We were in the Happy Plate Restaurant totally plowed, saucer-eyed, me sucking a bit lip, gazing at the menu but seeing nothing edible, nothing.
I was repeating the restaurant’s motto: “‘Always Happy, Never a Complate’ – get it?” over and over. Until Vivienne turned to me with a gaze like the eye of a storm passing over Menstruation County.
We’d just come from Amarillo where we’d seen one of the roadside attractions we’d asterisked in our trip notebook – A Must See. We were, I have to admit, probably suffering from what they call Stendhal’s Disease: Too much art starts to push in at your soul until the flimsy walls give and, although you know you’re something, you are for a time nothing. And that deserves blame.
I stared out the window. It was just past dusk so you can’t quite trust what you’re seeing: the sign: CUSTOM KILLING CUSTOM SLAUGHTERING. I repeated it several times to have it sink in like a knife sinks into the portion of her brain devoted to annoyance.
“Is there a phone number?”
“No.”
Bumper Sticker on the backend of a camper trailer: GET THE BEST REVENGE! SPEND YOUR KIDS INHERITANCE!
I pointed to it; she swatted at my forefinger like it was a bee or something.
The hairnet worn by the waitress lifted her eyebrows up off her forehead. She brought us 2 large platters balanced in the bend of her arms. We ate Tuna salad on something like rye, a side of greasy, preprocessed, warmed-up, frozen potato patty hash browns. The ginger ale was cold but kind of flat. But the pickles, we both agreed, were good.
“It’s a leftover, undrunk ginger ale recycled back to us with some more ice.”
In agreeing about the pickle AND the ginger ale we found reassuring common ground, cohesion, like it’s not so bad, it’s already blowing over; we’re a team established to fight off whatever it is that threatened us – that huge dark cloud of normalcy. Her smile – a trophy of my triumph.
She just had to take a pic of the five lit pictures of pizzas – 5 variations.
“…‘I’ll let you know how much it means just having you around / Oh darlin’ how I’d love to lay you down’ …and that was Conway Twitty with ‘I’d Love To Lay… ’”
“What kinda name is that?”
“Fake. His band was the Twitty Birds.”
At the counter as we’re paying … words floated past on a pedal steel breeze… “‘Yea, she taught me how to say I just don’t care.’ And that’s Mel Tillis with …” Grabbing toothpicks, I noticed a sign: FREEZE BEE CAKE CUPS. I wanted to ask the cashier what they were, but her mind was elsewhere, as smudged as her old glasses. So I left it.
* * *
As we neared Amarillo we smelled giant massive feedlots where millions of cattle queue one step from death. Destiny ready to transform them into you name a cut: T-bone, sirloin, short ribs … “When you walk out to stay / For me it’s over anyway / When you leave Amarillo / Turn out the lights…”
But if you’re not conscious of impending death, then is it really, actually death? That’s the kind of conversations we used to have.
Billboard: FREE 72 OUNCE STEAK IF EATEN IN ONE HOUR! BIG TEXAN STEAK RANCH in Amarillo FREE REFILLS.
The old towns, weathered highway stands, clapboard structures done in by 50 years of harsh wind. ‘Rotting figments of a former age’ I should have written down. They’ll tell you they could once earn a living around here from those who passed through their town seeking Dixie Cups of cold water or bathrooms or distraction, the best gas prices, the Jackalope, hot fresh coffee.
“It’s like don’t gimme the play-by-play of every thing you fuckin’ see. Apply your fuckin’ annoyance filter – if you got one and it ain’t busted. That there’s the bullshit factor of diminishing returns.” She could sound so much like a Texan in Texas, like she’d already put out for adoption, like her and Texans could agree about me.
I noticed I’m distracted by the lazy mesmerizing oil pumps churning away in the pastures while cattle chew and chew all day long and five miles outside Amarillo, we missed our exit, had to wind back. Navigation breakdown and the pilot’s pissed. The missing sign must be my fault, I thought to myself. [Don’t don’t don’t say it out loud, because that’s lighter fluid pissed on your own funeral pyre].
“I can’t help it there’s no sign…”
“You jiss cain’t help being you.” Mock Texan accent mocking me – I thought.
There we were, one road over, Cadillac Ranch, 10 red Cadillacs pointing down, half-buried, nose down in a cornfield. “Created by Ant Farm in 1974 …”
“I don’t care if it’s 1674 at this point.”
