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Ragged Glory
Ragged Glory
Ragged Glory
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Ragged Glory

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The wild and turbulent 1960's -- when and where anything seems possible until shown to be otherwise. Jake Acree leaves the bohemian blues joints of Chicago  and travels cross-country on route 66 in his battered Chevy  towing two English motorcycles. He lands in Los Angles in the midst of the flamboyant psychedelic revolution and his life radically changes. He launches himself on a free-roaming adventure that takes him deep into the Lsd counter-culture, dealing pure acid and Mexican  weed aalong the enchanted coast on his fast British bikes. He undergoes a passionate love affair with a Native American girl named Dawn, but his quest for mystical states of consciousness takes him beyond. Jake ventures deep into the Sierra Madre mountains of Oaxaca in search of a fabled mushroom cult and dwells there with the Mazatec Indians.. Then, with his partner Bones Osgood, he embarks on a border smuggling operation that is taut with danger and unpredictable characters. His life becomes a race to stay ahead of the ruthless law and flowers into a revelation of self-awareness that puts him on a new and transforming path. 

LanguageEnglish
PublisherMark S Owen
Release dateDec 12, 2018
ISBN9781386478485
Ragged Glory
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Author

Mark S Owen

Mark Owen lives and writes in the central Andes of Colombia. He resides in the fabled village of Salamina, in the coffee-growing highlands known as the Cafetero, with his Colombian sweetheart and a green and yellow Spanish-speaking parrot. When he is not writing with lucid passion, Mark likes to toast and blend organic coffee beans to taste, drink the delicious agua de vida, and wander the remote mountain pueblos. He is currently at work on the intriguing, darkly humorous, and metaphysical sequel to Other Than Flashbacks, 

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    Ragged Glory - Mark S Owen

    PART I

    Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go.

    ~~T.S. Elliot

    And all, like the diamond, is charcoal before the light.

    ~~Jose Marti

    Chapter 1

    Bones Osgood nods as the air blows through the window vents, lifting the hair away from his lean cheekbones. He nods to himself, musing, steering with one hand and stroking his sparse beard with the other. The old Mercury flathead chugs along at fifty-five, about as fast as Bones ever wants to go. But today I’m not on my motorcycle, I’m riding shotgun, tuned to the wind fluttering in the hollow of my ear, those subtle nuances that the pure acid illuminates in my bloodstream. The wind carries audible messages and I listen as we cruise down the coast highway to the Mexican border. The beach towns pass by glistening in the sun-shot haze. San Juan Capistrano on the hillsides, avocado and orange groves, high horse tail clouds brushed on an infinite window pane. The blue ocean curves away like a sheet of stained glass. Bones and I are riding high and light in this holy summer of 1966, everything that happens, happens now.

    For the past day and a half I’ve eaten nothing but a few handfuls of dried black figs, sipping strong black coffee with spring water, preparing myself for this mission. Before we left L.A., I slipped a quarter tab of pure Sandoz under my tongue and now a translucent energy ripples all through me. Whatever I look at is lucid and luminous, whatever I hear has layers of meaning. We believe in our luck like the thighbone of Jesus, but you never really know what’s coming around the bend.

    Glancing at Bones behind my shades, I point at the sun arcing into the shimmering Pacific.

    He flashes me his affable smile. Yeah, I dig it. But we’ll make it by sundown, no sweat.

    Tall and angular, sun-browned and skinny as only a protein-starved vegetarian can be, Bones weathered face has a benign groove. He hasn’t eaten a bite of red meat in three years, not even a chicken drumstick. He believes that eating animal flesh makes people cruel and warlike, and gives them cancer. To me, with bloody Vietnam breathing down my neck, that hypothesis makes perfect sense. Something drives these political motherfuckers to perpetrate an insane and criminal war on a tiny Asian country ten thousand miles from home.

    Bones and I briefly touch hands in agreement. He’s older than me by several years, a sort of laid-back beatnik turned hippie. Every morning, with honey-sweetened coffee and a joint, he consults the I-Ching by tossing bronze coins on a red cloth. Sandalwood incense rises in the air along with the fumes of Michoacán seer weed. As we smoke the pungent dope, he trips out on various philosophical tangents. Dig, Jake, my brother. The only thing really going on is whatever happens to be happening. Doesn’t really matter how much people want something else. It always is what it is. Karma rules the day.

    Karma rules the day? I counter. Maybe so, maybe not, but there’s no existential guarantee for any of it. I still think we have a major say-so in our fate, otherwise we’re at the mercy of whatever’s going down.

    Bones nods his head, considering how to respond, then tosses the coins. He’s a fatalist at heart and it’s his deep fatalistic streak that bothers me. I’m hip to karma, we both are. But I believe our intuition and conscious will are the real aces in our deck. We are creating our world through our thoughts and actions, every day, all the time. You don’t need Tarot cards to figure things out, you don’t need a special ritual. But Bones and I are solid, we are partners. Over these past few months we’ve shared one wild and crazy ride together. We have a strong trust.

