Free Vineland by Thomas Pynchon

walk-ons and he thinking about specializing in Brecht—one night in the Haight somebody had some acid, and after careening for a while through the sixties, they alit from their anarcho-psychedelic spin twenty miles up a mud obstacle course referred to as a road only by those who’d never been near it, deep in the Vineland redwoods in a cabin by a stream from whose bed they could hear gold-bearing cobblestones knocking together at night. When the business took off they’d rented a house in town, but had held on to the place in the mountains, where they’d first come back to Earth.
    â€œLittle busy just this second,” Millard handing Zoyd an envelope with a sum of greenbacks within, “later would be better—say Hon, what’s the Eight O’Clock Movie?”
    â€œUm, oh, it’s Pat Sajak in
The Frank Gorshin Story.
”
    â€œSay about ten, ten-thirty?”
    â€œYikes, got to call Trent, he needs his rig.”
    Trent, a sensitive poet-artist from the City, had moved up north here for his nerves, which at the moment were not at their most tranquil. “Armed personnel carriers,” Trent trying to scream and keep his voice down at the same time, “persons in full battle gear stomping through vegetable patches, somebody said they shot Stokely’s dog, I’m in here with a thirty-aught-six I don’t even know how to load, Zoyd, what’s gooeen
ahn?
”
    â€œWait, easy pardner, now it sounds like CAMP,” meaning the infamous federal-state Campaign Against Marijuana Production, “but it ain’t quite the season yet.”
    â€œIt’s you, fucker,” Trent blubbering now, “they’re usin’ your place for a headquarters, everything’s thrown out in the yard, they sure must’ve found your stash by now. . . .”
    â€œDo they know what I’m driving?”
    â€œNot from me.”
    â€œThanks Trent. Don’t know when—”
    â€œDon’t say it,” Trent warned, sniffling, “see you whenever,” and hung up.
    Zoyd thought his best bet might be to find an RV park someplace and try to blend in. He reserved a space a few miles out of town up Seventh River under a fake name, praying nobody was listening in on this phone. Then, gingerly, proceeded in the cedar-shake eyesore to Bodhi Dharma Pizza, which he could hear tonight before he saw it. All the occupants of the place were chanting, something that, with vibes of trouble to come, he recognized—not the words, which were in Tibetan, but the tune, with its bone-stirring bass, to a powerful and secret spell against invaders and oppressors, heard in particular a bit later in the year at harvest time, when CAMP helicopters gathered in the sky and North California, like other U.S. pot-growing areas, once again rejoined, operationally speaking, the third world.
    As Zoyd was about to pull into the lot, the first thing he saw through the front window was Hector standing tensely up on a table, completely surrounded by chanting pizza customers and staff. Zoyd kept driving, found a public phone, and called Doc Deeply at the Vineland Palace. “I don’t know how dangerous he is or how long I can stall him, so try to make it soon, OK?”
    Back inside Bodhi Dharma Pizza, Hector was furiously on defense, eyes inflamed, haircut askew. “Zoyd!
¡Órale, carnal!
Tell these people how much I don’ need this shit!”
    â€œWhere’s my kid, Hector?”
    Back in the employees’ toilet, as it turned out, where Prairie had locked the door. Zoyd went and stood hollering back and forth with her, trying to keep an eye on Hector at the same time, while the deep chanting continued.
    â€œHe says he knows where my mom is.” Her voice wary.
    â€œHe doesn’t know where she is, he was askin’ me the other day, now he’s tryin’ to use you.”
    â€œBut he said, she told him that—she really wants to see