Chapter 2
Can hallucinations dream?
We picked up the hitcher on Route 66 about ten miles east of Winslow. Bennie thought it was a bad idea, but the crew was acting up, and I was hoping the company would do me good.
"So what's your representation?"
"Come again?"
"Your label, man! What do they call you?"
Bennie wanted to know who "they" were. I panicked, forgetting my cover.
"Uhhh… Bennie. They call me Bennie."
Bennie snorted.
"You're not fooling anyone."
I held my breath and snuck a peek to see what our guest had heard. I'm a bit like a ventriloquist that way; only it's never really clear to me whether I'm speaking out loud. Or maybe that makes me the dummy? But if I'm the dummy, then who's doing the…?
Hell, stow that shit! That's the kind of thinking drives a man crazy.
"I'm Ken. Ken Kesey," he offered. "The writer? For The New Republic? Well, I'm a journalist, really. Been called a poet, too. And a traitor."
He paused to laugh at his own joke, if that's what it was.
"I'm covering the drug wars out of Vegas-"
"In Winslow?"
"Hell yes, in Winslow! Especially in Winslow. This here's the front line, man. Route Six-Six. The 'Trail of the Century.' This is where the real story's at. Talking to people like you."
Talking to people like me? That was the problem with people like Kesey: too damn busy talking to listen.
But that was good for me – it meant he wasn't going to pick up on any weirdness. Kesey was fundamentally oblivious.
Bennie put words in my mouth:
"Been taking the story personally, have we?"
Kesey missed the sarcasm.
"Oh, it is personal. Absolutely.
"Leary says you have to be the point. Isn't that beautiful, man? Absolutely beau-tiful! Blew my mind… right… the fuck… out of my head!
"And yes you do, of course, have to be the subject matter expert – if that's what you mean."
Kesey grinned mischievously.
Okay – maybe he hadn't missed the sarcasm. I'd have to be careful, then. Not quite as clueless as he seemed.
"Leary?" I prompted.
"Leary… Oh, man – you said a mouthful, there. If I'm the point, then he's the horizon. The whole… fuckin'… ho-rizon, baby! Do you understand what I'm tellin' you?
"This shit out here – the outposts, the trade routes, the godforsaken soldiers in the godforsaken fields… you, me – it's all just background material, man.
"Leary. He's the story."
"But what about you? What's your story?"
"What do you mean?"
I was stalling. I knew perfectly well what he meant. What's a nice guy like me doing in a place like this?
"You never told me where you're headed. I don't figure you for a delivery boy… What are you doing alone out here in the middle of the fuckin' desert, man?" I laughed, in spite of myself. "I'm on my way to kill your story."
Oh, shit! Did I say that out loud?
Timothy Leary.
I wondered how much Kesey really knew about his idol. Did he know that Leary helped develop LSD as a chemical weapon for the CIA?
Probably not. But it was a fact.
Or that Leary had close, personal and family ties to the FBI?
I somehow doubted that had come to Kesey's attention, either.
Another fact that I rather doubted Kesey had turned up was that his entire drugged up counter-culture began as a top-secret, government-sponsored, mind-control experiment. With willing, even eager test subjects.
It had seemed like such a brilliant idea at the time: Get the rats to test themselves. And gain control of them, in the bargain.
Hell, all you had to do was tell a rebellious, disaffected youth not to do something, and you could barely keep up with the demand.
"Oh, no! Don't throw me in the briar patch, Br'er Bear!"
It was a raging success.
The "new revolutionaries" self-medicated to a point where any real revolution was impossible. And they did our R&D work for us, too, spending what few brain cells they had left developing ever more potent drugs to enslave themselves with.
"Turn on and tune out," Leary told them. And that's exactly what they did.
VI
Of course it all blew up in our faces. As these things tend to do.
VII
It was sometime after Kesey dropped acid that things got weird. The whole sun-blasted crater that is Arizona seemed to be rippling in the midday heat, and I couldn't shake the feeling that we were the mirage.
Then the madness took hold, our visions noticed each other, and the strangest conversation of my life began.
