Interstate (34 page)

“Daddy,” Margo says and I say “What?—whew! you scared me, I was so into—involved with my own thoughts—that I…anyway, saved by the girl,” and she says “What's that?” and I say “Bell, as in prizefight, boxing, saved by it, the timer's bell, like a boxer who was almost going to be counted out—referee over him; you know, or maybe you don't,” and I hold the wheel with my left hand while the right one with the forefinger out wags like a referee's when he's calling off the seconds a boxer's been knocked down, “‘One…two…three…' But the bell ended the round, meaning the girl did, you, ended my confused thinking, before the boxer on the ground was counted out of the fight at ten,” and she says “I don't—” and I say “Ten seconds, I mean; that's how long they give the knocked-down boxer to get up if the round's still going on—they're three minutes each,” and she says “I don't know boxing, not the smaller things in it, and I don't know what the bell means to the girl,” and I say “Good, you don't have to, it's a stupid savage sport—you know, part of our culture so who am I to say and so on. With millions of fiends—
fans
—loving it…that wasn't a joke by the way, I actually said ‘fiends' for ‘fans' by mistake. And some of the boxers make fortunes from it, when they might earn peanuts for their lives otherwise and maybe become street hoods. But like bullfighting in Spain and southern France or wherever they still kill the bull at the end of the fight, Portugal, or maybe it's the reverse—no, never in France—it's antiquated, out of date, too brutal and too much like gladiators killing off each other in coliseums; that was two thousand years ago. Animals—humans, bulls, fighting cocks, anything—tarantulas—shouldn't be killed for money or sport,” and Margo says “Even the meat we eat? For we have to pay for it,” and I say “Hamburgers and grilled tuna steaks are another thing. I'm talking of…anyway, I forgot I was driving with you kids before, I was so engrossed in my own thoughts. But what were you going to ask me when I said
whew
!” and she says “I forgot too, and this isn't it, what were you thinking that made you so scared then?” and I say “Those guys, their looks while they did it, and especially doing it while there were you kids in the car, the freaking, well, freaking bastards—it's not such a bad word for what they did and I save it for rats like that,” and she says “Why did they, do you think?” and I say “Who knows? Bad bringing up, I'll tell you, or maybe they had a great one but the neighborhood toughs or something wherever they lived had a bigger influence on them than their parents did when they were teens or even younger. In other words—why do I always say ‘in other words,' or so often? Because I can't say anything straight or unqualified it seems, meaning, well, heck with what it means, I'd just be doing it some more—or clear first time out. Meaning I can't say it, first time out, clearly either. But in other words, their parents lost their influence and these guys, if they were once smart, got dumb because for years being dumb or acting it has been the fashion, you know,” and she says “How?” and I say “Talking it, for instance—‘Hey man, hey dude, yo, I dunno, I ain't like going, gonna dis this muddy rudder,' and so on. And looking and walking it too—the haircuts that make them look moronic, initials or coded messages scissored into their scalps, or maybe with razors, but some way—what barbershops do they go to? And the sides or just one side completely shaved as if they had brain surgery there while the rest of the mop's floppy and wild, not to mention those bleached and greased spikes that run down the middle of their heads like porcupine quills or warpath Indians. And the slouch, the clothes, caps on backwards like baseball catchers or tough Hell's Kitchen gang members—that's when I was a boy, kids with switchblades, before your time, but just the thought of them ganging up on me used to scare me more than anything,” and Margo says “I wear a cap that way sometimes,” and I say “Yeah, but you're a little girl, I'm talking about grownups or semiadults. And walking with their pants intentionally belted around their buttocks as if they're about to fall off, or even below the crotch area, I don't know how they stay on, but cuffs dragging up crud and such from the street. And I'm just referring to the guys and not even going into the stick-through studs they got up and down both lobes and through their noses and one woman, I even saw, through her lip and another with a safety pin through her belly-button nub—you know, the piece that—” and she says “Other than for the lip and thing-y, what's so wrong with it? It doesn't hurt you if they have it and if you don't like what you see, turn away but don't say how much you hate it,” and I say “One earring or stud per ear should be enough, I'd think; more than that's mutilating the body, and safety pins should be for what they were invented for—fastening things safely and not stylishly and painfully. And please, if you ever think to do this, even with your own money, don't come home with a big gold band clamped through your ear like a freshly killed kosher chicken has through its wing—you wouldn't know of