Harold, Mother, my alcoholic dad who still breathes into the phone when I call him, the goddamned fuzz, Cora. Cora.
Cora’s gone so far off my case, I can’t even figure any more why she stayed with me so long in the first place. Once in a while I pass her on the road in her new car, sitting next to her new guy. Soon as she sees me, she looks straight forward, crouches a bit. Her new guy drives a beatup Plymouth Duster. A Duster, can you beat it? All I see on the road nowadays: Pintos, Dusters, I expect kiddie cars linked together in a line any day now.
The few good guys—the stubborn roadrunners and hundredplussers who’re still hanging around—are avoiding me, calling me screwup. Worst is, I don’t even care to go out onto the highway anymore. It’s too much for me. My wheels are just not fast enough. Anyway, now Cora’s given up on me, there doesn’t seem to be any sense in staying around this tar-patch and performing my loner number anymore.
Well, let them shove it.
Let them all shove it.
I’m taking my wheels and going on down the road, heading west, across the great plains and through the mountains, where the fields are greener and so, I’m told, are the punk kids and cops.
* * * * *
The punk kid is in the parking lot of the rest stop, deliberately intruding on my home-base territory. He’s just leaning against his Pinto, which is hardly dented and looks like he’s just this moment shined it with a toothbrush. Shit, a prepubescent Harold. He’s so short he must have to use raised pedals. He looks less than twelve standing up like this.
A Pinto, for God’s sake!
I’m about to stop and explain to him why I didn’t accept his challenge, but he just grins to show off his black and brown baby teeth, gives me the finger, climbs in his car, and zooms away.
I got to get out of here.
I go to The Mech, ask for a tune-up. He gives me the usual look. Ritual, damn it. His answer is ritual, too.
I don’t think a symphony’ll help the old Mustang much less a tune-up, he says, but I’ll get to it, see what I can do.
He wipes sweat off his brow with the back of his hand, after wiping the back of his hand with a clean cloth first.
I really appreciate what you’ve done for the car, I say—my part of the ritual.
Sure, he says. How you fixed for money? Need any runs, anything?
What’s on the docket?
Not much. Crap, really.
Well, I’m fixed okay, I guess.
Not even any doper jobs now. Things’re tight.
I have a question I want to ask him, but he doesn’t like personal questions, so I hesitate. But I really have to ask it, so I say:
Emil told me last week you been offered a job.
Yep. Supervisor in that shiteating new inspection program back in the city. You know, where they give the new government approved vehicles the once-over, take their payoff, and stamp their seal of approval on the hood. Not even work, just checklisting big charts.
You’re not going to take it, right?
He glances around the garage, which is getting so barren it’s beginning to look neat.
I don’t know. Might.
Ah, c’mon, you—
Look, man, I gotta check your wheels. Don’t look over my shoulder. I’ll come get you when old Musty’s ready.
I hate it when he calls it old Musty, but I am getting good at responding to the voice of authority. I give him a kind of casual air-corps salute and go off. The Mech won’t take that job. He’d die in a day.
— 2 —
I have to hang around the rest stop, so I go up to the Savarin to see what’s doing. Nothing’s doing. Hardly anybody there.
Where’s everybody? I say to Emil. Emil looks tireder than usual. The hollows in his cheek seem cosmetic, as if he’s waiting for a traveling roadshow to offer him a character part. He looks like my dad looks at his worst.
Wedding bells are breaking up that old gang of mine, Emil says.
What the hell do you mean by that?
He shrugs and hands me a cup of coffee. I especially don’t want any coffee today. But you got to take it, and you got to drink it in front of him, give yourself a caffeine tracheotomy. More ritual. It’s the only thing makes him happy.
Guess I should say goodbye, Emil old buddy, I say.
You just got here. Drink your coffee.
No, I mean I’m taking my wheels and heading for the sunset.
The Sunset Drive-in? Man, you’ll never hack it there. That’s blade country.
I never know whether Emil is putting me on or not.
No, I mean when The Mech has given my Mustang the once-over, I am leaving the territory. You’ll never see me again.
Emil acts angry. Cora used to say that when he got angry at you, you must be doing something right.
What are you, co-opting? You believe all that leaflet crap about Reorganization? Dumbie, they got more rules, that’s how they reorganized! Look, you had trouble getting a safedry license, right?
Sure, that’s how—
Well, now they’re going to slip you one on a silver platter provided you return to the fold, and that’s worse.
I see that license, think of my dad’s driving record and how it cost me safedry status, and I’m almost tempted to go back.
I don’t understand, I say to Emil, how could it be worse?
You don’t know about the new monitors? They don’t even need fuzz to make you toe the line. Even the roaming safedrys who used to terrorize pedestrians by goosing them with the points of their hood ornaments—even they’ve gotta obey the rules now. Everybody tells everybody else it’s paradise, and everybody stays in their hovels getting wired in to every new device comes along. Gee-odd in Heaven, I don’t know how people can—
The monitors, Emil, what about the monitors?
