Ken Kesey - Demon Box

"Remember, boil -um that milk! Boil -um that milk!"

"Will do, Wise Old Grandsir. Boil milk!" They break into the milk song: " Boil -um that milk an' kill -um that bug that nobody see but make -um you sick."

The libraries exist! Old rituals hold clues to their whereabouts. Old chants! Chambers! Charts -!

At this point Jacky Cherry breaks into my fever in a fervor. "Muldoon's here! He's found somebody who says he knows where it is! He's going to lead us out there tonight."

"Knows what?" I rally a bit from my stupor. "Who?"

"A local visionary. He had a vision three Americans were looking for a secret hall so he drew a map to it!"

"A map?"

"To an underground hall! The guy must have something on the ball to know we were looking for one, sounds to me like."

Sounds to me like Jacky is getting a little desperate over the flak from the home office about the resultless state of our expedition, but I dress and totter out to the street. Muldoon is negotiating with a little man in a blue gellabia.

It is Marag.

Still October 19, Saturday afternoon, only a few tense seconds having elapsed.

"Good morning, my friend," says Marag, sifting his hand from the sleeve of his blue gellabia; "It is a good morning?"

I tell him it isn't a bad morning for two in the afternoon and shake his hand. We look each other over for the first time in the daylight. He's older than I thought, graying, but his eyes are as youthfully bright and black as his teeth are white. He's smiling at me to see what I'll do. There's protocol at stake here on this sunny sidewalk: an acknowledgement that this is my main hash man could be a faux pas costing me a good connection; on the other hand discretion might be taken as a snub, etc.

Muldoon ends my dilemma by introducing him to me as Marvin instead of Marag. I tell him my name is Devlin. Muldoon says Marvin has this map, and quick little hands produce a roll of paper. Something is dimly penciled secondhand over a kid's math assignment still showing through. We lean to look and it rolls back up like a windowshade.

"Marvin says it's a map, to a Secret Hall of Holy History -"

"Secret Tunnel," Marag corrects, "of Angel History. Not far. I have car and driver will take you there very reliable. Hut! Nephew! My friends from America. Hut hut hut!"

He waves at a guy slouched against the fender of his cab at the curb, a surly sort about twenty years old, wearing polyester-knit slacks and a polo shirt, sleeves rolled up to emphasize the arms-folded biceps. He looks us over, the set of his jaw and the beetle of his brow letting us know here, by Allah, is a customer cool yet dangerous. He answers Marag's hail with a curt nod, the very image of rawboned threat were the effect not flawed by the driver's actual squat-legged big-butted round-shouldered shape.

"Not so much education," Marag confides, "but a fine driver."

"Say, Marvin, just where'd you get that map?" I can't remember mentioning anything to him the other night about the Hall of Records.

"I hear talk the American doctors one with baldness are searching for the Secret Tunnels. I draw this last night this map."

"You drew it?"

"And have my son write in the words. Very reliable secret map. My family is live at Nazlet el-Samman many hundreds of years, pass down all is know."

Muldoon says all he is know is Marvin wants ten pounds for it. Ten pounds! Jacky and I say at once.

"Only five for me," Marag hastens to add. "Other five for car and my nephew driver." He notes our hesitation and shrugs good-naturedly. "As you wish, my friends. I don't blame you being cautious. We take only five now – for car, gasoline – and my five for map when you are return satisfied. Is good? Only five now?"

Five seems to be the going front figure. Marag keeps grinning at me.

"Let's go for it," I decide. I take a five-pound note out of my wallet. The hand comes out and the note vanishes into the folds of the blue gellabia; not as quick as the nephew's eye, though; he comes fuming over and he and Marag have a splendid argument in screaming Egyptian.

As squat as the nephew is, he still is some inches taller than his bantyweight uncle, and you can tell he's pushed a little iron down at the YMMA. Still, it's an obvious no-contest. That bright-eyed little mink of a man would swarm all over Cool Yet Dangerous, leaving nothing but a pear core.

"My nephew is a fool with money," he confides, showing us all toward the battered Fiat. "But a most reliable driver you can be insured."

As he bustles around the car closing us in, I realize he isn't coming along.

"Also most furthersome. His name is T'udd."

"Thud?" we all ask in mutual dawning apprehension. "Thud?" - as a thick brown thumb punches the starter into a victorious roar. Pumping the foot feed, Thud turns and gives us a thick-lipped leer of triumph. The map is crumpled in his hand.

"I haven't seen a grin like that," Jacky concedes, "since Sal Mineo won the Oscar for Young Mussolini."

Thud adjusts the mirror so he can see his reflection, brushes back an oily lock, then "peels out" is, I believe, the term: lays rubber in a squealing fishtailing brodie away from the Mena House turnaround off down Pyramid Boulevard, the pedal to whatever metal there is in a Fiat floorboard. Too late we realize we are in the sainted presence of Brainless Purity; as Las Vegas has distilled Western Materialism down to its purest abstract, so Thud is the assimilated essence of motormad Egypt. Blinking his headlights and blaring his terrible warhonk, he charges the afternoon traffic ahead, fearless as the Bedouin! wild as the Dervish! He reaches the creeping tail end of the traffic pack at full fifty. Never touching the brake he goes rocking shockless over the shoulder to the right of a poky VW, cuts back sharply between two motorcycles, and guns into the left lane to pass a tour bus, the passengers gawking horrified as we cut back just in time, then to the other lane around one of those big six-wheeled UAR machines the two soldiers on top with a cannon-passing left or right, again and again, just making it each time by the skin of our grill, finally getting in front of the pack to what looks like a promising clear stretch a chance to really unwind - - except for one minor nuisance, a little accident jam ahead, about thirty cars, coming up fast -

"Thud!"

There is the sickening metal-to-metal cry of brakes screaming for new shoes; then the shudder of the emergency against more scored metal; finally the last-minute cramping skid. My door is inches from the rear of a flatbed full of caged turkeys.

"Jacky for the love of God, tell him no more! I've got a wife and kids! Tell him, Muldoon!"

It's no use; both interpreters are in tongue-tied shock. Thud can't hear anyway, has his horn full down and his head out the window, demanding to know the meaning of all this mangled machinery impeding us. He eases ahead so we can see. It's two flimsy Fiat taxies just like ours, amalgamated head on, like two foil gum wrappers wadded together. No cops; no ambulances; no crowd of rubberneckers; just the first of those skinny street jackals sniffing the drippings, and what apparently is the surviving cab driver groggily standing on the center stripe with a green print handkerchief pressed to his bloody ear with one hand, waving the oncoming traffic around with the Other. Thud keeps shouting until he provokes a response. He pulls his head back in and passes the information on to us, so matter-of-factly that Jacky is brought from his trance to translate.