The Gas Crisis

By Ken Kuhlken

Following the loss of his home and best friend, Otis faces tough questions, such as whether to stay married, what sort of work and life to pursue and, above all, whether to kill Henry Tucker, whom his nemesis Cynthia Jones calls the Enemy. These dilemmas send him from California to Iowa where he enrolls in a prestigious graduate school. But panic attics and encounters with famous writers living and dead convince him to flee in haunted desperation.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publisher Hickey & McGee
• Release date: Nov 28, 2019
• ISBN: 9780463991138

Ken Kuhlken

Ken Kuhlken's stories have appeared in ESQUIRE and numerous other magazines, been honorably mentioned in BEST AMERICAN SHORT STORIES, and earned a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship.His novels include MIDHEAVEN, finalist for the Ernest Hemingway Award for best first fiction book, and the Hickey family mysteries: THE BIGGEST LIAR IN LOS ANGELES; THE GOOD KNOW NOTHING; THE VENUS DEAL; THE LOUD ADIOS, Private Eye Writers of America Press Best First PI Novel; THE ANGEL GANG; THE DO-RE-MI, finalist for the Shamus Best Novel Award; THE VAGABOND VIRGINS; THE VERY LEAST; and THE ANSWER TO EVERYTHING.His five-book saga FOR AMERICA, is together a long, long novel and an incantation, a work of magic created to postpone the end of the world for at least a thousand years.His work in progress is a YA mystery.His WRITING AND THE SPIRIT advises artists seeking inspiration. He guides readers on a trip to the Kingdom of Heaven in READING BROTHER LAWRENCE.Also, he reads a lot, plays golf, watches and coaches baseball and softball, teaches at Perelandra College, and hangs out with his daughter when she comes home from her excellent college back east.

Book preview

THE GAS CRISIS

FOR AMERICA — BOOK THREE

Ken Kuhlken

Hickey & McGee, publishers

hickeybooks.com

Praise for Ken and his novels

... brings a great new character — and a fresh voice — into the mystery field. Novelist Tony Hillerman

Kuhlken is an original, and in these days of cookie-cutter fiction, originality is something to be prized. San Diego Union Tribune

... brings the social and cultural scene of the period vividly to life. Publisher's Weekly

... a tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed. Kirkus Reviews

... takes readers into dark experiences and deep understandings that can't help but leave them changed. Novelist Michael Collins

Kuhlken weaves a complex plot around a complex man, a weary hero who tries to maintain standards as all around him fall to temptation. Publisher's Weekly

... a stunning combination of bad guys and angels, of fast-moving action and poignant, heartbreaking encounters. Novelist Wendy Hornsby

... captures the history and atmosphere of the 1970s as well as the complex dynamics of a fascinating family. Booklist

... a tale as sensitive and heartfelt as it is action-packed ... Crime, punishment and redemption. Kirkus Reviews

... fast-moving adventure, effectively combines mainstream historical fiction with the conventions of the hard-boiled detective novel. Booklist

A wonderful, literate, and very ambitious novel that does everything a good story should do. It surprises, delights, it jolts and makes you think . Novelist T. Jefferson Parker

... a pleasure to read. Novelist Anne Tyler

Elegant, eloquent, and elegiac, Kuhlken's novels sing an old melody, at the same time haunting and beautiful. Novelist Don Winslow

Copyright 2019 by Ken Kuhlken

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

Hickey & McGee

8697-C La Mesa Boulevard

La Mesa, CA 91942

hickeybooks.com

ISBN: 9780463991138

BISAC:

FIC050000      FICTION / Crime

FIC019000      FICTION / Literary

FIC008000      FICTION / Sagas

FIC031010      FICTION / Thrillers / Crime

Smashwords Edition

Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Author's note:

The collection of five books I call FOR AMERICA has been a long time coming. The story began when I rode in an old truck with Laurent Sozzani to Iowa. Back home, in what city folks called the sticks east of San Diego, I wrote some pages about the trip and called my story The Gas Crisis.

A few years later, my five-year-old Darcy noticed me standing in the kitchen staring at nothing, and she remarked, Oh no, crazy ol' daddy's working on the grass crisis again.

