Foggy Mountain Breakdown and Other Stories

HAPPINESS IS A DEAD POET

THE FIRST THING Rose Hanelon did at the Unicoi Writers’ Conference was to commandeer the reservation clerk’s typewriter and change her name tag from GUEST AUTHOR to NOBODY IN PARTICULAR.

It wouldn’t work for long, of course. By the end of the welcoming reception, the conference organizers would have introduced her to enough novices for word to get around, and she would spend the rest of the conference listening to plot summaries of romance novels (surely superfluous, since romance novels had only one plot), dodging poets carrying yellow legal pads, and trying to look sympathetic while housewives explained why they were only on chapter one after four years.

You had to go, though, she told herself, as she took the green-tagged room key and trudged off in search of an elevator. Agents and editors often turned up at these conferences, apparently under the delusion that a weekend’s confinement in a motel outside the state of New York constituted travel. These people could be useful. She always waited until two days into the conference to talk business with them, because by then they had been so steeped in novice-babble that she seemed brilliant by comparison.

Rose did not get the opportunity to feel brilliant as often as she thought she deserved, which was perhaps another reason to attend these regional conferences. Being hailed as a literary lion by Writer’s Market junkies compensated for the well-bred scorn she endured more or less regularly from the college English department, to which she did not belong. She and several of its faculty members sniped at each other with less than good-natured derision over their respective literary efforts.

The opinion in Bartleby Hall was that Rose was not worthy of serious consideration as a writer, because she wrote “accessible” fiction. That is, she used the past tense, quotation marks, and plots in her books, rather than venturing into their literary realm: experimental fiction of the sort published by the “little” magazines. These tiny subsidized (sometimes mimeographed) journals paid nothing, and were read chiefly by those planning to submit manuscripts, but they counted for much in prestige and tenure.

Rose didn’t have to worry about tenure. She was the college director of public relations (the English gang pronounced her job title as if it were something she did with no clothes on). For her part, Rose professed not to want a job teaching semicolons to future stockbrokers, and she often said that the English department would give a job to a Melville scholar any day, but that they would never have hired Herman Melville. Still, the steady trickle of disdain ate away at her ego, and she often threatened to write a “serious and pretentious novel” just to prove that she could. So far, though, time had not permitted her such an indulgence. The time that she could steal away from her job, her dog, and her laundry was spent producing carefully plotted mystery novels featuring a female deputy sheriff. Her works had not made her a household name, but they covered her car payments and inspired an occasional fan letter, which was better than nothing. Certainly better than writing derivative drivel for years and then not getting tenure.

This weekend’s conference was as much as she could manage in the way of career development. She could practice her lecturing style and sign a few books. Besides, the setting was wonderfully picturesque: a modern glass-and-redwood lodge on Whitethorn Island in Lake Adair. The choice of site was an indication that the conference organizers believed the myth about writers craving solitude. Apparently it had not occurred to them that the likes of Emily Dickinson wouldn’t be caught dead at a conference in the first place. Rose often wished she were rich enough to be temperamental, but since this was not the case, she had learned to cope with the world. The place looked pleasant enough to her, and she had quite enjoyed the boat ride over. All in all, Rose was feeling quite festive, until she remembered what writers’ conferences tended to be like.

It was a regional conference, devoted to all types of writers, without regard to merit or credentials. All that these people had in common was geography. Rose had decided she needed the practice of attending such a small, unimportant conference. If it went well, she could work up to an important event like an all-mystery convention. Being nice to people was not a thing that came naturally to Rose Hanelon, despite her job title. Public Relations at the university simply meant generating puff press releases for anyone’s slightest achievement and minimizing the football scandals with understatement and misdirection. Even a curmudgeon could do it. Thus her need to practice charm. After a few minutes’ observation of her fellow attendees, Rose began to think that she had set herself too great a task for her annual venture in celebrity.

The other guests waiting for the elevator were smiling at her, having noticed that the name tag of NOBODY IN PARTICULAR had the gold star for PROGRAM GUEST. They glanced at each other, trying to guess what this dumpy little lady with the bobbed hair and rimless spectacles could be an expert in. She did not look benevolent enough to be in Children’s Books. Children’s book editors were popularly supposed to resemble Helen Hayes or Goldie Hawn. Perhaps she was an agent. No one knew what an agent would look like.

Rose in turn noticed that the gawkers’ name tags were pale pink, signifying aspiring romance novelists. Would-be mystery writers had name tags edged in black, and western writers had a little red cowboy hat beside their names. Rose wondered what symbol would indicate the poets. Not that a mere notation on a name tag would be warning enough, she thought sardonically. Amateur poets ought to be belled and cowled like lepers, so that you could hear them coming and flee.

This thought made her smile so broadly that one of the pink tags actually ventured to speak to her. “I see you’re one of our program guests,” said the grandmotherly woman in lavender.

Rose nodded warily, edging her way into the elevator. The doors slid shut behind them, turning the elevator into an interrogation room until the third floor, at which stop Rose planned to bolt.

“Are you an editor?” the plump one asked breathlessly.

“No.” Editors were like ghosts: all novices talked about them, but very few had actually seen one. “I’m a writer,” she admitted, noting that her stock with them had dropped considerably.

The novices exchanged glances. “Not… Deidre Bellaire!”

“No. Rose Hanelon.” And you’ve never heard of me, she wanted to add.

