In
which Yours Truly is detained by the Secret Service as a suspected
assassin.
It
was the summer of 1975, I think; I've mentioned before that my
memories of this time are a bit hazy as to dates and things. I was
living in Buffalo NY and divorced for the second time and not
unnaturally had begun to feel somewhat disconnected, so of course I
did what many others did at that time and in those circumstance, I
set out for California.
The
crossing took six days, that much is certain. I had bought a Rambler
station wagon for the trip, and planned to pitch my jungle hammock
(it incorporated a canopy and bug netting) on the top of the roof,
tied off to the bumpers. I couldn't sleep inside as the cargo space
was taken up by a large desk. I don't remember exactly why I took the
desk, after all I'd even left my beloved Kayak behind, but at the
time it seemed important. Perhaps as a sort of anchor to reality.
I
of course chose to cross on the fabled Route 66, which meant progress
at first seemed negligible as one kept encountering the same
constellation of filling stations, shops and diners, over and over.
After a while I struck the Great Plains and progress ceased
altogether, or seemed to. Mile after mile, and once in while a
distant farmhouse would appear on an absolutely flat horizon, seeming
to follow along for awhile in a companionable sort of way. I wasn't able to sleep for very long; quite often I would wake at 2 or 3 in
the morning and get back on the road. At that hour the only other
traffic were the huge trucks delivering freight across the nation.
This was the era of the CB radio, and the air would have been
full of the conversation of truckers talking back and forth as they
drove but as I had no such equipment the huge eighteen wheelers were
silent except for the language of their many lights and I blinked
politely when it was safe to pass and to cut back in as my father had
taught me.
Then
as I drove one morning near dawn accompanied by these genial
behemoths I became aware that the landscape had changed, from flat to
a sort of lunar landscape of humps and hollows colored a light beige.
Dawn brought the realization that I had reached the Painted Desert
and Arizona. When it was fully light I pulled into a rest station and
got out. The station was a plexiglass shelter and the only man-made
structure in sight except for the seemingly endless stretch of
straight highway. Curious because I had never actually seen a desert
before I walked away from the road. It was absolutely silent except
for the crunch of my footsteps and very hot. Far in the distance I
could see a range of mountains toned a deep black; everything else
was a glaring wilderness of baking rock, sand, and sparse vegetation
all of which seemed armored with lethal looking spines. I stirred
with the toe of my shoe the twisted transparent skin of some kind of
large snake and shivered, retracing my steps to the car and the
safety of motion.
What
did I know of California? Very little except for the names of large
cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles. I had no destination in
mind, but the thought of living among crowds of people felt
unbearable so I turned south toward the
Texas.plains. I think I must have stopped at least once en route but
by then the trip had become merged into seemingly endless highway
unrolling ahead promising Escape from the image of the desert that
pursued me like a vision of what awaited if I stopped moving. One
night I remember clearly, parked in the ruins of an abandoned Texas
motel alongside the cracked concrete of a long dried swimming pool.
The only things moving were the spherical tumbleweeds stirred into
motion by a fitful breeze and as night closed in the sky opened
overhead with a display of stars such as I had never seen before. I
lay back on the warm steel hood of the Rambler and felt as if I would
in a moment simply fall upward forever.
San
Diego when I reached it was white stucco and an aging population in
long billed hats and khaki shorts baking in the relentless sun. I
turned north along the coastal road and as I did so realized that my
money was getting low and the Rambler had developed an unhealthy
thirst indicating a radiator leak. After some hours I reached a
little seaside town, pulled in and went looking for someplace to
stay.
The
place I found was peculiar, one half of a divided apartment- I had
the ridiculously posh bathroom and no kitchen; the fellow on the
other side had the remainder. I checked the want ads and found a
landscaping company nearby looking for help. I shrugged; it was not
my favorite sort of work but it didn't seem to matter. The trouble
was, I couldn't summon up much enthusiasm about anything.
I
lasted a couple of weeks at the landscaping job until we parted by
mutual consent and I hit the local job center for something more
permanent. There was an ad for an opening at the Pinkerton Security
Agency and more or less seduced by the romanticism of working for
such a firm I went in for an interview. The absurdity of wearing the
uniform appealed to me, and it seemed something about my background
intrigued the interviewer. He noted my lack of war record, and
mentioned that they'd had trouble keeping men at one particular post
because of problems with the nurses, wink wink. It wasn't until later
that it dawned on me that he must have thought I was gay. God bless
America.
So
I was fitted for a blue serge uniform and a peaked cap complete with
badge, then told that because the post was a hospital I would be
required to wear a firearm. There followed a firearms training course
run by an ex-police officer who regaled all of us trainees with
stories about how he had dealt with recalcitrant offenders back in
the day: 'So this one ol' boy, he kept spitting goobers through the
mesh ( he meant the steel mesh barrier that separates the back and
front seats in a patrol car) so what I did, I put my foot down and
when we hit seventy I jammed on the brakes sudden like, an' that
turkey's face, it looked like a waffle iron!' (cue sycophantic
laughter)
I
was issued a large .38 revolver and when I had made enough holes in
the paper target I was allowed to take the thing home, to be ready
for my first night on the job. I remember staring at it as it lay on
my desk top, the copper coated bullets gleaming, the sharp smell of
the oil we had used to clean out the barrel after the target shoot.
All I had to do was pick it up, point it at some reasonably vital
part of my anatomy, and pull the trigger one last time. The sense of
failure and all the useless questions that had pursued me across the
vast American continent would all go away and bother someone else.
