“Actually, Cory, it was me Farmer was talking about when he told me this, which was after I told him about this trip Tinker and I were going on. He said he was sorry to hear about it because he was training me to be a horse trader, see, and when I told him I wanted to do some travelling he figures I’m never coming back. ‘Oh, you’ll come back home,’he said, ‘but you won’t come back to the horses’.”
“Will you?” Cory asked him.
“I used to think so, but the way I had it worked out then isn’t the way it’s working out. I don’t know now whether Farmer is right or not, but I’m right about you, aren’t I, Cory?”
“Probably. When I think about the future I don’t see any horses in it. Not the horses, not the commune, not Capricorn.”
“Not that mustang of yours? How’d he get you to go up there anyway? A girl? Drugs? What?”
“No, man, his vision. There’s nothing wrong with Capricorn except maybe he’s on the wrong planet. He’s not on mine, that’s for sure, and there’s no place for me on his. Right now, I’m where I should have been from the beginning, and where I belong right now. Eventually, we all wind up where we belong, I suppose.”
“I hope you’re right,” Blue replied, “because I know where we belong, Tinker and me, and it’s on the other side of the world. You belong in that uniform and we belong in Cape Breton.”
24
Tinker had drifted away while Blue and Cory were talking, he and Kathy slipping into the solitude of their room where Kathy opened her palm and presented two small pieces of paper to him. Tinker took one and examined it while Kathy placed the other one under her tongue.
It had been a curiosity stirring in him ever since he had seen people “dropping acid” and experiencing what Blue described as “visitations from the Little Flower.”
“Those drugs are just a shortcut to the DTs, Tinker,” Blue told him whenever they had watched people on the street or in the commune reaching out to touch or stroke the empty air in front of them, or just Wow!-ing over the colour or sound or shape of something as ordinary as a stone on the street or a weed growing through a crack in the sidewalk. “You can get away with that shit here in San Francisco but if they tried to pull that off back home they’d be delivered straight to the Little Flower.”
“You two are always doing that,” Kathy complained to Tinker, “talking to each other in telegrams. Blue says ‘the Little Flower’ and you start to laugh and it’s like a whole conversation has taken place with just three words but nobody else is included. You do it all the time.”
“Okay, I’ll explain. The Little Flower is this place in Sydney where guys on the booze are sent to dry out,” Tinker explained.
“You send your drunks to Australia?”
“No, Sydney back home. I can’t believe you never heard of it. It’s the biggest city on the island. All its businesses even advertise on television. Everybody from home goes there to shop for Christmas, but whenever we say Sydney, everybody asks, ‘Australia?’ Blue always said Americans don’t learn about anything but themselves in school and he’s beginning to sound right.
“Anyway, the Little Flower is this place where they take in drunks to dry them out, which is about the time they go in the DTs. So when Blue says that people on drugs are taking the shortcut to the Little Flower he means they don’t get to enjoy a few months on the booze first. They just take a little pill and start seeing things, and seeing things is your passport to the Little Flower. Have you ever taken any of that stuff?”
Kathy, said that she had, a couple of times, and found it expanding, although her explanation of exactly what it was that expanded was lost on Tinker. But his curiosity had been fanned by the book he was reading.
He had told Blue about these people on the bus in the book and the way they took LSD, “like a Catholic taking Communion, Blue.”
“Sounds like a Black Mass to me,” Blue said. “Or a bunch of Holy Rollers. We got to stick with the booze, buddy. That’s our culture. Just ask the other fellow. If God had wanted us to do drugs he wouldn’t of turned that water into wine, would he? He’d of turned it into a barrelful of LSD.”
Tinker didn’t tell Blue about the plans he and Kathy made.
Tinker’s second thoughts about taking LSD were crushed by the fact that Kathy had already took hers, ruining any chance he might have of talking them out of it. He put it under his tongue and sucked terrifyingly, tracing the chemical’s absorption into his blood, counted to ten and concluded that nothing was happening.
“I’m not feeling anything. I don’t think it’s going to work. You know, drugs never really have any effect on me. Not even aspirin. If I have a headache and take an aspirin nothing happens. There’s a certain percentage of the population that doesn’t react to drugs, you know. Any doctor will tell you that. I think I’m one of those. Nothing’s going on. Maybe I’ll try it again some other time.”
“It takes longer than thirty seconds to work, Tinker. Don’t worry. It will happen.”
“Who’s worried? I was just worried there that it wasn’t going to work. I think it will be great if it does. But it could happen, couldn’t it, that sometimes it just doesn’t work? Well, if that happens to me then we’ll just have to try some other time, okay? But if it does work ... ah ... does everybody do stupid things like talking to God or taking off their clothes and walking outside, you know that kind of thing?”
“I’ve never seen anybody taking their clothes off and walking outside, Tinker,” Kathy assured him.
