Pages Torn From a Travel Journal Read online

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  ISBN: 1-62105-093-9

  Pages Torn from a Travel Jounral copyright 2010, 2013 by Edward Lee

  Cover art copyright © 2013 Glenn Chadbourne

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written consent of the publisher, except where permitted by law.

  Printed in the USA.

  [The following handwritten manuscript was found in the trash bin on Burlington Superior Bus Lines Coach No. 610 by Operator A. Linden, and promptly turned into the Pulaski County Sheriff’s Office; investigation is pending. The author appears to be some manner of professional writer, yet identifies himself herein only as “Howard.”]

  1 May, 19—

  c. 6 p.m.

  Somewhere in southeastern Virginia (?)

  May Day now, & I feel a cliched & foreboding “prickling of my thumbs,” to quote Shakespeare. The irony strikes me with potency–yes, the 1st of May, the Beltane, & the immemorial eve of which so often reflects in my tales: the Druidic and pre-Druidic night of otherworldly phantasmata, the worship of fertility goddesses & celebration of winter’s death & the coming spring via orgiastic revel, a time of joyous, lust-ripe fecundity . . .

  I’d selected this newer northern-based bus line simply for reduced rates in spite of the more circuitous routes necessitating an extra travel-day. But even with the unexpected $ from Wright, I now fear the delay will prevent my continuing on to New Orleans & its antique granite architecture; its ponderous mausolea & risen burying grounds; its ghost-shrouded swamps; its primal Santerian obsequies; &–most significant–its Vodou-soused atmosphere. Hence, in all probability, my connecting train in Chattanooga would be missed, forcing me to wing a make-shift itinerary. Perhaps next year financial happenstance will license a proper New Orleans tour.

  It was through hilly woodland that our course took us since the rail junction in D.C. this morning. The deeper our penetrations, the more degraded the road-paving seemed; but certainly this less-direct route provided the reversal of metropolitan scenery that I preferred. These Virginian hills, however, loomed like immense sentient entities whose various orifi seemed to swallow our coach & plunge us into overgrown darkness. Indeed, the woodland of the U.S. south brings an ambience all its own, differing much from that of my beloved New England. Greens were deeper, the foliage more diverse yet abnormal from overgrowth, & the wooded byways more forebodingly dark. Signs of poverty lurked everywhere, tucked away behind flanks of centuried trees & vine-encumbered groves: plank-board houses half-collapsed yet still occupied, pre-‘20s motor-vehicles & farm equipment reduced to rusting hulks, primitive shacks & lean-to’s populated by families in rotting clothing & malnourished bodies. Twice we spotted Negro corpses hanging from stout limbs, proof that the lynching scourges were ended only by the mouths of prevaricating authorities. Before a sheet-metal shed pocked by cut-out holes for windows, a wax-pallid & filthy-haired adolescent stood cringingly pregnant in mere sackcloth. She appeared to be sucking the innards from the slit belly of a squirrel, her mouth encrimsoned & face flinty. Sunken eyes like those of an octogenarian followed the bus as we passed. I know it was but my imagination, yet those eyes seemed locked on my own. On similar trips I’d seen New England’s version of the same despair many times, nothing so devastating as this. Whereas New England’s woods may well have been ghost-haunted, these of the south stood haunted by the living.

  Just as poverty’s scars & the over-dense forests grew too oppressive, the bus rumbled out onto a road of better & newer repair, possibly a result of the recent Federal Highway Initiative where workers were paid $1 per day to improve interstate commerce by building more effective roadways. But I sighed as my gaze showed me a sign: RTE. 6, the imperfect number. The vibrations of my karma were already atwitch, even with the refreshing new scenery beyond my window: fields & meadows constellated by all manner of colourful flora. It was at this point, then, there came a suspicious rattling from the rear of the coach where I can only suppose the engine compartment is located. & after that, our dutiful bus driver–did I mention in a previous entry that his eyes seemed watery & unhealthily over-protuberant; while his head appeared more narrow than it should? There was also a peculiarly thick layering about the neck that was impossible not to notice. I’ll need to use his likeness in an upcoming tale . . .

