Previously: Her face was glowing brighter than the Schlitz globe above the bar behind her … Holy shit, you quit your job? When did you quit your job? Why did you quit your job … We ordered a bucket of Miller Light, twelve bottles, on special… Two people per bucket was not sustainable under ordinary conditions, but we filled the table with empties and finished that fucking bucket … Ana suggested shots … Two tequila shots. Please. Apiece. Four shots … Listen: Shutup and drink your shots. You’re going home with me and then we’re gonna fuck … I shut up and drank my shots.
Take it from the top:
fernweh (fern-way) n.
1. An ache for distant places
2. Being homesick for anywhere but home
At least heading east on 90 was a direction, more than I usually had. It was a better plan than locking Pete in the couch. Better than sitting on back porches and shooting birds with .22s, which I did in my I’m- going-to-try-to-fit-in-here phase. Better than looking at pornography with Paul, who, on the few nights a years, would come from Guthrie and bring with him his music and comics and, Mother Mary, a sample of his father’s best — I’m not talking about the magazines that all the dads had stashed in places all the sons knew about; I’m talking videos, and videos of shit that blew my fucking mind, of stuff that I could not have conceived of even if I were given clues ahead of time.
“Paul, do people do this in New York City?”
“Are you kidding? People do shit like this in Guthrie.”
“Guthrie?”
“Everywhere, dude. You have no fucking idea. Teachers, policemen, farmers, preachers. Fuck it, especially the preachers. People are fucking freaks, they just won’t admit it.”
It was as if he had told me Darth Vader was Luke Skywalker’s father, and Luke Skywalker’s father had a German Dungeon fetish.
“Paul, how do you know this?”
“Trust me, dude. Freaks.”
It won’t surprise you to learn that it was Paul who first gave me marijuana. On the night before I left Oklahoma, he and I went for a walk out into the tall grasses of our restored prairie.
“Hold it like this and breath in. Take a deep breath and hold it in your lungs. It’s going to burn a bit but try to hold it. Just hold it in as long as you can. Give it time to work. That’s it, hold it.”
“Wow. That fucking burned. Is it supposed to burn like that?”
“It burns, dude.”
“Wow.”
“It gets easier. It takes practice. Do you feel anything?”
“A little, I think.”
“It takes time. Next time will be better. Next time you’ll feel like you are planted on this fucking prairie, swaying back and forth, wind goes this way wind goes that way, swoosh, swoosh, wind goes by, but you stay there, fucking planted, dude. With your feet. There.”
“You feel stuck?”
“No, dude, not like stuck. Like, planted.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Stuck is stuck, dude. Planted is planted. Look at me now.” He was standing with his feet shoulder-width apart, deliberate. “This is planted.”
He fell to the ground in a three-part fall, down to a squat, down to a sit, down to on his back.
“Are you planted now?”
“No, dude, but sometimes you just need to lie the fuck down.”
Here is some advice for you, America: when you are going down Interstate 90 at almost eighty miles an hour and letting your mind wander this way and that, do not let it wander to the memory of the time you smoked weed on the prairie late in the evening with the wind pushing the grass and hushing out all other sounds. You’ll fall asleep and drive into a field of soybeans.
Ana, wide-awake for the first time since we left Chicago: “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Nothing, I — shit.”
“We could’ve been killed!”
I held the steering wheel, as if it wasn’t too late to take control. “I know. I know. Jesus.”
“We could have been killed.”
“I’m sorry. I should’ve pulled over. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”
“Are we stuck?”
I tried to drive. The wheels whirred and spun and threw soil behind us. We were stuck. Not planted.
“Fuck.”
“Fuck.”
“Fuck!”
“Fuck.”
“So what do we do?”
“Call the 911, I guess.”
“911?” Ana looked nervous.
“I guess. Who else?”
“I don’t know. Will the police come?”
“Probably. They might send a tow truck, but they’ll probably come. This is probably officially an accident they have to report and do paper work on or something.”
She looked worried, her arms were wrapped tight across her body, as if it was snowing and windy.
“Will they look in the car?”
“I doubt it. I imagine they will be profoundly annoyed to have to deal with us and they’ll get it over with as soon as they can. Why are you worried,” I widened my eyes in mock revelation, “Is there really a bucket of meth in the car?”
Fuck off, she said, with every muscle in her face.
I chalked her nerves up to the fact that this was her first car crash. She didn’t know what to expect, didn’t know that the State Police would stop, look at my license, see I was from Chicago, look at my face, see everything they needed to see, shake their head just enough to remain professional but still communicate that they expect nothing less from the likes of me.
Thank you for reading. Next week starts like this:
She fell asleep on my shoulder in the taxi.
Then Jackson spends the night with Ana.