Vineland

adron of blue jays stomping around on the roof. In his dream these had been carrier pigeons from someplace far across the ocean, landing and t

ty check, reminding him that unless he did something publicly crazy before a date now less than a week away, he would no longer qualify for benefits. He

a note from Prairie. "Dad, they changed my shift again, so I rode in with Thapsia. You got a call

, he finally got around to locating the phone and calling the local TV station to recite to them this year's press release. But - "You'd better check again, Mr. Wheeler. Word we have is that you've been rescheduled." "Check wi

an attitude, some being known to chase cars and pickups for miles down the road and bite anybody who didn't like it. As Zoyd came out, Desmond gave him an inquiring look. "Just dig yourself," shaking his head at the chocolate crumbs on the dog's face, "

this very cash register after failing to clear, and proceeded to the men's room of the Breez-Thru gas station, where he shifted into the dress and with a small hairbrush tried to rat what was on his head and face into a snarl he hoped would register as insane-looking enough for the mental-health folks. Back at the pump he put in five dollars' worth of gas, went in the back seat, got a quart of

that time ag

n me, hate to think I'm

eeling," Sl

fifteen,

se front window you d

my past, this year I'm gonna just take this little chai

. Wheeler, you bee

narrowly escaping death by tree, not too much patience with anything

," weary Sl

t-of-state Winnebagos on some leisurely tour of the redwoods, in among whom, on the two-lane stretches, he was obliged to gear down and

girl younger than his daughter screamed at him

ewly blacktopped. These were to be the first of several rude updates. Trying to think cheerful thoughts - like assuming the television crews were only late - Zoyd collected the bag wi

hed around lightly on designer barstools, sipping kiwi mimosas. The jukebox once famous for hundreds of freeway exits up and down the coast for its gigantic country-and-western collection, including half a dozen covers of "So Lonesome I Could Cry," was reformatted to light classical and New Age music that gently peeped at the edges of audibility, slowing, lulling this roomful of

ow you as a person with your many fine points and so on like that, but from your fashion message I can tell that you a

t attracted immediate attention from everyone in the room, not all of it technical curiosity. It was a tailor-made lady's chain saw, "tough enough for timber," as the commercials said, "but petite enough for a purse." The guide bar, handle gri

ack as Zoyd, he hoped demurely, yanked at a silk cord on a dainty st

that li'l h

eciding it was time to intervene, "no channel's gonna send no crew thi

d. "This person

vers Conference," Buster all smile

gerousness. He throttled the nacreous pretty saw reluctantly back first to a lady

month, you 'n' 'at little saw, c

t the gentrification of South Spooner, Two Street, and other more familiar hellraisin' locales has upped the ante way outa my bracket, these are all folks now wh

re either Zoyd, in fact since George Lucas and all his crew

, just a lady's-size beer there . . . you know I

d life there forever. He put his massive elbows on about the only thing in here that hadn't been replaced, the original b

r parking lot, the cou

're no bar fighter, I can see the thirst for new experiences, but a man's be

r logger, his voice almost inaudible, si

rebellious ain't he?' they'll say, and soon you'll find those checks are gettin' slower, even lost, in the mail and say there Lemay! my good man and good sport, let's have a look at the palm of that hand up here on the bar a minute? 'Cz I'm gonna read your fortune for you, how about that," guiding by strange jovial magn

uh

oyd here does look a little strange right

ied Lemay. "Und

e," conf

sounds like intere

ber Lounge, a notorious Vineland County roadhouse, in high agitation. "Got six mobile TV units wa

ust called m

upposed to be jumping through th

y and told 'm it was u

aid it got

ay this act would g

on back," s

is beer, and made his exit, blowing broad show-biz ki

orches, barbecues, waterbeds, and cable TV. During the brief North Coast summers they were for tourists and travelers, but through the rainy remainder of the year, occupants tended to be local, and paying by the week. The woodstove

s old bass player and troublemaking companion had been living here for years, in what he still described as a commune, with an astounding number of current and ex-old ladies, ex-old ladies' boyfriends, children of parent combinations present and absent, plus miscellaneous folks in out of the night. Zoyd had watched television shows about Japan, showing places such as Tokyo where people got into incredibly crowded situations but, because over the course of history they'd all learned to act civil, everybody got along fine despite the congestion. So when Van Meter, a lifetime

ce, Wounded Righteousness. "Are you ready? We'll be losin' the light, fog's gonn

why is everybod

-rowing his forehead. "Guess I can tell you now you're h

ratic federal comet who brought, each visit in to Zoyd's orbit, new forms of bad luck and baleful influence. This time, though, it had been a while, long enough that Zoyd had begun to hope the man might've found other meat and be gone for good. Dream on, Zoyd. Hector stood over by the toilets pretending to play a Zaxxon machine, but in reality waiting to be reintroduced, this honor apparently falling to the manager of the Cu

