Demon Box by Ken Kesey
But he wasn't sticking pins in dolls or such like that. He was sitting calm in his therapeutic recline-o-lounger reading one of his big books by the light of the Coleman lamp, a big pair of earphones on his head. Through the bus windows I could hear there was a tape or record or some such playing, of a bunch of men's voices chanting in a foreign tongue. His mouth was moving to the words of the chant as he read. I slapped on the side of the bus stairwell.
"Hello... can I come in a minute?"
"Mrs. Whitter?" He comes to the door. "Sure, man. Come in. Come on in. I'm honored. Honest."
He gives me his hand and seems genuinely happy to see me. I told him I had been thinking and if there'd been a misunderstanding I wanted to be the first - But he cuts right in, apologizing himself, how he'd acted abominable and inexcusable and hang on a second. Please. Then held up a big palm while he swirled around to flip a switch on his phonograph. The speakers went off but the tape still turned on the machine. I could still hear a tiny chorus chanting out from the earphones on the recline-o-lounger: Rah. Rah. Rah ree run. Like that...
"I'm glad you come," he says. "I been feeling terrible for the way I acted. There was no excuse for it and I apologize for getting so heavy on you. Please, come on in."
I told him it was understandable, and that was why I was there. I started to tell him that I had never said anything about the little boy having the kitten without his mom's consent when I glanced back to the waterbed. She wasn't there but the little boy was, lying propped up on a pillow like a ventriloquist doll, his eyes staring at a glass bead strung from the ceiling. He had on his own pair of earphones, and the bead twisted and untwisted.
"Well, I get to apologize first," I told Mr. Keller-Brown. That that was why I'd come. I told him that he'd been completely correct, and that I had no right telling his child those kind of whoppers and deserved a scolding. The chant went something like Rah. Rah. Tut nee cum. Mr. Keller-Brown says okay, we've traded apologies. We chums again? I said I guess so. Rah. Rah. Tut nee eye sis rah cum RAH and that bead turning slow as syrup on its thread. He says he hopes I'll still consider riding down to LA with them; they'd be honored. I say it's too bad it ain't to Arkansas; I need to go to Arkansas - for legal business. He says they go to St. Louis after Oklahoma City and that's near Arkansas. I says we'll see how I feel tomorrow; it's been a big day. He says good night and helps me back down the steps. I thank him.
At the bus window waving, his face gives me no clue whether he believed it or not. Everything suddenly turned ten times brighter as I felt him withdraw that terrible pruning shadow and return it to its sheath. Now forget it, I told myself, all, and made a picture of the rain stopping and the duck flying off.
I walked through the bright moonlight at the edge of the ash grove. The look of things was headed back to normal. There were crickets in the trees, nothing else. The ground ran level and the night was calm. I had just about convinced myself that it was all over, that it was all just a widder woman's nightmare, nothing more, nothing worse, when I heard the mama Siamese meowing.
The kitten was stuffed under some ash roots and covered with big rocks. I could barely move them. You were right, I told the mama; you should've kept him in the rhubarb. She followed crying as I carried it up to the cabin. I kept talking to her as I walked, and fingering the poor stiffening little kitty to see if it was cut or broke or what. And when I found it at the furry throat I was reminded of the time I was picking pears in the dusk as a kid of a girl in Penrose, Colorado, and reached up to get what I thought was sure a funny fuzzy-feeling pear, when it suddenly uncurled and squeaked and flew away and I fell off the ladder with bat bites all over my hand... was what I thought as my fingers recognized the cameo and chain knotted around its neck. O Lord, I cried, what have I got into now? And tossed it under the cabin porch without even trying to break that chain. Then I come inside and took another pill out of my bag and got right down on my knees for a sign. And a dumb old rooster just crowed. Okay. Okay then. If not a sign Lord Jesus to make me certain then how about the strength to act like i am for it looks to me like i am left with no choice but to go ahead along a fortress or harbor Amen Lord amen --
(to be continued)
NOW WE KNOW HOW MANY HOLES IT TAKES TO FILL THE ALBERT HALL
In the waning days of 1968, for some reason never very specific and now nearly obscured by time, the prime movers from the Dead Center made arrangements with the Beatles at Apple to send over to London a sampling of psychedeloids.
