Counting coup, p.19
Counting Coup, page 19
From there on it was numbness and nausea and easy breathing and the plashing of tires along the highway, until Charlie missed his exit for 95 and found himself on secondary roads, passing by pig farms and run down gas stations selling cheap cigarettes and fireworks. Frustrated, he turned the car around and backtracked until he found the exit. Once on 95, he drove like hell, as if troopers were after him—and he might actually have a chance to outrace them in this car. The damn thing could certainly move, even though it was the silliest goddamn piece of engineering he had ever seen. Although the windows had to be manually raised and lowered, the side view mirrors were electric. Only the Japanese could think that one up, he thought. And there wasn’t enough room to pick your ass; if you were going to sit in the back seat, you’d better be a dwarf or something. Well, that wasn’t really fair to the Japs, Charlie thought. All cars nowadays were being built for people the size of midgets.
But Charlie had never had to worry about that before, since he could never afford anything but old beaters, big old gas-guzzlers that had enough room in the back seat to play pool.
Charlie was all right through Richmond, and John was awake enough to give him money for tolls. Knowing John, Charlie thought, he’d probably robbed everybody at Lorena’s. It was getting dark, and the traffic was quite heavy, three lanes’ worth of it, but then they were back on open highway. It was as if they were moving backward through the seasons. The trees were greener; autumn had not yet taken its full bite. They drove through woods and rolling farmlands punctuated by gas stations with signs on high poles and eateries that seemed to repeat themselves such as Stuckey’s and McDonald’s and Burger King and Hardees and Dairy Queen and Wayfara. And Charlie felt alone again. He had to keep drinking to keep himself from suddenly turning around to see whatever it was that was watching him. He wasn’t going to be able to keep this up, he thought. Not for long. But the booze did help.
“You want to stop for a while?” John asked. He’d been awake for a time, but hadn’t spoken.
Charlie was weaving all over the road. It was just past dusk when what light was left seemed refracted into the blue. It seemed dusty, as if they were driving through a mist, or a dream—he wished it was a dream. “No, I’m doing just fine.”
“Doesn’t seem that way to me.”
“Maybe we should get some coffee,” Charlie said.
“I’m in the mood for pizza.”
Just the thought of pizza brought a bitter, metallic taste to Charlie’s mouth, but he found a sign for Pizza Hut, and then had to drive two miles from the highway before they found the place. It was across the street from a Day’s Inn and a McDonald’s.
They went inside. The restaurant was decorated like every other Pizza Hut, which made Charlie feel suddenly depressed. He could almost be back home in Johnson City. They walked past the video games and the coat closets and the wood and plastic salad kiosk, and took a booth against the wall. There was raunchy rock-and-roll music coming from speakers in the ceiling, and the place was empty, except for six punk-looking high school kids sitting at a table on the other side of the room.
Charlie felt dizzy. It had to be all that booze. He looked out the circlehead window beside him and saw his own reflection in the dark glass. He turned away quickly. “You know,” he said to John, “I think this medicine stuff is all in our heads. If we could be strong enough, it wouldn’t bother us. I think we hypnotized ourselves, or something.”
John smiled wanly. “You got some of it right. Of course, it’s in your head, where else do you expect it to be? In your pants? But we didn’t do it to ourselves. Once you get over thinking that, you can start to fight what’s really after you. Then, if you’re strong enough, it won’t hurt you.”
A waitress in a brown uniform gave them menus and asked if they wanted coffee. She appeared to be in her late thirties; and she was pretty, but it was a tired, faded beauty. Her long blond hair was pulled back into a ponytail; and, although she was very tall, she wasn’t a bit awkward. She had a smooth, experienced way about her and looked a little like Charlie’s first wife, Ruth. Charlie had run out on Ruth thirty years ago. But it was her own goddamn fault, he told himself. I wouldn’t have fucked around on her so much if she would have just stopped hammering and nagging at me all the goddamn time, every minute of the day. I was a good provider for her, and things might have been different if she’d acted like a woman instead of my mother. Charlie was surprised at what he was thinking—Christ, he hadn’t thought about Ruth for years; he’d put her completely out of his mind. Joline and he never talked about her, and Joline never mentioned his two children from that marriage. Ruth had set those kids against me, Charlie told himself. That’s why they never called, would never return my letters. Well, it’s like they never were. It’s like you never were, Ruth. Goddamn your eyes. And now I walk into a pizza parlor in the middle of nowhere and I find your goddamn ghost. Charlie wanted to get out, but he had just got here, and there was no way that he could pull John away from the waitress.
