The Removed(26)

What did he mean, “Pow wow”? Or had I misheard him, and he’d said “pow” twice? Finally I came to a small cluster of stores on a street of old buildings and stepped into a place called Rusty Spoon Records. Inside, the owner, a bearded man with long silver hair and black teeth, asked me if I was looking for a particular record.

“Browsing,” I said.

He told me his name was Venery, and he lived upstairs in the building with his miniature Doberman. He looked like an ex-hippie who’d tripped too many times in the sixties.

“You’re a stranger in town,” he said. “A stranger in an even stranger town.”

I looked at him.

“Where you from?” he asked.

“I came here from Albuquerque.”

“No, I mean where you from, son?”

“Oklahoma.”

“Indian Territory,” he said. He looked brain-dead and slack-jawed. I could see bits of egg in his beard. “Woody Guthrie was from Oklahoma, right?”

“Right.”

“So was Jim Thorpe.”

“Right again.”

“You’re a dead ringer for Jim Thorpe,” he said. “Anyone ever tell you that?”

“Yeah, a few people.”

Venery scratched at his cheek. “They say Jim Thorpe died of a heart attack. A victim of racism and intolerance and suffering. Tall, like yourself.”

I didn’t make eye contact with him, and I think he could tell I was feeling uncomfortable, so he went over to his space by the register and returned with a good smoke and a large ashtray. “This ashtray was made from the ancient bones of a man from the plains,” he said. “I’m not kidding. Look at this thing.”

The ashtray was oblong and pale, and we smoked and looked at it, studying its curves and cracks. “I got a forty-thousand-year-old Neanderthal skull,” he went on. “I use it as a bong for my good weed upstairs. Is it true the Natives had elongated skulls? What do you know about that? Can you enlighten me, Jim Thorpe?”

His tone was inconsiderate, but then I thought he was partly unhinged. The music playing in the store was loud, something psychedelic from the sixties or seventies. I decided to try to ignore him and began browsing records, flipping through the classic rock section, then on to blues and jazz. Some punk, even old country and western.

He told me he was so obsessed with Procol Harum that he’d named his oldest daughter after the band. “She and her husband live in a farmhouse outside of Kansas. It’s a flat and desolate area full of cockeyed mouth breathers. Good God. I haven’t seen them since I swallowed a bunch of pills thirteen years ago.”

“Pills,” I said. “What kind of pills?”

“The good kind.”

“Me too.”

Venery laughed. “My neighbor Vic got loaded on whiskey and beat his dog to death, then slit his own throat in his ex-wife’s kitchen. His daughter overdosed on benzos and died in the tub. Now all they do is talk jive about everyone and never leave the house.”

“Why don’t they leave?”

“Bad air, Jimster. Wait until you start coughing, you’ll see.”

He had an eeriness about him, but he seemed harmless. He reminded me of some of the older guys I used to see in Albuquerque. They loved to talk music and drugs. “Sounds like a lot of people who live here tried to kill themselves,” I said.

“Go down the street to Hemingway’s Pub, and you’ll run into Richard Manuel from The Band. Or maybe you’ll see Phil Ochs. Both famous musicians, dead of suicide.”

He had to think before he decided what to say next.

“You prefer Elliott Smith? I saw him in there drinking raspberry tea and reading something by Virginia Woolf. See the connection, Thorpe? We’re all here for the same reason.”

“I need to know where I am. This whole place, I mean. It’s creeping me out. I can’t seem to relax here. You ever see a big red fowl walking around?”

“It’s the Darkening Land, Jimbo. Nobody can breathe from the bad air. You’ll develop a cough and spots on your lung. You’re here like us, pal. Everyone has a fowl. You gotta withstand this evil harridan of a town and kill it yourself.”

“Kill what? The fowl?”

“Kill it, JT. The rules are different in this place. Cobain plays the Cobra Room every Friday night. Hendrix does an acoustic set in the upstairs lounge at DFW’s. What you need to do is listen to music. It helps.” He showed me the album cover of Their Satanic Majesties Request. “This is a great fucking record. I also got Exile on Main Street. I got Albert Ayler. I got Hendrix live at Monterey.”

I glanced at the album cover but told him I couldn’t afford to buy anything right now until I got a job. “I’ll come back soon,” I told him. “I just got to town.”

“Did you say your name was Jim Thorpe?”

“Funny,” I said.

Venery laughed, coughing dust and smoke.

I HEADED BACK TO JACKSON’S, down the same street as before. I looked up to the yellow sky full of clouds and tiny birds circling overhead. On the street puddles of rainwater reflected autumn foliage. An older man, spindly and awkward, wearing a long coat and fedora hat, stopped me and asked if I’d been to Devil’s Bridge.

“Sorry, no.”