Interstate (35 page)

these knives ‘How can the police let the shopkeepers sell these things and put them in their windows, no less, to interest thousands of potential customers a day?' I mean, that's the point—that's economics, marketing, business; you think you can sell them so you advertise or show them in the best possible spots. Or you just want to sell them, to make money, but what do you think of the creep you're selling one of these to or about the person or the cop, which is the other point I had, he's going to possibly use it on? It's too unbelievable. But there they were, and most of the knives in Army-Navy stores they called them. So I'm saying, everything about these knives represented to me—that word again—an ugly dog-beat-dog-to-death life I didn't want to live. I in fact hated it and wanted to become an adult in part just so I wouldn't have to face young toughs with switchblades and guns anymore or just their crazy fists and kicking feet, and hey, look how that turned out. They're all around us now, weapons, and kids are tougher to adults than they ever were, though believe me they were always tough, and believe me also when I say I was no saint then myself but I wasn't a devil either. You know, somehow I don't think I'm making much sense. Repeating myself, often contradicting myself, meaning saying the opposite or near opposite to what I just said but with as much belief. Am I, or should I just drive?” and Margo says “A little, but drive too,” and I say “Funny, funny, does this kit have a sense of hummus?” and Julie says “Really, Daddy, you're only making a very little sense; you don't say things to understand and you're not nice to the people you talk about,” and I say “Not nice, not nice? After all I said and you're still on their side just because they're kids?” raising my voice, angry, I can't believe it, she's just a little kid, I'm always doing this, where's it come from and how come I can't stop it? From now on I will. Make it that way. From now on you stop! “Okay, I apologize, about the earlier stuff if I offended the ladies, but I'd like to bust some of those boys' faces for what they do to people, at least tackle and slap them, and guys like those schmucks who tried to scare the crap out of us. But okay, okay, but anyway, nobody then—boys—owned the powerful guns they do today. Boys and men, what am I talking about? For they've machine guns and submachine guns and probably semi- and quarterma-chine guns if there're such things. All the guns. AKA this, ZBT-10 that. Even the initials, numbers and names are a clever come-on by the manufacturers of the guns, like for cars, though the ones I gave aren't them. But a turn-on, a something-on, a buy me, use-me, abuse-me, that's what I'm for if I'm affordable and if I'm unaffordable then all you got to do to get me is rob a few people with knives or normal rifles or handguns. I mean, boys—I know you heard Mommy and I discussing it the other night—boys of fourteen and fifteen getting on buses and maybe even paying the correct fare to do this…Okay, it happened recently with only one city bus and once with a commuter train when it was at a station for a stop. But Jesse James way-out-Wild-West style, but instead of holding up stagecoaches, which was bad enough, they hold up the entire bus and train car with these big blow-off-your-upper-torso guns with a single spraying round. Sorry, I'm being too graphic—I'm describing too much—and then for good measure—‘Oh, thank you, kind boys'—slamming two women in the cheek with the gun butts because they didn't say thanks when these young robbers emptied their purses into a shopping bag and threw them back in their faces. And on the train another young hood putting the gun barrel—that's the long part where the bullet comes out—into a man's mouth far as it would go and pulling the trigger—nothing was in the first round, ha-ha—and giving the guy an almost fatal heart attack. So why, I'm asking, was asking—either of you have an answer? And why do boys set fire to derelicts—you know, bums on the street, but here on subway benches where they're sleeping? Hey, subways were safe when I was a boy. The toilets were even open though so smelly to be unusable unless you had an emergency. I used to go downtown myself to Macy's when I was ten or eleven to buy Christmas gifts for my parents and dog—maybe today during the Christmas season they're a bit safer too. After all—well, I wanted to say something about ‘bad for business' and especially during the month the stores make forty percent of their money—but I won't. But do you think I'd ever let you do that alone at thirteen, fourteen, even if you were boys and traveling together? Though your mommy, who's a good deal younger than I, used to do it too—go to some special genius girls' school in New York when she was eleven and right through high school, so that must mean the city was still a lot safer then too, though she can recall incidents she didn't like,” and Margo says “Like what?” and I say “Ask her—but on the subway, usually going to school during rush hour when it was crowded and she couldn't get a seat,” and Margo says “So she had to stand. So what sort of things?” and I say “You know, you can imagine it, with men,” and Julie says “What they do to her?” and I say “They didn't act nice to young girls. Some men didn't with older girls too, but these guys I'm talking about were even worse. Because you know, or you don't, and why should you? though maybe now's as good a time as any to find out—for Margo; you, Julie, you keep your hands over your ears, hear? But older men—I didn't mean to be cute about it; just listen, both of you, seriously to what I say. Older men can be a bit peculiar,
some;
