Tag: precarious lee (Page 7 of 11)

You can’t lighten your load. Drop a pound and pick up a year. Life will always match you. It’s hard enough to keep a constant bearing working at cross-purposes to time’s tide, Precarious Lee thought. Moderate what was once excessive. Pare what has overgrown. Stop eating so much shit and smoking so many cigarettes. Take the easy line through the curve, he figured, in hopes that there would be another curve in a mile or two. Attack the turn and it bites back, eventually.

Precarious had been living out in Stinson Beach in some rich friend’s guest house. He walked down to the beach when he first moved in, and didn’t see the point in it. You stare at it? Great, now lemme stare at the next thing over the horizon, Precarious thought, although he would freely admit that the sea smelled good. Then the whales started beaching themselves every day and nothing smelled good any more, and Precarious knew that he needed an open window, one that was doing 70 mph and with an eye out for cops, and other undesirable road companions.

The scientists couldn’t explain the whales’ behavior, and tow trucks foundered in the sand. Bulldozers were needed, and still the whales came, and they began to pile up into a blubbery beachhead, three or four whales high in places. Toppling was feared.  Several lions were imported to eat the carcasses, but their introduction into the situation caused more problems than it solved. Ambergris was discovered within the body of one of the creatures, leading to an economic boom, but the crash was enormous. It hit suddenly and then instead of dead whales on the beach, there were dead whales on the beach with their insides hanging out and no one had any money.

Precarious was not a religious man in any sense, but he couldn’t figure any way to interpret what was going on other than as a sign from God to skip town for a bit. Maybe that was what faith was, he thought: the ability to see the Lord in the small things, in the cup of coffee, in the Tuesday afternoons. Anybody could see God when whales are mass suiciding themselves on your doorstep. That’s just blatant, he figured, and he had a 1972 Ford Thunderbird in Copper Fire, which was only available as a Glamour Paint option, and a 429 cubic inch V8, so he was equipped to light out for the territories when God gave him the high sign.

The Shoreline Highway to the Panoramic, and across Cataract Creek to the 101. Mount Tamalpais out the driver’s window, and Bobby I think I can see your house from here. Precarious always told himself that joke when he passed the mountain, decades now, and he always laughed. North, around the city and catch SR-37 at Novato, which goes to I-80, which will get you to America in no time at all, any place you want to go.

He drove for hours, and then all night, and then all day, and when he had lost track of the calendar and his eyes turned into headlights and his ass into fine Corinthian leather, then up ahead he saw the on-ramp to Route 77, shining and brand-new, freshly lain in. The top was so damned black, and the mac had been tarred with a jeweler’s precision. Bright as a smile, and twice as inviting, and Precarious slammed his foot on the gas and sped off. He knew a trap when he saw one, and the on-ramp chased him down the highway for several miles, screaming racial epithets and shooting at him. Precarious found the real on-ramp tied up and stuffed into a gas station bathroom stall a little bit down the road, and untied it, and got on the Interstitial.

Precarious never stopped at the attractions on Route 77. He was pretty sure those were traps, too. Tourist attractions were for tourists, and there were no tourists on 77, at least not for long. Tourists are legally considered game on the Interstitial, and if they’re in season and you’re under your limit, then happy hunting. Precarious never indulged, but he also wouldn’t drive too close to the Nuclear Family Trucksters. It was like standing right next to a gazelle on the Savannah. Should never let the circle of life encircle you, Precarious thought.

Don’t go where you’re not wanted. Trust the signs that say “Beware.” Be fucking aware. People ambled into situations, Precarious noticed, like a broken nose wasn’t even an option. When he was a kid, his father nudged him and motioned to a fellow walking down the street rather proudly. “Like the doctor vaccinated him against an ass kicking,” Precarious’ dad said and he had always remembered that. Precarious also remembered that his father was a petty little prick, and that proud fellow was likely a decent sort. He still liked the line, though.

