On the Road with Bob Dylan (15 page)

George stirs from his menu. “What did your mother think of you bashing the guy’s head in?”

Bob smiles. “She shook my hand. Said ‘Thank you.’ Then my older brother, stepbrother, he’s a good friend, calls my mother ‘Ma’ and shit, he said he wanted to go rip the prick out of bed and hit him some more.

“We went down to Washington, D.C., once, my partner and me. We get off the plane, just going into the what’s-it-called, the terminal, right, and two black kids come over and say, ‘Motherfucker, I want some money.’ I says, ‘Screw you, you black prick,’ so he says, ‘I’m gonna pop you’ and I say, ‘I’m gonna pop you back, but harder, boy.’ Anyway, he swung at me, the stupidest thing he did ’cause I grab my suitcase. Whung! I hit him in the face, and he started bleeding all over the place. About fifty of them started coming down in motorcycles, and I look outside and I see a Lincoln Continental out there so I say, ‘Let’s get the fuck out of here.’ And they started chasing us, we get on the plane screaming, ‘Fuck you, niggers! We’re leaving.’” Bob’s eyes turn cold. “This town sucks, I gotta get out of here.” His face lights up. “I’m gonna go to Vegas. I love Vegas, I gambled there for two days. I saw Warren Beatty standing on the streetcorner. I knew it was him, I walked right up to him and said, ‘Didn’t you play in the picture
Shampoo?
and he said, ‘Yeah I was the star of the movie,’ and I goes, ‘Oh wow, how’s
it going?’ and he said, ‘Not too bad, kid’ and the fucking cops go by and he sticks his middle finger up and goes, ‘That’s for you.’ He was smoking a joint, he don’t care.”

Bob hunches forward, ready to tell us another insane lie, the once-savored sandwich now getting cold. “You should have seen the car he drives, know the thing he drove in the movie, the Honda motorcycle? That’s what he was driving that day. ‘Seventy-one chopper. I met the Fifth Dimension, too. And one of the Osmonds, Marie. What a talented, beautiful girl she is. But you can’t touch her, you can’t go near her. I tried just touching her face but she’s got these big fucking bodyguards there with silencers.”

The waitress brings the check and I pick it up, impressing Bob. “Does Dylan pay all your expenses?” I nod no. We start toward the car.

“Anyone else famous from this town, other than Kerouac?” George asks, suppressing a yawn.

“Yeah, President Ford,” Bob replies.

“Get out of here,” we scream simultaneously.

Bob explains, “He is. He’s not from Lowell but he’s known good in Lowell. He came to the auditorium, this is how good he is in Lowell. He came out of the auditorium and this guy had a double-barreled shotgun to his head, said, ‘I’ll blow your fucking brains out,’ that’s when his fucking bodyguards grabbed the guy, threw him in the wagon.”

George and I exchange glances. “OK,” Bob waves, “I’ll see you guys. If I go through New York, I’ll check you out.” He starts to turn and walk home but first he stares at George, his eyes narrowing.

“Are you sure you weren’t in
Shampoo?”

The next day I wake up at noon. George is still sleeping so I walk over to the office to get a paper. And sure enough, there about five stalls down from our room is the bright shiny red Cadillac. Andy and Mooney, two of Dylan’s driver-bodyguards, are poring over some brochures. I investigate.

“These are just different Cadillacs. Bob was so knocked out by this car that he’s thinking of buying another like it,” Andy relates cheerfully.

I keep sneaking glances over my shoulder at the camper, trying to buy time, small-talking with Andy and Mooney. And it pays off, for in two minutes Dylan strides out the Executive’s door. And Kemp is nowhere to be seen.

I move in for the kill. “Hey Larry, how ya doin’,” Dylan asks wearily. He’s wearing the same clothes as he does onstage, the hat, the leather jacket, the dungarees. We start walking toward the office.

“You read my article yet, the first one for
Rolling Stone?”

“Yeah, it was all right but you didn’t say how you felt. You didn’t write how the show made you feel.”

I frown. “That shit just gets edited right out of your copy. They’re bureaucrats there, they don’t give a shit about feeling.”

“That’s important,” Dylan stresses, “how the show made ya feel.”

“Well, I want to write a book about the tour. Something I’d control. Sort of like a diary. Is that all right?”

Dylan hesitates before going into the office. “Sure, you can do anything you want, Larry.”

“So how come Kemp keeps hassling me,” I protest. “I can’t talk to my friends, I can’t get any backstage color, I can’t stay at the same hotels. I don’t think Louie likes me.”

“Oh, come on,” Bob smiles. “Louie’s just doing his job. He’s my friend.”

We pass the front desk and continue toward the restaurant. I can see Ginsberg and Orlovsky and a few others already seated.

“So I can do a book, it’s all right with you?” I reaffirm.

“You can do anything you want, Larry. Just tell me what you need.”