  At any rate, it was this same less-than-gainly driver who made an announcement to the passengers. “Wal haow yew like thet?” rang his dark New England accent. “Engine problems, folks. Saounds like the manifold.” (I hadn’t a clue as to what a manifold—as a noun–could be. Note: look up.) There were 11 other passengers, & we all moaned in audible unison; yet, wouldn’t I know it? 11 plus myself plus the seemingly viced-headed driver equaled 13, the # of ill-omen.

  In the name of Nyarlathotep! Though I’m not typically superstitious—a bombast of illogic—the 13 coupled with the 6 & my thumbs’ unpleasant tingling did not bode well in my psyche.

  But at least better fortune would come in concert w/ the gruelling & likely trip-destroying news. “Thar’s a Gawd off-tuh all, ee-yuh!” the driver muttered an exclamation, & was able to wheel the bunglesome coach into a filling station/garage; indeed, when the vehicle stopped, a loud bang! erupted from the muffler & the engine sputtered & died.

  The garage was a plank-board hovel called, simply, NATE’S GAS & REPAIRS, & boasted a price of 5 cents per gallon for petrol which I believe was 2 cents lower than my northern homestead. My small valise in hand, I stepped out into ambrosial heat after the others debarked (my beloved Providence still possessed an evil chill when I left just days ago, yet even this modest distance more southerly brought a lovely swelter to the air.) The long narrow ribbon of asphalt we’d arrived on seemed to bisect a great field gone wild and heavy, ascending woodland. While the driver conversed w/a grease-smudged mechanic, I & the others straggled into the establishment’s poor facsimile for an office; but before entering myself I saw that in either direction, rayed by intense sunlight, nary another building could be seen. I would’ve liked to know the region’s name, yet I hadn’t a guess.

  Distancing myself from the others (as I am wont to do more times than not) I analyzed my map & deduced that the mechanical mishap had stranded us somewhere in proximity to towns I’d barely heard of, in particular Pulaski & the dubiously named Christiansburg. Very close we must be to the West Virginia as well as the Kentucky border–& a cryptic region notoriously steeped in “white trash” cliches of inbredism & genetically inherited idiocy, for these same regions were, centuries ago, repositories for England’s expelled criminal element. It seems unfair to so negatively brand a region for societal misadventure when in fact the history of all regions suffer from it. Grumbling sundry misfortunes, my fellow passengers sat sweat-badged while I remained in leisurely comfort. They were mostly plebeians, I’m sorry to say, & only one man other than myself had retained the dignity to wear a light suit. A pregnant woman, more than likely unwed, sat holding her gravid belly like a bushel basket. She wore Flapperish black bangs, & appeared quite lithe & shapely save, of course, for the grievously swollen stomach; while high & no doubt milk-laden breasts made a visual curio of her. When she asked the time, a surprising cockney accent revealed her British heritage. A gentlewoman she was not, however: her remarkable breasts jutted obviously un-brassiered w/in the threadbare cotton sundress–& when she listlessly parted her
legs–gads!!!–the fact that she wore no under-linens disclosed itself. Via her appearance, I believe she was what vulgarians would call a “sauce-box.” Several scruffy roughs in their 20’s seemed to know each other; their lean, weaselish faces made me think of fugitives; or was that just my naturalistic cynicism bubbling through? The rest were so un-unique in appearance & personality there is no need to distinguish them via words.

  Momentarily, the driver came inside w/the proprietor. Nate, the garage’s namesake, proved as much by the patch on his begrimed shirt: a short, wiry type, chisel-chinned, w/biceps like apples. His physical form, facial features, & attire very much bespoke his station in life: a “red-neck” mechanic.

  “Ain’t the best news for yawl,” spake Nate, “and ain’t the worst. Yer bus blew the intake manner-fold, and I’se can fix it in a jiff.”

  “This would be the good news, then?” I prompted.

  “Yeee-ip. Bad news’s that I cain’t get the blammed gasket till tomorrow mornin’. They’ll be drivin’ one over from Pulaski.”

  Another chorus of moans, then someone remarked of the obvious, “So we’re stranded here till it’s fixed.”

  “Yeee-ip,” replied Nate, hands on hips. The pose displayed the darkened armpits of his work-tunic. “So’s yawl can decide fer yerselfs. Ya can spend the night on the bus or”–he shot a thumb in the fashion of a hitchhiker toward road behind him–“hoof it ‘bout a mile to Luntville’n flop at the motel. Gilman House, it’s called.”

