Chapter 40. These Songs of Zion

How can we sing the Lord's Songs in a strange land?

Dave was getting discharged from the Air Force on a Section Eight. He hadn’t served much time in Nam, but managed to get a medical discharge instead of a court martial. He never told us what he did. We sat-up smoking pot and finished off the Ripple. Dave decided he’d crash there on the floor and we, Dave and I, would leave first thing in the morning. I would find out that Dave had earned his Section Eight before we got as far as the Alabama border. He was madder than a hatter on meth. He spat out all and any kinds of caustic nonsense, popping cross-tops as he drove that VW Beetle in and out through traffic, over center dividers, into the weeds, all the while ranting… “Let’s drive to the White House! I wanna tie Richard Nixon to a chair in the Oval Office and put a shotgun up his butt. No, you can put one up his butt,” he yanked out a thirty-eight from his belt, “and I’ll put this in his mouth!”

I had my hand ready at the door when he waved it and cocked it, before he continued, “But before we blow his brains out, I wanna rape Pat and those fat bitch daughters of his. Those Tricia and Julie bitches, right in front of him…”

At Birmingham Alabama I had to talk him out of turning east to DC. I was worried that he might consider me to be one of the undercover agent he said was tailing him or some other paranoid delusion. We were ten miles towards Atlanta before I talked him into pulling over. He stopped the car to change seats and let me drive after I insisted. I assumed he went back take a leak, but he took off the gas cap and sniffed the fumes from the tank. My original intention was to ride all the way to Chicago with Dave. I planned to get out at the next service station, but I needed to get back on the interstate heading north and the gas fumes must have done something for him because he calmed down and slept through Tennessee and Kentucky.

He woke up in Indiana. My fear became palpable when I saw him put the revolver in his mouth without saying anything. I had to think fast and talked him down, demanding, “Hey, Dave, it’s your turn to drive! You can get out of it that way.”

He turned the revolver on me, “Uh, what? Sure, pull over.”

I kept driving until we got to a busy interstate off-ramp in Terra Haute Indiana where I stopped the car feigning to change seats. I near dove out of the car. He fired one shot. The bullet whizzed past my ear. I saw his face before I ducked zig-zagging over the berm on the side of the ramp. He looked at me with shock on his face, “Oh, fuck, sorry Max. Get back in the car. Please.”

I ducked down out of his line of sight so that he wouldn’t see which way I ran off. His, “Sorry Max” was no different than my, “Sorry Daphne.” It was far less premeditated, but it was his regret that the bullet left the chamber and the realization that it could never be retrieved with mere remorse for pulling the trigger. Guilt was our way of coping with our murderous instincts.

I stood by the onramp a half-hour before a Lincoln Continental pulled up. The passenger side window went down before I even approached the car. The driver leaned over and hollered out to me, “Can you drive?”

“I sure can.”

The driver got out of the car and came around, “Well, then you’re driving. I’m gonna take a nap… just head for Dallas.”

“Dallas? Texas you mean.”

He said, “If you know of any other Dallas, don’t take me there.” With that he crawled into the backseat and was fast asleep before I had the car on the freeway.

I hadn’t driven a fully loaded car since I was a staff driver in the Navy at COMSUBPAC. The sun was going down and I was behind the wheel of a grand car, a strange man snoring as backdrop to Hank Williams, Johnny Cash, and Merle Haggard, on the radio... it just plain didn’t matter to me that I wasn’t going the route I wanted to take to Gary Indiana and on to I-90. As fate would have it I missed a major blizzard by turning off the interstate and cutting down to Memphis, waking up the snorer to gas-up, and going eighty-five to ninety mph all the way into Dallas. The sun was coming up as I got off near Daley Plaza. The man woke up and took the wheel. I was hoping that he’d slip me a few bucks for my driving but he didn’t. Counting my dimes and pennies, along with three singles folded up in my pocket, I had a net worth of three dollars and fifty-seven cents.

I had to make a pilgrimage to Dealey Plaza. I’d gotten off the freeway at Ervay Street and walked to the City Hall Plaza. It didn’t feel right to me… nothing resembled the photos that were etched solidly into my memory from November twenty-second of sixty-three. I spotted a bum across the plaza and crossed over to ask, “This isn’t Dealey Plaza, is it?”

“Wotchew wanna know fer?” the grizzled old fart fired back.

