Decline and Fall of Alternative Civilization Read online

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  That night the veteran lawman woke from an uneasy sleep. He had dreamed a scene from the 1970s TV movie The Car in which he and the vehicle seen a few hours earlier were facing off against each other. Dragging himself downstairs and sitting at the kitchen table, he scratched his face to think that his brain was working so mercilessly overtime on the idea of it all until he had a flash of thought. From the bookcase in his den he dug up a volume he hadn't looked at in years-a book about old Fords with photos of the various years. He and his father had been Ford men. Casually leafing through the pages, he froze.

  There it was: a 1956 Victoria coupe.

  How could he have missed that?

  The front end of that year's Ford had very distinctive lines, and the car had excellent handling characteristics when hopped-up. He learned this from his uncle many years ago. But there was something about it that made him feel stupid. Messed and consternated his head on losing his ability to see things. He recalled the other day, while driving back from Fort Stockton, seeing a dark vehicle in the rearview mirror maybe half a mile behind him. Nothing unusual or menacing. Just a car traveling the same highway with a non-reflective paint job, why should he think anything was out of the ordinary? Why indeed, until now?

  Setting down the book, he ran upstairs, dressed, left a note for his sleeping wife on the bedside table and left the house. It was 1:30 a.m. Still in decent physical shape, he rode his bicycle, sidearm concealed beneath a thin windbreaker, toward the Dairy Queen. The moon was almost full, the air felt good, he stashed the bike behind the dumpster in the DQ parking lot and, looking up and down the road in all directions, he decided he was alone. There was neither sound nor sight of his headless horseman and no idea what to do in the event of their meeting. He figured he was lucky. Police work cannot be done on whimsy.

  In the early Summer moonlight, there were the crickets. Like street corner crooners they chirped and droned until aware of intrusion. They halted and self-consciously resumed their song once his footsteps passed them by. It was their world, he conceded. They had no reason to hide their activity; they just did as if unscrupulous listeners might steal their sound and their copyright on it. Their world. He played with the crazy ideas in his head and grappled with what the hell he, an unromantic human being, was doing out here at this time of morning. Then damned if the sheriff didn't see the strangest thing. He thought he had blown a brain gasket and was still dreaming. All around him, the entire quality of the light had changed. In the sky, a fuzzy halo appeared around the moon and a faint confluence of orbs filled the air and fluttered by, all drifting toward the middle of the field past the hardware store.

  A dream, he hoped.

  Running over to the fence and through an unlocked gate, he slinked toward the center of the clearing where a rocky mound glowed orangely. A few lights danced about, then vanished. A scattering of unidentified distributor caps lay illuminated by the radiance and he thought he saw a woman's body floating. A slithering emerged from the dimness and the snake raised its hooded head, coiling itself atop the rock pile. The faraway rumbling of a powerful V-8 echoed in his ears and the lawman heard a voice in his head cry, "Ground zero."

  He spun around and hightailed the hell outta there, fumbled the bicycle from behind the dumpster and hauled ass home. His wife was sleeping soundly. Ashen-faced and shaking, he undressed and slipped into bed beside her. There was no way to explain what he had witnessed. And no way could he explain it in the morning. Through the window facing onto the night, everything, the moon, the sky, the earth, the stars, the trees, looked as it should.

  Everything was AS - IT - SHOULD - BE.

  If slumber eluded him he would report in sick. That way he could stay in bed with his wife. Maybe convince her to be late to work as well. He rolled against her warm body, wrapped an arm around her and breathed secret words into her ear. In the moonlight she stirred, moaned, and without waking, entwined her fingers in his.

  XIII

  "Art is art, isn't it?

  ?on the other hand, water is water.

  And east is east and west is west

  and if you take cranberries and stew them

  like applesauce they taste much more

  like prunes than rhubarb does.

  Now you tell me what you know."

