Off the Road - 01
a jazz novel on a typewriter
The first thing you have to remember is this is all 12 in the Blues by Parker and Sons, at least Sons of the Pressing, which means that it starts with the theme and then goes to the counter theme then floats back to the original tune and then stops with a florid finish on the drums if you have a skins player who really knows his stuff and can get down with the beat and wail with the best of them. And the horns sing out “Doo, do-doo, do-doo, do-do-doo” The whole thing started on a late August Sunday when my rent was up and I didn’t have a pad until the first of October. And I realized that the best thing for me to do was to take my small Hyundai and light out for the territories with what little stuff I owned to get naked in the summer sun and get out of the scene of North Station, Kenmore Sq., and all the old haunts from the Merrimack River down to Marymount Park and set my store by Rte. 1 there I could commune with the small towns that littered the way from Boston up to Portland all the while drinking Coke as my sustenance and listening to the radio for my listening pleasure and take in through the eyes and through the ears all the sounds that would conglomerate themselves into a tune that would turn and twist and have an S shape that would slow down to an adagio when the singer would open her throat and scat out the pain that everyone felt when they were drunk and alone and listening to an E♭ whisper head on a tune that everyone remembers but all remember differently because everyone hears it slightly differently, like Mack the Knife, because who you hear it from determines what the scat structure is like. So, I tossed in a book from the Library of America on Rachel Carson and a volume with three books by Neitzche after I had dropped the keys into the slot and hoped that the next person would have better luck than I did in this little place in Ashmont looking down over the flats and sharps of a river that I was told was called the Neponset River but I could never get the turn after the cards were dealt by the dealer. I suppose I just played the typewriter and did not have the gift for figures that were needed at the baccarat table. though I have to remember to remember not to change words unless it makes great scene clearer. When your life is a movie and you could walk over to the Newbury St near Newbury Comics was, no relation, the house band is loaded with miles, bird, and friends that could count on being your friends on Sunday morning as well as Saturday night.
With a push from the gas, I drew out not taking another look at the three-story building that had contained my life for the last one year, and set out for I-93 towards 1A in the north for some dollop of freedom that lay beyond Massachusetts and the small slice of towns that I had lived in for basically all of my life. Of course, I was leaving behind a girl who was once called my girlfriend but that last syllable stung with a blue base note after an argument, that came to a fight became a breakup at 4 AM. The kind of breakup that you both know is the final one even if you all could not explicitly state what it was that broke your heart’s into, and you all lied blubbering on the floor reaching for air that never came. But first I had to pick up bread and baloney from the market and of course, a good friend of mine called Dean who also was running out of the rent only he did not have any fallback, not for September, October, or any month that you could name. He was telling me that there was someplace in Albuquerque New Mexico where he could set up his heels with the lady who rented a place that was on the cheap side of inexpensive and did not have to do much other than fix a few things that the landlord said he would fix what had never gotten around to it. So, I hit the 88 Market and picked him up on Milton Street and then we were off to I 93 and in some sense for a home that neither of us had ever seen.
And it is in the middle of the conversation that his voice comes in like a radio station which is just barely within the limits of the car and its lousy reception which just barely holds the rhythm of a track by Miles when he was still in fine style:
“I am glad you picked you up when you did because it was like about to get hairy. I needed to find some new people anyway because the old ones were sticking like glue on my blue jeans.”
I looked for only an instant at his handsome face because I was in the traffic going north on I 93 and did not want to crunch another time on my right side as I tried to change a lane and missed another car careening in two tries and got loose of all the traffic, racing like the head of foam coming into the bay. And the beat goes I, I, I, I, and with triple time when the words came out in a jambalaya.
“How did you end up with them anyway?”
“It was the same way that you clicked in with all of your people. Only mine was called Marylou and yours was called something different.”
“Leeanne.”
“All right so put in Leanne when I say Marylou and the riffs will be different, but the beat will come out the same. If you don’t know the tune just hum the middle line just as you were working on the sous chef platter.”
I thought about this and saw that he was right as he usually was. But then Dean had a greater vocabulary than I did and a slickness of mind to form the words in two sentences which then spilled out into neat paragraphs that I could only wonder how he did it.
I then looked forward to seeing where I had to exit right to get on 1a them to 60 and finally to Rte. 1 and then north to New Hampshire and other points North. I was in East Boston before I took a look over to Dean and he was reading a letter printed out from his friend’s printer and glistening over some memory which had probably been the reason that he printed it out and wanted to keep it for at least a little while. And then there came the crack of the based drum and we were on the top of the spired structure that was 1a because the music stopped and there was no turning back. That is the way with all tunes they spill out and then result into nothingness and then nothing yes when the snare drum hits the last hit beat.