  Immediately I was enthralled by the divergency of the man’s accent. Accents, in fact, has always baited some queer interest in me, with regard to how they mirrored the legacy of the speaker–a societal parallelism; the cruder the accent, i.e., the cruder the man, & the greater the deficit of civility. Our driver, for instance (a Vermonter) carried on his tongue the dialect of a New England jerkwater, a style of speech I was all too familiar with &, I hope, had accurately demonstrated in several tales (“Picture,” “Sleep,” to name a few). Yet Nate the wiry mechanic cracked in something altogether more unique, what I think of as the accent of the unrefined, poorly educated, low-economic-status Caucasian southerner. All regions had their cultural tongues, & here was a new one on me.

  Yet as for the motel–no doubt a discredited fleabag—the prospect I immediately rejected upon being informed of probable $1 ½ per-night fees (outlandish for these economic times and this locale!); while the stubbed-chinned ruffian-trio declined as well, as did the wayward British mother, all clearly as poor if not poorer than I. In my time I’d slept on many a bus to save much filthy lucre. Best to be prudent regarding creature comfort, & keep more funds available for some indulgence. The others deputed at once, to retrieve bags & baggage from the coach luggage compartment, & begin the simple trek on foot. (I did however like the name of the motel–the Gilman House. It had a nice creepish ring to it. I’ll have to use it in an upcoming tale, along with the suspicious likeness of the driver.)

  A simple query of “Nate” afforded me directions to the commode facilities (the “donniker,” he called it), & upon entrance to the cubby I was slammed in the face by an absolutely miasmal urine/excreta odor so common amongst these out-of-the-way stops. Yet holding my breath, nearly teary-eyed by the vaporous stench, I proceeded to my business into a toilet horrific beyond description–an observation of some peculiarity for a travelogue, yet write it I remain inclined. Here, indeed, a 2nd auspex occurred, a premonition of cogent effect. My thumbs did tingle as the unknown divination heightened, for amid typical crude scrawls of telephone #’s & names promising all manner of sexual formidability, my eyes stopped on a single graffito revealed via the crudest stick-figure drawing: a grinning male figure with obvious erection. Lying elevated before him was a stick-figure woman, arms & legs asprawl, circles for breasts & dots for nipples, a clump of pen-squiggles for private hair, then bugged eyes & a jutting tongue. It was the simplicity of the grotesqueness that had snagged my eye, not art-work at all, but an appallingly demented representation of a deranged mind. See, at first glance, the actions of the 2 stick-figures remained paradoxical, but as I scrutinized details . . .

  The male, clearly, was inserting his erection into the crown of the prone female’s head . . .

  What madness was this to so visually vandalize the chamber’s wall, & what manner of pervert had drawn it? The speculation was as depressing as it was beguiling. Indeed, who could even think of so depraved a thing?

  Darkness, then, seemed to settle over my soul.

  The world was changing ever-so-grimly, it seemed. A trifling matter–just a crude scrawl by a demented hand–yet for reasons I could not reckon with, I felt as though a portent had been infused into my very psychic fiber.

  Before I quitted the abysmal closet, I penned a graffito of my own: cthulhu fhtagn. Still, the ignorant drawing left me imbued in despair. I tried to recompose myself when I went back to the front office, loosening my neck tie & removing my jacket. At this point I was informed that the 3 scruffs had lit off for a nearby lake with their fishing rods that they’d unsecured from the coach’s luggage hold; presumably the pregnant Briton had joined them, to allay boredom. Other riders were already departing for the short walk to lodgings. “Gentlemen,” I spake to Nate & the bus operator, “if you’ll excuse me, I believe I’ll take advantage of these lush Virginian surroundings for a nature walk.”

  Nate grinned wickedly at my notice, & said, “Sometimes there’s creeker gals swimmin’ in the lake–buck naked, they’ll be,” er—at least that’s what I think he said, the word “creeker,” yet he’d pronounced it more as “cricker,” which I presumed to be a hill-dweller of an even more rustic bent than Nate. “If’n yer lucky, you’ll get to gander some”–he rubbed his hands together as if greedy–“and, yee-ip, I ain’t kiddin’ ya, a lotta them backwoods hosebags are lookers. Got big ole tits settin’ out like Thanksgivin’ supper, yes sir!”

  “Thet sew?” asked the driver in his own conflicting accent.

