Free Already Dead: A California Gothic by Denis Johnson Page B

thought I’d peek Already Dead / 49

    at the letters he was writing. During his manic runs he corresponds voluminously, in a trembling scrawl—with whom I don’t exactly know, but he does in fact mail his letters out, usually in big batches, sometimes, though rarely, to one of our fellow Gualalanians, who then shows them all around town just for laughs. His cabin’s well made, with a back deck, a gable over the front door, a small tidy porch. I followed him as far as the creek that ran beside it, where he got down on his muddy knees to fill his coffee can again. Young acacia trees nosed in under the taller creekside alders. Acacias bloom golden and abundant in the spring, but the variety propagates ruthlessly and has to be contained.
    A couple of severed deer heads hung down on bailing twine from the branches, with asterisks for eyes, exactly as the cartoonists show them.
    “I believe that’s a doe,” I said of one.
    “I’m a poacher,” he admitted, “but in or out of season I don’t take doe.”
    This was his life. He killed and butchered deer, packed the bloody meat back and forth between here and our father’s freezer. An elemental calling. “If a couple of people came down here after me,” I asked him,
    “would you shoot them for me—make them dead and make their eyes like that?”
    “No, no. No, Nellie,” he said, using the hated childhood diminutive.
    “I wouldn’t violate anything around here.”
    “You killed those deer.”
    “But I don’t do war. War is a diseased game.”
    “I’m a target for certain unpleasantness.”
    “In fact you yourself are a diseased game. Too much exposure to radar. You shouldn’t be here.”
    “This time it’s my intention to stay for a while. I’d like to hide here.”
    “Stay at the Tides. Or the Hotel.”
    “I’ve rented five rooms in six days.”
    “Go hide in your pot patch.”
    “I can’t.”
    “All you need is a sleeping bag! Be a man, will you?”
    “It’s my plants they’re after. It’s a money thing.”
    “They’d never find the place.”
    “I got drunk and told Melissa where it was.”
    “Melissa!”
    50 / Denis Johnson

    Bill disapproved of everything outside this forest. But for my mistress he had special contempt. Well, I guess we both judged her incapable of any real loyalty.
    “I’ve got to have a place to hide and think. I’ve got to take care of this mess fast. Before they get around to her.”
    “She couldn’t give them detailed directions, could she?”
    “In general. She could tell them generally, and they’d find it. They have dogs.”
    “They?”
    I nodded.
    He was suspicious. “Is this a real they?”
    “Yes.”
    “Or a chemical they?”
    “They’re real. They were just at the house.”
    “But maybe your reaction is chemical.”
    “No, I have good reason to be afraid.”
    “Or maybe partly chemical.”
    “Once in a while a joint. A bong hit. Recreational use.”
    “Maybe you don’t cure it right.”
    “Too much alcohol of course. I really should moderate.”
    “Green dope and tequila! Plus whatever the radar’s doing to you.” Now I made a scene, I’m afraid, shouting, “They’re coming for me!
    They’re coming for me here or there and sooner or later! They’re getting paid for it! These are hit men, hit men, hit men!”
    “Okay, okay, okay.” I’d unbalanced things now, set the energies whirling. He was angry but he didn’t know how to be angry. “You mentioned dogs?”
    “And I’ll mention more dogs! Their slimy noses in the dirt, jammed against my personal essence!”
    “Not police dogs, I hope.”
    “The smell of me .”
    “This isn’t the cops, I hope. Did you do something bad?”
    “What happened to the time when brother helped brother and no questions asked? What happened to those times?” We were standing beside his jeep again by now. He put his can of water on the hood, laid his hands on my shoulders, looked into my eyes. He meant, by this, to signal that those times