Leaving the burg of Oakley, Kansas behind me, I slowed to turn onto I-70. I was traveling from Colorado to Detroit
to visit a friend. We had talked about going to Jamaica for Thanksgiving. Having quit my last job and lost my last girl, I
was traveling light and easy. And slow. My split-windshield VW van did not handle interstate speeds, so I mostly
steered down older roads. But the gas tank would need filling in the next fifty miles, and the interstate seemed like
the best bet to find a station open late on Sunday afternoon in the deserted northwest quarter of Kansas.
At the on-ramp stood a man and two women. Hippies. I had to make a quick decision as I slowed for the turn onto
the ramp. Some company would be nice after a long day of solitudinous driving. And one of the girls was cute. The
thought process began and ended there. Thus did I light the fuse on a long night’s stumble into a gray, weary dawn.
They opened the double doors behind the passenger’s seat and piled in, bright voices, nylon backpacks, spices,
and cigarette smoke. The van rocked as they got themselves settled. There were no seats in back, just carpeting on
the floor, and a few of my belongings in a bag and a box. But the floor angled up in back over the engine
compartment almost like a double La-Z-Boy, and most important to them, it was not the side of the road. The ride
would be noisy and monotonous, but East. I put the Jeff Beck tape on the stereo, and “Shapes of Things to Come”
harmonized with the hum of the tires and the tailpipe.
We were no sooner rolling than the pretty one asked if we could stop at the next town. “We’ve been out there since
noon,” she whined fetchingly. I pulled off at a crossroads store. As the three of them walked away, I reached into the
box of camping stuff behind my seat and pulled out my money stash, a Ben-Hur allspice tin. It held eighty bucks. I
emphasize held—the money was not in the bank.
My head spun off my shoulders. I peered into the can again and again, felt around in the box and under the seats,
my hands emerging grimy from places in the ten-year-old bus that had never been cleaned. Nothing. I rummaged
among the other packs and bags on the floor in back. Nope. I got out and walked around, and even looked under the
van. Meanwhile reviewing the previous two days for the last known whereabouts of the Andrew Jackson family. As
the group walked back toward me, I blocked the door of the van.
“I had some money in here.” I held up the can. “And it’s gone.”
“I didn’t take it, sir,” said the one I would come to know as Louise. She looked about sixteen, was pregnant, and
smelled of grape gum.
“Are you accusing us of stealing, bro?” the man asked, more amused than threatened. He was Guy, from
California, with beads around his throat.
“No,” I gave him a level look. “I’m asking if you’ve seen it.”
They all shook their heads. They seemed sincere, but I had only known them for ten minutes, and for all I knew I
had picked up a family of roving pickpockets.
“Well, I guess you’re out of luck.” I tapped the faded paint of the van with my knuckle. “Tank’s empty.”
“How much do you need?” asked Claire. Dark, exotic eyes, sun-brushed cheeks, a glow of strength and
intelligence, chestnut curls embraced by the band of purple and corn-gold silk that circled her head and formed a scarf
down her back or around her shoulders, depending on her movements. She reached inside her peasant blouse and
from her cleavage produced a warm, flat, folded five. “I need to get three back.”
With that money, two more from me and one each from Guy and Louise, we got the gas gauge up to three-
quarters of a tank. “I’ve got a Chevron card,” said Guy. “I’ll fill it up at the next town.”
But I was not happy. Thieves, or not, they would be with me now until Hays, an hour and a half. I had twelve dollars
left in my wallet—I would be patting my wallet pocket dozens of times in the next few hours. I also had a paycheck
from my last job in Colorado. I had planned to leave that untouched until Detroit. Now what wild-eyed Kansas banker
would cash it for me?
I drove on. There was no Chevron station in Hays. That meant Salina, another two hours away. I figured I’d ditch
them there, gas or no gas.
But I had hope for Claire. She had been in Boulder, thinking about going back to school. “I’m still thinking about it,
but meanwhile I’m going home for the holidays.”
“The holidays? It’s October 28,” I said.
“...starting with Halloween.”
We laughed. She was older than me. Twenty-five, an Aries. I tried to find out more, but she deflected my curiosity
with humor and smokey looks that hinted of things, of wisdom and passion so far out it would be ridiculous to talk
about them.
Louise had limp, straight, dark hair, and a brash, bratty attitude that demanded attention and rejected judgment.
Whatever subject came up, from religion to pro football, she had the last word. She was going to North Carolina to
have the baby. Louise had no money and no fear. “I took the Greyhound from Cheyenne and wound up crashing at
Claire’s house,” she told me, in her slightly twitchy twang. The two women formed a team to cross the country. “If
anuh man gives us trouble, we’ll just go for his balls. Men are wimps when you get ‘em there.”
They met Guy at the place where I picked them up. He said he had worked on computers in California,. “Got burned
out, man. My boss was rippin’ me off somethin’ royal.” He was probably late twenties, tall and possibly athletic, with
surfer hair that wouldn’t stay put when he brushed it back with his hand. “So I’m takin’ it down the road. Seein’ the
world.” A grin creased his hard, brown face. “Slowly.”
Outside Hays we saw a kid hitching, right on the freeway. Claire had taken the shotgun seat. “Maybe he has
money for gas!” she shouted. I stopped.
The kid climbed in, looked us over for a moment, and by way of introduction asked, “Anybody want to smoke some
hash?”