Their faces looked blank, but at least they did not begin to thumb through their programs in search of her biography. The elevator creaked to a stop and Rose hoisted her bag out into the hallway.

“A published writer!” the lavender lady called after her. “How wonderful! Well, we’re here to take Deidre Bellaire’s workshop in writing romance novels. Tell me, what’s your advice for writing a romance novel?”

“Try sticking your finger down your throat!” said Rose, as the metal doors closed behind them.

Jess Scarberry eased through the front doors of the hotel, balancing a small canvas bag, containing his weekend wardrobe, and a large leather suitcase, containing sample copies of his mimeographed poetry magazine The Scarberry Scriptures and 137 assorted copies of his own books-softcover, $5.95. Scarberry liked to call each volume a limited edition, which indeed they were, since he could only afford to print a few hundred copies at a time, and these would take years to sell.

He looked the part of a poet, Walt Whitman variety, with his short gray beard, well-worn Levi’s, and chambray work shirt. A man who gets his inspiration from the land, his appearance seemed to suggest. But if Jess Scarberry heard America singing, the tune was “How Great Thou Art,” directed admiringly at himself, in a chorus of feminine voices.

The fact that Scarberry neither had, nor wanted, any male followers was evident from his books, which all had titles like Shadows in the Mist or Rivers of Memory, and from the poems they contained, which were all variations on the idea that the poet was a lonely wanderer occasionally seeking refuge from the cruel world in the arms of love. His photo on the back of each book showed a pensive Scarberry, wearing a sheepskin jacket and leaning over a saddle that had been placed atop a split-rail fence. The biographical notes said that the Poet had been a working cowboy, an ambulance driver, a tugboat captain, and that he was an honorary medicine man of the Tuscarora Indian tribe. His most recent occupation-literary con man and jackleg publisher-was not mentioned.

Scarberry cast an appraising glance around the hotel lobby, sizing up the livestock at what he liked to think of as a literary rodeo. During the weekend he would bulldog a few heifers, rope and brand some new Scarberry fans, and collect enough of a grubstake to keep himself in Budweiser and wheat germ until the next conference.

As he approached the registration desk, he remembered to walk a bit bowlegged, suggesting one who has left his horse in the parking lot. He hoped the twittery ladies near the potted palm had noticed him. When he finished registering, he would go over, personally invite them to attend his workshop (“The Poetry of Experience”), and graciously allow them to buy him dinner.

“May I have a new name tag?” asked the tall young woman at the conference registration table. The fact that she had just torn the old one in half suggested that this was not a request.

Margie Collier’s felt tip pen poised in midair while she checked the registration form. “We spelled it right,” she declared. “Connie Maria Samari. S-a-m-”

The woman winced. “I only use one name,” she said. “Just Samari.” Samari… a lilting word that conjured up images of Omar Khayyám and jasmine-scented gardens, but prefaced by Connie Maria, the word sank back into an ordinary Italian surname, containing no romance at all. With all due respect to her Italian grandmother, Connie Maria felt that being called Samari would be a definite advantage to her career as a poet.

With only a small sigh (because she was used to humoring eccentrics), Margie Collier took out a new name tag and obligingly wrote SAMARI in large capital letters. “There you are,” she said with a friendly smile. “I suppose you write Japanese haiku?”

Samari’s response was a puzzled stare, until half a minute later, when enlightenment dawned. “That is not how my name is pronounced!”

Several ego-encounters later, Margie Collier looked up at a registrant, who had signaled her presence simply by the shadow she cast on Margie’s paperwork. The awkward-looking young woman in an unflattering black plaid suit looked faintly ridiculous clutching a vase of red carnations. Margie found herself thinking of Ferdinand the Bull. “Those flowers will look nice in your room,” Margie remarked, hoping that the woman wasn’t planning to tote them around during the conference. She looked in the collection of Poet badges just in case, though.

“They’re not for me!” said the young woman, blushing. “They’re for John Clay Hawkins. For his room, I mean. I’d like to pick up his name tag, too, if I may.”

Margie frowned. “Are you his wife?”

“Certainly not! I am his graduate student. My name is Amy Dillow, and I also have a name tag. Dr. Hawkins will be arriving sometime this afternoon, and I wanted to make sure that his room is ready, and that the copies of his books arrived, and I’ll need his name tag and a copy of the schedule.”

When Margie Collier, still trying to make sense of this, did not reply, Amy sighed with impatience. “Dr. Hawkins,” she explained, “is required reading.”

By whom? thought Margie, but she only smiled, and began to search the desk for the requested items. Some people thought that being rude was the first step to becoming a writer. She found Hawkins’s name tag-not surprisingly-filed in the Poet section. Really, she thought, these male poets seem to attract groupies like maggots to a dead cat. She couldn’t see what all the fuss was about. Margie’s husband, a football coach at the junior high, often said that writing-and reading, for that matter-was women’s work, and secretly she agreed with him. Give her a middle-linebacker any old day, instead of these peevish, sensitive artistes that didn’t know spit from come here. Her idea of a real writer was Deidre Bellaire, who was just as sweet as peach jam, and she outsold those poet types by ten thousand to one, so that ought to show them, with their literary airs!

