Winged Shoes and a Shield

by Don Bajema

  “Hey hey hey. . . . Here, take it. I was just kidding.”

  She pushes me around the stall.

  “Asshole.”

  Yeah, sorry, I know. She fills a spoon, puts it under my nose. Boom. Malibu dentist’s daughter I guess.

  By the time we get to Trancas, the funkman has departed. He’s living elsewhere. His parties have come to the attention of the police. His guests’ drunk driving has become a problem for tourists. The general scene is turning sour. I’m getting this from a guy who feels important for a second, having all this information about a famous hipster-superstar. I gotta put up with it. It’s pretty warm today; all the windows are open and this guy is wearing one of those huge knit hats that flop down around one shoulder. He’s wearing tight, tight, tight pants. It’s plain to see it hurts him to move, but he must think it’s worth it. His shirt has huge wet rings under each arm. Little drops are running rivulets down his shiny black neck. He walks back and forth across the deep shag rug, sniffing deep with a knuckle pressing first one then another nostril closed.

  “Where is he? We’re late already with this and my man said he was pissed.”

  He ignores me.

  “OK, well, when he asks about it I’ll just. . . . What’s your name?”

  He sneers at me.

  “OK, I don’t need to know your name. I’ll just say you said that he should fuck himself.”

  He starts telling me about my white ass.

  “Let’s just drop the racial shit, OK?”

  He’s not listening.

  “OK, OK . . . right before you get to the part about the last four hundred years and all, why don’t you just call Adolph?” He asks me who the fuck is Adolph.

  “Adolph is the man who takes care of your boss.”

  He yawns and tells me the studio is in Oxnard. He bought a house. It’s better for him out there — no white folks hanging around. God, the guy doesn’t quit. I ask him if it’s near Pt. Mugu. He says it is. I ask if it’s around the Angels’ place and he says it’s across the fucking street. I tell him thanks and if he talks to his meal ticket, which he will, to tell him we’re on our way.

  “What do you mean, meal ticket?”

  “Just tell him.”

  Oxnard is where the pigs, like all pigs, will look the other way after their taste. We get up there past Pt. Dume, around the corner of a huge rock along the highway, and we meet a few friends at a little bar for a couple of beers. We try to see if our program is together, but it’s hopeless. We can’t remember anything, so we decide to play it by ear. A couple of guys stay at the bar and we call the Angels. We ask one of them to go across the street to see if anyone’s home. He comes back saying there is. That, it turns out, was probably our mistake. Angels are so fast. I mean, you give them a half second to fuck something up for you and next thing you know you’re saying, “Ow, ow, ow.”

  We drive over and watch three big dogs’ heads pogoing over a redwood fence. After a minute or two of standing around timing our spit and the dogs’ heads, we hear a whistle and the dogs are rounded up. A man asks us what we want, and we try to sound like gangsters in an old movie but we start laughing. The fence gate opens. An old black man looks at us. He’s got to be the funkman’s father. He lets us in, closes the gate. He’s a little drunk . . . and he’s holding a gun.

  “You funny guys?”

  “You drunk?”

  “Yeah, you funny?”

  “Where’s your son?”

  “Which son? I got eight.”

  “Oh, c’mon. . . . ”

  “You crazy?”

  “Yeah, sometimes.”

  “Sometimes” hits the old man’s funny bone. He doubles over. I get embarrassed. I feel my face getting red. I knew right there that something was real wrong.

  The patchy lawn is dotted with white and brown piles — every square inch. The place stinks. The door to the house is wide open. Doris Day is singing “Que Será Será” over a zillion-dollar sound system. An Amazon crosses the doorway. Three-inch platforms put her about eight feet tall. After she leaves, a voice comes from inside, whiny, and at the same time trying to be demanding. It’s a man’s voice squeaking like a neurotic queen. It’s the kind of voice that has no power but instead wears you down — a “with-it” smart-ass assuming a superior position over somebody.

