Windwhistle Bone

by Richard Trainor

  “That’s not what I heard.”

  “It was nothing. You didn’t steal Miranda away from anybody. The lady’s not for sale and she can’t be held. She’s kinda like a guy.”

  “A lot like a guy,” John said. He wasn’t laughing now.

  The rest of the walk back to Alan’s house was quiet, and so little light was cracking through the fog cover that the day seemed as though it were perpetual dusk. There was an almost eerie quality to it if you stepped back from it and viewed it objectively, though to Ram, it seemed perfectly natural, for it mirrored his state-of-being: ill-defined, in tones of chiaroscuro, shrouded, and numb. And years later, Ram wondered whether the frigidity of that time, that wintry season of fogs and frosts and snow, the coldest on record in Sagrada for 100 years, had anything to do with the numbness of those methadone days, or was it somehow the outward emanation of the vaporizing freon that ran in his veins and the sub-zero climate of his spirit. In the end, all that mattered was that it was: Ram Le Doir and the times were equally Arctic.

  Ram was sitting at Alan’s kitchen table smoking a cigarette and looking down at the street below when he saw a four-door Plymouth cruise by slowly. There were two men in the car, a late model job, and Ram didn’t like the look of it. At the time, he said nothing. Then a second car, a different color but the same general description, with two men inside, cruised by in the opposite direction.

  “I think we’re gonna have company,” Ram said.

  Devlin asked him what he was talking about and Ram said he thought there were narcs in the neighborhood. Devlin came to the window to look outside but the cars had passed out of sight by then. “You’re fucking crazy, Le Doir. That methadone is making you hallucinate,” Dev said. As he was saying this, Devlin turned back to the stove and didn’t see the third car, a late model, four-door Plymouth, different color than the first two, pull up. When cars One and Three pulled up alongside, they all rolled down their windows to talk.

  “So, I’m crazy, huh, Devlin?” Ram finally said. “Here, what do you make of this?”

  Devlin turned to look and saw that it was real, that something was coming down fast. He ran and fished out his stash from his suitcase and flushed it down the toilet.

  A moment later, Alan came in through the front door. “There’s a whole bunch of cops all over the street. Something’s going down at the corner.”

  Ram and John and Alan went to the front room and John pulled the drapes back to look out on the action down in the street below. A group of plainclothes policemen were mounting the apartment steps across the street when a door flew open and shots were fired. Two cops were hit and tumbled back down the stairs. Their comrades returned fire with shotguns and the door slammed closed. The Shoot-Out on Q Street, a legend in its own time though now so long forgotten as to be fiction, had officially begun.

  Ram most remembered the sirens, and how sleepy, tulé-and-snow choked Sagrada seemed as though it were screaming, the echoes of the siren whine coming from all directions and converging on Q Street directly across from them. Police and sheriffs and fire engines and ambulances, all wailing and disgorging occupants, all armed to the teeth with pistols and shotguns and tear gas grenade launchers, stretchers and ladders and every emergency apparatus imaginable. The street was teeming with emergency personnel—at least fifty or more and growing by the minute. A crowd began to gather to watch the 6 o’clock news-like scene, to observe and analyze and cheer and boo the unfolding action. After twenty minutes of shots exchanged, one of the apartment-treed gang threw open the front door and tried to shoot his way out. A sheriff’s shotgun cut him almost in two. He sort of stuck to the building a bit before he slid down the siding, dead. The door shut from the inside and the cops shot it out from both directions from the Q Street side and from the windows fronting out onto 18th Street. After a while, the cops pumped some tear gas into the apartment and one of the canisters hit something flammable and the building caught fire. But still the gang wouldn’t give up and continued shooting it out. It went on like that for a while, fusillade against fusillade, maybe an hour or so. But the flames and the smoke were getting to be too much, and finally, one of the trapped men broke open a window. He dangled his gun outside and tossed it in surrender. Some cheered, others booed. A fire truck ladder was extended up to the window and the fireman scaled it to fetch the man out. Smoke was rolling out of the building now and the flames were thirty feet above the roof. The trapped man inside flopped out the window and hung outside. When the fireman reached him, he went to pull him toward him. The man’s flesh was so superheated it came off in chunks and stuck to the fireman’s gloves. Finally, another fireman climbed the ladder and they managed to get him out.

