Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
It lay there on Queenie, congealing in its death throes. He and I glanced at each other and
giggled at prospects of the pizza queen devouring the pizza. We feared another hyena round
that would render us helpless among big, trailer-park women.
Queenie caught us snickering and cried out, “Balls, cried the queen! If I had 'um I'd be
king!” The trailer wasn't at all like Marcia's place. Both places were tattered, but the trailer was
brightly lit and slovenly, an example of the emerging phrase,
trailer trash
. It reflected none of
the Age of Aquarius. It was a dump. I suspected Queenie's cry of balls and kingship was regu-
lar and predictable, and sure enough.
We entertained the three females briefly, answering their questions on how it felt to be col-
lege students and never having to work but then facing death in Vietnam as soon as we were
done but then being able to finally die for our country, which should make anybody feel bet-
ter about being a worthless piece o' shit for four years straight. “God, I hate those chickenshit
fuckers!” Queenie cried out before leveling her gaze for the follow up. “Are you guys chicken-
shit?”
We pledged our sincere hope that we were not chickenshit and said we needed to get
back. To our amazement, Janis and Grace were up and out and taking us back to Marcia's. We
picked up a hitchhiker with a backpack on the way whose name was Clem or Zeke or Luke,
who said he wasn't too sure where he was headed, except for into the future, unless we were
going backward, and nobody could be sure we weren't. Clem was a hayseed who'd been to
town and gone home but couldn't stay home, because of what he'd seen in town. Oh, those
were the days, my friend. He too seemed uncertain on the plains of reality awaiting discovery.
So his backpack preceded him into the backseat, where it and the three of us got squeezed
like sardines as Janis showed us what that li'l sumbitch could do. It was her turn for a hyena
chorus, spinning snow brodies between the ditches.
Clem got out with Kenny and me practically bonded by peril. We trooped into Marcia's
where the gang had leveled at ninety thousand feet. Seated around the big dining room table,
everyone listened to Ray Haney's instructions for capping his acid. “It ain't nothing to it. You
just scoop a little fucker in a powder 'n 'en you scoop a other half 'n 'en you press 'um together.
Like so. Don't lick your fingers. It gums everthang. 'N don't worry. You'll git of on account of
what soaks in. I mean this shit's a McCoy.”
Clem wanted to try this intriguing task, capping the magic and absorbing the dust on his
fingertips. He broke into high-speed hayseed with Ray Haney like it was old home week for a
couple cuzzins from the liberated side of Podunk Holler, and soon enough he reckoned Ray
had a thing or two coh-rect. Then he too climbed to orbital altitude. Or maybe he only re-
membered what it had been like or how he imagined it to be. He glanced toward the kitchen at
the sound of tiny clattering—a sound we'd long ignored, because it was only the mice playing
hide and seek among the dinner dishes and pots and pans. Lindsay explained that they made
more noise at first because they had to get a salad bowl moved over in the sink right under
