American Spirit: A Novel

by Dan Kennedy

  “So, I’ve been making these coffee mugs. I wish I would’ve brought some; with all of the crafts and souvenirs and stuff here, I could sell a ton of them, I bet. Especially if these guys keep cops off your back like you were saying.”

  “Dude, if you’re making cash, speak up. Because I can get you twenty percent and that’s after I take ten for the trouble. Everybody thinks we’re in a recession, but there’s mid-cap shit. Shit you can skim weekly right now, especially in bailout financials and tech; Citigroup, Micron, Netfl… a bunch of other shit I’m not gonna sit here and list off for free.”

  “I’m not making that kind of cash. I’m selling a few, but I’m not the guy giving you twenty or thirty to put in the market.”

  “This whole world cries victim—no offense—and puts their money in mutuals and ETFs like a bunch of little pussies—no offense—hoping for the best without taking a fucking risk. It’s becoming the American way, to bear no risk then sit back and demand to be able to live like a fucking billionaire. Assholes—not you—fucking normal people. And what the fuck do I know about normal people?”

  “You’re, maybe, not exactly a portrait of risks panning out at the moment.”

  “What you’re forgetting is that I only did as much damage as an average failure but I was completely strung out on the kind of A-list shit South American presidents are hitting. I was doing blow that left tribal chiefs psychotic and suicidal and chewing fucking coca leaves until their gums bled in huts made of dung up in the Andes. But people don’t factor that in, do they? They don’t take a minute to use reason and think: Well, let’s see, yeah, the guy fucked up, but there are guys who fuck up that much sober, and this guy was out of his head on Christ knows what and he was still as good as a sober fuckup.”

  “Fair point, I guess. Anyway, I don’t have that cash at the moment, but if I did…”

  “Selling coffee cups… you’re lucky I’m on a spiritual path out here with these guys, because the old me would’ve fully fucked up your mode for wasting time with namby-pamby pussy-whipped ideas like making money selling coffee cups. But now I live and let live, Chief. I seek to understand, not be understood, which is something Modoch taught me.”

  “Okay.”

  “Oh, real quick, that’s kind of the other thing: ever since Crazy Daryl Acid became Modoch, shit’s gotten a little sensitive, and saying Chief is apparently not cool with him, so you gotta help me lay off it.”

  “You went with Sport earlier. Why don’t you just go with that?”

  “I’m trying that, Sport’s good, and I’m going with Genius when I want to give someone a little shit, because the only problem with Sport is that sometimes it seems paternal and positive when I’m not trying to communicate that. Sport’s not as malleable as Chief.”

  Tim looks at the little side-view video screen, sees a tiny, bluish black-and-white duo at the door of the rig, and reaches to the dash to toggle a small electric switch so that the door of the Sierra Mountain Air slides open. Modoch and Tic Tac climb aboard.

  “Hey, guys, did you get everything you need?” Matthew asks.

  Tic Tac talks like a broken metronome, all fast and bad meter jumping the beat, stepping over the last of Matthew’s question with the answer coming in too hot and soon. “It’s fucking for everybody, it’s for all members on board.” And upon saying this, Tic Tac is instantly hunched and stooped with his head forward, hands flicking up under his coat like a tiny hyper and gravid crustacean tending to a bulge of roe just beneath its shell, gobs and grabs of bright wrappers and bottles and cans, all coming out, all dumping onto the rig’s couch. A family-size bag of Spicy Hot Corn Nuts; a large can of lighter fluid; an aerosol can of hair spray; a large can of lighter fluid; panty hose; another large can of lighter fluid; a bag of assorted bite-size candy bars with Halloween not even on the horizon; a pair of bright orange work gloves; three large commuter mugs that don’t even have art or a saying on them—corporate mugs, brushed stainless steel with a Nissan logo on them; a big box of kitchen matches. Tim is staring at the bag of Corn Nuts; he turns his head quickly to try to hide his lingering automatic flash of a scowl. Tic Tac rolls his eyes and reaches into his waistband and takes a red pine tree air freshener out from between his absolutely tiny, taut, muscular, amphetamine-etched lower stomach and waist. He whips the plastic wrapper from the air freshener as fast as a medic tearing open gauze or a syringe, takes two speedy strides forward, and snaps the thing up over the giant rearview mirror hanging from the rig’s overhead console of controls.

  “You ain’t gonna smell a thing, princess, so don’t get your period just because I got some Corn Nuts.”

