saw the scum of red part. He hadn't actually lost much blood…
He pressed his right hand against the gash in the other and with one toe pried up the drain plug. The blood in the tub began to move amoebically toward the drain as the pipes made an echoey sucking growl and the cleaner water welled up. Tenuous shapes formed there, around the little whirlpool where blood and water spiraled. For a moment, one of the shapes was Amy's face. The red lips mouthing Help me… Help us… And then it melted swiftly away in down-whirling water and was gone.
11
The Hills near Malibu
The first thing Lonny noticed when he woke was the smell. He thought: They caught me and they threw me in some stinking pit of rotting dead people under the ranch. Maybe he should just lie here and let himself die.
He decided he had to face it anyway. He sat up – the movement made his head swim with pain – and opened his eyes a crack.
'Oh fuck,' he said. Now he knew what the smell was from. He had been captured by a hippie.
He was in a shack, unevenly lit with greasy yellow light from three kerosene lamps hanging from three different walls. The reek of unwashed man and dog overcame even the oily stink of kerosene. Sitting in an old rocking chair at the foot of the bed, watching him fixedly, smoking a briar pipe that reeked of pot, was an old hippie. At least, that's how he looked to Lonny. He wore kerchief-patched, age-shiny jeans and, yes: they were bell- bottoms. His horny, dirt crusted feet in homemade leather sandals. He wore an ancient Grateful Dead t-shirt, the one with the skull crowned in roses…
Roses…
The girl in the rose vines.
'Look like ya seen a ghost, brother,' the old hippie rasped. Sniggering to himself. 'You come off the Cocksucker Ranch?'
'I… ' He couldn't seem to pull up any words.
'Devil's Cocksuckers is what them fuckers are. The Devil's Cocksuckers.' He sniggered again, this time showing his few rotting, mossy teeth. His gaunt face was leathery and sun-reddened. His eyelids budded with benign growths; his eyes were the faded blue of his jeans. His receding, waist-length black hair and beard were streaked with gray and clumped with dust. His mustache had grown over his mouth and was stained with food and pot-smoke. His fingernails were two inches long and crusty with dirt. He reached over to a worktable next to the squawky rocking chair and found a box of wooden matches. Meditatively, with one hand, he relit his pipe, never taking his eyes off Lonny. Leaning against the wall next to the worktable – within reach of the rocking chair – was a twelve gauge shotgun. Lonny never forgot it was there and neither did the old hippie.
In a corner, behind the rickety, multi-padlocked door, a mongrel dog got to its feet in a nest of foul rags, stretching, shaking itself, its long brown fur matted, the inevitable grimy kerchief around its neck. It came trotting over, claws clicking on the flattened tin-cans nailed down over most of the floor, and laid its muzzle on the old hippie's lap, casting sideways glances at Lonny. The hippie put his hand absently on the dog's head; somehow, its blind trust in the guy put Lonny more at ease.
He looked around; there were shelves of rusted tools; from nails on the shelves and ceiling dangled little dolls made of coloured wires and bits of junk. Between the rickety, unmatched shelves, the walls were covered with odds and ends: a cobwebbed poster of a babyfaced Mick Jagger and a startlingly human Keith Richards posing in costumes of Asian potentates against a psychedelic backdrop; randomly nailed up road signs pocked with bullet holes; and lots and lots of glued-on newspaper clippings, gone the colour of aged ivory, scribbled with notations and multiple exclamation points.
Sure. The dude was a paranoid old hippie. 'You… find me?' Lonny managed.
'About a mile west. Me'n'Jerry here watched you for a while, crawling and talkin' to yourself.' He exhaled an aromatic plume of marijuana smoke. 'You crawled right through one of my fields and never looked twice at the buds. You either don't like pot or don't know it – well I expect you was spaced pretty bad. I knowed you was one that got away. First one I know about except for the movie star. And I helped him too. Lots of graves out in them hills, around the Ranch… You want some of this?'
