The Damned Highway Read Online Free PDF

mall across the four-lane highway from the concrete slab they call the local bus depot. There’s little traffic, so it’s easy enough to pick my way across the first two lanes of the four laner and hop the crash barrier. The second two lanes are a Kafkaesque nightmare of squealing pig greed. Nobody stops. Instead, they speed up. A pickup truck veers right and sends up a wave of blackish mud and slush. From inside the truck, I hear Merle Haggard singing the praises of being from Muskogee. A woman screams from the passenger’s side of an ass-beaten sedan, “You’re poor!” and waves a fist from the end of an arm that looks more like a canned ham than a limb. I raise my fist and extend my middle finger in that time-honored salute. Finally, I just dive into the middle of the street, hands up and whirling, shouting, “Ho, ho! Man needs a drink here! Lemme pass, you swine!” and the night is filled with burning brake pads and honking horns and cries of bewildered rage. The sound is like a symphony, and it fills my heart with joy.
    I don’t catch the bar’s name. Back where I’m from, that means it is either a place for fairies or criminals (or both; nobody is angrier and more efficient than a homosexual Mafia assassin, and I have known a few). Here, it means something else. There’s no pool table, no jukebox, no pictures on the wall, and no dartboard. Instead, there is just a long black bar that looks like it’s grown out from the Earth Herself, like a wave of obsidian that erupted from the asphalt of the strip mall and then at its apex just stopped. Elbow height. The place is near deserted as well, at least up front. I don’t even catch the bartender at first; then I see her—a wide-eyed midget of a woman, an hourglass of a gal squashed flat except for a tower of bangs and high hair.
    â€œBourbon,” she says and is already pouring one.
    â€œThat’s a good call,” I say. “Old Crow, even.”
    â€œIt’s a gift,” she says. “That I can tell a man’s predilection for this or that liquor, that is. The beverage itself, that’ll be two dollars, friend.” Her voice isn’t as Minnie Mousie high as I would have guessed it would be. It’s deep, like her diaphragm is naturally low to the ground and thus her timbre is as well. I put down a fin, and she knows that I want another. She smiles. So do I.
    â€œGood girl,” I say when the second glass appears. I glance down at it and feel a rush of wind on my forehead. I look up to a machete, a real Haitian baby splitter. It’s a serious blade meant for serious business. The bartender is holding it with two hands, like someone might on the cover of one of those Robert E. Howard novels you can buy at the drugstore. Her face is twisted with hate.
    â€œWhat did you call me, you goddamned son-of-a-bitch pedophile?” Pedophile comes out slow and deep, like tar spread along the road. I take a sip of my second Old Crow, even though I want to slam it back, hit the lip against the bar, and then grind it in her face. I want to do this so badly that for a moment I think I actually have. Maybe it’s the remnants of the blotter acid or maybe it’s just wish fulfillment. But I don’t, because she’s a lady. I can see it in her cheeks and eyes. Only ladies get that angry, only women who have not since the cradle let a man get the better of them can even generate that sort of simmering supernova of ape rage, without a hair out of place, without lips bared.
    â€œSorry, ma’am,” I say, keeping my voice steady. “I was just overcome by the quality of service here.” The blade quivers like it’s going to drop. “You see, I’ve been on a bus for two days. At least, I think it’s been two days. I’m not really sure, because things have gotten weird lately, including time. Strangeness happens to me a lot. But never mind that. I’m a