【Raymond Carver】我父亲的一生

雷蒙德·卡佛 著 孙仲旭 译

我的爸爸名叫克莱维·雷蒙德·卡佛，他的父母叫他雷蒙德，朋友们叫他C.R.。我给起名叫小雷蒙德·克莱维·卡佛，我讨厌里面的“小”这个字。小时候，我爸爸叫我“青蛙”，那还行。但是后来，和家里别的人一样，他开始叫我“小”。他一直这样叫我，直到我十三四岁时，宣布再叫那个名字我就不答应，他就开始叫我“博士”。从那时到他1967年6月17日去世，他叫我“博士”，要么是“儿子”。

他去世后，我妈妈打电话通知我的妻子，当时我没跟自己的家里人在一起，正准备换一种生活，想报读爱荷华大学的图书馆系。我妻子拿起电话时，我妈妈张口就说：“雷蒙德死了！”有一阵子，我妻子还以为我妈妈在跟她说我死了。后来我妈妈说清楚了她说的是哪个雷蒙德，我妻子说：“感谢上帝，我还以为你说的是我的雷蒙德呢。”

我爸爸1934年从阿肯色州去华盛顿州找工作时，他走过路，搭过便车，也搭过铁路上的空货车。我不知道他去华盛顿州时，是否在追寻梦想，我怀疑没有，我想他并没有很多梦想，相信他只是去找一份薪水过得去的稳定工作，稳定的工作，就是有意义的工作。有段时间，他摘过苹果，然后在大河谷水坝当建筑工人。他攒了点钱后买了辆小汽车，开车回了阿肯色州去帮助他的家里人（也就是我的祖父母）收拾东西搬到西部。我爸爸后来说他们在那里快饿死了，这样说并不是比喻。就是在阿肯色州短短待的那一次，在一个名叫莱奥拉的镇上，我妈妈在人行道上遇到了我爸爸，他正从一间小酒馆出来。

“当时他喝醉了，”她说，“我不知道我干吗让他跟我说话。他的眼睛亮晶晶的，我真希望当时我能看到未来。”他们大约一年前在一场舞会上见过面。在她之前，他有过女朋友，我妈妈告诉我：“你爸爸总是有女朋友，甚至在我们结婚后还是。他是我的第一个，也是最后一个。我从来没有过别的男的，不过我也没感到有什么遗憾。”

他们出发去华盛顿州的当天，在治安法官主持下结了婚，一个是高高大大的乡村姑娘，一个是以前的农夫，现在的建筑工人。我妈妈的新婚之夜，是跟我爸爸和他的家里人一起度过的，他们都在阿肯色州内的路边搭帐篷住。

在华盛顿州奥马克，我爸爸和我妈妈住的地方比一间小木屋大不了多少，我的祖父母住隔壁。我爸爸当时还在坝上工作，后来，随着巨大的涡轮发电机发电，蓄水蓄到了深入加拿大境内一百英里的地方，他站在人群中听富兰克林·D.罗斯福在大坝工地上讲话。“从头到尾，他都没提建坝中死的那些人。”我爸爸说。他的几个朋友死在那里，从阿肯色、俄克拉荷马和密苏里州来的。

后来他在俄勒冈州的克勒茨卡尼镇锯木厂找到了活干，那是哥伦比亚河边的一个小镇，我就出生在那里。我妈妈有一张照片，上面我爸爸站在锯木厂的大门口，自豪地把我抱起来面对镜头，我戴的童帽歪着，系带快要松开了，他的帽子往后推到了额头上，脸上笑逐颜开。他是要去上班还是刚下班？没关系，不管怎样，他都是有工作的，还有一个家庭。这段时间，是他顺风顺水的时候。

1941年，我们搬到了华盛顿州雅基马，我爸爸在那里当锉锯工，这活他已经在克勒茨卡尼镇学得拿手了。战争爆发后，他被批准可以推迟入伍，因为他的工作被认为对打仗有用，军队需要锯好的原木，他把他锉的锯保持锐利得能刮掉胳膊上的汗毛。

