Not Fade Away

by Jim Dodge

  There was a brief pause, then, no doubt about it, John’s voice, his fake professorial tone resonant with five scotches: ‘Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Christopher Columbus and you’re a dead Indian.’

  That was it.

  Captain Midnight jumped back in: ‘Didn’t I tell you the man knows his shit? We’re gonna hear more from him, just hang on, but first a little paean to his name, and another man you might wisely have for company on this night of wandering zombies and rabid werewolves, ain’t that right, Jimmy Dean? Who’re we talking about? Who else but “Big Bad John.”’

  I only half-listened to the song. The John I knew was neither big nor bad. Sharp tongued and a bit severe, like most poets, but sweet at heart. If he was self-destructive, it was only because he’d rather hurt himself than someone else. I was perplexed he hadn’t mentioned the KRZE gig to me; John’s only deep vanity was as an historian. He claimed to be a Metasexual Marxist, a school of historical scholarship where, according to John, one arrived at the dialectical truth by kissing tears from the eyes of victims. Maybe his KRZE series had come up after I left, or he’d neglected to tell me in the frenzy of my departure. But if all went right I’d probably see him in a day or so, and I could tell him he’d kept me company through a wild night. And maybe I could get a line on this weird radio station out of the Wind River Range.

  ‘And speaking of the man,’ Captain Midnight came in at the end of the song, ‘here he is with Part Two in our public service series, “A Social Demonology of the Ol’ Hollow Weenie.” This time we’re going to hear from a famous seventeenth-century religious leader, an old-fashioned, honest-to-God, down-home preacher man.’

  John’s voice came on: ‘The Reverend Cotton Mather at your service. In 1691, one of the female members of my congregation at North Church came to me with the sad admission that she could not open her mouth to pray. I, of course, made every effort to help her. I tried physical manipulation, prayer, admonitions … all without success – though, in a noble effort to save her soul, I refused to admit failure. A few nights later I had a dream in which an angel appeared to me and urged me to kiss the unfortunate woman and thereby unlock her mouth to offer her prayers to God for the redemption of her soul. A less experienced theologian might have been fooled. In the past, you see, I had always been visited by angels in my study, not my sleeping quarters, and while awake, not in the vulnerable state of dreams. It was obviously a false visitation, the devil in the guise of an angel, and a devil plainly manifested through the woman who would not open her mouth to pray. I denounced her as a witch. Following a proper trial, she was burned at the stake, and so completely had Satan inhabited her that even under the scourge of fire she refused to open her mouth except to scream.’

  ‘My oh my,’ Captain Midnight cut back in, ‘Reverend Mather don’t seem too kindly disposed toward womenfolk. But don’t you get blue behind it, honey. You give the Captain here a jingle on this Satanic night – he’d like to bob for your apples, know what I mean? While I’m waiting for the switchboard to light up, let’s pin an ear to men of more modern understanding – Sam Cooke, say, with “Bring It on Home to Me” and Roy Orbison’s “O Pretty Woman.”’

  It had been John Seasons for sure. The supercilious, righteous whine, the smug, zealous certainty of the conclusions – I’d heard his Mather imitation many nights in North Beach bars.

  ‘This John Seasons is a good buddy of mine, you know,’ I told my ghost. Evidently he wasn’t impressed.

  I honked the horn for the hell of it and bored on deeper into the night. It was all in my imagination, of course, but I could clearly hear the Pacific Ocean breaking on the edge of the continent.

  About fifteen minutes later, John came on again, manifesting one of those inexplicable congruencies we call coincidence. At the same instant I saw the highway sign for Fort Bridger, John’s voice began:

  ‘Jim Bridger’s the name. I trapped beaver in these mountains nigh onto a century ago. Traded the pelts for provisions and possibles, and pretty much went wherever my stick floated. Now what I wanna know, the thing that plagues on me, is what have you ignorant dung-heads done with the buffalo? I used to traipse this country all over and it weren’t nothing to eyeball thousands of them critters at the same time. Now I don’t see hide nor ha’r. You got ’em on reservations like the Injuns?’

