Blood, Bone, and Marrow by Ted Geltner

Author:Ted Geltner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The University of Georgia Press
Published: 2016-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO END OF THE FEAST

Harry Crews looks a little like a primitive who has tried civilization and was unimpressed.

—Miami Herald, June 30, 1974

The first time Maggie Powell laid eyes on Harry Crews, he was buck naked and unconscious, the comatose host of a party that was just kicking into gear. She had just walked into Harry’s Melrose hideaway with Johnny Feiber, searching for a place to keep the night alive after the lights were turned off at Lillian’s. In short order, Harry was roused, donned a “loincloth,” and another night by the lake careened toward dawn.

Maggie was the granddaughter of a president of the University of Georgia who was raised in Gainesville and had recently returned to town. Her father did soil conservation work for the federal government, and her mother worked in the University of Florida Athletic Department. After getting her undergraduate psychology degree at Florida State in Tallahassee, she was back, accepted into a prestigious program to pursue a graduate degree at UF in clinical psychology. She was tall, lithe, and athletic, a former high school and college gymnast who was now a devoted runner. She was also emotionally raw, having lost her father the year before, after he succumbed following a year-long struggle with heart disease. Within weeks of coming back home to begin her studies, she was in a devastating car wreck after a UF football game. The crash left her with brain injuries that would not be fully revealed for decades.

But that first night in Melrose, Harry took notice of Maggie and soon was asking Feiber about her. Feiber gave Harry the green light, and what would become a lifelong relationship for Harry began.

Maggie and Harry had their first date in early December 1976, and by the end of the year they were a couple. On New Year’s Eve, with Sally out of town, Maggie came over to the Crews house in northwest Gainesville, and they ushered in 1977, drinking first at home, then at Lillian’s, then wherever else they could find a drink. “We got good and drunk,” Maggie remembered. “From then on, Harry and I started hanging out together all the time.”

Harry would eventually pack up his things and move into Maggie’s small Gainesville apartment near the university. Her life was consumed with her graduate studies, but she assumed the role of Harry’s personal assistant as well. Harry was still using the old Underwood typewriter he’d acquired back in Fort Lauderdale, but he’d recently thrown it against the wall in a fit of rage and had started writing in longhand on legal pads. Maggie became his typist. Another of the duties she assumed was teaching assistant. On days when Harry had started drinking too early, or too heavily, students would get to class for the Thursday-night seminar to find Maggie instead of their instructor. She’d pass out assignments, assure the class that Harry was alive and well, and that he would be back the following week. Or, when he was up to

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