[SIGHING AUDIBLY]
[LAUGHTER]
Tucson.
You guys, let's just have Jane get back up here and just talk
for an hour or so.
Shall we?
Jane, tell us what it was like when you were born.
[LAUGHTER]
Now tell us what it was like when you were four.
I'm so happy to be here.
I'm so moved to be here.
You guys, if you want to sit down, there's chairs here,
and there's a lot of room up here.
Rodney.
And anybody else back there, just come up.
Thank you.
It's comfier.
Are there any more--
There's some chairs there.
You could sell some books.
[LAUGHTER]
This is good.
Give me a minute to get working on it.
Whup.
See?
Thank you.
Good.
Steve Orlen.
Jon Anderson.
You know, Arizona.
Tucson.
This place has meant so much to so many writers,
and it's meant so much to me.
I came here in 1997, 15 years ago,
at a turning point in my life.
And I'm so moved to be here again, right here and now,
with you all.
There's a lot of you here, too.
I have to go like this.
[LAUGHTER]
Do you know what I mean?
My high school boyfriend is here, Tom Drexel.
[LAUGHTER] Give him a big hand.
[CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
Because in my troubled youth, he saved me.
He tolerated my temper and my tempestuous heart.
And here we are, like, 100 years later.
[LAUGHTER]
Together again.
I'm going to read one poem in praise of boys in Tom's honor.
It's called "Sixth Grade."
Remember sixth grade?
My god.
Yi-Nan, you're in sixth grade right now.
This is my daughter.
[LAUGHTER]
There she is.
Give her a big hand.
[APPLAUSE]
I didn't realize this until this moment,
that you're in sixth grade.
Buckle your seat belt. OK.
You've heard this before.
[LAUGHTER]
I know.
But I never realized that when this happened to me, it was--
she is the age--
Anyway, here it is.
"Sixth Grade."
Boys and girls.
Remember?
"The afternoon the neighborhood boys tied me and Mary Lou Mahar
to Donny Ralph's father's garage doors, spread-eagled,
it was the summer they chased us almost every day.
Careening across the lawns they'd
mowed for money, on bikes they threw down,
they'd catch us, lie on top of us, then get up and walk away.
That afternoon Donny's mother wasn't home.
His nine sisters and brothers gone--
even Gramps, who lived with them, gone somewhere--
the backyard empty, the big house quiet.
A gang of boys.
They pulled the heavy garage doors down, and tied us to them
with clothesline, and Donny got the deer's leg
severed from the buck his dad had killed the year before,
dried up and still fur-covered, and sort of poked at us,
dancing around the blacktop in his sneakers, laughing.
And then somebody took it from Donny and did it.
And then somebody else, and somebody after him.
And then Donny pulled up Mary Lou's dress and held it up,
and she began to cry, and I became a boy again,
and shouted Stop, and they wouldn't.
And then a girl-boy, calling out to Charlie,
my best friend's brother, who wouldn't look--
Charlie!
to my brother's friend who knew me--
Stop them.
And he wouldn't.
And then more softly, and looking directly at him,
I said, Charlie.
And he said Stop.
And they said What?
And he said Stop it.
And they did, quickly untying the ropes, weirdly quiet,
Mary Lou still weeping.
And Charlie?
Already gone."