by Jim Dodge
As the shock gradually faded, my balls settled into a tender, throbbing ache and my mind added primitive consideration to mere perception: I was exhausted. Given that exhaustion – so sorely compounded by my recent testicular trauma – I wondered whether I should stop in Wichita for food and a good night’s rest, or just pop the four bennies I had coming for dessert and bore on for K.C. and Des Moines. I wondered briefly if the problem was with my plans or plans in general, and why I seemed to keep falling into traps I didn’t know I’d set, but I caught myself short of that metaphysical deadfall and stepped instead into the snare of compromise: I ate the four bennies on the spot and an hour later, when I stopped in Wichita for gas, after examining myself for damage in the men’s room stall and finding them both tender but without obvious need of medical attention, I walked gingerly across the street to Grissom’s Liquors and Deli, where I got a fatty ham sandwich on Wonder Bread and a half-pint carton of limp slaw.
I ate in the car, distracting my palate with a perfunctory reconsideration of whether to grab a room for the night right there or make a run at Des Moines, four hundred miles upstream. It was 7:13 P.M. by the station’s Hire’s Root Beer clock: I could make Des Moines by midnight easy, which meant I could still soak an hour in a hot bath, get a solid eight hours of snooze, dally over breakfast, and hit Mason City by high noon. This sounded so much like a plan that I summarily abandoned it. I’d play it on the move – it always seemed to come to that anyway. In the unlikely event that none of the billions of unforeseen complications occurred, I could always fall back on the plan.
I headed ’em out for Kansas City feeling refreshingly realistic – getting nailed in the nuts will do that to you – and also, to my surprise, feeling playful enough to slap Jerry Lee Lewis on the box, keeping time with my fingers on the steering wheel because it proved too painful to tap my foot:
You broke my will,
What a thrill!
Goodness, gracious,
Great Balls o’ Fire!
I made the selection as an arrogantly humble acknowledgment that I could take a joke, accompanied by a silent prayer that the gods had a sense of humor.
Sailing along the Interstate somewhere between Wichita and Kansas City, I suddenly found myself deep in the drunken memory of a North Beach midnight where somebody was yelling to me through time, ‘You show me one place in the Bible where God the Father or Jesus Christ His Son laughs, and I’ll convert to Christianity. Otherwise, fuck it.’ Whose voice was it? One of the Buddhist poets, it sounded like, maybe Welch or Snyder, but whoever said it was two tables away in the wine-blurred babble and clatter of Vesuvio’s, where I was enthralled by the sight of a voluptuous redhead named Irene throwing back a shot of Jack Daniels at the end of the bar. That was its own joke, being an adolescent American male, because if it didn’t get me high, have a pussy, or hit 65 in second gear, it wasn’t of compelling concern. Who cares about the place of humor in the cosmic order when you’re nineteen years old and never had a blowjob? When there’s drugs to take and tracks to make and music that carries you away? I hadn’t sinned enough to need salvation, and hadn’t lost enough to truly laugh.
But what a thrill!
Goooodd-ness, Graaaa-shuuus;
Greaaaaaaaaat Balls o’ Fire!!!
Indeed. And if neither the Father or that lucky ol’ son had the required sense of humor, perhaps it resided in the Holy Spirit, in speed and music and fucking your brains out, in roaming the mountains and roaring through the night, the bare wire, the straight shot. That might be funny.
It was altogether too fitting that my little reverie on the possibilities of divine humor was obliterated by the pulsing flash of a red light in my rearview mirror. Since I was going close to 100, it wasn’t gaining much, which gave me time to die a thousand deaths before I instinctively punched it and instantly changed my mind. I came off the gas and pulled slowly into the right-hand lane, hoping with all my heart that it wasn’t a cop, and if it was, that he had someone other than me in mind.
It was a fire engine, a big red fire engine. I pulled over to hug the shoulder as it wailed by. I was just about to put my foot back down on the pedal when another red light came streaking up, and then another: a state trooper followed by an ambulance. Wreck ahead, probably a bad one. I told myself that if I saw another mangled five-year-old kid I’d drink that bottle of speed, bash the Bopper’s Cadillac through the Heavenly Gates, and grab God by the throat and demand a justification, an explanation, and some satisfaction. A dead kid isn’t funny.