At that, we enter the room and waiting there for Dylan is Mr. Kemp. He gives me a smoldering stare and I beat a hasty retreat.

“I hear they’re filming something at Kerouac’s grave,” I tell George as we eat breakfast later.

“Let’s go out there, I really want to see Jack’s grave,” George gushes, “that would mean a lot to me.”

So we get the car, get directions at a gas station, and start toward the outskirts of town. It’s a beautiful autumn day, the leaves have turned, and the air is crisp as we pull into the cemetery. George takes a left and heads down a narrow dirt road. And fifty feet ahead walking toward us with a huge wood stick as a cane is Dylan, followed by two bodyguards, Ginsberg, Kemp, and Orlovsky. We drive on and spot the film crew packing up. Suddenly, Larry Johnson and Dave Meyers start running up to our car, with their cameras rolling. I start to get out.

“What’s going on? Did they film any—” I feel a huge arm propel me back into the car and the door slams.

Johnson’s face appears at the window, smiling broadly. “We just wanted to get some footage of you getting kicked out. You’re the reporter that gets shit on in the film, you know.”

I seek out Mel to get a report on the shooting. “We did a beautiful scene,” he relates, “just Dylan and Ginsberg improvising over Kerouac’s grave. We couldn’t hear much because for discretion we used long lenses and radial mikes but it seemed to be very effective.” Bit by bit, I piece together the scene. First Ginsberg read a selection from
Mexico City Blues
, then both Dylan and he sat on the grave and Bob squeezed a tune on harmonium. Then he picked up his guitar and started a blues and Ginsberg improvised in an exalted manner, a poem with an image of Kerouac’s skull looking down over them. Dylan stopped playing to pick up an autumn leaf and Ginsberg went merrily on in
a cappella
style. In all, a very moving scene.

George, meanwhile, has wandered away in search of the tombstone. After a few minutes, he comes across it, gives a yelp, and I rush over. The headstone is simple, just a small Indian eagle insignia and the stark lettering: JOHN KEROUAC MARCH 11, 1922 TO OCTOBER 21, 1969. HE HONORED LIFE. And there’s a provision for Stella, his wife.

After a few silent moments, we head back to the car. “Fucking
Kerouac means so much to me,” George mumbles. “How I dug
The Dharma Bums
, you should read that. That really psyched me up, I’d lay in bed at night and I’d just fucking hoot and howl, I’d go whoooo, whoooo. I’d always start doing weird things after I read it, really up, manic, popping my fingers all the time.” George pauses to pick up a leaf.

“Kerouac means more to me than Dylan,” he continues. “No, I don’t know. Shakespeare means more to me than Dylan, Keats, man, even though I wasn’t around when they were creating.”

On the way back to the Holiday Inn, we stop off at Nicky’s. Nicky gives me a big greeting, based I guess on the premise that any friend of Ginsberg’s, who was a friend of Kerouac’s, who was his brother-in-law and best friend, is a friend of his. We sit down at a table near the bar.

“Hey, Nicky, we just got back from the cemetery,” I report. “Did you ever make it to the concert last night?”

“I went but I walked out on it,” Nicky relates in his heavy accent, sounding a bit like a Greek Archie Bunker. “I had to sit down in the gym so I said I’ll just let it go, ya know what I mean. Hey youse guys want a drink?”

Nicky takes our order, barks it over to the bartender, and hollers to have the jukebox turned down. He settles down with the authority that only bar owners possess.

“How’d you like that food yesterday? I made it myself. I could have opened an Italian restaurant after the army. Jack used to call me the quartermaster sergeant in a couple of his books.”

The mere mention of Kerouac’s name has set Nicky into a slight reverie and I take the opportunity to scan the bar. It’s afternoon and there are about fifteen locals, working-class kids playing pinball and drinking beer from the bottle. Plaques, trophies, and photos hang on the walls. The smells of sweat and urine waft in the air. Kerouac must have loved this joint.

“How’d you feel about seeing Jack’s friends?” George breaks the silence.

“Jack’s mother and stuff, she never liked Ginsberg and that crowd,” Nicky recalls. “She didn’t like Ginsberg for smoking pot and all that. Know what I mean? But he didn’t want to leave Lowell, you know that, when Jack got to Florida we got this friend of mine with a beach wagon to drive it down ’cause she was in a stretcher like, when he got into Florida he says, ‘Here, here’s your Florida.’” Nicky pauses, careening off on his tangent. “I tell you the God’s truth, right before he passed away he sent me a penny postcard telling me to look around for another house for him. He was gonna move back here. He always used to send me dese penny postcards, I got them up at the house you know. I got one a week before he passed away. And you know where he used to hang around. Here lemme show you …”

And suddenly Nicky springs to his feet, grabbing one of us with each hand, leading us to a small table in the rear. Releasing us, he slaps the formica like a newborn. “He used to sit right here. He used to play all the old-time music. This is a dance area here.” One of the kids who’s been playing cards at a circular table in the rear asks Nicky if he wants someone to finish his hand.

