MORE PORTLAND TAR

(a sequel to TAR and PORTLAND TAR, simultaneously a sequel to the OK KIDS/THICKER THAN WATER stories, wherein the characters conjoin.)

Dayton said, “The only places in North America left high and dry are out west in

Portland, Oregon, and there’s another one way up in northern Canada.

“We’ve been talking about that,” Sharon said.

“That’s how I know.”

“And there are people in Portland that want us to go.”

Rake had stayed clean until ‘the a’---the apocalypse with a small a---and since

then he’d had no opportunity to do otherwise. With Carmen’s consent they’d let

him stay with them in ‘the house behind’. Dayton was with his family. It was Rake

who asked, “How you going to find your way to Oregon?”

“By boat, roughly following the canal lines that used to be interstates. But Rake

you’d best be utilized guarding the roost here.”

“I didn’t hear me volunteer to go.”

“So we have an understanding.”

“Edgar asked, “What kind of boat?”

“There’s an old cabin cruiser nobody owns anymore. We need provisions---food,

water, toilet paper, pampers.”

“You’re including Carmen?

“She’s always helpful. Can’t leave her here with this scoundrel.”

“Give me time.”

“You’re going to have a lot of that.”

Carmen’s parents agreed to watch Baby Georgie, and they embarked on

the cruiser they dubbed The African Queen.

When things settled down, it was a different day in Portland. Any innocence, if it ever had that, was already gone by the bodies the gangster dealers left in the Willamette River, and then Hartman came, bringing them the small a apocalypse.  

Gus and Spokes, who had the similarity of lifestyles and their complicity in Hartman’s disposal bonding them, seemed to each other a natural match. Not that they expressed such right away. Its funny which things survive a catastrophe, like the rock club Paradym, and the grungy  Burnsiders population. Burnside was always the line between downtown and the other side. It wasn’t a racial divide, that was elsewhere. The other side of Burnside was a diverse street life division, where the train station and the Pardym Club were located. No trains were going into the station now, but the benches and floor were a domicile for the homeless who’d already been that. Damien and Allison had once told them that In L.A. there’s a hipness to street people---shooting speed, guitar in hock, sleeping in a dumpsster, but kept that leather vest, gonna sart a band---tbut in Portland they looked like bum stereotypes, their clothes some version of Salvation Army issue, their bodies grimy. But on the business downtown side, the city was trying to come back, and maybe mainstreamers would eventually be attracted again to the Paradym’s promise of abyss, vicariously.

 It was still Gus’s nightclub, and if he could find a couple of bands that would play…Spokes could have her old job back as bartender, but they had to consider if there was any point at all to starting over. They sat across from each other in one of the torn booths with crumbs of stuffing poking out of the vinyl, Spokes as lovely as ever with construction nails wrapped in multicolored strands of hair protruding from her scalp, and Gus with a sleeveless tan leather vest, T shirt, jeans, and boots made for walking and stomping.

Spokes said, “You’ll get some customers back.”

“Street people were the real survivors. but how can even they keep going?”

“YOU’re thinking to help?”

“I look like a social worker to you?”

“No-oo.”

“All that help- others went wrong before. It was always corrupt, political, greedy.”

“We have the anarchy now.”

“Right. If this place catches fire, I can scream for people with hoses.”

“Think the Burnsiders will come?”

“If they did it would burn down anyway.”

“So we just survive.”

“Same shit, another day.”

“I feel like the first time I drove, you know, even with a teacher beside you, and you feel---holy shit---this vehicle is moving and I’m responsible for it.”

“But then you realize you can steer it.”

“Yeah.”

So they swept and mopped and scrubbed the Paradym down because even funky can’t be disgusting. Since the bank to which Gus paid a mortgage was gone, he made Spokes his partner. His ‘partner’ and his partner. The social breakdown had been terrible. It wasn’t just the Burnsiders who sacked the stores empty. Everybody has to eat, but a little order was resuming. Delivery trucks came with armed guards, and some groceries had reopened, guys with rifles standing outside them. For Gus and Spokes, Paradym had been their hardware or dry cleaning establishment. What they knew.

