Big Man Read online

  It was one of my favorite moments in life. I had no dope and Robert Altman had no use for me. I stood there and laughed out loud. I went back into the living room to tell my wife what had happened and found her talking to another show business dude, the actor Peter Boyle. She introduced us, and this time I really did have a lot to say as we were both employed in the world of situation comedy. Peter was great and smart and friendly and made the rest of my time at the party a real pleasure.

  But once again everything seems to be connected to everything else in surprising ways.

  Four years later, after both Peter Boyle and Robert Altman had passed away, I found myself back in New York. I was walking around the upper reaches of Madison Square Garden during a show on the “Magic” tour. Bruce was onstage introducing the beautiful “Meeting Across the River.”

  “I’d like to dedicate this song to an old friend who passed away awhile back,” he said. “He was one of the first people we met when we came to New York City and today would’ve been his birthday. This is for Peter Boyle.”

  Until that moment I had no idea that Bruce had even heard of Peter Boyle. It brought me back to that party and made me realize once again how tentative life is and how important it is to savor every day. It sounds trite, I know, but I also know that death doesn’t fuck around and that it’s waiting around some corner for all of us, and once you make that turn you’re not coming back. Order the good wine.

  Scotland

  Clarence

  I was rocking a chocolate-colored Charlie Tweddle cowboy hat with a snakeskin band and a yellow feather, as I stood on the waterfall platform of the Glencalive Estate, on the River Carron in the Scottish Highlands, and cast my line into the root beer-colored water.

  A soft, steady rain had been falling all morning. I wore a long oilskin coat from Australia and the waterproofed leather boots I had made in Spain. The rain was gentle enough to allow me to smoke a cigar. Today it was a fine Cuban Montecristo #2 I’d bought in London before heading up here on the overnight train to Inverness.

  I was fishing for salmon.

  In the distance I could see smoke tying the chimneys in the big house to the sky. I took meals there with the others, but I was staying at the remote stone lodge five miles away in the hills. Remote didn’t quite describe the splendid isolation of the place. The estate was comprised of twenty-five thousand acres, which meant if you stood in the center of it you could walk about ten miles in any direction and still be on the property. The lodge overlooked a mountain loch.

  I had come here to relax and unwind after the European leg of the tour. I had another ten days before I climbed onstage again, and I was happy to spend that time here in this faraway corner of Scotland. A woman I knew had told me about this place and had set me up here through the owner, an English publisher whom she had known for years.

  It was spring, and the stalking season hadn’t begun. The herds of deer could be seen and felt thundering through the glen a mile below the lodge where I sat at night smoking and sipping whiskey in a beautiful wooden chair hand-built by the genius Petter Southall. It stayed light here until near midnight. I’d been told that the midges would eat me alive, but they didn’t like my cigar or, I guess, dark meat.

  I loved it here. It was high, wild country and it made me feel closer to God.

  The fish weren’t biting, so I sat in one of the dark green wooden chairs in the gazebo on the platform. I loved the sound of the rain on the metal roof. I took out a book I’d been reading. It was called Someday This Pain Will Be Useful to You by Peter Cameron. It was about a latter-day Holden Caulfield struggling to feel something. It brought to mind the Warren Zevon’s lines “I’m going to hurl myself against the wall / ’Cause I’d rather feel bad than not feel anything at all.” I read for a while then sat back and, like Zimmy, just watched the river flow. The sound of the waterfall had a hypnotic effect, and soon I was drifting, floating and flying on the wings of my imagination. It was as if my left lobe shut down and euphoria took me to the beaches and lovers from somewhere in my past. I was somewhere in honey-colored sunlight with honey-colored women and felt strong and fit and young.

  These were the moments when things came to me. Today it was this image of a room on a sandy tropical shore somewhere that may or may not have been real. No matter. It was mine now and the languid, louche feeling of it would convert easily into music. The music I began to hear now. I started humming involuntarily, the sound flowing from me like maple syrup, all thick and slow and sweet and good.

