The Damned Highway (15 page)

“I'd hoped you wouldn't notice,” he mutters.

“Not notice! How could I not notice, Smitty? You're turning into a Cannock. What sparked the change? Was it the fungi I gave you? Because if so, then I am sincerely sorry.” And I was, and I meant it.

“No,” he says. “It's not the shrooms.”

It occurs to me that I probably shouldn't kill Smitty after all. I'm far too on edge to be trusted sufficiently enough to find where I put my rental car and file the story before the deadline without his big dumb hands to lead me. So I instruct him to take me to the car, and he complies. We don't say anything else. My head still hurts from running into the fire door, and I am in no mood for small talk, or any other kind of talk, either. But when we get to my car and to my stuff, Smitty has a surprise for me. I collect my kit bag and turn to say goodbye and there is a bright orange snub-nosed flare gun, pointed right at me.

“I'm sorry,” Smitty says, and by his tone, I can tell that he genuinely is. “But I can't let you leave.”

“What happens if I do, eh? What happens if I just get in this car and drive off and type up my story from a motel sixty miles down the road? I can do that, you know! I have an expense account.”

“Get back in,” Smitty says, “or I'll light you up like a goddamned gook.”

“Sure!” I smile wide, so he can see all my teeth. Damn, my Mojo Wire feels heavy, and Smitty is so far away. I could chuck it at him, but he'd surely get off a shot with that flare gun first. It probably wouldn't kill me, but it could certainly break my ribs, and I'd be a blackened and blinded lipless freak scrabbling around the shoulder of Arkham's main drag till someone in a Chevrolet took me out like an aging squirrel.

“Innsmouth. Where I'm from.”

For the second time in an hour, Smitty leaves me speechless.

“Innsmouth . . .” I shake my head. “But your accent. You sounded like a hillbilly, and then like a . . . but anyway, never like—”

“I worked hard to lose it. There was a time when I didn't want people to know where I was from. I guess you could say I got above my raising. But that's where we're going now, Lono. I've got to go back, and I'm bringing you with me. I'm sorry. You've got to meet my people. Let me tell you about me and Innsmouth on the way. Fair enough?”

I shrug and smile, because there is nothing else I can do. Smitty smiles back at me, a wide-lipped, fat-cheeked gesture. We drive on.

An Oral History of North Shore Rites of Passage . . . Smitty's Homecoming . . . The Ugly Truth about Lawyers . . . Round, Round, Get Around, Dagon Gets Around . . . J. Edgar Hoover Meets the Fish-People . . . Oscar: From the Ashes . . . The Brown Buffalo Meets Mother Hydra . . . The Banshee Screams for Nixon Meat . . . The Great and Terrible Plan . . .

——

The cold January wind buffets the cab as dusk turns to darkness, and for a brief moment, I'm convinced Smitty and I are still in the Midwest, heading for the airport. But no, that's the fungi talking. We're here in the now, rocketing toward Innsmouth while Arkham fades in the rear-view mirror like a bad dream. I'm almost out of tapes. I make a mental note to pick up more. Then I set my tape recorder on the dashboard and let Smitty speak. He's happy to tell me his story.
People want to talk
; never forget that. Remembering that little nugget of wisdom, and carrying a weapon with you at all times, will pretty much get you through anything life throws your way.

“Go ahead,” I say, lighting a cigarette.

What he says is shocking:

——

I woke up one morning. I ate a banana and some toast. I like jam on my toast. No butter. I turned on the TV and watched the news from Boston. It was going to be cloudy. A store was robbed. The sanitation department was on strike. Someone had a book out about carbohydrates. There was a lot of traffic. I felt good to be home, away from all the commuters and the highways. I almost never leave town. I ate another banana and then a peanut-butter sandwich because I was still hungry. I stopped being hungry. The mail came early because I live near the post office. It was all junk mail and coupons. Sometimes, I use coupons. Nothing good today though. I go to Ipswich to shop. I take the bus. It comes only six times all morning and afternoon.

Sometimes, people come here and say that the waterfront smells. I don't smell the waterfront. I never smell the waterfront.

I felt cold. The bus is by the waterfront. The waterfront isn't very busy anymore. Just some guys fishing. Lobster traps stacked high. A few birds. A couple of years ago, one dock crumbled into the bay after a big storm. Sometimes, people come here and say that the waterfront smells. I don't smell the waterfront. I never smell the waterfront. When you've lived here a long time, you can't smell what things smell like to outsiders. It's the same everywhere. I went to Salem State College for a semester and then dropped out. I'd go to Nam. It would be okay. I had a girl friend there, in Salem. Not a girlfriend, but a girl friend. She had three black cats, sort of as a joke. Her apartment smelled like cats. She said she couldn't smell the cats. Innsmouth is like this. The bus smells sometimes.

