North Dallas Forty

by Peter Gent

  Harvey was alone in the front room, reading Rolling Stone and listening to Leon Russell. The television flickered soundless in the corner. Mr. Spock and Captain Kirk facing some indefinable danger that resembled a living fruit salad.

  “Hello, Harvey.”

  “How yew, Phillip.” Harvey’s eyes shone as he got up from the couch. We perfunctorily shook hands. “Want some mescaline?” Three white capsules lay in his open left palm. He held them up to my face.

  “How much?” I asked.

  “Nothin’. You can have ’em.”

  “I’ll take two for later.”

  “Take ’em all.” He dropped the pills into my hand.

  “Thanks, Harvey. I need to use your phone.”

  “Go ahead, I’ll turn down the stereo.” He turned the volume knob to the left, cutting off the opening strains of “Delta Lady.”

  I dialed Joanne’s number. After three rings, she answered.

  “Hi,” I said.

  “Oh hi, how was your day?”

  “All right, somebody tore the shit outta my house last night and stole twenty dollars, nothing special.” I held up my injured fingers and flexed them. They were still taped together. “How about you?”

  “Emmett called, he’s taking a late flight from Chicago tonight. He’ll be in about midnight. Do you want to come by till then?”

  “I’m at Harvey’s now. Better not, he might take an earlier flight. No sense taking chances. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  “Joanne?” Harvey asked. He was one of the few acquainted with the situation and had hosted Joanne and me earlier in our relationship before paranoia forced us into greater seclusion.

  “Yeah.” I was still standing by the phone, staring at the floor and trying to organize my mind. I was disappointed that I couldn’t see Joanne but strangely relieved that I wasn’t expected to be somewhere tonight. Now I could meet Maxwell and the rest later, if I chose, or I could do something else. I was without commitment. My spirits suddenly picked up at the freedom.

  “Well, Harvey, what’s on in the revolution tonight?”

  “I dunno ... assassinations ... a couple of fire bombings. Nothing much, it’s a weekday. I’m sure some kids from the campus will stop by and give vent to their dope-crazed fantasies of correcting the social ills of the great Southwest. It gives ’em somethin’ to do while they look for a nice uncompromising job with a big salary and an expense account.” Harvey smiled and shook his head. “Whew. Myself, I took two of them mescalines and I’m waitin’ to go up ... after which I’ll wait to see if I can get laid.” He grinned evilly and sauntered into the kitchen.

  I recalled a statement Harvey once made:

  “The only difference between these kids,” he had said, referring to the native Dallas hippies, misfits, and pseudo revolutionaries who streamed through his house, “and their parents, whom they profess to despise, is their choice of mind-altering agents. They need success as deeply as mom and dad. And when they start selling grass and acid at the Royal Knight Club, these kids will be down there eating steak sandwiches and smoking dope and manipulating purchasing agents. It may be rock shows and gas masks instead of guidance systems, but it’s gonna be the same old game.”

  “Man,” he had continued, “this is where America is headed. A combination of Richard Nixon and B. F. Skinner, operating inside a Charles Manson morality. Everything is all right as long as it feels good and doesn’t pollute the environment. And I’m just along for the ride.”

  Harvey had joined the university counterculture to irritate his department head and had not planned to become a martyr. But since he had, he found himself surrounded by lots of dope and lots of neurotic young girls anxious for real experiences. Harvey believed the majority of what he mouthed about the revolution, the sickness inherent in the land of the free; but he was by no means committed to it.

  Harvey Belding’s commitments were to dope, rock music, young girls, and anything else that would bring him intense if transitory pleasure.

  “Want some?” Harvey was at the stove, stirring a pan of dark brown gruel. He took the spoon out and tasted it.

  “What is it?” I moved closer to the stove, trying to catch the scent, but stayed back far enough to lessen the risk of overdose. Harvey ate some incredible shit.

  “It’s supposed to be chili, but it tastes like fish.”

