Ken Kesey - Demon Box

Deboree's research had yielded up no satisfactory answer. After hours of trial and chemistry before the typewriter, he had pecked out one meager page of print, but the victories he had listed on his side were largely mundane achievements: "Dobbs and Blanche had another kid… Rampage and I finally got cut loose from our three-year probation…" Certainly no great score for the left wing of the ledger. But that was all he could think of: one puny page to show for forty hours of prowling around in the lonely library of what he used to call "The Movement." Forty hours of thinking, drinking, and peeing in a milk bottle, with no break except that ten-minute trip downstairs to deal with those pilgriming prickheads. And now, back upstairs and still badly shaken, even that feeble page was missing; the typed yellow sheet of paper was as misplaced as his colored glasses.

"Pox on both houses," he moaned aloud, rubbing his irritated eyes with his wrists. "On Oregon field burners poisoning the air for weed-free profit and on California flower children gone to seed and thorn!"

He rubbed until the sockets filled with sparks; then he lowered his fists and held both arms tight against his sides in an attempt calm himself, standing straight and breathing steady. His chest was still choked with adrenaline. Those California goddamned clowns, both smelling of patchouli oil, and cheap sweet wine, and an angry festering vindictiveness. Of threat, really. They reeked of threat. The older of the two, the blackbeard, had stopped the barking of M'kehla's pair of Great Danes with only a word. "Shut!" he had hissed, the sound slicing out from the side of his mouth. The dogs had immediately turned tail back to their bus.

Deboree hadn't wanted to interface with the pair from the moment he saw them come sauntering in, all long hair and dust and multipatched Levi's, but Betsy was away with the kids up Fall Creek and it was either go down and meet them in the yard or let them saunter right on into the house. They had called him brother when he came down to greet them – an endearment that always made him watch out for his wallet – and the younger one had lit a stick of incense to wave around while they told their tale. They were brothers of the sun. They were on their way back to the Haight, coming from the big doings in Woodstock, and had decided they'd meet the famous Devlin Deboree before going on south.

"Rest a little, rap a little, maybe riff a little. Y'know what I'm saying, bro?"

As Deboree listened, nodding, Stewart had trotted up carrying the broken bean pole.

"Don't go for Stewart's stick, by the way." He addressed the younger of the pair, a blond-bearded boy with a gleaming milk-fed smile and new motorcycle boots. "Stewart's like an old drunk with his stick. The more you throw it, the more lushed out he gets."

The dog dropped the stick between the new boots and looked eagerly into the boy's face.

"For years I tried to break him of the habit. But he just can't help it when he sees certain strangers. I finally realized it was easier training the stick throwers than the stick chasers. So just ignore it, okay? Tell him no dice. Pretty soon he goes away."

"Whatever," the boy had answered, smiling. "You heard the man, Stewart: no dice."

The boy had kicked the stick away, but the dog had snagged it from the air and planted himself again before the boots. The boy did try to ignore it. He continued his description of the great scene at Woodstock, telling dreamily what a groove it had been, how high, how happy, how everybody there had been looking for Devlin Deboree.

"You shoulda made it, man. A stone primo groove…"

The dog grew impatient and picked up his stick and carried it to the other man, who was squatting in the grass on one lean haunch.

"Just tell him no dice," Deboree said to the side of the man's head. "Beat it, Stewart. Don't pester the tourists."

The other man smiled down at the dog without speaking. His beard was long and black and extremely thick, with the salt of age beginning to sprinkle around the mouth and ears. As his profile smiled, Deboree watched two long incisors grow from the black bramble of his mouth. The teeth were as yellow and broken as the boy's were perfect. This dude, Deboree remembered, had kept his face averted while they were shaking hands. He wondered if this was because he was self-conscious about his breath like a lot of people with bad teeth.

"Well, anyway, what's happening, man? What's doing? All this?" Blondboy was beaming about at his surroundings. "Boss place you got here, this garden and trees and shit. I can see you are into the land. That's good, that's good. We're getting it together to get a little place outside of Petaluma soon as Bob here's old lady dies. Be good for the soul. Lot of work, though, right? Watering and feeding and taking care of all this shit?"

"It keeps you occupied," Deboree had allowed.

"Just the same," the boy rambled on, "you shoulda made it back there to Woodstock. Primo, that's the only word. Acres and acres of bare titty and good weed and outa sight vibes, you get me?"

"So I've heard," Deboree answered, nodding pleasantly at the boy. But he couldn't take his mind off the other hitchhiker. Blackbeard shifted his weight to the other haunch, the movement deliberate and restrained, careful not to disturb the dust that covered him. His face was deeply tanned and his hair tied back so the leathery cords in his neck could be seen working as he followed the dog's imploring little tosses of the stick. He was without clothes from the waist up but not unadorned. He wore a string of eucalyptus berries around his neck and tooled leather wristbands on each long arm. A jail tattoo – made, Deboree recognized, by two sewing needles lashed parallel at the end of a matchstick and dipped in india ink – covered his left hand: it was a blue-black spider with legs extending down all five fingers to their ragged nails. At his hip he carried a bone-handled skinning knife in a beaded sheath, and across his knotted belly a long scar ran diagonally down out of sight into his Levi's. Grinning, the man watched Stewart prance up and down with the three-foot length of broken bean stake dripping in his mouth.

"Back off, Stewart," Deboree commanded. "Leave this guy alone!"

"Stewart don't bother me," the man said, his voice soft from the side of his mouth. "Everything gotta have its own trip."

Encouraged by the soft voice, Stewart sank to his rump before the man. This pair of motorcycle boots were old and scuffed. Unlike his partner's, these boots had tromped many a bike to life. Even now, dusty and still, they itched to kick. That itch hung in the air like the peacock's unsounded cry.

Blondboy had become aware of the tenseness of the situation at last. He smiled and broke his incense and threw the smoking half into the quince bush. "Anyhow, you shoulda dug it," he said. "Half a million freaks in the mud and the music." He was beaming impishly from one participant to the other, from Deboree, to his partner, to the prancing dog, as he picked at his wide grin with the dyed end of the incense stick. "Half a million beautiful people…"

They had all sensed it coming. Deboree had tried once more to avert it. "Don't pay him any mind, man. Just an old stick junkie -" but it had been a halfhearted try, and Stewart was already dropping the stick. It had barely touched the dusty boot before the squatting man scooped it up and in the same motion sidearmed it into the grape arbor. Stewart bounded after it.

"Come on, man," Deboree had pleaded. "Don't throw it for him. He goes through wire and thorns and gets all cut up."

"Whatever you say," Blackbeard had replied, his face averted as he watched Stewart trotting back with the retrieved stake held high. "Whatever's right." Then had thrown it again as soon as Stewart dropped it, catching and slinging it all in one motion so fast and smooth that Deboree wondered if he hadn't been a professional athlete at a younger time, baseball or maybe boxing.