我爸爸把我们搬到雅基马后，把他的家里人也搬到了附近地方。到了40年代中期，我爸爸另外的家人——除了他的叔叔、堂兄弟、侄儿侄女，还有他的弟弟、妹妹、妹夫以及他们大家族里的大多数人和朋友——都从阿肯色州过来了，都是因为我爸爸最早过来。那些男的去了博伊西·卡斯凯德公司工作，我爸爸也在那里工作，女的在罐头厂包装苹果。没过多久，据我妈妈说，好像谁都比我爸爸有钱。“你爸爸存不住钱，”我妈妈说，“钱在他的口袋里烧了个洞，他总是在给别人办事。”

我清楚记得住过的第一座房子（在雅基马镇南15大街1515号）的厕所在外面。万圣节之夜，要么随便哪天夜里，无缘无故，邻居十二三岁的小孩会把我们家厕所抬走搁到路边，我爸爸就得叫谁帮他把厕所抬回来。要么那些孩子会把厕所抬走放到别人家后院。有一次，他们居然把它点了火。可是并非只有我们家的厕所在外面，我长大到知道自己在干吗后，看到别人家厕所有人进去时，往里面扔过石头，那叫轰炸厕所。但是过了一段时间，大家开始安装室内管道，后来一下子，邻近一带只剩下我们家的厕所还在外面。我记得我的三年级老师怀斯先生有一天开车从学校送我回家，我不好意思，让他在我们家房子前面那座停下来，说我就住那儿。

我还记得有天晚上我爸爸回家晚了，发现我妈妈从里面把门全锁上不让他进来之后的事。他喝醉了，把门弄得嘎嘎响时，我们能感到整座房子在抖动。他硬是弄开一面窗户时，她抄起一口滤锅打在他的鼻梁上，把他打晕了，我们能看到他躺在草地上。后来有好多年，我一拿起那口滤锅——它像根擀面杖一样重——就会想象被那种东西打到头上会是什么感觉。

就是在这段期间，我记得有次我爸爸把我领进了睡房，让我坐在床上，跟我说我可能得去拉弗恩姑妈家住段时间。我当时想不通我做了什么，会导致我得离开家生活。可是不管怎样，这件事——无论是什么引起的——多少说来还是取消了，因为我们还是在一起住，我不用去跟我姑妈或者别的任何人一起住。

我记得我妈妈把他的威士忌倒进水池。有时候她会全倒出来，有时如果她害怕给抓到，会只倒一半，然后往剩下的酒里掺水。有一次，我自己尝了点他的威士忌，很难喝的玩意儿，我现在还不明白怎么竟有人喝。

我们家很久都没有汽车开，最后终于有了一辆，在1949年或者1950年，一辆1938年出厂的福特车，可是买后不到一星期就断了根活塞杆，我爸爸不得不让人把发动机大修了一次。

“我们开的是市里最旧的汽车。”我妈妈说，“他花那么多钱去修车，我们本来可以用那钱买辆卡迪拉克。”有一次，她在车内的地上发现了一枝唇膏，还有一块花边手帕。“看见了吗？”她跟我说，“是哪个浪货忘到车上的。”

有次我看到她端着一平底锅温水进了睡房，我爸爸在里面睡觉，她把他的手从被子里拉出来按在水里。我站在门口看，纳闷她是在干吗。那样会让他说梦话，她告诉我，她需要知道一些事情，她觉得我爸爸肯定有事情瞒着她。

我小时候，每隔一年左右，我们会搭乘北岸有限公司的火车穿过喀斯喀特山，从雅基马到西雅图，住在一间名叫万斯旅馆的地方，我记得吃饭是去一间名叫“就餐铃”的小餐馆。有一次我们去了伊瓦尔多亩蛤蜊餐馆，喝杯装的蛤蜊温汤。

1956年，也就是我即将高中毕业的那一年，我爸爸辞了雅基马那间锯木厂的工作，跳槽去了切斯特镇，那是加利福尼亚北部的一个锯木厂镇。他之所以跳槽，给出的理由是在这间新的锯木厂，每小时工资更高，另外还有个不太明确的承诺，即再过几年，他有可能接任锉工的头儿。可是我想主要是我爸爸心里不踏实了，只是想换个地方试试运气。在他眼里，在雅基马的生活有点太平淡。另外之前一年，在半年时间里，我的祖父母都去世了。

