Miracles (The Remarkable Adventures of Deets Parker Book 3)

by J. Davis Henry

  At the sound of a baby’s cries, I reminded myself why I had come to Los Angeles and followed the sound. Jerry stood in a doorway nearby. I stepped up behind him. A nude woman was sitting on the bed, coaxing the crying baby to breast feed. A short, wild-haired guy sat in a rocking chair nearby.

  “Who’s playing peek-a-boo behind you, Jerry?”

  “Hitchhiker we picked up outside Flagstaff. He’s an artist. Deets, this is Freddie.”

  I nodded, and an immediate sensation of regretting I’d stepped foot in the house overwhelmed me. The rattlesnake skin hanging above a frenzied swastika hacked into the wood paneling and the blaze of evil I caught smoldering in Freddie’s eyes made me forget about the free weed, the bare tits, and a place to crash.

  “What’s in the knapsack? Any dope? Food?”

  “You should see this guy’s art, Freddie.”

  Freddie stood up, interested. “Yeah?”

  Jerry signaled me to take off my knapsack. I opened my sketchbook and laid it on the bed.

  Freddie examined each page, stroking his beard.

  His expressions ran the gamut of giggling at the picture of Nando to expressing fury at the battle scene with the helicopter swooping in over the jungle. He looked at me with a crazed corkscrew of light trapped deep behind his pupils and asked me if I told the truth or lied in my drawings. Not bothering to wait for an answer, he turned to an illustration of Fish Man swimming just below the surface of a pond that reflected the blue sky and a surly Monkey Man.

  “Yeah, far out.”

  Freddie’s hand glided over details in the drawings, stopping at certain areas that intrigued him. Coming to a drawing featuring Pan, he howled in laughter, stomped his feet, and twirled in place before resuming his perusal of my work. After staring intently at the lightning, flying snakes, and lurking caiman covering another page, he circled around me, sarcastically remarking how my energy wasn’t pure, then went back to examining my work as he muttered to himself.

  “Well, well, the rats are busy in your head. Eating up all those tender bits of decency and convention.”

  Folding back the last protective sheet of tracing paper, he asked me if I was connected to a gallery, told me he had contacts with money people in Hollywood and the music scene, and guaranteed he could set me up with them for a private showing.

  “Hell, I’ll make those dickheads buy them. And you can have a week of pussy for every one I sell.”

  Faintly, off in the distance, I heard a sound puncturing the coming night. It didn’t register at first, but when it repeated itself, I recognized it. Somewhere in the neighboring hills, the black dream dog barked a direct warning. Instinctively knowing either Sheoblask or Steel was about to pounce, I gathered up my drawing pad and glanced around me, taking in possible threats. There was a machete in the corner of the room.

  I twirled around, expecting danger when I heard a woman speak behind me, telling Freddie his dinner was ready.

  It was raven-haired Brenda—Tweety—who had lost her virginity to me, tried to kill me, and at the moment, didn’t recognize me. She glanced at me with dull, stoned eyes before a shot of concern sharpened her focus. In slow motion, her head tilted to one side as she tried to recognize the person behind the beard and scars. I have no idea what was transpiring on my features, but my armpits had begun to flood with sweat and my legs tensed.

  “What are you—?” She shoved at my shoulder.

  I stepped past her. No time to chat with someone who had once stabbed me.

  “I gotta split, man.”

  Brenda grabbed at me, called for Freddie.

  Jerry stepped in front of me. “What’s happening here, man?”

  “This is that New York artist asshole I told you about, Freddie. He’s got a beard now, and his face is all fucked up, but it’s him,” Brenda yelled.

  “We got some drama.” Freddie’s eyes screwed up way off-kilter, and a hunter’s smile slowly spread across his face. “Who are you, Deets? What are you doing here?”

  I warily ignored him. “Look, Tweety, lets call it even. You did what you did and got away with it. Let’s leave it at that. Just cool it.” I hiked my knapsack onto my shoulder.

  “I did what I did? You bastard, you did what you did, and I’m not going to let you get away with it.”

