Highway Trade and Other Stories

by John Domini

  Highway Trade

  John Domini

  Dzanc Books

  1334 Woodbourne Street

  Westland, MI 48186

  www.dzancbooks.org

  Copyright © 1988 Highway Trade by John Domini

  All rights reserved, except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher.

  Published 2013 by Dzanc Books

  A Dzanc Books rEprint Series Selection

  The stories in this book have first appeared in the following magazines and anthologies: Agni, “Senior Transfer”; Anyone Is Possible, “Minimum Bid”; Black Warrior Review, “The Arno Line”; Confrontation, “Eastertime Fogs” and “Second Trimester”; Indiana Review, “Hot” Southwest Review, “Highway Trade” and “Three Dreams of Europe”; Witness, “Period Sets” and “The Rules of Dancing”; Threepenny Review, “Field Burning”.

  eBooks ISBN-13: 978-1-936873-61-6

  eBook Cover Designed by Awarding Book Covers

  Published in the United States of America

  The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

  This one has to be for Vera

  Contents

  The Rules of Dancing

  Senior Transfer

  Eastertime Fogs

  Second Trimester Hot

  Hot

  Field Burning

  Three Dreams of Europe

  Period Sets

  The Arno Line

  Minimum Bid

  Highway Trade

  The incredible postwar American electro-pastel surge into the suburbs!—it was sweeping the Valley….

  —Tom Wolfe,

  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

  The Rules of Dancing

  GILLARD’S PLAYING with my daughter on the park swing set. I just got here. Humming my Sunday blues, wagging my horn case in rhythm—and there they are. If the rosebushes hadn’t been so ugly, January ugly, I might have walked right into the man. I do like those roses. As it is, the best I can manage is stumbling to a halt. And then my first thought has nothing to do with getting out of there. Instead I’m looking those two over, and I’m thinking: at least he’s got the girl in the right swing. Carrie’s not two yet. She still has to be fitted as deep as she’ll go into the smallest swing, the middle one of the three on the park set. It’s made from a tire, this smallest swing, but it’s not like your classic down-home tire-swing. This is a tire cut and hung like a crescent moon. Instead of fitting her feet through a center-hole and leaving her back unprotected, Gillard has settled Carrie inside the black rubber U where the inner tube used to be. Her feet stick out the front of the crescent and her back is cradled by the rest. I wouldn’t even know it was my daughter in there, if that weren’t positively Gillard with her. There’s only one cowboy that big with “WILLARD” crimped in tin across the back of his belt.

  But give the man credit, he’s making it fun. He squats in front of the girl. He’s there partly so he can catch her if she gets too crazy of course, but mostly so she can feel as if she’s the one running the show. On something like every third forward swing, he’ll puff up his chest, she’ll stiff out her feet. “Annnnd, boom!” Plus Gillard’s so wiry. Even back before the sauce had turned me into such a lard-belly, back a year ago or so when I first taught the girl the game—even then I don’t think I could have popped up after each kick as fast as old Willy Gilly.

  Then finally I’ve got my brains again, I’m backing off. When I go out on a Sunday I’ve got my horn and my Jack Daniel’s, which these days I’ll put in a Diet Coke can. That’s not too much to keep quiet.

  Before making any major move, I hug up the case in both arms, pinning the can to it with both hands. Don’t take my eyes from those two at the swing set for more than a look-see left-right. Makes things a little pinchy inside my coat, my old Chesterfield, and with the lapel right in my face I can smell last night’s smoke. Of course I also have to get a thumb over the opening at the top of the Diet Coke. Then with everything held up tight like that I break sideways. Backwards and sideways, when earlier all I got was maybe one glance at the bench where I figured it’d be safe. So naturally I end up going straight into one of the damn rosebushes. I clip off a dead New Year’s bud or two, break a few soggy thorns with my knuckles. One shoelace catches on something and next thing I know I’ve got to drag that foot. But Carrie goes on squealing, and Gillard keeps up his patter. I keep on telling myself that it’s an honest mistake, coming here, since there aren’t that many parks in this part of Eugene anyway and the ones down by the Willamette are nothing but lowlife.

