The Forgiven

by Mike Shepherd

  I didn’t like the thought of hitchhiking at night, and the beers I’d drunk had put me in a partying mood, so I took the guy up on his invitation.

  When we arrived at the party, we had finished the six pack, but a keg was waiting -- along with Jake, and six other people. Two were young women who looked like they were barely old enough to drink. In fact, everyone looked like that, but, boy, could they drink! In addition to the beer, they were drinking from a big bowl of red punch into which I saw someone pour a bottle of some kind of clear booze.

  Ricky – the guy who had picked me up, introduced me to Jake, and he told him I was a Vietnam veteran.

  “Know anything about the Mekong Delta?” he asked. “That’s where I’m going. I’ll be with the Riverines.”

  I knew that it was dangerous down there, especially for the Riverines, but I didn’t want to alarm Jake, so I simply said, “It’s hot.”

  “Like Kitty here?” Jake wrapped an arm around one of the women and squeezed her.

  I had to admit, she was nice looking – a full-figured blond with big blue eyes like Cathy Riggins.

  “Kitty, meet Mick.”

  “Hi, Mick. Ricky told me you’re going to San Francisco. Lucky you. I’d love to go there someday.”

  “Go with him,” Jake said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t mind. You’d get rides pretty fast.”

  We chuckled, knowing Jake was only kidding. But his light-hearted suggestion opened the door for more serious conversation between Kitty and me. She asked me if I had a girlfriend.

  “No.”

  “I don’t have a boyfriend, in case you thought it was Jake. We’re just friends.”

  Apparently a drunk and slobbering Jake didn’t see it that way. He pawed Kitty while she tried to talk to me, so I took her hand and we went outside to the back porch for a refreshing breath of night air. It was a little cool, so I draped my denim jacket around Kitty’s shoulders and she snuggled up to me. We embraced and kissed. We stayed on the porch for quite a while until it got too chilly. When we went back inside, the party had fizzled out. Jake had crashed in his bedroom, Ricky was passed out in a recliner, and the others were gone.

  Kitty and I lay on the couch and continued to make out, but she was drunk from the potent punch, and she soon fell asleep in my arms. Before long I did the same. When I woke up at the crack of dawn, Kitty was gone. On my chest was a note: “Thanks for rescuing me from my ‘friend’ Jake.”

  I grabbed my backpack and sleeping bag and headed out. Jake’s apartment wasn’t far from the interstate, so it wasn’t long before I was at it again with my thumb out.

  As in St. Louis, the Kansas City traffic was heavy and fast-moving. I walked for a couple of miles, until I came to a truck stop, where I had a bite to eat. A chubby guy with long, dark sideburns and a mustache, who was sitting at one of the tables, motioned for me to come over to him.

  “I saw you hitchhiking a ways back, but I couldn’t stop. If you’ll wait till I finish my breakfast I’ll give you a ride. I’m going to Denver. Will that help?”

  “Sure will.”

  It was a bouncy ride. The shocks in that 18-wheeler weren’t very effective at absorbing the numerous bumps on the road, but it beat standing on the side of the road being buffeted by the violent draft from passing trucks that blew grit in my eyes.

  Apart from the bouncing, I enjoyed riding up high with a panoramic view of the green Kansas plains rolling endlessly into the treeless blue horizon. The plains were austere compared to the wooded hills of Missouri through which I’d traveled the day before.

  The driver’s personality was just as austere. He didn’t speak for miles, and not until I spoke to him.

  “How long have you been a truck driver?” I asked.

  “Counting convoy duty in Vietnam -- four years.”

  “I’m a ‘Nam vet too.”

  “Oh yeah? What did you do there?”

  “I was a combat correspondent for Armed Forces Radio.”

  “A reporter, huh?”

  He sounded a little put off by the revelation.

  “Civilian or military?” he asked.

  “Military.”

  “Then you probably told the truth unlike those civilian assholes.”

  “For the most part. There were a few things we weren’t allowed to say.”

  “Like what?”

