Sanity

by Neovictorian

  “All right,” she says. “It’s a sound plan, I’m an extreme planner…usually.”

  She giggles and squirms her bottom into the bed and I get a jolt of pleasure, of something more than pleasure, thinking about how I turned it a bright, hot pink with my hand.

  She glances at the hotel table clock. “I’ve got to go,” she says. “I’m spending tonight at a friend’s in Pismo Beach and I don’t want to get there too late.”

  Something in the way she says this makes me flash on the sequence of events for an instant, wonder if this whole day and night, from our conversation at the wake until now was as spontaneous as it appears.

  Then I decide I really don’t care.

  ~

  I gradually, gently come out of my reverie, focus my eyes on the ceiling of the tent. It’s really time to get up and out, to look forward instead of reminiscing. The erection I got dreamthinking about Janet has finally subsided and I crawl out of the tent, naked, and turn away from the hint of light behind the mountains to the east. There’s no wind, and I carefully barefoot it over to where the coyote was sitting, I’m going to practice walking shoeless for a while, yeah, it’s a ReHume technique that makes sense.

  I get down on my hands and knees for the last few feet, I don’t want to spoil any traces, the dirt is full of rocks big and small, digging pain into my palms and knees, and I laugh at it.

  The flat rock it was sitting on shows no mark, but I follow the path it took leaving with my eyes close to the ground and it’s light enough to make out one faint paw print.

  Though I wouldn’t really be surprised if there was nothing at all.

  23. 8 years ago, Cima Dome, Mojave Desert, California May 1, 6:23 am

  The sun peaks over the hills to the east and I stand facing it, naked, close my eyes and see red, and in the blood redbright redblank are swirls and dots and colors, especially blacks and purples, and the swirls gradually form into a pair of eyes, human eyes but without the whites.

  I’m finally ready to talk but there’s no one else here but a faint breeze, it’s whispering to me, it’s not James this time but is it anybody? My head’s been in Heights and the Manifesto and “Noticing” so much these last few days that I know who I’d really like to talk to, but he’s been dead for 23 years; he’d be 102 now, I reckon. The thing that I get out of all of Duke’s material, the thing that only a few others seem to have commented on, is how amused he is about what people put themselves through. There’s a big dollop of Stoicism in ReHume, not the part about bearing up under suffering without complaining, the part that the truncated abridged digest version of now emphasizes, but the part about detachment, even amusement, at how hard people make things on themselves. Something James had told me, something about fighting with one hand tied to your belt…

  “There’s a good reason for that,” the whisper says in my ear, no it’s not James, I’m sure it’s just me, it’s my left brain talking to my right brain, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, that was the title, hell, just go with it.

  “I’m listening,” I say, out loud.

  “I personally directed that that exercise be part of the triaging,” I say, or he says. “Always make it the strong hand that’s out of action, too. And give the opponent a club, or a gun. Whatcha gonna do, boy, when you’ve only got one arm and they’re coming at you with sticks, with knives, with nuclear weapons. Whatcha gonna do, boy?”

  “Everything you can.” I say.

  “Goddam right. And you’re gonna die, but so what? What’s so special about that? Do your thing, do what you can, take one with you, hell, take two. You don’t need all the training, you just took out a guy who had a semi-auto rifle, and all you had was a whisky glass.”

  “Yes, but I had James, and James went after him and he took his eye off of me and killed James instead.”

  “James knew the right thing to do, and he did it. And that’s a world’s weight more valuable than hiding under a pile of dead people and living until you’re 90 and dying of drowning in your own vomit. But that’s done, and you know it. What you’d like to talk about is the future. Whatcha gonna do, boy?”

  “I don’t know, that’s why I’m here, in the middle of fucking nowhere, Phil. You don’t mind if I call you Phil, I know. So you go out in the desert and something happens you come back and hit it big, bestseller and a Movement, or whatever the hell you’ve wrought, but you never say exactly what happened, Phil, sure Heights is a hell of a read and it gives people a reason to live and give an effort, it convinces them the world is worth living in, no, there’s a world worth living in. And if they don’t take action that world will die in fire and blood.”

