CHAPTER ELEVEN: HASTA LA VISTA BABY
Nightmare Alley had earned its name just as honestly as other stretches of road had earned theirs. Dead man’s Curve and Devil’s Backbone were no more than a Lover’s Lane compared with the stretch of road that joined Topeka and Atchison, Kansas. By day it was a narrow two lane road rolling through Kansas farm country and joining several rural communities to the Capital. But as if it were some sort of asphalt version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the highway transformed into a dark and snaking monster at sunset. The inky blackness that engulfed the road at night sucked in and swallowed any light that threatened to penetrate her cloak.
One moment a traveller might think themselves on a straight stretch of road that in reality was curving to the left or right. It would cause the driver to suddenly pull hard in one direction or another to keep the lane. The denizens of the night lurked along her shoulders. A leaping deer or scurrying raccoon might suddenly challenge the unwary driver further; Nightmare Alley had claimed a score of inattentive drivers whose restless spirits ranged just outside the edge of vision. “They seek to warn but have lost their power to intervene.” As Jacob Marley had intoned to Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol.
So it was that on the night of my father’s burial I found myself navigating a road that otherwise I would have avoided after dark.
The temperature was in the mid-thirties but the wind chill on the speeding motorcycle brought the temperature down to the teens. The cold sliced through my leather and heavy clothing cutting into my flesh like an icy knife. I let my mind travel its own road to help me ignore the freezing needles of the road I now travelled.
I wandered back in time reliving the night in 1969 when my mother revealed that the father, I thought was long dead in fact lived. My mother had told me the true circumstances of his accident and for forty five minutes had desperately tried to justify her lie.
She pleaded for my forgiveness, which because she was my mother, I gave her. As I look back on that night, knowing the state of dementia that over the years my mother’s mind has fallen into, perhaps it was easier for her to pretend Lee Roy had died rather than live with the fact that she could never be with him again. I do not doubt that he was truly the love of her life.
***
My mother ended her explanation as the phone rang.
“It’s for you,” she said through her tears, “it’s your father.”
We spoke, he and I, for over an hour. Lee Roy promised that he would make up for lost time and be a true father to me. He explained that due to his accident and ultimate recovery the Governor had pardoned him.
“I guess he figures I suffered enough,” he said half joking.
I told him of my life, of my likes and dislikes and he listened attentively. My mother sat on the edge of her bed chain smoking her Bel-Aires and listening to each word I spoke. As if sensing she was near, Lee Roy finally asked to speak with my mother. As I handed her the phone, I heard him say, “I love you son.”
***
That phrase echoed through my mind as I navigated the shadowy turns of Nightmare Alley. Had he really loved me, or did he love the baby that he had known.
***
My room was at the back of the house and had once been a porch before someone had enclosed it. A small window that had never been covered, near my bed, connected my room with my mothers. I opened the window slightly and lay awake deep into the night listening to them talk. Somewhere around two in the morning I fell asleep.
***
Sleep did sound good at this point, but I still had many cold miles to go before I made it home. I pulled into the little service station at Valley Falls just as they were closing for the night. I convinced the same greasy station attendant I had thrown money at earlier in the day to stay open long enough for me to gas up. I tossed a buck and a quarter on the counter, Wasn’t that what I paid earlier today? The little café on the hill had closed for the day and all the goat fuckers had gone home to fuck their hairy, garbage eating wives.
I spied the stained coffee pot sitting on a hot plate behind the counter and indicated it to the greasy attendant. He grabbed a dirty Styrofoam cup from the trash can and rinsed it in a greasy sink. He poured the remains of the sludge in the cup and handed it to me. I offered him two bits, but he declined it saying, “I wuz gonna toss it anyways.” This crap was first cousin to the tar I had at the café that morning. In the darkened parking lot of the service station, I choked it down as I cleared the taste from my mouth with a cigarette. Hell, this wasn’t coffee it’s the remains of a spittoon. At least it’s hot.
