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Tunnel Rat
- University of Nevada Press
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Tunnel Rat Young people were messy then - the war, the draft, plentiful drugs. Rowe and Betty were singularly so. They'd club-hop, starting at the Pussy Cat aGo-Go, the lounge at the Flamingo, then the International, up and down the Strip, dancing, drinking, and popping uppers, then back to the Pussy Cat and him off at daylight with no sleep to work for Grady. Rowe wore a T-shirt with a Superman emblem emblazoned in red and yellow. Betty slept while he worked. When she found out she was pregnant with his baby, she cleared her clothes out of the closet in their apartment and left behind a half-drunk bottle of tequila, a baggie of cross-tops, and a short note declaring she'd run off with Tom, a former lover. Rowe held the note, his hands ossifying as he stared at it, then his legs gave way and he collapsed into a recliner Betty's father had given him. 76 Rowe's mother had warned him Betty would break his heart. Now she had. Eventually he popped the note into his mouth and chewed it to a wad compact enough to swallow. He dropped three cross-tops and chased them with the tequila. He didn't bother to lock the door, just slammed it and headed into the night. One strong kick started his 650 Bonneville. He rode nonstop from Vegas to San Francisco, where he found a squalid Haight-Ashbury flat to hole up in. Earning money under the table, he laid carpet and stayed stoned or drunk for the next two months. Across the hall lived a self-proclaimed guru of the free love movement named Lonnie, who pushed acid and peyote. An avowed social revolutionary, on the side he interned as an entrepreneur , pimping fifteen- and sixteen-year-old runaway girls. One evening he and Rowe had a difference of opinion over a girl who said she wanted to leave if Rowe only would be so kind as to give her a ride to the bus terminal and send her back to Spokane. Lonnie caught Sunshine in the hall with her bedroll slung over a shoulder and pulled her to a halt by her ponytail. He insisted he loved her. Rowe told him to let go. He refused, so Rowe busted Lonnie's jaw and two fingers. The girl's loyalty wasn't as unsettled as Rowe thought. She called the police. Fatigued from so much peace and love and fearing arrest, Rowe kick-started his Triumph in hopes it would hold together long enough to get him to L.A. It did. Against the wife's objections, Rowe's Uncle Harve sheltered him in his Bellflower home. They were blood, Uncle Harve contended , no matter how Rowe smelled or how unkempt he looked or even if he was a federal fugitive, which he might be. Rowe dialed his mother, who said his draft board had turned his name over to the FBI. He told her it was a strange world where a guy couldn't go off to mend a broken heart without becoming a criminal. She said he owed her twenty-two dollars on a phone bill she had to pay after he'd left. Rowe said he'd send the money Tunnel Rat 77 [3.85.224.214] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 10:53 GMT) from prison or Vietnam or Sweden. His mother said she wouldn't hold her breath. Rowe called Grady, who informed him Betty had returned, alone, had aborted the baby, and had been dumped by Tom at the door. She was still too upset to come to the phone. Grady, who owned a construction firm, a downtown casino, and a ranch in Montana, had about half the money in the free world, but Rowe didn't hold this against him, in fact liked him though he'd made a mess of his daughter and two sons, who were a bit off-axis. On the other hand, Grady loved Rowe like a son and told him so. "FBI'S looking for me, I think," Rowe said. ''I'll hide you, put you to work and pay you under the table, double scale. I'll tell Betty you'll be comin' back. Won't bother me to see her marry you. I got a fondness for you." "Probably won't work out," Rowe said, meaning marrying Betty. Besides he'd decided a fugitive's life wasn't...