  -Groucho Marx

  There was an abundance-perhaps an overabundance-of white vans in the world. Like panties, bras and socks, they were everywhere. Out of the laundry rooms and into the streets. Out through the cracks of plumbers' closets, the toolboxes of the non-elite rolling away to the next shambles in distress, to stand and deliver, carrying the arrows and quivers of Robin's Handy Hoods. Like panties, bras and socks, white vans get dirty and at some point get washed, but over time they too show life's permanent stains that dominate the neutrality of utilitarian goodness. Good to the last drip and to the last hole worn through fabric and paint.

  White vans were sensible regardless of make, year, or body style. They were always in style. Business slogans and telephone numbers always stood out and blemishes could be retouched with most any brand of white paint, nail polish, or liquid paper. In the entropal movements of time, dirt is the great equalizer and neither absences, oversaturations, nor any definable shadings in between are exempt from its effects, although panties, bras and socks can be far more notorious in their entropal states than vans.

  The Faux Toppa van had once been white; the movements of time showed a rainbow of pastel greys and browns sensuously highlighted by earthy rusts and gentle flecks of fowl droppings. It had no engine or transmission or driveshaft or rear axle or brakes. Mere details. A more important detail was that the guys found it for free behind a warehouse in a rundown shipyard, a legally titled "git'cher-own-trailer-and-tow'er" haul off. A late-'70s GMC Vandura, it was basically a Chevy, and in the hands of a mechanic like Prez, all it took was spare parts which, given his profession and parts connections, were easy to come by at the right prices.

  ?No problema!

  Anything was possible given Dedra's credit solvency. And given that they had no garage, Prez made do with rebuilding a tough old Pontiac 350 V-8 in the girls' kitchen. It only took a week until he and some friends strapped it to a stout skateboard and dragged it out to the waiting hoist, which dropped it into the GMC's chassis and mated it to an equally tough Turbo-Hydramatic transmission from a dead Oldsmobile, all of which were acquired for nearly nothing. The driveshaft, rear axle and most of the suspension components were pilfered from wrecked Chevy trucks and vans. Numerous twisted junkyard carcasses of Monte Carlos and Impalas contributed brakes, electrical parts, etc.

  A la the old Johnny Cash song "One Piece at a Time," one evening he lowered the mongrel vehicle and called forth Dedra and June to witness and pray. The engine had already been started successfully but it hadn't yet moved. He fired it up, made the sign of the cross, and gently nudged the gearshift lever out of Park. The van lurched, the parking brake held. Releasing it, the van inched forward slightly and he applied pressure to the brake pedal. They held. De and Junie were jumping up and down. He instructed them to pull the cinder blocks from behind the rear wheels and he shifted into Reverse. After five feet of travel he tested the brakes again. Good! Pulling out the switch only half the lights came on; nothing to stop the girls from piling into the passenger seat chorusing, "Let's go for a ride!"

  They were quickly pulled over by one of Seattle's "finest" after the first turn (the turn signals didn't work either). Dedra's impassioned, on-her-knees and promise-to-buy-you-piroshkies explanation as to why the unregistered, uninsured van was on the street at all with three "unlicensed occupants" got them off with a conditional warning. They all had a grand laugh that night over whiskey, beer and pizza recalling how she played the sexy blonde card to the hilt.

  The requisite proofs of compliance were delivered to city clerks a couple of weeks later, making it a sure bet the citing officer didn't expect to be tracked down in mid-shift by
the bubbly babe bearing a dozen pastries and a generous gift certificate to a good local coffeehouse.

  Damn. Faux Toppa was on its way.

  At least in a latter day Kerouac sense.

  Ahh, the sound of the well-heeled American V-8.

  Prez was concerned they not get hit by The Capper. They did live in Seattle, he reminded his bandmates, and he was surprised the girls had never heard of the mysterious criminal or paid attention to such things. One day June was trying to learn the fine art of the oil change and other mechanical tips from him and as they laid beneath the engine compartment of the van, he related stories of the legend. He knew a few folks who had fallen prey to those sticky fingers and he said, "I sure hope el puto Capper leaves us alone."

  "What makes you think this Capper is a man?"

  "I don't know if he's a man. No one knows. You're right, but then it'd be la puta Capper," he laughed. "Say, that'd be a good name for an all-girl band."

  June agreed. She toothily mugged and said, "Too bad Dedra and I aren't Latinas."