“Year Jethro Tull was born!”
“Oh My Fucking God?! The band that killed rock ’n’ roll? You don’t stop.”
“Invented the horse-drawn hoe.”
“Ho is right. Woe is me. Oh fuckin’ NEVER MIND!”
She drove recklessly right across a ditch onto the field, headlights on high beam pointing toward the 10 Cadillacs. Dried corn stalk leaves fibrillating in a westerly breeze. She opened the escape hatch and I watched her flee, a tantrum firming her buttocks, extended arms of despair reaching for an uncaring sky, stumbling across the plow ridges and furrows toward the artwork, begging god to help her – “PLEASE PLEASE LORD RELIEVE ME OF MY TORMENT” – at the top of her lungs because god is hard of hearing.
I joined her, wondering if “relieve” included murder, just as she fell to her knees, which sank into the soft earth in a, dare I say, sensuous manner.
And suddenly our mission of discovering unusual, forgotten sites on our 15,000-mile crisscross journey – was infuriating her. It’s not like the Cadillac Ranch in a roadside cornfield wasn’t on our list and why shouldn’t we have gone. It’s art and she’s the artist. It’s weird, we’re weird and we used to like weird.
“Ten Cadillacs up-ended in a cornfield along I-40… a pop art homage to the fins and extravagant ornamentation excesses of post-WW2 American cars is owned by millionaire Stanley Marsh, an eccentric patron of pop art. They’re buried at the exact angle of the Great Pyramid in Egypt. Marsh also keeps yaks and llamas and…”
I watched her, an agnostic, again drop to her knees in that cornfield where she began to pray at the top of her lungs above the whirr of highway traffic as the sun disappeared to the West. “PLEASE LORD, HAVE MERCY ON ME! BRING ME, DEAR LORD, PEACE! SAVE MY SANITY! DEAR DEAR DEAR LORD!”
I recalled a joke about fellatio in a field, about how farmers used to masturbate on their fields to ensure a bountiful harvest. It was ready for launching. But better not.
I did, however, suggest taking a photo of her on her knees. She flipped, lunged for the camera and now there’s no visual evidence this ever happened.
“I WANT A DIVORCE RIGHT HERE! NOW!”
What’ve I done wrong? I don’t even know how to ask this, with her dashing, stumbling over the back to the car, the inviting embrace of the open doors.
“I’M GONNA HITCH HOME RIGHT NOW. GET MY SHIT AND HITCH HOME!”
“THAT’S SILLY.” Wrong word.
“OH!!!!”
Then she turned to me; fists flailing in a blur just over her head, lunged at me and, out of spite or frustration, grabbed hold of the sleeve of my favorite shirt in the middle of this cornfield and ripped it to unwearability.
I had over time informally studied what set her off generally and during her menstrual cycle: my smile, my walk, all jokes, the name of any other woman, human foibles of any kind, pretentious shirts, any “droney” music. I’d read up on the Amygdala, where emotional memories are stored, deep in Limbic County, New Jersey. Better to avoid the whole area. And yet, the best of all intentions and plenty of knowledge were no guarantee one would ever make an informed decision in times like these.
So I did the mature thing and ripped the pocket right off of her favorite shirt. This set her off: moral indignation plus exasperation, sputtering, not crying, but disappointed that the Lord had abandoned her at wit’s end. She flung herself at me again, fists a flying, kicking, flailing [the Tasmanian Devil attempting Kung Fu – don’t worry, I didn’t say this out loud].
She reached for my shirt again in a superhuman outburst and, as I pulled away, the entire sleeve came off. The photo of her twirling it like a lasso over her head would have been priceless.
And there she stood, sobbing amongst the brittle corn stalks, grabbing earth, half-burying the sleeve, holding a clump of rich, dark soil in her outstretched arms and then letting it rain over her head. She grabbed a dried corn leave and for a second it looked like she was clutching a knife.
“I’m at the end of my rope. Gonna make a hangman’s noose. DEAR GOD PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE grant me a D-I-V-O-R-C-E.” She turned to me: “You disGUST me with youryouryour obsequious sense of level-headed trustworthiness, your fawning patronizing paternalistic BULLSHIT, your fucking reliable dedication, to the me that just ain’t me!!”
