by Chris Rush
“Do they have guns?”
I nodded.
“Well, there’s no reason I have to meet them. We’ll do it like this—just you and me. Chris—it’s good to see you working. I’m proud of you.”
The acid sold well, and I was able to score from Valentine several more times. The partners were pleased. They said I could keep my spot under the table.
The apartment was always busy. People came by, day and night, to score. Dino answered the door, brought out cold beers, sat and chatted with everyone, but it was always Carl who did the actual deal. All product, all monies, were managed with extreme precision. Carl was obsessed with his scales—it was the math of meth. All conversations at high speed—a revolver within reach.
One night, after everyone had split, Carl stripped to a thong and begin lifting weights in a bizarre frenzy. I hid in my sleeping bag as he thumped and moaned like he was going to come. “Quick, spot me!” he screamed.
I didn’t move. The weights crashed, missing his bald head but shattering the coffee table. A bag of speed flew onto the carpet, mixed with beer and broken glass.
As he yelled, blaming me for the mess, I pulled the mummy bag over my head.
Sometimes, when the partners went out, I’d snoop around. Dino’s bedroom was a hopeless wreck, but Carl’s was always disturbingly neat. Lit only by a bubbling aquarium, the room glowed an evil green. In the tank was a baby octopus stuck to the glass and a sleepy eel. Carl’s immense waterbed was covered with a mink bedspread, reeking of sperm.
Dino told me Carl would be worth millions the day he turned twenty-one.
* * *
CARLTON, AS HE LIKED TO BE CALLED, handed me a Coors. It had been a long night, with a lot of traffic in the apartment. I wanted to sleep, but Carl insisted, “Drink up, man!”
“Okay, okay.” I guzzled it and went to bed.
A couple of hours later, Carl was on the floor, touching my butt with his fat hand.
“How do you feel, Chris? Any interesting dreams?”
“No.”
Carl was right next to me. I could smell him, hear him breathing in the dark.
“So, Chris, do you like being our dog? Does it excite you?” And then he laughed and told me he’d put fifteen hits of acid in my beer.
I started to panic. Was the asshole trying to poison me?
“You’re a lowlife,” I said—and when he tried to touch me again, I started screaming, “Fuck you. Fuck you!”
I packed my stuff and split. Greeted dawn, on fire.
* * *
SUMMER WAS ON its way. I wandered in the heat.
One morning, I went into a gas station to ask the old man at the register what day it was. It was just a few days before my birthday. I stared at him, confused. When he asked if I needed anything else, I said, “Nah. Just enjoying the AC.”
“There’s a chair in the corner.”
He let me sit there for an hour or so, gave me a bag of chips.
I kept thinking, Soon I’ll be eighteen. It wasn’t until that night, just before I fell asleep, that I realized I was wrong—that I’d lost a year. I was about to turn nineteen.
* * *
THE NEXT MORNING, before sunrise, I stood at the base of Mica Mountain—a great blue whale rising from the valley.
It seemed impossible. There was no road—the trail to the summit less than a scratch.
Slowly I climbed up the steep canyons, past waterfalls, moving from thorn to pine. I entered a miraculous green world concealed from humans, a garden on the back of a whale.
Near the summit, I rested for the night, smoked hashish. No campfire. The mountain was too vast and I was not yet brave enough to announce my arrival. I hid under dark pines, quietly watching the sky fade from violet to galactic black.
In the morning, there was ice along the streambed. I filled my canteen and walked on. Not too far away, I saw the weathered wooden signpost: HELEN’S DOME—8364 FEET. I climbed up the granite tower, weak with hunger, strong with other intentions. Rocks fell into the void as I ascended, the mountain crumbling in my hands. It was crazy.
Am I going to die today? Is that what’s next?
At the top, the wind was full of swallows, cutting the air—cashuuu! shuuu! shuuu! Tucson was no more than a blur of smoke. It was no longer real. Nothing was.
And then, on a stone ledge, a panther appeared, a shadow.
