by Gregory Hill
And then, zwoop! we hit reset and everyone has a brief moment to feel bewildered before three music stands appear out of figuratively nowhere and then, while Vero is in the midst of reading the crypto-note on her stand, the waitress and the old guy start up with the accusatory What the fucks.
Vero, this is Narwhal. Everything’s okay. I love you. Some odd things have happened in the last few seconds. I’ll explain later. If you can read this, wink RIGHT NOW. Please wink IMMEDIATELY.
In retrospect, I should have included a message of similar length on the signs I placed in front of Sandy and Old Timer, both of whom would have read I am not a ghost in a glance and immediately dismissed it as bullshit. Meanwhile, I’ve saddled Vero with an entire paragraph, one that includes a specific instruction to wink.
Let’s examine those eyes of hers. There’s definitely some moisture. Pain, fear, you name it. She has every reason to cry and each of those reasons is the fault of the shortsightedness of Narwhal Slotterfield. I did this to her. In the sprint to the finish line of the Asshole Stakes, the horse known as Veronica’s Dalliance With The Blad has slipped several lengths behind The Time The Corrupt Referee Started Freaking Everybody Out.
Horse-race analogy inspired by George Jones.
Vero’s face is pointed at the note on the music stand, but her eyes are facing Sandy and Old Timer. Vero is looking at them because their rising voices compel her to do so. She really just wants them to shut their mouths so she can read.
I put my hands on Vero’s table and place my face directly before hers. Do I appear as a ghostly blur? Does the breeze from my hyper-speed blow back her hair? Is my every movement accompanied by a sonic boom? Questions best reserved for later, or better, one of those conventions attended by people who wear handmade alien costumes.
Closer now, let’s examine the skin around her eyes. People typically wink with their non-dominant eye. Being left-handed, Vero will likely wink with her right eye.
The mechanics of a wink are not as straightforward as one assumes. It’s not a simple matter of an eyelid dropping down and then flipping back up, accompanied by a brief flash and a resonating ting. Unless one is an expert winker—Vero is not—the entire winking side of one’s face scrunches up, accompanied by a slight sneer of the lip.
I see in Vero’s face a tightening of the skin below her right eye. There’s a touch of a crease between her right nostril and the corner of her mouth. I do believe she’s about to wink.
I’m concerned that Sandy and Old Timer will interrupt Vero’s potential wink with their shouting and finger-pointing. In my pre-accelerated state of mind, I would have solved this problem by dragging them out of the room, you know, so Vero could interact with me unencumbered.
In my post-hallucinogenically-enlightened state of mind, I am no longer comfortable with capriciously manipulating the bodies of people—or things—unless absolutely necessary. Consider it a Personal Prime Directive: Because my actions, even the most benign, can potentially lead to unforeseen, unintentional, and unpleasant consequences, I will do everything I can to not fuck with people who live in the normal time-stream.
I’ll leave it to the Star Trek fanatics to determine if, when it comes to Prime Directives, I’m a Kirk or if I’m a Janeway.
My best course of action is to find a comfortable place to sit and watch things unfold.
39
It takes forever for things to unfold. I’ve been watching Vero’s face for thousands of heartbeats, leaning in close, fooling myself to think some part of her has moved. I can’t tell if she’s winking. I’ve got to re-think this. I will memorize her face, then leave, and then come back. Hopefully, I’ll be able to tell if anything has changed.
With the intention of figuring out how long I had been away from Vero during my round-trip journey to the magic mushrooms, I revisited Holliday High. There, I found a slide rule, read the instructions, went out to my telescope, got down on my back, and peeked up. The 747 had moved several degrees away from the viewfinder. Shit. Outside the viewfinder, it couldn’t tell me anything; it would be like trying to read a thermometer after the mercury had exploded out of the glass; all you know is that it got hot; or, in this case, all I knew was that a chunk of time had passed. Silly me, I should have reduced the magnification before I’d headed out so the plane didn’t take up as much room in the viewfinder. Instead, I was stuck measuring a flea with a yardstick. Or maybe the opposite, a skyscraper with an inchworm. Whatever. In order to sort this out, I’d need a sextant or a protractor or, preferably, a geometry tutor.
