C had passed around the joints, and Jake handed one to me. “No thanks, Jake,” I said. “I can’t get high. It’s just a waste on me.”
“I know,” Jake replied. “But, for Vinny’s sake, smoke with us.”
I could not refuse that request.
“Here’s to Vinny,” C said as the five of us lit up.
As I inhaled the smoke deep into my lungs, I tried to put myself in the shoes of these men when they were nineteen-to-twenty-year-olds walking through the jungle and the rice paddies, knowing that six of their friends were killed just the day before.
When I was twenty, I was at home or at college, reading and writing, having sex with girls in the back of the Buick, watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show on TV. McDonald’s had opened its first restaurant in my hometown a couple of years before, and I was eating three Big Macs a day, with fries.
As I took another hit from the joint, I started to get angry at God. Not for me, but for them. If there was a God, how dare He allow these men to suffer so long for a fight they didn’t choose? It was time for Him to get His lazy ass down here and help them. I wanted to pray for these men and all the other homeless souls I had met and broken bread with each day.
But would it do any good?
Were the trillions of prayers offered up over the centuries just a total waste of time, time that could have been spent just as productively producing widgets? Was God, like me, depressed by what He saw? His most blessed creation—mankind—was killing, enslaving, and torturing fellow men over gold, oil, land, and water. Did God need a few milligrams of Zoloft? Or how about a joint?
I was sick and tired of hearing excuses offered by preachers about how God works in mysterious ways and loves the poor, the hungry, and the sick. I wanted God to break into the six-o’clock news and make an announcement: “Good evening. This is God. When I am done with this message, I want you to turn off your television, walk out your door, love your neighbor, take the homeless into your homes, stop killing each other, quit stealing from one another, and halt the raping and pillaging of the world I have given you. Good night, David. Good night, Chet. Good night, everyone, and have a nice tomorrow.”
The warmth of the sun on my face brought me back to the present. I was one of five men sitting in a circle in a graveyard. I saw part of a rainbow dipping into the water in the distance. It was still drizzling, but the clouds were moving on and the sun was breaking through.
It was then that I realized I might have finally gotten high! “You guys see that rainbow?” I asked.
“I do believe Richard is high,” Jake laughed.
“What rainbow?” C asked.
“That one,” I said, pointing. “It’s growing bigger. It’s going to fill the sky.”
“You see it, Charlie?” Jake asked.
Charles shook his head.
“I guess you’re right, Jake. I must be high. Do you guys see rainbows when you get high?”
“Sure do,” C said. “And we all get mad at God and cuss Him out!”
The rainbow grew stronger, arching across the sky in hues of pink, green, and yellow.
“Oh, I see that rainbow now,” Jake said, taking another hit of his joint.
“Me, too,” Charles said.
“It’s a beauty!” C added.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” Rodney exclaimed.
We all took another drag and admired our own personal version of the colors.
“Did I ever tell you I can talk to whales?” I asked.
“Oh, shit,” Jake said. “We’d better get out of here before he gets going on that!”
Chapter 19
THE OPERA
The next week, C invited me to a night at the opera in Seattle.
We left right after lunching on macaroni and cheese at Sally’s. We drove up to Bainbridge Island and caught the ferry from there to Seattle.
C wanted to cruise “The Ave” in the U District, just north of downtown Seattle. The Ave is an eight-block stretch of ethnic restaurants, bookstores, funky bars, and shops full of T-shirts, incense (with provocative names like White Dove, Virgin, Captain Black, and Hot Breath), exotic knives with curved black handles and shiny steel blades, and pipes bearing an uncanny resemblance to those used to smoke illegal drugs.
A mixture of university students and professors, homeless and street people, and amused observers frequented The Ave. There were teens with spiked hair, dyed orange, chartreuse, red-white-and-blue, and all the other shades of the rainbow. Street musicians were strumming their guitars and singing folk songs, with their instrument cases lying open on the sidewalk, ready to receive the coin of the realm.
