“Still in there fighting, just where I left it,” she said. And years melted away, and he knew she was back. “Take it slow and easy, we’ve got time,” she said, hugging him to her. And with a strange-style shudder he had never felt before, said: “All the time in the world.”
Haven’t done this since they made grass legal, Jack Barron mused as the hand-rolled as in days of street-corner dealer yore joint passed around the mystic circle—himself, Sara, some cat named Sime who was obviously after Sara’s ass, a chick calling herself Leeta or something (iron-blonde Psychedelic Church acolyte), and a hairy type known only as the Wolfman. Barron sucked deep, getting into the anachronistic nostalgia bag, husbanding whiffs of smoke as if the stuff still cost twenty bucks an ounce, still was illegal.
“Wow,” he said, drawing out the word in approved early ’60s style. “Don’t let the word get out, but this stuff has a bigger kick to it than Acapulco Golds.”
Sara laughed. “It should; there’s some opium in it.”
Barron smiled, felt a sardonic detachment from the others squatting on the straw-matted floor. From old head days, he knew there couldn’t be more than a taste of opium in the shit; you’d have to smoke about a pound of the grass to even get a buzz off O. But that’s not where it’s at, he thought, kick’s in the idea of opium because the stuff’s still illegal; you can buy pot in any candy store. So bring back images of danger with a couple pinches of O—pushers in the streets pay-envelopes police lock fuzz in the hall, Good Old Bad Old Days, where spice of the opium’s at. And maybe there isn’t any opium, just bullshit, what’s the difference, charge is the same.
“Hey,” said the Wolfman, “you hung on Acapulco Golds too? Funny how any old head that’s really been around a while digs Acapulco Golds. And we all know how long you’ve been around, Jack.” The last walking a thin line between genuine innocent affection and sycophant put-on.
Hearing the Wolfman voice the question he was always asking himself, Barron suddenly dug why Acapulco Golds were overwhelming best-seller in the Village, Fulton, Strip City ghettos, among old-time nostalgia-head potheads: my sponsor, is all. They’re sure getting their money’s worth out of Bug Jack Barron; smoke Acapulco Golds and you’re smoking Jack Barron, act of patriotism for Wolfman, for psychedelic-ghetto types, True Believers in Dylan-haired (gotta get a haircut, starting to itch) Berkeley bad boy, our boy kick-’em-in-the-ass myth.
He passed the joint to Sara, saw her drag a deep tight bread times drag, wondered why he hadn’t bitched about this pot-party scene, so patently a show-the-flag Jack Barron-returns-to-the-people schtick, had looked forward to it, need for… need for…?
“Hey, man,” the Wolfman said, “those stories going ’round about you and the Foundation true?”
“What stories?” Barron asked, and the whiff of a very professional rumor-mill (Luke’s rumor-mill already) hung in the air.
The Wolfman took the joint from Sara, dragged, held smoke in his lungs and talked through it in old-time pothead screen-door croak. “Say you’re out for Bennie Howards. For blood. Last show a real gas. Public freezer. Man you—” The Wolfman spasmed, coughed smoke in talk-inhale conflict resolution, then immediately continued, loud, and gesticulating in new-found lung-freedom. “Yeah the word is that you’re in with the Public Freezer cats, playing it real cool till you got the Foundation set up for the kill, and then Pow! down on the fuckers with both feet, split things wide open, and then everyone’s got a chance at living forever not just the usual fat-cat fascist bastards, but like people, dig? Like we’re all people, dig? One thing you glom on to when you’re born, no matter what you do later, like whether you pile up bread or not, or how long you wear your hair, or whether you got a nine-to-fiver or just like make it, whether you’re white or black or purple dig? Yeah, like this death-kick is laid on everyone as soon as they’re born. I mean, one boat we’re all in together—people, see? Like they got Medicare for everyone cause they finally dug that you shouldn’t die just because you’re wasted. Well, ain’t Freezing just one more medical-type thing to beat the death-kick? So it should be free for everyone, like the rest of it. Like people. I’m people, you’re people, Bennie Howards’ people. We’re all people, and we all should have the same odds to live, dig?”
Barron felt the wheels turning. Cat’s riffing out straight SJC party line with a neat little Jack Barron tie-in, too neat. Got put in his head real professional-like, but he doesn’t know it, thinks it’s his own scam, in the air, is all. Rumor-mill stuff, all right: whispers in drunken barroom voices, on street corners, discos real-spontaneous-looking, just stuff everyone hears around. And ten to one it all comes from Evers, Mississippi… And I oughta know, I invented the schtick way back when.
Yeah, Barron thought, as he picked up on the moment hanging in the air, the four of them looking to him with life-death desperation in their eyes, vacuum-eyes of Brackett Audience Count estimated hundred million people, planted story, but a good one ’cause it hit a nerve, Luke and Morris are right, death is like the issue. Face of death, we’re all just people, do anything (lie, kill, form Foundation for Human Immortality, sell out to Bennie Howards) to stay alive just one more second, ’cause when you’re dead, mortality bullshit dies with you. Only two-party system on issue of life and death: Death Party and Life Party. Gut-level Presidential campaign: SJC-Republican-Jack Barron Party of life eternal versus Howards-Democratic Party of death by the numbers.
Jesus H. Christ on a Harley! Barron thought as it hit his gut-reality for the very first time—I actually could make the old college try for President!
“Well, like I’m with you in principle,” Barron said, with horrid awareness of his words as possible projected instrument of history (stuff history!) public statement from the Man Who thrust unwillingly into electric-contact reality social-conscience reality (goddamned silly-ass Berkeley bullshit is all!) he needed like an extra rectum. “But from where I sit, the whole Public Freezer schtick’s nowheresville. Don’t you see what you’re bucking? Bucking Benedict Howards and like billions in frozen assets bucking the Democratic Party that’s elected every president but two for over half a century bucking Teddy the Pretender and his ghosts and bucking the Republicans too—they don’t want Public Freezing, just a piece of the action for their own fat cats, is all, and they’re still rolling in bread. So what’s that leave on the other side, the SJC and my big mouth, and a few hundred fruitcakes parading around with picket signs? Big fucking deal!”
“Hey, you’re beautiful, man!” the Wolfman said sincerely. “You got more people listen to you than any cat in the country, and you don’t dig your own power, so groovy. You’re the coolest head around, is what you are, sitting up there with those sons of bitches, bigger than any of ’em and not playing that game, still keeping your cool. Cat we can trust. Shit, you’re beautiful, man.”
“He’s right,” the blonde chick said. “Don’t you dig? You got the power like the rest of the bastards, but you’re the only one didn’t get it on a pile of dead bodies, so you can use it the way it should be used, for people…”