The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (42 page)

"Awwwww," says Kesey. The kid, meanwhile, is deathly quiet.

"I'm not lying!" says Stone. "Look up there. There it is, the
sum

"Uhhh, uhhhh,
God,
you was right, there it is, the
sun!
Why ... it fi-i-i-i-lls the sky!

It li-i-i-i-i-ights up the valley! It shi-i-i-i-ines upon the ocean!"

After a few miles the kid speaks up in a casual way, best he can, "Say, fellows, I think I'll get out in Tepic instead of Sonora. 1 just remembered, I got to see somebody there."

So he gets out.

Never trust a Prankster!

And Cassady—Cassady barreling onto the Rat strand in yet another Cassady vehicle, revved up revved up revved up at the ; eternal Cassady speed, with a new typical Cassady Excalibur. He has a four-pound sledge hammer with the handle wrapped in Day-Glo tape, which he throws about from noon to doom like an Indian club, flipping it up in the air and catching it, flipping it up in double spins, triples, quadruples, true spins, eccentric spins, sprocketing his shoulders his elbows his knees his feet about in the jerky beat. The Prank and the Schism are apparently long forgotten. If there's any soul can break up this focking red tide and clear the mucus air sailing speedily on all channels, it is Cassady. So they smoke some grass and climb up on top of la casa grande and sit up there while Cassady circuses and sprockets with his sledge hammer off on his speedy trip just the barest l/30th second from Now at dusk.

Cassady does his wild American sledge hammer ballet by the side of a pool of backwater and they can see Cassady's reflection in the pool and their own reflection looking down at Cassady, but looking
up
in the pool in perfect asymmetric playback, winking Day-Glo and dusk, invoking apparitions from the past, a moon door, for the world in the immense act of contemplating itself, Domnu,
sativa
and
rajas
all at once,
fons et origo,
instant Movie—Now

Wet-handle Harry!

And the Halusion Gulp begins to shake its wings again like leather paddle flaps on the wheel o' fortune carnival game, a Rat bird, but it knows the one hole in the sky.

Kesey in la casa grande with the wind up and the sky cloudy, and the Gulp flapping, and the Rat plaster paneled with pages from out of Marvel comics, whole scenes of Dr. Strange, Sub Mariner, the Incredible Hulk, the Fantastic Four, the Human Torch—Superheroes, in short. All heads believe them to be drawn by meth freaks, because of the minute phosphorescent dedication of their hands. Super-heroes!

Übermenschen! It was passing strange that Nietzsche, that curious little Peter Lorre misanthrope with whiskers and a sour black Tubingen professorial frock coat on, should be into the essence of the thing—

—and Kesey can hear Bob Stone telling him, "Nietzsche is up in Heaven now, Ken, saying 'I dig what you're doing—but don't read my books' "—

—yet the old Valkyrie was into the thing. The world not a line of cause and effect heading forward forever, but finite and ever-repeating, so that all that ever was and ever will be is caught up in
now,
in endless Recurrence, only waiting for the Superheroes to resurface; after which, a total revaluation. And combining Nietzsche's inspiration with his own of
at-present-best
—of man forever watching his own movie and never being able to get to the paradise beyond the screen: as Nietzsche glimmered, life is a circle and so it is the going, not the getting there, that counts.
Live
in the moment. Lots of good heads said it. I tried. I devoted much time and much
energy. To find that those good heads had been tricked
—
that simple trick\ of I was
right about living in the moment but we can never get in the moment! Orggggggg!

Yet, as Pranksters and many close and near believe, he knows he has somehow caught sight of the great flapping beast and is somewhere beyond this side of the screen and into the true old full bare essence of the thing—he is onto what is popularly thought of as enlightenment... thinking back:

Nighttime and he had gone out to the water, high on grass, and sat down and the light from the electric signs—Coca-Cola?—in the town came across the bay, and every line of light came off straight, the primitive line, Stone Age, the line of grass CUT TO

nighttime, same spot, high on acid, and the lines come off not straight but in perfect half circles, the acid line, the line of the

present, the perfect circle, like the spiders they injected with acid, and they wove perfect little round webs

