Joshua sat behind the desk drawing stick figures holding hands with the stick figure hands of the lord above them coming from heavenly clouds above. The television was off and he could see his reflection in the dark glass. He crumpled up the drawing he made and threw it at the wastebasket. Missed and bounced around some others. “Why?” he asked the Lord. “Why are things so difficult?”
A car pulled up in front and Vicky Sue got out of the driver’s side. She used her shoulder to push open the glass door. She managed to appear even more disheveled and her eye turned red on the iris and black and blue above her cheek. One of her shoulder straps was loose on her arm. “Hey.” She drew figure eights with her finger on the counter. “I’m looking for two really cute guys, not that you would know if they were cute. Can you tell me what room there in?”
Joshua pretended like he didn’t know off hand. He shuffled through the guest cards. “Well, I don’t know if they’re cute or not, but two guys from New York checked into room 32.”
She covered the cut on her lip with her finger. “I thought they were from Boston.”
“They told me New York.”
“Doesn’t matter really. They’re right next to each other.”
“Not really.”
“I thought they were. Close enough.” She noticed his WWJD bracelet. “Do you like Jesus?”
“Jesus is the road to salvation.”
“I like Jesus. I think he was sexy. Is that okay or is there something wrong with that?”
“Well, there’s nothing wrong with that, but…”
“Some one told me Jesus had sex with a prostitute.”
“He was friends with a prostitute. Her name was Mary Magdalene. But he never…”
“So he was friends with her, but he never had sex with her. That’s a strong will. Shit. If he was friends with me, I’d be having sex with him.”
Joshua pretended like he had something to do with some papers. “There in room 32.”
“Okay, thanks.”
Cap showered while drinking a beer. He was thinking about a place out west by a lake surrounded by pine trees and snow peaked mountains. He heard a pounding on the bathroom door so he shut the water off and wrapped himself in a towel. He opened the door and Vicky Sue twirled her hair with her finger. She tried to pull his towel off, but he grabbed her hand. “What happened to your face?”
“That fucking asshole. But we’re good and done for dam sure.” She pushed him back into the bathroom and tried to pull at his towel again. “Don’t be shy.”
“I’m not, but wait.”
“I can’t wait, I want you right here. I’m wet for you.”
“Wait a minute, hold on. Where’s Vince?”
“He’s alright. He’s right here.” She closed the door. “Not that I care if anyone walks in and sees us.”
“Sees us what?”
“Don’t they fuck in Boston or New York, wherever you’re from?”
“Let’s have a beer, okay.”
“Do you have any whiskey?”
“I think we do in the car.” Cap maneuvered his way past Vicky Sue and out of the bathroom. She followed right behind him and gave one last tug on his towel from behind. He had not expected it and it was too quick to react to. Lady and Vince were looking at him when the towel came off. Vicky Sue slapped him on his bare ass.
Lady was cutting up some sort of powder on the nightstand and Vince was watching her. “You go,” she said.
Vince covered his eyes. “Oh please, I don’t need to see that. Cover yourself. I’m gay now!”
“Me too,” Lady said.
Cap slowly picked up the towel and took a bow. Vince kept his eyes covered with his hands. Vicky Sue pinched his ass and sat on the bed. Cap went in the bathroom and came out in cargo shorts.
“Give a half hour and we’ll all be naked,” Lady said.
Vince snorted up his nose using a rolled up dollar bill Lady gave him.
“What is that stuff?” Cap asked.
“Oh fuck,” Lady said. “You never seen this shit?”
Caps took a closer look. “Looks like coke.”
Lady separated another line with the room 32 key card. “Here, find out for yourself.” Her eyes told him to buckle up and enjoy.
Cap stood over the table and Vince, pinching one eye shut, handed him the dollar bill. He rolled it up. “But what is it? Is it that crank shit?”
“No way. MDMA. Pure ecstasy. All I want to do is fuck on this shit. But too much can hurt you. All you need is a little.”
Vince cupped his face with a spider-like hand. “Is it normal for your nose to burn?”
“For a few minutes,” Lady said.
Vicky Sue laid on the other bed with her legs in the air like a stripper. She put her finger in her mouth and withdrew slowly.
Cap bent over and snorted one up.
A half hour Lady tuned into a station on the clock radio. “Do you guys like classic rock? I love classic rock. It can make you happy. Make you cry. It can make you want to dance… and fuck.”It didn’t mater, no one was listening. They were all in their heads, now the only voice was that of Mick Jagger singing “Heartbreaker."
Lady reminisced to herself. “It reminds me of better times, when I was younger. I wish I was sixteen again. That was fun. I didn’t have to worry about a job or money or how or what you were going to eat.”
Vince played with his face in the mirror above the dresser. It felt rubbery. He asked Cap to pull on his cheek. Cap played with Vince’s face. Vicky Sue kissed Cap all over his back.
“I want someone to care when I cry,” Lady continued. “No one even notices anymore. Like I’m already a ghost.” She cut up another line for herself. “How about we all pretend like we’re in Heaven together and we can’t die.” She leaned in for the second time. One was enough.
Lady joined them by the mirror. She kissed Vince on his neck, down his arm, back to his neck. She whispered, “I want to show you something in the bathroom.”
“What do you want to show me?” Vince mumbled, his eyelids resting.
“I want to show you.”
Vicky Sue pulled Cap onto the bed and used her knees to pin his arms down. “Is your boyfriend coming?” Cap asked.
“I don’t think so.”
“He thinks he’s a tuff guy.”
“Crazy. He’s crazy. Feel me up.”
She moved his hands over her throat and breasts. She pulled her shoulder straps down so her dress slipped to her waist. She put a finger in his mouth, suggesting that he suck on it. He didn’t like that idea, even in that moment of bliss. Instead he removed her finger from his mouth and put it in her mouth. He walked his finger up her chin and into her mouth. Then he put another finger in. Then three. Four. She had four fingers in her mouth and she was trying to consume his whole hand. He took his hand away when she gagged and spit. She licked her spit from his face.
“So where are you really from?” Vicky Sue asked.
“Boston. Why don’t you believe me?”
She pressed against Cap’s chest like she was administering first aid. “Cause I just know you ain’t from no Boston. I’ve never been there so I don’t know what it’s like. You could tell me just about anything under the sun about Boston and I’d have to take your word for it.” She put her hands around his throat. “Be honest.”
She squeezed tight enough to restrict his breathing. His words came out sounding stressed. “New York, promise.”
“You better not be lying.”
“No,” he managed.
She let go. She felt his chest with her hands. “What you doing touring the country? You running from the law or something?”
“Just getting a closer look at America.”
“You going to a lot of cool places?”
He poked her chest with his finger. “We met up here in good old West Virginia.” He moved his finger down, onto her nipple. “Drive through Kentucky.” He traced his route with his finger down to her belly button. “Through Tennessee, Mississippi, into New Orleans.” He dragged his finger up onto her nipple. She made little satisfying noises. “Then we have a friend in Colorado, we’re going to pick her up. Then California, and maybe that’s it.”
“You gonna drive all that?”
“It’s just like that.”
“Just like that.” She clamped his nostrils with her fingers. “I’d like to travel, I ain’t never been nowhere outside of West Virginia, except Pennsylvania for a party once when I was in high school. Some boy I knew had a friend in Pennsylvania and we went to his house for a weekend. I was the only girl there with fifteen boys. All we did was have sex.”
“You have sex a lot, don’t you?”
“I like it. It feels good.”
“I agree, but is there anything else.”
“I want to leave and go somewhere else. Somewhere quiet.”
“Just get in the car and go.” His words came out nasally and he pushed her hand away from his face.
“I’d like to see things before I die.”
“Before you die. How old are you?”
“I’ll be twenty in a month.”
“God you’re young, momma. Shouldn’t be talking about dieing. Should be thinking about living.”
“I’d like to see California. You know that song by Led Zeplin? Going to California. I love that song.” She stiffened up like she suddenly realized something. “Maybe I’ll surprise you somewhere.”
In the bathroom Lady sat Vince on the toilet and glided her hands down his chest, catching his zipper on his pants. She started at his belt. Then the buttons.
Vince put his hand on her face. “Wait, wait, we can’t do this. I don’t want to do this. I have a girlfriend.”
Lady already had a hold of him underneath his boxer shorts. She felt him shrink in her hand. She slid herself back on the floor so she leaned against the door. Her head was too heavy for her neck to handle. Vince started to look like the molecules he consisted of were separating and rejoining, similar to an object through a kaleidoscope. She waved away at the images deceiving her then closed her eyes instinctively, protecting her mind from traumatic hallucinations.
Vince leaned over and studied her for a moment. What he saw was real. A girl with her eyes rolled back so that her pupils were replaced by the blood-white of the lower eyeball. Her head dropped, hiding the blue beads that wrapped around her neck. The only thing that seemed to live was her arm in a Nazi like salute. “Hey, hey, I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m in love. I can’t help that. Hey.”
Her arm finally dropped as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
“You awake.” He leaned in closer to her, dropped on one knee. He picked her head up and let go so that it dropped like dead weight. “Oh…my…God.” She slumped over sideways when he moved her out of the way to open the door.
He interrupted Cap and Vicky Sue in the middle of a game of lion meets tiger. They both looked at him, still in character. Vicky Sue’s bangs covering her face, the veins in Cap’s neck swollen from tension.
He swallowed before he could articulate his thoughts. The saliva settled in his throat, causing his words to stutter. “You’re, you’re, something’s wrong, really, with your friend.”
Lady was crawling on the floor behind him. She managed to gather that much strength.
Vicky Sue massaged her groin. “Are you alright baby? You want to play with my pussy?”
Lady looked up on all fours, her hair once pulled back, now in curly disarray. “He can’t. He can’t.”
Vicky Sue sat Indian style now on the bed. “He can’t what baby?
Cap crawled off the bed onto the floor, still in tiger face. “He can’t cause he’s got a girlfriend.”
“I do.”
“He does,” Cap said.
Someone was kicking on the door.
“The police,” Vince said.
Lady came to life. “It’s only God.”
“Open the fucking door!” a voice called.
“Shit, Danny.”
The door was down and some big, baldheaded version of Danny fell on the floor. His gun bounced on the carpet. Danny came in behind him, out of breath and spitting sounds of the possessed. “Put ya fucking pant’s on bitch ass, and get on the floor, everybody.”
Cap stood up and pointed his trigger finger at Danny. “What ghetto are you from?”
Danny pounded his foot on the floor in anger. “And you’re high on my supply.”
“Join us please,” Cap said. “It’s a party.”
Vince thought about going for the gun the big guy dropped, but he was frozen. All the voices yelling overlapped so he couldn’t understand anything. Slowly he slumped down onto the floor and all he could see was Danny’s calves covered in tattoos. He looked around for the gun but the big guy had picked it up by now and he was pointing it at the back of Vince’s head.
Cap raised his hands. “It’s all cool man, we’re having a little party. You’re welcome to stay.”
“No he’s not!” Vicky Sue yelled. “He’s crazy!”
Danny stopped waiving the gun around. He looked more disappointed then angry. “Why you do this shit to me baby, I’m good to you.”
“Bullshit! You call me a whore, you hit me.”
“Cause you don’t listen. What you want me to do when you don’t listen?”
“Fuck you!”
“Just get you’re shit and let’s go. I feel like shooting somebody today.”
Vicky Sue put the drugs in her bag. “Shut up, you ain’t gonna shoot nobody. I’m coming, put the gun away.”
Cap dropped his arms. “Don’t leave.”
Vince picked his head up and felt the barrel of the gun against his skull. “No, I think it’s a good idea if everyone left now. Party’s over.”
Vicky Sue pulled Lady up by her arm. “I’m staying.”
“You have to come.” She whispered in Lady’s ear. “Don’t worry, it won’t be long.”
Cap started to approach the girls but Danny swung the gun down on the top of his head. He fell to his knees and his head bobbled as he watched Vicky Sue. “My fucking head.” He face planted into the carpet.
Vince watched Cap fall and was about to call his name, but the big guy kicked him in the face hard enough to turn his world black.
The old man struggled to regain his balance once he stood up from the tracks where he’d been lying, waiting for a train. He looked east and he looked west, not in favor of either. The silhouettes of trees illuminated by a moon so much a stranger but still the old man’s only friend. He remembered writing letters to friends in other places, asking them for help. His money was gone one day and his family was hungry. He drank it away, the money he barely made day to day. He’d come home drunk and broke, and watched the kids go hungry. Where was that place he failed himself? West, he whispered, west. And so he walked west because the letters he had written once long ago said Colorado.
Lisa’s hair was dark and on the bed it fanned out around her shoulders. The dress she wore Vince bought on the trip they’d taken to New Orleans. Her chest sparkled with sweat and their skin stuck together above the covers.
He felt the coldness against his forehead, dripping down the side of his face. When he opened his eyes, Cap and Joshua sat on either side of him. A zip lock bag containing ice cubes rested on his head.
Cap smiled, relieved to see his friend awake. “They're gone.”
The pain was worse behind his eyes. “Can we leave now?”
“Just like that?” Cap said.
“I don’t think you should leave immediately,” Joshua suggested. “You both have serious head injuries. I can call an ambulance.”
Vince felt around his eyes. “I can’t see too good. How does it look?”
Cap shrugged. “Looks like you took a heavy boot in the head.”
Vince squirmed. “Weird.”
Cap stood up and started to button up his shirt. The blood dripping down from behind his ear had dried. “We’re getting out of here. Maybe the people in Kentucky are a little friendlier.”
“We don’t have time for Kentucky,” Vince said.
When the morning came Joshua folded his arms over his chest as Cap started the car. He gave it some gas to keep it from stalling. Vince sprawled out on the back seat with the bag of ice on his face and a cigarette in the side of his mouth.
Cap got a last look at room 32. “You sure you can cover this up?”
“Yeah, no one will be around until Monday. I’ll have it fixed.”
“Thanks man, it’s been real.” Cap extended his hand out the window and Joshua met him with his. “Good luck with Jesus and everything. We’ll toast a drink to you when we get to New Orleans.”
“We can’t go to New Orleans,” Vince mumbled.
Joshua watched the car back away and disappear around a bend in the road behind the healthy trees. He brushed his bangs back and asked Jesus to watch over them wherever they went.
They headed south towards Kentucky, taking a small road rather then an interstate, because Cap wanted to see “Can-tugee.” Most of the landscape was green and rolling along with the road and high up into the sky, blending in with little white clouds. One side of the road was a two-foot deep ravine to gutter the natural springs down from the hills and the other side a steep cliff hidden under the brush of trees. No guardrails. Some houses erected like a drunk on one leg. The other homes far off from the road, perched atop a grassy hill, housed those more privileged. In the more popular spots, usually centered on an intersection, kids were covered in dirt. Beau and Momma sat on the porch wondering why strangers would drive through town. People turned their property into graveyards for potentially fixable appliances and small machines.
They stopped at a super market for beers and food. Their wounds were obvious to a short, plump woman filling a shopping cart with cases of soda. Cap drank a can of beer as they browsed the frozen meats isle. Vince picked out two pieces of red meat and Cap agreed. “We’ve already have blood on our hands.” A man listening, with a trout fish printed on his t-shirt, raised his bushy eyebrows.
The person at the cash register had a short haircut and bad acne but little pointy boob-like things just above the lungs. Male or female: undetermined. It told them it was mating season for snakes. “Copper heads are mating with diamond backs, pointers are mating with silvers. They’ll just about wrap themselves around anything this time of year. They’re poisonous to.” It started placing their items in a plastic bag. “Where you all from? Know you isn’t from here, I can tell by ya’ll accent.”
“Cleveland,” Cap said.
“I’ve never seen it first hand, but I’ve seen it on TV a lot. Ya’ll got mountains there?”
Vince grabbed the twelve pack of beer. “No, but we have buildings.”
“Tall ones,” Cap added.
Vince used his one good eye to find Dewey Lake on the atlas, marked by the biggest blue spot on the page. When they reached the entrance to the campgrounds it was already 6:30 PM, twelve hours since they’d left the motel. They glided the car around the lake with all its different spots for boats and swimmers, wave runners and barbecues.
They parked on an available spot, with no privacy between campers. They knew they were in the wrong kind of place. Too many kids riding bikes and calling each other things you might find in a bathroom.
A ranger pulled up in a truck with sirens on the roof. He called Cap over to the car and said something into the two-way receiver attached to his shoulder. “What’s going on?”
Cap leaned against the truck. “Nothing, what’s up?”
The ranger pointed to the beer. “You’re going to have to do better then that.” The condensation caused the label on the bottle to peel off. “You can’t drink here, it’s against the law. Put it in a cup.”
Cap stepped back. “Of course. We had no idea.”
The ranger drove away and Cap got some plastic cups from the car. The bugs were biting, but the bats helped a little in the night. The tents were pitched, sleeping bags rolled up inside. They sat at the picnic table and smoked cigarettes. Kids were still running around as parents called out their names in the dark.
The meat was cooking on the grill covering the hearth. Smoke rose between them. Folklore’s by Town Van Zandt lingered over from the family next to them. Something about the miner’s daughter Caroline, free spirited with the sunshine beside her.
Vince wiped the sweat from his forehead, irritating his wound at the same time. “I’m just happy we’re out of that mess, those freaks. How strange people can be.”
“I don’t know,” Cap said, “Thought it was all kind of interesting. They’re different, no doubt, but that’s good, I think. I mean that’s why we’re doing this.”
“I’m not doing this to have guns pulled on me or whatever else was going on with them. At least we don’t have to see them again. Just want to get my girl out of that place.” Vince checked the underside of the steaks, drops of grease escaped and flames rose above the grill, caused a sizzling sound. “They’re done. Ready?”
“Leave mine on there a little longer.”
“I’m telling you they’re ready. You don’t want to cook them too much.”
“I like mine well done.”
Vince put his steak on a plate. “Its steak, how could you eat it well done? That’s like ruining a perfectly good piece of meat. You might as well have a slab of tire.”
“I like it well done.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“That’s fine that you think that but it’s my steak so maybe I’ll leave it there a little longer.”
Vince sat at the picnic table and started cutting with a plastic knife and fork. “You might as well put ketchup on it.”
“Do we have any?”
“No.”
“That’s too bad,” Cap said, now trying to get under Vince’s skin.
“Enjoy your steak. Should be real juicy by the time it’s done.”
Cap let his stake cook a little longer, just for spite. He wasn’t even hungry anymore. The family on the other side had encircled their campsite with a few old Fords. In one car a tremendously fat woman they called Betty sat all night and they brought her food, drink and cigarettes. A few dogs ran around the cars.
Cap sat down at the table to eat.
Vince watched. “How is it? Looks like shit.”
Cap chewed a mouthful. “I like shit.”
“I can’t believe you eat it like that.”
“I’m sure that’s all that’s bothering you.”
Vince lit that after dinner cigarette. “I don’t care how you eat your steak.”
“It’s going to be impossible to sleep in this heat.”
“Just don’t understand why you want to waste a perfectly good piece of meat,” Vince maintained.
“The mosquitoes are ruthless.”
“Steak’s supposed to be bloody.”
“The more you drink the less the bugs will bother you so keep…”
“…I gave up everything this time. I quit my job, sold the apartment. I worked hard for that apartment. I wanted to live there with Lisa. Needed the money. Wanted to marry her and take care of her. Have a daughter and a son with her. It cost me a lot of money to send her to Colorado. Her parents wouldn’t do it. They quit on her. Can you believe that? Her own parents gave up on her? They told her the last time she came out they were finished paying for her screw-ups. And the reason why she was so upset about that, because she felt like she let them down. She started right back up again. She’s not a bad person Cap.”
“I know Vince, I know she’s not.”
“I’m not going to give up on her. I’m not going to let her waste away.”
“She’s going to be okay.”
“You really think that? Do you really think so, cause I’m a little scared?”
“I know, but that’s what it’s all about, taking these kinds of chances with love. You’re doing the right thing. She’s going to be really happy to see you when we get there.”
During the night Cap thought about the truth and maybe he should have told Vince what he was really thinking. He finally fell to sleep and woke to a humid hot morning. He poked his head from the tent. The flies were hovering around their piss puddle from the night before. Vince and the car were gone.
Vicky Sue was back kissing Lady at the bar for free drinks. The bartender encouraged them, because he knew it kept the customers drinking and tipping. Ideas bounced around in her head; New Orleans, Colorado, California. The way Cap smiled when he talked about driving around the country. She was suffocated by the toothless smiles and the whistling tongues. She felt a pinch on her ass and she turned around swinging her arm and connected and knocked a man’s baseball hat off his head. He grabbed her by her pigtails and pulled her head back and spit on her face. She tried to swing again but another man grabbed her by the arm and swung her around and into a table. Glasses broke on the floor and she lay in a puddle of beer, her eyes covered by her bangs, laughter all around. Not her, she didn’t laugh. Slowly, she came to her feet and wiped her hair away from her eyes. The bartender grabbed her arm, led her to the door, and gave her a good push. She fell to her bare knees on the sidewalk. Lady came out after her and helped her off the ground. They hugged.
The old man emerged from the trees after climbing up a dusty hill of loose rocks and sharp roots. The twisted guardrail was mangled by an automobile accident. Pieces of red plastic still scattered about at the bottom of the hill. He was out of breath now after all that climbing and it took him a moment before he could stand up straight and catch his breath. He remembered Colorado.
