by William Poe
I managed to get Ernie to my room and stretch him out on the bed, pressing tightly against his body and wrapping my arm around his chest. If Ernie stopped breathing, I was ready to act.
The party raged until dawn. In succession, someone put on a song from Demons and Wizards and, finally, In the Court of the Crimson King. Ernie began to stir. I couldn’t bear thinking about what would happen if he awoke and found me holding him. I studied the pained expression on his face and then kissed his cheek. I feared it might be the last time I’d ever see him.
I left Jake’s and drove to Sibley as fast as my old car would take me. At that point, I didn’t care what happened to my stuff at Jake’s. Lenny eyed me suspiciously when I opened the back door. He had gotten up to take his medicine and sat in his bathrobe at the table with an array of prescription drugs in front of him. I had been crying the entire drive home. I must have looked drunk.
“You didn’t need to get behind a wheel in that condition.” Lenny said.
“I made it, though,” I replied, preferring that he think I was intoxicated.
Vivian came out of her room just as I shut the bedroom door and turned the key to lock it. I heard her walk up, but she didn’t knock.
Late in the day, Connie and Derek arrived. I put on a pair of jeans and a sweatshirt, and came downstairs. Vivian had planned a New Year’s dinner. I figured it might be best for me to leave, but somewhere inside, I still held out hope that there might be a place for me in this family. Even if I couldn’t tell anyone about Ernie, maybe they would realize that I needed solace.
Connie helped Vivian prepare the food. The menu would include black-eyed peas and corn bread, sweet potato pie, cranberry salad, and apple cobbler. The aroma of honey-cured ham cooking in the oven filled the house. We gathered in the dining room. I couldn’t remember the last time we spread a tablecloth over the great mahogany table. Tradition said that old JT had purchased it himself. Overhead hung the original chandelier, its candle cups long ago replaced by lightbulbs.
Vivian asked Lenny to say a prayer. I tried to drown it out with a silent chant, but Lenny was too loud.
“Lord, for this meal we are about to receive, we give thanks…And we pray you will put some sense into Simon’s head.”
I stood up and started toward the front door. Vivian tried to say something to Lenny, but the clatter of dishes as he pounded his fist silenced her.
How absurd to think that I was part of their family. I grabbed my coat and went onto the porch, leaning against one of the Doric columns that Lenny had repaired when we first moved into the mansion. Through the heavy oak door, I heard Vivian and Lenny squabbling. I shook my head to dispel memories of the many quarrels I’d endured as a child. I went to the back of the house and walked toward the creek.
In the darkness, Bracelet and Storm whinnied in the corral. The Corley house stood out in the distance through the leafless trees. Every year, Mrs. Corley paid decorators to install colored lights along the eves and to place a Christmas diorama on the roof: Santa, his sleigh, and all the reindeer, with Rudolf’s nose shining bright.
What must Ernie have thought when he awoke at Jake’s house and saw the recognizable self-portrait? Would he come to Sibley looking for me? How could I entertain such a fantasy! I knew exactly what Ernie would do—he’d be on the street looking for his next fix.
His last words to me echoed loudly: Can I come over?
Sure, Ernie. Anytime.
CHAPTER 14
When Mojo registered at the draft board, they classified him I-A. We had all listened to John Carson’s horror stories about Vietnam and dreaded Mojo getting the call to go. John hadn’t come home in a body bag, but little remained of his old self. Seeing what military service in Vietnam had done to him drove many Sibley alumni to join protest rallies; some even ran naked in streaking events. I attended several protests, but left the streaking to others.
The thought of going to war plagued Mojo until word spread that a Little Rock psychiatrist was willing to diagnose draftees with mental illness, allowing them to apply for a deferment. Dr. Hancock only accepted cash for this service. Mojo begged his estranged father for the money. Fortunately, Mojo’s father distrusted Richard Nixon more than he doubted his son’s motives.
Jake drove Mojo to the psychiatrist’s office. It was a propitious decision. At the office, Jake met the love of his life, Jewell Hancock, the doctor’s daughter. She was not only her father’s secretary; she had provided the impetus for the scheme to help young men evade the draft. Dr. Hancock believed it was the right thing to do, even though it put his license at risk.