It was two miles up the road, and I was the fourth or fifth car on the scene. The cops had blocked both northbound lanes about two hundred yards from the wreck. I couldn’t see much in the distracting light of flares and whirling red flashers, but it didn’t look like the fire crew was necessary – they were standing around jawing as the flames died down. The charred hulk of an upside-down car was lying diagonally in the right lane, nose just touching the shoulder, rear end jutting out on the road. The air reeked of burnt rubber and scorched grease. It looked bad, so bad I didn’t want to look again; in ten years of driving and towing I hadn’t seen many much worse.
I powered down my window and yelled to a nearby trooper, asking if they needed any help.
‘Nope, no thanks,’ he called back. ‘It’s not as bad as it looks. Tow truck lost it – clevis snapped. Nobody inside. We’ll have a lane open in about ten minutes.’
Wonderful news all around. I had to strain to see the tow truck another hundred yards down, its flashers barely visible in the oily haze. Probably take a squadron of troopers to write up the citations on the driver. Never lost one myself, but there’s lots of good drivers that have. The trooper didn’t mention the safety chain, but I fraternally hoped it had failed and hadn’t been forgotten.
They opened the left lane about fifteen minutes later. By then traffic was backed up a quarter-mile, but I was right in front. I was so gleefully anticipating some open road to run on while half the night shift of Oklahoma law enforcement was otherwise engaged that I was almost past the smoldering hulk before I recognized it was a ’59 Cadillac – impossible to tell the model, but even crashed, burned, and upside-down you couldn’t mistake the space-shot styling.
I didn’t know if this wreck in my path was supposed to be funny or not. I didn’t laugh, but I smiled – grimly, I admit – because if I took it as something beyond indifferent coincidence or random connection, then I had to think of it as a sign or omen, and to decide whether it augured well or ill: well if it foreshadowed accomplishment, the gift aflame, delivered, nobody inside, nobody hurt; ill if it portended some pitiful failure, a weak connection snapping, an opportunity squandered to ignorance, negligence, delusion – merely lost instead of released. I wasn’t sure what it meant – nothing new there – but I didn’t like it.
However, I liked the open road a lot and put everything else behind me in no time flat, including endless speculation about unclear omens. This seemed an ideal time to put KRZY back on the air, and since 110 mph requires most of your attention, I just grabbed a handful and stacked them on the spindle, announcing to the night, ‘This is KRZY coming on to darkness, Floorboard George flopping the sides and babbling in your ear. What you hear is what you get, and it sounds like what we got is Jerry Lee and “A Whole Lot of Shaking Going On.” Won’t be doing much shaking myself, you understand, having received a bad blow to the go-daddies earlier this evening, but you guys go right ahead and strut yo’ stuff.’
Less than halfway through the stack, the program was interrupted by the greatest traveling salesman in the world. Clad only in dark pants and a white undershirt, bouncing up and down barefoot alongside the road in 35° weather, I might’ve guessed he was the craziest fucker within a thousand miles, or the best Human Pogo Stick act west of the Mississippi, but it never even crossed my mind that he might be the greatest traveling salesman in the world until he was in the Caddy and shaking my hand, introducing himself as Phillip Lewis Kerr, ‘please c
all me Lew,’ and handing me a silver card with deeply embossed blue print that read:
PHILLIP LEWIS KERR
Greatest Traveling Salesman in the World
(212) 698–7000
He was an old guy, easily in his early sixties, belly slumping over his waistband, but not at all sloppy – in fact, his general bearing, the close-cropped grey beard and neatly trimmed mustache, the small blue eyes forcefully alert and mildly amused, the directness of his manner and speech, all combined to imbue him with the calm dignity of a man who knows what he’s about, even if he’s hitchhiking half-naked on a freezing night.
I introduced myself as he stowed a battered leather attaché case under the front seat. His feet were broad, gnarly toed, and blue with cold; I don’t know whether I shivered in sympathy or at the icy blast pouring in through the open door. Suddenly I was freezing.
‘Hey, Lew,’ I hissed, jaw clamped to keep from chattering. ‘Unless you got more gear to load, how ’bout putting some door in that hole.’
