Sharon Tate Home Movies 6
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
Sharon Tate Home Movies 1
Okay- this surfaced about 5 years ago. It is known as Sharon Tate Home Movies. She is NOT in every bit- we do get her at home, modeling, on the set of Matt Helm with Dino, kicking it with Roman. Then we get a party in Malibu with I think Ryan O'Neill and later on Mia Farrow on th ebeach. I do not know what this is, okay- but it is GODDAMN AMAZING. There is NO sound. Enjoy and thank your Col- he loves you all.
Okay- this surfaced about 5 years ago. It is known as Sharon Tate Home Movies. She is NOT in every bit- we do get her at home, modeling, on the set of Matt Helm with Dino, kicking it with Roman. Then we get a party in Malibu with I think Ryan O'Neill and later on Mia Farrow on th ebeach. I do not know what this is, okay- but it is GODDAMN AMAZING. There is NO sound. Enjoy and thank your Col- he loves you all.
Monday, July 24, 2006
My Life With Charles Manson Chapter The Twenty Second
Chapter 22
Juan Flynn had difficulty sleeping at night. He knew too much. Charlie had told him “things,” When we asked him what “things,” Juan remained evasive, preferring to keep his knowledge to himself, thinking perhaps as I had, that by disclosing such information he would only spread fear. Juan suspected Charlie of many things, but he wanted to be sure; he was like that—the kind of person who comes to his own conclusions. I always admired Juan for that quality. We all did. Also, having a six-foot-five
We were staying in the bunkhouse then, the four of us on cots in one small room. At night we’d play bridge and games of concentration. Sometimes Juan talked about his Panamanian mother, who “knew voodoo.” “She have, my mother, strong powers to keep thee spirits under control. One day I walk out in thee street in front of my home and find a dagger stock in thee ground and my mother she tell me not to touch, that eet keep away thee locura…how do you say…craziness.”
Following my episode with Charlie in the canyon, Juan put his shotgun on nails above his bunk. By that time Crockett had convinced him to try to sleep.
“We got a psychic umbrella around the ranch…it’s there. Soon as anyone enters that area, we’ll wake up…ain’t no way Charlie’s gonna sneak up on us.”
One night about two o’clock he tried it. We were all asleep, bundled up in sleeping bags. The nights had turned cold; we had a small wood-buring stove set up in one corner. I was awakened by Juan thrashing around in bed, talking in his sleep. Crockett and Posten were also awakened; we lay there watching and listening to Juan.
“You…son of a beech…” he muttered. “You motherfocker….Ah…ah…okay… okay. I got you, you! I got you! Hah! No, no, you ain’t getting away. There I’m in your lung. Now…burn. I’m burning real good…Sisss…” Juan’s legs flailed inside the sleeping bag, his body dangling over the edge of the bunk at both ends. Finally his foot struck the shotgun and it fell on top of him.
When he opened his eyes, I was looking straight at him from my bed just adjacent to his. Across the room, Crockett lay there wide-awake on his bunk. Brooks was already sitting up.
“What’s going on, Juan?”
“I got him,” Juan muttered.
“It’s Charlie, ain’t it…he sneaking up on us out there.”
“Yeah, but I got him good…I burned in there…in his lung.”
“It’s Charlie and somebody else,” Crockett said.
“I got him,” Juan repeated, his voice still groggy.
“Yeah, but he’s still coming,” I said.
Crockett sat up. “He may be comin’, but by the time he gets here, he’s gonna be so wiped out he won’t be able to do much.”
Juan slipped out of the bag and climbed down from the bed. He picked up the shotgun and checked the chamber before setting the weapon on top of the bunk. Then he walked to the door and went out onto the porch.
Seconds later we heard him. “Hi Charlie…what you looking for?”
Charlie’s response was unintelligible. Then we heard Juan. “And you too, Clem, you sneaky motherfocker…I know you’re out there. And you, Bruce, cabron!”
Charlie followed Juan inside the bunkhouse. Charlie was white. He looked totally disoriented. Crockett grinned, lit a cigarette, and offered one to Charlie. “Kind o’ late for a social call, ain’t it?”
Charlie wore buckskins and carried a leather thong over his shoulder.
“One of these nights I’m gonna sneak up on you motherfuckers,” he said evenly, forcing a grin, still trying to regain his composure. “And when I do…”
“Now, that’s impossible, Charlie,” Crockett said. “Ain’t no such thing as sneakin’ up on people. You know it and I know it…all that sneakin’ up is just make-believe, somethin’ people do to keep up a little intrigue in their lives.”
“Yeah,” I added. “You taught us too well.”
Charlie grinned, and some of the color returned to his face.
“Yeah, well…you folks just sleep tight.” He turned and walked out the door, and Juan called after him, “Hey, Charlie…thee next time, cabron, there ain’t gonna be no next time!”
Two nights later we all woke up simultaneously.
“Charlie,” Brooks said. “Creepy-crawly.”
“Son of a beech!”
“He don’t give up, does he?” Crockett sat up and reached for his shirt.
I put on my pants, then hopped back up on the bunk—Juan’s shotgun was under my sleeping bag. I tossed it to Juan.
We were all sitting up and Crockett was smoking a cigarette when Cahrlie pushed the door open and came crawling in on his hands and knees.
“Hi, Charlie,” I said.
“Buenas noches, cabron.”
“Lose somethin’, Charlie?”
Charlie was utterly humilated, but he didn’t lose his composure. “One of these nights…” he said. Then he got up and walked out of the bunkhouse. We heard him say something to
Crockett got to his feet and stretched. “Let’s head down to the main house and make some coffee. ‘Bout time we had a little powwow.”
It was clear that we had pushed Charlie to his limit. Up until then, the rules of the game had dictated a certain bizarre etiquette that we’d all adhered to. But Charlie’s karma was turning; it had started to turn from the day he met Crockett. Charlie could not get to Crockett. Charlie needed the paranoia of the city to work his fear tactics; in the desert Crockett was on home ground, amid surroundings which were a part of his consciousness.
Before, there were no doubts; Charlie’s belief in his “destiny” had been reinforced by an entire Family of followers. Two months had passed since the Tate-La Bianca murders, and still the law had nothing on him. They’d busted him for stolen vehicles but could not hold him. This made Charlie strong, made Helter-Skelter even more of a reality. It validated Charlie’s power. The fact that people had actually gone out and committed murder for him was proof of that power; proof that his revolution, despite all odds, was meant to be, and that he was beyond the law.
Then Crockett appeared and the Family began to disintegrate. Charlie sought to beat Crockett at his own game, but without success. He could not discredit the man. Maybe Charlie was wrong. Maybe Crockett actually had more knowledge than he did; if that were the case, then perhaps Charlie had created a myth; he had killed for nothing. Maybe Helter-Skelter wasn’t real. That’s when Charlie began to doubt himself, and that’s when his karma turned and he grew desperate. Though we didn’t know it at the time, Charlie’s rampages in the desert began to reflect his frustrations; just days before his nocturnal visits to us, he and Clem and Tex set fire to a construction site and several pieces of large earthmoving equipment—a sure way to bring the Man down on him.
Crockett had sensed the dangers but had no intention of letting someone drive him away from the canyon. He had also been curious to play out his hand with Charlie. Until that night.
