by Allen Steele
We check out the other side of the amphitheater. More hucksters selling clothes and bumper stickers and shit, but there’re also tables set up by groups like Greenpeace, NOW, Missouri Public Interest Research Group, and so forth. All these guys trying to save the world; what’s the point? I sign a NORML petition so I can get a bumper sticker with a pot leaf on it. There’s a large silkscreen tapestry set up on a scaffold: a mushroom cloud exploding behind screaming children and mounds of skulls, titled “August 1945.” History, man; it happened a long time ago. Let it go, let it go.
Back in our seats, we blow another joint as we wait for Hole’s road crew to finish setting up. It’s a little after eight now, and the sun is finally beginning to go down; the heat is off, and the crowd is beginning to awaken from its collective stupor. Time to do some serious partying.
Yet, as I turn around to look back over the countless bodies crammed together beneath the shed and up on the hill, something occurs to me. In this instant, I see my generation: torn apart by divorce when we were five years old, then told that monogamy or abstinence is the only way to stop AIDS; suckled on a tube filled with bad sitcoms, idiot cop shows, and Saturday morning cartoons with not-so-subtle messages about Peace, Love, Understanding, along with ads for a Barbie’s Dream House that looks like nothing we’ll ever afford; despised by hippies-turned-yuppies who try to sell us compilations of twenty-five-year-old rock music and reproductions of Peter Max paintings, but won’t give us a decent job so we can pay for this shit; numbed by whippits, lousy pot, and gassy beer; dumbed out on Nintendo, the failed politics of both Democrats and Republicans, and Beverly Hills 90210. No respect, no hope, no clue, no cigarettes…
No future.
It’s something like an epiphany.
Realizing this, I say:
(and this part I remember very clearly)
“Y’know, this is the best day of my life.”
I don’t realize that I’ve spoken aloud until Erin turns to look at me.
“Really?” she says. “I didn’t know you were enjoying yourself so much.”
Startled by her voice, I look at her, and it’s almost as if I’m seeing her for the first time. God, she’s so beautiful. A warm breeze has caught her long, fine hair and cast it back from her face; the setting sun has highlighted it and made it golden. There isn’t an inch of her body that I don’t know, yet in this instant she’s as new to me as the moment when we first met, and although what I just said was meant to be ironic, I suddenly realize that it’s truthful.
This is the best day of my life.
This same time next year I’ll be twenty-six, and ten years later I’ll be thirty-six, and twenty years after that I’ll be forty-six; if I’m still alive by then, this stoned summer afternoon will be another faded memory of a middle-aged man who has long since discarded his youth and become the CEO of Tucker Brothers Enterprises, with an ex-wife who now lives in Los Angeles with her third husband and a son I’ll see only occasionally, and then only to give worthless presents to…
Like the aluminum dog tag that hangs around my neck on a silver link chain like a weird medal of St. Christopher. My father gave it to me last February, when he took me out to my usual birthday dinner at Tony’s. One of the few times I ever see him; most of the time, he’s either at the office or in another country, making another business deal. Toaster ovens to Russians who can’t buy bread. I smoked a bone in my car before going into the four-star Italian restaurant, so I was pretty stoned at the time and don’t remember why he said it was so important that I have this thing…but, y’know, it’s stamped with my name and the phone number of some company called the Immortality Partnership, and since it looks kinda punk I wear it from time to time, including today. Shemp’s dad gave him one, too, and we get a laugh out of them. If we get killed, these things are supposed to make sure that we have a second chance.
Uh-huh. Sure. And you can grow up to be the next president of the United States. I mean, it’s possible…
I can’t articulate any of this, though. I’ve smoked too much, drunk too much; my mind has been turned to mush by heat and loud music and the crush of bodies. All I can do is look into Erin’s pale green eyes and say something I’ve said to other girls before, but never with any sincerity. Until now.
“I love you,” I say. “I love you so much.”
Erin blinks. For an instant, there’s doubt in her face. She has had other boyfriends before me; doubtless they’ve muttered the same thing as they’ve tried to get her into bed. But I don’t grab at her and I don’t look away and I don’t make a smartass remark, and finally there’s acceptance in her eyes.
“I love you, too,” she says at last, then she puts her arms around me and pulls me close.
The house lights dim and everyone rises to their feet. I wrap my arms around her shoulders and duck my head to receive a kiss that makes the world disappear for a moment.
The best day of my life. If someone had told me that I had only an hour and twenty-six minutes left to live, I would have never believed them.
Hole comes on stage beneath a punk galaxy of mirror balls and foil stars. Courtney Love wears a low-cut black babydoll dress, cigarette dangling from her mouth. She plays guitar with her left foot propped up on a monitor speaker, giving the horny college jocks in the front row a flash of her inner thighs. Her lyrics are unintelligible beneath the raw power of her band’s music, but it doesn’t matter; for an hour she’s the vortex of a tornado that rips through the shed and up the hill. It’s good shit. When Hole is through with its set, Courtney hands her guitar to someone in the front row, flips off some puke who’d been verbally abusing her, and marches off stage. Everyone’s on their feet and howling for more.