Today, the bus smells like a bus. I go to Ipswich. I buy some fruit. I buy some pork chops. The pork chops are on sale because they're about to go bad. They have fish for sale too in Ipswich, but nobody from my town needs to buy fish because we live on the water. Sometimes, I buy fish right off the boat. Sometimes, I go fishing myself, with a reel. Sometimes, I fish with a net. Sometimes, I take a boat with Marsh and we go out to the reef. I like to row the boat, but I get tired. Marsh rows better than I do. I buy Pop-Tarts. The kind that are apple currant. I only ever find that kind in Ipswich. I run out of money. Thinking about fishing before makes me decide to go fishing. I like to fish in the evenings anyway. In the morning, too many people try to fish. Some people think this is because the fish bite better in the morning. No, it is really because people who want to fish early want to get there before everyone else. Everyone ends up fishing just as the sun comes up. I'm in bed when the sun comes up. I wait till the morning news to get up. When I go fishing in the evening, I am almost always alone.

I go home and put the grocery bags on the counter. I take the stuff that needs to be refrigerated out of the bags and put it in the Frigidaire. Everything else I leave in the bags on the counter and on the range. I see that I have plenty of room in the Frigidaire for some fish if I catch any. I get my reel and go fishing. I don't use live bait. At the waterfront, I meet Marsh. Marsh says Hello. I say Hello. He says Fancy Meeting You Here. I laugh and say Yeah. We cast.

Marsh uses tiny eels. He talks to one as he puts it on the hook. I look out to sea. I like the white caps. I like to see how long it takes for the Devil's Reef to disappear from sight as the sun sinks down and the water turns wine dark. I read that in college. Wine dark. I brought a banana with me. I start eating it. Marsh says something, but I don't hear him because I think he's talking to the eel on his hook. The last bus comes and the door opens, but nobody steps out. Marsh repeats himself, but I don't answer because I have a lot of banana in my mouth. Then he asks a third time.

How Old Are You?

Twenty-One Now I say.

Would You Like To Join A Secret Society? Marsh asks me. I ask him What Do You Mean, A Secret Society? He says Everyone Around Here Is In It. I say Then How Come I Haven't Heard Of It? Then we both say Because It's A Secret and we both laugh. Then I say Is It Communism? Because I Am Not Into That. In My One Semester Of College, I Learned That Communism Is Perfect Except For Human Nature. Marsh says Oh, You Don't Have To Worry About Human Nature. It's Not Really Communism. I say That Sounds Fine, Then. He says Great. We Should Get Going.

I haven't caught anything. Marsh says he'll give me one of his. He recommends eel for bluefish. We go to the main drag. We go to the Odd Fellows club. Marsh tells me that the secret society is not an Odd Fellows branch. Nobody bothers to take down the sign because everyone is in the secret society. We walk in. The Odd Fellows club smells like brine and salt water. It smells like the waterfront smelled to my old girl friend when she came that one time to visit after I left school. Marsh says Take Off All Your Clothes. Then he takes off all his clothes. He has a belly on him; the rolls look a little like gills on his flanks. I take off all my clothes and leave them in a heap.

We walk down a hall. I hear chanting and burbling. There is a big double door like from a castle in a movie. It opens without Marsh or me touching it. Two people I've seen around town, a man and a woman, both naked, have opened the door. Marsh says Well, Here It Is. The room is huge and full of naked people. I see the mayor. I see my mailman, who is a lady. I see my cousin Freddy, who I don't see much even though we're cousins. There is a big pool in the middle of the room. There's light coming from the water, like there was another sun, a white-wine sun, way down deep. Marsh says In You Go and in I do.

I swim down toward the watery sun. It's awesome. There's a thing down there and she loves me. I never want to leave her. I don't need to breathe down here. Then I hear splashing and see feet and hands bubbling up the water and everyone is with me. Thank You, Thank You, Thank You I think to myself. I'm glad to be from here.

——

It takes me a moment to realize that Smitty is finished. He shifts in the seat. The springs creak beneath him. Then he just stares straight ahead, eyes on the road. I notice a rash on his neck; it looks like scales, almost. Or the world's worst case of razor burn. The knobs on his hands have grown longer. I switch off the tape recorder, stow it in my kit bag, and pull out the Mojo Wire. If Smitty notices, he doesn't say so. I watch the trees roll past in the dark. A sign tells me that we're entering Innsmouth, and my stomach roils. I can smell it already. I wonder if Smitty is taking me to the Odd Fellows club, and if the stink permeates the entire town.

Is anyone from this part of Massachusetts
not
in an Unspeakable Cult? I thought that nothing could be more insane than the Democratic Party primary process, with its even dozen hopefuls, most of them utter slime. Wallace, the raging racist fueled by nothing more than nigger hate and his desire to out-Nixon Nixon himself, was surely the worst. Most of them were nonentities—Indiana's Vance Hartke was surprisingly progressive, but the sort of wall-eyed policy wonk who could never connect with the masses. Especially not these masses. Wilbur Mills was pushed forward as a joke, and Mayor Lindsay lost any chance of escaping New York two years ago, when AFL-CIO hardhats did the cops' work for them and beat the living shit out of student protesters, and right on Wall Street as a favor to corporate masters that would never be repaid. When old Dutch New York money man from the silk-stocking district gets decried as a Red and a homosexual by organized labor, there's no chance. None of the candidates seemed well positioned to win even their own states, much less the presidency. Yes, Professor Madison Haringa and so many of the others I've met on my travels thus far appear to be dedicated to nothing short of a fifty-state victory.

