In the days before Christmas, as NASA’s intrepid Voyager probe escaped the orbit of the moon, Marty’s own, earthbound vessel was grounded when the car virus struck again. It wasn’t the engine block that killed his Volkswagen bus, as Julie informed him in a matter-of-fact tone, but the two “good” valves were blown out from working too hard. He sold the wretched piece of space junk for $500 rather than fix it, but now he was back to being a passenger, or hitchhiking. Mike’s Stanger was going strong, with its Cleveland 351 engine boosters; rivaling any rocket for pure thrust. He and Marty often blasted off on the Woodacre stretch, with the windows down, and AC/DC abusing the pastoral atmosphere. The red-and-black Stanger was becoming a famous yet elusive target for all the local deputies.
Gorilla Joe was earning his keep by repairing some sagging floor joists under the house, and Marty imagined he could feel the floor tilt as the strongman lifted up the corners with his massive shoulders to install the beams. His black lab, Monty, was like an older brother to Lobo and Keno, and the three of them were on constant patrol around the property, followed (after a slight delay) by Manderbelles. The dogs loved Mike and Marty, but they loved their freedom even more, and it wasn’t unusual for them to be gone most of the day. A week before Christmas, Lobo and Keno returned without Monty; obviously shaken. Lobo hid in Marty’s room while Keno sat sadly on the floor, staring at the door with his head resting on his paws. When Gorilla Joe came home from work with Mike, Marty excitedly informed him something must have happened to Monty! They both bolted for the door and wrestled briefly, trying to go through at the same time. Meanwhile, Marty stayed to watch the traumatized dogs. After a while, he heard sullen boot steps and a heavy thump on the deck, and his worst fear was realized: Monty had been struck and killed by a car! They found him right by the white horse’s corral, where the pack must have been following the railroad bed. Gorilla Joe was in tears after carrying his stiffened body home in his arms, and it was exquisitely touching to see such a strong man weep openly for the love of a good dog. He buried Monty in the middle of an exquisite council circle of young redwoods out by the picnic table, which from then on was affectionately referred to as “Monty’s Grove.”
The Rusty Bucket Ranch was notoriously hard on dogs. Gorilla Joe was sad for days, and couldn’t work. He spent most of his time in Marge’s room, and one day he was gone, “returning to the heart of the mountains,” as Marge quipped somewhat bravely, but with a wistful tone of loss.
The next day at the pet store, when Pat overheard Marge and Marty mourning the loss of another dog, she pointed her cigarette at them and scolded, “You gotta train them dogs to stay put,” she coughed and continued, “It’s your responsibility to make sure they don’t roam around and get hurt.” She was right, so Mike and Monty began training the ‘teenage’ pups to remain close to the house and not cross the creek to the road. Lobo and Keno hated the new discipline and chains, but the brothers were tired of losing dog friends!
Another terrible side effect of canine carousing was observed near Christmas, as Marty developed a severe reaction to poison oak. That nasty little shrub was everywhere in the canyon, changing the color of its leaves like a chameleon to hide among the underbrush. As the dogs ran about indiscriminately, they collected the nasty oil on their fur, which caused a virulent rash when it came in contact with skin. Marty had a few mild cases before, but they had always gone away quickly… until now. On Christmas day, he woke up with his face as pink and puffy as a gigantic strawberry! His skin had swollen badly, with yellow pustules scattered all over, in the distinctive pattern of chicken pox.
“You look like Santa’s ass,” offered Mike, by way of yuletide greeting.
“I’m sure you’ve had a close look!” Marty was beside himself with concern, and thought about going to the hospital.
“Take some allergy medicine,” Marge suggested. He found some expired pills in the bathroom, and they seemed to help (a little). Later, his rash started to ooze, and he awoke the next day with his cheek stuck to the pillow. It itched so much that his face prickled as if it was crawling with fire ants, but the worst part was he couldn’t scratch it, for fear of spreading the oil to other parts of his body. Huge scabs of crusty yellow discharge covered his ears and cheeks, and everyone avoided him like a leper. In the mirror, the reflection of his face seemed to ooze and flare up, like the crust of a young earth. Mike even slept on the couch – in case the alien fungus consuming Marty’s face was an airborne contagion. The hideous pariah stayed shut in his hovel and didn’t come out for days, until at last he started to look normal again. His ravaged complexion was still pink but tentatively healing; the way a burn victim grows new tissue. He put gobs of aloe ointment on the shrinking sores, hoping there wouldn’t be any permanent scarring. “This isn’t going to be a popular fashion trend at school,” he lamented his deformed reflection in the mirror, knowing he had to return in a few days.
