Dealing or The Berkeley-to-Boston Forty-Brick Lost-Bag Blues Read online

  “Maybe.”

  He looked vaguely apprehensive. “Well, if he made a deal, he’ll just turn in a couple of smack freaks.” He thought that over, and then added, “He wouldn’t turn in any of his friends. Ernie’s all right.”

  “I’ll let somebody else find that out,” I said.

  “Ernie’s all right.”

  “Yeah, probably he is. But we’ve got another connection now, and there’s no question about whether he’s cool or not. Which reminds me, can I use your phone?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Stevie said. He got up, and followed me back into the kitchen. I was asking how to dial information when there was a noise at the back door and a huge freak walked in, holding his head and bleeding.

  It was Ross.

  8

  THERE WAS BLOOD ALL OVER everything, including the little blond chick who was holding him up. As usual, Ross had his sheepskin vest on, and as usual, he was mad. Ross was always mad about something; a good bust in the head just gave him a chance to focus his energy. He slumped down on the couch with the chick, beneath the poster that said SEE AMERICA FIRST. Stevie ran for a rag.

  “What happened?” I asked the chick, who was crying and wiping her face and Ross’s with the same bloody handkerchief. There was a hell of a lot of blood, but then Ross was a hell of a big boy. He was big enough to be playing football for Ohio State, except that this was Berkeley, and Ross had hair down to his shoulders and was wearing a huge pair of yellow shades. One frame was shattered and they were lopsided on his nose now as he looked up at me.

  “Oh,” he said. “It’s you.”

  “What happened?” I said again.

  “Up on campus,” the chick said, “the Governor gave the order to the pigs to break up the picket lines.” I tilted my head. “We were keeping people from classes,” she added.

  “At seven o’clock at night,” Ross said. “The motherfuckers, keeping people from classes at seven at night.”

  “So the pigs broke it up,” the chick said. She had stopped crying and was staring at my clothes. Stevie came back with a rag and started wiping more blood off Ross’s face. “Motherfuckers,” Ross kept saying.

  “Quit moving your head,” said Stevie.

  “See it now,” Ross said, to no one in particular. Suddenly he tilted his nose in the air and started sniffing. Sniff, sniff. “Goddamn,” he suddenly said. “Goddamn morons. You been smoking again.”

  “Relax,” Stevie said.

  “Goddamn,” Ross said, “now of all times.”

  Stevie and the chick were working on him. Stevie said to her, “Sukie, this is Peter. Peter, Sukie.”

  “Hello,” Sukie said. Her back was to me. She was bent over Ross, putting merthiolate on his head. Her long legs were stretched taut, and they were very brown. Hello, hello.

  “You guys are going to screw everything,” Ross said. “You’re going to get us all busted for sure. Jesus, I think if you have too much of this, it begins to affect your brains. I think—”

  “Quit moving your head,” Stevie said again. He glanced over at me and we exchanged looks. Old Ross. He’d never change.

  He sat patiently until they had patched up his head, then stumbled off to the bathroom, with the chick still supporting him. When they’d gone, Stevie said, “He bought another one.”

  “Oh?” Nothing had changed since the year before.

  “Yeah. Last week.”

  “What was it?”

  “Shotgun,” Stevie said.

  “Out of sight. What’s he got lying around by now?”

  “I don’t know. At least six. Two shotguns for sure.”

  “Two?”

  “Yeah, one to replace the automatic. He jammed it last week and he’s having a hard time getting it fixed.”

  I nodded. Seeing as how automatics were illegal, you’d have a very hard time getting one fixed. Besides the fact that none of Ross’s guns was registered. But that was the way his head worked. He figured that if he registered his guns, he’d just be tipping them off—the big “them”—so that when the day of liberation came they would know about him, would know to come and get him. He figured that they probably already knew enough about him to come and get him anyway, but just let them try. He was ready. Muthafuggin’ pigs.

