Chelsea Manning Welcome Home Fund, and Final Reflections
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This will likely be the final email from the former Chelsea Manning Support Network. We hope that you'll help Chelsea restart her life by contributing to the Welcome Home Fund, and helping exceed the $100,000 goal. It’s still hard to believe that we won Chelsea’s freedom (only 80 days to go!).
We are extremely proud to have served as fiscal manager for the Chelsea Manning Defense Fund for nearly seven years. Those funds provided Chelsea a legal defense team at trial, funded most of her appeals, supported hundreds of events worldwide, and in the end, was immensely important to winning Chelsea’s freedom.
Sunday, May 14, 2017
Chelsea Manning Welcome Home Fund, and Final Reflections
A View From The Left-Expropriate the Health Care Industry! For Quality Medical Care for All!
Workers Vanguard No. 1111
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5 May 2017
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Expropriate the Health Care Industry!
For Quality Medical Care for All!
MAY 1—Donald Trump has so far failed to make good on his campaign promise to “repeal and replace” the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act (ACA) due to opposition within his own party, but his administration is determined to do so. Since 2010, destroying the ACA (popularly dubbed Obamacare) has been a rallying cry for the Republicans and sundry religious and racist reactionaries. We oppose the Republican assault on the ACA; if it succeeds, millions more will be denied medical care, and increasing numbers of people will suffer and die.
Republicans described the ACA as some kind of insidious attempt by Obama to introduce “socialism.” Far from it! Obama’s ACA was crafted to maintain the profit motive in health care. Indeed, it has been a bonanza for the profit-gouging owners of the private hospitals, pharmaceutical and medical supply companies, as well as the parasitic health insurers. From the beginning, we denounced Obama’s ACA as a rip-off of working people in the phony guise of providing health care to all (undocumented immigrants were always excluded). A central purpose of the ACA was to cut costs for the capitalists by undermining employer-paid health plans, including decent ones won by the unions, which are to be hit with a so-called Cadillac tax.
Some 20 million people have obtained health insurance under the ACA. But, under the individual mandate forcing people to purchase insurance, many are paying high premiums, co-pays and deductibles for inadequate coverage. And 29 million still remain uninsured. More than half of the people who gained insurance did so because of the expansion of Medicaid, which now covers one in five Americans. The proposed repeal of the ACA would, according to the Congressional Budget Office, result in 14 million Americans losing their insurance next year, growing to 24 million by 2026. Even the meager gains provided by the ACA are anathema to Trump and his cronies, who are committed to eviscerating any program that might help working people and the poor.
Republicans have run into trouble with a section of their own constituencies, who fear losing their existing health coverage. Moves to allow insurance companies to go back to denying coverage for pre-existing conditions are particularly feared. Moderate Republicans balked at Trump’s bill after receiving tongue-lashings over the proposed cuts from angry voters at town hall meetings across the country. On the other side, the far-right House Freedom Caucus thought Trump’s first bill didn’t go far enough in leaving the poor to die in agony according to the logic of the “free market.” Trump has now won over the Freedom Caucus with an even more vicious version of the bill.
Under capitalism, the bourgeoisie seeks to spend on health care, education and other social benefits for workers the bare minimum to maintain a sufficient mass of labor power to be profitably exploited. The debate over health care “reform” reflects divisions within the U.S. ruling class over just how low that minimum should be. Both Democrats and Republicans share a fundamental commitment to enriching the health care industry profiteers: Obamacare was modeled on a program instituted by Republican Mitt Romney when he was governor of Massachusetts.
Access to quality health care should be an elementary right for everyone from birth to death. The whole health care industry—from the hospitals to the pharmaceutical companies—should be expropriated. The provision of personnel, medical facilities, equipment and medicines entails a cost to society. That cost should be borne not by individuals out of pocket but by the government. Medical care should be free of charge at the point of delivery. It will take fierce class struggle by workers to win even a modicum of the quality care everyone needs. Fully satisfying basic human necessities—including good education, decent housing and stable, well-paid jobs—will inevitably run up against the capitalist drive for profit. This points to the need to overturn the capitalist order through socialist revolution.
Health Care, U.S.A.: Racist, Sexist and Anti-Worker
The tiny, super-wealthy minority at the top of capitalist society gets the very latest and best in medical treatment, while health care for the vast majority in the U.S. is rationed according to race, sex and class. Cries against “big government” have long been coded language for calls to ax social programs portrayed as a “redistribution” of income from hard-working folks to “undeserving” black people and other minorities. In this vein, the Republicans have been taking specific aim at Medicaid. It is no coincidence that most of the states in the former Confederacy were among those whose governments revolted against the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid.
To qualify for Medicaid, people’s income must be at starvation level; the median income for the parents in a family of three to qualify is less than $28,000. In racist, capitalist America black people and Latinos are disproportionately consigned to joblessness and poverty. As paltry as Medicaid is, it represents the only lifeline for millions. Altogether, Medicaid covers some 70 million people, more than half of them children, including millions of white people. Two-thirds of Americans have received care under Medicaid or know someone who has. Many Trump voters are now realizing that workers and the poor across the board, including themselves, will be hit hard by attacks on Medicaid.
Attacks on abortion rights are being used as a wedge to introduce broader attacks on health care as well. Pandering to the religious zealots, on April 13 Trump signed a bill denying federal funding to any agency that provides abortions, even though federal funding to abortion itself has been outlawed since the 1976 Hyde Amendment. The new measure represents a renewed attack on Planned Parenthood, which provides millions of women with free and low-cost prenatal care, cancer and STD screenings as well as contraception.
Per capita medical costs here are by far the highest among advanced capitalist countries, yet the U.S. ranks lower than most in terms of life expectancy, infant mortality and the percentage of people aged 65 or older with chronic diseases. As detailed in Steven Brill’s powerful exposé, “Bitter Pill: Why Medical Bills Are Killing Us,” (Time, 20 February 2013), big urban and university hospitals that are supposedly “nonprofit” rake in lucrative surpluses by charging exorbitant prices for everything from generic Tylenol to surgeons’ gowns. A study published in Health Affairs (September 2016) calculated that what hospitals charge compared to the actual medical cost ranges from 180 percent for routine inpatient care to 2,850 percent for specialized interventions such as CT scans! Drug prices have also skyrocketed, not least due to a ban on Medicare negotiating prices with the pharmaceutical companies.
Hospitals and clinics routinely turn away those without insurance who cannot pay up front. Even working families who have what they thought was adequate insurance can end up with bills for tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for a simple outpatient procedure or a broken bone. People dying of cancer and their families are hounded by collection agency scavengers. Medical debt is the number one cause of personal bankruptcy—46 million people are currently struggling to pay off medical debt.