    Now, as we motor south toward the Tecate border crossing, the sun glints off the sea, making me squint. The freeway breeze rustles in through the window wings. The radio doesn’t work in this old coupe, not that it much matters. Bones and I share a knowing glance, I light up a Canary Island robusto. You’re never bored tripping and soon enough we’ll be flush with hippie glory.

    All that happens, happens now, always. Six weeks ago, under a pumpkin August moon, we limped back up the long Mexican road from sweltering San Blas to the Tecate crossing. Our ’52 Mercury coupe was about done in from the bad gas, gaping potholes, and the patched and plugged retreads. We carried a small load of high-octane marijuana that we didn’t dare smuggle across right away, knowing better than to push our luck. We’d been living way down in the mountains of southern Oaxaca in a village so remote that it didn’t show up on most maps. But in those cloud forests and nights drenched in monsoon rains the sacred mushrooms grew, the magical fungi the Mazatecas called the little birds. This was why we came and we might still be there had Bones not become infested with the blood-sucking fleas that almost drove him mad.

    Those vampire fleas drove us down out of the primitive sierra, then across the vast central plateau to the parrot jungles of the San Blas coast, obsessed with our risky scheme. Once we got back to the border our clothes hung on us like ragged flags, two gaunt long-hairs with luminous eyes, the old Merc sputtering like a tractor. On that journey we found miracles, we came to know what cannot be known, we lost, we scored, we endured. The nerve-wracking Federale checkpoints, machine gun toting, scowling guards, our illicit weed stuffed in the trunk, insufferable fucking heat, the bitter swarms of flies. Things seem to work out as long as you don’t wimp out.

    We made it back to the California border in one piece, hungry, thirsty and worn-out, and down to our last few bucks. On the sun-baked plaza of dusty Tecate we find a patio cafe with umbrellas and a juice stand. Sprawled in our chairs, we gulp tumblers of fresh-squeezed jugo de naranja and scarf chips with guacamole infused with chili, cilantro and lime. The dour waiter comes and goes, thinking to himself, two wild-eyed gringos, probably insane, we can read his thoughts. These border Mexicans are warier than their open-hearted brethren down in the interior, their eyes are hooded in distrust. Or is this just my paranoia at work? We have been out on the road a long time, trucking illegal contraband, we have been burned, we have been cosmically high for months. Who can trust anybody anymore?

    Bones, I can trust. Clearing my throat, I say, We need to plan this next move, amigo.

    His slate-blue eyes are as shiny as glass. Rubbing the avocado pulp out of his mustache, he says, Right on, I know it. We need to find a safe hiding place.

    Somewhere to stash the goods. Because first we need to get back to L.A. and regroup. Nothing too risky right now, we look too weird. We’ll come back later and bring it across.

    Right on, Bones agrees, stroking his Jesus beard. Let’s just hang out here for awhile, eat oranges, drink cold beer. Tonight, later, after it cools off, we’ll drive outta town and look for a cave to hide the bolsas in.

    A cave? A pirate’s cave on the Mexican border? Is he serious? I furrow my brows, trying to visualize this. A cave would almost surely be someone’s hidey-hole already. But Tecate is surrounded by rocky desert hills and arroyos, so I nod my okay. There’s no need to debate speculative details, old Mexico has already wrung us to the bone.

    All right, man, I smile, let’s drink some beer and let the world ease up.

    Don’t worry, Bones says in an encouraging tone We’ll find the perfect stash place, nothing’s gonna go wrong. Our karma is too good, Jake, our karma is good.

    Looking in his eyes, I wonder about the condition of Bones’ wits This is my friend, our bond has been forged out on that reckless adventurer’s road. Still, a lot has gone wrong and after the ravaging fleas and the horrible dysentery down in San Blas, I wonder if he still has it altogether. Sometimes Bones reminds me of a Taoist sage. But at other times, he has the look of a man half-expecting an unseen blow. It’s hard to really know anyone, we all have our hidden personas. But Bones and I are brothers in our denunciation of this racist, war-mongering society and in our zealous desire to wake up its stupefied denizens.

    After the sun goes down over the ragged hills, on a hilltop mesa strewn with large stones, we find our hiding spot. Notching the car in between two yellow-flowering Acacia trees, we roll a joint of the cosmic weed we scored off the back of a burro on a jungle beach. Hallucinogenic weed, it literally stops the world. Suffused and aglow, a giant moon rising over the hills, we spy out in the field a large jumble of pale rocks. The boulders seem almost white, maybe fifty yards from where we stand. If you sight between the Acacias back toward the lights of Tecate, that mound is dead-center. Using his long legs, Bones paces off forty-seven irregular steps. Stoned, in open-toed huaraches, it’s tricky going. Cat-footing over the dim terrain across jagged stones, cactus, maybe scorpions, who knows what else? But in that pale mound of rocks we find a crevice deep enough to stash our two jute bolsas stuffed with mas o menos five kilos of the most psychedelic grass on the planet—resinous, golden-green buds wrapped in tubes of Mexican newspaper. The loop-handled jute sacks are dyed red, yellow and green. We shove them into the gap, plug it with stones, then stand back to appraise our work under the lambent full moon.