  The feeling of the room and the rain and the rushing water and the soft wind conspired and collaborated to produce this sound. “It sounds like butterscotch,” I said aloud. That’s what I’d call it—“Sounds Like Butterscotch,” or maybe just “Butterscotch.” Better. I ached to have the horn right there so I could play it, but that would have to wait. Before every performance I prayed the same prayers. One was “Let this horn touch someone tonight.” Tonight would be no different. I’d climb the hill overlooking that green valley filled with mist and magic, and I’d play it for no one and for everyone and the music would fall, tumbling and rolling down to the water, and mix with the cold streams and the heather, and for a little while I would be transported to a place of peace both inside and out.

  There was something about the Scottish Highlands that spoke to me. There was a huge masculine beauty to the place. It was both hard and soft at the same time. There was a great sense of peace tempered by the faint scent of ancient blood on stone. Life felt a little more real to me here. This was a place of basics. Wind and water and wood and rocks. I could feel time passing here, a feeling I was unable to touch anywhere else in the world.

  And the people were smart and funny. They were as smart and as funny as any group of people I’d ever met, including the community of professional comedy writers. The Scots had that same sharp wit and the dark streak in their souls that put them in touch with outrageousness. If they didn’t have a penchant for killing each other they would’ve ruled the world. But while the clans fought over the small things, the English moved north and stole the country.

  Now here in the far North Country full dark had arrived, and I went back into the stone lodge and built a fire. I sat in front of it on the leather couch and felt where I was. Alone in a small house in a remote corner of a foreign country in the blackest of nights, with the cold wind now carrying more rain, which began tapping on the windows. The logs hissed and crackled. I took off my boots and put my feet up on the wooden table. The heat from the fire felt good. I did not want the moment to end.

  Islamorada

  Clarence

  By six o’clock in the evening Islamorada is legally drunk. The sun sets early this time of year, and no one wants to face the darkness without fortification. We entered this broken-down dive bar on the gulf side of the road at six-thirty and found the place jammed with seriously monstered rednecks, hooting and hollering and stumble-dancing to a Jimmy Buffett cover band led by our fishing guide, Chris Miller. Some of these people, maybe most, were drunk from two days ago.

  “In the Keys,” Don said, “every night is Saturday night.”

  I had agreed to sit in, and apparently the word had spread because the place was packed. There was a rumor going around that Billy Joel was also stopping by because he and I had met that morning while having breakfast at Lor-E-Lei’s, but I was there and Billy Joel wasn’t. Besides, there was no piano in the joint even if he did show up. We pushed our way through the crowd, who broke into cheers when they saw me, and made our way to the stage. Don was carrying the horn in its case, while my assistant had the bag of things I always have with me. It contains medicines, reeds, pads, and some form of adult beverage and all kinds of other stuff. My paramour, Victoria, was also there, looking as out of place as a swan in the desert. Victoria is tall, elegant, twenty-nine, and Russian. She in fact resembles the tennis star Maria Sharapova but is more beautiful. I swear she could charm a hungry dog off a meat wagon. I got set up while Victor
ia and Don squeezed into the two seats saved for them at a front table, which included some very drunk women and at least two kids. Seeing children in a bar is unusual, but then again this is the Keys. The kids were both blond and obviously brothers, about ten and twelve years old. I found out later that the older boy, AJ, was celebrating his birthday. It turned out to be one I’m sure he’ll never forget.

  Don had gotten to the hotel here in the Florida Keys a few hours ahead of us the day before. I called him when we got to the hotel to talk about dinner plans and fishing plans, and something else.

  “I think there’s going to be a wedding soon,” I said.

  I had been thinking about marrying Victoria for weeks. Last night we had discussed various locations where such a wedding could take place. I rejected the obvious suggestions of Vegas and Hawaii because I’ve already gotten married in those places. So we put the where of it aside.

  “How soon?” he asked.

