CONTENTS

 

                                            THE EXIT.......................................3

 

                                            HOMEWOOD GARDENS.............5

 

                                            BERZERKELEY.............................7

 

                                            SMITH'S MILL...............................9

 

                                            MOREHOUSE..............................11

 

                                            WHAT GOES AROUND..............14

 

                                            GARDEN TERRACE....................18

 

                                            THE STREET.................................21

 

                                            VERY CADILLAC........................23

 

                                            THE RUNNERS............................27

 

                                            "WHEN YOU CAN'T TRUST.."...30

 

FOREWORD

 

            This book is a true story.  Only the names have been changed, to protect the guilty. Travel with me on a search for freedom, then for love, then for wisdom, and then for God.  Survive the seventies, and the city, and the logging woods.  Meet the devil, and several good angels.  Make my mistakes with me, and learn the hard lessons I learned, without taking the risks I took.

THE EXIT

 

 

            He was a small, thin boy, barely five feet three inches, with wavy brown hair and brown eyes.  His left leg was three quarters of an inch shorter than the other, causing him to be slightly hunched-over.  He didn't know this, so he responded to constant comments about his posture by hunching his narrow shoulders upward to compensate.  At 16 years old, Jacob weighed only one hundred ten pounds.  He didn’t look like much of a match for his six foot, two inch, muscular foster father, a one hundred ninety five pound redneck mechanic.  This thirty four year old alcoholic’s bulbous nose turned red as his face formed the squinted, crazy look little Jacob had come to know too well.  Then he said it again, for what ended-up being the last time:

 

            “Bend over and grab your ankles!”  But this time was to be different: after four years of bending over this way, once or twice every week, to hold his ankles in silence while his foster father busted his ass with a two by four; three, four, sometimes ten times as he raved insults; it had all built up inside Jacob, and he finally exploded!  Hovering

six inches off the ground with adrenaline, he yelled:

 

            “Fuck you!”   Jacob simultaneously jerked the two-by-four form his startled tormentor's hand and shattered it over his knee, as if it was made of Balsa wood!  Jacob “saw stars”; He awoke bleeding on the hardwood floor of the old Victorian house.

 

            “Get up and clean yourself up,” raved Don.   Jacob's tongue had been between his teeth when Don's first connected with his fragile jaw, which was now badly broken, and his tongue was bleeding heavily.  Still, as Jacob washed the blood into the reddened sink, victory was brewing in his heart!   He knew that he would now be free! Jacob would run away tonight.  He knew he would eventually be caught or turn himself in with a busted jaw.  And he knew that he would not have to go back; and that was all that mattered for now.  That night, while everyone else in the house slept, Jacob packed some clothing into his small rucksack and slipped out he door of the basement room where he slept, never to return.  Jacob had beaten Don, and he knew it.  He was no longer the eleven year old Jewish “mamma’s boy” who had come to live with the family mechanic when his mother died.  Jacob had been lifting weights, planning this day.  He was no longer a boy at all. Jacob had become a man. He had been pushed to the point as to not fear the outcome of his actions.  Jacob vowed never to accept any abuse form anyone ever again. He was fierce, brave and reckless; rebellious and defiant!  He was ready, he thought, for whatever the world could dish out.  He had discovered the secret mindset of winners: fearlessness! He vowed never to forget.

 

            “Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red light...”  The young black boy's soprano voice echoed down the cold yellow halls of the juvenile detention center from the cell next to Jacob's.  Jacob wondered what kind of life this boy would have; what kind of life had he already lived? Yet he sang so well!  Jacob was humbled by the thought.  Jacob would only be here for a week or two, while he was processed through the system.  This seemed tough enough, since he had done nothing wrong, only to flee a bad foster home. But now, with absolutely nothing else to do, Jacob thought about how the boy's ghetto accent made him sound like he had a cold in his nose, and he wondered about the terrible circumstances which this poor black boy had endured only to end up here. Jacob counted his blessings.  He knew he was articulate and intelligent. He fully expected to have a good life, and to accomplish great things someday. Jacob would be a writer, he thought, after living a life to write about.  But what would this boy have?  Jacob wondered for hour after hour, vowing never to forget how lucky he was not to be this boy.

 

            Jacob had hitch-hiked until he found himself somewhere in South San Francisco. A nice, barely literate couple had taken him to their deli-style restaurant and fed him. They gave Jacob a job washing dishes.  They gently, but persistently insisted that he seek proper medical attention for his jaw and tongue.  After a few days, Jacob called the police and said:

 

            “I am a runaway; come get me.”    When Don came to get Jacob, the detectives

asked:

 

            “Your foster farther is here: would you like to talk to him?”  Jacob refused. The embarrassed Don promised, through Jacob's sister (who was his legal guardian) not to do anything to intimidate Jacob. Jacob finally agreed to go back for a couple of days to get his possessions.  He had been promised that he wouldn't need to stay.  His foster parents tried to make amends.  But Jacob maintained his position and held everyone to their promises.  Everyone apologized for the fact that Jacob would have to stay in the county juvenile detention center until a suitable alternative was found.  Jacob thought they were trying to scare him into staying with his foster home, which was not going to happen.  He was shocked when they actually put him in jail.  But he still remembered what life was like under Don's tyranny. Jacob would never endure those insults and beatings again.  He was pretty anxious by the time he was released and sent to Homewood Gardens, a Jewish group home a few blocks from Golden Gate Park and George Washington High School, where Jacob would now live and attend school.  Jacob would never forget the boy in the cell next door, who had been there for months, and who was still there when Jacob left; still singing:

 

            “Roxanne, you don't have to put on the red light...”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

HOMEWOOD GARDENS

 

 

            They were about as different from Jacob's foster parents as they could be.  “Chuck” was a bearded, slightly round, pipe-smoking intellectual with thick glasses, who had obviously always been a bookworm.  Lauraine was a medium - size, late middle age blond; a European-looking, menthol 100's smoking German, who almost always wore an angelic smile around the house.  Jacob was in heaven, except for putting up with the other boys, who were all a little childish or obnoxious in one way or another.  But there were rules and regulations controlling everything here; everything was spelled out fairly and exactly in a handbook.  Jacob knew exactly what he could and couldn't do; exactly what was required of him; precious little, he thought!   Most of the time he could actually do whatever he wanted, as long as his situation were known to Chuck and Larraine, and they had confidence in Jacob's judgment.  In fact, Jacob's new house parents were so amiable that Jacob often wondered if they really cared what he did, as long as he didn't disturb their obvious serenity.  Now Jacob almost always got his way, and he almost always prevailed in any dispute, because he caused fewer problems than his house-mates. This was quite a change from living under the iron-fisted discipline which Jacob was accustomed to.

 

            I must mention now that Jacob began getting very deeply involved with drugs. Judas, Jacob's little brother, who now lived in another Homewood Gardens house (for younger kids), had sent Jacob some marijuana in a box of cookies for Christmas, during Jacob's sophomore year at a boys' boarding school in southern California. The two had made plans during a Thanksgiving reunion, when they were reunited for the first time since Judas had returned form living with the estranged relatives on their deceased father's side.  Judas had grown up, until then, in New Jersey, in an inner-city school.  In contrast, Jacob had obtained a scholarship to a very exclusive school; the idea was to mix some smart, poor kids in with the “screwed-up” wealthy ones. Jacob earned the highest grade point average in the school his freshman year, a 3.9, and everyone concerned wanted him to stay there.  But Jacob wanted to leave so that he could go to a coed school; he wanted to be around girls!  So Jacob and Judas devised the plot so that Jacob could use that marijuana to get expelled, which would allow Jacob to return to the public school system. They tried a little that Thanksgiving, and again at Christmas, before Jacob plopped the remainder of the bad on the headmaster's desk. The headmaster offered to forget it, but Jacob insisted, and he was expelled. This is the only way Jacob could have left Midland.  It had been very convenient for everyone concerned, especially Jacob's sister and his foster parents, for Jacob to stay at that school.  They all felt good about Jacob's grades, and Jacob's absence was easier on them.  Jacob might have been better off if he had stayed.  But a sixteen years old boy's thoughts are filled with girls, and Jacob didn't like letting anyone make his decisions for him.

