By the time we got back to the old house, Dolly had moved two chairs onto the sun porch and bundled the old man up to look at the stars.
“That's it,” we heard Dolly yelling. “That's the Big Dipper,” she said, pointing up toward the moon. “I can only find the Big Dipper and the North Star.”
“I only know Betelgeuse,” the Colonel muttered.
Dolly let out a squeal of joy when she saw us coming up the front walk. She dashed down toward the steps, her earrings ablaze.
“We're going to Atlantic City!” She beamed. “The Colonel has always wanted to see Atlantic City!” Dolly and the Colonel laughed joyously and even Gus began to bark. John and I didn't know what had gone on while we were gone, but one thing was for sure—nobody on that porch acted as though they had diverticulosis!
eleven
We all tucked the Colonel into his chair and had a few more good laughs before he fell asleep for the night with Gus plopped at his feet like a rug. Then we walked Dolly home to Castleton Avenue, and Lorraine kept quizzing her whether someone who had been screaming in pain from diverticulosis should really be going to Atlantic City. Dolly kept stressing that it was what the Colonel wanted. But there was something weird in her tone again, as though she was holding some secret back from us. I didn't think anything about it until the next morning when Lorraine called me at seven A.M. to say she was talking about diverticulosis with her mother, and her mother said that diverticulosis was a big word that could mean a lot of things. In general it meant that there was some kind of obstruction growing in the Colonel's intestines, and if he had screamed in pain, like Lorraine described, then the Colonel must be in pretty rough shape. Mrs. Jensen had said there are usually operations and things that can straighten it out, but if the condition has gone too far, a person could croak from it. I told her I really wanted to go to Atlantic City. I thought it would be a lot of fun.
“John,” Lorraine said, “a man who was screaming in pain, like the Colonel was, can't be in any condition to take a drive like that.”
“I heard you can really scream in pain from gas,” I told her. And I personally gave Dolly a vote of confidence that she must know what she's doing. If she says the Colonel should go to Atlantic City, then he should go to Atlantic City.
We got over to the house before nine o'clock, and Dolly had already arrived and was cooking breakfast for the Colonel and Gus. We told them we had over thirty-seven dollars between us. I had borrowed twenty from Bore, and Lorraine had broken open a piggy bank for another seventeen bucks.
“That's all right,” Dolly said, “I've got a few dollars, and the Colonel is going to sell his silver dollars.”
“Oh, I don't think you should do that,” Lorraine said.
“Why not?” the Colonel asked. “Didn't you ever hear that expression, You can't take it with you?” He let out a little chuckle. But I happened to notice Dolly's eyes get a sudden sad look to them, and again I felt as though there was some sort of secret going on that Lorraine and I didn't know about. And then for some reason we were quiet for a while finishing all the preparations. Dolly had already called in sick, said she wouldn't be pushing her broom around at school today. Lorraine and I decided to plain cut our classes and face the consequences afterward. The sky was just too beautiful to worry about something like school attendance. You could look right out the back of the house and see straight to the Blue Mountains of Jersey and the huge oil tanks about forty miles away looming like steaming monuments against the New Jersey skyline. Lorraine had borrowed a few of her mother's nursing journals, and she was surreptitiously flipping through those as a sort of handy reference guide in case the Colonel had another attack on the way. Except for her one lapse into a quick downer, Dolly was the only one who didn't seem worried. She was even baking biscuits and had armed herself with butter and jam and a thermos of milk. I guess the saddest thing was watching Gus' face as he began to realize he wasn't going with us. I pulled the Studebaker out of the garage, and as everyone piled in Gus barked like a trouper from inside the house.
“Are you sure you don't want him to come?” Dolly asked.
“No,” the Colonel said. “It wouldn't be fair to lock him up in the car while we walked along the Boardwalk. I'm sure they don't let dogs on the Boardwalk and surely not on the beach. Besides, I lost him once and I don't want to lose him again.”
