Suffering Synapses

Chapter 3 of Carnival

Carnival

Chapter 3

Suffering Synapses

“Hang on!” Kevin bleated, doubling over in agony on the toilet seat. “For Pete’s sake, hang on!” His gut was a raging fumarole, heaving violently, swelling with gas. The pressure built up in his lower intestine until he thought he’d die. He gritted his teeth, whined, “Mom!” and let the tears breach his eyelids. The utterance was instinctive; he wouldn’t have wished his mother’s intrusion on his worst enemy. Speaking of whom, he now heard Mike outside, calling,

“You’ve always gotta slow us down!”

“Hang on,” he whimpered. “Oh, hang on!” The phrase was repeated in a gasping decrescendo, as much to himself as to Mike, as Kevin fought to marshal his stammering consciousness. His rectum swelled and shriveled like a balloon at the lips of a colossus, gas flared in his colon as the pressure skyrocketed, plunged, rose again. With each attack his mind went blank, his eyes rolled, his heart hammered so hard it seemed to be located in his skull. Just when he was sure the awful pressure would claim him, he spurted a long vile stream of stinking lava, which splashed back up to spatter the twin straining moons of his sunken rump.

“Oh my God,” he cried, and caught his breath for the next wave. There were giant hands in there, squeezing, punching; punishing his colon with the brutal precision of an enraged masseur.

At last came the acme of all possible agonies. Those hands twisted Kevin’s poor gut until he nearly fainted with the strain. Sweat trickled from every pore, the walls of the tiny outhouse approached and receded. For a terrifying instant he was certain his heart had stopped. And then the screaming began.

Kevin sat with his head buried between his knees and his hands clasped behind his neck, sobbing as wave after wave of fuming excrement spewed from the mouth of hell.

“Would you hurry up!” Mike shrieked.

Mike’s only answer was a string of splats and plops and gurgles and squirts, sounds he took as clever lips-repartee. Mike stooped and grabbed a large pebble off the sand, hurled it with accuracy at ear-level on the outhouse. Warming to this activity, he began firing anything he could find--Coke bottles, driftwood, shells--until Eddie asked him to stop.

Inside, Kevin sat with head on knees, breathing slowly as his body went about the business of repairs, his mind rolling (little white corpuscle plumbers with hardhats and wrenches speeding to the rescue) in slow fever. He wished, not for the last time, that Mike and Eddie--especially Mike--could share in the rotten breaks. But maybe their numbers were just waiting to come up. Maybe the worm would turn. A tremor rattled his frame and he wondered--but no; the damage was repairable. Yet it felt really bad down there, no getting around it, like he’d been ravished by a hot poker, and the least movement instantly created a wild prominence. So he sat. He moaned over his rashness, and for the first time seriously considered the energy and grit required in covering almost four hundred miles in what looked to be the hottest part of this summer. San Francisco had lost much of its appeal already, and so had the Movement. All these bum trips and bad vibes hadn’t been included in the trek’s master plan; it was supposed to be nothing but fun and games, smooth sailing all the way. Well, it was a lesson learned well. He nodded ruefully and swallowed. No more munchies orgies; it was that simple. He didn’t for a second blame the grass in any way. Right now, as he gazed vacuously at the door’s equestrian Teamsters logo, he was thinking about how a good fat joint would do wonders to numb the pain. And not only the physical pain. If the embarrassment he was suffering here--in a tiny outhouse just south of Camarillo--was indicative of things to come, well, perhaps it was time to begin downgrading his expectations.

These outhouses are not renowned for their fragrance, and with the added pall of Kevin’s performance the little pocket of stench quickly became unbearable. Kevin groaned to his feet, cursing feebly as he dabbed at his bespattered cheeks with the rough industrial tissue. Cleaning between them was a very dainty and agonizing operation, involving a breath-held grimacing tap dance. Sensitivity was so great the tissue felt like the coarsest of sandpapers.

When at last the ordeal was over he slouched and listened to his vital processes. He could still breathe, albeit with revulsion in this malodorous cell. He wiped the tears from his face, pulled up his Levis carefully, unlatched the door and moved outside with the tiny feeler-steps of an invalid.

His friends recoiled as he approached.

“Whew!” Eddie laughed, making a sour face and fanning the air in front of his nose. “You smell like a cesspool.”

