I guess that I have seen that little bit of film more times than anyone else in the world. I watch the film, and he talks to me, talks to me directly. I have it all up here.
He kissed me.
He died.
Leave his life alone.
I know motivation. I teach motivation. I teach acting.
PIECES
I parked that night in a lot across the street from a restaurant I wanted to call on the next day early. I had gotten into Fort Wayne late, having driven all day from my home in Corbin, Kentucky. I had made a side trip crossing the Ohio at Brandenberg to Maukport, then on to Henryville, Indiana, where I was born and grew up. It was for old times’ sake. No one knows me there now. I talked with no one. Climbing north, I had this sense of things starting up again. It was already hot. They were running, and I took my place in the stream of white-haired travelers hauling those silver trailers, driving those new finned cars, passed only by Negro children being driven south out of the cities to Grandma’s place on the land in Mississippi or Alabama. These are the times of real migrations. With the warm weather and those new highways, people had started to move. I was on the road all the time and hadn’t seen anything like it. Not since the thirties.
The traffic put me late in the city. I got my bearings from the bank building downtown. I’d been here before a few years earlier in 1950. I found Anthony Street, and followed the overhead trolleybus lines, a main street, and must have even followed a trolleybus because I remember thinking they still have these, the smell and the sparks and the sound of sliding metal. Fake lightning. And there might have been real heat lightning that night and lightning bugs.
The elms looked real sick in the streetlights. I didn’t have time to find a place, or money if I had found one, having not much more than enough for gas and a bit extra, just in case. Nor am I so inclined. I like sleeping in a car, especially my car. I have my spices. And there was a change in the weather that night. So when I spotted the Hobby House Restaurant—and I had some trouble since it was locked and dark—I pulled into the lot across the street which had a huge sign still on that late. It was a painter’s palette with three brushes poking through the thumb hole. Each dab of paint was lit up by a different color of neon.
It wasn’t a paint store but an ice-cream parlor. Each color a flavor of ice cream, I guess. The sign burned and buzzed to high heaven, but I was able to settle down in the backseat with beaten biscuits and my scales.
I weighed my spices and herbs in the pools of colored light for the next day’s meeting.
The palette was on some type of timer.
At midnight, it went out and silent just like that, even though no one was around to switch it off. And there was lightning that night but no thunder. It flashed as I put my things away in the dark.
Am I telling you too much? These things might not be to the point of the matter. But give me a little room to build up speed.
I’m sixty-six years old, which should give me a pretty good enough excuse to act this way.
I can remember fifty years ago as if it were yesterday. I can’t remember yesterday.
The maps in my time you had to read. Three miles from the county line, turn left on the macadamized road, an old Indian trail, and at four and a half miles, with red barn on the right, take another left. This is county road 16. Oil mat. Roads weren’t lines then. Give me time and I’ll make the turn.
I sell a recipe for fried chicken. That’s what brought me to Fort Wayne that night. I used to have my own place in Corbin, and I couldn’t complain. Business was good because my cooking was good. Country ham, black-eyed peas, red-eye gravy, okra and string beans, watermelon pickle, hoe cake, baked apples. Duncan Hines wrote me up in his Adventures in Good Eating before the war. Gave directions. The shed on your left, the fence on your right. That kind of thing. He got you right to my door. No Worcester Diner, tablecloths, and gravy boats. And the thing was in place. I even had a root cellar with roots.
Eisenhower’s defense highways put me out of business. I sold it all for a big loss. My wife said that it was about time we went south anyway, and she wanted to head down that new 75, a clear shot to Florida, SEE ROCK CITY on every barn and birdhouse. But I wasn’t going to manage on my Social Security wearing Bermuda shorts, thinking twice about buying this pack of Beechnut gum.
A few years ago, I taught a good friend of mine, Pete Harman of Salt Lake City, how to fry chicken with this recipe and every indication was that the chicken did a job for his business.
