“Well?”
“I think you should come over to my house so we can talk head to head or face to face, however it goes. And bring some doughnuts, the kind with the sprinkles.” He told me his address, and before he hung up he said, “You know, we mustn’t judge people by what they drive.”
“What does that mean?” I asked an empty line.
I drove my car over to Everett’s home, a narrow two-story brick house with an enclosed front porch. He held open the screen door for me as I walked past him into the foyer. I followed him into the living room, such as it was. There was a low yellow, floral-print sofa in the middle of the room facing a windowless wall against which sat a small television on a wooden table. On the screen two men boxed.
“Do you like boxing?” I asked.
“Hate it.”
I looked at the television. “Why are you watching it?”
“Because I love the sublime violence of it. In a way. It’s a lot like doing drugs, if you know what I mean. And even if you don’t. What bullshit I’m spouting.”
I handed him the doughnuts.
“How thoughtful,” he said. “You shouldn’t have. I can’t accept them, though. I’m watching my weight, before anyone else does. You have them, enjoy them. They have sprinkles. Now, what’s this business about dropping out of school?” He sat on the sofa.
“Why shouldn’t I?” I sat beside him.
“Don’t you want a degree?”
“I never really thought about it.”
He shook his head. “That’s a damn good answer. I wish I’d said it. I wish I’d thought it. I will the next time.” He took his cold cigar from the ashtray and stuck it in his face. “Now that you’ve thought about it, do you want one?”
“Not particularly.”
“Well, there you have it.”
“There I have what?”
“What do you get after four years of college?” he asked.
“A degree.”
“And you don’t want a degree. So, there you have it. Go sailing or skiing or something.”
“What about an education?” I said.
“Listen, if you want to stay in school, then stay in school, but don’t ask me to tell you what to do. Truth is, I don’t know or care what you do.”
“Is that true, that you don’t care?”
He paused to think it over. “Pretty much. Eat a doughnut. It will make you feel much better. It will make me feel better if you eat one.”
“For some reason, maybe because you’re a professor, I thought you’d try to talk me into staying.”
“It’s a bitch, ain’t it? The things we assume.” He looked at his watch. “Hey, it’s ten o’clock. Time for some real entertainment.” He walked over to the television and changed channels. “Now, this is genius.”
A man’s white-turbaned head appeared on screen, disembodied and floating against a blue field, slowly, from one corner to the other. The head wore a white turban and sang in what I took to be Hindi. The title grew large enough to read: Punjabi Profiles.
“Absolute genius,” Everett said. “Listen, Poitier, you’ll get your education. Hey, you’re already a smart guy, smarter than most, better educated than most of my so-called colleagues. Don’t get me wrong, I believe in higher education, but you’ll find your way. I don’t worry about you. Doughnut?”
“Why do you teach?”
“Money.”
“That’s it?”
“I’m no good at anything else,” he said.
I wanted to tell him that he was no good at teaching.
But then he said, “As if I’m any good at teaching. But you know what? Who the fuck cares? You know what I mean? Still, I can teach you two or three things, among them how to perform a tracheotomy on a squirming and unwilling patient, but you probably don’t believe that.”
I sat quietly for a few minutes while we watched an Indian music video. I thought about my visit to Maggie’s home, about the Larkins, about the dinner. “Why are people so fucked up?” I asked.
“Maybe you do need college, Poitier,” Everett said. “You want to know why people are so fucked up? Son, that’s about the only question I can answer with even a small measure of authority. It’s because they’re people. People, my friend, are worse than anybody.”
I was not certain whether I was troubled more by his answer or by the fact that he had called me son.
Everett, as usual, had been of no help whatsoever. He insisted as I left that I take the doughnuts, sprinkles and all. He said that they would kill him, but he’d be happy to know I was enjoying them. I took the doughnuts and ate them as I drove back to campus and my dorm. The place was so empty, so quiet and dead, that there was a sudden and strange appeal to it, but I refused to be seduced. I would have liked to talk with Ted, but he was off at his ranch in Montana doing something with buffaloes. And what would he have said to me anyway except, “Why is it that the buffalo’s head is so disproportionately large?” or something like that. I’d always wanted to see Turner and Everett meet, imagined it a little like Perry Como performing with Ornette Coleman. I resolved as I walked across campus to again attempt my drive west. Only this time I would stick to the interstate system, the homogeneous tangle of the ribbons that made up the fifty-first state. I would observe each and every traffic rule and avoid people whenever possible. I realized that I could simply board a plane and fly to California, but being there wasn’t the point, getting there was what I was after. I didn’t know anyone there or what I would do and so the drive would afford me time to formulate some kind of plan. Also I still harbored the young, romantic, naïve, and stupid notion that a cross-country trek would be a valuable learning experience, a rite of passage. That night I packed up my Buick Skylark and headed west once again, my heart pounding, my palms sweating against the plastic of the steering wheel, a thermos of coffee beside me next to a sack of my newest addiction, doughnuts with sprinkles.
The Georgia that surrounded Atlanta had lived up to its billing on my first migratory attempt. I made the short drive to the state’s edge in a quick dead sprint and fell into the next state, which turned out to be Alabama. Of course, I knew it would be Alabama, but still I don’t think anyone is ever quite prepared for Alabama, though I imagined it appropriate and decent preparation for Mississippi; decent is a term the connotation of which I am here unable to articulate.
My chosen route seemed simple enough. I would take Interstate 85 to Interstate 65 to Interstate 10 and that would take me to Los Angeles. There were no turns involved. How could a person get lost? I got lost. I was somewhere in Alabama, in the dark, and it turns out that night in Alabama is darker than night anywhere. I recalled the song “Stars Fell on Alabama” and thought, no, they didn’t. I was further disheartened by a sign telling me I was near a town called Smuteye. Look at the map. And then of course my Skylark began to shutter and make a new unfamiliar, though not terribly alarming sound.
I managed to roll into a lonesome and unlit gas station on a dirt road. The dark sign hovering over the pumps read Rabbit Toe’s Filling Station. My car’s wheels tripped a bell that might as well have been a siren for the way it split the still night air. But nothing and no one stirred. A dog barked far off in the distance and though that reminded me of life, it did more to make me fear death. I was at once terrified that there was no one there and that at any moment someone would appear. And someone did.
An extremely tall, extremely thin, extremely washed-out, and extremely white man walked out of the darkness beside the building and into the white glow of my headlights. He bent at the waist and peered through the driver’s-side window and said the scariest thing I could imagine. He said, “Boy, you must be lost.”