The first scheduled event for the Unicoi Writers’ Conference was a get-acquainted cocktail party, in which all the attendees met in the Nolichucky Room and either asked or endured the Writers’ Conference Litany: What name do you write under? Where do you get your ideas? Should I have heard of you? Outside, a raging thunderstorm lent the appropriate literary atmosphere to the setting. Rose Hanelon decided that the next person who came up to her and said “It is a dark and stormy night” was going to get a cup of punch in the face.

Now she had retreated into a corner, clutching a plastic cup of lukewarm strawberry punch, with nothing but a glazed smile between her and a plot summary. She had long since lost the ability to nod, but the droning woman had yet to notice. Every so often she would pat her crimped brown curls. (As if anything short of barbecue tongs could have moved them, thought Rose). “And then,” said the aspiring author, prattling happily, mistaking silence for interest, “the heroine gets on a train and goes to New Hampshire. Or do I mean Vermont? Which one is the one on the right? Well, anyway, meanwhile, the hero has decided to go mountain climbing on a glacier. Do they have glaciers in New Hampshire? Well, it doesn’t matter. Nobody’s ever been there. So he goes to a psychic to, you know, see if it’s going to be okay-what with his wooden leg and all, and-”

“Excuse me,” said Rose. “Could I ask you something? If I give you two eggs, can you tell me if the cake will be any good?”

The narrator blinked. “What? The cake? What cake?”

“Any cake,” sighed Rose. “You can’t judge a cake from two eggs, and you can’t judge a book from a plot summary. A bad writer can ruin anything. Just write the book and shut up.” She stalked off in the direction of the hors d’oeuvres, but her way was blocked by a bearded man in a fringed buckskin jacket.

“Hello, little lady,” he beamed at her in a B-movie twang. “You wouldn’t happen to be an editor, would you?”

“Why do you ask?” Her eyes were glittering, the way they always did when people said words like shorty or pulp fiction.

“Why, I just happen to have a new chapbook here that is Rod McKuen and Kahlil Gibran rolled into one. I’m Jess Scarberry.” He paused, waiting for cries of recognition that were not forthcoming. “I’m going to be doing a reading from it at eleven tomorrow. Why don’t you come?” He beamed at a serious young woman in horn-rimmed glasses who was standing near Rose. “And you, too, of course, ma’am.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” said Rose, edging past him as she reached for a cheese cube. Jess Scarberry wandered away in search of other victims.

When he was out of earshot, Amy Dillow snickered. “I can’t believe he thinks anybody will come to his stupid reading,” she sniffed. “John Clay Hawkins is lecturing that hour on the poetic tradition.”

“Really?” Rose wondered what else was going on at that hour. Flea-dipping seemed preferable.

Amy nodded, eyes shining. “He’s been published everywhere! Even the Virginia Quarterly Review. And John Ciardi once called his work well-crafted.”

“That silver-tongued devil,” murmured Rose.

“I’m doing my dissertation on Dr. Hawkins,” Amy confided. “I think Sylvia Plath and Philip Larkin are just too overdone, don’t you?”

“Well, that’s because people have heard of them,” said Rose. “I suppose you’d have a better chance of getting a professorship as a Larkin scholar than as a Hawkins expert. Still, it must be useful to be able to discuss the symbolism of the poetry with its author.”

Amy looked shocked. “Oh, I wouldn’t do that! What would he know about that? He just writes them. It’s up to us scholars to determine what they mean. But I do see quite a bit of Dr. Hawkins. I’m sort of working as his volunteer secretary, too. I just hate to see him wasting his time on anything but his Muse.”

Rose grunted. “I wish somebody felt that way about mystery writers.”

“That’s him over there,” whispered Amy, pointing at a silver-haired man with a shiny blue suit and a leathery tan. The substance in his glass did not look like fruit punch. He was surrounded by several other men-an unusual occurrence for a male poet at a writers’ conference. Even Amy seemed to feel that the phenomenon warranted an explanation. “Those other men are also regional poets. That young one in the leather jacket is Carter Jute, and the gaunt, elderly one is Mr. Snowfield. And there’s the guy in the cowboy outfit who just invited us to his poetry class. I don’t know who he thinks he is.”

Rose smiled in the direction of Jess Scarberry, talking shop and, no doubt, chapbooks with the academic gentry of his field. “That,” she said solemnly, “is the poet lariat.”

Meanwhile, in the Poets’ Corner, John Clay Hawkins was smiling genially as the discussion of poetry went on around him. He had already sized up Scarberry as a con man poet, but he wasn’t particularly offended by him. After all, was an iambic pentameter sex life really so much worse than what poor old Snowfield did-using his lackluster lyrics to evade teaching freshmen, and as an excuse for pomposity with other members of his department. Young Jute, he decided, was going through a phase, probably on his way to becoming a William Faulkner clone. He had already acquired the drinking problem, and he seemed to revel in the inaccessibility of his work, as though being incoherent made him smarter than anybody else. Hawkins sometimes wanted to say to these people, “All babies are incoherent, but they grow up. That is the principal difference between an infant and a poet.” But he never said anything so unkind. Other people’s folly didn’t really annoy John Clay Hawkins; they all seemed very remote.

