Tinker and Blue (13 page)

22

“Tinker, you remember Silly Sadie?” Blue asked, wandering into Tinker and Kathy's room, but the subject froze on his tongue when he saw his friend look up at him over the pages of a book.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

Tinker shrugged apologetically, explaining that Kathy had given him the book to read.

“
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
,” Blue read, running his fingers along the title. “You got to be kidding. Who'd buy a book called something that? You better be careful there, buddy. I know you, remember? You read two books and the next thing you'll think you can write one.”

“I'll leave that job to Kathy. What about Silly Sadie?” Tinker asked, slipping out from under a conversation he didn't want to have.

“Wouldn't you say she was just about the craziest person in town? Remember the time you dropped the fire cracker behind her and she chased you over street yelling, ‘The Devil will piss on you yet, Tinker Dempsey.'

“Anyway, she was a weird sight, wasn't she, wandering around town with a pair of bloomers on her head and pink hair rollers sticking out of the legs holes and no teeth and muttering to herself and taking fits. They say the moon played her like a tide. Well, I must of told you what Farmer told me about her, huh.”

“What was that?” Tinker asked on cue.

“About when she was young? Farmer's about her age and he said she was be-u-ti-ful. She really was something to look at and a guy can put up with a lot of weird stuff if he figures there's a pot of poontang at the end of the rainbow, Farmer said. She used to take fits even back then. Nobody minded much, though, because she was so pretty, but the older she got the uglier and crazier she got. Is Farmer ever glad now that she wouldn't have anything to do with him back then because he said she was pretty enough to marry.

“Think if something like that happened to you. Say, for instance, you married Kathy and her being a hippie and everything you can't tell what's just hippie talk and what's really her. Suppose sometime she started talking about, oh ... say, being Napoleon or something like that and you were so much in love with her you couldn't tell whether or not she was hatching into another Silly Sadie, what would you do?”

“This is about Karma, right?”

“Aw, Jesus, Tinker, she thinks she's Chinese. You know the way they have all these lives in their religion, well, she's one of those. Or all of those. Could be a phase, as the other fellow says, or it could lead straight to a straightjacket. I need a second opinion.”

Offering the book in his hand as evidence, Tinker's thoughts shaped themselves into words.

“There's not a single book in this commune that you or I ever heard of in school, Blue. I know. I went through all the titles. The guys in this here book here make Silly Sadie look sane and they're all supposed to be geniuses, for Christ's sake. Capricorn says the real difference between the people in this book and the establishment isn't long hair or music. It's questions. People who ask questions that nobody wants to answer should jump in a bus, just like these guys, and drive as far away from society as they can get, according to Capricorn.”

“Bet he wants to be the driver.”

“I don't really care who's driving as long as I'm the mechanic. What have you got against him anyway? He treats us fair, doesn't he?”

“When somebody you don't know is treating you fair, you better wonder why, boy. That's the first lesson Farmer ever taught me. But what does that book have to do with Karma?”

“Remember when we picked her and Kathy up in Kansas? Well, if the bus in this book had picked the two of them up they would have been right at home in it, more at home than in the Plymouth. That's what I think. I don't think the people in this book and the people in this house would have to explain much to each other. Not like us. Every time we open our mouths somebody is asking us what we mean, and every time they say something to us we have to ask ‘Huh?' I don't think crazy enters into it, Blue. We're just a long way from home.”

Blue collapsed on a wooden chair beside the bed and his eyes wandered around the room, growing more and more interested in what he saw.

“That's a flower over there,” he said, pointing to a water-colour thumb-tacked to the wall.

“Yeah,” Tinker confirmed. “Kathy did that. She drew all of these things to go with a story she wrote.”

“A flower in a jug,” Blue went on, nodding his approval. “And that's a building on that wall over there, a whole street of buildings, and a dove perched on one of those peace signs everybody wears. You're lucky, Tinker. You don't have to guess at anything Kathy does. You should see Karma's paintings. But even her paintings are simple to get compared to Tulip's. Did you see hers? Looks like something Monk did in the DTs, but I guess you must need some kind of talent to live in this commune. Good thing we can sing. But you think Karma's okay?”

“I like her, but what difference does it make anyway, Blue? We're not going to live here forever. Besides, the way it stands right now, we're in a foreign country, broke, no jobs and not many places to crash unless you want to move back to the hotel. We're sort of trapped here, but it could be worse, couldn't it? We could actually be back at that hotel. So we make the peace sign, sing the right songs and we'll get along just fine. If we have to be trapped anywhere, here's as good a place as any. It's like we're prisoners of peace instead of prisoners of war.”

“We're prisoners of a piece of something, Tinker old buddy, that's for sure,” Blue said. “What bothers me, Tink, is that I can't see a minute beyond where we are right now. I used to be able to imagine every mile of the drive back home. That was the whole point of leaving home, for Christ's sake. Make some money and get the hell back where we belong, telling our stories until we're broke again.

“Now I can't see me without Karma no matter how many different ways I try to figure out how to get us out of here. I'm the guy who saw Danny Danny Dan's funeral, for Christ's sake. It shouldn't be any problem for me to imagine going home next summer, should it? But if Karma won't come I'm probably not going to go either. But if she does come— Christ, that's too scary to even think about. Farmer told me you had to be careful around women. Not get led by the brainless head, as the other feller says. I'm glad he's not here to see this. I went and drowned my first time in the water, Tink. I'm in love. So this is what sex is all about.”

“So the mighty Blue is in love, is he?” Tinker teased his mangled friend.