I can remember his voice—or my starved translation of it.
He says that he’s the Devil, that he’s known me forever—that he’s always been my friend. He has so many things he still wants me to do.
I think of Pauly, from St. John’s, and how he’d once fed me to the demons. I wondered if Pauly is famous yet, if all his dreams have come true. Maybe he’s playing at Carnegie Hall.
Where is everyone I love?
The panther disappears.
I’m nineteen.
* * *
FOR FIVE DAYS I wander, wrapped in a blanket, sneaking past panther shit and broken bones. On the other side of the mountain, I find my way to Chivo Falls. Water hisses from a hundred-foot cliff, steady as a machine.
At the top is a stone pool, six feet around, jutting precariously over the gorge. For a whole day, I soak in its green waters.
On morning six, I look back and see a cloud resting on Helen’s Dome, dark as blood. Thunder rolls down from the high peaks. As I hike out, a storm erupts. Later, I slip off my pack by some empty corrals near the road to town. I eat rain. Stick out my fool thumb.
The old cowboy who stops is concerned. “Son, are you all right?”
I nod.
“What happened to you? You look like you’re in shock.”
In the truck’s rearview mirror, my hair is tangled and wet, the whiskers on my chin white as snow. My skin has turned dark. My eyes are buggy, blue as glass.
I try to answer. “It was the mountain, sir. It was very bright.”
* * *
IN THE CITY, I was a foreigner, a time traveler. People stared at me on the bus. When I tried to buy an apple, in the Safeway, I could barely remember how. Pulling the money from my pocket, I didn’t understand: hundred-dollar bills appeared, one after another, like some kind of magic trick.
* * *
NOT THINKING CLEARLY, I started walking toward Dino’s apartment, hoping to crash for a night or two. When I got there, I saw the front door broken off its hinges. I walked in, still wearing my backpack. The place was hollow. I called out, but there was no reply. In the hall, ash and broken glass. All the rooms were stripped—only a single pointy boot remained, on the bathroom floor—ostrich skin.
I saw bullet holes in the living room.
Are they dead?
Outside, in the parking lot, I spotted a neighbor, an old lady with a bouffant and somebody else’s baby in her arms. She looked at me suspiciously.
“Ma’am, do you know what happened here? Everyone’s gone.”
“Oh.” She paused. “The police came.”
When I asked her if anyone died, she didn’t answer, only covered the baby’s head.
I could feel my heart racing. “He saved me,” I said.
She looked right at me. “Jesus?”
Not Jesus, no. I was thinking of the panther.
34.
Rush Brothers Construction
SOMEHOW I ENDED UP IN the derelict pool house of the Rancho del Rey, where Sean was now living—a rambling 1920s dude ranch that had been converted into apartments. The pool house was at the edge of the property; beyond it, hundreds of acres of desert. Tumbleweeds flew by and saguaros leaned like drunks. In any western, this would be where the bad guys would be.
Months had passed since I’d seen Sean and I didn’t recognize him at first, with a goatee and a crew cut. His explosion of curly black hair gone, he no longer looked like a dopey lion. He was handsome now, even with his big ears. Of course, his shorn hair exposed scars I’d never noticed before. He’d traded his harem pants for tight slacks and a shiny button-down shirt
. Very disco.
When I said “Wow, you look great,” he replied, “Wish I could say the same about you. What the fuck, Chris?”
He looked me in the eye. Sean seemed strong and steady. I was jealous.
He said he was working at an expensive restaurant, had saved some money, was still considering San Francisco. He made me a sandwich. Egg salad. He apologized for the pickles. “I know some people hate them.”
“I love pickles,” I said, wolfing down the sandwich while he watched.
He told the other tenants that I’d just be staying temporarily. In my gratitude I said, “I have a plan, too, Sean. I’m going to go into business for myself.” And then I quoted a line from Dune: He who controls the spice controls the universe.
In reply, Sean slapped me—not hard, but with enough energy to make me gasp.
