Notes on the Drive '04: New Orleans to Atlanta

- This is great. I'm feeling in the process again, where the point of being is the action of being. I'm really living right now. I was feeling sad how all the great NO moments were over but now I'm starting to enjoy the journey I'm on now, to Atlanta, to have more good times with other people.

- British people are so repressed, quiet, and individualistic, forever pish-poshing as a matter of course. There hasn't been any cheer in England since Ringo stopped singing Yellow Submarine.

- Just had a mid-40s sweaty beer belly guy in shorts and a sweat-stained button down ask me if I'm going North toward Birmingham, and I am but I lied saying I'm not. I was concentrating too hard to talk to anyone. I didn't say anything while he went through this spiel of coming from the dogtrack and he broke down and shit. He called me "Hey Fella" and started his spiel. Now he's off walking around talking to other people, as I sit in my car recording these words while the gas goes into my gas tank.

- The drive to Atlanta has been consistent. Short bursts of strong storms, low clouds, longer periods of a steady rain, and about the same amount of longer periods with spotty sun and clouds.

- There is a small-scale Statue of Liberty at the Liberty Parkway exit in AL. Also beside it is a big Boy Scouts of America sign. The roads begin to get hilly and curvy.

- The red clay cliffs of these AL-GA hills are just gorgeous. Different shades of red, brown, amber.

- Most of East 20 is under construction. Two thin lanes, one through the former emergency lane. Dreary bumpy driving.

- Sign off the exit ramp near mile marker 210 said TNT sold here in big yellow and red blast graphics on the side of a white building, around the last exit before Georgia.

- A girl's name, Lisa, shaved by lawnmower into the side of a hill in Carroll County.

- A church in Atlanta: Druid Hill Baptist Church.

Notes on the Drive '04: Covington to New Orleans

- Twin spotlights in the sky are saying to the drivers at night: "Don't be lonely." And wouldn't it be nice if we put Don't Be Lonely signs along the expressways? Like the town in AL called Good Hope.

- You Can Tell the Brightness of the Light by the Strength of the Shadow It Casts. <-- That's the title of my next short story.

- The cop hiding in the speed trap with his lights out.

- The boy in the rest stop restroom with the dyed yo boy hair, just standing looking in the mirror in silence, not running the water, maybe not looking in the mirror at all, I don't know. He was behind me while I was urinating. Finally he turned the water on and then left.

- The sun starts coming up around Decatur, AL about 20 or 30 miles south of the border. It took four and a half hours to Nashville, six to the AL border.

- Road advertisement in Hartselle, AL: The Huddle House.

- The AL morning is gray, sprinkly, and foggy. The air has a chill.

- Sing from your chest. Open your mouth and open your throat. And really open your nose. Push the air from your stomach. Gives a bassier tone to your voice.

- There was a surprising amount of traffic for an all night drive. Then driving into Birmingham in morning rush hour traffic it's just me and the Tri-Oil Tanker. From whence they came I do not know. And toward sights they've seen I do not know.

- Arkadelphia, AL. A sign for a shrine of the Most Blessed Virgin as well as a sign above it that said Colony. (?)

- Warrior, AL. Xena's cousin. But before that we have Garden City and Blount Springs. Pronounced "Blunt," that one being my personal favorite. And it slows to a 20 mph crawl near Blount Springs where they have orange barrels taking it down from three lanes into one.

- Next comes Hayden Corner, then Warrior. And a sign for Warrior Robbins. Xena's incestuous cousin. And Kimberly Warrior-Morris, their feminist file clerk.

- A stretch of highway heading into Birmingham is called The Hero's Way. A sub sandwich?

- On the way to Tuscaloosa: I'm not there but I'm still on my own / With the tall red weeds outside Blocton. That's West Blocton. There's fog in the pines, and the rain is steady on the road to Tuscaloosa.

- On the way to Meridien: a sign for Fosters, AL. Australian for sharecropper.

- It rains all the way down 20/59. Just as I write these words the rain picks up and comes down harder.

- Near the Black Warrior River, the land looks like Holland, flat and green and below sea level, criss-crossed in brown trails.

- I see a four foot carved Woodchuck atop a car-towed moving trailer on the road to Meridien.

- Next comes an exit for Demopolis, the dreaded place where all garage band demos go to die. At the same exit is a hospital and near them is a rest stop.

- The tree-lined drive through Mississippi is like a spreadsheet table with green fuzzy borders.

- The rain stops a half hour from the MS border.

- As we cross the border into MS the sky is pale blue all over and what clouds there are are white and wispy.

- The rain tracks on the highway impossibly converge forming an elongated Jim Morrison head.

- A sign (sighin?) for Cuba / Demopolis.

