Flashback

Julio chuckled. “Sort of. We met at a We’re-Free-Truckers, You-Fuckers Peterbilt Convention in Lubbock, Texas. I heard that there was this woman at the tattoo stall getting an image of Cerberus tattooed on her ass—two dog’s heads on her left cheek, one on her right—and I had to see that. It was Perdita, of course, twenty-three years old, been an independent trucker her own self for four years already, and was looking for fun or a fight that weekend. I took her out for a shot with a beer back afterwards, to help dull the pain, I said. We got the name thing with each other right away, both realized that the other’s parents had been into the Winter’s Tale scholar thing, and we both sort of figured that we were destined either to be enemies or mates. After a week or so on the road, during which I got to admire her Cerberus, we chose mates.”

“O seclum insipiens et inficetum,” muttered Leonard, not realizing that he’d spoken aloud. O stupid and tasteless age.

“Yeah, exactly,” laughed Julio. “True in his day and true in ours. I love Catullus. Especially when he said they make a desert and call it peace. We’ve seen that in our lifetimes too, haven’t we, Lenny?”

The “make a desert and call it peace” line was by Tacitus, but Leonard did not choose to correct his new friend. “Yes. Well, Julio, I’m getting a bit sleepy…” Leonard shifted in the deeply upholstered seat, setting his hands on his shoulder harness and the heavy center clasp. The trucks ahead of them seemed to be diving ever more steeply into the darkness of the broad canyon on this side of the Divide.

“Yes, absolutely, Lenny, you need to get some sleep. We’ll be pulling into Denver midmorning or so—before noon, certainly. But can I ask you just one more question before you head up to the bunk?” The driver laughed, a bit ruefully, Leonard thought. “Who knows when I’ll have another professor-emeritus intellectual in my cab.”

“Certainly,” said Leonard, taking his hands off the seat belt. “One question. I’ve enjoyed tonight’s conversation. But you’ll have to pardon me if my answer is short. I’m feeling my years these days… also feeling all the sleep I’ve missed this week.”

“Of course,” said Julio Romano. His right hand and left leg seemed to move without thought when he performed the complex actions needed to shift down several gears. The big rig moaned its response to him. Brake lights winked in the convoy ahead and Leonard could already smell the overheated brakes on some of the other trucks ahead or behind.

“Lenny, are you a Jew?”

Leonard felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. Not necessarily an insulting or aggressive slap, but the kind a doctor might give to bring someone to full consciousness. In all his life—seventy-four long years—no one had ever asked him that question. The only one of his four wives he’d told was Carol, his third wife. For a second Leonard was sure that this truck driver was no lonely, earnest autodidact—no highway semi-intellectual in the making as he’d generously thought a few minutes earlier—but, rather, just another redneck asshole.

Julio hadn’t even worded it politely, as in “Are you Jewish?” He’d used the casual anti-Semite’s “Are you a Jew?” Leonard suddenly felt fully awake. Not angry or alarmed yet, just very, very alert.

“Yes,” he said tightly. “I’m a Jew. Or at least from a long line of Jews. I’ve never practiced the religion. My grandfather changed his name when he came to the United States after World War One.”

“What was it originally?”

“Fuchs. Evidently it was a German variant of the English name Fox. Reportedly, red hair ran in the family and the men on my grandfather’s side of the family were supposedly very cunning. Because Fuchs sounds too much like the f-word in English, some Jews added a suffix—Fuchsman or some such—but German-sounding names also weren’t that popular right after the Great War, so my grandfather just used the cognate form Fox when he arrived.” Leonard realized that he was talking too much and fell quiet.

Julio was nodding—not as if a suspicion had been confirmed, but the way someone does when an almost unnecessary preliminary was out of the way.

“So was that the question?” asked Leonard. He didn’t succeed in keeping the edge out of his voice and he didn’t really care.

“No,” said Julio, who showed no sign of hearing any irritation. “You see, Lenny, you’re a Jew and a university left-wing intellectual, so it’s really important for me to get your take on one issue.”

“What’s that?” Now Leonard’s voice had no edge. It just sounded unutterably tired, even to himself.

“A lot of people think that Israel was destroyed because it had let the flashback drug they’d invented escape from the secret Havat MaShash lab hidden in the southern desert there in Israel,” said Julio.

Leonard had also heard this “fact” since the destruction of Israel, but it wasn’t a question and he had no comment on it.