Back at the car she began gathering up her things, cramming them into a rucksack. “I’m gettin’ my stuff and hitchin’ home.”
“Where’s’at?!”
“Anywhere where you’re NOT!!!”
We stood silently brooding by the open car door, gazing over and past each other, me at the Cadillacs. In the movie version, the sound man would pump up the reverb to capture that windy silence of despair. What’s the fucking purpose of art? Come on. Her upper lip twitching – never a good sign. My hand hovered over her shoulder, ready to console. Vivienne Rainbow: We’d been together 3 years and I had never wondered whether this was her real name.
All is silly and I convinced her to get back in the car. Lighten up: I didn’t say it but hoped it, meant it. We were silent, not moving for a long time. We’re a million miles from nowhere. [My scenario: As I shift into second, doing 25 mph, she suddenly opens her door and leaps out, rolling with the motion, and she’s up on her feet dashing for the sunset like a stunt double.]
Instead, she crossed her arms and spoke not a word for the next… 40 miles. Yes, 40 miles. She whacked my hand as I reached for the radio ON/Off. Focal point of the power struggle.
“I WANNA HEAR THIS!”
It’s a radio ad for “EVERYTHING’S BIGGER IN TEXAS Texas-shaped waffles.” Seriously.
The sun was setting, almost 8 PM, when I read aloud the approaching sign: “Happy Texas: The Town Without A Frown.” And, believe it or not, we both broke out laughing, laughing way beyond the humor of the sign, laughing until we caught ourselves appreciating each other for appreciating the absurdity of life. This was the real, unstated foundation of any winning relationship but I’m no self-help expert and knew how ridiculous this must have sounded.
We pulled into the Happy Plate gravel lot. We’re hungry, tired, shell-shocked. We shook the gasp and wheeze from our clothes, she swatted the dirt from her red hair-in-a-bun. Mud on the knees of her capri pants. But viewed from the sideview mirror, we look spruced enough for the Happy Plate.
On the steps, in the doorway, she helped rip my other sleeve off because there’s nothing worse than a lack of symmetry.
“I hate you for loving me so I can’t hate you,” she hissed. “Country music’s about loving the one you can’t have. Mine goes ‘I hate seeing myself copulating with the one who loves me too much. Grrrr…” And with that she kissed, then bit my lip until it bled. I entered the diner with a punctured lip, sucking it in, warping my facial features.
* * *
We’ve calmed down from our latest detonation of… of… what was it about anyway? The inability to be indifferent to park inside the diagonal lines, the inhalation of too much of another’s breath? Is that it? The lost sense of proportion between not enough and too much attention paid? Enthusiasm as a landslide?
I drove and punched PLAY – our portable cassette deck, not great on fidelity, tinny: “When I die I may not go to heaven / I don’t know if they let cowboys in / If they don’t, just let me go to Texas / Texas is as close as I’ve been.”
“Here’s the sin / Seeing your heart’s made of tin.” It was a riff, a joke. No, really.
Route 27 was mostly straight, abandoned road, from Happy to Tulia and we were singing bad and silly – “You’re the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly,” Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty, “I’m Gonna Hire a Wino to Decorate Our Home” – with the windows closed or open, nobody heard how bad, nobody cared.
The sign in downtown Tulia says:
Tulia holds the all-time record for lowest recorded temperature EVER in Texas at -23°F (-30.6 °C), set during the severe winter weather event known as the “Great Blizzard of the Winter of 1899”.
We fled all 2 blocks of Tulia, down 86 East, another 50 miles to Turkey Texas, slipstreaming behind an old Ford pickup, going 10 miles under the limit. A girl sat delicately balanced on the tailgate, staring into her future [strangely enough, exactly where she’d just come from]. Hair in the wind, legs swooshing, pedaling, dangling off the backend. She pulled petals off a wild sunflower, offered them to the breeze.
I imagined her legs stirring my drink but we ultimately, somewhat regrettably, passed them, honk as we do; the driver tipping his straw hat.
Vivienne was staring so far out ahead on this road of incredible straightness she has almost entered a state called prescience. Counted telephone poles 1,2, 3, 303, 3003, maybe reach a million. By then she’ll already be living her new life, with her Texan twang, freed from the oppression of me.
“What’s that Bob Wills song that goes ‘when I leave this time, it’s from now on’?”
