by Jim Dodge
‘My pleasure,’ Lew said. ‘I know you’ll ignore me, but George, you shouldn’t go on much farther without some rest. It’s not helping.’
‘Three more hours and I’m soaking in a hot bath.’ I pulled over onto the shoulder and stopped. ‘I’m tempted to kidnap you for company and counsel, but I need to be alone for a while to think, to make up my mind.’
‘Make up a good one,’ the greatest traveling salesman in the world advised me as he offered a little wave in farewell.
As I nosed back onto the blacktop I caught a glimpse of him in the rearview mirror as he sprinted across the freeway to the southbound lanes and stuck his thumb up for a ride back the way he’d come. Something else to think about.
But I don’t remember thinking about that or anything else on the drive into Des Moines. I don’t remember the drive, either. The only evidence that I actually did it is that I woke up in a Des Moines motel the next morning. Between dropping off Lewis Kerr and waking up is pretty much a hole; there are a few clinging fragments, and if they were the high points I can understand why the rest are forgotten. Perhaps my strongest memory is a feeling of frustrated rage that I’d been cheated out of Paradise. I remember a huge green figure that seemed to beckon to me. I recall giving money to a sallow young man with a prominent Adam’s apple who – except for a bright green blazer – looked like an apprentice embalmer. There was one sliver of pleasure, the immense relief I felt as I slid into a steaming bath, but the next memory is of screaming awake in cold, grease-slicked water, terrified I’d drowned my ghost. I remember clawing and sloshing my way out of the tub, the freezing linoleum, and – most vividly – the explosive bitterness in my mouth as I scrabbled on hands and knees to puke in the toilet. I remember passing the wall heater as I crawled toward the bed and stopping to crank it up full blast before I died of exposure. Still dripping wet, I heaved myself up on the bed and wriggled under the covers. The last memory-shard of that night is so faint it may have been a dream: uncontrollable shivers that became convulsions; praying they would stop before my skeleton flew apart; begging the mercy of every god I could remember, from Allah to Zeus. After that, nothing.
Memory did not resume gently. I woke the next morning convulsed by a heart-stopping shock that was like getting hit with a souped-up cattle prod. Phone! my brain screeched. Nightstand. To your right. I saw it. A green and yellow plastic phone that resembled an ear of corn. ‘Please don’t!’ I blurted just as it rang again. I reached to pick it up and make it quit when an alarm went off in my brain stem – who knows you’re here? who knows you’re here? – and the crank of adrenalin turned my mind over; it was idling rough, but it was running. The phone rang again. Nobody knows I’m here, wherever it is. The phone rang again. Maybe it was the gods returning my call. It rang again. Whoever invented the telephone’s alleged ‘bell’ should have his skull drilled with a dull bit until it’s a gossamer of bone. I snatched up the receiver, lifted it to my ear, but didn’t speak.
‘Good morning!’ a scratchy recording of a pert female voice began brightly, ‘this is your wake-up call as requested.’ I didn’t remember requesting one, but then again I didn’t remember much of anything. I relaxed as the voice continued, ‘Thank you for staying with us at the Jolly Green Giant Motel. If you’re hungry, may we suggest Pancake Paradise, conveniently located next to the motel. And please keep in mind that any prolonged irregularity in your bowel habits or the presence of blood in the stool are both warning signs of rectal cancer and you should see a doctor immediately. It’s been our pleasure to serve you. We hope you’ve enjoyed your stay. If you’ll be journeying on today, have a safe and successful trip, and do stop and see us if you get back this way again.’
Rectal cancer? Blood? Stool? My brain denied it. I kept the phone to my ear. ‘Good morning!’ she began again, and I listened intently through ‘signs of rectal cancer,’ then decisively hung up. The room was gorged with rank humidity. I was sweating and shivering. The bed looked like I’d been cavorting with a school of mermaids all night. I was simultaneously numb-dumb and jangled with an unfocused frenzy. Muscles in my body twitched randomly. I wasn’t feeling well. In fact, objectively, I was a wretched mess. Subjectively, however, all I needed was a dozen hits of speed. Soon. Otherwise I was going to turn into a big clot of algae.
