THE 2020 ALL-TIME LIST

page one


Marker had just come inside the apartment on C Street and handed Harson a soup-size plastic thermos.
"Dink said you'd know how to open this. It's a special treat for you."
Harson unscrewed the lid and Marker said, "It's empty, I said 'special treat.'"
 After prying the container open with a kitchen knife, Harson found a gram of coke stored inside a folded sheet of paper.
"Are you ready for a Little King?  I brought three cases, oh yeah, and these."
He held up a baggie and there were four purple pills inside. Harson shrugged.
"It's acid, man, a hit for the four of us"
"Is that acetylsalicylic acid?"
"Very funny, this is purple microdot, good shit, not easy to score...."
"O-fuckin'-K, I believe you."
Marker smiled broadly and exclaimed, "We going to party, or what...or maybe you gettin' to that 'too old' stage and...."
"Boy, forget you talkin' to the HaWK? You wish you could hang with me."
Marker had driven from Ohio in Dolly Daggar's Lincoln. She was Harson's sister-in-law, twenty-years Harson's junior. His wife was fifteen-years younger. Harson had no interaction with a chronological peer for nearly ten years.
He'd met Marker Boyd after Dolly'd been asked to introduce him to her brother-in-law. Harson had been scoring hash from a TU student who was breaking off slabs from a sheet and calling it a gram or two grams. It was probably stolen and all profit, so Harson got "ten" grams for $70.
It was smoked by sticking a piece on the end of a needle, lighting it and quickly putting the needle under a glass bowl. After it filled with the white smoke, one person would bend down, lift the side of the bowl and inhale the smoke, re-cover and hold the hit while another took a turn.  Traditionally, it's toasted by water pipe people, with multiple mouthpieces so someone is drawing all the time and the hash stays lit. Anything else is mostly show. Which is where Marker came in.
    He wanted to buy some to impress his clientile.  He paid  Harson eighty-five dollars for the "ten" grams.  After quite a few years, while Harson was chiding Marker about his high school dealing days, Marker admitted he turned it over for ten dollars a gram within hours after weighing with balance beam scales.  Never did reveal how close the "ten" was to true.
     When Harson had first become aware of  Marker, they were members of  one of two Roman Catholic Churches in a farm and factory northern Ohio community and were straight.  Harson was attending with his first wife and daughters.  Marker had just been adopted.  He was black and every direction he looked was white, as he crawled over one parent or the other.  Harson watched him grow to serve mass and then to be spoiled  by most of the town while he partied and lived at home.  He was quick to laugh and  his diction was exactly like the rest of the townspeople.  He visited Harson and Colleen often, becoming a kid-brother-friend they both enjoyed.  Both men began dealing pot about the same time they first got high.
      Discussing, comparing, inspecting and testing marijuana provided enough of a bond which eventually led to cross-country visits by each, to touch bases.  This one was precipitated by Humboldt County sensimillian.  Harson had moved to Eureka, California, made acquaintance with a grower and had a deal set up for Marker to get a quarter-pound for $375.  When Walter Wilson delivered it, he held the bag up and gave a bit of a swish towards Marker and affected, "The next one will cost more, darlin'."
     Marker just laughed at antics he'd never seen from anybody, especially a black man.
     Dolly was between them, smiling, and Harson remembered her father warning her about the population of young blacks at the Ford plant where they were both employed.  She listened.  Quit her job and drove to California accompanied by Marker.
     Just weeks before, another couple crashed at the Kelley's prior to getting an apartment.  He was in the roofing trade and was travelling with a girlfriend from Demoines, Iowa,  Rochelle "Rocky" Russel.   She said, "goodness" alot and it came out "g'ness."  She spoke of the Blue Moon Lounge which was a hilljack joint where she could hear SATIN SHEETS.  Nearby was Up Your Mother's.  Rocky said, "You probably got a buzz if you''re inside there."
     She was travelling with "just Dennis,"  another back home Catholic.  Major dealer, one time, during the Boogie Hall days.  Packed heat and never stayed around long.  One time at Harson's, Marker and Gut were toasting one when Dennis stopped by.  Marker starts quizzing him down which he did with everybody and when he asked his name he got, "Dennis."
     "Uh, Dennis...?  What about a last name?"
     "Just...Dennis."
     "Whoa-ho, 'just Dennis,' me and Gut knew he was bigtime!"  Marker used to crow about that incident.
     Dennis was avoiding a warrent of some type, or something similar and had followed the Kelley's to Eueka.  He spoke of looking for psilocybin mushrooms but he quickly was hired on by a roofing contractor.  He was also a classmate of  another hometown Catholic, the friend of Colleen's who provided a roof when the Kelley's first arrived to stay.
