by John Nichols
“I’m open for any suggestions. I’m tired and I’m really demoralized.”
“Did you call the police?”
“Not yet. I mean, suppose he’s at a friend’s house?”
“Did you call anybody?”
“Tribby and Rachel, Suki, the Baileys, and Jane Zuckerman. Nobody’s seen him, nobody’s heard a word.”
“I bet Michael went across town to kill her with his BB gun,” Heather said.
“Her who, Jane?”
“No, your her.”
“Heather,” Joe groaned, “do Mommy and Daddy a favor and don’t talk until you’re spoken to, all right?”
“I can talk if I want. It’s a free country.”
“Free country?” Joe snarled. “Who feeds you that shit!” Something in his head went ping! “Is it a free country for all the millions of gay people that Anita Bryant’s trying to burn at the stake? Is it a free country for all the blacks and Chicanos and Indians who can’t get into law school or medical school or into a decent housing project unless they burn down a ghetto to prove they’re sick and tired of being exploited and culturally genocided into oblivion? Is it a free country for our twenty-five million alcoholics, our ten million junkies, and the other one hundred eighty million of our people who are manic-depressive pill poppers that spend ninety percent of their salaries on psychiatrists? Is it a—”
“Joey, for God’s sake, stoppit.”
“—free country for the millions and millions of people that we have incarcerated in one of the most extensive prison systems on earth? Is it a free country for the ten million New Yorkers who are afraid to go out after five for fear of being mugged? Is it a free—”
“Joey! Jesus Christ.”
“—country for all the people who get murdered in America, and for all the people who get robbed, and who get killed in car accidents? Is it a free country for all the kids that graduate from our lousy high schools as semifunctional illiterates? Huh? Tell me about this free country! Heidi, who feeds them this junk…?”
They were all crying: Joe, Heidi, and Heather. Shocked, Heather stood in the middle of the room, staring at her father, tears flowing down her cheeks. Head buried in her arms, Heidi’s voice was muffled as she sobbed, “Joey, just shut the Christ up, please.”
“Look at you and me!” Joe wept hysterically. “Look at us! The beneficiaries of the best education money can buy, upwardly mobile middle class, every advantage on earth! Look at all this freedom! Look at Skipper Nuzum and Jeff and Suki and, and look at all that freedom! Everybody’s so happy in this country with all their freedom! Freedom,” he spat, turning to aim his final invective at their only daughter. “Don’t you believe it for a minute.”
“Joey, geez, can it.”
“’Cause it’s bullshit!” he sobbed. “It’s propaganda! Freedom to choose between thirty-seven different colors of car or flavors of ice cream does not a democracy make, little girl. And don’t you ever forget it!”
With that, he ran out of steam. Nobody moved. Joe wondered: had he flipped out? Right before their eyes had he gone nuts? Apparently. Heather said, “You’re crazy, Daddy.” Snatching an orange from the coffee-table bowl, she heaved it at her dad, galloped past him to her room, and slammed the door.
“She’s right,” Joe whimpered. “I’m crazy. I’m sorry.”
“What about Michael?”
“I’ll go look for him.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. I’ll drive around. Do we still have that elk call? I’ll go stand in the middle of a field somewhere and blow it until he comes arunning.”
“Joey, what’s happening? This doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know. Go read Gail Sheehy, I sure don’t have a pipeline to any answers.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“No, you better stay with Heather.”
“What if you don’t find him?”
“Then we call the cops. No, actually, we can’t call them.”
“Why not?”
Joe displayed the tea box. “Because it makes no sense to call attention to yourself when you’re sitting on a potential hundred Gs of cocaine, does it?”
“I’ll call the cops,” Heidi said darkly, “if I have to.”
* * *
IGNORANT OF HUMAN FOLLIES, the yard was enchanted by the glowing dusk. Even the Green Gorilla, bathed in luminescent butter-yellow light, seemed to have a magnified importance, like a museum object—precious, beautiful, unique. Love for landscape, colors, and smells momentarily stopped Joe. Greedily, he sucked it all in, needing the transfusion. A kingfisher rat-a-tatted by. Peepers and crickets had commenced their evening racket. Sweet puppy clouds, and the darkening mauve sky behind them, were reflected in the Green Gorilla’s spiderwebbed windshield. Tiny mosquitoes floated through the last brilliant light; tree leaves were paralyzed by an airless crescendo of mood. The earth was captured for a moment, its heart revealed. Absolute silence governed the planet, as if somewhere, somehow, the first oxygen-breathing fish was emerging from the sea to crawl about clumsily on terra firma; it gulped in an initial breath of air and filled out fledgling lungs.