  “Whoa, let’s get this sorted out by speaking plainly.” Freddie turned to the woman on the bed. “Marla, go get us some food. We’re going to have a pow-wow.”

  Freddie took hold of the machete, sat on the floor, placed the weapon across his lap, and, with a wave of his hand, invited me to sit.

  I had no out. If I tried to leave, that machete was in the hands of an apparent madman, and I doubted that, between Brenda, Jerry, and him, I would get very far.

  Brenda told the story of our New Years night together, how I had later purposely avoided her, and how almost a year later she had stabbed me while we made love.

  Made love? You tried to kill me.

  I got the impression she was trying to seduce Freddie into finishing what she had failed to do. She squeezed his hand as she described her anger at me for ignoring her, stroked his thigh as she spoke of the utter loneliness she felt at my rejection, and ran her finger along the machete as she cooed into his ear about how her frustrated affections were relieved when her blade had entered me.

  Despite her sadism, she relayed the facts of our story truthfully, even mentioning that she had stalked me one sleet-filled night until I had hitched a ride with the cops.

  “He got into a car filled with pigs?” Freddie exaggeratedly dug at his ear with one finger. “Am I hearing you right? Willingly?”

  I lit a cigarette.

  Freddie snapped at me, “What’s that you polluting me with? Kools? You fucking crazy or something? You a man or what?”

  A cold detachment overcame me as I blew a smoke ring at him in a “fuck you” sort of way.

  He looked startled, then smiled like a three-step pit viper. “How long were you in for? You’ve been in some rough and tumble, and not just that bald patch in your beard by some little virgin floozy’s knife back in New York. Hmm, yeah, maybe Nam or a sicko father. But you survived. Like me. I know what it takes, jerk-off, so don’t go blowing sweet-assed menthol at me. I don’t smell that stink. You know what I smell? I smell luck and violence hovering around you.” He held the machete to the side of my neck. “Bad luck.”

  Tweety whispered fearfully, “Not here, Freddie.”

  He grabbed at his chin, rubbing his mouth roughly in thought, then announced like he thought I should believe his words, “I’m a fair man, Deets.” Tapping my knapsack with the tip of the blade, he spoke to Brenda. “How much you think his art is worth?”

  “At his show a few years back, they sold for about one or two hundred each, maybe more if they were larger than these.”

  “The sucking faggots down the street would probably fork over five or six hundred. I counted thirty drawings.”

  Jerry whistled in a way that sounded like “wow.”

  Freddie studied me, slapping the side of the machete blade against one of his thighs. Set to listening and watching for an opportunity to escape, I hadn’t said a word.

  “Okay, I’ve heard enough to declare there is sufficient cause to hold this twisted son of a bitch over for trial. Jerry, call the family together in the drum room.”

  Chapter 22

  Fifteen women and seven men found places to sit.

  “I, the honorable Freddie Cranston, presiding judge, friend and father to you all, have found our sister Brenda to have a painful reason to accuse this perfidious pile of skin and bones to be without a soul. You shall decide his guilt or innocence. I shall decide his fate if guilty. If he’s innocent you can do what you want with him—fuck him, feed him to the sharks, play tiddlywinks with him, plant flowers up his ass, I don’t care.”


  Freddie lifted a cellophane bag filled with little orange pills. “Of course, we’ll use God’s eyes. See right through his lies. Peer into his truths. Come on, brothers and sisters, everybody’s dropping tonight.”

  I finally spoke. “I don’t feel like tripping out. I’d rather just be bugging out of here.”

  “Ha, ha. Do you see, children? He’s not in tune with us.”

  “Hey, peace, man. I’ll split. Everything’s cool, just give me my sketchbook back.”

  “This is the center of freedom. Your food, your weed, your cock, your cunt, your creations, your music, your mind—all are free for me or you or anyone here to use, without no crusty egotistical outbursts shattering the vision. The moment you walked in my door, you were obligated to share everything you are, everything you own. These are the family’s drawings and you want to hold on to your possessions like the bourgeois pig you pretend not to be.”

  “Why’s it your door, then? And if it’s free to use, I choose to open it and leave.”

