Mr. Blue: Memoirs of a Renegade (41 page)

My headlight beams were biting
into the gray light before me. It was a sunless winter day; the hour could have
been high noon or dusk. Two hundred miles northeast, the night rose up and
swallowed the land.
Onward, onward, rode the four hundred.
I turned on the radio and
tried to find some music I liked. Darkness made for clearer reception. Maybe I
could pick up Chicago or St Louis. What I got was country and western. I
preferred jazz, blues and some classical, especially Mozart, because that was
what I knew. In juvende hall and reform school most of the wards were city
boys, whatever their skin color, and there was a bias against country boys as
corn-fed fools. In prison, however, that prejudice disappeared. The toughest
convicts I know are offspring of country people who poured into California from
the Dust Bowl of Middle America during the Great Depression of the '30s.

Although my preference in
singers leaned toward a quartet of black females — Ella Fitzgerald, Dinah
Washington, Sarah Vaughan and Billie Holiday — when Patsy Cline's twangy voice
filled with lament came over the speaker, I stopped turning the dial and
listened. She had what they had — soul.

Somewhere in Missouri I made a
wrong turn. I found myself in Cairo, Illinois, where the Ohio River joins the
mighty Mississippi. I crossed into Kentucky. My car began throwing oil.
Somewhere east of the Mississippi I bought a case and stopped every hundred
miles to pour in another quart or two. It was messy on the undercarriage, and
when I came out of a coffee shop a thick pool of oil was on the ground. But as
long as I kept pouring it in, the engine kept running. I was a few miles
outside of Paducah, Kentucky when suddenly the engine stopped. I rolled to a
stop on a long, slight grade, the kind that giant trucks and trailers race up
if they have gathered momentum. The last thing any driver wants to do is stop
for some fool standing beside a stalled car at 4 a.m. on a freezing night. It
was cold but now I had some warm clothes. The ground was barren black, but
where it was shaded by bushes or tree trunks there were white patches of snow.
The air was icy and clean — and the sky was filled with more glittering stars
than I'd ever seen. A shooting star arced for a few seconds and went out. I had
a thought I've had many times since. How reasonable was our idea of God when
the tiny blue marble of Earth was, compared to the universe, less than one
grain of sand on the beach at Santa Monica? If we could see galaxies of a
billion suns each two million light years away, how could it be that God spoke
personally to Moses, or had a son named Jesus? The Bible did have some truth
and insights, the most obvioius one being "All is vanity ..."

When the sun came up, a pickup
truck stopped. The driver took me to a gas station with a mechanic, on the edge
of Paducah. I thought the fuel pump had gone out. The gauge said a quarter full
but the engine wasn't getting any gas. A tow truck was sent to bring it in. A
new fuel pump was installed but the engine still wasn't getting any gas. The
mechanic put a stick down the gas tank and it came up dry. It wasn't the fuel
pump. The float in the gas tank had gotten stuck. I was sure the mechanic had
known the truth and, by not checking before installing a new fuel pump, had
taken advantage of me. I envisaged his consternated terror if I put a pistol in
his face and took all his money. I figured it wouldn't be worth the heat I
would bring on myself so I choked back anger and paid him, remembering the con
man's adage that if you're going to be a sucker, be a quiet one.

In Paducah I rented a room in a
three-story brick residential hotel. It cost $50 a month and it was a
respectable establishment. Its residents were bachelor sales clerks or were
otherwise employed. One was a recendy graduated law student working in
Paducah's most prestigious law firm and preparing for the bar exam. Another was
a bartender. The hotel arranged for me to rent a TV from a nearby furniture
store that was owned by the same people who owned the hotel. I told them I was
a writer, but acted mysterious when asked what I was writing. I was actually
working on my second novel, the same for which the manuscript had been lost in
the Wallis house move, and also a journal of my travel as a fugitive, much of
which I sent in letters to Sandy via another address. One of the residents commented
that he'd heard my typewriter when coming in late one Saturday night.

Having been born in Southern
California, where anything older than forty years was positively decrepit with
age, Paducah was the oldest city I'd ever seen. It seemed all dark brick with
abundant wrought iron. In a cocktad lounge near the river I met a whore named
Jetta. She was from Detroit, and her "old man" was doing six months
in the local jad for playing a con game called "the pigeon drop." She
knew the meager extent of Paducah's fast life - and we both needed
companionship. I told her a litde, but not too much. She could probably have
traded me for her old man if she knew the truth. I told her that I was hiding
from an ex-wife who wanted chdd support. "I'd pay it," I said,
"but I don't think the little rug rat is even mine. Kid looks more like
her goddamned boyfriend."

Within a week, Paducah grew
boring. I'd seen all the movies, some of them twice and, because it was so
cold, I spent lots of time in my room. I got some work done on the second of
what would become six unpublished novels. In Paducah I made another mistake of
hubris which, as you know, is one of my many character defects. I sent the
parole officer in Los Angeles a postcard:
"Glad you're not here.
Ha ha ha ..." I
mailed it the day before I left town.

I planned to drive to New York
City, which always had a fascination for me. I knew it as well as anyone could
who hadn't been there. I'd read Thomas Wolfe's symphonic descriptions of Penn
Station and Park Avenue, and of walking the city at night. I'd been on top of
the Empire State Budding with Cary Grant and Deborah Kerr in
An Affair to Remember,
and in Harlem with Richard
Wright's
Outsider.
I
knew about the Cotton Club and the Fulton fish market. I'd never seen a play or
a Broadway musical, but I knew I could find both near Times Square. New York
was somewhere I wanted to see more than anywhere else.