What precocious magic could deliver a reverie like that? Michael had fled—or had he been kidnapped by Ray Verboten, to be held for ransom? Heather hated his guts, and already, at age eight, she was scarred for life. Heidi was counting ways to ream him in a divorce. A woman he had screwed only twice had asked what time he would be home for supper. He was sitting on a hundred Gs of coke with absolutely no idea of how to market it without being killed. Eloy Irribarren wanted to rob a bank, and Joe had foolishly promised to help in hopes of somehow forestalling that idiotic move. And Diana Clayman was pitching a tent on land that he lusted for, desperately, but would probably never own, unless a miracle occurred.
And yet the world, caught in a hollow of evocative color—nature, the endless pietá!—moved him to feel a sensation that could only be described as tragically sublime.
He should have flung out his arms: Here I am, Charlton Heston, ready to inherit your throne! But a last vestige of good taste came to the rescue. Instead, pretending not to notice a large stain of transmission oil on the ground near the rear of the vehicle, he entered the Green Gorilla, spent ten minutes firing it up, daintily wrestled the trigger-outfitted gearing lever into reverse, backed up, swung around, and, the gear shift grinding and clunking horrendously as he manipulated it, Joe headed off in a gusty cloud of blue poison to search for Michael.
The truck rattled, bumped, hiccoughed, skipped a few beats, lurched, swayed, and carried on. Exhaust seeped up through the fire wall, so Joe rolled down the passenger window. Under his butt seat-springs howled in execration: only three layers of duct tape in a crisscross pattern lay between him and a royal goosing. Ay, Mama, he loved this old truck! It was all he had left that he cherished. Bury me in this truck, boys! Air-freight it to Varanasi and burn me alive in it on the banks of the putrid Ganges! Actually, properly embalmed, his feet lashed to the brake and clutch pedals, his hands strapped to the steering wheel, the bed chock full of piñon wood, he wanted to be pushed off the mesa into the Rio Grande Gorge. Let the boulders and the foaming waters consecrate his body to the Great Unknown!
Heidi believed in an afterlife: in reincarnation. Joe couldn’t see it. Living in a town surrounded by people absorbed in their former lives and reincarnations and in their future lives and immortalities (and in interplanetary-spirit jamborees and encounters of the third kind, and in astral hitchhiking and nether beings, and in deathbed guides and 1,112 easy ways to attain nirvana)—living in a town like that, Joe had nevertheless been unable to come up with a necromance any more complex than: when you’re dead you’re dead. When it was over, you stopped—period. No feeling, just blankness, all sensations ceased. The human spirit—The Soul—was nice to have when alive. But it ceased to be when you died. No reason to feel bitter or cheated, however—he had no complaints, he wasn’t scared. Life on earth was what counted. For
some reason, Joe had always mistrusted every manifestation he ran into of spiritual pie in the sky, from cryonics to Catholicism, from devil worshipers to Hare Krishnas. He could understand the artificial continuation of a particular spirit, say a writer’s in his books. But beyond that—?
“Hey, wake up, turkey!”
He had driven a mile without searching for Michael. Joe slammed on the brakes, forgetting he had to pump for ten minutes before they’d even begin to catch. The truck continued at thirty miles an hour for a ways, then began slowing down because, after all, he had taken his foot off the accelerator.
A female hippie hitchhiker stood forlornly beside the road. Joe’s immediate instinct was to hit the gas pedal, peeling away in a cloud of dust so thick she couldn’t identify the truck (meaning that next week, when by coincidence he met her at the Cinema Bar, she wouldn’t be able to say, “I know you, you’re that son of a bitch in the Green ’47 Chevy with license plate number AKJ-one eighty-four, who refused to pick me up last week when I was trying to flag down a car for help because my daughter was back in the house, choking to death on a chicken bone!”).
