The Lonely Life of Mike Ketchum

Mike left the facility in a daze, starting his car as the sun set for the last time on his mission. Having promised his father that he’d deliver the single to Marzine before she died, Mike had followed through with his promise, even if he’d kept the single for himself in the end. “But what was I to do, leave it in the hands of a corpse?” he’d answer, if his father ever came back as a vision, or worse, a nightmare asking why he didn’t fulfill his end of the bargain and why was he such a rotten son. Mike would feel that he betrayed his father for the last time, and would spend the rest of his life regretting it, feeling like a cheat. It was his father’s passion after all. Mike didn’t have any passion for music. At this moment though, he failed to see the money he stood to gain from holding on to the glass-encased 78 that sat in the back of his car, reflecting the last rays of the New York sunset, reflecting off the long shadows of the fading day.

In time Mike learned to live with the guilt that would eventually fade out in the corner of his mind thanks to the piles of money made when the single was digitized twenty years later and his life became a sewer rush of debt, alcoholism and petulance. He was amazed the phone still worked, when it rang out, disturbing his sleep patterns, dreaming of another cheap blonde whom he’d impregnate for the sheer bliss of raising children when he was still a child himself, and wasn’t that half the sport in it, raising kids when you are still a child yourself?

He’d see the money as the end of the tenancy of the motor hotel, no more working nights as an auditor to pay the room, no more drinking fifths of Finlandia vodka to swim himself to sleep. All of this ended the day the phone rang and he picked it up, still sweaty from the detox he had forced upon himself, spouting a guttural “Hello”, while barely hanging on to the drifting feeling, the pangs of guilt that had held onto him ever since that afternoon, when he’d broken his father’s promise, pretended to be there, hold her hand while she died, but in his mind he was oh so very far away.

“This is Columbia records, is this Hank Ketchum? I believe we have a finder’s fee for you. We want to bring Marzine’s Moonstruck Band into the new millennium, I was told you had the only existing copy of her single with the Moonstruck band?”

But it wasn’t the only copy. That diner, the one that would go undiscovered for 25 years, the same bar slash diner that Bert Harmon would frequent, the song he’d asked over and over for in his own inevitable way: “Again bartender, we aint sleepin tonight, cuz another one left me and this broad’s voice on the record over there is the only thing that keeps me between this stool here and that ground there.”

By this time the bar had fallen on bad times, only to be remodeled, became a victim of neglect, and then rebuilt again, each layer of improvement built over the previous one, until the place became more and more narrow. And if anyone ever thought to do a cross section of the place, why it would have shown the day-to-day history of the past fifty years. Every cup of coffee drank, cigarette smoked, every order of cheesy hash browns would be there on the walls, each layer sealing history into its own sarcophagus.

The layer where the record was contained was not found until last year. Rumor has it fetched a fair price on Ebay, purchased by Marzine’s grandson, son to Ambly, the son created by Marzine and her sea captain that fateful night.

But up until that point, only until last year that society knew about the second copy, for now it was the 1990’s (December 18th 1991, to be exact.) and only one copy existed, and Rhino Records called Mike and asked for the record to be digitized, so that Marzine’s legacy could be carried on for another millennium to enjoy.

Mike had said in his first interview that it was Columbia records who called him, but apparently he was trying to pick up another one of the blonde franchises he had set up, replete with two children and requisite trailer park that they would live in, the offspring that would eventually grow to police the area, after forming their own militia. But all of this was before the rise of terror in that area, and before the wars broke out. We’ll bring more on that last part up later on, perhaps in the appendix.

Rhino records released the box set “Legends of Folk History” in July 1993. The set sold modestly, but continued to be re-released until well into the 2000’s.

One last song before we go to bed

At the end of every line,
you'll find a light so bright,
it could light up the world.
And if you could find at the end of the line,
the light so bright you'll want to stay home tonight.
With a light so bright,
we'll find the right to fight,
for the light so bright at the end of the line.