  He gestured angrily for a few of his gang to hold me as Tweety slipped the acid tab between my lips. With a demented grin, he raised his eyebrows at me and gestured grandiosely. “We’re all on trial, man, but you’re going to pay for all the shit that comes down tonight.”

  Man, this has got to be Steel’s trap. How the hell does he do it?

  Freddie waited about an hour before he launched into a razzle-dazzle pep talk to everyone in the room. His spiel was performed as a revolutionary, free-spirited, all-seeing guru accompanying himself on a guitar. Jerry and Chuck sat by the two doors that led outside.

  The buzz from the LSD was mild, mainly spikes of light, shimmering auras, or vivid dreams when I shut my eyes, but with no roaring universe overcoming me. One woman was sprawled in the middle of the room saying “wow” every few minutes, and one of the guys had stripped naked and was standing in the corner, looking scared. I heard him say, “Is this what it’s always like?” The brunette in the cutoffs had her eyes closed. A spiderweb of red veins spread across her tits. It took me a moment, but I realized the thin crimson tracks were the trip’s first hallucination, spinning out from Freddie, snaking across the floor, dropping from the ceiling, tying together each person in the room.

  Except me.

  “This human is not really one of us. Do you feel his disconnect? This is the man that introduced our sister Brenda to the act of love. But he stole it, then hid like some slinking vermin from her.” He snatched at the air with his strumming hand, then brought it down hard across the strings, striking an off-key tangle of a chord. A woman shrieked, two others looked at each other like they suddenly realized they were lost, and another cuddled Tweety into her arms.

  Freddie continued to bang and pluck on his guitar until his motions coalesced into a choppy, repetitive strum. Once he had the rhythm down, he began to tell a story about how Judas had sold out Christ for thirty pieces of silver. He counted out my thirty drawings, pointed at me, and accused me of entering into their house and not wanting to share my thirty possessions.

  “Do you understand how that hurts me, hurts us—all of our dreams for a better world?”

  He launched into a song, moaning about terrible things, wonderful beauties, lost dreams, stuck, plugged-up selfish strangers, and how his children loved one another, fought as one, and would rid the world of evil and greed.

  “I am the child, I am the future, son of the fates, and the long walker of the only path. Speak truth to me as I to you. Let yourself dissolve. Dissolve into my voice. Submit to me. I love you. Admit to me. I’ll carry your pain. Commit to me. I’ll lead you to the free skies in your mind.”

  Everyone in the room had become skeletons, stiffly wrapped in cocoons of bloody cobwebs.

  I stood up, waved at everybody. “Omit, can’t fit, anyway, where’s the holy cow shit?” I reached for my drawings, and Freddie swung his guitar at me.

  In a flash of blue light, I was on the opposite side of the room, and Freddie’s guitar smashed into Tweety. She went sprawling, knocking over a candle. People began stirring from their dream oblivion. Freddie glared wild-eyed at me, then burst out laughing.

  “Ha, ha, so you’ve come to visit. See our little enclave that will soon rule the world. Are you here to bless us, or curse us, or take it all for yourself?”

  “What’s going on?” The naked man in the corner asked.

  “That guy just disappeared.” A woman with her eyes closed said while pointing at me.

  The atmosphere in the room had a disjointed and confused edge to it as the chains of Freddie’s spell snapped.

  “Man, what’s happening?”

  “He flew, man.”

  “Freddie waved his magical rainbow wings and the guy was knocked across the room.”

  “Heavy, man.”

  “Man, is that a potato growing over there?”

  “There’s another one. Ha, ha, right next to it.”

  A woman rolled into a ball on the couch, covered her ears with her hands. “Just leave me alone. You’re all just bad vibes. Really bad. When does life begin if this is this?”

  “Brenda just burst into flames, man.”

  “Do we have permission to talk? Do we?”

  “Huh, that guy’s like a spark of electricity. I mean, did you...? Poof, he was gone.”

  “Who? Man, ha, ha, the universe just cracked.”

  “Like Humpty Dumpty. Oh man, like, oh wow.”

