Black Eyed Susan

by Elizabeth Leiknes

  I made my way to the back of the “coach” and laughed when I noticed the license plate—“Tik Tok.”

  “Funny guy, your dad.”

  Calliope’s expression confirmed my assessment. “But most of all, he believed in living—really living. In the end, I don’t think he had any regrets.”

  I had to ask. “Why a hearse?”

  “Some people thought my dad was trying to be symbolic, the hearse being a reminder of mortality, memento mori or something deep like that, but really it was about simple mechanics.” Calliope placed her hands on the classic tailfins of her dead father’s proudest purchase. “My dad loved cars, and he also loved anything that was one-of-a-kind.” She raised her eyebrows when she said, “This is a 1959 Cadillac, customized to serve as a luxury funeral coach. It’s got a commercial chassis, but what makes it unique is that Cadillac built the front half, while Eureka hand-built the back half. It’s like two different people fused together with welded metal. ‘Frankenstein and his Monster’ we’d say whenever my dad drove it.”

  I looked at Calliope, my patchwork girlfriend sewn together with cheap fabric, and had a feeling we weren’t talking about cars anymore.

  She stared at the rear-loading back end. “She was retired at nine thousand miles. Car buffs call any car with under ten thousand miles on it a ‘virgin.’” Calliope took her hands off the body. “I was always jealous of this car.”

  Things were getting a little serious, so in a moment of awkwardness, I uttered something equally clumsy. “What’s under this baby’s hood?”

  She smiled at my attempt to lighten the situation. “V8 … rebuilt 454, super fast—you know, in case you’re ever in a real hurry to die,” she chortled.

  My face must have shown fear.

  She walked over to me and gave my shoulders a mini-shake. “No worries, Susan. People don’t die in hearses. They die in ambulances.”

  Note to self: Steer clear of ambulances.

  “Besides,” Calliope added, “what did Freud say? That death was sexier than sex?”

  Something to look forward to.

  Ready for our adventure to begin, I took my place in the passenger’s seat, trying to hide my doubts that Calliope and I would be able to find what we were looking for. But the ghosts saw through me, and as if to combat my uncertainty, they pointed out a small silver plate, shiny and engraved, attached to the dash.

  “The journey is the destination,” it read. Calliope paid no attention to it. Probably, it was her father’s mission statement, a tender but clichéd mantra she’d seen hundreds of times before. But to me, it was new and pure, the kind of wisdom most of us are too busy or too proud to recognize as a calling.

  ELEVEN

  We’d been driving for two and a half hours when I had a revelation: You can take the girl out of Vegas, but you can’t take Vegas out of the girl.

  “Sure could go for a prime rib special about now,” Calliope said, filing her nails and driving at the same time. “But I’d settle for a burrito and a Slurpee.”

  When we pulled into the truck stop, I filled up while she ran in to get provisions. Ten miles later, after our bellies were full of junk food, she handed me a small book. Big letters at the top of the front cover read Francais pour des Conducteurs de Camion. In parentheses it said French for Truck Drivers.

  “Looked like something you’d like,” she said.

  Wow, she really was a muse. How did she know?

  Below the book’s title was a list of the entire book series by a peculiar company called Smoky & the Bandit Goes Global. The company didn’t have the funds to write an extensive translation, so it appealed to the small sect of truck drivers dissatisfied with their monolingual status, then marketed its products in the perfect venue—truck stops. The series offered by the Global Bandit & Co. was impressive.

  Español para los conductors del carro.

  Deutscher für LKW Treiber.

  Het Naderlands voor vrachtwagenchauffeurs.

  Italiano per I driver del camion.

  Cogo vehiculum.

  Spanish was the most applicable, and I could even see the allure of German, Dutch, and Italian, but the last one seemed obsolete, Latin being a non-spoken language. Furthermore, it seemed to me a dangerous proposition—truck drivers reading instead of listening to a book on tape. But it was a good place for me to begin my personal quest for fulfillment. After all, I wouldn’t have time to learn an entire language before I died.

