by Chris Rush
Anyway, Lu didn’t like the phone. He was always worried his lines might be tapped and made somewhat batty attempts to speak in code. This never seemed terribly effective.
So … Tyrone liked the squash … No, not the pumpkin pie, the squash, like last time … Listen to me, remember the squash in the teepee, with Buffalo and the Jew?
In Marin County that summer, while listening to men in Halloween costumes talking gibberish, it was impossible to remember that drugs were illegal. Lu and his clients went boldly about their business, grinning like clowns, while Jingle sang hymns.
What I didn’t realize was that these clowns—Lu and Valentine included—were becoming multimillionaires, while I packed product for free.
After the dealers were gone, Lu would shut down, go silent. I’d see him in his chair, feet not touching the floor, face in pain. “His afflictions are terrible,” Jingle would tell me, cleaning his crutches with a cloth. I would think of the brace on my father’s leg. But what was a drunken car wreck compared to the curse of polio?
Sometimes Lu would mumble the rosary like an old man, alone in church. He seemed to bore inside himself and disappear into sadness. Of course, I believed in Lu’s sadness, as I could not believe in my father’s.
And Lu was always gentle. He never leapt at his loved ones like an animal. Instead, he’d rise slowly from his chair, grimacing in pain—and to whomever was in the room he’d say, “Onward.”
* * *
LIKE MY SISTER, I was expected to help the cause and pitch in.
One afternoon, Lu took me into the back room and pointed at five or six cardboard boxes. Told me to open them up. Inside were a couple of hundred pounds of hash. Lu said it all had to be unwrapped, taken out of muslin, properly weighed, and placed in Ziploc bags. I asked him where it was from.
“Kabul. Hidden in VWs, shipped by boat.”
“By who?”
“The Brotherhood.”
From conversations with Valentine, I knew that Lu was talking about the Brotherhood of Eternal Love, the international drug-smuggling syndicate. I adored their name, and began to imagine my own glamorous future.
I was happy to work for hours, putting hash on a triple-beam scale and recording the weight in a tiny notebook. I studied each black block, inhaling its delicious scent, trying to figure out how on earth it was made. Some of the bigger slabs were stamped in gold rectangles—tribal symbols, with swords and stars. Somewhere in the Hindu Kush, an Afghani boy had prepared this hash for sale, much as I was doing. I imagined he and I were brothers of eternal love, helping the world get high.
There was no moral confusion. I never doubted our right to get stoned and sell drugs.
At sixteen, I completely believed in the power of dope. While my brothers were in New Jersey eating candy and watching television (things forbidden in Donna’s and Jingle’s homes), I was eating acid three or four times a week, watching my own visions—and watching those visions blur into the visions of my companions. There was no candy, no television show that could ever compete with what these chemicals could do.
Sometimes in my room at Donna and Vinnie’s, I drew for hours, and in my fantastic landscapes I often added a new figure. There, on the roiling hills, under the sea-creature skies, stood a boy—only a tiny speck, but if you looked closely you could see that he was smiling.
It was me.
* * *
IF JINGLE WAS OUT, sometimes I would help Lu get undressed for his afternoon nap. I’d seen my mother undress my father when he was drunk—but it was nothing like that. There was no drama between Lu and me. Only simple kindness.
Lu told me about the illness he had as a very young child, and how he’d spent his entire life on crutches. In his bedroom, I would help him take off his white jeans. His legs were no wider than his wrists and would flop about meaninglessly.
Once in bed, he’d say, “Thanks, Chris, wanna smoke a J?”
I always said yes, and often in the middle of our reverie, Lu would look me in the eye and ask me how I was. This question, I could see, was real—he really wanted to know—and it would thrill my heart.
“There’s no shame in being sad,” he said.
“I’m not sad,” I said. “I’m just wondering about things.”
Once I asked him, “What’s the greatest trip of all?”
“The greatest trip,” he said, “is this, right here—life.”
I smiled. “Then what about the greatest drug?”
