The Atlas

BAD AIR

Up the glary gray roadstripe whose white and red truck-lights were the jewels on the necklace, up they went. He sat beside her, being nothing. The white dots in the passing lanes were other jewels. Effortlessly they ascended that black hill. They could see the drivers of the other cars and trucks pallidly entranced. Headlights glared on a comb of power wires. Headlights masturbated the wheeled blocks of trucks studded with hard lights. A car, a black die of death, came down the hill toward them bearing two red headlight-dots — a low roll. Then it was gone. Opening their palms like seashells, they reached the crest of the hill and began to descend into Los Angeles. He heard her clear her throat. The hot night air made his eyes water. His throat began to ache. He looked sidelong at her and saw her swallowing the bad air. For some reason he did not want her to#know that he had seen her. She did not see; she stared ahead, her interest in him long since molded white like a mongrel pigeon's feathers. They passed a clean white truck which was a wall of perfect cream. Their headlights picked across the rivets of another truck. The sky was already glowing putridly ahead, just beyond the black ridge. He took another breath and willed it to be as clean as the light-sweat on white trucks, but it burned inside him. They went down the dashed white line that dribbled into the night like an old man's urine. He took another breath and coughed. They passed a truck in the night, pleated like a dirty gray accordion. The air was getting murky; there were no white trucks anymore. They followed the curve down between black ridges, marked ahead by the pale lights of oncoming cars. He inhaled the stale smell of some chemical. Foolish rectangles of car-vision swept down across pavement and dead grass. Then at last he saw clearly the low horizon riddled with lights. The weariness of the air was something he could not win over; he could only deny it. Everything was such an effort! The dashed white line had become his only friend now, as long and straight and even as the row of screws in the window-moldings that ran the length of a Greyhound bus. — We'll be there soon, she said without looking at him, and he almost believed that he hadn't heard her. He was already forgetting that the air hurt. He was already saying to himself: I could get used to this. — He was already looking forward to being there.

To the ancient ones who lived behind horse-headed gates, people like him and her would have been appalling. Those two thought themselves at home everywhere, and so they had no home. Long before Magic Mountain the greasy-gray air had begun to smell like burning tires. Three patrol cars sped past. Through his window he saw ape of those skeletal-trailered trucks used to haul racks of new automobiles to the dealers' lots; it was carrying nothing but police cars. He and she both had sore throats by the time they passed the Pico Canyon exit. The air smeared itself more and more thickly over the mountains ahead. To the east, no mountains could even be seen. She drove rapidly. They continued to descend. His eyes began to water. I've never seen it this bad, she said. They passed another car. The driver was looking where the road led and shaking his head. Two men in the next car were gesturing to one another.

He had a terrible headache. Ahead, the air was a featureless curtain, opaque and purplish-gray. The hills nearby were paradoxically clear, their greenery standing out on the chalky eroded walls. It is always like that in a fog; the very clarity of one's immediate surroundings points up the obscurity ahead.

The sun was large, pale yellow and soft in the turbid sky.

She clenched the steering wheel. — Do you think they burned Uncle's store?

I don't know. I hope not. I like your uncle.

They were close enough to see the black smoke now. Another patrol car screamed past.

Later they were at a dinner in the expensive hills where the smell of burning was not so bad. A white woman said: You know. I was a student at Kent State. I was there when the National Guard shot Allison Krause and those other students. I saw it! I saw the blood! I breathed it all in. .

Somebody was coughing.

And I–I knew the pigs were the enemy, the woman said. No question about it. They were the pigs. And tonight, well, tonight I'm thinking that the police are protecting me. Thank God the police are standing between me and the enemy! And I'm trying to understand what changed. Because I don't feel that I'm any different; the police sure aren't any different—

His throat ached. He said: Doyou mean that the blacks are your enemy?

She put down her wineglass and he thought that she might cry. She said: Yes, they are. It's not fair that I have all the nice things I have and they have nothing. I understand that, I really do. Once I had black friends. But I'm afraid. And I hate them because they make me afraid. And that truck driver, the way they dragged him owt and beat him half to death. .

Another guest had come in quietly from the pool while they were talking, and he was black.

The black man said: So you've hated me for a week. I've hated you for half a thousand years. Nothing personal.

My friends, my friends! cried the host, waving his hands. Don't listen to what you're both saying; it's just the stress and this awful air. .