但是就在我毕业前没几天，我和我妈妈收拾好东西搬到了切斯特，我爸爸用铅笔写了封信，说他已经病了一段时间。他不想让我们担心，他说，可是他在锯上把自己弄伤了，也许有一小片钢屑进到了他的血液里。反正是出了什么事，他不得不误工，他说。就在同一封信里，那边的一个人附了张没署名的明信片，跟我妈妈说他快死了，他在喝“劣质威士忌”。

我们到了切斯特时，我爸爸住在公司的一座拖车式活动房屋里。我一下子没能认出他，我想有一阵子，是我不想认出他。他皮包骨头，颜色苍白，一副不知所措的样子。他的裤子老是往下掉，他看上去不像我爸爸。我妈妈哭了起来，我爸爸搂着她，茫然地拍着她的肩膀，好像不明白这都是怎么回事。我们三个人都住在那座拖车式房屋里，我们尽量照顾他。可是我爸爸病了，也完全没有好转。那年夏天还有秋天的一部分时间里，我跟他一起在那间锯木厂工作。我们会早上起床，一边听收音机一边吃鸡蛋和吐司，然后带着午餐桶出门。我们会一起在早上八点钟走进大门，直到下班时，我才会再次见到他。11月时，我回到雅基马，好跟我女朋友离得更近，当时我决心要娶这个女孩。

他在切斯特镇那间锯木厂一直干到来年2月，最后他干着干着就垮掉了，他们把他送进医院。我妈妈问我能不能过去帮忙，我坐上一辆从雅基马开往切斯特镇的公共汽车，打算开车把他们拉回雅基马。可是这时，除了身体有病，他还神经失常，不过当时我们都不知道那样称呼。回雅基马的整个一路上，他都不说话，甚至直接问他什么事（“你感觉怎么样，雷蒙德？”“你没事吧，爸爸？”），他也不说话。他不表达什么，真的表达时，是动一动头或者把手掌掌心朝上，似乎说他不知道或者无所谓。一路上以及后来快有一个月的时间里，他唯一一次开口，是在我沿着俄勒冈州的一条砂砾路飞驰时，汽车的减震器松了。“你开得太快。”他说。

回到雅基马，有位医生一定要我爸爸去看一位心理医生。我妈妈和我爸爸只得去申请救济——当时是那样叫的——国家出钱让他看心理医生。那位心理医生问我爸爸：“谁是总统？”问的问题是他能够回答的。“艾克。”我爸爸说。然而他们还是把他关到了山谷纪念医院的五楼，开始对他实行电击疗法。我当时已经结婚，就快有孩子了。我的妻子生第一胎进了同一间医院时，我爸爸还被关在那里，只比我妻子高了一楼。我妻子分娩后，我上楼去告诉我爸爸这个消息。他们让我走进一道铁门，指给我去哪儿找他。他坐在一张沙发上，大腿上搭着一条毯子。嗨，我想，我爸爸这到底是怎么了？我坐到他旁边，跟他说他当爷爷了。过了一会儿他才说：“我感觉像是个爷爷。”他就说那么多，没有微笑，也没有动。他跟别的很多人在一间大屋子里。后来我拥抱他，他哭了起来。

不管怎样，他出院了。但是接下来的几年里，他干不了活，只是在家里这儿坐坐，那儿坐坐，想弄清楚下一步该怎么办，也想弄清楚他这辈子哪儿做错了，让他到了这步田地。我妈妈干了一样又一样糟糕的工作。很久以后，她提到我爸爸住院和紧接着的那几年，会说“雷蒙德生病那阵子”。生病这个词，在我眼里永远不一样了。

1964年时，有朋友帮忙，他幸运地在加利福尼亚州克拉马斯镇的一间锯木厂找到了活。他一个人去了那里，看他能不能干。他住在锯木厂附近，在一座只有一间房的小木屋里，跟他和我妈妈去西部后一开始住的差不多。他笔迹潦草地写信给我妈妈，我打电话时，她会大声念给我听。在信上，他说他心里很没底，每天去工作时，都觉得这是他生命中最重要的一天，可是他又跟她说，每一天都让第二天好过很多。他让我妈妈替他向我问好。他说，他夜里睡不着觉时，就会想起我和我们以前度过的好时光。最后过了一两个月，他多少又有了信心。那样工作他干得了，也不用想着他得担心自己会再次让任何人失望。他有了把握后，让我妈妈也过去。

