drive in 2.wps

by phuc

"Well," Grace said, "you know how it is, nature's sayonara and all."

  Clarence nodded and undressed. He didn't have on any underwear. He tossed the clothes at me. "Take all of it. Shoes too, if they fit. Hell, if they don't fit."

  I gathered up the clothes and held them. They smelled a little ripe.

  "Hey Gene," Clarence said. "Want to help the other fella out?"

  Gene had finally got off the dead man, and he came over to the bench and sat down. He took off his clothes, except for some soiled, green boxer shorts, and gave them to Bob.

  "Go on, enjoy them," Clarence said. "You want to thank us later, well, we'll be hanging around."

  Clarence loved that. He laughed like a drunk hyena.

  He was tying Fran's hands for her when we went away.

  5

  We collected Crier and went out to the camper. He and Grace sat up front and talked, and Bob and I tried the clothes on. I ended up with some pants too tight in the waist, but I zipped them up high as they would go and left them unsnapped and used the belt I had made for my blanket outfit and ran it through the pants loops for extra support. The shirt fit fine and I wore it with the tails hanging out. The socks were thin but not holey. The shoes were an inch too long and they made me look a little like Bozo the Clown.

  Bob's pants fit him in the waist, but were too short. They were what my dad used to call high-water pants. The shirt he had was too narrow across the shoulders, and he got a knife out of the toolbox and slit it halfway down the back. He slit the sides of the shoes too because they were too narrow.

  Grace and Crier laughed at our outfits, but just a little. I guess thinking about where the clothes came from took some of the humor out of it.

  Crier and Bob stayed with the camper, and Grace and I took Bob's gas can and went around begging for gas. The people who were living in cars that had huts attached to them were the quickest to give up their gas; they had made a stand and they were staying. Some wouldn't even talk to us, and one guy told us he'd pour his goddamn gas on the ground and piss on it before he gave it to us. We took this as a no.

  By the end of the day we had a full tank of gas, and we went into Shit Town one last time to see if we could talk someone into giving us enough to fill our can. It never hurt to have extra.

  We got off Main Street and went down a little side street lined with huts and cars and we came on this tall, hatchet-faced fella wearing a sweat-stained cowboy hat. He was unusual in that he was clean-shaven.

  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.

  I lay 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 pants 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&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 t
o 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 we'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

  (Tooling With Steve, Crier Gets Some

  Sunglasses, Showdown at the Orbit)

  1

  The convertible fishtailed to a stop, disappearing into the darker part of the highway, and right before it did, I caught the ghostly reflection of something in one of its mirrors, some kind of monster that faded with the car's movement. Then the driver was out of the car and running toward Crier. I knew the moment I saw his cowboy hat that it was Steve from back at Shit Town.

  I got my feet out of the glue and started over to Crier. Steve was down on his knees feeling Crier's chest and neck. He looked up at me and said, "Dead as a rock."

  I tried to kick Steve in the face, but he caught my foot and pulled me on my butt.

  "I didn't do it on purpose," he said.

  I tried to get up and swarm him. He jabbed me in the chest with his palm and knocked me on my butt again.

  "I didn't see him. He shouldn't have been standing in the highway."

  "You sonofabitch. You goddamn sonofabitch."

  Bob and Grace came over. As they neared us they slowed down, as if taking small steps would give the reality of the thing time to go away.

  When they stood over us and looked down, Bob said, "Damn. One thing after another."

  "One of you get his feet," Steve said, "and let's get him out of the road before we get creamed by somebody."

  Grace got Crier's feet and Steve got him under the arms and they started him off the highway. Crier's hand fell off his chest and he dropped what he was holding.

  "Put him down," Steve said.

  They lowered him to the highway and Steve picked up what Crier had dropped and put it in Crier's shirt pocket. It poked out the top like a periscope.

  They picked him up again and carried him over to the side of the road, and Steve went and got in his car and pulled it over to our side and walked back to us. I kept thinking I'd find something on the ground to pick up and hit Steve with, but the urge was going away.

  There didn't seem to be any reason to hit anyone.

  Grace didn't feel that way. She kicked Steve flush in the balls. He dropped to his knees and had a facial workout. When that was over and he got his breath back, he said, "Damn, lady."

  "It didn't make me feel as good as I hoped," Grace said, "but it still does a little something for me."

  Then the camper blew up.

  2

  Hot, sticky morning with the convertible's tape deck blasting Sleepy LaBeef who's singing something about how he's a boogie-woogie man, jetting along with the top down, doing about ninety plus, me in the front seat, Steve at the wheel, bugs on the windshield, Grace, Bob and Crier in the back. Crier strapped in with a seat belt, leaning to the left, head partly out the window, hair standing up like wire, eyelids blown back by the wind, eyes glassy as cheap beads, pecker in his pocket, the tip of it shriveling and turning brown.

  "Oh no," Grace says, "the fire's all right. It isn't too big. No sir. Just right. I'm in front of it. No problem. It's not too close to the truck. OF Bob's got it under control. Ol' Bob's got it by the balls. Ol' Bob—

  "Shut up, will you," Bob says.

  Steve sings along with Sleepy LaBeef. New bugs hit the windshield. Outside the scenery is changing. More popcorn bags and garish posters lying about, blowing up as we jet by.

