Henry started talking like he was in a daze. “It goes all the way across. The top is like a jagged line, all the way north that you can see and as far south as you can see. They’re gonna get taller and taller as we drive toward them, and there’s no way to tell from here how tall that’s gonna be.”
I joined in. “I can count . . . ten, twelve . . . I don’t know . . . a dozen and a half different peaks, not all the same height but all in the same family. Not all in a straight row, some in front of the others and closer to us.”
“Only the tallest few have snow,” Henry said.
“From this distance, they look almost blue. And one of them has poked a hole clean through a little cloud. Looks like it’s wearing it for a hat.”
We were quiet till Paul said, “Purple mountain majesties.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. “That’s it exactly. Just exactly.”
We sat in silence for a few more minutes until I could focus on the road in front of us and drive on.
The town of Deer Trail blended in so well with the backdrop of the mountains in the distance that we were nearly upon it before we saw it. It looked to be about the size of Lexington. We motored into town and asked the first person we came across if there was a Ford dealer in town. He looked at us like each of us had three heads and none of them spoke English.
Paul piped up from the back. “What about a smith or a bicycle shop?”
The man studied Paul’s face and then pulled back like he had almost stepped in something. He motioned with one hand—up a ways and over a little—and I explained this to Paul. I didn’t bother to thank the man before we went on.
We found the bicycle shop and showed the mechanic our worn-out tire casing.
He said, “Well, now, that there’s ready for the scrap heap. But I can sell you some patches and rubber cement that might could help if you have any more trouble before Denver.”
Paul paid for three patches.
Henry asked for two more. He searched all his pockets and was starting to panic before he remembered I had his money. “Gimme a dollar, John, would ya?”
I pulled the whole wad of bills and handed it over.
He shook his head. “Naw, go on and hang on to it for me.”
We eyeballed each other, and I nodded.
That night, we found a place that was half cafe, half tavern, and half music hall. Jake’s Roadhouse, it was called, and it was the first time since Topeka we’d seen someplace with almost as many cars as horses parked outside.
Inside, the place jumped. Musicians played fiddle, bass, guitar, and banjo, and you could almost hear them over the foot stomping and hollering going on. Women wove their way through the tables carrying trays of plates and glasses way up over their heads, and most of them looked like they’d been interrupted while they were getting dressed. Three couples twirled and stepped and nearly crashed into the guitar player on the little space set aside for dancing. Everybody looked like they’d gotten a large head start on us. It looked like a fun place.
“Get you boys a beer?” our waitress asked.
I said, “Sure.”
Paul said, “Yes, please.”
And Henry said, “Milk for me.”
She gave him a hard look and grinned. “Sure you don’t need a little hair of the dog? Shot of whiskey with a raw egg?”
I was afraid Henry was going to give her his dinner as an answer, but he swallowed and said, “No, ma’am. Just milk.”
She came back with mugs in a couple minutes and shouted over the music, asking if we were eatin’ or if we had eaten—hard to tell which.
Henry and I squinted at each other.
“Want some ribs?” she hollered.
We all nodded to that.
I looked around some more while we waited. There was a knot of men crouching close to the floor over in one corner, and every once in a while, one would whoop or yell something foul you could hear even over the music. I finally could see through the crowd that they were rolling dice. I noticed three of them were wearing sidearms, and I did a hasty survey around the place looking for holsters. There were lots of them, and those were just on the men who weren’t hiding them behind tables. I got Henry’s attention and pantomimed a pistol, then jerked my head toward the bigger part of the crowd. He frowned, looked around, then met my eyes with a worried look that I was pretty sure mirrored my own.
I was thinking maybe Jake’s was fun more like a picture show is fun. You might want to watch, but you don’t necessarily want to be in it. I couldn’t imagine this many guns and that much alcohol—and gambling, to boot—without somebody taking a bullet before the night was over. It just seemed unlikely when you added things up.
Then the woman who’d brought us our mugs walked by, and a man at the next table pinched her bottom. She turned around and slapped him, and he stood up and punched her in the face. She went down like a sack of potatoes.
Henry and I both started up out of our chairs, but a quick look around told us nobody else had taken notice. Like it was a regular thing. And before the man sat back down, we saw the Colt revolver strapped to his thigh. Henry and I met eyes again and sank back down in our chairs.
His escapade the day before had reminded us how quick a good time could head south, and it looked like the south covered a whole lot more territory here. And I know I was remembering we didn’t have a friendly sheriff to come rescue us this time.
A different woman brought our food. We ate, then paid and left. Paul didn’t ask why we were in such a hurry. Maybe he didn’t like the sound of the place.
From the car out front, we could still hear the ruckus. It took on an even worse feel apart from it. The thought came to me it might be some kind of hell in there. Like maybe all of it went on around the clock day after day, month after month, until it wasn’t even fun anymore and everyone wanted to leave but couldn’t. Maybe we could come back anytime to see the same people trying just as hard to have a good time, when really the whole thing was ugly and sour.
