The Dawn
Cracked
Which way I fly is Hell; myself am Hell.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Ram.
Michael Kirk MacIntosh modulated his voice as the guru had taught him, chanting the sacred word slowly, letting its sound reverberate across the desert floor while he sat and stared at the ghostly outlines of Yucca Valley.
Ram... Ram... Ram...
It was four o'clock in the morning and he was hallucinating. The LSD had taken hold; cosmic music was flooding his brain. He was waiting for a flying saucer to appear.
Ram.
Below the knoll on which he kept his solitary vigil, Michael could make out the dark shapes of cacti and Joshua trees. The desert night was crisp, the sky was clear, and the full moon was still high. The gist of his meditation in this excellent spot was, "Here I am, stoned and lonely, and living in hell on this stupid mountain."
Ram.
Some distance away in a 1967 Volkswagen camper were two spaced out lovers, Rick and Lori, friends who had
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driven him out from the city. Down below, gathered around the fence that surrounded a well-lit, white-domed structure, were some of the others. They had assured Michael the building housed a cyclotron, or space machine, that gave off electromagnetic impulses and would take him back in time. Around the edge of the hill stretched an airport where a UFO was supposed to be coming in anytime. Michael leaned back and looked at the stars. They were wobbling. It seemed to him he was gazing at them through the glass of an agitated aquarium. A droning pitch continued to penetrate the silence. It was, he decided, the sound of the cosmos, holding everything together.
Ram... Ram...
Disgusted, he quit his chanting. The emptiness of his life had caught up with him. He had torpedoed his marriage. Sandra, his wife, had taken their two-year-old daughter and moved back to Philadelphia and her parents. Michael pictured adorable little Mindi as he had last seen her. He remembered the pink dress with white ruffles, the embroidered socks and white shoes, the curly yellow hair. She was standing by the car in front of the house and waving as he drove off with all his goods, while Sandra stood by the gate looking daggers and hand grenades at him. God, he thought, what have I done?
Shaking the image out of his mind, he shifted to other dreary subjects. He was thousands of dollars in debt. He had a fistful of traffic citations. His boss, a Santa Ana auto dealer, was unhappy. His draft board was looking for him. There was no end to it! The year was 1969. He was twenty-four years old, and he was living in a roach-infested shack at the end of Twenty-fourth Street near the shore of Newport Beach.
To the east, a faint lightening of the sky appeared on the horizon. Micheal watched in a blur as the miracle of a
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new day brought a subtle change to the desert atmosphere. Somewhere a meadowlark was singing. But now a sharp sound cleaved the air, like the crack of a bullwhip. He looked around but could see nothing unusual, only the first rays of the sun as they spilled down from the mountains and tinted the sagebrush. "I know," he whispered, "it's the crack of dawn. And I've heard it! Me, a social derelict, stoned out of my mind, and I've heard the dawn crack." He watched the streaks in the eastern sky and the changing hues of the desert until, with a final burst of orange, the daylight took over. It seemed to Michael almost as if the universe had exploded. It was the first of many explosions that would punctuate the young man's career.
The leader of the cult that wooed flying saucers was a glassy-eyed drug pusher named Ron, who practiced yoga, Zen, and Satan worship in a run-down section of Orange County. Ron considered himself a messiah. Michael, intrigued by the exiting prospect of contact with outer space, had wanted to meet Ron and was rewarded by the invitation to Yucca Valley and, three weeks later, by Rick's gift of LSD laced with strychnine. After swallowing the capsule in Rick's camper, Michael asked to be dropped off at Ron's hangout, a one-story, brown-shingled shack furnished with discarded junk and perched on the edge of a canyon. Here the faithful came to pick up their acid. Michael found Ron, who seemed distant and preoccupied. Not knowing any of the others present, he sat down to watch television.