  My eyes adjust to the darker room. A little white guy is sitting on the sofa. Blousy shirt, sunglasses. Guy talks fast — East Coast — makes a point of using it. Trying to conjure up mean-ass streets to someone over the telephone. I hate that shit. I begin to realize he’s doing a version of what he thinks is Mick Jagger. A lot of these guys are doing that androgynous bad boy bit these days. He knows he has my attention and carelessly lets a little English lower-class nasal snarl rise at the end of his sentences. Fake people busting themselves everywhere.

  He’s a mogul of some kind, using the funkman’s name. It begins to dawn on me that he is directing this stream of abuse to the funkman. He’s screaming now about money, then a couple insults. Whoa, personal insults. Definitely impressive.

  I walk out the door because I’m too stupid to be impressed. He’ll have to try something else. The Amazon clomps up behind me. Eight feet easy. She’s talking to the guys and wearing a loose halter top. When’s she gonna bend over? Five . . . six . . . seven. Bend. Big jolt when the cleavage shakes loose for a good glimpse. Up . . . big smile. Phoenix Program licks his lips. The other guy drags a few thinning strands of what was once a pompadour through his fingers and does something like a smile or smirk with his mouth. I stuff my hands in my pockets and turn to see if the guy is off the phone. His hands are waving in the air, bouncing up and down on the sofa with each accented threat. There’s no telling which continent he grew up on now. He’s a cheesy Londoner one phrase and a cheesy Brooklynite the next. He gets quiet and listens. I better fall for his big-shot routine.

  The Amazon is telling Elvis damage where the funkman is. Blue mountains outside of Kingston or recording at Muscle Shoals. Someplace, you know how it is, never can tell. He is making a point of looking directly into her halter top. She emphasizes that funkman is elsewhere one too many times. Elvis is going to lose his balance rocking forward on his toes.

  I’m back inside. The international big-shot is off the phone and now he’s assuming I’ll be interested in his problems with superstars. How it’s so hard to make them do things when they already have more of everything than they know what to do with. Basic business, a deal is a deal and you gotta be where you say you’re gonna be. Yeah . . . right, I understand.

  I cut him off before he starts the standard rhapsody beginning with “Well, he’s a genius,” and blah blah blah. I stand still and ask can I use the phone.

  “Sure, go ahead.”

  He glowers down at the coffee table. A gigantic ashtray is heaped with butts. He lights up. I leave a number out of my home phone. I start talking.

  “He’s not here.” Wait. . . .

  “He’s in Kingston. . . . I guess so.”

  I ask the mogul his name.

  “A guy here named Phil has just been talking to him. . . . I don’t know.”

  I check to see if Phil is biting. I direct a question to him.

  “Phil, do you know when he’s coming back?”

  Phil shrugs with disgust.

  “No telling. . . . What should I do? Bring it back or what?”

  Phil sits up on the edge of the couch. I turn to pretend to try and get a little privacy. He stands up and walks to the fireplace and gets a little box from the mantel. He’s nonchalant as all hell about it. The phone is gonna make an off-the-hook tone any second.

  “Well . . . shit, I don’t really know. You want to talk to Phil?”

  Phil turns, walking with his hand out for the phone.

 
“OK . . . then listen. I’ll just see what he wants me to do. The money? Yeah, I know.”

  I hang up. Phil looks a little miffed.

  “Phil, Adolph says you can take the load if you want to pay for it all now or get a taste on account to get you through until he gets back from Kingston. What you want to do?”

  Phil’s dreams are coming true. He says, “I’ll take it all now.”

  He can barely contain himself. I say OK and Phil goes upstairs, saying anxiously, “I’ll be right down.”

  This is a bad situation. Phil doesn’t know me. He’s ready to pay out a ton of money? Sure. He’s ready to set us up before we set him up is what he’s ready to do. The Amazon selling funkman’s whereabouts tells me he’s probably upstairs. This house isn’t permanent; he’d never live near the Angels. He’s got something going with them, some kind of split. Pretty soon the place is gonna fill up with people. They’ll try to fuck up my team.

  I walk out to the porch. I look at the guys.

  “Let’s go.”