  “Most likely it will anyway, my boy. And a new, different one will come out of that, some of it better and some of it worse. But maybe, maybe maybe maybe, this time it’ll be different. If we go out, to the planets and stars, the cycle will finally stop repeating, it’ll be a real fucking phase shift, Man finally stepping off the treadmill.”

  “I know you wrote, you weren’t the first to write it, that only the tiniest minority can ever learn, really learn, from someone else’s experience, but I’d appreciate it, old man, if you’d give me a hint, about why I’m out here, because looking around, I can’t even remember.”

  “Yeah, you’re not really going to learn anything from my babble, but here’s your hint. See that big knob of rock off to the northeast? How far away is it from here?”

  “I was looking on the topo map earlier, it’s about six miles.”

  “Right. Well tonight, when the sun goes down, walk over there and climb to the top. Take a canteen, but do not take a light. Any light. And be there, at the top, when the sun comes over the mountains. If you don’t make it in time, come back, sleep during the day, and do it again tomorrow night. When you see the first rays of the sun from up there, you’ll know. You won’t know something, you’ll know.”

  He chuckles, in my head, Christ he sounds like a very smooth radio announcer, the kind of guy that can sell you stuff you don’t need and make you like it.

  “What if I never make it before sunrise?”

  “Then you’ll die out here.”

  He chuckles again, louder and longer, genuinely amused. “One more thing before I go. Are you expecting to be a father nine months from now?”

  “Maybe, Phil. I certainly gave it my best shot.”

  “Hahaha! Well, no extra credit, I teed that one up for you. But I don’t think so, Cal. Janet is a lovely woman, but she’s a real ReHume lifer. I expect she set you up so that you’ll want to go stay with her up in Mendocino and keep on trying. And trying. And once you’ve spent some time at The Ranch, you’ll want to make it permanent. Believe me, I know. I personally set the whole operation up.”

  “I guess I got taken in pretty good.”

  “Well, it was worth it, wasn’t it?”

  “Oh hell yes.”

  “Just one more thing, son. After you see the sunrise from the top of the hill, you ought to get away from the cities for a couple of years. Go live in a little town, do something different, get away from it and wait and watch. You’ll know when it’s time to make your next move. Someone will let you know—don’t get too bound up to ReHume yet. Nobody told you this, and probably no one was going to tell you for a long time, but ReHume is there to save the world from the outside. You’re already on the inside. When the time comes you’ll know the…”

  And he cuts off like a switch being thrown, and all of a sudden I’m back in the desert, I’ve been here all along but I wasn’t seeing anything but a blur, but it’s all so sharp now, the sun’s well over the mountain and everything is bathed in hot light.

  I wonder if what he said about Janet is true, and laugh to myself, how the hell would he know? It’s logical enough, the conniving old son of a bitch and his conniving followers. It doesn’t really matter though, Christ if I die tonight, I’ll die thinking of that, of her smell and the silky skin on the insides of her thighs.
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  I turn and look at the knob of rock. Six miles. Hell, it’s stroll in the park, my ancestors would have done it, easy, to protect their village, their tribe. They would have done it carrying a spear, a shield, a 1903 Springfield.

  I crawl back in to the tent to take a nap.

  24. 8 years ago, Cima Dome, Mojave Desert, California May 27, 5:35 am

  There’s plenty of pre-dawn light, light to see each toe and handhold, but I’m familiar with them now, every one, I could see them in the dark, I’m sucking air but this time I will not be denied, I feel the True Will that drove the Heroes, Odysseus and Alexander and Sergeant York, to move forward no matter what, no matter pain and loss and suffering, I’ve tried it 20 times before but this is the Day, Der Tag.

