“Hole in the World”
“For any reader who has ever pointed their fortunes north and let their moral compass waver, or loves reading about well-crafted antiheroes, O’Neill’s collection is an intense but entertaining dive into another world.” – SPR review
I turn around and face the sidewalk, folding my arms across my chest. I rock back on my heels a bit. By George, we’re having some fun now. I stand there waiting and all I get for entertainment is this young college guy across the street in the doorway of the flophouse Lexington Hotel, dry-humping and tongue kissing this old hag of a barfly. I’m getting ready to yell at them and condemn their public indecency when I hear an engine start up behind me.
Roy is backing out of a parking space now. Has his arm out the window waving me on. I run up to the black Cadillac Eldorado and jump inside to plush, charcoal-gray leather seats. Roy is snorting and laughing and looking at me proudly. Am I supposed to praise him? I don’t know; I never had kids.
“Jesus, man, this is unobtrusive?” I strain for politeness. “This is stealth? We’ll be riding down the highway to the Grey Rock Hotel in this goddamn pimp car.”
“Calmly, please, calmly. Let’s think this out, Donny. This car is black. It is night. It is dark, or you could say black, at night. We will fit right in.”
“It’s a goddamn almost new Caddy. Perhaps a bit ostentatious for an—a—Native American—don’t you think? I mean, no offense meant, but it doesn’t seem like your people are exactly burning up the place around here. With financial success, I mean.”
“Again my son, I shall say to you: The car is black. The night is black. The crow is black. Bear shit is black. We will be fine as long as I stay the speed limits. There are a lot of rich assholes from Chicago up that way, staying at the condos. This car will fit right in, like I said, no problem. Cops up the shore are usually too busy busting teen-age girls and coercing blowjobs from them in exchange for leniency, to be checking out any hot list from Souptown. As long as you got the money, honey, I got the ride. Besides, I’ve always wanted to drive a car with the fabulous Northstar System. Whatever the fuck that is. Look at the dash on this thing.”
“Cockpit City. Now I really need a drink.”
He drives me back to the rooming house. I grab a few necessities and we’re on the way. Before we leave town we stop at a liquor store and pick up a few supplies.
We are about halfway across this big bridge, the John C. Blatnik Bridge it says on a green sign, when I start to feel pretty good. I stare out at the lights on the hillside of approaching Duluth, Minnesota. It isn’t bad to look at, at one a.m. All the drugs and stuff swirling around inside me seem to have found some common ground.
Look, I’m not recommending drugs. In fact, I hate all that pharmacy shit: pills and capsules. It’s all poison. If any kids are reading this, I’ll tell you right now: Stay away from drugs. Nuff said.
But this is going to be one of those nights; I can feel it. The Great American Night: A fine automobile, a lunatic for a companion, a damn near full moon and the unknown lying just ahead.
The ride is a dandy: fantastic stereo, the most comfortable seats I’ve ever been in, and it moves like a dream. I look over at Roy and he’s almost glowing, chewing Juicy Fruit, popping the radio from station to station in search of the perfect song and smoking a rum-soaked crook. The air system in the Caddy is good: sucks out that smoke real nice.
We cruise through Duluth and hook up with the Scenic North Shore Drive. Up above it there’s a nice four-laner but Roy says the winding two-lane scenic route is the way to go. The moon is putting a big glow on the inky waters of Gitchee Gummi. Roy told me that was what the Indians called Lake Superior. I ask him what it means, and he says he doesn’t know, which seems weird to me. All he knows, he says, is that the lake has a power and a spirit all its own. Beautiful but cold. Alluring but frigid.
Like a thirty-year-old virgin, I say, and he looks at me funny.
We glide along the winding road drinking cans of Bud from the two twelve-packs in the back seat. They are getting warm fast so I have Roy pull over while I throw one twelver in the trunk. When I get back in, Roy hands me the weed and I roll a bunch of joints.
We smoke some. We aren’t saying much. We cruise by houses with friendly looking lights inside. We roll by a few taverns and a store and cross a small bridge at the French River. And then it is just blackness and we are fitting right in.
Roy says we’re almost to “Kaniffy River,” about three times.
I’m thinking that’s a funny name for a river, until we come to this fishing village name of Knife River.
I look at him funny.
A glowing, neon “Smoked Fish” sign is our welcome. There is a closed general store, a used car lot and not much else. The river is wide and dark and running heavy. I open the window as we pass over and I can hear the water moving down below; a fresh smell rising up.
Then we’re rolling into the moon-glow darkness again and I’m yearning for something. I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s up here ahead on this road. Sign says, Two Harbors.
Christ, I’m getting squirrelly. I got green money waiting for me. After I lock that shit in the trunk, then I can be a poet. Right now I can feel all warm and fuzzy because I got a 9mm Glock pistol in a grocery sack in the back seat. The Glock is a smooth item: efficient and deadly and uncaring. Elegant and brutish. Shit, it’s probably the sons and daughters of Nazis making these guns. That’s why they shoot so damn good.
That’s right, I said I had the gun in a grocery sack. The sack is my luggage, my favorite brand: the good old, brown paper grocery bag. If one piece gets lost or damaged, you can easily find a matching replacement. Keeps the loggers in business, too. That must be something they do up here in Minnesota; sure is a lot of trees. And it gets dark in those trees when a cloud covers the moon and you’re driving along this snake of a highway.
(To be continued)
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