Tuesday, May 29, 2012

canyon, los angeles


think this is it. final draft. i like it.

Downpour
Damndest thing.  One drop. Then another. And another until it stippled the ground black, moistening Ellroy and I with rain. But the sky was clear. Cloudless, thick with warmth. I needed a walk. We needed a walk. Sleeves down, scraggly, unbuttoned, down past liberty port tattoos and a deep breathe. Long and slow – just like Doc taught me. Three in a row.  Heartbeat tempers, lungs full of oxygen, rain be damned. We push out.
Twenty minutes earlier I was in an office. Small simple joint, laced with pictures. Her pictures – my boss. Always smiling, staring straight at the camera, pupils wide, unblinking. We were at a crossroads, I hated my job, she hated me, and a transfer was in the works. A different location, different superior, same old shit. I was angry. Not necessarily at my boss or the job, but at the handwriting on the wall.
Fast and loose was my mantra, and it had worked up until a year ago.
I’d given up the ghost, said adios to writing, to film, and hello to retail. Albeit upper-level management, the world was still “sell.” Unfortunately wordsmithing just wasn’t panning out. Gigs here and there, film festivals, a few commissions, but never enough. So I branched out. Sold out. Took passion to the pasture, suffocated the scribe. Before I knew it, I was tending rabbits by the river. And I knew it was wrong. Knew if I kept it up, someday I’d end up with a pistol pressed against my temple. Nonetheless, I’d been locked into a straight job. Responsibilities abounded. Cheeks sore from forced smiles. Fluorescent light. Polished linoleum. Covered and aligned packages of a million different cereal boxes. Pampers; pushing product; playing nice – it all overwhelmed me. Twisted my guts. Even the latrines, typically delegated to respite, provided no solace. No, no. Cold aluminum horseshoe lids stuck sticky against my khakis. The roar of bright bleached bulbs overhead exposed every flaw, every imperfection – a quick glance in the mirror and it was clogged pores and blemishes, ingrown hairs. Hands shaking, gripping the sink, heartbeat kicked in overdrive, sweat pouring past my brow, pooling in my eyes. I wanted to cry. Wanted to flush myself down the drain. Just get away, far, far away. But I was stuck, tethered like a fetus, mainlining sustenance. I did not know what to do.
Ellroy is a dog. An eight-pound dachshund dog. He’s three years old and believes himself a boy. In fact, he is my boy. A furry little boy stuck in a furry little dachshund body. We walk, he leads. Quarterbacks our expeditions, if you will. Eight-pounds of pup escorting 195-pounds of former Marine. Nevertheless, we walked the walk that day, peppered with rain, taking our time. The air was rich, smelled like earth and fresh cut grass. Los Angeles smog smothered en route – Mother Nature doing her best, washing what we She could. Rounding a bend, Ellroy bolted, barreled into the underbrush of a nearby canyon. Took off after him, but the little bugger was damn fast – he had caught a scent.
I called out. Yelled. Ran. Skidded down an ice-plant slope, nearly sheared by errant glass bottles and automobile detritus. FWOOMP! I hit hard – the canyon’s lost world taking me by surprise.
It was green, so green. Trash – mostly booze, dead Christmas trees, tires, and a shopping cart – all intertwined with viral-like weeds. A moment to take it all in – the dull roar of traffic setting an unusual tone. And then I heard it, a scream. A little boy confronted by something aghast. Parted weeds, busted beer bottles under-toe, I found a bristling Ellroy, and his cackles raised high.  He continued to bark as I approached. A boy’s bark. Pushing further, I saw what Ellroy was seeing. It was ugly. 
En Route
Years ago. Darkness illuminated by orange and white – artillery shells pounded a little town named Al Nasiriyah, Iraq. A Master Sgt – like Meriwether Lewis, perched on the hood of a HMMV, declared war in the name of the US Marines. It was the first time for me. Lost my virginity on the side of the road. Awkward – very. Tense – yes. He had been inside a Toyota. New model. Dead not too long. Slumped against the steering wheel in a rather unnatural position. His face was peeled off to a certain extent and blood congealed between his unshaven cheek. The gray blazer he wore to the end of the world was shot full of holes. But no blood there. Flies. Two million flies assembled on his back, on his face, on his hair. From what I could tell, he was middle-aged. Perhaps a guy fleeing from the approaching American Invasion launched a few days prior. He was late. And he paid stiffly, serving as a warning to all those who passed his gruesome corpse. He must’ve given many a young man their first glimpse of death in a war that would last many years. I imagine there are quite a few veterans who sit up at night thinking about the man in the gray blazer. His new Toyota. The steering wheel splattered with blood and spit. His stubble poking through red, still growing. I do.
