by Adam Johnson
The road rose toward the two-lane highway, and there was nothing but the frictiony shush-shush of our nylon parkas, the far-off civet of skunk, and the silent companionship of things half exposed in the plowed shoulder—various bits of refuse, a fan of radial-tire belts, rows of fallen icicles stuck in the snow. The empty cups of horse hooves walked out of the woods, pacing us awhile before vanishing.
At the junction, you could see the tracks of big rigs that had blown through not long ago, and the only other signs of life were rectangles of light from Tyler’s Bait & Go. Inside the bait shop, we opened our coats to take in the heat and then headed straight for the junk food. Trudy hit the nachos hard, then switched to little breakfast biscuits, the kind with double sausage patties. I dug into some cellophane-wrapped bologna-and-cheese sandwiches, the ones that are cut diagonally both ways. I folded open a carton of milk so the top was wide-mouthed and square. That way I could dunk the points of my sandwiches and get them down that much faster.
A guy came out from the back room, carrying a case of toilet paper. He was wearing a hunting cap, driving gloves, and a walkie-talkie in a holster. He almost dropped the box when he saw us. “Jesus,” he said, veering toward the register, “I didn’t hear the bell.”
He looked back, suspicious of the petrified ball of mud under my arm.
I didn’t say anything to him. Had I ever been so hungry? I knew better than to cap things off with grape soda and salted nuts, but after chili, cheese, bologna, and milk, what did it matter? I took a swig of soda, the nuts fizzing in my mouth as I inspected a wall covered with photos of folks posing with trophy fish—shovel-faced sturgeons stretched the scales, and men held up trot lines of crappie, strung like Chinese lanterns. Two catfish, black as vinyl, lay on a dock like body bags. One photo showed an old man at the water’s edge, cleaning fish assembly-line style on a rusty ironing board.
Under the food station’s bright lights, I looked at Trudy anew. She had a sprinkling of freckles across her cheeks and nose, and even in fluorescent lighting her skin looked the color of roasted almonds. Her brow seemed weighted, as if she viewed the world through the parted curtains of what had been. I suddenly had a surge of fondness for her which I could only describe as fatherly. We’d witnessed something fabulous and dangerous, something that, by the laws of brashness and foolishness, should have gotten us dead. I nodded and saluted with my grape soda.
Fiesta concluded, we took the empty cans and containers and carried them to the counter, where we piled next to the Lottery machine. The man working the register obviously wasn’t the regular cashier. He flattened some wrappers, punched some numbers, then squinted across the store for prices.
He looked up. “How about twenty bucks?” he asked.
I treated, glancing out the window as I opened my wallet. The cashier looked out the window as well. He scanned the empty lot.
“You folks have some car trouble?” he asked. “I drive the wrecker around here.”
Trudy said, “We might could use a lift.”
“I’m no taxi,” the driver said. But then he shrugged, asked, “Where to?”
“Almost to the casino,” I told him.
“Almost?” the driver asked.
We followed him out back to the tow truck, brand-new, painted cream and trimmed with chrome. On the door, instead of a sign or logo, there was an airbrush of a Lakota dancer, underlit by fire, his arms upstretched to the great Cangleska, or Medicine Wheel, of the sky.
I turned toward the driver to see if I’d missed some Sioux in his face.
“It’s my brother-in-law’s truck,” he said. “He owns Pride Towing. Ty’s my other brother-in-law.” He pointed to the Tyler’s Bait & Go sign above us.
The driver had probably been hoping to get mashed in next to Trudy but got stuck elbowing me instead. He flipped on a row of toggle switches, and then turned up the police scanner, though there was nothing to hear, and off we went. The diesel knocked so loud you’d think it ran without oil, and the headlights were insanely bright. We trucked in silence past the airport, the downtown, the prairie prison on a hill. We were almost to the casino when we passed the Lollygag.
Most of the cars were parked around back, beyond the view of the wives, husbands, and general citizenry of Parkton. Only my van was prominent, glowing pink under the Lollygag’s neon signs, and it was parked before a room with all the lights on.
