The Fool's Progress

by Edward Abbey

  The babble of an idiot. I seal the letter in an envelope and leave it for Elaine on the kitchen table. She’ll be here as soon as she knows I’m gone.

  Now what? Now we are ready, I to depart—I stroke the dog on her bony skull—you to remain. Which is the better only God knows.

  Poor Sollie looks unhappy. She fears and dreads these ominous departures, has sensed by now that I’m leaving for good. I scratch her neck, pick another engorged tick from behind her ear. (God in his wisdom gave us the bloodsucking tick. The theologians have been trying to figure that one out for three thousand years.) What a miserable specimen of dog she is. I check her food dish and water bucket: both full. I reenter house, make that last essential phone call to Professor Schmuck’s secretary at Computer Science, leave message for Elaine about Sollie, turn on a couple of lights and the radio for burglar protection, lock the doors, hide the key under the rubber rattlesnake in the carport shed, stumble into my truck, start motor, engage the slipping clutch. Driving down the lane with its center line of bur sage and sore-eye poppies. Past the mailbox and into the dirt street.

  Stepping hard on the gas, I stir up a plume of dust—farewell, Tucson. I glance once into the mirror to see if our flag is still flying. Yes it is, flapping from the pole on the roof, our sun-bleached rainbow flag, symbol of peace, brotherhood, happiness, the freedom of the open seas. Tom Paine designed that flag in 1789. A good man, that Thomas Paine.

  And then—oh no—I notice something else appearing through my trail of dust, a dark animate object, dog-shaped, loping after me on arthritic legs. Please, not that. But it is.

  I stop the truck, open door on passenger side, wait. Presently she comes, heaves herself with great effort up and onto seat, sits there panting, tongue hanging out like a wino’s necktie. Assuming a confident nonchalance she cannot feel, the dog stares through the cracked windshield at the road ahead, ready to go. I slam the door and drive on, lurching forward, sick of the dog already and ashamed of myself for being such a chickenhearted fool. Slowing for the STOP sign on Silverbell Road, I consider—but only for a moment—returning to the house for Sollie’s food dish, her water bucket, her sleeping rug, her leash, flea powder, Nizoral pills. No, I’m a busy man, I’ve dallied far too long, it’s nearly noon. Anyhow it would be impossible for me to return to that empty haunted silent reproachful house. My heart could not bear it.

  Impossible. Can’t be done. But I do it. I turn the truck 180 degrees, drive back to house, pick up Sollie’s things. The dog remains in her place on the passenger’s side of the bench seat, not watching me, pretending these are routine procedures, hoping I’ll not notice that she’s there. Off we go.

  We’re not yet clear of Tucson. Next stop the bank. I’ll take the four hundred or so left in our joint checking account—vulgar necessities of material contingency—before heading north and northeast onto the open road, the asphalt trail leading homeward. Where is home? Home is where you shall find your happiness. Whatever that may be.

  Heavy traffic on my route. Forty-ton dump trucks loaded with gravel obstruct my passage. Move it, damn it, or get it the hell off the road. Chuckholes here and there, everywhere. A sticker on the tailgate of the truck in front of me says, “This Truck Pays $7,500 a Year in Road Taxes.” Not nearly enough, you road-hogging pavement-busting traffic-jamming swine.

  I work around the truck only to find my way blocked by a black old bomb of a Chevy sedan riding one inch above the asphalt, a row of six dark small heads barely showing above the dashboard. The driver apparently watches the road through a periscope. La Raza moving in, one must be understanding, they don’t want to live in Mexico either and who can blame them? Life is better in Newark, N.J.

  Be fair, you bigot, I say to myself, think of the cultural riches the Mexicans have added to the decadent materialism of the gringo. Tacos for instance. Nachos. Burritos. Salsa music. Spray-paint art. Patrón-style politics. Plastic Madonnas on acrylic-plush dashboards and other intellectual, scientific and artistic treasures I’m sure I could think of if I really set my mind to it.

  I slip around the low rider and find myself behind a high rider, a sunglassed T-shirted neckless urban redneck wearing one of those funny hats like cowboys wear and operating this four-by-four GMC road tank with six KC Lites on the roof of the cab, chrome-plated roll bars in the tiny bed and something like tractor tires with raised white lettering—DIRT DIGGER—mounted on each oversize wheel. His left bumper sticker reads YOU DON’T LIKE THE WAY I DRIVE, STAY OFF THE SIDEWALK. His right-hand sticker says HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR TOILET BOWL TODAY? Bad manners everywhere. The truck’s headers rumble like machine-gun fire as the driver gears down for a red light.

