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IN PURSUIT OFWISDOM

FRANCES McCUE

PILG R IMAG E

Followingthe poet's past throug! the desoluteWest

The poet Richard Hugo and I never mer.By the time I arrived in Seattle in 19g6,Hugo had been dead four years, and hehad left town for Montana eighteen yearsbefore that, so there was never any realconnection between us. I was a youngwoman, a gir1 rcally, and Hugo, Seattle,sgreat poet, was already gone.

And yet I took up with him. Hugo'spoems, rhe ones about places other poetsnever saw, pushed me to abandon mymoony stares at Mount Rainier and seemy new Northwest home in another light.He showed me the salal at the mouth ofthe Duwamish and the sludge that gath-ered around it, alcoholic elders who bledfrom the corners of their grins, some ofthe Indians who attended taverns withthe severe artention they gave to fish tin,ning, places where drinking was a kind ofwork, and the powedess men and ignored

women who populated shacks and turnedtricks along the river.

At first, it was the poems that attractedme to him; then Hugo himself started totake shape in his book of essays, The Trig-gering Town, in which he says to buddingpoets: "Keep your crap detector on," andthen even more through The Realwest Mdr.ginal Way in which he describes his boy-hood in White Center, the blue-collardivot just off the south end of the city lustas Hugo started ro step from behind thecurtain, my friends and I opened RichardHugo House, a place in Seattle for writersto gather and present new work. Over theten years that I worked there, as cofounderand director, Hugo House gave thousandsof writers the chance for an audience.camaraderie with other artists, and somefinancial support. It was no wonder wenamed it for Hugo: he was from Seattle

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and he epitomized a writer with a day job,struggling to make poetry matter. In hisSeattle years, he worked at Boeing.

Along the way, something happened toHugo and me. I fell in with his friends,his colleagues, his family He turned up ineverything I wrote and I could see myselftrying to make him into a composite ofe man I would like to have known, onewhose failings had lessons buried insidethem. The project took over and ten yearsafter founding Hugo House, I left it, rush-ing headlong into my work on fuchardHugo himself. I wonder if my own begin-nings as a poet-one who turned poetryinto a public act first by writing poemsand setting them loose in a book and thenby starting Hugo House in Seattle-wereset aflame by a life, like Hugo's, without afather, in the company of a lonely motherand grandparents who lived in a thirty'year time lag. Hugo's own boyhood, swing-ing on the axis between oppression andneglect. sparked an urgency in his voiceand he too became a writer. As childrenboth reviled and adored, we were subjectto the flips of other people's projections.You can hear it in Hugo's desires for utter-ance. "I was in love with my own resPonsesto things," he says later in life, and thestatement echoes as a declaration both towrite and to shed the responses of others.I knew just what he meant.

I could hear that boy in much of Hugo'swriting-the boy who attends the picnicby himself and stares, matter-of-facdy,into the despair of the place where he isgrowing up. It is the kind of fatigue and

hopelessness I'm most aftatd of, the onethat keeps pulling a person home-onlyhome is some set of conditions that areuntenable.

The journey west, beyond mountainsalready stripped by mining and logging,would lead me to Hugo's city and to hisraw conclusion: "What endures / is sad-ness and long memories . . ." That poem."Letter to Levertov from Butte," perhapsmore than any other, spotlights the coreof Hugo: how he identified with brokenplaces, physical and emotional.

r hav e ambiguous feelings coningfroffi d pldceItkethts

and having claw ed my way away thanhs to afewweahgifis

and psychiatry and the luck of lking in a country

where enough moneyfloats to the topfor theshipwrecked

to hang on. On the one hand, no matter what mysalaryh

or title, I remdin d cotnrnonlaborer, stainedbythe perpetual

dust from load.ingflour or coal. I stay humble,inadequate

insidg. . .

There is a Butte in every Hugo poem. Theseflse that he was an imposter, a visitorwho barely escapes the roughest life possi-ble, is something that runs between Hugoand me. I am constantly craving both to

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FRANCES MCCUE

belong to and to walk away from clans.That desire is f luid and abrupt-one voumight find in most poems-th; fe.hng yo.,are going into something that will let youknowwho you are.

