Summer Fiction Issue!

Though with only one piece--an exclusive excerpt from my novel in progress, with appropriate musical soundtrack from Bob Dylan and The Band.

Today we depart from our daily collection of short takes, but this draft of a first chapter does fit the usual mode of music, humor and politics. Three thousand words, so you might want to read some and return. Then, more than usual, let me know what you think—especially if you are a book editor, publisher or agent! (Jane Smiley has read the chapter and responded: “Amusing and appealing—a lot of funny lines.”) Thanks if you give it a go. First, a timely cartoon…

This Wheel’s On Fire

AS THE SUN rose behind the haunted house on Parnassus Lane, Katie plugged in her guitar and played.  It was the day of the annual talent show, but talent at her school was spread pretty thin, so a performance of “Highway 61 Revisited” with Katie’s band, Clean Underpants, backing up her History teacher, a borderline lunatic, would likely be the highlight.  Who’d have thought that Katie, not her father, would be first to play lead guitar on a Dylan song before a paying audience? It was a dream come true, but for the wrong person.      

The song, recorded nearly thirty years before Katie was born, meant nothing to her.  She cared deeply about the show, however.  That’s why she was stirring at seven this morning, practicing before school, even though she hated Dylan and mocked him around the house--pure blasphemy, given where she lived.  Katie considered Bob Dylan old and over the hill.  She even thought Jakob Dylan was old and over the hill.  Her father put up with it, knowing she would graduate soon and skip off to college.

While Katie punished her guitar,  Mooney got ready to drive her to school.  He had no choice.  His wife, Sara, had spent the night in New York,  where she had met a famous scientist for dinner.   If she was having an affair it would be hard to blame her, though, of course, he would.   Blonde, willowy and relatively unwrinkled, Sara was one of the best-preserved women (of a certain age) in town.  Mooney called her a “babe emeritus.” She looked like Tea Leoni and was still quite limber, since she was, in her spare time, an even bigger Woodstock cliché than her husband:  She was an environmental activist and yoga instructor. 

To show his love,  Mooney cooked her exotic meals, took her to  foreign films (even though he now had trouble reading the subtitles) and tended to her many needs in bed.   He clung to the belief that after more than twenty years together this was sufficient.  Mooney had not made the mistake of marrying someone crazier than him.  He had done something far more dangerous.  He had married someone smarter, thinner, better looking--and even more flirtatious.  

Making matters worse, he hadn’t had a hit record in twenty-five years.  Hell, he hadn’t released a record of any kind for five years,  hadn’t finished a song in longer than that, and his most recent CD was a Best Of collection with just ten tracks.  (You get a Best Of album instead of a Greatest Hits album if you only have one hit.)  Mooney was his own musical category:  the one-hit wonder who had not disappeared.  He once told a reporter that he planned to change the title of that one hit from “Take the Highway” to “Sui Generis.”  Past his peak he wrote love songs no one made love to, protest anthems that sent no one to the streets.

Fortunately, his one gold record had just been recycled in a car commercial.   Is America great or what?   Mooney had the foresight and  good fortune to anticipate the SUV craze.  No, he could not even take credit for that, it was just bum luck (an apt phrase in this case).   Subaru, for some reason,  had picked “Take the Highway,” a catchy ‘80s drug song, for a TV spot promoting the Gargantua, its mammoth all-terrain vehicle.   From that he had earned (if that is the word) a $100,000 reward he didn’t have the faintest idea what to do with.

Mooney grew up idolizing Bob Dylan,  and now they were both shilling for Madison Avenue.  Dylan had just sold “Lay Lady Lay” to Dial-a-Mattress, grabbing five times what Mooney got for “Take the Highway.” 
(One might call this poetic justice.) Otherwise, Mooney was in a rut, and he seemed to lack the four-wheel mental drive to climb out.   And if  he was going nowhere fast, why did it take so long to get there?  But, at last, he’d decided to do something about it.  He was about to test the adage that there are no second acts in American life.  In a few days he would embark on his first tour in over ten years, and his life, he prayed, would never be the same.  (Below, “I Shall Be Released,” Dylan and The Band and others at The Last Waltz.)