He looked at me, startled. ‘Oh! I am sorry.’ He swung the door shut, killing the domelight. In the darkness his voice was disembodied. ‘That was thoughtless of me, George, inexcusably thoughtless. The warmth was so welcome I didn’t imagine you could be cold. And it is cold outside, I assure you.’ I felt the seat tremble as he shivered beside me.
I put the Caddy back on the asphalt and eased it up through the gears, still very much aware of the tenderness in my loins. Reminded by my own discomfort, I asked Lew if he’d like the heat turned up.
‘Oh no, not at all. It’s better to thaw slowly. At my age the cell walls can’t tolerate rapid changes; they rupture.’
‘Never considered that,’ I said truthfully. Everything he was saying seemed forthright and direct as it entered my ear, but seemed to make oblique jumps in my brain. We weren’t connecting. I was willing to grant that the problem was in the receiver. However, I didn’t want him to get going on his cell walls the way old folks sometimes do, elaborating their ills with lurid physiological details of how the flesh fails – I had a couple of aching examples of my own – so I changed the subject by asking him if he was going to Kansas City.
‘I’ll be going there, yes. Yourself?’
‘Des Moines – and I’m running late. I may just drop you off at the closest warm place to an off-ramp.’
‘Well,’ he began, pausing so long I thought he was through, ‘you must have left awfully late, because at this speed you would have to be early.’ He smiled tentatively.
I smiled in kind. ‘Lew, you mind if I ask if you always dress like this for freezing weather?’
‘My goodness, no,’ he said. ‘I sold my coat, shirt, tie, socks, and shoes to a young fellow that works in the oil fields. He had a date with a young lady this evening, but he’d stopped with his friends after work for a few drinks and didn’t have time to drop by a haberdashery.’
Again, this didn’t sound right to me. ‘Didn’t he want the pants, too? He’d look strange wearing crusty old Levis with a coat and tie.’
‘Oh, he inquired about the trousers, but I couldn’t risk the possibility of being incarcerated for indecent exposure.’
‘Rather die of regular exposure,’ I asked lightly.
‘I figured someone would come along shortly. And besides, the trousers were too small.’
‘I’m glad you explained things, because I’d have to wonder why the world’s greatest salesman couldn’t afford to put some fabric between his flesh and a nasty night. That your usual line, men’s clothes?’
‘I sell anything and everything. I’ve found that in the long run diversity is stability.’
‘Looks like you’re about sold out.’
‘Indeed I am. It’s been an interesting trip.’
I figured out what was bothering me. ‘You know, Lew, I’ve wanted to ask you a question ever since you handed me your business card here, but I can’t see a way to ask it without sounding offensive, like I was challenging your credentials, and that’s not what I mean to do.’
‘George,’ he said, ‘I’m a salesman. I started with a lemonade stand in Sweetwater, Indiana, when I was five years old. I learned very early that it was expensive to take offense. It deflects you from your purpose.’
I wanted to ask what his purpose was – profit? the transaction itself? the necessary appeasement of demons and dreams? – but didn’t want to lose my original question. ‘All right, since you won’t take offense, I was wondering about what it says on your card, that you’re the greatest salesman in the world.’
He interrupted softly, ‘Actually, the greatest traveling salesman.’
‘Right. But it was “greatest” that grabbed me. I mean, how do you know you’re the greatest in the world, traveling or standing still? Is there some measure, an objective standard, a committee of judges, a general consensus, or do you just step out and claim the title?’
‘George, you’re a remarkable man, the one out of a thousand whose first reaction doesn’t concern farmers’ daughters.’ Evidently sensing my puzzlement, he added helpfully, ‘You know, the traveling salesman and the farmer’s daughter – there’s a tradition of jokes. I’m sure you’ve heard some.’
‘Yeh, sure, but I can’t remember any offhand.’ In fact I was trying hard to remember one – an act, considering my mental state, akin to fishing in a parking lot – when I realized that he’d evaded my question with a little flourish of distracting flattery. But I was too tired and too wired to play whatever game I sensed was going on, so I rammed straight ahead – not heedlessly, for I did understand something was going on, but with a wariness recklessly short of giving a rat’s ass. ‘Lew, I asked the question because I wanted your answer.’
