The Last Open Road Read online

  Julie had her heart set on being a fashion illustrator for the Sunday newspaper supplements, drawing all those high-fashion women with flowing gowns and swanlike necks that are always posed arched over backward like any kind of decent breeze would topple 'em clear over. I thought they looked pretty dumb, but Julie said they were real artistic and dramatic, and spent a tremendous amount of time doodling those artistic, high-fashion women in dramatic, topple-over poses inside the spiral-bound sketchbooks she carried around with her. She kept talking about going to art school, but there was no way on account of her dad got killed in the Philippines and her mom couldn't do any better than a job as a hairdresser and a cheap apartment on the second floor of somebody else's house. So Julie was stuck helping out in her uncle's gas station three days a week and working part-time at the Doggie Shake up on Fremont Avenue evenings and weekends. It was a shame, too, because Julie could draw really good—and not just those arched-over fashion models, either. Her sketchbooks were filled with prancing horses and creaky old farmhouses, flowerpots on windowsills and driftwood on the beach, and even some of the cars she saw around the Sinclair. Those were my favorites, of course, and I figured they were a hell of a lot more interesting than any of those topple-over women from the Sunday newspaper supplements.

  Needless to say, my folks weren't too keen on having their one and only son turn into a grease monkey. Especially my dad. Heck, I had four older sisters, and he never complained when one of them took a job as a waitress at the grill over on Camden Street. Or when the youngest one, Mary Frances, decided she wanted to cut hair and paint nails for a living someplace in downtown Manhattan. Sure, my mom wasn't too happy about the apartment Mary Frances shared with three other girls near Greenwich Village. But they let her do it, you know? The way my dad figured, girls spent their formative years mostly just waiting around to get married so they could raise families and have kids of their own to worry over and yell at. My two oldest sisters were already married, and the third one, Sarah Jean, had been pretty close with this guy whose family ran a trucking company over in Jersey City. The word around town was that his dad and uncle actually did most of the important lifting, hollering, and decision making, and that this guy was just another of those overpaid son-in-the-business bozos who amount to a kind of permanent skin disease on the face of American commerce. My dad was pretty high on him because of the way he flashed money around, but I figured right away he was just stringing Sarah Jean along for what he could get (and of course I was right, not that anybody will admit it, or even talk about it much anymore).

  But I was a son, and somehow that was different. Especially since my dad was a big union shop steward over at this chemical plant in Newark, and naturally he wanted me to come to work there, too. He even had this notion I ought to save up and maybe go off to college someplace to study chemistry, while I figured I was damn lucky just to make it through high school algebra. Hell, it took me two tries. Besides, I was eighteen, and all I really wanted in life was to get out of school, fix cars at the Sinclair and goof around with Julie whenever I got the chance. But my old man wasn't having any part of it. "You're gonna work down at the chemical plant," he'd tell me, eyes hard as tombstones, "and that's the way it's going to be!"

  That was kind of an old standard around our house.

  My old man could be a real jerk when he put his mind to it. And he put his mind to it a lot. He'd spend all day bossing people around at work, 6:30 ayem to 4:30P.M., five days a week, and then he'd come home and do a little light evening bullying on my mom and me. Just to keep in practice. My poor mom always got the brunt of it when my dad and I had a fight, and after I started hanging around the Sinclair, we had them on an increasingly regular basis. But it never seemed to bother her too much. My dad and me could be screaming at each other at the top of our lungs and she could just sit there, darning a sock or copying a recipe or thumbing through one of her pocket-sized bird-spotter guides as if nothing was happening at all.

  See, my mom was a bird-watcher. She kept this old pair of Army surplus field glasses over by the kitchen window, and I swear she'd damn near wet her pants when one of her favorite sapsuckers flew through our yard. She'd stand at that window for hours at a stretch with those binoculars jammed into her eye sockets, making birdcalls through her teeth like she was holding a conversation with those damn birds. She'd coo at pigeons and twitter at chickadees and warble at warblers until it got to where I just couldn't bring anybody over, you know, because my mom would get so blessed weird about those stupid birds of hers.

