Pure Orange Sunshine: A True Tale of Peace, Love, and Misunderstanding

By Bob Henry Baber

Morning dawns, pure orange sunshine slicing through the windows and casting a grill of bars on the wall. Its a beautiful day in the neighborhood . . . a beautiful . . .
A beautiful Little Miss Muffet nurse trainee serving her time, delivers pancakes only a deluge of generic syrup will soften up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 24, 2011
• ISBN: 9781453599679

Book preview

Pure Orange Sunshine

A true tale of peace, love,

and misunderstanding

Bob Henry Baber

Copyright © 2011 by Bob Henry Baber.

Library of Congress Control Number:       2010915590

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4535-9966-2

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4535-9965-5

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4535-9967-9

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

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72711

Contents

PART 1

DRAW

TAKE SOMINEX TONIGHT AND SLEEP, SAFE AND RESTFUL SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE

OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

WE DECLARE THIS AN AWFULLY UNLAWFULLY ASSEMBLY

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’

FULL CIRCLE

SPECIAL DELIVERY

HABEAS CORPUS

NOT GUILTY

A KISS-ASS SITUATION

PAPER TIGERS AND AIRPLANES

FROM ELTON JOHN TO MAJOR TOM

PEOPLE

MONKEY IN THE MIDDLE

THREE TEARS UP FROM HELL

THE EASTER BUNNY IS DEAD

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY’S

WAITING FOR THE STOP SIGN

TO TURN GREEN

CLOSE PINS

REVERSE THE CHARGES

THANX, BUT NO THANX

AIRLIFT

SUFFER FROM THE COST OF HATE

FIRELINES

HAVA NICE DAZE

Part 2

HIT THE ROAD JACK AND

DONCHA COME BACK NO MORE

NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE

ACID TRIP

PAVING THE WAY

RAPS

COMMON DENOMINATORS

COLD SHOULDERS

AIR MAIL

BYGOD

MOTHBALLS, MOOLA, AND MARIA

AND GIVE US THIS DAY

OUR DAILY BLAST

ROAM ANTICS

DON’T LOOK BACK

ASSORTED LIFESAVERS

99 CRAYOLAS

CRABS AND SCABS

THE MEANS OF PRODUCTION

SURFING USA

BLAME IT ON THE RAIN

DEJA VOO DOO

PART 3

LOST ANGELS

ELECTRIC-FLAVORED AIR

BOY, ARE WE CLOSED

BLOWOUTS

THE PLOT THICKENS AND GELS

I KNOW MY MEGAHURTS,

HOW ’BOUT YOURS?

POWER FAILURES

FOUR REASONS BEYOND

OUR CONTROL

CASE CLOSED AND DISPOSED OF

TILT

SNORTIN’ BULLS WITH NO TEARS

IN THEIR SOULS

KNOT ON YOUR LIFE

IDIODYSSEYS

SHORTCUTS

KILLING TIME

THE INCREDIBLE SULK

DOWN ON THE BIOME

REFINISHED DREAMS

FIRST PULL DOWN, THEN PULL UP

This true story is based in part on notes smuggled out of prison in 1971-1972. Some fictional liberties have been taken for dramatic purposes. Any similarity between fictional characters, real people, and actual events is likely intentional.

I wish to warmly acknowledge the Union Institute and my doctoral committee for the critical role they played in the initial version of this book, created from 1979-1983. In particular, I’d like to thank Gurney Norman, the Poet Laureate of Kentucky, and the late Jim Wayne Miller, the father of modern Appalachian poetry, who served on that committee and provided incredible inspiration.

Cover Art: Deborah Dorland

Special Thanks: Ronda Gregory

I dedicate this book to my children, Ciara, Cara, Cody, and Jacqueline,

to the Soupbean Poets of Antioch/Appalachia and the Southern Appalachian Writers’ Co-Op

&

to all those who fought in the Vietnam War . . .

and those who resisted it, including the Vietnam Veterans

Against the War . . .

without whom there would be many more than

58,195 names on the Memorial.

"Hatred does not cease by hatred, but only love.

This is the eternal rule."

—Siddhartha Gautama

PART 1

"Don’t throw rocks at policemen;

you’ll find yourself in jail ’fore long."

—John Mayall

DRAW

Reach for it, cop killer; reach for it, a guard barks at me and I try, snakepain side-winding up my spine. Ma Bell. Plastic black beauty. Copper lifeline to kinship and bail.

