Gutbucket Quest (8 page)

“Why are you back playing, now?” Nadine asked. Still it seemed that she was after something else, as if Slim were carrying some hint of a larger mystery, some more important thing behind him she was trying to see.

“A few years ago, I just got hungry for it, so I picked up my guitar and started playing. Side gigs, sessions, jamming. I thought about getting in touch with Roy again, and I’d just gotten ahold of his address when I heard that he’d died. After I heard that, I knew I had to play again. It was like I’d be disloyal to him or something, if I didn’t. And here I am. But there’s still something missing from me. That’s why I keep asking you stuff, trying to get hold of the idea.”

“That’s fine,” Progress said. “You ask all you want. Far as I ever knowed, that’s the only way a body ever finds anything out.”

“Yeah,” Nadine said gruffly. “But shut up now. We’re at the store.
Let’s go get your clothes and see if we can’t get you looking a little more respectable.”

Later, with Slim dressed in new jeans and the kind of floral shirt he liked, and with the empty tool box of the pickup filled with packages, they drove to the pan of town where friendly, one-story buildings changed to tall, imposing edifices. An almost invisible haze of steel-blue smoke colored the sky. Even the sun seemed hotter in this part of town. They paid a lot attendant two dollars for a space, and got out of the truck to walk.

“Can you beat that?” Progress said. “Chargin’ a man money just to park his truck. That’s T-Bone’s doin’, tryin’ to make more money. That man’d charge for air if he could.”

As they walked the sidewalks, Slim noticed that things here were opposite to the world he’d come from. In his world, the downtown areas were always clean, nearly polished. But here in Tejas, at least Armadillo, downtown was the
only
part of the city he’d seen that
wasn’t
clean. On the contrary, it was gray, dingy and depressing. The glass in the tall buildings didn’t shine in the sunlight and anonymous trash blew through the streets and gutters.

The sidewalks were empty. They headed for the tallest building of all: a black, seemingly windowless tower of stone. The only indication that it was more than a column of solid rock was the glass front doors and a bright red sign at the very top that read
T.B.P. UNLIMITED.

They walked up the short flight of stairs and went through the streaked glass doors into a bare lobby, devoid of life. They went quickly to the elevator, which opened to them almost immediately. It was empty, and smelled faintly of urine or cigar smoke. Slim couldn’t identify the odor except as stale and bitter and unpleasant. Nadine wrinkled her nose and glanced significantly at her father, as if the smell was proving a point. But Slim couldn’t figure what that point could be, except that something disgusting must have been there recently.
Something like—whatever might have been in the bathroom, in the morning. But that didn’t make any sense.

They were going to the very top floor, and it was an excruciatingly slow and bumpy elevator, almost as if it had been designed to keep the riders in suspense as to the safety of the metal box and the cable that held it. No one interrupted the ride, and Slim wondered if there were actually any other people in the building.

The three of them stepped from the elevator and were faced by a uniform gray entry office. Against one wall sat a gigantic desk and at the desk sat a gigantic woman who could easily fulfill every pre-teenage boy’s nightmare of the ultimate authority figure: a combination of the wicked witch of Oz and Grendel, with traces of bigfoot and the Marquis de Sade thrown into improve her looks. A formidable woman who glared at them with obvious hatred for disturbing her important task of doing nothing.

“Can I
help
you?” she sneered.

Progress, unintimidated, walked right up to her desk and looked her in the eyes. “We want to see T-Bone,” he said sternly.

“Do you
people
have an appointment?” the woman asked. The expression on her face showed clearly that the entirety of her job was to ensure that no one, ever, got inside.

“Nope. But T-Bone will see me. You just tell him that Progress is here to talk to him.”

“I’m sure,” she said, her tone derisive. “Just a moment.” She lifted the receiver of a red phone and pushed a button. After a few seconds, she mumbled into it, making sure that no one but the person on the other end could understand anything she said. Then her eyes widened and she hung the phone up quickly. As if Slim, Progress and Nadine had ceased to exist, she waved her arm in the general direction of a wide door behind her and said, “Go in, go in.” Then she began shuffling and studying the papers that lay on her desk.

They walked through the door she’d indicated, into an office that,
to Slim’s surprise, was totally, brilliantly white. Behind a high desk sat the man they’d come to see. He was thin and fishbelly white, as if his life was lived completely within his office. He had little pig eyes, a thin, scraggly mustache, and stubby fingers. He was dressed in a white suit with a red tie, and seemed intensely preoccupied with counting the several bundles of filth-covered money that lay on the desk before him. He was using a dirty handkerchief to clean the bills as he counted them, and he ran them lovingly through his hands and before his eyes as if drawing power from their existence.

