"Hey man, listen carefully to these words, notice the things I say.  Use your head.  There is something happening I can't explain in a word or a sentence or in twenty five words or less.  If I don't make sense, try relating on a different level; move your head space to another angle, turn your reality to one side, find a different light.
"I wanted to tell you about George Bumm and I wanted to tell how the road goes nowhere, it's just you and me beside it waiting for a ride.  Godeaux and his Brothers are still waiting for us at the corner of VanNess and Fell, but you ain't listening and you don't seem to care.  You just keep asking about how I'm doing and I'm trying to tell you there really is a George Bumm and we stood beside the road together in Oregon once, waiting for a ride that never came..."

It was a rainy winter Tuesday after chem lab.  I was doing volunteer work, community service time on a traffic ticket.  We were all relieved that I only had to do six weeks of it, but Mom had kittens when I drew an assignment to the AIDS ward at General Hospital.  The job description said I was supposed to fetch and carry and push wheelchairs.  When I reported for duty, the nurses said they didn't need any of that today and steered me to a door at the end of the corridor.
"His name is Animal.  You are here to visit him because no one else does."  The nurse who told me this outside the door knew what circumstances had brought me to the hospital.  "He's lonely, just keep him company, listen to him.  He's generally lucid and he does like to talk.  Don't worry, you won't get AIDS by sitting on a chair listening to him reminisce, and you might learn something."  I followed the nurse in, trying to convince myself that it could be worse.
"Animal, you have a visitor."  I was led to the bedside of a thin bruised looking man with scraggly patches of gray brown hair attached to his skull.  Bare broomstick arms stuck out from the shoulders of a cutoff denim jacket, which was decorated with studs and patches and embroidered with the colors of a bike club called Sons of Never out of Santa Cruz.  He wore it open, and I could see skin shaping hollows between his ribs.  The nurse carefully adjusted the bed to a position more like sitting and shut the TV off.  "Are you warm enough?"  Animal nodded.  "Don't tire yourself, Animal.  Have a good visit."  And he left us alone in the room.
I made an effort at polite conversation.  I couldn't think of much to say to a stranger with a death sentence written on him.  At my age you don't think about dying because you haven't done much living, you know?  There's not a great deal of room for comparison.
Animal started talking like he had an urgent need to tell me something important.  It's easy to look like you're listening, I learned that with Gramma before she died.  The grownups called visits with her valuable lessons in Family History, but I lost interest real quick and had to fake it.  I learned as long as the outside of me, the expression on my face and the way I sat in the chair, satisfied them, the inside of my head was my own.  They don't have much use for that, anyway.
 "...what came was a Cadillac."  Animal waited for some response from me.  I nodded, "Hmmhum?"
"George lived in a school bus with Fannie.  Big old orange GM with 'Grasstown Union High School' in black letters on the sides.  Number 33.  Had a mangy dog named Wheeze who came and went and stayed away when he wanted.  He was the kind of mutt you'd chase away from your yard if he came around and you'd be justified if you did.  You heard that theory about how people look like their pets?  It was 'specially true in George Bumm's case.
"Man was a speedfreak and a biker.  Crazy.  He'd do anything - you name it, he's done it - and this time we were sitting by the road and he was rapping about this rangy cur and all the good times they'd had.  Some of 'em were pretty weird for good times, but we were laughing.  Wasn't much else to do and we were helping it along.
"Had this nurdle of hash in the pipe.  He'd light it up, pass it over, sipping air to hold his toke longer; face turning red, snorting smoke from his nose before he'd blow the hit with a blasting smoky cough.  Then he'd smile.  He always smiled when he was high, I think it was to show off the gaps in his teeth.  He liked the reaction it got, those ugly black holes, and he'd tell you the story for each one if you asked, but he didn't always wait to be asked.
"George was burned out.  Fried, like.  Not just from being on the road or camping beside this empty one in Oregon, but cooked by his past.  Tripping puts lots of miles on your soul and George Bumm had lost some tread.  Fannie'd decided to stay in Portland with her people there, so she parked the bus.  Hid the keys, man, and told George to keep moving, come back later.  We grabbed our packs and moved on, heading back to the City, you know, and the Haight.  Fanny's a good woman, but you don't want to cross her.  I got a card from her a while back; has a family now, and land up in Mendo."
Animal stopped to breathe for a bit and he brought his focus on me.  His eyes had hot lights burning in them, like lasers looking into me.  "You bored?"  he asked, "Ain't no time in life to be bored, kid.  Remember that, ain't no time in life to be bored.
