The Tokyo-Montana Express Read online

  Published by

  Delacorte Press/Seymour Lawrence

  1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza

  New York, N.Y. 10017

  Portions of this work first appeared in Mademoiselle, Esquire, Outside, California Living, Earth, Evergreen, Triquarterly, New Ingenue, TheCoEvolution Quarterly, New Orleans Review, San Francisco Stories, and The Overland Journey of Joseph Francl published by William P. Wreden.

  A limited edition of The Tokyo-Montana Express was published in different form by Targ Editions.

  The author thanks them and Playboy (Japanese edition) for publishing his work.

  Copyright © 1980 by Richard Brautigan

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the Publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  First printing

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

  Brautigan, Richard.

  The Tokyo-Montana express.

  I. Title.

  PS3503.R2736T64 813’.54 80-17171

  ISBN 0-440-08770-8

  FOR RICHARD AND NANCY HODGE

  Though the Tokyo-Montana Express moves at a great speed, there are many stops along the way. This book is those brief stations: some confident, others still searching for their identities.

  The “I” in this book is the voice of the stations along the tracks of the Tokyo-Montana Express.

  THE ROUTE OF THE TOKYO-MONTANA EXPRESS:

  The Overland Journey of Joseph Francl and the Eternal Sleep of His Wife Antonia in Crete, Nebraska

  All the People That I Didn’t Meet and the Places That I Didn’t Go

  The Japanese Squid Fishermen Are Asleep Now

  The Smallest Snowstorm on Record

  A San Francisco Snake Story

  Football

  Ice Age Cab Company

  Shrine of Carp

  Meat

  Umbrellas

  A Death in Canada

  Autumn Trout Gathering

  Harmonica High

  Winter Vacation

  The Purpose

  The Irrevocable Sadness of Her Thank You

  No Hunting Without Permission

  OPEN

  Spiders Are in the House

  Very Good Dead Friends

  What Are You Going to Do with 390 Photographs of Christmas Trees?

