Demon Box

THE DEMON BOX: AN ESSAY

"Your trouble is -" my tall daddy used to warn, whenever the current of my curiosity threatened to carry me too far out, over my head, into such mysterious seas as swirl around THE SECRETS OF SUNKEN MU or REAL SPELLS FROM VOODOO ISLES or similar shroudy realms that could be reached with maps ordered from the back of science fiction and fantasy pulps:

"- is you keep trying to unscrew the unscrutable."

Years later another warning beacon of similar stature expressed the opposite view. Here's Dr. Klaus Woofner:

"Your trouble, my dear Devlin, is you are loath to let go your Sunday school daydreams. Yah? This toy balloon, this bubble of spiritual gas where angels dance on a pin? Why will you not let it go? It's empty. Any angels to be found will not be found dancing on the head of the famous pin, no. It is only in the dreams of the pinhead that they dance, these angels."

The old doctor waited until his audience finished snickering.

"More and more slowly, too," he continued. "Even there. They become tired, these dancing fancies, and if not given nourishment they become famished. As must everything. For the famine must fall eventually on us all, yah? On the angel and the fool, the fantastic and the true. Do any of you understand what I'm talking about? Izzy Newton's Nameless Famine?"

Dr. Woofner was still asking this straight at me, black brows raised, giving me the full treatment (like a cop's flashlight, somebody once described the analyst's infamous gaze). I ventured that I thought I understood what he was talking about, although I didn't know what to call it. After a moment he nodded and proceeded to give it a name:

"It is called, this famine, entropy. Eh? No ringing bells? Ach, you Americans. Very well, some front-brain effort if you please. Entropy is a term from conceptual physics. It is the judgment passed on us by a cruel law, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. To put it technically, it is 'the nonavailability of energy in a closed thermodyamic system.' Eh? Can you encompass this, my little Yankee pinheads? The nonavailability of energy?"

Nobody ventured an answer this time. He smiled around the circle.

"To put it mechanically, it means that your automobile cannot produce its own petroleum. If not fueled from without it runs down and stops. Goes cold. Very like us, yah? Without an external energy supply our bodies, our brains, even our dreams… must eventually run down, stop, and go cold."

"Hard-nail stuff," big Behema observed. "Bleak."

The doctor squinted against the smoke of his habitual cigarette. A non-filter Camel hung from his shaggy Vandyke, always, even as he was on this night – up to his jowls in a tub of hot water with a nude court recorder on his lap. He lifted a puckered hand above the surface as though to wave the smoke away.

"Hard nails? Perhaps. But perhaps this is what is needed to prick the pinhead's dream, to awaken him, bring him to his senses – here!"

Instead of waving, the hand slapped the black water – crack. The circle of bobbing faces jumped like frogs.

"We are only here, in this moment, this leaky tub. The hot water stops coming in? Our tub cools down and drains to the bottom. Bleak stuff, yah… but is there any way to experience what is left in our barrel without we confront that impending bottom? I think not."

About a dozen of my friends and family were gathered in the barrel to receive this existential challenge. We'd been driving down the coast to take a break from the heat the San Mateo Sheriff's Department was putting on our La Honda commune, bound for Frank Dobbs's ex-father-in-law's avocado ranch in Santa Barbara. When we passed Monterey I had been reminded that coming up just down the road was the Big Sur Institute of Higher Light, and that Dr. Klaus Woofner was serving another hitch as resident guru. I was the only one on board who had attended one of his seminars, and as we drove I regaled my fellow travelers with recollections of the scene – especially of the mineral baths simmering with open minds and unclad flesh. By the time we reached the turnoff to the Institute, I had talked everybody into swinging in to test the waters.

Everybody except for the driver; somewhat sulky about the senseless stop anyway, Houlihan had elected to stay behind with the bus.

"Chief, I demur. I needs to rest my eyes more than cleanse my soul – the wicked curves ahead, y'unnerstand, not to mention the cliffs. You all go ahead: take some snapshots, make your, as it were, obeisance. I'll keep a watch on the valuables and in the event little Caleb wakes up. Whup? There he is now."

At the mention of his name the child's head had popped up to peer through his crib bars. Betsy started back.

"Nay, Lady Beth, you needn't miss this holy pilgrimage. Squire Houlihan'll keep the castle safe and serene. See? The young prince dozes back down already. Whatcha think, Chief? Thirty minutes for howdies and a quick dip, forty-five at the most? Then ride on through the fading fires of sunset."

He was wishful thinking on all counts. The little boy was not dozing down; he was standing straight up in his crib, big-eyed to see the crew trooping out the bus door to some mysterious Mecca, and it was fading sunset by the time we had finished our hellos at the lodge and headed for the tubs. It was long past midnight before we finally outlasted the regular bathers and could congregate in the main barrel where the king of modern psychiatry was holding court.

This was the way Woofner liked it best – everybody naked in his big bath. He was notorious for it. Students returned from his seminars as though from an old-fashioned lye-soap laundry, bleached clean inside and out. His method of group ablution came to be known as "Woofner's Brainwash." The doctor preferred to call it Gestalt Realization. By any name, it reigned as the hottest therapy in the Bay Area for more than ten years, provoking dissertations and articles and books by the score. There are no written records of those legendary late-night launderings, but a number of the daytime seminars were taped and transcribed. One of the most well known sessions was recorded during the weekend of my first visit. It's a good sample:

DR. WOOFNER: Good afternoon. Are you all comfortable? Very good. Enjoy this comfort for a while. It may not last.

(The group sprawls on the sun-dappled lawn. Above is the acetylene sky. Down the cliffs behind them is the foamy maw of the Pacific. In front, seated at a shaded table with an empty chair opposite him, is a man in his late sixties. He has a bald pate, peeling from sunburn, and an unkempt billygoat beard. A cigarette droops from his mouth and a pair of tinted glasses sits slantwise on his nose.

(He removes the glasses. His eyes move from face to face until the group starts to squirm: then he begins to speak. The voice is aristocratically accented, but an unmistakable edge of contempt rings under the words, like the clink of blades from beneath an elegant cloak.)

DR. W: So. Before I inquire if there is a volunteer who is willing to interface with me, I want to clarify my position. First, I want you to forget all you have heard about "Super Shrink" and "Charismatic Manipulator" and "Lovable Old Lecher," etc. I am a catalyst; that is all. I am not your doctor. I am not your savior. Or your judge or your rabbi or your probation officer. In short, I am not responsible for you. If I am responsible for anyone it is for myself – perhaps not even that. Since I was a child people told me, Klaus, you are a genius. It was only a few years ago that I could accept what they said. This lasted maybe a month. Then I realized that I did not much care for the responsibility required to be a genius. I would rather be the Lovable Old Lecher.

(The group giggles. He waits until they stop.)

So. I am not Papa Genius but I can play Papa Genius. Or Papa God, or Mama God, or even the Wailing Wall God. I can take on the role for therapy's sake.

My therapy is quite simple: I try to make you aware of yourself in the here-and-now, and I try to frustrate you in any attempt to wriggle away.

I use four implements to perform this therapy. The first is my learning and experience… my years. Second is this empty chair across the table, the Hot Seat. This is where you are invited to sit if you want to work with me. The third is my cigarette – probably irritating to some but I am a shaman and this is my smoke.

Finally, number four is someone who is willing to work with me, here and now, on a few dreams. Eh? Who wants to really work with the old Herr Doktor and not just try to make a fool of him?

BILL: Okay, I guess I'm game. (Gets up from the lawn and takes the chair; introduces himself in a droll voice.) My name is William S. Lawton, Captain William S. Lawton, to be precise, of the Bolinas Volunteer Fire Department. (Long pause, ten or fifteen seconds. ) Okay… just plain Bill.

W: How do you do, Bill. No, do not change your position. What do you notice about Bill's posture?

ALL: Nervous… pretty guarded.

W: Yes, Bill's wearing quite an elaborate ceremonial shield. Unfold the arms, Bill; open up. Yah, better. Now how do you feel?

B: Butterflies.

W: So we go from the stage armor to stagefright. We become the anxious little schoolboy in the wings, about to go on. The gap that exists between that "there" in the wings and here is frequently filled with pent-up energy experienced as anxiety. Okay, Bill, relax. You have a dream that we can work with? Good. Is it a recent dream, or is it recurring?

B: Recurring. About twice a month I dream of this ugly snake, crawling up me. Hey, I know it's pretty trite and Freudian but -

W: Never mind that. Imagine that I am Bill and you are the snake. How do you crawl up me?

B: Up your leg. But I don't like being that snake.

W: It's your dream, you spawned it.

B: All right. I am the snake. I'm crawling. A foot is in my way. I'll crawl over it-

W: A foot?

B: Something, it doesn't matter. Maybe a stone. Unimportant.

W: Unimportant?

B: Unfeeling, then. It doesn't matter if you crawl over unfeeling things.

W: Say this to the group.

B: I don't feel this way toward the group.

W: But you feel that way toward a foot.

B: I don't feel that way. The snake feels that way.

W: Eh? You're not the snake?

B: I am not a snake.

W: Say to us all what you're not. I'm not a snake, I'm not -?

B: I'm not…ugly. I'm not venomous, I'm not cold-blooded.

W: Now say this about Bill.

B: Bill's not venomous, not cold-blooded -

W: Change roles, talk back to the snake.

B: Then why do you crawl on me, you snake?

W: Change back, keep it going.

B: Because you don't matter. You're not important.

– I am important!

– Oh, yeah? Who says?

– Everybody says. I'm important to the community. (Laughs, resumes the affected voice.) Captain Bill the firefighter. Hot stuff.

W: (taking over snake's voice): Oh, yeah? Then why is your foot so cold? (laughter)

B: Because it's so far from my head, (more laughter) But I see what you're getting at, Doctor; my foot is important, of course. It's all me -

W: Have the snake say it.

B: Huh? A foot is important.

W: Now change roles and give Mr. Snake some recognition. Is he not important?

B: I suppose you are important, Mr. Snake, somewhere on Nature's Great Ladder. You control pests, mice and insects and… lesser creatures.

W: Have the snake return this compliment to Captain Bill.

B: You're important too, Captain Bill. I recognize that.

W: How do you recognize Captain Bill's importance?

B: I… well, because you told me to.

W: Is that all? Doesn't Captain Bill also control lesser creatures from up on the big ladder?

B: Somebody has to tell them what to do down there.

W: Down there?

B: At the pumps, crawling around in the confusion… the hoses and smoke and stuff.

W: I see. And how do these lesser creatures recognize you through all this smoke and confusion, Captain Bill, to do what you tell them?

B: By my – by the helmet. The whole outfit. They issue the captain a special uniform with hi-viz striping on the jacket and boots. Sharp! And on the helmet there's this insignia of a shield, you see -

W: There it is, people! Do you see? That same armor he marched onstage with – shield, helmet, boots – the complete fascist wardrobe! Mr. Snake, Captain Bill needs to shed his skin, don't you think? Tell him how one sheds a skin.

B: Well, I… you… grow. The skin gets tighter and tighter, until it gets so tight it splits along the back. Then you crawl out. It hurts. It hurts but it must be done if one is to – wait! I get it! If one is to grow! I see what you mean, Doctor. Grow out of my armor even if it hurts? Okay, I can stand a little pain if I have to.

W: Who can stand a little pain?

B: Bill can! I'm strong enough, I believe, to endure being humbled a little. I've always maintained that if one has a truly strong "Self" that one can -

W: Ah-ah-ah! Never gossip about someone who isn't present, especially when it is yourself. Also, when you write the word "self" you would do better to spell it with a lower-case s. The capital S went out with such myths as perpetual motion. And lastly, Bill, one thing more. What, if you would please tell us, is so important over there -

(lifting a finger to point out the vague place in the air where Bill has fixed his thoughtful gaze)

– that keeps you from looking here?

