O'Brien's brings on the paranoia right away. It is a break in the Rat movie. It is dark and a Mexican band playsâsignaling to the Rat sensibility that it will cost too much. Rat souls everywhere fear dark, picturesque restaurant, knowing instinctively they will pay dearly for the bullshit ambiance, dollar a drink probably. O'Brien's was crowded, and then through the cocktail gloom: heads. A bunch of kids with the jesuschrist hair, the temple bells and donkey beads, serape vests, mandalas; in short, American heads. Zonker recognizes them immediately. They're not only American heads, but from San Jose, and some had been to the Acid Tests.
Just what the Fugitive needs to blow the whole suicide ruse. “Guess who I saw in Mexico ⦔
Naturally, Zonk, with his zest for debacle, hails them over. Kesey is introduced as “Joe,” and nobody pays him much mind except for one dark little girl, Mexican-looking, with long black hair.
“When were you born?” she says to Kesey. She doesn't sound Mexican.
She sounds like Lauren Bacall speaking through a tube.
“I'm a Virgo.” No sense hitting a ball three bits you can see coming if you can cut across the fourth.
“I thought so. I'm a Scorpio.”
“Beautiful.”
The black Scorpio obviously knows Zonk best. She knows
him when. But Zonk belongs to the ages and it comes to pass that Zonk or no Zonk, she and Kesey relax out in the open air on the pier one night down by a Mazatlan Rat beach, all dirt and scrabble, but the waves and the wind and the harbor lights do it up right and the moon hits some kind of concrete shaft there, putting her in the dark, in the shadow, and him in the light, lit up by the moon, as if some designer drew a line precisely between their bodies.
Black Maria
, he decides.
So Black Maria joins the Fugitive band and they go off to Puerto Vallarta. Puerto Vallarta is out of the Rat lands. All picture-book Mexico. Paradise-blue Bandarias Bay and a pure white beach and white latino cottages right up against the jungle, which is a deep raw green, and clean. Fat green fronds lapping up against the back of the houses on the beach. Macaw sounds, or very near it. Secret poisonous orchid and orange pops and petals winking out when the foliage moves. A nice romantic Gothic jungle. Zonker hassles with an oily little real-estate man and gets the last house on the edge of town for $80 a month. The rent is low because the jungle is too close for the tourists, the jungle and too many Mexican kids and chickens and the rural dung dust. Boise heads back to the U.S. and Kesey, Zonker and Black Maria move in. They have the upper half of the house, one floor and a spiral staircase up to the roof. Up on the roof is a kind of thatched hut, the highest perch around, a perfect lookout post and a snug harbor. Kesey decides to risk a phone call to the States to let Faye and everybody know he's O.K. He goes into town and calls Peter Demma in the Hip Pocket Book Store in Santa Cruz. A little metallic clanking about by the telefonista señoritas down at central. And then,
“Peter?”
From many Rat miles away: “Ken!” Very surprised, naturally â¦
So Kesey whiled the time sitting in the snug hacienda on the edge of Puerto Vallarta sipping beer and smoking many joints
and writing in a notebook occasionally. He wanted to get a little of all this down and send it to Larry McMurtry.
“Larry:
“Phone calls to the states eight bucks apiece besides was ever a good board to bound my favorite ball of bullshit prose offen, it was you ⦔
Like all about Black Maria. In many ways she was so great. She is quiet and has a kind of broody beauty. She cooks. She looks Mex and speaks Mex. She can even hassle Mex. She sounds out the Mayor of Puerto Vallarta as to how safe Kesey will be here in town. Hay tiempo, he says. The extradition takes forever. Very nice to know â¦
And yet Black Maria is not completely a Prankster. She wants to be a part of all this, she wants to do this thing, but
she does it without belief.
It is like the Mexican part of her Black Maria thing. She has all the trappings of Mexicanâshe looks it, she speaks it, her grandfather was even Mexicanâbut she is not Mexican. She is Carolyn Hannah of San Jose, California, under everything else, even the blood. He wrote in the notebook::
Moving the dark Indian
10 SECONDS LEFT, YOU FREAKING EE-JOT!!!!
body out of the Indian land weakened the Indian blood witch chicken soup and matzoh balls. So much of the fire concealed by the dark and broody beauty lies just that deep. Because she does it without belief.
