Off the Road - 37

a jazz novel on a typewriter

2

My life could be fit on a posted stand: hatched, matched, dispatched: with the last two not having any date. Death only kept me out of respect for my esteemed father. It is a farewell to Kings after that. I wish I could gather up my friends and load up guns. But I had no friends. No friends at all. It is a desolate feeling when you understand what that means and where that heads and tails.

It is the deepest midnight, and we only have blankets for clothing. She admitted that her name was Faith and that she came from Nebraska like the song, and her parents hoped that she would become a nun because then they would not have to feed her or her husband or her children. There were few jobs, at least ones with pay, and they couldn’t count on one being ready for him or her. They only had one child because of the need which left once she gave birth. She told me that she had had 30 then in the last six months but zero before that. I thought in my head that I had never had even so close a number.

She brings her chubby face to my ear: “So telling me again your story as if you had not told anyone before.” I could not help myself, but I squeezed the Charmin. Even though I knew that I would be warned that this would not save me.

“Don’t you believe me? I was telling you unbroken by the spirit of the radio and did not leave out much in the middle.”

“I am trying to decide because there are plenty of people who fake their life just to mose their way into bed. Now that you’ve done that, I want to hear it again and piece together whether there is any to truth to the fiction.”

So, I started with the decision to vamoose my caboose and wander around the country and how I hooked up with Dean partially because he knew the nation much better than I did. And in more ways than one. It seemed logical as a song with no lyrics. There are times when all the world’s asleep but for inquiries. Then I made light of the time in Maine and Vermont and started to tell of our journey as if in a dark wood where the straightway seemed blocked, butchered, and buried. Then to Memphis where the tall pyramid reigned supreme and off into the distance that contained regions as dark as any Inferno that we had run into. Even if you turn on the radio by the decade all the time, even I was still alive right here right now. She stopped me there and asked questions within questions making me stop and stare as if still in Oklahoma peering to the North by Northwest without an airplane. Everybody knew the war was over. I finally knew the good guys lost even with a box of chocolates. Though the colored girls were too exhausted to sing: “Doo, do-doo, do-doo, do-do-doo.” Though they could change with an urge from the children of Paradise.

Then I stopped. Then I looked at her. She was still paying attention. And I needed to go on. I need to recognize my pain and let it cleanse my mind in a sense of shame. It’s a sin. It’s a sin. It’s a sin. And let me wash up on the shores on the forgetfulness. I was frightened but went ahead. The last bit of the story was jejune and it seemed to bore her as if it were someone else’s story that I nearly was recounting.

She eased my forehead with her hand. It was soft like a glove. She touch me with both sides whisking away the agony for just a second. I had faith.

Then with a rapture that came from my groin, I took every demiurge and began. The blackjack, the waiting, and the dénouement of faith going to be ruined by the Jolly Roger. And in the end, I lay there weeping as Jesus wept in that imaginary book that people push on you for redemption, yours and theirs. Unfortunately, there are so many versions that you can not keep track of even with a computer and spreadsheet.

Then Faith’s green eyes looked at me knowing that there was more to be told but that she knew that there was truth in the lies because charity was dead and forgotten in the news.

Then she surprised me as her pink lips clasped mine and for an instant, I thought I was in love. But that past because the heart is the organ which feels love. Then we tour at each other in the dark where it is less dangerous.

She corrected me when I made mistakes when I made them as a sinner.

Then she went to sleep with her eyelids closing over her green. I looked at her realizing that she was nothing like pretty, but she was the first one that I had had in a year and my muscles expanded from the strain and strenuous pull. I looked up and down and realized that she might be the last one for another 12 months, but somehow that would be fine because at that moment I didn’t see myself stepping out except for a cigarette in the divan. I am getting old before my time. But time could wind its way backward so why couldn’t I?

Then without realizing it, I went to the dreamland where the king pranced and prayed with the knees and all of the young women cried and screamed for a taste of the forbidden even if they did not know exactly what was to be done except caress the child and realizing that it was too late to run the movie again because they know what they will find in the morning.

I looked at her once again.

Entertain us. Entertain us. Entertain us. Entertain us.

With a jazz novel on a typewriter.