“Seems to me,” he said, once we were seated around the table with our coffee, “that things are getting’ a little out of hand. What’s nice about bein’ here is the peace of mind…but there don’t seem much of that left…more like the city up here now. Old Charlie brought his Helter-Skelter with him. But I hate like hell to pull…just when we’re having success with our prospectin’ and findin’ that yeller stuff.”
Juan picked up his shotgun and walked to the door. “I don’t stay,” he said. “I’m going back.” He walked out onto the porch.
We took our coffee and joined him, sitting on the steps. The night was cold, studded with stars, but there was enough light to see the craggy spine of the Panamints cutting sharply across the sky.
“We’ll give it one more week,” Crockett said. “Make one more supply run. We can’t stay too much longer, ‘cause the cops are gonna swarm this place. I can feel it.”
The following morning Juan and I set out for Las Vegas. The trip took six hours; most of it was made in silence. Several times I tried to engage Juan in conversation, but he wasn’t in the mood to talk; he said only that he planned to return to Spahn’s and to pick up his back pay from George. After that, he confessed, he didn’t know what he was going to do. “Maybe when you and Brooks and Crockett find a good mine, I come and work with you…but I don’t come back to Barker Ranch…no more.”
I let Juan out on the outskirts of Las Vegas. While he hitchhiked south towards Baker, I drove on into town. It took three days to get supplies, round up parts for my BSA, and deliver a couple of messages for Crockett. By noon on the fourth day I was on my way back.
Like Juan, I too thought of leaving. Charlie’s terror tactics, even though they had backfired, had transformed our quiet productive scene into a perverse kind of torture. I had gained a certain satisfaction in seeing Charlie’s interaction with Crockett, since it reinforced my withdrawal from the Family and served to convince me I had made a wise decision. But I knew Charlie couldn’t and wouldn’t be pushed much further; his own credibility was on the line. There was too much at stake. Had I known just how much, I would never have returned that afternoon.
By the time I parked the truck at Barker’s, it was too late to carry in the supplies, so I left everything and hiked back up to the ranch. When I got there, all the lights in the ranch house were on. I saw Snake and Squeaky walking up the path to the house. Two dirt bikes were parked at the gate, and three or four dune buggies beyond the bunkhouse. Clem and Bruce Davis were sitting beside Brenda when I entered the gate. I saw Sadie coming down the road from the Meyers place with Ouisch and Kitty Lutesinger, one of Bobby’s old girlfriends. As I reached the porch, I spotted two of the girls getting out of the bus, followed by Tex and Bill Vance, who had driven a new dune buggy up the back route by way of Furnace Creek.
My heart was pounding as I walked into the house. Charlie sat at the table across from Snake. Katie was cutting Snake’s hair. Snake smiled, but she looked ghostly. She laughed nervously when I sat down.
“Glad you’re back, brother,” Charlie said, getting to his feet and stretching his arms over his head.
“Where’s Brooks and Crockett?”
“Don’t know.” Charlie walked past me to the door. “But I got to dig a couple of graves before it gets dark.”
He let the door slam as he walked out.
Fear, rage, utter desperation commingled inside me. Tex came in with a shotgun and sat down at the table. Then Squeaky, Sandy, and Brenda entered the house. All had short, uneven, recently cut hair. The sound of the scissors slicing through Snake’s hair sent chills down my back.
Bruce came in and sat down across from me. His face was red and puffy; some of the sores on his arms had healed, but new ones had erupted on his neck, just under his chin. “Where’s that Panamanian piggie?” he rasped.
Before I could respond, Charlie called to him from the porch and he walked out. I got up, went into the bathroom, and closed the door. I had to compose myself. I had to face Charlie without blowing it. I heard him and Bruce walk past the house. I heard Bruce’s coarse pneumatic laugh as I started to take a piss. Then I heard Charlie speaking to Phil Simms, an ex-con and friend of Charlie’s who had apparently just arrived.
“How’s your wife, Jean?” Charlie wanted to know.
“Real pain in the ass at the moment… you know how women are.”
“Well,” Charlie blurted, his voice hard and without a trace of humor, “why don’t you bring her up here and we’ll throw her down a mine shaft. Then you can move in with us.”
I didn’t wait for Phil’s reply, but went back into the living room. Katie, Stephanie, and Cappy were in the kitchen preparing a meal. Cappy said, “Hi, Paul,” as I passed the kitchen doorway and took a seat by the table, just as Charlie and Bruce walked in from the porch and sat down.
In addition to Charlie and Bruce, there were two other males seated at the table – a kid they called Zero, and a part-time wrangler from Spahn’s named Larry Jones; there were also two new girls, introduced to me as Beth and Shelly. With his Family slowly disintegrating around him, Charlie felt the need of recruiting additional followers. But I paid little attention to any of them. All my focus was on Charlie.
He grinned at me. “Let’s make a little music.” His eyes were dancing. I knew it was test time, and sensed, as I held his gaze, that what lay in the balance was everything.
While he tuned the guitar, he told me that the tapes we’d made at Spahn’s were set to be recorded and that an LP record would soon be released; he said it was long overdue but that our hard work would pay off. I put all my attention on Charlie, on the music. I listened to the sounds he made on the guitar. Then he sang, and I sang with him, and it was like one sound. Afterward he came over and put his arm around me. “You’re finally back, huh… where you belong… It’s about time.”
We ate a huge meal together that night; then the girls moved the table and chairs and brought in mattresses and laid them on the floor; Tex built a fire and we all gathered around Charlie to make music. I sensed that it was all a means of showing me that the Family was still unified, that the love was still there, that we were still one. But going through the motions was not enough. The people sitting around me, Snake on my left, Brenda on my right, then Katie, Sadie, Stephanie, Ouisch, Cappy, Tex, Kitty, Bill Vance, Crazy Patty, Sandy, Clem, and Squeaky – seemed lifeless. With their close-cropped hair, the girls looked like a gaggle of militant dikes. There was no feeling, there was only a strange, depraved momentum set in motion by Charlie. When I looked at Snake, I felt sick inside; her eyes were glassy, lusterless; she looked insane. When Charlie made a joke, everyone laughed, yet the laughter was soulless and without joy. At times I found the girls looking at me as though I were a stranger, or perhaps someone they had seen before but could not quite remember. Still, there was a connection, however vague and nostalgic, and I felt it. I also felt Charlie’s attention on me, particularly after he began to play the guitar. Like the others, I went through the motions.
We were getting ready to drop acid when Bruce Davis came stumbling into the room to announce that the truck was stuck in the wash. Charlie flew into a rage.
“Motherfucker!” he shouted. “Can’t you do anything without someone holding your hand! I might as well send a girl to drive the truck! We got to drop off that gasoline and get supplies!”
“I can get the truck out, Charlie,” I said.
Charlie’s eyes found mine. He got to his feet and walked across the room muttering to himself.
“Yeah,” he said finally. “Why don’t ya do that. Deliver them gas drums and pick up supplies, then come back here. You go too,” he said to Bruce. “Make sure everything gets back safe and sound – everything!”
Bruce nodded.
Charlie was taking a chance, yet he probably saw it as an opportunity to teach Bruce a lesson while testing me at the same time. In a way, it was a continuation of the power games he had been playing with Crockett. With Crockett gone, he may have considered his position stronger. He knew that Bruce, having assumed my position within the Family, would keep a close eye on me.
Charlie went into the bedroom and came out with a wad of folded bills, which he laid in my hand. “Here’s three hundred bucks. Buy some camping gear and a couple of parachutes, then play the slot machines for me… okay?”