I personally thought it was terrific that the Colonel wanted to drive straight to the Silver Exchange on Bay Street. I could see that Lorraine wasn't happy about the Colonel selling his collection, but when she saw that his one hundred twenty-three silver dollars were turned into over six hundred dollars she changed her mind and realized why he had really wanted the trunk. That was a lot of money for a guy who had no cash. And he could even take that and rent a decent room somewhere and be able to eat for a few months, but it wouldn't be enough to pay taxes with, I didn't think.
By noon we had the top down on the Studebaker, and I was driving like a movie star over the Outer-bridge Crossing and zooming down into Perth Am-boy to pick up the Garden State Parkway. “Atlantic City, here we come,” everybody was singing. “Atlantic City, here we come.”
“Oh, I love it,” Dolly said. “Things are lookin' up, really lookin' up!” She looked ecstatic in the backseat with the Colonel, smoothing out her blue electric dress and checking to make sure her tight little pile of white curls still sat sprayed and firm on top of her head. Sometimes the Colonel would turn and look at her and I noticed in the rearview mirror that he looked a bit like a parrot in profile—a very alert, happy parrot whenever his eyes fell on Dolly. He was wearing a pullover sweater and a turtleneck with a little tear on a seam just above the spot where his fossil medallion swung back and forth, creating a semicircle of blue flashing that matched Dolly's dress.
“I just love it when you smile,” Dolly told the Colonel. “When you smile your eye strength improves. Of course you must eat carrots too. Tomorrow I'll bake you my grandmother's favorite country carrot cake.”
“I hate carrots,” the Colonel said factually. In fact, he did complain a lot on the trip, but you could tell it was just his personality. He was really having a good time. He'd get real excited whenever we'd pass over train tracks. The only thing he didn't seem to like was when there were tracks that had been abandoned and grass had grown between the railroad ties. He also spent a good deal of time complaining about all the quarters that the toll booths were eating up. “Boy, the Garden State Parkway really gobbles up your quarters,” he said about a dozen times. But Dolly didn't pay any attention to him and just dipped into his pocket regularly to pass the money forward to me. At one point steam began to shoot out from under the hood of the Studebaker, threatening to turn us all into succulent roasts. It got so it was almost impossible to breathe. But we finally made it to a gas station called the Lucky Seven Mine Fill-'er-Up Stop, which was supposed to be a haven for truck drivers with block-long trailers. I got out and checked under the hood. It was only a loose water hose, and in no time I had the radiator filled with cold water. Dolly didn't budge from the Colonel's side in the backseat. She let him use her as a pillow while he dozed off—which looked kind of cute. It dawned on me that I had never once seen my father use my mother for a pillow. If he had I'm sure she would have tried to Lysol his head.
I bought us some coffee and donuts, since we had already stopped. And at one point Dolly slipped out from under the Colonel and went to the ladies' room with Lorraine. When they came back I noticed that Dolly had helped fix Lorraine's hair into a French twist and put makeup on parts of her face that I had never seen made up before.
“Isn't she a beauty?” Dolly asked me. “Isn't she a beauty?”
“Oh yeah, a real beauty,” I said.
“But makeup isn't the thing that makes a girl beautiful,” Dolly added. “John knows that, don't you?”
“Do I?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, I can see it in your eyes,” she said, slipping back under the dozing Colonel. “You kids
are swell! You kids are just swell!” she kept saying.
I started the car again and before you knew it we had thrown a couple of more quarters into the toll booths on the Garden State. Somewhere beyond the Asbury Park turnoff the Colonel snored so loud he woke himself up. And he didn't doze off again on the whole trip, which had to be due to Dolly's vivaciousness. Most of the time the motor was making so much noise I couldn't hear everything the Colonel and Dolly were saying. But they were laughing and waving to people in other cars. Then at one point he started grilling Dolly about the Game of Life, and she did all the things he told her about closing her eyes, and it looked like she was having a ball. Dolly said the road she could see in her imagination was a terrific beautiful highway and she said she found a key that looked like it belonged to a church door, and picked it up to save it. And when she found a cup, she said it was made of beautiful porcelain, and she sipped from it and had tea biscuits. And her Tree of Sex turned out to be a beautiful pear tree with doves sitting on all the branches. When it got time for her to imagine the wall at the end of her Road of Life, I slowed the car down to quiet the motor. I didn't want to miss this. The Colonel told her how the wall reached for eternity in all directions, and in the mirror I watched the expression on Dolly's face change from great joy to incredible seriousness.
