THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN

By Penrose
Prologue:

The highest source of the Hudson River is a tiny lake known as “Tear of the Clouds”. At an elevation of more than 4000 feet, this lovely little pool is surrounded by wild and seldom visited mountain country. At the river’s other end lies the largest seaport in the world.
From the purest fresh-rain waters of Lake Tear to the filthy scum of the lower Hudson, the river is a circle. And so it is with people: they arrive in New York harbor, dirty and tired more often than not. Then they fight their way upstream for the rest of their lives, to the northern suburbs of New Jersey, and possibly to retire to the pastoral heavens of Maine or New Hampshire (if not Florida). But let them lose strength, hope, or family ties, and they may fall back... to Patterson, Hackensack, or the bowels of the great city itself.
This then is a story about a river. About how things go up and down, in a big circle. About how so many people can be so wrong about the most basic things.
Our story ends in New York City, but in a very real sense it begins there as well... for it is there, in a small bohemian apartment, that our main character discovers once and for all what he was born to do... or at least, a fairly interesting way to waste the remaining years of his life.

John:
A young boy is fishing at a quiet pond in New Hampshire. His name is John. A duck flies overhead as a brisk breeze sends small clouds skittering across the sky. John has an itch in his left foot, probably because his socks are dirty. He is too lazy to take off his boot to scratch it, so he stamps his foot against a rock. This technique, as you may know, is not very effective. John soon gives up and tries to bear the increasing discomfort. He wonders if serious medical problems can arise from not scratching an itch. It is a very lovely New England afternoon.

Then:
A young man in his early twenties sits in the dust beside what passes for a bus stop here, and on his knee sits a fly. He flicks a pebble with his finger, and the fly chases it, until it hits the ground, then returns to the man’s knee. John is quite fascinated by this behavior.
Yes, it did seem like the fucking bus was taking forever. John had occupied about 45 minutes playing this insect fetch-it game. It was quite weird. The road ahead wound gently down into the California farm country. Clouds moved slowly and unthreateningly in from the nearby ocean, but John’s eye was now turned inland. The ocean held no more interest for him; he had watched it, bathed in it, cursed at it, and threw up on it for the past three years. He saw it now as a protagonist in his life; an irresistible force that kept him from maintaining any sense of discipline for more than a week. It seemed to continuously cry out: “Just let go... and be drawn into the eternal vast darkness.” And so he had been, over and over, until his liver was desiccated and his brain was a foggy day in an Irish Pub.
But now at last the bus rounded the bend, and pulled over between the gas station and the cafe, where a makeshift wooden bus stop had been erected. John boarded without a backwards glance, and sat near the back, away from the windows. He kicked off his hat, and leaned back, wishing for another cigarette, and wishing the bus would leave quickly. When it did leave, there came the first feeling of semi-contentment in quite a while. A kind of blankness came over John’s mind as the bus wound through the lush and fertile farm country - a very welcome blankness after so much inner and outer turmoil.
After a long while, as evening began to settle in, and the once far away desert hills grew closer, John moved to the window seat, and slid his cowboy hat back on. He saw a crow in a scrub oak, and imagined it was laughing. He began to cry silently. It was almost joyful, this river of unfelt emotion that swept over the dry landscape of his mind, and collected in the pools of his brown eyes. The hills became mountains, the mountains again became hills, and now the desert stretched out in the East California night, stretched toward Arizona and the even more desolate spaces of West Texas. But John wasn’t going that far. His destination was Albuquerque. He had spent two years in college there, another year decompressing and confused, and now he was going back.

Father Olsen:
Father Olsen entered the front lobby of the huge hospital, and took the elevator up to the 40th floor. He was right on time for his appointment with Dr. Rheingold. They had become good friends over the years. Father Olsen had a rare blood disease, and he made the trip to N.Y. every 3 months for treatments. Dr. Rheingold was a heart specialist, but also had an extensive background in blood disorders.
Their visits inevitably became long discussions on non-medical matters, and not infrequently they would have dinner together, so as to continue the dialogue in a more hospitable setting. This being no exception, we find them at an Italian eatery downtown near the Village, with a good meal finished and tempted to buy a second bottle of red wine.

FO - It never really occurred to me that America would choose such a bitter road. So many children in jail, dead, hopelessly locked into deadly struggle, and so much evil in their lives.
DR - It’s a changing world, Father. This country, it had what some saw as a golden moment. The industrialists, the companies, they did well after the turn of the century. But for the great majority, it wasn’t until the 40’s, after the depression, and especially after the war. The fifties, and the inevitable sixties, with so much freedom, so many new ideas.
FO - And so much bloodletting. That horrible war, and Nixon, and the riots.
DR - Yes, by the 70’s a recession, and a change in climate. A darkness, come to push back the light.
FO - I should have said that! I think I’m rubbing off on you, Heir Docktore.
DR - It seems that too much freedom is a dangerous thing. But you know, the economy changed as well. The world grew up. Other peoples wanted a slice.
FO - And it seems like, ever since, there’s been a conscious attempt to foster an illusion - that we are still in the 50’s.
DR - An illusion that is lost on a good portion of the poor, and poorer, and soon to be poor.
FO - I see in my parish the results of this changing world. It was bad 20 years ago, but now there is a very deadly form of capitalism, finally a way for the ghetto youth to attain “importance”.
DR - I know Father. I see these “capitalists” hauled in through the emergency rooms, shot full of holes.
FO - In a way, it’s nothing new. The visionary capitalist always faced great danger. The Panama Canal, oil production wars, wars fought to “penetrate” markets. It isn’t pretty, this “free” enterprise.
DR - No, but it is as “natural” as anything else, Father.
FO - The Jews have a saying: “Forever one - forever alone”. Indeed, a man may strive to find new worlds, great profits. But the risk is always that we will forget our commonality, our Universal connectedness.
DR - Quite a mouthful, Father. “Gain the world and lose the soul”. Sounds like those twin spirits of evil you spoke of - materialism and ... what was it? Pride, that’s it.
FO - Ahriman and Lucifer. Lucifer to fill us with a boundless egoism and sense of self-sufficiency. And Ahriman to sever all connection to the Spiritual world. So we become arrogant self-sufficient creatures in a material world. Anything goes.
DR - The only game in town, right?
FO - A mouthful indeed.
DR - I know several doctors who consider themselves deities.
FO - Like the Shaman of old, they wield their secret knowledge as a weapon, to stun and render helpless the layman.
DR - It is human nature to seek such power.
FO - It is human nature to self-destruct as well. And I, due to my chosen profession, must watch the peripheral devastation of this tiered Utopia.
DR - It is no Heaven I see here. The closest thing to God I find is the feeling that passes between people - between Priest and Doctor, between the child and the dying. We are essentially a caring and a feeling species.
FO - That we are, Doctor. And you and I are so alike, I nursing the infirmity of the Spirit, and you the infirmity of the body.
DR - It seems at times that I am making greater progress. There was so much suffering in the past.
FO - Relativity is the key here, my dear doctor. There are many suffering today as well, as you lengthen their stay on this Earth, without necessarily improving their quality of life.
DR - It has indeed become a very corrupt profession, Father. Profit has entered the halls of medicine. But what would you have me do?
FO - I would have you tend the sick, as you do, as our Lord did. You are not responsible for the world you find yourself in, and your part is not a small one.
DR - Nor is yours, Father. I think above all, I admire your ability to dream, to philosophize. That is a luxury in my world. The needs of the flesh are very pressing here. We must work with what we have, from where we are.
FO - And I as well, good doctor. No more, no less.

Outside, there was a swirling of snow... complex patterns between the towering buildings of Wall Street and lower downtown. It was a bitter cold night, people huddled for warmth in every available inn and concierge, bar and club. Some in doorways, over heat grates, in alleys. New York is a Mecca for the homeless, a land’s end. A Tower of Babel and a pit of despair. One can rise no higher, nor sink lower, than within this massive concrete and steel edifice, built so conveniently and fortunately upon such deep and enduring bedrock. It is the melting of the glacial ice, the rising of the Atlantic, that will in the end lay low this greatest of American Cities.
Father Olsen had been with the Parish quite a while now, and he was past fifty. He had grown up poor in a tough neighborhood, and studied religion and psychology at a good Jesuit college. His Father was strict, and his Mother was kind and long suffering. All these experiences served him well in the tough Chicago neighborhood his Parish served. He was neither afraid nor confused by what he saw, only saddened and determined to be of use.
Father Olsen got back in Chicago at 9am, and stopped at his favorite little coffee shop, not far from his old parish in the South Side. It was a divey little joint run by a Greek named Claude. But the food was good, the coffee was hot, and somehow.. it always felt just like Chicago, especially to one who had been away. Chicago, like New York, like any large city, is a collage of sensation - smells, tastes, impressions. And each city has it’s own signature, as it were. Chicago is very rich in sensations, in fact. And like every large city, it spins off many unfortunate folk, slipped through the flimsy safety nets onto the cracked pavement, to be hustled aside by the burly phalanx of Chicago’s finest.
Or to be met more fortunately by Father Olsen, whose flock they indeed are. Often it is a difficult flock to tend. The poor, the diseased, the misshapen - they are not, as one might expect, humbly and politely waiting for aid and good council, to be followed by sincere thanks and a profound personal effort at self-improvement. They can be an ungrateful lot, in fact. This Father Olsen knew well, yet it was never a consideration. He was working for a solar deity named Jesus, and the sun shines on the most unholy of places. And so should Father Olsen.
That afternoon, he had an appointment with a boy named Jeb. Jeb had seen a lot for a twelve year old, but he was far from a lost cause. Father Olsen had nurtured a relationship with him for two years, bringing him around gently, encouraging him. It was like baking bread, a delicate and precise kind of magic. And the Priest knew there were those working on Jeb from the other end as well. Pulling him toward the life of the hopeless warrior, the drug-pawn, the shady character. This was a spiritual war, and the Father went into battle just as avidly as Dr. Rheingold, who, with hands scrubbed, was ready to repair a dis-eased heart.
Father Olsen’s preparations were just as meticulous, but his scrubbing was internal. Whenever Jeb entered his office, he needed a very good argument for choosing a life other than the Ghetto streets, the quick flash roll of twenties, the beloved gangs. Today Jeb was nervous, jittery. He seemed guilt-ridden and afraid.
“What’s wrong Jeb? And don’t lie to me.”
“Nuthin’ Father. I’m just chillin’.. it’s OK.”
“Sumthin’ happened, Jeb. I’m here, if you wanna tell me.”
“I can’t, Father. You know.. it’s bad stuff.”
“You involved, Jeb?”
“No.. it’s OK. I know people, but I’m not in it.”
“Cops after you?”
“I don’t think so. I mean, they always after everybody, but I didn’t do nuthin’”
“Then it’s OK, Jeb. How’s your brother Jimmy?”
“He’s messed up. He smokin’ that crack-pipe. He won’t stop.”
“But you’re not smokin’, right?”
“Nah.. I ain down wi dat shit... whoops, sorry Father.”
“That’s OK, Jeb. I’m glad you’re not, ‘cause it’s real bad for you, body and soul.”
“Word, Father. I know.”
“I wish I could get Jimmy to be brave like you and come in here.”
“Yeah, and I get laughed at for comin’, too. Jimmy, he won’t come down here. He too fucked up... damn!.. sorry Father.”

