All Is True: The Naked Girl in the Treehouse
Chapter 7: Love and Death
The unfamiliar tone of a telephone ringing in Great Britain purred strangely in my ear as I waited for someone to pick up at the other end.
“Hello, this is Mary,” said a familiar voice at last.
“Oh, wow,” I gasped, “This is Thom.”
“Who?”
“Thom One, Mary. It’s me.”
We clicked at last and came together. “Where are you? How can you be calling?” she said, confused.
Waves of guilt drenched my throat. “There’s someone here who’s lent me her phone. We’re at a school near Cleveland.”
“It’s amazing to hear your voice,” said Mary, distant and as close as the wind.
“Wonderful to hear yours, I said. “I love you, Mary.”
A pause.
Pregnant would be the wrong adjective.
“Listen,” she said. “I have some news.”
Dread would be the right word now.
“Thank you for all your letters,” she said. “They’re wonderful.”
That’s better.
“So I showed them to Lawrence Durrell.”
Whoa!
“Mum and dad have just been to Corfu and they took me with them. We met Mr. Durrell over dinner at a friend of dad’s.”
“What did he say?” I asked.
“Hello.”
“No, I mean about the letters.”
“Well, he was very polite,” said Mary.”
“And?”
“And that your writing was sub-Kerouac.”
“Kerouac — he said Kerouac?” I yelled. My heart took off like a bird. He compared me to Kerouac! The author of “On the Road”! My hero since I was 16. Oh my God. Oh my God!” The best thing that happened to me in all my 20 years! Mary, I love you.”
“I love you,” she said.
The second best thing ever to happen to me.
“You called Mary?” David asked incredulously in the car, heading west. “Gail helped you call Mary?” (No interest in the Kerouac news.)
“I love Mary,” I said. “She loves me.”
“Well, well, well,” said David at the wheel.
At this point we were almost halfway across the United States — the new fast way, not the Route 66 way. This was the 1960s, we were in Interstate time, about to be man-on-the-moon time. No stopping us now.
We must have consumed about a hundred packs of unfiltered Pall Malls by this time, spent countless nights in the Plymouth Savoy, its seat covers front and back engraved on our cheeks, we’d let our hair grow long, we’d discussed the nature of life and the universe and women, we’d performed Beatles songs for 14 American households (count ’em, still can’t believe it) where the wife was always at home and only the kids really knew who the Rolling Stones were.
But it was in Kansas that there occurred just one irreversible event that we wished had never happened.
That newly blacktopped road, right across the state, paralleled the railroad and we had a smashing time flashing our lights at the oncoming locomotives so the engineer would be ready to blast his horn as he slammed by us.
One day a convertible roared up behind our car and overtook us at great speed, just as we prepared to flash the headlights at a super-long freight train heading our way from across the prairie. This convertible’s driver was a young blonde woman whose hair streamed behind her as she passed us, not even looking our way. So we honked our horn at her, then flashed the lights at the train. The driver responded to our signal with an endless blast of his own, one that went on as he roared by us.
The blonde car driver, now well ahead of us, began to swerve as the train’s horn filled the air and then she seemed completely to lose control. The roar and clatter of the train filled our ears as we watched in horror while the windswept driver swerved wildly from one lane to another. Suddenly her convertible tipped and rolled, scattering debris all over the highway.
We squealed to a stop to avoid sliding into the wreck. The train churned on, its driver oblivious of this disaster and whether his horn — which we had provoked — was to blame for distracting the driver’s attention. I ran to the car, which lay upside down but could see no sign of her. By this time David was out of the car and several other vehicles, traveling in both directions, came to a stop amid the debris, which I now noticed in hellish slow motion consisted of cosmetics and women’s clothing.
I sank to my knees by the side of the car and just prayed, still looking for the driver in the shade beneath the upside-down wreck.
It’s all right, Thom,” David whispered, his hand over my shoulder. “She’s not under there. She’s probably been thrown off the road. Come back to the car.” I was shaking convulsively, actually sobbing.
“I’ll make this up to you,” he said, so seriously. “You’re a man of faith and you don’t deserve all this hell.”
And amazingly David, a man of little faith, did make it better for me.
Continued next week.
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