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“My honors student sells drugs to your honors student.”
“I know you’re stalking me.”
“Please don’t tailgate: body in trunk.”
“Quantum physics has a problem of major gravity.”
When we get hungry, we eat at greasy-spoon diners, where Balder and I order things with names like “The Count of Monte Cristo Sandwich” (a fried egg in a ham-and-toast “mask”) and “Devil Dogs—hot dogs so good you’ll swear you’re sinning!” Gonzo always orders the grilled cheese. It’s the only thing he deems safe.
We drive through interstate rainstorms that last all of ten minutes, like the weather’s just in a bad mood. I like looking out through the metronome of the windshield wipers at the rain bouncing off the bull horns. When the storms pass behind us, the sun cuts through, and sometimes there’s a greasy smudge of a rainbow.
At the Georgia-Alabama border, we park the car on the shoulder and Gonzo and I stand with one foot on either side of the WELCOME TO GEORGIA sign, just so we can say we were in two places at the same time. Then we hold Balder between us so he can say he did it, too. I like the way Georgia looks, so different from Texas. All those tall pine trees and that rich, red dirt, like the ground bled and scabbed over, like it’s got a history you can read in the very clay.
We talk about stupid things, things that don’t matter, like why no one ever has to go to the bathroom in action movies or what you’d do if you found a suitcase full of money. Gonzo wants to start a dwarf detective series called “The Littlest PI” or “Dwarf of Destiny.” Balder argues that you can never know about destiny: are the people you meet there to play a part in your destiny, or do you exist just to play a role in theirs? I tell them about my secret cartoon fantasy, the one where the coyote stops chasing the roadrunner, sells all his contraptions of death, buys a boat, and goes fishing instead.
What I don’t tell them is that every time I look up at those frequent billboards for personal injury lawyers or HAMBURGERS NEXT FIVE MILES, I see the Small World characters smiling and waving me on. Marionette Balinese girls dancing. A Mexican boy in sombrero playing the guitar. The alligator with the umbrella. The Inuit fishing boy with his plastic fish.
It’s tempting to say, “Hey, check it out—the animatronic Don Quixote on his wooden horse just winked at me.”
But then they might not let me drive.
A Copenhagen Interpretation song comes on. Balder sings along.
“I didn’t know you were a CI fan,” Gonzo says.
“A most harmonious band,” Balder says, air drumming. “They performed for my people at Breidablik.”
Gonzo and I exchange glances.
“It’s true!” Balder insists. “They fell from the sky with their odd instruments, and we feared that Ragnarok was upon us.”
“Ragnarok.” Gonzo makes a face. “Is that a musical festival?”
“The end of the world in Norse mythology,” I say, remembering my mom’s lessons. “The doom of the gods.”
“They spoke a strange tongue, but their song was a charm against ill. While they played, peace reigned. Enemies stood as friends. The giants lay down in contentment. Even the Valkyries refused to choose the dead. We feasted. And then, the clouds opened once more. They were gone, leaving behind only the northern lights.”
The sky’s filling up with dark clouds. Time for an afternoon downpour. Cars flip on their headlights, bracing for the coming rain. Our rigged boom box flickers into a staticky symphony of pops, crackles, and occasional burps of words. With the precision of a code breaker, I turn the knob, listening for the sonar of life in the distance, happy when we get a sudden blurp of sound; it makes me feel like I’m moving toward something, that it’s only a signal tower away and getting stronger.
“Could we please find something else? This is torture,” Balder pleads.
“How do you feel about the Great Tremolo?” I ask.
“Is it static?”
“No, it’s a CD,” I say, feeling around on the front seat for the disc I burned.
Balder yawns. “Wonderful.”
Gonzo does the honors, and soon, the car’s thumping to the head-banging pleasure of Portuguese love songs on ukulele and recorder.
“What is this shit?” Gonzo asks, a smile tugging at his lips.
“The Great Tremolo. The master of love in any language.”
The Great Tremolo starts to sing in his high, shaky falsetto and that’s it. Gonzo is officially gone. He’s crying he’s laughing so hard, which of course makes me laugh, too. The Great Tremolo goes for a high note and we nearly piss our pants. Balder has chosen to ignore our immaturity. He’s stretched across the backseat with his eyes closed, probably taking a little gnome snooze.
“Dude, where did you find this?” Gonzo chokes out.