在此之前，他已经有6年没工作过了，那段时间，他失去了一切——家，小汽车，家具还有家用电器，包括我妈妈引以为豪的那台大冰箱。他也失去了好名声——雷蒙德·卡佛是个付不起账单的人——自尊心也没了，甚至也雄风不在。我妈妈曾跟我妻子说：“雷蒙德生病那阵子从头到尾，我们睡在一张床上，可是我们没干那事。有几次他想过，可是根本不行。我当时没什么遗憾，不过我觉得他想，你要知道。”

那几年，为了自己一家人，我也在努力养家餬口，可是因为这样那样的事，我们发现不得不搬很多次家，我没办法关注我爸爸的生活情况，不过有一年圣诞节，我的确有机会跟他说我想当个作家，那还不如跟他说我想当个整形医生呢。“你要写什么？”他想知道。接着，似乎是想帮我，他说：“就写你了解的东西，写写我们一起去钓鱼的那几次吧。”我说我会，可是我知道我不会。“你把你写的寄给我看看。”他说。我说我会的，但又是没有，我想他也不是特别在意，甚至未必明白我当时所写的，再说也不适合他读，反正他不是我想象为其写作的那类读者。

后来他就去世了。我当时离家很远，在爱荷华市，还有些话要跟他说。我没机会跟他告别，或者跟他说我觉得他在新工作中干得很不错，说他能够卷土重来，我为他感到骄傲。

我妈妈说他那天晚上下班后回到家里，晚饭吃得很多。后来他一个人坐在桌子前，把一瓶威士忌剩下的喝完了，过了一天左右，她发现瓶子藏在垃圾的最下面，上面有些咖味渣。后来他起身去睡觉了，稍迟一点，我妈妈也去睡了。可是半夜时，她不得不起来在沙发上铺床睡觉。“他打呼噜声音大得让我睡不着。”她说。第二天早上，她去看他时，他仰面躺着，嘴巴张开，脸颊凹陷，颜色灰白，她说。她知道他死了——她不需要一位医生来告诉她，不过她还是给医生打了电话，然后给我妻子打电话。

在我妈妈保存的她和我父亲早期在华盛顿州的照片中，有一张是他站在一辆小汽车前，拎着一瓶啤酒还有一串鱼。照片上，他的帽子掀到了额头上，脸上带着局促的笑容。我问她要，她给了我，跟别的几张照片一起。我把这张照片挂在墙上，我们每次搬家，都把它和别的照片一起挂在墙上。我时不时会仔细看这张照片，想弄明白我爸爸的一些事，也许顺便也弄明白关于我自己的一些事。但是我做不到。我爸爸只是越来越远离我，退回到时间中。最后有次搬家中，我把这张照片弄丢了。那时，我努力想回忆起这张照片，同时想就我爸爸说点什么，说说在一些重要方面，我们也许相去不远。我住在圣弗朗西斯科南郊的一幢公寓楼时，写了这首诗，当时我发现自己就像我爸爸一样，有酗酒问题。写这首诗，也是我努力想把自己跟我爸爸联系起来。

我父亲二十二岁时的照片

十月。在这间潮湿而陌生的厨房， 我研究我父亲那张拘束的年轻人脸庞。 他腼腆地咧着嘴笑，一只手拎着一串 多刺的黄鲈鱼，另一只手上 是瓶嘉士伯啤酒。

他穿着牛仔裤、法兰绒衬衫，靠着 一辆一九三四年出厂的福特车前挡泥板。 他想为他的后代摆出勇敢而开心的样子， 把旧帽子戴得翘到耳朵上。 我父亲这辈子都想显得大胆。

可是他的眼神暴露了他，还有那双手 无力地拎着那串死鲈鱼 和那瓶啤酒。

父亲，我爱你， 可我又怎么能说谢谢你？我也无法饮酒有度， 而且根本不知道去哪儿钓鱼。

在细节上，这首诗是真实的，只是我父亲死在6月，而不是像这首诗第一个词所述的10月。我需要超过一个音节的词，好拖长一点。然而还不仅仅是这样。我需要找一个适合写这首诗时感觉的月份——一个白天短、光线变暗、空中有烟雾、事物在消失的月份。6月是夏天的日夜，毕业典礼，我的结婚纪念日，我两个孩子之一的生日。6月不应该是父亲去世的月份。

