by Lisa Mason
“The Haight-Ashbury isn’t a ghetto,” Morgana says.
“Sure, it is. The Hashberry is the Love Ghetto.”
They laugh, but the sound rings hollow.
A flatbed truck rolls by, packed with Persian carpets, brass water pipes, black lights the size of baseball bats. The grim driver waves. Some hip merchants are moving their best goods out of the neighborhood entirely until the rumors blow over or the riot has run its course, whichever comes first. The Print Mint has sent out the word that anyone who has no place to sleep can get off the street tonight and crash in the shop. Maybe a horde of sleeping kids will amount to fire insurance, Ruby thinks. Or maybe not.
A haystack of plywood planks lies at her feet. She intends to board up her front windows before darkness falls. The windows would cost her five hundred bucks apiece to replace, not to mention the damage if people break in and trash the place. All her beautiful handcrafted shelves and counters. Five years’ worth of work.
H. Rap Brown says violence is as American as cherry pie. What if they start fires, like in Watts in ’65? Or Detroit last week? That’s not cherry pie. That’s burnt crust, inedible and ruined.
She doesn’t want to think about it. Just take care of business. She’s got her bankbooks and business records, her favorite photograph albums and psychedelic posters, the jewelry her mother left her, and the cats’ five pet carriers waiting by the kitchen door. What else can she take in the Mercedes if they set 555 Clayton on fire? Not much. Take only the most important things.
Ruby wipes her brow with a handkerchief, flings down the sopping cloth. She hates this! She picks up a slim volume she chose from her inventory, Anna Riva’s Secrets of Magical Seals. She pores through the pages, searching for some practical magic. The book depicts all manner of symbols, Solomon’s Seals, signs of the Goetia, and voodoo veves.
She finds something promising. Veves are decorative designs that incorporate shapes and images symbolizing supernatural forces. Voodooists draw these designs to call up those supernatural forces and put them to work. Far out. Ruby finds the veve for Legba, the protector of doorways, a guardian against thieves. Yes! She takes a scarlet chalk Starbright left behind and draws the veve on the sidewalk in front of the Mystic Eye:
Is that any good? Where the hell is Starbright? She needs an artist.
“We’re doing an invocation at the house tonight,” Morgana says. “We’re calling up Bune. He’s one of the Goetia who protects doorways and property. We considered sacrificing a dove, but everyone voted against it. We decided we shouldn’t kill an innocent being to invoke power. I’m going to stab my finger, instead.” She says this as matter-of-factly as if she’s told Ruby they’re baking banana bread tonight.
Morgana is a formidable woman with a mane of inky curls and a moonish Celtic face. She’s a witch, of course. She lives in the House of Magick, a women’s commune on Baker Street. Strange things go on there, that’s the rumor. Everyone loves a good rumor, preferably with sex. So many rumors are floating around these days, the weirder, the better.
But the women at the House of Magick don’t seem so strange to Ruby. Morgana works the drawer some afternoons at the Mystic Eye. So does Bettina. Maria-Fortuna reads the tarot in the back of the shop on Thursdays. Ishbette casts astrological charts on Fridays. They buy candles and incense, exotic jewelry, Indian saris in saffron and teal. They are all scrupulously honest. Ruby gives them a huge discount.
Ruby doesn’t care what they do in the privacy of the House of Magick. It’s uncool to indulge in rumors.
Just take one look at her. How’s that for a lifestyle, taking in a foreign young dude and a teenage runaway?
What about her unexpected tender feelings toward Starbright? The kid is like a kitten climbing up on her lap for a scratch under the chin, but it’s more than that. Ruby looks in the mirror and asks herself why. She’s usually in touch with her feelings, but now she’s got no easy answer.
“Bune, Bune. Which seal is that?” Ruby consults Anna Riva again. Seals are employed in magical ceremonies to summon the Goetia, spirits of the infernal realms. Ruby studies the seal and reads aloud, “Bune is the twenty-sixth Spirit who appears, when summoned, in the form of a Dragon with three heads, that of a Dog, a Gryphon, and a Man.”
“That’s the one,” says Morgana. “We figure if we can appease Bune, he’ll stop the riot.”
“Worth a try.”