  "No no no, you're good the way you are. Otherwise, you'd be trying to cut off my dick with your tamale scissors."

  Busting into laughter, she banged her forehead on the frame. "Ouch! I'm gonna sue you if you make me do that again."

  He grinned and said nothing.

  "But seriously, this Capper guy"-massaging her skull-"where has he been doing this other than Seattle?"

  "Well, there was a crazy thing he or someone else did last year out in west Texas and New Mexico. OK, you got your oil filter right there. Grab it."

  The good student reached up. "This thing?"

  "Yep."

  "And I?"

  "You grab a hold of it and unscrew it."

  "Really? By hand?"

  "Mmhmm. Like opening a jar of pickles. Anyway, it seems some music writer on a motorcycle in Austin got chased by some nut in a hot rod. Supposedly, he got chased out of town and across two states."

  "And this was the Capper?" She groaned and grimaced but got nowhere with the stubborn object.

  "No one knows if it was or not. But while it was happening a number of caps got stolen along the chase route."

  "You mean distributor caps?"

  "Si, se?orita. Es correcto."

  "And no one knows who really did it?" She gave up for a frustrated moment.

  "No." Smirking at her lack of progress, he said, "There's never enough evidence or fingerprints to build a case on. You should have Dedra find some of the crazy stuff that's on the Internet about this. Especially the Rondo Von Questador story. That's the motorcycle guy who got chased. It's pretty wild. I'm not sure if I believe it myself, though."

  June whistled and rubbed her dirty hands. "Why's that?"

  "Well, for one thing, he was a music writer and most of those dudes are kinda sketchy. Also, they'z too many ghost stories out there and sometimes, no disrespect to Miss Dedra, this Internet thing gets a little hard to stomach, if you know what I mean."

  "So you're skeptical." She shifted her position and with a mighty grunt, again wrapped her hands around the canister.

  "June, I don't know about the rest of the world. I only know what I know and what people I know have told me. Everything else better be at least amusing or else pay me dinero."

  "Omigod! I did it! It's moving!" The filter loosened and, triumphantly, she was unscrewing it. Then the oozing cascade. "AAAAAaaahhhhh!"

  "Oh, did I mention you might get a mouthful of oil if you get too cocky?"

  "God?"-spitting crude-"????DAMMIT!"

  XIV

  "Never go to bed mad. Stay up and fight."

  -Phyllis Diller

  Popular mythologies always promise heroes.

  In the 1960s when JFK declared the US would put a man on the moon such declarations were believable because, against all odds, it happened, and against all conservative and liberal sensibilities, The Last Poets earned license to talk about "Whitey on the Moon." The payoff was that Whitey got there. Well, someone had to. He got there and back with lotsa photos and rocks like so many souvenirs from a family weekend at the shore. Despite the harsh reflections in the beachlike environment, there was nary a sunburn nor moonburn to ruin it all. Hats and helmets off to Madison Avenue! Of all subliminal duck-and-cover images, kudos to the classic Coppertone girl! As early as 1953, Whitey was coerced by the visual myth of the startled, prepubescent maiden having her blue trunks attacked by the biting dogs of fate, revealing her red and white skin to the world. It was the metaphoric flag and mama's little apple pie being plundered by the scurvy beasts of darkness.

  O Lawdy, Lawd, it mustn't happen here!

  And if it does, will ya hand me that Coppertone, buddy?

  In the early 1990s the last tin soldier pretended his life was his own. It appeared to be but there were no funds for space exploration since the former president had fed them to a hungry defense industry that craved celebrity hunting, expensive cuts of succulent weapons, salad on the side with Kuwaiti oil & vinegar. There was always the prospect he would receive a new communication from a division chief or general or engineer to interrupt his ersatz freedom. It could happen any time. They always claimed to be "just wondering" about some strategy or technical quandary on which he might know a thing or two. Really, they were politely making sure he was still alive and had some semblance of sanity keeping his head in place. If he were to suddenly snap and blow up one of the 50 states, they'd feel better knowing they'd had the faintest indication of it. The centrifugal treadmill had devolved into a creaky carousel; the calliope gasped missing notes; the mirrors and lights of the midway were cracked and dull; the ring, still beckoning within reach, was no longer the prize. They tried to put him out to pasture but he knew far too much for them to manage it. His knowledge had become the game changing power that let him turn the tables-check, and mate-as he became an undisputed outside consultant and master of their fates. Nothing could help him shake the idea of when he was chosen for the lunar jaunt, the special mission. They had sorely needed his skills then; he was the only one who had them, but he couldn't just be honored and done with it.