Ah, they’re butterfly’s assholes, they are. There’s one installed in every approved car, transmitting every move a driver makes to a central agency. A monitor picks up every mistake, no matter how trivial. Two points against you for each mph over the limit, a point for failing to signal, ignoring a stop sign, that sort of thing. It’s like taking a driver’s test each time you go out on the road. It’s like a permanent learner’s permit. Pile up enough points and you can apply for a tricycle license.
Emil always gets fired up about social topics. His habit, he’s an old-line political activist. Once I asked him which extremist groups he was connected with, he said republican. I don’t know anything about republicans, except my alcoholic old dad was against them, so they must’ve been extreme all right.
Ah well, he says, no use ranting. Man, I was born when F.D.R. was elected president—fourth or fifth time, don’t remember which—and here I’ve lasted several years into a new century. You probably don’t know anything about F.D.R. Do you even know there’s still a president holed out down there in Washington, forging new improved invisible chains to keep the citizenry in line, do you know that, buster?
Yes, well, I think so. I never voted, but I guess his name is—
Who cares what his name is? Their names haven’t mattered since, since I don’t know when. You go right back to where you came from, vote for him, or is it her, like everybody else. Become a nine-to-fiver like all the rest.
All the rest of what?
All the rest of you dumb bastards. Look around. Nobody’s here because nobody’s riding the roads anymore. Everybody’s copped out, gone back to the absorbent middle-class, sold their wheels and bought kiddie cars. Yeah, I can see you in one of those lousy new machines, car polish on your teeth, chrome epaulettes on your shoulders. Gee-odd in Heaven, I knew you’d be one of them. I never knew what the hell you were doing around here in the first place.
I feel hurt, Emil’s been on my back ever since Cora said so long. I feel hurt, but damned if I’ll let Emil see it.
I'm not copping out, Emil, I’m—
Your voice is shrill, drink some more of that coffee. That’ll drop it an octave.
I take
a sip. My tongue dissolves, the trickle down my throat leaves scars. Emil looks like he hopes I'll choke. My new low voice may be permanent.
I am not returning to the goddamned city. I wouldn’t go back there if they paid me, I—
They will pay you. Amply. It’s the new thing. Ask the fuzz.
Nobody ever said anything to me about that.
No, maybe they might forget to tell you.
That’s an insinuation.
That’s what it is, all right. So, where in this land of opportunity and sudden ambush do you plan to go?
I don’t know. Somewhere west of here.
Ah, west! Of course. Robert Penn Warren, All the King’s Men, west is where you have to go, something like that. West is, when you go there, they have to take you in. No, that’s not right. Forget quotes, misquotes. People used to pursue their dreams to California. They died there, which was all part of the dream according to some. I’ve heard it’s not so pretty there any more.
So what? It’s pretty here?
A rare smile from Emil.
You may have something there. Would you like another cup of coffee?
It is not a question, it’s an order. I haven’t drunk that much of my first cup. I hope The Mech gets to my car soon. Before I die would be good. A lot of the coffee spills when Emil pours it. I never noticed before how much his hand shakes. I touch my coffee cup cautiously, not wanting to get any of the spilled coffee on my skin. Emil stares off toward the bug-splattered glass window behind me.
That whole myth, the California dream, California trip, died when I was quite young, Emil says. It died first, then it traveled across the country and left grave-dirt on the paths it walked.
What do you mean by that?
I don’t know. Drink your coffee.
He means something by all this chatter about deaths of myths, but it’s nothing I really want to hear about. You get tired of people telling you that everything you wanted has decayed long ago.
Hi Lee, what’s on?
I recognize the voice immediately. Just exactly who I don’t want to see. But I swing around in my stool anyway. Smiling.
Hello Cora.
She’s looking as compactly beautiful as ever. She’s cut her hair, an attempt to look more African, but it doesn’t work, still looks like a white woman’s hair. Large-looped earrings hang from her newly pierced ears. She’s wearing Afro dress, a dashiki or whatever they call it, and it isn’t quite right either. Sad: no matter what she does, she’ll never look black enough. At least she has stopped using that cosmetic that made her skin darker than normal. In spite of all the tinkering with herself, and all the fights we’ve had, I immediately want to fall to the floor and beg her to take me back, But she won’t, wouldn’t ever, and so it’s no use bothering with the floor.
You look good Lee, weatherbeaten or something, Cora says.
All that sun. Guess it affects the skin.
Affects the brain, too.
I wince, and some tears come to Cora’s eyes.
Sorry Lee. I don’t want to hurt you with cheap talk. You know that, not anymore.
I don’t like her being delicate. She should’ve let the insult stand.
Saw you riding with some, with a new guy. Who is he?
A guy. Nice guy, you don’t know him.
Where is he?
Oh, the fuzz got him yesterday. I was with him, but he made me run away. He’ll be back in the usual coupla days.
Sure. That really a Duster he drives?
A brief flash of anger in her eyes.
Don’t start mockery, Lee. That Duster’s in good condition, better than your—ah, fuck. Blue’s a good vehicle, leave it at that.
Blue? You named it Blue?
Let’s not start squaring off, all right?
She looks around the room, runs her skinny little finger along the edge of the counter, skipping it over an upraised metal sliver.
