"I know. That wasn't supposed to happen, either. How much time you do?"
"Thirteen years. I was renowned for my good behavior. In Marion," he added.
"Funny," said the hitcher, chuckling dryly. "The interesting people you meet out on the road."
"I can imagine."
"Yesterday some insane trucker tried to stick me with a sharpened screwdriver."
"Don't worry, I'm harmless."
"Never thought otherwise, Tom. As a matter of fact, I feel pretty comfortable in this car, as nice as I've been in many a season."
"Thirsty?" Gripping the wheel with one hand, the driver reached under the seat and hauled up a half-empty fifth of Crown Royal. "Help yourself."
"Thanks." The hitcher removed the cap, lifted the bottle to his lips. As soon as the alcohol hit, the air went out of his flesh, skin molding instantly around a hard frame, he was vacuum-packed, ready for use. "Now, there's a fineness too long gone from the low round of my days."
It was the driver's turn. He eyed the road around the upraised burbling bottle to the visible astonishment of a passing minivan marked ST. PAUL'S CHURCH
and a gray-haired woman in a beige BMW who shouted from behind big sunglasses her angry opinion of such recklessness, a caution he blithely ignored. "How anyone manages to negotiate the treachery of the modern freeway system sober is a complete enigma to me."
"Don't get no better than this," declared the hitcher.
"Can't get no worse," answered the driver.
The bottle went back and forth in a general silence patrolled by the self-importance of fermented thought, the hitcher intrigued by the notion of his body as contested ground, an arena of warring presences Pastor Bob couldn't placate with a doeskin valise of faith-dollars. He rolled his tongue through the cavern of his mouth, lapping the taste from its walls. "Don't get no better than this," he said.
"Believe I've already seconded that motion, Ray."
"You like women, Tom?"
"Indeed I do."
"Then here's a proposition for you, you tell me who you fucked, I'll tell you who I fucked."
"Go."
The hitcher once loved a woman who loved his armpits, licked them night and day. Dark eyes and a wolf's sense of propriety. Clothes were anathema to her, encumbrances to be shed like foliage in the woods where they'd go skinny-dipping in the cool green pond, screw like lizards in the warm mud. Up on the commune, of course, where boy and girl and sun and stone were one. The driver confessed to screwing a woman who liked to do it on the kitchen table, serve her husband dinner on the same toasty spot along with the butter she'd spread on his steaming dick. She was an actress, ate three avocados a day regular as clockwork.
"Want to hear my dream?" the hitcher asked.
"If it's not too long."
The hitcher paused to consider briefly whether insult had been inflicted, but decided no, the shape of this other's head was of a fair, honorable type. Nevertheless, dirty fingers couldn't help straying legward to check. . . yep, the trusty blade, she was secure.
"Not simply a sleep dream," the hitcher explained. "Bugs hell out of my days, too. Can't seem to get shut of it. Things stop. I can be anywhere. I'm on a beach, water mild and foamy, sky red and purple. A dog trots up, black Lab with inescapable Bambi eyes, and this animal looks at me and I can't move, I don't want to move, movement is pain, I am safe, I am in paradise.
"Or this: I'm in a car. What kind? Don't know. How'd I get there? Don't know. Where am I going? Don't know, but there's no one to answer to, no one -- in -- my -- way."
"Like this car, Ray?"
The hitcher pretended to examine the interior. "Why, yes, Tom, exactly like this car."
"I know the dream, Ray. And in mine, the wandering soul I encounter on my journey turns out to be an angel in disguise who reveals his radiance, sets my wheels toward the shining city in the sky."
"Ever hear, Tom, about this Indian tribe up north who believes that if two minds share the same dream they are connected somewhere far back in time, spirit cousins, pieces of the same puzzle in their bones."
"And in your dream, Ray, who am I?"
The hitcher drained the last from the bottle. "Easy. You're the guy I kill to get into the next world." The driver laughed.
The hitcher licked the mouth of the bottle with coonlike assiduity, ran his pink tongue down the glass neck, then lobbed the empty at an oncoming sign
no littering
$150.00
fine.
It missed.
The momentary lull between driver and passenger transgressed by the inexhaustible exertions of Pastor Bob launching a possibility bomb into Satan's stronghold in Chillicothe, Ohio, where a sister in need required an emergency financial healing.
"So this dream car of ours," asked the hitcher, "the museum know you got it?"
'"69 Ford Galaxie," boasted the driver. "Sign and symbol of my confused and wild youth."
"What'd you do, steal it?"
The driver, who was chewing on one of his nails, hesitated to inspect the damage. "Well, as a matter of fact, yeah."
