51
Until finally I smell it, fire, in the ever-cooler ever-damper, underneath the 405.
Where garbage burns wetly, torched in a barrel in a cave at the top of the on-ramp underslope, wetly and smoky and smelly as the dude who talked me up here from the sidewalk, a Viet vet dude like all the others it seems, the underpass dudes, there’s so many now, but he might as well be by his lone ranger dangersome tonight, his buddy Graycloud’s at maximum ease on a pile of broken-down boxes, the only worse companion than a drunk’s a white port drunk, and the only worse drunk than a white port drunk’s an Indian white port drunk, and that there sad sack in the surplus fartsack’s got both bases covered, the sunova chief, couldn’t ask for better cover in a firefight, though, or watch-your-backup on a hooch-to-hooch, but that was just a.
Sideshow.
Brief interruption in the regularly scheduled.
“How old are you, kid?”
I say sixteen, I always add three, and it’s not only technically my birthday now, it’ll even be daytime officially any Zoo York minute now.
He grunts.
“Well, when I was your age I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d be getting personal Greetings! from the General himself, and I don’t mean Motors, I don’t mean Dynamics, I don’t mean delivery, I mean damned old Lewis B., his Hersheyness. And once the General gave the G-word to a South Central boy like me there was no last exit via the D-word—that’s deferment, kid—just a hop, skip, and how-high jump to getting injected, in-fected, and
see
-lected.”
He doesn’t laugh so much as cackle, it’s hard telling with these dudes who’s mental and who’s not, so mostly I steer as clear as the complexion on a Stri-Dex after model, but smelling smoke down below I knew the train was on the tracks never mind which kind, it made no difference, train in vain or train in vein, bands arrive at stands or hands arrive at hands, my arm is tired of waiting, to burn it down. And maybe a trickle of My Tunnel luck’s still flowing somewheres in the pipeline, because next thing you know what’s tripping slightly slurred off his tongue but the P-word setup, he says something about Alice in Wonderland’s restaurant then asks what kind of music I like, whose record I’m sacrificing to the elements tonight.
“Actually, that’s why I—well, I was wondering—”
And with
Down at the bricks, hectic, isn’t it
like this close to autopilot-tripping off the tip of my own tongue before I catch myself I know know know I have to do it now now now, make some kind of break, I mean what if there is an afterlife and I’m stuck with these songs in my head for infernity, talk about go to hell and see if you like it.
“I want to burn this record tonight. It’s hard to explain. But it’s really important. And I know it’d stink up your camp here, so, well, here’s my offer, if you let me toss it in, I’ll give you some money for the trouble. All my money, actually.”
“You’re walking the streets this time of night with that there long player so you can
burn
it? Hand ’er over, kid, let’s see what kinda trouble we can blame on rock ’n’ roll tonight, it won’t be the first time it’s taken—”
I hold it out for him, but his hands don’t reach for it. Instead he sidesteps right next to me and bends down with his lips in lobelock distance practically and says in my ear, “Do you know what it won’t be the first time it’s taken, kid? Rock ’n’ roll?”
He steps back like he’s waiting on professional advice from a Magic 8 Ball on Kentucky Derby day. But the only sure thing I’ve got for him is cluelessness. And it comes out like on its own, I’m actually trying interior to remember exactly what the fuck the original question was when I hear myself saying exterior, “I don’t know.”
“You want some help? You want a hint?”
“Sure.”
“It won’t be the first time rock ’n’ roll’s taken the
rap
.”
“Okay.”
“But do you know what kind of rap, kid? Can you tell me that?”
“Rap music?”
“What? Rap
music
? What kind of answer is that? The answer can’t be one kind of music when the question’s another kind of music, that’s just common sense.”
Is it, though? What was the question, anyways? Is it him or me?
Who’s crazy.
“C’mon, kid, you just think it through. What kind of raps are there? How many can there be?”
“Bad?”
“Good! Close! Almost there. Now just repeat after me.”
His hands swirl the air in front of my face like he’s Beethoven conducting his symphony for the rebel.
“It won’t. Be the first time. Rock ’n’ roll. Has taken. Taken what? A rap. What kind of rap? A—”
“Bum rap?”