Enormous advances are possible when the profit motive is taken out of health care. Albeit under Stalinist misrule, the Cuban deformed workers state, thanks to its collectivized economy, has developed a health system that outshines in many respects what is generally available in the U.S. Despite a longtime imperialist embargo and limited resources, Cuba has three times as many doctors per person as the U.S., and it also sends doctors to scores of poor countries.
The Fight for Free, Quality Health Care for All
As we noted when Obama’s ACA was rolled out:
“That the U.S. is the only major industrialized country in the world without a national health care program is, in large part, testimony to how successfully America’s rulers have wielded anti-black racism and anti-immigrant nativism to divide and weaken the working class and its struggles. Those divisions have been a major roadblock to the development of elementary class consciousness—that is, the understanding that the multiracial proletariat has distinct class interests that require political expression in its own party.”
— “For Socialized Medicine—Quality Health Care for All!” WV No. 1035, 29 November 2013
The race/caste oppression of black people, the majority of whom are forcibly segregated at the bottom of society, is fundamental to American capitalism, which was founded on black chattel slavery. While black workers are the last hired and the first fired, they are a strategic component of the working class, particularly in the unions.
The potentially powerful, multiracial trade unions would find plenty of allies if they waged some hard-fought class struggle. The working class must take up the fight for free, quality health care, including abortion and contraception and link it to the struggle against black oppression and for immigrant rights. Such a perspective is alien to the pro-capitalist union bureaucrats who, despite some griping, fell into line behind the Democrats and supported the ACA.
Contrary to Democratic Party mythology about FDR’s “New Deal” and LBJ’s “Great Society,” social programs like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid were only conceded by the capitalists after mass social struggle. Social Security came out of the class battles of the 1930s that forged the industrial trade unions. Union health care plans were wrested from the employers through militant strikes after World War II, like the cradle-to-grave, union-run system won by the United Mine Workers in 1950. Medicare and Medicaid were launched amid the ferment of the civil rights and anti-Vietnam War movements.
The labor tops’ prostration in the face of the bosses’ decades-long war on the working class is an expression of the union bureaucracy’s support to the capitalist system. These capitulations have resulted in a shredding of hard-won gains: health coverage, wages and pensions have been slashed. Instead of class struggle to defend pay and benefits, the union tops call on workers to vote Democrat. We fight to break the proletariat from the Democrats, Republicans and the rest of the capitalist rats who uphold the system of exploitation for profit. The labor sellouts at the top of the unions push the lie that workers and bosses have common interests. The unions need a class-struggle leadership committed to mobilizing workers power against the class enemy.
“Single-Payer” Socialists: Keeping the Profit in Health Care
Many liberals and reformist leftists, echoing Democrat Bernie Sanders, are proponents of a “single-payer” health system, something akin to what exists in Canada. In such a system, the capitalist government would pay private providers for the health care costs of the population while rationing medical care. If implemented, such a reform could represent a rational advance over the current “free market” anarchy, but a single-payer system would do nothing to take the profit motive out of health care.
The reformist International Socialist Organization (ISO) explicitly accepts private medicine for profit. An April 6 article on socialistworker.org (“Putting Single-Payer Back on the Table”) says: “The left should embrace the opportunity to put forward single-payer as a real alternative.” It enthuses over a proposed single-payer scheme in California, under which it admits health care will be “carried out by various public and private providers.” The ISO tailors its demands to whatever is acceptable to the liberal wing of the bourgeois Democrats. The truth is that achieving free, quality medical care for all will require an uncompromising struggle by the multiracial working class to rip the health industry out of the hands of the profit-gorged capitalists.
It is the job of revolutionary Marxists to make the working class conscious of its power and interests in leading all the oppressed to overthrow the imperialist bourgeoisie. What is needed is a multiracial, revolutionary workers party to lead the proletariat to seize state power from the capitalists and end the system of exploitation and oppression that barters human lives for profit.
He Threw It All Away-With Bob Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away ” In Mind
He Threw It All
Away-With Bob Dylan’s “I Threw It All Away ” In Mind
By Freeman Steel
He had it all. Jeffrey
Davis had it all although until he lost it, until he gave it away, he did not
realize that he had had it all. By the way for the curious who thing that they
recognize the named party to this piece Jeffrey Davis is not the real name of
our protagonist but like the Jeffrey Davis that you do think you know from his
various screen exploits our Jeffrey Davis has his own similar reasons for using
an alias here. Part of the reason is that he although not connected in any way
with the screen, with movies or television is well-known in the literary field
for his work and works of criticism. Part of the reason to be completely candid
is that he was not sure that the statute of limitations might not have run out
of various small crimes and legal evasions in his past so that publishing his
real name might not bring to notice in the circles that he formerly ran in to
haul his ass into court, especially the ex-wives he left high and dry. And part
of the reason was that he just plain asked me as a long-time friend (and one
time victim of his youthful cons) to not use his name as a test of my loyalty
after all these years if I wanted the story. I did and so Jeffrey Davis it is.
But enough of
subterfuges and diversions around identity confidentiality and on to the reason
why our boy, my old corner boy from, well, I had better not say from when, what
times or where since his beginnings are well known to part of the public and
that would defeat his purpose in forcing me at virtual reality gunpoint to
guard like a sacred temple his real name, had lost what he had, had given it
all away. Jeffrey Davis’ wife, Lorraine Daley not her real name either since if
you knew that name you, you the literary sort would figure out who that old
corner boy from wherever he was from back in the day was and I would be out a
“think piece” story about the pitfalls of statutory neglect (not a crime, a
legal crime anyway, and not the reason that Jeffrey was worried about statute
of limitation run outs), had recently left Jeffrey high and dry. Had left him
for her own reasons mostly according to Jeffrey’s frail understandings in the
matter to “find” herself whatever that might have meant to her.
Left in the middle of
the night one night a few months back bag and baggage as they use to say around
the old neighborhood when some married partner high-tailed it out of town with
no explanation (in those unenlightened days either male leaving female or
female leaving male but not one leaving one of the same gender just so you know
we are talking about it has been a while back since that phrase had fresh
currency). NO public explanation but it did not take much to figure out that
some stay married forever woman had had enough of the abuse, physical and
mental, from some bastard of a drunken husband (and father which is how we
began to figure such abnormal leavings, abnormal for the old neighborhood), or
that some husband had done the high-tailing with some barroom floozy. In any
case Lorraine left and left no forwarding address-none. Had discontinued her
previous cellphone and presumably gotten a new one although Jeffrey speculated
that in the process of “finding” herself Lorraine may have decided to forgo the
modern conveniences if she had wound up in some ashram as she had talked about,
had threatened to do in previous versions of the downward slide of their
relationship.