A kind of cultural lend-lease, heads across the water and all that.
There were thirteen of us in all - hippies, hoopies, and harpies; Hell's Angels and their hogs; a few serious managers with lots of plots and proposals... one prankster without plan one.
I was happy to be getting out of the U.S. That book about me and my Kool Aid cronies had just come out and I felt the hot beam of the spotlight on me. It burned like a big ultraviolet eye. The voltage generated by all this attention scared me a little and titillated me a lot, and I needed a breather from it before I became an addict, or a casualty. Stand in this spotlight, feel this eye pass over you. You never forget it. You are suddenly changed, lifted, singled out, elevated and alone, above any of your old bush-league frets of stage fright, nagging scruples, etc. Self-consciousness and irresolution melt in this beam's blast. Grace and power surge in to take their place. Banging speed is the only thing even close. Drowsing protoplasm snaps instantly to Bruce Lee perfection -- enter the dragon. But there's the scaly rub, right? Because if you go around to the other end of that eye and look through at the star shining there so elevated, you see that this adoring telescope has a crosshair built in it, and notches in the barrel filed for luminaries: Kennedy... King... Joplin... Hemingway... Anyway, we headed to London, flying high (as Country Joe put it) all the way. As the DC-8 began to hum down through the thick English fog, everybody realized that after our transatlantic antics a customs check was almost certainly coming up, and what couldn't be flushed had better be swallowed.
Up to the bustling British customs table we floated, a big-eyed baker's dozen from America, in leather and furs and cowboy hats and similar fashionable finery. The weary officer sighed sorely at the sight, then politely searched us for three hours, even the cylinders of the two Harley-Davidsons. It was well into the afternoon by the time our fleet of taxis headed for London, escorted through the wrong-side-of-the-road traffic by Angels Old Bert and Smooth Sam Smathers on their two huge choppers. It was clammy gray twilight by the time we all arrived at Apple.
There was a small flock of the faithful at the door, waiting with that radiant patience of reverent pilgrims. Frisco Fran, a long blond mama of thirty-five, with a feeling for Old Bert and Old Bert's new Harley, and a $6,000 mink coat over her T-shirt and greasy jeans, looked at the little gaggle of fans on the Savile Row steps, then up at the crisp white office building, and observed, "I feel like I'm going to see the Pope, or something."
In the outer lobby a chubby receptionist welcomed us with a cheeky wink for the men and an embossed invitation for each of us. She looked like Lulu in To Sir, With Love. After a confirming call from higher up, she let us into lobby #2, where all the rock & roll managers greeted each other - Yanks, Limeys, even a visiting Frog - embracing and slapping five and jiving each other rock- &-roll-wise. This got us through lobby 2's door into the crimson-carpeted keep of lobby #3, where George Harrison finally came down to shake everybody's hand and escort us into the very core of the Apple organization - endless offices, wandering halls with gold records on all the walls, a huge recording studio in the basement that looked like Disney had designed it for Captain Nemo and hired Hugh Hefner to decorate it - finally to a doorless doorway upstairs opening on a large room that we could use as our digs, we were told, during our stay. All eyes popped at the accommodations. The room was full of food: roasted pigs suckling apples, smoked turkeys, cheeses, breads, cases of champagne and ale stacked to the ceiling... for the big Apple Christmas party coming up, we wer
"Looks like home to me," he proclaimed.
Ringo dropped in for 'arf a mo' to welcome us, and once we thought we caught a glimpse of Paul down the hall, though some said it wasn't Paul, that Paul was in New York getting engaged. But he was bright-eyed, lovable, and barefoot so it might have been Paul. Also, he was small.
"They're all so... so..." - Spider, a tall ex-UCLA-track star gone hip and hairy and thirty, searched for the precise word - "diminutive."
"They're all the size I thought Ringo was," Smooth Sam added.
