He had the hood up on an old red-and-white Plymouth convertible, and he had a wrench and he was fiddling with something under there. He didn’t look like someone that wanted to get rid of his gas, but we asked anyway.
“I got plans for a big trip,” he said. “Need all the gas I can get. Y’all want a drink? It’s the local poison. Made out of fruit juice and piss. No kidding. It’ll put you higher than goddamn Skylab.”
We passed.
He took a swig and shivered. “Things a man’ll drink. Look here, name’s Steve.”
He stuck out his hand and we took turns shaking it and giving our names.
“Guess y’all are heading on down the highway too, huh?”
“That’s the plan,” I said.
“Maybe I’ll see you then. Soon as I get this buddy tuned up, have me a damn good drunk, I’ll be ready to roll. I figure sometime tomorrow. Can’t say that I see much to keep me here.”
We wished him luck and went back to the camper without the gas. I didn’t look in the direction of the hanging tree.
It was dark by the time we got back there, and the four of us talked and ate some fruit and went to bed, Crier slept in the front seat as usual, and Bob, Grace and I slept in the back.
Grace was between me and Bob, but she didn’t try to molest me, and she didn’t try and molest Bob. Bob refrained from playing with himself.
Ilay there and thought about Grace and told myself I was too mature and philosophical and had been through too much to expect anything of our relationship other than friendship. Besides, hadn’t she said not to make too much of the other night?
Some things you just had to take like an adult. What she did was what she did and it didn’t matter to me. She was her own person. And a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do, and look and see if you’re right then go ahead, and every dog has his day, and every cloud has a silver lining, and a penny saved is a penny earned, and everything works out for the best, and… it was a long night.
It was later than we planned by the time we got up. We had fruit for breakfast because there wasn’t any ham and eggs and coffee on the menu, then we got out of there. Crier and Bob up front, me and Grace in the back.
Grace talked about some books I hadn’t read and necking didn’t come up.
That’s how it went for a few days, and finally I quit worrying about IT every second, and cut down to about once an hour.
So when I wasn’t thinking about IT, I was thinking about what in hell had possessed me to agree to go along on this little run. I wasn’t any hero. I had tried to be once and I had gotten nailed up for the trouble. What I did best was mind my own business, and here I was barreling down the highway so I could confront Popalong Cassidy, who did not sound like a nice guy. Worse yet, I was the reason Crier and Bob were going too. Or at least part of it. I guess when a fella gets bored he can do some stupid things. And maybe I thought I was being macho going with Grace to the end of the highway to help her out. I was wondering how I had ever arrived at that. Grace could probably beat up all three of us.
Damn, Bob had been right when he said a set of titties made me go all to pieces. And maybe Grace had known exactly what she was doing that night in the camper and down by the lake-sealing a deal.
And maybe I was being a horse’s ass. It really hurt to discover I had a bigger streak of male chauvinist pig in me than I thought. It hurt worse to realize that I was stupid and tittie blind and was probably going to get killed for it. I preferred happy endings.
But even this kind of thinking didn’t last. You can only focus on your own death and destruction so long before it gets boring. You begin to wonder about more important matters, like do people who wear suspenders wear them because they like the way they look, or because they hold their paints up? Do people who work on garbage trucks see their work as important? Did they grow up wanting to be garbage men? What kind of tools are used to scrape dead animals off the highway? Who was the idiot who invented those Happy Face symbols, or those signs that read BABY ON BOARD or SHIT HAPPENS? Should those folks be slow-tortured by parboiling, or killed outright? What was the true story on green M amp;M’s?
I tell you, I had lots of interesting things to think about.
6
That night we got some dried brush and stuff and used our flint and steel to build a little fire near the camper, and pretty soon it was a big fire because Bob couldn’t get warm enough and he kept piling brush on it.
“You’re gonna catch the truck on fire,” Crier said.
“No, I ain’t,” Bob said. “We’re right here in front of the fire.”
“I won’t burn up to save the truck,” Crier said.
“Count me out too,” Grace said.
“It’s all right,” Bob said. “I’m watching it.”
After that we sat there and thought and said a little now and then, but not too much because we had our minds on some things, like the fact the highway was starting to change. The nights were getting darker, as if the air was getting thicker, and there were posters and popcorn bags and soft drink cups and the like lying about, and I figured pretty soon we’d be getting into the stormy part. Already we were seeing things in the truck mirrors, and sometimes things reflected in the windows; things like the face of King Kong, the Frankenstein monster clinging to the side of the truck, Dracula and Daffy Duck with their arms around one another.
It was pretty disconcerting to see stuff like that, then look and not find anything there to reflect it. On second thought, I guess we were glad of that. Still, it was unnerving.
Anyway, we were sitting there, and Crier said, “Got to see a man about a horse.”
“Me too,” I said.
We walked out behind the truck and stood in the highway to do our business. It was very dark. I looked down the road the way we had come. There was a bend in the road and it went around behind some trees and there was some moonlight on the highway, but when I looked in the other direction it was dark as the inside of a goat.
I finished pissing and put my equipment up and wandered off the highway and started walking along the edge in the direction of the dark part. I didn’t go too far. It was really dark.
I turned and looked at Crier. He was still hosing the concrete. He looked at me and said, “You know, after all I’ve been through, bad as it’s been, I think things are about to get better. I feel it.”
I was going to say something to that, but around the corner came two headlights and the faintest glint of a grillwork smile.
Crier, dong in hand, swiveled in the direction of the car and then he was a hood ornament.
The car, a convertible, sailed by me with Crier bent over the hood and the driver hit down on the horn, stomped the brakes and yelled, “Motherfucker!”
Crier went under the car and bounced out from beneath it and lay in the highway with the moonlight for a shroud. He still had his dong in his hand, but it wasn’t connected to his body anymore. He had jerked it off, no pun intended. Lying on his back, his fist on his chest, his dong clenched there like a frankfurter, he looked as if he were studying the universe while preparing to eat a weenie.
FIFTH REEL