I interpreted this gesture as a vote of confidence, and as a means of castigating Bruce. Less than a week before, I had been on Charlie’s shit list. Now he was entrusting me with money and responsibility for supplies. He was also, he believed, securing an implied agreement from me – to return.
My plan at that point was simple: to get the truck unstuck, get to Vegas, and start looking for Brooks and Crockett. I had a growing sense that they were safe. I wasn’t that worried about Bruce Davis.
Charlie walked with us down to the gate, Bruce on one side, me on the other. For a long moment we stood in silence looking down the road that leads to Golar Wash. Charlie lit a cigarette and exhaled into the chill night air. I was aware of a low rumbling sound that seemed to seep up out of the canyon, the same psychic vibration that preceded Charlie’s arrival at Barker’s just weeks before. I had an impulse to ask Charlie and Bruce if they heard the sound, but thought better of it. Even then I knew what the sound was. It was a sound Brooks and Crockett and I had heard a week earlier. The sound of the Man closing in.
As I stood beside Charlie listening to his final instructions to Bruce, I recalled the words he had spoken to me at Gresham Street over six months before. “You know, once Helter-Skelter comes down, I’ll be going back to the joint. After that, it’ll be up to you.”
It was after three A.M. by the time we got the truck out and drove it to the base of the wash. I told Bruce to stop while I lifted my BSA out of the pickup. Without a word he helped me load it onto the flatbed. Then we headed out across the valley toward Ballarat, to deliver Charlie’s gas drums and continue on to Las Vegas.
Bruce did a lot of talking on that trip. He told me about going to London and studying Scientology; he told me Helter-Skelter would stun the world. He also told me something I’d heard before; how hard it had been to kill Shorty Shea.
Once we got to Vegas, I ditched Bruce long enough to make a phone call to Shoshone. I spoke to Don Ward. When I asked if he knew where Crockett and Posten were, he said, “Maybe, but we got to talk to make sure who you are…”
The next day I unloaded my bike and drove it to Shoshone. Brooks Posten and Paul Crockett were in Don Ward’s office when I got there.
The following morning, the Barker ranch was busted.
COPYRIGHT PAUL WATKINS AND GUILLERMO SOLEDAD
Sunday, July 23, 2006
New Blog
It is a shame that she is so lacking in knowledge and says things like "uncontrollable urge".
But I encourage all blogs about the case. Let's see if she keeps it up.
New Blog from a Cousin
Buffooooooooons
When this great work started I mocked other sites a lot. That is because I am immature. I stopped that. Usually I only bash Mark Turner. His site is great. But he is a censor. And censorship is evil and UnAmerican.
But watching what has gone on over at Charles Manson and the Family, a Yahoo group, requires this response:
Candygramma- shame on you you ignorant, stupid, flabby cow. You aren't fit to clean my clothes much less talk to someone smart like Heaven. Go start your nuclear fission group you retarded, moronic, walking corpse.
Poche- you don't surprise me. I could spot it a mile away. Child abuse is funny to you? Really, it is a shame the abortion didn't work. I hope someone hits you with a car.
Sorry for this interlude. But this scumbags are just so irksome because they are so hillbilly stupid.
Up top we have a candid snap - Candygramma above and Poche below.
My Life With Charles Manson Chapter The Twenty First
Chapter 21
In late August, while Charlie’s dune buggies roared across the
“Pig” was the word Charlie had used to describe
Near the end of September, Manson was making numerous forays into Death Valley, looking for caves, exploring the terrain, choosing strategic hideouts in which to store his burgeoning supplies – still searching for the mystical (hole” in the desert where the Family could go to wait out the ravages of Helter-Skelter and make “a new beginning.” Traveling in caravans of three to five dune buggies, he led these expeditions for days at a time, leaving Clem and Bruce and a few girls behind to watch the Meyers ranch in his absence. At one point Charlie asked me to search for “the hole” by diving with scua gear into Devil’s Hole, a vast, murky water-filled cavern just across the
Still, I was playing both ends against the middle. I had accepted favors from the Family—playing music with them, made love to Snake, and at times had listened to Charlie’s Helter-Skelter rap, still half-believing it was true. I didn’t want to do this; more, it was like an unconscious reflex born of habit. It was also as Crockett had said, “foolish” –a game I was playing that was rooted in conditioning and based in part on my fear of completely severing ties with the Family, even after I sensed there was nothing left to salvage. Accepting this was to admit I had been a fool, a dupe, just another of Charlie’s pawns; which I had. Describing my feelings is not easy, since they changed often and there were many levels and much confusion. Inside, I told myself, “They did not kill Shorty.” I’d seen him less than a month before. I’d waved and he’d waved back. Charlie was merely trying to manipulate my fears. It was easy to say, “Yeah, we had to kill Shorty.” But where was the proof? Charlie was always boasting of his macho exploits, but I had never actually seen him so much as step on a bug. Yet, deeper down, I sense it was true. I’d felt it. At that point I still had no idea how deeply programmed I was, how much work it would take to free myself.
Early one morning sometime around the first of October, Charlie spotted me on the hillside and hiked up to where I stood surveying the valley while sipping a cup of hot coffee. He reminded me that a year had passed since we had first come to the Barker Ranch as a Family. He told me he was taking an expedition over to the
“You don’t have to go all the way with them or nothin’, just show them how to get up there—that’s a pretty tricky trail, you know, and they’ve never been up there.”
“I don’t mind, Charlie,” I said.
An hour later I met the girls at the head of Golar Wash and we started for the Lotus, a defunct gold mine located about midway up Golar Canyon at the top of the mountain, a strategic spot from which to survey the entire valley. The climb from the base of the wash to the mine and the small stone dwelling beside it followed a steep, twisting trail, replete with switchbacks and spots where the footing was treacherous. Halfway up, Sherry and Barbara announced they had left their packs and canteens at the bottom of the trail and went back to get them, and I continued on to the mine with the girls. After helping them make camp, I hiked down the quebrada and back four miles to the Barker ranch.
Later that afternoon when Crockett, Brooks, and I went down to retrieve supplies from the foot of the wash, Sherry and Barbara Hoyt suddenly appeared from behind a rock, claiming they wanted to hike out of the valley and go back to
Crockett listened while they confessed their fears. His face expressionless, his eyes scanning the alluvial fan that stretched twenty-three miles toward Ballarat; he reached over and felt the canteen Barbara had strapped to her waist.
“Getting dark,” he said. “Might as well go up with us, think this out.”
That night we sat around the table drinking coffee and listening to Barbara and Sherry. Both girls were relative latecomers to the Family. Barbara arriving at
Barbara’s voice was high-pitched and agitated. “Charlie says we’re free, that there are no rules, but we’re not free. He says we can do what we want, but we can’t. He said about two weeks ago that if we tried to leave he’d poke out eyes out with sticks. He—“
All we want is to go to Ballarat,” Sherry added. “From there we can get to
After the girls had gone to sleep, I discussed it with Crockett and decided that I would take them to the base of the canyon, drive down the gorge in the power wagon, and leave them at the edge of the valley.
“Give ‘em enough water and tell ‘em to keep a steady pace…they won’t have no toruble…we’ll feed ‘em a good breakfast in the mornin’.”
