Not Fade Away

by Jim Dodge

  It didn’t last long. ‘Hound Dog’ had just finished playing, and either the bennies had sped up my hearing or Elvis was singing slower – something was out of time. The next platter down was the Kingsmen’s ‘Louie, Louie.’ If you want to hear music for the end of the world try a 45 of ‘Louie, Louie’ played at 33 and progressively fading to about 13:

  Looouuuuiiiieeeeee, Looouuuiiiieeeeeeeeeee,

  Ooooooohhhhhhh yeeeaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

  Goooooooooooooootttttttaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh

  Goooooooooooooooooooooo

  Nnnnnnooooooooooooooowwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

  The battery was dying in Joshua’s magic box. ‘Aaawwwwwwww fuuuuuuuccccccckkkkk,’ I said, trying to maintain my sense of humor as I reached back and snapped it off.

  ‘Music!’ my ghost demanded, suddenly beside me in the passenger’s seat. ‘Sounds! Give me the beat!’

  ‘If you don’t like it, leave,’ I told him, slowing to pull over.

  He whined like a five-year-old. ‘But it’s boring without music.’ He disappeared.

  ‘Just take it easy.’ I wondered if he could still hear me. ‘Your man’s on the job.’

  I stopped and got out. I could’ve switched batteries, but Joshua’s sounded so low I probably would’ve had to roll start the car, and I hate running on low power. To dig out Donna’s machine and plug it into the lighter socket seemed smarter; this would do till I got to Rock Springs, where I could buy new juice for Joshua’s system. In theory this sounded good, but when I lifted Donna’s record player from the trunk I noticed the tone arm was jammed down on the turntable, and the needle was broken. Somewhere along the line – probably in Gladys Nogardam’s driveway – the cooler must’ve slid into it. Or maybe I’d thrown the shot-up tire on it. Didn’t make any fucking difference how at that point – it was useless. I considered trying a needle swap but figured by the time I discovered they weren’t interchangeable I could be leaving Rock Springs with a new battery. Till then we’d just have to do without music.

  Two silent minutes down the freeway, my ghost reappeared beside me, commenting in that nasal snottiness five-year-olds find so withering, ‘Well, my man; where’s the music?’

  I ignored him. No reason to pamper hallucinations.

  ‘I need the beat!’ he demanded. ‘The sound of fucking music!’

  ‘I’ll sing for you,’ I offered sarcastically.

  ‘Why don’t you just turn on the radio there?’ He pointed. ‘They’re amazing inventions. Magic. You click on the switch and sometimes music jumps right out.’ He disappeared.

  It was embarrassing. Like I said, I don’t normally have a radio in a working vehicle. Music is fine, but all the deejay chit-chat and commercials poison your attention. But the fact was I hadn’t even thought of the radio.

  I was glad my ghost had, though. We picked up krom out of Boulder, almost solid music and a lot of it what I’d been listening to a couple months earlier holed up in my apartment trying to stay sane. After a steady diet of Donna’s collection, it was a nice leap forward to hear what was blooming from those roots. My ghost must’ve enjoyed it, too; not a peep out of him for fifty miles.

  When he reappeared again it wasn’t to complain about the music, but to offer an observation. ‘Jeez, George, maybe I’m the paranoid one, but at the speed we’re traveling it seems hard to believe that black car behind us is catching up – well, not actually catching up, but sort of settled in, if you know what I mean.’

  Two big mothers in an Olds 88. I use the mirrors on reflex and was sure I’d checked in the last half-minute, so unless I’d missed them or was slipping badly they hadn’t been there long. Considering their adverse impact on my pulse rate, I saw no reason for them to be there any longer than necessary. I was doing a smooth 90 at the time, coming off a long downhill stretch, and I had lots of pedal left. I was just stomping on it when I saw another car coming fast down the hill and, unless the dusk light was playing tricks, this one had a bubblegum machine bolted to its roof and generally conveyed the feeling of a state trooper. So rather than punch it, I let the accelerator spring push my foot back up to a more sensible 65 mph.

  By coming off the gas suddenly like that, the Olds, if it wanted to stay on my tail, would’ve had to hit its brakes, thus making its intentions obvious, or at least provide some rational basis for the paranoia playing my heart like a kettle drum. If the Olds passed – the exact move I was hoping to force – I’d at least get a good look at them, and with any luck the trooper would nail their ass. I’d get two birds with one stone. Just call me Slick. Unfortunately the Olds must’ve spotted the trooper too, and didn’t gain an inch.

