Lloyd and Hillwill

     So there we were, Davis and I, rocking and rolling down Interstate 80 toward Sacramento, after spending a few days hiking Snow Tent Trail in the hills of my beloved gold country.
     “Living the dream,” I said. “We’s just living the dream.” I was driving his Gold Duster and Davis was relaxing with his eyes closed in the early morning air of late summer.
     “See what I mean about this air.” I told him. “It’s not watery like the air back home in South Carolina. Back home the humidity can put a campfire out. Back home you gotta swim-walk. And when it rains it’s only a little wetter than when it’s not raining. Back home…”
     “Yeah, yeah, I get the picture. You’re from a swamp by the sea. But the mountain air reminds me of my home where the air is cool and crisp and clean.” Davis was from the hills of Kentucky and we had met while in the Air Force here in Northern California. Just out now, I was living the dream of unemployment enjoyment while Davis was still in the service. It was the mid-seventies and I was calling myself Joe Beet. I was a self-styled bullshit artist and teller of tall tales and short incident stories I’d collect from nowhere and everywhere. But to tell this story I have to return to the real, as we all do from time to time. I told Davis the story of the space traveling hitchhiker and it led right on to another story of which I was the witness to wonders. You can tell them Joe peeled this one right out of my own personal file, the story of Lloyd and Hillwill. Get the ladder boys and girls; this one’s a reach.
     “Did I ever tell you about the strange hitchhiker me and Zacker and Westerlund picked up a few months ago?”
     No, but I bound to hear about it now.”
     “Well, we were motervatin’ in Zacker’s car to Winterland to see Focus do their Hocus Pocus. Westerlund was driving and I was riding shotgun with Zack coolin’ it in the back. I told them about an article I’d read—that there was this strange brand of hitchhiker going around. No, I don’t mean the regular strange, no, no, I mean this kind is going to entertain and amaze you with fantastic stories in exchange for the ride.”
     “Yeah, I remember now, you and Paul Antonioli were talking about that.” Davis said.
     “Yeah, that’s right.” I went on. “The article said it’s a phenomenal thing reported mostly in California. but also up in Oregon.”
     “These are the space travelers ya’ll were talking about.”
     “Yeah, and as soon as I finished telling them about that and before they finished telling me I was full of shit, we came upon a bohemian sitting by the road leaning on a backpack playing a flute.”
     “Hot damn! That’s what I call service.” Davis yelled out the car window.
     “So Westerlund stopped and gave that guy a ride. He was a space cowboy alright, with a long beard and tall tales. He told us he traveled all over the universe and knew the aliens who watch us with instruments like we watch TV. He said the dead are among us and we’re the dumbest sons of bitches in the universe cause we ignore it all and live our insect lives. We focus our attention only on our little piddlin’ selves when there is a whole cosmos to see and know.”
     “Was he tripping?” Davis wondered.
     “He was the ghost of trips past for me. And he told us about the wood chopper.”
     “The wood Chopper?”
     “Yeah, he said for everything you do and for everything there is, there is an archetype and a spirit or being to tend to it. For instance, the archetypal woodchopper helped Abraham Lincoln learn to cut wood and it was there that in the loneliness of that chore that, as a young boy, Abe learned to listen inside for the mentor’s voice, that still small voice that guides us all through this crazy life.”
     “Hey, I think I know this wood chopper, as much wood as I’ve cut in my life, I should know him anyway. What did Zacker and Westerlund make of this space trucker?”
     “They were as fascinated as I was. We’ve been talking about it ever since, you know the coincidence of it all and…”
     “Hey, what about that guy!” Davis shouted as we passed by a thumber beside the road. “Let’s give him a ride and see what his trip is.”
     I had gone too far so I said I’d hit the next exit and go back. A few minutes later we were coming up on the hiker again. He looked very similar to the one I’d just told Davis about. I had a funny feeling, and like the great Yogi said—it was déjà vu all over again. Next stop, the Twilight Zone.
     We both had a sense of expectancy, like after telling ghost stories around a campfire, you feel there’s a ghost about to jump out at you. The long beard was coming out of the bushes as if he knew he had a ride. He was tall and lean, maybe in his sixties, but his walk was athletic and musical. He only carried a small rucksack. He got in the back saying thanks and after we said our howdies he told us his name was Lloyd. He said he lived in North San Juan and Berkeley.
     “You live in two places?” I asked.
     “When I need money I hike to Berkeley and drive a cab for a month or so. Then I hike back to my home in the foothills.” Lloyd said matter of factly.
     Davis took special delight in that. “You’ve got the best of both worlds. The mountains and the city, Hot damn! And you hitchhike a couple hundred miles to drive a cab, Wow!”
     “Yeah, I’m lucky, thank spirit, I live in a state of grace. I’m out of the rat race and off of the wheel of death and rebirth. I’ve paid my dues.”
      We both looked back at him but he seemed unconcerned with our reaction.
     “Everything I need is supplied free and easy by the spirit.” He said.
     “Everything except money.” Davis said.
     “Oh no, money is of no consequence.” Lloyd said. I had just read that Walt Whitman had said that when asked about the need to make money. And Davis and I had just that morning talked about the perfect life- living in a city and in the mountains.