  I said, “Thank you,” and began thumbing through the book for a word or phrase I could apply to our current conversation, but it was an unusual collection of words. The words were categorized alphabetically, but there were little stars next to each word indicating their importance, as if to signify the hierarchy of a man’s primal needs. A word like uriner, which was an obvious priority for a truck driver, was marked with three stars. Other words, like bébé and chéri, both meaning “babe” in English, were marked with two stars. And next to that entry was a list of phrases, all involving the babe concept, so I chose my favorite.

  In a hideous French accent, I told Calliope, “Je t’aime, chéri!”

  “Love you, too, babe!” she said with a laugh.

  I crossed my arms for a moment, feeling duped. “You didn’t tell me you spoke French.”

  She shrugged. “You never asked.”

  I asked her what else she could do that I didn’t know about, but she just kept driving.

  After three hours, our Slurpees caught up with us. “I gotta pee,” Calliope said, so she made it to Interstate 80, took the next exit—Wendover, Utah—and, seeing no gas stations in sight, pulled into the parking lot of the first place we saw. Children bustled around, eager to get up to the building, which was located right next to the busiest street in town. We ascended a steep cement stairway that led to an ornate castle-like building on the top of what was apparently the only hill in Wendover. The structure featured two signature turrets, and once we reached the top, we noticed a mini-moat and drawbridge to the right of the double-door entryway, which was massive and wooden. A little sailboat bobbed up and down in the water, displaying a sail that read, “Welcome to Wendover’s Children’s Museum.”

  Children’s museums are educational, enlightening, hands-on learning places where parents take their kids when they can’t stand having them in the house anymore. I peeked inside one of the windows to see a Respect Your Grocer display, where kids stocked fake shelves with fake food, and collected fake money at a fake cash register.

  Calliope grabbed the wrought iron handle on the museum’s front door and went in to find the restroom. I lagged behind a moment to tie my shoe. Just as I crouched down, the big double doors flew open, and I was bowled over by a large knight, covered head to toe in full armor, hollering and running with a raised sword. I lost my balance as the horseless knight clinked and clanked his way past me, clumsily stabbing at invisible enemies along the way.

  “Pussy!” he screamed at a crying four-year-old boy standing in the museum foyer. Screaming became mumbling. “You’re probably a shitty jouster anyway,” he spewed out along with a healthy dose of spittle.

  Then his knees buckled, and he did a violent, clunkety-clunk trip down an entire flight of cement steps. The noise was deafening—like a Volkswagen filled to the brim with silverware and loose change plummeting end-over-end down a concrete mountain.

  The sun disappeared behind the medieval castle. Two old-fashioned lantern streetlights illuminated at the museum’s entrance.

  Night had fallen. And a knight had fallen.

  “Hello in there. You all right?” I asked, knocking on metal, but there was no answer. When I lifted the hinged lower half of his slatted face-guard, I figured out why. The stench got more intense the closer I got to his mouth. The overall smell was whiskey, but when he burped, I learned what he’d eaten for his last meal: chili dog with extra relish.

  A woman carrying a clipboard dashed out of the museum along with two young boys holding waxy leeks, tubers, and o
ther items from the grocery display. One of the boys chucked a plastic eggplant at the already broken knight, and when it hit him, he stirred. The woman grabbed the boy’s arm in disapproval. “Don’t stoop to his level, Joshua.”

  Calliope, returning from the bathroom with two play swords she’d bought at the gift shop, saw Clipboard Lady, me, and two other staff members who had heard the commotion, standing together at the base of the steps. The museum employees chatted as they poked and prodded the spectacle that lay before us. As they conversed, I gleaned important facts about the drunken knight.

  He was an out-of-work actor who’d moved here from Hollywood about a year ago. They called him Hudson. I wasn’t sure if that was his first name or last, but whoever he was, he’d had a very bad day. He’d shown up to work that morning in some sort of funk, and as the day progressed, after sneaking nips from his flask, he’d become increasingly belligerent. They’d banished him from his Knights of the Round Table learning station just before we’d arrived.