The McAuliffes were having a New Year’s Eve party, and Marty was expected to make a public appearance. Rumors were hovering around the Lagunitas Triangle like flying saucers, mysteriously heralding otherworldly tidings that there could be magic mushrooms on the menu. Marty was somewhat intrigued by this news, but was skeptical of hallucinogens. Of course he’d read about them, and had seen artwork associated with fantastic visions, but his mind had been stretched only as far as alcohol or marijuana could take it. It was already hard enough to contain all the thoughts inside his brain, and he feared that if he let it run loose it might get hit by a car, the way his luck was going. He and Mike walked over as soon as it got dark, and Tillie and Susie greeted them at the door, crestfallen, as if they had expected other boys. Marty could see Tillie staring at his disfigured face, and he blushed under the layer of pink lotion. The room was festooned with balloons and gay decorations that shouted “Happy New Year!” and “Old Lang Sign!” (sic). They even had a punch bowl, for crying out loud! The Mouseketeer Club had obviously claimed the upstairs part of the house. The guys must be down in the cellar, so they followed the smell of burning herb to Little Billy’s den.
Imagine an entire antique store contained in the space of a small apartment, and you’ll understand why Little Billy’s basement was the coolest place in the Lagunitas Triangle. Crates of interesting implements crowded the corners, which were stuffed to the rafters with the eclectic debris of three generations of homesteaders. Old junk jostled for attention from every nook and cranny: bagpipes, swords, stove parts, surfboards, wagon wheels, manila rope, crab pots, ski poles, bicycles, anvils, wooden golf clubs, anchor chains, saw blades, motorcycle parts, and a turquoise stuffed marlin. Oil lanterns flickered in sepia tones of wood and rust, hanging from square-headed nails in the ancient beams. Strange guitar music like a sitar twanged and jangled from the stereo. Little Billy, Gilly, Ent, and Earl the Spook sat sublimely in a circle of barrels like a council of wise shamans; stoically welcoming the initiates to the inner chamber of the temple. Mike and Marty pulled up a couple of crates and accepted the eternal flame that was being passed around.
The complicated guitar music playing in the background turned out to be Jorma Kaukonen, the lead guitarist of the Jefferson Airplane, who was an incredible musician. The conversation centered on legendary guitarists, and who was the best ever. Page, Kottke, and Clapton were all promoted in the lively discussion, until Marty blurted out, “Django Reinhardt,” just to be different.
He had stumped the council. Only Earl the Spook knew who he was talking about, because he knew everything. “Django Reinhardt was a three-fingered gypsy jazz guitar player in the thirties.” He pushed his glasses up on his nose, as everyone but Marty stared at him like he just made that up. “He was damn good, too.”
“He played with the Hot Club Quartet of France,” Marty offered knowingly, from his experience listening to his dad’s music in the background for years. Little Billy and Gilly were grinning at each other as if he was pulling their leg, because there couldn’t possibly be a hot, three-fingered gypsy jazz guitarist from France. Ent was studiously examining a sextant he had pulled down off a shelf, as if he was trying to navigate to another world.
Earl’s ‘play’ button was now officially pushed, and he launched into a long, erudite soliloquy, which was his specialty. “Actually, it was a quintessential quintet that formed in Paris, with Stéphane Grappelli on violin, and…”
“Shut up, Earl,” Little Billy said casually, like commanding a dog to sit. Earl shut up.
When Mike suggested Angus Young of AC/DC was the baddest guitarist on the planet, the owlish council members hooted with laughter. It was then they realized that the venerable elders had probably already partaken of the sacred mushrooms, and the acolytes had some catching up to do. “Hey man, what have you guys been smokin’?” Mike asked pointedly, and the four elders looked at each other and nodded. Earl smilingly pulled a cigar box from one of the crates with great ceremony. Inside was a pile of dried cat shit. Or at least that’s what it looked like… and Marty was an expert on domestic animal waste. When informed that the point of the ritual was to actually eat the unappetizing contents of that box, the disciples seriously considered leaving the cult. They thought that something called ‘magic mushrooms’ would be pretty, like holiday candy, not leathery and smelly like dried umbilical cords.