Brett T.
Ellroy nearly squirmed out my grip several times before I managed to pop a safe squat in the undergrowth. Hand over his muzzle, sitting in my lap, Ellroy and I looked down on a crumpled figure of a woman. An older woman. Clad in denim and dirt, missing a shoe. A stocking foot jutted from under a dingy pair of Wranglers.
Ellroy and I sat silently. The pooch eventually tired of the escape and remorsefully sat between my legs. There was static in the air. An electricity of silence – the city above muted, encapsulated by an unsightly reality. This woman – someone’s mother, sister, cousin – she lie in the weeds of suburban Los Angeles, dead and steaming. Body stiff by the time we met, presumably dead for some time. Up above, the traffic hummed, the metropolis chugged away. But these were the facts:
A woman was dead.
She had been for days.
She wore tattered clothes. Filthy, stinking clothes.
A grocery bag nearby revealed a toothbrush, soap, and pills.
A Jehovah Witness “bulletin,” well travelled, dog-eared and grubby, was rolled tight with rubber bands.  A bible, Gideon-type, same condition, lie nearby.
A name: Brett T. It was scribbled inside the bible, Gideon-type. Several pages had been ripped out. No particular order, just torn clean. Ellroy remained calm. His nose tilted up, herky-jerky. Wet sniffer twitched, invisible calling cards drifting past, his eyes opened wide. Then he became restless. Twisted.  Whined. It was obvious he had caught another scent. Ellroy patrolled the surrounding area. Discarded what he deemed useless; he quickly disappeared into waist-high weeds.
The smell stays with you. Human death is sweet, acrid, and for many, disturbing to the core. Like burnt hair. Charred toenails. And there is nothing worse than smelling the dead before bed. Bad seeds eager to germinate. So I left. Searched out Ellroy and found him some ten-feet away, nose to the ground. Taco Bell wrappers lead to a raised portion of canyon. Cattails obfuscated several sheets of cardboard. There, Ellroy halted, looked at me and sat still. I inched up, right close to the pressed paper. And there, tunneled into the limestone wall, abutting the second largest city in the world stood the entrance to a cave. The genetic code inseminated by Neanderthals so many generations ago, was suddenly thrust in my lap. This was her home. A cave. Brett T., most probably homeless, living on the fringe, had been living inside a cave along a main thoroughfare in the City of Angels. We entered cautiously – Ellroy sensed my apprehension. I called out. No answer. My iPhone powered up, it guided us inside. Dark, dank, and smelled like sweet onions. A laundry basket up front held foodstuffs. A pillow, damp, crusted with stains, hugged the wall. Bottles, aligned and empty, mostly booze, mostly malt-type encircled the floor. Ellroy and I pushed further, deep into this bizarre domicile, right up to the back wall. And that’s where I found it. Leather-bound, cracked with age. A time capsule pulled from 1978. It was not easy reading the first few pages.
Blue Birds
The bodies were stripped of clothing, shoes, some sporting erections, others blank-faced and mouths agape. This was my Second Act. No time to sit and wax poetically. It was time to go. Hard-boiled was the tone. “Blitzkrieg,” was the gambit. Up and around marshes, Bedouins side-eyed the massive trail of American vehicles. Marsh Arabs waved. Little girls still pretty, sans burkas. The boys helped old men – pushing carts full of booty. Artifacts. Microwaves. Televisions. Circumnavigated several small villas, rolled into a nameless hamlet of mud huts along the Tigris.  Old, perhaps ancient. We halted in place – food and drink before Baghdad. The Combat Operations Center went up.  The Marines dug in. The sun went down. The sky a fiery copper, and just so damn pretty. 360 degrees of security set. 240 machine-guns; SAWs; fragmentation grenades; new batteries for our night vision; Grunts fat and happy – bellies full of dehydrated vanilla pound cake. The adjacent town had been cleared – so they said. Only “friendlies,” but we wanted to make sure. The usual suspects gathered: the Texan, Arab Translator, and several shit-bird Lance Corporals. All trigger pullers. All anxious for our story. The bars, the women, the friends wondering if it could’ve been them. So we left. Armed to the teeth, over-killed on grenades, ammo and honed blades.