“Chris, wake up—it’s 1975!”
* * *
HE OFFERED ME his couch, but I knew better. We were not good roommates. I stayed in the pool house.
But sleeping on the concrete floor, in the pitch black, I barely knew where I was. In the mornings, I’d wake up covered in sweat, breathless from the heat. Where was my dream of Tucson? Lying there naked and lost, I realized that everything had failed: Friends, family. Even Jesus.
What was wrong with me? Boys don’t spend years in the desert, looking for God. They get jobs, get married, live in lovely homes. They do not hide in crumbling buildings. They do not masturbate with suntan lotion found in the trash.
How did I get there? I tried to play the movie backward.
Since I was eleven, I’d been ready to believe such terrific nonsense, believe it with all my heart, certain that I’d become enlightened from little pink pills and rare herb. I’d abandoned everything for sacrament. It suddenly seemed ridiculous.
Still, my heart wasn’t quite ready to give it up. Jingle, I kept thinking—if only I could talk to Jingle. Listen to her hymns. I wondered if she still believed.
Sometimes, outside the pool house, I’d see a little girl playing in a field of dust—a child of one of the tenants. The girl was always alone, chewing on something—a scrap of bread or, one day, a piece of rubber, maybe a toy snake. I saw it hanging from her mouth, like the tongue of a demon.
* * *
I OFFERED SEAN some of my stash, but he no longer partook. He only liked to drink—and often he’d come back to the Rancho, shit-faced, dropped off by strange men in big cars. He put on a performance of happiness, but sometimes he came into the pool house and sat quietly, leaving some of his sadness beside my own.
At night, my dreams returned, the same old horrible repertoire—men with mustaches, black bears, white pickup trucks. One morning, an apparition was so real I jumped up, thinking I could hear wheels on gravel outside the pool house.
It was no dream. My father’s truck appeared in a cloud of dust. I could see the red words on the door: CHARLES RUSH CONSTRUCTION.
I ran inside, but he followed me.
“Chris!”
Not my father, but my brother Michael. And behind him my brother Steven. The two of them, teen giants—sixteen and seventeen.
They looked at me, shocked.
I tried to tame my hair as they stared. They stepped forward to shake my hand—polite, too polite.
Finally, Steven said “Shit” and hugged me.
Mike refused. “You smell terrible.”
When I asked how they found me, Steven said, “Sean. He called us.”
* * *
THAT FIRST NIGHT, I slept outside with my brothers, a row of Rushes under mad stars. I didn’t ask why they were here; they didn’t ask why I’d been gone so long. We smoked hash, of course.
“Are they still fighting?”—my words quiet in the dark.
Michael said, “Not exactly. They’re always bickering and shit, but they’re never together for long. Mom’s in Florida a lot, with Danny. Dad just works and drinks. Then he goes down to the hunting camp.”
“He has a woman down there,” Steven added.
“That’s what Mom says—but who knows if it’s true.” Michael shook his head. “He’s an asshole, either way.”
I could hear the tremble in his voice. “Doesn’t matter,” I said. “In a year, you’ll be at some fancy college.”
Michael laughed. “Yeah, with what money? Dad told me if I want to go to college, I better start saving now.”
“Well, at least he gave you the truck.”
“We kind of stole it.”
* * *
IT TURNED OUT my brothers had only forty bucks between them—they’d spent the rest of their money on the trip out. They told me that our parents wouldn’t give them a penny when they found out they were coming to see me.
“Dad said we could get jobs as migrant workers.”
“Well, I have some cash and—” I pulled out a bag of acid, skimmed off Carl and Dino before things went south.
“Let’s just drive,” Michael said. “Show us shit.”
* * *
I CAME TO LIFE.
My brothers and I got in Dad’s truck and took off. My little bunnies.
We’d helped one another through the rip-off of childhood. Michael and Steven were copies of me, improved versions, with flesh on their bones and clean clothes on their backs—hands in their pockets, not flailing through the air. They were already men—Mike in a beige bucket hat, Steve with a rock-star mustache.