Nobody but Louise said no, so he ran back through thick grass to a tree, and returned with a green zipper bag. “I
stashed it there in case someone not cool picked me up. Like Johnny Law.” The kid briefly flashed a tin-foiled packet
at us that was about the size of a deck of cards. He looked to make sure we were impressed. Then he pulled out a
smaller canister and a pipe. I’d learn he was my age, twenty-one, though baby-faced and soup bowl-haired. His
cultivated cool and toughness amused me. His car had broken down in Hays, he said, and he needed to get to a big
city where he could rent a car or take a plane. He had a buyer for the brick in St. Louis.
So Don got us high, and the sharp, musty smoke of the hashish filled the van. Claire stayed in the front seat, while
the rest of them sprawled on the carpet and the bags in the back. She and I started a conversation that somehow
ended up in a hilarious roundelay about ducks, terns and gooses—geese! You had to be there. Then Guy leaned
forward, and her smiles left me for him. She had a way of establishing instant rapport, especially with males. Louise
asked loudly if anyone wanted a soaper. I had no idea what that meant.
The sun went down. Euphoria faded into paranoia as I concentrated on the road. It seemed incredible to me that a
hash-laden angel would turn up in a soybean field, just to make us happy. Donny—you had to call him Donny—said he
would make enough on the dope deal to “kick back on the beach all winter.” No problem, unless he was arrested,
ripped off, or killed. The kind of things that happened to drug smugglers. That made me shiver. If he was the
Smuggler, what was I? The Driver?
That’s when I saw the car. It was dark blue or black, with gold lettering on the door that I could not read. It looked
more like a muscle car than a police car—an Olds Cutlass, or a GTO. Every other vehicle on the road passed us,
sooner or later, but the dark car appeared in my mirror, and then five minutes later I saw it again. Only it might have
been only thirty seconds—how many cigarettes had I smoked? I was also having trouble keeping the accelerator
pushed down. With all the weight of passengers the little engine whined, struggling to make fifty miles per hour. And
the wind seemed to be against us, and I smelled burning oil.
After the hash rush, I sort of woke up to the bus running normally, the blue muscle car gone, and the only smell a
loamy sweetness from the farm fields.
“Can you close your window?” Claire asked. Her smile poured into me like melted butter into a biscuit. “It’s getting
cold.”
Donny filled my tank in Salina and we kept going. I settled in back with Louise and Claire, and Don drove. We had
agreed that I would take everyone to St. Louis and Don would pay for the gas. Claire passed out a mixture of raw
cashews, sunflower seeds and dried fruits. She called it “earth mix.” I had some well-ripened pepperoni and cheese I
sliced and passed around. Louise had gone real quiet, working the cheese between her fingers and staring vacantly
at the patterns of lights made by passing cars on the interior of the van.
Once in a while a big semi would overtake us, going twenty miles an hour faster, and the roar and the wind of the
thing would buffet our little box. One of them blasted his horn as he went by—BOMP BOMMMMP! I guess he was
angry about something—hippie busses in general, or our lack of speed. The rush of wind off him shoved us two feet
to the right, and then sucked us back to the left.
Louise sat up suddenly. “What are you doing to us!” she shouted. She sprang forward over Claire, and threw an
arm around Don’s neck. The van swerved dangerously.
“Hey—hey!” I leaped up beside her and grabbed her arm as Don slipped his head under it. The van swerved again,
but it had slowed down.
“He’s taking us to Scotia!” Louise cried. “They cut off their heads and arms!” Or something like that as she wrestled
me with furious strength, both of us on top of Claire. I got my arms around Louise, as Claire pushed us off of her.
Louise kicked, and my back slammed against the double doors. The doors popped open. We fell into space.
I realized that my life had not ended. I was looking up at the stars, my feet still in the van, which was stopped on the
side of the road, with the engine idling. Don sat twisted around in the driver’s seat, looking at me, scared, his hands
still on the wheel.
My left shoulder had hit the ground hard, and it felt like it was broken or dislocated. I screamed curses and staggered
to my feet. There was not another car in sight, or a light anywhere but the lights of the van. As I walked around, the
pain in my shoulder decreased from blinding to merely agonizing.
Louise lay in the grass on the side of the road, babbling about pig’s blood, shoelaces, and the back of the closet. Guy
sat next to her with his arm around her. They looked like a father and daughter studying the constellations. I sat in
the open doorway, next to Claire.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “What happened?”
“She took something” Don said. “And I don’t think it was a soaper. Or not just a soaper. Kids take stuff, they have
no idea. It’s stupid.”
“It might have been angel dust,” Claire moved her jaw around with her hand.
“You got clocked,” I said to her. “I hope it wasn’t me.”
“It doesn’t matter. Are you okay?”
“She shouldn’t be doing shit like that if she’s having a baby,” Don whacked the back of the seat softly.
Right then I didn’t care a fig about her or her baby. I was marooned between earth and sky with people who had
stolen my money and broken my shoulder, and scared the living crap out of me. I wanted to jettison the whole lot. A
car came by. A Kansas Highway Patrol officer looked at us, but he didn’t slow down.
Guy stood up and pulled Louise up. He walked her back to the van and she crawled inside and curled up on the
carpet.
“She’ll be all right now,” he muttered. “I just talked her down. She says she gets fits. Maybe some kind of epilepsy.
And there’s been abuse.”
That’s what I figured. “Drug abuse.”