Despite the several
month time lapse Jeff had not really reconciled himself as to what had caused
him to forget that he had had it all with Lorraine, had given it all away. Then
one night he called me on his cellphone, called me Sid Lawrence if I have not
introduced myself before and looking over the previous paragraphs it appears
that I have not although the important information, Jeff and my connection for
the old neighborhood I did give you and wanted me to come over to his house in,
well it is a big city so I can say it and he will proof this piece anyway, Los
Angeles, over in the hills and canyons and sit with him while he tried to tell
me how he had by his own freaking hand, his term, lost it all. I wasn’t sure
that I wanted to hear what he had to say but in the interest of old corner boy
friendship I agreed.
We met at his
well-appointed bungalow a few nights later and after a couple of stiff belts of
well-preserved scotch he sat me down in one of his comfortable (and expensive)
easy chairs and sat himself down on his long couch to speak about what ailed
him about what was on his mind. Jeff whatever his literary skills, whatever
line of pure, unmitigated bullshit he could throw at male or female, but mostly
female and whatever the gods had granted him in the wisdom department was not a
reflective man, did not dwell on the past, conveniently forgot the past (as in
the big time con for several thousand hard-luck earned dollars he ran by me
back in the days when for what he called “literary” purposes he ran tens of
thousands of somebody else’s dollars up his snowman nose) and lived in the
moment. I could tell though by his demeanor (and his willingness to sit me down
after only two stiff scotches) that he had been thinking about some past stuff,
about his character which was so explosive, so unstable at times that giving it
all away in the past was coming back to haunt his dreams-or his desires.
When he began talking
about Annie Dubois, his first real love, his, well, I had better not mentioned
marriages and leave everything as affairs so the smart reader will not figure
out who Jeff really is and we would have wasted good time and cyberspace
creating a ruse, I knew he been in a sullen introspective mood. That sullen
part no literary device on my part Jeff really did get sullen which showed up
remarkably clearly on his face when he had to think through some ramification
of some off-the-wall thing he had done. He just hid that trait these days
better in public than when I first noticed his reaction back in sophomore year
in high school.
What I know is that he had not mentioned her name in front of
me for years, hell, decades so I knew that sullen look was real. I should
mentioned here before I tell you how Jeff related his feelings about how he had
loved and lost that young woman, had given it all away, that I was half, maybe
more, in love with her myself, had seen her first at a college mixer but she
after looking me over on a few dates had decided that my roommate Jeff was more
to her liking (they called them the now rightly taboo “smokers” in those days
for some unknown to me reason but probably because since everybody was hopped
up to find some companion the air was filled with anxious smoke, anxious
Marlboro, Salem, Newport, Winston smoke). So I was not disappointed those many
years when he did not mention her name. That night my heart raced at the
mention of her name just like it had when I was some smitten schoolboy. Damn,
Jeff.
I never, because I did
not want to know and you can understand why now, knew the details of the
break-up between Jeff and Annie. Painfully I listened as Jeff went through the
litany. He and Annie stuck like glue together all through college. They
essentially lived together for much of that time after freshman year in an
apartment in Cambridge (not the real location but close-what I do for Jeff in
the interest of a story) during the school year and at various seaside resorts
in the summer. A classic 1960s romance with the sword of Damocles hanging over
it. That sword –the raging crazy and unjust Vietnam War that we were all very
aware of, we males anyway, since its’ seemingly endless travails put despite
huge and growing protests and calls from even many governmental quarters to
stop the damn thing placed us all at risk of being drafted. Eventually as the
reader can probably figure out by now Jeff’s number came up with no further
student exemption and no serious reason not to accept induction he allowed
himself to be drafted. That “allowed” his term later for what had happened to
him. (Although he and Annie were prominent anti-war rally attendees he did not
consider himself under the rules for such status and under his Catholic
upbringing a conscientious objector and under no circumstances was he going to
jail or to Canada the other options that faced almost every young male then. I
was 4-F, unfit for military duty, because of a crippling knee accident as a kid
and the Army may overlook lots of disabilities but they want their charges to
be able to march- and march great distances- as necessary)
Once he got his draft
notice Jeff began to panic. Started worrying about things like never having
been married if he was killed in Vietnam. Not having any family to mourn him
(he had been estranged from his parents for many years, had lived with his
grandmother who just before senior year had passed away). Stuff like that that
if the times were different he would have not given a fuck about, my term. So
he and Annie tied the knot, got married. A bad move, a “war-time marriage” bad
move that they could have seen coming if they had watched just a few old time
movies like I did although even that might not have helped.
He eventually like some
horrible nightmare coming to pass as things developed against him was trained
as an infantryman, the only thing in the late 1960s the Army cared about
training since the attrition rate with one year deployments in Vietnam was
eating up personnel at a fast clip. And
at just that time the only place in the great wide world that a U.S.
infantryman was heading for was that hell hole Vietnam. So after his training
and month’s leave Jeff had orders issued to him report to Fort Lewis in the
state of Washington for transfer to Vietnam. He panicked, or maybe if not
panicked then reverted back to his corner boy ways-or part of the corner boy
ethos-lie like a bastard and hope things worked out
After his leave was up
he suddenly told Annie that he had through political connections had had his
orders changed and he was to report to Fort Dix in New Jersey where he was to
be discharged under some administrative regulation so that he could go work on
the staff of a Congressman in Washington, D.C. Annie was elated (and relieved)
by the news and ready to run to D.C. with him for their new future. The whole
scenario seemed very reasonable since Jeff had worked like seven dervishes for
the late Robert Kennedy’s presidential campaign and even as he was telling me
this over forty years later I could see where if he had told me the same story
then I would have bought it hook, line and sinker.
The problem though, and
I would have been harassed like crazy for believing one word of the story back
in corner boy days when he (and we) thought nothing of lying about everything
from having sex with hot girls to how much we paid for a shirt (usually nothing
since we stole stuff like that), it was all bullshit. He had just unilaterally
taken himself AWOL for that whole time, the whole few months. The way the whole
thing exploded was that the FBI had come to Annie’s parents’ house (he had used
their address with their permission on his Army information file) looking for
him, AWOL him. He did turn himself in and faced the music. That however was the
last straw for Annie and her parents. Especially Annie since as it turned out
he had done a number of unsavory or illegal things unknown then to me during
their courtship. She left him to go back to her parents’ home. Eventually Annie
got a civil divorce and as a Catholic member of a church who at the time, maybe
now too, had very strict rules about remarriage after a divorce finally got a
church annulment from Jeff. As for Jeff he on his return to the Army did the
honorable thing and refused to go to Vietnam and wound up in the stockade for
his efforts. But the details of that story are for his next serious giving it
all away and besides this is about his first serious love life, his giving it
all away when the deal went down. Typical Jeff though a heel one day a hero the
next.
As Jeff started to explain why he had never
forgotten about Annie I urged him to change the subject and something in my
tone told him that I meant it, meant that I too had not forgotten Annie and
what she had meant to me back then. So he went on about his thunder-struck
whirlwind relationship with Josie, Josie Stein, a woman who I had never met
because I had stayed on the West Coast while Jeff after a wild man run with me
and a few others from the old neighborhood at various times there returned to
the East. Josie would be the first, and most serious, of a string of young
Jewish women that would checkerboard through his later relationships. Fine
women who he never fully understood either. This meeting up with Josie had come
about because like half of the things that Jeff did in his life he was on a
vengeance roll to obliterate all the stupid things he had done by letting
himself be inducted in the Army.
