THE RAINBOW RUN
a tale told by Wild Goose
The evening had started out easy, Saturday night, dead winter. Jimbo and I were up here, Jance Creek, sipping 'Big Cat' and blowing some good weed. I had gotten out the Go board and had just put the new Buddy Guy tape my baby brother Maxwell had sent up just that week on the trusty Ampex reel to reel when we heard them tearing up the old stage-coach road, gearing through the muck to pull up outside. It was Larry Sutter, and he had Lasker and Mack Maston with him too.
Now Larry was a poet, had been driven mad by Artaud long ago. Could do a damned good imitation of Lord Buckley when he got the juice on.. Had sung tenor. Denver, Colorado. Lasker ran a gypo logging outfit out of the hills around here, and Mack, well he had finally gotten it together, bought his own cab and trailer and would be hauling Lasker's logs come spring. Strange crew, may I say.
They busted through the door yelping and a'hollering, Mack holding up the fifth of Old Crow for all of us to see. Jimbo and I stared across the Go board, shrugged our shoulders. It's the rain you see, twelve days of it that time, and all of us had been sitting it out in our shacks, balling our old ladies and getting doped up. Going crazy. It's like a massive dose of the clap, cabin fever. You can't do anything.
I got the lid I'd stashed behind the dictionary and flopped it down on the table. Found the wheatstraw and handed it to Lasker.
"Roll some up."
He did, too. Five big fat ones. And I know we finished off that Old Crow before we got out of there. They'd forced me onto the banjo, had gotten up my 'one big union' blood, and I sang them "Harlan County Blues" the way I had copped it off Mike Seeger's record.
A bunch of fellas, the other night
Over to Harlan went
Told me 'bout the time they had
The Time in jail they spent.
Most of the fellas were like me
And didn't go along
If 'ya want to hear the story, boys
Just listen to this song.
It was the night of the "great sodomy trial," I remember that much. We had put Jimbo up in the straightback chair, put him under the hanging light of our makeshift witness stand. Larry played the small town hick lawyer, working defense, wiping his face with his huge bandanna. Lasker, of course, was the D.A. out of the county seat as Mack played jury to my judge.
"Your honor... (...) ... The court sets out to prove, that, on said night, the defendant was, indeed, found, in the shed he keeps for such purposes, wantonly, ...and openly, performing an act of copulation with said goat, Netta...!"
"Your honor. I object! Said goat Netta should be known, on the record, as a sensitive and..."
"Objection over-ruled. I have known said goat intimately and..."
God knows how that one worked out. We did get out of there cushioned in the Falcon sedan Larry had traded off of Lasker in exchange for building the major construction in and around that year, the new kennel for Larry's crazy pack of hunting hounds.
"Owooooh!"
You didn't have to be drunk that night
To get throw'd in the can
The only thing you needed be
Was just a union man
The Falcoon, as Larry called it, had belonged to Lasker's father, was in reality still being held in estate, a fact that was later to save our collective asses when Mack finally stood before the district judge taking the rap.
"In this matter of vehicle code violations 20016, 20023 and 34: missing muffler, inoperative turn-signals and cracked windshield..."
"I am afraid, your honor, that the registered owner will not be able to appear today because, you see, your honor, he is dead."
"I'm sorry to hear that."
Larry drove. Got as far as Lewis' Green River Farm before the screams of "Piss call! Piss stop!" came pouring out of the back seat.
Now, Larry and I know Lewis a little bit, can appreciate the idea of all of us taking a leak outside his front gate. He's sort of a Zen freak, built this place into a real miniature Tassajara meditation center. When you're hitch-hiking, and you're lucky, you might get stuck here waiting for a ride. Hear the clunk of a slamming hammer against the block of wood. You might mistake it for the sound of chopping wood, but, if you listen closely, it all comes out rather strange.
"Clunk." Followed by thirty seconds of nothing stirring but the birds.
"Clunk." And another protracted period of silence.
"Clunkclunkclunk... clunkclunkclunkclunk."
A very insane sound.
If you went up to the formidable wooden fence he's built surrounding this medieval estate, tip-toed up and peeped over, you'd find him there in his loin cloth, stanced under this little redwood shake awning stretched between two gargantuan split posts sprouting in the middle of his yard. Concentrated in a blank stare, holding this huge wooden mallet to his chest he waits another long moment before pounding shit out of this block of redwood he's got on rope dangling down in front of him. I don't know. As he was often to point out, most of us had suffered a public education while he had gone to Brown.