“Acid, of course. My acid. But it’s pointless, really, unless you take enough. It takes around ten hits to really break through.”
“Break through what?”
“The ego, into the light.”
“What light?”
“Inside the buzz is the white light. And inside the light is the void.”
Lu was already falling asleep.
“Don’t worry,” he said, “you’ll find it. You’re a good kid.”
* * *
JINGLE INSTRUCTED ME, TOO. Sometimes, when I brought a book to her house—Cat’s Cradle or Naked Lunch—she’d put it away and say, That’s not what you need. She would sit with me and tell me about the Bible—about the Bible and UFOs.
“Have you seen the ships?” she asked me. When I told her I hadn’t, she said she felt that I would, at some point. She sensed that I was open to them, to what she called angelic energies.
I asked her if she’d seen flying saucers, and she said, “Yes, I’ve seen the lights.”
“What do they want from us?”
She told me that was the wrong question. “What do we want?” she said. “What do we need?”
I nodded, knowing the answer had something to do with love, which according to Jingle was the mystery of the blood, the reason we were born. She was not soft about these things; there was a righteous severity to her sermons.
Whenever she said Love is the law, there were swords in her eyes.
Of course, conversations about UFOs and angels could easily shift to forbidden foods or footwear, especially if I was wearing my sneakers.
“What did I tell you, Chris? Rubber cuts off the Earth’s emanations. Sneakers can cause serious illness. Take them off right now.”
I did so, gladly—happy to be a part of the bubble-world of Lu and Jingle, Donna and Vinnie. Barefoot, by the mescaline fireplace, I forgot to be afraid.
I forgot my mother, my father, my own dreams—whatever they were.
No one asked me, What do you want to be when you grow up?
The future was irrelevant, we were living in the now, moved to tears by sunsets, hashish, and the miracle of asparagus.
* * *
OFTEN, IN THE SUPERMARKET, my sister would be moved to tears by the price of asparagus. Several times that summer, I watched her break down and sob at the checkout line when she found out she didn’t have enough for our groceries.
Her payments from Lu, combined with the twenty-five bucks Mom sent every month for me, were not quite enough to keep us going in semi-chic Marin. The rental house was overpriced. It was a hot summer and the baby needed AC. “I can’t believe this electricity bill!” Donna would say, just like my mother. Vinnie still wasn’t working—only odd jobs for Lu, for which he was paid with product.
Donna wanted nothing more than to get away from my parents. She was against conformity and materialism. But now she had a baby on the way, and for the first time, I saw the worry in her eyes.
* * *
WE MADE THE BEST OF IT. It was too hot to eat much—and who needed new clothes when it was a hundred degrees?
Vinnie told me, “Clothing is a lie.”
Donna said, “Use coconut oil, you’ll get a beautiful tan.”
In our backyard, past the flaming dahlias, I was encouraged to bake my nude and skinny body. The California sun darkened my flesh and turned my blond hair white as it had been when I was little; it was now so long Jingle started to call it “the waterfall.”
I was proud of my tan, my flowing white waterfall.
>
The problem was my penis. Lying naked in the sun gave me an incredible boner. Embarrassed, I’d flip onto my stomach, which only made matters worse. Pressing against the towel, I’d imagine what men did with women, and what guys could do with guys. Somehow I’d always end up thinking about the surfer at Point Reyes, who I’d watched undress. Over and over, I replayed that moment, his clothes falling off in an endless loop.
Then, half-crazy, I’d take the coconut oil to my room.
* * *
WHILE MY HORMONES RAGED, so did my sister’s. Her moods became unpredictable, and she looked increasingly uncomfortable as she waited for the baby to arrive. I brought her iced tea and fanned her. I felt sorry for her. Pregnancy seemed an outlandish punishment for just having sex.
Several times a day, Donna wept spontaneously. Vinnie, confused, thought Donna was mad at him, thus leading to many arguments—in which Donna genuinely became mad at him. I’d walk to Lu’s to escape the shouting and pouting, trying not to think how much D and V were like my parents.
