Grand Coda: Mass Indifference - By Nate Berg

You wonder if the Lords of Bakersfield are real after reading my book. You wonder if Nate Berg is real after you read his voyages. Was he just some guy wanting to be a dark Lord of Bakersfield, perhaps a lord of the Bakersfield music scene shadows; that 'baseball bat of poor consciousness' spilling his own mind to the Bakersfield scene through his dark tales. They are only tales, right?

We've all been reading them. And we all wonder if such true-to-life fictions are indeed, true. Enter his latest entry, Grand Coda: Mass Indifference. Not really a voyage at all, Coda is a separate piece, darkly reflective, and judgmental over the surrounding Katrina strewn Gulf cities. Bewareof its ending and the Coda you might have for the author of this story...

Berg writes today in an email about this latest submission:

I am in Mobile, Alabama, you must see Dauphin Street, a wannabe Bourbon Street of the South in full gear now Bourbon is hurt. Veranda's, party girls, brick work, and liquour. College ball.

I will get you a picture. later though. this must roll around like a soggy teabag in the kettle of the mind first, this story is NOT about my return. it is about subtlety, knowing when enough is enough.

Yes, this story is direct from Nate Berg himself. You've already seen The Voyage of Nate Berg Part One as he entered hurricane winds. In Part Two you were fascinated at his tale of debauchery as the villain entered New Orleans driven by thoughts of an old love, just before he headed West, back to the land of Buck City. And in Part Three, in Slidell and Covington, Louisiana you read as he got caught by cops after breaking into a car. Is this the 'Baseball bat of poor consciousness' in full swing? This DeNiro in the black hat, hovering near sin city of the South just weeks before Katrina unleashed... forget about music and the Bakersfield Pizza-a-go-go for just a moment as you read the dark CODA of a criminal mind...



Grand Coda: Mass Indifference - By Nate Berg


An arraignment is where you face the judge and respond to your charges with a stance of respect and fill in the blanks with guilty, not guilty, no contest, whatever your claim.

Louisiana is a buzzing wasteland of destruction and ravage, carrying the bugs of carrion both literal and figurative as debris removers, tree cutters, construction giants and maggots pick over the corpses and properties like hopeful bugs, cheering the White Sox every pitch.

All the witnesses in my case have left, to be replaced by an ambitious corps of laborers bigger then the Confederate Army, who stream down from distant places such as North Dakota, and even from as close as Hattiesberg to make quick bucks switching out ruin to something new. The District Attorney in my case knows this, even my charges are buried under mud in Slidell and the victims are unreachable. He charges me with one crime, the minor one, sets aside the bigger charges, and sets a tentative date. I'm ablaze with glory and spunk, even request to the judge that I be able to travel at will. She grants my request. As if she saw my every well-intentioned effort to make the arraignment on time, the Greyhound to Baton Rouge, the subsequent hitchhiking with drug dealers, white supremacists, low-lives, criminals, preacher men. I made it to the courthouse, which is way out of the way, and all local transit is cancelled. I made the 6-hour journey which took me 24 hours, when the rest of the courthouse was filled with 50% empty seats and "failure to appears" and damn if my new haircut and briefcase don't look good, Republican red tie and my boy's Cub Scout tiepin.

Now the return journey home.

LETS GET A LITTLE OUT OF THE WAY.

East of Houston is the new ground zero. The ground is littered with the equivalent of a trash digger's dream and thief's revelry: valuables and semi valuables picked or left out of consideration for the next person. There is a desperation in the air. The American ideal is in effect but stunted. There is DEMAND, there is SUPPLY, yet there is a debilitating lack of SERVICE. Nobody to work the long lines at the gas station to sell the expensive gas to the long lines amassing at the pump. New Orleans is covered with a filth drying in the newly minted sunscape; the town is recovering, yet Burger King is open 4 hours of the day, and troops pass out free food by the case. I like Snickers Bars, they are packed with peanuts and....they really satisfy. So I acquire a box and carry them around in a briefcase, next to the weapons which I had chosen for this journey, which, besides the regular stuff, includes a 12 pound aluminum sprinkler head which could fuck up a human face and split a skullcase with a simple whip around my side with arms splayed.

