“You want anything from the drugstore?” Roger asked the girl.
“Camels,” she said. “Remember we have to fill the ice jug.”
“I’ll ask them.”
Roger came back with the morning papers and a carton of cigarettes.
“It’s not going so good.” He handed her one of the papers.
“Is there anything we didn’t get on the radio?”
“Not much. But it doesn’t look so good.”
“Can they fill the ice jug?”
“I forgot to ask.”
The waitress came with the two breakfasts and they both drank their cold grapefruit juice and started to eat. Roger kept on reading his paper so Helena propped hers against a water glass and read too.
“Have you any chili sauce?” Roger asked the waitress. She Was a thin juke-joint looking blonde.
“You bet,” she said. “You people from Hollywood.”
“I’ve been there.”
“Ain’t she from there?”
“She’s going there.”
“Oh Jesus me,” the waitress said. “Would you write in my book?
“I’d love to,” Helena said. “But I’m not in pictures.”
“You will be, honey,” the waitress said. “Wait a minute,” she said, got a pen.”
She handed Helena the book. It was quite new and had a grey imitation leather cover.
“I only just got it,” she said. “I only had this job a week.”
Helena wrote Helena Hancock on the first page in the rather flamboyant untypical hand that had emerged form the mixed ways of writing she had been taught at various schools.
“Jesus beat me what a name,” the waitress said. “Wouldn’t you write something with it?”
“What’s your name?” Helena asked.
“Marie.”
To Marie from her friend Helena wrote above the florid name in the slightly suspect script.
“Gee thanks,” Marie said. Then to Roger, “You don’t mind writing do you.”
“No,” Roger said. “I’d like to. What’s your last name, Marie?”
“Oh that don’t matter.”
He wrote Best always to Marie from Roger Hancock.
“You her father?” the waitress asked.
“Yes,” said Roger.
“Gee I’m glad she’s going out there with her father,” the waitress said. “Well I certainly wish you people luck.”
“We need it,” Roger said.
“No,” the waitress said. “You don’t need it. But I wish it to you anyway. Say you must have got married awfully young.”
“I was,” Roger said. I sure as hell was, he thought.
“I’ll bet her mother was beautiful.”
“She was the most beautiful girl you ever saw.”
“Where’s she now?”
“In London,” Helena said.
“You people certainly lead lives,” the waitress said. “Do you want another glass of milk?”
“No thanks,” Helena said. “Where are you from, Marie?”
“Fort Meade,” the waitress said. “It’s right up the road.”
“Do you like it here?”
“This is a bigger town. It’s a step up I guess.”
“Do you have any fun?”
“I always have fun when there’s any time. Do you want anything more?” she asked Roger.
“No. We have to roll.”
They paid the check and shook hands.
“Thanks very much for the quarter,” the waitress said. “And for writing in my book. I guess I’ll be reading about you in the papers. Good luck, Miss Hancock.”
“Good luck,” Helena said. “I hope you have a good summer.”
“It’ll be all right,” the waitress said. “You be careful won’t you.”
“You be careful too,” Helena said.
“O.K.,” Marie said. “Only it’s kind of late for me.”
She bit her lip and turned and went into the kitchen.
“She was a nice girl,” Helena said to Roger as they got into the car. “I should have told her it was sort of late for me too. But I guess that only would have worried her.”
“We must fill the ice jug,” Roger said.
“I’ll take it in,” Helena offered. “I haven’t done anything for us all day.”
“Let me get it.”
“No. You read the paper and I’ll get it. Have we enough Scotch?”
“There’s that whole other bottle in the carton that isn’t opened.”
“That’s splendid.”
Roger read the paper. I might as well, he thought. I’m going to drive all day.
“It only cost a quarter,” the girl said when she came back with the jug. “But it’s chipped awfully fine. Too fine I’m afraid.”
“We can get some more this evening.”
When they were out of the town and had settled down to the long black highway north through the prairie and the pines, into the hills of the lake country, the road striped black over the long, varied peninsula, heavy with the mounting summer heat now that they were away from the sea breeze; but with them making their own breeze driving at a steady seventy on the straight long stretches and feeling the country being put behind them, the girl said, “It’s fun to drive fast isn’t it? It’s like making your own youth.”
“How do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “Sort of foreshortening and telescoping the world the way youth does.”
“I never thought much about youth.”
“I know it,” she said. “But I did. You didn’t think about it because you never lost it. If you never thought about it you couldn’t lose it.”
“Go on,” he said. “That doesn’t follow.”
“It doesn’t make good sense,” she said. “I’ll get it straightened out though and then it will. You don’t mind me talking when it doesn’t make completely good sense do you?”
“No, daughter.”
“You see if I made really completely good sense I wouldn’t be here.” She stopped. “Yes I would. It’s super good sense. Not common sense.”
“Like surrealism?”
