"You should be ashamed," he said, trembling, his fists clenched at his side. "If your mother . . . if your mother . . ."
"Ahhh, your mother," she muttered, and then walked back to her car. He heard her say, "Stupid old fuck," as she got in and started the engine.
Alex got into his car and leaned his head against the steering wheel. If only Paula had lived. I wouldn't care about the debt and the worry. If only I had her to hold each night, to share the struggle with, even to share the failure with. If only Paula had lived.
We could be happy here, Aleshka. . . .
COME TO THE SEANCE! JANUARY 11!
R.S.V.P.
You are cordially invited to attend a seance as a guest of the late Grogo the Goblin on this coming January 11th, at the Saunders estate in scenic Beckskill, NY. Drink and dope will be provided, but it would be cool to make a contribution to the common pot (Get it? Ha-ha!)
ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO IMPEACH LBJ!
VERNON SWEET FOR PRESIDENT!
R.S.V.P.
"Sean, this is nuts!" Artie Winston was screaming into his ear from the back of the motorcycle.
"What?" Sean Brenner screamed back.
"I said this is nuts! We should have taken a bus or something!"
"What?"
"Pull over, pull over!"
"What?"
"I said pull over, goddamn it!"
Sean slowed down and drove the motorcycle onto the shoulder of the thruway. He kept the motor revving as he turned behind him and said, "Hey, you know, Artie, we're never gonna get up there if you keep making me stop every fifteen minutes."
"I don't think we're ever gonna get up there at all," Artie responded sullenly. "I'm scared to death."
Sean was growing exasperated. "What the hell's the matter with you? You've been on motorcycles before."
"Yeah, but not in the middle of fucking winter on an icy road with a guitar strapped to my back." As he spoke he fussed with the makeshift harness Sean had concocted from a few belts and a long piece of rope. Artie's guitar was tied to his back, the neck extending upward behind his head and the box resting against his spine.
"Ice!" Sean exclaimed. "There isn't any ice on the road. It's so clear it might as well be July! And besides, you should have left the fucking guitar at home."
"I don't go anywhere without my ax."
"Okay, so what's the problem? Jesus, Artie, it's almost one o'clock. We left Queens two fucking hours ago, we aren't even halfway there, and it's only supposed to be a three-hour drive."
"I keep feeling the wind pushing the guitar, like it's gonna be like a sail or something, like I'm gonna get blown off the bike. You know, like in that Arlo song?"
"I'm gonna blow you off the bike if you don't stop this shit. If riding on the bike bothers you so much, why the hell didn't you ride up with Peter and Russell?"
"You know damn well that you can't fit those two guys and Deirdre and Nancy and their bags and me in that Beetle, not with my guitar."
"So why the hell do you need the guitar? Christ, Clay has a guitar. Why don't you just play his?"
"That piece of junk? That old broken-down Guild? Are you kidding? I wouldn't be caught dead playing something like that."
Sean reached into his pocket and pulled out a plastic prescription bottle. "Do you know what's in here, Artie?"
"Yes." Artie sighed. "You've told me ten times already."
"Well, here's the eleventh. In here we have twenty-five tabs of absolutely the purest, most potent LSD-25 you can buy."
"I know, Sean." Artie sighed again.
"I got this acid from Steve Wolzman himself before he got busted last week."
"I know, Sean."
"Do you know what's gonna happen when you and me and everybody else takes this acid?"
"Yes, Sean."
"Yes, Sean," he mimicked. "Well, one of the things it's gonna do is get everybody so fiicked up that it won't make a goddamn bit of difference if you play a Guild or a Gibson or a flicking cigar box with rubber bands on it, so . . ." Sean stopped in midsentence and whipped his arm downward, tossing the pill bottle underhand behind him into the snow along the shoulder of the road.
"What the hell'd you do that for?" Artie asked.
Sean motioned with his head. "Cops. Hey, you aren't holding, are you?"
"Just a few joints in the harmonica compartment in my guitar case."
"Shit," he muttered. "That'd be enough to screw me royally with my probation officer."
"You holding?"
He looked over at the hole in the snow made by the plastic bottle. "Not anymore."