     The first time, they used a drive-a-way from Chicago to Santa Anna but had five days, so they drove to Glatt Street to see Sharon.  It was exactly 1000 miles over their 3500 mile limit.  For some reason Harson and Colleen overlooked the mileage written on the form by the older guy who had picked them up at brother Bruce's and drove them to the lot his son owned to get the Chevy El Camino.
     There was a two-hundred dollar deposit to be picked up at the dropoff office and a $.20 charge for each mile over the limit.   Colleen was taking a whiz as Harson and the proprietor went to the car.  The guy checked around then opened the door to check the mileage. 
     "According to this, you're a thousand miles over.  That eats your deposit."
     "Hold up, dude, this makes no sense.  I get lost once in the City and it's a thousand miles?  Exactly a thousand?"
     "Yeah, right here, take a look."
     Harson was seeing it for the first time and bluffed, "I've seen it man, but I'm telling you it must have been printed wrong."
     Just then Colleen arrived and asked about the protesting.  When told, she launched into a mini-tirade.  She ended with, "In fact, he couldn't see the odometer and asked me to repeat it to him.  He just copied a number wrong, that's all."
     "That's right, I'd forgotten about that," Harson agreed.
     The guy began walking towards the office mumbling that it was too late to call Chicago so he'd cut a check and cash it.
     The Kelley's, carrying bags and baggage, walked over to a Taco Bell, paid for an order and sat outside eating and planning to hitchhike towards Huntington Beach.
      Marker began rolling joints as soon as he checked the special aroma of the pot Walter had delivered.  The hits were rinsed with the 8-oz. bottles of ale and Colleen fixed casidillas under the flat surface of an electric waffle iron.  At the urging of Marker,  Harson lined up some of the power powder on an antique mirror his wife's grandmother had given her.  Later, Marker handed Harson the acid pill.
     "Here, take this, man, me and Dolly and your wife have already eaten ours."
     Harson Welsey Kelley was acronymically nicknamed "HaWK,"  by his grandfather.  Few others copied Ernest D.'s appelllations, so it was obscure even within the family.  However, he began to use it as the identity of his marijuana persona, e.g., "the HaWK is in a steep stoop!"  Harson also believed he was going to be published as soon as he had the time and resources to get it down on paper and get it in the mail.   Boosted by what he believed to be a release of creativity and a perfect place to "be a writer," Harson jumped around fashioning stuff for The Writer's Market and it all seemed the likely hit to allow him to dip into his well of stuff and get money.  He'd reached age forty-two and was stuck in semi-poverty in northern California and could only hold on to the writing.
     He would eventually figure it out or it would come to him and he'd be the one to put it down for all to read...but not tonight, Harson was thinking.  Just relax and party.  Dennis and Rocky arrived to add a 6-pack to the party.
     Marker drank from the corner of his mouth, the green bottle held sideways as he looked directly ahead.   Taking small sips and talking between, he spoke of an arsonist and wondered if Dennis recognized the name "Torch?"  He'd been grilling Dennis down about different people back home that they both might know.
     Harson sensed Dennis was uncomfortable,  so he stepped in and told Marker to back off.  Dennis left the room.
     Dolly and her sister were catching up and Rocky was fitting in,  the younger dudes were joining the small talk and laughing as HaWK perched by the second story bay windows watching the Halloween evening  decorations and costumes below.  In Eueka, there are neighborhoods with Halloween adornment as dedicated as Christmas.
    "When is the last time you heard about a country so free that it could proivide a living share for everybody?  You're in it!  It's happening here."  HaWK was standing and preaching to young ears listening to party conversation about real stuff, not political ranting.
    "You hear that, it's on the radio?"
    Alan Parsons Project Breakdown lyrics were meshing with his speech and the "freedom, freedom..." chants set him off.  Harson Welsey Kelley was on his first acid trip with coke, alcohol and high grade pot back.  The writing jones was bursting his seams.
     Rocky mentioned the beautiful full moon everyone else had gone to see, so he suggested they all go together to see it.  All six squeezed down the narrow stairwell and into the middle of the street.  By then, the neighborhood was quiet and dark.  Suddenly, HaWK was concerned about Dudley, the renter below them, and whether or not he was alive.  He began going toward Dudley's apartment door with five people trying to hold him back which became a weight the door latch didn't stop and six people tumbled into a space at the foot of Dudley's iron bed in a weak night light glow.
    Dudley was laid out and  Harson yelled, "Dudley, if you're alive, let me know."
    The toothless dishevelled figure sat straight up and screamed, "I'm alive, goddammit, now get the hell out of my house!"
    As soon as Harson was hoisted upstairs, Dennis had Rocky by the hand and was on the way out with, "I can't be here, man, wouldn't be good."