C was in his element. Flowers Bar was our first stop of the day. It had been a flower shop for many years. Poor students would often buy a single rose there on the way to a date, when gallantry was in vogue. When the new owners bought the site and turned it into a restaurant, they couldn’t think of a better name. So they simply called it Flowers. It was an airy place, with old, cracked leather chairs placed by the front windows. That made it the perfect perch for people watching.
“I think I’ll have a White Russian,” C told the waitress tending to our perch.
“Do you have a nice Pinot?” I asked.
“Very nice,” she said, with a smile.
“I’ll take a glass,” I replied, and she headed off to fill our order.
Flowers was busy.
“Listen,” C said, leaning toward me. “People are talking about issues—about books, art, music, and faraway places. They are sharing ideas instead of talking about other people, their husbands, their problems, their cars, and their possessions. Ahhhh ... this is heaven!”
We spent the next four hours watching the parade of people on The Ave, and C would have made the Russkies proud, consuming seven White Russians to my four Pinots.
We arrived at the opera just as they were flicking the lights to announce the start.
C looked more like a cast member, dressed in his “pirate-wear,” topped with a bandana. All he needed was a gold earring and he could have been Captain Cook. He handed the tickets to the usher, who directed us to third row, center. I, dressed in my jeans and scuffed Reeboks, found myself seated next to a gentleman in a black tuxedo.
“How did you get these great seats?” I whispered.
“I did somebody a favor,” C said. “Somebody needed a glad bag for a sick friend, and I just happened to have one. Actually, I think these seats belong to Mr. and Mrs. Bill Gates, but they’re touring Europe right now.”
The house lights dimmed. I crossed my arms and leaned back in my seat. C leaned forward as if to inhale every moment of the production. It was Carmen. The gypsy girl lifted the hem of her skirt and danced toward her male admirers in a sun-drenched Seville square outside the cigarette factory where she worked.
The production carried the audience through a whole range of emotions. C laughed when Carmen sang the “Habanera” aria, about love as a lawless gypsy child. He cried when the outcast Don José lamented the prison love had made for him.
At intermission, while others were savoring six-dollar glasses of Chardonnay in the lobby, C took a can of Budweiser and a bag of Fritos from his wool pea coat and noisily enjoyed his refreshments, much to the chagrin of some and the amusement of other operagoers.
The third act was just as engrossing as the first two. C nodded as Carmen mourned the fate that cannot be escaped. He tapped his feet and hummed along to the “Toreador Song.” And he cried again when the tormented Don José drove his knife into the heart of his beloved, Carmen, and threw himself on her dead body.
It was about eleven when the opera ended and we headed back to the van. C was exhilarated, humming the score. “Can we stop at 7-Eleven?” he asked.
Willow was doing her I-have-to-take-a-pee dance as we headed out. She had been very patiently waiting in the car, drinking her water in the cup-holder and napping the entire time we were in the theater. I found a spot as quickly as possible and took Willow for he
r nightly duty. C stayed in the car listening to NPR, catching up on the war.
Willow seemed to enjoy our late night walks the best. Maybe it was the wolf in her little body, smelling the grass as it began cooling down after being warmed by the earth during the day. She rolled more at night, throwing herself on the ground and tossing her tiny frame back and forth, wiggling and rubbing her nose in the green stuff. When she stood up, it looked for a moment like she was intoxicated. And then, she would run!
The music was blaring from the van speakers when Willow and I returned. C was inside stomping his feet and playing an imaginary drum. I opened the door and Willow hopped in. “No wonder he killed himself,” C said, “playing music like that all the time.”
“Who’s that?” I asked.
“Kurt Cobain,” C replied. “That’s one of his hits—“The Man Who Sold the World.” He was from Seattle.”
