by Lisa Mason
She looks away, frowning.
“You are important. That’s true, it’s not a game. And I swear I won’t let any harm come to you.”
“Because you’d look bad in front of your cosmicist friends.”
“Because I love you.”
She’s trembling, but she doesn’t try to dart away.
He takes out a wipe, blots sweat from her forehead, smoothes her hair around her face with his fingers. “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight. That’s you, and only you. The first star of the evening. Starbright.”
She tosses her head and squints up at him. “You are so full of it, Chi.” But she’s grinning.
He could shout for joy. How long since he’s seen her smile?
The crowd jostles all around them, but he doesn’t notice. Someone bumps into him, a very tall, very slim, mannish woman with strawberry-blond hair and ivory skin. That famous Irish fashion model? She taps Starbright on the shoulder and says in a broque, “I say, love. Could you show me where the Psychedelic Shop is at?”
“Down the block,” Starbright says, turning to point. Suddenly, she sees something over her shoulder. She whirls. “Look! Look!”
She darts across the intersection. The Irish lass follows, striding with her to the other side of the street.
Chi jogs after both of them. Damn it, Starbright, he starts to shout, can’t you stand still for one minute? But the words stall in his throat.
He sees a knot of teenagers crossing the intersection. He sees the backs of their heads, all that sun-spangled hair blowing in the wind. He sees the cameramen walking ahead of the crowd, the producer gesturing, the sound boom and a microphone: CBS News.
Chi darts across the street, pursuing the teens. There, in the center of it all, walks a sandy-haired man, his distinguished profile clean-shaven. Starbright squeezes into the crowd behind the man’s shoulder. Her hair lifts in the breeze. They march across the intersection, posing beneath the street signs of Haight and Ashbury.
As Chi catches up, he sees the man glance at the teens walking behind him and say, “… .the hippie capital of the world.”
Chi cannot see Starbright’s face, only a sliver of her profile. She stands behind the sandy-haired man, tall and slim and cocky in her high-collared shirt. She nods at the camera, a quick bob, that’s all. Chi can see only a corner of her haunting smile. The cameraman beams at her, the producer nods back. The sound man is having a bit of trouble with the microphone.
It all looks so different from behind the scenes!
Chi is so ecstatic—one hundred percent! one hundred percent! one hundred percent!—that he exclaims in a voice thick with wonder and joy, “Beautiful!”
The sandy-haired man says, “I’m Harry Reasoner.”
Transcendence:
When space and time slow and hover, a convergence of light and consciousness. When the One Day shows its face behind the veil of illusion.
And you knew it. You knew it!
But then the moment flees, and you have only the memory.
Because you never did know. We only know time as a forward-moving experience.
You only know after time has passed.
She is jumping up and down, shouting, “Wow! Wow! Am I going to be on TV?”
Chi grins. “You’re going to be on TV, my love.”
“Wow! Did I look all right? Did my hair look all right?”
“You look beautiful. Your hair is beautiful.”
She prances down the street, laughing, skipping, jumping.
No, Chi never was the tall, pale, red-haired person in the background. But he did say—he has always said—“Beautiful!”
He has always run after her.
He has always taken her hand.
15
Over Under Sideways Down
When Ruby goes downtown to the San Francisco Gun Exchange to buy herself a pistol, she sees four Haightians she knows there. Why is she not surprised? The hippie drug murders—all those sordid details! in her morning newspaper!—not to mention all the breakins and burglaries in the neighborhood have freaked out everyone awake enough to pay attention and take matters into their own hands.
The gun exchange boggles her mind. Weapons on racks are stockpiled from the floor to the twenty-foot ceiling. There are semiautomatics of every description and combat automatics, too. Hunting knives in leather cases, aristocratic fencing swords, curved sabers fit for barbarian marauders. A hard-bitten clientele slouches at the counters like regulars at a local bar, chatting, smoking Chesterfields, checking it out.
A pock-faced white dude hands her a vest-pocket Walther, watches her turn the pistol around in her hands, and says, with a gap-toothed leer, “You one a’ them Black Panther broads? Whaddaya want this piece for?”
She aims her best glare at him. “Gonna off me some stool pigeons, what do you think?”
