by Dick Croy
Eugene suddenly noticed that the singing had stopped. How long ago, he wondered. What should he say to her to show his deep appreciation for sharing this with him? What could he safely ask? Did she know him well enough by now to know how he would feel about something like this? It was sacred in a way. Christ, maybe this was part of why they had met.
“…That sounds incredible, Catherine,” he said gently.
She said nothing as her emotions ebbed, hoping he would let it drop
Eugene kept seeing pictures from Catherine’s story, at once vivid yet with important details missing. The silence between them began to feel uncomfortable. Finally he said, “How do you mean you went through the whirlpool?
“I mean, did it seem like it was actually happening to you, or was it more like a vision?”
He had to ask, didn’t he! She said she didn’t know how it happened. He was the goddamn “mystic”, with his secret worlds and separate realities…trying to make her look like some kind of spiritual weirdo herself.
“I don’t know!” she snapped. “What’s the difference? ‘ We create our own realities’—right?”
Eugene stared back at her, sorry that he’d hurt her; embarrassed for being so clumsy; finally angry that she had lashed out at him with such bitter sarcasm.
As for Catherine, she knew she’d over-reacted, but it was because she was furious with him for being here and knowing this about her now—having it to hold over her. So it was a stand-off. And it was the second night in a row she was sorry to be with this man. What the fuck was she doing with him?
What was she doing here? Did Ram know? As a matter of fact, what was he doing here, camped above them on the mountain? Ram himself was curious: about the music they had all heard. Always the Mountain surprised him.
Chapter 23
Jerry knelt to stroke his mother’s hair. Though it was far from clean, he loved the feel of it. He wished he could just bury his hands in its heavy sleep-warm tangles but suppressed the desire; he could imagine her reaction. He’d have to content himself with the feel of it against the palm of his hand, the suggestion of the curve of her head beneath his light caress.
Helen mumbled, smacking her dry lips, and opened an eye to peer up at him from her sleep like some sea creature from the bottom of the ocean. It took her a moment to focus eye and mind; then her cracked voice attempted a growl that didn’t get past a whine. She turned over, painfully—only to confront the foul heavy breathing of Pretty Boy, who was definitely not living up to his name this morning. Trapped, she turned back toward Jerry, hunkered down and looking at her with the detached, analytical expression shared only by children and scientists. It was worse than the sun streaming in through a suddenly opened Venetian blind.
“Goddamnit, Jerry, what the hell are you doin’? Leave me alone now, will ya?”
“I’m hungry.”
“Well, goddamnit, there ain’t nothin’ t’ eat. If there was no food last night, how d’ ya think there could be anything this morning? You think any a these jerks could hustle up something after dark? Hell, they’re afraid a the dark.”
This last was obviously for Pretty Boy’s benefit; he had struggled to his elbows and was staring in mute outrage at the sky. Helen’s anger increased as she realized she was too wide awake now to get back to sleep. She squinted up at the boy. “What’re ya doin’ up this early anyway?”
Pretty Boy threw back the flap of his sleeping bag and kicked his booted feet to get up, succeeding only in entangling himself and jamming the zipper. This threw him into a paroxysm of fury and he lashed out with arms, legs, feet, and tongue. Only Jerry’s high-pitched childish laughter could be heard above the inarticulate bellows and ripping fabric.
“What the hell’s goin’ on now, Helen?” asked the Fool, stumbling up sleepily with his own bag draped over his head like an Arab in the loosest of burnooses. Pretty Boy, who had rolled and kicked himself down into a dry streambed, leaving a trail of feathers from the shredded sleeping bag, finally emerged from his cocoon like a maddened and bedraggled moth. Raving and waving his arms as if they were the remnants of tattered wings on which he was attempting to take flight, he staggered off into the trees to relieve himself.
“Jesus Christ.” The Fool shook his head in disbelief. “What’d he do, go t’ bed with a scorpion?”
“No, I did. “ We’re hungry, man. With everyone around here too stoned and too goddamn helpless to get some food somewhere, we’re all gonna starve! We gotta get outa these trees and back to civilization.”