"I know," said the mama in mink, eyes shining with tender solicitude. "It makes me want to hold an umbrella over them, or something."
We didn't see John until later, at the famous Apple Christmas Debacle. What happened that night has been run down in a bunch of books, both pro-Yank and anti, so no one else needs to go into that. I only want to give you the setting for Lennon's entrance, for drama's sake...
As the day drifted toward the festive eve ahead, we drifted out of our little food-filled office to stroll the Christmasy London streets and drink stout in the pubs - work up an appetite for the feast to come. When we ambled back to 3 Savile Row and past the pack of cheeky fans that cluttered the steps with their little autograph books (they all looked like Lulu) and through lobbies #1 and #2 to the hallowed lobby #3, we found that another coterie of Yanks had established a beachhead right in the middle of the lush crimson carpet. What kind of pull they had used to bore this deep into Apple I couldn't imagine, because they were even scruffier than we were. There were half a dozen big bearded dudes with ragged grins, a bunch of naked noisy kids, and one woman - a skinny redhead on the sinewy side of thirty sporting a faded blue dress of hillbilly homespun with matching hicky twang.
"We're the Firedog Family," she informed us. "We come here to see the Beatles all the way from Fort Smith, Arkansas. I had this dream me and John was running side by side through the electric-blue waters of the Caribbean and he looked at me and says 'Come Together.' 'Ticket to Ride' was play in'. We was naked. We was on acid. We ran right out of the water right up into the sky. And my given name is Lucy Diamond. Let's chant again, children."
The pack of kids stopped fussing and settled themselves obeli diently in a circle and began chanting.
"John and Yo-ko Ring-go too-ooo. John and Yo-ko Ring-go too-ooo..."
The woman snaked across the carpet to the rhythm, all knees and elbows and freckles. "We know they is in the building. One of the kids was running in the hall and seen them carrying a big red sack. This chant will bring us together."
Her eyes fluttered shut a moment at the divine prospect, then she stopped dancing and gave us a look faded as her blue dress.
"Y' know, don't you, that the Beatles is the most blessed people on earth? They are. For instance, how many times have you been coming down with the blues and heard a Beatles tune come on the radio and thought to yourself, 'God bless the Beatles.' Huh? That's exactly what I said when I saw Yellow Submarine after my last abortion. 'God bless the Beatles.' And how many folks all over the world have done the same thing more or less, blest the Beatles? So, you see - they're all saints. Blessed saints. I mean who on this miserable earth, in this day and age, who can you name that has been blest more times than the Beatles?"
We couldn't think of a soul. We were hungry and tired and not very interested in playing Name the Saints. When the door was finally opened to us and we left lobby #3 the kids were still chanting "John and Yo-ko Ring-go too-ooo" and the woman was swaying and the bearded dudes were nodding to the beat. We walked up the hall to our assigned room without a word, stomachs grumbling, only to find the food had been completely removed. Nothing left but the smell. It seemed like a hint. Grumpily, Old Bert gathered his bedroll from beneath the empty table.
"Blessing them's all right, but I don't guess you have to get right up in their faces to do it."
"Yeah," Frisco Fran agreed. "Let's cut."
Back down in the main sanctum the night's crowd was gathering - toffs in worsted flannel and sandalwood cologne, birds in bright beads and bouffants by Vidal Sassoon, executive types in tie-dyed Nehru shirts and Day-Glo tennies - and the champagne was flowing. Old Bert decided a little snack might be nice before leaving. His nose told him the grub couldn't be far away. He sniffed up to a parted door where a natty lad in a plaid weskit was positioned as guard.
"Whatsye, myte?" Bert had picked up a nice cockney accent in the afternoon pubs. "That I grabs me a drumstick for the road?"
"Cawn't, I don't think," the boy answered, nervous and vague. "Supposed to save it for after. The invited, rather. You understand - for later."
"We are invited, old sport." Bert produced the card we'd been issued. "And maybe we ain't staying till later. Furthermore" -- he jerked a thick-knuckled thumb over his shoulder, indicating a place in the past - "I ain't ate since the airport."