  All right, John! Maybe needed a little work on the mountain man accent, but it was nice to hear a whack for the natural world. Not that I remember John personally caring much for the wilds. I’d once tried to get him to go backpacking with me and Kacy, but he’d declined with the explanation that every time he saw a blade of grass he wanted to jump on the nearest cable car. His heart knew better, though.

  I was just outside Evanston, moving right along, when his next lick hit: a lugubrious blackface, the parody of a parody: ‘Mah name’s John. John Henry. Ahm a steel-drivin’ man. Whup tha steel. Whup the steel on down, Lawd Lawd. An’ now them Southe’n Pacific muthafucks own half the Sierra Nevada.’

  I couldn’t help myself. I had to stop in Evanston and call him, tell him how good it was to hear his voice, let him know there were listeners in the night. I figured the program was taped, so I called him at home from a Standard station. There was no answer but I let it ring; maybe he was in the basement printing.

  About the fourteenth buzz someone answered, either out of breath or patience. ‘My God, all right, who is it?’

  ‘My name’s George Gastin,’ I said, thinking this was one of his boyfriends and maybe I’d interrupted something. ‘I’m calling John Seasons. We’re old friends.’

  There was a breathy pause on the other end, then: ‘Well. I don’t like bearing bad news, but John’s in the hospital.’

  I sagged. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘They think so. All the tests are good. But for heavenssakes, he’s been unconscious for three days.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It’s … unclear.’

  ‘Hey, pal – fuck that shit. I told you he was an old friend. I’ve taken him to the Emergency Room more times than I care to remember.’

  ‘Well don’t get mad at me about it! I don’t know you.’

  ‘Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry. But I don’t know you either, though you’re answering his phone.’

  ‘I’m Steven.’

  Steven? Steven? I racked my brain. ‘You work at the Federal Building, right?’

  ‘Yes, I do.’

  ‘I haven’t met you, Steven, but I know from John he holds you in high regard. You looking after his place? The manuscripts and presses?’

  ‘Yes. Larry asked if I would.’

  ‘I’m sure they’re in good hands. Now tell me what happened. He get those Percodans mixed up with some Scotch?’

  ‘Well, that’s what the doctors are saying. Or he got drunk and forgot how many pills he was taking.’

  ‘Did he try to kill himself, Steven?’ I made this as direct as I could.

  ‘No one really knows. Larry found him on the kitchen floor unconscious. It could’ve been a mistake.’

  ‘No note?’

  ‘No, nothing like that.’

  ‘And this was three days ago, right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And he’s in a coma?’

  ‘Yes. But as I said, all the signs are good. The brain waves are absolutely normal. The liver function isn’t great, but with the amount he drinks that’s to be expected. The doctors say it isn’t really a coma. I ask if he’s still in a coma and they say, “No, he just hasn’t regained consciousness yet.” Good Lord, you know how technical doctors are.’

  ‘What hospital is he in?’

  ‘General.’

  ‘Well, listen. I’ll be there as soon as I can. I’m on my way now, but I’m coming from Wyoming and there’s some business first.’

  ‘I go by the hospital every morning before work. If he’s awake I’ll tell him to expect you.’

  ‘Did you know he’s on the radio here tonigh
t in Wyoming? A special series called “A Social Demonology of the Hollow Weenie.”’

  ‘Really? He never mentioned it to me, and we discuss his work all the time. I think he’s a fabulous writer, but you know he’s so hard on himself. It must be taped, of course, but I just can’t believe he wouldn’t have mentioned it. Are you sure it’s John? The title sounds … well, tacky.’

  ‘It’s his name, it sounds just like him, and he lives in San Francisco.’

  ‘How odd.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I agreed, ‘and getting odder all the time.’

  ‘That’s so true. You should see Haight Street these days.’

  I wanted to avoid the sociological at all costs. ‘Steven, listen, my time’s up. Thanks, and sorry I jumped on you. I felt I had a right to know.’

