“Sorry, boys,” the man says, waving in a way that says feel free to not shake my hand. “I would have picked you up, but to be honest, you don’t look quite as pick-uppable as the elder gentleman here. Fact, there is an air of prison-break about your appearance just now.”
“It’s okay, no problem. But I’ll tell you, you could really give us a hand by maybe towing our car up out of the ditch there.” It is strictly not in the ditch. It’s gone through the ditch and with some force into the field. The corn crop looks like a perfect door has been cut into it.
“Well, um, no. But I tell you what, I could get my gun and go shoot it for you. Because, fellas, she’s gone to the great Japanese auto plant in the sky.”
“Told them buy American,” Da says sadly.
“Ah-huh,” the man says, nodding, nodding.
He doesn’t even look countrified at all, like with the overalls and the chaw and the gun rack? In fact, he looks like one of those lunatic country club golfers with the pom-pom hat and the grape pants. Because that’s what he is wearing. And there are golf clubs in the back. Oh, and actually there is a gun rack in the rear window.
“The frame is snapped, right in half.”
I turn to Jarrod. “You said it looked fine underneath.”
“I’m not a mechanic, Danny.”
“It is in two pieces,” the man says, supremely amused. “Only thing holding front and back of that machine together is the transmission and the carpeting.”
Da has begun walking in the direction we came from.
“Go get him,” I tell Jarrod.
Jarrod goes and I speak to the man, up close and personal.
“Listen, I am sorry, but-”
“Whoa there, death breath,” he says, and takes two steps back.
And I realize how much further we have drifted from what I thought of as civilization just days ago. I haven’t brushed my teeth. As of this moment I don’t even think I technically own a toothbrush. We need some money. We need things.
We need to get where we are going.
“Can you possibly give us a lift?” I ask.
My comrades have joined us now.
The man crinkles up his nose.
“Smoke?” Da says, offering one to the man.
“Ah,” he says to Da as he gleefully takes the cigarette. “We are a dying breed, ain’t we? Dying by our own hand, but that’s another story. Where are you going to?”
“Lundy Lee,” Jarrod says.
“Ooooh,” the man says, raising his eyebrows comically. “Queers, artists, or outlaws?”
“Actually,” I say, going for as respectable as I can muster, “I’m a philosophy student.”
“Ah, all three, then,” the man says, making perfect laugh Os of smoke in the air. “I suppose,” he says, and we all scramble toward the front cabin, which has two whole benches of room.
“Ah, no no,” the man says, looking across the top of the truck at us. “In the bed. And don’t touch my golf clubs.”
Da heads back to climb in, and the man shouts, “Not you, sir. You’re up here with me. Let them filthy young pups roll around back there.”
Da has a spring in his limp as he ambles back up front. I can tell he administered himself his afternoon dose while waiting for us to catch up. It reminds me. “One minute,” I say to the man as I hop out and run down to the hobbled Subaru. I get to the car, get inside, and clean out our sad little bag of belongings. If I cannot keep my team healthy, wealthy, wise, clean, housed…
I can at least keep them on their meds.
“What the hell is he saying up there?” I ask Jarrod as I peek up at the conversation going on in the comforts of the cab. The two of them are chain-smoking and laughing and shouting and wildly gesticulating their way through a nonstop Da-fest of tale-telling. That guy seems like the kind of man who holds his own in any exchange of stories, if he doesn’t dominate it, but there is no mistaking that this session is all singing, all dancing, Da. I only hope the guy doesn’t think turning us into the local law enforcement is in order, and if he doesn’t, then maybe he considers the whole thing worth a buck or two donation.
A couple of times I get worried enough to bang on the cab’s rear window. When Da looks at me the first time, I give him a turbo octo-shush, which only makes him wave me off and launch right into another killer story to his new pal. The second time, after my knocking frantically, I figure it is futile when the two of them spin in my direction and give me dual, synchronized octo-shushes.
They laugh so hard I fear we are in for the third crash of the day. So I slink back down low, under the big built-in storage chest behind the cab.
The end of August is some of the loveliest weather of the year. If you are not in the open bed of a pickup truck going seventy, northbound when you are already north of probably forty of the continental United States. If you are not already weakened by exhaustion and unwelcome excitement you could only have ever dreamed of before. And especially if you are not a confused and stupid and fragile and helpful and helpless mess of a nowhere man who just happens to be badly in need of his self-prescribed medicine on top of all of the above.
I lie down on the floor of the truck, in front of Jarrod. I back up into him so that as much of my body surface is contacting as much of his body surface as is decently possible. And then a little more. We huddle there that way, for dear life, for survival, for the duration of the trip.
14
Everybody has a kill switch, Da said.
Same as a car with an immobilizer. The power is there, it’s just interrupted. You just have to find the kill switch that reconnects that power.
Once you flip your kill switch, you can do anything. Everything you thought you couldn’t do, and many things you never even thought of.
What if I don’t want to kill anything, I said.
You don’t know that until you’ve flipped the switch.
15
When the big truck finally stops, and the engine cuts, it still feels, underneath me, like the motor is vibrating. I suspect the left side of my body will feel like that for some time now, and my right side will feel like defrosting chicken. Jarrod clings to my back like a baby marmoset as we hear the doors of the comfortable part of the vehicle bang shut, one-two.
Next thing, the two men are hanging over the side of the truck bed, observing us as if selecting tonight’s slab of halibut.
I look up at the Golfer, and he looks the way you look when you get off the best carnival rides. Grinning, delirious, stunned, disheveled, possibly a bit nauseous but unwilling to admit it, and ready to sign up for more.
“That is a great American,” he says, and I’m pretty sure he’s not talking about Buzz Aldrin.
“You are right about that,” I say, creaking myself into an upright position. Without my insulation, Jarrod instantly goes into teeth-chattering mode, sits up, and clings again to my back. Every sinew of the boy quakes like an electric charge is being bolted through him.
“Here,” the Golfer says, peeling off business cards for each of us, “I know a couple people in this town. Don’t know what you’re looking for here-don’t know if I want to know, either-but if you mention my name at the ferry office or at the pawn shop called Bread and Waters, these folks will treat you right.”
“Thank you,” Da says, and the two men hug like two old war veterans parting ways.
“Yeah,” I say, hopping over the side. “Thanks for this, and for the lift. You really bailed us out.”
“Just being a good neighbor,” he says. “Pass it on, pay it forward, whatever.”