(bringing the finger back to touch himself beneath an eye, razor-blade blue, tugging the cheek until the orb seems to lean down from his face like some incorruptible old magistrate leaning from his sacrosanct bench)

B: Sorry.

W: Are you back? Good. Can you not feel the difference? The tingling? Yah? What you are feeling is the Thou of Martin Buber, the Tao of Chung Tzu. When you sneak away like that you are divided, like Kierkegaard's "Double Minded Man" or the Beatles' "Nowhere Man." You are noplace, nothing, of absolutely no importance, whatever uniform you wear, and don't attempt to give me a lot of community-spirited elephant shit otherwise. Now, out of the chair. Your time is up.

Woofner's tone was considered by many colleagues to be too sarcastic, too cutting. After class, in the tub with his advanced pupils, he went way past cutting. In these hunts for submerged blubber, he wielded scorn like a harpoon, sarcasm like a filleting knife.

"So?" The old man had slid deeper beneath the girl and the water, clear to his mocking lower lip. "Der Kinder seem to be fascinated by this law of bottled dynamics?" His sharp look cut from face to face, but I felt the point was aimed at me. "Then you will probably be equally fascinated by the little imp that inhabits that vessel – Maxwell's Demon. Excuse me, dear -?"

He dumped the court recorder up from his lap. When she surfaced, gasping and coughing, he gave her a fatherly pat.

"- hand me my trousers if you would be so kind?"

She obeyed without a word, just as she had hours earlier when he'd bid her stay with him instead of leaving with the Omaha Public Defender who had brought her. The doctor toweled a hand dry on a pant's leg, then reached into the pocket. He removed a ballpoint pen and his checkbook. Grunting, he scooted along the slippery staves until he was near the brightest candle.

"About one hundred years ago there lived a British physicist named James Clerk Maxwell. Entropy fascinated him also. As a physicist he had great affection for the wonders of our physical universe, and it seemed to him too cruel that all the moving things of our world, all the marvelous, spinning, humming, ticking, breathing things, should be doomed to run down and die. Was there no remedy to this unfair fate? The problem gnawed at him and, in British bulldog fashion, he gnawed back. At length he felt he had devised a solution, a loophole around one of the bleakest laws on the books. What he did was… he devised this."

Carefully cradling the checkbook near the flame so all could see, he began to draw on the back of a check, a simple rectangular box. "Professor Maxwell postulated, 'Imagine we have a box, sealed, full of the usual assortment of molecules careening about in the dark… and inside this box a dividing partition, and in this partition a door' "

At the bottom of the partition he outlined a door with tiny hinges and doorknob.

" 'And standing beside this door… a demon!' " He sketched a crude stick figure with a tiny stick arm reaching for the doorknob.

" 'Now further imagine,' said our Professor, 'that this demon is trained to open and close this door for those flying molecules. When he sees a hot molecule approaching he lets it pass through to this side' " – he drew a large block H on the right half of the box – " 'and when he sees a cold, slow-moving molecule our obedient demon closes the door, containing it on this, the cold side of the box.' "

Mesmerized, we watched the puckered hand draw the C.

" 'Should not it then follow,' Professor Maxwell reasoned, 'that as the left side of the box got colder the right side would begin to get hot? Hot enough to boil steam and turn a turbine? A very small turbine, to be certain, but theoretically capable of generating energy none the less, free, and from within a closed system? Thus actually circumventing the second law of thermodynamics would it not?' "

Dobbs had to admit that it seemed to him like it ought to work; he said he had encountered such demons as looked like they had the muscle to manage it.

"Ah, precisely – the muscle. So. Within a few decades another fascinated physicist published another essay, which argued that even granted that such a system could be made, and that the demon-slave could be compelled to perform the system's task without salary, the little imp still would not be without expense! He would need muscles to move the door, and sustenance to give those muscles strength. In short, he would need food.

"Another few decades pass. Another pessimist theorizes that the demon would also have to have light, to be able to see the molecules. Further energy outlay to be subtracted from the profit. The twentieth century brings theorists that are more pessimistic still. They insist that Maxwell's little dybbuk will not only require food and light but some amount of education as well, to enable him to evaluate which molecules are fast-moving and hot enough, which are too slow and cool. Mr. Demon must enroll in special courses, they maintain. This means tuition, transportation to class, textbooks, perhaps eyeglasses. More expense. It adds up…

"The upshot? After a century of theoretical analysis, the world of physics reached a very distressing conclusion: that Maxwell's little mechanism will not only consume more energy than it produces and cost more than it can ever make, it will continue to do so in increase! Does this remind you of anything, children?"

"It reminds me," my brother Buddy said, "of the atomic power plants they're building up in Washington."

"Just so, yah, only worse. Now. Imagine again, please, that this box" – he bent again over the picture with his ballpoint, changing the H into a G -- "represents the cognitive process of Modern civilization. Eh? And that this side, let's say, represents 'Good.' This other side, 'bad.' "

He changed the C to an ornate B, then waggled the picture at us through the steam.

"Our divided mind! in all its doomed glory! And ensconced right in the middle is this medieval slavey, under orders to sort through the whirling blizzard of experience and separate the grain from the chaff. He must deliberate over everything, and to what end? Purportedly to further us in some way, eh? Get us an edge in wheat futures, a master's degree, another rung up the ladder of elephant shit. Glorious rewards supposedly await us if our slave piles up enough 'good.' But he must accomplish this before he bankrupts us, is the catch. Und all this deliberating, it makes him hungry. He needs more energy. Such an appetite."

His hand had drifted down to float on the surface, the checkbook still pinched aloft between thumb and finger.

"Our accounts begin to sink into the red. We have to float loans from the future. At the wheel we sense something dreadfully wrong. We are losing way! We must maintain way or we lose the rudder! We hammer on the bulkhead of the engine room: 'Stoker! More hot molecules, damn your ass! We're losing way!' But the hammering only seems to make him more ravenous. At last it becomes clear: we must fire this fireman."

We watched the hand. It was gradually sinking, checkbook and all, into the dark waters.

"But these stokers have built up quite the maritime union over the past century, and they have an ironclad contract, binding their presence on board to our whole crew of conscious faculties. If Stokey goes, everybody goes, from the navigator right down to the sphincter's mate. We may be drifting for the rocks but there is nothing we can do but stand at the wheel, helpless, and wait for the boat to go… down."

He held the vowel, bowing his voice like a fine cello. "O, my sailors, what I say is sad but true – our brave new boat is sinking. Every day finds more of us drowning in depression, or drifting aimlessly in a sea of antidepressants, or grasping at such straws as psychodrama and regression catharsis. Fah! The problem does not lie in poo-poo fantasies from our past. It is this mistake we have programmed into the machinery of our present that has scuttled us!"

The book was gone. Not a ripple remained. Finally the court recorder broke the spell with her flat, cornbelt voice.

"Then what do you advise we do, doctor? You've figured somethin', I can tell by the way you're leadin' us on."

That voice was the only thing flat she'd brought from Nebraska. Woofner leered at her for a moment, his face streaming moisture like some kind of seagoing Pan's; then he sighed and raised the checkbook high to let the water trickle out of it.

"I'm sorry, dear. The doctor has not figured anything. Maybe someday. Until then, his considered advice is to live with your demon as peacefully as possible, to make fewer demands and be satisfied with less results… and above all, mine students, to strive constantly to be here!"

The wet checkbook slapped the water. We jumped like startled frogs again. Woofner wheezed a laugh and surged standing, puffy and pale as Moby Dick himself.

"Class dismissed. Miss Omaha? A student in such obviously fit condition shouldn't object to helping a poor old pedagogue up to his bed, yah?"

"How about if I walk along?" I had to ask. "It's time I checked on the bus."

"By all means, Devlin." He grinned. "The fit and the fascinated. You may carry the wine."

After getting dressed, I accompanied the girl and the old man on the walk up to the cottages. We walked in single file up the narrow path, the girl in the middle. I was still in a steam from the hot-tub talk and wanting to keep after it, but the doctor didn't seem so inclined. He inquired instead about my legal status. He'd followed the bust in the papers – was I really involved in all those chemical experiments, or was that merely more San Francisco Chronicle crap? Mostly crap, I told him. I was flattered that he asked.

Woofner was quartered in the dean's cabin, the best of the Institute's accommodations and highest up the hill. While the court recorder detoured to get her suitcase, the doctor and I continued on up, strolling and sipping in silence. The air was still and sweet. It had rained sometime since midnight, then cleared, and pale stars floated in puddles here and there. The dawn was just over the mountains to the east, like a golden bugle sounding a distant reveille. The color echoed off the bald head bobbing in front of me. I cleared my throat.

"You were right, Doctor," I began, "about me being fascinated."

"I can see that," he said without turning. "But why so much? Do you plan to use the old doctor's secrets to become a rival in the nut-curing business?"

"Not if I can help it." I laughed. "The little while I worked at the state hospital was plenty."

"You wrote your novel on the job, I heard?" The words puffing back over his shoulder smelled like stale ashtrays.

"That's where I got all those crazy characters. I was a night aide on a disturbed ward. I turned in all my white suits the moment I had a rough draft done, but I never lost the fascination."

"Your book must have reaped certain rewards," he said. "Perhaps you feel some sort of debt toward those crazy people and call it fascination?"

I allowed that it could be a possibility. "But I don't think it's the people I'm fascinated by so much as the puzzle. Like what is crazy? What's making all these people go there? I mean, what an interesting notion this metaphor of yours is, if I've got it right – that modern civilization's angst is mechanical first and mental second?"

"Not angst," he corrected. "Fear. Of emptiness. Since the Industrial Revolution, civilization is increasingly afraid of running empty."

He was breathing hard but I knew he wasn't going to stop for a rest; I only had another couple dozen yards left before we reached his cabin.

"And that this fear," I pressed on, "has driven us to dream up a kind of broker and install him in our brain so he can increase our accounts by -"

"Minds," he puffed. "Into the way we think."

"- minds… by monitoring our incomes and making smart investments? He can't be any smarter than we are, though; we created him – and that he is the main snake-in-the-grass making people crazy, not all that psychology stuff?"

"That psychology stuff is… like the stuff the Chronicle writes… mostly crap."

I followed in silence, waiting for him to continue. The wheezing breaths turned into a laugh.

"But, yah, that is my metaphor. You got it right. He is the snake in our grass."

"And no way to get him out?"

He shook his head.

"What about the way he got in? What would happen if you hypnotized somebody and told them that their dream broker was no more? That he got wind the bank auditors were coming and committed suicide?"

"Bank failure would happen." He chuckled. "Then panic, then collapse. Today's somebody has too much invested in that dream."

We were almost to his cabin. I didn't know what else to ask.

"We are experimenting," he went on, "with some hybrid techniques, using some of Hubbard's Scientology auditors – 'Clears,' these inquisitors call themselves – in tandem with John Lilly's Sensory Deprivation. The deprivation tank melts away the subject's sense of outline. His box. The auditor locates the demon and deprograms him – clears him out, is the theory."

"Are you clearing any out?"

He shrugged. "With these Scientology schwules who can tell? What about you? We have a tank open all next week. Just how fascinated are you?"

The invitation caught me completely by surprise. Scientologists and deprivation tanks? On the other hand, a respite from the bus hassles and the cop hassles both was appealing. But before I could respond the doctor suddenly held up a hand and stopped. He tilted his hairy ear to listen.

