The Bazaar of Bad Dreams

Herman Wouk Is Still Alive

From the Portland (Maine) Press-Herald, September 19, 2010:

9 DIE IN HORRIFIC 1-95 CRASH

Spontaneous Mourning at Scene

By Ray Dugan

Less than six hours after a one-vehicle accident in the town of Fairfield took the lives of two adults and seven children, all under the age of ten, the mourning has already begun. Bouquets of wildflowers in tin cans and insulated coffee mugs ring the scorched earth; a line of nine crosses has been placed in the picnic area of the adjacent rest area at Mile 109. At the site where the bodies of the two youngest children were found, an anonymous sign, words spray-painted on a piece of bedsheet, has been erected. It reads, ANGELS GATHER HERE.

I.

BRENDA HITS PICK-3 FOR $2,700 AND RESISTS HER FIRST IMPULSE.

Instead of going out for a bottle of Orange Driver to celebrate with, Brenda pays off the MasterCard, which has been maxed like forever. Then calls Hertz and asks a question. Then calls her friend Jasmine, who lives in North Berwick, and tells her about the Pick-3. Jasmine screams and says, ‘Girl, you’re rich!’

If only. Brenda explains how she paid off the credit card so she can rent a Chevy Express if she wants to. It’s a van that seats nine, that’s what the Hertz girl told her. ‘We could get all the kids in there and drive up to Mars Hill. See your folks and mine. Show off the grandchildren. Squeeze the home folks for a little more dough. What do you think?’

Jasmine is dubious. The glorified shack in Mars Hill that her folks call home doesn’t have room, and she wouldn’t want to stay with them even if it did. She hates her parents. With good reason, Brenda knows; it was Jazzy’s own father who broke her in, a week after her fifteenth birthday. Her mother knew what was going on and did nothing. When Jaz went to her in tears, her ma said, ‘You got nothing to worry about, he’s had his nuts cut.’

Jaz married Mitch Robicheau to get away from them, and now, three men, four kids, and eight years later, she’s on her own. And on welfare, although she gets sixteen hours a week at the Roll Around, handing out skates and making change for the video arcade, where the machines take only special tokens. They let her bring her two youngest. Delight sleeps in the office and Truth, her three-year-old, wanders around in the arcade hitching at his diapers. He doesn’t get into too much trouble, although last year he got headlice and the two women had to shave all his hair off. How he howled.

‘There’s six hundred left over after I paid off the credit card balance,’ Brenda says. ‘Well, four hundred if you count the rental, only I don’t, because I can put that on MasterCard. We could stay at the Red Roof, watch Home Box. It’s free. We can get takeout from downstreet and the kids can swim in the pool. What do you say?’

From behind her comes yelling. Brenda raises her voice and screams, ‘Freddy, you stop teasing your sister and give that back!’ Then, oh goody, their squabbling wakes up the baby. Either that or Freedom has messed in her diapers and awakened herself. Freedom always messes in her diapers. To Brenda it seems like manufacturing poop is Free’s life’s work. Takes after her father that way.

‘I suppose …’ Jasmine says, drawing suppose out to four syllables. Maybe five.

‘Come on, girl! Road trip! Get with the program! We take the bus to the Jetport and rent the van. Three hundred miles, we can be there in four hours. The girl says the rugrats can watch DVDs. The Little Mermaid and all that good stuff.’

‘Maybe I could get some of that government money from my ma before it’s all gone,’ Jasmine says thoughtfully.

Her brother Tommy died the year before, in Afghanistan. It was an IED that took him. Her ma and dad got eighty thousand out of it. Her ma has promised her some, although not when the old man was in hearing distance of the phone. Of course it may be gone already. Probably is. She knows Mr Fuck-A-Fifteen-Year-Old bought a Yamaha rice-rocket with some of it, although what he wants with a thing like that at his age Jasmine has no idea. And she knows things like government money are mostly a mirage. This is something they both know. Every time you see bright stuff, somebody turns on the rain machine. The bright stuff is never colorfast.

‘Come on,’ Brenda says. She has fallen in love with the idea of loading up the van with kids and her best (her only) friend from high school, who ended up living just one town over. Both of them on their own, seven kids between them, too many lousy men in the rearview, but sometimes they still have a little fun.