  Harvey, like most dopeheads, ate all day long—things like canned chili, beans, spaghetti, and all kinds of sweets. His teeth were starting to go, a consequence of his insatiable appetite for sweets and the slipshod oral hygiene peculiar to dopers.

  The front door banged open and shut. It was Judy, Harvey’s recently liberated roommate. She was just twenty-one, with a pretty little-girl face and long blonde hair. She had a slight weight problem that made her too heavy in the ass and thighs. Her big tits swung free under a cotton T-shirt, the nipples stuck out like thimbles.

  “Harvey?” She walked into the kitchen. “Oh, hi, Phillip.” Her eyes darted from Harvey to me and down to the floor.

  “Hello, Judy,” I said. “How is everything?” I smiled pleasantly and without intent.

  I was always carefully formal with Judy. It was a defense against her sexual liberation, in which she continually wanted me to participate. My reluctance to accept her invitations stemmed from my belief that she wasn’t nearly as liberated as she thought. My suspicions were confirmed when Maxwell accompanied me to the house one evening and immediately took her up on her blanket offer to ball. The next day in the sauna Maxwell compared the experience with “fucking a dead fish” and complained she would neither perform fellatio, nor let him eat her pussy. He added that in the morning she had accused him of high conceit and showing her no respect. Then she broke down and cried, holding onto his leg as he tried to leave. “I finally had to give her a light boot in the short ribs or I’d still be there,” Maxwell confided.

  “Harvey, can I borrow your car?” Judy was hopping anxiously from one foot to the other. “Please. I’ve got some friends coming in from Austin. I have to pick them up at the bus.”

  “The keys are on my dresser.” Harvey never raised his eyes from his stirring.

  “Luv ya, Harv.” She wheeled and raced out.

  “Harv? ... Harv? Who the fuck calls me Harv?” He was shaking his head looking after her. “Goddam. I wonder if I was that stupid when I was twenty-one? I hope so. I know I’m being punished for some transgression in my impetuous youth.”

  “Harvey,” I said, “you’re being punished because you’re an evil man with perverse desires and instincts. And you like being punished.”

  Harvey looked up from the pan and squinted an eye in my direction.

  “You, on the other hand, me boy ...” Harvey pointed the spoon at me. Some chili ran down onto his fingers. “... are being praised, and if I have my choice, I’d rather take my punishment.” He wiped his fingers on the seat of his pants.

  “In fact,” Harvey rolled his eyes and opened them wide, “I think I feel the very first rushes of my punishment, and I can tell you at the outset, I deserve it.” The mescaline was beginning to work. A smile broke across his face and his eyes gleamed wetly.

  “If this is made from cactus,” he continued, waving the spoon and splattering chili on the wall, “I’m gonna eat my way across south Texas.”

  I reached into my watch pocket and felt the three capsules, briefly weighing the advantages of insanity. I decided, and quickly popped all three into my mouth and, drinking directly from the faucet, washing them into my empty stomach.

  “We’ll see what kind of reality comes in gelatin-encased white crystals,” I said, wiping my lips on my sleeve.

  Whether it was watching Harvey eat the diarrhetic chili, or the bits of strychnine in my empty stomach, I soon felt nauseated, and went to the back of the house to lie down. I was very tired and my mouth was watering.

  As I passed the bathroom, I choked down the urge to vomit and continued on to the small room at the end of the hall. I s
tretched out on an old-fashioned high-backed couch. I stared, unseeing, at the ceiling. I felt awful, my body ached and bile kept irrupting up my throat into the back of my mouth.

  Several more times, I fought back the desire to vomit. My head started to ache and when I closed my eyes, bright flashes of vivid colors made me dizzy. The cords and leaders in the back of my neck began to stiffen. I rolled my head on my shoulders and my neck popped and cracked loudly in my ears.

