A Fold in the Tent of the Sky

by Michael Hale

  August 8, 1969. This was going to be his dry run, his practice dive. Coming to the rescue of his first love. It was worth a shot. Back to the sixties.

  Poor old Ron gave it a shot; so can I.

  August 8, 1969: the window of opportunity. Before I was born, conceived of (he remembered Jane’s words about staying clear of your own life line; the chance of getting caught up in the branching tree of ancestors)—but not too much earlier than that.

  Oh yes. What to wear.

  Black for sure; you couldn’t go wrong wearing something black. Black went with everything. The noncolor. In the eye department, it gave the rods and cones a rest: “Take this nanosecond off, boys. All we’re getting is black.”

  August 8, 1969. Around nine o’clock. The Spahn Movie Ranch near Chatsworth, a suburb of LA. He’d done his homework; he knew exactly when and where he was aiming for. Manson and his gaggle of clap-infested brainwashed chicks. The night they murdered Sharon Tate, among others—Abigail Folger of the coffee Folgers.

  He just had to make sure he didn’t stand out in the crowd—he wasn’t attending this function to be seen; it had nothing to do with networking, with making a good first impression.

  He settled on an old pair of black jeans and a dark blue sweater of Betty’s that had somehow found its way into his suitcase. His Rockport shoes ruined by the fucking Vancouver weather like two pieces of stale bread, and a wool hat he had owned since high school: black with white piping, which he folded out of sight.

  He was going to try for corporeal manifestation in the past. Just like that guy Ron Koch—but not like Ron Koch. He was going to do it on purpose. He wasn’t going to touch down anywhere near his own life line; he was aiming for a point in time before he was born, before he was conceived.

  Simon locked his door and pulled the drapes, shutting out his view of the scrubby hillside. He turned off all the lights and checked the door again. He unplugged the phone and lay down on the bed, all the while telling himself it was possible; repeating it to himself—it is possible, believe it—getting up to check the door one more time, then lying back down on the bed. He felt a jab of pain behind his left eye—and saw it connected to the crescent scar on the top of his head; the filaments of connection were arrayed in the shape of a trowel.

  He touched his medal for good luck. Treat it like a dive, remember. You’re going to dive into the past. Not air-to-water; but present-to-past—not that different, really. An out-of-body excursion through the surface tension of Time.

  He closed his eyes and forced his breathing into low gear. He played through his head the words of “Blackbird”—the one from the White Album. The way he used to back when he was a diver competing on the springboard or the ten-meter platform—pacing his every move.

  Go through it in your head, he told himself. The push-off and the slap of the springboard bouncing once, twice before the final leap, the somersault. He found a spot in his mind—the time/space coordinates of his target—just like his coach had taught him to do so long ago, orienting himself so that even in a spin he knew exactly where he was—the spot like a knifepoint but stretching away from him through the ether. A point that burned hot white and cold all at once—his reference point for acrobatics he’d never tried before: a reverse three-and-a-half with God only knows how many twists and turns and inside-outs—all of it new to him, scary as hell.

  He dove through blackness and driving airless wind—into what he did not know. Always find your vertical, his coach would say. No matter what, always find your vertical. The words of the song rippled through his flesh and bones and played through to the part of himself that could go inside and out at the same time. He was falling in a convoluted tumble, not through air this time but more than air, or less than it. What Jane and Eli called the ether. Through the ether beyond the boundary between “then” and “now.”

  Down, down . . .

  August 8, 1969, around nine o’clock. Just after sundown.

  The air had a suspicious sweetness about it—like the smell of air released from a car tire. The sound of flies hung in the neoprenecaged air behind the panicked whine of a pup tied up somewhere beyond the ragged roofline of Main Street.

  The ranch had enclaves of odor—near where the girls kept their stuff, patchouli oil and head-shop Ravi Shankar incense; dung out back with the horses. Behind George Spahn’s shack, a whiff of chicken: raw, rotting. The sweat of maggots expediting the demise of discarded apples, coffee grounds.