She hears a thunk sound. Freddy starts to scream. Glory has whopped him in the eye with an action figure.

‘Glory you stop that or I’ll tear you a new one!’ Brenda screams.

‘He won’t give back my Powerpuff!’ Glory shrieks, and she starts to cry. Now they’re all crying – Freddy, Glory, and Freedom – and for a moment grayness creeps over Brenda’s vision. She’s seen a lot of that grayness lately. Here they are in a three-room third-floor apartment, no guy in the picture (Tim, the latest in her life, took off six months ago), living pretty much on noodles and Pepsi and that cheap ice cream they sell at Walmart, no air-conditioning, no cable TV, she had a job at the Quik-Flash store but the company went bust and now the store’s an On the Run and the manager hired some Taco Paco to do her job because Taco Paco can work twelve or fourteen hours a day. Taco Paco wears a doorag on his head and a nasty little mustache on his upper lip and he’s never been pregnant. Taco Paco’s job is to get girls pregnant. They fall for that little mustache and then boom, the line in the little drugstore testing gadget turns blue and here comes another one, just like the other one.

Brenda has personal here-comes-another-one experience. She tells people she knows who Freddy’s father is, but she really doesn’t, she had a few drunk nights there when they all looked good, and besides, come on, how is she supposed to look for a job anyway? She’s got these kids. What’s she supposed to do, leave Freddy to mind Glory and take Freedom to the goddam job interviews? Sure, that’ll work. And what is there, besides drive-up window girl at Mickey D’s or the Booger King? Portland has a couple of strip clubs, but wide loads like her don’t get that kind of work.

She reminds herself she hit the lottery. She reminds herself they could be in a couple of air-conditioned rooms tonight at the Red Roof – three, even! Why not? Things are turning around!

‘Brennie?’ Jaz sounds more doubtful than ever. ‘Are you like serious about this?’

‘Yeah,’ Brenda says. ‘Come on, girl, I’m approved. The Hertz chick says the van is red.’ She lowers her voice and adds: ‘Your lucky color.’

‘Did you pay off the credit card online? How’d you do that?’ Freddy and Glory got fighting last month and knocked Brenda’s laptop off the bed. It fell on the floor and broke.

‘I used the one at the library.’ She says it the way she grew up in Mars Hill saying it: liberry. ‘I had to wait awhile to get on, but it’s worth it. It’s free. So what do you say?’

‘Maybe we could get a bottle of Allen’s,’ Jaz says. She loves that Allen’s Coffee Brandy, when she can get it. In truth, Jasmine loves anything when she can get it.

‘No doubt,’ Brenda says. ‘And a bottle of Orange Driver for me. But I won’t drink while I’m behind the wheel, Jaz. I have to keep my license. It’s about all I got left.’

‘Can you really get any money out of your folks, do you think?’

Brenda tells herself that once they see the kids – assuming the kids can be bribed (or intimidated) into good behavior – she can. ‘But not a word about the lottery,’ she says.

‘No way,’ Jasmine says. ‘I was born at night but it wasn’t last night.’

They yuk at this one, an oldie but a goodie.

‘So what do you think?’

‘I’ll have to take Eddie and Rose Ellen out of school …’

‘BFD,’ Brenda says. ‘So what do you think, girl?’

After a long pause on the other end, Jasmine says, ‘Road trip!’

‘Road trip!’ Brenda hollers back.

Then they are chanting it while the three kids bawl in Brenda’s Sanford apartment and at least one (maybe two) are bawling in Jasmine’s North Berwick apartment. These are the fat women nobody wants to see when they’re on the streets, the ones no guy wants to pick up in the bars unless the hour is late and the mood is drunk and there’s nobody better in sight. What men think when they’re drunk – Brenda and Jasmine both know this – is that thunder thighs are better than no thighs at all. Especially at closing time. They went to high school together in Mars Hill and now they’re downstate and they help each other when they can. They are the fat women nobody wants to see, they have a litter of children between them, and they are chanting road trip, road trip like a couple of cheerleading fools.