“What’d you do,” Mike pushed, “wipe with your shirt?”

“It’s not funny,” Kevin whispered. “I’ve never been so sick.”

Mike said nastily, “Serves you right, scarfhound.”

Kevin tried to take the hard words in stride; he was too weak to retaliate. Someday he would give Mike a lesson in manners, but right now it was all he could do to say, “Be cool, man. It was worse than you think. I could’ve died in there.”

“Yeah!” Mike said, grinning. “And we could’ve donated your body to science fiction.”

Eddie glanced at his friend’s hindquarters meaningfully. “It doesn’t look like you ran fast enough, Kevin.”

“Where?” Kevin tried to turn around far enough to search his pants’ seat for stains.

They roared with laughter at his gullibility and ran off whooping. Kevin chased them with clenched fists.

“Okay,” he puffed, “okay.” He held up a hand and stood panting, drained. The fat boy grinned, butt of the joke. “You win.”

His friends hopped on their bikes like eager little frogs. “So let’s go!” Eddie shouted.

“Wait! I mean, really. Gimme a minute, willya? Look at me, man; I’m in no condition to just jump up and take off. How d’you expect me to ride after what I just went through?”

“Quit your bitching!” Mike said with venom; the boy on the dark steed. “We’ve waited long enough!” And they were pedaling away just as fast as they could. Kevin followed grudgingly, muttering as he rode, but it was a long while and many a mile before he ventured to make use of his bicycle’s seat. Soon his back and shoulders were smarting with sunburn. He put his shirt on, and the scratchiness was added misery. He took it off and mopped his brow with one of the sleeves. He had to think of something besides his pain or he’d go mad. But the moment he allowed his mind to dwell on the day his thoughts zoomed onto the young woman at Perky’s house, zeroing in on her cleavage like a homing pigeon. He was ashamed to think of her this way, but it couldn’t be helped. He could only visualize her from the neck down, hearing her voice rambling in dreamy, indecipherable tones from just above the image. He figured she was yet at Perky’s, lonely and hurt, perhaps this very moment thinking of him and wishing he would fly to her side.

A heavy gloom absorbed him as he relived the sequence of events leading to their meeting on the anteroom couch. Kevin wished to God he could do it all over again, this time with a bit of foresight. And so several fantasies entertained him as the miles passed and the sun dipped to the horizon. In one of these daydreams he coolly and expertly trounced the mustached bully while the raven-haired girl watched limply, at last collapsing into Kevin’s magnificently muscled arms with a sigh of yearning. But when time came for his reward the fantasy stumbled on nerveless feet. He could not visualize taking the girl, for thinking of heaving bodies and lusty breathing only desecrated the fabricated altar. He prayed it wasn’t some personal “sexual failing”, and began to feel this imagined inadequacy was letting down his fantasy and, by extension, letting down the raven-haired girl. He fought to overcome the flaccidity of his psyche; tried to stir up swashbuckling, libidinous images of her conquest. The images came with a vividness he hadn’t expected. He saw himself sinking with her on the couch, the casually tucked hem of her cheap cotton shirt popping free, the shirt peeling away from her chest to reveal--but no, the reward was simply too boggling: those awesome headlights bursting forth with jack-in-the-box resilience, their firm rounded peaks, as on a mannequin, mysteriously devoid of n*****s, jiggling and oscillating, growing up round his ears and snaring his head to draw it deeper into ecstasy. Kevin’s breathing grew shallower as his entire attention focused inward. His legs pumped harder, and he was soon caught up with his friends.

“Hey!” Mike shouted as the heavy boy hurtled by. He and Eddie struggled to catch up.

Kevin slowed and looked back with an embarrassed half-smile, his thoughts still damp and sticky.

“If you wanted to race,” Eddie said with a grin, “why didn’t you say so?” He poked his skinny haunches high, ready to jackrabbit away. “Betcha I can beatcha around that bend.”

“Boy, are you fast,” Mike said sarcastically, meaning: if low man was ready to make his move, then just maybe it was time for top dog to show some teeth. “I guess you’re a lot lighter with all that s**t out of you.”

“Sometimes,” Kevin said lamely, “I like to really haul-a*s.” He abruptly changed the subject, reaching back a hand to tenderly consult his back. It felt like he’d been flogged.

