Amador Green
Book One
Chapters 1-3
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Chapter One
--Cross-Eyed, Bone-Zoned and Rosy

Marty "Moon Man" Marmoset and Alexander "Toker" MacPherd were partners, a pair of bosom pals who had rarely been out of each other's sight from early childhood, even all the way on up through the first crack of a voice change, first eruption of an armpit hair and notable Krakatoa splat of a pimple's magma on the mirror; just about any kind of hair or bodily excrescence worth mention, these two guys experienced it all, initially together--and they were buddies, full buddies in every sense of the thing, and plenty of other things going right on up through their early years of maturity when after not quite flunking out of high school, they had graduated "summa come lousy" as they would have it, to start working at their various jobs around Grass Valley, where truly being their mothers' sons they went on to become quite the pair of activists, as over the years, despite changes of town and county, they had remained steadfast in a major dedication so radical that in the view of some their old consciousness-raised friends, it might even be deemed extreme, the extent of their conviction, what with their refusal to eat meat or even so much as kill a bug, if they could help it (rather than hinder it); neither would they wear a leather belt, but suspenders only, and plastic shoes, green ones too, if they could get them, to match their identical "Greenspeak" caps, which they wore backward so that if ever you saw them coming you wouldn't know a thing about it till you saw them going the other way, down the dusty main street in the town of Dry Creek, Amador County, California.

One night, the two friends were sitting in their one room domicile by light of a purple lava lamp whose languorous glow formed its flowing coagulations over a cable spool table, as all the further it undulated to illuminate at the center between the two, a hand-carved Nepalese cedar-wood box that lay, lid open, to reveal a gleaming trove in jade encrusted do-dads of Indian brass paraphernalia, a pair of sterling Navajo silver turquoise jeweled clips, a tiny Chinese tea-bell, one short-stemmed clay pipe, and an ancient, multi-colored collection of French cigarette papers, all of which represented, table, box, bell, and candle, for the most part, the entire estate bequeathed to Alex by his Dad's will--may he, Alexander "Toker" MacPherd, the First, "Rest in Peace and Good, Good Loving," as Alex always smilingly said, in loving reverence, to speak in fond remembrance of a *Peace* which had always been viewed as something that probably "passeth all understanding" in the nature of a *good trip*.

Beside the table near Marty's chair was a portable stand boasting a CD playing computer loaded with World Wide Web ripped hits of Classic Rock, some 80's stuff too, and connected was all this to their 300 watt stereo that pushed a ring of 12 speaker cabinets completely surrounding these fellows and their table; all powered by battery stored energy from the hexagonal solar panels forming the entire exterior of this geodesic igloo which these two womb to tomb buddies had built from the ground up right there on the red earth of the California Mother Lode Amador County Outback.

On this Saturday night, the purple glow of the lava-lamp was just sufficient to illuminate the faces of these two blue-eyed chaps, Marty of the blonde beard, and Alex of a red which shone in this light as a flame in the tone of a setting California sun; with towels in hand, their Buffalo Bill length hair was let down to dry, following a weekly ritual of ablutions done in the suds of a solar heated hot-tub, a luxurious nicety mounted as inset to the deck upon which the dome also was founded and just now shaking, not by gesture of any shock of temblor or quake but due to the computer MP3 player going full tilt with the Rolling Stones' *Brown Sugar*.

Alex, wiping his red mustache after a hearty swig of his green macrobiotic beer, set the jar down, and looked across at his buddy: "Dude, I think we been resting here on our laurels long enough."

That's when there was a long, green, macrobiotic burp, upon which Marty was heard to ask, "What 'laurels'?"

"Well . . . " Alex rapped off a good one too, pumping his biceps to give a bit of finesse and pizzazz to it as the belch came, and when it was done, he went on: "Okay, look how long its been since we protested anything."

Marty shrugged. "You name it, I'll protest it. What you got?" He blasted a good one cupping his hands over his mouth for that pipe organ effect.

"Aw get serious, Moon Man because like . . . for example: how long's it been since we snuck out to a clear-cut and pounded some good ol' chain-bustin' spikes in the trees?"