up, it's me's gott

just canceled, I'm the social coordinator, supposed

r not fuck up this one Ralp

ng. Can I have them get you a drink or anything? Oh by the way Zoyd,

tor exchanged the br

r outfit,

ector's stomach. "Look like you been 'movi

speaking of lunch, how about

to make the rent an

nk of it this way. If I can prove to you, that I'm as bad of a de

me, for these oily Hectorial setups? The best it had ever turned

smiles, and a

lunch, but please, I have to jump through this windo

breathing steady, silently repeated a mantra that Van Meter, claiming it'd cost him $ioo, had toward the end of his yoga phase last year hustled Zoyd into buying fo

ded at the window and went crashing through. He knew the instant he hit that something was funny. There was hardly any i

o Zoyd. "Are you ready?" Like a snake he lunged his head forward and took a giant bite out of the glass. Holyshit, Zoyd frozen, he's lost it - no, actually now, instead Hector was chewing away, crunching and slobbering, with the same evil grin, going "Mmm-mm!" and "?Qué rico, qué sabroso!" Van Meter went running after a departing paramedic truck hol

ext day at the bowling alley? Technically, no. But in the feder-ale's eyes there'd been a glint that Zoyd could still see, behind the one-way auto glass, even as the nightly fog rolled up over the great berm and on toward 101 and Hector was driven away into it. Zoyd could feel another hustle on the way. Hector had been trying over and over for years to develop him as a resource, and

d beautiful Vanna White at the corner of his vision to cheer on the Wheel, to wish him w

ching the 4:30 Movie, Pia Zadora in The Clara Bow Story. She fingered the material of the lurid print

er types, fallers, choker s

oyd.

of these guys slipped me their phone number, s

at

hter. Was this a trick question here? "Let'

like to try

k alarm, covering her mouth and making her eyes round. He was wearing ancient surfer baggies underneath,

story. "Well," chuckled news anchor Skip Tromblay, "an annual Vine-land event was repeated today, as local laughing-academy outpatient Zoyd Wheeler performed his now familiar yearly leap through another area plate-glass window. This time the lucky esta

a retro-Hawaiian parrots-and-hula-girls print, came across as a real attention-getter. Over on one of the San Francisco channels, the videotape was being repeated in slow motion, the million crystal trajectories smooth as fountain-drops, Zoyd in midair with time to rotate into a number of positions he didn't remember being in, many of which, freeze-framed, could have won photo awards someplace. Next came highlights of his previous attempts, at each step into the past the color and other production val

your personal best - too bad the V

orkin'

evenly. "We real

oper, I can't even keep enou

that's leaving all these cakes and pies and stuff layin' around, candy bars

t was money, kid. Who's been m

turn and tilt, as if slipping into an adjustment that would allow her to ta

unker diet expert - named himsel

"which your friends his hippie-freak parents laid on him in 1967, about converting

you maybe oP R2D2's just cheap, and doesn't want to buy you any mo

e, Dad, maybe y

be you forget, I already know him, I can remember all you guys trick or treatin' not so long ago and let me tell you, any kid w

ike a Frankenstein, and so what, I don't see how you could have any k

ha

studied every inch of all your videotapes. Sa

y, ah.

g sharp spears? heavy enough to go right through ya? Isaiah says all his friends

to just dummy up. But was it true, was it possible, had he been that close to death or major surgery each previous fun-filled time? How, then, unless he could count on sugar windows f

ss," Prairie had evidently been saying, " 'cause I know he'

chirpy. "Long as he don't open it for me," having then to dodge the athle

hing between neighborhood scold and soap-opera Chief of Psychiatric. "You've turned into exac

night at somebody's door in no hockey mask, carryin' around all these lethal blades, even somethin' looked like a pruning hook? and you're telli

idea, if only y

ll do that, what kind of uptight father do you take me for, why, he might even turn out to be a fine

emerged Isaiah Two Four, who today, Zoyd noticed, had his long Mohawk colored a vibrant acid green, except at the tips, where some magenta shade was airbrushed on. Now these happene

me of this was bush-vet and jailyard moves Zoyd recognized, some was private choreography he couldn't keep up with, though

ed their last get-together, when, from a temperate discussion of musical differences, feelings h

in terms of our joint strange fate as mortal sandwich, equally exposed to the jaws of destiny, and from that perspective what's it matter, rill

trivial your spirited advocacy of the Uzi as a

acious of

s - a cold six-pack of Dos Equis, ah right! Popping one open, beaming, he observed once again in his daughter the sly, not yet professionally developed gift of staging a hustle,

franchising purposes. Isaiah sat at the cable-spool table, making diagrams with tortilla chips and pitching his dreams - "Third World Thrills," a jungle obstacle course where you got to swing on ropes, fall into the water, blast away at surprise pop-up targets shaped like indigenous guerrilla elements . . . "Scum of the City," which would allow the visitor to wipe from the world images of assorted urban undesirables, including Pimps, Perverts, Dope Dealers, and Muggers, all carefully multiracial so as to offen

id was coming up with. Dazedly he realized that at some point his mouth had fallen open and remained so, he didn't know for h

w much will

orthodontia, plus full eye contact. Zoyd

some address in a distant state, obtained from a matchbook cover. Turned out to be the Bank of Vine