Mostly he was tired. His career as a poet had begun while he was in graduate school, when he had written a slim volume of poems commemorating the marriage of his former roommate, Norman Grant, to a cheerleader named Lee Locklear. The poems were tastefully obscure, so as not to resemble the bawdy limericks usually offered by groomsmen on such occasions. He had meant them as a gift, since he couldn’t afford so much as a shard of the expensive china pattern the couple had chosen, but the former roommate had been a literary type himself, and flattered by this poetic tribute, he had sent copies of Grant and Lee’s Union to The Carolina Quarterly and to various other prestigious Southern publications. The editors of those august journals, not apprised of the coming nuptials, assumed that the verses were a retrospective of the Civil War, and the verses were published to considerable acclaim in several magazines. The LSU Press brought out the entire collection the following year, and it won an obscure prize thanks to the presence of an LSU man and a Civil War buff on the panel of judges. After that, John Clay Hawkins found that people took it for granted that he wanted to continue being a poet, and to his surprise he found that he was rather good at it, so he kept writing. Long after Mrs. Lee Locklear Grant had dumped Norman Grant for a Wachovia Bank vice president, Hawkins continued to receive writing fellowships, and to spend a good part of his non-teaching time lecturing at various universities. After twenty years of unfailingly patient workshops and well-performed readings that people actually understood, Hawkins found himself enshrined in academic hearts somewhere between Robert Frost and Yoda, the Jedi Master of Star Wars. He bore beatification with quiet dignity, and went on writing simple, beautifully phrased poems about rural life. Sometimes, though, hearing the same old questions for the hundredth time that day left him feeling unutterably weary.

He turned to smile at a twittery woman who was tugging at his elbow. “Tell me,” she said, through Bambi eyelashes, “where do you get your ideas for a poem?”

An elegant woman also bent on speaking to him had overheard this remark. “Poets get ideas everywhere,” she snapped. “That’s what makes them poets!” Having thus frightened the church bulletin versifier out of the fold, the dark-eyed young woman offered her hand to John Clay Hawkins. “My name is Samari,” she purred. “I also write verse.”

“You must meet Carter Jute,” Hawkins murmured, recognizing an example of his colleague’s taste in women.

The woman ignored his ploy. “I especially wanted to speak to you. I have found the ranks of scholarly poetry to be rather a closed circle”-she glanced over at Jess Scarberry and shuddered delicately-“with good reason, perhaps. But I do think I have a special gift, and I’d like you to read my work and to suggest some places that I could send it.”

As often as this trap had sprung shut on him, John Clay Hawkins had not yet devised a foolproof way to get out of it. He tried his first tactic: the Aw Shucks Maneuver. “Oh, I just buy Poet’s Market every year, and send ’em on out to whoever seems to like my sort of work,” he said modestly, studying the tops of his shoes.

“Yes, but you’re a name,” Samari persisted. “I’m not. It would really help if you’d recommend it. Then I could say that you told me to send it to them.”

Hawkins studied the jut of Connie Maria Samari’s jaw, and the sharklike glitter of her eyes, and he recognized the Type Three Poet, the Lady Praying Mantis. In relationships she eats her mate alive, and professionally, she is as singleminded as Attila the Hun. Struggling would only prolong and embitter the encounter. Worst of all, he actually had to look at her work. A simple “Send it to Bob at Whistlepig Review” would not satisfy her. She wanted a diagnosis based on a reading. “Well, bring it along later,” he sighed. “I’ll be in my room-406-after eleven. I’ll look at it then.”

As she moved away in search of other prey, Hawkins remembered that he had also promised to have drinks with Jute, Snowfield, and Scarberry after eleven, and he had promised interviews or consultations with two other novices. Fortunately, Hawkins was a night person, and his lecture wasn’t until eleven the next morning. Surely, he thought, there must be quicker forms of martyrdom.

Rose Hanelon, who went to bed with the chickens (exclusively), had been sound asleep for several hours when the pounding on her door called her forth from slumber. Groping for her eyeglasses and then her terry cloth bathrobe, she stumbled toward the door, propelled only by the thought of dismembering whoever she found when she opened it.

“Miss Hanelon?” An anxious Margie Collier, looking as if she’d thrown her clothes on with a pitchfork, fidgeted in the doorway. The sight of a glaring gargoyle in a dressing gown did little to calm her. “Did I wake you?” she gasped. “I mean-I thought you writers worked late at night on your manuscripts.”

“No,” said Rose between her teeth. “I’m usually out robbing graves at this hour, but it’s raining! Now what do you want?”

“I’m sorry to disturb you, but since you are a mystery writer, we thought-Oh, Miss Hanelon, there’s been a murder!”

“How amusing for you.” Rose started to close the door. “These little parlor games are of no interest to me, however.”

“No! Not a murder game! A real murder. Someone has killed John Clay Hawkins!”

“That is too bad,” said Rose, shaking her head sadly. “He wasn’t my first choice at all.”

Eventually Margie Collier’s urgency persuaded Rose that the matter was indeed serious, and her next reaction was to ask why they had bothered to wake her about it, instead of calling the local police. “They aren’t here yet. Besides, we thought they might need some help,” said Margie. “The people at this writers’ conference are hardly the criminal types they’re used to.”

“No, I suppose not. They’re the criminal types I’m used to.” She stifled a yawn. “All right. Give me ten minutes to get dressed. Oh, you might as well tell me about it while I do. Save time. What happened?”

Margie sat down on the bed, and modestly fixed her eyes at a point on the ceiling while she recited her narrative. “About midnight, a woman named Samari went to Dr. Hawkins’s room to show him her manuscript-”

“I’ve never heard it called that before-” Rose called from the bathroom.