"Do you hear a gang of men? Having an argument?" I listened. When his breathing quieted I heard it. From somewhere beyond the hedge that bordered the cottages arose a garbled hubbub. It did sound like a gang of men arguing, a platoon of soldiers ribbing each other. Or a ball team. I knew what it was, of course, even before I followed the doctor to an opening in the hedge; it was Houlihan, and only one of him.

Against the quiet purple of the Big Sur dawn, the bus was so gaudy it appeared to be in motion. It seemed to be still lurching along even though its motor was off and Houlihan wasn't in his driver's seat. He was outside in the parking lot among the twinkling puddles. He had located some more speed, it looked like, and his six-pound single jack. Then he had picked out a nice flat space behind the bus where he could waltz around, toss some hammer, and, all for himself alone and the few fading stars, talk some high-octane shit.

"Unbelievable but you all witnessed the move – one thirtieth of a sec maybe faster! How's that you skeptical blinkies? for world champion sinews and synapsis. But what? Again? Is this champ never satisfied? It looks like he's going for the backward double-clutch up and over record! Three, four – count the revolutions – five, six… which end first? In which hand?… eight, nine – either hand, Houlihan, no deliberation – eleven twelve thirteenka-fwamp yehh-h-h…"

Flipping the cumbersome tool over his shoulder, behind his back, between his legs – catching it deftly at the last instant by the tip of the dew-wet handle. Or not catching it, then dancing around it in mock frustration – cursing his ineptness, the slippery handle, the very stars for their distraction.

"A miss! What's amiss? Has the acclaim pried open our hero's as it were vanity? Elementals will invade through one's weakest point. Or has he gone all dropsy from a few celestial eyes staring?" – bending and scooping the hammer from its puddle to spin it high again and pluck it out of a pinwheeling spray. "Nay, not this lad, not world-famous Wet… Handle… Hooly! No pictures, please; it's an act of devotion…"

I'd seen the act plenty times before, so I watched the doctor. The old man was studying the phenomenon through the hedge with the detached expression of an intern observing aberrant behavior through a one-way mirror. As Houlihan went on, though, and on and on, the detachment changed to a look of grudging wonder.

"It's the demon himself," he whispered. "He's been stoned out of his box!"

He stood back from the hedge, lifting his brows at me.

"So it is not quite all Chronicle crap, eh, Dr. Deboree? Eviction by chemical command? Very impressive. But what about the risk of side effects?" He put his hand on my shoulder and looked earnestly into my eyes. "Mightn't such powerful doses turn one into the very tenant one is trying to turn out? But, ach, don't make such a face! I'm joking, my friend. Teasing. These experiments you and your bus family are conducting deserve attention, sincerely they do -"

It was over my shoulder that his attention was directed, though. The court recorder was coming, carrying a small green suitcase and a large pink pillow.

"- but at another time."

He gave me a final squeeze good night and promised that we would resume our consideration of this puzzle the very next opportunity. In the tubs again this evening? I nodded, flattered and excited by the prospect. He asked that I think about his invitation in the meantime – sleep a few quiet hours on it, yah? Then he hustled off to join the girl.

I pushed my way through the hedge and headed across the lot, hoping I could get Houlihan geared down enough to let me sleep a few quiet minutes. Fat chance. As soon as saw me coming he whinnied like an old firehorse.

"Chief! You're bestirred, saints be praised. All 'bo-warrrd!"

He was through the rear window and up into his seat with the motor roaring before I could make it to the door. I tried to tell him about my appointment with the doctor but Houlihan kept rapping and the bus kept revving until it beckoned its whole scattered family. Too many had been left behind before. They came like a grumpy litter coming to a sow, grunting and complaining they weren't ready to leave this comfortable wallow, wait for breakfast.

"We're coming right back," Houlihan assured one and all. "Positively! Just a junket to purchase some brake fluid – I checked; we're low – the merest spin back to that – it was a Flying Red Horse if I recollect rightly – hang on re-verse pshtoww! now I ain't a liar but I stretch the line…"

Drove us instead up a high-centered dirt road that llamas would have shunned and broke the universal miles from the highway but coincidentally near the hut of a meth-making buddy from Houlihan's beatnik days. This leathery old lizard gave the crew a lot of advice and homemade wine and introduced us to his chemical baths. It was a day before Buddy returned from his hike to borrow tools. It was nearly a week before we got the U-joint into Monterey and welded and replaced so we could baby the bus back down to civilized pavement.

It was a whole decade before I kept my appointment with Dr. Klaus Woofner, in the spring of 1974, in Disney World.

A lot of things had changed in my scene by then. Banished by court order from San Mateo County, I was back in Oregon on the old Nebo farm with my family – the one that shared my last name, not my bus family. They were scattered and regrouped with their own scenes. Behema was communing with the Dead down in Marin. Buddy had taken over my Dad's creamery in Eugene. Dobbs and Blanche had finagled a spread just down the road from our place, where they were raising kids on credit. The bus was rusting in the sheep pasture, a casualty of the Woodstock campaign. A wrong turn down a Mexican railroad had left nothing of Houlihan but myth and ashes. My father was a mere shade of that tower of my youth, sucked small by something medical science can name only, and barely that.

Otherwise, things seemed to be looking up. My dope sentence and my probation time had been served and my record expunged. My right to vote had been reinstated. And Hollywood had decided to make a movie of my nuthouse novel, which they wanted to shoot in the state hospital where the story is set. They were even interested in me doing the screenplay.

To firm up this fantasy I was limousined up to Portland by the producers to meet the head doctor, Superintendent Malachi Mortimer. Dr. Mortimer was a fatherly Jew of fifty with a gray pompadour and a jovial singsong voice. He sounded like a tour guide when he showed the hospital to me and the high-stepping herd of moguls up from Hollywood. Hype of moguls might be better.

As I followed through the dilapidated wards, memories of those long-ago graveyard shifts were brought sharply back to me – by the sound of heavy keychains jangling, by the reek of Pine Sol over urine, especially by the faces. All those curious stares from doorways and corridors gave me a very curious feeling. It wasn't exactly a memory but there was something familiar about it. It was the kind of tugging sensation you get when you feel that something is needed from you but have no notion what it is, and neither does the thing needing it. I guessed that maybe it was just information. Over and over I was drawn from our parade by looks so starved to know what was going on that I felt obliged to stop and try to shed some light. The faces did brighten. The likelihood that their sorry situation might be exploited as the set for a Hollywood movie didn't seem to disturb them. If Superintendent Mortimer decided it was all right, then they had no objections.

I was touched by their trust and I was impressed with Mortimer. All his charges seemed to like him. In turn he admired my book and liked the changes it had wrought in the industry. The producers liked that we liked each other, and before the day was over everything was agreed: Dr. Mortimer would permit use of his hospital if the movie company would foot the bill for a much-needed sprucing up, the patients would be paid extras, I would write the screenplay, the hype of moguls would pull in a heap of Oscars. Everyone would be fulfilled and happy.

"This baby's got big box written all over her!" was the way one enthusiastic second assistant something-or-other expressed it.

But driving back to Eugene that evening I found it difficult to hold up my end of the enthusiasm. That tugging sensation continued to hook at me, reeling my mind back to that haunted countenance at the hospital like a fish to a phantom fisherman. I hadn't confronted that face in years. Or wanted to. Nobody wants to. We learn to turn away whenever we detect the barbed cast of it – in the sticky eyes of a wino, or behind a hustler's come-on, or out the side of a street dealer's mouth. It's the loser's profile, the side of society's face that the other side always tries to turn away from. Maybe that's why the screenplay I eventually hacked out never appealed to the moguls – they know a loser when they have to look away from one.

Weeks passed but I couldn't shake that nebulous nagging. It put a terrible drag on my adaptation efforts. Turning a novel into a screenplay is mainly a job of cutting, condensing; yet I felt compelled to try to say not only more but something else. My first attempt was way long and long overdue. I declined the producers' offer to rent me a place up near the hospital so I could browse around the wards and maybe recharge my muse. My muse was still overcharged from that first browse. I wasn't ready to take another. For one thing, whatever it was that had got me so good was still waiting with baited looks; if it got me any better I feared it was liable to have me for good.

For another, it seemed to be communicable, a virus that might be transmitted eye to eye. I was beginning to imagine I could detect traces of it in friends and family – in fretful glances, flickers of despair escaping from cracked lids, particularly in my father's face. It was as though something picked up from the hospital had passed on to him, the way the fear inside a fallen rider can become the horse's. It was hard to believe that a mean old mustang raised on the plains of west Texas would inexplicably develop a fear of emptiness. He had always been too tough. Hadn't he already outlasted all the experts' estimates by nearly five years, more from his own stiff-necked grit than from any help they had given? But suddenly all that grit seemed gone, and the sponge collar that he wore to keep his head up just wasn't doing the trick any more.

"What'd this Lou Gehrig accomplish that was so dadgum great?" was the sort of thing he had taken to asking. "No matter how many times you make it all the way around the bases, you're still right back where you started – in the dirt. That's no accomplishment."

He swept the sports page from his lap and across the lawn, exposing the withered remnant of his legs. I had dropped by and caught him out on the backyard lawn chair, reading the newspaper in his shorts.

"I'm sick of home plate is what it is! I feel like a potted plant."

"Well, you ain't no tumbleweed anymore," my mother said. She was bringing another pot of coffee out to us. "He's working up to buying that used motorhome down the street is what it really is – so I can drive him to the Pendleton Roundup."

"Maybe he wants to go to Mexico again," I said. Buddy and I had rented a Winnebago some years before and taken him on a hectic ride over the border. I had wanted him to come on at least one of those unchartered trips that he used to warn me against. He came back claiming that the only thing he'd got out of it was jumping beans and running shits. I winked at my mother. "Maybe he wants to go into the jungle and look for diamonds, like Willy Loman."

"Uh-huh," Daddy grunted. The sudden sweep of the papers had tilted his head; he was pushing it straight with his hand. "Maybe he don't, too."

"Another cup of mud?" my mother asked to change the subject.

I shook my head. "One cup of that stuff is plenty; I've got to work tonight."

"How you coming with it?" my dad wanted to know.

"Slow," I said. "It's tough to get the machine up to speed."

"Especially when you ain't run the thing in a dozen years." He had his head steady enough to get me with his old, stiff-thumb-in-the-ribs look. "If you expect to have that movie out in time to benefit from my opinions, you better crank 'er up to speed pretty damn quick!"

It was the look that flashed a second later, after the stiffening went out, that got me. I finished my coffee and stood up. "That's where I'm headed out to right now," I said. "To crank 'er up."

"Better not head too far out," he growled, reaching for another section of the paper. "I'm liable not to wait for you to get back."

Mom met me at my car. "They have him on tap for another one of those spinals Saturday," she said. "He hates the nasty things, and they scare the dickens out of me."

"Spinals aren't dangerous, Mom: I've seen dozens of them."

"Ever think that might be why he wants you to be around, you knothead!"

"Take it easy, Mom, I'll be around," I promised. "Thanks for the mud."

So when Dr. Mortimer called the following Thursday to invite me to join him at the annual convention of psychiatric superintendents, I told him I'd better stay home and keep at our project.

"But it's in Florida this year!" he explained through the phone. "At the Disney World Hotel! The movie people will pick up your tab."

Again I declined. I didn't mention my father. "I'm a little stuck with the script," I explained.

"They said they thought a trip like this might help unstick you. This year's entertainment is The Bellevue Revue. I saw them two years ago in Atlantic City. Positively hilarious. I bet you could pick up some fresh angles from those Looney Toons. Also, the keynote speaker? They've dug up the author of that beatnik bible, Now Be Thou. You've perhaps heard of him? Dr. Klaus Woofner?"

I said yes I had, and that I'd be interested to hear what he was talking about these days – "But not right now."