Father Olsen felt good.. it seemed to be working with Jeb. He prayed that it was working. Jeb walked back to the projects, one hand in his pocket. On his back, a Chicago Bulls jacket. On his feet, almost new 75 dollar Nike high-steppin’ space-age wonders, with technology one would think far beyond the needs of a twelve year old boy in a bad Chicago neighborhood. From around the corner, two older boys shufflin’, one with a hooded sweatshirt.
“Yo, cuz,” says the one with the hood.
Jeb sees them, keeps walkin’.
“Yo, hole up, G. Wanna ask you sumthin’.”
Jeb turns and takes off runnin’. He’s OK until he darts into a blind alley. The older boys catch up to him, and lay right into him hard. Jeb never even fights back.. he just goes down, down, and down... into a dark and painless stupor.

Albuquerque:
The mercury climbed past the 100 mark as the old brown dog crossed the road and walked directly into the barbershop. A man near the entrance turned and spit as the dog passed, almost hitting him. Across the street was an incredibly obnoxious bar named Cherry’s. TVs bleating sports crap from every corner, waitresses that hate their job scowling, or managing an “I’d like to kill you” smile. College kids in every chair, howling about sports and God knows what else. A thoroughly uninspiring place.
The dog wandered out of the barbershop door again, loped about six feet to the curb, and flopped down in the fucking dirt. He looked like he was having a hard time just wagging his tail. Passing cars, which came infrequently thank God, raised a cloud of dust that took ten minutes to settle again. Doggy didn’t mind the dust - just the heat.
John sits in a corner booth at Cherry’s. He noticed now the conversations were also frequently about careers. “Less judging and more feeling”, he muttered to himself. This was a personal goal John had been working on for quite a while - a writer’s discipline as he saw it. He felt refreshed by the long and mostly uneventful trip from California. John lit a cigarette and surveyed this weird bar full of college kids, so exuberant and animated in their pursuits. College is a lot more than an education. Relationships are formed.. sexual encounters become long friendships.. even marriages. A place of beginnings, connections.
John remembered well. It was after all only three years ago, but he also remembered feeling mostly alone and alienated from everything. Now, at 23, he felt much older .. so much older. The year in LA was the main culprit. He had started out in a small town up the coast a ways. A few menial jobs befitting a college dropout, and some amazing weekends in places like Big Sur had undone at least some of the damage school had caused him. The 70’s were over, and the coming decade would be a time of renewed commitment for most – commitment to hard work and the pursuit of status and wealth. But John had at least one thing in common with the “Love Generation” that came before his time: He was completely confused about what to do with his life. He had been a Liberal Arts major, with a minor in business. After two years, it had all felt utterly meaningless, so he dropped out and eventually made his way out to California, like some time-warped Hippy. John, however, was no Hippy.
As those without direction usually do, John eventually fell into the biggest city around, which was in this case LA. “Reality” pushed back at him like a Suma wrestler. It became clear again that he had a life, whether he wanted to or not. And the business of survival took precedence over daydreams. However, there were some interesting and altering experiences as well.

Joel:
A job as a bartender led to many acquaintances, among them one Joseph (a.k.a. Joel) Freedland. Joel came in every night, often alone, but otherwise usually with a woman. John could remember about three different women, in fact. They were all younger than Joel, and all of an interesting ilk. Their clothing seemed anachronous, sometimes gothic, and Joel had an aura of a being who had been around a very long time. He seemed to flow with all the social graces, although he did not appear wealthy. In fact, Joel seemed on the surface a very plain and common sort, but the closer one got the more Joel seemed to open, like fractal geometry.
One night, Joel came in alone and stayed a long time. He sat in a dim-lit booth writing in a notebook; in fact, he was there at closing, and John went over and said hi. They had talked before, ‘tho not of anything important, but this night was different. Joel unceremoniously asked John if he would like to come over and shoot the breeze over a couple of vodkas. John had no place else to go, and without hesitation he agreed. He found Joel quite fascinating.
It was beginning to rain as they approached a row of converted Victorian apartments, topped with domes and spires, colored with stained glass windows. Joel’s condo was flanked by an ornate iron grating. Once inside, John was hit by an overwhelming array of sights and sensations. On the far wall of the living room, bookcases reached to the ceiling, filled with very old and beautiful books. The living room table was a two inch thick slab of round glass held aloft by a carved wooden statue of Pan. A hint of strange incense permeated the room, and a crack in the nearest door revealed in part an even more ornate room, probably a bedroom. Purple hanging drapes, a huge black-canopied bed, a statue of a beautiful naked woman pouring from a white vase into a real pool of water, with fish!
Amid all this gothic wealth, there coexisted a remarkable decadence. Erotic magazines left carelessly open on floor and chair. Cigarette packages everywhere, some crumbled, others not entirely empty. Stacks of books, marked in several places to make certain passages readily available.
John sat on a leather sofa in absolute awe as Joel brought out some cognac and laid out a few lines of coke. He heard Joel say hi to a woman through the partially open bedroom door. John noticed a beautiful painting behind him, and then realized the walls were covered with impressive looking art and objects d’art. He looked closely at a few; they were all signed by Joseph Freedland.
“Just a little exercise I had to do for a magickal group I belonged to. They are of course all characters from the Tarot, loosely interpreted. Good way to learn the cards intimately.”
John recognized at least a few of the cards, and Joel explained others. Above the bathroom door was the “Hanged Man”, and over the front entrance was the “Tower”, portrayed as an oilrig. John visited Joel a few times and they became friends. Joel let John borrow stacks of books, mostly on Occult subjects, and it opened up a lot of new territory. But John also started drinking heavily, spending his bar wages on coke, and winding up at all night parties, or with women he had little feeling for. After a year, he was burned out, and more confused and disillusioned than when he had quit college. He knew it was time to do something, and one weekend he just packed up his meager belongings and split. He took a bus north out of LA, then changed his mind and got off at a little town surrounded by farmlands. Here he bought a ticket to Albuquerque, a cowboy hat, and some food for the trip. Sometimes you have to just let go to find where in hell you want to get to. Once John decided on Albuquerque, it felt right, or destined, or at least necessary.

Father Olsen is close to tears as he enters the Chicago General ER wing. He knows it’s Jeb. The other kids told him soon after it happened. Now Father Olsen is praying silently, for Jeb. The night nurse takes him to the room, and there before him lies a very broken little boy. His head swollen and bandaged, face a terrible mess, teeth missing, a broken arm ... but the truth was far worse. Jeb was comatose, a very bad concussion, and he had bled internally, causing other problems. Yet he lay so peaceful, breathing oxygen quietly through his nose.
Now Father Olsen did cry. As he took Jeb’s little hand, he wept openly. He liked this kid a lot. After a while, Father Olsen left, saying a few words to Jeb’s mother, who sat stoically beside the bed. He walked out into the night, the air cold and the wind blowing. It was late autumn.
Father Olsen walked for a long time, not aware of his direction. He felt a terrible rage trying to surface into his heart, and he watched himself fighting it off. He had never felt it like this before, nor such a strong urge to allow it to take over. He walked aimlessly on, in fact making a large circle, and wound up back in the same neighborhood. As if in a dream, he glanced up and saw he was standing on a corner, diagonally across from a bar he didn’t recognize. He decided to go ahead in, intending to have a shot of whiskey. The black bartender looked a little surprised as the Father sidled up to the dingy wooden bar.
“Shot and a beer,” said Father Olsen. The barkeep complied without a word, and Father Olsen took his drinks over to a wooden table, in the corner, where the light was dim. He downed his shot and sipped the beer, still mostly oblivious to his surroundings. In fact, it was a pretty tough bar - they all were in that neighborhood, and Father Olsen was not a drinking man.
At a nearby table sits a youth about 18, with a hooded sweatshirt. Two guys settin’ with him, all young, one with a mustache and wearin’ a Chicago Bulls jacket. Father Olsen is unaware of them, and he orders another round. The voices of the 3 nearby gangsters are barely audible, so the Father catches only an occasional snatch at first.
“Kicked the little Mutha’s coon-ass.”
“Little fuck shouldna run.”
“Fuckin’ coat’s too small, G.”
“Give it the fuck back then. I’ll wear it.”

A flush begins to rise on the good Father’s face. His muscles tighten and his mind grows alert. He glances over now to the table, and instantly he is aware of everything - Jeb’s jacket, the sneering faces. He rises without thought or intent, walking directly over, staring into the faces of these fallen angels. They meet his gaze, and are soon to become confrontational, but the Father turns and walks out of the bar, just as unexpectedly.
Now as the Father walks through dark and wet streets, his rage turns to anguish again, and the tears come anew. He feels frustration, his faith severely shaken. At the window in his modest apartment near the parish, Father Olsen prays long into the night. Prays for Jeb, for the gangster kids, and all the others, some aggressive, some victimized, yet all victims of the same injustice, the same game. And he prays for forgiveness for what he knows was a strong urge to forget all his beliefs, and kill all three of those kids, with his bare hands.
In the morning, the sun shone down on Chicago, and the light in Father Olsen was renewed as well. He got a call from the hospital, and little Jeb was improved a bit, though still in a coma. He had moved a little, and his mom said she saw him smile once, though noone else saw it. The Father decided to wait until later to visit Jeb, since there was quite a crowd there apparently. Jeb was liked by many, he was a good kid.
He walked past the playground, where so many adolescent connections were made, both good and bad. Near where Jeb was beaten. Today, a large group playing basketball. Father Olsen strolled past, hands in pockets. There were friends of Jeb in the group, but noone spoke to the Father. Such a closed, tight, paranoid social structure, he thought. All expression carefully tempered, controlled. Like a police state... well?
Father Olsen had one vice, it’s true. A serious one though, for a priest. He liked the horse races, and he would have taken easily to gambling, had he given himself the license. But his faith would not allow him that far into hell, so he watched, once a month, maybe twice. And he did bet, in his mind at least, and he was pretty damned good at it too.

Dr Rheingold (in thoughts):
My father was a lonely man, as I too am lonely, have always been lonely. This man who waded through his insanity and built a life in New Jersey. This man whose eyes I looked into, and for the first time saw the kind of world I had to live in. To look across the short distance into the eyes of the symbol of all futures, and to wish so very hard for some word of truth to make sense of it all, and instead to hear as always the obvious, the expected. To feel my soul condemned to damnation by the petty insistence of one man, that all truth doth lie in the obvious, in the given, in the familiar.
My mother... she grew fat as her dreams grew thin. She too looked into the eyes of this talented extraordinary man for some kind of salvation, and then grew cynical with time as she felt the bitter sting of his mental and verbal abuse. My mother was a singer, though not professionally. In fact, she was a housewife by trade.
So I have looked hard indeed for salvation from my nuclear family, as it were. Symbols of strength, womanhood, an ethical base, etc.
There was a hurricane in New Jersey, and I and Glenn C blew ourselves about the town. It was glorious, that feeling of power and chaos. I could barely stand upright. Trees down all over, power and glory.
For some, like Glenn, life was much more real and immediate than for me. No rich daddy and promises of a bright and dignified future. I have no idea what he was up against, but he burned hot and fast, and died at the age of about 35. Lung cancer. My childhood friend grew up to be a chain-smoking chimney sweep! In New Jersey of all places. And the first thing I ever smoked was a dried bean pod from a tree in his yard!
In winter, we played ice hockey on Jay G's lake. Jay was a rich little kid with a mansion with a large pond. I remember wonderful Sandy B, bringing us hot chocolate and setting all day by the lake in devoted fashion. Wonder what her real motivation was? This was of course in the days when sex was a dirty magazine in the woods, so I'll never know what dear Sandy was up to, or whether she got what she really wanted.
When we fought the sea battle on the monk's pond on the way to New York State, we were all herded up to the mission or whatever it was, at the top of the hill overlooking the Hudson River. What a wonderful place it was. I've always liked retreats, monasteries, and the like. It's so exciting being a kid; while the priest was threatening and insulting us, I was probably interested in the place itself, in the view of the Hudson, other details. There just isn't any concern for such worldly things as punishment, unless I guess if you have parents that really whale on you. But then you learn to not care in another fashion, like Jeff K and Johny C.
At any rate, Dr. Rheingold had left his hoodlum inclinations at the door of Boston University, where he studied medicine. Now he had racked up nearly 20 years at a major hospital, a renowned surgeon, with many journal articles and two books to his credit.