Over the next few days, Jake spoke of nothing but Jewell. According to his version of the story, they looked into each other’s eyes, and immediately, it was love at first sight. Jewell’s description of their first encounter was a bit more circumspect. Jake’s sex appeal attracted her first; then she saw his loyalty to Mojo and recognized a man with a good heart. Growing up under the glare of psychoanalysis, she found Jake’s simplicity refreshing.
Jake and I would have ended up competing for Jewell’s affections if I had been straight. She was a naturally attractive, dark-haired beauty. Eye shadow would have diminished the penetrating quality of her lapis-blue eyes, which blazed beneath sweeping bangs.
I wasn’t straight, though, and Jewell recognized that fact on our first meeting. One wink and I knew she had me pegged.
Jake, Mojo, and I, along with Jewell and others who dropped by the little commune, took hallucinogens whenever good-quality drugs could be found. We came to prefer psilocybin mushrooms when they were available as well as mescaline, which we usually got in powdered form. Jake and Mojo continued to use heroin, but like me, Jewell drew the line at needles.
Eventually, under Jewell’s influence, Jake stopped shooting up. Mojo, on the other hand, freed from worries about going to war, did more heroin than ever.
Jewell was an easy person to confide in. I told her about my days in junior high school when I used to tutor Jake, and described how Jake and I sat together on the couch in Dot’s library and, instead of studying, read passages from The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Jake simply admired the poetry. I read the famous lines with a certain degree of emotion: A Jug of Wine, a Loaf of Bread—and Thou. Jewell understood my affections for Jake and didn’t feel threatened.
When the trees budded early that spring, everyone felt like getting out into nature, especially after a friend showed up at Jake’s having returned from a hike with a paper sack crammed full of psilocybin mushrooms. We made a quart of soup from them.
I suggested that we drink the hallucinogenic concoction at Petit Jean Mountain, a plateau in the Ouachita Mountain foothills. The deep hollows and complex rock formations were mysterious even when sober; we knew they’d be spectacular tripping on hallucinogens.
We drank the psilocybin soup from a thermos shortly after parking the VW bus. Jake and Jewell and I took the Seven Hollows Hiking Trail, while Mojo and the others decided to hang out around Bear Cave. The drugs took effect gradually, effortlessly transitioning us from beings governed by reason to creatures at the mercy of magical thinking.
It didn’t seem strange at all when I stopped to place pebbles into an empty hummingbird’s nest that I found nestled among the limbs of a redbud tree. Jewell and I climbed onto a rock ledge and waited for hummingbirds to hatch from the stones.
Without warning, Jake descended on the scene, caught up in his own mania as he dragged his knuckles on the ground and grunted like an ape. He took the pebbles from the nest and flung them at Jewell and me, all the while mouthing what sounded like the syllables of a primordial tongue.
Jewell and I held each other, fearing that we had violated the “natural order of things.” Jake leaped into the air and then knuckle-walked across the ground.
Apes live by nature’s law, a voice seemed to say.
I didn’t know where the sound had originated, but Jewell heard it, too.
Humans violate nature.
&nbs
p; Jewell and I embraced each other tighter, convinced that something outside our plane of existence wanted to communicate. Jake let out a bloodcurdling scream, curling his lips like a chimpanzee. He jumped from rock to rock while Jewell and I listened to the otherworldly voice.
Eventually, the three of us meandered to the valley floor, arriving at the base of Petit Jean’s waterfall. Sitting on the embankment of the pond formed by the falls, we talked about what had happened on the Seven Hollows Trail. Mushrooms are kinder than LSD when they leave the system. We were able to collect our thoughts and speak coherently.
Jewell described the voice we had heard. It was strange listening to her description, which matched what I had experienced exactly. Then we talked about what it meant to be “natural.” Jewell mentioned “Mr. Natural” and proposed that cartoons had their own existence. We weren’t, after all, completely sober.