“No. Getting hit. On the head.” Guy bumped his temple with his fist. “The kid’s father. That’s why she’s going home.”
We loaded up and headed out. The night grew colder, and not much warm air flowed out of the van’s heating vents.
As the road curved slightly through the lights of a rest area, I thought I saw it again: the dark muscle car, staying
about ten lengths behind us. I slowed down to 35, and it did not get closer. I speeded up and the shadow car
stayed right there.
Then it disappeared. A delusion, or an illusion. I checked the mirror several times a minute for a half hour and never
saw it again.
Traffic picked up as we neared Topeka. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I pulled off the road and stopped at a Sambo’s.
We all went inside except Louise, who had fallen asleep without another word. I had coffee and a piece of gelatinous,
cardboardish material the waitress called “pie.” Even at twenty-one, I should know to stick to fried eggs and toast at
a chain coffee shop. Don drank hot chocolate. Guy had a soda and a hamburger. Claire ordered a cup of soup and a
cup of tea, but she had brought her own tea bag. The waitress gave her a cup of hot water for free. Through the half-
hour we sat there, she munched packs of crackers.
“I hate to say this, but I’m about ready to dump the pregnant lady.” I looked at them. “Give her a BLT to go and set
her by the side of the road.”
“She’s not a bad kid,” said Claire. “But I’m not arguing with you. She was alright until she took that pill.”
“Famous Last Words,” said I.
Don balanced the napkin dispenser on one of its little rubber feet.
Guy had sort of become Louise’s gallant protector. “You have to take care of people. Help them on their way.”
I did not like the way Claire leaned against him as she nibbled his french fries. “Okay, “I ventured, “we could leave
her at the Salvation Army.”
Cups clacked on saucers at adjacent tables.
“We can’t abandon her.” Claire looked at me. “But maybe you want to get rid of all of us.”
I felt a little betrayed. “I got no reason.”
Claire touched my hand. “She’s a sister.”
“Yeah,” Donny scowled, the bratty kid brother. “She’s annoying enough to be.”
“All right, leave her in,” I said. “But one word crossways, she gets a tallywacker.”
Claire smiled. “A what?”
I reached out and popped an index finger at her ear. “One of these.” She jerked her head, and all I caught was a
fluff of hair.
“Cut it out, asswipe!” This time we really laughed. This girl could be mine. I was pretty sure of that.
Slushy rain had just begun to fall when we walked outside, and it increased with every step we took across the
parking lot. I yelled at Claire. “Come on, let’s leave her out in this! She’ll be the god damn Little Match Girl.” Back in
the van we discussed where and how my passengers would continue their journeys. We had become a we.
Passengers on a stagecoach.
Claire said that from St. Louis, she would head for Louisville, and then PA. “And, I guess, she can come with me as far
as she wants. She’s going to Greensboro.”
Guy volunteered to accompany the ladies to Louisville, but offered them lodging in Frankfort, where he was going to
visit friends.
We drove east to KC and midnight, and blew past both. Guy sat next to me, and we did not talk much. He had put on
a knitted cap that looked vaguely Middle-Eastern, or Tibetan, and made his whole face sharper. Everyone else
huddled in the back, asleep, or anyway lying on the floor. I was tired. Cigarettes tasted foul. It had stopped raining,
but it was still cold and damp. I could tell by the rise and fall of the road we had entered hills,—you couldn’t see
squat of the surroundings.
A sappy song came on the radio, and I goofed on it, just out of boredom: “I would give everything I own...Give up my
house, my car, my phone...”
Guy looked at me sadly. “You like the Carpenters?”
“Not at...”
“I hate ‘em. I hate that song.” His voiced rasped from cold and disuse.
“Okay”
“That was playing on the stereo when a mortar hit our hooch. Nam, man.”
“Oh.” Guy was a Viet vet?
“One of the best friends I’ll ever have was inside.” He seemed to be looking through the darkness into the past.
“Really. Sorry.”
“You been in the military?”
“No. I...”
“Don’t go to Nam. No way. Just don’t do it.” I knew this was not a political position. He was speaking to me as a
friend.
“That sounds like good advice.”
“Damn straight.”
How to open and close a subject in four and a half sentences. That’s when I saw the car again. The one that had
freaked me halfway across Kansas. Only I quickly realized it wasn’t, because lights began flashing on its roof.
We were about to pass an off ramp, so I took it. The ramp led to a truck stop—one of the new kind with thirty-seven
gas pumps, an all-night cafe and gift shop, etc. I pulled up on the apron at the edge of this glowing monument of
commerce. The cop parked behind me with his headlights on, though he did turn off his flashers, which I appreciated.
My eyes ached with weariness.
His name, according to the brass plate above his right shirt pocket, was Karl E. Boyd. He was not much older—if at all—
than the people in the bus. In the headlights I could see the spray of dark freckles on his face, ears and neck, the
latter two areas clearly visible because his bright red hair had been mowed nearly to the skin.
“Can I see your license and registration.” His breath exploded around his face in the cold, damp air.
I took the license out of my wallet, and the registration from the shelf under the dashboard. “It’s signed over,” I said,
though he could see that. I had acquired the van in Colorado less than a week before, and had not yet had the title
transferred. He looked at the documents, then walked to his car, got into it, and picked up his radio mike.
They stirred a little in back. Don said, “Cops?”
Boyd was back. “Can I have everyone out of the vehicle, please.”