  The Pacific Ocean

  Another Texas Ghost Story

  There Is No Dignity, Only the Windswept Plains of Ankona

  The Tomb of the Unknown Friend

  Cooking Spaghetti Dinner in Japan

  The Beacon

  Blue Sky

  An Eye for Good Produce

  Gone Before We Open Our Eyes

  Harem

  Montana Love

  Cat Cantaloupe

  Al’s Rose Harbor

  Farewell to the First Grade and Hello to the National Enquirer

  The Wolf Is Dead

  The Closest I Have Been to the Sea Since Evolution

  Homage to Groucho Marx

  A Feeling of Helplessness

  One Arm Burning in Tokyo

  Rubber Bands

  Werewolf Raspberries

  Toothbrush Ghost Story

  Skylab at the Graves of Abbott and Costello

  The Bed Salesman

  Tire Chain Bridge

  White

  Montana Traffic Spell

  Hangover as Folk Art

  Marching in the Opposite Direction of a Pizza

  Dogs on the Roof

  California Mailman

  The Cobweb Toy

  Her Last Known Boyfriend a Canadian Airman

  The Butcher

  To the Yotsuya Station

  A Safe Journey Like This River

  Parking Place Lost

  Studio 54

  Crows Eating a Truck Tire in the Dead of Winter

  Something Cooking

  Cold Kingdom Enterprise

  The Beautiful Oranges of Osaka

  Drowned Japanese Boy

  The Great Golden Telescope

  The Man Who Shot Jesse James

  Dancing Feet

  Seventeen Dead Cats

  Light on at the Tastee-Freez

  The Eyes of Japan

  The Magic of Peaches

  Times Square in Montana

  Wind in the Ground

  Tokyo Snow Story

  The Last of My Armstrong Spring Creek Mosquito Bites

  Clouds over Egypt

  Fantasy Ownership

  The Mill Creek Penguins

  A Reason for Living

  1953 Chevrolet

  My Fair Tokyo Lady

  The Menu / 1965

  The Convention

  In Pursuit of the Impossible Dream

  The Old Testament Book of the Telephone Company

  Breakfast in Beirut

  Another Montana School Gone to the Milky Way

  Four People in Their Eighties

  My Fault

  Florida

  Ghosts

  A Study in Thyme and Funeral Parlors

  Rabbits

  A Different Way of Looking at President Kennedy’s Assassination

  Portrait of a Marriage

  Self-Portrait as an Old Man

  Beer Story

  Homage to Rudi Gernreich / 1965

  Turkey and Dry Breakfast Cereal Sonata

  Old Man Working the Rain

  The Remarkable Dining Cars of the Northern Pacific Railroad

  Railroading in Tokyo

  Two Montana Humidifiers

  Contents for Good Luck

  Tod

  Five Ice-Cream Cones Running in Tokyo

  The Good Work of Chickens

  Castle of the Snow Bride

  The Instant Ghost Town

  The Mouse

  House of Carpets

  The 1977 Television Season

  The Window

  Painstaking Popcorn Label

  Imaginary Beginning to Japan

  Leaves

  Waking Up Again

  Poetry Will Come to Montana on March 24th

  Sunday

  Japanese Love Affair

  Tap Dancing Chickadee Slaves

  Pleasures of the Swamp

  Sky Blue Pants

  Kyoto, Montana

  A Different or the Same Drummer

  When 3 Made Sense for the First Time

  A One-Frame Movie about a Man Living in the 1970s

  My Tokyo Friend

  Chicken Fable

  The Fence

  Subscribers to the Sun

  The Overland Journey of

  Joseph Francl and the

  Eternal Sleep of His Wife Antonia

  in Crete, Nebraska

  PART 1: OFTEN CLOAKED LIKE TRICK OR TREATERS IN THE CASUAL

  On the third day out from Lucky Ford River we found a corpse almost eaten by wolves (which are very numerous here, howl in concert at night and keep us awake) and scalped by the Indians… We buried him and went on our way, with sorrowful thoughts. —Joseph Francl

  Often, cloaked like trick or treaters in the casual disguises of philosophical gossip, we wonder about the ultimate meaning of a man’s life, and today I’m thinking about Joseph Francl: a man who brought his future to America, God only knows why, from Czechoslovakia in 1851, and completely used up that future to lie dead, facedown in the snow, not unhappy in early December 1875, and then to be buried at Fort Klamath, Oregon, in a grave that was lost forever.

  I’ve read the surviv
ing sections of a diary that he kept on a long unsuccessful gold mining expedition that he took in 1854 from Wisconsin to California, and some letters that he wrote back from California.

  His diary is written in a mirror-like prose that is simultaneously innocent and sophisticated and reflects a sense of gentle humor and irony. He saw this land in his own way. I think it was an unusual life that led him inevitably, like an awkward comet, to his diary and then later to his death in America.

  In the beginning Joseph Francl was the son of a man who owned a brewery and a glassworks in Czechoslovakia, so he was probably surrounded by a stable world of abundance.

  He became a classical musician who studied music at the Prague Conservatory and travelled with an orchestra that gave concerts in Czechoslovakia, Austria, and Germany.

  I keep asking myself a question that can’t be answered: Why did Joseph Francl come to America in the first place and leave so different a life behind him? There is just something inside of me that cannot understand why he came here.

  Gee, it’s such a long way from giving a concert, perhaps Beethoven or Schubert, in Berlin or Vienna to Joseph Francl describing the American West: … after supper, we received a visit from a real wild Indian, a chief of the Omaha tribe. He said he was looking for his squaw. He had not seen her for two days, she was wandering around among the emigrants.

  That is quite distant from a concert audience waiting for the music to begin.

  Joseph Francl left his own Czechoslovakian-born, American-courted wife Antonia whom he called Tony and his young son Fred behind in Wisconsin when he went out to California to find gold.