However, because of some atavistic guilt in his genes, Joe could almost never pass up a hitchhiker, even though he hated giving lifts, especially to hippies. For starters, they were usually stoned, or in one weird place or another that made Joe uncomfortable. Often they pulled out six and a half pounds of Moroccan hash and offered to turn him on. And from that moment until he left them at their destination, Joe was terrified of getting stopped by the fuzz for a traffic offense, or on the mere suspicion of being suspicious. And, unable to prove his innocence, he’d pull a life term for trafficking in controlled substances. Too, nobody in this part of the country, especially hippies, ever had a logical destination, such as the center of town, or a well-traveled crossroads. Invariably, they lived sixteen miles off the highway up a grade-X dirt road liable to flash-flooding any hour of the day or night. And, because it was snowing, or too hot, or the hitchhiker was sick or drunk or stoned (or nine months pregnant), Joe always felt obligated to make the detour. This often resulted in an hour’s delay in his life (usually for an important meeting that could cost him a three-thousand-dollar hauling contract if he was late), or a flat tire, or perhaps a broken axle. Other hitchhikers might prove surly, and spend their time trashing their old ladies, or gringos. Driving back from the Pueblo last year, he had picked up a drunk obnoxious Indian kid who asked if Joe was local. When Joe said yes, the kid replied, “Guess I can’t describe the local points of interest for a buck, then.” When Joe asked about his destination, the kid cracked, “I’m not getting off, this is a hijacking. Take me to Cuba.” Still attempting to be friendly, Joe talked about Cuba. The kid replied, “What was the name of that guy down there—Geeborba?” “Guevara.” “Yeah, him. I’d like to grab his balls and squeeze them seventeen times.” When they reached the overcrowded town and were simmering in a traffic jam, the kid kept remarking, “Geez, there’s hardly anybody in Chamisaville these days.” Finally, he ordered Joe to drive him to a liquor store and buy him a bottle: “I can’t get it myself, I’m underage.” Joe refused, the kid called him a cocksucker, and they almost came to blows.
Other hitchhikers said nothing, but made him so nervous by their sinister silence that Joe became convinced they intended to rob him, put a bullet in his head, and dump him in a sandy arroyo where he wouldn’t be discovered until the only way to identify him was through his dental records. Better them, though, than some of the talkative ones who drove him nuts. Each year a few gay thumbers made passes which Joe mishandled abysmally, trying to reject the advances without offending the advancer. He had a terror of hurting feelings, especially of strangers, and, even more especially, of homosexuals.
Occasionally, Joe pretended he couldn’t stop for a certain hitchhiker by making exaggerated pointing signals to the right or to the left, smiling with sympathetic “what can I do?” sadness to indicate he was turning off the beaten track just up the road a few yards. But this led to elaborate and time-consuming deceits. Horribly aware of the hitchhiker’s eyes following him just to make sure “that cat in the green Chevy wasn’t just another honky middle-class bullshitter,” Joe often clicked on his blinker and turned onto the very first path that appeared, praying it wouldn’t dead-end at the digs of some trigger-happy redneck holding a grudge against hippie vehicles.
The Green Gorilla ceased its forward progress and stalled. As the girl ran toward the truck, Joe removed the ignition key and circled around to unlock the passengerside door. Panting heavily, the girl arrived. Heavy-set, pregnant, dressed in what looked like colorful rags, she also wore athletic socks and hiking boots. Her dirty face was tear-streaked. As Joe fiddled the key in his broken lock, she blurted desperately: “Oh wow, man, am I glad to see you. Jesus, is this ever a heavy day. I mean, like, what a fuckin’ bummer, you know? Do you know my old man, Othello?”
“Othello?” Rolling down the window, Joe pinched the tidbit of broken passengerside lock-knob poking above the windowsill hole, and tried to prod it upward. Instead, a rude clack! inside the door indicated some crucial mechanism had gone awry.
“Othello. You know, man. He’s a big, heavyset dude with a walrus moustache, drives a 1957 Dodge van with a cow skull welded on the front grille. He used to be a bouncer at the La Lomita until that one-eyed dude, Pearly Stan, ran away with all the bread.”
Vaguely, Joe remembered he had seen the cow-skull van around. He recalled a plastic bubble skylight, psychedelic head-paintings on both sides, and a sign saying CHICKEN RIVER FUNKY PIE. But he was distracted and couldn’t recall exactly where he’d seen it last.