  It probably would have been a cool idea for Ross to keep his guns out of sight if he’d been doing anything, if he’d been a Panther or a Weatherman—even if he’d been a member of the Sierra Club. Anything. But Ross wasn’t doing anything, short of letting everyone know what a heavy he was, and knocking out a few token Bank of America windows with the butt of his gun when the inevitable spring riot came to Berkeley. That was why he always cut such a ludicrous figure to me.

  Ross was a fervent Marxist-Leninist. At least, that’s how he thought of himself. He was one of the first people I’d ever met in Berkeley. I’d just been walking down Telegraph, digging the street scene, and he’d looked like he knew his way around, so I’d asked him if he knew where such-and-such Dwight Way was. He lived there too.

  We’d been great good friends for an hour or so, which was, I later discovered, about as long as Rossie could function before finding it necessary to pause and consider the state of the coming revolution. So we’d started talking about the revolution, and after a bit of it I’d just laughed—and that had offended him deeply. You could do anything, say anything, be anything, to Ross—but you couldn’t laugh at the revolution.

  Later, when Stevie mentioned that I was in Berkeley to score some dope, the dislike had turned to contempt. Ross had no place in his life for drugs. He was serious enough about his trip to live in constant preparedness for the big day. He didn’t drink, he didn’t smoke, and you could hear him panting every night as he did his calisthenics. He stayed in shape for it, and he expected others to do the same. And so he especially detested dope people, whose presence meant a possible bust, and with it the confiscation of his well-maintained arsenal. We really didn’t get along.

  But what bothered me about Ross, in the end, was that he couldn’t dig what anybody else was up to. I mean, I didn’t want the dude to knock off what he was doing just because I couldn’t dig it, but that was exactly what he seemed to want me to do. And as far as I was concerned, that was half-assed, because it all came down to personal excuses, which were purely a matter of choice. His excuse for not paying any attention to us was that we blew dope, which was not only illegal but was quite literally an opiate of the people, an anti-revolutionary device that we were politically ignorant enough to indulge in.

  And our excuse for not digging Ross’s trip was that we figured that any changes that were really going to happen were going to happen in people’s heads. We figured that once you started killing, you admitted that you were at a loss for other solutions, and that your own way was so poverty-stricken in the knowledge department that all you could do with people who didn’t see the light was liquidate them. And we figured that was nowhere. So we blew our dope and stayed in our heads; maybe that was nowhere, but that was our problem.

  The only hitch in all this was that, from the point of view of Ross’s repressionary society, he was a lot cooler than we were. I mean some places the written penalties for selling marijuana are greater than the written penalties for killing somebody. In that sense, Ross was a lot more hip than we were.

  9

  STEVIE AND I SAT IN the living room, waiting for something to happen. Pretty soon the chick came back out. I was fumbling around for a cigarette, but I didn’t have a match. “Do you have a match?” I asked her. She stared at me blandly for a moment, then said, “If you made a salad out of tobacco leaves and ate it, you would be very sick.” It was said without judgment or heat, simply a stated fact. But all I could think was, Christ, not again. Another California health-food freak.

  “Stevie, got a match?”

  He shook his head. “I’m all out, man. Ask Ross, why don’t you.”

  Just then Ross came out of the bathroom, still holding a towel to his head. He wa
s mumbling to himself, so I left the honors to Stevie.

  “Ross, you got a match?” he asked.

  “So you can smoke some more dope and stink the place up? Hell, no.”

  “It’s not for a joint,” said Stevie. “Just a plain, ordinary butt that won’t stink anything up any more than it already is. For Peter,” he added.

  “Okay,” he said. “Okay. In my room, near the phone.” As I got up he said, “Hey, and there’s a number by the phone that you were supposed to call if you showed up here. Some guy from Boston called this morning and left it.”

  I nodded and said, “Thanks.”

  “If you call Boston, call collect,” Ross yelled after me as I went into his room.

  There was a number with a Boston exchange written on a newspaper. There was blood all over the paper and I wasn’t sure of the last digit, but what the hell. I dialed and a far-off voice answered.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Peter,” I said.

