The Damned Highway (20 page)

“I'm gonna open a window,” my attorney says and moves to my side. He pulls the blinds up and tries the window, but it's nailed shut. “It's rotten enough that I can probably push it right out,” he says. I tell him don't bother, because we're not going to be here long enough for it to matter.

“Why?” He turns to me, eyes focused again. The whiskey has cured him, and once again I was right. Always listen to your doctor. That's the moral of this story.

“Wha's t' plan, Lono?” Smitty asks from the bed, as the room begins to stink like fish.

“Yeah,” my attorney echoes. “Enough of this sitting-around bullshit. We've got work to do. What's the plan? What's our next step?”

“I'll tell you,” I say, and then I do.

Steal This Book . . . The Great and Terrible Plan . . . Down the Yellow-Brick Road . . . The Solidarity between Proletarian, Intellectual, Woman, and Racial Minority Brought Oh-So-Ferociously to Bear . . . Dinner with Josephine . . . The Contents Are Just What It Reads on the Tin . . . A Bed Trick and a Head Trick . . .

——

At the Innsmouth Public Library, we check out a copy of
Unspeakable Cults
. It's a cheap Photostat of the real grimoire, with that cheap, plastic-leather library binding that you find on so many books these days. Ye Gods, I hate that sort of shit. The library is deserted, except for a geriatric librarian behind the front desk, who stares at us balefully with enormous fish eyes magnified by her equally enormous eyeglasses. She doesn't say a word to us. She simply stares.

“I don't like this,” my attorney whispers. “This place has a real negative vibe, man. There is bad karma here.”

“Never mind that. Stand in front of me and block the librarian's view.”

“Why?”

“Because I'm borrowing this book, and I don't have a library card.”

“As your attorney, I have to advise you not to steal that book. Time is running short and we've got a lot to do. We can't do it from jail.” Nevertheless, he moves in front of me, blocking the aisle and hiding me from the librarian's watchful eyes.

“We won't go to jail. First of all, we're not going to get caught. Second of all, they don't put you in the slammer for stealing a book. Especially not this book and especially not in Innsmouth. This fucking thing doesn't even have an ISBN, or a Dewey decimal number.” I slip the book into my kit bag, nestling it between the Mojo Wire and an empty whiskey bottle. “Plus, I don't think there are too many readers left in town. They won't miss it. We just need two more things now, and one of them should be along any moment. We'll pick up the third on the road. By the way, are you carrying?”

My lawyer hoists up his attaché case and pats it twice. “Of course.”

“Good,” I say. “Now listen to me very carefully, because this applies to your billable hours. If you see me growing gills or a sixth finger on either hand, or my eyes suddenly bulge out even when I'm not doing coke, I want you to shoot me. I'm serious. I am not fucking around here. Shoot me in the head, and make sure that does the trick. I'll sign a waiver, but we can't get it notarized, not around here.”

I begin to close the kit bag, when a thought occurs to me. “Sweet Jesus, you're right. We don't have to steal this book.”

“Would you make up your mind, man? I thought you weren't fucking around?”

“I'm not, and Smitty better not be either. I told him to find us a ride.” I glance around, making sure we're still not being observed, and then I pull both the book and my Leatherman utility tool from my kit. I flense the spine from the book with a few flicks of the knife, and then set up the Mojo Wire. The librarian, deep in the throes of the Innsmouth look, her mouth full of needlelike fangs, her eyes spilling out from their lids, her breathing the horrid gasp of a pregnant scud flopping around on the deck of a fishing trawler, says nothing to us, not even when I unplug the phone on her desk and start feeding pages of her blasphemous tome to my editor in New York. Here is wisdom, and I shall share it with you because I am feeling generous: the trick with libraries is not to break the rules, and there can be no rule against mutilating and infringing the copyright of a book that does not exist. (You know, much like this one, dear reader . . .)

“No problemo,” my lawyer finally says, not even bothering to look up from flipping through a ratty paperback of his own biography, which the library inexplicably has on the stacks. “And how about me? I saw things down there while I was with Mother Hydra . . . things that called to me, like the twisted snake gods of my ancestors, piles of waterlogged hearts on Cyclopean staircases, slabs overgrown with lichen fed by the blood of men. And I think I liked it. If I start, you know, turning into one of these Innsmouth people, will you shoot me, too?”

“No, but I can put you on retainer to shoot yourself. My editor has given me carte blanche. There is nothing more dangerous or desperate than a writer with carte blanche.”

