On the Road with Bob Dylan (54 page)

“Lawrence’s letters went for a lot of money though,” Bob leans back in the chair. “I’d like to leave from here. I don’t want to go back to the hotel. I’m gonna leave from here.”

“You gotta get your stuff from the hotel,” Ratso reminds him.

“I don’t have any stuff. Gary can wrap up all Sara’s shit, or I don’t know, all our shit. Rolling Thunder shit.”

“I’ll go back and tell him, I have to get my own shit,” Ratso volunteers.

“Would you? That would be great. I haven’t been in a place like this in three months.” Dylan surveys the room. “I like houses, old houses.”

Emmett starts to tell Bob about his child, Max, as Ratso prepares to go back to the hotel. “Max’ll love it here,” Emmett smiles.

“How could he not?” Bob says, wide-eyed. “This is a great place to grow up in.”

“Leonard’s got kids his age,” Ratso relates.

“Leonard does?” Bob seems surprised. “By his first wife?”

“No, Suzanne, she’s not his wife.” Ratso smiles.

“What?” Bob feigns shock. “Comment!”

“Elle n’est pas femme
from the song,” Ratso fractures both languages. “She’s not the one from the song. Leonard claims the song conjured her up,
elle est conjurée par le chanson.”

“He’s got us confused now.” Bob nudges Grogan. “This guy met a black Jamaican Jew.”

“She wasn’t black,” Ratso protests.

“She looked black to me,” Bob joshes.

“She was Sephardic,” Emmett compromises.

“Whatever, she was great in bed,” Ratso remembers fondly. “She said …”

“I love you very much,” Bob pimps the reporter.

“I love you, Ratso,” Emmett continues. “I’ll give you anything if you just fuck me again.”

“No, schmucks,” Ratso fumes, “she gave me this bracelet, this sterling silver—”

“Looks like a slave bracelet to me,” Emmett examines.

“I traded her for one of those cheap ten-cent Dylan pins,” Ratso laughs.

“I wouldn’t repeat that if I were you, Ratso,” Bob warns, “especially with that dollar sign on your left shoulder.”

Ratso starts for the door and then pauses, “Hey, did you ever get a telegram from Kinky?”

“No.” Bob looks puzzled.

“You did get a telegram from Kinky, love,” Sara, who had just come down from changing, reports.

“I did?” Bob stammers. “What did it say?”

“I know,” Ratso smiles. “It says, ‘Made Hartford, Missed Montreal, Move Over Malibu. Stop.’”

“Move over Malibu?” Dylan’s really puzzled now. “He’s moving to Malibu?”

“Maybe,” Ratso shrugs, “he’s in L.A. now.”

“Wait a minute,” Dylan stops, “how did you know what it said?”

“We wrote it together on the phone,” Ratso chuckles.

“Which part did you write?” Dylan’s curious. “Move over Malibu?”

“No, actually he just read it to me.” The reporter heads for the door.

“OK, you’ll get Gary to get that stuff, right Ratso,” Bob reaffirms.

“Sure.” The reporter heads out.

Dylan leans back, and taps out a rhythm on the wood floor with his boot heel. “Man, I love this place,” he gushes.

“Robbie told me he wanted to come up here and spend a year,” Louise reports.

“I can dig it,” Bob smiles.

“Most Americans say that after a while if you hang around here, the people start asking you what you do.” Emmett smiles mischievously.

“They ask you that here?” Bob seems crestfallen.

“They say that everywhere.” Louise shrugs.

“They don’t ask it in Brooklyn or Chicago,” Emmett growls.

“Well, I like the vibes in this place.” Dylan peers around the house again, and gets up and restlessly starts pacing the dining room. “You could just come up here and disappear,” he says longingly, and sits back down, patiently, to await Gary and the stuff and the camper and the kids and the long drive back down across the border.

R
atso went back to the hotel, alerted Gary, and then had a great idea. He dumped the Hertz Granada, left the keys with the manager, loaded all his stuff into Bob’s red Eldorado and drove over the border with Andy, one of the security guys, and Jesse, Bob’s oldest son, who slept through most of the late-night drive in the rear seat.