    Hell Bones, no one can tell what’s here, that’s perfect until the right time comes.

    Lifting his palm, Bones intones, Aiyee, our lips are sealed. And until that time comes, we’re keeping a low-profile.

    A-fucking-men to that, I laugh, clasping his hand to seal the deal.

    We amble back to the beige coupe and swig from a tepid bottle of San Carlos beer. In the eerie lunar light, the landscape seems to float and dance. Over on the California borderline we can make out the ominous silhouette of the American watchtower, about a half mile away. The border narcs are probably up there right now, scoping the terrain, their presence looming over the border. But we’re a ways away in the night, confident that no one can decipher our movements. What would they even see at such a distance? Some drunken Mexicanos way over in a field, swigging tequila, hanging out, laughing and pissing, nada mas.

    Leaning against the fender, we finish off the pungent roach, burning our fingertips. The moon-glow shifts shapes out in that field of pale stones, but our landmark remains visible. We feel at ease, nothing much to worry about. We have drawn our secret treasure map.

    We’ll come back in a few weeks and smuggle it across, says Bones.

    Sounds good to me. And we make the run only when we feel it’s right.

    Sucking on the hot roach, Bones says, What if we forget where we hid it?

    No man, we won’t forget. Don’t even put out those vibes. No way, not after all this.

    Aiyee, Jake, we’re gonna be in the money soon. Those rich potheads up in Topanga will pay top dollar for this ganga, they’re gonna flip out.

    Bones rocks at the waist, propped against the chrome grill, an apparition in the nebulous light. If some mescal-swilling local comes wandering along, everybody might freak out. Truth is, we’ve been out on our gypsy road way too long and it’s time to go home. We back the car down off the bluff with the lights off, easy and slow. It’s a magical night on the border, teeming with spirits, alive with omens.

    About a half-hour before midnight, we cross into California without any hassles. The little-used crossing at Tecate is a one-horse operation, an ideal smugglers route. It closes at midnight and opens again at seven in the morning. At midnight, yawning time, the station is manned by a solitary bored guard, ready to split on home. He questions us, disgusted by our glass beads and long unkempt hair, gives the car a cursory once-over, flashlights the trunk, then waves us on through into the USA. It’s so easy I almost feel a twinge of regret, as though, maybe, we should have done the deed right there? But no point in second guessing ourselves. Relaxed and elated, we cruise the canyons back into San Diego in a reverie of night wind and August moon light.

    Chapter 2

    Once back home in Silverlake we gorge ourselves like famished refugees. We feast on the organic Indio dates, almond butter smeared on dark rye toast, black Mission figs, juicy green grapes and dry-roasted sunflower seeds, washing it down with unfiltered apple juice. Everything is so clean here in California—no flies crawling on everything, no DDT being fogged into the air, no putrid heaps of vomit and shit in the roadside latrines. The intoxicating sense of danger is gone, replaced now by a sense of balmy ease. I walk over the hill in the old Gypsy Boots neighborhood to the weathered garage that I rented months before and dial off the combo lock. This paint-peeling hideaway shelters all my valuable goods in the shade of some Jacaranda trees. Twenty-two lids of pretty good grass, a few hundred bucks in cash, around a thousand hits of purple Owsley and Sandoz acid sealed in amber jars. Acid of this quality, for me, is like money in the bank. I check the boxes in the shadowy garage, making sure it’s all still here. Several pine orange crates of books and clothes and tools; a thick stack of typed and scribbled poems and short stories in manila folders along with a green Remington typewriter; leather gloves, a couple folding knives, a scuffed pair of Wellington boots. And my most prized possessions, two strong English motorcycles. I go over and pull off the dusty sheets, check the drip pans to see how much oil leaked, test and hook up the batteries. These Brit bikes are my babies. A burgundy and chrome teardrop BSA Lightning twin 650 and a black Matchless Typhoon 600 single with its flying M on the tank. The Matchless has a deflated rear knobby that I decide to deal with later. After connecting the ignition and adding a little oil, I roll my race-tuned BSA Lightning into the sunlight, swing onto the seat, open the choke, prime the carbs, and kick it over. The Beaser coughs to life on the third kick, spits, fires with a throaty snarl. Down in the Mexican wilderness what I missed the most was riding, I dreamed of riding, like a bereft lover.

    Coasting the bike down one of the hilly side streets to a Gulf station, I add air to the tires and top it off for half a buck. Then I hit it, flying along, riding way out Sunset Boulevard clear to the ocean, past the SRF Lake Shrine, falling in love again with this quicksilver British bike. Stopping at Sunset Beach, I kick off my huaraches and wade into the foaming surf, glad and grateful to be back home. As much as I love deep Mexico, it’s can be primitive beyond belief. In the teeming cities they rip you off and laugh, then charm you all over again in the coastal fishing villages. But traveling across that labyrinth of cultures has undeniably changed my life. Now I need to make it all count.