  Big noise, tiny balls.

  We stop, we roar, we proceed. Henry pulls around the giant toy truck and past a little Honda Seppuku sedan, racing for the next intersection through a broken field. Too late, too late, he is jammed by a red light. I brake and wait, drumming my fingers on the wheel. Something about urban driving makes me testy, impatient, a touch irritable. Me and a hundred million others. But a wise man does not yield his equanimity to such trivial things.

  A girl on foot picks her way cautiously through the crosswalk, between the ranks of muttering panting steel beasts. A fine specimen of young American female, well developed in every essential respect. Pretty face, breasts, buttocks—the eternal verities. Contemplating this restorative picture, I am startled to hear a metallic squealing noise at my immediate rear. I glance up at the traffic light to see, at this moment, the light change from red to green. The son of a bitch behind me has hit his horn in rheostatic anticipation of the green light, as if his head itself were wired to the controlling terminals.

  This sort of thing exasperates Henry Lightcap. Instead of driving on he sets the parking brake and gets out of his truck to have a few words with the fellow behind. Yes, it’s the man in the Seppuku. He gapes at Henry in astonishment as Lightcap leans down to speak to him through the open window, face-to-face. Like a gentleman.

  “You blew your horn at me,” says Henry.

  Amazed, the man stares at Henry. He is large, well dressed but limp, shoulders sloping as if deboned, his eyes unable to focus on any particular object. A man in the grip of abstractions. Hands trembling. Nerves haywire.

  “I hate horn blowers,” Henry says, leaning closer.

  Sensing danger, the man starts to roll up his window. Lightcap checks it with a heavy hand on the glass. The man glances at his rearview mirror, shifts into reverse and begins to back up. Henry opens the lightweight soybean door and slams it hard against the front fender of the car, springing the hinges. Bent, warped, out of reach, the door stays jammed in its open position as the driver backs off to a safe distance. He pauses a moment, gears crunching, then swerves forward to the right-hand lane and dives into the mainstream of traffic beyond. The man’s passing scream of trite obscenities (“asshole; cocksucker; motherfucker”) is lost in an uproar of brawling auto horns.

  Henry walks to his vehicle, climbs in beside his patient dog and waits calmly for the return of the green. He feels better now, like any boiler that’s popped its safety valve. Jap crap, he thinks. Rice rockets. Niki-Tiki sewing machines. Hondas, Toyotas, Sonys, Kawasakis. Tofu metallics, noodle-soup plastic. Vile cheap imported garbage: to think that we Americans, in our blindness and stupidity, should throw our own people out of work, shut down our great mills, let the Forest Service clear-cut our forests and the BLM stripmine our hills and the beef industry gnaw down our rangelands to the bone in order to produce raw materials to trade to those Nipponese ant people in exchange for their bright cheap slick robot-manufactured electro-mechanical junk, none of which, not one single item of which, we actually need.

  Now now. Temper temper. I mutter my prayer: “Oh Lord, please help me to become like the others—gentle, kind, tranquil…soon.”

  On to the bank. As always, fresh difficulties appear. We find good parking space at the front door, thanks to double-wide slots reserved for our physically ha
ndicapped friends, but there is a long queue of folk inside standing within corridors of velvet rope. A few geriatrics and quite a few official minorities, clutching their government checks, impede my progress toward a teller, cash and liberty.

  Inching forward with the human centipede, gradually but slowly making progress, I hear the old geezers in front of me, lisping through their dentures, say, “Remember them good old days when you could just walk into a goldanged blankety-blank bank and get your check cashed?” “That was before they got them son-of-bitchin’ computers,” says the other; “now everything is automatic, that’s why it takes so long.” “Course we didn’t have much money in them days neither,” the first says. “That’s true, Luther, but we didn’t need much: you could buy a new suit for $19.95 in them days.”