 

 

Anyway, in 1969, everyone was experimenting with drugs, and Jacob and Judas were not exceptions.  By now, Jacob was the school dealer.  Now, for the first time, he could wear his hair as long as he liked, and it was long and wavy; down to his shoulders.  He had a light mustache and side burns. Jacob became popular in school, something he really liked after being isolated in a boys' school. After a lifetime of being the littlest kid in school, the only Jew in class, the only kid with no dad (rare in those days), always the new kid (Jacob’s mother moved almost yearly until she died); now, finally, Jacob had his day. Now Jacob was cool! Jacob was now the “Fonze,” the center of attention.  Jacob walked two blocks to get to school at George Washington High School.  The teachers were out in front, carrying signs which said: “ON STRIKE” Nobody knew if the kids were in class or not.  Jacob spent most of his time in the dugout, under the bleachers.  There , Jacob and his friends drank beer, and snorted blue mescaline, and smoked cigarettes and pot, and took “Bennies.” They made fun of the system, the establishment, the government, the war in Vietnam, the teachers, their parents, and everything else which would bear criticism. Jacob thought he knew everything now!   His 3.9 G.P.A. fell to 2.9, to no consequence; he had the teachers' strike as an excuse, and only passing was required. Not passing would have been nearly impossible.  Jacob often carried a plastic bag of one hundred “hits” of Orange Sunshine (L.S.D.) in his sock.  Sometimes he would lose count and not remember

how many hits he had taken. Sometimes the acid was cut with speed, and he would stay up pumping iron; but his house-parents suspected nothing. In 1971, in the Spring of Jacob's junior year in High School, at seventeen, Jacob petitioned for, and was granted the right to become an “emancipated minor.”  He still had $235.00 per month coming in from the government for his support (until he was 18, if he stayed in school), which now came directly to him. He dropped out of school and rented a room in an old house with a community kitchen and bathrooms in Berkeley.  Now Jacob was a hippie.

 

 

BERZERKELEY

 

            Berkeley, California was a wild place in 1971.  Every convention of the rigid "keep up with the Jones's" society of the 1950's was being torn down.  Complete strangers would smile and say "hi" on the street, making eye contact instead of looking down. Parents and teachers grew their hair long and experimented with drugs. Uptight professionals quit their jobs and "dropped-out" to seek more "meaning."  The rigid moralistic society of the "depression babies" was out of style now, and everyone wanted to "tune in" and become part of the new "freedom." E.S.T. became popular, and the local water board found L.S.D. in Berkeley's water supply.  For better or for worse, the world was changing.   Everybody knew it, and Berkeley was the center of it all.

 

            Jacob's room had once been the living room of the old house on Parker Street. Strange single people lived in the other rooms. Jacob awakened each morning to a weeping saxophone; his neighbor upstairs was a black man who played for a living.  The neighbors across the street were real Hippies, with "Pot" plants on the back porch and all. Once a nineteen year old nymphomaniac from San Jose can home from a rock concert with Jacob.  She screwed him all night long, until he lost interest the next morning.  Then she went across the street and screwed all of them!  Jacob didn't ever really understand "free love."  He was always very dedicated and possessive.  But the people across the street were really "far out."  Once they blocked-off four blocks, by mutual consent, and created a week-long "block party."  It was like time stood still; a solid week of drugs and alcohol and rock-n-roll music.  It would have been illegal at any other place and time. But this was "Berzerkely."  Once, when the music got really loud, a 'cop' came by and took a hit off a joint, and asked them to turn it down! Jacob became his Hippie neighbors' portage'.  They schooled him in the "peace, love, stop the war" philosophy which was he glue that united them, and also was their excuse for whatever they wanted to do (or not do - like work).  John was actually a college student from a good Christian home in Cleveland, Ohio.  He lived with his wife and baby by preying on the system: he and his wife had student loans, and grants, and unemployment, and food stamps, and welfare, and pot. They made huge salads which everyone shared. John and his wife, Karen, introduced Jacob to wandering "brothers" who would sleep on Jacob's floor for a night or two:

 

            "Brother have you got this, Brother can you spare that?!"  Jacob didn't have much, but what he had, he reluctantly shared.  He tried to become a part of John's extended family. Jacob bought an old Ford Falcon Station Wagon, which became the communal group's main form of transportation.  Jacob participated in John’s daily clippings of the huge marijuana plants growing on the back porch, a special

privilege. When John's Hippie-friend from Cleveland invited John and his family to leave the city and come to the Olympic Peninsula in Washington to work in a shingle-mill ("back to the woods," sort of), Jacob was invited to come with John and his wife and baby (in the Station Wagon, of course), and Jacob accepted. That summer Jacob had learned to scorn the society which he felt he had never been a part of anyway. All his life he had felt like a second class citizen: an orphaned Jew amongst middle class white Christians and Ghetto Blacks. Before that, as a young child, he remembered hearing the bombs (above-ground nuclear testing) explode near Holoman Air Force Base, where his father worked a civilian Electrical Engineer. Jacob's generation was the one who participated in mock air-raids at school, when the children were taught to hide under their desks in the event of an air-raid; as if a desk could protect anyone from a nuclear bomb!  Jacob had watched his farther beat his mother's face in a fit of rage, and then leave, when Jacob was five years old.  His father went overseas and never returned, dying of cancer at 46. Jacob had watched as his mother, who worked for Lawrence Livermore Laboratories, and who would have to take a day off when her radiation badge turned-color, died of cancer when he was eleven. Jacob turned all his frustration with life against the society he had been left out of.  He embraced the most radical ideals. Jacob loved his Hippie friends and the ideas they promoted. For the first time in his unstable life of moving every year or two, and always being the new kid in school, he felt like he belonged.  He was actually having "fun."  He was finally "in-on" something.  Jacob wasn't stuffed away in some isolated boys school now; he didn’t' go home to a "group home." Jacob did not answer to anyone!   He was free and happy at last (he thought!)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

SMITH’S MILL

 

            May I speak to you for a moment, son?   The benevolent, gentle pastor’s face looked troubled.  Pastor Smith, as he was called, had become a magnet for the wayward kids who flocked to the old mill town called Sapho in converted school-buses and bread-vans, looking for a simpler life.  A general store, a group of rental shacks, and some skid-houses had been a ‘speakeasy’ during Prohibition, and now this old shingle mill, which ran powered entirely on steam generated from a large boiler fueled by waste wood from the mill’s eight sawyers’ tables, had become a livelihood for the community of counter- culture rebels.  Some of the non-materialistic views of these ‘hip’ youngsters went well with fundamentalist Christianity, and many a spaced-out adventurer had landed here to become “saved” in Pastor Smith’s church, and earn a living “piling blocks”, or “packing “ of “sawing” shingles in the old mill.  The air was thick with the sweet smell of cedar sawdust, as it always was, and it was a normal cool, cloudy, damp day.  The ear-splitting screech of the saws split the air in the background, punctuated by the mill whistle, signaling five minutes until the start of the next shift.  Jacob's hickory shirt was soaking  wet, and stained with sawdust, like the other, weathered-looking cedar veterans getting off shift after six hours of piling blocks. Block-piling was an entry level position which often caused a hernia or back problems.  The ‘block-pile’ job was to stand in a trench between the sawyers' tables and the old chain-style conveyor, and to flip three hundred pound blocks of cedar across from the conveyor to the tables.  Jacob was only five foot six inches tall,  So he couldn't balance the blocks on his hip, as was normally done; he had to lift them chest high.   Jacob was barely making it for the week he had the job, but he was now beginning to keep up.  Jacob and his friend John had started together doing odd jobs with the millwright. They had spent two weeks jacking timbers into the mud under the mill in order to straighten and shore-up the ever-sinking foundation.   John had not been as hard a worker as Jacob, and John was laid off when Jacob was promoted.

 

          "Sure, what's happened?"  Jacob asked, a little apprehensive.  Jacob had hidden his age.  It was illegal for anyone under l8 years old to work in the mill. Only John knew he was seventeen, until now.

 

          "It has been brought to my attention that you are only seventeen years old.  Son, I'm going to need to lay you off until you are eighteen."  Jacob's best friend, John, had just insisted that Jacob move the night before.  Jacob hadn't understood why he couldn't wait a couple of days until he found a place; all of a sudden he had to move right then.  Jacob had slept in the old Falcon wagon, wondering why, until now.  Now Jacob was without a friend, without a job, and without a home, all inside of twenty four hours from having had everything.

 

          "I understand," Jacob squeaked, holding back the tears, and he walked away, check in hand, head hung low.   He thought about how John had been abusive to his wife.  Jacob often took her side, which John didn't appreciate.  And now John had Jacob's job.  Jacob sadly resolved that he would go see his sister in Oakland, California; he would need to find a way to get by until he was eighteen.  Jacob vowed to return to his beloved Olympic Peninsula, to live out his dream, as soon as he was able.   He wept occasionally as he drove down I-5, back to the filthy city.