    Standing to my shins in the swooshing surf, I know I have to make our border gamble happen. The draft board with their Vietnam noose has been hounding me for over two years, although at the moment they have no notion of where I am. The despicable bastards want me in uniform, want to cut my hair, want to brainwash me into killing other people in their loathsome, fucking, imperialistic war. The government has gone insane with its assumed license to ruin lives and wage death, and if I could, I’d burn the entire stinking system down to the ground. But what I need to do most is score a wad of cash and clear out of this fucked-up racist country for as long as it takes. Bones and I are brothers, but he doesn’t have to sweat the draft, I do. But the first thing I want to do is find the dark-eyed girl I left behind here in L.A., Dawn Freitas. I let myself think of her for the first time in a while, now that the dangerous time is past, standing here in this wild and hissing Pacific surf.

    Tracking Dawn down isn’t all that hard. I look her up through our old mutual friends. She’s in east Hollywood, living in a third floor studio above a beer and wine joint called ‘The Dazed Door’. The bar is a seedy hangout for pill-popping bikers who guzzle tap and rub elbows with the losers that blink their way out of the all-nude, all-night strip club down the street. These sleazy dives, the way they smell, the twisted vibes, definitely not my scene. But Dawn’s the daytime barmaid and these dudes lavish her with tips and imagine themselves being her stud. She’s a half-breed wet dream and brings out the fool in lonely men.

    The creaking old elevator takes me upstairs. I pad down the faded hall to her door and knock my knock. She opens up without a word, regarding me with her moody brown eyes, an incredulous tilt to her face. She’s wearing black jeans and a yellow tee shirt with red letters that says, No You Can’t. Her long hair falls like jet-black silk. For a girl in her fourth month she doesn’t look very pregnant; she’s still quite alluring, Dawn gives me a knowing smirk, her eyes smile, she takes my hand, kisses my fingers, then pulls me inside and closes the door.

    I knew you were coming, she says, leading me toward her bed, her lovely lithe hips, fine round ass. This is the girl I fell quite madly in love with and who responded with a wildness of passion unknown to me.

    She sits down on the rumpled bed and gives me her Lolita look, with a playful toss of her hair. You hear what I said, Jake? I knew you were back, so I took a couple days off.

    Sliding my hands in my pockets, standing, I don’t doubt what she’s saying. Dawn is not your usual girl next door. She communicates daily with her dead Iroquois grandmother and psyches out bullshit in an eye blink. She knows that I know this, but she likes to remind me. Looking at me, she opens up like a dusky rose, beautiful and breathless, hoping. But the disappointment is keen in her and this makes me wary. Guilt is a heavy drug, guilt is a trap.

    I’m glad you’re still here, Dawn, where I can find you, I’m glad you didn’t leave.

    You can always find me, you know how. She pats the bed beside her. Come sit. Did you miss me down there at all?

    All the time. You know I did. You got those letters I wrote you, right?

    A letter. I only got one letter from you in three long months.

    Settling beside her on the bed, I take her fingers in mine. I wrote you three times.

    I wish I had gotten them. I’ve been all alone mostly and surrounded by dumb assholes.

    We laugh together. Afternoon sun filters through the slatted blinds, illuminating specks of dust. Her presence in this room is evident. A red hibiscus floats in a chipped cup on the mirrored bureau; a poster of Maxfield Parrish unframed on the wall; a National Tattler open on the coffee table, proclaiming an infant has been born with a pig’s tail; a pile of her favorite movie magazines. Not the least bit self-conscious, Dawn reads this crap and laughs out loud. She snuggles against me, warm and supple, my arm goes around her. Traffic noise rises from the street, you can make out the bar jukebox three floors down, pumping out sounds. This doesn’t seem to bug her at all, it’s just wallpaper. A black and white TV with rabbit ears sits on the table, but turned off. I detest the boob-tube in general, she likes to watch the soaps. The only plush chair in the room is strewn with her clothes, her blue plastic makeup case near at hand. A pad of paper lies on the coffee table with a scribbled message, You need to do something about me.

    Kissing her hand, I say, Listen, I have some amazing things to tell you. So many times I wished you were there with me. It’s another world, Dawn, it’s like another century.

    She pushes the crown of her head into my neck. You’re telling me? Jesus Jake, you look like you just dropped in from another planet. I hope you realize that.

    Actually, hah, I do, I reply, smiling into her fragrant hair. And maybe I have.

    Did you keep your promise to me?

    I can’t even promise I remember my promises. What are we talking about?

    Not funny, I wanna know. Just tell me if you kept your promise.

    I don’t want to go into these reckless and sordid details, so I say, I’m back whole and healthy, does that count?

    That’s not what I mean.

    Well, things got a little weird but we made it through alive. We’re good.

    Oh beautiful, meaning you got involved in some kind of dope deal?