“I just need to see it… say, it’s for the memories.”

“Whall, t’aint too far from chere. Jess cross ovah ta Elm and hang a left. Y’all pass right under the Book Suppository Buildin’.”

“You mean, Depository?”

“Yeh, whatchew call it,” the man agreed and went back to pretending to read a yellowed Wall Street Journal that I could see was upside down. 

“Thanks, Mister.”

I went down to the place where JFK met his magic bullet, sat a few minutes on the steps to the Pergola and Grassy Knoll out of respect, and then I got back to the road. I felt nothing that I thought I would by being there where a whole generation of hope was crushed. While thinking of the announcement over the High School intercom... the tears, the shock, followed by conspiracy theories, a flatbed truck pulled over and picked me up taking me as far as the outskirts of Fort Worth. I was dropped off where the truck turned off at an off-ramp called Farm to Market Road. I took a position at the Freeway on-ramp for about an hour before I got fed up at no traffic at all going by so I went straight out onto the freeway. I was out there no more than five minutes when a light-blue, metal-flaked Camaro, pulled up with two, crew-cut characters in sports coats, in it.

“Where you headed?” The shotgun rider yelled.

“Los Angeles, for now.”

“Can you drive? We’re goin’ as far as Vegas.”

“Sure, I can drive.”

“Good, we need to sleep. Jump in!”

They traded seats, Shotgun moved to the back seat and the driver rode shotgun.

I hadn’t driven one of the newer muscle-cars like a Camaro but I knew my way around old hot rods. I went through the gears smoothly so as not to hot-rod it too much. However, these guys weren’t paying any attention to my driving. Their eyes were closed as they shouted back and forth as though I wasn’t there over the rumble of the mill. Shotgun would say something like, “You would have fucked her, eh?”

Driver would answer, “Naw, she must have been ninety!”

“Naw, man, she was at least a hundred.” Shotgun fired back.

I listened as they sawed on about bits and parts of that old lady but I never did figure out the whole context. They were kind of a scary pair… especially Driver, the way he talked cold… like violent scary and I wasn’t so sure that I wanted to be in that car for very long at all… as far as Vegas.

“Hey, bud, what do people call you?” Shotgun finally seemed to recognize someone else was in the car with them.

“Max.”

“Max?” Driver asked no one in particular.

“As in maximum… as ‘posed to minimum.” Shotgun smarted off.

“Maxwell… as in Smart.” It wasn’t true. I didn’t want to have to give my whole name to these guys.

“You mean… Hey Maxwell, your shoe is ringing!” Shotgun got it.

“What do you mean, shoe is ringing?” Driver demanded.

Shotgun was the smarter of the two but just as dangerous and in command, “Aw, go to sleep. We got work to do in Vegas.”

I didn’t care to know what kind of work they had to do in Vegas. They didn’t look like gambler types… more like hit-men from bits and pieces I gleaned from the back and forth rap. I looked over at Driver while he slept and noticed a holster under his sports coat. These characters were definitely not lawmen and I really didn’t want to know any more than that. I figured I’d bail out first chance I got… we gotta gas-up sometime. I wasn’t sure how fast the Camaro’s 396 cubic inches would eat up the gas but I knew I wouldn’t get much further on what we had in the tank than Las Cruces New Mexico.

 Just about then Driver reached inside his jacket pocket and pulled a twenty out of his wallet. “You can get gas before this hog hits empty. Don’t wake us up though.”

I only got as far as Pecos before I had to gas up. It took about $5.50 to fill it up and I wondered what I ought to do with the change. I wanted to just get the hell away, maybe put the change on the dash and just split, but thought better of it. What the hell, I never knew what’s going to happen anyway, might as well ride with it. So, I got back in behind the wheel and drove the two sleeping beauties as far as Kingman where Driver took over. I wanted to see Boulder Dam and I took a spot in the cramped back seat while Shotgun moved to… well, shotgun position, and they made their way up to Las Vegas.

I saw very little of Vegas. I was dropped off at the Barstow freeway entrance at the southern end of the strip. It was warm and the sun bore down on me standing there in my wool Air Force long coat. Further up the onramp was a long-haired and bearded character sitting in the lotus position with his shirt off. I approached him to make small talk.

“How long have you been here?” There was no answer. I got closer to him and saw that the guy’s eyes were open a little. “I say, have you been here long?”