  “Oh, yeah,” said John. He sounded like I had just wakened him, which was the way he always sounded on the telephone. “What’s happening?”

  “Not much. I got invited to a bust but I didn’t attend.”

  “Good man. Musty gave me a ring about five hours ago. He said he’d had to split his place fast.”

  “No kidding,” I said.

  John ignored me. “Yeah. We were really worried about you for a while there, Peter.” I’ll bet he was. It would’ve cost him a lot of bread. As if he knew what I was thinking, John went on. “We were afraid the heat might hassle you when they found the house clean.”

  I said, “They did. Big deal.”

  “Ummm.” I had half expected congratulations on my narrow escape, but of course there weren’t any. John said, “Big bust?”

  “Eight narcs. Couple of patrol cars.”

  “Shit, that’s the trouble with Musty. When they come down on him, they come down hard.”

  “I thought he was so cool,” I said.

  “For Chrissake,” said John, “he is. He knew this was coming. He called me, didn’t he? Don’t worry about it.”

  “Okay,” I said, “okay. You know where he is now?”

  “Just a minute.” John left the phone. I could hear music in the background and, faintly, a chick giggling. Then John came back. “Peter?” he said. “Take this number down.” He gave me an Oakland number, told me to be careful, and hung up. I sighed a deep sigh of relief, knowing at last that everything was still cool. I felt like I could relax a bit, maybe even dig the Sukie chick for a while before I dived back into the business routine. I picked up Ross’s matches and went back into the living room.

  Ross was sitting alone on the couch, smiling and drinking a medicinal glass of wine. He was telling Stevie with great glee how he’d managed to kick a cop in the ’nads before they’d gotten to him. “Took that fucking pig right out with me,” he said.

  Stevie looked up at me. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  “Yeah, fine,” I said. “Thanks.” Then to Ross: “Where’s your old lady?”

  “Who, you mean Sukie?” I nodded, and he laughed. “She’s not my old lady, man. Just a good head. She hangs around to take care of friends on days like this, when she knows there’s going to be trouble.”

  “Where’d she go?” I asked.

  “She went back up to campus to see what’s happening.” He looked at me hard, and then laughed again. “You can forget about her, Harkness, if you’re thinking what I think you’re thinking. She’s got a good head. She doesn’t go for druggies like you.”

  “Oh, I see,” I said.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” he asked, but I just shook my head and sat down. I wasn’t going to argue with the dude, I was just going to relax for a change and enjoy myself. In my hand I had the number John had given me, Musty’s number. I should’ve been on the phone trying to get hold of him, to set up a time. But I didn’t feel like I had to be in any rush. I could wait. Musty had almost put me on the shithook, and it was my turn to reciprocate. He could sweat it for a while, not knowing whether I’d been picked up. It was all part of the game.

  10

  DEALING IS FUNNY, AS A game. It is very external and controlled and it follows patterns of protocol and consequences as rigid as any ever encountered by Nine-to-Five Man. More rigid, perhaps, since not everyone is playing the dealing game on the same scale, or with the same intensity, or with the same degree of knowledge.

  But everyone in the park is playing, whether he’s on the grass or in the bleachers drinking beer, because everyone figures he’s got something to lose. Essentially, that is what makes dealing so dangerous and so thrilling—the simple fact that everyone is convinced he’s got something to lose. Because not everyone is going to admit it.

  That’s the difference between the dealer and Nine-to-Five Man, who is forced to admit it, whether he likes it or not. He has to wear a suit to work, and he has to keep his shoes shined, and he has to get haircuts and watch out for tell-tale underarm stains. These rules are accepted by J. P. Nine-to-Five, by Mrs. Ruth Wanamaker Nine-to-Five, and by all the little Nine-to-Fives. It’s accepted by them and before they know it, it is them, for which they receive the Consolation Prize of Knowing Who They Are. And everybody’s happy so long as the supply of glycerin suppositories holds out.