  ~

  I move along the trail to the base quicker every night, in the dark but most nights with starlight and some part of the moon, learning the obstacles, the roots that trip and the hidden holes and loose rocks. The first night I didn’t even make to the base, stumbling in the dark, before the first ray of the sun struck the top of the knob and on the walk back to my camp I wondered how it was possible to climb the bastard before the dawn, but I didn’t understand yet how much you could learn when all the things you wanted to do were only One Thing, I never left before the sun officially went down, not just behind the mountains but official sundown, to cheat would be to try to make myself not believe something that I was inside of.

  It wasn’t cheating to scout the best route during the day though, and I’d been back and forth to the knob dozens of times, often just sleeping a couple of hours and going back out, searching, Noticing, remembering.

  And tonight I’d walked fast, trotted in the open places, much of it I could have done with my eyes closed, like a blind man.

  At the base of the rock I drain my water bottle, drop it and the small pack there, to pick up on the way back down, in the light. It’s still full dark but I can see the whole route I’ve picked to the top, the easiest, safest and quickest, not a straight line but three big switchbacks that avoid almost all the real vertical climbs. There’s only one face that must be climbed, no matter which route I take, one 50-foot near vertical but I know the handholds and the footholds by heart.

  ~

  I make the top of the knob with minutes to spare, stare at the spot on the mountain to the east where the sun will rise, it’s layered in red and orange and purple and blue, getting whiter by the second, and the first ray hits my eye, I blink but will myself to stare at it for a few more seconds, because it the signal that it’s time, time to move.

  I haven’t thought of where for weeks, told myself I wouldn’t until this day, the day I saw the sunrise from here, and I stand on the highest point of the knob, the very tip, and slowly turn, visualizing the world in each direction, I’m free to go anywhere now, I face west I see the Pacific, the beaches, and the thought of LA and Hollywood and fake plastic faces and plastic boobs is repulsive, I keep turning, facing south and I can feel it’s the wrong direction, my people came from the north, I need to go back for a while, I keep turning squinting my eyes as they slide past the piece of sun now over the mountain, until I’m looking that way.

  It’s more open to the north, I can see the farthest, I wonder if I’m seeing into Nevada. I suddenly know I want to stay in the desert, almost a month out here and it’s infused my soul, there’s nothing useless or gaudy or showy out here, everything is carved down to the bone, to the essential.

  I’ll drive north until I see something right.

  I turn and start back down.

  25. 8 years ago, Barrett Gold Mine, Nye County, Nevada, June 1, 2:17 pm

  The steady subtle roar of a working mine dims but doesn’t completely disappear as I close the door to the dusty mobile home with “OFFICE” lettered on it. The letters are the kind people use to put their name on a mailbox, tiny and gold and slanted. I have to duck my head an inch or two to make sure it clears the top of the door frame.

  The man at a stand-up desk to my left looks up, looks me in the eye. He’s got a big head, big shoulders, an incredible bushy black mustache and a large silver semi-auto handgun in a shoulder holster under his left armpit.

  “Can I help you?” he asks, but the tone indicates he doubts it very much.

  “Mr. Barrett, My name is Cal Adler, and I want to work for you,” I say, looking him right in the eyes back. A first glance at him tells me that any indication of submission, any loss of frame, will lower the supplicant in his eyes and make the rest of the “interview” painful and likely useless.

  He nods, once. “Okay, what can you do that would be useful?”

  I turn a little, make sure I’m facing him square, raise my chin parallel to the floor.

  “I can fix and maintain anything electrical—the mill, the trucks, the generator, all of the equipment. That’s my training. I can repair the engines and the hydraulics on the equipment, too, but I don’t have a certificate.”

  “That’s nice,” he says. “Can you drive a truck?”

  “I’ve never driven anything as big as what I saw going up the road, but I can learn, quick, if that’s what you need.”