On a September morning, already hot at eight thirty, this is the way things happen. It’s never been any different.

II.

SO THESE TWO OLD POETS WHO WERE ONCE LOVERS IN PARIS HAVE A PICNIC NEAR THE BATHROOMS.

Phil Henreid is seventy-eight now, and Pauline Enslin is seventy-five. They’re both skinny. They both wear spectacles. Their hair, white and thin, blows in the breeze. They’ve paused at a rest area on 1–95 near Fairfield, which is about twenty miles north of Augusta. The rest area building is barnboard, and the adjacent bathrooms are brick. They’re good-looking bathrooms. State-of-the-art bathrooms, one could say. There’s no odor. Phil, who lives in Maine and knows this rest area well, would never have proposed a picnic here two months earlier. In the summertime, the traffic on the interstate swells with out-of-state vacationers, and the Turnpike Authority brings in a line of plastic Port-O-Sans. They make this pleasant grassy area stink like hell on New Year’s Eve. But now the Port-O-Sans are in storage somewhere and the rest area is nice.

Pauline puts a checked cloth on the initial-scarred picnic table standing in the shade of an old oak, and anchors it with a wicker picnic basket against a slight warm breeze. From the basket she takes sandwiches, potato salad, melon wedges, and two slices of coconut-custard pie. She also has a large glass bottle of red tea. Ice cubes clink cheerfully inside.

‘If we were in Paris, we’d have wine,’ Phil says.

‘In Paris we never had another eighty miles to drive on the turnpike,’ she replies. ‘That tea is cold and it’s fresh. You’ll have to make do.’

‘I wasn’t carping,’ he says, and lays an arthritis-swollen hand over hers (which is also swollen, although marginally less so). ‘This is a feast, my dear.’

They smile into each other’s used faces. Although Phil has been married three times (and has scattered five children behind him) and Pauline has been married twice (no children, but lovers of both sexes in the dozens), they still have quite a lot between them. Much more than a spark. Phil is both surprised and not surprised. At his age – late, but not quite last call – you take what you can and are happy to get it. They are on their way to a poetry festival at the University of Maine’s Orono branch, and while the compensation for their joint appearance isn’t huge, it’s adequate. Since he has an expense account, Phil has splurged and rented a Cadillac from Hertz at the Portland Jetport, where he met her plane. Pauline jeered at the Caddy, said she always knew he was a plastic hippie, but she did so gently. He wasn’t a hippie, but he was a genuine iconoclast, a one-of-a-kinder, and she knows it. As he knows that her osteoporotic bones have enjoyed the ride.

Now, a picnic. Tonight they’ll have a catered meal, but the food will be a lukewarm, sauce-covered mess o’ mystery supplied by the cafeteria in one of the college commons. Possibly chicken, possibly fish, it’s always hard to tell. Beige food is what Pauline calls it. Visiting poet-food is always beige, and in any case it won’t be served until eight o’clock. With some cheap yellowish-white wine seemingly created to saw at the guts of semiretired alcohol abusers such as themselves. This meal is nicer, and iced tea is fine. Phil even indulges the fantasy of leading her by the hand to the high grass behind the bathrooms once they have finished eating, like in that old Van Morrison song, and—

Ah, but no. Elderly poets whose sex drives are now permanently stuck in first gear should not chance such a potentially ludicrous site of assignation. Especially poets of long, rich, and varied experience, who now know that each time is apt to be largely unsatisfactory, and each time may well be the last time. Besides, Phil thinks, I have already had two heart attacks. Who knows what’s up with her?

Pauline thinks, Not after sandwiches and potato salad, not to mention custard pie. But perhaps tonight. It is not out of the question. She smiles at him and takes the last item from the hamper. It is a New York Times, bought at the same Augusta convenience store where she got the rest of the picnic things, checked cloth and iced-tea bottle included. As in the old days, they flip for the Arts & Leisure section. In the old days, Phil – who won the National Book Award for Burning Elephants in 1970 – always called tails and won far more times than the odds said he should. Today he calls heads … and wins again.

‘Why, you snot!’ she cries, and hands it over.

