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Denis Johnson ALREADY A California Gothic DEAD for Cindy Lee In nightmares, which are no more than intensifications of some worry through anxiety, the terrible expectation is always fulfilled: the bull catches you, the knife reaches you, the axe whistles about your ears—but at this point, when you have given yourself up for dead, you wake up. (Though I once actually felt the cold steel of a sword thrust into me.) —PEDRO MESEGUER, S.J. THE SECRET OF DREAMS Contents Epigraph iii Book One 1 August 7, 1990 3 August 8–10, 1990 22 August 9–10, 1990 61 August 28, 1990 84 August 11-September 5, 1990 89 October 30, 1991 141 Book Two 163 September 2–5, 1990 165 September 4–12, 1990 203 September 13, 1990 238 October 30, 1991 270 Book Three 291 September 13, 1990 293 September 14, 1990 326 Sept. 21–23, 1990 332 September 22–24, 1990 358 September 14–25, 1990 388 October 31, 1991 426 Author’s Note 436 Acknowledgments About the Author Praise Other Books by Denis Johnson Cover Copyright About the Publisher Book One August 7, 1990 Van Ness felt a gladness and wonder as he drove past the small isolated towns along U.S. 101 in Northern California, a certain interest, a yearning, because he sensed they were places a person could disappear into. They felt like little naps you might never wake up from—you might throw a tire and hike to a gas station and stumble unexpectedly onto the rest of your life, the people who would finally mean something to you, a woman, an immortal friend, a saving fellowship in the religion of some obscure church. But such a thing as a small detour into deep and permanent changes, at the time, anyway, that he was travelling down the coast from Seattle into Mendocino County, wasn’t even to be dreamt of in Van Ness’s world. The side trip he took off 101 into Humboldt County only proved it. He deserted his route at Redway, went five miles west to Briceland and from there a half dozen miles to the Mattole River and past an invisible town (he saw only a one-room school in the corner of a field) called Ettersburg, and then switched back and forth along mountainous terrain another few miles to a dirt road that cut through the King Range Na- tional Forest. Bucking slowly in his Volvo down the steep zigzag track among 3
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