She took a pack of cigarettes out from under a roll in the sleeve of her dress, shook one out and lipped it, replaced the pack. “We give a man a job, we like to give him the full run of things, see, and while we’re talking here, let me tell you something. You’re ugly, kid. With a kisser like that if you was a chicken you’d have to sneak up on a pile of shit to peck a corn kernel out of it. But that’s not your fault. It’s something we can fix.”
She brought out a box of wooden matches and struck one on her hip and lit her smoke. She puffed and tossed the box on the floor. She pinched the cigarette between thumb and forefinger and held the flame toward her palm.
“Tell me what face you want, kid. I want to show you what we can do. Naw, don’t tell me a thing. I know the face, and it ain’t pretty and it ain’t ugly. It ain’t really a face. You want something everyone will look at. You want it so when you step into a room all eyes go to you. Well, in the name of the Producer and the Great Director, by the power vested in me, and all that stuff, I give it to you.”
She waved the wand. “The stuff dreams are made of, kid.”
I felt a rush of energy. I was a thermometer and I was overheated and my mercury was about to explode out the top of my head.
Next thing I knew, I was on the floor, then I was coming out of darkness. I bl inked and found myself next to the hole that let in the tip of the TV pyramid.
I looked at my hands. They weren’t animated now. A big-handled mirror lay next to me. I picked it up and looked at myself.
What I had for a face was a TV, and that suited me fine. And my face operated like one. Inside my head was the mental switch, and with a twist of my mind I could tune into any movie, television show, commercial, or personal video I wanted.
And I could play it on my face and see it at the same time.
I was proud.
I tossed away the mirror and started down. I felt like Charlton Heston playing Moses in The Ten Commandments. But I wasn’t coming down from on high with the Ten Commandments. I had something better. Every movie, show and commercial ever made was tucked tight in my head, ready to explode onto my face at a whim.
It took me some time to get down, of course, but when I did, the drive-in was full of people. They had been wandering in for a time. They had built a stage of TVs in front of one of the drive-in screens, and they were taking turns going up there and acting out scenes from movies, quoting dialogue they remembered. They also did sound effects and screams. They weren’t too good at it.
When they saw me they stood open-mouthed, and when I turned my face on and filled it with Night of the Living Dead, their expressions turned to rapture. I sat down on a TV set and crossed my legs and leaned forward and they gathered before me and squatted down and watched. And when Night was over, I gave them The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and then The Sound of Music intercut with Zombie. Now and then I gave them a commercial for GI Joe action figures and accessories, tossed in a California Raisins commercial, and one for some kind of shampoo. Things got cozy.
They loved me, and it was then that I gave myself a new name. I was in Hopalong gear and I had a TV face and my idol had been the Popcorn King, so naturally, I came up with Popalong Cassidy. I told my audience that was what they should call me, and they did. They would have called me anything to keep those images coming; they had learned that the images were the reality and all else was an illusion they had to work to invent. My face did all the work for them. It gave them all the reality they needed to know, minus the effort.
I found that I no longer needed to eat food. All I needed were the eyes and minds of those people on my face. That kept me full.
In time, more people came to the drive-in, and they too sat before my face and worshiped it, and I pulled energy from them and felt fuller and stronger than ever before.
I was loved. Loved by those who sat before me and ate the popcorn and candy that fell from the sky, drank the drinks it rained. Loved, goddamnit, loved. Me, Popalong Cassidy. Loved and admired and revered.
Course, there were some nonbel ievers. They wanted to stay away from my face. They saw it as bad. They blamed the movies for what had happened to them.
This was nonsense.
I had my followers rip them open and eat their guts and act out Night of the Living Dead. Then the heads of those stupid dissenters went up on tall pieces of antenna and we placed them all around the drive-in as a warning to the nonviewers who might come, and as an inspiration to the rest of us.
I had my followers strike sparks and set the TV pyramids on fire. They would have no other gods before me. I was it, and I didn’t want competition. No one else would be climbing up there to see my Fairy Godmother; no one else could have my prize.
This kept the drive-in a happy place. A new era had dawned. I was its messiah. Offspring of the Producer and the Great Director, whoever they were, and it was my job to make sure they were entertained. And I planned to give my heavenly parents a really big show.
Now let’s pause for this brief commercial message.
8
GRACE TALKING
All the while Popalong had been talking, images were flashing on his face. Clips from movies and television shows. Now a series of commercials went lickety-split across the screen; everything from exercise machines to Boxcar Willie’s Greatest Hits. Damn if I hadn’t always wanted to try Boxcar Willie’s stuff, though I hated to admit it. If I ever got home, I was going to order his album.
I suppose there were subliminals at work under all that film stuff, but maybe not. I like to think it had no effect on me because I’m just too much woman to be taken in by a subliminal message; I like to think Mom and Dad raised a pretty stubborn girl and that my martial arts training allowed me to maintain my focus on who I was and what I thought.