Contact Right! A BMP – Russian troop carrier, gutted. Still smoking. A round detonated from the heat. Some pencils, pens, a button here and there, shreds of clothing, food. Still smoking. What happened to the poor bastards manning the Soviet hand-me-down? We found them a short time later. Pieces. Teeth. Molars. A canine. Pieces. We pushed on. An abandoned bungalow begged us to bust in. Large parlor, a mirror shattered, potatoes still in the pan. Clothing was scattered, personal particulars askew.  Something caught me eye – tiny stones. Lined up along a windowsill, baking in the sun, stamped with script. “Prayer stones,” said the Texan.  I took one. Clay or compressed sand. Maybe limestone. Hell if I know, but I’ve still got it. We left, headed towards another bungalow. Empty spare an aviary, brimming with parrots. Parakeets to be exact – blue and yellow and green. Chirping away like there wasn’t a war on. Some rigid on the cage floor. Tried to take a few out. Free them. But as soon as I grabbed one – crunch! The sonofabitch clamped down on my hand like it was going out of style. So I left, leaving the door ajar. Headed towards the river. Past a palm groove that obscured thousands of enemy artillery rounds (future IEDs). Dates clung high up under massive fronds. Tree tops seared by rocket fire. It’s a Mailer novel –  “The Naked and the Dead.” And then we saw them. Little old ladies. White fabric in hand, waving, forced smiles. Ugly as sin. Teeth yellowed and missing. Breath – a pungent odor of garlic and weeks of mutton. Such an ugly place Iraq, I remember thinking. The Translator asked their business. “Salvaging personal things.” Where were their men? “Gone, maybe dead.” They whispered to one another. More strained smiles, heavy accent: “Fuck Saddam,” said one little old lady, leader of the pack. Couldn’t help but laugh. “Yeah, fuck Saddam,” I said. The Marines cleared the house as the Translator and I watched the old gals. “Siddown,” I said. They sat. We fixed our M-16s in their general direction. “No more Saddam,” said the ringleader. No more Saddam. How absurd. These little old ladies seated on dirt, assault weapons pointed inches from their heads, on the order of a 23-year old punk – me. Looked down at them – homely, scared, just living life on the Tigris. Something that’s been done for a millennia. KA-BOOM! Impacts. Couldn’t tell if they were incoming or outgoing. The tone shifted. Anxiety amplified. I was a kid again – the little old ladies saw it in my eyes.  WHOOMP! WHOOMP! WHOOMP! Huey’s piled past, sucking air, engaging targets. Could only imagine what was going on in these little old ladies heads’. These kids with their guns. These mind-rattling explosions. Our homes sacked by infidels. It was a shit fest to be sure. But they’d slice my throat given the chance. Given the knife. Given the opportunity. And this is why I must point my semi-automatic rifle inches from your gourd, ma’am. I’m sorry. Honest. It’s all just so goddamn ugly. But I can’t apologize now. Nope. Maybe someday. When it’s settled and there’s a Starbucks on every corner – someday. I can explain why I treated you like a dirty dog. But not today. Today is war. And my burden is staying alive. Suddenly glass shattered. A door was kicked in. Wood splintered. Pots and pans tumbled, rumbled. A sickening feeling surged out my gut, up my esophagus, caused me to suck at my teeth. “Hurry the fuck up numb-nuts,” I said. A beat or two. Maybe three, but us numb-nuts eventually headed out. KA-BOOM! A direct hit. The Tigris exploded, sprayed water high, falling in droplets. Mist suspended in air. I could taste it. It coated my face. It made my heart race. Another impact pounded the earth. The ground rolled like an earthquake. Something beyond a single man’s control and it was scary. WHOOSH! “Oh shit,” I said. And the fear set in. Real fear. But this wasn’t reality – we all knew this, we all said this. This was a movie, our movie. Lets leave, go home. Negative – feces was really hitting fan by now, Marines scrambled out bungalows, goats going ape, projectiles screamed overhead. Fear ratcheted to panic. Mother! Father! Band of Brothers! Tom Hanks! Get your ass over here and save me too! Write my epilogue, sir, and say it rustic-like, with self assured confidence – “20 years with the Postal Service, three kids, a good dog, a good boat, a good woman, died in his sleep with a shit-eating grin at 85.” But I’m left in the lurch. Abandoned. The little old ladies got hysteric. Chickens, sans heads. They peppered our Translator with questions.
“Who was firing?”
“What should we do?”
“Where do we go?”
