Chapter 11 Moon River (complete)

Ch. 11 Moon River

Moon River

Moon River with Fergus

Johnny Mercer's House at Moon River

where the author lived.

Photo by Jack Miller 


Standing on the sun porch, Landry watched the lightning in the distance as the clouds amassed over Moon River. Usually ignoring weather reports, he nonetheless had caught the name of the newly developing storm off the Florida coast, soon to be Hurricane David. "Please God, no more tempests of that caliber," he said, smiling.
Landry had the house to himself. He was packing in preparation for a year in Mexico. In a few more days, he and David would drive to New Orleans. A flood of memories from his days in that city watered Don's eyes.
He still had so much to do at Armstrong. Mercifully he could leave his office intact.  Someone else would use it, of course, while he was gone. But he could leave all of his books and store things in the cabinets. On one hand, Landry thought, in a year he could return to move everything stored to Mexico. On the other, he knew it was possible he would not want to stay in Mexico and choose to continue at Armstrong, teaching spoiled suburbanites who filled his English and Philosophy classes. "Come back to tossing my pearls to swine," Landry said out loud.
Landry thought of Carlos. Another marriage-- Carlos and Esther, the giant and the debutante dwarf, he thought cruelly. He couldn't conceive how his hunky sometimes lover loved tiny, thin Esther.  To Landry she was an hysterical, nervous, and high-strung child. "Mexican men are the same," Landry said. "They will marry any woman who will have them. But they will gladly go to bed with men like me on the sly, especially with the help of some tequila. Or is that just my fantasy," Don mused.
Octavio Paz caught his eye from one of the stacks of books he planned to take. "What do you say, Octavio? Am I not right about Mexican 'machismo'?"
Landry would dine alone tonight. David was taking his mother to a restaurant. "Poor Betty,"  he thought. " A painful divorce and now both her sons are leaving town."  He thought of his own mother,  " If only she can come to like Mexico.  I must show her how civilized it can be, take her to good shops in the Zona Rosa, help her appreciate how cosmopolitan Mexico City is."
By the time she flew to the city, he would be settled in Puebla. She would be impressed by the dramatic drive he planned to Taxco and Cuernevaca. Then, after showing her how elegant and rich Mexico could be, he would take her to Oaxaca. He would dispel her fear of Catholicism, a fear as deep as her homophobia.
Landry surveyed the house. So much that he had collected and loved remained. He would leave most of his art and artifacts in the care of Patricia, the wife of a colleague at Armstrong. They had become close over the past year and he trusted her. Even Fergus was staying, at least until Christmas when he would have time to return from his home in Puebla. The awareness of leaving so much here was disturbing, confusing.
It was good to have this time alone. Landry was glad Eddie was gone, married, no longer part of his routine. David would continue to work at the library until the week before they departed. He needed the extra money for New Orleans.
As rain began to patter on the porch, Don removed his clothes. He fantasized about the Mexican man he would meet in Puebla. He saw this shirtless, bronze man standing in an open field with snow-covered Popocatepatl rising behind him. The image brought an eruption of pleasure.
    
     A few days later, a hot August 1, Johnny Mercer arrived with his wife Ginger. Landry sat in the breezeway with Patricia. She was excited to be meeting the famous song writer who was about to become her landlord. After introductions all around, the four entered the screen door to the main house.
"What would you like, juice, a drink?" Landry offered.
"Oh my, no. Thank you." Mercer said. "Nothing for us at all. How nice the way you have managed the house."
"Well, it's a bit of a clutter, what with all of your lovely Stickley furniture and my not-so-practical Eighteenth Century collection." How pretentious I sound, Landry thought as he said this.

Mercer did not remove his blue, woolen  Greek sailor's cap as they toured the house. He sported a trim white beard and looked as if he had not a care in the world. To Landry, Mercer's wife appeared just the opposite. Plump, neatly dressed, she was serious, businesslike, hurried. She brought up the details of Patricia and her husband taking over the house, the sublet. They would pay the Mercer's by check each month and Johnny's niece, who lived in Savannah, would be their contact, if they needed anything.

"My niece has endless praise for you, Dr. Landry." Mercer said, "She still goes on about how moving your Yeats seminar was."

Landry was flattered.

Patricia expressed her love for Breakfast at Tiffany's. Mercer smiled like a child receiving a pat on the head.

"I hope your move to Mexico is a great success," Mrs. Mercer said to Landry as they all bid one another goodbye. What she really wished was that he were buying this property from them. She and Johnny could certainly never return here. Between New York and L.A. there was no time for Savannah, and it would be fine with her not to have the burden of upkeep of this place, lovely as it was.

