The Devil's Fireworks (crash WALKER Conclusion)

Crash Walker and Sgt. Gene Kurlich both stood atop the Jet Train as it raced on an elevated track above Duffyland. Walker stood on one end and Kurlich stood at the other end, both of their shoulders squared like a pair of gunfighters facing off for the final showdown. They could see the background behind them of Funny Animal statues and garish wall murals of Jesus on the cross, Drunken Fire Trucks, and Doctor Monkey the Crazy Surgeon. Lights of different colors shined in their faces as they stared each other down.

“Your one-eyed girlfriend didn’t bother to search me”, Kurlich yelled, steadying himself. “If she had she would have noticed this little friend of mine”. He pulled out a switchblade as he advanced towards Walker. The train picked up speed.

There was a slight rock to the train with no railing to support them. If they fell it was over. The train cut a sharp turn and the knife fell out of Kurlich’s hand and clattered across the rooftop. They both dove to pick it up, wrestling each other for the knife. Kurlich commanded the knife with a vicious smile. “Alright, Walker, get up right now. This time the good guys win!” he ordered.

Walker got up with a frustrated look.
“Hero Killer, you think you’re so tough”, grumbled Kurlich, confident until he suddenly jerked his arm up from the train’s turbulence. The train accelerated to 65 mph.
Walker punched him flat out on the chin, leaving him sprawled on his back.
“You dumb fuck, don’t you know the best heroes are make believe?”
Kurlich curled up and threw the knife at Walker, narrowly missing his face by a few inches. Walker lost his balance and almost fell off the train. He hung off the side of the train as it raced through the park. The train accelerated to 75 mph.

Kurlich laughed and got to his feet. “Oh, this is good, this is too good. Now I’m standing up and your ass is hanging off the train. Well, say goodbye to showbiz, asshole!” Kurlich marched towards Walker’s hanging hands. He stomped on the fingers of Walker’s left hand, making him lose his grip.
“Confess you killed Bill Flagg, Walker!”
He stomped on the little finger of Walker’s right hand and Walker lost the feeling in his finger.
“Confess! Maybe God will forgive you on the way to Hell!”
He stomped on Walker’s ring finger, making him lose his grip with that finger. He only hung by his first three fingers.
“Still won’t talk, huh? On behalf of Jesus Christ and the LAPD, I, uh, ah –“ he tried to stomp again but lost all feeling in his right leg.

“What the hell is going on? Shit!” The numbness radiated up his right leg to his back. He desperately kicked his leg up and down to get some feeling back into it, with no success. His body felt weightless so when the Jet Train took a quick turn he flew off screaming, the screams stopping when he fell towards the entrance to Johnny Reb's Jubilee, landing on the end of a bayonet sticking out of a Confederate soldier’s rifle, impaled all the way through, his bugged eyes open with shock.

Walker shook his pained hands, put them back up on the rim of the train’s roof and climbed back up. Before he could climb all the way up the train entered the terminal, slowing down to a dead halt. He looked down and saw April Van Winter standing at the platform with Jack Duffy, Judd Parks and Randall McIver behind her. An armed group of Funny Animals ran up the stairs to the platform.

“April, put away your gun”, Walker said, jumping off the train, “Kurlich is dead-“
“But, lover, I -“
“You’ll find his body hanging around the Johnny Reb exhibit. Whew!” He rubbed his forehead.
“Grab this guy!” Duffy ordered the Funny Animals. Van Winter turned around to see the Funny Animals approaching, and stopped everything right then and there. She lifted her gun and opened fire on Crash Walker, shooting him three times in the chest. He crumpled into a heap, banging his head against the train, blood trickling out his ears. Everyone looked astonished.

"Now, honey, you didn’t have to do that”, Jack Duffy admonished her.
“I couldn’t help it. If it wasn’t for him my father would still be alive. Everything Walker touched turned to death”, she hung her head down.
“Well, what’s done is done. Hey fellas, take this creep away and dispose of the body”, Duffy pointed at the limp body.
“Wait! Let me take care of him. It would give me great pleasure to see his body burn”.
“Gee, I don’t know, that’s not a very ladylike thing to do-“
“Hey, Packy Pig, give me a hand with this body, put him in my car”, she threw her car keys at him. “Put his dead ass in the trunk. There’s a $100 bill in it for you”.
“Yes, Ma’am!” a chunky guy in a pig mask tootled, happily dragging Crash Walker’s body away.

