The Costs and Benefits of Constant Motion
Fiction Piece - Fiction Writing Workshop, Submission for Skidmore Student Fiction Writing Award
Spring 2012 - Professor Steve Stern
It is 3:00 PM, and the road is empty. For this, Harry is grateful. Without the irksome presence of other vehicles and their occupants, he is free to submerse himself in the recesses of his own mind. Harry permits the engine of his pickup to usher him into a trancelike state. He does not believe in mysticism, but imagines that he is experiencing a sensation akin to what monks feel when they meditate. The droning mix of guitar and viola flowing from his speakers, courtesy of the Velvet Underground, provides the perfect soundtrack for his trance. As his physical surroundings recede into insignificance, Harry’s mind drifts to his early years on the road, the starting point of his second life.
Harry began to feel the tingle in his sophomore year of high school. Life up until that point had been a generic, suburban slog. Like countless other rebels and exiles (although he would never refer to himself as such), he could not abide the stifling expectations of a 21st century life. Harry cared little for the disembodied social interactions that helped to determine one’s place on the all-important high school totem pole. In fact, he found other human beings, online and in person, to be a source of perpetual discomfort. Interactions that others considered routine set his heart pounding, his sweat glands pumping, and his beleaguered mind into paroxysms of paranoia.
Try as he might, Harry could not discern the intentions of his fellow human beings, identical to him anatomically but possessing of brains that seemed to function in a manner entirely different from his own. His parents tried their best to support him, but were inevitably frustrated by the uselessness of their efforts. In the end, his father converted the ensuing guilt into anger, while his mother transmuted it into an impenetrable melancholy. The family therapist had described their reactions in far more detailed, psychiatric terms, which Harry had found incomprehensible. He had an affinity for memorizing trivial facts (for instance, he had astounded his family by reciting every U.S. president from Washington to Clinton at the age of three), but he could not seem to get a handle on the simplest of social cues or recognize the most obvious of emotions. Sarcasm and hyperbole were like a foreign language. These unfortunate social deficiencies made life almost intolerable for Harry. He concluded that things could not get any worse.
That was when the tingle started, first in the form of barely-perceptible sensations: An urge to scratch here, a sub vocal utterance there. Soon, however, the tingle had metastasized into an irrepressible attack of jerks and spasms. Harry felt as if some sadistic ventriloquist had taken up residence in his nervous system. The more he was forced to interact with people, the worse his problem became. Revelation ultimately came from an unlikely source. Feigning sickness, as he so often did when the prospect of facing his peers at school proved too overwhelming, Harry found himself skimming the channels on his flat screen TV. Most of what he encountered was of little interest; daytime soap operas and talk shows only reminded him of the convoluted rituals of human social interaction that caused him so much distress in real life.
He was nearly ready to turn off the TV when he stumbled upon a program that would change his life forever. It was one of those spaghetti Westerns that most cultured folk considered trash, worthy only of the occasional nostalgic foray on a rainy day. Harry, on the other hand, took comfort in the genre’s predictability and simplicity. None of the characters’ motivations were at all complex; they all functioned according to easily identifiable patterns of behavior, scarcely concerning themselves with such trivialities as thoughts and feelings. Harry found himself particularly captivated by one protagonist, a somber man of few words who seemed to share his distaste for human company. When not hunting down outlaws or foiling bank robberies, he spent most of his time herding cattle and traversing the dirt roads of the Wild West atop his trusty steed.
Harry soon discovered that there were many such TV Westerns accessible to those who sought them out. His interest in the genre developed into an obsession, much to the chagrin of his parents, who thought that their son should spend more time interacting with peers and less stationed in front of the TV gorging himself on nachos and Spaghetti Westerns. And so, one day, Harry returned home from school to find his TV conspicuously absent from the perch atop his bookshelf. The next day, his parents returned from the opera in New York City to discover their son conspicuously absent from his room as well.
Harry had never so much as contemplated running away before. But the steady diet of TV Westerns had awoken something in him, an irresistible wanderlust that he soon diagnosed as the source of his tingle. Not yet ready to live on his own, Harry sought comradery in the form of a yuppie biker gang operating on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Life as a member of the Hollow Skulls could not have differed more from life in Short Hills, New Jersey. For a time, Harry’s tingle subsided, making itself known only as an occasional muscle spasm in his foot or shoulder. Yet, the pressures of social interaction with his fellow bikers gradually mounted, eventually bringing the tingle out of hibernation. He knew there was no way the Hollow Skulls would understand his problem. He had to get away, find some secluded place to collect himself. And so he did.
