Executioner's Song, The - Norman Mailer [234]
A third of the Prosecutors in the Contra Costa office, the younger ones, smoked pot all the while they were working under bosses with narrow attitudes and that FBI mentality-white short-sleeved shirts and skinny black ties.
In one party at a two-story bungalow a half-dozen young Prosecutors, including Dennis, drifted up to the attic for a toke, while down below their bosses were imbibing alcohol in the living room.
The true juxtaposition between booze and grass. The bosses-you could say, the boozers-were down in hell, and Dennis and all his associates upstairs in heaven.
About then, Dennis got married to a beautiful woman, and helped raise her son. Dennis had been brought up by a stepfather and had ended as a stepfather. Good symmetry helped to maintain good emotion. It was a good marriage for a while. He left the D.A.'s office, did criminal defense, and enjoyed that. It was more dramatic to fight in Court for someone's liberty than to protect their money. He and his wife, Ariadne, during that time, also took a taste of the sensuous aspects of the right to play. The selfish things, good cars, French food, trips to Europe.
Then he and Ariadne went off in different directions. Divorce was a shock point. Dennis got less interested in his practice. Law was dealing with property problems, and here was he with psychological problems. He moved over into consciousness raising, and hung in with a Hindu named Harish. In orbit around the guru were physicists, poets, artists, physicians, musicians, and theatre people. A group of them formed Maya Modulation. They all put money into a sound film that was going to be made in India, but one of the members died over there. The whole thing kind of collapsed.
By '75, Dennis was fiat-out broke, and determined to live as a writer. Flopped in Ariadne Street in East Oakland with an old handball-playing partner, and a mad jogger. The house smelled of track shoes and sweat socks. Dennis slept on a couch in the front room for six months. There were dog's hairballs all over the house on Ariadne Street. Still, it was the name of his ex-wife. Good vibes in that synchronicity. He also had a couple of lady friends who took pity on a struggling writer and gave him nurturing.
But by '76, he was on a yo-yo. A couple of weeks of free room and board with his mother meant living with her annoyance that a successful young lawyer had let it all go. A couple of months with a buddy who ran an after-hours club meant no sleep and no writing.
Next he painted a house for his real father. Dennis was living by his wits. Of course, he loved brinkmanship.
But he decided to go back to the law. He also cared about responsibility. His real father was a pipe fitter, and Dennis never wanted to lose his identity with the working class. In fact, he'd even worked in college as a teamster. So now he took up this retainer for the bus drivers' union in Salt Lake and got ready to prepare a lawsuit against the bus companies who were not allowing bus drivers to use CBs. As Dennis saw it, CBs could save lives in emergencies. He was, therefore, commuting by Saab between California and Utah, when, on the last of these swings, he saw the dead man on the highway while coming back to Salt Lake to vote for Carter.
Dennis had already visited Temple Square and looked at the building where the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sang, and in the Visitors Center he had listened to the guide tell the story of God coming to Joseph Smith with the golden plates of the Angel Moroni. Dennis couldn't help it, he had a big reaction: there were these angels Mormon and Moroni, two angels directly under God, just as important as Peter and Paul in Mormon circles, and their names had something to tell him.
It was only after he had walked up to the Capitol Building and was standing on the steps, looking down the hill and out across Salt Lake City, that it came to him. From here, on a clear day, you could see across half of Utah. Only today it was