Free Jubilee Hitchhiker by William Hjortsberg

bottle “nummy-nose.” Later, he had a code word for his potty so that no one but his mother knew what he meant. “People sometimes asked me, ‘Is that kid dumb? He never says anything.’” Mary Lou laughed at the memory. “Well, I knew he wasn’t dumb.”
    Richard was a keenly observant child. His aunt Eveline took him out into the backyard at night to stargaze. She held him in her arms, and he looked fixedly up at the stars and the moon, studying them with an intense curiosity unusual in someone so young. He also stared at people, never saying a word, just watching and listening. It was unnerving. Folks didn’t know what to make of this little white-haired kid, staring at them with his big unblinking blue eyes. Was he from another planet?
    When Richard was two, Aunt Eveline gave him a beautiful yellow Taylor tricycle. He loved his new velocipede, pedaling around and around the house, refusing to get off, not even for meals. Mary Lou had to feed him on the trike. His little red wagon was another favorite vehicle. Richard pulled it out the back door and across the yard to the alley. A half block further, he cut across a vacant lot, dragging his wagon over to the Bill & Mid Market, a grocery store on McKinley Avenue.
    In later years, Brautigan often told of learning to read from looking at canned goods, associating the fruit and vegetables pictured on the colorful paper labels with the printed words. Corn. Peas. Green Beans. Tomatoes. Beets. The corner market became his kindergarten, and time after time, Richard loaded up his little red wagon with cans and jars, piling them like alphabet blocks and hauling the load home down the alley.
    â€œHe saw me go in the store and do it, so he was going to do mother’s shopping for her,” Mary Lou Folston recalled. The store owners watched without comment, enjoying the comedy inherent in this tiny criminal’s pilfering. They let Richard haul off his loot, knowing that as soon as he got home, his mother would either send him back or come and pay for what he had taken.
    Boats fascinated Richard when he was two years old. He liked floating sticks of stove wood in the sink, launching homemade armadas. One night, sleeping upstairs, Mary Lou was awakened by the sound of running water. She pulled on a robe and went down to the kitchen. Richard had drawn a chair up to the sink, turned on the taps, and floated one of her new shoes in the basin.
    Another terrible twos misadventure involved a German shepherd named Mark that Moonshine Bess brought to Tacoma when she came to visit. The animal watched over the toddler playing in the front yard. Once, Richard removed his diaper and pooped on the lawn. Overcome by scatological artistic inclinations, the little boy smeared handfuls of his shit all over the patient dog.

    Mary Lou moved out of her family home that same year. She got a job in town and rented a place nine miles in the country. Her brother Edward continued living on Sixty-fifth Street, inviting his friend Ronald Bluett to share the house with him. Bluett, the man Bernard Brautigan accused of having an affair with his wife and Ben believed was Richard’s actual father. Bluett was later crushed to death while working for a lumber outfit.
    Eveline continued running the New Country Grocery with her husband, selling imported Italian foods. Mary Lou often stopped by to see her sister in the afternoons after work. She caught the bus home right in front of the store. The Pisannis had opened a bar in the same building. The Teamster’s Union Hall stood only half a block away and the drivers gathered there, drinking beer while waiting for a call to make a run. A Norwegian trucker named “Big Jack” Fjetland took a shine to Eveline. One afternoon, Fjetland sat drinking and remarked to the proprietor, “You know, Pisanni, I’m in love with your wife.”
    Not taking him seriously, John Pisanni said, “Who wants her? You can