to Lewiston in Androscoggin County, and the quickest way to get
there is by I-95. The turnpike isn't such a good road to take if
you're hitchhiking, though; the state police are apt to boot anyone
they see off--even if you're just standing on the ramp they give
you the boot--and if the same cop catches you twice, he's apt to
write you a ticket, as well. So I took Route 68, which winds southwest
from Bangor. It's a pretty well-traveled road, and if you don't
look like an out-and-out psycho, you can usually do pretty well.
The cops leave you alone, too, for the most part.
My first lift was with a morose insurance
man and took me as far as Newport. I stood at the intersection of
Route 68 and Route 2 for about twenty minutes, then got a ride with
an elderly gentleman who was on his way to Bowdoinham. He kept grabbing
at his crotch as he drove. It was as if he was trying to catch something
that was running around in there.
"My wife allus told me I'd wind up in the
ditch with a knife in my back if I kept on picking up hitchhikers,"
he said, "but when I see a young fella standin t'side of the rud,
I allus remember my own younger days. Rode my thumb quite a bit,
so I did. Rode the rods, too. And lookit this, her dead four year
and me still a-goin, drivin this same old Dodge. I miss her somethin
turrible." He snatched at his crotch. "Where you headed, son?"
I told him I was going to Lewiston, and
why.
"That's turrible," he said. "Your ma! I'm
so sorry!"
His sympathy was so strong and spontaneous
that it made the corners of my eyes prickle. I blinked the tears
back. The last thing in the world I wanted was to burst out crying
in this old man's old car, which rattled and wallowed and smelled
quite strongly of pee.
"Mrs. McCurdy--the lady who called
me--said it isn't that serious. My mother's still young, only forty-eight."
"Still! A stroke!" He was genuinely dismayed.
He snatched at the baggy crotch of his green pants again, yanking
with an old man's oversized, clawlike hand. "A stroke's allus serious!
Son, I'd take you to the CMMC myself--drive you right up to the
front door--if I hadn't promised my brother Ralph I'd take him up
to the nursin home in Gates. His wife's there, she has that forgettin
disease, I can't think what in the world they call it, Anderson's
or Alvarez or somethin like that--"
"Alzheimer's," I said.
"Ayuh, prob'ly I'm gettin it myself. Hell,
I'm tempted to take you anyway."
"You don't need to do that," I said. "I
can get a ride from Gates easy."
"Still," he said. "Your mother! A stroke!
Only forty-eight!" He grabbed at the baggy crotch of his pants.
"Fucking truss!" he cried, then laughed--the sound was both desperate
and amused. "Fucking rupture! If you stick around, son, all your
works start fallin apart. God kicks your ass in the end, let me
tell you. But you're a good boy to just drop everythin and go to
her like you're doin."
"She's a good mom," I said, and once again
I felt the tears bite. I never felt very homesick when I went away
to school--a little bit the first week, that was all--but I felt
homesick then. There was just me and her, no other close relatives.
I couldn't imagine life without her. Wasn't too bad, Mrs. McCurdy
had said; a stroke, but not too bad. Damn old lady better be telling
the truth, I thought, she just better be.
We rode in silence for a little while.
It wasn't the fast ride I'd hoped for--the old man maintained a
steady forty-five miles an hour and sometimes wandered over the
white line to sample the other lane--but it was a long ride, and
that was really just as good. Highway 68 unrolled before us, turning
its way through miles of woods and splitting the little towns that
were there and gone in a slow blink, each one with its bar and its
self- service gas station: New Sharon, Ophelia, West Ophelia, Ganistan
(which had once been Afghantistan, strange but true), Mechanic Falls,
Castle View, Castle Rock. The bright blue of the sky dimmed as the
day drained out of it; the old man turned on first his parking lights
and then his headlights. They were the high beams but he didn't
seem to notice, not even when cars coming the other way flashed
their own high beams at him.
"My sister'n-law don't even remember
her own name," he said. "She don't know aye, yes, no, nor maybe.