John seemed to come to life as soon as he saw her. He was at it again, smiling and looking all over this woman. All Charlie could do was put it all out of his mind—Christ, he’d been putting Ruth out of his mind for thirty years. Now she was a ghost, is all. A few memories of regret and guilt well-layered with rationalization.
Immediately and unabashedly, John let it drop that he was a medicine man. Charlie could feel something quick pass between John and the waitress, and that made him jealous and insecure. Goddamn if she wasn’t flirting back at John.
He didn’t understand his feelings, but it was as if Joline was flirting with John.
“I’ll be right back with your coffees,” she said to John. She spoke with a slight, but noticeable southern drawl.
“We should take her along with us,” John said as he watched her walk away. He smiled. “Make this trip more interesting.”
“Maybe I should order some orange juice, the booze makes me thirsty,” Charlie said, looking at the fold-out menu. Fuck John and fuck the waitress … and fuck Ruth, too, he told himself. I don’t need this shit. Then he thought of Sharry and felt ashamed and embarrassed and angry. She had been interested in John, too. She only fucked me because he told her to. God damn him! But Charlie was even more disgusted with himself for being here—his place was with Joline and the kids. They were his only salvation. Sonovabitch if that hadn’t come to him as a shock after all these years.
“You’re crazy,” John said. “You drink orange juice and you’ll be barfing all over.”
When the waitress returned with their coffee and silverware, John said, “You know we been drinking ourselves numb, and doing some pretty mysterious things, and my partner here wants to order orange juice. Can you believe that?”
“I don’t know about the mysterious things,” the waitress said, “but if you’ve been drinking, I’d advise you to stick with the coffee. Juice might make you sick.”
But Charlie insisted, as if he had to save face.
After she brought Charlie his orange juice and went back for John’s pan pizza, John coaxed her to sit down. “The place is empty, anyway,” he said; and then he began his routine, working her, as if he were reeling in a sunfish from the ocean. He asked her name (“Kim”) and where she was from (“Right here”), and they talked about the loud music and the high school kids who were trying to look like punks. John talked to her about medicine and vision-quests, and she seemed interested in everything he had to say. He talked about Whiteshirt and how they had to stay drunk because booze was protection. Then he started talking dangerously.
“Now you should have seen Charlie, he’s a regular hero,” John said. “He stole a goddamn patrol car right out from a trooper. That trooper got himself so bent, he started shooting at us.”
“Jesus H. Christ,” Charlie said. “Shut the hell up! What are you trying to do, anyway?”
“She’s okay,” John said. “Trust me, I wasn’t a medicine man for all those years for nothing.” And he continued talking. He had her. She was laughing with him as if she’d been through it all with them.
“Is this for real?” she asked.
“If I really try to convince you, you’re still not going to believe me,” John said. “So what’s the point? But even if you don’t believe it, you gotta admit it’s a helluva story.”
“That it is,” she said. “Are you really a medicine man?”
“If you’re not going to believe the story, why would you believe I was a medicine man?”
“Good point,” she said, smiling at him. “You know, I did some traveling once upon a time. I hitchhiked out west, got pregnant, and rode back home on a Harley.” She laughed at that. “I just never could get comfortable out there. All the rocks seemed to be shaped funny, you know? I have a sixteen-year-old boy … he’s taller than me, if that’s possible. Don’t you guys have any family?”
Charlie averted his eyes from her gaze, but he noticed that she had a faint tattoo: three dots on the knuckles of her right hand. An old boyfriend must have done that. Or who knows, maybe it was her husband’s work, Charlie thought.