Hugo lived in Missoula for eighteen years.He first moved to Milltown, Misstuh,sversion of White Cenrer-a working-classrivet rossed just off to the side of the ciwlimits. During the last third of his life,he taught at rhe University of Montanaand visited small settlemenrs rhroughourthe western part of the state. On

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pus, former srudents tell me, he looked

Shortlyafter I leave my job at Hugo House,I get serious with charts. I spread a Mon,tana road map out onmy table and for rwodays, dressed in mypajamas, read throughHugo's Mahing Certain ItGoes On (his collectedpoems) and circleail of the rowns tharHugo wrote about. Onmy computer I makea spreadsheet of thetowns and the poems.Some of the cross-roads, I notice, arementioned again and

Lois te l ls me, there wereloops Hugo seemed to dr ive,somet imes with a woman.("These were not women;

they were students,"

she wryly adds.)

a bit like a typewritersalesman ducking inand out of the buijd-ings. Later, when hedwander out to fish andexplore, he resembledany other middle-aged man headed to atrout stream-dressedin work pants andan old button-downshirt. "He was a fish-erman and fishing washis mode of exploring

again-Milltown, Dixon, Missoula_andothers are one-stop crossings-silver Starand Bynum. On the map, I highlight thetowns that Hugo refers to most often.Then I step back from the table. My yel,low marks and black circles

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all clustered vertically in the left third ofthe map of Montana. If I were to dropout the background of roads ,.rd ,tr""r^and mountain ridges and look only at themarkings. ld see rwo constellations, bothcircles, with some comet trails off them.

the country" says hisfriend Lois Welch when I talk to h.. or..,the phone. "you don't do trour fishing eastof the mountains except in the streamscoming out of the mountains." On themap, I trace the routes with my finger.Most of the rowns that the poems..f.itoare within a few hours of Missoula_easyday trips-and this accounts for the epi_center of the two circles-one nofth andone south-hovering around the collegetown. Indeed, Lois tells me, th.r. *.r.loops Hugo seemed to drive, sometimeswith a woman. (These were not women:they were students." she wryly adds.)

t

In Pursuit ofWisdom

Not far from Butte is philipsburg, anemotional and spiritual cenrer of Hugo'sverse because it is the setting for ..Degiesof- Gray in Philipsburg.,, Often, Hugoreferred to it as his best poem. Fo. ,ryexplorations, "Degrees of Gray', is thecompass by which all other directions areset. On the map rhe town looks like ithangs on the end of a pendulum inside thecircle of towns from the Bitterroot Rangeover to Butte. "Degrees of Gray" is theemotional vortex of Hugo's itinerant nar-.rator, a man who inspires a brokenheartedintimacy with his readers: ..Isn,t this yourlifel That ancient kiss sti l l burning ouryour eyesl" The way that Hugo addressesthe poem directly ro "you,,' as if ..you,' areboth real-l i fe acquaintance and imaginedreader, dismantles the secure wall betweenyour tidy life and his torn-aparr one. ..Sayyour l ife broke down" is the firsr l ine of thepoem. In the end, you can leave the poem,and the town, in "the car that brought youhere," because it "still runs.,' Both townand poem will exist beyond your visit, amonumenr to the stability of despair. Itmakes me want to visit the town and stayfor weeks.

I'Ll le av e b eli eving w e he ep all w e lo s e and lov e.Dirt roads are hard tofind. I need to walh oneshabby some gJamorous wdy the movieslike.I'll rest at creeks . . .

-from "Last Day There"

FRANCES McCUE

The highway from Seattle to Missoula,I-9O, flattens outbetween Snoqualmie pass,only an hour out ofthe ciqr and Fourth ofJuly Pass, nearly five hours later, in Jdaho.It's a long strerch and on the day I travel itthree rumbleweeds- airy rounds of sage-blow across the road near Moses Lake.Farther east, smoke from some northernforest fires presses across the plains. Manvof the drivers have their lights on. I m tap-ping the steering wheel out of boredomand resdessness. Flipping the air condi_tioner vents open and closed until the cir.-culation is just sq and rolling up the radiovolume, I m trying not to count rhe miles.Emmylou Harris sings, "Like falling starsfrom the universe, we are huded / bo*nthrough the long loneliness of the world /Until we behold the parn and become thepead," and it's enough to make me put myhead onto the dash and cry in recoggition.Next to me, my little black dog, Ida, yawnsand stretches in the fronr sear and then sitsup to look out the window:

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As I m speeding along, the road some-times dissolves and reconstitutes itselfThe wheel feels loose in my hands and thecar slung low to the concrete. When youare driving, I realize. you are the ultimateoutsider. Stopping along the way doesn,tmake you a visitor, it makes yov a tran-sient. The pause is instrumental to yourjourney-say it 's a stop for gasoline or arestroom-but of no use at all to the placesand people who regard you there. Eachtime I roll off the ramp, I am no one.