He’s going to search the car. And us. He’s going to find the hash. I did not know if I cared anymore. If he’s the
smuggler, what am I?
We gathered on the apron by the double doors of the van without a word of complaint. Everyone, including Louise,
was quite awake now. We all seemed to realize the situation. Except Louise. Everyone handed a driver’s license to
Boyd, except Louise. She gave him a J.C. Penney charge card.
“No,” said Boyd. “I need a license, or some form of good I.D.”
“Oh,” she smiled. “I got a good idee. Why don’t you let us go.”
Boyd chose to ignore this, even when she laughed spastically.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though clearly she was not. She happily gave her name, last address in Wyoming, parents’
address in Greenville or Greensboro or Ashville or Nashville, and her age, nineteen. I wondered obliquely if that made
her a minor. A minor I had just taken across a state line to contribute to its delinquency. Actually, two minors, or
maybe only one, if you counted the baby. I thought back fondly to the little crossroads of Oakley, Kansas. My last
moment of freedom.
Boyd pointed to the license plate on the back of the van. The year sticker said 1969. I couldn’t believe it—not even
the right decade. And I hadn’t even noticed that when I bought the van. He took the licenses back to his car. After a
couple of minutes, Don approached him to ask if the ladies could go to the restroom. Boyd spoke to him and nodded.
Guy went with them. Boyd was a while with the licenses, which were from four different states, none of them
Missouri. The pissers returned.
Another cop car pulled up. The second patrolman took Louise to the back of this car, and leaned by the open door
talking to her for about ten minutes. Boyd kept getting calls on his radio. The two cops conferred, and then they told
Louise to get out of the car, and she came back over to us. Boyd handed me the license and registration. “You will
need to get an up-to-date tag for that,” he said, meaning the license plate. “The registration is fine, but you could get
stopped every fifty miles.” I heartily agreed.
He looked around for Guy, and Guy was not there.
When they searched Guy’s backpack they found a clip for a 9 mm Ruger. It looked like Guy, and presumably his gun,
had flipped a ride on a gassing truck. Or maybe he’d just set off across a field and into the woods. Anyway, he had
vanished. More cops came, they searched, and we sat or stood, slowly freezing, until nearly dawn. Then we went in
a caravan to the sheriff’s office in Boonville, a bright, quiet place that smelled of ditto solution and burnt coffee. A
series of phone calls and teletypes revealed that Guy had assaulted an employee of a legal poker palace in Concord,
California, and stolen seven thousand dollars. And finally, finally, the people at the station determined that we had
not known him, helped him, or been threatened by him. To pass the time I tried to figure Guy. I couldn’t.
They put Louise and Claire on the bus to St. Louis. Claire had been sleeping leaning against me, her head perched on
my shoulder like a tucked-in bird. Her I had figured. A shapely, but empty vessel of young men’s dreams. Before she
left she reached out and slowly passed her fingers over my stubbled cheek and jaw. And she gave me one more of,
the last of, those smiling, smokey looks. Louise was already mentally down the road, you could tell. And who wouldn’
t want to put this night behind them? Whatever personality and character we had at sundown had been washed out
of us during the hours since.
The clock on the courthouse tower said ten o’clock when Don and I walked out of the sheriff’s office. They had
searched the van, and our belongings, looking for Guy’s gun. I assumed that the reason we were now walking out
was that the babyface boy had ditched the hashish somehow at the truck stop.
We drove a hundred miles and pulled over at a shaded spot behind a row of old stone buildings in a town that had
been largely abandoned. Even the trash cans smelled ancient. We slept for some hours. I woke up feeling fuzzy-
headed, and longing for Claire.
“Hey man,” said Donny, his attitude restored. “Wait for me in Saint Louis and take me to Tampa, and I’ll buy the gas.
And give you a C.”
“Wait for what?”
He opened the Gilbey’s Gin box that held my food and utensils, and pulled out the paper towel roll. He squeezed it
and shook it, and something fell out. It was the packet of hash. It had been rolled up and squeezed into the tube of
the paper towels through a slit in the wrapper.
That pissed me off. “Looks to me like I became the owner of that when you put it in my stuff.”
“They didn’t find it. And I wouldna let you take the rap, brother.” Donny smiled his TV teenager smile. “The girls knew
it was mine.”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” I grumped.
“Pretty sure.” He flattened the bar of hash tenderly. “By the way, Louise took your money.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Claire told me.”
“She knew? Did she see it?”
He shrugged.
“Well, just fine, Claire,” I said. “Damn your eyes.”
“Dames...”
“Dolls,” I corrected him. “Guy and Dolls.”
“That’s a bar in Sarasota. Where are we, anyway?”
The stone building beside us had a sign over the back door that had probably been hung there eighty years ago. It
said 411 Beaver St. and the rusted screws that held it to the wall were placed just above the lettering, so they looked
like single quotation marks. ‘411 Beaver St.’ As if the address of the place was a title, or a joke.
I said, “We’re at 411 Beaver Street.”
“Is that North Beaver Street, East Beaver Street...”
“South. Always south.”
He thought for a minute. “How about New Orleans? For fifty?”
“All right,” I said. “But you’re getting rid of the hash in Saint Lou. And no more drugs?”
“No.”
“Maybe just enough to get us to New Orl...”
