We reloaded the car and checked out. He paid cash for the room and asked the guy at the desk where we could get a good breakfast. He recommended a place about three miles away that turned out to be one of those country-style inns we’d been hoping to find the night before, and had in fact driven right past. We were both starved, and my dad told me to order a dream breakfast—anything I thought I could possibly eat. I had four eggs, home fries, sausages, waffles, toast, orange juice, and coffee. He had steak and eggs with fried onions. The waitress looked a little hassled bringing out all that food—there was barely room for the plates—but we got a kick out of being so extravagant, and we tipped her heavily when we were through. After all, it wasn’t our money.
We hit the road about eleven, windows open, tape deck turned up full. We sang along with some old Traffic and Santana, and I beat out rhythms by banging one hand on the glove compartment and the other against the roof of the car. It was a perfect day to be driving, and north seemed the only direction possible. The Buick’s big engine hummed powerfully in front of us, and even the air tasted like Canada—cool and fresh and full of promise.
“Hey,” I said to him. “What do you say after Montreal we just keep on going? We could set a record. First station wagon to reach the North Pole.”
“Bad idea,” he said, adjusting his glasses with his forefinger.
“Why?”
“Because. Too much competition. The North Pole is swarming with guitarists already.”
I kept quiet.
He closed his eyes for a moment. “They’ve got this little town up there. It’s jointly owned by all the major record companies.”
“Not a very pleasant place to live,” I said.
“That’s the whole point, it’s a miserable place to live.” He reached over and turned the stereo down. “Bluestown,” he said. “Most of the greats are up there, on salary, just biding their time. Muddy Waters, Jimi Hendrix, Duane Allman, Elmore James. All of them hanging out, drinking, jamming and trying to keep warm.”
I forced a laugh, but I wondered. Sometimes he seemed to have no notion of how old I was. Or even that I was there at all. “So what you’re saying is that they’re actually still alive?”
“That’s exactly what I’m saying. Where do you think they keep getting those ‘newly discovered’ tapes from? The blues wasn’t selling, so they figured this would be a good way to stir up interest. And let me tell you something, a couple of years from now the world is going to be in for one hell of a surprise. Because they’re coming back, all of them.”
“Return of the Killer Guitarists,” I said in my best coming-attractions voice. “When is this going to happen?”
He shrugged. “Who knows? When we’re ready for them, I guess. When everyone has had enough of the crap they play on the radio.”
“Bluestown.” I flipped through the road atlas. “You know, it’s not here on the map.”
“It’s there. Trust me. You just go to Chicago, then head due north.”
“But,” I pointed out, “the North Pole is due north of everywhere, not just Chicago.”
“Hey,” he said. “Don’t argue with your father.”
I nodded off for a while, imagining a town built entirely of ice, with fur-bundled shapes walking up and down the streets carrying guitar cases. I kept thinking, How do I know these people are who they say they are if I can’t see their faces? Then we got off the highway and I woke up. We were a little south of St. Johnsbury. My dad said he wanted to take a few minutes and look at a typical New England town. The place was called Denton, and it was truly quaint: tree-lined streets, big old houses with well-kept yards, two neat, white-steepled churches, only a couple of blocks apart. It was one of those picture postcards of a town, and I thought it probably didn’t look any different now than it had fifty years ago. I couldn’t imagine what people there did for a living, but everyone we saw looked reasonably well off. We drove up and down its few streets, looking at the houses, and just enjoying the simplicity of the place. In the center of town, he pulled over by the bus station and put the car in neutral.
“How about a couple of candy bars before we get going?” he said.
I was still stuffed from breakfast, and I couldn’t imagine that he was actually hungry again, but I said sure and hopped out of the car. He stuck his hand out the window with a five dollar bill in it. I took the money and went inside.
It was a tiny bus station, just a window, a bench, and two vending machines. The guy at the window was out of singles, and I waited while he counted the whole five out in quarters, nickels and dimes. Then I bought two Snickers bars. With them in my hand, I stepped back out into the bright sunlight.
He was already gone. I could see the tailgate of the station wagon bouncing away from me down the street in the distance. I stood there watching him go, thinking that any moment now he would turn around and come back. It had to be a joke. But he kept going until the car disappeared over a crest.
I stared after him down the street. I was standing alone in the middle of a tiny Vermont town with two chocolate bars in my hand and no idea what to do next. Then I stuck my hand in my jacket pocket and felt the wad of money. He had slipped it there somehow without my noticing, and when I took it out I counted nearly seven hundred dollars, most of it in fifties and twenties. I sat down right where I was on the curb.
It took a little while to collect myself. I walked up and down the main street of Denton, Vermont, looking into shop windows, kicking at loose stones on the street. I opened one of the candy bars and took a bite, but dropped the rest of it in a trash can. I took out the roll of money again, fanned through it. This time, a small slip of yellow paper fell out from between two of the fifties. Picking it up, I saw that it was a withdrawal slip for just over nine hundred dollars from my father’s bank, and on it in a teller’s handwriting were the words Account Closed.
I stood for a while feeling the sun on my face, looking up at a solid blue sky that extended, unbroken, right up to the Canadian border and beyond. There was no audition. There had only been, for a brief while, an idea about the two of us starting over again someplace else, and maybe this time getting it right. I thought I understood what it felt like to look at your own future and see nothing but disappointment and failure stretching out like an endless series of clouds. The thing was, if he’d asked, I would have kept going. Taking all the change I had in my pockets, I began feeding the parking meters of downtown Denton, Vermont, pumping each one hard until it would take no more, then moving on to the next. After a while, when I ran out of coins, I stepped back into the dark little bus station and paid for a one-way ticket home.
Previous Winners of the
DRUE HEINZ LITERATURE PRIZE
The Death of Descartes, David Bosworth, 1981
Dancing for Men, Robley Wilson, 1982
Private Parties, Jonathan Penner, 1983
The Luckiest Man in the World, Randall Silvis, 1984
The Man Who Loved Levittown, W. D. Wetherell, 1985
Under the Wheat, Rick DeMarinis, 1986
In the Music Library, Ellen Hunnicutt, 1987
Moustapha’s Eclipse, Reginald McKnight, 1988
Cartographies, Maya Sonenberg, 1989
Limbo River, Rick Hillis, 1990
Have You Seen Me?, Elizabeth Graver, 1991
Director of the World and Other Stories, Jane McCafferty, 1992
In the Walled City, Stewart O’Nan, 1993
Departures, Jennifer C Cornell, 1994
Dangerous Men Page 17