  By then, the scene was most alive. There were hundreds of people on the street. A unicyclist’s head bobbed above the knotted crowd and the colored balls of a juggler blipped through the gray sky. Knots of people gathered and pointed at the burning building as they explained what had happened to more recent arrivals. They were bank robbers whose three-state spree of small town robberies had finished in Placerville earlier that morning. Someone had taken down their license plate and a Sagrada plainclothes policeman had followed their car to the apartment house on Q Street. A white canteen truck arrived and cold food and refreshments were made available. The police and sheriffs had their own canteen truck, a black-and-white one, and the veterans of the gun fight gathered in the vacant lot alongside Alan’s house, doing post-mortem dissections of their performance. Like the crowd, they too were pointing and gesturing, shaking their heads and describing what happened. It was like the aftermath of a football game at Kezar Stadium, Ram thought, and the scene went on for another hour or so. It was better than the circus coming to town when he was a kid, Ram thought then.

  Finally, Devlin got up and went into the bathroom, coming back with a fat joint which he lit and handed to Ram. “The other shit I could lose, but they weren’t getting my Jamaican,” John said. “I paid fifty bucks an ounce for this shit.”

  And it was at that moment, with the Jamaican weed going and Lou Reed’s “Walk on the Wild Side” murmuring out of the stereo, that Ram knew that his time in Sagrada was closing. He sipped at the joint, stunned on the sofa, thinking that this was too close for him, that only chance and circumstance had kept him here on this side of the street, an observer, and not there on the other as a participant. Ram didn’t say much about it to Devlin or anybody at the time, but he knew that he wouldn’t survive the summer if he stayed in Sagrada. He’d find himself in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong bunch, and it would be him glued to the siding or coming off in chunks on a fireman’s gloves. The following Monday, Ram went to the clinic and told them that he wanted to detox off methadone in three weeks. They said that he was crazy, that it would take six months at least; Ram said that he wanted off in the time that he said and that he appreciated their advice but he’d take his chances. The clinic reluctantly approved his request after again trying to get him to reconsider. But for Ram, there was no other option, for he saw himself as he would become that August or September: gray, cold, and badly groomed, turned out in a suit, lying in a parlor of bad flowers sibilant with sobs for the someone who they imagined him to be…

  …Ram walked down St. Jacobsstraat over to the Spui, turned left onto it and headed toward the Egg Cream. When he entered, Susan gave him a small table by the front window and he ordered uitsmijter, orange juice and coffee. He thought back to the time of when he’d first met Jimmy Ray and Vance back on Cannery Row, when they owned The Hamburger Joynt and lived in an old boiler inside the cannery next door to Endymion Records, where Fran and Mike Boswell lived and worked as Endymion’ carpenters. That was right before Ram’s first journey into exile, to Vancouver with Jason and Walt, and he remembered those spring days on Cannery Row with all the freaks from the Boat Works and the Hamburger Joynt. Then he came back to where he was and saw that the time was getting away from him, that he had better get back to The Oporto if he wa
nted to have some time with Netty before her shift started.

  He stopped to pee along the backside of the Nieuwkerk and looked up and watched the seagulls and pigeons wheeling above him. It was maybe 11:30 now and the sky was cracking all the way open—an almost cloudless Titian-colored firmament. And Ram thought about what Vance had said and began asking himself whether returning to California was such a good idea, as it once seemed a month before when Fran was there. To make peace with the Old Man again. That was one reason, Fran said, Ram should come back home; things were changing, the weasels were on the run; that was another. He tried to think of the other ones that Fran and he had talked about that day when they took the boat and went to the Doelen, but all that Ram knew was that he was leaving because he somehow felt obliged to do so, and the more he thought about it, the less he liked it.

  …They were cruising down Singelgracht on a glass-topped canal boat. Other than the tour guide and a handful of Germans, Fran and Ram had the boat to themselves. It was a miserable gray day with gusting winds and black clouds moving in toward Nassaukade from out west across the English Channel. Ram stretched out and looked up at the fat raindrops splattering the glass roof above him.