  Truth is, a lot of stuff seemed to sneak right past my mom. Or maybe she was smart enough to know it was better to stay stupid about things you couldn't do anything about. Like my old man's temper, for example. She was a tiny little thing with a laugh like chickens in a henhouse and eyes always lit up dumb and sparkly as a kid's on Christmas morning. Everybody thought she was the nicest, sweetest person on earth, and she was always volunteering for the school paper drive or selling tickets to the church variety show or baking a triple chocolate layer cake for somebody who was laid up with the stomach flu. You have anybody like that in your family? Sometimes they can be so stinking sweet and nice that you just can't stand it anymore.

  But she was a dish of ice cream with a cherry on top compared to my dad. What with three sisters gone already and Sarah Jean being one of those quiet cooking-and-sewing types herself, it didn't leave much for my dad besides concentrating his considerable talent on bossing me around. He'd make me mow the lawn or wash his Mercury while he laid in the hammock out back, listening to the Yankee game and downing himself a fresh beer every inning. Afterwards, regular as clockwork, he'd tell me what a lousy job I'd done on the edging or how I'd left a Criminally Negligent number of water spots on the hood of his car. Then he'd launch into one of these long, rambling, parental-type lectures about ambition and direction and career opportunities, none of which had anything to do with Old Man Finzio's gas station as far as he could see. Of course, he didn't know how much ambition and direction I had focused on getting into Miss Julie Finzio's underpants. But I had to admit it wasn't exactly what he or anybody else would consider a career opportunity.

  Anyhow, this chemical plant job paid union scale (which was a hell of a lot of money for a kid just out of high school), but I just flat couldn't stand it. The place was hot and dark and smelled something awful, and every day was the same stupid grind, over and over and over again. I never understood how those union guys could keep doing it—day after day, week after week, year after year—without going batty one morning and blowing their brains out. Every single day they'd swap the same wisecracking hellos, put on the same baggy coveralls, hard hats, and safety goggles, drink the same thermos of coffee, eat the same tin-box lunches, and spend eight solid hours loading and unloading drums of chemical shit that made your eyes burn and your nose run like a damn faucet. You'd work as slow as you could get away with (always a matter of fierce professional pride in any union shop), and every night you'd hear the same stale dick jokes in the shower, blow the same weird, yellow-green globs of snot out your nostrils, and head home for a few beers and dinner before going to bed—just so's you could get up in the morning and do it all over again. . . .

  You call that a life?

  Plus it was no barrel of laughs working for my dad. Some guys'd maybe take it a little easy on their own kid. But not my old man. No sir. He didn't want anybody thinking I got this job just because he was my father (which, of course, is exactly why I did), so he made damn sure I worked twice as hard as anybody else.

  It got to where I hated waking up in the morning.

  But even while I was working at my old man's stupid chemical plant job, I'd drop by the Sinclair every now and again to shoot the breeze with Butch or maybe see Julie and goof around a little. Then I showed up one drizzly Saturday morning when the leaves were just starting to turn and noticed that Butch's old Ford was missing. For a crazy second, I thought maybe he had it up on the lift, fixing that bad
tie-rod end. But Old Man Finzio was all alone inside the shop, torch ablaze and sledgehammer in hand, trying to beat a helpless Buick into submission. "Where's Butch?" I hollered over the banging.

  Old Man Finzio looked at me with the queerest expression on his face. He laid down the hammer and turned the acetylene down until the cutting torch shut off with a hollow pop. "Ya don't know, d'ya?" the Old Man said softly.

  "Know what?"

  "Butch got hisself inna car accident with that Ford of his. A bad one. He's in the hospital down by Elizabeth."

  "He what?"

  And that's when the tow truck pulled in, dragging what was left of Butch's Ford. Why, you could hardly even recognize it was a car anymore, and looking at it turned me icy-white inside. The front end was pushed clear back to the firewall, the roof was buckled, and the tail shaft off the transmission was sticking right up through the middle of the front seat like one of those compound fractures where the bone comes through the skin. You could see where his hands busted two solid chunks out of the steering wheel, and there was shattered glass and streaks of dried blood all over the place. It made you sick just looking at it, and you knew that whoever was behind the wheel of that car ought to be dead.

