Screwjack Read online

  DONE . . . but my knees are locked and my head is about twenty feet higher than my feet . . . in this room with an eight-foot roof, making travel very difficult. The light again, get those sunglasses, unlock the knees and creep over there . . . not far . . . yes, I’m wearing the glasses now, but the glare is still all around. Getting out of this hotel and catching this plane is going to be weird. . . . I see not much hope, but that’s not the way to think. . . . I have managed to do everything else I’ve had to do so far. Twenty-three minutes past eight on this brain-saving station, I hear echoes of the news, leaking out the back of the TV set. . . . Nixon has ordered the Condor Legion into Berkeley . . . smile . . . relax a bit, sip that drink. Bagpipes now on the radio, but it’s really violins . . . they’re fucking around with these instruments, sounds like a tractor in the hall, the charwomen are going to cave my door in with a fucking webbed vehicle, a crane in the hall, snapping doors off their hinges like so many cobwebs . . . creaking and clanking along, this hotel has gone all to hell since the chain took it over, no more grapefruit in the light sockets, the lamp sockets . . . put some lampblack on these walls, take off the glare. We need more hair on these walls, and crab lice in the rug to give it life. There are marijuana seeds in this rug, the place is full of them. The rug crackles like popcorn when I walk, who planted these seeds in this rug, and why aren’t they watered? Now . . . yes . . . there is a project, tend the crops, soak this rug like a drenching rain, some kind of tropical downpour . . . good for the crops, keep the ground damp and prune the leaves every other day. Be careful about renting the room, special people, nature freaks, tillers of the soil . . . let them in, but for Christ’s sake keep the charwomen out. They don’t like things growing in the rug, most of them seem like third-generation Finns, old muscles turned to lard and hanging like wasps nests. . . .

  Wasps nests? Slipping again, beware, Oscar just came in, bringing beer. I seem to have leveled out, like after the first rush of acid. If this is as deep as it’s going to bore I think we can make that plane, but I dread it. Getting in a steel tube and shot across the sky, strapped down . . . yes, I sense a peak, just now, a hint of letdown, but still vibrating and hovering around with the typewriter. The cloud is over the sun again, or maybe it’s smog . . . but the glare is gone from the walls, no highlights on the buildings down below, no sparkle on the rooftops, no water, just gray air. I see a concrete mixer moving, red and gray, down on that other street a long way off. It looks like a Matchbox toy; they sell them in airports. Get one for Juan. I think we will catch that plane. Someday when things are right and like they should be we can do all this again by putting a quarter in the Holiday Inn vibrator bed and taking a special madness pill . . . but wait, hold over there, we can do that now. We can do almost anything now . . . and why not?

  * * *

  Xerox copy with author’s notes of yesterday’s program for today’s Continental Airlines tape concert—private earphones for all passengers and six-channel selector dials, along with individual volume controls, built into each seat. The “program” being twenty-four hours old plays hell with a head full of cactus madness—like watching an NFL football game with an AFL roster.

  * * *

  11:32—hovering again. Weightless—weird—L.A. down below—earphones and knobs—switching around Jesus, Leon Blum—the Canadian Legion Haile Selassie speech.

  * * *

  Cheap rental cars at the airport—seize Batrollers and zang up to Big Sur—have Michael Murphy arrested for restraint of trade, killing the last true hillbilly-music cabal on the West Coast. Who can blame me for whipping on that paraplegic in the baths? Anyone would have done it—Selah.