“Take it easy,” he said. “I’ll get the vet and we’ll go out and hunt us some game. You sayin’ we ain’t able t’ survive out here, fer chrissake? Hell, baby, them kinda roots runs deep. They say my gran’pappy was a trapper er somethin’. With that kinda background and a dude that seen action in Nam, we got us enough fire-power t’ bring down a damn bear.”
“You’re out of your mind,” she said matter of factly. “The only way we’re gonna eat is to go on a food run.” She glared angrily in the direction of the Leader. He wasn’t looking—she wouldn’t have done it otherwise—but Becky noticed.
We don’t need t’ make no food run with the talent we got here. Whadda they call that deer meat—venison? We’ll be back in a couple a hours with enough venison fer a month. You come along with me, boy.” He and Jerry went off to organize the hunt, while Helen shook her head in tight-lipped anger and lay back down in what she knew would be a futile effort to regain the oblivion of sleep.
The gang possessed quite an arsenal. Not counting the Buck knives most of them carried, they had the vet’s black market M-16 and a German-made Heckler-Koch semi- automatic owned by the Fool, as well as several hand guns. The Leader toted a Colt Python .357 Magnum and the intellectual a Detonics stainless steel .45, while Pretty Boy and Becky both sported Smith & Wesson .38 Specials. All of these were hidden beneath false bottoms in their saddlebags, including the disassembled automatic and rifle in zippered plastic pouches.
They also had a silver-plated cap pistol, a Colt .45 which at one time must have been part of some kid’s gun and holster set with little wooden bullets in the belt. Twice the gang had made the vet’s buddy pull holdups with this toy, complete with cowboy hat and a red bandanna across his face. The second time nearly turned disastrous when in nervousness he pulled the trigger and fired off a cap on a roll which the Fool had thoughtfully placed in the chamber. Suddenly realizing they were being ripped off by a punk with a cap pistol, the employees of the liquor store in question had understandably turned testy. There were three of them: a wizened older man and two big suckers. The old fart went for the real gun underneath the counter, and the gorillas came over it, one of them yelling, “I knew that was a goddamned cap gun!” He’d been scared shitless and would probably have torn the little weasel’s head off if the others hadn’t stepped in at the last second.
“This ain’t though, asshole!” The Fool was bent over in laughter at the success of his prank and might have had a hard time convincing them the game was over if a round from the Magnum hadn’t done the trick.
In addition to the gang’s guns and knives, the Chinaman always had some exotic weapon within easy reach. At one time or other he’d made and used a mace whose business end was a cactus the size of a grapefruit, on a two-foot chain; his unpatented adaptation of a scuba diver’s spear gun; assorted zip guns and numchuks; and of course the obligatory tire chains, blackjacks and brass knuckles.
Fu was a gifted craftsman, as good at fashioning instruments of mayhem as the mechanic was at fixing engines and transmissions. But as satisfying as he found the creative process, it was unquestionably secondary to the end that it served. He’d spent the last two days cutting a 30-lb. bow from an ash sapling and stringing it with rabbit gut. Six willow shafts, with lethal-looking bone tips, lay ready for fletching with blue jay feathers. One was already finished, much to the gang’s admiration.
Everyone but the Fool. Not only would he have been loath to give his adversary
the satisfaction of his approval, but in fact he thought it was damn stupid to spend so much time making a primitive weapon like that when you could go out and steal a gun.
“You think your compadrés over in Nam woulda won the war usin’ bows and arrows, El Chinko?” Fu calmly ignored the Fool’s insulting presence. Chris, his lady, however, had spent the last couple of days bored out of her skull while he lost himself in his work. That bow and those skinny little arrows represented her competition right now. Damn if that didn’t gall a girl! She gave the Fool a mockingly sultry look from her “parlor”, enclosed on three sides by rocks, ferns, and manzanita and on the fourth, when it was up, by a blanket draped over a rope tied between two trees. It was spread out on the ground now; Fu sat cross-legged at his work on it.