_________

Hurricane David provided the opportunity for a storm party. Skip and David invited everyone they knew, including the Kleins from Asheville who were in town for two weeks. After days of downpours, Battey House creaked, its twenty-three rooms were rank with mold and mildew. Skip burned incense  to cover the odor and the smell of marijuana smoked daily by the ever changing denizens of the house. Carlos and Esther had agreed to move in and keep the house for the time Skip would be away in military training for the Airforce reserves, almost a year that included boot camp and duty in Biloxi. Carlos was relieved and grateful to be escaping from living with Esther's mother, now three blocks away on 52d Street.
"Who do you have coming," Skip asked his brother.
"Well, Don will be late. Eddie and Sharon. Andreas and Eva. Maybe Susan. Possibly Connor and Jane. I invited Brian, but who knows if he'll show. How about you?"

"Not sure. Carlos and Esther, since they are moving in. Odie. The usual neighborhood crowd. This girl named Kay I've been dating. I'm hoping she wants to give me a patriotic send off to the Airforce."

"That would be nice," David laughed. "Do we have enough tapes and records?"

Word of the party spread wider than David or Skip imagined. By the time Don Landry arrived, many of the rooms of Battey House were filled. The broken steps and railing of the entrance hall always made Landry want to turn and flee. How could such a grand old house degenerate into this wasted ruin?  The huge entrance hall rose with cracked walls to a ceiling from which half the plaster had fallen from bare wood planks. "Why am I entering this house of horror?" Landry asked himself, as he ascended  to the noise and music upstairs.

The vision beyond the open upstairs door confirmed Landry's fears. As Jim Morrison urged them to "Ride the snake," figures in the dim expanse of living room, lit only by small, bare light bulbs, one red, one blue, smoked a water pipe, crawled along the floor, and flowed in and out of the two doors connecting to the screen porch.

"Hey, man. You want some dope?" Odie offered  Landry a jay. To Don he looked about fourteen years old.
"No. Thanks."
As Landry turned to leave, David appeared. "Shocking party, isn't it?" He asked.

"Appalling, not shocking." Landry answered. But what the fuck; in another week they'd be in New Orleans.

"Let's go to the porch; it's cooler out there." David suggested. Despite the rain, the unair-conditioned room was hot. Landry saw that some of the young men were shirtless.

"Who are all of these people?" He asked David.
"Mostly neighborhood friends of Skip."

The screen porch, like the living room was huge. A ceiling fan stirred the damp, smoky air. Gusts of rain and wind came through the half dozen tall windows encompassing the room. Landry recognized Susan and recalled Andreas from their last meeting along with Eva who was sitting next to him on the pink loveseat. And there, too, were Esther and Carlos. Carlos. Carlos. Landry sat down as if stricken on another soft, filthy divan. He smiled and sought composure.

"We're smoking some fine opium hash," Carlos reached out offering Landry a water pipe. "Try it."

"I've had enough experiences of opium," Don said. "It's nothing to play around with." Then, he took the pipe and inhaled  as deeply as his lungs would allow.

An hour later, Landry felt as if caught in one of Kahil Gibran's vast spirals of naked figures, swirling upwards into the heavens. He was a magnet drawing people into his vortex. From room to room he wandered as if in a dream, and in each room others both familiar and unknown approached him with questions, "Who are you?" "How do you know Skip? "Are you a professor, what do you teach?" To them they were simple questions. To Don they were the Zen Koans of his life.

Suddenly, there was Connor Lawrence towering before him. He was a Cyclops. No, there were clearly two big round eyes looking him up and down. "Dr. Landry, what a blessing to find you here at this orgiastic affair." Connor gave Don his best mocking smile.

"My dear, you have no idea how glad I am to see you." Landry exclaimed. "You are my shining knight come to my rescue."

"But, Don, what do you need to be rescued from?" Connor asked, still smiling.

"Madness, banality, folly." Don replied. "And maybe you can help me find a simple scotch and water in this opium den."

Connor laughed his deep, throaty laugh, giving Don a bear hug. He kept his huge, artist hand clasped to Don's shoulder. "I didn't bring Jane along, tonight. This is not her scene. So, honey, it's just me and you."
 

