Roadwork (16 page)

He threw his drink at the television.

He missed by quite a bit. The glass hit the wall, fell to the floor, and shattered. He burst into fresh tears.

Crying, he thought: Look at me, look at me, Jesus you’re disgusting. You’re such a fucking mess it’s beyond belief. You spoiled your whole life and Mary’s too and you sit here joking about it, you fucking waste. Jesus, Jesus, Jesus—

He was halfway to the telephone before he could stop himself. The night before, drunk and crying, he had called Mary and begged her to come back. He had begged until she began to cry and hung up on him. It made him squirm and grin to think of it, that he had done such a Godawful embarrassing thing.

He went on to the kitchen, got the dustpan and the whiskbroom, and went back to the living room. He shut off the TV and swept up the glass. He took it into the kitchen, weaving slightly, and dumped it into the trash. Then he stood there, wondering what to do next.

He could hear the insectile buzz of the refrigerator and it frightened him. He went to bed. And dreamed.

It was half past three and he was slamming up the turnpike toward home, doing seventy. The day was clear and hard and bright, the temperature in the low thirties. Every day since Mary had left he went for a long ride on the turnpike—in a way, it had become his surrogate work. It soothed him. When the road was unrolling in front of him, its edges clearly marked by the low early winter snowbanks, on either side, he was without thought and at peace. Sometimes he sang along with the radio in a lusty, bellowing voice. Often on these trips he thought he should just keep going, letting way lead on to way, getting gas on the credit card. He would drive south and not stop until he ran out of roads or out of land. Could you drive all the way to the tip of South America? He didn’t know.

But he always came back. He would get off the turnpike, eat hamburgers and French fries in some pickup restaurant, and then drive into the city, arriving at sunset or just past.

He always drove down Stanton Street, parked, and got out to look at whatever progress the 784 extension had made during the day. The construction company had mounted a special platform for rubberneckers—mostly old men and shoppers with an extra minute—and during the day it was always full. They lined up along the railing like clay ducks in a shooting gallery, the cold vapor pluming from their mouths, gawking at the bulldozers and graders and the surveyors with their sextants and tripods. He could cheerfully have shot all of them.

But at night, with the temperatures down in the 20’s, with sunset a bitter orange line in the west and thousands of stars already pricking coldly through the firmament overhead, he could measure the road’s progress alone and undisturbed. The moments he spent there were becoming very important to him—he suspected that in an obscure way, the moments spent on the observation platform were recharging him, keeping him tied to a world of at least half-sanity. In those moments before the evening’s long plunge into drunkenness had begun, before the inevitable urge to call Mary struck, before he began the evening’s activities in Self-Pity Land—he was totally himself, coldly and blinkingly sober. He would curl his hands over the iron pipe and stare down at the construction until his fingers became as unfeeling as the iron itself and it became impossible to tell where the world of himself—the world of human things—ended and the outside world of tractors and cranes and observation platforms began. In those moments there was no need to blubber or pick over the rickrack of the past that jumbled his memory. In those moments he felt his self pulsing warmly in the cold indifference of the early-winter evening, a real person, perhaps still whole.

Now, whipping up the turnpike at seventy, still forty miles away from the Westgate tollbooths, he saw a figure standing in the breakdown lane just past exit 16, muffled up in a CPO coat and wearing a black knitted watchcap. The figure was holding up a sign that said (amazingly, in all this snow): LAS VEGAS. And underneath that, defiantly: OR BUST!

He slammed on the power brake and felt the seat belt strain a groove in his middle with the swift deceleration, a little exhilarated by the Richard Petty sound of his own squealing tires. He pulled over about twenty yards beyond the figure. It tucked its sign under its arm and ran toward him. Something about the way the figure was running told him the hitchhiker was a girl.

The passenger door opened and she got in.

“Hey, thanks.”

“Sure.” He glanced in the rearview mirror and pulled out, accelerating back to seventy. The road unrolled in front of him again. “A long way to Vegas.”

“It sure is.” She smiled at him, the stock smile for people that told her it was a long way to Vegas, and pulled off her gloves. “Do you mind if I smoke?”

“No, go ahead.”

She pulled out a box of Marlboros. “Like one?”

“No, thanks.”

