Riding The Bullet

catches you twice, he's apt to write you a ticket, as

well. So I took Route 68, which winds southwest from Bangor. It's a pretty well-traveled road, and if you don't look like an out-and-out psycho, you can usually do pretty well. The cops leave you alone, too, for the most part.

My first lift was with a morose insurance man and took me as far as Newport. I stood at the intersection of Route 68 and Route 2 for about twenty minutes, then got a ride with an elderly gentleman who was on his way to Bowdoinham. He kept grabbing at his crotch as he drove. It was as if he was trying to catch something that was running around in there. "My wife allus told me I'd wind up in the ditch with a knife in my back if I kept on picking up hitch-hikers," he said, "but when I see a young fella standin t'side of the rud, I allus remember my own younger days. Rode my thumb quite a bit, so I did. Rode the rods, too. And lookit this, her dead four year and me still a-goin, drivin this same old Dodge. I miss her somethin turrible." He snatched at his crotch. "Where you headed, son?"

I told him I was going to Lewiston, and why.

"That's turrible," he said. "Your ma! I'm so sorry!" His sympathy was so strong and spontaneous that it made the corners of my eyes prickle. I blinked the tears back. The last thing in the world I wanted was to burst out crying in this old man's old car, which rat-tled and wallowed and smelled quite strongly of pee.

"Mrs. McCurdy-the lady who called me-said it isn't that serious. My mother's still young, only forty-eight."

"Still! A stroke!" He was genuinely dismayed. He snatched at the baggy crotch of his green pants again, yanking with an old man's oversized, clawlike hand. "A stroke's allus serious! Son, I'd take you to the CMMC myself-drive you right up to the front door-if I hadn't

promised my brother Ralph I'd take him up to the nursin home in Gates. His wife's there, she has that forgettin disease, I can't think what in the world they call it, Anderson's or Alvarez or some-thin like that-" "Alzheimer's," I said.

"Ayuh, prob'ly I'm gettin it myself. Hell, I'm tempted to take you anyway."

"You don't need to do that," I said. "I can get a ride from Gates easy."

"Still," he said. "Your mother! A stroke! Only forty-eight!"

He grabbed at the baggy crotch of his pants. "Fucking truss!" he cried, then laughed-the sound was both desperate and amused. "Fucking rupture! If you stick around, son, all your works start fallin apart. God kicks your ass in the end, let me tell you. But you're a good boy to just drop everythin and go to her like you're doin."

"She's a good mom," I said, and once again I felt the

tears bite. I never felt very homesick when I went

away to school-a little bit the first week, that was all-but I felt homesick then. There was just me and her, no other close relatives. I couldn't imagine life without her. Wasn't too bad, Mrs. McCurdy had said; a stroke, but not too bad. Damn old lady better be telling the truth, I thought, she just better be. We rode in silence for a little while. It wasn't the fast ride I'd hoped for-the old man maintained a steady forty-five miles an hour and sometimes wan-dered over the white line to sample the other lane-but it was a long ride, and that was really just as good. Highway 68 unrolled before us, turning its way through miles of woods and splitting the little towns that were there and gone in a slow blink, each one with its bar and its self-service gas station: New Sharon, Ophelia, West Ophelia, Ganistan (which had once been Afghantistan, strange but true), Mechanic Falls, Castle View, Castle Rock. The bright blue of the sky dimmed as the day drained out of it; the old man turned on first his parking lights and then his headlights. They were the high beams but he didn't seem to notice, not even when cars coming the other way flashed their own high beams at him.

"My sister'n-law don't even remember her own

name," he said. "She don't know aye, yes, no, nor

maybe. That's what that Anderson's Disease does to

you, son. There's a look in her eyes . . . like she's sayin

'Let me out of here' . . . or would say it, if she could think of the words. Do you know what I mean?" "Yes," I said. I took a deep breath and wondered if the pee I smelled was the old man's or if he maybe had a dog that rode with him sometimes. I wondered if he'd be offended if I rolled down my window a little. Finally I did. He didn't seem to notice, any more than he noticed the oncoming cars flashing their highs at him. Around seven o'clock we breasted a hill in West Gates and my chauffeur cried, "Lookit, son! The moon! Ain't she a corker?"

She was indeed a corker-a huge orange ball hoist-ing itself over the horizon. I thought there was never-theless something terrible about it. It looked both pregnant and infected. Looking at the rising moon, a sudden and awful thought came to me: what if I got to the hospital and my ma didn't recognize me? What if her memory was gone, completely shot, and she didn't know aye, yes, no, nor maybe? What if the doc-tor told me she'd need someone to take care of her for the rest of her life? That someone would have to be me, of course; there was no one else. Goodbye college. What about that, friends and neighbors?

"Make a wish on it, boyo!" the old man cried. In his excitement his voice grew sharp and unpleasant-it was like having shards of glass stuffed into your ear.

He gave his crotch a terrific tug. Something in there

made a snapping sound. I didn't see how you could

yank on your crotch like that and not rip your balls right off at the stem, truss or no truss. "Wish you make on the ha'vest moon allus comes true, that's what my father said!"

So I wished that my mother would know me when I walked into her room, that her eyes would light up at once and she would say my name. I made that wish and immediately wished I could have it back again; I thought that no wish made in that fevery orange light could come to any good.

"Ah, son!" the old man said. "I wish my wife was here! I'd beg forgiveness for every sha'ap and unkind word I ever said to her!"

Twenty minutes later, with the last light of the day still in the air and the moon still hanging low and bloated in the sky, we arrived in Gates Falls. There's a yellow blinker at the intersection of Route 68 and Pleasant Street. Just before he reached it, the old man swerved to the side of the road, bumping the Dodge's right front wheel up over the curb and then back down again. It rattled my teeth. The old man looked at me with a kind of wild, defiant excitement-every-thing about him was wild, although I hadn't seen that at first; everything about him had that broken-glass feeling. And everything that came out of his mouth seemed to be an exclamation.

"I'll take you up there! I will, yessir! Never mind Ralph! Hell with him! You just say the word!"

I wanted to get to my mother, but the thought of another twenty miles with the smell of piss in the air and cars flashing their brights at us wasn't very pleas-ant. Neither was the image of the old fellow wander-ing and weaving across four lanes of Lisbon Street. Mostly, though, it was him. I couldn't stand another twenty miles of crotch-snatching and that excited broken-glass voice.