“I see. You have a last name, Sid?”
“Sure do. Hartshorn.”
“And what brings you two to the exclusive Deer Park Kitchen?”
“Pure chance, Ann. Kid A and I are blindly navigating our way with luck and pluck from one haven to another, and your fine establishment just happened to be one of the lifesaving beacons along our route. Could you tell us a little about this neck of the woods, by the way?”
“Well, Route One outside there runs from Cape Benefit to Lum-berton, and we’re about halfway between the two. The big rigs all take the freeway, so we don’t see many of them. But there’s plenty of local traffic, and some of the drivers are hungry and undiscriminating enough to stop here. My garage business consists mostly of pumping gas and fixing flats, but every now and then we get a transmission to repair or brake job.”
“Got a fellow to handle that?”
Ann’s face got glum for some reason. “Uh-huh.”
“How about the Motor Lodge end of your corporation?”
Ann grinned. “Well, you and I pretty much both know where that business comes from. And it’s not tired families on their way to Disneyland.”
“Gotcha. Well, seems like you got a nice little business empire here.”
“I suppose. But keeping it all going runs me ragged. I’m about one man short of a full crew.”
Sid smiled broadly. “Ann, sit yourself down and tell me about your woes. Kid A, take my pack onto your side.”
Sid lifted his pack over the table to me, and I crammed it beside mine. Ann slid in next to Sid, and they began talking a mile a minute.
Their talk was pretty boring, and after a minute or so I didn’t pay any more attention to what they were saying. My full stomach kept sending sleepy signals to my coffee-wired brain, and this tug-of-war between sleepiness and alertness sent me off into a kind of deep daydreaming. I thought about home, and the road and everything that had happened since yesterday. A lot of fantasy images of what I’d encounter down the way today and tomorrow and the next day swam through my head.
Maybe I even dozed off a little. The next thing I knew Sid was shaking me.
“Wake up, Kid A! We got ourselves jobs!”
His words weren’t making any sense. “Huh? Jobs? What jobs?”
“Miss Ann needs a handyman. That’s me. And you’re gonna be my assistant. She’s gonna put us up in that trailer out back. Meals included, and a little cash too. I said I didn’t mind sharing quarters with you, as long as you didn’t bash the bishop too often.”
I squirmed out of the booth. “What the hell are you talking about, Sid? What about the road?”
“Aw, pal, the road’ll always be there. This is a chance to rest up a bit and help somebody at the same time.”
Ann smiled hopefully at me. I felt like they were ganging up on me. I couldn’t think straight.
“I just don’t know, Sid. I’m not ready to rest up yet. I haven’t been on the road for forty years like you. I just got started.”
“But Kid A—”
“I need to clear my head,” I said, and ran out the door.
I paced up and down the gravel under the noontime sun. What the fuck was going on here? How could Sid give up his freedom just like that? Even if any employment here was only temporary? What about sleeping out under the stars? “That which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and the silences of night.” That was what the Prophet said.
It had to be the woman. Sid was hot for Ann. He figured that taking this job would let him get into her pants. Or maybe he figured he could score with Yasmine. Or both of them!
Now I began to get pissed. What kind of friendship was this? He had just gone right ahead and made this decision that affected both of us without even consulting me!
I marched away from the diner. Screw this! I’d move on without Sid!
Then I remembered my pack was still inside. Shit. I kicked the gravel, slowed down and tried to figure out some no-hassle way to go back inside, get my stuff and tell him off.
My feet took me among the cabins. Then I ran out of steam, and plopped down on the corner of the low step in front of one doorway. I felt sad and sick.
Behind me the door opened and something snapped me sharply in the back of me head.
I jumped up.
A girl was shaking out a bedspread. She jumped back too.
“Oh, shit, I’m sorry! I didn’t see you there.”
I massaged the sore spot and said, “That’s cool.”
The girl was more or less my age, maybe a little taller. She wore faded blue farmer jeans over a yellow shirt printed with flowers, and scuffed Doc Martens. She was kinda pudgy, with big boobs. Her face made me think of Britney Spears at her fattest. Big blue eyes and tiny nose and short reddish-brown hair streaked blonde.