that because I always unclamp the band before I cook the chicken, but young people are ravaging their ears with similar things. And okay, I'm an old fuddy-duddy I suppose and a bit of a crank, and I'll even grant you the cruddy cuffs and stuff—they're funny and actually make me laugh when I see pants worn that way—but buying shirts and pants with holes and rips manufactured into them down to the frayed threads and at probably twice the price these clothes would cost if they were bought whole?” and she says “Dad, nobody wears them anymore except in old TV shows like from two to three years ago. It was a style, like all those things you hate are styles. Kids like styles and looking right. Older people do too but different kinds,” and I say “But the boots,” and she says “The boots?” and I think “Nah, I've said enough,” but I say “The ludicrous boots. Ones that cost seventy, eighty, a hundred bucks for kids, and what kind?—authentic work boots when they're not working, they're schooling or fooling around. I bet they even use them for dances and gyms. Even if they work at McDonald's, these boots are for lumberjacks or people who climb telephone poles to the top to fix downed lines—they're conducted or something to prevent electric shocks; they're permanently oiled to keep out woods-like mud and slush and maybe something else is done to them to ward off snake bites,” and she says “I like work boots and I want to get a pair, and most of them are only copies of the real,” and Julie says “I like them too, hightops,” and Margo says “They aren't boots,” and I say “Okay, let's close it, I'm getting nowhere in my argument with you—discussion. But I—this is all I was saying before, that those guys who gawked eerily into our car at us and with theirs got too close reminded me in a way of overage teenagers, even if they were in their twenties—well, that's my point, and the driver maybe thirty-plus. But they had that look of guys who never and will never grow up, which I hope what we're discussing here will help you to never have or not as long or much. It's such a repugnant puss though I realize as kids growing up you gotta try all kinds before the more fitting decent one sticks—all wiseguy and sly smile and insecure oafish to brainless grimace and pout. And which probably is the danger that comes from your parents, if they're good sensible people, losing their influence on you,” and she says “Why, what were they wearing?” and I say “Wearing? You barely took in a word I said and after all my sputtering muddled effort,” and she says “Yes I did, why?” and I say “Because you could only say ‘What were they wearing?' Oh boy do people try to fool you when they're caught or might look bad, not that you did or weren't entitled, sweetie—it was me remissing,” and she says “You said clothes has a lot to do with it, so I'm asking what,” and I say “That's right, you're right. A necklace, the driver; an ear stud, the other,” and she says “You saw that?” and I say “Yeah, the necklace, as if it had long teeth or white bones from a shark on it, but definitely very primitive. And the window guy not just the stud but I think another one pierced through his nostril like the ones I spoke of before,” and she says “You're making it up,” and Julie says “I didn't see it, I had my eyes closed, but I wish I had,” and I say “I only think I saw the nose ring but the ear thing I definitely did and maybe two,” and Margo says “If he had them I would've seen it, I was looking more than you—I was watching you too and didn't have to drive. But what else in clothes and things, this is getting interesting,” and I say “Just that, perhaps the ear guy a tie, the driver a hat, and both with those arrogant contemptuous looks, but the ear guy the worst,” and she says “‘Contemptuous'?” and I say “Snotty, sniffy, snooty in a cruel way—so, ‘Why?' I was asking myself then, and not just what was making them act like that but everything years before and all around us today that went into it, for that was what you wanted to know, right?—what thoughts I had before you made me jump?” and she says nothing and I say “You nodding or shaking your head or just thinking?” and she says “I didn't see any tie or hat, but yes, what?” and I say “Well, if that's an invite for me to go on, and I'm almost sure the driver wore a hat, then they, these men, represented something to me—a toughness today, et cetera, that didn't exist so pervasively—all around, so much—and also so maniacally, murderously, prevalently—all around again and as much—as years ago when I was a boy—” and Julie says “Oh-oh, Margo, when Daddy was a boy again,” and I say “Yes, sure, a boy and then a teen and so on, same things you'll be except for the boy, but cutting it off, meaning it got worse, when I got to around thirty. Not that I'm saying I didn't get into fights when I was a kid. I did, as my neighborhood, and especially the ones around it, and later my high school, could be rough and boys acted that way then. At a party or right after school, grade or high. Or they suddenly appeared on your street in a big group and got after you—picked fights, we called it—and over nothing. To show they were tough. For dopey or psychological reasons I don't want to go into—having