“Hold it,” I called. “You can let me off here.”
The wrecker clanged down through gears, slowing to the shoulder, the tires fighting for traction as they slogged through frozen gravel.
“Trudy, it looks like my father has procured a room here. Are you going to be okay going out there with Eggers?” I asked, as if she had not just wielded a chain saw.
We came to a stop, and I opened the door, swinging myself down by the big side mirror. Trudy slid over to get some breathing room, and I paused on the running board.
“Sure, Dr. Hannah,” she said. “You okay here?”
“Don’t worry about me,” I said.
“Maybe we’ll see you tomorrow at the site,” she said.
“Maybe,” I said.
I turned to face the Lollygag, which flagged under a northerly wind that would have cut us down out on the ice. Twin aerial antennas sang with the gusts, and riding the air was a medley of empty-swimming-pool smells—exposed plaster, old chlorine tabs, the frozen fiberglass of a diving board.
When I knocked, my father answered in an undershirt and shorts.
“Hey, there’s my boy,” he said, and smiled, though he looked as if he was expecting someone else. He stuck his head out and looked both ways down the row of motel doors. “Come on in.”
The place was like a sweat lodge, the tinny room heater set to fire-hazard levels. All the lights were on, as was the TV. Taking a seat on the empty twin bed, I noticed the carpet was oddly worn in front of the full-length mirror. I set Keno’s ball on the bedside table and leaned against the headboard.
Dad offered me a can of vegetable juice, but I waved it off.
“This is all I can drink today,” he said. “My stomach is killing me.”
“Mine, too,” I said.
Dad eyed me, then seemed to determine that the source of my trouble was different from his. He looked back at his TV movie. “You’re welcome to stay,” he said, “unless something comes up.” The film was Jeremiah Johnson, starring Robert Redford as a guy who gets fed up with things and goes to live by himself as a mountain man. Nobody talked to anybody else in the movie, and from what I could gather, it was one of those plots where a guy’s on a journey to find growth and inner peace, but in reality fights everyone he comes across, including several large animals.
“I’m taking the van back,” I told him. “So you’ll have to get your own car.”
“Key’s on the ring there,” he said.
“I’ll need the house key, too.”
“Suit yourself.”
As a nod to our father-son thing, I tried to watch the TV. What could ruin my mood more? The only television programs I remember enjoying were the Winter Olympics—God, those lady speed skaters!—and a nature show I saw at Farley’s about how certain bears, when they get old, refuse to hibernate. They just wander around all winter causing trouble. Lonely and cranky, they pull down baby trees for no reason and tear the bark off logs. The narrator said these were the most dangerous bears to film.
I was starting to get sleepy. It was hot enough that I unbuttoned my shirt.
“Okay,” I yawned. “I’ll bite. What are you doing here?”
“They’re painting my place. The fumes are awful.”
He said this in an offhand, exhausted way.
“What color?” I asked.
“White, I guess.”
“White? Your place is already white. That apartment’s not even a year old.”
“Believe me,” he said. “It needed it.”
“Oh, it did, did it?”
“Those walls were driving me cra
zy,” Dad said, reaching for his vegetable juice.
Robert Redford tromped on and on through the snow, giving shit to all the Indians. His Hollywood buckskins never got dirty, and the scenes started to blend together. At some point I drifted off, shirt open, dozing on top of a motel bedspread, the antennas on the rooftop above whistling the soundtrack to my life, and this was how I spent my last night of freedom in the land we used to call “America.”
Chapter Six
Which brings me to the second great fallacy of life—the notion of “climax.”
This is how it supposedly works: You’re going about the normal business of living when an event occurs that forces you to drop everything and cast a long glance toward the approaching brakeman of fate. A moment of sudden definition has arrived, a point at which life’s manifold possibilities narrow to one true course, and grand decisions must be made. Destiny beckons, and the future falls clear as the scythe through the field. Common side effects of climax include tunnel vision, loss of balance, hearing voices, and occasional bladder or bowel failure.