  “In ’67 we wouldn’t admit that there were North Vietnamese soldiers in such great numbers in the south, or that we used napalm, because it was considered inhumane.”

  “What a joke.” He laughed. “We were constantly being ambushed by the North Vietnamese in ’67, and the Air Force used napalm to fend them off.”

  The driver had gone from taciturn to outspoken.

  “That’s the trouble with this war. The press has bamboozled the American people. I’ll give you another example. The Tet Offensive of ’68 was a devastating defeat for the Viet Cong, yet Walter Cronkite made it out to be a victory for them. He said the war had become a stalemate, even though we kicked the enemy’s ass. Hell, LBJ decided not to run for a second term because of what Cronkite said. No newsman should have that much power. So here we are in 1972 and we’re about to pull out of the war before the job gets done,”

  We rode along in silence again, mile after mile through Kansas and the high plains of eastern Colorado, and gradually, in the hazy distance, the Rocky Mountains and Denver’s skyline appeared.

  The sun was setting behind the mountains, which cast their purple-gray shadows over the city, but there was still plenty of time left in the day for me to catch a ride north to Cheyenne before dark. I’d told the driver that was where I’d be going, so, as we approached Denver, he let me out on a clover leaf that circled into I-25.

  By the time I got to Cheyenne via piecemeal rides, it had gotten dark, so I checked into a cheap motel to get a warm shower and a good night’s rest.

  I slept fairly well and got an early start going west on I-80. The weather was warm for Wyoming in the spring. Because of the altitude, the air was thinner than I was accustomed to, and I got winded walking as I hitchhiked. I plopped down on my backpack and nonchalantly stuck my thumb out, appearing indifferent, I’m sure, as to whether I got a ride or not. Sometimes when you don’t try as hard, things come your way, and they did when two teenagers in a pickup truck stopped and motioned for me to ride in the back. It was now late afternoon, and it was chilly as the wind blew over me. I was relieved to get out of the wind when they stopped at a roadhouse on a secondary highway at the edge of the Medicine Bow National Forest, according to a sign I saw.

  To my puzzlement, after I got out of the truck, they sped away, laughing wildly. What was so damn funny, I wondered, about dropping me off in the middle of nowhere? I soon found out. When I entered the establishment, I saw that it was a cowboy hangout. Cowboys didn’t take kindly to long hairs with pony tails, at least the male kind, judging from the looks of animosity I received.

  Those mischievous boys knew what they were getting me into.

  The bartender didn’t seem too enthusiastic about my presence either. He asked me, in an unfriendly tone, what I wanted.

  “Whatever’s on tap,” I said.

  He slid a beer in front of me and snatched up my money without saying thanks. The others in the bar stared at me, and I drank the beer as fast as I could. I wanted to get out of the place quickly. I was reminded of the Lynyrd Skynyrd song about the long hair who happened into a red neck roadhouse, which pleaded: “Give me three steps mister, give me three steps for the door, and you won’t see me no more.”

  After I left, I started walking in the direction from which I thought I had come, but after about two miles I realized I was going the wrong way, and was heading toward the forest. It was almost nightfall and there was no traffic going either way, so I decided to bed down in the forest, in the sleeping bag I had with me.


  The forest floor was soft with fallen pine needles, and quite comfortable. I was warm enough in the sleeping bag, despite the chilly air, laden with the soothing scent of pine. The stark silence, save for the faint whispering of a breeze in the trees, was a welcome relief from the noisy interstates I’d been on for the last two days. Or was it three? Damn, I was losing track of time, and the number of miles I had gone, with many more to go before I reached San Francisco, and Ferlinghetti’s City Lights Book Store.

  In the morning, after a peaceful night’s sleep, I began what I thought would be about a five mile trek back to I-80. There was almost no traffic -- not surprising for a dead end road -- so I ended up walking all the way back to the interstate. Luckily, there was a Stuckey’s restaurant there. I had a big breakfast becasuse I hadn’t eaten for a while. Then I was on my way again. After getting a series of relatively short rides, then one long one with a rancher hauling horses, I reached Utah before a VW bus painted with peace signs and flowers, with New York plates and four hippies inside, pulled over.

