Ken Kesey - Demon Box

Betsy and I were instantly on our feet.

"Who in the world?"

"Not Buddy," I said, dancing into my pants. "That's for sure."

Still unzipped I reached the front door. Through the open window I saw a shiny black bus parked in the gravel of our drive, still smoking. I heard another shout and another string of curses, then I saw a big brown man in a skimpy white loincloth come hopping out of the exhaust fumes at the rear end of the bus. He had a Mexican huarachi on one foot and was trying to put the mate on as he hopped. After a wild-eyed look behind him he paused at the bus door and started banging with the sandal.

"Open the door, God damn your bastard ass – open this door!"

"It's M'kehla," I called back toward our bedroom. "M'kehla, and here comes Killer after him."

The goat rounded the rear of the bus and skidded to a spread-legged stop in the gravel, looking this way and that. His lone eye was so inflamed with hate that he was having trouble seeing. His ribs pumped and his lips foamed. He looked more like an animation than a live animal; you could almost hear him muttering in his cartoon chin whiskers as he swung his gaze back and forth in search of his quarry.

M'kehla kept banging and cursing at somebody inside the bus. I glimpsed a face at a side window but the door did not open. Suddenly, the banging was cut short by a bleat of triumph. Killer had found his mark. The horn lowered and the hooves scratched for ramming speed. M'kehla threw the sandal hard at the onrushing animal, then sprinted away around the front fender, cursing. You could hear him all the way down the back stretch, heaping curses on the bearded demon at his heels, on the bastard ass behind the bus door, on the very stones underfoot. When he appeared again at the rear of the bus I swung open our door.

"In here!"

He covered the twenty yards across our drive in a tenderfooted stumble, Killer gaining with every leap. I slammed the door behind him just as the goat clattered onto the porch and piled against the doorframe. The whole house shook. M'kehla rolled his eyes in relief.

"Lubba mussy, Cap'n," he finally gasped in a high Stepin Fetchit voice, "where you git a watchdog so mean? Selma Alibama?"

"Little Rock. Orville been developing this strain to guard melon fields."

"Orville Faubus?" he wheezed, rolling his eyes again, bobbing in a foolish stoop. "Orville allus did have a knaick!"

I grinned at him and waited. Betsy called from the bedroom – Everything alright? – and he instantly dropped the fieldhand facade and straightened up to his full six-foot-plus.

"Hello, Home," he said in his natural voice, holding out his hand. "Good to see you."

"You too, man. Been a while." I put my palm to his, hooking thumbs. "How've you been?"

"Still keepin ahead," he said, holding the grip while we studied each other's faces.

Since we last saw each other I had wasted ten foolish months playing the fugitive in Mexico, then another six behind bars. He had lost one younger brother in Laos and another in a 7-Eleven shootout with the Oakland police, and an ailing mother as a resultof the first two losses. Enough to mark any man. Yet his features were still as unmarred as a polished idol's, his eyes as unwavering.

"… still movin still groovin and still keepin at least one step ahead."

There had always been a hint of powers recondite behind that diamond-eyed gaze, I remembered. Then, as if he had read my thoughts, the expression changed. The eyes dialed back to gentle, the lips loosened into a grin and, before I could duck free, he hauled me close and kissed me full on the mouth. He was slick all over from his scrimmage with the goat.

"Not to mention still sweatin and stinkin." I wriggled free. "No wonder Charity wouldn't let you back on the bus."

"Isn't Charity, Dev; she kicked me out last month. I can't imagine why…"

He gave me a glance of wicked innocence and went on.

"All's I said was 'Get up and get me some breakfast, bitch, I don't care if you are pregnant.' For that she tells me 'No, you get up, get up and get out and get gone. Just like that. So I been going."

He nodded toward the bus.

"That's Heliotrope's pup, Percy," he said. "My complete crew this trip – cabin boy, navigator, and shotgun." Then he leaned down to holler out the open window: "And he better quit dickin with me, he ever expect to see his mama again!"

The face at the bus window paid no attention; there were closer things to worry about. Killer had returned to the bus door and was working the hinges with his single horn. The whole bus was rocking. M'kehla straightened up from the window and chuckled fondly.

"Stuck out there, that billygoat between him and his breakfast cereal heh heh heh."

Heliotrope was a paraplegic pharmacologist from Berkeley, beautiful and brilliant, and a bathtub chemist of underground renown. M'kehla always liked to pal around with Heliotrope when he was on the outs with his wife or when he was out of chemicals. Percy was her ten-year-old, known to some around San Francisco as the Psychedelic Brat. He had boarded with us occasionally, staying a week, a month, until one of his parents came to round him back up. He was redheaded, intelligent, and practically illiterate, and he had a way of referring to himself in the third person that could be simultaneously amusing and infuriating.

"Percy Without Mercy he calls himself nowdays; likes to keep the pedal to the metal."

"Hello, Montgomery." Betsy came out of the bedroom, belting on her robe. "I'm glad to see you."

Not sounding all that glad. She'd seen the two of us go weirding off together too many times to be too glad. But she allowed him a quick hug.

"What did I hear you telling Dev about Charity? That she got you gone instead of getting you breakfast? Good on her. And she's pregnant? She ought to get you neutered if you ask me."

"Why, Betsy, Charity don't want nothing that permanent. But speakin of breakfast" – he edged around her toward the kitchen, the one huarachi flapping on the linoleum – "is you nice folks fetched in yet the aigs?"

"The henhouse is that way." Betsy pointed. "Past the billygoat."

"Mm, I see. Well then, in that case… where y'all keep the cornflakes?"

While Betsy ground the coffee, M'kehla and I went out to contain the goat so we could gather the eggs. Percy was delighted with the action. His freckled face followed from bus window to window as we manhandled the animal back into the field he'd butted out of. While we were swinging the gate closed he caught M'kehla a sharp hind-hoof kick on the shin. I had to laugh as M'kehla danced and cursed, and Percy hooted and jeered from the bus. Even the peacocks and chickens joined in.

Out in the henhouse M'kehla told me his story.

"I don't know whether it was my Black Panther dealings or my white powder dealings. Charity just says get the hell gone and give her some respite. I say Gone it is, Baby! Naturally I called Heliotrope. Long distance. She's been the last year up in Canada with Percy's older brother, Vance, who's dodging the draft. And a bunch of Vance's buddies of like persuasion. Heliotrope persuaded me to sneak Percy off from his old man in Marin and bring him up… help her start a mission."

We had the chickens fed and quieted and all the eggs that the rats and skunks had left us piled nicely in the feed bucket. We stood in the henhouse door, watching the morning sun pull hard for a Fourth of July noon, circa 1970.

"A mission? In Canada?"

"Yeah." He was looking across the chickenyard at his bus. The black door had cracked open and Percy was peeping out to see if the coast was clear. "A sort of modern underground railway."

"You mean leave the States?"