The seal is mighty strange:
Ruby sighs. She’s too tired to draw that. “Thanks, Morgana. You’ve done enough. Better go home and lock your doors.”
“I will,” Morgana says and squeezes her shoulder. “Listen, Ruby, I feel everything will be all right. Venus is in Virgo. That’s a peaceful place to be.”
“Yes, but the moon is in Aries,” Ruby snaps. “That means violence in the subconscious mind of the world.”
“Maybe so.” Morgana hurries away before Ruby can apologize for being so blunt.
She lays down Secrets of Magical Seals and hauls herself to her feet. She bends her aching back to the haystack of plywood planks, reaches for her hammer. She bites on a couple of nails, picks up a plank. Damn, she’s tired. Forget it, Ruby, get that hammer pounding.
Violence isn’t in the moon. Violence is here, in only too human form, on the streets of San Francisco during the Summer of Love.
Chi’s bizarre logic resonates in her memory. Danger summons Devolved Entities Manifested from the Other Now, opens a hole in reality through which they can invade. Will demons also stalk the streets tonight?
Where is Starbright? Ruby is worried sick.
*
Leo Gorgon pulls his ragtag truck into the driveway, hops out. Chi hops out the other side and offers his hand to the kid to help her down. Like a gentleman should, Ruby sniffs. But the kid indignantly waves him away and climbs down on her own, spurning his gallantry. She shoots him a belligerent look. She’s flushed with sunburn. And something else?
“Look who I picked up hitchhikin’ on Market Street,” Gorgon says.
“We were not hitchhiking,” Starbright says.
“We were waiting for the bus,” Chi says.
“And where did we go today?” Ruby says.
“Sausalito,” they say in unison. But the kid glares at Chi. What’s that about?
“Uh-huh.” Ruby pounds the last nail in the last plank. “You’re just in time for dinner.”
“Nice work, Ruby.” Gorgon juts his chin at the boarded-up windows. “Say, I got me a hole that needs fixin’. Why don’t you swing my way?”
“I’ll swing your way,” Ruby says and swipes the hammer at his head, only half in jest. Since Morning Star Ranch, Gorgon doesn’t come around like he used to. When he does stop by for an afternoon in bed, his harangues against hip merchants have gotten nastier. He’s actually started calling her a whore—and he doesn’t mean because she’s balling him.
He seizes her hand, takes the hammer away, and hurls it on the sidewalk. The hammer crashes headfirst, gouging out the center of Chi’s carved heart.
“Damn you, Leo,” she says. But she lets him kiss her, rough and exciting. He smells of sex and patchouli oil.
She pulls away. She never wears that scent.
“Ready for the revolution?” Gorgon grins and hands her a Communication Company mimeograph.
Ruby reads:
Within the black people’s mind, they will be fighting a revolution. If you hamper them in any way, you will be their enemy. During the riot, the only help they want from you is your gun.
“You write this, Leo?” she asks, sweet as poison.
He nods proudly. “Me an’ Cowboy musta passed out a thousand.”
“Cowboy gave me one this morning,” Starbright says.
“Got all this on good authority, did you?” Ruby says to Leo.
“Well.” He hesitates. “It’s what we heard, anyway.”
“Do you have any notion what you’re doing?” She finds herself shouting. “You are starting rumors!”
“But it’
s true! The Fillmore’s gonna blow tonight.”
“Says who? Who asked you?”
“Wow,” Starbright says, staring at the veve on the sidewalk. “What is that?”
Before Ruby can tell her about Legba and voodoo veves, Papa Al, the burly hipster who volunteers at the Free Clinic, comes tearing around the corner of Haight and Clayton. They all turn and stare as Papa Al clatters up the clinic’s stairs, bursts in the door and bursts back out with four scruffy boys in tow. One boy wears a cast on his wrist.
“We need more troops!” Papa Al shouts, hustling the boys before him. The boys scatter in every direction, footsteps ringing in the empty street. “Go get me more troops!”
“What’s happening, Papa Al?” Ruby calls to him.
“I seen dozens of spades, man! Hundreds of spades with shoppin’ bags full a’ knives!”
“Knives! Where?”
“Comin’ from the Fillmore, man! Comin’ here!”
Dr. David Smith races down the stairs. “Papa Al,” he says reasonably, “those kids are my patients.”
“We need more troops,” Papa Al shouts.
