Demon Box

Heliotrope was a paraplegic pharmacologist from Berkeley, beautiful and brilliant, and a bathtub chemist of underground renown. M’kehla always liked to pal around with Heliotrope when he was on the outs with his wife or when he was out of chemicals. Percy was her ten-year-old, known to some around San Francisco as the Psychedelic Brat. He had boarded with us occasionally, staying a week, a month, until one of his parents came to round him back up. He was redheaded, intelligent, and practically illiterate, and he had a way of referring to himself in the third person that could be simultaneously amusing and infuriating.

“Percy Without Mercy he calls himself nowdays; likes to keep the pedal to the metal.”

“Hello, Montgomery.” Betsy came out of the bedroom, belting on her robe. “I’m glad to see you.”

Not sounding all that glad. She’d seen the two of us go weirding off together too many times to be too glad. But she allowed him a quick hug.

“What did I hear you telling Dev about Charity? That she got you gone instead of getting you breakfast? Good on her. And she’s pregnant? She ought to get you neutered if you ask me.”

“Why, Betsy, Charity don’t want nothing that permanent. But speakin of breakfast”—he edged around her toward the kitchen, the one huarachi flapping on the linoleum—“is you nice folks fetched in yet the aigs?”

“The henhouse is that way.” Betsy pointed. “Past the billygoat.”

“Mm, I see. Well then, in that case… where y’all keep the cornflakes?”

While Betsy ground the coffee, M’kehla and I went out to contain the goat so we could gather the eggs. Percy was delighted with the action. His freckled face followed from bus window to window as we manhandled the animal back into the field he’d butted out of. While we were swinging the gate closed he caught M’kehla a sharp hind-hoof kick on the shin. I had to laugh as M’kehla danced and cursed, and Percy hooted and jeered from the bus. Even the peacocks and chickens joined in.

Out in the henhouse M’kehla told me his story.

“I don’t know whether it was my Black Panther dealings or my white powder dealings. Charity just says get the hell gone and give her some respite. I say Gone it is, Baby! Naturally I called Heliotrope. Long distance. She’s been the last year up in Canada with Percy’s older brother, Vance, who’s dodging the draft. And a bunch of Vance’s buddies of like persuasion. Heliotrope persuaded me to sneak Percy off from his old man in Marin and bring him up … help her start a mission.”

We had the chickens fed and quieted and all the eggs that the rats and skunks had left us piled nicely in the feed bucket. We stood in the henhouse door, watching the morning sun pull hard for a Fourth of July noon, circa 1970.

“A mission? In Canada?”

“Yeah.” He was looking across the chickenyard at his bus. The black door had cracked open and Percy was peeping out to see if the coast was clear. “A sort of modern underground railway.”

“You mean leave the States?”

“Heliotrope was very persuasive,” he answered. “And who can say how thick this Vietnam shit is gonna get?”

“M’kehla, you’re way past getting drafted.”

“But I’m not past knowing bum shit when I see it border to border. Hang around shit long enough you’re gonna get some on you I also know that.”

“Listen. When I was on the run I came across a lot of American expatriots. You know what they all had in common, especially the men?”

He didn’t answer. He picked an egg out of the bucket and rolled it around his long magician’s fingers.

“They were all very damn hangdog apologetic, that’s what they all had in common.”

“Apologetic about what?”

“About running away from home with all this bum shit needing cleaned up is what! Besides, what about Percy? He isn’t draft age either.”

“In a way he is. His square daddy keeps trying to force him to shape up. His teachers are always on his case—pledge allegiance, cut his hair, mind his tongue.”

He paused. Percy’s red head had ducked out of the bus and he was sneaking across our yard.

“There are some pegs that’ll never fit a square hole. No matter how much force is used.”

“We can change the hole,” I reminded him.

“Can we?” M’kehla carefully put the egg back in the bucket and looked at me. “Can we really?”

This time it was me didn’t answer. The issue was too long between us for short answering. During the decade of our friendship we had shared a vision, a cause if you will. We were comrades in that elite though somewhat nebulous campaign dedicated to the overthrow of thought control. We dreamed of actually changing the human mind to make way for a loftier consciousness. Only from this unclouded vantage, we maintained, could humanity finally rise out of its repetitious history of turds and turmoil and realize that mighty goal of One World. One World Well Fed, Treated Fair, At Peace, Turned On, and In Tune with the Universal Harmony of the Spheres and the Eternal Everchanging Dharma of… of… Anyway, One Wonderful World.