Stanley Elkin - The Franchiser

But his body — he’d been sick, he’d been in hospital, M.S. was a stress disease — couldn’t adjust to the new hours and he had to return to the old pattern of traveling the highways during the day, thinking to change directions when the radio told him of the brownouts in western Nebraska — he’d been heading for Wyoming, for the high country, mountains, as if electricity followed the laws of gravity, pushing his Cadillac uphill (but that wasted gas, too, didn’t it?) toward the headwaters of force — and drop toward Kansas. He couldn’t decide. Then, on Interstate 80, he saw detour signs spring up sudden as targets in skeet, the metal diamonds of early warning. He slammed his brakes, slowed to fifty, forty, twenty-five, ten, as the road turned to gravel and dirt at the barricades and the traffic merged two ways. A tall girl in an orange hard hat stood lazily in the road holding up a heavy sign that said SLOW. Her bare arms, more heavily muscled than his own, rubbed death in his face. He yearned for her, her job, her indifference, her strength, her health. He stopped the car and got out. “Tell me,” he said, “are you from west of here or east?”

“What? Get back in your car, you’re tying up traffic.”

“Where do you live? West, east?”

“Get back in that car or I’ll drive it off into a field for you.”

“Look,” he said, “all I want…” She raised her arms, lifting her sign high and plunging its metal shaft into the earth, where it quivered for a moment and then stayed, stuck there like an act of state.

“You want to try me?” she threatened.

“I want to know if they’ve still got power west of here.”

“Power’s all out west of here. Get back in your car.” He lowered his eyes and returned to his car and, going forward slowly and slowly back, made a U-turn in the dirt and gravel narrows.

“Hey,” the tall girl shouted. “What the hell—”

On the sixth day, on Interstate 70, between Russell and Hays — the radio was silent — he looked out the window and was cheered to see oil rigs — he remembered what they were called: “donkey pumps”—pumping up oil from the farmers’ fields, the ranchers’. The pumps drove powerful and slow as giant pistons, turning like the fat metal gear on locomotives just starting up. Ridiculous things in the open field, spaced in apparent random, some almost at the very edge of the highway, that dipped down toward the ground and up again like novelty birds into glasses of water. Abandoned, churning everywhere unsupervised and unattended for as far as he could see, they gave him an impression of tremendous reservoirs of power, indifferent opulence, like cars left standing unlocked and keys in the ignition. There was no brownout here. (Of course, he thought, priorities : oil for the lamps of Asia, for the tanks and planes of political commitment and intervention. Flesh was apolitical but nothing so drove home to him the sense of his nation’s real interests as the sight of these untended donkey pumps in these obscure Kansas fields. Wichita had been without electricity for two days while the thirsty monsters of vacant west central Kansas used up enough to sustain a city of millions.) He pulled off the Interstate at Hays and went up the exit ramp, heading for the Texaco station, the sign for which, high as a three-story building, he had seen a mile off, a great red star standing in the daylight.

It wasn’t open.

He crossed the road and drove to the entrance of a Best Western Motel. He went inside. The lobby was dark. At the desk, the cashier was preparing a guest’s bill by hand. “Is that what you get?” They checked the addition together.

“I guess,” the man said.

“Did you want to register, sir?” the clerk asked Ben.

“What’s happening? Why are the lights out? Is your air conditioning working? The TV? What about the restaurant? Will I be able to get a hot meal? Is there iced coffee?”

“There’s a power failure,” the clerk said. “We can put you up but I’m afraid all the electric is out. You’ll have to pay by credit card because we can’t get into the register to make change.”

“But the pumps,” Ben said. “All those pumps are going. I saw them myself. There can’t be a brownout. What about those pumps?”

“Those are driven by gasoline engines,” the clerk said.

“Oh,” Flesh said, “gas. Jesus, that never occurred to me.”

“Did you want a room, sir? There’s no air conditioning but you can cool off in the pool. Usually there’s no swimming after 9 p.m., but because of the power failure we’re going to keep it open all night.”

“There’s no filtration,” Flesh said. “It’s stagnant water. There’s no filtration. It’s kids’ pee and melted Mister Softees and gallons of sweat.”

“It’s heavily chlorinated, mister. It’s been supershocked plenty. We’re spending a fortune on chlorine and pH minus.”

He stayed. He stayed because in an odd way the clerk spoke his language and Flesh had caught hints in the man’s speech of his own concerns and obsessions. The motel people had made, he suspected, on their level, the preparations he had made on his. There would be a ton of ice to preserve their meats and keep their Cokes cold. There would be flashlights and extra batteries — candles would be too dangerous, Coleman lamps would — on the nightstand and on the sink in the bathroom. He signed the registration card in the gathering dusk.

That was not the first time he was fooled. Two days before he had left Interstate 80 at North Platte, Nebraska, and doubled back east along U.S. 30 to Grand Island. It had already turned dark in Grand Island. The phones were working and he called Nebraska Power and Light. This wasn’t a power failure but a localized brownout; he was told that the electricity would be back on by morning. He decided to continue driving. If the brownouts were localized he could probably find a town farther on where there was still juice. He consulted his Shell and Phillips and Mobil maps of Nebraska by the beam of his flashlight. His best bet would be to leave U.S. 30 and get onto 34. That way, heading toward Lincoln, he would hit Aurora and York — York showing in fairly large type on Shell and Mobil — and then Seward, then Lincoln itself. If nothing happened by Seward, State Route 15 looked promising. He could head north to David City and Schuyler or south to the junction with U.S. 6, leave 15, and continue on 6 the three miles to Milford or the twelve to Friend. He would keep his options open. At Schuyler, if nothing was happening, he could get back on U.S. 30 and head west again to Columbus, represented on all the maps in type just a little less bold than Grand Island itself.

That’s what he did finally. It was very dark now. There was absolutely no moon. It seemed odd to Flesh that after days of such horrendous sunlight there would be no moonlight at all. Did that mean there were clouds? Was the weather about to break? (Yet the air felt no heavier; he could not perceive heat lightning.) He drove with his brights on. State Route 15 was unimproved road, paved, but gravel kept spitting itself at the Cadillac, putting great pits in its body and undercarriage. The gas gauge was dangerously close to empty, and Flesh pulled off to an improved county road that he would have not seen at all if he had not had his brights on. He stopped the car and went with his flashlight to the trunk. This was the first time he had had to use any of the gas from the five-gallon cans. As he emptied each can he got back into the driver’s seat and read the gas gauge. Five gallons was a spit in the bucket to the huge Cadillac tank and he found that he had to empty four cans and part of a fifth before the gauge read Full. This left him with only three and a fraction cans in reserve — he had not yet purchased all twelve five-gallon cans — perhaps seventeen or eighteen gallons at the most.