Already Dead: A California Gothic Read Online Free PDF Page A

underneath the floorboards. They had a special slyness, and their cowardice was devastating. Van Ness bore quite other markings. He might have been bodied forth out of some Eastern parable or Buddhist fairy tale, in particular one that Frank now recalled concerning a pilgrim and seeker in the North Country. Tired of his travels, this man sat one day in the shade of a tree in the heat of the afternoon to meditate on the changing emptiness of life. The air tasted good in his throat, but after a while he was thirsty, and he couldn’t drink the air. He wished he had a cool drink. Immediately a big urn full of fruit nectar appeared on the ground in front of him—because this tree he’d stopped to rest beneath happened to be the legendary Wishing Tree. He took a long, delicious drink, and then he felt his hunger and thought how good some food would taste.
    Instantly, he had a plate of wheat cakes in his lap. He ate and drank his fill. What a great spot I’ve come to! he thought. It occurred to him this would be exactly the right place for a little home. And there it was, sunlight pouring
    20 / Denis Johnson

    down around it, a cottage made of white stones. Now, he thought, if only I had a wife…A completely beautiful woman strolled up, sat down beside him, and took his hands in both of hers. They made love and then nestled in the grass together, he with his head in her lap. As the man started to drift off to sleep he suddenly wondered with alarm if these wishes weren’t being granted, perhaps, by some sort of devil.
    Sure enough, a terrifying devil, red as anger, huge and stinking of rot, appeared before him. And right in front of his wife and his gorgeous home, the monster tore him to pieces and ate him.
    Already Dead / 21

    August 8–10, 1990
    M y wife is a lovely woman, and we’ve built one of this area’s most beautiful homes.
    It’s a new house, of true adobe brick, with redwood interiors, solar heating, a fireplace, two bedrooms, all on forty acres. Certainly no mansion but perfect for a childless couple providing they love each other. But we don’t.
    Winona loves California. Winona loves her westward, golden dream.
    And I love Melissa.
    Melissa: your eyes: the gravities and winds across those skies…
    I saw Melissa drifting up the rutted drive. Her music was sad. But as I saw her walking in her alien softness, squinting under the indelible blue sky, I vowed again as I had at my first glimpse of her that for this woman I would throw everything away. All of you: if you make it necessary, I will.
    “How’d you get up from town?”
    “By begging rides.”
    22

    “No. Melissa—you can’t do that. Someday somebody’s going to kidnap you.”
    “And what will they do to me?”
    “Things,” I said.
    “The things you like to do.”
    She was a nature’s child of the drug-demented sort, always living without power or running water and dressing from the rummage sales, but just for me she sometimes wore dark eye shadow and painted her lips a pale disheveled pink. Just for me she’d put on long blazing rags and fake jewels and high-heeled sandals and no panties and we’d whiz in my convertible to someplace up the coast where you could get a freezing margarita by the sea. We’d get smashed and kiss on the open wooden decks of these restaurants while the sun went down and the whole world blushed and trembled. Do you get it? Do you think I could do that with Winona? Thoughtful, muscular, artistic Winona? No—with her I stayed up through the first nights of our romance talking about Europe, and we said everything there was to say about Europe, where I’d never been. Later I did visit there, and it was a fantastic, an inspiring region. But I like Melissa even better than Europe.
    Let me tell you about this girl. Her eyes are brown and wet. Her mouth twists from the effort of hiding her bad teeth when she smiles.
    But when she’s drunk she laughs widely and her gold bridgework flashes. Bartenders like to lean forward