  * * *

  Who are these pigs—as a validated addict I demand to be left alone—drink the eucalyptus oil—with dials and knobs still high as a freak male locked into the vibrations of the jet engines—get a bag of acid and a credit card for airlines—evaluate the pitch, roll and yaw—no sense of movement in this plane—just humming—the phones—acid-style high tingling and strange, intense vibrations. Get that dead animal off the seat—put it under—where is the drink? These pigs are taking us for a ride—put it on the card. Strange feedback echoes on the headset, Gabriel Heatter screaming in the background—telephone conversations—fantastic people talking. This is yesterday’s program—new songs today. A dingbat across the aisle and Kitty Wells on the headphones. This channel is hag-ridden with echoes—telephone conversations. See no wings on this plane—good God the lock on my whiskey bag is frozen—a lifting body, tends to destroy itself, very wormy. I seem to be getting higher. (12:15.) Warn the pilot—this plane feels very wormy at this altitude. An ominous sense of yaw . . . sliding off edge—fire in the ashtray. Weird things in this channel.

  * * *

  Further notes in the Denver airport—coming down but can’t relax, looking for a plane ride to Aspen with all legitimate flights canceled due to snowstorm—if not to Aspen, then back to L.A.—last chance to get straight—final effort—and half wanting the abyss. One of you pigs will find me a plane—sweating obscenely, hair plastered down and dripping from the cheekbones—the drug is gone now, no more zang, failing energy, disconnected thoughts—the Goodyear blimp as a last resort but no driving. Beware of (unreadable) hawks in the company of straight people—get that charter, leaving in five minutes—fiery stomach, running through the airport screaming for Bromo-Seltzer—coming down again in the Denver airport. Now, sitting in the copilot’s seat of an Aero Commander—weirdness feeds on itself—with a wheel in my lap and pedals on the floor at my feet—forty-one round dials in front of me, blinking lights, jabbering radio noise—smoking, waiting for the oxygen—sick, feeling deranged—two Ritalins don’t help much—sliding—no hope of pulling out—air bubbles in the brain—open this window beside me, a rush of air and crisis sounds from the others. Smelling of booze in this tiny cabin, nobody speaks—fear and loathing, dizzy, flying and bouncing through clouds. No more hole-cards, drained. Back to L.A., rather than Grand Junction—why go there? Chaos in the Denver airport—soaking sweats and all flights canceled—charwomen working—lying swine at the counters—“here boy, rent this car.” Sorry, as a certified addict I cannot drive on snow—I must fly!

  LOS ANGELES, 1969

  In the coffin of ice, I sleep naked

  In the tunnel of fire, I drink

  —F. X. LEACH

  It was dark when we dropped into Green Bay, and the airport was deadly calm. The whole town was in shock from the disastrous beating inflicted that day on the hometown Packers by the Kansas City Chiefs. . . . Their confidence was broken; the Magic Man had failed, Mighty Casey had struck out.

  The girl at the Avis counter was weeping uncontrollably in her booth as I approached. My heart was filled with joy, but I couldn’t get through to her. She had lost her will to live. “Take any car you want,” she said. “I don’t care anymore: It’s over. I’m moving to Milwaukee on Monday.”

  “Who cares?” I said. “Give me some goddamn keys.” She was slow to respond so I gave her a taste of the long knuckle and she fell to her knees. “There’s more where that came from,” I told her.

  Then I grabbed a set of keys off a nail and hurried outside to find a car. I was eager to see Leach and celebrate our great victory.

  * * *

  The address he had given me turned out to be a trailer court behind the stockyards. He met me at the door with red eyes and trembling hands, wearing a soiled cowhide bathrobe and carrying a half-gallon of Wild Turkey.

  “You got here just in time,” he said. “I was about to slit my wrists. This is the worst day of my life.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “We won big. I bet the same way you did. You gave me the numbers. You even predicted Kansas City would stomp the Packers.”

  F.X. tensed, then he threw back his head and uttered a high-pitch quavering shriek. I seized him. “Get a grip on yourself,” I snapped. “What’s wrong?”

  “I went crazy,” he said. “I got drunk and changed
my bet. Then I doubled up.”

  I felt a shudder in my spine. “What!” I said. “You bet on the Packers? What happened?”

  “I went to that big Packer pep rally with some guys from the shop,” he said. “We were all drinking schnapps and screaming and I lost my head. . . . It was impossible to bet against the Packers in that atmosphere.”

