Trying to Save Piggy Sneed

by John Irving

  And minor characters are all the more essential to any story that entails plot; they are the often-hapless figures who move the story in unexpected ways -- often because they are blind to the course of action the main character is following. Minna Barrett is simply a precursor to the lineup of supporting characters in The World According to Garp; to the lesser members of the Berry family (or the rapist, Chipper Dove) in The Hotel New Hampshire; to Wally Worthington (or the superstitious Stationmaster at St. Cloud's) in The Cider House Rules; to Hester (or Major Rawls or the Reverend Lewis Merrill) in A Prayer for Owen Meany; to Martin Mills (or Inspector Dhar or Nancy) in A Son of the Circus. They are major-minor characters, all, and to get inside their points of view is fundamental to storytelling.

  With Minna Barrett, I can see that I was just learning how, albeit clumsily.

  ALMOST IN IOWA

  The driver relied on travel as a form of reflection, but the Volvo had never been out of Vermont. Usually, the driver was a sensible traveler; he kept his oil up and his windshield clean and he carried his own tire gauge in his left breast pocket next to a ballpoint pen. The pen was for making entries in the Grand Trip List, such things as gas mileage, toll fees and riding time.

  The Volvo appreciated this carefulness of the driver; Route 9 across Vermont, Brattleboro to Bennington, was a trip without fear. When the first signs for the New York state line appeared, the driver said, "It's all right." The Volvo believed him.

  It was a dusty tomato-red two-door sedan, 1969, with all-black Semperit radial tires, standard four-speed transmission, four cylinders, two carburetors and 45,238 miles of experience without a radio. It was the driver's feeling that a radio would be distracting to them both.

  They had started out at midnight from Vermont. "Dawn in Pennsylvania!" the driver told the worried Volvo.

  In Troy, New York, the driver used steady downshifting and a caressing voice to reassure the Volvo that all this would soon pass. "Not much more of this," he said. The Volvo took him at his word. Sometimes it is necessary to indulge illusions.

  At the nearly abandoned entrance to the New York State Thruway, West, an innocent Volkswagen exhibited indecision concerning which lane to use. The driver eased up close behind the Volkswagen and allowed the Volvo's horn to blare; the Volkswagen, near panic, swerved right; the Volvo opened up on the left, passed, cut in with aggression, flashed taillights.

  The Volvo felt better.

  The New York State Thruway is hours and hours long; the driver knew that monotony is a dangerous thing. He therefore left the Thruway at Syracuse and made an extended detour to Ithaca, driving a loop around Lake Cayuga and meeting up with the Thruway again near Rochester. The countryside bore a comforting resemblance to Vermont. The smell of apples was in the air; maple leaves were falling in front of the headlights. Only once was there an encounter with a shocking, night-lit sign which seemed to undermine the Volvo's confidence, LIVE BAIT! the sign said. The driver had troublesome visions with that one himself, but he knew it could be infectious to express his imagination too vividly. "Just little worms and things," he said to the Volvo, who purred along. But there lurked in the driver's mind the possibility of other kinds of "live bait" -- a kind of reverse-working bait, which rather than luring the fish to nibble would scare them out of the water. Throw in some of this special bait and retrieve the terrified, gasping fish from where they'd land on shore. Or perhaps LIVE BAIT! was the name of a nightclub.

  It was actually with relief that the driver returned to the Thruway. Not every excursion from the main road leads one back. But the driver just patted the dashboard and said, "Pretty soon we'll be in Buffalo."

  A kind of light was in the sky -- a phase seen only by duck hunters and marathon lovers. The driver had seen little of that light.

  Lake Erie lay as still and gray as a dead ocean; the cars on the Pennsylvania Interstate were just those few early risers who commute to Ohio. "Don't let Cleveland get you down," the driver warned.

  The Volvo looked superbly fit -- tires cool, gas mileage at 22.3 per gallon, oil full up, battery water ample and undisturbed. The only indication that the whole fearsome night had been journeyed was the weird wingmash and blur of bug stains which blotched the windshield and webbed the grille.

  The gas-station attendant had to work his squeegee very hard. "Going a long way?" he asked the driver, but the driver just shrugged. I'm going all the way! he longed to shout, but the Volvo was right there.

  You have to watch who you hurt with what you say. For example, the driver hadn't told anyone he was leaving.

