PAGAN
LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS
19.
Succor
One of my first rides got me stoned and brought
me to a house just north of LA. One of the guys there had the smallest gasoline chainsaw
I’d ever seen. I got to thinking how easy it would be to pack it around. A saw like
that might be a useful tool for a traveler like myself to make extra cash cutting up wood
for people. Maybe I could get hold of a cheap truck and start doing cord wood? He said he
wanted to sell it for $50. I had just slightly more than that amount in my pockets. Since
it really seemed like a good investment I bought it. I insisted on a receipt. Then we got
back out on the road.
Several rides later I was in the back of a
pickup truck with my backpack and my dog and my new chainsaw when the driver pulled over
to pick up a girl who was also hitching. He asked her where she was going.
“—Anywhere...”
The ride was chilly. She scrunched up close to
me against the cab so we could shield ourselves from the wind. Miles passed. She put her
head in my lap to rest. I felt a huge harden growing against her face—my denims were
getting uncomfortably tight. She felt the enlarging presence and didn’t mind at all.
She pressed her cheek hard against my bulge. I got larger. My blue jeans felt like they
were going to burst. She liked that and slipped her hand under my shirt and stroked the
hair around my belly button. Silently I unzipped my zipper; cool sea air coursed against
freed flesh. Laying there she put her hand inside and pulled out my cock and looked at it.
The countryside was really rolling by now. The pickup was winding through seaside
farmlands and steep coastline passes. The brisk atmosphere was totally charged with sexual
atoms. She looked up at me.
“Go ahead!” I whispered.
She lay her head back down and put my cock in
her mouth and began to suck beautifully. We stretched it out as long as we could but it
was really just a matter of minutes. I told her I wasn’t sure if she liked drinking
cum but that I felt it was only fair to warn her—in another moment or two I was going
to cum like a mountain river in spring flood. “Good”,
she muttered without removing me from her mouth, without losing a stroke. Then she just
lay there. We both slept awhile.
When
the truck stopped the driver got out and was looking at us as we awoke. She still had my
cock out in her hand beside her face. She opened her eyes and became aware of him. I
slipped my cock back into my pants and zipped up. The driver muttered.
“Jeez!
Some guys get all the luck!”
We
climbed out and got our gear and stood beside the road. A few more rides brought us to Big
Sur. Night was coming on so we found a space between some bushes and rolled out our
blankets. We made love before falling asleep.
***
I awoke with someone kicking me. It was a cop. Demetrious and I
both became aware of him at the same time. All hell broke loose. The cop hadn’t
noticed the big St Bernard sleeping soundly in bushes a few feet beyond us. He sure saw
Demetrious now though—because the dog was up and angrily charging at him like he was
going to eat the cop for breakfast. The cop was flying. He broke all speed records getting
back to his patrol car. I observed a second cop on the other side also fumbling madly with
his door handle. Once they were both safely inside they drew their guns and yelled they
were going to shoot Demetrious unless I got him under control. This I did—with a
considerable amount of scratching behind his ears and a kiss on his nose, which he
returned.
After
the St Bernard was leashed and tied-up safely a few feet away I returned to the officers
and explained that Demetrious was really a gentle puppy but that they had startled us both
and the dog had just been naturally protecting us from what he concluded must be “bad
people”. The cops weren’t
impressed. They were pissed off. They were still threatening to kill Demetrious. One cop
in particular was seething mad. He ordered us to get up and show him ID. He called his
buddy who remained standing beside the car talking into his radio.
“Look
at this crap!”
He
held up the little chainsaw.
“—Probably
stolen. Where’d you steal it, creep?”
He
sneered at me. Very ugly. I told him I hadn’t stolen it: I’d bought it just the
day before.
“—Yeah?
Well we’ll see about that’ Run the serial number on this sawl”
he ordered to his cohort.
The
fellow took the saw and returned to the patrol car. We proceeded to answer the
officer’s Interrogations. Names, addresses, where we were coming from, where we were
going, why we were sleeping in the bushes. I figured they had no real reason to bother us
for long so I was
totally
surprised when the second cop returned and chortled to the first cop:
“—Yeah.
