Up in the Air

The briefcase, still unopened, is in the trunk. Some truckstop along the way will have a screwdriver. My new theory is that the case is mine, that I left it on board a jet some years ago during one of the strobing, amnesiac flutters that follow intensive bouts of CTC work, and that the case has been sailing ever since in the parallel dimension of Great West baggage. I anticipate no epiphanies (Verbal Edge, tape nine, “The Language of Art and Literature”) when I crack it. I expect to find socks and boxers and a shirt and perhaps a collection of loose-leaf workbook pages from Sandy Pinter’s master-level seminar, the one where participants wore colored hats representing the Six Cognitive Styles and were asked by the trainer to cross a hotel ballroom without letting their feet contact the floor. It was a daunting task for the non-acrobats and the source of much frustration and puzzlement, until the trainer pointed out to us that our feet and the floor were separated by shoes, an obvious fact that all had overlooked and proof of Sandy Pinter’s principle that frantic problem-solving is usually evidence that no problem exists.

Either that or the case contains Morse’s tracking device and I can go crazy in earnest once I’ve jimmied and stripped the bug from the lining. To find a bug—how glorious that must be for those who’ve done it. To have one’s fears credentialed, physically. To hold the little gremlin in one’s hand and hear it tick or buzz or hum or whatever it does that tells one that it’s operating, then to bellow into the ears of living spies! I’d like to sit down with a man who’s had this chance. I think he would have a strong spirit as a result. I could offer to agent him as a corporate speaker.

I let Julie drive. I’m accustomed to being piloted. We head north toward Cheyenne, where we’ll meet I-80 west and push up over the hump to the Great Basin in the footsteps of the Mormon settlers. They say you can walk in the grooves cut by the wheels of their wagons and handcarts. We’ll pass the graves of children, the shady encampments where Brigham spread his bedroll. I’ve never driven this trail, but I’ve flown over it, and my sense of its contours and hazards is comprehensive. The West gave people so much trouble once, mostly because they couldn’t see over its ridges, but now we can, and it’s just another place.

This might be the nicest car Julie’s ever driven; she’s treating it with inordinate respect. Both hands on the wheel, a stiff, cadet-like posture, much attention to mirrors and turn signals. She’s scared. This is world-class imported equipment, and it’s intimidating, especially to those who don’t rent cars much and believe that the vehicles are theirs illicitly, as part of a scam or a very special favor. Me, I push these cars hard, without remorse, aware that they’ve been paid for ten times over and will be sold at a profit on top of that. It’s sweet, though, to see the meek, more natural attitude. May it never die out. It’s a cushion for the rest of us.

“What if, when we hit Wyoming,” Julie says, “we go right, not left? To Minnesota? It seems pretty easy suddenly. Just swerve. The rest might take care of itself. The wedding. Keith. He’s already burying wires for that lawn mower.”

“That monster you met in my office made you think. Red wagons and cornfields are sounding pretty good.”

“It isn’t like that now. We have espresso. Good espresso. Mom’s hooked on it. Burt, too.”

“The Lovely Man on uppers. What is that like? Just more, faster loveliness, or does he growl at people?”

“Burt’s family now. You should get to know him, Ryan. He’s full of great stories. He’s had a long, full life. He drove an armored truck in Mason City before he started his nursery, and someone, a fellow driver, drugged him once and tied him up with string and drove the truck way out into the woods and tried to rob it, except that he needed Burt’s key to open it, but when he reached down to take it, Burt bit his ear off. That wild old movie stuff really used to happen. Burt’s been around, you’d be shocked.”

“He’s good to Mom, that’s all I care about. I hear lots of stories. True ones, too.”

“Burt doesn’t lie. He wouldn’t make things up. He made a moral blood pact once, he told me. He opened a little vein along one knuckle and squeezed out a whole teaspoonful and drank it, then said the Ten Commandments with bloody lips while looking into a mirror.”

“That’s a fancy one.”

“It’s because he’d told a man a fib that accidentally killed him a day later. That’s how Burt made things right with God. He’s like that.”

“Deranged and ritualistic?”

“He just likes pacts. And he keeps them, it’s amazing. He swore off sweets—I was there for this, I witnessed it—and ever since I’ve never seen him eat one, not even sugar in coffee. It’s like sweets vanished. He doesn’t see them now. He’s trained his mind.”

“Enough black magic. How’s Mom?”

“You know, she’s Mom. She moms it up. You’ll see.”

“It’s good to be down here, isn’t it? Old sea level.”