  ‘I understand,’ Steven said. ‘I can appreciate your concern.’

  When I pulled out of the gas station I was so preoccupied I didn’t realize for six blocks that I was heading downtown instead of out to I-80. I hung a U and had just straightened out the wheels when I saw three small skeletons dancing across the street about a block away, their bones shining with a pale green luminescence in the headlights. I wasn’t frightened by their appearance – they obviously were kids dressed up in five-and-dime Halloween costumes – but I was terrified by my desire to stomp on the gas and run them down.

  I didn’t. I didn’t even come close, not really. I hit the brakes instead and immediately pulled over and turned off the car, jamming on the emergency brake as hard as I could. I sat there watching the three little skeletons continue their skipping dance across the pavement and then disappear down a cross street, happily unaware that a man with an impulse to murder them sat watching from a car parked down the block.

  After Eddie, how could the impulse even have entered my mind? I felt my exhaustion collapsing on its empty center, my point and purpose caving in to an oblivion of regrets I could neither shape nor salvage, an oblivion I was clearly seeking with a twisted vengeance, trying to destroy what I couldn’t redeem, the gift I could neither deliver nor accept.

  Yet it was also true that I hadn’t even come close; I’d smothered the desire the moment it seized me. But would I again? I raised my fists and hammered them down on the steering wheel, hoping the wheel would break or the bones in my hands shatter or both: any reason to get out of that sleek white Cadillac and walk away. But with each blow all I felt was the congealing certainty that the only choice left was forward and my only chance was fast. I understood too late that it was too late to stop. So, with the rush of freedom that is doom’s honey spilling in the heart, I got on it.

  As I hit the on-ramp my ghost appeared, in the backseat this time, leaning forward to whisper, ‘George, oooh George, you almost did it back there. You better let me drive. You can’t trust yourself anymore.’

  ‘Why don’t you vanish for good,’ I said. ‘You’re no help.’

  He laughed. ‘Okay, George. Sure thing. You bet.’ And he was gone, leaving an unnerving silence.

  Five minutes and ten miles later, when I thought to turn the radio back on, Captain Midnight was doling out the encouragement: ‘Yup, the Captain’s back from that trip down the voodoo track, and hey!, ain’t we got fun? How are you doing on this night when the insane rip their chains from the walls and roam the night to play with the dead and plague the innocent? You still getting where you’re going? Keeping on keeping on? I hope so, friend, ’cause if life ain’t right with you, you better get right with life. Whatever that is on this ghoul-ridden night. You just tell ’em Captain Midnight, patron deejay of fool dreamers, prays nightly for your soul and twice on Halloween and Easter. Lapidem esse aquam fontis vivi. Obscurum per obscurius, ignotum per ignotius. Yes. And may the gods go with you, child.

  ‘And now, because KRZE is dedicated to giving you heart for the path, or some path for the heart, whatever it is you think you need, here’s John Seasons again with some more insightful demonology.’

  ‘My name’s Black Bart. A lot of people asked me why I only robbed Wells Fargo stages… if it was something personal against Mr Wells or Mr Fargo or both. Well, not really. I just sorta figured anybody with that much money should be robbed.’

  ‘OW!’ Captain Midnight shouted, ‘now there’s a jack-o-lantern with a fuse. But your Captain’s forced to concur that large piles of money are dangerous, so send me some if it’s piling up on you and save yourself the grief. While you’re getting it together, I got to attend to a couple of personal gigs. I could slap on a stack of platters and hope they didn’t stick, but since it’s Halloween I thought it might be a touch of class to leave you with some dead air. But to make it right by you, I’ll bring back goodies that’ll make you drool. Not just more boss sounds and John Seasons’s exclusive demonology, but things you can’t even imagine. But go ahead and wonder while yours truly visits the Lizard King and throws a few snowballs at the moon. Back in a flash, Jack – I’ll make it up to you, and that’s a promise.’

  The air went dead. I would’ve turned it off and listened to Donna’s collection if it hadn’t been for John’s social commentaries. I didn’t want to miss one. They connected me to someone real, and I was convinced beyond reason that John would live so long as I kept listening. I thought of him drifting in his coma and wondered if, like Elmer, he had a smile on his face.