"They've got you a ticket waiting at the Portland airport: United to Orlando at three thirty." Mortimer sounded as excited as a kid. "A free trip to Disney World, you lucky dog – think of it!" I told him I would; I had a good twenty-four hours to make up my mind. "I'll phone you tomorrow morning and let you know what I decide."

"I'm sure it'll be a load of laughs," he urged. "Honestly try to make it."

I said I was sure, too, and that I honestly would, though I had no intention whatsoever of driving a hundred and fifty miles to Portland, then flying all the way to Florida, not even to hear old Woofner huff and puff.

The next morning I didn't feel quite as firm about it. The night had cranked me backwards and left me feeling uncertain. I had shitcanned most of my old draft and made a fresh start, and the new stuff was already looking old. A little break away from it looked more and more inviting. On the other hand, a drive to Portland in my wishy-washy condition would be a task. By the time it was getting late enough that I had to make the call to Mortimer, one way or the other, I was in the middle of a quandary. I decided that I had best consult the I Ching for an answer; the oracle has helped me clear up more than one wishy-washy quandary. I had just carried the book to the breakfast table when the dogs announced the arrival of a car. Betsy opened the door for a well-dressed young man with a monotone voice.

"Good morning, Mrs. Deboree. I'm Dr. Joseph Gola. Dr. Mortimer sent me down from the hospital to pick up your husband."

"Pick up my husband?"

"And drive him back to Portland. Dr. Mortimer was afraid there could be a problem getting gas."

That weekend was the peak of the Arab oil embargo. Governor McCall had motorists buying gas on odd or even days, according to the last digit on their license plates, and there were still reports of craziness at the pumps.

"The patients call me Joe," he introduced himself. "Joe Go."

Joe Go was a young Irish-Italian, wearing a hopeful expression and a St. Jude the Obscure pin for a tie clasp. He was very soft-spoken. After he accepted a chair and a cup of coffee, he shyly asked about the picture-covered book in front of me.

"It's just an I Ching," I explained, "with its cover collaged with photographs. I was about to ask it whether to go or not to go. Then you showed up. I better pack my suit."

"Better pack the book too," he said with a grin. "In case we need to ask about coming back."

Betsy was completely taken by his altar boy innocence. While I packed she kept bringing him coffee with blueberry muffins and big smiles. The kids on the other hand had nothing but frowns for Doctor Joe. After all, they had never been to Disney World – not to Disneyland in Anaheim, even. If innocent young company was what was needed in Florida, couldn't I take one of them along? They each made their bid a few times, then moped off in protest, all except for little Caleb. The ten-year-old remained at the table in his long Grateful Dead nightshirt and his longing face. He yearned to go as much as his brother or sisters, but it wasn't Caleb's style to mope off and maybe miss something else. He was the only one that came outside to wish us farewell, too.

"Remember to bring us something back from Disney World, Dad," he called from the porch, his voice brave. "Something neat, aw-right?"

"Aw-right," I called back as I climbed into the car. I waved but he didn't wave back – he couldn't see me through the Lincoln's tinted safety glass. The thing was big as a barge. I told Doctor Joe he'd better back it out instead of trying to turn around between our blueberries. "They're hard enough to keep alive."

He started down our drive in reverse, twisting out his door to try to miss the deepest holes. I buckled my seatbelt and rolled with the bouncing. After a night of getting nowhere on my own, I found I liked the idea of being picked up and carried away. I was leaning back to try the cushy headrest when, from out of nowhere, something yanked me straight up and wide-eyed, something deeper than any of our chuckholes.

It was that same tugging sensation again, to the tenth power – still as enigmatic and even more familiar, like a dream so meaningful that it jolts you awake, then you can't remember what it was about. It only lasted a second or two before it faded, leaving me dumbfounded. What the hell was it? Simply the thought of going back up to that hospital and having to face that face again? Some kind of hangfire out of the past bounced loose?

"What's the best way back from here?"

It took a moment to realize the young doctor was asking me the best way back to Portland. He'd come to the end of our driveway.

"Well, I go that way if I'm in a hurry." I pointed up the hill. "Or down through Nebo and Brownsville if I've got time for a peaceful cruise."

He backed around headed downhill. "We've got plenty of time," he said, and reached over to open a leather case that was waiting on the seat between us. It looked like an old-fashioned sample case for patent medicines. Neatly arranged between the dividers was an extensive selection of those miniature bottles of brand liquors, dozens of them.

"It looks like things have changed since I was connected with the mental health business," I observed.

"Some ways yes, some ways no," he said, choosing a tiny Johnny Walker. "Less restrictions, more medications. Still no cures. Help yourself."

Conversation was sparse. The young man was more of a one-liner than a talker, and I would have been content to keep quiet and go over the mystery of that thing that had hit me back in the blueberries, or go to sleep. But with the help of the long drive and the medicine kit we gradually got to know each other. Doctor Joe had rebounded into psychology after flunking out of the field of his true interest: genetics. Both the Latin and the Gaelic sides of his family had histories of mental disease, not to mention a lot of crazy poets and painters and priests. Joe said he had inherited a lot of bad art, blind faith, and troubling questions. Also, he said he was going to the convention for the same reason I was – to see Dr. Klaus Woofner. He said he had been a fan since his undergrad days at Queens.

"I've read every little thing written by him, plus that huge pile of shit about him. They called him everything from the Big Bad Wolf to Old Sanity Klaus."

He gave me a look of hopeful curiosity. We were on a stretch of empty two-lane through the gentle pasturelands above Salem, the cruise control set at a drowsy forty-five.

"The old goat must have been some sort of hero, yeah? to get so much shit started?"

Yeah, I nodded. Some sort of hero. I closed my eyes. Could the old goat get it finished was what I was curious about.

The Lincoln's horn woke me. We were in an insane jam of cars all trying to gas up before the weekend rush. The hospital was less than a mile away but we couldn't get through the snarled intersection where the gas stations were. Cars were lined up bumper-to-bumper for blocks. Joe finally swung about and took a wide detour around the tangle. By the time we got to the gate at the hospital grounds, the dashboard clock showed we had less than a half hour before flight time. What's more, the drive up to the main building was blocked by a police car slanted into the curb. We couldn't get around it.

"Grab your bags!" Joe switched off the Lincoln right where it sat. "Maybe Mortimer's still on the ward."

He sprinted off like a track star. I picked up my shoulder bag and my suitcase and followed groggily after him, reluctant to leave the big car's torpor. But that surprise at my morning Ching should have forewarned me; this was not going to be a peaceful cruise. When I rounded the squad car I encountered a tableau that stopped me in my tracks.

The car was still idling, all four doors open. At the rear a stout state trooper and two overweight police matrons were trying to bring down an Unidentified Flying Object. The thing was far too fast for them, a blur of noise and movement, whirling in and out of the haze of exhaust, hissing and screeching and snarling. Honking, too, with some kind of horn-on-a-spear. It used this spear to slash and honk at the circle of uniforms, holding them at bay.

Two burly hospital aides came loping to help out, a sheet stretched between them dragnet fashion. Reinforced thus, the herd charged. The UFO was silenced beneath half a ton of beef. Then there was a high, sharp hiss followed by a beller of pain and the thing whirled free again. It scurried right through the legs all the way around the herd into one rear door of the car and out the other, twittering curses in some language from a far speedier dimension. By the time the pursuers had circled the car, their quarry was arrowing down the drive for the open gate. The herd was already slackening their halfhearted chase – anybody could see that there was nothing earthly capable of catching up – when, to everybody's astonishment, the arrow missed that huge two-lane opening by a good five feet and crashed full tilt into the Cyclone fence. It spronged back, spun erratically a moment on the gleaming green, then went down a second time under the welter of uniforms. There was a final piteous little squank from beneath the pile on the lawn, then nothing but heavy puffing and panting.

"Come on!" Joe had returned and jerked me out of my gawk. "Don't worry. You couldn't hurt that little cyclone with fifty fences."

He led me through a lobby full of carpenters, past the elevator, and up a long, echoing ramp. The ramp leveled off to a metal door. Joe unlocked it and I found myself back on Dr. Mortimer's ward. Everything was in upheaval for the Hollywood renovation, new stuff and old piled in the halls. Mortimer wasn't in his office. Neither was his secretary. We hurried past the staring patients to the nurse's station at the ward's intersection. The duty nurse and the secretary were both there, sharing a box of Crackerjacks.

"Omigod!" the nurse exclaimed as though caught. "Dr. Mortimer just left."

"Left for where!"

"The lot… Possibly the airport."

"Joannie! You get on the phone to the main gate."

"Yes, Dr. Gola." The secretary hurried back to the office.

"Miss Beal, you try the CB in the lobby, in case he's still at the motor pool. I'll run down to the lot."

The nurse trotted off, Crackerjacks rattling in the pocket of her white cardigan. Joe sprinted back the way we'd come, leaving me alone in the fluorescent buzz.

Well, not exactly. Robed specters were trolling back and forth past the windows and open half door of the nurse's station, casting looks in at me. I turned my back on them and sat down on the counter, pretending to peruse a back issue of OMNI. As the minutes hummed past I could feel eyes picking at my neck. I traded OMNI for a copy of National Enquirer, rattling the big pages. The hum seemed to caramelize right over the noise of the paper like a clear glaze. Spells in the blueberries. U.F.O.s on the lawn. Now this. I am in no condition for this. Then the glaze was shattered by a screech at the Admissions Door.

"- fascist snotsucking shitmother pigs! Don'cha know whosoever wields the Diamond Sword of ACHALA wields burning justice? Where's my cane you ignorant assholes and don't whisper to me Cool it! Like, you're so hip? So with it? Don'cha know this messing with blood sacraments in the name of revolution must fucking cease?"

The high twittering hiss had been slowed but it was still sharp; the words chopped through the impacted air like an ax through ice.

"Down with dilettantes who mouth dopey slogans and muddy the flow of change! May the lot of you be slit butthole to bellybutton by the diamond edge of ACHALA Lord of Hot Wisdom, whose face is bloody fangs, who wears a garland of severed heads, who turns Rage to Accomplishment, who is clad in gunpowder and glaciers and lava, who saves honest tormented spirits from filth-eating fascist pig ghosts! In His name I curse you: NAMAH SAMANTHA VAJRANAM CHANGA!"

It sounded like some militant soprano Gary Snyder tongue-lashing a strip miners' meeting. I joined the others in the hall to see what it was that could sound so pissed-off and poetic all at once.

"MAHROSHANA SHATA YA HUM TRAKA HAM MAM!"

It was a girl, still years and inches short of legal age or full growth, bony and bone-colored, skin, hair, eyes, clothes, and all. There was a checkerboard pattern up her front from the crash with the Cyclone fence, but no cuts, no purple bruises. The only color in the whole composition was a green swatch down the side of her close-cropped head, probably from the scuffle on the lawn. She fingered the air before her a moment, like a cave lizard, then lunged.

"Give me my fucking stick you faggot!"

"No you don't, Lissy." The biggest-butted aide held it high out of her reach. "This could be a weapon in hostile hands.'"

I saw that the spear had originally been the kind of lightweight staff used by the Vision Impaired. The white paint was all but gone from the battered aluminum, and it had been thonged from tip to handle with feathers and beads, like an Indian spear. Just in front of the handle was lashed the staffs main mojo – a rubber squeeze-toy head of Donald Duck, his angry open bill forward and his rubber sailor cap within thumb's reach. This was how she had been able to swing the thing and quack it at the same time.

"Give it give it give it!" she screeched.

"I won't won't won't!" the aide mocked, parading ahead like a fat-assed drum major with a baton. The girl took squinting aim at the plump target and kicked; she missed as wide as she had missed the gate. She would have fallen if the matron hadn't been gripping her arms.

