Crash Gordon and the Mysteries of Kingsburg (62 page)

“So my mom wasn’t the real Son of Sam,” Gordon concludes.

“No. At least you can say that much for her,” Helen says, pursing her lips. “She’s never liked me very much, has she?”

“No, but don’t feel bad,” Gordon says. “She may not like you, but she absolutely
despises
me.”

“Gordon, don’t say that…” Twinker says. “No mother could think that about her own son. Especially one like you.”

Gordon only says, “You haven’t met my mother.”

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

“God, what a strange world we live in…” Twinker says to Gordon out in front of Helen’s house after they’ve said their good-byes. She glances over at the Smileys’ green, well-fertilized lawn and their empty driveway next door, saying, “Sometimes I don’t like being here much.”

When they step into the street, they see a gleaming, sky-colored Bentley Corniche convertible parked up the street in front of Gordon’s house. Jimmy, Skip, and D.H. are standing around it, looking aimless and bored. When they see Gordon and Twinker they wave and head up the street to greet them.

“Where’ve you guys been?” Skip asks. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

“We were just visiting Gordon’s
abuela
,” Twinker says. “She’s really sweet.”

“I guess you guys had no trouble finding Jimmy,” says Gordon.

“Sirhan! My man!” shouts D.H., slapping a high-five to shyly grinning Jimmy.

“You were awesome in there,” Gordon says, shaking Jimmy’s hand. “Where’d you learn to shoot blanks like that?”

“Bite me, Crash…” says Jimmy. “And pack your bags. We’re taking a road trip.”

“How come?”

“Lloyd will explain it to you in the car.”

“Lloyd’s with you guys?” But Gordon can already see that he is. Lloyd’s fat red face is slouched down low behind the wheel of the Bentley. Gordon missed him at first because the car is right-hand drive and he wasn’t looking for anyone on what he normally thinks of as the passenger side.

“Dude, you and Jimmy have had the CIA messin’ inside your skulls,” says Skip, giving him a little preview of the conversation to come.

“Lloyd knows a deprogrammer over at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur–one of his old Mason buddies–Doctor Felix or somebody,” says Jimmy. “I can’t really explain it to you the way Lloyd can. But if everything goes right, this Doctor Felix guy should be able to straighten us out over the weekend. Otherwise, we’re screwed. We could go off at any time.”

D.H. drops into a crouch, pointing an imaginary gun at Skip’s chest.
“Eat lead, muthafucka!”
he shouts wildly, mimicking Jimmy’s earlier assassination attempt.

Skip mimes death throes, or a shiveringly intense orgasm.

“Yeah, and if you think I’m bad,” Jimmy says to Gordon, “you could be, like, ten times worse. Lloyd says they’ve been teaching you how to kill people with your mind.”

“Right. A psychic killer.” Saying that in front of his friends causes Gordon to feel a small jolt of pride, which he instantly nullifies with self-deprecation: “I was also programmed to masturbate myself to death if I start remembering too much of my training.”

“
Shit!
I can’t believe you know this stuff already!” Jimmy sounds disappointed.

“Lloyd’s hypnotist buddy told me about it after the show,” Gordon admits. And right there, at that moment, it occurs to him–
the whole thing could be a set-up.

But a set-up for what?
Gordon wonders.
For the insurance policies we all signed? How? And how would that explain what happened to Twinker, who’s not even covered?

“Stop it! You guys are freaking me the fuck out!” Twinker whines. “Crash, I didn’t hear anything about you being a psychic killer.”

“You were hypnotized, Twinker…” Gordon reminds her. He sees a loose strand of hair curving across the pale skin of her bare shoulder and he feels a rush of almost paternal tenderness toward her (
paternal in the good sense–not in the way her own father abused her…
). He also feels an overwhelming urge to protect her. If he really has the ability to kill people with his mind, maybe Twinker’s dad should be first on his list.

And if the deprogrammer at Esalen is for real,
Gordon thinks,
Twinker should go with us.

It’s up to him to figure out what’s real and what isn’t. No one else can do it for him. Maybe this plunge into weirdness and uncertainty is the world’s way of waking him up from the dream of life by forcing him to use his soul’s intuition.

Self-conscious but resolved, Gordon walks over to the Bentley to say hello to Lloyd. The convertible top is down, revealing a buttery, biscuit-colored leather interior with a bird’s-eye maple dash. “Nice car…” Gordon says.