CUT TO

nighttime, same spot, high on opium, only time he ever took hard dope, and the lines came off starting into circles and instead finished with a little hook, like the little hook in the water of a Japanese print, like the little hook even in the lines of that strange comic strip,
The Spirit
, and this was the line of the future, completing the circle without having to go all the way every time, getting there by knowing the beginning of the trip

CUT TO

Nighttime and an electrical storm in the Mexican heat flashes, high on acid, the lightning breaking out—
there!
—
there!
—and the electricity flows through him and out of him, a second skin, a suit of electricity, and if the time was ever now it is—

Now!
—and he hurls his hand toward the sky to make the lightning break out where he points—
Now!
—we've got to close it, the gap between the flash and the eye, and
make
it, the reentry into
Now
... as Superheroes ... open ... until he falls to the beach and Mountain Girl finds him holding his throat and choking as if he is gagging on sand ...

Beyond acid.
They have made the trip now, closed the circle, all of them, and they either emerge as Superheroes, closing the door behind them and soaring through the hole in the sapling sky, or just lollygag in the loop-the-loop of the lag. Almost clear!

Presque vu!
—many good heads have seen it—Paul telling the early Christians: hooking down wine for the Holy Spirit—sooner or later the Blood has got to flood into you
for good
—Zoroaster telling his followers: you can't keep taking haoma water to
see
the names of Vohu Mano—you've got to
become
the flames, man—And Dr.

Strange and Sub Mariner and the Incredible Hulk and the Fantastic Four and the Human Torch prank about on the Rat walls of la casa grande like stroboscopic sledgehammer Cassadys,
fons et origo
::::: and it is either make this thing permanent inside of you or forever just climb draggled up into the conning tower every time for one short glimpse of the horizon :::::

The Mexican Bust

HAGEN, MEANWHILE, WAS MORE AND MORE . . . HAGEN. The irresistible charmer ... and it seems some beautiful deb from California had insisted on following him to Mexico.
Dear Dad. Don't worry about me. I am in Mexico with some beautiful
people.. .
Her father sensed
beatnik
and
dope
right away, of course, and pulled all manner of strings to find out where she was and get her back. At least the Pranksters figured later that was what explained the mysterious debacle that came next, on the road to Guadalajara.

Hagen, Kesey and Ram Rod were driving up toward Guadalajara in a panel truck one night when they came upon a roadblock manned by Mexican Federales. What to do? Turn around? bust through? fake it? At the time, everything had been so cool with the local legals, they were feeling strong and confident, and so Kesey decided to stop and just do the old thing of draw them into the movie. God knows the Pranksters had coped with many cops before.

But—of course, they couldn't speak Mexican, so they couldn't even get the Movie going with these Federales. The Federales grabbed all three of them and searched the truck immediately for grass, which they found, and that wrapped that up. Out in the rain and the dark in the Rat lands. The Mexicans don't hassle people over grass as much as the American cops, but they have the same kind of laws, and they are not delighted to have American heads guests of their country, and Kesey was "hot," as they say. A certified debacle, in a word.

This Route 15 ran along the railroad tracks that come up from the Guatemalan border. Between the road and the tracks were the spiky dark clumps of a lot of high foliage, scrub and shit, thorns, razor leaves. Kesey smiles sadly and goes through a big well-you-got us, fellas, fair-and-square pantomine, that's the way it goes. The Federales take his turista card, which is a fake. Yup-you-win-fellas, and say, Lemme just go over in them bushes a second before you haul us off. Fella has to take a leak; all men equal, gringos and Mex and whatever, when the piss call comes, right-fellas?

So the Federales say O.K. and Kesey goes off in the scrub—

—out the corner of his eye he sees a train easing over the siding on the tracks, coming around the bend slow—

—Haul ass! Rotor Rooter! Kesey plunges into the brush toward the tracks, thorns and razor leaves raking his legs, the light from the train shaking that weird sick ochre cast over the spiky brush clumps, thrashing through this shit, up against the side of the train jumps up on top of a coupling, grabs a ladder to the top of the boxcar. Rain comes in a sudden sheet, lightning breaks out, lighting up the whole scene and his body—Federales huffing and galomping through the scrub like comic-movie Mexicans popping buttons off their guts and screaming
¡hoy! ¡pronto!
and then HRHAAAAAAAAAAMMMNNNNNNNNNN

The bastards are
shooting
at him! Mama don't 'low no grass-smokin' in hyar! Testy out here on edges of professed belief—

blackness—then Cosmo let him in on it for an instant with a flash of lightning—more huffing harroomping

HRHAAAAAAAAMMMNNNNNNNNNN

comic latino cops—until the train picks up speed and he lies battened down to the top of the car heading off to somebody's Edge City somewhere.