  Just a little direct to Elvis, just a little “gotta go now” in my voice. Over his head. He’s watching a carload of women unloading by the gate.

  The Amazon is playing with the attack dogs in their cage. “Big boy. Tough boy. So vicious.” The guys take it as a hinted invitation. Upstairs, a couple of Angels we know stick their heads out of windows and howl cheerful greetings to us. How the fuck we been? Jokes about watermelons to the black women walking toward the house.

  If I press the guys to leave, I’m fucked. I start yelling to the guys upstairs about who’s buying the beer. Not them. I collect about ten dollars from people at the front door. I swing my leg over a Schwinn and thunk thunk thunk off the porch steps on a beer run. I leave the guys there.

  Out the gate, heading west to find a car to steal or a ride to hitch, whichever comes first. My friends are going to be dosed with big, cringing, paranoiac versions of every nightmare they ever dreamed. What the payback is about must have happened before I got here or maybe this is something initiated by them. The end result is the same. They’ll get buried alive in the desert and no one will ever hear from them again. Tied up and thrown in a deep hole, covered over. They’ll scream their heads off. They won’t gag them. They’ll let them talk, let them cry, let them beg, let them scream. I hear he does the digging himself. Has to do with who the baddest man in the valley is, and I guess in this case, it’s the guy with the shovel. He’s gonna get a ton of blow, kill two guys, and has the other one pedaling like a bastard for home. A good solider would sneak the coke out of the trunk of the car. Too close a call, and I don’t have the keys.

  There’s a party up Decker Canyon. I know this guy. I can’t call him a friend, nobody can. He’s just finished a movie and is hanging out spending his millions, on what you can guess.

  He’s the most photogenic young god in Hollywood. Redford won’t work with him. He carries the bad-boy mystique to a point approaching realism, beyond what anyone in Hollywood has done in years. And that’s saying something with all the freaks, degenerates, and homicidal maniacs that have been burning their images in the world’s brains for the last fifty years or so.

  Bruce Lee has been up there for about a week, hanging around and impressing the girls. Conceited little fucker. Don’t tell him I said so. Anyway, you’ve heard about the parties and what all goes on there. He throws the lowest, most barbaric of parties, in lavish style, making it glamorous. And to go with that, he’s got a lot of big-wave riders around. Big waves, not to be found in California. The kind in Hawaii, over coral that no one in their right mind challenges. Except them. And they know it. Four or five of them up at the star’s house. Idols and legends all high and happy. Pulling dozens of the most amazing eighteen-year-olds you’ve ever seen. Sprinkled with these fearless women and musicians, or songwriters and actresses, or camera operators who are in their thirties and irresistible if they decide to focus a second or two on you. Everybody fucking ’til the cows come home.

  Everything bigger than life and so comfortable with the servants cleaning the slop in seconds. The pool drained of puke, filled and reheated by Mexicans in uniform. Great parties, even if those fucking guys from the Eagles are always hanging around.

  But the immediate problem is getting out of Oxnard. Nobody is gonna go too far out of their way, but if they happen to run across me, or if they pin me on their way to funkman’s place, or if . . . Jesus, this is the real concern, if they see me on their way to the desert. . . . Well fuck it. . . . That isn’t likely to happen for at least a couple of hours. Meanwhile, I’m thinking all this to avoid thinking about pedaling the Schwinn to the parking lot, which is a lot further than I thought and I’m getting real hot and tired. And I need the motivation before I say “Fuck it” and stop off someplace and get nailed on account of being this lazy fuck, which is what I am. I can’t tell you how many guys are sitting around in the slam because they took too much time doing this and that, or stopping off to get a little, or you know, just procrastinating instead of doing the right thing. The right thing is to get out of here.

  Too late. Camaro grumbling toward me . . . or is it. . . . No . . . probably not. . . . Yep. It is.

  The Camaro pulls to a stop, blocking my path. Nothing but fields around. I can outrun them if I have to.

  “Fuckface.” He’s talking to me.