No avail. Of tears.

Jesse? That you? I hear a voice up to its axles in mucus and muck, working its way through a labyrinth of IVs. Christ, they got Paul, too! Got us both just where they wanted us—on their turf and terms.

"If those bastards want a fight, by god,

we’re just the ones to give it to ’em."

He pulls himself up in bed. A sheet stained with dried blood the color of partially charred paint drawn up around his bruised neck. Frankenstein stitches circle his head like railroad tracks in an abandoned train yard. His eye sockets are seeping juice like rotten apples in late October.

Yeah, we’re just the ones to show ’em, all right.

The bottom falls out of the stretcher market. I stop reaching. Rock-bottom stones rumble over flesh. Ears buzz with anathema. A 38 slug lodges still deeper in memory.

It’s me, Paul. I’m shot . . . through both legs . . . charged with attempted murder . . . of a police officer . . .

I sink further into quicksand. Beg no further questions. Please. The press conference is over, thank you. Somebody mumbles something about a last call. Still, I don’t reach for it.

Heart Throb Jesse goes for his gun

Heart Throb Jesse finds he had none

Wowi zowi wowi zowi

wowi zowi wowi zow!

They wheel me away from the glaring lights and the pounding IBM typewriter reinterpreting history and deposit me with the busted strewn helter-skelter down the hall. It doesn’t register any cash, Johnny. Sleep is the thought that fills every space of my brain. I go willingly and without effort—dumbly grasping what simple ecstasy sleep can be.

TAKE SOMINEX TONIGHT AND SLEEP, SAFE AND RESTFUL SLEEP, SLEEP, SLEEP

Inmate, inmate.

I wake to the abrupt shake of a female Russian shot-putter defected from the Olympics and dressed to kill in Man from Glad garb. She thrusts me a Pink Lady painkiller and orders me to swallow, as if I’m going to argue or something. I pop it down like a St. Joseph’s Aspirin for Children and sink back into a sweet warm swamp only to feel her hand clasp my leg—keep them cold, icy fingers offa me—and bend me at the joint, hard, sending a pain larger than life itself shooting from sinew to cortex.

What the hell, bitch? But she’s out the door and going for more before I’ve even mouthed the curse. With her patrolling the floor, I know that little Pink Lady wouldn’t be getting a bit more company to party with tonight.

Murder! Murder! Resides in the heart

& not even Maria’s touch (though lithe as the leaves)

can wipe away salty sweat, or the guilt,

or reprieve.

WHILE YOU WERE OUT

Morning dawns, pure orange sunshine slicing through the windows and casting a grill of bars on the wall. It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood . . . a beautiful . . . 

A beautiful Little Miss Muffet nurse trainee serving her time, delivers pancakes only a deluge of generic syrup will soften up. Rituals and victuals. No doubt, sweet, sweet manna compared to what’s to come.

Nine sharp: an orderly harps at us to clear the room. While the other winged prisoners hit the door, I survey the damage. Hoisting my fashionable Sassoon backless gown, I inspect two legs swollen to the size of football dummies and spotting the reds and purples of lysergic acid diethylamide. I know my limitations. The white-collared collaborator knows his, too.

In the hall, malingerer.

I swing my legs over the side and touch the cool speckled tile, the pressure of weight pushing on my knees—this is a big, bloody mistake, limey—and a wave of fuzz dances around my skull. A thousand conversations converge. No rights of way emerge. Infant eyes find little and go haywire. Thoughts soak into an arroyo and disappear—no way, buddy, no goddamn way. A ten-foot wave smacks me down. I buckle. Under. Trip out. Close shop. Depart to Muhammad Ali’s Near Room where crocodiles play trombones. A gasp of naked rage punctures my inner tubes and a nurse spins out of Rapid Shave and screams, There’s no need for this, inmate; we’re simply moving you to another ward. But she is swept away in a jangle of keys before I can mount this lame reply, Nothing, my dear, is that simple.

I wash up on a shore as pure as Pensacola sand. A strange voice tinged with Mercurochrome but with a familiar accent greets me.

Welcome to the gunshot, gun-shy wound-womb recovery room! Welcome, fellow traverser. Company loves misery here, for sure. Well, boys, here’s another one that ain’t goin’ to get away. Any one wanna come out and play, eh, Ese? The voice trails off and is drowned out by a steel tanker pounding around in a bay reclaimed by fog thicker than split pea soup.

