by Jim Dodge
The only three crucial problems I hadn’t resolved were where and how to wreck the Caddy and how to get away. I say I hadn’t decided, but I had – subject to tough review. I applied all the hard-headed logic I could muster, weighing, balancing, trying to enforce an intelligent objectivity, but I finally approved my original inclinations, which were based on pure sentimentality and an aesthetic disposition for the symmetrical: I’d put it over the same cliff out on the Pacific where Big Red and I had dumped that first car, the Mercury falling into silence. Of course this would leave me on foot about a hundred miles from home, but I saw a pleasing way around that. I’d hide out in one of the rugged coastal ravines for a day devoted to contemplating what to do with my life, then hitch back the next evening. That left a minor hang-up, which I solved immediately with a phone call to Cravetti’s, telling them that a buddy of mine had been badly hurt in a logging accident near Gualala and I was on my way up to see him for a couple of days.
I lay there listening to the music till almost 1:30 in the morning, then gathered my crime kit and headed for the door. My hand was on the knob before I realized I’d left the radio on, and just as I reached to snap it off the deejay dropped the needle on James Brown’s ‘Pappa’s Got a Brand New Bag.’ I could never figure out whether the new bag was smack, a recharged scrotum, or a new direction in life, but you could sure as shit dance to it. And that’s just what I did, bopping around my apartment, little shimmy and slide, touch of Afro-Cuban shuffle here, four beats of off-the-wall flamenco gypsy twist there, a bit of straight-on ass shaking to smooth it out, and ending with a flourished twirl that Mr Brown himself, King of Flash Cool, would’ve applauded. Yea, if the heart’s beating the blood’s gotta move. Flushed with dancing, nearly giddy, I clicked off the tunes and lights and hit the street.
The bars were just beginning to empty as I headed up Columbus toward Kearny. Lots of sailor boys fresh from the tit shows and a handful of new fuzz-beard beatniks who looked like they were wondering where they might score a lid of the good stuff. A black-and-white cruised by and I kept on walking as cool as you can get until it turned the corner, then, irrepressible me, I broke into a full-tilt boogie step and took it right over the top into my newly discovered James Brown whoop-da-twirl, a double this time.
The double whoop-da-twirl was actually a one-and-a-half, and I landed facing a young couple that I hadn’t noticed behind me on the sidewalk, scaring the holy bejeesus out of them. ‘Love each other or die!’ I commanded, a line John Seasons was fond of screaming unexpectedly when he was at the peak of a binge. And I’ll be go to hell if they both didn’t simultaneously blurt, ‘Yes, sir!’ They were scared, and that certainly wasn’t what I’d intended, nor what I wanted. I could see them flagging down the next cop car with a babbling raw-panic story about some guy who’d spun around and threatened to kill them, so I said, ‘Hey, relax. I was just quoting a line from a poem. You know, poetry? And that wild old twirl was straight from unbearable exuberance. Sorry if I startled you, but I didn’t hear you coming up behind me.’ I bowed to the woman and offered my hand to the young man as I introduced myself: ‘My name’s Jack Kerouac.’
‘I thought you were taller,’ the woman said. I could’ve kissed her.
‘You wrote On the Road,’ the guy announced. ‘I dug it.’
We chatted a few minutes as I basked in their reverence, and then I told them I had to go find Snyder because we were taking off in the morning to climb Mount Shasta. Once we reached the peak we’d each say one word to the wind and then give up speech for a year. Bless their hearts, they wanted to go along.
I was turning to go when the woman stopped me with a touch on the shoulder. She reached in her pocket and handed me a small foil-wrapped package. ‘LSD,’ she murmured. ‘Only take one at a time.’
‘Thank you,’ I said politely. I’d been hearing about LSD but hadn’t been interested enough to score. I had enough trouble with peyote. I realized it wasn’t exceptionally bright to add drug possession to a list of imminent felonies, but there was no way to gracefully refuse.
‘Take it in a beautiful place,’ she advised. ‘It’ll really open things up.’
Well, after all, I was interested in opening things up, so why not? Keep the spirit of adventure alive. ‘Wish I had something I could offer in return,’ I said – except lies, my conscience reminded me.