  “You ever think about coming back home?” Fran asked.

  Ram closed his eyes and blew out a deep breath.

  “Not much.”

  “Why is that?”

  “I don’t know, Fran. Amsterdam’s my home now. Besides, there wasn’t much left there that I’d want to go back for. I pretty much made a wreck of things there.”

  “But you said that’s all over with now.”

  “Yeah, it is. Here it is. But how do I know I won’t get back into it if I go back there?”

  “Well, don’t go back there—to Sagrada, I mean.”

  “Where would I go then?”

  “Come with me to Monterey.”

  Ram laughed.

  “What would I do there, Fran?”

  “I don’t know. Find a job; go back to school, whatever you want. I’ll help you get started doing something.”

  “I’ll tell you something. I’m pretty happy right here in Amsterdam. I’ve got a nice apartment, a business that keeps me alive and is fun to do and isn’t hurting anybody. Plus, I’ve got a few bucks put aside and a bunch of friends I can trust. Like I say, it’s not much but it’s mine. I fit in here. I belong here… Back there? I don’t know. I never could make it there, so why would it be different now?”

  “Things are different now, Ram. Politically, I mean. Nixon’s on the run and things will start to loosen up and get better, I think.”

  “Cut off the head and the body dies, right? I’m not so sure about that, Fran.”

  “It’s time is over now. That whole thing is coming apart.”

  Ram leaned back and turned to his brother so they were face to face. He shook out a cigarette, lit it and inhaled, blew out the smoke, and smiled broadly.

  “You really believe that, Fran? I mean, really?”

  His brother was smiling crookedly. He nodded his head in the affirmative but remained silent.

  They were on the Amstel now, just opposite Frederiksplein, and the weather was showing signs of temporary clearing. At the next stop, they disembarked and walked down broad Sarphatistraat through Frederiksplein and on toward Leidseplein. Just past the Westencircuit, it started raining hard again and they boarded a tram to complete the journey to the Doelen where Kon and Janie said they’d meet them.

  Fran and Ram took seats in the hotel bar and ordered two coffees. They were looking out on Prinsengracht, its waters reflecting the marbled-black sky. Wind squalls caused raindrops to spatter the water like fusillades of arrows, and the sky was growing blacker with the onset of what promised to be a heavy storm. Ram stirred his coffee, laughed, and sighed.

  “What? What’s funny?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. It’s not funny really, just strange or something… I remember that this was where Mac took Jaime and Juan and me when we first got here to A’dam from Sitges. Another one of those Jaime stories.”

  “Like the tree and Corona Road story?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well, tell it then.”

  “Nah, Fran, not this one. This one was a you-had-to-be-there kind of deal.”

  Fran shifted uneasily in his chair, unzipped one of his parka pockets, and pulled out a travel company envelope. There were two tickets inside. He handed them over to Ram. Ram examined them. They were one-way tickets from Amsterdam to San Francisco with a weeklong layover in New York. One had Fran’s name on it; the other had Ram’s.

  “Is this your idea of a joke? Or maybe you think it’s a surprise,” Ram sneered.

  “It’s not from me. It’s from Dad. He wants to see you, Ram. He wants you to come home.”

  “My God, Fran. I already told you that I am home. This is my home, right here, Amsterdam.”

  “Just come home for a while then. Do it to please him.”

  “Toss the old man a bone, huh? Why? I don’t see the point.”

  “Ram, he’s your father. We’re your family. Peter asks about you all the time and Mom’s worried about you. Everybody’s always asking about you and wondering what you’re doing—”

  “—In evil Amsterdam. I’m sure they are. I can only guess how they’re using that shit against me.”

  “You can come back in six months when the weather will be better than it is here now.”

  Ram looked out the Doelen windows to the steady rain now tattooing Prinsengracht. The sky was black and blue and ugly, and passersby were scurrying on the slick cobbles trying to maintain their balance on the uneven stones.

  But as inclement and harsh as A’dam’s weather could be, Ram loved it just as well. Its severity forced people inside—into cafés, bars, and hotels—where they were forced to interact with one another. Ram thought of Sagrada and its culture of freeways and fast food chains and malls; the whole mythic readymade and all up for grabs, an environment that, by its very nature, almost prohibited social interaction, and he considered what his brother had just said.

