The Ferrari in the Bedroom (3 page)

I’m a lonesome, lonesome Yellow Cab
Rider a-travelin’ on the old man’s
Diners’ Club card.

One thing I’ve noticed about jet flying is that once you’re at cross-country altitude, you rarely feel the slightest bump of a transient air pocket or rough crosswind. At 600 miles per hour plus, you just hang there, suspended. And it is easy to lose all sense of time, space, and reality. The old DC-3s and 4s and even the 6s bumped and banged along, and you knew damn well that something was out there battering at that fuselage, trying to get in. I guess the place to have a fantasy, if you don’t want Reality to come creeping in on gnarled vulture claws, is in a jet, just hanging there.

I felt vaguely drunk. Every junkie and pothead I’ve ever known, as well as drinkers of all variety, somehow always use the word “high.” By God, we really
were
high! Half a snootful at 37,500 feet is
high,
baby! Just look out of the misty, ovoid window and there it is, big, fat, and luscious—that fat old earth. I knew one guy who said every time he smoked a joint or two he felt as though he were slowly volplaning around, doing an easy Immelmann, looking down at everybody. He could see it
all.
Of course, the truth is he was five feet six and a very nervous cat. In real life he didn’t look down at much, except maybe a gopher or two, and it all scared him. Maybe that’s part of the key, too. I don’t know.

The hostess began serving brandies and liqueurs. Our little First Class section was now a tightly knit, jet-propelled hootenanny. Bagged to the gills and feeling the rich, heady hot blood of Social Protest coursing through our veins. Solidarity! Love! Ah, it was good to be alive. And not only alive, but a vibrant, sensitive, Aware person who knew where injustice and human misery were. And we knew what to do about it.
Sing
about it.

I could no longer fight back the urge to join in with my fellow men. Yes, we had been through hell together. Together we had seen it.

A thin, pale young man stood in the aisle. His crystal-clear boy soprano quivering with exultation, he led us on to further glories. True, he reminded me a little of Jane Fonda, who never was exactly my type. His little-boy bangs carelessly brushed down over his forehead, his clearly symbolic denim-blue workshirt open, nay,
ripped
open, à la fist-fightin’ Millhand, he was the very image of a Master Sufferer Singer of our time. In the overheated air of our First Class cabin you could almost see his head starkly outlined in a grainy black and white photograph—towering above the rubble of an American street—a perfect Album Cover head. One of the New Breed—the New Breed of fiction artists edging out the old crowd who had used writing as a medium to create fictional characters in novels and plays and short stories, characters that were clearly recognized as make-believe.

The New Breed has gone one important step farther. They use their own lives as a medium for fiction and their own persons as fictional characters. The New Breed can imagine himself to be anything, and believe it—Cowhand, Lumberjack, Negro, Itinerant Fruit-Picker, Bullfighter—any romantic figure that fits his fancy. So, at 19 or 20, a man can have lived a full, rich, dangerous life and feel that he is a worn-out, misery-scarred pilgrim. And what’s more, his followers believe him, because they work in the same medium.

Denim Shirt’s china-blue eyes burned with the feverish light of the Creative Artist, believing himself to be a rough-hewn hunk who had traveled many roads, “rode freight trains for kicks and got beat up for laughs, cut grass for quarters and sang for dimes,” and now he was singing out all the pain of all those old wounds, a spent, scarred Singer for Truth who had been there and known it all. At 22.

If I Had a Hammer

Sang the pale, wispy lad.

Up near the forward bulkhead two shaggy-browed 45-year-old tractor salesmen with the obvious tribal markings of retired paratroopers raised their snouts from the champagne trough. The port-side ex-sergeant glared backward down the aisle.

“For God’s sake, sonny, will you keep it down?” With which the old battler went back to his jug.

For a brief moment the plane became very aggressive. A classical—if you will excuse the expression—pregnant moment.

And then, bravely, as he had always done, Young Fonda sang on….

I looked at the bulging back of Old Sarge, and I wondered how many roads
that
old son of a gun had walked down. From Bizerte to Remagen, up the Po Valley and back; 7,000 miles, from Kiska to Iwo. And still on the Goddamn road.

Beat up for laughs! The grizzled specimen next to Old Sarge had the chewed ears of a guy who had fist-fought his way through every Off Limits bar from Camp Kilmer to the Kit Kat Klub on the Potzdamer Platz, and all for laughs.

The dark chick glowered up the cabin at the back of Old Sarge’s head. He and his buddy were boffing it up. She glanced meltingly at young Denim Shirt, her blue and white “Get Out of Vietnam” button gleaming like an angry shield above her tiny black-T-shirted bosom.

Her glance spoke volumes: “Those clods! What do they know of Suffering, of fighting for Good, for Ideals? What do they know of the hard, flinty back alleys of Life, of Injustice? Only Youth
understands
and knows. Do not be afraid. I, an angry Girl-Type Lonesome Traveler, will protect you.”

The lissome lad, taking heart, began again with renewed spirit and passion.

She was right. What
did
Old Sarge know about true Suffering? His swarthy, grizzled neck bent defiantly forward, back to the trough, that neck which still bore a permanent mahogany stain of 10,000 suns, the Libyan Desert, Tinian, the Solomons, Burma Road, Corregidor…

Chewed Ear glanced over his hunched shoulder for a brief instant at the button-wearer, the leer that had impaled broad-beamed, ripe-bosomed females from Dakar to Adelaide, a glance primeval and unmistakable. She flushed. She obviously was not used to heavy artillery.

