“They ought to have hamburgers and maybe barbecue.”
The second drink was like the first, icy cold but quick melting in the wind and Helena held the cup out of the rush of the air and handed it to him when he drank.
“Daughter, are you drinking more than you usually do?”
“Of course. You didn’t think I drank a couple of cups of whisky and water every noon by myself before lunch did you?”
“I don’t want you to drink more than you should.”
“I won’t. But it’s fun. If I don’t want one I won’t take one. I never knew about driving across the country and having our drinks on the way.”
“We could have fun stopping and poking around. Going down to the coast and seeing the old places. But I want us to get out west.”
“So do I. I’ve never seen it. We can always come back.”
“It’s such a long way. But this is so much more fun than flying.”
“This is flying. Roger, will it be wonderful out west?”
“It always is to me.”
“Isn’t it lucky I’ve never been out so we’ll have it together?”
“We’ve got a lot of country to get through first.”
“It’s going to be fun though. Do you think we’ll come to the sandwich town pretty soon?”
“We’ll take the next town.”
The next town was a lumbering town with one long street of frame and brick buildings along the highway. The mills were by the railroad and lumber was piled high along the tracks and there was the smell of cypress and pine sawdust in the heat. While Roger filled the gas and had the water, oil and air checked Helena ordered hamburger sandwiches and barbecued pork sandwiches with hot sauce on them in a lunch counter and brought them to the car in a brown paper bag. She had beer in another paper sack.
Back on the highway again, and out of the heat of the town, they ate the sandwiches and drank cold beer that the girl opened.
“I couldn’t get any of our marriage beer,” she said. “This was the only kind there was.”
“It’s good and cold. Wonderful after the barbecue.”
“The man said it was about like Regal. He said I’d never be able to tell it from Regal.”
“It’s better than Regal.”
“It had a funny name. It wasn’t a German name either. But the labels soaked off.”
“It’ll be on the caps.”
“I threw the caps away.”
“Wait till we get out west. They have better beer the further out you get.”
“I don’t think they could have any better sandwich buns or any better barbecue. Aren’t these good?”
“They’re awfully good. This isn’t a part of the country where you eat very good either.”
“Roger, will you mind terribly if I go to sleep for a little while after lunch? I won’t if you’re sleepy.”
“I’d love it if you went to sleep. I’m not sleepy at all really. I’d tell you if I was.”
“There’s another bottle of beer for you. Dammit I forgot to look at the cap.”
“That’s good. I like to drink it unknown.”
“But we could have remembered it for another time.”
“We’ll get another new one.”
“Roger, would you really not mind if I went to sleep?”
“No, beauty.”
“I can stay awake if you want.”
“Please sleep and you’ll wake up lonely and we can talk.”
“Good night, my dear Roger. Thank you very much for the trip and the two drinks and the sandwiches and the unknown beer and the way down upon the Swanee River and for where we are going.”
“You go to sleep, my baby.”
“I will. You wake me up if you want me.”
She slept curled up in the deep seat and Roger drove, watching the wide road ahead for stock, making fast time through the pine country, trying to keep around seventy to try to see how much he could get over sixty miles onto the speedometer in each hour. He had never been on this stretch of highway but he knew this part of the state and he was driving it now only to put it behind him. You shouldn’t have to waste country but on a long trip you have to.
The monotony tires you, he thought. That and the fact there are no vistas. This would be a fine country on foot in cool weather but it is monotonous to drive through now.
I have not been driving long enough to settle into it yet. But I should have more resiliency than I have.
I’m not sleepy. My eyes are bored I guess as well as tired. I am not bored, he thought. It is just my eyes and the fact that it is a long time since I have been sitting still so long. It is another game and I’ll have to relearn it. About day after tomorrow we will start to make real distance and not be tired by it. I haven’t sat still this long for a long time.
He reached forward and turned on the radio and tuned it. Helenadid not wake so he left it on and let it blur in with his thinking and his driving.
It is awfully nice having her in the car asleep, he thought. She is good company even when she is asleep. You are a strange and lucky bastard, he thought. You are having much better luck than you deserve. You just thought you had learned something about being alone and you really worked at it and you did learn something. You got right to the edge of something. Then you backslid and ran with those worthless people, not quite as worthless as the other batch, but worthless enough and to spare. Probably they were even more worthless. You certainly were worthless with them.
Then you got through that and got in fine shape with Tom and the kids and you knew you couldn’t be happier and that there was nothing coming up except to be lonely again and then along comes this girl and you go right into happiness as though it were a country you were the biggest landowner in.
Happiness is pre-war Hungary and you are Count Károlyi. Maybe not the biggest landowner but raised the most pheasant anyway. I wonder if she will like to shoot pheasant. Maybe she will. I can still shoot them. They don’t bother me. I never asked her if she could shoot. Her mother shot quite well in that wonderful dope-head trance she had. She wasn’t a wicked woman at the start.
She was a very nice woman, pleasant and kind and successful in bed and I think she meant all the things she said to all the people. I really think she meant them. That is probably what made it so dangerous. It always sounded as though she meant them anyway. I suppose, though, it finally becomes a social defect to be unable to believe any marriage has not really been consummated until the husband has committed suicide.
Things all ended so violently that started so pleasantly. But I suppose that is always the way with drugs. Though I suppose among those spiders who eat their mates some of the mate eaters are remarkably attractive. My dear she has never, really never, looked better. Dear Henry was just a bonne bouche. Henry was nice too. You know how much we all liked him.
None of those spiders take drugs either, he thought. Of course that’s what I should remember about this child, exactly as you should remember the stalling speed of a plane, that her mother was her mother.
That’s all very simple, he thought. But you know your own mother was a bitch. But you also know you are a bastard in quite different ways from her ways. So why should her stalling speed be the same as her mother’s? Yours isn’t.
No one had ever said it was. Hers I mean. What you said was that you should remember her mother as you would remember and so forth.
That’s dirty too, he thought. For nothing, for no reason, when you need it most you have this girl, freely and of her own will, lovely, loving and full of illusions about you, and with her asleep beside you on the seat you start destroying her and denying her without any formalities of cocks crowing, twice nor thrice nor even on the radio.
You are a bastard, he thought and looked down at the girl asleep on the seat by him.
I suppose you start to destroy it for fear you will lose it, or that it will take too great a hold on you, or in case it shouldn’t be true, but it is not very good to do. I would like to see you have something besides your kids you did not destroy sometime. This girl’s mother was and is a bitch and your mother was a bitch. That ought to bring you closer to her and make you understand her. That doesn’t mean she has to be a bitch any more than you have to be a heel.
She thinks you are a much better guy than you are and maybe that will make you a better guy than you are. You’ve been good for a long time now and maybe you can be good. As far as I know you haven’t done anything cruel since that night on the dock with that citizen with the wife and the dog. You haven’t been drunk. You haven’t been wicked. It’s a shame you’re not still in the church because you could make such a good confession.
She sees you the way you are now and you are a good guy as