  “Dang straight, buddy. And pussies? Shee-it! They got big hairy pussies just drippin’ to get poked, and I’se mean drippin’ like a blammed honey jar turnt upside-down! And sometimes you’ll a-see ‘em ettin’ each other, no lie.” He winked right at me. “Like to make ya wanna jerk out a creamer.”

  This outrageous excess of information & crudity left me staring, but even more regrettably, Nate continued as if in a fever of vulgarness, still rubbing his hands together, “Yee-ip, I’ll tell ya, man. Some’a them hill girls out there’re so sick in the head for dick, you’ll shit your ever-livin’ pants!”

  I nearly gasped.

  The bus driver piped in, “Sick in the head fer dick, yew say? Yew know, up narth we got gulls like thet tew, like they juss curn’t get enough of it. Way a rummy needs rum? These gulls need dick stuck in ‘em, ee-yuh.”

  “Aw, shore, girls like that ever-where, man,” Nate replied. “S’way they was made, yessir! Was made ta be filled with cum, and fer ever minute goes by that they ain’t, it’s a blammed cryin’ shame. A bunch’a fuck-pots is what they is, an’ IIIIIIIIIIIII’se love ‘em!”

  The driver laughed. “”I heer thet, feller!”

  “But mind ya, these creeker tramps? The ones deeper in the hills, they’ll try ta charge ya money but if’n ya ain’t got none, they’ll likely fuck or suck ya anyway. That’s how dag blammed horny they is. Dick in the mouth or dick in the kitty, either way they gots ta have it . . . ”

  Paling, I uttered, “I . . . appreciate being so apprized,” as I could stand not one moment more of Nate’s butchery of the English language & dizzying entreatment of profane exposition, but then as I hastened outside, Nate crackled laughter along with the slab-necked bus driver.

  Gads! What a thing to experience! The human sexual condition never fails to astound me. While I had no desire to behold “backwoods hosebags” “ettin’” each other, I did need a walk to clear my head of its sudden & inexplicable sense of foreboding along with the recent backwash of psychic detritus. Yet Nate’s crudi
ties served to reinforce the dark truth I’d only started to learn in New York: that too much of the world revolved around matters of base & morbid carnality. Now removed from the squat repair building, I embarked into blazing sun & the sights of sweeping fields to the north & dense-packed woods to the south. Across the narrow asphalt ribbon, I spied the pregnant one waddling cumbersomely into a trail posted with a makeshift sign that read simply LAKE with a painted arrow pointing. Presumably she meant to join the rube fishers. So distended was her belly that she braced it as she walked w/interlocked fingers beneath its considerable girth. She stopped, glanced once over her shoulder at me, then continued & disappeared into the overgrown trail.

  The weather could not have been more propitious, and I found a trail proceeding in the opposite direction & at once let myself be engulfed by it. The woods off the road were redolent w/delightful fresh spring smells, and locusts trilled pleasantly. Scenic strolls, just like scenic bus & train rides, were welcome opportunities for the esthete in me to emancipate my mind of life’s discord & to ponder upcoming tales. But after the queer observation in the commode–& Nate’s harrowing dissertation of local female proclivities—I found creative concentration beyond the realm of the possible.

  Nate’s endorsement of the “creekers” stuck to me like a gadfly. Certainly some women, just as some men, were possessed of accelerated sexual yearnings, perhaps forged by upbringing or environment, or some hormonal imbalance as certain recent scientific journals were known to imply, though I was hardly the expert. I can only speak of my own libido which has always seemed to run on the low side. In times past, when the endless discourse with my New York Group turned to matters of crudity, it was made known to me that certain women exist stricken with syndromes such as nymphomania & erotopathia–hmm. Sonia, during my short-lived term of wedlock, had gone through such spates, for sure. She’d wake me from a sound sleep as though I were a vender on demand! & once Little Belknap, in one of his coarser turns of talk, had referred to a species of woman “hell-bent for cock,” he’d said; & CAS–quite the ladies man–had made similar references in his wild missives: women obsessed with the male privates. If I remember with any accuracy, he’d called them “head-queens,” of all things. I’d scoffed at such talk but then I was admittedly not an authority. For amusement I tried to think of a more scholarly appellation—a sufferer from some acute pudendamaniacal syndrome. Indeed, a genitalus obsessus!