“You think people will get hurt?” Dr. Smith glances anxiously around.
“I guarantee it. An’ I’m gonna be the dude doin’ some of the hurtin’.” Papa Al yanks a thirty-eight caliber revolver out of his waistband with one hand, a Colt forty-five with the other.
He pushes past Dr. Smith and sprints up the stairs again, waving the guns. In a flash, he’s out, dragging two young men. Each wields a fire ax. Papa Al positions them at each side of the door where they stand, wide-eyed and tense, axes held high like Roman guards in a B movie.
Papa Al takes a stand halfway up the stairs, brandishing his guns.
Now Teddy Bear, Papa Al’s sidekick, races around the corner.
“I seen carloads of spades with machine guns!” he yells. “They’re comin’ at us!”
Ruby retrieves her hammer and the last of the planks, and hurries inside the shop. Starbright, Chi, and Gorgon follow. Ruby triple-locks the front door and hammers two planks, crisscrossed, on the inside. She peers through her peephole.
The street is so dark and silent and empty, Ruby finds herself missing the carnival crowd she used to curse.
Grandmother Says: Lu (Treading On The Tail Of The Tiger)
The Image: The sky above, the lake below. This is the placement of the elements. When vapor lifts from the lake, however, it rises to the sky and makes rain.
The tiger has a temper when he is hungry.
The Oracle: One who is humble seeking advancement among the powerful is permitted to rise when the principle of placement of the elements is observed. Advance through the accomplishment of worthy goals, righting of injustices, strength, quality, and perseverance.
Beware, however, if the lake rises above the sky. Beware if the tiger turns to bite.
Hexagram 10, The I Ching or Book of Changes
Dig it:
The underground is buzzing with rumors, only some of which Ruby knows are true. At the International Congress on the Dialectics of Liberation in London, Stokely Carmichael announced that color is a state of mind. If black people choose to act like whitey, he said, they should be shot like any whitey.
Rumor has it that Jimi Hendrix’s father is black and his mother is full-blooded Cherokee. Jimi told reporters, “I don’t feel black. I just feel the music.”
Would Stokely Carmichael shoot Jimi Hendrix? Ruby wonders. Would Stokely Carmichael shoot her?
The Black Panthers are exciting and handsome in their berets, leather jackets, and bandoliers of bullets crisscrossed over their strapping chests. They excite the white revolutionary boys. The latest fashion statement on Haight Street is berets, leather jackets, and bandoliers of bullets crisscrossed over strapping chests.
Who is telling all these young men to finish school, become doctors and lawyers, set up businesses, run for political office? Study history? Build up their community, not tear things down? Martin Luther King. That’s it.
Gorgon strides out the kitchen door and clatters down the stairs. He says he’s pulling his truck all the way up Ruby’s driveway, getting off the street. Starbright huddles on the couch in the living room, surrounded by the cats, and anxiously studies the Communication Company mimeograph.
“Confusing, isn’t it?” Ruby says.
The kid nods.
Ruby sits next to her. “Don’t be confused. This riot thing? This talk of shooting whitey, and the revolutionary boys running around, all excited by the prospect of a street fight? The whole damn thing is a shuck. My pa was half Cherokee and half Irish, and my ma was Haitian black with a splash of Southern cream. I am Ruby A. Maverick, and I’m telling you, it’s a shuck.”
But Starbright’s big brown eyes brim with fear. Fear and confusion.
Ruby pats her hand. “This is just the sort of stupidity that the personal revolution would not abide. Violence and aggression are Establishment games. The revolutionaries will tell you love is weak, but they’re wrong. Isn’t that true, man from Mars?” Ruby says to Chi. “Things will be different in the future. Violence and aggression won’t make it anymore. We’ll achieve a society based on merit and opportunity. People will be recognized for their intelligence and talent, hard work and good will. For their hearts. For love, whether you’re black, white, green, or tangerine. Right, am I right, Chi?”
“Sometimes,” Chi says quietly. “Sometimes not.”
Gorgon clatters up the back stairs, hauling a tin of gasoline.
“Where do you think you’re going with that?” Ruby demands.
Gorgon says nothing. He roots around in the trash can under the kitchen counter, pulls out four empty wine bottles. “Your love shuck is crap.”
