Looking for Jack Kerouac Page 4

  Eventually, I conked out for real—and the next thing I knew, we were stopping for gas south of Terre Haute. Hank chatted with the gas station attendant filling the tank, a greasy disheveled guy with dark circles under his eyes who seemed glad for the company. Duke and I got out and stretched, then headed for the restroom, where Duke took out his little spiral notebook and filled up a couple of pages. Probably notes for the Great American Novel he planned to write.

  Back in the car, wide-awake now, the road between me and home getting longer and longer, I listened to Hank hold forth about Barry Goldwater: a good businessman, that’s what he was, with a businessman’s interests at heart. Goddamn unions, full of Reds, everybody knew it, always lobbying to work less for more. People ought to stand on their own two feet, they ought to have to go out and make a buck on commission, like he did. That wasn’t easy! Why did we think he was still on the road at three in the morning instead of in bed, asleep, with his wife?

  We just let him talk. We needed the ride, but I felt bad for not speaking up and saying that Duke and I were members of the United Steelworkers Union ourselves—my dad was, too, and nobody in the world worked harder than he did. Barry Goldwater was a rich man, Dad always said, born rich, and he didn’t have any idea about what it was like for people who had to work for a living. Until now, I hadn’t even known anybody who was planning to vote for Goldwater in November. A couple of the Eddies were twenty-one, maybe they’d vote for him, being college guys and all. But if Goldwater was their man, they’d been smart enough not to mention it when Duke and I were around.

  Hank was a decent enough guy, in any case. When we got to Evansville, he drove past his turn-off and dropped us off on the south side of town, where we’d be more likely to pick up another ride.

  “You boys be careful,” he said, like the dad he was.

  We thanked him, watched him make a U-turn and head for home.

  “Leg one, Paulie,” Duke said.

  We shouldered our duffel bags and started walking.

  Cornfields stretched out on either side of the road, here and there the shadows of farmhouses dotted the horizon and red lights blinked at the top of radio towers. We passed a football field—Home of the Blue Devils—and it seemed to me like a lifetime since I’d been at the game with Kathy.

  It was still dark, but starting to feel like morning. The weeds along the side of the road were beaded with dew, and there was a fresh smell in the air, a country smell I couldn’t name. Duke and I walked in silence. I liked being quiet, watching the night drain out of the sky and everything turn gray, then color up.

  There was a silvery gray mist off to the west, hovering over the fields, but to the east the sky was blue, the barns red, the corn green, but drying, brown, at the base. A yellow caution light blinked in the distance and, as we approached and I saw there was a truck stop at the junction, I was suddenly starving.

  I guess Duke was, too, because he gave me a look and we both took off, running.

  Apple pie and ice cream, that’s what we had, because it was what Sal Paradise ate pretty much all the way across the country on his first trip west in On the Road. It was good, too: the pie freshly baked, hot, the ice cream melting down the sides. We had seconds, then thirds, and the waitress said we might as well buy the whole pie, it was cheaper that way, so we did—polishing it off, dabbing up the crumbs left in the pie pan with our fingers.

  SIX

  A trucker named Bud took us the next leg, over the Ohio River—silver as a mirror and perfectly still, so that the trees along the riverbank reflected there looked like they were painted on the water—and into Kentucky, where I’d never been before. Except for our senior trip last fall, I’d never been anywhere, except to Chicago for White Sox games and to see the Christmas windows at Marshall Fields, and a couple of times to a cottage my parents rented on a weedy little lake in Michigan. So it kind of thrilled me to see all the horse farms surrounded by what seemed like miles of white split-rail fence and also what Bud told us were tobacco fields, the big leaves drying on racks alongside the road, like the pages of books. The warm air blowing in through the open window smelled like cigarettes.

  “Take a whiff.” He tapped the pack of Lucky Strikes in his shirt pocket.

  He was a talker, Bud. He’d crisscrossed the whole country hauling freight and had something to say about the high times he’d had in every single place he’d ever been. Oregon, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas. You name it. It beat the hell out of hitchhiking, he said. Never knowing how far you were going to get in a day, who you were going to have to put up with to get there, not to mention not knowing where you were going to sleep.