There are some other places too. Other men who have heard about it. They would send me four cents, a nickel a bird. But it was nothing I worked at or thought about. And now these cars were passing my place. Though I couldn’t see the traffic, I could feel its steady rumble through my feet. Those roads are so big you can hear things like you can over open water.
My last good days were feeding the crews who drove the graders and dozers. Their hard hats were lined up on the rack by the door like skulls. I’d rather wear out than rust through. So I got on that road, joined the rumble with the Pete Harman deal in mind. I put a pressure cooker, the spices and scales, my apron and knives in the backseat of my ‘53 Pontiac. It had an amber Indian head on the hood, and it handled like a boat. I shipped out over that sound.
It was no great adventure. I’m an old man, after all.
I started by cooking for my family. Time to get out of the kitchen and take it on the road since the road had up and gone. It’s not so strange. You fellows are fretting right now about what to do with your folks, I bet. I had to make up my own mind, had to make a little money.
So I hadn’t met her yet. Instead, I am in a parking lot in Fort Wayne, waiting for this restaurant to open up for breakfast. A crew of high school kids is tarring and repainting the lot. They are making noise as thev close off a section with rope laced through the handles of gray sealer cans. I’m the only car in the lot. It’s a big lot. They lay down the parking stripes that look like fish bones on the tar. I can see the painter’s palette sign is turquoise. Down the way is the baseball stadium where the Pistons play. There are big silver pistons on the press box. I know beyond the stadium is a road being built.
The elms look even sicker in the daylight. More like willows than elms. The restaurant has the look of being open now, though I haven’t seen anyone unlock the doors, and, sure enough, cars start turning in. I start mine and drive across the street carefully as the traffic is picking up. I park and go in. I like the place. The walls have stained, knotty pine paneling. The tables have red checkered tablecloths and each, no matter how large, is set for two. There are wagon wheels on the walls; half-wheels are buried in the backs of booths; the chimney lamps on the tables rest on little wagon wheels. The coffee is streaming into pots.
In the restroom, I wash my face and shave quickly. I have very little beard. The room is well lit and clean. Before going back to my booth, I knock on the women’s restroom door. When there is no answer, I peek in. It’s the same story, clean and bright, a couch for nursing.
It is a breakfast menu. Combinations of eggs, ham, potatoes. They have steak, hash, all the juices, and a specialty—a doughnut with its hole teed up in the center, glaze dripping from one to the other. But I order lunch—a hamburger, fries, and a Coke.
“No problem, hon, but the deep fryer’s not on till eleven. Hash browns okay?”
Everything is fine.
There’s a regular clientele. Coffee is poured before anyone asks. Conversations are picked up where they left off the day before, morning papers left behind to be picked up. So are large tips. There are men in uniforms. They use their fingers and dip their toast. They stack their own dishes. This feels like home.
“Here, let me heat that up for you,” the waitress says, pouring coffee with a smile.
Even though it is crowded, it is comfortable. There are dining rooms closed off. I can just sit, drink the coffee, and read your local news.
After the morning rush has left for work, what
remains are the old men talking about the weather, a feeble-minded boy sweeping up, and my waitress with the bright glass coffeepot still steaming in her hand. I ask to see the owner. I know his name. At first she looks at me as if I’ve betrayed her hospitality. Then she reads me as a salesman, smiling as she says, “All right, I’ll get him, wait right here.”
The owner comes through the swinging doors, out from his office. He is followed by my waitress, who brings him coffee as he sits. I get right to the people we know, talk about the National Restaurant Association, mention the new highways. He’s at a disadvantage when I make my pitch. I could be his father. I ask him to let me make some chicken for him. What’s he out but some shortening and flour? That’s right. I stayed on to cook for him and then for his customers. Then we shook on it, and I taught his people in the kitchen how to do it. Next thing was to make arrangements for getting the ingredients mailed and him sending all the money back home.