The road shifts up over rhe pass out ofCoeur dAlene and Idaho becomes a series

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of tr ick cabinets: Wal-lace, the town tuckedunder the new part ofthe highway; Silverton,tossed up against thehil ls with mine shafts,and Cataldo, an oldSpanish srucco church,yellow against all thegreen.

Off to the s ide, on a dir tdead-end road, is an old

basketbal t hoop stapled to aphone pole. No net dr ips f romthe rusted r ing, and the back-

board is gray ptywood setcrookedly to the post.

and Perma. A mile orso later, I see a home-stead caught half-tum-ble in the prairie. It's asimple cotage with aroom attached-unin-habited-and nearbyis an aluminum-sidedsaddle shop. Hugo'spoem "MontanaRanch Abandoned"describes the feelingof being in that valley:

From the brown hills west of Missoula.I-93 traces the valley norrh, windingthrough pines and sharper swells of hillsalong the river. I'm in the Flathead IndianReservation and clusters of lodgepole andponderosa pines, greener through the hills,shade little bridges crossing the river. Thenthe road dips and smoorhs into a wid.e val-ley: burnished and dotted with houses.Off to the side, on a dirt dead-end road, isan old basketball hoop stapled to a phonepole. No net drips from the rusted ring,and the backboard is gray plyrlrood sJtcrookedly ro the post. Below it, a brightgreen Jaguar is parked. This is the per-fect metaphor, I realize. for contemoo-rary Montana a place where Indian kidscobble together basketball games, wherethe road ends in dirt and the river pusheson, where the realtor parks his fancy car,where the riches of some block the shotsof others.

At the norrhern end, where the fockoRiver comes in, is the turnoff for Dixon

Cracks in eight logbuildings, counting sheds

and outhouse, widen and a ghost peeks out.

Nothing tree or rnountain, weahens wind

comingfor the throat.

I'm rolling through prairies and mountainsand each turn seems to catch in my ribsas though I'm being pulled into the place,each divot and rise sinking into my U"ay Iwing through Dixon, noticing the decrepitbaseball field in front of the school andsome empty storefronts. No settlementappears to exist in the nineteen milesbetween Dixon and perma.

Perma, Montana, doesn,t have a postoffice anymore. 'Address is plains now,.'Harold Shaw tells me. I've pulled into thestore just off the road. Harold owns rheplace and as I'm peering into his displaycase, he says, "The old store was right inthis exact spot. Wanted to get the whole

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In Pursuit ofWlsdom

place declared a historic district but nopermits came." I want to find somethingto buy; a few old key chains, some Lnivesand beads are on the shelves but I settleon some jerky that looks like a peel ofmud. Harold tells me that across the way"used to be a grain silo- a beautiFul thing.: 'Now there's no town at all, iust Haroldin his shop with a few cans of soda popand some fishhooks. "Some people / goto Perma and come back I from permasaying Perma / is no fun," Hugo writes in"The Only Bar in Dixon." I don't feel thatway-instead it's an unfinished place thatI can't connect to . . a town without atriggering image.

I drive back south to Dixon and slowas I enter the town limits. To the left,across a small field, is the plain rectan-gle of the train depot. It's a storage shedwith "Dixon" painted over rhe top ofthe door. Only freight trains, if any. sropthere, I'm thinking. The bar is on theright and in front is a "For Sale,' sign. Thenext building to the south also has a sign,nailed to the siding: "This building for r"l.too." Around the back of the storefronts.the town is rwo blocks deep, and drivingthrough, I see what Hugo left out of hisdescriptions of small towns: trailers. Morethan ever, people are pulling trailers up totheir leaklr tumbledown houses and mov-ing into them.

In the r97os, Hugo made a trip toDixon with James Welch and anotherpoet, t. D. Reed. The three of them wrotepoems about the bar and then sent thepoems to the Neu'yorher. Nl three poems

FRANCES McCUE

about the "only bar in Dixon,, were pub,lished. Welch's described the propriltor:"Thke the red-headed bartender. . . youcan have her for a word.,, When I pullthe door, it is locked. k,s one otlock lnthe afternoon and I know that it isn't tooeady for a beer, especially in Montana, soI rap on the glass. I see someone movinginside and a man opens the door. ..Whatl',he says.

