In the end some mondo bastard with a vest full of patches dragged us to the street. Next to the Kodak booth on the corner, an ancient bum was hollering at passersby. His old Schwinn bike, a masterpiece, really, had a banana seat and two-foot sissy bar, and ape hangers, too, with long-tasseled grips. The guy was bedecked in leather, head to foot, and sported a helmet from Germany strapped with vintage goggles.
“Now don’t spaz out over there,” he shouted when he saw us. “If you can’t dance, don’t start off with the funky chicken!”
The night may have gone sour, but that hadn’t kept the gang from stepping out to the tune of Hatchet Lady! and Oh Mommy, Mommy! and Daddy still wants to lick the jam jar! The Trophy Room’s neon bathed the street in sad pink light. I thought of Lucille’s painting, the woman collapsed in her fruitless world. Her head hung low, Lucille was a spooky premonition.
“For whatever it’s worth,” I said, “I’m sorry.”
Her eyes were mascara ruined by tears. “You didn’t have to tell them that.”
“I’m really sorry.” I tried to put my arm around her, but she shrugged me off and turned away. “Look,” I said. “I’ll tell them I was lying.”
“All you know is little and mean.”
“I’ll make it up,” I said. “Just tell me what to do, and I will.”
“Go to hell.”
And with that she ran up the Haight, past the bowling alley, past the Mickey D’s, and melted into shadows in the park.
“You may think you got over good,” Tina said, up in my face for added effect, “but Karma’s going to get you.”
“You know what you guys are?” Basil said to the girls. “A couple a type-1 morons. Now that,” he said with a slap to my back, “was some kind of joke.”
“I told you not to tell her.”
“It was a joke,” Basil said, and slipped a lemon-drop in his mouth. “Forget about it.”
The old leather dude was still yammering at the passersby. “I ask you,” he shouted at one woman, “if Death Valley is below LA or to the west of LA, and you don’t know. You don’t know anything. You’re just Mrs Motor Mouth. And you’re a messy housekeeper, too!” Then he saw me gaping and said, “You want to know a secret, pal?”
“What’s that?”
“Dead men are heavier than Sunday afternoons.”
“Yeah?”
“Them and wedding vows.”
Dinky, gazing up through the gridlock of muni-wires, still hadn’t said a word.
“Tell him, Dink,” Basil said.
“Tell him what?”
“That she’ll get over it.”
“We must always remember old Tom’s wondrous words of wisdom,” Dinky said, smiling. “There’s nothing wrong with her a hundred dollars won’t fix.”
AUGUST IN THE CAPAY VALLEY IS STRAIGHT-UP death. What water doesn’t touch, the sun destroys, the nut trees droop under coats of dust, and the hillsides big with jim brush and sage fret with the shadows of buzzards, and hiding sparrows, and mice. And yet, even so, from a ruin of drought you can walk into corn so dense it might be a wall of scrumptious hair. With dusk the heat resolves — if only faintly, the sky’s on you still — until at last night emerges and sleep becomes something you think could be real. That’s the rattler’s hour, then, time of the skunk, time of the owl, some Achemon sphinx with wings of blood-stained eyes.
For the month since I returned from Portland I’ve been trucking crops most days and nights to outfits down in Sacto and the Bay, Oaktown mostly, and the veggie quarter south of Frisco. I live in a trailer on cinderblocks, now, with one pair of boots, a pair of cutoffs and two of socks, and an old wool sweater nabbed from Sally-Alley. And save the nip here and there I take with Thomas the Tattooed Whiskey Man, I’ve quit with the drinking and smoking both. As for the folks who roust me some nights, when the bongos beat and the jug goes round the flames, well, they say I talk in my sleep about a girl by the name of Avey.
It’s hard to believe I lived that other life. Not that this one’s all that different. I’ve got nothing to my name but the letters it’s made of, them and my rags and the copy of Fear and Loathing I stashed in my ruck the day Super got us to the lake. A host of black birds ten thousand strong will rise from a field like a cloud from myth, and it’s no more to me than dishes in my sink. I hit the peak of a rise on the road to look down windrows gold as my mother’s gold ring, wider and farther than I can tell, and if I don’t feel bewildered, it’s because I’m numb.
Any boob with sense can see me for what I am. I could care less. Yet when I think on that night, up at Dinky’s cabin, waiting for Super to return while Lucille told Hickory I was Satan in the guise of a drunk, how I’d always wanted Lucille for myself but couldn’t, not, she said, because I never tried but because she wouldn’t have me, how her scorn made me do things no human should have done to a person they called friend, how if Hickory knew what was good she’d get as far from me as her legs could go — when I think of that night from here in the endless quiet heat, I feel I’ve drunk a bucket of blood. Where Lucille got that stuff, I will never know. Not a snatch of it was true, not the parts that mattered. And besides, what difference did it make, so long as she never tried to load Hickory up with poison? That’s how it went: I woke from a nap with a tampon in my tea and her saying she’d found it in some jam.
“It sure does look like one to me,” I said. Dinky had sunk back into his pillow. Hickory was glaring. “What exactly did Lucy say?”
She dipped her rag in the basin and sponged Dinky’s brow. “You could’ve told me you were just about anything,” she said, “and I’d have believed you.”
I’d hoped she’d ask me to explain, or even not to explain, that whatever had happened happened and nothing she or I could do would change it, that even if we could it wouldn’t matter, because none of it had happened between us. I wanted her to trust in the promise of the man I was trying to give her. But she dropped her rag and left.
Dinky was snoring. A faint glow had crept into the room. Through the window I watched the swaying trees…
One of the girls had slapped in another disc, I couldn’t quite make it out, a wheezing melody, country-like, the lyrics scarcely patchy… learn how to steer… spill my beer… Hickory and Lucille were talking—“come back”—“fucking nightmare”—“just those Doritos”… I slipped toward the landing and cocked my head.
“What if they can’t get the truck?” Lucille said.
“They’ll get it.”
“That old man scares me.” One glass clinked on another. Something plastic bounced on the table, a lighter or a cup. The couch springs creaked, then the wooden rocker.
“Dinky,” Hickory said, “told me you two used to have a thing.”