Sundays belonged to the Lord in Tulsa. Numerous church bells rang from nearby steeples. Sean pulled the pillow over his head. A knock sounded on the door.
“Don’t say anything,” whispered AK. He liked sleeping late, but free rooms had their price.
The next knock was more forceful.
“You boys awake?” The voice belonged to Mr. Spear.
“Sort of.” Sean sat up in bed.
“It’s almost 8. The service begins soon.” The lanky professor attended church several blocks east of the Arkansas River and pushed open the door. “Are you boys up?”
He entered the room in his Sunday finest with the family Bible was nestled under his arm.
AK pushed his long hair out of his face.
“We’re up now.”
“We can’t have you sleeping away the Lord’s Day. Are you ready for church?” His question was directed at Sean.
“No, sir, I’m sleeping in.” Sean hadn’t been to church in a long time.
“Sleeping in? Our government didn’t put IN GOD WE TRUST on our money as a joke.”
“And I don’t think it’s funny.” He respected other people’s disapproval of his lack of faith.
“Never too late to save your soul. Last year you said you were distantly related to the founder of the Mormons.”
“A family legend.”
“Perhaps, but I would be honored to bring Joseph Smith’s ancestor back to the faith.”
“I know, sir, but I’m sort of set in my ways.”
finds his way back home.” The fifty year-old greeted AK with an outstretched hand.
“I know that you young people claimed that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus, but it’s four years since they broke up. Jesus is God. God never breaks up.”
“I was never into the Beatles. I was more into the Rolling Stones.” This was as close as I could come to telling Vickie’s father that he did not believe in God.
“The Stones were my band too. They played here in 1965. I gave them up for Jesus.”
“That’s quite a sacrifice.” Almost as much as the Jews and Muslims rejecting bacon for Yah-Weh and Allah.
“You can’t always get what you want with the Stones, but you can with Jesus.” Mr. Spear faced AK. “I know you’re a Jew, but my church has sent many missions to your people in hopes of bringing the Chosen People back to the Way of God. Come with us. The Word will save your soul.”
“Thank, you sir, but I’ll sit this morning out.” AK existed a step down from the hierarchy of atheism on the plane of agnosticism and doubt, however AK’s sacrament was marijuana and no preaching could force him to abandon his Search for the Ultimate High of Reefer.
“You boys can’t say that I didn’t try.”
“Try is the first syllable in triumph.” Sean had read that adage from a Salada tea bag.
“My wife, the girls and I will pray for your souls, then come back here with some nice young people for a fried chicken dinner with all the fixings.”
“Your wife’s fried chicken?” Sean swung my feet onto the floor.
“You remember it from last year?”
“Who could forget it?”
“It’s an old family recipe.” Mr. Spears went to the door. “We’ll be back at 11.”
“We’ll be waiting.”
Mr. Spear shut the door and Sean faded back into the pillows.
“That felt like a sermon before a Salvation Army dinner on the Bowery.”
“No one forced you to drink last night.”
“You either.”
“We can sleep for another hour, then we’ll shower, eat Mrs. Spear’s chicken, and we hit the road at 1.”
“That’s late. I hate hitchhiking at night.
“A long ride will take us to Chicago by morning.” Sean had memorized the map of the USA.
“And if not?” AK didn’t like sleeping in the rough.
“We’ll find someplace to crash.”
“Great. Another night on the side of the road.”
“Same as Jack Kerouac.”
“Or a hobo.”
There was another knock on the door.
“C’mon in.”
Vickie entered the room and sat on his bed.
Her younger sister remained by the door. Both of the long-legged blondes were in virginal white dresses. The hemlines hung at mid-calf and their ankles were covered by sheer white sox.
AK stirred under the sheets and Sean pulled the covers over his lap. Vickie and Sean were just friends. Even with Nick on the other side of the world, Vickie was his girl.
“Out of bed.” Her voice expressed an unexpected urgency.
“Out of bed?”
“We have to be at church in ten minutes and you have to be out of the house in five.”
“What about the chicken dinner?” Sean hated hitting the road on an empty stomach.
“My mother cooked the chicken this morning.” Sharlene held up a paper sack. She gave it to AK. “I packed you a doggie bag.”
“What’s the hurry?” Sean pulled on his jeans.