  They skirted the truck traffic around Cleveland before Cleveland could get them in its foul grasp; they left behind them the feeling that the morning rush hour was angry it just missed them. COLUMBUS, SOUTH, said a sign, but the driver snorted with scorn and sailed up the west ramp of the Ohio Turnpike.

  "Crabs in ice water to you, Columbus," he said.

  When you've come through a night of well-controlled tension and you're underway in the morning with that feeling of a headstart advantage on the rest of the world, even Ohio seems possible -- even Toledo appears to be just a short sprint away.

  "Lunch in Toledo!" the driver announced, with daring. The Volvo gave a slight shudder at 75, skipped to 80 and found that fabled "second wind"; the sun was behind them and they both relished the Volvo's squat shadow fleeing in front of them. They felt they could follow that vision to Indiana.

  Early-morning goals are among the illusions we must indulge if we're going to get anywhere at all.

  There is more to Ohio than you think; there are more exits to Sandusky than seem reasonable. At one of the many and anonymous rest pavilions off the turnpike, the Volvo had a severe fit of pre-ignition and the driver had to choke off the car's lunging coughs by executing a sharp stallout with the clutch. This irritated them both. And when he made the mileage calculations on the new full tank, the driver was hasty and thoughtless enough to blurt out the disappointing performance. "Fourteen and six tenths miles a gallon!" Then he quickly tried to make the Volvo know that this wasn't offered as criticism. "It was that last gas," he said. "They gave you some bad gas."

  But the Volvo was slow and wheezing to start; it idled low and stalled pulling away from the pumps, and the driver thought it was best to say, "Oil's full up, not burning a drop." This was a lie; the Volvo was down half a quart -- not enough to add, but below the mark. For a sickening moment, past one more countless exit for Sandusky, the driver wondered if the Volvo knew. For distance, trust is essential. Can a car feel its oil level falling?

  "Lunch in Toledo" hulked in the driver's mind like a taunt; lapsed hunger informed him that lunchtime could have been dawdled away at any of 14 exits which pretended to lead to Sandusky. God, what was Sandusky?

  The Volvo, though quenched and wiped, had gone without a proper rest since breakfast in Buffalo. The driver decided to let his own lunch pass. "I'm not hungry," he said cheerfully, but he felt the weight of his second lie. The driver knew that some sacrifices are tokens. If you're in a thing together, a fair share of the suffering must be a top priority. The area referred to as "Toledo" was silently passed in the afternoon like an unmentionable anticlimax. And as for the matter of a falling oil level, the driver knew he was down half a quart of his own. Oh, Ohio.

  Fort Wayne, Elkhart, Gary, and Michigan City -- ah, Indiana! A different state, not planted with cement. "Green as Vermont," the driver whispered. Vermont! A magic word. "Of course, flatter," he added, then feared he might have said too much.

  A drenching, cleansing thunderstorm broke over the Volvo in Lagrange; gas mileage at Goshen read 20.2, a figure the driver chanted to the Volvo like a litany -- past Ligonier, past Nappanee. Boring their way into the heartland, the driver sensed the coming on of an unprecedented "third wind."

  Cows appeared to like Indiana. But what was a "Hoosier"?

  Shall we have supper in South Bend? A punt's distance from Notre Dame. Nonsense! Gas mileage 23.5! Push on!

 
Even the motels were appealing; swimming pools winked alongside them. Have a good night's sleep! Indiana seemed to sing.

  "Not yet," the driver said. He had seen the signs for Chicago. To wake up in the morning with Chicago already passed by, successfully avoided, outmaneuvered -- what a headstart that would be!

  At the Illinois line, he figured the time, the distance to Chicago, the coincidence of his arrival with the rush hour, etc. The Volvo's case of pre-ignition was gone; it shut off calmly; it appeared to have mastered the famous "kiss start." After the uplift of Indiana, how bad could Illinois be?

  "We will be bypassing Chicago at six-thirty P.M.," the driver said. "The worst of the rush hour will be over. We'll drive an hour away from Chicago, down-state Illinois -- just to get out in the country again -- and we'll definitely stop by eight. A wash for you, a swim for me! Mississippi catfish poached in white wine, an Illinois banana boat, a pint of STP, a cognac in the Red Satin Bar, let some air escape from your tires, in bed by ten, cross the Mississippi at first light, breakfast in Iowa, sausage from homegrown hogs, Nebraska by noon, corn fritters for lunch

  He talked the Volvo into it. They drove into what the license plates call the "Land of Lincoln."