The speed was in … where? The bottle. The bottle of speed. Now I was getting somewhere. Under the seat of the car, right. Car? Where’s the car? Parked where? Keys? Pants? To think and crave at the same time is extremely difficult, particularly when you’re handicapped by the loss of recent memory.
If you think I bolted bare-ass from the room, keys clutched in a sweaty palm, and careened around the parking lot looking for something large and white with swept fins sporting dual bullet taillights and a bottle of amphetamine under the seat, you’ve forgotten – as I had until that moment – my purpose in subjecting myself to exhaustion, amnesia, drug withdrawals, the dangers of the road, and rectal cancer in wake-up calls. It was delivery day, arrival, the point of completion, and I’d damn near forgotten. ‘You pathetic piece of shit,’ I said aloud. ‘Must really be important, a deeply serious matter of love, music, spirit. But first get that speed. Don’t stand there jerking yourself off with this gift-of-love horse-shit. You can go get the speed or you can get serious.’
I got serious. It wasn’t what I felt like doing – what I felt like doing was a tall stack of crank – but when Saint George came galloping in on his ethereal white charger, I submitted to what I wanted to be rather than what I was.
Following Saint George’s command, I marched to the bathroom. The undrained water in the tub was slicked with grey congealed oils, but it was an enchanted lake with lily pads compared to the toilet, which I understandably, if unfortunately, hadn’t flushed after vomiting. ‘Take a good look in the mirror,’ Saint George ordered. I obeyed. Not as bad as the toilet bowl, but if the blood in my eyes had been in my stool I would’ve been fanning the Yellow Pages under Physicians.
‘This is what you’ve come to,’ Saint George sneered. ‘But you don’t have to live your life like this. You don’t have to die with pee-stains on your underwear in a scabby motel room reeking of disinfectant, holding your broken dreams in your arms like some ghostly lover whose every touch you failed. This bathroom is the image of your soul. Clean it up.’
I cleaned the bathroom till it sparkled, then started on myself. First a hot shower, then a cold one, followed by a shave and a clean change of clothes. That my duffle bag and shaving kit were already in the room was proof I’d at least retained some mental functions the night before. Though I was trying to be playful about it, I was distressed by the black-out. My last coherent memory was of Lew Kerr selling me my ghost, and that was hardly encouraging. I hoped my ghost wasn’t as fucked-up as I was. ‘You fight with what you have,’ Saint George rebuked me, his formidable white charger trembling for action. ‘Go eat, and then let’s do it.’
When you’re bullwhipping yourself with self-loathing, there’s a tendency to want to spread the pain. I made a point of returning the key to the office instead of leaving it in the room, hoping that the sallow young man was on duty; a few lashes might get his blood moving. That I was disappointed to find a freckle-faced woman in her mid-twenties in the office was evidence of my mean mood. She was pleasantly chubby, with a cute nose and bright hazel eyes, wearing more make-up than she needed – the milky farmer’s daughter of a traveling salesman’s wettest dreams. I was disconcerted by her healthy glow, but any inclination to spare the lash vanished at her cheerful chirp of a greeting: ‘Good morning, Dr Gass.’ Hers was the same perky voice I’d heard on the wake-up call.
‘Wrong.’ I slapped the room key on the counter. ‘It might’ve been a bearable morning had it not been besmirched by the malignant anus of your wake-up call.’
The weight of her collapsing smile bowed her head. I felt like I’d run over a puppy. ‘I like words,’ I told her. ‘I read the dictionary with breakfast. I’m secretly vai
n about my abilities to express myself in all sorts of situations, and in company ranging from scumballs to poets. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been sick with the flu this week, but I find I can’t even begin to express my disgust at the utter tastelessness of including the warning signs of rectal cancer in a wake-up call.’
She lifted her face, tears trembling in the corners of her eyes. ‘Try “putrid.” Or “hideous.” “A grossly thoughtless insult to human sensibility and the hope of a new day.” That’s the best one so far. “Sick” and “disgusting” are the most common.’ She paused to knuckle the brimming tears. ‘I get ten complaints every morning.’ She sniffled, sniffled again, then tried to smile.
I wasn’t moved. ‘If you get complaints every morning,’ I said icily, ‘why do you persist in including it? Why not remove it?’
