Revolution No.9

by Neil Mcmahon

  “If I ever get off this killin’ floor, Lord, I’ll never get down so low no more. Mmm-hmmh, mmm, mmm-mmm-hmmh-”

  Abruptly, Glenn slapped the strings to silence and looked up.

  “I ain’t got nothing to say to you, Rasp,” Glenn said. “I’m only doing this because Freeboot said I have to.”

  Monks noted the use of his own old navy nickname, short for Rasputin, given to him because of his thick tangled eyebrows. Under other circumstances it might have been joking or even affectionate, but here it was clearly a taunt. He noted the grammar, too. Glenn had not been brought up to say “ain’t got.” His kinky ginger-colored hair bushed out from his head Afro style. A silvery skull-shaped earring, a punkish affectation, hung from his left ear.

  “I’m not here to read you out, Glenn. I’d just like to know how you’re doing.”

  “Call me Coil. Glenn was a middle-class white motherfucker. He’s gone, man.”

  “All right, Coil it is. Because you’re wound really tight?”

  “You got it.” Glenn bared his teeth in a defiant grin, and Monks’s gut twisted again. Dark blotches were starting to form on Glenn’s teeth and gums. Monks had seen similar ones in the ER. They were blisters that came from methamphetamine.

  “You mind telling me how much of that stuff you’re using?” Monks said.

  “What stuff?” Glenn said innocently.

  “Speed. And whatever else.”

  Glenn shrugged. “As much as I want. It’s not hurting me.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “Jesus, Rasp.” Glenn slapped the guitar neck again, this time angrily. “You’re in the door thirty seconds and already you’re on my case.”

  Monks exhaled, biting off his next questions: Have you shared needles? Had an AIDS test?

  “Okay,” he said. “I’m concerned, that’s all.”

  Glenn pulled a cigarette out of a pack and lit it. Monks saw with slight relief that it was a Marlboro 100-at least it was filtered. The cabin reeked of smoke. There was an ashtray stuffed with dead butts on the floor beside Glenn, along with a bottle of screw-cap Tokay wine. Paperback sci-fi novels, computer magazines, and what looked like adult comic books were scattered around. This seemed to be Glenn’s corner, and it had the feel of a teenager’s bedroom. But it was made eerie by the clear evidence that Glenn was living with a much older woman. Instead of a mountain man’s hard and narrow bunk, there was a new, expensive queen-sized bed covered by a duvet. Through the open door to the small attached bathroom, crude and concrete-floored like the washhouse, Monks glimpsed a wooden clothes-drying rack hung with lingerie.

  “Your mom and sister are doing well,” Monks said.

  “I don’t want to hear about my perfect sister, okay?” Glenn sucked hard on the cigarette, managing to look disdainful. Stephanie was in her third year of medical school at UCSF. That would probably be a sore point to bring up to a high school dropout. But, then, it seemed like just about anything would be.

  “You mind telling me how you hooked up with these folks?” Monks said.

  “I was junked out. Shrinkwrap found me and took me home. She cares about people like me,” Glenn added accusingly.

  “Are you one of the, uh, maquis?”

  “Nope. Those guys are the muscle. I do the complicated computer stuff.”

  “Such as?”

  Glenn shook his head. “It’s none of your fucking business, Rasp, okay?” His tone had the same sense of superiority, of being the elite guardian of secret knowledge, that Monks had sensed in Freeboot and the maquis.

  Glenn started playing again, another blues. This one was jazzier, involving complex fingerpicking, with the sound of Robert Johnson’s knife guitar.

  “You’ve gotten good,” Monks said.

  Glenn nodded, continuing to play, and for a few seconds Monks sensed his son’s pride in showing off for his father. Glenn had become a man, at least in his own eyes, and he handled the guitar with genuine feeling and talent.

  Then his hands moved abruptly, the right slashing down across the strings with a discordant clash.

  “Take this, brother, may it serve you well,” he growled, in the deepest bass he could muster. They were the same words that Captain America had spoken ceremoniously when he came into the lodge last night.

  “Tell me what that means,” Monks said.