  “Where ya going?” one of them asked through an open window.

  “San Francisco.”

  “You’re in luck. We’re going there too. Climb in.”

  They looked like a rock band on tour. One of the women strummed a guitar and the other one thumped and jingled a tambourine. The inside of the van smelled like marijuana. A joint was going around. They assumed, I guess, that because I had long hair, I would gladly partake. They were right. When the joint came around to me I took a hit and passed it on. Around it went, and before long I was delightfully stoned, and some of the words to Scott McKenzie’s hit song came to mind: “If you’re going to San Francisco be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” And these women did wear flowers in their hair. I asked the woman that the others called Abigail why they were going to San Francisco.

  “For the Summer of Love reunion in June,” she said.

  I had been in Vietnam when it happened, but I’d read about in the Pacific Stars and Stripes newspaper. It was a rousing rockfest featuring Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, the Who, the Doors, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix, to name just a few.

  “How about you?” Abigail asked.

  “To visit Lawrence Ferlinghetti at his City Lights Book Store.”

  “Far out!” she exclaimed.

  One of the men asked me if I was a poet too.

  “Sort of. I’ve written a few poems.”

  “Far out,” was his response also.

  Far out, for sure. I had become totally stoned out of my mind. Too stoned to talk much more. Apparently the others were, too, and we rode along in silence for quite a while.

  It was another three-joint stretch across Utah and around Salt Lake City, and eventually into Nevada. We drove all night and then some. They switched drivers when we stopped for gas and bought Twinkies and Fritos to take care of the munchies.

  By morning we were driving through Reno and into the Sierra Mountains of California. We took a side trip to Lake Tahoe, and went for a swim in a secluded cove. We weren’t the least bit inhibited about seeing each other naked, even though we were total strangers. The cold mountain water was refreshing after riding in a stuffy van for so many miles.

  Reinvigorated after the swim, we embarked on the last leg of the journey around Sacramento and to San Francisco through Oakland and across the Bay Bridge. As we crossed the bridge, the towering Transamerica Pyramid Building, Coit Tower and the magnificent Golden Gate Bridge came into view.

  “We’re going straight into Haight-Ashbury,” Peter, the driver, informed me. “We’ll park in Golden Gate Park and try to get by with sleeping in the bus there tonight. It’ll be too cramped in here for five, so I’d suggest that you find some place else to crash,” he said matter-of-factly.

  “Okay. Well then, thanks for the ride. So long.”

  They let me out at Haight and Market Streets and I walked around searching for a room to rent for the night. Haight-Ashbury didn’t look like the vibrant flower power enclave I expected to see. It was 1972 -- the hippies had become burned out street people wandering about aimlessly while presumably bumming money to support their drug habits.

  I was reluctant to stay in the area, but nightfall was fast approaching, and I needed to find a place to sleep. I went into a head shop and asked the clerk if he knew of any rooms to rent nearby.

  “Yeah. Down the street – the Wayfarer Hotel. I think it costs about 30 bucks a night. But be warned, its more like a roach hotel,” he said.

  That was okay by me, for the time being anyway, as long as I had a bed to lie on.

  A few blocks down, I saw the Wayfarer. It was easily identifiable by a flickering blue neon sign on the front of the building. I entered the small, musty-smelling lobby, where a seedy old man snored in a soiled, stuffed chair. I tapped on the bell next to a registration book on the front desk. He awoke with a start, and went behind the desk, grumbling. He asked gruffly if I wanted a room.

  “Yeah.”

  “Thirty-five dollars for one night,” he said. “No cooking or alcohol. Checkout at 11 a.m.”

  I gave him the money.

  “You’ll be in room 210. There’s a bathroom at the end of the hall with a tub. Towels in the room.”

  I immediately took a bath, returned to my room, and lay down to sleep, but the flickering neon sign outside my window kept me a awake for a while. Eventually it began to have a hypnotic effect, and lulled me to sleep. In the morning I woke up in time to check out by eleven, and I asked the guy who was now on duty how to get to the North Beach area, where the City Lights Book Store was.