在殡仪馆举行的葬礼结束后，我们到了外面，有个我不认识的女人走到我跟前说：“他到了现在的那里更幸福了。”我盯着这个女的，直到她走开。我现在还记得她戴的帽子上的圆形小饰物。然后我爸爸的一个堂兄弟——我不知道他叫什么——伸过手来握着我的手。“我们都想念他。”他说，我知道他那样说，并非只是客套。

我开始哭起来，那是得知噩耗后的第一次，之前我一直没能出哭出来，首先是没有时间。这时突如其来，我哭得停不下来。我抱着我的妻子哭，她尽量说着什么话、做着什么事来安慰我，就在那里，在那个夏天半下午的时候。

我听到人们跟我妈妈说着安慰的话，我感到高兴的是，我爸爸家族中的人都来了，来到了我爸爸所在的地方。我想我会记得那天大家所说、所做的一切，也许什么时候想办法讲出来，可是我没能够，我全忘了，要么几乎全忘了。我的确记得的，是那天下午我听到好多次提到我们的名字，我爸爸的和我的。可是我知道他们说的是我爸爸。雷蒙德，这些人用我小时候就听到的好听的声音一再说，雷蒙德。

英文原文：

My Father's Life

My dad's name was Clevie Raymond Carver. His family called him Raymond and friends called him C. R. I was named Raymond Clevie Carver, Jr. I hated the "Junior" part. When I was little my dad called me Frog, which was okay. But later, like everybody else in the family, he began calling me Junior. He went on calling me this until I was thirteen or fourteen and announced that I wouldn't answer to that name any longer. So he began calling me Doc. From then until his death, on June 17, 1967, he called me Doc, or else Son.

When he died, my mother telephoned my wife with the news. I was away from my family at the time, between lives, trying to enroll in the School of Library Science at the University of Iowa. When my wife answered the phone, my mother blurted out, "Raymond's dead!" For a moment, my wife thought my mother was telling her that I was dead. Then my mother made it clear which Raymond she was talking about and my wife said, "Thank God. I thought you meant my Raymond."

My dad walked, hitched rides, and rode in empty boxcars when he went from Arkansas to Washington State in 1934, looking for work. I don't know whether he was pursuing a dream when he went out to Washington. I doubt it. I don't think he dreamed much. I believe he was simply looking for steady work at decent pay. Steady work was meaningful work. He picked apples for a time and then landed a construction laborer's job on the Grand Coulee Dam. After he'd put aside a little money, he bought a car and drove back to Arkansas to help his folks, my grandparents, pack up for the move west. He said later that they were about to starve down there, and this wasn't meant as a figure of speech. It was during that short while in Arkansas, in a town called Leola, that my mother met my dad on the sidewalk as he came out of a tavern.

"He was drunk," she said. "I don't know why I let him talk to me. His eyes were glittery. I wish I'd had a crystal ball." They'd met once, a year or so before, at a dance. He'd had girlfriends before her, my mother told me. "Your dad always had a girlfriend, even after we married. He was my first and last. I never had another man. But I didn't miss anything."

They were married by a justice of the peace on the day they left for Washington, this big, tall country girl and a farmhand-turned-construction worker. My mother spent her wedding night with my dad and his folks, all of them camped beside the road in Arkansas.

In Omak, Washington, my dad and mother lived in a little place not much bigger than a cabin. My grandparents lived next door. My dad was still working on the dam, and later, with the huge turbines producing electricity and the water backed up for a hundred miles into Canada, he stood in the crowd and heard Franklin D. Roosevelt when he spoke at the construction site. "He never mentioned those guys who died building that dam," my dad said. Some of his friends had died there, men from Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Missouri.

He then took a job in a sawmill in Clatskanie, Oregon, a little town alongside the Columbia River. I was born there, and my mother has a picture of my dad star~ding in front of the gate to the mill, proudly holding me up to face the camera. My bonnet is on crooked and about to come untied. His hat is pushed back on his forehead, and he's wearing a big grin. Was he going in to work or just finishing his shift? It doesn't matter. In either case, he had a job and a family. These were his salad days.