I hit the highway, my thoughts at once falling into the rhythm of the road and going back to that time that a small taste of what could have been entered our lives.
***
Shirley was the happiest she had been in years. Soon she would be back with her Lee Roy. Soon they would be together again, and nothing would ever separate them again. She started putting a package together for Lee Roy.
She collected photos of herself, Jimmy and Patty. She wrote long letters catching Lee up on all he had missed. Shirley had Jimmy draw several pictures so that she could show Lee what a fine artist his son was. At the present Lee was at the convalescent home in Houston, Texas.
He had assured Shirley that as soon as he was released from rehabilitation, he would get a job and send for her and the children. Shirley talked to Lee Roy every day on the phone and watched the mail every afternoon for a letter from her beloved.
Patty carried the thick manila envelope in from the mailbox, “Mail mommy,” she called out. Shirley ran in from the kitchen and grabbed the envelope from her daughter. In a neat block letter across the front of the envelope she read, Shirley George and children, 1235 Belleview, Topeka, Kansas 66601. Her heart sang with joy. Lee had used his name for her surname and had not used her legal name of Stewart in addressing the envelope. She ripped it open, letters and pictures poured out.
“Jimmy come here,” Shirley called out.
He rushed into the room. Shirley handed him a letter and a Polaroid snapshot. The photo was of a tall thin man with thinning black hair. He was seated, legs crossed, in an overstuffed chair.
“That’s your father,” Shirley said.
Jimmy took his letter and went to his room to read it. Shirley finally had an address for Lee Roy, and she left at once for the Post Office to mail her package to him. That night Shirley spoke with Lee Roy on the phone. She told him that she had mailed her package to him. He said that he would be watching for it. Lee Roy also told Shirley that he was being discharged from the convalescent home the next day and he would contact her again when he was settled. Lee Roy assured her that it would not be long before he would be coming for them.
Shirley anxiously waited for word from Lee Roy. She went nowhere in the evenings for fear she would miss his call. When she arrived home from work each afternoon the mailbox was her first stop. It had been two weeks since Shirley had last spoken to Lee Roy, and she was getting worried. It was a Saturday and she resolved herself to call Cecil on Sunday if she had not heard from Lee Roy by the end of the day.
“Mommy,” it was Patty coming in from outside, “you got a package.” Shirley rushed to her daughter and grabbed the package out of her hands. It was another thick manila envelope but the handwriting on this one was not the neat block lettering on the earlier envelope from Lee Roy. This envelope was addressed to Shirley Stewart.
With trembling hands, she ripped the envelope open and poured the contents on her bed. Every letter she and the children had written, every picture Jimmy had drawn, every photo she had sent now lay upon her bed torn and ripped into hundreds of pieces. Amid the shredded pieces of paper was a sheet of plain blue stationary. Scrawled across its face in a hurried script was this message;
If you want to know who the father of your bastard child is why don’t you look at Wesley? Leave my husband alone, whore. Wilma.
Jimmy was gone, spending the day swimming at the YMCA and Patty had gone outside to play in the yard. Shirley sat on the edge of her bed holding the piece of blue stationary and staring at the pile of trash that had been a brief dream, a moment of hope. She folded the piece of stationary and placed it in the envelope. Rising up from the bed she slowly walked into the kitchen and removed a roll of scotch tape from the utility drawer.
Returning to her bedroom Shirley sat down on the edge of the bed. Searching through the scraps of paper she started matching up pieces and taping them together. With tears streaming down her face, she worked carefully, methodically repairing photos, pictures and letters alike. Shirley had always had a mind for repairing and putting things back together. Jigsaw, word and crossword puzzles held little challenge for her. She was sure that with just a little perseverance she could fix this too.