  Doors on either side of the car swung open; three guys pile out. What is all this hostility about? They got on bathing suits, big baggy things about down to the knees, flower prints, big bellies on two and the other — Mr. Washboard. They must be ready to do something; they got the strut going. Why do guys strut? Jesus, like they got a hard-on down the pant leg, or just a dick so huge it has to be dragged behind them or I don’t know what.

  I’m sitting astride the Schwinn trying to look as confused as I can for the benefit of the tough guy walking real fast, one foot hitching and then sliding and then hitching and sliding. And because they’re moving fast, they gotta hop along sideways in order to keep the strut. Looks so stupid. But they’re serious, I can tell. One of them is looking over his shoulder for traffic. Highway Patrol always uses this cut-off.

  I lay the Schwinn down on its side. A butterfly darts in and out of the spokes. Every time something violent happens or is gonna happen, I see a butterfly flitting around. I remember being in a football game once and right down the line of scrimmage goes this little white butterfly. Made the whole scene seem stupid. Another time, I got jumped by about a million black dudes. They got out of their car, left the doors open, and with the radio blaring “My Girl,” they tap-danced on me and my friend’s heads. A moment filled with irony, because at the time, that was my favorite song. That bass line and vocal became the soundtrack to our ass-kicking. I thought it was so weird at the time. No butterflies, but a butterfly type of irony. Anyway, here they are. Back to you in a minute.

  “Nice. Calling me fuckface.”

  His fist passes over my head. His balance is overcommitted and he’s over the Schwinn. Good, shove him onto it. He gets tangled in the chain and sprocket, tries to keep his clumsy balance but fails. He’s down.

  “Hey, what is all this about?”

  Better not wait for an answer. One guy has long hair. Why do tough guys wear their hair long? I’m swinging him around by it and the other guy can’t get in. My knee hits his face, not too solid, just enough to double up his adrenaline. He’s grabbing for a handhold on the top of my pants. He’s got me. Thumb hard in his eye. He lets go and grabs his face. I plant two shots on the back of his ear. Bingo. His body stiffens and he drops on his face. The third guy trying to get me down has just torn a long trail of skin off my back with his fingernails.

  Fat fuck has just gotten to his feet. He’s bouncing up and down with his fists prepared like a goddamn pugilist, all darty in-and-out and all showy. Pussy. I’ll get him later. Mr. Washboard has a pi
ece of wood from some farmer’s fence. I see a guy coming from the Camaro with a tire iron. I am out of here.

  Mr. Washboard breaks the wood over my head. Dry rot, nothing to it. But it’s the thought that counts, right?

  There are times when the universe works against you. When guys much like yourself are doing a job on you and you know that the sun and moon have had some kind of convergence and the planets are set up for a spinning red light and the wail of your ambulance.

  But you never can tell, so you lead with a right that has your body behind it from the tips of your toes through your hips that were low to begin with and everything is lined up perfectly so that you’re gonna break your fist or break a face. And then the guy contributes to the beauty of the moment. They call it “walking into a punch.”

  Mr. Washboard actually runs into this one. I never felt a thing, like connecting perfectly on a baseball and knowing immediately that it’s out of the fucking park. So you can drop the bat and do that long look of admiration that the other team hates and watch the ball disappear. To top it off, I had a perfect view. I felt my fist caving into his nose, heard the sound like a chicken leg breaking. Down he went.

  What you gotta do when you’re gonna get hit like that is give them the top of your head. It’ll hurt you but it will also disintegrate the guy’s fist and probably break his wrist too. Mr. Washboard must have been doing sit-ups when he should have learned about taking a punch.

  Still have to consider the tire iron. Fat fuck is not jumping around anymore; he’s admiring my shot on Mr. Washboard, who is twitching on the ground with what looks like serious central nervous system damage. I feel so fulfilled. Time has just kind of stopped here for a while.

  I know there is an ethic against running away from a fight. And although I’m hot and bloodied from the battle and all, and I want to stay because of something stupid I have learned, I am also calculating. I deduce that the tire iron, plus the fat boxer, and maybe another guy getting off the ground are more than enough to kill my ass.