I finish transmitting the book, and then I pack up the Mojo Wire and we head for the door. I nod at the librarian, thanking her for her time, and she stares at us as we leave. Outside, it is snowing.

“Ah, here's our ride.” And it's Smitty in his half-ruined black tractor-trailer cab. He honks the horn. Shave and a haircut. Two bits. My attorney eyes the truck the same way the librarian eyed us.

“We're riding in that thing?”

“Of course! It'll be a tight squeeze, the four of us, but we'll make do.”

“Four of us?”

“Yes, indeed. We'll pick up the fourth on the road, I'm sure of it.”

“Who the hell else are we bringing along down the yellow-brick road?”

I shrug. “Dorothy? Toto? A dozen flying monkeys?”

“I guess that's better than bats,” my lawyer mutters.

“Oh, ho,” I say, clapping him on the back. “You have no reason to fear. We're not going anywhere near bat country.”

We clamber into the cab, and Smitty smiles a disconcerting catfish smile at us. Our connection is even less than tentative now; it's a fond memory, but it works. Smitty has fond memories of the Nam too; he's itching for another war, and we're bringing the war to the steps of the White House in the way the Weather Underground could only dream of. Ho ho! I feel a tingling in my journalistic loins. My lawyer grunts a greeting and Smitty burbles in return. I sit between them like an awkward child stuck in the middle of fuming parents. Smitty's white as cod, and my lawyer has the natural animosity an oppressed brown person would have toward a big Anglo Teamster, all his jive about the international working class and the Revolution aside. And in truth, I think he just might be a little . . . envious? Jealous? After all, Smitty was my sidekick on this journey long before my lawyer came along. Smitty has been fulfilling a role that my attorney sees as his. The same sort of quiet animosity used to exist between Ralph and my attorney, until Ralph began coming up with excuses as to why he couldn't make the trek across the pond. That poor bastard. He was never the same after the Kentucky Derby, but I warned him it was decadent and depraved. That's what made him the perfect person to capture it with illustrations.

“It's going to be a long, strange trip to DC, fellows, so let's try to keep it civil, eh? And keep the perspiration to a minimum; we can't afford to have our windows steam up.” I see her, wandering with a one-shoed limp on the shoulder of the highway. “Ah, there she is.” Miskatonic University's favorite sorority girl, Betsy. “There's our Dorothy.”

Smitty blows the air horn, and Betsy nearly leaps into the grass. My lawyer rolls down the window and shouts, “Hey,
chica
! Come for a ride with us!” She's stunned, as women often are in his presence. “Your country needs you!” I add. Impatient, my lawyer rolls out of the truck, lumbers toward Betsy, and unceremoniously grabs her and flings her over his shoulder. “Come on, darlin'. The doctor's waitin'!” he says.

“He's a forward type, innit he?” Smitty asks.

“Listen, man. That's exactly the sort of attitude you want in a civil-rights attorney. Look! See there? He doesn't even notice her little fists beating against his back. It's like his cousin's
quinceañera
all over again.” Smitty frowns. “I'm just kidding,” I tell him. “He's not usually like this. It's just . . .” I wave my hands about the cab, at a loss for words I want to use.

Betsy calms down when she sees me, which is pretty peculiar since she did just participate in a conspiracy to commit deicide—that is, to kill
me
—the other day. But then I remember how she changed teams quickly when it looked like I had the upper hand over Haringa.

“Get in,” I say. “We're going to visit J. Edgar Hoover, and we need your help.”

My lawyer shoves her onto my lap; I awkwardly hand her the book as we both get shoved into Smitty. He seems happy with the arrangement. I notice that his clothes are damp and his skin feels clammy.

“Gentlemen,” I say. “Meet Dorothy. Dorothy, I think you know the Scarecrow and the Cowardly Lion? And I, of course, am the Tin Man.”

“What the hell, Mr. Lono?” she demands. “What kind of crazy, wacked-out trip are you
on
?”

Smitty has us back on the road in a second, and we're tearing up the highway now. The radio is playing a weather report. They're calling for six inches of snow, and the roads are rumored to grow treacherous. My excitement builds. Nothing can stop us now, as long as I can keep my attorney from pawing Betsy before we get to our destination. He is eyeing her bosom like a starved hyena. His dalliance with Mother Hydra has made him so hungry.

“What kind of trip am I on?” I ask her. “The same trip we've all been on for years now, sweet child. But this trip has a terminus, even if it doesn't have an ending. We're going to see Hoover, and we're going to demand reparations for his attack on Innsmouth. We're going to show him this book, see, and tell him that my editor is ready to publish one chapter a month, every month—”

“With color photos,” Smitty ad-libs.

