Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

“What about him?”

“Like the location of his residence?”

192 / Denis Johnson

“They’ll get around to everybody eventually,” Fairchild said.

The coffee had cooled and Meadows took a big gulp and found that he was thirsty and that it was good to drink. He watched the buzzards totter in the currents.

“Do you remember,” he asked Fairchild, “where it was we met?”

“Everybody I’ve ever met I met in the Gualala Hotel bar.”

“Well, that’s right. That’s where it was. We had a conversation, we sensed an opportunity, we struck an arrangement. Three years later it’s still in effect. That’s unusually lucky, when you think about it.”

“Is this a farewell speech? Do I sense yet another divorce in my future?”

“No, man, no. In fact exactly the opposite. I’m seeing that we have a past here, and I want to value it. I will do what I can to maintain our partnership.”

“Clarence! You’re better than any shrink! What about the pig-men?”

“What can they do?”

“They’ll staple my penis to something, I think.”

“They’ll leave. How long can they hang around? Didn’t you say they left once already? I’ll talk to them.”

“Clarence, look: I’m happy!”

The night’s heavens kept clear all the way to M-47, a galaxy lying some eighty billion light-years off and appearing over such unframeable distances no more impressive than an asteroid. In fact it would have swallowed the Milky Way and two others just as big. Meadows while at sea had learned to locate it. He and Billy lay now on a plastic tarp in a clear spot out front of the cabin raptly marking a pinpoint candes-cence’s course toward M-47 and praying for a collision. A weather satellite, most likely.

“Oh lord, oh lord, so close,” Billy said as the bright little mover failed to pierce the galaxy.

They’d put away a feast of venison sausage fried up with eggs and beans, and hard biscuits baked in a covered pan. Meadows lay there wedded to the deep basso pulse of all outer space and feeling only recently surfaced from total amnesia.

— No matter how untrustworthy his sensations, interpretations, conclusions, the bare unnameable fact remained. You couldn’t know it. But you could be it. A relaxed but attentive attitude, nothing more Already Dead / 193

was required. No need to push through to the next thing. It’s already here.

As on the road that had taken him back this way. And he moving forward, blind and strangling, through the storm…

Billy said, “Did you ever imagine, like, a guy who keeps hearing something from way out, way out, but it won’t reach down here where it’s all twisted and full of vengeance, and it’s like if he could get out there , he’d see — because he could look back down here— ”

“Twelve now,” Meadows said, counting yet another meteor’s trace through the northwest quadrant.

“—and without all the boundaries cutting it up it would be made obvious — I mean like his unknown purpose, his not-to-be-revealed identity.”

“His secret mission.”

“Yeah. But don’t laugh.”

“I’m not. I was thinking those very things while I was driving up yesterday. Have you ever seen these trick hats that look like Greek writing until you get far enough back? And then they say, ‘Fuck You’?” Billy seemed to hold his breath in the dark a minute, and then said…“No.”

In a while Billy asked after the garden, and Meadows told him how if a person only walked along the rows and breathed the plants’ exhalations, he saw visions. “I got a couple crumbs, if you want a hit.”

“I don’t think I should touch anything even remotely psychedelic.”

“That’s what your brother said.”

“ Some times we agree. Not always.”

“He’s jammed up some way, he tells me.”

“It’s his buddy that he partnered with on a rotten deal.”

“Lally.”

“Harry Lally. He’s slick.”

“Slicker’n a wet bean.”

“That’s nothing. Nelson knows demons way past Harry Lally’s level.”

“I believe you.”

“Why doesn’t he try talking to a cop?”

“A cop?”

“Like the new guy. My instincts tell me he might be okay.” 194 / Denis Johnson

“Do you realize we’re criminals, Billy? We don’t think cops are okay.”

“There are good ones and bad ones. Like any profession. The world is full of bad news. Anybody who’s not an asshole — thanked be fortune.

Thanked be fortune, cop or priest or I don’t care who. The mayor.”

“Thanked be fortune.”

“Yes, you got it.”

“Is this place getting crazier and crazier?”

“Very likely, yes. You referring to the North Coast?”

“Here. Here. Here, man. The entire western portion of the Milky Way.”

Billy kept silent a minute and then said, “The whole age is turning.”

“So they say.”

“When you erase the lines, that’s God. God is all.”

“You’re not gonna trip your wires now.”

“Me? No.”

“You haven’t been doing coffee.”

“No. But wow. The stars.”

He asked Billy, “Did you one time tell me you had a Coleman stove?

Could I borrow it? I think I better start sleeping out by the garden.”

“It’s in the Scout. Fuel’s there too.”

“Okay. Remind me.”

“Remind you what?”

Clarence told Billy about the woman named Carrie, the woman with the kid named Clarence; of how he’d watched her calmly sleeping.

“…but she’s awake, she’s penitent, suddenly wants to go chaste, all religiously deranged and messed up.”

“Godliness isn’t bad, Clarencio.”

“Did I say it was bad?”

“Religion’s okay. But those highways. Some people just get rolling.”

“And their scene boils down to looking for the one thing that’ll stop them. That’s why she was out there in her defunct evening dress laughing and pretending to be normal.” A thought came into Clarence’s mind and he laughed: “I got me a bowling ball, dude. I got you a hat, too.”

“It was probably just highway madness,” Billy offered in defense of this godly woman he’d never seen.

Already Dead / 195

The same constellations lit the clearing when he came awake that same night, disturbed by movements in the cabin where Billy must have turned in. Meadows lay by the cold coals where he’d drifted off, his bag wrapped around him but his feet sticking out and paralyzed by the chill. He kicked his boots off and jammed his toes into the down-filled folds while a flashlight beam jerked and floated the cabin from inside. With the moon so low it wouldn’t yet be eleven; he’d only napped a little while.

The light moved outside and the cabin door clapped behind it.

“Something’s wrong!”

“You sick or something?”

“Something’s happening!”

“It’s just a night on Earth, man.”

“There’s something happening, Clarence. I really — I gotta go.”

“Are you about to disappear into the woods?”

“I’m going to Dad’s.”

“That don’t seem too smart.”

But Billy was moving. “Something’s happening , brother.” The lantern swung west and Meadows could make out Billy’s form occluding it. Billy headed out under the glittering galaxies through the trees and toward Carter’s Landing Road, by which he’d find the coast.

Clarence was at a loss here, but judged that Billy would probably make his way and if he foundered would get his bearings easily by daylight. Meadows sat up in the bag and wrapped his arms about his shins and then saw the full moon break the treetops: dawn not five hours off.

He crawled from under his bag and pulled his boots on quickly, shivering against the breeze that stirred up around him that faint sweet fetid redwood smell like mystic yeast. He threw his things into Billy’s Scout, made certain of its fuel level and gave the gallon Coleman tin a shake — plenty for the stove — before trying the road up to the ridge.