  Instead, Glenn started chanting in a high-pitched nasal tone, playing the same strident chord over and over:

  “Number nine, number nine, number nine…”

  It took Monks a moment to recognize the source-an old Beatles song called “Revolution No. 9.” He remembered it as being nonsensical and noisy.

  Glenn kept up the chanting, rotating his head to it like a parody of a marionette controlled by a stuck record.

  “Number nine, number nine…”

  Monks stepped forward, dropped to one knee, and clamped his hand around the guitar neck. Glenn stared at him in outrage.

  “Look. I can understand why you helped them bring me here,” Monks said. “I’m willing to let it go, I won’t press charges. But that little boy’s going to die if he doesn’t get help. This isn’t some kind of game.”

  “Game? What the fuck do you know about it? I was living on the streets, man. My friends were dying.”

  “You were living on the streets by your own choice,” Monks said. “You could have come home anytime you wanted. And a lot of people have seen a lot more people die than you have, including me.”

  Glenn wrested the guitar away from Monks and scrambled to his feet.

  “Freeboot’s doing something that nobody else in the fucking world can do, and I’m part of it. He needs me, man. You got that? For the first time in my life, I matter. And the way I live is up to me, and nobody else, okay?”

  “You think you’re smart and cool, but you don’t know shit,” Monks said, his own voice rising fiercely.

  Then he stopped, and lowered his face into his right hand, thumb and forefinger squeezing his eyes shut. This was how it had always gone between them, and it was the signature of his own failure-his own immaturity, his intolerance of a kid’s outbursts, when a father’s love should have prevailed and made him just take the punch. It was true that Glenn had demanded unconditional love-the freedom to do whatever he pleased-and Monks was incapable of giving that.

  But for a few terrible seconds, he wondered if he had ever loved Glenn at all-if Glenn had somehow sensed that from an early age, and all of his problems stemmed from it.

  Maybe what Glenn had said last night was true: Monks did owe him bigtime.

  He raised his head to face his son. “I’m sorry, Glenn,” he said.

  “Yeah, well, being sorry doesn’t do anybody any good,” Glenn said, with angry sarcasm. “Remember how you used to tell me that?”

  Feeling suddenly leaden, Monks nodded. He sought for some line of conversation that might get Glenn to open up.

  “This cause that you and Freeboot are involved in,” Monks said. “Will you tell me about it?”

  “I just did. Now get out of my place.” Glenn slung the guitar down onto the pillow and pushed past Monks to the door.

  “You can still come home,” Monks said. “No judgment, just help. Don’t forget that.”

  “I don’t need your fucking help! Get out, man!” Glenn yanked open the door.

  Revealing Shrinkwrap, who apparently had been standing outside, listening.

  Glenn stared at her, looking shocked, then bolted past her, vanishing into the dusk.

  “Proud of yourself?” she said to Monks.

  “I could ask you the same thing.”

  Her lips formed a tight, mean line. “Don’t bother. I’ve heard it plenty.”

  She stepped into the cabin, walking past Monks carefully, almost circling him. She looked more sure of herself than she had last night-attractive in a gaunt way. She had a fine facial bone structure with an aquiline nose. Her skin was smooth, almost translucent, and her auburn hair was thick and gl
ossy. Along with the hard edge, there was a cool seductiveness.

  “You can think whatever you want,” she said. “The truth is, he’d probably be dead by now if not for me.”

  “Yes, he told me. You pulled him out of hell.”

  “Out of a serious emotional disturbance. I happen to be a psychologist.”

  “Oh, really? Is that where all this is coming from, about his abused childhood? You’ve been helping him recover memories?”

  “He doesn’t need help remembering an alcoholic, domineering father.”

  “Domineering?” Monks said wearily. “Because I used to interrupt his tantrums where he threw dishes at his mother when he didn’t get his way? He was still doing it at seventeen.”

  “He was expressing the anger he got from you. Just like he got your addictive personality.”

  “Is that a clinical assessment? Or you telling him what he wants to hear, so you can keep a hold on him?”

  “Ah, yes, the physician dismisses psychology as a soft science,” she said sarcastically.

