Ken Kesey - Demon Box

The prospect called Reject peeks in to ask, "You seen Old Bert?" I tell him not in a while and he goes farting off. Yesterday's chili.

"I'm so damn proud! To be here! To-day!" – followed by that sharp, insinuating snigger, more a planing, now, than a hammering. I picture pine chips falling in white curls around black boots.

Somebody knocks on our big farm bell. I yell out my window "That bell's an alarm bell! For fires! Nothing to be played with."

"With us," Harry hollers back from the other direction, " any thing's to be played with."

A loud chongk! It's a hunting knife being thrown against the pumphouse.

I hear Dobbs's voice from down at the cabin porch. He's reading from Grandma Whittier's big Bible, very loud, about all the trouble Paul had with the Corinthians twenty centuries ago. If I was him I'd tone down and consider the trouble Rampage had only yesterday.

One of the Harleys pops to life, roisterous and husky, a machine in rut. The black car revs, honks twice, leaves. Another bike is stomped awake.

"Hey, everybody! let's hear it for seriousness."

Everybody: "Hawr hawr hawr…!"

Visiting Jenneke, that Danish delight, up from her rest, standing in the cookhouse doorway half-naked but with such a toothache that nobody dares come on to her, yet… glares at it all shaking her head – never seen barbarism like this in Copenhagen.

The tall guy with the cast comes lurching back, buckling his belt. Dobbs hollers up from the cabin, "Hey tell us the tale of your accident?"

Without halting his lurch the guy says, "Screech. Crash. Hurt. Hospital."

Jenneke decides to put on a short kimono and take some of her stale pastry down to feed the ducks.

"I'm so damn proud … to be here…"

More bikes are racketing now, the majority of them, grunting, coughing, roaring – "Let's go go go-o-o!" Then they all shut down. It's Awful Harry that's holding them up. His brakes after all. Completely fucked.

The black car is back with the trailer. What refrigerated truck? Nobody told them about no fuckin refrigerated truck.

Dobbs comes strolling up, drops in on me, shaking his head at all the starting and stopping out my window. "They're like a rock band getting ready to play: tuning up and jerking off and rattling around trying to find the right key for so long that sometimes it comes close to music."

"Never close enough," I say, but I have to concede to myself: the bastards are trying to find the key, true enough. Maybe even the right one. Rusty gates might be unlocked by all this rattling and damn we'd hate to miss that… The black car splits again, sans trailer.

"You tell me tough shit? When I aint got no fuckin brakes and my front end's fucked up and I'm strung out and you tell me tough shit? Well fuck you!"

"Hey it was tough shit for me when I went down in that fuckin blizzard in Reno last Easter with my bad arm, but I didn't get no truck ride home. So fuck you, too!"

Silence follows the flare-up, then the tinkering, then the sound of the knife against the pumphouse again.

The afternoon stretches out. There's a breeze moving the God's Eyes at last. The guy that I think is the acting president is sitting under the tree holding his head with both hands.

A meadowlark calls, bright and incongruous. More yells from the greasy concrete: "Hey you know what?"

"Hey you know what I don't give a shit is what."

"Hey you know what?

"Yeah, I know what… I want one of those downers is what."

"Who got some downers? Who?"

"Who shits through feathers?"

"Hey you know what? I'm so damn proud…"

"I slid down the snow to the other lane and fuckin near got hit by a diesel, too!"

"… to be here…"

"Who's got a yellow? I need a mellow yellow."

"… to -day!"

The girl for the interview shows up, her East Coast attire provoking whistles and howls. "Take off them ray-ud pants!"

The knife hits the pumphouse. You can tell it doesn't stick that often.

"Hey, where's Varmint-boy? Let's bug the Varmint some more."

"Yeah, where is that weird little Varmint dude?"

"Bug the Varmint! Bug the Varmint!"

"The Varmint's already bugged out," Dobbs yells from the cabin. "Headed for the hills this morning while you guys weren't watching, bow and arrow and all." "Ahhh," everybody says.

The knife hits the pumphouse.

"Hey, Lucifer! Run up to the store and get us something while we're waiting."

"Yeah, some pussy."

"Yeah! Hey you up there in them red pants" – boredom is beginning to stiffen into horniness – "why don'cha interview me?"

"O, cook, cook, cook that ol' dog!"

They've got Reject masturbating Stewart. A roar of applause congratulates the ejaculation.

"Hey you know what? I can do better'n that."

"Right on, Little Lou! Do it! Do it!"

"Cook! Cook! Get it, dog!"

"Yea! I won!"

"You won my dick! Reject pumped out a good half a quart more than you."

"So what? You want quantity or you want quality? I made him shoot all the way to that piece of wood. If you're talkin quality I can jack off circles around Reject and you both!"

"Lucifer, get us some warshwater."

"Hey, Lucifer!"

"Where the hell is he? I want my hands warshed."

"He's getting Bert a beer. Reject, see if you can find a hose."

"I know what! Let's sit that chick with the toothache over there and see if Stewart can hit her in the mouth."

"Yeah! There you go! Cook!"

The black car again, like a dispatch runner back and forth from the front.

Jenneke bends over to feel the temperature of the pond. Even sixty yards away her ass shines like a beacon through the thin kimono.

"Hey you know what? I could go for some smorgasbord." More talk of leaving and worry about the State Troopers. They've managed to locate one helmet and Awful Harry has it on, out in the goat pen. He's down on all fours battling Killer the goat. Jenneke the animal lover strides around, hands on her hips, glowering and joggling.

"Mmmboy let's hang around another day," somebody suggests on the basis of Jenneke's boobs.

"Mmmboy let's fucking not! I aint no oral surgeon."

"Hey where's Old Bert? We're getting ready to roll anybody seen Old Bert?"

Going to pee I find Bert and Harry's hithchiking ladyfriend drying off after a shower. The 45 portable is sitting on the dryer – "Take a… take another little piece of my har-ar-art…"

Bert grins at me. "Be outta here in a hot second," he says, sheepish. Old Bert's the only one I know anymore. Everybody else crippled or busted or snuffed. Bert used to be president, says now he'd rather ride than ride herd. "- we just had to rinche off the cum."

Back up in the office I hear more bikes starting. Harry comes walking across the yard, bare-bellied, swinging his arms wide out like his ribs hurt. Maybe old Killer tagged him one.

Now Bert is kicking his old chopper over. Same one he took to London, years ago. The girl puts the record player in the black car then shuffles around, uncertain. Awful Harry rolls his big luxury model out of the garage, declares he's got brakes again. The girl looks from Old Bert's old bike with its skimpy seat, to Harry's new Electroglide with elaborate leather cushions and sissybar. Harry shakes his head at her.

"Oh no you don't, bitch! He balls you, he hauls you."

She climbs on behind Old Bert and wraps her sunburned arms around his waist. He grins up at me.

More popping, roaring, backfiring, churning brown dust and blue smoke… stalling and stalling… then, all at once, they are leaving, whooping and roaring, rolling in a long detonating wave out our dirt road to the pavement, west, rap-bap-bapping up the grade toward Mt. Nebo, then out of sight, south, echoing their way through the smokey afternoon.