In 1941 we moved to Yakima, Washington, where my dad went to work as a saw filer, a skilled trade he'd learned in Clatskanie. When war broke out, he was given a deferment because his work was considered necessary to the war effort. Finished lumber was in demand by the armed services, and he kept his saws so sharp they could shave the hair off your arm.

After my dad had moved us to Yakima, he moved his folks into the same neighborhood. By the mid-1940s the rest of my dad's family--his brother, his sister, and her husband, as well as uncles, cousins, nephews, and most of their extended family and friends--had come out from Arkansas. All because my dad came out first. The men went to work at Boise Cascade, where my dad worked, and the women packed apples in the canneries. And in just a little while, it seemed--according to my mother--everybody was better off than my dad. "Your dad couldn't keep money," my mother said. "Money burned a hole in his pocket. He was always doing for others."

The first house I clearly remember living in, at 1515 South Fifteenth 10 Street, in Yakima, had an outdoor toilet. On Halloween night, or just any night, for the hell of it, neighbor kids, kids in their early teens, would carry our toilet away and leave it next to the road. My dad would have to get somebody to help him bring it home. Or these kids would take the toilet and stand it in somebody else's backyard. Once they actually set it on fire. But ours wasn't the only house that had an outdoor toilet. When I was old enough to know what I was doing, I threw rocks at the other toilets when I'd see someone go inside. This was called bombing the toilets. After a while, though, everyone went to indoor plumbing until, suddenly, our toilet was the last outdoor one in the neighborhood. I remember the shame I felt when my third-grade teacher, Mr. Wise, drove me home from school one day. I asked him to stop at the house just before ours, claiming I lived there.

I can recall what happened one night when my dad came home late to find that my mother had locked all the doors on him from the inside. He was drunk, and we could feel the house shudder as he rattled the door. When he'd managed to force open a window, she hit him between the eyes with a colander and knocked him out. We could see him down there on the grass. For years afterward, I used to pick up this colander--it was as heavy as a rolling pin--and imagine what it would feel like to be hit in the head with something like that.

It was during this period that I remember my dad taking me into the bedroom, sitting me down on the bed, and telling me that I might have to go live with my Aunt LaVon for a while. I couldn't understand what I'd done that meant I'd have to go away from home to live. But this, too--whatever prompted it--must have blown over, more or less, anyway, because we stayed together, and I didn't have to go live with her or anyone else.

I remember my mother pouring his whiskey down the sink. Sometimes she'd pour it all out and sometimes, if she was afraid of getting caught, she'd only pour half of it out and then add water to the rest. I tasted some of his whiskey once myself. It was terrible stuff, and I don't see how anybody could drink it.

After a long time without one, we finally got a car, in 1949 or 1950, a 1938 Ford. But it threw a rod the first week we had it, and my dad had to have the motor rebuilt.

"We drove the oldest car in town," my mother said. "We could have had a Cadillac for all he spent on car repairs." One time she found someone else's tube of lipstick on the floorboard, along with a lacy handker~ chief. "See this?" she said to me. "Some floozy left this in the car."

Once I saw her take a pan of warm water into the bedroom where my dad was sleeping. She took his hand from under the covers and held it in the water. I stood in the doorway and watched. I wanted to know what was going on. This would make him talk in his sleep, she told me. There were things she needed to know, things she was sure he was keeping from her.

Every year or so, when I was little, we would take the North Coast Limited across the Cascade Range from Yakima to Seattle and stay in the Vance Hotel and eat, I remember, at a place called the Dinner Bell Cafe. Once we went to Ivar's Acres of Clams and drank glasses of warm clam broth.

In 1956, the year I was to graduate from high school, my dad quit his job at the mill in Yakima and took a job in Chester, a little sawmill town in northern California. The reasons given at the time for his taking the job had to do with a higher hourly wage and the vague promise that he might, in a few years' time, succeed to the job of head filer in this new mill. But I think, in the main, that my dad had grown restless and simply wanted to try his luck elsewhere. Things had gotten a little too predictable for him in Yakima. Also, the year before, there had been the deaths, within six months of each other, of both his parents.

