“No, I see signs, pun intended. Change is slow, but I see it. The graffiti you document in your journal, the murals and designs, some of it’s like underground art. I see stickers, stencils, tags, each one a little rebellion, everywhere, growing. On walls, bus benches, overpasses, every surface. And it’s not just the spray-painting, it’s those surfaces too, using the canvases to make statements about the system itself they want to overthrow.”
Monk nods. “Like smOG bombed the Water and Power building over on Vermont, so it reads Watter and Powerless. Watter’s slang for Watts folks.”
“You gotta show me that one, man. Only the old and feeble-minded take Madison Avenue at face value. There’s a change coming, these fuckers’ days are numbered. This is it,” and points up at the glowing, massive billboard towering above:
New for 1965!
The Ford Comet
The compact blue car streaks across the billboard, a fiery comet’s tail burning in its wake. Huge letters banner under its wheels:
Forward!
The letters F, o, r, and d are highlighted in silver.
Jax slings the rope ladder up, its hooks ringing onto the bottom iron rungs of the access ladder. Bandanna over his face, he heaves the canvas satchel over his shoulder and scrambles up the rope ladder. Up on the catwalk, he digs into the canvas bag and works quickly, deftly spray-painting, drawing and holstering half a dozen spray-paint cans from a utility belt like an old gunslinger, spraying the duct-taped cans, then spinning them in the air to spray the attached can; finally he unfurls a large sticker.
Down below in the shadows of the pylons and girders, Monk shakes his head, then staggers down the weedy embankment, lost in the scaffolded rows of the billboards. He leans against the cool iron of a pylon and rubs his eyes. The billboard looms as he gazes up:
New for 1965!
Ford
For war!
A huge red, white, and blue poster’s been glued to the Comet’s doors:
Robert Strange McNamara
President of Ford
Secretary of Defense
First the Edsel …
Now Vietnam!
Monk wanders under the scaffolded signs.
“You okay, man?” Jax grabs his arm, leading him toward the alley.
“That shit they gave me. It keeps coming back like a bad memory.”
The alley angles back into Grand Avenue. The idling VW hulks in the darkness. They climb in, slamming doors.
“You all right, Monk?” Sofia shrugs around. Monk nods. She grinds into gear and the bug lurches off.
Jax pulls the flask from the glove compartment. “Take a swig, do you good.” Jax hands Monk the flask as the VW chugs toward the hazy lights of Century Boulevard.
The windows are engulfed in crimson light as a siren wails behind them. “Cops!” Sofia’s eyes go wide with fear in the rearview mirror.
“Where the fuck did they come from!” Jax peels off his bandanna and knit cap, stuffs them under the seat.
“I don’t know! One of the alleys we passed, maybe. Hijo de puta … Jax, what should I do?”
“Pull over! Be cool!” Jax trying to jam the satchel under the seat. Sofia glides the VW to the curb. They’re still on Grand, the street is dark, quiet, the intersection lights of Century still ahead.
A cop appears at the window, bends down, shines a flashlight into the car. “Well, if it isn’t Mr. Monk.”
“Good evening, Officer Trench.” Monk’s voice is tight with fear.
Trench smiles, studies Sofia and Jax for a moment. “Shut the vehicle off, miss.” Sofia turns off the ignition. “You folks are approaching Century but there’s a roadblock. You should have taken the detour back on Manchester.”
“We’re sorry, officer,” Jax says, smiles. “I guess we missed it.”
“We’ll check you out, then you can be on your way.” Smiling down at Sofia, enjoying the smell of her perfume. “License and registration, please.” Sofia swallows, digs in her purse, hands him her license. Trench shines the flashlight on the glove compartment as Jax opens it, rummages around, hands him the registration. “I’ll be right back. You folks sit tight.” His boots click away in the hot, still night.
Inside the VW, their exaggerated shadows loom in the red radiance of the patrol car’s lights. Sofia looks over to Jax. “Fuck, I thought he’d see your flask.”
“It’s in my pocket.”
“Jax, I’m scared.” Sofia’s fists blanch white as she grips the steering wheel.
“We’ll be okay, baby. The license and registration’s clean. It’s the riot, they’ll send us back toward the detour.” He shrugs around to Monk. “The fuzz knows you?”