  “You got a truck, you got a rolling motel room.” He gestured over his shoulder, to a built-in bed between the seat and the back window.

  “You’ll notice, the wife even made me up some nice throw pillows.” He winked. “I’m going to tell you something, boys: In addition to all its other benefits, trucking is the secret to a happy marriage.”

  “How’s that?” Duke asked.

  “Simple,” Bud said. “You’re gone a lot, you see the world. You romance the occasional lady who doesn’t expect anything but a nice steak dinner and a few drinks for a roll in the hay. So you come home and find out the wife’s gone overboard with the Sears Roebuck catalogue? It’s a small price to pay to dodge the nine-to-five grind, coming home to tuna casserole, whiny kids, and mowing the grass every Saturday morning. There’s damn good money in it, too—if you can put together enough to get your own rig.”

  “Yeah?” Duke asked.

  Bud nodded. “You bet.”

  It sounded like a pretty good life, and I started second-guessing myself. What if I just hitchhiked home, told Kathy I’d figured out it was working at the mill that I hated and what I really wanted to do was drive a truck? I could make as much money, maybe even more. Plenty for a nice apartment and—I don’t know, sofas, toasters, irons. Whatever she wanted. Eventually, we could afford to buy a house, brick with three bedrooms and a basement, a two-car garage. She might go for it.

  But when Bud dropped us at a truck stop a few miles south of Clarksville and pulled into the truckers’ parking lot to sleep, Duke shook his head and laughed. “Poor old Bud. He thinks he’s got it knocked, but he’s just kidding himself. His leash is just longer than most other guys’, that’s all.”

  And I was right back to being in a panic at the very thought of getting married because I knew, if you were a decent person, which I still believed I wanted to be, married was married. You couldn’t be halfway married any more than you could be halfway dead.

  “Paulie,” Duke snapped his fingers. “Hey! Paulie!”

  “What?”

  He gave me this look. “You doing okay, man?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m doing great.”

  “You sure?”

  “Aside from being hungry, in serious need of a shower, and sick to death of listening to old farts rationalize their lives. Yeah. I’m swell.”

  But he kept looking at me. “Listen,” he said. “You got more to lose than I do. You got a nice girlfriend, if a girlfriend is what you want; you got a nice family. You got troubles to consider—you know, on account of your mom. Me? That’s a different story. My old man will probably be tickled pink when he figures out I’m gone—prove to him he was right all along. I couldn’t cut it, you know? My mom, she’ll go to mass and pray. Then come home and fuss over the old man and boss my brothers and their wives around and bake krusczyki for all the bratty little grandkids—and pretty soon forget I’m not there.” He held up his hands, as if in surrender. “I’m just saying, I get it if you want to go back.”

  “I’m not going back,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, not going back and not wanting to go back aren’t exactly the same thing, you know? You might want to think about that.”

  “I said I’m not going back.”

  “Okay, then.”

  He held out his hand. We shook.

  Then headed
for the little grocery store inside the truck stop, where we bought a loaf of Wonder bread, a package of salami, a jar of mustard, a bag of potato chips—and fished out four icy Cokes from the barrel near the cash register, two for each of us. There were four tables outside, under some shade trees, just one lone trucker sitting at one, drinking a cup of coffee, listening to the Sox play Cleveland on his transistor radio. We took a table nearby, and Duke made up the all the bread and salami into sandwiches, just like Sal Paradise did in On the Road. He tore open the bag of potato chips.

  I smeared some mustard on one of the sandwiches with my pocketknife, chowed down—and, no doubt, it was the best salami sandwich I’d ever eaten in my life. The Wonder bread was soft and chewy, the mix of meat and mustard perfect, the salty crunch of potato chips slipped in between the bread and meat so much more satisfying than lettuce would have been. I wolfed down three in a row; the cold prickle of Coke washing them down made my eyes water.

