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Dancer 8

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 A few months later, I ran into Suzanne again at an impromptu poetry reading local artists had thrown together in a desperate attempt to revive the already fading Paterson art scene. The numbers had dwindled. The cream of the artist crop had mostly taken off for other places. Even the bad poets had plans to leave. Suzanne had lost her indignant air. But she had apparently adopted a beret and black leotards typical of a Beat scene from the 1940s Greenwich Village rather than 1980s Paterson. She didn’t see me a first and looked a lot like a lost sheep among a pathetic group of mangy wolves. When she finally spotted me, she looked relieved at finding a familiar face, relieved enough to overlook our last encounter. She made her way across the room to where I sat in the corner among the mostly empty tables. “I thought you were going to Nashville?” she said, taking the empty seat across from mine. “I am.” “When?” “In my own good time.” She laughed and shook her head, her long blonde hair...
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Dancer 7

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Creeley had a local reputation as “a character.” Born just prior to the Wall Street crash that led to the Great Depression in what was then called Paterson General hospital, Creeley attended local public schools, including the local community college, but never got the necessary degrees to qualify him for any legitimate position. He loved to scrounge around, always searching for the roots of things. He spent a great deal of time among the dusty volumes at William Paterson College’s historic archive, and even more time among old timers, from which he learned more about Paterson’s rich history than any other living being. He was possessed with knowing everything there was to know about every part of Paterson's history, going back as far as written records went, and when he expired those, he sought out whatever folk tales he could get from the Native American tribes, often traveling to the archives in Newark. Hutchenson claimed Jackson had everything necessary for a first cl...
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Dancer 6

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 As I had told Puck, my uncle Charlie was dead. Word about it had come to house on the day before Thanksgiving, as two soldiers in full dress uniforms came up onto our front porch and rang the front door bell – something nobody we knew did, so it always generally signified bad news. My family welcomed the soldiers into the front hall, where the soldiers delivered their solumn declaration. It was as if the bomb that had killed him had gone off again in our living room, leaving a stunned silence in its wake, putting to an end at least temporarily all the usual family feuds, and replacing them with something even more terrible, mourning. I couldn’t stand it. I needed noise around me. I needed to do something violent. So I lifted the key to the GTO from the hook in my uncle’s room and crept out of the house to the driveway where Charlie had parked and covered the car before going off to war. The engine started with a number of rough coughs, but as soon as I got it back onto...
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