However, what he had initially intended as a week long “vacation” somehow evolved into a 10-year solo venture. Upon discovering the comfort of solitude courtesy of the interstate highway system, he could not bring himself to voluntarily rejoin the company of other human beings. All of their convoluted motivations and displays of unfathomable emotion set him on edge and, he soon realized, constituted the source of his perpetual anxiety. Better to live in isolation, Harry reasoned, than to subject oneself to that constant torture.
Harry’s newfound lifestyle did not require much in the way of funding. He purchased his meals at gas station, preferably Stewarts, taking a particular fancy to their pre-made egg salad sandwiches. On the rare occasions that he could work up the courage to break his all-important routine, the drive-throughs of fast-food establishments proved a satisfying indulgence. The roll of one hundred dollar bills Harry had stolen from the shoebox under his father’s bed before fleeing Short Hills kept him going for a while, but it eventually proved necessary to acquire another source of income. Fortunately, a chance encounter with a member of the Hollow Skulls in a roadside diner landed him a low-paying but steady job that required constant traveling and limited human interaction, which suited Harry perfectly.
Seizing upon one of the few childhood memories that he had not banished from his mind, Harry took to wearing a cowboy that he had acquired secondhand at Pittsburgh pawnshop for $10.95. He had initially bought the item to keep the sun out of his eyes while riding his Harley, but had retired without much thought after replacing his old motorcycle with the pickup truck that was now the only reliable presence in his life, aside from a few of his loyal customers. Try as he might, however, Harry could never dispel the feeling thereafter that something was missing; at times, he raised his hand to adjust the brim of his old hat, only to feel instead the sharp bristles he had inherited from his father. This would inevitably set off the tingle, mandating a hasty retreat into a service lane.
Fed up with unpleasant reminders of his former life, Harry decided to shave his head, which proved to be disastrous; with his collection of biker tattoos and baldpate, many important clients mistook him as a skinhead. That was when it occurred to him: why not take the old cowboy hat out of retirement? Although it made him look ridiculous as his biker companions never missed out on a chance to remind him, the benefits seemed to outweigh the cost. After striking out on his own, Harry never devoted much thought to his apparel; his chief concern in choosing what to wear was far more utilitarian than aesthetic (flannel and ratty old painter jeans was his outfit of choice). Besides, he considered the connotations of his signature headgear oddly appropriate given his lifestyle. And so the cowboy hat was brought out of retirement.
And so here he was, a modern day cowboy traversing the tar tributaries of the interstate highway system making deliveries, at long last content. Or at least most of the time. On this particular night, despite the comfort of an empty road, Harry could swear that he could feel his tingle rearing its ugly head for the first time since he had left the Hollow Skulls. He quickly decided that he must be imagining things and sank back into his trance.
The Lexus rapidly approaching in the lane adjacent to Harry’s was the first vehicle he had seen in what felt like hours, but so absorbed was he in his own contemplation that he did not truly process its presence. Under ordinary circumstances, this would not have mattered. Each driver sits in his own self-contained world on the road, Harry thought, divided from his fellow man by boundaries of space, glass and steel. But on this day, his headlights illuminated the X-factor in the equation. A flash of black and white, almost imperceptible to untrained eyes, triggered an instinctual response in Harry. His neurons fired a quick message, and his hands jerked him into the adjacent lane.
Harry’s first thought upon registering the crash was for his fellow human organism, the unlucky bundle of electrical impulses whose existence might well have been discontinued by the force of the collision. Empathy did not come naturally to Harry; his mind could never quite wrap itself around the fact that other people had thoughts, feelings and memories just like he did. Nevertheless, his mind dutifully ran through a list of possible scenarios. The one in which X expires (for at this point he has no details with which to label the organism in question) was disturbing to him. His mother had programmed him sufficiently well to ensure that causing another human harm would cause a negative reaction. Too bad the helpless old mare had never been able to protect him from the constant harm, physical and emotional, inflicted on him by his father.