Of course, my mother had always done pregnancy in comfort and style.
On the August day my brother Danny was born, an ambulance had come to take Mom to the hospital. It all happened in the middle of a cocktail party by the pool, hundreds of people, drinking and dancing. Mom looked terrific—I remember perfectly. She had a huge head of teased hair and a strand of amber around her neck. A black silk maternity tunic, with mustard-yellow toreador pants. Her feet were sublimely wrapped in soleless sandals—a fan of fake jewels from her ankles to her toes.
With medics on each arm, she was escorted to the ambulance through the crowd. Coolly, she waved from the stretcher as the attendants slid her into the wagon. As the door shut, I saw her toes, lacquer red against the white sheets.
The sirens wailed like a baby.
In no time, Mom had had her seventh child, alone in a hospital, while Dad partied on.
Vinnie, of course, planned to stay right by Donna’s side when the baby came. “Yes, I will,” he would say to my sister’s belly, blowing reefer smoke into her navel.
* * *
“WE’RE POOR, but pure,” Donna liked to say—though the words started to feel a bit rehearsed. In addition to having no television, we had no phone. And since Lu was always waiting for a call, he didn’t like us to use his. Every couple of weeks, Vinnie would drive Donna and me to a gas station to call Mom. We called collect, of course. It was my job to talk to the operator, and I always noted how Mom hesitated—just a second—before accepting the charges.
When she asked how I was, I was always quick, giving her back the stage after a sentence or two. “What about you, Mom?”
“Well!”—and here the torrent would begin: golf, Bermuda, Dad’s new building, my brother’s summer camp. “We’re doing well—much better,” she said. “The charges against your father have been dropped. Finally some peace in this house!”
The secret message was always: It’s best you stay away.
It made me angry how much I missed her.
“Oh, and did I tell you Steven’s dating the daughter of a doctor? Do you remember Dr.—”
I had a sudden urge to cut her off—something I never did. I needed to announce my own happiness—the happiness of being far away from her.
“Marin County is so great!” I said. “Everyone is so nice to me. And we have these great parties on the beach!”
It was a total lie. The beaches in Marin were fog-bound and freezing.
As I hesitated, Mom burst in on my breathlessness. “You’re not out there to have fun, buster. You’re out there to finish school. Have you enrolled yet? I’m not sending checks so that you can have parties on the beach. Let me talk to your sister.”
Sitting in the car with Vinnie, I watched Donna stand in the hot sun, at the edge of the highway, talking to our mother. She looked increasingly unwell. I saw her gesturing with her hands. Eventually, Vinnie honked the horn.
When Donna got in the car, she was crying.
“What’s wrong?” I said.
She dried her eyes. “I’ve made a decision: no more runs.”
“Why not?” asked Vinnie.
“I’m scared. Look at me!” she said, pointing to her stomach. “I’m getting close. What if I went into labor with a hundred pounds of hash in my suitcase?”
Vinnie didn’t look happy.
“I’ll talk to Lu,” she said. And then a miracle—she smiled. “I have faith.”
When she looked at me, I believed her.
“You’ll be an uncle, Chris. And you’ll go to high school in September.”
Though nervous about returning to school, I was also excited. When we’d visited Tamalpais High in Mill Valley on registration day, I’d seen beautiful kids everywhere, hopping out of Mercedeses like baby rock stars. My waterfall would fit right in.
* * *
A WEEK OR SO later, I was showered and ready for my first day. I put on a simple white T-shirt and ponytailed my white hair with three purple rubber bands. Donna came into the bedroom and told me I looked amazing.
And then Vinnie came in and said the same thing.
They were both smiling too much; I was suspicious.
“What?” I said.
Vinnie said, “You don’t really want to go to school with all those rich fucks—do you?”
I looked at Donna for clarification.
She sat on my bed. “We talked to Lu and he offered us another job, watching a stash house of his. He said we could stay there, rent free.”