  The voice of a man now, in the swell of oration, holding forth over the thin sizzle of small speakers burdened with the rich cargo of “I Am the Walrus.” The Beatles here and now, the way they were then, different to Simon’s ears in this context: more innocent; no irony at all.

  What Manson was saying, a countervailing wind, sweet with anti-freeze. Redolent of battery acid: We got to help Blackie get his hands dirty—make it look like the Spades from Watts, the Panthers, are cutting down establishment piggies; lawyers; movie people. Armageddon is coming down fast! (other voices, squeaky little girl voices: “Amen!”) We will let the black man pull all the karma down on him just like the Jews . . . the four angels: John, Paul, George, and Ringo are telling us just how to make it happen—the pigs will fucking shit themselves, man—The smell of cooked food: brown rice and garlic. Hippie home cooking. Wet dishrag commune hepatitis stew. And when it’s all over we will ride out of the desert and Blackie will come runnin’ to meet us: “Save our asses, brother. We are tired of the killin’. Just tell us what to do, man. Give us something to do!” (“Amen!”)

  Simon fell into the locus of this moment and hung suspended for a while—on the edge of heft and mass. An exhausted observer just floating.

  Linda Kasabian was dazed from the food and Charlie’s words. It always felt like he was looking right at her, and her alone, even though he was talking to all of them, the Family—love potion number nine.

  But nagging at her head was this heavy trip he was laying on her about her daughter—how all the kids at the ranch should be kept away from their parents—something about “ego cleansing,” which sounded full of cosmic wisdom when Charlie said it; but looking back on it now, it didn’t make much sense at all. It didn’t fit his picture of love, the “All You Need Is Love” kind of love. Tanya needed love too—a mother’s love.

  The bowl of leftovers she had snuck out under her shirt: she knew it was better for her than the shit she was getting out back in the trailer with the other kids—stuff not much different than what they fed the dogs, sometimes. Charlie, her man, his face in front of hers even when she closed her eyes making her fearful of even thinking such things; his voice like God sitting on her shoulder telling her all she needed to know. An acid rush like nothing else. All you need is Me, da d-da, d-daa. A natural high.

  The sex was okay, not great like with Tex, who really tried to make her come; but Charlie, just having him inside her . . . He was like a little ferret sometimes, so quick like he was blowing his nose or something. But just being in the same room with him seemed enough—God I love him. Man’s Son. The Second Coming. Helter Skelter.

  When she came back from the trailer a bunch of them were out milling around on the boardwalk in front of the saloon. Katie and Ouisch, and Brenda. Tex fooling with Sadie, coming up on her from behind and goosing her through this hole in the ass of her jeans where the patches were coming undone—like a welcome mat, Linda thought. Like that song, “Fixing a Hole.”

  Charlie was coming out then, pushing the saloon doors apart like a sheriff in a cowboy movie, and everyone stood still and stopped talking. He came over and looked at her, breathing at her with his tongue touching his bottom lip for a second, hunched over the way he did sometimes, making a point of staring right at you, centering you out. He turned away and slapped Tex on the back, which made Tex sort of flinch. Charlie did a little jive in his shuffling moccasins, his mouth making after-dinner sounds. Sucking at his teeth.

  In the faint glow of the yard light she could see his litt
le pigeon chest, his T-shirt tight across his sternum, a curl of chest hair poking through where the buttons used to be. He was looking out into the yard as if he were trying to drive away the dark heat hanging with the flies. He turned back to her again and she knew he had caught her, but his eyes were saying, one more chance. His love infinite. Infinity plus one, she thought, to forgive like that. As his eyes lingered she regretted going behind his back; she wanted to rip the food out of her daughter’s mouth then. Her stomach.

  “Get your license, Linda. You’re driving tonight—and a change of clothes.” Her second chance. A garbage run, or a creepy-crawly maybe, through some Beverly Hills mansion—a piggy panty raid. He still loves me. He still loves me. “Just do what Tex tells you to do.”

  Someone was handing her a long knife with black electrical tape around the handle. Cold in her hand, heavy but right somehow. Charlie was talking to the others, about Helter Skelter coming down. This being the night to make it happen.

