World 42; Freaks 0

In a pleasant Canadian schoolyard, children are washing cars to make money for their class project. Two Americans--call them Peter and Mickie--gun in on ancient motorcycles. How much to wash a bike? "Fifty cents." They confer, come up with 60 cents, try to bargain with the kids for a two-bike package deal. They are turned down. "What next?" Mickie asks. "Nothing," says Peter, "unless you want to rip off a kid to wash cars and dishes at the house."

A VW bus already dead and half-risen again and a feline little sports car now on the last of its nine lives join the scene and disgorge more Americans into the waning brilliance of Canada's autumn. A mock trial takes place to decide which bike, as the dirtiest, gets the 50-cent treatment. Peter surreptitiously throws dirt on the one he rode. The result is a draw and the bikes remain unwashed, like their owners.

The Americans, with headbands keeping shoulder-length hair out of their eyes, could be rebel Indians breaking out of a reservation. Instead, this afternoon, they are a ragged touch-football team. Mickie, thin and loose-jointed, leads the way onto the dry field, caricaturing a drum majorette, knees almost hitting his chin with each prance and each pump of the great baton. "Don't fuck off," Dusty shouts indignantly. "This is for the honor of the United States of fuckin' America." Dusty left the Army in haste--he had been shipped back to America on suspicion of selling arms to the Viet Cong ("A hundred and fifty dollars in scrip for an M-16," he reminisces dreamily. "Ah, fuck!").

They come here every Sunday to play a collection of Canadian high school footballers, phys-ed teachers and semipro castoffs--two-handed touch, Canadian rules (three downs a drive, no fair catch, etc.). The Americans are not high this time--they ran out of grass and money two days ago and are waiting for a hashish shipment to peddle. In fact, they are badly hung over; without money, all they can get is beer, charged to one of several accounts (all delinquent) at the grocery store. (In the store, they pretend not to recognize one another. "That guy? Just another fucker from America dodging the draft," Dusty tells the owner with contempt. He went to drama school before the Army got him.)

"Sisss," the Americans whistle, "boom," as the Canadians boot it, "bahhhhh," as it settles into Big Al's hands. Al is the quiet one who holds the house together, puffing moodily, never drinking, writing poems and manifestos, reading Ché. He scampers well, fakes a lateral, then screams in pain--Canadian cleats have gouged away most of a big toenail; it dangles bloodily until Jimmy, Al's brother, twists the mangled thing off and wraps his own headband around the toe. "An international incident!" Dusty trumpets. "Off the cleats! That's a non-fuckin'-negotiable demand." The Americans have taken the field in boots and sandals--all but Al, who is barefoot. Lladislaw, "our international diplomat," is chosen to lead a legation to the other side. Llad is a Hungarian defector to the Israeli army who jumped ship with a large store of hashish in Montreal and worked his way inland selling the stuff. His prime qualification as diplomat is that Canadians cannot understand his accent. Eventually, everyone is shoeless, and it is first down Americans. Dwayne takes charge--"I'll run the option." It doesn't work, and no wonder. He had told me the night before how he "flunked Arson 1."

"It was my first try and I was alone, so I thought I'd knock off the only wooden building on campus--just for practice, you know? It meant working right under a streetlight where campus police patrolled, but every other building looked so damn strong. This was hardly more than a shack. I soaked rags in gas, and spread them all around inside in a circle, leading out of a big gas drum and back into it. I had a roll of explosive fuse. So I got across the street and lit it. The silly fire just sat there and looked at me; it didn't go out, but it was smoldering away at a rate of about one inch every ten minutes--no light to it, just a little smoke, people walked right by it in the street, it was so damn sneaky and slow. Hell, I had bought slow fuse! I didn't want to spend the night watching it, so I split. It finally got there, I was told, and a little fire started. But it was put out. I figured it was time to retire. If I couldn't knock over a half-assed building like that, I couldn't bring down a goddamn tent!"

Big Al had done better. He got an R.O.T.C. building before he crossed the border. He has designs on other U. S. buildings, and has lined up the dynamite; but he would rather wait for some plastique: "It's easier to get across the border. I'll make goddamn decorative candles of the stuff." Much of the dope dealt by the house--marijuana up over the border, hashish down--is transmitted inside the large candles they pour and sculpt. Now, crippled on the side lines, Al unwraps his bloodied toe to appreciative oohs and ahs of the children. He is good with kids. One of his poems tells of "the mirror-faces of the very young," and his notebooks say they are the reason he must risk further bombings.

The Canadians are scoring, it is 12-0. Nothing Dwayne can think of moves the ball from scrimmage. The big play so far was Jimmy's interception and 20-yard runback of a pass. Dusty pounded his back. "MVP here, M-fuckin'-V-P!" "Great," Jimmy shouts. "What does the MVP get?" Llad, Hungarian potatoes in his English diction, smiles, "He ball Dani first when she cured." Dusty scowls at him--Dani is his chick, off to the city for her Monday morning gonorrhea treatment. "I would get one with the clap--but it's the last time she'll have it, you can bet. There's nothing she hates more than those two shots in the ass on Monday."

