Wasted Year: The Last Hippies of Ole Miss Read online

  “Who is that?” I ask Dottie Carroll.

  “That just Ho – a poor heathen who speaks not word one of English. But she certainly loves funkadelic.”

  At the sound of our voices, the old woman stops dancing in place and fixes us all with a baleful look before focusing her attention specifically on me. She then delivers a 45-second harangue in a language I’ve never heard before. The only word I recognize is the final one, “Bubba,” which she punctuates with a fist in the air, followed by a cackling laugh of sheer mockery.

  Ho doesn’t seem to like me.

  “Where’s she from?”

  “China, we think. Or maybe Formosa. The rumor is,” and here Dottie lowers her voice, as if politely trying to spare the feelings of the old soul, “that her own brothers kidnapped her and smuggled her here to work for them. They’re foreign students in the Engineering school. Nobody knows, because the brothers have gone off someplace, leaving her behind to live in the Lyric.”

  “How can she live in a movie theater?”

  “In the projectionist booth. She has a little bed and a hot plate and lots of canned food. I’ve been there myself. It would break your heart to see it, poor thing. If I were going to have a relative of mine to live in a movie, the very last place I’d pick would be the Lyric. I’d at least put her up in the projectionist booth across the street at the Ritz. Or even better, at that nice new theater in the shopping center on University Avenue.”

  Ho lashes out with the sharp toe of a pair of child’s cowboy boots, aiming for my shins, as we’re leaving, me with the copy of Derek and the Dominos I’ve finally settled on. Cindy spots her and nudges me out of her path at the last moment and I emerge unscathed into a suddenly bright day on the Square. Cindy is wearing a halter top, revealing splays of freckles across her shoulders and arms, and it strikes me that she’s a sweet, ripe strawberry of a girl.

  Back at the house on Tyler, Cindy and I are listening to the “Keep on Growing” cut for the fourth or fifth time when Garrett returns from the head shop, bearing a gallon jug of Wild Irish Rose and a monster five-pound fryer in a paper bag from the Jitney Jungle.

  “What do we do with it? Fry it?”

  “No oil.”

  “Bake it?”

  “No pan. But we have a pot.”

  “Boil it, then. I think there’s an onion under the sink.”

  Garrett puts American Beauty on. Half an hour later, the chicken has come to a boil and we’re a little high on the wine. An hour later, the jug is half empty, the chicken’s cooling on a plate, and Garrett is dancing with Cindy to “Sugar Magnolia.” Sometime after that, the chicken is lying in ragged chunks on the plate, Cindy and Garrett are lying on a couch with greasy lips and greasy fingers, singing, and I’m slurping broth from a teacup that was probably once owned by Mrs. Hirsch, may she rest in peace.

  Some time after that the three of us are singing. The jug’s totally empty. We’ve run out of songs with words that we know, so we’re vocalizing on instrumentals. We’re almost at the closing riff of “Telstar” when we hear a commotion on the porch, followed by the screech of the screen door spring. Andrew and James enter the kitchen, each carrying an army surplus duffel bag. James has shaved his beard, which oddly makes him look even more like a gypsy than he did before.

  They pounce on the remains of the chicken like orphaned wolverines, scarcely saying a word until it’s reduced to a sad saggy pile of greasy bones. Then they begin to recount their travels – New Orleans to Dallas, Little Rock, Louisville, Philadelphia, D.C., Chapel Hill, Atlanta, Chattanooga, Memphis, home.

  I ask if they heard anything about the revolt of the deejay in Chattanooga. They haven’t.

  “A dozen cities in three weeks,” James says, “and everywhere people are talking about the same thing.”

  “Sex?” Garrett offers.

  “No, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Then it must be Margaret Mitchell. Everybody’s talking about Margaret Mitchell.”

  “No, it’s . . . .”

  “Margaret Mead.”

  “Princess Margaret,” Cindy suggests.

  “Margaret Sanger.”

  “Margaret Truman.”

  “Margaret Hamilton.”

  “Margaret Rutherford.”

  “Margaret Chase Smith.”

