Summer of Love, a Time Travel (41 page)

Two
are hip merchants of recent vintage, the third a speed dealer with a hog shop
for cover. Ruby doesn’t say hello. Neither do they. They each pay their bill
and hurry out.

But
the neighborly pull overcomes this odd shyness. As Ruby leaves the gun
exchange, she finds the quartet lingering outside on the sidewalk.

“Shob
and Superspade got everybody spooked,” Peter says out of the corner of his
mouth to no one in particular. With his Stetson, muttonchops, and pointy-toed
boots, he’s a cosmic cowboy with a habit of staring at the clouds whenever he’s
supposed to be carrying on a normal conversation with a human being.

“The
Syndicate thing freaks me out,” Luther says.

“Screw
the Syndicate like my shop my shop my shop got ripped off last night, man,”
Jerry says. “Last
night.
” Jerry is a wiry little dude in a sleeveless
shirt showing off the screaming eagles tattooed on his knotty biceps. “Like the
second time this week, ‘n the third time in a month, ‘n the pigs don’t give a
shit give a shit. Wasn’t no Syndicate did that, man. Was some freakin’ little
speed speed speed freak over-ampin’, man, over-ampin’.”

“You
ought to know, Jere,” Ruby says.

“Don’t
see how you can bitch about that, Jere,” Luther drawls. “Karmic compensation,
y’know.” Luther is one of the good ol’ boys invited to sit on the Council for a
Summer of Love. He’s got the guru trip bad, wearing all white from his beaded
suede headband to his ivory leather boots.

Uh-huh,
Ruby thinks, holy animal skins. But she keeps her opinion to herself.

“Karmic
compensation nothin’,” Jerry says. “I deal it, I ain’t payin’ payin’ payin’ for
it, too, man. Ain’t gonna tolerate, ain’t gonna put
up
with no more
rip-offs.” Jerry pulls a cheap, mean-looking revolver from his paper bag and
spins the barrel, demonstrating his intent. “How about you, Ruby?”

She
shows them her Walther.

Luther
whistles. “You always got fine taste, Ruby.”

“Why,
thank you, Luther,” she says, sweet as poison. She’s heard through the
grapevine all the scorn Luther heaps on her behind her back. Uppity bitch.
Wait, wait. Uppity
colored
bitch. He’s always been jealous of her
financial acumen. Then again, Luther tokes up most of his profits and, guru
that he is, turns on his friends as well--friends being defined as whoever is
cool in the tribal echelons of the Haight-Ashbury and whoever he’s balling.
He’s never got much bread left over for small matters like his employees’
salaries or the quality of his inventory, let alone donations to the Free
Clinic. “Anybody looks cross-eyed at me, sonny,” Ruby tells him, “
blam blam
blam!
”

They
all laugh, but the sound rings untrue, like the clapper in the cracked bell of
liberty. It’s the Summer of Love, and graffiti is stenciled in red paint on the
sidewalk in front of the Bank of America on Haight Street:

And
hip people who celebrate the infinite holiness of life are buying guns.

Dig
it:

You
want to know why the Establishment media is so pleased with all this bad news? Why
they salivate over each and every gory detail and parade scary headlines about
the pathetic murders of two dope dealers who don’t amount to a hill of beans
while thousands of young men are dying in Vietnam?

Because
this kind of news means the hip community is as bad as the Establishment always
said. It means the New Explanation is as corrupt as the rest of the morally
bankrupt world, maybe more so, due to false pretenses. The personal revolution
can assert no valid ideals, provide no guidance to the disaffected youth of
America, offer no alternatives. The hip community has failed. They have failed.

Fog
rolls in, casting a cold gray shroud over the street. Luther is a bigot and a
misogynist, Luther’s lady is a silly fool, Jerry is a speed freak and a pusher,
and Peter is just plain weird. Ruby doesn’t like any of them. She owes them
nothing.

She
says, “Want a ride?”

Luther’s
lady dips into her handbag, pulls out an abalone shell, and offers it to Ruby
with a shy smile. Luther takes off his beaded suede headband and hands it over.
Jerry slips her a plastic baggie with a couple of amphetamine tabs, which she
promptly dumps in the gutter. Peter actually looks at her and says, “Gee,
thanks, Ruby,” and she notices for the first time Peter is cross-eyed.

They
all pile in her Mercedes, and Ruby takes them home.

Grandmother Says: Ku
(Decay)

The
Image:
The wind blows low on the mountain. When the wind blows low,
it is thrown back and spoils the vegetation. But if the wind rises, it dispels
the despoliation.

The
Oracle:
Work on what has decayed brings supreme success.

It
furthers one to undertake great tasks, but great tasks take time and patience.

What
has been spoiled through the fault of humanity may be made good again through
humanity’s work. Corruption occurs not due to immutable fate, but by the abuse
of human freedom, indifference, and inertia. Ascertain the causes of
corruption; thus begin again with deliberation. Ascertain whether the new way
brings renewal; thus examine your path after you have embarked upon it.

Hexagram 18,
The I
Ching
or Book of Changes

Broken
glass. Shards scattered on the deck, a hole in the window. That’s what Ruby
sees first. The kitchen door cracked open like a wound.