"Can I trouble you for a beerl" I ask."A11 right," he says. The bar is dark.I turn and wave to some men across

the street. They are fixing a car. SomehowI want someone to see me going into thisplace, someone who would know whensomething was wrong.

Should I not have menrioned Hugo, theDixon Bar would have been a quiet experi_ence. I would have drunk my beer, tradedtourist snippets, and headed on my wavlnstead I say, "Hey I m writ ing about thipoet Richard Hugo. Ever heard of him?,'

The man has a flyswatter and slaps theface of it against the bar. Szap. ..Sure have."

"Oh good. Do you remember him com-ing in here?"

"Sure do," the man says. "He was an ass-hole. Pompous, condescending, arrogant. Ihate that shit." He looks around for moreflies. Snap.

'Oh," I say "Did you like his poemsf',"Hell no. Them's were the worst thing

about that guy Those poems were nasryabout the bar and about my mother. She,sthe redhead, you know"

Slap goes the swater. I look at the bar-tender. "I d love a beer," I say

"Give you the bestwe ve got. ' he says.He puts a Mi l ler anca small bell jar on thebar. "That's a damnfine beer I got you."

"Thanks," I sayI look at rhe bottle.On the label, there'sa woman, dressed in abikini and cowboy hat,swinging inside a cres,cent moon.

I took around and try toimagine Hugo here.

Somehow, a gl impse of h imcomes only when I imagineother people bent over thebar, t ipping forward from

their stools.

they got their name."He taps the edge ofthe flyswatter againstthe bar. "That DirtyFoot was an assholetoo. Wasn't too longago when it was stillillegal for them todrink in bars."

"Thanks for thebeer," I say, sliding afew dollars onto thebar. "I'm headed off

"What do I call youl" the man asks."Frances." I look around and try to

imagine Hugo here. Somehow, a glimpse ofhim comes onlywhen I imagine other peo-ple bent over the baa tipping forward fromtheir stools. Slumped upon his elbows,scooting the beer mug back and forth,Hugo might have leaned over and talkedto the men near him. M"yb. he exchangedsome words about fishing. "So,you have alot of interesting stuff on the walls," I say'Are the poems up anywhere?"

"Nope," he says. "I'm Bud, by the wayThat other asshole, the one with Hugo, hestill around)" Bud's shirt is white and hishair is black.

"You mean lim Welch? The Blackfeetwriterl" Jim is one of the greatest writerswho ever worked in the American West, asfar as I am concerned.

"Dirty Foot. He was a Dirty Foot," Budsays. He reminds me of a militiaman in alames Lee Burke mystery novel. "That'swhat I call them. They walked across fireand burned their feet all up. That's how

Can I get to Missoula in an hour?""M"yb.." He takes the glass and the

bottle away "Come back if you want anymore history lessons," he says.

From the expanse, you can never discernwhat's around the next turn in Montana,because it aches out in front of you formiles and miles and then the road sud-denly dips and you are rushed throughsome crevice in the mountains and you'recompletely somewhere else. Out of Moi-ese, a town farther on from Dixon, thingsget brown and soft, like dunes, up againstthe road. Flouses nudge into smaller hill-ocks shouldered against mountains. Sugarbeet farms once lined the area around thetown where now there is a bison range. Inthe picnic area ofthe range is the ghost ofa softball field-five gray rree poles withnetting curved around them as a back-stop. I park and look at the field, the siteof Hugo's poem "The Ballpark at Moiese,,'mapping out the rrees rhat Hugo must

In Pursuit of Wisdon

IIIIII have seen, the ones that took up airspace in

center field. Now there are only the shad-ows of a pitcher's mound and baselines.

"Montana is / the rest of America 5oyears back," Hugo wrote in "Letter toGoldbarth from Bigfork." Mining disas-ters, union busts, and the struggles ofthe railroad ransacked many small townsand left them half boarded up. By thetime Hugo saw these places, he felt thedespair frozen inro the storefronts, placeswhere "all memory resolves itself in gaze"(Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg). Partmuseum, part living thing, each town thatHugo was attracted to had a thick veneerof the past lacquered over it, but was some-how still alive: "the rortured try of localdrivers to accelerate their lives." That lineriles me up-not only because of the paltryhopes that Hugo has for these townsfolk,but because the rewing engine of long /spushes the poem along relentlessly Thepeople will continue their srruggle and thetown will continue to barely accommodatethem. "The car that brought you here stillruns," he writes, as if you can come and go,but at an ossified pace. To Hugo the pov-erty of these places was historical.