Anyway, Larry appreciates all of this, and as the four of us get out to take a leak, he starts revving up the engine to amplify our illusion as pimply-assed teenagers violating the sanctuary. It is especially fine without the muffler. Sort of as a vintage Bird-Cage Masarati warming up in the long ago.
"Braaaam...braaaam...braaaaaaambraaamabraambraam!"
"Braaaam...braaaaaam...braaaaamabraaaaambraaaaam!"
And that get's Lewis up and running hoping to catch us in our act, stumbling through the mud with his kerosene lantern held high while philosophically inquiring, we can hear, "What the fuck! What the fuck!" Everybody piles in and, just to cap it off, Larry manages to screech away leaving an impossible stretch of burning rubber.
Down the road, coming into the Pigmy Forest, things develop more insane.
"Fawamp! Fawampfawampwamp."
Larry pulled over with the flat tire and we all clamored out, eager to help get ourselves back on our way, when Larry, in a very quiet and soothing tone, laid it on us, the facts of life.
"Well, men, I'll tell you the situation. I think I've got a fair spare. It's in the trunk. The key for that trunk is sitting, right now, on the dresser in my bedroom. If however, as would make sense at this time, we rip out the back seat and get this perhaps ok tire, I am afraid I have neither the jack nor the lug wrench we might possibly find of assistance. I leave it to you, my friends, to decide on the course of action."
Inspired by his oratory, one of us suggested we hitch-hike into town. Another senator proposed we lay back and await a passing vehicle hopefully better equipped. All this democracy really disturbed Larry. His eyebrows went into a tight little knot and as he took things under control he screamed, "Get in, motherfuckers!" We did. Hopped to. And Larry drove the remaining seven miles into town.
"Fawamp! Fawamp! Fawamp! Fawampwampwamp!"
Even in the pale dim of our one operative tail-light we could make out the smoke trail of our burning rubber, catch sight of bits and pieces of tire stuff as they flew off and up into the night, tearing apart in ever larger chunks as Larry gear-roared into the curves and on out of the flat. Coming onto the highway, the hitch-hiker stranded there, leaning into the road with his thumb hanging out, dived for cover as we passed him by, the racket jumping a few octaves and hitting the metallic.
"Bealam! Beeeaaalamlamlam!"
Jesus! It looked to be the whole rear end right there! The car was doomed to lose it's asshole!
Pulling into the gas station, the eyes of the kid attendant really did bulge, something I had never seen before. We got out and looked at it. Astonishingly, there were actually two strips of rubber left. Complete. Just nothing in-between. You could have worn them like Honalulu leis.
Larry arranged a credit deal, something he's very good at, and we left the car there with the kid to receive it's new appendage. Larry had the drawn look of a concerned dad leaving his kid for a tonsillectomy.
"Don't worry now."
"This really is a hospital."
"They know how to take care of her." we reassured him as we meandered the walk to the hotel, our waiting room, the bar.
This gets nice. I guess because I really didn't know any of them that well, especially Jimbo. We all drank for a long time. God knows where the money came from, I think Lasker was flush. Anyway, whoever had a five put it on the bar and it became community property, you know.
"A brandy, please." That's Jimbo.
"Old Crow!"
"Rye on the rocks and another draft. If you please."
"Make that two!"
"Olympia!"
A lotta' energy getting out.
The bartender is a rather strange dude. He's got his black vaselined hair combed back into a duck-tail and he's too short for his size he's in. A frustrated mastiff disguised as a miniature terrier. We don't help much. Lasker keeps beat to the jukebox he's plugged a fistful of quarters into. Adventuresome as always, he must of selected three tunes if that and I don't think the bartender was particularly fond of either of them. The straw fall though as I drop my chaser onto the wooden floor and it smashes into huge splinters.
"Another beer. If you please."
Billy Bartender hesitates. Wants out and waves a dismissive hand which gets Jimbo off his stool and on his feet. He strolls over to the scene of the accident and starts jumping up and down on the broken shards and grinds them into the floor before returning to the bar.
"Please. My friend. Another beer for the gentleman."
Jimbo, by advocation, was our fully frocked Episcopal priest, a deep river, and I really appreciated him skipping that stone on his waters so to speak. I had thought too often that all that brandy was a waste between his ears.