  I’ve thought about him leaving Antonia behind. I’ve thought about her waiting. She was just twenty years old. She must have been very lonely. Her husband was gone for three years.

  PART 2: JERKY OLD TIME SILENT MOVIES (TURKEYS, QUAIL

  In the I854 West of Joseph Francl one sees many birds like jerky old time silent movies (turkeys, quail, ducks, geese, snipes, pheasants) and many animals like actors in those movies (buffaloes, elk, wolves) and many fish like swimming silent titles (pike, catfish, perch) and vast lonely areas that are not like movies where no one lives and the road is slender and easy to lose: We realized that we were wandering. The road we are on looks dim, no one has been over it for a year. There are no human tracks, but there are signs that wolves and larger animals have passed here. An overpowering stillness oppresses us.

  It is a land inhabited by sly, dog-stealing Indians who know how to get the best of you, even when you mount a small army and go to their camp and demand the dog back, threatening the Indians with WAR! if they do not return the dog (how very distant this is from Prague, Czechoslovakia, and a brief career in classical music!) but the Indians are crafty in their dog-stealing ways and offer a horse in return for the dog, but work things so that the horse never actually changes hands, and the men return (including Joseph Francl) dogless to their camp and without the promised horse, knowing that they have been had. The dog is lost and the Indians are just too God-damn smart.

  The people that Joseph Francl met on his way West are mentally cross-eyed and archetypically funky. I do not think your well-balanced section of society chooses to pioneer the frontier. It is always a breed of strange, half-crazy people who go to make their lives where no one else has lived.

  Joseph Francl starts right off in the beginning, I mean, he doesn’t fool around, travelling with three insane German brothers and another German who dreams of German military glory and world supremacy.

  This was in 1854!

  And of course they all got drunk on their first day out and were terribly hung over, including Joseph Francl who cared for his beer and other liquors, too.

  In and out of his travelling vision of the West, wander a cheating landlord, a charlatan doctor, a cynical farmer, wild, Godless hunters and trappers whom Joseph Francl thinks would look strange in the streets of Europe: Their clothing speaks for them. They could not walk through the streets of any European city, nor would they be permitted to do so, without bringing a crowd around them, the members of which would ask each other what sort of comedians are these?

  He meets a smart-assed adulterous wife and her simple good-hearted stupid cuckolded husband, a judge going out to Utah to administer justice and cleanup at the same time with $25,000 worth of dry goods that he`s going to sell to the Mormons whom Joseph Francl considers to be an unchaste breed of humanity, a hungry Indian chief who did not thank Joseph Francl for giving him dinner, a licentious clergyman and his pretty mistress-cook, a band of extorting Sioux Indians, just back from war with the Pawnees, carrying with them twenty-one Pawnee scalps which they show a great deal of affection toward, and the kind owner of a wagon train that gave Joseph Francl some dinner and some flour when he was very hungry.

  In the Placerville gold country of California he met two men who gave him a bad deal on a dry claim and he dealt with merchants that extended credit to him for his unrequited search for wealth while he lived in an abandoned Chinaman’s shack, looking for gold, and finally he had to go to work for someone who wasn`t very well off himself.

  Things just did not work out for Joseph Francl in California, a land that he describes as this beautiful but unfortunate country.

  And all the time that he was gone his wife Antonia waited in Wisconsin for his return. She was also in poor health. Three years passed. That’s a long time for a young woman who’s not feeling well.

  PART 3: THE LONG DOORS OF JOSEPH FRANCL

  We arrived in camp on the third day amid a big rain and thunder storm and supper was served with difficulty. I was just pouring out the tea when I heard—

  But we’ll never know what Joseph Francl heard because part of his diary was lost right after when I heard—

  I find the breaks in his diary very beautiful like long poetic pauses where you can hear the innocence of eternity.