  The moon was the stone that landed in the well and sent ripples to the edges of his sight. It didn't matter whether there was a small step for a man or if there had been an equally small step for a woman. JHH had seen too many nights of reflections from the hood of a fast old Ford that drove him mad with timelines measured in lunar phases. There was a time to forget, disappear, slice low, a deep-breathing night, clouds traveling like ships on dark seas.

  Onward.

  A journey leading to a more serene Valhalla.

  In the night:

  Too much reading, calculating, moons waxing and waning.

  No, he wasn't crazy.

  Great horses of night escaped from the carousel again, loose and pounding and jumping over sacred circles of protection and no. He wasn't crazy. The broken circles no longer afford that protection no matter what believers believed. Pounding hooves in the distance and there was no more than a strange cow galloping around a chalky orb. Escape velocity and hands on the wheel, redlining an unseen glory, bypassing light, heat, radar. Sailless and broken masts silhouetted by a quarter moon, and no. He was not crazy.

  XV

  "You're not in love! You're just on drugs!"

  -The Weeds, 1989

  End of January:

  Optimism was shuffling toward positivism.

  The van was a properly working vehicle.

  Since late November Faux Toppa had played a few parties and even some club gigs.

  With a few good songs and a handful of fans, they were earning an ungainly air of legitimacy and no one could call down Bryan or Prez as fakes. There was always that martyred contingent of scenesters who loved to play the whine game, and following their first write-up in the Stranger (a de rigueur article talking up bands and big doings in Texas), the typical shit hit the typical fan and a few "veterans" took them to task. J
une ignored it, Bryan and Prez laughed at it, their bifocaled bandmate, the official spokesperson for FT activities, was painted and scorned as a privileged daughter of wealth and the tension was wearing. They didn't have an official release in any record stores but a number of decent-sounding cassette copies of the otherwise bogus demo tape had been circulated in all the right places. It wasn't difficult to get airplay on hip college radio and, in the face of criticism, she would insist that all things came down to the luck of the draw.

  Whether a band had to claw their way through barbed wire or not, upon arrival in the limelight the great media fire walk begins. Gossip mouths are not prone to let up and Dedra could not ignore the perceptions of the outside world (see "Fatiuchkan Laws of Thermodynamics," Chapter IV). She was a normal human being who, like most other human beings, had a rational and an irrational side constantly butting heads with each other. The sheer blame of following through on the SXSW gamble placed her squarely on the tightrope, and what a show it promised. Safety nets are useless when panic and aim cannot work together in event of a misstep. The lesson of Humpty Dumpty was never taught well, and spectators will come from miles around to eat their hot dogs and wait for the fall.

  Where society claims to value human equality, it mostly fails to regulate its realities. Angels may be sharks well governed, but wide open seas of predatory possibilities usually decide where one equality ends and another begins. Ideals of success are well dealt with theoretically, and great schools of learning have devoted entire curriculums to the tuitions of such attainment. Ideals of failure, however, are rashly dismissed as not worth considering, even though failure is what most victims of human equality will attain, leaving disregarded mounds of broken eggshells littered against walls of certain knowledge.

  June's life of routine disappointment secured her ability to walk the tightrope without having to stop and consider the net below. She long ago surrendered her inner banana scone to the fandango of mundane fortune thanks to dear Uncle Kevin. She was far more interested in the adventure itself than what anyone had to say about it. Dedra's track record of success had been her high-wire companion. She had proven herself time after stressful time but she was still the Chicken-Shit Rose. At any undefined height, loose footing?the wire stretched between points less and less anchored?