    I don’t answer. She looks at me with her brown, candid eyes. I got that rambling letter of yours, she says. It took three weeks to reach me, you could’ve been dead for all I knew. You should read it. It sounds like you were tripping out on God again, Mexican-style.

    Dawn, dig, I know what I wrote. And I was tripping out on God. It all came from the heart.

    She moves closer, skin to skin, her lips near mine, wanting more. I breathe in her fresh scent. My lips graze her forehead, I love her dusky skin, her shoulders relax. We have never gotten over the intensity of our psychedelic love-making and maybe some things you don’t ever get over. But a lot has gone down and we can’t pretend otherwise. Sometimes I wish we could just take a match to memories.

    She takes my hand and kisses my palm, presses it to her breast, moves it to her stomach. She slips her tongue into my mouth, sweet insatiable girl, wanting her way, knowing she can get me super-hard in a moment. She really doesn’t give a fuck about my transcendental trip or my metaphysical aspirations. To her, that’s all just part of the lsd carnival. She’s the love-child of a Iroquois woman and a Portuguese sailor who shipped the Great Lakes on iron ore freighters, but skipped out and didn’t return. None of this seems to bother Dawn. She’s playful and girlish, a ravishing sensual creature. And there’s nothing like ultra-pure acid and fast English motorcycles to ignite a love affair, ignoring everyone else, we fell wildly in love almost overnight.

    She moves her hand to my lap, caressing my burgeoning cock, but I stop her. She looks at me from beneath her dark lashes. Compressing her lips, she starts to say something, then doesn’t, then it blurts out.

    You gave me your word you wouldn’t do anything risky down there. No smuggling, you promised me, Jake. You remember that?

    Yea, I remember, I say with a poker face. And I haven’t smuggled anything yet.

    Yet?

    Even apostles need some cool green cash.

    What do you mean? she persists, suppressing a laugh. What kind of trick are you up to now?

    Trick? Come on, Dawn, lighten up. I didn’t come to see you for this. It’s been three months. I don’t want any more arguments.

    She puts her face against my chest, murmuring, Sorry. It’s just that I’ve been living too much in my head with you. I keep going over and over all that stuff.

    Before I took off for Oaxaca she and I pretty much fell apart. We bickered for weeks. She was against the mushroom pilgrimage, although she knew what it meant to me. We’ve got a baby coming, I’m pregnant, she’d yell, like I’m supposed to change on a dime. I’d made it clear from the get-go that babies weren’t in the picture for me, that I had zero interest in a domestic scene. Then out of nowhere, she’s pregnant. And really, what did I know, after all that had gone down, my baby, whose baby?

    Oh don’t be ridiculous, it’s gotta be ours, she swore. I haven’t been with anyone but you!

    Me, a father? I retorted. That’s the last thing in the world I want to be, you know that. You told me you couldn’t get pregnant again, no worries, your doctor said you’d always miscarry. So how come you’re suddenly knocked up? And baby, you’ve been running around late without me for weeks.

    Stung, she swore that this could only be mine. How could I even doubt her? Except I did have cause to doubt her and I’d just as soon forget the reasons. She resented my fascination with mysticism—how could someone be into outlaw bikes and dope be into yoga? She doesn’t feel the need to transcend this deranged society or to even try and change it. To her it was too awful to change, so fuck it, and that sort of flippant cynicism pisses me off. But she says what do I really know about hardships? I’d never lived in a tarpaper shack on a cold water reservation.

    So yeah, things got pretty weird between us. When I stopped eating her delicious chorizo omelets and went on the brown rice macrobiotic diet it really flipped her out. She took it personally, she thought I’d gone off the deep end with lsd. We stopped playing together, the way we loved to do, things got dicey. She stayed out late and then later after her bar shift, running with a pack of Dexedrine chopper hooliigans. That wasn’t my scene and she knew it. We had a series of howling confrontations, she accused me of being judgmental and snide. She wanted us to go back to Illinois together to have the baby. I said no, no way in hell. She became furious and moved out.

    Remembering all this, I let out a ragged sigh. You got to be true to you.

    Shifting beside me on the bed, she says, What’s the matter?

    Nothing. I’m just kinda worn out, it was a rugged trip back home.

    Her hand caresses my thigh. You’re eyes are very green right now, Jake Acree.

    Dawn, my darling Dawn. I’m still doing what I’m doing.

    Oh, I get it. Still trying to live without sex and become like God? Still trying to make love to the universe? She pulls away. All that cosmic-consciousness crap, how can you buy into that? You, why you?

    Aiyee, the other shoe drops like lead. Yeah, me, I reply with a twist of my lips. Imagine that, Dawn. I just want to turn on all the lights up inside my head and keep them lit. And you know what’s funny? It’s what I’m really into doing, yet mostly what I get is flak from the people who know me. Why is that?

    Because it’s asinine?

    But you don’t know that, it’s just your opinion. You don’t know because all you do is put it down.

    Uh, maybe because I’m not interested in wasting my time?