     Colleen was leading HaWK around as Marker said he was taking Dolly for a walk because her trip was starting to go bad.
     Dennis and Rocky were hurrying while hugging and had cleared the first cross street when two cruisers screamed to a v-cordon behind them.  Three patrolmen in full riot gear advanced toward Kelley's.
     At the other end of the block, the scene was repeated with four in riot gear advancing.  Dolly was half-leaning on a picket fence and Marker left her to run to the first officer and ask what was going on?   He was told about a major disturbance in this block and Marker said there was just him and his girl and she's kinda sick...he was told to get the girl and leave.
    Meanwhile, Harson was under the delusion the street below was filled with media and spectators awaiting his move to recognize them.  Somehow it was tied to his writings but there were other keys to his corridor of  mind doors like a brother in the crowd shouting out his nickname.  He grabbed a wheeled TV cart and mumbled about it being the moment and was going to heave it through the bay windows.
    Colleen grabbed it back to the floor, then grabbed her husband and spun him through the bedroom doorway and onto the bed.  She climbed up onto his chest and began slapping him.  She was jacking his jaws from side to side, then shaking him by the shoulders and shreiking  for him to snap out of it.
     He neither felt nor heard.  His head was spinning into futuristic visions.  His focus closed on a Norman Rockwell style cover of the July 4th 2020 issue of THE SATURDAY EVENING POST.  It was a caricature of each member of  The 2020 All-Time List.  HaWK is in front because he has written the one-sentence quitessential definition of "an American."  Another was the inventor of the Skycar, a vehicle able to hover out of jams and accidents.  He sees futuristic scenes in a city he had yet to live in.  The next thing he realized was sitting on the edge of the old claw-foot tub in the bathroom at the back of the apartment.  The cruiser lights reflected through condensed moisture on the window panes producing a red and orange frosted flash.
    "I really did it this time, didn't I?"
     "Yes, you did."
     Harson imagined he'd completely destroyed the front-half two stories of the old 
Victorian structure.  In his mind, the two of them were sitting behind the closed door of their bathroom and only jagged timbers and broken boards formed the wall to open space.
    "Does the landlady know?"
     "I'm sure she does."
     "Will we be evicted?"
     "Probably."
     Colleen helped Harson to his feet and opened the door.  Harson paused, then realized the apartment was still intact.  But the "List" was still real.  As they passed a desert scene wall hanging, Harson reminded his wife the camera was still behind the camel.  He believed he'd created a huge audience and networks were plugged into his apartment and neighborhood, awaiting the description which was to put him on a future course to join an "All-Time."
     He mentioned Lou Gehrig as another noted member and when Colleen didn't recognize the name, he viewed her as being in a Gracie Allen role and decided to patronize her for the millions tuned in.  He began to worry about Dudley again and spoke of  wanting to see him to make sure he was alive because if Dudley is dead it means he will also die before he has time to come up with "the description."
     He grabbed his wife's hand and held it against his chest proclaiming he could feel it pounding and her eyes indicated she too, could feel it.
     HaWK thought he had to concoct the sentence while on live TV.  His wife thought he meant he had to write it so she lead him to the typewriter and suggested he sit down and start typing the "answer."
     "I don't have time!"
     "Yes, you do."
     HaWK glanced at the clock and it was fifteen minutes from midnight.
     "You mean I have fifteen minutes to put it down on  paper?"
     "Go ahead."
      "Impossible, I can't do it.  I can't type!"
     "Do you want me to do it?" 
     Colleen moved a chair next to her husband and began to type:  Dudley is out there.  Harson Kelley is out there.  HaWK is out there.  Lake Alma is out there.
     She got up and said she was going to get Dudley.  Marker and Dolly had just returned and she told them to keep an eye on Harson.  By the time she convinced Dudley to get dressed and come upstairs, Rocky and Dennis were back, so everyone was wondering about another meeting with Dudley.  Harson inquired about the reason the neighbor was being aroused and Marker told him because hed insisted.
     Dudley wasn't a stranger.  Harson had spoken to him many times and Colleen had been friendly.  He claimed to be part Indian but he wore cowboy boots and hat.  Said he played the steel guitar and mentioned some unknown bands.  After awhile it was clear he was a recovering alcoholic, receiving government aid and likely to hit the bottle and be locked up again.
     Harson hugged Dudley, tentatively, as if making sure he was real, then offered to make him a sandwich.  Colleen had already begun to grill peanut butter with mayonaise between white slices. Dudley was soon the center of attention, holding court in the living room and expounding on the bad effects of white lightening.  He explained that Indians call everything that intoxicates  "White Lightening." 
