The Damned Highway (6 page)

“Maybe I'll just sit over here and wait for the next bus,” I say.

“Here.” He slides a brown paper bag across the table. “Maybe these will keep you company while you wait.”

I pick up the bag and peek inside. There are three dried mushrooms, milk-white, porous things run through with tiny black spots. I am not adverse to the psychoactive effects of psilocybin and psilocin, but these are the strangest mushrooms I've ever seen. They appear unwholesome.

“What are these?” I sniff the mouth of the bag.

“Come now, Lono. Your reputation precedes you. Surely, you've done shrooms before.”

“I'm being set up, aren't I? For whom do you really work, you swine?”

“I've already told you. Consider this a parting gift. One last gentle kiss before the beating to come. These fungi come all the way from Yuggoth.”

“Where?” I've traveled all around the world, but I've never heard of this place. It's a strange name, Yuggoth. Could be Asian or Slavic or Hebrew, and yet, it sounds like none of them, nor any other language I can think of.

“Yuggoth. It's where the best shrooms come from. I read in your interview with
Playboy
that you like mushrooms.”

“I do,” I say, seeing no reason to deny it. “Mescaline and mushrooms are a genuine high. They're clean and interior, as all psychedelics are. Things like speed just give you a motor high. They don't clean out your brain pipes the way some good psychedelics do.”

“Well, then, enjoy these with our compliments.”

“They don't look right. How do I know they aren't poisonous, you swine?”

“You don't. But really, do we ever?”

He has a point, but I'm not about to admit that to him.

“So, what's it going to be, Lono? Are you going to beat me to death? Kill me with your bare hands? Or are you going to take the ride?”

“I already bought the ticket.”

Somewhere, someone flicks a switch and the lights go off. I presume my coffee and sandwich are now free. Laughing yet again, Mac grabs the sugar silo and clonks himself over his own head with it. A babyish tap, but his left temple opens right up in the brightest NTSC red, just like a Saturday-morning wrestler. Head wounds bleed a lot, but I've never seen anything like what pours from his. He smiles at me under his new mask of crimson, flashing teeth that seem just a bit too large, and I decide I'll find a hotel. I grab the bag of mushrooms almost as an afterthought, and then beat feet right out of there. Mac doesn't follow me, but his hooting, piping laughter does.

“Moloch!” he shouts after me.
Moloch!

——

If you think I am out of options or weaponry, then you don't know me very well at all. I have some technology with me, the sort of thing that will change the world one day. The Mojo Wire! From any phone jack I can plug it in and feed it finished copy, one sheet at a time, and facsimile sheets will spit forth from the wire's opposite number in the editorial office of whoever is paying my bar tab at the moment. If only everyone had one of these things, whole nations would collapse into the sort of mutualist anarchic Utopia only a Russian prince could dream of. Imagine a Mojo Wire in every home, and the masses accessing it from anywhere! That would be rich, eh? But for now, the tool belongs to me. Or it is lent to me occasionally by my editor, to keep me off his home telephone at three a.m. But this gem of a machine, only twenty-three pounds and sturdy enough to survive the Big One, if the Big One were a sufficient number of miles away, needs two things—a phone jack and an electrical receptacle. Neither is anywhere nearby, and the rest stop is no help, not with Mac stomping around on the other side of the dark glass, raving and flailing his arms as he finishes his exegesis without me. But I am in Middle America, damn it, walking on the sandy shoulder of a major highway. By law and common decency—the American Dream!—there will be a neon oasis sooner rather than later. Gas, Food, and Lodging, a veritable Disneyland compared to the awful Knott's Berry Farm of that last rest stop. Buses go by here, for the love of God!