Straight up now tell me do you wanna scar yourself forever. Now you are caught in a pool of blood.

My truckdriver across the Causeway, a 24-mile bridge across Lake Ponchatrain, is a kind young Baptist minister. I agree with him that God chose Katrina to be a tool to cleanse the scum of New Orleans away to bring forth a new light and a cleaner people. These are the end times. Our meeting ends in a firm handshake and a promise: “If you are ever in Bakersfield, head to my nightclub, Jerry's Pizza, I'll get you some food and a few drinks.”

"I look forward to seeing you again. God bless you."

A previous driver had left me in the lurch. A white boy ICP fan and deliverer of fairway rides like the Demon Dragon, primed to ride trash galleys like the Kern County Fair and please their ignorant children. I rode in his cab from Hammond to what was supposed to be Mandeville, but Highway 12 was closed. Six 18-wheelers had formed into molten balls of flaming gas, metal parts and burning flesh, so we took a back rode through God's Country.

At 3 am, the moon illuminated what can only be seen by the wicked, searching eye. A beauty in the nothingness, fireflies, shade upon the shadows cast by the icy moon. Signless roads twist upon command; declining hills, yet bayou waters ride upwards by the murk, not on the backs of salmon. Licking the stoops of the Bayou tribes, doors open unto the tidy tides of slurping waters. A farmer stands and plays Frisbee with his nubile daughter in the lantern light. Six or Seven young men are unloading canisters from a stationary ice cream truck.

"You like moonshine," sez Jeff. It ain’t a question. He is telling me that I indeed like moonshine. And do you know what???

"I fucking do." I cough and put the mason jar back in cupholder, half drained.
We enter a moronic debate that lasts 45 minutes. Two men in the dark of the Gawdest of Countries. Kenny Rogers wails away on the cassette player about the dealing done. Giving way to Pantera on a fool's mix tape. He lets me out by a log, a gas pump, and a pay phone, by a lantern-lit intersection of no concrete. This is Mandeville. Thank You Jeff, a stir behind me, I look behind the seat, THERE IS ANOTHER DIRTBALL SLEEPING, the whole hour there was someone else in the cab. My tired senses failed to check behind the seat. This guy wakes up stiffly, and grabs his crossbow.

"Are we there yet? I'm itching to kill something."

I grab my case, scramble for the sprinkler head of cranial importance, and back step. The truck pulls away. I look at the payphone. It's address is Sorrento. I was lulled into delightful talk by the moon and the land, and now I was 85 miles out of the way for it. Two Southern carny workers could easily rage a duo of crossbow bolts straight into my body and be gone with me. Pitch my body into the swirling waters of Lake Ponchatrain before you could say "Spiral Fries". My grave be a vortex of brown waters, girders, splinters and Kid Rock CD cases. An old pair of Nike’s for a pillow. I consider myself lucky.

I walk to where Katrina was held by the pressures of the Southern Wind coming of out of the Pass. A cherry picker cab picked me up in Northern Sorrento, after hours of wandering through giant orange pumpkin-faced bags filled with leaves. It's Fall. A white supremacist picks me up on seeing my white face, he is relieved. I don't tell him that I am 12.5% completely Jewish. A distinction that I save much to the chagrin of ragged journalists who refer to me as ticket Nazi music promoter, or to the pain of trashy partyboys who I have to have pepper sprayed, and hauled away to jail by my loyal Bakersfield PD officers back in Northern Los Angeles.

"Where are you heading, boy?"

"I'm going East on the 10 as far as you can go."

"Good, boy, get in."

In 20 minutes we were talking about the race war.

Earlier in the trip my truck driver accomplice sped me towards Covington. Michael, a self styled-dealer of crack cocaine, he had asked me if I could use my crime ties back East to get him into a 'getquickrich' position.

“Micheal, God helps those who help themselves... to other peoples stuff. I can't give you the answers, but here is a hint: Large shipments, hidden in shit, drugs in the containers of portapotties, Michael. Not even law enforcement dogs like to nose around in shit..." That one is for you, run with it. If you are ever in Bakersfield, look me up...

