“I’m sure it doesn’t. Anyway, Jeremy the kochloffel went over to the phone and got out the phone book and proceeded to look up Leo Youngdahl in the listings, and announced that he was listed. Of course the faction who said he was dead, including my father, started to say that a listing didn’t prove anything, that he could have died since the book came out, or that his wife might have kept the listing active under his name, which was evidently common practice. But Jeremy didn’t even wait out the objections, he just started dialing, and when someone answered he said, ‘Is Leo Youngdahl there?’ And whoever it was said that he was indeed there, and asked who was calling, and Jeremy said, ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, I was just checking, and please give Leo my best wishes.’ Then he hung up, and everybody laughed and made various speculations as to the reaction that exchange must have caused at the Youngdahl household, and there the matter stood, because the subject was settled and Leo Youngdahl was alive and well.”
Evans looked at me and asked if that was the whole story, and how my father’s funeral entered into it.
I said, “No, it’s not the whole story. I’m going to have another drink. Do you want one?”
He didn’t. I made myself one and came back into the room. “My father’s funeral,” I said. “I don’t want to go into all of it now, but it was a very bad time for me. I’m sure it usually is. In this case there were complicating factors, including the fact that I was away from home when he died. It happened suddenly and I felt guilty about not being there. What happened was he had a heart attack and died about fifteen hours later, and I was in New York and was spending the night with a man and they couldn’t reach me by phone, and—”
“Look, why don’t you sit down.”
“No, I’d rather stand. Let’s just say I was guilty and let it go at that. Feeling guilty. I wish you would stop it with those wise Freudian nods.”
“Oh, for God’s sake.”
“I’m sorry. Where was I? Another thing, it was my first real experience with death. Both of my grandfathers had died when I was too young to understand what was going on. This was the first death I related to personally as an adult.
“The point of this is that we were all at the funeral parlor the day before the funeral—actually it was the night before—and there was this endless stream of people paying condolence calls. My mother and brother and I had to sit there forever while half the town came up to take our hands and tell us how sorry they were and what a wonderful man my father was. I didn’t recognize more than half of them. Bethel’s not that large, but my father was a rather prominent man—”
“So you’ve told me.”
“You’re a son of a bitch. Have I told you that?”
“Hey!”
“Oh, I’m sorry. But just let me get this over with. Finally one of these strangers took my mother’s hand and said, ‘Edna, I’m terribly sorry,’ or whatever the hell he said, and then he turned his head toward me—I was sitting next to her between her and Gordon—and said, ‘I don’t think you know me, my name is Leo Youngdahl,’ and I cracked up completely.”
“You cried? Yes, I can see that, hearing the name and all—”
“No, no, no! You’re missing the whole point. I cracked up, I laughed!”
“Oh.”
“It was such incredible comic relief. The only thing on earth the name Leo Youngdahl meant to me was Jeremy phoning to find out if he was alive or dead, and now meeting him for the first time and at my father’s funeral. I have never laughed so uncontrollably in my life.”
“What did he do?”
“That’s just it. He never knew I was laughing. Nobody ever knew, because my mother did the most positively brilliant thing anybody ever did in their lives. She knew I was laughing, and she knew why, but without the slightest hesitation she put her arm around me and drew me down and said, ‘Don’t cry, baby, don’t cry, it’s all right,’ and I finally got hold of myself enough to turn off the laughter and turn it into the falsest tears I’ve ever shed, and by the time I picked my face up Leo Youngdahl was gone and I was able to handle myself. I went downstairs and washed my face and settled myself down, and after that I was all right.”
I lit a cigarette, and Evans said something or other, but I wasn’t done yet. That might have been the end of the story. But I sometimes have difficulty determining where to end a story.
“Later that night the parade ended and we went home. Mother and Gordon and I had coffee, and neither of us mentioned the incident in front of Gordon. I don’t know why. I told him the next day and he couldn’t get over how it had happened right next to him and he had missed it, and we both went on and on about how incredibly poised she had been. I don’t know how you develop that kind of social grace under pressure.
