The Complete Drive-In

1

The days went by slow, and we got good at fishing. Using a piece of cloth cut off one of our rags for bait, dipped in blood from an open wound Cory got from snagging his elbow on the side of the bus while out swimming, we attached that strip of cloth to a long length of twine (it had come with a kite found in the trunk of a car). Actually, we had a roll of it, the twine, and we cut several strips and made a strong cord by braiding them. We made a hook carved out of a bone from the meat Steve and Grace had provided, a sinker made out of a bolt we worked out of one of the seats with a screwdriver. With our rig we sat on top of the bus, taking turns, catching fish.

The fish we caught were mostly small, but now and again we’d catch something a little bigger. We found that a way to prepare our catch for food was to gut them and cut them in strips and lay them on top of the bus for a day and a night, then turn them over and do it to the other side. We tied them up there with string, running cord from one window, across the top of the bus to the other window, tying the cords off on seats inside.

The sun didn’t exactly cook them, but it dried them some, and that was good enough. Trust me, when you’re really hungry, you get a whole lot less persnickety.

Slowly, we started making not only a home of that bus, but a pint-sized community.

The only thing that was really terrible was when we wanted to go to the bathroom, we had to climb out a window-which made the bus lean heavy to one side-and work our way to the roof and hang the old moon over the side.

This however, in the number two department, didn’t work so well, as there were dark streaks on the windows, as our loads didn’t go smooth into the water.

Finally, it was determined the best thing to do was to climb down on the hood of the bus, near the front, and let it fly. This way, you didn’t quite hit the water, stains on the front weren’t so noticeable, and the way the bus nodded itself forward into the waves, as it was wont to do, it washed off the old dookie, became a perpetual self-cleaning machine.

Compared to how things had been, it seemed downright hygienic.

When I could, I got out my little possessions, which were all in a backpack I’d found in one of the cars-you wouldn’t believe the stuff we found in cars-and inside I had paper and composition writing books I’d taken from different places, and in those I tried to keep a running diary of everything that had happened. I also had a Louis L’Amour book, Hellfire Trail, that I read from time to time, even if it was missing a few pages, and I had a copy of an old Ace Double science-fiction book. It had a cover on back and front and half of the book was a novel called Masters the Lamp, and the other half-you had to turn it over and open it from the other side-were short stories under the title A Harvest of Hoodwinks. The writer was some guy named Robert Lory, and it was pretty good, though a little less interesting when you had read it about twenty times. I liked the story “Rolling Robert” best, and I could tell it pretty good, and I did that for Reba quite a few times, and though she had read it from the book its ownself, she liked me telling it best, because I added what she liked to refer to as embellishments. I put fucking in it. She liked that. And if you’ve read “Rolling Robert,” dear nonexistent reader, you know what a goddamn accomplishment that is, putting in the fucking, I mean.

So our biggest battle was not food, or drinking water, though we did call a moratorium on pulling up water in our buckets any time close to when one of our esteemed crew did their number one or two.

So, all things considered, life was tolerable. But there was all that water.

Water. Water. Every goddamn where you looked.

Water.

And more water.

Did I mention the water?

Alas, our greatest opponent was…

Boredom.

Boredom set in with a vengeance. We made up games. I Spy was out. That was easy. Uh, I spy… Water.

Me and Reba, we spent more time together. I shared my two books with her. We talked about this, we talked about that, did some serious drilling and heaving anytime it was night, and sometimes when it was day, and it got so, after awhile, the other guys, the ones not getting any, started to eye Reba in a way that made me nervous.

I didn’t like the way they were looking at me either.

Of course, they looked at Grace that way too. But Grace, they’d have had to have come on to her fast and en masse, ‘cause she was one badass. All that karate, or tae kwon do, whatever it was. And Steve, he was her man, and he was a pretty tough nut too. So, it was me and Reba they eyeballed.

In time, Cory took to fucking James in the ass now and then. Then they’d reverse it. I don’t think it was a big homo thing, though I was hoping for that, so they could get their mind off what I was getting, and off who was giving it to me. But, you know, they were guys, and they had discovered there were holes they could use; did it out there right in front of everybody, just tapping the cork in the upturned jug. Course, out there and in front of everybody was pretty much how everything was, you know, being on the bus and all, but, man, they weren’t even trying to pretend they were hiding it.

One of them would lift his pale, shit-holed whiteness to the other, say, “Okay, it’s your turn, and don’t look at me, ‘cause that beard you got is throwing me off,” and then James would say to Cory, “Like fucking you in the ass and looking at that cutup head you shave with your pocket knife is any kind of goddamn turn-on,” and Cory, he says, “Close your goddamn eyes, and just imagine it’s your mother.”

Then there’d be a fight, fists flying this way and that, then they’d make up, pat each other on the shoulder, say something nice, and it was Ass Fuck City all over again. And later on, just to show there wasn’t any hard feelings, they’d hold each other’s nuts while the other stroked off.

It was kind of sweet, really.

But the sweetness only went so far, and they kept eyeing Reba. And Homer. He eyed her too, ‘cause he wasn’t even getting his ass end worked. They all eyed her so much she didn’t go back there with them, not even to get her food rations. I had to bring her food out, and I’ll tell you, I was not feeling too good going back there myself. I think they wanted to beat me up and eat me and keep Reba.

And maybe they liked me for what they wanted to like each other for. I had good long hair and I kept shaved with my pocketknife, so there was just the now and again shaving rash to remind them of my masculine features.

And, hell, I’m gonna say it. I’ve always kind of prided myself on the shape of my ass, so I’m sure it was a factor, that good ass of mine in rags, which, though not a fashion statement, did show, in spots, the meat.

Nervous times, dear hearts. Nervous times.