“Well, Duffy, you picked another lemon”, Parks chuckled, “First Flagg and now this yo-yo. From now on we’re going to be the ones that'll choose a suitable candidate”.
“He wasn’t so bad-“
“He got Van Winter killed, for Chrissakes-“ McIver burst in.
“Doggone it, fellas, how did I know this guy was a total idiot?”
“Well, lookee boys, I know a guy who can’t let us down. He’s a Western TV star just like Walker, he’s a lot older, not as good looking, mind you, but he’s gosh darn earnest and God fearing and I’ll bet he’s hungry for work. He hasn’t made a movie in years and he’s dumb enough to do what he’s told”.
“Now that sounds real good!”
“He’s not some Sunset Strip punk, either, he lives in the Palisades”.
“Why, that sounds Jim Dandy!” Duffy brightened up. “I haven’t felt this good since I hired Joseph Mengele on that Space Paradise project!”
“Let’s call him tonight”.
“Damn straight! This calls for a drink!”


ONE YEAR LATER:

A man with long, messy black hair stood on a balcony in a Swiss chateau overlooking the New Year’s fireworks bringing in 1968. He wore a flowing white silk shirt with red crushed velvet trousers, sipped expensive cognac from a snifter and pinched a joint in the other hand. “Your turn to toke, Mrs. Van Walker”, he handed the joint to a woman in a paisley kaftan and sandals who wore a leather eye patch with a huge paisley eyeball painted on. The doorbell rang.

“Hold that thought, darling!” she ran downstairs to open the door.
Several voices rang up from the staircase in the background. The long-haired man watched the fireworks burst open, one shaped like a flower, the next like a kaleidoscope. “You shouldn’t have!” April Van Walker gushed. “A block of hashish!”
“The finest in Morocco, Ape”, Keith Richards smiled. “Let’s have a bit of paper, Walker, that’s a good man”.

Crash Walker smiled when he saw Mick Jagger, Marianne Faithfull, Anita Pallenberg, Brian Jones and Mr. Richards standing next to Mrs. Van Walker on the balcony.
“How do, old man?” Jagger did a mock pompous bow.
Walker held up his joint. “On with the show, good health to you”.

April lifted her arms, “Well, we suffer from lack of domestics, so allow me, children. Hand me your coats!”
She ran off to put away their coats. “Well, Jones, have you returned for more of my finest Mexican grass?”
“You have the best, Walker”, Brian Jones laughed, “Pass it over here. Generosity is next to godliness, or so I’ve heard”.
Fireworks were exploding faster and brighter. “A tab would be lovely about now”.
“Indeed”, Jagger rolled some Moroccan hash by the table. “ Walker, how did you become such a fine purveyor of drugs?”
“I don’t remember”, Walker said. Everyone laughed. April Van Walker came in.
“How did Walker cultivate his appreciation of fine drugs, Ape? Tell us the tale”.

April thought for a moment. “Well, um, there was this mad dog, and the mad dog was on a train and it tried to bite him, see-“
“A mad dog on a train?” Richards asked.
“Yes! And I shot the bitch with a trank. I had this trank gun, yes?”
“You had a trank gun on your person?”
“Yes, well that was when I was a stunt woman, that’s how I earned my bread and butter before Pappums shuffled off his mortal coil, but shit, I digress”.
“Yes, do go on”, Jagger begged. Walker quietly sipped his cognac, his face occasionally brightened by the fireworks in the background.
“Well, these animal men were going to kill old Crash so I had to make him disappear, you know, make him invisible. So, I-“
“Yesyesyes?”
“So she shot me with the trank gun, rendering me invisible”, Walker finished for her. April took her bow like a star.
“Did anybody try to find you, then?” Marianne asked.
“No, nobody cared”.
“You poor bugger!” Everybody laughed.
“Darlings, you must see the most fabulous dress I got from Rudi, it’s out of sight!” April ran off with Anita and Marianne.

Crash Walker stared out into the Swiss hills, beautiful but not as beautiful as the Hollywood Hills, gazing into the colorful sky but not as colorful as the lights of the Sunset Strip, the scenery lush but not as kinetic as Hollywood Boulevard, the Pacific Coast Highway just a memory. There were lights, of course, but not the lights of a restless frontier like Southern California. The fleeting homesickness passed, broken by Mick Jagger saying, “Lovely hashish, Walker, lovely hashish. “

“Nothing but the best for my friends”, he took a drag, and smiled, “After all, I’m a man of wealth and taste”.