They thought they had an actual customer that afternoon. There was still booze and mixer left to sell, and the door chimes alerted them to ‘a live one’---no cliché anymore.

 It was street Wade.

Gus said, “I’m wondering about my sanity now, or whether I died and this is the new world.”

Wade came and sat with them, and Gus asked, “Didn’t they pull you dead from the Willamette before all the real shit happened?”

“No, that was a different Wade. I got popped for selling, just to pay for my own, and the judge sent me to rehab. The rehab got demolished, but I’ve been clean since then.”

Spokes said, “Damien thought you were dead and it was his fault. He has a big guilt trip about that.”

“Yeah, well, nice to be missed.”

“You can surprise him. He survived too.”

Wade asked, “You know about that detective from Oklahoma City who uses psychic twins and their girlfriend to solve crimes?”

The both said, “No.”

“Well he’s here with them. The twins got an insight that Portland was still up too, and we need them. They came from Oklahoma by boat.”

Spokes said, “You’re still smoking crack, Wade.”

“I am not.”

“A cop, huh?” That was Gus. “Last one leaned on us didn’t do so well.”

Spokes reminded him,  ”That was Mann. He was an asshole.”

Wade said “This one’s here to help.”

Gus snorted, “Help, huh? You saying you met him?”

“I have.”

“Came from Oklahoma in a boat?”

“Following the flooded interstates.”

“I guess he couldn’t fly. Where’s he hanging out?”

“At the police station.”

“Of course. Its still standing, but all the cops drowned. Just ironic coincidence he’s there?  There are no hotels, he couldn’t rent a room, and maybe there are still some resources there.”

“Couldn’t tell you about that, but he knows that guy Hartman that they say caused all of this. The OK cop’s here tracking him.”

“I do believe Hartman’s gone to hell.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

“ Anybody ever asks I didn’t tell you this, but he was left in a sinking boat, a tub of concrete on his feet, his hands tied”

“Did they ever find him?”

Spokes said, “No, because he washed out to sea in the current. Fed the fishes.”

“He’s back looking for his son?”

“What would you know about that?”

“I get the psychic chills too. I knew that detective and the OK Kids were here.”

Gus asked, “That’s what they call them? The OK Kids?”

“National Enquired named them that---twins, a boy and girl---and their platonic girlfriend. And the detective wants to meet you.”

“I’d say he’s out of his jurisdiction.”

“He does a lot of that. He’s not investigating you. He’s looking for Hartman Doesn’t hold anything against any of you. That was self defense.”

Damien and Allison were staying for nothing at the unstaffed Unicorn Hotel, that did survive too, way out from downtown, on the north end of Portland’s downtown.

Allison mused, “So, what’s left to do from here?”

“Lie down and die? We’re not doing bad.”

“Room service is slack.”

“Beats sleeping in the weeds.”

“Have to be grateful.”

“We do.”

“Nobody’s challenged us yet for squatting here.”

There was then a strong knock on the door.

Damien said, “Not buying.”

And Allison, “No money.”

The voice from the other side said, “It’s Wade, Damien.”

“Wade Who?”

“Wade from Burnside.”

“Not possible.”

But it sounded like him.

“I wasn’t the Wade in the river.”

Allison asked, “What do you want with us?”

“Talk.”

“What would there be to talk about?”

“Hartman.”

Damien roared, “Harman no longer exists.”

“Yes he does.”

Damien opened the door.

The rendezvous with Detective Dayton, the twins Edgar and Sharon and their pal Carmen, to meet Damien, Allison, Gus and Spokes, transpired at the Paradym.

Dayton began, “We came because they said you needed our help.” The referred to ‘they’ were the twins and Carmen.