It was stolen. Let’s get the handcuffs on this character...”
Nothing I had to say about the receipt could sway them. They
just laughed.
“—This receipt doesn’t even have an address on
it! Just a scribbled signature! This don’t mean jack-shit!”
I
never saw the girl again so I have no idea what happened to her. It was Demetrious that
had me worried. They said he’d been taken to the dogpound.
I
was fingerprinted, booked, de-liced, given a blue set of clothes and ushered into a
holding cell. I could have a telephone call if I wanted it. But who should I call?
The way I saw the thing—and from what a desk cop had told
me while he booked me -- it looked like they might stick me in prison for a year for theft
or for possession of stolen property. I had only two things that might be going for me.
The first was that I remembered the weird name on the mailbox in front of the house where
I had bought the chain saw, “Sugg”. I wrote down that information on a piece of
paper and sent it out with a guard to have the prosecutor look into it. Secondly, It
seemed to me that if someone who knew me would telephone the judge and assure him that I
was not a thief perhaps he would realize it was true.
I decided to call my grandmother. My grandmother knew my
character better than almost anyone. I might look scruffy. But I was not a thief. She knew
that. She would tell the judge. He would believe her.
My grandmother promised me she would try her
best to get hold of the judge. She was very old though, and not very adept at such things.
It’s hard to imagine her getting the telephone number right and getting through to
the judge. But I figured that — if she could do it — it might work wonders
— because she was such a special person that even over a telephone line he would have
to instantly be aware of her simple and innocent nature. She couldn’t help but tell
the truth. That’s why I had asked her.
It
must have worked. Three days later I was released with all charges dropped.
Outside the jail the rush of late-afternoon sea-air tasted like
freedom. But I had scarcely time to give it much thought — because I had a mounting
frenzy in my heart. I had to figure out how to get Demetrious out of the dogpound—and
it couldn’t wait or he might be dead.
This world doesn’t have much of a place for someone like
me. It’s frustrating to tears sometimes. I’d been thinking about my buddy
Demetrious constantly while I sat in that cell. The cop who had returned my property told
me they destroyed all animals after holding them for three days. He said it was already
probably too late. I felt like I was going nuts! It was so far away that it looked like
even by hurrying as fast as I could I would arrive too late and find him dead when I got
there. And the dogpound was outside the city limits somewhere—I didn’t have the
foggiest idea how to get there! All I knew, from what I’d been told, it was a long
ways away from the jail.
I probably looked a little crazy the way I began running and
hitchhiking at the same time, stopping every so often to spare-change someone with a
desperate fast-worded plea for money to help me save my dog’s life — because I
might need to pay some money to get my dog out and I only had around seven dollars. People
gawked at me, handed me nickles and dimes and I ran on. I gave up on the spare-changing; I
didn’t have time for that. Sometimes I stopped to ask directions. I developed a vague
idea where I was going but San Francisco was a strange city to me — and huge. In my
state of mind, bug-eyed from looking for street signs, out of breath from running — I
was losing my self-control.
A man picked me up. I slid into the front seat and blurted out
everything to him.
“They’re gonna kill my dog! I’ve got to get there FAST and I barely know even where the place is!”
The guy picked up on my emotions right away and assured me that
he would drive me out to get my dog. After thanking the man profusely I sunk back into the
seat and watched the city pass outside the car windows. It was a pretty long drive. I
tried to converse, told the guy how I’d been jailed wrongly and released after three
days when the cops finally realized it. I told him about my grandmother, like an angel
helping me, about my St Bernard.... I told him how broke I was. But I felt like if I just
spoke from my heart and explained to the humane officer about how I had been jailed in
error he would excuse any fine. After all, if the cops hadn’t made the error the dog
wouldn’t have ended up in the pound! So I shouldn’t have to pay any money... Should
I?
The
fellow was pretty good-natured. He listened and drove, asked a few mild questions, and
eventually we arrived at the pound. He said he’d wait for me and my dog in the car.