The hitcher sat extremely quietly in his seat, a diminished presence, face turned like a carved figurehead to the linear madness of the road, mile after hard mile of hassle and fumes. He was aware of being moved, his stillness in transit in a steel "cage" (the biker term for a four-wheeled vehicle), the space traversed enclosed in a cage of time moving on what road? to what end? But he was thinking now under the verbal surface, the way an animal thinks, the eyes looking back at themselves in the cracked door mirror without color or recognition. He touched like a magic amulet the length of metal strapped to his leg. People everywhere were always, ultimately, a profound disappointment.
"What's the matter?" the driver asked.
"Let me out." The hitcher reached over the seat, heaved his pack up onto his lap.
"This isn't your stop, Ray."
"Anywhere along here."
"I changed the plates, if that's what you're worried about."
"Now."
"But, Ray --"
"Stop the fucking car!"
"Whatever you say, Ray, but I got to tell you, I was just beginning to enjoy myself."
The Galaxie slowed onto the narrow shoulder, the hitcher's fingers already wrapped around the door handle. "Just remembered," he said, "I forgot to kiss my mother goodbye." Then the door sprang open and he was gone.
The land descended steeply into a thick overgrown ravine. The hitcher crossed a dappled field of high grass, scattering before him an eruption of white cabbage moths and dusty brown grasshoppers with dark papery wings. Trees crowded in straight and tall as antenna masts. He picked his way down, clinging to the rough crumbling bark. Under his hand he could feel the pine humming, the tended machinery of the nonhuman world. Down below, the broken voice of an unseen creek, the rubbing of the wind against the firs. The sun was high and round, emitting a rain of perfect light. Surely a day in which all things were possible. A day God had made.
Four
THE 25-MILE PISS
The office of the Yellowbird Motel in Cool Creek, Colorado, was rigged in the standard beads, bones, and bullets motif of a Hollywood trading post. Faded Navaho rug tacked to acrylic log wall. Cheyenne war bonnet dangling soiled feathers from a stage prop hat rack. Painted shields of dried buffalo hide -- a Plains medley. A yellowing piece of Eskimo scrimshaw. A gnarled moccasin. A scruffy bear claw. Iroquois pipe in a dusty case of dubious arrowheads. Crouching in the corner as if about to spring, a stuffed armadillo. Hanging on wire from the ceiling a Seminole hunting lance -- cracked. Beside the door a gilt-framed copy of Asher Durand's study in downy incarnadine,
The Last of the Mohicans.
And everywhere amulets and guns, knives and skulls -- a democracy of artifacts attesting to no known reality either historical or fantastic, but rather to the scavenging indifference of the founder, one Ken Carson, claimant to an attenuated collateral descent from the legendary Kit, retired stuntman and rodeo clown who left Republic Pictures about the time his friend and mentor, director Elmo "Pops" Young, began insisting cast and crew alike address him simply as Elmo the Great while he communicated through intermediaries or angrily obscene notes scrawled on the backs of key script pages, though by then he was only being permitted to shoot action serials anyway, twelve-chapter cliff-hangers titled
Atom Burnett of the Stratosphere
or
Amazon Zombies on Mars.
Like his famous ancestor, Kenny never looked back, intrepid scout that he was, broaching the frontier of automotive tourism. Eisenhower was president in those willfully innocent years, a convalescent tone prevailed, and a peculiarly aggressive style of wholesomeness was being celebrated as a national ideal, best exemplified in such demonstrations of folksy solidarity as the family dinner and the family outing. Kenny noted the lay of the land and invested his movie stake in the American family and its endearing trust in Good Times at a Good Price. The inn went up in Cool Creek, "Gateway to the Rockies," just twenty miles from Kenny's boyhood home, back yard bursting with dandelions and dreams, back lot of the eye where it all began, and never suffered an unprofitable year, enough surplus value to finance annual vacations for Kenny and the thriving Carson brood, twice to Europe ("nice roofs"), once around the globe ("lotta water"), before Kenny finally succumbed, at his post, peacefully, without exotica, a silent crimson flaring across vast cerebral space, the skull that had proficiently absorbed so much staged violence from without betrayed by a traitorously unscripted vein within; he was watching television at the time, Saturday morning cartoons, so took his final pratfall amid a soft riot of animated stunts.