“You’ll cool off pretty quick,” Eddie remarked sympathetically. “The sun’s going down.” He peeked at his watch. “Must be around seven o’clock. Gee, look, Point Mugu. Do you guys realize we’ve gone almost fifty miles?”

“Wow.”

“Wow.”

Getting through Ventura meant negotiating miles of freeway-like road that left the ocean cut off from view by hills and alfalfa fields. Whenever possible the boys followed the scenic drives provided for motorists with romance on their minds and time on their hands. In such situations it was Mike who prevented his companions from lagging, and thus falling behind schedule. “C’mon, you p*****s!” he would scream. “We’ve got to ride! What are you guys, anyway--people, or tourists?” Kevin and Eddie would gladly have stopped every few miles to admire the beauty of the coastline as the warm summer breeze blew through their hearts, just as it must have stirred the first Franciscan missionaries to discover salt air could be so sweet. They found the San Buenaventura scenic drive particularly enchanting. It’s easy to forget your gripes around such loveliness.

After another hour of riding, the velvety beach degenerated to heaped rocks of all sizes, and only occasional dabs of sand. The scene took on a primitive, lost look, like the savage coastline of another planet. The swells writhed with reflected light. Shadows grew solid and grim. The sun, a furious red ball, was truncated, was composed, by the sea.

And from out of nowhere the fog came rolling in. Like a vast preying fungus it was suddenly everywhere, dampening their clothes and blotting the dying sun. It was incredibly swift and thorough, and it surprised the boys and made them a bit uneasy. One moment they were following the coast in warm late afternoon sunshine, and the next the world was a dreary, dismal place, the waves had grown choppy, and a buoy, somewhere out in that soggy blight, was lonesomely clanging its funereal bell.

“Kee-rist!” Mike said. “What is this? The end of the world?”

“Might as well be,” Kevin mumbled, shivering of a sudden. “I don’t know about you guys, but I’m not riding in this bullshit.”

Mike scowled and thrust forward his torso in the ages-old posture of challenge. “Oh, you were just praying for an excuse to stop, man, so why don’t you just face it and quit blaming it on the weather? You’re just lazy; no wonder you’re so fat.”

“Not either!” Kevin retorted, incensed at being called fat and lazy, snarling at the look of vicious delight darkening Mike’s face. “I’m just cold. And you would be too, if you had the brains to know better…f****t.”

“Who’s a f****t!” Mike cried, and slapped Kevin on the sorest part of his sunburn. He rode off laughing, with Kevin in hot cursing pursuit.

There was a narrow, longish spit of beach between the piles of rock Mike was making for, laughing over his shoulder. Kevin, who was laughing too by now, forsook the chase when Mike picked up his bicycle and clambered over the rocks to the sand. Kevin waited breathlessly for Eddie. The two picked their way down carefully.

“Hey, guys!” Mike called up. “This is a neat place to camp. There’s nobody here!” The fog was now so dense they could hardly see him.

“Yeah,” Kevin disagreed, “if the tide doesn’t come in and drown us in our sleep.”

“Don’t worry,” Eddie said, “you can see the high tide marks on the sand. If we crash right up next to the rocks we’re cool.”

“Well, far out then.” Kevin rubbed his palms together. “Let’s cook up some roast beef hash and some beans and some cocoa.” He shivered again, gingerly pulled on the scratchy shirt. “It’s getting cold anyway. A fire would be right-on.”

They split up to find firewood and met back by their bikes in ten minutes. Mike had discovered a salt-eaten apple crate and some not-too-damp newspaper. Kevin and Eddie each contributed armloads of small branches from the stunted bushes on the highway’s other side. And Mike had made an exciting discovery: about sixty yards down, just a darker haze within the fog, an odd-looking man was sitting solo.

“He’s just sitting there,” Mike sputtered, “looking out to sea. He’s not dead, ’cause I seen him scratch his balls.”

“Where’d he come from?” Kevin wondered. “What’s he doing there?”

“How should I know?” Mike snapped, looking as though he would spit on Kevin. “Crawled outta the rocks for all I know. Why don’t you go ask him?”

Kevin shook his head vigorously. “Uh-uh.”

“You, Eddie?”