Screw this. Reading a thousand magazine articles at the dinner table does not make one a scientist. Holding a slide rule doesn’t make one a mathematician. And fuck it all anyway. Keeping an obsessive lock on the passage of time no longer matters to me in my post-hallucinogenically-enlightened mood. The hypertemporal Narwhal is compelled only to keep track of himself.
I shifted the telescope toward the daredevils in the Cessna formerly known as a seagull. The plane was slightly less upside down, with the nose now pointing a little more down and the tail a little more up. The daredevils appeared to be coming out of a loop-de-loop. The pilot and co-pilot retained their expressions of delight. Go get ‘em boys. I’ll be down here, waiting for my gal to wink.
My hair is still growing. I can keep track of time thataway, if necessary, which it won’t be. What’s so important about keeping track of time? I subscribe to the theory that clocks were invented solely so people could keep track of their TV schedules.
I returned to the Palace and sat across from Vero. I waited for her to wink and I counted the hairs in her eyebrows. Eventually, I became tired. I couldn’t allow myself to go to sleep. I’m pretty sure I’m sleeping at least twelve hours a pop. Over the course of twelve hours, Vero could complete her wink and return her face to both-eyes-open. If that happens, I’ll have to ask her to wink again and then I’ll have to wait again.
I ate two cans of caffeinated cola and kept on staring. Patience, young jackass. A watched sex pot…
The caffeine wore off. To perk up, I took a quick half-mile hike to the fetishist’s semi. The wayward truck was in mid-careen. The front wheels had crested the shoulder and were hovering in air above the ditch, just prior to their big slambooie. It wouldn’t be but a few more hours before the fireworks.
Behind the action, my trucker buddy was sitting bolt upright on the road where I’d left him, his jaw slack. I wish I could help you, guy, but I’m not strong enough to move that steering wheel. As seekers of serenity, you and I must also accept the things we can’t unchange. At least we can look forward to an explosion.
I sat with the driver for several minutes. When it became unreasonable to stay awake, I sleep-walked back to Holliday.
I entered Cookie’s Palace Diner, hoping one thing, expecting another. I got my wish, which gives me hope. Vero’s eyes have migrated away from Sandy and Old Timer and they’ve settled back on my sign. The corners of her mouth have shifted into the suggestion of a wry smile. And her right eye is distinctly, halfway closed.
I refrained from hugging her. Instead, I shouted into my ear bones, “That’s my Vero!”
This is the happiest day of my accelerated life. We can communicate. Even better, Vero trusts me. Under extraordinary and trying circumstances, with two intimidating strangers raising their voices at her, Vero read a note that appeared out of nowhere and followed my instructions.
Veronica and I can’t continue this conversation in the middle of the nonsense in here. Cookie is about to come out of the kitchen and he’s probably going to join Sandy and Old Timer in accusing Vero and her pee-pee boyfriend, me, of conspiring to freak them out. But my Personal Prime Directive demands that I don’t interfere. But I’ve already interfered. Therefore, ipso facto, common sense suggests that although I can’t uninterfere, I can at least minimize the degree to which I have interferenced.
To that end, rather than drag the Hollidayans out of their diner, which was my first inclination, I sha
ll instead remove Vero. Before I do that, it’ll only be polite of me to warn everyone, and that includes Vero.
I’ve placed signs in front of Sandy, Old Timer, and Cookie:
Sorry about the commotion. Please be respectful to the woman at the table over there. She’s not responsible for any of this. I’ve taken her elsewhere. Please go about your business and pretend you never saw us.
yrs sincerely,
Narwhal S.
Vero’s turn. I could haul her away right now, and screw the note. It’s not like I’m afraid of injuring her; I’ve moved people around without harming them; that’s not the issue. But I am concerned about giving her a heart attack. If she finds herself instantly in a different place, it’ll surely freak her shit out. And then how long would it take for me to convince her that everything’s totally cool?
