Off the Road - 08

a jazz novel on a typewriter

8

I spun round and round Binghamton New York on the interstate in the clouded gloom which reminded me just how much I detest putting my hood on the road that has few exits and no passion and that made me realize that the reason the stage was important is that it showed passion as well as commitment. On the second trip around I realized almost instantaneously that I wasn’t going to make the exit that I needed to and would have to drive the third trip around as if someone was chasing me and meant me grievous bodily harm. Dean was looking out at the small city. He puffed from his cigarette:

Then Dean said: “Just how long would it take for this city to fall if it were attacked?”

I looked at the city which was to our north by now and said: “I suppose that would depend on who protected it and whether or not it was defended or just scattered like the winds of war.” Then I looked over at Dean and wanted to know what he thought.

“That’s true, the non-defended the city will not last very long at all. I was thinking about that because someone had told me that there was a television show on a new civil war which was made up out of whole cloth.” Then Dean took another drag on his cig.

“I sold my television set to pay for April’s rent, so I’m not really ensconced with the world of television.” I did not look over at Dean but past a Porsche because he was not flooring it the way I was.

“It’s dying because nobody wants to watch the same thing at the same time as everyone else wants to watch.” I could hear the long slow puff from Dean.

“That’s why binging has become the new hip word.” Remembering all the conversations that I had had about TV even after I had stopped watching it because I had no television.

“Maybe binging will be what kills television. Or maybe there isn’t anything that is that important to keep up on.” I could hear him open up the Raw to make another cigarette. I still had half left and wished that I could smoke the entire thing so that I could ask for one as well. But then he might not give me a cigarette in any event even though my sig. was weatherbeaten and gray by now. the cigarette packs like then I’m, like a bite of a poisonous snake. And I was helpless as if it seduced me into taking that next puff and then taking another and another still until the cigarette was gone and I wanted nothing more than to have another. It started from the base and went up to the high treble in my need. I slick around an SUV that I felt was going too slowly. “ I had not thought of it that way.”

“That’s why war runs on its own clock, and wizards know the chime.” Then Dean added: “It is the wizards of weather that can detect whether it’s time for the city to be attacked.”

I kept listening as Dean went on: “That’s why there was a shift between the old style of war when armies met on a particular field of battle and the lines that made up World War I where there were fronts rather than armies.”

That’s the thing about the way Dean talked you ended up being an audience member as he tumbled out wisdom, or at least more wisdom than I had.

I suppose that is what makes irony what it is: irony doesn’t consist in the dissolution of a sophisticated charm, but it reverses the powers and turns over the surface to see what makes the service work. But then I thought about everything he told me about many times between the speaking and the typing because that is what I really do. Not writing but typing out of the thin air the impressions that I took from Dean.

Then Dean took another path and thought out aloud: “ I spooked because my father smoked. But who is my father bought the man who was pointed out to me? And because he smoked, I smoked as well as if it were a pharmacy that would cure all of the things that were wrong.”

I was just listening, but I interjected: “My parents didn’t smoke so I did just to spite them.” Then I took a long drag on the fag, and I felt a small sense of rebellion even though my parents were long since dead. In fact, my father had died violently with a knife into his chest because he felt he could stop a burglar from entering which turned out to be a bad move.

I thought about that when the funeral came, and all of his friends spoke highly of him and participated in a sort of game that involved a great deal of drinking and then trying to get in the bed of other people’s wives. And then nobody mentioned the funeral again because everyone had some secret that they did not want to mention and therefore they could not mention the secrets that other people had taken away with them. It was a conspiracy of silence wrapped up in a ministry on how a man could not understand that he should not face a burglar with a knife.  But the secret that I knew was that his wife told him she would call the police, and she didn’t.

Then the sun lit from the clouds and there was a renewed vigor to the steering of the car. At this point, the radio finally found a signal and Miles was playing Kind of Blue and we were near the beginning because the mark chords were still fading, and the slow instrumental rise of “So What?” was beginning. And our words calmed down as the swelling note sustained,  calling, calling, calling us as we drove around one more time and made our escape from the city with all of the lamentations following along after us.