  The Caddy, Olds, and trooper’s Dodge settled into a stately procession, an extremely nervous one from my vantage, marked by a great deal of wishing, hoping, and nonchalant concealment of visible felonies, and not untainted by a certain mean irony as Bob Dylan asked through the magic of KROM radio,

  How does it feeeeelll

  To be on your ooooownnn

  ‘Tell you the truth, Bob, not too fucking good right now, sort of caught between goons and the heat out here on the alkali Wyoming sage flats with a bad case of dread and my ghost hiding under the front seat, but I guess that’s what makes existence the wonderful adventure it is.’

  We kept moving in strict formation, me in front, my worries right behind at hundred-yard intervals. Dylan finished his biting lament and the KROM deejay was announcing a license plate number for some promotional contest – if it was yours and you called within ten minutes you won two tickets to hear Moon Cap and the Car Thieves at the first annual KROM Goblin Rock-and-Roll Horror Romp at Vet’s Hall. I’d rather have been there than where I was and, worse yet, with a decision to make: should I take the upcoming Rock Springs turn-off or not? Not, I decided; I didn’t know the turf, a severe disadvantage if I had to run for it.

  The black Olds, however, did take the exit, making me wonder for a minute whether they were simply a couple of big guys out for a drive. That left just me and the trooper, me wildly radiating innocence and the trooper, I hoped to Christ, receiving. Unfortunately, a discreet glance in the rearview revealed he actually seemed to be sending, since he was holding the radio mike to his mouth. Maybe a little spot-check on a five-niner Cadillac Eldorado, California license plate number B as in busted, O as in Oh-shit, and P as in prison, 3 as in the square root of nine, 3 as in trinity, 3 like the wise men. Such moments have led me to the firm conviction that driving our nation’s highways would be a hell of a lot more fun without license plates.

  I held my speed at an even 65 for the next few minutes, then held my breath as I saw him coming up quickly behind. But he went on around, giving me a long look as he passed.

  He saw a smile. Far better for a paranoid to have them in front instead of behind. Unless they’re playing games, as he apparently was, because in less than a mile he began to slow down. Now what? I silently shrieked, but ahhh, blink-blink, he was taking the Green River exit.

  I continued driving as if he was right behind me, but after a few more miles and no sign of him, I romped on it. On the radio, the Rolling Stones were laying claim to their cloud, a position I shared, though by then it was dark enough that no clouds were visible.

  No more than three minutes later, just as I made a mental note to gas at the next available station and pick up a battery, another trooper passed me in the eastbound lane, his brake lights casting an apocalyptic glow in my rearview mirror as he slowed to cross the divider strip. I momentarily lost sight of him as the road, approaching the Green River bridge, swung abruptly.

  I snapped off my lights and started looking for somewhere else to go – there’s almost always a frontage road along rivers, and I hoped I could make one out in the fast-fading light. And there it was, just on the other side of the bridge; no need to signal or slow down much. Then I started looking for cover, a campground or spur road or anything. I came off the gas, though, goin
g too fast to see, and to slow down seemed smarter than turning on the headlights. I finally spotted an abrupt right that dropped down to the floodplain; it looked like gravel trucks had used this through the summer. Banging bottom and rattling my teeth, I took it at full speed. I whipped the Caddy around so I was facing back up the road, backed in close to some willows, then shut the engine down and started gathering the beer cans and other incriminating evidence. I needed something to carry the empties so I dumped my joke house purchases on the front seat and used the bag. The first thing I heard when I opened the door was the river. It sounded green. I wondered if that was the reason for its name, but doubted anything so seductive. Probably it was named for the color of its water, though all I could make out in the heavy dusk was a broad shimmer of light.

  I hid the beer cans and benzedrine behind a clump of willows, then strolled down to the river, keeping a sharp eye out for traffic on the road to my right. Far downstream I could see the headlights of cars crossing the I-80 bridge.

  At the river’s edge, it was cold. As I stood there watching the light fade, three dark shapes winged over, one crying, ‘Argk! Argk! Argk!’

  Ravens. ‘Argggk,’ I called back weakly, but they disappeared downstream.

  My ghost appeared in front of me, standing on a rock about ten feet out in the river. ‘You’re crazy,’ he announced. ‘Barking at the sky.’

