Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

The barman tossed down a pink disposable, and the man paused while he set the butane feather against the cigarette depending like a bit of root from his lips and got it smoking. Dragged deep. Stared significantly at Fairchild. “Ever heard of overhead?”

“Have you got another little stogie, partner?”

“You? You don’t smoke.” The man turned away looking sad.

The barman raised his eyebrows at Fairchild.

“Something about halfway fatal. An ounce.”

“Tequila? Rum?”

“Tequila, please, and please,” he added as the barman nudged open with his knee the little icebox, reached within and turned to him holding in one hand a gleaming blade and in the other a yellow, a quite yellow, a solar-yellow lemon, “no food.”

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The barman set it out. Fairchild tipped the shot to his life and relaxed the craving. The man sitting next to him did the same for himself and waited with his hands in front him on the bar, the black penitentiary futharks on them blurred by trembling. Others joined them, other hands at the shot glasses like shivering newborn puppies — the randomly in-cised and greasy hands of bikers — carpenters’ hands with their discompleted fingers — sawyers’ hands epoxied with pitch and dirt — and they all got right with shots and watched the images on the tube.

“There he is.”

“He do look dead.”

“Shot him right through the tattoo. The heart on his tattoo. Rock of Ages tattoo.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah, you know the tattoo with the drowning lady hugging a big old motherfucking cross.”

“She been in a shipwreck.”

“Yeah. Right through her own chest.”

“Shot ’em both.”

“Him and her.”

“That’s too beautiful to laugh about.”

The barman pointed his remote and hit the same murder on another station.

“Guess there’s a dope scare on in Oakland.”

“Hey.”

“Hey there.”

“Hey. Somebody capped Joe Hopeless.”

“No.”

“Yep. Assassinated him at the driving range. They just showed him laid out with a bucket of golf balls spilled all around him.”

“Who did it?”

“Unknown assailant.”

“Lee Harvey Oswald.”

Not bad people, not evil people, but actually storms of innocence.

Deadheads telling their tears. The town where Jesus got his swastika removed…Fairchild wondered about the possibility of living here forever.

A second tequila went down in Whitehorn. The Thing melted away and Fairchild turned to his right. A face: cuneiform features. “How you doing?”

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“My muscles up my back are all kinked up. Back trouble.”

“Would you be Mr. Harley?” Fairchild asked. “Or would you be Davidson.”

“I am who I am. What brings you to our parts? You look like an escapee.”

“I’m exactly that.”

“Escaped from what?”

“Some incredibly boring people.”

“Charles. Same again, Charles. On the tab.”

“The tab? Tabs do not exist here.”

“You stingy shit. Ghosta Joe Hopeless gonna get you bad.”

“I don’t believe in ghosts,” the barkeep said.

“I seen a million. In the war I probably wasted more ghosts than gooks.”

“Let God,” one man quoted for them, his face blank and staring, “sort

’em out.”

“Oh, yeah, ghosts , yeah,” the barman said. “I hate to inform you.

When you see a ghost walking around a battle zone, that is not a spirit.

It’s all electromagnetic transactions on a series of fields. I mean, for instance. Have you read Whitehead?”

“Stop right there,” Fairchild interrupted.

“Drop a little acid sometime. Then read Whitehead.”

“A Whiteheadian tavern-keep.”

“Whitehead must’ve dabbled a little.”

“How do you know? Hey. Charles. How do you know?”

“I wish I didn’t work in a bar where intelligent conversation gets impossible after nine-fifteen A.M.” The tavern-keep stooped down and rose up with a burning cigarette, dragged on it with half-shut eyes.

“This is a lonely business.” He crouched and snuffed it and turned away.

“Boudreau.”

“Boudreau. Get in here, Boudreau.”

“News of the hour: they killed Joe Hopeless.”

“Who?”

“About fifty thousand suspects. Take your pick.”

“Lord God,” one man said, turning directly to Fairchild, “I was on the golf course with my bookie when they nuked my street.” Goofy dude, he assumed so anyway because he was smiling with his jaw doddering open and brown tobacco juice strung through his chin 406 / Denis Johnson

whiskers. “Wow. You are the dead spit of Normal Bates. Hey brother.” He choked on his plug. Tears filled his eyes and he drank down his beer. “Did you realize you’re bleeding like raw steak?” The barman peered over and down into Fairchild’s lap. “You having one of them days, boy.”

“Normal Bates is bleeding. Must’ve stabbed himself in the shower.”

“Pay no attention,” the barman advised Fairchild. “He was fricasseed by a power wire a few years back.”

They both studied the man for a moment.

“Oh yeah,” he said as if suddenly remembering. “I got a metal plate in my head.”

“ Get cher ass in here, you snake.”

“You hear about Joe Hopeless experiencing a little difficulty?”

“Broke his neck stepping out a cigarette.”

“Killed trying to get to the phone too quick.”

“We all die. Whose thrifty-six is that setting out there?”

“Mine, sir. Let me buy you a drink.”

“Beautiful. Shot of Black Velvet, Charlie.”

“Black Velvet. Outta five. My name is not Charlie.”

“’Scuse me. Charles, Charles.”

“Outta five. And sir?”

“Tequila. No food.”

Fairchild, grown strong and optimistic, heads for the Lost Coast.

He passes between high forested hills and lowland chaparrals of manzanita, mobs of near-leafless crones, but still hung with bear-berries, and he gets near but can’t quite locate one or two small towns in the back country, nothing but a schoolhouse or a tiny grange hall and a sense that somebody must live here — the creeks of intrigue burbling through square dances, and tall gone columbine leaning over into the road — and one tiny kid waving, just holding up his hand as if to prove it. Out ahead of him a small dog trots lopsided, fetching its tongue down through California.

Aroad not hardly a road,” Thompson said. The worst he’d seen. An African footpath. He’d bought a pint, by now a half-pint, in Whitehorn, a settlement of dinosaur bikeys too dried-down to get it kicked over; and not by any means drunk, still he’d lost interest in worldly things, had melted halfway into the seat cush-Already Dead / 407

ion, his head rolling with the terrain. “We are lost…We are scrotally alone in this universe…”

Falls drove, as his sight had come back. But it showed him nothing but ruts and trees, too deep and too close. Whenever branches knocked against the truck he said, “Come in? Come in?” Even the ocean found a place to hide behind these trees. In gaps the country fell away over cliffs topped by wind-flattened grass, the emptiness hung with gulls.

Then boom — the jungle. “This ain’t no coast,” Falls said, “not to me. To me a coast is where you can touch the water.”

“‘Lost Coast.’”

“I didn’t see it on the map.”

“Lost Coast. That’s what the sign said. Ranger Station, big white arrow.”

“That was pointing right. We went straight.” It said ‘Lost Coast.’ And we’re sure as shit lost.”

“We ain’t lost.” Foliage whacked at the windows. “Come in? Come in?”