     “Besides, it’s a joy to work as long as it’s not on a treadmill. Say, you dudes from Kentucky?”
     “Why I sure am.” Davis said in his back home accent. And Joe here is a firefucker from South Carolina, the land time forgot and only ancient history can remember.”
     “I had some magic moments down around Spartanburg just a few years ago. They got a good music thing going there with the Marshall Tucker Band and …say, is that the new Stones song there?” Lloyd asked.
     I was leaning toward the radio thinking it might be the Stones’ new song. “I don’t know for sure.” I said. We listened but I was getting a little spooked. Lloyd was picking up everything I was thinking.
     “Don’t go out of your way now.” Lloyd said. I looked at Davis and he was smiling like he was in on the joke. I had just missed our turn off to Marysville on purpose, thinking we had time to take the old guy into Berkeley.
     “Keep on Truckin’.” Davis said. “Stop and gas up when you’re ready.”
     “Okey dokey pokey, no more jokey.” I said as I was thinking ‘Will the ole hep cat read my thoughts again? And how do he do dat anyway?’
     “I traveled down to South America one time to partake of the ‘Sacred vine of the Gods, Yage.” He said.
     “Wow! I have a book about Yage in the trunk.” I was amazed that he did it again.
     “What is that?” Davis asked.
     “It’s a sacrament the Shamans have used for centuries to guide the spiritual traveler. It promotes telepathic powers among other things.” Lloyd told him.
     “I have,’ The Yage Letters’, by Allen Ginsburg and William Burroughs.” I announced.
     “That’s a book that booked lots of seats to South America.” Lloyd said. “Speaking of Ginsburg, he got in my cab once playing a human thigh bone as a flute. He’s quite a character. He sojourns at times at Colfax, you know where that is.”
     “No.” We both said.
     “Gary Snyder lives just a few miles from me.”
     “You mean Jappy Ryder, the knapsack, rucksack revolution man himself?” I asked.
     “Yeah, that’s the one. You fellows should come and see me sometime. Not everyone who looks for me can find me, but if the spirit is willing and the mind is calm, you won’t have a problem if the time is right.”
     We stopped and gassed up. I started to ask Lloyd if he wanted anything but he said, “Just a sip of something to wet my throat.” I gave him the first sip of my beer and we were on the road again.
     Davis mentioned to Lloyd the story I had told him about the spaceman hitchhiker. Lloyd seemed to take it quite seriously as if he recognized a fellow traveler.
     “Some explorers have learned to allow their mental dial to slip out of focus. They slide between the worlds and travel to spaces of imagination, or to places of parallel reality. Some lose their way while others learn to navigate and travel freely back and forth, here and there. Some become couriers while others become entertainers. Some become both and develop their lifestyle as an art”
     Lloyd asked us about our overseas travel and Davis told him about his experiences in Thailand. I found it curious that Davis emphasized his involvement with Buddhist Priests and the large amount of time he spent in the temples and monasteries. Davis had been a student of a Priest there and had been given a medallion, which he wore on a string of leather around his neck. His Priest had been given the medallion by his Priest, a famous teacher, and the story was that only five of these medallions had been made. Lloyd asked to see it and Davis took it off and handed it him. After much talk about the workmanship and the intent behind it Lloyd handed it back.
     “What is this living in the spirit you were talking about?” Davis asked him.
     “Oh, that’s a state of inner quiet. You gotta learn to hush the fussbox in your head, stop reflecting, stop talking to yourself. Spirit needs a space and needs quiet. I found the spirit through the back door it seems. According to conventional wisdom I was doing everything wrong in my life. But I was following my heart and I persisted until day about ten years ago the veil lifted and I stepped into a state of grace, a lovin’ light that tends me moment by moment.”
     “Do you meditate?” Davis inquired.
     “Not any more. Not Formally. I meditated for many years until every waking and sleeping moment became a meditation.”
     “Why do you say you came to the spirit by the back door?”
     “Because I intuited that the front door would be locked. I don’t think there are any steps one person can spell out for another. Everybody engages and is engaged by the spirit differently and uniquely.” Lloyd said with a nod of his head, pretty much closing the subject.
     We felt the silence as if feeling for the spirit.
     “You know, living is like panning for gold.” Lloyd said. “Living separates the good stuff from the lousy stuff.”
     “Hey, we saw some gold panners up yonder. How they do dat anyway?” I had to ask.
     “Well, you know how to separate the seeds from the shake and buds in bag of reefer?”
     “Doesn’t everyone?” I replied.
     ‘You just shake, rattle and roll the pan around and the gold, being heavier than the sediment, falls to the bottom of the pan,” Lloyd explained. “And speaking of reefer, I have a hot little number I’d like to share if you fellows care…”
     Twist my arm!” I blurted out.
     “Light’em if you got’em.” Davis chimed in as he handed back a lighter.
     We smoked and joked and rocked and rolled the rest of the way like three hobos on a holiday. Soon we pulled up in front of the Psychedelic Cab Company in Berserkeley, radical city of the Bay Area. The ride back to Marysville was downhill all the way. Davis and I reviewed everything Lloyd had said. He had told us about the Zen technique of ‘thinking of the opposite’, when we got stuck in an extreme, and ‘following the breath’, for training attention. We were not just in a good mood; we were ecstatic.