But just a few days after graduation, when my mother and I were packed to move to Chester, my dad penciled a letter to say he'd been sick for a while. He didn't want us to worry, he said, but he'd cut himself on a saw. Maybe he'd got a tiny sliver of steel in his blood. Anyway, something had happened and he'd had to miss work, he said. In the same mail was an unsigned postcard from somebody down there telling my mother that my dad was about to die and that he was drinking "raw whiskey."

When we arrived in Chester, my dad was living in a trailer that belonged to the company. I didn't recognize him immediately. I guess for a moment I didn't want to recognize him. He was skinny and pale and looked bewildered. His pants wouldn't stay up. He didn't look like my dad. My mother began to cry. My dad put his arm around her and patted her shoulder vaguely,- like he didn't know what this was all about, either. The three of us took up life together in the trailer, and we looked after him as best we could. But my dad was sick, and he couldn't get any better. I worked with him in the mill that summer and part of the fall. We'd get up in the mornings and eat eggs and toast while we listened to the radio, and then go out the door with our lunch pails. We'd pass through the gate together at eight in the morning, and I wouldn't see him again until quitting time. In November I went back to Yakima to be closer to my girlfriend, the girl I'd made up my mind I was going to marry.

He worked at the mill in Chester until the following February, when he collapsed on the job and was taken to the hospital. My mother asked if I would come down there and help. I caught a bus from Yakima to Chester, intending to drive them back to Yakima. But now, in addition to being physically sick, my dad was in the midst of a nervous breakdown, though none of us knew to call it that at the time. During the entire trip back to Yakima, he didn't speak, not even when asked a direct question. ("How do you feel, Raymond?" "You okay, Dad?") He'd communicate, if he communicated at all, by moving his head or by turning his palms up as if to say he didn't know or care. The only time he said anything on the trip, and for nearly a month afterward, was when I was speeding down a gravel road in Oregon and the car muffler came loose. "You were going too fast," he said.

Back in Yakima a doctor saw to it that my dad went to a psychiatrist. My mother and dad had to go on relief, as it was called, and the county paid for the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist asked my dad, "Who is the President?" He'd had a question put to him that he could answer. "Ike," my dad said. Nevertheless, they put him on the fifth floor of Valley Memorial Hospital and began giving him electroshock treatment. I was married by then and about to start my own family. My dad was still locked up when my wife went into this same hospital, just one floor down, to have our first baby. After she had delivered, I went upstairs to give my dad the news. They let me in through a steel door and showed me where I could find him. He was sitting on a couch with a blanket over his lap. Hey, I thought. What in hell is happening to my dad? I sat down next to him and told him he was a grandfather. He waited a minute and then he said, "I feel like a grandfather." That's all he said. He didn't smile or move. He was in a big room with a lot of other people. Then I hugged him, and he began to cry.

Somehow he got out of there. But now came the years when he couldn't work and just sat around the house trying to figure what next and what he'd done wrong in his life that he'd wound up like this. My mother went from job to crummy job. Much later she referred to that time he was in the hospital, and those years just afterward, as "when Raymond was sick." The word sick was never the same for me again.

In 1964, through the help of a friend, he was lucky enough to be hired on at a mill in Klamath, California. He moved down there by himself to see if he could hack it. He lived not far from the mill, in a oneroom cabin not much different from the place he and my mother had started out living in when they went west. He scrawled letters to my mother, and if I called she'd read them aloud to me over the phone. In the letters, he said it was touch and go. Every day that he went to work, he felt like it was the most important day of his life. But every day, he told her, made the next day that much easier. He said for her to tell me he said hello. If he couldn't sleep at night, he said, he thought about me and the good times we used to have. Finally, after a couple of months, he regained some of his confidence. He could do the work and didn't think he had to worry that he'd let anybody down ever again. When he was sure, he sent for my mother.

He'd been off from work for six years and had lost everything in that time--home, car, furniture, and appliances, including the big freezer that had been my mother's pride and joy. He'd lost his good name too--Raymond Carver was someone who couldn't pay his bills--and his selfrespect was gone. He'd even lost his virility. My mother told my wife, "All during that time Raymond was sick we slept together in the same bed, but we didn't have relations. He wanted to a few times, but nothing happened. I didn't miss it, but I think he wanted to, you know."