The little personal things with which Chris always decorated any place she’d be spending more than a day or two—scarves, a few pieces of costume and antique jewelry, a Japanese fan, feathers, and flowers she’d gathered—were hung and arranged so as to stake out her claim on this spot, to tell the world, and herself, that she had taken up residence here, however briefly.
“Don’t bother the master,” she said in an exaggerated whisper. “Can’t you see how busy he is, bein’ inscrutable and all?”
“Inscrutable? Not like his old lady then is he, honey. Nothin’ unscrewable about you, is there.”
“Oh fuck you,” she said delicately, turning suddenly “demure” behind her fan. Good actress that she was, she went from coy geisha to Southern belle with only the fan for prop: “Honey, y’all know I said ‘in-scrut-able’. Now y’all just watch y’self or mah man here will make y’all in-scrot-able.” And she pantomimed a gruesome castration scene as it might have looked directed for the silent screen by Brian De Palma.
Jerry and the Fool thought it was hilarious, but Fu kept right on working, meticulously notching the ends of the naked shafts where their tail feathers would go.
“Hey, Mai-lai—gitcher piece assembled!” the Fool yelled. “We’re goin’ after some venison!” The vet, who was chasing his morning eye-opener with a Coors, was in no mood for conversation. That’s deer meat, Nam, case you didn’t know. We’re gonna git us a big buck. Just pretend his antlers is Viet Cong carbines held up over their heads by a couple a gooks and cut ‘em off at the knees. We’re gonna have us some meat tonight, you mothers!”
Looking to see whether Fu had heard, he swaggered over to his bike and dug the stock and metal pieces of the semi-automatic out of their hidden compartments in his saddlebags, then pulled a can of Bud from the lukewarm water it was floating in and sat down to assemble the rifle. “You watch this now, boy,” he said to Jerry. “Here, open this beer for me. One a these days I’m gonna expect you to know how t’ put this thing together blindfolded, ya hear me?”
“I can do it already!” Jerry took a healthy swig of the beer and handed it back to his big buddy. He’d probably end up having to help him. He couldn’t really put the gun together blindfolded yet, but there were a few places where the Fool often screwed up which Jerry knew by heart now. Actually, what he hadn’t caught on to was that while the Fool knew this gun like he knew his own male hardware, he also knew how to make life interesting for a kid. And he loved this boy like a father—although that was something the Fool himself would probably never realize or own up to.
Later, when the vet had made his daily recovery, snapping the parts of the automatic together like a man playing the castanets, the hunting party headed off into the woods. Unfortunately, since it was now after nine-thirty on a day that was already warm, they were going to have to damn near fall over a deer to shoot one, but then faint heart never fair game won.
* * *
Becky wondered what would happen to her when the Gang finally turned against the Leader. Would they turn on her as well, or would she finally have her chance to take her rightful place in his? She needed that experience…then she had plans for the future that most of these clowns couldn’t even begin to imagine.
Hell, man, the apocalypse was coming. The cops could see it, the guys in the front lines. They saw the tsunami of the future building up out there. For years they’d been buying up all the guns and ammunition they could afford and moving their families as far into the country as they could find affordable land. The first wave of civilization’s expats called themselves survivalists, and others were starting to follow their example. But of course most people ignored the signs all around them. To them change was the enemy; they didn’t want to disrupt their lives. Even this bunch—who in the coming chaos stood a chance to gain so much—were too lazy and complaisant in their role as losers living off the scraps and fat of the land to look any farther ahead than the next score, the next high, the next fuck—the next party.
Well, man, she could see farther than that. The tidal wave that was coming was going to sweep this greedy motherfucking society away. A new order was going to rise up, a new way of life. Survival, baby—that’s all that would mean anything soon. She could take the only three of these people who were worth a damn—the Chinaman, the Fool, and the mechanic—assuming the Leader, as blind behind those goddamned glasses as the rest of them, got taken out of the picture…she could take that nucleus and build the wildest, most savage band of marauders this fucking country had ever seen. Man, she’d be so merciless the devil himself would want to get him a hog so’s he could ride with her.
