Jack Shellac woke unusually late and tried to recall the face of the werewolf hunkered down in the corner of his dream. He lay eyes closed, fully awake, seeking to re-enter the night’s images. He noticed the carnal hunger in the dark of his belly and felt a kind of clarity he hadn’t known in months. He let the hunger spread, clearing the myths and fantasies that cloaked his will, until he was left with the plain truth: he would break the vegan vow he’d made the previous summer. He knew now he'd lived half starved because of the smell of patchouli on a young woman’s pits.
She’d picked him out of a crowd of drunk vagabonds, lechers really, standing at the edge of a makeshift concert--three young men in cutoffs, hemp leis, beaded dreadlocks, playing a hacked version of Marley through a row of tissue box amps wired to a car battery. They stood on an oil-stained rug, Pakistani he figured, stood on it like it was an elevated stage. They spun and swung their matted locks, raised and swaggered their axes, lurched at the half-dozen dancers like they were head-lining in Kingston. The dancers, forest hippies—dirty hair, brown dusty skin, brown clothes--danced half-naked, lines of sweat streaking light across their faces. Jack and the drunks from the river bank stood at the creek bank, unmoved, like free-range cattle. Jack had no feeling at the appearance of this spontaneous gathering, his ears working, outlining the mathematics of the beat.
He didn’t know when or why the young woman with the nocturnal eyes came to him. He couldn’t recall whether his embarrassment at her made-up name (Morning Glory) was in reaction to her obvious need or from some sense of propriety his parents had tucked into his bones. What he did recall was the way she whispered, “I can heal you,” and the smell, the alluring scent of un-bathed female, like peaches split open on the ground. She told him it was patchouli and lifted her arm so he could smell it. When he bent toward her, she kissed his dry crown and beckoned, “Come with me. I’m going to heal you.”
He took her hand and walked. The sharp smell of ponderosa pine cleared the Wild Turkey from his eyes and he looked at her soft shoulder blades and realized he was looking at a gift. This was just like Mother Nature. How many nights had he begged and pleaded with her for a sign? He’d fasted, sang to her in the sacred woods, gave up every man-made pleasure, and yet she’d remained full of silence. And then now, now that he’d cursed her, called her a lying whore, threw Oscar Meyer wrappers in her rivers, carved his name in redwoods, shat and pissed on squirrel nuts and molehills, gave himself over to rye and sugar water, now she turns to him and gives him Morning Glory? A doe of a girl, with warmth in her eyes, and rose lips.
She was a gift. Maybe the last gift of female attention he would know on this planet, and his knotted heart went slack with gratefulness. She walked him into a clearing that smelled of charcoal and summer urine, and then to a set of safety-orange camping mats, duck-taped into a hobo’s California king. She laid him down on that foam mat at the base of an oak tree and he looked up at the branches tied with dream catchers, tiny Tibetan bells, and satchels of lavender. He choked, in shock really, at the cold ball of silver studded through her soft pink tongue, then lifted his cheek to catch the strands of beads that hung from her ears and neck, felt them brush across his flat face like summer rain. He lifted his hands, touched her oily hair, pulled at the dark dreds, noticed his fingers wanted to play her, find the melody, pluck out some kind of African blues.
She fancied herself a healer, though he knew she was an L.A. refugee--no place, no people, only head-shop rumors--and yet, she did resurrect the warrior, the old spear straight and sharp, which was a kind of supernatural surprise. He gave himself over, and felt the death ache separate from his body and head for the junipers where it hovered, watching, waiting, like a sick animal.
In the morning he woke with her visage dark against the early light. Her services complete, she gave final instructions, “You need to stop eating meat. It’s blocking your energy. Your third and fifth chakras have almost completely stopped functioning.” He sensed she was referring to his heart and maybe his groin and told her he thought he’d done alright last night. She smiled at him, told him he did fine in a way that let him know it was a one-time service. “You’re gonna have to take care of yourself now. You should go vegan. And no more booze. Buddha said that.”
“Buddha said no booze?”
“I think so. It was either him or Laura Schlessinger.”
He lay back, smiled at the feel of his spent body, then made a vow to become a new man.
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