Awakening

     A few days later Davis reported to me that something strange had happened. There was a little guy with him now. A dark skinned man wearing the robe of a Buddhist monk. I looked but I couldn’t see. They communicated silently, by thoughts. I searched my inventory for the meaning. I thought this would pass soon but two days later Davis said he was still there, except when he went to the bathroom or started thinking gross or carnal thoughts. He was at times superimposed like a ghost on the images of our so-called real world and at other times he seemed to be an almost solid person in our world. I didn’t know what to say so I said very little, and listened. Davis thought the ghostly Buddha was his teacher’s teacher, the one who gave out the five medallions. Their communication was shaky at best because Davis had to separate the words of the Priest from all the other voices in his head. He said his own fear was a problem too but when he could control it and trust his new friend the skies would clear and the sun of awareness would shine. Davis said his friend was here to prepare him for a new life. Everything had changed now and the catalyst for this change was when he took the medallion off for Lloyd to hold and look at. He’d never taken it off before, not even when he got naked with his wife. Something told him to take it off for the old man. Now he had a new life. Now he had to collect a new family, a family of the spirit. He also had a new name. His new name was Hillwill.

Background
     Over the next few days Hillwill told me the stories of his life. He was the youngest of nine children of proud but rock poor people of eastern Kentucky. His brothers and uncles, like those of my family, were mechanics, carpenters, plumbers, electricians, and moon shiners. His father had set him apart from the rest of the family and had secretly told him a number of times that he was not to be like them. That he was made of a different pattern and of a finer material. Hillwill didn’t know what to make of it then. He was told he was more like his Grandmother, a wonderfully strange woman who could make inanimate objects move, heal people and animals, and speak with the dead. So Hillwill’s Father sent him away to a boarding school in Lexington. His mother was a devout Pentecostal but his Pappy was not religious at all. He never interfered with his wife’s faith but he would never talk about religion either. He would tell anyone who asked, that he was an atheist, and then he would drop the subject. But everyday just before sunset he would walk into the woods and sit down at a tree, his favorite tree. He only told his youngest son the reason for it. He said that he and the tree talked to each other.
     Hillwill then told me some of the more recent background. When he was in Thailand he was selling junk in a foolish attempt to raise money to fund a boarding school for orphans. That’s right, at the same time he was sitting in mediation he was selling scag. One time he had a hassle with his suppliers so he switched apartments just in case they tried something. His partner, who took the threats lightly, turned up dead. Hillwill was sent back to the states but a year later, another partner, whom he’d not been in touch with, sent him a couple of ounces of white powder. As soon as he received it he was busted. So at the time he started seeing his Buddha Hillwill was under lots of pressure. His wife had returned to Kentucky and the Air Force was going to make an example out of him. I wanted to believe it would all soon blow over but Hillwill assured me, that his Lawyer, and his Buddha, both told him it looked bad, real bad. Right about this time, wouldn’t you know it, the shit hits the fan.

to be continued

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Consolation Prize

When things don’t work out
and you don’t win the first prize
and you feel just shit out of luck
not to worry, if you have a lover
just go home and fuck.

Old man Bob Barker
On that stupid price is god show
Says as often as a vacuum sucks
“Oh, I’m sorry, you didn’t win.
But still, you can go home and fuck.”

Former President Clinton
now I really like the sound of that
and Senator Hillary, who wouldn’t suck
could do us all a favor now
if they, would just go home and fuck.

When the game is over and you’ve lost
So what, life goes on and on
No shame to lose but don’t get stuck
stroking to that great release
Oh yeah, just go home and fuck.

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Twenty Horses

Stand clear, for I am Twenty Horses
Stand clear, and cover your ears
I am Twenty Horses
And these animals I raised to glory
These are as good as the War God’s Horses

As a young warrior
I went into the mountain
To find my purpose
“Keep twenty of the best
Of the War God’s horses

For your people, when fight comes.”
That I have done
And they called me, “Twenty Horses”

Now, that fight is done
But our spirit is not
The stand we made will stand forever.
On the Western Plains
I still ride with the wind
Feel my breeze
For I am Twenty Horses

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Drunk Man Preaching

There’s a drunk man preaching
On a street corner night
Bible in his left hand
Bottle of bull in his right

There’s a drunk man preaching
As I walk on down the street
It’s fades into the mix
Of the noise of the world
Drunk man preaching
Becomes the cry of our species
All that is off-balance
The crux of the problem
Is right there
In the drunk man preaching
What the good book says is true
Don’t let your left hand know
What your right hand do
There’s a drunk man preaching
The power and the glory
Forever and ever, amen.