Fortunately, I have an idea. I pick up Joe's walking stick, at the same time I glance out the closest window through which I can still see the Doc's cabin. No sign of life there.
"Carry this inside your sarape like it's a shotgun. They'll never know the difference."
"But they're arms men."
"Exactly. Like I said, they'll never know the difference. Follow directly behind me, back to back, no matter what happens."
"Always a pleasure, my dear."
As soon as I step outside the saloon door I yell, "Throw up your hands, you rotten old cowboys!"
Together, we march out into the middle of the street. Joe stays right behind me, carryin the stick just the way I told him to. Chester runs towards us declaring that he "ain't armed". I can't tell if this is some kinda trick so I'm relieved when Joe whips out the staff and uses it to put Chester in a choke hold.
"Stay with me!" I'm tryin to speak to Joe over my shoulder as I start heading down the street to Doc Hubbleworth's place. It's like we're moving in some kinda strange sandwich race: me and Joe are still back to back, and he's dragging Chester along with us. I'm not sure what sort of scene I'll encounter upon opening Doc's front door, but I don't want him to know we're about to pay a visit.
"Joe, callate!"
My Spanish is not very good, but I think he gets the point. We're approachin the Doc's veranda, I'm preparing myself to kick in his door, when I see it open a crack. I immediately stop, thinkin that the muzzle of a gun is gonna peak its way out. Instead, I see bloody fingers clutching at the edge of the door frame.
"Dammit!" I'm cursin out loud, believin that we're too late and the Doc's already completed his day's work, but it's the customs officer cautiously backing through the front door. Maybe the Doc finally got what's comin to him? Not bloody likely. "Just the man I wanted to see! You run on down, now and get the General. Bring'im back here. He'll sort this mess out." I feel that I am jubilant, though I'm not quite certain I understand the meanin o'the word. The customs officer is startled, but ready to run, as he was probably about to do in any case. I just hope he's able to bring the General up here in time.
"Uh, Carey? Nosotros tenemos mas influencia sin que el general."
I'm thinkin back to that one semester of beginner's Spanish. It's not enough.
"Joe, yo sé que tú no quieres estar aquí con el general. Salir de entre nosotros y entrar en la casa del médico."
I'm not sure if that's right, but I know that it's at least a valiant effort. I'm slowly turning around so that I'm facing Joe and Chester. I reach around Joe and place my hands beside his on the staff that's holding Chester in check. Joe makes sure that I've got a good grip then he slowly ducks down, crouching all the way, he creeps through the Doc's front door. As soon as Chester realizes that I'm the one holding him he starts squirming around like the snake that he is. I bring my left leg up right between his, hard and fast enough to bring'im to his knees. In an instant, Chester is all but dangling from the staff, as my choke hold is the only thing that's keeping him from collapsing to the ground.

I thought for sure that Doc would've locked his front door. Is that not an important part of his modus operandi? Perhaps he is slipping. If he's already done for, my own work here will go so much more smoothly. I'm getting tired of holding Chester up. If I apply just a little more pressure, he'll pass out and I can drag him into Doc's hut. If I apply too much pressure then I won't have to worry about Chester at all anymore, though I may have to worry about the General. I can only give him so much at one time.

He continues to suck back the cigarillo in between comments.
"Crater Lake is a cozy village populated by more than seven million fascinating individuals..."
He is bone tired from long days. He sits back and crosses his legs. His eyes are deepset. His brow bones jut out as do his cheek bones. When he is not smiling his face is full of shadow. Joe Manco has always had this problem. He's told me in the past about walkin down the street, people see him comin and cross over to the other side. What he doesn't realize is that there are a couple of people waitin on him right now. They may be across the street, or they may be right outside that door, or they may be comin round the corner at any minute.
"Wynn is gross in movement. He's shrewd, Joe."
"And Chester?"
"Chester is built as his brother, but slower of mind."
"How do they feel about your arrival in town?"
"That's none of your concern."
"They got two against one. I find that mighty concernin, Carey. You gonna make your play, or are you gonna talk me to death?"
"There is no way out, and you know it."
"The village is the place to which the roads tend, a sort of expansion of the highway..."
"Where they once dug for money, but never found any..."
"Nobody repairs it, for nobody wears it..."
"But a direction out there, and the bare possibility of goin somewhere?"
"I hear ya, sista."
The problem is, so do they.

