Heads

For those of you interested in madness, yours or mine, I can tell you a little about mine...

Lew was with me and we'd driven three days already in search of something¦ the end of our journey, wherever that was. Three days with never a sober breath, taking the back roads to stay out of trouble. Lew reached the stage where he was seeing things ' heads sprouting out of the distant mountain tops ' so I took over the wheel. The road carried on, never going anywhere except further ahead. The mountains shifted position, getting no bigger. There were no towns, no cars. Nothing, forwards or back. But Lew kept seeing the heads. Sometimes they came up out of the road. When they did, he'd scream. He said he could hear them pop as I drove over them.

"Fuck it, Stan, he screamed. "Can't you hear them?

We came to a place. A few houses, strung out like boxes on a conveyor. A grocery store. A pool room. A bar on the corner. Flyscreens banging in the wind. No signpost. Pissant.

Lew slumped his head and looked in the back.

"We need more supplies, man. Stan the man, I say¦ we need to pull over.

I came in near the grocery, banging the front wheel over the sidewalk like beaching a boat. Jesus, the heat! You could hear it. Lew just sat there. He lit a cigarette. He looked up the street. He took off his cap, turned it around, put it back. A crust of salt on his eyebrows.

"Heads, he said. "All those fuckin' heads, man. Pop-pop-POP!

Inside, the tarpaper walls were moving. An old guy sat at the register, cooking like a stew-bone, face like an empty knacker-sack. He rang up the stuff: four 6-packs, a bag of doughnuts, two cans of wieners, a chocolate milk, a quart of scotch, a carton of Luckys, a dozen Milky Ways, a lighter. I gave him a 50. He gave me some change.

"You need to get that road fixed, said Lew, ripping the tab off the milk. He took a swig. His throat jerked like a bobber in a trout pool. He wiped his mouth.

"I mean, all them fuckin' heads. You need to do something about it.

We sat in the car outside. We drank 2 beers apiece before opening the scotch. It bypassed our livers and came straight out in sweat. We smoked some Luckys. Through the window, I could see the old guy watching us. He was baked. Everything was baked. The whole town was a cook-out.

"So¦ where are we, anyway? said Lew. "Just where the fuck is this? I mean, whose fuckin' map is this place on?

I took the bottle from him, fitted it to my lips like a flatbacker does, took some down. The fire inside as well.

"Ours, I said.