She hefts the pistol. James Bond carries a Beretta. Stan the Man always fancied himself a hip James Bond. He took her to see Goldfinger three times, but maybe that was on account of Pussy Galore. Ruby cannot tolerate James Bond, who is more of a bumbling idiot than the publicity machine would have you believe. Well, what do you expect of a booze-soaked womanizer?
A Beretta may be good enough for James Bond, but a Walther is better for Ruby A. Maverick. The pistol is heavy, a dead weight. The high-polish blue finish and checkered grip look kind of classy. Almost makes her feel all right about buying a gun.
She goes to cashier, and damn if she doesn’t see Luther and his latest lady, Peter, and Jerry lined up in the queue. She doesn’t know Luther’s lady, a voluptuous girl with runaway eyes who gawks at the wares as if a rifle is about to hop down and blast her all by itself. The three dudes Ruby knows only too well.
Two are hip merchants of recent vintage, the third a speed dealer with a hog shop for cover. Ruby doesn’t say hello. Neither do they. They each pay their bill and hurry out.
But the neighborly pull overcomes this odd shyness. As Ruby leaves the gun exchange, she finds the quartet lingering outside on the sidewalk.
“Shob and Superspade got everybody spooked,” Peter says out of the corner of his mouth to no one in particular. With his Stetson, muttonchops, and pointy-toed boots, he’s a cosmic cowboy with a habit of staring at the clouds whenever he’s supposed to be carrying on a normal conversation with a human being.
“The Syndicate thing freaks me out,” Luther says.
“Screw the Syndicate like my shop my shop my shop got ripped off last night, man,” Jerry says. “Last night.” Jerry is a wiry little dude in a sleeveless shirt showing off the screaming eagles tattooed on his knotty biceps. “Like the second time this week, ‘n the third time in a month, ‘n the pigs don’t give a shit give a shit. Wasn’t no Syndicate did that, man. Was some freakin’ little speed speed speed freak over-ampin’, man, over-ampin’.”
“You ought to know, Jere,” Ruby says.
“Don’t see how you can bitch about that, Jere,” Luther drawls. “Karmic compensation, y’know.” Luther is one of the good ol’ boys invited to sit on the Council for a Summer of Love. He’s got the guru trip bad, wearing all white from his beaded suede headband to his ivory leather boots.
Uh-huh, Ruby thinks, holy animal skins. But she keeps her opinion to herself.
“Karmic compensation nothin’,” Jerry says. “I deal it, I ain’t payin’ payin’ payin’ for it, too, man. Ain’t gonna tolerate, ain’t gonna put up with no more rip-offs.” Jerry pulls a cheap, mean-looking revolver from his paper bag and spins the barrel, demonstrating his intent. “How about you, Ruby?”
She shows them her Walther.
Luther whistles. “You always got fine taste, Ruby.”
“Why, thank you, Luther,” she says, sweet as poison. She’s heard through the grapevine all the scorn Luther heaps on her behind her back. Uppity bitch. Wait, wait. Uppity colored bitch. He’s always been jealous of her financial acumen. Then again, Luther tokes up most of his profits and, guru that he is, turns on
his friends as well—friends being defined as whoever is cool in the tribal echelons of the Haight-Ashbury and whoever he’s balling. He’s never got much bread left over for small matters like his employees’ salaries or the quality of his inventory, let alone donations to the Free Clinic. “Anybody looks cross-eyed at me, sonny,” Ruby tells him, “blam blam blam!”
They all laugh, but the sound rings untrue, like the clapper in the cracked bell of liberty. It’s the Summer of Love, and graffiti is stenciled in red paint on the sidewalk in front of the Bank of America on Haight Street:
And hip people who celebrate the infinite holiness of life are buying guns.
Dig it:
You want to know why the Establishment media is so pleased with all this bad news? Why they salivate over each and every gory detail and parade scary headlines about the pathetic murders of two dope dealers who don’t amount to a hill of beans while thousands of young men are dying in Vietnam?
