Ken Kesey - Demon Box

When he wandered back up to the house it was dark. We had finished supper and were on the other side of the room watching Monday Night Football. I didn't turn but I could see Betsy in the mirror setting him a place. Quiston and Caleb had been duck hunting the day before, and we'd had two mallards and a widgeon for supper, stuffed with rice and filberts. A whole mallard and two half-eaten carcasses were left. John ate the mallard and picked all three carcasses so clean that red ants wouldn't have bothered over the leavings. Plus a whole loaf of bread, a pot of rice big enough for a family of Cambodian refugees, and most of a pound of butter. He ate slowly and with bemused determination, not like a glutton eats but like a coyote who never knows how long it might be before the next feast so he better get down all he can hold down. I kept my eyes on the game, not wanting to embarrass him by letting on I was watching.

It was the Dolphins against the Patriots, the fourth quarter. It was an important game to both teams, as they fought for a playoff berth, and a tense series of downs. Suddenly Howard Cosell interrupted his colorful commentary and said a funny thing, apropos of nothing discernible on the screen. He said, "Yet, however egregious a loss might seem to either side at this point in time, we must never lose sight of the fact… that this is only a football game." A very un-Howard-Cosell-like thing to say, I thought, and turned up the sound. After a few moments of silence Howard announced over the play-action fake unfolding on the field that John Lennon had been shot and killed outside his apartment in New York.

I turned to see if John the Groupie had heard the news. He had. He was twisted toward me in his seat, his mouth open, the last duck carcass stopped midway between tooth and table. We looked into each other's eyes across the room, and our roles fell away. No more the scowling landowner and the ingratiating tramp, simply old allies, united in sudden hurt by the news of a mutual hero's death.

We could have held each other and wept.

The weather broke that night. It rained awhile, then cleared. The sun sneaked through the overcast after breakfast, looking a little embarrassed for the short hours it had been getting away with during this solstice time. Betsy bundled John up and gave him a knit cap, and I drove him to the freeway. I let him off near the Creswell ramp. We shook hands and I wished him luck. He said not to worry, he'd get a ride easy. Today. I saw somebody stop for him before I had gotten back across the overpass. On the way home I heard a report on Switchboard, our local community-access program, that there was no need to call in to try to scam rides today, that everybody was picking everybody up, today.

When I got home the phone was ringing. It was a Unitarian Minister from San Francisco who was trying to put together some kind of Lennon memorial in Golden Gate Park, needed some help. I thought he was calling to ask me to come speak or something – deliver a eulogy. I started saying that, sorry, much as I'd like to I just couldn't make it, I had fence to fix and kids' Christmas programs to attend and so forth… but he said, oh no, he wasn't wanting that kind of help.

"What is it you need, then?" I asked.

"I need some organizational help," he said. "I've never done anything like this before. I need to find out about permits and the like. So I was wondering if you might know how I could get in touch with Chet Helms? The guy who did all those big be-ins? You happen to have Chet Helms's phone number anywhere?"

Many such memorable scenes from the last decade and a half of our onreeling epic have been underscored by Beatles music: "With a Little Help from My Friends" was playing when Frank Dobbs and Houlihan and Buddy helped hold my acified atoms together one awful night. During my six-month sojourn in the outer reaches of the California penal system, I used a Beatles record as my mantra, a litany to lead me safely through the Bardo of Being Busted. The record was "All You Need Is Love." I listened to it so many times that I came to count the number of times the word "love" is used in the mix. It was 128 times, as I recall.

Now, as I run my eyes over these three ragged runes of Christmastime in the Eighties, looking at them for whatever message or augury they might offer, I cannot help but view them to the accompaniment of Guru Lennon's musical teachings.

The lesson learned from Bible Bill and his ilk is simple. I already had it pat: Don't encourage a bum. Attention is like coke to these bottomless wraiths – the more they get the more they want.

The epiphany taught by the visitation of John the Groupie is simple enough on the surface: Don't forget the Magical Summer of Love in the Chilly Season of Reagan. I think even John the Limey would have agreed with this interpretation.

What complicates the lesson is that in its wake washes up the third apparition.

This final visitor is still a mystery to me. I knew how to deal with Bible Bill. I know now how I should have dealt with John the Groupie. But I still don't know what to do about my third phantasm, the Ghost, I fear, of Christmases to Come: Patrick the Punk.

He was on the road alongside my pasture, shuffling along in army fatigues and jacket and carrying a khaki duffel over his shoulder. I was headed to town to pick up some wiring and exchange a video tape. When I saw him I knew there was no place he could be headed but mine. I stopped the Merc and rolled down the window.

"Mr. Deboree?" he said.

"Get in," I said.

He tossed the duffel in the back and climbed in beside me, heaving an unhappy sigh.

"Fuckin Christ, it's cold. I didn't think I'd make it. My name is Patrick."

"Hi, Pat. How far have you come?"

"All the way from New York State on a fuckin Trailways bus. Took every nickel I had. But fuck, you know? I mean I had to split. That East Coast-shit, all they want to do is fuck you over or suck you dry. I'm dry, Mr. Deboree. I'm broke and I'm hungry and I haven't been able to sleep in three days from this fuckin poison oak."

He was only a few years past voting age, with a soft unblinking stare and a gray mold of first whiskers on his chin. The whole right half of his face was covered with white lotion.

"How'd you get poison oak?"

"Running through the woods from this murderous old bitch in Utah or Idaho or someplace." He dug a Camel out of a new pack and stuck it in his swollen mouth. "She thought I was trying to rip off her fuckin' pickup."

"Were you?"

He didn't even shrug. "Hey, I was terminally drug with that fuckin' bus. Who can sleep with all that starting and stopping? Bums and winos, maybe, but not me."

I still hadn't resumed driving. I realized I didn't know what to do with him. I didn't like having him in the car with me – he stank of medicine and nicotine and sour unvented adrenaline, of rage – and I didn't want to let him stroll onto my place.

"I came to see you, Mr. Deboree," he said without looking at me. He seemed in a kind of shock. The Camel just hung there.

"What the hell for? You don't know me."

"I've heard you help people. I'm fucked and sucked dry by those vampires, Mr. Deboree. You've got to help me."

I started to drive, away from the farm.

"I never read Sometimes a Cuckoo Nest, but I seen the flick. I did read what you said in the Whole Earth Catalogue about believing in Christian mercy. Myself, I'm an antagnostic, but I believe everybody has a right to believe in mercy. And I need some, Mr. Deboree, you can fuckin believe that! I'm no wino bum. I'm intelligent. I've got talent. I had my own little C & W group and was doing real good for a while, but then, them fuckin vampires – I mean, man, you know what they -?"

"Never mind. I don't want to hear. It'll just depress me. If you'll promise to spare me your tale of woe I'll buy you lunch in town."