‘There’s something I’d like to know,’ she said shyly.
I braced myself. ‘Name it and I’ll try.’
‘I’d like to know what word you’re going to say on top of Mount Shasta.’
‘I can’t tell you because I don’t know,’ I said, relaxing. ‘I’m just going to say whatever comes to me, whatever I feel. Spontaneous bop of the moment’s revelation, you understand. Sorry I can’t tell you or I sure would.’
‘Just a minute,’ she said, rummaging in her buckskin purse till she found a card and a pen. She talked as she scribbled under the streetlight. ‘It’s a stamped postcard. I’ll address it to myself. My name’s Natalie. After you come down from the mountain, write what word you said and mail it to me – but only if you feel like it. No obligation. And I promise not to tell anybody.’
‘That’s fair. Assuming I make the top and have something to say.’ I pocketed the card.
‘Can she tell me?’ her boyfriend asked.
‘Sure, if you still love each other and haven’t died.’
They both giggled.
‘Don’t die,’ I admonished them, and then I was gone up Columbus to Kearny, strolling up the mountain toward the wild wind and the mighty clouds of joy, letting fly with a bit of the double-shuffle be-bop buck-and-wing as the spirit moved me. From the instrument room of my psyche, a voice as dry as my conscience’s but with a more sardonic edge announced, .You’re asking for it. And I answered under my breath, ‘That’s right, I’m asking for it. Hell, I’m begging for it.’ And I bopped on down the street.
I was more subdued by the time I reached the garage on 7th, but still full of juice. I felt alert, confident, inevitable, and I hadn’t felt any of that in a long time. I walked up to the garage door like I owned the place, used the key, and swung the double doors open. I stepped inside, shutting the doors behind me, slipped the flashlight out of my crime kit, and stood still in the darkness, senses straining. The air seemed warmer inside. There was a musky odor of gear oil, sharp tang of solvent. I switched on the flashlight.
The garage was full of Cadillac. The car looked about seventy feet long. Where it wasn’t chrome, it was pure white, including the sidewalls on the tires. Six years is a long time for rubber not to roll, and though Scumball had assured me there were new tires all around, I wanted to be sure. There were. I checked the plates: current. Despite my attention to safety items as I made my inspection, it was impossible to miss the extravagance of the styling: swept fins that seemed as high as the roofline, each sporting twin bullet taillights; a front grille divided by a thick horizontal chrome bar and studded with small chrome bullets, a pattern repeated on the rear dummy grille that ran across the lower back panel above the bumper; fenderskirts on the rear wells; tinted wrap-around windows front and back; chrome gleaming everywhere. It was an Eldorado, and if memory serves that meant 390 cubes, 345 horses, fed by three two-barrel carbs. You’d need that kind of thrust to move such a chunk of metal.
I opened the door to check the key and registration and was hit by the odor of new leather upholstery and, over that, a fragrance I knew in my loins and reeled to remember: Shalimar. Kacy’s favorite perfume. I inhaled deeply, and again, but still wasn’t really sure I still smelled it. The uncertainty spooked me. I kept sniffing, starting to tremble, then willed myself back to the job at hand before I snapped my concentration. Forcing myself to relax and slow down, I slipped the registration from the visor and went over it carefully. Clean as a whistle.
The key was under the front seat where it was supposed to be, and slipped smoothly into the ignition. The engine caught on the first stroke and settled into a
purr. I gave the gauges a glance; everything looked good. The tank was full. That just left the tricky part, the point of maximum vulnerability. I had to open the garage doors, drive out, stop, close the garage door, reattach the duplicate lock, scatter some metal drippings under the hasp, toss the cut lock out where it wouldn’t be obvious but where it could be found without a struggle, then get back into the Eldorado and cruise away. I figured five minutes at the outside if nothing screwed up; two if it all jammed together smooth. What I didn’t need was a cop cruising by or some good neighbor with insomnia who collected the Dick Tracy Crimestopper Notes out of the Sunday funnies.
