Tinker and Blue (10 page)

16

“Kind of reminds you of the inside of a coal shed, doesn't it?” Blue said, scanning the interior of the Aquarius Café.

The café, complete with low ceiling and exposed pipes, was located in the basement of the address to which they had been directed. The walls were painted black and most of the inadequate lighting came from clusters of candles flickering slow shadows across fluorescent stop-the-war posters while layers of cigarette, marijuana and hashish smoke made lazy swirls in the wake of anyone passing by. Tinker and Blue sat on tin folding chairs at one of a dozen small, round tables, drinking syrupy coffee and waiting for Tinker's turn on the stage.

The stage was a tiny, six-inch elevation in one corner of the café, equipped with a stool and a microphone that was unnecessary in the close basement quarters. They listened to singers singing anti-war songs, poets reading anti-war poems, political activists chanting anti-war slogans and dropped change into the cup every time it came around.

“If you don't get up there soon and get us our money back we're going to wind up on the losing end of this deal, Tinker,” Blue cautioned as another donation left his hand. “It's cheaper to go to church.”

“I don't know about this, Blue. Everybody that's gone up there has been singing their own songs and they're all against the war. I can sing a few that I picked up on the street, but they're not my own.”

“Make you a deal, Tink. You go up there tonight and get our money back and I'll write you some anti-war songs of your own for the next time.”

“You sure you can do that?”

“Christ, Tinker, how hard can it be? Do you know how many words rhyme with war? Sore, more, door, floor, gore, nor, snore, chore, bore. It'll be a breeze, buddy. Just be glad they're not singing anti-orange songs.”

A girl with a sweet, angry voice sang of napalmed children and when she finished Blue opened his guitar case and followed Tinker to the stage. Tinker sat on the stool and nervously began “Last Night I Had the Strangest Dream.” Blue, playing behind him, remembered the really important thing about this particular anti-war song, the reason Tinker had decided to learn it.

“Fellow from back home wrote that. Ed McCurdy,” he shouted between verses. “Halifax, actually.”

Tinker moved through his small selection of popular protest songs, his rendering of them casting a spell across the café. Recognizing that this was the ideal time to profit from the war, Blue lowered his guitar and left Tinker to finish unaccompanied while he walked among the tables with his hat extended. When he came to their own table it was occupied by Nathan Goldstein and a friend, along with Tinker who had finished his gig. Blue pulled up a chair.

“Not bad,” Blue told Tinker, whose performance was being complimented from all corners of the café. Blue's review was for the collection.

Nathan shook Tinker's hand, said hello to Blue and introduced them to his friend who wore pigtails and Benjamin Franklin glasses with a cracked lens.

“What's the name again?” Blue asked.

“Peter?” Nathan's friend replied.

“Don't ask me. I'm asking you,” Blue said. “Peter, you said?”

“No. Peter?”

“Acid, right?” Blue said, turning to Nathan for confirmation.

“No,” Nathan answered. “It's Peter? Explain it, Peter?”

“Well,” Peter? began slowly, collecting his thoughts. “Descartes was correct in proving his own existence. I think, therefore I am! Brilliant. I couldn't have said it better myself. But proving your own existence is only the first step. You can say ‘I am,' and still know nothing except that. So the question that truly brings us to the centre of being, of existence, of the Universe is ‘Who am I?' I am still questioning myself. Peter, my parents' choice for a name, really says nothing about me. Peter?, the question you see, keeps my quest eternally before me. Descartes laid the foundation, but someone must build a tower of truth upon it. Wouldn't you agree?”

“Like putting da cartes before da horse, you mean?” Blue said, kicking Tinker under the table.

“Precisely!” Peter? said, his eyes glowing with excitement. “The cart before the horse! Very colloquial but very insightful. We're kindred spirits, I believe, fellow philosophers,” extending his hand to Blue.

Blue fired a panicky glance at Tinker who was already on his feet and heading for the washroom, shoulders shaking.

“You've got more than that in common, Blue. Peter? is a writer, as well,” Nathan said as Blue rose from the table.

“Great,” Blue answered. “Excuse me, guys, but I got to see a man about a horse, as the other fellow says.”

