Home: Part 18

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Expect nothing, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

August 1974

 
I didn't know where we were--someplace north of Pensacola, Florida, on a two-lane rode that was as dark as any road I'd seen. There was nothing on the sides of the road but what I assumed were pine trees. The truck's windows were wide open, and the humidity and wind beat against my face in a way that wasn't comfortable but was better than keeping the window closed and feeling just the humidity.  

"Where are we?" I asked at one point.

"Traveling north," Mitchell said. It was his truck: an old Chevrolet with a bench seat that sagged in the middle.

I just my eyes and listened to the radio. Mostly the radio fed us static, but now and then it would feed us gospel music. 

"We're here," Mitchell said. I'd dozed off, apparently, and I needed a moment to come to terms with who I was with and what we were doing.

"We're where," I said.

"Flomation. Flomation, Alabama."

"Flomation?"

"Yep. Sounds like a toilet part, doesn't it?"

"Why are we here."

"In Flomation?"

"Anywhere. Why are we in Alabama?" The humidity in Alabama's night wasn't any less than it had been in Florida.

"There's a bar."

"We drove this far to go to a bar?"

He nodded. "I might know some people."

"What kind of people?"

"Nice people, mostly. They're mostly polite."

He parked the truck in a gravel lot in front of a small, single-story building. The neon sign over the door read "Marianne's." I pointed at the sign. "Who's Marianne--friend of yours?"

"Everyone's a friend of mine," he said. "Come on. Let's get a drink."

The smell of stale cigarette smoke inside the bar seemed flow out of the paneled walls. A couple of pool tables in the back of the room had suffered great abuse. A couple of women were standing around the jukebox, and who I took to be there boyfriends were sitting in a booth nearby. The bartender looked up from his newspaper when we entered.

Mitch gestured toward the bar. "Our lucky night--a choice of seats." The bartender looked at us. "Budweisers," Mitch said.

"I hate Budweiser," I said.

"I know you do. Just have one, and keep the bottle handy."

"What?"

"Long-necked bottles: useful if you get into a fight."

"Mitch," the bartender said when he set the bottles in front of us.

"Gary. Things look kind of slow tonight."

"I like to think of it as peaceful," Gary said. 

"Yeah, peaceful," Mitch said. "I found this guy on the side of the road and thought he might like a place to sit for a while." He gestured at me.

Gary shook my hand. "You a friend of Mitch's?"

"So far," I said. "A lot rides on how the night goes."

"Yeah. I understand that." He returned to his newspaper at the far end of the bar.

"How was Subic City?" Mitch asked.

"Felt just like this," I said. "Hot and humid."

"Get yourself laid?"

"Don't get personal."

"Get the clap?"

"That's personal, too."

He nodded. "The last time I was there, I started dripping before I left and didn't stop for a month. When I finally saw a doctor, he asked how many times I'd had the clap. I told him six, and he didn't believe me."

"That's a lot of clap," I said. "It's an actual ovation."

"Clever."

"You ever thought about using a rubber?"

"I did, once."

"About five times less than you should've." The women at the jukebox must have been unsuccessful, because there was no music playing. They had returned to their boyfriends, and the group of them seemed happy in the booth. The Budweiser had cooled my throat. 

"The doctor said that some of that stuff over there has started to eat penicillin. He said I've got enough scar tissue inside my pecker to nearly close me up."

"And you're proud of that?"

Mitch shrugged. "The price of doing business, I guess." 

"So you've been here before, I take it."

"Yeah. Now and again. Used to run with a woman who worked here two, three years ago."

"And now?"

"And now, I'm just depressed and thought I'd come up here to remember her."

"Christ. You're getting all sentimental." 

"We almost got married." He gestured for Gary to bring us more beer.

"Almost?"

"Almost. Then she met a drummer, and the next thing I knew she popped out a kid that didn't look anything like me. You could say that our relationship pretty much ended then."

"If I didn't know better, Mitch, I'd say that you're about to cry."

"I might."

"Don't pull me into your misery, okay? I didn't get dragged all the way to Flomation to have a bad night."

He looked at me, and I knew that he was on the cusp between disappointment and anger. "Maybe we should play pool," I said.