Of all the towns that I've circled on theMontana map, Philipsburg is the larg-est and is, according to Hugo's friends,the town that thrives past rhe collapseof industry Once a home to mines andhuge mills for processing metals, Philips-burg had a'dance floor built on springs"and "eight going silver mines" before the

r9o7 boom. According to Annick Smith,Hugo didn't want ro come to P-burg, asthe locals call it, because of the mining. "Itwas too industrial," she says. "Hugo trav,eled Montana to find places to fish." Theday after he did visit the town, he calledAnnick and her husband, Dave Smith. andread to them a draft of "Degrees of Grayin Philipsburg."

"That's quite a poem," Annick said toHugo. She laughs as she tells us rhe storyHer curly gray hair, stapled together witha barrette, flies off to the sides from thewind coming in her truck. There are threeof us driving with her and we're on our wayto Philipsburg. Bill Kittredge, Annick'scompanion for the last thirty-some yearssince Dave died, is in the passenger sear.He's one of the other celebrated writersof the American West, but from the seatbehind I see him as somebody's father.He's the one we're leaning in to so thatwe can hear him tell stories. Just out is hisfirst novel, The Willow Field, following atleast eight books of nonfiction, some mon-umental anthologies, including The LastBest Place, and two story collections. Thatanyone would write a first novel at sev-enty-four years old impresses me beyondanything I can think of The book is heftyand loving, told from the point of view ofa boy named Rossie, who moves from onejob to the next, from herding horses nearCalgary to living, finally, up the Bitterroorand running for governor. In the backseatwith me is Chades DAmbrosio. a short-story writer and essayist whose books arethrilling in their craftsmanship and in the

FRANCES MCCUE

aching loneliness ofnarrators trying to fig-ure things out. Severalyears back, Charliemoved to Philipsburgbecause of"Degrees ofGray in Philipsburg."

"Shit, Charlie," Billsays, "you afe the onlywriter I know who

. . . Char l ie ID'Ambrosio] ,"Bi l lsays, "you are the onlywriter I know who actually

moved somewherebecause ofa poem and

got th ings done.

Then Bil l srarts inabout Hugo. He knev'him for twentyyears olso. "I remember him asa fisherman," Bill says,and laughs. "Hed takesome branches and setthem in a V to holdup his pole. That wayhe could get into his

actually moved somewhere because of apoem and got things done. Crumley wentsomewhere to write and spent his timearranging his stuff" He's talking aboutJames Crumley the novelist who wrotebooks titled after lines in Hugo's poems:The Nght uadness and The Last Good Kiss.

"Well, there is a balance between isola-tion and social stimularion," Chadie says.'And I didn't have much social stuff hao-pen in P-burg." He's a thoughtful rn"rl *homoves his words around carefully and thenlaughs easily

"A1l right, Frances," Bill said when Iasked him to make the drive with Annickand me. I knew he was giving up a day ofgolf to come. Bill is big, generous of spirit,and his statickl low voice breaks into agrowling laugh as he tells stories. He,spatient with my pursuit of Hugo and addsto it whenever he thinls of something.

Charlie and I lean forward from thebackseat to hear Bill and Annick tell sto,ries about the terrain. Once we get offI-9o and take the secondary road south,we pass a museum-a small, wooden build-ing*that stands at the head of some ranchland and the sign says "Usually Open."

cooler. He'd sit in some lawn chair andlean back and wait for the fish to hit." Billpauses and looks out the window "Christ,I remember one time I went fishing withHugo. He did his first big cast and the polesnaps right in half He drives all the way roPlains and the only assurance I have thathe'll come back is the fact that I have hiscooler. fwo hours later, he comes walkingup with a new pole and it was clear hedhad a few in Plains."

"Did he always drink beer when hefished?" I ask.

"That or peppermint schnapps,,' Billsays.

Ahead of us is a herd of cattle in theroad. A boy on horseback tries to pushthe cows across while a man on an all,ter-rain vehicle that looks like a jacked-upgo-cart drives alongside. Until the cattlemake it across, we idle in the truck and Ilisten to Chadie tell us how he moved toPhilipsburg.

"I can't believe how cool this is,', I say"Girl from New England sees cattle."

'And has experiences," adds Kittredge.He's laughing.