"What about my glasses then? Am I going to deathray somebody with my fucking glasses? I'm fucking legally blind, you stupid shits! If I don't get my glasses immediately every turd of you is gonna fry! My whole fucking family are lawyers."

This threat hit home harder than all the other curses together. The parade stopped cold to talk it over. The aide who had gone in search of higher authorities came panting back with the news that the ward seemed empty of doctor and nurse alike. After a whispered debate they decided to relinquish the specs. The state trooper removed them from a manila envelope and handed them to her. The matrons loosened their grip so she could put them on. The lenses were like shot glasses. As soon as they were settled on her nose she swung around snarling. Out of that whole hallful of gaping specters she focused on me.

"What are you gawping at, Baldy? You never seen somebody on a bum trip before?"

I wanted to tell her as a matter of fact I had – been on some myself – but the ward door clashed open again and in bustled Joe, the nurse, and Dr. Mortimer. The nurse was carrying a two-way radio. She saw the congestion in her halls and waded right in without breaking stride, swishing it clear with the antenna. She stopped in front of the girl.

"Back so soon, Miss Urchardt? You must have missed us."

"I missed the elegant facilities, Miss Beal," the girl declared. "Wall-to-wall walls. Bathtubs you could get drowned in." A lot of the sharp sting had gone out of her tongue, though.

"Then let's not hesitate to enjoy one. Dr. Mortimer? Would you phone Miss Urchardt's father while I admit her? The rest of you, go about your business."

At his office Dr. Mortimer passed the task right on to his secretary and hurried Joe and me toward the ramp door. We could hear the phone start ringing before he got it closed. He leaned back in.

"That's probably the senator now, Joannie," he called. "If he wishes to speak to his daughter, tell him she's in the Admissions Bath. If he wishes to speak to me, tell him he'll have to call Orlando, care of the Disney World Hotel. Ask for Goofy."

Then locked the door behind us. He giggled all the echoing lope down the ramp. "Ask for Goofy, Senator; ask for Goofy."

With the help of a ticket agent, a later longer flight finally got us through the night to the sticky Florida sunshine. The rent-a-car cost us double, because of the fuel shortage, we were told, but the room for three at Disney's monstrous pyramid cost us only about half the regular rate, and for the same reason. The gum-chewing peach behind the desk told us we were lucky, that triples was took months in advance, usually.

I asked if a Dr. Klaus Woofner had checked in yet. She glanced at her book and told me not yet. I left my name and a message for him to call our room as soon as he arrived. "Or leave word if we're out," Mortimer added, herding us upstairs to stow our bags. "Time's a-wasting, boys. I intend to see it all."

On the monorail to the park Dr. Mortimer divided the package of free ticket books that had been provided us by the movie producers, more thrilled by the minute. He really did intend to see everything, we found out. He ran Joe and me ragged for hours. I finally balked at Small World.

"I want to phone the hotel, see if anybody's heard anything about Woofner."

"And I want," Joe added, "to buy one of those beadwork botas." We had seen a bunch of foreign sailors drinking out of wineskins on the Mississippi Riverboat Ride, and Joe had been covetous ever since.

"I suspect they're not available here, Joe," the doctor suspected. "I hate to get separated -"

"Joe can ask around while I phone. We'll check for you every half hour – at, say the Sky Ride ticket booth?"

"I guess that will be all right," the doctor singsonged, right in time with "It's a small world af-ter all," and hurried away toward the music.

Joe asked around and I phoned. Nobody had heard anything about Woofner or wineskins, either one. On the Sky Ride we were able to enjoy Joe's samples in the privacy of our plastic funicular. We alighted to find that there are ticket booths at each end of the ride. When the doctor wasn't at one end there was nothing to do but climb back aboard and highride back to the other. We spent a good part of our afternoon this way, without another glimpse of Dr. Mortimer. Once, though, Joe thought he might have seen Dr. Woofner.

"The guy with the nurse?" Joe pointed a tiny Tanqueray bottle at the funicular that had just passed us. "Could that be our hero? He appears old and bald enough."

I craned around to look. An old man and a blond nurse were seated on each side of a folded wheelchair. He wore dark glasses and a too-big Panama hat. For a second something about him did remind me of Woofner, some severe slant to the shoulders, some uncompromising hunch that made me wonder if I wanted to meet up with the ornery old gadfly as much as I thought I did, then a breeze flipped the hat off. The man was old and bald all right, nary a hair from his crown to his chinless neck, but he wasn't much bigger than a child. I laughed.

"Not unless he's turned into a Mongoloid midget," I said. "These dwarf drinks must be affecting your vision, Joe."

When we docked I phoned the hotel nevertheless. No doctor by that name had checked in. There was a message from one named Mortimer, though. He had returned, reserves exhausted – would see us before the evening's program.

The Sky Rides had depleted Joe's reserves, too, so we spent the rest of the afternoon more or less on the ground. It was exactly like Disneyland in Anaheim except for one striking addition: the Happy Hippos. This was a temporary exhibit set up in Adventureland, near the Congo boat dock. A low fence had been erected outside a tent, and a pair of full-grown hippos lounged in a makeshift puddle in the enclosure.

These brutes were nearly twice as big as those mechanical robotamuses on Disney's Wild Jungle River Ride, awesome tons of meat and muscle, fresh from the real wild. Yet they dozed complacent as cows in their knee-deep puddle, beneath an absolute downpour of insults. Kids bounced ice cubes and balled-up Coke cups off their bristled noses. Teenagers hollered ridicule: "Hey Abdul how's yer tool?" A Campfire Girl probed at the wilted ears with her rubber spear from Frontierland until an attendant made her stop. Every passerby had to stop and express contempt for this pair of groggy giants, it seemed. The chinless dwarf from the Sky Ride even got in his licks; he took a big sip of Pepto-Bismol, then motioned his nurse to wheel him up close so he could spew a pink spray at them.

Inside the tent was the exhibit's film, produced by UNESCO, Made Possible by a Grant from Szaabo Laboratories, rear-projected on three special screens donated by Du Pont. As the right and left screens flashed slides of drought-stricken Africa, the center screen would show parched hippos being winched from the curdled red-orange mire of their ancestral wallows. These wallows were drying up, the narration informed us, as a result of a lengthy dry spell plus the damming of rivers to provide electricity for the emerging Third World.

After an animal was successfully winched up from his bog he would be knocked out with a hippo hypo, forklifted onto a reinforced boxcar, and released, hundreds of miles away, into a chain-link compound full of other displaced hippos awaiting relocation. The compound looked as desolate as the regions they'd just been evacuated from, swirling with flies and thick orange dust.

"During the initial weeks of the project," the voice of the narrator told us, "the hippos made repeated charges against the compound's fences, often breaking through, more often injuring themselves. We were eventually able to quell these assaults by introducing into their drinking water a formula especially designed by our laboratories – making them, comparatively, much happier hippos."

"Compared with what?" I heard Joe's one-liner from the dark. "Each other?"

The shadows were long when we emerged from the film, the sun sinking between the spires of Cinderella's Castle. I had pretty much lost interest in the convention, but Joe felt he should make an appearance. Besides, now his reserves were completely exhausted. So we took the old-fashioned choo-choo around to the gate, where we boarded its modern monorail counterpart.

We had to wait while our engineer had a cigarette outside on the landing. A restless musing filled the car while we waited. Hidden machinery hummed. People slumped in the chrome-and-plastic seats. Out the open doors of the car, the Florida sky was airbrushed full of crimson clouds, just like Uncle Walt had ordered, and the indistinct sounds and voices of the park waved softly in and out on the evening breezes. Annette Funicello's recorded greeting at the entrance gate could be heard clearest: "Hey there hi there ho there," she chanted like a cheerleader. "We're as happy as can be, to have you here today… hip hip hoo-ray!"

None of the waiting passengers seemed inclined to be led into the cheer. In the seat in front of us a family rode, six of them. The husband sat alone, his back to us, his muscled arms spread over the red plastic seatback. Across from him, facing us, his family fussed and stewed. His wife had dark circles under her eyes and at her Rayon armpits. In her lap his toddler whimpered. On one side of her his first-grader whined and on the other side his sixth-grader sucked her thumb. Across the aisle his teenager slouched and bitched.

"The kids at school will not believe we never went on Pirates of the Caribbean!"

"Hush, honey," the mother said wearily. "We were out of tickets. You know that."

"We could have bought more," the teenager maintained. The other kids wailed agreement. "Yeah! we could have bought more!"

"We were also out of money," the mother said.

"We didn't even get to see the Enchanted Tiki Birds. The kids at school simply will not believe it!"

"That we were out of money? Well, the kids at school had better believe it. And you better give it a rest if you know what's good for you – all of you!"

And all the while the father sat without comment, not moving, just the muscles in his forearms and his big workadaddy hands, gripping the back of the seat. I noticed he'd been able to get his wrists and knuckles clean for this occasion, but there was still carbon under the fingernails, the indelible tattoo left by the other fifty-one weeks of his year working a lathe in Detroit, or changing tires in Muncie, or scrabbling coal in Monongahela.

"In a recent worldwide survey," Annette's voice continued in a more serious vein, "it was found that twice as many people desire to go to Disney World than to any other attraction on earth. That's pretty impressive, don't you all agree?"

Nobody nodded agreement, not even the kids. Before we could hear more our driver returned to his controls; the doors hissed shut and the big tube hummed away toward the hotel. The hands continued their gripping and ungripping of the seatback, trying not to let it show how hard it was getting to be, this business of keeping a grip – Joe and I exchanged looks. The poor guy. Hadn't he done everything you're supposed to? Labored hard? made a home? raised a family? even saved enough for this most desired of all vacations? But it wasn't working. Something was wrong somewhere, and hanging on was getting harder all the time.

We never saw his face. They filed off forward of us at the hotel. As they left Joe shook his head:

"Just the tip of an enormous iceberg," he said, "heading toward a titanic industry."

I had no idea just how titanic until I saw the exhibits. While Joe rushed off to make his appearance at industry parties, I roamed the crowded exhibition hall, amazed at all the latest devices and potions designed to care for and control the upcoming hordes unable to care for or control themselves. Teenagers rented from the local high school were our guides through a vast maze of displays. They demonstrated long-snouted pitchers that could get nourishment down the most intractable throat. They showed us how new Velcro straps could strap down a big strapping lad as well as the bulky old buckle cuffs. They invited us to test the comfort of urine-proof mattresses, pointing out the slotless screwheads that held the bed-frame together: "to keep them nuts from eating the screws."

There were unrippable pajamas with padded mittens to prevent the hallucinator from plucking out an offending eye. There were impact-dispersing skullcaps for the clumsy, disposable looparound mouthpieces for the tongue gnashers, lockfast maxi-Pampers for the thrashing incontinent, and countless kinds of medication reminders that beeped and buzzed and chimed to remind the forgetful. The vast majority of the booths were manned by the many pharmaceutical laboratories supported by this industry. Most of these displays lacked the visual pizazz of the hardware shows. Pills and pamphlets just aren't as interesting to look at as restraining chairs featuring built-in commodes with automated enemas. The Szaabo display was the exception, attracting far the largest audience of all the booths. Company designers had mocked up a large cocktail lounge complete with plastic plants and free peanuts and waitresses in miniskirts. Above the bar was a big-screen TV monitor that played actual tapes of the company's products in action. Conventioneers could eat peanuts and drink and cheer like a Monday Night Football crowd as they watched big hyperactive hellraisers get wrestled down and turned meek as mice with a shot. I wondered if the display designers got the idea from the hippo show, or vice versa.

