Demon Box

It’s only then that he notices that it is not a light, dry 12-percent burgundy after all but a syrupy sweet 18-percent wino port with a bouquet just like he’d smelled out of Blackbeard’s mouth a couple of hours back. He looks around and sees two raggedy bedrolls, a World War I shoulder pack, and the remains of a small fire. There is a dog-eared pile of underground comics beside one bedroll and a paperback On the Road. In the other bedroll’s area lies a pile of shavings, idly whittled slivers, some as thin as the fallen cotton-wood leaves.

“So this is why they were up the road from this direction, not down from the highway direction like every other pilgrim. Asshole bums…”

But there is no heat in the curse. He tips up the bottle again, more thoughtfully now, and somewhat curious. Maybe they’re more than bums.

“Team,” he says to the ravens, “I think we ought to put a stakeout on these assholes.”

The birds don’t disagree. They seem to have already begun the vigil, hunching their heads deep into their black breasts and settling down on their limbs in the smoky air. Deboree picks up the paperback and the stack of comics and retreats to the wheelbarrow, his finger still hooked in the gallon’s glass handle. He selects a blackberry patch about twenty steps from the camp and bores into the brambles from behind, using the wheelbarrow as a plow and the spade like a machete until he has cleared a comfortable observation post in the center of the thorny vines. He tilts the wheelbarrow up and packs it with the Spanish moss from an overhanging oak limb until the rusty old bucket is as comfortable as any easy chair. He settles into his nest, arranging the leaves in front of his face so he can easily see out without having to touch the vines, and takes another long drink of the sweet wine.

The shadows climb slowly up the tree trunks. The ravens desert, squawking off to their respective roosts after a disappointing day. The air turns a deeper red as the sun, dropping to the horizon, has even more smoke to penetrate. The wine goes down as the Checkered Demon and Mr. Natural and the Furry Freak Brothers flip past his eyes. At last there is only an inch left, and the paperback. He’s read it three times before. Years ago. Before heading off to California. Hoping to sign on in some way, to join that joyous voyage, like thousands of other volunteers inspired by the same book, and its vision, and, of course, its incomparable hero.

Like all the other young candidates for beatitude, he had prowled North Beach’s famous hangouts—City Lights, The Place, The Coffee Gallery, The Bagel Shop—hoping to catch a glimpse of that lightning-mouthed character that Kerouac had called Dean Moriarty in On the Road and that John Clellon Holmes had named Hart Kennedy in Go, maybe eavesdrop on one of his high-octane hipalogues, perhaps even get a chance to be a big-eyed passenger on one of his wild rapping runs around the high spots of magic San Francisco. But he had never imagined much more, certainly not the jackpot of associations that followed, the trips, the adventures, the near disasters—and, worse danger, the near successes that almost put Houlihan on stage. Houlihan was Lenny Bruce, Jonathan Winters, and Lord Buckley all together just for starters. He couldn’t have helped but been a hit. But a nightclub format would have pinched his free-flying mind, and no stage in the world could have really accommodated his art—his hurtling, careening, corner-squealing commentary on the cosmos—except the stage he built about himself the moment he slid all quick and sinewy under the steering wheel of a good car: the bigger, the boatier, the more American, the better. The glow of the dash was his footlights, the slash of oncoming sealed beams was his spots. And now, and now, and now the act is over. No more would that rolling theater ever come bouncing and steaming and blaring rhythm and blues and Houlihan hoopla up the drive all full of speed and plans and hammering hearts.

For now, now, now, the son of a bitch is dead.