“Nothing like surrealism. I hate surrealism.”
“I don’t,” he said. “I liked it when it started. It kept on such a long time after it was over was the trouble.”
“But things are never really successful until they are over.”
“Say that again.”
“I mean they aren’t successful in America until they are over. And they have to have been over for years and years before they are successful in London.”
“Where did you learn all this, daughter?”
“I thought it out,” she said. “I’ve had a lot of time to think while I was waiting around for you.”
“You didn’t wait so very much.”
“Oh yes I did. You’ll never know.”
There was a choice to be made soon of two main highways with very little difference in their mileage and he did not know whether to take the one that he knew was a good road through pleasant country but that he had driven many times with Andy and David’s mother or the newly finished highway that might go through duller country.
That’s no choice, he thought. We’ll take the new one. The hell with maybe starting something again like I had the other night coming across the Tamiami Trail.
They caught the news broadcast on the radio, switching it off through the soap operas of the forenoon and on at each hour.
“It isn’t like fiddling while Rome burns,” Roger said. “It’s driving west northwest at seventy miles an hour away from a fire that’s burning up what you care about to the east and hearing about it while you drive away from it.”
“If we keep on driving long enough we’ll get to it.”
“We hit a lot of water first.”
“Roger. Do you have to go? If you have to go you should.”
“No dammit. I don’t have to go. Not yet. I figured that through yesterday morning while y
ou were asleep.”
“Didn’t I sleep though? It was shameful.”
“I’m awfully glad you did. Do you think you got enough last night? It was awfully early when I woke you.”
“I had a wonderful sleep. Roger?”
“What, daughter?”
“We were mean to lie to that waitress.”
“She asked questions,” Roger said. “It was simpler that way.”
“Could you have been my father?”
“If I’d begot you at fourteen.”
“I’m glad you’re not,” she said. “God it would be complicated. It’s complicated enough I suppose until I simplify it. Do you think I’ll bore you because I’m twenty-two and sleep all night long and am hungry all the time?”
“And are the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen and wonderful and strange as hell in bed and always fun to talk to.”
“All right. Stop. Why am I strange in bed?”
“You are.”
“I said why?”
“I’m not an anatomist,” he said. “I’m just the guy that loves you.”
“Don’t you like to talk about it?”
“No. Do you?”
“No. I’m shy about it and very frightened. Always frightened.”
“My old Bratchen. We were lucky weren’t we?”
“Let’s not even talk about how lucky. Do you think Andy and Dave and Tom would mind?”
“No.”
“We ought to write to Tom.”
“We will.”
“What do you suppose he’s doing now?”
Roger looked through the wheel at the clock on the dashboard
“He will have finished painting and be having a drink.”
“Why don’t we have one?”
“Fine.”
She made the drinks in the cups putting in handfuls of the finely chipped ice, the whisky and White Rock. The new highway was wide now and ran far and clear ahead through the forest of pines that were tapped and scored for turpentine.
“It doesn’t look like the Landes does it,” Roger said and lifting the cup felt the drink icy in his mouth. It was very good but the chipped ice melted fast.
“No. In the Landes there is yellow gorse in between the pines.”
“And they don’t work the trees for turpentine with chain gangs either,” Roger said. “This is all convict labor country through here.”
“Tell me how they work it.”
“It’s pretty damned awful,” he said. “The state contracts them out to the turpentine and lumber camps. They used to catch everyone off the trains during the worst of the Depression. All the people riding the trains looking for work. Going east or west or south. They’d stop the trains right outside of Tallahassee and round up the men and march them off to jail and then sentence them to chain gangs and contract them out to the turpentine and lumber outfits. This is a wicked stretch of country. It’s old and wicked with lots of law and no justice.”
“Pine country can be so friendly too.”
“This isn’t friendly. This is a bastard. There are lots of lawless people in it but the work is done by the prisoners. It’s a slave country. The law’s only for outsiders.”
“I’m glad we’re going through it fast.”
“Yes. But we really ought to know it. How it’s run. How it works. Who are the crooks and the tyrants and how to get rid of them.”
“I’d love to do that.”
“You ought to buck Florida politics some time and see what happens.”
“Is it really bad?”
“You couldn’t believe it.”
“Do you know much about it?”
“A little,” he said. “I bucked it for a while with some good people but we didn’t get anywhere. We got the Bejesus beat out of us. On conversation.”
“Wouldn’t you like to be in politics?”
“No. I want to be a writer.”
“That’s what I want you to be.”
The road was unrolling now through some scattered hardwood and then across cypress swamps and hammock country and then ahead there was an iron bridge across a clear, dark-watered stream, beautiful and clear moving, with live oaks along its bank and a sign at the bridge that said it was the Senwannee (sic) River.
They were on it and over it and up the bank beyond and the road had turned north.
“It was like a river in a dream,” Helena said. “Wasn’t it wonderful so clear and so dark? Couldn’t we go down it in a canoe some time?”