    I almost point to the ridiculous National Tattler baby-with-a-pigtail story. But instead, I say, Forget it. It’s just a broken record, Dawn, and I’ve heard all this too many times. I’m doing what I’m doing, you do what you do, and I’m okay with that. Just be good with that where I’m concerned.

    Oh sure, she mocks, mustn’t waste that precious sperm of yours, right? But I bet you wouldn’t mind me sucking you off right now, like I do?

    Oh fuck off, will you? Look, I’m gonna split. I stand up abruptly, but she pulls me back down on the bed.

    Propping herself up on the pillows, she slides her foot along my thigh. She gives me a sultry look, closes her eyes, cradling her breasts. She’s twenty-two, passes for school girl, moody as a Siamese cat. I still adore her but I’m not giving in, but curious, I wait her out.

    Blinking her eyelids open, Dawn says softly, My mom wants me to come back to Joliet to have this baby. So does my grandma, my grandma says this is a very special child.

    What am I supposed to say? Her grandmother is dead as a doornail, I’m not in on the seances. She studies my face, my mind is a lucid blank. Stroking my neck, I reply, I don’t know, I wish I had the answer. But you don’t seem to like my answers much anymore.

    Because you are so fucking selfish, she retorts. When we could get high and make love in the orange groves everything was hunky-dory, right? But now I’m pregnant and you can’t be bothered.

    What? What the fuck, Dawn, I’m here. Stop wigging out on me, please. You knew from day one where I was coming from You said you didn’t need the pill, didn’t need an Iud, didn’t want another kid. Now you want me to be someone I am not intended to be. That’s crazy.

    Silent for a moment, she says, You’re still a ruthless prick, as always. And my doctor did tell me that, he said it was because of the shape of my uterus.

    Whatever, the quack was wrong. And you say no to an abortion, so I’ll do the best I can with the situation. I’ll do the best I can. But I’m not changing my aims just to satisfy you and your grandma and your momma. I’m not moving into Squaresville with you. This is my life, okay? But when this Mexican deal pans out I’ll be flush with cash, so at least that won’t be a problem.

    Dawn sniffs. What Mexican deal?

    We’ll be able to take a trip out of this smoggy rat-hole if we want. Go live on a beach down on the Mexican coast, I’m telling you, it’s paradise. Everything simple and beautiful, ripe fruit on the trees, parrots flying around, beer cold and super-cheap, that turquoise ocean.

    She plays with her hair, avoiding my eyes. I don’t want to go live in Mexico, not with this baby coming. It’s too backward. You wrote me about all the flies crawling on the meat, are you kidding? Besides, your pal Bones would always be hanging around. That asshole thinks he’s the second coming of Jesus.

    I don’t eat meat anymore and no goddamnit, he doesn’t. He’s a truth seeker just like me and we’re partners, Dawn.

    She frowns at my tone of voice, the wheels turning, then she brightens. Hey, I hope you noticed something about me today. Something different?

    All at once I flash on it – she isn’t smoking. No cloying fumes in the air, no foul ashtrays, no mashed Winston butts. Wow, I say, smiling, you quit! You actually kicked it? Baby, I am so proud of you!

    It was no big deal, really. And I’m hardly drinking at all. Sometimes I get a craving at the bar, but I just don’t. I think about our baby instead. I think about her.

    Her? How do you know it’s a her?

    It’s a girl. I just know, Jake, and my grandmother says so too. She says we have to start living in a better way.

    I’m hip, I mutter half to myself, wondering what happened to the girl I fell for? Was she ever really there or did I just imagine her? It seems pointless to try and outwit a disembodied granny soothsayer.

    For a minute we sit without words. She looks at me hopefully, her toes dig a into my thigh. I should probably hit the road, I suggest, got some things I need to do.

    No, don’t go yet, she says, coaxing me down beside her. I don’t mean to be such a crabby bitch. I get sick in the mornings sometimes, I keep going up and down. Just hold me.

    So I do, I fold her supple body into my arms. Her forehead feels like warm silk. She murmurs, You’re not ever gonna really change, huh?

    I don’t know whether that’s true or not. I seem to be changing all the time, a mile a minute sometimes. But you’re asking me to stop and be something I’m not, the thing I’m not cut out to be.

    She relaxes into my chest. I kiss her eyelids, the crown of her head. I smooth her black hair down between her shoulder blades. She drifts off, feeling safe, even as my arm falls asleep. Down on the street an ambulance goes wailing by, the unholy siren of Los Angeles.

    She stirs against me. How come nothing ever turns out the way we want, she says in a child’s mumble. Tell me that.

    My response catches in my throat. Because I don’t and won’t believe that is true. Because that means we’re all just hopeless suckers, trapped in a maze of fake dreams. If that’s the real low-down, then junkies are way ahead.

    You know how I feel, I murmur. This life has whatever meaning we give it. We have to make it real or it doesn’t really happen. We make it whatever it is.

