Nameless Things

Richard A. Becker

October 2005

After I checked into the little local hotel, they directed me on to nearby Indian Ridge and the Smith residence. No, no telephone up there, they said. But they’re friendly enough people, though old Clark’s a little odd. No reason you can’t go to their doorstep. I drove perhaps ten minutes through the hilly area, with its outcroppings of black volcanic stone and twisted gray-green pines and straight green buckeyes. Here and there, meager plum and cherry ranches dotted the landscape, framed by the snowy Sierras to the east and the dim blue of the Coast Range to the west. Double-checking myself against the townsfolk’s directions, I found myself at the Smith place.

It was a plot of land rife with tall, yellowing grass and scrub clinging to the thin, stony soil. There was a one-story wooden frame house clad in a jumble of stained boards and shingles, abutted by a grove of blue oak trees. An outhouse stood not far behind it, and a pump-operated well not too far away either. Here and there a bit of junk rusted amid the straggle of boulders lying in the "yard." There was no sound but the wind in the trees. I got out of the Packard, putting my bribe-gift for the poet under the seat to keep it cool, and went to the front door. There could only have been four rooms in the house at most; it was a very picture of neatly maintained poverty. Through the screen door I could see scattered crude drawings and paintings in an untrained primitive-like style, as of a man seeking to emulate tribal folk art. I knocked on the doorframe.

"Timeus, is that you?" an old woman’s tremulous voice answered me. I called in, introducing myself, asking after Clark A. Smith. "I’m Mrs. Fanny Smith," the old lady replied. "You say you want to talk to Clark?" I said I did, and asked if he went by the name of Timeus. "Timeus is my husband. Clark is our son." She neared the door, and I saw her more clearly. "Yes. Our only boy. Clark," she concluded. She was a stout, tallish woman of advanced age in a patterned farm dress who peered at me through glasses. Her skin was sallow and she breathed with some difficulty, inviting me into her home to wait for Smith’s return. I accepted, entering the front room and its cool dimness. "Clark takes care of us. He is such a good boy."

The front room was a neatly organized collection of old furniture, kerosene lamps, bric-a-brac and books. The books were well-read, covering a broad range of topics from gold mining to Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary. Art, signed by Smith, was scattered around the room – paintings and drawings, and a couple of the odd little statuettes partially carved from soft stone. Over it all hung the smells of dust, age and the sickroom. The old woman talked and fretted on about every little thing, bragging about her Clark and complaining about her Timeus and how long he always took down in Auburn, it being supply day and all. I struggled to focus my thoughts on Smith’s work and its hints of truths outside my world. She offered and made me a cup of unsweetened tea, which I was about to sip when a heavy footfall approached the front door.

I turned. Behind me stood a weathered man of about forty, a bit under six feet tall and rather thin despite his large chest. He wore a neat blue suit, colorful patterned shirt, and a blue beret. It was as if I had somehow stumbled across a Montmartre painter in a walnut plantation. The hat nearly provoked me to laughter, but there was a somber expression in his heavy-lidded eyes that somehow lent dignity to the ridiculous ensemble. His weathered face was graced with a wispy brown moustache, setting off lank brown hair that hung slightly over his collar. I leaped to regain control of the situation. "Clark Ashton Smith?" I said.

"Yes, I am Clark Smith," he said in a deep voice. "What can I do for you?"

I named myself to him and explained that I had come from Chicago to write about a matter related to his poetry. He seemed surprised and a little wary. Smith struck a match and lit his pipe. "Forgive me. I am not fond of crowds, and I do have a hard time meeting new people," he said. "But you’re interested in poetry?" I affirmed that I was, and named the poems which the girl had underlined most fervidly. I wished to know more, especially about his inspiration. They invited me to stay for dinner and began to present Smith’s work to me.

They proudly showed me the current cover of a magazine called Weird Tales, a tasteless and lurid painting of two nearly nude young girls daubed by a woman named Brundage, which might have illuminated a manuscript of the dead starlet’s failed love affair. Smith’s work was behind that cover. I felt an odd surge of kinship for him. My own worthless typings were entombed between covers no better than those, differing only in that they prostituted philosophy, religion and cosmology instead of nubile flesh. Smith’s mother apologized for the fleshly indiscretion, noting that such things went with the "art world." I nodded sagely in agreement. We went over Smith’s own odd little drawings and paintings in excruciating detail, which bored me endlessly as it was clear that he was much more of a wordsmith than a visual artist.