  She went over to Swartz’s trailer. To his car, an old Ford from the fifties—they always took his car on garbage runs. It was the only set of wheels at the ranch that actually worked. She still had to get a change of clothes but she felt compelled to stay near the car. It was like Charlie was standing there and not with the others on the boardwalk—wanting to lay some heavy shit on her.

  But it wasn’t Charlie; it was someone else. Someone or something blocking out Charlie’s light or filling in the hole of darkness Charlie had opened up, compensating for Charlie’s vibes, whatever they were—Yin, Yang; black, white. Fixing the hole.

  He was clean, that’s the first thing that came to mind. Straight-looking, like a guy in the Marines or a cop; his face smooth, clean-shaven, not even sideburns. Black cap over his head like he was dressed to go on a creepy-crawly. And he was talking to her, inside her head the way Charlie did sometimes when they were all high on something and he was next to her on a mattress touching her legs and tits as if he were thinking of buying her like one of the horses out back. Words in her head now too, but from a space totally new to her: Tanya and you should go—right now. Take your daughter and leave . . .

  This new cat flickered and glowed like something she would see when she was on acid—he had this freaky black-light kind of glow around his shoulders and head even though he was standing behind the car in the shadow of Swartz’s trailer. Tanya. Tanya. Tanya. Tanya.

  This voice in her head battling with Charlie’s. Charlie’s voice like a background hiss on an old record. It came to her then that it had never let up since the first day she met him—the soundtrack of this movie she was living.

  Now these other words were breaking through: Go get your daughter and get the fuck out of here.

  But Charlie wanted her for the piggy run, the knife in her hand part of him—his love machine in her hand pointing the way. Helter Skelter. She had been chosen. It was all about Revelation. Revolution 9.

  . . . go get your daughter, put her in the car and get the fuck out of here.

  The weird glowing figure moved closer: his hand was coming up, reaching out to her.

  “Get thee behind me, Satan.” She said this out loud, then turned toward the light of the yard, the saloon, to Charlie standing with the others. It was like looking at the sun. Like breathing pure oxygen.

  She still had the knife in her hand, a bayonet, really, part of Charlie’s stash of the army-surplus shit he was hoarding. The black tape handle making it feel more like something from a toolbox. Stick it to the Pigs. Stick it to the Pigs. Charlie’s words in ascendance now, eclipsing. She saw him turn then and step off the boardwalk in front of the saloon, his eyes swinging round—lighthouse eyes sweeping round—and the others like mechanical dolls turning with him.

  The man beside her, the glowing figure, faded like a dying flashlight. He stood before her now—solid. No more disco strobe thing happening, thank God, she thought. He was shorter than before, as if the glowing, pulsing version of him had been standing on something or floating in the air. Real all of a sudden. Downer-real in his wool hat and black jeans. Wearing black clothes like the rest of them now, but they weren’t quite normal: it was as if the outfit had come from a movie costume department—there was something weird about it her mind couldn’t grab on to. He was clean, though: clean-cut; like a narc, sort of. His clean soft face like a little boy. He moved closer; his mouth was saying things she could really hear now. And his voice was like a shaft of clear light, somehow. Breaking the spell:

  “I’m not from around here, Linda, but I know who you are and I know what Charlie’s up to. If you don’t get out of here right now you’re going to regret it for the rest of your life.”

  As he began to speak Simon felt the weight of a body, his own body, suddenly pull him to earth. I’ve done it. Landed in the past. A full-blown CM. “He wants you to kill for him, Linda.” His voice sounded odd, distant—attenuated like a voice on an overheard phone conversation. His throat felt raw; he was breathing air older than he was. “Kill innocent people, young mothers just like yourself—pregnant women. All she wants to do is have her baby. That’s what she’s going to say just before she dies. ‘I just want to have my baby’—just like you. You’re going to have another one, right? A little brother for Tanya?” Simon felt as if he were preaching to her but that’s what the situation called for—a lecture. To get through the drug fog and the Manson brainwash bilge her head was full of. He could feel it working through the color, the scent of her thinking—that’s the way he perceived it then: it was as if she were shedding waves of pheromones, odors—the stench of what Charlie had filled her with. It was all coming out of her. And Simon’s words were filling the air with the scent of hibiscus and roses, lavender and vanilla extract—fresh-baked cinnamon rolls. Yes. All that Norman Rockwell stuff. Whatever he could come up with to drive away the stink of Charlie. Jesus Christ, I’m doing it! Talking to someone right here in 1969!