Soon the superior Canadians, having run their score up to 42, tire of the game--they are friendly but rather quiet; they like the Americans more for their theatrics than their football. (Each hard block brings weird cries and magical treatments. Even one yard gained from scrimmage calls for Mickie's stirring rendition of the American national anthem.) Sides are now rearranged, three Americans and two Canadians on each, and a stream of little kids pours onto the field--this is the moment they have been waiting for. They know all the "freaks" by name, and know they will be welcomed into the huddle. Even a passing group of high school girls is invited out to play. "They're minnows," Mickie says. "Throw them back."Jimmy: "But so many minnows--nothing like a whole stream of minnows to squirm in." The game disintegrates as the freaks manage to give each kid a turn at passing or receiving. This is the only quarterbacking Dwayne is good at--he has a two-year-old son back in the States.

Dusty breaks things off with, "I got to go to fuckin' work." "Cure him." "Pop him a mescaline." "Chant him an O-O-W-M." "Bring on the medicine man." But the Canadian who owns the football is leaving anyway, and the freaks are hungry.

Back at the house, strays and teenyboppers who passed out or bedded down late Saturday night are awake now, trying to find something in the refrigerator. "There's nothing but salad," one girl complains; she's a French-Canadian high-schooler who comes every weekend, and is called Frou-Frou at the house.

"Make way for Big Al. It's pancake time." They have chaired him up the porch in their arms and told the girls of his heroic toenail sacrifice. But now they need a cook. They rose too late to eat breakfast and make it to the game. Each had grabbed a remedial bottle of beer to drink on the way to the field.

"Al, make a big supply of pancakes. What we don't eat we can use as Frisbees."

"Frisbees, hell! I saved one last week and put it on a stick for a fly swatter."

"Make me two big ones--I'll use them for snowshoes next month."

Llad has gone up to watch TV--he spends hours before the screen, giggling and picking up English. His favorite shows in Hungary were American and English. "My friends were brokenhearted when The Saint was canceled." Llad and his brother live in a different house, occupied by non-American defectors, but he comes over here every day for the TV.

Dusty calls Mickie into the front room to cut his hair and trim his beard--it dwindles to a matted goatee under the shears. "Who has a pair of pants?" "I do," from Jimmy. "Not your dungarees with fuckin' bell bottoms. I mean real pants. I gotta look straight for this job." Dusty begins a temporary job as bouncer in a nearby tavern tonight--just till the shipment of hash arrives. By the time he gets into Al's pants--a foot too short and certain to split if he actually bounces anyone--the girls are giving him a Mr. America treatment, all of them judges with fake little notebooks: "Nice ass on him." "A ghrayt beeg blownd Greek God!" Frou-Frou applauds. "Yeah, but his swimsuit is too long--right down over his goddamn knees." Tina laughs, but does not join in--she was a high school teacher last spring. Al, looking round the corner from his stove, says, "You look like a French faggot." "Yeah," Dusty agrees, and goes up to shave the rest of his beard off.

Llad, at the head of the stairs, shouts, "FLQ ripped off another!" Several people head for the TV. "Mother-sweet-fuck-er!" Dusty croons approvingly. The news is that the Front de Libération de Québec has kidnaped a second government official--the house admires the FLQ and has contacted it in the search for plastique. "They're so much more together than American radicals," Al explains over his batter. "Wow! If they pull this off, the Panthers will bust every black man out of America's prisons."

A car door slams--Tony, back from taking Dani to the city. His hair is short, the Army crewcut still growing out; his tanned thin arms are scribbled over with "good ole boy" unsophisticated tattoos. His eyes light up at the sight of the two motorcycles and he kicks one off into the field, wheels slipping as he bangs off thin deciduous trees, then races halfway up an incline till the loose grass and leaves throw him, laughing crazily. The motor kicks and coughs itself to rest on the ground.

"Bombed out of his head," Al mutters. "He was supposed to deal some dope in the city, but he got high on the first batch. Well, it always happens. When people first come over the border, they have to stay high for a couple of weeks before they can get themselves together." Tony deserted last week, when his company was preparing to ship out for Vietnam. "That means we'll have nothing but rice and salad for dinner tonight."

Dusty is back downstairs, clean-shaven. Frou-Frou sees him first: "Look at the surf keed." "Yeah," he moans, "Troy-fuckin'-Donahue." The pancakes are moving fast now, and taste good--stuffing welcome rags into their hunger. The only pause is when Ohio drops onto the phonograph (a machine fed continuously night and day), and the benches are scuffed back for everyone to stand, hand over heart. "That's our house anthem," Al whispers as Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young weave the lament, "Four dead in Ohio." Llad knows these English words well: "Soldiers are cutting us down." As everyone sits down again, he says, "I left army because I could not ... I can kill no one. In day, I peddled dope with Arabs we were supposed to ambush at night."

Jimmy disagrees: "There are some people I would kill with pleasure." Dusty: "Hell, they're killing us. Sending us out to kill others. The Marines are worst. I once saw them string plastic explosive on wires from hut to hut in a Vietnam village, letting the people think it was a decoration, so they could get off on the way the people touched it and played with it and giggled--before they detonated it."