She heard the tune, while propped up in her bed, at Mersey Place, a rickety facility in upstate New York that catered to those at the end of their lives. A place where stark contemplation took place among the rusty gurneys, IV carts and row benches that at this moment propped up an old Victrola. Someone had come into the room, strapped this Victrola down on to the benches, lifted the jade handle, and dropped the needle onto the shellacqued 78.

It was Marzine's first record with the Moonstruck band.

Mike, Hank Ketchum's oldest son, had made the 400 mile journey to play this, the only existing record of Marzine's career that wasn't burned at the tail end of the Red Scare. Marzine lost her vision a few years before, so she sat propped up with her sunglasses on, and somewhere inside the hunched up 89 year-old's life that was shaped and guided by pain, lay the remnants of the little girl, the wide eyed doe of optimism that had written that song for her father. Hershel didn't visit anymore, and hearing this brought Hershel and his overalls directly into the room, she could feel the thick denim of his overalls, hear his laugh and feel the bristles of his whiskers against her face when at age 13,she was recovering from the chickenpoks.

She fell asleep and into a reverie that walked the fine line between fantasy and reality, fact and fiction, and Hershel's myth and who he was. She felt how it applied to her, and somewhere in her mind, she traveled instantly to the harbors of Shanghai, the labrythinan streets where Hoover's boys almost shot her, how she hopped on a rickshaw and found herself in the rolling fields of New Mexico a few years later. The looming image of her bunker raised forward, as her coal car skittered into the bunker, taking her back to the touring days of the Moonstruck Band, meeting Elvis and the fight with Turfula, the love found in the cradle of absinthe and her sea captain, in the village shaking hands with Bob Dylan, looking at his hair lip as it jumped around when he sang at the Village Tavern that night, where for one hour he owned the world, and Marzine had seen where she had come before him, and how because of her, folk music could now evolve into what she knew it always could be.

Hershel was there with her, smacking his Black Jack gum, but the coal car had other plans and veered off towards the leftward path in the bunker, passing through the blood-stained alleys of the village on that night, the bullets in Ed's demanding torso, the yellow tape, and the sirens that would not end. The coal car's journey continued to China, as the opium based halos of the streets of Shanghai passed by her, and the ratatat of the gunfire passed by before Robert's face came to the surface and the needle of the record finally stopped, and the handle clicked as Marzine lay still, propped up as Mike held out his hand, wiping away the last tears, as she still stunned managed a bloated and groggy "Thank You."

Marzine loses her soul mate

Marzine pulled her 1953 roadster off to the side of the road, her hands trembling with the heavy remorse of violent death. The sirens first clued her in, as they raced from New Jersey into the boroughs of Greenwich Village. She felt a strange sensation when she left the gig, in Long Island a few hours earlier. The evening’s momentum seemed to stop dead in its tracks. She was ebullient with excitement for Bobbie Dylan one moment and the next she could only hear the silent roar of her tires on the road, and the empty kiss of the puff on her Chesterfield Cigarette. In a strange way, she could feel Ed somehow slipping away, but at the time she played it off as suspicion, or the kind of feeling that would come over her if Hershel decided to pay her a visit.
With her suspicion sated somewhat, she rounded McDougall, and caught the faint whiff of burning tires combined with the heat felt from the flames that licked out towards the opposite side of the street, by Moe’s bar, who’s grief was visible in the way that he staggered through the street, an audible whine could be heard clear across to the other side of the street, as his face was buried in his bloody hands. Her steps grew faster, and in her heart she was already mourning. When the yellow shield of police tape crossed her field of vision, in her mind she had already filled in Ed’s body, riddled with bullets, his sad heavy corpse turned over on it’s side, as the the Che severe portraits slowly dissolved in the fire.
She knew it was Edgar’s boys from before she’d turned the corner, and she could still here Guthrie’s warnings from that afternoon in the hospital a few years back. “They’ll get to him one day, Marzie, be careful. They’ll get all of us soon, just you see.” He too was gone, as had all the heroes of her youth, but this wasn’t supposed to happen to Ed. He was larger than life, Marzine’s soul mate, her ideal other self, who existed on an identical plane, headed on the same trajectory. He’d heard of Hershel and wrote songs about the old days, mythological figures that loomed over the tall tales of the American West.