 

MOREHOUSE

The Institute of Human Abilities 

 

                        "Come work and live with us!   Become a counselor at The Institute of Human Abilities.  Ask for Mr. Roberts."  The ad caught Jacob's eye as he gazed at the Oakland Tribune on his  sister's coffee table.  Jacob's sister, Ethell, was a  benevolent crazy woman who never seamed to get a "handle" on her emotions.  Jacob found out years later that she had been hooked on prescription valium, prescribed by her multiple 

therapists.  Ethell had been thrown out on the street by her mother when she was seventeen years old, when Jacob was six.  She had been pregnant (no small matter in 1960!)  She had tried to commit suicide and had been periodically suicidal ever since.  Ethell was Jacob's legal guardian until he became an emancipated minor.  So Jacob now found himself standing in the entryway of the "main house" of the commune, a beautifully restored, ornate Victorian mansion.  The front porch and window dressings were decorated with intricate redwood moldings with carved cherubim, all accented with 

multiple bright colors and Goldleaf.  Inside, plaster "anaglyptus" painted in gold surrounded polished-brass gas chandeliers, which had been neatly converted to electricity.  Jacob studied the redwood woodwork and banisters, and luxurious velvet wallpaper, and oriental rugs on newly refinished hardwood floors.   He wondered why everyone seemed to know something he didn't, and he thought he heard peripheral giggling when he asked for this "Mr. Roberts."   Years later, when he was selling  cars, he learned that "Mr. Roberts" was a code identifying Jacob as a prospect.   Now he just wondered what was going on, and he felt a little uneasy.   He could smell sickly-sweet incense in the air, like the shaved-headed,  white robed "Hare' Chrishnas" would hand him when he walked to the University District.  The sexy dark haired beauty, with flaming red lipstick and rouge on her cheeks, had on a very short black skirt/white blouse French maid's uniform.   Jacob thought she obviously knew he was staring at her exposed butt while she walked away.  She returned with a dynamic looking, silk shirt guy named Mark. 

 

            "Let's have a cup," said Mark confidently, after a  brief, intimidating moment of silence, during which he stared directly  into Jacob's eyes without flinching.  Mark proceeded to explain  "Responsible Hedonism," as the commune philosophy was called, as Jacob and Mark were waited on by the French maid, who flirted with Jacob shamelessly with her eyes.

 

            " The story goes like this: Victor Bronco, and his close friend, Bobby, were 'tripping' out in Victor's back yard in Lafayette, and they started to discuss what business to go into next..."  Mark proceeded to explain how they had decided to go into the commune business: how Victor had written down his philosophy on life; sort of a cross between scientology and capitalism. Anything goes, and it's all your fault, one might paraphrase.  Mark laid out the rules: there was an initiation period during which the initiatee  was supposed to answer yes to anything he/she was asked to do. During this period, one would learn the rules and the philosophy.  Then, if still inclined, the new member would choose one of the houses and move in.  The houses were all on one street, in various phases of restoration.  "The Institute" made it's money in two ways: by restoring and then refinancing old Victorian homes utilizing free labor; and by "teaching" courses and encounter groups for the public.  Morehouse offered weekend seminars for self-improvement dealing with: sexuality,  which was actually taught in the nude in the  advanced version;  salesmanship (called "Hexing" and "Advanced Hexing");  and any other  "self help"  title which Victor and Bobby may dream up from time to time.  "Marks," as the prospects were called, paid between sixty and two hundred dollars per weekend for such titles as: "WEEKEND WITH VICTOR," and "WEEKEND WITH BOBBY."  Jacob had very  little to loose, and he joined, and lived in the commune/cult for almost a year.  He never really "bought-into" the philosophy, which  was built around allot of self-sacrifice and hero-worship.  But Jacob wanted to, and did, learn about sex; about human nature (or "stable data," as Victor called it); and about how people could be manipulated, and even totally controlled, using a few basic techniques.  In those days, most people were raised with strict Judao-Christian values, and it was easy and predictable to manipulate them by using their common fears and weaknesses.  Jacob was young, and a little shy when he went into the commune, but he was savvy and street-wise when he came out.  He eventually learned that anyone who really understood what was going on might start their own commune, but probably wouldn't join anyone else's.  Jacob brought his High School sweetheart to an Institute party, once: she ended up sleeping with a man who Jacob thought was his friend - a man in his late forties!   Jacob didn't know  until months later; he was the last to know.  She finally told him, after everyone else had known for months.  This betrayal crushed him.  Jacob felt that he had been repeatedly  deceived by everyone around him.  The lesson he thought he learned at Morehouse was that it is in fact a "dog-eat-dog world," one which he thought he understood, finally.  Jacob worked two full time jobs in order to save money to buy a car and leave Morehouse.  He "put" his peers “together," acting as if he just wanted work experience and some money, perhaps to buy a Morehouse,  while secretly plotting his escape.  Jacob worked hanging sheetrock in South San Francisco by day, and worked as a bellhop at the Emeryville Holiday Inn by night, commuting back and forth across the Bay Bridge, and sleeping  in-between.  After six weeks, he fell asleep on the night job and got fired.  By then, it was only two weeks more until he had saved enough to buy a 1969 Chevy Impala for $400. Jacob packed it with his modest personal property and headed for Washington,   back to his beloved Olympic Peninsula. Jacob had escaped the city again.  Height/Ashbury and "The U District" were not places decorated with colorful hippies anymore; these had turned into littered war zones, inhabited by junkies and cops and alcoholic bums. 

 

            Jacob never registered for the draft.  He was an atheist, he thought. The world looked to Jacob like one big, smelly, disgusting cesspool.  Everywhere he looked he saw sickness and deceit, pollution and garbage.  Mindless disco, which Jacob hated with an intensity which few people have for any issue, had replaced rock-and-roll as the popular music of the day.  What had started as idealistic rebellion in the sixties, quickly changed into disillusioned chaos in the seventies.  Jacob was afraid to eat the fish he caught off the Berkeley  pier.   No-one seemed to be on any idealistic search for meaning anymore. They all just wanted to hide and forget.  Jacob left for Washington, a survivor of the cesspool; headed for a cleaner, simpler life, he hoped.  The Chevy was a good ca 

 "WHAT GOES AROUND, COMES AROUND"

 

          "Old Joe," as he was called, had the biggest hands Jacob (or anyone else) had ever seen.  They were as big as a catcher's mitt; his fingers were over an inch and a half in diameter, and at least seven or eight inches long!  Gladdis, Joe's Indian wife, who was 70 years old herself, Jacob, and Joe sat at the old wood table and drank beer for hours. Gladdis and Old Joe were animated with wide eyes and hand gestures, happy to have a fresh audience to reminisce with and through. Old Joe had moved the skid house to the riverfront property by pulling it on skids.  These old shacks had become available as mills, whorehouses and log-camps closed down.  Joe could get them for free because they were to be burned otherwise.  Gladdis and Joe now lived in three adjoining ones, and rented a string of others.  Joe explained why his hands were so big: a hand-rolled Prince Albert cigarette hung from his lip as he told how he had started bucking 100 pound sacks of fertilizer onto a wagon in the early 1900's, when Joe was 12 years old.  The seventy six year old Hungarian squinted as he remembered, his still huge "baseball" biceps bulging from his T-shirt. He had subsequently become a trapper; he ran a trap-line for twenty years. Gladdis rubbed her twisted fingers as she interjected how she had terrible arthritis from those years of running trap-lines in the snow. They had saved and bought all this land when it was stumps, after it was clear-cut.  Now this ninety plus acres of riverfront property was worth allot, with mature Spruce and Hemlock second growth covering it.  But they would never sell it.  Now Jacob had taken the floor, gesturing with his hands and pacing, as he tried to communicate a complicated answer to a simple question:

 

            "...you see, my mother loved nature, and, although she died when I was only eleven, I still remember how she explained to me that she believed that,  when you die,  you become a part of all  things, a part of the spirit of life.”  Jacob paused as he took another swig of his beer.  "I think that there is a universal law of’ repricrosity', and that somehow whatever 'vibes' you put out,  that adds to that kind of vibes being around;  and, in some direct or indirect way, those same vibes have a tendency to bounce back and affect you positively, or negatively, as the case may be; so that if you put out good vibes,

you get back good vibes, and,.." Jacob paused because he noticed the old couple squint at each other,  and he mistook their hidden smirks for confusion:  "Do you have any idea what I mean," he asked.   Joe squinted at Gladdis, and she looked thoughtful for a moment, and took a patient swig of her beer.

 

          "Oh yea, you mean 'what goes around, comes around," she said.  The words seemed, to Jacob, to fall like bricks on the table,  and the old couple smirked gently, with kindly, all-knowing benevolence on their faces.