to do with their minds and the way they were raised—and you protected yourself or set a time and place, usually in the park on the grass so you didn't crack your skull on the pavement, and fought them one to one, your friends and theirs standing in a ring around you so nobody cheated in the fight and the winner didn't take it too far. So, all up and up but in a way terrifying because you could still get your wind knocked out and also lose the fight too easily. Though never with a gun, never a knife, not even a rock or club; at the most a hanky tied around your knuckles if you had one. But mostly you just fought in self-defense to stop them from busting your nose or for them to think you're an easy guy to be picked on a second time,” and one of them says “How do you mean the nose?” and I say “Who said that?” and Julie says “Julie,” and I say “I'm sorry, darling, sometimes you both sound alike. Well, you're sisters. But you were saying I wasn't clear then, right? And I wasn't when I should be, another thing I was mulling over when Margo suddenly scared me, how I should be able to think in my mind more—well of course thinking is in my mind, but—” and Julie says “No, I was saying how can they bust your nose? With a hammer?” and I say “Their fists. Imag ine,” and I raise my right hand into a fist and jerk it forward several times. “Pow, nose splattered. Half my friends had them, splattered schnozzolas, from that and football and which they were proud of, the fools, showing how stupid we were then too. I wasn't, with that, because I didn't bust mine. If I had I would've thought ‘Oh dear, my looks, ruined, I won't be a Greek god to girls anymore,' only kidding, but probably so, while they thought with their broken noses they would because it gave them a rough he-mannish look. But some boys, not any I knew—oh, I knew of them but didn't want to know them because these guns meant bullets in the foot and gang wars—actually only one bullet since it only shot one, and—” and Margo says “What guns? You said before no guns. You're confusing us again, Daddy,” and I say “Boys had—some did—not any I palled around with—zip guns then, handmade ones that were made from toy guns or a pipe and a rubberband, if you can believe it, that got the bullet off, and of course the toy gun converted into a zip. They made them then because I suppose you couldn't buy the real ones—they weren't around as much and probably were too expensive and maybe boys were still a little frightened of the real thing and still into—involved in constructing and fashioning things on their own then, bad as what they constructed was—we all had to take two years of shop in seventh and eighth grades while the girls took home economics. But half the time these zip guns backfired in your face when you shot them, or maybe that's only what the police and older people told us to keep them out of our hands. Some other boys though, again not ones I wanted to know, and these to me were scarier than the zip guns, for you at least knew there was a chance the gun would misfire or the shooter of it would get it in his foot or face, while the switchblade never missed. In other words, there was always some part of you it hit. Well, these other kids carried switchblade knives—I didn't mention this before?” and I listen but don't hear anything from them so I go on. “But I wouldn't touch one, because they also reminded me of terror, murder, gang fights with knives and zips and bicycle chains and guys pinning you to the ground and kicking your teeth in, stuff I could never do, or do only if I was attacked and my life depended on it and I saw one of these weapons on the ground, but I certainly wouldn't do anything to some guy I'd already subdued. I also didn't like—‘subdued'; to, you know, win over, beat by force—didn't like these knives because they could zip open on your finger, so maybe they should have been called zip knives, for that's how they opened, zip!—but cutting it. But I guess the ‘switch' in the word—never thought of this before, not that it's important—it isn't—is the thing that springs it open. You flicked a little switch on the knife's handle near where the blade and handle joined, if I remember right,” and I hold up my right hand as if there's a closed switchblade knife in it and pretend to flick it open as if I remember where, thumb and forefinger rubbing—“and the blade sprung out. Anyway, it did that, cut your finger, or could, and could also spring open in your pocket by mistake and cut your thigh or pants, and then you're in a jam, at least with the pants, with your mom. Because you got to know, the art of making these knives couldn't have been so perfect, as the people who wanted them—punks, hoods—wouldn't know the difference or really didn't care; they just wanted a scary-looking weapon with a long blade that could fold back into the handle and stay hidden there, and if it stopped working right they'd just toss it away and buy another one. I remember as a kid I used to see a whole bunch of them sticking blade-point-down in wood, or maybe it was a sort of solid foam, but in store windows in Times Square and other places in New York, and maybe they're still there. Also that I used to think when I looked at