  Eventually I make it over to my bench. Clouseau’d my way through things as usual. I’d been planning to set up on the pavilion, off the other side of the swing set. But the afternoon’s on the sunny side anyway. The clouds have knuckles, but so far they’re holding off from real trouble.

  And as soon as I get a decent mouthful from my Diet Coke I can do a little damage control: it’s okay, it’s okay. Yes this has got to be a mistake. No way I went out looking for my daughter and my wife’s new man. On my Sunday blow I try and keep my mind blank to that kind of situation altogether. Of course it’s not like word doesn’t get around; it’s not like either me or my ex has no idea what the other one does on a weekend. Granted. But soon as I get my mouthful and open the case on my knees, I can feel what I’m really out for.

  I mean, I’ve been blowing on Sunday ever since I started doing gigs on Saturday. Going on twenty years now. I’ve found an opening about one-thirty, two o’clock, when church or brunch is done with and I’m also out of synch with the serious joggers. Everybody’s deep into whatever their home thing is. But with me it gets way too intense for home. Like now I’ve got this couple in the apartment upstairs, all their natter-natter and jumping around. I need it cleaner than that. I need to be sure I’ll catch the moment when I should put aside the Diet Coke—though I do love these sassy gold ones, the caffeine-free—and concentrate on my saxophone. There are things you can discover in a more picky and useful way, like knowing when to lift the bridge from one song and take it to another. But you might also get a whole different kind of satisfaction, just making a lot of noise out there. Or then again from time to time you’ll understand that all you honestly have to do is oil a few keys till they’re quiet again, after which if you hold one of the stoppers open and get the horn up at the right angle you can see some reflections, you can see the trees, or the pavilion itself or some people here and there, and there are moments when you can even find the roses and a couple of the park playthings, all caught and bent a little in that single clean golden stopper’s circle not much bigger than a bottle cap. After that of course I’ll play.

  Except as soon as I start to put the horn together, I can see there’s another problem. If I play, Gillard will hear me.

  So much for trying to get into my ready groove. I screw the top back on the cork grease. Set the Diet Coke to one side of the bench, the horn (I mean the pieces, halfway there across the velveteen fittings in the case) to the other. Then it’s round and up onto my knees so I can check out the situation on the swings. I’m so flabby now that the most comfortable I can get is by resting my gut on the topmost rail of the bench. But through the skeletons of the rosebushes I can make out Gillard’s back, Carrie’s feet. They’re still at it, swingtime boogie. She gets him a good one while I’m watching, bang in the chest hard enough to make him whoop like a smoker. Plus there’s the bouncy-animals next to the swing-set, the lion and mustang and dolphin all fixed on springs. Just past them’s the sl
ide. Most likely the little girl’s planning on staying a while; I used to start on the swings too. And like I say word gets around, I know what my ex is saying about me these days. I know that one way or another I’d come out hurting if Gillard heard me play.

  My wife after all was a woman who towards the end would say of my horn: “Let’s take it to New York.” She’d say: “Let’s take the damn fishhook to L.A., why don’t we?” Granted, she might have looked angrier than she was. She’s got these very fine lines, the kind of tight-knit hips and shoulders I always think of when I think of Western women. She could glare like if you kissed her, you’d cut yourself on her cheekbones. And granted, also, I was no help. How much of my take on the weekends wound up going to the bar tab? But there are rules nonetheless. A person can’t go round saying she wants a kid, saying it would be so exciting to have a kid, so I’m thinking of like a hokey Christmas card with the whole family in a paper moon or something—and then as soon as the first one’s born she turns around and starts talking about L.A.? A person can’t do that. The woman was from Cottage Grove, just down the highway here, after all. Very small town, very kids-and-family. She should have known what she was getting into.

  So now I’m back facing front, sitting on the bench like a normal person. But my next hit of Diet Coke is much too heavy; it floods the sinuses. After that it’s straight to the cork grease and the rest of the horn. I even put the reed in my mouth so I won’t be tempted.