MOONEY LOVED driving his daughter to school in his new SUV  (part of his payoff from Subaru), even when it was snowing, like today, and even though they rarely spoke during the trip.  Katie barely had the energy to get dressed and refuse breakfast in the morning let alone form a coherent sentence.  “Tesxt me at school” was her favorite a.m. expression.  Like her father  she didn’t believe in making small talk just to be polite.  He  regarded this as a sign of mutual respect, but wondered if they were drifting apart.  

Silence was seeping into all of his other relationships, too.  He’d never suffered fools gladly and now he didn’t suffer them at all--and they were everywhere in Woodstock. 

Mooney enjoyed the ride to school because he got to play deejay,  trading off with Katie along the way.  They’d spin one song apiece on the CD player, so each had to shut up and pretend to listen half the time.  His daughter would select something current and grating,  while he tried to educate her with a relic from the distant past (from The Kinks to Elvis Costello).  Katie referred to this as “paleo-rock.” 

“I hear Dylan and his kids argued about music all the time, too,” he said this morning as they neared the school.

“Probably because he made them listen to his own stuff,” she shot back,  sweetly.   That was one mistake Mooney never made.

Mooney liked to keep hip to current music in case he started hitting on younger women again after his shows.  Besides, he never knew where he might steal his next riff.  He’d ripped off a melody from Prince about a decade ago and no one  cared, or complained if they did care (maybe because the song was so lame).   God knows, he had to steal nearly everything nowadays, including affection, even from his own daughter.  

Poor Katie was still flummoxed by the song she had to play that night.  Now she asked her dad,  “What does that Dylan song mean anyway?”  Sadly, he could not help her.  This was a man who, when he was a boy, thought Dylan was  “stuck inside a mobile,” not  “stuck inside of Mobile.”

Katie, in fact, looked like a young Mooney—dark curls, a little fleshy, with striking green eyes and handsome  features.  “If they ever make a movie about my life,” he once told her, “you could cut your hair and play me.”

“Why would anyone make a movie about you?” she answered. (Below, The Band at Woodstock, “Tears of Rage.”)

AFTER DEPOSITING his daughter at school, Mooney headed  home.  As usual he felt chilled inside his parka.  He preferred leather jackets but dead animal hides had been banned from his house for years.  Snow barely fluttered but the wind howled, and the SUV,  with acres of unused cargo space, shimmied and swayed.  His wife claimed it was so huge it had its own zip code,  that it burned so much gas it needed an onboard oil refinery.   Coming from her these were not jokes but accusations. 

Despite the gusts,  he gunned it all the way until, on a curve,  the SUV skidded and its two left wheels lifted slightly off the road.   Mooney thought he was a dead man but the wind died, the wheels dropped and the nearest ditch sighed with disappointment as he screeched to a stop on the shoulder.  (God was trying to tell him something, but what?)  After that, he drove slower, which gave  him more time to worry that his song might be leading consumers to the slaughter.   

As it turned out, the right song for the Subaru jingle was not  “Take the Highway”  but  “Rollin’ and Tumblin’.” 

Arriving home,  Mooney looked forward to breakfast,   coffee and The New York Times.  No longer did he stop for triple lattes at Bread Alone  (he’d taken to calling them “triple bypass lattes”).  These were his mild and crazy days, and it seemed like they might last forever.     Mooney was not suffering from a mid-life crisis.  If anything he was suffering from the absence of a mid-life crisis.   He feared he had slept right through it—like dozing off watching a second-rate movie and missing the one exciting scene in the middle.

“Don’t you have an inner child screaming to escape?” his friend Nick, the town drunk, once asked.

“My inner child,” Mooney replied, “has grown up and moved out.”  So when Katie left for college he would be an empty nester twice over.

