David Brin: Senses Three and Six

I lean here against this polished wooden surface, while the drums pound and the smoke blows around, and my mind feels like a wild thing, completely out of control. For days I’ve hardly slept, dreading the dreams that have come back… eyes in the sky and a fiery mountainside.

Even as I stand here, this damned day keeps throwing memories at me, like soggy rags dragged out of a pile of old discarded clothes—things I thought I’d buried away for good.

Right now, for instance, I can’t help remembering how weird I thought my old man was, when I was a kid.

Oh, he was a pip, he was. Whenever he caught me in a lie, he would beat me twice.

The first thing he’d do was he’d take me into the house and lecture me really reasonable-like about how it was immoral to tell lies, how a real man would face the truth, and all that stuff. Then he’d make me bend over and take my licking like a man. That part was okay, I guess. I didn’t like the lecture, but he didn’t hit very hard.

It was later in the day he’d scare me half to death. And all the time in between I’d be so frightened I couldn’t hardly breathe. I think, now that you get right down to it, he punished me three times each time he found out I’d lied… a spanking indoors for being unethical, a Chinese water torture of a wait, and then a terrific pasting out next to the garage for getting caught .

I think the wait was so I could think about how I could have talked my way out of it without lying… or come up with a better lie, one without holes in it.

When he knocked me around outside he kept telling me how stupid it was to waste an untruth—how a man’s credibility was as important to his survival as his wind, his stamina, or his ability to make friends.

My lather was like that. Indoors he talked as if he were trying to teach me how to be moral and upright. Outside, in the twilight, he acted as if tomorrow I was going to be dumped into the Amazon, or Devil’s Island, or deepest darkest Wall Street, and it was his job to see to it I could make it in a jungle.

One of the good things I can say about him is that he never got mad when I told him to his face he was nuts. He just laughed and said it was an interesting proposition—and that his duty to teach me to survive didn’t include policing my opinions.

In all mis smoke and noise and stream-of-consciousness rambling tonight, it occurs to me for the first time that maybe my old man was right after all.

Maybe he had a feeling I’d wind up in a place like this, hunted, trapped, my survival depending on the credibility of a lie.

These eyes in the sky keep coming back. And the picture of a burning mountain. I try to shrug them aside, but another image comes, uninvited, unwelcome …

A closeup of the moon …

Hey, I’m not illiterate. Though my life depends on seeming as if I am. Like Bogart said to Bacall, I been to college and I can read a book. It’s just that I adapt real good. And right now I’ve got to adapt to being Chuck Magun.

Chuck. Yeah. Cut this memory crap and think about Chuck. Reinforce Chuck.

Chuck looks a lot like I used to look, naturally. I couldn’t change that. He’s a big guy with shoulders and everything heaped up six three or so. He looks mean. He lifts weights every day and runs a few miles along the riverfront.

He’s got an old Harley torn apart in his living room, and either a country western station or the TV is on all the time.

Chuck drinks in local bars, curses at all the right bad plays when football is on, and enjoys tearing up a patch of back road with his dirt bike, time to time. When he races he uses a lot of profanity, but he never loses his temper.

He reads motorcycle racing magazines and maintenance manuals with a guilty, hungry nervousness. He can’t scan more than six or eight sentences without suddenly looking up with a shy grin on his face, as if he expected to be kidded, or maybe killed.

Mostly he doesn’t read. He’s a fully qualified member of the Great Unwashed. At least I hope so.

Chuckie may also be getting married soon…

(… A closeup of the moon… the stars bitterly bright… purple cat-slitted eyes…)

What was that? An earthquake? Did the bar shake? Why is my hand trembling?

Maybe I should stay away from provocative topics for a little while. As long as I’m standing here mumbling to a pretend listener in my own mind, I might as well do some background. It’ll take up the time.

Ever been a bouncer?

You say no, my imagined friend? Well, let me explain. It’s not a trivial trade.

Bouncers meet all the chicks. There seems to be a sort of fascination women feel towards that husky bearded type of guy who stands alone with watchful eyes at the edge of the bar with a big flashlight in his pocket and a beer that hardly gets touched during the night. Maybe it’s that here’s a big stud whose whole purpose in life is to make sure little girls don’t get bothered in or around the Yankee Dollar if they don’t want to be.

Anyway, the girls here are always flirting with Chuck. He doesn’t mind, but I hate it. Their attentions make me nervous. I don’t like strangers looking too close. Sure, none of Them , the monsters who pursue me, could disguise himself as a young woman. Especially the way they dress these days. Still, I have Chuck’s girlfriend join him here each night to shake the chicks loose.

Hell, it’s not the girls’ fault. Neither is it Chuck’s. So much for bouncer lesson number one.

Lesson number two is pick a place where kids hang out. You get a hell of a lot more aggravation, minute by minute, but it’s a damn sight better than working bored sick in some topless place when some drunk jumps onto the runway to dance with the Girl, and you’ve got to jump up too, and grin and friendly-like ask him to join you in beer while the poor Girl has a stupefied smile on her face and only a little bikini bottom on her ass, and everyone in the house can see that big weighted flashlight you’re holding behind your back, and you’re wondering if your sphincters are going to hold because that drunk’s got six friends at the bar just as “friendly.”

That happened twice in Weed. I damn near broke character, as well as some poor Indian’s head, before I quit.

Weed was a lot like Crescent City, wet and pungent. Only here the fog is made of ocean spray and clouds crawling upriver on their way to skirmish with the mountains. In Weed the morning haze was pure mosquitoes.

The kids who come to the Yankee Dollar to hear bluegrass and chivy sips of beer from their older brothers and sisters don’t know how to be mean yet. They’re so tied up in teenage smells and teenage aggravation. I remember when I was that age so I try to be tolerant.

It’s funny how tonight I can recollect things like that from twenty years ago, but until recently I had trouble thinking much more than a week either way. Today I saw a jet flying high overhead. A fast little navy fighter, I guess. It got me thinking…

… The growl of engines… launching to a fanfare from Beethoven… laughter and clean flight …

Stop that! Divert! What is the matter with me? Where are these visions coming from?

Ignore ’em. That’s what I’ll do. Nothing like that ever happened… Think about something else. Think about the kids. Think about the kids and bouncer lessons.

I guess I like the kids enough. I watch ’em close, though. The worst they usually do is try to sneak pitchers outside or do J’s in the corner. I put a stop to that fast, and have a rep for the sharpest eye in bouncerdom.

No way. I’m gettin’ hauled up before a judge for “contributing to delinquency.” A judge might be one of the ones They are watching. They catch wind of me, and pfff! There goes both Chuckie and me.