---

Sharon would have avoided this party if she could have. When she reminded herself that David, Don, and even Skip were all leaving Savannah, she admitted that Eddie had to attend. She certainly had no intention of letting him go alone. So now she was here, lost in the funhouse. What a hideous place. How could anyone live in such a nightmare? To her dismay, Eddie was at home here. He took her by the hand and guided her upstairs, through the maze of rooms, the ceilingless breakfast room, the soiled kitchen where a cockroach scurried across the sink, to a back door where steps went up to a dark door to the attic, and down to a lower level where voices indicated a crowd.

"Looking for David?" a voice asked as a face looked up from below. "He's up there, I think."

"That's OK," Eddie yelled down. He turned to go back to the refrigerator. "Beer. Fantastic." He helped himself, offering one to Sharon.

She accepted. She decided she needed one, despite the baby.

"Two twelve packs of Bohemia," Eddie said," No doubt to celebrate Don's big move to Mexico. Of course, it's also David's favorite beer."

Landry, though, was not drinking Bohemia. He was nursing a blessed Scotch and water. Connor had miraculously produced a fifth of Inver House. They encountered Eddie and Sharon in the black light lit  hallway leading to the back bedrooms and bathroom. Strangers pushed past them going both ways.

"My congratulations to you both," boomed Connor to Sharon. "Your wedding reception was the social event of the summer."

"Right," Eddie replied. What a buffoon Connor is, he thought. He turned to Landry," Mexico so soon. You must be thrilled. I wish I were going with you."

"Thrilled, but terrified." Don said with a pained smile. "I already miss Moon River, and I haven't even left."

"Funny, I miss Moon River, too." Eddie said, not looking at Sharon.

"Well, then, we should move the whole party there," Connor suggested. "We can all get naked on the sunporch!"

Sharon blushed, but no one saw in the dayglow of the hallway.

"Did you see this?" Asked Eddie, pointing to the glowing writing on the wall.

Sharon read the scrawl Eddie pointed out, "Beam me up Scotty; there's no intelligent life here." Eddie was laughing. Sharon thought the Star Trek quote only too true.

As they moved down the hallway, Sharon continued to read the walls and survey the rooms. A small poster announced a performance of the "Now Explosion." A fractured female mannequin head stared from the lightless wall socket above her. There were more scribblings and a Peanuts cartoon cut and pasted to the wall. Strings of beads hung from door knobs. The three bedrooms toward the back of the house were filled with debris, unmade beds with filthy sheets, chests of drawers half open with clothes spilling out of them. "How can people live here?" She asked.

Then she saw the bathroom. Floor to ceiling was pasted with Playboy centerfolds and other  magazine photos of nude women. "Oh my God!" She said with disgust.

"Hell, it's a party house. Don't take everything so seriously." Eddie laughed at her," Let's go find David. "

David was on the screen porch, deep in conversation with Andreas and Eva.  "That's a great idea. Take the train to New Orleans for your honeymoon." Eva would be a December bride. She and Andy would spend Christmas to New Years Day with David. 

Eddie politely listened to the elaboration of plans he had already heard on his own wedding day.

"Speaking of weddings and honeymoons," David said looking up at Eddie, "How is married life?'

"Fantastic; nothing better," Eddie lied. Sharon gave a nervous laugh. Their marriage had improved, however. After the wedding night, Eddie's momentary impotence vanished with the morning sun over Hilton Head Island. The intensity of conjugal pleasure was theirs.

" A toast to true love and marital bliss," David proposed, lifting his bottle of Bohemia and clinking it to Eddie's.

"And to true friendship," added Andreas, touching his bottle to theirs.

As midnight approached, David missed Brian. "All these couples everywhere," David thought out loud. He knew Eddie and Sharon would leave soon. Then, he saw Susan sitting alone in the living room. He walked over to her, "What do you think of the newly weds?"

"I hope they're happy. Just glad it ain't me, you know? I am ready for New York. Or at least a different scene." Susan said.

David sat on the sofa across from her. A tall, lanky teenager he didn't know was also sitting there. "Hi. I'm Birdsey." The boy said holding out his hand, then offering David a cigarette.

"Hey. I'm David." David accepted the offer, considered making a pass, but resisted. "Much too young," he told himself. He inhaled the Marlboro. 

---

 "Your paintings are as good as Matisse. You are a genius, a great artist." Landry praised Connor but Connor resisted.

" I am a hopeless drunk and a sinner." Connor's tongue was thick with several drinks. "But you are right. I love my work; my paintings are my soul."

Landry and Connor huddled in the last bedroom at the end of the hall. Skip had left it open.

"We should leave," Landry coaxed. "I'll drive you home."

"Whatever you say, my dear," Connor accepted. "Take me away. Take me in your arms."