“My father is coming back here with ten Oral Robert football players dedicated to Jesus and they’ll try to strong-arm you into becoming believers.” Vickie packed his canvas bag.
“Sounds like a lynch mob.” AK dressed faster than a Polish Jew fleeing the Nazis and looped his sleeping bag over his shoulder.
“My father has become a little too gung-ho about Jesus.” Vickie apologized for her old man. “My mother is hoping that he’ll find a way back to reason, but that isn’t happening this morning. He’s not a bad man, but he’s worried that you’ll suffer in Hell.”
“He should meet my mother. She’s a true believer of the Old religion.
“Boston’s a long way away, but we hope to see you again. Hurry up and we’ll drive you to the highway.”
Seven minutes later Vickie jammed on the brakes of her Tempest convertible at the entrance to I-44. The sky was a blue eggshell from horizon to horizon with the day promising to be a hot one. Sharlene had filled their canteens with fresh water. Vickie kissed his cheek.
“We had a good time.”
“Us too.”
“Be careful on the road. This state has some funny laws. Like no spitting on the street or taking a bite from someone else’s hamburger.” Vickie was showing off her progress as law enforcement major.
“Or wearing your boots to bed.” Sharlene added from the passenger seat.
“Call us from Boston.” Vickie stamped on the accelerator. The V8 spun its rear tires with a squeal of rubber. The both of them covered their faces to keep from breathing the dust.
“That’s what I call a bum’s rush.” AK stuck out his thumb to a passing pick-up truck. The farmer stared, as if he cheered for the rednecks, who had murdered Captain America in EASY RIDER.
“You want to wait for a football squad of Bible-thumpers?”
“No, those Jesus freaks forget that the Messiah was a Jew a little too easy for my tastes. At least we have fried chicken and water.”
“A miracle.” Sean resisted tearing into the chicken. It would taste even better when he was really hungry.
“A better miracle would be someone giving us a ride out of here.”
“I agree.”
Sean put his long hair in a pony tail with a rubber band and AK followed suit. They slipped on baseball caps. Any motorist not looking too closely might mistake them for college kids instead of longhaired hippies and ten minutes later a Cadillac stopped in the breakdown lane.
Sean jumped in the front seat and AK sat in the back. The crew-cut driver was bound to Justice, Oklahoma, which was about forty minutes up the road.
“I’ll be driving fast. I spent last night in Tulsa with a cousin. We drank beers until dawn. I forgot church. I hate church, but my wife is a believer.”
“As are most people in Oklahoma.”
“Me too, if I’m sober.”
His driving was a classic example of what law enforcement officers called weaving and two seconds later Sean grabbed the wheel to prevent the car from tumbling the highway.
“Sorry about that. I couldn’t find my glasses this morning and I can’t see shit.”
“Damn,” AK muttered from the rear. He wanted to get out of the car. Sean was in the same mind, but north of Tulsa was the middle of emptiness of the Great Plains.
Luckily traffic was light, but the drivers of passing cars slurred out silent swears.
“Damn Methodists think the road was built for them.”
“How you know they’re Methodists?”
“Because the Baptists are already in church.” We were barely going 30 mph.
Sean listened the driver’s rant against the church for almost an hour. When AK and Sean were left at Justice, the New Yorker kicked a stone in the wake of the exhaust and said, “I hate America.”
“You don’t want to say that. It’s a big country. There’s the good and the bad.”
“Here?”
Crops had been harvested early and fields of dirt stretched to each point of the compass. A truck stop lay off the exit.
“Okay, not here, but let’s see if that gas station has food.” Sean cleared my mouth and spit on the ground.
small diner was open for breakfast. AK and Sean ate a full breakfast of bacon and eggs. The station also served as a bus stop. The price of a ticket to Chicago was $20.
“If you want, you could catch a Greyhound home from here. I’ll wait with you till the bus came.”
“And what about you?”
“No, I’ll take my chances on the highway.” Sean was cursed by having read Kerouac’s ON THE ROAD.
“No, I’ll stick it out with you.” AK was a true friend.
They washed up in the bathroom and tramped back to the onramp. The temperature had risen several degrees into the low 90s. The high plains sun bleached the blue from the sky and the only available shade was beneath the underpass. A state trooper backed up the ramp. His cruiser was a Plymouth Grand Fury built for speed.