Paul interrupted my thoughts. “This is just a suggestion, mind you, but what do you think about camping out tonight? I could do with some quiet.” It was almost like he’d seen what I was thinking.
We headed west out of town about a mile and decided anywhere was the same as another. There was nothing around except about a million stars and those mountains in the distance, their snowcaps showing pale blue in the moonlight. Everything to see was above us.
We built a fire out of a little wood we’d picked up on our way out of town and sat around it. A reflection of the flame flickered in Paul’s pale eyes.
“Is it just me,” I started, “or was that just about the worst good-time place there could be?”
Henry blew out a breath. “I thought it was just my hangover talking till you pointed out all the guns and that guy took out a couple of that woman’s teeth.”
“What?” Paul sat up straight. We had to explain what had happened, including why we hadn’t done anything about it. Doing nothing still seemed like the right decision to have made at the time, but that didn’t make it feel good.
“All I knew was it felt a little . . . desperate,” Paul said.
My turn. “Yeah. That was part of it too. Like everybody was trying too hard.” I glanced at his eyes and shivered. “I don’t know how to explain the feeling I got when we left except if we went back right now, I don’t know I’d be all that surprised if the place wasn’t even there.” It was pretty much the opposite of my earlier thought, but either way seemed possible.
“You think we had supper with ghosts?” Henry sniffed. “The food was real. Real good too.”
“I think I know what you mean,” Paul said. “Kind of like it might have appeared, all of a cloth, just for tonight?”
“Yeah,” I told him. “Something like that.”
We all sat with our own thoughts until Paul spoke up some minutes later. “Have you ever thought about what you would do if you could drop yourself into another place or another time? Wher
e you’d go?”
I’d never given a second to such a fancy notion. But wide-open desert does provide a lot of room for the imagination to grow.
In no time, I was imagining myself some kind of Revolutionary hero like Paul Revere or riding a raft down the Mississippi with Mark Twain when he was a boy.
“Where would you go, Paul?” Henry asked.
I hadn’t gotten around to wondering about either of them.
“I’d go back to the day I was born and trade places with Elizabeth.” Paul’s voice was flat.
“Who?” Henry asked.
Paul sat so long I thought he’d made up his mind not to answer, and I wondered why he’d brought it up in the first place. But then he shook his head. “My twin sister.”
“You got a twin?” Henry sounded as surprised as I was.
“Had a twin.” Paul started rubbing his fingers, but slow—more preoccupied than nervous. “‘Perfect little angel.’ That’s what my mother always says. ‘Perfect.’”
I wanted to know but didn’t want to ask.
Henry obliged. “What happened to her?”
“She was born dead. I came out first, and she came out with my cord wrapped around her neck. She never took a breath.”
A piece of wood in the fire cracked so loud we all jumped.
My heart was beating like an Indian drum when Henry said, “It wasn’t your fault.”
Paul snorted. “I’ve told myself that for nineteen years. But if I could go back, anywhere and anytime? It would be the blind baby who died.”
We sat in the quiet until Henry spoke. “I’d go back before I was born too.”
Paul said, “You wish you’d never been born? Aren’t we a pair?”
“No,” Henry said. His face was fierce. “Not that. But I’d be born right. Not hurt my mother like I did. Grow up with her alive and maybe my pa wouldn’t’a . . .”
“It wasn’t your fault either,” Paul said.
The words hung in the air like a song just finished.
I had imagined myself larger than life, some kind of special, while Paul and Henry just imagined themselves being wanted.
All of a sudden, ordinary seemed a lot better than it had before.
CHAPTER NINE
We headed toward the mountains straightaway the next morning and felt the Model T strain for the first time as the hills got a little steeper, like practice for what was ahead. The view changed every foot we moved, the peaks getting taller by the second, and there was a certain charge in the air. Something about making it to Denver felt big. I for sure didn’t know anyone who’d been there.
I was in the backseat, studying the map. “Looks like a town called Byers coming up. Maybe we can look for dinner there.”
“All we do is look for food and someplace to sleep.” Henry had been in a bad mood all morning—got up on the wrong side of the bedroll, I guess.
“Mountains!” Paul bellowed.
Henry slammed on the brake. Good thing he did, because I jumped and the map flew out of my hands and fluttered out behind us. I scrambled over the back door.
Henry laid into Paul. “What the hell was that for?”
Paul was wearing a shit-eating grin when I climbed back in. “Just thought I’d describe the countryside.”
“Well, do it without scaring the hell out of the driver, would ya?”
Paul hooted. “What? Afraid you’ll steer over into traffic?”
We hadn’t met anyone, horse or automobile, outside any town since Burlington.
And I hadn’t seen the two of them squabble since before Henry was laid up sick in Junction City. It was comforting in a way. Like stepping out of a new pair of shoes that pinch and into the pair you’ve worn for a year.
They went on like kid brothers until I determined to drown them out. “Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam . . .” It was hollering more than singing and felt twice as good.
Henry turned around and shouted something I couldn’t hear over my own “Where the deer and the antelope play . . .”