They drove straight to the Hotel Westbury, on Manhattan’s fashionable upper East Side, a good hideaway to sequester the troops till Monday’s show in the Garden. But even as Ratso perused the room list as soon as they pulled in that early Sunday morning, he could sense that the magic had been left north of the border.

For one thing, a lot of the musicians lived in New York, so, as an economy move, Imhoff had decreed that they should stay at home, resulting in an instantaneous division in the
esprit de corps
that the assemblage had generated.

Furthermore, this was the Apple, and everyone but everyone, down to the last equipment man, knows people in New York, and even if you don’t, there’s always the instant camaraderie of the Village, the amusing tackiness of Times Square, the all-night gastronomical lures of Chinatown. Whereas on the road, the troupe had played, for the most part, relatively small towns, towns and cities where the encapsulated world of hotel to gig to hotel to hospitality suite to room was an attractive option. So after ten minutes in the stately shabbiness of the Westbury lobby, Ratso could feel that the vibe was dissipating.

And those feelings were intensified four hours later, when the buses were loading for the trip out to New Jersey and the special
concert for Rubin and his friends in the slammer. It started when Ratso was thrown off the performers’ bus by Louie, apparently because Bob had decided to ride with his fellow Thunderers rather than take the camper out. The reporter was shuffled over to the other camper, which was being driven out by Mike Evans and Andy Bielanski. And the feeling grew stronger yet when Chesley was told by Imhoff that there was no room at the prison and he would be better off staying back.

So when the camper finally rolled out behind the rented Greyhound, Slocum was seething.

Evans pilots the vehicle through the heavy Sunday Ninth Avenue traffic. “Breaker one, breaker one,” a voice crackles over the CB. “Does anybody know what the score is at Shea Stadium?”

“Six-nothing,” Evans barks into the mike.

“The only way the Giants could win that game,” the disembodied voice groans, “is if the other team doesn’t show up.”

“Turn that shit off,” Andy grimaces, just as Evans slams on the brakes, hurtling Ratso against the front seat. “Jesus,” Evans shakes his head, “that poor dog.”

“You’re a real humanitarian,” Ratso smirks, dusting himself off.

“I could easily kill you before I kill the dog.” Evans half-smiles. “I’m one of those crazy people that if someone said to me that the city of Paris would be leveled to the ground and everyone killed and I could stop it by sacrificing my dog, I’d go out and buy my dog another can of Alpo. My dog is my best friend.” Evans swerves around a corner almost swiping two shoppers. “I don’t generally like people. They’re too materialistic, they lose a brush and they go crazy. They’re ruled by their possessions.”

“Look at Dylan,” Andy looks up from his paperback, “he’s got two pairs of pants, four shirts, a leather coat, and a hat, but if he ever lost one of those, watch out! I wouldn’t want to be around.” The bodyguard shudders.

Evans pulls into the tunnel to Jersey. “Bob doesn’t read, does he?”

The bodyguard laughs. “Are you shitting me? He reads tons. You ought to see the camper in the back there, he’s got bookmarks in about ten books. He reads mythology, poetry. When he writes he doesn’t have that much time but when he doesn’t, he reads everything.”

Ratso has been taking this all in, but the wear and tear of the all-night drive is getting to him, so he stretches out on one of the couches in the rear. When he wakes up, the security is gone, the camper is parked in a parking lot, and the beautiful wintry day has turned pitch black.

“Those fuckers,” the scribe screams to himself, “they left me behind.” He curses and runs through the frigid evening air to the cold brick building. A guard opens the door and he scurries into what seems to be a gym, outfitted with folding chairs facing the stage, and bleachers on the side. Complete with about a hundred humans with tape recorders, cameras, Portapacks, notebooks, all roaming around this chilly gym, so hungry for copy that it seems likely that if the concert, which has been delayed already for over an hour, doesn’t start soon, they’ll set on each other.

In fact, the only person really available for interviews is Bob’s nine-year-old son Jesse, who’s roaming unaccompanied through the milling reporters and entourage. And one sharp young blond reporter is snuggling over to the youngster, patting him on the head, smiling her sweet copy-crazed smile. Ratso spies this and rushes over. “What’s your name?” the girl is asking, pen poised over pad, as Slocum swoops in. “Hey Freddy,” he grabs Jesse’s hand, “your mother was looking for you.” He drags the youngster about forty yards, out of ear range. “Jesse, why the hell were you talking to that reporter?”