“Where you boys headed?” The young officer spoke through the open passenger window. He was about their age.
“Back east. We just left our friends in Tulsa. The Spears. Their uncle is with the State Police.”
“I don’t know any Spears, but I don’t want to see you on my highway. Hitchhiking’s against the law in Oklahoma.” His sunglasses were the same style sported by Boss Godfrey in COOL HAND LUKE. “Stay here on the ramp and you don’t get no trouble from me.”
The trooper accelerated down the ramp.
They stood in the sun.
Only three cars passed them in the next hour.
Two of the drivers pointed to the right and exited onto a dirt road a half-mile in the distance. The third gave them the finger. Two hours later a Greyhound bus heaved up to the gas station and AK said, “I’ll buy you a ticket.”
The panel atop the bus said CHICAGO.
“Thanks, but I feel good about this place. We’ll get out of here soon.”
The Greyhound whizzed by them a minute later.
The driver and his passengers on the right side of the bus gawked at them, as if Sean and AK were the descendants of the Okies refugees from California. This was Tom Joad country. John Steinbeck’s THE GRAPES OF WRATH began beyond the blurred horizons where the world remained 1930.
After eleven a steady processions of vehicles exited from the highway hauling speedboats. Sean checked the map. To the north reservoirs or lakes provided water recreation for the Tulsans. None of the vehicles were heading farther east.
“You still have that good feeling?”
“Not really.”
He suspected that the police officer had aired a warning to motorists about two hippies hitching a ride and AK suggested walking to the next exit.
Sean checked the map again.
That exit led to no town.
“We are where we are.” Sean finished off my water.
The sun seared the sweat off their skin.
Their canteens were soon empty and he refilled them at the gas station. The middle-age attendant said that he had seen two longhairs wait at this on-ramp for over a day.
“How they get out of here?”
“Don’t know. They were there one second and the next they were gone.” The man seemed a little touched by the isolation. “You’ll get out of here sooner or later.”
“I like those positive thoughts.” Sean planned on keeping this information to myself, but if another Greyhound bus showed up, he fully intended on taking up AK’s offer.
As Sean approached AK, a car screeched through the stop sign. The Ford Falcon bat-turned into the gas station. Three men piled out of the midnight-blue convertible. They wore new jeans and their hair was short.
“What you think?” AK asked with the right degree of apprehension.
“I think they’re drunk.” Sean picked up a rock. AK warned him ‘don’t’. The New Yorker wasn’t a fighter. The attendant filled the car with gas and Sean saw the driver give him money.
At least they weren’t imitating Charles Starkweather on a Nebraskan killing spree. The three of them sat back in the car and AK said, “I hope they’re going to the lake.”
The Falcon accelerated out of the truck stop and swerved right at the last second to fishtail down the ramp. AK backed away from the road. Sean stood his ground.
The car braked to a stop.
The driver with the slicked back hair lifted a beer and said, “Damn, we’re fucked up. Can either of you drive?”
“Say no,” whispered AK.
The three men in the car were born trouble, but the radio was playing FOR THE LOVE OF MONEY.
“You like the OJays?”
“Shit, we listen to anything as long as it don’t have no Jesus in it,” the pale-faced passenger in the rear said with a laugh. “I hate God.”
“Shut your mouth. It’s the Lord’s Day.” The heavy-set man with tattoos on his muscular arms punched the blasphemer.
“My apologies. I just picked my cousins up at McAlester Prison. They’re respectable citizens now that they have been rehabilitated.” The driver raised his PBR and toasted their release. “Ain’t that right boys?”
“Definitely no.” AK was ready to flee into the dirt fields.
“Yes, sir, we done learned our lesson.” The thin rake on the right had an easy smile.
“Can you drive or what? We’re wasting gas.”
“Hold your horses, Garrald.” The driver wasn’t in such a hurry. “We’re leaving this cow-paddy state and driving through Missouri to Springfield, Illinois. It will be a little tight, but we’ve packed more than five people in this Fal-coon.”
“I can drive.” Sean dropped the rock on the ground.
“Shit.” AK hated crackers.
“Then you take the wheel. My name’s Earl.”