“Well, well…
Crash Gordon!
So we meet again.” Lloyd reaches a plump hand up from the Bentley’s steering wheel to greet him.

They shake hands warmly–and in that brief clasping Gordon instantly learns everything he needs to know. It’s like a huge, blooming bundle of thought exploding through his mind, throwing off images, names, and phrases everywhere all at once. He suddenly knows Lloyd is there as a friend to assist and guide them and he’s aching to tell them more than he’ll ever be able to explain. Gordon knows they’re all in grave danger, Lloyd included. He knows Doctor Robert H. Felix–
ROB FELIX
–can help. He’s even shown a mental picture of Doctor Felix (
very old, decrepit…
), which he’s certain will turn out to be accurate, if they can just get to Esalen to see him. But getting there is far from a sure thing. They might not make it. The Spirits of Darkness are already massing and will soon be chasing them like a storm.

And this is odd:
Although Lloyd and Doctor Felix are their allies in this situation, both of them are deeply,
deeply
corrupt. They’re unwitting travelers on the Malâmatî Path–the Path of Blame. A Malâmatî arrogantly displays what is blameworthy and conceals or ignores what is praiseworthy. They’re Unholy Fools who make things better by first making things worse.

When Gordon lets go of Lloyd’s hand, the thought-bundle disappears. It only lasted for a split-second, and everything it told him is already getting hard to recall. He’s had similar experiences with his dreams, wanting to remember some important insight given to him while sleeping, only to have it slip away as soon as he was awake. One of Gordon’s favorite artists, Rene Magritte, had something to say about that:
"If the dream is a translation of waking life, waking life is also a translation of the dream.”
It’s like old Chuang-Tzu waking up and not knowing if he’s a man who dreamt he was a butterfly, or a butterfly dreaming he’s a man. It’s tricky, that liminal state….

“So–are you up for a little weekend jaunt?” Lloyd asks him.

“You bet,” Gordon says. “I’ll go pack my stuff.” He takes off toward the house.

“Be quick about it!” Lloyd shouts after him. “It’s absolutely imperative that we arrive in Big Sur before sundown.”

Inside his bedroom, Gordon quickly packs a backpack with some light clothes, a toothbrush, a roll of cash, and his asthma medication. He also throws in a few books: Barry Hannah’s
Ray
, Jim Harrison’s
Warlock
, Jacques Vallee’s
Messengers of Deception
, and Philip K. Dick’s
Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said.
For Gordon, having something to read is as important as having clean underwear.

On his way back out the door, he tries to figure out how he’s going to get Twinker to go on the trip with them.

“Twinker, D.H., Skip!” Gordon shouts. “You guys should come, too!”
Well, that wasn’t exactly smooth or well thought out,
he thinks
, but it might work.

“Yeah! Party on the beach!” shouts Skip.

“There may not be enough room,” Lloyd rather half-heartedly protests.

Just as Gordon is tossing his backpack into the Bentley’s open trunk, his mother drives up behind him in her avocado-green Cadillac.

“Where do you think
you’re
going, Mister?” she says as the power window on the driver’s side rolls down with an electronic groan. Derek is cringing in the backseat.

“We’re spending the weekend in Big Sur with Jimmy’s uncle,” Gordon tells her, simply stating the facts.

“Oh no you’re not,” she sneers back at him, stepping out of the car. “You get right back in that house, little man. You’ve got some vacuuming to do.”

“You don’t understand,” Gordon says, standing up to her. “I have to go on this trip. It’s important.”

“You’re not doing any such thing,” Cynthia says grimly, about to boil over with her usual rage. “I’m your mother–and if I say you’re spending the weekend vacuuming and weeding my flowerbeds, then you damn well better do it.”

“You can pull your own damn weeds,” Gordon says. “I’m going.”

“Don’t you
dare
talk back to me like that!” Cynthia howls–her voice choked with fury. She rears back to slap him.

A thought flashes through Gordon’s mind. Two inches from his cheek, Cynthia’s hand is stayed. Shedding furious tears, she tries to slap him with the other hand. Gordon stops that hand, as well–all without moving a muscle.

