ROB HANNON

ROB HANNON BLACK TAR: HEAVEN AND HELL

Less than a year after I left the high-desert, sunblessed sagebrush steppe of the Wood River Valley in central Idaho, and returned on a Northwest detour to that somber, sodden metropolis, Seattle, my demons cornered, diminished and conquered, they sprang back to life with a startling ferocity far greater than before. Pulled into the inexorable undertow, I began to haunt the downtown underworld near the Pike Place Market, my personal Hades, Pike Street my river Styx. To waylay the creeping sickness rotting my soul, I made daily-atleast-excursions to the Southwest corner of Third and Pike.

It was Sparky’s corner, and his gang-my gang by extension-would ‘take care’ of any encroachers intent on marketing their goods from ‘his’ spot. Sparky sold the finest heroin in King County. His connection, Lee Ping, brought the junk straight from the Golden Triangle of Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Black tar so rich and pure that after plunging one deftlycooked, well-aimed shot through the festering scabs on my forearm, the dreadful opium poppy’s residue would stream and steam and scream through my veins and capillaries, and I could shout, anywhere, anytime, as I wandered, like a stultified, addicted Odysseus trying in vain to get back home to safety, with the Sirens’ enchanting, tone-perfect lyrics luring me back every day to the rocky, soul-destroying shores, “I’m in Heaven, I’m in Heaven, I’m in…Hell.”

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