I waved a hand in front of the Mahatma’s eyes. He didn’t even blink. I must have stood there a half an hour but the guy never said a word. An old school bus, that had been extended upwards with the body of a Volkswagen van on top pulled up. I turned to the Mahatma and yelled, “Hey, we got a ride. C’mon.”

There was still no answer and he didn’t move.

I’ll never know whether the old guru was meditating or dead.

I turned and boarded the converted bus. It was a mobile home for a family of four. The father was driving. He had long hair and a beard, and he wore a yarmulke. The kids were about two or three, a boy and a girl. Mom was friendly and offered some sunflower seeds from a big sack. I was at once at home in the comfort of the bus and the warmth of familial companionship. I’d been away from such people since leaving New Mexico and felt, for the hours between there and L.A., that there was hope, and that all the darkness I’d sunk into would fade. Since leaving Crestview I’d abandoned the idea of going back to Taos. I just flat out felt too dirty to return.

The bus family was going all the way into Fairfax and Melrose in West Hollywood. Though I’d thought I wanted to go back to my family in Eastern Washington, I could accept Hollywood as being somewhat familiar turf where I could get it together should I decide to head north. I had no real plan… no direction to go… no place I could land and feel it to be where I actually belonged.

The bus couple’s names were right out of the Old Testament, Aaron and Rebecca. I sat up front near Aaron who talked, or asked questions, as he drove, “Where you from Max?”

“I just came from Florida but I’m from Eastern Washington… Spokane Valley is where I grew up.” As I said this much my heart could have burst from loneliness.

“You got family there?”

“Yeh, they are all there with the suburban homes and two or three kids each…”

“What brought you to Florida?”

“I went to Jamaica and got stuck there afterwards.”

“Oh, Jamaica! Hear that Hon… Max went to Jamaica.”

Rebecca was busy putting the kids down for a nap and didn’t answer.

“So, how’d you end up in Vegas?”

“I just went where my ride went. I kinda thought I would be pointed in the right direction to go north. Then I thought I’d be better off going up the coast this time of the year, The only direct way out of Vegas was to go back south to L.A.”

“You got any people in L.A.?”

“I’m not sure. I’ve been away for a year and most of the people I knew were comin’ or goin’. Know what I mean?”

“Yeh, things got kinda crazy in Hollywood since you were in town. The Strip’s gotten downright decadent.” Aaron spit out some sunflower husks as he spoke.

“Well, it wasn’t exactly pristine when I left. I got out of town to check out Taos, New Mexico.”

“Wow, that place is heaven on earth! How did you like it?”

“I liked it plenty, but I had to move on after a bit.”

“You had to?”

“Yeh, you know how it is… enough people were there already, and I was beginning to feel I just didn’t belong there any longer… that I had to move on a find a place where I do belong.”

“Yes, Max, we’re strangers in a strange land. I hope you find it.”

I didn’t stay in Hollywood very long. Aaron’s words found a niche in my mind that would loosen up once in a while and come rolling out like a pinball and bounce around. “Yes, Max, we’re strangers in a strange land. I hope you find it.”

I’d read that in jail… the Bible… what was it, a psalm? How could I feel happiness and peace of mind as long as there wasn’t a place on the planet I could feel a part of? How can we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? I wasn’t sure what that meant but it meant something important, perhaps the key to my despair.

I hitched up the Coast Highway because I wasn’t in any hurry and I wanted to be near the ocean. One ride took me from Zuma Beach all the way to Santa Barbara. I was familiar with the place where Highway101turned from freeway to three sets of stop lights; making it the #1 most pleasant place to hitch a ride on the entire coast. It felt good to be back there. The mowed and tended green grass and shrubs along both sides of the road made me feel at home. All I had to do was make a sign saying where I wanted to go and lay down on the grass until someone wanted to take me there. A Sambo’s restaurant was right there and a liquor store was up a block from the highway. A huge fig tree spread over a triangular park, between the highway and the tracks, that made for a pleasant place to lie down and take a nap. Santa Barbara also had a Southern Pacific roundhouse where the trains slowed to transfer loads. There were no hard-assed yard dicks there either; so, it was also a good place to find a boxcar to ride either way, north or south. I looked around, the thought occurred to me that it might be a nice place to check out. I remembered thinking the same thoughts as I passed through the exact same place a time ago.

A time ago and then some, indeed, I thought.