The inertia of success had insured the office would retain its original look, so evocative of Kenny's personality, even as success waned, to the inevitable day of the bulldozers and the painful transformation into fun singles' playland or grand shopping nexus, whichever happened to be most lucrative at the time, a time whose shadowy lineaments were already discernible in the abstracted face of the man now behind the desk with the razor burn on his neck and the erection in his pants. He was Emory Chace, owner, operator, and present-day keeper of Kenny Carson's vision, this morning's obvious tumescence an agreeable nudging sensation out on the rim of cognizance, it would die, it did, he no more aware of the erotic's comings and goings than he was of the trickle of departing guests with their jingling keys and impatient credit cards and forced pleasantries. Glorious day, Big sky, The fudge in the case here, is it honestly homemade? Under the guise of the laconic westerner his grunts and monosyllabic replies were designed to abbreviate these irritating intrusions so as to return, one foot always wedged in the door, to the bustling soundstage of the mind he spent lengthening hours of his day hiding out in. The pen in his hand hovered fretfully over a yellow legal pad upon which was scribbled beneath the bold black caps
things to consider,
a list:
1. $$$$
2. Pubescence (the pimple mentality) -- key to the show.
3. Effect of .44 round on average car door? on Japanese car door?
4. The identity of a machine -- personality? character? -- possibilities.
5. 3-ply jute twine no. 28 -- sufficient to bind wrists of 110 lb. woman?
The large picture window faced east into the overheated drama of the rising sun, even with the blinds closed and partially lowered, flooding the small room with a hopeful effervescence that would, by day's end, have gone as flat as a forgotten bottle of uncapped beer. In the terrarium beneath the window behind a hand-lettered sign DO NOT
tap on glass
lounged Herbie, a massasauga rattlesnake, dry beaded patience coiled under a ledge of gray shale, the only item in the room, besides the cash register, not for sale.
6. Head from body -- a single kick -- plausibility?
7. Luk's blood -- psychedelic turquoise.
The recognizable stutter of a MAC-10 swung his attention to the television installed upon a stand of bricks inside the cold fireplace, the flanks of the sacred screen guarded by a menacing duo of prickly pear cactus plants. It was the fare on HBO he was monitoring this morning, the present offering an umpteenth rerun of a film he had seen at least once before, the one about the undercover cop who assumes the identity of a mid-level N.Y.C. mobster only to discover he actually
likes
committing felonies, so, seduced by the Life, he pockets the benefits of both worlds, he's a man of law, he's a man of crime, walking that tightrope of danger until. . .
The screenwriter's name was new to Emory, but so far, a mere forty minutes in, he had already detected three holes in the plot line prominent enough to cast inescapable shapes on the scrim of his unpopulated awareness, a good sign there were other, lesser holes he had missed.
8. Fuck craft, let the good times roll.
9. How can it be that Luk not only understands but is able to speak a perfect, unaccented English? Can anyone possibly care?
10. Where is the love?
Emory raised the pen to his face. He moved the point carefully in toward his eye, then slowly away again; in, then away.
"Oh God." The mocking tones of daughter Beryl, the unfortunate embodiment of adolescent attitude, lurking in typical stealth just beyond the beaded curtain that separated front office from rear living quarters. "What? There's a hair on the rolling ball? Eeek." And she was gone.
11. Human flesh. Like chicken?
12. Change fem lead to male name. Trendier/sexier. Or is it sexier/trendier? Androgyny is now.
The plastic and chrome signal rack of a police cruiser came gliding spectrallike across the unshaded bottom third of the window. Reluctantly, Emory capped his pen, considered briefly ducking below the counter, but turned instead to the door a strangely mobile face caught in the act of seeking its proper guise even as a tingling of brass Indian bells
(MADE IN BOMBAY)
announced the entrance of Sergeant Mitchell Smithee, Cool Creek P.D. In any age this stocky straightforward man would have found the uniform that fitted him. Comfortably complete in his starched khakis, he was rarely seen out of them.
"There he is." Smithee had a high excitable voice alive with a sense of promise it never kept.
"I am the man," Emory admitted. "Yep."
"You are the walrus, you mean. Lucky I don't just run you in on general suspicion. What'd you do this morning, Emory, squeeze the toothpaste tube from the middle?"
"Question: is this a friendly visit or routine harassment? I get so easily confused."
"Well, I don't yet know myself." He removed his hat, a ceremonial gesture.
"Didn't expect to see you today."
"Police work, Emory, is a bag of surprises." He centered the hat neatly on the counter between large red hands. "Carl called in sick about an hour ago. Sounded like to Tracy he had a big rag stuffed over the mouthpiece. Cough, cough. But, hey, no evidence, no indictments, right, counselor?"
"You payroll humpers, you don't know what you've got -- sick leave, health insurance, paid vacations. Try slogging it up the hill and down in ye olde innkeeper's shoes. We don't show up, we don't get our bucket filled."
"And the less you do, the more you bitch."
"Too early, officer, to endure insults from a government employee. Don't you have someone to kill or a doughnut to eat?"
"Okay, Emory, might have known this is -- God, try to do you a favor, and lose sleep over it, too."
"You've found someone willing to torch the place cheap."
"Better." He leaned forward confidentially. "I have the solution to all your problems."
"You're going to torch yourself."
Smithee leaned closer. "Luk is a cop."
