Denis Johnson - Already Dead - A California Gothic

Immediately around the bend and out of sight, Meadows cranked the steering a half turn to the left, depressed the clutch, and yanked up the emergency brake hard. Headed now directly at the bluff’s edge, he dropped the brake, straightened the wheel, popped the clutch, jammed the gas, and accomplished a sliding bootlegger’s U-turn and went into pursuit.

Falls dreams often of the moment he killed his father, put one in his heart during an argument. The killing had been completely unexpected, a shock to everybody, although one had been going to shoot the other for a long time. Only, and he was more and more certain of it the older he got, only his father hadn’t Already Dead / 363

quite realized this until the slug split his breastbone. Then his eyes had clouded out, turned to little bright stones in the sockets. Falls goes over this moment when he wakes from dreams of it, holding it carefully in his mind, pressing his fingers to his temples, staring at the face he’s just dreamed, intensely curious to find in those eyes a beat of light — shit, the light would say, I get it: We’ve been fucking with the ultimate…But the dream had been fading out over the years, the decades. He woke remembering, but you couldn’t say the dream had actually run itself through. It only signaled itself by scattered half-images, like stations ticked over as you spin the dream-dial.

Meanwhile Tommy gave up and turned off the radio. Falls said,

“Good. That activity irritates the shit out of me.”

“Nothing comes in.”

“Garberville’s got a station.”

“Not on this piece of equipment.”

Thompson managed to contain himself for a while, looking out at 101 and the tracks running in a ravine alongside it.

Falls tried to distract him by bringing up the Mexican girl again:

“Hey, you know that Mexican girl?”

“What about her?”

“She wasn’t half bad. What’s your opinion?” But Tommy gave out with something that combined a sigh and a laugh. They’d met the Mexican girl two days ago, and both had agreed at the time that she was an ugly dog. “Okay, Bart, back to the thing.

Straight, no bullshit. Mano a mano .”

“ Mano a mano ? You mean hombre to hombre .”

“Goddamn! Fine!”

“Okay—”

“No. Way to go, man.”

“All right—”

“Way to go.”

“Can I answer your question?”

“Yeah…”

“It’d be best in a war.”

“Were you in a war?”

“No, I’m really just guessing is all.”

“Okay.”

“But it’d be easier to lay it down later. You take off the uniform, and you lay it all down.”

364 / Denis Johnson

“Yeah, okay,” Tommy said, “I gotta lay it down.”

“That’s the message.”

“I just didn’t know how I’d feel afterward. Now it’s afterward and I still don’t know.”

“Man. I’ll never understand you.”

“You don’t have to.” Thompson watched things go by out in the world. “In fact I don’t want you to.” He wrinkled his nose. “It stinks around here.” A brown atmospheric haze had followed them down from the fires in Humboldt County.

They ate cold sandwiches at a picnic stop north of the Leggett turnoff. “We going to eat in a restaurant one of these days?”

“It wouldn’t be smart. I don’t wanna be remembered,” Falls said.

Thompson stood up and attempted a jump shot with his wrappings toward the rubbish can. “Two points,” he announced, although it hit the rim and went wrong. He sat down backward at the table and reached for his Michelob and told Falls, “We should be bringing back an ear or a finger.”

“He’s got a private swimming pool from which he looks down on the ocean. He don’t wanna see nobody’s ear.”

“Shit, man. Why are you keeping that thing?” Falls had taken out the pages again and begun shuffling them around in his lap. “This is like a hundred pages long,” he said in wonder.

“Why’d you keep it in the first place?”

“You can’t leave it to fly out all over the world like when they let down leaflets out of a plane, man.”

Thompson said, “You’re in a mood.”

“I knew that before you did.”

“I don’t feel nothin’.”

“Look. It’s not about that.” Falls bent close over the pages in his lap.

“I think it’s in a foreign language. Or I think it’s in code.”

“I’m gonna get a fire going.”

“Be my guest.”

“Gimme some of that diary to get her lit, please.” Falls said, “Here’s some good shit. This bark is dry.” He was putting it back in its envelope in the morning when Thompson woke up and said, “So. Breakfast is not served, I guess?” Already Dead / 365

“This thing,” Falls said, “is as good as a finger or ear or whatever.”

“I think this conversation started before I joined in,” Thompson said.

“You can get an ear just about anyplace.”

“Excuse me? Did you say something stupid again? Did you say you could get an ear just about anyplace?”

“It would take me a year to write this much,” Falls said.

“You can’t even read it, man.”

“Good. Because I looked at it, and I could read it.”

“You gonna read it?”

“I don’t wanna see it or even know about it. No, I’m not gonna read it.”

“Just don’t go giving it to Lally. We need genuine proof of comple-tion.”

“After we dig in the garden, we’ll have proof.”

“ If we find it,” Tommy said. “That guy was delirious. He was meat anyway, and he knew it. He could’ve given us a totally false location.”

“He didn’t lie. He wouldn’t.”

“He might’ve lied about it just to be funny.”

“That’s why he told the truth. Just to be funny.” After they’d finished their business in Fairchild’s garden and washed up at a gas station, the men and the dogs celebrated with pizza, canned all-meat Alpo, imported Dos Equis beer. Well past the supper hour they parked in the pullout in front of the client’s gate and killed the engine. No lights showed in the house. The wind moved little floating toys around in the swimming pool. Tommy started chewing on a cuticle. It looked like he was sucking his thumb.

“Wish he’d take a bleeding phone call. I mean we could’ve said something neutral like, hi, your order’s ready.”

“He’s paranoid. Probably keeps him outta jail. We should be paranoid too.”

They heard quarreling in the camper. The truck rocked slightly.

“Damn their shit.”

Thompson whapped the back windshield. “SETTLE DOWN!”

“If those two get into that bundle, they’ll have a hell of a party.”

“Can dogs get stoned?”

“Sure. They’re animals. All animals can get stoned.” 366 / Denis Johnson

“Crayfish? Salmon?”

“Can I say something, please? I’m enjoying our success, and you seem to wanna mess with me. It ain’t fun. You’re bringing me down.”

“I’m just prodding you, man, to be a little more accurate in your statements.”

“Hey, you asked, I answered.”

“Really I’m just trying to think. I feel like some sort of other plan is coming out of left field.”

“That’s a powerful shitload of dope, man,” said Falls.

“I see. Great minds think alike.”

“Unfortunately it ain’t drying right.”

“Sure. And it’s picked too early. But still.”

“It might not be quick. You might have to practically retail it. Meanwhile Lally hires somebody to come after us .”

“That one car was on us for a while.”

“That jeep, yeah.”

“Bullshit.”

“Probably bullshit — but. I wouldn’t put it past him to have us tailed, see if we stick to business.”