I took a stroll over to the saloon. Situated directly across the road from the old apothecary's shop, it allowed me to keep an eye on the Doctor without being too conspicuous. Dodging a few tumble-wires along the way, I noticed that the air was picking up speed. Then I saw Joe Manco come around the corner of the saloon. He was wearing a brightly-coloured sarape, beat-up old hat with a telescope crown, and tanned cowboy boots. He is unshaven to the point of sporting a full beard. His trademark cigarillo is lit, hanging out of his mouth. He enters the saloon moments before me, pretending that he doesn't know I'm right behind him. I sit down beside him at the bar and order us both a whiskey.
"Blondie, let me stun you senseless with cosmopolitans."
One of the patrons begins to laugh. Then another. Soon we are all laughing together while Joe continues to smoke his cigarillo and squint at us nonchalantly. Cool as a cucumber, he says out of the side of his mouth, "I knew somebody like you, once... and there was no'ne to help." He smiles crookedly blowing smoke in my face. I stare at him without blinking and say, "You know what you are? You're a whore."
"Takes one to know one, darlin."
"I do my best, pardner." I return his crooked grin.
"What are you doin back in town, Carey?"
"Time to get down to business, my friend."
"Everything ready?"
I can't see his eyebrows, but I know that they're raised. I ignore his question and ask my own.
"You still thinking about going home?"
He pauses a moment before answering.
"I never found home that great. Hey, remember America?"
"America, oh who discovered yer ass?"
"Land o'the free?"
"Land of the BRAVE, not quite. My friend -"
"You knew it was finished before it began?"
"We gotta have this conversation again?"
"O'course, maybe this time it'll finish the right way."
"Not bloody likely."
"You see, the thing to be remembered is this, Carey. America wasn't like anything that ever happened before. Oh, maybe your first Romans, but I doubt it. No, ma'am. America was sui generis -"
"Ain't nothin generous about it, suh. How would any American know what existed before..."
"The strong devour the weak every time... "
"Americans got everything by cuttin the Indians' throats and stealin whatever wasn't nailed down."
"And that's the way of the world."
"Terribly Malthusian of you, dahlingk."
"Well, what the hell point of view do you presume to speak from? You think you're speakin on behalf o'the goddam proletariat?... Yeah, don't hear your bourgeois ass laughing now. Marx was fuckin bourgeois too. Did you know that?"
"So what? He was still defending the rights of the workers who -"
"The workers who fuckin supported his ass? Did Marx ever see a day of manual labour himself? Isn't that exactly what he was supposed to be fighting against? So, it's ok for him to lead the proletariat in a revolution but it's not ok for any other bourgeois leaders to do the same."


"Stop. STOP! Dr. X, this is not how the simulation is s'posed to go."
"You want to win this argument, Carey? Then fuckin play the game."
"Oh, come on. Dr. X yer not playin fair. I specifically chose certain parameters that were within my -"
"Knowledge base?"
"I was gonna say, 'skill set'."
"Carey, if you feel yer gettin out-played here then you can always PAUSE, study-up, and then come back to the conversation."
"It's not a conversation. This one always turns into an argument and I feel like I need to win it in order to move on."
"Do what you have to do, Carey."
"Dr. X, I didn't think this was s'posed to be about winning or losing."
"What do you think we're doin right now? Yer tryin to convince me o'something outside the parameters o'the game. If you win, things within the game will change. If you lose, they'll stay the same. What you don't seem to realize is that it's still a fuckin game. Change the parameters all you want. At the end of the day..."
"It's s'posed to be about the play, the process. Why does it have to be so adversarial? Is that all there is? Me against the next guy. I survive and he dies, or the other way around. Nothing in between. Is there no cooperation in life?"
"What are we cooperating for, here?"
"Collective well-being."
"Fine. You tell the story then."
"Very funny."
"More cooperation, huh? I think we can work with that."
"Thank god."
"Ha ha. Very good. You give me so much at one time..."
"Dr. X?"
"Yeah?"
"It's hard, making your mark on the world."
"It certainly is. It certainly is. People spend most of their lives trying to make their own mark indelible and then once that's achieved, a good deal of them spend the rest of their lives trying to erase it."
"I know what you mean."
"Well? Back to the game..."

