Dawn's Hwy part 2
Part 2 Goin' to the Roadhouse
Jim woke up in the backseat of Carol’s convertible which, he had charmed her into letting him borrow. He looked around; the rising sun was in his eyes.
“Where are we?” He asked.
“The desert,” Phil said, “look around, where do you think we are?”
Jim looked around at the highway surrounded by the scrub, cactus and Joshua trees of the desert. His mind flashed on images of dead Indians laying on the highway, blood on the asphalt.
“Oh shit, I’m back.” He said.
“Back? Where?”
“Here.”
“Here?” Felix asked.
“It looks like it, man.”
“What the fuck are you talking about, Jim?” Phil asked, always trying to cut to the heart of a problem.
“When I was a kid, my family was moving to one of my father’s new assignments, and one morning, it was like, you know, the time between night and day.”
“We know when dawn is, asshole.” Felix said, sarcastically.
“Anyway, we drove up to an accident, a truckload of Indians had overturned. There was blood everywhere on the road, and I was really freaking out. I wanted to do something, but I couldn’t, I was just a kid, right? My father got out of the car but didn’t do anything. My mother told me it was a dream. I don’t know if she thought that would make it better or not, but it wavered in strange time between reality and dream since then. I may write a story about it.”
“Sounds like you already are.”
“Maybe one of the Indians was a shaman, and his soul jumped into mine.” Jim posited, an idea he liked, a part of the new mythology of himself. He grabbed the notebook next to him on the seat and started writing in it. Felix saw what he was doing and reached into the backseat and grabbed it.
“Morrison, you may have read a lot of philosophy, but you need a philosophy. All great writers have a philosophy.”
“What’re you going to write about anyway?” Phil asked.
Jim smiled mischievously, “how I lured two dumb motherfuckers into the desert and killed them.”
“Fuck you, Morrison! You may get Phil baby here, but I’ll take you out first.” Felix said, as he looked through the notebook, “Morrison, you’re such a pussy! A writer! You stack the deck, choose the circumstances and conditions of a story, so of course the outcome can be anything you want. If you want to be a real artist, you need to do something that is real. A film is real, it records reality, it shows you consciousness, what’s really going on.” Felix threw the notebook out of the car.
“Hey asshole!” Jim yelled, “that’s my notebook!”
“Morrison, you gotta learn to let go of the bullshit. Hell, even that rock band of yours has a better chance of doing something more real than with ‘stories.’”
Jim sat back in the seat. That’s not what most of his friends thought. Just the opposite, most of his friends thought The Doors were a lark. He thought back to a couple months before. It had been a cool night and he was meeting a couple friends at the UCLA botanical gardens. He walked through the labyrinth of sculpted bushes down the stone path to the grotto in the center, where he was supposed to meet Liz, Katie and Max. They were surrounded by cool green hedges, slick with evening dew, and they were trying to talk him out of being in the band.
“There’s too much competition, you’ll never make it,” Katie said.
“Your film career is going great.”
“You don’t want to be in a band with those guys Jim, they’re not going anywhere.” Max said, “Manczarek isn’t like you. He isn’t a poet, he’s a capitalist. He wants fame, money, power.”
“That’s funny,” Jim said. “That’s the irony of it, people have told Ray I’m flakey and unreliable.” Jim considered it a minor betrayal, it played like a Garden of Gethsemane scene in his mind.
“Hey man, let me drive. I’m bored back here.”
“No way, Morrison,” Felix said, “you drive like shit. Is there any beer left?”
“Yeah, it’s warm,” Jim grabbed a can, shook it, and tossed it to Felix. He opened it to a spray of foam, chugged it down and threw the can out of the car after Jim’s notebook, the desert claiming both. “Felix, you’re one strange cat,” Jim said. “Since you’re not going to let me drive, wake me when we get somewhere.” As he lay down in the backseat, he smiled to himself and wondered if either of them got his joke.
The car pulled up in front of a roadside bar. It was a sun bleached, weather-beaten wooden building with a porch running across the front. There were some motorcycles parked off to the side of the building.
“Wake up, Jim. We’re here!”
“Where?”
“Somewhere.” Felix said. They went inside.
Inside the bar, it wasn’t very big. It was cool, quiet and dark, despite the soft moaning of the jukebox. The bar ran the length of one wall. A little farther in and across from it was a pool table. Sitting at a table were five or six bikers with their girlfriends. All the guys were dressed in leather jackets, white t-shirts, jeans, biker boots, their hair slicked back into DA’s. The girls were all dressed in low cut flowery blouses, tight pants, their jackets hanging off their chairs. They all watched as the outsiders came in. Jim was the first to get to the bar.