She stuck a cigarette in her mouth, took a box of kitchen matches from her CPO pocket, lit her smoke, took a huge drag and chuffed it out, fogging part of the windshield, put Marlboros and matches away, loosened the dark blue scarf around her neck and said: “I appreciate the ride. It’s cold out there.”

“Were you waiting long?”

“About an hour. The last guy was drunk. Man, I was glad to get out.”

He nodded. “I’ll take you to the end of the turnpike.”

“End?” She looked at him. “You’re going all the way to Chicago?”

“What? Oh, no.” He named his city.

“But the turnpike goes through there.” She pulled a Sunoco road map, dog-earned from much thumbing, from her other coat pocket. “The map says so.”

“Unfold it and look again.”

She did so.

“What color is the part of the turnpike we’re on now?”

“Green.”

“What color is the part going through the city?”

“Dotted green. It’s ... oh, Christ! It’s under
construction! ”

“That’s right. The world-famous 784 extension. Girl, you’ll never get to Las Vegas if you don’t read the key to your map.”

She bent over it, her nose almost touching the paper. Her skin was clear, perhaps normally milky, but now the cold had brought a bloom to her cheeks and forehead. The tip of her nose was red, and a small drop of water hung beside her left nostril. Her hair was clipped short, and not very well. A home job. A pretty chestnut color. Too bad to cut it, worse to cut it badly. What was that Christmas story by O. Henry? “The Gift of the Magi.” Who did you buy a watch chain for, little wanderer?

“The solid green picks up at a place called Landy,” she said. “How far is that from where this part ends?”

“About thirty miles.”

“Oh
Christ.”

She puzzled over the map some more. Exit 15 flashed by.

“What’s the bypass road?” she asked finally. “It just looks like a snarl to me.”

“Route 7’s best,” he said. “It’s at the last exit, the one they call Westgate.” He hesitated. “But you’d do better to just hang it up for the night. There’s a Holiday Inn. We won’t get there until almost dark, and you don’t want to try hitching up Route 7 after dark.”

“Why not?” she asked, looking over at him. Her eyes were green and disconcerting; an eye color you read about occasionally but rarely see.

“It’s a city bypass road,” he said, taking charge of the passing lane and roaring past a whole line of vehicles doing fifty. Several of them honked at him angrily. “Four lanes with a little bitty concrete divider between them. Two lanes west toward Landy, two lanes east into the city. Lots of shopping centers and hamburger stands and bowling alleys and all that. Everybody is going in short hops. No one wants to stop.”

“Yeah.” She sighed. “Is there a bus to Landy?”

“There used to be a city bus, but it went bankrupt. I guess there must be a Greyhound—”

“Oh, fuck it.” She squidged the map back together and stuffed it into her pocket. She stared at the road, looking put out and worried.

“Can’t afford a motel room?”

“Mister, I’ve got thirteen bucks. I couldn’t rent a doghouse.”

“You can stay at my house if you want,” he said.

“Yeah, and maybe you better let me out right here.”

“Never mind. I withdraw the offer.”

“Besides, what would your wife think?” She looked pointedly at the wedding ring on his finger. It was a look that suggested she thought he might also hang around school play yards after the monitor had gone home for the day.

“My wife and I are separated.”

“Recently?”

“Yes. As of December first.”

“And now you’ve got all these hang-ups that you could use some help with,” she said. There was contempt in her voice but it was an old contempt, not aimed specifically at him. “Especially some help from a young chick.”

“I don’t want to lay anybody,” he said truthfully. “I don’t even think I could get it up.” He realized he had just used two terms that he had never used before a woman in his life, but it seemed all right. Not good or bad but all right, like discussing the weather.

“Is that supposed to be a challenge?” she asked. She drew deeply on her cigarette and exhaled more smoke.

“No,” he said. “I suppose it sounds like a line if you’re looking for lines. I suppose a girl on her own has to be looking for them all the time.”

“This must be part three,” she said. There was still mild contempt and hostility in her tone, but now it was cut with a certain tired amusement. “How did a nice girl like you get in a car like this?”

“Oh, to hell with it,” he said. “You’re impossible.”