Gus addressed the youngsters from OKC, not Dayton. ”Its not we couldn’t use any help, but what in particular can you do?”

Edgar said, “We don’t know yet.”

“That was the motivation to take your ark halfway across the United States?”

Dayton said. ”Sir, just because you don’t want to talk to me is no reason I won’t talk to you.”

“There’s copper talk.”

“They go on instincts that aren’t fully explainable at first but turn out to be correct. That connection kept this young lady alive not long ago.”

Spokes said to the twins, “You guys are connected by a birth bond. What makes you think it extends any further than that?”

Dayton responded, “They’ve demonstrated the ability since then.”

Gus did talk to Dayton. “We got rid of Hartman, but you think he’s still around. What do you expect us to do?”

“As Edgar just told you, we don’t know yet.”

“Well keep us posted on further transmissions.”

“We will.”

“So this here now is a wrap. Me and Spokes have housework to do. Nice to meet all of you.”

Dayton said, “Likewise. Damien, you should have been sure.”

“It was inevitable he drowned.”

“Afraid not.”

Damien and Allison hung around after the Oklahoma people were gone, mostly because they could only get back to the Unicorn by walking and Gus invited them to stay at Paradym. They could help get the place running in case any customers ever came again. Maybe some day he’d even have paying jobs for them, but in the meantime…They all still had some cash resources to buy what food was  available again in the stores, but the inside of a derelict nightclub had that feeling of a deserted island.

At the police station, if for only the perfunctory appearance of continued order, Dayton sat at the high marble throne from where visitors had previously been greeted. Behind Dayton, on a long horizontal rod with hangers, were transparent suit bags full of police uniforms.

Hartman sniffed that Allison was in Portland, staying at Paradym. He studied the appearance of Burnsiders. They didn’t have the residual ‘cool’ of L.A. indigents, looked like the poor in the third world. So he downscaled attire and appearance,  let his beard grow, found an old cane and leaned on it as he walked. He managed to look pathetic. And lurked across the street

He observed that meeting between the OK group, the Portlanders and  Damien and Allison, saw that the people in Paradym made grocery runs in pairs, often the two guys, or Gus with Spokes, Damien with Allison. Edgar and Sharon were spending time at Paradym too. That Sharon was a cutie. Maybe when he was through with Allison? Maybe before? If he could become Damien, maybe he could become Edgar.

Hartman spent some time staking her out too, across from the police station. Only to discover a competitor. An unlikely one, by appearance also a Burnsider,  though  the size of a football player, who snarled,

 “Stay away from my quail.”

“I’m after my own.”

“She aint here.”

“She might come here. I’m simply waiting to take my wife back”

“I like that. My mission too.”

“And find my son.”

“Maybe we can help each other.  If I can get yours, and I hold her for you, you’ll reciprocate?”

Hartman said, “It I have an opportunity, I will.”

And maybe a little tete-a-tete with Sharon. He couldn’t believe Strode was any nobler.

Dayton stayed in the police station while the youngsters often visited Paradym.

Carmen and the twins used the unlocked cells as sleeping quarters and a prospective fantasy office for a new indie film company.

No one came in the building except the few always-down-and out petitioning spare change, until one afternoon a tall obese man entered and said to Dayton,

“I want to report a crime.”

“You know we’ve been…defunded.”

“You’re not even local.”

“So then what do you expect me to do?”

“You’re a sworn lawman and the only law here. You can listen.”

“I do have time.”

“There’s been an attempted murder.”

“Who’s the victim?”

“Me.”

“Do you know the assailants?”

“Damien Rennard and Gus Deutch tried to drown me.”

“Oh? Well, your name must be Harry Hartman.”

“You also psychic?”

“No, just a sleuth. Weren’t you trying to kill Damien?”

“That’s irrelevant. Once I was subdued he didn’t have a self defense claim.”

“All things considered?”