The trouble was once you got into the popular Szaabo lounge, it was next to impossible to get back out through the crush of the boisterous crowd. Harder than that to snag one of the free drinks. I was buffeted back and forth through the smoky clamor until I found myself near an exit along the far wall. It was marked for Emergency Use Only. I felt my smarting eyes and burning throat qualified so I pushed the lockbar and peeked out. To my great relief I saw I had found not only a private balcony with fresh air and a view of the sunset, but a tray of unclaimed martinis.

I squeezed through and heard the big door shut behind me over the noise. I grabbed the push bar but I was too late. "Let it lock," I decided, releasing the bar. "I can get by on olives if I miss the banquet."

I noticed these olives were skewered on clever little S-shaped silver swizzles, supposed to look like the Szaabo logo. It was also etched on the martini glasses, in red and yellow, like the crest on Superman's chest. About halfway through the tray I raised one of the glasses in a toast – to Szaabo Labs, original layers of those tiny blue eggs of enlightenment. Remember when we used to think that every egg would hatch cherubs in every head and that these fledglings would feather into the highest-flying Vision in mankind's history? Remember our conspiracy, Szaabo? You make 'em; we'll take 'em – as far as the Vision can see. Who's left to carry the colors of our crusade now? Where's the robin's-egg-blue banner of the Vision of Man now? In the hands of one little girl, that's where, some titless wonder who can see about as far as she can pee, and she's been captured, probably by now quelled with one of your latest designer formulas and watching a rerun of Happy Days, comparatively happy herself.

But, like Joe says, compared to what?

By the time the drinks were drained and the olives eaten, the din on the other side of the door had gone down considerably. For a keepsake I dropped the last glass in my shoulder bag with my Ching and my leftover ticket books and tried the door. I was able to attract one of the waitresses by rattling the tray between the bar and the metal. She let me back in, apologizing all over herself for not hearing my signal earlier; it had been just too dern noisy. I gave her the tray and a ten spot and told her not to worry – I hadn't been signaling earlier, anyhow.

The Szaabo bar and the convention hall were both almost empty. Everybody was off getting dressed for the evening's main event. I swung one more time by the main desk and saw my message to Woofner still folded in his box. The fresh peach behind the desk told me so many folks'd been asking she was curious herself what'd come of this missin' doctor.

Up in our room Dr. Mortimer was trying to find an answer to the same question. He was pacing to and fro in front of the telephone table in his rumpled tux and untied tie, talking into the receiver in a loud singsong German. I discerned he was a little drunk. When he saw me he put his hand over the receiver and shook his head forlornly.

Joe was also dressed for dinner, more rumpled than his boss and lots drunker. He was tilted back on a wastepaper basket. "You're burned bright as a beet," he said squinting at me. He held out the miniature bottle of Beefeater he was drinking. "Use some of this on your head. White wine's best but gin'll do."

I shook my head, explaining I had come to expect olives with my gin. Joe finished the bottle and dropped it between his legs into the wastebasket. I heard it clink against other bottles. He looked at his boss pacing foolishly with the phone, then started singing, "Who's afraid of the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf, the big bad wolf…"

Mortimer got the point and finally hung up. "I know you're both disappointed" – he sighed – "but it may be just as well. According to some of my colleagues our big bad wolf has long ago lost his fangs. And who wants to sit through a dull gumming? The program will be just fine, regardless. We've got last year's minutes, and the Bellevue Revue, and Dr. Bailey Toocter from Jamaica has already volunteered to fill in as keynote with his – what did he call it, Joe?"

"Therapeutic Thumb harp," Joe answered. "Soothes the savage breast."

It was just as well with me, too. I had realized as much locked out on the balcony – that I'd been wishful dreaming. Only a pin-head fool would hope to find the wild and woolly Big Sur of bygone days in the Florida torpor. I stepped over Joe's legs to the closet where my gray suit hung.

The dinner was held in an elegantly appointed wedge-shaped hall, its point focusing on the raised dais. Dr. Mortimer was seated at this head table between the square-jawed Dudley DuRight who was to be the evening's master of ceremonies and a wild-headed black man in a coral pink tuxedo. First served, they had already finished eating. Dudley was sober and serious about his evening's role – he kept checking backstage, reading messages, going over his handful of notes – while the black man and Mortimer whispered and giggled like carefree schoolgirls. On the table in front of their plates was a hinged wooden box inlaid with mother-of-pearl butterflies. I assumed it was the thumb harp.

Joe and I were about three tables back, still picking at our lobster Newberg but already into our third bottle of Johannesburg Riesling. I admitted to Joe that he was right; the cold wine was relieving to the outside of my burned head as well as the inside. I didn't mention the main relief I was feeling – that I would not have to face my old mentor after all. I wasn't disappointed and I found I was rather pleased with that fact. I saw it as a significant stride. If you feel that nothing is owed you, then you owe nothing. I leaned back with my chilled Riesling and newfound wisdom, prepared to enjoy a peace I had not enjoyed for months. Screw the nuts and to hell with the heroes. As far as I was concerned, the change to the thumb harp was just what the doctor ordered.

But when Dudley got up and took the mike and launched into a grandiloquent introduction of the great man who was to speak to us, I wondered if anybody had told him about the change.

"A legend!" he proclaimed. "A star of Sigmund Freud's magnitude, of Wilhelm Reich's radiance, of Carl Jung's historic brilliance! A pillar of fire burning before most of us were born, yet still listed in the Who's Who of Psychology Today! Still considered a giant in the contemporary field – a giant!"

This didn't seem to describe the dreadlocked Dr. Toocter, not even the thumb harpist himself, now frowning perplexed up at the MC. Indeed, all seated at the main table were turned toward the master of ceremonies in wonder. It was nothing like my amazement, though. When our speaker rolled in from the curtain wings, I saw it was the hairless dwarf from the Sky Ride after all.

The tall blond nurse had changed from her nurse's uniform into a beige evening gown, but her patient was wearing the same dark glasses and rumpled shirt and slacks, as though he'd never left the chair. She wheeled him to the podium through an uncertain flurry of clapping, then helped him stand. When she was sure he had a good grip on the podium she wheeled the chair back off, leaving him swaying and nodding in the spotlight.

He was not merely hairless; he was partially faceless as well. The corner of his upper lip and much of the lower had been pared away, all the way down his chin, and the scar covered with flesh-colored makeup. This was why he had looked to me like some kind of long-lived Down's syndrome this afternoon. And without his hat the Florida sun had burned his head even brighter than it had mine. He was a blazing Day-Glo purple everywhere except the painted scar. This hand-sized swatch looked like the only island of natural flesh on a globe of synthetic skin, instead of the other way around. The clapping had been over for a long minute before he finally cleared his throat and spoke.

"Who's who," he murmured, shaking his head. "Das ist mir scheissegal. Who's who." Then the voice lifted a little. "That's what you really want to consider, yah? Who was, who is, who will be who, when next season's list is published?"

The accent was thicker and the speech halting. It would never be the fine instrument of old, but there was still a ring to it.

"How about we consider instead who is correct. Der Siggy Freud? All those interesting theories? like how anal retention becomes compulsive repetition and causes some sort of blockage what he called petrification? Und how this blockage could be dissolved with enough analysis, like enough castor oil? Please, mine colleagues, let us speak truthfully, doctor to doctor. We have all observed the application of these theories. Interesting though they may be, we all know that they are for all practical purposes useless in the psychiatric ward. Castor oil would be more effective, and Sigmund would have been more useful had he written romances for a living. The romantic ideal can be useful in the world of fiction; in world of medicine, never. Und we are all medical men, yah? We must be able to distinguish medicine from fiction. We must be able to know what is psychological results and what is psychological soap opera, never mind how the one is so discouraging while the other is so fascinating. You are all just as capable as I am of knowing who is really who and what was really what, so you all must have suspected what I am trying to tell you before now: that Sigmund Freud was a neurotic, romantic, coke-shooting quack!" When he said this he slapped the podium a sharp crack. The effect on the convention crowd would not have been greater if he'd said Albert Schweitzer was a Nazi, then fired a Luger at the ceiling. He swept his black-goggled gaze about the hall until the air subsided.

"Old daydreamer Carl Jung mit his sugar-glazed mandala? Willy Reich teaching orgasm by the numbers? All quacks. Yah, they were all very good writers, very interesting. But if you are a woodcutter, let us say, and you purchase a woodsaw – what does it matter how interesting the sawmaker writes about it? If it does not saw good it is not a good saw. As a woodcutter, you should be the first to detect the cheat: it won't cut straight! So take it back to that lying sawmaker, or paint a sunset on it, or throw it in the river – but don't pass the crooked wood on to your customers!" He paused to reach down and pick up Dr. Toocter's wadded napkin. He bowed his head to dab at the sweat that had begun to glisten on his neck and throat. He waited until his breathing calmed before he looked back up.

"Also, you are bad woodcutters for more reason than you invest in bad saws. You are afraid to go into the forest. You would rather invent a tree to fit your theory, and cut down the invention. You cannot face the real forest. You cannot face the real roots of your world's madness. You see the sore well enough but you cannot heal it. You can ease the pain, perhaps, but you can't stop the infection. You cannot even find the thorn! Und so" – he lifted his shoulders in a deprecating shrug – "that is the reason why I have flown to speak to you here tonight, even here, in the very heart of the festering American dream: to point out to you that thorn. Miss Nichswander?"

She was already rolling out the blackboard. When it was secured behind the dais she took a stick of chalk from her jeweled handbag and handed it to her boss. He waited until she was out of sight through the curtains before he turned back to us.

"Okay, some concentration if you please." The hand began pushing the chalk around the slate rectangle. "I will explain you this only once."

It was the same annotated sketch from ten years before, only honed far finer, with more bite to it. I smiled to think of those who had been worried about getting a dull gumming this evening. The old wolf was maimed and mangy, but still plenty sharp. His history of James Clerk Maxwell and the laws of thermodynamics was more extensive, his drawing more detailed. The demon had acquired a set of horns and a very insolent sneer. And the seams of the whole concept had come together so ingeniously that he could move the metaphor back and forth at will, from the machine to the modern mind, hot and cold to good and bad, smooth as a stage magician. "This problem of nonavailability was grasped by only a few during Maxwell's day: William Thomson, Lord Kelvin; Emanuel Clausius. Clausius understood it best of all, perhaps; he wrote that, while the energy of the universe is constant, entropy is always on the increase. Only a handful of the smartest, back then. Today every illiterate clod with an automobile is beginning to get it; every time he sees the price of petrol go up, he sees his world go a little emptier, and a little more mad. So you educated doctors ought to be able to see it. Of all people, you must have seen the signs. Your ward rollbooks should trace the trend: as the power shortage increases, enrollment in your institutions follows along? What are your most recent statistics? One American in five will be treated for mental illness sometime during their lifetimes. What? Did I hear someone say it is now one in four? Ach, don't you see? You are no longer the gentlemen curators of some quaint Bedlam, displaying such mooncalfs as once were accounted rare. You are the wall guards over increasing millions. In ten years it will be one out of three; in thirty years one out of everyone -- millions and millions, and rundown walls in the bargain."

He paused again to catch his breath, swaying with the effort. I noticed Joe was swaying slightly in concert as he stared, like a bird watching a cobra.

"Still, you are true to your duty. You walk your watch, chin high and diplomas shouldered for all to see, though you are secretly certain that if the rabble decides to rush the walls, that roll of paper will be as useless against them as Freud's theories. You are up on that wall armed with only one weapon with any proven firepower. Can anyone tell the rest of the class what that weapon is? Eh? Any guesses? I shall give you a hint: Who is paying the bill for this august gathering?"