Blowin’ in the Wind

The black-T-shirted White Dove fluttered, confused, in the sand for a few wing beats and then scurried out of range.

The undergrad hootenanny swung into the chorus. Someone had produced a Kentucky mandolin, jangling high above the passionate Ovaltine voices…. The cabin was filled with the joyous sound. Old Sarge, after the last note died echoing in the soft light-blue carpeting, turned suddenly. “Hey kid, do any of you guys know ‘Dirty Gertie from Bizerte’?”

He laughed obscenely, not realizing he was disrupting a Religious service. The congregation plunked, embarrassed.

“How ’bout ‘Lili Marlene’?” Without any warning, Chewed Ear tuned up—
a cappella.

I’ve been workin’ on the railroad,
all the Goddamned day…

He sang in the cracked voice that had sung itself out over 9,000 miles of Canadian-Pacific track, laying every spike in the frozen tundra personally.

I’ve been workin’ on the railroad,
just to pass the time away…

he bellowed.

Blue Jeans in the seat behind me, in a put-down stage whisper to O.S.U. Bag:

“For God sake, ‘I’ve Been Working on the Railroad’! This old guy wouldn’t know a Work Song if he heard it.”

The apple-cheeked youth, his fingers calloused by countless hours of guitar-pick-clutching, slumped knowingly against the cushions of his seat.

Can’t you hear those whistles blowin’…

The whiskey-cracked calliope, honed and sharpened against the cold winds blowing over countless flatbed coal cars and short-coupled reefers, ground to a stop.

    
FASTEN YOUR SEAT BELTS. NO SMOKING PLEASE.
The soft yellow warning broke up the action.

“This is the Captain speaking. We are making our final approach to O’Hare Airport. We should be on the ground in three minutes. The ground temperature in Chicago—fifty-seven degrees. There is a slight crosswind. I hope you’ve enjoyed your trip. We hope to see you soon. Please fasten your seat belts.”

Our great silver arrow knifed down through the thick underlayer of cloud and smoke. Red-roofed houses and lines of crawling blue Fords rose up toward us. The great flaps creaked and clanked into position. The bird paused for a brief instant, and we touched the runway.

“This is your stewardess. It has been a pleasure to have you aboard. Please keep your seat belts fastened until we
come to a full stop. We hope you have had a pleasant trip, and hope to see you again soon.”

The jet stopped rolling, and outside my porthole I could see the Chicago end of the Great Tube being inserted into our bird. Behind me, the angry snap of a guitar case clasp. We moved up the aisle. From somewhere ahead, a piping adolescent voice:

“Hey Freddie, I’ll see ya next weekend at the big hoot in Ann Arbor. Dylan’s gonna make the scene. Maybe Baez!”

Old Sarge, hat jammed down over his ears, made one last verbal swipe at the stewardess who stood by the exit as we filed out. She smiled blandly.

“I hope you enjoyed your trip, sir.”

Our little band of Lonesome Travelers toiled up the chute toward the City of the Broad Shoulders, Meat Packer to the World. The party was over.

We sat in the warm afterglow of the Christmas celebration. My friend Clarence, an incurable romantic, and I quietly sipped a final glass of port. The family had long since gone to bed, leaving in their wake a billowing cloud of torn tissue paper, mangled ribbon rosettes and crushed boxes. The tree cast a mellow glow of Christmas cheer over the mound of presents, opened and admired earlier by the gang.

It had been, at least for me, one of the better Christmases—giftwise, that is. My usual lot of booty runs heavily to drab socks, glaringly unusable ties and bedroom slippers that pinch the insteps. Lately I’ve begun to feel that Christmas is for the other people. But this year everything was changed. As Clarence refilled his glass from the sideboard, I covetously toyed with the film advance lever of my magnificent new Instamatic Reflex. The Christmas tree bulbs reflected on the glowing surface of the 1.9 Xenon lens, making a tiny, multi-jeweled crown in the polished glass. I thoughtfully peered through the viewfinder, focusing a sharp image on the ground glass of a Christmas tree ornament that
resembled a drunken Donald Duck. The family had really hit the jackpot with me this year. They had gotten me the Christmas present to end all Christmas presents, as far as I was concerned. I felt expansive and complete. My cup, while not totally runneth over, at least was decently well-filled.

“That is the most beautiful camera I’ve ever seen,” Clarence said, raising his glass in a slight toast to the Instamatic. I leaned back comfortably in my easy chair.

“Well,” I answered, “yes, it is a magnificent camera, Clarence. Certainly that is true. But I must say it is not the most beautiful camera I have ever seen. The best, for my purposes perhaps, but not the most beautiful.”

Clarence carefully lowered his glass to the coffee table and, sensing something in my voice, quietly asked:

“What do you mean?”

“Old chum,” I continued, “I’ve known you a long time. In fact, we’ve known each other since childhood.” I sipped my wine thoughtfully.

“Yeess…” Clarence replied, a question in his voice.

“Clarence, do you think I’m an evil person?”

“Why, no!” He laughed at the thought of it.

“You are wrong, Clarence. I once pulled a job that I’ve never forgotten, and, in fact, that has kept me awake many a night over the years. And I got away with it.”

I lit a cigar; blew a large smoke ring toward a rotund stuffed panda.

“What’s all this got to do with the camera?” Clarence persisted.

“Okay, my friend. You are about to hear a confession. I have never told anyone about this before, and I trust I have your fullest confidence.”

Clarence leaned forward with great interest: “Yes, of course! Go on. I’ll tell no one.”