As I mentioned before
after blowing up the world, the Annie world, with his fears Jeff when he went
back into the Army made up his mind not to go to Vietnam, not to be complicit.
He paid the price with two special court-martials for disobeying orders and did
altogether something over a year in an Army stockade (partly broken up by what
amounted to house arrest in between times). He wound up though getting out of
the Army with an honorable discharge to boot as a conscientious objector
through a writ of habeas corpus which his civilian lawyer had managed to
convince a federal court judge was due him. As part of his struggle, his
righteous struggle okay, a number of anti-war activists and Quaker-types came
to his defense, publicized what he was doing and held vigils and other events
in and around the Army base where he was being held. This was a time when some
elements of the anti-war movement began, after the war was dragging out to what
seemed like eternity, to pay attention to the soldiers, the “grunts” who were
carrying out the war on the ground. So Jeff became for a while before he and I
left for California and some mad but harmless dope-enhanced adventures up and
down the Pacific Coast Highway something of a poster child for the local
anti-war G.I. resistance. Some of that reputation would stick for a while as
the war finally wound down.
Josie had been born in
Manhattan but had gone in order to get away from the city, her parents, her
Jewish roots you name the reason to the University of Wisconsin which the way
Jeff told it was a magnet for New York City and Long Island Jewish kids looking
to break out back then, maybe now too. While there she had become radicalized,
had become somewhat prominent in the campus anti-war, anti-imperialist and the
beginnings of the women’s liberation movement. After graduating from Wisconsin
she had decided to go to graduate school in Boston (at BU for the School of
Social Work). While in Boston she again took up her political causes in the
red-hot milieu there. Jeff had met her a couple of months after he had returned
East at an anti-war conference, no, I have that wrong, at a meeting to discuss
having another in the long line of anti-war conferences. This one to take place
in a rural conference center which had been converted from being a farmhouse
about fifty miles from Boston and had donated by some movement “angels” for
such purposes. Such things happened with some frequency then.
When Jeff was
introduced to speak about his G.I resistance experiences he spied Josie in the
audience. During a break he, she, maybe both at the same time Jeff had
forgotten that detail took dead aim at each other (that part he remembered)
although nothing occurred that night. Their big moment came when both had
showed up at the rural site for the conference and they were almost inseparable
for the rest of the weekend. So started the torrid off and on again five year
love affair between Jeff and Josie. According to Jeff they had their ups and
downs, mostly toward the end downs over Josie’s increasingly incessant desire
to settle down, to have a family, to be “at peace” with herself as the
turbulent ‘60s shuttered down around them. Jeff in an uncharacteristic denial
of some kind of realty thought that the whole experiment would go on forever
and he could ride that wave into old age.
Funny about that, funny
that he would still remember that he had felt that way those many years ago
since I remember that we had both distinctly understood that after May Day,
1971 when we foolhardily thought we could close down the U.S. government if
they would not close down the war and had been militarily defeated, had taken
tens of thousands of arrests, we had reached an ebb tide of the movement, had
passed the high water mark.
That however was not
what laid the relationship between Jeff and Josie low but yet another of the
contradictions of the angel-devil Jeffrey Davis. Jeff, and I could see where
this came from since I had thoughts along those lines a little myself, had a
hard-edged chip on his shoulder, thought that because he (and I) had come up
“from hunger,” from utter poverty, from
the old projects ethos that the world owed him a living, or something like
that. I got over it by high school, maybe a little later but Jeff took much
longer, maybe still hasn’t gotten over it even now but if you want to
understand why he periodically would give it all away you have to know that
hard sad fact. The particulars this time were that he had gotten seriously into
dope, first speed and mescaline and later as it became more popular and more
available cocaine. Now we all did our fair share of dope during the 1960s,
usually marijuana and other light-headed drugs like hashish and peyote buttons.
This cocaine thing though was something else, had Jeff by the balls. Had laid
him low. This is where all his past kind of came up and bit him. He couldn’t or
wouldn’t stop. Kept it from Josie mostly although at the end she asked him
point blank if he was on heroin or something. Of course a young guy with no
dough, or not much, not working much with a habit that called out to him needed
dough. So he ran though everybody, everybody including leaving me high and dry
out on the Coast broke as well, who he knew for dough using every lame excuse
in the book to get the dough-and of course would pay it back just as soon as he
could.
He didn’t hit Josie
until the end, or near the end. That was when he was seeing some hopped-up Judy
on the side who kept him company in his wanting habits. Once he started asking
Josie for money for this and that after a while she started getting wise, found
out about the Judy from some friend and that was that. She broke off with him
in a minute once she knew the score (prodded he said by her parents who were
not happy that she was serious about a non-Jewish guy). She got an unlisted
number, moved from their sometimes shared apartment which she paid for, or
rather her parents paid for. The end. Gave it all away for a razor, mirror and
a rolled up dollar line.
Which brings us back to
Lorraine and Jeff’s newly discovered troubled mind and why he gave it all away
once again when she left to find herself.
Or whatever had driven her away from him. After a number of years out in
the West Coast trying to “find” myself I finally headed back to the East, back
to Boston via Riverdale after my last stormy marriage that ended not well. Not
well enough that despite being broken as a smashed soda bottle, splintered if
you like that better, I desperately hitchhiked across the country to get away
from that last horrible scene (which was partly, a big partly, due to my own
“from hunger” thinking that the world owed me a living from getting deeply in
debt to the gambling gods). But enough of that this is Jeff’s story and my travails
can wait another day. I just wanted to point that out since this return to the
East meant that I was back in touch after several year’s absence with Jeff
which was deep in the throes of his stormy relationship with Lorraine. So
unlike Josie whom I had to take Jeff’s word on I knew Lorraine although unlike
Annie of blessed memory I had no half in love thoughts about her.
Jeff quickly went
through how he had met Lorraine since I knew most of the details of the story.