"Couple years, mate."

"Dude! I call that slacking off."

Alex kept his eyes steady on his pal who was busy doing things with little papers and a pile of dead leaves heaped on a wildly colored antique copy of the San Francisco Oracle--another item from the MacPherd Estate. Alex went on: "It's time we got off our butts and right back into the swim of it again, Moon Man, and I mean especially this one they've got going for the rain forest, because that thing is important."

"Sure it is." Marty licked a cherry red paper. "But, it's not like we haven't done our part because lookit all the good we did already; back in the old Anti-Nuke days?"

Alex burped a couple of blasts to the beat of *Midnight Rambler* just coming on. "That was then, an' this is now."

"Dude, haven't you looked in the newspaper lately?" Having finished with his hands he put the product of his effort between his lips and started searching with his hands in the dark over the surface of the table. "I mean, cool, I hear what you say, but I don't know what we could do about a huge ol' jungle in somebody else's backyard halfway around the world." Finding a box of wooden kitchen matches, he struck one and looked at Alex in the light of it. "Shoot!" They ain't hardly got the juice to run a damn mail order electric cat-box in this state anymore, and that's thanks to us!" He raised the match to the end of the article in his lips. "We put in our time climbing the nuclear fence; so now they got the rolling blackouts, and we . . . " He lit the joint.

"Oh, yes."

"We got the rockin' sun-juice, Baby."

"Do tell!"

"Oh yeah. We got the China Cat Sun Power from outer space, My Man."

"Yes!" With the joint on a smoke, Marty reached over and clicked a tune, *China Cat Sunflower*, by the Grateful Dead.

Alex raised his green 12 ounce Mason jar of beer and so did Marty. They clashed them together, got up and danced a doh-si-doh around the table for about three minutes, before they took a mind to sit back down.

Marty, his grin spreading from ear to ear, gave his buddy another good solid clink, and after a few good gulps, he set down the jar; from the ashtray, he picked up the joint and took a few quick pecks at it; he let some of the smoke go up his nose; he put it back to his lips as Alex with widening eyes watched it burn up half the length in one draw. Passing it, with his breath held in check, Marty rasped, "But, what did you have in mind to do, more than we already done, Bro?"

"Moon Dude," said Alex, after a quick kiss at the end of the joint, "Have you ever seen the way..." he took another quick hit, "...barnacles grow on the back of a Gray California whale?" He sneezed out a little, which caused him to look at Marty cross-eyed.

Marty looked back at him over the rim of his green jar and said, "No, man, I have not ever seen the way barnacles growed on the back of a whale."

"Well," said Alex MacPherd, passing the joint, "that is something to see."

Marty ripped a snort up his nose, popped the roach into the air, caught it on his tongue and washed it down with a swallow of beer; he smacked his lips and said, "Is it now?"

"With my own eyes, I saw it." Alex observed Marty reaching across to a shelf under the computer for a florescent tape-wrapped paper towel tube with half a cigar-sized joint sticking out a hole in the top of it.

Alex settled back. "Back in the old days, when I was a kid in L.A. and still eating the dead bodies of my fellow creatures, I was out fishing one day off that big breakwater they got down there off San Pedro, when all of a sudden --WHOOSH!"

Marty's eyes widened along with his billowing cheeks as he fired up; his voice on release of a hand came like the gravelly croak of a bullfrog trumpeted through the end of the tube. "Woooo."

"Yeah! I'm down there; I'm fishing; I'm casting a bubble and Bonita feather. I'm right on the ocean at Cabrillo beach, out on the breakwater and WHOOSH!"

Marty passed him the tube. "Mondo Bongo!"

Alex toked, held it, and wheezed, "So, Dude, I turn and Holy Jonah, man: it's this huge, enormously fat, big ol' whale!"

"Where?"

"Right there!"

"Nah!"

"You know I don't lie." Marty grinned, accepting the bong. Alex went on: "Hey! I coulda damn near reached out and touched him. Here he was, close enough to swallow me in one gulp, give me my just dessert right there."

