The Damned Highway (2 page)

So that's it. Never mind the snow or the roads or the thing lurking outside. I leave tonight, under the cover of darkness, alone and traveling light, armed only with my wits, my tape recorder, batteries, Moleskine notebook, pens, pencils, a gun, extra ammunition, a canister of mace, my Mojo Wire, two ripe grapefruit, some cocaine and marijuana, three tabs of blotter acid with colorful Jack Kirby characters emblazoned on them, four packs of cigarettes, a cigarette filter, and two pints of bourbon, all of which can fit into my brown leather kit bag. But that still leaves me with the problem of where to go and how to get there. A final destination is important, but the journey there is just as vital. The radio says the airport is shut down now because the runways are snowed in. That damned car out in the driveway won't make it very far—a few hundred miles at best. No planes and no automobiles. My only other option is the Greyhound station, so that's where I'll start. I'll buy a one-way ticket and take the ride, as long as the ride isn't to Los Angeles or New York or Washington or especially goddamned Vegas, because those are all places that I want to forget. They are a part of the old me, and I must forge a new me in someplace different. I can't use any of my pseudonyms, either. They are as well known now as I am. They have become a part of my legend. I will have to become somebody new. I must be born again. And there it is. Now, at last, we're getting close to the nut of the thing.

I have trouble zipping up my kit bag, bulging with my armament as it is. The bag is a heavy load but doesn't compare to the weight of my own mythos crushing down on me. I'm in a hurry now, and the walls seem to be closing in. They groan and quiver like old men, and I am not entirely certain that this is alcohol or drug induced.

I trip over the fan mail on my way out the door and suffer a thousand little paper cuts. The bastards have drawn blood, but I'll show them. I'm going to kill this life and start another. The name comes to me from out of nowhere, but I like the sound of it and decide to make it mine.

This time, I shall become Uncle Lono.

Uncle Lono Buys the Ticket and Takes the Ride . . . Road Dog for the Gods of Bad Karma . . . I Read the News Today, Oh Boy . . . The Revenge of Jack Kirby . . . A Shoggoth in Every Pot

——

I reach the bus terminal just before dawn, and after a long and harrowing drive down treacherous, snow-covered mountain roads, where each blind curve illuminated in my lone, functioning headlight promised death and dismemberment and the possibility of flaming wreckage, I am in no mood for nonsense. My eyes are watering from hours of desperate, snow-blind squinting, and it will be a wonder if I ever type again because my fingers carry the indentation of the goddamned steering wheel and are curved into crablike claws. I am tense and tired and have lost most of my high, and a terrible anger simmers beneath the surface of my skin, bubbling and percolating, desperate to come out, eager for release. When the parking-lot attendant tells me that it will cost me fifty cents a day to park my car, I stub my cigarette out in his whiskered face and tell him he can keep the junk heap, because I am abandoning it. Shrieking, he paws at his smoldering cheek, and I tell him that I accept his gratitude and thanks. Then I grab my kit bag and flee for the station before he can give chase.

“I know you,” he screams. “I know who the fuck you are, you monster! You're that guy who writes for—”

“No,” I shout, not bothering to turn around. “You do not know me. You have no idea who this is. I am something different, and none of you have met me before. I am a new kind of monster.”

I run across the parking lot, and his cries echo behind me like those of a tortured, mewling kitten. The sound brings me joy, and I laugh. It feels good. Reborn and recharged, I have never been more dangerous than I am right now. I am Uncle Lono. You should run.

Inside, the bus station is almost deserted, populated only by winos and junkies and whores, and a sloe-eyed ticket agent behind the counter who stares at me as if I've just stepped out of a flying saucer. She has a wad of pink gum in her wide, gaping mouth, and she snaps it while she studies me. The noise fills my heart with hate, and I fear that I will soon grow violent if it doesn't cease. The bus station feels wrong. The overhead lights are too bright, and one of the bulbs flickers like a strobe. Flies buzz around it, worshiping this strange new fluorescent god. I quickly scan the big board, searching for a destination. Beneath the board is a map of the United States with a network of route lines drawn across it like sprawling tentacles. I could go to Wichita, Kansas, or Lincoln, Nebraska, or Sioux Falls, South Dakota, but all of those are still too close to Las Vegas, and I need to escape that dark proximity. I need someplace else. The drone of the flies grows louder. The air is hot and cloying. I study the map and the tentacle lines blur, congealing into a massive spider web. The woman behind the counter snaps her gum at me again, and I grind my teeth and try not to moan. Joni Mitchell sings on someone's radio, but her voice sounds strange.