“Not me!”

“You’re both a bunch of chickenshits, man! And you guys always talking so rowdy about what great adventurers you are.”

“Well then you go ask him,” Eddie retorted, “bigmouth.”

“Let’s eat first,” Kevin suggested out of desperation.

Eddie, who was nearly as apprehensive, said, “I’m hip to that idea.”

It was rapidly darkening. All Kevin wanted to do was eat and clear out of there quietly as possible. The stranger--if Mike wasn’t making this all up--was clearly a mental case.

And then they were lost in the thrill of starting and feeding the fire, and Mike’s Crazy Man gradually left the conversation. But Kevin’s eyes, as he ate his cold beans and warmed hash, were ever and again surveying the beach, and now he was sure he could see a skinny man sitting motionlessly on the sand. Kevin felt a chill. In the fog the skinny man looked like a huge famished wharf rat, regarding the boys with sunken eyes and whiskers tensed. Kevin thought he caught one brief, fuzzy impression of the man with his head cocked, as if listening, calculating. He almost choked on his beans when he saw the campfire’s light reflected off the stranger’s questing eye.

It seemed the meal lasted but a minute, and already they were talking about him again.

“Let’s go rap with that guy. Maybe he’s hungry.”

Eddie spread his hands. “We only had the hash and the beans. Remember?”

“That’s right,” Kevin groaned, hoping to change the subject. “No breakfast tomorrow.”

“Tough s**t all around,” Mike said. “Come on, let’s go check out that guy.” He and Eddie stood.

“Wait!” Kevin said.

Mike sneered. “You really are chicken.”

“No, I just wanna get high first. Let’s smoke a joint.”

“Yeah,” Eddie said with relief, “that sounds cool to me.”

Outvoted again, Mike consented grumblingly. He muttered on about sissies and slowpokes, but sucked deeply on the smoke.

Again, it seemed to take only a moment for the joint to pass round thrice.

“Now that was dynamite,” Mike said. “Now. Let’s. Go. Check. out…that…GUY!”

“Wait!” said Kevin. He was really high now. Sounds were oddly muffled, absorbing. The waves exploded in B flat, were sucked back in F minor; the wind whisked and whoosked; the noise of the occasional passing car was like that of a huge cruising wasp, the headlight beams like systematic searchlights.

“Now what?” Mike screamed.

“Just one more joint,” Kevin said, his voice sounding, to him, alarmingly like his mother’s. “I already got it rolled.”

“That’s an offer I can’t refuse,” Eddie gabbled. “Fire ’er up!” An asinine grin was smeared across his face. His eyes were crimson slits, his hair tousled. He hugged himself and shivered with cold and anticipation.

This cigarette took longer, and Kevin had to hang through a lengthy fit of hacking and gasping. When the smoke was finished his eyes were even redder than Eddie’s, and tears covered his cheeks. His mind went blank, the night caved in, and then he was somehow walking dazedly with his friends, and they were approaching the fogbound stranger like travelers from another dimension, materializing out of nothingness onto the haunted coast of a parallel world. They wouldn’t have been surprised to see the long neck of a sea monster appear dripping at water’s edge.

“What’s happening?” Mike called in tentative greeting.

The sitting figure turned his head and smiled approvingly, as if all four were accustomed to meeting here each night, sipping hot cocoa and throwing morsels of sweet Danish for bashful sea serpents. The rodent features were now in hideous focus: a dark body practically covered with coarse brown hair, thin claw-like hands and feet, large blank eyes, a wiry beard and frayed mustache. The mouth was starved and thin-lipped, the nose long and sharp. He was wearing only cutoff blue jeans, and his body was so wasted, with its chicken breast and distended stomach, that Kevin’s fears vanished immediately. This guy looked like he lived off sea anemones and slow sparrows. So where there was physical repulsion at least there was no threat of physical danger.

“Sit down, sit down,” said the stranger, patting the sand to his left. A few rags of clothing were in a lazy pile behind him. The boys sat, feigning relaxation.

“You sure we’re not disturbing you?” Kevin asked.

“We’re on our way to Frisco,” Eddie burst out, from sheer nervousness. “On our bikes. To Golden Gate Park. We’re joining the Movement. I mean we’re already in the Movement, but we’re moving. From Santa Monica, I mean. To Frisco.”