“Oh, God, I hope I’m not the first! I don’t mean I want to take my clothes off, Kathy. I mean that drugs make you crazy, right? You must have dreamed about not having any clothes on in church or someplace. Think of having that happen to you and not being able to wake up. But don’t worry, I’m not going to take my clothes off.... I’m not going to take my clothes off.... I’m not going to take my clothes off.... No matter what happens I am not going to take my clothes off.... I will not take my clothes off.... I will—”
“What are you mumbling about, Tinker?”
25
Silently chanting his mantra, waiting for the naked madness to strike him, Tinker talked to God about mini miracles, like not letting the acid work, like protecting him from the Devil if the drugs did work, and offering to take the pledge for life. “No drugs ever again if this cup can be passed from me. Please God, don’t let it work. Please God, don’t let me take my clothes off....”
Tinker’s prayerful pleadings continued until the walls started to breathe, or, he quickly reminded himself, until they looked like they had started to breathe, seeming to expand and contract like a chest wall, like an iron lung. He killed off the hallucination by reminding himself that the room was candlelit, that he had seen the same effect when the power failed in his own home during winter storms and lantern light flickering on the wind-pounded wall made the house appear to be breathing. He turned his attention to the lone candle and studied its flame which was so still it could have been painted on the top of the candle, but the walls, when he looked at them, continued to breathe. His winter storm theory collapsed and he became vividly aware that the house was alive; it had swallowed them all.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” he whispered to Kathy, uncrossing his legs to stand and run from the building. When he stood he screamed and leapt onto the mattress, gripping his feet and warning Kathy not to touch the floor.
“It’s full of electric currents. We’re trapped here. We can’t get out and the house is going to swallow us, me, you, Blue, Karma, the band, the music, your writings, everything is going to be swallowed. We’re being eaten alive,” he said in a voice reaching panic.
Kathy came to him on the mattress, soothing him with a calm voice, reaching to take his feet in her hands.
“Tinker, you sat with your legs crossed for too long. Your feet fell asleep, that’s all. The house is not alive. We’re not being
swallowed. Just relax and listen to the music and let it happen, but don’t let it scare you. I won’t let anything happen to you, I promise.”
Tinker watched the walls. They were still breathing, but Kathy’s assurance was stronger than the inhaling and exhaling around him. He began to relax, listening to the music. He found it funny that he had to stop and listen for it since the music was everywhere, wild rock rhythms spilling down on them from the ceiling like an invisible rain.
“Why is music invisible?” Tinker asked Kathy, but the question created its own answer for Tinker. Music wasn’t invisible. Kathy, as he looked at her, was transforming herself into music. A vapour of soft notes surrounded her and began replacing her physical presence with a gently constructed harmony.
“You’re made of music,” he told her excitedly. “I can see you and you’re made of music. If I could read music I could read you, I could sing you!”
“That sounds better than being eaten alive by a house, Tinker. Do you want to stay here where it’s quiet or go join the party? We’ll do what’s most comfortable for you. Stay here?”
Tinker could barely discern Kathy’s features through the veil of music encompassing her, and he could feel the notes from the stereo pattering off his head and exposed arms. He wanted to walk into it, walk into the forest of dense music that he knew waited in the common room beyond the bedroom.
“Hold on to me,” he said, reaching for Kathy’s hand, letting himself be led into the strobe-lit action of the party.
The music was raining so thick he could barely move through it toward the corner where Kathy was leading him, a safe place to sit and watch. The music smelled of things familiar, sandalwood and cigarettes and marijuana, and it broke over them like a storm, pounding and pushing with its two-fisted bass, and soaring and diving like a family of screeching eagles, but the wildness of the music remained leashed to a harmony that kept it from flying apart into a violent cascade of brutal sound.
Tinker sat on a pillow in the corner, huddled close to Kathy, studying the impressions that flowed toward him through the music. Everyone in the common room was made of music, he realized, as he detected each presence through the atmosphere of music that encased them. Some were wonderfully complete in their personal melody, and some were sadly fractured and poorly composed in the essence of their music. It seemed as if everyone’s soul had slipped outside for Tinker to see, making him wonder about himself.
He looked down at his arm and it was barely there because it was encased in a musical haze, and the song of it grew inside and began sounding itself through him. Unheard through the torrent of music from the stereo he began to hum the tune of himself, an air so pleasing that he knew he would remember it for as long as he lived. He felt happy to be composed of music that made him feel like singing, because looking around the room he could see that more than a few people at the party would not be happy to encounter the truth in the music of which they were composed. Some people were enveloped in their music, some were shrouded in it.
A motion of music swaying near the stereo caught his attention, and Tinker recognized it as belonging to Capricorn. He was surprised that he recognized Capricorn through the music, but it was music that couldn’t belong to anyone else. What surrounded him was powerful and uncomplicated, a music focused on a single, simple, uncluttered theme.
“Capricorn means exactly what he says,” Tinker whispered to Kathy. “I’ll have to tell Blue. He won’t like to hear that.”
