Betrayed by F. Scott Fitzgerald (25 page)

The fish chowder had cleared my head.

I once dreamed he came to my desk with a copy of
The Last Tycoon
finished, and then we were walking through the abandoned alleys of Salt Lake City. After I had the dream, which was occasioned by half a quart of Beefeater gin at a reception for a visiting poet, I spent ten days wandering the side streets after midnight, searching. On the tenth day I stepped on a man’s hand. He had been sleeping under some back stairs behind the Rialto, and woke to look at my saddle oxfords and then my eyes. I wrote in my journal that I had at last glimpsed the devil.

Now outside our circle, Scott Fitzgerald, a man eaten alive by his conception of romance and desire to be drawn inexorably up and toward the lights, the mainstream, seemed content to smile at me. It was the smile we offer children, and it is a promise that someday they’ll know more than they do today.

Eldon dropped his cigarette in the fire and turned to slip into his sleeping bag.

“Did you see the fish?” I asked both of my friends.

“I’m still not sure,” Eldon said.

Fitzgerald’s eyes squinted almost to laughter; it was a joyous, derisive look.

“What happened?” I looked straight at him.

“Your imagination bit you,” Eldon said. He knew me.

“Yeah, I guess so. Old movies. Summers when I was eleven I watched every late show there was. Did you ever see
I Married an Angel
?”

“Sure. That panorama of heaven, my first glimpse.”

“People took their time. Things mattered. Mr. Smith went to Washington.”

“No one should see that until they’re thirty.”

“And when my mind was ravaged by old movies, a silver screen of ninety heroes, I read the books.
This Side of Paradise
when I was seventeen. I learned how to smoke and moved my bed under the window. I was ripe.”

“Yeah,” Eldon said. “Well relax. Don’t worry. We’re the last victims. There aren’t any good movies left and no one reads books.”

“I’m not so sure.”

“I am. Kids don’t even read the labels on the drugs they swallow.”

“You’re a cynic.”

“Yes, and you’re my friend.”

And so fine friends, readers for instance, one life becomes another the way morning becomes electric (I know, I know), the way night becomes morning, gradually, suddenly, and the changes surprise us until we’re tired and lie down to change for the last time. What I mean is we left the mountains, a setting and viewpoint far above others I’d known, and raised dust on every switch-back and hairpin down, down, down, down. Ahead and below us, I knew the races could not quite measure up to a fish I’d seen and eaten. We’d had the climax over a river in the dark, and my innocence and proving it seemed less significant. Besides, I felt guilty again for not fishing more, for dragging four tons of self-pity to the Uinta Mountains.

Eldon leaned forward and shifted an imaginary stick shift in the Valiant in his crazy simulated test-pilot berserkness. He sang motor and brake sounds through each curve. We slid off the mountain sideways, or so it seemed, through the national forest gates and onto the flatlands where citizens for hundreds of miles around gathered their children into the family automobile and headed out for the raceway and the green flag that would drop near us at high noon. Footraces were started with a pistol, Eldon reminded me, because of the days when slaves ran away. In his helmet in the morning sun, motoring through Roosevelt in number 88, all six cylinders about to expire, Eldon looked the part: a cocky, deranged race-car driver.

“How you feel, Rocky.”

“Wired. Primed.”

“I’m Scared.”

“Relax kid, it’s my car that enters its last golden day on the laps of distinction.”

We listened to the distant static of the Roosevelt radio station. The announcer left the tail-end off every word he spoke in some incredibly consistent suffix phobia as he introduced a Leon Sanger tune: “Horse Trailer Love.” I was beginning to dislike this kind of massive country-western imprecision.

We lunched early on sausages and vermouth. Eldon sipped a little of the warm wine to further prime for the coming mangle. He pulled in the gas station next to the Day-Night Market and filled the car with water, oil, and gasoline, putting an extra quart of oil in the rubble of the backseat. Russell Case and his stock car were already gone, and we could see the new yellow green color of the June grass under the spot where the car had been. We gave the nine remaining trout to the woman who pumped gas and she nodded her toothless thanks. Eldon never stopped at the self-serve pumps preferring the human contact, and “Besides,” he’d say, “we’re a self-serving enough country.” I lowered all the windows and tied the doors shut with two neckties I located on the floor of the backseat. Eldon borrowed a crowbar from the woman, and said to the car, “This is going to be the hard part, Prince.” While he climbed onto the hood, the woman asked, “What are you going to do?”

Eldon held the crowbar aloft, fifteen minutes from racetime, and looked at me. “Aiding and abetting. It’s going to be worth it, I keep thinking.” He tapped a small hole in the upper corner of the window and then levering the whole thing with the bar pulled it out, a rubbery spiderwebbed piece of broken glass, and dropped it to the ground.

“I need air when I drive,” he explained to the woman. She held her breasts up with one arm and her chin up with the other hand. He then walked over the roof and broke out the rear window. “There! Now maybe a fellow can breathe.”

“You don’t fool me,” she said, “You’re in this stock-car race.”

“Right as right,” he answered, “Rocky’s the name.” He handed her the crowbar and we climbed through the windows into what remained of the Valiant. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. Just fry those fish in a little butter.”