“Whatcha doing here?” she asked.
“Just hanging out while my friend talks with Ann back at the diner.”
She balled up the bedspread and tossed it back inside the cabin. “Changing dirty sheets can wait. Time for my cigarette break.” She stepped all the way outside, dug out a pack of Camels and lit up.
“Sit down again, and make some room for me. Smoke?”
“No thanks.”
She shrugged. “Your loss. I’m Sue. Ann’s my aunt.”
“Oh yeah?”
“My folks sent me to live with her because they got sick of me.”
“What’d you do to piss them off?”
Sue puffed, blew a cloud of smoke, then made a gesture like Who the fuck knows? “Nothing very radical. Hung out with friends they didn’t approve of. Stayed out past my curfew. Smoked some dope and got caught. But to listen to them, you’d think I slaughtered a whole gymnasium full of cheerleaders.”
“Right. So, you still gotta go to school?”
“No way. I dropped out. Now I help my aunt with the Motor Lodge. We live in some rooms behind the office part. It’s okay for now. But I’ve got plans for later.”
“Me too.”
“What’s your name?”
Christ, here we go again. “Kid A.”
Sue looked impressed, and I was really surprised. “Cool. Radio-head, right?”
I hadn’t thought of that musical reference till this very minute. Sid’s joke actually tied in with something hip by accident. “Uh, right.”
“So, what’s your friend discussing with my aunt?”
“Whether me and him are gonna stay and work here.”
“No way! That would be so fantastic! There’s no one here for me to hang out with.”
“You think it’s a good idea?”
Sue grabbed my upper arm. Her face hovered just inches from mine, and I could smell her shampoo. “I think it’s an excellent idea!”
We talked some more until Sue finished her cigarette.
“Well, I gotta get back to work. Cabin’s gotta be clean for the next set of swingers. Hope to see you later, Kid.”
I walked real slow back to the diner. Inside, Sid and Ann were still sitting side by side. They stopped talking and looked up eagerly at me.
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said.
Hell, even Ray and Japhy had stayed off the road and shared a cabin for a while.
The door to the rusting egg-shaped trailer had only one hinge that worked, the lower one. Sid had to heft the door upward in order to swing it open. But the crummy entrance to our new home didn’t seem to discourage him at all.
“That’s chore number one for your new handyman, Ann.”
Ann Danielson grinned a little nervously. “I hope you’re not put off by the inside, Sid. No one’s lived in this box for a year or more, since my old jack of all trades up and left on me.”
“Now why would anyone vacate such a cushy berth?”
“Little matter of some old warrants catching up to him.” She paused. “That’s not something I’m gonna have to worry about with you or Kid A, is it?”
“Swear on a stack of Supreme Court Justices, Ann, the Kid and I are straight as Santa’s accountants.”
“Well, that’s a relief to know. We’ve got one officious son-of-a-bitch cop in this county. Guy named A1 Vakharia. Once he gets wind of you guys, he’ll be by to check you out.”
“Far as I care, he can play computer games with my name till he goes blind. How about you, Kid A? Your nose clean?”
Standing on the low tilty wooden porch braced against the trailer, I wondered what I should say.
Had my parents reported me missing in the past five days? Would my real name pop up on this Vakharia’s screen as a runaway?
I couldn’t know for sure, but I tended to doubt it.
My folks didn’t believe in “worldly institutions.” They had gotten their heads so far into some kind of jackass mysticism that they tended to let a lot of “unimportant” things like grocery shopping and mortgage payments and laundry slide.
I knew that all Buddhists weren’t like this. Kerouac had been a Buddhist loner who had his act together. He loved all the solid things of the world, just like me. And a lot of other kinds of mystics were pretty sensible too. My dude Gibran had all those deep thoughts about day-to-day activities, real practical wisdom. But not my folks. They had plunged into the deep end of the cosmic pool without a life preserver. Thinking too hard about the big questions of life and death had made them kinda mushbrained.