  “Maybe soon,” I replied.

  “That’s great,” said Don. “As long as it doesn’t fuck up the fishing.”

  That first night the four of us went out for dinner, and conversation turned from marriage to tequila, then (as it always does following tequila), life itself. Don tried to imagine what my life might have been like had I never met Bruce.

  “I’d still be playing,” I said. “Just in smaller rooms.”

  We were in a restaurant owned by a friend of mine. (At this point in time I have friends everywhere who own just about anything you can imagine.) The owner in this case was named Frank and was one of many men in the Keys who wears ponytails. I believe there are four hundred men in this country who still wear ponytails. Six of them live in Big Sur, four of them live on Maui, and the rest are in the Florida Keys.

  Having dinner in any public place with me can sometimes be like attending a party. Everyone is in a good mood. They generally seem to feel fortunate, even blessed, that they chose the same place to eat that someone famous chose. They don’t realize that I sometimes have really bad taste. People also like to buy me drinks. In fact it’s difficult to pay for anything. This is one of the perks of fame that nobody talks about much. It’s really, really nice.

  I love it down here in the Keys. It is one of those end of the road places like Hana or Provincetown, where all that was once loose finally stops rolling. Many people here are outsiders and larger than life. Some are rich; the rest work for the rich. Two of them died in the days before our arrival. I read their obituaries in the morning paper.

  A photograph that caught my eye accompanied the first. It was a headshot of a razor-thin guy with a tanned face wearing dark sunglasses and an old gimme cap. His black hair was pulled back into, you guessed it, a ponytail. He looked like he had spent his entire life on a bar stool drinking beer and smoking Marlboros. His name was John “Cockroach” Hart. He was from New Jersey but had been in the Keys for thirty years. He worked in the “fishing industry.”

  He had died of a heart attack. He was fifty-eight years old. A celebration of his life was to be held on Thursday afternoon at the Dog Pound bar in Marathon Key.

  The second was Carl “Cappy” Carlson, also fifty-eight. Cappy was the owner of the “DUI cab company.” A one cab operation that specialized in driving convicted DUI offenders to and from their DUI classes. After dropping off his charges the previous Saturday, Cappy had been stopped by the police and arrested for driving under the influence. He couldn’t make bail and died in his sleep in his cell that night.

  Rest in peace.

  The next morning we made our way to Lor-E-Lei’s, the funky waterfront open air restaurant in Islamorada. We ate fried egg sandwiches, drank coffee, and didn’t see Billy Joel. (As it turned out later we may have passed Billy as he was walking in and we were walking out.) Chris Miller, our fishing guide and boat captain, arrived on a twenty-four-foot flat bottom Triton at about eight thirty, and we were loaded up and on the water by nine.

  It was chilly at first, and Don was huddled behind the captain’s chair, freezing. Victoria and I sat forward, looking like oddly matched figureheads on the prow of the Proud Mary.

  It turned out to be a beautiful day on the water. I caught four mangrove snappers, which we had for dinner that night. Chris caught a catfish that stabbed him with its poisonous barb while he was removing the hook. He swore and bled profusely, concerned mostly about being able to play his guitar that night. Fortunately I had a small taste of whiskey in my bag, which Chris poured on the wound. He said it also made sucking out the poison easier. It must have worked, because his hand didn’t swell, and he was fine by the time we got back to the dock at three thirty.

  But after our first day on the Triton we went back to the hotel, took naps, and left for the club at sunset. We stopped briefly so I could do a local radio show being broadcast from, of course, a bar. It was ostensibly a show about fishing but was actually a forum for the local gossip that fuels all small towns. We heard there that the club where I had agreed to sit in was jammed and had been for hours.

  Most people hear something like a place being jammed and start to imagine difficulty parking or getting in. I never worry about stuff like that.

  “My face is my pass,” I said to Don once, and it’s true.

  It’s easy for me to forget that I’ve been very famous for a very long time. Since the band still attracts young people, the size and scope of its fan base is vast.