 

          "Uh, ja, uh - I guess it's really pretty simple, and obvious, isn't it,"  Jacob blurted out,  red faced, and embarrassed by how simply what he had attempted so smugly to communicate, could be said.

 

            "Why don't you get some sleep, you're gonna' need to be rested in the morning, you have a big day ahead of you," Gladdis is said.  She showed him to Joe's "trophy room," where he heard some very detailed stories about old Joe's triumphs as a hunter and trapper, represented by the magnificent racks, heads, and skins on the surrounding walls of the crowded room.  Jacob's dreams were filled with the stories he had heard that night. He had heard along story about all the hippies from Ohio, starting with John's friend, Rick, who had become the fireman at Smith's Mill and invited the others.  Jacob had listened, as he ate the delicious dinner;  all of it proudly caught, raised and preserved by Gladdis and Joe's own hands. The animated old couple explained how, at first, no one would rent to "long-hairs."  The loggers would tell stories of cutting of peoples' long hair with broken bottles!  They told how Rick had gone crazy with wild flashbacks from L.S.D., and how Gladdis, and Rick's young wife, had nursed him back to reality; and how they had joined Pastor Smith's church, and how well they were all doing; buying land, and eating healthy food.  Gladdis and Joe told how they hated the terrible herbicides, 24D and 245T, which were being sprayed along the roads and on the woods; and how it deformed the animals, and caused cancer in humans, and miscarriages, and deformed babies.                                                

           Jacob's cabin in the woods would be made ready to move into tomorrow, and Jacob would get up at four A.M. to be in Forks at five  A.M., to hire on "setting chokers."  Jacob would wear Joe's old size 11 "caulk boots", as they were called (three sizes too big), until he could get  paid, and buy his own pair of these very expensive logging boots.   Actually, Jacob slept very little. In the morning, he knew he would break-in in "the woods"; a one hundred and ten pounds light city-boy, who had lived his life on sidewalks, would attempt to make it as a cable-logger.  Jacob had a new short haircut and a fresh chance, but not much rest!

 

          Emil Smith looked allot like Old Joe; the two could be brothers. His hands weren't quite as big as Joe's,  but they were unusually large; and Emil had that same "hard day's work" look to him.  Emil was the hooktender (the boss 'out in the brush').  Emil had a steel plate in his skull where a "widowmaker" had hit him years ago.  (A widowmaker, as he explained, was a falling branch from a tree)

 

          "These woods ain't no good for you," Emil said.  He said it like he really meant it. "These woods ain't no good for nobody. You're a  smart boy, do something else!" The old, beat-up hooktender was really trying to do a small boy a favor.  Emil really, genuinely meant what he said about the woods being "no good."   But Jacob,  like so many little men,  had something to prove.  Being told he was too small or too young to do anything, only made him more determined.  

 

           "Give me one more week," Jacob pleaded: "I know I can do this!  I love the woods; I just need a little more time to build-up."  Jacob had hired-on a few days before, with Joe's oversize caulk boots, which he could barely walk in on flat ground, and less in "the brush."   This was what they called a "ground-lead show."   This meant that the"butt-rigging" (a giant fish swivel twelve feet long) was in the dirt.  The butt-rigging was dragged by a one and a half inch cable, and three, one inch thick, thirty foot long cables, known as chokers, were dragged by the butt-rigging, wrapped around it, and the  "mainline."  They were willing to hire "green" help here, because no-one else wanted the job.  The chokersetters were required to untangle the mangled chokers and set them on the logs, so that the logs could be "yarded" (pulled to "the landing").  This method was nearly outdated now. Other "outfits" were hanging "blocks"(pulleys) in trees, in order to get the chokers off the ground, which made the job much easier.  Emil was so impressed with little Jacob's determination, and so much in need of help, that he gave him another chance.  Jacob was week, at first, and clumsy in those oversize boots.  He was required to  pack blocks, some of which weighed over 135 pounds, on his 110 pound body, and somehow he did it.

 

          And, when Jacob got paid, he bought a new pair of Westcoast caulk boots.  He bought "rigging pants," and suspenders, and he "staged-off" his pants, so he didn't trip on the brush anymore.  (You would have to actually see what is left after a northwoods hillside has been cut down, and "bucked," to fully understand the tangled mess of broken, twisted trees referred to as "the brush.")  After six weeks, old Emil fired Jacob; he was still too small and too weak for a ground-lead show. So Jacob hired-on the next morning  with another company, one that paid more, as an experienced "hand."  This time he was teamed up with one experienced guy, on a “two men  in the brush" crew.  This "SJ7" was a small machine, which doubled as a loader, and which could yard logs small distances. This set up was  used for logging "right of way" logs; preparation for road building.  Jim Tremble looked like he trembled!  He was very skinny and sickly-looking, pale and thin; not at all what you'd expect a logger to look like.  But Jim knew logging, and he taught Jacob everything.  In the eight months which followed, Jacob worked ten hours a day, six or seven days per week.  Jacob learned all the whistles used to communicate with the yarder engineer from “out in the brush”.   He learned how to "make a layout," and "change roads," and do all the things necessary to get logs.  He learned to splice wire rope, sharpen a chain saw by hand, climb a tree using spurs and a climbing rope, and hang a block.  He learned how to fall trees and buck logs; Jim taught him everything he needed to know.  Jacob grew two inches and gained sixty pounds.  He was now five feet eight inches tall and he weighed one hundred eighty pounds (solid muscle), and he was lonely.  And it was snowing. 

 

            Jacob now lived in the Vagabond Hotel.  This historic landmark was a 100 room hotel,  four stories high,  with a rustic community bathroom (sink and tub only) on each floor. In years past, the hotel had been a whorehouse, but now it was home to many a "rigging tramp."   The restaurant downstairs fed the young boys and old alcoholics their  huge breakfasts, and sold them pre-packed lunches and cigarettes and Skoal. The loggers who lived here spent most of their paychecks here.  Jacob would never forget sitting in the huge porcelain tub, with it's cherubim feet, after a day of battle with the brush; watching the fir needles float around , scraping the black sap and dirt which was em- bedded into his wrists after a day of logging.  It was November now, and Jacob hated working in the snow.   There were not any eligible girls available in Forks, a town of eight thousand people supported by forty-two logging companies.  Jacob decided to return to the city for the winter months, to try to find a wife to bring back with him      next spring.   Jacob had a Couger XR-7, with a Mercury 390cc V-8 and a four barrel carburetor.  It was a beautiful maroon car, covered with chrome.  He packed up his modest personal possessions and headed back to the San Fransico Bay Area,  a different person from the boy who had left there a few months before.

 

GARDEN TERRACE

 

 

          The painfully skinny, flat butted, dark haired, balding diabetic looked pretty wimpy in a bathing suit.  But he seemed very adult and savvy, and a little dangerous, and exciting to the three fatherless brothers.   He had befriended them that summer by the pool-side of this upscale apartment community, where Jacob's two brothers lived, and Jacob was staying.   This mysterious "landsman" gambled all night, and he usually showed up at pool-side, drink in hand, at about 1:00 P.M. daily.  He had once been a lawyer, or so he said, and now he played cards for a living.

 

          "Tell me about yourself, Jacob, where have you been the last couple of years?" John's curiosity was aroused by Jacob's wildness, and apparent lack of direction.  Jacob couldn't say what he would do next; what he wanted, or where he was going.  Jacob had a tan deep enough to be a Mexican (he sunbathed while others worked).   He looked like someone’s depiction of Jesus, muscular, with no body fat.  Jacob proceeded with his fascinating stories by the pool-side..

 

            "Then, when I got back, the second time, I looked up Larry Steinbury, this hip' guy I knew from Homewood Garden, the group home I told you about.  I stayed with him awhile and shared the rent in a small apartment.  We got high a lot and listened to rock-n-roll, and dated.   I had a job for a while hiking cars, and then parking cars in a downtown garage.   I had some money, three thousand dollars, coming to me from my dead fathers' estate.   I had to sue my sister to get my hands on it, (she wanted me to wait).  So I had to pay the lawyer thirty percent, but I still got over $2,000.  Right before I got the money, I got into a relationship with a beautiful, seventeen year old daughter of a doctor, and I bought a Corvair and brought her back north in it.  We were engaged.  I went to work for Earny Nielson, a highball logger who always paid more than anyone else in town."   Jacob paused to take a drink.  His two younger brothers and several

sunbathers were now listening.   "Old Joe actually got some of that, I think!  'Turns out this girl was a stone-cold junky!   When I was at work, she was out doing god knows what with whoever,' to get her hands on whatever!!"  A nearby sunbather dropped his drink.   "I found out  when she got so sick she had to go to the hospital 'cause she hadn't shit for a week!"   Jacob suddenly realized how many sunbathers were fidgeting, and he lowered his voice.  