He looked up as they entered the office. “Progress,” he said, smiling crookedly, twitchingly. “Come in. Come in.” He nodded and added, “Nadine. You look mighty good.”

Nadine pointedly averted her gaze.

His porcine eyes scanned Slim carefully and his smile broadened into a leer. Slim felt violated, the way a child would by the touch of a molester.

Pickens turned back to Progress. “Who’s this?” he asked.

“My new apprentice,” Progress replied. “Slim.”

Pickens seemed to flinch for just a moment; then the nasty smile returned to his face. When he spoke, a venom had entered his already unpleasant voice. “What? Did you find yet another poor fool to humiliate?”

“No,” Progress said calmly. “This one can play.”

Slim saw Pickens’ hands clench tightly around the already crushed bundles of money as the piggy eyes turned and seemed to try to burn through him. “Well, I’ll have to keep an
especially
close eye on you.”

“Don’t go to any trouble for me,” Slim mumbled. The man made him feel dirty and afraid.

“No trouble at all,” Pickens said, turning back to Progress. “Well,
Mister
Hornsby, what’s you business here?”

“Don’t be playin’ no games, T-Bone. You know what I’m here for. Where is it?”

Pickens ignored the question. “Nadine,” he said. “Why don’t you dump these losers and come in with me?”

Slim hadn’t had a reason to hate the man until that moment. But the feeling flared up inside him like a lightning bolt, shaking him and causing his fists to clench. He was going to say something, but Nadine spat on the white rug and said, “You? Don’t even think about me, you slimeass. I’d rather fuck your slave out there.”

Pickens growled and the affable mask slipped once again. Showing clearly the greed and hatred that consumed him, he pointed his finger at Progress and shook it. “Old fool, you’ll
never
get the Gutbucket back. It’s mine, now.”

Progress wasn’t fazed. “Take your finger out my face,” he said. “I s’pected that’d be your attitude. I guess there’s nothin’ for it. Come on, chillen. Time for us to be goin’.”

They turned and headed for the door. Just before they reached it, Progress turned.

“By the way,” he said. “We’re havin’ us a friendly little blues festival out at the river in a few days. Whyn’t you come on along and see some folks with
real
talent do it right.”

That didn’t seem like much of a barb to Slim, but it scored on Pickens. “Get out! Get out” His voice was high-pitched and filled with rage.

They left, quickly closing the door behind them. They heard something hit it on the other side, and Progress laughed all the long way down the elevator.

8

These brief flashes bring with them a great joy, a great beauty and a great uplift. They are, for most people, their first vivid awakening to the existence and reality of a spiritual order of being. The contrast with their ordinary state is so tremendous as to shame it into pitiful drabness. The intention is to arouse and stimulate them into the longing for re-entry into the spirit, a longing which inevitably expresses itself in the quest.

—Paul Brunton,
Introduction to Mystical Glimpses

After an hour or so in the woods looking for mushrooms, Dad said “Well, we can always go and buy some real ones. “

—John Cage

A
fter another hearty breakfast, Slim and Nadine were traveling alone in the pickup. Progress had said that there was important work he had to do in his garden. After a stop for gas, and ice and sodas Nadine packed in a chest, they headed west. The roads were rural and twisting. Sometimes Nadine, driving, took dirt roads, or paths that didn’t look like roads at all. Slim was glad of the sodas when he could wash the invading red dust from his throat.

“Where are we going?” he asked nervously. It was the first time he and Nadine had been alone, and he wanted very desperately to try to start a friendship, a relationship.

“We’re going to Tralfaz, to see Mother Phillips,” she answered. There was a strange smile on her face that spoke of things she wasn’t saying. “Daddy wants her to bless the festival.”

“I don’t understand.”

Nadine whoofed, exasperated. “Can you really be that stupid and live?”

“Hey—”

“Never mind. Sorry. I know you don’t know anything. I grew up here all my life, so I don’t take well to explaining things I think everyone knows. Daddy wants to call on the deep powers at the festival. So he has to start out with a blessing so that everything builds up the way he wants it.”

“Why are we taking such a hard way to get there?”

“In case anyone tries to follow us.”

“Oh,” Slim said. “I guess that makes sense.”

Nadine whoofed again. “Oh thanks,” she said. “I always appreciate a man that knows absolutely nothing telling me I know what I’m doing.”

It wasn’t going well. Slim could tell that. No matter what he said, it seemed to be wrong.

“Nadine?”

“Yes?”

“I’m sorry.”

She sighed. “It’s okay,” she said. “But tell me something. How do you manage to be so inept?”

