Killer Tunes

Just can’t figure out what other folks have got against forests. Don’t go into the woods alone, I can hear them say, because you don’t know what you will find in them that could hurt you. Like that doesn’t happen in just about any place you might happen to go? I’ve been camping and hiking pretty much since the Middle Ages — I trust the woods. I know to be cautious in them. I won’t be found in the woods, half-eaten, put it that way.

Deserts? That’s a different story… the heat, the snakes, the scorpions, and worst threat of all, desert people. Deserts make folks crazy. Now don’t get yourself in a big huff about that, you sane-and-friendly desert people. It’s not you that I mean, but the ones that make the news, appear in B-movies made by Roger Corman, and folks like him. Serial killers who got started, big surprise, by lighting out into the blazing nothing to get away from the world. That’s what got Yours, Truly into this particular mess.

I love to travel to new places, but I didn’t own a car that year. I had to catch my rides with my friends Bryson and Dionne, who are always zooming off to these interesting places: East Coast, West Coast, north to Canada, south to Mexico, a cruise they took to Australia. He’s got money; she says it’s only a matter of time before she does. I’m content, for now, to hold down these service jobs: a supermarket here, a coffee house there. My mind is on my hobby — I draw indie comic books; I’m hoping to turn pro.

Bedrolls, water bottles, blankets, flare guns, sandwiches and various other kinds of edible goodness took up the back seat of Bryson’s Jeep, so I pushed it aside and jumped in. As his girlfriend, Dionne rode shotgun. They talked for a while, as he drove us down State Route 1 from Daly City to San Jose. I paid a little bit of attention at first, but like a kid much younger than I was at that time, which was twenty-seven, I drifted off from their murmurings to catch what my vocalists were singing directly into my skull — it could be important.

I wish I could play guitar, or keyboards, or drums, or sing. My comics are influenced by my musical heroes, some of whom are heroines. I brought along my cassette player and headphones, despite how redundant these gadgets are in the cellphone era, when “Bry and Di” invited me along on their jaunt into the California desert. Good thing that I did that; probably saved my life. Like I said, I don’t trust deserts.

Occasionally, when the driving got to be a bit monotonous, Bryson would ask me something like, “So, I’m right about Mick Fleetwood having played with the Stones? Di says I’m wrong.” She was looking up directions on her phone, so she just mm-mm’ed from her seat. I had to set him straight on a serious point: Mick and John McVie played with John Mayall, before Mick Taylor did, and he was the one who joined Lips-and-Tongue, in ’sixty-nine. Bryson was good-natured about it. “That shows a real grasp of history,” he said. “Speaking of history, you know anything about Rugg’s Rabbit Trap?”

“Just what you told me,” I offered back. “Some weird old dude, served in Vietnam, dropped out of the world to come live out in the frying pan. A drifter, with some criminal stuff in his background. These ‘rabbits’ were hitch-hikers, or… just hikers, who got lost.” I knew he dug the whole crime genre, but it did nothing for me. I prefer science fiction.

We pulled over, once we got deep into the frying pan, so to speak, a long ways west from Los Angeles. We weren’t actually heading to Los Angeles; that’s just to set the stage. Dionne (who definitely knew the way from San Jose; it was her birthplace, but not the singer's) had suggested that we attend this music festival in the frying pan, so here we were. Bry wanted us to camp in the middle of the pan, to ‘get into the atmosphere’. He didn’t happen to mention that this Elvin Rugg dude lived, if you can call it that, in the general vicinity.

^^^^

Something else Hollywood forgets to show us is that deserts don’t just try to kill us with heat. You can freeze, at night, ’til you’re stone dead, in a desert. I guess, if you’re not into irony, that might not impress you, but Bryson had a fair amount of experience in roaming the Southwest, from when he was a kid growing up in Yuma, and he insisted that we bring our winter best, just in case we needed it after dark. Dionne knew he was on target. I might have cracked wise about it, but I packed sweaters, long-johns, the works.

We found ourselves a nice place to stargaze ourselves to sleep. Bryson got a fire going. We had no cell-phone reception, which suited us fine. We drank some beers, watched the crackling embers. I drifted off to sleep fairly early, and lost track of the time — not a serious error, at first. I overheard some of what Dionne and Bryson were whispering about, and it concerned Rugg.

“He wasn’t a veteran,” she divulged to him, at least twice. “That was just a lie he used to tell the gullible folks. He got discharged — for being a nightmare, I’d imagine — before he ever even saw the jungle. The stories went, he was a lowlife Mob dude for a while, then they got sick of his ass, too, and sent him on his not-so-merry way. Could have killed him, saved a lot of regular folks a lot of misery from his crimes, but nope.” That was cheerful white noise as sleep wafted over me. Her last words were: “Eight unsolved deaths. So far.”

Loads of things can wake a dude up in the middle of the night, in the frying pan in southeastern California. Di and Bry, as we call them, were natives of the state; this was their scene, driving all over to festivals and events. I have to remind myself that I’m an Idaho punk, and have to adjust my bearings at times. Which brings me to the terrible fact that I woke up an unknown time later, and I thought I could just about hear the earth breathing.