I walk for what seems like minutes and see a faded billboard looming over the highway.
war is over
, it reads,
if you want it
. I remember reading in the news that John Lennon and Yoko Ono commissioned a dozen or so such billboards several months back to promote his new single, which was unavoidable on the airwaves only a month before. Lennon could have been a warrior, but instead, he's become just another American, if by proxy. A Royalist turned Peacenik turned Royalist again. That's what this political climate does to people. Lennon stood for something once. Now his idea of a progressive decade is a camelhair jacket in every closet and a Gucci on every foot. Or maybe that's Tom Wolfe. I can't remember. I haven't heard from Tom since I gave him my tapes of the gangbang at the Merry Pranksters' party, that notorious weekend when Kesey and his people introduced acid to the Hells Angels. I wonder where Tom is now? New York, I guess, along with Lennon. I feel a surge of anger. He should be here with me. Where are the other warriors for truth? Where are Kesey and Hoffman and Ayers and the rest of the Happy Fun-Time Club? Someone should be here with me, on this dark and desolate stretch of damned highway. At this moment, I decide I was wrong to go on this journey alone. I even wish for my goddamned attorney, before remembering that the Brown Buffalo is probably dead and fish bait. At least, that's the rumor, and we have a saying in this business about rumors. But who am I kidding? The truth is, he's been living on borrowed time since Vegas. He saw the same things there I saw. One does not boldly go into Bat Country and expect to come through unscathed. Vegas took a terrible toll on his psyche and spirit. He was a walking corpse after that. His death is merely a hastened eventuality. I miss him, sometimes. At any rate, I owe him too much money—the retainer has long since been consumed by coke and grapefruits—even if he is alive.

A few minutes later, I come across a local knockoff of one of the big chain motels. Call it Super 7 if you like, because that's what they did. There's no concierge, no bellowing demands for three dozen grapefruit, no lounge with live light jazz and whores who spackle the wrinkles from their faces with foundation makeup, not even a color television. But it's cheap and takes credit cards. The night manager doesn't even blink at a man walking up the highway alone with a large kit bag and asking for a room. Hell, he doesn't blink at all. It's almost as though he's long forgotten how. Maybe I'm not the first to miss my bus out here in the wastelands. He barely acknowledges me as I check in, preferring to communicate to me in a series of grunts and wheezes. A Lucky Strike dangles from his mouth, dropping ashes onto the counter. Another burns in an ashtray behind him. His fingernails are stained yellow.

“And who are you going to vote for in the upcoming election—Democrat or Republican?” I ask.

He looks at me as if I were a brain-damaged geek. “Nixon, of course. Why? Who are you going to vote for?”

“It doesn't matter,” I say. “What matters is the process itself.”

“Well, of course it matters! Don't tell me you're one of those
doesn't matter who's in office, they're all gonna screw ya
type of people. Because that's not what I fought for during the war.”

“Which war? Korea?”

The manager nods, and as he does, he sucks his gut in and stands a little taller.

“Thanks for your service, friend. I keep thinking I should go see Vietnam. The place is causing so much trouble; I ought to have a look at it. Haven't been there yet, though.”

The manager sneers at me, the derision practically oozing from his pores. “I could have guessed you never served.”

“Oh, but I serve my country in other ways. What part of Korea were you in during the war?”

His proud expression falters. “I was stationed in Germany the whole time. Sign here.”

Sign I do, chuckling as I scribble my name on the receipt. It feels good to be writing. It always does. Almost as good as it felt to bait the inept little manager who proudly fought to protect this country from the Moloch-worshiping heathen Democrats by sitting on a base in Germany and peeling potatoes while his friends went off to die.

I have a lot to write this night, and on the tiny desk in the dank little motel room, that's exactly what I'll do. First I take a shower, letting the oily, strange-smelling motel water sluice away the road dirt my body collected during the bus trip. Then I light up a cigarette, find some ice from the machine down the hall, and pour myself a tumbler glass of whiskey. I like to drink when I write. That's when my writing is at its most pure in essence, when the truth comes barreling out like machine-gun fire, and typos abound, word counts be damned. Taking a big swig from the glass, I consider the brown paper bag lying on the bed. I pull out one of the mushrooms. It's cool to the touch, but not slimy, as its appearance would seem to indicate.

“Yuggoth, eh?” I announce to the empty motel room. “What the hell . . . Buy the ticket, take the ride.”

Shrugging, I toss it into my mouth and chew slowly. It tastes just like any other shroom—basically, like a moist paper bag—so I swallow, and then get down to business.