  “Your life is not my life, live and let live. How I feel about your snack food is none of my business,” and when Tim says this in the forced, languid pace of a man reciting mantras to keep from snapping, Modoch silently fixes a gaze of approval on him. Evidently Modoch doesn’t speak, or maybe he speaks only when spoken to, and so Matthew tries, still new to the crew, and happy to see someone after the lonely car-bound hours that followed his exchange with the maternal Reno hooker at Walgreens.

  “Hey, besides, I’ll bet those Corn Nuts are gonna start looking pretty good after a long day and a good campfire, right Mur… dock?” Modoch stares. Matthew’s eye contact shifts politely back and forth, first to Modoch’s eyes, then up to the eyes of the bison head atop Modoch’s long, furry robe, and back again. The silence lasts for what feels like minutes on end and is interrupted by Tim pressing a series of buttons that fire up the gigantic, strong, almost silent engine of the rig.

  Tim speaks up and goes down a mental checklist like a pilot, “Doors good, generators off, hook’s locked, all clear back and sides… and we’re looking good for a long, wide left out of here. We’ll come in behind that silver SUV, third in line, west entrance.”

  Tic Tac jabs a fast street-fight left at Matthew that flattens out into a handshake reciprocated. “Welcome, motherfucker! Nice to have new blood, so welcome!” and he starts laughing a speedy fast laugh that turns into a little dry coughing fit. Then he jabs the hand back up under his coat and yanks out a gift for Matthew, a pink tee shirt, a ladies’ tee shirt. He fast-jabs it at Matthew like another sporting punch to the gut and Matthew takes it, smiling. Tic Tac wouldn’t guess it, or Tim or Tatiana, or anyone else on the planet, but Matthew still gets a lump in his throat when someone gives him clothing. Someone gives you some stupid tee shirt or a slightly ill-fitting jacket that’ll almost do the job for the season coming up, that’s love. How many cardboard boxes came to those houses where he lived when nobody with his last name was left down here in this earthly fix; how many people doled out what worked best for each kid—that’s love. No matter what you might fucking think, no matter how much it might look like the short shrift, it is love and it is gigantic because it is the only kind you have.

  “Itty Bitty… Titty… Committee,” Matthew says, trying to politely decode the tee shirt like a good sport.

  “Don’t say I never gave you nothing!” And the speedy laugh is back with the dry hack.

  “But, wait, a committee is more than one person,” Matthew ventures in sporting fashion.

  “I didn’t invent the shit, Professor, I just stole it.”

  The rig starts to taxi across the tarmac ready to make its left out of the gas station and into the line of vehicles waiting to enter Yellowstone National Park. In the little video screen on the overhead console of controls, the rental Taurus is there in blue-gray black and white, starting to creep behind in tow, then slowly and silently veering right, free of the hook, and creeping along in slow motion until it crashes gently into the gas station’s Dumpster, ending its short-lived independence. Tim uses the word genius pejoratively. Matthew is still staring at a tee shirt made for a woman, but one that will fit him when he needs it.

  25

  Parklife

  AT THE WEST ENTRANCE to the park, the right lane inches along as each car ahead of it pays, as each driver gets the free park ne
wspaper and map and has to be told to put the receipt somewhere where they won’t lose it in case they leave the park and want to enter again. Tim starts to sweat the slow line, starts getting tense at how slowly the rig is moving, how long the normals are all taking to get through the gate, but then Modoch shoots him a scolding look and Tim calms down, almost out of spite. Then he takes it too far, stops the rig altogether, sets the huge hydraulic parking brake, and turns the pilot’s seat around on its swivel base to lock into a position that will allow him to flip through the channels on the flat-screen TV in the forward lounge area. Tic Tac is excited like a family dog to see the television turn on and instantly arches his neck almost straight up to watch the channels as Tim flips through them.

  Modoch meditates pensively in the giant passenger seat, staring at the gap between the rig and the cars ahead as it widens, and after about four minutes of this, he speaks:

  “This is a physical model of addiction; this is an illustration of the disease and how it takes any natural separation between the self and others and sits quietly as that gap widens.”

  Tim rolls his eyes, recommits his focus, and really tries to concentrate on the television; tries to ignore what Modoch is saying, even though Modoch speaks up so seldom that it qualifies as an occasion when his mouth is open. Tic Tac is just happy to be watching television, and says, “Oh, this one’s fucking hilarious, it’s about all these jerk-offs trying to buy houses in other countries and shit.”

