L.H. Thompson, Manchester Boutique

Thursday, October 1, 2009

“I hear the bottle broke us down.”

Part Two
It was at dawn on the third day that we finally crossed the Indiana state line.  We had suffered multiple hindrances on our all-American trek to the sordid and depraved heart of the PEBA.  In addition to the initial, unforeseeable accident that left my car a hulking and shattered mess, more human factors had slowed our progress.

Morris was by now a complete and total basket case.  I had miscalculated, spiking his water bottles with far too much Xanax, and I had employed my entire stash after only 24 hours on the road.  Morris’s eyes were bloodshot, his hands twitching, and his entire body was vibrating.  By the time we hit Fort Wayne he was howling, “Hester!  Hester!!!  What are you now, my sweet boy?!”  Morris hadn’t slept since we left nearly 60 hours earlier.  At night he paced around the hotel room, periodically screaming at imaginary insects that crawled out from under the carpet and sent him into convulsions.  It was at this moment, as we crossed the Fort Wayne city line, that I decided that I must intervene.  After all, we still had a ½ trunk full of Maker’s Mark.

Complicating Morris’s travails was the insufferably cautious driving of our unexpected travel companion, Vicente León .  Having saved us from an undoubtedly terrible fate on the side of the road, León was now subjecting us to an even more terrible reality.  He refused to edge his Caddy over 40 MPH and, when occasionally pressed on this, responded in incomprehensible tones.  The following exchange was typical:

“Jesus, León!  It will be September before we make it to Aurora!  Put your foot on the gas and put the hammer down!” I exclaimed.

“Hester, Hester, Hester!!!” Morris gurgled.

“Pipe down, Morris, I’m trying to talk some sense into ‘Wonder’.”

“Hey, why are you calling me that?  Anyway, like I told you before, this baby here is a sweet 1969 Caddy Deluxe.  We take care of her and she takes care of us.  Besides, we’ve got the top down.  Ah, the nature!  The serenity!  Can you feel it?  Ah, yes, yes, yes.  This is just as the crystals told me it would be.  Everything is proceeding perfectly.”

I was trapped on the road with two certifiable lunatics: one so full of Blue to be completely disengaged with reality, the other a true Wonder of nature who was befuddled by blades of grass.  Jesus!  Stuck on the road with Blue and Wonder while glory awaited in Aurora!  What had I done to get stuck with this lot, in this backwater of America!?

As Morris ranted, I spiked his water with scotch-whiskey and sighed deeply.  Morris, with the right combination of intoxicants, was salvageable.  But León was a lost cause.  
And then suddenly I understood.  If this journey was to be redeemed, if we were to somehow make it to Aurora in time for the All-Star Game, there was only one thing to do.  It would take total commitment, an unhesitating and unwavering fidelity to the task at hand.  Yes, to save ourselves we would have to journey even deeper into the wilds of America!

And so it came to pass that, at this very moment, the ghost of Martin Patterson, disembodied and menacingly self-satisfied, hovered over the Caddy and pointed the way down.