I blink, and when I look at the map again, one destination stands out from the others—Arkham, Massachusetts. It appears that the bus will be traveling Interstate 70, because to get to Arkham, we will have to pass through the diseased, blackened heart of this country, where the dregs of society live and breed and elect people who send their children overseas to die in a foreign jungle for something the French should have handled long ago. It occurs to me for a moment that Vietnam has been causing all kinds of trouble for a while now, and perhaps I should go and see it for myself, but not now. That is a trip for another day and another me. Uncle Lono seeks the American Nightmare. I turn back to the map again. The route goes through Salina, Topeka, Kansas City, St. Louis, Terre Haute, Indianapolis, Dayton, Columbus, Wheeling, and Pittsburgh. Then we jump up to Interstate 90 toward Erie and Buffalo, and pass through Rochester, Syracuse, and Albany before finally arriving in Arkham. It is a bizarre, insane trip, like going from Philadelphia to Seattle by way of the moon and Mars, but I have taken bizarre, insane trips before. You buy the ticket, you take the ride, and if that ride is atop a hunk of lead fired from the barrel of a snub-nosed .38 and plowing straight into the heart of darkness, then you hold on tight and keep grinning, even as the bugs splatter against your teeth. Ho ho.

I approach the counter and smile, and the ticket agent stops popping her gum. There is a brief, crystalline moment of silence, and then other sounds seep through the terminal. Creedence Clearwater Revival plays softly over the PA system, and I pause to wonder where Joni Mitchell has gone. A toilet flushes in a nearby restroom, and a sleeping drunk snores incessantly. The ticket agent seems uneasy, perhaps frightened by the look in my eyes or the smile on my face. Her bottom lip quivers and she tugs at her earlobe. Enjoying the effect I'm having on her, I request a one-way ticket to Arkham. I pay cash, and she takes the bills cautiously, her expression suggesting that perhaps I've wiped my ass with them or sprayed the money with LSD. It is a good idea, and I make a mental note to try it later.

The woman is polite and laconic, but when I ask her for a receipt, I can sense her annoyance and disdain. In her eyes, I represent everything that is wrong with this country, and what she doesn't understand is that I see the same in her. I represent Freak Power, and she represents Sheep People. We are two sides of the same coin, mirror images in alternate realities, symptoms of the same disease. Still smiling, I thank her, expressing my sincere desire that God bless her, and then I suppress my laughter when she flinches. I stuff the receipt into my bag, knowing full well that my whore-hopping editor will decline reimbursement when I try to apply it to the magazine's expense account later on, but old habits die hard, and fuck him, anyway. Then I duck into the restroom, eat one of the tabs of Jack Kirby acid, and feel the alkaline linger on my tongue. It is like licking a battery, and not at all unpleasant. In fact, I relish the taste. I splash cold water on my face and walk back out into the terminal, where I take a seat next to a vagrant and wait for the trip to begin.

The derelict smells like the inside of a gorilla's stomach, and his skin has the sickly complexion of a hunk of Provolone cheese left out in the sun for too long. Gray stubble lines his cracked, ruddy cheeks and a multicolored collection of tattered rags masquerading as clothing hang from his skeletal frame. A worn valise sits on the floor between his feet and a folded newspaper lies in his lap.

“Taking a trip?” He smiles. Someone has stolen this poor soul's teeth.

“Something like that.” I point at his newspaper. “Care if I take a peek? I'm a bit of a news junkie.”

“Go ahead. I know what's gonna happen, anyway. It's not news to me.”

Frowning, I flip the paper open and scan the headlines. The big story is the Irish Republican Army's continuing campaign of terror in Ulster. Here we are, five days into the new year, and there is already speculation that 1972's outrages will eclipse all others. Nineteen seventy-one saw the murder of Ulster Defence Regiment members in their homes, the assassination of a senator from Stormont, and over six thousand other terrorist incidents, including two hundred attacks on police stations, a thousand bombings, and the deaths of hundreds of civilians, including children.

