Demon Box

Larry was an old literary friend from Texas. They had met at a graduate writing seminar at Stanford and had immediately disagreed about most of the important issues of the day—beatniks, politics, ethics, and, especially, psychedelics—in fact, about everything except for their mutual fondness and respect for writing and each other. It was a friendship that flourished during many midnight debates over bourbon and booklore, with neither the right nor the left side of the issues ever gaining much ground. Over the years since Stanford, they had tried to keep up the argument by correspondence—Larry defending the traditional and Deboree championing the radical—but without the shared bourbon the letters had naturally lessened. The letter from Larry on Thursday was the first in a year. Nevertheless it went straight back at the issue, claiming conservative advances, listing the victories of the righteous right, and pointing out the retreats and mistakes made by certain left-wing luminaries, especially Charles Manson, whom Deboree had known slightly. The letter ended by asking, in the closing paragraph, “So. What has the Good Old Revolution been doing lately?”

Deboree’s research had yielded up no satisfactory answer. After hours of trial and chemistry before the typewriter, he had pecked out one meager page of print, but the victories he had listed on his side were largely mundane achievements: “Dobbs and Blanche had another kid… Rampage and I finally got cut loose from our three-year probation…” Certainly no great score for the left wing of the ledger. But that was all he could think of: one puny page to show for forty hours of prowling around in the lonely library of what he used to call “The Movement.” Forty hours of thinking, drinking, and peeing in a milk bottle, with no break except that ten-minute trip downstairs to deal with those pilgriming prickheads. And now, back upstairs and still badly shaken, even that feeble page was missing; the typed yellow sheet of paper was as misplaced as his colored glasses.

“Pox on both houses,” he moaned aloud, rubbing his irritated eyes with his wrists. “On Oregon field burners poisoning the air for weed-free profit and on California flower children gone to seed and thorn!”

He rubbed until the sockets filled with sparks; then he lowered his fists and held both arms tight against his sides in an attempt calm himself, standing straight and breathing steady. His chest was still choked with adrenaline. Those California goddamned clowns, both smelling of patchouli oil, and cheap sweet wine, and an angry festering vindictiveness. Of threat, really. They reeked of threat. The older of the two, the blackbeard, had stopped the barking of M’kehla’s pair of Great Danes with only a word. “Shut!” he had hissed, the sound slicing out from the side of his mouth. The dogs had immediately turned tail back to their bus.

Deboree hadn’t wanted to interface with the pair from the moment he saw them come sauntering in, all long hair and dust and multipatched Levi’s, but Betsy was away with the kids up Fall Creek and it was either go down and meet them in the yard or let them saunter right on into the house. They had called him brother when he came down to greet them—an endearment that always made him watch out for his wallet—and the younger one had lit a stick of incense to wave around while they told their tale. They were brothers of the sun. They were on their way back to the Haight, coming from the big doings in Woodstock, and had decided they’d meet the famous Devlin Deboree before going on south.

“Rest a little, rap a little, maybe riff a little. Y’know what I’m saying, bro?”

As Deboree listened, nodding, Stewart had trotted up carrying the broken bean pole.

“Don’t go for Stewart’s stick, by the way.” He addressed the younger of the pair, a blond-bearded boy with a gleaming milk-fed smile and new motorcycle boots. “Stewart’s like an old drunk with his stick. The more you throw it, the more lushed out he gets.”

The dog dropped the stick between the new boots and looked eagerly into the boy’s face.

“For years I tried to break him of the habit. But he just can’t help it when he sees certain strangers. I finally realized it was easier training the stick throwers than the stick chasers. So just ignore it, okay? Tell him no dice. Pretty soon he goes away.”

“Whatever,” the boy had answered, smiling. “You heard the man, Stewart: no dice.”

The boy had kicked the stick away, but the dog had snagged it from the air and planted himself again before the boots. The boy did try to ignore it. He continued his description of the great scene at Woodstock, telling dreamily what a groove it had been, how high, how happy, how everybody there had been looking for Devlin Deboree.

“You shoulda made it, man. A stone primo groove…”

The dog grew impatient and picked up his stick and carried it to the other man, who was squatting in the grass on one lean haunch.