by Chuck Kinder
Well, you can’t imagine how much I’ve missed talking with you. You’re my best friend on earth, Lindsay. I mean that.
What about your best friend Jim?
You’ve been my best friend from the first day we met. I’ve never gotten over that.
Well, Ralph, no matter what else transpired between us, or didn’t, I have always thought of you as a dear friend.
I am your dear friend. Your dear, dear, dear friend. And more. In my book, anyway. Much more. And I can talk with you like I’ve never been able to talk with anybody else in my life. I can open up with you like I’ve never been able to do with anybody.
What about your wife, Ralph? What about Alice Ann?
Not even with Alice Ann when it was still good between us. You can’t imagine how good it is to talk with you again. You can’t imagine how much I’ve missed it.
I’ve missed it, too, Ralph.
I’ve missed it more than anything. I mean it. That’s the honest- to-God truth.
What really is the honest-to-God’s truth, Ralph? What’s the truth about your life?
My life is crazy, and getting crazier by the day. I’ve finally arrived at the end of my rope. Alice Ann and I are history.
I’ll say. About eight or nine thousand years* worth, Lindsay said. —According to Alice Ann, you two have shared countless lifetimes together. And she has inspired your work. She has lived your stories with you. She gave birth to your two children, Ralph. Your family.
Right, Ralph said. —Remind me to write her a fat letter of thanks about that. If I wrote monster stories I could use those kids as inspiration. Maybe I could rent them to Stephen King.
You are talking about your children, Ralph.
God, but I wish we could have had kids together, Lindsay. I wish we had a son of our own.
Oh, Ralph, don’t you think we already had our shot at happiness?
Did we? Do you only get one shot? You know, Lindsay, I can remember exacdy what your kisses taste like.
My, my, what an amazing memory the boy has. What do you think Jim would do if he caught you kissing me?
Give me a knuckle sandwich, I guess, but it would be worth it. I love old Jim. I do. We go at each other a lot, I know it. But I do love him. It’s just that you went and married him. And the last good kiss I ever got I got from you. Lindsay, we could still sail into the future like we used to talk about.
Which way is that?
I mean it. Finally everything in my household is just too crazy. Alice Ann is convinced she’s some kind of medium. That spirits, you know, of dead people, can speak through her. Can you beat that? And then there’s her old Egyptian spirit pal Horus, who she apparently got real tight with down in the lower delta during the Old Kingdom. So old Horus gives Alice Ann a ring from the beyond now and then to shoot the breeze. Talk about long- distance bills. And I’ll probably get stuck with those charges, too. Like all the other outrageous charges Alice Ann levels at me day and night. Outrageous charges from other lifetimes. I can hardly get through one day at a time intact in this lifetime and I’m being held accountable for crimes I committed in other lifetimes. Did you know that in Roman times I once tossed Alice Ann, who was this Christian virgin martyr, to a lion. And once in ancient Egypt I supposedly had, you know, carnal knowledge of Alice Ann’s royal sister down on the banks of the old Nile.
Well, did you, Ralph?
Probably, Ralph said. —But after six thousand years, so what, I say. Cut a fellow some slack. There has to be a statute of limitations, doesn’t there? Let sleeping dogs lie is my motto. Especially six-thousand-year-old sleeping dogs. Well, I, for one, am out of all that ancient history now. Let somebody else look back on the long, sorry record, its scraps and tirades, the deadly silences and innuendos, the screams in the night, and let them figure out what it all adds up to. Goodbye, I’m saying. Goodbye to that history of heartbreak.
Really, Ralph? Goodbye? Goodbye to eight or nine thousand years of togetherness?
I’m kissing it all goodbye, Ralph said. —I’m laying it all to rest. I should have taken a hike out of that tragedy four or five centuries ago. And I’m going to turn over a new leaf in this lifetime while I still have time. For one thing, I’m going to stop drinking. Any day now, I mean it. And I’m going to become the sort of man a son could look up to. The sort of man a son, a son like our son, if we had had one, or ever have one, could be proud of. God, Lindsay, but it really is good to talk with you.
It’s good to talk with you, too, Ralph.
Really. To talk my heart out. To be able to get things off my chest like this. I have always, no matter what the course of events, thought I could count on you as my best friend.
Thank you, Ralph. I feel as though I can count on you, too.
That settles it, then, Ralph said. He got up and stepped over beside Lindsay and rested a hand on her shoulder. —We can count on each other. Through thick or thin. Come hell or high water. For better or worse. Until death us do part, Ralph said, and put out his hand as though to shake.
Come hell or high water, Lindsay said, then took Ralph’s outstretched hand and shook it, laughing.
God but I wish we had hours and hours to talk, like we used to. Talk the day and night away. Talk and make love until the sun comes up. Can you remember that?
Yes, Lindsay said.
Talking. Telling stories, gossiping, dragging all our friends through the mud, eating about a dozen scrambled eggs at three in the a.m., making love about every fifteen minutes
You, my boy, are a cracked record, Lindsay said, and laughed. —But I’m happy you feel you can talk with me. I’m afraid I’m out of practice. The practice of opening up.
