Already Dead: A California Gothic (60 page)

He mashed the clutch, the gas, worked the gearshift like a pump handle.

Excuse me. I have got to deal with this wound.

At the gas station in Redway he parked around back of the building and found himself able to move, more than able, strangely unen-cumbered by his own weight, and he got out of his car like anybody.

But all of him above the waist felt both numb and terribly painful, and his head began to crash as he stood by the garbage cans and raised his T-shirt’s hem to check his injury. He couldn’t quite see for all the blood.

He tried the bathroom, perhaps it was the ladies’, whose lock was engaged though the door itself wasn’t closed, and he shut it softly behind him and found the lightswitch. The bit of man in the tiny mirror wore a slick patch of jellied blood below his right armpit and down out of the frame. He got the neckline of his T-shirt in his teeth and tore it down lengthwise, peeled it from him and sopped with it at the area of the wound. He’d been gashed along the belly, exposing a brief pallid streak of what he believed to be a rib. He filled and patched over this hole in his flesh with brown paper towels and tied his T-shirt around him, knotting it along the opposite ribs, sucking air through his teeth and singing, “Oh man! Oh man! Oh man!” continuously. One of his deck shoes and the right leg of his white pants were 400 / Denis Johnson

soaked with blood. He sat on the toilet and kicked off the shoes for the first time since—he didn’t know; he’d forgotten they weren’t his feet; he’d been fighting and swimming and hiking and driving in them since birth. A proper lodge would have had a tub! A proper lodge would have had its own restaurant!

He took several minutes getting his pants off. He didn’t think it was physical shock, but only doubt and disgust, that had turned everything to molasses. He rinsed his trousers in the sink and twisted the pink water out of them, pausing at intervals to breathe and allow himself to whimper, then bathed away the blood on his hips and leg with wet paper towels and donned the wet pants—a good cool clean feeling that woke him.

He sat in the car out back of the Texaco until after sundown, listening to the radio so low he couldn’t actually hear it, quite dazed and only imagining the music.

In the latter moments of dusk he collected himself and began driving west through Redway and out toward the coast on the asphalt two-lane, and soon it was night. He kept to the second gear, took it slow so as not to disturb his injury, steering one-handed, the road bodying forth into his low beams and a crouching, wolflike blackness on either side.

Past occasional homes, or hovels, with implements and woodpiles presented under electric lights, little tableaux of repairs undone.

Then he found himself moving slowly over a rough main street with his headlights jactitating. With some difficulty and a reawakening of his pain he managed a right-angle turn into a wide alley. Or was it a street. And parked beside a tavern. Or was it a cafe. He shut off the engine and lights. He fell asleep, and woke with dawn pale over the town of Whitehorn.

T
hey left the Mexican girl and her Mexican baby to be toyed with forever by their luck and went south on 101.

Thompson drove. Falls sat with his head back, lecturing through the wet handkerchief he held against his face. “You gotta think about what works. What works? A twenty-two target pistol.”

“And when it slips out of your waistband at the policemen’s ball, everybody knows what business you’re in.”

“I’m not here to debate with you.”

“Then don’t.”

Already Dead / 401

“In real life you gotta walk right up and do ’em. A twenty-two magnum to the back of the skull. That’s universal knowledge.” Falls took the rag from his face and doused it afresh with iced tea from the Thermos.

“How is it?”

“I’m completely blind is how it is.”

“No, but for real, man, is it getting better or worse?”

“Better. But on the left side of things there’s still this continuing wavy electric line.”

“That guy.”

“People will surprise you.”

“Okay, I’m him,” Falls said as they peed together in the men’s room of the Texaco near Redway.

“Okay,” Thompson said, “you’re him.”

“Either I turn back north and shoot up the big road all the way to Canada, or I pull off and hide.”

“The smartest thing would be a steady straight run in that little Nazi smoker. We’d never catch his ass.”

“He might not be driving too good,” Falls said. “He was dripping all over the john, and I don’t mean this stuff.” He zipped himself and started washing his hands.

“I hit him?”

“Something injured the man.”

“You said I missed!”

“You took one shot and slaughtered the drinking fountain is all I know.”

“Hey, man. Don’t be twisting with me. Did I or didn’t I?”

