I gave Snaggle the car keys so he could take our things to the car. Gina and I sat at the last empty table. The hungry travelers were swarming the all-you-can-eat buffet, piling their plates with everything they could get their grubby hands on: pancakes, waffles, eggs, bagels, donuts, bacon, muffins, everything. This buffet was a cheap bastard's wet dream and these cheap bastards were taking full advantage. Gina stood up and asked me if I wanted anything. I told her I wanted some coffee and watched her invade the throng of hungry travelers. Unlike everyone else, she didn't pile a mound of food on her plate. She came back with two pieces of wheat toast for herself and a cup of coffee for me. I wondered momentarily as she was setting the things on the table if she would ever be attracted to a pudgy, slightly balding guy like me. I felt a tiny smile stretch across my face and she noticed it, giving me a perplexed look.
"What?" she asked.
"Nothing," I said, prepping my coffee. I like my sugar with coffee and cream, as they say, my one sweet indulgence. It's true.
"You looked at me funny."
"I didn't mean to. Sorry."
Out of nowhere, Snaggle appeared with a stack of waffles a foot high and a bowl of syrup to pour over his mound of breakfast. His poor teeth were begging for mercy at that very moment. Those poor incisors and molars were in for a world of hurt. It's true.
"Waffles!" he chirped, shoving fork-fulls drenched with syrup into his mouth. It was fucking disgusting.
"Hey, slow down!" I said. "You're going to choke yourself." He replied with nothing more than a groan.
"So what's the plan, boys?" Gina asked. I sat back in my seat, looked at her, then looked at Snaggle. It hit me right then and there. I knew exactly what I wanted to do. It's funny how inspiration hits you like that, just out of nowhere, right out of thin air.
"Well, after all this talk about my grandparents, I think I want to go visit them in Oklahoma City," I said.
"What?!" Snaggle said, sitting up, food stuffed in his snaggly mouth. "You want us to go to visit your grandparents after all?"
"Well, I want to go visit them. And I can drop Gina off in Norman since it's on the way." Gina looked at me, shocked.
"But what about me?" Snaggle asked.
"I think you should go back to Austin."
"How am I going to do that?"
"I'll buy you a bus ticket."
Snaggle sulked while he slowly chewed his breakfast. He looked like a sad bastard, what, with his droopy face and full mouth and greasy nerd hair. He was a sight to see but I wasn't about to spend one day further with that disgusting jackass. I was determined to send him on his way.
"But what about our vacation?"
"It was never a vacation," I said, sipping coffee. "I think I need to go visit my grandparents, by myself."
After that, he didn't say another goddamn word to me. Not one single word. We finished up our breakfast and hopped in Clint the Caddy and still not a word from Snaggle. I drove up the highway a bit, found a bus station, bought Snaggle a ticket, and helped him get on the bus. Inside, he found a seat by the window and just looked at me and Gina like a stray dog, his face sad and weepy and shit. The bus roared to life and slowly pulled away and then he was gone. The snaggly bastard was on his way home. And I was on my way to Oklahoma with Gina.
19.
When I was a kid, I used to spend a couple of weeks every summer at my grandparents' house in Oklahoma. My mother, the kind soul that she was, probably needed a break from me (although she never actually said that to my snot-nosed face) and arranged a time with my grandparents when she could drive me up and leave me there with them. I always looked forward to this road trip to Oklahoma for a couple of reasons. 1) Stuckey's convenience stores. I already mentioned those shrines of craptastic awesomeness to you. And 2) Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In. Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In was this drive-in burger joint where you could park your car and order food and eat in your car. Now, anyone with half a brain would say to me, "What is so special about that? You can go to a Sonic anywhere, goofball." And I would reply, "You don't know what the fuck you're talking about, smarty pants." Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In was the real deal, not a corporate, fast food rip-off. Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In was outside of Ardmore, Oklahoma, a little shithole town that was frozen in time, a place right out of the 1950s that evolved untouched into the early 1980s. Cooter's had these humongous billboard signs with a cartoon of Cooter on it wearing a big ol' cowboy hat and he had this big ol' hamburger in one hand and a big ol' cigar in the other hand. I always thought that was kind of strange, him having food in one hand and a stinky cigar in the other. That didn't make much sense to me because it seemed to my little boyhood mind that those things didn't go well together but he had a big grin on his face like he was as happy as a clam getting ready to stuff his face with that big ol' burger and that was enough for me. It's true. Whenever I would see the billboard signs for Cooter's, usually about 10 or 15 miles before the exit, I would start screaming to my mom.