"Like, *his* dessert."

"No way, Dude. Whales are vegetarians like you 'n me."

"You sure?"

"Well, some more than others, but . . . "

"Ah, I might o' heard different on the Nature Channel."

"Dude? You wanna hear what happened or what?

"Yeah! What that whale do if he didn't eat ya?" He toked.

"Didn't eat me, just kept cruisin' on by, divin' down a little as they go, an' comin' back up all along the breakwater, how it curves, way on around to the lighthouse, and that's where he found his way out of the harbor." He raised his jar. "I'll tell you what, and this is no foolin': I could feel the humungous mind of that whale, man. And all around that huge head is where it was at, man: it was a mountain of mind, right there."

"Whoa."

"Ooo! That space between him an' me was just crackling with vibes of brain lightnin'. I mean, do we know vibes or don't we?

Marty nodded, handing him the bong. "We dig the vibes, man."

"Uh-huh. Well that whale's mind was hummin', Dude."

After a toke, Alex wheezed, "But that huge mind goin' by was a worried mind, ya see." Alex had a faraway look in his eye as he passed the bong. "It was from the way he would look at stuff as he went swimming by down along the jetty, following the curve. Worry and hope. Hope and worry, huge as the world dude. Powerful."

Raising a hand of peace and understanding, Marty said, "You're cool man. Your vibe is clear, reception is here. But, howcome you got this on your mind? We were talking about, like, the rain forest, and now you got us on the humungous mind vibes of the whale."

"Moon Man, these things are all one in the Great Scheme of Things."

"How could I forget? Why shoot! Any magic mushroom happy hippy from Hallelujah Gulch knows that."

"Darn tootin. So, what I am saying here is that we go down to San Francisco Bay and rescue us one of them stranded whales they get down there, and . . .

"And what? Rescue us a whale! What for?"

"Be cool, be open, have a huge mind, dude and then you will see how we could rig that baby with a harness and raft, y'see and..."

"What?" Marty looked down the hole of the bong. He bent over to sniff the stash piled on the Oracle. "What we been smokin', here, my man?" He pulled the joint from the hole in the bong and looked in there.

"It's the barnacles, man! They are coarse and scratchy, so you could . . . "

"Barnacles!" He picked up some of the stash and let it fall back out of his fingers watching it. "I thought this was our own home grown."

"It is! And that ain't what . . ."

"Dude. What was in that fertilizer you come home with? We got a hundred bricks of this year's crop to unload here; we got customers to think of, we got . . . "

"Moon Man. You are not listening."

"Oh yes. Yes I am. I totally heard you say something about putting a harness on a whale, and like, okay, so I'm thinking we got barnacles on the brain from this weed. Now, where'd ya say you got that fertilizer?"

"Moonie Dude, it's the same fertilizer we always get, the same old horseshit."

"You sure it's the same old horseshit?"

"Whaddaya want--my hand on the I Ching while I solemnly swear?"

"No, no. Okay. You're cool. Now what the hell are you talking about?"

"Groove down, Dude: You buckle a heavy-duty, strap of canvas around that whale, and it would catch on the barnacles, and that way you got yourself a harnessed whale. Dig it Dude: it's just like in Moby Dick!"

"Moby Dick?"

"They harpoon the whale and the whale tows the whaling boat."

"Damn!" Marty looked again in the bong, and then tossed it across the room.
Alex watched it bounce off the dome wall. "Heeey. It could work, Dude. Try to hang loose and catch the groove."

He turned back to face Alex: "I'm tryin' but...like, you're talking about harnessing a whale to go somewhere? On a whale?"

"Like down to the Rain Forest to save the trees, man! Down to the rain forest to save the trees, Dude. Down to the rain forest to save the trees!"

After thinking for a while, Marty said, "Well, what's the matter with these trees around here?"

"Not a thing. But those Amazon trees are giving oxygen to the whole earth. It's a whole earth thing, man. A global responsibility we got."

Marty shrugged and shook his head.