“You're pissed at me, aren't ya, Lono?” Smitty asks, breaking the silence. “I wouldna brought ya here if I had any other choice. Maybe I shoulda told you everythin' from the beginning, but I couldn't. You see that, right?”
Now
I hear traces of Innsmouth cant.

“I'm too busy thinking to be pissed off at you right now, Smitty. I may decide to be angry with you later, but at this moment, I'm just trying to get to the nut of things. I think we need to get back to Miskatonic U. I have a book I want to check out of the library. A rare tome, a folio in human-skin leather that I've heard about in my travels.”

“Yeah, which one?”

“Uh . . .
Unspeakable Cults
?”

“No problem. We got that one at the public library at Innsmouth,” Smitty says, casual. The shrooms didn't add anything to his personality, his visions and whatnot aside. Rather, they
revealed
whatever he had been running from. Smitty was an Innsmouth boy, a six-fingered Cannock deep into what used to be recessive genes, now finding expression through pharmacological magic straight out of
The Tibetan Book of the Dead
. The raw “is-ness,” Leary called it after experimenting with LSD at . . . where . . . Harvard, in Cambridge, Mass, just forty miles away. Smitty is devolving before my eyes. Becoming what he was always meant to be. Forget the prematurely old veteran proud of his service, bitter over his old girl, and worried about the racial-political freight that words like “gook” carry even when used between two white men, even when used while the war still shreds Vietnamese and Americans alike a world away; as Smitty approaches Innsmouth he becomes like a child again, complete with budding extra digits and a new manner of speech. And whatever that rash is on his neck.

“Look,” he points to some vacant lot on which the remains of a clapboard house—not more than half a crumbling wall and elements of a chimney—still stand. “My auntie's house.” Then he points out the lights on the cape, which he insists are fishing boats though it is past nine p.m. on this frigid winter evening. His old school, another decaying building, and the mayor's house, a gutted two-story home in the federal style. Innsmouth looks like a classic Norman Rockwell New England town, if the Watts and Newark rioters decided to hold a Superbowl there, but Smitty only sees the sites of the halcyon days of his childhood. He even drives his truck like a boy pretending to be a man, his hands at three and nine on the wheel, every acceleration and shifted gear an expansive gesture saying,
Look at me, Papa! Aren't I a big boy now?

“So, do you think this public library is still standing? With books on the shelves and shelves on the walls, the way I'm used to back in civilized exurban Colorado?” I ask Smitty, and Smitty nods and says, “Yes, sir,” with an Innsmouthian accent:
Yeaah-suhr
. Being home after so long can do that to a body, and indeed something is happening to Smitty's body. It couldn't have been a coincidence that he was the one to pick me up on that road outside the airport, couldn't have been a coincidence that Haringa was in the area, on my flight, so expansively willing to tell me about secret societies. But then again, that's the secret to secret societies—we know all about the Masons and Bilderbergers and the Skulls and Bones; what we
don't
normally know is what they do behind closed doors. Except that Smitty had just told me what his particular organization did, and sure enough, now we were pulling up to the Odd Fellows hall.

“I think I might want to stay at a hotel,” I say. Smitty's a nice guy who has helped me out, saved my life, and clearly been through a lot in his own years, but the Mojo Wire in my hands sings like a hammer of the gods. I'll brain him if I have to and hit the road in his stolen truck rather than come face to face with a Deep One. I've watched him drive it enough that I think I can fumble my way through the gears. By the time the tires have eaten all of I-85 and I'm down in Alabama to check out the Wallace campaign, I'll have mastered the intricacies of the Mack truck, I'm sure. And the Ku Klux Klan won't be half as frightening in its wall-eyed backwardness as the northern alternatives. At least with the Klan, you know where you stand.

“This's the 'otel,” Smitty says. It's right off the shore, the calm water of the bay lapping the edge of the parking lot.

“And what is it that you had to show me? What's so goddamned important that you had to pull a flare gun on me? More importantly, what's stopping me from going to my room and calling the cops?”

Smitty fiddled around with the flare gun and then stepped out of the truck. “Innsmouth cops or Arkham cops?” he asks. “Y'think either one would help you? Anyway, I'm not going to shoot you, Lono. I only have one flare an' I'm 'bouta use it. Stand back. Ya don't wanna get this on ya.” He holds his arm high and fires off the flare. It streaks up into the inky sky, illuminating the crumbling exterior of the Odd Fellows hall as it does. “You'sa wanna see this,” Smitty says. He's grinning, and the expression is obscene. His lips are more fishlike than human now, and I wonder if he's even aware of it. He walks to the lip of the parking lot, to the edge of the sea, and waits. When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro, and I'm after a big story, but it's despite my better judgment that I stay. That and the fact that running off to hitchhike to freedom is what got me into this goddamn mess in the first place.