They eat. They read the divided paper. At one point she looks at him over a forkful of potato salad and says, ‘I still love you, you old fraud.’

Phil smiles. The wind blows the gone-to-seed dandelion puff of his hair. His scalp shines gauzily through. He’s not the young man who once came roistering out of Brooklyn, broad-shouldered as a longshoreman (and just as foul-mouthed), but Pauline can still see the shadow of that man, who was so full of anger, despair, and hilarity.

‘Why, I love you, too, Paulie,’ he says.

‘We’re a couple of old crocks,’ she says, and bursts into laughter. Once she had sex with a king and a movie star at pretty much the same time on a balcony while ‘Maggie May’ played on the gramophone, Rod Stewart singing in French. Now the woman The New York Times once called America’s greatest living female poet lives in a walk-up in Queens. ‘Doing poetry readings in tank towns for dishonorable honorariums and eating alfresco in rest areas.’

‘We’re not old,’ he says, ‘we’re young, bébé.’

‘What in the world are you talking about?’

‘Look at this,’ he says, and holds out the first page of the Arts section. She takes it and sees a photograph. It’s a dried-up string of a man wearing a straw hat and a smile.

Nonagenarian Wouk to Publish New Book

By Motoko Rich

By the time they reach the age of ninety-five – if they do – most writers have retired long ago. Not Herman Wouk, author of such famous novels as The Caine Mutiny (1951) and Marjorie Morningstar (1955). Many of those who remember the TV miniseries presentations of his exhaustive World War II novels, The Winds of War (1971) and War and Remembrance (1978), are now drawing Social Security themselves. It’s a retirement premium Wouk became eligible for in 1980.

Wouk, however, is not done. He published a well-reviewed surprise novel, A Hole in Texas, a year shy of his ninetieth birthday, and expects to publish a book-length essay called The Language God Talks later this year. Is it his final word?

‘I’m not prepared to speak on that subject, one way or the other,’ Wouk said with a smile. ‘The ideas don’t stop just because one is old. The body weakens, but the words never do.’ When asked about his

Continued on page 19

As she looks at that old, seamed face beneath the rakishly tilted straw hat, Pauline feels the sudden sting of tears. ‘The body weakens, but the words never do,’ she says. ‘That’s beautiful.’

‘Have you ever read him?’ Phil asks.

‘Marjorie Morningstar, in my youth. It’s an annoying hymn to virginity, but I was swept away in spite of myself. Have you?’

‘I tried Youngblood Hawke, but couldn’t finish it. Still … he’s in there pitching. And, unbelievable as it may seem, he’s old enough to be our father.’ Phil folds the paper and puts it into the picnic basket. Below them, light traffic on the turnpike runs beneath a high September sky full of fair-weather clouds. ‘Before we get back on the road, do you want to do swapsies? Like in the old days?’

She thinks about it, then nods. Many years have passed since she listened to someone else read one of her poems, and the experience is always a little dismaying – like having an out-of-body experience – but why not? They have the rest area to themselves. ‘In honor of Herman Wouk, who’s still in there pitching. My work folder’s in the front pocket of my carry bag.’

‘You trust me to go through your things?’

She gives him her old slanted smile, then stretches into the sun with her eyes closed. Relishing the heat. Soon the days will turn cold, but now there is heat. ‘You can go through my things all you want, Philip.’ She opens one eye in a reverse wink that is amusingly seductive. ‘Explore me to your heart’s content.’

‘I’ll keep that in mind,’ he says, and goes back to the Cadillac he has rented for them.

Poets in a Cadillac, she thinks. The very definition of absurdity. For a moment she watches the cars rush by. Then she picks up the paper and looks again at the narrow, smiling face of the old scribbler. Still alive. Perhaps at this very moment looking up at the high blue September sky, with his notebook open on a patio table and a glass of Perrier (or wine, if his stomach will still stand it) near to hand.

If there is a God, Pauline Enslin thinks, She can occasionally be very generous.

She waits for Phil to come back with her work folder and one of the steno pads he favors for composition. They will play swapsies. Tonight they may play other games. Once again she tells herself that it is not out of the question.

III.

