Move Under Ground | Page 8

a bit too closely.
I spent an hour nursing a coffee and watching the traffic. All of it was
heading south. Me, I rolled north in my dented but still fierce stolen
truck after stopping to smear some mud on the plates. The City was
farther off than I remembered it, or the old jalopy was slow, or the
speedometer a liar or the sun setting too quickly into the Pacific. It was

hard for me to travel alone again by car; I'd always preferred the hitch
or the bus or a smartly hopped rail. I stopped in a little town just after
dusk, one I had never stopped at before. It was called San Santo (Saint
Saint? Sounded auspicious, surely. The water tower poking up over the
trees off the road simply read SANS from my position).
The one thing the town was not without was alcohol, thankfully. The
diner had shut down, as had the store, once it turned dark. I'd never
seen corrugated metal gates pulled down over display windows in a
town so small. Two stoplights down the main drag, maybe a half-mile
square, only the steeple and the water tower topped three stories. Didn't
see a school. But bars. Oh the bars, four bars in a cul-du-sac waiting for
me at the end of this little town. The Tear Drop, The Dead End (they
must have really liked their cul-du-sac, those two), El Negro for
Mexicans and Secrets. I got out of the car and just stood. The aura of
beer, just hanging in the cooling air for me to inhale, for free. My body
remembered beer, oh yes it did, every pore a little mouth sucking in
individual molecules. I was dizzy. Oh, the music. Live accordions from
the Mexican joint, and murmured singing punctuated with ecstatic
tra-la-las and from Secrets, jazz. A hot five maybe, but with a banjo
instead of a piano. From the other two bars, a melody of guffaws and
snorting, heavy chortles sprinkled with yelps. Old friends hiding from
the deadening night. I wasn't feeling too social though; I could tell from
the laughter alone that if I hit The Dead End or walked into The Tear
Drop I'd be off the road and settled in for days or weeks of great
conversation, fun girls, maybe a job logging or pouring cement with
new rawboned buddies who'd thrill to the damn beatness of it all.
Tempting, but no. Sans Santo couldn't have me; I needed to get to the
City.
I also needed to get to a drink. I had fifteen fifty in my pocket and it
paralyzed me. I knew I could get the cheapest booze in El Negro, even
if The Dead End looked a bit dingier, but oh the bop. Saxaphone
swirling down a whirlpool, the bars of some old standard collapsing
into rough chaos I had to go towards it, my eyes off so that my soul
could listen more deeply without the distractions of light and shadow. I
started walking towards it when I heard a screech squawk and thump.

Then nothing but two bright lamps and a silhouette leaning over to
comfort the poor chicken that had been crushed under the narrow wheel
of the old car.
The Negro cradled the bird in his arms, so warm like Madonna, his skin
bronze in the light. And he turned to me and smiled wide, like he knew
me. Like he recognized me maybe, from television or the papers. My
knees locked and the old fear returned, my stomach dropping into my
bowels.
"Peckerwood," he said, still smiling, "Blood's been spilled, so I been
called. Take this bird inside. Have 'em cook it up for me. I gotta set." I
took the chicken. "You don't mind," he said, nice and slow, but he
definitely said, he did not ask. I didn't mind, not once I saw the horn the
driver was pulling out of the front side passenger seat of the car. I led
them into Secrets, my decision made, and waved the chicken, still alive
(one stunted wing fluttered, but its eyes were closed and content) under
the bouncer's nose. He nodded economically towards the freckle-faced
girl leaning by the kitchen door. She smoothed down her apron when
she saw me. I lost the Negro, handed over the bird, found a seat,
snatched a cocktail from the table next to mine and blew my mind. The
music had stopped; so had the chatter around me. The only thing that
was, the only thing in the icy now of San Santo's beerlight section was
the Negro. He was slow, head low, practically on the nod, but he was a
pillar of his race. The other saxman shuffled off the stage to make way
for this man, who