“Ye Gods,” I mutter. “Happy New Year.”

“Reading about the Troubles?”

Nodding, I hand him the newspaper and reach for my cigarettes, wishing the acid would kick in. Where is Jack Kirby when we need him the most?

“It'll get worse,” the vagrant says. “You just wait. The last Sunday of this month will be very bloody. There have been signs and portents.”

I flick my lighter open and touch flame to cigarette. Then I inhale, snap the lighter shut, and blow smoke in my new companion's face. He frowns as I poke him in the chest.

“What are you jabbering about?”

The vagrant squirms, clearly agitated. “The Troubles. The end of this month, there's gonna be a massacre in Derry. The Brits will gun down twenty-six protesters. Cold-blooded fucking murder. They shoot 'em in the back. Run 'em down with tanks and trucks. Like I said, it's gonna be bloody. It needs to be. That's what he wants.”

“What who wants? Stop raving like a lunatic and speak English, man! Obviously, you can read, so I must assume that you're literate. Learn how to string a goddamned sentence together and communicate clearly.”

“I am. It's you who ain't listening, writer guy. Oh yeah, that's right. I know who you are, and I ain't impressed. You need to pay attention to what's coming. You need to get in touch with some starry wisdom, man. You dig? Starry fucking wisdom. Look. It ain't dead if it's only sleeping, and if you wait long enough, even death can bite the big one.”

I dismiss his ramblings with a wave of my hand. “Wonderful. I'm trapped in this terrible place with a madman and a Nixon supporter who chews her gum too loud. This must be what hell is like.”

“No,” the bum says. “Hell ain't like this at all. I know, man. I've seen it. And I don't want to go back there again. Hell is cold and full of fungi.”

“Well, of course it is. All the fun guys go to hell when they die.”

He squints at me, eyebrows furrowing beneath the dirt and grime caking his face, and when he responds, his voice is barely a whisper. “And people think
I'm
crazy.”

I take another drag off my cigarette and glance at my watch, wondering how long I have until the bus arrives, when—holy Jesus—the acid kicks in. I know this because a long, pale tentacle with a tapered, pink tip slithers out of the bum's valise and creeps toward me. The tendril is almost translucent, and veins throb beneath the doughy flesh.

“Holy Jesus . . .”

The vagrant grins with his horrible mouth. “Isn't it beautiful?”

“Isn't what beautiful? This bus station? No, it smells like a urinal and there are flies everywhere.”

“Not this place. My pet. Isn't it beautiful? It's a Shoggoth.”

“A what? You're rambling again.”

“When he comes back, everyone will have their own Shoggoth.”

“Sort of like a chicken in every pot and two cars in every garage?”

The vagrant appears confused. “What's that?”

“That was the American Dream.”

“I don't know about that. I don't dream much. But
he
dreams. Deep beneath the ocean,
he dreams
.”

The bum leans over and strokes the tentacle. I drop my cigarette on the floor and stub it out beneath my heel. Then I lean back and close my eyes and wait for the bus to come. It occurs to me to ask the vagrant how it's possible that he sees the pink tentacle, too. This is my trip, after all. Jack Kirby kicked me in the head,
not
him. If the vagrant wants to trip, then let him buy his own acid, the swine. But my tongue is too thick to say these things, and then the tentacle is gently caressing my ankle. I should be repulsed or frightened, but I'm not. In truth, the sensation is nice. The tentacle's flesh is warm and smooth, and not at all slimy. Its touch makes me think of a woman I once knew in Puerto Rico. She touched me in just the same way. I still miss her sometimes.

The first time I tripped on acid was back when I was writing the Hells Angels book. Ken Kesey was having a big party at his place in La Honda. He was desperate to meet some of the Angels, so he reached out to me and invited us all down for the weekend. About fifty of us came rolling in on our bikes, and the Angels began to mingle with Kesey's friends. Then he offered them acid, and I decided I'd better join in, if only to bear witness to the bizarre scene to come. The bikers were already loaded on cheap wine and bennies when we arrived, and now they had LSD in their systems. I expected a weekend of great and terrible violence and bloodshed, but other than the gangbang, the entire experience was actually peaceful and nice, much like the current trip with the friendly tentacle.

“My friend likes you,” the derelict informs me.

“That's good. I like your friend, too.”

We stay like that until the bus arrives.