The Spin

The Spin

A novel by Don Keith

Copyright 2012 by Don Keith

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form other than brief excerpts for review purposes without the express written consent of the copyright holder.

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

CONTENTS

Prologue: About THE SPIN

1. Chauncey McKissack

2. Pat and Sandy

3. Chauncey

4. Sammy Larocca

5. Teezie Cole

6. The Los Angeles Times

7. Loretta Spaghetti

8. Jack Perot

9. The Glitter Gazette

10. Chauncey and I Go to Hermosa Beach

11. Steve Godchaux

12. Greg Whetstone

13. Teezie Cole

14. Greg Whetstone to Las Vegas

15. Loretta at Loyola Marymount

16. Steve and Cindy

17. Billy Lester

18. Chauncey

19. Greg Whetstone

20. Sammy Larocca

21. Billy’s roommate

22. The Las Vegas Review-Journal

23. Greg

24. The Spin

25. Me

26. Jerry and Loni

About the Author

For Mark Schreiber, whose idea it was in the first place, after all.

"There are two great pleasures in gambling:

that of winning and that of losing."

--French proverb

Prologue: About the Spin

We are gluttons for captivating stories, for titillating events, for intimate glimpses into the lives of people we otherwise would never know—or likely care to know. If there was not such an appetite for reality, what the TV networks, the 24-hour-a-day cable news channels, the newspapers, and the Internet sites serve up, they would not be streaming it out to us. They have to fill all that airtime and space with something or somebody that is interesting to us. Either that or they must make sure the celebrities they create enthrall us long enough to please advertisers. They have to find a hook that drags us in and keeps us on the line long enough so they can sell us a car, a soda pop, or a cemetery plot.

I like to think the story of Jerry Gray, Loni Flowers, and the rest of them was different, though. Sure, it dominated the media for a few weeks once the whole unusual plot hit their radar. However, TV and the papers ignored the whole thing at first. It was almost by accident that word got out.

Then, when it did, people were authentically curious. They wanted to find out all they could about Jerry’s odd quest and about all the others who joined in, one way or the other, as it grew into so much more than what it was intended to be in the beginning.

I certainly wanted to learn all I could about it. So did you, if the TV ratings and magazine sales and Facebook posts and calls to radio talk shows were any indication.

You watched it play out on your TV set. Millions did. You heard Leno and Letterman make jokes about it and watched the television preachers rail against it and read the opinions as expressed in Internet chat rooms by folks just like you. You saw it on the cover of People, as the lead story on Nightline, and as a topic in the acceptance speeches of both parties’ presidential candidates. Saw it and what it supposedly said about our culture as it was analyzed in detail in the op-ed pages of the New York Times, argued about incessantly by red-faced experts on Fox News and CNN, and explored scientifically in the pages of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Remember the aerial shots of Jerry’s neighborhood? There was an anthill of people down there who only wanted to be near him. How about the helicopter video of that snaking convoy of cars winding its way through the desert? You saw the parade of people who followed Jerry to whatever Promised Land and milk-and-honey they perceived Las Vegas and Jerry’s spin to be. Who does not remember watching TV in amazement at what happened that cool California morning? You were a voyeur as the cameras suddenly showed us a seven-foot-tall man sailing out of the sky on his Harley, an odd, black comet, striking earth at the head of the entourage. You heard the interviews with Loretta and tried to figure out what brand of left-over-from-the-‘70s hippie dialect she was speaking, just as I did. You listened to the music Jerry and Loni made the night before the trip to Vegas.

Did it all affect you the way it did the rest of us? How many of you waved from the bridges and overpasses or pulled to the side of the freeway to catch a glimpse of them as they and their gypsy parade passed? Or had your own office pool with money down, riding on red or black? Who did not turn up the volume on the TV as they sat there on the sofa or gathered in the break room, listening intently as Jerry tried to tell the video camera and each of us one more time the real meaning of what he was going to do that day in the desert?

Tell me you did not record and save the television images of what ultimately spun out in the Luck-O-the-Draw Casino.

Some research company stated it was the most-recorded live television event since the O.J. Simpson Bronco chase, and rivaled the final episode of MASH in that regard.