“Reporter?” the kid squeezes the word out, just like his old man, “I didn’t know she was a reporter, I thought she was a woman.” He’s still scratching his head as Ratso deposits him with Sara. But the few hours’ sleep coupled with the excitement of being in this
setting, added on to the adrenalin rush New York City invariably gives, is propelling Ratso all over the gym. He’s instructing reporters and cameramen and herding them to one side, talking to the guards, jiving with the convicts, who are slowly streaming in and filling the folding chairs, generally scurrying around like a furry ball of white heat, heat a bit too hot for the tastes of Imhoff.

With a straight face, the fat mandarin calmly points out the reporter to a prison security guard. “He’s not with us,” Imhoff decrees, and seconds later Ratso finds himself, shivering and banging on the locked gym door, shades of Maple Leaf Gardens.

“You cocksucker, let me in, this is my turf,” Ratso rants, and then has a brilliant idea. He runs around the building to the far wing, stopping under the last window. With a Herculean effort, he leaps into the air and smashes his fist against the pane.

“What the fuck is that?” Lois yells, as he and Hurricane and the others rush to the window. “It’s Ratso, you crazy motherfucker!” Lois grins broadly.

“Ratso, what you doin’ out there?” Hurricane laughs.

“That prick Imhoff had me kicked out,” the reporter’s voice seeps through the thick glass pane. “Get me in, you schmucks, I’m gonna get double pneumonia.”

Lois grabs a chair and fakes throwing it through the window, and Hurricane laughs some more. “C’mon you smuck, come around to the door on the other side, they’ll let you in.”

Ratso gains entry there and joins them in the library. “I can’t believe this place,” Lois is looking around the building, “I didn’t know it was this open. I can’t find any fucking bars? Where are the bars, Rubin?”

“There ain’t none,” Carter shrugs.

“What a fucking image,” the adman shakes his head, “this joint looks like a country club.”

They start to stroll down the lobby when Lois suddenly stops short. “What’s that?” he points to a grill hanging out of the ceiling.

“It’s a gate, sir,” one of the unctuous guards smiles.

“What does it look like when it’s down? Does it look like bars?” Lois screams.

“I suppose,” the guard agrees.

“Pull it down, pull it down,” Lois is screaming and the guard complies, separating Ratso from the rest of the party, by the steel grill gate that looks fairly ominous. “We got our bars,” Lois shouts. “Hey Ratso, go get Dylan. Tell him Rubin wants to talk to him.”

The reporter rushes down the hall and returns with Bob. In the meantime Regan has been sent for, and he arrives with his ever-present Nikon. “Hey Rube, how you doing man,” a hatted, multiscarfed Dylan pokes his fingers through the grill to meet the boxer’s. Lois whispers to Regan and points to the pair, and Regan fires away, capturing the singer on one side of the gate and the boxer on the other, huge stubby fingers curled around steel latticework, a picture that a few weeks later will grace two full pages of
People
magazine, with a caption that reads, “Bridging a prison gate in New Jersey, Rubin ‘Hurricane’ Carter, inside, and Bob Dylan, out, rap before showtime.” Ratso laughs to himself as Regan shoots away and a few feet out of the frame Lois just smiles like a Cheshire cat.

Back in the gym, the inmates have crowded into the floor chairs, most dressed much classier than the mediaoids who have been herded into one corner and are bleating to each other about their misfortune and the delay and their deadlines and their drinking problems. Ratso wanders around and finally spots Robbie Robertson, the guitar player from the Band and longtime friend of Bob’s and Sally Grossman. A few seconds later, Joni Mitchell ambles up.

“Joni, you made it.” Ratso feared that she might be talked into honoring her quasi-commitment to play at a fund-raising Jerry Brown-William Buckley debate that night in California.

“I got a replacement,” Joni beams, “James Taylor. James is like a really good cover. I couldn’t be happier. I tried to get some different people to do it but nobody would. Bobby was talking about that
today, like he tried to get Aretha to come today and they talked to different people and they hemmed and hawed and Roberta Flack just said ‘Yes,’ and you don’t forget that.”