"What?"
"One of these others you've helped."
After some thought he said, "There was this little chick in New Jersey, for example. Real sharp but out of touch, you know? I got her out of the fuckin hypocritical public junior high and turned her on to a true way of living."
Made me mad again. I turned around and drove the little bastard back to the freeway. That evening when I came back from dropping my daughter off at her basketball practice, there he was, hunching along Nebo Road with his duffel over his shoulder, heading toward the farm.
"Get in," I said.
"I wasn't going to your place. I'm just looking for a ditch to sleep in."
"Get in. I'd rather have you where I can keep an eye on you."
So he ate supper and went to the cabin. He wouldn't let me build a fire. Heat bothered his rash, and light was starting to hurt his eyes. So I turned out the light and left him lying there. While we were watching our video tape I couldn't help but imagine him, stretched out down there in the black and cheerless chill, eyes still wide open, not scratching, not even brooding, really, just lying there.
The movie we were watching was Alien.
The next day Dobbs and I loaded up the pickup for a dump run to Creswell and I went down to stir Patrick up.
"You better bring your bag," I told him. Again he gave me that you-too-huh-you-fuckin-vampire look, then lifted his duffel from the floor and sullenly swung it up to his shoulder. The harsh right-angle object was no longer outlined through the khaki.
He was so peeved at being hauled away he barely spoke. He got out while we were at the dump unloading and wouldn't get back in.
"Don't you want a ride to the freeway?" I asked.
"I'll walk," he' said.
"Suit yourself," I said and backed the rig around. He stood in the mud and gravel and Pampers and wine bottles and old magazines, the duffel at his side, and watched us pull away, his round gray eyes unblinking.
As I jounced out of the dump I felt those cross hairs on the back of my neck.
The next day he phoned. He was calling from the Goshen Truck Stop, just down our road. He said his poison oak was worse and he was considerably disappointed in me, but he was giving me another chance. I hung up on him.
And last night my daughter said she saw him through the window of the school bus, sitting on his duffel bag in the weeds at the corner of Jasper Road and Valley. She said he was eating a carrot and that his whole face was now painted white.
I don't know what to do about him. I know he's out there, and on the rise.
Dobbs and I went carousing this afternoon with ol' Hunter S. Thompson, who's up to do one of his Gonzo gigs at the behest of the U of O School of Journalism. We stopped at the Vet's Club to help him get his wheels turning in preparation for his upcoming lecture - his "wiseman riff" he called it - and we talked of John Lennon, and Patrick the Punk, and this new legion of dangerous disappointeds. Thompson mused that he didn't understand why it was people like Lennon they seemed to set their sights for, instead of people like him.
"I mean, I've pissed off quite a few citizens in my time," the good doctor let us know.
"But you've never disappointed them," I told him. "You never promised World Peace or Universal Love, did you?"
He admitted he had not. We all admitted it had been quite a while since any of us had heard anybody talk such Pollyanna pie-in-the-sky promises.
"Today's wiseman," Hunter claimed, "has too much brains to talk himself out on that kind of dead-end limb."
"Or not enough balls," Dobbs allowed.
We ordered another round and mulled awhile on such things, not talking, but I suspected we were all thinking - privately, as we sipped our drinks - that maybe it was time to talk a little of that old sky pie once more, for all the danger of dead ends or cross hairs.
Else how are we going to be able to look that little bespectacled Liverpudlian in the eye again, when the Revolutionary Roll is Up Yonder called?
THE DEMON BOX: AN ESSAY
"Your trouble is -" my tall daddy used to warn, whenever the current of my curiosity threatened to carry me too far out, over my head, into such mysterious seas as swirl around THE SECRETS OF SUNKEN MU or REAL SPELLS FROM VOODOO ISLES or similar shroudy realms that could be reached with maps ordered from the back of science fiction and fantasy pulps:
"- is you keep trying to unscrew the unscrutable."
Years later another warning beacon of similar stature expressed the opposite view. Here's Dr. Klaus Woofner:
"Your trouble, my dear Devlin, is you are loath to let go your Sunday school daydreams. Yah? This toy balloon, this bubble of spiritual gas where angels dance on a pin? Why will you not let it go? It's empty. Any angels to be found will not be found dancing on the head of the famous pin, no. It is only in the dreams of the pinhead that they dance, these angels."