But a part of him that existed beneath layers of lingering social conditioning could fathom why he should spare a single thought for an entity whose very existence would not have had any impact on his own had their vehicles not collided. Yet, he was obligated to investigate, if for no other reason than to avoid being reported to the authorities, and investigate he does, delayed only slightly by the jammed door of his pickup. A man, presumably the occupant of the vehicle he just collided with, is standing on the side of the road, sucking desperately on a cigarette with the single-minded intensity of an infant at his mother’s breast. He is wearing a puffy, mud-colored jacket and beat up cap over a thicket of straggly blonde hair.
The prospect of social interaction, even in a limited and impersonal capacity, is enough to set Harry on edge. Steeling himself, he walks over to join the stranger on the side of the road. He feels a sudden jolt as his right foot departs the comforting uniformity of the tar and alights on the uneven stew of rocks and pebbles that people refer to as the “side of the road.” Harry finds it odd that one would consider two entirely separate landscapes as belonging to a unified whole. Distressed by this bit of commonplace illogic, he was tempted to draw back and seek refuge in the familiar comfort of his vehicle. He stood poised on the precipice between the two surfaces for a moment longer than he should have.
The stranger spits violently onto the road, as if to express a deep-seated hatred towards it. He detects a certain innocence in the stranger’s bearing. This innocence reminds Harry of a small child, clad in an awkwardly large, zebra-striped flotation device, taking his first tentative steps into the ocean and drawing back at the kiss of the April waves, only to feel the cold, merciless hands of his father propelling him forward. Could the stranger’s bluster indicate an eagerness for confrontation? A gesture intended to cover up fear? Harry locks eyes with the stranger in a futile attempt get some sense of what is going on beyond the unreadable positioning of his features.
Harry experiences the instinct to introduce himself, as his mother has taught him, but knows it would be foolish to take such a risk. He glances at the stranger expectantly, waiting for him to make the first move and thereby reveal some inkling of personality or motivation. “Well, shit. Had this thing for years, now look,” the stranger laments, pointing to indicate the hunk of metal that had until minutes before been his vehicle. “And damn, we’re both lucky to be alive. What in the hell caused you to swerve into my lane like that? Forget to drink your coffee?” Harry is struck by the stranger’s humorous tone immediately following a near-death experience.
“A skunk,” Harry responds. “A skunk?” the stranger echoes in disbelief. “A skunk,” Harry answers again. The stranger appears oddly relieved by Harry’s answer. “Well, I suppose I understand not wanting to stink up your ride. But man, we could have both been pulverized.” “We weren’t,” Harry points out matter-of-factly. “And the smell had nothing to do with my decision.” The stranger is puzzled. “Then what? Don’t tell me you got sympathy for the overgrown rodents or something.” Harry does not exactly have sympathy for the skunk, but he cannot fault the animal for responding instinctually to a given stimuli. But he knows it would be useless to try and explain this. “Me, I fucking hate them,” the stranger continues. “My wife? She got herself sprayed once, when she was gardening if I remember correct. Couldn’t get any action for two weeks. First it was the stench and then her time of the month came right after.”
Harry is struck by the stranger’s willingness to openly discuss such private matters. He remembers his mother telling him never to mention sexual intercourse or one’s bodily functions; especially to someone he’s just met. The stranger’s failure to recognize this golden rule makes Harry feel very uncomfortable. In a panic, his mind grapples for a way to change the subject.
“There’s marijuana in your car,” Harry blurts out impulsively. “What- what makes you think that, huh?” the man replies. “ What in the world makes you think I’m carrying marijuana? Is it because I look like a hippie?” Harry curses himself for creating unnecessary tension. He wishes he could just change the topic, but social etiquette demands that he must wait until the appropriate time to make a transition. “No, I find that judging a person by his appearance is not an accurate way of predicting their behavior or course of action. It’s just that I have a strong sense of smell, like a dog. And your windows are broken. I would venture a guess that you smoked not 10 minutes ago.”
Harry is not good at reading body language, but even he can tell that the stranger is suspicious. “Oooh, you’re an observant one. Well I’ll tell you what, buddy, I’ve got drugs in my car that makes marijuana look like Cheerios. I deal for the Dixie Mafia, in fact. So don’t fuck with me.”
Harry knows that the stranger is lying. No dealer for the Dixie Mafia would ever advertise his affiliation to stranger, who could very well report him to the authorities. Flustered and unsure of how to respond, Harry runs his hand through his hair, the familiar texture calming him ever so slightly. He starts to respond, but stutters, giving the impression of a malfunctioning computer failing to execute a command.