  “Tamburlaine,” James manages to interject, and the good spirits of the evening sink at the mention of the name.

  Everyone falls silent. Except for Garrett, who giggles. “C’mon, James, let it go.”

  I decide to retire to my room, leaving the others to debate this matter without me. A little while later, Andrew and Cindy begin having loud sex next door.

  ~ ~ ~

  Sunday, August 29

  I’m learning that James has been married. To Joan. Unhappily. Andrew drops this bombshell on me casually, while showing me his dissertation work, consisting of eight spiral notebooks crammed with equations that he’s developed on the road.

  He calls himself a peripatetic mathematician, working calculations in his head while riding in the passenger’s seat of James’ car. Something about the combination of the road, the radio and James’ endless political rants creates the perfect stimulus for Andrew’s abstract muse. He’s the Sal Paradise of math.

  His department chair is treating Andrew like their star quarterback. Though still technically a graduate student himself, Andrew’s been given his own graduate assistant who covers all his classes and departmental duties any time the next road trip – and its attendant burst of creative energy – comes along.

  In the past two years, James and Andrew have been out of town together for a combined eleven months, and those absences became the cause of James’ marital problems.

  James and Joan got hitched, Andrew tells me, a year ago last 4th of July, with a ceremony in the back yard of the Earth. Brother Leopold presided, though neither James nor Joan is Catholic.

  Joan expected her new husband to settle down with her and give up the road. When he didn’t, she expected that he would invite her to join him. She was mistaken in both assumptions, as she discovered when, twelve days after the wedding, James and Andrew left on an eight-week odyssey through northern California.

  Joan retaliated by seducing Brother Leopold. The resulting scandal in the diocese necessitated Brother Leopold’s recall by his order.

  James was more upset over losing Leopold as a trusted ally in the Revolution than over Joan’s infidelity. Leopold was also the guiding force behind last year’s failed referendum to legalize beer.

  “Oxford is still dry on beer?” I ask.

  Joan then seduced Dr. Buchtel, James’ thesis advisor.

  “Not Dr. Buchtel,” I marvel. “That lucky bastard.”

  Not merely Buchtel, but Sommers, Murphy, Hagen and Trask, a quintet of cuckolding that made the divorce inevitable. Whenever she’s not shacking up with her latest conquest, Joan stays with Nick and Suzie, who are as blissfully monogamous today as they were when I left Oxford.

  “Just between us,” Andrew notes, “she tried to get me into bed, too. Of course, I didn’t.”

  “I always thought you weren’t human.”

  “I only mention it because, now you’re back, she might make a play for you. As James’ friend, you wouldn’t, of course.”

  “You’re giving me far too much credit. I’ve been fantasizing about Joan since that night back in ’68. Still, I feel sorry for James.”

  “I feel sorry for the Catholics,” Andrew says. “Without a priest, they have to drive to Holly Springs for Mass. And now there’s a rumor that the Baptists are trying to buy their church building.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Monday, August 30

  I have another of my frozen-in-amber moments as I step off the elevator on the third floor of Bishop Hall, turn the corner into the English offices, and find Dr. Evans writing at his desk, fountain pen in his left hand, pipe in his right, exactly as I’d left him 15 months ago.

  “Amy told me you were l
ooking thin,” he remarks. “She didn’t say emaciated.”

  “Imagine Amy missing the chance to use a big word. Do you know she’s started calling you ‘Harold’?” I ask.

  “Have you been ill?”

  “I developed a gag reaction to solid food. The doctors put me on a liquid diet and sent me to a shrink.”

  “Sounds like the beginning of a story. Have you been writing anything?”

  “My masters thesis. A hundred and five pages on linguistic ambiguity in the verse of Jonathan Swift. I took some of the funniest lines of the 18th century and sucked all the life right out of them. My thesis advisers were very pleased. They said F.R. Leavis would be pleased, too.”

  “Ah. And of course you want to please F.R. Leavis.”

  “My current goals are more modest. I want a good night’s sleep. I want a dog. I want a cheeseburger with mustard and pickles. I want the love of a good woman and a bottle of Southern Comfort.”