No hands went up. The whole hall was spellbound. Finally the old man gave a disgusted snort and unrolled the napkin for all to see: embossed around the border, like a record of registered cattle brands, were all the logos of the convention's sponsors.

"Here's who!" he declared. "The pharmaceutical companies. Their laboratories manufacture your weapon – drugs. They are the munitions dealers and you are their customers. This gathering is their marketplace. Each of those displays downstairs was designed to appeal to your need up on that wall, to convince you that their laboratory can provide you with the most modern ammunition – the very latest in the high-powered tranquilizers! painkillers! mood elevators! muscle relaxants! psychodelics!"

This last category could have been aimed at the table where Joe and I sat, but with those black glasses it was impossible to be sure. "That is all you have in your arsenal," he went on softly, "the only armament known to work on both the demon and the host: a few chemicals – though the host has become a horde, and the demon, he is legion. A few feeble spears and arrows, dipped in a temporary solution to which that horde will soon become immune. Miss Nichswander?"

The blond was already coming through the drapes to retrieve the blackboard. She wheeled it away without a word. The drapery closed behind her, leaving Woofner sucking thoughtfully on his piece of chalk. It was the only sound in the room – not a shuffle or cough or clink else.

"I apologize," Woofner said at length. "I know that at this point in the program one is expected to follow up his diagnosis of the disease with a prognosis for a cure. I am sorry to have to disappoint you. I do not have a cure for your problems up on that wall, and I refuse to offer temporary solutions. I should have made it clear to begin with that I bring you no salvation. All I can do is bring you to your senses, here, in the present. Und if you find that the pressure of this here-and-now is too much for you to bear, ach, then -?" He wagged his head derisively. "Then it is quite an easy task to simply step over the wall and join the happy hippos."

If most of his audience was left in the dark by his closing metaphor, this time at least I was certain: it was a parting shot at none but me. He must have recognized me at my table during his talk and at the hippopotamus tank both, probably even on the Sky Ride. His shoulders sagged and he drew a long ragged breath; he was hunched so low that the sound whistled loudly through the mike. His whole body appeared to shake with the effort, like some kind of holy ruin about to collapse before a gale. Then he took off the pitch-dark glasses; the contrasting beam that burned forth was a shock. The temple roof might have been in ruin but the altar still held its fire, blue as the arc from an electric welder, and as painfully bright. Don't look away if he turns it on you, I told myself. Try to meet it. Sure. Try matching eyes with skull-necklaced Kali. At the first searing touch I bent and focused on the congealing butter sauce around my lobster shell, for whatever unguent the oil might offer.

"So? That is that, yah? Yah, I think so. I thank you all for your attention. Guten Abend und auf wiedersehen! Miss Nichswander?"

When I looked back up she was wheeling him through the velveteen slot.

The Bellevue Revue couldn't understand why their crazyhouse hilarity received even less laughs than it deserved, which was damned little. My leftover lobster was funnier than they were; I was sorry when the waiter took it away. After the banquet broke up, however, the conventioneers set about dispelling the heavy pall the best way they could, by trying to make light of it. The remainder of the evening was spent drinking hard and listening to a lot of lampoons of the Woofner address. His heavy accent made him easy prey to parody. The joking got so uproarious in the wide-open hospitality suite the La Bouche Laboratories had reserved that kindhearted Dr. Mortimer fretted the old man might hear.

"All this ridicule, this loud laughing – what if the poor fellow happened to come by? It could be injurious to someone in his condition."

"This isn't laughing," Joe said. "This is whistling in the graveyard."

It was long after midnight before the revelers wore it out and Mortimer got everybody quieted down enough to listen to Dr. Toocter play his harp. It was the perfect soporific. Within minutes people were yawning good nights and stumbling off toward their rooms.

As much as I'd drunk I was sure I'd drop straight off when I hit the bed, but I didn't. The air of our room seemed too close, the pitchy dark full of racket. The air conditioning throbbed brokenly and Mortimer snored along. I was so tired and dehydrated I could barely think, not even about Woofner. I'll think about him tomorrow. I'll look him up in the morning for a quick hello, then get on the first thing I can find flying west. Tonight all I want is a little sleep and a lot of liquid.

On one of my trips to the bathroom to refill my water glass, I met Joe coming out carrying his. He frowned at me from the crack of light.

"Christ, man, do you really feel it that bad?"

"Not quite," I said. "But I feel it coming."

Joe took me by the arm and pulled me into the bathroom and shut the door. He gave me a big pink tablet from his shaving kit.

"Remedy number one," he prescribed, "is to duck it. Before it hits."

I took the pill without asking any questions. After that I got up only once more, to get rid of some of that liquid. The room was still black but still at last. The broken throbbing had been fixed and Mortimer's bed was quiet as a church. It seemed I had just lain back down when he shook me awake and told me it was Sunday.

"Sunday?" I squinted at the light. My head hammered. "What happened to Saturday?"

"You looked so wasted we decided to let you rest," Joe explained. He was drawing open the drapes. In the cruel light my two roommates looked pretty wasted themselves. Mortimer said I must be hungry but there would be time for a bite of breakfast before our flight; we'd better hurry.

I didn't feel hungry or rested either. I just had a cup of airport coffee and bought a box of Aspergum to have in my shoulder bag – the hammering in my head promised to get louder. Boarding the airplane I confided to Joe that whatever I had ducked seemed to be swinging back for another shot. He sympathized but said that big pink pill had been his last. He gave me a peek in his sample case, though; he'd managed to buy a quart of black rum from one of the Cuban maids.

"Remedy number two: if you can't duck it, try to keep ahead of it."

It was a long sober return flight even with the rum. While Mortimer slept, Joe and I drank steadily, trying to keep ahead of the thing. The rum was gone before we got to Denver. Joe looked at the empty bottle mournfully.

"Yuh done somethin' t' the booze, Hickey," he muttered in a thirties dialect. "What yuh done t' da booze?"

The mutter was for my benefit, but Dr. Mortimer was roused from his doze by the window.

"What's that, Joe?"

"Nothing, Doctor." Joe slid the bottle out of sight. "Just a line that came to me from O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh. It's in the last act, after Hickey's given them all 'The Word,' so to speak, and one of the barflies says something to the effect of 'The booze ain't got no kick t' it no more, Hickey. What yuh done t' da booze?' "

"I see," Mortimer answered, and dug his head back into the little airplane pillow. He saw about as well as anybody did, I guessed.

With the help of Aspergum and overpriced airline cocktails I was still in front of the thing when we landed in Portland, but it was closing fast. The banging in my skull heralded it like the rising toll of a storm bell. Mortimer phoned his wife from the airport to have her meet him at the big Standard station on the edge of the hospital grounds. He said he simply did not have the energy to check on the ward just now. Joe said he would do it. Dr. Mortimer gave Joe a grateful smile but allowed as how the nuts had been cracking right along without either of them for two days and nights now; another night probably wouldn't hurt.

"Besides, our guest has to be driven home," he added. "Unless he'd like to lay over a night with us. Devlin? It would give you an opportunity to study the set sketches the producers sent up."

"Yeah, why don't you?" Joe put it. "You can check out my collection of bad religious art from Ireland."

I shook my head. "I promised I'd be back. My dad was scheduled for a spinal this morning. I thought about phoning from Denver," I said, "but you know how it is."

They both nodded that they did and no more was said about it.

We dropped Dr. Mortimer off at the gas station. His wife was nowhere in sight, but we might not have seen her; there was still a jam of cars stretching around the corner of the block both ways. Joe began to fret as soon as the looming complex of the hospital came into sight. "I think I ought to swing in, anyway," he said. "We can make a quick round while they're gassing us up at the motor pool."

He braked to make the turn and the guard at the gate waved us on. He pulled to the NO STOPPING curb in front and motioned the aide sweeping the lobby to come out.

"Mr. Gonzales? Would you mind driving this bomb around back and filling it up?"

Gonzales didn't mind a bit. Grinning at his good fortune, he gave Joe the broom and took the wheel. Joe shouldered it and marched around to my door.

"Come on," he implored, "you can stand it if I can." He even added an enticement. "Maybe I can scrounge up another pink pill."

I could see he was needing the company; the hopeful glow had gone out of his eyes, leaving a gloomy smudge. I caught the strap of my shoulder bag and followed him toward the lobby, resolved to stand it.

The lobby was empty and completely changed. The renovation was nearly finished and the workers had knocked off for the weekend. There was gleaming new tile on the floor and fresh white paint on the walls. The veteran squad of khaki couches had been discharged and a replacement of recruits waited in close-order file, still in their plastic shipping bags. All the Venetian blinds had been removed from the windows, and the wooden window frames replaced by chrome. It glistened in the harsh sunshine streaming through the big windows.

The only thing about the lobby that was the same was the fluorescent lights. They still buzzed and fluttered even in the shadeless sunlight. They made me think of the ward above. And this suddenly made my resolve start to flutter like the chilly light in those long tubes. I backed out when the elevator door opened.

"I'll wait down here," I had to tell Joe. "Maybe I'll finish that Ching you interrupted the other morning."

"Right," Joe said. "So you can find out whether to go or not to go to Florida." He handed me the broom. "Find out for me too, why don't you?"

The elevator took him up and left me standing there, knowing that I had let him down. I leaned the broom against the wall and went to the drinking fountain and spit out my last piece of Aspergum. I tried to rinse out the taste but it wouldn't go away. It tasted like pennies, or a lightning storm in the making. I walked to the receptionist's deserted desk. Two of the buttons on her switchboard were blinking. As I watched, they both stopped. Calls were probably being relayed to another board during renovation.

I managed to get an outside line and dial my parents' house. I listened to it ringing at the other end. Maybe they were still at the hospital. Maybe something had happened. I should have tried to call earlier. I had lied about Denver. I hadn't thought of calling from there at all.

I tried awhile to ring Information for the number at the clinic, but I couldn't decipher the complicated switchboard. I finally gave up and walked to the couches. I took a seat in the one at the front of the rank, right at the windows. New louvered sun shades waited along the baseboard. They would replace the old blinds. Now the sun boomed in dead level, like cannon fire.

I got up and went around to the couch at the rear. It was still in the sun but I managed to pull it over into the bar of shade from one of the window frames. I sat down in the narrow shadow and closed my eyes.

Joe was gone a long time. The sun angled along. I had to keep scooting on the plastic to stay behind that shadow. I slumped back and folded my arms, hoping I might appear calm and relaxed should a guard happen past. I just about had the flutter in my breath under control when a thumping crash right at my feet made me jump a mile. My shoulder bag on the couch had been spilled by my fidgeting – the thump was the I Ching hitting the floor; the crash was the martini glass I'd swiped from Szaabo.

I tried to make fun of myself: Whadja think, one of the guys in white gotcha with his butterfly net? I was leaning to gather up the spilled stuff when I saw something that got me worse than any net ever could. It was on the front cover of the book, one of the pictures taken years before-of a little boy in pajamas looking over the rail of a crib at the back of a cluttered bus. God Almighty had that been all there was to it? Nothing but a spell of déjà vu! a commonplace phenomenon triggered by that glimpse of Caleb standing on the porch in his nightclothes? It seemed to be that simply: the image on the porch had resonated with the photograph of that other time I traipsed off to see this mysterious Wolf Doctor. Always one of my favorite of Hassler's bus pictures. That's why it's front page center in my collage. A ringing moment from the past, and it happened to find a corresponding note in the present. This could account for all these shadows that have been haunting me. Reverberations. The nuthouse reverberations. Woofner repeated. Separate splashes in the same pond, the ripples intersecting. Resonating waves, that's what it is, clear and simple -

yet…

there must be something more to it than surface waves to get you so good. It stirs too far down, rolls from too far away. To roll that far, wouldn't the two moments have to share something deeper as well? some primal heading? some upwelling force from a mutual spring that drives the pair of times to join forces and become one many times more lasting than either original time alone, a double-sided moment that can roll powerfully across years and at the same time remain fixed, permanently laminated in a timeproof vault of the memory, where the little boy stands longing yet, in unfading Kodachrome, in flannel pajamas and Grateful Deadshirt both, on the porch at the farm and holding to the crib rail at the back of the bus, eyes shining forever brave down that dim and disorderly tube -

and yet…

it isn't the longing. Or the bravery. It's the trust. If Dad leaves a speed demon to babysit, the very act must signify it's aw-right, right? If he says a visit to Disney World is a Big People's business trip, then that's that. Trust doesn't fume off in a pout, like big brother Quiston, or wheedle like May or Sherree; but it does expect to have something brought back. It does expect to reel in something if it casts far and often and deep enough, like those faces on the ward. It does expect to slide in someday to more than a plate of dirt if it rounds bases enough. It expects these things because these things have been signified. That's what gets you.