"Mom! Mom! Can we go to Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In? Please?! PLEASE!" I would say, like the little brat I was.
"OK," she would always say. My mother had an affinity for Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In because she went there when she was a teenager. And I loved it too. It was a bonding experience for the two of us, mom and son on a long car trip in the middle of nowhere. It's true.
So when the exit would come up, she would pull her car off the highway and we would drive in and find a place to park. There would be teenage girls rollerskating around in 50s outfits, poodle skirts, pink sweaters, and their hair pulled up in 50s hairdos. And there would be teenage boys in 50s greaser get-ups, their hair slicked back, jeans rolled up at the bottom, and tight t-shirts on with cigarette packs rolled up in their sleeves, standing around their cars, looking cool and cruising for chicks. It was a goddamn sight to see. It's true. And I loved every second of it.
We would park our car and roll down the windows and the 50s music would blast from the speaker under the menu signs in each parking space. The menu was a cornucopia of food that had the least amount of nutritional value whatsoever but was what a lot of people refer to as comfort food, which means every goddamn thing in sight was deep-fried and served with ketchup. I always ordered a cheeseburger with fries and a vanilla milkshake while my mom always ordered a bacon cheeseburger with onion rings and a chocolate malt. It was absolute heaven, even for Oklahoma. There's something about eating greasy, fried food in a car that makes children happy. Maybe it had to do with the fact that most times, eating in the car was frowned upon by my parents but for this one time, I was allowed to gobble down the greasiest, messiest, most delicious meal I'd ever had. It was a little on the magical side. It's true.
So as we got closer and closer to Ardmore, I related this story from my childhood to Gina, telling her every detail about the food I ate and the people I would see hanging out and working at Cooter's. She didn't seem all that impressed with my childhood memories but she nodded and smiled and went along when I asked her to keep an eye out for the billboard sign. She was being a real goddamn trooper and I appreciated that. I knew one thing for sure though. When we did see that sign for Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In, I was going to haul ass off the highway, find the first parking space, park Clint the Caddy, order my favorite meal, and I was going to face-fuck that hamburger. It's true.
"Ardmore isn't too far away," I said. "I'm sure we'll see the sign soon."
"I'm looking," she said.
"Are you going to get something to eat when we get there?"
"No, I don't think so."
"Why not?" I asked, startled. After all of my stories about how great Cooter's was, how could she NOT want to at least try the food? Weird girl.
"I'm a vegetarian."
"A vegetarian? How do you survive in the South by being a vegetarian?" That was a very honest question on my part. Everything, and I mean everything, in the South was prepared from something that used to moo or oink or cluck. That was just the way it was. I
t's true.
"It's very difficult," she said. "But I make do."
"You could order some fries or onion rings."
"Uh, but those are fried with the rest of the food with meat in it."
"Oh, right. Well, a milkshake doesn't have meat in it."
"A Cooter's milkshake probably has meat in it." We both laughed hysterically. There's one thing I could say about Gina, she had a sense of humor on her. She was sharp as a tack. You must be sharp as a tack to be able to hitchhike like she was, across Texas to Oklahoma, through towns that weren't particularly known for hospitality towards a college girl with weird hair and goth clothes and shit stuck in her face. I was really curious as to why she was hitchhiking in the first place. That was something she never mentioned to me or Snaggle. Well, maybe she told Snaggle while she was giving him a prostate exam in the highway rest stop but she never mentioned it to me. I was pretty goddamn curious at this point. It's true.
