Half the time I
couldn’t tell you just what Blake’s getting at, Miss Littlefield,
but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying his work. That sonnet of
your young man’s, that poem about riding a train across Kansas and
looking at the moon. I’m sure you remember it.”
“Sort of.”
“He writes of the moon ‘stroking desperate
tides in the liquid land.’ That’s a lovely line, Miss Littlefield,
and who cares whether the poem itself is fully comprehensible?
Who’d raise such a niggling point? William Telliford is a poet and
I’m under an obligation to defend him. I’m certain he couldn’t have
murdered that woman.”
Robin gnawed a thumbnail. “The police are
pretty sure he did it,” she said. “The fire axe was missing from
the hallway of our building and the glass case where it was kept
was smashed open. And Janice Penrose, he used to live with her
before he met me, well, they say he was still going around her
place sometimes when I was working at the diner. And they never
found the fire axe, but Bill came home with his jeans and shirt
covered with blood and couldn’t remember what happened. And he was
seen in her neighborhood, and he’d been drinking, plus he smoked a
lot of dope that afternoon and he was always taking pills. Ups and
downs, like, plus some green capsules he stole from somebody’s
medicine chest and we were never quite sure what they were, but
they do weird things to your head.”
“The artist is so often the subject of his
own experiment,” Ehrengraf said sympathetically. “Think of De
Quincey. Consider Coleridge, waking from an opium dream with all of
‘Kubla Khan’ fixed in his mind, just waiting for him to write it
down. Of course he was interrupted by that dashed man from Porlock,
but the lines he did manage to save are so wonderful. You know the
poem, Miss Littlefield?”
“I think we had to read it in school.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or didn’t he write something about an
albatross? Some guy shot an albatross, something like that.”
“Something like that.”
* * *
“The thing is,” William Telliford said, “the
more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I
must have killed Jan. I mean, who else would kill her?”
“You’re innocent,” Ehrengraf told him.
“You really think so? I can’t remember what
happened that day. I was doing some drugs and hitting the wine
pretty good, and then I found this bottle of bourbon that I didn’t
think we still had, and I started drinking that, and that’s about
the last thing I remember. I must have gone right into blackout and
the next thing I knew I was walking around covered with blood. And
I’ve got a way of being violent when I’m drunk. When I lived with
Jan I beat her up a few times, and I did the same with Robin.
That’s one of the reasons her father hates me.”
“Her father hates you?”
“Despises me. Oh, I can’t really blame him.
He’s this self-made man with more money than God and I’m squeezing
by on food stamps. There’s not much of a living in poetry.”
“It’s an outrage.”
“Right. When Robin and I moved in together,
well, her old man had a fit. Up to then he was laying a pretty
heavy check on her the first of every month, but as soon as she
moved in with me that was the end of that song. No more money for
her. Here’s her little brother going to this fancy private school
and her mother dripping in sables and emeralds and diamonds and
mink, and here’s Robin slinging hash in a greasy spoon because her
father doesn’t care for the company she’s keeping.”
“Interesting.”
“The man really hates me. Some people take to
me and some people don’t, but he just couldn’t stomach me. Thought
I was the lowest of the low. It really grinds a person down, you
know. All the pressure he was putting on Robin, and both of us
being as broke as we were, I’ll tell you, it reached the point
where I couldn’t get any writing done.”
“That’s terrible,” Ehrengraf said,
couldn’t tell you just what Blake’s getting at, Miss Littlefield,
but that doesn’t keep me from enjoying his work. That sonnet of
your young man’s, that poem about riding a train across Kansas and
looking at the moon. I’m sure you remember it.”
“Sort of.”
“He writes of the moon ‘stroking desperate
tides in the liquid land.’ That’s a lovely line, Miss Littlefield,
and who cares whether the poem itself is fully comprehensible?
Who’d raise such a niggling point? William Telliford is a poet and
I’m under an obligation to defend him. I’m certain he couldn’t have
murdered that woman.”
Robin gnawed a thumbnail. “The police are
pretty sure he did it,” she said. “The fire axe was missing from
the hallway of our building and the glass case where it was kept
was smashed open. And Janice Penrose, he used to live with her
before he met me, well, they say he was still going around her
place sometimes when I was working at the diner. And they never
found the fire axe, but Bill came home with his jeans and shirt
covered with blood and couldn’t remember what happened. And he was
seen in her neighborhood, and he’d been drinking, plus he smoked a
lot of dope that afternoon and he was always taking pills. Ups and
downs, like, plus some green capsules he stole from somebody’s
medicine chest and we were never quite sure what they were, but
they do weird things to your head.”
“The artist is so often the subject of his
own experiment,” Ehrengraf said sympathetically. “Think of De
Quincey. Consider Coleridge, waking from an opium dream with all of
‘Kubla Khan’ fixed in his mind, just waiting for him to write it
down. Of course he was interrupted by that dashed man from Porlock,
but the lines he did manage to save are so wonderful. You know the
poem, Miss Littlefield?”
“I think we had to read it in school.”
“Perhaps.”
“Or didn’t he write something about an
albatross? Some guy shot an albatross, something like that.”
“Something like that.”
* * *
“The thing is,” William Telliford said, “the
more I think about it, the more I come to the conclusion that I
must have killed Jan. I mean, who else would kill her?”
“You’re innocent,” Ehrengraf told him.
“You really think so? I can’t remember what
happened that day. I was doing some drugs and hitting the wine
pretty good, and then I found this bottle of bourbon that I didn’t
think we still had, and I started drinking that, and that’s about
the last thing I remember. I must have gone right into blackout and
the next thing I knew I was walking around covered with blood. And
I’ve got a way of being violent when I’m drunk. When I lived with
Jan I beat her up a few times, and I did the same with Robin.
That’s one of the reasons her father hates me.”
“Her father hates you?”
“Despises me. Oh, I can’t really blame him.
He’s this self-made man with more money than God and I’m squeezing
by on food stamps. There’s not much of a living in poetry.”
“It’s an outrage.”
“Right. When Robin and I moved in together,
well, her old man had a fit. Up to then he was laying a pretty
heavy check on her the first of every month, but as soon as she
moved in with me that was the end of that song. No more money for
her. Here’s her little brother going to this fancy private school
and her mother dripping in sables and emeralds and diamonds and
mink, and here’s Robin slinging hash in a greasy spoon because her
father doesn’t care for the company she’s keeping.”
“Interesting.”
“The man really hates me. Some people take to
me and some people don’t, but he just couldn’t stomach me. Thought
I was the lowest of the low. It really grinds a person down, you
know. All the pressure he was putting on Robin, and both of us
being as broke as we were, I’ll tell you, it reached the point
where I couldn’t get any writing done.”
“That’s terrible,” Ehrengraf said,
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