“Maybe and maybe not. Violence is definitely crap.”
He goes to the half-bath, pulls a pillowcase from her linen closet, and rips it into strips. “You can’t change nothin’ without tearin’ it down.”
“Leo!” Ruby screams, scattering the cats.
But he’s gone. Out the kitchen door and clattering up the fire escape to the roof.
Ruby dashes after him, Chi and the kid close behind.
The Aries moon is a scythe in the sky. From the roof, Ruby can see Papa Al and Teddy Bear huddled on the stairs of the Free Clinic. Terrified patients in pajamas cluster at the door. The two Roman guards lean their axes on the stoop, but their stance is tense.
“What’s goin’ on, man?” Gorgon calls down to them, leaning over the gutter and gingerbread trim. He’s filling empty bottles with gasoline, stuffing strips of pillowcase in the necks. He spills a box of matches on the rooftop.
“We called Chocolate George,” Teddy Bear yells up. “The Hells Angels say they’re comin’ over to kick some ass, man!”
Ruby takes Starbright’s hand and protectively presses her away from the edge of the roof.
A shimmer of ebony deeper than the night sky ripples across the rooftop. The gutter begins to rattle, as if an earthquake is striking.
“Chi,” Ruby calls in a ragged whisper. He crouches by her side at once. “What’s happening? The energy is getting strange, can’t you see it?”
“Yes.” He whispers, “Katie,” to his magic ring and cups the lavender light in the palm of his hand. The light flickers eerily in the darkness. “Ruby,” he finally says. “I’ve calculated three times. There’s no record of a race riot in the Haight-Ashbury during the Summer of Love.”
“What do you mean? What are you saying?”
He whispers, “Katie, off,” and the lavender light disappears. “The riot is a probability, but not a Prime Probability. It doesn’t have to happen. You and me and Starbright, we’re observing. We can make a difference.”
Ruby stares at him, his face impossibly pale and baby-smooth. He used to look so innocent to her. Not anymore. Not so innocent and not so familiar. Who are you, she thinks for the thousandth time. What are you, Chiron Cat’s Eye in Draco? In a white-rabbit flip of reality, it
occurs to her that the elegant lad really is a t-porter from 2467. This suddenly makes more sense to her than what is happening on Haight Street tonight.
It doesn’t have to happen.
She nods, then stalks across the roof to Gorgon and his four Molotov cocktails arranged before him in a semicircle.
A huge, hollow-eyed skull presses out of the whole wall of the house across the street, then disappears. Waves throb through the wall as if the old stucco is made of liquid.
Ruby hears Starbright gasp behind her, glances back. Chi circles his arms around the kid. She struggles away, but he won’t let her go. Good.
“Leo,” Ruby says, but she can’t catch his eye. He stares down at the street. “Who you gonna fire-bomb, huh? Your black brothers? Isn’t that what you revolutionary boys call them?”
“No,” he says, stroking the neck of a bottle. “These are for the pigs.”
“The pigs, uh-huh. What good does that do your black brothers if you fire-bomb the police? What good does it do for them?”
He refuses to look at her, but he’s breathing hard. “You capitalist pig, with your witch crap an’ your love shuck.” He spits. “What do you know about the revolution?”
She seizes his elbow. “I know this, sonny. I know it isn’t your revolution.”
He still won’t look at her.
“You’re not the one who will get hurt by this!”
He turns and looks at her, at last.
“You accuse me of selling out. You call me an opportunist. But that’s exactly what you are, Leo. No, you don’t care about money. Money isn’t kicks for you. The revolution is kicks for you.”
His eyes flash fire and madness. A gust sweeps across the rooftop, scattering gravel.
“Just kicks, damn you!”
With an inarticulate yell, Gorgon plucks the rags out of the bottles and smashes the bottles on the rooftop. He clatters down the stairs, leaving the stink of gasoline behind. Black glass shimmers in the Aries moonlight.
*
Gorgon’s truck is gone by the time Ruby, Chi, and the kid climb down the fire escape to the deck. She lets everyone in the kitchen door.
It’s over. Sweet Isis, her time with him is over just as strangely as it began. It’s not likely she’ll ever see Gorgon again but, if she does, he’ll be just some dude she knew during the Summer of Love. They will pass by on the street like strangers.