SITTING BEHIND THE WHEEL OF THE CHEVY EXPRESS VAN, BRENDA FEELS LIKE SHE’S IN THE COCKPIT OF A JET FIGHTER

.

Everything is digital. There’s a satellite radio and a GPS screen. When she backs up, the GPS turns into a TV monitor, so you can see what’s behind you. Everything on the dashboard shines, that new-car smell fills the interior, and why not, with only seven hundred and fifty miles on the odometer? She has never in her life been behind the wheel of a motor vehicle with such low mileage. You can push buttons on the control stalk to show your average speed, how many miles per gallon you’re getting, and how many gallons you’ve got left. The engine makes hardly any noise at all. The seats up front are twin buckets, upholstered in bone white material that looks like leather. The shocks are like butter.

In back is a pop-down TV screen with a DVD player. The Little Mermaid won’t work because Truth, Jasmine’s three-year-old, spread peanut butter all over the disk at some point, but they are content with Shrek, even though all of them have seen it like a billion times. The thrill is watching it while they’re on the road! Driving! Freedom is asleep in her car seat between Freddy and Glory; Delight, Jasmine’s six-month-old, is asleep in Jaz’s lap, but the other five cram together in the two backseats, watching, entranced. Their mouths are hanging open. Jasmine’s Eddie is picking his nose and Eddie’s older sister Rose Ellen has got drool on her sharp little chin, but at least they are quiet and not beating away at each other for once. They are hypnotized.

Brenda should be happy. The kids are quiet, the road stretches ahead of her like an airport runway, she’s behind the wheel of a brand-new van, and the traffic is light once they leave Portland. The digital speedometer reads 70, and this baby hasn’t even broken a sweat. Nonetheless, that grayness has begun to creep over her again.

The van isn’t hers, after all. She’ll have to give it back. A foolish expense, really, because what’s at the far end of this trip? Mars Hill. Mars … fucking … Hill. Food brought in from the Round-Up, where she used to waitress when she was in high school and still had a figure. Hamburgers and fries covered with plastic wrap. The kids splashing in the pool before and maybe after. At least one of them will get hurt and bawl. Maybe more. Glory will complain that the water is too cold, even if it isn’t. Glory always complains. She will complain her whole life. Brenda hates that whining and likes to tell Glory it’s her father coming out … but the truth is the kid gets it from both sides. Poor kid. All of them, really. And the years stretch ahead, a march beneath a sun that never goes down.

She looks to her right, hoping Jasmine will say something funny and cheer her up, and is dismayed to see that Jaz is crying. Silent tears well up in her eyes and shine on her cheeks. In her lap, baby Delight sleeps on, sucking one of her fingers. It’s her comfort finger, and all blistered down the inside. Once Jaz slapped her good and hard when she saw Dee sticking it in her mouth, but what good is slapping a kid that’s only six months old? Might as well slap a door. But sometimes you do it. Sometimes you can’t help it. Sometimes you don’t want to help it. Brenda has done it herself.

‘What’s wrong, girl?’ Brenda asks.

‘Nothing. Never mind me, just watch your driving.’

Behind them, Donkey says something funny to Shrek and some of the kids laugh. Not Glory, though; she’s nodding off.

‘Come on, Jaz. Tell me. I’m your friend.’

‘Nothing, I said.’

Jasmine leans over the sleeping infant. Delight’s baby seat is on the floor. Resting in it on a pile of diapers is the bottle of Allen’s they stopped for in South Portland, before hitting the turnpike. Jaz has only had a couple of sips, but this time she takes two good long swallows before putting the cap back on. The tears are still running down her cheeks.

‘Nothing. Everything. Comes to the same either way you say it, that’s what I think.’

‘Is it Tommy? Is it your bro?’

Jaz laughs angrily. ‘They’ll never give me a cent of that money, who’m I kidding? Ma’ll blame it on Dad because that’s easier for her, but she feels the same. It’ll mostly be gone, anyway. What about you? Will your folks really give you something?’

‘Sure, I think so.’