  “That’s what I do need, at the moment,” he says. “Other needs come up, from time to time. But before we go any further with this, why the hell would you want to work here? The power company in town is hiring, pays good, you work your shift and go home, ‘cept when there’s an outage. I’m out here 55 miles from civilization, it’s damn hot, and dirty, I’ve got 20 men and no women on my crew, they sleep in the trailers five nights a week and the other two they spend at the bars in town or the whorehouse. And if they come back too hungover to work I fire ‘em on the spot, and if I have to I drive a truck or run a loader myself, ‘til I can get someone in here who wants to work. And they ain’t as plentiful as they used to be.”

  “I want to work,” I say. “What I want to do, is make gold. I want to turn dirt into bullion. And I don’t go to whorehouses.”

  He smiles, thinly. “I’m not sure I believe that, but if you really want to make gold, and you’re willing to do whatever needs to be done, whenever I tell you to do it, you’re hired. You look a man in the eye, and that tells me more than any paper application.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet, son. Your job is gonna be assistant maintenance man until we get you licensed driving truck and maybe some other things. You get 15 dollars an hour, a bunk in trailer number four and three meals on workdays. You buy your own clothes, and they will get worn out, ‘cause you’re gonna be down inside the ducts changing air filters, and clearing rock jams on the conveyors with a pry bar, when you’re not washing the dust off every surface on the property.”

  He comes out from behind the desk, looking even bigger in the open—maybe an inch shorter than me, broader, no bulge out over his big silver belt buckle.

  He holds out his hand. “Every man here gets a monthly bonus based on how much gold we take out and the price, of course. You have to be here for the full month to start getting it. Your position at the bottom of the pecking order usually draws around 6, 700 in bonus. Do we have a deal?”

  “Yes, Mr. Barrett, we do.” I take his hand, firmly, and he gives me one good shake and lets go.”

  “Call me Jim, from now on.”

  He takes a step back, looks me up and down. “You claim you don’t frequent whorehouses, but I noticed you didn’t say you don’t go to bars. What do you drink, Cal?”

  “Whisky.”

  He turns around without a word, walks past his desk to a dark wood cabinet, swings open the upper door and pulls out a bottle of Old Grandad and two glasses.

  “When can you start?” he asks.

  “Now.”

  “Good. Just a taste, then. I’ll get you a coverall and some gloves. Dinner break in four hours.”

  He pours one finger into each of the glasses, hands me one.

  “To your new career in the mining industry.” He raises his glass and inch
, and I do the same. He laughs, briefly.

  “You’re not from around here, obviously. How much time have you spent in town?”

  “I drove in yesterday, stayed overnight. Everyone was pretty friendly.”

  “Yep. There’s a lot of square miles in this county and not a whole lot of people. Look ‘em in the eye and treat ‘em with respect, and you’ll get along just fine. Get a bad rep and you’ll be leaving, soon enough.”

  He downs his drink, and I do the same. He runs his tongue around the inside of his lips, makes a satisfied smack.

  “C’mon, I’ll show you around the property and where to walk so you don’t get your ass run over.”

  26. 6 years ago, The Lucky Lady Bar & Grill, Nye County, Nevada March 3, 7:47 pm

  The place is more than packed, bulging, normal for a Saturday night but I usually get here earlier. I don’t want to get in line behind the ten people waiting for tables so I continue through the restaurant, dodging waitresses, and check out the bar in the back room. Every seat at the bar is full, too, but I see one of the stand up tables has a single at it, a young guy in a suit, so I head over to ask if I can join him.

  He sees me coming and looks at me for a second, in the eyes, judging. He’s an inch or so shorter, but a big man. I get the impression that he’s alert for physical threats. His right hand has the slightest curl in it, a hint of instant readiness to reach for something at his waist. I studiously avoid looking down to try and discern if it’s straight, cross draw or shoulder holster.

  “Mind if I join you?”

  “Sure,” he says, relaxing. “You’re going to have to stand to the side here so I can see who comes in the door, though.”

  I smile at him briefly. “Fair enough. I’ll watch your blind side then.”

  He laughs and sticks out his hand. “Josh Miller.”

  “Yes, I recognize you now, Mr. District Attorney. I’m Cal Adler.”