  But here’s what I wanted to know about Hudson the hostile knight: Why would an out-of-work actor move to a small town in the middle of nowhere? And why was he so angry and forlorn?

  We all formed a circle around Hudson and assessed his overall condition. “Darn, I’m always in the bathroom when the action happens,” said Calliope, popping a piece of gum in her mouth. “Is he a hunk or what?”

  A custodian who’d come out for a cigarette snickered, “A hunk? Yeah, a hunk of metal.”

  Clipboard Lady, who I now knew was the museum’s director, was worried about a lawsuit. She poked at him with her ballpoint pen. “Oh, God, is he dead?” It was the second time in as many days that I’d had to answer that question, so I rolled my eyes and sighed when I said, “He’s not dead. He’s just drunk.” His exposed mouth, a veritable saliva-river, was now leaking three tributaries of drool. “Really drunk.”

  Clipboard Lady panicked. “We’ve got to get him out of here quick. The fundraiser starts in twenty minutes, and he’s not exactly the kind of greeter who’s going to inspire donations.” She explained how she hoped this fundraiser would make possible her brainchild, a learning station she was going to name Choose a plant—Is it edible or is it poisonous? She wanted it to be completed before the holidays. I pictured toddlers dropping to their knees after eating deadly poinsettias as Santa attempted multiple resuscitations.

  “I hate to ask you this, but could you take him—” Clipboard Lady said

  We had to get out of this place, and fast. “Sorry, ma’am,” I said, “but we just stopped to use the bathroom. We’re traveling—”

  She pleaded. “Pleeeeease. Here’s something for your efforts,” she said, handing me a small card that said, “Lifetime Pass to Wendover Children’s Museum.”

  “Lifetime?” I laughed. “You have no idea what a good deal this is for you.”

  Clipboard Lady handed me Hudson the Knight’s wallet, keys, and cell phone, then said, “He mentioned that he only lives two blocks from here. I can’t thank you enough, girls. You’re lifesavers.” Then she scooted back up the stairs to start the evening’s festivities.

  Calliope threw up her hands. “You heard the lady, Susan. Spit-spot. Grab his legs.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  At that very moment, as she stood beneath one of the tall street lamps at the base of the stairs, Calliope looked poised and radiant, like she was on stage, ready to deliver the monologue of her career. The muse was back. And within seconds, it was as if someone had said “Silence on the set!” All noise disappeared, except for Calliope at center stage.

  “St. Peter at the gates will wonder why

  You left the knight abandoned here to die.

  He’ll close the gates and wonder what to tell

  The selfish girl now bound to burn in hell.”

  “God, this armor’s heavy,” I said, almost tripping over myself to lift him.

  And just as dusk arrived full force in Wendover, Utah, we hauled a limp, corpse-like stranger named Hudson across the street to our waiting hearse in front of scores of wide-eyed children arriving for a bake sale fundraiser.

  We opened the rear-loading back door and, with an awkward thud, placed him in the holding bed area. And as we took our places in the front seat to drive him back to his personal castle, it hit me: After a lifetime of waiting for my knight in shining armor, he had finally arrived during my dying days—in the form of someone who seemed to be a total asshole.

  TWELVE

  Some people believe each of us has a set number of heartbeats in our life, and once they’re up, they’re up.

  It’s not scientific—more of a destiny-based concept. But if there’s any truth to it, I wished I’d been provided my exact number—something real, something tangible, with built-in updates, like a stock market ticker tape which scrolled across my tummy and flashed “7,959,840 beats left (three months, two days, three hours, four minutes).” Maybe everyone should have ticker tapes of death.

  Imagine people walking around every day, knowing and displaying their destiny. What self-respecting person could steal a parking spot from someone with only 86,400 beats left (twenty-four hours)? Would we have to stop saying “Life is short” to those whose ticker tapes said they’d live to see their hundredth birthday? Would there be a designated number of beats at which we could officially stop sweating those inevitable downers like credit card bills and dental visits?