  Dr. Evans sucks meditatively on his pipe. “Southern Comfort. That’s good.” He taps burning ashes into a coffee cup. “The department’s launching a new student magazine, and we’ve been tossing titles around for it. Amy’s editor-in-chief, and she wants to call it Fire Thorn.”

  “That’s a terrible name. Where does she come up with these titles?”

  “I’ll suggest Southern Comfort instead. Say,” he puts down the pipe and fixes me with the steely blues, always indicative of a brainstorm, “I should appoint you as poetry editor. Would you like that?”

  “No, but I think you would.”

  “Damn right, I would. It’ll be fun to watch you and Amy squabbling again. Last year was so boring – I missed your feud.”

  The Sociology department is also frozen in amber, when I drop in to find Dr. Stevens. Mrs. Arnett, their secretary, even seems to be wearing the same dress that I last saw her in.

  “Dr. Stevens isn’t here,” she announces. “He’s in Turkey.”

  “What’s he doing in Turkey?”

  “Studying Turks.”

  “Why is he studying Turks?”

  “Why shouldn’t he study Turks?”

  “I just didn’t know he was interested in Turks.”

  “I don’t think he is. But he got a research grant. So he went to Turkey.”

  “For how long?”

  “He’ll be back in December. Would you like to wait?”

  “Did he take his research assistant with him?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “I’m looking for Melissa Allen, his research assistant. Did she go to Turkey, too?”

  Mrs. Arnett’s puckered face purses into something that looks like a grin. “Oh ho ho,” she says. “That girl.”

  “What do you mean, ‘that’ girl?”

  “I’m just saying.”

  “Saying what?”

  “That it’s not for me to say.”

  “Have you heard anything about Melissa Allen?” I ask Andrew when I get back to Tyler Avenue.

  “Melissa Allen? Wasn’t that the girl you proposed to? No, I haven’t heard anything.”

  “I think she might be in Turkey.”

  “What would she be doing in Turkey?”

  “Studying Turks.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Tuesday, August 31

  It’s Garrett’s lunch hour, and we’re sharing a joint in the head shop while we stare out the window the Square. At one point, Deputy Hacker wades through traffic, crossing from Lamar to the base of the Confederate statue, and we duck our heads back inside until he enters the courthouse.

  I ask Garrett whether Joan has ever tried to seduce him.

  “Alas, she hasn’t,” he admits with a sigh and a giggle. “And to answer your next question: yes, I’d probably fold like an aluminum chair if she tried. I’m weak, and she’s so goddamn beautiful, I’d go to hell with a smile on my face. Look, there’s the new sheriff. No, wait, you missed him – he went into Nielsen’s.” A moment later he mutters, “Oh, shit. Duck inside! Duck inside! Crap, she saw us.”

  “Who?”

  “The Clamor,” he replies. “Hell, she’s coming up here.”

  “I heard James was back,” the Clamor announces, a little breathless, as she enters the shop.

  Despite her nickname, the Clamor isn’t a loud girl. She’s kind of soft-spoken, and has a nice voice. Her real name is Claire Marie. Garrett nick-named her “Clamor” and now everyone’s started calling her that.

  She strikes me as a plain girl, at least by Ole Miss coed standards – squirrelly brown hair cropped close and clumsily to her scalp, brown eyes, prominent ears made even more so by the haircut. Claire Marie is also the tallest girl I’ve ever met, standing a good 6’4” in army boots, jeans, and a rumpled camouflage jacket that she must be suffocating in on this hot day.

  “He’s not here,” Garrett tells her, and offers her a toke. “You want some of this?”

  “I wanted to hear about his trip. I thought maybe he could tell me more about Tamburlaine.”

  “Aaarrrrgggh!” Garrett shouts, clasping his hands over his ears and pulling tufts of blond hair sideways from his head. “Tamburlaine doesn’t exist! There is no such person. He’s a myth. A legend. A fairy tale. A goddamn delusion invented by acid freaks. How many times do I have to explain this to you people?”

  Clamor looks at me, an appeal in her eyes.

  “Tamburlaine is real,” I say. “He’s as real as you or me. He’s coming, and when he does, the Revolution will begin.”