I’ll write something short, something she can read quickly and which will still prepare her, even if only a little bit, for what’s about to happen.
Hang on. I’m taking you out of here. It’ll happen quick.
Love, Nar.
I’ll give her two seconds, two of my days, to read this one. After that, whether she’s ready or not, it’s goodbye to Cookie’s Palace Diner.
40
I went outside and sat upon the diner’s front step, absorbing the orange light from the unsettling setting sun. The thing about this sun is, it’s not shining or glowing, it’s on. It, and the blackening blue sky to the east are so motionless they don’t even seem three-dimensional.
You know how it sometimes happens that you look up on a summer day and you know that the sun is closer to you than the blue sky is, even though you can’t really tell, and in fact, you don’t even know exactly what the blue sky is other than some vaguely washed out version of outer space? But still you know that the sun is separate from the sky, and within the sky?
That illusion of depth is gone. It’s all a single, distant two-dimensional projection. Since the air doesn’t move, there are no mirages or heat waves on the horizon. There are waves of focus and distorted ripples around the corona of the sun, but the waves don’t wave and the ripples don’t ripple. It’s more like flawed stained glass.
To the west, though, the sky is closer, with the bubbling clouds of the hellfire storm, which is itself worthy of at least two paragraphs of well-considered synonyms for looming, brooding, and beckoning. I’ve seen those clouds from many different angles and I know that they’re three-dimensional and that they contain rain and hail. I know that underneath the cloud that looks like a young Henry Fonda—but only when viewed from the west side—there’s an actual tornado, capable of picking up actual rabbits. And, lookee there. Up sizzles another slow blossom of lightning. It takes my breath away, again. And it’s a reminder that, although I may be neck deep in the Twilight Zone, I’m not yet over my head.
41
What do I do for the next two days? I can’t just sit here on this front stoop of the diner. Why, I oughta take a trip to that town, Keaton, whose Route 36 sign I’ve passed four times in my comings and goings.
I made it there before lunch. Keaton is two miles south of the highway. It’s perched upon a nameless paved road which doesn’t even show up on my map, and which leads to a town that, per my road map, might as well be a fly spot. In the real, non-map version of the world, Keaton is an actual place.
On Route 36, all the towns are laid out in a linear fashion, the highway splitting them each down the center, with buildings flanking either side, and maybe a few dirt roads to count as surface streets. No stop lights, no stop signs. Any street signs are hand-made, with names like “Liberty Lane” and “Old Gusman Road.”
Keaton is like two of those Route 36 towns superimposed upon each other in the shape of a cross. Or, to discourage the symbol-hunters amongst you, in the shape of a plus-sign. Or, to be less vague, Keaton has two distinct streets, the nameless north-south paved road intersected by a nameless east-west dirt road. There’s even a four-way stop.
I suspect that the towns on Route 36 initially survived on traffic tourism until such time as the interstates were constructed and siphoned off all the motel/gas/diner business. You can tell that Keaton, being as it is off the browbeaten path, has never suckled from the bosom of the transient automobilist and, as such, it’s learned to make do on its own. Someone could actually live here without traveling thirty miles for basic necessities.
The town has two whiteboard churches (Methodist and Foursquare), a bank, a meat locker, a mechanic’s shop, a Co-op with towering grain elevators, a gas station, a hardware store, a grocery, and a couple dozen residences, few of which I suspect will survive the hell-storm once it blows in.
The houses aren’t all pretty, but they’re livable, inviting. The yards contain kitschy sculptures made out of old tractor parts formed into things that look like rusted robot cowboys, rusted miniature windmills, and rusted tractors. The fences around the houses are maintained, but, again, not entirely prettily. Some have been patched with barnwood, some are neatly tied together with scraps of baling wire. It’s almost cheery here.
The Keaton Cooperative Grocery is a gem of the Great Plains. You don’t know how badly you miss soymilk until you come across a half-gallon carton in a country store. It’s a miracle they stock the stuff, here in the land of milk and beasts-that-secrete-milk. As evidence of how little it takes for me to consider anything a gem of the Great Plains, the Keaton Cooperative Grocery is basically a glorified convenience store, down to the Swisher Sweets behind the counter. Except convenience stores don’t normally carry soymilk. I guess even yokels can suffer from lactose intolerance.