New Orleans seemed to be doing fine, however the misguided eye of the media skipped over the real suffering of Gulfport/ Biloxi. This is where I regain the service of Greyhound, they seriously just started servicing Biloxi 2 hours ago. The little bus station appears like the US embassy at the fall of Saigon. US soldiers and citizens with bags bigger then their bodies, everywhere. 3 times the capacity of the 'only ride out of Saigon/ Mogadishu/ Biloxi'. I had made purchase of the last available ticket; so, I lock up my bags with the ticket clerk and go for a nice walk. I have 3 hours.

There is a quiet waterfront blocked by US soldiers, I bluff my way past the blockade with a US Green Card, English Accent, and assurance that I volunteer with Salvation Army and would like to survey the wreckage. Not a prob.

A riverboat casino pitched deep into the city park, cars smashed into the ground somewhat semi-intact yet vicious winds and torrents had clustered them 6 feet into the opening ground 3 at a time, like secret lovers kissing and succumbing to the wrath of God's hand. Houses ripped clean of walls and left limping on one bad leg. An entire school vaulted onto its side, desks and chairs filling the head like lotto balls in a lotto globe. A pile of boats. An entire neighborhood gutted and tied up, cleaned out, all the owner's possessions tied up in squares, quarantined pigs in the forefront for all to view. Like the coroner's removal of the brain outside of the head that held it. Man vainly trying to quickly stem the tide of natural fury.

A science exercise.

A beautiful day. An AYSO sparkling Saturday morning now. Bright and cool. The only thing missing was the kids, the parents, the ball, the field. Plenty of Gatorade, cases by the side of the road for any passerby to indulge in as they grab a tourist seat to see the hand of God at work in Biloxi disassembling the houses of good people, the dreams of better people, much to the delight of the evil people. God's destruction of the Good People made glorious by a refreshing wind and fresher light. Our Lord had gotten crafty, blameless now of the people, when it is he himself that liquidates the lives, funds and aims of the good. As a people I suggest we have gone one Brittney Spears video too far, and missed the turn off. God decapitated a family in the street, starting with one Peter Dupri and his wife who got crushed when a church steeple hit them like a pinball flipper into the mouth of the dark bonus panel. No extra ball for that hardworking man.

Tilt on the moral people.

Me? I need a momento.

A dollhouse? No, way too big to carry. A steering wheel, too obvious and clunky.
Here it is, scattered with the broken bits of glass on the grip tape floor of a sexy speedboat, down main street, where The Hard Rock Cafe stares at you from the West. I pick up my momento from Biloxi.

I am the only human left for miles in the mist and the sun.

Please Come In, sez the Hard Rock Cafe.

No, I am fine with my new souvenir, I don't need the entire Hard Rock Cafe.

I now have a silver Prince keychain, you know, from when he first changed his name into a symbol.

This is what it sounds like... when God cries. His killer whisper hewn into the metal on a molecular level, I don't even need to put the keychain closer to my ear to hear God's voice. It has poured out from behind the rock that Jesus had to roll back in the Land of Burial, and now fills the world anew. It came crashing out of the Gulf Coast. Winged dictums of dying Americans, welcomed to the new age.

Get with it now, or it shall run you over. Accept it. Embrace it. Ride it. The streamroller moves West.

I walk back through the blast zone towards where people start to be seen milling around, there is a little 18-year-old girl, rail thin, crying on the steps of the McDonald's. She clutches an employment application in her hand, her nails chewed down to the quick, and, if scent was sound, I would hear the crackle of all the cigarettes little April had ever smoked, until she ran into the arms of the man at McDonalds, who then took her to the park.

Her Mom had sent her to file an application with threat of abandonment, yet McDonald's was closed. Apparently common sense had also left with the killer high-pressure system.

I place my arm over her sweet shoulder.

"Let me help you, I am in the rock music business."

This entry was posted by N.L. Belardes, on Saturday, November 12, 2005. You can leave your response.