  Linda was thinking how calm his voice was. And suddenly everything he said made sense to her—as if she’d woken from a bad dream, as if she’d been hypnotized and now she was coming out of it—his clear words like someone snapping their fingers. “He’s killed already, Linda. Shorty, and that guy Hinman. You’ve heard those names, right?” She had heard them—from Sadie and the others, when Charlie wasn’t around—they spoke their names like cusswords, holy words Charlie had sole rights to. “Go get your daughter, Linda. Get in the car right now, find your daughter and get the hell out of here before it’s too late. You’ve got to believe me.”

  “Who are you?” she finally said, moving closer. At the same time feeling Charlie’s eyes eating into the back of her head. Preying on her thoughts, pushing buttons. She swiped at the stranger with her knife and his arm fell away. Where she had cut him glowed for a second, like before but he kept talking to her: “Fuck, what’d you do that for? Get out of here, for Christ sake. Get your daughter out of here!” He faded into black-light poster flashes again. His voice squawked like a bad phone line. “Get the hell . . .”

  “Hey, Linda. Who you talking to? What the fuck’s going on?” Charlie’s voice this time—from over by the saloon.

  Linda dropped the knife and got in the car. She turned the key and the engine sputtered for a second, then came to life. She put it in drive and stepped on the gas—the back wheel dug and spun through gravel and sand—some of it clattered against the side of Swartz’s trailer. More voices then—squeaky giggly voices, then Tex’s voice, and Charlie’s like a knife in her ears. She sped past the corral back toward the creek to where the children were: the trailer they were all sleeping in tonight—Tanya, her baby. One of her babies. It seemed as if she were awake for the first time in days. Awake and aware of exactly what she had to do. What her responsibilities were: all lined up before her like the rungs of a ladder, steps out of a dark stinking hole—one rung leading to the next. Get Tanya; get the fuck out of here. Go right to Chatworth—the cops. The police station she remembered seeing that time they had gone out to
dig old food out of the supermarket Dumpster. Think of your baby, Tanya, and the one inside you—then think about yourself. Her mind was dizzy with it all. Everything seemed turned inside out or the right way up: Charlie not Jesus after all—it seemed so insane all of a sudden—more like the Devil. And all the shit he had been feeding her these past weeks, all the crap about Revolution 9 and the messages in the Beatles music about Armageddon. All turned round in her head now.

  She got out of the car and yanked at the falling-off door of the trailer. Mary was playing den mother, smoking a cigarette and breast-feeding her own kid on the bed in the corner—she barely looked up. Linda could hear Tanya’s voice calling to her then, out of the squeals and babble and baby-shit stink. The kids looked like a nest of newborn mice, a knot of little bodies writhing on a dirty mattress. Kids living like rats, she thought. Worse off than the fucking horses out back. She wanted to take them all but she knew she couldn’t—the rungs of the ladder again. First things first: Tanya. Out of here. Then the cops.

  She grabbed Tanya and went back outside without saying anything. She heard Mary’s voice as the door slammed but she didn’t look back. She put Tanya through the driver’s-side door and jumped in after her. “It’s okay, baby. We’re going home,” she said as they pulled away.

  Charlie was out by the corral along with the others by this time; Sadie was jumping up and down, waving her arms and yelling—trying to flag her down. Linda put her foot to the floor and the car swayed through the loose sand and gravel. Tanya was bouncing around in the seat; she fell toward Linda and started to cry. The beam of the one headlight that worked swung around and played across the piles of lumber and broken-down cars—and all the people in her way all of a sudden. She almost hit Brenda, and Tex kicked at the side of the car as she gunned it onto the road.