“That other fellow's name wouldn't be Descartes by any chance?” Peter? asked, winking at his own witticism.

—

“Tinker, will you shut up and listen to me!” Blue said, standing at the urinal. Tinker was sitting in the washroom's only cubicle, barely able to breathe, laughter rolling out of him. “Know what I think, Tink? When we go to leave this goddamned city we aren't going to be able to get out because there's going to be a big cement wall all around it and written on that wall in letters big as Giant MacAskill are the words ‘San Francisco Asylum.' If people aren't shitting on the floor of the hotel they think they're God. Did you hear the guy? I am who am! That's right out of the Bible, boy. And Moses playing the bagpipes. Jesus, Tinker, we gotta get home.”

They returned to the table where Nathan and Peter? were listening to another voice rising melodically against the war in Vietnam. Peter? ordered a round of coffee while explaining that freelancing articles to various magazines paid the bills while he worked on his philosophical dissertation. He inquired about Blue's writing.

“I'm a songwriter myself,” Blue told him, tapping the guitar case that leaned against the table.

“Spoken like a true wordsmith,” Peter? replied.

“The poet?” Blue asked.

Peter? looked at him oddly, then smiled.

“Oh, Wordsworth! That's another pun, right? A wordsmith, I said. You must have heard that used before to describe a writer. A wordsmith, someone who works with words the way someone who works with hot iron is a blacksmith.”

“Oh, I get it,” Blue said. “A wordsmith. There's a sense of real work in it, isn't there? I helped Iron Angus, this blacksmith back home, shoe a few horses in my time. Blacksmith, wordsmith. I like that. Tinker, don't let me forget it.”

“But the important thing,” Peter? observed, “is that you described yourself as a songwriter, not a musician. A musician is primarily concerned with music; words are a secondary consideration, but when a man says to me that he is a songwriter, emphasis on ‘writer,' then I know that this man is interested in articulating thought rather than feelings. Feelings are fine, of course, and music may soothe the savage beast, but it cannot make the beast argue intelligently for itself or its species. Without words there is no philosophy, and without philosophy there is no hope of understanding Man's essential nature. But what about a sample of your own words, Blue? The stage is free, I see,” Peter? said.

“Yes,” Nathan encouraged. “If you don't go, I'll be up there with my pipes emptying this place. The acoustics here are not what you would call Hebridean.”

Blue, smiling, pulled off his blue hat and threw it into Tinker's lap. “Watch me fill that thing for you, buddy,” he said. “I'm working on a piece that you might be interested in,” he said to Peter?, taking his guitar from the case and turning toward the stage.

For the first time since retiring his talent on the sidewalks of San Francisco, Blue let the lyrics to his masterpiece-in-progress pour out of him in public. The words to “The Red Lobster,” including its latest addition, verse fifty-four;

You reach out and grab me

Like the long arm of the law

Squeezing me hard

With your lobster claw

You wanna hear “I love you”

Squeak outta me

But all I gotta say

is “Show some merceee”

Red Lobster, red lobster

Don't you dare sob, sir

'Cause love is you, and love is her

You're the meat. She's the but-tur

The patrons of the Aquarius Café were unfamiliar with the musical forms employed by Blue, both in his lyrical construction and in his rendering of lyrics. Some listened politely and some not at all and some departed, but Blue didn't notice because his song was directed at the table where Tinker, Nathan and Peter? were seated.

It was their request that caused him to be up there on the stage instead of hovering in the background, engineering Tinker's career. Tinker, of course, had heard it all before. Nathan had obviously heard nothing quite like it before. Peter? pulled a notebook from his pocket and scribbled while listening to Blue's forty-minute memory feat. In spite of Blue's coaxing, no one dared join him in the chorus. He carried the whole event off by himself.

“That's as far as I've gotten with it,” he explained as he returned to his seat in the near empty café. “There's forty-six more verses left to write.”

Anything that Tinker or Nathan might have felt obliged to say was drowned in the tidal enthusiasm welling out of Peter?.

“It's epic, Blue, courageously epic. I was jotting notes just to keep track of the thoughts inspired by your music. You're not insulted that I call it music, I hope.”