The old doctor waited until his audience finished snickering.
"More and more slowly, too," he continued. "Even there. They become tired, these dancing fancies, and if not given nourishment they become famished. As must everything. For the famine must fall eventually on us all, yah? On the angel and the fool, the fantastic and the true. Do any of you understand what I'm talking about? Izzy Newton's Nameless Famine?"
Dr. Woofner was still asking this straight at me, black brows raised, giving me the full treatment (like a cop's flashlight, somebody once described the analyst's infamous gaze). I ventured that I thought I understood what he was talking about, although I didn't know what to call it. After a moment he nodded and proceeded to give it a name:
"It is called, this famine, entropy. Eh? No ringing bells? Ach, you Americans. Very well, some front-brain effort if you please. Entropy is a term from conceptual physics. It is the judgment passed on us by a cruel law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To put it technically, it is 'the nonavailability of energy in a closed thermodyamic system.' Eh? Can you encompass this, my little Yankee pinheads? The nonavailability of energy?"
Nobody ventured an answer this time. He smiled around the circle.
"To put it mechanically, it means that your automobile cannot produce its own petroleum. If not fueled from without it runs down and stops. Goes cold. Very like us, yah? Without an external energy supply our bodies, our brains, even our dreams... must eventually run down, stop, and go cold."
"Hard-nail stuff," big Behema observed. "Bleak."
The doctor squinted against the smoke of his habitual cigarette. A non-filter Camel hung from his shaggy Vandyke, always, even as he was on this night - up to his jowls in a tub of hot water with a nude court recorder on his lap. He lifted a puckered hand above the surface as though to wave the smoke away.
"Hard nails? Perhaps. But perhaps this is what is needed to prick the pinhead's dream, to awaken him, bring him to his senses - here!"
Instead of waving, the hand slapped the black water - crack. The circle of bobbing faces jumped like frogs.
"We are only here, in this moment, this leaky tub. The hot water stops coming in? Our tub cools down and drains to the bottom. Bleak stuff, yah... but is there any way to experience what is left in our barrel without we confront that impending bottom? I think not."
About a dozen of my friends and family were gathered in the barrel to receive this existential challenge. We'd been driving down the coast to take a break from the heat the San Mateo Sheriff's Department was putting on our La Honda commune, bound for Frank Dobbs's ex-father-in-law's avocado ranch in Santa Barbara. When we passed Monterey I had been reminded that coming up just down the road was the Big Sur Institute of Higher Light, and that Dr. Klaus Woofner was serving another hitch as resident guru. I was the only one on board who had attended one of his seminars, and as we drove I regaled my fellow travelers with recollections of the scene - especially of the mineral baths simmering with open minds and unclad flesh. By the time we reached the turnoff to the Institute, I had talked everybody into swinging in to test the waters.
Everybody except for the driver; so
mewhat sulky about the senseless stop anyway, Houlihan had elected to stay behind with the bus.
"Chief, I demur. I needs to rest my eyes more than cleanse my soul - the wicked curves ahead, y'unnerstand, not to mention the cliffs. You all go ahead: take some snapshots, make your, as it were, obeisance. I'll keep a watch on the valuables and in the event little Caleb wakes up. Whup? There he is now."
At the mention of his name the child's head had popped up to peer through his crib bars. Betsy started back.
"Nay, Lady Beth, you needn't miss this holy pilgrimage. Squire Houlihan'll keep the castle safe and serene. See? The young prince dozes back down already. Whatcha think, Chief? Thirty minutes for howdies and a quick dip, forty-five at the most? Then ride on through the fading fires of sunset."
He was wishful thinking on all counts. The little boy was not dozing down; he was standing straight up in his crib, big-eyed to see the crew trooping out the bus door to some mysterious Mecca, and it was fading sunset by the time we had finished our hellos at the lodge and headed for the tubs. It was long past midnight before we finally outlasted the regular bathers and could congregate in the main barrel where the king of modern psychiatry was holding court.