When I wake, a man is hovering over me, issuing last rites from the LA Times.

Officer Ron Pounds reported that he witnessed an officer on the ground with a group of radicals attacking him and shouting obscenities. Pounds said he fired his pistol when one of them struck the officer with a board. A police spokesman issued a statement that Officer Gabriel Hernandez was in critical condition and had a fractured jaw and numerous other unreported injuries. They also reported that Jesse Webb, 20, was arrested at the USC hospital and taken to their jail ward after he went there for gunshot wounds.

IN THE NAME OF THE PEOPLE

OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA

WE DECLARE THIS AN AWFULLY UNLAWFULLY ASSEMBLY

Flush the shotgun down the commode

& hush up about it, woman, doncha know

murder precludes all apologies?

Pulp the Man

Tell a Lie

Rip Out Palm Trees

Swat the Sky:

of dust

a bleeding cop’s making paste.

It is written: to the extent that you are fucked with by the law, so shall ye be further fucked; thus sayeth the Lawd. Ergo, Ipso, Facto, if you’re shot you must be charged with murder. Right, Ese? Well, boy, they got to justify those vents in your legs somehow, so you’d better wire home for your hip boots ’cause you’re up to your cute Little Debbie honey buns in pig’s shit now. Gentlemen, ladies, I cordially invite you to meet with the LAPD’s newest justification for their existence: Mr. Jesse Webb, cop killer par excellence! He pauses for dramatic effect before continuing. Friends, foes, country-men, I ask you not as a con with cancer but as a concerned citizen: what brings this or any other Pretty Boy, Floyd, besides a few small air pockets in his cells, to this—curse the words—Terminal Annex, the only damn thirteenth floor in this entire alien nation?

Who needs this one-man Greek chorus, this Con Vivial narrator to my hubris, I silently wonder.

Hold up there a second, Big Red, I say.

Well, lookee here, Ese, our celebrated Sleeping Beauty has returned from the land of Vitamin Valium to join us, his humble peers and mental dwarfs, in the glorious, if setting, sun of the wound womb room. He looks me square in the face for the first time. The name’s Fletcher, he says, thrusting his huge hand spotted with freckles into mine and shaking the dickens out of it.

Where you from, Slim?

Richwood, West Virginia.

West, Bygod, Virginia? Hell, I’m from Harlan County, Kentucky.

Bloody Harlan, eh?

And a Union man to boot! Shit, you ever mine coal? He doesn’t wait for an answer. I did, till about five years ago when the roof came down on my best buddy. I took the first mantrip out and bolted. Left the broken Harley, the double-wide trailer, the truck, the old lady, every damn thing. Smartest thing I ever did, besides stickin’ up the Bank of America, eh, Ese?

Fletcher directs these words to a small, emaciated black dude who’s propped up in a bed on the opposite side of the room. The dude doesn’t appear to directly respond except to bob his head up and down, like one of those football mascots with wire necks that you see in the rear windows of Rams’ fan’s cars.

’Course the stupidest thing was goin’ back for sloppy seconds, but I suppose that was as inevitable as clouds precedin’ rain. He sighs, before adding, Well, that’s my excuse. What’s yer’n?

I ain’t had time to compose one yet.

Fletcher laughs. Well, you’d better get t’ crackin’ ’cause the Law’s done puttin’ the finishin’ touches on their tall tale by now.

Considering the L.A. Times article, I know he’s probably right, though I resent him saying it. The thought that the entire department is out to get me and is playing the media like an electric guitar is more than my holy legs have the strength to carry. Still, something keeps me talking to him.

Did I hear you say you have cancer?

’Fraid so. They found it when they couldn’t patch up one of the bullet holes from what appears to be my final stickup in this cold, cruel world. A kind of pout overtakes his sullen mouth, and cynicism now crouches where animation played but a minute before. He turns away from me and looks out the meshed windows to the sun setting in red dog smog.

What the hell am I doin’ here, my cells eatin’ each other alive, when I could be swiggin’ moonshine with Lou Ann Campbell down by the side of Laurel Crick?

With that he trails off, strides the length of the ward, and sits down in a folding chair beside the bed of the vacant man who’s been his audience. I don’t acknowledge Fletcher but watch intently as he unconsciously takes his left wrist in his right hand and wrings it back and forth until in a matter of minutes it’s rubbed red-raw.