  “I guess the weather would be better this time of year,” Ram finally said.

  “Then you’ll come back with me?”

  “I’ll think about it.”

  At that moment, Konrad and Janie entered the bar. For the next hour, Neuer gave a detailed account of their tour to the Sex Museum and the Live Sex show bars they visited in the Red Light. At another time, Konrad’s account might have amused them, but the conversation which Fran and Ram had seemed to kill Neuer’s strange sense of humor for them, and the best Fran or Ram could manage were smiles and gentle abstracted laughter. The four sat through two beers and then Ram got up to leave for home. They shook hands and got up to leave.

  “I’ll call you from Interlocken, Ram, about what we were talking about earlier.”

  “I told you I’d think about it, Fran. I’m not making any promises.”

  Ram hugged his brother goodbye, then said goodnight to Kon and Janie and walked home to 69 Keizersgracht. At the corner of Heerenstraat, Ram thought about stopping in for a beer at the Heeren. But he was too tired for that now. Unlike a month before when all seemed sure, there was much uncertainty for him to consider…

  …Ram crossed Kalverstraat—The Walking Street—now filling with Sunday shoppers and strollers. A gypsy accordionist was playing holiday music; his daughter was jingling a tambourine in one hand and in the other, shaking a tin cup filled with coins. Ram reached in his pocket, pulling out a guilder and a handful of pfennigs, and dropped it in her cup. The young girl thanked him with a tambourine shake and a slight curtsey. Then Ram continued up The Zoutsteeg toward The Dam. When he entered The Oporto, he looked through the smoke and saw Netty sitting at the back table near the jukebox. Ram walked over to her, and the music started to play:

  "Your long, blonde hair,

  And your eyes of blue,

  The only thing I ever got from you was Sorrow,

  Sorrow.
"

  “Here I am, not too late, I hope,” said Ram sitting down.

  “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come back,” she said.

  “I told Hans—”

  “—I know what you told Hans. Hans told me. But I didn’t think you’d come back.”

  Ram looked at her and smiled. “I always keep my word, Netty.”

  “Yes, Peter always says that about you. Ram is good for his promise, Peter says.”

  They both smiled wanly and uneasily. Netty had asked Ram to meet her and said that she had something to tell him. Ram couldn’t conceive of what that might be. He hardly knew her, except from The Oporto, where she worked waiting tables and sometimes behind the bar. She’d always been kind to him, but they had never conversed much except to talk about music, and Ram hadn’t the slightest idea why she needed to see him on this, his last day in Amsterdam.

  “Could we go for a walk?” Netty asked.

  “Yeah, sure. Where to?”

  “Oh, it’s not important. I’d just like to be out in the sun while it’s shining.”

  Netty told Hans that she’d be back in an hour or so and stood up to leave. She looked lovely, dressed in black. It matched her long, corkscrewed curls and contrasted with the paleness of her skin. When they got outside, she looked even more striking. She was wearing a tight black leather miniskirt and black nylons with a skintight lace top, and Ram could see that she was bare beneath it. Over all this was a long black leather coat. The only colors other than the black of her clothes and the white of her skin was her red lipstick and blue shoes, which Ram couldn’t help noticing.

  “They’re my special shoes,” she said, catching him. “Blue shoes for a blue day,” she said and tried to smile.

  Ram looked at her uneasily. ‘Perhaps a death in the family,’ he thought.

  They walked across The Dam past the big department store and into the red light district and through it, strolling slowly past the bars with the live sex shows and prostitutes posing in their black-lit windows. They walked past the Oude Kirke, turned right on Oudezijds Voorburgwal, and then left past the Nieuwmarkt, and walked through the quieter part of the district, heading toward the Oudeschans. When they reached it, they turned southeast again, heading toward Waterlooplein. When they got to the square along the canal at Zwanenburgwal, Netty asked Ram if they could sit on a bench and rest a while. Ram had no objection, and they took a seat on one of the benches near the end of the canal where it emptied into the Amstel. A barge was passing on it. A flock of seagulls wheeled about its aft, a deckhand scattering grain to them. Netty laughed lightly.