  A bitter taste flooded my mouth and I decide to throw it all up. Once I made the decision, it was a race to the bathroom. Standing up was no mean accomplishment. My whole body was sore and my movements felt leaden and disconnected. I felt my way blindly down the hall. I didn’t even think to open my eyes until I reached the bathroom. The newfound vision guided me to the commode amidst multicolored spots that were filling the room.

  It was slow motion. The small amount of bitter effluence didn’t seem capable of producing the misery I had just suffered. But as soon as it surged up my throat into my sinus cavities and out my mouth and nose, I felt fantastic. I forced myself to vomit twice more, it felt so good. Finally, I straightened up, blew my nose, and rinsed out my mouth.

  I retraced my steps along the hall to the couch and lay down. As I stretched out, my legs quivered violently and relaxed. Then the chronic pain left my legs and back; my body felt strong. The feeling of renewal and relaxation rushed through my lungs and chest, roaring up my neck and blowing out the top of my head. The tightness left the back of my neck and the muscles relaxed. The skin on my face sagged, I could feel the weight of it. I felt brand-new.

  I held my hands out in front of my face, turning them over, inspecting each finger with great interest. The sight of my hands filled me with an inexplicable joy, a sense of well-being and oneness. They seemed to radiate, I could feel their energy. They were my hands. They were part of me. They had always seemed as strangers, like my feet; they were tools whose purpose was to take care of my head. I was in my head, all wrapped up in a tight little black ball. I had retreated up there years ago from the broken bones, torn muscles, and ruptured pride. It wasn’t near as much fun, hiding in my head, but it was a lot safer.

  Now I wanted to move back down my neck, through my shoulders and arms, to those hands and farther to my distant feet. I felt strong, and I started slipping through my neck, into my back and shoulders, arms, hands, fingers, hips, thighs, knees, ankles, and finally my feet. It had been years since I had been in my feet, they were still a little sore. I took off my boots so I could breathe easier.

  The light from the hall seemed unusually bright and clear, everything seemed so crisp. Energy surged through me; I shuddered and chills ran up my spine and exploded in my head. My jaws became tight.

  I was immersed in a rushing river, something roaring by me on all sides, a sort of limitless flow. An incredible flow of motion forward as if forward wasn’t a direction but a state of being. I was feeling the earth rush through space—186,000 miles a second. I was light.

  The sound of someone approaching brought me to a sitting position. It was Harvey.

  “Hey, I thought you’d gone,” he said, a heavy white coffee mug tightly gripped in his right hand.

  “I have.” I pulled my boots back around me.

  “Judy’s back,” Harvey said. “And you gotta meet the girls.”

  “Huh?” I had been sidetracked by the remark about Judy’s back and was picturing her spine and shoulder blades from various angles, in various colors.

  “The girls she picked up,” he elaborated.

  “Who picked up?”

  “Judy. The three girls from Austin, she picked them up at the bus station.”

  “Huh ... oh yeah ... whew!” I was totally confused but signaled comprehension, in hopes of a new subject.

  “They’re into revolutions and women’s lib,” Harvey continued.

  I just nodded, transfixed by the glow in Harvey’s eyes.

  “They ran me outta my own kitchen with stern looks and vengeful remarks about dudes,” he complained.

  “Dudes? ... what?” I only heard dudes but the word seemed such a strange shape to come out of Harvey’s mouth.

  I repeated it out loud as I watched it tumble to the floor at Harvey’s feet.

  “Yeah, I know.” Harvey looked down at his feet. “It’s a strange word, isn’t it?”

  I burst into laughter, Harvey joined in, and we both laughed uncontrollably, gasping for air, tears rolling down our cheeks.

  Harvey suddenly stopped laughing and started out the door back toward the kitchen. I followed automatically.

  The four girls were huddled around the giant cable spool that served as the kitchen table. They took no notice of us.

  “This is Phillip.” Harvey spoke in a lower tone than normal, slumped his shoulders, and hung his head. I recognized the submission and followed suit, just smiling and raising a hand, palm out, shoulder high, in a short wave.