“I’ve got your goddamn discouraging word,” he said when I took a breath.
It struck me so funny I choked.
Paul joined in laughing.
When we’d caught our air, Paul said, “Henry?”
“What?”
“It is my understanding that the skies are not cloudy all day!”
And we set off laughing again.
Henry looked disgusted and put the car back in gear.
In Byers, Henry pouted all through a meat loaf plate while Paul carried on like it was the happiest day of his life. It was almost like the talk around the fire the night before had bound Henry up and set Paul free.
I guess there’s not much difference between having nothing and having nothing to lose, except how you look at it. And that view is always subject to change.
After dinner, as bad as I wanted to see Denver, I wasn’t ready to jump back into the Ford so soon.
I guess Paul wasn’t either. When we stepped outside the May Cafe, he tilted his head back and sniffed the air. Then he licked a pointer finger and held it up like he was checking the wind.
“What?” Henry repeated his last word from an hour earlier.
“Do I detect, somewhere in the area, beer?” Paul tilted his head to the side, considering.
“Kinda early, ain’t it?” That was rich, coming from Henry.
Paul pretended to take a watch out of his pocket and study it. “Nope. John? Join me in a spot of barley tea?”
“Sure.” I took his elbow and walked down the street and across to a place named Bar.
It was just opening up for the day, and we had the place to ourselves, along with the little man behind the counter. He looked like he was made from one long tendon, more wire than muscle. Cannibals would have passed him up as too tough. He wore a ring of slate-colored hair around a shiny dome and looked like he’d traded beaks with a hawk. “Who are you?” he said.
Byers was a Wakenda-sized town, and I guess he didn’t see many strangers.
“Tom, Dick, and Harry,” Paul answered, still wearing the grin he’d woken up with.
“Jesus, Joseph, and”—Henry gave Paul a little shove—“Mary.”
Oh, shit. I hoped we hadn’t happened upon a Bible-thumper.
“Huh. Looks to me like Asshole, Butthole, and Twat.”
My shoulders relaxed. Funny thing, being happy to be called Twat. Butthole. Or whichever one I was.
We carried mugs to a table, and when he was through setting up supplies for the day, he brought a cup of coffee over and sat down with us.
“So who wants to tell their life story first?” His features were so sharp, you’d never suspect he was a friendly sort.
None of us answered straightaway.
“How about you?”
When Paul didn’t answer, the man elbowed him.
“Oh. I’m blind.”
The man squinted. “You deaf too?”
“No, sir, I’m not. But you have to say my name for me to know you’re talking to me.”
“Ah.” The man looked like he was waiting. “Well? You with the movie-picture looks. What’s your name?”
I kicked Paul under the table. “He’s talking to you.”
Paul’s ears turned red.
“He don’t know he’s pretty,” Henry explained.
“He thinks he looks like a buffalo,” I said.
“He don’t know what a buffalo looks like either,” Henry argued.
The man’s face turned back and forth like he was watching a game of catch. Then he said, “Enough of that. How about your story all together? You got to have one.”
So we told him. Between us, we told it all to this stranger, who got up and refilled our mugs whenever they were empty.
Getting wrapped up in telling about yourself will help you forget you’ve got a case of grumpiness, I guess, or at least that’s how it seemed in Henry’s case. It’s safe to say, too, we were all glad to have someone to talk to
other than one another.
When we’d got caught up to the present, Paul asked the man if he’d heard any recent word of the big fight coming up.
He stared at his coffee cup before answering. “Well, it’s a subject I’ve tried my best to keep out of here. Pouring alcohol into a hothead is about like throwing gasoline on a fire, you know. And there don’t seem to be any cool heads that can talk on the subject.”
“I’m just curious,” Paul told him. “I’m not sure we’ve kept up with all the news.”
The man stared at the cup in front of him. “I know there’s some preacher out east got up a petition to stop the fight on the grounds it ain’t Christian.”
Paul said, “Because they’re just beating on each other, instead of nailing somebody to a piece of wood?”
The man chuckled deep in his throat. “You got a point there. Then there’s some—the governor of California one of them—saying Johnson’s planning to throw the fight.”
Henry spoke up. “We heard that too. Because somebody’s bound to kill him if he wins.”
“But if he were afraid of that, why would he sign on in the first place?” Paul said.
The man looked over his shoulder toward the door. “No, like most things in this world, it comes down to filthy lucre. Money. This Governor Gillett claims the moving-picture people out there explained the whole deal to him. Johnson and Jeffries both stand to make a whole hell of a lot more money on the movie of the fight if Jeffries wins.”
What a thought. All this talk and the possibility, when all was said and done, it wouldn’t amount to any more than what outcome would better line the pockets of two men already rich.
“What do you think, Mr. I-don’t-know-your-name?” Paul slurred a little.
“I think . . . I believe . . . it might rain tomorrow. You boys might want to get on to Denver before it does.” He smiled before he stood up and took his coffee cup back behind the bar.
We paid up and moved on.
Seeing America Page 18