  “I’ve got great respect for psychologists who don’t use convenient labels to blame everything on somebody else,” Monks said. “We sent him to two of them. A psychiatrist, too, in case there was a neurological problem or a chemical imbalance. The consensus was, ‘Well, we can keep treating him as long as you want, but all he’s going to do is play games with us. This is just the way he is.’”

  “And instead of supporting him, you undermined him. Like you’re doing now.”

  “His mother and I did everything we knew how, Doctor. With plenty of pain involved, believe me. I finally decided the only way I could deal with it was to call it by its real name. Try to keep the hurt from spreading too much. Glenn’s very good at getting people to believe what he wants them to. Especially women. He was doing it as soon as he could talk.”

  “If he was such a charmer, how come he never had a good relationship with a girl?”

  “Is that what he told you? There were plenty who were willing. But he’d lose interest as soon as they fell for him. He left a string of poor little broken hearts.”

  She put her hands on her hips, one foot pointing toward him, a pose that was tough but provocative.

  “I guess he needed a grown-up,” she said.

  Right, Monks thought. Mother and lover in one package-and glad to let him do all the drugs he wanted.

  “I have no desire to go into my son’s bedroom,” Monks said. “If he’s happy, I’m happy for him. Like I told him, I’ll leave here and never say a word about it, if Mandrake comes with me.”

  “That’s up to Freeboot.”

  “Surely you don’t believe a four-year-old can heal himself of diabetes through willpower.”

  Her gaze shifted away. “I’d handle the situation differently. Let’s leave it at that.”

  “Unfortunately, I can’t leave it at that,” Monks said. “But if you’ve got a better idea than keeping me chained up here playing ‘Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman,’ then by all means go for it.”

  Her head tilted with a calculating air. “He’s sure right about one thing,” she said. “You reek of self-righteousness.”

  The words hit hard, and it must have shown. Monks saw her take on the satisfied look of knowing that she had scored.

  He turned away and walked to the door. “You’d better get him to do something about those blisters,” he said. “He’s looking at losing his teeth.”

  He stepped out of the cabin, feeling weak, as if he were bleeding internally. He stared off into the gloom in the direction that Glenn had run-his son, who in some ways seemed old far beyond his years, but in other ways would always be very young. There was an ugly irony in that the niche he had finally found, his pride in whatever Freeboot’s cause was, involved madness and violence.

  He had tried with Glenn, Monks assured himself. But it had never been enough. The more that Glenn had gotten, the more-and more belligerently-he had demanded, until there was nothing left for Monks to do but build a wall.

  At least that was how Monks remembered it.

  Hammerhead was waiting for him. They walked back toward the lodge, the shackles clanking around Monks’s ankles.

  “Uh, getting back to what you said before,” Hammerhead said.

  “What?” Monks said distractedly.

  “That tic. In my eye.”

  Monks stared at him, then remembered.

  “What about it?” he demanded.

  “You said it was probably nothing. What does ‘probably’ mean?”

  Monks shook his head. “It means you probably don’t want to know.”

  “Yeah, I do. Tell me.”

  “Well-a tic like that is a classic symptom of a brain tumor. Pressing on the optic nerve.”

  “A brain tumor?”

  “Sometimes if you catch them very early, they can be lasered out, or treated by radiation. But by the time they start interfering with your vision, they tend to be the size of an egg, and they’re growing fast. They’re pretty tough to handle by then.”

  Hammerhead’s square jaw moved from side to side, as if trying to work its way around the concept.

  “Of course, I’m not sure,” Monks said. “Keep tabs on the headaches and delusions. If they go away, that’s good. But if you start noticing them more…” He grimaced. Then he added, comfortingly, “There’s other things it could be, too. Maybe a minor stroke. That’s no problem in itself, but it makes you more susceptible to a major one. Then you’re talking the rest of your life in a wheelchair, wearing a diaper.”

  Hammerhead’s face had taken on a stunned, flounder-like look.

  “Is there, like-I mean-what should I do?”

  “A hospital might be able to help,” Monks said. “Or at least tell you how long you’ve got. But if you buy into the antimedical sentiment around here-” He shrugged. “Enjoy yourself as much as you can, is my advice.”

