The Damned Highway Read Online Free PDF Page B

reporter. A journalist. I need my medicine or else I start spouting all sorts of bizarre nonsense. Copyeditors hate me. So does everybody else. The ombudsman has a red phone on his desk just for me. When I do freelance writing work, I have to file my stories in pencil so that the editor can erase every fourth word before the gi—women in the typing pool get to it. They’d all quit or be rendered infertile and insane otherwise. So you’ve got to believe me, ma’am, when I tell you that I am so terribly, terribly sorry. And I am certainly no girl lover or boy lover, ma’am. In fact, just the other day I helped corner one of those rampaging mongoloids for the police. That was back home, back in Colorado. My dogs could smell the lustful desperation on him, and so could I. We can’t have that nonsense infecting where we live, now can we? We must take care of our own backyards. The police thanked me, but it was the least I could do. We found him outside the soda shop, rubbing his hands and listening to sinister Negro music on a transistor radio. God only knows what he would have done had we let him live. Selah.”
    I take another sip and let the Old Crow burn my wisdom teeth. The woman blinks. The machete lowers and vanishes behind her back.
    â€œReporter, eh?”
    â€œYes’m.” That knife can come out again in a flash. My cranium has never felt so much like a melon in my life. “I don’t enjoy it. I’m not one of those types. I write when I must. It’s a wretched profession, but someone has to do it, and I haven’t had another job in quite a long time. But believe me when I tell you that you pay weird dues for earning a living this way.”
    â€œSo, if you’re a reporter, then you must be here for the meeting in the back.”
    â€œThe meeting,” I say with a nod. Now I slam down my glass. “In the back. Yes. That’s right. I just needed some medicine. It primes my muse, you see.”
    The lights flicker.
    â€œYou’d better head on back,” she says, her eyes glancing toward the ceiling. “It’s starting.”
    She pours me two doubles, and I accept them both. The glasses are damp and cold in my palms. Double fisting the drinks, I get up and head toward the back room. It’s a dark bar, all right. Even if there were any light coming from outside, it wouldn’t reach here. The lights above are dim and yellow, as if the darkness were an active thing, blanketing and smothering the glow of the filaments. In this place, light is the enemy. It is as unwanted and undesired as a Black Panther member at the local VFW meeting. There are no dartboards, no promotional mirrors for Budweiser, no pinups. There is nothing. Nothing but the dark and an eye floater or two worth of lights, and the smell of rancid beer and dead cigarettes. The back door is thick, made of the same obsidian-type substance as the bar itself, and there’s no handle, but it looks like it has a decent swing to it even though I can’t make out any hinges. I back into the door and push it open with my posterior, and turn to face the meeting, Old Crow to my lips so I can have a few seconds to spare before having to talk myself the rest of the way in.
    And then—ho ho—I swear to sweet baby Jesus almighty that it’s Senator Eagleton, spread-eagle on across the slab, wrists and ankles cuffed tight to the corners. Electrodes cover his face and chest, the wires reaching up into a jury-rigged light fixture. He can’t see me, obviously, but I can see him, and what I see fills me with loathing. Understand, I’ve seen a lot of bad craziness in my time. When I was riding with the Hells Angels, I witnessed a gangbang take place at a Merry Pranksters party. I caught the whole thing on my tape recorder and wrote about it later on in my book. Then I lent the tapes to Tom Wolfe and he wrote about it, as well. That particular depraved scene stuck with me for