“What can I get for you?” The bartender asked.
“Beer.”
“Beer?”
“Tres cerveza’s por favor,” Jim said, smiling broadly.
“Tequila with mine,” Felix said. ‘Always on the road to finding bliss or the end of the night,’ Jim thought.
“Excuse me,” Phil said timidly as the bartender put a beer in front of him, “can you help us?” The bartender stared at him blankly. “We, we’re looking for Senor Reyes.” At the mention of the name, the bikers stopped what they were doing, and exchanged looks. One, who Jim took to be the leader, swaggered over to them.
“You sick or something?” He asked menacingly.
“No, why?” Phil asked.
“I thought maybe you’re looking for a medicine man.”
“No, the shaman, a brujo.” The biker looked shocked.
“Where’d gringos like you learn words like that?”
Phil was getting more nervous now, but he was undeterred. “We heard he might have some peyote.”
“Peyote? Why don’t you just go to church?”
“Because we’re looking for a new way to find…”
“It’s old, very old.”
“We’re on a mission of discovery,” Jim chimed in smoothly, “looking for a new world.”
“A new world?” the biker said, “you mean a new world like when Europeans came here and killed our ancestors, stole our culture and then tried to kill it? Is that what you mean?”
“No, it’s like space, but instead of going outwards we want to go inward.”
“I thought it was just up and out for you Anglos?”
“The farther I go in, the further I reach out, man.” Jim said.
“That’s a luxury for us, we only have what was left to us. Now you’re coming back for that? They’re our beliefs man. You college boys are tourists, slumming, wanting to see what you’ve read about, but you can leave any time you want. We can’t. You’re just gringos looking to get high.”
“No, no, no,” Phil said.
“You may not think you’re stealing something…”
“We want to learn those beliefs, to see if it’s a way for us.”
“Javier, why don’t you just tell them where the old man lives?” one of the other bikers said. “He won’t see them anyway.”
“Sure,” the biker said, relenting. “He lives on the outside of town, by a crossroads, the house with all the snakes.”
“What does that mean?” Phil asked.
“You’ll see,” the biker said, as he walked back to the table.
“Cool,” Jim said.
Jim, Phil and Felix turned to their beers, Jim looked around taking in the surroundings, trying to memorize everything about the place. He caught the eye of one of the girls. Her blouse was low-cut and there was the undulation of skin across the top of her breasts as she insinuated her way up to the bar. She sidled up next to Jim under the pretense of getting a drink.
“You buy me a drink?” She asked.
“Sure! What do you want?”
“For right now,” she said, hesitating, “a beer.”
The bikers started to notice Jim flirting with the girl and were getting agitated. The talking amongst themselves grew louder. Phil was the first to notice and leaned over to Jim, “I don’t think that’s such a good idea, Jim.”
“Why not? We’re here to have some fun and maybe a few other things that start with f-u.”
“Well, for one,” Phil said, “you almost got us busted in L.A. when you jumped out of the car and kissed that chick.”
“Aww, leave him alone,” Felix said, “he’s just havin’ a good time.”
“Your egging him on isn’t helping any!” Phil snapped.
“Awww, Phil,” Jim said with mock innocence, “she was a beautiful angel of womanhood, and I just thought I’d break the ice.”
“That’s beside the point, Jim. All those guys over there are getting upset.
Jim looked over at them, and roared, “well, fuck them!” The bikers all stopped talking and were glaring at them. Javier, the leader of the gang, walked over to Jim.
“You like my girlfriend, gringo?”
“Who says she’s yours?”
“I do.”
“We’ll see who she leaves with.”
“You like girls?”
“Hey man, why don’t you fuck off!” Felix yelled. The biker ignored him.
“I thought with your long hair maybe you’re a maricón.” He looked at Jim to see if he was scared. “You know what a maricón is gringo?”
“Why? You want to fuck me?” Jim said.
“More like fuck you up.” The biker punched Jim. Felix jumped up and blindsided the biker, and then there was an explosion of sound as chairs crashed to the floor and the bikers jumped on Jim, Felix, and Phil. The bartender started yelling, “get them out of here! You’re not going to break up my bar!” The group scuffled punches were thrown on both sides. They spilled out onto the wooden porch, and the bikers threw Jim, Felix, and Phil into the desert dust and dirt in front of the bar. The three jumped into the car, tires spinning out a cloud of dust and rock in their wake as the bikers headed back into the bar.
TO BE CONTINUED…Part 3
This is an early version of Dawn’s Hwy which appears in The Lion Communique. I’m also the author of The Doors Examined. For more information and more of my books Jymsbooks to join my monthly newsletter!