 

            "They are all cunts!" John whispered, "Only good for one thing!"

 

            "Yeah!"  Jacob's middle brother said.

 

            Jacob changed the subject back to himself: "Anyway, I came back the next winter - I'm a sunshine logger;  I hate working in the snow."

 

            "Really?," John asked, obviously enjoying the conversation, the bikini-clad scenery, and especially his drink.

 

            "Yeah, loggin' is tough enough in nice weather - anyway I stayed

with a friend for awhile and we dealt drugs and got really spaced out. I actually woke up on the beach, one time, fully nude, waiting for the spaceships to come get me!" All Jacob's listeners were on the edge of their chairs.  

 

            "Yeah, you always were so good with the ladies."  Jacob's brother, Judas, interrupted, nervous about the attention of his neighbors. 

 

            "How do you do it?"  Judas was trying to change the subject.

 

            "It's so easy," Jacob said, "Look over there, see that blond?"  A petite blond with wavy butt-length hair had on an exaggeratedly skimpy string bikini, with her ass shoved up in the air by the shape of the lounge chair;  so you could actually see her pussy!

 

            "Yeah, I'd like some of that!"

 

            "Well, here's a joint, go ask her to smoke it with you!" Jacob nudged his brother's shoulder.

 

            "I couldn't do that in front of all these people!" Judas said. He was obviously not going to do it.

 

            "Sure you could," Jacob said, about to get up from his lounge chair.

 

            "Tell me about the spaceships; what's that about?!"  John interrupted.

 

            "Well, ever since I was little, I knew I was different, special, sort-of.  I was always smarter and quicker than anyone else, and I always thought it was for a reason."

 

             "Yes?" John coaxed Jacob on.

 

            "Yeah, and now we've got this T.V. thing, who knows who it is!"  Jacob's brothers fidgeted. "You were there!"  They had taken an acid trip the night before, which had scared the hell out of Judas and  his younger brother.

 

            "I don't want to talk about that!"  Judas exclaimed, "How can I screw that girl?!"

 

            "I already told you!"  Jacob said.

 

            "She won't go with me," said Judas.

 

             "Watch this,"  Jacob barked, realizing that his brother was too shy,  and he got up and walked over and stood behind her.  "Excuse me, mam', would you like to smoke a joint with me?" Jacob asked, smiling.

 

            "Huh, what did you say," the obviously very young girl asked, a  little startled.  Jacob leaned down closer to keep neighboring  sunbathers from hearing.

 

            "Would  you like to share this joint with me?" he said softly, as he opened his hand and showed her the joint, face to face.

 

            "Oh, pot!" she blurted out, startling Jacob and the neighboring sunbathers; "Sure," she said, and she got up and followed Jacob to Judas’s bedroom (Jacob had been sleeping on the couch), where Judas accidentally walked in on Jacob, screwing her on Judas’s waterbed.

 

            After that, things quickly deteriorated between Judas and Jacob.  Jacob wouldn't look for a job; he actually thought something "special" was coming his way. Finally, Judas asked Jacob to leave.  Drug crazed Jacob, who had just recently been released after ten  days in San Francisco county jail, was now homeless and possessionless on the streets of San Francisco.  At twenty, he would start over again.  All he had going for him was a very pretty, sixteen year old girlfriend named Denise, who brought him food and cared  for him.  He had found just exactly what he had come to the city for in the first place, he reflected.

 

 

THE STREET     

 

                By night, Jacob walked the street, reliving his past, justifying his faults to himself; high on a residual build-up of psychedelic drugs, stored in his fatty tissues, which he was metabolizing, due to hunger.  He was approached often by homosexuals seeking sexual favors.  Jacob ignored them, with the blank stare of the "burned out."  When he could go no further without sleep, he'd find unlocked cars to sleep in, often waking-up to irate owners yelling at him.   He would awake at four or five o'clock A.M. for the rest of his life as a result of the experience, never to need an alarm clock again.  Sometimes Jacob would visit the apartment complex to take advantage of the fact that no one knew he was not a resident; he'd use the showers and pool.  He visited young acquaintances, who scrounged soup and other canned goods from their parents' cupboards, until he wore-out his welcome.   Jacob threw away his only pair of socks, and stole new ones.   He walked every mile of the San Francisco Peninsula.  Height/Ashbury looked like a futuristic movie about life after the holocaust.   The streets were dirty, littered with the human refuse cast-off by the drug scene; a ghetto now.  Sometimes Jacob actually believed he had been transplanted to the future and was now a god who needed neither rest  nor food.   He went days at a time without eating, rarely sleeping,  seemingly to no consequence.  Years later, he would wonder how long he lived on the streets;  Days?   Weeks?   Nobody knows.

 

                Perhaps it was because he ran out of drug-saturated fatty tissues.  Perhaps he just got it all sorted out.  It is hard to believe, unless you understand what a desperate person is capable of, but Jacob finally found a job and got back on his feet.  The spaceships never came, and he needed an apartment and a car.  He simply walked, business to business, applying everywhere, for anything, until he found a job, long hair and all.   Jacob used his brothers' address without permission, and got hired as a lot attendant at a large Chevrolet dealership in South San Francisco.  This was the year of the Vega.   The dealership had five hundred of them, very few of which would run at all.  Jacob washed them anyway.   He washed cars by day, and slept in unlocked cars at night.  He found a donut shop, close to work, where he got the previous day's donuts,  free for the asking, every morning on his walk to work.  Jacob lived on donuts, coffee, and non-dairy creamer, until he got his first check.  Lost in his own thoughts, Jacob washed more cars per day than any previous employee; in spite of his situation, he still knew how to work.   Jacob rented a room built onto the back of an old couple's house.  The room had a separate entrance, a refrigerator, and a hot plate.   Denise, the 17 year old blond  beauty from the pool, came back from her vacation in Mexico, to become Jacob's angle of mercy.   She came by regularly in her parents' station wagon, bringing Jacob food from her parents' cupboards.  She was a nymphomaniac, a Sado-Masochist, and very  confused.  But, for Jacob, she was his angel.  She rented an apartment, and Jacob moved in, disappearing whenever she entertained her family.  Denise worked at Standard Oil, with her father; and Jacob went to Bennett's Detail Shop, now a professional auto-detailer.   He learned how to buff paint, and he started making good money, being paid on a piecework  basis.   Jacob bought a car.  He was on his way back. But,         somewhere in the back of his mind, was a burning question; a fear that it was all a dream.  Had he really made it, or  had he been carried by God or something?   He wondered what  or whom.  Now Jacob became a poet, a mystic.  He was seeking the answers to all life's questions.   What had really happened?  Was he crazy?  Was it God?  Why was there always good fortune which carried him through, just before his strength failed? Why was he so incredibly strong?   Why was he so intelligent?  Why was his life so hard?  Why had he always been spared in his moment of weakness?  And by whom, or what?  Did he have a  purpose, a destiny?   If so, what was it?   Was it all in his mind?

 

 

 

 

                    PERHAPS GOD IS A SUPERIOR RACE,

 

                    AN INFANT OF IT IN EACH OF US

 

                    PERHAPS THE GOAL ISN'T RIGHT OR WRONG

 

                    MERELY GROWTH, AND GOING ON

 

                    I HERE STRANGE THINGS IN SOME POPULAR SONGS

 

                    AM I A KING, OR MERELY A PAWN

 

                    PERHAPS "ENTERPRISE" WILL BEAM ME ON!

 

                    MAYBE I WONT LIVE TO SEE THE DAWN

 

                    COULD BE, OR NOT, FOR ALL WE KNOW

 

                    THAT IS THE SEED I WISH TO SOW

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

VERY CADILLAC

 

 

               Sam works at Very Cadillac

 

               He has comical looks, and a tired old back

 

               He cleans up old grease, and buffs out new paint

 

               He has underseal in his eyes, and sober he ain't

 

               And when he is threatened by the new kid on the block,

 

               he acts like his friend, then chops off his cock!

 

 

          "You should go here, 'ya!"  The Swedish parts manager at the Teamsters' Union Cadillac dealership, where Jacob was now working, had been listening to Jacob's philosophical comments and questions for weeks;  "It is a 'goot' place!" He gave Jacob a card.   It read: THE THEOSOPHICAL SOCIETY.  It was only a few blocks away; walking distance, according to Hans.  It was Christmas Eve, and the dealership was closing.  Jacob, and everyone within shouting distance, was drunk.  He took the card and started walking.  He would never find the place again, but, somehow, perhaps an hour later, Jacob arrived at an old, brown, bank-like building, dizzy, and half-blind from alcohol.   Jacob knocked.