Fuzz’ll have him back two days, exactly. Everything’s very formal these days. Remember when this place was crowded?
Emil and I were just talking about that. He says we’ve lost a lot of people from the ranks. They’ve gone back to the city and civilization.
That’s the new hustle all right. Rip it off, rip it up, rip away. They really screwed us when they repealed some of the old anti-car laws. Don’t get me wrong, those laws were dumb all right. Well-intentioned, maybe, but dumb. But look at it this way, we all got out of our traps just because some dumbie legislators cooked up a lot of profitmaking ways to restrict the use of the old automobile. How’d they know their profits’d disappear when G.M. and Ford went down the tubes? Still, it was great—gave us all this space, all these roads.
Cora’s eyes glow when she talks like this. I told her once it was like she clicked on her high beams, and she ridiculed me for days for saying it.
Well, she says, the good old days are departed. Now you can go back to the city, the megalopolis of megalopoli, and get a brand-new machine that’s got so many special devices hidden in it, it can’t even outrun a snail. So you can plod along, lowpollute the air with low-pollutants, and take a luxurious half-day job with all-day pay. For all-day suckers. Shit, why’d anybody want a half-day shift when they can have a no-day shift?
I don’t know, Cora.
How’s your wheels?
Okay. They always say they’ll impound it the next time around. But they don’t really want it.
I know what you mean. They don’t really care. They’re not going to do any impounding or anything. They’re too out of it to even pull out any red tape nowadays. Gonna let all outlaw vehicles die natural deaths. They’ve got your number, Lee, that’s all.
Not my number.
Oh come on Lee, what—
No, I mean it. I’m clearing out. Heading west.
What’s west?
Without waiting for an answer, she walks away, stands by the plate-glass window. It’s a grey day outdoors, and it puts her in a shadow, makes her for a moment as dark as she wants to be.
Emil taps me on the shoulder. Without speaking he puts a piece of paper in my hand.
What’s this? I say.
Telephone number here. That wall-phone, that one over there.
I know where it is. Thought it broke forever.
Nah, it works. Chuck came back one night and threw together a few wires and fixed it.
Chuck? You’ve seen Chuck?
Day-amn, I wasn’t supposed to say anything. Okay, yeah, I seen him. He pops in sometimes, the dead of night, when nobody’s around. Just appears at the door out of nowhere, asks for a cup of coffee. His face is always white against the night, like a ghost. Maybe that’s what he is. Anyway, he fixes phones. Coffee urns, too. And he’s worked out a gasline system for the stove. Ghost or no, he’s handy.
If Emil is really off his nut, like some people say, then Chuck may exist only in his demented mind. Nevertheless, I say:
Next time you see him, say hello from me.
Okay, but he doesn’t like to hear about anybody. Always shuts me up when I bring up a name. Spooks me, I’ll say that.
The phone really works?
Course it does. Hardly anybody ever uses it, that’s all. I never tell anybody it works.
I look down at the piece of paper with the number on it.
Well, what should I do with this number?
Call it, schmuck.
He says this affectionately, then walks away without further explanation. I pocket the paper with the number on it, wondering why I’d ever want to call this miserable place.
Then the sun breaks out from behind a cloud (Cora steps backward), and The Mech comes in.
Your wheels’re about as healed as can be expected, he says, but I really recommend a sanitorium for it. Matter of fact, I got an address right here—
Thanks, I’ll run it a little longer. You take out the usual gas cans?
Not this time.
That’s really decent of you. I mean, you—
Shut up, roadrunne
r. Look, these days I got no need for extra gas in extra cans. Just weigh me down.
What he says worries me but I decide not to pursue the subject. Instead, I mumble goodbyes to Emil and Cora and, without looking at either of them, follow The Mech out of the Savarin. Checking the trunk, I find that not only has The Mech not taken his payment, he’s added a couple of filled cans to my supply. Looks like I can get out west on what I got. I crawl into the Mustang and, swinging around a broken and fallen gas pump, I am off. I forget to look back at the café window to see if Cora waves goodbye. I know she did, though, and I’m just as glad not to see it.
— 3 —
As usual, The Mech has put the magic touch on my vehicle. It never goes so good as when he’s just worked on it. At its worst, just before I hand it over to him, nothing responds right away, everything seems to take a moment of contemplation before the Mustang will allow it to happen. But, after The Mech has left off his working of wonders, its responses come much quicker. So quick that it seems like the car’s reflex actions damn near ignore stimuli.
I go smooth for many miles, almost half the afternoon. I don’t want to attract the attention of any stray fuzz looking to fill last week’s quota. But the roads are clear. Not only that, they’re in good shape. We have our own road teams, who work at night, making repairs with what material they can find, making the road safe for roadrunners. I’ve heard the roads are worse farther on.
I only see a few other cars, mostly going in the other direction, on the other side of the median. It bothers me I don’t see any familiar faces. Drivers I’d normally snub for their meanness, moral corruption, and coldhearted stupidity would seem like old-school-tie chums to me now. The people I do see are cretins, testing whether or not they are alive by riding the roads.
A Set Of Wheels Page 10