“They want my notebook,” Monk rasps, shaking his head. “That cop, he’s a real motherfucker.”
“Fuck that.” Jax reaches under the seat.
“Jax! Don’t do anything stupid!” Sofia’s voice is pleading, strained in panic.
Inside the open doors of the cop cruiser, Officer Vicodanz sets the radio receiver back in its cradle. “They’re clean,” tossing his clipboard with Sofia’s license and registration on the dashboard.
“Maybe. Let’s do a vehicle search, then we can take Mr. Monk and his spy book to the professor.”
“Parker’s dyin’ for that book, huh?”
“Just trying to make us look good, partner. You take Monk to the car, and I’ll search those two.”
“How ’bout I search that Mexican little spitfire?” Vicodanz licks his lips, opens his door.
“Whose collar is this asshole?” Trench grins, slides his baton into his holster as he walks toward the VW.
Officer Vicodanz opens the bug’s rear door. “Okay, red shoes, let’s go to the patrol car for a field search.”
“He hasn’t done anything, Officer.” Jax’s voice measured, controlled as Monk steps out of the car.
“Jax!” Sofia hisses.
“You should listen to your lady friend.” Trench at Sofia’s window. “She’s smart … and nice-lookin’.”
Sofia’s squeezing the wheel; in the side mirror she can see Vicodanz and Monk are halfway to the patrol car.
“Now I’m going to conduct a field search of your persons, then your vehicle.” Trench leans into Sofia. “We’ll start with you, miss. Go ahead and step out of the vehicle, and you, sir, remain inside the car.”
“Sofi, go!” Jax shouts as a wire-thin line of Babylon Blue spray paint shoots across the front seat, just missing Sofia’s face, no time to react, no time to see the can of Magic Wick spray paint with its strange chrome nozzle in Jax’s hand, as the spray has already jetted into Trench’s eyes. Sofia wrenches the key and the VW revs up.
“Ahhh, sonofabitch.” Trench staggers back, rubbing his blind eyes; he’s pulled out his service revolver but the VW’s already yards down Grand, Sofia grinding it into second gear. “Vicodanz!” Trench shouts, reeling around blind, the gun impotently waving in his right hand.
“Fuck!” Vicodanz runs toward Trench as Monk stands at the side of the patrol car, legs spread, hands on the ivory roof: through the rear passenger window, he can see his notebook where Vicodanz had tossed it on the backseat. Inside the open driver’s door, the clipboard with their license and registration sits on the dashboard.
“The med kit!” Trench shouts.
Vicodanz turns and runs back toward the cruiser, fumbling, pulling at his nightstick in his utility belt. Monk slips his fingers under the rear door handle. The big cop is yards from him, raising his baton. Fuck! Monk grabs the clipboard from the dash and runs back into the alley, toward the median strip where the breached chain-link fence leads back to the billboards and the vacant lots, a network of dark alleys and interstices of escape behind the parallel lighted barrier of Century Boulevard.
“That nigger’s gettin’ away!” Vicodanz, breathless, sprinting toward the alley.
“Fuck him! Get the med kit!” Trench rubbing his eyes: he looks like some kind of raccoon demon. He can see blue light from one ey
e squinted open: Vicodanz looks like a ghostly indigo shadow.
Vicodanz runs back to the patrol car and opens the trunk. He sets the med kit on the trunk lid, hands Trench a squirt bottle of tear-gas eyewash. “I’ll get backup.” Vicodanz leans into the cruiser, pulls out the radio mike. “Car twenty-two, request backup, over.” His thumb releases the mike switch. Static pops and hisses, then a slow, bass male voice purrs from the radio, the drawling words, to their dawning horror, thick with a Negro resonance: Keep it cool out there in riot land, baby … This is Sir Soul with another groove to burn, John Lee Hooker and his “Blues Before Sunrise” … Burn, baby, burn …
19
They sit and stand in the muted glow of blinking, snowy static. On the Zenith, the reporter, the flames and gutted buildings seem to tower above them, like a pulpit of violence. Black-and-white images and crackling sounds fade in and out. Charred storefronts. Two patrol cars block the intersection behind, their lights pulsing in the darkness. “Police are warning that the riot is spilling to other areas.”
“Riot my ass!” Marcus shouts, raising his fists like a crazed black Moses with his long woolly beard. “This is a rebellion!”
