Vineland (6 page)

“All's I'd like to know is will they be after your money,” a familiar question around here, the subcontractor accounts collectively having more attachments on them than a vacuum cleaner, “More liens,” Zoyd had once suggested, “than the Tower of Pisa,” to which Blodwen had answered, “More garnishes than a California burger—spouses, ex-spouses, welfare, the bank, the Lost Nugget, haberdasheries in faraway zip codes, it's what you all get for leading these irregular lives.”

“Looks like it's what
you
get,” Zoyd had remarked.

“Is why most of you ringdings keep gettin' paid off the books,” she'd advised, making a face Zoyd remembered from teachers in elementary school. She wasn't a bad person, though Zoyd theorized that she'd've been happier if they'd gone to Hollywood. Millard and Blodwen had met in a San Francisco theater group, she doing pretty-girl walk-ons and he thinking about specializing in Brecht—one night in the Haight somebody had some acid, and after careening for a while through the sixties, they alit from their anarcho-psychedelic spin twenty miles up a mud obstacle course referred to as a road only by those who'd never been near it, deep in the Vineland redwoods in a cabin by a stream from whose bed they could hear gold-bearing cobblestones knocking together at night. When the business took off they'd rented a house in town, but had held on to the place in the mountains, where they'd first come back to Earth.

“Little busy just this second,” Millard handing Zoyd an envelope with a sum of greenbacks within, “later would be better—say Hon, what's the Eight O'Clock Movie?”

“Um, oh, it's Pat Sajak in
The Frank Gorshin Story.
”

“Say about ten, ten-thirty?”

“Yikes, got to call Trent, he needs his rig.”

Trent, a sensitive poet-artist from the City, had moved up north here for his nerves, which at the moment were not at their most tranquil. “Armed personnel carriers,” Trent trying to scream and keep his voice down at the same time, “persons in full battle gear stomping through vegetable patches, somebody said they shot Stokely's dog, I'm in here with a thirty-aught-six I don't even know how to load, Zoyd, what's gooeen
ahn?
”

“Wait, easy pardner, now it sounds like CAMP,” meaning the infamous federal-state Campaign Against Marijuana Production, “but it ain't quite the season yet.”

“It's you, fucker,” Trent blubbering now, “they're usin' your place for a headquarters, everything's thrown out in the yard, they sure must've found your stash by now. . . .”

“Do they know what I'm driving?”

“Not from me.”

“Thanks Trent. Don't know when—”

“Don't say it,” Trent warned, sniffling, “see you whenever,” and hung up.

Zoyd thought his best bet might be to find an RV park someplace and try to blend in. He reserved a space a few miles out of town up Seventh River under a fake name, praying nobody was listening in on this phone. Then, gingerly, proceeded in the cedar-shake eyesore to Bodhi Dharma Pizza, which he could hear tonight before he saw it. All the occupants of the place were chanting, something that, with vibes of trouble to come, he recognized—not the words, which were in Tibetan, but the tune, with its bone-stirring bass, to a powerful and secret spell against invaders and oppressors, heard in particular a bit later in the year at harvest time, when CAMP helicopters gathered in the sky and North California, like other U.S. pot-growing areas, once again rejoined, operationally speaking, the third world.

As Zoyd was about to pull into the lot, the first thing he saw through the front window was Hector standing tensely up on a table, completely surrounded by chanting pizza customers and staff. Zoyd kept driving, found a public phone, and called Doc Deeply at the Vineland Palace. “I don't know how dangerous he is or how long I can stall him, so try to make it soon, OK?”

Back inside Bodhi Dharma Pizza, Hector was furiously on defense, eyes inflamed, haircut askew. “Zoyd!
¡Órale, carnal!
Tell these people how much I don' need this shit!”

“Where's my kid, Hector?”

Back in the employees' toilet, as it turned out, where Prairie had locked the door. Zoyd went and stood hollering back and forth with her, trying to keep an eye on Hector at the same time, while the deep chanting continued.

“He says he knows where my mom is.” Her voice wary.

“He doesn't know where she is, he was askin' me the other day, now he's tryin' to use you.”

“But he said, she told him that—she really wants to see me. . . .”

“He's bullshittin' you, Prairie, he's DEA, his business is lying.”