Spray from the waterfall began to soak our clothes. Jake stood up, stripped naked, and plunged into the pond. Jewell followed his lead, taking off her clothes, stretching out her arms, and diving into the water. Jake’s ass rose from the surface as he jackknifed to submerge himself deeper. Jewell remained in the shallows, fixated by the waves radiating from her breasts as they bounced on the surface. Her hair flowed from her body, and I couldn’t help but think that she looked like the image of Ophelia from a pre-Raphaelite painting.
“Take off your clothes and jump in,” Jewell called out.
Jake disappeared under the water before resurfacing at a boulder and climbing onto it. He placed his hand on his naked hip, becoming a veritable replica of Donatello’s David. I half expected nightingales to swoop from the heavens with a billowy robe to hide his beauty from mortal eyes.
“Come on, Simon. Strip down and join us,” Jake urged.
He had no idea what he was asking. The cool air had hardened his nipples into tight little beads, and though I tried not to look, he was becoming aroused watching Jewell’s breasts agitating the water. A strong breeze lifted Jake’s hair, which brushed against the fair skin of his shoulders. He suddenly realized that he had grown fully erect and dove into the water. Jewell swam to meet him. While they were preoccupied, I shed my clothes and jumped in. Despite the chilly water, I was as hard as the rocks under my feet.
The experience at Petit Jean altered the character of my friendship with Jake. After seeing him in such an idyllic setting, and under the influence of such an emotionally powerful drug, my feelings became nearly unmanageable. It didn’t help that Jake had become more physical than he had been previously. Now he seemed to grab my arm when making a point and stood a little too close when we spoke to each other. Whenever I looked at him, I didn’t see my old friend; I saw the naked beauty poised on the boulder.
Not long after the psilocybin experience, Jake scored a sack of peyote buttons from a band of hippies who were driving through Little Rock in a dilapidated school bus on their way from Arizona to New York. He suggested that we go back to Petit Jean and camp out for a few days. “Wouldn’t it be cool to trip by moonlight?” Jake mused.
I didn’t want to go through the vomiting required to get high from raw peyote, and anyway, there were term papers to write. I used my schoolwork as an excuse not to go. It was true that if I didn’t get busy, I would earn bad grades for the first time in my life. Jake decided to go to Pettit Jean anyway and invited Mojo. Jewell wasn’t happy about him tagging along, but Jake insisted.
Ever since returning from Petit Jean, I had been working on a large painting, redolent of Gauguin’s Who Are We? What Are We? Where Are We Going? I had never attempted a painting on such a large scale. It was taking me a long time to complete. But I had to get it finished, since it was my final project for a junior-level painting class. My adviser had allowed me to take the class after I petitioned for advanced placement. If I didn’t prove myself, I’d be back to basic design classes.
I was anxious to get Stanley’s opinion of the painting and went to see him while Jake and the others were away. I planned to bring him to the house, but Stanley had been preparing for an acid trip and didn’t want to interrupt his ritual. He offered to have me join him, and I agreed, once again defeating my better judgment.
Stanley lit votive candles and placed tabs of Purple Haze acid between two crystal spires set erect on the cinder block altar. I sat next to him in the lotus position as we chanted before swallowing the drug.
Though Stanley and I were alone, I was sure I saw Jake enter the room. He took me by one hand as Stanley grasped the other. They led me toward Ghiberti’s bronze doors of the cathedral in Florence. My eyes fell on the panel depicting the sacrifice of Isaac. As I watched, the panels began to move, the images transforming into winged snakes that, one by one, flew into the heavens. Letters formed on the now barren doors, an alphabet at once alien and familiar.
I turned toward Stanley, who became an ethereal being with hair a liquid fire that flowed from his head and dripped onto the cobblestoned street like beads of lava. His mouth opened to become an Easter lily. A voice issued forth: Your art is Isaac. The Jake presence took my face in its hands and said with a compassionate voice, You will not be alone.
The cathedral doors now dissipated to reveal a vast plane leading toward infinity. A phalange of blazing-white angels trumpeted as if in victory. I took a step forward and lost myself in a blinding sunrise. The scene collapsed into a flicker of candlelight.
