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By Root 1090 0

at the counter when a couple of men who looked to be in their sixties pulled up in a long black El Dorado. They parked just a few feet from the front door and strutted inside. One was dressed in a Western outfit trimmed in sparkling sequins. His potbelly pushed against a belt buckle designed to look like a Winchester rifle, and he walked bowlegged, as if, Carl thought, he had either just gotten off a mighty wide horse or was hiding a cucumber up his ass. The other wore a dark blue suit, decorated across the front with various badges and patriotic ribbons, and a square VFW cap at a jaunty angle. Both of their faces were flushed red with strong drink and arrogance. Carl recognized the cowboy from the newspaper, a Republican loudmouth on the city council, always complaining at the monthly meetings about the degenerate, wide-open sex scene in the Meade city park. Though Carl had driven through there a hundred times at night, the hottest thing he’d ever encountered was a couple of gawky teenagers attempting a kiss in front of the little World War II memorial.

The two men sat down in a booth and ordered coffee. After the waitress served them, they began talking about a man with long hair they had seen walking down the sidewalk on their way over from the American Legion. “Never thought I’d see anything like that around here,” the suit said.

“You just wait,” the cowboy said. “If something ain’t done, they’ll be thick as fleas on a monkey’s ass within a year or two.” He took a sip of his coffee. “I got a niece lives in New York City, and that boy of hers looks just like a girl, hair clear down over his ears. I keep telling her, you send him to me, I’ll straighten his ass out, but she won’t do it. Says I’d be too rough on him.”

They lowered their voices a bit, but Carl could still hear them talking about the way they used to hang niggers, how someone needed to start lynching again, even if it was goddamn hard work, but with the longhairs this time. “Stretch a few of their dirty necks,” the cowboy said. “That will wake ’em up, by God. At least keep ’em out of these parts.”

Carl could smell their aftershave clear across the diner. He stared at the sugar bowl in front of him on the counter and tried to imagine their lives, the irrevocable steps they had taken to get to where they were on this cold, dark night in Meade, Ohio. It was electric, the sensation that went through him just then, the awareness he had of his own short time on this earth and what he had done with it, and these two old fucks and their connection to it all. It was the same sort of feeling he got with the models. They had chosen one ride or one direction over another, and they had ended up in his and Sandy’s car. Could he explain it? No, he couldn’t explain it, but he sure as hell could feel it. The mystery, that’s all Carl could ever say. Tomorrow, he knew, it wouldn’t mean anything. The feeling would be gone until the next time. Then he heard water running in the sink back in the kitchen, and the clear image of a soggy grave he’d once dug on a starry night rose to the surface of his memory—he’d dug in a wet spot, and a half-moon, high in the sky and as white as new snow, had bobbed and settled on top of the water seeping into the bottom of the hole and he had never seen anything so beautiful—and he tried to hold on to the image because he hadn’t thought about it for a while, but the old men’s voices broke in again and disturbed his peace.

His head began to ache a little and he asked the young waitress for one of the aspirins he knew she kept in her purse. She liked to smoke them, she had confessed to him one night, crush them and put the powder in a cigarette. Small-town dope, Carl had thought, and he had to restrain himself from laughing at her, this poor stupid girl. She handed him two tablets with a wink, Jesus, like she was passing him a shot of morphine or something. He smiled at her and thought again about taking her out for a trial run, watch a hitcher get his jollies with her while he took some pictures and assured her that this was the way all models