  ‘They were ravens.’ I defended myself. ‘Looking for the ark. Noah’s Ark, remember? All the animals two by two. You know, I’ve always wondered how it was that ravens were able to reproduce if Noah sent one off that never came back. That only left one, right? So how––’

  ‘Please.’ My ghost stopped me. ‘Let’s listen to the babble of running water; it’s so much more soothing than the ravings of your poor mind.’

  ‘Hey, you’re my ghost – you’ve got to be crazy, too.’

  ‘I don’t have to be anything,’ he said, vanishing.

  I bent over and scooped up some water and splashed it over my face, trembling as it ran down my neck. It was cold. When I opened my eyes, blinking water from the lashes, I thought I saw a flicker of light upstream. I wiped my eyes and looked again. Still there. I couldn’t tell if the light itself was flickering or if something was crossing in front of it. I walked upstream till I could see more clearly. As nearly as I could tell, it was behind a screen of willows. A campfire, I decided. Maybe Smokey was having a wiener roast for his forest friends. I splashed another sobering shot of water on my face to sharpen my focus. Yup, I was sure I saw Bambi’s shadow, and then Thumper’s. But whose shadow was that, the tall naked woman unfurling her wings? I headed back to the car.

  ‘Where are you going now?’ my ghost demanded. I couldn’t see him but his voice was clear. ‘Don’t you think it might be wise to wait a few minutes before resuming this fool’s errand? I like it here by the river.’

  ‘I’m going swimming,’ I told him.

  ‘The river’s this way.’

  ‘I’m going to the car first. For a present.’

  ‘George,’ my ghost said with strained patience, ‘hasn’t it ever struck you that you’re one of those warriors who, every time he girds up his loins for another reckless leap into the unknown, gets his little pee-pee caught in the buckle?’

  ‘There’s always a first time,’ I said without breaking stride.

  ‘And a last,’ he reminded me.

  On the way back from the car with the can of S.D. Rollo’s Divinity Confections in my hand, I cautioned myself over and over Don’t expect it to be Kacy; don’t even think of it. A far-fetched notion, I realized even at the time. I picked the slowest water I could find, a long bellying pool downstream from the flickering firelight. I caught a faint scent of wood-smoke.

  I stripped to my shorts and, holding the Divinity Confections aloft, waded in to mid-thigh, then launched myself gently into the current. The water was so cold that all bodily sensations gasped to a numb stop, and if I hadn’t been so full of crank I doubt they’d ever have started again. After two stunned minutes of mechanical exertion I was across, crawling out on the opposite shore like some blue-fleshed proof of unnatural selection.

  I flopped around on the sandy beach to reheat my body, then, still shivering badly, picked up the can of Divinity Confections and lurched upstream toward the fire. While the road-side of the river had a wide floodplain, the other side rose into steep, rockface bluffs with only a narrow, willow-choked flat between river and rock. I crashed my way through the willows, muttering and grunting to myself until I realized I probably sounded like a rabid bear. I felt the crosshairs centering on my heart. No need to frighten anybody into such unthinking defensive behavior as shooting me, so I stopped and hollered, ‘Hello there! Company coming with gifts and good cheer!’

  ‘Please, go away,’ a young woman’s voice answered close by, genuine appeal in her tone.

  ‘Nothing to fear,’ I called back, moving forward a few steps and stumbling into a small clearing. The fire was built against the base of the bluff, set back under a ledge that high water had cut through the centuries. The woman was standing in front of the fire shaking her head vehemently. She wasn’t tall, she didn’t have wings, and, of course, she wasn’t Kacy. She was a couple of inches over five feet, and what I’d taken for wings from across the river was a poncho made of an olive-drab Army blanket.

  ‘Please listen a minute before you send me away,’ I asked. ‘I’m probably stone crazy and a fool to boot, but my intentions are wholesome and altogether honorable. I was attracted by the light, and I just swam that icicle of a river because I wanted to bring you a present – whoever you are.’ I held up the can of Divinity Confections as if it were irrefutable truth.

  ‘That’s nice of you,’ she said evenly, lowering her head, ‘but I don’t want company. I’m not in the mood to entertain.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ I assured her – as if there was assurance to be found in a wild-eyed, sand-blotched fool wearing nothing but his soaked jockey shorts and waving what looked like a large tinker-toy can. ‘I’ll entertain you. Please? I just want to talk to another human being.’

  ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly.

  Her name was Mira Whitman, twenty years old, and she listened to my tale of low adventure and high stupidity as she sat on a log in front of the fire, her shoulders hunched and head down, staring at her fingers entwined on her lap. She had a small, squarish head, brown hair cut short, with a thin, sharp nose at odds with her broad cheekbones. Her face was deeply tanned.

  When I finished my narration, bringing her right up to date on my mission and the imminent delivery at the continental edge, she said, still staring at her hands, ‘I guess you are kind of crazy. But, you know, at least it’s a real craziness; at least it has a point. And I hope you make it, if that’s what you want to do. Wreck that car, I mean.’

  ‘That’s what I want to do. But I didn’t tell you I’m starting to see my ghost lately. He just shows up. He looks just like me only he’s not flesh and blood. I talk to him. Do you think that’s cause for alarm, or does it matter?’

  ‘I have no idea. You’re talking to the wrong person. I mean, I don’t really even understand what you’ve been telling me. Don’t you see that? I have no understanding. It’s all I can do right now to wake up in the morning and see the river. Or a leaf. Or an ant.’

  ‘Why’s that,’ I asked gently, quickly adding, ‘But don’t tell me if it has anything to do with a man – one who loves you or doesn’t, beats you, adores you, who’s died or’s dying. I don’t want to know. Seems like every woman I’ve talked to in the last year has man troubles.’

  She glanced at me, then looked down at her hands. ‘I thought you were doing it for love and music?’ But fortunately, before I had to defend the untenable, she went on, ‘But no, it’s not a man. That just hurts. Or infuriates. No, it’s me. Or not me.’ She bit her lip and glanced up again. ‘I got lost.’ This time she didn’t look back down. ‘Does that make any sense?’


  I sighed. ‘Sounds painfully familiar.’

  ‘No.’ She was adamant. ‘With you it’s meaning. Making it mean something.’

  ‘And with you?’

  She looked past me into the fire, then back to my face. ‘You’re nice, George. And I like what you’re trying to do. But it’s pointless for me to talk about it. For you the words help carry it, give you something to hold on to, but for me they tear it out of my hands, or turn it mushy.’ She started to add something, then changed her mind, her gaze moving back to the fire. ‘I’ve enjoyed talking to you, George, but the best thing you could do is leave.’

  ‘No,’ I told her, ‘I won’t.’ That surprised her. Me, too. ‘I want to know what happened and what you’re going to do about it, or what you’re trying to do. You sit here and tell me you’re lost and imply you have no sense of being real, and I see the real light from this real fire dancing in your real pretty brown eyes, and I know you’re wrong, me who doesn’t know very much at all. Maybe what you lost is a feeling, maybe a feeling I’ve lost, too; or that we’re both trying to create, or fake, or somehow just patch enough together to make it through another day.’

  ‘You’re so hungry,’ she said, looking straight at me.

  I looked straight back. ‘Maybe you’re not hungry enough?’

  ‘I’m not like you,’ she pleaded, ‘can’t you see that? You with your lost lover and stolen car and wild adventures all over the country. For you – oh, Jesus, this doesn’t make any sense – for you it’s like you can’t blow up a balloon big enough to hold it all, can’t find a balloon large enough … and me, it’s like a little balloon I was blowing up every day, and every day the air leaked out until I was emptying faster than I could fill it. Ever since I was twelve, right around junior high, I’ve just dwindled. I’ll spare you adolescence in a small town in Colorado. I wasn’t pretty. I wasn’t popular. I wasn’t particularly smart. I didn’t have any friends that were the way I thought friends should be, men or women. But it was manageable. As soon as I graduated from high school I left and moved to Boulder. The Big City! I had a tiny apartment and I cleaned motel rooms in the morning and worked at Burger Hut in the evening. I liked being on my own, doing what I felt like when I didn’t have to work, but I was still shrinking. I could feel it every morning, like I was running away from myself over the hills. Then I got a break: this woman who came into Burger Hut all the time mentioned a job was opening at a radio station down the block, KROM, not as a deejay or anything, just a receptionist, record librarian, general assistant … and I got it. The pay was two dollars an hour, but I loved the job. The people were nutty and it was always chaos and it was fun being involved with the music. Music touches people, you know that, and I was part of it, and it had been a long time since I felt like a part of anything.