"So," I said. She turned and looked at me. "You never told me WHY you were hitchhiking to Norman."
"I didn't?" she asked.
"No, you didn't."
"I just thought it would be more interesting that way."
"More interesting?"
"I thought it would be more interesting than taking a bus or a plane. And safer. I have something with me that I didn't want to take on a bus or plane."
"Really? What do you have?" Now I was curious, really curious. What did she have with her that she didn't want to take on a bus or a plane? I was curious as hell. It's true.
"I can't tell you."
"Why not? You're in MY car, you know?"
"I know. I just can't tell you. OK?"
"OK." That was really fucking annoying. Who the fuck did she think I was? Her personal taxi driver? She was really starting to annoy the shit out of me with her snide comment and her mystery package and all. I was really starting to regret bringing her along now. What if she had drugs in her bag? Or a bomb?! I started to feel uneasy and a little disturbed. She was becoming a liability. It's true.
"Tell you what. I'll tell you once we get to Norman. OK? It really is no big deal. It's just personal. That's all."
"OK."
I was really starting to regret a lot of the choices I had made over the last few weeks, few months even. It didn't seem like I was making the right choices about anything really. Not one goddamn thing. In fact, I would have to say since my divorce, almost nothing had gone my way. It was a pretty sad goddamn state of affairs. It's true. I was becoming one of those sad bastards that I liked to make fun of. You know the type? Pretty much everyone I came in contact with, the whole lot of them, all sad bastards. And I didn't want to be like everyone else. I wanted to be a famous writer! But it seemed as more time went on, the more fucked up I was becoming. Who would bring their nerdy, testicle juggling coworker on a road trip with them to a funeral that was never going to happen? Who would pick up some strange hitchhiker in Waco and have her tag along to the house of their ex-wive's parents? It was sad to think that the answers to these types of questions always pointed to dumbass decisions on my part. It's true. It's fucking unbelievably true.
"Tell me about being a writer," she said, steering away from the topic of her secret stash.
"There is no greater profession than being a writer. It's my dream."
"But you had a book published, right?"
"Yes, but it didn't do very well. I want to write GREAT books. I want my name to be remembered alongside Hemingway, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Bukowski, the greats. I want to be great."
"You will be one day," she said, looking out the window. "I can tell."
"It doesn't seem like it's going to happen any time soon. My life has been so hard lately. Why does life have to be so hard?"
"Life is just hard. That's the way it is."
"There has to be a better answer than that."
"I'm sure there is. But what do I know? I'm just a college kid. I don't know anything."
Right when she said that, I saw a sign on the side of the highway that said, "Ardmore. Next exit." I realized I hadn't seen the sign for Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In. I became frantic. Did we miss the sign while we were bullshitting? Did we pass it without seeing it? It was another unfortunate event in a long series of unfortunate events. It's true.
"I didn't see the sign. Did you?" I asked.
"No, we must have missed it."
"I'll exit at the next one. I remember Cooter's being around here somewhere."
When we got to the exit, I pulled off the highway and onto the access road but the only thing I could see was an outlet mall, a big, massive tan-colored building with department stores and shoe stores and luggage stores and shit like that. And the only restaurants around were corporate, chain restaurants like Applebee's and Red Lobster and Chili's. Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In was nowhere to be found. For all I knew, it had vanished under the urban sprawl like the other relics from my past. I decided right then and there that I was going to get to the bottom of this. I had to know if this great place still existed. It was an imperative. It's true.
"I'm going to ask someone if they know where it is," I said, turning Clint the Caddy into the outlet mall parking lot. "Someone here has to know. Cooter's is famous!"
The parking lot was a massive black eye in front of the outlet mall, the rows lined with thousands of minivans, pickup trucks, SUVs, and the like. Dozens of families streamed out in each row, pulling baby strollers from their vehicles, gathering their diaper bags and their purses and whatever other shit they felt was a necessity for their day walking around the outlet mall shopping for useless shit they didn't need. It was a goddamn sight to see, all the people walking like herds of zombies. Since the parking lot was practically full, I had to find a spot in the back as far from the mall as physically possible. We had a long trek ahead of us, a long torturous trek. It's true.