This goes on for a long, far too long time, and as I remember was deteriorating badly and bordering offensive. Larry had slipped out to retrieve the Falcoon and had returned to find us splurging on the last of the bucks when he realised that none of us had eaten anything for hours and hours and hours, something Larry very much likes to do. Not only that, but it had gotten late.
On the coast, things close down early. It's a drive, another ten miles, up to Fart Bag where they keep the big mill running and an all night diner. We made it. We only got stopped once by the Highway Patrol.
"Any beer in those cans you're holdin'?"
He's, of course, starin' through the window where Mack is at the wheel and at the six-pak we had divi'd up amongst us back at the hotel before pulling off.
"Why, why, no sir!"
To emphasize the point, we all finished off our brews and crushed our cans for him to view. Whew!
Lasker's got a lotta pull. His father was big stuff, even if he had been dead for three years. Maybe that explains the ticket for the muffler and the turn signals and that battered windshield and the fact they didn't throw us into the can right there. Maybe it was the times. Maybe just the chemistry of that night.
Anyway, we made it to the aforesaid all night diner. Ordered up our steak and eggs all around. In fact, Larry and I, famished, ordered up a refill on the faith one of us could pass off one of our checks on one of our long overdrawn bank accounts, but losing our nerve we just skipped, walked out dazed, fell asleep in the back seat of the Falcoon and hoped someone would take care of it.
I don't know what happened on that, but, damn if I didn't wake up to the rumble of the Falcoon pumping on back south towards Jasper again.
"Hey, the hotel's closed by now."
"Well, we ain't headin' home, that's for sure."
And goddamn if that car didn't fill with most godawful noise. The yelps and hollers as if everyone was as sober as when they'd come in my door.
Now, Rainbow, she's beautiful. I even read a year later, what was it, Herb Cain talking about it. How this famous movie star had fallen for her, had at least gotten it up, meeting her in Sausalito at the Trident where she was waitressing then. Anyway, she was more than the Evergreen Review ever gave anybody. Now Stan Winter was her old man at this time, a damned good electrician, and somehow he's Lasker's cousin and that is the man we are heading to see.
We pull into Jasper, and man, that town was closed down. We got onto the back streets, saw it, their place, and, damn it, it was true. The lights had been turned off long ago. Lasker says, "Fuck it, man, I'll just knock on the door."
He does, and damn if doesn't damn well get them up.
There's only five of us you see, and we're all there to see her. Stan takes us into the living room and gets us some stray beers out of the ice box, rolls up a few long slender ones, calls out to the bedroom.
"Hey, Hon, why don't you come out and join us."
"I am, I am. Just trying to put something on."
Lasker, grinning like a sonofabitch. "Ah, Rainbow. It's only your lovin' cousin."
She comes out anyway, still dreamy eyed and dressed in this leotard thing so fitted and sheer you can almost see feel her goose bumps. She is beautiful. A very beautiful woman, let me say. It doesn't take the nudies of her that Stan's got plastered all over the walls to us this either. We've all known her, serving waitress down at the fish place, and, on some, of course, it doesn't matter what they're wearing for you to see it. We're wearing erections, though, only in our mind's eye, if you know what I mean.
We all sit around and gab. Sip the beer and pass the joints around. Stan put on some Santana real loud and Lasker asked Rainbow if she would like to dance and she said yes, she would. She danced like a rainbow too. It was beautiful. Lasker doing his old bump and grind. It was too much. Pretty soon Mack is up there bumping and grinding right along with Lasker and Rainbow. It doesn't take too long before we're all into it, the five of us strutting around, making true beautiful assholes out of ourselves doing the funky chicken with this very fine chick. We'd wear out, some of us. Sit down and sip a beer, just watch the madness dance by. But she never quit. Danced the rest of the night away into the dawn.
We'd get back up. Join in again. Once, dancing with her slow, alone, the rest of them watching us, I held her tight, felt her body and fell in love. I suppose we all did. We all knew, somehow, that it was as close as we would ever get. See her later, smiling to us. Be able, finally, to really smile on back. It was the closest the five of us would ever get either. Dancing that crazy night away. Strange crew. Trucker. Our dear Episcopalian priest. Gypo logger, poet and thief. Time is like that.
I got out of there. Left them falling out on the sofa and the big stuffed chair. Larry and Mack curled up right on the floor. I made out to the headlands just as the light started to break. Waited for the earthquake.
Peter Black
(c) 1971