His whoops reverb off the concrete overhead and I start laughing too, deep out of my belly so I gasp from the, fuck, bellows action is what it feels like, fueling embers hot already into fiery flicking lava tongues, not snake-forked but fork-forked, sharp superheated tines that rake and stab and edgewise carve inside me baked-potato style. But I cough for coverup, and the little dust bowl he’s kicking up jig-dancing in front of me camos the real reason.
“You must be thinking I’m like retarded.”
“Hell, no! I’m thinking of myself! And I like what I’m thinking! I’m thinking you must not be thinking I’m a bum!”
He lets out another good cackle.
“All that matters is we got us to the mountaintop, kid.”
He thumps my back.
“And we got there together. Now let’s see the record behind the rap sheet.”
Once he look-sees the cover he doesn’t give it much of the benefit, I tell him it’s an X burning, not a cross, but he says six of one, half dozen of the other, looks like the same old racist shit to him, and then he starts reading out the lyrics to “Los Angeles,” disbelieving at first, then disgusted.
“You catch that, Graycloud? Niggers and Jews and spics and queers. Damned if your people don’t get the short end even when it comes to the equal-opportunity hating.”
Though credit where due, the idle rich, well, he can’t say his dander gets past half mast on that one.
“You want the skinny on that crowd, you go up to Santa Barbara. I had a buddy ask me why do hard time in LA, get up close and personal with all those rich folks feeling guilty and live high on the hog off the fat of the land. So I stuck my thumb out, did a little recon. And that town’s thick with blue-bloods, all right, thick as creamed peas, but let me tell you, they’re feeling no shame on account of having money. You’re the one who’s supposed to feel guilty for not having it.”
“There’s islands up there, right?”
“Islands?”
“In the ocean. By Santa Barbara.”
“The Channel Islands, you must mean. Yes indeed. Big as life. Not like on-a-clear-day-you-can-see Catalina, otherwise try a Pontiac dealer.”
A beat.
“Kid, don’t tell me—”
“I get it.”
“You got a nice smile, you oughta show it more. You had me worried there. Sure there’s islands, three, four, five, straight shot over the water. But it’s the damnedest thing, you never get a sunset behind ’em or between ’em or any which ways that direction. Geography’s all screwy up there. Sun sets over the land half the year, that’s what I heard. Over the mountains. Feels wrong, for California.”
He taps a finger on the record jacket.
“Same here. It ain’t right, singing up prejudice. Where’s this outfit from, back east?”
I tell him they’re pretty much local, but he’s all, No, not a chance, he begs to differ, I must be mistaken, and I remember what Animal Cracker said about Exene, she just came out here three or four years ago, same with John Doe.
“Now, this fellow with the piled-up hair, him I’ll buy. He probably is local. Looks like a surfer who got religion, that old-time rhythm religion. But this lovely lady—kid, I’ve lived here all my life, except for that brief interruption in the regularly scheduled, and one thing I can spot, I promise you, is a California girl, a southern California girl, and I am one hundred percent—”
“I think she’s maybe from Florida, originally.”
“Florida. Well, that explains it, then. People come out here, they just don’t get it. While the born-and-breds, like me and you—am I right, kid? You native?”
I nod.
“We get it. Just naturally. Comes with the territory.”
He hands back the record.
“So you got your principles. At a young age. Good for you.”
I just go along with him, kind of like Darby, you know, it’s easier. I fish in my jeans pockets till I find it, David’s twenty from our bet, about west of the west.
“Here. It’s all I have.”
He whistles.
“Well, we’re grateful for any and all contributions to the cause, but hell, I don’t want
all
your money, kid, no offense, but you’re not looking so prosperous yourself.”
I say I don’t need any money, not where I’m headed, and he says in that case just keep the twenty and lead him to the Promised Land. Then he rewind-repeat cackles and takes it.
I let go of
Los Angeles
over the barrel so it’s diving for the flames same ways I’ll be diving for the opposite, from the pier.
“Burn, baby, burn!” he says.
And genielike it billows up, almost instantly, the gut-churning smoke from the melting vinyl.
“To purloin a phrase.”
We both step back.
“Sixteen, you say? Born in ’sixty-five? Hard to believe.”
“I’m small for my age. But I shave and—stuff.”
