Summer—1977
Coming up on Oakley, Kansas, Frank Ford’s head was scrambled eggs.
The black dex got him here nicely, fourteen hours of positive thoughts pointing straight ahead to the future like a bunch of little arrows. But now the arrows were falling to the pavement like pieces of an imploding building, and Frank was lost.
Not lost on the highway—he had his trusty Michelin Road Atlas to prevent that—but lost inside his head. The horror show of his recent past was kicking in like a garish neon sign on a dark, empty street and an ice pick of fear was growing in his solar plexus.
He’d left home confident that he’d covered his tracks. The cops hadn’t given him so much as a sniff. But he’d killed two women and shot the ear off another guy and sometimes stuff like that comes back to haunt you.
You just never know.
And the self-immolating burn of guilt for killing two murderous, psychopathic sisters?
It shouldn’t be there.
But it was, kind of.
Sometimes you think you’ve put certain things behind you, gotten past them, but then one day they come sneaking back up your brain stem and resume the grinding.
Back in Minnesota he had all his rationalizations in place. Wanting to believe that if he just kept moving, the recriminations would never catch up. But now it seemed he was getting as fearful as an old woman. Maybe just like his mother. He was walking on eggs in his mind as if one wrong thought would bring on the Hater. But hell, the accusing voice had already been in there for a while and Frank was starting to get accustomed to the internal accusations and self-condemnation.
Currently the Hater was insisting that Frank deserved to burn in hell.
Or some other form of Christian-themed punishment.
Frank knew he just needed to get comfortable with being uncomfortable; it was that simple.
He’d always considered himself an outlaw. You know, a few illegal drugs, a little cheating on the taxes, maybe a couple lies to the girlfriend or the occasional hot item purchased from some hangdown at the Metropole.
But a killer?
He hadn’t planned on it, but he most certainly was guilty of murder, no matter how justified. And the cops had a nasty habit of overlooking justifications when it came to homicide.
So he had the ice pick in the gut and a hot wire in his brain shooting sparks and making him squirm behind the steering wheel of his 1971 Ford station wagon. He was thinking maybe if he pulled over for a while and shut his eyes—if he was lucky, catch a few Zs—he might get back to that walk-and-don’t-look-back state of mind that had carried him so smoothly across the plains.
If he could just get back to the same old Frank Ford, things would be all right.
Thinking about it, he knew it would never happen. The old Frank Ford was history, gone Johnson.
He fired up a Marlboro with the car lighter. Yeah, he was smoking again, his nerves and the monotony of long-distance driving conspiring to make him buy a pack at the first place he saw after crossing into Iowa early this morning. But this latest butt tasted like burning rope, and was adding a pulsing pain behind the eyes to his already existing symptoms of disarray.
He stubbed out the cig in the ashtray and glanced at the approaching road sign.
Oakley 3.
Highway 83 3.
Highway 83 was a north-south road that would take him to the Texas panhandle and I-40, somewhere west of Oklahoma City, and from there it was a straight shot to LA. But he knew he’d struggle just to make it to Garden City, Kansas, only forty miles to the south, if he didn’t stop for a while.
The fuel situation was also troubling. Some of the gas stations were already closed and it was only seven o’clock in the evening, Central Time. The good fellows from OPEC were putting the squeeze on America’s oil supply. The petroleum titans from the Middle East conspiring to enlighten America as to who was running the gas-and-oil show.
And it seemed to be working. Big companies like Amoco, Shell and Texaco were unable to provide enough fuel to keep all their stations open. And those that did have gas were plagued by long lines, purchase limits and surly drivers—one of whom, Frank was rapidly becoming. So he made a quick decision—or something made it for him—and he wheeled the Ford wagon onto the Oakley exit.
He tried to make himself relax.
At least enough to give the impression that he was relatively normal, which, of course, was the furthest thing from the truth.
Oakley was a Norman Rockwell painting. And like most small towns Frank had visited, there was a supermarket on the main drag.
He swung into the parking lot of Bob’s Ideal Market and steered the wagon into a slot. There was plenty of room. He got out of the car, surprised how stiff he was, and went into the store. There he grabbed a large Styrofoam cup of coffee and two pieces of fried chicken and some deep-fried potato quarters from the deli, the scent of the greasy treats too tantalizing to resist.
Getting back to the car, his stomach now a little queasy from road coffee, cigarettes and no food, he put the potatoes in his cooler for later and grabbed a chicken thigh.
He sipped the coffee and took a bite of the greasy chicken and gazed out the car window at the comings and goings of the locals. Then for no apparent reason the anxiety started up again and he didn’t feel like moving quite yet so he reached into the back seat and grabbed the little going-away-gift box that hippie boy Keith Waverly had given him back in Zenith.
He lifted out the two dog-eared paperbacks.
One was an old Raymond Chandler novel, The Little Sister, which Frank suspected was Waverly’s off-handed comment on the adventures in Frank’s recent past. The other one, On the Road, by Jack Kerouac, was a famous book Frank knew about but had never read, and was probably Waverly’s comment on Frank’s current situation.
And immediate future, Frank was thinking as he put the Chandler novel back in the box and turned back the wrinkled cover of the late Jack Kerouac’s claim to fame.
He looked at the copyright.
1957.
Twenty years ago.
He started to read.
Once he adjusted to the scattershot prose it seemed to sync with his discordant mind and bring on some form of calm. Got him feeling like he was sitting placidly in a giant eggcup. A strange image, for sure, but that’s exactly what he felt like, that’s what came to him.
He read for an hour straight, looking up only occasionally to glance at the old pickups and dusty sedans going by on Main Street, USA.
Story so far was about a bunch of people under the age of thirty traveling across the country on the cheap, doing a lot of drinking and drugs. And sex, if they could get it.
Basically turning dissipation into a religion.
The Beat Generation. Predecessors to the hippies.
Story took place in 1947. Thirty years ago….
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