“Maybe the fountain was a secondary hit.”

“No maybe about it. You get the scope up. You put the red dot where you’re aiming. I told you and told you.”

“Another magic bullet.”

“It’s common as houseflies, Bart, it’s called ballistics.”

“We gotta try every side route.”

“Oh, man. What do you think that’ll accomplish? Aside from wasting eternity?”

“That’s the viable option. The other is he’s a hundred miles up the road already. The world isn’t complicated if you stay with the viable options.”

“You know what? You talk like a lifer.”

402 / Denis Johnson

H
e woke up paralyzed. It was the cold. He’d slept uncovered, bare-chested except for his big bandage. For the next couple of hours, while the rising sun warmed the car, he tracked the return of his energies through his limbs, a pleasure that slowly intensified until it was glory and trumpets blew that he hadn’t been killed.

He unknotted his T-shirt and unstuck his loosest paper bandages from the others…. The jetting debris, he assumed it was, had clipped an inch of flesh from between his sixth and seventh ribs on the right side. Not a colossal violation of his unity—on a fatter man, a scratch. It had bled during the night and clotted thickly, but he feared setting it bleeding again. He rested in his body until something else, not pleasure, strummed along his nerves. He thought he’d better try his legs.

A touch of the Scary Electric. Just a breath. A little lick of the jim-jams.

There were taverns in this town.

The Blue Deads the Purple People the Yellow Fellow. He had to move.

The tavern he’d parked beside looked just the one, obviously open soon and certain locals already creaking in their tattoos and wickers along the front of it in motorcycle senectitude. Toothless Wild Ones lined out and tilted back like courthouse louts, with flies clustered on their hats. His body was functioning persuasively, breaking its inertia and putting itself out in the street. He found nothing to cover him but Melissa’s white terrycloth. He stood next to the car and donned it, cinched it only quite loosely because of the discomfort. Tied the belt in an unbreakable square knot and went among his people. For want of entertainment they watched him come on, squinting at his image against the morning sun.

“He ain’t open.”

But the door stood open. Fairchild went inside and climbed onto a stool holding his wallet in his hand. He stared at the bartender’s back.

“Open at nine.” At his stationmaster face. “I’m just airing out.”

“And what’s the time?”

“Seven minutes.”

A guy slighted outside, Fairchild couldn’t hear the insult, continued on into the place with a kind of blunted ebullience and sat on the stool beside Fairchild’s. The others were coming in too to take their places.

“A man in a bathrobe.”

“The dress code has been temporarily suspended.” Already Dead / 403

“If that ain’t country you can kiss my ass.”

“If that ain’t evil you can kiss my ass.”

“If that ain’t sociopathic you can kiss my ass.”

“You can kiss my ass. You can pucker up and smooch my rosy red pimply butt. Charles. A shot and a beer. Charles.”

“Open at nine.”

“Time marches on.”

“Time marches, rolls, and flows. It’s got more metaphors than God.” This remark had the air of something rehearsed.

Whitehorn…surely these wrecks and ringoes had a purpose. Fairchild and the man beside him exchanged the look of dogs on chains. No, no purpose. We’ve all been consigned to this by accidents of cowardice.

Fairchild watched the guy hand-rolling a cigarette out of a pouch, licking up the length of it to keep it closed.

“Where’s the amusement?”

“I’m laughing,” Fairchild said, “to see such sport.” The barman said, “One at a
time
,” as they were open now.

“Shot and a beer,” the man said. “I’m owed some money in this town, and that should be enough to say. Instead I’m in here killing off my appetite for breakfast because I’m owed, but I ain’t paid. You can’t do your work if they don’t pay you. Ever heard of expenses?” As he spoke he searched his environs for someplace to strike his match, and this became rather the focus of his world—snapping the white cap with his thumbnail, sliding it longways up his boot, jamming it against a nailhead in the wood and ripping it off. “Ever heard of gas? Food? Rent? Goddamn it, gimme a light.”

The barman tossed down a pink disposable, and the man paused while he set the butane feather against the cigarette depending like a bit of root from his lips and got it smoking. Dragged deep. Stared significantly at Fairchild. “Ever heard of overhead?”