Finally after the cows make it through,

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In Pursuit ofWlsdon

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we turn round the bend where some build-ings gather as if tumbled there, across ahillside.

"The suburbs of Philipsburg," Charliesays.

"I haven't been here in years," Annicksays. "Things are upscale now-aren't they,Charlief"

"For some people," Charlie says. "I usedto go to the thrift store, and once, I wasin there with a woman who was doing herback-to-school shopping. She had a pileof things for her kids and the bill came roseveflteen dollars. The killer was that sheasked to have it pur on layaway"

Of all Hugo's poems, "Degrees of Grayin Philipsburg" is the one he's best knownfor and the one that inspires, and some-times frightens, readers. The lines I hearrecited most often are.

. . . nvo stackshigh abore the town,

two deadkilns, thehuge mill in collapse

forfifiy years that wonlfallfinally down.

As we're looking for the mill, Annick says,"Where is that huge mill in collapsel"and when we go by some abandoned loghouses, decades old, I ask, "Don't emptyhouses ring?" Bill says, 'Are magnesiumand scorn sufficient to support a town?"The lines from the poem tumble out ofus as we circle the "streets laid out by theinsane." Charlie guides us around a hill. Isee an old man and stop to ask him wherethe mill is. He "stilllaughs although his lipscollapse," and I'm feeling the town inside

Hugo's poem charge to life.At first I think that the remnants of

the mi1l are the wooden frame buildingsset along a hillside. That's until Annickaccelerates the truck farther up the rutteddirt road. Around the bend and down, wesee the stone. "Look upl" Annick says andro1ls down her window, leaning her headout. Above her are the twin brick edifices,the "two stacks high above the town." Themapping of the lines of the poem rolls soeasily onto the actual place that I feel thesurge of recognition. It is as though we arevisiting a place someone we knew has justleft behind.

While we're all looking up, Annickbrings the truck around another bend andthere's the foundation of an old mill infront of us. Round stones, one after theother, stacked up into the side of a hill, pileup to four or five stories. Annick remem-bers what it used to look like. the last timeshe was here. "There was a big wood framebuilding going way up." Her arm sweepsout in front of her. "Tiny windows linedthe top, as I remember. It was huge."

Bill walks over to the bulldozers at thebase of the rocks. Annick. Chadie. and Ihead off in different direcrions; we studythe outbuildings and look up at the wall ofthe mill and the smokestacks.

'Bill," I call out. "Would you read thepoem herel"

He agrees and I take out a rickety littlecamera and push play as Bill Kittredgereads "Degrees of Gray in Philipsburg"while he's in the ruin of the old mill. Lean-ing against the bulldozer and holding the

FRANCES

book upright. Bill bellows our the poem.. The p_ri.ncipal supporting brrines no*rs rage, he reads. enunciating

"rrd thrurtling the words ahead. It,s LkJei"g i;;1.l:.r.".n..."1 Hugo, only ch a n neled,irouJnrs rnend, the one with the booming voic"e.'Say no to yoursel{" he insists. "S";;;;;roll,_h" says / I,ll go to sleep

"rra ,ro, *Jlup.".lts a stunning moment, there in thesunshrne on a fall day so crisp ir has bro-Ken open with color and a slow wind. lnthe shot of the rocks and dirt, ,fr. ,-"f.._

stacks siphoning the sky into them, I thinkI'm closer to Hugo. ..God bless il,;;iJ;Kinredge says afrer he finishes .."dj;;.He closes the book and laughs. t, ;;;;;",mischievous.

trajectory of the four stanzas of'Degrees_of Gray in philipsburg,,, ".;.;-ing to. Chadie's great essay of the samename, is:

Youlrefuched.

We'reallfucfud

whv?Let\ haye lunch.

?hilipsburg" traces the route directly fromthe stranger who comes into town, survevsthe. damage, makes the debris ;;ili,and then has lunch. And so, *. a..iJ"-ilhave lunch Bill picks the place_th. Cl;Bar. A sign out front announces ..CheaoFood and Warm Beer."

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. "There,"_ Bill says. ..That last place wastoo Missoula." He laughs, ."f..drrg ,o ,t*

In pursuit ofWlsdom

fashiona.ble feeling of the tidy sandwichsnop we ve passed.

Inside, we find a table in the back, past*," ,it and several pinball _".t i.r.i.'i{a lamlnate surface with chairs like youdfind at a church bazaar.a f"ff

"rfrt.*y ""Ja ketchup bottle hold up the _"rn r. ' -

"This is perfect," says Annick.

