December 6, 1973
It was half past three and he was slamming up the turnpike toward home, doing seventy. The day was clear and hand and bright, the temperature in the low thirties. Every day since Mary had left he went for a long ride on the turnpike-in a way, it had become his surrogate work. It soothed him. When the road was unrolling in front of him, its edges clearly marked by the low early winter snowbanks on either side, he was without thought and at peace. Sometimes he sang along with the radio in a lusty, bellowing voice. Often on these trips he thought he should just keep going, letting way lead on to way, getting gas on the credit card. He would drive south and not stop until he ran out of roads or out of land. Could you drive all the way to the tip of South America? He didn’t know.
But he always came back. He would get off the turnpike, eat hamburgers and French fries in some pickup restaurant, and then drive into the city, arriving at sunset or just past.
He always drove down Stanton Street, parked, and got out to look at whatever progress the 784 extension had made during the day. The construction company had mounted a special platform for rubberneckers-mostly old men and shoppers with an extra minute-and during the day it was always full. They lined up along the railing like clay ducks in a shooting gallery, the cold vapor pluming from their mouths, gawking at the bulldozers and graders and the surveyors with their sextants and tripods. He could cheerfully have shot all of them.
But at night, with the temperatures down in the 20’s, with sunset a bitter orange line in the west and thousands of stars already pricking coldly through the firmament overhead, he could measure the road’s progress alone and undisturbed. The moments he spent there were becoming very important to him-he suspected that in an obscure way, the moments spent on the observation platform were recharging him, keeping him tied to a world of at least half-sanity. In those moments before the evening’s long plunge into drunkenness had begun, before the inevitable urge to call Mary struck, before he began the evening’s activities in Self-Pity-Land he was totally himself, coldly and blinkingly sober. He would curl his hands over the iron pipe and stare down at the construction until his fingers became as unfeeling as the iron itself and it became impossible to tell where the world of himself-the world of human things-ended and the outside world of tractors and cranes and observation platforms began. In those moments there was no need to blubber or pick over the rickrack of the past that jumbled his memory. In those moments he felt his
Now, whipping up the turnpike at seventy, still forty miles away from the Westgate tollbooths, he saw a figure standing in the breakdown land just past exit 16, muffled up in a CPO coat and wearing a black knitted watchcap. The figure was holding up a sign that said (amazingly, in all this snow): LAS VEGAS. And underneath that, defiantly: or BUST!
He slammed on the power brake and felt the seat belt strain a groove in his middle with the swift deceleration, a little exhilarated by the Richard Petty sound of his own squealing tires. He pulled over about twenty yards beyond the figure. It tucked its sign under its arm and ran toward him. Something about the way the figure was running told him the hitchhiker was a girl.
The passenger door opened and she got in.
“Hey, thanks.”
“Sure.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled out, accelerating back to seventy. The road unrolled in front of him again. “A long way to Vegas.”
“It sure is.” She smiled at him, the stock smile for people that told her it was a long way to Vegas, and pulled off her gloves. “Do you mind if I smoke?”
“No, go ahead.”
She pulled out a box of Marlboros. “Like one?”
“No, thanks.”
She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, took a box of kitchen matches from her CPO pocket, lit her smoke, took a huge drag and chuffed it out, fogging part of the windshield, put Marlboros and matches away, loosened the dark blue scarf around her neck and said: “I appreciate the ride. It’s cold out there.”
“Were you waiting long?”
“About an hour. The last guy was drunk. Man, I was glad to get out.”
He nodded. “I’ll take you to the end of the turnpike.”
“End?” She looked at him. “You’re going all the way to Chicago?”
“What? Oh, no.” He named his city.
“But the turnpike goes through there.” She pulled a Sunoco road map, dog-eared from much thumbing, from her other coat pocket. “The map says so.”
“Unfold it and look again.”
She did so.
“What color is the part of the turnpike we’re on now?”
“Green.”
“What color is the part going through the city?”
“Dotted green. It’s… oh, Christ! It’s under
“That’s right. The world-famous 784 extension. Girl, you’ll never get to Las Vegas if you don’t read the key to your map.”