Jeb began speaking again the second week of December. He cried about something, incoherently. Then he asked for Father Olsen, as his Mom held his hand and stroked his head. Father Olsen came by the following day, and discovered that although Jeb could speak, it was with difficulty and a slurring of his words. Also, his face twitched a lot, especially his right eye. As they shared some rather small talk, the Father felt a great wave of sorrow, realizing the probability that Jeb had permanent brain damage. It was also visible in the face of Jeb’s mother. Well, thought the Father, he’s alive and much better.

Dr. Rheingold wept as well when he heard that his son had gotten remarried. He couldn’t explain the sadness; the marriage was probably a good thing. Then again, it reminded him of his own wife, who had died three years ago from a stroke. It had been her second one, and it left him hollow and angry at himself, for letting it happen. His home in New Jersey, with the garage and the dog and the morning papers, was gone now. He lived in an expensive condominium in Manhattan’s rich Upper East Side. He was a very successful, and very lonely man, with many thoughts, if not misgivings, about his life. Father Olsen had only to rekindle his own faith from time to time. Dr. Rheingold had no faith, other than a pragmatic faith in his own skills. He had saved many patients, and he had lost quite a few as well. He saw no reason to include the supernatural in his worldview. But this also somehow left him living in a very bleak world, with only humans to give it any meaning. And humans were far from being Gods.
The family ties were mostly gone now; the money and a bit of fame remained, but an emptiness had come to join him, an emptiness that had probably always been there, waiting for the right time to announce itself. As the Doctor looked out across the East River, he felt alone, and New York is a bad place to feel alone.

Joan:
“Come back later – come back to it later”. She kept telling this to her mind, like hammering in a nail. Well, it seemed important, damn it! She had never been in a situation like this, and she had never had this particular thought. The swimmers were all stark naked when she got to the lake with John. She had heard about it, but the reality could only be unexpected. So the thought that she kept telling herself to remember was: “Why did John bring me here?” A woman instinctively knows when a situation is rife with meaning. She had not seen John in almost six years – since high school. She had a crush on him then, and probably she loved him now.
As for John, he had no idea why he was bringing Joan to Skylark Lake. He had not planned on running into her, and he had no idea that kids were still swimming nude up there. It was after all almost the Eighties. Kids don’t change much, though, and it was still a beautiful place. Less than 10 miles outside Albuquerque, and yet not easy to get to. The roads were still unpaved, and it was still likely for a stranger to get very lost and wind up at Bill’s Salvage Yard, or worse.
But John knew the way blindfolded, and if he had thought about it, he would have remembered that way back in high school he had wanted to ask Joan out, but shyness prevented him. Being a teenager really sucks, yet everyone wants to get back there once it’s gone. And now here was Joan, living and working in Albuquerque. All the way from John’s hometown in New Hampshire. A chance meeting at a local pub, and all the high school memories flooded back, some good, some not so.
The moon shone down in it’s almost fullness on Skylark Lake, reflecting the whiteness of any arm, leg, etc. that happened to poke out from under a blanket.
“Goin’ down to Lose-ianna, baby behind the sun.” The legendary Paul Butterfield Blues Band blared out to the night. One stark naked couple was actually dancing in front of their car, the headlights turned bright on their undulating bodies. It was warm except when the wind blew, but noone cared.
John waited patiently in the front seat beside Joan. Neither one of them was in much of a hurry, since neither knew quite what they were doing there. I mean, were they really gonna just shuck their clothes and jump in the lake together? It was unlikely. As John watched the oddly prehistoric scene before him, memories came flooding in, and he forgot for a moment that Joan was even there.

Father Olsen sits in the park with his scarf wrapped tight against the chill November air. He has on a wool cap as well, and yet it is not coldness of the flesh that bothers him, as he smokes his pipe and watches the smoke rise against the Chicago skyline. He is thinking rather about Jeb, who walks about but will never be the same. Jeb, who was cheerful, and filled with optimism. One of the few who was salvageable.
Mysterious are the ways of God, he thought.
“And wily, those of the devil”, he muttered.
He rose and paced across the park, unable to sit still. The park was noisy and full of bundled children, on a Saturday afternoon. He crossed the grassy area, and without thinking walked onto the asphalt fence-enclosed basketball courts adjoining the park. When he realized he was outside the park, Father Olsen looked up, and saw a half dozen youths playing ball in front of him. Two of this group were among the perpetrators of Jeb’s injustice, while the third sat hunched against the iron fence, his hood up, smoking a cigarette.
Father Olsen walked to within a dozen feet of the court, and stood there watching numbly. He knew the three boys on sight now. They had been arrested, held, questioned, and then released. They all had priors and rap sheets, but there had been no witnesses to the beating, and not much evidence. Actually, there was probably lots of evidence, but Jeb’s poverty stricken relatives were not about to hire Perry Mason, or Johnny Cochran, or even Marsha Clark.
So there they play, wild and free. Near the playground where the little ones wait their turns to be Doctors (doubtful) or Bangers (good chance). One of the three strolled over near the Father and tipped his cap.
“Yo, Father.. what’s sup?”
Father Olsen stared at him, as at a plant that might need watering.
“Sup? S’matter wid you?”
No response.
“Have a nice day,” the boy said glumly as he shuffled off.
Something cold had passed between them. Father Olsen walked on as well, and as with every encounter with these haunted youth, he felt cold tears forming in his eyes. As darkness moved in on the city, and Father Olsen put a few blocks between himself, and the objects of this rare test of his faith, his mind cleared a bit. For the first time, he began to analyze the murderous impulses he had been indulging in of late.
“I begin to understand,” he said out loud. “It breeds it’s own kind, this rage, this frustration. It fuels itself in whatever direction is immediate, close at hand. And it grows stronger, and goes on and on.” And soon, Father Olsen began to feel his own anger dissipating. And as he considered the situation more holistically, his pain lessened as well. The extreme indifference of these kids was just a major symptom of the whole soul-killing apparatus going on throughout the entire system. To add more hate to it was to kill what little hope remained. Jeb was indeed a tragedy, but what could and should be the response of a Godly man? It was time to revisit some philosophical territory, but he had some new scenery to add and reflect on.
Father Olsen found himself wishing it were time to visit Dr. Rheingold, but it was only late fall, and nearly two months before their next appointment. The Father sat before a window in his bedroom. It was windy, and beginning to snow. He thought for a while, then took a writing tablet from his desk, and began to write. He would pray later, but only just before sleeping.

In fact, Dr. Rheingold was on his way to visit an Aunt in New York State. She lived in a storybook cottage with her brother. They were both getting older, but they kept some animals and a large garden. A screened porch looked out on a quiet fenced yard with two huge old oak trees. His Aunt made the finest pies and delicious teas, but what made it always special was her ability to listen, and her non-judgmental advice and consolation. He had been visiting her since he was a boy, often alone. This time she made coffee, and they ate some homemade cookies. As usual, the conversation started from the trivial and moved deeper.
“You miss her don’t you?” (It wasn’t a question).
“All the time,” said DR, sipping his coffee.
“Still blaming yourself?” she asked for real.
“I guess so. I’m a Doctor, and she was my wife.”
“But she wasn’t your patient, thank God. Everything was done that could be done – you said that many times.”
“I know, Aunt Helen. I do miss her.”
“I read a story once about a farmer who’s wife died of cancer, and left him so very much alone. At night, when he slept, she would come to him in his dreams, and they would sit together on the front porch, as in life, without talking, and very much in love. She’ll always be with you, Jim.”

Albuquerque Post Office:
Near the Post Office, a strange smell could be experienced just by walking past the back door. Something was definitely going on, but who would have expected a slap and bones Korean poker game. Wang Chung, as we’ll call him, had been waiting all afternoon for this weekly event – Friday afternoon, one hour to closing. He and Shim Bob and Whack Ho would work their Korean asses off all day Friday so’s they could skip back into the coat room at about 4 PM. It was all incredibly illegal, but the supervisor knew about it, and he adhered to the philosophy: “If they do good work, let ‘em have some fun.” He also hated the government with a passion, and was sometimes willing to put his own ass on the line to help someone else fuck with the rules a bit.
Wang sat back and watched intently, having dropped out of the current hand with the bet at 150.00. He smoked a cheap fat Cuban cigar, another fragrant (NPI) violation of Federal Statutes. He was up about 300.00 already, and so was in no big hurry. In fact, he was pretty much stalling, waiting for five-o-clock to roll around so he could walk home smiling. He had even folded with a pretty good hand, but why be foolish? Wang sometimes made more on these one-hour poker games than he made all week sorting mail, and this was one of those times, or so it seemed.
Up front, a very remarkable event was just beginning to occur. Number 17 was patiently awaiting his turn when suddenly the man in front of him pitched forward onto the floor making horrible gurgling noises. He rapidly turned bright pink, and then a grayish-green. John stood dumbfounded as the man died right in front of him. He had no idea what to do, and three people were already trying to squeeze and pound life back into the poor fellow, who looked about fifty and was quite fat.
John had no idea a person could die that fast. He went outside and sat on the steps, having forgotten why he had even been standing in line for so long. Soon came the ambulance, and three cop cars, but the cops circled to the back of the building. When they left, the cars were full to the brim with Koreans. The ambulance turned left, the cops right. John would never know that one of the largest illegal Post Office gambling rings in history had just been broken up. Fact is, when you’ve just watched a man die out of the blue (NPI) right in front of you, it’s tough getting excited about 7 or 8 Koreans leaving out the back door into the waiting arms of Albuquerque’s finest! John was thinking: “This is going to be a very strange day.”

Father Olsen woke to a bright November morning, feeling once again the advocate of Christianity. He felt somehow washed clean, and knew that should the need arise, he would minister to the Devil himself. Well, he thought, this calls for an old fashioned bagel and maybe a double cappuccino. He hopped on the bus and headed downtown, to the little bagel nook run by an old Jewish family. It sat nestled on a quaint corner of the Jewish neighborhood that bordered the financial district. They were always glad to see him, Catholic though he was, and the Mrs. and he beamed at each other on sight. He picked a table by the window and settled in. It was a cold crisp lovely day in old Chicago.