Course, maybe the only subliminal in the whole mess was for me to buy a Boxcar Willie album, and that seemed to be working. Maybe all those people who had fallen for Popalong’s line of corn were just stupid. My dad always said, “Grace, most people are idiots.”
It was kind of cold-blooded, but life seemed to sort of be bearing him out.
The commercials wrapped up, and in spite of myself I liked the last one. It had to do with these carrots, potatoes and bell peppers with stick legs and shoes and stick arms and gloves. They were hopping off the face of a box and dancing across a kitchen table on their way to leap into a pan full of water resting in the mouth of an open stove.
“My message is simple,” said Popalong. “There is pleasure in darkness and pain. The light cannot be appreciated without the dark. Entertainment is where it’s at. At the end of the highway I have formed a humble Church of Darkness and Pain. Services every day. It all plays on my face. And when someone, shall we say, becomes a star at the church, like those nonbel ievers I told you about, we record their acting and play it again and again for our pleasure. No special effects. No wooden lines. No one pretending to eat guts. The real thing. It’s addicting, I kid you not.”
He leaned close to me. “Revolutionary, don’t you think?”
“It bites the moose,” I said.
“Now that’s ugly,” Popalong said. “After all I’ve shown you and told you, you’re still an asshole. I’m afraid you’ll have to be edited out of what you call life. But don’t worry, I’ll make you a star. I’ll make sure your agony is recorded forever in the only way that really matters. On film.”
He turned to Sue Ellen. “Her, I think she’s got potential. I think she can see the light of my face and know it for what it is, don’t you? I think she’s rather pretty. She might make me a nice queen. I’d like that. I mean I may be a messiah, but to hell with this Jesus stuff where you don’t get any pussy. I’m a new kind of messiah, and I say hey, what’s the point in being a messiah with all kinds of control, if you don’t throw some pork to the women. You see, I can give them any face they want while I make love to them. Whatever star they want, man or woman, hell, Lassie or Rin Tin Tin, I can call them up on my screen, and presto, I’m
who they want me to be.”
The rain had stopped and daylight was creeping beneath the tarp and poking through the holes where the rain had come through. The fires in the television sets were dying down and the smoke from them was thinning and becoming lighter, going as soft and gray as the cottony strands of an old man’s hair.
The shadows huddling against the back of the tarp were fading. Popalong’s shadow was seeping into the ground at his feet like motor oil.
“They’re fraidy-cats of the light,” he said. “Roy, would you please get the gasoline.”
The man who had cut me free climbed on the wrecker and came down with a five-gallon can.
“You should feel honored,” Popalong said. “Rare as gasoline is. You know, this will be our last trip out from the church in the wrecker. When we get back we’ll be near empty. It’s a pisser not to be able to go out and spread the word, but what’s a fel la to do?”
“You’re no fella,” I said.
“You know, you’re right. Soak her, Roy.”
“Don’t we get to fuck her first?” Roy asked.
“Now that you mention it,” Popalong said, “I do seem to be ahead of myself. Everyone for fucking her?”
He held up his hand as an example. The four men put their hands up.
Popalong turned that sixteen-inch screen on me. “You’re popular, what can I say. But you know, I’m going to pass. You have such a nasty disposition, I’m afraid I’d end up having to fake an orgasm. Roy, would you like to be first to crack open the box?”
Roy smiled and put the can down. He got a pair of wire cutters out of his back pocket and went over and snipped what held me to the wrecker, but this didn’t free my hands. They were fastened together by a separate bond.
“You going to record this?” Roy said.
“Whatever I see is recorded,” Popalong said. “Bring her out from the wrecker, please, get her pants off, and get started. I’m sort of in a hurry to see her burn. Rest of you get that tarp down.”
The three in the back went straight to the tarp and pulled it up and flipped it over the antenna in the middle and tossed it onto the wrecker.
Roy led me so that I was in front of Popalong’s antenna. Popalong stepped up on his spokes and hung his arms in the rods. He looked at me and smiled his dials.
“Showtime,” he said.
9
There was no wind and the dead air had turned warm and humid. Sweat poured off of me and my hair stuck to the back of my neck. I needed to go to the ladies’ room.
Roy wasn’t taking me real serious. After all, I was a girl. Maybe I was supposed to beg and scream like in the horror movies.
What I did when Roy reached out to take hold of my pants was swivel on the ball of my left foot and whip my head around and get my hips shifting, and I brought my leg up fast and loose and snapped it back so that the heel caught Roy directly behind his right ear and made a sound like big hands clapping.
Before Roy filled his teeth with dirt, I was moving. One of the men tried to stop me, but I jumped up and snapped out my right leg and caught him in the throat with the edge of my foot. I could feel something in his neck give, then I was down and running, hitting the jungle hard as I could go, keeping my balance as best I could, which wasn’t easy with my hands tied the way they were. Then I was out of there, boys, prehistoric history.
10
At first I felt like Brer Rabbit in the brier patch, then I didn’t feel so good. This was where the film crawled and sucked on you, where the bad storms blew shadows and trees moved.
But nothing of the sort was happening then. The film lay still at my feet and still in the trees. There were no shadows and no storms. I supposed those things were reserved for night.