Because this kind of news means the hip community is as bad as the Establishment always said. It means the New Explanation is as corrupt as the rest of the morally bankrupt world, maybe more so, due to false pretenses. The personal revolution can assert no valid ideals, provide no guidance to the disaffected youth of America, offer no alternatives. The hip community has failed. They have failed.
Fog rolls in, casting a cold gray shroud over the street. Luther is a bigot and a misogynist, Luther’s lady is a silly fool, Jerry is a speed freak and a pusher, and Peter is just plain weird. Ruby doesn’t like any of them. She owes them nothing.
She says, “Want a ride?”
Luther’s lady dips into her handbag, pulls out an abalone shell, and offers it to Ruby with a shy smile. Luther takes off his beaded suede headband and hands it over. Jerry slips her a plastic baggie with a couple of amphetamine tabs, which she promptly dumps in the gutter. Peter actually looks at her and says, “Gee, thanks, Ruby,” and she notices for the first time Peter is cross-eyed.
They all pile in her Mercedes, and Ruby takes them home.
Grandmother Says: Ku (Decay)
The Image: The wind blows low on the mountain. When the wind blows low, it is thrown back and spoils the vegetation. But if the wind rises, it dispels the despoliation.
The Oracle: Work on what has decayed brings supreme success.
It furthers one to undertake great tasks, but great tasks take time and patience.
What has been spoiled through the fault of humanity may be made good again through humanity’s work. Corruption occurs not due to immutable fate, but by the abuse of human freedom, indifference, and inertia. Ascertain the causes of corruption; thus begin again with deliberation. Ascertain whether the new way brings renewal; thus examine your path after you have embarked upon it.
Hexagram 18, The I Ching or Book of Changes
Broken glass. Shards scattered on the deck, a hole in the window. That’s what Ruby sees first. The kitchen door cracked open like a wound.
Her heart clenches. Every superstition she’s ever held about having a gun leaps to mind—if you own one, you’ll attract bad energy and sure as hell you’ll wind up having to use it—instantly proving their truth. She draws the Walther, hands shaking so hard she couldn’t hit the side of a barn. She swings the door open, cursing the squeak she never got around to oiling, and creeps inside.
A man bends over her turntable in the living room, plucking plugs from the wall socket. On the floor, by his feet, lies the disconnected amplifier, plus one of her speakers.
“I’ve got a gun. So you can stop what you’re doing right now, sonny, and turn around, nice and slow.”
He turns around. Gorgon’s face is a mask, deadpan, dead. A scrap of paper falls from his hand to the floor.
“Leo!” She stares. She knows that look, grim purpose chiseled in crystallized flesh. She glances at his arms, but his shirtsleeves go to his wrists. She can’t see his tracks. Doesn’t matter. She knows. And it’s terrible, like a death and a grieving. Not Gorgon, she thinks. Not Gorgon and junk.
Uh-huh, Gorgon.
She pulls herself up all her nearly six feet. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Leo?”
“I’m liberatin’ your stereo for the revolution.”
“What revolution?”
He shrugs. “You can only be free if you live outside the private property premise of this lousy country. If you participate in that, you change nothin’.”
“What are you changing by stealing my stereo?”
He shrugs again. “The love shuck changes nothin’. We must destroy the United States of America.”
“My pa died for the United States of America. He was half Cherokee.”
“He died for nothin’. He was a stupid redskin who died for a shuck.”
“Don’t you dare call my pa stupid!”
“You understand nothin’ of the dialectics of liberation. You’re one of the oppressors.”
“Oppressor, uh-huh. I got me a business, sonny. Thanks to my ma and my pa and working hard, I got my own little piece of free enterprise. I don’t call that oppression. I call that success.”
“Oh, you got yours,” he says sardonically. “You got yours, Ruby A. Maverick.”
Without taking her eyes off him, she stoops and retrieves the scrap of paper.
SHUCKING THE REVOLUTION
YOU WILL PAY, CAPITALIST PIG
BE ADVISED
“You!” Her head suddenly throbs in syncopation with the pounding of her heart. “Taking me to bed, and messing with my head. Why?”
“Why? Because you are. You are a capitalist pig, with your kraut car an’ your metaphysics shuck an’ your bank account.”