Donny smiled. “Gotcha covered.”
to visit a friend. We had talked about going to Jamaica for Thanksgiving. Having quit my last job and lost my last girl, I
was traveling light and easy. And slow. My split-windshield VW van did not handle interstate speeds, so I mostly
steered down older roads. But the gas tank would need filling in the next fifty miles, and the interstate seemed like
the best bet to find a station open late on Sunday afternoon in the deserted northwest quarter of Kansas.
At the on-ramp stood a man and two women. Hippies. I had to make a quick decision as I slowed for the turn onto
the ramp. Some company would be nice after a long day of solitudinous driving. And one of the girls was cute. The
thought process began and ended there. Thus did I light the fuse on a long night’s stumble into a gray, weary dawn.
They opened the double doors behind the passenger’s seat and piled in, bright voices, nylon backpacks, spices,
and cigarette smoke. The van rocked as they got themselves settled. There were no seats in back, just carpeting on
the floor, and a few of my belongings in a bag and a box. But the floor angled up in back over the engine
compartment almost like a double La-Z-Boy, and most important to them, it was not the side of the road. The ride
would be noisy and monotonous, but East. I put the Jeff Beck tape on the stereo, and “Shapes of Things to Come”
harmonized with the hum of the tires and the tailpipe.
We were no sooner rolling than the pretty one asked if we could stop at the next town. “We’ve been out there since
noon,” she whined fetchingly. I pulled off at a crossroads store. As the three of them walked away, I reached into the
box of camping stuff behind my seat and pulled out my money stash, a Ben-Hur allspice tin. It held eighty bucks. I
emphasize held—the money was not in the bank.
My head spun off my shoulders. I peered into the can again and again, felt around in the box and under the seats,
my hands emerging grimy from places in the ten-year-old bus that had never been cleaned. Nothing. I rummaged
among the other packs and bags on the floor in back. Nope. I got out and walked around, and even looked under the
van. Meanwhile reviewing the previous two days for the last known whereabouts of the Andrew Jackson family. As
the group walked back toward me, I blocked the door of the van.
“I had some money in here.” I held up the can. “And it’s gone.”
“I didn’t take it, sir,” said the one I would come to know as Louise. She looked about sixteen, was pregnant, and
smelled of grape gum.
“Are you accusing us of stealing, bro?” the man asked, more amused than threatened. He was Guy, from
California, with beads around his throat.
“No,” I gave him a level look. “I’m asking if you’ve seen it.”
They all shook their heads. They seemed sincere, but I had only known them for ten minutes, and for all I knew I
had picked up a family of roving pickpockets.
“Well, I guess you’re out of luck.” I tapped the faded paint of the van with my knuckle. “Tank’s empty.”
“How much do you need?” asked Claire. Dark, exotic eyes, sun-brushed cheeks, a glow of strength and
intelligence, chestnut curls embraced by the band of purple and corn-gold silk that circled her head and formed a scarf
down her back or around her shoulders, depending on her movements. She reached inside her peasant blouse and
from her cleavage produced a warm, flat, folded five. “I need to get three back.”
With that money, two more from me and one each from Guy and Louise, we got the gas gauge up to three-
quarters of a tank. “I’ve got a Chevron card,” said Guy. “I’ll fill it up at the next town.”
But I was not happy. Thieves, or not, they would be with me now until Hays, an hour and a half. I had twelve dollars
left in my wallet—I would be patting my wallet pocket dozens of times in the next few hours. I also had a paycheck
from my last job in Colorado. I had planned to leave that untouched until Detroit. Now what wild-eyed Kansas banker
would cash it for me?
I drove on. There was no Chevron station in Hays. That meant Salina, another two hours away. I figured I’d ditch
them there, gas or no gas.
But I had hope for Claire. She had been in Boulder, thinking about going back to school. “I’m still thinking about it,
but meanwhile I’m going home for the holidays.”
“The holidays? It’s October 28,” I said.
“...starting with Halloween.”
We laughed. She was older than me. Twenty-five, an Aries. I tried to find out more, but she deflected my curiosity
with humor and smokey looks that hinted of things, of wisdom and passion so far out it would be ridiculous to talk
about them.
Louise had limp, straight, dark hair, and a brash, bratty attitude that demanded attention and rejected judgment.
Whatever subject came up, from religion to pro football, she had the last word. She was going to North Carolina to
have the baby. Louise had no money and no fear. “I took the Greyhound from Cheyenne and wound up crashing at
Claire’s house,” she told me, in her slightly twitchy twang. The two women formed a team to cross the country. “If
anuh man gives us trouble, we’ll just go for his balls. Men are wimps when you get ‘em there.”
They met Guy at the place where I picked them up. He said he had worked on computers in California,. “Got burned
out, man. My boss was rippin’ me off somethin’ royal.” He was probably late twenties, tall and possibly athletic, with
surfer hair that wouldn’t stay put when he brushed it back with his hand. “So I’m takin’ it down the road. Seein’ the
world.” A grin creased his hard, brown face. “Slowly.”
Outside Hays we saw a kid hitching, right on the freeway. Claire had taken the shotgun seat. “Maybe he has
money for gas!” she shouted. I stopped.
The kid climbed in, looked us over for a moment, and by way of introduction asked, “Anybody want to smoke some
hash?”