Al, who has been sampling his wares as he poured batter and flipped pancakes, calls people away from the table: "We have to get the trial started if Dusty is going to get to work."

"On with the trial!" They retire to the front room, rough and paneled but kept very clean, with a well-polished rifle over the fireplace. Every Sunday, violations of house decorum are assessed and punished. Affidavits have to be made up before Saturday midnight to keep the session from becoming a cockpit of sudden hostilities. "We don't want this to be too frivolous," Al explains carefully. "People can't live together if they are not all into the community, if some are taking a free ride on it." The tone is facetious, but a tense trial last week ended in the vote to purge one couple from the house.

Tina is on trial first, for waste. She took a bottle of beer, sipped from it, did not finish it. Jimmy prosecutes--he found the nearly full bottle next morning. Dusty defends--he argues it is the duty of others to fuckin' find any bottles with beer left in them and drink the stuff. She is voted guilty and made to wash dishes one extra time next week. "That's all we do is wash dishes," she complains. "This house is rotten with male chauvinism." "Goddamn right," Jimmy applauds--"The only thing we dig about women's lib is no bras!" (concluded on page 186) World 42 Freaks 0 (continued from page 136) (Tina, alone of the girls in the house, wears a bra). Al tells Jimmy to sit down: "The teeny-boppers you let in don't have enough yet to put bras around." It is clear that, though everyone votes, Al is the real judge at trials.

Yet Al is also the next one convicted--of losing the house football on a mountainside picnic (they climb a nearby mountain whenever they have some particularly good stuff to smoke or drop--"We get off on the trees"). Jimmy prosecutes again. Al had earlier sworn out an affidavit against Jimmy for leaving the football in the rain--there are old conflicts nagging at the brothers. Currents of serious criticism run beneath all the banter of trial. Jimmy finds Al too officious.

Dwayne rises to bring Dusty to trial. "He shows a bourgeois possessiveness about Dani."

"Oh, she can fuckin' fuck anyone she wants," Dusty answers.

"But if she does, you might kill her--or one of us," Dwayne says.

"It's not an issue, she can't ball anyone now anyway, not till she fuckin' gets over the clap. But this is the time to get it all out front."

Mickie objects: "I thought who is balling who was not a matter for trial."

"Right," Dwayne answers. "But this is not about balling--only about Dusty trying to prevent people from balling freely with whoever they want; and that is a violation of the house code."

Dusty: "Why not wait till Dani is back to see if she wants to ball others?"

Dwayne: "No chick has ever been here without balling more than one."

"Sure they have. Remember Silvy?"

"But she didn't like it here; that's why she left."

"Balling should be nobody's business but those involved."

"Remember, this is a trial--one should speak, henceforth, of the ball or and the ballee."

Mickie comes back, "If balling is nobody's business, why does everybody try to make the most noise possible? I sometimes think we're going to shake the goddamn house down. Everyone wants cheerleaders at the bedside, to see he is getting his."

"That's right," Tina spouts. "That he is getting his. The whole balling ethic here is male piggism."

"You seem to enjoy it," Jimmy leers.

"But I want to be more than a piece of meat for you to get off on--you remember I left you when you took that attitude."

"But you came back."

"Just when I got too cold in the other bed."

Several kinds of hostility are out now, and naked--and sex dragged it all out, here as in any uptight suburb.

Al intervenes, "This is a trial, not a gross-off."

Dusty is acquitted. "Sometimes," he says, "this place reminds me of a fuckin' fraternity house."

Mickie, who graduated from an Ivy League school, lifts a maudlin tenor, "We're poor little lambs who have gone astray ...."

To lighten things, Al gets out some of his favorite bad poems and reads them melodramatically, Dwayne doing silentmovie chords and shakes on his guitar. The first poem is The Highwayman. "She blew off her tits," Jimmy says afterward. "No wonder he split." Then The Face on the Barroom Floor.

Dwayne, who has recorded several songs on an obscure label, airs his new compositions, all lovelorn with passionate boot-stompings and gittar-lashings. Mickie comes in at the end with "Gentlemen songsters off on a spree ...."

Al, turned serious again, reads from Evtushenko (how not people die, but worlds die in them) and his own notebooks (how his shadow glides at his side, the revolutionary in him, stalking him with accusation for worlds not brought to birth). Tina is nuzzling the house cat, a furry collection of crossed wires (there is LSD in its saucer on good nights). Jimmy flickers a dim flashlight on the ceiling. "Hell, who can get off on that," he finally sighs, and goes for wood to make a fire.

Mickie softly rubs Tina awhile as she rubs the cat, and then they head for the stairs together. "What's up for tomorrow?" Al asks.

Jimmy: "Rifle practice."

Dwayne: "Up the mountain."

Tina: "There's no grass."

Dwayne: "There's some mescaline."

Jimmy: "There's only one thing I care about. Tomorrow the hash!"

Mickie brays his way upstairs, hugging Tina: "Doomed from here to eternity ...."

I ask Al what will happen tomorrow. "Tomorrow?" he says with theatrical pretentiousness--his only way, now, of preserving all the soured hopes: "Tomorrow the revolution!" And goes upstairs to write in his notebooks.