They sat motionless and breathless on the motorcycle as a police car pulled onto the shoulder behind them and a solitary state trooper emerged. He walked over to them and smiled. "Afternoon, boys."'
"Good afternoon, Officer." Artie nodded deferentially. Sean said nothing as the blood began to drain from his face.
"What's the problem?"
"Problem?"
"Yes, I saw you pulled over here and I thought there might be something wrong."
He was looking at the driver, awaiting a response, and after a moment Sean said, "No, no problems. It's just kinda hard driving a bike this time of year. I just pulled of to rest my eyes for a minute."
"You know, you shouldn't be driving a motorcycle at all during the winter months. It isn't a safe vehicle under the best of conditions."
"Yeah, well," Sean muttered.
The trooper appraised him closely. "Mind if I see your license and registration?"
"No, no, not at all," Sean said just a bit too eagerly as he fumbled with his wallet, praying that he had not stuck a joint in, which would come dropping out.
The trooper went back to his car to call in the name and numbers, and Sean turned to Artie. "Please be cool, man. I can't afford any trouble with this pig. It could mean the state pen for me."
"Who do you think I am—Russell? You think I'm gonna start telling him he's a lackey of the military-industrial complex or something? Come on, Sean, give me some credit, will you?" He paused. "And calm down, for Christ's sake. This is just a routine check. The way you're acting, he's gonna think you're a fucking bomb thrower."
Sean looked at his friend angrily. "Look who's talking! Who was it last summer when the cops pulled Becky over for running a red light, got out of the backseat, put his hands on the hood, and spread his feet apart?"
"I was real stoned," Artie muttered. "I just assumed we were getting busted."
"All the cop did was tell Becky to give him her license, and there you are, waiting to be fucking frisked!" Sean began to laugh at the memory.
Artie laughed in turn. "It was kinda funny, I guess."
"Yeah, in retrospect." Sean nodded. "It wasn't so funny at the moment, not with a half a pound of pot in the trunk." He stopped speaking as the trooper walked back over to them and handed Sean his cards.
"Just checking, boys." He smiled. "Now, listen, the road is pretty clear up to Albany, but it gets a little slick after that, and you can never tell when you're going to hit ice. So drive carefully."
Sean nodded. "We will, Officer." He waited until the patrol car had pulled back onto the thruway before letting out the breath he had been holding. "God, that was scary." He hopped of the motorcycle and retrieved the bottle of LSD.
"You heard what he said," Artie reminded him. "Drive slow, okay?"
"Okay, okay."
A few minutes later Sean was once again barreling up the road, and Artie was screaming, "Slow down!"
"What?"
"I said slow down, damn it!"
"What?"
"For Christ's sake, Sean, you're gonna get us killed! Will you slow down!"
"What?"
COME TO THE SEANCE! JANUARY 11!
R .S.V.P.
You are cordially invited to attend a séance as a guest of the late Grogo the Goblin on this coming January llth, at the Saunders estate in scenic Beckskill, NY. Drink and dope will be provided, but it would be cool to m
ake a contribution to the common pot (Get it? Ha-ha!)
ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO IMPEACH LBJ!
VERNON SWEET FOR PRESIDENT!
R.S.V.P.
"I don't trust him," Russell was saying as he steered his Volkswagen Beetle off the thruway exit.
"Don't be ridiculous," Peter replied from behind him. "Clay's got all the money he needs, and he loves nature as much as we do."
"I don't love nature," Nancy O'Hara said. "I think nature is boring. Dorcas made me go out and look at the stars with her once." She shrugged. "It was okay, I guess."
"How can you be so unromantic?" Deirdre Duell asked. "I mean, think about all the poetry about nature, all the art work, all the writing. Didn't you ever read Thoreau?"
"Yeah, sure," Nancy said. "He was that guy who crawled off to live in the woods and stare at a lake or something."
"Incredible," Peter muttered.
"This has nothing to do with nature," Russell insisted. "Clay's a lot of fun most of the time, and I get a kick out of going up to hang out with him and Becky, but I don't have any illusions about him. Someone as self-destructive as he is wouldn't worry about fucking up a river."
"That's the word for him," Nancy agreed. "He's the most self-destructive person I've ever met."
"Look who's talking!" Peter exclaimed. "You still snorting heroin, Nance?"
