The Road Home

The-Road-Home-4

Jenny groaned and tried to make herself wake up, but she couldn’t move or make a sound. She slipped back into her whirling dream. The car was upside down, and she was lying on the roof. She could see the man’s legs outside the window. He had gotten up and staggered to

the back door. Now his feet were next to the window. She heard him pulling on the handle and swearing. She lay terrified as he began to kick at the window. She could just barely hear him mumbling incoherently. The window didn’t break, and then she could see him step back.

She saw him walk away from the car, and then she saw a piece of metal lying a few feet away. She watched him as he bent over to pick it up. Suddenly a hole opened up under his feet, and he fell into it. There was a big splash, and then he was up to his neck in water. He tried to pull himself up, but the edge of the hole kept breaking off. His face was only a few feet away from hers, and as she looked out the window of the car, she saw him sink beneath the surface.

He came back up, and with one arm he grabbed the edge of the hole. He looked right into her eyes, and then she saw his face turn into a skull, and his bony skeletal fingers reached for her. Just as they touched the car door, the edge of the hole broke, and the man disappeared under the water once more. There was a thrashing underneath the surface, and more water splashed out. Then, finally, everything was quiet, and the surface of the water became smooth and still.

Jenny felt the cold creep into the car. Then somebody was with her in the car, and she felt as if she were being covered with warm feathers. She turned to look, and she wasn’t in the car anymore. She was lying on a bed in a small room. A woman was lying on the bed with her. Jenny tried to cuddle up to her and get warm, but the heat was gone from the woman’s body. The man who had drowned was sitting in a chair in the corner of the room, weeping. Ashtrays full of half-smoked cigarettes and empty bottles were scattered around the room. On a stand by the bed was a spoon with some brown liquid and a piece of cotton in it. The woman had something tied around her arm. Jenny was crying. Suddenly the woman’s eyes opened, and she looked straight at Jenny.

“I’m sorry, Jenny,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean for all this to happen. I just wanted the pain to stop.”

The woman looked up at the ceiling. “Dear Jesus,” she prayed, “please look after my little girl.”

Then everything began to get all mixed up. She was back in the car, and then she was being carried through blinding snow. She was freezing, and then she was wrapped in something warm and soft. Now she was somewhere in a dark room. She was being held next to a warm, beating heart, and she felt moisture dropping on her face. She opened her eyes and looked up into the beautiful face of another woman. The woman was holding her close and weeping. Her body was shaking with sobs. It was Mama! And then as she looked, Jerusha’s face turned into the face of the woman in the small room. The other woman’s skin was cold and blue. Her eyes opened, and she looked at Jenny.

“Jenny, come find me. I’m lost, so lost,” she said, and then the skin began to melt off her face, and she was just bones and the bones were death, and Jenny fell into the water, and the man who had drowned came up from below and grabbed her leg with bony fingers and began to pull her down, down, down…

Jenny sat up in bed and screamed. “Mama, Mama, where are you? Come find me, Mama!”

There was the sound of hurried footsteps in the hall, and Jerusha rushed into the room, holding a lamp. “Jenny, darling, what is it?” she asked as she came to the side of Jenny’s bed.

“A dream, Mama, a horrible dream,” Jenny sobbed.

Jerusha put the lamp on the stand by the bed and sat next to Jenny. She took the girl in her arms and kissed her forehead. “I’m here, my darling, I’m here.”

Jerusha held Jenny close, and Jenny felt the beating of her mother’s

heart.

Chapter Three

Johnny

Johnny the Candyman woke up out of a deep sleep and sat straight up in his bed, moaning and holding his head in his hands. Strange images and faces and…horses, yes, horses and plows, like a weird kaleidoscopic farm movie, were all mixed together in his mind. Finally his dazed thoughts cleared, and he opened his eyes. As he slowly came back to reality, he shrugged and thought, The drugs. It was the drugs I took last night.

Johnny rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. The walls were brightly painted with clashing primary colors that strobed and flashed and made his head ache. Large posters of Martin Luther King and Mahatma Ghandi were pinned on the wall over the bed. The room was decorated in the quasi-Edwardian mode that was all the rage in the Haight-Ashbury.

An overstuffed brown, furry couch and a brass floor lamp with a shade fringed with strands of tiny golden beads sat against the wall. An expensive oriental rug lay on the floor. The stale smell of incense, Gauloise cigarettes, and patchouli oil permeated the room. On the back of the bedroom door was a hand-lettered poster advertising one of Ken Kesey’s acid trips. The letters seemed to swell and pulse—more of the lingering effects of the acid, he guessed.