“Yeah, go ahead finish it,” Nicky growls impatiently. He continues the narrative: “You know she made a remark, what the hell was her name? The one that wrote
Kerouac
, Ann Charters, yeah. What did I think of the book? It was bullshit. Lemme tell you why, I gotta show you one very important point.” And again George and I get scooped up out of our seats and herded back over to the bar. Nicky scurries behind the counter and grabs a bottle of wine.

“Not that I’m trying to be a wise guy,” Nicky complains, “but look at this, the cheapest wine I got. Mavrodaffi. You don’t see no bar wine or nothing. This is a high-class wine, Mavrodaffi. Jack never drank wine and she says in her book I used cheap wine in my place of business.” Nick’s getting expansive now, the pride just oozing out of him like sweat. He gestures up and down the myriad bottles behind him. “Show me one cheap wine there that I ever
carried. Ask anybody. I can tell you what Jack used to drink. Johnny Walker Red or Black with a glass of beer.”

“Was it on the house?” George asks.

“No, he used to have a tab and every month he would send me a check. I’ll show you one of the letters I got.”

But Nicky is still mulling over Charters’ slur and he grabs an old-timer sitting placidly at the bar.

“Did I ever carry any cheap wine in my place?” he badgers the barfly; “I’m talking about cheap wine, the bar wine and all that.” The old-timer manages a nod. “No, right,” Nicky fumes, “always carried the Mavrodaffi, right, and that’s not a cheap wine and that’s the God’s truth, I don’t like someone who writes what’s not.”

We return to Jack’s booth and Nicky gets called away to answer the phone. George is animated and he grabs my ear. He shouts over the din of the jukebox, “Fucking Kerouac was organic. He’s like a fucking Faulkner or a fucking Melville. Part of the tradition, man. The fucking American myth stopped with Kerouac, all that expansion west. He was crazy when he got there, driving around crazy looking for new frontiers. He was desperate, man.”

George is getting impatient with Nicky’s small talk, he wants more Kerouac data. “Would Jack just sit by himself or would he mingle with people? Did he talk?” George asks when the bar owner comes back.

“He wouldn’t mingle with the people. This was ’67, ’68. Billy, keep it down a little, we’re trying to have a conversation.”

“What kind of shape was he in?” George asks.

“He was good,” Nicky remembers, “that surprised me, you know. I tried to get him to stop his drinking but he wouldn’t stop his drinking. He used to get up in the morning, you know, lay on his head you know doing exercise. Stand on his head. He said that helped his legs.”

George looks like he’s about to burst a blood vessel. “Did you ever see him do it?”

Nicky smiles. “Yeah, sure, I seen him do it, you know. Where was he living at the time? He was living in the Jewish ghetto of Lowell. One of the high-class places in Lowell. He bought a nice beautiful home and he was living with my sister Stella and with his mother-in-law. They used to call me up to go up there for coffee. His mother was sick. He had bought that house and he was pressed for money and that book
Visions of Duluoz
, he rushed that book. He used to call me up and he used to have the long typewriter and he used to type and all that and he said, ‘I gotta do this book in three weeks.’ That was the only book that he was really rushed on but he really didn’t want to do that book so fast.”

George jumps in with, “How did he feel all of a sudden when he started getting real famous at the end and they ignored him when he was real young writing all that great stuff? Was he bitter about it, did he feel sick about it?”

“No, never!” Nicky notes emphatically. “To him he was the same guy.”

“How much time did he spend here?” I ask.

“He used to be here every day,” Nicky recollects. “When he moved here from the Cape I hadn’t seen him for about fifteen years. I was in the army and he walks in one day, he was still living at the Cape and he had one of them long hats and boots and he says, ‘Who are you?’ and I said, ‘Who are you?’ but I loved him, you know. What he used to do, he had a funny thing about him I’ll tell ya. Let’s say there was a wino or something, drinking a draft beer or something, ’cause you know this is a poor town not a rich man’s town and the guy’ll be drinking a draft beer, like this kid Chris, an old alcoholic. Jack would send him across the street for a fifteen-cent cigar and give him a five-dollar bill and he would come back and Jack would be gone. That would probably be Jack’s last five dollars in his pocket, know what I mean. And this guy who wrote
Visions of Kerouac
, this guy Jarvis, he wasn’t as close to Jack as people think he was. You talk to people in Lowell High School, they’ll tell you the same thing, personal friends of Jack, they all want to
know who is he? I mean what the hell, the guy’s feeling good, he’s drunk, you don’t show the bad, you show the good side of him. He would always help the poor guy, in his way, like a secret. Like the guy did him an errand and he wanted to give him the five dollars so he smoked the cigar.