  Mumbling, grumbling, we crawl along. The first old man says, “Now they claim pretty soon the computers will do everything: you won’t have to go to no bank at all, never even leave your room, just sit there in front of a display screen, push buttons, food’ll come out of a slot by your elbow like shit out of a tube.” “You ever been to one of them automated hog farms? That’s the way they take care of hogs already.” “We’re next,” somebody says up ahead. “You know what my computer tells me?” says another veteran; “my computer tells me in fifty years there won’t be no computers.” A short silence follows this amazing statement.

  “Next!” yells a teller.

  I find myself at a window facing a solemn young woman of the Afro-American preference. I’ve already scribbled out a check to “Cash” for $385, the amount remaining in our account, according to my check register. I present this document to the clerk, along with my bank I.D. card with its color photo of Henry H. Lightcap, number 1331-0323-0287, authorized signature on reverse side. Never looking at me, saying not a word, the clerk frowns at my check and card, punches some buttons on her computer terminal, waits a moment and announces the result:

  “You have one dollar left in your account.” With a smile of satisfaction she raises her black irises to my face, interested in my reaction.

  Calm, very calm, cool as a Christian with aces wired, I say, “Run that through again, please.” But my mind, sick and disorderly instrument though it is, has grasped at once the bitter truth: Elaine got here first. It was, after all—madness—a joint account. Decent of her, though, to leave me that one symbolic dollar, keeping our account joined, together, alive.

  “One dollar,” the teller says.

  “Exactly one dollar?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll take it.”

  “There’s a five-dollar service charge for closing the account.”

  “I see. Suppose I withdraw ninety-nine cents?”

  “We don’t accept accounts of less than one dollar.” She stares at me with insolent pleasure, aware of the waiting queue of human types behind me, the file’s passive acceptance of delay, confusion, indignity, humiliation—the New Age.

  Henry considers creating a scene. But reconsiders. Any act of rebellion, even mere verbal abuse—and why pour his spleen on this poor dependent employee?—will be met with force. Official violence. That broad fellow over there in the blue suit, with club and revolver, is not here merely to watch us creepers crawl. He means force. If I should object to force I will be arrested. If I object to arrest I will be clubbed. If I defend myself against clubbing I will be shot. These procedures are known as The Rule of Law.

  Anyhow I have other resources. I open my wallet and present the teller with my credit card, a MasterCard® in my case, Valley National Bank Arizona number 5288-6766-3314-9855, 1192 VNB AZ valid thru 07/80, Henry H. Lightcap, by Gawd. My genuine authorized signature on the backside.

  “Okay, Miss,” I say. “I’ll use this. Give me a credit form.”

  I slip her my MasterCard®, she slips me the slip of paper, I fill it in for $499 while she fingers the clitoral buttons of her dream machine. As I slide the form toward her she reads the numbers on the screen. “Mr. Lightcap, you’ve already gone three hundred dollars over your credit line.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “That means you can’t borrow any more money on this card until you pay your bill.”

  “You mean the minimum payment due?”

  Again she taps buttons, waits, gives me the news. “No, it means your payment is six weeks overdue so now you have to pay the whole bill, which is”—button, button—“which is $1,352.55.”

  “I’ll speak to the manager. What’s your name, young lady?”

  She points to the nameplate on her counter. AMITY. “Next!” she cries to the file of forgers, murmuring but resigned, in my rear.

  The manager is out. Only the assistant manager is available and he does not rise at my approach. Deep in his black padded leather armchair, shuffling a sheaf of papers, he does not even glance at me as I seat myself in the hard chair beside his desk. The supplicant’s chair. According to the brass nameplate I’m dealing with a Larry Klick. I toss my bank card and credit card onto the glossy surface of his desk.

  “My name’s Lightcap,” I say. “I’m here on business.” No answer. “Henry Lightcap,” I explain. That should rouse him. It does not.

  Finally, though, he condescends to glance at my cards, then at my face, then at my cards again. Both cards are smudged, I’ll admit, blurry, as they have been ever since Elaine ran my pants through the washer with my wallet in the hip pocket. Got my money laundered, my cards obscured.

  “Yes, Henry, what can I do for you?”