And this wasn’t just a fugitive wave of violence she saw coming; this was the next society, the future culture. This was theater, man. Art! This was fucking religion, man! …The new order. The science of the future wouldn’t concern itself with esoteric bullshit like anti-matter and black holes in space. It could check out anti-civilization; black holes right here in the good ole U.S.A., baby!
Becky’s was an interesting story. Her father, the minister of an obscure fundamentalist Christian sect in the Midwest, had driven her away from home when she was 12, calling her “the devil’s child”. He forswore having conceived her. Her great sin was to have been the object of her father’s lust. Though he had literally never touched her since the onset of puberty at the age of 10 or so, the battle he had waged with himself to avoid ravishing her had turned his heart to brimstone where she was concerned.
However, since hellfire in the heart of a preacher would have been damned inconvenient, he reasoned that it must be his daughter’s breast in which it burned. She was obviously some demonic temptress sent by Satan to corrupt him. When he finally figured this out—as well as exhausting any last hope of a solution admitting a unique instance of divinely-inspired incest—he went down to the crick one night when the moon was nearly full and cut a willow rod as long and thick as a hoe handle.
Up until this time Becky’s mother had been able to overlook her husband’s inner struggle and the coldness he showed their youngest daughter. She was a rural Midwesterner brought up on a farm, with no more than the most rudimentary high school education, but she could have told you what was going on with him. Not that she would have of course; never in her life would she have dreamt of articulating such a thing. But she tried to understand. She figured it was God’s test of her husband and prayed fervently for his release from Satan’s grasp. But no one was going to beat her daughter half to death: husband, preacher, or minister of God. She stood up to him for the first and last time in her life.
It had shamed the man and brought him to his senses for a night. But the next morning the battle had begun anew, and within the week Becky was sent off to her aunt and uncle’s. As they drove away with the uncomprehending young girl—none of her three brothers and two sisters was there to see the pariah off—the last thing she’d seen of her parents was her mother standing sorrowful but obedient beside her father, who glowered down from the front porch with the wrath and fierce pride of a man who had met the devil straight on and defeated him.
Becky went from small town to suburb. Her mother’s youngest brother had graduated from the state university with a degree in busines
s and had worked his way up in a chain of shoe stores to a high-level management position. He and his wife had a five-bedroom house, four children, an English sheepdog and various smaller pets which came and went with what, to Becky, was disconcerting regularity. The sheepdog was not only tough and resilient but mean too, so he’d managed to stick around, even though he’d been hit by a number of cars and still didn’t know the difference between a street and a dog run.
She decided that her new family was nice enough—the two youngest, for example, boys 6 and 8, had agreed to double-up so she could have her own room—but they didn’t seem to be quite all there. She wasn’t subjected to the ostracism she’d received the last two years from her own family because this one had no unity at all. Meals were catch as catch can. You stayed out pretty much as late as you wanted to and went to school only if you had nothing better to do or, in the case of the eldest boy, because you were on probation. There was only one real rule and it was unspoken: don’t blow it; i.e., don’t bring any unfavorable attention to the household. Mom and Dad didn’t need that, what with his career and the various extracurricular activities which kept them away from home much of the time, usually separately.
In this environment, after the extreme and rigid polarity of her earlier upbringing, Becky grew like some luxuriant and untended tropical plant in a greenhouse. It was only a matter of time before she burst through the painted panes of glass to expose the humid interior to the whole neighborhood. So at 15 she was once again sent packing, and this time she was on her own. Completely. Survival? She knew survival, baby.
Chapter 24
So this is what he did first thing in the morning. She might have known. He looked like part of a Japanese painting. They were in the clouds; the tops of the trees were hidden in mist, and all she could see of him was the profile of a man in meditation. He could have been one of those early Zen patriarchs so often pictured in landscapes like this. That was his ambition apparently. Well, more power to him, but it seemed a hell of a waste to her. The scene itself was beautiful, even with the man in it. But Eugene? Why was he caught up in this pseudo-Eastern bullshit? She shook her head and sighed. Maybe what she saw in him was only what she wanted to see.