“There’s only one movement in San Francisco,” the stranger said excitedly. “I’ve seen it on the piers, I’ve seen it downtown, I’ve seen it in the Panhandle. And that’s the movement of Blessed Jesus the Holy Spirit.”

The boys froze, staring at one another uncertainly.

“Well,” said Mike, “got to get back and keep the fire up. Nice to meet you and so forth.”

“Yeah, catch you later,” said Eddie. He sniggered. “Don’t catch cold.”

But Kevin said, “I think I’ll hang here for a while and rap.” The Panhandle, as they all knew, was an extension of Golden Gate Park, and here was a chance for first-hand news. His friends gawked at him. Mike smirked with unconcealed hostility. They walked off laughing, the foggy darkness soaking up their retreating forms like a sponge.

“God bless you!” the stranger called after them. “Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you!” He whirled on Kevin. “Jesus can save you. Jesus can show you the way.”

“Right,” Kevin said quickly. “But I just wanted to ask you about the City. I mean like, how’s the Movement, you know, the hippie movement, working out?”

The stranger shook his head, and for a moment sobered. “Just a word, brother. Don’t be calling the Haight ‘the City’. People up there don’t go in for neology, they go in for theology. And they don’t like being called hippies. That’s like ‘a******s’.”

Kevin cocked an eyebrow. “The Haight,” he mumbled. “The Haight.” He was learning fast. “And it’s Utopia,” he prompted, “right?”

“Utopia? It’s Heaven, brother, Heaven! God’s kingdom on Earth, the Lord’s--”

“But what I mean is,” Kevin broke in, “I mean besides all that religious stuff, how are the people? Everybody’s turned on, right? Everybody gets high?”

“Everybody’s turned on to Jesus, brother, to Jesus! To the one and only Son. Everybody gets high on Christ the Lord Jesus. Glory in Christ, and hallelujah! Hallelujah!”

“Okay. Okay. Okay. But how about dope? What about drugs, I mean.”

“Nobody needs narcotics, man. God’s children weren’t placed on this world to put impurities in their bodies. There’s only one drug, and that’s Sweet Jesus Himself. I was like you: I was young and confused and hung up on all my problems, problems too great for me to bear.”

“I’m not confused.”

“But Sweet Jesus of Nazareth lifted my burden and lightened my heart with Divine Light. The light of God! I said, ‘I can’t go on! I’ve had it!’ and Jesus came down to help me with my load. Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus! Praise Jesus! Man, it was intense. His eyes were blue as the sky, and filled with tears as he looked down on me. Read your Bible: For the wages of sin is death; but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. There! What does that tell you? It tells you if you deny the one true God--not the god of the pagans, not the god of craven images, but the one and only Savior Himself--it means you’re a sinner, and it means Almighty Jesus will laugh as your eternal soul fries and rots in Hell!”

Kevin frowned at this. It’s no great trick to see through these people; they’re obviously all willing dupes, extras on the ever-evolving set of mankind’s most elaborately contrived fantasy. The point it, as anybody should be able to see: these Jesus freaks, these born-again just-converted amateur holy rollers, are losers from the word GO. Christianity, to those with nowhere left to turn, is irresistible. Free security and direction and society for those too paranoid, aimless, or boring to satisfy these deep human needs any other way. Religion was an issue Kevin religiously avoided, but when it was being stuffed down his throat he couldn’t help but take a stand. So now he squared his shoulders, cocked back his head, and boldly said:

“Anybody who would make some guy who’s all cut up carry his s**t around for him has no right to tell me I’m a sinner!”