I am especially indebted to the people who inspired the characters you will find in the novel. In addition to the aforementioned Laurent, they include, my grandparents, Wade and Mary Garfield; my dad Wayne Kuhlken and mom Ada Garfield Kuhlken; Laura Munger; all the Torrey family, especially Cliff, Bill, and Barbara; Bill, Steve and Pam Zarp; Ron Martina and Pat; Halima who used to be Yvonne; my cousins, Steve, Kris, Jill, Ed, Wade, Virgie, Wendy, Susie, Patti, Tim, Gayle; my aunts Harriet and Mary and uncles Charlie, Jimmy, Fenton, Eddy, and Virgil; as well as friends including Denny Williamson, Gene Seaman, Pam Fox, Lucas and Carol Field, Bob Williams, Karl Hartman, Stephanie Schram, Fred and Cliff Niman, Margaret Beasley, Tony Tarantino, Ron Maxted, and David Knop; and all the fine musicians who blessed the Candy Company and other coffee houses, among them Jackson Browne, Hoyt Axton, Big Mama Thornton, Steve Martin, Lightnin' Hopkins, Steve Gillette, Ray Phoenix, Hedge and Donna, Linda Ronstadt and the Stone Ponies, Barry McGuire, Glen Frey and J.D. Souther. And the story would never have begun without the inspiration of my dear friends and mentors Eric and Sylvia Curtis.

But I wrote all this mostly for my beloved children, Darcy, Cody, Zoë, and Nicholas, so they could vicariously experience life in some turbulent, exciting and perhaps ominous times. Thousands of thanks to their mothers for collaborating in the creation and nurturing of such marvels as they have grown to be even while crazy ol' daddy spent thousands of hours working on and otherwise living what Darcy still calls the grass crisis.

Contents

Author's note

A Brief Reminder

FOR AMERICA, book three

THE GAS CRISIS:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10,

11, 12, 13, 14

A request

A preview of book four

Also by Ken K

About the author

Brief Reminder

For readers with slippery memories or who have so far missed the extraordinary experience of reading the previous books in the For America saga: here are some details you should know before moving on.

Supermen: Otis Otterbach at age six determines he will be a baseball pitcher. Soon he meets Carl Jones, aka Casey, a talented catcher. The two become like close brothers and are sought after by professional and college scouts. But Casey's mother, the homicidal Cynthia Jones, disrupts their careers by sending them on a mysterious mission. All Otis knows about the purpose of the mission is that it concerns a Biblical beast and the end of the world.

This Rough Beast finds Otis bereft. Over the past few years, he has lost his father and his beloved grandma, an artist whose stories inspired him with a vast imagination. And now he has not only lost his dearest friend; he believes Casey obeyed his mother and committed murder.

Otis plays ball one season in college then gives up the game after maiming a batter. In place of sports, he frequents beatnik coffee houses and invites musicians and other friends to live in the home he inherited. By the time Casey reappears, the place is what people call a hippie commune.

Casey assures Otis he hasn't killed anybody. Rather, he fabricated the story attempting to end Cynthia's plotting against his cousin, Henry Tucker, whom Cynthia believes is a mythical Beast she calls the Enemy. He tells Otis that Henry — who deserted the U.S. Army — has become a major producer of LSD.

Soon after Casey reappears, so does their long-time friend Nancy, who is now a target of the Manson family, from which she got entangled then escaped. She and Casey become a couple. Then Henry Tucker and followers, on the run after an FBI bust, make a stop at Otis's home and leave behind a fire that turns the place into ashes.

FOR AMERICA

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country. John F. Kennedy"

THE GAS CRISIS

As the flames climbed high into the night to light the sacrificial rite, I saw Satan laughing with delight . . . American Pie, 1971

1

From Editor Clifford:

Probably billions of people have suffered losses even more cruel than Otis did when the home his grandparents built and where he grew up burned to ashes.

Perhaps millions of folks have lost someone as dear to them as Casey, who perished in the blaze, was to Otis.

Most likely, many of those millions or billions, in the wake of their losses, gave up on reality.

