Not so long after I moved up here, they hung the Indian in the jail. Sheriff's deputies. They hung him. Three of them. As inevitably occurs, sooner or later, with everyone who works in law-enforcement, these men, they had decided, that the law, it was them. Not the statutes. Not the courts. Not the system. Not the process. Them. And, according to their law, as they conceived and decreed it, sometimes, someone who came into their jail, that person, needed to be dead.

The first two men they killed, they were locked up on serious charges. However, due to the bungling Barney Fifes and hapless Hamilton Bugers, in the cop shop and in the district attorney's office, it was not at all certain, that they would be convicted. There was also, of course, the possibility they were actually innocent. But these three law jockeys, they paid that no mind. They went ahead and killed them. First the one. Then, a couple years later, the other. "Suicide." Duly pronounced so, by the county coroner. A "doctor," allowed only to examine dead people. Because any live person, upon whom he might "practice" medicine, that person, surely, and soon, would be quite dead.

The Indian, he was not in on any serious charge. He'd been picked up but for public drunkenness. Generally, such a person, he would just be held overnight, and then be released. But, for some reason, the three deputies, they decided to hang him. It's not certain, to this day, why. Maybe, posits one theory, he gave them some lip. The Indian, he was known to have a mouth on him. And, all law-enforcement officers, they believe that they possess, a natural-born right, to harass, intimidate, arrest, beat, and sometimes even kill, anyone who gives them any grief, whatsoever. Who, thereby, refuse to acknowledge, their innate and essential godhood. Bestowed by the badge and the gun. For sure, these deputies, they figured that no one would care. That the Indian had "suicided." For, why would they? After all: he was, just, an Indian.

However, since the last time these men, they had suicided someone in the jail, M had come into the county. I previously wrote a little about M here. M, he was running Legal Services, a hideous communist conspiracy designed to ensure that poor people receive "equal justice under the law." And, all and everywhere, he was busy making a stink. Now, he proceeded to make a stink, about the Indian.

The Indian, it had been Officially said, he had hung himself, and with his own belt. However, M discovered that, during booking, the Indian had surrendered his belt to the property law-jockey. There was an official record, denoting such. How, M wondered aloud—and then in a newspaper—could the Indian hang himself, with a belt that was stashed away in a sheriff's property locker? The thin blue line, then, of course, it held—as it almost always does—and the deputy who had recorded, in writing, the surrendering of the belt, he hangdoggedly confessed that he had "miswrote"; that, actually, the Indian, he went back into the cell, fully armed, with his belt.

M, he next wanted to know—and he wanted to know this in a newspaper—why the Indian, as well as the other two hangers, they had all hung themselves, in the very same cell. A dingy, remote, eyeless little tomb, tucked away in the very, back of beyond, dripping bowels, of the county dungeon. There was, for sure, no reason for the Indian to be back there, M pointed out. He should have been in the loud and crowded drunk tank, with all the rest of the overnight inebriates. How did he get back there? And why? Was the sheriff's department, M wanted to know, maintaining—and employing—some sort of "hangin' cell"?

That was too much for the old boys, who ran the county. "Hangin' cell"—that just sounded too much like something that could get loose in a newspaper. Not just the local papers—those could be handled, or at least borne—but a newspaper in some place like San Francisco.

The old boys, then as now, they lived in mortal fear, of some sniggering scribe, journeying northeast, 170 miles or so out of San Francisco, to roam around their county a bit, and then going back to write something that portrayed them all as goofs and geeks and pinheads and buffoons. Wildly frailing away. On their Deliverance banjos.

They were still reeling, the old boys, from Herb Caen's blithe three-dot observation, in his San Francisco Chronicle column, that the county's supposed seat of taste and sophistication, it was actually the sort of rube-burg that proudly placed Velveeta in the gourmet section of the supermarkets. If they had been medieval Japanese samurai, the old boys, they would all have had to slit their bellies: so great, at this, was their shame.

Then there was the time the physics professor at the university, he ran utterly wild, and foisted upon his students a final exam that required them to answer problems involving the delivery of napalm upon Southeast Asian human beings. The school moved to fire him—tenure or no—but then he got into the national newsmagazines, one of which had the bad taste to note that the same school had fired from its faculty, as unacceptable mutants, Raymond Carver and John Gardner; both men then had the gall to go on to become respected, rewarded writers. So the physics nutwad, he had to be allowed, to continue to wander the halls, in his dirty bare feet, and his scraggly moss-beard, and his brazen, unapologetic, communism.