  I slipped into something of a coma myself, my mind blurred as the night blurred with speed, shadows whipping around me like torn sails, waves breaking in my mind, a mind I’d maybe gone out of, long gone, blooey, nobody home on the range, but I was taking it on home anyway. I flew down the west slope of the Rockies into Salt Lake City before I knew I was there. The lights snapped me out of my trance. I started looking for my buddy, the green dinosaur, and, when I didn’t see him, felt like I’d lost a piece of magic. I settled for a Conoco next to an interchange. My bladder was a drop from bursting, but I stayed in the car with the windows up tight, cracking mine only a quick inch to tell the pump jockey to fill it with supreme. I was certain if I started talking the way I was thinking I’d be surrounded by squad cars faster than you could say, ‘Up against the wall, motherfucker.’ I didn’t want to fly apart when my only hope was to fly, to freeze my bead on the Pacific shore and stand on the juice. I gave the kid a twenty for the gas and told him he could keep the change whether he prayed for my doomed ass or not. I came off the on-ramp running.

  When you have to piss so bad your tonsils are under water, it’s as hard to fly as it is to stand still, so at the beginning of the long desolate run across the saltflats between Salt Lake and Wendover, I cracked my momentum to pull over and piss, doing so with the profound appreciation that much of pleasure is mere relief. The night was so cold that my piss steamed as it soaked into the moonlit salt. There’s nothing like a good, basic piss to clear the mind, and by volume I should’ve become lucid; but perhaps I was just giddy, because I asked my ghost as if he were present, ‘Are saltflats the ghosts of old oceans? Feel like the seashore? Can we count it as the Pacific if we come up short?’

  No ghost. No answers. But I could feel him then, feel him as he waited for his moment, waited with the massive patience of a boulder that knows it will someday be sand for the hourglass. That was his presence, but underneath I felt his essence, and his essence was wind. I stood there with my dick in my hand – suddenly alive in a memory when I was ten and a hurricane had hit out of nowhere and I’d watched, awed, as the wind ripped petals from the rose garden and flung them against the windows, pressing their colors against the quivering glass. The next morning, as he looked at his stripped and ravaged roses, was the only time I’d ever seen my father cry. The memory of it made me start crying, too. ‘Help me, ghost,’ I asked, not sure whether I was talking to my father’s or my own – both, I decided, since I needed all the help I could get. If ghosts help. No ghosts. No answers. I got back in the Cadillac and burned on down the line.

  The best thing about saltflats is the flat: a straight, level shot to the horizon, the
meeting of heaven and earth, the limit of sight. If you can go fast enough, you can see over the edge. The road was two-lane blacktop, and I opened it up all the way, straddling the white line unless the rare oncoming car sent me back to my lane.

  The silence and distance were eating me up. I was just about to shut off Captain Midnight and spin a few records myself when there was an explosion of static on the radio and my Captain said, ‘Ah, back alive; proof against the demons so far, and so far, so good. “But who can tell on this witch’s flight/the true darkness from the dancing light?” Them fuckin’ demons are tricky. That’s why we asked troubadour John Seasons to offer us some insights into the dark. Oh John, way up there in your shaman trance, come in please.’

  ‘Good evening,’ John said mildly. ‘My name, if you don’t know it, is J.P. Morgan, and I’m here tonight to reveal the secret to success in American business. I think you’ll be surprised how simple it is. First, buy a steel mill. Secondly, buy workers. Buy them for as little as possible, but pay just enough to keep them going. Lastly, buy Congressmen, and pay them to enact tariff laws to keep out foreign steel. Politicians can be purchased cheaply, so buy in quantity. The goal, you see, is stability, and nothing destabilizes like competition. So remember: high prices, low wages, and a lock on the market. Because when you scrape off all the sentiment and rhetoric, spirit is for idiots and poetry for fools. Money is power. And, put bluntly, power rules.’