“That’s right, I am.” She snuffed her cigarette in his ashtray and then wrinkled her nose. “Look at this. Full of candy wrappers and cellophane and every other kind of shit. Why don’t you get a litterbag?”

“Because I don’t smoke. If you had just called ahead and said, Barton old boy, I intend to be hitching the turnpike today so give me a ride, would you? And by the way, clear the shit out of your ashtray because I intend to smoke—then I would have emptied it. Why don’t you just throw it out the window?”

She was smiling. “You have a nice sense of irony.”

“It’s my sad life.”

“Do you know how long it takes filter tips to biodegrade? Two hundred years, that’s how long. By that time your grandchildren will be dead.”

He shrugged. “You don’t mind me breathing in your used carcinogens, screwing up the cilia in my lungs, but you don’t want to throw a filter tip out into the turnpike. Okay.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing.”

“Listen, do you want to let me out? Is that it?”

“No,” he said. “Why don’t we just talk about something neutral? The state of the dollar. The state of the Union. The state of Arkansas.”

“I think I’d rather catch a little nap if you don’t mind. It looks like I’m going to be up most of the night.”

“Fine.”

She tilted the watchcap over her eyes, folded her arms, and became still. After a few moments her breathing deepened to long strokes. He looked at her in short snatches, shoplifting an image of her. She was wearing blue jeans, tight, faded, thin. They molded her legs closely enough to let him know that she wasn’t wearing a second pair or longhandles. They were long legs, folded under the dashboard for comfort, and they were probably blushing lobster red now, itching like hell. He started to ask her if her legs itched, and then thought how it would sound. The thought of her hitchhiking all night on Route 7, either getting rides in short hops or not getting rides at all, made him feel uncomfortable. Night, thin pants, temperatures in the 20’s. Well, it was her business. If she got cold enough, she could go in someplace and warm up. No problem.

They passed exits 14 and 13. He stopped looking at her and concentrated on his driving. The speedometer needle stayed pegged at seventy, and he stayed in the passing lane. More cars honked at him. As they passed exit 12, a man in a station wagon which bore a KEEP IT AT 50 bumper sticker honked three times and blipped his lights indignantly. He gave the station wagon the finger.

With her eyes still closed she said: “You’re going too fast. That’s why they’re honking.”

“I know why they’re doing it.”

“But you don’t care.”

“No.”

“Just another concerned citizen,” she intoned, “doing his part to rid America of the energy squeeze.”

“I don’t give a tin weasel about the energy squeeze.”

“So say we; so say we all.”

“I used to drive at fifty-five on the turnpike. No more, no less. That’s where my car got the best mileage. Now I’m protesting the Trained Dog Ethic. Surely you read about it in your sociology courses? Or am I wrong? I took it for granted you were a college kid.”

She sat up. “I was a sociology major for a while. Well, sort of. But I never heard of the Trained Dog Ethic.”

“That’s because I made it up.”

“Oh. April Fool.” Disgust. She slid back down in the seat and tilted the watchcap over her eyes again.

“The Trained Dog Ethic, first advanced by Barton George Dawes in late 1973, fully explains such mysteries as the monetary crisis, inflation, the Viet Nam war, and the current energy crisis. Let us take the energy crisis as an example. The American people are the trained dogs, trained in this case to love oil-guzzling toys. Cars, snowmobiles, large boats, dune buggies, motorcycles, minicycles, campers, and many, many more. In the years 1973 to 1980 we will be trained to hate energy toys. The American people love to be trained. Training makes them wag their tails. Use energy. Don’t use energy. Go pee on the newspaper. I don’t object to saving energy, I object to training.”

He found himself thinking of Mr. Piazzi’s dog, who had first stopped wagging his tail, had then started rolling his eyes, and had then ripped out Luigi Bronticelli’s throat.

“Like Pavlov’s dogs,” he said. “They were trained to salivate at the sound of a bell. We’ve been trained to salivate when somebody shows us a Bombardier Skidoo with overdrive or a Zenith color TV with a motorized antenna. I have one of those at my house. The TV has a Space Command gadget. You can sit in your chair and change the channels, hike the volume or lower it, turn it on or off. I stuck the gadget in my mouth once and pushed the on button and the TV came right on. The signal went right through my brain and still did the job. Technology is wonderful.”