  I mean it’s not like it’s never occurred to me, sitting here thinking, that I could just skip it today. Am I no good at all without my Sunday blow? It’s not like it’s never occurred to me, I could just keep on socking back my sassy golden can of goods till I didn’t hear the girl squealing any more. I spent a day like that recently. A Monday not a Sunday, after the last call from my lawyer about custody. Tuesday was just as bad, yeah. And when I showed up at the record store on Wednesday they sent me home. The best I could manage in fact was making my gig for the weekend. Though the people at Lunar Attraction Records & Tapes, some very good people there, they gave me back my stool. They said anybody can fall off it once.

  The reed might be soaked enough by now. But I keep it there, taking my time with the chamois. I can see one or two spots that could be a little smoky after last night, but honestly, in this sunshine the horn looks so righteous that I believe I’d polish it even if I didn’t want to keep my hands busy. My Selmer Mark VI. And seeing my face reflected in the bend of the hook—my beret’s a black rubber band, just barely holding together the fat red bag of beard and mustache—that settles me some more. You know I am the kind of person, the story’s been told a thousand times. Just another white boy in love with the blues. From Boston; everybody knows how that one goes.

  When I was at the university here (Eugene was the hippie dream, right?) sometimes at gigs I did a goof on that, on the kind of thing everybody knows. I called it the “Rules of Dancing.” Strictly a goof. But it worked, it got the crowd in the necessary groove, because everybody recognized exactly the stuff I was talking about. I would say like, do you people remember those dances with names? The Swim or whatever? Well for five years there, any dance with a name was no longer allowed. I’d say like, if you were over sixteen, dancing with members of your own sex was no longer allowed—not in this bar anyway. Or unless you were a gold miner in an old Western movie. Those B-movie miners, right? With the fiddle and the concertina? All they could do was clomp around, clomp and fidget, and they didn’t have anybody for partners except some other old stinking little wizened clomping miner.

  Now I’m chuckling to myself. I’ve fit the reed into the holder, which means I can have a little more Diet Coke. But while I’m sipping, just sipping, I start to hear some things. Off to my left there’s the clatter-rasp of a bike chain running on after a kid hits the brakes. And in the other direction, somebody’s mother is giving orders: “Hurry dear, we’ve got to hurry.”

  Oh. I should have expected this, the sun out so early in the New Year and all. But I’m blinking, surprised. My mouth still mostly dry. That sharp talk to my right turns out to be a Mommy/Daddy/ Baby, the whole unit layered in Gore-Tex and polo shirts. As near as I can tell, the poor kid had to hurry just so they could all stop and look over the park plaque together. I can’t be sure, because—when did all this happen? There’s a lot more clip-clop out on the sidewalk than I remember, and there’s squealing behind me that isn’t Carrie. I can’t be sure which family I heard, while I was sitting here trying to think how I got here. Only, the baby frowning at the plaque looks hard to budge. And the clatter to my left was definitely a bike. Over that way, four of them have pulled up. Your basic subteen flyboys. They’ve gathered in front of the dead fountain, the glum civic granite, so their day-glo handlebar grips and the lightning on their chain guards appear even spacier than usual. They’re giving me an awfully steady look.

  But by now I’ve caught up to it, I just smile back. Hey brother. I don’t mind the turnout, in fact. I might like to start my time outside at an empty hour, but I realize, this isn’t Death Valley. In fact I count on drop-ins. I’m after something that isn’t just doing another set, sure, but that isn’t being alone either. And the crowd in the parks is always so different from the one in the clubs. Love to see those churchgoing clothes, so much clean natural fiber, when I catch a reflection in my raised stopper. Not to mention how it feels to get an entirely new set of faces lined up and bobbing. Talk about an old story, I’m hooked on my Sunday blow. Except today, with Carrie here—

  Damage control, damage control. Would I rather not have the girl around? Would I rather not see her at all? Damage control report.

  The thought sticks, it’s got claws. If I hit the Coke I won’t stop. The horn goes back down on the case, I go back up on my knees, and then I start looking truly silly. Craning my neck and worrying about whether the bench is going to fall.