“It’s easy,” Slim said. “I practice.”

They both laughed then. It was the first time Slim had seen Nadine really smile. It was a beautiful smile.

“Did Progress tell you where I came from?” he asked.

“No. Just that you weren’t from around here.”

Slim told her his story. He might have gotten a little carried away in his desire for her. Started a little too soon, told her a little too much about his problems with women and life. But he wanted her to know, and he soon got to the point where he’d been exploded into her world, and how confused he was about it. He almost told her he loved her. He wanted to, badly, but he was afraid.

“That explains a lot of things,” she said, when he had finished.

Slim was surprised. “You believe me?”

“Daddy does, so I do, too. I’ve never known him to be wrong about a person. And you may be a lot of things, but I don’t think you’re a liar. Besides, you’re not used to this world. A lot of strange things happen here. Stranger than you.”

They were suddenly driving through trees, not a common sight on the plains. The woods he had known in Texas were certainly not lush enough or green enough to give the impression of a forest like the one they were now in the middle of.

“What the—”

“It hits everybody that way when they first come to Tralfaz,” Nadine said. “They found an underground lake under the property. And there are streams and creeks all through here, so there’s always enough water to grow all this. Hey, it still gets brown in the winter, so don’t sweat it.”

They followed a narrow dirt road through the trees. Slim was amazed to see small antelope and buffalo in the brush, along with what looked to be hundreds and hundreds of cats. “What’s with all the animals?” he asked.

“Oh, Tralfaz is a kind of safe place. Mother Phillips doesn’t allow hunting here at all, and they’ll take in any kind of strays. The animals know it somehow, and they migrate here from all around. The people in town know it, too, so if they can’t keep their animals they bring them out here.”

“That’s outstanding,” Slim said. “I like that a lot. You come out here often?”

“As often as I can. I’m not exactly a member. But I like the people here. It’s a good place to be. I agree with the beliefs and I like the attitude.”

“What do they believe?” Slim asked.

Nadine smiled that mysterious smile again. “I don’t really want to tell you,” she said. “Once we get inside, you can ask Mother Phillips. She’ll be happy to tell you.”

“Why didn’t Progress come with us?”

Nadine’s smile turned to chuckles. “Daddy wouldn’t come out here for anything in the world. Mother Phillips has been after Daddy for years. I guess she’s been in love with him since they were young. Daddy likes her and there have been a few good times between them, but he isn’t looking to get connected with her just yet.”

Nadine drove the pickup to what looked like a group of domes that had grown from the earth. Instead of wood or concrete, they were covered with soil and grass and wildflowers, surrounded by the oldest trees of all. They were huge, but not imposing.

“Reference stop,” she said. “Everybody out.” She was still laughing, and Slim couldn’t figure out why.

They walked through a doorway in the nearest dome, pulling a buffalo-skin cover aside, and were in a small bare room.

“Take your clothes off,” Nadine said.

“
What?"

“Take your clothes off. No clothing allowed in Tralfaz.” Nadine was already undressing, so Slim did so as well. He had a difficult time because he couldn’t take his eyes off Nadine. She seemed totally at ease and, as she slipped her panties off, she stood and turned to look at Slim.

“Come on,” she said, still smiling wickedly. “Get them off.”

Slim took his pants off, and as he wore no underwear, was exposed
to view. The sight of Nadine’s small breasts, her legs, her stomach, her puss, had put him into an embarrassing condition. He knew he had a nice face, and women had told him many times that he had a beautiful dick, but there wasn’t any other part of his body that he felt was attractive and this casual intimacy both excited and disturbed him. He wished adamantly that he could exert control over the single part of his body he knew it was useless to try to control.

Nadine, however, was looking him over carefully, unselfconsciously as he stood there wondering what to do with his hands. She spent, he thought, an inordinate amount of time looking at his protruding dick, but there seemed to be a look of approval on her face.

She walked up to him and patted his stomach. It made him jump.

“Don’t worry,” she said. “I like big men. Come on, now. Let’s go see Mother Phillips.”

She walked through another door. Slim followed, which did nothing to abate his embarrassing condition. It made it, in fact, even worse. But she had said she liked big men. That meant he had a chance. At least his rotundity wouldn’t stand in the way. Now, if only he could overcome his personality, he might have it made.

He’d heard that people who spent time in nudist colonies soon got over the immediate sexual attraction. But as long as a naked Nadine was around him, Slim thought it highly unlikely that that condition would ever occur to him. As long as he could see—
everything
—it just got more desperate.