He is successful on his second attempt: “My name is Harry J. Smith,” he holds out his hand, as his mother taught him, figuring that an introduction might help to alleviate some of the tension that is rapidly accumulating on the deserted, icy road. “And there is no need to get defensive. Your drugs are no concern of mine. I was merely trying to make conversation.” The stranger seems to relax a little bit, his aggressive demeanor momentarily replaced with puzzlement. Harry is immensely relived when the stranger offers his hand in return, accompanied by a wide, friendly grin. “You’re a real strange one aren’t you, buddy? Name’s Dale. Dale Swinton. Pleased to meet you. Not so pleased what you did to my car.” Harry smiles back, hoping that the stranger will relieve him of the responsibility of having to say something in response.
“Well then,” Dale says after an awkward pause. “Guess we should call the cops. You wanna do the honors?”
“No, no, I’d prefer not to.”
Again, Dale is puzzled. “With all respect buddy, we gotta call. For insurance purposes if nothing else. I mean, just look at the damage. I hate filling out paperwork as much as the next guy, but there’s proper procedure to follow. Price of being a citizen, I guess.”
“It is not necessary to call the authorities,” Harry reiterates. “Let’s just settle this ourselves. We’re free men aren’t we?” Harry reaches into his pocket and pulls out a beat- up wallet. He begins to rifle through a hearty collection of bills. Dale momentarily perks up at the sight of cash, but his common sense gets the better of him. “Look, I appreciate that you folks have a certain way of doing things out here, but I have to insist that we- “
“Folks like me?” Harry asks, puzzled. “Well, yeah, Southerners. I know you’re not so fond of government down here. I’m from Short Hills, New Jersey,” says Harry.
Impossibly, Dale’s smile broadens even more; Harry entertains the notion that if it expands much further the man’s face might well tear itself in half. “Well whadduya know, same here! Short Hills High, class of ’84. Sorry for jumping to conclusions; I’d be pretty offended if someone called me a redneck. But I suppose a lot of folks have made that mistake, seeing as you’re wearing that cowboy hat. So, buddy, what year did you graduate?”
Harry does not see how sharing a hometown necessarily makes him and Dale buddies, but he decides he’d better play along. “I graduated in 1981.” “Well whadduya know! So did my sister. Carrie Swinton. Did you know her?” “No.” In fact, Carrie Swinton was one of the few people Harry did remember from high school, owing to the fact that she teased him with a lively enthusiasm matched by few throughout his life.
“Well I prolly wouldn’t remember her either. Not the choicest piece of meat in the freezer, if I do say so.” Dale laughs heartily at his own jest. “Well, anyway, I’m sure we both have better things to do than chat on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. So I’ll go ahead and call the cops and we can both be on our way. Lemme just go get my bud first and stash it in the woods. Wouldn’t want the cops catching a whiff.” With that, Dale spins around and starts toward his car, a lively spring in his step as if the matter has somehow been settled in the brief span of time spent talking about high school in Short Hills, New Jersey. “And all the other drugs too, of course,” Dale footnotes in deference to his previous lie.
Harry wishes he could just give in and allow his roadside companion to call the authorities. But he knows that the consequences of doing so would be dire, and so he is forced to declare: “I told you before, we will not call the authorities.” This time, Harry allows a hint of aggression into his tone, hoping that it will be sufficient to ensure Dale’s compliance. “What was that, buddy, didn’t quite hear you?” Dale shouts, occupied as he is rummaging through a pile of junk in the back of his car. “We shall not call the cops!” Harry repeats, his frustration mounting. “I appreciate your commitment to due process, and will pay you twice the cost of the damage to your vehicle as compensation,” Harry adds diplomatically. Dale withdraws from his car, clutching a ziplock bag that contains an eighth of premium marijuana. “Oh, I could never accept that, Harry. I’d feel awful. Tell me, what do you have against calling the cops?” Harry knows that he should not answer that question. But what other option does he have? Perhaps Dale would understand Harry’s reasoning if knew the truth. Yes, how could anyone not? It would be totally illogical.