“Keep 'er down there, Tinker,” Blue warned, hushing him with hand gestures. “A rumour like that gets back to Karma and I'm done for. As it is, I'll probably be washing dishes here at the Human Rainbow Commune until I look like my grandfather. What I need is a record contract. Cross your fingers, buddy, because that's our ticket out of here.”

The bead curtain pushed aside and Kathy walked into the room.

“Am I interrupting anything?”

“You live here, I don't,” Blue replied, getting up from the chair. “I was just telling Tinker here how much I like your paintings. You should give up writing and start giving drawing lessons. I bet there's people right in this house who could use them.”

“Thank you, Blue. But you don't have to leave just because I'm here.”

“Have to go anyway. The band's having a rehearsal over at Peter?'s,” explained Blue who always seemed to have an explanation for leaving Tinker's presence as soon as Kathy turned up.

“Are you playing at the party tonight?”

“Party?” Blue asked. “Who's having a party?”

“The commune. There's a notice on the bulletin board downstairs. Each member is allowed to invite three people. You could invite the band. It would be a chance to play for some new people.”

“Did you know about this?” Blue directed the question to Tinker who shrugged his ignorance of the commune's social calendar. “I thought we were supposed to make these decisions together. If any of us have a suggestion everyone has to agree to it, right? But this idea belongs to his royal highness, I bet, so we don't have to be consulted at all. Just insulted. What we need here is a coop-de-thaw. I've got a good mind to invite everybody I see between here and Peter?'s,” Blue added.

“Take my invitations over to Peter?'s with you,” Tinker said to Blue as his friend was leaving the room. “You know everybody I know over there.”

—

Blue Cacophony practised in the scrap of backyard at Peter?'s place, Blue singing the words of his songs while the rest of the band struggled to produce sounds to match the author's vocal renderings. Blue was patient with their efforts.

“With practice you'll get it down perfect,” he assured them. “It's easier for me because I'm the guy who was inspired to write these songs. Gives me a head start.”

Gerry opened his mouth and dropped his bow. “Nathan, can two people, say you and I, get caught on the same acid trip?” he asked.

Nathan replied with a sudden squeeze of his arm, releasing a crazed alley cat into the neighbourhood.

“Squeezed your bag a little too tight there, did you, Nathan?” Blue asked, picking at his guitar. “Occupational hazard, the other fellow says. Look, guys, I know it's not easy. That's because you book-learned your music. Nothing wrong with that, but I have to teach you something different. Bach can't help you here, but I can, and I'm going to make you guys a million bucks. Now, let's try a few more tunes before we call it a day. We'll want to be good at the party.”

The practice was interrupted by Peter?'s arrival, clapping for silence. When silence did fall upon the neighbourhood from the stilled instruments, even Barney wandered from under the sound-deadening step where he waited for Blue.

“We've got our first gig, men. I talked to the woman who runs the Warehouse Gallery, the place where Tulip is showing her work, and we can play during the opening. She read about Blue in
Rolling Stone
but never got a chance to hear him. She said a lot of people are curious and that gave me an idea.

“What do you think of this? We begin telling the press that we refuse to record. That creates the impression that we've already had offers. And if we do get any offers we say no.”

“Aw, Jesus, I don't know about that, Peter?” Blue argued.

“Blue, we have the vehicle now. Blue Cacophony isn't a band, it's a revolution. It's everything we ever dreamed about. We haven't even played anywhere yet and we're getting lots of press. Critics are debating Blue Cacophony's merits. A legend is hatching as we speak. Carpe diem!”

“Yeah, well, I was an altar boy, too, and to tell you the truth in plain English, I don't remember ever dreaming about a revolution. I just want to get a little gas money, and maybe a couple of million bucks besides, and records is where the money is.”

“Capitalist garbage. There's no money in records, Blue. The record company gets ninety per cent and never pays taxes and you get ten per cent and it all goes in taxes. Then they tour you to death with nothing to do but take drugs and screw a different girl in a different hotel in a different city every night. Our legacy to the future will be a musical legend shrouded in silence, our absolute rejection of music as it has mutated over the ages.”

“That's just fine, Peter?, but there's something to be said for drugs and screwing, you know. Especially screwing. If I can just get the gas money, I'll take the couple of million in trade.”

“How do you fellows feel about this?” Peter? asked.

“I agree! No recordings, for Christ's sake,” Gerry said. “Some of us might have a future. I'd hate to see a record of Blue Cacophony turn up some time down the road just when I might be getting somewhere with my music – the way an old porno movie haunts some big movie stars.”

Nathan was gentler. “I think the legend idea is a good one, Blue. After all, we're suppose to be a street band. I didn't having touring in mind. And never in my wildest dreams did I plan on us recording. I'm curious as hell about what's going on here, but we have to draw the line somewhere.”

“Do you guys hear what you're saying. This is our chance. Records are pictures of voices, for Christ's sake. I bet there was lots of great singers a hundred years ago that we don't know anything about because we never heard them, so we never heard about them. But I bet everybody from now until Doomsday is going to know who Elvis is. I'd kind of like my chance.”

The vote was clear.

“Perhaps a rumour about not recording could get the record companies really interested, couldn't it, Barney? Who knows, they might even start bidding on us. That would change a few minds around here,” Blue said as he and the dog walked back to the commune, following a different path than the one that brought them there. It was a brisk detour of four blocks that passed a small diner where the cook made his hamburger patties by hand instead of a meat-measuring cup, and the fried meat oozed with greasy juice. The cook, Blue and Barney were on a first name basis.