At noon the next day I dropped them off at the edge of the canyon, then headed back in the power wagon. I drove slowly, bouncing and weaving along the valley floor, avoiding eroded gullies and boulders. The sun blazed off the hood of the car, casting a blinding reflection. To cut the glare I put on a pair of dark glasses that were lying on the dashboard; it was well over 120 degrees in the shade, the air bone-dry. Sherry and Barbara would have to go slowly in the heat, but they had enough water and I knew from experience that barring unforeseen circumstances, they would make it with little problem.
I was nearing a point just south of Halfway House Spring, a particularly rocky stretch of ground, almost directly beneath the Lotus Mine, when something distracted me. I looked to my left just as Charlie’s head appeared above the rocks in the gully, where he’d been filling his canteen. At the very instant our eyes met, the left rear tire popped, the echo reverberating against the walls of the canyon. It was as if all the pressure generated by our gaze had caused the blowout. I sat stunned, listening to the hiss of escaping air as Charlie scrambled toward me over the rocks. He was shirtless and had Snake’s binoculars around his neck. I knew at once he’d been watching me from the Lotus Mine. He had a shit-eating grin on his face as he approached me, dusting off his buckskins with his hands. He took the hat he was wearing and held it out as though appraising it, then looked at me.
“Thought you were headed out to Saline?”
“Just wanted to check on the girls,” he said evenly. He leaned against the fender of the truck and put his hat back on. “Hey brother,” he drawled, “you wouldn’t lie to me, would you?”
“No.”
“You didn’t take Barbara and Sherry down the canyon, did ya?”
I looked Charlie dead in the eye.
“No.”
Charlie grinned. We both knew I lied, yet for some reason he reacted as though I had said yes, as though my lie had been programmed by him. That was Charlie’s way. When things went against him, he often acted as though he had programmed it, so that no matter what was said, he was in control.
“Well,” he said, “you want to drive me down there so we can pick them up?”
“Got a flat…no jack.”
“How ‘bout walkin’ with me?”
“I gotta get back to the ranch…get this truck fixed.”
He gave me a long, hard look. “Guess I’ll have to get them myself.” With that he turned and trotted down the wash.
Frightened and confused, I scrambled up the wash. Sherry and Barbara had a three-mile start on Charlie, but they didn’t know he was after them, and we’d told them to conserve energy and go slow. Had the car been running, we’d have caught them in twenty minutes. I figured they had a fifty-fifty chance of making it. If he did catch them, I didn’t know what he’d do. But it wouldn’t be pleasant. For the first time I was really scared. Up until then, my actions had all been open and aboveboard insofar as Charlie was concerned; there was still the implication in the game we were playing that I might be won back to the fold, that Charlie might still invalidate Crockett. But helping his girls escape – I couldn’t have crossed him in a more blatant fashion. I had an impulse to go back and find him. I felt like a condemned man, sensing that unless I confronted him right away, I’d never be able to face him. But I wanted to talk to Crockett.
“I think you’re right,” Crockett said after listening to what had happened. “Better go back and meet him… tell him straightaway. That lie puts you on the run, and the longer you got it hangin’ over ya, the more it’s gonna wear ya down.”
I filled a canteen and put on my boots. Crockett went out on the porch with me.
“What you can do,” he said, “is process yourself on the way down there so there’s minimum tension when you meet him. You just imagine everything that could possibly happen when you see him, everything, as vividly as you can…all while you’re walkin’; that way you run all the excess tension and energy off the actual confrontation, so it’s cleaner. See what I’m drivin’ at?”
“Yeah, I see.”
“I t ain’t like you imagine they’re gonna happen…it’s just takin’ the tension off the possibilities, like makin’ them pictures go away, so you don’t bring them up when you get there…you just do it.”
I knew Charlie had eight or nine miles on me, but I took off anyway. It was dusk by the time I reached the base of the canyon and started out across the valley. I must have gone at least ten miles when I realized the futility of trying to catch Charlie at night. I knew, too, that if I remained in the valley he might not see me when he returned to
About midmorning the next day,
“Are Sherry and Barbara with him?”
“Naw…why?” Barbara asked.
“Just wondered.” I got out of the sleeping bag and started rolling it up.
“You need a ride back up?”
Go to talk to Charlie.”
For the next hour I waited, still processing all the confrontation possibilities in my mind. I was apprehensive but in control. It must have been close to noon when Charlie finally rumbled into view about twenty yards from where I sat hunched against the cool wall of the canyon. The moment he spotted me, he stopped the buggy and leaped out with a forty-five pistol in his hand.
“You motherfucker,” he shouted, “I should blow your head off!”
/my heart was thudding, but I didn’t panic. Charlie’s eyes were bloodshot, his face windburned and dry. He pushed the barrel into my chest.
“You ready to die?” he bellowed.
I held my breath, but didn’t flinch, then said, “Sure, go ahead…I fucked up, maybe I deserve it.”
“I’d be doin’ you a favor!”
“Maybe so.”
Then he thrust the gun at me and I took it. “Maybe you ought to kill me…see what it’s like!”
“No, Charlie, you know I don’t want to do that.”
“How ‘bout if I just cut you a little!” He pulled out his knife and shoved the point against my throat. I took a step back. “Well, then, you cut me!” He offered me the knife and I shook my head.”
“You know what I ought to do…I ought to kill that fucking old man…he talked those girls into leaving.”
“No, he didn’t. All they wanted was food and water. They were leaving anyway.”
“Well, he put discontent in their heads…Get in!”
Charlie pointed toward the dune buggy, and we both climbed in. He laid the forty-five in the back and fired up the engine. “I caught up with those girls in Ballarat,” he said, without looking at me. “They wouldn’t talk…I gave them twenty bucks and sent them back to Spahn’s”
Moments later, Charlie was laughing. He put his arm around me. “Nothin’s changed, you know, between you and me. What goes round comes round; we’re still brothers, and no redneck piggie miner is gonna change that. ‘Cause one day he’s gonna wake up and find that he just ain’t here.”
Near the top of the canyon we came up behind Juan and Brooks hiking toward the ranch. Charlie stopped and they climbed in.
“Where you been, Juan? Seems like I hardly see you anymore.”
Juan didn’t reply, but he held Charlie’s gaze through a rearview mirror. Charlie pulled up at the gate and stopped. We all piled out.
“Say hello to that old man for me,” he said. Then he lurched forward in a swirl of dust, and we headed into the yard as Crockett came down to meet us.
Saturday, July 22, 2006
Friday, July 21, 2006
My Life With Charles Manson Chapter The Twentieth
Chapter 20
The following morning, the three of us were up early, Crockett was scrambling eggs and frying bacon while Brooks and I packed the mining gear and filled the canteens. We’d stayed up much of the night discussing what had happened. We’d stayed up much of the night discussing what had happened. I’d told them what Charlie had said to me. Brooks suggested we split. Crockett said no.
“I ain’t goin’ anyplace… we got our work here, and I’ll be damned if I’m gonna be run off.”
Our “success” with Charlie during that initial encounter was due to several factors: for one thing, Crockett anticipated Charlie would use fear tactics to influence us; though I knew nothing about the Tate-La Bianca murders (which was also in our favor), I had experienced Charlie’s fear games before. Too, Crockett had been prepared for Charlie by Brooks and me. We’d been spouting his rap for months, so that nothing he said was new to Crockett. Crockett’s validity, meanwhile, had been established in Charlie’s mind by the mere fact that Brooks, Juanita, Bo, Stephanie, and I had defected. Equally disturbing, perhaps, in light of my claim of a “psychic barrier” on the canyon, was Charlie’s inability to get his trucks and supplies up to the ranch. Charlie knew enough about psychic power to realize that such phenomena were possible, and after meeting Crockett, however briefly, it became clear to him that the old miner was for real. In a single afternoon the stage was set for what was to become a battle of nerves.