"In consideration, you get all the

why don't your

egetarians, they also discriminated among vegetables, excluding from their diet everything red, for example, the color of anger. Most bread, having been made by ki

folks don't know

ted it to be

and he caught Prairie giving him a wei

g out for a few days, OK? Basically t

d called Billy Barf and the Vomitones, who

ter's getting married down the City next weekend, the band suddenly a

I'll do it now, can

he bathroom, las

contact. She'd never been a squirmer, no

o bank's gonna let me c

local bu

er, and I owe too much mone

it when you

ouse." A point that may even have begun to get through, when Isaiah came running ou

g to a full-scale Italian wedding and do

ng," Isaiah admitted. "I, like, imp

ings in his career, nothing the kid couldn't handle, and besides the eats would more than make up for any awkward episodes, so it wasn't as if he were running a mean trick on his daughter's boyfriend, whom he was still not 100 percent crazy about, or anything like that. And as a problem t

e showed up first in Zoyd's life shortly after Reagan was elected governor of California. Zoyd was living down south then, sharing a house in Gordita Beach with elements of a surf band he'd been playing keyboard in since junior high, the Corvairs, along with friends more and less transient. The house was so old that all of its termite clauses and code violations had been waived, on the theory that the next moderate act of nature would finish it off. But having been put up back during an era of overdesign, it proved to be sturdier than it looked, with its old stucco eaten at to reveal generations of paint jobs in different beach-town pastels, corroded by salt and petrochemical fogs that flowed in the summers onshore up the sand slopes, on up past Se

them, leaning on the doorjamb playing with his hair. "Maybe later," Hector greeted him, "you c

Scott wittily. "

m, out there in the car? You can't really tell till he stands up, but he is so big, that nobody ever wa

g, Scott - he had a little run-in a few years ago with so

gs, much celebrated in the folklore of my people" - this being in the early days

me to take

o which now also afforded a leisurely view of a service .38 in an armpi

o nothing federal,

mandated at least a stop-and-frisk, ran in frowning.

," Hector had been explaini

e'd never score again! oh yes, it's a miracle-" Zoyd kicking hi

o is temporarily in custody, though sure to be back before

..," went

half a lid of Mexican commercial in those days, from behind Van Meter's ear. Zoyd rolled his eyes as the bass player grabbed at the money. "And there

ot others obtained with it. Now and then he would get fooled on some minor dope purchase, sweet basil in a heat-sealed bag, a small vial of Bisquick (yep, he'd murmur, still making stupid mistakes and how about yourself?) and he'd feel really tempted, sometimes for days, to turn the dealer in to Hector. But there were always good reasons not to - it would happen that one was a cool person who needed the money, another a distant cousin from the Middle West, or a homicidal maniac who would take revenge, so forth. Each time Zoyd failed to inform on these people, Hector grew furious. "You think you're protectín them? They just gonna fuck you over again." The edge in his voice was frustration, everything abou

nions, jealousy and revenge always goin' on, plus substance dealers and their go-betweens, and narcs who thought they were undercover trying to pop them, couple-three politicals fleein

He ordered the Health Food Enchilada Special and Hector had the soup of the day, cream of zucchini, and the vegetarian tostada, which upon its a

your food, Hector,

a storm approaching over his life's horizon, had begun to bring everything indoors. Stuck out in the field at GS-13 for years because of his attitude, he had sworn - Zoyd thought - he'd go out the gate early before he'd ever be some cagatintas, a bureaucrat who shits ink. But he must have cut some deal, maybe it got too cold for him - tim

eared descending from rain-slick stagecoaches, geniuses with wood who could build you anything from a bowling alley to a Carpenter Gothic outhouse. Balls struck pins, pins struck wood, echoes of collision came thundering in from next door along with herds of kids in different bowling jackets, each carrying at least one ball in a bag plus precarious stacks of sodas and food, each squeaking open the screen door between