You
see, I had already learned something about California that wasn't in
the ads and tourist brochures. It was from a short deeply tanned guy
who ran a Vespa dealership, when I went in to see about replacing the
Rambler with something cheaper to run. We chatted for awhile about
living in California, and then he said, examining me closely, ' You
see all the beautiful beaches, the surf , the palm trees, all of
that?' he gestured in a wave that took in the miles of coastline.
'Wait till you've been here awhile. Everybody comes here to escape
their problems, see, but then they reach the ocean and that's all
there is, there's no place else to run.'
I
thought of this, looking at the polished walnut grips of the pistol I
had been given as casually as the rest of the uniform, and thought,
man, you can't really be thinking of blowing out your brains; it
would be such an absurd cliché .
The
Hospital proved to be up in the hills above the ocean. Southern
California is to a large degree desert and scrub land and there were
no houses anywhere near to the grounds. Beyond the parking lot was
just darkness punctuated by a few stunted plants and an army of jack
rabbits. Part of my rounds took me around the perimeter, I suppose to
check for intruders, and it became one of my favorite parts of the
job. Another came at the very end of my shift when I stood at the
entrance way to see the doctors and nurses to their cars. The place
was designed in a faux adobe style, and all over the massive portico
of the entrance porch the swallows had built their mud and wattle
nests. Sensing the mysterious energy of the coming dawn they would
burst out in a delighted chorus of song that sounded like a seventies record played backwards at high speed. Then I would hop on my little
moped- all I could reasonably afford in the end- and putt down to the
coastal highway as the sun lit the tops of the hills. At the
apartment I would change and take a jog around the neighborhood which was built
into the side of a hill and terraced with bungalows, then shower and
go to bed until late afternoon. I spoke to no one more than necessary
and few people spoke to me. I painted pictures and wrote a lot of
poetry.
I
became absorbed with the little apartment, finally installing a
compact kitchenette in an alcove complete with sink and electric
oven. I amused myself trying to create gourmet meals, the only time
in my life I bothered about food and a bit of history my wife refuses
to believe possible. I took the little moped on long journeys on my
days off, back into the hills and once as far as the mountains that
run north to south inland. That trip ended with a hair raising ride
down the mountain roads in the dark, feeling about as substantial as
a skateboard as the cars wizzed past inches away.
One
of my trips took me down south toward San Clemente, and the road I
was following turned into a four lane expressway, not really suitable
for the little moped, so I turned off to try to find a way around . I
was motoring down a narrow side road when I came to a dead halt at a
large wooden gate marked 'Coast Guard Property' that blocked the
road. Now, you have to remember that I was a Pinkerton's Security
Guard and by now accustomed to opening doors and going where members
of the general public weren't allowed. At least that was what I told
myself; what I actually did was to pry open a corner of the gate to
see if there was a way through. I saw rolling grasslands and in the
distance a few horses placidly grazing, but no sign of a through
road.
I
shrugged and was about to turn around and go back when two
automobiles screeched to a halt behind me and four men jumped out
with their guns drawn, all of them pointed at me. I found to my
chagrin that I was not made, sadly, of the stuff of movie heroes, for
I promptly wet myself. The men who in my memory remain faceless to
this day hustled me into one of the cars, drove me through the gate
which turned out to be electrically operated and which I had
presumably damaged by forcing it open because I received a very dirty
look by one of the men. It did seem an overreaction to handcuff me .
They took me into a building, locked one half of the cuffs to the arm
of a chair, then left.
After
a while one of them came back in with the case I had strapped onto
the bike's carrier which contained all the report forms I used at
work, plus some other papers.
Who
are all these doctors, he wanted to know. I told him I had made a
list of Urologists I had wanted to see to discuss the possibility of
reversing my vasectomy. He looked disappointed which I didn't
understand at the time but later I realized he had hoped they were
all Psychiatrists.
'Do
you know where you are?' he asked next. I shrugged as well as a
person wearing handcuffs can and replied in the negative. ' This is
the summer home of former President Nixon,' he stated, watching me
narrowly. Oh sweet Jesus, I thought. Nixon of Watergate fame. Tricky
Dick. One of the most unpopular presidents ever up till then. So
these guys were not fellow Security Guards, this was the Secret
Service given the unenviable job of guarding the ex-president from
potential assassins. This was beyond a joke- I had been in College
when two disaffected young men had killed the Kennedy Brothers, one
after the other. Martin Luther King's death was only a few years
distant.
The
grilling began in earnest. What did I think of ex-president Nixon?
Did I feel he ought to have been punished? What were my feelings
about the war in Vietnam? And on and on.
I
became a vessel of absolute sincerity. I said that Nixon had gotten a
raw deal from the media. I said I had no opinion on his leaving
office, he had seemed to be a victim of circumstance. I explained
that I had only been seeking a short cut, that I was a Security Guard
for Pinkerton and used to opening doors. It sounded pretty thin stuff
even to me, but I gradually realized that my interrogator was
becoming bored. Doubtless it had been a slow afternoon and it would
have been nice just to shoot someone. Finally I heard someone in the
other room say, 'Oh, just throw a scare into him and let him go.'
My
interrogator told me I was now in a permanent file and I had better
never do anything like this again. I fell over myself promising to be
good, aware by now that we were both playing a part. They took me
back to he gate which now operated normally, gave me my moped and, as ordered, let
me go.
I
pedaled the little machine into motion and putted off back down the
road and you know? It was suddenly, completely, wonderful to be
alive.