Route 77 had all kinds of roadside attractions for the tourists to see. There were fly-by-night zoos, and swim-by-night aquariums. There were many water parks, but there were many more half-filled Mr. Turtle pools that could be rented for an hour, and Precarious did not see the appeal in those at all. The Romero Mall parking lots were always full at the outlet stores, which sold slightly-defective merchandise, and the inlet stores, which sold wildly-defective merchandise. Precarious bought a hoodie at one of those places and it tried to strangle him using its own drawstring as a garrotte. After that, Precarious stopped clothes shopping on Route 77. Ernie was gonna fondle you, but his clothes didn’t come to life at all, let alone murderously.

The World’s Smallest Ball of Twine seemed like an obvious scam to Precarious, and when it turned out that the owners had been kidnapping tourists and making art out of them for years, he wasn’t all that sympathetic. Authentic Indian villages, and lone bison in cages outside gas stations, and ghost towns, and abandoned railroad stops, and places people used to live, but now can be visited. There was a freak show, but the freaks pooled their savings and bought a sandwich place. Mom Mum, the Silentist Lady in America, bakes the bread.

Battlefields limned the highway, and misplaced pilgrims emptied out of their mini-vans, and they walked down into a grassy field, well-kept and plain, and breathed in deeply, these pilgrims, and were able to imagine the deaths of young men so much more vividly than they could if they were back safe at home, far from a battlefield, and Precarious hated those pilgrim fucks. Grief requires ownership, and they were bystanders. They were tourists, not pilgrims. All pilgrims are tourists, he thought.

In the Low Desert, there was Panamint Castle. It was constructed entirely from the surrounding rock, and by one man, and over the course of forty years, which was impressive until you saw it and realized how small it was. Maybe the size of a one-bedroom apartment. Not forty years work, Precarious thought when his back hurt bad enough to pull over one time. The masonry was acceptable, at best. Somewhere near the water, there was D***** W****, which was the Happiest and Copyright Lawyeriest Pace on Route 77.

Alternate history buffs zipped up and down the Interstitial. Precarious didn’t mind them. Buffs kept their car interiors immaculate, and had state capitals to see in Westylvania, and Shasta, and Kanawha, and Lincoln, and Jefferson. Postcards to be stamped with a Cascadian mark, and mailed to the Cimarron Republic. Pick up your own postcard, make your own souvenir. Ain’t that America, Precarious thought. So little history that people insist on making some up.

He had nothing to see but everything, and America, and the road which ran rudely over the horizon and away, always away, but he had a V8 engine and nothing to do and a front yard full of dead whales, so Precarious Lee turned down the radio, which was playing an advertisement for something he did not want, and lit another cigarette even though he had promised himself to cut down. There was a curve ahead and he took the easy line through it, and tried not to look like a tourist on Route 77, which is the road to Little Aleppo. It is a hard truck, but God will forgive you the miles.

America was a highway, Precarious believed. People needed places to live, and there were mountains and lakes, but the important part was the road. He’d heard poets call it a ribbon, and that was fine, but when people compared the highway to a river, Precarious got annoyed. River of commerce, river of migration. Bullshit to that, he thought. Rivers flow with or without us, rivers don’t care, rivers go where God told them to. The highway goes where it’s needed. Geology and topography and time makes a river, but the road got laid down by men just like the ones he worked with. Road crews are all the same.

The rivers brought the gold to California, but the road brought the people to the gold. That was the Lee family story, as much as Precarious knew of it, or cared. His ancestors were poor in England, then poor somewhere in the South, and then there was a healthy stretch of poverty out West. Precarious could understand the rich and powerful caring about their lineage, but he was quite sure that all his forebears were assholes in rickety shacks. I appreciate that ya got me this far, but I’ll be fine on my own, Precarious figured.

It worried him how fine he was on his own, though. He’d been married, but that was over a long time, and the kids were grown. Precarious had given his wife the house when they divorced. Kids lived there, he figured. Never got around to getting another, just rented from then on. There was always a friend-of-a-friend with a guest house, or a Deadhead landlord who’d take his rent in backstage passes and the occasional piece of insider gossip. Precarious always got a real good deal, and he saved the money Uncle Sam and his ex-wife didn’t get, and the money he didn’t save, he spent on cars.