Well. Yeah. Probably. Like forty dollars. A bag and a half’s worth of groceries. Two bags if she uses the coupons in Uncle Henry’s Swap Guide. Just the thought of flipping through that raggy little free magazine – the poor people’s Bible – and getting the ink on her fingers causes the grayness around her to thicken. The afternoon is beautiful, more like summer than September, but a world where you have to depend on Uncle Henry’s is a gray world. Brenda thinks, How did we end up with all these kids? Wasn’t I letting Mike Higgins cop a feel on me out behind the metal shop just yesterday?

‘Bully for you,’ Jasmine says, and snorks back tears. ‘My folks, they’ll have three new gasoline toys in the dooryard and then plead poverty. And do you know what my dad’ll say about the kids? “Don’t let em touch anything,” that’s what he’ll say.’

‘Maybe he’ll be different,’ Brenda says. ‘Better.’

‘He’s never different and he’s never better,’ Jasmine says.

Rose Ellen is drifting off. She tries to put her head on her brother Eddie’s shoulder and he punches her in the arm. She rubs it and begins to snivel, but pretty soon she’s watching Shrek again. The drool is still on her chin. Brenda thinks it makes her look like an idiot, which she pretty close to is.

‘I don’t know what to say,’ Brenda says. ‘We’ll have some fun, anyway. Red Roof, girl! Swimming pool!’

‘Yeah, and some guy knocking on the wall at one in the morning, telling me to shut my kid up. Like, you know, I want Dee awake in the middle of the night because all those stinkin teeth are coming in at once.’

She takes another slug from the coffee brandy bottle, then holds it out. Brenda knows better than to take it and risk her license, but no cops are in sight, and if she did lose her ticket, how much would she really be out? The car was Tim’s, he took it when he left, and it was half dead anyway, a Bondo-and-chickenwire special. No great loss there. Besides, there’s that grayness. She takes the bottle and tips it. Just a little sip, but the brandy’s warm and nice, a shaft of dark sunlight, so she takes another one.

‘They’re closing the Roll Around at the end of the month,’ Jasmine says, taking the bottle back.

‘Jazzy, no!’

‘Jazzy yes.’ She stares straight ahead at the unrolling road. ‘Jack finally went broke. The writing’s been on the wall since last year. So there goes that ninety a week.’ She drinks. In her lap, Delight stirs, then goes back to sleep with her comfort finger plugged in her gob. Where, Brenda thinks, some boy like Mike Higgins will want to put his dick not all that many years from now. And she’ll probably let him. I did. Jaz did too. It’s just how things go.

Behind them Princess Fiona is now saying something funny, but none of the kids laugh. They’re getting glassy, even Eddie and Freddy, names like a TV sitcom joke.

‘The world is gray,’ Brenda says. She didn’t know she was going to say those words until she hears them come out of her mouth.

Jasmine looks at her, surprised. ‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Now you’re getting with the program.’

Brenda says, ‘Pass me that bottle.’

Jasmine does. Brenda drinks some more, then hands it back. ‘Okay, enough of that.’

Jasmine gives her her old sideways grin, the one Brenda remembers from study hall on Friday afternoons. It looks strange below her wet cheeks and bloodshot eyes. ‘You sure?’

Brenda doesn’t reply, but she pushes the accelerator a little deeper with her foot. Now the digital speedometer reads 80.

IV.

‘YOU FIRST,’ PAULINE SAYS.

All at once she feels shy, afraid to hear her words coming out of Phil’s mouth, sure they will sound booming yet false, like dry thunder. But she has forgotten the difference between his public voice – declamatory and a little corny, like the voice of a movie attorney in a summing-up-to-the-jury scene – and the one he uses when he’s with just a friend or two (and hasn’t had anything to drink). It is a softer, kinder voice, and she is pleased to hear her poem coming out of his mouth. No, more than pleased. She is grateful. He makes it sound far better than it is.

‘Shadow-print the road

with black lipstick kisses.

Decaying snow in farmhouse fields

like cast-off bridal dresses.

The rising mist turns to gold dust.

The clouds boil apart in ragged tresses.

It bursts through!

For five seconds it could be summer

and I seventeen with flowers

folded in the apron of my dress.’

He puts the sheet down. She looks at him, smiling a little, but anxious. He nods his head. ‘It’s fine, dear,’ he says. ‘Fine enough. Now you.’

