The Old Crow Book Club (Part 2)
A week or so later, I took a walk and Mark was sitting on his usual sidewalk. Three other homeless men gathered around him. One sat, the other two stood. The sitting man was drinking a fifth of Old Crow, a rotgut whiskey if there ever was one. Presumably, he was sharing the bottle with the two standing men because it was half gone. Or maybe he was drinking the whole damn thing by himself.
Mark greeted me warmly. I asked him if he'd spent the gift certificate. He had not. He was saving it and going to give his female friend first crack at it. She had her eye on a special Bible at the store.
He introduced me to his friends as The Author and they reacted like I was famous. He obviously had told them about me and finding my book in a street library and then me seeing him reading it while he waited to redeem cans and bottles.
The five of us then embarked on a very spirited conversation about the merits of finding random books in street libraries. Mark said he just knew that in the very near future he was going to find one that was going to change his life. I told him I feel like that all the time.
At some point, I was tempted to ask Mark and the men about their journeys to this sidewalk, but the timing didn't seem right. Perhaps another time. Perhaps never. I still feel strange broaching this subject in the context of being a writer interested in their journeys. Mark seems like a born storyteller so I may need to get over it. Maybe pay or barter for his time.
I had to go. The men said goodbye and called me brother.
Oh really? Then why wasn't I offered a belt off the Old Crow? We're all literary men, right?
A few days went by. I took a walk. Mark was stationed at his sidewalk. But today he wasn't reading or drinking or smoking or going to stop reading, drinking or smoking to discuss books with me. He had a woman with him sitting on the sidewalk! They were holding hands! She was younger, vaguely Asian, a little squirrelly. She appeared drunk or high.
I crossed the street to say hello to Mark. He saw me and waved me over. I asked what he was reading and he dipped into his backpack and pulled out a book.
“It's called The Sheltering Sky,” he said.
I told him I'd read it, probably 30 years ago. It was written by Paul Bowles and the novel is a modern classic and cult book.
His girlfriend said something unintelligible. He didn't introduce me but mentioned to her that I was The Author. I told him when he'd finished reading The Sheltering Sky that I'd love to discuss the novel with him. He said it might take him a while, but he'd be game.
I knew I was. Mark was probably the only homeless man in America reading The Sheltering Sky on a sidewalk or in a tent or RV or plywood shanty or official shelter, and I also knew that his reading this esoteric novel was a partially cosmic intersection with my writing and thinking about the homeless issue. How did I know that? I just did.
As I walked, I raked through my mind to recall the novel. I did remember Debra Winger was in the movie. Or was she? Didn't Bertolucci direct it?
The novel takes place in Morocco or somewhere else in North Africa, post WW I or II and a married American couple goes on some kind of trip, with a caravan, and they get kidnapped or something, the man gets castrated and left behind and joins a circus, and the woman becomes a piece of property to a nomadic tribal chieftain. Or was that one of Bowles' short stories, which I also read and marveled at because of their shattering bleakness and bizarre settings?
Was I totally wrong on the summary of the novel? There was always Google, but I wanted to reread the novel before Googling it. I knew somehow it would connect to the New American Diaspora I've been writing about. Just exactly how, was a mystery.
We said our goodbyes and I walked away to purchase The Sheltering Sky from the local bookstore.
Shattering bleakness and bizarre settings. That sounded a lot like the homeless encampments, although both occurred in America, not far from my front door, not North Africa or Central America.
I bought the novel at the store and started reading it right away. A few days later, I saw Mark sitting on his usual sidewalk, drinking a can of malt liquor and smoking a cigarette. Near him rested a backpack and a bag of bottles and cans ready for sweet Oregon Bottle Bill redemption. His buddy was standing near him with his backpack on the sidewalk. I'd met the buddy several times in book chat moments but hadn't learned his name.
Crows called out as I crossed the street to say hello and talk The Sheltering Sky. I had almost finished rereading the novel and was eager to talk with Mark about it.
He pulled the novel from his backpack when I asked about it. Mark told me he had four chapters to go, that he didn't want to finish it, but would. He always finished a book when he started it, except that one time, many years ago—The Hobbit.
He didn't care for The Sheltering Sky at all and he dissected its flaws better than a New York Times reviewer might have. I disagreed with him on the merits of the novel and felt it held up well.
We discussed its naïve and rich American characters and exotic North African settings. Everything terrible was happening to these people because they could not comprehend where they were nor why they were there. Their basic lack of comprehension about their surroundings was either killing them or driving them insane. That sounds a lot like many Americans in their own country during the Pandemic with their various associated outcomes of conspiracy theories, insanity and death.
At one point during our conversation, Mark's buddy reached into his backpack and produced a fifth of Old Crow. Two weeks ago, in a similar book chat, he brandished a bottle of Old Crow but failed to offer me a belt.
This time he did, but I declined. The idea of Old Crow frying my gizzard at three in the afternoon made me wince.
After concluding our conversation about The Sheltering Sky, we moved onto One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, which Mark said he'd read three times. We took that novel and the film apart. He knew the book almost as well as I did, and I've read it ten times, and taught it to hundreds of high school students. We both wanted to see The Dalles Dam blown to smithereens and uncover Celilo Falls before we died.
As I stood there talking about books, a definitely great notion occurred to me. Let's really do the Old Crow Book Club, right here, on the sidewalk, drinking Old Crow, and talking about a great book.
I pitched the idea. Mark and his buddy loved it. I would provide the novel for us to read. I'd also provide the Old Crow. They even knew a woman who might want to join the group. She'd just started reading and Mark often read to her night to lessen her psychotic behavior. It was the only remedy that worked.
Even before pitching the idea, I knew the book I wanted us to read. I'd taught it at Newport and Astoria High Schools and the students ate it up better than any novel I'd ever assigned. It was Motel Life by Willy Vlautin. I had a class set in storage! Why I'd hung onto the box all these years after being excommunicated from the teaching profession, I didn't know. I did now.
They'd never heard of Motel Life. I summarized the contents and they were intrigued. They agreed to form the book club and I told them I'd hand out copies in the coming weeks.
I asked Mark about his Oregon roots and he told me he'd been born in Hood River. How he ended up on this sidewalk was something I wanted to know but Hood River was enough for now.
Then we moved onto Tom McCall and how he might have handled the Pandemic. We both agreed he would have hit the road to rural and reactionary Oregon and delivered fiery speeches demanding his fellow Oregonian get vaccinated. It might have worked, but we'll never know now. Too late for that.
From there, we went on to discuss crows and Mark's habit of sometimes cursing the ornery ones perched in the trees shading his sidewalk. He'll put up with five or six caws, he said, but not 26 and once the count reaches that high, he's going to call them a motherfucker and demand they shut the hell up.
It was time to go. I bounded away with a smile on my face. Not too long from now, I might actually be teaching a kind of class again. There was still teaching blood in me yet. How it might mix with Old Crow and obnoxious crows on a sidewalk in Portland was to be determined. But I was relishing the idea of that moment.