After all this he wanted to see me with my dog. I ran into the building.
The
officer in charge listened impassively while I told him everything just as I had prepared
it in my mind during the drive. He looked real grim. No doubt about it, if this guy knew
any way to drown all the hippies in the world in San Francisco harbor he would have done
it in the blink of an eye. His eyes narrowed and he snarled at me,
“Save your breath! I don’t care what
happened to you at the jail. It’s no
concern of mine. This is the dogpound and we don’t have anything to do with the jail.
Your dog is in our custody and you’ll have to pay money to get him
out—thirty-two dollars.”
I lost my temper: I tried to make him
understand that I didn’t have access to money that easily. I didn’t work a
regular job... I was talking fast. Emotionally. He didn’t want to hear it. Angrily he
yelled into my face for me to “SHUT UP!” And furthermore, he told me with
a voice as cold as winter seas that if I didn’t have the money he was going to
destroy my dog in the morning.
I went running out
the door.
The man was still
waiting in his car with the motor running. The cool drizzly day was darkening and he had
the heater and the windshield wipers going. He rolled down his window and I told the man
what the humane officer had told me. I begged him to give me thirty-two dollars to save my
dog’s life. He looked at me hard, and then he looked at the building. The humane
officer had come outside. He was locking the doors; it was closing time. I looked at the
man in the car and said. “Please, man...” He thought another moment and
said. “Sure...” He dug into his back pocket for his wallet. I turned and
yelled at the humane officer to WAIT because I had the money to get my dog out. The
officer yelled back. “Too late! We’re
CLOSED!!” The man in the car handed me a twenty and a ten and two ones... I
ran up to the cop with the money waving in front of me. He looked at it and at me, frowned
deeply — and relented.
“All right. But
you better know I’m doing something I never do. Once I close up. I’m DONE here.
I don’t reopen till morning. I’m making an exception this one time—and I
don’t know why — but you better know how lucky you are. Give me the money.”
I handed the pieces of green and white paper to
him. He
withdrew into the building and returned several minutes later with Demetrious.
You got a leash?” he asked.
I told him I usually used a rope but it had
gotten left behind when the police dragged me off. He told me it was against the law to
have the dog unless I had a leash. I took my belt off my pants and slipped it around the
dog’s neck. He said he guessed that would do. I hurried Demetrious back to the car.
The man in the car seemed to have just realized
that he had parted with thirty-two dollars to a total stranger. He wasn’t as nice now
as he had been before. He wanted to know my address. When I told him I just wandered
around and slept on beaches it hit him for the first time that he might never get his
thirty-two dollars back. I told him if he gave me his address I would send it to him as
soon as I got it. That was the final straw for him.
“Oh, SURE!! Well. I don’t believe
you would do that! I think you just ripped me off! I can’t believe what a sucker I
am!”
It wasn’t true. I would send him the
money. I tried to tell him. But he refused to believe me. Muttering loudly and viciously
he tromped on the gas, threw the car into gear and burned rubber until he was out of
sight. We stood in the middle of the road watching him disappear. The smell of his tires
merged with the rain on the pavement; the sound of his distant transmission winding
through the gears finally faded too until I heard only winter winds whipping through the
countryside and Demetrious panting.
I hugged Demetrious. He seemed to sense how
lucky we were to have stolen our life together back from fickle fate. The free road in
front of us must have seemed like Heaven compared to his three days in that cage.
My own recent cage still lurked like a
scarecrow in my heart. I’d known too many cages. I vowed to my soul that somehow I
would remove myself forever from those downward spiraling California nightmares.
I began to worry our reluctant benefactor would
mull his loss over and over until his brain caught fire and then he’d turn his car
around and come back to find us and make all kinds of trouble. Demetrious and I began to
run… I kept my eyes alert for the tell-tale sign of on-coming headlights, thinking I
would high-tail it off the road if I saw the guy again.
The
area turned residential. A car was coming up behind us. I turned and stuck out my thumb.
The car stopped and we climbed in. Soon we were miles away and safe.