The month that followed was both bizarre and frightening.
While we ate that morning, Crockett reiterated what he’d said the night before. “The idea is not to take anything from Charlie – not even Snake, Paul. We don’t need to make any agreements with him… we have all we need right here – a mine to dig, a good garden, plenty to keep us busy. We put our attention on what we have.”
Brooks and I both sensed that Crockett was intrigued by Charlie and that part of his motivation to stay was prompted by his own curiosity. Crockett loved games. When Brooks asked him what he thought about Charles Manson, Crockett replied succinctly, “He has a lot of power.”
We’d no more than stepped out the door when Snake appeared at the gate and motioned to me. Dressed in skin-tight Levi’s and a transparent silk halter top, she stood leaning against the fencepost. Charlie wasn’t wasting any time. While I spoke with Snake, Crockett and Brooks started down the wash. She asked what I was doing and I told her we had work to do.
“Charlie wants you to come up and make some music. He brought tapes of the stuff we recorded at Spahn’s.”
“Maybe later.”
Charlie knew my greatest tie to the Family was the music. A lot of the work was mine. He also knew how tight I was with Snake. She asked if I was coming back with the Family.
I said no, and started down the wash after Brooks and Crockett.
“I’ll come back later, Paul,” she called after me.
It was around nine o’clock and already hot; the sides of the wash loomed up on either side of me as I scrambled over the boulders, then descended to the creek bed. I spotted Brooks and Paul far down the wash, Crockett in front wearing a red bandanna tied around his neck, and Brooks just behind him. I could see the tire tracks from Charlie’s dune buggies in the sand, and yellow paint on an outcropping of rock where the vehicles had scraped the canyon walls. I thought about Snake and decided then that I would make love with her. What I had going with her (in my mind) had nothing to do with Charlie. Submitting to any of the other girls would be different, like taking of Charlie’s hospitality. But with Snake I had established a separate relationship. That night, when we got back to Barker’s, she was there… and I was horny. I knew Charlie had sent her, but it didn’t matter. I took her up to the bunkhouse and we made love.
Later, when Crockett asked me what happened, I told him.
He shook his head. “You’re a fool,” he muttered.
“Maybe so, but I feel a lot better.”
Around eleven the next morning
“
Crockett came out of the bathroom as
“Letter sent to Bob’s post-office box in Vegas.”
“Hundred and thirty in Ballarat at eight this mornin’,” he said, more to himself than to any of us.
“Got to go to L.A.,” I announced. “Induction physical… Shit!”
“Finally gonna do somethin’ fer yer country, are ya?” Stanley jibed. “’Stead o’ hangin’ around with this no good rock hound.”
Crockett sat down with a cup of coffee and took out his cards.
How’re Bob and Juanita getting’ along?” he asked.
“Got married Sunday… no, Saturday… and left the state.” Stanley slurped at his coffee. “No great loss… as a miner, Bob wasn’t worth two tits on a boar.” He set his cup down. “What’s all the to-do up at Meyers’? I seen two spanking-new dune buggies sittin’ out front… seen a couple of guys down in the wash too, drivin’ motorcycles; said they was headed up here.”
“More supplies for Charlie,” I said, looking at Brooks. “Probably Bill Vance.”
“Well,” Stanley said, getting to his feet, “I got to stop at Meyers’ and pick up some of my tools, then I’m headin’ back to Vegas; anyone want a ride?”
“Yeah, I’ll ride with you… then hitchhike to L.A. and make that physical by Monday.”
Crockett glanced up from his cards, “Good idea.”
“Yeah, ya might get lucky,” Stanley joked, “get drafted… go to Veet-Nam.”
“Would you draft him?” Crockett asked dryly. “Either one of ‘em?”
Stanley looked at me, then at Brooks. “Yeah, I see what ya mean.”
I smiled and flipped Crockett off.
Stanley grinned. “Hey, little Paul, that reminds me, ya know what a taint is, don’t ya? Think he’s old enough to hear this, Big Paul?… Ya know, Brooks?”
“Nope, what’s a taint?”
“Ya know that little space in there between the pussy and the asshole?” He paused, his eyes dancing from me to Brooks. “Well, taint pussy and taint asshole!”
Stanley’s laugh sounded like a flock of startled poultry.
I ripped off a booming fart. “Let’s go,” I said.
On our way out, we stopped at the Meyers ranch so Stanley could pick up his tools; Clem and Bruce were sitting outside with Brenda and Sandy. The dune buggies were pulled right up to the house; boxes of supplies lay strewn along the narrow porch. Charlie appeared on the porch with Squeaky as Stanley and I got out of the truck. He was all smiles. He told Stanley that he was welcome to any tools or equipment he saw lying around. Stanley thought that right neighborly and immediately loaded his truck with backpacks, picks, and shovels that Charlie had brought up from Spahn’s It was obvious to me that Stanley’s eagerness to actually take the stuff pissed Charlie off. That was Charlie’s way with people: offer them everything so as to immediately put them in his debt. Usually the offer was enough. The first day I met Charlie he offered me food, shelter, a harem of women – his entire life-style – asking only that in exchange I “cease to exist,” a fate that could well have become Stanley’s had he ever returned to the Meyers ranch while Charlie was there, which he didn’t. Several days later, Charlie would tell Crockett, “When Stanley comes back up here, I’m gonna bury him.” We considered it part of Charlie’s ongoing fear games, not knowing that by then he’d been responsible for at least eight murders.
I attended my physical in L.A. on a Monday morning and before noon was classified as unfit for military service. A well-thought-out spiel on the virtues of drugs in expanding consciousness (plus my police record) was enough apparently to make me “undesirable.” That afternoon I hitchhiked up to Spahn’s to find Juan, only to learn that he had left for Golar Canyon. In the meantime, Brenda had returned to Spahn’s to deliver a message to Clem and Gypsy: Charlie wanted them to come to the Meyers ranch at once and to bring a load of motor parts. Brenda hailed me as I approached the boardwalk, and I walked down to the corral, where she and Clem were sitting on the chassis of a dune buggy smoking a joint.
Brenda informed me they were driving back to the desert later that afternoon and that I was welcome to ride with them. I thanked her and told her I would. She asked why I hadn’t come back to the Family, saying that Charlie was hurt by me and that I was needed. By then, Brenda had become one of Charlie’s heaviest and most dependable girls. She could talk his rap and get things done. And in contrast to some of the others, she never appeared spaced-out or lethargic. Yet, Charlie had a firm hold on her. Like everyone else, she had been ordered to work on me.
Clem, on the other hand, was totally blitzed, and sat slouched over the steering wheel of the dune buggy, his eyes glassy, his hair matted and snarled; he wore buckskins and a hunting knife on his belt. He appeared stiff, almost cadaverous, as though the essence of what was once Steve Grogan had been drained out of his body and replaced by a recording that mumbled bits and snatches about Helter-Skelter and the piggies and how beautiful it would all be when the young love came to the desert.
Later, on the ride back to the desert, he became animated. He was driving, while Brenda sat between us. “Hey,” he said, “heard about Shorty… huh?”