See an aged man, advancing toward us. His hair is white with years, and he is singing,
"I am a poor, wayfaring stranger
Wandering o'er this world of woe
And there's no sickness, toil or danger
In that bright land to which I go..."
Then, suddenly, shouting, "I come to lead you to the other shore, to the eternal dark, to fire and frost. And you approaching there, you living soul, keep well away from these - they are dead. There lies your Company's station."

I venture to hint that the Company is run for profit, and silence falls upon the woolly cheeks of our Charon. He responds simply by pointing at three barrack-like structures on a rocky slope. "I will send yer things up. Four boxes did you say? So. Farewell."

Down past his hairy chin a length of beard descends, uncombed, and unclean. It didn't really matter: everybody was insured once possession o'the ticket had been assumed. Half a dozen passengers lent on the rail, amongst hobbled turkeys, and stared at the warehouse, the empty baked street complete with bonestrewn waste. A customs officer was watching angrily. As we landed he paced through parcels of foot-travelers, and men who called out to him, along with men dead where they'd fallen.

Soon the Doctor came scrambling down from behind the warehouse. He'd not seen to his person in weeks and he was filthy, disheveled. He tugged at the custom officer's trouserleg and pointed toward the fortifications on the hill from which the General was emerging.

"'Demagogue'!" mutters Dr. L. Roger Hubbleworth. "Our excellent Sprout Penitentiary Pseudo-Parliamentary leader... HIS shameless Attentions to... has the effrontery to speak of 'crushing this Demagogue' - well, well, aye, Demagogue... Milton thought it a 'Goblin word,' that might yet describe good Patriots, -"
The Doctor observes us all, one at a time, through the tinted lenses of spectacles (his own invention, to moderate the glare of the sun).

The oldest inhabitant of the village croaks, "Well, of all things... Can it be, really? No! Yes! Oh HI! Oh, my eye! My mind may be wandering, but I confess, I believe it is..."

See the General. He is pale and thin, but muscular. He wears a ragged linen shirt.
"The first steps at Manning Depot... included a medical exam and... Then to the stores to line up for a new uniform, from boots to wedge cap - no trial fitting, just size based on the opinion of one o'the clerks staffing the long table, and even including a brass-polishing kit for your buttons. (Well-polished brass gave the impression of long military service!) Then we heard that our corporal had been charged with an infraction and a sergeant (unknown to us) would be administering the test - panic! Guess who became breakfast waiters? We served three sittings of porridge, toast, ham and coffee... They thought this was quite a joke! Oh yes, and for a fee of 6 pence, you could get a hot bath in a tub at the old local mental asylum... Barracks were the standard one-storey shed for 35 men, with one community washroom nearby... All headed by a young officer, so inexperienced that he blushed when we saluted him..."