“She’s a poetess.” Margie’s tone was reproachful. “She knocked, and found the door ajar, and there he was, slumped in his chair at the writing table. Someone had hit him over the head with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

“Was it empty?”

“I believe so. There wasn’t any spilled on the body. Ms. Samari came and got me, not knowing what else to do.”

“An empty whiskey bottle.” Rose wriggled a black sweater over her head. “Dylan Thomas would probably approve of that finale,” she remarked. “There. I’m ready. If you insist on doing this. I’ll bet the police shut down this show the minute they get here.”

“Maybe so,” said Margie. “But that won’t be until sometime tomorrow. The storm is too bad to take a boat across. And they won’t risk a helicopter, either.”

“What? We’re stuck here? What if somebody becomes seriously ill?”

“I asked the hotel manager about that. He said there’s a registered nurse on the staff. Actually, she’s the dietician, but in an emergency-”

“Never mind. I guess I’m elected. Let’s go investigate this thing.”

Margie brightened. “It’s just like a mystery story, isn’t it?”

“Not one that my editor would buy.”

Although Rose Hanelon wrote what she liked to call traditional mysteries, she was well-versed in police procedure, first of all because she read widely within the genre, and secondly because the townhouse adjoining hers belonged to a police detective who liked to talk shop at his backyard cookouts. He particularly enjoyed critiquing the police procedurals written by Rose’s fellow authors. With no effort on her part, Rose had assimilated quite a good working knowledge of law enforcement. She wondered if it would serve her well in the current emergency. Probably not. People had to cooperate with police officers, but they were perfectly free to ignore an inquisitive mystery writer, no matter how knowledgeable she was about investigative procedure.

“Do you think you’ll be able to solve the crime?” asked Margie, who was scurrying along after Rose like a terrier in the wake of a St. Bernard.

“I doubt it,” said Rose. “The police have computers, and other useful tools for ferreting out the truth. Paraffin tests, ballistics experts. If Joe Villanova had to use his powers of deduction to solve cases, he’d be in big trouble. He’s a police officer; lives next door to me. He’d probably arrest me for even trying to meddle in this case. Too bad he’s not here.”

“Oh, but you’ve written so many mysteries!” said Margie. “I’m sure you know quite a bit.”

“I can tell you who I want to be guilty,” Rose replied. “That’s what I do in my books.”

“Do you want to examine Mr. Hawkins’s body?”

“No. I’m not a doctor, and I don’t want to get hassled for tampering with evidence. Let’s just go and badger some suspects, shall we?”

Margie nodded. “I asked the hotel manager to put the poets in the hospitality suite.”

“I hope they didn’t bring along any manuscripts,” muttered Rose. “The very thought of being cooped up with a bunch of bards gives me hives.”

“It seems strange, doesn’t it, to think of poets as murder suspects. They are such gentle people.”

Rose Hanelon raised her eyebrows. “Have you ever been in an English department?”

The door to the hospitality suite was open, and the sounds of bickering could be heard halfway down the hall. “I think we should just conduct a memorial service in Hawkins’s scheduled hour tomorrow,” Carter Jute was saying. “It would be a nice way to honor his memory. I wouldn’t mind conducting the service.”

Jess Scarberry, the poet lariat, sneered. “I’ll bet you wouldn’t mind, Sonny, but remember that I’m also scheduled to do a reading at that hour. You’re not taking away my audience for some phony displays of grief.”

Connie Samari, mothlike in a red-and-black polyester kimono, toyed with her crystal earrings. “I suppose we could all write commemorative poems in honor of John Clay Hawkins,” she murmured. “Read them at the memorial service.”

Snowfield held up a restraining hand. “Just a moment,” he said. “I think that I am the obvious choice for regional poet laureate, now that Hawkins has shuffled off the mortal coil. In light of that, the hour ought to be spent introducing people to my own works, with perhaps a short farewell to Hawkins.” He shrugged. “I don’t care which of you does that.”

The poets were so intent upon their territorial struggles that they did not notice the two self-appointed investigators watching them from the doorway. What, after all, was a trifle like murder compared to their artistic considerations?

Amy Dillow, Hawkins’s graduate student, glared at the upstarts. Two spots of color appeared in her pale cheeks, and she drew herself up with as much dignity as one can muster when wearing a pink chenille bathrobe and bunny slippers. “I am appalled at your attitudes!” she announced. “John Clay Hawkins was a major poet, deserving of much greater recognition than he ever received. The idea of any of you assuming his mantle is laughable. I will conduct Dr. Hawkins’s conference hour myself. I have just completed a paper on the symbolism in the works of Hawkins, and it seems logical to read that tomorrow as we pause to consider his achievements.”

Rose Hanelon strode into the fray, rubbing her hands together in cheerful anticipation. “Well, this won’t be hard!” she announced. “It sounds just like a faculty meeting in the English department.”

The poets stopped quarreling and stared at her. “Who are you?” Snowfield demanded with a touch of apprehension. He didn’t think any major women poets had been invited to this piddling conference. Anyway, she wasn’t Nikki Giovanni, so she probably didn’t matter.

“Relax,” said Rose. “If anybody called me a poet, I’d sue them for slander. I’m not here to replace Caesar, but to bury him. He was murdered, you know.”

Amy Dillow sighed theatrically. “Now he belongs to the ages.”

