My father reared back his great head and called, “What have you learned?”
His voice strained under a high pain that bewildered the other. The back seat was silent. My father waited. “I don’t follow you,” the hitchhiker said.
My father amplified. “What’s your verdict? You’re a man I admire. You’ve had the guts to do what I always wanted to do: move around, see the cities. Do you think I’ve missed out?”
“You ain’t missed a thing.” The words curled back on themselves like offended feelers.
“Have you done anything you like to remember? I was awake all last night trying to remember something pleasant and I couldn’t do it. Misery and horror; that’s my memories.”
This hurt my feelings; he had had me.
The hitchhiker’s voice scribbled; maybe it was a laugh.
“Last month I killed a goddam dog,” he said. “How’s that?
Damn suckin’ dogs come up outa the bushes and try to grab a piece of your leg, so I get myself a hell of a big stick and I was walkin’ along this cock jumps out at me and I cracked him right between the eyes. He drops down and I thump him a couple times more good and boy there’s one suckin’ dog won’t be tryin’ to grab a piece of your leg just because you ain’t got no car to go haulin’ your ass around in. Christ right between the eyes the first crack.”
My father had listened rather dolefully. “Most dogs won’t hurt you,” he said now. “They’re just like I am, curious. I know just how they think. We have a dog at home I think the world of. My wife just worships that animal.”
“Well I fixed that one bastard good I tell ya,” the hitch hiker said, and sucked back spittle. “You like dogs, boy?” he asked me.
“Peter likes everybody,” my father said. “I’d give my eyes if I had that boy’s good nature. But I see your point, mister, when a dog comes up to you in the dark along a strange road.”
“Yeah and then nobody picks ya up any more,” the hitchhiker said. “Stand there all day your balls freezin’ off and yours was the first car in a hour stopped for me.”
“I always pick ‘em up,” my father said. “If Heaven didn’t look after fools I’d be in your shoes. You said you’re a cook?”
“Annh-I done it.”
“My hat’s off to you. You’re an artist.”
I felt within myself like a worm hatching the hitchhiker beginning to wonder if my father were sane. I cringed with the desire to apologize, to grovel before this stranger, to explain. It’s just his way, he loves strange people, he’s worried about something.
“There’s nothin’ to it except keep the griddle greased.” This response came cautiously.
“You’re lying, mister,” my father shouted. “There’s a fine art to cooking for other people. I couldn’t learn it if you gave me a million years.”
“Buddy, that’s horse poop,” the hitchhiker said, lurching into intimacy. “Just keep the burgers thin’s all the bastards run these suckin’ joints give a dick about. Give ‘em grease and spare the meat; if I had one of those bastards gimme the word I had a hundred. The great god Dollar’s the only one they’re looking out for. Christ I wouldn’t drink the nigger piss they call coffee.”
As the hitchhiker grew more and more expansive I felt myself shrivel and shrink; my skin itched furiously.
“I wanted to be a druggist,” my father told him. “But when I got out of college there was no do-re-mi. My old man left us a Bible and a deskful of debts. But I don’t blame him, the poor devil tried to do what was right. Some of my kids-I’m a schoolteacher-go off to pharmaceutical school and from what they tell me I just wouldn’t have had enough brains for it. A druggist is an intelligent man.”
“What are you goin’ to be, boy?”
My desire to become a painter embarrassed my father. “That poor kid’s as confused as I am,” he told the hitch hiker. “He ought to get out of this part of the country and get down where there’s some sun. He has a terrible skin problem.”
In effect my father had torn off my clothes and displayed my prickling scabs. In the glare of my anger his profile seemed that of a blind raw rock.
“That right, boy? How so?” ‘
“My skin is blue,” I said in a congested voice.
“He’s just kidding,” my father said. “He’s a hell of a good sport about it. Best thing in the world for him would be to go down to Florida; if you were his father instead of me he’d be there.”
“I expect to be down in two three weeks,” the hitchhiker said.
“Take him along!” my father exclaimed. “If ever a kid deserved a break, it’s this kid here. My wad is shot. Time to trade in on a new old man; I’m a walking junk heap.”
He took the image from the great Alton dump, which had appeared beside the road. A few fires smoldered here and there across its tattered gay acres. Things revert, through rust and rot, to a hopeful brown, and in their heaps of ash take on fantastic silhouettes, frazzled and feathery as ferns. Like a halted host of banners colored bits of paper were pressed by a constant riverside breeze against upright weed stalks. Beyond, the Running Horse River reflected in its strip of black varnish the cobalt blue silently domed above. Elephant-colored gas tanks, mounted to rise and fall in cylindrical frames, guarded the city’s brick skyline: rose madder Alton, the secret city, lining the lap of its purple-green hills. The evergreen crest of Mt. Alton was a slash of black. My hand twitched, as if a brush were in it. Railroad tracks slipped silver along the highway; factory parking lots flashed full; and the road became a suburban street curving between car agencies, corroded diners, and composition-shingled homes.
My father said to the hitchhiker, “There it is. The grand and glorious city of Alton. If anybody had ever come to me when I was a kid and told me I’d die in Alton, PA, I would have laughed in his face. I’d never heard of it.”
“It’s a dirty town,” the hitchhiker said.
To me it looked so beautiful.
My father stopped the car at the intersection of 122 and the Lancaster Pike; the light was red. The pike to the right became a concrete bridge, the Running Horse Bridge, on whose other side Alton began in earnest. To the left it was three miles to Olinger and another two miles to Ely. “This is it,” my father said. “We got to put you out into the cold.”
The hitchhiker opened his door. Since my father had announced my skin, the flirtatious emanations in the car had weakened. Nevertheless, perhaps by accident, the back of my neck was touched. In the open air the hobo hugged the paper tight against his chest. The liquid face turned stiff. “I’ve enjoyed talking to you,” my father called to him.
The hitchhiker sneered. “Nnnnyeah.” The door slammed. The light turned green. My heart slowed its beating. We nosed onto the pike and drove against the current of the Alton-bound traffic. Through the dusty rear window I watched our guest, looking like a messenger with his undisclosed bundle, dwindle. The hitchhiker became a brown wisp at the mouth of the bridge, flew upwards, vanished. My father said to me in the most matter-of-fact tone, “That man was a gentleman.”
There was a tantrum rich and bristling within me; I coldly intended to berate him all the way to school. “This is really great,” I said. “Really great. You’re in such a hurry you won’t let me eat a rotten bite of breakfast and then you pick up some rotten bum and go three miles out of your way for him and he doesn’t even thank you. Now we will be late for school. I can just see Zimmerman, looking at his watch, stamping up and down in the halls, wondering where you are. Really, Daddy, I’d think you’d have more sense once in a while. What do you see in these bums? Is it my fault I was born so you couldn’t be a bum? Florida. And then telling him about my skin. That was very nice, I thank you very much. Whyncha make me take off my shirt while you’re at it? Maybe I should have showed him my crusty legs. Whydya keep telling everybody every damn thing there is to tell? Who cares, nobody cares, all that moron cared about was killing dogs and breathing on the back of my neck. The white stoops of Baltimore, for Heaven’s sake. Really, Daddy, what do you think about when you babble like that?”