During those years I was trying to raise my own family and earn a living. But, one thing and another, we found ourselves having to move a lot. I couldn't keep track of what was going down in my dad's life. But I did have a chance one Christmas to tell him I wanted to be a writer. I might as well have told him I wanted to become a plastic surgeon. "What are you going to write about?" he wanted to know. Then, as if to help me out, he said, "Write about stuff you know about. Write about some of those fishing trips we took." I said I would, but I knew I wouldn't. "Send me what you write," he said. I said I'd do that, but then I didn't. I wasn't writing anything about fishing, and I didn't think he'd particularly care about, or even necessarily understand, what I was writing in those days. Besides, he wasn't a reader. Not the sort, anyway, I imagined I was writing for.

Then he died. I was a long way off, in Iowa City, with things still to say to him. I didn't have the chance to tell him goodbye, or that I thought he was doing great at his new job. That I was proud of him for making a comeback.

My mother said he came in from work that night and ate a big supper. Then he sat at the table by himself and finished what was left of a bottle of whiskey, a bottle she found hidden in the bottom of the garbage under some coffee grounds a day or so later. Then he got up and went to bed, where my mother joined him a little later. But in the night she had to get,~up and make a bed for herself on the couch. "He was snoring so loud I couldn't sleep," she said. The next morning when she looked in on him, he was on his back with his mouth open, his cheeks caved in. Graylookirlg, she said. She knew he was dead--she didn't need a doctor to tell her that. But she called one anyway, and thcn shc called my wife.

Among the pictures my mother kept of my dad and herself during those early days in Washington was a photograph of him standing in front of a car, holding a beer and a stringer of fish. In the photograph he is wearing his hat back on his forehead and has this awkward grin on his face. I asked her for it and she gave it to me, along with some others. I put it up on my wall, and each time we moved, I took the picture along and put it up on another wall. I looked at it carefully from time to time, trying to figure out some things about my dad, and maybe myself in the process. But I couldn't. My dad just kept moving further and further away from me and back into time. Finally, in the course of another move, I lost the photograph. It was then that I tried to recall it, and at the same time make an attempt to say something about my dad, and how I thought that in some important ways we might be alike. I wrote the poem when I was living in an apartment house in an urban area south of San Francisco, at a time when I found myself, like my dad, having trouble with alcohol. The poem was a way of trying to connect up with him.

PHOTOGRAPH OF MY FATHER IN HIS TWENTY SECOND YEAR October. Here in this dank, unfamiliar kitchen I study my father's embarrassed young man's face. Sheepish grin, he holds in one hand a string of spiny yellow perch, in the other a bottle of Carlsberg beer.

In jeans and flannel shirt, he leans agai-nst the front fender of a 1934 Ford. He would like to pose hrave and hearty for his posterity, wear his old hat cocked over his ear. All his life my father wanted to be bold.

But the eyes give him away, and the handsthat limply offer the string of dead perchand the bottle of beer.

Father, I love you,

yet how can I say thank you,

I who can't hold my liquor either and don't even know the places to fish.

The poem is true in its particulars, except that my dad died in June and not October, as the first word of the poem says. I wanted a word with more than one syllable to it to make it linger a little. But more than that, I wanted a month appropriate to what I felt at the time I wrote the poem--a month of short days and failing light, smoke in the air, things perishing. June was summer nights and days, graduations, my wedding anniversary, the birthday of one of my children. June wasn't a month your father died in.

After the service at the funeral home, after we had moved outside, a woman I didn't know came over to me and said, "He's happier where he is now." I stared at this woman until she moved away. I still remember the little knob of a hat she was wearing. Then one of my dad's cousins--I didn't know the man's name--reached out and took my hand. "We all miss him," he said, and I knew he wasn't saying it just to be polite.

I began to weep for the first time since receiving the news. I hadn't been able to before. I hadn't had the time, for one thing Now, suddenly, I couldn't stop. I held my wife and wept while she said and did what she could do to comfort me there in the middle of that summer afternoon.

I listened to people say consoling things to my mother, and I was glad that my dad's family had turned up, had come to where he was. I thought I'd remember everything that was said and done that day and maybe find a way to tell it sometime. But I didn't. I forgot it all, or nearly. What I do remember is that I heard our name used a lot that afternoon, my dad's name and mine. But I knew they were talking about my dad. Raymond, these people kept saying in their beautiful voices out of my childhood. Raymond.