For several weeks, the story was hard for any of us to ignore, even if we had so desired. No, not hard. Impossible. It was that teenage girl from Alabama missing in Aruba, Paris Hilton going to jail, Princess Diana dead in that tunnel, the latest scandal in Congress, all rolled up into one big ball of media frenzy. It was the story that captured your attention—mine, too—for those few summertime weeks when primetime was re-runs, the Twin Towers still stood tall, and we were not yet at war with anyone that we knew of.

Then, as with all those stories, it was over. It was inevitable, and especially considering how it came down at the end. Soon, something else came along to kidnap our short attention spans.

Over for most, but not for me. What Jerry Gray did that day, the message he sent, changed me profoundly. I would later learn it had a similar effect on many, many others, but that is not the kind of thing that captures the lead on Fox or CNN or the nightly news. Somehow, in the midst of the swirl of media, late-night-TV jokes, and marching picketers, Jerry, Loni, Chauncey McKissack, Loretta Spaghetti, Sammy LaRocca, Billy Lester, and the rest of the main players in The Spin showed so many of us a better way.

For the first time for each of us, it was perfectly all right to put heart over head, to set aside reality for a bit and to pursue a dream.

Whether we ever actually lived that dream or not, it did not matter. We had taken the shot, stepped out, and risked it all on a single spin of that impartial wheel.

My own spin came when I made the decision to tell their story. No, that is incorrect. It was when I decided to allow each of the players in this bit of reality-TV drama to each tell his or her part of the story while I served as the scribe, letting my tape recorder run as I scribbled furiously in my notebook.

When I started tracking each of them down, I did not know if these accounts would ever see the light of day, if anybody even cared anymore about The Spin.

I did know one thing by then. It did not matter.

I took a shot at my own personal spin, just as Jerry counseled us to do.

Just by doing that, by stepping out, I became a winner, regardless of fate, doubt, or the color of the slot on the wheel into which that little sightless ball eventually came to rest.

But if you are reading this, then the story has been revived. I hope you get the same blessing from it that we all did. Putting heart over head. Not in a foolish way, but in a way that allows a dream to ultimately become reality.

Who would have thought such a positive crusade could have started on the darkest day of a man’s life? On a dog-kicking bad day, when the Santa Ana winds made kindling of the bougainvillea and the dust devils danced a dervish?

1. Chauncey McKissack

Looks fifty, tops. My notes say sixty-three but that’s suspect. Despite a face free of lines and a young set of eyes, he could just as easily be somewhere north of seventy. His hair is still dark, too, but there is no evidence of any gray-away goop. Just a bit of something thick and greasy that he is using to prop up the retro cowlick in front.

The eyes are the first things I notice. Eyes that are strong, quick, and always searching for something. They seem to size you up and make an immediate assay in a second or two. Hard to tell at first, because they are in constant motion, but they seem to be gray, flinty.

When I wave at him from across the bar, he apparently decides to come on over anyway, even after he has sized me up with a Popeye squint and a dismissing curl of his upper lip.

That is the first good sign.

He is short, wiry, and tough looking, like a mean, stubborn weed sprouting up through a crack in the pavement despite all the odds against it. The way he strides over to where I am waiting for him in the restaurant booth, he could just as easily be a former athlete, a gandy-dancer who might still, at an impossible age, be working high construction. Or maybe a cat burglar, casing the joint and pacing off distances to re-step later in the darkness. He bounces more than he walks then pounces rather than actually sitting down in the empty seat in the booth across from me.

The face is broad and open, seemingly hiding nothing, and the skin is like smooth Naugahyde. Small, white scars mark the spots where he may have had sun-cancers cut away. His just-off-center nose shows evidence of some previous dispute, roughly settled.

He smiles a lot as he talks. When he listens, too. His teeth are white, even, and he is glad to show them. His gaze is direct but not threatening, his accent definitely Southern but with enough of a twist on the ends of the words to verify that he has been out here on the west coast for a while now. At least long enough for it to have effectively skewed his lilt a bit.

There is something else, too. He speaks as if he gets the punchline of a joke no one else has caught yet. He is mildly sarcastic, as if he is always a second or two from a knowing wink or a dismissing spit.