I fumbled for my flashlight, stuck my boots on my feet and laced them up; I know how to do with my eyes closed, which helped. I set out for a suitable, unclaimed bush or craggy bit of rock to water the grass, and I heard my two chums sharing what sounded like an aggravated asthma attack. My timing, at least, was impeccable. My sense of direction, though…

Bladder emptied, I stumbled about, trying to figure out which way I had to go to double back. An hour of that, maybe two, and my teeth chattered like a tea kettle coming to a boil, which was an image I liked in that chilly night air. I tripped and fell, at least twice, cursing my clumsiness; managed to avoid a third fall by landing on my side, against a large boulder, right in back of the abandoned shack. I hoped it was abandoned.

I raked my flashlight beam across its side. Place looked like it was in bad shape, almost swaying in the breeze; a bad smell came out of it, too. Had to be loads of these abandoned places out here. Nobody in his right mind would live there, I thought, and I stand by that position, because a minute after I looked at it, the front door flew open, slapping like a thin piece of wood against the front wall. I heard a raspy man’s voice say, “I think you better come inside, real slow, and show me your hands.”

No way, I thought, no freaking way. I had to get lost on my own out in the frying pan, and run into him? Or, someone like him? He demanded to know who I was; I gave him a fictitious name, of course. Bryson once said that he heard that a famous criminal’s fanboy can be even more dangerous than the criminal. I had no interest in testing that theory. Then — in my best polite voice — I said, “I hate to bother you at this hour… Mister Rugg.”

^^^^

He didn’t act shocked, he didn’t bother to deny it. Maybe this meant that he wasn’t Rugg, and had no clue what this gibberish I was spouting had meant. I responded to his evil gravitational pull. What if he had a gun — a pistol, a shotgun? What if he intended to carve me up with a number of, I don’t know, serrated, serial-killing knives? My teeth were chattering louder. I must have stuttered, too much. “Shut that up,” he rasped. “I always hate it when they do that. You sit down, and I’ll ask the questions.” It didn’t sound like he invited my creative suggestions on the matter.

There followed this moment of feeling like I had been drugged, like when a dentist numbs your gums, before yanking a bloodied tooth out of your face. My numbness spread across to both ears, and would have gotten to my eyes — if I were willing to take my eyes off of him. He set his tiny lantern down — a flickering flame inside of it allowed me to get my only look at him. Had to be pushing seventy, from how old the legends were. He was gaunt, had two fading white scars on his cheek and upper right bicep, I guess from either a military thing or some criminal thing. He ordered me to sit on the edge of a very old mattress. Smelled like he hadn’t bathed in my lifetime.

“I’ll be right with you, kid,” he said, and for the first time, I wished someone older had called me anything but that. Kid was not a term of endearment in his mouth — he made it sound like Victim. He pulled open one drawer, then another, searching for what, my cause of death? His mattress’ springs bit my legs, and I felt around for anything useful as some form of a weapon. I’m young enough to be his grandson. I played amateur baseball in Boise. I’m sober, over six feet tall, full of adrenaline. None of that protected me against flying lead. Or, serrated steel.

I hoped he was a serious addict, ideally going blind; at least, suffering the extreme fatigue, like I was. He raised the lantern. I could see stacks of old LP records, and not just the sort of weirdo-ish, obscure stuff, either, but a lot of quality things. I spotted some Doors and some Eagles, Van Halen, a couple of punk bands (X was one). Rumours, by Fleetwood Mac? Too good, for the like of him; they all were. “Wouldn’t happen to have any Stones, by any chance?” I asked, foolishly; a dead man sitting.

“What are you talking about?” he snarled at me, and swung something in an arc behind himself, a blind effort to connect with — me. Firelight caught the edge of it. I realized my mistake; he only liked southern California bands. I swallowed hard, shifted my position on the mattress. Something, hard, dug into my lower back. I realized what it was, and I got a good grip on it. Then, I swear, I said to him in a low voice, because I was so tired and afraid, “I’m not here to be your number nine.” White Album started to play in my brain, so I changed the record, to Let It Bleed.

I was back where I started, lost at night on the frying pan. I was too freaked out, too cold, and too sleepy to run any longer. I fell again; I chipped at least one tooth, but it was totally worth it. After what felt like a whole lot more of that, I could see headlights that bore an uncanny resemblance to those out front on Bryson’s vehicle. He and Dionne called, I responded, and I was on board in a jiff. “Don’t tell me. ‘You could see for miles’,” I said, paraphrasing that Who tune. Dionne asked me what I meant by this. I was stumped, that she was stumped.

Honestly, I had never set out to scare them; much less, to let a creep with a scorched brain scare me. This is the sort of supposedly true story, of how a dude experiences a close brush with terror, that usually amuses me when I hear it. If it were Rugg, he was an overrated menace near Zabriskie Point. It plain baffled me that my friends couldn’t see his shack from miles away. It should have lit up the pre-dawn sky. We drove back to the area, right after dawn. Couldn’t find the shack, in any condition. Off, then, to our festival —

Had any of it happened? How long had Rugg been allowed to prey on folks, free of police scrutiny? Couldn’t I have wandered a few steps away to do my business, not stumble off into pitch blackness like some complete idjit? He and I liked a lot of the same bands; that bothered me. Maybe, he stole it off of his victims? Who says the devil gets all of the good music? I was a blue-eyed lad, at his mercy; no weapons but my wits, my will to live, my tunes. Right, I’d almost forgotten about that flare gun. Except, of course: I hadn’t.

© Eric Wolf 2023.