One way to create a sense of fall holiday when out for a drive in October is to extract the windshield from your car and let the fresh air blow directly, as it comes off the hood, into your passenger’s mouth. Eldon and I motored along in this fashion toward the races. The air was redolent of cut hay, apples, and a little oil exhaust from our leakage. The last and largest and hardiest of the insect tribe bumped themselves against our squinting faces. Finally, at over fifty miles an hour, it became impossible to breathe facing straight ahead, and I had to turn my head or duck under the dash as if I were trying to light a cigarette. Eldon was laughing maniacally and swerving slightly from line to shoulder on the roadway.

“You’re not driving,” I yelled at his red helmet.

“What?”

“You are not driving in this race!” I repeated.

“My car. I drive.” He slowed but not much, to make a right, and I could hear all the valuable trash in the backseat slide over. I held my door handle.

“Untrue, big boy,” I said.” I am going to drive us directly to the police who will be there and then to Nicky and Lila who will be there, and we will dismount, and things will settle.”

“And you’ll get your innocence back.” He laughed. “No, I think I’ll drive around in old eighty-eight today while you have conversations with Nicky.”

Then we saw the grandstand, and I didn’t want to be there anymore. There was a sign on an old snow fence
RACES,
with an arrow pointing straight into the sky. Overhead, one cloud crossed its fingers and became a Jolly Roger. A half-dozen birds made wing for Phoenix. I did not want to go near Nicky or the Waynes who would battery and assault me, and I did not want to go near the police who would replace me in the facilities. But we continued. Cars were parked randomly, a wheel in every ditch, in the nearby fields. Adrenalin was arriving to do my thinking in October.

“This might not work.”

“It’s all we’ve got,” Eldon said. “And besides, we’re here; it’s so convenient.”

There was a larger sign on the parking lot fence:
DEMO-DERBY DRAG RACE TODAY! SEASON FINALE.
Eldon cruised through the parking lot past two hundred cars and campers, and eased up to the inner gate marked
PIT AREA—TRACK.
We drove through.

“Hey!” The guard yelled and ran up to us. Eldon continued to let the car drift a bit as he talked.

“Howdy, howdy,” Eldon said.

“You can’t go into the pits.” The guard held the door handle as he walked along with us.

“How have you been, Dave?” Eldon said.

“Malcolm.”

“Right, Malcolm, sorry.”

“You guys got a pass?”

“Hey, Mal, come on.” Eldon stopped the car short and quickly pulled off his helmet. “It’s me. Rocky.” Malcolm squinted at him as if he were a math problem. “
Rocky
,” Eldon assisted him, “Nicky’s
brother
for Christsake. Now get back and guard the gate before people start stealing cars.”

“Oh, hell
Rocky
, I’m sorry, I …”

“It’s all right. Where’s Lila? I’ve got a present for her.”

“They’re in the infield like always.” Before Malcolm finished saying this, Eldon drove away, nearly desocketing the guard’s arm.

“Nicky’s brother,” I said.

“Something like that,” Eldon said, replacing his helmet.

“This is where we commence playing by ear.”

The pit area was almost vacant. Several former automobiles relaxed on their sides and tops, clearly intent on never running again, and the gravel itself was marked conspicuously with the recent oil spoors from today’s preparations. Screwdrivers and wrenches lay mingled in the grease, as testimony to haste. As we drove toward the opening in the cinder-block fence which bordered the track, a man stepped out of a camper and looked me flush in the face.

It was Wayne Gunn.

He snarled and took off at a run for the track, waving his arms and hollering: “Nick! Hey, Nick!” And before I could stop myself, I was out after him. He did not reach the track; I tackled him from behind, and lost myself fully in choking and punching this one-time table wielding antagonist of mine. I realize now that it was one of the few times in my life I have achieved that higher state of consciousness known as frenzy, and I don’t regret it at all. By the time Eldon pulled me off, I had subdued Wayne Gunn somewhat. He was bleeding from the nose, and blinking so rapidly I thought I might have damaged his central nervous system, if he had one. He had stopped calling out, and his mouth only flickered in the rapid Morse code of the super-angry.

“Isn’t that great?” Eldon said. “He remembers you.” We lifted Gunn and placed him back in the camper, locking the door.

“This strikes me as one of the best things we’ve ever done,” Eldon said. “You have to escape from prison more often.”

We could hear a loudspeaker from the track instructing all the cars to back up to the starting line. That’s right, I thought, they start these demo-derby spectaculars backwards; it’s as sensible as anything else. Then the voice was encouraging bumping, crashing, and general collisionry, but no headons.
Good luck
the voice said. If those were the rules, we’d be all right; we’d been operating under the same principles for days.

Eldon nosed the car up to the track, and the thunder of the stock cars became specific. In the infield we could see Nicky and Lila sitting on top of his Volkswagen bus in deck chairs. They were enjoying beverages from a thermos. Also, we could see seven squad cars representing the various law enforcement agencies we’d written to.

“They must have received your cards,” Eldon said. “Now just go over and begin a rational explanation.”

I scanned the scene. It seemed so right and so wrong. I could sense the process of lawyering beginning again, and I didn’t want that. I wanted to punch and throttle a few more old friends and lock them in campers.

“I don’t know,” I said to Eldon. “Why don’t you go across and do the rational things?”

Behind us there was a rush and a scream, and we turned to see Wayne Gunn lunge for me with an axe in his hand. Eldon moved out, and Gunn swung, imbedding the weapon in the trunk instead of my head. We dragged him ten feet before he let go, and then Malcolm was helping him up.

“What is this, serious?” Eldon yelled as he swerved onto the track and drove a quarter-mile up to where the other cars were backed, ready to start. “Are they going to kill us?” The axe stuck straight up like our scared tail.