“Uh…”
Somehow we launched into an impromptu psychosession: confessing fears, lack of acceptance, laughed at for the way I danced, acne, halitosis from rotting teeth – couldn’t afford dental care. Who I was as a writer (nobody)… turned to see her face glazing over like neglected German porcelain in a Texas Hill Country junk shop.
Car confessions are a known phenomenon; there’s little else to do sitting next to another, no matter how estranged. Something about the shape of a car’s interior, like a horizontal confessional, like a nest pressing you toward each other into unavoidable cognizance as the car thrusts forward through the mesmeric, contemplative distance, each telephone pole not unlike each bead on a rosary like the one that hung from the rearview mirror, Jesus painted day-glo colors, nothing more than ironic decoration – let’s make that clear.
I confessed to being hopelessly in love with her.
“With the me you hope I am or can be made into.”
“No. Just you.”
“So, I’m responsible for your insanity?”
“No. Yes. I dunno.”
“Well, me too, you know.”
Pushing my luck, I confessed about pre-her affairs, girlfriends, realizing too late that any mention of a rival, even just someone like Helen who sat in front of me in 3rd grade, was likely to set her off.
She could be so … delightfully, frighteningly, psychotically possessive in these situations. Extreme jealousy to the point of ripping photos of girls out of my yearbook from 12 years ago if they’d written anything even vaguely suggestive under their photos like: “I hope to see you this summer” or “always stay as nice as you are.” Crumpling their faces into tiny meteors of incendiary venom, all flattering and cute in the beginning, as she flung them into the waste basket.
“I hate fake confession-bragging. The name of your biography’s gonna be: HOPELESS DELUSION.”
Now it’s her turn: A roiling storm system sucking in all moist, hot air, in her flexed cleavage, full of electrical discharge, an eerie calm disguising impending turbulence. And thus began her confession – ranting and raving to yank apart the concentration camp memories of her youth brick by brick. At some point, I took my eye off the road to gaze at her and I did not see Vivienne Rainbow. I saw a vague ether, a rumor, a blurry mouth, a turbulent presence hovering there in the passenger seat.
Let us state the obvious: She was not looking forward to us driving down to visit her brother Dolph in Perdido Esperanza, near the Town of Seminole Burial Canoe and the exclusive Black Seminole Country Club in Pinellas County, Florida, playground to ex-presidents, real estate moguls, CEOs, industrialists, pop stars, and royalty. And thus her agitated beehive mind.
“I dunno from honest no more. You want me to be good but you’re too good, too much pressure. My natural response is to feel bad, dirty, guilty, inadequate. Every time you do something nice I hate you for how I end up feeling. But some of it’s passive-aggressive. Admit it. I don’t wanna go through life feeling guilty for who I am. But even more, I don’t wanna see my brother. I’d rather stick my head in a stopped-up toilet filled with diarrhea and rusty razor blades. But my father, Dolph Sr., the asshole, insisted we visit Dolph [actually it’s “Adolph” on his birth certificate, named so upon the insistence of Viv’s grandparents who, she had discovered, had only 2 books in their home – the Bible and Mein Kampf] the prick and his stupid wife and their stupid kid Dior who only wears stupid Disney clothes, sparkly look-at-me rainbow stupid fucking Adidas, leading their stupid lives driving THREE stupid cars so big you can fit like 2 softball teams inside. Last year Dior redeemed herself somewhat when I took her for ice cream and as we walked around she sang ditties about her father being a ‘farthead’ a ‘dickheaddickheaddickhead’ like a dozen times. I counted. I think she meant something by it, so maybe there’s hope she’ll escape bad DNA. Dolph and Jeannie eat out or order in their stupid dinner food, which they’re always praising – ‘best in Florida’ – fucking Florida! Who the fuck praises fucking Denny’s or Kentucky Fried Chicken? My fucking brother and his stupid nitwit wife Jeannie, that’s who. His stupid ideas that stewed in the Navy and his stupid wife who’s got no ideas except those poured down the hole where her head oughta be. They’re not fucking religious but they give wads of cash to Jerry fucking Falwell every year. EVERY YEAR! Not just $10 but like 2 or $300 per shot. Dolph and his fucking rightwing Reagan ideas. Still thinks whatever he upchucks his little sister – ME! – is gonna swallow. Stupid assholes calling Disneyworld ‘our backyard.’ Who fuckin’ talks like that!? I’m worried about the genetics of all this. I dream of kidnapping Dior and taking her to Reminiscence Thrift Warehouse and making her over into a hippie punk. They hate me cuz I don’t agree with them and hang around with so-called ‘art fags.’ He calls me fuckin’ mouthy. It’s fuckin’ ideas that make stupid people nauseous. ‘Sis’ the fuck calls me. I HATE being called ‘Sis.’ He knows that. He’s always driving a stake into my heart. Useta ‘lose’ or outright just fucking destroy my drawings. Jealousy turned him into a Nazi. And then the next minute he’ll be all chummy nostalgic remembering how we had to work for my father EVERY weekend, building stone walls. Misery loves company. Some shit like that. Had to help build walls come freezing cold, thunderstorms, flu, a rock crushing my finger. Dad, the fuck, was a slave driver. Child labor and all that. And what’d my mom do? NOTHIN’, maybe a moan of displeasure but, no, she never stuck up for me, even with a crushed finger. She’s an enabler, wimpy as Jello in a blender on high. Smart as a barn wall. A stuffed bird. In my father’s eyes she’s just a kitchenhand and a blade of grass to be mowed over. Him on his fuckin’ John Deere and no doubt cuz of genetics now he’s got a John Deere, the dumb fuck! Mowin’ his little patch o’ lawn like he’s got a golf course. Calls Black Seminole Country Club his own. ‘My club’. He don’t even play golf – really! – and he wouldn’t even be invited as a caddy in blackface. Nevah! Applies every year and every year he’s rejected. For fuckin’ what?! Who wants to be a member of a club that don’t want you? Dolph, the fuck, that’s who. Even if he is Navy they don’t want his kind. They just want him out there on the frontlines defending their profits, their 18 holes. And don’t even mention this basic slobbering up to your masters. He won’t hear it. He’s fuckin’ patriotic and deaf as a dead bat. It’s fuckin’ pathetic being elite with money but even more pathetic bein’ wannabe elite without a fuckin’ cent. The stupid fuck…
[silence, Sign: PAYLESS GRO-BEER] ………………… [Sign: FAIRY HAPPY CUTHAND] ……………….. Vivienne is staring again into the road’s incredible straightness, and even as the sky darkened she could still count telephone poles 26,003, 26,004, 26005 … some kind of million some day, already living a new life freed from the oppression I and/or Dolph Jr. and/or Dolph Sr. represent. I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I LAZY M RANCH
Advice: If you count them out loud like 99-bottles-of-beer-on-the-wall you will earn the eternal contempt of the navigator. So, she tried but gave it up.
“…Useta tease me all the time as his little sis. Small tits. No tits. Hey, suddenly I got tits and he’s like everyday: “Lemme see your tits.” If I cried, my dad, the fuck’d be yelling “STIFF UPPER LIP.” Mom claiming Dolph meant no harm, just didn’t know how to play with girls. O man, if she only knew! The more I cried, the more he laughed. The stupid fuck. He’d snap my bra, act like he hadn’t. All fuckin’ innocent and my parents just bought it cuz they wanted to fuckin’ buy it lock stock and fuckin 2 barrels. He graduated to grabbin’ my tits, and there he is actin’ all innocent again like a serial killer in a courtroom. Mom’d stick up for him – “he doesn’t mean any harm, honey.” And my father, Dolph Sr., the fuck, would get all surly and offended, sayin’: “Stop crying wolf.” And there’s Dolph howlin’ like a wolf in the kitchen. Laughin’ his fuckin’ brain dry. And then he graduated to his idea of ‘med school,’ watchin’ me pee, tryin’ to feel my pussy … the fuck … and it doesn’t matter, none of it does. He’d embarrass me at Thanksgiving, tell everybody that I stuck snot under the dinner table. She’ll eat it later, he says. He’d masturbate in my underwear drawer, the slimy fuckin’ perv. One time he pulled my blood-stained panties outa the hamper and dropped them all strategic on the living room floor so others will see them on the 4th of July. My period, age 13 and he’s spooked by it all. Menstrual blood. Thinks I’m sick. Many guests over for the barbecue. He’s goin’ “Ugh Ugh,” pointing to my bloody panties near the couch. My mother reprimandin’ me to be more careful with female hygiene and he’s crackin’ up. THAT’s who we’re goin’ to visit. You