  It was true. Leach was a bad drinker and a junkie for mass hysteria.

  “They’re going to kill me,” he said. “They’ll be here by midnight. I’m doomed.” He uttered another low cry and reached for the Wild Turkey bottle, which had fallen over and spilled.

  “Hang on,” I said. “I’ll get more.”

  On my way to the kitchen I was jolted by the sight of a naked woman slumped awkwardly in the corner with a desperate look on her face, as if she’d been shot. Her eyes were bulged and her mouth was wide open and she appeared to be reaching out for me.

  I leaped back and heard laughter behind me. My first thought was that Leach, unhinged by his gambling disaster, had finally gone over the line with his wife-beating habit and shot her in the mouth just before I knocked on the door. She appeared to be crying out for help, but there was no voice.

  I ran into the kitchen and looked around for a knife thinking that if Leach had gone crazy enough to kill his wife, now he would have to kill me too, since I was the only witness.

  Suddenly he appeared in the doorway, holding the naked woman by the neck, and hurled her across the room at me. . . .

  . . . Time stood still for an instant. The woman seemed to hover in the air, coming at me in the darkness like a body in slow motion. I went into a stance with the bread knife and braced for fighting.

  Then the thing hit me and bounced softly down to the floor. It was a rubber blow-up doll: one of those things with five orifices that young stockbrokers buy in adult bookstores after the singles bars close.

  “Meet Jennifer,” he said. “She’s my punching bag.” He picked up the doll by her hair and slammed it across the room.

  “Ho, ho,” he chuckled. “No more wife beating. I’m cured, thanks to Jennifer.” He smiled sheepishly. “It’s almost like a miracle. These dolls saved my marriage. They’re a lot smarter than you think,” he nodded gravely. “Sometimes I have to beat two at once, but it always calms me down, you know what I mean?”

  Whoops, I thought. Welcome to the night train. “Oh hell yes,” I said quickly. “How do the neighbors handle it?”

  “No problem,” he said. “They love me.”

  Sure, I thought. I tried to imagine the horror of living in a muddy industrial lot full of tin-walled trailers and trying to protect your family against brain damage from knowing that, every night when you look out your kitchen to check out the neighbor’s unit, there will be a man in a leather bathrobe flogging two naked women around the room with a quart of Wild Turkey. Sometimes for two or three hours. . . . It was horrible.

  “How is your wife?” I asked. “Is she still here?”

  “Oh yes,” he said quickly. “She just went out for some cigarettes. She’ll be back any minute.” He nodded eagerly. “Oh yes, she’s very proud of me. We’re almost reconciled. She really loves these dolls.”

  I smiled, but something about his story made me nervous. “How many do you have?” I asked him.

  “Don’t worry,” he said. “I have all we need.” He reached into a nearby broom closet and pulled out another one, a half-inflated Chinese-looking woman with rings in her nipples and two electric cords attached to her head. “This is Ling-Ling,” he said. “Screams when I hit her.” He whacked the doll’s head and it squawked stupidly.

  Just then we heard car doors slamming outside the trailer, a loud knocking on the front door and a gruff voice shouting, “Open up! Police!”

  Leach grabbed a snub-nosed .44 Magnum out of a shoulder holster inside his bathrobe and fired two shots through the front door. “You bitch,” he screamed. “I should have killed you a long time ago.”

  He fired two more shots, laughing calmly. Then he turned to face me and put the barrel of the gun in his mouth. He hesitated for a moment, staring directly into my eyes. Then he pulled the trigger and blew off the back of his head.

  Among the many documents, manuscripts, personal papers and artworks that miraculously survived the Great Firestorm that swept the Duke Estate in the winter of ’88 was this one—a profoundly disturbing love letter that he wrote to his wife only sixteen days before his disappearance.

