Bent Highway
Chapter Thirteen: New Wave
My life had become a Godard movie—and not just the fucked up parts. I used to watch those French films. For some weird reason my small town video store had a full collection of French movies, all the New Wave ones, Godard, Renoir, Truffaut, Varda. I got bored with all the Hollywood crap, and started watching them. At first they made no sense, like the poetry that English teachers take apart as the whole class shares the same blank stare. Then I’d watch the movies again, and again. Just by myself, in my crappy apartment, after a shift at the hardware store. I drank warm Pilsner and chomped on Doritos—no Cabernet and smelly cheese for me. There was no way I’d invite anyone over to watch them with me. Not even Harold. My mind and stomach did a swoop when I thought of him.
For one thing, okay, the main thing, they were all chopped up. The stories didn’t play out like they did in regular movies. The first time I rented one, I took it back the next day and complained.
“Someone took chunks out of it.”
“That’s just the way they are.”
“What? Did you get them on sale or something?”
The video store owner took a long drag, he kinda looked like the skinny French guy in the movie. He even had one of those striped shirts. I imagined him in black and white.
“Watch it again. They're more like life than you think.”
I went home and watched it again. And again. Then I went back and rented two more. Damned if skinny-video-guy wasn’t right. Someone had told me that the video guy had gone to film school, tried to make it as a director, and came back with his tail between his legs. I always thought that was a weird image, like comparing someone to a dog. If there was an animal the guy looked like it was a tall bird, or a lizard, maybe a gecko.
The one who told me about skinny-video-guy also said there was a group of people looking to collect on some debts from his failed movie. And they were the kind that got paid off in broken kneecaps. Better get gone gecko.
I’d been on the highway for more than two hours, my mind drifting over to things like French movies. What was the name of that one super-weird crime one? Alpha-something. It was like on earth, except it wasn’t. Back then, while watching the movies, I got the idea of how life didn’t always run in a smooth line. Now, I’d been living inside one of those movies. Huge chunks were cut out and lines were right out the goddamn window.
I don’t remember leaving the white room where I’d talked to Walt on his tall chair. Damn, I barely remember being in that room. And what the hell was that thing with Harold? He burnt down my parents' house? For starters, that never happened. And then what about the kid talking about his friend Harold? The kid being me, and there was no way I’d known Harold back then. So it wasn’t like time was out of order, shit was happening that never happened.
There is that thing about going back in time and changing history. A buddy of mine said it was dumb when they did a time-travel story and somebody did something in the past that caused a huge change, like the Nazis won the war. He said if he went back in time, all that would change in the future would be people started to wear more hats. He was a funny guy.
Okay, so the Harold I knew might not be the real Harold I knew. Walt said he was stirring up shit, widening the rips, messing with time, and even my memory. Thinking this way was taking a jackhammer to my frontal lobe. Maybe Lester’s tire iron in the head knocked me more than I knew.
After Walt’s white room, I sure as hell don’t remember finding my truck again. But here I was, peeling down a stretch of highway, with the same yellow lines, the same empty landscape, the same insignificant towns with combination grocery, liquor and insurance stores. I could really go for some insurance right now.
All right then—some French director had taken my life as a film strip, cut out all the bits that made it make sense, and stitched it together again. M from 9 to 5. That’s what I’d call it. I was thinking how this film of mine included a girl that kept popping into the story, when I saw the hitcher on the road. Of course it was her. I mean, why not? I pulled over and she got in.
“You’re wet,” I said.
“Yeah.”
“It’s not raining,” I said.
“Not here.”
I reached behind the seat and pulled out a roll of paper towels.
I drove, and Chalk Girl dried off.
“Why do you have these?”
“My mother always kept a roll in her truck—said they’d come in handy.”
“She still around?”
“Both my parents have been gone for a long time.”
“Gone like dead and in the ground?”
“Ashes spread over a field.”
“Poetic.”
“Dusty.”
We didn’t say anything else for a long time—though, I couldn’t say it it was ten minutes or a hundred. I’d given up trying to give markers to time. Watches and clocks might as well not exist anymore. Fuck calendars, too.
She looked out her window, and I thought I heard her hum, though it was no song I knew. The rain started just as we’d come out of a long grove of trees, drops landed on the windshield like fat bugs. A few moments later it was a driving sheet that came with gale force winds.
“Do you know where we are?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“You care to tell me?”
“What did Walt show you?” she asked.
“You mean in the white room? That place he called—”
“The rest stop,” she said.
“You’ve been there?”
I couldn’t look at her when I asked the question. I was too focused on keeping the truck on the right side of the road, and upright. The rain moved into hail, peppering the windshield and body of the truck, like stones thrown against metal fences, or pellet guns fired into granaries. A huge gust came up and I swerved onto the other side. Twin circles appeared, headlights inches away from me. I wrenched the wheel and swung the truck across the median as an earsplitting horn erupted. The backend of the truck fishtailed behind me, catching the force of the semi that ripped past with the force of a locomotive. The sound of loose gravel told me I had slid onto the shoulder, I steered into the fishtail, the truck righted itself and I eased back onto the road.
As fast as it had began, the rain suddenly slowed, then stopped as if someone had turned off a tap. I glanced over at Chalk Girl. She still peered out the window— unmoved by our very near miss of becoming road kill.
“There’s a turn coming up. Half a mile,” she said.
“A turn for where?”
She resumed humming, this time I caught the song. It was one of those old folk songs that gets sung around campfires and protest marches—an angry hippie anthem.
A bent yellow sign appeared in the distance. As it grew closer, I made out the black arrow, pointing at the ground, and the pattern of dents I recognized from my days of firing .22’s at road signs.
“This it?” I asked.
She pointed.
I was about to ask her again to tell me where we were, and then I saw the edge of it. It was a house trailer with a long skinny antenna. Another French jump cut, the camera jerked, and I saw the trailer in flames. There I was, running away from it… or was it towards? A long drawn out scream escaped from bowed lips. I’d been here before. I’d been here more than once. I’d been here a lot of times.
“Do you see anything in front of it?” She had stopped humming.
I looked over at her. Chalk Girl stared out her window, in the opposite direction we were headed. I drove the truck over a small rise, and there was the trailer, intact, no sign of the fire that had filled my vision seconds ago.
“Anything like what?” I asked.
“He drives a long green car, I don’t know the name of it. One of those huge landshark deals. A French name.”
“The car is French?”
“Le something,” she said.
“The yard’s empty.”
She pointed again.
I pulled the truck in next to the trailer, what they called a mobile home. I gazed past the skinny row of poplars, into a wide field of grain, the sun beating down made the gold sheaves look like tiny fires. I walked toward the field. I heard the truck door open and close, and then it opened and closed again. I spun around. Chalk Girl was in the driver’s seat. I ran back to the truck. She pulled in front of me and rolled down the window.
“You’re going to leave me here, just like before.” It wasn’t a question. She was telling me. “I’ll go head and wait for you out on the road.” Her eyes were red. I didn’t notice in the truck that she’d been crying.
“Tell me this,” I started, “whose car am I waiting for?”
“My husband’s.”
“What’s his name?” I asked.
“You know his name.”
She dropped the truck back into drive. I listened to the tires on gravel leave the yard and head back to the highway. I walked back to the poplars, plunked down and rested my back against the thickest one, barely six inches across. A warm wind had picked up and rustled through the leaves, sounding like water through a channel. I always liked that sound.
She was right, I did know his name.
Like a French film indeed!!
Alphaville... indeed!