"It's good to hear English spoken," Doc says to no one in particular. "Now, you learnt yours in the States?"
The General agrees. He was feeling garrulous, wasn't he?
"Ah, what I wouldn't give," starts Doc, "to be there now."
Doc continues in a low and anxious voice to the customs officer, "You don't happen, do you, to have a drink in that case of yours? Some of you people back there - I've known one or two - a little for medical purposes."
"Only medicine," the officer replies, his bloodshot eyes look slyly out of their corners at the General.
"You are the Doctor?"
"You would call me perhaps a - quack? Patent medicines? Live and let live," Doc says. He puts his hand on his stomach, "You haven't got any medicine have you for - oh hell. I don't know what. It's just this bloody land. You can't cure me of that. No'ne can."
"You want to go home?"
"Home," the Doctor continues, "my home's here. It's too hot anyway. I think I must find somewhere to sit. Come up to my place for a moment. Don't worry about your post. The General is here, afterall."
The customs officer hesitates. "You will be receiving this trunk?"
"Of course. I've got a spare hammock," Doc says with a wink.
The customs officer stares at him. "I was expecting to meet someone... The name was Lopez."
"Oh, they shot him weeks ago," Doc explains nonchalantly.
"Dead?"
"You know how it is round here. Friend of yers?"
"No, no," the officer protests hurriedly.
"Well, that's how it is." He brings up his bile again and spits it out into the hard sunlight. "They say he used to help... Oh, the undesirables... Well, to get out... Oh god, I'd like a drink. Ora pro nobis."
"I have a little brandy," the officer offers.
Doc regards him sharply. "Where?" And seizes his wrist. "Careful," he says. "Not here..."
A sentry sat nearby on an empty crate, asleep.
"Come to my place," the Doctor entreats.

I follow at a distance, of course. There was still no paving, but the ground was hard under the feet, like stone. Ahead, I could see a little wooden hut, one storey high with a veranda where a hammock swung. At least he hadn't fabricated this detail. The hut was a little larger than the others in the narrow street which petered out 200 yards away in a semi-toxic dump. Doc leads the way inside the pungent and dim back reaches of his own apothecary, being sure to lock the door behind him. But I am already familiar with his place: a dining-room where two rocking-chairs stand on either side of a bare table, among bins of Godfrey's Cordial and Bateman's Drops, Hopper's Pills, and Smith's Medicinal Snuff. This room, where bargains are struck, strings of numbers and letters and alchemists' signs whisper'd (and some never written down) would be cobwebbed and dingy with old paint; its floor is strewn with gray sand, in a fashion that has elsewhere fallen into disuse.

Once here, the Doctor could play upon the young officer as he chose. Would he arouse him with a throb of agony? His victim was forever on the rack. He needed only to know the spring that controlled the engine; - and the physician knew it well! Would he startle him with sudden fear? True, the officer eyes the Doctor with a doubtful, even fearful countenance, but he has his orders. The trunk must be delivered and signed for by a Dr. L. Roger Hubbleworth. Doc's gestures, his gait, his grizzled beard, the slightest and most indifferent of his acts, the very fashion of his garments, were odious in the custom officer's sight; a token, implicitly to be relied upon, of a deeper antipathy in the breast of the Doctor...

"It's not so bad, is it," concedes the Doctor, "for this town. You can't imagine the difficulties... I'll get the glasses out, but first I'd like to show you - you're an educated..."
The operating-room looks out on a yard where a few turkeys move with shabby nervous pomp.
"The window," the officer says, "is very beautiful..."
Forceps stand in a cup, a broken spirit-lamp is pushed into a corner, and gags of cotton-wool lay on all the shelves.

The letter 'A' (when capitalized) bears resemblance to the inverted heart. This is a fact of which Thomas Pynchon was most certainly aware.

"The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the sight of a prison."

from The Scarlet Letter by
Nathaniel Hawthorne

deep sleepnessness

"I believe that all my imaginistic work is composed during deep sleep. But I am very seldom aware of dreaming."
[bells ringing]
"For me, even worse than blindness or deafness would be sleepnessness... sleepnessness..."
[bells ringing]
"... sleepnessness... I believe that all of my imaginistic work is composed during deep sleep. But I'm very seldom aware of dreaming... sleepnessness..."
[bells ringing]
"I believe that all of my imaginistic work is composed during... But I'm very seldom aware of dreaming..."

"Eleven o'clock marks the change. And the change is the Alternative Bedtime Hour. Delirium in the background right now... Bill Nelson, "Sleepnessness"... Stress, "My Father Once Said"... Bad Big King, Carcass... From the Residence Dedication to Elvis, "Baby King, Part FIVE"... Fred, "The Miss X Mix of Rosebud"... And bug powder and all, William S. Burroughs, "What are We Here for?"... Sort of an eternal question, isn't it?"