  The first few lines contain no warning of the madness and fear and lust that came more and more to plague him and dominate his life, as he felt his crimes coming back to haunt him.

  —THE EDITORS

  I was just joined by the rich and famous Mr. Screwjack, who ate the last of the tuna fish and gave me one of those head jobs under the chin, and then tried to coax me outside with him, but I refused . . . so he shrugged and went out by himself, into the cold and sunless dawn.

  He would rather have stayed inside with me—the two of us curled up on the couch together, watching Oprah Winfrey on TV . . . I could see it in his cold yellow eyes, a wistful kind of yearning for love that would have to wait, or perhaps could never be. . . .

  His whining drove me crazy as I carried him in my arms to the front door and just before I hurled his wretched black ass out onto the thin crust of snow that had settled on the porch since midnight, I lifted him up to my face and kissed him deeply on the lips. I forced my tongue between his fangs and rolled it around the ridges on the top of his mouth. I gripped him around his strong young shoulders and pulled him closer to me. His purring was so loud and strong that it made us both tremble.

  “Ah, sweet Screwjack,” I whispered. “We are doomed. Mama has gone off to Real Estate School and then to El Centro, and after that maybe even to Law School. We will never see her again.”

  He stared at me, but said nothing. Then he twisted out of my grip and dropped to the floor. . . . And then he was gone, with no noise, like some ghost from my other world . . . and I knew in my heart, as his dirty black shape leaped away from me across the woodpile and through that shadowy hole between the blue spruce tree and the cold silver grille of the Volvo, that I would never see him again.

  At least not for six years, and probably not then; and the next time we met he would weigh 200 pounds and flip me over on my stomach and fuck me from behind like a panther.

  Like my beast and my dolphin, my perfect dream lover, like that ghost that I must forget . . . and my beautiful little tattoo that will cost me $1500 to get burned off my shoulder with a laser needle.

  Forgive me Lord, for loving this beast like I do, and for wanting him so deep inside me that I will finally feel him coming on the soft red skin of my own heart . . . and for wanting to lay down beside him and sleep like a baby with our bodies wrapped into each other and the same wild dream in our heads.

  I am guilty, Lord, but I am also a lover—and I am one of your best people, as you know; and yea tho I have walked in many strange shadows and acted crazy from time to time and even drooled on many High Priests, I have not been an embarrassment to you. . . . So leave me alone, goddamnit, and send Mr. Screwjack back to me; and if the others have any questions or snide comments about it, tell them to eat shit and die.

  Who among them is pure enough to cast the first stone? Or to look on me with those rheumy courtroom eyes and say that I was wrong for loving a huge black tomcat.

  Never mind that, Lord. I can handle it. Just keep the lawyers off my back, and the pious . . . and leave us alone to make babies.

  R.D.

  At the depths of my social leperism I remember Duke’s strange letter. . . . And I am horrified to realize that I am fondling the cat. . . . We were smoking marijuana a moment ago, maybe for one or two minutes, and now he is acting wild. He is rolling his nuts at me for real this time, on his back in my lap and suddenly curling up to put his fangs on me. He uttered a low kind of whimpering sound, then he opened his mouth and grabbed the ball-muscle of my right thum
b with all four of those goddamn white fangs (I was stroking his navel, at the time) . . . and for one very high tenth of a second I thought the crazy black bastard was going to do it.

  I was typing, but once The Boy put his fangs on me, things changed. I stared down at him very intently from a distance of five or six inches (compounded by a factor of 1.25 by the specs). . . . So I felt pretty close to the beast when he suddenly curled up in my lap and began sinking his teeth into me.

  That’s how it felt. It was a very interesting sensation, because I believed it was really happening. This monster was actually going to puncture me, draw blood, and change our lives forever.

  Goddamnit! I thought. You fool! I trusted you, but I was wrong. You’re no better than that punk Mailer fell for . . . and now I must cut your head off. . . . And then the beast said “nevermore.”