Chronicles - Bob Dylan [22]
One time Clayton and myself came in late and Ray was asleep in a big chair — he looked like he was asleep in the room with the light on his face — dark hollows under his eyes, face caked with sweat. It looked like he was dreaming a dead dream. We just stood there. Paul is tall, has dark hair, Vandyke beard, resembles Gauguin the painter. Paul takes a deep breath and seems to hold it forever and then he turns around and leaves.
Ray dressed in a variety of ways. Sometimes you’d see him in a striped suit with a wing-shaped collar, pleated pants that were pegged. Sometimes he’s in a sweater, corduroy trousers, country boots. A lot of times he dressed in overalls like a garage mechanic. He wears a long coat. Tan. Camel’s hair. Wore it over everything.
Within the first few months that I was in New York I’d lost my interest in the “hungry for kicks” hipster vision that Kerouac illustrates so well in his book On the Road. That book had been like a bible for me. Not anymore, though. I still loved the breathless, dynamic bop poetry phrases that flowed from Jack’s pen, but now, that character Moriarty seemed out of place, purposeless — seemed like a character who inspired idiocy. He goes through life bumping and grinding with a bull on top of him.
Ray wasn’t like that. He wasn’t somebody who would leave any footprints on the sands of time, but there was something special about him. He had blood in his eyes, the face of a man who could do no wrong — total lack of viciousness or wickedness or even sinfulness in his face. He seemed like a man who could conquer and command anytime he wished to. Ray was mysterious as hell.
Through the narrow passageway, trailing through the apartment that led past one or two Victorian type rooms, there was another room — a larger one with a big window that backed up to an alley. The space was configured into a work-shop with all kinds of paraphernalia piled up. Most things either on a table with a long wooden top, or on another one with a slate surface. There were some iron flowers on a spiral vine painted white leaning in the corner. All kinds of tools laying around — hammers, hacksaws, screwdrivers, electricians’ pliers, wire cutters and levers, claw chisels, boxes with gear wheels — everything glistening in the backlight of the sun. Soldering equipment and sketch pads, paint tubes and gauges, electric drill — cans of stuff that could make things either waterproof or fireproof.
Everything in plain sight. A lot of firearms, too. You’d think that Ray was part of the police force or a licensed gun-smith or something. There were different parts of guns — of pistols, large frame, small frame, Taurus Tracker pistol, a pocket pistol, trigger guards, everything like in a compost heap — altered guns…guns with shortened barrels, different brands of guns — Ruger, Browning, a single-action Navy pistol, everything poised to work, shined out. You’d walk into this room and feel like you were under the vigilance of some unsleeping eye. It was weird. Ray was anything but a macho tough guy. I asked him once what he did with all this stuff back there, what it was for. “Tactical response,” he said.
I’d seen guns before. My old hometown girlfriend, my Becky Thatcher had a father who wasn’t anything like Judge Thatcher. He had had a lot of guns laying around, too. Mostly deer rifles and shotguns, some long-barreled pistols and that was pretty creepy. She lived in a log house past the edge of town, off the asphalt. It was always kind of dangerous over there because the old man had a reputation for being mean. It was funny because her mother was the kindest woman