“No, I’m not familiar with him at all,” I said, settling into my seat, and headed for 7-Eleven. C turned Cobain up another few decibels, pounded his feet harder, and moved his head to the beat of the music.
As I expected, our pit stop at 7-Eleven was for an intoxicant. C bought two bottles of cheap high-proof wine.
“Wait a minute.” C stepped out of the van again and dug into the top pocket of his shirt and then patted his pants pockets. “Damn. I’ve done it again.” Then he went over and took the lid off the trash can in front of the store, rustled up an aluminum can, and got back in the van. “I lost my pipe,” he said. “I must have lost a hundred of them by now.” He took his knife from his pocket, punched a hole in the empty can, and bent it into a chic marijuana appliance. “Just as good, if not better,” he said of his new pipe.
“Pick your poison—cherry or strawberry?” C asked, holding up the bottles of wine.
“You choose,” I said.
He closed his eyes. “Eenie, meenie, mynee, mo. It’s strawberry!” he said, twisting the cap off the bottle and pouring generously into a paper cup. He took a swig and handed me the cup. “When we get back on the other side, let’s stop in Hansville and see my friend Adrian, okay?”
We headed north toward Edmonds and barely caught the twelve-thirty-five ferry. After six White Russians, four glasses of Pinot, and a night of Carmen, washed down with two glasses of forty-proof strawberry wine, we both fell asleep in the van to the hum of the ferry turbines. The blaring of the horns signaling our arrival in Kingston startled us both back to life. “Arriving Kingston,” the first mate announced over the speaker system. “Passengers need to return to their cars at this time. We are tying up for the night. The next ferry will be at five thirty a.m.”
“I must’ve dozed off,” C said, stretching.
“I did too,” I said. “It felt good. Are you sure your friend—what’s his name?”
“Adrian.”
“Are you sure he’ll still be up?” I asked.
“He stays up all night most of the time,” C replied. “He’s truly a night owl.” C reached for his cup and poured some more wine. “Adrian is the quiet type,” he said. “He likes to be alone. He’s got a little two-bedroom cabin in the woods. He works in the garden, smokes some pot, has something to eat, takes a nap, reads a book, smokes some more pot, eats dinner, smokes some more pot, plays his guitar, reads, and then smokes some more pot. Now, take a right at the old country store coming up,” directed C. “It’s not far after that.”
I made the turn at the store and headed north. C delicately shaped his marijuana bud and placed it over the hole in his beer-can pipe, struck his lighter, and sucked in hard. I noticed a car coming up fast from behind and immediately checked my speed.
“I hope this isn’t a cop on our tail,” I said.
“Cop? Where?” C choked on his smoke.
The car drew up behind us and then changed lanes, whizzing past, doing a good eighty.
“Whew! He was moving!” I said.
C took another hit from his can. “Glad it wasn’t a cop,” he coughed out. In a moment, he pointed ahead. “Turn right on the next road. It’s gravel and kinda bumpy.”
I slowed and made the turn. It was bumpy all right—full of potholes a good eight inches deep. After about ten minutes of torture I asked, “Hey C, how much farther do we have to go? The van and I can’t take much more of this.”
“Just a little bit farther. We’re almost there,” he promised.
As we approached Adrian’s cabin, we could see car lights in the distance. “He must be home,” I said.
“Wait a minute; something’s not right,” C said, leaning forward and peering out the window. “It’s too bright. Adrian’s wouldn’t be all lit up at this time of night; he’d be too stoned. Slow down. Pull over here, and turn off your lights.”
I pulled over as instructed, flipped off the lights, and turned off the engine.
“Let’s walk up there and check this out,” he said, opening the van door quietly.
I climbed out and told Willow we’d be right back. “No bark! No bark!”
Now that we were out of the car, we could hear yelling. We slowly approached Adrian’s place.
“I don’t like this,” C whispered. We crept along in the shadows of the tree line until the house came into view. “Stay down.”