Climax, of course, is an illusion. High powers suddenly call us to action? Mundane days spontaneously become epic? Don’t make me laugh. It’s understandable that people are drawn to moments in which they feel like actors in a larger drama; it’s only natural to let such moments stand in for all the days that slip away. But there’s no shorthand for existence. Time spars with no stunt double.
The need to have life rise to a higher plane is strong enough, however, that history is littered with examples of “false climax”:
After the last battle for Persia, Alexander declared that crossing the Hydaspes River had been the glory of his life, the reason he was born. Little could he know he was still to conquer Egypt, Media, Scythia, and India.
Rome didn’t crest and fall with the ascension of Nero, as the armies and Senate expected, but with the conversion of Constantine centuries later.
John Wilkes Booth told reporters in 1860 that performing Hamlet for President James Buchanan was “the greatest role of his life.”
In N’Gosa’s biography of Nelson Mandela, we learn that, on the eve of his incarceration for life in the Kittleton Afrikaner Penitentiary, Mandela ordered his followers to hold a funeral for him, complete with coffin and song. How could he know that his life would “climax” five more times, Moses-like, before he became the leader of his people twenty-seven years later?
So, the following morning, when I woke itchy and nit-ridden in that oven of a motel room, my life was not without historical precedent for the day ahead. A feeble light penetrated the heavy drapes, setting aglow the nappy fibers of my father’s bedspread, which he’d neatly made, folding and tucking the corners. I wasn’t about to go hunting him down, though. My scalp was on fire. My armpits, too, were aflame, and I’d rather not talk about the troubles I was having down below.
I took a shower so fierce and scorching that my skin puffed red, and my hairline felt as if it receded an inch. To no avail, however—the nits had incubated and hatched, and a good scrubbing only served to work them up. How I’d have killed for a Q-tip! I don’t want to go into it, but my underwear turned out to be a lost cause, and I was forced to proceed with my day in the French manner.
Still flushed from the shower, I dressed and stepped outside, where my hands steamed in the crisp air, as if the cold were trying to burn off my fingerprints. Except for my van, every car in the lot was gone. On the horizon, the Thunderbird Casino went through its morning calisthenics—its flashing banners pumped up and down, while neon fountains of light climbed, climbed, then dropped and gave us twenty.
I had Keno’s ball in one hand, the key to my van in the other, and I told myself just to forget my father and go. But I smelled coffee brewing, and I couldn’t help wandering past the bleak, tarped-over swimming pool, smelling of frozen leaves and granulated chlorine, to the Lollygag Lounge. Inside, dark corkboard lined the walls, its surface quilted with tacked-up photos of patrons, mugging for immortality in this hall of good times. Twin TVs broadcast at each end of the bar, in the middle of which my father sat alone. While one television broadcast news images of faraway fires, typhoons, and sundry disasters befalling remote points of the globe, my father watched the other television set, the one showing muted interviews with pop stars.
I took a stool next to my father.
He opened his mouth to speak, but I cut him off:
“There you are, my boy,” I said, mimicking his fake-cheery voice.
“Good morning to you, too,” he said.
I looked around at the empty bar. The corkboard had been darkened by an eon of cigarettes, and the thousand faded photos stuck to it formed our Greek chorus. Above, I was drawn to the TV footage of cattle with blistered lips and cracked hooves, to the chicken fires that were lighting the night skies of Hong Kong.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
Dad rapped on the bar. “Best breakfast in town,” he said, though I’d never even heard of someone eating here. Respectable adulterers left this place long before first light.
“The biscuits,” Dad said, “are celestial. Light and buttery as love.”
That bitter note of irony was my cue not to take him too seriously. It was meant to throw me off balance and invite me into our usual rapport—a well-trodden mode in which we avoided all topics of consequence. I’ll admit I was in the mood for a day like that, where we drove around without talking, slowing to look at places we knew already, or just staring off the dam at the turbulent water below.