What had I expected? A reclusive Hermetic sorcerer in a remote cabin in the mountains, attended by a shaven cabal of catamites and virgins? Rohmer’s Doctor Fu Manchu? Madame Blavatsky’s Dadaist cousin, perhaps? It was no matter. Increasingly, I saw no reason at all why this particular man produced these particular artworks, nor why anyone should follow his visions in any direction whatsoever. Perhaps outside his mother’s influence he would have more to say for himself, I reasoned.

Smith Pere finally returned, amid a storm of recriminations from his wife. He was a thin little man, with a beaky nose and an old-fashioned moustache turned white like his hair. He spoke with a faded British accent. "Hullo, I’m the elder Smith," he smiled to me. "Timeus Smith." He could not have been a day under seventy-five, and had the air of a ne’er-do-well who’d finally been pinned down to one spot like a well-collected butterfly. His collector was infuriated at his lateness, a full forty minutes, and did not mind berating him for it before his son and a guest. "Fanny keeps me on a schedule on our supply day," he whispered to me. "Afraid I might go running after one of the young girls in town." He winked jovially, and I mustered a thin smile. Throughout the afternoon, and through the simple dinner, both men deferred to Fanny Smith’s every whim. She was polite to her men, but firm, and it did not take me long to see who wore the pants in the household.

Dinner was simple, mainly beans and bread and a little meat supplemented with homegrown vegetables. No one held much store by saying grace, to my relief. After dinner, we smoked while Smith did the dishes. His father held forth to me about his footloose youth and his many misadventures on the road from England to California. It did not take long for the older Smiths to grow bone-tired and ready for sleep.

When Smith had seen both his mother and his father to bed after their many medications, he joined me to sit outside the house. I had in the meantime gone back to my car and retrieved my planned gift for him: A bottle of wine "imported" from Canada which we could drink together. "I’m afraid I don’t have many chances to sample vintages," he said. "Especially in this godawful cow-town."

"None of us do anymore. Prohibition, you know."

He smiled and stuck a pocketknife in the cork, twisting it and pulling it out with a smooth turn of his strong, leathery hands. We drank out of odd little cups he’d made himself. It was not long before his taciturnity mellowed to a warm glow, and I was surprised at how much Smith had to say when his guard had been dissolved by the wine. He became voluble about his thoughts and his ideas, things which clearly no one in the nearby community ever discussed with him, let alone his elderly parents. His polite reserve was as much for their sake as for his own daily behavior.

Smith had dropped out of high school and educated himself from books, a task made easier by his nearly photographic memory. He had worked many odd outdoor jobs, hating any work that demanded he stay indoors or keep normal hours. Smith, the poet, had chopped firewood, picked fruit, dug wells, mined for gold, and a great deal more. He had few anecdotes to tell of these things, but after the wine warmed him further he told me a bit more. It seemed he was also the town’s own Don Juan, romancing the bored local ladies, single or married. Poets, I clucked theatrically, and he had laughed richly at that. I poured him more wine, generously, and then gave myself a much more judicious amount.

"Are you familiar with the works of Charles Baudelaire? `Les Fleurs du Mal?’ I once translated the work for myself. Listen."

I had read the book once, in an English translation, but it had been in my freshman year and it had been for "the spicy parts." But the wine had not yet finished working its magic, so I nodded for Smith to commence. His memory was truly remarkable – he spoke aloud the words as if the text was before him. Yet all was not well. I gritted my teeth. I was no Francophone myself, but the poor man had obviously learned exclusively from books. He had never actually heard the language spoken aloud. He did not hesitate in his recitation, which bespoke great confidence, but after the first few words of "Les Femmes Damnees" declaimed in that strange quasi-French I chose to concentrate instead on the distant sound of an owl hooting.

