Then we began to ride. My soul
Smoothed itself out, a long-cramped scroll
Freshening and fluttering in the wind.
Past hopes already lay behind.
The Last Ride Together
I awoke feeling positively chipper but the feeling didn’t last. By the time I had dressed and packed I was being shaken with hangover like a rat in the grip of a keen but inexperienced terrier. I made it down to the hotel bar by easy stages (take the slow lift, never the express one) and the barman had me diagnosed and treated in no time at all. Your actual hangover, he explained, is no more than a withdrawal syndrome; halt the withdrawal by injecting more of what is withdrawing and the syndrome vanishes with a rustle of black wings. It seemed to make good sense. His prescription was simply Scotch and branch water – he swore a great oath that the branch water was freighted in fresh and fresh each morning from the Appalachian mountains, would you believe it? I tipped him with no niggardly hand.
Well medicated, but by no means potted, I paid my bill at the desk, collected a spotless Silver Ghost from a reluctant brownish chap and drove carefully away in the general direction of New Mexico. Posterity will want to know that I was wearing my Complete American Disguise: a cream tussore suit, sunglasses and a cocoa-coloured straw hat with a burnt-orange ribbon. The effect was pretty sexy, I don’t mind telling you. Mr Abercrombie would have bitten Mr Fitch if he’d seen it and the Tailor and Cutter would have been moved to tears.
Curiously, I was afraid again. I felt obscurely that this land – ‘where law and custom alike are based on the dreams of spinsters’ – was nevertheless a land where I might well get hurt if I were not careful – or even if I were careful.
By the time that I was quite clear of the city’s unlovely faubourgs and purlieus I needed petrol: the Silver Ghost is a lovely car but its best friend would have to admit that its m.’s per g. are few. I selected a petrol station that looked as though it could use the business and drew up. This was near a place called Charlottesville on the edge of the Shenandoah National Park. The attendant was standing with his back to me, arms akimbo, saying, ‘Howd’ya like that guy?’ and staring after a large powder-blue car which was vanishing at great speed down the road. He didn’t realize my presence until I switched off the engine, then he double-took the Rolls in the most gratifying way, whispering ‘shee-it!’ again and again. (I was to hear enough admiring ‘shee-its’ in the next few days to refertilize the entire Oklahoma dust bowl.) He giggled like a virgin as he dipped the nozzle into the petrol tank and sped me on my way with one last dungy praise spattering my ears. I wondered vaguely what the powder-blue car had done to earn his disapproval.
I got a little lost after that, but an hour later I hit Interstate Highway 81 at Lexington and made excellent time down through Virginia. Once over the State line into Tennessee I called it quits for the day and booked in at a Genuine Log Kabins Motel. The yellow-haired, slack-mouthed, fat-arsed landlady wiggled her surplus flesh at me in the most revolting way: she looked about as hard to get as a haircut and at about the same price. Everything in my Kabin was screwed to the floor: the landlady told me that newlyweds often furnish their entire apartments with stuff they steal from motels, they spend the whole night unscrewing things, she told me with a coy giggle, indicating that she could think of better ways of passing the time. Like being screwed to the floor, I dare say.
The sheets were bright red. ‘By golly,’ I told them, ‘I’d blush too, if I were you.’
For supper I had some Old Fashioned Mountain Boys’ Corned Beef Hash; you’d think it would be delicious in Tennessee but it wasn’t, you know; not a patch on Jock’s. I drank some of my store of Red Hackle De Luxe and went to sleep instantly – you’d never have unscrewed me.
You can’t get an early morning cup of tea in an American motel, not even for ready money; I wished I had brought a portable apparatus along. You’ve no idea how hard it is to get dressed without a cheering cup inside you. I hobbled to the restaurant and drank a whole pot of their coffee, which was excellent and nerved me to try the sweet Canadian bacon and hot cakes. Not at all bad, really. I noticed that the owner of the powder-blue car – or one very like it – had selected the same motel, but I didn’t see him, or her. I idly wondered whether they’d done much unscrewing. For my part, I checked out with a clear conscience, I hadn’t stolen anything for days.
I hardly got lost at all that morning. I was on US 40 in not much more than an hour and sailed clear across Tennessee on it, wonderful scenery. I had lunch in Nashville: spareribs and spoon bread and the finest jukebox I ever saw: it was a privilege to sit in front of it. Dazed with hot pork and decibels I nearly stepped under the wheels of a powder-blue car as I stepped off the sidewalk (pavement). Now, at the last count I’m sure there were probably half a million powder-blue cars in the United States, but when pedestrians walk under their wheels American drivers usually turn a bit powder-blue themselves and lean out and curse you roundly, calling you ‘Buster’ if you happen to be at all portly. This one did not: he looked through me and drove on, a thick-set, jowly chap rather like my Mr Braun, the crown prince of fish and chips, but hatted and sunglassed to the point of anonymity.
I dismissed the incident front my mind until I reached the outskirts of Memphis late that evening, when I was overtaken by just such a car driven by just such a chap.
They brought me coffee in my hotel room that night and a bottle of branch water for my Scotch; I locked the door and put in a call to Mr Krampf. American telephonists are wonderful, you just tell them the name and address of the chap you want to talk to and they do the rest. Krampf sounded a bit tight but very friendly; there was a lot of noise in the background which suggested that he had guests with him who were also a bit tight. I told him that I was on schedule, making no reference to his departure from our original plan.
‘Well, that’s just dandy,’ he bellowed. ‘Just dandy.’ He said it a few times more, he’s like that.
‘Mr Krampf,’ I went on guardedly, ‘I seem to have a sort of companion on the road, if you know what I mean. A late model, powder-blue Buick convertible with New York plates. Do you have any idea …?
There was a long pause, then he chuckled fruitily.
‘That’s awright, son, that’s your kind of escort. Wouldn’t want anyone hijacking that old Rolls and Royce of mine.’
I made relieved noises and he went on: ‘Hey, let’s don’t let him know we tumbled him, just make like he wasn’t there and when he gets here and tells me you never made him I’ll chew his nuts off, huh?’
‘All right, Mr Krampf,’ I said, ‘but don’t be too hard on him, will you. I mean, I was rather on the qui vive, you know.’
He delivered another fruity chuckle – or perhaps it was a belch – and rang off. Then somebody else rang off. Perhaps it was just the hotel telephonist, but the noises weren’t quite right for that. Then I rang off and treated myself to a belch, too, and went to bed.
Nothing else happened that night, except that I worried a lot. Krampf hadn’t made his millions by being a drunken old fart; to be a millionaire you need brains, ruthlessness and a certain little maggot in your brain. Krampf had all these and he was cleverer than me and much more evil. This was all wrong. My bowels whined and grumbled, they wanted to go home. Above all, they wanted no part in assassinating clever millionaires in their own homes. I finally nagged myself to sleep.