“I’m putting up a runaway and a tourist in my home for free. I’m feeding people. I donate to the Free Clinic. I—”
“Screw your charity. You’re not changin’ things with your charity. You say you’re not Standard Oil, but you’re wrong. I’ve seen your trip with my own eyes, that’s why. You’re no different, that’s why. When the revolution comes, I’ll be after you with a gun.” He grins. “You’ll be the first one I off.”
She’s speechless for one of the rare moments in her life. She thinks of Chi and his self-righteous cosmicists with their domes and gardens, their sky-seeding and telespace. Their anger at the past.
Do the Leo Gorgons of the world tear down the United States of America in 1967? By 2467?
No. Somewhere, in between all these polarities, there has got to be a New Explanation. Will the comicists arrive at it? Maybe, maybe not. But at least they’re still searching, after five hundred years.
She shakes with fury. “Right now, I got the gun, and your revolution is a shuck, Leo Gorgon. Get out of my house and never come back.”
He eyes the gun, eyes her. Can he take it away? Will he try? But no, he’s got the shakes. Sweat beads on his forehead. From his habit, not fear of her and her gun.
He goes, banging the kitchen door.
She runs after him, locks the door up tight. She returns to her ravaged living room. Her cats slink out of the twilight shadows where they’ve been hiding and wrap themselves around her ankles, mewing in distress.
She sits heavily on the couch and raises the Walther. So strange to see her hand gripping this alien scrap of metal, knuckles taut. The blue finish gleams. Only then does she realize she never loaded the magazine. The gun is empty, a husk, without a means to its end.
*
Capitalist pig. After her with a gun. After their afternoons in her sun-dappled bed. Broken glass, broken door. A door she opened to him freely with her own hand.
Her sense of violation is so complete that another door opens to another room. A room she’s shut in a past she’s locked away. T-porting in her memory, images of ancient light flash faster than a heartbeat.
He stands before her, big as life. Long dead.
Roi.
Her skinny girl-arm was frail next to his when they pushed back their sleeves and compared. She’d envied his skin—like chocol
ate or coffee or blackjack toffee. Good things, fragrant and rich.
But Roi had laughed at her, slapped her fingers away. Already bitter at age nine, he was far wiser than she could know at six. “You practically white, girl. You got no nose.” He’d tweaked it, provoking her giggle. “You an angel, Ruby. You blessed.”
But she didn’t see her blessing when Pa was killed at Pearl Harbor in ’41, and Ma went to work at Marinship, burying her grief in the great battleships like the asbestos she installed in their inner works. Ruby came home from school to canned peas and potted meat left out for her supper ‘cause Ma was working, always working beneath the pall of dread cast over everyone by the war.
Ruby remembers waiting for Ma to finish her shift late one Saturday afternoon. You couldn’t call it playing. She huddled outside the door of a ship’s engine room with a Superman comic book and a teddy bear and tried to understand the ache in her heart. Why Pa wasn’t ever coming home. Why Ma sat up with a whiskey bottle when she did come home, her face slack, her eyes blurred.
Ruby remembers that engine room as clear as day. She peeked through a window in that door. And it was snowing in the room! Like in Nanook of the North or The Gold Rush. There stood her mother and her coworkers, four women of color, trim and purposeful in their white overalls, bandanas wrapped around their hair, their lipsticked mouths like ripe fruit. They were haughty toward other Marinship workers. Asbestos installation was a plum job compared to welding or riveting, clean and easy on the bones. Her mother and her coworkers were quick and efficient, deft with their hands. They pushed the slabs of asbestos up, panting with exertion, mouths open while they worked, catching white flakes on their tongues like children gobbling a fresh snowfall.
Roi’s mother took her brother’s death as hard as Ma, maybe harder. When the notice came he was gone, Aunt Clarice took to steady drink. She spiraled down a well of despair and never came back up. Clarice and Roi lived in Hunter’s Point, another black ghetto like Marin City spawned by the war and its temporary industries, its greed for cheap labor. Marin City was nothing like Hunter’s Point, though, another of Ruby’s advantages Cousin Roi came to hold against her. Worse than the Fillmore or East Oakland, Hunter’s Point fell idle at the end of the war. If you could, you got out. If you couldn’t, you got down.