“That’s the same Chevy that roared past us on the highway,” I whispered back. Its brights were on and the motor was running.
“Fuck you, asshole!” someone screamed, and a man was pushed out the front door. He was wearing jeans but no shirt or shoes. “We’re going to teach you a fucking lesson!” the voice bellowed again.
The shoeless man fell to the ground, and two men raced out and kicked him. “There, motherfucker! Maybe you’ll listen to us when we ask you something next time,” the man kept yelling. “That’s if you live, asshole!”
“We’ve got to do something,” I said to C, starting to get up.
“Stay down!” he ordered, pulling me back to the ground. “Those guys’ll kill you and think nothing of it. That’s Michael and Roy. Michael calls himself the ‘avenging angel.’ He’s the one with the black vest and the big chain hanging around his waist. The fat guy with the ponytail is Roy. Adrian should know better than to deal with those dudes; he must have been pretty desperate, like a cabin payment due and the bank on his ass.
“Michael’s a hired gun—a bounty hunter. For forty bucks, he’ll collect the hundred dollars somebody owes you. He’s like a bill collector, a lawyer, a banker, a judge, and a jury all rolled into one.”
“Where’s the fucking stuff we paid you for, asshole?” Michael yelled as he kicked Adrian in the back with the pointed toe of his boot.
Adrian seemed to say something, but we couldn’t hear it.
“Next week, my ass!” Michael bellowed. “That’s what you said last week, you son of a bitch!”
“Drug deal gone sour,” C whispered. “This is bad.”
“You like to drag on your shit all day,” Michael snarled. “Well, we’re going to give you a little drag. Right, Roy? Give me that fucking rope!” Roy tossed the rope to Michael, who tied Adrian’s feet together and then pulled him toward the car. He tossed the end of the rope to Roy, who tied it to the bumper of the car. Michael jumped into the driver’s seat and raced the engine of the Chevy.
“Let’s get the fuck out of here and call the police,” C said. “Hurry!”
I took a quick look as Michael put the car in gear and started dragging Adrian around the graveled cul-de-sac, and then I scrambled to the van.
“Go! Go! Go!” chanted C as I started the engine and turned around as fast as I could. “Hit your horn, now! We can’t stop them. They have guns—they’d kill us! But we sure as hell can pray they’ll hear us leave and stop!”
I blasted the horn as we raced down the bumpy road, shaking all the way.
“Michael and Roy skinned a man alive two years ago,” C said. “It was so bad it wasn’t even in the papers. The policemen who found the victim had to go to therapy for months afterwards, and one ev
entually quit the force. They sawed off another man’s legs after killing him and then stuffed him in a dresser drawer.”
The things C was telling me made me drive even faster as we pounded our way back to the main highway. The adrenalin was gushing.
We found a pay phone at the country store and C jumped out and called 911. “I hope he lives,” C said as he jumped back in the van. “Now, let’s get out of here!”
We passed two sheriff’s cars about two miles up the road. They were heading back the way we had come, with their sirens blaring and lights flashing.
“Pass me that bottle of cherry wine!” I said. I unscrewed the cap and took a big drink and passed it to C, who took a chug.
It was three thirty in the morning. We drove the next few miles in a daze. I was waiting for my heartbeat to return to normal.
“You hungry?” asked C, finally. “Let’s go to Denny’s.”
I hardly knew how to respond. Maybe he was used to events like this happening around him, but I wasn’t. I didn’t know if or how I ever could be. Maybe being homeless and living from moment to moment eventually hardens you—makes you so numb you no longer have normal reactions to the horror you may have just seen or the terror you may have felt. But it seemed to me that this was way over the top. It had to do with the drug scene—and it scared the shit out of me. I could see how some people had become homeless because of their drug use; it seemed that the drugs started out as an “aspirin,” taken to ease some of the immediate pain of their plights. Unfortunately, it was an aspirin that became an incurable addiction. I vowed once again never to mess with that shit.
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