a little dirty—yes, not nice, and they're not nice, I'm not nice to them—in ways boys aren't, with girls, I mean. I'm sure I wasn't clear there, and probably intentionally. Anyway, that's all I'm going to say about it—ask Mommy the rest, though she might kill me for saying as much as I did. But—so what happened, I was trying to think before, but I guess I lost track of it,” and Julie says “About what that happened?” and I say “Wait, I didn't hear that, a bus just passed, what?” and she says “That track that happened, you said, and got lost,” and I say “Was I referring before, meaning was I talking to you before about what I was thinking way before, about…regarding…something about civilized life in cities and around them and what happened to it? I don't quite remember, but certainly lots about cities have changed. Maybe it's the overcrowdedness, not only in subways—there've always been rush hours and dirty men—but everywhere, and people just don't know how to deal with it as well as they did. That clear?” and Margo says no and I say “Anyway, it's ironic, though, because—you know, a strange twist, a reverse of what was to—” and Margo says “I know what ‘ironic' is; we learned it in English,” and I say “Well, then that's a positive part of life today—‘positive: good,' Julie,” and Julie says “I know ‘positive.' ‘The man is positive. The nurse is positive,'” and I say “So, there again: another slice of the good positive part of life today. You both know the word ‘positive' and one of you at ten knows what ‘irony' is while I didn't probably know it till I was fifteen, or even seventeen, eighteen. I probably was first taught it at fifteen but it didn't sink in and it maybe could have been till I was twenty till it did, and the truth is I'm not so sure I even now know what it means or at least could give a good definition of it. I was not well educated, you can say, and most likely because I hated school. Uh-oh, I wasn't supposed to say that,” and Julie says “Why?” and Margo says “‘Irony' has something to do with that opposite-to-what's-expected thing again,” and I say “School's—I'm avoiding an answer to Julie because I don't want to give either of you reasons for hating school too—school's just more fun today and the teachers are better paid and the classrooms are brighter and airier and everything's less regimented in the safer schools, it seems. And the blackboard's green and magnetized in spots so things can stick to it instead of falling off and something else it has where everybody doesn't get full of awful chalk dust, and instead of solemn Presidents George and Abe on the wall you have gay posters of flashy TV and music stars. And what else? Lots else. Reading corners, Disney movies in classrooms, cheery librarians and a principal who merrily races through the halls calling you ‘sweetie' and greets you with a good morning at the school door. While we had stiff-lipped principals and screwed-down desks and ugly textbooks, and teachers—Mr. Feeny and Miss Brady, call for Mr. Feeny and Miss Brady and his five ruler smacks on your palm and her single face slap if you spoke out of turn or for a second, while they were speaking, turned your back—who often used corporal punishment. That's—” and Margo says “We know, you just said,” and Julie says “I don't,” and I say “It's when an army corporal punishes you in basic training,” and Margo says “You're not funny sometimes, Daddy,” and I say “Vat's dat? Anudder bigische bus just vent past and I dint hear,” and she says “No it didn't and one didn't before. It's when people,” to Julie, “hit your body as punishment but not to kill you. That's capital punishment,” and I say “Now that's something. You know it, now Julie does and may continue to—can? may?—while I—” and Margo says “May,” and I say “Good, while I probably did think when I was your age, and probably at Julie's never even heard the term—phrase?—that it was a corporal who punished you in early army training. But I'm also almost sure I didn't know the difference between them, capital and corporal. In fact I might have thought—somehow this is all coming back—that capital punishment took place in the nation's capital or even in that capital's Capitol building, and probably not till I was sixteen or so did I think otherwise—and quick, on your toes, tell me the difference between those two capitals or capitols, and for a bonus Q, what two U.S. bodies meet in the Capitol building, which are toughies but winner gets something sweet,” and Julie says “Let me think,” and Margo says “One's an
a
, other's an o and has a capital C but I don't know who meets,” and Julie says “Not fair,” and I say “You're so ehjacated as my dad liked to say, probably anudder reason I wasn't, but how would that account for you girls being so smart? Your brainy mom, who doesn't laugh at my anti-intellectual jokes, while my brainy mom did at my dad's,” and Margo says “When do I get my prize?” and I say “At the next rest stop, and Julie too, but smaller,” and Margo says “That's not fair.” “Anyway,” I say, “if you want to continue this till the first sweet stop, another reason for the dismalness of life today is that most people don't read, and I kid you not. What's the figure I read in the paper—fifty percent of the people don't even read a book a year? And if they don't this year, why would they the next, and so on, so maybe the real figure, unless I don't understand statistics—you know…well, just statistics—is that they don't read a book in five or ten years—Americans—twenty, maybe the rest of their lives,” and Julie says “I read a lot—three books in one day last week and I'm American,” and I say “They're small books, and kids don't count in this report; it's for people after they're done with school, and not for the day done but life. But you do, fine, I'm proud of ya, Margo too, what a read-team, and I just hope the habit sticks. But the entertainment or diversion or outside activity or just intellectual pleasure, and I use the word—term—loosely—phrase—is, well, lots of things—music, movies, catalogs, TV, but creepy demonic killer music, movies and TV, where it's cool, dude, to say dumb things and that you hate cops and you take advantage of old ladies and young girls—I'm talking here of the—” and Julie says “What girls, what do they say to them?” and I say “No girls, shouldn't have brought them up. But of talk music I'm talking of—you know, the one with the flat mangled speech and clumsy headachy beat. I mean, when I was a kid your age we couldn't wait—and not