  8

  When Monks stepped into the lodge, Freeboot was sitting at the long wooden table with a kerosene lamp before him, poring over an open book. The pose was so like medieval paintings of scholars like Aquinas and Erasmus that Monks wondered if it was deliberately staged.

  Freeboot kept reading for another half minute, a pause that also seemed staged.

  “I’m a self-educated man,” Freeboot said. “I never had no benefits of formal schooling. But that also means I think for myself. My mind hasn’t been crammed full of poison by people who want you to believe things their way.

  “So here’s how I see it. This country’s gotten to be a big, spoiled, overgrown kid. Everybody figures if they got the best toys, that gives them the right to hog the sandbox.”

  He watched Monks intently, apparently expecting a response.

  “I told you, I’m not interested in discussion while I’m chained up,” Monks said.

  Freeboot considered this a moment, then said, “All right.” He dug into a pocket of his jeans and tossed Monks a small key.

  Monks sat on the floor and unlocked the cuffs. The clicks as they released were among the most satisfying sounds he had ever heard. He stayed sitting down, rubbing his chafed ankles.

  “Does this mean I’m free to go?” he said.

  Freeboot smiled thinly. “I’m working on trust, like I told you. I expect the same back from you.” He held his open palm out for the key. Monks tossed it back.

  “Let’s hope we won’t need it again,” Freeboot said. “You with me so far?”

  “About the country being a spoiled kid?”

  “That’s right. What’s it going to take to make it grow up?”

  Monks chose his words carefully, very much aware of the shackles still lying on the floor.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t think there are simple answers to complex problems.”

  “Oh, the problem’s real simple. The system’s set up so all the money’s going to a few rich motherfuckers who’ve already got a ton of it, and it’s being taken from the masses who need it.”

&n
bsp; That was putting it simply, all right-a one-line summary of Marxist ideology with a contemporary spin, managing to combine the words motherfuckers and masses.

  “And the solution?” Monks said.

  “What you got to do with any kid that gets out of line. A good old-fashioned spanking.”

  Monks was startled. “Spank America?”

  “Tough love,” Freeboot agreed. He smiled again, and this time it seemed to have a leering, even sadistic edge. And yet Freeboot’s brand of tough love seemed to have captivated Glenn, while Monks’s own attempts had failed miserably. Was that the key-some mixture of cruelty and submission?

  Freeboot abandoned the philosophic pose, leaning back in his chair and groping on the floor for a bottle of the Monte Alban mescal. He took a long swig and offered it to Monks. Monks shook his head.

  “The next question is: How do you bring off something like that?” Freeboot said. “You’d need an army, right?”

  Monks was still not clear on what “spanking America ” entailed. He shrugged noncommittally.

  “It’s already out there.” Freeboot waved one arm in a wide, circling gesture. “All those working people who got thrown out on the bricks, because somebody sent their jobs to slave-labor factories in China. All those kids coming up poor, the best thing they can ever expect is to put on a Burger King cap. There’s three and a half million homeless people in this country right now, man, and thousands more every month. Another big factory closed down every time you pick up a newspaper. That’s the real, hard-ass result of the big rip-off that’s going on.”

  He watched Monks, his gaze challenging.

  “I agree that spreading money around differently would help,” Monks said.

  “It’s not just about money. Those people have lost their dignity. You give that back to them, they’ll give you dedication.”

  “Dignity’s a huge thing to offer.”

  “Meaning what? My mouth’s writing a check my ass can’t cash? Let me tell you something else. The necks think the people on the streets are just going to disappear somehow. They’re fucking wrong. Those people are tough, and they’re not stupid.”

  “Necks?”

  “That’s right. ’Cause when shit starts to happen, somebody’s foot’s going to be on them.” Freeboot crossed his ankles up on the table, displaying his bare soles, dark with dirt and horny with callus. “They think they can hide in their gated communities and nobody can touch them. They’re gonna get spanked hard.” He drank again from the mescal bottle. It seemed that he was prepared to hold forth for quite some time.