Her
heart clenches. Every superstition she’s ever held about having a gun leaps to
mind—if you own one, you’ll attract bad energy and sure as hell you’ll wind up
having to use it—instantly proving their truth. She draws the Walther, hands
shaking so hard she couldn’t hit the side of a barn. She swings the door open,
cursing the squeak she never got around to oiling, and creeps inside.

A
man bends over her turntable in the living room, plucking plugs from the wall
socket. On the floor, by his feet, lies the disconnected amplifier, plus one of
her speakers.

“I’ve
got a gun. So you can stop what you’re doing right now, sonny, and turn around,
nice and slow.”

He
turns around. Gorgon’s face is a mask, deadpan, dead. A scrap of paper falls
from his hand to the floor.

“Leo!”
She stares. She knows that look, grim purpose chiseled in crystallized flesh.
She glances at his arms, but his shirtsleeves go to his wrists. She can’t see
his tracks. Doesn’t matter. She
knows.
And it’s terrible, like a death
and a grieving. Not Gorgon, she thinks. Not Gorgon and junk.

Uh-huh,
Gorgon.

She
pulls herself up all her nearly six feet. “What the hell do you think you’re
doing, Leo?”

“I’m
liberatin’ your stereo for the revolution.”

“
What
revolution?”

He
shrugs. “You can only be free if you live outside the private property premise
of this lousy country. If you participate in that, you change nothin’.”

“What
are you changing by stealing my stereo?”

He
shrugs again. “The love shuck changes nothin’. We must destroy the United
States of America.”

“My
pa died for the United States of America. He was half Cherokee.”

“He
died for nothin’. He was a stupid redskin who died for a shuck.”

“Don’t
you dare call my pa stupid!”

“You
understand nothin’ of the dialectics of liberation.
You’re
one of the
oppressors.”

“Oppressor,
uh-huh. I got me a business, sonny. Thanks to my ma and my pa and working hard,
I got my own little piece of free enterprise. I don’t call that oppression. I
call that success.”

“Oh,
you got yours,” he says sardonically. “You got yours, Ruby A. Maverick.”

Without
taking her eyes off him, she stoops and retrieves the scrap of paper.

SHUCKING THE
REVOLUTION

YOU WILL PAY,
CAPITALIST PIG

BE ADVISED

“You!”
Her head suddenly throbs in syncopation with the pounding of her heart. “Taking
me to bed, and messing with my head.
Why?
”

“Why?
Because you
are.
You
are
a capitalist pig, with your kraut car
an’ your metaphysics shuck an’ your bank account.”

“I’m
putting up a runaway and a tourist in my home for free. I’m feeding people. I
donate to the Free Clinic. I—”

“Screw
your charity. You’re not
changin’
things with your charity. You say
you’re not Standard Oil, but you’re wrong. I’ve seen your trip with my own
eyes,
that’s
why. You’re no different,
that’s
why. When the
revolution comes, I’ll be after you with a gun.” He grins. “You’ll be the first
one I off.”

She’s
speechless for one of the rare moments in her life. She thinks of Chi and his
self-righteous cosmicists with their domes and gardens, their sky-seeding and
telespace. Their anger at the past.

Do
the Leo Gorgons of the world tear down the United States of America in 1967? By
2467?

No.
Somewhere, in between all these polarities, there has got to be a New Explanation.
Will the comicists arrive at it? Maybe, maybe not. But at least they’re still
searching, after five hundred years.

She
shakes with fury. “Right now,
I
got the gun, and your revolution is a
shuck, Leo Gorgon. Get out of my house and never come back.”

He
eyes the gun, eyes her. Can he take it away? Will he try? But no, he’s got the
shakes. Sweat beads on his forehead. From his habit, not fear of her and her
gun.

He
goes, banging the kitchen door.

She
runs after him, locks the door up tight. She returns to her ravaged living
room. Her cats slink out of the twilight shadows where they’ve been hiding and
wrap themselves around her ankles, mewing in distress.

She
sits heavily on the couch and raises the Walther. So strange to see her hand
gripping this alien scrap of metal, knuckles taut. The blue finish gleams. Only
then does she realize she never loaded the magazine. The gun is empty, a husk,
without a means to its end.

*  
*   *

Capitalist
pig. After her with a gun. After their afternoons in her sun-dappled bed.
Broken glass, broken door. A door she opened to him freely with her own hand.

Her
sense of violation is so complete that another door opens to another room. A
room she’s shut in a past she’s locked away. T-porting in her memory, images of
ancient light flash faster than a heartbeat.

He
stands before her, big as life. Long dead.

Roi.

Her
skinny girl-arm was frail next to his when they pushed back their sleeves and
compared. She’d envied his skin--like chocolate or coffee or blackjack toffee.
Good things, fragrant and rich.

But
Roi had laughed at her, slapped her fingers away. Already bitter at age nine,
he was far wiser than she could know at six. “You practically white, girl. You
got no nose.” He’d tweaked it, provoking her giggle. “You an angel, Ruby. You
blessed.”

But
she didn’t see her blessing when Pa was killed at Pearl Harbor in ’41, and Ma
went to work at Marinship, burying her grief in the great battleships like the
asbestos she installed in their inner works. Ruby came home from school to canned
peas and potted meat left out for her supper ‘cause Ma was working, always
working beneath the pall of dread cast over everyone by the war.