Plate Techtonics

(Faaaaaaaaaart)

A weird, almost chemical smell, and a flurry of hacks, coughs, sniffing, scraping, and breathy, belabored groans. Finally, the ignition of a cigarette, a migration from dead center of a California King canopy to an oak night table, and a pouring of honey-colored liquid. “Rebel Yell” brand, from Kentucky. He mutters, a scarred, oddly melodic tenor whisper:

Whiskey,jack. Wonda’fool…

…To nobody in particular, and bolts the contents of the glass down the gullet in one go. Keith Richards, awake and alive yet again. Sitting upright now, sheet-wrapped sheik-like at the bedside, with his feet (still fully matador-booted, he notes with some interest) touching the shag. The low, melodic whisper once again:

But where sweetheart, where?

This time another voice: hyper, booming, shot through with Texas-ness and gaspy between the words. The voice of a redneck doing something.

Hef’s house you limey (gasp) faggot. You (gasp) fell asleep ten minutes ago (gasp)…

Then yet another voice, laughing, speaking French. This voice also doing…Keef, The bed-sheik, turned and twisted, looking for the source. There was a door behind him, to the rear of the bed. The bathroom, he knew. It was all starting to pile back in for him. This was Hef’s, he’d been here with Bobby, and - who? - Freddie? Mick? Mick had been here, he was sure of it. He remembered setting something on fire…The booming voice again:

(Augh, augh oh….Aughhhhhhuuh.) Ok. ’Scuse me baby…

Now a woman, naked save for a pair of black, steel-toed Tony llamas, emerges from the door. She’s physically astounding, and Keef watches her cross the room until another woman - equally astounding and naked - walks from the same door. They are bothering around something over by a day bed in the corner. The girls whisper in French and giggle, searching through bags and clothes. Keef watches their asses bouncing about. Smoking and drinking at 9:30am. Again, the Tenor whisper:

What to do children, what to do…

In answer: Texas, loud and hollow from Hef’s awesome bathroom:

Nothin’ doin’ KR. Rudge says we’re headin fer desert. He says “now“. Mick sent the car. Time to turn and burn captain Queeg.

Bobby walked out from the naked French girl door birthday suited. The awful vision, coupled with the tiring news conspiring to ruin things for Keef. He felt muddled. There was a car here already? What had they been burning?

Bobby was towering over him now, hosting a wilting Texas hard-on while lighting a gigantic Texas joint. He puffed and sucked at it heartily while settling in to regard the naked women for a bit. The girls still babbling and bouncing and sifting through their shit. After a few minutes he hands the splif to K.R. and they both sit watching the French girl’s butts. That’s as far as they get before Rudge himself comes exploding in. He’s carrying a walkie/Talkie and broadcasting static. He pauses for a few seconds and registers: The girls, the Saxophone player, the Principal. Then he intercepts the waning joint en route from Keef to Bobby.

I’ll take this. You two cover up and go outside now. I’ll finish up here.

On the way out, KR muttering:

Monteville? Ashemont? Merrymont….Where…?
Bobby is walking while putting pants on and staring - still - at the naked French girls. He intones with enthusiam:

Altamont, you disgusting man. Altamont National Motor Speedway. Like Woodstock!

Then a stage whisper, smiling into KR’s face and motioning with eyes only:

I fucked those girls just right now in the bathroom while you were sleepin’.

***

Fucking Altamont. Dude, are you sure?

But even asking the question Smokey knew it was true. They’d double and triple checked since leaving for the desert. He’d actually seen Fitch and some other guys at a breakfast counter in the Haight, and they confirmed it. Golden Gate said “no” at the last second, had the towns muni workers rip the stage down. The Dead had worked some weird, Bay-Area magic and moved the whole affair 40 miles East into the desert. Altamont National, an underused motor track out between Livermoore and Tracey, would now be the scene of The Scene.

Smoke had retained his spot in the enormous Cadillac, and none of those guys - the Armour’s and the spellbinding, honey-smelling girl Toni - had ever heard of the place, much less been out there. Smoke was probably, he realized, one of the only people headed to the track that had actually been there before. In the bad old days, before his parents split and moved back east, his dad had been an auto racing enthusiast. The Bay Area born Smokey had spent many a scorching Sunday tracing the same trip they were on now, riding out before the sun came up and coming back late in the evening so his dad could geek out with the rest of the motor heads. He’d learned to hate a lot of things on those trips: The desert, crowds of people who liked cars, his father…The sudden change of plans playing hell with his forced optimism. Burning in the desert, would motherfuckers really want speed, even speed as singular and rare as his?