Margie Collier, ever the peacemaker, said, “Why don’t I get us some coffee while Miss Hanelon speaks to you about the murder. We thought it might be nice to get the preliminary questioning done while we wait for the police.” She hurried away before anyone could raise any objections to this plan, leaving Rose Hanelon alone with a roomful of egotists and possibly one murderer.

The poets sat down in a semicircle and faced her with varying degrees of resentment. Some of them were sputtering about the indignity of being a suspect in a sordid murder case.

Rose sighed. “I always find this the boring part of murder mysteries,” she confided to the assembly. “It seems to go on for pages and pages, while we listen to alibis, and tedious contradictory accounts of the deceased’s relationships with all present. And in order to find out who’s lying, I need access to outside documents detailing the life and loves of the victim. Obviously, I can’t do that, since we’re stormbound on this island.”

“Perhaps we could tell the police that Hawkins committed suicide,” said Carter Jute. “That would protect us all from notoriety, and it’s very correct in literary circles. Hemingway, Sylvia Plath.”

“We could blame it on Ted Hughes,” said Rose sarcastically, “but that wouldn’t be true, either. You’ll find that the police are awfully wedded to facts, as opposed to hopeful interpretation. They will investigate the crime scene, get fingerprints off the bottle, and that’ll be that.”

“Surely the killer would wipe the fingerprints off the murder weapon?” said Snowfield. He reddened under the stares of everyone else present. “Well, I’ve read a few whodunits. After all, C. Day Lewis, the English poet laureate, wrote some under the name of Nicholas Blake.”

“Never mind about the murder!” said Carter Jute. “What are we going to do about Hawkins’s time slot tomorrow?”

“Yes,” said Rose. “Why don’t you discuss that among yourselves? And while you do, I’d like to read that paper on the life and works of John Clay Hawkins. Do you have it with you, Ms. Dillow?”

Amy Dillow stood up, and yawned. “It’s in my room. I’ll get it for you. But why do you want to read it now?”

“It helps to have a clear idea who the victim was,” said Rose.

“Oh, all right.” She shuffled off in her bunny slippers. “I haven’t proofed it yet, though.”

In the doorway she nearly collided with Margie Collier, who was returning with a pot of coffee and seven cups. She set the tray on the coffee table, and beamed at Rose Hanelon. “Have you solved it yet?”

“Not yet,” said Rose. “It’s easier on television, where one of the actors is paid to confess. Real life is less tidy. This lot haven’t even decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour yet.”

“Well, you could read John Clay Hawkins’s last poem,” said Margie. “The one he was writing when he died.”

“He was working?” said Rose.

“Yes. I looked at the paper under poor Mr. Hawkins’s hand when we examined his body. Of course, we can’t remove the actual paper from the room. I’m sure the police would object to that, but I did make a copy while I was waiting for the hotel manager to arrive. Would you like to see it?” She fished a sheet of hotel stationery out of the pocket of her robe and handed it to Rose.

“Read it aloud!” Snowfield called out. The others nodded assent.

“Oh, all right,” grumbled the mystery writer. “I knew you would find some way to turn this into a poetry reading.” Holding the paper at arm’s length, she squinted at the spidery writing, and recited:

There’s this guy.

his name is Norman

and he’s sitting in a white room.

he’s sitting in a white room,

but you might as well call it

white death.

Norman is holding death like

a white peach to the window

and turning,

turning death

like the dial of a timer

in the white light of the sun.

death begins to tick.

Norman puts death down

and stares with his white eyes

at the white wall.

his shadow is white and moves

without him around the white room.

then death goes off.

She lowered the paper and blinked at the assortment of poets. “That is the most stupid and pointless thing I have ever read. Do any of you bards get any meaning out of that?”

Jess Scarberry shrugged. “Shucks, ma’am, these professor types don’t have to make sense. If you don’t understand what they write, they reckon it’s your fault.”

Snowfield scowled at him. “It seems clear enough to me. Hawkins was obviously contemplating his own mortality. Perhaps he had a premonition. Keats did.”

Rose Hanelon rolled her eyes. “Keats had medical training and symptoms of tuberculosis. I’d hardly call that a premonition. I should have thought that if Hawkins foresaw his own murder, he’d have gotten out of there, rather than sit down and write a poem about it. Still, with poets, you never know.”

“Who’s Norman?” asked Margie with a puzzled frown.

“A metaphor for Everyman,” said Carter Jute.

Connie Samari snickered. “Everyman. How typical of the male poet’s arrogance! And I think that poem stinks!”

“I expect it’s over your head,” said Snowfield.

Amy Dillow returned just then with a sheaf of dot matrix-printed papers. “Here’s my thesis on Hawkins. It isn’t finished, of course, but you may find it helpful.”

“A polygraph machine would be helpful,” said Rose. “Reading this is an act of desperation. But it will have to do. Pour me some of that coffee.” She settled down on one of the sofas and began to read, while the bickering went on about her.

Carter Jute handed a cup of coffee to Amy Dillow. “It’s such a shame about poor old Hawkins,” he said. “By the way, Amy, do you have a copy of his current vitae?”

“Why do you ask?”

Jute gave her a boyish smile. “Well, I was thinking what a void his passing will leave in literary circles. There were certain editorial positions he held, and workshops that he taught year after year-”

“And you thought you’d apply for them?” Amy Dillow looked shocked.

