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Her name was ‘Low River’. She wasn’t an Indian but a thorough hippy. She’d been a stewardess for many years but now with three kids she was a mom. She was about ten years older than me, in a long robe with bead jewelry, a lovely face framed in very long, straight, light brown hair. We were talking in a dark corner of the middle bedroom so packed with people we were pressed into one another against the wall. I don’t recall what I said but at one point she grabs my shoulders, kisses me hard on the lips and says, “you’re coming home with me”. I smiled.
The next morning I remember sitting on a couch and talking with her ten-year-old son. She lived in the bottom flat of an old Victorian house above College avenue. They split these grand houses up into two or three units. She had the main entrance with its veranda, a beautiful, spacious living room with bay windows and then a few smaller rooms with a kitchen tacked on.
Her son was showing me a picture he’d drawn on a large sheet of paper and had spent much time on. It was the battle of Hastings with William on one side, mounted, with spear men and archers around him and Harold likewise on the other with the arrow in his head. We were talking excitedly about the battle all the while mom made breakfast and even after. She had a younger son and a very cute daughter, perhaps five, playing by themselves quietly and well behaved on the wooden floor.
What a curious thing is memory. It’s both fickle and dilettante. It will keep a major event but along with that a flood of insignificant details, as if they were precious pieces to a puzzle we can’t quite comprehend or complete. I remember parts of that day well. The day after not at all. Our little flame lasted only a few weeks, with three or four more visits and what we did or said or felt is all lost, except for one other crazy snapshot.
I remember going to the cafe Med. one night and reading for several hours in the mezzanine. I had several books with me. The one I chose that night was a blue, hardcover copy of Milton’s complete poetry. It had notes below the poetry on many pages. I was just beginning the book. I recall that night walking the long way to her house, her small bedroom, the single bed and the lamp on a flimsy night table beside it. This is where I placed my books. We turned out the light and made love and were supposed to fall asleep on that narrow bed wrapped up in each other’s arms. I couldn’t sleep, having done a few lines hours earlier. I could lay still but my mind was racing away. Worse, I was thinking about the Milton book and my thoughts fixated upon a specific footnote in it and all of a sudden it dawned on me in the pitch-black room that the footnote had an error in it. But how could that be? It was an Oxford edition, a standard school text, the most carefully corrected editions that exist.
This bothered me to no end. I was on the lamp side of the bed and the book was right there. I thought if I could turn on the light for just a few seconds I could check it, (I even remembered the page number) and settle the matter and turn the light out again without her noticing. I spent several minutes revolving this plan. I could tell from her breathing she was sound asleep. I smoothly rolled over, turned on the light, opened the book and sure enough, “what are you doing?” fills my ears. I turn off the light and mumble some incoherent apology, very embarrassed, turn back to her and somehow manage to fall asleep. The next morning I found out I was right. It was a typo, an error of a page number.
Now going back to that first morning I remember so well, with Low River and her children, a chance event occurred through a simple act of forgetfulness that introduced me to a new friend that blessed and enriched and changed my life for years to come.
After breakfast Low River said she’d give me a ride home. The children could be left and were frequently minded by an ex-boyfriend (not the father) who lived upstairs.
As we came to the car and she noticed them she exclaims: “Oh my God, I’ve completely forgotten. I was supposed to return this laundry two days ago.” The depth of her emotion in this statement surprised me. It sounded as if some disaster had occurred. So I asked her what the big deal was. “These are all his clothes. He has nothing. We have to go there right away”.
So we drove quickly across town to a rundown house only a few blocks from the Plough (on the ghetto side) and knocked on a side door. “Come on in, I can’t get up” was the reply. We entered the small room and there on a bed against the wall sat John Seebach, naked, a sheet pulled round him for modesty, a paperback in his hand.
He was seven or eight years older than me, with black, curly hair, pudgy, a little overweight with a round, dimpled face, like a young Dylan Thomas. He was very happy to see us, not over the clothes situation but just as visitors. Low River was all apologies but John just brushed it off: “I knew you’d come back sooner or later”. There were empty pop cans and candy wrappers all over the floor. The only other furniture in the room was a lamp and a chair. The curtains were drawn and he’d been reading by lamplight even though it was bright sunshine outside.
“I’ve been fine, don’t worry about it” he told her. There were stacks of at least fifty, old, dog-eared paperbacks on the floor all around his bed, mostly pulp fiction and detective novels and I imagined that he must have read them all.
Low River, as an old friend, had come by three days earlier and offered to do his laundry at her house and as the opportunity was so rare he gave her all his laundry, down to his last socks and underwear. She was supposed to return it the next morning but forgot. Luckily, he had a supply of junk food laid in and to him a day in bed with a cheap novel was pure nirvana. She brought in his clothes, we turned our backs, he dressed and we talked for a while. She had to get back to her children, so we kissed goodbye. I could walk home and wanted to stay longer as we were very much enjoying each other’s conversation. Our friendship had begun.
Now that John had clothes again and could ramble about, we decided to head over to my place. I could show him the pad. Bones wasn’t home. It was becoming habitual lately for anyone entering our apartment to offer him or her a line. This I did in the living room and now our conversation began in earnest.
John had the sharpest mind and was one of the best conversationalist I ever met. And with him as with me, ‘speed’ always doubled the effort and the intelligence we put into it. We talked like athletes sparring with each other in the ring. I remember to this day that afternoon as I recounted to him, (both of us sitting on the floor by the front window next to Bones’ loft,) in great vividness with arms waving, the final battle scene from Sallust’s ‘Catiline Conspiracy’, and him listening just as intently. I remember how he clapped his hands just as I finished describing Catiline’s noble death in pure delight.
I paid him the same attention with his stories and he had a huge fund. But more important, we would analyze each matter, ask questions and debate answers. Bones joined us a few hours later and he too fell under John’s spell. John played guitar and piano with a Tom Waits-like voice and knew many songs, so they too became fast friends.