    She cuddles against my chest, her languid warmth stealing into me. Half-asleep, she says, Even if I’d never seen you I woulda come looking.

    How so?

    Your voice. A voice has a face all it’s own. I woulda found you.

    She drowses off in child-like slumber, her breath softening, I listen, I hold her, this precious girl, then I get up and gently stretch. She mumbles but doesn’t wake. Gazing at her, my heart feels like it’s secreting a substance I cannot name, because there is no name. There was a time not long ago when all we needed was each other.

    I let myself out and walk along the musty hall to the ramshackle elevator, ride it down, walk into the smog-enriched daylight. The Stones are blaring out of The Dazed Door’s jukebox – Hey dude, get outta my dream! Don’t be hanging around on my dream! Two chopper hooligans in red bandannas slouch beside their panhandles, fixing me with hard-assed stares. But it’s not like I give a flying fuck and they know it. They’d give their left nut to be with the chick upstairs but I’m still the one she wants.

    I stroll over to my BSA Lightning, tie my hair back, and prime the racing carbs. My right wrist is wrapped with a sweat-stained leather band embedded with three turquoise stones. I wear flat-heeled cordovan Wellingtons. On the side plate of my bike is the white imprint of my palm and five fingers, with the words, Mojo Hand. I know and they know that anytime, anyplace, anywhere, this sleek limey motorcycle will blow their Harleys clean off the road. Make Love, Not War, is a slogan I take seriously. But don’t let any asshole bring you down and no apologies are owed. I give them a nonchalant look, kick my motorcycle to life, throttle the raucous pipes, and ride off in the hazy L.A. sunshine.

    Chapter 3

    Later, back at the Silverlake abode, I lounge in a sidewalk chair and light up a Canary Island robusto. The rust-stained sunset bleeds across the Los Angeles skyline. When your intentions get bent so far out of shape, what can you do? I’m not sure. But I do know you can’t indenture your life to a misstep, You have to live your purpose and stay true to your purpose. Maybe what Dawn says it true and maybe it’s not, maybe I’m the father but maybe I’m not. Maybe one of those barflies did knock her up, as much as it pains me to say so. And until I know for myself I’m not going to brood about it. Guilt is the trap.

    From inside the 1920’s brick storefront, I hear Bones arguing with his chick Veegee. I’m not trying to eavesdrop. We’re all living together in this corner store that Bones is fixing up in a deal with the landlord, where we only pay in sixty bucks a month in rent. It’s a single-story building with plumbing and Bones is adroit with tools. He’s installed a kitchen sink, a gas stove, hung wooden cabinets on the walls, now he’s remodeling the bathroom closet into a redwood chamber complete with an ornate tub. We’ve draped Indian tapestries over the bare brick walls and thrown an Oriental rug on the concrete floor. We’ve slung a red hammock between two floor to ceiling posts and against the back wall Veegee has her antique brass bed. A rocker, a few stick chairs, a round barrel table, a frayed easy chair and ottoman fill out the room. No television, we don’t want television programming, TV is for the automatons. We eat at the round table, play cards there, sift seeds and stems from lids, and throw the I-Ching for favorable portents. After all, hippie smugglers need all the help they can get.

    My main contribution to this communal scene is a 33 rpm Hi-Fi player and stacks of 33 rpm records—Dylan, Miles, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan, Coltrane, Howling Wolf, Love, Dave Von Ronk, Muddy Waters, Butterfield and Bloomfield, Donald Bird, John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, Nina Simone, Brubeck, the Stones and Jeff Airplane, Joan Baez, Jimmy Reed. But Bob Dylan is my main man, Dylan’s lyrics struck a match that set fire to my whole world. And we have many, many books. Books stacked everywhere, shelves and boxes of poetry, philosophy, beatnik fiction, Zen, astrology, yoga, and metaphysic new age. Bones and I are voracious readers, these books are like food. My sleeping and meditation space is against the front wall, under the long window, on a bare mattress and unzipped sleeping bag. This is our groove on a shoe-string budget, and for the time-being it’s perfect.

    Bones’ mulatto girlfriend, Veegee, hung in here while we were away in Oaxaca, keeping the scene together. But at the moment she’s bitching again, half sport, half complaint, why I don’t quite know.

    Look at that old bathtub, she sasses, gesturing at the clawfoot tub encased in cedar planks shaped like a rowboat with an unfinished bow.

    At least we have one, Bones cajoles. His hand work is precise and elegant, and he takes rightful pride in it.

    A tub that gives me splinters if I slip, Veegee parries, honing her edge. She tokes on the brass hash pipe, her eyes aglitter, nursing some grudge against Bones I can’t put my finger on. Her moods seem to cartwheel all over the place. Still, Veegee gets up in the morning, puts on a straight dress and low heels, then hops a nearby bus to temp office jobs. Every week she brings home a paycheck, the only reliable money that we have, and Bones treats her with wary respect. He and I both know that dope money is unreliable because dopers themselves are notoriously unreliable. The only solution is to score big once and for all, to roll free in the high cotton.