He laughs.
“Oh, I’m sure you do. Stuff, especially. I don’t doubt it. What’s hard to believe is sixteen years, since the long hot summer.”
Sizzling sounds funnel up out of the barrel and turn to static on the airwaves, distorted, echoing.
“Since the Rebellion.”
Like out of a frying pan.
“Since the Gulf of Tonkin.”
And into a fire.
He starts humming a tune, not one I recognize, though. And the breeze turns into wind, just like that, force-feeding us oily nasty greasy gagging rhymes-with-choke till we both take another step back, and then another.
“Father, father,” he sings. “We don’t need to escalate.”
And he keeps singing, with melting vinyl snap crackle popping for the rhythm track and double tripled heat from the barrel spoofing spotlight glare, at least how it feels, the furnace thing surprises me at first but what are records anyways but hardened petroleum, in circular form. What keeps on surprising me is his singing voice, how it doesn’t match the way he talks or the way he smells or the place I’m hearing it, not at all, more belongs in church almost, and not just any church but one of those ancient Holy Roman ones that took longer to build than this country’s been a country, and partly it’s the words I guess,
war is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate
, but only only partly partly, the words are just whispers but the voice, clear and unclear, sure and unsure all at once, so many edges to it soft and sweet and bitter, torn, the hurt of a promise, broken, father father, the stir of a kiss, beginning, sister sister, the touch of need, endless, mother mother, oh like the river of time or something, with currents and eddies and riffles and rapids, sun-warm shallows, green deeps, cold deeps, dark, and sinkholes, sinkholes you lose yourself in, touch your toes on smooth white stones it seems that voice is here for one reason only one alone, to show you something nobody else has ever seen.
The wind gusts through again when he’s finished, but turnabout from behind so it stays the smoke away completely for one beat, two beats, three beats, counting. Too bad it stays the heat though too, and buys me a shiver. He calls me “Sixteen,” like it’s my name, and says at least kids my age won’t ever get drafted, it’s just not in the deck of fireproof cards, not till the sons of the dudes who were over in ’Nam get past draft age at least, sometime after the turn of the century, and even then we’ll need a new enemy, before the Hershey Bar speedway’s back in business.
“They’ll string this thing with the Russians out as long as they can, but it won’t last forever. That’s the country that’ll always back down from war, push comes to shove. You know why?”
I say I don’t and move closer to the barrel, rubbing my hands together, the wind feels like it’s coming off the Arctic Ocean, not the Pacific, the water out there must be cold as the blood in the heart of a shark.
“Because they know what war’s like. More than anybody else. And they hate it. Hell, all we have to do is start shootin’ color TVs over there instead of missiles and they’ll sign the peace treaty tomorrow. You think they give two shits in Tahiti about making the world Communist? That’s the last thing they want, everybody on their side. If everybody’s like you, then who’s the enemy? Who do you get folks worked up about to keep their minds off all the dirt you’re doing them yourself ?”
He stops, to see if I’m paying attention, I guess.
“Nobody.”
“You got it. That’s what the USA’s got to do, long term. Find us a new enemy. But he’s out there somewhere. We don’t know who he is, but he’s out there. Somewhere. Just like Charlie.”
A low muttering carries over from the base of the on-ramp buttress.
“That got a rise out of you, didn’t it, Graycloud?”
He lowers his voice.
“Charlie does it every time. Must be his own private early warning system.”
The wind dies down as fast as it picked up. The smoke’s back to wet garbagey again, completely. So the record’s gone, like all those songs. Gone like the Indians, gone like the Spaniards, Darby, Rory, how many people?
He claps a big hand on my shoulder.
“But hey, you gotta have enemies so you know who your friends are. Right, kid?”
“I guess so. I try not to make any, though.”
“Is that right? That’s good. You’re a good kid. I can see that.”
“I can’t.”
He thinks it’s the funniest thing he’s ever heard.
west of the west
52
West.
The distance, swallowing one boy after another.
Swallowed me.
Rain.
Real rain, the magic in the tragic, first the smell the dampened dust one beat two beat three beat drop, four beat five beat six beat drop, seven beat eight beat fatter drops, nine beat ten beat drops so huge, drench on eleven, twelve, deluge.
