David Ohle: The Devil in Kansas

A hippie pad, San Francisco, 1967.

Half-hidden in a fragrant cloud of incense, Vickie, eighteen, in swimsuit and high socks, punches the button on a tape player. An Indian-accented voice gives instruction: “Short of breath? Feeling tired all the time? Yogi Vithaldas recommends beginning with Sukhasana, the Easy Pose — a position of ease and comfort. To attain it, the student sits down on the floor with his legs stretched out in front of him. The right leg is bent at the knee and the foot is placed under the thigh of the opposite leg.”

Vickie follows the Yogi’s instructions.

In the hallway, her sister, Wendy, twenty-five, and Charlie, early thirties, stand outside a door. Wendy wears a thrift store ensemble. Charlie, in a leather-fringed jacket and elephant skin boots, carries a guitar over his shoulder like a shotgun.

Wendy searches through a mesh bag. “I’m wasted, man. I don’t even know where I’ve been for three days, much less where I left my keys.”

Charlie’s face has a translucent, prison pallor.

Vickie hears a knock, breaks her pose and shuts off the recorder. On the way to answer the door, she lowers the stereo needle onto Pink Floyd’s “Interstellar Overdrive.”

“That you, Wendy?” She looks through the peephole.

Incense smoke pours out when the door is opened.

“Yeah, sorry…Vickie, Charlie. Charlie, Vickie, my little sister. I told him he could take a shower. He just got out of prison. Isn’t that far out?”

“A political prisoner, man. Fuggin fascists don’t want free spirits like me runnin’ loose when there’s revolution in the air.”

He barges in and sits on the sofa, deftly rolls a cigarette from Bugler tobacco. Cigarette clenched between his lips, he tunes his guitar.

Wendy splashes on patchouli oil, grabs a jacket. “I gotta go. The Dead are playing in the Park. Ginsberg’s there. Aren’t you going, Vickie? You’re crazy not to. You going, Charlie?”

“After I shower.”

Vickie, a little anxious about being left alone with Charlie, follows Wendy into the hallway. “I’ll be there later. Gotta finish my yoga. Do I want to be alone with this guy? He looks creepy. Is he cool?”

“Yeah, he’s okay. Don’t worry.”

Back in the pad, Vickie resumes her yoga position. “Excuse me, but I have to finish my yoga.”

“I did some yoga in the joint. It’s a good time-passer. Which way’s the shower?”

“Over there, blue door. Maybe there’s a clean towel.”

Charlie produces a rabbit’s foot pill stash, unscrews its metal top and taps a purple tab into his hand. “You wanna drop? We’ll go dig the Dead.”

“I don’t know. I gotta do my yoga.”

“It’s trippy shit, man. Purple Haze.”

She extends her hand. “Okay, cool. What the fuck.”

He taps a tab into her palm. She pops it into her mouth. “You too, right? You’re gonna drop, too?”

“Fuckin’ A.” Turning his face to the side, he pretends to swallow one of the tabs. “Trippin’ in the joint, that ain’t fun.”

“Cool stash, man.” Vickie strokes the rabbit’s foot with the tip of her finger.

“Bought it off a lifer. He made ‘em in the shop. Sold ‘em to inmates. Had him a little cottage industry goin’. Raised ‘em in his cell. Guards and him had a deal. They didn’t give a shit about the feet. They wanted the meat. Kitchen guys was in on it, too. They scored lettuce and carrots. It was a good thing for everybody. They oughta run the fuggin world that way.”

“Nice boots, too.”

“Elephant skin. Got ‘em down in L.A. The guy in the store, he like says, ‘These boots are guaranteed road kill.’ I say, ‘Come on, man, a road kill elephant?’ He might’ve been jokin’. I dunno.”

Vickie, coming on to the acid, finds this unbearably funny, begins laughing uncontrollably.

Charlie showers, humming the tune to Duane Eddy’s “Rebel Rouser.”

Vickie assumes the lotus pose. She has a glass of water on the floor in front of her. In it, soaking, is a long piece of gauze. She listens to the tape: “Dhoti Kriya, or stomach cleansing, is one of the six processes of purifying the body. A long piece of wet cloth, like a narrow bandage, is swallowed slowly the entire length.” She swallows the cloth in small increments. “When the cloth has reached the stomach, begin to rotate the muscles surrounding the rectum. This gives a cleansing massage to the stomach, which removes accumulated mucus and keeps the stomach healthy.” She gags on the cloth, pulls it out.

Charlie enters wearing only a bath towel, sits on the sofa, strums his guitar. Vickie lies on the floor, coming on strong to the acid, a look of horror on her face. “God, man, this is waaaaayy too heavy.”

“Don’t be afraid, girl. The son of man is here. That’s me. Man-son. I’m the son of man and the god of fuck.” He drops the towel, kneels, removes Vickie’s clothes and unceremoniously mounts her. All but oblivious to these goings on, she stares into space, sobbing. When he’s finished, he hurriedly throws on his clothes, dumps the remaining tabs from the stash into his top pocket, then tosses the rabbit’s foot onto the floor. “There you go, girl. Keep that in remembrance of you know who.” He snatches up his guitar and leaves, slamming the door behind him. Vickie stares fixedly at the ceiling, her mind far, far away.

A Wichita, Kansas, bus station, late afternoon on a sweltering August Friday twenty years later. A bus pulls into the station and docks. People get off: two or three men in Army uniforms, old women and men, winos, college students, sleepy redneck couples with kids, and lastly Vickie, now in her late thirties, with her son, Junior, early twenties, and Wendy.

Junior bears a familial resemblance to Charlie Manson, particularly in the slightly crossed, empty black eyes. He carries a hunting knife in a leather sheath on his snakeskin belt and a guitar in a tattered case. He wears western boots and cutoff jeans. One earring is a crucifix, the other a swastika. On a leather thong around his neck is Manson’s rabbit’s foot stash.

Wendy’s Levis and western blouse fit her bone-thin body loosely. Her face is waxen, pale, her eyes unfocused. She looks ill.

Vickie, in vintage thrift store clothes and well-worn espadrilles, carries a capacious mesh handbag and wears oversized, oval sunglasses. Travel-weary, the three stand next to their luggage, eating granola bars, not sure where to go. Vickie takes off her sunglasses, blinks in the bright sun. “What do you think? Does this look like a place where we can start all over again?”

Junior salivates excessively, wipes the spittle from his lips with a bandana. “I don’t know about that, but I’m hungry enough to eat the ass end off a ministratin’ skunk.”

Wendy sits on her luggage. “I’m tired. I’m just tired.”

A bum approaches, shows a hand that appears to be withered, holds out the other for spare change. “Now, lemme tell you, I still got a piece of shrapnel in my head. Korea. Chosin Reservoir. Nineteen fifty-two.”

Junior reaches into his pocket for change. “If you spare us the rest of that fuckin’ story I’ll give you four bits.”

“I’ll take that deal.”

Junior holds the quarters above the bum’s withered hand, which opens to catch the coins as they are dropped one by one. “Thank you, sonny boy.”

“Where’s the closest place where we can get something to eat?”

“The Squat ‘n’ Gobble over on Broadway. Three, four blocks.”