His first wife never would have done anything like that, that was for damn sure. She used to tell Charlie that he had disfigured himself—turned himself into a circus freak—just because he had a Marine insignia tattooed on his right arm. The tattoo had faded, but, dammit, he was still proud of it.
“Well, he’s got a family,” she said, meaning Charlie. “Why’re you doing this, drinking and stealing cars and all that?”
“Why’d you go cross-country on a cycle and get knocked-up?” John asked.
“I was a kid. Eighteen years old.”
“Just like us,” John said. Even Charlie smiled at that. But Charlie was nervous. He wanted to get out of here. He wanted to get John out of here—alone.
“That’s not good enough,” she said. She was suddenly serious, earnest.
“Okay, so we’re two old fucks,” John said. “But by the time we’re done, we’ll show the whole world we were alive. You married?”
She looked surprised. “No.”
“Then why don’t you come along with us? Your son would be okay for a while by himself, wouldn’t he?”
“We gotta go,” Charlie said, and he stood up. The sooner they were back on the road, the sooner Charlie could pay off his dues, try to get Whiteshirt out of his life, and go home to Joline. But that might not be possible, he thought anxiously. If Whiteshirt wins, he’ll probably kill us both or turn us into spirits or something. Christ, he thought, I’m getting as crazy as John.
“Why don’t you guys stay here for a while?” Kim asked.
John seemed to be considering that. Charlie touched his arm and said, “Come on. We got enough problems as it is. You can’t bring anybody else into it.”
“We’re supposed to be having a party,” John said, and his eyes looked hard, as if he could go heyoka right here in a snap. He could go either way. But he said, “Okay, Charlie, you’re right. We could have showed you some time, though,” he said to Kim.
“I’ll bet you could.”
“Can we have the check?” Charlie asked, changing the mood.
“Wait one sec,” and Kim went into the kitchen. When she came out, she had a large soda container capped with a white plastic top. “This is for the road, and don’t shake it or open it here.”
“What about the check?” John asked.
“On the house,” and she turned and walked away to wait on the high school kids.
* * *
It had started to rain while they were in the restaurant. It was drizzling now, and the air was heavy with mist. The parking lot was dappled with puddles.
John insisted on driving.
When they got inside the car, he started the engine and turned on the heater—it was cold tonight. Then he shook the soda container. “This sure as hell isn’t filled with water.” He opened it and started to laugh. “Well, bless her heart.”
“What is it?” Charlie asked.
“Protection.”
“What?”
“Good old homegrown. And she even dropped in a pack of Zig-Zag.”
Charlie reached over and took the container from John. It looked like it was filled with tobacco. He smelled it. “I know what this is. I’m not smoking that crap, and either should you.”
“That a fact,” John said, taking back the container. He expertly rolled four joints, licked them, and twisted the ends. “We need all the help we can get.” He lit one joint and put the others in his shirt pocket. After taking a drag and holding it deep in his lungs, he passed the marijuana cigarette to Charlie. Charlie refused it. “Indian people been smoking this stuff for hundreds of years,” John said, exhaling smoke.
There he goes again, Charlie thought. Now he’s got Indians inventing pot. The pungent odor of the marijuana made him feel queasy—or maybe it was that orange juice. “You can’t drive on that stuff.”
John laughed and said, “Hell if I can’t!” He threw the car into gear and drove like a wild man, puffing and coughing, trying to find the interchange. Charlie had to tell him to turn on the windshield wipers. John must have taken a wrong turn, for they passed what seemed to be miles of broken five-rail fences and dilapidated farm houses painted in several colors; and it seemed that rusting appliances and used tires were strewn around every house and farm, as if they were part of the southern flora like jimson weed and trumpet vine and kudzu.
“I told you, you can’t drive on that stuff,” Charlie said, and they both started laughing uncontrollably. Charlie began to choke, and he opened up his window. He felt slightly numbed. Probably all that pot smoke, he thought; but he got the giggles, just as if he had been smoking the pipe with John. And that old pipe was still hanging from the rear-view mirror, sliding back and forth on the dash as John rounded one turn and then another.
John lit a new marijuana cigarette and passed it to Charlie. “This’ll open up your lungs. And you can’t just turn down a present. This is holy shit.”
So Charlie tried it, just to show John that he was in control. He gagged trying to hold the burning, sickly sweet smoke in his lungs. It didn’t have much effect on him, he thought, except to make him a bit sleepy. But he didn’t get sick—orange juice or not. It was a question of mind over matter. He could be in control, no matter how fucked up he got.
John found the interchange and got back on 95. Charlie slept some, although his thoughts seemed to be going every which way. He dreamed of Ruth and Joline and Sharry, and they all got mixed up in his mind. He awoke feeling gummy. He smoked and drank some more, as did John. Maybe the pot counteracted the booze, Charlie thought.
But even with the pot, this driving through the night became monotonous: the same sounds of tires rolling over the long blocks of concrete, the moon sliding out from behind curtains of clouds, and the monochrome shapes of corn, cotton, and tobacco country all around them, flattened out by the night. Charlie remembered passing through Rocky Mount—an exit sign and a small constellation of lights flickering by—but he dozed through Benson, Dunn, Godwin, Wade, Fayetteville, and Lumberton. He woke up with a full bladder, and made John stop so he could piss by the side of the road … he even tried to “hang it out the window”, as John had suggested, but there was no way he could manage that.
Charlie played a game with himself: He’d try to stay awake until he came to the next billboard advertisement for South of the Border, a motel, shopping complex, and amusement park located on the northern edge of South Carolina. Each successive sign seemed to be grander and bolder than the last. But Charlie would nod out between signs nevertheless, dazed and drunk on drugs and booze.
He dreamed of the sweat-lodge … he dreamed that the rocks and stones in the pit had turned into eyes, unblinking coal-red eyes watching him.
He awakened with a jolt.
“Whiteshirt at it again?” John asked.
Charlie nodded. He might as well accept the inevitable, no sense calling an elephant an apple. Somebody was doing something. It had to be Whiteshirt. Charlie thought such thinking was crazy, but if he didn’t believe what was happening to him, then he’d certainly be crazy. He should make John give up the wheel, and then he could turn this car right around and go back home. That would save both their asses, probably. But it wouldn’t be so easy to get John out of the driver’s seat. It was too late, anyway. They were too far gone. If they didn’t face Whiteshirt and get it over with, those goddamn eyes would be watching them for the rest of their lives. It wouldn’t even matter if Whiteshirt dropped dead, probably, Charlie thought. If what John said was the truth, then Whiteshirt could put himself into rocks or the goddamn coffee maker, for that matter, and haunt John and Charlie forever. Charlie chuckled, thinking about Whiteshirt in the coffee maker, yet it also scared him that nothing was safe, not even those things he was most familiar with. Christ, for that matter, Whiteshirt could take over Charlie himself … or he could take over John. That thought shook him, removed his smile.
“What’s funny?” John asked.
“Nothing.”
“Was something … must have been something.”
“I was thinking about Whiteshirt being dead and turning into the coffee maker Joline uses to make coffee every morning.”
“So you’re finally believing what you see,” John said seriously. He was still drinking hard and smoking pot. How he was managing to keep the car on the road and talk like a sober person, Charlie had no idea. Then John started laughing. “I kind of like that … Whiteshirt ending up as a coffee maker. Beats turning into a rock, I guess.”
Charlie was relieved that John had restrained himself from going heyoka. Every time John laughed or chuckled, Charlie wondered if he was going to go over the edge again. In spite of all the bad medicine crap—and with the help of all the booze he’d been drinking and all the pot he’d been smoking—John actually seemed to be sober. Goddammit, Charlie thought, it’s him that’s in control. Charlie could feel the marijuana working through him like Novocaine, maybe shielding him from whatever half-assed, crazy medicine stuff was going on around him; but dulling him just the same, giving him cottonmouth and cottonbrain.
