King 12
Arthur Couch sat in lawn chair surveying the huge green expanse behind his Wayne home. In another setting, I might have mistaken the lawn for a putting green or several holes of a larger golf course. Couch, a white haired man of 87 with a face that could easily have served a geological map of the mountainous Sussex county, clearly enjoyed his success. He had clawed his way out of Paterson, where his parents had worked as silk workers.
"I always envied those men who owned the mills," he said during my short interview with him. "They had the right idea. My parents used to complain about them, about how well they lived off the backs of working people. But it was pure jealousy. My parents wanted what they had and didn't know how or didn't have the courage to go get it. So instead, they tore it all down."
The old man seemed grieved by the loss of that way of life, as if he wished for it to have survived long enough for him to take his place among the silk barons.
"Paterson was never the same after the strikes," he said. "The town slowly died, and the people along with it."
"You seem to have done well enough by it," I said.
"There are always opportunism, even in a sinking economy," Couch said. "People need places to live and food to eat, and other services."
"All of which you provided?"
The old man shrugged. "You make your fortunes on what opportunity fate provides. Had I lived in the 19th Century, I would have done things differently. I might even have built a castle on the hill the way Lambert did. But you did not come to talk about me."
"No," I admitted. "You own most of that section of Main Street where Zarra lived."
"That block all around," Couch said with a slight nod.
"And you rented to Zarra?"
"Yes."
"And Creeley Jackson before that?"
"Creeley was an old acquaintance," Couch said, then reacting to my querying frown, "Paterson's not as large a place as it seems. It is not like other cities its size. It is more of a small town when it comes to associations. In downtown in my day, it was difficult if next to impossible to avoid people. Creeley was a regular character in the town, so I got to know him, to like him, even if I did think he had his priorities wrong."
"Meaning he didn't pursue money?"
"He didn't understand reality," Couch said. "The most basic principle of living is survival. That's a tooth and claw existence. He lived in an ivory tower of his own making, built on books and bullshit. He believed he could make the world better than elevating himself above the common masses. So he floundered in the middle of it, just barely able to keep from drowning in their misery."
"So you helped him survive by keeping his rent low?"
"Something like that."
"And you did the same for Zarra?"
"Creeley liked the boy. So when Creeley left Paterson, he asked that I look after him."
"Because Zarra had the same foolish ivory tower notions?"
"Not the same, but equally foolish," Couch admitted. "You can't live on art the way he wants to. He works hard enough. That I'll give him. But he doesn't understand that work must be directed towards a goal, and that wealth cannot be squirrelled away in a savings account, it must be invested, must go towards building more wealth."
"But you looked out for him?"
"I kept tabs on him," Couch corrected. "I made certain that I collected rent personally, just so that I could see what he was up to and whether he needed anything."
"So you were aware of the time when he had the woman living in the loft with him."
"It was a bit of a surprise," Couch said.
"Why?"
"I knew old Creeley was queer for boys. So I automatically presumed he and the boy were, well, you know. Apparently that was not the case."
"Did you object to Zarra having the woman living with him?"
"I was his landlord, not his priest. If he wanted to live with the woman, that was his business. I was mostly concerned with collecting the rent and making certain he didn't get into deep trouble. Paterson has a way of sucking you into situations, as clearly happened later."
"You mean with the shooting near the falls?"
The old man nodded. "I should have seen it coming. But over the last few years I have been more and more reluctant to travel into downtown so allowed Maxwell to mail me the rent. I did not know, for instance, about his newer room mate -- what was his name?"
"Jack Shaw," I said.
"Yes, him," Couch said. "I did not know about the other woman. The dancer, or the fact that Zarra had been wandering into so many dark places."
"Let's get back to the girl you did know about, back in the early 1980s," I said. "Did the girl move in with Zarra?"
"No. Maxwell was still living with Creeley then, and Creeley would not have tolerated a female roommate. Maxwell moved out for a time."
"Out? Where?"
"To Oak Street, near where Paterson General Hospital used to be. Creeley told me they were both attending the local college, but didn't feel right in accepting space in the artist housing down near the Mills. Creeley said they were `playing husband and wife,' and clearly thought the whole thing ludicrous."
"Why did he think it ludicrous."
"He seemed to understand that it wouldn't work out. The Paterson art scene was unraveling, and the girl already ached for opportunities that could only be found in New York City. Creeley kept telling me she wanted to `test her meddle against the real pros in the real art scene.' Creeley was upset by the fact that she wanted Maxwell to go with her. And Creeley believed New York would destroy whatever talent Maxwell had. He kept telling me how brutal the art scene was in the City, and kept saying sensitive people had no business there."
"So what did Zarra do?"
"He refused to go. Creeley said he was particularly torn up about it, and overheard more than one argument between the two," Couch recalled.
"But why won't you come?" Suzanne demanded. "What's holding you to this dumpy little town? You can write your poetry and music as easily there as you can here."
"New York is the wrong direction for me," Zarra said. "And far too expensive. I'm saving my money for Nashville. I don't need to be swallowed up in that pit."
"That's your friend Creeley talking," Suzanne said bitterly.
"On that point, he's right."
"So you'll rot here, waiting for some big break that will never come?"