  Some of the group were standing up, shifting positions. I spoke to Freddie over the growing turmoil of voices. “If this is a trial, that’s my defense. Freddie, your case is all about your shifty, little greedy heart. You just clobbered the chick you’re pretending to be defending, and I’m hearing not guilty all over this room.”

  “Hey, Freddie, let’s start fucking the girls.”

  “That’s not a potato. Ha, ha, man do you see this? Wait. It is a potato. Ha, ha. Man, look at this potato growing in the room.”

  “They’re both at the end of your legs. Oh man, I can’t believe this. Look, they’re your feet.”

  “Potatoes as feet. I’ll never starve.”

  Freddie looked around at the trial falling apart. A magazine was burning near Tweety’s head. She lay still, staring straight up at the ceiling.

  “Shit, put out that fucking fire.” Freddie screamed.

  “Man, but it’s beautiful.” The half-naked brunette was on hands and knees, her tits hanging over the flickering flames.

  Freddie kicked her, grabbed her hair and pulled her head back. “Do you want me to burn you at the stake, witch? Put it out.”

  Freddie became wild, pulling people to their feet, pushing others down, pointing at me accusingly. “The stranger is guilty of chaos. He’s destruction incarnate. Jerry, Chuck, get him out of here. Take his knapsack away from him.”

  Some blonde woman grabbed at my leg and began ripping at my jeans with her teeth. She was growling, “We’ll kill you over and over.”

  Outside, Jerry and Chuck held me, and the rabid-beast woman stood nearby, hunched over, with her fingers curled like claws. Freddie paced around the driveway, stopping to stare at a worktable of car parts. He turned his head to the sky and muttered to himself for a long time, then stuck his face into mine.

  “You take your little tricks to another demonic realm. You see, there’s no room for your kind on my farm. I’m raising people here, blood and flesh, not some scratches on a piece of paper for money and glory. But thanks for the donation.”

  He slapped a knife into Jerry’s hand.

  “Show this pig-shit chaos master the sights of our cliffs on this fine Topanga night. There are deep clefts up there, but I don’t want no buzzards or coyotes for neighbors. Take a fucking shovel.”

  Freddie’s eyes gleamed with evil mockery. He laughed like he was greeting me in hell. “You lose, but you’ll understand at th
e last moment, when sight and air and blood no longer are of value, that my blessings are with you.”

  Jerry pushed me ahead of him. Chuck shouldered a shovel as the woman led us up a hillside path towards dark shapes that blocked out the stars.

  Freddie Cranston, homicidal guru, stepped back into the house. From an open window, I heard him clap his hands and call out cheerfully, “Okay, everybody, let’s feel good. Everybody get naked. It’s time to share our love, cleanse impurities, and celebrate life.”

  Trudging up the hill with my executioners, I wondered how the magic had worked—propelling me across the room when Freddie had struck out at me. I couldn’t remember consciously calling up my power symbol or moving any muscles to escape. A flash of blue light had exploded, and I had appeared in a shower of sparks across the room

  A mini tunnel-hop. It better happen again, soon. I don’t know how to jump. What, just wave my symbol and hope I’m near a god-tunnel tributary? What words do I use for a prayer or invocation?

  We stopped on a ridge. The air smelled of ocean salt. The light of Los Angeles glared behind some hills, but overhead, the sky was dark and points of starlight twinkled like they were all singing the same song.

  Hadn’t I gone through this before? The farewells, filled with thankful blessings and disappointing failures, welling up in my soul; the stars above, with their light shining on forever, offering safe lodging for promises, hopes, and confessions. And yet still, as I breathed, none of it was of any consequence when compared to my longing to see Teresa’s eyes once more.

  It’s a sad moment when you stand on a quiet hillside with the foreknowledge that your death is just moments away at the hands of murderers. The desire to go gracefully, cradling the joys of life, murmurs beneath your frantic fears.

  But in war, survival comes as a keening sense that sharpens your eyes, intensifies your sense of smell, and allows you to judge the world around you from the slightest sound. It’s also a creature that howls with primal intuition and slinks with cunning deception.