"Yes?" Emory needed a moment to finesse a reply. "With no references, no birth certificate, no identity even, who's gonna hire an applicant like that?"
"Chief Hallowin."
"True. But this is not reality. This is not a comedy." The phone rang and Emory spoke into it. "No," he said. "You're welcome."
"Tossing and turning, Emory," Sergeant Smithee resumed. "At two Brenda orders me out to the couch. Maybe four I finally fall asleep. At six I get the word about Carl. You can imagine my mood."
"Talk to my agent."
"Well, I think I have been useful with my suggestions, my technical advice. I'll pass on a flat fee, you can give me some points."
"A point. One single point."
"Net or gross?"
"Net."
"Thank you so much. That's sucker bait. There's no net, there's never been any net, there never will be any net. There are lost souls in the valley living on cat food with rusted mailboxes waiting for the payoff on
Star Wars.
E.T.'s still in the red, for Christ's sake."
"My, my," declared Emory. "Such savvy from the ranks. Today everyone's a goddamn insider. After such knowledge, what forgiveness?"
"We read a lot of magazines down at the station. The chief subscribes to
Cinema Confit, Pan and Scan,
and
Hollywood Honeys,
Carl gets
Media Zone,
and I take
Crosscut, Film Finger,
and
People."
Emory wrote on the pad:
13. Maximize action, minimize dialogue. Foreign markets. Entire world understands without dubbing or subtitling the language of the careening car, the ricocheting bullet, the swinging fist.
Room 11, a double, Everson, Ted, Mr. & Mrs., entered the office in matching outfits, blue plaid shirt, beige shorts, each jingling a set of keys, Beautiful day, Early start, Miles to go, room rate $55 + tax + $6.50 pay movie
Rubber Heads,
Visa, exp. date 12/95, Bye-bye, So long, See you in another life.
"So, Mitch," Emory continued, "you ever hear of the Society Islands?"
"Nope."
"Ever hear of Captain Bligh? Breadfruit trees? Marlon Brando? You know, he owns an island out there. It's his refuge from the madness of stardom. Well, check out a map of the Pacific sometime, tiny tiny islands everywhere, hundreds of these microscopic dots with no names floating like grains of pepper over all that big blue. This screenplay is my ticket to paradise. Gonna buy me one of them dots out near Marlon, my refuge from the madness of me, gonna christen it Ataraxia, design my own flag, run it up a bamboo pole in the lee of a crystal cove, come visit anytime, you and Brenda or you and you, no dogs, no kids, no guests, no bells, no keys, no money."
The Syn-Man,
our story so far:
One shiny Big Apple morning a descending elevator in Two World Trade Center opens its doors on the seventy-sixth floor to reveal -- omigod! -- a man curied up in the corner, unconscious and stark naked. After skillfully reviving him, Dr. Constance Petersen, a beautiful psychiatrist who happens to practice in the building, covers the man with her suit jacket and leads him through the curious crowd to the privacy of her office. This mysterious John Doe lacks not only ID but also a memory, the surface of his brain apparently stripped as bare as his body. The good doctor is intrigued. She decides to take him home to her East Side town house, where she has a second office and plenty of extra rooms, because he appears to be roughly the same size as her ex-husband (closets and drawers bulging with abandoned but stylish masculine wear), because he is young, handsome, and well toned, and because this is a movie. Sequence of quick scenes. Serious discussion of his multiple problems. Less serious discussion of hers. A trip to a restaurant. She shows him how to eat lobster. He shows her how to do handstands atop parked cars. He hardly appears older than twelve. They race taxis to the corner. They lick each other's sorbet. Her bedroom: the skin and limb montage. She's never experienced such pure sensual pleasure. She realizes her understanding of the term "love" has been a complete misconception. She's caught by her patients grinning at inappropriate times. Days of body fun, but for Mr. John Doe no change in the head department. He's a sweet guy just one degree removed from total guyhood.
One day, while Constance is at work in her castle tower unraveling the private parts of the world, "John" decides to venture out on an exploratory prowl of the city. Sequence of naive reaction shots to the dissonance of the street. In the subway he is mugged and, due to his ignorance of proper victimization procedure, stabbed in the arm, the resultant wound surrendering a display of blood of a color conspicuously not-red. Sensing instinctively this is not a spectacle to be shared, "John," clutching his arm, hustles home to inspect the injury in solitude. He has already noticed in an earlier scene that when Dr. Petersen accidentally cut herself with a kitchen knife she bled red. Why is he different? In the bathroom he examines his own internal fluid, rubs it curiously between his fingers, tentatively tastes it with his tongue. The effect is immediate and shocking; cut to: the fury and howl of a landscape of streaming skies and exploding rock where beneath the tides of heaving magma, the spouting fumaroles, lurk deep black rooms of black machines in silence, gleaming and sinister.