    Getting up from my chair, flipping my smoldering cigar into the gutter, I go to the front door and lean against the frame. In the red hammock Veegee is sagging into a Lebanese Blond dream. A poster of Viva Zapata presides over the room. A Few Of My Favorite Things moans on the turntable, Coltrane’s magical vibes. Bones is hunched over the barrel table, rocking himself, reading one of Dane Rhudyar’s far-out astrology books. All is so mellow mellow, except I am feeling more exasperated by the day. Our primo-deluxe weed still lies buried under those rocks down on the Tecate border, doing us no good. Bugs could be devouring that precious cargo, stoned ants, wigged-out scorpions. I’ve never liked dawdling around. I want to get this show back on the road.

    Bones bends in thought over his charts, making notations, seeking the revelatory aspects—Sun trine Jupiter, Mercury square Moon, Venus opposition whatever, Sun conjunct the nodes of life foretold. I suspect some crucial part has been left out of all this astrological divination, but I keep such thoughts to myself. We’re always trying to make speculative stuff fit together, even when it doesn’t hold water. Awareness is the only thing I’m banking on—lucid, intuitive awareness.

    Twilight begins to paint the Silverlake hills. I twirl the purple and yellow god’s-eye dangling from a rafter. In the flecked wall mirror, I study my own reflection: the handsome visage, high cheekbones, skeptical lips, Roman nose, the compelling green eyes. My pupils are dilated from psychedelics. I sport a dark bandido mustache and my long brown hair is swept back. We have the look of ardent apostles, Bones and me, we can’t disguise it. To be who we really are, we have to live by our wits.

    Bones is older than me, maybe thirty-two, thirty-three, the perfect age to be crucified, hah ha ha. But I don’t buy into that nonsense that you can’t trust anyone over thirty. Bones is a quirky hippie dervish who glides around in his congenial manner. He meets the world with open arms, whereas I am not nearly so trusting. I am a hunter, always with an eye out for what’s being concealed. What’s being concealed points to the unspoken truth.

    Cocooned in her hammock, Veegee begins to snore, snores and mumbles. I share an amused look with Bones, toke on the joint in my hand and pass it to him, then nod at his ruler-drawn horoscope. What’s the word, brother-man?

    The signs are turning green for us, no malefactors, he says, smoke trailing out his nostrils, the vibes are good.

    By malefactors, he means no bad trips. Cool, I smile. So let’s pick a day, and put the wheels in motion.

    Bones rocks back, his brain lit up. Never hurts to get some perspective..

    I agree, I definitely agree. But let’s remember what old Will Shakespeare said.

    Bones laughs. What was that? What did he say?

    The stars don’t decide who wins and loses in this world. We do.

    We touch fingers, Bones goes back to work with his colored pencils and ephemeris. The horoscope is his mandala, he tolerates my blasphemies in an amused way. But you don’t win a race by drawing pictures of it. I step outside into the hibiscus dusk, breathing in the cooling air. I have my own strange trips going. My fascination with the yogic siddhi powers, which involves conscious celibacy, makes Bones’ eyes glaze over. He cannot fathom not fucking for any reason under the sun, not even to become Godlike.

    Jake, bro, listen to me, he insists, that celibacy crap is a total myth. Nothing ever comes of it, except you don’t get laid anymore. You, a celibate? You’ll just be frustrated and all stressed out. You’ll become a eunuch man, dig, a eunuch. It’s all a form of bullshit religious control.

    You think cosmic-consciousness is a myth? Seriously? You think all those enlightened swamis just made all that shit up? Come on, man, get real.

    Bones eyes are opulent slits from the hash-hish fumes. Believe me, he says, celibacy is just another con invented by the control freaks. You don’t have to put your cock in a sock to get cosmic, that’s why we have psychedelics. Drop a thousand mikes of that Sandoz acid of yours, it’ll do the trick.

    Laughing, I say, Yeah, I’m aware of that. But Bones, I’m not talking about an extraordinary, hallucinogenic trip, that’s still just transitory. I mean a transcendent and transforming state of being – a permanent super-consciousness!

    Permanent, whew, far out, I hear you. Okay, I’ll admit that it might be possible. But I’m not giving up fresh pussy to prove it.

    Well, I intend to find out for myself. Because for me, that would be worth it. It doesn’t mean you have to give up chicks forever. It’s more like a special esoteric experiment.

    Peeling an orange, my lanky friend shrugs. He’s a Leo with an Aquarius rising, self-certain and proud. I’m a Virgo with Scorpio rising, strong-willed and visionary. And as usual, we leave it right there. Neither one of us likes to get hung up on our differences, we’d rather shake on our agreements. Truth is, Bones has turned me onto some heavy-duty insights. He’s the one who persuaded me to get off the austere brown rice macrobiotic diet, my early food obsession that freaked Dawn out.

    Sure, he expounded in my kitchen that day, "macrobiotics are better than eating greasy burgers and chorizo omelets, but if you just eat rice

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