It wasn’t until I was back on the road again that I saw her hitchhiking. At first, I thought she might be a boy. She wore pants and had her hair up short. She had a small roll at her feet, a silver frying pan tied up on it. She stood, thumb out, too far from the road. But I saw her. She grabbed her things and ran to the car and opened the door without looking in first.
“Where you going?” I asked her.
“Wherever you are.”
Fair enough. I put it in gear and got back on the highway. It didn’t take her long to notice.
She said, “Jesus, what’s that smell?”
I told her what the smell was and what I was doing on the road. I didn’t ask anything because I felt she didn’t want me to, nor could I tell from her looks whether she had been on the road for a while or if I was her first ride. She didn’t say a word when I pointed the car toward Michigan. Maybe she didn’t know. Maybe she didn’t care.
It seems to me there aren’t any real crossroads anymore for most people. Most of us are going against the grain. She had nothing to decide, only tendencies. I had taken her up. Your part of the country is a funnel of flat land with a bias. I worked as a ferryboat captain on the Ohio. A small boat. Ferried autos and walkers from Jeffersonville to Louisville. I made the trip once an hour, seven hours a day. I heard about Mark Twain and read some of his books. I wanted to be a river pilot like him. I took to wearing white suits like his. Piloting that boat, you could feel what I mean. The Ohio wants to sweep you west.
She said, “You’re from the South, aren’t you?”
I said that all depends on what you mean. Some people will say the South starts at 38th Street in Indianapolis.
The accent, the funny suit. I knew she was thinking of it all. The greasy diet, the in-breeding. I don’t mind. On these trips, I let people think what they think. It’s good for business. My age helps too. But I try not to go on about what I’ve done or seen. Let them imagine what they want.
I’d say she was a city girl. Movie stars on her mind. She probably thought the road led somewhere, that it was not just for the nation’s business, the national defense. The “big road,” you call it in Kentucky. The road to town. The road that leads to something different. As I think of it now, I didn’t understand her half the time. She was restless on the seat, read the road signs to me, wanted to play games with license plates. I said she should follow along on the maps I keep in the glove box. She didn’t want to.
There were things I didn’t want to be with her but couldn’t help being because they are what I am. An old man, a salesman, a gentleman, her father. But she needed to be talked to. The country whizzing past needed to be filled up with fun. I have advice, though I try to hide what I mean. I’ve done my share on posses walking through field stubble and dragging rivers while dogs bawled. Maybe I wanted to scare her, but I say I didn’t.
She put on her sunglasses so I couldn’t see her eyes and slouched in the scat against the door. It wasn’t locked, but I held off from doing anything about it. We went on miles that way, me lecturing. She leaning into the unsafe door. Finally, I reached across the seat behind her. Pushed the button down. She didn’t say a word except “Thank you.”
We were traveling through the lake country near the Michigan line. The trees along the road would open up to water. I talked about me then. I couldn’t help myself. I had made a sale. Like that waitress, I just wanted everybody served. I left home when I was twelve. I told her that I had worked on farms, been a streetcar conductor, was in the Army in Cuba, worked jobs that disappear. I studied law by mail waiting on the ready track of freight yards. Boiler was my light. I was a justice of the peace in Little Rock. Sold insurance and tires. Headed the Chamber in Columbus, Indiana. You can check that out if you want. I’m not really from the South, you see. Not from anywhere.
“Yes,” I said. I pulled it all together, a piece here, a piece there. Yes, I have seen things. I rode the reefers and the blinds, saw a man frozen to the metal of the baggage car when the tender threw water picking it up on the fly. I was on a train with ballast in my pockets. Then I said something I thought she could use. Never get off where there is no shade.
I meant that.
She asked me when I left school, and I told her when they started in with algebra. If X was what you didn’t know, then I didn’t want it.
She lost interest after that. She turned to look out the window at the orchards being sprayed.