***

The breezes that massaged the Western Desert near the holy lands were odd in May. By turns harsh, mellow, non-existent and multi-directional, travelers through the region were always at a loss when putting together a successful blend of weights and weaves. To light and the trades from the Meditteranian will go through you like a thousand knives, lashing dust and sand before them. To heavy and the you’re likely becalmed, left to swelter in a fabric oven of your own devise. Thant’s why, in Tam Rhitta’s part of the dessert, he built down instead of up. The desert cannot devour you if you allready live already deep within it’s belly. Tam borrowed the plans from secrets and rumors passed through his family’s bloodlines since - some said - the dawn of time itself. He left his glass castle under the dunes only twice a year: In the spring, for a week, to oversee a thousand - odd acres in a week long sewing, prayer, and feasting, and in the autumn, again for a week, to paint his wives with honey and watch them run through his fields. These days he left the actual harvest to paid employees, but since Tam’s wives were so closely involved, he felt he should at least portray the image of paying attention to the process. Even as any man woman or child within 3000 air miles in any direction would rather claw his own eyes out than fuck with Tam Rhitta‘s money (or his wives for that matter). Besides, it was a harvest, and that meant the massive ingestion of a new year’s blessing. It was a time to be among the people.

Tam Rhitta’s harvest had happened almost a full month before Altamont became the agreed-upon sight to hole a free concert by the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead. That was enough time for Tam’s army of 80 wives to trample his Khef fields for almost a whole week, leaving no plant untouched by their honey-blessed nakedness. It was enough time for Tam’s arm of 80 harvesters to gently massage the resin-caked bodys of his wives until they gave of their otherworldly yield. And, yes, enough time was left for a rather large shipment of the resultant temple-ball hash to be shipped over to a few lucky souls stateside, a good many of whom resided within a 4-block radius of Haight Street, city of San Francisco, State of California.

One of these lucky souls was Smokey Denniker’s good old buddy Splurgeon “Fitch” Fitcher, who Smoke had finally managed to rendevous with at that same Stones / Dead bill out in the desert. Good thing for both. Smokey had been at Altamont only a few hours before he’d ingested way to much of the grade A+ rocket fuel speed he was supposed to be selling. He couldn’t stop chewing on his bottom lip even though it was all swollen and red. Conversely, Fitch had been to heavy into the Temple-Ball and kept passing out and falling and hurting his face. Thus, a fortuitous meeting gained an extra onion-layer of benefit for both parties. They sat like conquerors in the front seat of a gigantic, powder-blue Cadillac ElDorado chasing sizeable blasts of the Temple with even bigger schnoz-fulls of raw-diesel methadrine, bitching about things that seemed trivial in the face of such a monster buzz in the late-summer desert. They’d been doing just that when a familiar man wearing velvet pants, of which one leg was purple, and the other huntsman’s green, appeared standing on the endless blue prairie of the El-D’s hood. Smokey’s first thought was that the dudes boots looked expensive.

***

Smokey: I heard a trick once. Try this next time you’re around a mirror: Look directly into the reflection for a bit, a few seconds. Then look at your right eye with your left eye. Now try the other way, your left eye looking at your right. Go back and forth like that a few times and you’ll see it. They aren’t moving. I mean, they are - your eyes have to move to be able to see from thing to thing right? But your brain edits that action out for some reason. Like an editor see? Taking out the things that don’t mean anything. But why? And who decides what to see and what not?

Keef: You know that’s interesting. I never knew that. It makes me want to find a mirror…(Yina’sintrisin…Nino dat. Micksmwun fin mira…)

Smokey: Another one - Have you ever done something you didn’t want to do? Not talking about like major life things, getting married or quitting a job or whatever, just small things: I shouldn’t go out tonight cause I don’t have cash and rent is coming. Twenty four drunken hours later…You know, that type of thing. It’s easy to chalk it up o risk/reward and what not, but that’s to easy. In most of those situations you ask the person later and it’s “I don’t know what I was thinking”. Like given the chance they wouldn’t do it again. So what part of us does that? It’s scary if you get to deep thinking about it. Do we really have any choices at all?

Keef: My whole life is a running example of that. Fascinating. (Ma ‘olaffs runnin’xampltha…s’fscinate)

***

Hearing the story come tumbling out of his mouth, Smoke was thinking later that maybe it was just somebody fucking with him for no reason. The scene was basically that in a nutshell these days, and you couldn’t play out here without being exposed to such foolishness. On the other hand, the dude had taken him behind some invisible security perimeter and handed him six thousand dollars in wrapped hundreds in exchange for a sizeable hunk of meth and a fist-sized blob of the Temple-Ball. Jokers from the Hashbury were unlikely to be riding so high, and even less likely to avail others of it if they were. The whole thing was fucked up. Now here’s Smoke, newly free from worry, newly flush with drugs and money, and feeling more weirded out and paranoid than he’d been since running out here in the first. Fucked up.

To make matters stranger, Altamont was doing a big flip right in front of his face. When they’d first arrived yesterday evening, everything out here was feeling easy…The freaks had the regular hippie farmer’s market set up going, but since the show was being put on for free, the use of money had been all but completely abolished on the grounds and motherfuckers were just giving shit away. Knitted clothing, drug paraphernalia, vinyl…All of it either on the bubble or traded for some other type lf good. Smoke had never seen the like. He himself had scored a heavy poncho and a carved-driftwood pipe for Fitch’s Temple Balls.