They had once belonged to this big mainstream Buddhist temple, the guys who have the special chant to get everything you want. Nothing too weird with those guys. They were as conventional as Lutherans. But when a faction splintered off, my folks had gone along with this new self-appointed perfect-master type. That had been the beginning of the end of any regularity in my life.
That chaos had been the main reason I had booked. Not too much supervision or too many rules, but not enough. Maybe some of my old friends thought I had it made. But having parents who were useless asswipes sucked. I had gotten sick of answering nasty phone calls from bill collectors, or explaining to the principal why my report cards were never signed. Or apologizing to the neighbors for the piles of trash half-hidden by unmown grass.
What had my folks done when they realized I had hit the road? Probably nothing. They were always bullshitting about “individual karma” transcending every other conventional obligation. That was how they justified their own negligence. I figured maybe they’d extend their hey-it’s-my-life philosophy to me, let me go down my own path without interference. At other times for several nights running I had stayed away at friends’ houses without telling my folks in advance, and there had never been any hassle when I finally returned. If I was lucky, they wouldn’t even realize I was missing.
Sid and Ann were waiting for my answer. They were both smiling, but I could tell they were a little freaky over my past. Probably because I wouldn’t reveal my real name. And even that was just a stupid whim. But of course I couldn’t admit that now.
“No blood on my hands, guys.”
Well, maybe that wasn’t the smartest, most reassuring phrase I could have chosen, but it seemed to do the trick. Sid clapped me on the shoulder, and Ann led us inside the trailer.
The air inside was damp and heavy with moldy smells, like a wet basement. Old-fashioned panelling warped away here and there from the lower part of the curving walls. Ann flicked a lightswitch, but nothing happened.
“There’s a connection to the Lodge’s electricity, but I guess I shut it down at the box a year ago.” She cranked open some slatted windows, letting in fresh air and more light. The trailer was small, with a couple of bunks on opposite sides, a tiny sink and a dormsized fridge. A built-in table, now closed, featured a hanging drop leaf that would make its surface about as big as bathmat when you raised it. Two folding chairs tangled their legs next to the table. A high shelf held a radio that must’ve been real state-of-the-art when Kerouac was young. Dust lay everywhere. Sid had to stoop a little except in the middle of the trailer.
My road partner walked over to one bunk and tested the cheap foam mattress with one big hand. “Sweet.” He dumped his pack on the mattress, then motioned for me to add mine. “We’ll start cleaning this place now. Got a broom and a bucket and some Lestoil to loan us, Ann? Couple of rags too.”
“Sure. I’ll be right back.”
Sid winked at me once Ann was gone. “Not bad, huh, Kid? We lucked out.”
“Lucked out? Sid, this dirty hole is half the size of my room at home, and I have to share it with you.”
Sid’s good-natured look transformed instantly to a kind of closed-tight blankness that was right on the edge of being hostile. I realized how ugly his face really was when he wasn’t smiling. Those fat lips and patchy whiskers and bad skin. Too late I remembered his stupid tit-for-tat rule.
“Listen, Kid, I ain’t holding your balls to keep you here with me. You want to go, then go. I thought I engineered us a pretty good deal with a decent boss. We do a little easy, honest labor every day in return for a warm dry place to sleep, all the grub we can enjoy, and some attractive female company. And I’m not talking sex. Shit, sometimes on the road I would’ve wrestled a gator just to hear a woman’s voice say something to me besides ‘Here’s your change, Mister.’ I wasn’t intending any more’n you to stay here when we first spotted this place from across the highway this morning. But I seen a need in Ann for some help, and that matched a need in me for some time off from the blister trail. Now, I know that my needs ain’t yours. You’re a helluva lot younger than me, with different goals and dreams and plans. I acknowledge that. I’m not saying ‘Sid knows best’ or any authoritative crap like that. If it’s one thing I hate myself, it’s getting stepped on from above. I’m just saying that so far I’m happy with this setup, and intend to enjoy myself for however long I decide to stay. If you’re not down with the program, then you can haul ass outa here. But I don’t want you hanging around with a sour puss, sniping at everything and bringing people down. You understand all that?”