The stranger stared, shaking his head incredulously. “Lookit me, man!” He thrust out his wasted arms. “For six years I lived in a scummy tenement with nine other speed freaks, fighting over syringes, sleeping on the trash pile in the boiler room. The Feds were on my a*s, my old lady was pregnant, and the both of us had hepatitis, crabs, and the clap. There wasn’t nothing left to live for and no way out of that hole. And then one day, one day when I was slumped across the shitter with my outfit in my hand, man, and trying to get a register from that collapsed old vein, I said one day brother, when it looked like I was heading for the Big Flush--brother, I looked up at that leaky ceiling and I saw God Almighty Himself. God who wasn’t too high and mighty to take the time to try to save a poor burnt-out pissant like me. And He said to me, ‘My child, do you repent of your sins and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior? Do you hold any gods sacred above the one and only True God?’ And I said, ‘Man, I’m freaking out. I gotta be over-amped. This is it!’ Like you, I didn’t believe it at first. I thought I was rushing to the max. And He told me I wasn’t hearing things, and that if I wanted to save myself I’d better get my a*s down on the floor PDQ and let Him know I meant it. And brother, that’s just what I did. I got down on my knees at the base of that commode and accepted Jesus Christ as my savior. And I threw away my works right then and there, and Jesus came down and held my hand and told me He loved me. Man, it blew my mind! I changed my whole scene just like that! I went out to spread the Word of Love to all my brothers.”

“Love,” Kevin echoed. “That’s what I’m looking for in San Francisco. A different kind of love. A love that has everybody grooving together, stoking their heads on hashish and trying to win the world back from the Government. Y’know, that 1984 thing isn’t so far away. You can’t win a revolution with religious love; it takes passive resistance.”

“Oh, man. It makes me so sad to hear that! God is love! God is my sunshine, God is my lifeline. God is my guru and my goaltender. God is my helicopter, man, and God is my teleprompter. All you gotta do is admit you’re a sinner and accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your healer.”

“I’m not a sinner.”

“You’re sinning if you’re living without Christ. We’re all born in sin.”

“And you--you’re not a sinner, huh? You’re special?”

“Born in sin. Born in sin. I said we’re all born sinners, man, but we can be saved. Look at me. God has lighted my life!” He gave Kevin a used car salesman’s smile full of teeth like stalactites before pounding a gnarly fist on his palm. “I was a sinner in God’s eyes and a loser in my own! Jesus showed me the way! Jesus showed me the way! Jesus gave me His breath, His faith, and His body. He gave me His life, man!”

“Super!” Kevin snorted. “That’s all just really bitchen…for you. But it’s like I gotta get it on in the real world, you dig? Look--”

“No, you look! You think I’m just making idle conversation here? This is first-class wisdom you’re getting, buddy, and you oughta be grateful. You want some real-world advice, is that it? Okay then, man; okay, you got it.” He placed one hand over his eyes and the other over his heart. “Beware of men with mustaches,” he droned. “A mustache is a proof of vanity, and vanity is woman’s province. Therefore, if you’re ever in the same gym showers with a guy wearing a mustache and you happen to drop the soap, never retrieve it in a bent-at-the-waist posture while facing away. You’ve been warned. And,” he said bitterly, “never smile for a photographer! If you’re ever accused of, oh, say…ripping off parishioners while posing as a minister, and the newspaper features a picture of you smiling it’ll look like you enjoy bamboozling people. Then again, if you don’t smile people’ll think you’re really a prick, and therefore likely guilty. Always pose beatifically, with your eyes raised heavenward and an expression of grudgeless suffering. Remember, innocence is a word coined by the guilty. What else? Oh yeah, don’t eat stuff out of a dumpster if the seal’s broken on the package. And watch out for that guy who lives in the storm drain over on Seventh and Cranberry. He bites.” The stranger now placed his palms together. “So there you go. Now you got all you need to get through the real world. But what you really need, man, is wisdom. What you need is Christ.”

“Listen,” Kevin said patiently, “I mean, no offense or anything, but everybody to his own trip, right? Me, my thing’s the Revolution, and you, your thing’s religion. Okay. All I wanted to know was, like, how are the chicks up in the…Haight, and are they into the Movement and Free Love, and are they as friendly as the rumors say they are? What I mean is, you know, do they put out?”

“They put out for Jesus, man, for Jesus! I’m not making myself clear? I’m not speaking loud enough? For Jesus. They are Sacred Sisters and are one under Christ.”

“That’s not--”

“For Jesus, man. Jesus. J-E-S-U-S! Jesus the Son. Jesus the Christ. Jesus! Jesus Christ!”

“Well I…I guess I’d better be getting back. My partners’ll be wondering.”

“Jesus died for you, brother! He died for you.”

“Anyway, it’s getting cold.”

“Read your Bible: Doth the wild a*s bray when he hath grass? Think about it.”