  The story going around was that Butch and Marlene got into a big god-awful argument and she wound up packing and heading back home to Tennessee. And good riddance, far as I was concerned. But later that night, right after the bars closed down, Butch took a notion to chase after her. The poor bastard didn't even make it to Perth Amboy before he flattened that old Ford of his against a concrete bridge abutment and damn near killed himself.

  Naturally, I went to visit him in the hospital, and it was a real, honest-to-God horror show. I hate hospitals anyway. I hate the smell of disinfectant and the fluorescent lights that don't cast any shadows and the way the nurses' shoes squeak on the polished linoleum floors. And I most especially hate how everybody talks in these hushed funeral parlor whispers out in the hall. It gives me the creeps, you know? Anyhow, they had Butch all covered in plaster and gauze like one of those Egyptian mummies, what with his arms and legs dangling on pulleys and all kinds of tubes and needles running in and out of him. You could tell right away he was never going to be the same again, and it was tough understanding how a car accident could change your whole life in an instant—just like that! —as if an invisible hand reached down out of the sky and flicked you off like a damn light switch.

  The thought of it made me go all dry and hollow.

  But I knew I was there to visit Butch and try to make him feel a little better, so I swallowed hard, walked over by the bed, and tried my best to make a little small talk. To tell the truth, it was like talking into an empty closet. But I gave it my best shot, rambling on about Old Man Finzio and what a jerk my dad was and how much I hated his stupid chemical plant job over in Newark. It didn't seem to have much effect on Butch. About all he could do was just lay there, arms and legs dangling, staring up at the ceiling like he couldn't really see it. It made me feel dumb and clumsy trying to carry on a conversation by myself, but every time I'd stop, Butch'd give off a coarse little grunt—like the sound a car with a flat battery makes when you try to turn it over—just to let me know he was listening. Then I more or less ran out of stuff to say and just stood there watching what looked like bloody pee drain out of Butch through a clear plastic tube. But when I finally turned to leave, Butch gathered up every bit of strength he had and called me back over by his bedside. His voice came out so faint and hoarse that I had to lean my ear right up next to the gauze to make it out. "The Plymouth . . . ," he rasped, fighting for every word, "bad water pump . . . parts under bench . . . toolbox key . . . under trash drum . . . don't let Old Man . . . get near that car. . . ." It took a moment to sink in, but then I nodded to let him know I understood. "An' lissen," Butch choked, his whole body straining upward, "you take care a'my fuckin' tools or I'll breaks yer goddam arms fr'ya. Y'hear me?"

  I stopped by the Sinclair early the next morning, and just like Butch said, I found his key hidden under the trash drum, Mr. Altobelli's Plymouth in the service bay, and a rebuilt water pump under his workbench, neatly wrapped in oiled paper. Now you have to understand that Butch never let anybody mess with his tools. Oh, he'd let me borrow a socket or a wrench when I needed it, but just one at a time, on a strictly ask-and-return basis. Most often I worked with Old Man Finzio's tools, which were always scattered all over the place like the remains of a recently detonated fragmentation bomb. Hell, you could never find anything. But Butch kept his tools neat, clean, and perfectly organized, and was careful to wipe them off and pack them away whenever he finished a job. Or even part of a job. Every topflight mechanic I ever met was the same way. So it was really an honor that somebody like Butch would trust me with his toolbox key.

  Old Man Finzio didn't offer me a job that day. Not in so many words, anyway. But he allowed as how I could maybe help him out while Butch was laid up if I thought I could spare the time. So I played hooky from the chemical plant and spent my morning replacing the water pump on Mr. Altobelli's Plymouth. Then I repaired some lady's Ford with a bum U-joint, and it sure felt good to work on cars again. I decided right then and there I was going to stay on at the Sinclair. Hell, I'd had it up to here with that dumb-ass chemical plant. Sure, fixing cars didn't pay as good (in fact, it didn't pay anywheres near as good) but at least you got to work on your own, at your own pace, and every single job had its own special challenge. Best of all, there was always a golden little Appreciation Moment at the end when you finally got a car all buttoned back together and running like a fine Swiss watch.