I peel apart a carton of soymilk and drink until my belly swells over the elastic of my sweat pants.
There’s only one person working tonight. She’s slender with long, straight, brown hair streaked with grey. I’d put her at roughly fifty-five years old. Her arms have the sinewy, tawny look of an old person who spends a lot of time outside, lifting rocks, digging holes.
The plastic nametag pinned to her blouse reads HELLO MY NAME IS: I Don’t Discuss the Weather. She’s leaning against the counter, staring at a tabloid article about a child raised by wolves. According to the sign on the window, the store closes at eight o’clock. Just another half-hour and you’re free to go.
I’m instantly fond of I Don’t Discuss the Weather. Please don’t tell Vero, with her beehive, but I prefer straight hair on humans. Every other woman I’ve seen in these parts seems compelled to turn her hair into a highlighted, multi-leveled, gravity-loathing, exhibit of sexual potency. The style is 1988 by way of 2009, arranged in a fashion that says, “I don’t care what y’all city folk do. We’re sassy, we’re country, and we’re proud.”
For the record, the men I’ve encountered are all wearing caps, most of which advertise seed companies, tractor factories, irrigation facilities, and a mystifyingly popular shoe manufacturer.
I don’t wish to sound judgmental. The hats and the hair must serve their respective purposes, otherwise nobody’d bother with them, right?
Still, I lean straight, hair-wise. Straight hair declares nothing, demands nothing, thus preventing and preempting stereotypicism. This presumes, of course, that the hair was straight to begin with. A black person with straight hair says the opposite.
Let’s tidy this up. I often find myself admiring people who allow their hair to grow in a natural fashion in spite of what fashion mores unnaturally demand.
I Don’t Discuss the Weather’s billfold is stashed under the counter. According to her driver’s license, her name is Charlene Morning and she lives here in Keaton. Also in the billfold are twenty-three dollars in cash and an old, beat-up Topps ABA rookie card for a small forward named Kitch Riles.
Well, now.
You are not alone in not knowing who in the tarnation Kitch Riles is. He played less than half of one season in the American Basketball Association, a league which, for reasons that make zero sense to me, has retreated into the dustbin of mystery. H
eroic figures of the ABA include Ray Eiffel, Bobby Flowers, Doctor J, and Moses Malone. There were plenty more, many of whom migrated to the NBA, where they kicked ass after the ABA went teats-up in 1976.
Bear in mind, I never got to see an ABA game. The league dissolved a few months before I was allegedly born. But I know my history. The ABA gave us the three-point basket, afros, on-court inebriation, and some of the most idiotic owners in the history of human athletic exhibition. As in, let’s create a league without any money and then try to get the NBA to buy us out, even though no one comes to our games.
Kitch Riles was a Colorado kid who played half a season with the Kentucky Colonels in 1975, the final season of the ABA’s nine-year existence. Riles scored fifty points in his last game, on New Year’s Eve in Denver, and then he completely disappeared.
I know this mainly because of a single paragraph written about Riles in Loose Balls, the one decent history ever written about the ABA. That paragraph also states that Riles was an obnoxious, thrill-seeking hillbilly with possible links to a ring of Peruvian narcotic distributors. The drug charges were never proved.
If this seems like arcane knowledge, please understand that I love basketball; the game is not simply a job to me. When played well, the collective improvisation displayed on a hardwood court is as impressive as anything accomplished by anything short of a late fifties hard bop quintet. Even then, Max Roach never had to worry about someone stealing his sticks in the middle of one of Sonny’s solos.
My belly sagging with soy milk, I lay down on the floor next to a shelf of kiddie cereal and I held the Kitch Riles ABA rookie card in front of my nose. The card had acquired a permanent curl from living in Charlene’s wallet. Even so, it was probably worth twenty dollars.