seven but ten, eleven, I swear to you—and I don't want to go into my own dad's when-I-was-a-kid routine, though they had some wonderful artful songs then too, something with a honey blonde and the bicycle-built-for-two one and before his time there was ‘Beautiful Dreamer' and ‘Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair'—but kids my age couldn't wait for the next Broadway musical by Rodgers and—” and Margo says “Well I like rap,” and I say “Who said anything about that? I don't even know what it is,” and Julie says “Oh sure, Dad, tell us,” and I say “Rap, like chitchat, right, or is that the one with the flat popular-ugly-music-one beat?” and Julie says “You know what it is,” and I say “Okay, I won't lie, and I dislike it immensely and think it's hateful—I give that music four aspirins, maybe five,” and Margo says “You won't lie after you're caught, because everyone knows rap and that must mean it's good,” and I say “Oh, ‘good'—a great critical word, ‘good.' it's good, this movie's good, this book's good, this line of poetry's real good,' or it's bad, this bassoon quintet's bad,
The Iliad
's bad,
War and Peace
is both good and bad,' some title of a great work with three names which I can't come up with right now,
The Red and the Black and the Green
or something, is good, bad and I-don't-know,” and she says “I still think rap's very good and that life is better for kids today than when you were one. Kids are freer to choose their own things and styles more,” and I say “Freer to choose what the advertisers gorge down their little throats,” “and have more selections to do what they want most times, while you've always said you couldn't as a boy,” and I say “Advertisers, store owners, record company heads and the piggies who rant these songs, all they want is your money. And we too could say what we wanted when we were kids, to adults, but about important things, if we had anything important to say—racial and religious prejudice, for instance. Those were big issues for kids then, and the right of people to live freely—in freedom—you know, so long as they're not killing other people, I'm speaking of whole countries. But other things, some not even important, we listened rather than shot off our mouths every first chance, not that you do that. But anywhere, I mean anyway, look what your freer freedom's ended up in—I'm saying rap and music like it that makes kids want to do hateful things because the rappers encourage them to—‘Hey babe, beat, bleed and bleat, ‘cause it feels good'—and the kids think ‘Say, these dudes are cool and cute and just great because they're popular and hip and make a mint, so they must know about life and what's right, wrong and I-don't-know,'” and she says “You're not making sense again,” and Julie says “She's right, Daddy, you're not,” and I say “Ahh, she's always right to you, but good, you're inseparable sisses and she's a thinker so a good one to look up to, and your loyalty's fine too to a certain extent, you two will be true comrades forever or so I hope,” and Margo says “I admit some rap might be like what you said but there's other nicer kinds that—” and I say “Look, those guys before riding alongside us looking as if they wanted to shoot—freedom, oh boy great freedom when they plug us dead, give me five,” and I hold up my right palm for someone to slap though know no one will, and she says “I don't see the connection,” and I say “And you know something, for a few moments there I almost did think we'd get shot at—I didn't see any gun but I was sure they had one, for what other way to travel today? And that face filled with a rapper's put-down hate, though at least the rapper gets paid for it so his is mostly fake, while these guys make it for real; they hated me, but why? They don't know me from Charlie, do they? Someone here snitch on her dad? So we got a man you don't know who's doing nothing to you and with two kids in back who are obviously his—that's who you take out your rage on?” and Margo says “Maybe they didn't see me and Julie,” and I say “They saw, you yourself said you were sitting up and staring at them, or at least staring at them so you had to be sitting up and for them to see, and if they didn't, even so, for what I do? What's really to mock and go ha-ha about in me if my driving was okay which I think it was? Before, sure, I laughed at myself in saying maybe they think I look funny. I've seen my mug in the mirror enough to know it's often good for a laugh. But tell me, why am I letting it upset me so? Listen, one good thing from it once the scare was over is that they helped us pass the time for a while talking about them and anything that came out of it, and that's always a relief. This trip's too familiar and the scenery's pretty dull so it can be a longie for me without someone to chat with in the front seat, not that that's an invite for either of you to come up here. You can amuse yourself and each other much better back there and maybe get a snooze in too. And for safety sake, meaning I bet you get a leverage—ooh, I hate that word, it doesn't mean anything and defies definition—an edge, an advantage of maybe ten percentage points in living and skipping injury from being in back rather than up front if let's say, God forbid, there was ever a crash. If anybody's got to get it, let it be me, though nothing's gonna happen, take my word. This is all what they call conjecture—supposing, perhapsing, like that. But I'll never understand why people act so savagely to people, do you? No matter what the reasons—meaning, what disadvantages they might have in life—you both know what I mean by ‘disadvantages,'” and Julie says yes and Margo says nothing but I know she knows. “And they were driving an expensive new car, though maybe stolen, but anyway, things seemed to be going okay with them and they didn't look poor by any means. But even if you're poor—hold on, what you've been waiting for, the lecture; even if you're looked down on by a lot of insensitive stupid society who gotta look down on someone to think they're better, all of which you've heard. Even if—” and Margo says “