“Not at all,” Blue answered. “You know what the other fellow says about music, don't you?”

“Remind me.”

“The other fellow says music's nothing but organized noise. Well, some people organize it one way, I organize it another.”

“Wow!” replied Peter?. “But music is as close as I can come to describing what I have just heard while at the same time I realize that music is exactly what it wasn't. Oh, man, it's so far out there on its own it could originate on another planet. You've read Plato, of course?
The Republic
?”

“Ahhhhh, yeah, I think so,” Blue lied. “The condensed version.
Reader's Digest
. Pretty good story.”

“You're pulling my leg, right?” Peter? asked him. “
Reader's Digest
? Condensed version? Never happened, did it? I would have heard. I'm sure I would have heard. Then, of course, I never heard
The Republic
called a story before but I suppose you're right. Plato was just making it up in his own head, wasn't he? But do you remember what he said about music?”

“That he liked it?” Blue replied tentatively.

“No, that in the perfect society music needs to be controlled. Plato said that society must have control over the development of its music because, listen to me now, because Plato saw that the winds of change and protest will always appear in music long before people become consciously aware of it. So the Republic must protect itself from the influence of music by allowing only a shadow of it to exist.

“And he was right! Plato, I mean. Because do you remember the first time you heard the Beatles? They were singing ‘Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! I wanna hold your hand.' Cute stuff, but not poetry. Still, it mattered. Why? Because of the music. Even when we didn't know why, the Beatles' music still mattered,” Peter? pointed out. “It spoke to our restless souls, man. We wanted to find out things for ourselves, about ourselves, things Second World War movies couldn't tell us. And look at us now! The Beatles and so many other songwriters have caught up to the music, putting in words the ideas that make our parents puke. We're out here making it happen, and the music is leading the dancers.

“But, for all their brilliance, the fact remains that the Beatles are still experimenting within established forms of melody, finding new ways to use established harmonic relationships. Your material, though, Blue, assaults the concept of harmony itself. It threatens to produce anarchy in the spheres. It's wonderful, man. Don't you agree?”

“Well, I won't say that you're not right, but as the other fellow says, I'll have to give it some thought before I sign anything.”

Peter? invited them back to his place where a party was already in its fourth day, according to him, and apologized because they would have to walk several blocks to get there. “My van broke down,” he explained.

“A VW?” Tinker inquired and, finding out that it was, assured Peter? that there was nothing to worry about. He was an experienced Volkswagen mechanic.

“Whaddya think, Tink?” Blue asked as he emptied the contents of his hat, put the thirty-two cents in his pockets and picked up his guitar. “Follow any of that philosophy business?”

“Lost me just about the time he started to talk,” Tinker replied.

17

Hendrix was pulsing out of speakers wired into every room in the apartment, but that was the only visible energy as far as Blue could see. The bodies themselves were slouched on a collection of makeshift pillow furniture which was strewn around the rooms. People made listless, glassy-eyed waves of acknowledgement to the four newcomers. Bead curtains separated the rooms but the rooms were pretty much all the same, beads, posters and incense. In the stereo room a black light searched out a phosphorescent Universe for the entertainment of those afloat on the good ship LSD. Blue wondered what would happen if he threw a fake grenade in there.

“Smile.”

Blue turned toward the voice and a flash exploded like a grenade in his face, giving Blue some idea of just how much a fake grenade would be appreciated.

“Have to have pictures, you know,” Peter? said, holding a camera in his hands. “Just make yourself at home,” he added, entering a room to get rid of the camera.

Blue wandered around, reading the walls, trying to distinguish in the subdued lighting whether he was nodding to a girl or a guy. The party, he realized, presented the first possibilities since Colorado. He wanted to remind Tinker of that.

Tinker was into the van engine before he was into the apartment, the latter only to find a light he could string outside. When Blue came out to check on him, he was bare-chested to protect his shirt from the oil and banging a wrench on the motor.

“How the hell can you see what you're doing in this light?” Blue asked, watching Tinker work in a series of shadowy flashes.

“It's got a short or something. I tried to fix it but I don't know shit about electricity.”

“Want something to eat?” Blue said, holding out a pan to his friend. “Nothing in the place but brownies which we should be thankful are not sunflower seeds.”

