The Armageddon Rag

  Sandy stared at her, suddenly feeling very ill at ease. “There’s an uncomfortable amount of truth in that,” he said carefully. But habit got the better of him, and he added, “I can’t believe I’m sitting here in a teepee on top of a mountain listening to nuggets of wisdom from a guru named Bambi.”

  “See what I mean?” she said. They both smiled. “Do you remember the first time we met?” she asked.

  “Freshman year?” Sandy said. “Not really.”

  “You came by the dorm to pick up Maggie, and she introduced us. You noted that Bambi was kind of an unusual name, and asked me how I got it. So I told you the story about how my parents had been in the movies watching Disney’s Bambi, with my mother eight-and-a-half months pregnant, when suddenly the labor pains started and she had to rush to the hospital. I thought it was kind of a cute story. You stared at me as if I was some kind of a loon, and then told me I’d been real lucky. I walked right into it and asked why, and you said, ‘Hell, they could have been watching Dumbo!’”

  “Ouch,” Sandy said.

  “Ouch indeed.”

  “All right,” Sandy said. “I’m guilty. Still, Bambi, you’ve got to admit that there are some things that deserve being made light of.”

  “Aura balancing?”

  “It will do for starts,” Sandy said.

  “No, Sandy,” she said. “You just don’t understand it. You won’t open yourself to it, so you’ll never understand. You’d rather make light of it and reaffirm your image of yourself as shrewd and clever than try to accept and believe. If you believe, people might think you are gullible. If you believe, they might think you’re a fool, that you aren’t as sophisticated as you might be. That’s why you’re so sad and unhappy.”

  “I am not sad and unhappy,” Sandy said, annoyed.

  Bambi ignored him. “Your problem is that you run your life with your mind. You think about everything. You think when you should be feeling. Open yourself up, let your heart and your emotions and your body have their way, and you’d be a fuller, happier person, more in tune with nature, more in harmony. Believe. Trust. Accept.”

  “Turn off the computer, eh?” Sandy asked. “Trust the Force to zap the Deathstar?”

  Bambi looked at him, baffled.

  “Star Wars,” Sandy said. “You don’t know Star Wars?”

  Bambi shook her head. “But the message is right. Computers are very sick. We shouldn’t let our machines think for us. So long as you deny your feelings, you’ll experience depression and anguish and all the rest. The mind cannot find truth by itself.”

  “Maybe not,” Sandy said, “but it sure as hell can find falsehood. The idea of stumbling through life with my heart open and my bullshit detector turned off doesn’t appeal to me, Bambi.”

  “Just because something is strange or new or too big to be comprehended by your conscious mind, that doesn’t mean it is bullshit. Look at the world, Sandy. You did once. It’s a poisonous, plastic, death-worshiping society, full of war and pollution and racism and starvation and greed. And it was built with the mind, with technology, with materialist thinking and no human feeling at all. Once you rejected that world, rightly, as all of us did. Unlike Lark, you’ve never been able to accept it again. But you’ve never really found a new way of living, either… you reject everything.”

  “Such as?” Sandy said.

  “Such as the Movement. You were never really totally committed, Sandy. You were always critical. Establishment journalistic ethics meant more to you than helping the cause.”

  “Right,” said Sandy. “In other words, I wouldn’t deliberately distort the facts or make up stuff when reporting a story.”

  “Truth is greater than facts. You’ve never understood that.”

  Sandy leaned forward, frowning. “Bullshit. I never changed my politics. I never rejected the Movement. But the Movement was pretty damn big. I rejected parts of it, yeah. The parts that had become as bad as what we were fighting against. We were supposed to stand for something, and Jolly Chollie Manson and the SLA had no relation to what I stood for.”

  “You rejected mind-expanding drugs, too.”

  “Hey!” Sandy protested. “I tried that stuff.”

  “You experimented. It was recreation. But you were always scared of anything that might open your being to new levels of awareness.”

  “I was always scared of anything that might turn my brain to small-curd cottage cheese, you mean.”

  “New belief systems, mysticism, meditation, transcendence…”

  “Twelve-year-old gurus, imported superstition, self-delusion, escape, slogan-chanting yahoos. No thanks.”