"I never got into that too deep," she replied defensively. "I was just experimenting a little."
"Yeah, but experimenting with heroin isn't like trying out some new pot," he reminded her. "And you, Russsell. Clay drinks, and so do you. Clay gets stoned, and so do you. Clay drops acid, and so do you."
"I drop acid maybe once a month," Russell replied. "I go drinking on weekends. I smoke maybe one or two joints a day. Clay drinks and smokes from the minute he wakes up to the minute he passes out."
"That's not the point. . . ."
"It is the point. Okay, we're going up to Beckskill and we're gonna drink and smoke and trip all weekend. But come Sunday, we'll all be coming home. And on Monday you'll be going back to work at the college. I have a job interview with that parochial school in Maspeth, Nancy's gonna go back to her nursing practicum and Deirdre's gonna be back hitting the pavement with her paintings, going from gallery to gallery. But Clay's gonna spend Sunday and Monday the same way he spent Friday and Saturday."
"So what?" Deirdre asked. "So he doesn't have to work like the rest of us do. So what?"
"It doesn't have anything to do with work," Russell insisted. "You've read Freud, Peter. You know what Thanatos is."
"Come on, Russ. He doesn't have a death wish."
"So why does he always talk about Kerouac in such glowing terms, a self-centered hedonist who did nothing for the cause of social justice, a fucking good-for-nothing who drank himself to death on purpose?"
"Kerouac was an artist," Peter said testily. "And don't change the subject. Clay bought that land so the town couldn't give it to some big corporation, and that's that. He'll never sell it to them. You don't give him enough credit."
"I hope you're right," Russell said, "but I still don't trust him. He's a rich man, and no matter how much they like to pretend that they're like the rest of us, they aren't. The more money he has, the less risk he runs of ever having to do anything for a living."
"But the river . . ."
"So if the river gets polluted, hell go buy another mountain near another river someplace else."
"You're not being fair," Peter insisted.
"And you're not being realistic," Russell responded. "And you're both getting like really boring, you know?" Nancy broke in.
"Really," Deirdre said. "Hey, who else is gonna be up here this weekend? Is Artie going?"
"Sure," Peter replied. "I think he's going up with Sean."
"Oh, great. I love listening to him sing."
"Give up, man," Nancy said. "He'll never try to get together with you. He's too scared of girls."
"That's why he always carries his guitar around with him," Russell agreed. "When he sings, he doesn't have to talk."
"He's just shy and sensitive," Deirdre said. "And I think he's cute."
"And I don't think Clay would ever sell that land." Peter insisted. Both girls sighed and resigned themselves to having to listen to the same endless argument for the rest of the way up to Beckskill.
COME TO THE SEANCE! JANUARY II!
R.S.V.P.
You are cordially invited to attend a séance as a guest of the late Grogo the Goblin on this coming January 11th, at the Saunders estate in scenic Beckskill, NY. Drink and dope will be provided, but it would be cool to make a contribution to the common pot (Get it? Ha-ha!)
ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO IMPEACH LBJ!
VERNON SWEET FOR PRESIDENT!
R.S.V.P.
Maybe he did and maybe he didn't. Maybe he was and maybe he wasn't. Maybe I'm nuts and maybe I'm not.
Dorcas was sitting on the floor of her bedroom, and as she lifted the bottle of sherry to her lips and drank long and deep, she inadvertently knocked her head against the wall. She seemed not to notice the pain as she covered her mouth and burped softly.
What is reality? If we think we know things, how do we know that we know them? When I see the color blue, how do I know that I see the same thing somebody else sees who sees the color blue? How do I know that anything exists outside the room I'm in right now? Why is it you can go for months and months without ever stubbing your toe, but then when you finally do, you stub the same toe the next day? Why does Venus rhyme with penis? Are cats aloof, or are they just stupid? How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood? And are there answers to these eternal questions?
She giggled and took another swig of sherry.
Maybe I really am nuts. Maybe I never saw Mr. Schilder change into Vernon. Maybe I never spoke with Mr. Patanjali in that cave. Maybe I made up that prayer in my own imagination. It's all just sounds, anyway. Maybe I cooked the whole thing up in my messed-up brain.
