… he, Charles River Blackie using his road moniker now that he was back on the bum, as he turned up the frayed collar of his threadbare denim jacket against the unexpectedly cold early October desert night, sprayed his eyes around the sitting night camp fire being reignited by Boomer Jack, and shuddered, no cold shake off shudder although he had enough of that in his time, but some unspoken, also un-thought of response to a fear that was creeping into his bones. Something about this Indio camp fire was just not right, just had the wrong smell, and no he did not mean the man unwashed smell, nothing to that anymore, he had lost all sense of that rank smell or not rank smell long ago, not did the smell of cheap whiskey, or of low- down cast-off food being olio-brothed on a big pot on a second camp fire, no this was fear smell, bad happening smell like happens every once in a while out in a desolate railroad jungle when just the wrong combination of hoboes, tramps, and bums work their way into trouble. (Indio, by the way, out by the high California desert before the Sierras, out by an underside of a bridge an of old Southern Pacific railroad route, if you need to know, don’t look for it unless you are headed there, properly headed there with frayed clothing, some Sally second or third hand stuff, mismatched so no one would mistake you for a poser for Gentlemen’s Quarterly, or something like that, maybe a little cheap wine or rotgut whisky wobbly to declare you are brethren.)
Maybe it was that the denizens of this camp had set up their sitting camp fire early, early before the sun set and he could see, see clearly the pug-ugly faces of each individual man sitting around the circle. Hard men with hard chilling eyes, hard men who had not had a woman’s touch to soften them since about mother cradle time (unlike him, who had just gotten through, for about the eighth time, he had stopped counting, exact counting, after a couple once he got wise to the way things were between them and always between them, his thing with Susie after he just couldn’t take that nine to five white picket fence existence she had plotted out for them and so was not woman hungry, not yet), hard men who had the snarl of men who had done some hard ancient time, felony time, busting rock, or planting fields, or putting down road courtesy of some state penal authority (his own legal transgressions, vag, trespassing, loitering, being ugly in an open place, drunk, some small larceny stuff, the “clip” they called it in oceanside Hull working class neighborhood corner boy days, long past, had been of a small enough order that he was usually just cell-bound over night, a couple of nights, and then let out).
Maybe it was those dark stone eyes heathen going back ten thousand years to when they confronted a hostile natural world, and won for a time injuns who had made their camp here after the big Intertribal, over in Gallup, over around Red Rock, back east in New Mexico in late summer and were constantly affronting everybody, drunk, whiskey drunk, with their theory that all this land was theirs and therefore all gringos, all whites, should be grateful that they were allowed on this sacred ancient burial land, including the brethren here at Indio. He had seen fights all over the West, drunkenfights, sober fights, one against five and five against one fights, and serious cut-ups, knives, razors, whip chains if available, over that proposition.
And just maybe his fear was fueled by something Susie said, something that night anyway he feared she might have been right on, that the road had died, that friendly road where they, he and she, had happenstance met in sunnier times, in times when hitchhiking was just like waiting at a bus stop for the next Volkswagen minibus or painted converted yellow brick school bus to pass, had died long ago and the remnants left on that scattered road were now too dangerous for part -time gentlemen hoboes afraid to settle down. As he sat, sat kind of off to himself but close enough to get some flame warmth, he still did not like the omens that night and as the fire’s embers brightened he thought back to other camps, and other times.
Back to that first camp, that first camp by the old abandoned Boston and Maine railroad over in Revere back in Massachusetts when after his break-up with his first wife he had been unceremoniously (and legally) kicked out of that mortgaged house of theirs, and the camp where he first picked up his Charles River Blackie moniker from Black River Whitey who took him under his wing. That camp had been softened up by a couple of runaway boys, just boys, maybe sixteen or seventeen, who seeking a life of crime or a life away from some troubled home life, had stumbled into the camp and a couple of old ‘bos had made them their “girls,” protecting them, but passing them around to the other men as need be so there was not the cutthroat woman hunger that he felt was about to explode among the men that night. In those days too, Black River Whitey, an old anarchist and old Wobblie (Industrial Workers Of The World, IWW), who had been out in the railroad jungles of the west, the working man hard drinking hard fighting and hard shooting of need be strike-bound west, kept things in check, kept a certain social order to keep the rough edges in check. And was tough enough to make his word stick, no questions asked, none after Big Red (an old communist from about 1932 who kept talking about what he was going to do when they really went at it, class against class, in the near future) went down in a heap after Whitey cut him up like a steak when he tried some fag rough stuff with the “girls” one afternoon.
And too there was always a stray dog or two around that camp, Laddy and Queenie he remembered, to make everyone laugh as they adjusted to the soft hobo life (soft for them, the dogs, and they were kept in virtually royal splendor while the camp would go without). But most of all he remembered how Jimmy One Shoe (he always seemed to be missing one, or had two different ones) used to sing on his old beat up guitar (although don’t touch it, believe him don’t touch it. He had seen Jimmy knife gash a guy for just such folly) about every railroad song ever written, and about all of the American songbook (before his love of drink got the better of him One Shoe had been a folk performer of some minor note down in the Village in the 1950s, according to Whitey anyway).So when any trouble, whiskey or wine- soaked trouble began he would go into some old Phoebe Snow song, a song about some long ago lost love that didn’t work out after a while but the guy still carried the torch, and every guy (even him with that damn first wife) would get kind of wistful and weepy before the fire’s flames.
And then he thought back, thought back to his first days out on the road, the hitchhike road, that summer of love (no, not the famous one in1967 out in San Francisco, later, but still in California, further south down LaJolla way toward Mexico). The days when all you had to do on certain highways (almost all of California and up the coast, Boston to Washington, Maine to the border, Ann Arbor, Madison, Denver, not Arizona or Connecticut though , jesus no) was stand there alone (sometimes with a sparkle woman to improve your chances, especially if it looked like you were just travelling together not coupled ) and some Volkswagen minibus or ex-yellow brick road school bus now painted all the colors of the universe would come by and pick you up). And you would have your pick of Cosmic Muffin, Sunny Ray, Be-Bop Betty, Sunshine Sue and about a million other road moniker women; if that was your thing (he had met that first wife, then called Moonbeam Magic, “on the bus,” and later Susie too ). If it wasn’t, then why bother going out there (if your thing was your own sex he didn’t know but that was cool too, if that was your kick). You would have your pick of drugs too, mainly weed, ganja, out on the coast with that direct line south to sunny Mexico (if you didn’t get caught, otherwise the bastinado forever he heard). And if some injustice reared its head there was always a flash demonstration to keep you busy. He, being a righteous man, or at least a man in tune with the ethos of the new thing they were trying to put together , a new world, would always stick himself out front on those days when a brother was down on his luck, or a sister was in need. But mainly it was drugs, sex, and of course rock and rock, rock and roll until the cows came home. And until that ebb came, that downer to use the language of the day the road was a beautiful place to hang your hat. Then some left the road, but if it was in your blood, you were stuck, stuck like he was that night.
He looked again at those hard faces around the fire as the light around them turned starless black. He resolved right then and there that if he made it through the night alive he would slip out of camp before dawn, get down the road, and get that fear washed out …
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