Free The Tokyo-Montana Express by Richard Brautigan Page B

Direction of a Pizza
    They are like a strange army returning
from the front for a brief rest before going back into battle again here in Tokyo.
Four of them just came by in uniform which consists of blue pants and red and
white striped shirts. They were not wearing their helmets that look like
plastic straw hats. Their military discipline is relaxed because they are on
what the army calls furlough. They are on furlough from making pizzas. Just a
short distance away is a Shakey’s Pizza Parlor. These crack troops are young Japanese
men who make pizzas there. They are on break or furlough from a battlefield
whose lines, yards won and lost, are measured in pizzas eaten.
    As they walk by, I know one thing for
certain in this world and it may be the only thing I do know, they are not going
to get a pizza.

Dogs on the Roof
    I could see the dogs standing on the
root from a long distance away. There were two of them; collies (quite small),
but as I bicycled toward them they grew larger and larger until eventually they
would start barking when I was close enough.
    There was a small polluted creek beside the
house and a small tangled woods behind the house. It was a very dense and
unfriendly woods, the kind that scratches you and tears your clothes.
    The house itself wasn’t much to look at. It
was two stories high and wooden: hard to describe and easy to forget except for
the dogs on the roof.
    Often I had to bicycle past that house.
    I don’t know how the dogs got onto the roof
but they were there.
    Once they didn’t bark at me and that made
me nervous.
    Hard as it is to believe, their barking was
easier to take than their silence.
    They just stood there on the roof staring
at me as I bicycled past.
    I never once saw the people that lived in
the house.
    I hope the dogs didn’t live there alone.

California Mailman
    Until recently, I’ve never been a very
intuitive person and my ESP temperature has always hovered in the low zeroes
like 27 below. But all that changed a few months ago when I had a dream that
came true. It is the first time this ever happened to me. I dreamt that my mail
would be very boring and uninteresting in the months to come and that’s the way
it’s been since the dream.
    All I get are bills and junkmail and
trivia.
    When I see the mailman coming up the walk,
my eyelids slowly lower. Sometimes I fall asleep while I am opening an
envelope.
    California is ready for anything.
    I wonder if I should start a cult.

The Cobweb Toy
    I remember five years ago when he first
became famous. It was a beautiful toy and he had a lot of fun with it. I
enjoyed watching his pleasure. He is a very good writer and deserved the fame.
    Now: He has published a book about the Acid
Shadow of Fame that eats at the heart and soul until ambiguity and disarray are
as predictable as the time the sun rises and the sun goes down.
    Today the sun came up at 6:13 a.m. and went
down at 6:22 p.m.
    It was only five years ago.
    My, how time flies.

Her Last Known Boyfriend
a Canadian Airman
    Her last known boyfriend was a
Canadian airman who was shot down over Germany in November 1944. Their romance
only lasted a week and they never went to bed together. They were going to get
married after the war.
    He was twenty-two and she was nineteen.
    They met by accident at a bus stop in San
Francisco. He had never talked to a Chinese woman before. She was the only
other person waiting for a bus. He was a very cheerful and outward going young
man. People instantly liked him.
    “Hello,” he said. “I’m from Canada.”
    They wrote every day after he was gone,
promising each other the future. They were going to have three children: two
boys and a girl.
    The last letter she got was written by an
air force chaplain:
    He often spoke of you, etc.
    He asked me to write to you if, etc.
    I know that he would want you to, etc.
    When she finished reading the letter, her
life was over and she had joined him in death. She quit college where she was a
straight-A