“You won’t ever hit me again,” he says evenly. He stares into his mother’s hateful sea-green eyes to make sure she gets the message. Then he closes the Bentley’s trunk and tells the others he’s ready to leave. Cynthia just gets back into her Cadillac and rolls up the power windows. Derek grins wildly from the backseat and waves goodbye as Cynthia sits there gripping the steering wheel and tensing her jaws.

Gordon picks up, via telepathy, that his mother is contemplating the destruction of Lloyd’s Bentley. She wants to crumple it like an aluminum can with the Cadillac’s heavy chrome bumper and then go inside and call Doctor Smiley. Gordon sends a thought back, telling her to stay put, or he’ll rupture her internal organs.

How he’s able to do these new things is a mystery to him. They feel like abilities he’s always had, but couldn’t access until Doctor Lemingeller hypnotized him. Then he remembers:

They
are
abilities he’s always had–
in his dreams
.

If the Tibetan mystics are right and dreaming is the astral body’s way of leaving the physical body behind to travel to other realms–to have an out-of-body experience, or OBE, as some call it–then Gordon has known how to engage in telepathy and telekinesis all along. Maybe his physical body is starting to learn from his astral body’s example. Maybe instead of using only 10% of his brain’s potential, Doctor Lemingeller somehow, inadvertently, hypnotized him into using more of it.

“That was so cool!” D.H. says, patting Gordon’s back as they all climb into the Bentley. “So I guess that psychic killer stuff is true.”

I guess it is,
thinks Gordon.
How else would I know how to rupture my mother’s aorta and spleen?

“You should’ve made her head explode,” Jimmy says. “That would’ve been rad.”

“Let’s not make any rash suggestions,” Lloyd says as he starts the Bentley’s engine. “Our friend Gordon is in a fragile, highly volatile state.”

“Actually, I’m feeling pretty good right now,” Gordon says, sitting up front next to Lloyd, enjoying the breeze as they pull away from the curb and pick up speed. The Cadillac doesn’t follow them.

“You were right about your mom,” Twinker leans forward to tell Gordon from the backseat. “God, what a total bitch!”

□ □ □ □ □ □ □ □ □

“There’s nothing quite like motoring in an open Bentley at full and proper speed,” Lloyd says, donning a pair of tortoiseshell sunglasses as the Bentley tools along past dairy farms, broken-down barns, and dusty green grape vineyards just outside of Kingsburg on Conejo Avenue. Lloyd smacks his fat lips in the turbulent breeze and widens his nostrils to inhale a bracing whiff of cow flatulence. His voice deepens in the malodorous bovine smog, turning orotund as he declaims: “With the top down, there comes an almost irresistible urge to burst into some wild war song, greater even than the immortal song of Roland.”

“Yes, utterly,” Gordon concurs, humoring him.

“I’m not sure I’ve heard that immortal Roland guy’s song before,” D.H. pipes up from the backseat, where he’s crushed between Jimmy and Skip.

“Yeah, could you hum a few bars?” Twinker asks, prodding Lloyd with her tiny fist from her perch on Skip’s lap.

“I’ll do you one better….” Lloyd punches a cassette into the Bentley’s tape deck. The distinctive voice of one of their favorite malcontent singer-songwriters bellows from the speakers.

“Ah… the song of Warren Zevon –” D.H. observes with satisfaction–“the immortal ’Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.’”

“I thought you might enjoy that,” Lloyd says. He turns up the volume and starts to sing along. Everyone else soon joins in:

His comrades fought beside him–Van Owen and the rest

But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best

So the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead

That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen blew off Roland’s head

Roland the headless Thompson gunner

Norway’s bravest son

Time, time, time

For another peaceful war

But time stands still for Roland

’Til he evens up the score

They keep it up until the final enigmatic line:
“Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland’s Thompson gun and bought it.”
As the song segues into Lou Reed’s “Coney Island Baby” Lloyd turns down the stereo and says:

“I’m sure you’re all aware that CIA mind control programming played a large role in the kidnapping of Patty Hearst. Or did you not know that?”

“We did the fuck not!” Jimmy shouts with something approaching glee as they pass a hay-littered flatbed truck transporting migrant workers. Some of the workers shout obscenities back at Jimmy and wave.

“Yeah, we’d love to hear you explain that one for us,” Gordon says. “Especially since CIA mind control programming has been on our minds a lot lately.”

“It’s inside your minds, fucking with you,” Skip clarifies.