  Out the windows, real mothers and fathers and children inch by in minivans and SUVs in the other ticket lines; Modoch is still staring at Tim.

  “No sense being slow and quiet like a disease or… whatever the fuck you were saying,” says Tim, trying to affect the tone of enlightenment or at least being resigned.

  Modoch goes silent like a brooding boy used to being misunderstood. Tim looks like a man who was watching television but is now watching every thought crossing his mind. He huffs a huge huff, jams his hand under the seat, jacks the lever and spins back around facing the windshield, slams the seat lever back into place, mashes his right foot into the accelerator, and the Sierra Mountain Air lurches up like a kicked horse, closing the gap left in front by cars that have paid and entered the park; families look on at the huge RV rocketing fast right up to the ticket window then slamming on the brakes. Tic Tac never stops watching television, simply letting his body bump and lurch along with the rig absentmindedly while his stare remains chained to the screen.

  Tim toggles the switch above his head that rolls the window down, the woman in the ticket booth, the ranger, smiles in olive drab and a wide-rimmed yesteryear ranger’s hat, starts to say welcome and explain how much money it costs to enter the park. Tic Tac takes his eyes off the television and snaps to. Bounds up off the sofa, takes a couple of speedy strides forward, and stops by putting his left hand up on the back of the captain’s seat and waving with his right hand. Before he can say a thing, the ranger sees who she’s got here.

  “Hi, Kelly,” the ranger says.

  “Hey, Joan.” Tic Tac beams.

  “Not even Fourth of July yet and you pulled a hop-on?”

  “Yeah, you know… we got a receipt around here somewhere, but…” A pause hangs here long enough that Matthew can feel a whole life passing by, clocks dragging calendars through days.

  “That’s fine. Stay out of trouble, head on in, guys.”

  This small exchange takes place without acknowledging that there’s a gigantic black man dressed as a bison riding shotgun. For the first handful of endless curves and bends on the road along the Madison, everyone is silent. Tic Tac turns his head the other way, back over his shoulder to look out the big side window as the river runs along the road with them. The early-season water is still carrying more than a hint of glacial aquamarine, before July comes along to render it gin clear and pristine, and well before August heat steals the high flow and leaves the river warm and shallow with a light amber stain like maple or nicotine.

  The silence breaks with Tic Tac offering one insight: “And I don’t wanna hear one fuckin’ peep about my name. Joanie can call me whatever the fuck she wants. Any of you try it and you’re waxed, grunts.”

  The park road unfurls in steady zags, a grayish white two-lane ribbon alongside rivers Madison, Firehole, Gibbon; occasional elk bedded down on the other side of the water where the grass widens into meadows. Signs alerting one to keep driving and not stop to look at the eagles nesting—this makes people stop driving in order to look at the eagles nesting. The rig makes good time, and so far the only sound out here in nature is the low din of a Cheers rerun on the Hallmark Channel playing on the flat screen, and the thin, flat narcotic hum of the HVAC system purifying and cooling the pure cool air from outside. Campgrounds pass by with names like the ghosts of the sons Matthew, Tim, Tic Tac, and Modoch don’t have—Madison, Norris, Grant. The occasional traffic jam slows things for a minute—tourists pulling to the side, three or ten cars at a time. They get out of their cars, creeping up unwisely on bison, elk, black bear, and loading their cameras with images that would tell the grim and hilarious story of a beautiful and shaky last day on the planet should they be gored or charged. Matthew makes another stab at conversation with Modoch now that there’s evidence of him being able to speak.

  “Should they be doing that; getting that close to bison and stuff?” asks Matthew.

  Modoch simply closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and adjusts the bison head atop his own head.

  Tim says, “Should who be doing what?”

  And Matthew decides to abort his stab at conversation as quickly as he started it. “Nothing.”

  Tic Tac jumps in. “I seen a fucker, one year, get gored by a bison and thrown like a little rag doll right up into the top ‘f one these pines. Funny as shit.”