“I’ve crossed it up above and it’s beautiful wherever you cross it.”
“Can’t we make a trip on it sometime?”
“Sure. There’s a place way up above where I’ve seen it as clear as a trout stream.”
“Wouldn’t there be snakes?”
“I’m pretty sure there’d be a lot.”
“I’m afraid of them. Really afraid of them. But we could be careful couldn’t we?”
“Sure. We ought to do it in the winter time.”
“There are such wonderful places for us to go,” she said. “I’ll always remember this river now and we saw it only like the lens clicking in a camera. We should have stopped.”
“Do you want to go back?”
“Not until we come to it going the other way. I want to go on and on and on.”
“We’re either going to have to stop to get something to eat or else get sandwiches and eat them while we drive.”
“Let’s have another drink,” she said. “And then get some sandwiches. What kind do you think they’ll have?”
“They ought to have hamburgers and maybe barbecue.”
The second drink was like the first, icy cold but quick melting in the wind and Helena held the cup out of the rush of the air and handed it to him when he drank.
“Daughter, are you drinking more than you usually do?”
“Of course. You didn’t think I drank a couple of cups of whisky and water every noon by myself before lunch did you?”
“I don’t want you to drink more than you should.”
“I won’t. But it’s fun. If I don’t want one I won’t take one. I never knew about driving across the country and having our drinks on the way.”
“We could have fun stopping and poking around. Going down to the coast and seeing the old places. But I want us to get out west.”
“So do I. I’ve never seen it. We can always come back.”
“It’s such a long way. But this is so much more fun than flying.”
“This is flying. Roger, will it be wonderful out west?”
“It always is to me.”
“Isn’t it lucky I’ve never been out so we’ll have it together?”
“We’ve got a lot of country to get through first.”
“It’s going to be fun though. Do you think we’ll come to the sandwich town pretty soon?”
“We’ll take the next town.”
The next town was a lumbering town with one long street of frame and brick buildings along the highway. The mills were by the railroad and lumber was piled high along the tracks and there was the smell of cypress and pine sawdust in the heat. While Roger filled the gas and had the water, oil and air checked Helena ordered hamburger sandwiches and barbecued pork sandwiches with hot sauce on them in a lunch counter and brought them to the car in a brown paper bag. She had beer in another paper sack.
Back on the highway again, and out of the heat of the town, they ate the sandwiches and drank cold beer that the girl opened.
“I couldn’t get any of our marriage beer,” she said. “This was the only kind there was.”
“It’s good and cold. Wonderful after the barbecue.”
“The man said it was about like Regal. He said I’d never be able to tell it from Regal.”
“It’s better than Regal.”
“It had a funny name. It wasn’t a German name either. But the labels soaked off.”
“It’ll be on the caps.”
“I threw the caps away.”
&n
bsp; “Wait till we get out west. They have better beer the further out you get.”
“I don’t think they could have any better sandwich buns or any better barbecue. Aren’t these good?”
“They’re awfully good. This isn’t a part of the country where you eat very good either.”
“Roger, will you mind terribly if I go to sleep for a little while after lunch? I won’t if you’re sleepy.”
“I’d love it if you went to sleep. I’m not sleepy at all really. I’d tell you if I was.”
“There’s another bottle of beer for you. Dammit I forgot to look at the cap.”
“That’s good. I like to drink it unknown.”
“But we could have remembered it for another time.”
“We’ll get another new one.”
“Roger, would you really not mind if I went to sleep?”
“No, beauty.”
“I can stay awake if you want.”
“Please sleep and you’ll wake up lonely and we can talk.”
“Good night, my dear Roger. Thank you very much for the trip and the two drinks and the sandwiches and the unknown beer and the way down upon the Swanee River and for where we are going.”
“You go to sleep, my baby.”
“I will. You wake me up if you want me.”
She slept curled up in the deep seat and Roger drove, watching the wide road ahead for stock, making fast time through the pine country, trying to keep around seventy to try to see how much he could get over sixty miles onto the speedometer in each hour. He had never been on this stretch of highway but he knew this part of the state and he was driving it now only to put it behind him. You shouldn’t have to waste country but on a long trip you have to.
The monotony tires you, he thought. That and the fact there are no vistas. This would be a fine country on foot in cool weather but it is monotonous to drive through now.
I have not been driving long enough to settle into it yet. But I should have more resiliency than I have. I’m not sleepy. My eyes are bored I guess as well as tired. I am not bored, he thought. It is just my eyes and the fact that it is a long time since I have been sitting still so long. It is another game and I’ll have to relearn it. About day after tomorrow we will start to make real distance and not be tired by it. I haven’t sat still this long for a long time.
He reached forward and turned on the radio and tuned it. Helenadid not wake so he left it on and let it blur in with his thinking and his driving.