This was the way Woofner liked it best - everybody naked in his big bath. He was notorious for it. Students returned from his seminars as though from an old-fashioned lye-soap laundry, bleached clean inside and out. His method of group ablution came to be known as "Woofner's Brainwash." The doctor preferred to call it Gestalt Realization. By any name, it reigned as the hottest therapy in the Bay Area for more than ten years, provoking dissertations and articles and books by the score. There are no written records of those legendary late-night launderings, but a number of the daytime seminars were taped and transcribed. One of the most well known sessions was recorded during the weekend of my first visit. It's a good sample:
DR. WOOFNER: Good afternoon. Are you all comfortable? Very good. Enjoy this comfort for a while. It may not last.
(The group sprawls on the sun-dappled lawn. Above is the acetylene sky. Down the cliffs behind them is the foamy maw of the Pacific. In front, seated at a shaded table with an empty chair opposite him, is a man in his late sixties. He has a bald pate, peeling from sunburn, and an unkempt billygoat beard. A cigarette droops from his mouth and a pair of tinted glasses sits slantwise on his nose.
(He removes the glasses. His eyes move from face to face until the group starts to squirm: then he begins to speak. The voice is aristocratically accented, but an unmistakable edge of contempt rings under the words, like the clink of blades from beneath an elegant cloak.)
DR. W: So. Before I inquire if there is a volunteer who is willing to interface with me, I want to clarify my position. First, I want you to forget all you have heard about "Super Shrink" and "Charismatic Manipulator" and "Lovable Old Lecher," etc. I am a catalyst; that is all. I am not your doctor. I am not your savior. Or your judge or your rabbi or your probation officer. In short, I am not responsible for you. If I am responsible for anyone it is for myself - perhaps not even that. Since I was a child people told me, Klaus, you are a genius. It was only a few years ago that I could accept what they said. This lasted maybe a month. Then I realized that I did not much care for the responsibility required to be a genius. I would rather be the Lovable Old Lecher.
(The group giggles. He waits until they stop.)
So. I am not Papa Genius but I can play Papa Genius. Or Papa God, or Mama God, or even the Wailing Wall God. I can take on the role for therapy's sake.
My therapy is quite simple: I try to make you aware of yourself in the here-and-now, and I try to frustrate you in any attempt to wriggle away.
I use four implements to perform this therapy. The first is my learning and experience... my years. Second is this empty chair across the table, the Hot Seat. This is where you are invited to sit if you want to work with me. The third is my cigarette - probably irritating to some but I am a shaman and this is my smoke.
Finally, number four is someone who is willing to work with me, here and now, on a few dreams. Eh? Who wants to really work with the old Herr Doktor and not just try to make a fool of him?
BILL: Okay, I guess I'm game. (Gets up from the lawn and takes the chair; introduces himself in a droll voice.) My name is William S. Lawton, Captain William S. Lawton, to be precise, of the Bolinas Volunteer Fire Department. (Long pause, ten or fifteen seconds. ) Okay... just plain Bill.
W: How do you do, Bill. No, do not change your position. What do you notice about Bill's posture?
ALL: Nervous... pretty guarded.
W: Yes, Bill's wearing quite an elaborate ceremonial shield. Unfold the arms, Bill; open up. Yah, better. Now how do you feel?
B: Butterflies.
W: So we go from the stage armor to stagefright. We become the anxious little schoolboy in the wings, about to go on. The gap that exists between that "there" in the wings and here is frequently filled with pent-up energy experienced as anxiety. Okay, Bill, relax. You have a dream that we can work with? Good. Is it a recent dream, or is it recurring?
B: Recurring. About twice a month I dream of this ugly snake, crawling up me. Hey, I know it's pretty trite and Freudian but -
W: Never mind that. Imagine that I am Bill and you are the snake. How do you crawl up me?
B: Up your leg. But I don't like being that snake.
W: It's your dream, you spawned it.
B: All right. I am the snake. I'm crawling. A foot is in my way. I'll crawl over it—
W: A foot?
B: Something, it doesn't matter. Maybe a stone. Unimportant.
W: Unimportant?
B: Unfeeling, then. It doesn't matter if you crawl over unfeeling things.
W: Say this to the group.
B: I don't feel this way toward the group.
W: But you feel that way toward a foot.
B: I don't feel that way. The snake feels that way.