The old boys, they knew M had been in San Francisco. Where he had attended San Francisco State. From which he was swept into the pokey, by Mad Sam Hayakawa & Co. Together with some 700 of his fellows. That M, he then taught himself the law, and eventually represented himself, successfully. That he then went to the law school, and got himself the Degree, and the License. And now, for reasons passeth understanding, he had come to their county. Where he was ruining all of their lives: running off at the mouth, and in the newspapers, about the Indian. And, probably, they reasoned fearfully, he knew some snotty reporter, back there in San Francisco. Who might soon be Writing the Articles, about "the hangin' cell." And that, it would surely be worse, even, than the Velveeta, or the nutty napalm professor.

And so, the old boys, they pulled the plug, on the sheriff.

He had been in office for more than 25 years, this fellow. Elected, and then elected again, and then etc., etc., etc., because he had first been some sort of hometown baseball hero, and then, in WWII, some sort of overseas war hero. He was not much interested in sheriffing, this guy, and he really didn't know anything about it. What he was interested in, was pancakes. Pancakes: these he knew a lot about. He had a pancake wagon—"Cap'n Bob's—which he lugged all over the county, serving up pancakes, for the betterment of this white-people cause, and that. He meanwhile let his lieutenants run the department. Which is why the department was recurrently the happy playland of stone incompetents. And, now: stone killers.

The old boys, they told the sheriff, that he was going to be put out to grass. The sheriff, his primary worry, upon hearing this news, was that he would lose the pancake wagon. The old boys, they then reassured the sheriff, that he could still be the pancake man. Relieved, he agreed to no longer be the sheriff.

Then the old boys, they told him that the three killer deputies, they were going to have to leave the department. The old boys, they knew that deputies were killing people, there in the hangin' cell, and they also knew who the deputies were. They would have preferred such a thing not occur, but the sheriff's department, it was doing what all good law-enforcement agencies in the United States are designed and intended to do—protect the important white people, and their property—so why make waves?

But now the three killers, they had made their own waves. By getting sloppy—as all serial killers, of whatever persuasion, are usually, eventually, apt to do. And so. They had to go.

The sheriff, he was stunned. He was about the only person in the county, who did not know, that men in his employ, were killing people, out in his jail. He was a nice fellow, this sheriff, but quite dim: he rendered Chauncey Gardiner, the functional equivalent of Albert Einstein. Probably, he was scrambled in the war. Best guess.

So the sheriff, he declined to run, come the next election. And the three deputies, they were plucked out of the jail, and set before desks. Where they doodled and dawdled. Until, one by one, over a period of a couple years or so, so as not to make it too obvious, they all left the department.

And the old boys, they never had to read, about any "hangin' cell," in any San Francisco newspaper.

Meanwhile, another lawyer, P, he started sniffing around the jail, and eventually he signed up a passel of inmates, in a class-action suit, that argued the place, it was more or less worse than the Bastille.

P, he was a great guy. My neighbor for a number of years; so even-tempered, he never once lost his shit, when my pig, she would get loose, and go over there, and knock his house off its foundation.

He needed that sort of patience. Did P. Because it took forever, for his suit, to wind its way through the courts. But, in the end, he secured an Official judgement that, yes, the county jail, it was indeed worse than the Bastille. The jail was then put under civilian oversight. Of a board of which P was the head. He had permanent access to all records, personnel, inmates, at any and all times. He received no remuneration for this. He just did it because it was right. And, as a result, no more Indians, or anyone else, hangs in that jail.

P, he died a number of years ago—for no reason, for he lived right; but, this life, while it can be good, is not fair at all. And then his jail-oversight position, it passed on to one of his proteges. And so, she, today: she does the right thing, too.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtkSmczvWac]

M, he regrets ever going into the law. "I was deep in the Owsley network," he moans. "I was doing more good for people there, than I could ever do in the law."

He sees, now, that he got snookered into the law, through getting arrested. "That's how the State gets you," he says. "At the university, we had all these amazing community programs. We were really out there making a difference. With the people. But, as soon as they arrested all of us, our focus immediately shifted to the outrage of our own arrests. All those programs eventually dried up. We were all swallowed up in the law."

Before I ever met M, I experienced the same. A bunch of us occupied the administration building, protesting the arming of the campus police. The new campus police chief, he had come up here after serving 25 years with the Los Angeles Police Department. And so of course he believed his new men should be armed at all times, because there would for sure be some Negroes about, who would need to be shot.

We thought this absurd. The place was a freaking cowtown. It didn't need no guns on its campus. Absurd, then, especially, when, in the first week that the chief's men received their firearms, one of his Barney Fifes, he shot his desk.

This desk-shooting nimrod, he lived down the road from the commune in which I was then immersed in the three essential food groups: wine, women, song. And, whenever, heading into town, we passed his place, my friend K and I, we would express disgust.

Unfortunately, these disgust-expressions, they had a felonious effect, on both my brother, and K2, the latter the math whiz they removed from out of the school and marrooned onto Mare Island, at the tender age of 15 . . . until he realized they were working him on nuke-rain projects, and so he abruptly quit. Now, he sat up all night, smoking Viceroys, and drinking 40-ouncers, and laughing quietly, and pretty much half-mad, as he read Dosteyevsky, in the original Russian.