"George was bored after two days of hitchhiking without a ride.  It was OK till we ran out of matches, then he started to freak.  Maybe you can eat weed, but you got to smoke tobacco to make it work.  Eating it just makes you sick.  Wasn't long before he decided to stop the next truck and ask for some.  He ate more of the 'shrooms we'd found under a madrone tree, down by the stream aways.  Little pink suckers, with spots, like the dancing ones in that Disney flick...what's it called?"
"Fantasia?"
"Yeah, man.  Right.  Ate more of those mean little things and dropped his jeans.  Not that they'd have dropped.  George used to brag that his pants walked over to the corner at night when he took 'em off, and stood there waiting till he whistled for 'em in the morning.  He more like climbed out of 'em, baring his hairy white hide to the sun.
"Even before he took off his shirt, I lost it laughing at him standing by the road, butt naked in boots, kerchief and tattoos; pale as a mushroom, never seen the sun except his arms, neck and face, and maybe his pecker in passing.  He slapped his doughy ass and told me that George Ashe Bumm the Fourth wasn't ashamed to display his assets to the world and I laughed harder.  I'd had my share of those 'shrooms and found reasons to laugh at the wind blowing and the godforsaken nowhere full of trees we were stuck in.
"Logging trucks went by, stinking and roaring, just loaded with trees.  Big mothers, like, so wide they had to be cut in half to get 'em on the back of these eighteen wheelers.  I'm talking enormous.  These truckers'ud play chicken with us, swerving, you know, like they were gonna run us down.  Or they did till George took his clothes off.  After that they went around us, shifting gears and accelerating to leave George in the dust, jumping up and down begging for a light.  One trucker opened his window and yelled something at George and threw a cigarette butt at him.  Didn't stay lit and the trucks stopped rumbling by at about sunset and all George Ashe Bumm the Fourth got for his efforts was a sunburn.
"His jeans had fallen over to take a nap while George was dancing in the road; didn't come when he whistled, so he walked over and kicked 'em awake.  Kept on about some dude named Godot who never showed up.  He'd been at Berkeley back during the Free Speech Riots, always bragging about the education he got while he was there.  Guess this Godot must of been some of that, 'cos the only Godeaux I know about is the guy and his brothers, used to run a mortuary, down on VanNess.  You could see the sign on the wall when you waited for the bus that went up to the Avalon on Sutter.  Don't suppose you'd remember it?"  The eyes burned into me again.  "No, not likely.  Pour me some water."
There was a pink plastic water pitcher on the bedside table with a matching cup beside it.  I poured some water into the cup and held it out to him.  When he reached to take it, he touched my hand and nodded with satisfaction when I stifled my desire to pull away.  His hand shook as he lifted the cup slowly, took a sip and put it on the table bedside the bed.
"Are you tired?"  I asked, hoping he would agree.  "Would you like me to call the nurse?"
"What are you afraid of, boy?"  His laser eyes could see that I half believed my mother's superstitions, reading my fear that I would, in time, end up where he was with less to remember for it.  I could feel myself blushing and he smiled, pulling back leather lips to display the wreckage of his teeth.
"Boy, you got to be bigger than your fear.  Can't be so hard when fear's just a little bit of chemical your body makes, so small it almost ain't real.  What you're afraid of may be real, but that's karma, if you know what I mean, and you deal with that when it happens.  Being afraid just makes it harder.
"George was one of those people who never copped to being afraid, but his fear ran him, just the same.  He was afraid of not being the baddest badass around.  Real strutting macho, dig?  Never into hurting people, you understand, but he liked to make straight people uncomfortable, shake their trees a bit, blow their minds.  Figured they spend so much time being offended that they must like it, so he'd oblige 'em by being offensive.  He wore this brass belt buckle, an oversize fist with the bird finger raised, used to send those old ladies running and he'd just laugh."  Animal paused for a moment, snorting.  Maybe it was laughter.
"Didn't make hitchhiking with him any easier.  Was dawn the next day when the gold Cadillac finally came.  Everything all gray and drippy, felt like rain but it came from the trees, not the sky.  Caddie came zooming down the road out of nowhere like a ray of sun.  Must have been doing fifty.  George leaped out waving his arms, hollering at it to stop.  He was in the middle of the road when the Caddie hit him square on.  Threw him spinning six, maybe ten feet in the air and roared off under him in a cloud of dust and exhaust.  Everything was all slow motion, like, and I watched George land on the other side of the road with a grunt and a thud.