  Judy, sitting across the spool, looked up and smiled. The girl next to her, with a squarish face, wearing a fatigue jacket with Rhinehart on the pocket, frowned and nodded, not bothering to look up. The other two kept their backs to us and nodded absently. They continued their conversation.

  I shivered again as more energy surged through me. A flash of movement by the stove startled me and I turned quickly to investigate. The hard lines of the stove started to waver as I stared. It seemed to move, a rippling motion that blurred the distinct edges. I tried to petrify the stove with my gaze, but the harder I stared the more violent the motion became.

  I glanced over to the four girls. Rhinehart was rolling a joint. I walked over to join the caucus.

  “Could I smoke some of that with you?” I asked, trying to sound as neutral as possible.

  “That’s what it’s for, ain’t it?” Rhinehart said.

  The ain’t it confused me, as I wasn’t sure if she expected an answer, and if she did, what the correct answer was, there being so many popular opinions as to what dope was truly for. The confusion served its purpose. During the pause she finished the joint and passed it to me first.

  I dragged deeply and, sitting down in the only empty chair, I passed the joint to Judy on my left.

  “What do you do?”

  I knew the question was for me, but it seemed so out of place. In the alternate culture you weren’t supposed to ask people what they did.

  I made a palms-up gesture of unknowing. Mixed in somewhere were feelings of modesty.

  “Do? ... What do you do?” It was Rhinehart and she seemed impatient.

  “I’m a folk hero ... contemporary folk hero.” I set my jaw, surprised but satisfied with my answer.

  “You a singer?” Her tone was cautious, not wanting to be discourteous if I was a folk hero, but she was most definitely not to be put on.

  “No. I’m an athlete. Professional athlete.” I liked the ring of it.

  “You play for SMU?” She seemed interested.

  “No ... ah ... I’m professional. I play professional football.” I was embarrassed at having to repeat it. I was sorry I hadn’t said I was an electrical contractor.

  “For who?”

  “Dallas—the team here in Dallas.”

  “Oh.” Rhinehart’s interest vanished.

  Suddenly the girl in the poncho burst out laughing.

  “Folk hero—I get it ...” She continued to laugh. “All those square little people in their square little houses watching you on their square little picture tubes... .”

  I wasn’t sure I had meant it like that, or for that matter how I had meant it, but it really pleased her, so I smiled and nodded. I felt calm and very much in control.

  The phone rang several times in the next room. It was Maxwell for me.

  “Phil, listen. I’ve gotten hung up with some of the people from the YMCA.” Maxwell’s voice sounded urgent. “Anyway, I’m gonna pass on Rock City.”

  “Ah. All right, okay.” I nodded at the phone.

  “But listen, meet
me at the locker room around eight-thirty tomorrow. We’ll take a sauna.” He lowered his voice. “I’ve got a story you ain’t gonna believe.”

  “Okay.” I immediately hung up. It makes me nervous to talk to people I can’t see. I reseated myself at the table. Harvey wandered out of the kitchen.

  “... well, anyway ...” Rhinehart was in the middle of a story, “... I tol’ the motherfucker, he’d better have a goddam warrant.”

  I wanted to listen to the story, but the harder I tried, the less I heard. I couldn’t follow a thought pattern. Everything seemed to be rushing into the past like a train into a tunnel.

  “... we were afraid he’d been given shock treatments.” Rhinehart pierced my confusion.

  “Had he?” Judy flinched expecting the worse.

  “I dunno ... he didn’t say.”

  The conversation ended, leaving everyone in confusion as to what to do next. I waited a moment, then walked head down out the kitchen door through the dining room and up the stairs to Harvey’s bedroom. I took a baggie of grass from the six in the nightstand and left a ten-dollar bill in the drawer. I returned downstairs and walked to the front of the house.

  In the living room the stereo was on full volume. Harvey was lying on the floor, eyes closed, with the huge KLH speakers on either side of his head, pressed against his ears. George Harrison was singing “My Sweet Lord.” I waved at the unseeing man and left.