But on the other hand, maybe I saw everything just as I thought I saw it. Maybe it's all true, all real.
On the other hand, it all might be a flashback from that horrible acid trip I took last year.
But on the other hand, it certainly seemed real enough, I think. It didn't feel like an acid trip. But then how accurate can your memory be of an acid trip?
"Maybe it's all an illusion, just like Mr. Patanjali said," she whispered. "Maybe none of it's real, not even me." Isn't that a funny thought? What if I don't exist? What if Lydia's imagining me, or maybe I'm imagining her, or maybe Karen is imagining both of us.
Karen. She frowned. Who's Karen? She looked at the bottle of sherry. Potent stuff. I don't even know what I'm thinking. And that's the whole point, isn't it? If you can't trust your own thoughts, how can you know what is real?
Mr. Rihaczeck saw Mr. Schilder, so what I thought I saw couldn't have been real. On the other hand, Vernon fooled me, so why couldn't he fool Mr. Rihaczeck? But why would he bother to fool Mr. Rihaczeck? On the other hand, why not?
"I don't know anything," she sang, "I never did know anything, but now I know that I don't know, all on a Christmas morning. . . ." She finished the bottle of sherry and let it drop loudly onto the floor of her bedroom. "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," she whispered.
"Hey, Dork!" Lydia called out from downstairs. "Becky's outside. Come on."
Dorcas pulled herself to her feet and stumbled out into the hallway. She almost fell as she descended the stairs, and her sister said, "Whatcha been doing? You drunk?"
"Just a little mellow." Dorcas giggled, and then fell flat on her face in the foyer.
"Ah, shit, Dork," Lydia muttered as she helped her sister stand up. "The party hasn't even started yet, you know?"
"Where do you think you're going?" Dr. Ostlich asked angrily as he entered from the study. He frowned when he saw Dorcas. "Have you been drinking, Dorcas? Answer me!"
"Well," she sang, "I've been a moon
shiner for many a year, and spent all my money on whiskey and beer . . ."
"Get outside and get into the car," Lydia ordered, pushing Dorcas out the front door and hoping that she could manage to get to Rebecca's car. She turned to her father. "We're going to a party. We'll see you probably Sunday."
"I absolutely forbid it," he bellowed, "for you and in particular for Dorcas!"
She shook her head. "You really don't understand, do you? You ain't in a position to forbid anything, man."
She turned to follow Dorcas, but her father grabbed her by the arm and said, "You wait just one—"
"Get your fucking hands off me!" Lydia shouted, pulling her arm free. "I told you years ago I never wanted you to touch me again, not ever, not after . . ."
She did not finish her sentence, and he did not respond to it. They both knew the events to which she was referring, those many nights of her early puberty when he would creep into her room and touch her and make her touch him, until that night when Lydia's mother saw them, that night before the morning she took the shotgun and placed the barrel into her mouth and. . .
"We'll be up at Clay's," Lydia said evenly. "We'll see you Sunday. Maybe Monday." She slammed the door behind her, leaving her father alone in the foyer of the large, empty house.
COME TO THE SEANCE! JANUARY 11!
R.S.V.P.
You are cordially invited to attend a seance as a guest of the late Grogo the Goblin on this coming January 11th, at the Saunders estate in scenic Beckskill, NY. Drink and dope will be provided, but it would be cool to make a contribution to the common pot (Get it? Ha-ha!)
ONLY TWO WEEKS LEFT TO IMPEACH LBJ!
VERNON SWEET FOR PRESIDENT!
R.S.V.P.
Clayton Saunders had all but depleted the small general store of its supply of beer, and as he heaved the last case into the back of the jeep he thought, Gonna be a great weekend. Haven't thrown a mammoth party in almost a year. Gonna be great, great. Lotta dope, lotta chicks, lotta liquor. Ain't life grand? He looked across the street at the Browns' Hotel. If we want to go out drinking someplace, we'll probably be too fucked up to drive any distance. Wouldn't wanna go someplace unfamiliar, not with so many people tripping. Al probably won't even notice, and even if he does, all Beck'll have to do is wiggle her tits at him and he'll go hide somewhere. Yeah, it's gotta be Al's place, or nowhere. Guess I better go make nice to old Alex.
Grogo the Goblin Page 21