W: Eh? You're not the snake?
B: I am not a snake.
W: Say to us all what you're not. I'm not a snake, I'm not -?
B: I'm not...ugly. I'm not venomous, I'm not cold-blooded.
W: Now say this about Bill.
B: Bill's not venomous, not cold-blooded -
W: Change roles, talk back to the snake.
B: Then why do you crawl on me, you snake?
W: Change back, keep it going.
B: Because you don't matter. You're not important.
- I am important!
- Oh, yeah? Who says?
- Everybody says. I'm important to the community. (Laughs, resumes the affected voice.) Captain Bill the firefighter. Hot stuff.
W: (taking over snake's voice): Oh, yeah? Then why is your foot so cold? (laughter)
B: Because it's so far from my head, (more laughter) But I see what you're getting at, Doctor; my foot is important, of course. It's all me -
W: Have the snake say it.
B: Huh? A foot is important.
W: Now change roles and give Mr. Snake some recognition. Is he not important?
B: I suppose you are important, Mr. Snake, somewhere on Nature's Great Ladder. You control pests, mice and insects and... lesser creatures.
W: Have the snake return this compliment to Captain Bill.
B: You're important too, Captain Bill. I recognize that.
W: How do you recognize Captain Bill's importance?
B: I... well, because you told me to.
W: Is that all? Doesn't Captain Bill also control lesser creatures from up on the big ladder?
B: Somebody has to tell them what to do down there.
W: Down there?
B: At the pumps, crawling around in the confusion... the hoses and smoke and stuff.
W: I see. And how do these lesser creatures recognize you through all this smoke and confusion, Captain Bill, to do what you tell them?
B: By my - by the helmet. The whole outfit. They issue the captain a special uniform with hi-viz striping on the ja
cket and boots. Sharp! And on the helmet there's this insignia of a shield, you see -
W: There it is, people! Do you see? That same armor he marched onstage with - shield, helmet, boots - the complete fascist wardrobe! Mr. Snake, Captain Bill needs to shed his skin, don't you think? Tell him how one sheds a skin.
B: Well, I... you... grow. The skin gets tighter and tighter, until it gets so tight it splits along the back. Then you crawl out. It hurts. It hurts but it must be done if one is to - wait! I get it! If one is to grow! I see what you mean, Doctor. Grow out of my armor even if it hurts? Okay, I can stand a little pain if I have to.
W: Who can stand a little pain?
B: Bill can! I'm strong enough, I believe, to endure being humbled a little. I've always maintained that if one has a truly strong "Self" that one can -
W: Ah-ah-ah! Never gossip about someone who isn't present, especially when it is yourself. Also, when you write the word "self" you would do better to spell it with a lower-case s. The capital S went out with such myths as perpetual motion. And lastly, Bill, one thing more. What, if you would please tell us, is so important over there -
(lifting a finger to point out the vague place in the air where Bill has fixed his thoughtful gaze)
- that keeps you from looking here?
(bringing the finger back to touch himself beneath an eye, razor-blade blue, tugging the cheek until the orb seems to lean down from his face like some incorruptible old magistrate leaning from his sacrosanct bench)
B: Sorry.
W: Are you back? Good. Can you not feel the difference? The tingling? Yah? What you are feeling is the Thou of Martin Buber, the Tao of Chung Tzu. When you sneak away like that you are divided, like Kierkegaard's "Double Minded Man" or the Beatles' "Nowhere Man." You are noplace, nothing, of absolutely no importance, whatever uniform you wear, and don't attempt to give me a lot of community-spirited elephant shit otherwise. Now, out of the chair. Your time is up.
Woofner's tone was considered by many colleagues to be too sarcastic, too cutting. After class, in the tub with his advanced pupils, he went way past cutting. In these hunts for submerged blubber, he wielded scorn like a harpoon, sarcasm like a filleting knife.
"So?" The old man had slid deeper beneath the girl and the water, clear to his mocking lower lip. "Der Kinder seem to be fascinated by this law of bottled dynamics?" His sharp look cut from face to face, but I felt the point was aimed at me. "Then you will probably be equally fascinated by the little imp that inhabits that vessel - Maxwell's Demon. Excuse me, dear -?"