watch, he’ll tell his fucking “I Dream of Jeannie” jokes, the dumb fuck. Thinks he’s so clever, he’s laughin’ at his own jokes, not noticin’ that everybody else is at best fake laughin’ – polite contempt, you know. A quote-unquote clever person like him don’t see that others see him as a fucking pathetic Navy lifer who calls Disneyworld quote-unquote our playground and then pays $25 a head to visit his own fuckin’ park! The dumb fuck got dumbed down in the Navy and is now way more full o’ shit. He got a pocket full o’ shit – all this pride and patriotism BS. He knows I don’t respect him, know it has nothing to do with patriotism, more like pay-me-otism. Last time we had a family reunion – imagine the Titanic is a family – he pulls out a photo of me in a bikini top that came off in the pool, showing a nipple and he’s placed his forefinger right below the nipple – like right there, showing everybody. And, man, what he got away with … Talking to my old man about his fake Navy adventures, firepower, rules of engagement, operating a fucking MK10 Twin-arm launcher – once, fucking ONCE – and he’s got that arrogance of a little man puffed up inside his uniform and thinks everybody should respect him around the world, the dumb fuck. I dreamt of killing him in his sleep every day for 3 years. THAT’s where we’re headed.”
We were listening to Bob Wills out on State Highway 86, just as we entered the town of Turkey, as in “Down in Turkey, Texas,” home town of Bob Wills, King of Western Swing. The Bob Wills Monument is in a square on the edge of town. It’s late and dead and no one is out, except two glum teens with their heads bowed and covered, like sullen monks with no faces, no purpose. Unless having no purpose is a purpose.
Two shiny silver-painted fiddles crossed with bows, forged together, mounted on what looks like a DIY rocket made of corrugated roofing molded into the shape of a cylinder, sitting on an octagonal slab of pink granite. Each panel with biographical particulars and pointy cowboy-boot, cigar-smoking likenesses etched in stone.
The fiddles are outfitted with speakers that are supposed to rotate all day long, playing Wills’ “San Antonio Rose” and several other songs. But, when we arrived, the fiddles were not rotating, there was nothing, just the broken grumbling-whirr of a passing car.
We open both car doors, aim the small black plastic stereo speakers, wires spliced into the tape player – it shorts out if you’re not careful with the wires – and aim it at the monument.
She’s daring alright; attempted the impossible: to mount the monument to spin the fiddles, jumpstart the music. No go. She ran her hand along the smooth granite, looking for the button to start the fiddles spinning and playing. But there was no button. So, we blast Bob Wills from the car: “So why not let’s be fair to each other / For I knew the moment I lost you” rewind, “For I knew the moment I lost you / If there’s something I’ve done you’ve not forgiven” rewind, “done you’ve not forgiven / Just remember that I’m human same as you” rewind …
We read the granite slabs: “Wills, a barber in Turkey in the 1920s, said the lotions and delicate work of barbering kept his fingers pliable, giving his fiddle playing a certain finesse.”
I write down: Wills wasn’t born in Turkey but ‘home down between the rivers near Turkey Texas,’ original name Turkey Roost, population 493, 1984.’ Too bad Turkey’s Church of Christ doesn’t include the word ‘Turkey’ on its sign. Two fires in 1927 destroyed the entire town. The Turkey Fire Department was established in 1928. Fresh watermelon cake, watermelon popsicles, watermelon tequila pops …
It was time to move; head out of Turkey on 86 – don’t forget to turn right onto US 287 – still singing, suddenly we’re as inseparable as Sonny & Cher, Ike & Tina … “I’m a ding dong daddy wearin’ Pumas babe / You oughta see me do my stuff / Wild papa from below Belgrade / I don’t want to get rough …”
McBULLOCK’S STEAKHOUSE WATCH YOUR CURVES EAT MORE BEEF single-word wooden signs nailed atop barbed wire fence posts from here to there.
* * *
At a traffic light I read: “dusty prairie settlement grew to become Whichita Falls, a town with 21 saloons, earning it the nickname ‘Whiskeytaw Falls.’ The original falls were washed away in a flood in the 1800s, but there are plans for a new one [ed: completed in 1987 as “a 54-foot man-made waterfall, multi-level cascade, a perfect photo opportunity for weddings, reunions and group photos.”]