He had been half in and half out of a bunch of relationships which had not
worked out for several Jeff reasons when one night he happened to be in a bar
in Harvard Square, a country bar if you can believe that, when there had been
outlaw country music minute around the East after people tired once again of
the way rock was heading. That “if you can believe that” reflecting the hard
fact that Jeff, whose father hailed from the South, having been inundated with
that stuff around the house hated that music with a passion growing up. One night
by accident he had heard the late Townes Van Zandt at a local club and
something in his mournful lyrics and presence “spoke” to Jeff. So for a while
he was hopped up on the outlaws, took in the scene. You know it had to be some
kind of fad if in high Brahmin Harvard Square a couple of country music bars
had sprung up and so he headed to one of them, Jackie Speed’s, it is no longer
there, to hear some local country band which was making some noise about
breaking out and heading to the bright lights of Nashville and stardom. He sat at the bar as was his habit when he
was “single” in order to survey the scene and maybe an hour in and a couple of
Anchor Steam beers put away, a beer we had both developed a habit for in Frisco
town, he spied Lorraine all in white sitting at a far corner table with a
couple of girlfriends. When one of those girls came pass the bar he mentioned
to her that he thought her friend in white was cute, pretty, something like
that and to tell her his message. And she was. A delicate flower, thin, longest
black hair and a nice smile that he could see even across the room. His type no
question. That girlfriend not knowing what else to say told him to go over and
tell her himself. For some reason Jeff usually only a little shy about meeting
a young women for the first time definitely did not like to approach a table
full of women to make his play. His play was one on one, in a barroom scene
maybe sitting on a stool at the bar. While they took peep-a-boo meaningful
glances at each other nothing happened that night.
A few weeks later Jeff
was sitting at that same bar one night getting ready to listen to what somebody
had told him previously was the “next best thing” band coming along the
pipeline to break-out Nashville this young woman who he had not recognized came
and sat down at the stool next to his and ordered a drink, an exotic one if he
remembered correctly. She was thin, pretty, had longish black hair and a nice
smile. When it came time for her to order another one Jeff offered to buy her a
drink. She accepted and that kind of broke the ice as they found that they had
several interests in common around art, literature and folk music which was in
a serious hiatus then and the reason that she, Lorraine, was taking in the
insurgent country scene that was beginning to take root around town. She had
been brought up in the country, on a farm in upstate New York so she had heard
country music, a different old-timey Grand Old Opry kind of music, and also
hated it growing up. Toward the end of evening as they were chatting like two
jaybirds Lorraine asked Jeff if had ever seen her before. He said no he did not
think so. Lorraine then reminded him of the night several weeks before when
they had done their peek-a-boos. She also told him that she had looked for him
a couple of times later when she had been at the bar. Funny Jeff said he had
done the same. Fate and an exchange of telephones numbers got them on the start
of their torrid romance.
For a while, a fairly
long while by Jeff’s standards things went along pretty well. They had plenty
in common not only in the like to do things department but a commonality in the
ways they grew up, the hard family lives they had faced as kids. Especially
around holidays when under normal circumstances there was to be a shared joy
they shared a “get through the day” kinship. Like a lot of Jeff things though
known to me or not something in his inner life, something in his vacant soul,
his term, would not leave him alone. Would not let him break from his youthful
defensiveness inherited from years of mother harassment and ill-will when
dealing with Lorraine. In the end, or rather toward the end, the last few years
anyway for a whole assortment of reasons from health to intimations of immortality
to use the phrase from the poet’s brain he shut down, became unresponsive to
Lorraine’s needs. They lived together but were in his words two ships passing
in the night (and hers as well as they tried to figure out what had gone wrong
before she had had to flee for her own sanity). Both tried to do the right
thing, sought various forms of help but in the end she had to flee, had to find
herself and what she wanted to be in this wicked old world. Jeff didn’t like
the idea, actually hated it but he grudgingly respected her for her bravery in
striking out on her own. Had to admit that rather than his lying, cheating,
stealing destruction of his companionships he could be accused of statutory
neglect-a more serious social crime, much more serious.
One night many weeks
later after I had written up this piece from the notes I had taken over the
course of time we were sitting in Jimmy’s Grille, symbolically enough only a
couple of blocks from where Jeff and Lorraine had met at the now defunct Jackie
Speed’s, when he was feeling kind of melancholy since her birthday was
approaching, something they both made a big deal over he mentioned a song he
had heard recently. A song by the old-time folksinger Tom Paxton whom he had
liked to hear in the old folk minute days and whom the local college folk
station was playing to honor Paxton’s birthday (forget his age), She Is My Reason To
Be. Yeah, too late Jeff figured that hard truth out. But maybe he should have also
checked out Bob Dylan’s I Threw It All Away because once again he had thrown it
all away.
Saturday, May 13, 2017
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death
The 50th Anniversary Of The Summer Of Love- When The Music’s Over-On The Anniversary Of Janis Joplin’s Death
Classic Rock : 1968: Shakin’ All Over, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night.
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some yellow bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, even hanging around with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do. Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, autumns of drugs, winters of discontent, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim runner’s frame could not afford.
Moreover, now the chickens were coming home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though (his temperature rose every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually even now) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Peter Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Ruby although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message). Josh, throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. He got surprised one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace, mad Bessie Smith, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting work at the Monterrey Pop Festival each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl, ya just a wisp of a girl, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster. Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. What a night, what a blues singer.
Just now though Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that look in her that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August and still be okay but he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
Classic Rock : 1968: Shakin’ All Over, various artists, Time-Life Music, 1989
Scene: Brought to mind by a the cover art on this CD of a Janis Joplin-like female performer belting out some serious blues rock in the heat of the “Generation of ‘68” night.
Josh Breslin (a. k. a. the Prince of Love, although some yellow bus wit made a joke of that moniker calling him the Prince of Lvov, some Podunk town in Poland, or some place like that) was weary, weary as hell, road- weary, drug-weary, Captain Crunch’s now Big Sur–based magical mystery tour, merry prankster, yellow brick road bus-weary, even hanging around with his “papa,” “Far-Out” Phil Larkin who had gotten him through some pretty rough spots weary. Hell, he was girl-weary too, girl weary ever since his latest girlfriend, Gypsy Lady (nee Phyllis McBride), decided that she just had to go back to her junior year of college at Berkeley in order to finish some paper on the zodiac signs and their meaning for the new age rising. Ya, okay Gypsy, do what you have to do. Moreover this summer of 1968, June to be exact, after a year bouncing between summers of love, autumns of drugs, winters of discontent, and springs of political madness what with Johnson’s resignation, Robert Kennedy’s assassination piled on to that of King’s had taken a lot out of him, including his weight, weight loss that his already slim runner’s frame could not afford.
Moreover, now the chickens were coming home to roost. Before he had joined Captain Crunch’s merry prankster crew in San Francisco, got “on the bus,” in the youth nation tribal parlance, last summer he had assumed that he would enter State U in the fall (University of Maine, for those who did not know). After a summer of love with Butterfly Swirl though (his temperature rose every time he thought about her and her cute little tricks to get him going sexually even now) and then a keen interest in a couple of other young women before Gypsy Lady landed on him, some heavy drug experiences that he was still trying to figure out, his start–up friendship with Phil, and the hard fact that he just did not want to go home now that he had found “family” he decided that he needed to “see the world” for a while instead. And he had, at least enough to weary him.