At least the college was close by, in case Katie had to rush home—if her father needed her.  For it was Mooney, not his daughter, who was on the spot now.   He had long justified his career slump by telling himself (and others) that, like John Lennon, he had simply dropped out to help raise a terrific kid.  But now Katie was leaving home, after so many years, bye-bye.   So much for the child-rearing excuse.

After plunging his coffee,  Mooney fried up the hunk of  bacon  he’d hidden in the refrigerator the day before.  He was a strict vegetarian,  but  every chance he got  (when his wife wasn’t around) he sneaked a slab of meat.    He was like the faithful husband who visits prostitutes but doesn’t consider that cheating on his wife. 

Bursting with protein, he happily assumed his usual position in the country kitchen, occupying the wood rocker with coffee and newspaper close at hand.   He was wearing his home uniform of faded jeans and faded corduroy shirt—a fashion statement that, perhaps, said a bit too much.   Sunlight filtered through a bay window frosted with ice.  Even when his wife was around,  working on multimedia projects for environmental groups, they never had sex in the morning.  They made love only  at night and at best once a week.   Woodstock still had the drugs and the rock ‘n roll.  What happened to the sex?  Actually, he had no reason to complain, but being a man, he could, would, and did. 

Even skimming,  he took great interest in the Times this morning.  He still followed politics and social uproar,  at a safe distance.  The Times had become a fever chart to measure his own suffering, making writer’s block and sexual ennui seem trivial in comparison.  Every day it published dozens of items about people or entire nations in far worse straits than him:  a mayor arrested for drugs; a  family slain by an intruder;  a country in Africa he’d never heard of devastated by famine.  These types of stories had once been fodder for his songs, when he still wrote songs—back when he rhymed “ricochet” with “Pinochet” and even spelled both words correctly.    Then there were the tragedies that hit close to home, such as the jazz singer who threw herself out the window of her  Central Park West apartment;  and other cautionary tales  (“Professor Shot by Spouse After Affair With Grad Student”).  At least he didn’t have to worry about STDs.  Did he?  How much did he trust his wife?  (Below, The Band at Woodstock, “The Weight.”)

FINISHING HIS newspaper, Mooney had only a second cup of  coffee to look forward to the next few hours, so he retreated to his fallback position on his four-poster bed down the hall.   Head against a pillow, he liked to daydream about radically changing his life.  It didn’t help that he lived in a small town, even if that town was wild and wooly Woodstock, New York. 

Woodstock was one of the few places left where your sign was more important than your Facebook page.  The candy store sold chocolate Buddhas and a bakery called itself Grateful Bread.    The gardening center claimed it was “hoelistic.”  A realty company went by the name Surreal Estate.  When federal law mandated that radio stations must have four call letters, Woodstock’s FM station changed its name from  WOW to WACK.  The housewares shop featured Now & Zen alarm clocks and the liquor store peddled pesticide-free wines from California. 

A few years back, when the indigenous New Agers earned national  attention  celebrating  the   “harmonic convergence”  of  the planets,  Mooney wrote a letter to the Woodstock Times referring to it as  the  “harmonic   disturbance” that  was   causing  a  “moronic  convergence.”     This  was  just  one  reason  he  had  few  friends  left  in Woodstock.

The locals were always protesting something, whether they hailed from the Woodstock Generation or not.  His wife was often among the militants.   Just as bad, Woodstock’s idea of humor was,  “What did the Buddhist say to the pizza man?  Make me one with everything.”   Or:   “How many meat eaters do you need to change a light bulb?  None--they’d rather not see how their food is made.”   Still, Mooney loved the place, even though he was not a child of the ‘60s.   (By rights, he should be living in the Watergate, not in Woodstock.)   His favorite spot was a private yard just off Tinker Street where someone kept beat-up bicycles that anyone could take for a spin, no questions asked.  A sign on a tree called it the Old Spokes Home.   A  bucket nearby carried the message,  “If you fear change, leave it here.”