We’re singing “Where’s the Falls In Whichita Falls / Where will you be when nature calls…” over and over, louder and louder. We weren’t drunk. Not at all.
We reviewed our motel scam-scheme before stopping at the Motel 6 off US 277. We parked in the lot to the side. I got out, waiting in the dark. Vivienne took the wheel, parked out in front of the well-lit lobby. Paid for a single at $17.95. I circled out behind the motel to avoid detection. We met out back where she parked nose first in front of room A-238. We hugged, triumphant. We’d just saved $4. We’re almost Bonnie & Clyde.
She checked out the room as I grabbed some things out of the car including a bottle of Jim Beam. And there, at that moment, as if she fell from heaven, was a young woman, leaning against the back bumper of her Chevy Chevelle. Smile the size of a county fair. She was done up to look even sexier than she already appeared to be just in case the next 10 men were blind.
“Where you goin’ hoggin’ that whole bottle o’ JB by yerself. That ain’t social. Don’t you wanna invite some good time into yer life?”
“I always opt for a good time, but my wife has a different idea of ‘good time.’ Sorry.”
“You best be. Cuz I’m the best thing this side of the Panhandle. Rhymes with hard to handle. Yep, your loss, but you all have a grand ole evenin’ – yer JB an’ yer lady.” She lingered as if she were about to challenge me to a duel. Then suddenly she yanked down her shorts to flash me her sweet spot, the hair shaved into a heart shape. “Your club could be trumpin’ my heart.”
“Could be. Could be.” What else could I do but smile and tip my imaginary hat.
I entered the room high on flattery only to be hit by the odor of moldy carpet. She poured, we celebrated, clinked plastic cups of JB and ice she’d rescued from the ice machine at the bottom of the stairs. But she was freezing.
I did the chivalrous thing, got down on my knees, laughing and cursing as I tried to cover up the 2 AC vents with the LPS she bought in Montana: Lost Sounds From The Treasure State Montana Vol. 1 and Hoyt Axton’s My Griffin Is Gone because she was shivering for real in a fetal position on the bed and we couldn’t find the thermostat anywhere. I found a strange-odor extra blanket and gallantly threw it over her. We crawled under the sheets, snuggled as if we’d returned to our earliest courting season. We watched old episodes of Twilight Zone and Route 66.
In the morning she was still asleep, a rough breath emerging from a mouth open ever-so-slightly. I took the opportunity to grab her leather-fringe purse, flopped open her wallet, and gazed for the first time upon her driver’s license: Vivienne Regenbogen.*
* * *
I sat in the Motel 6 complimentary breakfast nook, wondering what to think [who does she want to be to me, to others?], waiting for Vivienne. There were heated-up frozen croissants, boxing glove-sized muffins, jelly in mini-tubs, powdered scrambled eggs, coffee with powdered creamer, some orange drink the astronauts always took to the moon, Domino Sugar packet with a fortune that I read aloud: an optimist is someone who tells you to cheer up when things are going his way.
“I hear someone a callin’ my name!?”
“Huh?”
“George here, George the Eternal Optimist. Some mean it as a take-down. I see it as a compliment. Where’re you all headed next?” George, a man with a high, gleaming forehead, grey hair, worked the rigs as a Drilling Fluids Engineer. His voice trailed off into a mouth curved into a perpetual smile like a hammock begging for someone to lie in it. And that his wife over the years has done.
“Headin’ back east.”
“This here’s Helen. She weaves, is a weaver. Teaches. Wove a web that caught me forever. Amen.” I nodded. Helen’s demure, a former prize, maybe a beauty queen but now more creamy pastry left out in the open air for a bit too long. She seemed tired, perm collapsing in the humidity, although the AC was on full-blast so she wore a pastel pink cardigan around her bare shoulders.
“Florida by way of Port Arthur, home of Janis Joplin, got her revenge for being bullied by becoming a superstar.”
“Yea, but dyin’ doin’ it. Port Arthur’s not much to look at.”
“That’s exactly what we like to look at.” I countered.
“It’s pretty far gone. The coloreds are all idle hanging in front of the boarded-up businesses – they came and the city go. I ain’t blamin’ ’em. It’s your basic rough town, oil refineries bring a rough crowd, once had your basic giant mansions, long gone. I worked there but I’s never rough enough.”