We were heading, though she didn’t know it, to Mackinac Island in the straits. It’s at the top of Michigan. The road is like a life line through the state s palm. It was there we got mixed up in a troop convoy. On maneuvers, I guess. Reserve Guard. I had seen convoys in the southbound lane with their lights on, antennas bowed over on the jeeps. The trucks have a round-shouldered look, like they’re hunching down the hot highway. We came up on their replacements heading north. The last vehicle was a jeep with MPs in white helmets in it. I scooted around, and then around the next deuce and a half. I blew my horn. I could see the cops shaking their heads, yelling and pointing. They weren’t happy to have their string broken up. I tucked the Pontiac in between two trucks, waited for the lane to clear, then leapfrogged another truck.
I could see, when I swerved out there to pass, that the line went on for what looked like miles ahead. She perked up when we started passing. Rolled down her window. Took off her sunglasses.
As we got along deeper into the convoy, she waved to the boys. I could tell they knew right away she was a girl. Some drivers sped up to get a good look, pacing us and not letting me jog around. I could see the jeep of MPs in the rearview. It was working its way up the line behind us. They passed when we passed, eyes on us.
She yelled out to each truck. How far you going? Where you going? And then she would listen for a boy to shout how good-looking she was. I kept my eyes on the road. Listen to them, will you?
Laughing.
I felt sad seeing her reach out so far and trying to hold hands with some boy while the wind blew.
But I got to the head of the line, and that was that.
It was dark in Mackinaw City. A storm was on the lake. We could see the white in the water. Here was the end of the world as far as I was concerned. Even the roads ran out.
Across the water there was an island with no cars, restaurants that might sell my chicken. We’d take the ferry in the morning.
I arranged for a cabin. It had a small stove and a sink. I grabbed some food from a grocery just as it closed. Then I cooked dinner, using her skillet. I took my knives and started cleaning chicken, telling her I’d been cooking it since I was six. I told her about Momma peeling tomatoes all day for Stokely–Van Camp in Henryville. I told her about May apples, greens, sassafras buds. I let her help, showing her how to peel a potato, snap the skin off the garlic with the flat of the knife. She was helpless, and I asked her why she brought the pan along anyway. She had seen pictures of Johnny Appleseed when she was a kid. She was serious, she said, about leaving home. I was cutting an onion. I can cut an onion, if it is a good onion, in such a
way that it stays whole for a few seconds after I am done slicing. One instant it is whole, the next a pile of a hundred pieces. She had me do this several times. You have to know what to do with it once you have it, I said, thinking of her frying pan, of the onions, well, of everything. We were both crying tears we didn’t mean. We ate in silence. She said she loved the food. Everybody does.
The storm boomed on outside. I don’t think she knew where she was. Not just that moment—an old log cabin with an old man—but where in the world. Maybe if she knew, she would have considered turning back. The highway was pretty slow after all. Camping with her family all over again. I looked at her as she looked at the fire and wondered if she would be telling stories about this ancient man crossing roads with chickens. She asked me what held the onion together in the first place and if I ever tried to put it all back together like a puzzle.
I slept outside in the backseat of the car. She hadn’t said one thing, not one way or the other. There are certain lines I don’t cross. I hadn’t offered her candy, only stone soup. To me it is all the same. When my belly’s full, so is the rest of me. Maybe she just didn’t have the words. Outside the Pontiac, it was bad. The chief’s head flashed. I went to sleep in the smell of sage and fresh ground pepper.
In the morning, it was all there. My spices, the storm, the girl in the cabin.
We drove to the ferry. But we could see from the water that no one was going anywhere. We got out and stood around. Some places you never reach.
I asked her what she wanted.
She said, “Let’s just go. Just keep moving.”
We headed south down 131. Nothing to talk about. No sun to give her a clue to the direction. The tin of the pressure cooker whistled as we drove.
Alive and Dead in Indiana Page 2