Anyway. One night, K2 and my brother, they journeyed down the road—in K's car—and put some sort of firecrackers in the desk-shooter's mailbox, and blew it up.

The next day, K and I, driving by, observed a shattered stump, where the mailbox and its post used to be. We wondered what had happened. Eventually, we were clued in. K, he was not happy, that his car, it had been employed in various felonies, and without his knowledge.

But—shit—if I were to here list this man's felonies—witting or no—I would be here all night. But I think that not hardly fair. Especially since, these days, K, he is the chief lawyer, for a mammoth state organization, and one involving children.

He was a serious and devoted consumer of LSD, back in the day, was K, and the Grateful Dead, in his world, they played at all times. Once he and I went to a gig by Reconstruction, a Garcia spin-off band, before which we ate psilocybin mushrooms grown by a chemistry student at UC Davis, which completely kicked our minds right out of our bodies: K spent three hours standing three feet from Garcia, just Staring, while I rewound to the primordial sea, became the spark of life, and then lived all life, leisurely, through all its terran permutations, to Now. And then there was the day, before a Dead show, we snorted cocaine, in her absolute absence, off his wife's bible . . . .

Anyway. After five or six months or so, they got sick of us there, in their administration building, and so they called in the cops, and they had us all arrested. (I'd actually already been arrested there once. For softly blowing a kazoo. Which I consider, and without doubt, one of my finest hours.)

It had always been a ludicrous enterprise: halfway through our occupation, the administration moved from one building, to another; so, then, did we. They had an open house; so, too, did we. The night of the arrests, a couple people from a local anarchist art collective, the Batwingers, who had never been involved in the occupation, showed up specifically to get arrested. And thus, in the newspapers, it was soberly noted, that one of the miscreants taken into custody, her name was Connie Lingus.

I wasn't an out Batwinger, then, despite the instinctive kazoo-blowing; I thought, then, that Politics, it actually Mattered. That veil, it was lifted about a year or so after the occupation, when I moved to the mountain. And then, I looked over. By the time I came down, I knew—for sure—there are no Politics. And, like the aging Michael Corleone, I enter fit, whenever I am dragged, back, into all that, goddam, nonsense.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPw-3e_pzqU]

Anyway. M was right. As soon as we all got popped, there in the occupation, all we could think about, was fighting the Outrage, of our arrests. We could very easily have just returned to the administration bulding, and occupied it anew. But no. No one even thought of it. It was like a switch had been pulled, in our brains. It became all about us. Our arrests.

"Watch," M said, during Occupy. "The State will let them have at it, for a while. But then the State will start the arrests. It can be any bullshit little misdemeanor. It will have the same effect, as some serious felony. Then, it won't be about the one-percent anymore. It will be about them. Watch."

And so, he was right. As soon as the arrests started, the one percent, the ninety-nine percent—that all went by the wayside. The big Outrage, now, was the injustice of the arrests.

And so, Occupy, it dried up. And it blew away.

"I wish there was a way to tell them," M had said. "But there isn't. There were old lefties, who tried to tell us, there at SF State, but we couldn't hear them. Everybody has to learn it for themselves."

Owsley Stanley, he had moved to Australia, where he hoped to ride out what he expected to be an imminent planetary pole-shift. But, instead, he died in a mundane car accident. However, his elemental nature, it remains. As the Dead's Mickey Hart has said: "He left an ample legacy. LSD is very delicate. It doesn't like heat or light. It has to be well kept. It's all how it's stored. But I can't tell you where it is. I'd have to kill you."

M, also, truth be told, did never fully leave, his Owsley connection. He, too, has, secreted away, some Stores.

"So your legacy, it is there," I try to reassure M, when he goes on about how he should never have shifted from Owsley, to the law. "Ready for release. When the time is right."

"The time is always right," he moans, "for acid. Never right, for the law."

"And there," I tell him, "you're wrong. For you couldn't save that one Indian. But you made sure there were no more such Indians. You did that. You and P."

"Yeah," he replies. "But why did it have to be me?"

"Because," I say, "it's just like that sergeant-major says, there in Zulu. When the doomed youth asks him, 'Why is it us? Why us?' And the sergeant-major, he replies, 'Because we're here, lad. And nobody else. Just us.'"

(This is only the first half, of what was intended to be here; all but a mere introduction, to a planned prolonged simmering screed about the sort of Indian cases I work in the criminal law today. But the piece got completely away from me. And it is already so much longerer than anyone in today's twitverse would want to read. And so, the rest, it will have to wait. Until the Open Sesame, of this coming Saturday. Selah.)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29f4hQkM7nY]