  Duke leaned back against the picnic table, gazed up into the blue sky. “Is this the life, or what?” He grinned. “We haven’t even missed work yet, you know? Another day, we won’t even remember that frigging place.”

  “No shit,” I said.

  But it was a lie. I wouldn’t forget it. I didn’t want to forget it: the pounding of the machinery, the mind-numbing repetition of the work, the way my body ached at the end of the shift, the shock of sunlight every morning. If I forgot that, I’d forget the person I was when I worked there, the person I was in serious danger of becoming.

  I rummaged in my duffel bag for my baseball mitt and held it up. Duke nodded and took his out, too, and we threw awhile. Easy at first, then testing out our best stuff on each other. Baseball was my game. I was good at it, and the familiar arc of my arm as I threw, the rhythmic slapping of the ball in my glove never failed to calm me.

  Afterward, Duke took his notebook from his shirt pocket and started writing. I tossed my duffel to the ground, stretched out, and used it as a pillow. The sun felt good filtering down through the shade trees, dappling my face. My eyes felt heavy. There was a nice little breeze and, lying there, I could hear the whoosh of cars going by, the occasional semi engine cranking up and wheezing out of the gas station onto the highway, the sound of a dog barking in the distance.

  And the ballgame, wafting over from the trucker’s table. The crackly sound of the radio and the rhythm of the announcer’s voice mingling with the ebb and flow of voices in the crowd made me think of lying in bed summer nights listening to White Sox games on my transistor—Bobby in his own room, doing the same thing. How he’d always knock on my wall when they scored and I’d knock back.

  We lived and breathed baseball when we were kids. We played Little League from the time we could hold a bat, we played catch with Dad when he came home from work, we played pick-up ball in Joey Bucko’s backyard every afternoon. When it rained, we stayed inside and played by way of our baseball cards. It was always the Sox against another team. We’d set up the field and the dugouts on the living room floor, pull a team name out of the cereal bowl we kept them in, flip a coin for who got to be the Sox—then play the lineups, throwing dice to decide the hits and the plays, moving the players’ cards around the bases.

  Once we actually saw Keegan pitch a no-hitter in the second game of a doubleheader; once Bobby caught a foul ball hit by Minnie Minoso, the Cuban Comet, who smiled up at him and gave him a wave. He still had the ball, on a little stand on top of his dresser.

  Then I was remembering going to a Sox game this summer, without Mom. Dad and Bobby and I sitting in the bleachers, not mentioning her, not talking about anything else, either—not even the fact that the Sox were barely in the game that night and lost to the Yankees, who we hated.

  I concentrated on the sound of the game on the trucker’s radio, making myself remember other, happier times—but they all had Mom in them, and it only made me miss her more.

  “Hey, Paulie!”

  I opened my eyes and there was Duke standing maybe fifty feet away, in the parking lot, a skinny old colored guy by his side.

  “Paulie! Hey, come here! Bring the sandwiches.”

  I looked toward the picnic table, where there were a couple of sandwiches left in the bread bag. I picked up the bag, went over to where he was standing.

  He took the bag and handed it to the colored guy, who bobbed and weaved a pantomime of thanks, eyes darting, all hunched up, trying to look smaller than he already was.

  “Paul, this is Gus,” Duke said.

  I held out my hand, but Gus took a step back, clutching the bag of sandwiches.

  “Negroes aren’t allowed in the store,” Duke said. “They can buy gas, but they can’t go in the store. Is that bullshit, or what? So I told Gus here he could have our extra sandwiches, no problem.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Yeah, he can have them.”

  Gus opened his mouth, nothing came out.

  Duke clapped him on the shoulder. “He’s going to Nashville. He says he’ll take us that far.”

  Duke was facing the picnic area, but I was facing the gas station, where I could see three guys standing by a red GTO with a decal of the Confederate flag on the back window, watching us. They were older than we were—built, sunburned, maybe construction workers.

  “Duke,” I said.

  “What?”

  I tilted my head, just barely.