Lamar mumbles, stoned, like a weird black praying mantis in his dark sunglasses.
Etaoin Shrdlu exhales menthol cigarette smoke: the TV images reflect in his wire-rim glasses like tiny apocalypses.
Dalynne shakes her head, sips wine. Karmann stands behind her, with a cup of merlot: she wants to get away from the Sea-Land container, take refuge on the observation deck or back in the bedroom, but she waits it out for a few more minutes, hoping for some kind of good news, anything.
“Southgate … Lynwood … north to the Harbor Gateway … the rioters seem intent on spreading their lawlessness and havoc,” the reporter’s voice breaking into static. Jumbled shots of ransacked liquor stores, looters running down sidewalks, loading car trunks with boxes and lamps and furniture.
“What the fuck is the Harbor Gateway?” Another stranger standing next to Karmann says, pointing his beer can.
“Look at all that shit,” Lamar mumbles. “Free for the takin’.”
“Authorities are bracing for the terrifying possibility that these rioters and gangsters want a race riot … it seems to stagger the mind … will we see the fall of Culver City? The fall of Torrance?”
“Viet-Watts!” A shirtless man, another reveler Karmann doesn’t know, hurls an empty beer can at the TV; Karmann’s stomach churns; she can’t tell if it’s the baby or if she’s sick with hopelessness.
“I’m gon’ get my share while the gettin’s good.” Lamar weaves toward a portal door.
“Here’s the latest hot spots, ladies and gentlemen! The battle of Watts … Live from our Telecopter Five!” Images and sounds on the Zenith fade in and out between white storms of static: swaying helicopter aerial shots of buildings on fire, plumes of smoke, chains of police cars flashing through the darkness: beaming across every TV in America, this white, godlike vision from above of the savages scurrying in the darkness below … Now from the TV, this prerecorded music blares in the background, up-tempo drums, a horn section …
“Motherfuckers playin’ car-chase music!” Marcus shouts.
“Sounds like that fuckin’ Fugitive show,” Shrdlu says.
“Honky propaganda bullshit!” Marcus reaches up and topples the TV: the plug, baling-wire antennas taped to the iron walls ripping out as the TV thuds and crackles into his arms and he runs out the hatchway, everyone staring in stunned disbelief.
“No, Marcus!” Dalynne shouts, chasing him. Karmann, Shrdlu, the shirtless stranger run to the portal.
They’re running across the rusted green roof of the Hanjin container, like a mob chasing some looter with his purloined TV set. “Marcus, you crazy asshole!” Dalynne shouts.
At the edge of the container, Marcus raises the TV over his head and hurls it toward the dark Pacific below, the Zenith swings back: the shirtless man’s grabbed the dangling cord, and he catches the TV, laughing. Marcus, off-balance, windmills his arms as he pitches forward over the side … but Shrdlu and Dalynne have his shirt bunched in their fists, and they rock him back away from the precipice.
“I don’t know whether to laugh or cry,” Karmann says as they follow the men back through the hatchway.
“Laughin’s more fun.” Dalynne squeezes her hand. “Let’s have more wine.” But back inside the Sea-Land, Marcus and Dalynne erupt into an argument, and Karmann slips away.
* * *
In the kitchen area, all the wine and booze bottles on the counters and serving tables are empty. Karmann scrounges through the cabinets and boxes. “They’ve drunk every drop of Monk’s liquor. Maybe they’ll go home.” What if they don’t go home? “Don’t think like that,” Karmann says aloud, shaking her head. What if the party never ends? How many days and nights have passed? It’s like Monk’s always talking about, ghetto time, where time can speed up, slow down, or even freeze in a kind of strange suspension …
She settles on going to the observation deck; fresh air will do her good, and from there she can always go downstairs to the bedroom and sleep, or spin another record on the turntable.
Karmann rushes through the WestCon room, its party still going, sweaty bodies in varying stages of undress swaying, dancing under the stolen blinking amber road lamps. Radio music echoes, bouncing off the iron walls. She glances away from a shadowy corner, where five or six bodies squirm and fuck under blankets and sleeping bags. Monk, you better get home soon.
Stepping onto the roof of the Evergreen container, the rush of warm August night only feels like a suffocating shroud. Karmann resolves not to gaze north, toward the burning city.