^. ] **",i.9er Hugo and me fishing oneaternoon," Kittredge says. .A g.ry dl_rr_srream was catching all the fish and it waspissing Hugo off The word would comeupstream that a guy below pritch"ra 1a7r,

llrr',i1-. *"',."r:h:lg the fish.,, Biil stopsand rmrrares the holler. ...pritchard

."rgi,,a big one,' someone would y"ll

"rra ih.word traveled up. I co,ul{-see H*g" g"rr*g

more and more ticked off Then i"-.runf,ria little Fish -one about that Oig " rcitt.Jie.holds up his palms and rpr.adirr*,n-;;:;eight inches apart. ..He yelled down.r.."_,'Hey Pritchardl Fuck youl,,,

^, "Sounds Iike my lr.k.,.say, our waitress.

s.he s suddenly come up to the table andtn:.:_r:nnr"* her pencil on h., ,rd;;;;;*"Whatt a porkie sandwichf,, I ask."]ust what it sounds l ike,., Kitrredsesays. Ir 's pork and irs fried. "t, l l h"r;-;Budweiser with tomato juice.,,

"Me toq" says Annick.The waitress nods. ..porkief,,

she saysto me.Charlie and I order Millers and porkies.

...r^tj ' ' : ,-r" old hangover cure. Bil l sayswnen the reddish beer comes. It looks l ikea microbrew

And thewho knew

arternoon passes, two of usHugo and the other two_

younger writers who never met him butperformed acts of obsession in his name_huddling over the table, listening for sto_ries and feeling like philipsburg isn't sogray at all. When we come our into thesunshine, Annick and Bill opr for the longway back-a dirt road along Rock Cr..kthrough the cottonwoods, their leaves nowa yellow that snaps our vision and sits usupright.

Before I leave Montana, I need to get toWisdom. The town is at the botto- of th.Bitterroot Valley and I'm driving southto get there. Just when the road lifts overChief loseph pass, a ..Welcome to Idaho,,sign greets me. That's when I take a leftonto Route 43 and point down until I getto the Big Hole Drain. On the other side.almost thirry miles away. I'll get ro thetown of Wisdom. Along the route, I passthrough Vctor and Stevensville, townsHugo refers to but does not linger in:"I m phoning from the last bar in Victol,,he writes in "phoning from SweathouseCreek." As I roll through these places, Inotice

_I'm flipping backward in Hugo'sCollected poens. Up north, the poems ab-outthe places were closer to the end of thebook, written nearer to the end of Hugo'slife. Driving south, I am paging backwardto a younger Hugo. Funny how writingmarks your place in time and space, I thinlas I'm acceleraring out of Darby Montana.With Hugo, I was finding the intersectionsof those arcs, tossing my own iourney in asanother measure, another convergelrce.

In the lean and sway of the curves alongthe road through the pass, I'm wonderling how Hugo found the towns he wroteabout. "It was all about fishing,', Annicksaid, and I can see now that Hugo is myversion of angling. I am traveling ro ,o-.r,that Hugo wrote about, because I wantto find him, the great headwarer to thepoems. By coming, a generation later, tothe towns Hugo wrote about, I'm see-ing them through the added layer of hisimpressions mingled with my own.

I pass a battlefield where five bands oft._ N"1 Perc6, led by Chief /oseph, foughtColonel John Gibbon's rroops, ioinedlysettler volunteers. and won. In ..Letterto Reed from Lolq" Hugo describes thechief's journey to Wisdom: ..One shouldthink Chief Joseph here, coming soft /out of the Lolo Canyon, turning right atthe Don Trtpp l?uck Stop and headingsouth for Wisdom." The Big Hole Drain isa huge prairie, seemingly round as I crosson the diameter, surrounded by the Bit-terroot and Beaverhead mountain ranges.Cattle roam throughour the sage land andlow grass; fences pole their *Jy dorrg fo.miles and miles. Off along the far ed!e, Iglimpse silos and a few houses. As I leepdriving, they grow closer and the mounltains behind them farthe r away until Irealize that the Big Hole Drain is an illu_sion: it's even bigger than it looks.