- A squirrel took five hops to cross two lanes in South Enterprise, MS.

- The trees look like frilly green lining in an overcoat.

- I start getting seriously tired in Ellisville, MS, still an hour and a half from the LA border. I'm starting to see shapes in the trees and I can't get to my caffeine pills.

- Rows of stumps are shaped like the bones on a stegosaurus's back. And burst tire treads curl like snakes on the defensive in the emergency lanes. Like Nessie sticking her head above the Loch.

- Two sets of orange jumpsuit prison day laborer gangs so far in MS.

- What should we name our county? Well, what have we got here? Well, we got Pearl River. I know! Pearl River County!

- Pearl River also has its own community college, which is nowhere affectionately known as the PRCC.

- Coming into LA we have low-hanging clouds, big white puffy mountain clouds. I could be on a mile-high plateau, instead I'm in a sub-sea level swamp.

- Tall thin pines with purple trunks and bare mid-riffs, like a porn star in a halter top.

- The mountain clouds gather and join in LA, the sun is shaded. Only patches of blue. It could rain.

- LA has the worst roads in the country. All the bumps and dips, jostles and jiggles. And some of the strangest drivers, drivers you wouldn't be surprised to see going 35 mph on an expressway, in the middle of three lanes.

- Lake Pontchartrain on the shorter of the two bridges, which have camel humps near each shore to let the boats pass. They look like ramps that will launch you into the clouds.

- The Bayou Sauvage National Wildlife Refuge also has swamp tours. (Look up what kind of bird that is.)

- 20 min from NO dragonflies buzz the roadways taking the place of the cicadas on opposite end of the trip.

- LA drivers are aggressive. They dart around you and never signal. But then, everything is a legal U-turn.

- Past the city now heading west to Metairie. More blue sky opens up. The clouds lighten, no longer looking so threatening.

My toes too numb to step

I met Bob Dylan when he was 18 or 19 in college. I was in Minnesota prospecting for iron ore on the plains, back before they put roads everywhere. At night I liked to slip out of my heavy ram's wool jacket and wet my whistle at a watering hole. I was walking down the street one night near the college campus and there was Bob with two other guys stumbling around up ahead and drunk off their asses. It was before he got famous, but already he was known around town.

I walked up to him and said, "C'mon Bob let's get you back."

And he said, "Get the hell away from me," so I hung back and followed from a distance.

We got back to the dorm, where they'd let me a room, and I got on the elevator with them, and then I followed them back to their suite to make sure he was okay. He swerved into a common room and laid down on a work-out bench.

I thought, well I guess he's okay like that. I went back and talked to the two other guys. Dylan came out and looking at me pissed off he said, "I'm gonna kick your ass."

He took two swings at me and I easily blocked them both because he was so drunk. And I got a little mad so I said, "Alright then come on," and I grabbed him and steered him into his room. Then I yelled at him "Is that the way they treat samaritans in this town? You remember that line, motherfucker!"

I left laughing sure that will appear in one of his songs someday.

Diamond Dave's Next Break

Dateline: Hollywood, California. It's a short building with a maroon Spanish-tile roof, its once yellow stucco facade bleached near-white under the Frankie Avalon sun. Upstairs, on the third floor, is an office. There's a desk and swivel chair, and on the desk sits a punch bowl filled with a medley of carob power bars. The blinds on the lone window are pulled up, scattering clumps of dust that don't so much loll through the sunlight as plummet right through it. The office is crowded. There's a camerawoman and a rotund man with a boom mic scrunching behind a svelte lady with church door teeth and petrified hair. A concert poster is on the wall behind the chair. It's of David Lee Roth who's standing and smiling next to an older overweight gentleman with grey hair and big round glasses wearing a flame jacket, Vegas style. Underneath in embossed blue it says "Van Huard, the Band." I initially think it's Van Halen but I look again and it says Van Huard.

The older overweight gentleman is seated behind the desk. Thank you for coming to our press conference, he says. DLR is beside him, smiling. He puts one foot on the desk and then the other, leaning in and grunting softly with the stretch. Can't jump without stretching, or much of anything else, he says with a wink. How did you come up with this idea, asks the on-camera talent. DLR picks up a guitar and starts to sing a country song:

I don't even know where ta put ma hainds on the gitar
Come and watch me play gitar, Van Huard

It is damn funny and I laugh, trying not to shake the boom mic. Then he picks up another guitar that only has one long string on it and he tries to play it. I am cracking up. It's a hit.

