Keeping an Appointment with a Dead Man

From the October 2016 issue

My wife and I drove C/D’s long-term Kia Sorento to Livingston, Montana, to share drinks with novelist/gourmand/raconteur Jim Harrison. Jim lives south of town in the aptly named Paradise Valley. I first met him through meals shared with David E. Davis Jr., where Jim would occasionally burst into Tourette-quality profanity during the dinner prayer and where his evening attire comprised a terry-cloth bathrobe, skin underneath.

Jim always seemed to live by celebrities—Tom McGuane, Michael Keaton, John Mayer, Russell Chat­ham—and the neon-speckled trout in the Yellowstone River, which I believe he preferred to people. I’d think of Paradise Valley as a kind of bohemian retreat if bohemians all carried loaded weapons.

In Livingston, it’s my habit to stay at the Murray Hotel, circa 1904—motto: “Fireproof and strictly modern.” It was originally a four-story “skyscraper” with the town’s only elevator, an Otis hand-cranked model. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, director Sam Peckinpah resided on the Murray’s top floor, in the shadow of the Absaroka and Crazy mountains, true purple mountain majesties. Speaking of crazy, he attached a sign to his door that read, “The old iguana sleeps, and the answer is still no.” When Peckinpah became so drunk he couldn’t find the door, he’d shoot holes in the ceiling.

Anyway. Attached to the hotel is the Murray Bar—live music, dogs welcome, trout fisherman galore, among them occasionally Anthony Bourdain and often Jim, who once told his waitress, “I was a dog with a short chain, and now there’s no chain.” Stricken by ill health the last few years, Jim prophetically mentioned, “At my age, you don’t think about the future because you don’t have one.”

Mr. Harrison at work. Your C/D columnist is developing similar facial features.

Which was true. Between the time we set up our tentative drinking date and our arrival at the Murray, Jim died. The official cause of death, in Livingston at least, is “Body all wore out.” Toward the end, Jim looked like Ernest Hemingway if Hemingway had been dragged for a couple of miles behind a train. I say that knowing it would make Jim smile, although I think he detested Hemingway. Anyway, this is the first time I’ve kept an appointment with a dead man. And the last, I hope.

My wife and I walked over to the local bookstore, where the elderly manager occasionally rushes outside to yell at skateboarders. I bought Jim’s final book, and the store lady said, “He’d have signed that, but he got cranky at the end, suffering so much from shingles that he’d walk up to perfect strangers and say, ‘If you don’t have your shingles immunization, I’ll buy it for you.’ ” She further claimed that when Jim died, he dropped the writing pen he was holding. I insisted it was more likely he dropped the American Spirit cigarette in his left hand and the jelly jar of Domaine Tempier Bandol in his right. “He had three hands?” she asked. Jim abandoned the Murray Bar after no-smoking signs were posted but quickly located a downscale establishment where smoking was apparently mandatory. You could tell when he was in residence, I’m told, if his “dream car”—a Toyota Land Cruiser—was parked at a bad angle and half atop the curb. Jim had poor aim, but it was because his left eye had been jabbed out when he was a kid. Last time I talked to Jim, he asked about my own dream car. “A 1967 Bizzarrini 5300 GT Strada,” I answered. Jim pondered that, then blew a small cloud of smoke in my face. I recall two long-term Subarus that Jim borrowed. Both returned looking as if a 50-pound ashtray had exploded inside a Burger King dumpster.

The next morning in Livingston, the Sorento’s right-rear Kumho was flat—well, not completely, but the bottom of the tire was rumpled like scrambled eggs. I’ll bet half of all my flats have been discovered in the morning, after a slow leak did its dirty work during the graveyard shift. The tire was in the gutter, hard against the curb. Worse, behind me were breakfast diners sitting at sidewalk tables, offering the amount of advice you’d level at a fourth-grade golfer. They were unanimously appalled when I loosened the lug nuts before raising the car, perhaps thinking I was going to attempt a jack-free fix. Then a bald guy shouted, “Wait, there’s your problem,” as he pointed to the Sorento’s California license plate. I got a small round of applause at the conclusion, although what I never got was an offer of assistance.

If Jim Harrison had something like a mantra, it was this: “My mom and dad preferred the straight and narrow, where I, for nongenetic reasons, have favored the wide and crooked.” More advice, only this time worthwhile.