THE TIMES THEY ARE A CHANGIN’

Your buddy, what’s his name, Paul Payson, well he’s got sixty-one stitches in his head and four busted ribs. But that ain’t the worst of it, Fletcher says as he returns from the bath down the hall. He’s lost his vision in one eye, and the other is damaged, too. Seems the cops stopped three times on the way to the station to strum a little on his skull. ’Course callin’ ’em motherfuckers wasn’t exactly the most tactful approach he could have taken, though I don’t doubt that they were. There’s a kid named Roybal charged, too. He’s goin’ to be your fellow defendant along with Payson. They probably tossed him in the salsa for good measure—your token Chicano rowdy. That’s what a day of diversity training’ll get ya’. One other thing. There’s a reporter at the desk gettin’ screened for an interview with you.

How’d you find all this out? I ask skeptically.

I’ve been here long enough to shimmy shimmy coco bop up, down and around this grapevine without shakin’ a leaf. Anyway, the bulls are coming. Take my word for it.

I hear the squeak of tiger paws on the polished floors and the rattling of keys in the hall. What do you think? I ask, relying on Fletcher’s wisdom.

The Law’s got their story out there; you’d sure as hell better get yer’ns. Y’ know, only the guilty take the fifth.

The guard dogs unlock the door. They’re pushing an empty wheelchair. All efficiency, kindness, and respect when the media comes snooping around. Put your best foot forward and hide your clubfoot behind. Sirloin steaks all around, when the women’s auxiliary comes to town.

They lift me into the chair and wheel me toward the door. As they lock it behind me, I glance over my shoulder through the shatterproof square towards Fletcher. His face is a study in Appalachian resignation, its lines born of strip mines, cave-ins, corruption, floods, poverty, ignorance, and a hundred other man-made disasters. Yet, the humored resolve of a survivor rims his eyes as he catches my glance and lifts his palms skyward as if to say, Who the hell knows, Man? Take your dive and pray to God the groundskeeper didn’t drain the pool!

Just take that leap into what’s despised

and heap more lies on top of lies

FULL CIRCLE

For the Nth time I tell you

Life is modified in the mouths of the living—

holding a black lap dog

under rabid water

till the struggle is no more,

biting hiyo silver bullet

while you suck poison from my flesh,

yr jet-black hair fresh on my face.

I call this love,

but you say it’s but a plea for clemency,

dangling a light bulb down my throat;

the Bittersweet Angel of Vulnerabilities

in the confessional.

The Priest is fingering his erection

under his robes

while I swear on a carton of hymnals

there are truck ruts alive

with the waves of tadpoles,

family snapshots developing,

and blackmarish stallions trampling fallen Apollo

with hardass hooves.

But you remain unimpressed,

whipping me with a pussy willow.

I rise too fast from sleep and get the bends.

A ten-year-old blasts me in the back

with a plastic laser gun

and orders me to die.

I spit up cat’s-eye marbles

& crawl over to your Nancy Sinatra boots.

Fog clings to the roof of my mouth,

spins a cocoon around my alibi.

I move to explain and stumble over a riddled planet

Cauterizing forever

the isotopes

of an atomic reaction

uncontained in my brain.

When I wake, my skull is pressed against bed bars, cold steel stenciling the wet-wired temples of my brain. My left leg is throbbing with every pulse of my heart, and moonlight is cascading through mesh and falling on every surface of this jail, this goddamn jail I’m in.

Maria, Maria take me back in your arms;

cradle my wounds with balms and psalms:

the inadmissible scalding tears,

the dissolved dreams

& guilt & time & blood & lies

cauterized for good

by your burning bright eyes.

SPECIAL DELIVERY

Fletcher tosses a paper on my bed, turns and walks away, shaking his head somberly from side to side to side. The bold headline reads:

EASTER LOVE-IN TROUBLE

When a love-in was held in Elysian Park on Easter Sunday in 1970, 17 persons were arrested. There were no major incidents.

When a love-in was held in the same place last Sunday, 135 persons were arrested, a youth shot, 21 officers injured, and 15 police vehicles damaged. It took 376 policemen to restore order at a cost estimated at $50,000.

The two love-ins were much the same. The big difference was in the police attitude toward