It was not long before Michael lost all touch with reality. His vision blurred; his speech became tangled. Ron had become to him a hit man assigned by the Mafia to murder him. The prospect of a violent death terrified him. Michael staggered to his feet and went to find Ron, who was sitting on the floor in the kitchen loading a pistol while his Manson-type followers stood around watching.
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Eager to get out of the place, but realizing he was in no shape to do so, Michael said, "Ron, I've OD'd."
Ron looked up. He observed Michael's eyes, the dilated pupils and bloodshot whites. "You're O.K.," he said curtly, shoving a bullet into the chamber. "Just take it easy. No problem."
Michael panicked, "No! Help me. It's a bummer! I'm going numb. My brains are frying. I'm not going to make it. You've got to take me to Hoag Hospital."
Ron stood up and shoved the pistol under his belt. "No way. Cool it!"
But Michael was now yelling. "I'm going to die! I'm going to be murdered in the next few minutes. It's all over. God, help me!" He collapsed in a chair. At a sign from Ron, those in the room began to lay hands on him. They removed his shirt, his shoes and sox, leaving him only his Levis, from which they lifted his wallet. They they tied his hands behind him and placed a bag over his head. They left him sprawled on a davenport. In the kitchen a tape was playing a Rolling Stones number. Now I'm really in hell, thought Michael. God, do you hear me? I'm in hell!
Sitting in the darkness, he sensed that spirit forms were hovering around him. It seemed he could make out a likeness of the guru Maharishi, whose teachings he had studied along with those of Edward Cayce and Jeane Dixon. Now the semblance of the Los Angeles metaphysician, Paramahansa Yogananda, was floating about, and Krishna, and the Buddha himself. He called to them: "Help me. I'm not ready to die! Please get me to God!"
They mocked him and cackled, "This is as far as we take man!"
Michael would not be put off. "Take me to God!" he screamed. "I've lost my mind, my job, my wife, my child, my money, but I've paid. I gave 135 bucks to the Maharishi. You take me to God!"
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Desperate, and certain that death lay before him, Michael began searching his soul and confessing his sins as fast as he could name them. "I'm a drunk. I'm a liar. I'm a thief. I've lost my wife. I'm taking drugs. I can't face my problems. There's no good in my life. I found it with Sandy but never recognized it. I've failed in everything I ever tried." But somehow it all seemed too late; he was doomed. Nobody could help him, nobody.
With the bag still tied over his head and his arms lashed, Michael bumped his way into a bedroom. He knelt down, pressed his forehead against the floor, and tried to pray. Instead he felt something go up against the side of his head. It may have been Ron's revolver; he never knew. But suddenly he heard a tremendous explosion, so loud he thought it must be a nuclear blast. In his mind's eye he saw a huge ball of fire and flames shooting up into a mushroom cloud. It seemed he was standing in a valley watching it and thinking that he ought to tell people to turn to God before it was too late. He dared not touch his head; he was certain a huge cavity was there and half his brain had been shot away.
Late that evening Rick showed up and drove Michael back to his own pad, where he woke up his older brother Kent. For the next few days he continued in a state of confusion. The physical and psychological effects of that drug trip were to remain with him for years. He was utterly convinced that his brain had exploded. On the following Sunday afternoon he presented himself at the Laguna Beach police station. He related a wild story about the Beatles, saying they were in town and he was part of their troupe. The officers treated him gently and invited him to take a ride with them. They drove him to the Orange County Medical Center.
It was a beautiful February day in southern California. Mockingbirds were singing and blossoms were on the
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peach trees, but for Michael MacIntosh life had lost its beauty. He knew he had touched bottom. The easy charm, the puckish, fun-loving demeanor had failed him. Not often had Michael been reduced to tears — once when his older brother, David, was slammed into a telephone pole and killed; once when he broke up with a high school sweetheart; and once, most agonizingly, when Sandra moved out with little Melinda. But on this Sunday morning, Michael cried because he was in a holding tank, locked in the mental ward of a hospital with some strange-looking characters; and he was not getting out.