“As a citizen, I demand you arrest him.”

“I can’t. No D.A., no court, and the cells don’t lock.”

“I want confirmation of my complaint.”

“No computer either, but is there some way to contact you if I make any progress?”

“No.”

“Well, I’m liable to forget then.”

“That wouldn’t be wise. I’ll be back.”

“I still have my service pistol, sir. Be gone now before you tempt me.”

But shooting wouldn’t do. They had to be permanently rid of this time.

In OKC Strode scavenged from hospitals and skid row for ‘occupants’. Here his spirit was inhabiting various dying Burnsiders. He wondered how effective his new near- dead body manifestation was. He decided to test his display and pay a visit to Detective Dayton, Dayton who’d left him in a wall sarcophagus in Oklahoma at the Strode mansion. Strode bribed a servant to free him, then killed the servant because he was the only witness.

Strode saw that only vagrants went in the building, apparently to panhandle. If he could trick Dayton, he’d surely fool Sharon.

Upon seeing him on the threshold, Dayton roared,

“What do you want?”

Strode obsequiously replied, as he advanced, “A spare coin, any kind of food.”

He got about halfway to the throne.

Dayton said, “God Almighty. You can’t be Strode Bollings, but nobody ever smelled like he did,”

“So sorry, Sir. Its so hard to maintain hygiene living on the streets. Humbly, I am Henry Morris and in a dire state.”

“Don’t come any closer. Out! Out now!”

Strode left.

What could he do about that smell of death?

Spokes and the guys were doing carpentry, renovating the stage, for when…

Allison said to Sharon, “ I’m going out to shop. You want to come with me?”

Sharon said oke, and as they walked, they talked.

 “Edgar and I made indie movies in Oklahoma, but OKC is more a big town than a city. Like Portland. What was Hollywood like?”

“Damien had a metaphor for it. Tar. Trapped like the animals in the Tar Pits. Hollywood sucks. I mean, it sucks you in. Hotel California. You can check out but you can never leave.”

“Did you want to?”

“Everything gets old, wherever you are.”

“I’ve never felt like that.”

“You’re younger than me.”

“I just want to do more.”

“And you should. Its just, after you’ve done it…We had an episode of rich and famous. It changes things, but not really. You’re still the first person you meet every morning.”

Strode, in his present ‘occupant’, followed at a short distance and listened. Sharon wanted more. Maybe he’d help her with that. Allison had done it all. Not all. Not Strode.

Allison said, “The streets never get cleaned now, but what is that stench?”

“That can only be…Oh God, its…Run!  He can’t be fast in that body.”

Hartman saw Sharon and Allison running away from Strode and around a corner. He turned the corner too, didn’t see them, but the abandoned library was there. He went in and searched the whole building, but that wasn’t where they’d hidden.

He went to the police station. Dayton bellowed, “Haven’t found your assailants yet.”

“I have another report. An attempted abduction. Allison and Sharon are hiding in the library, and Strode is in there looking for them”

Why would Hartman let Dayton know that? But what if….? Dayton scurried from behind the desk. The empty library was less than a block way.

Hartman taunted, “Leaving your post unguarded?”

“What’s to steal?”

But there was something to steal. An XXX- plus size uniform that Dayton probably wouldn’t realize was missing. Hartman stuck the uniform into his rucksack.

And Hartman decided, today was for Wardrobe. He found some abandoned Army fatigues and a helmet in a redundant surplus store, stripped several Burnsiders of their rags, found Halloween masks, and in the evening mugged an oversized elderly woman for her garments and the perfume bottles in her purse to hopefully conceal his stench, even if he’d smell like a downscale brothel.

Strode thought, Almost got a double. Should he tell Hartman? He didn’t have to share spoils if he’d got Sharon too. Would Harman share?

But he wanted to brag. He went to see Hartman, Harry to him now, and told him about the encounter.

 Said, “I just have to get into a younger body.”