So he nodded: “I guess so, maybe, sure.” And wondered: what kind of a human being is it who, when his son runs away (desperate, unhappy, and bearing a firearm into the bargain), and there’s only an hour before dark in which to locate him, winds up parked beside the road jawboning with what looks like a cross between a yak and a professional crackpot about her Chicken River Funky Pie van driver?
Joe tugged on the key: it wouldn’t budge. He yanked hard, but it was stuck.
“Damn.”
“He’s gone, man. And I don’t even know where he split to. We used to live up at the Family, but I couldn’t take all the PTSes. And anyway, Bill Dillinger, man, he’s heading into this real weird place, like, he’s really putting out some weird ego trip and I didn’t wanna hang around him anymore, you know? Their whole inner-reality program is on the skids. So me and Othello found this really groovy little place, it’s right back there, across that field, see? It doesn’t have any running water or heat right now, but the price is right—only a hundred and fifty a month. And the vibes are wonderful. He’s almost a Clear. I’m a Pre-Clear and also a pretty heavy SP. But for a while, there, we were really moving up The Bridge together fantastically. Then this morning—wow. The stars must be all messed up. I’m running this goddam negative karma you wouldn’t believe. Othello went out last night and didn’t return until two A.M. He was really uptight and doing a whole bunch of Overts. We had a big fight and couldn’t do any Word Clearing at all. And then he just split—barefoot! Can you dig it? I threw an I Ching and it told me I shouldn’t even of got outta bed this morning. But I gotta find him, man. I really love him. This is such a beautiful place to live—why are we all so unhappy?”
Joe said, “Lookit this. My key’s stuck in the lock. Not only can I not open the door, now I can’t even start the truck, ’cause the lousy key’s stuck in the lock.”
“It’s me, man. I wanna be an Upstat, but every place I go I screw up all the ions in the air. I don’t know why I keep pushing all the wrong Buttons. I need a hit of something, man, I really do. You got any shit in the truck? Some reds … a popper, maybe? Or even a little grass? I really could use a hit of something.”
Joe stared at her, wondering who was writing this script. He said, “How’m I gonna get this key unstuck?”
“Don’t ask me, man, I’m not very mechanical.”
/>
“Well, why don’t you quit messing with the ions for a minute, so I can get my key out?”
“I don’t know how to,” she sobbed. “Ever since I left Chicago, I don’t know what’s the matter with me. But I keep having all these ARC breaks. One week after I landed in the Family, I got gonorrhea. Then some tithead I never even met before got me pregnant. I dunno what’s wrong with me. My Flow One, Flow Two, and Flow Zero are so fucked up I can’t see straight. I don’t know if I can live without Othello, man. He was my Auditor in Chicago. He was the biggest Win I ever had. You gotta help me find him.”
“I can’t get my ignition key out of this door.”
“Where could he go without his shoes on?” she hiccoughed bewilderedly. “You know what he called me?—a ‘stinkin’ gorilla.’ Then he smashed our E-meter and ran away. If I don’t find him I’m gonna kill myself. I’m so blue … and I’m broke. I couldn’t buy a nickel bag if you paid me to. God knows what’s wrong. I hate falling off The Bridge. Mars or Jupiter must be all screwed up. Wow. What a bummer! I bet I’ll be a Pre-Clear forever!”
Locating his toolbox under the front seat, Joe assaulted the door paneling with screwdrivers, pliers, a socket wrench, a hammer. As he worked, in a frenzy of trying to stay calm so he wouldn’t freak out entirely, Joe puzzled over his own bad luck. Where had he learned this heartrending ability to step in shit?
Talk about karma!
“Do you think he’ll come back?” she persisted. “If he left without his shoes, he’ll return, won’t he?”
“Frankly, all I care about right now is getting my key out of this door so I can start this truck.”
About then, it dawned on Joe that he was approaching the problem incorrectly. He had to remove the paneling to get at the lock apparatus. But he couldn’t pop the paneling unless he opened the door. And the door was locked. So he had to separate it from its hinges. But the hinges weren’t exposed. Therefore, he must crawl underneath the fender to find them. Or take out the fire wall, hoping that he could somehow wedge himself around.…