  And then more silence, all the way up into the northeast corner. The Lamar Valley stretches out bigger and flatter than the whole country, huge herds of bison roam through it, wolves or coyotes are specks trotting the creek way out on the horizon of it, the whole scene a scale and sight so grand the head instantly reduces it to a painting, to an illustration in a grade-school history textbook growing up, to a mural on the wall of a trendy cowgirl bar full of lesbians from where Matthew and Tim were once ejected with force by a broad-shouldered gal. They entered the place already drunk, whooping and hollering, thinking they’d hit pay dirt—thinking they’d stumbled onto a cavalcade of women buzzed on Buck’s beer and whiskey; boots and tight pants as far as the eyes could see! And not a man in sight! In retrospect, this is what would make the whole situation seem like a baited trap. Anyway, the cruel, cruel lesbian bars of Manhattan are far from the Lamar Valley.

  The rig rolls on, America’s Serengeti taking forever and a day to track past, a sixteenth of an inch at a time, filling the entire side windows with living proof of what America used to be. Twelve or fourteen more slow-winding miles, and at Slough Creek Campground, Tim starts decelerating, starts sizing up the skinny, pockmarked entrance road into Slough like a pilot forced to land where he’d rather not be trying to land. To himself, or maybe to everyone else, Tim breathes words calmly and confidently.

  “Looking good for going in on the left; that’s my first plan. Trying to read past that pullout about fifty yards in. Everyone, eyes open for long spaces; sixty-plus and electric would be ideal up here, but we won’t find it this far out. Going left, main road to that first shoulder right, then we’ll see what our visual is for the best approach further in.”

  Tic Tac replies, although not with the calming copilot nomenclature that would have fit well here, “If you can get this fucker up there, I can get it out if need be to do the recon up ahead and report back. Full battle rattle, boss. It takes guts to get in, but it takes nuts to get out, bitch.”

  And just like that, Matthew’s new family’s residency at Slough Creek Campground begins. The rig is driven in, anchored to the one long, skinny space near the creek, which is basically the road, since the place do
esn’t look to be geared toward big-rig living. Nobody else is up here this early in the season, and the trees are still mostly bare, summer hasn’t been here yet to chase away the isolation. There’s no electricity, but a series of switches toggled on the console above Tim’s head set generators into whir and hum and the rig goes about juicing itself. Another four switches depressed in fast sequence start the whisper of stabilizing feet coming down in all four corners.

  Before anyone has stepped out onto this new planet, Tic Tac has made use of a small and rather unofficial doorway in the back lounge, an emergency exit in case the rig ever rolls. He jacks the red bar from across it; swings it open fast, shoves and shimmies his muscle and bone through to daylight; forgoes the little steel ladder; lets gravity jump him right down onto the packed dirt; and he’s darted off to the side of the stream as fast and focused as a coyote on the scent of lunch. At the stream’s edge he stops suddenly and seems to wait for waypoints and bearings to kick in—smells the air, sizes up his position relative to the trees on the far bank and to the mountain on the horizon. Without warning, his calm breaks as fast as it came; he wades out quickly, without reserve or ceremony, right into the middle of the stream. When the water reaches about neck high, he automatically pulls his chin into his chest and rolls his head down into an otter dive. His butt and feet come straight up and high into the air like Olympic form, his legs crossed tightly, he goes straight down underwater fast, stealthy and silent, creating no ripple on the surface.

  Matthew stares on with wide eyes begging explanation, face weighed down by the kind of disbelief that comes with years of steady modern living. Tim and Modoch make no notice of Tic Tac’s deft reconnaissance, and they go about straightening things inside the Sierra Mountain Air, Tim in charge of flipping up little doors containing meters and switches, seeing how much power is being generated, making sure the stabilizer legs have bitten in, peering out the windows on the starboard side to make sure there’s clearance from trees so that the awning can be switched on and deployed. Tic Tac pops up after what seems like ten minutes under the stream’s current, and he comes up in exactly the same place he made the fast muskrat dive, no matter that the currents here are strong enough to put any man off by fifteen yards at least. He pops up without a layman’s gasp, just pops up silently, eyes and forehead barely above the waterline, like he could care less if he ever breathed above water again. He’s got something in his mouth and he paddles like a beaver, just his head and mouth above the water, cuts a fast, efficient wake right to the exact spot on the bank from which his mission started. A foot or two from the bank he pops to his feet and is on land again seamlessly, walking right up to the rig and standing at the side door that Tim has now toggled and switched so that it opens in its silent spaceship slide. Tic Tac takes a big two-quart-sized ziplocked baggie from his mouth and unseals it, taking out two or three smaller packages from inside and smelling them each: cash, weed, a lighter, hashish, a little booklet of scribbled notes, a necklace, a knife, a coil of green cord and fishing line, the dried neck of a pheasant, two Twinkies.