“He’d want someone to carry on his work,” Jute assured her.

Connie Samari laughed. “And heaven forbid that his honors should go to someone outside the old-boy network, right?”

Margie Collier looked dismayed to be caught in such a maelstrom of ill will. She had always thought of poets as gentle people, wandering lonely as a cloud while they composed their little odes to nature. “Why don’t we all try to write a poem in memory of poor Dr. Hawkins?” she suggested. “Does anyone do haiku?”

Rose Hanelon looked up from her reading. “You say here that Hawkins was married.”

“He’s divorced,” said Amy.

“From whom?”

“A librarian named Dreama Belcher. They didn’t have any children, though.”

“Just as well,” muttered Snowfield, shuddering. “Imagine what the progeny of someone named Dreama Belcher would look like!”

“What became of her?”

“I don’t know,” said Amy. “Nothing much, I expect. She didn’t have the temperament to be married to a poet.”

“She preferred monogamy, I expect,” said Samari. “I’ve often thought that male poets were reincarnations of walruses. Can’t you just picture them up there on a rock, surrounded by a herd of sunbathing cow-wives?”

Jess Scarberry reddened. “It’s understandable,” he said. “Poets need inspiration like a car needs a battery. If you’re writing love poems, you need something to jumpstart the creative process.”

Rose Hanelon ignored him. “Walruses,” she echoed. “That’s interesting. So John Clay Hawkins was… er… Byronic. That could have been hazardous to his health. Especially if one of his girlfriends objected to his philandering. Are any of his conquests here?” She peered at Amy Dillow with a glint of malicious interest.

The young graduate student blushed and looked away. “Certainly not!” she murmured. “I was solely interested in his work.”

“Don’t look at me,” said Connie Samari. “I met him for the first time tonight. And he definitely wasn’t my type.”

“Yes, but if you went to his room to discuss your poetry, and he made a pass at you, you might have killed him by accident, trying to fend him off.”

“If I had, I would have called a press conference to announce it,” said Samari. “I certainly wouldn’t have fled the scene and denied it.”

Jute and Snowfield, seated on either side of her, unobtrusively edged away. Jess Scarberry crossed his legs and whistled tunelessly. Rose Hanelon went back to reading the thesis.

“Would anybody like more coffee?” asked Margie nervously.

After a few moments of uneasy silence, the poets returned to the topic of Hawkins and the professional repercussions that would ensue.

“Wasn’t he set to do a guest professorship in Virginia this summer?” asked Snowfield.

“Probably. I know he was slated to write the introduction to the Regional Poets Anthology,” said Samari. “Had he written that?”

Amy Dillow shrugged. “Not that I know of.”

“I was thinking of applying for his slot at Bread Loaf,” mused Carter Jute.

“There’ll never be another John Clay Hawkins,” Amy Dillow assured them. “He was the greatest poet of our region.”

“Oh, come now!” Snowfield protested. “You ladies always say that about a good-looking fellow who reads well.”

“Oh, don’t be such a dinosaur!” said the graduate student. “I loved Hawkins’s work before I even knew what he looked like. He’s one of the few original voices in contemporary poetry. The fact that he was a drunk and a lecher is neither here nor there.”

Rose Hanelon was wondering if Detective Joe Villanova was awake at-what was it?-four A.M. Probably not. He wouldn’t be much better at this than she would, though, with no forensic evidence to go on. “Oh, well,” said Rose. “Even if I don’t figure out who the murderer is, all of you will be too exhausted tomorrow to commit any more murders, no matter which of you is guilty.”

Carter Jute consulted his watch. “Gosh, that’s right! We all have to be on panels tomorrow. Or rather, today. And we still haven’t decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour.”

The others stood up, yawned and stretched. “Long day,” they murmured.

“Wait! I’m not finished!” Rose was still riffling through the clues. “Is anyone here named Norman?” she asked in tones of desperation. “Does anyone know Hawkins’s ex-wife?”

They all shook their heads. “Sorry we can’t help, little lady,” drawled Scarberry.

“Wait!” said Connie Samari. “We never decided what to do with Hawkins’s hour!”

“Ah! Hawkins’s hour,” said Rose Hanelon with a feral smile. “I will be taking that.”

By skipping breakfast, Rose managed to get three hours of sleep before the conference sessions began, but she still looked like a catatonic bag lady. Five cups of coffee later, she had recovered the use of most of her brain cells, but she was still considerably lacking in presentability. When she ran into Joe Villanova, helping himself to doughnuts at the coffee break in the hall, he did a double take and said, “If you’ll lie down, I’ll draw chalk marks around you and ask the coroner to take a look at you.”

His next-door neighbor managed a feeble snarl. “Buzz off, Villanova. I’m solving this case for you. Come to the next lecture in the Catawba Room, and you’ll see.”

“You don’t mind if we continue doing the fingerprinting and the suspect interrogations in the meantime, do you?”

“Not at all. So glad you could finally manage to come.”

“Hey, I’m not risking my neck in a helicopter for a guy who is already dead. Listen, when you do this lecture of yours, don’t violate anybody’s rights, okay? I have to get a conviction.”

Rose looked up as a gaggle of silver-haired women walked by. They were wearing Poet name tags and they seemed to be earnestly discussing onomatopoeia. “I don’t suppose you could arrest all of them, Joe,” she said. “We have quite a surplus of poets.”

