Demon Box

Fascinated, Deboree watches from the brambles as Sandy waltzes in a slow circle, then leans the huge doll against the stump and sits in its lap. “Give us a hand,” she says, picking at the button of the collar taut across her throat, “an’ a drink.” Blackbeard draws a half gallon of wine from one of the grocery sacks. He uncorks it and drinks beneath the gently swinging light, his eyes on the fat woman and the doll. He lowers the bottle and takes a big summer sausage from the other sack and begins to chew the plastic wrapping away. Blondboy kneels beside Sandy, giggling, to help with the buttons of her blouse. Blackbeard watches, and Deboree. The 10:10 toots past at the Nebo junction. The shadows rock. The fumbling fingers have the garment off one shoulder when, abruptly, Sandy’s head falls back to the bear’s shoulder and she begins to snore. The giggle bubbles louder over the healthy teeth as Blondboy hefts the bra strap up and down.

“What kinda credit card got you these, mama?”

Sandy sags and snores louder. The boy tries to reach behind her sleeping back to find the clasp. Blackbeard is going through her shopping bag. He takes out a little transistor radio and turns it on. He leans against the oak tree, gnawing the sausage and tuning the radio as he watches his partner wrestle with the sleeping woman’s brassiere. At last, Deboree has to close his eyes to the spectacle, and the dark swirls over him. His head is ringing. He hears the radio dial travel on until it finds The Beach Boys’ hit. The harmony softens Sandy’s snores and grunts and covers the crunch of twigs. Deboree can barely hear any of it. It comes from a long way off, through a twining, leafy tunnel. The tunnel has almost twined shut when he hears Blackbeard speak.

“What did she say he was doing out there on the railroad tracks? Counting?”

“The ties,” Blondboy answers. “Counting the ties between Puerto Sancto and the next village. Thirty miles away. Counting the railroad ties. They got him doped up and dared him and he did it, didn’t he, hee hee?”

“Houlihan,” says Blackboard’s voice, gentler. “The great Houlihan. Done in by downers and a dare.” Blackbeard sounded honestly grieved, and Deboree found himself suddenly liking him. “I can’t believe it…”

“Don’t let it bother you, bro. He was fried, you know? Gangrened. But c’mere and check this. I bet this makes you take that wienie outta your mouth…”

Deboree tries to lift his eyes open, but the tunnel is twining too fast. Let it close, he tells himself. Who’s afraid of the dark now? Houlihan wasn’t merely making noise; he was counting. We were all counting.

The dark space about him is suddenly filled with faces, winking off and on. Deboree watches them twinkle, feeling warm and befriended, equally fond of all the countenances, those close, those far, those known, those never met, those dead, those never dead. Hello faces. Come back. Come on back all of you even LBJ with your Texas cheeks eroded by compromises come back. Khrushchev, fearless beyond peasant ignorance, healthy beside Eisenhower, come back both of you. James Dean all picked apart and Tab Hunter all put together. Michael Rennie in your silver suit the day the earth stood still for peace, come back all of you.

Now go away and leave me. Now come back.

Come back Vaughn Monroe, Ethel Waters, Krazy Kat, Lou Costello, Harpo Marx, Adlai Stevenson, Ernest Hemingway, Herbert Hoover, Harry Belafonte, Timothy Leary, Ron Boise, Jerry Lee Lewis, Lee Harvey Oswald, Chou En-lai, Ludwig Erhard, Sir Alec Douglas-Home and Mandy Rice-Davies, General Curtis LeMay and Gordon Cooper, John O’Hara and Liz Taylor, Estes Kefauver and Governor Scranton, the Invisible Man and the Lonely Crowd, the True Believer and the Emerging Nations, the Hungarian Freedom Fighters, Elsa Maxwell, Dinah Washington, Jean Cocteau, William Edward Burghardt Du Bois, Jimmy Hatlo, Aldous Huxley, Edith Piaf, Zasu Pitts, Seymour Glass, Big Daddy Nord, Grandma Whittier, Grandpa Deboree, Pretty Boy Floyd, Big Boy Williams, Boyo Behan, Mickey Rooney, Mickey Mantle, Mickey McGee, Mickey Mouse, come back, go away, come on back.

That summer-sweet Frisco with flowers in your hair come back. Now go away.

Cleaver, come back. Abbie, come back. And you that never left come back anew, Joan Baez, Bob Kaufmann, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Gordon Lish, Gordon Fraser, Gregory Corso, Ira Sandperl, Fritz Perls, swine pearls, even you black bus Charlie Manson asshole. And you better get back to Tennessee Jed come back, get back, now come back afresh.

We are being summoned. We get a reprieve, not just rebop. He wasn’t just riffing; he was counting. Appear and testify.

Young Cassius Clay.

Young Mailer.

Young Miller.

Young Jack Kerouac before you fractured your football career at Columbia and popped your hernia in Esquire. Young Sandy without your credit card bare. Young Devlin. Young Dylan. Young Lennon. Young lovers wherever you are. Come back and remember and go away and come back.

Attendance mandatory but not required.