“Well, those guys haven’t died yet,” Mike shrugged, gesturing at the grinning council goons, and bravely chewed on a stem. He immediately jumped to his feet and retched. The elders exchanged mirthful glances of empathy while Mike gagged but boldly stuffed the whole thing down his throat. He chugged a beer to quell the taste, and loudly announced with hyperbolic sarcasm, “Well, that was pleasant!” He passed the kitty litter box to Marty, who daintily tried to extract the least repulsive specimen. His stomach recoiled, and it tried to hide in his shoes.
Ugh! The flavor was worse than dried cat shit! Not that Marty ever tried any, mind you, but he’d dealt with enough of the smell to know all too well what it might have tasted like. The offended parts of his upper digestive system rebelled in outrage, and he chugged a nearby Lowenbrau. The combination reminded him of a mistake he made once at a late-night party, when he grabbed an old beer bottle and sipped warm sludge full of cigarette butts. It seemed the moldy aftertaste would never come out of his mouth, so his taste buds quit and left for cleaner pastures. Everyone was laughing at him, but he managed to keep the disgusting compost inside his body without expelling it all over his friends.
And then, nothing happened. Marty wondered silently, with growing concern: did those assholes make me eat cat shit thinking it was magic mushrooms?
He felt stoned from the good bud they were smoking, and a sour buzz from the beer, but there was certainly nothing ‘magical’ happening. He felt gypped, as if he was the butt of their joke, and didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of accusing them. Besides, he had more important things to think about! Incredible realizations were whirling in Marty’s mind as time slowed down; then stopped altogether. He wanted to write all his ideas down, or at least discuss them with someone, but Earl the Spook wouldn’t stop pontificating about quantum mechanics and CIA algorithms. Marty watched his lower jaw become misshapen from his incessant prattling, and the way he kept pushing his glasses up on the bridge of his proboscis with his index finger was really annoying! In the center of the room, two octopi that resembled Little Billy and Ent debated vehemently about the relative merits of Jorma and Jimmy, with their tentacle fingers writhing demonstratively. Gecko Mike was raptly absorbed by the black hole in Gilly’s iguana face, as he described the perfect wave. The two big lizards dragged the surfboard down from the rafters and attempted to balance it on two barrels to illustrate their technique, but neither could climb on top of it.
All the objects in the room were beginning to writhe subtly, and take on character, with the whimsy of Alice in Wonderland. With surreal insight, Marty realized he was surrounded by ten thousand memories manifested in junk. He felt the bite of that saw against a tree, heard those bagpipes playing, and smelled the ocean breeze as the waves of time broke on the beach of his mind. “Something’s awfuwy scwewy awound here!” Elmer Fudd whispered in his ear. Now Little Billy had the head of a gray fox and was yapping at Ent, who rumbled and bristled like an old fir tree. The walls of the room began swirling around as if he was riding on a carousel, or surrounded by revolving constellations of artifacts. Gilly the iguana went surfing past, hanging ten on a saw blade. A stuffed turquoise marlin came over and gave him a big hug, telling him how much he loved being his brother, and living in the woods. Meanwhile, nobody was listening to Earl the Spook anymore, but that didn’t stop him from debating with himself about the relative advantages of projected first strike missile trajectories.
That was the first New Year’s Eve in Marty’s life where time was not only forgotten, but utterly meaningless. The old year passed into the new, and back again, in endless circles of progression. The hands of the clock were spinning pointlessly around a face with no numbers. Seconds and minutes floated aimlessly in the air the way motes of dust drift in a sunbeam. Marty became aware of the molecules now entering his lungs that had been breathed in and out by countless life forms since the beginning of the universe. While the creek roared ceaselessly just outside the walls, his brain boomed even louder inside his head. The entire council was so engrossed in the myriad phenomena of altered cognition that they forgot to celebrate at midnight, and tripped right on in to the New Year.
Hours later, as the first vestiges of light filtered down through the canyon, the irrevocably altered brothers walked home through a subtly shimmering forest of dark shadows. Words were pointless, as the two had been communicating telepathically ever since partaking of the potent psilocybin. Marty felt a profound sense of belonging, for the first time in his life, and he knew for certain that everything was going to be all right, just like Bob Marley said.