Tinker’s eyes moved around the room trying to find Blue, unable to anticipate what kind of music sang the essence of his friend. When he located Blue it was through the rectangular door of the kitchen, leaning on the counter beside Cory. In the harsh electric light under which the two of them stood, Tinker’s perception of the music within people faded. There was no aura of any kind surrounding the people in the kitchen, just their stark physical presence. Watching from his place on the cushion beside Kathy, Tinker grew curious.
“Who’s that standing beside Blue?”
“That’s Cory. You were talking to him earlier, Tinker.”
“I know Cory, Kathy. I mean standing on the other side of Blue.”
“There’s no one on the other side of Blue.”
“Yes there is, and I know him from somewhere,” Tinker said just as the unidentified figure turned toward the doorway and beckoned Tinker with a finger. Tinker was slow to rise from the comfort of Kathy’s company but curious about the stranger who had the dress and manner of someone from home. Blue was paying the guy no attention at all as he and Cory leaned beside each other on the counter, no longer talking, just gawking through the doorway at the swirl of the party.
“There’s only Blue and Cory out there,” Kathy stressed as Tinker started to rise.
“And that other fellow,” Tinker said, stopping suddenly. Recognition exploded across his face. “That’s who it is! It’s the Other Fellow! So help me God, Kathy, it’s the Other Fellow!”
He released himself from Kathy’s grip and walked slowly toward the kitchen, the way he would approach someone whose name he was trying to remember as they were about to meet on the street. The awareness of music evaporated as the Other Fellow’s presence grew more solid and confident. He smiled at Tinker and nodded, the expression on the Other Fellow’s face reminding Tinker of the nun who taught them in grade nine. But he resembled Farmer, too, but a Farmer with a beard not unlike Christ’s. The face seemed always familiar but forever changing. The Other Fellow, Tinker realized, had been conjured into being by all the borrowed, stolen and original sayings that fired Blue’s imagination and shaped his opinions.
I think I’m seeing a figment of Blue’s imagination, Tinker concluded, at the same time trying to protect his sanity by reminding himself that his mind was, temporarily, he hoped, stranded on the foreign shore of a phantom island inhabited by people composed of music, and by the Other Fellow, who bore a striking resemblance to the whole town he grew up in.
“How’s she goin’, bye?” the Other Fellow asked in an exaggerated accent from back home.
“Not bad,” Tinker replied.
“What’s not bad?” Blue asked.
“Me,” Tinker answered.
“You? You what?” Blue asked.
“Me. I’m not bad,” Tinker replied.
“So who’s asking?” Blue wondered.
“The Other Fellow,” Tinker said, nodding toward Blue’s left.
Blue glanced over his shoulder at an empty space beside him, shrugged and said to Cory, “Looks like my buddy’s had ten too many beers. Geared to the gills, as the other fellow says.”
“I never said that,” the Other Fellow complained to Tinker who relayed the message.
“The Other Fellow never said that.”
“Never said what?”
“Geared to the gills. He always says ‘geared to the ears.’ You’re always doing that to the Other Fellow, making him say what you want instead of repeating what he really said.”
“Who told you that?”
“The Other Fellow,” Tinker said, turning to listen to what else the Other Fellow had to say. “If you don’t start quoting him right, the Other Fellow’s going to take off and find somebody else to travel with.”
“Are you planning to frig off on me? Is that what you mean?” Blue asked, lost and confused by Tinker’s rambling.
“I’m not going anywhere on you, Blue,” Tinker promised. “But the Other Fellow could use a little more respect. That’s all I’m saying.”
“Frig the other fellow and the ship he rode in on, as the other fellow says....”
“What I said was ‘the horse you rode in on.’ You’d think a horseman like Blue would get that much right at least, wouldn’t you?” the Other Fellow sighed hopelessly to Tinker.
“...because what I want to know is whether or not you and the Plymouth are planning to take a trip wi
thout me?”
“I think Tinker has already taken a trip without you, Blue,” Cory said, assessing Tinker’s determination to hold a conversation with the kitchen sink into which Blue was flicking his cigarette ashes.
“What do you ... mean?” Blue asked, comprehension arriving with his question. “Aw, Jesus, Tinker. Don’t tell me you’re doing drugs. Not the acid, man. Not the acid!”
“What did you call me?” Tinker asked. “Man! That’s what you called me, not ‘boy,’ or ‘bye’ as the other fellow would say.” Tinker turned to wink at the Other Fellow who had suddenly disappeared, just a thin vapour of him hovering around Blue, as if he had been reabsorbed.
“This isn’t funny, Tinker. This is serious business. You’re scrambling your brains, boy. It’s going to be just great if I have take you home in a straight-jacket and sit you in the tavern and feed you beer through a straw for the rest of your life while you carrying on conversations with imaginary men. If you’re going to have imaginary conversations, for Christ’s sake, have them with women. That’s how you practice on women, by pretending to talk to them. But you’re hallucinating. The Other Fellow, for the love of God! Please, Tinker. Throw it up or something. And promise me right now that you’ll never do this again.”
Tinker and Blue Page 14