Wisdom, like philipsburg once was, isa town barely alive. It,s mid-afternoonon a Friday and the only cars parked bythe houses are cars or trucks that nobodvcould start anymore. They're sinking into

E'

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FRANCES McCUE

the ground. Work-ing vehicles are some'where else, and so arethe people who drivethem. I takear ight ,offthe main road, anddrive a block before itbecomes dirt. fughtthen, at that dip fromthe pavement, thetown becomes its olvnpast. On my ileft arelog cabins, oni-roomthings hulked together

"Hugo went to that bar inWisdom and it was fi l led with

taxidermy. The thing thatscared him was that at t theheads were pulled off. Just

wire sticking out of all thoseelk and moose."

moose."I opt for the c#d

rather than the Ant-ler Bar. Inside, I pick atable while a few peo-ple mill about the cashregister. A friendlywoman comes overand I order coffee.

"Ever hear of thisguy?" I ask, holdingup Hugo's CollectedPoems."Hewrote aboutWisdom."

with chinking the color of margarine. Ipark the car and get out to walk. Abovethe doorway of each little cabin hangs anumber, and a little porch sticks out-rwoposts and a shed roof One would haveto duck to get inside. The cabins are laidout around a small patch of grass. Was it amotel or a brothelt

Beyond the back side of the old cabinsand around a couple of newhouses and oldtrailers, the dirt road passes the school. Ahandfirl of children is outside and they'replayrng on the swings and running acrossthe grass. Farther up and I'm back intotown, the main drag of Wisdom, where Ipark in front of a trading post with ahalf-naked Indian gid painted on the turquoisefacing of the building. Nexr to that is a caf6and aeross the street is the Antler Bar. Iremeihber Kittredge saying, "Hugo wentto that bar in Wisdom and it was filledwith taxidermy The thing that scaredhim was that all the heads were pulled of{/ust wire sticking out of all those elk and

"No kidding?" she says. "Wonder if myhusband knows about him,"

"He says in one of the poems that therewas a murder here, long ago. Look at this."I point out the lines from "Letter to Reedfrom Lolo":

. . . heading southfor wisdom where the whitemdnhtlledhtswfe . . .

Whyname atown

Wisdon?Why notbecause an Indianwept onceowr thebody ofhitrift . . .

"Well, look at that," she says.After she brings over my coffee, a man

comes into the restaurant and the waitresssays, "Hey Guy, this lady has some poemsabout Wisdom."

I show them to him. "Do you have alibraryhere?" I ask. "I could make sure youall have copies of them."

"The library is locked and nobody hasthe key" the waitress says.

In Pursuit of Wkdon

A line simply constructed, syfltactically'

and in spirit just like one I love in TheTrig'

geringTiwn, "The graveyard is ignored and'o,r.r"rtn with weeds." Thelihrary isloched and

nobody has the fuY."We11, Sharon might"'says the mafl'"Oh yes. She probably does"' the woman

says. "You go and tell Sharon that Joni and

Guy sent you over to fetch the key to the

back of the communitY ha11'""Is that the boarded-up white building

a few doors down?" I passed it on the way

from the school and wondered why the

windows were boarded and painted over'

"That's it"' Joni says' "sharon is at the

petroleum station, right over there'" She

points across the street'I thank them and PaY for the coffee I

take a piece of strawberry-rhubarb pie to

go. Orrthe other side of the street' I walk

Into th. gas station' The woman at the

counter looks at me'"Hi there. Joni and GuY sent me- Do

you have the keys to the library?" I ask'"Don't have no library" the woman says'

"Don't know nothin' about no books'" I

look down at the counter and there's a

handmade sign that says "Rea1 Americans

only.""Are you Sharon?""Nope. Sharon's at home making soy

candles," the woman saYs'Ain't no llbtary

in this town.""Maybe in the back of the communiry

building?""Doubt it." she saYs'I buy some gas and a bottle of water'

On the way out of the station' I see a

stack of oilcans.with candles on

On top is a little boardit. "sharon's soY candles"

1t says.Of il .t. towns, Wisdom was the one

with the triggers Hugo would still cherish'

Wisdom was a place where "wind pours in

. . . leaving false fronts what they seem'" It

was a town, I rca7ized,I could write about:

the more outside it I felt, the more it

found its way inside me After all' I d come

all the way to Wisdom and the library was

locked. No onehasfteys, I sang to mysell the

words hovering there like the mill that

"won't fall flnally down," suspended by

language and the beating of my own heart'

soit"*h"r" out there, Hugo laughed "The

library is locked and nobody has the keys"'

I could hear him say over and over' walking

toward the Antler Bar' @

FRANCES MCCUE