Lippy

From age 5-13 Sandra used to watch TV with the sound off because she wanted to learn how to read lips. At night she'd sneak her dad's opera glasses from his bureau. She could see the drive-in theater out the upstairs window if she used them. She'd watch the men in the neighborhood stand about from her porch for the same reason, catching all the words she didn't understand. And when they got a VCR she'd watch each tape twice, rewinding it with the sound off to catch the lipspeak.

After graduation Sandra decided to join the FBI. To gain experience, and to study firsthand the criminal mind, she became a corrections officer at a maximum security facility. She used her abilities to spy on the prisoners' conversations in the yard. Two years later she started at the academy in Langley.

Cubby

I just moved here to an area of the American Northwest about half an hour from where I grew up. There are woods around my neighborhood so I did some exploring: a nature hike, see where the narrow trails lead, and so on.

I’m walking through the creek on igneous and slate rocks, the water only a foot at its deepest, half looking for arrowheads or whatever else may turn up. It involves at times jumping from rock to rock so as not to get my feet wet. I am making noise.

I’m not more than 100 feet into the woods when I hear a rustling and turn to the left bank to see a deer trotting (not running) from me. A big six-point buck. I’ve grown up in subdivisions around woods and I have never, never seen a deer up close and personal. I’m thrilled and a little nervous. I look down and there is a small rusty iron pipe at my feet. I pick it up just in case and stand there, motionless, watching the deer, turned back, watching me.

I continue down the creek cautiously, the thin pipe at my side. When I get almost across from it the deer trots back up the trail, the way I just came from. I watch it graze for a few minutes and then continue down the creek. Another 50 feet and there is a fallen tree blocking my path. I could’ve climbed over it and continued but I took this as a sign and turned back.

The deer was still there, right near the edge of the trail where it leads down to the creek, right where I needed to go to get back home. I walk slowly toward it, stopping and watching. It’s oblivious to my approach, grazing as it is. When it senses me I’m about 20 feet away, standing on a rock in the creek. It stares at me full on and this is what happens.

It winks at me with its left eye three times, then wiggles its left ear. There were about, maybe one was buzzing in its eye, I don’t know. We stare. Then it winks its right eye two or three times. And here’s what’s weird to me. Imagine staring at a deer up close full on, meaning its face was squared to mine. It has big black pupil-less eyes and a narrow face that tapers down into a curved point. You know what it made me think of? The face of the Communion alien or little grey men, only with horns. I’m not saying I hallucinated a Terminator 2-esque morphing. I’m just saying the faces, at that time, looked the same.

What was left to do but talk to it? I didn’t know what to say but I raised my open left hand as if to wave and:

“Hello. (pause) Thank you for coming out to see me. (pause) I’m going to need to cross back over there to get home. (pause) I mean you no harm.”

And right when I finished those words, I mean you no harm, the deer bowed and raised its head in one motion, as if bending for a bite but changing its mind. It was a bow. Then it turned again, white tail lax, and walked off.

Dong-Chee needs a liquor box to prop his feet on

1967 is the year I saw god, Jack. That was when the solid gold dancer, who died, dumped me for a Korean soap star. Her dance I scorned was a jig. Not my fault. Had I invented electricity, I wouldn't be a thug for hire. My dancer didn't like the pretty flowers, but the nature boy did. The planets shined in her eyes. Gonna shine in her eyes now, planets?

When the aliens land, that'll show him.

Get away from the marching beat of 4/4

When I get food on my face, I tend to wipe my mouth, AND my nose, at the same time in one smooth motion. This leaves two streaks on the napkin, and they are PARALLEL.

My friend the movie star

Yeah he's pretty cool. He floats the boat in The African Queen. Every lesser holiday he gets mad and headbutts a turnbuckle. He puts a neon license plate thing on his Dodge Neon. At all nite diners he orders the Orkin army to attack some good eats. His favorite retort is "Fat chance, Charlie Rose." His world is coin jewelry and identifying himself by his area code. If he weren't in the movies his other career choice would be up to snuff. He has an idea for an adult feature called Tara Firma, about the first exotic dancer ever to get implants. IRL he's left-handed but otherwise always right. He often asks about our specials. Sometimes when he touch, the honesty's too much.

The Butterfly Lanai 9

Mr. J pointed his gun at Lorna. "I hate shooting women," he said.

"Oh, if only I had the recipe for immortality," Lorna wished.

There was a thud behind them. The body of Hollybrick Vine was tossed off the glass door. The tiger rose up, appearing annoyed. "To create the recipe in pill form, ..."

The tiger explained how to do it, step by step. The other two were stunned. It wasn't that hard.

"If we can make it, we must," Lorna said. "An immortality pill."