“After Gordon went to bed, I thanked her for covering for me and we talked about the whole thing and laughed about it. Then she said, ‘You know, that’s just the kind of thing your dad would have loved. He would have loved it.’ And then her face changed, and she said, ‘And I can never tell him about it, oh God, I can never tell him anything again,’ and she cried. We both cried, and just remembering it—”
“Come here, baby.”
“No. The last time I talked to him was three days before he died. Over the phone, and we quarreled. I don’t remember what about. Oh, I do remember. It doesn’t matter.”
“Of course not.”
“We quarreled, and then they tried to reach me to tell me he was dying, and they couldn’t and then he was dead and there were all those things I couldn’t tell him. And now Leo Youngdahl is dead. I can’t even remember what he looked like.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here. Let’s go over to Sully’s and I’ll buy you a drink.”
“No, you go.”
“I’ll stay with you.”
“No, you go. I want a little time alone. I’m a mess. I’ll meet you over there in a little while. You said Sully’s?”
“Sure.”
And so that’s the story, if indeed it is a story. I thought about sending a contribution to the American Cancer Society in Leo Youngdahl’s memory. I never did. I often conceive gestures of that sort but rarely carry them out.
There’s nothing more to it, except to say that within two weeks of that conversation Evans Wheeler packed his things and moved out. There is no earthly way to attribute his departure to that particular conversation. Nor is there any earthly way I can be convinced that the two events are unrelated.
I still have Leo Youngdahl’s obituary notice around somewhere. At least I think I do. I certainly don’t remember ever throwing it away.
As always,
Jill
Like a Bug on a Windshield
There are two Rodeway Inns in Indianapolis, but Waldron only knew the one on West Southern Avenue, near the airport. He made it a point to break trips there if he could do so without going out of his way or messing up his schedule. There were eight or ten motels around the country that were favorites of his, some of them chain affiliates, a couple of them independents. A Days Inn south of Tulsa, for example, was right across the street from a particularly good restaurant. A Quality Court outside of Jacksonville had friendly staff and big cakes of soap in the bathroom. Sometimes he didn’t know exactly why a motel was on his list, and he thought that it might be habit, like the brand of cigarettes he smoked, and that habit in turn might be largely a matter of convenience. Easier to buy Camels every time than to stand around deciding what you felt like smoking. Easier to listen to WJJD out of Chicago until the signal faded, then dial on down to KOMA in Omaha, than to hunt around and try to guess what kind of music you wanted to hear and where you were likely to find it.
It was more than habit, though, that made him stop at the Indianapolis Rodeway when he was in the neighborhood. They made it nice for a trucker without running a place that felt like a truck stop. There was a separate lot for the big rigs, of course, but there was also a twenty-four-hour check-in area around back just for truckers, with a couple o
f old boys sitting around in chairs and country music playing on the radio. The coffee was always hot and always free, and it was real coffee out of a Silex, not the brown dishwater the machines dispensed.
Inside, the rooms were large and clean and the beds comfortable. There was a huge indoor pool with Jacuzzi and sauna. A good bar, an okay restaurant—and, before you hit the road again, there was more free coffee at the truckers’ room in back.
Sometimes a guy could get lucky at the bar or around the pool. If not, well, there was free HBO on the color television and direct-dial phones to call home on. You wouldn’t drive five hundred miles out of your way, but it was worth planning your trip to stop there.
He walked into the Rodeway truckers’ room around nine on a hot July night. The room was air-conditioned but the door was always open, so the air-conditioning didn’t make much difference. Lundy rocked back in his chair and looked up at him. “Hey, boy,” Lundy said. “Where you been?”
“Drivin’,” he said, giving the ritual response to the ritual question.
“Yeah, I guess. You look about as gray as this desk. Get yourself a cup of coffee, I think you need it.”