“I,” Kevin said contemptuously, a parting thrust, “don’t need a Bible.”

Quick as a flash the stranger whipped out a worn old coverless dog-eared Bible from his pile of clothes. His left hand snatched Kevin’s right wrist. The boy froze.

“Look, I really have to get back,” he chattered. The hand was an iron talon.

“When you have the warmth of Jesus in you…when you have the warmth.”

“You know, time to roll up, time to hit the hay.”

The stranger dropped the book onto his lap, flipped it open with his free hand. He tore at the leaves until he came to page one of Genesis. Quoth he: “In the beginning,” and a wild pride came into his eyes, “God created the heaven and the Earth!”

Kevin groaned piteously. By the look of things, he was about to be read the entire Old Testament. But the harder he tried to pull away, the fiercer the stranger’s grip became. “You’re hurting me!” Although it should have been readily within Kevin’s power to break free of this scrawny man, the boy found himself suddenly paralyzed, and unable to think assertively. The steely fingers seemed to be siphoning blood from his brain, down his numbing arm to the relentless bite of those five inflexible leeches. His pulse hammered in protest.

Now the stranger slapped shut the book and duplicated the hold on Kevin’s other wrist. “Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your healer and admit you’re a sinner?” He squeezed.

“No, I just--owwW! You’re hurting me!”

“Do you forgive men their trespasses? Do you accept the Lord Jesus Christ as your savior?” He squeezed harder.

“No!” Kevin howled. “I mean, yes! Yes, yes! But leggo my--yes! Eddie! Mike!”

“Are you gonna remember the Sabbath Day? Are you gonna keep it holy?”

“Yes! Mike! Eddie!” Kevin’s hands were half-filled water balloons. He looked around wildly.

“Do you beg mercy,” the stranger panted, “of the Lord your God in His infinite wisdom?” He clamped Kevin’s hands together and squeezed with all his strength, his teeth bared in a ferocious snarl, his head lolling feverishly.

“Yes!” Kevin screamed. “Oh God, oh God, yes, yes!”

“Blessed are the poor in spirit!” the stranger cried, his eyes rolling in their sockets. “Merciful Lord, bathe us in eternal light! Take this poor damned sinner in your heart that he may witness You also! Show him your Son! Show him…forgive his sins! Yes! Forgive his sins! Show him…show him--sweet…JE-sus!” On the penultimate syllable his head fell forward, his shriek fluttered down to a rasping sigh. After a minute he looked vaguely at Kevin, who was green, and released the boy’s wrists. He stared down at his own hands, then back at Kevin. “This--all this--everything’s cool. What I mean is, like, nothing personal, okay? No offense, man.” He searched through his pile of clothes and dug out a plain white business card with type in thick black italics covering most of its face. “I want you to come to our church. The address is down in the corner.” He scooped up his clothes, rose stiffly, and vanished in the fog. Kevin heard his bare feet slapping on the rocks as he climbed to the road.

The boy stood and stumbled across the sand. He stopped and looked back, but all was foggy darkness. For a moment he felt it had all been a dream or hallucination; perhaps an effect produced by the eerily shifting curtains of mist during a particularly poignant pot high. And, if a dream, he must now be passing through the portal separating sleep and wakefulness. But things were getting darker and colder instead of lighter and warmer. Then positively black. After a while his mind cleared and he stood looking back, sluggishly trying to recapture the night. His face was bathed in sweat, he was wobbly at the knees. He grew aware of the soreness in his wrists, massaged them, rubbed his moist palms down his legs. He shuddered and listened. Nothing but the breaking of small waves.

He used the sound of surf to find his way back to their campsite. The fire was out. Mike and Eddie lay shivering, asleep in their bags. Kevin sat on his sleeping roll and stared at nothing. Pensively, he pulled his notepad and a pen from an odds-and-ends sack he kept tucked in the roll. He looked out toward the sound of breakers, and after a minute began to write:

jime

wl hr i am up pas vnchru awn thu bch sumwaer jus groovn awn thu nit

2nit we gawt stond an i had uh rap sshn with this gi hoo jus kam down frum sanfrans--

To hell with it, he thought, and crumpled the page. He climbed in his sleeping bag, tucked in his head and clasped his knees. Into the abyss of slumber he dropped like a stone.