  It’s the people in the way, plus now there are kids to either side of that fishhook swing for the toddlers. And one of those kids, uh-oh. One of them is being pushed by an outstanding blonde number. Such a sweet-face young mom or babysitter, she’s got to be the exception to my Sunday-afternoon rule. She’s got to be a club type out of her element. I can see her earrings wink from here. I would imagine Gillard’s already cooled it on the kick-flop business, judging from how my daughter’s changed pitch. But I can’t tell for sure. Between us this granny-looking woman keeps whirling back and forth. I mean in a scarf and a shawl and an ankle length dress, whirling and waving round a bubble wand. A real Eugeney arts-and-craftser. But it’s obvious that the two or three youngsters trailing along just love her jive. A couple times now, one little boy’s even jumped and tried to catch a bubble in his mouth. So I can’t be sure about old Willy Gilly. Of course I hate him, I expect him to do dirty. But then again in this kind of crowd I feel like just as bad a hard case, myself.

  Up on my knees this way, I can’t see the Mommy/Daddy/Baby sliding past. But I know what I smell like, and those claws in my head haven’t let up. I figure Daddy’s got his fist clamped tight around his spare change.

  On Sundays, if I don’t get to have my blow, I feel like the lizard in the flower bed. Gillard, nothing; it started way before that. The worst time—I mean, I felt like I didn’t even deserve to be kept around—was just after the baby came. We were renting one of the professor’s houses here. No question a heavyweight house. But did that mean that, every time we brought somebody over, we had to drag them through the whole scene from the cellar to the roof-deck? Wow, would you look at that gold-fleck in the dining room. Hey, check out the scrollwork on the fireplace, that’s real brass. There were times I wanted to scream: This is somebody else’s house! I wanted to shake all over and holler: This is a sabbatical house! But then I’d notice my wife’s smile, or I’d see her lift the baby so the little girl could point out a light fixture. After that there’d be no screaming. I’d just trail behind, yumming and cooing with the others. Feeling like the meanest lizard in the whole green
and peaceable Willamette Valley. Like just the most shameful thing that ever tried to get along on two legs.

  My feet are getting cold, I’m spending too much time on my knees. And anyway it’s looking like my decision will be made for me.

  There’s something of a crowd by the swings now, and Carrie’s in the middle of it. She’s got Gillard by the leg, complaining that he’s stopped playing. Oh, but he’s still at it. He’s got some people there grinning just to watch him make his move. I can just see him cock his hips, before that old woman waving her wand drifts by again. That girl could be jailbait, Gillard. Then one way or another he’ll take Carrie off, getting coffee or avoiding further embarrassment. And I’ll just let the rest of the day go dark.

  What did I expect, coming here? Word gets around. Just last night at the club, one of the waitresses was talking about Gillard and my ex.

  I should have figured she’d go for the same trouble twice. I mean, what’s the difference between Gillard and me, exactly? No question I’ve been every kind of disappointment to women. In the case of my ex, when she first started showing up at the clubs, I had the nerve to say I wanted to be rehabilitated. Where’d I get such nerve? The truth is, when I start to play—like now, I figure I can’t just let the keys go cold—I’m following some impulse or line out there that’s a lot cleaner than I’ll ever be, so that while some woman who’s watching me or somebody else standing back from the dance floor might believe I’ve got the whole crowd blooded up and jumping all for me, the truth is, just the opposite, I’m the most hooked person in the place. The story’s been told a thousand times. But it’s not like we aren’t all of us carried along, carried along helpless except for the damage control. It’s not like, if tomorrow I should see my ex give me that gypsy smile, I wouldn’t start right in thinking about how I might drop a few pounds and stand up straighter when I play. I’m certainly up straight now, off the park bench. I’m doing “The Moon Got In My Eyes,” a little intense but nonetheless a pleasure. And there are some bad feelings in there still. There are some thoughts that don’t belong, like a memory of the first time we took Gillard bowling. He hit two strikes, and then after the third he turned to my wife and said, a real nasty deadpan, “You probably have new respect for me now. You probably see me with new eyes.” Some joke. But I know that if I keep blowing even the nastiest stuff will clear out for a while. For a while I’ll be where I like to be, swinging on a star, only the lamest idea of good or bad or where I fit in there but happy to live with that anyway.