“I’ll see if I can find one for you.”

“Brothers?”

“From hell.”

How then could they trust each other?  Hartman didn’t tell Strode he’d witnessed his failed attempt to capture them. Their cooperation was like the paparazzi’s in L.A., where they coordinated in tracking a target, but once they got it, it was every photographer for himself.

When Allison and Sharon got back to Paradym and told the others, Gus  went to the police station.

Dayton asked, “How long did they hide in the library? They weren’t in there when I went.”

“They weren’t in the library. The hid in an unlocked car.”

“I’d  admit it if I got gamed, but I didn’t.  There’s a ruse planted in a pocket of the biggest uniform, because I knew at some point he’d try to get that.”

The twins sensed the vile agreement between Hartman and Strode, one to possibly capture both Allison and Sharon together, and hold the  prize for the other.

At Paradym, there was a meeting of the alliance. Dayton told them about the ruse he’d planted in a pocket of the XXX size police uniform---tablets in jar with a taped on handwritten label calling them Immortavil, and instructions to take three a day. The tablets were aspirins.

 It was Carmen who advanced a logistical strategy, and one day when they were sure Hartman was stalking in front, ironically wearing his police get up, Allison and Sharon strolled out together.

Hartman became visibly energized and agitated by this draw of fortune, but before he could do anything, Dayton also appeared.

Hartman snarled.

“I just want to talk to you.”

“About what?”

“Peace. You ever wonder how we survived when so many perished?”

“I didn’t care, concluded it was coincidence.”

“It’s no coincidence. We have a secret, a drug we call Immortavil.”

Hartman response was held back, but he said “Bullshit”

“I’ll tell you what. You can try it. We’ll let you have it too.”

“In exchange for?”

“Backing off. Leave Allison and Damien alone.”

Dayton knew if such a drug did exist, Hartman wouldn’t keep any deal, but…

“What do you have to lose? Allison and Sharon already went back inside Pardym. You won’t get them today, so give it some thought.”

“I don’t have to give it any thought. I’ve been taking them. Nothing.”

“They don’t make you high. They only work if you keep taking them.”

 And you’re probably running out.

“So that’s a no?”

“Not a no. When could we start this?”

“I’m here, you’re here, Pardym’s here. No time like the present.”

“Now?”

“Why not?”

“Alright.”

Strode had to periodically get back into his own body to survive, and outside the police station where he now was as himself, Damien and Spokes approached. Strode wasn’t looking for a chat either, but when the same offer was made, and he smelled the stench off himself, it sounded worth a try. He also had no intention of giving up on Sharon, but he could promise.

Once both were at Pardym, the pals there jumped them and employed some standard restraints of handcuffs and ankle chains from the police station.

There was then discussion on how to be rid for good.

Dayton said “I think the mummy would die if it had no brain.”

Damien pointed out, “No doctor here for a lobotomy.”

Gus said. “There’s a huge drill bit for the big power saw.”

Dayton concurred, “That could do or Hartman. “

“Strode too.”

“I’d prefer to shoot Strode. They say sick brains on a wall stink as bad as Strode does. At least that’s what I’ve always heard. I’d like to find out if there’s any truth to it.”

Spokes said, a bit impatiently, “Well let’s get it over with so we can finish cleaning up in here.”

Dayton asked Sharon, Strode’s victim in the past, and of a pacifist conviction, “You okay with this?”

“Not my decision.”

Gus reminded them all, “Hartman’s son still exists.”

Allison screamed, “Far away and doesn’t know anything of his father.”

Dayton said the last words ever directed at Hartman.

“You’ll never meet him.”

There was one loud gunshot.

Then there were a few minutes of a heavy duty drill bit grinding through cartilage and tissue.

And that was that.

Had to be.

But Damien hoped he could locate an embalmer and preserve Hartman on ice a while, until such time as he could be transported to L.A. and deposited in the Tar Pits.