“Please,” Hector called, “could you do somethín about the glee club here, 'causs it's makín me, I don' know, weird?”

“You're abducting my kid, Hector?”

“She wants to come with me, asshole!”

“That true, Prair?”

The door opened. Big fat tears were rolling down her cheeks, with little swirls of violet eye makeup. “Dad, what is it?”

“He's crazy. He escaped from the Detox.”

“You better know how to protect her, Wheeler,” the federale getting frantic now. “You better have some resources, you're gonna wish she
was
with me before too long,
ése
, I ain't the only stranger in town today.”

“Yeah you must mean that army up at my place—tell me Hector, who is that?”

“Anybody less of a fool would know already. It's a Justice Department strike force, they got military backup, and it's beín led by your old pal himself, Brock Vond, remember him? Man who took your ol' lady away from you, hah,
cabrón?
”

“Well, shit.” Zoyd had just assumed all along they were Hector's people, DEA plus their local dope-squad tagalongs. But Brock Vond was a federal prosecutor, a Washington, D.C., heavy and, as Hector had so helpfully recalled, the expediter of most of Zoyd's years of long and sooner or later tearful nights down in places like the Lost Nugget. Why, at this late date, would the man be coming after Zoyd full-scale like this, unless it had something to do with Frenesi, and the old sad story?

“And you might as well forget about goín home, chump, 'cause you got no more home, paperwork's already in the mill to confiscate it under civil RICO, 'causs guess what, Zoyd, they found marijuana? in yer house! Yah, must've been two ounces of the shit, although we're gonna call it tons.”

“Dad, what's he talkin' about?”

“They're up 'ere all right, Trooper.”

“My diary? My hair stuff, my clothes? Desmond?”

“We'll get 'em all back,” as she moved beside him into a one-arm embrace. He believed what he was saying, because he couldn't quite believe the other yet. Trent could've been taking some artistic liberties, right? Hector could be having a Tubal fantasy provoked by watching too many cop shows?

“Then I still need to know,” Zoyd addressed the beleaguered narc up on the table, “why Brock Vond and his army is doin' this to me.”

As if their chanting had been recitative for Hector's aria, everyone now fell silent and attended. He stood beneath a stained-glass window made in the likeness of an eightfold Pizzic Mandala, in full sunlight a dazzling revelation in scarlet and gold, but at the moment dark, only tweaked now and then by headlights out in the street.

“It ain't that I don' have Hollywood connections. I know Ernie Triggerman. Yeah and Ernie's been waitín years for the big Nostalgia Wave to move along to the sixties, which according to his demographics is the best time most people from back then are ever goín to have in their life—sad for them maybe, but not for the picture business. Our dream, Ernie's and mine, is to locate a legendary observer-participant from those times, Frenesi Gates—your ex-ol' lady, Zoyd, your mom, Prairie—and bring her up out of her mysterious years of underground existence, to make a Film about all those long-ago political wars, the drugs, the sex, the rock an' roll, which th' ultimate message will be that the real threat to America, then and now, is from th' illegal abuse of narcotics?”

Zoyd squinted. “Oh, Hector. . . .”

“I'll show you the figures,” Hector raved on, “even with a 1% penetration we're oll gonna be rich forever off of this, man!”

“About this ‘we,'” Zoyd was wondering, “have you brought Cap'n Vond on board this project yet, you and this Ernie?”

Hector was looking down at his shoes. “We didt'n finalize it.”

“Y'haven't been in touch with him at all, right?”

“Well I don't know who is,
ése
—nobody's returnín calls.”

“I don't believe this, you wantin' to be in the world of entertainment, when all along I had you pegged as a real terrorist workin' for the State? When you said cuttin' and shootin' I didt'n know you were talkin' about film. I thought th' only kind of options you cared about were semi- and full automatic. Why, I'm lookin' at Steven Spielberg, here.”

“Risking a lifelong career in law enforcement,” put in the saintly night manager, who called himself Baba Havabananda, “in the service of the ever-dwindling attention span of an ever more infantilized population. A sorry spectacle.”

“Yah, well you sound like Howard Cosell.”

“So Brock Vond taking over my place, Hector, that's got nothin' to do with your movie scheme, that correct?”

