Desperation

He dropped a hand into his lap and wasn’t exactly sur prised at what he found there. Say, folks, Frampton comes alive.“… new bunch, or maybe even a book.”

He settled his hand firmly back on the arm of his chair “Huh. What.”

“Are you going deaf as well as senile.”

“No. I was remembering one time with you behind 2 Gibby’s. Making out.”

“Oh. In the sunflowers, right.”

“Right.”

There was a long pause when she might have been con-sidering some further comment on that interlude. Joh

“1 said maybe you ought to drive across country on your bike before you get too old to work the footgears, or start drinking again and splash yourself all over the Black Hills.”

“Are you out of your mind. I haven’t been on that thing in three years, and I have no intention of getting back on, Terry. My eyesight sucks—”

“So get a stronger pair of glasses—”

“—and my reflexes are shot. John Cheever may or may not have died of alcoholism, but John Gardner definitely went out on a motorcycle. Had an argument with a tree.

He lost. It happened on a road in Pe

Terry wasn’t listening. She was one of the few people in the world who felt perfectly comfortable ignoring him and letting her own thoughts carry her away. He supposed that was another reason he’d divorced her. He didn’t like being ignored, especially by a woman.

“You could cross the country on your motorcycle and collect material for a new bunch of essays,” she was saying. She sounded both excited and amused. “If you front-loaded the best of the early bunch—as Part One, you know—you’d have a pretty good-sized book.

American Heart, 1 966—1996, essays by John Edward Marinville.” She giggled. “Who knows. You might even get another good notice from Shelby Foote. That’s the one you always liked the best, wasn’t it.” She paused for his reply, and when it didn’t come, she asked him if he was there, first lightly, then with a little concern.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m here.” He was suddenly glad he was sitting down. “Listen, Terry, I have to go. I’ve got an appointment.”

“New lady-friend.”

“Podiatrist,” he said, thinking Foote, thinking foot. That name was like the final number in a bank-vault com-bination. Click, and the door swings open.

“Well, take care of yourself,” she said. “And honest to God, Joh

“Nothing, I suppose,” he said, thinking about Shelby Foote, who had once called John Edward Marinville the only living American writer of John Steinbeck’s stature, and Terry was right—of all the praisenuggets he’d ever gotten, that was the one he liked the best.

“Right, nothing.” She paused. “Joh

“Fine. Say hello to the kids for me.”

“I always do. They usually respond with what my ma used to call potty-words, but I always do. Bye.”

He hung up without looking at the telephone, and when it fell off the edge of the desk and onto the floor, he still didn’t look around. John Steinbeck had crossed the country with his dog in a makeshift camper. Joh

It was a ridiculous title, a laughable title, like a Mad 2 magazine parody… but was it any worse than an essay titled “Death on the Second Shift” or “Feeding the Flames”. He thought not… and he felt the title would work, would rise above its pu

“If it was bighearted,” he said. His heart was thumping hard in his chest, but for once the feel of that didn’t scare him. “Bighearted like Blue Highways. Bighearted like. well, like Steinbeck.”

Sitting there in his office chair with the telephone bur ring harshly at his feet, what Joh

He had scooped the telephone up and called his agent his fingers flying over the buttons.

“Bill,” he said, “it’s Joh

As Joh

“Afternoon, Officer,” Joh

“Sir, are you aware that parking a vehicle on a state road is against the law.” the cop asked without look-ing up.

“No, but I hardly think—”

— it can be much of a problem on a road as deserted as U.s. 50 was how he meant to finish, and in the haughty “How dare you question my judgement.” tone that he had been using on underlings and service people for years, but then he saw something that changed his mind. There was blood on the right cuff and sleeve of the cop’s shirt, quite a lot of it, drying now to a maroon glaze. He had probably finished moving some large piece of roadkill off the highway not very long ago—likely a deer or an elk hit by a speeding semi. That would explain both the blood and the bad temper. The shirt looked like a dead loss; that much blood would never come out.

“Sir.” the cop asked sharply. He had finished writ-ing down the plate number now but went on looking at the bike, his blond eyebrows drawn together, his mouth scrimped flat.

It was as if he didn’t want to look at the bike’s owner, as if he knew that would only make him feel lousier than he did already. “You were saying.”

“Nothing, Officer,” Joh

Still without looking up, his notepad strangled in one hand and his gaze fixed severely on the Harley’s taillight, the cop said: “It’s also against the law to relieve yourself within sight of a state road. Did you know that.”

“No, I’m sorry,” Joh

“Well, it is. Now, I’m going to let you go He looked up for the first time, looked at Joh

He trailed off, eyes now as wide as a kid’s when the circus parade comes thumping down the street in a swirl of clowns and trombones. Joh

Afan, he thought. I’m out here in the big nowhere between Ely and Austin, and I’ve found a by-God fan.

He couldn’t wait to tell Steve Ames about this when 2 they met up in Austin tonight.

Hell, he might call him on the cellular later on this afternoon… if the cellulars worked out here, that was. Now that he thought about it, he supposed they didn’t. The battery in his was up, he’d had it on the charger all last night, but he hadn’t actually talked to Steve on the damned thing since leaving Salt Lake City. In truth he wasn’t all that crazy about the cel-lulars. He didn’t think they actually did cause cancer, that was probably just more tabloid scare-stuff, but…