She opens his steno pad, finds what appears to be the last poem, and pages through four or five scribbled drafts. She knows how he works and goes on until she comes to a version not in mostly illegible cursive but in small neat printing. She shows it to him. Phil nods, then turns to look at the turnpike. All of this is very nice, but they will have to go soon. They don’t want to be late.

He sees a bright red van coming. It’s going fast.

She begins.

V.

BRENDA SEES A HORN OF PLENTY SPILLING ROTTEN FRUIT.

Yes, she thinks, that’s just about right. Thanksgiving for fools.

Freddy will go for a soldier and fight in foreign lands, the way Jasmine’s brother Tommy did. Jazzy’s boys, Eddie and Truth, will do the same. They’ll own muscle cars when and if they come home, always supposing gas is still available twenty years from now. And the girls? They’ll go with boys. They’ll give up their virginity while game shows play on TV. They’ll believe the boys who tell them they’ll pull out in time. They’ll have babies and fry meat in skillets and put on weight, same as she and Jaz did. They’ll smoke a little dope and eat a lot of ice cream – the cheap stuff from Walmart. Maybe not Rose Ellen, though. Something is wrong with Rose. She’ll still have drool on her sharp little chin when she’s in the eighth grade, same as now. The seven kids will beget seventeen, and the seventeen will beget seventy, and the seventy will beget two hundred. She can see a ragged fool’s parade marching into the future, some wearing jeans that show the ass of their underwear, some wearing heavy-metal tee-shirts, some wearing gravy-spotted waitress uniforms, some wearing stretch pants from Kmart that have little MADE IN PARAGUAY tags sewn into the seams of the roomy seats. She can see the mountain of Fisher-Price toys they will own and which will later be sold at yard sales (which was where they were bought in the first place). They will buy the products they see on TV and go in debt to the credit card companies, as she did … and will again, because the Pick-3 was a fluke and she knows it. Worse than a fluke, really: a tease. Life is a rusty hubcab lying in a ditch at the side of the road, and life goes on. She will never again feel like she’s sitting in the cockpit of a jet fighter. This is as good as it gets. There are no boats for nobody, and no camera is filming her life. This is reality, not a reality show.

Shrek is over and all the kids are asleep, even Eddie. Rose Ellen’s head is once more on Eddie’s shoulder. She’s snoring like an old woman. She has red marks on her arms, because sometimes she can’t stop scratching herself.

Jasmine screws the cap on the bottle of Allen’s and drops it back into the baby seat in the footwell. In a low voice she says, ‘When I was five, I believed in unicorns.’

‘So did I,’ Brenda says. ‘I wonder how fast this fucker goes.’

Jasmine looks at the road ahead. They flash past a blue sign that says REST AREA 1 MI. She sees no traffic northbound; both lanes are entirely theirs. ‘Let’s find out,’ Jaz says.

The numbers on the speedometer dial rise from 80 to 85. Then 87. There’s still some room left between the accelerator pedal and the floor. All the kids are sleeping.

Here is the rest area, coming up fast. Brenda sees only one car in the parking lot. It looks like a fancy one, a Lincoln or maybe a Cadillac. I could have rented one of those, she thinks. I had enough money but too many kids. Couldn’t fit them all in. Story of her life, really.

She looks away from the road. She looks at her old friend from high school, who ended up living just one town away. Jaz is looking back at her. The van, now doing almost a hundred miles an hour, begins to drift.

Jasmine gives a small nod and then lifts Dee, cradling the baby against her big breasts. Dee’s still got her comfort finger in her mouth.

Brenda nods back. Then she pushes down harder with her foot, trying to find the van’s carpeted floor. It’s there, and she lays the accelerator pedal softly against it.

VI.

‘STOP, PAULIE, STOP.’