 

          "Do you know how old I am,"  creaked the ancient, four and one half foot short, human skeleton who answered the door.   "I'm ninety seven years old!"  Jacob followed her, wide-eyed, as she  led him into the magical one-room, dusty library, filled with   stacks and shelves of old books.  Jacob thought he must have entered another dimension; this was obviously a mystical place.  Suddenly he was sober, alert, and awake.  "All these books...Here's one I  specially like."    The old witch showed Jacob a very large book,  perhaps 50 pounds or more heavy, laying open to a parchment page which was all one large painting.   "See how the new little Buddahs travel up the stairs toward the light," she squeaked, in a sweet and fragile voice of the very old.  "Now, I want you to take this book," she said,  as she handed Jacob a small book,  with a cross on it.  The foil letters on black made the book look like a bible or hymnal: THE IMPERSONAL LIFE.

 

          "Oh, okay," Jacob said, "Can I sign something..."

 

          "No, just bring it back when you are through with it, and I'll give you another."  She limped off, bent over, even shorter than before.   Jacob took the book and left the empty library.

 

          "I am the big 'I AM' inside of you," page one read; and a fly landed on the "I" and walked across "inside" to "you!" Jacob read on, shivers running up and down his back.  He read the entire book in one sitting. The book was an unknown testimony of a philosophy  of metaphysical Christianity.  Until now, Jacob had never read either the new or old testaments of the Bible, and he had always thought that Christians were narrow minded, uneducated, and stupid.  But this book was different!  What a book!  Could this be it?  Could this book be the beginning of a real understanding?  Jacob shuddered  as he realized that he was again aware of a supernatural connection to a world he had once denied the existence of; a spirit world.  Jacob returned to the library, he thought, and found only an empty building.  He could not find any 'Theosophical Society' in the phone book, and he never found anyone else who had ever heard of, or seen the place.  The Swedish parts manager never returned to work after the holidays.  Again Jacob was left "hanging."   So he went to regular libraries and checked out many books.  Jacob read L. Ron Hubbard, and Buddha, and Gurchev', and other philosophies, and theologians.  He read self-help books, both testaments of the Bible, and everything else dealing with the supernatural.  All these books seemed to be saying the same thing.  Jacob wondered if there could really be a spirit world.  

 

          "Put it out!" Jacob screamed, as the psychedelic cotton print curtain burst into flames in Marty's bedroom.  Marty was Jacob's drug connection, a long haired, effeminate blond, who was actually a homosexual, although Jacob didn't know it yet.  Jacob and Marty engaged in long intellectual debates, rarely agreeing on anything. They experimented with mind altering drugs: M.D.A., L.S.D., P.C.P., and Cocaine.  They had decided that it should be possible to direct enough psycho-kinetic energy to start the curtain on fire simply by willing it, and they had done it!

 

           "Wow,"   Marty yipped, as he put the flames out with a blanket off his waterbed,   "How did you do that?"

 

            "Me?"  Jacob asked, in a high-pitched voice, as a barely tolerable level of adrenaline rushed into his bloodstream.  "I thought it was you; it was us!"  The two sat there, staring at each other communicating excitement and amazement with their eyes; needing to  renew their grip on reality.  "Wow!" Jacob said.

 

          "Woe!" Marty moaned.

 

          "Please to meet you, hope you catch my name.," said the stereo!

 

           The two sat and listened to the rest of the record, stoned  beyond conversation.

 

           Every time the fog horns at the Golden Gate Bridge blew, Jacob heard the moans:             

            "O-h-h-h-o, bo-o-o-o-o-p," the old sound was punctuated with a thousand tormented voices.  Were they real?   Were they spirits?

 

            "Oh-oh-oo-oo, b-o-o-o-o-o-p," again, and again they moaned.

 

            "Perhaps I should join them," a voice in Jacob's head said from behind his brain, 

 

            "Go ahead!  Cash it in! Its all right,"  another, blacker voice said.

            "Oh-oh-oh-oh," the million voices moaned.

 

            "You know where that leads," a different voice said from 

 behind Jacob's brain.

 

           "Oh-oh-oh-oh," the billion voices moaned again, louder than  before. 

 

           "You are here for a purpose, Jacob, you know that," the new 

voice said.

 

           "Crash!"  The iron gate Jacob was hanging on came crashing down on top of him.  Jacob suddenly realized he was outside his body and he got scared.  He was instantly jerked back to Marty's room.

 

           "Cash it in," the black voice said again, insisting.

 

           "No way," the good voice said, "You know better than that, you have a purpose...."

 

           "Oh-oh-oh-oh," the trillion voices moaned.

 

            It was nearly daylight, and Marty hadn't returned.   Jacob couldn't

 stay, though he had nowhere to go, and no way to get there.

 

           "What's the point?" Jacob wondered.

 

            By about 11:00 A.M., Jacob had walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, and he was now in Sousalito, at the house of Mamee, a whore who lived with a homosexual pimp named Bob.  Bob was Marty's lover, Jacob would decipher later when he was thinking clearly.   As Jacob had walked across the Golden Gate Bridge, he had become more and more excited.  "Where did Marty go without telling me?  Why did he get me so obliterated on this  P.C.P.?   Did he know it was that potent?   Did he do it on purpose!?"  Jacob was hovering in mid-air when Mamee came to the door.  Jacob talked faster than he could  think,  faster than he could pronounce the words;  until Mamee interrupted him:

 

           "Follow me," she said, and she led Jacob into her bedroom, where she had chopped and lined some cocaine on a mirror.  She snorted a line and gave the rest to Jacob.   Instantly, Jacob relaxed.  Simultaneously, Jacob realized for the first time what Marty, and Mamee, and Jacob's family, and his ex-girlfriend already knew, and had known for months:  Jacob was addicted to Cocaine.  He and Marty had been dealing Peruvian "flake" Cocaine; they had even been arrested, and incarcerated for theft, when they were caught stealing power tools from construction sites to pay for it.  If not for a large, scar-faced Texan, who hated queers, and who showed up just in time,  Jacob would have been raped  during that ten days in San Francisco County Jail.  Without even  realizing it,  Jacob had become addicted,  and he had alienated everyone he cared about as an addict.  It all became very clear now for the first time;  time to leave again!

 

            Again Jacob returned to the Olympic Peninsula, to Forks, to go logging.  Again he was able to get thoroughly cleaned out and  healthy ( although he was nearly killed several times in the process).   And then it happened.   One day,  on very steep ground, a choker broke; and the log slid down the hill toward the rigging crew.  And this larger log hit another, smaller, longer "pole," fifty feet long and sixteen inches in diameter on the fat end, which hit Jacob in the chest, breaking six ribs in one blow; it sent him flying through the air twenty six feet where he landed across a log on his back.  Jacob was broken up pretty badly.  They blew six of the seven long whistles for  " dead man in the  brush,"  before they realized that he was still alive.  And now Jacob was lonely, and depressed, and in pain; and shaken.   He was cleared to work with the broken ribs by the log-town doctor, who prescribed codeine as a pain killer.   His boss gave him an easy job, to keep him off disability.   Jacob hated the job, the codeine, and the pain he couldn't endure without it.   His strength  left him.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 THE RUNNERS

 

             Jacob was shocked as he got closer and closer, following the directions to Juhas’ house.  Jacob knew Judas had a little Pukka Shell import business,  but this was a very upscale neighborhood.   Jacob's blood raced as he pulled up to a beautiful white-stucco  house.   Judas was opening the electric garage door, his late model  Ford pick-up backed up to the door on the steep driveway.

 

          "Is this your house?!"  Jacob asked as he walked up bewildered.  Jacob had driven all night to get here.

 

          "Oh!, Jay!"  Judas had always called Jacob "Jay".  He still had a New Jersey accent;  "Help me with these, will 'ya?"   Jacob tried, broken ribs and all, to help move the five large green bales; then he choked: 

 

          "Colombian Pot?"

 

          "Quiet, Jay!"  Judas said, as he moved the last bale, “I have neighbors!"

