Gerald Duff - Fugitive Days

It was early spring in Ohio with just a dusting of snow from the night before still visible on the crocus pushing up by the front door of the small cottage in Gambier. The weather was cold but bright, the roads would be clear all the way to the airport in Columbus, and the car I would be driving belonged to the Kenyon College fleet, so it was a lot younger than the one I owned. There was no reason for me to be earlier than the time Id been assigned to arrive at the cottage for the pick-up of my passenger.

The passenger, a guest in Gambier, Ohio, that day was Robert Penn Warren, and his host was John Crowe Ransom. I was early by at least twenty minutes, and that was due not to inadvertance but to planning. I had left my house just off Gaskin Street at precisely the moment I had figured would give me the most defensible argument for arriving early. I didnt want to chance being late to the airport, I could say to the chairman of the English department when he asked me later why so forward in my timing. What if traffic got clogged the other side of Centerburg? What if the flight from Columbus to LaGuardia left a little early? Then what? Better to get to my assigned location a little early than a little late, right?

So when I knocked on the door earlier than the hour Bob Daniel had told me to arrive at the little white house, I knew I would have to explain to the person who opened the door it would probably be the daughter or granddaughter, maybe the wife, but not likely and I had prepared what Id say to the greeter in defense of my early arrival. Sorry to be a little early, but I heard a report about some possible road conditions north of Columbus, and I wanted to be on the safe side. A woman would accept that excuse, and shed say come on in and Ill let him know youre here. You might have to wait a bit. You dont mind, do you?

Mind? No, not at all, Id say, thinking Id kill to be able to sit down with him and chat. Are you kidding me? Mind?

So I was ready. Primed. Hair combed, in full uniform of coat and tie, looking fit to be buried, all that when I heard opening noises on the other side of the front door and a shuffling of elderly feet in toddle. The wife, I thought. Speak up so she can hear you when she gets the door open. Smile. Act like youre listening to what shell be saying. Look at her, not over her shoulder for a glimpse of either one of them.

The door opened a crack, paused, and then swung all the way wide like a couplet chiming at the end of a sonnet with a Shakepearean rhyme scheme. Bing bang. Isnt it nice to hear that satisfying sound youve been waiting for? Catching the gleam of white hair, I adjusted my sight downward. It was not one of the women of the family, nor a cleaning lady, nor a stranger. It was the essential old man himself. Coat and tie, head cranked to look up at me, light reflecting off the lenses of his glasses, his mouth open as though to speak, but more likely simply to breathe, since he appeared to be so aged that his nose wouldnt allow easy air access any longer.

Yes? he said. Can I help you, young man?

Mr. Ransom, I said. Im from the English department. Im here to pick up Mr. Warren.

You want to take Red away from here? Is that what youre saying to me, son?

John, another voice called, this from a man I would have judged elderly had I not just had the door to the house opened by its owner, Mr. Ransom himself. He was elderly. The other man, the current speaker, didnt look a day over 80, comparatively a man in full physical bloom and blossom. Let him in, John. Im expecting him or somebody like him, and hes where hes supposed to be.

But he says he wants to take you away, Red. Im not ready for you to leave.

I want to go with him, John, Robert Penn Warren said. I got to get on back home. Things I got to do.

Well, come on in, then, John Crowe Ransom said. Red cant leave just on the spur of the moment.

I do like to dilly dally, all right, Red Warren said. You say youre from the Kenyon English department, young man. What do you teach, beside bad writers?

Oh, no, sir, I said. We do teach some bad writers, I mean contempories as I think you must mean. But we teach the classics, English and American. Mainly.

Then Robert Penn Warren begin to chuckle as if a fool had responded to a simple comment from him say, for example, is it raining? And the fool answered, I dont know. Ill look at the newspaper and see and then Warren went on to say he meant bad writers of essays, students, implying in my mind biology majors, social science aficianados, all that species.

I hastened to chuckle at my error, ready to slap myself sharply on the forehead if necessary to show how stupid I saw myself to be, but I didnt have to do that. I was saved. Saved by John Crowe Ransom, the founder of the Kenyon Review himself, the poet, critic, teacher, and editor, saved by his asking plaintively why wouldnt I leave Red Warren alone and go on about my business.

As we sat down in the living room, and as I readied myself for what I hoped would be a feast of literary talk, I mentally ticked off two more names from my list of Vanderbilt fugitives sighted, tracked down, and met. Id actually encountered Robert Penn Warren before, when I was teaching at Vanderbilt in my first academic job. Warren was back for a visit at the place where hed first made his mark, imported once more from his career on the East Coast to be shown off to the local gentry the way a Nashville matron in one of the mansions in Belle Meade would put an expensive piece of jewelry on display, something so valuable and blessed by time that it couldnt possibly be of practical use today. It was of such great worth now because of what it had meant when no one took notice of it. It had been at its heighth when it was known the least. Now it stood as a monument to itself, glowing from within with an immortal fire, no longer to be touched in this ordinary world.

That day in the faculty club at lunch, though, Warren didnt behave like a precious monument to himself and what he and his fellows had come to mean to Vanderbilt University and to the upper class Southerners who understood it was fitting and necessary for them to appreciate works of and about literature. It was an obligation to be honored, and by God they would, if not actually read these impenetrable works, publicly honor them and their makers, no matter how much trouble it caused them to do so.