Precarious was back and forth about Plymouths, but the ’74 Duster had a 360 cubic inch engine and a four-speed manual on the column where it should be, and it came in a two-toned paint scheme. Precarious thought that was the best kind of paint scheme, and he got one with a Spinnaker White roof and a body of Basin Street Blue. He slid it into fourth on Highway 101 somewhere outside Novato and pointed the car towards America. Precarious Lee had no particular place to go.

He didn’t tell people about the driving, sometimes. Business, he’d say, important band business to explain where he’d been. He wasn’t embarrassed, but he had gotten tired of the conversation. You drive for work, people would say, and Precarious would tell them that he liked that, too. I could drive until the engine seizes, he said once. Precarious hung out with a crowd that prided itself on accepting each other’s quirks, but he could read a face.

Someone always knew where he was, or at least that he was out on the road. He’d call every couple days, his ex-wife or his son. Sometimes he called his daughter, but the conversations were short, and they hadn’t spoken since she got an answering machine. Precarious had written her a letter, but torn it up, and then another and another. He had more paper, and there was always a 48-hour diner open on Route 77.

The on-ramp was doing karaoke in a Tahoe drag bar, and Precarious let it finish singing Mississippi Queen before slamming on the gas and shooting down glass-smooth 77. The Duster was humming and the road was clear, and the billboards all advertised places you had passed ten miles back. Route 77 had all the roadside attractions you could hope for: there was the World’s Smallest Ball of Twine, and Window Drug, and Mount Dickmore, which is just like Mount Rushmore except the sculptures are not of faces.

Precarious drove south and passed Big Top, the circus town. Most of the circus-folk lived in Winter Garden, in Florida, but even a circus town has some folks no one can deal with, and they found their way to the Interstitial. The bearded lady and her fourteen bearded children had a place. OJ the Boy-Faced Dog was tied up in the yard. Lobster Boy lived quietly with his Craw Daddy, unless they were drinking again. Gumbo the elephant yearned for the Bayou.

He sped through the Great Planes, which are very flat. A herd of bison tens of thousands strong stamped across the highway in front of him very early in the morning, and there was steam coming off of their shag  in the pink light, and buffaloboys on their horses egged them on and apologized with the brims of their hats for making Precarious stop. He flashed his headlights at them and lit a cigarette, and smoked it, and stripped it into the ashtray, and lit another cigarette, and thought to himself, Goddamn, that’s a lot of bison.

Route 77 would take you where you needed to be, and you’d make good time, but everything else was a crapshoot. U-turns were forbidden, but if you could figure out how, you could make an E-turn. The rest areas were perpetually at war with one another, and there was a bathroom bombing or two before the scenic routes stepped in to mediate. The truck stops were giant steel walls that actually stopped trucks, and sometimes the shoulder would pull over onto you. There were highwaymen and slavers and all the types that had always sprouted up alongside highways like venomous dandelions. It wasn’t always safe.

Precarious kept his eyes on the road, and knew the Rules of the Road, and he also figured that the safest thing was to stay home. It was a free country, still, he’d been told, and he was a big boy. There was nothing wrong with the Interstate, it was the best since the Romans, and Precarious knew just about every bit of it, plus the belt roads and the city feeders and back ways. He might even know a frontage road or two that let you bypass the weigh stations, and he loved every crumbling mile. Man can’t stay home every night, though, drives him batty, and so Precarious took the Interstitial.

Somewhere in the darkness, in the middle of the Low Desert, Precarious coasted the Duster to the side of the road, way over far, and he got out and looked up. He had never learned the constellations, so he drew his own, and named them after people he loved. The moon revolved around the Milky Way and Precarious got back in the car, and pointed it west just like every Lee had done before him. He found first gear right where he left it, and second, too, and soon Precarious was at cruising speed on Route 77, which is the road to Little Aleppo.