  But he turned around at stared at them. “You’re worried about them?” he asked.

  “I think maybe Gus is worried about them.”

  Gus nodded. “You boys be putting yourselves in harm’s way you be coming with me.”

  “They’re just bullies,” Duke said. “I’m not afraid of them.” He walked over to the picnic table, got his gear, and headed toward Gus’s beat-up ’53 Chevy.

  What could I do but get my own gear and follow him, Gus trailing behind?

  “Hey, Yankee boy,” one of the guys hollered as we went past.

  The others laughed.

  “I guess ya’ll don’t know how we do things in Tennessee?”

  I ignored him. Gus looked scared to death.

  “Hey!” the guy yelled again. “Nigger lover.”

  I could have killed Duke for setting us up like this. If we went with Gus—well, who knew what they’d do. If we didn’t go with him, Duke and I were in for a fight, big-time—and after they’d kicked our asses, they were likely to follow Gus and pull him over and beat the crap out of him, too, or worse.

  I was pretty sure Gus was thinking the same thing. He didn’t say anything, though, just darted a glance at me and picked up his pace. Duke got in front, in the passenger’s seat; I slid into the back. Gus got in, put the key into the ignition and the Chevy started up with a cough and a rattle. His hands were shaking on the wheel.

  He pulled out onto the highway and we went maybe a mile, none of us saying a word. Then there was the roar of the GTO behind us.

  “Lord, have mercy,” Gus said, his voice trembling.

  “Fuckers,” Duke said, his fists clenched. “Those motherfuckers.” But he looked worried.

  I was scared shitless, myself.

  Gus kept his hands on the wheel, his eyes on the road. He was going thirty, tops. His lips were moving, but no sound was coming out. I think he was praying.

  The GTO tailgated until the other lane was clear; then the driver pulled up right next to us so the guy in the passenger seat and Gus were head-to-head.

  He threw a beer can, hard, and it bounced off of the car door. Gus didn’t flinch, he didn’t even look at them, just kept driving and praying.

  “Nigger lovers,” the guy in the backseat yelled at Duke and me. “Y’all go home where you belong.”

  I don’t know how long they stayed right beside us. It seemed like forever until a car appeared on the horizon and the GTO had to zoom ahead and clear the lane.

  They played with us a while: speeding up, slowing down. Then, finally, I guess they’d had their fun, because the driver floored it and to
ok off. It wasn’t until they were out of sight and I blew out a long breath that I realized I’d barely been breathing.

  Gus pulled over. “I know you boys be meaning to do me a kindness,” he said. “And I thank you for the sandwiches. But you ain’t safe with me, hear? Ain’t none of us safe. Y’all got to get out now and find you a white man to take you the rest of the way.”

  “Ignorant hillbillies,” Duke said, as Gus pulled away. “Truth is, they’re just scared maybe colored people will turn out to be smarter than they are. Then where would they be? I’ve got friends who are colored, guys I’ve known since grade school. It pisses me off for them, you know? We should’ve taken those fuckers out. Seriously. We really should have.”

  “Yeah, right. All three of them?”

  He shrugged. “Chickenshits. Throwing beer cans at an old man. That’s low.”

  “It was our fault,” I said.

  “Bullshit. We were the ones doing the right thing.”

  “Giving him the sandwiches, yeah. But making him give us a ride?”

  “We didn’t make him. Christ, I just wanted him to see that every white person isn’t a goddamn bigot. Tell me what’s wrong with that.”

  “It was stupid. You could have gotten him killed. For all we know they’ll go back and find him. And don’t try to tell me you weren’t scared.”

  “Yeah, I was scared. So what? Hemingway said courage is being scared and doing the right thing, anyway. Did you know that?”

  “Hemingway blew his brains out,” I said. “What kind of courage is that?”

  Duke shrugged. “Well, I’m not sorry we did it,” he said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Just let’s not do it again, okay?”

  He shrugged again and took off, walking. I let him get a few hundred yards ahead before I followed him, to get some distance between us.