  Bambi smiled. “You see, Sandy? You haven’t changed. Your mind is still locked and rigid. It’s your mind saying all this, giving orders to your feelings, to your body. Your mind is rigidly materialist, frightened, critical.”

  “My wisdom teeth used to be deeply spiritual, but I had them removed,” Sandy said.

  Bambi Lassiter sighed. “I can see that you’re never going to open yourself to enlightenment. Whenever your defenses start to weaken, the jokes begin again.”

  “Jokes are better than mindless uncritical belief.”

  “No, Sandy. I love you, but you’re very wrong. To be happy, to be fulfilled, you must learn to believe. To accept. Look at me.” She smiled, and seemed to radiate contentment.

  “Your answer would never work for me.”

  “Try it. Believe. Turn off your mind and turn on your feelings.”

  Sandy shook his head emphatically. “Believers scare me, Bambi. Sure they’re happy. They’re also dangerous. Look at the Moral Majority yahoos, Hitler Youth, those poor suckers in Jonestown… all of them good, happy believers.”

  Still Bambi smiled. “You’re hopeless, Sandy.”

  “That you can believe.”

  “I love you anyway, and I wish you well.” She smiled and moved off the subject. “Will you be seeing anyone else this trip?”

  He nodded. “Froggy is out in LA. That’s where I’m heading next. Slum is in Denver, living with his folks. I’ll check in there on my swing back east.”

  “Give them my love,” Bambi said. “Why are you doing all this? We’ve all been out of touch for a long time, walking our separate paths. Why this, now?”

  “Hard to say,” Sandy replied. “Maybe I’m looking for something. Maybe I’m just curious. And… well, it relates to a story I’m working on. Don’t ask me how, but it does. In fact, you might be a bigger help with the story than any of the others.”

  “How?” she asked.

  “In the old days, you went a good way beyond the rest of us when it came to tearing down society.”

  “Yes,” she said. “A long time ago. I finally learned that society was too big and too monstrous to come down easily, and that you can’t use violence to rid the world of violence.”

  Sandy grinned. “That was my line in the old days. What you and Lark said was that all power came out of the barrel of a gun. But that’s neither here nor there. You had ties to the bomb-throwers. The Weather Underground, the Black Freedom Militia, the American Liberation Front, all of it. I need to talk to those people. Those that are left.”

  “That’s all ancient history,” Bambi said.

  “Give me a name, an avenue of approach,” Sandy said. “I’ll take it from there.”

  Bambi paused and was about to answer when they were interrupted by a loud clanging. “The dinner bell,” she said. She rose smoothly to her feet, with a cryptic smile, and helped Sandy up. His legs had gone to sleep. “Let me think over what you want. Perhaps I’ll be able to help you.”

  Dinner was served in the large main house, on a long rough-hewn wooden table covered with handmade plates and platters. Everyone shared the communal meal. Sandy was introduced to the other adult members of the community, and to the children. There were six children altogether, ranging in age from a ten-year-old boy named Free to a six-month-old infant who rode in a harness on her mother’s back. No one
used last names. When they were seated, they all clasped hands, children and adults both, forming a huge ring around the table, and everyone stared silently at the plates, heads bowed, for a long minute. Sandy joined in, holding hands with Bambi on his right and a slender, goateed man named Mitch on his left. He felt as awkward and out of place as he always did during Christmas dinner with Sharon’s parents, when her father stood up and said interminable grace over the turkey.

  There was no turkey at this dinner, of course. It was strictly vegetarian; brown rice and huge platters of fresh vegetables, spiced and curried in some cases, with thick lovely homemade soup and hot, fresh-baked bread. They washed it all down with iced herbal teas and glasses of raw milk. It was enormously tasty, and the various Golden Visionaries around the table were friendly. The cook, a tall broad-shouldered woman named Lisa with the infant on her back, told him proudly that the food he had just praised had “no preservatives or chemicals at all.”

  Sandy had a forkful of rice halfway to his mouth, but he paused and stared at Lisa. “No chemicals? No chemicals at all.”

  “None at all,” Lisa said.