That's what that Anderson's Disease does to you, son. There's a
look in her eyes . . . like she's sayin 'Let me out of here'
. . . or would say it, if she could think of the words. Do
you know what I mean?"
"Yes," I said. I took a deep breath and
wondered if the pee I smelled was the old man's or if he maybe had
a dog that rode with him sometimes. I wondered if he'd be offended
if I rolled down my window a little. Finally I did. He didn't seem
to notice, any more than he noticed the oncoming cars flashing their
highs at him.
Around seven o'clock we breasted a hill
in West Gates and my chauffeur cried, "Lookit, son! The moon! Ain't
she a corker?"
She was indeed a corker--a huge orange
ball hoisting itself over the horizon. I thought there was nevertheless
something terrible about it. It looked both pregnant and infected.
Looking at the rising moon, a sudden and awful thought came to me:
what if I got to the hospital and my ma didn't recognize me? What
if her memory was gone, completely shot, and she didn't know aye,
yes, no, nor maybe? What if the doctor told me she'd need someone
to take care of her for the rest of her life? That someone would
have to be me, of course; there was no one else. Goodbye college.
What about that, friends and neighbors?
"Make a wish on it, boyo!" the old man
cried. In his excitement his voice grew sharp and unpleasant--it
was like having shards of glass stuffed into your ear. He gave his
crotch a terrific tug. Something in there made a snapping sound.
I didn't see how you could yank on your crotch like that and not
rip your balls right off at the stem, truss or no truss. "Wish you
make on the ha'vest moon allus comes true, that's what my father
said!"
So
I wished that my mother would know me when I walked into her room,
that her eyes would light up at once and she would say my name.
I made that wish and immediately wished I could have it back again;
I thought that no wish made in that fevery orange light could come
to any good.
"Ah, son!" the old man said. "I wish my
wife was here! I'd beg forgiveness for every sha'ap and unkind word
I ever said to her!"
Twenty minutes later, with the last light
of the day still in the air and the moon still hanging low and bloated
in the sky, we arrived in Gates Falls. There's a yellow blinker
at the intersection of Route 68 and Pleasant Street. Just before
he reached it, the old man swerved to the side of the road, bumping
the Dodge's right front wheel up over the curb and then back down
again. It rattled my teeth. The old man looked at me with a kind
of wild, defiant excitement--everything about him was wild, although
I hadn't seen that at first; everything about him had that broken-glass
feeling. And everything that came out of his mouth seemed to be
an exclamation.
"I'll take you up there! I will, yessir!
Never mind Ralph! Hell with him! You just say the word!"
I wanted to get to my mother, but
the thought of another twenty miles with the smell of piss in the
air and cars flashing their brights at us wasn't very pleasant.
Neither was the image of the old fellow wandering and weaving across
four lanes of Lisbon Street. Mostly, though, it was him. I couldn't
stand another twenty miles of crotch- snatching and that excited
broken-glass voice.
"Hey, no," I said, "that's okay. You go
on and take care of your brother." I opened the door and what I'd
feared happened--he reached out and took hold of my arm with his
twisted old man's hand. It was the hand with which he kept tearing
at his crotch.
"You just say the word!" he told me. His
voice was hoarse, confidential. His fingers were pressing deep into
the flesh just below my armpit. "I'll take you right to the hospital
door! Ayuh! Don't matter if I never saw you before in my life nor
you me! Don't matter aye, yes, no, nor maybe! I'll take you right
. . . there!"
"It's okay," I repeated, and all at once
I was fighting an urge to bolt out of the car, leaving my shirt
behind in his grip if that was what it took to get free. It was
as if he were drowning. I thought that when I moved, his grip would
tighten, that he might even go for the nape of my neck, but he didn't.
His fingers loosened, then slipped away entirely as I put my leg
out. And I wondered, as we always do when an irrational moment of
panic passes, what I had been so afraid of in the first place. He
was just an elderly carbon-based life-form in an elderly Dodge's
pee-smelling ecosystem, looking disappointed that his offer had