The Butterfly Lanai 8

Lorna seemed to know her way around it. She retrieved an MRE from one cabinet and tore it open, dumping chicken tetrazini on a plate and into the microwave. On top of the fridge was a tub of thick 'n rich protein powder. She soon had a shake collecting beads of water at its base, staining a ring into the woodgrain kitchen table. Lorna sat down to eat. Mr. J didn't mind. A half-finished meal would lend credence to a suicide scenario for the investigators.

"Let's take him down to the state fair and charge twenty dollars a question," said Lorna. "We'll set it up on an elevated stage with a velvet curtain hanging to the ground, like a Vegas magician. You'll be the emcee and I'll be your assistant. People will expect it to be a trick, but the tiger itself will answer. They can ask questions about each other, about others not in attendance! Twenty bucks is a steal for that. The fair committee will move us into the indoor theater. They'll have to, to accomodate everyone."

"That is the third stupidest thing I've ever heard." Precise but true, the second stupidest thing Mr. J ever heard was that aliens built the pyramids of cheerleaders at school spirit rallies. The first was that the Tartans of Upper Denali married their daughters to flamingos. The most solemn part of the ceremony came when the bird pecked the bride's veil off her face, and with deliberation the bride then bent her left leg behind her. So he was told. He continued:

"There's never been a market for uncomfortable penetrating philosophy and science. Uncomfortable penetrating has a huge market though. Biggest market you ever saw. With one of the steepest inclines of growth."

Lorna had ceased listening. Alert and animated as she had been during her delivery, she hadn't spied the body of Hollybrick sprawled behind the tiger, which now moved.

"I'm not sure I need to do anything about that creature," said Mr. J. "I'm sure I'm ready to go. I'm not sure I need to leave anything that can identify me."

The Butterfly Lanai 7

Lorna headed straight for the kitchen. It was off the living room of the apartment, decorated with old-time utensils hanging from walls papered in cornflower blue. There was a framed verse of Bless This Home stitched beside dual chiripping songbirds. On a white shelf by the cabinets sat a stack of pot holders and a palm-size wicker basket of potpourri. The narrow window on the far wall was open. The kitchen felt airy. Lorna was rooting through the cabinets, which were full of things like bullion cubes, garlic salt, canned hash, a single bag of microwave popcorn, shrimp ramen, sugar-free drink powder, cannisters, water chestnuts, and aspirin.

"There's only one thing a talking tiger will eat," Lorna said. "Sugar cereal flakes. I'm out, and it looks like you are too."

"Then what did he feed it?" Mr. J asked, gesturing to the body of Hollybrick Vine.

"He was the owner?"

"As far as I know."

"Well hell," said Lorna. "The damn thing talks so let's just ask it where it lives. Maybe it ain't hungry at all."

Mr. J was deciding whether the easiest thing would be to shoot her. He reckoned it was.

The Butterfly Lanai 6

Mr. J could hardly believe the bengal tiger was real, it became so still and breathed so quietly. He drew his pistol from his suitcoat pocket and slid open the glass door.

"I hope you like Hollybrick Vine," said Mr. J. "It's fresh."

With a light step he flung the body on the lanai. It sprawled, landing on the tiger's tail, but the tiger didn't move.

"Please," Mr. J said, "there's no need to trouble me with your thoughts on the matter. Bon appetit. Make sure you get all the DNA out of the carpet."

"What, do you think the tiger's going to eat that man?"

The lanai of the next apartment over had a woman on it, name of Lorna. "He couldn't get all the DNA up," she said. "It's in the bones, the hair, it's everywhere."

Mr. J began sliding the door shut. He wasn't sure if she'd got a good look at him, and he was ready to run.

"Besides, that's no ordinary tiger," she said. "I heard him talking. You did too."

Lorna was 37 and in great shape. Her brunette hair was pulled back into twin ponytails whose ends tickled her shoulders. For the last decade she had been a food taster for the king of Zambizia. This granted her a pension and a room in the royal palace in Kuniz, the tropical capital. Her days were spent on walks through the pedicured gardens where she'd encounter babboons, the kind that smoked cigarettes and took naps when they were supposed to be on duty. The nobles were initiated to the inner circle and expelled just as quickly, but each year one found enough time away from wife and meetings to make Lorna his mistress. In the sack she would yell, "I'm an all-star, baby! All-star!"

"That tiger has no interest in killing," Lorna said around the corner, "not with its teeth and not with its paws. Far more terrible, its mind is its weapon. It tries to kill with its mind."

"By using existential arguments," said Mr. J. "It does a crackin good job."

"Step on out and let's have a look at you."

"I'll not be taken for that, siren!"

Lorna hopped over the railing and pushed her way past Mr. J inside. He slid the door behind him.

"You have a problem," said Lorna. "Lucky for you I live next door."