Woody a 'show', when the show ends all the paintings
vanish. Twenty bold big oils buddhas nudes christs
hopheads bullfighters staked on a grassy lawn of a
touristtown crapshop; 2 weeks viewed by passers who'd
never in a lifetime hang one such bloodshot cartoon of
God on a domestic wall. But gallery owner and friends,
solid businessmen, covet the macho icons of Jesus and
his matadors, all glaring dark and angry about their
wounded groins. Gambling the artist strung $50 a month
riskily over the Border cannot fund pursuit or law,
the bourgeois artfinks roll up canvases stack masonite
boards and carry them home: to chintzy domiciles all
over the map of SantaAna and LA. Woody had worked a
year painting in Baja, with snakes looped around the
easel legs, impasto clogged with blowing dirt; some of
the work bought by friends, loaned on his promise of
safe return. It was a principle of matter. Accompanied
by longtime buddy JackLee, son of John Wayne's
stuntdouble and limousine driver to the Stars, we
thug ourselves up in black leather jackets and deadeye
attitudes, track down every sleazeball on the list
from Anaheim to Sherman Oaks, Venice Beach to Studio
City. Pursuit of those who can afford to buy but     
prefer to ripoff the artist. All but one work rescued,
the prodigal truck come home to collapse.

An hour of talk, tvcoffeefate, as a horrific pain 
develops in my skull grows from dull to bad to insane
and then we rise to leave. We need a free repair job,
the father agrees to work on it tomorrow, the mother
loans her 4door maroon Ford so we can deliver 8 paintings
back to their owners tonight. I follow Woody to the
doorway, an arch an oaken doorstep leads to a redtiled
porch and that is the last I know. I wake, on my back
on the floor, with the mothernurse bent over my face.
I wonder if I am dead, I have the impression of being
wheeled into a hospital emergency ward. No, says
mothernurse, I am exhausted. Once in my life I 'faint',
passing thru house portal into small foyer where our
jackets hang in a closet, still wet still raining in
the night. I am held back, helped to my feet, the
mothernurse walks me to the guest room.

It is small and windowless, chair throwrug narrow
bed. A monastery cell, a place I would otherwise
not be. I lie in fetal position on the blanket, eyes
closed, looking inward for pain's off-button. When my
eyes open again, I see the opposite wall, 2 long
bureaus, many drawers, the tops covered with framed
photographs. Soft light comes from the hallway, and the
pictures appear to glow: the family museum. Woody's
cousins aunts uncles nephews nieces. Older photos.
Depression fashion, Model Ts, older than that. Sepia
images of the famous 19th c. relative. Victoriana.
I'd met her already in Woody's ink cartoons. A
pugface woman, wearing a lace cap, shawl, stifled
in fat and clothing, but with a fist raised, an
arm swinging ax or fryingpan. An army of women
surround her, clutching bloody disconnected heads of
husbands.

Not my history. California beachgirl, 23 years,
coolly amused by uptight women of the past. Prudes,
tavernbangers, moralists. We specialized in all things
they hated: sex drugs extreme art dreams. Those killjoy
women Mr. Freud had explained very well. And the
overstuffed wife of Henry B. Stanton, Abolitionist,
drawn 100 years later by a junkie beatnik in his Mexican
hut, was the leader of them all. A royal Victorian
battleax. One of those righteous women with 3 names.