I heard footsteps behind me and I only paused long enough to jump up and pull my knees to my chest and whip my bound hands underneath me.
I saw that my hands were tied with a piece of wire that had been wrapped around them three or four times with the ends twisted together. I pulled at the wire with my teeth as I ran and got it loose. I crunched it up and put it in my pocket so I wouldn’t leave something on the ground for them to mark my passing.
Eventually I didn’t hear them anymore, but I kept running. I don’t know how long I went, and I had no idea which way I was going. I followed the path of least resistance.
When I felt certain they were no longer behind me, I stopped and found a tree with low branches and swung up in that and climbed as high as I could.
I was shocked. I had looped back until I was almost to the highway. In fact, I probably wasn’t far from where I had been captured. If I had kept running, I would have been out on the highway again in a matter of minutes.
I could see the wrecker at the edge of the highway and I could see Popalong’s antenna, but he wasn’t on it. I could see the Galaxy too. I couldn’t see Popalong, his men or Timothy or Sue Ellen. I could see some dark smoke, but I couldn’t tell what it was coming from. Its source was near the edge of the woods though.
I felt poorly, so I found a forked limb that had a lot of leafy cover and wedged my butt in the fork and put my back against a bigger limb and clutched a smaller one with the crook of my right arm. A wind began to stir, and that was all I needed to send me off to dreamland.
When I awoke my back hurt and my arm was stiff, but I felt rested. I had no idea how long I slept. It was still daylight.
I got out on the limb where I had been before and looked at the wrecker. Popalong’s antenna cross was in the back of the wrecker, fastened to the wench post somehow and Popalong was on it. He had this TV head turned in my direction, lifted slightly up, but I didn’t think he could see me. One of his men was coiled at his feet like a house cat.
The wrecker started to move. I watched until it was out of sight.
11
At this point, some of this is bound to be obvious. Yes, it was Timothy that was burning. I found the guy I had kicked in the head dead in the bushes. The one I had kicked in the throat had been impaled on a piece of television antenna. Popalong didn’t like failures much.
I guess I should have killed Timothy. That’s what he asked for. But I got the keys out of my pocket and opened up the trunk of the Galaxy and took the gas can and poured it into the tank. I got my arms under Timothy and got him loaded in the backseat of the Galaxy. His flesh came off on my hands and I had to go out to the side of the road and wipe my palms in the grass; it was as if I had been holding greasy pork chops.
I got the car going and made a U-turn and drove us away from there. I talked about anything that came to mind, and Timothy when he did speak, said, “Kill me.”
I didn’t seem to know how to do anything but drive, and I did that through the day and through the night, finally stopping to rest. I kept going like that, kept talking and singing and reciting poetry to myself, and I don’t remember eating or drinking at all.
There’s not much to tell after that. My throat got hoarse. The road pulled me on. When I was nearly out of gas I saw the lake—your lake—and I guess it made me realize how thirsty I was, and I went for it.
Next thing I knew Jack here was pulling me out and then I was in the back of your camper. I woke up and had to pee, and when I came back from that, you guys were here.
FOURTH REEL
Titties Even Closer Up, Pants for Jack and Bob,
and On Down the Road
1
Bob said, “You’re welcome to stay with us.”
“Thanks. I appreciate it. But tomorrow, or day after tomorrow, when I’m rested, I’m going to start after Sue Ellen. I owe her that. I went sort of nuts when I found Timothy, panicked, took off in the opposite direction. But I’ve got to go back now and find her.”
“You don’t have a car,” I said.
“If I can get to Shit Town, I think I can get a car and some gas. If not, I’ll go on foot.”
“I’m going too,” I said.
“What?” Bob said.
“I can’t sit here the res
t of my life.”
“See a set of titties and you go all to pieces, don’t you?” Bob said.
“If what she says is true, we know what’s at the end of the highway,” Crier said. “So why go?”
“Let Grace be the White Knight,” Bob said. “She’s into that kind of shit. Kung fu lady and all that. We’re into surviving.”
“I may have to do some ugly things when I catch up to Popalong,” Grace said. “It won’t be an easy trek, especially if I end up on foot.”
“Listen to her,” Bob said.
“This isn’t living,” I said. “This is existing. It’s giving up. I did that once before. Won’t do it again. You’re the one made me do something last time, Bob. You’re the one pulled me of out just getting by.”
“But this isn’t so bad,” Bob said.
“Maybe we can find a way home at the end of the highway,” I said. “Maybe there’s something more than what Popalong told her about. And there’s that little girl, Sue Ellen.”
“I’m not asking anything of you,” Grace said.
“Not much you’re not, lady,” Bob said.
“Shit,” Crier said. “We’ve been through some things together, the three of us. I feel like we’re the three musketeers or something.”
“Oh hell,” Bob said. “Here it comes.”
“We’re all we got,” Crier said. “I’d like to see us stick together. Hell, fellas, you’re the first real friends I ever had.”
The Complete Drive-In Page 23
