Potshot

Chapter 35

HAWK HAD ACQUIRED a black Ford Explorer, properly registered with a new inspection sticker. I didn't ask him about it. He and I and Vinnie, with gear, were on the road the next day by 8:00 in the morning. Hawk was driving. Vinnie was in the back seat. The sun was shining directly into our faces. I was drinking coffee and eating two donuts. Donuts make excellent travel food.

"We coulda flown," Vinnie said. "Take us four or five hours."

"With a bunch of infernal devices?" Hawk said.

"You mean guns?" Vinnie said.

"Sho 'nuff," Hawk said.

"Hell," Vinnie said. "You coulda driven the guns out, and I coulda flown out next week, first class, and met you there."

"We may all wish you did," I said. "An hour out of Boston and you're already bitching."

V'mnie almost smiled.

"We there yet?" he said.

I had a CD in the player. Carol Sloane and Clark Terry.

"She can sing for a white broad," Hawk said.

"The best," I said.

"Keeps right up with the black guy," Hawk said.

"Astonishing isn't it?" I said.

We turned off the Mass Pike at Sturbridge and went west on Route 84. We weren't in a hurry. We drove through Connecticut, which was low and green and suburban. We went across New York state and crossed the Hudson River near Fishkill. We crossed the Delaware near Port Jervis and after awhile picked up Route 81 at Scranton. The country had grown hillier. We played CDs: Carol Sloane, and Sarah, and Bob Stewart, and Sinatra, Mel Torme, and Ella, and some Clifford Brown. Hawk insisted on a couple of Afro-Cuban CDs that gave me a stomachache, but I tried to stay open-minded. We talked about sex and baseball, and food and drink, and the days when Hawk and I were fighters. When we exhausted that topic we talked about sex, and basketball, and the days when we were soldiers. We stopped along the way for more coffee, and more donuts, and peanut butter Nabs, and prewrapped ham sandwiches, and pre-condimented cheeseburgers, and chicken deepfried in cholesterol.

"We got to find better chop," Hawk said. "We keep eating this crap we'll be dead before we get there."

"Maybe the next place will have a salad bar," I said.

"With some of that orange French dressing," Hawk said.

"Which is also excellent for slicking your hair back."

"My hair?" Hawk said.

"If you had some."

"Used to have an Afro," Hawk said.

"I remember," I said. "You looked like a short Artis Gilmore."

"Handsome," Hawk said, "and distinguished, but too easy to get hold of in a scuffle. My present do is more practical."

In the back Vinnie looked out the window and said very little. Vinnie wasn't much for small talk.

We stopped the first night at Hagerstown, Maryland, near the Antietam battlefield, and slept in a Holiday Inn. We drove south. We listened to Tony Bennett and Carmen McRea, Anita O'Day, Stan Kenton, Bobby Hackett and Johnny Hartrnan.

Going through West Virginia, near Martinsburg, Vinnie said, "You guys ever listen to anything recorded this century?"

Hawk said, "No."

"Don't you have nothing like Pink Floyd, or Procol Harum?"

"How 'bout The Ink Spots?" Hawk said.

Vinnie shook his head and settled back to look out the window.

We drove down the horsy green Shenandoah Valley with the Alleghenies to the west and Blue Ridge to the east. We hit Knoxville that evening. We crossed the Mississippi at Memphis a day later. Fort Smith, Little Rock, Oklahoma City. I felt like Bobby Troup. Shoney's, Shakey's, McDonald's, Burger King, KFC. I felt my arteries clogging. Gulf, Mobile, Esso, Pilot. Truck stops with buffet tables where you could overeat vastly for maybe six bucks. Hawk and I had a running bet as to who could count the most desirable women. By the time we crossed the Texas panhandle I had already spotted two. Hawk said it wasn't fair, that my standards were too low.

"You have to adjust," I said, "to your environment."

We went through Amarillo. Big John's Steak House. Tucumcari. Uphill to Albuquerque. We slept in Holiday Inns, and Quality Courts, and Hampton Courts, and. Motel Sixes. We drank coffee and Coke and bottled water. We pulled into rest stops and mingled with fat people who wore pink shorts and plastic baseball caps. I was leading the desirable women contest two to one. Sometimes the people wore plaid shorts and plastic baseball caps. They were of both genders, I think. Motor homes got in our way. They moved like odd beetles, slowly, hugging the edge of the highway, driven uneasily by aging people, many of whom were almost certainly wearing pink shorts. Big rigs with fifteen gears slowed us down on the upgrades, and tore past us on the downgrades, trying to make time, which as we know, is money. Small sub sandwiches, biscuits and gravy. Biscuits and sausage. Biscuits and sausage with gravy. Chicken fried steak with cream gravy.

"Used to sleep with a woman was a professor at Harvard," Hawk said. "Red-headed woman. Taught literature."

I was driving. Hawk was in the passenger seat. Vinnie was in the back seat gazing out the window.

"She felt I was," and his voice deepened and his accent disappeared, "the perfect embodiment of untrammeled sensuality. Unrestrained by the stale ethics or conventions of the state."

"I thought that was you," I said.

"What the fuck she talking about?" Vinnie said.

"Meant she liked a lot of unusual ways to do it," Hawk said.

"Nothing wrong with that," Vinnie said.

"Nuthin'," Hawk said.

The next morning we came down out of the mountains west of Albuquerque, and by evening were in the desert.