He reaches out and grabs her shoulder with his bony hand, startling her. She looks up from his poem (it is quite a bit longer than hers, but she’s reached the last dozen lines or so) and sees him staring at the turnpike. His mouth is open and behind his glasses his eyes appear to be bulging out almost far enough to touch the lenses. She follows his gaze in time to see a red van slide smoothly from the travel lane into the breakdown lane and from the breakdown lane across the rest area entrance ramp. It doesn’t turn in. It’s going far too fast to turn in. It crosses the ramp, doing at least ninety, and plows onto the slope just below them, where it hits a tree. He hears a loud, toneless bang and the sound of breaking glass. The windshield disintegrates; glass pebbles sparkle for a moment in the sun and she thinks – blasphemously – beautiful.

The tree shears the van into two ragged pieces. Something – Phil Henreid can’t bear to believe it’s a child – is flung high into the air and comes down in the grass. Then the van’s gas tank begins to burn, and Pauline screams.

He gets to his feet and runs down the slope, vaulting over the shakepole fence like the young man he once was. These days his failing heart is usually never far from his mind, but as he runs down to the burning pieces of the van, he never even thinks of it.

Cloud-shadows roll across the field, printing shadow-kisses on the hay and timothy. Wildflowers nod their heads.

Phil stops twenty yards from the burning remains, the heat baking his face. He sees what he knew he would see – no survivors – but he never imagined so many non-survivors. He sees blood on timothy and clover. He sees a shatter of taillight glass like a patch of strawberries. He sees a severed arm caught in a bush. In the flames he sees a melting baby seat. He sees shoes.

Pauline comes up beside him. She’s gasping for breath. The only thing wilder than her eyes is her hair.

‘Don’t look,’ he says.

‘What’s that smell? Phil, what’s that smell?’

‘Burning gas and rubber,’ he says, although that’s probably not the smell she’s talking about. ‘Don’t look. Go back to the car and … do you have a cell phone?’

‘Yes, of course I have a—’

‘Go back and call 911. Don’t look at this. You don’t want to see this.’

He doesn’t want to see it either, but cannot look away. How many? He can see the bodies of at least three children and one adult – probably a woman, but he can’t be sure. Yet so many shoes … and he can see a DVD package with cartoon characters on it …

‘What if I can’t get through?’ she asks.

He points to the smoke. Then to the three or four cars that are already pulling over. ‘Getting through won’t matter,’ he says, ‘but try.’

She starts to go, then turns back. She’s crying. ‘Phil … how many?’

‘I don’t know. A lot. Maybe half a dozen. Go on, Paulie. Some of them might still be alive.’

‘You know better,’ she says through her sobs. ‘Damn thing was going six licks to the minute.’

She begins trudging back up the hill. Halfway to the rest area parking lot (more cars are pulling in now), a terrible idea crosses her mind and she looks back, sure she will see her old friend and lover lying in the grass himself. Perhaps unconscious, perhaps dead of a final thunderclap heart attack. But he’s on his feet, cautiously circling the blazing left half of the van. As she watches, he takes off his natty sport jacket with the patches on the elbows. He kneels and covers something with it. Either a small person or a part of a big person. Then he continues his circle.

Climbing the hill, she thinks that their lifelong efforts to make beauty out of words are an illusion. Either that or a joke played on children who have selfishly refused to grow up. Yes, probably that. Stupid selfish children like that, she thinks, deserve to be pranked.

As she reaches the parking lot, now gasping for breath, she sees the Times Arts & Leisure section flipping lazily through the grass on the breath of a light breeze and thinks, Never mind. Herman Wouk is still alive and writing a book about God’s language. Herman Wouk believes that the body weakens, but the words never do. So that’s all right, isn’t it?

A man and a woman rush up. The woman raises her own cellphone and takes a picture with it. Pauline Enslin observes this without much surprise. She supposes the woman will show it to friends later. Then they will have drinks and a meal and talk about the grace of God and how everything happens for a reason. God’s grace is a pretty cool concept. It stays intact every time it’s not you.

‘What happened?’ the man shouts into her face. ‘What in hell happened?’

Down below them a skinny old poet is happening. He has taken off his shirt to cover one of the other bodies. His ribs are a stack outlined against white skin. He kneels and spreads the shirt. He raises his arms into the sky, then lowers them and wraps them around his head.

Pauline is also a poet, and as such feels capable of answering the man in the language God speaks.

‘What the fuck does it look like?’ she says.

For Owen King and Herman Wouk