  “Get on the Masonic Avenue bus going north, then transfer onto the Washington Street bus that goes east to Columbus Avenue. It’ll stop at the Transamerica building. City Lights is about six blocks northwest of there on Columbus. It’s a long ride.”

  When I finally reached Columbus Avenue, I got off the bus and walked the few blocks to the book store. On the way I stopped at a Cantonese restaurant for a delicious duck dinner (nobody does duck like the Chinese), then I went on to the book store, where I hoped to meet Ferlinghetti. If he was there, perhaps he’d remember me from his visit to Springfield.

  In the store, a few people browsed among the many book shelves. It was quiet, except for the faint sound of jazz playing on a radio, or stereo. The place smelled a little musty, as used book stores do, even though the store sold new books, too.

  Before long, I spotted Ferlinghetti – a man with a lean, angular face ands a graying goatee -- at the back shelving books. I approached him and told him that I was in Randy Randazzo’s Beat lit class at Sangamon State in Springfield.

  “Oh, wow! I didn’t expect to see anyone from there all the way out here. What brings you to San Francisco?”

  “You.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. I’m planning to write a paper on the Beats, and I wanted to pick your brain on the movement’s origin, and where it’s at now.”

  “Well, you’ve come to the right place. Come to my office. We’ll talk there.”

  His office was a cubby hole at the back of the store. It contained a couple of chairs, a desk and an electric typewriter with a half-typed sheet of paper in it. The desk was strewn with typewritten papers marked up with a pencil, evidence that he might have been working on a writing project. There was a coffee maker on a little table in the corner. He offered me a cup.

  “Cream, sugar?” he asked.

  “Black. Thanks.”

  He poured one for himself too, and sat at the desk.

  “In answer to your question about what’s happening with the Beat movement now – it’s still barely alive, thanks to cats like Randazzo who teach it at the universities and colleges, and some high schools.

  “As far as its origins, well, it goes all the way back to the early to mid-’40s in New York City and a group of
up-and-coming writers at Columbia University. The group, which included Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Neal Cassady and myself, walked to the beat of a different drum – if you will – experimenting with alternative lifestyles, including certain drugs that we believed would enhance our writing. We were the original counter-culture. Eventually, with the popularity of Jack’s On the Road, the Beat movement came to San Francisco, where it eventually became the hippie movement, which went nationwide, even to small towns in mid-America. But it, too, is beginning to die out. Have you been to Haight-Ashbury?”

  “Yes. Yesterday.”

  “Then you may have noticed that the flowers have become a little wilted, except for the poppies. Heroin use is flourishing there, between sharing both needles and multiple sex partners, so is venereal disease. Good place to stay away from. North Beach is where it’s at.”

  “So I’ve heard. I’d like to find a place to live around here for the summer.”

  “Consult the classifieds in the Chronicle,” Ferlinghetti suggested.“You can use my phone.”

  He left me alone in his office to look through the newspaper he’d handed me. I found an ad for an efficiency apartment on Columbus for $300 a month – very reasonable for this expensive city. I called the number to set up a meeting with the landlord, who sounded like an effeminate man. When we met, his physique was nothing like feminin. He was about 6’4’’ with a muscular build, enhanced by the tank top he wore. With his thick black mustache and hair, square chin and jaw, toothy smile and prominent dark eyes, he resembled Tom Selleck, but when he opened his mouth he sounded more like Farrah Fawcett.

  “Follow me, I’ll show you the apartment.”

  We went through an iron gate and onto a brick walk alongside the stucco building into a small courtyard at the back. He unlocked the door of the apartment, and we stepped inside. It had an Oriental motif with bamboo furniture. A large watercolor of a misty mountain scene hung on one of the walls. Another wall contained a Murphy bed. A bamboo curtain partitioned the room from a small kitchen. There was a small bathroom with a shower. It was a bright and airy little place, and I immediately agreed to rent it.