“That’s great,” I said.
Donna nodded, and then added: “It’s in Tucson.”
I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I was twenty minutes away from becoming a real California kid.
“All we have to do is babysit bales of pot,” Donna said. “It’ll be easy and—”
“And beautiful,” Vinnie added. “We’ll have our little Acorn in the desert.”
“We’re not naming her that,” Donna snapped.
She took a deep breath and attempted a smile. “What do you think, Chris?”
I felt my heart fluttering. I didn’t really want to move again.
“Maybe I could stay here, though,” I said. “With Lu and Jingle.”
Silence. Donna turned away.
Vinnie finally said, “We need the checks, Chris. We need you with us.”
My sister looked so tired. What could I say?
I swallowed, tried to find my voice. I took my sister’s hand. “I just want to be with you guys. Wherever you are.”
A wave of melancholy swept through the room. We all felt it.
In my mind, I saw all those pretty long-haired boys walking away.
California slipped into the sea.
20.
Miracle of the Dust
LU’S STASH HOUSE sat on a black rock, surrounded by saguaros. Drugs from Mexico waited there to be flipped or shipped. Lu needed someone to live at the house and keep an eye on things, and to make the place seem normal. The last tenant—another of Lu’s crew—had fled, worried that the cops had the place under surveillance.
“The guy was paranoid,” Lu assured us. “But you know what to do if anything goes down.”
We did know what to do: keep our mouths shut—wait for the lawyers. For our silence, there were prayerful promises of bail and legal assistance. “We’re family,” Lu said.
Staying in the house involved some risk, but Donna and Vinnie couldn’t pass up the offer of free rent. And Donna was glad to babysit product, rather than transport it.
With the feel of a beach bungalow or a motel, the place was both worn-out and never really lived in. Lacy grandma curtains, church candles, a funky lamp made from the skeleton of a cactus. Nothing in the place matched, or mattered. But the picture window in the living room was splendid: the whole valley of Tucson, spread out below. In the distance, freight trains chugged by like toys.
* * *
IT TOOK US three days to drive to Arizona. As Vinnie’s old Chevy s
tation wagon pushed on, with no AC, I wondered if my sister missed the sports car she’d given back to my parents in a huff of pride.
But she was free now, we all were—and that meant everything.
At night, we slept on blankets in the desert, the sound of the highway like the ocean. The world seemed huge and hollow. I kept hearing my mom’s voice. Why are you moving? That’s absurd. Your sister is due in two weeks.
I repeated what Donna had told me: It’s a business opportunity.
During the drive, I had a nightmare—the first since New Jersey. I woke up screaming, but Donna and Vinnie didn’t even stir. I watched the crazy stars and tried to catch my breath.
At sunrise, we were off again. As the heat grew, mirages rose from the blacktop and the mountains floated by as if on some silver sea.
When we crossed the Colorado, Donna poured us warm lemonade. We toasted with paper cups. Driving into Arizona, into the wastelands of the Gila, I thought of my brothers, drinking glasses of ice-cold milk, my father eating saltines with shaky hands.
And Mother with her checkbook and pen, writing my name in lovely loops.
Pay to the order of Christopher Scott Rush.
Twenty-five dollars and no cents.
Twenty-five dollars and no sense.
Later, I wrote both versions in my sketchbook.
Drew a starry sky full of coins like flying saucers.
* * *
A WEEK LATER. Donna handing me my lunch in a paper bag, saying: Off you go …
Strolling down the lava driveway with my avocado and alfalfa sprout sandwich, I stood in the road, a stick figure waiting for a yellow bus. Worried about yet another new school, I felt the old familiar sick. Looking down at my favorite shirt, a gauzy tunic coiled with blue embroidery, I tried to feel better. Donna had bought this shirt for me. It was my shield of flowers. Carefully, I rehearsed my lines: Hi, I’m Chris—from California! (New Jersey would be wiped from my résumé.)