And so, against his better instincts, Harry starts toward his vehicle and beckons Dale to follow. He opens the back door and proceeds to lift up the seat. A look of sudden comprehension slips across Dale face. Sitting in the compartment underneath is an assortment of illegal drugs, mostly cocaine and meth, but also a few others that are not so well known. “Holy shit,” Dale reacts predictably. “Well, now I’m definitely calling the cops.” Dale laughs and punches Harry playfully on the shoulder. “Come on, buddy, don’t look so horrified, I’m only joking. Wouldn’t want to mess with a big bad drug dealer. Listen, just pay me for the damage and let’s get out of here.” Harry flashes a half-hearted smile, but in truth he is not at all amused. How could someone say the opposite of what they mean and then call it a “joke?” It reminds him of the kinds of comments his peers used to make in high school. The same peers that mercilessly teased him only to play it off like a joke when he got angry or when, on rare occasions, when the teachers swooped in to defend him. Carrie Swinton had been one of those students.
Uneasy and eager to retreat into the hermitic comfort of his disfigured vehicle, Harry decides to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. “I’m glad we’ve arrived at an understanding. I don’t have enough in my wallet to pay you double, so I’ll have to go get more cash from my glove compartment.” His smile staunched by Harry’s less-than-amused reaction to his sarcastic remark, Dale is all courtesy when he responds: “Sure thing. Take your time. I’ll just go wait in my car.” Dale returns to his vehicle with a bit more enthusiasm than necessary, banging his head on the way in.
Harry is all the more disconcerted by the stranger’s sudden change in demeanor. Moments before, he had been grinning and cracking jokes, now he’s deathly serious. He is also put off by the stranger’s sudden willingness to accept twice as much cash as it would take to repair his vehicle. As far as Harry is concerned, offering to cover the damage at all was quite generous. How could he trust a man who could alter his demands and his behavior with little or no provocation? Harry eyes the stranger suspiciously before going to fetch the cash from his glove compartment. Behind a couple of empty cigarette cartons and several packs of stale chewing gum, he finds the bills. He looks up, only to find what a part of him had been expecting for the past few minutes: the stranger, frantically entering a number into his cell phone. Harry curses the stranger for making him do what he now knows is unavoidable. Reaching back into the glove compartment, he grabs the revolver that, up until now, he has never needed to use. There is no time for hesitation; the stranger will be connected to the police in moments, if he is not already.
The gunshot rings out in the night with a harsh finality. The stranger slumps over in his seat mid-conversation like a narcoleptic, a thin thread of blood trickling from the hole in his forehead. His distinctively wide smile remains fixed like the expression of a harlequin doll. Harry wonders how calling the police to report a drug dealer can possibly be a cause for mirth; perhaps this man deserved to die. Yes, anyone who would take pleasure in the prospect of condemning another human being to a life behind bars without cause is not worthy of sharing the road. Even as his mind cartwheels to justify his actions, Harry notices that his hand is shaking in a manner surely foreign to the spaghetti Western stars he grew up admiring. Depositing his devirginized weapon in his ample coat pocket, Harry walks to the drivers side door of Dale’s Lexus and grips its handle. He is rocked by a visceral jab of intense trepidation. Illogical as he knows it might be, Harry feels that the consequences of his decision will become real only when he opens the door. But open it he must, if only to make sure the stranger is dead. He has heard stories about men surviving gunshot wounds to the head, appearances notwithstanding.
Upon opening the door, Harry hears a voice rising from the floor of the car. Momentarily afraid that the shock of committing his first murder has driven him insane, Harry realizes with some relief that the voice is emanating from the stranger’s phone. “The stranger just dropped his phone. You’re not going crazy,” he reassures himself. Harry picks up the phone and puts it to his ear. “Hello,” he says instinctually, realizing only belatedly the foolishness of doing so. “Hello? Dale? Is that you? What happened?,” the voice responds. Harry wonders how the dispatcher could possibly know the stranger’s name. “No, no, this is… Lex. Lex Barker,” says Harry, using the first name that pops into his head. “Don’t worry, ma’am, everything is alright. The strange- Dale just dropped his phone down the stairs. I-I picked it up for him.” Harry curses himself for the implausibility of his excuse. He’s never been good at thinking on his feet; now the police will surely show up to investigate. “The stairs?” the voice responds, her voice permeated with confusion. “My Dale told me he was driving in his car. I don’t recognize your voice. Put my son back on the phone.” Harry’s heart skips a beat. “To whom am I speaking?” he asks, hoping against hope that he did not hear what he thinks he did. “This is Martha Swinton. Listen, mister, you put my son back on the phone right now or I’ll call the police. I want to speak to Dale right-” Harry slams the phone shut before Dale’s mother can finish her sentence. “Wrong. I was totally wrong. Totally… illogical.” Harry utters the last syllable with a venom that stems from years of despising the illogic of his fellow human beings for as long as he can remember.