  Just before when I heard—he was working as a cook on a wagon train and there was a lot of Indian trouble. Some Pawnee Indians were really making it hard on them. Most of the Indians didn’t have any clothes on. They were running around naked, except for their weapons, and they did not have pleasant ideas in their minds.

  …when I heard—

  We’ll never know.

  When we are returned to his narrative, we find him at the beginning of the Great Plains, and what he heard is lost forever.

  The next break in his writing is a chosen one. He is at Fort Laramie and he says, I will not describe the rest of my journey to Salt Lake City, for I do not remember that anything of interest occurred.

  Then suddenly he is in Salt Lake City and nothing is described in between as if the distance from Fort Laramie (over 400 miles) to Salt Lake City were just a door that you opened and stepped through.

  Joseph Francl’s diary ends with him in the Sierra Mountains, waking up in the morning covered with snow. And Antonia waited in Wisconsin for her husband, who was Joseph Francl covered with snow, worrying about him, and when he would be back.

  Three long years passed.

  PART 4: TWO CZECHOSLOVAKIANS LIE BURIED HERE IN AMERICA

  Joseph Francl finally returned to Antonia who was now twenty-three years old. She must have been very happy. She probably threw her arms around him and cried.

  Then he settled down for a while and they had five more children and he returned to his old Prague musical ways. He taught piano and singing and was the director of the Mendelssohn Singing Society in Watertown, Wisconsin.

  He also worked as a county clerk for years and then in 1869 he moved to Crete, Nebraska, and started a general store there in 1870, but business was bad, so in I874 for some God-damn California dreaming reason, he left his wife Antonia and a bunch of children behind in Crete and returned to Placerville, looking for gold again. This was years after the gold rush was over.

  He didn’t write about his trip to California this time. He just went there. Of course things didn’t work out for him this time either. He even lived i
n the same Chinaman’s shack that he lived in twenty years before.

  Joseph Francl was never destined to make anything out of California, so he went to visit his oldest son Fred who was now grown and living up near Walla Walla, Washington, chopping wood for a living.

  Fred was the American grandson of a Czechoslovakian brewery and glassworks owner. How distant the seeds of blood are blown over this world.

  In the spring of 1875, Joseph Francl walked from Placerville to Portland, Oregon. That is 650 miles of walking. He turned right at the Columbia River and walked up to the Blue Mountains where his son lived.

  Working conditions were poor in Washington, so he, his son, and a friend of his son decided to go to California where things might be better (Oh no!) and Joseph Francl was off on his third trip to California.

  They travelled on horses, but it was a bad winter and Joseph Francl’s son Fred decided to turn back and go by ship to California, leaving his father and his friend to continue on horses to California.

  OK: So now it was son by ship and father by horse to California. Things are really getting strange now. The story of Joseph Francl is not an easy one.

  Joseph Francl got sick travelling through Oregon, and he didn’t eat anything tor eleven days and then he was delirious for several days. I do not know what form his delirium took but perhaps Indians and concert halls were a part of it.

  Then Joseph Francl got lost from his travelling companion who looked for him, then went for help. When the search party found him a few clays later, he was lying facedown in the snow, dead, and he was not unhappy.

  In his delirium he probably thought that death was California. Isle was buried at Fort Klamath, Oregon, on December 10, 1875 in a grave that was lost forever. It was the end of his American childhood.

  Antonia Francl died in Crete, Nebraska, on November 21, 1911, and all the waiting that could ever be done was over now.

  All the People That

  I Didn’t Meet and the

  Places That I Didn’t Go

  “I have a short lifeline,” she says. “Damn it.”

  We’re lying together under the sheet. It’s morning. She’s looking at her hand. She’s twenty-three; dark hair.

  She’s very carefully looking at her hand.

  “Damn it!”

  The Japanese Squid Fishermen

  Are Asleep Now

  That’s why I forgot the bottle this morning because the Japanese squid fishermen are asleep and I was thinking about them being asleep.