“Have you got another little stogie, partner?”

“You? You don’t smoke.” The man turned away looking sad.

The barman raised his eyebrows at Fairchild.

“Something about halfway fatal. An ounce.”

“Tequila? Rum?”

“Tequila, please, and please,” he added as the barman nudged open with his knee the little icebox, reached within and turned to him holding in one hand a gleaming blade and in the other a yellow, a quite yellow, a solar-yellow lemon, “no food.”

404 / Denis Johnson

The barman set it out. Fairchild tipped the shot to his life and relaxed the craving. The man sitting next to him did the same for himself and waited with his hands in front him on the bar, the black penitentiary futharks on them blurred by trembling. Others joined them, other hands at the shot glasses like shivering newborn puppies—the randomly in-cised and greasy hands of bikers—carpenters’ hands with their discompleted fingers—sawyers’ hands epoxied with pitch and dirt—and they all got right with shots and watched the images on the tube.

“There he is.”

“He do look dead.”

“Shot him right through the tattoo. The heart on his tattoo. Rock of Ages tattoo.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you know the tattoo with the drowning lady hugging a big old motherfucking cross.”

“She been in a shipwreck.”

“Yeah. Right through her own chest.”

“Shot ’em both.”

“Him and her.”

“That’s too beautiful to laugh about.”

The barman pointed his remote and hit the same murder on another station.

“Guess there’s a dope scare on in Oakland.”

“Hey.”

“Hey there.”

“Hey. Somebody capped Joe Hopeless.”

“No.”

“Yep. Assassinated him at the driving range. They just showed him laid out with a bucket of golf balls spilled all around him.”

“Who did it?”

“Unknown assailant.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Not bad people, not evil people, but actually storms of innocence.

Deadheads telling their tears. The town where Jesus got his swastika removed…Fairchild wondered about the possibility of living here forever.

A second tequila went down in Whitehorn. The Thing melted away and Fairchild turned to his right. A face: cuneiform features. “How you doing?”

Already Dead / 405

“My muscles up my back are all kinked up. Back trouble.”

“Would you be Mr. Harley?” Fairchild asked. “Or would you be Davidson.”

“I am who I am. What brings you to our parts? You look like an escapee.”

“I’m exactly that.”

“Escaped from what?”

“Some incredibly boring people.”

“Charles. Same again, Charles. On the tab.”

“The tab? Tabs do not exist here.”

“You stingy shit. Ghosta Joe Hopeless gonna get you bad.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” the barkeep said.

“I seen a million. In the war I probably wasted more ghosts than gooks.”

“Let God,” one man quoted for them, his face blank and staring, “sort

’em out.”

“Oh, yeah,
ghosts
, yeah,” the barman said. “I hate to inform you.

When you see a ghost walking around a battle zone, that is not a spirit.

It’s all electromagnetic transactions on a series of fields. I mean, for instance. Have you read Whitehead?”

“Stop right there,” Fairchild interrupted.

“Drop a little acid sometime. Then read Whitehead.”

“A
Whiteheadian
tavern-keep.”

“Whitehead must’ve dabbled a little.”

“How do you know? Hey. Charles. How do you know?”

“I wish I didn’t work in a bar where intelligent conversation gets impossible after nine-fifteen A.M.” The tavern-keep stooped down and rose up with a burning cigarette, dragged on it with half-shut eyes.

“This is a lonely business.” He crouched and snuffed it and turned away.

“Boudreau.”

“Boudreau. Get in here, Boudreau.”

“News of the hour: they killed Joe Hopeless.”

“Who?”

“About fifty thousand suspects. Take your pick.”

“Lord God,” one man said, turning directly to Fairchild, “I was on the golf course with my bookie when they nuked my street.” Goofy dude, he assumed so anyway because he was smiling with his jaw doddering open and brown tobacco juice strung through his chin 406 / Denis Johnson

whiskers. “Wow. You are the dead spit of Normal Bates. Hey brother.” He choked on his plug. Tears filled his eyes and he drank down his beer. “Did you realize you’re bleeding like raw steak?” The barman peered over and down into Fairchild’s lap. “You having one of them days, boy.”

“Normal Bates is bleeding. Must’ve stabbed himself in the shower.”