The Love Attack

Living in Southern California, you get used to humans visiting atrocities and depredations on one another. What else would you expect from a region that funds and shelters a terrorist organization like the Los Angeles Dodgers?

There are no depths to which some Angelenos will not sink and the local media outlets reflect that every single day. With alarming frequency, terrifying originality, and unimaginable brutality, they murder, rape, and savage one another like characters in an FX drama.

And so it is with a sense of welcome relief that once a week I eschew the Los Angeles Times and its litany of violence and pick up the Anderson Valley Advertiser. I am soothed by its familiarity and comforted by its simple, reassuring, bucolic charm. I know what to expect and I faithfully receive it. KZYX board engaging in criminal nincompoopery? Check! Evil wine producers being inconsiderate to their neighbors? Check! Malcontent prisoners asserting their innocence and whining about the food in jail? Check! Linda Thompson heedlessly chucking another client into the gaping maw of the prison system? Check! Old coots reminiscing about bygone days? Check, and guilty. The AVA is the voice and character of Mendocino County and I doubt that any panel of experts could contrive a more fitting representation of her quirks and charms or a more effective outlet for her people.

Therefore I am saddened and shocked and angered when I receive an issue like that of September 9 and am confronted on the front page by Murder. Murder most foul. The usually very entertaining court reporting section was occupied this week not with another bungling tweaker or serial drunk driver, but with two horrific killings and their perpetrators, Tyrell Marshall and Talen Barton. These fiends in human shape, these poisonous toads, these misbegotten scumsucking pieces of subhuman dross—insufficient descriptions, I know; words are inadequate to convey the kind of loathing and contempt I feel for people capable of this kind of savagery—upset the balance and knock askew whatever harmony and symmetry people are trying to maintain.

Mendocino has its share of social pathology and I have personally and significantly contributed to it in the past. But dammit, you have to draw the line somewhere and I assert that murder has no place in the Mendocino Weltanschauung. So just cool it. In fact, anyone—and I'm directing this to the county at large—considering dipping a toe in the life-taking field, may I suggest you pull up stakes and head south? Relocation to the LA basin will put you in among many like-minded peers and perhaps fraternal organizations and workshops dedicated to helping you hone your craft. If it's financial constraints that are keeping you in the area, try a Kickstartr campaign or just ask. I'm sure there's any number of people who'll buy your murderous ass a bus ticket.

Deeper in the paper, in the Off the Record section, mention was made of another, less timely killing — the matter of Red Kester and Jason Blackshear. I happen to be acquainted with both of these gentlemen and am sickened and saddened by the whole sorry mess. Red is a high-spirited cat who never backed down from a scrap, but I never would have pegged him to take a life. Jason was a basically sweet-natured garbagehead whose mouth often got ahead of him when he was drinking, which was his weapon of choice in recent years — he simply could not muster the necessary vigor to maintain a speed habit. I hate to think of him going in such a manner, though the odds are he wasn't long for this world anyway, and I find it equally distasteful that Red will be spending the rest of his life in prison because of it, even though he was already doing life on the installment plan.

So Jason, having perished in ignominy, now lies largely forgotten, a footnote in the AVA as a character in another of those small, sordid tragedies that are an unfortunate part of the worlds of drugs and crime. I feel them probably a little more acutely than most because I am painfully aware each time one occurs that it could have been me. If you travel in those circles and engage in that sort of behavior, you run the risk of winding up dead on the floor of some filthy hovel while degenerate scumbags discuss how to dispose of your carcass.

I thought I might tell a little story featuring Jason in the way of memorializing him a little. It's not a tale that's particularly flattering to him, but it's what I got. I will say this about him: he was a gifted mushroom hunter and he really loved his dog. He had a female pit bull with an extraordinarily sweet and spirited disposition. I disremember the dog's name, but for the purposes of this reminiscence let's call her Lady. That may actually have been it.

Anyway, it was about ten years ago, down on Spring Street in Fort Bragg at the home of my friend Mike Spiller. I was helping him redo the floor in one of the bedrooms and we'd hired Jason Blackshear and Will Hawk (yes, he really exists) to do some sanding, general labor, and cleanup. At one point in the day, Mike and I needed to go to Mendo Mill for supplies and decided to leave the two of them working. Neither Mike nor myself were unaware of the risks of leaving characters of a shady nature around valuable property, but I decided to employ a tactic I'd found useful in the past: put one of them (secretly) in charge of the other. This gives one a sense of responsibility and pride in being relied upon, and he will not only not pilfer but will tell on the other if he does.

So goes the theory, anyhow.

I took Will aside, clapped him on the shoulder, and said, "Will—buddy—I trust you, totally, I'm just not real sure about Jason, there. I need you to keep an eye on him. Don't say anything, but you're in charge. Just keep him working, check on him if he leaves the room, and make sure he doesn't steal anything."

Will looked me straight in the eye and said, soberly, "I got this."

He headed back into the work area and Mike and I walked toward his truck. We hadn't even reached the driveway when a terrible banging and clatter arose from the house. We ran back up to the house just as Will and Jason rolled out of the door and onto the deck in a seething, flailing tangle of arms and legs. We pulled them apart and I stood between them, holding them each at arm's length.

"Enough, dammit!" I said. "What the hell's going on?"

The two combatants stood red-faced and silent, puffing and glaring at one another.

As I was later to understand, the conversation had gone something like this:

Will: I've got my eye on you, so you better not try anything.

Jason: What?

Will: I'm in charge. I'm the boss of you and this whole operation. Get your ass to work and don't steal anything.

Jason: The hell you say.

In implementing my plan, I'd failed to take into account Will's complete lack of subtlety and utterly literal operational parameters. I love the boy dearly, but he's no thinker.

Mike got them to shake hands and promise to play nice, but no sooner had we turned our backs than they were at it again. They rolled across the deck, down the steps and into the backyard. As they looked more like a couple of boisterous puppies than any kind of danger to one another, we decided to allow the tussle to resolve itself organically. They rolled back and forth across the yard, trading momentary advantages, Lady bounding around them and barking furiously the whole time.

Will had the advantage of youth and when Jason ran out of gas, Will straddled him victoriously, knees on his shoulders in a classic schoolyard pin. Jason deployed his last weapon. "Lady! Sic 'im! Get him, girl!" he shouted.

Lady leapt into the fray, putting her paws on Will's shoulders and going for his face—with her tongue. She joyfully slobbered all over Will's face as he, unable to withstand the salivary onslaught, fell backwards and off of Jason. He stood up, brushed himself off, and said, "Good girl. C'mere, babe," hugging her as if the love attack was exactly what he had in mind. It was decided that I would make the materials run and Mike would ride herd over the help.

Rest in peace, Jason. Red, best of luck to you.