After me, no, after who?
It could be anybody pulling up alongside, I don’t care who, I hope they jack me to the Valley and keep me in a box under their waterbed, I hope they kill me, save me the here comes queer comes double trouble.
“You’re Darby’s friend.”
That voice, like music, real music.
LA punks, take off your swastikas.
It’s Phranc.
“Get in. You’re soaked.”
“Where you headed?”
“Home.”
“Where’s home?”
“Venice.”
“I need to get to Santa Monica.”
“I’ll take you.”
Over?
There?
Inside she reaches for my shades and lifts them up and off to dry the lenses. Then she touches my forehead just above the gash on my eyebrow from the counter when I dived for dirt at the taco stand.
“What happened?”
“Rory’s dead. Rory Dolores.”
“No! How?”
“Stabbed.”
“Where?”
“Hollywood.”
“Over drugs? By the V-13?”
“You already heard about it?”
“I heard they were looking for him.”
“For Rory?”
“He owed them money.”
“Who said that?”
“They did, to my brother, we grew up next to Oakwood, that’s the ’hood.”
“But why?”
“Because they know I’m down with the Hollywood scene, and he’d pass the word to me.”
“That Rory owed them—”
“For this major amount of speed and he’d disappeared, and, well, he could run but not hide, so he’d better pay up.”
“Rory? They said it was Rory? Are you sure?”
“They just said Darby’s homie. But that’s Rory.”
“Blitzer! It was Blitzer.”
“Blitzer?”
“It had to be.”
“I don’t think they even know Blitzer. He never hung out. Rory’s been around the pavilion forever. And the Cove. That surf spot between the old POP piers, you know, Pacific Ocean Park. He’s local.”
“It wasn’t Rory. Blitzer blamed it on him. He planted the Desoxyn in the room and let V-13 know where it was and when they found it they killed him.”
“What room? Why? How do you know?”
And I tell her everything. Mostly. I leave out the sex stuff. But she hears all the rest and she just starts driving while I sit there drip drip dripping, it’s one of those old-school cruisers with rubber floor mats so you hear every drop, I feel like a windup alarm clock, max vol ticking at three A.M. when you can’t get to sleep.
Three A.M., long time passing, where have all the hours gone, hours that would, hours that wouldn’t.
Work.
“ ‘Three A.M. at the Taco Stand.’ ”
And Wanda wouldn’t, might not anyways, either.
Work.
At the taco stand, anymore, if we bailed on everyone like Blitzer wanted, then and there, and the cops came later asking questions. So we couldn’t, it was wrong.
Who said?
I said.
And if I hadn’t?
We’d have gone to the Nast how long before we did?
An hour?
More?
For the checks and?
More.
“We got to wash you up. Soap and hot water.”
More.
“Buy ourselves some alone time.”
With Rory being killed next door?
An hour that would or an hour that wouldn’t? Have made any difference or would have made.
More?
Not any but all?
“What kind of car is this?”
“ ’Sixty-five Plymouth Valiant. It’s got the push-button transmission. Right here. Torque-Flite.”
Her fingers thunk the hesher dash, heavy metal, not aluminum, tastes like.
Veneer.
“Isn’t that cool? They named everything so cool then. I think it stopped when they gave up on World’s Fairs.”
She says they’ll come back though. Like Tupperware. It’s coming back. Everything comes back.
“Because everything goes in circles.”
She slows down and pulls over.
Rat-tat raindrops, rat-tat-tat, raindrops raindrops, tell them that.
“Circle One,” she says.
Rat-tat I’m rat-tat-tat-tat.
“I’m calling it.”
I’m your rat-tat I’m your gun.
“Okay.”
Rat-tat pull my rat-tat trigger, rat-tat rat-tat rat-tat bigger.
“What really happened tonight between you and Blitzer?”
I tell her I stopped trusting him I guess, because of Tim and David, he kept pushing things that would mix them up with the beach punks, and I started liking them, in their own way they were wicked cool, I was worried they’d get hurt or even killed, I mean, Darby was afraid of that, and these guys weren’t even punks.
“So I was like on guard, constantly.”
“Did Blitzer know you were worried?”