All except Erin and I. Sonic Youth is the headliner; they’re good, but we’ve seen them before, and for the last hour Erin’s body has swayed next to mine in a seductive way. If the emcee were to announce that Sonic Youth’s bus broke down and that they’re going to be replaced by Jesus and the Twelve Disciples, we would have to leave. We’ve got the urge, that simple.
By now, Shemp has returned to his seat. He’s still tripping, but he peaked some time ago and now all he wants to do is go home and catch a Star Trek rerun. I know that he really intends to crash on the living room couch, something that I’ve tried to discourage him from doing after Erin moved in, but this time I don’t argue with him. He can always turn up the sound while Erin and I make it on the waterbed.
There’s also the fact that, of the three of us, Shemp is in the best shape to drive. Shemp may be babbling about another cosmic revelation he’s received, but at least he’s able to walk a straight line. I’m wasted; Erin is in better condition, but she doesn’t know how to handle manual and my car has a five-speed stick. Shemp has driven my car many times; if we happen to get pulled over by the cops, at least he doesn’t have beer on his breath.
All this is discussed while we weave our way through the parking lot in search of my car, our faces made sickly yellow by the sodium lights. If I had any common sense, I would head straight for the high-rise hotel on the other side of the lot. Screw it, guys, let’s get a room. I’d have staggered into the lobby, whipped out a gold Visa or a gold MasterCard or the American Express trump card, rented a single and a double for the night, and forgotten about the car until tomorrow morning.
Indeed, the notion occurs to me, just as we find my Saturn at the far end of the lot. My mind is fogged, though, and Erin is warm and deliciously sweaty. Responsibility has always been something I’ve tried to ignore, so I toss Shemp the keys, and we now have ten minutes left to live.
We roll down the windows; the night air is warm and dusty.
I’m curled up in the backseat; Erin is riding shotgun. She strains against the shoulder harness as she reaches behind her for the tape box. Shemp has disconnected the driver’s seat harness because it pinches his stomach.
Erin switches on the map light to look through the box. Shemp peers at the cassettes as if they’re the crow
n jewels of England. He grabs for Orb Live before Erin swats his hand away, insisting that we listen to Pearl Jam instead.
Erin and Shemp get in an argument. The car almost veers off the shoulder right in front of the cops directing traffic to the interstate. I yell for Shemp to keep his eyes on the road. Shemp grabs the wheel and gets the Saturn back in his lane. For a moment I’m afraid that the cops are going to flag us for a roadside check, but their flashlights wave us through.
Shemp makes the turn for the interstate ramp. Erin slips Ten into the deck. Eddie Vedder serenades us with a song about a woman trying to seduce her son as we join a dense river of eastbound headlights: cars, trucks, RVs driven by middle-aged tourists making their way from country music palaces in Branson to downtown St. Louis and points beyond.
A car horn blares just behind us as Shemp swings into the center lane without using the left turn signal. I try to tell him to take it easy, but he’s raving about the vapor trails coming from the taillights in front of him.
Erin turns down the music a little and tells him to concentrate on the road. Shemp grips the wheel with both hands and stares straight ahead, but a minute later he catches a glimpse of a billboard for the Casino St. Charles riverboat. That cracks him up for no accountable reason. He turns up the volume again.
I lie down on the backseat and stare up at the ceiling. My ears are buzzing, my clothes are sticking to me like day-old chewing gum, my leg muscles are stiff and aching.
It’s been a long day. All I want to do is go home.
I scratch at a mosquito bite under my right knee and think about putting some lotion on my sunburned neck.
Shemp abruptly swerves into the right lane. Suddenly the backseat is flooded with harsh white light. A truck horn bellows in rage…
Something as big as God smashes into the rear bumper.
And now Shemp and Erin and I are all screaming at once, and Shemp panics and twists the wheel hard to the right, and I look back just in time to see a Mack eighteen-wheeler munching the Saturn’s rear fender, and then I’m thrown from my seat as the car leaves the pavement and
dives
down
a hill
and now everything is rolling
rolling
rolling
twisting
screaming
side over side
twisting screaming
Erin screaming fuck fuck fuck
Shemp screaming god oh fuck oh shit
something slams
against my chest
(pain)
lights all around me Erin Shemp
(love you)
(you stupid fuck)
then the roof caves in
(PAIN)
something crushes me pushing me
down
down
my head hits something hard
(OH MY GOD JESUS IT HURTS)
and suddenly, there is no pain.
Darkness falls on me.
And then there is
nothing.
CHAPTER
TWO
* * *
SIMPLE
Midway in our life’s journey, I went astray
from the straight road and woke to find myself
alone in a dark wood…
—Dante, The Inferno
And so I die.
It doesn’t last very long.
It’s much as if I’ve gone to sleep for awhile.
“Wake up now,” a voice says to me from the darkness.