She bent over it, her nose almost touching the paper. Her skin was clear, perhaps normally milky, but now the cold had brought a bloom to her cheeks and forehead. The tip of her nose was red, and a small drop of water hung beside her left nostril. Her hair was clipped short, and not very well. A home job. A pretty chestnut color. Too bad to cut it, worse to cut it badly. What was that Christmas story by O. Henry? “The Gift of the Magi.” Who did you buy a watch chain for, little wanderer?
“The solid green picks up at a place called Landy,” she said. “How far is that from where this part ends?”
“About thirty miles.”
“Oh Christ.”
She puzzled over the map some more. Exit 15 flashed by.
“What’s the bypass road?” she asked finally. “It just looks like a snarl to me.”
“Route 7’s best,” he said. “It’s at the last exit, the one they call Westgate.” He hesitated. “But you’d do better to just hang it up for the night. There’s a Holiday Inn. We won’t get there until almost dark, and you don’t want to try hitching up Route 7 after dark.”
“Why not?” she asked, looking over at him. Her eyes were green and disconcerting; an eye color you read about occasionally but rarely see.
“It’s a city bypass road,” he said, taking charge of the passing lane and roaring past a whole line of vehicles doing fifty. Several of them honked at him angrily. “Four lanes with a little bitty concrete divider between them. Two lanes west toward Landy, two lanes east into the city. Lots of shopping centers and hamburger stands and bowling alleys and all that. Everybody is going in short hops. No one wants to stop.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “Is there a bus to Landy?”
“There used to be a city bus, but it went bankrupt. I guess there must be a Greyhound-
“Oh, fuck it.” She squidged the map back together and stuffed it into her pocket. She stared at the road, looking put out and worried.
“Can’t afford a motel room?”
“Mister, I’ve got thirteen bucks. I couldn’t rent a doghouse.”
“You can stay at my house if you want,” he said.
“Yeah, and maybe you better let me out right here.”
“Never mind. I withdraw the offer.”
“Besides, what would your wife think?” She looked pointedly at the wedding ring on his finger. It was a look that suggested she thought he might also hang around school play yards after the monitor had gone home for the day.
“My wife and I are separated.”
“Recently?”
“Yes. As of December first.”
“And now you’ve got all these hang-ups that you could use some help with,” she said. There was contempt in her voice but it was an old contempt, not aimed specifically at him. “Especially some help from a young chick.”
“I don’t want to lay anybody,” he said truthfully. “I don’t even think I could get it up.” He realized he had just used two terms that he had never used before a woman in his life, but it seemed all right. Not good or bad but all right, like discussing the weather.
“Is that supposed to be a challenge?” she asked. She drew deeply on her cigarette and exhaled more smoke.
“No,” he said. “I suppose it sounds like a line if you’re looking for lines. I suppose a girl on her own has to be looking for them all the time.”
“This must be part three,” she said. There was still mild contempt and hostility in her tone, but now it was cut with a certain tired amusement. “How did a nice girl like you get in a car like this?”
“Oh, to hell with it,” he said. “You’re impossible.”
“That’s right, I am.” She snuffed her cigarette in his ashtray and then wrinkled her nose. “Look at this. Full of candy wrappers and cellophane and every other kind of shit. Why don’t you get a litterbag?”
“Because I don’t smoke. If you had just called ahead and said, Barton old boy, I intend to be hitching the turnpike today so give me a ride, would you? And by the way, clear the shit out of your ashtray because I intend to smoke-then I would have emptied it. Why don’t you just throw it out the window?”
She was smiling. “You have a nice sense of irony.”
“It’s my sad life.”
“Do you know how long it takes filter tips to biodegrade? Two hundred years, that’s how long. By that time your grandchildren will be dead.”
He shrugged. “You don’t mind me breathing in your used carcinogens, screwing up the cilia in my lungs, but you don’t want to throw a filter tip out into the turnpike. Okay.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Nothing.”
“Listen, do you want to let me out? Is that it?”
“No,” he said. “Why don’t we just talk about something neutral? The state of the dollar. The state of the Union. The state of Arkansas.”
“I think I’d rather catch a little nap if you don’t mind. It looks like I’m going to be up most of the night.”
“Fine.”