I didn’t reply. I just looked straight ahead over the tops of boulders fronting on the horizon, and beyond them to the mountains, which were cast in crimson, as if a fire were burning somewhere beneath my vision. I did not want to believe what Clem was saying, but I knew it was true, and he didn’t stop talking.
“… Yeah, it was a trip, you know. I never seen so much blood… it was all over everything. But he wouldn’t die… he jest wouldn’t die… he kept sayin’, ‘Why, Charlie, why? Why, Steve, why?’ And we just kept stabbin’ him… me and Bruce and Tex and Charlie. ‘You know why, motherfucker?’ Charlie says… but he wouldn’t shut up… So when Charlie told me, I took the machete and chopped his head off so he’d stop talkin’… and it just rolled off the trail, bloop… bloop… bloop… into the weeds.”
I didn’t tell Brooks and Crockett what Clem had said. I justified it by trying to convince myself it wasn’t true, that it would be a weakness. I wanted to be strong and not tell them. Yet, deep down, in the truest part of myself, which was only then becoming partially accessible, I knew it was true, that everything I had been committed to in the Manson Family had turned foul, irrevocably malignant.
Juan spent two days at the Meyers place with Charlie and the Family, then moved into the Barker ranch with us; he said very little, but I sensed he knew a lot. Meanwhile, more supplies arrived for Charlie – stolen dune buggies, Harleys, weapons, food supplies. Helter-Skelter was in full swing, happening just as Charlie had described. There was still a part of me, even then, that thought maybe he was right; Brooks and Juan expressed similar feelings, yet we all recoiled at “the reality” of what the Family had become. It is not easy to see people you love become subverted, twisted, rendered into robots. Crockett became our island of sanity, something solid like the mountains we could turn to and feel assured. Crockett had agreed to this position, consciously pitted himself against Charlie. Juan’s defection became Crockett’s victory. But the battle was only beginning.
Juan’s decision to join us wasn’t made until he had taken off for a week (with a canteen and some dried figs) and hiked into Butte Valley to be alone. Juan Flynn was a deeply sensitive man, by nature happy and thoroughly outgoing. During the course of our friendship, I saw evidence of his compassion and generosity. His experience in the United States (after coming from Panama) had been no picnic. Immediately upon arrival, he was drafted into the army and sent into combat in Vietnam. He later confessed to all of us that his battlefield experiences were terrifying and that only by smoking hashish could he keep from being totally paranoid.
“I was scared,” he admitted. “Sometime I theenk I will die and that eet would be better to die than to be so frightened… that I just have to fight and fight and kill anyone who might kill me. In war every man become a child who want his mother… because there is so much he will never understand alone.”
It was not hard to comprehend how Charlie’s rap on making love and facing your fears had appealed to Juan, particularly in light of his infatuation with Brenda. Charlie continued to use her, as he did snake, as a means of luring us back to the fold.
With each new day the scene became more nerve-racking – like two armed camps in the throes of some bizarre and arcane psychological warfare. At odd hours during the day Charlie would send down contingents of women – Snake, Ouisch, Brenda, Sandy, and Squeaky – to work on us all. When that failed, he’d come into the yard with Clem and Tex, brandishing shotguns, and start shooting them off around the property. We learned to size up a situation and turn it around without panic. On one occasion Crockett borrowed Clem’s shotgun and began taking target practice in the front yard.
Often Charlie would engage Crockett in verbal exchanges, which sometimes lasted hours. But Crockett played it perfect; he did not fight with Charlie or openly disagree in a way that might provoke anger. He merely expressed opinions which left Charlie utterly flabbergasted. He later confessed that he and Charlie shared many of the same opinions about the world but that Charlie “had a hole in his humanity.” One evening they were out in the yard near the porch – squatting on their haunches like two Indians taking a shit. Brooks and I were inside listening through the window. Charlie was discussing karma, how every man and every spirit has a destiny that is inevitable. He insisted that part of his destiny was to bring about the revolution through Helter-Skelter. As usual, he did most of the talking. Finally, after a long silence, Charlie asked Crockett, “Look, do you always keep your head like that?”
Crockett seemed to ponder several moments, then said, “If you were beating me with a stick, Charlie, don’t you suppose I’d know it?”
“Dig it… why don’t you teach me?… How ‘bout that… you teach me?”
“Teach ya what?”
“What you know.”
“I can’t teach ya… ya already know everything.” We watched through the window as Charlie got to his feet and stretched, then knelt down again beside Crockett.
“Naw,” he said. “I don’t know nothin’… really, I don’t.”
“Well, that’s about the same as knowin’ everything. Can’t teach a man who knows nothin’… ain’t nothin’ to build on.”
Charlie just couldn’t get a handle on Crockett; he couldn’t get any agreements with him, nor could he get any disagreements. Their exchanges served only to exasperate him; yet he would not give up. The dynamics of the situation were curious. Charlie wanted me back in the Family; he, perhaps, knew better than I how deeply I had been affected and that only Crockett stood in his way. Crockett was the first guy Charlie had encountered who (Charlie believed) had more knowledge than he did. The rules of warfare were different because of it; he couldn’t just kill Crockett; it would prove only that Charlie had been defeated. Rather, he had to psych him out, discredit him, con him. Getting us back into the Family would accomplish all three objectives. But up until that point it had all gone against Charlie. Not only had Juan Flynn joined forces with the Crockett-Posten-Watkins contingent, but there were others who were contemplating similar maneuvers.
If the murders were weighing on Charlie’s mind at that time (certainly he was aware of the hysteria they must have created and that the Man would seek a just revenge), it didn’t manifest itself physically in his outward behavior. Such was not the case with many of the others. Within a matter of weeks nearly everyone broke out in hideous open sores on their arms and legs – sores that would not heal.
Thursday, July 20, 2006
Manson 1970s Part One
I got this tape from Bret who is part of the BEST damn Manson site on the web- check out the link to the left. Anyway, here it is for everyone except that sack of shit at KTS who calls himself OOGLY. Suicide is an answer for you, Oogler. Great freaking stuff here for us all to talk about. Enjoy.
I got this tape from Bret who is part of the BEST damn Manson site on the web- check out the link to the left. Anyway, here it is for everyone except that sack of shit at KTS who calls himself OOGLY. Suicide is an answer for you, Oogler. Great freaking stuff here for us all to talk about. Enjoy.
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
My Life With Charles Manson Chapter The Nineteenth
Chapter 19
August 1969 will always remain indelible in my mind: the Tate-La Bianca murders, the bloodcurdling fruition of the Manson nightmare, demons unleashed from the bowels of a diseased man in a diseased society. In August 1969, at a rock festival at
Don Ward was short, balding, middle-aged, and built like a fireplug. His reputation as a lawman had spread far beyond his legal jurisdiction in the valleys around Shoshone. I’d never met him before that day, but I’d been told once in Tecopa that “old Don Ward is a little bit o’ hell.” He was that morning. When Bob asked him what was going on, he waved the barrel of his shotgun up under Bob’s nose.
“What’s goin’ on is that this gal” – he pointed at Juanita – “about two months back, she gave my niece a marijuana cigarette!”
“I didn’t even –.”
“Yes, ya did!” Don bellowed, his face turning a violent crimson. “My wife runs the drugstore in town and she seen ya. Now, you just listen: there’s six kids in Shoshone on pot. And I know where it comes from – from that goddamned ranch up by
“Don’t threaten us,” Crockett said. “It isn’t necessary, and you won’t like it.” Ward glanced at Crockett as the other co handed him I.D.’s taken from our wallets.