‘Mr Gastin,’ he said, his voice soft as a cotton swab, ‘I thought I’d lost you there for a minute. Perhaps you should disregard your tardiness and rest in Kansas City. And though obviously less capable, I would be glad to drive.’
The abuse of amphetamine is notorious for producing bad paranoia, and I got a sudden, deep stab: old Lew was a hit man hired by Scumball to murder me and wreck the car. I had to be cool, keep a sense of craziness in the air, keep my control – I doubted if he’d make his move while I had the wheel in my hands, especially at 110. ‘Appreciate your concern, Lew.’ I giggled. ‘I admit that my mental health is not all it should be. Not at all. Lately I’ve been having these recurring losses of thought, and frankly I’m alarmed by their increasing frequency. Only thing that seems to stop them temporarily is a hard knee in the balls. But again I think you’ve squirmed the question. It’s a fair question. Why don’t you answer it?’
‘If you insist,’ he said evenly, ‘though it’s pointless.’
‘Not to me.’
‘But George, you would have absolutely no way of knowing whether I was lying or not.’
‘That’s exactly my point,’ I said and, not having the slightest idea what my point was, jumped: ‘You see, it doesn’t matter if I can know the truth of what you tell me; the point is, I trust you to tell the truth, exactly as you trust my belief. And if the truth is boring or embarrassing, then tell me an illuminating lie. We’ve got to have faith in each other. I get a little incoherent when I’m this far gone, especially considering I’m pretty fucked-up to start with, so let me put it as bluntly as I can: Answer or get out.’
He said it quietly, as if to himself, ‘No.’ I then understood that he wasn’t a hit man, but I’d already committed myself. I was lifting my foot from the gas and angling for the shoulder when he said, only slightly louder, ‘No, Mr Gastin, I will not converse under duress. And certainly if trust is your point, duress betrays it. If you’ll withdraw your ill-considered threat, I’ll answer the question gladly, as I intended. After all, I did invite it. And it is a fair question.’
That coercion denies trust is obvious. I was properly chastened, both for my glaring lack of logic and my paranoid delusion. ‘You’re welcome to the ride,’ I said, ‘whether you answer or not.’
>
‘Thank you.’ There wasn’t a trace of triumph or mockery in his voice.
I was about to burst into tears again, felt my throat tighten and my eyes begin to burn. I turned and screamed. ‘Fuck this song and dance! You wandering half-naked and coming on so calm and coy, who the fuck knows what your game is? Who knows whose … whose …’ but I’d lost it, and in frustrated rage slammed my open palm against the dash, the slap sharp as a gunshot.
Lewis Kerr flinched badly, recoiling toward the door. But he spoke in the same tone of imperturbable sympathy. ‘George, if you’ll permit a candid observation, you’re in bad shape.’
‘No shit!’ I howled in agreement. ‘Would you sell your soul?’ I hurled it at him, more demand than question, and without immediate reference except my bad shape.
He looked confused for a moment, then said, ‘Don’t be silly.’
‘Do you have a soul to sell?’
‘Yes, I make that assumption.’
I wanted to nail his slippery ass down. ‘Why,’ I asked him, my throat tight, ‘are you being so fucking careful?’
‘Because you’re not,’ he shot back, some heat in his voice for the first time.
‘Why should I be?’
‘Because you’re terrified, and terror inspires disastrous stupidity, and stupidity is slavery. Because, George, you’re not a slave.’
If you’ve ever been inside a slaughterhouse and seen a big, prime steer crumple and splay at the stun-hammer’s blow, that’s close to what I felt like – both steer and observer. I was floating out of myself. I couldn’t think in words. I couldn’t tell if I was breathing or not, if my tongue was still in my mouth, if it was the car or the road moving, or the night moving through us both. My normally narrow field of awareness was suddenly constricted to a single sensation of terror. Not the profound cellular fear of death, or of time’s star-jeweled movement and stone gears grinding on, or the gangrenous dread that I was among those randomly picked to be randomly destroyed, any time now, without warning. No, it was an embarrassing terror, like you were lost in your own house.