"What if you could train a whale not to dive too deep? Like, they train Killer Whales all the time so they will jump through hoops, do any cool thing you want 'em to. This you should know."

"This I do know, as you darn well know, since we are subscribed to the Nature Channel, and because we watch it a lot." Marty took a big green gulp. "We like the Nature Channel in this house."

"Damn right. So, I'm telling you, based on everything we've learned by watching that, we know how the brain in this California Gray whale is bigger and wiser and fifty times friendlier than the brain of a Killer Whale all because the Gray whale is mainly a vegetarian."

"Nah, not all of 'em, not entirely."

"Okay, so they eat some seafood, but that's cool 'cause they can't be blamed for what gets in their mouth by accident, an' it's not like they ate that sea-food on purpose?"

Marty shrugged.

"Wasn't like goin' down to Fisherman's Wharf and ordering a live-boiled crab, right out on purpose."

Marty shrugged, having to acknowledge the sense of that.

"Cool. Okay, now dig: it's a friendly mind, not a killer mind in that whale which I know 'cause of how I could feel it was a friendly mind. And now I tell you that if I could feel what that whale had on his mind, so far as what he was hoping to do, why couldn't a whale feel from our minds what we might be hoping to do?"

"What? Like, go down to South America and pound some big ol' chain bustin' spikes in them Rain Forest trees fer the godsakes?"

"You got it." Alex sat back and grinned while he awaited his friend's reaction.

Marty looked at Alex and after a couple times of trying to start talking, he finally said, "Okay, we go down to the bay and rescue us a beached whale."

"Right."

"We get one with lots of barnacles so a canvas harness will stick and hold on him."

"You got it."

"You use canvas with grommets so's you can run lines aft of the whale in order to tow a raft."

"That's it." He watched Marty shaking his head. "What's the matter?"

"Dude, it all sounds just too . . . " he sighed, "perfect and sensible and easy to me."

"Huh?"

"Something's got to be missing."

Alex kept grinning all the more. "I can't imagine what."

After a healthy swallow, Marty burped. "Okay," He cut loose another short one. "So just what kind of raft might you be talking about, here?"

"Could be anything." Alex shrugged, then he snapped his fingers."Remember those big 'ol tractor tubes we used to float the River on?"

Marty narrowed his eyes to give it the skeptical treatment; one eye got so narrow that it closed all the way. "I remember . . . when we used to go floating down South Fork to the nude beach!"

Alex slammed a hand to the table. "Hoo Haw! Eighth grade--I forgot about those days. I was thinkin' about the Russian River when we was . . . "

"Forgot them days! Dude? That was your greatest genius stroke of all time!" He sprayed Alex with beer from laughing so hard. "How we bought those snorkels and periscopes?"

"Be cool!" Alex lifted the towel from his lap. "Hold the phone." He put it on over his head. "Don't tell me! I won't be able to stand it. "

Marty had to grab the table to stop from rolling off his chair. "Are ya ready, Toker?"

"No. No!"

"An' we came floatin' down like Captain Nemo and Kirk Douglas, dangling from bungees under the tubes, camouflaged with spray-painted gunny sacks to look like river rocks . . ."

Alex raised a fist. "Up Periscope!"

"And blow the ballast, matey!" Marty swung his jar on high.

When they were all done splitting their guts, Alex put the towel down around his shoulders. "What more you want?"

Marty narrowed his eyes again. "Whaddaya need?"

"A whale raft, Dude."

Silently, Marty considered it; then he said, "How 'bout a duckboat?"

"Duckboat. Wait. Do I hear a duckboat?"

"Sure!"

"No way! This is the Pacific Ocean, Moon Man, you can't just . . . "

"Dude? I'm talking about a duckboat plus innertubes."

"Huh?"

"Strap the duckboat with bungees to a double layer of big ol' Monster Truck tubes, man, get 'em big as they come and that way we sit in the duckboat, high and dry, eatin' peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, all the way down to South America, man.

Alex's eyes slowly widened, till he had his hand up for a big old high five.
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