Early February I am hitch hiking down the California coast after my Big Sur adventure, riding in a rented SUV with Jeffrey Ma, a computer programmer on vacation from China. Jeffrey Ma's schema of American living still includes 'freedom on the range', and picking up hitch hikers seems at the time like an appropriate American activity; one that would help him befriend the locals. He wants to know about my travels and I am happy to tell all.
A few miles down the coast we pass an old man at the roadside, a tired and grey stranger bent over his backpack with thumb in air.
"He hitch hike like you!" says Jeffrey Ma.
As we zoom by I see the man's dark eyes scroll parallax in the panorama.
We continue down Highway One, forty miles past Gordo, and the cliffs slowly and defeatedly sink into the water with an eon of erosion until we are driving oceanside with the windows down and Chinese techno blaring out to the sweet California air. Up ahead a figure materializes on the shoulder and grows larger as we approach until we are upon him: the same old man!
"Look Jeffrey Ma, it's the same old man we passed in Lucia!"
"How is it possible!?"
Jeffrey Ma rolls the car over gravel and stops. The old stranger ambles up to the passenger's side.
"Didn't we pass you an hour ago in Lucia?" I ask. "How did you get here?"
"Eh?" the old man coughs, looking around lost.
"Do you need a ride?" Jeffrey Ma asks.
The old man's face lights up. His eyes bug out, clear and green. He forces an unnatural grin that splits open his red-leather face and stubble-white beard into a smile with row upon row of razor-sharp teeth.
"I'm Kevin Murphy," he says. "Pleased to meet you."
Kevin Murphy climbs in the back seat and sits quietly as the car pulls to the road and away. For half an hour he sits like a statue, eyes focused to infinity, wheezing and barely breathing. The smile is gone and his face has settled back into a grey, old muzzle.
I'm telling Jeffrey Ma about my night with the seals; I ask Kevin Murphy if he has seen them; he looks at me long but doesn't answer. Hard of hearing? I ask again but the old man stares on. We all sit in awkward quiet. I try again to break the ice with this stranger:
"Where have you come from, old timer?"
Kevin Murphy's face lights back up through his chitenous skin and cancer scalp, the stubble receeds and out barrels the smile; it tears his head back open to chattering razor-sharp teeth.
"I come four thousand years from... fairyfolk in eldar days... Oregon... the fairy who begot the trillobite, fossilized and hence came the insects -- I was sent by spirits a million miles, year after year -- sent to rescue an angel of fourteen who was lost in California -- I looked everywhere for her... up and down the valley... courtyards and cliffs... many years in woods and towns... until I found her one day on a slab... in the morgue -- I had no choice but to kill twenty doctors and five nurses with my bare hands [which he shows us, cracked and bloody]... rescued the girl and brought her to the beach where I made love to her -- dead as a nail, though she was... I had to untangle her from all the venerations of the machines -- the halterations from hospitals (my god, so many wires) and thereby bring her back to life. Now that I'm dying I walk my spirit walk... five years on the coast alone, I wait for my message from God."
Kevin Murphy forces another smile, one that cracks open his skull like a nut, then he falls back into himself, once more the grey stranger. Jeffrey Ma drums his fingers on the steering wheel and looks around in subdued panic. Oh no, Jeffrey Ma, what madman have you let into your car?
We drive on and Kevin Murphy remains silent. No one talks at all. I feel obliged to liven the atmosphere, so I turn to talk with the old man. He reanimates and leans in to hear, flashing row upon row of razor-sharp teeth. I start to tell him about my trip through Big Sur, but seconds in he collapses back, asleep, snoring loud, so I shut up and return to forward facing. We drive again in silence.
Outside of San Simeon we pass fields of wild zebras run free from Hearst Zoo, long abandoned and now flourishing with the cows and horses of lush California meadows. Kevin Murphy comes to life and watches the zebras intently. He speaks with razor-sharp words:
"A zebra fucks a cow... the monosome of the monoform becomes dioform... a serpent -- a cowbra... it is in sephiform. Now, split the diosome and you get a wheelbarrow... full of zebra shit!"
And this is uproariously funny -- Kevin Murphy cackles with hitherto unforseen tidal volume and continues five miles down the road, head thrown back and row upon row of razor-sharp teeth on display for all to see. Jeffrey Ma casts me a look of true fear.
Past the lighthouse in Piedras Blancas we are driving along the beach. All along the roadside, mammoth bull elephant seals collide in growling walrus fury, feet from the car they are, while their seal-cows and babies flop in the sand. We pull up to get a better look. Kevin Murphy is asleep -- I try to wake him -- he doesn't budge -- I jostle him -- no response -- I check his pulse -- dead, it appears.
"Jeffrey Ma," I say. "Kevin Murphy is dead."
We get out of the car and pace in frantic brainstorm before the bull walrus clash. What to do with the mortal remains of Kevin Murphy? We decide to phone the police in San Simeon and drop the body there. But, when we return to the car, Kevin Murphy is gone! And there he is, over by the elephant seals, there with them, dancing around their epic war, head red and horribly bald, arms upraised like condor threat, flashing row upon row of razor-sharp teeth. The seals cringe away in animal fright.
Now this is all to weird and surreal. Jeffrey Ma agrees.
Kevin Murphy plods back up the sand saying, "Now take me to the post office in San Simeon." We can but comply. As we drive he sits still in the rear, pale though alert, mouth split open in razor-sharp toothiness, not smiling, not menacing, just there. No one talks.
At the post office he clambers out like an old man, saying, "I'll get my mail... it has been waiting for me all these years, the letter from God... that's what I've been waiting for... then you'll drive me to the state park where I sleep with the bears."
Jeffrey Ma speaks up: "I not going that way. We go south from here."
Kevin Murphy leaps up, now glowing with a new red fury, baring his razor-sharp teeth -- "You will drive me to sleep with the bears!" -- then he collapses back into the form of old-man-Murphy and shuffles off into the post office.
"We leave without him," says Jeffrey Ma.
I agree.
I run up to the post office door and look through. The woman inside is saying, "Kevin Murphy! How are you doing? So nice to see you... come on in, here, have a cup of coffee, your mail is waiting; we've held it so long for you! Would you like something to eat? [with your razor-sharp teeth, to tear the jugular in red fury?]"
I run back to the car and tell Jeffrey Ma, "they will take care of him here; lets go!"
And we drive off, through zebra fields and seal spawning shores, to San Luis Obispo, leaving Kevin Murphy gnashing his rows upon rows of razor-sharp teeth at some random roadside, dreading to see him once more up ahead...
...but no. That was the last I saw of Kevin Murphy. Jeffrey Ma dropped me off in San Luis Obispo and sped off to gamble in Las Vegas. I checked in to a wonderful heaven-like hostel full of musical instruments and pretty girls, and that night I told the legend of Kevin Murphy to eager ears by the firesided.
Go with God, Kevin Murphy, wherever your awful spirit walk takes you.