  “I ought to write this up,” Sandy said. “Food made up of pure energy. Why, this could solve world hunger.”

  Bambi shook her head, Lisa went off to the kitchen a bit miffed, and several of the others looked at him strangely. After that, table talk was a bit more stilted.

  Sandy tried to make up for the crack by volunteering to help with the dishes after dinner. They took him up on it, and he wound up laboring in the kitchen with Fern. They scraped all the leftovers into their compost pile out back, and then washed the dishes in their own homemade soap. Sandy washed and Fern dried, and he figured out straight off that the soap was definitely less mild than Palmolive, but this time he wisely kept his mouth shut and let Fern chatter amiably about literature. She was a big fan of Stranger in a Strange Land.

  When he emerged from the kitchen, four of the adults were still seated around the big table, talking. He drifted over to join them, but one of them, the heavyset bearded black man who had talked briefly to Sandy when he arrived, got up and intercepted him. “Hey, man,” he said, clapping a big rough hand on Sandy’s shoulder, “let’s take a little walk, OK?”

  “Sure,” Sandy said, uncertainly. The black guy led him outside. The sun had set a short time ago, and a chill lingering dusk was settling over the mountains. It was very still and quiet. He could hear the children playing somewhere off down the road, running and shouting, small in the distance.

  “My name’s Ray,” the black man said. He walked slowly, his hands shoved into his pockets. “You got that?”

  “Uh, sure,” Sandy said.

  They shuffled across the yard. Ray paused next to the old Jeep, leaned up against it, and crossed his arms. “Bambi says you want to talk to somebody with maybe some underground connections.”

  “Yeah,” Sandy said. He studied Ray carefully. “You?”

  “I ain’t saying yes and I ain’t saying no. Bambi says that you can be trusted, but I don’t know you, so I got to be careful. Like I said, the name’s Ray. But maybe that ain’t always been my name. This is a nice place. I like it here. I like the people. I wouldn’t like it for anything to happen that might maybe make me have to leave. You understand?”

  Sandy nodded. “What group do you tie in with?”

  “Me? No one. Like I said, I’m just Ray. Ray is clean, no record, nothing. Nobody wants Ray. But let’s just say I got an old, old friend who’s wanted in about six states and was a real hot item for a while. The man wanted this guy something bad. And he was into just about any group you care to name, as long as they were doing things. This dude didn’t like talk. He liked action. You get it? He was a real crazy dude.”

  “All right,” Sandy said. “You know about the Lynch murder?”

  Dark furrows creased the broad, balding forehead. “We don’t get newspapers, man. They’re full of lies and violence, give off bad emanations.”

  “Jamie Lynch was an old promoter and manager. He handled the Nazgûl, American Taco, the Fevre River Packet Company, and a bunch of others. Last month someone cut his heart out.” He gave Ray a brief summary of the grisly details of the murder and mentioned the fire at the Gopher Hole as well.

  “I remember the Nazgûl,” Ray said. “For a white band, they weren’t half bad. That Gopher John was a badass drummer.” He frowned. “So, you think the underground offed this Lynch mothafucker?”

  “I don’t think anything. I’m trying to find out.”

  Ray tugged at his wiry black beard. “My friend was mostly involved with folks who had political goals, if you get what I mean. Kidnapping the man. Ripping off banks and other exploiters. Arming the ghetto. I don’t see no political shit here.” He scowled. “Maybe more the Manson Family style. Offing the piggies. But why Lynch?” He shrugged. “I don’t think my friend knows anything could help you, man. Sorry.”

  Sandy nodded. “It was just a long shot. One more question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “Edan Morse,” Sandy said. “That name mean anything to you?”

  For a long quiet moment, Ray just stood silently in the twilight, while Sandy watched him and waited for the familiar shrug and denial. Instead the big man turned to face him. “I done a lot of shit I’m sorry for now,” he said. “This place has changed me, you know. I got my guilts, like everybody. But one thing I never done is rat on a brother, even a white one. You sure you ain’t going to the man with this?”

