"Breathing," he said, and smiled. He picked his cigarette
out of the ashtray, smoked, returned it to the groove, and
thumbed back through the book again. The entries recalled
thousands of truck stops and roadside chicken shacks and
highway rest areas the way certain songs on the radio can
bring back specific memories of a place, a time, the person
you were with, what you were drinking, what you were
thinking.
"Here I sit, brokenhearted, tried to shit but only farted."
Everyone knew that one, but here was an interesting
variation from Double D Steaks in Hooker, Oklahoma: "Here I
sit, I'm at a loss, trying to shit out taco sauce. I know
I'm going to drop a load, only hope I don't explode," And
from Casey, Iowa, where SR 25 crossed 1_80: "My mother made
me a whore." To which someone had added in very different
penmanship: "If I supply the yarn will she make me one?"
He had started collecting when he was selling the UPCs,
noting various bits of graffiti in the Spiral notebook
without at first knowing why he was doing it. They were
just amusing, or disconcerting, or both at the same
time. Yet little by little he had become fascinated with
these messages from the interstate, where the only other
communications seemed to be dipped headlights when you
passed in the rain, or maybe somebody in a bad mood flipping
you the bird when you went by in the passing lane pulling a
rooster_tail of snow behind you. He came gradually to
see__or perhaps only to hope-_that something was going on
here. The e. e. cummings lilt of "Poopie doopie you so
loopy," for instance, or the inarticulate rage of "1380 West
Avenue kill my mother TAKE HER JEWELS."
Or take this oldie: "Here I sit, cheeks a-flexin', giving
birth to another Texan." The metre, when you considered it,
was odd. Not iambs but some odd triplet formula with the
stress on the third: "Here I sit, cheeks a_flexin', giving
birth to another Texan." O. K., it broke down a little at
the end, but that somehow added to its memorability, gave it
that final mnemonic twist of the tail. He had thought on
many occasions that he could go back to school, take some
courses, get all that feet_and_metre stuff down pat. Know
what he was talking about instead of running on a tightrope
of intuition. All he really remembered clearly from school
was iambic pentameter: "To be or not to be, that is the
question." He had seen that in a men's room on 1_70,
actually, to which someone had added, "The real question is
who your father was, dipstick."
These triplets, now. What were they called? Was that
trochaic? He didn't know. The fact that he could find out no
longer seemed important, but he could find out, yes. It was
something people taught; it was no big secret.
Or take this variation, which Alfie had also seen all over
the country: "Here I sit, on the pooper, giving birth to a
Maine state trooper." It was always Maine, no matter where
you were it was always Maine State Trooper, and why? Because
no other state would scan. Maine was the only one of the
fifty whose name consisted of a single syllable. Yet again,
it was in triplets: "Here I sit, on the pooper."
He had thought of writing a book. Just a little one. The
first title to occur to him had been "Don't Look up Here,
You're Pissing on Your Shoes," but you couldn't call a book
that. Not and reasonably hope someone would put it out
for sale in a store, anyway. And, besides, that was
light. Frothy. He had become convinced over the years that
something was going on here, and it wasn't frothy. The title
he had finally decided on was an adaptation of something
he'd seen in a rest_area toilet stall outside Fort Scott,
Kansas, on Highway 54. "I Killed Ted Bundy: The Secret
Transit Code of America's Highways." By Alfred Zimmer. That
sounded mysterious and ominous, almost scholarly. But he
hadn't done it. And although he had seen "If I supply the
yarn, will she make me one" added to "My mother made me a
whore" all over the country, he had never expounded (at
least in writing) on the startling lack of sympathy, the
"just deal with it" sensibility of the response. Or what
about "Mammon is the King of New Jersey"? How did one
explain why New Jersey made it funny and the name of some
other state probably wouldn't? Even to try seemed almost
arrogant. He was just a little man, after all, with a little
man's job. He sold things. A line of frozen dinners,
currently.
And now, of course ... now ...
Alfie took another deep drag on his cigarette, mashed it
out, and called home. He didn't expect to get Maura and
didn't. It was his own recorded voice that answered him,
ending with the number of his cell phone. A lot of good that
would do; the cell phone was in the trunk of the Chevrolet,
broken. He had never had good luck with gadgets.