"Do you think you could park any farther?" Gina said, the sarcasm not lost on me. I smiled at her, annoyed.
We made our way to the mall. As we walked, I thought of asking some of the families if they knew where Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In was but most of the families we passed didn't seem like they were from Oklahoma since some spoke Spanish or some had Midwestern accents and some just looked plain old lost. I mean, there is just no point in asking tourists for directions. That's like asking a bum if you can borrow a quarter, absolutely worthless. It's true.
The outlet mall was like a modern-day fortress. The outside of it was completely walled in. The entrances for the stores were on the inside of the complex. All the people were corralled into a single entrance and then once you were on the path to the first section of stores, it was almost impossible to get out without passing the rest of the goddamn stores. The herds of zombies looked in the store-front windows, their eyes glazed over, their minds filled with fantasies of owning designer shoes at rock-bottom prices. It was an absolute goddamn nightmare. It's true. I turned to Gina, stunned.
"I don't know who to ask," I said.
"We should ask in there." She pointed to the Food Court. That seemed like a fine idea.
Inside, the Food Court was packed. All the tables were filled with more families, kids screaming and tossing their food on the floor, parents with their heads weighing heavy in their hands pretending their kids didn't exist, grandparents oblivious to the rest of the world. We found a burger place called McSkippy's, got in line, and waited for our turn at the counter.
"If anyone knows, they will," Gina said, giving me a supportive smile. I could only hope that what she said was true.
I watched all the families at their tables, stuffing their goddamn faces with crap, looking miserable. Man, what a bunch of fucking losers. I wondered why they would come here to spend their family time. It seemed to me that there were a lot better places to spend time with your children than in a Food Court at a goddamn outlet mall. Little kids don't care about Puma shoes and Gap jeans and Gucci purses and shit like that. Kids just want to play outside and get dir
ty. These poor little bastards had to suffer because their parents wanted better belongings than their neighbors had. It's true.
After 10 minutes or so we got to the front of the line. The teenage boy behind the counter looked happy to serve me, a big white smile stretching across his pimply face. He had a name tag on his shirt. It said, "Little Wing."
"Welcome to McSkippy's. What can I get for you?" he asked, his voice like a little bird's song.
"Your name is Little Wing?" I asked.
"Yessir."
"Do you know that Little Wing is the name of a Stevie Ray Vaughn song?" I asked, seeing if the little guy had any idea about the origin of his name. He shook his head.
"Actually, sir, Stevie Ray Vaughn's version is a cover of the original Jimi Hendrix version."
"I see. Well, I'm from Austin, Texas. I only know of the Stevie Ray Vaughn version. Are your parents hippies?"
"No, they are Chickasaw Indians."
"Oh."
Gina tapped me on the shoulder, pointing to a man that looked like he was a supervisor or a manager or an assistant manager or some shit like that. He was giving me and Little Wing the stink eye. I didn't want the little fellow to get in trouble. He seemed like a sweet kid and all. It's true.
"Would you like to order some food?" Little Wing asked.
"No, I'm actually looking for a place called Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In. Do you know where it is?"
"I'm sorry, sir. I've never heard of it."
"You've never heard of Cooter's Big Burger Drive-In? That's impossible."
"No sir."
At this point, the supervisor or manager or assistant manager or whatever he was walked over. I heard some grumbling and groaning coming from the line behind us. I could feel some tension in the air, the kind of tension that comes from keeping hungry, fat bastards from eating their beloved fast food crap. The manager had a name tag on his shirt. It said, "Skip." He didn't look very happy. He probably hated his job, what, with the shitty pay and long hours and no respect from teenage employees who would rather be anywhere but at work. He was probably suicidal too. It's true.
The Spectacular Simon Burchwood Page 16