I cannot tell if he is having fun with me or if that is simply the way he actually talks. His words spill out of him like a song. I half expect them to rhyme, to hear a bridge or a chorus repeated as a refrain.

It's clear that Chauncey McKissack loves to talk.

And that is yet another lucky break for me.

So, you're the next one that wants to hear about me and Jerry and all the stuff that happened on our little adventure together, huh? Lessee. That a tape recorder you got there? Naw, I don't mind if you tape record anything I got to say. I'd rather you got it down on a spool of tape like that and then went back and told it right instead of trying to recollect it all and then screw it up royally like some of the other ones done.

Tell you what. You buy me a cold draft beer and punch off that start button there on your recorder and I'll begin at the beginning and end at the ending, just like it come about. Man alive! I'm so thirsty I'm spittin’ dust and coughin’ up cotton. It's hotter than forty hells out there today.

Where’d you say you was from? Oh. Well, you been down here in this part of God’s country enough to know about the Santa Ana winds ain't you? When them damned winds blow down out of the San Bernardinos pretty much like they're doing today, crazy shit happens. Same as they did the day all the stuff with Gray and me got started.

Them damn winds can dry a man out like the heat off Satan’s blast furnace. I’ve seen ‘em snatch the tears right out of a fellow’s eyes. Make you feel like a piece of kindlin’ tinder, ready to suddenly bust out in fire without no warning a’tall.

This kind of devil-wind and the dry-ass heat can make folks do screwy things, you know. They say robberies and murders and wife beatings and all that go up a far sight when the Santa Ana winds are blowing about. I don't doubt any of it for a dadburn second.

My third wife left me on a day just like this one. I can honestly say that that's the only one of the bunch I actually hated to see go, you know. I think, to this day, if it had been damp and foggy, or maybe if it had turned off clear and cool that morning, she might have let it all pass and just cracked me on the head with the skillet like she usually done. But not after the damn Santa Anas got her blood pressure all out of whack. No sir. Damn wind blew her right on out of my life in no time flat like I was no more than some old tumbleweed.

The waitress, who is notably attractive, steps out of the smoky darkness and sets down in front of Chauncey about the largest mug of beer I have ever seen. Then she puts her arm around his neck and tries to kiss him playfully on one cheek. He offers her the cheek but then suddenly twists his head around and gets her full on the lips. He pulls her down on top of him. She lands in his lap, laughing good-naturedly as she squirms out of his grasp, not offended by his move at all.

Chauncey, you know you're old enough to be my daddy.

And I may well be. Pretty damn good odds it’s the case, in fact, if you do the math on the possibilities. Come back here and give me the opportunity to look you over real good and let me see if I might can locate that distinguishing McKissack birthmark that usually shows up on the ass or upper thigh somewhere.

She laughs again and winks broadly before going on about her business.

When I first asked him if he would be willing to do an interview, Chauncey McKissack immediately suggested meeting at this particular hole-in-the-wall bar. And now I know why. He seems completely at home here in this dark place, aromatic with yeast and cigarettes and the sweat of working men.

He takes a small sip of the beer, as if performing some kind of formal wine-tasting ritual. The amber brew apparently meets his approval. He smacks loudly and takes a big slug that takes his breath and leaves him silent.

But he is quiet for only a moment.

You know, I could have just hauled off and strangled Jerry Gray right then and there and none of it would ever have happened. In retrospect, I definitely should have put him out of his misery, and the rest of us, too. First thing, when he started talking about it, I wanted to choke him with my bare hands. I knew he was down, lower than a snake's belly. Who the hell wouldn't have been, everything that had happened to the man?

But when he started talking about what he had got into his head to do to try to get past this latest stretch of rocky road, I thought for a second about maybe tying him to a tree and going for a walk for a month or two. I’d leave his ass there until he come to his senses and turned back into the usual dour and uninteresting feller he used to be before he begun to talk so silly.