When he had finished, I gave polite and wholly deserved praise to his voice and spoke vaguely of the quality of Baudelaire’s verse. Ambiguity is the stronghold of hope. I named for him the dead starlet, explained the circumstances of her death. A frown creased his broad forehead as he swam through the alcohol fumes. "Yes, I remember corresponding with her," he said of the dead girl. "She was always on about the visions she’d had drinking absinthe after reading my poetry. Terrific stuff. I felt like I was Coleridge or Chambers, reading her letters. She got soppy about another girl as well. One of those, do you think?" I shrugged. He certainly didn’t need my confirmation of the obvious. "I carved the Tsathoggua for her on commission, when she’d learned I sculpted as well. She had originally wanted something a bit more sensuous, but I said I was new to the medium. I’ve been thinking of selling my sculpture. Nothing very high in price, just a few dollars here and there." I grunted affirmation of the statement, honestly not very enthusiastic at the prospect. "At least it would be my own stuff. I would hate to write for someone else, letting them put their name on my work. That’s Lovecraft’s game."

I felt a pang, followed by curiosity. "Lovecraft? What’s that?"

"Howard Lovecraft. He and Bob Howard and I write for the same sorts of magazines, chiefly for Farnsworth and `Weird Tales.’ Those two have a great deal more time for letter-writing than I do. It must be nice. I hardly have time to write for sale these days, with all I must do around here." He smiled sleepily. "But they’re both prose writers, too. I am first and foremost a poet. I used to write and edit poetry, primarily. But George was right. There is no money in it. Poor old George." It took some time to piece together that "poor old George" Sterling had been his literary mentor, an obscure fellow in Carmel, now dead. He’d known vanished Bierce, who had likewise been an enthusiast for Smith’s early poetry. "One wonders whatever became of Bierce," Smith murmured.

"He was amongst Pancho Villa’s men," I said. "Or so I’ve read. Good way to get yourself killed. Not much of a mystery."

"No, you’re quite right. Not much of a mystery at all. Nothing much is a mystery, is it?" he said. "We create all the mysteries ourselves, then give ourselves the answers we like. Even slit wrists can be an answer, if there is no other."

I focused on the stars blazing in the clear country sky and asked, "Is there any other?"

"I don’t know yet."

I poured him more wine and asked him if he had found his verse in the visions of narcotics. "Opium?" He laughed. "A little tobacco, a little wine and poetry are enough for me. I’m not Thomas DeQuincey. Besides, where would you get opium in this nasty little backwood? They would think it was some new-fangled fertilizer." He muttered imprecations about Auburn and its inbred citizenry for some minutes, then, as I made mental notes to myself about what facts I would invent for Barker’s story. A man could follow me and learn if I had done my research, but he could not follow me and know what my research was. Barker wanted answers. I would give him answers. I had none for myself. But I continued to listen to Smith as he rambled over the wine cup.

Smith supported his narrow chin on his hands. He cleared his throat. He had something important to say to me, or thought he did. I listened. "I think sometimes that poets have a vision of another world," Smith said. "And artists as well. That there is something beyond this rotten planet. Something rare and strange." I nodded. "You know something?" he slurred. "I sometimes think that if enough beauty is brought into the world... enough poetry, or paintings, or sculptures... that something out there rewards us. With a little mercy. A gift for the dying." I winced at his earnestness, and tried to joke that perhaps he meant Tsathoggua, the toad-sloth-god of his invention. He frowned and concentrated on his words and said, "Maybe. Any dream will do, if it can get you away from this."

I thought of his florid poetry and crude painting, and could not imagine it easing the passage of anyone from this world. The image of the girl in her bathtub amid cheap yellow silk made it no easier. But what dream could?

"I hate this place," he muttered softly. "I will leave it one day, as a butterfly leaves its hated husk to rot into the soil. I will leave them behind, and never return." His heavy eyelids might have touched shut, for all that I could see in the starlight. His mouth dribbled slackly, and his breathing deepened. He had passed out. I sat there in the darkness beside the man for long minutes, listening to the sound of his breathing. There was a creak and a cough from within the house.

"Clark? Clark, I need you," the old woman groaned in the night.

"Must be asleep. Here, I’ll help," said the old man.

"No," the old woman whimpered. "Clark? Clark..."

But Smith was entirely passed out in the chair, his quaint handmade cup draining into the dry earth. Having no desire to overstay my welcome, I walked back to my car, pushed the starter button, and began to drive back into Auburn. Beside me, Tsathoggua smiled sleepily. I was a little sleepy myself, and I pulled over onto the shoulder of the empty road to clear my head for a few moments.

I gazed up at the stars and tried in vain to form pictures with them.

Richard A. Becker is a native of Los Angeles, CA, where he pursues a career in writing and filmmaking.

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