  “Do you realize what a magical life you’re living?” Don asked me in the car on the way to the club.

  “I do,” I said.

  “Most people don’t get this kind of life. Most people can’t even imagine it,” he said.

  I just smiled and pointed at the sky.

  * * *

  “My old boyfriend knew lots of famous people,” said the drunk girl. “He knew Simon and Garfunkel.”

  “No kidding,” said Don. “Both of them?”

  “Yup.” She nodded as she spoke. “And…”

  She trailed off, trying hard to focus. It was after the show and the place was still electric, everyone ripping high and buzzed about what they had seen. Even I was stoked about what had happened earlier with the kid in the front row.

  The drunk girl had simply plunked herself down next to us and started talking. She was skinny and slack-haired and on the dark side of forty, but we called her the drunk girl to distinguish her from the drunk woman, a fat, plastered sixty-year-old with a bleached blond Sandra Dee bouffant, wearing a muumuu and holding up the keys to her van.

  “I can’t find my passengers,” she slurred.

  “They’re probably hiding,” I said.

  “From you,” Don added.

  “I’m the designated driver,” she announced. “I’ve only had two beers.”

  “Jonathan Winters’s brother,” the drunk girl finally finished.

  “People say I’m drunk but I’m not,” said the drunk woman. “That’s bullshit.”

  “Chilly?” I said to the drunk girl.

  “No, I’m warm,” she said.

  “No, Jonathan Winters’s brother… is his name Chilly Winters?” I smiled. “Or Long Dark Winters?”

  She considered that. “No,” she concluded.

  “Juss bullshit,” said the drunk woman, as she wandered away. “I can drive.”

  “I know Jonathan Winters,” Don said to the drunk girl, “and I don’t think he has a brother. If he does, I can’t remember him mentioning it.”

  “My ex-boyfriend knew his brother,” she said.

  “The Simon and Garfunkel ex-boyfriend?” I asked politely, trying to keep up.

  “Yup. He knew lots of famous people,” she said, then turned to Don. “You know Jonathan Winters?”

  “Well,” he said. “I’ve met him a few times.”

  He had in fact met Mr. Winters a few times over the years. Most notably on the street in Montecito or at the drugstore coffee shop, where he often holds court for hours.

  “He’s a great guitar player,” said the drunk girl.<
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  “Jonathan Winters is a great guitar player?” I said.

  “So’s his brother,” she answered.

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Is his brother’s name Edgar?”

  “Yes!” She smiled and actually applauded. “That’s it.”

  “Johnny and Edgar Winter,” Don said to me.

  “You might have mentioned the fact that he’s a fucking albino,” I said. “That would’ve been a good clue.”

  Earlier the thing with the kid happened. The band had just begun the third song, a bluesy version of a ’60’s tune called “Rhythm of the Rain,” when the kid at the front table started acting weirdly.

  I thought it was strange enough to see kids in a place like this, but everything in the Keys is strange.

  He was sitting to Don’s left in a chair turned to face the stage. He’d been watching me intently, ignoring his little brother who kept coming up to him from somewhere in the crowd behind us and hitting him before running away. A woman I assumed was his mother appeared a few times to tousle his bushy blond hair and give him another Happy Birthday kiss on the cheek. Each time she did it he’d wipe his face. He was a husky kid who seemed to be very serious and very focused, which put him at odds with this chaotic environment. Along the way I’d gleaned that his name was AJ.

  About ten seconds into the song he seemed to make some inner decision, to reach some conclusion to a problem he’d worked on for a long time, and he took action.

  He leaned forward and pulled something out from under his chair. I could not see what it was. He was bent over fiddling with something on the floor. His movements were fast and practiced.

  Finally he finished and sat up, lifting the object in front of him.

  It was a saxophone.

  The people around the kid saw the horn and began to cheer. They all knew him and began to chant, “AJ! AJ! AJ!”