But at that moment—the moment he was letting me in on his little scheme—I was busy, you see. Busy watching my beloved Dodgers. Looking at ‘em on that very television set right up yonder over the bar, by the way. And they were blowing another game in the ninth inning, as usual. Anyways, I was so busy wishing Tommy Lasorda (who is as close to a god as any man I can think of) was back in the dugout where he belonged, and that we had a relief pitcher that didn't have a arm like a San Francisco fairy—no offense--and that them dim-wits in the front office would please, God in heaven, trade for any-damn-body that could get a bat off his shoulder late in the game. Anyway, I was so busy being the general manager for the damn Dodgers that I never did get around to choking the bastard to death and saving us all a damn sight of trouble.

Who knows? If I’d of had sense enough, I might even could have talked him out of the whole thing with my well known persuasional talent. Ever’body says I could sell matches in hell. Ice water to Eskimos.

Maybe not, though. Not with Jerry Gray. Not this time.

I think he had already been studying on it for a long time already and probably had his mind made up for the most part before he ever spelled it out for me. There was no changing the boy’s mind.

The pink slip from Pacific Aircraft was the thing that finally cut it. The old boy had been teetering on the edge for a while, threatening to fall right off the bluff, and the pink slip me and him got from work that day and them damn hot winds blowin’ out of them mountains like somebody left the grate to hell open. Well, that was more’n enough to shove poor old Jerry right on over the cliff.

Here’s the deal. Jerry Gray never had been much of a talker.

Unlike yours truly, Jerry’s old man wasn't much of an accomplished conversationalist neither. Hell, I knew old Maxie Gray for thirty years, on and off. Worked with him at Pacific Aircraft for over twenty of ‘em, right there side-by-side in the harness shop most of the time.

I remember it as if it was this morning, that day he brought Jerry in and got him signed on to go to work at Pacific. The boy had gone away to school somewhere upstate, around Modesto, I think. One of them state schools that have decent football teams but don’t ever get to go to the Rose Bowl or play much on the TV. But the kid flunked out of college, I think. Got mixed up with a wild bunch, his daddy said. Maybe he snorted or imbibed too much of something, got himself drafted and spent some time in Vietnam, dangling out of one of them helicopters, shooting at shadows while his buddies picked up dead bodies and pieces of Marines. Jerry maybe talked about what it was like out there in that green-colored hell once or twice, but even then, just when it looked to me like he was gonna let go a torrent and get it all out once and for all, he’d shut down like somebody turned off the spigot.

Maxie was proud as could be, though, about his boy finally coming to work alongside him at Pacific, following the old man’s example. Wasn't but a couple of years, though, before Maxie got sick and ended up in that old-people's warehouse over in Cerritos and finally died. Least his boy come back to him from the war. Plenty of ‘em didn’t. And he got to work with his son for a few years, anyhow. Not many daddies get that chance.

Anyhow, where was I? Oh, yeah, the day me and him got cut loose from the job at Pacific.

Back then, when Pacific Aircraft had a contract that was threatening to run past the completion deadline, they would have hired a chimpanzee if he could hold a soldering iron or pull a length of cable through one of them stinking old C-130s we was always refurbishing. They sure as hell wasn't gonna pay all them millions of dollars in government penalties for not finishing up on time. Jerry had been a technician of some kind for a while when he was in the service so Pac Air snatched him up like the last cookie on the platter and put him right to work on one of the lead crews, ahead of some boys that had a whole bunch more seniority. Don’t get me wrong, though. None of them seemed to mind. They knew the kid could do the job better than they could. And there was that Vietnam thing. Hell, they liked the boy. And everybody liked his daddy, too.

Who the hell wouldn’t?

McKissack pauses as if he has finished the story. I should have known better. He eyes the bowl of nuts that rests in front of me but waits until I raise my eyebrows in response to his pointed stare.

You mind shoving them beer nuts over this way? I ain't had a chance to eat yet today, been so busy with balancing my stock portfolio and planning my trip to Europe and checking on my vast real estate holdings. By the way, I appreciate you picking out all the cashews and almonds and Brazil nuts before I got here, too. Otherwise, I would have been forced to eat them. These old peanut husks you left in here will do just fine, thanky.

He chews on a generous handful of the nuts for a bit, apparently deciding on where to go next with his narrative. I begin to wonder if he has forgotten where he was. Just when I am about to prompt him, he swallows a big draught of the beer and watches the television long enough to get the Dodgers score and decides to just pick up where he left off.

Getting laid off at the plant was nothing new for Jerry or