Somehow John and Joan had eventually wound up consummating a process that had begun almost ten years earlier, way back in Jr. High, when John had succeeded only at what could be called: the feeble grope, and now BAM, like gangbusters. They never actually did much at the lake the previous night, but it got the ball rolling (NPI), so to speak. And the morning after John woke with a sense of completion, followed by a state of at least semi-contentment that lasted right up until these last fucking two hours (at the Post Office). Now he felt quite stressed, and decided to visit yet another of his old haunts: “The Pub” - that old college hangout that had taken half his education and a fair piece of his mind, plus a large chunk of money. John walked the ten or twelve blocks to the bar, and as he crossed the main Avenue, he felt an incredibly familiar sensation, like he had never left Albuquerque, like if he looked under his arm he might find a Geometry book.
John downed his first beer, and savored the second. By about halfway through the third, he had pretty much forgotten the traumatic events of the now distant afternoon, and was settled into a foggy stream-of-consciousness. Just like old times. And as if on queue, in came another blast from the past.

Matt:
Large he was, large and Irish, maybe a bit Scottish as well. With one front tooth cracked, and another missing. A man who looked like he was born to be either walking in or out of a pub, and who would welcome a fight as readily as a sexual encounter. His hair short and scraggly, his leather jacket tight about his big shoulders and arms. Big waist too, but one that could take a punch. John looked up from his beer and right into the approaching bulk of Matt Gowin. Matt looked back at him, but it took a long minute to register.
“Oh, my heavens,” says Matt, and soon John is hit with a slap on the back that emptied his mouth of beer in a projected spray, but it was no good being offended by Matt because:
a.) He usually didn’t mean anything by whatever he did to you, and –
b.) There wouldn’t be much you could do about it if he did mean it.

Anyway, John was glad to see Matt. Matt was like a storm that came along when things were particularly horrid, and by his very nature often worked miracles, like making it impossible for someone to collect on an overdue bill, or otherwise harass you. And if you had love trouble, Matt would take care of that by refusing to allow you to wallow in it. He was that rare kind of individual, so simply enthusiastic about life, good or bad, that he carried all along on this path. And John at that moment welcomed a change in direction, as he had none. He had arrived from nowhere, and had no destination. He hoped all that would change in time. It would certainly be a long time in coming. For now, he had scrambled the cards and broken free. That was actually a lot. Back in LA, he had felt like a man in a poker game, down to his last nickel, and surrounded by grinning faces hunched over piles of money, a lot of it his.
Indeed, John had gotten out of LA in good time, but he was as confused now as he had been in his teenage years. Fortunately, and thanks to Matt, he would be forgetting his problems soon, at least for a few days.

Martha:
In Greenwich Village, NY, a woman named Martha West sips an Espresso in a café, and waits for a boy named Tim. She met Tim at the record store where she works, over near Canal St. The noises and smells and tastes of NY can fill the palate of almost anyone (even John Lennon). You are never outside in NY, you’re always in the middle of something.
Tim didn’t show, and Martha got bored. She wasn’t about to have her day off spoiled by a flaky boyfriend, if that’s what he was. She headed out down Bleeker St., to her favorite little bar. There she ordered a Scotch, and whipped out her Tarot deck, as New York began to feel more like the big city she loved. The electricity began to build, and she saw more intuitively into the eyes of men who caught her glance. A look can be a novel, as only a woman knows. She laid the cards out in a Celtic cross pattern (a cross and four cards beside) and waited for action. This was actually her means of additional income, and this particular bar indulged her. As she looked at the ten card layout, she felt both apprehension and excitement, for the cards indicated something weird was about to happen. (the death card, then the tower, three cards that didn’t interest her, and then the hanged man (transformation) – never before had these three cards appeared in the same reading.

Tristane:
A stranger animal you will never see. Down the main street of Albuquerque comes a-walkin’ a long-haired swishy-tailed beauty. Jet black hair to her waist, she had. Purse a-swingin’ like she can’t wait to swipe somebody with it. Into The Pub she slams, swingin’ the door wide. Straight across the room she flies, right into Matt Gowin’s face. Purse, fist and foot all strike for him at once, but though Matt is large, he is also quick. In half a tick, she lay across his lap, and in another, they were necking furiously.
Such is Matt: always relaxed, and ready for life’s onslaughts, be they beneficial or destructive. A constant source of shame to the general populace, trying to gently die in their little nooks and crannies; a man alive in a cautious world. Events moved forward as John, Matt, Tristane, and her friend Marsha wandered the streets and bars in and around Albuquerque, made it up to Skylark Lake (almost driving the car into it), and finally settling in at Tristane’s trailer, where Matt had been staying for a while. They partied for the next two days, hardly sleeping.

The morning of the third day:
John could still see the lights of town several miles away as dawn approached. Matt had finally passed out, and so had Tristane. Marsha had gone home. A small mouse darted out from under the trailer and across the dirt road. John flicked a small pebble at it, missed, toked on his cigarette, pulled on his cap – quite a display ‘tho noone saw. He remembered his little pet fly at the beginning of the journey, and it seemed like a very long time ago.
And something stirred from a quiet place inside John: not just a memory, feeling or thought – more an impression, a place, a symptom of a very deep disorder – a longing, but for no known person or thing. He experienced this “sensation” in a semi-detached manner. For a time, he was unaware of himself – of the beating of his own heart. John was having a vision that concerned a woman: in New York!
The mouse peeked out at John’s foot, possibly wondering if it was edible. John stared back at it, unconsciously.

Stumpy and Moe:
The midday sun bakes down upon the Arizona community, as the wind dies to a still, and the fiery desert reaches out it’s fingers and draws beads of sweat from the quiet parishioners of Saint John’s Episcopal Church. If half these folks knew what was going on just a few miles away in broad daylight, they would cease their frantic fanning and rush to the nearest radio. In fact, one of the great crime dramas in Arizona history had at this moment begun. They will soon find their TV screens filled for the next two weeks with all the lurid details of this rare series of events.
Now Stumpy was a Gentleman criminal. He wore fine clothes and carried a brass-handled cane. His interests included riding, baking and gunsmithing, the last of which did indeed come in handy. Beneath his elegant exterior and fine mannerisms, however, lurked the soul of a flim-flam man, a circus barker, a con. He had avoided prison twenty times now by sheer luck, but had also spent a few not-so-lucky years under the care of the Alabama correctional system, and this had put an edge to his almost effeminate demeanor, which used to catch many a potential victim off guard. This hard edge made some of his older con games a tick more difficult.
When the nice old couple entered the diner, Moe elbowed “Mr. Thompson” (nobody called him Stumpy except Moe, and never in public) and nodded in the direction of the door. Stumpy casually scanned the new arrivals, and his wizened brain immediately said, “marks”, but he kept his seat and nursed his coffee as the chosen pair settled into a nearby booth. The diner was pleasantly air-conditioned, and the view of the desert beyond the windows was rather pleasant without the baking outside heat.
And so, an hour or so of pleasantry and calm continued at Buck’s Diner, right off the Interstate highway not far from Willcox, Arizona.
Eighty miles east, a state trooper rushes to the nearest town, his radio disabled and a non-lethal but quite painful shoulder wound leaking blood onto the floor of the patrol car. He was very glad to be alive, and oh so anxious to get to a phone so as to report his circumstances. His nearly fatal encounter had begun just outside of Lordsburg, New Mexico, where he had stopped to check out a car parked illegally on the shoulder of the highway. As he approached the black car with his flashlight beaming, he saw a man apparently sleeping in the front seat. He tapped with his light on the glass, but the man didn’t wake up. He tried the door, which he found locked, and was deciding whether to break the window when he heard the words: “say brother”, and a loud bang, and simultaneously felt his shoulder explode. The shot blew him to the front of the car and onto his back, and the next few minutes were pretty hazy. But he remembered, as in a dream, a voice saying: “Stumpy – we gotta nail this guy – he saw you.” Then: “It’s OK – it’s dark – let’s go – it’s OK.” Then he heard the car start, and soon the headlights blinded him, for just an instant. Then total darkness – no – it seemed that way for a minute, but his eyes were just fucked up from the headlights. As he lay there on the hard road surface in an absolutely amazing amount of pain, he saw a light appear before him, at eye-level .. growing brighter .. brighter … now it was a little bright light in a larger circle. It grew very bright. It was Sergeant Tom Elliot’s flashlight.

On the road:
The Moon was just barely over the hill outside Albuquerque, and John had been walking all night. It was chilly, and many cars had passed, but John felt no inclination to hitch a ride. This was at least partly because he had no idea where he was going. John hadn’t seen anything past Albuquerque. The three day debauchery with Matt and the ladies had cleared his head, hopefully for a long time, of the swampy complications he had fallen into in LA. At any rate, John now walked unheedingly down the road, along the highway, apparently walking to Texas.
Anyone who’s hitchhiked a lot knows the feeling. Eventually you’ll have to stick your thumb out; you can’t walk forever – but sometimes you just don’t wanna talk to anyone, and the road is yours, you can do what you want – long as your feet hold out, and the cigarettes. So when the sun unzipped itself, and shone forth upon the desert, John was still walking, although he stopped more often to rest. He had considered trying to sleep in an old shed near the road, but John was terrified of spiders, and this was desert! Waking up with a face full of tarantula would probably put him in a mental ward.
The sun was up, but it was still cold. The sky was a pleasant, kind of pastel color, with little clouds drifting slowly across the highway. John sat on a rock, having finally tired of walking, and was again remembering his pet fly back in California. He was changing again. He had done “what the doctor ordered” – run like hell and grab the wind, but now the seductive structure of his life began to creep back in, and John let it. He began walking and thinking again, but when the big wheel of an old Chevy pulled along side, he stopped and looked up.
“Hey – you need a ride?” said a gruff voice. John realized that was exactly what he needed. He threw his stuff over the headrest into the back seat and slid into the plush overstuffed cushions. It was a restored model, early sixties, and the motor sounded very healthy. As they purred along down the Interstate toward Texas, John stole a look at the driver. He was about thirty, with longish hair and large features. He had on a Hawaiian shirt and dark glasses. The radio blared out some Beach Boys’ tune – it’s amazing how vintage cars often seem to play music from their own era, like in “Christine”.
“Still a long way to Texas,” said the driver.
“Where you headed?” – John
“Houston ... you?”
“East ... NY, I guess.”
“Not sure, huh?”
“Yeah, NY … name’s John.”
“Barney … smeecha.”
“Nice car.”
“Thanks … cost a bundle to fix up … runs good though.”
“Yeah … sounds healthy … ’61, ain’t she?”
“’60 … has a few ’61 parts though.”

And like so many similar conversations, this one soon lapsed into silence. In fact, John soon fell asleep, which implied that a level of trust had been created by the smallest of talk – such is the power of language (also weariness and necessity). After a few hours, he was awakened by the radio.
“Sorry to wake you,” said the driver. “I was trying to find some quiet music to keep me awake, and I ran across this news channel. There’s some wacky stuff going on back in Arizona.”
John listened half-awake to something about an amazing crime spree going on, but then he drifted off into sleep again, which he sorely needed. Barney turned the radio to a quieter station after a bit, and sank back into the long stretch of highway up ahead.

