published), and offered half a cord of wood as an advance. Gardener took it.
'You should have held out for three-quarters of a cord,' Bobbi told him that night, as they sat in front of her stove, feet up on the fender, smoking cigarettes as a wind shrieked fresh snow across the fields and into the trees. 'Those're good poems. There's a lot of them, too.'
'I know,' Gardener said, 'but I was cold. Half a cord'll get me through until spring.' He dropped her a wink. 'Besides, the guy's from Connecticut. I don't think he knew most of it was ash.'
She dropped her feet to the floor and stared at him. 'You kidding?'
'Nope.'
She began to giggle and he kissed her soundly and later took her to bed and they slept together like spoons. He remembered waking up once, listening to the wind, thinking of all the dark and rushing cold outside and all the warmth of this bed. filled with their peaceful heat under two quilts, and wishing it could be like this forever - only nothing ever was. He had been raised to believe God was love, but you had to wonder how loving a God could be when He made men and women smart enough to land on the moon but stupid enough to have to learn there was no such thing as forever over and over again.
The next day Bobbi had again offered money and Gardener again refused. He wasn't exactly rolling in dough, but he made out. And he couldn't help the little spark of anger he felt in spite of her matter-of-fact tone. 'Don't you know who's supposed to get the money after a night in bed?' he asked.
She stuck out her chin. 'You calling me a whore?'
He smiled. 'You need a pimp? There's money in it, I hear.'
You want breakfast, Gard, or do you want to piss me off?'
How about both?'
'No,' she said, and he saw she was really mad - Christ, he was getting worse and worse at seeing things like that, and it used to be so easy. He hugged her. I was only kidding, couldn't she see that? he thought. She always used to be able to tell when I was kidding. But of course she hadn't known he was kidding because he hadn't been. If he believed different, the only one getting kidded was himself. He had been trying to hurt her because she'd embarrassed him. And it wasn't her offer that had been stupid; it was his embarrassment. He had more or less chosen the life he was living, hadn't he?
And he didn't want to hurt Bobbi, didn't want to drive Bobbi away. The bed part was fine, but the bed part wasn't the really important part. The really important part was that Bobbi Anderson was a friend, and something scary seemed to be happening just lately. How fast he seemed to be running out of friends. That was pretty scary, all right.
Running out of friends? Or running them out? Which is it, Gard?
At first hugging her was like hugging an ironing board and he was afraid she would try to pull away and he would make the mistake of trying to hold on, but she finally softened.
'I want breakfast,' he said, 'and to say I'm sorry.'
'It's all right,' she said, and turned away before he could see her face - but her voice held that dry briskness that meant she was either crying or near it. 'I keep forgetting it's bad manners to offer money to Yankees.'
Well, he didn't know if it was bad manners or not, but he would not take money from Bobbi. Never had, never would.
The New England Poetry Caravan, however, was a different matter.
Grab that chicken, son, Ron Cummings, who needed money about as much as the Pope needed a new hat, would have said. The bitch is too slow to run and too fat to pass up.
The New England Poetry Caravan paid cash. Coin of the realm for poetry - three hundred up front and three hundred at the end of the tour. The word made flesh, as you might say. But hard cash, it was understood, was only part of the deal.
The rest of the deal was THE TAB.
While you were on tour, you took advantage of every opportunity. You got your meals from room service, your hair cut in the hotel barbershop if there was one, brought your extra pair of shoes (if you had one) and put them out one night