“Unless he cooperates,” my lawyer finishes. He cracks his knuckles like a bowl of walnuts.

“J. Edgar Hoover? Are you all insane?” Betsy says. “Don't you know how powerful he is?”

“More powerful than Nixon, maybe. How many administrations has he outlived, after all? More powerful, but also, in the end, mortal. Can we say the same thing about Nixon?” I riffle through the leaves in my bag. “Look! Did you even
do
your reading in Haringa's class before you signed up for extracurricular activities?” I show her the page I'd been looking for, one whose contents are so mind raping that I dare not even allude to them here except to suggest that in the text it describes another orgy, one in which Nixon was a satyr rather than a wallflower. And there's a line drawing. Listen. There are books out there, and the things written in those books will drive a man insane. This was one of them. Better to describe the horror within by telling you that I can't describe it. But I do show it to Betsy, and only because I have no choice. We've already abducted her, and we have very little time to fuck around. Better to make her a willing participant in this misadventure than to risk blowing it all if she decides to jump from the truck. She's a brave girl, Betsy, as she stares at the horrific page and barely blinks and bites her lips hard enough to start blood dribbling down her chin.

“Hey now, put that away,” Smitty says, scratching his crotch, “or I'll want to look at it too.”

“That was just on the recommended-reading list,” Betsy says softly. “And on reserve in the library. But whenever I went there, one of the boys already had it out. You met them yesterday.” She jerks suddenly, and I see a flash of brown leave her thigh.

“Easy, big man,” I tell my lawyer. “You can have what's left after Hoover's done with her.” I expect him to laugh, but she does instead.

“Oh boy, Mr. Lono—”

“Doctor. I was Uncle Lono, but now I'm feeling more like my old self. Call me doctor. I am, among other things, a doctor of journalism.”

“
Dr
. Lono, then.” She smiles, flashing perfect teeth. “Don't you know anything? If you're looking to bargain with J. Edgar Hoover, then you've chosen the wrong person for a sacrifice. Doesn't a with-it journalist like you know that Hoover is . . .” Suddenly sotto voce, as if her mother is in the cab with us, “a homosexualist.”

“Of course I know that! I was not born yesterday, sweetheart. I know Hoover is a homosexual. That's why we've got Smitty here,” I say. “Just in case.”

Smitty yawps and slams on the brakes, sending all of us headfirst into the dashboard.

——

Four years ago, the streets of Paris were filled with revolutionaries. Columbia University, home to the best and brightest and very much the wealthiest of New York City, was aflame. Suicide squads rose up from the bush and showed the leader of the free world that it did not own, and indeed, would
never
own Saigon. The Soviets rolled tanks into Czechoslovakia, while here at home, dark forces killed Bobby Kennedy and assassinated Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And in the midst of this madness and mayhem, Nixon won the presidency, but only by the slimmest of margins. Only because it seemed that the barbarians were at the gate, that the children of Levittown had eaten drugs and gone mad for anarchy and Negro music and wanton fornication. Nixon had beaten us all back with a coalition of cornpone racists and alcoholic insurance adjusters, the John Birch crowd and the “silent majority.” The silent majority, a term coined by Aristotle himself, though he was a happy old sodomite and his use of the term was meant to describe the dead.

And who knows? Maybe that is true. Perhaps the dead really are the silent majority. If so, the dead won America back. Dead Cthulhu lies dreaming, but he won't be for much longer because of Nixon's Machiavellian schemes and Faustian bargains, with all the ruthlessness implied by the former and supernatural traffic hinted at by the latter. But it wasn't just Nixon, who is in the end just another monster in a flannel suit that brought America to the brink of oblivion; it was us too. The hardhats betrayed the hippies, the hippies betrayed their women, everyone betrayed the Negro and the Chicano. The world fell not into the wild and liberating chaos of Freak Power, but into the bloody confusion of division and conquest. In four years, a lot can change.

In four seconds, even more can change. Following Smitty sending us all into the dashboard, we spin wildly, and the world is full of stars. Pages of
Unspeakable Cults
fly from the open window of the truck, escaping on evil wings like four-and-twenty demonic blackbirds baked into a pie. How long, oh Lord? How long? Is this how it's all to end? No great and terrible plan, no showdown with the forces of evil, no frantic hope, no McGovern surging ahead on the hopes of millions and setting the world aright for another generation?