     Suddenly, Harson was hearing what P.D. the biker told him once.  He was talking about the only people not to mess with, from hippies to Hell's Angel, with two or three colors in between.  But don't fuck with the cowboys!  The all-inclusive definitive sentence which would describe all Americans was flipping the trip anew.
     Harson began to ramble on about Dudley not knowing if he was an Indian or a cowboy and how the quest to write the sentence is becoming more difficult.  Colleen brought his slippers and placed them in front of him and asked him to check them out.  When he looked down, he saw his grandfather's slippers.
     His wide cuffs were like those on full-cut trousers his grandfather wore.  HaWK was standing on his grandfather's legs.  He walked to the sink, cleared away some dirty dishes and spit into the drain while running water, an act he'd seen his grandfather perform.  Colleen was aghast as he explained it was all on TV.  Then he walked towards Dudley who was furiously chewing on a bite sans teeth.  Dudley seemed uneasy with the stareing.  Colleen gave Harson a sandwich and when he inspected it, he decided it was the All-American sandwich, sure everything was still being recorded.
    He believed Dudley was his grandfather and that somehow their bodies were going to transpose into one with attributes of both, grandfather and grandson.  Dudley's half-sandwich and HaWK'S half would be the "key" matchup to unlock the interchange.  Anxious moments, until Colleen led him slowly to the typoewriter and insisted he finish.
     Once again, the last line she'd left left him less plugged into the trip.

page 27

     He glanced up and down and across the street which used to run parallel to the four lanes of highway 101 which dissect the city.  This street wound through the poorest neighborhoods in an un-incorporated, previously Italian section, through a railroad underpass, across third street and on to the Railroad Square area.  Over surfaces from bumpy and curving to smooth and straight, and three street name changes, it eventually led to the city's original shopping center.
     Harson puzzled to remember what was different.  The first thing he noticed was the absence of the huge tree which he'd only heard described as a "monkey tail" because of the long stemmed seed pods with the hard discs encircling them.  Then it occured to him there were no automobiles, either parked or being driven.  Also, there were none of the homeless vagabonds and local poor who used to lie on the small patch of grass or meander around waiting for the Catholic Worker's Kitchen to open.  But turning to look towards the building he'd just left, he became aware it occupied three entire block lengths, encompassing a former hotel, the soup kitchen, an antique store, barber shop and record store.
     Everyone else on the street was rushing past as Harson stood alone.  There was a loud whooshing sound and a train arrived on tracks which he'd seldom seen used.  It came at tremendous speed and stopped in an instant.  Gull-winged sides opened and two or three hindred people disembarked.  They boarded what Harson had seen as empty truck trailers.  Each had a different destination identification but Harson recognized only the "San Francisco/Oakland."  As soon as each was loaded, the trailers were driven away silently.  Harson would learn that each was designed to be attached to a truck and propelled at high speed on a reserved strip of 101.
     Within seconds, the area was deserted until three more trailers arrived.  Another large group transferred from trailers to train and they were whooshed away.  Harson stood alone again. He walked over to the Third Street Bridge to see if anyone was there.
     The outline was there but the creek was gone.  It's flow was now encased by a steel conduit and controlled by automatic valves.  No more trouble than a kitchen spigot.  Harnessed at all the former tributaries, outside the city, the once natural flow which supported fish and game and beautifully lush banks was now contained in an unforgiving metal.  Harson remembered the early '80's when the creek had swelled like an engorged womb and self-cleansed its walls with a dynamic douche of millions of gallons of torrential rainfall.
     Harson continued towards his old neighborhood and thought about those times when he spoke of being the Mayor of Roseland while dispensing pieces of his positively patriotic melting pot principles.  He smiled at his intensity to do THE THIRD TESTAMENT.
     He finally met another person who wasn't rushing by.  He immediately thought the man was older than he appeared because of the look in his eyes.  They didn't seem to shift of dialate to see, as if focusing on the near and the faraway, at once, as if conserving energy for the lean body.
     Harson spoke with a hearty, "Hey, brother, how's it with you today?"
     The man stopped, smiled and asked, "Are you natural?"
     When Harson hesitated with a squinting expression, the man asked, "Do you still do synthetics?"
     "Hey, man, no chemicals.  Hell, I don't even take aspirin.  Yeah, I'm a natural tetrahydrocannabinolic, know where I can get a buzz?  You got a joint or a bowlful.  I have a pipe not far from here."
     The man put up his hand as if to stop Harson's speech.  "You've been watching too much of the history channel.  Here, take this budduster."
     Harson accepted the small foil-wrapped cylinder and read the fine print before unwrapping.  He could barely believe his eyes as he examined the reed which was very similar to the hollowed lengths he'd used on HaWK"s Haunt to smoke pieces of the Mendocino bud he used to score from Lisa Squirrel.