  Sandy looked at him squarely, feeling a strange electric chill creep up his spine. He was on to something at last, if he played it right. “That depends,” he said. “I’ll be straight with you, Ray. A lot of innocent kids died when the Gopher Hole burned. Jamie Lynch had his heart cut out of him with a knife. If I find out who did that, I’m not going to protect them. And if you’ve changed as much as you say you have, you won’t, either.”

  Ray looked troubled. “Fuck,” he said. “Maybe you’re right, man. Kids, huh?”

  “Teenagers, anyway.”

  “I’m going to have a kid soon,” Ray said. “I’m the daddy of the one that Bambi’s hauling around.” His hand clenched in a big fist and pounded very slowly against the side of the Jeep, over and over, thoughtfully, gently, deliberately. “My name stays out of this?”

  “Sure.”

  Ray took a breath. “You got it, then, for what it’s worth. Might not be much. Edan Morse is clean. Like Ray. He lives on the coast. Beverly Hills, I think. Real big money. He inherited it when he was like twenty. His parents and his big sister all died in this fire. Edan wasn’t home. Funny thing, that fire. They never proved nothing, though. Edan believed in the revolution. Didn’t just talk the talk either, knew how to walk the walk. He gave money to the cause. The Panthers, SDS, the Weather Underground, a hundred other groups. You needed bread in them days, there was always Edan. Later on, he was one of the guys helped start the Alfies.”

  “The American Liberation Front,” Sandy said thoughtfully. The ALF had been a radical splinter group of the early Seventies, made up of people who thought the other groups were too moderate. Urban terrorism and assassination had been Alfie specialties.

  “Edan was big in the Alfies. Not just money. He planned stuff too, gave orders, arranged for guns. But all behind the scenes, you know. He never made no speeches. The man knew that Edan was involved, but they could never make it stick. He was real careful. It’s no crime to give away your money, and that’s all they could ever prove about Edan. Only there’s stuff the man don’t know.”

  “Such as?”

  “Edan Morse is clean, like I said. And Ray is clean. But my friend, he’s not so clean. Edan had some friends too, if you’re getting my drift. Victor Von Doom. Maxwell Edison. Sylvester. They were all real good friends of Edan’s.”

  Sandy remembered all of those names from the old days, though he hadn’t heard them in years. Maxwell Edison was the name of the guy who took credit for blowing up that school b
oard meeting in Ohio. Victor Von Doom was said to be the top field commander of the Alfies, the one who directed all their bank robberies. And Sylvester… Sylvester had been on the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list for something like six years. None of them was ever apprehended. The Alfies just withered and vanished, and them with the rest. “Jesus,” Sandy said.

  Ray smiled. “The Alfies finally kicked him out, though. Edan was getting weird. At least, that was the word that got passed down.”

  “Weird?”

  “Yeah. Weird. The Alfies were crazy men, maybe, but they were practical crazy men. They figured they’d bring down the system with guns and bombs and shit like that. Edan, though, started getting funny after a while. He got into a lot of occult shit. I don’t know the details. Devil worship and stuff. Magic. That was too fucking much even for the Alfies. So they got rid of him, and he formed his own group. Never came to nothing, though. As far as I know, Edan is still out there on the coast, living in his house, clean as hell. His friends have all been missing for a long time.”

  “Well, he’s not missing anymore,” Sandy said. “He wants to get into the record business now. He wants to reunite the Nazgûl.”

  “Ain’t such a bad idea,” Ray said. “They made better music than what you hear on the radio these days, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Sandy said.

  “What help?” Ray said. “You just keep my name out of it. I don’t know nothing. I just live up here real peaceful. Organic Ray, get it?” He smiled. “You better watch out, though. Edan Morse ain’t the kind of guy I’d want to have mad at me.”

  “I’ll remember that,” Sandy said. He turned and walked back inside, to where Bambi and some of the others were sitting around the fireplace. “I’d like to use your phone, if I could.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Fern. “We don’t have a telephone here.”

  Sandy swore. “Where’s the nearest one?”

  “In town,” Bambi said. She stood up and came over to him. “You seem upset, Sandy. Why don’t you sit down and relax? We have some good dope. We grow our own. You’re welcome to spend the night.”