 

            In the week that followed, Jacob and Judas worked together to set up a situation where Jacob would be available to drive Judas’s Ford pick-up truck, which would be located in Denver, where Jacob would live near the pair's other, younger brother.   Judas never shared information freely, but he had apparently "made some money," as he put it.   On the first trip to Florida to get the pot, Judas came to observe Jacob and train him.  Judas and Jacob, two brothers 18 months apart, who had grown up separately since they were ten and eleven years old, got re-acquainted on that trip.  They discussed their tough backgrounds, and exchanged philosophy about life. Judas was an atheist, and he was impressed by Jacob's apparent total control over his body.   Judas had to sleep,  had to eat,  had to go to the bathroom.  "Jay", as Judas called him, ran on nothing but an endless supply of cigarettes.  Judas and Jacob discussed their crazy sister; their sweet younger brother, who was beloved to both of them.   They discussed how they had both always been different from everyone around them, since they were very little.   Jacob was a little intimidated by Judas.  Jacob had never met anyone he considered to be as bright and quick as himself, and Judas seemed to be brighter and quicker, and certainly harder.  Judas asked Jacob how he felt about killing someone if necessary or expedient.  Jacob deliberated a long while, and replied: 

 

          "Only if it were necessary to protect our family and there was no other option."  Jacob wondered secretly if he could really do it quickly enough even then.  Jacob guessed Judas already had, and he definitely could!  When they got back from the first trip, they unloaded the pot: nearly four hundred pounds of Colombian Marijuana.  Judas counted  out eight thousand dollars in cash and gave it to Jacob.  Then Jacob drove the Ford pick-up to Denver,  Colorado,  where their younger brother Benjamin lived with his young wife and baby.  Jacob rented a nice one bedroom apartment.  He bought some clothes and waited.

 

            The next time, Jacob was ordered to drive to Florida and meet Judas at a hotel.  All went as planned.  Judas had brought along a regular driver to ride with Jacob.   Judas wouldn't be on this trip.  Jacob had come by the coastal route, but Judas wanted them to take the turnpike back to save time.   That turned out to be a mistake.  The police had just opened up an "agricultural" stop on the turnpike to check for "oranges."  Jacob ignored the sign which said: 

 

            "All TRUCKS AND TRAILERS MUST EXIT."  On came the red lights, and Jacob and the other driver were escorted back to the stop.  The bed in the back of the truck was solid,  but the police did reach around it and pull out a handful of pot!  Busted!

Jacob and the very effeminate, whiny other driver spent the night in Jackson County Jail.   The pair could see a huge yard, full of RVs of all kinds which had been seized similarly.   Jacob  puked on his first and last taste of grits, dumped over his eggs.  The other driver whined continuously about how his wife would leave him if he went to jail.   The pair had cash with them , and they posted bail the next morning and got released. 

 

            "Lay low until the court date; don't do anything!"  These were Judas’s instructions for Jacob when he returned to Denver.

 

            "How can I lay low with no money?"  Jacob asked.

 

            "Get a job!" Judas said.  Jacob was beginning to dislike taking orders from his brother, who was getting very bossy and rude.

 

            "Just sit there and don't say anything,"  Steve, Judas’s lawyer said.  Jacob had gotten himself to the hearing as promised.  He was very scared that he would have to stay and do hard time.  Jacob was wearing the three-piece suit which had been tailored for his brother, and lent to him. Jacob sat there as the cumbersome process of presenting evidence proceeded.  Steve raised every objection imaginable, to everything going on.   The other attorney seemed intimidated and nervous; he was obviously out of his league. And then, when the prosecution rested it's case, Steve pointed out that the other attorney had neglected to submit the two hundred and fifty pounds of pot, still visible on the courtroom floor, as evidence!  Steve moved for immediate acquittal.  Reluctantly, noticeably upset by the situation, the judge said;  

 

          "...therefore I have no choice but to dismiss this case.  But,  if I ever...." 

 

            The foursome, Jacob, Judas, Steve the lawyer, and the whiny co-defendant,  rushed to the airport,  whooping' and hollering'; victorious and free.

 

            "Let's leave town before the lynch mob shows up," Steve laughed!

 

             "And I'm very pleased to meet you too," Jacob said, as he took the semi-attractive, sleazy looking, middle-age woman's hand and kissed it, sending shivers up and down her spine.  She may have been the boss.  Jacob wasn't sure, and he didn't ask.  But he was sure she had been sleeping with Judas, and she was hoping to sleep with  Jacob.  She suggested that Jacob should use her bed while they went to some party which Jacob was obviously not invited to.   Jacob was not at all interested;

 

          "Oh, that's O.K. ;  I'll sleep right out here, if you don't  mind.  I am very tired."

 

          "Well, if you change your mind, my bedroom is right there.."

Jacob was sure he wouldn't change his mind.   He was uneasy enough about his situation; Jacob felt small here.  He was obviously the "baby" here ; everyone felt comfortable except Jacob, and he felt  at a disadvantage.  Jacob didn't like depending on other people for anything, and this situation was beyond his understanding.   He couldn't just ask:

 

            "Is this organized crime ?"  Jacob was shaken; it was only this morning that he had wondered  weather or not he would be spending the night in jail in Florida.  The others had gone somewhere.  There was an oriental wooden box with pot in it on the ornate glass coffee table.  Jacob smoked a couple of joints, and slept.  He didn't know where he was in Mill Valley.   He fell asleep wishing he was somewhere else, and wondering where the others had gone.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"When you can't trust your friends..."

 

 

            Ryan had been the "town dealer" in a small town in Kansas.  He had to leave, because of a large bust.  Now he was living in the same apartment complex with Jacob.  Jacob and he had met in the whirlpool.  They had become friends drinking and talking in the 110 degree water, as the snow fell, at night.  Now they were best friends.  Jacob brought in pot from his brother in San Francisco.  Ryan got cocaine and speed from his connections in Kansas.  

 

            Jacob had also met a girl, one Tina Banino.   She and Jacob were engaged.   Tina was a cocktail waitress who's father was "Mafioso." 

 

            And now, since Jacob was so "settled in" for several months, he decided to get brave and do a small cocaine deal.  Jacob did not use cocaine anymore, and his rule had been not to sell what  he didn't do (sort of a code of honor which Jacob used to convince himself that he wasn’t a bad guy).   Jacob had received specific instructions not to do  any business on his own, from his now way too bossy brother.  When he did it anyway, the guy had to go back out to the car for  the money; and he came back with a gun!

 

            "Please move!"  The large black man was smiling from ear to ear.  He obviously enjoyed pointing the 45 caliber pistol at Jacob.  As he came in the door, other men, without faces, at this point, slid in behind him, and proceeded to frisk Jacob.  Then Jacob was  told to sit, with his back to the living room, at the kitchen table;

 

            "Now sit right here, and don't say anything!"   The large black man barked. Jacob thought he was dead.  He was expecting to be shot in the head at any moment, or at least hit over the head.  He felt cold and began shaking.  Then, after what seemed like a very long time,  relief came in the form of a badge!   Jacob realized now that the cops were the  least of his worries, and he breathed a sigh of relief.   These cops weren't going to kill him, or Tina, who was also in the room.  Jacob sat shaking at the kitchen table as his apartment was searched.  He couldn't stop thinking about how he could have died for eleven hundred dollars' worth of cocaine.   He wondered if Tina's dad really was a mob boss in Nevada.   He wondered if he was going to be dead anyway.  Ryan, Jacob, and Tina were arrested.   They were taken to  separate interrogation rooms for questioning.

 

          "It's when you do your first cocaine deal that you find out how long you've been dealing with the man,"  Jacob thought, as he listened to the "Organized Crime Strike Force" explain how they had been setting him up for eight months.  They didn't want Jacob, they said.  They wanted his connection.  They knew who he was, they said, but they had no evidence.

 

             "Oh, cool,  I go to jail or commit suicide," Jacob thought to himself.   The cops were offering Jacob a deal; less hard time if he set up a purchase.   All Jacob could think about was the Banino family in Las Vegas,  and what was going to happen to him if Tina went to jail.

 

            "I'll agree to help you, but not if we spend the night in jail.  You've got to let us out now, and I'll set it up."   They were all  released "on their own recognizance."  Because he really believed it, Jacob had convinced the cops that he wouldn't be alive long enough to help them if they didn't do it his way.

 

            On the way home, Jacob stopped at a pay phone.  He told everyone who's telephone number he had that the heat was on him and the whole apartment complex, and to "steer clear" and "stay low."   Everyone, that is, except for the ex-con who had ripped Jacob off  for ten pounds of "fronted" Colombian pot.   This guy Jacob would give to the cops.  Jacob told the cops all he knew about the guy, but he never found out whether or not they got him.