What he did not figure on, or what got blasted into the deep recesses of his brain just a couple of days ago, was a letter from his parents with a draft notice from his local board enclosed. Hell’s bells he had better get back, weary or not, and get some school stuff going real fast, right now fast. There was one thing for sure, one nineteen-year old Joshua Peter Breslin, Olde Saco, Maine High School Class of 1967, was not going with some other class of young men to ‘Nam to be shot at, or to shoot.
Funny, Josh thought, as he mentally prepared himself for the road back to Olde Saco, how the past couple of months had just kind of drifted by and that he really was ready to get serious. The only thing that had kind of perked him up lately was Ruby Red Lips (nee Sandra Kelly), who had just got “on the bus” from someplace down South like Georgia, or Alabama and who had a great collection of blues records that he was seriously getting into (as well as seriously into Ruby although she seemed slow, very slow, to get his message). Josh, throughout high school and even on the bus, was driven by rock ‘n’ roll. Period. He got surprised one day when he heard Ruby playing Shake, Rattle, and Roll. He asked, “Is that Carl Perkins?” Ruby laughed, laughed a laugh that he found appealing and said, “No silly, that's the king of be-bop blues, Big Joe Turner. Want to hear more stuff?” And that was that. Names like Skip James, Howlin’ Wolf, Robert Johnson, Son House, Muddy Waters and Little Walter started to fill his musical universe.
What got him really going though were the women singers, Sippie Wallace, mad Bessie Smith, a whole bunch of other barrelhouse blues-singers named Smith, Memphis Minnie and the one that really, really got to him, “Big Mama” Thornton. The latter belting out a bluesy rendition of Hound Dog that made Elvis' seem kind of punk, and best of all Piece Of My Heart.
Then one night Ruby took him to club over in Monterrey, the Blue Note, a club for young blues talent, mainly, that was a stepping-stone to getting work at the Monterrey Pop Festival each year. There he heard, heard if you can believe this, some freckled, red-headed whiskey-drinking off the hip girl, ya just a wisp of a girl, from Podunk, Texas, or maybe Oklahoma who was singing Big Mama’s Piece of My Heart. And then Ball and Chain, Little School Girl, and Little Red Rooster. Hell, she had the joint jumping until the early hours for just as long as guys kept putting drinks in front of her. What a night, what a blues singer.
Just now though Ruby Red Lips came over to him, kind of perky and kind of with that look in her that he was getting to catch on to when a girl was interested in him and said, “Hey, Janis, that singer from the Blue Note, is going to be at Monterrey Pops next month with a band to back her up, want to go? And, do you want to go to the Blue Note with me tonight?” After answering, yes, yes, to both those questions the Prince of Love (and not some dinky Lvov either) figured he could go back to old life Olde Saco by late August and still be okay but he had better grab Ruby now while he could.
The Best Laid Plans Always Go Awry- With The 1946 Film Adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman Always Rings Twice” In Mind
The Best Laid Plans
Always Go Awry- With The 1946 Film Adaptation of James M. Cain’s “The Postman
Always Rings Twice” In Mind
By Si Landon
[The following
“confession” was found in Martha Ames’ effects at the time of her death some
twenty years after the mysterious death by his own hand of Leon Ames, a
District Attorney in Los Angeles County out in California. From the markings
Martha had had the document for many years and had kept the whole affair quiet
out of what knows what reason. Maybe sorrow, maybe anger that another woman, a
tramp, had captured his imagination, maybe revenge that his “confession” would
never see the light of day while she had anything to do about it and her sudden
death by heart attack had cut across her purpose. The only clue to what had
happened back then was a comment made to her daughter, Emily, that Leon was
always a sucker for that jasmine scent, a scent she had used herself to capture
his attention when they were young. Si Landon]
*******
Now that Frank Chambers
is safely out of the way, now that last night at midnight he had the life
squeezed out of him, suffocated in his own gas-driven vomit courtesy of the
great State of California, and me, Leon Ames, the guy who prosecuted the case
of California v. Frank Chambers I can
tell whoever finds this little confession now or a hundred years from now what
really happened. Why Frank had to take the gas for a crime he did not commit. A
crime he had sworn on seven stacked bibles that he did not commit but I was
able to convince a select hand-picked jury that an accident was actually a
devious murder plan. And it was except not by Frank, not by a longshot but
Father Lally who administered the last rite of his church, Frank’s church, the
Roman Catholic one that forgives all sinners in the end and gives then a half
way decent shot at heaven told me that at the end Frank, soft-headed Frank
figured he got what he deserved. What did Father Lally say he called it, oh
yeah, divine retribution for his other sin. That “divine retribution” was
Father Lally’s way of putting the matter to a heathen Protestant but I knew
better, a lot better. It was nothing but Leon Ames retribution, or maybe
covering up is a better way to put it.
They say Jim Farrell,
the Postmaster General of the United States, is going to eliminate the service
to save some dough and I guess wear and tear on the postman who delivers the
mail by having them just deliver the mail and move on instead of ringing
doorbells expecting somebody to answer and if they don’t to ring the damn bell
again. This is the way we called a thing and it had nothing to do with divine
retribution around my old neighborhood, around the Bunker Hill section of Los
Angeles, when we were kids and we always said when something happened, usually
some petty larceny, or car-jacking, it was after all a rough neighborhood I
grew up in, and then got nailed for say truancy or some other crime that “the
postman always rings twice.” Some guy, a crime writer named Cain, pretty good
too, used that for the title of his book I remember once when I saw a copy in
the library but that was long after I gave up the petty criminal life and went
to college and then law school before eventually being elected a local D.A. in
sprawling Los Angeles County. I had to laugh when I thought about it in the
middle of the night last night when something woke me up that first Lana, then
Frank, and now I had heard that damn postman ringing twice.
See I was the guy behind
the whole plot, the whole scheme for me and Lana to get rid of her husband, an
old geezer named Cecil Kellaway, a guy who ran the Dew Drop Inn out on the
Pacific Coast Highway above Point Magoo as you start hitting the beautiful and
scenic beach spots. Cecil was not a bad guy but cheap and, more importantly
looked like he would live to a ripe old age. Cecil had picked up Lana, Lana
Turner, as least that was the name she used when Cecil picked her up in some
gin mill in Santa Monica when she was working as a B-girl and when he offered
to take her away from that life she grabbed the deal with all arms. A safe port
in stormy weather since she had nothing better going on, had been on her uppers
too long to argue the point. That Lana Turner moniker she told me one time she
had picked up from reading one of those Hollywood gossip magazines and seen a
candid photograph of the actress of the same name and though she looked like
that film star. Another time she told me that some guy she had picked up (and
jack-rolled) had called her Lana Turner as part of his come on and she liked it
enough to hold onto it for dear life. That was the name on the marriage license
that Nick had framed in the living room of their house which was adjacent and
connected to the diner. (It would turn out once court proceedings started that
her real name was Cora Smith from Omaha, Nebraska via the school of hard
knocks). That Lana Turner look-a-like was true enough. Blond as blond hair real
enough with maybe a few touches as befitted a corn-fed Midwestern girl, big
blue eyes that could devour you or scorn you and maybe both at the same time, a
nice shape in all the right places, which showed to great effect when she wore
those tight cashmere sweaters she was addicted to when she wasn’t wearing that
tight waitress’ uniform when she was serving them off the arm at the Dew Drop,
and nicely-turned legs and ankles. The whole package. And the morals and
conscience of a sewer rat.