***
At Atchison I crossed the high and narrow steel girded Missouri River Bridge back into Missouri. I was back on Highway 59 and approximately twenty cold miles from home. The motorcycle’s tires hummed as they skimmed over the bridge's steel deck. Looking up I saw the Welcome to Missouri sign as I passed under it. “Missouri The Show Me State” it proudly proclaimed! Show me my bed, I thought.
Kansas, Nightmare Alley and the bridge all disappeared behind me. The road hummed under my tires as a light mist started to fall. Great, couldn’t have waited until I got home. My mind took me away from my miserable conditions and back to the last time I had ever spoken to Lee Roy Everett George. It was almost like it had happened yesterday.
***
It was my fifteenth birthday, we were still living in Topeka at 5541 Southwest Twenty Ninth Street and my Mom was at work. The phone rang and when I answered a familiar voice wished me a Happy Birthday. I asked him where he was and he told me he was calling from a payphone by the beach in Corpus Christi, Texas. While we were dealing with thirty degree temperatures on this 25th day of October Lee Roy was basking in the sun of an 80 degree Texas afternoon. Lee Roy apologized for never coming for us.
He told me that he had divorced Wilma and would be contacting my mother soon to make arrangements to move us to Texas. He asked me not to say anything to my mother. He said he would call her in a few days and surprise her with the news. I promised that I would keep the secret. Lee Roy again wished me a happy birthday said he loved me and hung up promising to call back in a few days. He never called back, and I never told my mother of the phone call.
***
I pulled up in front of my apartment building around 9:00pm. I was cold, stiff, covered in small ice particles and probably just a step away from hypothermia. I almost fell off of the bike as I dismounted. My muscles were tight from the clenching against the cold I had been doing for the past seventy five miles. I crawled up the stairs to my second floor apartment and let myself in. The apartment was dark. Donnie Ray was probably at her grandmothers and Ronda was probably out with her best friend Carrie.
I moved through the apartment turning on lights and stripping off my clothes. I filled the bathtub with warm water and lowered my stiff frozen body into it.
As I thawed out my mind recapped the day’s events and I again regretted that I had not taken Lori up on her offer. As I dried off and started getting dressed, I thought; My father will never have to bathe again.
I went into the front room and turned on the stereo. The Hippo out of Kansas City was rocking out the night. I turned off the lamp and retrieved my stash box from under the couch. Opening up the old wooden cigar box I pulled out my bag and pipe. Packing the pipe, I dropped the bag back into the box. I lit up as I collapsed onto the couch. Red Bud and Deep Purple lulled me into a blessed dreamless sleep.
Sunday Morning broke bright upon the land. With morning temperatures in the mid-sixties there was no hint left of the cold and gray dismal weather of the day before. It promised to be a beautiful early spring day. Sometime during the night Ronda had come home. I found Donnie Ray in her bed and Ronda in ours both very sound asleep.
I put the coffee on the stove, grabbed a cigarette and headed out to the back balcony of the building. I lit my cigarette and sat on the rail waiting for the coffee to brew. I watched the fluffy white clouds slowly making their way across the deep blue sky. Pulling a drag off of my cigarette I thought about what my Uncle Cecil had told me Lee Roy had said when he told him I wanted to meet him.
“I wouldn’t know what to say to the boy."
Hello, I thought, would have been a good place to start.
I could hear the pot perking inside the kitchen and hurried inside to turn off the burner. I returned to the balcony a cup of coffee in my hand and an unlit cigarette hanging from my lips. I pulled the cigarette from my mouth and took a sip of the hot caramel coloured liquid. I looked up at the sky and addressed the clouds as they floated by;
“Lee Roy you were my father, but you were never my dad, that honor belongs to Ernie. Because you gave me life, for which I thank you, I did my duty and laid you to rest even though I never knew you and you never knew me. I vow on your grave that my children will always know me, and I will never leave them to wonder who I am. When I wanted to meet my father, you became a coward saying that you did not know what to say to me. Well today I am no coward and I know what to say to you…. Goodbye!”
I turned and stepped back into the building, the screen door slamming behind me.