  But that’s not what’s happening on the street, because all the people who are playing there aren’t sure they’re playing, and sometimes they’re most definitely not playing but only trying to play, or thinking they want to play, or some variation thereof. That’s what makes dealing so interesting.

  It doesn’t start that way, of course, with the fully developed patterns and responses and the paranoia and the inimitable thrills and chills. It usually starts as an act of love and only later turns into a game.

  You start with John Joseph Straight, single, on his way through life with one finger cocked piously up his ass and another thumbing through the Yellow Pages. To this sturdy fellow add two Pernicious Influences, one Psychedelic Experience, a taste of rock ’n’ roll music, and some form or another of Idle Mind (which is widely accepted as the Devil’s Playground). Beat Pernicious Influences and Psychedelic Experience until fluffy, add rock ’n’ roll, season with Idle Mind, and lick the gummed side. Hold a match to one end, insert in mouth. You are now smoking a joint and wondering why you never thought to do this before, while the little man in the back of your head who holds the keys to your future is rolling around on the medulla in a fit of epilepsy. He is shouting that you will never be the same again, that you have permanently damaged your chromosomes and your taste buds, and that you have generally corrupted your body and fulfilled your parents’ Worst Expectations. That is, that’s what he would be saying if you could hear him. But right now you are thinking you have never in your whole life ever noticed how perfidiously intricate the sun looks coming through a half-filled cut-glass decanter of wine, or how amusing it is that your belly button should be stopped shut, while your nose has two holes instead of one.

  After a few experiences of this sort, the dastardly weed becomes a fond and coveted friend, and it attracts others. That is to say, in the spirit of brotherhood and togetherness which is the mark of the Aquarian Age, you and your friends blow grass together; and those of your friends who don’t aren’t around much any more. This isn’t any fault of yours—you’re still digging them as much as you did before—but you just can’t stand those soon-to-be-behind-bars looks they give you when you get your shit out and ask them if they want a smoke; or the way they ask you if you’re high on “that stuff” before they’ll tell you how ugly their date was last night.

  So you and your dope friends blow dope together, and have a lot of good times together, and watch the sun go down every night together, and go to Baskin-Robbins to taste ice cream together. And after a while it gets so that you’re blowing a lot of dope together.

  And that’s cool, contrary to the local witch doctor’s medicinal meditations or
the Surgeon General’s latest case of the blahs. Because you know—having violated the number-one principle of Western science and entered into self-experimentation—you know that dope doesn’t make your eyes bug out, or make your head split open and grow asparagus. And you know that you don’t wake up the morning after with the cold-turkey, liver-lidded, hungry, frenzied, glassy-eyed, pure need look of dope in your eyes, because you’re eating better and sleeping more than you ever have before. And you know that grass doesn’t zap your brain into the fourth dimension only to drop it off in the second, leaving you with three eyes and a dork the size of a pineapple and the insistent, insane, uncontrollable need to kill, rape, pillage, and plunder (which a stint in the army would at least teach you how to do)—because in that sense grass is very uneducational.

  On the contrary, you find that it is vocational. You change your name to Phineas Phreak or Seymour Stone, and wear bellbottoms and dirty BVDs and grow your hair down to your ass and try to keep from passing Go while still collecting your two hundred bucks for tuition every month. You cancel your subscription to The New York Times and read the L.A. Free Press and don’t brush your teeth and look sullen as much as possible. You hang up when old girl friends call and lead a mysteriously quiet life, enjoying the knowledge that your straight friends are worrying about your health and the “deterioration of his nervous system.”

  But most of all you become conscious of the extent to which you were hoaxed by people you once believed in: dope doesn’t drive you to needles or crime, and you still laugh at your father’s dull jokes.

  So you try to create your own mechanism, and struggle to survive within it. You do what you think is right, and you say not what you’re supposed to say, usually not even what you want to say, but what you have to say. And then one morning you wake up and it’s you they’re describing in the editorials, and they’re talking about you like you’re a piece of shit that won’t flush. You’ve dropped out, it seems. You’re alienated and God knows what else.