 Skip, standing on the brick front steps of Battey House, told them goodbye. The rain had stopped and bright orange clouds swirled overhead in the night sky. Hurricane David was passing by. Skip watched Landry drive off in his Volkswagon. "He's the professor my brother is going with to new Orleans." Skip said to Kay. She looked perplexed.

"I wish someone would take me away from here. Can I come visit you in Biloxi?"

"That would be far out. I'll need all the friends I can find there." Skip replied happily. "We'll go over to New Orleans together."

"You promise?"

---

David wondered if he should try to drive home to Moon River. A lull in the rain had passed and the wind was gusting again. "Guess I could just crash here," David told himself. There were still people scattered about the house, most of them drunk or stoned. Skip had turned Jimi Hendrix down for fear that the unhappy neighbors would call the police. Now, Skip's new Elton John album was playing. Skip and Kay walked with his arm around her, said goodnight to David, and headed down the hallway. David wished them a sweet goodnight.

"Hey! Where's the party?" David looked up and saw Brian standing in the doorway.

"Everyone is gone or passed out-- you missed everybody: Andreas, Eva, Eddie, Sharon, even Don, gone, conquered by art."

"There seem to be a few party animals stumbling around in the dark here." Brian replied.

"We like the dark." David pulled Brian down onto the sofa beside him.

---

 Connor Lawrence insisted that Landry come in for a nightcap. His small apartment near the Telfair Museum was filled with his paintings. Don surveyed them with admiration. After a few sips on their drinks, Connor seized Don in a hug, dragging him willingly to the bedroom, and the huge canopy bed. As renewed wind and rain rattled the large old window, Connor unveiled for Landry his hidden asset. Thunder and lightning accompanied.

At Three A.M. Brian drove his convertible up the dirt driveway of Moon River. The house was dark and shadowy under the moonlight. The waning moon was emerging from the bands of cloud wispy and fleeing from east to west, from the storm still over the Atlantic. The moon seemed to be gliding above the marsh.

David had slept on the drive out, glad to be rescued from Battey House, especially by Brian. he was glad to see the yellow wood frame of the house at Moon River dark, unoccupied. "It's all ours."

They entered the house, David switching on lights, heading into the kitchen. "I just want some water, good  Moon River sulfur water." He filled a glass from the tap. Brian found a beer in the refrigerator. Upstairs they undressed and climbed into David's ample Stickley bed beside the window with a view of the river. The moon shone through the open window. The water in the distance tossed yet by the easterly winds, reflected the moon in shattered images.

Mid-morning, David awoke first. Brian lay naked on the bed in the warmth of the sunlight pouring through the window. David loved his body, blond peach fuz over his lips, his slender, hairless chest, the rise and fall of his taut belly, all the ripe details of his flesh, lying before him like an offering. He lightly touched Brian, not wanting to wake him.

David knew it was just another party night for Brian. He would become one more bit of Savannah left behind. Yet, Brian had liberated David, given him immense pleasure, allowed him to let go of Eddie, finally. In time David would wonder why and how he had ever been so in love with Eddie. At the same time, paradoxically, Brian deepend David's love for Don. 

---

Don Landry, at the same moment, was also awakening. Connor Lawrence was cooking eggs in his efficiency kitchen. "Stay where you are," Connor commanded. "I shall serve the good professor breakfast in bed."

"I've been well served quite enough," Landry said inaudibly. Still, he complied with the order. His body shivered in memory of Connor's fucking. He was "in me like my death," Landry quoted his own poem.

"What's that?" Connor asked, carrying a large copper tray filled with plates of eggs, toast, grits, and coffee. "You and I must go to church together, now, don't you think?" He asked.

"No. I repent nothing." Landry replied.

---

 On the afternoon of their last full day at Moon River, Don and David sat on the sun porch drinking the last bottle of Bordeaux.

"Do you think we are born gay?" David asked.

" I don't know," Don replied. "Maybe we are born with an inclination."

"My view is we are born bisexual and that we learn what not to desire. Our experience eliminates half of what we initially are attracted to."

"Nothing, no amount of learning, could have made me desire women." Don smiled, "I appreciate their aesthetic beauty, but I am no more attracted to them sexually than I am to a Ming vase."

David thought about what Don said. He could not imagine Don fucking a woman, it was true. Still, he persisted, "We nonetheless learn our aversions. You may lack the desire for women, but what is in your genetic makeup is the need to be with men. As you know, I tried being straight. Making love to women was exciting and extremely pleasurable, physically. I felt what  D. H. Lawrence called the 'charging of the blood.' The connection and the climax were a miracle of merging and flowing into one another physically and psychically. But for me that was the problem. I need to connect on that deep level with another man. I can't really explain it, but sexual intimacy with a man is the ultimate connection for me. It is the love that surpasses the love for women to put it in Biblical terms."