He popped open his door and opened the trunk with the keys. They had no bags, but several wrapped packages with OSP stamped on them.
“OSP stands for Oklahoma State Prison. You have nothing against ex-cons, do you?” Earl flipped back a fang of jet-black hair with his hand.
“Not me.” Something about the way the engine purred dissipated his reservations.
“Then you’re driving.” Earl handed Sean the key and told AK, ”And you’re in back.”
He put their bags in the trunk and sat behind the wheel. It had a four on the floor. Garrald had switched to the back seat with his brother. AK was squeezed between them. He wasn’t very happy.
“Earl, what year is this?”
“It's a 1964 Sprint with a 302 Cubic Inch Windsor V8. I shoulda bought a Mustang, but the dealer gave me a deal I couldn’t refuse. Nothing down.”
“So it’s ain’t hot.” Sean adopted a twang.
“Not stolen. The papers are in the glove compartment.” He whipped out his license. “No way I’m driving a stolen car with my cousins just out of Big Mac. Even I’m not that stupid.”
“I don’t know about that?” The one with the grin leaned forward smelling of harsh soap. “You’re related to us.”
“Only on my mother’s side, Jay Bob.” Earl shoved his cousin back from the front.
“We goin’ or we goin’?” Garrald asked directly behind him. Spit hit the back of his neck.
“We’re goin’.” Sean shoved the stick into first and stamped on the gas. The Falcon was light even with the weight of five men and the tires peeled an extra layer of rubber on the hot asphalt. He turned up the volume and they hit the highway the fastest car of the road.
“Try and keep it under 70. The cops hate hippies.” Earl advised popping open a beer with a can opener.
“Okay.” It was hard throttling back on the speed, because Earl was right. Cops hated hippies.
The two boys in the back dedicated their new freedom to sucking down beer.
“Where you comin’ from?” asked Earl.
“The Coast.”
“I never out there. Girls fun out that way?”
“Fun enough,” Sean told the story about meeting two lesbians in Big Sur.
“Whoowee. Better not say that too loud. My cousins ain’t had a touch in years. I felt the same way they did only three months ago.”
“You were in prison?”
“Yep, the Mac’s a hard place, but it used to be harder.” Earl rubbed his face. He was tired from driving, but kept on talking. “Back in the bad old days the guards liked to torture inmates more than kill them, so the prison commissioner sent two squads of inmates to build a new prison. The women at that time were held in Kansas and the warden had them build a women’s prison too.”
“What you do?”
“Do?” He looked over his shoulder. “I followed bad advice from my cousins. We robbed a church. Stupid idea, since it was a Friday and if you’re planning to rob a church better you do it on the Sunday afternoon. All three of us were drunk. The judge was hard on us, since we were longhairs and they don’t like longhairs in the Sooner State. Only reason we didn’t do more time was that we were related to the preacher. I got me two years and them got three. I was 19.”
Earl was his age and possessed a motormouth fast enough to match the Falcon’s V8.
He told him about the first prison escape from OSP and how the killers were shot dead on a ridge. He played DJ with the 8-track. GIMME SHELTER set off a long rant about the Hell’s Angels subverting the prison system.
“They play the race card, but all they care about is themselves. Set poor whites agin poor blacks like they cud make Helter-Skelter come to pass. Fuckin’ Beatles. They never played in Oklahoma. They did the goat-roper state, but never Oklahoma.” Earl hailed from Guynon in the Panhandle. With ten thousand folks it was the biggest city in the west of the state. “Rodeo and prison are the only two ways out of that town.”
Sean drove and Earl spoke. AK and he shared the chicken. The two cousins said that it tasted better than anything they had eaten in Big Mac.
“That’s not hard. The food sucked and there wasn’t enough of it.”
“I wish I had the recipe.” Garrald picked off the last meat and chucked the bone behind the Falcon, almost hitting the car following them.
The Chevy blew its horn and Sean picked up the pace.
They stopped for gas outside of Joplin, Missouri and Earl’s cousins stalked into the KFC like they were casing it for a robbery, while the Falcon’s owner bought more beer.
“I don’t know how much more of this I can handle.” AK was picking the wind out of his ears. “All they talk about is fucking women, but I don’t like the way Garrald’s been looking at me.”
“I’ve been listening to Okie 101 for the past hour, but them boys ain’t no trouble.”