  He called me Henry. A bad start. This banker type is at least fifteen years younger than I, a sleek plump blondish commercial lout with a twenty-five-dollar razorcut blowdried unisex coiffure, the dry, fluffy, styled and layered look. Each hair is fixed in place with an invisible net of wax from a spray can. Even the dandruff on his shoulders wears a metallic sheen. He’s dressed in what might be a Bill Blass suit, I suppose, desert tan, with a fake old-school tie (Eton? Harrow? Tucson High? Boystown?) strapped around his fat neck. Vest buttoned up with cute wooden buttons matching the four wooden buttons on the ends of his coat sleeves. Square gold monogrammed cuff links, immaculate white French cuffs. Soft contact lenses, I suspect, on his milky eyes. Tassels on his shoes. Eyes like fisheye tapioca. And tassels on his shoes.

  “What can I do for you, Henry?” he says again.

  “I want to check out four hundred dollars on my MasterCard®.” I think of the loaded .357 Magnum in my truck. What I should’ve brought in here is my MasterGun®. No waiting. Instant recognition. Honored everywhere. No finance charges, no fees, no paperwork.

  “Sorry but your credit line is used up.”

  My heart sinks. My face falls. My gorge rises. “How do you know that, Larry?”

  “Saw you talking with the teller.”

  “Is that your job, Larry? Watching the tellers? How could you hear what we were saying?”

  He smiles. “We have our little systems. My guard is watching you right this minute. You look like the nuisance type. You’d better leave.”

  I squint at the ceiling. “I read in the papers you’ve got an asbestos fiber problem in this little branch bank, Larry. Not only here but in every VNB branch in Arizona.”

  He looks at me directly. There’s a gleam of life—even anger—in those piscine eyes. “That’s a lie. That’s false. Chrysolite asbestos is absolutely safe. We’ve got sworn affidavits from independent testing laboratories.”

  “Cashiers dropping dead from mesothelioma. Asbestosis. Cankers like death’s-head toadstools in your clerks’ lungs. Deadly nightshade in their gallbladders.”

  He hesitates. “What do you want?”

  “Money.”

  “You’ve come to the wrong place.”

  Once more I survey the interior—the tellers’ cages, the safe-deposit vault, the video cameras mounted in the corners, the imitation Navajo sand paintings mounted on the wall, the shiny flecks of something toxic in the low fiberboard ceiling, the uniformed guard standing at parade rest
near the main entrance, pretending not to be watching me. “Wrong place? This looks like a bank to me.”

  “It’s the wrong place for you.”

  He’s trying to insult me. I rise from the chair. You can’t insult a Lightcap. We’re above that. I take my cards. “When I want money from swine like you I’ll take it by force.” (MasterGun®.)

  “You better leave, Lightcap.”

  He’s making notes on a pad. I replace the cards in my wallet. “You ought to get out of here yourself, Larry. How do you feel these days? Feel a funny ticklish sensation in your throat?”

  “Goodbye.”

  “See you in the obituaries, Larry.”

  “Get out.”

  “I’ll come back to piss on your grave. You like chablis, I suppose? Rosé? Perrier?”

  “I’m calling the cops, man, if you’re not out of here in thirty seconds.” He glances at the pink quartz digital chronometer on his wrist. Made in Japan. “You’ve got thirty seconds.”

  I leave, letting him have the last word. As I did the guru years before. You can’t strip an assistant branch-bank manager of all his pride. He’d become an animal. Besides, he does have the local constabulary on his side and we’ve discussed what The Rule of Law boils down to: violence, gunfire, sudden death.

  But we are short on cash. I count the change in my pocket: $34.56. Three thousand five hundred miles to go. About one dollar per hundred miles. And a bankrupt credit card. I see that we shall soon be suffering from that familiar disease called lack of money, a leading cause of poverty everywhere.

  Ah well—I still have my wits. And my bulk. Though inside I’m scared, outside I look big, dark, bulky, ugly, dangerous. I’m aware of that and take full advantage every chance I get. Furthermore I’ve got more interesting problems than poverty. Sartre wrote that Hell is other people. But Dante was right: Hell is existence without love.

  Got to go home for a while.

  Nor am I above an act of petty vengeance. Speaking of love. Love of fun. I see the blue Porsche convertible parked in a slot “Reserved for Ass’t Mgr.” I open the back of my truck, lift the lid of the grub box, take out a large Idaho potato and force it into the tailpipe of the Porsche. I jam it in deep, out of sight, pushing with my thumbs. That should pop his fucking valves. Or at least give his muffler a hernia.