“Fully. From the first. He brought up the idea of jacking their van and leaving them at Oki Dog and I was all, By themselves? and then he said maybe with Squid and Siouxsie.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“Pretty much.”
“So you influenced him.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You said he looked out for them at the Vex.”
“I sort of thought it was to get them trusting him. So he could take advantage later.”
“Didn’t they trust you already? Leaving you alone in their room with all their stuff? And their car keys?”
“I guess so.”
“And did anything bad happen to them tonight?”
“I told you! Their van got jacked, and their traveler’s checks.”
“But you were fine with that, right?”
“After Blitzer said they’d get all their money back, and the van was insured, yeah.”
“They never got beat down or anything?”
“Not from what those dykes—those lesbian sheriffs said.”
She wants to know why we didn’t bail as soon as we found the traveler’s checks, and take the speed with us, if Blitzer really had it. The coast was clear. We had the keys. I tell her we wanted more delay, before we had the cops on us, and she just laughs.
“I’m not lying to you.”
“Then don’t lie to yourself.”
Well. Okay. Say we blast from the Nast then and there, while they’re Poseur-bound. And Tim and David go straight I mean directly to Hollywood Division. Which they probably wouldn’t, not all wasted on MDA, not with Siouxsie and Squid telling them to chill, we can’t be far, we’re bound to show sooner or later, bring on the Manic Panic. But say they do. And what is it to the bullet boys? A couple of flamers who checked into a no-tell motel the minute they hit town and picked up rent boys and started doing drugs.
And that goes triplex quadruplex when they start reeling off the contents of the van.
“Mostly we just wanted to, you know, fool around. With privacy. On a real bed.”
“Oh.”
“It was the first time, him and me. I mean doing—everything.”
“But you wanted to? Blitzer wasn’t forcing—”
“No way! Blitzer’s not like that at all. He’d never—”
And I just stop talking, and there’s this silence except for me dripping on the floor mat like a damn water clock, and then she starts driving again and next thing you know we’re on the freeway, beachbound. So naturally what comes up on KROQ but Suburban Lawns, “Gidget Goes to Hell.”
Phranc says I’m welcome to crash at her place as long as I want.
“I don’t think so. But thanks anyways.”
“It’s sad about Rory.”
“I wanted him with us tonight.”
“To keep him away from trouble?”
I start to nod but only just. Because that’s what I want to remember, but what do I remember, how Blitzer told me I was smart, that was one thing he liked about me, how then his fingers, those fingers, how they traced up my leg, traced circles, on my thigh, traced inwards, warm, tracing, warmer, circles, farther, there, traced, a circle, another thing he said.
He liked about me.
And I remember what I said next, about the boys’ home, and after that, about Rory. So I shake my head instead and cover my face with my hands.
“Why, then?”
“So we wouldn’t be the only ones—”
I start sobbing, hold my breath to stay it.
“Who could have jacked the checks.”
I let it out.
“So there’d be another suspect.”
She reaches over and massages the back of my neck with her fingertips.
“Later.”
I can’t even say his name unless I cry baby cry.
“Rory.”
She just lets me, keeps rubbing my neck, doesn’t tell me it’s all right, doesn’t say I’ll get over it, hands me a tissue when I finally stay the big tears dry and says, “But it didn’t happen.”
“Because Blitzer said no. I was all for it. It was my idea. I was afraid I’d end up in a boys’ home.”
“That doesn’t mean Blitzer thought up the same kind of thing and went through with it.”
I tell her she’s turning it backwards, Blitzer did set Rory up, he must have, what about that kid Spanky, he warned us, what I’m saying is who am I to point the finger, I just figured that out, I’ve got short-term memory loss or something.
She says word on that, I’m forgetting first that for some reason Spanky didn’t scare Blitzer off the Vex, where those gangsters would be sure to look for a punk on a Sunday night, and second, more important, what we all called Rory after Darby died.
Read-all-about-it Rory.
Because there was Rory in the papers, Rory on TV, Rory on the roof of Sunset 9000, threatening to jump till John Doe talked him down, Rory at the funeral, head-to-head with Darby’s mom, he cried she cried, she wailed he wailed, right up to the finish line when they grounded the coffin and what did she scream, “Oh God, why couldn’t it have been me?”