Stumpy Thompson and sidekick Moe were barreling down the interstate toward New Mexico in a car that was definitely not their own, and the short order cook at Buck’s Diner had just discovered poor old Mr. Dallas in the rest room with his head bashed in. By the time the state police got there, Stumpy had the old Ford 35 miles East. He had even taken the old bird’s cigarettes. Moe wanted a beer, but there would be no stopping – maybe ever again. They had already snuffed two civilians and possibly a cop, so it was very likely there was active pursuit going on.
And there was. Arizona Highway Patrol was all over the map already, having been tipped by California, where the first fatality had occurred. Actually, Stumpy had run the first guy over trying to get away, after stealing a car, and robbing a gas station. So the California cops didn’t really know what they were up against, and Arizona hadn’t collated enough info to know much either. However, they knew enough now to radio New Mexico, and soon the border would be covered, at least somewhat.
Stumpy wasn’t all that concerned. His was a calm, unruffled disposition, unlike Moe, who could get pretty nervous at times. Moe hated jail, and when things got sticky, Moe got nervous, and when he got nervous, he became stupid and impulsive, and usually violent. Stumpy would sometimes have to use a lot of persuasion to rein Moe in, but he liked him – they had been together for a couple years, ever since the days at the Alabama Penitentiary, and he indulged Moe more than he would have anyone else. Besides, Stumpy was pretty damned nuts himself, just a different mode of behavior.
Arizona Highway Patrol vehicle #42 zoomed out of Buck’s Diner, lights a flashin’, siren a blowin’, and peelin’ rubber all the way onto the highway. After a few miles, however, sheriff Gary Larsen realized he would be on this chase a while, so he turned everything off, and settled down to a cool 95 mph. Over the radio, a jigsaw puzzle of facts began to emerge, and Gary began to realize even more that he was chasing some mighty bad dudes. And they had shot a cop already, so no taboos there, either.
And so, in zigzag fashion, Stumpy and Moe have traced a path of unpleasantry across the deserty Southwest. First, Stumpy runs down an old geezer in California, then they zoom out to New Mexico, kill or at least wound a policeman, then head back to Arizona in a panic (mostly Moe). Finally, the car fucks up, and they conk an old fool in Buck’s Diner, taking his keys and cigarettes, and heading east again! Well, noone said Stumpy was a genius, just a Gentleman, and he had Moe to deal with. Now we have Stumpy and Moe racing back toward New Mexico again, officer Gary Larsen in pursuit maybe 50 miles behind, and Sergeant Tom Elliot racing east from about fifty miles inside New Mexico, to get help.
A short while later, Tom was bandaged up and headed toward the border again, having insisted upon joining the dozen or so officers who would be on watch for the outlaws. His shoulder was throbbing, but not too bad really. His wife Jane was not at all happy about him going, but Tom wanted these guys bad, and here they were supposedly headed right into his arms.
So now we are on the verge of a nexus of events, where it is obvious that some kind of conclusion is in the works. Stumpy was going about 95 miles per hour, but he was enjoying some country music on the radio while Moe bitched and moaned about how “fucked” they were. Stumpy had a sense of destiny that transcended the immediate, wherein Moe was so tightly locked. Some genetic ancestral pattern at work, no doubt. Stumpy gazed ahead with an eye toward caution, but a demeanor of fatalism, and yes … fascination. Like poker, you know? You concentrate and focus until it comes to the wire, then at some point you must accept your hand, and the resulting win or loss. A gunslinger did the same – or a Samurai. Stumpy knew he was playing this hand as well as he had ever played, and so he was at peace.

John too was at peace, as he and Barney entered the Texas panhandle in late afternoon with yet another surfing tune finding it’s way onto the radio. He and Barney didn’t talk much, but they were hitting it off well enough. On the radio news came more pieces of the story of two fugitives racing across Arizona, and a huge manhunt in progress. Two known dead, a cop wounded. Boy, thought John, they’re gonna nail those two alright.
John loved the desert … the open space, for the mind to stretch out … as far as you liked.

At Ziggie’s lounge, Martha is sitting out on the patio, impressing two men with her “arcane” knowledge. The men were in their forties, and had a Mideastern appearance. The cards indicated two men, a lot of money, and a transformational experience of some kind. The Queen of Spades was at the center, which was Martha’s representation of herself. She had had a few drinks, and her sense of caution was definitely slipping. So when a black limo pulled up along side the curb, and both of her “customers” grabbed her arms, she was pulled out of her seat and into the car before she could let out much of a yell. She was thrown into the spacious, plush interior of the limo, and told to shut up in no uncertain tone.
Back at Ziggie’s, there was one card that had not been turned over yet. It was the Fool.

Stumpy was getting mighty hungry, and thirsty. The dry desert air filled his throat. After arguing about it with nervous old Moe, he decided to pull into a little whistle-stop town off the highway, having noticed a 7-11 billboard ad. The town was so small and so open, Stumpy figured he’d see a cop coming a mile off. They pulled into the 7/11 and Moe slumped down in the seat while Stumpy went in. What Stumpy didn’t know was that the manager had the TV on, and he had noticed their blue Ford pull in, New Mexico plate # BV749. In fact, he was on the phone as Stumpy waltzed in, which aroused immediate suspicion. He hurriedly hangs up and tries to look innocent, but Stumpy is already giving him a hard look. The TV is still on, and Stumpy scrambles around snatching a couple of sandwiches, some coffee, and a few candy bars. He plops down some cash, and then sticks a gun right in the kid’s face. A total contradiction really, but Stumpy had decided to lock the kid in the restroom, just in case. The kid however panics and takes off running, so Stumpy shoots him in the back. If this isn’t messy enough, in walks a burly trucker, who gets shot right in the face. Stumpy’s so worked up now he almost shoots a dog on the way back to the car, and Moe is absolutely bananas. I’ll spare you his crazed dialogue, and soon the Ford spins out of the now gore-strewn 7/11 onto the Interstate.
Twenty five miles now to the New Mexico border, with the tally now 3 dead, one dying, and one wounded and very pissed cop! Twenty five is the magic number now – twenty five miles ahead of Sheriff Gary Larsen, and twenty five miles from New Mexico, where Sergeant Tom Elliot waits at the border. Stumpy knew he was pushing way past his reservoir of luck. He had injured or killed people before, but this was all happening in a sequence that he knew would put him and Moe very high up on the Public Enemies list. But poker is poker, and just because the stakes are high doesn’t mean you crap out on yourself. Stumpy learned this during his days as a gambler, both on the Mississippi River, and down in Vegas, and this was also where he got his “Gentleman” manners, and his icy coolness. He was showing the latter lately, but certainly not the former.
As they approached the border, therefore, Stumpy was grim-faced and resolute, while Moe had settled into a quiet hysteria. Sheriff Gary had caught up to within ten miles, ears glued to the radio, and he was feeling itchy. He could smell somethin’ comin’ up ahead, and he nudged the needle a bit past 100. As he crested a small hill, he could see almost all the way into New Mexico, and possibly that small speck in the distance was the car he was chasing.

Martha found herself spirited away to the swank apartment district of Manhattan’s east side. The limo disappeared into the underground parking garage. Her occasional protestations were ignored as she was roughly herded into a service elevator and zipped up to the penthouse level. Into a very large and swank suite they shoved and dragged her. There was a large room with an oak table, around which were at least a dozen chairs. Above it was a beautiful crystal chandelier. The walls were black with ornate gold trim – Martha wondered how they got away with that in an apartment. On the table was a large globe, and nothing else. Martha was whisked through two more rooms and into a very plush bedroom. As soon as she was pushed inside, the door was locked behind her, and she was left there staring at a huge four-posted canopied bed, feeling a lot more sober, and a lot more scared.

Not that far away, Dr. Rheingold fantasizes a large fat Cuban cigar into his mouth as he looks out his high East Side apartment window at the impossible New York night. It frustrates him at times that his view from home is eastwards, whereas the Hospital affords him such a stunning view of New Jersey. He can’t see his town of birth from the Hospital, but he can clearly make out the highways and the sleepy suburban communities that eventually morph into his own former borough. The little stage that he acted his pain-filled youth upon.
“All gone now – everything,” he says aloud, as he gazes across the East River toward the vast lonely Atlantic Ocean. You can’t see the ocean from New York, but you know it’s there, and sometimes you can feel it… and its presence affects everything. Yet New York is such an enclosed microcosmic world that most New Yorkers are only aware of it when they go to the beach. To see the vast ocean superimposed next to the countless little everyday dramas in this giant city – somehow the perspective would be profoundly altered. But the dramas play out, while the ocean is ignored and invisible.
Dr. Rheingold is very aware of the Atlantic tonight, and it pulls on his heart as the tides pull the sandy beaches… out, out, away from the city, into the cold ocean night.

Stumpy was laying behind a tree, out in a field, surrounded by more than a dozen cops, local as well as State. Every one of them had a bead on him, yet he was quite calm. Maybe because the anticipation was over, or just because that was his nature. At any rate, Moe was dead, very dead. They got him before Stumpy even pulled of the road – got him right through the head – never said a word. Stumpy ditched the car, and ran crazy for the tree he was now behind. Well, now here he was, and noone was going anywhere. The cops were in no great hurry – they had him. They knew it, and he knew it. They would wait for the sharpshooters and tear gas, and maybe even a helicopter.
Stumpy had no thoughts of surrender, however. He had a good automatic rifle and a both pockets full of ammo – that much he had managed. So everyone settled down into a tense but quiet state of siege. Stumpy took out a little notepad and pulled a pen out of his breast pocket. He began to write:
“I got a hankerin’ to stay on this mighty Mississippi River, to stay here forever. To drift along under the Spanish moss, near the Louisiana shore, the cabin shacks on stilts visible in the distance. The moon full and shinin’ down on the deep muddy water, dancin’ lights on the ripplin’ waves.”
There was no place in America like this mighty river. Twain knew, John Hartford knew, John Fahey knew, and Stumpy knew. This river, that split the great USA in half, an unfair uneven half, with most of the land to the West, but the best land to the East. Maybe it was fair, after all.

John had one more good nap in Texas, before Barney let him off near Wichita Falls. Barney would then be heading south, leaving John to decide if New York City was really his destination, or at least a general direction. John dreamed himself right into an imaginary story of the old west. As he slowly awoke, he feigned sleep and took conscious control of the story line. It seemed the radio news clips had started something in John’s imagination, yet he seemed to be breaking in on a story nearer to the end than the beginning. In his dream, a powerful storm shook the Northeastern Texas landscape, as a lone rider rode furiously toward or away from something.
He dreams:
Hank pushed on through the Texas night, through the rain, the lightning, the cold wind. But by now, though tired, he was also drunk, having drunk all the booze he had scarfed from the train. He had also not eaten in a long time (“whatcha gonna do – eat beans inna rain?”).
The night was changing now, taking on a very different bent. All sorts of strange lights, shadows in the flashes of lightning, silence but for the rain. (John drifts in and out of sleep – he merges with Hank in his subconscious, until they become as one).
Hank feels like he is in a tiny little world, alone, closed in. And it begins to feel like a different world, a subtle shift from the familiar to the bizarre. And then… to the utterly bizarre. Hank feels an inexplicable lightness in his head, and a kind of clearing, as if for the first time.
He begins to perceive himself as a little point of origin, a place to look out from, a room with a view. Not an outlaw, not even a man. “I am here, in this place. Like a cougar’s snarling, to say I am here, I am alive, and I see, from this place. I see you, from here”.
Now as the rain begins to taper off, Hank begins to feel very new, like a darkness has lifted from his life. He is still an outlaw, and not a very good one (like Jesse and Frank), but it matters less now. He feels his being an outlaw as a garment, a pair of boots, to walk him across the desert, to keep him alive.
But I am not an outlaw, he realizes, and neither is Jesse.
John wakes finally and feels renewed and clear as well. He knows he is to be a writer, as if it was shouted to him from the heavens. And he decides for the first time where he is probably heading – New York.