“It might have been necessary a couple of months ago,” I added, “but it isn’t now… you can search the truck.”
“I know what I can do!” Ward barked. “And I know this gal was passing out marijuana.”
“Not anymore,” Juanita said. “Things are different. I’m married now… this is my husband.”
Bob’s head spun around as though he’d been punched.
“I.D. says you’re Wildebush and he’s
“Well, we’re getting married.”
“Ain’t that swell.”
Ward returned the I.D.’s and told us to scram. “If I hear of any more funny stuff going on at that ranch, there’s gonna be some heads rollin’.”
By noon the next day Bob and Juanita were packed and ready to go. We helped them transport their stuff to Bob’s truck at the foot of the canyon, wished them luck, and watched as they drove out across the valley. It was the last I ever saw of Juanita Wildebush.
During the next three weeks Brooks and I worked daily with Crockett – climbing mountains, digging, studying the terrain. The exercises he put us through were strenuous. With full packs, he had us running up and down the steepest trails time after time without resting, while he ran with us, suffering as much as we did. “Keepin’ up with two twenty-year-old kids ain’t that easy.”
One afternoon, while Brooks cleaned up the ranch house, Crockett and I went out to work the Gold Dollar. On the way back from digging (our packs filled), Crockett suggested we play follow the leader. “Ya just do what I do.” With that he took off down the trail at a trot. I followed him, stepping where he stepped. When we got back to the bottom, he turned around. “Now let’s run back up. You go first.” I was beat but determined to keep up with Crockett. I took off up the trail with him right behind me. By the time I reached the top, I was panting. But I’d no more than paused to catch my breath than Crockett whirled around and started back down again; wearily I trudged after him, trying to keep pace, trying to keep from falling on my face. By the time we reached the bottom, I was gasping for air. “Okay,” he said, “one more time.” I couldn’t believe it! Instinctively I turned and started back up, but my breathing was coming too hard, I just couldn’t go on. I was angry and exasperated. Mid-way up, I’d had it and was ready to cuss Crockett out. When I whirled around, he was right behind me, grinning. I don’t know what I intended to say, but all that came to my mouth was a long wheezing “Youuuuuuuu!”
As I gasped out this word, Crockett stopped in his tracks, still grinning. I looked at him dumbly, half-dazed.
“What happened to all that heavy breathin’?” he asked.
As he spoke I realized that my panting had stopped. I was calm, collected, and breathing evenly. To me, the experience was almost revelatory – off and on for years, I’d practiced yoga, trying to learn to control my breathing and energy flow. This new discovery elated me.
“No need to keep on breathin’ like that once ya stop workin’,” Crockett remarked. “Most times people get to breathin’ hard and let the momentum of it carry ‘em when they don’t need to… Let’s head back and get something to eat.”
I followed Crockett up the wash, feeling suddenly more centered and in tune with my body than I ever had squatting on a yoga mat.
“Ya know,” he said moments later, “one reason you work so hard is that you never learned how to walk.
He pointed out how I dragged my feet instead of walking with my knees raised and my steps following each other in an even rhythm. “Walking shouldn’t be work, it should be like floatin’. Tell ya what, pretend you’re walking four inches off the ground. Ya just do what I do, make every step a different step, never take two steps alike. Ready?” I nodded, and Crockett strode forward, stepping to the left, then to the right, up on a rock, down on another, walking on his toes, then his heels, on the side of his foot – taking long strides, then short ones, then in a series of tiny steps. We must have looked like a couple of spastics winding our way up the wash. But in time, during the days that followed, this exercise helped me gain an awareness of walking, and I learned to move with an easy stride that took much of the tension out of the exercises.
Crockett used to say that the body is the temple of the spirit and that the way the body moves is a reflection of the spirit. “The spirit moves the body and the muscles in a beautiful way. It doesn’t mean the spirit has to stay in the body, but mostly it does, and the way I see, it deserves a nice ride. Spirit,” he said, “occupies no time and no space. It can postulate, and perceive what it postulates.” But getting in touch with it, he insisted, was impossible unless one was turned in to the body. “It’s like all that yoga… getting’ the body lined up so’s the spirit can move around some and be in touch with other spirits, other forces.”
Charlie’s views on the body’s importance in sex closely paralleled Crockett’s. Charlie had said that what made sex “a spiritual trip” was a spontaneity – “Change the motion, change the rhythm,” or as Crockett had put it, “Never make the same step twice.” It was a way of getting free, aligning the body with the spirit, and in so doing being in touch with the greater energies around you.
“Sometimes,” Crockett said, “you hear people say that mind and spirit are one. But it really ain’t like that. A better way to look at it is to picture a man riding in a carriage. The carriage is the body. The spirit rides in the carriage. The mind is the driver sitting on top. The emotions are the horses pulling the carriage. The brain is the reins between the mind and the emotions. The mind, the emotions, and the body are all vulnerable to distraction, laziness, habit, misdirection. I mean, you just can’t let that carriage go along on its own momentum and think your spirit is okay. You got to be aware all the time. That’s why we keep on carryin’ heavier loads and climbin’ steeper trails – to keep our awareness keen. It’s like ya told me Charlie said, ‘Come to Now.’ Well that’s right, where the spirit is concerned, Now is a twenty-four-hour-a-day proposition.”
Perhaps the heaviest experience of that summer happened around eight-thirty one night when it started to rain. The three of us were sitting in the bunkhouse playing bridge. A couple of my friends – a man and his wife – had come up to the ranch that day and were sleeping in the bus with their little daughter. We were in the midst of the game, joking about how we had made it rain (it seldom rains in
“That floor gets pretty hard,” Crockett said. “Why don’t you run the mattress up to ‘em?”
“Rainin’ too hard now.”
“ Naw, the rain will stop when you go outside… long enough for you to take it up there and come back.”
Brooks and I both looked at Crockett.
“Well are ya gonna do it?” he asked me.
“Sure… sure.” I grabbed the mattress and ran through the open door. The moment I stepped outside, the rain stopped dead. Flabbergasted, I hurried up the hill to where the bus was parked, left the mattress, and trotted back to the bunkhouse; it couldn’t have taken more than forty seconds. Not one drop of water fell on me. Yet, the moment I stepped back inside the bunkhouse, it started to pour.
Crockett was grinning from ear to ear.
“How the hell did you do that?”
“We did it,” he said.
“How?”
“Well, you saw everything I saw – you tell me how…”
“But how did you know?
“Sometimes ya just know things.”
“It doesn’t make sense,” I said.
“Postulate and percieve,” Brooks declared.
By that time Brooks and I were firm believers in Crockett’s powers. The stronger his influence, the more anxious we were that he meet Charlie. We hadn’t seen a newspaper in weeks and knew nothing about developments in the Tate-La Bianca investigation, nor that Spahn’s had been raided (on August 16), the Family arrested for possession of stolen vehicles, and later released. We asked Crockett to agree to see Charlie, but he wouldn’t until he was ready, until his own curiosity about “this guy Charlie” got the better of him.
A few days later, Brooks and I were in the garden picking vegetables while Crockett sat on the porch whittling on a piece of wood. The air was still; yet, I heard something – a low rumbing sound which seemed to be coming from some great distance.
“What’s that noise?”