But I didn’t care,
didn’t give a damn if she had morals or conscience or anything once I got a
look at her one day when I was driving up the Pacific Coast Highway
investigating a case that was coming up for trial and tired and hungry from the
trip decided to stop when I saw a big Eats sign up ahead. She had that tight
uniform on that day and every nerve in my body tingled as she provocatively
served me my meatloaf dinner. I would not learn until later, later after that
jasmine scent she wore drove me to distraction and I couldn’t think of anything
but being with her that she was organically incapable of doing anything without
that come hither look when a man was within fifty yards of her. It took many
generations of breeding to get her to that fine-tuned sexual being that drove
me, and Frank, crazy. Apparently not Cecil since he used her like a
dishrag.
That was the start of my
downfall, the first time that I thought about that postman ringing twice. I
would go up there several more times, telling my wife back in Ventura that I
had a big case that needed my personal attention and since she was used to me
going on extended trips I got away with it, still to this day she doesn’t have
a clue that I was sleeping in some out of the way motel with Lana half the time
I went up north. At first Lana cold-shouldered me, was pleasant but distance.
Cecil on the other hand was tickled pink that a big-time Los Angeles County
D.A. was frequenting his establishment, said it gave the place some class. One
day when Cecil was out back in their house I flat-out asked her to go to dinner
with me. Without a missed step she said yes. Asked, no told, Cecil that I had
asked her to dinner like it was to some big time political event. He said sure.
No problem. From that moment on pure evil, murder, murder most foul was all I
could think of for one Cecil Kellaway. Done.
Done too was any
pretense by Lana that she cared anything at all for Cecil, told me before I
even had formulated my plan fully that she wanted to be rid of Cecil, that she
wanted to run the diner on her own or maybe start a gin mill on the premises,
make it a roadhouse with all the booze, gambling, whores and boys anybody
wanted. I would be the cover for all the action. I told her Cecil had to go,
and that I had a plan to do him in. Was she in or out? In a thousand percent
was the way she put it. A few days later right in the diner I laid out the plan
I had schemed up while Cecil was on the grill flipping hamburgers. We needed a
third guy, some drifter, some guy who was on the bum but who still had a hard
on for women (some bums, hoboes, tramps between the booze and dope and living
the life don’t give a damn about women except in some drunken dream thinking of
their Phoebe Snow, that’s what they called it anyway from what guys in the
drunk tank told me when I first started out and the booze got to them so they
saw some image of some fresh looking gal from long ago who had turned them over).
She had to persuade
Cecil to hire the guy to work the gas station part of the business. I knew that
would be no problem once she got her claws into him, or dangled the idea of
increased profits from auto repair work in front of him. (In the end it would be
the profits and not her claws that won him over). I would find the guy even if
it took some time as I expected it to, the fall guy as it would turn out, whom
Lana would make a play for and get him so bothered by her that he would easily
come to the same conclusion that I had. Murder, murder most foul. Cecil was
doomed. Lana was non-plussed by the plan, thought it over for about one minute
and agreed that it had to be done. The only qualm she had was how she was going
to get off a murder rap if she was part of the conspiracy to murder Cecil. I
told her I had that worked out but let’s get the guy first because that would
determine which way we went with it. Then coyly Lana, as if to get me all
heated up, said she would probably have to sleep with the guy, have him all
knotted up in her sex if he was going to fall for what he would think was her,
their plan. Said just as coyly that she would be thinking of me while she was
doing whatever the fall guy wanted with her. That burned me up alright but I
had already assumed she would have to do whatever kinky sex things she knew,
and she knew plenty, to get him to tumble but I was so far gone on her that it
was a small price to pay to have her all to myself when everything was settled.
Finding a guy who fit
what we needed was a lot harder than even I thought it would be. I knew a bunch
of guys, Bigsy Small, the con man who I had sent up three times for various
scams, Nick at Night the burglar, Tiny Tim the second story man, to name a few,
all good-looking guys who would have licked their chops and done whatever Lana
asked but they were too closely associated with me to do us any good. Young
rummies, bums, hoboes, tramps even after the war years were hard to find and
moreover as I pointed out already getting them hopped up on a dame as opposed
to some H or Johnny Walker Red would be a hard sell.
Then the solution came
up all by itself one day. One Francis Chambers, Frank, whom I picked up
hitchhiking on the Pacific Coast Highway around Malibu and who fit the build
perfectly. An ex-soldier on the bum, like a lot of guys who once they got off
the regular nine to five trip they were slated for by the war, got footloose
and itching to move on, move on to something. Good looking guy even if shabbily
dressed just off doing bracero work bringing in the harvest in the Imperial
Valley. Along the way we got talking and he told me few things, some of them I
knew were lies, which for me just then was manna from heaven, and few things
like he had been in a mechanized division over in Europe which had my head
spinning. He was heading to Frisco via Big Sur and Carmel where he knew guys
and I told him I could take him as far as Point Magoo maybe a little farther.
Yeah, a little farther.
A couple of hours later
we were at the diner and I had a plan ready. A plan aided by the smell of
Cecil’s stew which hit Frank for a loop and I could tell that he hadn’t had a
square meal in a while. I offered to buy him one but he said he had dough.
While I was filling up at the gas pumps Cecil came out to greet me and that is
when I sprung my “motor troubles” spiel. Frank immediately took the bait, I
opened the hood, and Frank told me in front of Cecil that I needed my valves
looked at, and soon. Cecil asked Frank if he was looking for a job. He said
no-then. After he got into the diner and seated at the counter with the look of
food hunger on his face Lana came out from the kitchen and I could hear him
smack his lips. That was all it took, all it took even when I told him Lana was
Cecil’s wife. He did a double-take but must have figured that like him she had
some story, some tale of woe that they would discuss under the sheets. Hooked.
Lana did her part to a
tee. Once Cecil bought into the idea that Frank’s skills were a money maker for
him he treated Frank almost like a son he was so afraid that Frank would leave
him in the lurch. When I would come around and make small talk with Lana he
would ask her what gives, and she would answer that we were up and up friends
just like I was with Cecil. Then she put the chill on him after that first
couple of provocative moves when she would serve him diner in the back of the
house kitchen. One time he half-grabbed and asked what gives, she couldn’t love
that has been Cecil. She dismissed him with some bullshit about Cecil being her
life-saver, a guy who took her out of the sewer, and get this, she was not
going to give that up for some two-bit stranger who might be gone tomorrow.
