Off the Road - 13

a jazz novel on a typewriter

5

We are in the middle of our country between the Boston Bridge and the Camino on the left side which points logical due North even when it runs South. But here there is no water anywhere to be found just the tumbleweeds invading with a plan drawn up by the sand. The north to South the East to West glimmers a sequentialness sameness of the plainness. Only the thorniest shrubbiest roses hold on to the spare soil in the hemisphere with cows grazing past. This was US 412 in all its grimy glory crossing over the Verdigris River with its brown shubs and blasted tumbleweeds.

Dean was looking in every direction to soak in the ocean of dirt:

“These plans now long to the native American only the handle and the pan belong to the invaders.”

“Perhaps they realized that it wasn’t worth the conquest.”

“And then some.”

 I looked at him and then out my window to see if there was any truck that was coming to bear down on us from behind. But only the cascades rolling over the concrete came. But then I wailed like a biker picking up a girl:

“EE-yah! EE-de-lee-yaah.”

 Dean simply nodded and then piped in: “Sometimes I think you should have been born a musclebound Negro with a set of drums.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Because you have no harmony but you do have a sense of rhythm that you can hammer out.”

Inside I was hurt by the connection but had to admit that after having listened to Coltrane that my sense of transition was sadly lacking, in the extreme, with whipped cream.

“Tell me Dean, what are your opinions on the races?”

“As of right now there is only one race and that is the human race.”

“So, there is no black or white?”

“There are ethnic variations, but the sun has a great deal more to do with the melanin content of all our skin. Or do you think that there is a connection between Australia and Zimbabwe that allowed them to sneak past?”

“So, what would be the difference between races?”

Dean sighed and explained to me that a race was different enough so that interbreeding would the difficult but not impossible. And from his experience, there was no problem in that score with any two people you cared to pick out of a crowd.

I then saw a stream that went winding down through the grass that had gone yellow, short trees sucking up the cola of the plain, and a bridge that we would come to in a mile as my comedy sings from the wind reverberating under my hood. The bridge was the highest point though that says very little as our eyes lost the sense of distance except for the power lines and the nubble of dotted trees on the horizon. I do not know how to say flat in as many ways as it presented itself and we drove further into the bright gloom akimbo. And then Dean was again moved to speak: “There once was a time when families would gather at a certain point and run off into the distance to claim a parcel of land. But of course, the ‘Sooners’ had snuck in the night before and latched on to the parcels with water.”

“So that means that that bridge was once a target.”

“Think about the fact that the University of Oklahoma calls its athletic teams the Sooners, and you might have some sense of who would win the power in times gone by. Just as Dante had the demons enter hell first and took lots as to which sinners would the in their care.”

My eyes watched the clickety claque of the miles and I wished that the radio would pick up the Miles and give my ears some relief from the most monotonous monotony that I had ever seen. Odometer revved silently upwards as this was much further than far. It truly was Oklahoma the land of the pimply papule Pustulence prairie du jour.

And then came Tulsa into view. It is not difficult to enunciate that Tulsa resembled the land of Dis, far from the light even during the day. You knew that you were approaching a city not by the height of the buildings bought by the width of the road: there were three. And we got our kicks on the buried Rte. 66, on the Hard Rock grist. A sign loaded past saying that there was Waffle Time, and it could say that again because it was so hot in the far that we had long since rolled the windows down.

Tacitly in silence and still we decided that this offering just above our heads was the sign that we should stop and repast before going forward again.

Once inside the empty space, we were immediately hooked on how everyone was dreary and drab and could not wait to get out of that place whether servers or diners or bystanders of chance. As a parenthesis and including my last thought: I had a vision of myself on a weight horse writing over every obstacle that presented itself including the dodging fence that separated us from the tables where we could dine.

But then we were seated and picked the pecan waffles with a slurry of syrup and Paul’s butter to wash it down the hole. Of course, it was Dean who spoke first: “I wonder what kind of life someone hast to live where this is as good as it gets and as bad as they can imagine.”

“Surely it’s not so bad.” But I looked again at the black and white faces and saw they had the same expression on them: the same dreary drabness all alike with no dignity.

Dean looked at me but then took another bite of the waffle with the syrup dripping off its edge. It disgusted many though I didn’t know why.

“Tell me if you can see any scrap of the bright road back to the setting stars.”