“What I need is about four ounces of bourbon and half an hour in the Jacuzzi.”
“And two hours with the very best TWA has to offer,” Lundy said. “What we all need, but meantime grab some coffee.”
“I guess,” Waldron said, and poured himself a cup. He blew on the surface to cool it and glanced around the room. Besides Lundy, a chirpy little man with wire-rimmed glasses and a built-up shoe, there were three truckers in the room. Two, like Waldron, were drinking coffee out of Styrofoam cups. The third man was drinking Hudepohl beer out of the can.
Waldron filled out the registration card, paid with his Visa card, pocketed his room key and receipt. Then he sat down and took another sip of his coffee.
“The way some people drive,” he said.
There were murmurs of agreement.
“About forty miles out of here,” he said, “I’m on the Interstate—what’s the matter with me, I can’t even think of the goddamned number—”
“Easy, boy.”
“Yeah, easy.” He took a breath, sipped at his coffee, blew at the surface. It was cool enough to drink, but blowing on it was reflexive, habitual. “Two kids in a Toyota. I thought at first it was two guys, but it was a guy and a girl. I’m going about five miles over the limit, not pushing it, and they pass me on a slight uphill and then they cut in tight. I gotta step on my brake or I’m gonna walk right up their back bumper.”
“These people don’t know how to drive,” one of the coffee drinkers said. “I don’t know where they get their licenses.”
“Through the mails,” the beer drinker said. “Out of the Monkey Ward catalog.”
“So I tapped the horn,” Waldron said. “Just a tap, you know? And the guy was driving, he taps back.”
“Honks his horn.”
“Right. And slows down. Sixty-two, sixty, fifty-eight, he’s dying out there in front of me. So I wait, and I flip the brights on and off to signal him, and then I go around him and wait until I’m plenty far ahead of him before I move back in.”
“And he passes you again,” said the other coffee drinker, speaking for the first time.
“How’d you know?”
“He cut in sharp again?”
Waldron nodded. “I guess I was expecting it once he moved out to pass me. I eased up on the gas, and when he cut in I had to touch the brake, but it wasn’t close, and this time I didn’t bother hitting the horn.”
“I’da used the horn,” the beer drinker said. “I’da stood up on the horn.”
“Then he slowed down again,” the second coffee drinker said. “Am I right?”
“What are these guys, friends of yours?”
“They slow down again?”
“To a crawl. And then I did use the horn, and the girl turned around and gave me the finger.” He drank the rest of the coffee. “And I got angry,” he said. “I pulled out. I put the pedal on the floor and I moved out in front of them—and this time they’re not gonna let me pass, you know, they’re gonna pace me, fast when I speed up, slow when I lay off. And they’re looking up at me, and they’re laughing, and she’s leaning across his lap and she’s got her blouse or the front of her dress, whatever it is, she’s got it pushed down, you know, like I’ve never seen it before and my eyeballs are gonna go out on stalks—”
“Like in a cartoon.”
“Right. And I thought, You idiots, because all I had to do, you know, was turn the wheel. Because where are they gonna go? The shoulder? They won’t have time to get there. I’ll run right over them, I’ll smear ’em like a bug on the windshield. Splat, and they’re gone.”
“I like that,” Lundy said.
Waldron took a breath. “I almost did it,” he said.
“How much is almost?”
“I could feel it in my hands,” he said. He held them out in front of him, shaped to grip a steering wheel. “I could feel the thought going into my hands, to turn that wheel and flatten them. I could see it all happening. I had the picture in my mind, and I was seeing myself driving away from them, just driving off, and they’re wrecked and burning.”
Lundy whistled.
“And I had the thought, That’s murder! And the thought like registered, but I was still going to do it, the hell with it. My hands”—he flexed his fingers—“my hands were ready to move on the wheel, and then it was gone.”
“The Toyota was gone?”