Nobody but Louise said no, so he ran back through thick grass to a tree, and returned with a green zipper bag. “I
stashed it there in case someone not cool picked me up. Like Johnny Law.” The kid briefly flashed a tin-foiled packet
at us that was about the size of a deck of cards. He looked to make sure we were impressed. Then he pulled out a
smaller canister and a pipe. I’d learn he was my age, twenty-one, though baby-faced and soup bowl-haired. His
cultivated cool and toughness amused me. His car had broken down in Hays, he said, and he needed to get to a big
city where he could rent a car or take a plane. He had a buyer for the brick in St. Louis.
So Don got us high, and the sharp, musty smoke of the hashish filled the van. Claire stayed in the front seat, while
the rest of them sprawled on the carpet and the bags in the back. She and I started a conversation that somehow
ended up in a hilarious roundelay about ducks, terns and gooses—geese! You had to be there. Then Guy leaned
forward, and her smiles left me for him. She had a way of establishing instant rapport, especially with males. Louise
asked loudly if anyone wanted a soaper. I had no idea what that meant.
The sun went down. Euphoria faded into paranoia as I concentrated on the road. It seemed incredible to me that a
hash-laden angel would turn up in a soybean field, just to make us happy. Donny—you had to call him Donny—said he
would make enough on the dope deal to “kick back on the beach all winter.” No problem, unless he was arrested,
ripped off, or killed. The kind of things that happened to drug smugglers. That made me shiver. If he was the
Smuggler, what was I? The Driver?
That’s when I saw the car. It was dark blue or black, with gold lettering on the door that I could not read. It looked
more like a muscle car than a police car—an Olds Cutlass, or a GTO. Every other vehicle on the road passed us,
sooner or later, but the dark car appeared in my mirror, and then five minutes later I saw it again. Only it might have
been only thirty seconds—how many cigarettes had I smoked? I was also having trouble keeping the accelerator
pushed down. With all the weight of passengers the little engine whined, struggling to make fifty miles per hour. And
the wind seemed to be against us, and I smelled burning oil.
After the hash rush, I sort of woke up to the bus running normally, the blue muscle car gone, and the only smell a
loamy sweetness from the farm fields.
“Can you close your window?” Claire asked. Her smile poured into me like melted butter into a biscuit. “It’s getting
cold.”
Donny filled my tank in Salina and we kept going. I settled in back with Louise and Claire, and Don drove. We had
agreed that I would take everyone to St. Louis and Don would pay for the gas. Claire passed out a mixture of raw
cashews, sunflower seeds and dried fruits. She called it “earth mix.” I had some well-ripened pepperoni and cheese I
sliced and passed around. Louise had gone real quiet, working the cheese between her fingers and staring vacantly
at the patterns of lights made by passing cars on the interior of the van.
Once in a while a big semi would overtake us, going twenty miles an hour faster, and the roar and the wind of the
thing would buffet our little box. One of them blasted his horn as he went by—BOMP BOMMMMP! I guess he was
angry about something—hippie busses in general, or our lack of speed. The rush of wind off him shoved us two feet
to the right, and then sucked us back to the left.
Louise sat up suddenly. “What are you doing to us!” she shouted. She sprang forward over Claire, and threw an
arm around Don’s neck. The van swerved dangerously.
“Hey—hey!” I leaped up beside her and grabbed her arm as Don slipped his head under it. The van swerved again,
but it had slowed down.
“He’s taking us to Scotia!” Louise cried. “They cut off their heads and arms!” Or something like that as she wrestled
me with furious strength, both of us on top of Claire. I got my arms around Louise, as Claire pushed us off of her.
Louise kicked, and my back slammed against the double doors. The doors popped open. We fell into space.
I realized that my life had not ended. I was looking up at the stars, my feet still in the van, which was stopped on the
side of the road, with the engine idling. Don sat twisted around in the driver’s seat, looking at me, scared, his hands
still on the wheel.
My left shoulder had hit the ground hard, and it felt like it was broken or dislocated. I screamed curses and staggered
to my feet. There was not another car in sight, or a light anywhere but the lights of the van. As I walked around, the
pain in my shoulder decreased from blinding to merely agonizing.
Louise lay in the grass on the side of the road, babbling about pig’s blood, shoelaces, and the back of the closet. Guy
sat next to her with his arm around her. They looked like a father and daughter studying the constellations. I sat in
the open doorway, next to Claire.
“Jesus Christ,” I said. “What happened?”
“She took something” Don said. “And I don’t think it was a soaper. Or not just a soaper. Kids take stuff, they have
no idea. It’s stupid.”
“It might have been angel dust,” Claire moved her jaw around with her hand.
“You got clocked,” I said to her. “I hope it wasn’t me.”
“It doesn’t matter. Are you okay?”
“She shouldn’t be doing shit like that if she’s having a baby,” Don whacked the back of the seat softly.
Right then I didn’t care a fig about her or her baby. I was marooned between earth and sky with people who had
stolen my money and broken my shoulder, and scared the living crap out of me. I wanted to jettison the whole lot. A
car came by. A Kansas Highway Patrol officer looked at us, but he didn’t slow down.
Guy stood up and pulled Louise up. He walked her back to the van and she crawled inside and curled up on the
carpet.
“She’ll be all right now,” he muttered. “I just talked her down. She says she gets fits. Maybe some kind of epilepsy.
And there’s been abuse.”
That’s what I figured. “Drug abuse.”
“No. Getting hit. On the head.” Guy bumped his temple with his fist. “The kid’s father. That’s why she’s going home.”