“What do you do at the wall?” the Colonel asked, his eyes glowing with anticipation.
“I fall down on my knees and kiss it,” Dolly said.
I got a terrible chill when she said that, and I think even the Colonel was shocked. When he told her that it was the Wall of Death, she explained that she really was a very religious person so she thought that might explain why she wasn't so afraid of dying. Actually all the talk about death in the backseat was getting a little frightening. I think it even rattled Dolly, because she kept checking her own face in the mirror of her compact. I tried to keep my eye on the real road of life, which at the moment was a very busy strip in New Jersey that was going to end at Exit 40. When we got off, there were huge signs pointing toward the Boardwalk. We passed a Ramada Inn with a mural of a huge bull that had been painted on the entire side of the building facing Atlantic Avenue. The bull was huffing and puffing at the street, and there was the cross of life through his nose. It was a very macabre greeting.
“Here we are, gang,” I said.
“Where?” Lorraine asked.
“We must have made a wrong turn,” the Colonel said.
“Nope, this is it,” Dolly exclaimed. “This is Atlantic City. I used to come here all the time as a kid and eat saltwater taffy and ride the Whip. I love the sound of the waves crashing.” Then she became more practical. “It said valet parking down close to the Boardwalk. It's not every day a knight of Sweden comes to this town.” Right near the Boardwalk was a very large building, and sure enough, two valet guys came running out and helped us out of the car like we were royalty. Then one of them who looked like he was stoned got behind the wheel and the Studebaker burned rubber as it was taken up this high ramp away from us.
“You want the special restaurant?” The other valet guy winked. “You bet,” Dolly said.
I must admit there was something rather elegant about Dolly and the Colonel as they walked together behind the guy. And I found it so sweet that he was trying as hard as he could not to use her as a crutch. Her dress swayed in the breeze like a blue parachute. And the Colonel's pullover did not match his trousers or turtleneck, but that didn't matter. The way they clung to each other, you'd have thought they were the Prince and Princess of Tasmania. I thought it was better that way because it probably would blind them to how ugly Atlantic City really was. Lorraine and I couldn't quite adjust to the fact that this “special restaurant” looked like nothing more than a converted old office building that had been temporarily saved from atomic detonation. Hundreds of tiny windows and shades decorated the exterior of the building, which made it about as glamorous as a condemned law school. There was something about the new marble facade and the automatic doors with the electronic surveillance system that didn't go with the rest of the building. It seemed like a big phony tourist trap just waiting to fleece anybody who walked into it. Inside there was a lot of color, as though a rainbow had gone berserk, and I began to think maybe it was making up for what the outside lacked. The valet guy put his hand out for a tip, frowned at the dollar bill Dolly put in it, and opened a final door. To our shock, the “special restaurant” turned out to be a giant gambling casino! I had heard so much about casinos and I thought it would be the most chic place for a kid to be, but when I looked around it seemed like everybody was pretty old and wearing toupees, or else they looked like they were all out from the poorhouse desperately hoping to make a million. What there was was a great big feeling of doom in the air. A good portion of the people around us were carrying little black promotional T-shirts that proclaimed the virtues of the Florida Mortuary Union, which was having a convention at a nearby hotel. Most of them were lining up at the cheap slot machines, which made me think that they weren't doing so well in the embalming business. There was no bounce or excitement. It seemed like all of them were zombies even when their machines came up winners. Just when I thought Dolly and the Colonel would want to turn around and exit in horror, something amazing happened. The Colonel gave Lorraine and me a hundred-dollar bill. We almost died.
“We can't take it,” Lorraine said. “We should get out of here.”
“I'll take it,” I said. “This place looks like fun!”
“Live it up, kids,” the Colonel said. “Live it up!”