They walked through several doors and buildings, following an increasing scent of earth and water, but Slim couldn’t have said what, if anything, the rooms contained. His attention was totally focused on Nadine’s shoulders, back, ass and legs and the way they all seemed to move so gracefully together. So he was unprepared when she stopped. He almost ran into her, which he thought could have been a wonderful disaster. When he was together enough to look around, he realized he was in a large, dome-shaped greenhouse. It was filled with young
trees, plants, flowers and naked people who paid no attention to him and Nadine beyond an initial identifying glance. Most of them were working with the plants. Some were playing. The energy and attention seemed to circle around a very short, wrinkled old woman who sat on a small grassy hummock just ahead of them.

The old woman looked up at them. She dismissed a little girl she had been talking to and stared at Slim as appraisingly as Nadine had. Then she smiled widely and genuinely. It made Slim uncomfortable in a way Nadine’s smile hadn’t. This old woman had power. He could feel it, but he didn’t understand it. It didn’t frighten him, but it was discomfiting.

“Nadine” the old woman said with delight. “Welcome. Welcome. Who’s your handsome friend here?”

“This is Slim Chance, Mother. We’ve come for an important thing.”

Mother Phillips stood up easily and walked over to Nadine and hugged her. Then she walked to Slim.

“Give me a hug, boy.”

She reached out her arms and Slim hugged her fearfully. To his amazement, she reached down and slapped her hand around his dick, which by this time felt gigantic and obvious. He would have pulled away, but Mother Phillips seemed to exude an aura of goodness, mixed with a subtle threat, as if this were a test that Slim had to pass or go no further, either with Nadine or with this world.

Mother Phillips released him with a smile and returned to her seat on the hummock. “Sit down, you two,” she said.

Slim sat first and he swore that, if Nadine sat cross-legged, he would explode. She did. He didn’t, but it was a close call.

“Nadine,” Mother Phillips said. “This is a good man. He’s a little desperate, but he’s got a good heart.” The old woman looked at him and her eyes seemed to pierce him. “Do you know he’s in love with you?” she said.

Slim groaned out loud. Did
everyone
see his feelings? Nadine looked at him harshly.

“Yes, I know,” she said. “But that doesn’t do me any good at all until
he
tells me.”

Slim wanted to protest, to say something to turn the conversation away from himself, but Mother Phillips put her hand over his mouth.

“He can’t,” she said. “I can feel inside him. He’s been hurt too bad, too many times. And he feels that he has something to prove to you.”

“He
does,”
Nadine said, looking straight at him. “He’s a little slow, and I haven’t even heard him play guitar, yet.”

“Is he a player?”

“Daddy says he is. He took him on as his apprentice. But I have to see it for myself.”

“That’s fair,” Mother Phillips said. “How is your daddy? Still ornery as ever?”

“He’s good,” Nadine replied.

“Tell him I said hello and he’s welcome here,” the old woman said. “I’m glad you’re giving this boy a fair chance to make it. For a minute I though you were being your mean old self.”

“She
is
,”
Slim blurted.

Nadine turned on him angrily, but before she could say anything, Mother Phillips broke in and stopped it. “No, boy,” she said. “If she was, she’d never have brought you here. You’re the first man she’s
ever
brought here.”

“Oh,” Slim said. “Sorry. Do you people always talk so—
personal,
here?”

“Yes, I guess we do, at that. Without clothes, there’s little need to cover up other aspects of reality and life, so we do tend to get right to the heart of things. Our beliefs don’t allow for any other attitude.”

“What is it you
do
believe?”

Mother Phillips smiled and closed her eyes. “That’s a hard question.
Basically, we believe in the two Mothers, the Goddess Without Name and our Mother the Earth. We celebrate life and love and lust, all the growing things. We believe in what we can see and feel and know. Past that, it’s hard to say. We’re just a community that loves life and freedom, sex and love and the enjoyment of the natural human being. Does that explain it for you?”

“As well as anything,” Slim said, more confused than ever. “It’s at least something I can halfway agree with.”

“Good,” the old woman said, turning back to Nadine. “Now that the air’s clear, tell me why you’ve come.”

Slim and Nadine told Mother Phillips about the Gutbucket and about Progress’ plans. They told her about their meeting with T-Bone. The old woman hmm’d and scratched and oh my’d throughout the story, and when it was finished she shook her head sadly.

“That’s bad,” she said. “That’s very bad. I don’t talk about it much, but Pickens has been after Tralfaz for years, trying to buy us out. He hates us, I think. Hates anything good that doesn’t make money. Wants to put more tall buildings here, I guess. So, yes, I will be more than happy to bring the whole community out to give the blessing for you.”

“Thanks,” Slim said, feeling he needed to. He wasn’t sure why, but it felt an important thing to say at that moment.