Opening up, Ralph said, and patted Lindsay’s cheek. —That’s something we can practice on together.
Oh, Ralph, Ralph, Lindsay said, and slowly stood up to hug him. —You can be such a dear old dog, she said, and kissed Ralph on the cheek.
Gosh, Ralph said. —Thanks a million. I’m a lucky old dog is what I am. Really. I needed that. What did I do right, anyhow? Tell me what I did right so I can do it again. I mean, that really hit the old spot, that kiss did. Well, it almost hit the old spot.
Almost, Ralph?
Well, you sort of missed my mouth.
Oh, not by a mile.
Hey, I’m not complaining, you understand. A kiss from you is a kiss from you, and I was a lucky old dog to get it. I’ll take any kind of kiss from you I can get. Hey, hold the horses. Let me ask you something. Is the reason you missed my mouth on account of this little cold sore I have?
Cold sore? Lindsay said, and laughed. —I hadn’t noticed any cold sore, Ralph.
Right here, Ralph said, and touched a red spot on the left corner of his mouth. —This little devil. I know it looks bad. You’re just being kind, as usual. I didn’t get enough milk or green veggies as a kid. That’s how a doc explained why I’m always getting these godawful sores. It’s just another carryover from what passed as my childhood. My childhood is always rearing its miserable, hoary head. Such as now. Deprived of an innocent kiss on the mouth from a dear, dear friend because Momma raised me mostly on lard and sugar sandwiches. Well, I don’t blame you one little bit. I wouldn’t want to kiss me on the mouth either. Even if I did know, which I do, that this little devil isn’t in the least bit contagious. This little baby has about run its course.
Oh, Ralph, you nut, Lindsay said. She put her hands on Ralph’s chest. —You make me laugh. I miss laughing.
I wish I knew some jokes. I can never remember jokes.
Neither can 1.1 always forget the punch lines.
Me too. Hey, here’s one I remember. Have you heard the one about, .. Ralph said, and stopped when Lindsay reached up and kissed him on the mouth. When Ralph opened his mouth, so did Lindsay. They kissed for a full minute.
When did you say Jim would get back? Ralph said.
I didn’t say. But my best guess is that it will be a while. Long enough, anyway.
Long enough?
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Let’s go downstairs, Ralph.
Downstairs? You mean, you think we should go downstairs?
I don’t want to think about it, Ralph. I want us to just go downstairs while we can.
Well, yes. Yes. Let’s do that. Go downstairs. And you’re sure Jim won’t be back anytime soon?
God, yes, Ralph. I’m sure about that, anyway, Lindsay said and took Ralph by the hand and led him across the deck to the stairs.
Lost Highways
1
The house was dark when Kathy returned from rounding the bars. She fixed herself a nightcap in the kitchen and then walked upstairs to what would have been the baby’s room. She sat in the rocking chair she had bought when she was six months pregnant. In the slant of light from the street the little lambs on the wallpaper were luminous. All around the room bits of light reflected from the bead eyes of stuffed animals. Kathy rocked while she smoked a cigarette in the dark.
Kathy turned the light on in Bill’s bedroom to see if perchance he was already home passed out. As soon as she entered her own room she heard the faint sounds of muffled hiccups coming from inside her closet, and the clink of ice against glass. The sliding closet doors were cracked. Kathy undressed slowly. When her six-foot-plus body was naked she carried her phone over to her dresser, where she sat down facing the mirror and began brushing her long blond hair. After a time Kathy picked up the phone and, holding the button down, pretended to dial.
Hello, honey, Kathy said into the phone. —Yes, I’m home now. Just got in. I wanted to hear your voice again before I tucked in. What, honey? No, I have no idea where he is, and I don't give a goddamn. Out romancing some barroom rosy, I guess. No, hon, you don’t even have to think about something like that. Don’t even think it. Old Billy hasn’t brought a boner home in years. What, baby? Me too, baby. It was. Really, baby. I’ve never before in my life like that. God, hon. I hope the walls were thick enough. I’ve never screamed out like that. What, baby? Nothing on, as a matter of fact. That’s right. I’m stark. Bare ass, baby. Yes, I was going to step into the shower. I mean, God, you can smell sex all over me. What, hon? Oh yes, baby. Yes. I’ll do it right now. My right nipple. Now my left, baby, I’m doing it. I’m pinching them. You’re pinching them. You’re sucking on them hard now. You’re biting now, baby. Bite harder, baby, harder. What, baby? Honey, I only have one free hand. What, sweetie? Honey, my tongue’s no way long enough to do that, unlike your own. What? Honey, I don’t see anything around I could use for that. I’m at my dresser, precious. Wait a minute. I’ve got a bright idea. There are some enormous cucumbers downstairs in the fridge. Could you hang on a sec, sweetie? Oh, me too, baby. God, yes, yes. Yes, I love you, too, honey. I love your huge cock. I just live to have your big black cock in my mouth, Rufus.
You bitch! You bitch! Bill bellowed as he took down the closet door in a single lurch.
Why, Bill, you’re home, Kathy said, and hung up the phone.
