Denis Johnson: Jesus' Son: Stories

"It happened a long time ago," he said.

"What did you do? Who did you rip off?"

"It was last year. It was last year." He laughed at himself for calling down a brand of justice that would hound him for that long.

"Who did you rip off, Hotel?"

"Aah, don't ask me. Shit. Fuck. God." He turned and started talking to somebody else.

The Vine was different every day. Some of the most terrible things that had happened to me in my life had happened in here. But like the others I kept coming back.

And with each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me. And then I would remember I had a wife at home who loved me, or later that my wife had left me and I was terrified, or again later that I had a beautiful alcoholic girlfriend who would make me happy forever. But every time I entered the place there were veiled faces promising everything and then clarifying quickly into the dull, the usual, looking up at me and making the same mistake.

That night I sat in a booth across from Kid Williams, a former boxer. His black hands were lumpy and mutilated. I always had the feeling he might suddenly reach out his hands and strangle me to death. He spoke in two voices. He was in his fifties. He'd wasted his entire life. Such people were very dear to those of us who'd wasted only a few years. With Kid Williams sitting across from you it was nothing to contemplate going on like this for another month or two.

I wasn't exaggerating about those hospital name bands. Kid Williams was wearing one on his wrist. He'd just come over the wall from Detox. "Buy me a drink, buy me a drink," he said in his high voice. Then he frowned and said in his low voice, "I come down here for just a short time," and brightening, in his high voice: "I wanted to see you-all! Buy me one now, because I don't have my purse, my wallet, they took all my money. They theifs." He grabbed at the barmaid like a child after a toy. All he was wearing was a nightshirt tucked into his pants and hospital slippers made of green paper.

Suddenly I remembered that Hotel himself, or somebody connected with him, had told me weeks ago that Hotel was in trouble for armed robbery. He'd stolen drugs and money at gunpoint from some college students who'd been selling a lot of cocaine, and they'd decided to turn him in. I'd forgotten I'd ever heard about it.

And then, as if to twist my life even further, I realized that all the celebrating that afternoon hadn't been Hotel's farewell party after all, but his welcome home. He'd been acquitted. His lawyer had managed to clear him on the curious grounds that he'd been trying to defend the community against the influence of these drug dealers. Completely confused as to who the real criminals were in this case, the jury had voted to wash their hands of everybody and they let him off. That had been the meaning of the conversation I'd had with him that afternoon, but I hadn't understood what was happening at all.

There were many moments in the Vine like that one-where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.

Hotel was given back the rest of his life, the twenty-five years and more. The police promised him, because they were so bitter about his good luck, that if he didn't leave town they would make him sorry he'd stayed. He stuck it out a while, but fought with his girlfriend and left-he held jobs in Denver, Reno, points west-and then within a year turned up again because he couldn't keep away from her.

Now he was twenty, twenty-one years old.

The Vine had been torn down. Urban renewal had changed all the streets. As for me, my girlfriend and I had split up, but we couldn't keep away from each other.

One night she and I fought, and I walked the streets till the bars opened in the morning. I just went into any old place.

Jack Hotel was beside me in the mirror, drinking. There were some others there exactly like the two of us, and we were comforted.

Sometimes what I wouldn't give to have us sitting in a bar again at 9:00 a.m. telling lies to one another, far from God.

Hotel had fought with his girlfriend, too. He'd walked the streets as I had. Now we matched each other drink for drink until we both ran out of money.

I knew of an apartment building where a dead tenant's Social Security checks were still being delivered. I'd been stealing them every month for half a year, always with trepidation, always delaying a couple of days after their arrival, always thinking I'd find an honest way to make a few dollars, always believing I was an honest person who shouldn't be doing things like that, always delaying because I was afraid this time I'd be caught.

Hotel went along with me while I stole the check. I forged the signature and signed it over to him, under his true name, so that he could cash it at a supermarket. I believe his true name was George Hoddel. It's German. We bought heroin with the money and split the heroin down the middle.

Then he went looking for his girlfriend, and I went looking for mine, knowing that when there were drugs around, she surrendered.

But I was in a bad condition-drunk, and having missed a night's sleep. As soon as the stuff entered my system, I passed out. Two hours went by without my noticing.

I felt I'd only blinked my eyes, but when I opened them my girlfriend and a Mexican neighbor were working on me, doing everything they could to bring me back. The Mexican was saying, "There, he's coming around now."

We lived in a tiny, dirty apartment. When I realized how long I'd been out and how close I'd come to leaving it forever, our little home seemed to glitter like cheap jewelry. I was overjoyed not to be dead. Generally the closest I ever came to wondering about the meaning of it all was to consider that I must be the victim of a joke. There was no touching the hem of mystery, no little occasion when any of us thought-well, speaking for myself only, I suppose-that our lungs were filled with light, or anything like that. I had a moment's glory that night, though. I was certain I was here in this world because I couldn't tolerate any other place.

As for Hotel, who was in exactly the same shape I was and carrying just as much heroin, but who didn't have to share it with his girlfriend, because he couldn't find her that day: he took himself to a rooming house down at the end of Iowa Avenue, and he overdosed, too. He went into a deep sleep, and to the others there he looked quite dead.

The people with him, all friends of ours, monitored his breathing by holding a pocket mirror under his nostrils from time to time, making sure that points of mist appeared on the glass. But after a while they forgot about him, and his breath failed without anybody's noticing. He simply went under. He died.

I am still alive.

I went out to the farmhouse where Dundun lived to get some pharmaceutical opium from him, but I was out of luck.

He greeted me as he was coming out into the front yard to go to the pump, wearing new cowboy boots and a leather vest, with his flannel shirt hanging out over his jeans. He was chewing on a piece of gum.

"Mclnnes isn't feeling too good today. I just shot him."

"You mean killed him?"

"I didn't mean to."

"Is he really dead?"

"No. He's sitting down."

"But he's alive."

"Oh, sure, he's alive. He's sitting down now in the back room."

Dundun went on over to the pump and started working the handle.

I went around the house and in through the back. The room just through the back door smelled of dogs and babies. Beatle stood in the opposite doorway. She watched me come in. Leaning against the wall was Blue, smoking a cigarette and scratching her chin thoughtfully. Jack Hotel was over at an old desk, setting fire to a pipe the bowl of which was wrapped in tinfoil.