Last Hunter: An American Family Album

Chapter Eight

72 will weaver to hear and be heard. There were a couple of other quick-­ to-­ speak young men like me with bushy hair and sweaters that needed washing, and we competed for Dr. Garner’s attention ; one of us (it might have been me!) once stood atop a classroom table in order to declaim some lines. It was at least halfway into the term before I noticed the beautiful girl in the back of the room. The Tempest receded as if blown out to sea. In its place were the rainbow cuffs of the girl’s bell-­ bottom jeans, her long legs, and an odd, kind calm that she carried about her. She did not notice me sneaking looks at her. As class continued , she followed Professor Garner’s instruction with a detached though sympathetic gaze. Her eyes were a neutral blue. Occasionally a ghost of a smile crossed her face; once, her lips moved. She was a totally unselfconscious woman with long hair, streaked platinum, and the fine features of Grace Kelly (I had not seen many movies and only later would understand that comparison). I do not remember the rest of The Tempest or much else about that term. Over the last few weeks I migrated, seat by seat, toward her desk. I made sure to say hello—casually, in passing—if I saw her before or after class. A couple of times I followed her a block or so and was struck by how she did not look to the side nor behind her. She usually got onto the red, No. 16A bus, which whirred away, leaving me shivering on the snowy sidewalk of University Avenue as the tide of forty thousand students flowed and eddied around me. I tried to divine her life; I knew that it was not centered upon the Tragedies and the Comedies. I did not gather up courage to make a move until nearly the last day of class. I managed to sit at the desk directly the last hunter 73 ahead of her and to make some small talk before class and get her phone number. I waited a tasteful couple of days before calling but in the end was overeager. “HithisisWillfromShakespeare,” I said in a rush. There was a long pause. “Right,” she said. “Who is this really?” Her life was focused upon a couple of part-­ time jobs and a small, off-­ campus apartment on Ashland Avenue that she shared with two other girls of similarly slender means. The three women ate lots of tuna, which meant that I had a high card to play. The farm provided me an endless supply of food—a pipeline of beef, venison, frozen chickens, partridge, walleyed pike, as well as all manner of homemade jams, jellies, and pickles, and wild rice. I went home about once a month; I always came back to my university apartment with a suitcase heavy with food. By then I had also come to acquire the affectations of a Literary Man, including a World War II–era, ankle-­ length gabardine trench coat with lambswool collar. The coat was more heavy than warm, but with its belt cinched around my waist and collar up around my ears I was mostly protected from the bitter, northwest wind that swirled down the Mississippi River channel and across the Washington Avenue Bridge, which linked the east and west banks of the campus. My trench coat, an army-­ surplus bomber hat, and pipe. The pipe was as much reading aid as literary prop—one bowl of pungent, dark tobacco and I could read Dostoevsky until dawn—but my largest presumption centered upon food: because I had lots of it, I came to think that I was a good cook. A gourmet, even. 74 will weaver I was without a girlfriend when I met Rose, in part because of an incident in the kitchen with a previous girl. I was cooking steaks, and Carla volunteered to help make the salad, a process which I micromanaged and ultimately took over but not before admonishing her for cutting the lettuce with a knife instead of tearing it by hand. It was the beginning of the end with Carla. Rose was not so delicate and suffered my pretensions in return for a serious steak. It was she, however , who showed me that salads were more than iceberg lettuce and grated carrots with French...