We loaded up and headed out. The night grew colder, and not much warm air flowed out of the van’s heating vents.
As the road curved slightly through the lights of a rest area, I thought I saw it again: the dark muscle car, staying
about ten lengths behind us. I slowed down to 35, and it did not get closer. I speeded up and the shadow car
stayed right there.
Then it disappeared. A delusion, or an illusion. I checked the mirror several times a minute for a half hour and never
saw it again.
Traffic picked up as we neared Topeka. It was nearly eleven o’clock. I pulled off the road and stopped at a Sambo’s.
We all went inside except Louise, who had fallen asleep without another word. I had coffee and a piece of gelatinous,
cardboardish material the waitress called “pie.” Even at twenty-one, I should know to stick to fried eggs and toast at
a chain coffee shop. Don drank hot chocolate. Guy had a soda and a hamburger. Claire ordered a cup of soup and a
cup of tea, but she had brought her own tea bag. The waitress gave her a cup of hot water for free. Through the half-
hour we sat there, she munched packs of crackers.
“I hate to say this, but I’m about ready to dump the pregnant lady.” I looked at them. “Give her a BLT to go and set
her by the side of the road.”
“She’s not a bad kid,” said Claire. “But I’m not arguing with you. She was alright until she took that pill.”
“Famous Last Words,” said I.
Don balanced the napkin dispenser on one of its little rubber feet.
Guy had sort of become Louise’s gallant protector. “You have to take care of people. Help them on their way.”
I did not like the way Claire leaned against him as she nibbled his french fries. “Okay, “I ventured, “we could leave
her at the Salvation Army.”
Cups clacked on saucers at adjacent tables.
“We can’t abandon her.” Claire looked at me. “But maybe you want to get rid of all of us.”
I felt a little betrayed. “I got no reason.”
Claire touched my hand. “She’s a sister.”
“Yeah,” Donny scowled, the bratty kid brother. “She’s annoying enough to be.”
“All right, leave her in,” I said. “But one word crossways, she gets a tallywacker.”
Claire smiled. “A what?”
I reached out and popped an index finger at her ear. “One of these.” She jerked her head, and all I caught was a
fluff of hair.
“Cut it out, asswipe!” This time we really laughed. This girl could be mine. I was pretty sure of that.
Slushy rain had just begun to fall when we walked outside, and it increased with every step we took across the
parking lot. I yelled at Claire. “Come on, let’s leave her out in this! She’ll be the god damn Little Match Girl.” Back in
the van we discussed where and how my passengers would continue their journeys. We had become a we.
Passengers on a stagecoach.
Claire said that from St. Louis, she would head for Louisville, and then PA. “And, I guess, she can come with me as far
as she wants. She’s going to Greensboro.”
Guy volunteered to accompany the ladies to Louisville, but offered them lodging in Frankfort, where he was going to
visit friends.
We drove east to KC and midnight, and blew past both. Guy sat next to me, and we did not talk much. He had put on
a knitted cap that looked vaguely Middle-Eastern, or Tibetan, and made his whole face sharper. Everyone else
huddled in the back, asleep, or anyway lying on the floor. I was tired. Cigarettes tasted foul. It had stopped raining,
but it was still cold and damp. I could tell by the rise and fall of the road we had entered hills,—you couldn’t see
squat of the surroundings.
A sappy song came on the radio, and I goofed on it, just out of boredom: “I would give everything I own...Give up my
house, my car, my phone...”
Guy looked at me sadly. “You like the Carpenters?”
“Not at...”
“I hate ‘em. I hate that song.” His voiced rasped from cold and disuse.
“Okay”
“That was playing on the stereo when a mortar hit our hooch. Nam, man.”
“Oh.” Guy was a Viet vet?
“One of the best friends I’ll ever have was inside.” He seemed to be looking through the darkness into the past.
“Really. Sorry.”
“You been in the military?”
“No. I...”
“Don’t go to Nam. No way. Just don’t do it.” I knew this was not a political position. He was speaking to me as a
friend.
“That sounds like good advice.”
“Damn straight.”
How to open and close a subject in four and a half sentences. That’s when I saw the car again. The one that had
freaked me halfway across Kansas. Only I quickly realized it wasn’t, because lights began flashing on its roof.
We were about to pass an off ramp, so I took it. The ramp led to a truck stop—one of the new kind with thirty-seven
gas pumps, an all-night cafe and gift shop, etc. I pulled up on the apron at the edge of this glowing monument of
commerce. The cop parked behind me with his headlights on, though he did turn off his flashers, which I appreciated.
My eyes ached with weariness.
His name, according to the brass plate above his right shirt pocket, was Karl E. Boyd. He was not much older—if at all—
than the people in the bus. In the headlights I could see the spray of dark freckles on his face, ears and neck, the
latter two areas clearly visible because his bright red hair had been mowed nearly to the skin.
“Can I see your license and registration.” His breath exploded around his face in the cold, damp air.
I took the license out of my wallet, and the registration from the shelf under the dashboard. “It’s signed over,” I said,
though he could see that. I had acquired the van in Colorado less than a week before, and had not yet had the title
transferred. He looked at the documents, then walked to his car, got into it, and picked up his radio mike.
They stirred a little in back. Don said, “Cops?”
Boyd was back. “Can I have everyone out of the vehicle, please.”
He’s going to search the car. And us. He’s going to find the hash. I did not know if I cared anymore. If he’s the
smuggler, what am I?