Yeah, she was a beaut. After that all she would do is give sly meaningful peeks
and then turn her head and continue the deep freeze. She could tell, remember
those generations of breeding, that genes stuff, he was gone on her and had to
make her move after a couple of weeks or he really would fly the coop. One day,
no night, as they were closing up, Nick was away with his drinking buddies from
the VFW hall, Lana asked Frank to help her with a faulty lightbulb (it was just
loose but that was because she had turned it a couple of times for her purposes).
They got so close Frank couldn’t help himself and Lana just kind of leaned into
him. Bang.
They quickly closed the
diner shut out the lights and headed to his room in back of the garage. Down
into the cotton sheets they did go with Lana giving Frank the full works about
how she couldn’t stop herself from giving herself to Frank and had been cold to
see if it was the real thing. She said it was. For the next couple of weeks
whenever Cecil was out, one night they had actually hit the sheets right after
Cecil went to bed Lana telling Frank that she couldn’t wait. All the while Lana
could see something was eating at him, I could tell it too and so one night
Frank laid out his problems, begged her to run away to Frisco town with him.
Get a divorce from Cecil and they could get married and do whatever they
wanted. Lana sitting right next to him
on the bed half naked said Cecil would never give her a divorce and would
cheapskate on other stuff spent his last nickel to hunt them down. So no go. No
soap.
That only got Frank more
in a lather and a few days later he sprung his plan on her. Cecil had to be
gotten rid of and he had a plan that would make it look like an accident. Then
they would be free. Lana fake thought a moment and then rushed into Frank’s
arms and said could it really be done. No even a moment’s hesitation that she
was agreeing to kill her husband. Cool as a cucumber was the way she explained
her play to me later. Well you know Cecil Kellaway is long dead so you know
that they finally gave him the big sent-off although they actually botched the
thing the first time. She was supposed to bop him on the head one night when he
came home drunk and make a play like he had been a victim of some robbery gone
bad. Well as she went to bop him the drunken fool slipped on his greasy diner
floor and wound up in the hospital for a couple of weeks. She and Frank made no
pretenses that they weren’t shacking up while he was away but that only made
the play sounder, drew Frank tighter to Lana’s skirt when I thought about it
later although I was plenty heated up that they were screwing for an extra few
weeks on my time.
The next time out they
were successful. Or Lana was since the play was to grab Cecil when he was in
another drunken stupor and decided that he just needed to take a bath to wash
away his sins or something. It had been a hot sultry night like we get in
Southern California even few weeks and besides washing those sins clean Cecil
had the fan next to him. Frank had expertly frayed the wires and so when old
Cecil reached for it with those shaky hands of his he got the biggest jolt of
his life. Took out the power of half the houses in that section of the Pacific
Coast Highway.
Naturally as a friend of
Cecil’s and as a vigilant D.A. I had to make sure that this “accident” after
the first one wasn’t some kind of dastardly deed. I went at it tooth and prongs
or rather I had my first Assistant D.A. Lou Reed pay extra attention to this
case, cleared his case load so he could work solely on the case once Cecil’s
friends and customers started their little campaign against Lana and Frank who
after a very brief period of “mourning” were seen looking very contented. Lou
got enough evidence, with my help, to bring Lana and Frank in for questioning
and eventually Lou got indictments on the pair for murder, murder one. They
were going to hang for their crimes if justice was to be satisfied. That is
where my plan that I had kept from Lana came into play. I had intentionally not
told her what I had up my sleeve for fear that she would spill the plan to
Frank some hot steamy cotton sheets night to show him how clever she was to get
out from under. Also I wanted her to play her part as expertly as possible and
with a little doubt in her mind once things heated up and her sweet ass was on
the line that would go a long way to effectuating my plan.
Here is the beauty of
the law, Anglo-American law anyway, once they try you for a crime and you get
off then they can’t try and convict you again for that same crime. You might
know what it is called, you know double jeopardy. It works equally according to
blind lady justice for the guilty and innocent in the interest of finality of
judgment. My plan was to bring the pair to trial on murder one which like any other
crime requires a degree of certainty of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt to gain
a verdict. I knew that Lou did not have enough hard evidence in hand to convict
but I kept badgering him to go to trial with what he had using the excuse that
the voters were looking for some action on our part. Furthermore at trial I
made sure that we had a jury packed with men, older men who would not mind
looking at Lana even in a plain jane suit, hair up and no makeup. I got that
jury nine men, all over forty, and three women who would have convicted Mary,
you know, Jesus’ mother. To add some further protection I made sure that our
star expert witness, the old rum-pot Sid Lance, who in his day was the best guy
around if you wanted a conviction, to testify that those frayed wires could
have been just worn out. Giving those eye-googling men a reason to acquit Lana
and Frank. When the “not guilty” verdict, the postman’s first ring came in I
could hardly work up enough energy to show distain for the verdict. I let Lou
face the reporters alone pleading a headache that would not go away.
The jailbirds free they
went back to the diner and started making plans to turn the place into a road
house figuring to draw attention from people who were interested in the seamy
side of life and had a certain amount of confidence in those who got off
scot-free on a murder one conviction. That was according to our plan to keep
Frank around until Lana and I fled to parts unknown with some money I had from
my wife’s trust and she now from Cecil’s life insurance. We would figure out
the rest later when we were safely away.
Then the roof fell in.
Then my world went awry, went to hell. Frank after a hard day’s work building a
patio next to the diner for those who wanted dinner before they got soaked at
the gambling tables, taken to heaven by some bent whore, or jack-rolled for
drinks told Lana that they should go for a drive to the ocean down by Malibu
where the waves were spectacular at that time of year. He had been drinking
whisky and Lana had had a few too before they left. On that hard curve stretch
after Oxnard they went off the road and down the hill to the ocean. As fate
would have it Lana was killed instantly, a broken neck. Frank said he thought
as they were tumbling down the hill that he heard her talking about the postman
calling again but that may have just been Frank bullshit, Frank’s lies. Frank
came out without a scratch which in the end was his misdoing.
I was in a rage. All my
plans had gone up in smoke and the idea that I would have to finish my days
with a wife whom I could barely stand to be in the same room with drove me to
distraction. Frank would pay for his life with his life. As you know double
jeopardy prevented Frank from being convicted on that Cecil murder but I made
sure, double sure that he was done in for on the Lana murder. That is right. I
went after him with a vengeance and brought back Sid Lance to “prove”
conclusively before that same kind of male dominated jury that the brake
linings had been worked on. My angle was that Frank had gotten greedy after
their acquittal and wanted everything for himself. Guilty, guilty as charged
after about three hours’ deliberation. Frank was going to smell some funny gas
in the big sent-off. Funny he didn’t even bother to wage a big appeal because
as he told Father Lally that few hours before death stood at his door he heard
that postman’s second ring. And now so have I.
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