insides of a motorcycle contain surfaces that are precise in some cases to as little as one ten-thousandth of an inch. If you drop them or get dirt on them or scratch them or bang them with a hammer they’ll lose that precision. It’s important to understand that the metal behind the surfaces can normally take great shock and stress but that the surfaces themselves cannot. When handling precision parts that are stuck or difficult to manipulate, a person with mechanic’s feel will avoid damaging the surfaces and work with his tools on the nonprecision surfaces of the same part whenever possible. If he must work on the surfaces themselves, he’ll always use softer surfaces to work them with. Brass hammers, plastic hammers, wood hammers, rubber hammers and lead hammers are all available for this work. Use them. Vise jaws can be fitted with plastic and copper and lead faces. Use these too. Handle precision parts gently. You’ll never be sorry. If you have a tendency to bang things around, take more time and try to develop a little more respect for the accomplishment that a precision part represents.
Low-angled shadows in the dry country we’ve been through have left a kind of blue depressed feeling. —
Maybe it’s just the usual late afternoon letdown, but after all I’ve said about all these things today I just have a feeling that I’ve somehow talked around the point. Some could ask, “Well, if I get around all those gumption traps, then will I have the thing licked?”
The answer, of course, is no, you still haven’t got anything licked. You’ve got to live right too. It’s the way you live that predisposes you to avoid the traps and see the right facts. You want to know how to paint a perfect painting? It’s easy. Make yourself perfect and then just paint naturally. That’s the way all the experts do it. The making of a painting or the fixing of a motorcycle isn’t separate from the rest of your existence. If you’re a sloppy thinker the six days of the week you aren’t working on your machine, what trap avoidances, what gimmicks, can make you all of a sudden sharp on the seventh? It all goes together.
But if you’re a sloppy thinker six days a week and you really try to be sharp on the seventh, then maybe the next six days aren’t going to be quite as sloppy as the preceding six. What I’m trying to come up with on these gumption traps I guess, is shortcuts to living right.
The real cycle you’re working on is a cycle called yourself. The machine that appears to be “out there” and the person that appears to be “in here” are not two separate things. They grow toward Quality or fall away from Quality together.
We arrive in Prineville Junction with only a few hours of daylight left. We’re at the intersection with Highway 97, where we’ll turn south, and I fill up the tank at the corner and then am so tired I go around in back and sit on the yellow-painted cement curb with my feet in the gravel and the last rays of the sun flaring through the trees into my eyes. Chris comes and sits down too, and we don’t say anything, but this is the worst depression yet. All that talk about gumption traps and I fall right into one myself. Fatigue maybe. We’ve got to get some sleep.
I watch the cars go by for a while on the highway. Something lonely about them. Not lonely… worse. Nothing. Like the attendant’s expression when he filled the tank. Nothing. A nothing curb, by some nothing gravel, at a nothing intersection, going nowhere.
Something about the car drivers too. They look just like the gasoline attendant, staring straight ahead in some private trance of their own. I haven’t seen that since — since Sylvia noticed it the first day. They all look like they’re in a funeral procession.
Once in a while one gives a quick glance and then looks away expressionlessly, as if minding his own business, as if embarrassed that we might have noticed he was looking at us. I see it now because we’ve been away from it for a long time. The driving is different too. The cars seem to be moving at a steady maximum speed for in-town driving, as though they want to get somewhere, as though what’s here right now is just something to get through. The drivers seem to be thinking about where they want to be rather than where they are.
I know what it is! We’ve arrived at the West Coast! We’re all strangers again! Folks, I just forgot the biggest gumption trap of all. The funeral procession! The one everybody’s in, this hyped-up, fuck-you, supermodern, ego style of life that thinks it owns this country. We’ve been out of it for so long I’d forgotten all about it.
We get into the stream of traffic going south and I can feel the hyped-up danger close in. I see in the mirror some bastard is tailgating me and won’t pass. I move it up to seventy-five and he still hangs in there. Ninety-five and we pull away from him. I don’t like this at all.
At Bend we stop and have supper in a modern restaurant in which people also come and go without looking at each other. The service is excellent but impersonal.
Farther south we find a forest of scrubby trees, subdivided into ridiculous little lots. Some developer’s scheme apparently. At one of the lots far off the main highway we spread out our sleeping bags and discover that the pine needles just barely cover what must be many feet of soft spongy dust. I’ve never seen anything like it. We have to be careful not to kick up the needles or the dust flies up over everything.
We spread out the tarps and put the sleeping bags on them. That seems to work. Chris and I talk for a while about where we are and where we are going. I look at the map in the twilight, and then look at it some more with the flashlight. We’ve covered 325 miles today. That’s a lot. Chris seems as completely tired as I am, and as ready as I am to fall asleep.
Part IV
27
Why don’t you come out of the shadows? What do you really look like? You’re afraid of something aren’t you? What is it you’re afraid of?
Beyond the figure in the shadows is the glass door. Chris is behind it, motioning me to open it. He’s older now, but his face still has a pleading expression. “What do I do now?” he wants to know. “What do I do next?” He’s waiting for my instructions.
It’s time to act.
I study the figure in the shadows. It’s not as omnipotent as it once seemed. “Who are you?” I ask.
No answer.
“By what right is that door closed?”
Still no answer. The figure is silent, but it is also cowering. It’s afraid! Of me.
“There are worse things than hiding in the shadows. Is that it? Is that why you don’t speak?”
It seems to be quivering, retreating, as though sensing what I am about to do.
I wait, and then move closer to it. Loathsome, dark, evil thing. Closer, looking not at it but at the glass door, so as not to warn it. I pause again, brace myself and then lunge!
My hands sink into something soft where its neck should be. It writhes, and I tighten the grip, as one holds a serpent. And now holding it tighter and tighter we’ll get it into the light. Here it comes! NOW WE’LL SEE ITS FACE!
“Dad!”
“Dad!” I hear Chris’s voice through the door?
Yes! The first time! “Dad! Dad!”
“Dad! Dad!” Chris tugs on my shirt. “Dad! Wake up! Dad!”
He’s crying, sobbing now. “Stop, Dad! Wake up!”
“It’s all right, Chris.”
“Dad! Wake up!”