Especially if you're one of those that's been doing the signifying.

So the discovery that I was having déjà vus did not bring me any ease. It only clarified the fearful murk that had been nagging me into something far more haunting: guilt. And when I closed my eyes to shut out the little face looking up from the book on my lap, I found my head crammed full of other faces waiting their turn. What was my mother going to say? Why hadn't I phoned? Why wouldn't I lend poor Joe a little support a while ago after all of it he's afforded me the last two days? Why can't I face those faces upstairs? I know now that it isn't my fear that chains me back. It's the bleak and bottomless rock of failure, jutting remote from the black waters. Onto this hard rock I am chained. The water pounds like blame itself. The air is thick with broken promises coming home to roost, flapping and clacking their beaks and circling down to give me the same as Prometheus got… worse! Because I sailed up to those forbidden heights more times than he had – as many times as I could manage the means – but instead of a flagon of fire the only thing I brought back was an empty cocktail glass… and I broke that.

I clenched my eyes, hoping I guess to squeeze out a few comforting drops of remorse, but I was as dry as the Ancient Mariner. I couldn't cry and I couldn't do anything about it. I couldn't do anything about anything, was about what it came down to. All I could do was sit by myself on my godforsaken reef of failure, clenching my eyes and gnashing my teeth in morbid self-recrimination.

This is what I was doing when I realized I was no longer by myself.

"Squank!"

She was leaned over the back of the couch, her twin telescopes within inches of my face. When I turned she reared away, wrinkling her nose.

"Tell me, Slick: are you wearing that expression to match your breath, or are you this lowdown for real?"

When I regained myself I told her that this was about as real as it got, and as lowdown.

"Good," she said. "I hate a phony funk. Mind if I join you? I'll even share your troubles…"

She came around without waiting for an answer, tapping her way to a place beside me.

"So. How do you explain this hangdog face?"

"I swallowed more than I can bite off," was all I told her. I didn't think this myopic little freak would understand more, even if I could explain it.

"Just don't spit up on me," she warned. She leaned around to get a closer look at my face. "Y'know, dude, you look kind of familiar. What do they call you besides ugly?" She stuck out a skeletal hand. "I'm called the Vacu-Dame, because I'm out in deep space most of the time."

I took the hand. It was warm and thin, but not a bit skeletal. "You can call me the Véjà Dude."

She made a sound like a call-in beeper with a fresh battery. I guessed it was supposed to be a laugh. "Very good, Slick. That's why you look so familiar, eh? Very clever. So what's with all the pictures stuck on that book in your lap? Photos of your famous flashbacks?"

"In a way. The pictures are from a bus trip I took once with my gang. The book's an ancient Chinese work called The Book of Changes."

"Oh, yeah? Which translation? The Richard Wilhelm? Let me have a look at it, so to speak."

I handed her the book and she held it up to her face. I was beginning to suspect that this freak might understand more than I thought.

"It's the English edition. That's what I used when I first started throwing the Ching. Then I thought I'd try using Wilhelm in his original German. I wanted to see if it helped the poetic parts. I found such a veritable shitload of difference between the two that I thought, 'Shit, if it loses this much from German into English, how much must've been lost from ancient Chinese to German?' So I decide to hell with it all. The last Ching I threw I threw at my degenerate Seeing Eye dog for turning over my wastepaper basket looking for Tampons. The sonofabitch thought I was playing games. He grabbed the book and ran outside with it, and by the time I tracked him down he'd consumed every page. He was a German shepherd. When he found something written in his ancestral tongue he just couldn't put it down. What's all this glass underfoot, incidentally? Did you drop something or did I just miss a Jewish marriage? I don't care for dogs but I love a good wedding. It gives the adults an excuse to get soused and let all the dirty laundry hang out. Is that where you're bringing such a booze breath back from, Ace? A big wedding?"

"I'm bringing it back from Disney World, believe it or not."

"I believe it. On the Red Eye Rocket. Here, you better put your fancy book away before I see a dog."

When I tried to reach around her for my bag I bumped her staff. It tipped and fell before I could grab it.

"Watch it!" she shrilled. "That's my third eye you're knocking in the broken glass!"

She picked it up and turned around to stand it behind the couch, out of danger. Then she leaned close again and gave me a fierce frown. "You're the one broke it too, ain't you? No wonder you got such a guilty look on you, cursed with such a clumsy goddamn nature."

For all her frowning, I couldn't help but grin at her. She didn't seem as fierce as she looked, really. She might not have realized she was frowning all the time. She wasn't as hopelessly homely as she first appeared, either, I decided. Or as titless.

"Speaking of curses," I said, "what was that one of yours the other day? It was formidable."

"Oh, that," she said. The frown vanished instantly. She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms around her shins. "It isn't mine," she confessed. "It's Gary Snyder's, mostly, a poem of his called 'Spel Against Demons.' You want to know why I happened to memorize it? Because one time I spray-painted the entire thing. On a football field. Remember when Billy Graham held that big rally in Multnomah Stadium a couple of years back?"

"You're the one who did that?"

"From goal line to goal line. It took nineteen rattle cans and most of the night. Some of the words were ten yards big."

"So, you're the famous phantom field-writer? Far damn out. The paper said the writing was completely illegible."

"It was dark! I've got a shaky pen hand!"

"You were plenty legible the other afternoon," I prompted. I wanted to keep her talking. I saw her cheeks color at the compliment, and she started rocking back and forth, hugging her knees.

"I was plenty ripped is what I was," she said. "Besides, I recite better than I handwrite."

She rocked awhile in thought, frowning straight ahead. The sun was almost out of sight in the ridgeline across the river, and the light in the room had softened. The chrome trim was turning the color of butter. All of a sudden she clapped her hands.

"Now I remember!" She aimed a finger at me. "Where I know your melancholy mug from: the dust jacket of your goddamn novel! So far-damn-out to you too!"

She started to rock again. It wouldn't have surprised me to see her put her thumb in her mouth.

"I'm something of a writer myself," she let me know, "when I'm not something else. Right now I'm an astral traveler on layover. Too far over, too, after two days of Miss Seal's Bed and Breakfast."

I told her she didn't look nearly as far laid over as the others I saw up there. This made her blush again.

"I cheek the tranqs," she confided. "I never swallow anything they give me. Watch -"

She felt around between her ragged deck shoes until she found a big shard of glass. She tossed it to the back of her mouth and swallowed. She opened wide to show nothing but teeth and tongue, then a moment later spat the shard tinkling across the new tile. "Want to know the reason they hauled me in here? Because I dropped three big blotter Sunshines and went paradin' around the rotunda at the capitol. Want to know why I got so ripped? I was celebrating the completion of my new novel. Want to know the name of it?"

I told her that as a matter of fact I would like to know the name of her novel. I couldn't help but feel that somebody was getting their leg pulled, but I didn't care. I was fascinated.

"I called it Teenage Girl Genius Takes Over the World! Not too shabby a title, huh?"

I conceded that I'd heard worse, especially for first novels. "First your ass! This is my goddamn third. My first was called Tits & Zits and my second is Somewhere Ovary Rainbows. Shallow shit, those first two, I admit it. Juvenile pulp pap. But I think Girl Genius has got some balls to it. Hey, let me ask you something! My publisher wants to reprint the first two and bring all three out as a package. But I'm not so sure. What's your thinking on that plan, as one novelist to another?"

I didn't know what to think. Was she on the level or lying or crazy or what? She sounded serious, but that could have been like the frown. I couldn't get over that feeling of a pulling sensation on my leg. I avoided her question with one of my own.

"Who's your publisher?"

"Binfords and Mort."

If she'd named off some well-known New York house like Knopf or Doubleday I'd have started shoveling pantomime manure. But Binfords & Mort? That's a specialty house for high-class historic stuff, and hardly known outside of the Northwest. Would she pick such company to lie about? Then again, would they pick her?

"I think you could do worse than follow the advice of Binfords and Mort," I averred, trying to probe her eyes. I couldn't get past the glass. I'd have to try another test.

"Okay, Girl Genius, I've got one for you."

"It'll have to be quick, Slick. I think my chariot has just arrived."

A black sedan had indeed just pulled up at the no standing curb. She must have heard it. An ambitious-looking young legal-type flunky got out and started for the lobby door.

"Quick it is," I said. "I'd like to know what's your thinking – just off the top of your I.Q. – on the Second Law of Thermodynamics?"

If I hoped to see her thrown by this, I was disappointed. She got very deliberately to her feet and stood in front of me. She bent her face down until it was almost touching mine. The thin lips were starting to stretch at the corners. The eager pad of driver's footsteps stopped a few feet away but neither the girl nor I turned.

"Melissa?" I heard him say. "Everything's cleared, Sweetie. Your father wants us to go to the Leaning Tower and order a couple giants – a pepperoni for him. He'll join us as soon as he gets rid of that damned delegation from Florence's fishing industry – they're still singing the blues about the salmon regulations. How does Canadian bacon sound for the other one? It's smoke cured…?

The lenses never wavered from me. But the lips continued to stretch, wider and wider, until it seemed her whole head might be split in half by her grin. The blush raged across her cheeks and neck, and her eyes flashed around their crystal cages like giddy green parakeets. She finally cupped her hand so we were shielded from the driver's eyes.

"Entropy," she whispered behind her hand, like a resistance fighter passing a vital secret under the very nose of the enemy, "is only a problem in a closed system." Then she straightened and spoke up. "What's more, a singing fisherman from Florence sounds better to me than a singed pig from Canada. How about you, Slick?"

"Much better," I agreed.

She nodded curtly. The scowl snapped back into place. Without another word she turned on her heel and stalked unaided past the waiting flunky, across the lobby, and straight out the door toward the sedan, majestically, or as majestically as possible for a knobby-jointed maybe-crazy half-green-haired nearly-completely-blind girl-thing from another dimension.

"If you're ever in Mt. Nebo," I called after her, "I'm in the book!"

She kept going. The flunky caught up to her but she disdained his help. She nearly stumbled when she stepped off the curb, but she caught the rear fender and felt her way to the door handle and got in. It was then I realized that, in her show of majesty, she'd left her cane.

They were pulling away as I ran out. I waved the feathered staff, but of course she couldn't see me. I thought of honking the thing after them but they were already to the gate, and the traffic was loud.

Besides, I knew it was the very sort of something I was supposed to bring back. It was absolutely neat. Caleb would love it. He would take it to school, show it off, brandish it, twirl it, honk it. His classmates would admire it, covet it, want one of their own. On their next trip to the Magic Kingdom they would look for them at all the Main Street souvenir shops, ask after them in all the little information kiosks…

Then, one bright blue airbrushed morn – a marvel of demand and supply! – there they'll be.