A loud, shrill whining rises behind her as she turns: Lil’ Davey flies past her, revving a red Vespa scooter, almost knocking her down. Two revelers—more strangers—burst from the hatchway, waving a green nylon jacket in the air. Lil’ Davey turns the scooter precariously around on the boat ramp that connects the south edge of the Evergreen to the Atlas container. Karmann watches in disbelief as Davey races past her, motor screaming, hand throttle all the way open, his long legs bent outward, knees above the handlebars like some black giant on a children’s bicycle. One of the strangers flicks and waves the jacket before him like a deranged matador as the Vespa plows through the jacket, the man jumping sideways at the last second.
“Toro! Toro!” The other hollers, swigging a whiskey bottle as Lil’ Davey screeches in a cloud of black exhaust, turns and blasts past Karmann, popping a wheelie that almost knocks her down as she jumps back.
“Fucking asshole!” Karmann shouts.
Lil’ Davey twists the scooter around the boat ramp again, flashing Karmann the finger.
“Toro Toro, motherfucker!” Voices behind her laugh.
“Fuck this,” Karmann hisses, stalking back inside the WestCon. “Why don’t y’all leave! Just fucking go!” she shouts. The dancers ignore her, turning, gyrating under the yellow strobe lights: it’s as if she’s a phantom. In the corner near the orgy of blankets and writhing bodies, a man leans against the iron walls, his pants curled around ankles as a woman with a gold-sprayed Afro swallows his huge cock deep into her mouth. Karmann flees out the hatchway.
Karmann sweeps through the containers in a seething rage, shouting at everyone to go home, like a mad noblewoman railing against the drunken peasants at a castle feast. Some nod and humor her, or laugh at the woman they don’t even know; most ignore her and go back to drinking, smoking, whatever pleasures her tantrum had disrupted. “Oh,” Karmann pauses, leans against a wall, her breath taken away as the baby kicks in her belly.
In the Matson container, Dalynne finds her. Under the blue and yellow strings of lightbulbs, Dalynne’s face looks garish, her tears seem to glow like molten silver.
“What is it?” Karmann holds her heaving shoulders.
“I’m leavin’. Marcus … I can’t stand him … I caught him … making out with some bitch outside … I’m sorry,
Karmann … I got to go.”
“Back home? It’s too dangerous, honey. Stay here with me.”
“No. I can’t stand it … I’m done with him. I’ll call you tomorrow, promise.” She kisses Karmann on the cheek and weaves through knots of people, toward the hatchway.
Cooky’s on the wall phone, shaky hand cupped over the receiver, probably talking to his heroin connection. “Get off the phone, Cooky!” Karmann hisses, standing before him, her arms crossed. Cooky raises a finger to his pale lips, then turns his back to her, his big Afro blotting out the phone like an eclipse. Karmann spins his scarecrow body around and rips the receiver from his bony hand. “Get lost!” She bangs the phone back into its plastic cradle.
“Man, you a bitch,” Cooky mutters and shuffles away.
She glares at him for a moment, then picks up the phone. A metallic white woman’s nasal voice—Karmann can always tell the sound of white voices—drones in her ear like a chanting curse: “If you’d like to make a call, please hang up and dial again … if you’d like to make a call, please hang up—” Karmann smashes the receiver again and again into the cradle, until a black shard of plastic flies into the air. “Goddamn it,” whispering, jabbing the plastic button-tab inside the cradle. She presses the phone against her ear: “If you’d like to make a call, please—” Her eyes fill with tears as she drops the phone and it clatters against the iron floor, swaying on its black coiled cord.
Through the open hatchway, music blares, someone’s ratcheted up the volume too high, she can hear the record player echoing from the Hanjin container. They’ll blow out the speakers … it’s one of Monk’s old Charles Mingus records. She knows this song but can’t think of the title … her mind aches … she wants to drink the last merlot in her bedroom, sleep … it’s too late, all of this madness, what does any of it matter if he doesn’t come home? These people … these things … the only important thing is Monk … Monk and her and the boy: she knows it will be a son. Now a refrain echoes: Weird nightmare … take away this dream you’ve born. A loud scratching sound grates her ear, then the record skips: take away this dream you’ve born … take away this dream you’ve born …
Graffiti Palace Page 21
