This Rough Beast

THIS ROUGH BEAST

FOR AMERICA -- BOOK TWO

Ken Kuhlken

Hickey & McGee, publishers

hickeybooks.com

Praise for Ken and his novels

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

... a pleasure to read. Novelist Anne Tyler

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

Copyright 2019 by Ken Kuhlken

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

Hickey & McGee

8697-C La Mesa Boulevard

La Mesa, CA 91942

hickeybooks.com

Smashwords Edition:

ISBN: 9780463152270

BISAC:

FIC031020 FICTION / Thrillers / Historical

FIC014000 FICTION / Historical / General


FIC019000 FICTION / Literary

FIC050000 FICTION / Crime

FIC008000 FICTION / Sagas

FIC038000 FICTION / Sports

FIC031010 FICTION / Thrillers / Crime

FIC031090 FICTION / Thrillers / Terrorism

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

Author's note:

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

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

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

Also, I can't begin to thank Jennifer Silva Redmond enough for her encouragement and help with proofreading.

My dedication to writing to this long, wild story is mostly about presenting a gift to my beloved children, Darcy, Cody, Zoë, and Nicholas, so they can vicariously experience life in some turbulent, exciting and ominous times. Sincere thanks to their mothers for collaborating in the creation and nurturing of such marvels as they have grown to be even while crazy ol' daddy spent thousands of hours working on and otherwise living what Darcy still calls the grass crisis.

Contents

Praise for Ken and his novels

Author's note

A Brief Reminder

FOR AMERICA, book two

THIS ROUGH BEAST:

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

11, 12, 13, 14, 15

A request

A preview of book three

Also by Ken K

About the author

A Brief Reminder

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

FOR AMERICA

And so, my fellow Americans: ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country. John F. Kennedy, 1961

THIS ROUGH BEAST

We starve, look at one another, short of breath, walking proudly in our winter coats, smells from laboratories, facing a dying nation. The Flesh Failures, 1968

1

From Editor Clifford Hickey:

Had I realized soon enough that my friend Otis even knew Cynthia Jones, I would surely have insisted he hear my dad’s stories about her. Maybe then he could have convinced Casey, Cynthia’s son and Otis’ best friend, that she was by no means only a harmless lunatic. Then maybe Casey would not have run off with his cousin, whom Cynthia called the Enemy, leaving Otis to mourn again.

He had already mourned over his dad's death, then over the death of his beloved grandma, and also over the plight of his mom whose illness stole away much of her mothering willpower. Now he had lost Casey.

Or, what they didn’t know about Cynthia was perhaps better left untold. Because if Otis and Casey had simply gone to pro baseball as it appeared they were destined to, our country might be doomed.

A couple things thing life has taught me

One: the future cannot be calculated using simple equations.

Two: just because someone -- such as Cynthia Jones -- is crazy, doesn’t mean she is wrong.

From Otis:


Vietnam is a stupid war, my girlfriend Denise said. This domino theory is phooey. The war is all about business, Mister Phipps says. Phipps, once my Civics teacher, was now hers.

My mom, as the widow of a WW II vet, declined to belittle the government’s ways, but she clearly was no fan of my risking my pitching arm in a war like my dad had risked and lost his. She said, Otis, you enrolled at the college and they waived your tuition, and paid for your books, and gave you a cushy job, and I think you owe them at least one season of pitching. After that, who knows?

Denise’s brother, my friend Willy, joined us one evening and pointed out that the survivor benefit I had gotten monthly from Social Security last fall, my one college semester before I dropped out, was forty dollars more than the U.S. Army paid privates. Denise, Willy, and Chloe, my mom, stared at me until at last I gave up and asked, Besides, with me gone to war, who would fix up this rickety house?

Not I, Willy said. I’m no handyman.

My mom rolled her eyes and made the overwrought face she had developed and practiced during her months in the hospital with spinal meningitis. And it’s too much for me.

The next day, I not only re-enrolled at State College but found Coach Cranford in his office and humbly requested he take me back onto his ball team.

Where’s Casey? he demanded.

I sighed and waited through one of the spells of angry petulance that befell me whenever Casey got mentioned. I wish I knew. Somewhere in the Midwest, according to his crazy mother.

Crazy, you say.

I nodded. I don’t think he’ll be back.

Another school take him?

Nope. I’m pretty sure of that.

Then he’ll get drafted. Not baseball. Army.

Yep.

Damn fool.

Even after I dropped out of college after one semester and followed Casey on a secret mission his lunatic mother assigned, and even though he ran off with his fugitive cousin and left me all alone and clueless in New York City, I couldn’t help but defend him. So I shook my head and declared, He’s no fool.

Coach heaved himself up and opened the locker room door. Pick out a locker. You’ll have to buy your own damned padlock."

2

Denise counted sixteen coffee houses within a mile of the college. Running a coffee house was a business for folks of the beat or hippie persuasion who usually hadn’t much money. Because they served only coffee, cider, and simple pastries like brownies, they didn’t need any liquor or full-service restaurant license.

The coffee houses gave high school and college kids cheap hangouts, and on nights when an establishment asked a cover charge in order to pay performers, the charge wasn’t much, because plenty of fine musicians favored Southern California and didn't expect to get wealthy.

We got treated to Lightnin’ Hopkins, Linda Ronstadt, Big Mama Thornton, Hoyt Axton, Steve Martin on banjo, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

Even the places that couldn’t afford name musicians survived by holding open mike nights or playing records, or by depending upon studious kids who sat poring over books, chess players, and people who wanted to talk or rant about the war and civil rights. While the kids who preferred booze and loud parties joined frats and sororities, Denise and I and sometimes Willy spent two or three evenings a week at the Upper Cellar, the Blind Alley, and the Candy Company, which was run by our friend Fred and his brother Cliff. At the Candy Company, Mr. Phipps the civics teacher hung out with Quakers who ran a draft-counseling service, Phoenix assured us, was knowing what to fight for and then fighting for it with all we had to give.

In February, at the start of college baseball season, I was second in the starting pitching rotation. I lost two games and logged a 4.3 ERA before Coach dropped me to number three starter, which meant in weeks when we only played two games, I didn’t start at all. And I rather preferred those weeks because when I pitched, most every inning I got stricken by moments of paralysis or delusion. My right arm might go strangely numb, or I might imagine that our catcher Bruce was Casey although Bruce was bronze-skinned and hadn’t a single freckle. And thinking about Casey brought moments of the angry petulance that made me tense and tweaked my mechanics so I hung curves or threw meatballs, down the middle and waist high. Sometimes, for a few seconds at least, I lost track of what I was supposed to be doing, like when we wake up from a dream and don't recognize where we are.`

Coach insisted that I simply wasn’t hungry. I had no