Ken Kesey - Demon Box

He picks a shady spot under an overhanging oak and sticks the spade into the dirt. It's clay: mud in winter, baked concrete in summer. It would be easier digging up by the pond, but he likes it here. It's hidden and cool. The arms of the old scrub oak are ceremoniously draped with long gray-green shrouds of Spanish moss. The pinched, dry oak leaves are motionless. Even the ravens have abandoned their raucous tirade and are watching in silence from a branch in the tallest of the cottonwoods.

He hangs his hat on an oak stob and sets to digging, furiously now that he has chosen the site, hacking and stamping and chopping at the mat of clay and roots until his lungs wheeze and the dust runs off his face in gullies of sweat. He finally wipes his eyes with the hem of his shirt and stands back from the simple black basin. "Ought to be deeper if we want to keep the foxes from smelling it and digging it up." He looks down into the hole, panting and shaking so violently that he has to support himself with the shovel. "But then, on the other hand," he decides, "it's deep enough for folk music, as they say," and tips the corpse into the hole. To make it fit he has to bend the front legs back against the chest and force the hind legs together. It looks actually cute this way, he concedes, a kid's woolly doll. Hardly used. Just have to sew on a couple of bright new buttons for eyes, be good as new.

Then the trembling starts to get worse. This must be how they begin, he thinks. Freak-outs. Breakdowns. Crack-ups. Eventually shut-ins and finally cross-offs. But first the cover-up…

He spoons the earth back into the hole over the little animal much slower than he had dug it out. He can feel that he has blistered both hands. He wishes he'd remembered to bring his gloves. He wishes Sandy hadn't smoked his last joint. He wishes he had his glasses. Most of all, he wishes he'd thought to bring some liquid relief. His throat is on fire. There is water back up at the stock tub, a short walk away, but water isn't enough. There are fires in more than the throat that need attention. And no hope in the house. Why hadn't he driven to the liquor store in Creswell before he started this flight? Always good to have a parachute. Never know when some unexpected downdraft might pop up, throw the best flier into a tailspin. He closes his eyes and frowns, examining the possibilities. No downers, no tranquilizers, no prescription painkillers even. All went with the main troops on the Woodstock campaign. Not even any wine left at the house, and Betsy still off with the only working vehicle. In short, no parachutes nowhere.

He begins to shudder uncontrollably, his teeth chattering. He's afraid he is having a stroke or a seizure. They run in the family, fits. Uncle Nathan Whittier had a seizure slopping the hogs in Arkansas, fell into the sty, and the hogs ate him. No hogs here, just those ravens up there and these still oaks and, over there, in another little glade only a dozen yards deeper into the swamp, atop a stump in a beam of smoky sunlight, by the grace of God, a gallon of red wine? Burgundy? From the heavens a bottle of burgundy?

He drops the spade and reels through the branches and banners of moss until he has the bottle in his hands. It is a wine bottle, cheap Gallo to be sure but still half full and cool in the shady bottom air. He unscrews the top and upends the bottle and drinks in long swallows until he loses his equilibrium and has to lower his head. He turns around and sits on the stump until he catches his balance, then tips his head back for the bottle again. He doesn't stop swallowing until his lungs demand it. There is less than a fourth remaining after his unbroken guzzle, and he can feel the liquid already spreading through his body's knotted thoroughfares, already bringing relief.

It's only then that he notices that it is not a light, dry 12-percent burgundy after all but a syrupy sweet 18-percent wino port with a bouquet just like he'd smelled out of Blackbeard's mouth a couple of hours back. He looks around and sees two raggedy bedrolls, a World War I shoulder pack, and the remains of a small fire. There is a dog-eared pile of underground comics beside one bedroll and a paperback On the Road. In the other bedroll's area lies a pile of shavings, idly whittled slivers, some as thin as the fallen cotton-wood leaves.

"So this is why they were up the road from this direction, not down from the highway direction like every other pilgrim. Asshole bums…"

But there is no heat in the curse. He tips up the bottle again, more thoughtfully now, and somewhat curious. Maybe they're more than bums.

"Team," he says to the ravens, "I think we ought to put a stakeout on these assholes."

The birds don't disagree. They seem to have already begun the vigil, hunching their heads deep into their black breasts and settling down on their limbs in the smoky air. Deboree picks up the paperback and the stack of comics and retreats to the wheelbarrow, his finger still hooked in the gallon's glass handle. He selects a blackberry patch about twenty steps from the camp and bores into the brambles from behind, using the wheelbarrow as a plow and the spade like a machete until he has cleared a comfortable observation post in the center of the thorny vines. He tilts the wheelbarrow up and packs it with the Spanish moss from an overhanging oak limb until the rusty old bucket is as comfortable as any easy chair. He settles into his nest, arranging the leaves in front of his face so he can easily see out without having to touch the vines, and takes another long drink of the sweet wine.

The shadows climb slowly up the tree trunks. The ravens desert, squawking off to their respective roosts after a disappointing day. The air turns a deeper red as the sun, dropping to the horizon, has even more smoke to penetrate. The wine goes down as the Checkered Demon and Mr. Natural and the Furry Freak Brothers flip past his eyes. At last there is only an inch left, and the paperback. He's read it three times before. Years ago. Before heading off to California. Hoping to sign on in some way, to join that joyous voyage, like thousands of other volunteers inspired by the same book, and its vision, and, of course, its incomparable hero.

Like all the other young candidates for beatitude, he had prowled North Beach's famous hangouts – City Lights, The Place, The Coffee Gallery, The Bagel Shop – hoping to catch a glimpse of that lightning-mouthed character that Kerouac had called Dean Moriarty in On the Road and that John Clellon Holmes had named Hart Kennedy in Go, maybe eavesdrop on one of his high-octane hipalogues, perhaps even get a chance to be a big-eyed passenger on one of his wild rapping runs around the high spots of magic San Francisco. But he had never imagined much more, certainly not the jackpot of associations that followed, the trips, the adventures, the near disasters – and, worse danger, the near successes that almost put Houlihan on stage. Houlihan was Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters, and Lord Buckley all together just for starters. He couldn't have helped but been a hit. But a nightclub format would have pinched his free-flying mind, and no stage in the world could have really accommodated his art – his hurtling, careening, corner-squealing commentary on the cosmos – except the stage he built about himself the moment he slid all quick and sinewy under the steering wheel of a good car: the bigger, the boatier, the more American, the better. The glow of the dash was his footlights, the slash of oncoming sealed beams was his spots. And now, and now, and now the act is over. No more would that rolling theater ever come bouncing and steaming and blaring rhythm and blues and Houlihan hoopla up the drive all full of speed and plans and hammering hearts.

For now, now, now, the son of a bitch is dead.