  As I looked for the address on his driver’s license, I wondered how many heartbeats Hudson the knight had left, assuming he had a heart at all. His picture was damn adorable, though, and made me think he was probably a Will, instead of a William. Sandy blonde hair, scruffy in a masculine sort of way, framed his face, yet his half-crooked smile gave him a disarmingly boyish softness.

  But even in his picture, his signature feature was his eyes. They were clear and bright, and though I couldn’t tell for sure, I think they were blue because they reminded me of Paul Newman’s in Butch Cassidy. Their authoritative gaze demanded attention. They were the kind of eyes that said, “I’m right. I’m always right. Let me convince you.” Hmmm. That could get annoying.

  Passed out in the back of our hearse—I mean coach—he was still clad in his occupational armor.

  His address, I said, was “1340 Arthur Court.”

  Calliope roared the engine. “Come on, Susan. What’s his real address? I’m tired.”

  I turned on the interior light and showed her his license to prove I was telling the truth.

  She grabbed it out of my hands to take a closer look. “The knight lives on Arthur Court?”

  “That’s what it says. And he has a name—William,” I said. “William Robert Hudson.” I almost pointed out that he was six-foot-one, one hundred-eighty pounds, and more dashing than he ought to be, but I didn’t want her to think I cared.

  Calliope checked her rear-view mirror and, in the direction of William Robert Hudson, said, “Sir William, have no fear, we brave damsels will get you home safely. Welcome to the new chivalry of the twenty-first century!”

  I stared at her.

  “What?” she said.

  “Aren’t you going to put your seatbelt on?”

  “No. That lady says he lives two blocks from here.”

  I didn’t mean it to be, but my tone sounded bossy. “Just because we’re driving a funeral coach doesn’t mean we should welcome death.”

  Thump. Thump. Thump—three more heartbeats gone.

  “I hate to break it to you,” she said, “but seatbelts are most effective when you’re traveling over fifty miles per hour.” She paused for emphasis. “And for the record, death doesn’t need a welcome. It comes when it wants, whether you like it or not.”

  Tell me about it.

  She noted my snotty exhale, and in pure Calliope form, embraced it. “Wow, I hit a chord, huh? If you don’t believe in destiny, you really do need a to-do list.”

  I repeated the word “destiny,” and made a dramatic and condescend
ing poof gesture, like a magician makes when he transforms a hankie into a bunny. I tried to sound confident, but something told me I was also trying to convince myself. “I believe in free will,” I said. “Making my own path, relying on my own map, not someone else’s.”

  “What about fate?” she said. “You don’t believe in fate at all?”

  I flashed a cocky smile and pointed to a street sign as we drove past it. “Look. Sir Lancelot Lane.”

  “So…?” she said.

  “So … so far, we’ve passed a Sir Gawain Drive, Sir Bors Boulevard, and Green Knight Court. You’d like to think there’s a divine connection between Sir William back there and his Arthur Court, but really it’s just one more address to complete some city planner’s lame attempt at thematic medieval street names.”

  Our destiny versus free-will debate came to a halt when we pulled up to William’s house. It was a small brick home, complete with details that surprised me: flower boxes under the windows, a wooden mailbox with a post that matched those supporting the front porch, and a doormat that read “Welcome” in inviting letters. Yet there was an overall sadness to the house. The flowers were wilted and droopy, and the doormat, free from gravel or dirt, was too clean to have been welcoming many guests.

  Calliope turned the engine off, and as she ran up to unlock the front door, I looked to see if “knight” was in my French for Truck Drivers dictionary, but it wasn’t—only “kielbasa,” “knuckle sandwich,” and ironically, “kitten.” Calliope came back to help me carry William Hudson over the threshold of his own home. When we opened the door, William still in our clutches, piles of packed and sealed moving boxes greeted us. Inside, I smelled a cocktail of aromas, each one revealing something different about the man who lived there: a hint of pine indicating a surface attempt at cleanliness; the distinct scent of books, old and new, assuring me he was not an illiterate asshole; and the undeniable smell of leftover pepperoni pizza, no doubt eaten at a table for one.