“It’s like Jersey here, ’cept more spread out …” Vivienne had joined us.
“Yep, it’s so that more gunk and despair and dust can collect between the buildings and park benches.” He was proud of his observations like a tour guide who loves his work.
“This here’s Vivienne Rainbow, she’s an artist …” She, head down, scraped a tub of grape jelly for her muffin.
“Puh-LEAse! Even the holes in the pepper shaker are big in Texas.” She was still groggy from the Jim Beam sleep.
“We’re just ramblin’-around retirees. Permanent vacation. Somebody’s gotta do it! We been everywhere.”
“Beirut Lebanon?”
“Yep. Er, at least Lebanon Texas. Ghost town now. Been there. Lebanon PA, Lebanon Illinois, Lebanon Virginia and New Hampshire. Been there, been there, been there, been there.” Helen’s eyes like two damp coasters. The paragon of what’s-one-to-do exasperated tolerance.
Helen gently shoved her chair back, excused herself, noticed she’d forgotten to remove one curler, announcing: “Have to pack for the day, big agenda. Nice meetin’ y’all.” Put an extra apple in her purse for the long drive.
We sat there with George. I was fiddling with the empty sugar packets. George looked so relaxed in his relaxed clothes, smelling sharp like he’d been soaking in Old Spice for an hour. His face lit up like he was about to reveal something precious.
“Don’t tell Helen, but I bought her an armadillo bank the other day in the San Antonio market on the sly. Tell yuh why. She loves to find pennies ever since she’s a kid. Even today when she finds one she’s gotta tell me the exact circumstances. Each penny’s got its own story. Findin’ a penny – or a nickel, any coins – makes her day.”
So what did he do from day to day? He usually figured out the day’s route and then dropped pennies along the way. Then went back to pick her up at the hotel and, as they cruised downtown, she’d find her pennies.
“Even around the house back home, in the garage, in pockets in the laundry, in the park. Keeps her happy and when she’s happy I’m halfway to happy myself.”
Me and George were staring out the same motel breakfast nook window and we were seeing totally different realities. He saw the entrance ramp; was counting 15 cars a minute as I watched I-forgot-to-ask-her-name bent over, halfway inside the trunk of her Chevelle with a tattoo on her back just above her waistline: ENJOY YOUR VISIT.
* Vivienne Rainbow [née Regenbogen] is the granddaughter of former SS guard Johannes Regenbogen who was captured by the US Army and transported to a Texas POW camp in early 1945.
During his Army Tribunal hearing in 1946, he was accused of complicity in the mass murder of hundreds by gassing, deliberate freezing to death, and other atrocities including poison injections to the heart. He was tried as a juvenile because he was only 18-20 at the time of the alleged crimes. During his hearing, he told how he was forced to join the SS, transported in a cattle car crammed with other recruits to an SS Training Camp where he excelled. He graduated “top of the class” and was sent to Herzogenbusch Concentration Camp in the south of Holland, where he served as the camp’s head guard, although he tended to minimize all this. They say he was known for his deceptively bubbly personality and was nicknamed der Glückliche Junge Kommandant [Happy Boy Commander].
He eventually convinced an Army Interrogation Panel of his innocence, however, claiming he had no knowledge of Hitler’s genocidal plans or the systematic killings occurring at the camp. He claimed he was naive and unaware that the canisters released into the camp showers were not disinfectants but actually Zyklon B poison gas.
After a short rehabilitation regimen, he was released and became a model citizen in Comfort, Texas, eventually serving as a combat stress reaction counselor at the Temple, Texas VA Hospital. He became a naturalized American citizen in 1951. He later moved to Albany, NY, where he met his wife Judith, and served as a corrections officer training instructor, raising a family including Dolph Sr., Vivienne’s father, in Mahopac, in Upstate NY.
He died peacefully in 1986 in Putnam Hospital, never having to face accusers who had reopened his case. His wife Judith Regenbogen [née Jutte Reiniger] died in 1993.
Regenbogen grew up in Vrede, near the Dutch border, and had many Dutch friends in his youth. He collected postage stamps and WWI memorabilia, including unexploded munitions. “Vrede” is the Dutch word for peace.