Which turns out to be Guadalajara. He has no money on him, no grass, no nothing.

He heads for the inevitable mariachi square, hunkers down in the dark, wet and shivering. Wonder do they tolerate gringo bums in this town? Daylight a Mexican comes through the park and strikes up a conversation, speaks English. He is a slender guy in his twenties, very handsome like a Valentino, almost feminine

¡QUEER!

offers to let Kesey rest up in his hotel room

¡QUEER!

so beat and shivering he takes him on it. The hotel is one step above a flophouse, but clean. He has a neat little room, this Mario, a snug harbor. "Go ahead, get some sleep." Kesey tries to fight off the sleep fantasy

¡QUEER ASSAULT!

but he falls asleep anyway, wakes up a long time later, all intact. Mario is broke himself, but gets off a collect telegram to Manzanillo under Kesey's new alias, Sol Almande.
Salamander,
you understand—the beast that lives in fire. Wait around all day and the next, Mario being nothing but a totally sweet person.

WHAT'S HIS GAME?

Down to the holy telégrafo to pray. All the huarache telégrafo workers sitting around under fluttering leaves of telegrams piling up.
Hay tiempo.
You have to know how to approach them, says Mario. Goes upstairs in the telégrafo. Presently the Huarache Chief rummages through the whole heap for a message for the burning Almande.

But—nothing.

Next morning Kesey decides to risk it, goes down to the American consulate as a poor broke grizzled balding American fisherman stranded and got to get back to Manzanillo. A girl there, a Miss Hitchcock, gives him 27 pesos for third-class bus fare to Manzanillo, and he gets on, with Mario waving a sweet valedictory goodbye. That was your bummer, Kesey, not to understand that the pure humble Mexican strain of sweetness—that was all that Mario was about, just a muy simpático human being. The bus ride was horrible, eighteen hours of bouncing through the Rat lands, half road and half no road, the Rat lands and yet so many open faces. They look at you just like a head, totally open, wanting to find something rather than hide something. Many piss stops, and Kesey can only struggle around grizzled, waiting for the driver to get on with it. Kesey is hungry and burnt out like a husk. About ten hours out, they're stopped and the driver walks back and stares at Kesey with the wide-open simpático look and gives him six pesos, just like that, without a word, worth about 17 cents but good for a taco or suchlike, and walks on back to the front of the bus. A strange land, this Rat land! Sometimes they
know.
There is hope!—not just for the Superaware elected few, but for the unsuspected multitudes who open up and look. They are waiting, here in this Rat land.

Back in Manzanillo, and the adrenaline was flowing again. Hagen and Ram Rod were salted away in jail. Like everything in Mexico, the jail scene was tough and soft at the same time. It was filthy, crawling with ticks, lice, scorpions, the whole scene.

The food was filthy, too. But you could have anything you wanted to put down your gullet sent in, if you could pay for it, from luscious enchilada meals to grass, speed and acid. Hagen and Ram Rod stayed delightfully high and miserable.

In any case, Kesey began to feel like it was only a matter of time before they closed in. It wasn't so much the Mexicans he was worried about. The Mexicans were always ready to make a deal. It was the Stateside zealots. The FBI bodysnatchers worried him. He knew about Morton Sobell, the atom spy, who suddenly turned up one day at a border town in the custody of an FBI agent, walking across the border with the Feds. If the FBI can grab you in Mexico, physically, the Mexicans will play along with that, too. And the zealous head-buff San Mateo County cops. Word was that San Mateo cops were taking their vacations in Mexico for no other reason than to go Kesey-hunting and make more fat headlines. La casa grande and the Rat Shack becoming steadily more uncool as first one head and then another showed up, with big comradely grins on, kids from California, even from New York, who had somehow learned
where Kesey is.
They always came on like naturally the Pranksters would be shining with joy to see them—
we holy few, we initiates of the acid scene
—