  As you can imagine, my old man was pretty burned about my decision to stiff his stupid chemical plant job and go to work at the Sinclair. Not to mention that it made him look pretty lame in front of all his union hall buddies. So we naturally had a big enormous fight about it. You know, the kind where you end up storming out of the house and slamming the front door so hard it shatters all the little glass windows on top.

  I wandered the streets for hours that night, feeling pissed at my old man, sorry for my mom, worrying about Butch and wondering just what the hell I was going to do next. I wanted to call Julie, but it was late and I was afraid her mom might answer. Plus I didn't especially want her to hear my voice, on account of I was pretty choked up and might've even cried a little. Not a real cry, of course, but one of those restricted male versions where your face goes all taut and flushed and you can feel the old eye juice backing up in the ducts. But you don't let it leak out. After all, that's for girls and little crybaby sissyboys who've fallen down and skinned their knees. At the very least, you don't let anybody see you.

  I remember it was awful chilly that night, and I'd been in such a mad, stinking rush to get out of the house that I forgot to grab my jacket, so now I was even shivering a little and hadn't the foggiest notion where to go or what to do next. I counted up the money in my jeans pockets to see if it was maybe enough to take me anywhere—anywhere at all, in fact—but it was just a bunch of loose change. And mostly pennies at that. I thought about walking the mile and a half to the bus station and spending the night there or maybe trying to break into the Sinclair so's I could sleep in the office next to the space heater, but neither of those sounded any good since I'd just have to limp home the next day with my tail between my legs and take another heaping dose of bullshit from my dad. A giant, economy-sized dose, for sure. And breaking into Old Man Finzio's gas station might easily get me fired, and the whole idea was that I wanted to work there as an automobile mechanic instead of wasting my time at that piece-of-shit chemical plant job.

  And then I had a brilliant idea. My Aunt Rosamarina lived a couple blocks away on Buchanan, and she had this empty sort of loft apartment over her garage that would be perfect for a young guy just out of high school. She was a retired librarian, lived alone with about three dozen cats, and spent most of her time reading musty old books with small type and no pictures. She was one of those thin,
sad-eyed old maids who get real nervous around other human beings. Why, even the simplest everyday encounters with the mailman or the kid who delivered her paper could get her all stuttering and trembling and shaking at the knees. I remember she used to come over by my folks' house for Christmas every year, and sometimes they'd arrange to have some "eligible male" on hand to talk to her or maybe even ask her out. But she'd just park herself in the corner—all by her lonesome—and not say a word. My mom would keep pouring her glasses of Asti Spumante to get her loosened up, but Aunt Rosamarina could suck up eight or ten of them without so much as cracking a Christmas smile or even tittering now and then like most of your elderly retired ladies do when they've gotten a bit too chummy with the punch bowl. To tell the truth, we all suspected my aunt might be putting in a little solo practice with the old liquor bottle back home.

  But now, the fact that Aunt Rosamarina was never real chatty or comfortable around other people turned into a fabulous asset. It meant I could count on her to leave me alone if I moved into that loft apartment over her garage. It was perfect! Sure, she'd watch my every move through her favorite little crack in the draperies, but that didn't matter because she'd never actually say anything. Except maybe to her cats.

  To tell the truth, the "apartment" over my aunt's garage wasn't really an apartment at all, but more like some pygmy-sized storage space under the rafters. A couple summers before, my dad and me put in a space heater and a couple rolls of tar-paper insulation and even a john and an eighteen-by-eighteen shower stall (which is the smallest size Sears sells, and has barely enough room inside for both a live human being and a decent-sized bar of soap). The idea was that my aunt could rent it out to some convenient recent widower or a quiet young divinity student and have herself a little extra income. My dad even put an ad in the paper for her when we were done, but when people showed up to take a look, she'd check them out through her little crack in the draperies and never even answer the door. So that apartment over my aunt's garage was just sitting there—waiting for me, you know?—like somehow it had all been planned out in advance.