Dolly nodded that it was okay, but I could see Lorraine look at me suspiciously when I pocketed the hundred, and I tried to change the subject. The look on Lorraine's face was so disturbed you'd think we had come down there planning to gamble. Not only that, you'd think that we were going to gamble for the Colonel's life and future. But he had a few hundred more. It wasn't going to be life or death. And he wanted us to have it. But what he seemed to really want was for me and Lorraine to go off by ourselves and leave him and Dolly alone. We took the hint and everybody agreed to meet back in front of the Rendezvous Lounge and Oyster Bar in an hour and a half—just so we could check on each other and see if we wanted to walk down the Boardwalk at that point.
“I'll take my fifty dollars,” Lorraine said right off the bat as soon as we were alone.
“I thought you didn't want the money.”
“Well, I do.”
I changed the hundred dollars and gave Lorraine her fifty. But I knew she just wanted to hold on to the fifty so I wouldn't blow it. I could see she was really nervous. I just took her hand and we walked around the place sizing it up. We watched them play craps at a few tables. One guy was rolling a lot of sevens and yelled, “Yahoo!” and eventually the whole table was yelling, “Yahoo!” It looked like he was winning a whole lot. But except for that table the whole crowd seemed extra dull. If it hadn't been for croupiers shouting out numbers at the roulette tables every once in a while, and some big brute running the Wheel of Fortune booming like a cannon, you would have thought we were in a tomb. Nobody spoke to anybody else, which made me realize we were in the company of diehard gamblers. We decided to play a few of the slot machines, and it took over an hour before they devoured five dollars worth of nickels. By that time there were so many lemons, cherries, and oranges rolling in my head, I thought I was on a psychedelic fruit trip. At one point we were surprised when we found Dolly and the Colonel sitting at a blackjack table. They were perched on these high stools looking very regal. Dolly was the only one really turning over cards, and we saw that she won a hand. The two of them howled and the Colonel kept patting Dolly's hand. They were both so sophisticated. Dolly sat adjusting her ashtray six or seven times, smoking a very long filter tip and fiddling with their betting chips. Lorraine and I stood back far enough so they wouldn't see us, and at one point the Colonel placed a bet on the spot next to Dolly.
He was dealt a ten and a five, so I figured he
was certain to be a loser. After a moment Dolly screamed out, referring to the dealer, “He went over twenty-one, my darling. You won!”
“And you got blackjack,” the Colonel said, like a surprised little boy.
“Oh, you're right,” Dolly said. Then she hugged him. Dolly even shouted to other people at the blackjack table. You could tell some of them thought she was a nuisance, but a few people who were looking particularly sad seemed glad at the sound of her infectious laugh. You could tell everyone was impressed by her earrings, which were without a doubt the brightest thing in the whole casino.
By this time Lorraine and I weren't as uptight, so we walked down toward the slot machines again where people were lined up three and four deep like cattle about to be slaughtered. I started to take notice of one machine that was lit up and ringing as it spit quarters out. I thought it was a very interesting comment about civilization. That so many people would flock to this place to yank on all these machine handles in an atmosphere of red velour walls and fake gold decorations. I just got to feeling like we really were all one big herd, and that frightened me so much I bumped into a waitress who was serving free drinks. Her name was Number 43 and she asked me if I wanted a drink. I told her I'd go for a scotch on the rocks and my girl friend would like a Tab.
“You don't drink scotch,” Lorraine chastised me after Number 43 left. “Besides, if there's a raid you'll be up on two charges.”
“She'd know we were kids if I ordered a Coke,” I explained. By this time I noticed that all the workers in the casino had numbers instead of names. What a horrible world! Can you imagine people going around saying, “Hello, Number 3.” “How are you today, Number 8?” Finally Number 43 came back and Lorraine took big gulps of her Tab. I took a sip of my scotch. I'd always thought it was amazing how much like Mercurochrome it tasted. I think if you really have class you order something like a milkshake with a shot of brandy in it, or Dry Sack on the rocks. After a couple more sips of the scotch, I thought it would be a good idea if I switched to a horse's neck or a Singapore sling. There are some benefits you get from having a father who was an alcoholic, and one of them is knowing the most picturesque ways to tie a load on.