Mooney often explored the Web, and constantly checked his email in case an old girlfriend or one of his faceless social media floozies contacted him (they rarely did).   He played AOL’s music trivia game until his name came up as an answer--and only 12% of his fellow experts guessed correctly.    One time for fun, long ago, he created his own chat room and called it  JackMooneyFans.   It  attracted just one visitor, who mistook him for a gay porn star.   He tried to sell  albums,  and other Mooney memorabilia,  on eBay  but no one bid more than a  dollar.  When he thought he could handle even more rejection he consulted the Amazon.com sales ranking for his latest  CD.   It rarely moved, and when it did, the direction was down.  

One night he Googled his name hoping to discover he still had a cult following, or at least remained worthy of music industry gossip.  It turned ugly in a hurry.  Who knew there were so many crooked politicians, and convicted killers,  named  Jack Mooney?  The links to his own life that did appear were mainly “Where Are They Now?” jokes,  stories about his sorry role in Subaru’s new ad campaign  (“New Jingle Unsafe At Any Speed”), and embarrassing message board postings by or about him. One was posted by his own wife.

AFTER CONFIRMING that  the  U.S.  still  hated  Iran,  and vice  versa, via CNN and MSNBC (who could believe anything on Fox?),  Mooney was almost ready for lunch, but as usual these days it wasn’t easy getting out of bed.  The furnace was blasting, which made him drowsy.   The setting of the house was dreamy, too, with acres of trees, a fine view of Overlook  Mountain, and only one neighbor across the road.   It was extravagantly quiet, except for the whispering pines.

A home with heft, it had three bedrooms, a full garage and a finished basement.  It was the kind of house  he normally wouldn't  be caught dead in--a postwar split-level with cheap vinyl siding—and it was too far from town, according to his wife and daughter.  But it had a couple things  going for it:  It was big, and it was pink. In fact, it was Big Pink.

Next to Graceland, it was arguably the most  famous house in rock 'n roll history, if you don't count "The House of the Rising Sun" and   "The House That Jack Built."   Back in 1967 its cinderblock cellar  spawned not only Dylan’s Basement Tapes (the world’s first bootleg album) but also The Band’s debut,  Music from Big Pink.   Dozens of  songs conceived or  recorded here, such as Dylan’s  “I Shall Be Released” and “This Wheel’s on Fire,” and The Band’s “The Weight,”  would change the course of popular music.   It was, among other things, the first true underground rock. 

Mooney called it  “the haunted house.”  Its latest owner had rented it to Dylan freaks on weekends for awhile.  Then he decided to go all the way and rent to a Dylanite (i.e. Mooney)  full-time.

 Dylan fans often visited Big Pink on a holy pilgrimage.  They would  drive by, stop, and maybe get out and snap a picture, grinning like fools. The house appeared unchanged since it graced the cover of  Music from Big Pink.  It was charming—a miracle—that it was still pink, as if each of its many owners  agreed that changing its color would be like painting the White House blue.  Occasionally someone came to the door and asked to see the basement.   Mooney welcomed the strangers because he shared their sense of purpose; after all, he resided in this shrine as a kind of perpetual  pilgrimage.   And, frankly, he had nothing better to do than show them around. Everyone seemed thrilled that another singer/songwriter lived in Big Pink,  even if they’d never heard of him.   

His daughter, unfortunately, had no special reverence, even reference, for Big Pink beyond feeling it was “sort of cool” that something famous happened in her home, although it would have been much cooler if it had been the setting for a scandalous music video, not a stupid Bob Dylan session.  

The reason Mooney came to Big Pink (besides its modest rent)  was  simple:  He hoped it would unlock his writer’s block.   He didn’t believe any of that Woodstock nonsense about “vibes” and “karma,” but he hoped that visiting the basement every day—if only to scoop the cat litter there—would shame him into realizing his so-called potential.  It was both long shot and short cut.   But so far, nothing was delivered--no music from Big Pink.  If these walls could talk what they would probably say is:  Stop cheating,  Mooney.  Get a real job.

