My job is to get answers.  Assorted citizens, families, some just errant strangers. I knock. No answer, I knock again.  If I can talk to them once, I can get in.  Skills some think I learned on the road, but actually in the mean halls of the old home. The badge I flash works both ways, alerts them that I am not just another lost soul, but sent to them from the authorities. It calms them, then I must intrique them, get them to ask, why me, why not someone else?  My answer, because you are important.  I look fast, what can I say to make this between them and me, personal, intrique them, to pry the slab from the first portal.  Sometimes, I invite them onto their own porch, suggesting they might be more comfortable there.  Charm, wit and cunning my keys, to twist open their windows, to slice their screens. They peer out their slot to see the badge, my real entry is the ability to convert the authority into some person, chrismatic, goofy, all attention. I need their answers.  I assure them I hate the part of the job that makes me rap at their wood, persisit until I find them picking up their paper off the sidewalk.  I  say, it’s ok, you’ll like me.

Notes from journal, Aug. 1997
Around 8:30 at night, I get a call from Wayne Propst, he said “Patricia, William has died. We knew this would happen sooner or later.” I ask ‘when?” he said “a couple of hours ago. he got sick yesterday and early this evening he was asleep and he just quit breathing. I am alone in the room with him now. james is out making arrangements.” I said ” Your alone with him in his room?” Wayne said “Yes” and i asked ‘what room are you at, his house? Wayne said “No,no, I am at the hospital in the ICU wing.” We got off the phone and I walked around the house, my chest got tighter and tighter, then I told my husband i was going to the hospital.

I went up to the ICU wing and asked to be admitted to the room and there was William, laid on the bed, in pajamas and i was immediately filled with a sense of peace and my whole body relaxed. I walked over to him and touched his arm. he looked so peaceful and strong. I was flashed back to the day i first met him in Texas. I was sitting in Ohle’s living room in Austin. I was waiting to let him in. he stood at the door and I said ‘they didn’t tell me you were big and strong. He chuckled, we sat down and started talking right off.

Seeing him on the bed he looked strong again, he was straight. He didn’t look frail and a little hunched over like he had these last few years. His corpse looked younger and strong. It was eerie.

His pallor was a steel grey color, his head dominant, his body looked full again, thin, solid, his great beak with his bald head (little down of hair), looked completely at peace and relaxed. I felt his presence there. He was always a gracious host. I sat down and Wayne, who is the most reliable person to tell a story, talked.

James came in the room and we hugged . Then James turned to William and clasped him, crying and sobbing in the most utterly broken hearted way. I had never seen James more beautiful. I thought, God, James was father and son to William. The love and respect that i had observed between those two over the years flashed through my thoughts like a bursting series of light.

We sat and talked about William, how he was fine and feeling good on Thursday, and that he had been writing about losing his beloved fletch. fletch had died two weeks ago. i thought how much William relished life and how interested he always was in these certain subjects. By now, PT, Bill Rich, James, Wayne and I were there in the room. Ohle and McCrary were both out of town. We tried to call Fred several times but there was no answer. The decided to have someone go and tell George Kaul personally, in the early morning.

Dean Ripa came into the room, he was visiting William this week. he acted irrational and said silly things. I decided to hug him with hopes that it would quiet him. James got up and then sat on his knees by Williams’ bed. His arms over William. I felt like it was a series of saying good bye.

I said I would go and watch over Williams house. I really wanted Dean to go back and do that but he said he would do that later. I went over to William and kissed him on the cheek, it felt very natural. I always liked kissing William.

I went and sat in Williams’ driveway, this was around 12:30, clear, warm, summer night. Someone came up and place a bouquet on the porch. I started crying there in the dark feeling sorry for myself because I knew I would miss him so much. I had this strong sense that he wasn’t gone yet.
I went to Dillons and brought two lavender roses and placed them on Williams’ porch. Sit there for a while. Ginger came out, (Williams’ old puck faced orange cat). Then we sit on the steps for a while.

patricia

Willam would often answer the door to fans and strangers, sometimes he was sorry, sometimes glad. He usually had a loaded pistol on the cabinet behind the door. One night a drunk student barged through his door, looking for Ruby, William eased him out with a combination of charm and confused old man act. One day at the downtown bookstore I watched him study the shelves, when he realized he was spotted, his entire stance changed, he was aloof, he smoothly slid to the next aisle, then recognizing me he showed me some new ones.
I first met him in Texas, he came to the door with an old red/brown suitcase in his hand/ a beauty with a worn Morrocan tag in the corner. I last saw him in a hospital bed a few hours after he died, surrounded by friends. It struck me how he looked a lot like the man I first met. There was a vigor and strength to his profile that was one of the first things I noticed about him.
One of the things that struck me was the continual creative energy he maintained. He was open, guarded, joyous, depressed, brillant, tedious, loving.

Poem 1
Drove by the other day

I drove by his house
still beat red
but a still life
no glimpse of an elderly
pajama clad man reaching for the paper.
The sides of the yard
wildly unkept to screen
the backyard that was
a beat scene.
Where Bill Hatke gardened.
The garden appearing in altered form in Rolling Stone.
Where pits were dug forming bogs and ponds
so William could throw pellets at the fish.
The front porch with trellis of red roses
that he amazed my child with, showing her
there was no scent, no scent at all.
A lot of amazement was shared
because he found it amazing.

I felt like I lost him
listening to crap opinions, shit stories.
Then I recalled to
when we first met, in Ohle’s room in Texas.
How strangers told me he couldn’t't care for me,
how he hated women.
The Velcro man that all myths clung to.
So I write little memories of
fish and tirades.
How he could hold your hand for moment.
He is coming back.
I have decided to visit his cats
I have guilt, that I, never asked about the shooting,
only was Joan funny? I forget the names of the heroes
in his stories, the clues he dropped.
He sat and told me about the similarities
between the calico he called Jane
and his memories of Jane Bowles
and I best remember the cat.