‘I want to,’ she pleaded, ‘but Mr Hilderbrand won’t let me.’
‘Who is Mr Hilderbrand?’ He was going to pay double, for my pain and hers.
‘He’s the owner.’
‘Is he here?’
She shook her head. ‘Excuse me a moment, please.’ She went into an adjoining room, out of view. I could hear her blowing her nose.
I was waiting like a moray eel when she returned. ‘Will Mr Hilderbrand be in soon?’
‘Not till this evening.’ Her voice was a bit tight and breathless, but steady.
‘Do you have his home number? I see no purpose in haranguing you if you’re only doing it at his insistence.’
‘He’s at the hospital most of the day.’
‘A mental hospital, I assume.’ Spare the rod, spoil the child. Too blind to see.
‘Oh no, of course not. His wife is dying of cancer. Rectal cancer. I mean, don’t you see? That’s why. Harriet – that’s his wife – knew something was wrong but she was too embarrassed to go to the doctor or even tell Mr Hilderbrand until it was too late. It’s so sad. Embarrassed by a thing like that. They’ve been married twenty-nine years.’
‘Do they love each other?’ It was a foolish question, but far less foolish than I felt.
She appeared baffled by the question. ‘I suppose so. Twenty-nine years is a lot, and he spends all his time with her at the hospital.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say, foolish or not, so nodded my head as if I understood.
She continued, ‘For a while I told him about the complaints, but he wouldn’t budge. He said people have to face what’s real. That it needs to be reinforced or they’ll ignore it.’
‘I agree. But why make you say it? Why make you suffer the consequences?’
‘Well, to tell the truth’ – a flicker of a smile – ‘Mr Hilderbrand has a squeaky voice, and it’s worse on tape. And every day for the last six weeks he’s been at the hospital with his wife – that’s suffering enough without the complaints. So I try to handle them and not bother him.’
‘What’s your name?’
‘Carol.’
‘Carol, you have a fine heart.’
‘That’s nice of you to say.’ Her eyes glistened with tears. She gave a funny little shrug of her shoulders, swiped at the tears with a tissue crumpled in her hand, then managed an awkward smile.
‘Could I borrow a paper and pen? I’d like to leave Mr Hilderbrand a note.’
‘Of course.’ She was glad to have something to do besides fight back tears in front of a stranger.
I explained. ‘I’m going to suggest to Mr Hilderbrand that instead of enforcing reality on the wake-up call he instead have all the warning signs of cancer printed on a piece of paper and placed in every room as a bookmark for the Gideon Bibles… sort of diagnosis and consolation at the same time. Slip them right in there at the Book of Job.’
Carol hesitantly slid a ballpoint pen and a livid green sheet of paper across the counter. I didn’t understand the hesitation till she said, ‘But Dr Gass, we don’t place Bibles in the rooms. Mr Hilderbrand won’t allow it. He says it’s presumptuous … not everybody is a Christian.’
‘But it’s not presumptuous to wake up guests, whatever their religious preferences, with graphic descriptions of the warning signs of rectal cancer?’ I felt sense disintegrating.
‘I guess Mr Hilderbrand doesn’t think so.’ I noted a new, non-committal coolness in her tone. She was tired of dealing with me.
I picked up the pen and briskly began, Dear Mr Hilderbrand … but then couldn’t think of anything to say. The last hour I’d been riding that combination of self-loathing and false power that accompanies the fervor of renewal, the righteousness released by fresh conviction, but it was fading fast. The pen trembled in my hand, and I put it down. ‘I don’t know what the hell to say,’ I confessed to Carol. ‘I can’t think with this damn flu.’ I suddenly wanted to bury my face in her bosom and weep.
‘Ralph – he’s the night manager – he said you didn’t look well.’
‘I was a zombie.’
‘Well, I hope you feel better soon, Dr Gass. And I hope you won’t hold the wake-up call against us.’ This was a reasonable facsimile of her perky self, but not the real item. She’d receded.
So had I. ‘Thanks. I hope I feel better, too. And now I understand how you knew my name – the night manager told you.’
‘Ralph was concerned. He said if you stayed past checkout to look in on you…. That sounds bad, like it was the money, but it was to make sure you were all right.’