2
When Bill awoke early the next morning he discovered that he must have dozed off in his car in the driveway with the engine running. But there he was, sure enough, his forehead against the top of the steering wheel, a little lake of drool on the floor mat between his boots. He also discovered that he was in a great amount of discomfort, mostly in and about his head. When Bill looked in the rearview mirror he made even further unhappy discoveries. Both his eyes were black, for one thing, and his nose was bloody, for another. A great knot had risen on the back of his head, which he touched tenderly with his fingertips. It also appeared that many of his worldly possessions—his clothes, for instance, his favorite books, a couple of boxes of his own manuscripts, his fishing gear, several guns, his old high-school football helmet, the framed picture of his mom, all this and more were strewn about the car, in both the front seat and the back. Oh, that’s right, Bill recalled, he had been in the process of leaving this place and its attendant woman forever. He had been in the process of running away from home. Well, okay, then, why not simply do that very thing?
But where was he going, and why exactly? Bill pondered as he rinsed his mouth and gargled with a swig from that half-full bottle of vodka he had happily discovered between his legs and swallowed. Well, he was going to go there. But where exactly was that? Looking for what? Call it desire and pursuit of that dim aura glowing over the horizon we call possibility, or excitement. Hadn’t Henry James once said there are two mental states, excitement and lack of excitement, and that unfortunately excitement was more interesting than the lack of? Who was Bill to argue with Henry James? Or call that chasing away from home the pursuit of that whole we call love. Why shouldn’t he, Bill, have some of it, too, love, like that evil betrayer, butt-kicking woman in that house he didn’t care if he ever set eyes on again in his lifetime.
Bill headed out of Missoula, Montana, upstream along the Blackfoot River, the asphalt weaving and dipping and the morning light lime-colored through the leaves on the aspen. He put a tape of fine, thin, fragile music on the tape deck, a Vivaldi cello concerto, music as clean as the air across the mountain pastures, music that didn’t encourage Bill to think. Later, he knew, there would be plenty of thinking. But all Bill needed at that point was the purity of that music and the motion of going, the very notion of it, that going, and somehow ending up as far away as he could get from that illusory sheltering semblance of coherency he had once called home. But with some restraint, sure, Bill thought as he passed a cluster of those little white crosses you see everywhere along the roads of Montana, marking those places where other travelers have died, many of them drunk, sure, and most of them
searching, too, and unable to name what it was they were missing at home.
Bill was well aware that lonesome traveling could get tricky. It was a delicate passage, lonesome traveling. Aloneness could lead to loneliness, and self-pity, and paranoia, and things like that. Such a trip could break down into dark questing after dubious companionship. But the advantage of going it alone lay, of course, in spontaneity and freedom. You don’t have to consult anything but your inclinations. You are in your old white Buick convertible and you are rolling, you are riding away and long gone. Shit fire, Bill thought, they don’t need me, not today. Or tomorrow. Maybe never. I’m sick. This is sick leave. You know it’s true, Bill told himself. You’ve been sick and now you are going to cure yourself elsewhere far away from that evil butt-kicking betrayer woman and old broken-down way of life.
It had always seemed like a good idea to Bill when driving up along the Blackfoot to stop at Trixie’s Antler Inn just as the doors were being unlocked. One single quick drink for the road and some dirty banter with the pretty hippie chick tending bar. But wrong. After that first hesitation Bill found himself stopping at other establishments, all enjoyable, one after the other. The Stockman’s in Arlee, the Buffalo Park in Ravalli. He moved on to the 44 Bar north of St. Ignatius, then made the Charo turn to Tiny’s Blind Pig. Then the Wheel Inn on the near outskirts of Lincoln, the Bowman’s Corner over south of Augusta, with the front of the Rockies rearing on the western skyline like hope and possibility personified.
Soon that fine blue bowl of heaven and Bill’s exquisite freedom were forgotten, and he found himself lying to strangers and himself about his role in life. No more Vivaldi. By noon of the second day Bill was playing Hank Williams tapes and singing along, wondering if he could have made it in the country-music business. By then Bill knew he was a long and dangerous way from that ticking stillness he recalled as home, and he was somewhat disoriented. The bartenders had begun to study him like a potential serious problem. Bill had drifted into another mythology called lost highways, an emotional rat’s nest of rootlessness, a country music worn-out drifter syncopation that could be a theatrical but finally real thin way of life.
Bill began to stop at historical markers, and then mull over the ironies of destiny as he drove on. This was maybe the third day and Bill was listening to bluegrass, in fact a tape from a Seldom Seen concert. Bill was experiencin
g no despair at that point. He thought of elk in the draws, buffalo on the plains, the complex precision of predator-prey relationships. Bill was becoming a philosopher. And he was willing to learn from his past mistakes. For instance, Bill reflected, as he touched his still-sore, swollen nose, never again would he fuck with a six-foot-plus humorless woman. Bill was finding himself interesting, and enjoying his own company mightily. There was no need to get drunk and kill somebody on the road, not to mention himself. At twilight Bill stopped in some little town and checked into one of the two motels along some river. He showered, shaved, changed shirts, and then ambled on over to that tavern across the road, where he intended to make some new best friends and share his pretty new vision of life.