Humboldt County, 1972

By Tom Braverman
Posted 7/19/19

Excerpted from: “717 Hemlock Street: The Empiricist Conversation from Locke to Gödel,” a novel by Tommy Saxophone

John and I sat on the porch on attached movie theater seats …

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Humboldt County, 1972

Posted

Excerpted from: “717 Hemlock Street: The Empiricist Conversation from Locke to Gödel,” a novel by Tommy Saxophone

John and I sat on the porch on attached movie theater seats John had rescued from an old East Bay movie theater just prior to its demolition. From tall glasses we drank hot coffee sweetened with condensed milk. John pointed west, towards a hilltop in the distance.
“China Creek Road is between us and that ridge. If you walk downhill from here you pretty much can’t miss it. Stay on the path.” John looked at me and repeated, “Stay on the path. If someone asks where you’re going, tell them you’re coming from Glassblower John’s and you’re going to Uncle Jimmy’s. Hoka Hey.”
“‘...coming from Glassblower John’s going to see Uncle Jimmy.’” I repeated.
“...Hoka Hey...!”
“Sorry. ‘Coming from Glassblower John’s going to see Uncle Jimmy...Hoka Hey.’”
“Yeah. Don’t forget the ‘Hoka Hey.’”
Sure enough, a quarter of a mile down the path from Glassblower John’s a voice out of the brush hailed, “Who goes there?”
“Uh...Tommy, coming from Glassblower John’s on my way to Uncle Jimmy’s.”
I heard a mechanical clicking that sounded very much like a round being chambered.
“Hoka Hey,” I added.
There was a pause.
“Go on then...”

I walked out of the woods into a clearing, an open space in front of a geodesic dome, the plywood sheathing three quarters complete, the remainder covered in black plastic. A young man with a sparse beard and long blonde hair gathered in a ponytail, shirtless under bib overalls and barefoot, was splitting wood rounds. The young man stopped working and leaned on the maul, regarding my approach with an owlish, bemused expression.
“And what have we here?” he asked in a clipped British accent.
Reggie was not British, as it turned out, but a refugee from an eastern steel town. Land in southern Humboldt County, deemed by the lumber industry of no further use, was going for a few hundred dollars an acre, and Reggie and a few friends had come west to live a simpler life far from urban sprawl.
“Sit, Sir,” he said, pulling out a chair for me. A young woman sat on the edge of the bed holding their infant son on her lap. The baby followed Reggie with his eyes as Reggie went to a cooler and fetched a quart container. Reggie sat down on a stool and pinched the container open and, touching it to his forehead, intoned something that sounded like “Bom Shiva.” The baby laughed, squirming with pleasure. Reggie took a swig from the container and passed it to me. I started to lift the container to my lips; Reggie stopped me.
“You have to do the thing, man.”
The baby was watching me now.
“Bom Shiva,” I ventured.
There was no reaction from the infant.
Reggie shook his head.
“Not enough bass...Louder.”
“Bom Shiva,” I attempted gruffly, in as low a voice as I could manage, touching the waxy container, beaded with condensation, to my forehead. I took a sip: raspberry kefir, sweet and cold. The baby laughed and kicked his feet.
Now I passed the container to the young mother who repeated the ritual much to the baby’s delight. The infant grew quiet, expectant. Reggie took the container and touched it to his son’s forehead. What the baby said may or may not have sounded more or less like “Bom Shiva.” But it was clear that the infant was attempting to supply the ritual incantation.
“Good boy, Charlie,” Reggie said, and putting his index finger into the container, brought out a little kefir which he offered to his son. The container went around again, and then again, until it was empty.
Reggie, watched intently by Charlie, now brought out a guitar.
I shot the sheriff...
...he sang in a soft, vibratoless tenor...
But I did not shoot the deputy...
...this last phrase sung in an ascending major triad, just as Marley himself had sung it.
Charlie was asleep and his mother laid him on the counterpane and covered him with a little blanket. Reggie fetched a jam jar from a cupboard.
“Reg, you don’t know if our guest partakes,” the woman said.
“Ma cherie,” Reggie answered, “you are perhaps some time in Bordeaux? In zee France? And zee wine is offered you? And zo you zay,” here he switched to the nasal whine of a Long Island teenager, “‘Nah, I’ll just have a diet Fresca,’” and falling back into mock-French, “...to refuse-ay, zis is not zo much zee politesse, no? You t’ink? Yes?”
The purple buds clustered on the little branch were “sinsemilla,” seedless, as Reggie explained. Reggie demonstrated that the sticky resin was enough to cause the little branch to adhere to his fingers. “The pure schmint,” Reggie called it.
I slept that night in an old oak grove. Far enough inland so that there was no fog, the night was warm, moonlit. The next morning I got up and stuffed my sleeping bag into its sack, wrapped the sack in my tarp and fastened the bundle to the bottom of my pack. Reg was standing in the doorway of his dome drinking kefir.
“China Creek Road is just at the top of the bank,” he said pointing to a path that led out of the clearing, offering me the container. “Uncle Jimmy’s is four or five miles up the road.”
I was starting out of the clearing when I remembered there was something I’d wanted to ask.
“What does ‘Hoka Hey’ mean?”
“‘Hoka Hey?’ That’s Lakota for ‘It’s a good day to die’.”

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