Writing BLUE HIGHWAYS: The Story of How a Book Happened

IX. The Secret Society Begins to Emerge

115 IX. The Secret Society Begins to Emerge The appendicitis intensified a growing notion that Blue Highways might not find a publisher during my life, so through another deliberate self-deception I tried one more wile to keep the idea from weakening my will to finish. I imagined a young woman in another time finding in an old attic among the cobwebs a box containing yellowed pages telling a story of how things were on a long road trip a century earlier: She sits down on a dusty chair and begins reading, and the Secret Society at last has a member. So useful was that fantasy of a manuscript reaching even a single reader, I bought an archival box. Just in case. Before leaving the hospital, I wrote Peter Davison to say progress had been slowed by an appendix—not one in the text but one in my body. Would he allow more time? He responded he would, but when healing allowed, get the manuscript to him posthaste. One month after the surgery, I finished the seventh draft and sent it to Boston the next afternoon, and began another wait, this 116 Writing Blue Highways round done not in confidence but once again in a thin, simple hope. Almost exactly four years after setting out in Ghost Dancing for territories unknown, I received a phone call from Davison.He had begun reading the manuscript on a Friday evening, took a break for a movie on Saturday, and finished Sunday afternoon—the fastest read-through yet. As he spoke, I heard for the first time something stronger than watery encouragement from academics; he had passionate belief, and I wrote down every sweet adjective, every encouraging phrase he applied to the manuscript. (Later, when I read Davison’s words about Blue Highways to Lucy, she considered them, then said, “Keep in mind it’s only one man’s opinion.”) His best remark was his question: “How are you keeping body and soul together ?” A loading dock. “Well then, I’m going to get you some publishing income.” And that’s how, after sixteen hundred days, acceptance came down. About two months later a contract arrived with a promise of an advance royalty check for ten thousand dollars: eighty-five hundred on delivering a final typescript , and the remainder on turning in signed releases from the thirty-seven people whose photographs would appear in the book. Lucy was impressed with the advance until she divided ten grand by forty-eight months; she said, “Two-hundred dollars a month? A kindergarten teacher makes more than that.” I said there might be another check or two.“Ye gods! Let’s hope so!” (Lest someone see a swindle here, I’ll add: As I write this sentence, Blue Highways is only weeks away from its thirtieth birthday, and over those 360 months the company has sent a royalty check, most of them modest, twice a year.) • The Secret Society Begins to Emerge 117 Uncertain about the prospects for the book, I continued Friday and Saturday nights on the loading dock, while during the week I gathered up loose ends: writing people who would appear in Blue Highways to ask each to sign an acknowledgment of the accuracy of the reported conversations and a portrait release required by the publisher. 118 Writing Blue Highways Claud Tyler, the barber of Dime Box, Texas, had died, and I couldn’t find Porfirio Sanchez, the Mexican Apache hitchhiker in West Texas; I suspected he also was gone. Many of the others, given the time they took to reply, made me fear they too had joined some beyond. But, slowly, slowly, their releases came in along with any corrections to the copy of the pages I’d written about them. I encouraged each one to comment on my interpretations and descriptions. Their replies ranged from no changes whatsoever to one from Barbara Pierre in St. Martinville, Louisiana. When I opened her envelope I found not my text but a half-dozen pages entirely retyped with many rephrasings. Although she wanted to become a writer, her expression Tom Hunter’s 1980 portrait release and acknowledgment. The Secret Society Begins to Emerge 119 Postcard from Barbara Pierre, St. Martinville, Louisiana, 1978. (I returned to visit her in 1983.) 120 Writing Blue Highways would benefit from, let’s say, a...