‘What did he say? “Look for a guy I can practice my embalming on?”’
Carol tittered. ‘No, he just said you looked sick and tired. And that you were wearing a colorful hat.’
‘He liked the hat, did he?’ I reached up and gave the narrow brim a tug.
‘He said you asked him if he understood your hat.’
‘Well, I was extremely ill last night. The fever was peaking. I suppose I was babbling. To tell the truth, I don’t even remember talking to him.’
‘Dr Gass, do you really wear that hat so the gods can spot you more easily?’
‘Did I say that?’
‘That’s what Ralph said you told him. I don’t think Ralph realized how sick you were. He thought you might be a little loony-tunes.’
‘I can certainly understand why,’ I chuckled nervously, ‘going around saying things like that. Or it may be that Ralph doesn’t personally feel the gods are watching. And maybe he’s right.’
‘Oh,’ Carol said. Now we both were nervous. ‘Do you mind my asking what sort of doctor you are? Ralph didn’t think you were a medical doctor, but I said you could be a professor.’
‘Bless you, but you’re both wrong – though you’re closer. I’m a Doctor of Divinity. I’m doing missionary work for the Rock Solid Gospel Light Church of the Holy Release.’
‘It’s pretty much Methodists around here,’ Carol said.
‘It’s a new church,’ I explained, ‘greater ecclesiastical emphasis on the role of the Holy Spirit as manifested in love and music. Which reminds me that I must be on my missionary way. It was a pleasure to meet you, Carol. I hope our paths cross again. Good day.’ I was out the door, feeling I’d handled the explanations and my exit with dignity and aplomb.
Out in the parking lot, the dignity and aplomb quickly withered: I couldn’t find the Eldorado. I felt the keys in my pocket; all I lacked was the car. I went around back. No Caddy. I circled the entire motel, shivering with cold and impending collapse. Nothing. As gone as any memory of where I might’ve parked it.
Trying to fight down the panic, I returned to the office. Carol seemed startled to see me.
‘I can’t seem to locate my car,’ I told her, my attempted smile more like a twitch.
She put her hand to her mouth. ‘Oh, I’m sorry. I was supposed to remind you – Ralph asked me to … but I got involved talking and … oh, I’m really sorry. It’s parked in front of the restaurant … the pancake house next to us.’ She pointed helpfully.
‘I don’t remember parking it there,’ I said, excruciatingly aware as soon as the feeble words left
my mouth that that was obvious.
‘Well, according to Ralph you were very upset.’
‘Did he say why?’ I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.
‘Because the neon letters were the same color as your hat,’ Carol said.
I shouldn’t have asked. ‘The fever.’ I shook my head sadly. ‘I must’ve been delirious.’
‘I don’t know if it’s true, but Ralph said they almost called the police.’
‘Oh?’
‘You were threatening to tear the sign down with your bare hands.’
‘I was? I like the color.’
‘But it wasn’t Paradise.’
‘What wasn’t?’ I demanded. I needed speed just to keep up with the conversation.
Carol shied at my tone. ‘I only know what Ralph told me.’
‘Yes?’ I urged.
‘You were upset because the pancake house wasn’t Paradise. The sign said it was, but it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t, you said they shouldn’t use an honest color like your hat’s for false advertising.’
‘Sounds like my sort of logic. Wish I could’ve been there.’
‘It is kind of funny.’ Carol grinned, glee flashing in her lovely hazel eyes. ‘I always thought Pancake Paradise was a really stupid name. Mr Hilderbrand’s ex-partner owns it, a Mr Granger. They bought the motel and restaurant together, but they couldn’t get along – mainly because Mr Granger is such a jerk – so they split it up. The restaurant isn’t doing so good now that Mr Granger has it. He’s never there. He’s more interested in chasing women. He thinks he’s so neat. He’s always coming over and asking me to go out and have a drink with him, and he’s married.’
‘Do they make good pancakes over there?’
‘Urp.’ She giggled.
I liked her giggle. ‘Well, if it isn’t Paradise and they serve urpy food and Mr Granger is an adulterous jerk, why don’t you and me go over there and tear the sign down together right now. Strike a blow for truth, justice, beauty, and good eats. Then, soon as I take care of a little business, we can run away to Brazil.’