It was just this afternoon she’d seen him, hours before the meeting that would end with his office in flames and his body riddled with bullets, and the ideas, the revolution in their hearts and heads was now over. He was so content that afternoon, at peace with himself and the world. With the ink of their marriage barely dry, they spoke of over a steaming cup of coffee, that warmed the office, headquarters for their movement.
“I didn’t think I’d see you until tonight.” Ed teased, turning away from the mounds of voter registration ballots, anti-communist propaganda leaflets, and bills for the next party-sponsored folk festival. “You never cease to amaze me Marzie.”
“I couldn’t wait that long.” Marzine let the last syllable drift off in a lazy sexy drawl, picked up from her time on the road in Mississippi. She leapt into his arms, creaking the desk chair, as they stared into each others eyes.
Ed paused before commenting on his zen-like calm “I’m so glad we got married a few weeks early, and forego the bourgeois weddin’ thing.”
“I don’t have any family left.” She said, and Ed stood up, with Marzine still in his arms, as they laughed and spoke of children and the start of their new family.” When she left for the show a few minutes later, his eyes were still pearly, dewed from the frank encounter with his new wife.

She wailed on through that night, caressing the corpse as she rocked him into the next world, as the fire trucks and police cars roared off McDougall and onto the next emergency. Her cries sounded like hymns to gods that no one believed in anymore. That night she watched the sun rise and the chaos of the day swim inwards towards the oncoming day, bitterly cold to her hands that by now held Hershel’s cold body, but she stayed until the last of the warmth ran out of him and through the streets,rising up through the air, shouting at the fascism of the cops, the indecency of emotional slavery, the racism that tainted ever pillar of western society, demanding a change, forcing people to level their own beliefs, decrying demands of freedom.

The love of her life was gone.

On the Verge of Discovery or "You Can Never Hide From Who You Are"

Marzine was busy slathering on the crimson paint onto the silk screen when a heavy knock came to the door. The eventual discovery of her underground network was finished, she knew this, in the back of her mind she always knew it, that one day the door would simply crash open, spilling out 15 Hoover boys dressed as Shanghai militia, roping up her arms and dragging her out on the street, to sweat out the withdrawals of opium that kept her anger dulled, and her creativity at a brisk pace, staying up for days cranking out posters and songs.

She finally got up, after the fifth vision of her discovery floated by in a comtrails of excitement. She went to the door, expecting someone far more visicous, a bearing force of nature that would ruin the whole surprise before it ever got off the ground. It was Charlie, her assistant, he was curt, cheery and something about him was forced, maybe in the way he enunciated his clipped speech, and in not too many words, in workable mandarin made out:

"New guy for you, he American, but he friend. He knew Ed, wants to meet you."

"You know my policy, I have never met an American sympathizer who wasn't a two-bit flunky for Hoover and his cronies."

"He said he knew Ed." He pronounced this with the inferred love from which Charlie had picked up on from the moment he was assigned to her care, after his aunt died, the one who consistently kept Marzine from OD'ing, spoke to her when the hallucinations became too much to bear, and put her to sleep with her brand of Shiatsu, brought down from the mountains by her ancestors centuries ago. "He spoke of Herhsel"

The tone in the room seemed to instantly change, like the way dried paint bubbles up when heated.

Noone except Ed had managed to put the connections between the two of them, Herhsel and Marzine. Noone but Ed could have recognized the spirit of Hershel in Marzine the first time he saw her play Greenwich Village, when she was still a shy girl, unsure of what she wanted or how to achieve it. Edgar's boys could have never found that out. Not even the brief but passing connection with an active president could lead Edgar over three continents, four oceans and fifteen track marks that dotted Marzine's arm as the feverishly scratched them, unsure of what to do next.

"Send him in", she said, wiping a tear away by reaching for the pipe in the velvet box on the mantle, as red paint dripped from the silkscreen that comfortably rested against the clock, which rang out through the streets, passed every poster of Ed, out to sea, passed the junk boats and burning sky that seemed to cry out in a vague sense of desperation.