ABCDEFG. Plans. Pure delusions. How can you ever accommodate the imponderables, the variables, the voluptuous teeming of possibilities, the random assertions of chance, the inflexible dictates of fate? You jump out of a tree and walk down the street and a little boy is slaughtered in front of your eyes. The music ends and a woman stands up and takes off her clothes and you fall in love. I was turning the key when I heard a car swing around the corner and come down the street. Then another right behind it, radio blasting rock-and-roll. Both passed without slowing. Then another cruised by from up the block. Far too much traffic for 2:30 in the morning. Maybe there was a party in the neighborhood, a card game, whorehouse, drug deal, who knows. I figured I’d give it a few minutes to settle out.
I decided there were a couple of useful things I could do while waiting, like get the lock and metal drippings out and ready, and then stash the rest of my kit in the glovebox. When I leaned over and opened the glovebox, the powerful scent of Shalimar carried me back into Kacy’s arms.
I came back to reality fast, greatly aided by another memory – that I was in the middle of multiple felonies – and by the fact that Kacy wasn’t likely to be curled up in the glovebox awaiting my amorous designs. Shalimar is hardly a rare perfume. Maybe Cory Bingham had a girlfriend who used it, or maybe he liked to splash a little on himself and prance around. I shined the flashlight in the glovebox, expecting to find a leaky perfume bottle or a scented scarf, but the only thing in the glovebox was a crumpled piece of paper which on closer inspection turned out to be an envelope. I lifted it to my nose: absolutely Shalimar, not overwhelming but distinct. Of course, logical, always an explanation – a perfumed letter, addressed in a fine, precise script to Mr Big Bopper. That was all, just the name. No stamps or postmark. I turned it over in the flashlight’s beam and saw the jagged tear where it had been ripped open. The letter inside was typewritten, single-spaced. I took it out and smoothed it on the steering wheel.
I read the letter seven times straight through right then, another seven later that night, and maybe seven hundred times altogether, but after the first time through I knew without doubt or hesitation what I was going to do.
I can recite the letter by heart. The letterhead was embossed in a rich burgundy ink: Miss Harriet Annalee Gildner. Under her name, exactly centered, the date was typed, February 1, 1959.
Dear Mr Bopper,
I am a 57-year-old virgin. I’ve never had sex with a man because none has ever moved me. Don’t mistake me, please. I’m neither vain in my virtue, nor ashamed. Life is rich with passions and pleasures, and sex is undoubtedly one. I haven’t denied myself; I simply haven’t found the man and the moment, and see no reason to fake it.
I hope you won’t mistake me as a hopeless kook, but one of my deepest interests is the invisible world. Over the years I’ve employed some of the most sensitive psychics, shamans, and mediums to provide access to that realm of being which defies the rational circuits of knowledge our culture enforces as reality. I’ve sought those realms out of a desire to know, not a need to believe. I’ll spare you the techniques and metaphysics; since they are much closer to music than ‘thought,’ I assume you’ll understand.
To the point then: About a week ago, while I was in my office perusing my broker’s report and enjoying a pipe of opium, I was visited by formless spirits bearing a large book. It was bound in the horn of a white rhinoceros with the title stamped in gold: THE BOOK OF LAMENTATIONS.
I asked the spirits to open the book.
‘One page, one page,’ voices chanted together in reply, then held the book out to me.
It opened at my touch. The page revealed was in a language I’d never encountered before, but somehow I understood clearly as I read that it was a lament of virgins, both men and women, who, by whatever cause or reason, had never known (I quote the text) ‘the sweet obliterations of sexual love.’ The text continued, a chronicle of regrets, but the page faded as I read. In foolish desperation I tried to grab the book. It vanished with the spirits. But immediately a single spirit (they are invisible, but overwhelmingly present) returned. I could feel it waiting.
‘Why was I allowed this visit?’ I asked.
There was a giggle, a 17-year-old’s nervous glee, and a young woman’s voice replied, ‘Trust yourself, not us.’
‘How will I know?’ I asked her.
She giggled again. ‘You just do. And you’ll probably be wrong.’
‘Are you a virgin?’ I asked.