“The thought was gone. I hit the brake and I got behind them and a rest area came up and I took it, fast. I pulled in and cut the engine and had a smoke. I was all alone there. It was empty and I was thinking that maybe they’d come back and pull into the rest area, too, and if they did I was gonna take him on with a tire iron. There’s one I keep in the front seat with me and I actually got it down from the rig and walked around with it in one hand, smoking a cigarette and swinging the tire iron just so I’ll be ready.”
“You see ’em again?”
“No. They were just a couple of kids clowning around, probably working themselves up. Now they’ll get into the backseat and have themselves a workout.”
“I don’t envy them,” Lundy said. “Not in the backseat of an effing Toyota.”
“What they don’t know,” said Waldron, “is how close they came to being dead.”
They were all looking up at him. The second coffee drinker, a dark-haired man with deep-set brown eyes, smiled. “You really think it was close?”
“I told you, I almost—”
“So how close is almost? You thought about it and then you didn’t do it.”
“I thought about making it with Jane Fonda,” Lundy said, “but then I didn’t do it.”
“I was going to do it,” Waldron said.
“And then you didn’t.”
“And then I didn’t.” He shook a cigarette out of his pack and picked up Lundy’s Zippo and lit it. “I don’t know where the anger came from. I was angry enough to kill. Why? Because the girl shot me a bone? Because she waggled her—?”
“Because you were afraid,” the first coffee drinker suggested.
“Afraid of what? I got eighteen wheels under me, I’m hauling building materials, how’m I afraid of a Toyota? It’s not my ass if I hit them.” He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked at it. “But you’re right,” he said. “I was scared I’d hit them and kill them, and that turned into anger, and I almost did kill them.”
“Maybe you should have,” someone said. Waldron was still looking at his cigarette, not noticing who was speaking. “Whole road’s full of amateurs and people thinking they’re funny. Maybe you got to teach ’em a lesson.”
“Swat ’em,” someone else said. “Like you said, bug on the windshield.”
“ ‘I’m just a bug on the windshield of life,’ “ Lundy sang in a tuneless falsetto whine. “Now who was it sang that or did I just make it up?” D
olly Parton, the beer drinker suggested. “Now wouldn’t I just love to be a bug on her windshield?” Lundy said.
Waldron picked up his bag and went to look for his room.
Eight, ten weeks later, he was eating eggs and scrapple in a diner on Route 1 outside of Bordentown, New Jersey. The diner was called the Super Chief and was designed to look like a diesel locomotive and painted with aluminum paint. Waldron was reading a paper someone else had left in the booth. He almost missed the story, but then he saw it.
A camper had plunged through a guardrail and off an embankment on a branch of the Interstate near Gatlinburg, Tennessee. The driver, an instructor at Ozark Community College in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, had survived with massive chest and leg injuries. His wife and infant son had died in the crash.
According to the driver, an eighteen-wheeler had come up “out of nowhere” and shoved the little RV off the road. “It’s like he was a snowplow,” he said, “and he was clearing us out of the way.”
Like a bug on a windshield, thought Waldron.
He read the story again, closed the paper. His hand was shaking as he picked up his cup of coffee. He put the cup down, took a few deep breaths, then picked up the cup again without trembling.
He pictured them in the truckers’ room at the Rodeway, Lundy rocking back in his chair with his feet up, built-up shoe and all. The beer drinker, the two coffee drinkers. Had he even heard their names? He couldn’t remember, nor could he keep their images in focus in his memory. But he could hear their voices. And he could hear his own, suggesting an act not unlike the one he had just read about.
My God, had he given someone an idea?
He sipped his coffee, left the rest of his food untouched on the plate. Scrapple was a favorite of his and you could only find it in and around Philadelphia, and they did it right here, fried it crisp and served it with maple syrup, but he was letting the grease congeal around it now. That one coffee drinker, the one with the deep-set eyes, was he the one who’d spoken the words, but he remembered the anger in them, and something else, too, something like a blood lust.