He offered Lonny the pipe. Lonny shook his head. It was the last thing he wanted. 'You…' He struggled with his mouth. 'Hard to talk…'
'You're dehydrated is one reason. And maybe you're trying not to think about some things, and that keeps your brain busy. You got to deal with it sometime, brother, but maybe now ain't a good time. You did, though, dincha, see some pretty bad stuff in there, dincha. Devil's cocksuckers. Suckin' them worms. Dincha?'
Lonny didn't want to even acknowledge the memories with a yes. But he nodded, once. Forced out: 'You got any coffee?'
The hippie stopped rocking and leaned forwards so suddenly toward him Lonny thought he was going to bite him in rage. But the old dude grinned and cackled, 'Hell fucking yes! It's the only thing I go into town for, that an' aspirin. I go in twice a year, regular as the bad wind! Sure, Hell yeah, I got some coffee that'll make your hair stand up on your head and go, Holy shit!
'
Turned out his name was Drax. Mike Drax. The coffee was everything he'd said it would be and, though Lonny'd knocked back two cups only after drinking three pints of water and eating beans and tortillas, he was buzzing so intensely he was barely able to hold himself quiet on the edge of the foul-smelling bunk. He tried to relax and asked, 'How'd you come to be out here?'
Drax looked at him with a bald suspicion. 'I like it out here, is all.'
'Look – I told you what happened to me. Come on. Straight up. You know all about the Ranch. Why didn't you tell the cops?'
'Now what the hell would the pigs do? Some of them over there at the Cocksucker Ranch is cops. They in it up to their old piggy snouts.' He sniggered and muttered, 'It's all there, I seen it all.' He waved toward the newspaper clippings. 'I got the proof right there. You can check 'er out. That Mideast oil thing, it's there too. They suck on that just the same. Yeah, brother. Dobbs knows and Jerry here knows and I know.' He turned to the cluttered, paint-spattered work bench that served for all the table the shack had, and sorted through a mound of tarry, golden marijuana, began to crush pot-buds between his thumb and forefinger with practiced exactitude, winnowing out the seeds.
The old dude smokes too much fucking pot, Lonny thought. No wonder he's half cracked.
'Your friends might still be alive,' Drax said. 'Sometimes the Cocksuckers save 'em for a long time.' Abruptly he shot a narrow eyed look at Lonny and said, conspiratorially, 'I will tell ya.' His lingers kept crushing and winnowing the pot as he looked at Lonny, and went on, 'It was my dad. He was a singer. Well he started out a rancher – we had a real ranch I mean, down in New Mexico. Worked it ourselves too. My mama was long dead. My dad, he was a real singin' cowboy. Not much of a rancher. About the time I was ten somebody heard him in a honky-tonk, signed him to records, two years later he was singin in big concerts. That led to movies. He was in two westerns. Then he was in television. Well sure, he was a good looking fella.
'I was a boy, I thought he was a god. Goodest-hearted man you ever want to meet. Took me everywhere with him, right to the nightclub concerts, near everywhere he went. Never left me somewhere so he could play with those pretty-pussy girls. He loved me! And then, when I was fourteen, bang, he forgot I was alive! He left me to knock around by myself. He knew I was alone in that big old house and he…'
The anger shook its way out through Drax's voice; showed in his white knuckled grip on the armrest of his rocking chair. The dog whined and put a paw on his lap. Lonny sat very still. The old fuck was crazy and he might grab one of the oily tools on the desk and brain him on a whim, for all Lonny knew.
Drax's shoulders slumped. He went on, a little subdued. '… they did it to him. Sam Denver, he took my old man up to that place and they played with his head and made him one of them and started soaking up his money and his talent and everything he had. They wanted me, too. They came to get me one day and I went over to that ranch and I saw what they were doin' to them kids and I went over the fuckin wall, brother, you bet your fuckin' ass! Got myself up to San Francisco. Got myself a ticket to the other world, from Mr. Owsley himself, who I knew