And yet is is very nice up here in this thatched perch atop the last house. A car heads up the streetâZonker and Black Maria coming back to the house. He peers over the edge at the car kicking up the dust, then writes in the notebook, it is a perfect lookout,
allowing me to see them, Without them seeing me.
Many things ⦠synch.
ZONKER AND BLACK MARIA DROVE DOWN THE ROAD, SCATTERING up the kids and the chickens and the dust, and Black Maria pointed up to the top of the house and said to Zonker:
“Look, there's Kesey.” Then she looked out the window and stared at the jungle. “I bet he thinks we can't see him.”
THE JIG IS UP. ZONKER BRINGS A TELEGRAM FROM PAUL Robertson back in San Jose and it is a bear. It is not even a warning, it
5 SECONDSâ5 SECONDS LEFTâYOU REALLY JES GON' SIT THERE FOR THE SQUASH?
is final. THE JIG is UP, is says. Meaning, it turned out, that the suicide ruse had been exposed and the cops knew he was in Puerto Vallarta. Ex
posed?
âhell, the suicide prank had turned into a goddamn comic opera. For a start, Dee had pulled a sort of Dee-out, as Mountain Girl feared. Dee had driven up looking for a cliff near Humboldt Bay, about 250 miles north of San Francisco, up near Eureka, California, not far from the Oregon border in redwoods country. He got up to the last hill going up there and the panel truck wouldn't pull the hill. So he called into town for a tow truck and the garage man and the tow truck pulled the suicide vehicle up the last mile. Hired and paid for and thanks a lot. Always nice to hire some help to commit suicide. Next Dee dropped Kesey's distinctive sky-blue boots down to the shore belowâbut they hit the water instead and sank without a bubble. Next, the goddamned romantic suicide desolate foaming cliff was so goddamned desolate, nobody noticed the truck for about two weeks, despite the Ira Sandperl for President sign on the rear bumper. Apparently people figured the old heap had been abandoned. The Humboldt county police finally checked it out on February 11. Next, the suicide note, which seemed so ineluctably convincing as Kesey and Mountain Girl smoked a few joints and
soared into passages of Shelleyan
Weltschmerz
âit gave off a giddy scent of put-on, even to the straight cops of the Humboldt. There were certain inconsistencies. Like the part about the truck smashing into a redwood. Wellâeven in a Dee-out, Dee couldn't exactly ask the tow-truck man, Well, now that you've towed it up here, how about jamming it into a tree for me. Demma had really been bowled over to hear from Kesey. A lot of people, a lot of people who liked him, had really been worried that he was dead. And now here was Kesey calling himâ
alive
âwith a message for Faye and the whole thing. That was Saturday. The next night, Sunday, February 13, Demma dropped into Manuel's Mexican Restaurant in Santa Cruz, and there was his old friend Bob Levy. By way of making conversation, Levy says,
“What have you heard from Ken?”
“I just got a
call
from him!” says Demma. “From Puerto Vallarta!”
That's interesting.
Levy happened to be a reporter for the Watsonville
Register-Pajaronian,
Watsonville being a town near Santa Cruz. The next afternoon, Monday, the lead story in the Watsonville
Register-Pajaronian
carried a five-column headline reading:
MISSING NOVELIST TURNS UP IN MEXICO
The next day, Tuesday, the San Jose
Mercury
picked up the story and put a little more spin on it with a story headlined:
KESEY'S CORPSE HAVING A BALL IN PUERTO VALLARTA
2 SECONDS, OH CORPSE OF MINE!
THAT'S NO BLACK MARIA SHHHHHHHHUFFLING UP THE STAIRS
OUTSIDE
THE DOOR, DOLT, IT'S A COP CLUMP UP THE STAIRS NO EARTHLY SOUND LIKE IT
SHARP WHISTLE FROM THE TELEFONISTAS
VW BACKING DOWN THE STREET
THIS IS TRULY IT, TRULY IT
GRAB THE CORNEL WILDE RUNNING JACKET, FOOL! MAKE THE BRAIN CATCH HOLD! RRRRRRRRRRRRRRREVREVREVREV SPINNING AND IN THE GIANT PYRAMIDAL CELLS OF BETZ OF PRE-CENTRAL CEREBRAL CORTEX RISE AND HEAVE AND SLIP GANGLIONIC LAYER SHUDDERS AND GIGGLES SYNAPSES LIGHT LIKE RANDOM BEATLE FLASHBULBS KHEEWWW BLASTING OUT SILLY FROM MOTOR HOMUNCULUS YOU MISSED YR FLASH OH MIGHTY MASTICATOR, SALIVATOR, VOCALIZER, SWALLOWER, LICKER, BITER SUCKER BROW-KNITTER LOOKER BLINKER RUBBERNECKER THUMBER PRODDER UP-YOURS FINGERER RINGWEARER NOSEPICKER WAVER DRINKER ARMLIFTER BODYBENDER HIPSWIVELER KNEER SPRINGER RUNNER
ZERO::::::::OOOOOOOOO:::::::: RUN !