I’d been staring at it the entire time.
After a few hours crashing on Stanley’s floor, I left him sleeping and sat in my Chevy, pondering the statement I’d heard during the hallucination: Your art is Isaac. The voice called out, even then. Purple Haze was much stronger than other forms of LSD. I had not anticipated its power.
Fearing for my sanity, I drove to Sibley as desperately as if I were a vampire seeking ancestral ground before sunrise.
I sat in the drawing room, sipping tea with Mandy and Aunt Opal. Mandy told me family stories. Aunt Opal imparted ancient wisdom learned during her excursions to Nepal—words, she said, that came directly from the great lady, Madame Blavatsky.
Grandfather Bart appeared. He introduced me to our legendary ancestor, JT Powell. JT told me the names of the men who had hanged him.
I felt like someone trusted by the cosmos.
One week before Good Friday, my hallucinatory fantasies entered a new phase. Mojo had acquired what he said was the most potent windowpane acid ever to arrive in Little Rock. He divvied up hits with Jake and me. I invited Stanley, who arrived with a bag of quartz crystals, along with a recent addition to his spiritual arsenal—a magnetic ore he had collected in the Ozarks.
Jewell decided to abstain from acid for a while. A recent hit, cut with strychnine, had badly affected her. Now she stood watch in case the mishandling of a candle should start a fire or someone try to create a lake by overflowing the bathtub.
Stanley arranged his crystals in a circle and positioned the shards of magnetic ore into a pentagram. He placed the votive candles at cardinal points around the room. We chanted Nam Myōhō Renge Kyō. Mojo touched a speck of LSD-soaked cellophane to my tongue.
The drug raced through my synapses and shot along my spine. I thought my arms were on fire and ran into the yard to roll in the grass in an attempt to douse the flames. The crisp spring night brought me to my senses, at least to the degree that I realized flames had not engulfed me.
The ground shook and a great shaft of light descended from the sky. The well-defined beam created a round patch of light in the middle of the yard. Total darkness surrounded the shaft. As my eyes adjusted, I followed it to the source—a magnificent full moon, haloed by braided strands of energy that formed a rainbow. As I watched, an anthropomorphic form took shape in a sky laced with arteries and veins. My feet left the ground, and I floated through eternity, returning only when I heard the whimpering of a young pine tree. The sapling’s needles trembled with loneliness; the closer I approached, the more audible its weeping.
“What’s the
matter?” I asked, cupping my hand beneath a branch.
“For three years, no human has heard me,” cried the downcast tree.
Its expression of sadness pierced my soul. “What can I do for you?”
The tree swayed in the breeze, pleading wispily, “Can you love me?”
I ran my fingers along the bark, beginning where the trunk emerged from the soil and moving to the farthest reaches of each limb. The bark softened to become flesh. I ran my finger across Ernie’s neck, drifting toward his nether regions, then back to his face. A hand touched my ear. It was Vivian, comforting me in church.
With a crash, Mr. Klinghoffer’s “board of education” fell hard upon my thigh. Pain, like that which Jacob must have felt at the ford of Jabbok, nearly blinded me with its intensity. The fiery Angel of God descended along the widening shaft of light, holding a jewel-encrusted sword that it waved at a nearby dogwood. Ghostly white petals formed a mouth:
I took nails for the Christ they hanged,
His blood my petals stain.
Hear me, Son of Man—
You shall never see your home again.
The Angel of God compressed the dogwood limbs to create an arm. Spindly fingers pointed at me. I knelt, saying, I am not a Son of Man. Leaves gathered to form bloodstained lips.
Take this holy blood,
These sacred flowers.
Set them among your friends
And learn the lesson given.
Never come again to this place.
But seek the clouds of Heaven.
Daniel’s prophesy—He comes on the clouds of Heaven—surfaced from a distant Sunday school memory. I made a bouquet of the dogwood blossoms. Jake and Stanley paid no attention as I went to the middle of the room and set the bundle in a glass.