Demon Box

Puerto Sancto Darkness

Here it comes again: the turmoil, the chaos, the hubbub and howls—the nightdogs again—the pre-dawn yapping that starts in the hills south and sweeps across the town, just when you were sure the sonofabitches had, at last, exhausted the shadows and were going to settle down and let you get some rest.

Old Chief whimpers. The Tranny Man burrows under his pillow cursing the night, the dogs, the town, his crazy wife who had suggested in the first place coming to this thorny wilderness, goddamn her! Why here, he demands of the darkness, instead of Yosemite or Marineland or even the Shakespeare festival in Ashland? Why this goddamn anarchy of thorn and shadows?

A fair question. I had been forced to deal with it there once myself. You see, one day, not long after Betsy had announced we were finally broke, we all finally knew that my father was going to die (of course I am reminded of him by the Tranny Man—not by the person himself but by certain things particular to this type of American: the erect exit, the wink, the John Wayne way he spoke to machinery and mechanics… many things). The doctors had been telling us for ages that he only had so much time, but Daddy had continued to stretch that allotted time for so long that Buddy and I secretly believed that our stubborn Texas father was never going to succumb to any enemy except old age. His arms and legs shriveled and his head wobbled on his “goddamn noodle of a neck,” but we continued to expect some last-minute rescue to come bugling over the horizon.

Daddy thought so too. “All this research, I figure they’ll whip it pretty soon. They better. Look at these muscles jump around—” He’d draw up a pantleg and grin wryly at the flesh jerking and twitching.

“—like nervous rats on a leaky scow.”

Yeah, pretty soon, we agreed. Then one September day we were out at the goat pasture sighting in our rifles and talking about where we were going to take our hunting trip this fall, when Daddy lowered his ‘ought-six and looked at us.

“Boys, this damned gunbarrel is shaking like a dog shitting peach pits: Let’s take some other kind of trip…”

–and we all knew it was going to be our last. My brother and I talked it over that night. I knew where I wanted to go. Buddy wasn’t too sure about the idea, but he conceded I was the big brother. We presented the plan to Daddy the next day over his backyard barbecue.

“I don’t object to a journey south, but why this Purty Sancto? Why way the hell-and-gone down there?”

“Dev claims there’s something special about it,” Buddy said. “He wants to show off where he hid out for six months,” Daddy said. “Aint that the something special?”

“Partly,” I admitted. Everybody knew I’d been trying to get the three of us down there for years. “But there’s something besides that about the place—something primal, prehistoric…”

“Just what a man in his predicament needs,” my mother put in. “Something prehistoric.”

“Maybe we oughta fly up to that spot on the Yukon again,” Daddy mused. “Fish for sockeye.”

“No, damm it!” I said. “All my life you’ve been hauling me to your spots. Now it’s my turn.”

“A drive across Mexico would shake him to pieces!” my mother cried. “Why, he wasn’t even able to handle the drive to the Rose Parade up in Portland without getting wore to a frazzle.”

“Oh, I can handle the drive,” he told her. “That aint the question.”

“Handle my foot! A hundred miles on those Mexican roads in your sorry condition—”

“I said I can stand it,” he told her, flipping her a burger. He turned to eye me through the smoke. “All’s I want to know is, one: why this Puerto Sancto place? and, two: what else you got up your sleeve?”

I didn’t answer. We all knew what was up my sleeve.

“Oh no you don’t!” My mother swung her glare at me. “If you think you’re going to get him off somewheres and talk him into taking some of that stuff again—”

“Woman, I been legal age for some time now. I will thank you to leave me do my own deciding as to where I go and what stuff I take.”

Years before, at the beginning of the sixties, Buddy and I had been trying to grow psilocybin mushrooms in a cottage-cheese vat at the little creamery Daddy staked Buddy to after he got out of Oregon State. Bud made up some research stationery and was getting spore cultures sent to him straight from the Department of Agriculture, along with all the latest information for producing the mycelium hydroponically. Bud and I plumbed an air hose into the vat, mixed the required nutrients, added the cultures and monitored the development through a microscope. Our ultimate fantasy was to produce a psilocybin slurry and ferment it into a wine. We believed we could market the drink under the name Milk of the Gods. All we ever made was huge yeast-contaminated messes.