American Flamingo

Kindness of Strangers

83 Kindness of Strangers Nevada, 1965 He washed down Mexican dexadrine with Old Crow and Old Crow with beer. His dark blue Mercury shook at eighty like his hand. I kept him in the corner of my left eye, wondering what catastrophe he was leaving behind and racing toward. I didn’t say a word. After he watched me eat at a crossroads diner, he handed me a trembling ten and was gone into heat waves on the road aimed east. Just over the horizon under the desert’s skin they were making a new inferno, off limits even to the damned. { Look at the stars. You can almost touch them. The years stumble and bow before such space. Orion’s shaft, Cassiopeia between Cepheus and Andromeda, famous galactic families, dogs and horses of the heavens, cool glittering distant millions on a black velvet dome over the desert just off highway 50 west of Ely 84 under a single Joshua tree leaning a little toward the east, she slips out of her blue jeans, accomplice of visions and pleasures on the road over basin and range. We gaze at stars until we too stumble and bow, and the radio tuned to Salt Lake drifts in and out of songs all night. { Saturday night downtown Wendover. The Badgers or the Hornets have just beat the hell out of the Yellowjackets or the Panthers. The empire of the main drag is once again under the rule of hormones and beer. Have no fear, I tell myself, no fear. The only stoplight for hundreds of miles keeps opening and closing its red eye, and even the shards of glass at my feet pulse like pieces of a heart. I’m packing a pocketknife, Leaves of Grass in paperback, and two bloodshot eyes I intend to feast on New York’s neon apples. Give me a lift or leave me alone. The moon is bad, the spoon is bent, the dish is empty, the cow can’t jump, the same white Impala going up and down the main in a haze of hard rock, same Chevrolet that let go a fusillade 85 of bottles last time around stops and offers me a ride to the outskirts of town. Taillights fade and the road goes quiet. Stars over the power lines hum. Little red rooster crows awhile then falls back into stupor. Let the sun rise and stretch its rays over the salt flats of Utah and touch the sleeping body in the mosquito bog at the side of the road, the one who doesn’t want to waken yet from his dream of the kindness of strangers. ...