His precious Gibson twelve-string guitar leaned against the wall, its case lying open on the floor beside it with a few dollars from his most recent panhandling foray still inside. His fingers ached from the hours of mindless strumming that had passed for music among his friends the night before.

The sound of automobile traffic rose up from the street outside. His bed was a mattress on the floor next to the wall, so he turned over on his knees, grabbed the windowsill, pulled himself up, and looked out through the tall window of his second-floor flat. Traffic was bumper-

to-bumper headed west. It was time for Sunday morning football at Kezar Stadium, and a line of cars inched along as the straight folks drove down Haight Street to see the hippies. Unfortunately for the drive-bys, the hippies had been partying Saturday night, and very few of them were out on the street Sunday morning.

Johnny crawled off his mattress and groped his way to the pile of clothes heaped on the floor. He pawed through until he found the pieces that comprised his favorite outfit. He took hold of the couch and pulled himself up slowly, his head aching. He stood there for a minute until the whirling sensation passed. Then he pulled his clothes on. A thin cotton embroidered shirt, torn bell-bottom jeans, and green suede Beatle boots completed his attire. He stumbled over to the closet, pulled his leather-fringed jacket off a hanger, and put it on. He went to the mirror and stared at his pale complexion for a few moments.

Sheesh, look at me. I’ve got to get out more.

Then he ran his fingers through his long dark hair, pulled it into a ponytail, and fastened it with a rubber band. He looked at the orange headband on the dresser with the button that read, “Give us this day our Daily Flash” pinned to the knot, but he decided to forego wearing it this morning. His body was still wrestling with the effects of the drugs, and he really didn’t feel like a “daily flash” at the moment. As he stared at the bleary-eyed face in the mirror, he wondered why he thought tripping on LSD was so great.

He thought back to last night’s “freakout.” After the LSD had come on, Fat Freddy, one of his roommates, sat down in the corner and started asking, “But what does it all mean?” over and over until he had almost driven Johnny crazy. And then there was Lisa, the girl from Seattle, who liked to writhe like a snake on the floor when she got stoned. At one point Johnny got his guitar, and they sat in a circle and jammed until late into the night, everyone moaning and chanting along with the strumming.

Then there had been a big fight over whether they should listen to a Jefferson Airplane album or just turn on KMPX and lie on the floor. The party had ended up being a bunch of strange people doing weird stuff and playing loud music. That was supposed to be enlightenment? At one point it had gotten so loud that Johnny had yelled at them to shut up and peace out. Then someone suggested doing a flaming groovy, and they almost set the ceiling on fire.

Johnny opened the door and peeked down the hall. None of his roommates were up yet, and he was glad of that. He had made a bit of a jerk of himself by reproving his roommates’ obnoxious behavior, and he really didn’t want to face them this morning. Instead, he headed quietly down the stairs and out the door. There was a good breakfast place on Haight Street, and he wanted some strong coffee to wash the bitter taste out of his mouth and some decent food to help him feel better.

The air outside was crisp and cool as he went down the stoop onto the street. His Volkswagen bus was sitting at the curb. It had been dark blue when his father bought it for him back in Levittown, but now it was covered with green and orange Day-Glo flowers and glued-on pictures of the Beatles and Timothy Leary.

As he looked at the van, he remembered the day he had decorated it and how tripped-out he had been. These days, instead of feeling excited and high on life as he had then, he felt weary and anxious. He stared at his bus for a minute, shook his head, and then headed down the street past the Unique Men’s Shop. Mnasidika, a clothing store, was closed and dark, and the Psychedelic Shop next door was shuttered.

People were starting to crawl out of the various pads they had crashed in the night before. As Johnny passed them by, he noticed that they all looked like weird, hairy rodents, scratching their lice-ridden heads and blinking at the strange yellow ball in the sky. He walked by the free clinic and noticed the sign in the window.

“Closed. Free penicillin shots on Monday at nine a.m. Free food today at the Diggers tent in the Panhandle.”

The cafe at the foot of Clayton Street was just opening, and Johnny went in and saw an empty table toward the back. It was September in San Francisco, and Indian summer was in its full glory. The sun was streaming in the front windows, and the bright light was hard on his eyes. He grabbed a menu from the rack by the cash register on his way to the table, and once he was seated, he scanned it quickly. Crash Landing with eggs, toast, hash browns, bacon, and hot coffee looked really good.

He took a quick look in his wallet to make sure the two twenty-

dollar bills were still there, and then he caught the eye of the waitress.

She shuffled over and took his order. He peeked at the two twenties again. He could hardly believe he was down to his last forty bucks. What had become of all the gigs he was going to get?