But cheating, in one form or another, had become a way of life for him.  Mooney was a serial cheater.  He cheated musically, maritally, and politically, though never at the same time, for he had trouble maintaining a deception.   Fortunately, in behaving badly,  he was in good company.   The sad fact is:  People cheat.   They cheat on their taxes.  They cheat at cards. They cheat on spending time with  their children, and their children cheat on tests.   They cheat their talent chasing the almighty dollar, and cheat fate whenever they think they can get away with it (which is always).  

When they diet they cheat on calories.  They cut in line.  They steal ideas from their colleagues  and call it  "networking" or "optimizing"  or "cooperative work."   CEOs cheat their shareholders, who cheat on their expense accounts.  They walk against the light, when they’re not jay-walking.  They wear padded bras and hair pieces, and still feel lousy.  If their chin sags they visit a plastic surgeon, who fleeces them on his fee.  They shop lift and download music and movies illegally.   They visit web sites with names like Cheat Planet, Cheating Husbands, and Cheat Elite ("where the elite cheat").  They make up screen names and tweet under multiple personalities, where they argue with  their own alter egos.

They cheat on their promises. They betray their ideals.  They even cheat death, but only for so long.

CONTINUING TO channel surf, Mooney finally came across the Subaru commercial.  As always, he couldn’t hide a smile, even though it used just fifteen seconds of his song, the music was now infected by violins, and a macho voice (sounding disturbingly like William  Shatner) sang the snappy if insipid chorus:  “Take the highway…it’s my way.”   He still had not heard from his wife, which made him wonder what  Sara was really doing in New York.  

As it turned out, Mooney hadn’t timed lunch quite right, because it was still only 11:30 and he was afflicted with the neurotic inability to eat the midday meal before noon, no matter how hungry he was.   So he did what he usually did when he had time to kill, what a thrill.  He ambled over to Katie’s room across the hall, pulled her Les Paul guitar out of  its case, plugged it into an amp--and gave the strings a thrashing. 

Born too late for the psychedelic ‘60s, he was averse to punk in the ‘70s and too old to consider grunge later.  Besides, he’d established himself in the (obsolete) “singer-songwriter” niche and there was no way his dwindling audience would ever accept him as an electric guitar god.  He could go rap before he could go rock.  So he avenged the days he never got to play “Gloria” and “Wild Thing” by mangling them over in his daughter’s room.  No one ever played “Born to Be Wild” with more enthusiasm, or less sincerity.  It was harmless, except to his eardrums (which were already failing, according to his doctor) and to his two fat cats, Steve and Earl.  

Who needed masturbation when you could wank off like this?  It was viagra for the soul.  (Should he take this vibe on the road? He had too much of nothing to lose.) Finishing a primitive “Purple Haze,” it was all he could do to keep from smashing the instrument over the amp, and then ODing.  Mooney wiped a rare drop of sweat from his brow, returned the guitar to its case and, nearly exhausted, headed to the kitchen (where he’d hidden a small steak) for lunch.  Perhaps he had a new reason to live. When he’d told Katie that he once endorsed the notion of “hope I die before I get old,” she replied, “I agree, but even if I do get old—at least Billy Joel and Rod Stewart will be gone.” ### (Below, Dylan, “You Ain’t Goin’ Nowhere,” 1971.)

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Greg Mitchell is the author of a dozen books, including the bestseller The Tunnels (on escapes under the Berlin Wall), the current The Beginning or the End (on MGM’s wild atomic bomb movie), and The Campaign of the Century (on Upton Sinclair’s left-wing race for governor of California), which was recently picked by the Wall St. Journal as one of five greatest books ever about an election. His new film, Atomic Cover-up, just had its world premiere and is drawing extraordinary acclaim. For nearly all of the 1970s he was the #2 editor at the legendary Crawdaddy. Later he served as longtime editor of Editor & Publisher magazine. He recently co-produced a film about Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony.