Hob Broun - Odditorium

He pressed the button to transmit. “Who’s got their ears on out there? This here is Lonely Lonnie beaming right at you, come on. Hey, nightbirds, do you copy? We pointed north for that Fun City so how’s it look up I-95 through Savannah, come on.”

“Comin’ in strong, Lonely Lonnie.” Frog voice through a curtain of static. “You got Daddy Pigtails out of big Gee Ay, the man with the bacon from Macon, come on.”

“Get your feet on the floor and your hand on the door, Daddy. I understand there’s a real bad infection down your way.”

“Mile high negatory … What you talkin’, boy?”

“Just a random FCC check, sir. I suggest you drive immediately to your nearest emergency room.” Christo flipped the toggle switch, replaced the mike on its hook. “These things are a menace to public safety.”

But this gaudily professed scorn, Tildy noticed, didn’t prevent him from playing along. He couldn’t resist those free airwaves. With the urgency of an intermission smoke, he’d grab that mike and start babbling, a new identity each time, a fresh cover story. Self-parody? Protective coloration? She was making an effort, at least, to get the idea.

But there was no idea as such, no underlying sense or motive. There were only the zigzags of dissimulation that Christo had learned — as a mole learns which roots to eat, as a raccoon learns how and when it is safe to topple garbage cans — in order to make his living.

“This is the Rajah Rat running a load of hot spareribs out of Calcutta, India, that there ebony void.” And twenty miles later he was Little Ore Bucket and after that, Mad River Gramps as he rambled on about the great gone days of the Model-A Ford and real grass in the ballparks; and the loss of his dear wife to the vampirish thirst of the nation’s favorite disease. “Look at your watch. Two minutes from now someone on this planet will die of cancer.”

“You’re pretty good at this,” Tildy said. “You ought to have your own show.”

“It’s occurred to me.”

She opened the vent window, let the wind hit her face full on. Darkness was beginning to erode, a sallow-gray modulation at the edge of the horizon. They had been some ten hours in transit and she felt punchy, a tremolo hum in her ears, a raw spot at the back of her throat. Christo behind the wheel was noisily efficient, in full command. But she’d stayed right with him, hoped this had gained her some leverage. Her steadfast ambition at this stage: to be just one of the guys.

FLASHING LIGHTS MEAN LIFT BRIDGE IN OPERATION

It was nap time in Summerton, South Carolina. Christo was beginning to hallucinate: fallen trees across the road, low-flying aircraft, and finally a scant formation of rocks on his left which he mistook for a jackknifed semitrailer.

“We better stop for a little bit before the road disappears from under me.”

They registered at the Blue Bell Motel as Donnie and Connie Bodanski.

“My kid sister,” Christo offered. “I’m driving her up to Boston for her freshman year at college.”

“Ummm,” the desk clerk grunted, a putty-faced old ratbag in an orange muumuu who couldn’t be bothered to lift her eyes from a back issue of Daytime TV Mirror . “Number twelve. Last door on the left. Coke machine’s busted.”

Altogether pumped out, they tottered inside, exchanged a few instinctive pleasantries and fell asleep with their clothes on. It was late afternoon when they resurfaced with dim headaches and coated tongues. Tildy was so fogged she forgot to remove the crimped sani-bag from the bathroom glass and water glanced off the paper, making cold little shock points on the back of her hand.

She came out rubbing her neck. “I think I should burn these panties.”

She shucked off shoes and socks and did a little running in place, some knee bends, finished up with forty push-ups counted aloud. Christo watched leaves of muscle along her back widen and contract. Twenty-eight, twenty-nine. Hair fell across her face, exposing the first percolation of sweat on her neck. Thirty-two, thirty-three.

He roused himself, lit a cigarette, got on the wire with a long-distance operator. He read off a credit card number from the back page of his address book, its binding reinforced with Band-Aids. “This number belongs to Dow Chemical. I use it whenever I can…. Hey, Pierce, it’s Mr. Christo, your mule.”

“Where are you?”

“Cotton country somewhere. One of the Carolinas, I don’t know.”

“You coming on horseback or what? I was expecting you today.”

“I know, I know. Got a little sidetracked down around Tampa, picked up an associate.”

“I hope she’s over sixteen. Don’t want you getting busted for statutory rape and blowing my load.”

“No problem. She’s not into mating anyway. You got nothing to worry about. We should be there tomorrow, early P.M.”

“Call me from Looie’s.”

“I’m gonna need some cash when I …”

But Pierce had hung up.

“Who was that?”

“One of the foremost herb brokers in Manhattan. You’re going to like him a lot.”

Replete with chicken-fried steak, home fries, and wedges of chocolate chiffon pie, they were back on the track an hour later, Tildy relegated once more to map reading and gazing out the window at passing greenery.

“Whatsa matter? You don’t trust me to drive?”

“Not at all. But suppose some cracker lawman were to shake this car down? Then I saw you by the side of the road with your thumb in the air and you don’t know a thing about me or what I’m hauling.”

“Wish I could believe you were that kindhearted. I really do.”

They had arrived at some uncertain, intermediate stage, with not a single thing to say. Tildy counted the corpses of animals who had misjudged a sprint across the road; they were all over the place, losers to speed beyond their understanding. Back home, at the tourist information booths where they gave out free orange juice, there were little warnings posted about alligators who liked to sun themselves on the highway.

Christo chainsucked peppermints, steered with his elbows or his teeth, sang bits of advertising jingles and enjoyed a bout of good old nerve-rattling, mind-prodding paranoia. Every passing motorist wearing a tie was an FBI agent. Every speedwagon with growling tailpipes and wide tires contained some overwound DEA zealot who would just as soon blast you and take the dope. Every dark blotch on the horizon was a roadblock bristling with shotguns. What a nice unadorned target he made out here among the onion fields.

Finally, as dusk approached, they stopped at Nick & Nora’s Swim-O-Links for a dip in the pool in rented suits. Tildy’s white one-piecer with reinforced bra cups was at least one size too large; it bagged out in back and the shoulder straps kept slipping down. Christo challenged her to a five-lap race and lost, Tildy finishing with a sloshing burst, the suit peeled down around her middle by the rush of water. He paid for the chili dogs as promised, but fared no better at miniature golf. Tildy scored two holes-in-one, the first a shot that just missed the descending blade of a motor-driven Olde Dutch Windmill, the second a miracle putt that wobbled into the mouth of a cement polar bear, dropped through a pipe onto all-weather green carpet and rolled through a clot of dead leaves that altered the path of the ball almost ninety degrees, enabling it to reach the lip of the cup, teeter, fall in.

“I’d say you were a natural born athlete,” Christo muttered, tearing the scorecard to shreds.

GET US OUT OF THE UNITED NATIONS

WANAWEETA MERCHANTS ASS’N

In northern Virginia they came upon an outgrowth of the Indochinese diaspora. The Ban Dinh Family Restaurant was just across the street from a gas station where Tildy flirted with the attendant while Christo swiped a quart of 30-weight and wiper blades that turned out to be the wrong size.