Sonbitch! The gears catch at last, he springs up, grabs Cornel Wilde jacket, leaps through the back window, down through the hole, down the drainpipeânow vault the wall, you mother, into the jungle floppyâ
AWWRRRRRAMMMMANNNNNNN
WHAZZAT?
His head is down but he can see it
WHAZZAT!
Up there in the window he just jumped out of
BROWN !
He can feel it. There is a vibration on the parasympathetic efferent fibres behind the eyeballs and it hums
HRRRRRRRRRMANNNNNNNNNNN
Two of them one brown dumpy Mex with gold-handle butt gun one crewcut American FBI body-snatcher watching him flying like a monkey over the wall into the jungle the brown Mex holds gold gun but the brain behind that face too brown moldering Mex earth to worry about couldn't hit a peeing dog
PLUNGE
into the lapping P.V. fronds bursting orchid and orange the motor
homunculus working perfect now powerful gallop into the picturebook jungles of Mexicoâ
A MOMENT LATER BLACK MARIA WALKED INTO THE APARTMENT. She found Kesey gone and the Cornel Wilde jungle running jacket gone. That trip again. Well, he'll come back when he's ready to, worn out, and things will be cool for a while. Kesey had gotten paranoid as hell, but that wasn't the only thing. He
liked
this Fugitive game. Man, he'd scram out in the jungle and hide out there for two or three days and smoke a lot of grass and finally straggle in. That started before the telegram even. There was a whole signal they worked out. Or he worked out. When the coast was clear, she was supposed to hang up a yellow shirt of Zonk's on the line outside the back window, facing the jungle. It was a yellow shirt with a black and brown print on it, on the
faggy
side, if you asked Black Maria. The flag would go up and finally Kesey would straggle back home beat, having run himself about to death in the jungle or along the beach.
And yet it was nice. It was crazy but nice. Kesey was the most magnetic person she had ever met. He radiated something, a kind of power. His thoughts, the things he talked about, were very complex and metaphysical and cryptic but his manner was back-home, almost back-country. Even while he was reeking with paranoia, he seemed to have total confidence. That was very strange. He could make you feel like part of something very ⦠He had even given her a new name, Black Maria. She was ⦠Black Maria.
As a girl in San Jose, California, she had felt like everything she really was had been smothered under layers and layers of games she couldn't control. Externally there was nothing wrong. Her father and mother were both teachers and life in San Jose was comfortable and serene in the California suburban manner. But half the time nobody ever understands about growing up in
this country. Little Penguin Islands full of kids playing Lord of the Flies, a world of pygmy tribes, invisible to the Isfahan adult eye, these little devils, tribes of studs, tribes of rakes, tribes of IntelFinks even, tribes of greasers, and an amorphous mass of hopeless cases left over. Untilâpsychedelics started around there, mainly grass and acid. The new scene started and suddenly all sorts of ⦠well,
beautiful people
blossomed forth from out of the polyglot, people who really had a lot to them, only it had been smothered by all the eternal social games that had been set up. Suddenly they found each other.
One night she was high and experienced the unity, the All-one. A light was behind her in the room and hit her body from behind and broke up into beams and shone out before her, hitting the floor and the walls in spokes of light with shadows in between. The room broke up before her eyes and separated in just that pattern with bars of light vibrating. Suddenly it became very clear, the way the room was put together, the way the parts fit, the way the parts of
every
thing fit, as if someone had taken an Indian puzzle ring apart for her. It was clear how
every
thing fit together and it wasn't really a world split up into pointless games and cliques. That was merely the way it looked before you knew the key. And now there were beautiful people who knew the key and this experience could be shared.