“Since when do you speak like an extra in OKLAHOMA?”
“Listen, we’re going in the right direction and I’m behind the wheel. If anything changes in that equation, then we get out of the car polite like.” It was a little past 2 pm. A regular car would take five hours to cross the Show-Me State. I planned to do it in three with the souped-up Falcon.
“I would rather be with bible-thumpers than sitting between two cons.” AK had sat on the hump all the way from Justice.
“You’re only thinking about Pam.”
“Pam?”
“You really like her.”
“What was there not to like?”
“Harry.” He was her fiancée.
“I don’t understand why she went back to him.”
“Don’t take me the wrong way. I like Pam, but she’s a straight and straights like a straight life. Same as Jackie.”
“You haven’t mentioned her name in a while.”
“I liked Floe. She made me forget.”
“So you would have gone north with them?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Sorry, it didn’t work out.”
“Me too.”
“So what about your girlfriend?” Ann Marie lived next-door to Sean. She was no Pam, but a sweet woman.
“She doesn’t have to know anything about Pam.”
“Discretion is the better part of deception.” Sean scanned their surroundings.
The woods surrounding the truck stop were yellow pine. Joplin wasn’t mentioned in the song ROUTE 66. No one ever sang about stopping here. The boys were taking their time in the store.
The Falcon could make Chicago on another $20 of gas. Sean showed AK the keys. His friend shook his head.
“Are you sure?”
“We’re not thieves.”
Three months earlier he had left Boston with the words of BORN TO BE WILD as my philosophy of the road. Sean had sought ‘whatever comes my way’ and found it in California and few other places. Now a little over a thousand miles separated Sean from his hometown. Back in Boston he would resume his life. Time for ‘whatever comes my way’ was running out with each mile.
“I guess you’re right.” Neither of them were Bonnie or Clyde.
The two cousins exited from the store carrying cases of PBR and a box of fried chicken. They were wearing sunglasses. Earl followed them, holding a brown paper bag. Glass clinked against glass.
“Sorry about the wait, but crispy chicken needs some cookin’, plus I had a special order delivered.” He hefted the bag. “White Lightning.”
“It’ll be a welcome change from the Pruno at Big Mac.” Jay Bob sat in the back seat, opening a beer. “I’m lucky I didn’t go blind from that shit.”
“Do not. I’m better looking and a lot more white.” Jay Bob gave a big grin. He had most of his front teeth.
“Ain’t nobody 100% white in this world. The only reason white people back in the old times are white is, becuz artists painted their kinfolk white in them old pictures. Each of us have a bit of tar in them.”
“That’s some very advanced thinking you have back there. What you been doin’ at Big Mac? Getting educatified?” Jay Bob laughed to himself like he was on nitrous oxide.
Sean drove out of the truck stop and the wind baffled out the conversation in back. Earl put on Deep Purple and drank his beer. The boys were more into rock than country.
“You drive down to the Oklahoma State Prison from the Panhandle last night.”
“Yeah.”
“A long ride?’
“You got that right. Now don’t mind me none. I’m gonna catch me some sleep.” He placed the open PBR between his thighs. Within a minute he was snoring like a buzz saw through ice.
Sean stepped on the gas.
Nobody on I-44 was traveling less than 70. This country was too big for driving slow this far from the cities.
Sunday traffic was heavy around Springfield, Missouri. The older people in their cars stared, as if they were monkeys in the circus, while their kids smiled like they came from space. Cars with boats on trailer hitches headed south from the Ozarks. The weekend was fading with the setting sun.
Sean pulled off the interstate and drove down old Route 66.
“Where are we?” Earl reared up in his seat.
“About four miles west of Cuba. I was tired of the interstate.” He kept under the speed limit of 40. People like us made a Sunday for cops in small town America. “We need some gas.”
“I can drive from here.” AK volunteered from the back.
“Okay.”
Sean pulled into the Fanning Outpost. The stop provided gas, food, and lodging to travelers. Once spots like this bar dotted Route 66 from Chicago to LA. Now I-44 was pushing of them into the brink of extinction.
“Sad, but one day there will be no Route 66.” He pumped gas shifting his stance. His legs were stiff from sitting in one position for the past three hours. “Only a few sections are left.”
