Off the Road - 04

a jazz novel on a typewriter

4

A screaming comes across the sky, and gravity’s rainbow pulls it down. Just like Ulysses the subject of the first section was a catechism of death. How far away the Crystal Palace was from the view out the foreword windshield: there were trees and oak trees in the hollow and pine trees at the tops of the half-silvered rounded hills.

I tried to get some conversation going because I was ragged from washing, packing, loading, and driving the car. Sleep was at the corners of my consciousness, so I had to fight for the slumber that ate at my fingers:

“So, you said that you had a destination for us?”

With that lugubrious way that Dean had when he didn’t want to answer a question to completely:

“When last I was up here in the naphtha winter I took some time with a girl who invited me to come when I wanted to to spend some time. So last night I emailed her back and forth and took a picture and she said it would be fine for me to come up.”

There was hesitation, and then a release:

“She doesn’t know you’re coming, and you will have to sleep on the couch.”

I was still amazed how Dean could keep so many women on his leash because while he was handsome, he wasn’t that handsome. But then maybe he was handsome enough for the girls to stay on the leash. Then I thought I had not seen any of his girls.

 Perhaps he was serious when he said keep your rolling stock at the level that you can play. But then I would need to target women whose names I have never heard.

 With a lazy hesitation, I replied:

“That’s alright sleeping alone will be good for me.”

 At that point, there was quiet again and we slipped into the village and trees between the village’s slalom that was coastal Maine. The more driving down Rte 1, which often has stop signs and drives through the villages of Maine. Dean leaned back as we drove by a small statue of an iron giant, but I did not see what it was there for. I will have to look up Rockwell to see what it is about.

 Then we drove through Camden and Dean remarked about how there was a general for the union who was president of Bowdoin College.

“How do you know that?”

“I read it in the book and then saw it in Burns Civil War. But then you could almost say that all wars are civil wars because we all come from the same stock.”

“How do you spend so much time reading and watching?”

“It is easy if you do not work all the time to pay the bills.”

I once again realized that Dean was smarter than I was because I could never find a way to not work and pay for things like food. But then I noticed that Dean was not particular about what he ate or how long it would be before he ate again. As far as I was concerned a meal that is missed is a judgment on your finances. It is a judgment from which there is no appeal. But clearly Dean was not of the same opinion. A whisper of wind stirred the leaves and bows and voraciously my eyes soaked it in imagining a big photograph with Ko-ko on it by Charlie Parker and the drum solo which I had memorized. It was like the walls breaking down into absolute zero in the color of lead. The light from the sun came down through the leaves and spat its way onto my windshield percolating through the canopy. From beneath them was the pavement coming up from the unbelievable black topsoil which felt like the knives of the season racing by us towards fall, perhaps the fall of man down a spiral ladder of deoxyribonucleic acid. Since they had left Boston, the weather had grown slightly cooler and there was a wind blowing out of the North West like a drum. No longer was everything powered by a great power station and the gasworks beyond living on buying low and selling high the pick of bananas on seven squares on the webpage. I remember some time ago when I was driving in the same situation that is a grasp of green with a canopy of light green leaves overhead. It was a land beyond the zero and the zone waiting for the counterforce. For the moment, the Lone Ranger will charge in and save the day. But it was still glimmering summer even if by the skin of its teeth. And then Dean spoke up:

“Driving up north here one realizes that it is the South from Montréal and Ottawa. And one realizes that most of what one imagines is passing through your particular mind that remembers something rather distant.”

“I remember reading comics as my father drove us up to the camp that we had.”

“Timely and Atlas and Marvel the archrival to DC. So perhaps they are AC.”

The radio locked into a classic rock station and played “Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap” and then played the record again. You knew it was a record because there was a skip near the end separating deeds and done. I flexed my neck to see all of the leaves and the flowers that haunted in the foliage. I remembered my father chanting some lyrics that I did not understand at the time. “Doo, do-doo, do-doo, do-do-doo.” And the leaves sank over me and I didn’t stop to listen to what Dean was telling me even though I knew I should pay more attention to his ramblings but I did not really pay attention to his remarks on the inverted V though perhaps I should have when he stopped and said nix as if to dismiss the on. but I drove ahead and saw the church and knew to drive up a hill and find the loneliest mailbox in the world. So, we drove into a driveway far out from anywhere that was somewhere and Dean got out first and went to the back door and it was answered almost immediately by a chubby girl with a pretty face and she was smiling all for him and him alone.