The boy looked at the thumb with all that carbon and grease still under the thumbnail from reassembling the bikes, and at the leather wristband with its battered studs, and at the big, vein-laced forearm with those terrible tattoos of knives and nooses, and it appeared to me that he was about to see his way clear to advancing Old Bert an early taste of turkey. But just then one of the tie-dyed higher-ups sidled by in long muttonchops and a snide smile. He was eating a macaroon.
"Don't give it to them, Clayburn," this colorful creature advised through a long bony nose as he chewed his cookie. "I don't care how much chanting they do." Then, very foolishly, he added, "They're nothing but leeches and mumpers anyway."
"What was that, myte?" Bert asked with a wide grin, turning slowly from the turkey to what promised to be juicier fare. "What did you sye?"
"I said, 'Leeches and mumpers.' "
Pow! The executive went somersaulting backward all the way to the wall, where he slowly slid down in a pile against the baseboard and lay there, like a rumpled rainbow. The room suddenly polarized, all the Englishmen springing to one side of the carpet to surround their clobbered countryman in an instant display of British pith, all the Yanks to the other.
"Anybody else," Bert asked the group glaring at us from across the room, "thinks we're leeches or mumpers?" - in a challenge so specific that everybody knew it would have to be answered or none of the home team would ever be able to look the statue of Admiral Nelson in his steely eye again. I took off my watch and put it in my pocket. The music stopped. The two factions tightened and gathered, readying for the rumble.
It was into this smoldering scene, right between these two forces about to clash, that John Lennon came, in a red Santa Claus suit and a silly white beard.
"Awright, then," he said, not loud but very clear, and reasonable, and unsmiling, that thin, bespectacled face pale yet intensely bright, polished by more time spent beneath the blast of that high-voltage beam than any face I have ever seen, the thin hands coming out of the white fur cuffs to hold back the two sides of the room, like Moses holding back the waters - "That's enough."
And it was. The rumble didn't erupt. He stopped it, just like that. Old Bert was so impressed that he apologized at once to everyone, even bent down to help the young executive brush the bloody coconut crumbs out of his muttonchops. Everybody laughed. A cork popped. The music resumed. Yoko emerged from behind John, as though cloned from his yuletide image, in matching beard and red Santa suit with a big red sack over her shoulder. She began passing out gifts. Blond Mama Fran decided to take off her mink and stick around awhile after all. Spider began to eye the nervous Lulus. The caterers swept in with trays of sliced meats and pickled crabapples. The party went on.
Oo blah dee.
After New Year's Day, I returned to London with my family. We took a flat in Hampstead and I tubed daily to Apple to work on a spoken-word record that was to be called Paperback Records. It never happened. Fell apart. Administrative shake-ups. I didn't mind. It was a fun tim
I saw John Lennon every once in a while after that first night - on the roof watching the sky, in the halls, playing the piano in the studio, at Albert Hall for his over-hyped "Alchemical Wedding" when he crawled into a big bag with Yoko for forty uncomfortable minutes of public humping while the packed and petulant house hooted and whistled and called out things like " 'Ow's the revolootion goin' then, John?" - but never again saw anything as bright and clear and courageous as when he stepped between the two sides at the Christmas party.
He was something.
When he said "Peace," even the warring angels listened.
But this isn't a nickel valentine to a dead superstar. What this story is really about is not so much John Lennon as about all the stuff his passing stirred up around our farm, effluvia both bygone and yet to be, tangible and chimeral... mainly about these three visitations I had that week of his death, like the three ghosts from A Christmas Carol.
The first came the day before the killing, Sunday evening, while we were waiting for my mom and Grandma Whittier to come out for supper. This specter was the easiest to comprehend and deal with. In fact, he was almost classic in his immediate comprehensibility; versions of this spook have probably been around since the first campfire. He poked his bearded kisser in out of the night, all shaggily a-grin. He had a bottle of screw-top Tokay in his right hand, a battered black boot in his left, and a glint in his gummy eyes that could have been bottled and displayed in the Bureau of Standards: the Definitive Panhandler Come-on Glint.