The Catawba Room was packed. Some of those present were groupies of the distinguished and handsome poet, and they had not been informed of his death. Others had heard that a mystery writer was going to conduct the session, and attended in hopes of hearing a post mortem. All the poets were there in force in case Rose Hanelon didn’t use the whole hour. Scarberry, whose session had consisted of three elderly ladies, adjourned his group and joined the crowd in the Catawba Room. Villanova, with a ridiculous smirk on his face, sprawled in the front row with his arms folded, waiting for Rose to make an idiot of herself.

Rose surveyed the sheeplike faces and wished she’d had time for another cup of coffee. “Good morning,” she began. “I have come to bury John Clay Hawkins, not to praise him. As you know, our featured speaker was murdered last night with an empty bottle of Jack Daniel’s.”

“Those who live by the sword…” muttered Samari from the front row.

“Even now the police are measuring and photographing, and doing all that they can to collect the physical evidence to convict the killer. I used another approach-the examination of motives. Who would want to kill a poet?”

A suppressed whoop of laughter emanated from the romance writers’ contingent in the back of the room.

“Precisely,” said Rose. “Who wouldn’t want to kill a poet? But why this particular poet, when there are so many more annoying and less-talented specimens around. Besides, in this case, the suspects were all poets themselves, or people well acquainted with John Clay Hawkins as a human being.”

Hawkins’s fellow bards glared up at her from their front-row seats.

“The main motive that occurred to me was professional competitiveness. Hawkins, as a well-known minor poet, had a number of workshop engagements, editorships, and other poetic plums that everyone else seemed to want very badly.” Rose nodded in the direction of Jess Scarberry’s waving hand, acknowledging his objection. “Yes. Except for Jess Scarberry. No one would give him any literary recognition, not even if he was the last poet on earth. But I doubt if he minds. He’s in the game to pick up women and sell chapbooks, and he can do all of that without any academic recognition. If he killed Mr. Hawkins, it would have to be for more personal reasons. I didn’t find any.”

“That left Samari, Snowfield, and Carter Jute, whose personal attributes suggest that poems are made by barracudas. I didn’t even have a favorite suspect among them. So I read Amy Dillow’s thesis about John Clay Hawkins. And I read the last poem of Hawkins himself. Bear with me.”

She read the poem in clear measured tones to the startled audience. “At least it’s timely,” she remarked. “I wondered why Hawkins was thinking of Norman, and if in fact he knew anyone by that name.” Rose held up Amy Dillow’s thesis. “It turns out that he did. His old college roommate Norman Grant, interviewed by Ms. Dillow here as a source for material about Hawkins’s early years. I called Norman Grant, and read him the poem.”

“Since you had no address, how’d you find him on a Saturday morning?” Villanova called out from the front row. He was obviously enjoying himself.

Rose smiled. “Professional connections. The PR director of his alma mater is a colleague of mine. She looked him up in the alumni directory. Anyway, I called Norman Grant, and read the poem to him.”

There was a murmur of interest from the audience.

Rose shrugged. “He said it made no sense to him, either. But then he said Hawkins’s poems never did make sense, as far as he could tell. People just read them and assigned them meanings. He said John Clay used to joke that once a critic found one of your works profound, then anything else you ever wrote would be analyzed to death. Didn’t matter what it was. He said John Clay was getting pretty tired of all the pretension, and of the old-boy network of you-blurb-my-chapbook-and-I’ll-publish-your-poem-in-my-literary-magazine. He said it was the Mafia with meter. He said that Hawkins was talking about quitting the poetry business and coming to work with him. Mr. Grant is a crop duster in north Georgia.”

“He’s lying!” Amy Dillow called out. “He was always jealous of Hawkins’s success. Norman Grant flunked English!”

“He told me that, too,” said Rose. “He said they used to laugh about it, because John Clay Hawkins wrote his papers for him that term. Now assuming Hawkins was planning to quit poetry, there would be no need for the other poets to do him in, but that still leaves one very clear motive.” She pointed to Amy Dillow. “If Hawkins renounced poetry, your graduate career would have been ruined, wouldn’t it? You couldn’t very well make your literary reputation on an ex-poet who was never widely recognized to begin with. Besides, dead poets are so much more respected than live ones. Look at Sylvia Plath: famous for being dead.”

Amy Dillow jumped to her feet. “He had no ambition!” she cried. “He wouldn’t apply for the right fellowships, or curry favor with the really important critics. I had to do something! His work really had potential, but he was holding back his own reputation. I did it for scholarly reasons! I had to kill him so that I could devote myself to the legend!”

Rose’s jaw dropped. “You did?” she exclaimed. “You mean you did it?”

Amy Dillow nodded. “I thought you had figured it out.”

“No,” Rose blurted before she thought better of it. (It had been a long night.) “I was just using that theory for dramatic effect, building up for the big finish. You see, Norman Grant also told me that Hawkins’s first wife, Dreama Belcher, is still a librarian, but now she writes romance novels as Deidre Bellaire. I assumed she had done it.”

A wizened figure in rhinestones and green chiffon stood up in the back of the room, waving her fan. “I killed the bastard off in eight Harlequins and three Silhouettes,” she called out. “That was enough. Got it out of my system.”

Joe Villanova’s shouts of laughter drowned out the polite applause from the mystery fans. Rose Hanelon shrugged. “My editor will want me to change this ending.”