We gathered on the apron by the double doors of the van without a word of complaint. Everyone, including Louise,
was quite awake now. We all seemed to realize the situation. Except Louise. Everyone handed a driver’s license to
Boyd, except Louise. She gave him a J.C. Penney charge card.
“No,” said Boyd. “I need a license, or some form of good I.D.”
“Oh,” she smiled. “I got a good idee. Why don’t you let us go.”
Boyd chose to ignore this, even when she laughed spastically.
“I’m sorry,” she said, though clearly she was not. She happily gave her name, last address in Wyoming, parents’
address in Greenville or Greensboro or Ashville or Nashville, and her age, nineteen. I wondered obliquely if that made
her a minor. A minor I had just taken across a state line to contribute to its delinquency. Actually, two minors, or
maybe only one, if you counted the baby. I thought back fondly to the little crossroads of Oakley, Kansas. My last
moment of freedom.
Boyd pointed to the license plate on the back of the van. The year sticker said 1969. I couldn’t believe it—not even
the right decade. And I hadn’t even noticed that when I bought the van. He took the licenses back to his car. After a
couple of minutes, Don approached him to ask if the ladies could go to the restroom. Boyd spoke to him and nodded.
Guy went with them. Boyd was a while with the licenses, which were from four different states, none of them
Missouri. The pissers returned.
Another cop car pulled up. The second patrolman took Louise to the back of this car, and leaned by the open door
talking to her for about ten minutes. Boyd kept getting calls on his radio. The two cops conferred, and then they told
Louise to get out of the car, and she came back over to us. Boyd handed me the license and registration. “You will
need to get an up-to-date tag for that,” he said, meaning the license plate. “The registration is fine, but you could get
stopped every fifty miles.” I heartily agreed.
He looked around for Guy, and Guy was not there.
When they searched Guy’s backpack they found a clip for a 9 mm Ruger. It looked like Guy, and presumably his gun,
had flipped a ride on a gassing truck. Or maybe he’d just set off across a field and into the woods. Anyway, he had
vanished. More cops came, they searched, and we sat or stood, slowly freezing, until nearly dawn. Then we went in
a caravan to the sheriff’s office in Boonville, a bright, quiet place that smelled of ditto solution and burnt coffee. A
series of phone calls and teletypes revealed that Guy had assaulted an employee of a legal poker palace in Concord,
California, and stolen seven thousand dollars. And finally, finally, the people at the station determined that we had
not known him, helped him, or been threatened by him. To pass the time I tried to figure Guy. I couldn’t.
They put Louise and Claire on the bus to St. Louis. Claire had been sleeping leaning against me, her head perched on
my shoulder like a tucked-in bird. Her I had figured. A shapely, but empty vessel of young men’s dreams. Before she
left she reached out and slowly passed her fingers over my stubbled cheek and jaw. And she gave me one more of,
the last of, those smiling, smokey looks. Louise was already mentally down the road, you could tell. And who wouldn’
t want to put this night behind them? Whatever personality and character we had at sundown had been washed out
of us during the hours since.
The clock on the courthouse tower said ten o’clock when Don and I walked out of the sheriff’s office. They had
searched the van, and our belongings, looking for Guy’s gun. I assumed that the reason we were now walking out
was that the babyface boy had ditched the hashish somehow at the truck stop.
We drove a hundred miles and pulled over at a shaded spot behind a row of old stone buildings in a town that had
been largely abandoned. Even the trash cans smelled ancient. We slept for some hours. I woke up feeling fuzzy-
headed, and longing for Claire.
“Hey man,” said Donny, his attitude restored. “Wait for me in Saint Louis and take me to Tampa, and I’ll buy the gas.
And give you a C.”
“Wait for what?”
He opened the Gilbey’s Gin box that held my food and utensils, and pulled out the paper towel roll. He squeezed it
and shook it, and something fell out. It was the packet of hash. It had been rolled up and squeezed into the tube of
the paper towels through a slit in the wrapper.
That pissed me off. “Looks to me like I became the owner of that when you put it in my stuff.”
“They didn’t find it. And I wouldna let you take the rap, brother.” Donny smiled his TV teenager smile. “The girls knew
it was mine.”
“You’re pretty sure of yourself,” I grumped.
“Pretty sure.” He flattened the bar of hash tenderly. “By the way, Louise took your money.”
“How?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “Claire told me.”
“She knew? Did she see it?”
He shrugged.
“Well, just fine, Claire,” I said. “Damn your eyes.”
“Dames...”
“Dolls,” I corrected him. “Guy and Dolls.”
“That’s a bar in Sarasota. Where are we, anyway?”
The stone building beside us had a sign over the back door that had probably been hung there eighty years ago. It
said 411 Beaver St. and the rusted screws that held it to the wall were placed just above the lettering, so they looked
like single quotation marks. ‘411 Beaver St.’ As if the address of the place was a title, or a joke.
I said, “We’re at 411 Beaver Street.”
“Is that North Beaver Street, East Beaver Street...”
“South. Always south.”
He thought for a minute. “How about New Orleans? For fifty?”
“All right,” I said. “But you’re getting rid of the hash in Saint Lou. And no more drugs?”
“No.”
“Maybe just enough to get us to New Orl...”
Donny smiled. “Gotcha covered.”
HEADS EAST
By Webster Street
By Webster Street