‘Are you kidding?’ She vanished into her laughter, leaving me confused and, I must admit, distraught.
I didn’t fall asleep until late that night, but I slept deeply. When I woke the next morning, shrouded in the membranes of dreams I couldn’t remember, I reached over to my nightstand to turn on the radio to a classical station I frequently listen to. Or such was my attempt. I somehow turned the tuning dial rather than the on-off switch. I realized my mistake and turned the right knob, forgetting the station would be at random.
And there you were: ‘Helllooo bay-beeee, this is the Big Bopper.’ And I was moved. Men that have made sexual advances toward me in the past have always made it seem such an awkward, harrowing pursuit. When I heard the playfulness in your voice, the happy, loose lechery, I knew. And maybe – probably – I’m wrong, but that doesn’t alter the conviction.
I want you to understand this car is a gift, yours without strings or conditions. It is a gift to acknowledge your music, the desire that spins the planets, and the power it portends. So it is very much a gift to the possibilities of friendship, communion, and love. You owe me nothing. I can afford it because I’m ridiculously wealthy.
If you’re ever in San Francisco, please give me a call or drop by my house. I would like very much to meet you.
Sincerely yours,
Harriet Gildner
I sat there in the Shalimar-scented darkness, a man without a gift insidze a gift undelivered, a heartfelt crazy gift meant to celebrate music and the possibilities of human love. I would deliver it, all right.
Then a couple of pieces fell together. Scumball had said it was a present to some rock star who’d up and died, but the Big Bopper’s name hung on the threshold of memory for a moment before it arced across. ‘That’s a lot of music to lose,’ Kacy had said. Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper. And now this Cory jerkoff expected me to wreck the Bopper’s Cadillac, his aunt’s gift, to pay off his stupidity at the poker table? Nope. No way was it going to happen. The car didn’t belong to him. It belonged to the ghosts of Harriet and the Big Bopper, to love and music. I, too, was probably wrong, but fuck it. You move as you’re moved, and what I felt moved to do was drive it to the Big Bopper’s grave, stand on the hood and read Harriet’s letter, and then set it all ablaze, a monument of fire. I was going to climb the mountain and say my word; deliver my gift and slip away.
I knew this was going to be more difficult than it sounded. Besides a whole pile of luck, I needed a couple of other things I could think of offhand: solid cover and a little information. I figured the cover shouldn’t be too difficult. John Seasons and his many official seals could probably handle it as long as I didn’t come under hard scrutiny. The only information that seemed crucial was the location of the Big Bopper’s grave, and I figured I could find that out on the way.
I carefully refolded the letter and returned it
to the envelope, pissed that someone – most likely that asshole Cory – had ripped it open and then crumpled it. The letter was a noble document, a little strange maybe, but that’s no reason to treat it like a used Kleenex.
The occasional car still passed on the street, but I felt charmed in my elated conviction of doing right – or at least doing something – and if you’re going to throw your ass up for grabs, that’s a good time.
I didn’t hurry. I cranked the Caddy over again and let it idle while I opened the garage doors. I pulled out into the driveway, put it in neutral, and set the brake. That damn Caddy was so long half of it was in the street. I closed the doors, snapped on the duplicate lock, sprinkled the container of melted drippings around, side-armed the torch-cut original into the space between the garage and the building next door, climbed back in the Caddy, snugged up my gloves, took off the brake, and my ass was gone.
John Seasons answered the door with a distant grin. It was 3:30 in the morning and he’d just finished a poem he thought was worthy. He understood before I spoke that something was up, and fixed me with a cocked gaze. ‘My, you’re looking awfully lively this morning.’
I ran it down for him as quickly and as clearly as I could. ‘I bow to the romance of the gesture,’ he said, and actually gave me a formal little bow. That he liked the idea made it seem even better.
I explained my need for cover. I told him the Caddy was legally registered to Cory Bingham, so what I needed was either new registration or a damn good reason for being in the car.
John had an innate understanding of such things. ‘Do you have any leverage on Bingham?’
‘Since I’m off and running, and know the scam, he should be reasonable. I wouldn’t say I had him by the nuts, but I could sure yank on some short hairs.’