A powerful shot took a chunk out of the tree, and Stumpy knew the reinforcements had arrived. He lay with his back to the tree, and before him the sun was setting low over the wide-open barren land. America was such a free place; it would take another hundred years for all that open space to be corralled and fenced and herded in. A big land that incited new thoughts and brave attitudes; a land where hope could be felt physically, in places like Reno, or in the great Southwest, where a man’s troubles seemed pale indeed.
Stumpy flattened out against the tree as another round took some more of its precious protective bulk. Stumpy could hear the men’s voices as they watched the sharpshooter squeeze off another round. He knew this particular game would end soon; they would tire of this sport quickly. They could take him anytime now; he’d get one, maybe two of ‘em.
“Guess that’s what’s holdin' them back,” he thought. They wanted to end it with noone except Stumpy getting shot, and that was gonna be a problem, since he had already winged one of them, not to mention ‘ol Tom Elliot with his arm in a sling. Tom would love to have gotten a slug into Stumpy, but this operation had become big, and important. The men all knew it, and noone was messin’ around. So Stumpy had a temporary reprieve thanks to order and discipline, unless of course the sharpshooter got lucky.
But even he couldn’t shoot around a tree, and on such open ground nobody could safely get around to shoot at Stumpy from either side, and tear gas on an open desert was pretty useless, even if they could lob one close enough. Stumpy wasn’t about to jump up and have his head blown off just because his eyes were watering! So until something changed, the situation was pretty much in limbo, which was to the sole liking of Mr. Fred “Stumpy” Thompson.

In her prison tower, Martha sits before a giant screen TV, watching a news story about a couple of desperados down in Arizona who had killed people, wounded a Sheriff, and were still on the loose. Martha remembered hearing a snippet about this on the TV at Ziggie’s, before moving outside to the patio.

John dreams of Martha.
Stumpy dreams of the Mississippi.
Martha looks out of her high prison window at the still impossible skyline of downtown New York.
And the writer wonders what may be his relationship to these characters. It is easy to allow these people to issue forth from the void, to let them take on lives and interact with each other and with their environments. But immediately upon creation, a certain responsibility emerges, to remain by their sides as they live and grow. As with all “parenting”, as with the bringing forth of all children, you have to stand by your creatures, that’s the rule, the one ethic of writing. Whether they fall in love, get rich, or get shot – it’s all the same.
In the end, Stumpy got shot in the leg. He didn’t really give up; he just stopped caring. There was no way out of this, so he threw his gun out when they told him to, and sat back looking at the blood running out of his leg. It wasn’t fatal – great! So it was back to prison at last, hopefully not in Alabama.

Martha escapes:
In a very anti-climactic fashion, Martha was able to simply walk out of her prison. She had been locked up for at least a night and a day, or vice-versa, and had grown tired of the TV and raiding the refrigerator. The food she found was all weird foreign stuff that needed to be prepared, and she had no idea how. Her kidnappers never came back, and she was freed by the appearance of room service. She took the guest elevator this time, and passed through the lobby into the busy street. It was still daytime. She didn’t feel like calling the police or anything.. just wanted a drink and some good American food. In fact, it is in a downtown bar, over a cheeseburger and a beer, that she hears on the news of Stumpy’s capture.

Weeks or months later:
Stumpy washed his shirt in the cell sink, and crossed off another day on his calendar. He was growing a beard and writing a long book about the Mississippi. Death row was a quiet place for the most part. People who have trouble concentrating should try it.

Back in New York:
The doctor and the priest find time for a cup of coffee.

DR – How is that boy Jeb doing?
FO – He’s OK… his speech is effected, probably permanently, but I guess it could be worse.
DR – Did they catch the kids that did it yet?
FO – No – the relationship with the cops in those kinds of neighborhoods… well, they’re seen as something between an occupying force, and that stuff written on the side of the squad cars.
DR – To serve and protect?
FO – Exactly… how are you, Doc?
DR – I went to visit an aunt upstate recently. We had a nice talk – she lives on a farm.. well, it’s more of a cottage with a big garden. The front porch is screened in, with a view of the grassy yard and a couple of gigantic oak trees.
FO – Sounds idyllic, like a Norman Rockwell scene.
DR – It is – the house is very old… I have to stoop when I’m in the kitchen, and the floor tilts from decades of settling.
FO – A good place to get away from the big city.
DR – It always was. She makes the best homemade pies, and she’s a very good listener.
FO – Also a hard thing to find.

John meandered his way eventually to New York City, finally finding his level in the quaint and artsy lower Manhattan. And there he met Martha, which renewed their faith in the opposite sex. They spent quiet afternoons in Central Park, and in animated conversation down in their beloved Greenwich Village apartment. John decided to change his name to Roger Colvin. Roger was a name he always liked, and Colvin was the last name of the (white) man who first discovered the source of the Hudson River. This river source, which Mr. Verplanck Colvin had called “Tear of the Clouds”, was also a source of great inspiration for John. He saw in it the crystal pure beginnings of all his stories, and he tried to focus on it in his mind when new ideas were bubbling up.

(Later):
Roger is holding his own in front of the TV. He is quite stoned – and alone, Martha being at work. He holds in his hand a glass of red wine, and in the ashtray burns carelessly a joint. Roger has become a writer. He had written before, but now he is serious. It was a lot of work, but Roger likes writing, a lot. He likes to watch his characters take on lives, grow and change, do unexpected things. He could write for days on end, in the apartment, in the village cafes, on the subway, anywhere. Nothing distracted him. In the vast impersonal concrete universe called New York, he realized what he would do with the rest of his sorry life.
Because in writing, it all made sense, the past, and every experience of every day. So much less need to judge, to be personally concerned. The world was a vast stage, with almost infinite scenery and character. Life was something to take in, then exhale in literary gasps, and suffering had a purpose at last. All things were important - equally.
And so Johny boy, now known as Roger, hunkered down into his new avocation, and lusted after the bright and rarified air of the occasionally inspired story, the truly transcendent character. This was usually spontaneous, not forced, not even anticipated. You have to live with the drunken savage, the shallow tart, the boring baker. It was foolish and artistically deadly to pick and choose experience, to entertain prejudice toward a particular character, to engage in natural selection, to play God.
Roger had come to realize that life dictates all the experience we could ever hope for. It is we who reject or turn away from offered fate.
As the cat left it’s perch on the window and stretched it’s way into the kitchen, Roger sat before his computer and prepared himself mentally to embark on another night of adventure. He combed the Internet for ideas when the writing dried up, but for the most part, he considered it Global babble. The “internaught” he called it – the “world wide wasteland”. Best used to check the weather and hunt for weird porno.
The night wore on, as Roger tippy-typed away, blazing trails for his creations as they endeavored to understand and adapt to each other and to their virtual world.
Martha returned about 3am from her work waiting tables in a nightclub? It paid the rent, and for her classes as well. She was studying to be a film maker. She pretty much ignored Roger and went to bed, pausing only to take a toke off his joint, and then a little kiss. She was great to have around. She was a friend, a lover, and provided the emotional stability he needed to make the transformation to a serious professional writer. He was grateful for her presence. She also paid the lion’s share of the bills.
As the night moved on still further, Roger began to write about his favorite subject – the Old West. There were news clippings of the Stumpy story spread out near the computer table, a story more improbable than real life. Roger dreamed himself into a little wood and dirt town near Abilene, Texas, sometime in the late 1800s, maybe even 1865. A dusty, desperate little sod-clump of an existence, this town provided, and its Marshall was far more than the town deserved. He had wandered in three years ago on a cattle drive, and decided to stay, mostly because he’d broken his damned ankle, and a cowboy with a broken ankle was a lot worse than useless. He was able to threaten the trail boss out of a part of his wages, and he hung out for a while, and eventually got elected Sheriff, due primarily to a gunfight in which he was directly responsible for the death of three men. Yeah, he was pretty fast alright, a talent a few men just had. Speed of course was the third necessary attribute of a successful, and thus living, gunfighter. The first two are a closely guarded secret.
Marshall Jordan Phillips, known widely as Westy, walked out onto the dirt road that defined the mainstreet of his domain. With the sun just growing warm over the god-forsaken bad-assed scrub country, he puffed on a cigarette as he reassured himself and the citizenry that all was well. He liked his little town, and he liked the fact that not much happened, because the Marshall did not like trouble.
In fact, he mostly liked fishing. And there was a little stream-fed pond outside of town where he had spent many a day in enjoyable solitude, waiting for the trout that wore his brand. Jordan was in fact thinking of this little pond as he toked on his cigarette and admired the wood furniture in the window of Mel’s dry goods. Then he heard a clomping of horse-hoofs, and looked up to see three bad looking dudes staring down from their obviously worn out horses. Not one of these 6 eyes held any hope of mercy in it, not unlike many of the trail addicts he had gotten drunk with not so very long ago.
This type was reduced by life to an animal existence, except for a grim sense of honor they at least sometimes adhered to. Stone cold killers, when necessary, and they had Jordan on instant alert. Gunfighter instincts dictated that all potentially confrontational situations be evaluated, consciously or unconsciously. The direction of the sun’s light, the nature of the opposition, the lay of the land, escape routes – all important. Jordan knew in a split second that he had the better light, and that the man furthest to the right was the greatest threat of the three.
“Mornin’ Sheriff,” says the dangerous one, with forced politeness. “Got a place a man can get a drink here?”
“Sure,” says Jordan, “right over to the left there, Ted’s place. He ain’t open yet, ‘though.”
“Ain’t open, huh?” says #3 “When does he open?”
“Not ‘til ten,” says Jordan. “Most folks barely up around here.”
“Well, can we get some breakfast then?” asks 3.
“Sure,” answers the Sheriff, “Ol Bobby’s place is open crack a dawn – fer early birds like me.”
“Thanks,” says three, “Down that way is it?”
“Yeah,” says Jordan, “Where you boys comin from?”
“We come down the Santa Fe trail, Sheriff,” says #2, speaking for the first time.
“Just passin' through,” adds #1
“That’s a long ride,” says Jordan
“Yeah – real long,” says three, getting a bit impatient, “and we are real thirsty, and real hungry.”
“Well,” says the Sheriff, “Bobby ‘ll take care of ya, and Ted’ll be open in awhile.”
“Thanks,” says #2
“You boys take her easy,” ends the Marshall, and moves off.
“Sure will,” says one of them, and they head down the dusty road.