“Unless . . . ,” Hector looking almost bashful.

Zoyd saw it coming. “Unless he's out looking for her too?”

“For,” in a low suave croak, “let us say, motives of his own.”

At which point, finally, in through the doors front and rear of Bodhi Dharma Pizza came the NATO-camouflaged guys and gals of the Tubaldetox goon squad, to bring Hector gently “back to where we can help you,” cajoling him through the crowd, who'd begun to chant again. Doc Deeply, grooming his beard, strode over, high-fiving Baba Havabananda on the way.

“Can't thank you enough, anything we can do—”

“Long as he'll be out of my face for a while.”

“Don't count on it, we're only minimum-security down there. We can keep him under observation, but if he wants to, he can be back on the street inside of a week.”

“I got a contract!” Hector was screaming as they loaded him into the Tubaldetox paddy wagon, which went screeching off just as Isaiah Two Four and his friends came screeching in.

The boy loomed over them, frowning, unfrowning, frowning again as Zoyd and Prairie filled him in and the other Vomitones made dangerous sounds. Finally, “This wedding gig down in the City . . . what if Prairie came with us for a while? Get her out of the area?”

“These are like armed forces, Isaiah, you want that responsibility?”

“I'll protect her,” he whispered, looking around to see who was listening.

Prairie was, and getting annoyed. “What is this? Typical males, you're handin' me back and forth like a side of beef?”

“How about
pork?
” Isaiah, slightly to Zoyd's relief, at least this unwise, now actually trying to poke her playfully in the ribs while she smacked his hand away. Good luck, young fella.

“You already know how to live on the road,” Zoyd said. “Do you think you might be safer if you kept movin'?”

She came into his arms. “Dad, our house. . . .” She wasn't crying, fucked if she'd cry. . . .

“Will you stay over with me tonight? Can Isaiah come get you in the morning?”

Hector was right, she admitted later, she had been ready to go with him and find Frenesi. “I love you, Dad. But it's incomplete.” They were lying in bunk beds in the back of Trent's eccentric camper, listening to the foghorns down the river.

“You're Tubed out worse 'n Hector if you think your mom and me'll ever get back together.”

“You keep saying. But if you were me, wouldn't you do the same?”

He hated questions like that. He wasn't her. She could make him feel so old and tainted. “Maybe what you really want's just to get out of the house.”

“Uh-huh?”

Fair enough. “Well good timing, 'cause it looks like there is no house, this li'l Smurfmobile here's it.”

“Did you know this was gonna happen? Someday? You did, didt'n you.”

Zoyd hrrumphed. “Well—there was supposed to be a deal.”

“When?”

“You were still a baby.”

“Yeah so is that why you never got married again, was that part of your deal, that I was never supposed to have a mom—”

“Whoa, there, Trooper, who was I gonna hook up with, who were all 'ese ladies kickin' in my door all the time? Thapsia? Elvissa? Don't matter? Just so's you can say you have some mom?”

“But all you ever date is this, sorry but rilly B material, in terms of family skills, girls you pick up when they're out on eating binges at the Arctic Circle Drive-In, girls from these weird after-hours clubs whose whole wardrobe is like totally black, girls who inject cough syrup with biker boyfriends named Aahhrrgghh—in fact lots of them girls I see in
school
every day? Know what I think?” She'd rolled out of her lower bunk to stand and look him in the face, level. “Is that, deal or no deal, you must have always loved my mom, so much that if it couldt'n be her, it wouldt'n be anybody.”

No, that hadn't been part of the deal. The clarity of her gaze made him feel fraudulent and lost. About all he could manage was “Wow. You think I really am crazy, don't ya?”

“No, no—” quickly, her head dropping just for the moment, “Dad, that's exactly the way I feel too, that . . . she's the only one for me.” Then shaking back her hair, looking up again, stubborn, sure, out of Frenesi's blue eyes. The moment may have called for him to embrace her, but her remarks, by now familiar, about the role of jailbait in his emotional life warned him that this time he'd better refrain, even now when he most needed some kind of hug himself—only nod instead and try to look competent, call her Trooper, maybe sock her on the shoulder for morale . . . but have to lie there nevertheless, a foot and a half overhead, and let her find and follow her own way to sleep.