“All the Okies drove to California on the Mother Road. Reckon I have a lot a family out there.” Earl got out of the Falcon and wiped the dusty hood with a finger.
“Probably.” People with his background explained the conservative streak in Southern California County.
“My grandfather worked on the Chain of Rocks Bridge crossing the Mississippi. That money saved my family from having to leave the farm. Plenty of times I cursed that old man. If he hadn’t been working, we would have moved to California and I might have become one of the Beach Boys.”
“That’s a laugh.” Jay Bob helped his brother out of the car. Garrald had no idea where he was and lifted his sunglasses. “Damn, are we there yet?”
“No, we are not there yet.” Earl stretched the cramps out of his back. “We’ll be in Carbondale some time this evening.”
“What’s Carbondale?” This was the first Sean had heard of a destination.
“A college town in southern Illinois to work. The police don’t like ex-cons that ain’t workin’. We’re not even supposed to be in the same car together.”
“Speak for yourself. We’re free men. We didn’t get out on parole.”
Garrald scratched his head and examined his fingernails. They were crusted with dirt.
“Our uncle promised us jobs in the university kitchen. I learned a lot about cooking for numbers at Big Mac. Maybe I’ll find a hippie college girl. I hope she shaves her legs. I don’t like hairy women.”
“Just as long as you don’t take any longhaired guys for girls you’ll be fine.”
I regretted saying it immediately.
“And what’s that supposed to mean?” Garrand stepped forward.
“Just a joke. I come from Maine and the women up there are twice the men you and I will ever be. Moose women we call them.”
My insulting the female of the Pine Tree State placated the big man.
AK wandered off to the Men’s Room and Jay Bob led his brother into the store.
Sean finished pumping $5 worth of gas.
“This one is on me.”
“Be careful with Garrald. He had a hard time up there.”
“How so?”
“The COs treated us like dead men. Food was crap. Something happened in the mess. An inmate shanked two officers. The cons seized several hostages. Buildings were burned to the ground. Three inmates were killed. Garrald and Jay Bob were be working on the farm, when the trouble started. None of us want to go back to prison again. Never. But it ain’t easy for ex-cons. People are waiting for you to commit a crime and they ain’t too wrong. You see how fast Garrald got in your face.”
“Yes.”
Sean had been arrested in grammar school for vandalizing an abandoned missile base. He had saved the arresting officer’s son from a beating. The cop cut him loose and never said anything to his parents about my crime. Earl never received that break.
Garrald came out of the store and took Sean’s hand.
“Sorry, I have to keep my mouth shut more often.”
“Me, too.” Sean was surprised by his hug, half-expecting a knife in his back.
“You’re good people and so’s your friend.” He embraced AK with the love of a young man freed from prison.
They switched places in the Falcon.
Sean sat on the hump between Earl and Jay Bob.
They opened a jar of shine. It was clear as light. The first sip ripped a layer of taste buds from his tongue and sluiced down his throat like burning lava.
“Damn.” Sean was reborn with the spirit of Moonshine and happy to not be driving a car. AK and Garrald spoke in tongues. Between patches of the wind he heard the words Sly and the Family Stone, Brooklyn Dodgers, The Battle of the Bulge, the Gold Rush, and a thousand syllables distorted by the breeze.
Night closed on the sky north of Bourbon. They finished the chicken south of St. Clair. The ‘shine just kept coming and he kept drinking until reaching the bright lights of a city. A ribbon of steel owned the stars straight ahead above the highway.
Sean recognized the St. Louis Arch. A baseball game was being played under the lights. AK drove past the stadium without slowing down.
Earl faced Sean.
“Welcome to St. Louis. We’ll be turning on the other side of the Mississippi toward Carbondale. You can come with us to Carbondale or we can drop you at the Indian mounds. I’ve crashed there once or twice. It’s a fine night for sleeping under the sky.”
The moonshine erased his ability to make a decision and fifteen minutes later AK and Earl helped the New Englander from the Falcon. The convicts whooped a good-bye, as Sean staggered into tall grass.
The world swirled around his feet and his head struck the ground. The moon laughed at his descent. It was always up on the sky and Sean fell through the Earth to bury himself in a stupor designed to last eternity or longer and Sean didn’t care which was which.
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