Like tomcats, there was much said without words. Westy knew these men were trouble, and they knew now that the Sheriff was a tough nut and would have to be dealt with before anything else could be accomplished. That was OK by them. Jordan also figured someone was gonna get hurt over this one, and he knew he was standin' right square in the path of it, and that made him real mad! Besides #3, he didn’t have a strong dislike for these boys, but that didn’t matter one damn bit.
“Whether I’m havin' a steak down at Ted’s, or getting my fool head shot off, it’s the same ten dollars a week, plus free ammo.”

Roger ambled into Washington Square Park, still groggy from exercising his imagination most of the night. Now he sits on a bench in the hot intermittent sun, writing up a storm to the accompaniment of wild native drums, banging away indefatigably. When the sun came out, which was much too often, it was uncomfortable.
It had taken so long to get here, Roger thought. Here at the mouth of the Hudson River. He continued his musings for a while:
“This up and down the river stuff is important. People who don’t have the energy, or possibly the inclination, are washed downstream, sometimes all the way to the sea, where they may drown. Or, they fight their way back up stream, to a house in the suburbs, or an estate in New Hampshire or a seaside cottage in Maine. But as with water, the exchange is never-ending. The River/Sea is a circle.”
Roger tried to follow the analogy further, wondering if one might wash down into the sea, to emerge as mist, to be rained down upon Maine or Vermont, from above. Or, is this merely death? Merely death.
Well, Roger was pretty far downstream, but it didn’t feel at all like failure. The river wasn’t that simple. Life wasn’t that simple. There are villages all along the Congo, he mused, from the mountains to the sea, all interesting, all valid, nothing wasted, so much wasted.
Roger actually felt like he could not be more exactly where he ought to be, because for the first time, he was at the center, his center. From this point (Had), his characters emanated in concentric circles and sudden tangents, some returning, some who knows? (Nuit). And from now on, the world was something to be consumed, the raw material of Roger’s adventures, filtered through imagination… a new vicarious life, with Martha the rock to cling to in the stormy seas. And time was merely a part of the process of experience, of consumption. And space a prop to keep his characters far enough apart to interact… lonely, aching, or seeing with ecstatic visions from the highest peaks. To be happy, or not… anywhere, somewhere… up and down the Congo.

Stumpy waved a withered hand at the bull (guard). Not hungry tonight. Moe was Stumpy’s last friend, and Moe was dead. Now, behind the walls of Marion Prison, friendship was hard to come by. 23 hour lockdown – less love here than a cat had waiting at the pound to be euthanized. Much less.

Roger writes:
Marshall Jordan walked down the dusty street on his third round of the day, and saw the three newcomers comin’ out of Ted’s, with an obvious tip on. Good, he thought … bound to slow ‘em down some. High noon now, and the sun bakin' down like the dickens.
Jordan watched #3 (the shifty one) movin’ off to the left to douse his head in the horse trough. No way out now, since #3 had seen him – gonna have to pass right by. Jordan had little doubt from the beginning that he would wind up tanglin’ with this bunch, and he knew they weren’t in town just to freshen up. His instincts were still quite keen.
Problem now was, ol’ shifty was gonna wind up behind him if and when the trouble started, so Jordan would have to plug him first, hit the dirt spinning, and hope for the best. Probably come out of it with a bullet, if not worse. As the Marshall got within 30 feet, they all saw him, and Shifty was now movin’ with some intent. He was edgin' around just like Jordan thought he would. There was little doubt now as to the direction of things, but Jordan tied to stay calm.
A little cloud passed over the sun, for just a moment, and now all three were fanning out, casually, yet purposefully.
“Won’t be any small talk this time,” thought the Marshall, “They’ll try to plug me and then hit the bank. If I could just plug Shifty here, might take the other two with hardly a scratch. As it is, it’s a tough one, no doubt about it.”
“Mornin Sheriff,” says #2, but Jordan kept his attention on #3, knowing where the action would start. The three were almost in a half circle now, with a 12 foot radius, and movin closer, when Jordan caught #3’s hand movin down toward his gun. Yep, just like clockwork, he thought, and then made his move. Jordan drew, spun, and shot in one quick movement, then dropped almost simultaneously to the ground. He caught Shifty right in the chest – no more to worry about there. Then Jordan pulled off three more shots, one catchin’ #2 in the shoulder, the other wizzin' right past #1’s ear. Unfortunately, #1 turned out to be the best shot of the bunch, and he put one right down the pipe; he caught Jordan right in the left temple, took his lights right out. Nice try Sheriff.
By now the citizenry, by and large a cowardly bunch, were nosin' out onto the street. The remaining two outlaws ran back to their horses and clambered into the saddles. By then both Bob and Ted were on the scene, armed and ready. Ted had a Winchester, however #1 dropped him in his tracks. Bob meanwhile managed to get a bead on #2, and hit him with both barrels of his 12 gage. Took his arm and half his head off, dead on, close range. Hell of a mess, couldn’t miss.
#1 turned and took Bob down with a volley, but then he was out of ammo, and headin' helter-skelter the hell out of Dodge … Abilene, that is.
Well, there’s usually someone left standin' after a gunfight, and Henry (called Hank by some) felt damned lucky. Problem now was, no way to rob the fuckin' bank! Not with the townsfolk alerted – hell, he couldn’t even get a beer – he’d killed the bartender!
So Henry headed out into the Texas late afternoon, still broke, and now alone. As if that wasn’t enough, there was a thunderhead comin in fast from the East. Day wasn’t goin' well at all – nope – not well at all.
So now we got Henry, half-lost and all fucked-up, streamin’ out across Northeast Texas with a saddlebag fulla' nuthin’, glad to be alive, and already lookin’ for more trouble. Evenin’ comin’ on now, Hank looks back and down from a tall bluff and sees no posse. “Lazy bastards probably turned back, or they’re campin’ already.”
Actually, Henry was pretty burnt-out himself, and there was a growing danger of his horse trippin' in a prairie dog hole, or over a rock. Bad place to wind up on foot, he thought. So he turned into what proved to be a blind canyon, and followed a dried riverbed to a small growth of scrubby trees and bushes, and there he made camp as best he could.
Henry had killed a town Sheriff that afternoon, and the news would get around fast. He didn’t care much, ‘tho, as he knew he’d probably get into more trouble soon enough anyways. He was broke, the bank robbery having fallen through, and Henry’s philosophy was: “any man with a good aim and a fast draw had no business stayin’ broke.”
Henry spent the night hungry, thirsty and cold. The next day he found no food nor water, and by afternoon he was about to try pissing in his own face for comfort, when he topped a hill and saw a long train crossing the arid flat expanse of country before him.
“I’m gonna’ rob that fuckin’ train,” Henry said out loud, surprised by the hoarseness in his voice.
“Somehow... ”, he added feebly.

Frank James, with a long serious thick-browed stare, looked down his wide brimmed hat at the puffs of train smoke in the distance. But he had already solved the dilemma that Hank was workin’ on. He knew this train wasn’t goin’ nowhere. Train tracks were made to hold, and made to last. But he and Jesse had learned more than one trick in the damned Civil War, and that included disabling Union trains, a skill that lent itself so readily to their present line of work.
The engineer saw the half dozen or so riders from about a mile away. He knew about the James gang, but they were supposed to be way up north in the Kansas - Missouri region. As he got closer, tho’, he saw somethin’ that got him nervous. He began to realize there was a structure to the way this bunch was laid out. First off, what were they waitin’ for, by the tracks, in the hot sun, anyway? Next, one guy was oglin’ the train, while the rest were back off in a bunch. He too had heard of the James boys’ expertise in train disabling, so he began to pull back on the throttle handle, slowly at first. Then he noticed another guy off to the right, comin’ at the train in a big dusty hurry. Now he was all confused, as he would of sped up if it was just the guy on the right, who was obviously gonna try jumpin’ on. But the other boys were sitting still, as if they were waiting for the guy on the right to hop onto the train and stop it. Well, he wasn’t gonna make it, at that rate. The engineer pushed the throttle back up a bit, not sure how to play this thing.
“Mr. on-the-right here ain’t gettin’ on, anyhow,” he muttered.

Henry was in no shape for Geometry problems. He misjudged the speed and distance of the train by about a hundred yards, and he would have been sittin’ there eatin’ the train’s dust, if not for Jesse and Frank and the boys, who were waiting calmly for the results of their nefarious deeds. Hank was unaware of them, being on the other side of the train, and he proceeded to let loose with a vicious stream of invective, cursing the train, his half-dead horse, and his own damn stupidity. His curses were suddenly drowned out , however, by a loud explosion, and the engine went flyin’ off the track and turned over on it’s side, flippin’ two other cars with it. The rest of the cars smashed into the sideways coal car, and stopped up fairly short, not more than fifty yards to Henry’s right. Henry pulled up short as well, and sat with his mouth open, gapin' at this little bit of good fortune.
“Musta been sumthin’ wrong with the damn track!” he thought. “Jesus, what a piece of luck!”
On the North side of the train, still unseen by Henry, the James Gang hopped on board, their guns out and ready. Cole Younger, Frank, Jesse, and two others of the Younger clan. No long coats in this sun, just shirts and leggins', hats and scarves. Frank headed to the front of the train, to see if anyone was still alive. Jesse went the other way, to see to the passengers, and to find the mail car.
Hank stepped onto the nearest car, which was a baggage car. He headed toward the front of the train, car by car, and arrived at the mail car just after Jesse. The mail car meant little to Hank; his imagination couldn’t stretch beyond robbing the passengers. So he would have passed right through, except he was knocked unconscious by a long barreled Colt.
Frank found nothing of a threat up front, so he headed back to the others. The Youngers had herded the passengers together, mostly bruised and scared, in preparation of a grand fleecing. Cole didn’t like “innocents” getting roughed up too much, so he stayed to restrain his relatives. Frank and Jesse, on the other hand, didn’t care for personal larceny. They liked to think they were still working for the Confederacy.
Frank got to the mail car a few minutes before Hank woke up. Hank’s first sensation was a severe headache, but this was forgotten quickly as he realized he was looking right into the faces of Frank and Jesse James, whose conversation he had interrupted by returning to consciousness.
“Hey... you guys robbin’ this train?” asks Hank stupidly.
“No... were goin’ to Miami for a vacation,” says Frank who had a long barrel beaded on Henry’s head.
“It’s OK Frank,” says Jesse, “I got his gun” (Hank reached to his side to confirm this).
“Oughta plug him anyways,” says Frank, “sneakin’ up on us and all.”
“Maybe,” says Jesse, “but why doncha take him on back with the Youngers for now? I’m almost done here, slim pickens.”
“Get movin’ you,” says Frank.
The irony of all this was not lost on poor Hank: He was now a prisoner of the James gang, on a train that he was tryin’ to fuckin’ rob! And he called this a stroke of luck! Before he knew it, he was herded into the dining car with 20 or so passengers. “They’ll probably try to rob me now!” thought Henry, which was absurd since he had nothing to rob. “Jesus.”
Actually, Henry was in grave danger, because Frank had it in his head that Henry might be a Pinkerton, possibly because Jesse had caught him in the mail car. And so, when all were assembled, there was a bit of an argument between Frank, Jesse and Cole about Hank’s future. Hank tried to defend himself, and was told to shut up. It was Cole who was the most reasonable of the three.
“Frank, he ain’t no damned Pinkerton,” says Cole. “Look at him... he’s a fuckin’ mess.”
“I just don’t buy this bullshit about him robbin’ the train too,” says Frank. “A little too coincidental, Cole, ya know?”
“I know Frank, it’s fishy. But he ain’t no lawman, I believe that much. And the more people we plug, the harder they’ll be lookin’ for us.. you know that Frank.”
“Just as soon shoot him, Cole, but if you wanna save his sorry ass, I’ll go along. You ain’t sweet on him, are ya?”
“Fuck off, Frank, or I’ll shoot him for ya. Hey you.. tell everybody Cole Younger saved your butt.”
“Thanks,” was Henry’s feeble reply.