“What the fuck is all this?”
But we didn’t stick around. We had no answers. En route to our position, I could hear the parakeets chirping away. They sounded excited. I wanted to kill them.
Disjointed
She was crazy. Completely bat-shit crazy. Brett T. had been homeless for seventeen years according to her journal – which Ellroy and I recently discovered. She was 56-years old. A mother from Carlton, Oregon. She also liked Nutella – several empty jars were scattered about her cave dwelling as proof. I’d like to say Brett T. inspired me to follow my dreams. To take life by the balls. Live every day as it were my last. Yet, surrounded by the stagnant innards of a homeless woman’s existence, I longed for annihilation. A quick, painless, stop-the-inevitable-downward-spiral death. And an In-N-Out cheeseburger.
War Drums
The sun filtered through white whippets of smoke. It was late in the invasion – hope knee deep. A wooden fence post hung limp in my hand. An undefined flavor drifted throughout the forward operating base. Bacon; porterhouse; popcorn; gasoline and albacore. Troops instinctively avoided the epicenter of odor. And rightly so, several 55-gallons drums full of human waste roasted asunder. Excrement. Shit. Poo-poo.  A Forward Operating Base’s colon. And it was my job to dispose of said poo-poo via emollition. I can remember the crackle. The stirring. The incessant buzzing of flies – some of which would land on my face, my squinting eyelids, my ears. Thoughts abounded, mostly of home. Mostly a portion of coast off L.A. They call it Japanese Cove. Overlooking the Pacific, it is untouched by gentrification, somehow remaining wild. It is a long, long stretch of land that goes for miles, bordered by steep cliffs and rolling hills of grain. Cottontail rabbits, stalwarts of the South Bay, dart past dogs, surfers and are generally left alone. Fighting formations of Brown-billed pelicans cast shadows along the rolling hills.  The sun dips just so, creating a silver-white sea, undulating gently. Year ago, a massive hunk of driftwood had wedged itself against the tide pools – coral and sea creatures cementing themselves solid, locking the timber in place. You must prostrate yourself along the smooth edge of the wood, drenched in warmth, eyes closed, a deep, deep breath, and the heart will relax…completely. Some seals may bark off yonder, but don’t worry they won’t attack. And if you lie still long enough, the tide pools will come alive. Hermit crabs fight for land, stealing one another’s homes, tumbling down deep crevasses. Anemones encapsulated by warm salt-water bend with the sea. Orange starfish sprinkled purple; hang like graffiti along the abutments. Rockfish. Tiny babes wandering a world of hazard. Don’t think about that though. Just let the sun hit you and the breeze cool you and lock eyes with a pretty little tide pool, and I’m telling you, it could end right then and there. And you would be fine. Content. Anyways, that’s what I was thinking about that day, many years ago, burning shit. If I survive this, that’s all I want. A place in the sun, near the sea.
Departure
Ellroy was the first to exit Brett T’s cave. Her journal was barely readable.
Mostly rants. Nothing salient. No details. We walked several yards from Brett T’s, corpse, and took fresh air. It did not help. Not much, at least. I could still taste Brett T. Shortly after calling the Fuzz; I tried to make sense of things. We left the inner city, driving west. Salt was in the air.
Warmth
It hit the spot. A fine cheeseburger to be sure, yet I was distracted. Brett T., the cave, the past few hours of my life – an “Afterschool Special,” in need of an explanation. Ellroy was stumped. He hadn’t a clue. I explained to him where I was – a pivotal point in my life. A tipping point of sorts – ditch wordsmithing, embrace retail. Dreams were for kids and the lucky ones. And luck rarely lasts. Only survives so many firefights and IEDs. I came out alive. Every digit intact. Many aches. Few pains. But such was life. Spy the Greatest Generation: storming Normandy, scaling sea walls, hand-to-hand with Gestapo, green hells at Guadalcanal. But then what?
It Also Rises
I pulled up along the coast. We got out – rucksack sitting high up along my back. Ambled the path, humped the hill. Ellroy quick on the crabs, I found my piece of driftwood. It had changed, eroded a bit, but still jutted out along the coast. The sun felt good against my bare chest, skin browning, and sweat beading. I took out a pad of paper and began writing. It had been awhile, but the rhythm returned. My hand cramped and I rubbed it several times, tendons eventually loosening, prose eventually flowing. This went on for quite some time. Before I knew it, a big yellow moon had crept above the sea, casting just enough light for me to finish the second act of story I had no idea would end.