  "Good-bye, Indiana! Thank you, Indiana!" the driver sang from the old tune: "I Wish I Was a Hoosier," by M. Lampert. We will often do anything to pretend that nothing is on our minds.

  Smog bleared the sky ahead, the sun was not down but it was screened. The highway changed from clear tar to cement slabs with little cracks every second saying, "Thunk ker-thunk, thunk ker-thunk..." Awful, endless, identical suburbs of outdoor barbecue pits were smoldering.

  Nearing the first Chicago interchange, the driver stopped for fresh gas, a look at that falling oil, a pressure check on the tires -- just to be sure. The traffic was getting thicker. A transistor radio hung round the gas-station attendant's neck announced that the water temperature in Lake Michigan was 72 degrees.

  "Ick!" the driver said. Then he saw that the clock on the gas pump did not agree with his watch. He had crossed a time zone, somewhere -- maybe in that fantasy called Indiana. He was coming into Chicago an hour earlier than he thought: dead-center, rush-hour traffic hurtled past him. Around him now were the kinds of motels where swimming pools were filled with soot. He imagined the cows who could have woken him with their gentle bells, back in good old Indiana. He had been 18 1/2 hours on the road -- with only a breakfast in Buffalo to remember.

  "One bad mistake every eighteen and a half hours isn't so bad," he told the Volvo. For optimists, a necessary comeback. And a remarkable bit of repression to think of this mistake as the first.

  "Hello, Illinois. Hello to you, half of Chicago."

  The Volvo drank a quart of oil like that first cocktail the driver was dreaming of.

  If the driver thought Sandusky was guilty of gross excess, it would be gross excess itself to represent the range of his feelings for Joliet.

  Two hours of lane-changing inched him less than 30 miles southwest of Chicago and placed him at the crossroads for the travelers heading west -- even to Omaha -- and south to St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans. Not to mention errant fools laboring north to Chicago, Milwaukee and Green Bay -- and rarer travelers still, seeking Sandusky and the shimmering East.

  Joliet, Illinois, was where Chicago parked its trucks at night. Joliet was where people who mistook the Wisconsin interchange for the Missouri interchange discovered their mistake and gave up.

  The four four-lane highways that converged on Joliet like mating spiders had spawned two Howard Johnson Motor Lodges, three Holiday Inns and two Great Western Motels. All had indoor swimming pools, air conditioning and color TV. The color TV was an absurd attempt at idealism: to bring color to Joliet, Illinois, an area which was predominantly gray.

  At 8:30 P.M. the driver resigned from the open road.

  "I'm sorry," he said to the Volvo. There was no car wash at the Holiday Inn. What would have been the point? And it's doubtful that the Volvo heard him, or could have been consoled; the Volvo was suffering from a bout of pre-ignition that lurched and shook the madly clutching driver so badly that he lost all patience.

  "Damn car," he muttered, at an awkward silence -- a reprieve in the Volvo's fit. Well, the damage was done. The Volvo just sat there, pinging with heat, tires hot and hard, carburetors in hopeless disagreement, plugs caked with carbon, oil filter no doubt choked as tightly closed as a sphincter muscle.

  "I'm sorry," the driver said. "I didn't mean it. We'll get off to a fresh start in the morning."

  In the ghastly green-lit lobby, arranged with turtle aquariums and potted palms, the driver encountered about 1100 registering travelers, all in a shell-shocked state resembling his own, all telling their children and wives and cars: "I'm sorry, we'll get off to a fresh start in the morning ..."

  But disbelief was everywhere. When good faith has been violated, we have our work cut out for us.

  *

  The driver knew when good faith had been violated. He sat on the industrial double bed in Holiday Inn Room 879 and placed a collect phone call to his wife in Vermont.

  "Hello, it's me," he said.

  "Where have you been?" she cried. "God, everyone's been looking."

  "I'm sorry," he told her.

  "I looked all around that awful party for you," she said. "I was sure you had gone off somewhere with Helen Cranitz."

  "Oh, no."

  "Well, I finally humiliated myself by actually finding her ... she was with Ed Poines." "Oh, no."