With that, the gang departed, having filched the passengers and rifled the mail car. This left Hank in a curious position. He was unarmed, and in a car with 20 angry robbed passengers, who had just found out that he was gonna rob them if not for having been upstaged. Well, once again old Hank was saved by some uncanny luck. He saw out of the corner of his eye a wimpy dude pullin’ a dumb lookin’ six gun out of his travelin’ bag, about to drop a bead on the James gang as they left. Hank grabbed it out of the dude’s hand, acting on pure instinct. Now he had a gun, and he might have saved the James Gang to boot. Henry felt famous!
That was Henry’s last abortive attempt to rob a train, although he did manage to steal some food and a bottle of brandy on the way out. As he rode on through the vast dry flattened landscape, a storm came on, a real Texas gusher. Soon enough, Henry was soaked and miserable. It showed no sign of abating, in fact it got worse, and flashes of lightning hit the earth all around him. It was an awesome sight, and darkness was coming on fast. Hank watched the display grimly, expecting to get hit any minute.
“That’d be the kicker,” he thought, “the Marshall misses me, Cole Younger saves my ass, and then I get hit by lightning. Jesus!”

Roger looked up to see a Michael Jackson impersonator pirouetting directly in front of him. He looked back down at his writing book, knowing better than to encourage the nutty world around him. It was a hot day, but the writing was going well.

Jesse wondered about Hank for awhile. He was glad they had let him go, ‘though he would have went with the majority, if necessary.

Roger ponders on the river metaphor some more: Human bugs have infested every corner of the world. They settle all along the circular path of water, from the highest mountains to the lowliest scummy ocean ports. Some bugs think they’re better than other bugs, and most bugs would like to have everything, and give the other bugs nuthin’. But the richness of the river is the diversity of its infestation; the epidemic of humanity is a unity of purpose, that purpose being growth toward a higher level of awareness. And the very first step to this higher awareness is the realization of this commonality, this situational sameness.
“We are here to go,” muttered Roger, remembering a quote from a favorite author of his. *
So as the bugs near the top end of the river try to preserve their own culture, and repel alien bacterial strains from their children’s grade school classes, the fear and suspicion grows – Liberals, Hippies, Communists, Child molesters. And the benevolent Rush Limbaugh reaches his firm knowing hand out across his Kingdom, and tickles and pokes at the fears and hatreds of a society changing faster than even the mighty Bill Gates could have predicted. Rush and Roger – two very different peas from the same pod .

Jesse had heard of the Congo. A big river with lots of little black people, like ants swarming around eating fruit, and sometimes Missionaries. Jesse had a stash of money (gold) hid somewhere up in North Kansas. Only Frank knew about it – not even Zel. Enough to get plastic surgery and make it to Africa. Enough to buy a riverboat. Maybe he could get pigment treatments and wind up runnin’ up and down the Congo in his own riverboat.

Much later:
Dr. Rheingold sits at the high window of his office, a cognac in his hand. He is gazing out at the falling New York snow, at the vast shrouded visage of a wintry Central Park.

Roger too looks out, though his view is a bit more humble.

The world is like an orange laying in the sun. After a while, mold begins to form on the surface. You may eventually see several different shades of color, as the different strains via against each other for possession of the dying orange. One color mold may hold sway for a time, to then morph into a darker hue. In the end, the whole orange shrivels and blackens, and becomes at last inorganic. So goes the Earth and the petty struggles of its microscopic (microcosmic?) life forms. Yet one mind can contain the entire universe, if only for a drug-induced moment.

And the realization of eternity, is “the only game in town”.

END

Addendum:

So the river played a great roll in all these lives; it always has. The river is a vast circle, moving from purity to pollution, and then back again. From pristine urgency, to pornographic cynicism. Like man, who can resemble God at times, and at others serves only as a caretaker, a means of keeping the endless New Jersey lawns manicured.

Dr. Rheingold does not like the lawns of New Jersey. They hold bitter memories: of impeccable order hiding utter chaos and unspeakable cruelty. A slow and quiet death. His escape was successful, and bittersweet.

Dr. Rheingold's solitude is strange, in the sense that he did not plan it. It just happened, gradually. He muses: There is a vast emptiness, beyond reason or understanding. The clouds are painful, the sky is agony. The rain when it comes is the only redemption. I am Dr. Rheingold, important and well-paid healer, member of the priestly class. I am a little boy sitting with his father, crying in the rain.

So the river is a clock, and like most older-fashioned clocks, it is not linear, it is a circle. Always returning to the source, always renewed, cleansed, pure once more. In the ancient Kabbalah one feels the emanations of god pouring forth into the world, like an inexhaustible and utterly pure spring. And they become tainted as they descend into the unholy depths of this our material world. But the universe, I am sure, is also a circle, and these sullied emanations, now lost in darkness, must also be somehow recycled, as the river is. In fire all things are renewed, goes the saying.

Dr. Rheingold knows the sullied nature of his own life, the compromises and lost ideals. And he knows as well the inner treasures that have so far escaped the world's axe. This is one reason why his meetings with Father Olsen had become so important. The process of decay and renewal is so visible in the Priest. He loses his faith periodically, then somehow it is miraculously renewed, a process the Doctor had observed for several years. His own life was not so simple, maybe because it did not hinge on intangible things like faith to begin with. More like in the Kabbalah: life went on, somehow refreshed, yet from an invisible source.

(Epilogue - Spring):
In Chicago, Father Olsen sits in the warm sun with a bagel and a cup of black coffee, warm and at peace. In New York, it is raining, and the smell of the city streets has calmed down a bit. The rain falls all up along the Hudson, as far North as Poukipsee. The river swells and quickens, as Roger looks out his East Village window and…

Yes - Roger is still with Martha, in the Village. He is still writing. Roger has a faith not unlike Father Olsen. He is excited by the crush of humanity, but not from some God-soaked vision of light and holiness. Roger sees it all as a play, and he of course is the playwright. Grist for the mill, as it were.

From Dr. Rheingold’s journals:

My name is Dr. Rheingold, and I am an old man now. I have been a Doctor in New York City for 27 years. My closest friend was a priest, a Catholic Saint of a man named Father Olsen. He is now dead and I am retired. I have gone back to seed in the land of my boyhood fantasies, and miseries. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. So exclusive they kicked Richard Nixon out, even Henry K. couldn't get him in. The plush lawns are as beautiful and as manicured as ever, although there are fewer Jews and Italians, and more Asians pushing the lawn-mowers. The American Dream is an equal opportunity employer, it just takes awhile.

What eventually brought me to the medical profession, and to this dear stifling back yard of mine, is a very long story, and I have plenty of time. I should know, after all, I am a Doctor.

I met Father Olsen during a time when I was doubting my life, my path. He came to me as a patient, and we became great friends over the years, although I only saw him during his visits for treatments. He came three or four times each year. We haunted the Chinese and Italian restaurants of lower Manhattan, and drank espresso and anisette in Greenwich Village. He helped me immensely, and I miss him dearly. I have often hoped that I was a help to him as well.

A river is an easy metaphor, a close analogy, to the human condition.

A human life begins in purity, like the cleansing rain upon the Northern hills of Vermont and New York State. It picks up impurities, as it becomes denser, and deeper, and broader, until that life is too deep and too muddy to see into, and too committed to escape its inevitable course. This is where my life had brought me when Father Olsen fell into it.

Father Olsen had some problems as well. A boy named Jeb, he had grown quite close to, attacked for his coat, back in Chicago, right in front of St. Joseph's nunnery. For a time, the gentle Father said he felt nothing but hate, until his faith returned and rescued him from the darkness of his unbelief.

My problems, I fear, were not as simple. They still aren't. I had no faith to lose, as Bob Dylan once sang. My church was the Hospital, and our God... science. The miracle of chemical and biological attack upon merciless cancer cells. The elimination, however temporary, of great suffering through modern pharmacology. And... the occasional cure.

It is no small thing, being a scientist, or an Engineer for that matter. I do not denigrate my life, nor my father's. His problem was a lack of space, inside, to see how terribly askew his sense of priorities had become. Like Hearst, like Hughes, like Henry the car-maker, like Adolph... maybe even the Christ. My problem was a lack of inspiration, hidden behind a workaholic nature. I don't know when I ceased being in love with the world. I have spent so many years bringing people into it, easing people out of it, lessening their discomfort whilst they were here. I don't regret any of it; I just don't feel love for the whole affair, this life. Never have, as far back as I can remember.

My father was worse. He had at least my energy and drive, but I don't think his attitude within was nearly as neutral as mine. I think he genuinely hated life. I couldn't love it, but he hated it. So I'd rather be his father then have him be mine, under the circumstances.

This is exactly why Father Olsen was so healing to me... he was enthused. He did love life. And he helped many, as did I, but his motive was less tainted. I was attempting to work out, to assuage, a ton of guilt, while the good Father seemed to always return to a deep understanding of the commonality of the human species, of all species, of everything in fact. He worked and lived from this place. It was not even faith, for the most part. You need no faith in a mountain, if it's staring you in the face. A very rare type of man, this friend of mine. A beacon in a stormy night-sea.

Of course, a lot of this is simply what happens when one ages. Aging is death. Death is a gradual process. One strives sincerely for light while the body is young, ah... but then, the light is so cleverly hidden within the confusion of sex and status. And when one is older, and can finally see, it is too late, the light is for the most part gone. And so, God's secret is safe with these humans. Even when some very special individual, Shakespeare, or James Dean, comes along, all brimming over with light, the masses take it at face value, or totally misconstrue it.

To look for a hint of recognition in the eyes of one's father is no more productive than to look within the eyes of a lizard. It simply cannot be. Evolution says: "You are not ready yet."

I saw no hint of recognition in my father's eyes. The words and thoughts that condemned my Mother and I to lives of tragic somnambulance were inevitable, and for the most part... unuttered. He was a fine man. He was a son of a bitch.

Now through the Jasmine and Patchouli oil, death is a thick fog that essentially shuts off the light, however dim it may have been in the first place. Father Olsen walks in a bright light that I shall never see. I write these words to create a future, for those I may never see. For I too seek light, and I have not the luxury of seeing the obvious and bright eminence that drove Father Olsen forward. Mine is the true dark night of the soul, the abyss.

For Father Olsen, who nearly lost his faith over poor little Jeb, the only challenge was to regain it. For most of us, it is to find it at all. Those of us conscious enough to even feel bothered, that is.

* from a recording by William S. Burroughs, who may have heard it from Brian Gyson

Only Game in Town copyright © 1996-2012
By Penrose (W. S. Rose)
All rights reserved