Instead of taking a highway
that angled northeast, I wound up on US 40, heading due north toward the windy
city of Chicago. I knew my mistake within a few hours when I saw the signs.
What the hell, I might as well see Chicago, too. What did Sandburg call it:
"Hog Butcher to the world . . . ?" I knew Chicago, too, from Nelson
Algren and from Willard Motley's great novel,
Knock On Any Door,
which made me cry late at
night in the County Jad as Nicky (Live fast, die young and have a good looking
corpse) Romano went to the electric chair. I don't remember if he saw his son
before he died. It was a story I really identified with. It would be okay to
see Chicago, too.

By morning I was approaching
the south side of the great city. Born and raised in Southern California where
flowers bloom for the entire year and the worst slums are single family
bungalows with front yards, to me Chicago's south side was a bleak revelation.
The recent snow had turned to a filthy sludge mixed with rock salt. All the
buddings seemed to be three-story brick with wooden stairs and porches attached
to the rear. It was poverty unlike anything I had ever seen. I wanted to get
out of Chicago — but I ended up going north along the lake shore, and it wasn't
untd I neared Northwestern University that I realized it was the wrong way to
go around Lake Michigan. I'd have to go through Canada to head east that way.

I turned around and was glad
when I crossed into Indiana where for the first time on this journey I got a
road map. From Chicago to New York City, the highway was wide, flat and
straight. The only time I had to stop was at a state line and for gas — and oil.
Lots of oil.

Outside of South Bend, I
checked into a motel. By morning more snow was falling, and there was a lake of
od beneath the car. It refused to start. I unloaded it, removed the license
plates and threw them into a drainage ditch behind the motel. A taxi took me to
the Greyhound station. The bus took me to Toledo, my father's birthplace, or so
I thought, and still think, even though I cannot remember where I got this
idea. He and my aunt had been raised in Toledo, so I assumed they had also been
born there. I knew, too, that my paternal ancestors had come from France in the
eighteenth century and became fur trappers in the Great Lakes region, which
included Canada. There is a large Bunker Famdy Association whose members gather
yearly from all over America. I subscribe to their newsletter, but that Bunker
family is from Anglo-Saxon forebears who setded first on Nantucket and in New
Hampshire. I doubt that I am one of them, or that they would even want me. I
know nothing of my paternal grandmother, neither her first nor her famdy name,
although I
think
her
first name was Ida. I also think, more confidently, that my grandfather's name
was Charles. I was told that he was captain or an officer on a Great Lakes
sailing vessel and drowned when my father was quite young. It is meager
knowledge about a famdy history that might be interesting since it spans
America's history, too. When I arrived in Toledo I thought about the stories
I'd heard from the turn of the century when my father had seen the Dempsey—Firpo
fight: Firpo knocked Dempsey out of the ring. It was one of the most furious
heavyweight fights of all time.

I stayed in Toledo at a motel
untd the weather cleared. It was still cold, but it was at least bright. From a
classified ad I saw in the

Toledo newspaper, I bought a
'54 Olds Rocket 88, a hot car of the era. When the weatherman predicted bright
shiny days for the rest of the week, I continued on my journey. I'd now decided
that I would eventually arrive in New York, but before that I would take my time
and look at the countryside. I wished I had done that instead of burning up the
highway at the outset. Recently I had read Bruce Catton's
A Stillness at Appomatox
and knew that major Civd War
batdefields were within a few hundred miles. Pennsylvania had Gettysburg. I
wanted to see that. I wanted to see many things. I had time and money, so why
not drive where my whim dictated?

I saw Cincinnati then crossed
the river back into Kentucky. America has transcending beauty in incalculable
quantity, but the serene beauty of Kentucky's bluegrass country — mile after
mile of white fences; horses feeding beneath trees in verdant pastures with a
brick colonial or federal house in the distant background — that to me was it.
If I had my choice of living anywhere, this area would get a long, hard look -
but so would Paris, London, Capri, Martha's Vineyard, Roxbury Court, or eight
months in Montana and four in LA. Still and all, I loved the bluegrass country.

Memphis in June was all right,
too, although the days were now getting a little hot and sticky. The nights
were balmy and beautiful. I was planning to stay a few days, but I met a girl
at a Dairy Queen and stayed almost a month. It was before sexual liberation,
and although she would neck and pet until I was crazy, she wouldn't let me fuck
her. I figured it was time to move on.

I put off going to New York.
They said it was at its worst during midsummer — too hot, too humid. Those who
could afford it departed in the baking months.

After a few days of driving
around the South, staying a night here and a night there, I found myself in
Fulton County, Georgia, where I pulled into a motel of neat frame bungalows
that were arranged in a horseshoe, with the space in the middle paved with
gravel. It had no landscaping and the office was equally bare and excessively
prim. When the clerk, or proprietor, or whoever he was came from the rear,
through the open door I heard opera. I think it was Wagner.

Later after checking in, I took
a drive and passed a tiny cluster of businesses - gas station, coffee shop and
a store less than a mile up the road. As the sun started to set, I took a walk
to get something to eat and a pack of Camels. When I came out of the tiny
convenience market a state trooper with his lights flashing went by. I turned
down the road and watched him. The flashing lights went out before he reached
the motel driveway and turned in. Oh oh!

My first thought was, At least
I have my money. The truth was, that was all I had. Clothes, car, guns,
typewriter - everything else was in the car or in the room. Could I get some of
it back, maybe the guns? They were all in the car trunk and I had the keys.

I set out down the road,
remaining in the shadows and keeping my eyes on the spot ahead where I would
see headlights. About two hundred yards from the motel's driveway I veered into
the woods. The greenery was wet with dew and the ground was uneven. I saw the
lights again and when I reached the edge of the woods I now saw two state
troopers' cars, and uniformed men with wide-brimmed hats. They were at the open
door of my bungalow and around my car. One of them was looking inside the car
with a flashlight.