But that was last night and today, all that flower power bullshit was gone on a chill desert wind. Today Altamont was pushing a new, dark energy, twice as crowded and shot-up with a cruel, threatening atmosphere. Smokey had seen a least three fights on his way to the Port-a-john set up. One dude - being tended too by a fat old hippie lady - had gotten his nose exploded. A dark red mask hid his features as he lay sleeping on the sand.

Then there were the angels. Smokey had hardly seen any bikes on his arrival at the scene, and with Big Bear going down, he felt certain they’d stay away. As Friday Evening turned to Saturday morning though, he began see different. Colors and denim were more apparent to him on the crowd and in the lots. He Didn’t see any bikes, not yet, but there were already 100,000 freaks on the Altamont property, and that meant there could be lines of gleaming choppers parked in many places that Smoke wasn’t. Then at around 11:00, just around the official “doors” time for the show, he heard it.

The noise was far off still, maybe a few miles, but unmistakable in it’s volume and complexity. People were looking at the sky, smoke saw, watching for signs of rain to go with the sound effects. Smoke quivered involuntarily sitting, once again, behind the wheel of the Armour El-D. The thunder rolling through the valley was man made, he knew. The sound of quick violence and blood-thirst. The sound of a hundred - odd Harley Davidsons chopped into noisy chrome clouds and moving fast. The Hell’s Angels were heading to Altamont.

Smoke had Vulture’s money, and there were at hundred other chapters besides the LA colors, and the Big Bear run was presumably going on even now. Smoke should have found comfort in any of those home truths. New factors had cropped up though, and he was having trouble weighing them all in his poor, speed and hash-addled mind. Since his newfound windfall, he’d been thinking about ducking Vulch on a more permanent basis. Six g’s could set a guy up in Laurel Canyon, or Malibu, at least for the summer. If he showed up from an unforeseen jaunt with all of Vulch’s cash and maybe a thousand more, would the smelly old soldier even give a shit? Motherfucker was a biker on top of all of it. There was a good chance every day he woke up would be his last on earth. Jail, violence, traffic accident…The world of the outlaw biker was a risky one.

Now, hearing the awful sound and feeling the air-vibrations getting closer, Smoke decided he’d better smarten up. He grabbed the bag of cash and counted it, and then he tried to wake up Keef II. The dude was a dedicated sleeper, he knew, and it would take some doing. He was just finishing up the last thousand when a familiar voice say:

All these whiteys out in the desert, and yet there’s one who stands taller and more ivory than the rest. Smokey Denniker, give me the hundred dollars you owe me.

Smokey didn’t owe Merry Hunter any fucking money. Despite this, the guy always chose to greet him by mentioning some owed sum. A black thing - he guessed - but it was fucking irritating nonetheless. That the fucking dude was wearing a lime green seer sucker two piece with a pink shirt and loafers in a hundred + degrees was also annoying. Smoke started looking for a way out, but Hunter had him dead to rights in the Caddy. Smoke watched the rear view filling with green and pink, and then turned ready to take his medicine from the brother. Meredith had seen something more intriguing by then. He opened the back door without verbal interruption.

Whassis. What you got a…Hey Smoke. Smokey! You got a Rolling Stone back here you know dat. HaHa! Which stone you, sir? You suppos-a-bee. Wyman right? Naw, naw Watts right? Cha-leh!

Leave it Merry he’s catchin z’s before the show…

Smokey, you been smoking; that shit again, that shit…Uh Uh…No no. He catchin z’s durin’ the fuggin show. GP gone on stage now baby. We gotta move. What you got some weed? You got that shit you had?

He was talking about the meth. Smoke was puzzled. Had he mentioned that to fucking hunter? Why?

Uh…Well I had some. Jus a few left though. Show drugs…

Hunter - ever persistent:

Nah, Nah. Merry drugs you mean. We can trade up too. Lookee:

He held up a tums-sized white pill, glowing like the whitest thing ever. Smoke had been trying to act cool, but this was a bit much. He took the pill from the green-clad black man and marveled at it up close. It said, in tiny arching letters around the rim:

SANDOZ

And on the back, same lettering, smaller and stamped straight across:

LSD-25

And for the second time that day, Smoke was forced by fate into a choice with apocalyptic consequences.
Merry was already walking to the front passenger door.

Power blue. No No No. Smokey this car yours, this car got to be WHITE.

***

Well now he was fucked, fucked, fucked, fucked, he guessed as Hunter, the nice-smelling girl, and himself were walking across the million-acre beige parking lots at Altamont Speedway. In the distance there was music playing, probably the Burritos. And though Smoke loved GP and loved the Burrito’s thing, he had his brain-full just trying to keep track of the music blaring in melty stereo inside his own head. Shit was loud. The Stones, echoes from yesterday, blending in with jibber from the moving crowd, and jabber from those still seated around campsites, cars, and other seated people. All of it twisting, braiding, and separating in his mind like strands in a massive weaving. He tried to pay attention to events outside his braincase, but there was so much going on, he worried over missing some.