Alive and Dead in Indiana Read Online Free

white suits like his. Piloting that boat, you could feel what I mean. The Ohio wants to sweep you west.
    She said, “You’re from the South, aren’t you?”
    I said that all depends on what you mean. Some people will say the South starts at 38th Street in Indianapolis.
    The accent, the funny suit. I knew she was thinking of it all. The greasy diet, the in-breeding. I don’t mind. On these trips, I let people think what they think. It’s good for business. My age helps too. But I try not to go on about what I’ve done or seen. Let them imagine what they want.
    I’d say she was a city girl. Movie stars on her mind. She probably thought the road led somewhere, that it was not just for the nation’s business, the national defense. The “big road,” you call it in Kentucky. The road to town. The road that leads to something different. As I think of it now, I didn’t understand her half the time. She was restless on the seat, read the road signs to me, wanted to play games with license plates. I said she should follow along on the maps I keep in the glove box. She didn’t want to.
    There were things I didn’t want to be with her but couldn’t help being because they are what I am. An old man, a salesman, a gentleman, her father. But she needed to be talked to. The country whizzing past needed to be filled up with fun. I have advice, though I try to hide what I mean. I’ve done my share on posses walking through field stubble and dragging rivers while dogs bawled. Maybe I wanted to scare her, but I say I didn’t.
    She put on her sunglasses so I couldn’t see her eyes and slouched in the scat against the door. It wasn’t locked, but I held off from doing anything about it. We went on miles that way, me lecturing. She leaning into the unsafe door. Finally, I reached across the seat behind her. Pushed the button down. She didn’t say a word except “Thank you.”
    We were traveling through the lake country near the Michigan line. The trees along the road would open up to water. I talked about me then. I couldn’t help myself. I had made a sale. Like that waitress, I just wanted everybody served. I left home when I was twelve. I told her that I had worked on farms, been a streetcar conductor, was in the Army in Cuba, worked jobs that disappear. I studied law by mail waiting on the ready track of freight yards. Boiler was my light. I was a justice of the peace in Little Rock. Sold insurance and tires. Headed the Chamber in Columbus, Indiana. You can check that out if you want. I’m not really from the South, you see. Not from anywhere.
    “Yes,” I said. I pulled it all together, a piece here, a piece there. Yes, I have seen things. I rode the reefers and the blinds, saw a man frozen to the metal of the baggage car when the tender threw water picking it up on the fly. I was on a train with ballast in my pockets. Then I said something I thought she could use. Never get off where there is no shade .
    I meant that.
    She asked me when I left school, and I told her when they started in with algebra. If X was what you didn’t know, then I didn’t want it.
    She lost interest after that. She turned to look out the window at the orchards being sprayed.
    We were heading, though she didn’t know it, to Mackinac Island in the straits. It’s at the top of Michigan. The road is like a life line through the state s palm. It was there we got mixed up in a troop convoy. On maneuvers, I guess. Reserve Guard. I had seen convoys in the southbound lane with their lights on, antennas bowed over on the jeeps. The trucks have a round-shouldered look, like they’re hunching down the hot highway. We came up on their replacements heading north. The last vehicle was a jeep with MPs in white helmets in it. I scooted around, and then around the next deuce and a half. I blew my horn. I could see the cops shaking their heads, yelling and pointing. They weren’t happy to have their string broken up. I tucked the Pontiac in between two trucks,