I write about how despite all the demographical changes supposedly sweeping this great country—the Black Vote, the Women's Vote, the Youth Vote, the Antiwar Vote, the Labor Vote—none of it is going to matter. Nixon made his deal with devils unknown; the Democrats have the minority vote, but the Republicans are counting on hidden and secret races revealing themselves on Election Day. The Democrats are in bed with Moloch, that ancient god of one-sided trades and unfair deals. The Phoenicians were an industrious bunch for their time, trading across the Mediterranean on their triremes, but there was a price; oh, there was a price. Moloch, their great, fiery god, craved the succulent meat of children, and oh boy did those sandy buggers pay up with baby flesh. Never mind the pound. Those bastards paid by the ton. Anything to keep the lucre rolling in and the ships rolling out. That's what an insane mutant I met at a highway rest stop told me anyway, and while I have plenty of reasons not to believe a word of it, I can't think of a single thing that should stop me from reporting it as iron fact.

There is the ring of truth to it after all. The Great Society was born in the blood pools of Indochina as much as it was in the White House. Few whites could truly bear the thought of opening their wallets to help the Negro, but it was the evening bloodletting in every living room that let the white man believe that his mojo was still rising. Sure, the blacks could date their daughters and even run for office, provided the campaigns were sufficiently quixotic and starved for funds, but at least we were killing tons of gooks. A man could stand up. But now, with the war gone the wrong way and a social worker on every corner, what might the white man, with his diseased physiognomy and blank stare, believe in? Nixon has long transcended the need to even pretend to care about Jesus Christ—a hippie if anyone's ever seen one, and a suspected Jew besides, just like Noam Chomsky—and he has found another Lord to serve. He's laughing as the Democrats jockey for position; by week's end he might call a press conference at the National Cathedral. “Take a look at this, you homely bastards,” he'll growl, then drop trou and take a dump into the Holy Host. “Line up and take what's coming to you!” By Tuesday, he'll be twenty points ahead in the Gallup Poll. Moloch is the faith of a cringing slave, of a man who worships the whip and the pike. But what Nixon has goes beyond commerce, beyond capitalism, beyond Christianity, beyond anything at all. The stars are aligning in his favor, and there is little the Democrats can do about it.

The motel room grows sullen and oppressive and too quiet. I wonder if and when the mushroom will kick in. There's a small transistor radio on the scratched bureau, and I turn it on for company. I spin the dial, searching for Jefferson Airplane or the Grateful Dead or Bob Dylan or anything else that will soothe my soul and feed my muse, but all I find is that angry, new shit, Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper and the like. Dark music to be played after dark in dark times. I keep scanning and come across the news. Someone is interviewing Mamie Van Doren about her active role as a member of the president's reelection campaign. Incidentally, that's the same group I ran into before, the ones who had Senator Eagleton spread-eagled across a slab in the back room of a two-nit bar, wrists and ankles cuffed tight to the corners, electrodes attached to his balls. This is how those people like to play. Trust me. I'm a journalist. Apparently, Mamie Van Doren was granted a personal tour of the White House, conducted by Henry Kissinger himself. The reporter asks her if anything occurred at the end of the tour. The actress giggles and then says, “No comment. He took me back to my hotel. We were accompanied by several of his security men. One can't be too careful, you know. He was a complete gentleman. He said he'll call me when he gets back from Moscow. He has a lot of girlfriends, but that's okay, because I have a lot of boyfriends.”

I smash my fist down on the radio so hard that the plastic casing cracks. That makes me even angrier, so I sweep it to the floor and stomp it beneath my feet until I feel better. Then I scavenge through the debris, searching in an act of postmodern divination. And there it is, a tiny piece of broken plastic that reads
made in taiwan
. Because more and more, that is our country's slogan. We used to make things here, but that seems to be sliding away. I envision a time, decades from now, when America's only notable export will be our entertainment. Everyone in America will be involved in the movies somehow, because that will be the only type of job left for us, once our manufacturing and service centers have shipped overseas. Durable goods will be made in Taiwan, and B-movie actresses like Mamie Van Doren will go from movies and television to politics, and then maybe back to movies and television once they're done in Washington. How long, oh Lord, how long? We live in a country where Mamie Van Doren, star of such classic fare as
High School Confidential
and
Sex Kittens Go to College
, is getting personally guided tours of our seat of power by good old Henry the K. And why not, eh? Everyone knows Van Doren models herself after Marilyn Monroe. This third-rate blond bombshell was even engaged to a baseball player. Monroe snagged the great Joe DiMaggio, so Van Doren hitched herself to that sore-armed, left-handed pitcher Bo “Bad Boy” Belinsky.