I looked at the bottles of booze, some of them plastic, lined up in front of the bar mirror.
“I’m serious,” I said. “What are you doing here? You want to go on a bender, why not stay at the casino?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “The T-bird’s the best place to crash in town, but it’s not so good to wake up there.”
“Who is she?” I asked.
He pretended not to hear me.
A waitress came out of the kitchen area. She was about my father’s age, and she held three empty coffeepots in one hand. Dad and I were the only people in the place, so when she saw us she looked surprised, then just shook her head. She came over, her face looking steamed from the kitchen though it was just past dawn and the bar hadn’t even opened. She set the pots down.
“You again,” she said to my father. They held each other’s eyes a moment.
She stuck a ballpoint pen in her hair. She casually leaned toward my father, and together they regarded me. “That him?” she asked.
My father had this strange expression on his face, as if he were seeing me through her eyes, as if I were a stranger he was interested in getting to know.
“He’s the one,” Dad said.
The waitress looked at me, as if to confirm some aspect of a story she’d been told. “The professor,” she said, then pointed at Keno’s head. “What’s with the paperweight, Professor?”
Dad answered for me. “Probably some petrified dinosaur egg,” he said. “The boy likes to dig things up. He roots around in the past.”
“A dinosaur,” she said to me. “You gonna bring it to life, like in the movies?”
She said it in a friendly voice, as if I was an outsider she wanted to include.
“If I could bring things back to life,” I told her, “I’d start with my old man here.”
She followed my gaze to Dad.
“Don’t you worry about him,” she said. “Don’t you worry.”
“Hey, are we going to eat or what?” Dad asked. “I’ll take the usual.”
When he said “the usual,” there was some sauce on it. Either he’d never eaten here before, or they were lovers. This woman pulled on a towel that was draped over her shoulder, then wiped her hands. She went into the kitchen, set something sizzling on the grill, and began fixing us two Virgin Marys while more coffee brewed. Before I knew it, we were knee-deep in breakfast, the real proof that something was up between these two. First came sausage links, seaso
ned with anise and sage, then home-style potatoes, fried in butter and rosemary, and finally eggs, salty and fried crisp at the edges, all flanked by triangles of toast.
I dusted my eggs with black pepper and dug in. There is nothing like the eggs of birds—yellow-white, quivering with flavor, and light as the nests they were plucked from. Eggers always boasted that a reptile egg is just as good. He even claimed to like that ring of brown oil around turtle yolks. That morning in the Lollygag, though, the black pepper on my eggs had started to creep me out. Those little bits seemed to shift and twitch on my plate, hopping in my peripheral vision. Soon my skin was crawling, and I tossed my napkin on the bar.
Dad was crunching the celery stick from his Virgin Mary.
“You ready to roll?” I asked. God, my armpits were burning.
“Something wrong with the food?” he asked.
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Let’s just get out of here.”
I was still thinking we’d go fishing, maybe just sit around and not talk. We hadn’t played cards in a while. He used to love to play cards.
Dad shrugged. “I’m in no hurry.”
“Well, grab your coat,” I told him. “I can’t just leave you here.”
“You go on. I’ll finish watching my show.”
I looked up to the soundless television, where celebrities in strapless gowns were auctioning each other for charity.
“Look, I’m taking the van back, remember?”
Dad said, “We’ll do lunch later. How’s that sound?”
“Well, I’m not going to just leave you. I won’t do it.” I put my coat on and grabbed his off the stool. “Take it,” I told him. “Because I’m not going to abandon you here. You get some other son to do that. Find some other offspring for that shit job.”
This was when Dad was supposed to give me a winner smile and sweet-talk me with that salesman voice of his. But he didn’t. He just looked at me as if I was a curiosity. He took a nip of bacon. Whatever he was about to say would wound me, I felt it coming, and before that could happen, I dropped his coat on the floor and turned to leave.