 

            Jacob went and got a job and a lawyer.  The job was working underground at thirteen thousand feet up, building the Eisenhower Tunnel, under Loveland Pass in Colorado, graveyard shift.  The lawyer told Jacob he was going to jail for at least eighteen months.  The crime he had committed, "sale of a narcotic drug," carried a  sentence of no less than five, and no more than fifteen years in jail; and no less than two, and no more than ten thousand dollars fine.  Jacob was definitely going to jail, according to his lawyer; he could probably make parole after eighteen months because he had no prior convictions.  Jacob's sentencing hearing  was six months away.

 

            And then, one night on the way home from work at the tunnel, someone tried to run Jacob of the road.   Jacob was lucky enough to miss the guard rails in the medium; he got turned around after he almost entered the oncoming lane of traffic; and then he cut back across the medium at seventy miles per hour!   Jacob rammed the Chevy sedan with Tina's 68 Bonneville, and knocked it clean off the road and out of sight in the rear view mirror.   Was it Tina's dad?  Was it the ex-con Jacob had given up?   It could be Judas' people!    Jacob stopped at the first phone-booth when he got to Denver.  Still shaking, he called his younger brother, Benjamin.

 

            "Jay, I'm so glad you called, are you alone now?" Benjamin's voice took on the stern tone of a father giving orders to as son.

 

            "Jacob, Judas called.  He was in tears and he said that things were out of his hands and that you better run!   You have to leave the country if you can.  You've got to run!"

 

          Benjamin rented Jacob a car.  Jacob drove the car to Salt Lake City, where he boarded a plane to Port Angeles, Washington.   From there, completely broke now, and reduced to the clothes on his back, Jacob hitched a ride on a log truck, and got off at the road that led to Gladdis and Joe's house.   Then he walked the 1.4 miles to Gladdis and Joe's, reflecting on recent events as he walked.  Jacob thought about his brother, Benjamin's concerned face.   He wondered what to do next.   He confronted his absolute poverty.   He walked with the weight of his past heavy on his shoulders. 

 

            Gladdis and Joe gave Jacob a few clothes he had left in the cabin on his last visit. They lent Jacob one hundred dollars, which Jacob used to buy a nylon rucksack, and boarded a ferry to Canada.  Jacob was now running from both sides.  A fugitive, Jacob hitchhiked and he rode the  ferries; and he watched his one hundred dollars  dwindle.

 

            Jacob had a lot of time to think while he worked his way up to Prince Rupert,  walking for hours between rides with loggers, up the dirt rode, through Vancouver Island.  He had a pain in his chest; or perhaps his heart or back, he wasn't sure.  It felt like he was being stabbed in the back.   The sharp jabbing pain was increased by the rucksack.  If it was heart disease or lung cancer,  he was already dead,  because he couldn't seek medical attention  while he was broke and on the lamb.   No one could find him now.  Jacob knew he'd find a way to survive, but he was thinking way too clearly now with all this time for thought.  Jacob realized for the first time how a person could actually fall asleep, and become totally unaware of what he is doing, because he is so wrapped up in doing it.  Now Jacob realized that he had gone out of control, at some point, and that everyone knew it but him.  Jacob had thought everyone was stupid, or "straight," or both, and no-one had been able to get through to him, although they had tried, earnestly; and those tries now recalled themselves from Jacob’s memory, unnoticed the first time, but now crystal clear.  Jacob had become so arrogant, he contemplated, and so stupid!  Now Jacob could no longer ignore the truth as it stabbed him in the back, and beat down on his head, and pounded his feet.  Reality was setting in hard.

 

             Jacob hitchhiked and walked all the way up Vancouver Island to Prince Rupert, where the road ends.  There, he boarded a ferry, and then another; and then another, up the inland waters between the islands and the boats and fog.  Jacob examined his past as he rode and stared out at the foggy, tree covered Islands.  He didn't know where he was going or what he would do.  He was almost broke, but that didn't concern him.   He didn't care if he ate.   Jacob was sorting it all out for the first time.   The pain in his chest  moved down his backbone to his gut.

 

            Then Jacob arrived.  Penniless, Jacob walked the entire island, Santula Island,  thinking about everyone and everything he had left behind.   He was overwhelmed with a feeling of smallness.  For the first time in his life, Jacob felt beaten.  Jacob could not face his future here.  He was nowhere.  There was no lucky chance encounter to bail him out.  He could not see a way to win.  Jacob's pain became unbearable.  Perhaps he was dying.   He got back to the windy ferry dock by late afternoon.  There was a storm blowing in.  Jacob fell to his knees, broken, sad, and alone.   For the first time in Jacob's hard life, the future was just too horrible to face.  Jacob was out of creative ideas and excuses.   He just couldn't face a life of running from his past.   Jacob pictured his brother's father-in-law,      a benevolent Mexican man, who had treated Jacob like family, and who would lose his home if Jacob stayed on the lamb.  Jacob couldn't face the ruin of his dreams; he couldn't bare the loss of all of his family and friends.  Jacob buckled under the weight of his past.  His legendary strength and self-confidence, which had never failed him, were gone.  Jacob fell on his face, cringing with depression, writhing in pain from his undiagnosed injury.   In a spontaneous moment of anguish, Jacob cried out from the depth of his soul;  from the depth of his bowls he cried out!

 

             "God,"  he whined, "if there is a God, I have nowhere else to turn. I'll do anything for you if..."  Jacob burst into tears; overwhelmed with remorse, he was broken.

 

            Funny that in just one sentence, Jacob realized he had received his answer. In fact, the timing was perfect to the second.  Jacob had lived for years lost in a crazy world of radical ideas and drugs.   For years he had been unconscious to the fact that he had always known the truth.  But now, in his anguish and fear, trembling, Jacob suddenly was jerked into remembering who he really was.  As he knelt on that dock on Santula Island, pondering  everything he was running from; cringing at flashbacks of faces he should know, but couldn't remember, straining to visualize an acceptable future; the timing was such that he knew it was an angel who said, from right next to him, in a soft, all-knowing  voice;

 

          "You're a long way from home, aren't you son!"   It was not like a question.  Indeed, it was the answer.  At that very moment, Jacob came to the conclusion that he would rather go back and  face possible death and/or imprisonment, than to go on running  from the past, and the cops, and the Mafia, and perhaps the Banino's.  Magically now, the faces of all the angels of Jacob's life appeared before him;  Gladdis Pavel who had semi-adopted  him as an orphan; the lady at the donut shop, who fed him when he was homeless and lost; the Swedish parts manager; the big Texan who protected him from being raped in San Francisco county jail; the humble restaurant owners in South San Francisco, who helped him when he was a 16 year old runaway.  One by one the milepost spokespersons of Jacob's life were presented to him, out of his own memory, as evidence overwhelming.  Jacob didn't know who was after him and he didn't care anymore.  Tears gushed from Jacob's eyes as he realized that this was the first day of the rest of his life.   He never looked up to see the face of the speaker.   He just dried his eyes, and then picked up his rucksack, containing the balance of his worldly possessions, and started the journey back.

 

            Jacob would find out that the pain in his back was a compacted vertebra he hadn't felt until his ribs had healed.  But he didn't know that now.  He didn't know that he would very nearly be eaten by a cougar in Prince Rupert early the next morning.  He didn't know if he would survive the two contracts, or serve hard time.  Jacob didn't know if he would live or die.  

 

             All Jacob was absolutely sure of was that, whatever was ahead, he would never run scared again.  Jacob would live and die, from here on, as a free man:  free from fear. 

 

            Jacob made a decision, then and there, to go back, and to face everything, head on, come what may.  Jacob would never be alone, as he had never been alone.  And that was all he needed to know to go on, and to fulfill his purpose.

 

THE END.

 

 

 

          FOR SOME IT IS NOT EASY TO SEE WHAT IT'S FOR;

          ALL THE GREED; ALL THE HATE; ALL THE DIRT; ALL THE WAR.

          FOR SOME IT IS NOT EASY, BUT IT'S EASY FOR ME.

          IT ALL LOOKS GOOD TO ME!

 

          YOU SEE, PEOPLE ARE LITTLE, THE RACE AS A WHOLE,

          WE ARE SIMPLE, AND SELFISH, AND PAINFULLY SLOW.

          WE WON'T THINK IF WE HAVE A CHOICE.

          AND ALL WE GO THROUGH IS SIMPLY THE VOICE OF LIFE,

          TEACHING US WHAT WE WILL NOT LEARN, AND DO NEED TO KNOW.

 

          AND IF NOT FOR THE TRIALS, AND TRAUMAS, AND SUCH;

          OF THOUGHT, AND OF ARTWORK, YOU WOULDN'T SEE MUCH!