Information (tilde.town/~mozz/index) | |
All You Love Will Be Carried Away | |
By Steven King | |
(part 4 of 7) | |
"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. | |
All You Love Will Be Carried Away (Part 5 of 7) | |
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