petrified—all the time. I don’t know why I survived and-you-didn’t.”  He cleared his throat.  “I should have come here long ago but….” His voice broke off, then:  “How I got here is a long story--weird of bunch stories, actually—if you’ve got the time to listen.”  Harry and Monica, heads bowed, lingered in respectful silence in front of Eddie Phipps’ name.

Harry wiped away a tear.

“Do you hear me, Eddie?”  he resumed.  “It takes a lifetime of stories to tell the story of a life.  My life….your life….our journey together into the Unknown.  All because of an old graybeard gink who wrote poetry six hundred years ago and who you prob’ly never heard of, being you never finished high school….”

[12]

A chorus of thousand voices rose from the Wall and held Harry transfixed.

Voices from the dead.

Harry cried so hard he had to kneel on the grass.  He cried not simply for Eddie Phipps but for all those names, for all their friends and families.  People were leaving offerings at the Wall—a letter or a poem or such to be saved by the National Park Service for preservation as part of a museum collection.  Harry looked down and spotted at his feet a letter in a clear plastic cover.  The gist of the letter—from someone to someone whose name was on the Wall was “I love you and I miss you.”  Harry felt in his pockets; he had not brought a pen and paper with him.  “Get back into the line, you yellow asshole!” his CO yelled.

            “I’m going back,” he cried.

            Monica ran after him and found him kneeling in front of Eddie’s panel, the way the pilgrims must have knelt in Chaucer’s day in front of the shrine to the martyred Thomas a Beckett....