They polished off the half pan of brownies while talking about things that brought them back home for a minute.

“Know what we should do some night, Tinker? Phone the Legion back home. We'll get a bag of wine and a bag of quarters and get drunk and go to a pay phone and phone the Legion. A Saturday night, eh? We'll talk to the guys and listen to the Seaside Cowboys in the background. I bet you ten to one they're playing “Candy Kisses” when we call. That's the great thing about us being together out here, Tink. When we talk about home we see the same pictures, smell the same air. We'll tell them back home that we're playing in a club out here. The Aquarius Club. Playing rock noise and eating acid for breakfast. I'm going in before I go blind,” Blue said, pointing to the light.

“Did anybody see the strobe light?” a hippie was asking the population in general as Blue walked into the kitchen. “It was in there before but I don't know what happened to it.”

Blue would have asked him what a strobe was but his thoughts were drifting elsewhere so he simply shrugged and opened the fridge door, looking for food. There was nothing there but another pan of brownies and a quart of milk which he was helping himself to when Nathan came into the kitchen, holding a girl's hand and introducing him to Sherry. Behind Sherry and Nathan, though, came a far more startling apparition.

“Blue, meet Lee. Lee, Blue,” Peter? said, introducing them.

Peter? and Lee were also holding hands, but the significant difference for Blue was that Lee, effeminate or not, was definitely a guy. Lee released his hand from Peter?'s clasp to grasp Blue's hand.

“So you're the living proof of Peter?'s pet theory. I haven't seen him this happy since the first night I said I would go out with him.”

Chewing on a mouthful of brownie, Blue only nodded in response, but had a mild choking reaction that escalated to strangulation when Peter? asked if Tinker and Blue were lovers.

Blue spent so much time spitting brownies into the sink in order to be able to vehemently deny the charge that he barely remembered the question when he was finished.

“Don't be offended, Blue,” Peter? said mildly. “Just curious about the two of you living together.”

“Hell, we're from Cape Breton,” Blue said. “There's none of that business goes on back there. Almost everybody's Catholic, you know.”

“Oh, dear, spare me from the Catholics,” Lee sighed. “Obsessively heterosexual males can be so close-minded,” he remarked to Peter? as the two of them walked toward the stereo room, leaving Blue, Nathan and Sherry in the kitchen.

“We're not, you know,” Blue told the remaining two and having reasserted himself against any possible rumours about him and Blue, walked out of the apartment into the pulsating light of back yard.

“Better get that shirt back on, Tinker, old buddy, 'cause have I got a story for you,” he warned as he came down the back steps into a scene that disoriented him. Motor parts were spread around the yard and Tinker was sitting in the driver's seat of Peter?'s van, which was on the ground several feet from the vehicle.

“What did you take the seat out for?” Blue asked.

“I've been sitting here for the last ... oh, infinity ... asking myself that very same question. I know I knew what I was doing when I did it, but I forget. Blue, do you think those brownies might have been poisoned? I don't feel right. I don't feel bad, but I don't feel right.”

Blue remembered why he had come out to see Tinker and told him.

“I hope you cracked him on the head,” Tinker said, snapping his right fist into his left hand for emphasis.

“Holy shit, Tinker, it didn't even occur to me. That's the trouble with parties with no booze. You lose your sense of reason. A few beer at a party back home and that guy'd still be spitting out teeth. Well, I think I would of punched him, but he's with Peter?, and I liked Peter? before I knew about him. I can't see myself punching him now. He's practically a friend. Tinker, old buddy, there might be worst things happening to us than food poisoning. We might be turning into a couple of friggin' pacifists.”

But Tinker had long ago disappeared, working at the far side of the van and when he came back he was carrying the front passenger seat which he put down beside the first one and offered it to Blue. The two of them sat in silence in the flashing strobe imagining the front seat of the Plymouth as it sped down the highway toward home.

“Gas,” Tinker said after an unmeasured lapse of time. “The van was out of gas. That's all that was wrong with it. Found that out when I went to empty it so I wouldn't wind up blowing myself up like Charlie did. But ... I needed the practice,” he said, sweeping his hand to take in the yard filled with automotive parts.