I really don’t want to wake up. Everything is warm and peaceful.
“Open your eyes now,” the voice says, a little more insistently. “It’s time to wake up.”
I open my eyes. I’m in a very soft bed in a featureless white room with no windows.
In beds all around me are many people, their arms at their sides, faces turned upward. Some are men, some are women, all in their mid-twenties, with faces unwrinkled and unblemished, as hairless as newborn babes.
“Sit up now,” the voice says. “Can you sit up?”
My back feels stiff, my arms heavy as lead; it takes me a few moments before I manage to push myself up on my hands. The white sheets and covers fall away; I’m naked, but that doesn’t trouble me. In fact, nothing bothers me at all. I’m simply here, and how I came to be here is of no concern at all.
“Very good,” the voice says. “You’re doing very well.”
It sounds as if someone is standing next to my bed, but when I look around to see who’s speaking, there’s no one present.
“Get out of bed now,” the voice says. “See if you can stand up.”
This is a very complex request. The voice has asked me to do two things at once. I hesitate, trying to figure out what it wants me to do.
“Blink your eyes three times,” the voice says. “Blink them three times fast.”
Blink? Sure. I can blink. I can blink three times. When I do, a cartoonish stick-figure of a man appears in front of me. He’s sitting up in a bed, just as I am now; he slowly swings his legs over the side of the bed until his feet touch the floor. Then he stands up and walks to the end of the bed, where he stops.
“Do you think you can do that?” I nod, and the stick man vanishes. “Good. Try to do it now.”
I push the covers the rest of the way back, slowly turn until my legs are over the side of the bed, then lower my feet until their soles touch the smooth, cool floor. I hesitate again, then stand up. My hips and knees are as stiff as my back, but my leg muscles are strong and they support my weight.
“You’re doing very well,” the voice says. “Can you walk to the end of the bed?”
This requires a little more concentration, but I manage to get it done. “Very good. You’re doing very well. You can go back to bed now.”
I don’t understand what the voice had just told me to do, so I just stand there. “Go back to bed,” the voice repeats.
I still don’t understand what is being asked of me, and it disturbs me that I can’t see the source of the voice. I look around and see all those still forms lying in bed around me, so silent and
(dead)
sleeping in this white room illuminated by soft light that comes from everywhere but nowhere, and I’m the only one who’s moving around.
“Go back to bed now!”
I’m afraid now. I whimper, and as I do so, something hot and fluid rushes through my lower body. I look down and see a thin stream of urine splattering on the floor in front of me. My fear is replaced by vague sensations of relief and satisfaction, and I stare in curiosity at the urine as it forms a thin yellow puddle on the floor that touches my toes and makes me giggle at its warm touch.
“Blink your eyes three times,” the voice says, a little more kindly now; when I do, the little stick man reappears, standing at the foot of his bed just as I’m now in front of mine. He turns and reverses his process of getting out of bed, and when he’s back where he had started the image vanishes. “This is how you get back in bed,” the voice says. “Do you think you can do that?”
I nod, and then copy the stick man, and when my head touches the soft pillows again I feel as if I’ve accomplished something really spectacular.
“Very good,” the voice says. “You’re doing very well. Now, I want you to tell me a couple of things.”
This is new. What’s there to tell? “I want you to count to ten, aloud,” it asks.
This is extremely complicated. I whimper again, but at least my bladder’s empty and I’m unable to wet the safest place I know.
“Blink your eyes again,” the voice says.
I do so, and now the stick man lying in bed opens his mouth and speaks in a flat male voice: “One…two…three…four…five…six…seven…eight…nine…ten.”
The image vanishes. “Can you do that?” the voice asks.
I open my mouth and move my lips. Nothing emerges. I try again, and this time only exhale. Tears sting the corners of my eyes; deep down inside, I know what I w
ant to say, but I can’t articulate it.
“Blink three times.” I do so, and an abstract figure appears in front of me: a vertical spike, as large as a tombstone. “This is One,” the voice said. “Say it…one.”
Something deep in my throat stirs to life. “Wa…wa…won.”
“Very good,” the voice says, and that makes me feel better. Another abstract figure, this one curled over like a crooked finger, appears before me. “Two…”
“T-t-ttt…too…too!”
“Very good.” Another figure: two backward curls, one atop of the other. “Three…”
“Thrrpp…” I spit saliva on the sheets. “Thrrr…threeee…”
“You’re doing very well.” the voice says, and now I’m bouncing up and down in bed, proud of myself. A stick crossed with a right-angle replaces the earlier numeral, and this time I identify it without any trouble.
We get through the last six digits without any trouble, and when we’re done the voice asks me to recite all ten numbers. I really have to concentrate on this one, but after a few seconds it comes back to me: “W-won…too…threeee…foh…fi-fyve…sex…se-se-seppen…ate…n-n-nyne…tin!”
“Very good,” the voice says. “Now there’s only one last question, and after that you can go back to sleep.”