Brooks looked up.
“Hear it?”
“Yeah, I hear something. Sounds like a motor… someone coming up the valley.”
For three days we heard the sound – a low, ominous vibration, a kind of psychic rumbling that seemed to echo through the canyon. But no one came. Finally, one evening after hiking back from the mine, I asked Crockett what it was.
“Your friend Charlie,” he said solemnly without looking at me. “I lifted the gate. Wish I wouldn’t have. Listen to it… sure ain’t the sounds of harmony, is it?”
Sometime around noon the following day, Brooks and I looked up at the same time. We were seated at the dining-room table across from Crockett.
“You smell that?” I asked.
“Yeah… somethin’,” Brooks mumbled through a mouthful of cornbread.
Crockett sniffled. “Sounds like a combination of honey… and pussy.”
For some reason the association struck me. “It’s Brenda… goddamn, it’s Brenda!”
Two hours later, a bright yellow dune buggy pulled into the yard, and
“Here they are,” Crockett declared in a monotone as Brooks and I walked out onto the porch.
Brenda waved. “Howdy,” she called out.
I waved back and walked down the path with Brooks, my eyes on Tex Watson. I could hardly believe it was the same person. He looked like a zombie. His face was unshaven; his hair had grown several inches and hung over his eyes. The clothing he wore – Levi’s and T-shirt – was filthy. His vapid stare unnerved me. Like Bruce, he carried a sheathed hunting knife, and I noted when he stood aside to let Brenda out of the dune buggy that a shotgun and a box of shells were lying on the seat.
Bruce was no less grungy, yet he seemed more alert. There were open sores, like boils, on the side of his neck and on both arms. Brenda, meanwhile, though she appeared slightly emaciated, was enthusiastic and greeted Brooks and me with a hug as Bruce hopped out of the jeep to deliver Charlie’s message:
“Charlie’s down at Sourdough Springs… says if he has your agreement, he’ll come up.” By that time Crockett had ambled down from the house.
“Sure,” he said, “send him up.”
While Bruce drove the dune buggy back down the wash to relay the message, Brenda and
Less than an hour later Charlie drove into the yard behind Bruce with a full contingent of girls: Squeaky, Sandy, Ouisch, Snake, Sherry, Cathy, and Gypsy. When I went out to greet them, Charlie gave me a big hug, but his eyes were scanning the ranch house. “Where’s this guy Crockett?” he asked almost at once.
“Come on in and meet him.”
It must have been about four when we all gathered in the ranch house around the table. Crockett sat at one end playing solitaire,
“You know, Brooks, I could cut your throat.”
“Right, Charlie,” Brooks said jokingly, as though it were all in jest.
It’s certain Charlie was struck by the change in Brooks, who, only months before, was completely paranoid and hardly able to function. It’s equally certain that had Brooks known about the murders, he would not have been so cool.
But it wasn’t Brooks or me that Charlie was baiting, it was Crockett, who after a cordial “howdy” and a handshake, had lapsed into silence before his cards. Charlie wasted little time in sending several of the girls with Bruce Davis to check on the Meyers ranch; then he say beside Crockett and began rapping about Helter-Skelter. Crockett just listened while Charlie laid out his trip, pausing just long enough to ask Crockett for a cigarette. Crockett handed him one. A could of times Crockett muttered “yeah… uh-huh” but little else. It wasn’t until Charlie got into his “we-are-all-one” routine that Crockett seemed to perk up and listen more intently. Brooks was standing in the doorway to the kitchen. I was seated at the opposite end of the table beside Brenda.
As Charlie spoke, Crockett nodded, his hair falling in tight ringlets around his eyes. Charlie leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands gesturing freely.
“Dig it,” he said. “I am you and you are me.”
“No,” Crockett interrupted. “No… that ain’t true.”
Charlie’s hands came to rest on the table; he just stared as the old man went on to explain, while I exchanged glances with Brooks.
“We are both spirits… that’s true, both capable of postulating and perceiving that which we postulate. In that sense we are the same… but we have lived different lives and had different experiences, therefore I am not you and you are not me.”
Moments later, Bruce Davis come in to announce that everything seemed copacetic at the Meyers ranch… ready to move in.
Charlie glanced at Crockett, who had returned to his gama; then he addressed me. “Come on, Paul, let’s take a dune-buggy ride.”
We hiked down the trail and I climbed into the dune buggy.
“Look,” Charlie said, climbing in beside me, “get this straight – I don’t release you of your agreements. I don’t release you from nothin’!” He fired up the engine and backed the buggy into the road.
“You know, you broke my heart, man… just when I needed you.”
I didn’t say anything. I felt strangely composed as we passed the Meyers place and headed up behind the ranch.
“I gotta scene goin here now, Charlie.”
“What kind of scene? What are you doing?”
“Just doin’ things with Brooks and Crockett.”
“What things?”
“You told me never to put my business in the streets.”
“I’m not the streets!” Charlie bellowed, slamming on the brakes, his eyes flashing. “What about our trip… what about the things we were doing?”
“I’m still doing them, I’m still -.”
“I ought to kill that old man is what I should do.”
When we reached the summit, Charlie stopped and faced me.
“I’m gonna get you back with me… you ain’t released from nothin’…”
“It’s too late.”
“Even if I have to torture your little ass.” He glanced at me. “Even if I have to tie you to a tree and slit your belly open; I may just tie you up and have the girls take turns givin’ you head till you’re about ready to come, then I’ll cut your prick.”
I remembered Charlie’s fear games and was determined not to let him get to me. “You’re a riot,” I said.
“You know, man, we had to kill Shorty.” He fired up the engine, his eyes still on mine.
“That right? How come?”
“Got to talking too damn much… a real pain in the ass… we cut him up real good.”
I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to believe him. Had I gone for it, I would have been overwhelmed with fear, and that fear might have done me in. Yet, when he said it, I felt it might be true, that Charlie was capable of such an act. Only minutes before, I’d seem him put his knife to Brooks’s throat. Yet it was all for show, all done to get Crockett. Crockett was the one Charlie wanted – not to kill, but to discredit and invalidate in front of the Family. Winning me back would be one way to do it.
Charlie recognized and respected Crockett’s power (the fact that he asked permission to come up to the ranch was proof of that); there was also a part of him that sought to learn what Crockett had to teach. By that time Charlie had created a void around himself; he had fallen “into the hole” of his own madness. He could only grow if he were challenged, and by then there was no one to do so – just a band of followers programmed to heed his every whim. Just how far they were programmed to go (and had gone), I had no idea.
As we approached the Meyers ranch, Charlie described his plans to move in immediately. He spoke to me as though I had agreed to rejoin the Family, which I hadn’t. He said he was bringing in enough supplies and weapons to outfit an army. He said Helter-Skelter would go down in history as the grand finale.
We had just pulled in and parked in front of the Barker ranch when Charlie asked if I’d heard about Bobby Beausoleil and Mary Brunner.
“What about them?”
“They’re in jail, man… for murdering Gary Hinman.”
“Did they do it?”
Charlie hopped out of the dune buggy, ‘Sure they did it… you did it, I did it… we all did it.”
By the time it was dark, Charlie and the Family had moved, lock, stock, and barrel, into the Meyers ranch, leaving Brooks, Crockett, and me alone at the Barker ranch, just a quarter of a mile away.
COPYRIGHT PAUL WATKINS AND GUILLERMO SOLEDAD
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)