  "And when I saw you'd taken the car I got so worried about what you'd been drinking ..." "I was sober."

  "Well, Derek Marshall had to drive me home and he wasn't." "I'm sorry."

  "Well, nothing happened!" "I'm sorry.

  "Sorry!" she screamed. "Where are you? I needed the car to take Carey to the dentist. I called the police."

  "Oh, no."

  "Well, I thought you might be in a ditch somewhere off the road." "The car's fine."

  "The car!" she wailed. "Where are you? For God's sake

  "I'm in Joliet, Illinois."

  "I've had more than enough of your terrible humor. ..."

  "We screwed up at Chicago or I'd be in Iowa." "Who's we?" "Just me." "You said we." "I'm sorry. ..."

  "I just want to know if you're coming home tonight."

  "It's unlikely I could get there," the driver said.

  "Well, I've got Derek Marshall on my hands again, you can thank yourself for that. He took Carey to the dentist for me."

  "Oh, no."

  "He's been a perfect gentleman, of course, but I really had to ask him by. He's worried about you, too, you know."

  "Like hell

  "You're in no position to talk like that to me. When are you coming back?"

  The thought of "coming back" had not occurred to the driver and he was slow to respond.

  "I want to know where you are, really," his wife said.

  "Joliet, Illinois."

  She hung up.

  The longer distances take teamwork. The driver had his work cut out for him, for sure.

  Bobbing in the indoor pool, the driver was struck with a certain bilious sensation and the resemblance the pool bore to the turtle aquariums in the Holiday Inn lobby. I don't want to be here, he thought.

  In the Grape Arbor Restaurant the driver pondered the dizzying menu, then ordered the chefs crab salad. It came. Lake Michigan should be suspected as a possible, ominous source.

  In the Tahiti Bar he was served cognac.

  The local Joliet TV station reported the highway fatalities of the day: a grim body count -- the vision of the carbon-covered carnage sending travelers away from the bar and to bed early, for a night of troubled sleep. Perhaps this was the purpose of the program.

  Before he went to bed himself, the driver said goodnight to his Volvo. He felt its tires, he felt the black grit in the oil, he sought the degree of damage in a pockmark on the windshield.

  "That one must have s
tung."

  Derek Marshall! That one stung, too.

  The driver remembered what has been referred to as "that awful party." He told his wife he was going to the bathroom; cars were parked all over the lawn and he went to the bathroom there. Little Carey was staying at a friend's house; there was no babysitter to see the driver slip home for his toothbrush.

  A dress of his wife's, a favorite one of his, hung on the back of the bathroom door. He nuzzled it; he grew fainthearted at its silky feel; his tire gauge snagged on the zipper as he tried to pull away from it. "Good-bye," he told the dress, firmly.

  For a rash moment he considered taking all her clothes with him! But it was midnight -- time for turning to pumpkin -- and he sought the Volvo.

  His wife was a dusty tomato-red... no. She was a blonde, seven years married with one child and without a radio. A radio was distracting to them both. No. His wife took a size-10 dress, wore out three pairs of size-7 sandals between spring and fall, used a 36B bra and averaged 23.4 miles per gallon ... no! She was a small dark person with strong fingers and intense sea-blue eyes like airmail envelopes; she had the habit of putting her head back like a wrestler about to bridge or a patient preparing for mouth-to-mouth resuscitation whenever she made love.... oh, yes. She had a svelte, not a voluptuous, body and she liked things that clung to her, hugged her, hung around her... clothes, children, big dogs and men. She was tall with long thighs and a loping walk, a great mouth, a 38D....

  Then the driver's sinuses finally revolted against the nightlong endurance test forced upon them by the air conditioning; he sneezed violently and woke himself up. He put his thoughts for his wife and all other women in a large, empty part of his mind which resembled the Volvo's roomy, unpacked trunk. He took a forceful shower and thought that today was the day he would see the Mississippi.

  People actually learn very little about themselves; it's as if they really appreciate the continuous act of making themselves vulnerable.

  The driver planned to leave without breakfast. You'd have thought he'd be used to ups and downs, but the early morning sight of the violence done to the Volvo was a shock even to this veteran of the ways of the road. The Volvo had been vandalized. It sat at the curb by the driver's motel room like a wife he'd locked out of the house in the drunken night -- she was waiting there to hit him hard with his guilt in the daylight.