But I doubt many, or any, of them faced a challenger as fierce, a power as cunning and relentless, as Otis faced in the person of Casey’s mother, Cynthia Jones.

From Otis:

We rented a small house on a large lot that bordered the Illinois River, near the village of Takilma where Ron our saxophonist and Patricia our most gifted singer once owned a small farm.

Around us were ramshackle huts, makeshift A-frames, domes, and old trailers occupied by hippies whose innocence survived the Manson murders, who considered Manson and his kind aberrations rather than proof that, as Cynthia Jones contended, people are no damned good. These folks — still believing they could reclaim America using love and by advocating freedom from the need to possess everything — had founded a community garden, acres of rich black dirt from which anybody could harvest whatever they pleased. Women and girls with sprigs of mint in their hair stood by the road giving bundles of produce to passersby. Berries grew all along the river. Denise loved the place.

Leaves began falling. Clouds gathered, lumpy, gray and persistent as boulders. With the rains, I grew ever more miserable, which Denise called melancholy, because it sounded safer and more transitory than what she really thought, which psychology students like her called clinical depression. She had finished her first several college classes and considered herself mighty wise in the subject.

I tried to hibernate using Seconal I bought from neighbors. I slept twelve hours a day and when awake mostly stared into the woodstove and watched the heads of Casey, Cynthia Jones, and Henry Tucker rise out of flames. Meanwhile, Denise worked as a manager trainee at the Dairy Queen in Cave Junction.

In October, under a full moon, while we sat by the river, I told her about the plastic explosive Casey had stashed in the cave we used to visit as boys. I told her how Casey led me to the stash, how his last words, before he pushed our friend Laurent out of the window to save him from burning in the fire that turned the house my grandparents had built into smoke, were 'Tell Otis ...' and then something Laurent didn't catch except the last word was 'chastity,' the clue that sent me to our cave.

What else could I conclude, I demanded, besides that Casey wanted me to use the stuff to waste its maker, Henry Tucker, whose name Casey’s mother Cynthia wouldn’t utter, instead calling him the Enemy?

Denise said, Or maybe Casey sent you to the cave because at the end he saw the light and wanted you to dispose of that evil stuff before a child found it and accidentally blew up his family.

Since Denise argued against my every conclusion, I vowed to withhold my judgments and plans from her and everybody. But soon I discovered a longing for an ally, someone to applaud my murderous intentions. So I contacted Cynthia Jones. I mailed greetings, a return address, and a snapshot of myself naked, mud-packed, and brandishing a wooden spear, beside the stream that ran through our yard to the Illinois River.

A week later her response arrived, her new address in Santa Monica and the photocopy of a letter on which she had scribbled, postmarked Batopilas, Chihuahua, Mexico. The photocopy read: ... just learned about Casey’s death when a friend sent a clipping. We didn't mean for anybody to die, least of all Casey. He was a hero to me. An angel to Henry. He loved Casey and he's heartbroken. Tortured. We had been in the jungle and decided to move to the montañas, but when Henry learned about Casey he turned back to the jungle. The darkness —

I threw the letter at Denise and snarled, Read it. A note from Terry, one of the Enemy’s soldiers, the blonde who tried to seduce Casey. And tell me about how I should let them get away, but you'll just be blowing wind, Denise, because I'm still bound to kill the sonofabitch. Call it revenge if you want but it's not — it's exterminating a demon out of this world and I don't care what made him a demon, and I don’t care whose Enemy he is, because he sure is mine. Understand?

It doesn't matter. Reading the letter, she sobbed and afterward she walked outside toward the river.

Quit that bawling, Denise.

You should try it, she shouted. It might do you wonders.

I shouted back, I don't need wonders. What I need is a plan and some weapons.

For Thanksgiving week, we drove to Portland to visit my mom and her husband George the chiropractor. I worried that in person my mom would blame me for the fire on account of my consorting with maniacs and outlaws, though her letters had avoided the subject. And I feared she would faint when she saw that I had lied about my burnt face by telling her that all the scars had healed. The left half of my forehead remained salmon pink, and a wide ragged stripe, the color of Bazooka Joe bubble gum, ran from my left ear across my nose.

My mom only frowned, hugged me, and rebounded