Strangely, my brothers were experimenting in vagrancy, too.
How was it possible that the three of us had come to this? The summer before, when I’d been living on the mountain, my brothers had taken a bus to Maine, picked blueberries, and lived in the woods—a daring escape from my parents’ craziness. This trip, though, was bigger and better than anything we’d done before. We were together, driving north across a thousand miles of desert, to where the land lifted and the great forests began.
Idaho.
In the Sawtooths, over every rise, another peak floated up, another waterfall came down. Tripping, we ran through all of it, trying to comprehend the savage splendor of the place. In a pool of melting ice I saw a shining stone. When I picked it up, it was too heavy, a yellow nugget, big as a bent nickel.
“Gold,” Michael said.
Just then, a bolt of lightning struck the mountain. We were above the tree line, exposed. Another flash—too close. My brothers screamed and ran. I followed, the metal clenched in my hand. Torrential rain took the valley just as we reached the truck and climbed into the camper. We passed around the gold, marveling how something so small could be so bright. We talked about going back for more, getting rich.
Once we’d sobered and the rain slackened, Steven said, “We should go into business for ourselves. Dad doesn’t want us.”
Michael added, “We know how to build things. We could compete with him.”
“Rush Brothers Construction,” I said—none of us aware then that such a company had once existed. We’d always assumed my father had done it alone.
Embarrassed by the swell of fraternity, we agreed we were starving. Steven sliced open some avocados and we ate like animals, green goo on our fingers and faces.
* * *
TOGETHER WE DRIFTED away. Some nights, staring at the embers of our campfire, no one said a thing. I was glad to be with my brothers, flickering young men with dirt on their faces. My father was there, too. I could see him in Steven—the square jaw, the ocean-blue eyes. All of us straight-backed, with that soldier stare.
In my backpack, I had a yard of velvet. It was deep blue-purple, iridescent. I’d stolen it from my mother’s sewing room years ago, and had been carrying it around since I left home. Just as I did every night, I put it under my head while I slept, sometimes rubbing the fabric across my cheek.
When Michael saw it, he pulled it away from me. “What are you doing with that shit? Put that fucking thing away or I’ll throw it in the fire!”
Maybe it reminded him of my pink cape.
* * *
> IN WYOMING, the Grand Tetons were impossible. Peaks so violent, so vertical, they opposed reason. They were monsters, shredding the clouds with their fangs.
We asked a ranger how to get to the high peaks.
“Take Avalanche Canyon Trail,” he said. “You boys have ropes?”
We didn’t, but headed toward a crystal blade rising above all others. The peak was entirely beyond us, a celestial tower. With every step, it receded farther into the distance. After a couple of hours, the trail rose up and disappeared. Pulling our way up the face of a cliff, we began to shrink in the immensity. The wind was fierce; communication was difficult.
Michael yelled, “Noooo—we need to head doooowwwn!”
But down was worse than up, our backpacks unruly, ready to throw us into the abyss. Steve took his off and let it slide down a chute of snow. It crashed onto the rocks, sending boots and frying pans into the air.
At the base of the cliff was a field of talus. In caves below the broken rock, we could hear the roar of an underground river. We followed the sound to where the waters emerged into a tremendous pool, deep and utterly clear.
Solemnly, Michael said, “We should come back here, the rest of our lives.”
We stared into the water like it was a window to another world—a snowmelt aquarium.
There, we made our camp—and the next morning, we dropped acid.
“What are you doing?” Steven asked as I pulled off my shirt, and then my pants.
“No!” Michael cried, but it was too late.
I dove into the pool. It was shocking, the most complete cold I’d ever felt.
Beneath me I saw underwater passages, caves of sapphire blue. I wanted to enter the underworld, but in a kind of mortal panic my body saved itself. When I flew out of the frigid water, my brothers were yelling. They pulled me onto the rock. Everything went white …