"I'm waiting until I've saved enough to go south, then I will."
"And leave me?"
"You can come with me."
"Oh sure, I can see me, a ballet dancer, being a real big hit in the Grande Ole Opera."
"I'm not going to Nashville tomorrow," Zarra said. "Why can't we just stay where we are as we are until the time comes?"
"Because I can't keep commuting between here and New York and I can't stand the irritating looks I get from people when I tell them I live in Paterson. New York is where everything is happening. And I either go there or dry up."
"I guess you'll have to go then," Zarra said.
"And you'll stay here, like this, alone?"
"I can always move back with Creeley"
"And that's what he did," Couch recalled. "The boy apparently would not or could not maintain the Oak Street apartment. Creeley said Maxwell missed the girl dreadfully, and moped around for months, pinning after her as if she was dead.
"Did they stop communicating?"
"Apparently not at first," Couch said. "I know Creeley complained about the phone bill, even though Maxwell paid for the long distance calls to New York City. But I think Creeley was more concerned with the continued pain the calls caused the boy and eventually had the telephone service cancelled. After which, the Maxwell and the girl continued to write for a while. I used to get vague reports of her progress from Creeley, who got them from Maxwell. After all her time wasted in Paterson, the girl finally believed herself on the right road at last, the road that led her to the right people and therefore success. Eventually, the letters grew less frequent, until they stopped entirely."
Not long after the letters stopped, the rumors started, twisted and cruel tales typical of other artists who dared to flee the Paterson art scene, those left behind, full of jealousy hatred that emerged in cheap talk. But some of this talk was aimed particularly at Zarra, designed to hurt him even more deeply than her departure had. Many of the remaining artists still blamed him for ruining the scene.
Other stories, however, painted a more positive picture. A troop had apparently recognized Suzzane's talent and taken her on as a regular. Not in a starring role, of course, but one foot on the right rung to the right ladder, which meant all she now had to do was climb. When the bad news finally came, no rumor brought it.
A small article gave brief details of it in the Arts & Leasure section of The New York Times.
Tragedy strikes an up and coming dancer
A promising young dancer's career was struck down this week when a freak fall from a stage resulted in multiple break in two of her legs and ankles. The accident occurred during rehearsals for one of the most celebrated new programs on the dance scene, and will delay its opening for two weeks while management finds a replacement for Suzanne .....
After this, the rumor mill went crazy. The dogs of the Paterson art scene -- mad with blood lust -- tore at every bit of vulnerable flesh. They weren't satisfied with her ruin as a dancer, they needed her demise as a person as well, repeating and expanding upon the tales of her decline. Some said she married a mobster who beat her. Others said she turned to 42nd street peep shows, doing a kind of dance that didn't require perfect bones, just a perfect body. One rumor even said she'd sent out invitations to all her artists friends for them to come see her. Maxwell never saw one of these invitations, but he did later get word from a reliable source that Suzanne had spent time in an upstate sanitarium where she dried out from alcohol and drugs.
***********
Creeley Jackson moved out of the loft on March 1, 1986 after having struggled for several years to find another way to make a living. He had not exclusively survived on his SETA salary at the falls. Hutchenson had supplemented the income.
“I had made a lot of money off his research,” Hutchenson said during one of a series of interviews. “So I could afford to divert some of the royalties.”
Jackson also had a small trust that issued him money payments, none of which were claimed by his ex-wife in the divorce settlement.
“He was living marginally,” Hutchenson said. “And when the SETA funding stopped, these small stipends could not keep up even with his limited expenses.”
“So you brought him a house?” I asked.
“Not exactly,” Hutchenson said. “I inherited it when an aunt died. I had no need of it.”
“So you deeded it over to Jackson?”
“Yes.”
“And he decided to move there year round?”
“I had thought both would move there,” Hutchenson said. “But Maxwell refused to leave. He said Lake Hopatcong wasn’t any closer to Nashville than Paterson was, and he didn’t see the point of moving – except to get deeper entrenched than he already was.”
“Jackson could survive alone out there?”
“Yes, without rent, he seemed to do well for himself. In fact, he started a small plant nursery out behind the house, using the garage as an office – selling odd plants to the locals. With me paying the yearly taxes, sewerage bills and other minor expenses, he managed to get by on what he had and what he made.”
“And Zarra?”
“Now that’s the odd part,” Hutchenson said. “He seemed to pick up where Creeley left off.”
“In what way?”
“He started to wander around town, poking his nose into things.”
“You mean he practiced witchcraft, too?”
“No,” Hutchenson said. “At least not to my knowledge. But he wandered the streets in the same way Creeley did, seeking out local history and folk lore.”
“And he began to hang around local strip clubs?”
“I don’t know when that started,” Hutchenson said. “But it happened a some point after Creeley left.
“And you didn’t approve?”
“No, I did not approve. I thought he was tempting fate. Bad enough he wandered or jogged through some of the worst neighborhoods in the city without going into the den of the lion to where he might really get hurt. But for some reason, he needed to seek out those places. He seemed to think he might find some measure of truth or purity.”
“In a strip club?”
“It’s not a new idea,” Hutchenson said. “Just a foolish one.”
************
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