  “Shut up! Don’t encourage this.”

  “Who are you?” she asks.

  “I’m Daniel.”

  “You have a nice ass.”

  “Thank you. I like your jacket.”

  “Do you have a car? I need to buy something in Memphis.”

  “Maybe some other time? I have plans today.”

  “I want to buy James a welcome home present. But what I want to give him is in Memphis.”

  “Some other day, then.”

  “I think James is wonderful. Do you think he’s wonderful?”

  “Yes, I think he’s wonderful, too.”

  Clamor moons about, mostly lying on the waterbed, for a half hour, perhaps hoping that James will show up.

  “See you at the harvest,” she says before finally leaving.

  “At the harvest,” Garrett agrees. “Be there or be straight.”

  We return to the window and watch her stride across the Square, hands in the pockets of her camouflage jacket, teetering on a pair of stork legs above the other pedestrians, who turn with alarm and confusion to watch her.

  “There are some who claim,” Garrett remarks, “that Clamor isn’t really a girl.”

  “She’s boyish, for sure. And tall. But she’s a girl. I think.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Wednesday, September 1

  “I don’t sell to friends,” James tells me. “Just help yourself. It didn’t cost me anything.”

  It’s a new month, I have new cash in my pocket, and I’m tired of being treated as a charity case, always smoking Garrett’s weed, or borrowing from Cindy and Andrew’s stash. But James is ready to give it away, and the motive for his generosity constitutes the most amazing news I’ve heard since my return to Oxford.

  Ole Miss has its own marijuana field, a federal research project, thanks to strings pulled by one of the state senators and a killer grant proposal from the School of Pharmacy.

  “That’s sure beats studying Turks,” I observe.

  “Five acres of Cannabis Sativa. The government selected Ole Miss for two reasons. First, ideal growing conditions. Second, the feds figured that we were the only school with students backward enough not to have heard of pot yet. Which is mostly true. The boys on Fraternity Row have spent all summer on a scheme for direct shipments of beer from a dealer in Memphis, eliminating the Holly Springs middlemen, without realizing that the continent’s purest supply of grass is only three hundred yards from their back doors.”

  Its trust in Mississippi ignora
nce led the government to undertake minimal security measures – an 8’ chain link fence around the perimeter, a couple of placid old police dogs donated by the sheriff’s office, and a half-deaf night watchman named Clemson.

  Commando raiding proved easy and yielded enough product for James and Andrew to return from their late summer odyssey with around $1900 to split. Besides looking for Tamburlaine, their mission had been to spread the fame of Rebel Red, as they’re marketing it.

  “This gravy train pulls out of the station on the 18th, unfortunately. While most of the campus will be off at the game against Memphis State, a paid crew – under heavy guard – will deliver the crop to the old gym, where they’ll spend the day threshing and stuffing leaves into canvas bags, which will then be loaded into three armored trucks and taken away. We’re calling it the Harvest.”

  “The Harvest? Clamor mentioned that.”

  “You’ve met Claire Marie.”

  “Yesterday at Garrett’s shop. She was looking for you. I guess she’s part of the work crew.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Hey, can I get on the work crew, too? It sounds like fun.”

  James favors me with his gypsy grin. “I can arrange that.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Thursday, September 2

  “Studying Turks?” Dr. Hirsch asks. “Who’s studying Turks?”

  “I heard that Dr. Stevens is.”

  “Why would he be doing that? What’s so interesting about Turks?”

  “I thought you might know something, since you’re in the same department as him.”

  “We’re colleagues. That doesn’t mean we’re friends, or that I have any interest in his work.”

  The year has not been kind to Dr. Hirsch. He’s heavier and more disheveled than when I last saw him. His hairline has receded, his chin doubled, and his nervous tics grown more pronounced.

  “I’m just wondering about whether his research assistant went with him.”

  “You mean Melissa. Nice girl. I like her.” He pauses to think for a moment, and then begins pounding his pudgy fists on his pudgy thighs with amusement. “And you like her, too! Now I see how things stand. Well, don’t worry, my boy; we’re not rivals for her affection.”