I kept a tight rein on my feelings and expression. “Sure.”
Sid misread my easy agreement, and got this self-satisfied look on his face. “Cool. Because miscommunication and a bad attitude will screw up a good scene faster’n anything.”
I cut loose once he mistakenly thought everything was settled, catching him by surprise. “Oh, I understand perfectly. You want me to just shut up and not voice any opinions or judgments. You want to lead, and you want me to follow. I can’t fart without asking your permission. You’re not a free spirit, you’re a fucking dictator!”
Sid made a disgusted face and flung his hands up to the ceiling, whacking his knuckles on the tin roof.
“Oh, Christ, that’s not what I’m saying, and you know it! You don’t have to keep anything bottled up, and you don’t have to ask my stupid opinion about anything. And forget following my lead in anything. Lord knows I’ve fucked up often enough that my life won’t serve as a model for anybody. I’m just asking that you put your heart into whatever you choose to do. Stay or go, you gotta commit with an undivided heart. You can’t walk the fence. Make a choice, then live it out to the best of your abilities. Don’t be one of those assholes that always wants to come along for the ride, then criticizes the scenery.”
Sid finished his speech and waited for me to react. I let him stew while I thought on what he had said. I wanted to stay angry at him, but I couldn’t. Actually, as much as I hated to admit it, he made a lot of sense. There was no point in hanging around here if I was gonna be miserable and let everyone know about it until they got sick of my bitching. I was on an adventure, I reminded myself, and when you were on an adventure you had to be ready for whatever chance brought your way, and make the best of it.
I didn’t really understand why I had come around to Sid’s plans after meeting Sue. Something inside me had just shifted. But no matter what had made me change my mind, I had gone back to the diner and told Sid and Ann I’d give their scheme a shot. So
I guessed I owed them my full committment.
I laid a quote on Sid that I figured would say things better than I could on my own, in a suitably cryptic way. “’And since you are a breath in God’s sphere, and a leaf in God’s forest, you too should rest in reason and move in passion.’”
Sid looked at me weird, then got the source of the quote. He shook his head and laughed. “Jesus, not more of that Prophet crap! Oh well, if you’re willing to put up with my line of bullshit, I guess I can put up with yours! Let’s shake, roomie!”
Just as we finished shaking hands, Ann came back, lugging a mess of cleaning stuff. She smiled to see us burying any disagreements we might have been concealing from her. “Here’s everything you should need to get this trailer spic-and-span. I’m going to send over some sheets and hand towels in a minute. You won’t need bath towels here, because you’ll be using the shower either at my place or in one of the unrented cabins. When you’re done cleaning, come on over to the diner. I want to introduce you formally to everyone.”
“Gotcha, bosslady.” Sid took the cleaning supplies from Ann, and she left.
We got busy fixing up our trailer.
Sid started sweeping the floor and brushing down cobwebs. I went to fill our bucket from an outside hose. It took me both hands to carry it back. Sid had gotten all the loose dirt moved outside. He dumped half a bottle of piney disinfectant into the water. We soaked our sponges in the milky liquid and began to scrub. Sid took the upper reaches of the trailer and I did the lower. Before too long we had the whole place sparkling. Well, maybe not sparkling, but at least not grungy. The water in the bucket was now the color of the juice that leaks from garbage trucks.
Sid picked up the bucket with one hand and went to the door to ditch it. But someone knocked first.
Sid opened the door. From behind him, I saw Sue. She was smoking a cigarette and carrying an armload of bedclothes.
“Hey, Kid A. Looking good! And you must be Sid. My name’s Sue. Here’s your sheets and blankets and towels.”
Sid set down the bucket and wiped his right hand on his soggy pants. I realized my own jeans were wet from the knees down, from washing the floor on all fours. In a very dignified manner, Sid extended his hand.
Roadside Bodhisattva Page 3