And what did Gerber whisper, “Oh God, why not Rory?”
It was like he had to make up for Darby’s note, for not being name-checked like Bosco. And the note never made the news anyways, not what it said. It was Rory who lived at Darby’s last place, the Oxford house. Not Bosco. Not Blitzer. And who was Darby fighting with outside the Hong Kong Cafe the night he died?
Not Blitzer.
Rory.
AKA Darby’s homie.
“But I heard V-13 was looking for Blitzer starting with Siouxsie and—”
“Stitches Siouxsie?”
It turns out Phranc told them in the first place. At some dyke diner in Silver Lake. But she didn’t say Blitzer. She said what her brother said. Darby’s homie. They must have just assumed.
“It’s what Blitzer said it was. Mistaken identity. He told you the truth. Like I said, if he really burned V-13 like that would he go to the Vex tonight? Would he go to Oki Dog, or try to anyway?”
“We had to sell those tabs.”
“Not really. You just had to get those guys dosed so you could rip them off.”
And it’s true. But it sounds so harsh, hearing it like that, clue cards on the table.
It just isn’t me, I’m not like that at all.
And what did I tell Phranc, from my heart without thinking, Blitzer’s not like that at all.
And he is, or he isn’t.
And I am, or I’m not.
It is me.
It isn’t me.
Nothing’s harder than being different.
She slows going down the off-ramp.
“There’s Ships.”
What about being—
“Are you hungry?”
What about being—
“You look hungry.”
What about being—
“I lost my appetite.”
“Speed?”
“Yeah.”
“Slam it?”
“No!”
What about being—
“Darby did.”
Everything you want to be, nothing that you don’t.
“I don’t do everything Darby did.”
She says she hopes not. She really hopes not. Then she says it’s sad about Darby too. It always will be. And she runs down her all-time favorite memory of him, the first time Rodney interviewed the band, going around one by one, asking what everybody did. Finally Rodney got to Darby, who was last, and said, “So what do you play?” And Darby answered back, all sweet and sincere, “Hard to get.”
“I never heard that before.”
“It’s like the condensed version of Darby Crash. Clueless and funny and fuck-you, but with all this deep truth behind it. In three words. Three one-syllable words.”
And she’s got three more.
Here.
We.
Are.
Because we are.
“This is where we run out of continent,” she says, and turns in to the parking lot. But surprise surprise, we don’t run out of company. Too bad she has a flattop and doesn’t use cosmetics.
“What do you want to do? We could wait him out at my place. He won’t stay here forever, not in a stolen vehicle.”
If I don’t do it here and now I won’t. Somehow I’m sure of it.
“I can’t talk to him. I don’t want to and it’ll just make me feel worse and—I just can’t. But I want to go out there. Like I planned. I want to be out there by myself. Now. I don’t want him following me.”
“Will you come back?”
“To Blitzer?”
“Period.”
The rain’s letting up and the wipers get a little squeal going.
Squeal.
That’s what Elliot Mess said he didn’t want to do that night.
Squeal.
On Darby and Casey.
If I was Darby and Phranc was Elliot, it wouldn’t matter, what I answer.
If I was Darby and Phranc was me.
“Yes.”
“What if I don’t believe you?”
“Why wouldn’t you?”
“Because you might be thinking that lying’s the punk thing to do.”
“Everything I’ve told you is true.”
“The last thing isn’t true yet.”
“Just help me, okay? Talk to Blitzer so he’ll leave me alone. Please.”
“I don’t know if I should.”
“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have asked. It’s all on me.”
“It’s all about you. Nobody else.”
“I got nobody else.”
She cranks the steering wheel as far as she can, lets go, cranks it again, hard right, hard left, hard right, hard left. Between the pavement and the moving tires bits of gravel crunch and launch, peppering puddles with volleys of shrapnel like skimming stones, angled too low to skip so they carve fast noisy furrows that zip then hiss then all hands down no tracks no trace in a meteor moment that was there or wasn’t, who can say, Ships or shipwrecked, dawning, drowning, history, mystery, noose of charms or noose of chains, anything might happen or everything won’t, I’ve got a secret and Phranc’s got a Space Needle, threaded to the rearview mirror.