Landry took a deep puff of his cigarette, inhaling so deeply that the hot smoke hurt his lungs. He thought how different he was from David. What "charged his blood," was having a man fuck him, not fucking women. "We must relish and cherish the mystery. In love we must follow not our heads, but our hearts. Best to stop trying to undo the cords which bind our hearts to others, less we ourselves fall down dark stairs of the irrational."

David loved that poetic vision. "And if the cords of our hearts entwine with more than one person, more than one sex?"

"My dear, you already know the answer, don't you?"


In the evening, after a light dinner, the two men walked to the river's edge, listening to the pulse of the cicadas. The grounds were lush, still damp after the rains from the hurricane. "We'll drive straight through to the Gulf coast tomorrow," Landry explained.  "We should be able to reach the Florida Panhandle, beyond Pensacola, maybe Destin. The beach there is lovely and we can walk along the strand. Then we can drive on to New Orleans on Wednesday, get there in time for a late afternoon cocktail at Lafitte's." Landry smiled as he imagined Davids' reaction to the French Quarter.


"I can't wait," David replied.


Back in the house, ascending the stairs, David turned and gave Don a goodnight kiss. Then he turned to sleep in his own bedroom one last night. In the big Stickley bed, however, David could not sleep. His head was filled with speculation, with New Orleans and the unknown Mexico beyond.  After midnight he tiptoed into the master bedroom, climbing into the four poster bed where Don slept soundly. At last David could sleep.

Just before dawn they both awoke hugging each other. It was pitch dark. David felt Landry touch his face, brushing back the hair across his forehead. The touch expanded into caresses as the two men massaged and aroused each other. They gave each other heart racing yet gentle sexual release. simultaneous, both sighing with pleasure.

David held Don close to him. As his breath settled down, a new specter took shape in the dark. He felt Landry's thin face with the hard bones of his skull standing out. The bones of Don's shoulders and arms jutted out in the blackness, David imagining his friend as a living skeleton staring back at him with hollow eyes. David thought of Mexico and all the skeletons of the Day of the Dead he had seen. He thought of the heart eating gods. "I am embracing Death," David thought. Panic gripped him as he thought of the future.


Landry was shivering as the air conditioner churned. He reached down to pull up the covers.


"What's wrong?" David asked.


"I am freezing," Landry whispered. He took hold of David as he lifted the covers over them both. He felt David shaking. "You're cold too."


"No," David answered.


"What, then?"


"I don't know. I'm afraid. I feel like something dreadful is going to happen. Death and disaster."


Landry shared David's premonition, but he tried to console him.

"You mustn't worry, David. I promise you, nothing horrible is going to happen. One day we'll have a wonderful house to live in, whether it's in Mexico or here in Savannah. It will be our Garden of the Finzi-Continis, our Garden of Epicurus.

David tried to smile as his tears welled.

Landry continued, "Everything will be fine. We shall weather the storms. We shall 'pasture the horses of the sea,'" he quoted. 


"I don't know why I'm so upset," David answered. "Maybe that awful trial. All the death in Viet Nam. Or maybe just all of us going away to other places, our little family split up and disappearing. Why are we all leaving, anyway?"


"Sh, sh. It's alright. We aren't leaving one another." Landry was uncertain, but he persisted," We are evolving into a richer world and new experience, that's all. You will study philosophy at Tulane; you'll come to visit me in Cholula."


"An adventure for us both," David took up the dream.


Exhausted, they both fell back into sleep.


They awoke with the sun blazing over Moon River and into the window. Landry threw off the covers and rose to lift the window to the morning air. Shrill birdsong filled the room. After showers they had coffee and a final breakfast in the breezeway. 


"When will Pat and her husband arrive?' David asked.


"Later this afternoon." Their friends would keep the house until the following June, at least. Then, Landry would make the decision whether to return or stay in Mexico.


The morning sun had brought the return of reason, heightening their anticipation of New Orleans. The dark demons of the night had vanished for now. They carried their suitcases to the car. Both looked around the grounds which shimmered in the August heat, crickets pulsing. 


"I shall miss it here." David said.


Landry felt the same. "Let's go before we change our minds." They got into the Volkswagon.


"Next stop, Destin," they said simultaneously.




Jack Miller
Druid Hills
Summer 2010