, "What are you

hat I'm say

hing in his eyes. "Wh

r wi

enchiladas with a fork while Hector wai

and popping out some. "N

l me what, she

f defunding? Maybe you noticed on the news, on the Tube, all these stor

s and miles in the past. Why, besides the free lunch, was Zoyd sitting here listening to this?

her under Witn

be ex-Mob 'thout havin' to die first, since when are you usin' that Mafia meat locker for polit

get line, but still run by the U.S. Marsh

urally amiable? All that could possibly be restraining the tough old doorkicker was kindness, unfortun

he money disappears, but you still have her f

word hung in the wood space, betwe

troyed a file, 'th all 'ese litt

yd, the wave of History, and you can catch it, or scratch it." He eyed Zoyd with a smug look which in view of what he'd been doing to his tostada, over, by now, most of the tabletop, lacked authenticity. "The man who once shot the old Hermo

don't know why her

a need your help.

, some idiot back there wiped out the computer file, right?

think now she's h

s gonna take - twelve, thirteen years, not bad, you mind if I call the Guinness Book H

gs, I see - figured you'd be mellower by now, m

ate withers

ay out into smalltown Outer Mongolia, ése, there's gonna be some local person about your age come runnín

rs everything, space is re

l life back then. Still waitín for that magic payoff. But no prob, I can live with that. .. and it ain't like you're lazy or afraid to work, either. .. impossible to tell with you, Zoyd. Ne

n' me I - I wasn't innocent, me beh

like everybody el

at

me, please, aks yourself, OK, 'Who was saved

par

land, so on, more 'n half of 'em currently on the run, and you so far around the bend you don't even see it, that's what became of your happy househo

, He

s, simply to rely on going in, trying to neutralize whoever was there with a repertoire of assault that still ran from stupefy to obliterate, and if they were waiting for him one time and got in the first move, ay muere, too bad. Hector sadly knew this wasn't anywhere near the samurai condition of always being on that perfect edge prepared to die, a feeling he'd known only a few times in his life, long ago. Nowadays, with his old fighting talents lapsed, what looked like simple impulse or will might as easily have been advanced self-hatred. Zoyd, the big idealist, liked to believe that Hector remembered everybo

she can walk through and break, so you get a few minutes' edge but meanwhile I'

ou don't call in, we don't call unless we need you. All's you got to do's be t

he li'l fella today, with this edge on everything? "Well

ee scale, maybe

mp and warm from some agent's wallet

it can be well into the

ute - bonus

ate

uniform, a b

onna d

or, you givin'

ll him around my office, created all of us, even you, with free w

took me a long time even to get to where I am on the whole subject o' her, now you want to post

t your ki

ut how I should be bringin' up my own kid, we know already how much all you Reaganite folk

in't gonna wo

at you're spending a lot on one long-a

Maybe it goes beyond you

far be

your shoes, so I'll give you this for free." Was he reading strange soup messages? "Your ex-old lady, up till they terminated her budget line, was livín in a underground of the State, not like th' old Weatherpeople or nothín, OK? but a certain kind of world that civilians up on the surface, out in the sun thinkín 'em

f the way, 'specially anybody she's been r

u're just as fucked as you ever were,

hippie that's gone sour,

complainín this far down the line, it's only business, and we're b

need a yes or

rs now, did you send one Christmas card, or ask about Debbi, or the kids, or what's been happenín to my consciousness? Maybe I'm Mormon now, how would

M

iscipline's all,

or, how are Debb

skippín along through the wildflowers, so forth, thinkín you were

on't. You

like everybody else anyway! ?Ja, ja! So what was it for? All 'at livín in the hippie dirt, drivín around some piece of garbage ain't even in the blue book no more, passín

nd the girl, alarmed, backed away, dropping the document, which then got batted around by the three parties until at last fluttering

ut past the street door, came a convergence of sirens, purposeful

atoon of folks come crashing in after him, what was this, all wearing identical camo jumpsuits and crash helmets with the word NEVER stenciled on. Two stayed by the

ow came strolling in between the two doorpeople, heading

't know you and Hector were acquainted, listen, he hasn't been quite

roke

if you have any further contac

are

on," someplace down north of Santa Barbara, a struck circle around a TV set, above the Latin motto Ex luce ad sanitatem, with a printed p

em. You guys

ts, contracts, basically we study and treat T

Flintstone theme to calm himself down, and all those "li'l buddy"s, which as they both knew was wha

s has seen. He's already in the literature. Known in our field as the Brady

then the middle one's name was -" till Zo

eply, "you should gi

but he was already halfway out the door, soon to be joined by the othe

was some sort of escaped l

belonging to his neighbor Trent, with a camper shell whose unusual design gave the vehicle some cornering problems. "Long as you don't try it with the tank anywhere between empty and full," Trent suggested, he thought helpfully. But it was actually the camper shell, covered all over with