"I started over to help him but he growled at me that this was his trip, bought and paid for.  Really into hiding his pain, you know?  I watched him drag himself up and start messing with his belt buckle, saw lots of blood and something snaky.  He didn't look too good, staggered when he walked, so I decided to risk making him uptight and crossed the road to meet him.  I was halfway across when I heard that Caddie coming back, really wailing, kicking up gravel and aimed right at me.  I dived for the bushes and the car clipped George, throwing him into the air again.
"I stayed in the bushes a long time after the driver turned around and bumped over George's body in the road; you could hear crunching sounds.  The windows were closed and I couldn't see too good from under the bushes in the ditch, but it looked like the fucker was laughing when he drove away.
"I didn't see George moving, but I wasn't sure, because those 'shrooms can do funny things to your eyes.  The fog stopped hissing and started to lift before I crawled out of hiding and went to check George's scene.  He had a lot of blood and his guts were tangled over his belt buckle - it always did get him into trouble.  His neck was twisted funny, his eyes were open and he looked pissed.  There were flies on him already, but I was thinking of those logging trucks when I dragged him back to our camp.  Then I threw up.  Did it in Nam, too.  S'why they shipped me home early."
Animal was quiet for a long minute, staring through nothing, halfway to the wall.  I realized he had no personal belongings on display, no photos or flowers.  There were some books marked PROPERTY S.F.G.H., the TV and remote, pitcher and cup, and a chart at the foot of the bed.  And Animal, wearing club colors draped over what was left of his body, like it was all he had in the world.  He looked cold under his pride.
I shifted in my seat and cleared my throat.  Animal drew a long shuddering breath.
"He'd been holding out on me.  Found a Snickers bar that he didn't mention when the Ritz crackers ran out, and a lid stashed in a secret pocket Fannie'd put in the bottom of the pack.  He had ten bucks in cash and a dynamite brass pipe that folded up on itself and carried stash inside.  Had half a gram of black Afgani in it.  I took what I needed and left the rest.  George's ID and a lock of his hair, I mailed to Fannie when I got back to the City.  I smoked that pipe for years.  Had an old lady took a liking to it.  It left when she did, I think, 'cos I ain't seen it since.
"After a while I ate the Snickers bar and walked down the road to get away from the flies.  It felt so good to be moving that I didn't stop till I got to the Interstate, long after dark.  There was a brand new all night Denny's lighting up the exit and I had breakfast on George.  Put a handful of matches in my pocket and went to wash up in the john.  I may have gone back for more coffee and matches, 'cos it was sometime around dawn when I hit the entrance ramp.  Walked down to the freeway and got a ride right away from this pantyhose salesman in a Mustang.  He filled the time going south telling me about the hippie chicks he'd picked up and how they put out for him.  Couldn't call it bullshit when he's paying for lunch..."
Animal's voice faded and I sat silent in the gloom.  I could hear the hissing of traffic on wet pavement and the muffled rumble of engines stopping and starting when the light changed at the end of the block.  I heard phones chirp and trays rattle in the hall, but it seemed very distant.  Oregon seemed closer, with looming trees and circles of magic mushrooms growing beside deserted roads.  The nurse was so quiet that I didn't hear him come in and I jumped when he spoke beside me.
"You can go now.  Your time is up for today."  He dropped the blinds and switched on a lamp.  There was a smile on his face.
"Tell your mother you weren't exposed to anything.  You're OK, kid."
I signed out, caught the 9-SanBruno and transferred at 11th and Market to the outbound N-Judah without much of a wait.  I had to stand most of the way, caught in a damp rush hour crush with commuters and punks.  It was five rainy blocks from my stop, but I was home for supper and not too wet.  Mom made me strip in the garage and put my clothes in the washer, then take a shower and wash my hair before I could kiss her.
On Thursday, when I went back to the hospital, I took a crystal from my room to hang in Animal's window.  The nurses on the AIDS ward told me that Animal had died the day before.  I felt kind of empty.  I wasn't as relieved as I thought I'd be when they added that my assignment had been changed and I was to report in at Pediatrics instead, and I'm sure Mom had something to do with the switch, because the head nurse in Pediatrics told me to say hello to her.
The crystal got passed around and made the kids smile.  I ended up giving it to a skinny little girl who was mostly round dark eyes.  She watched it intently and smiled with delight at the refractions and sparkles inside.  The nurse told me her mother used crack while she was pregnant and the girl needed constant medical attention.
My memory of her kiss on my cheek will probably live longer than she does.