  The trees are starting to fill with film. Broken TV sets and fragments of antennas clutter the side of the road. Crier's pecker continues to wither.

  Steve moves the convertible up to a hundred and it's rocking a little. The sun is glinting off the hood and the tires are whining. I hope no one is standing in the road. All seats are taken.

  3

  High noon and we ran out of Sleepy LaBeef. Then we got Steve.

  "Now the reason I'm here is my wife. Finding out your gal can work a dick better than Tom Mix could work a lariat is all right, but the bad news on a thing like that is finding out the dick she works best don't belong to you. Wrong cow pony, you know. It can deflate a man's ego."

  "What about you?" Grace said.

  "Oh yeah," Steve said, not catching her tone. "Especially when all I ever got was the old in-and-out and are-you-finished-yet."

  "Imagine that," Grace said.

  "Worse than that, her man was none other than Fred Trual, and that goddamn got me, I'll tell you. He's a real baboon's ass, all the personality of a snot rag and as loyal as a paid-for date. He also stole my song 'My Baby Done Done Me Wrong,' and that was enough for me to swear I'd kill him.

  "How in hell do you figure a woman. This Fred is not only ugly, but he's been in the pen and rumor has it he poisoned his old maiden aunt for what she was gonna leave him, and he knew that wasn't nothing but five hundred dollars. I mean we're talking a greedy sonofabitch here. He even eats until he gets sick. I've known him since grade school.

  Wasn't worth a damn then either. But the gals always went for him. Must have had some kind of smell that got to them. Had to be that. He wasn't pretty and he wasn't smart and he wasn't nice. He and Tina Sue even stole my car."

  "See you got it back," I said. "Are you sure we heard both sides of Sleepy?"

  "About three times to a side," Steve said. "I got it back all right, but not because they gave it to me. I'll tell you about it."

  "That's all right," Grace said. "No need to bother."

  "I don't mind," Steve said, and he made a corner and the tires screeched like startled owls.

  "I told myself when I caught up with them I was going to kill Fred. I thought I might even kill her too. And I thought when they were both dead I was going to get out my guitar and sing the song I wrote over their dead bodies, then maybe on the back of my guitar I'd write another one in their blood, right then and there. That's how mad I was. Nasty, huh."

  "You're not a nice fella, Steve," Bob said.

  "Now I didn't mean to run over that ol' boy, I swear it. I'm a sensitive fella, don't think I'm not. I mean I can write the kind of songs that make the whiningest, sorriest-living, beer-drinkingest and gal-losingest sonofabitch cry like a baby with a thermometer up its ass.

  Kind of song that'll make women's thangs tingle and make fellas call home to make sure their old ladies aren't doing it with the next-door neighbor. Know what I mean?"

  "I think you sort of summed it up there," Bob said.

  "It'll make me a rich man. Or would if we were back in the real world. I'd be able to buy clothes that aren't on sale at the goddamn K mart. Go to some place to buy stuff that
ain't made out of genuine plastic and genuine cheap. I'd be able to get me a new hat made out of real hat stuff and have it be one of those with a fancy band around it with a feather fresh out of a peacock's ass sticking up in it. I'd get me some unchewed toothpicks to stick in. the band. I'd move to Nashville and sing my sexy little heart out. I'd wine and dine and chase them honky-tonk angels until my dick needed a wheelchair to get around. Course, that's what I would have done. I reckon Fred's made a mint off it now. It's probably on the radio back home. Go in any joint with a juke and I bet you can hear my song coming out of it, probably sung by George Jones or Randy Travis. And ol' Fred's spending my money.

  Tell you, I still want to kill him. If I got the chance I'd kill him deader than the ol' boy in the back seat there, then I'd really get rough."

  "I take it you don't like Fred," Bob said.

  "You're getting it. Let me backtrack on my story here."

  "I thought that was all of it," Grace said. "I mean that's enough to hold me. What about you guys?"

  "I want to hear it all," Bob said.

  I was starting to get interested too, but I didn't say anything. I didn't want Grace to kick me in the balls.

  "Well, when I found out Fred and Tina Sue were doing what they were doing from this private detective fella I hired, I couldn't hardly believe it. 'Cept that he had some real clear pictures of them in action and he didn't help matters none by saying stuff like, 'That's her best shot there, the one with the whip and the Mousketeer hat,' and 'By God, I didn't know human bodies could do them sort of things. Hell, I didn't know snakes could do them sort of things. Look at that, will you. I bet he's got his head halfway in there, whadaya think?'

  "I wasn't just hurt that Tina Sue was waxing another man's rope, or that the man was stupid, greedy, and maybe a murderer. There was the fact that Fred seemed to be having a hell of a lot better time with Tina Sue than I'd ever had. I didn't even know she had a Mousketeer hat. To put it simple, I was charmed by them sweet little eight-by-ten color glossies. Here I was busting chops and sweating gravel just to make a living, trying to write songs on the side so I could be a country-and-western singer, making the occasional trip to Nashville to try and peddle my songs— and not having much luck with it—and I find out my suspicions about my wife are true, and worse, it's old Fred and he's having a better time than me. Then to put the goddamn Howdy Doody smile on it, I found out they not only went off together in my car, but took my song on account of Fred claimed he wrote it some years back and I won it from him in a poker game. I only played poker with Fred and them other boys a few times, and I didn't never win. Come to think of it, I think Fred cheats.