As Harry speeds away from the scene of his atrocity (and that is the only thing he can call it), he considers what his mother would think of his behavior. She’d be horrified. She’d probably disown him. For the first time in over two decades, Harry doubts the life he has chosen. Sure, it has spared him the endless anxiety that comes with being forced to interact with other human beings. But at what cost? Perhaps it is time to go home, to become reacquainted with whatever humanity he had possessed before taking to the road. He may not have ever been normal, but the Harry of Short Hills, New Jersey would surely never have shot a man based on a mere suspicion. Seemingly of their own accord, his fingers enter in the coordinates of the affluent neighborhood where he spent his formative years in his GPS. No sooner do they finish, however, that he realizes the absurdity of this course of action. The Harry J. Smith’s of the world are not meant to dwell among other human beings. Harry has never been the kind to draw lessons from the frenetic shuffle of chance occurrences that is life. But if ever there was one, it’s that men like him are meant to live alone. And so he erases “Short Hills, NJ” from his GPS and guns the accelerator, leaving the pangs of conscience in his wake.
Spring 2012 - Professor Steve Stern
It is 3:00 PM, and the road is empty. For this, Harry is grateful. Without the irksome presence of other vehicles and their occupants, he is free to submerse himself in the recesses of his own mind. Harry permits the engine of his pickup to usher him into a trancelike state. He does not believe in mysticism, but imagines that he is experiencing a sensation akin to what monks feel when they meditate. The droning mix of guitar and viola flowing from his speakers, courtesy of the Velvet Underground, provides the perfect soundtrack for his trance. As his physical surroundings recede into insignificance, Harry’s mind drifts to his early years on the road, the starting point of his second life.
Harry began to feel the tingle in his sophomore year of high school. Life up until that point had been a generic, suburban slog. Like countless other rebels and exiles (although he would never refer to himself as such), he could not abide the stifling expectations of a 21st century life. Harry cared little for the disembodied social interactions that helped to determine one’s place on the all-important high school totem pole. In fact, he found other human beings, online and in person, to be a source of perpetual discomfort. Interactions that others considered routine set his heart pounding, his sweat glands pumping, and his beleaguered mind into paroxysms of paranoia.
Try as he might, Harry could not discern the intentions of his fellow human beings, identical to him anatomically but possessing of brains that seemed to function in a manner entirely different from his own. His parents tried their best to support him, but were inevitably frustrated by the uselessness of their efforts. In the end, his father converted the ensuing guilt into anger, while his mother transmuted it into an impenetrable melancholy. The family therapist had described their reactions in far more detailed, psychiatric terms, which Harry had found incomprehensible. He had an affinity for memorizing trivial facts (for instance, he had astounded his family by reciting every U.S. president from Washington to Clinton at the age of three), but he could not seem to get a handle on the simplest of social cues or recognize the most obvious of emotions. Sarcasm and hyperbole were like a foreign language. These unfortunate social deficiencies made life almost intolerable for Harry. He concluded that things could not get any worse.
That was when the tingle started, first in the form of barely-perceptible sensations: An urge to scratch here, a sub vocal utterance there. Soon, however, the tingle had metastasized into an irrepressible attack of jerks and spasms. Harry felt as if some sadistic ventriloquist had taken up residence in his nervous system. The more he was forced to interact with people, the worse his problem became. Revelation ultimately came from an unlikely source. Feigning sickness, as he so often did when the prospect of facing his peers at school proved too overwhelming, Harry found himself skimming the channels on his flat screen TV. Most of what he encountered was of little interest; daytime soap operas and talk shows only reminded him of the convoluted rituals of human social interaction that caused him so much distress in real life.
He was nearly ready to turn off the TV when he stumbled upon a program that would change his life forever. It was one of those spaghetti Westerns that most cultured folk considered trash, worthy only of the occasional nostalgic foray on a rainy day. Harry, on the other hand, took comfort in the genre’s predictability and simplicity. None of the characters’ motivations were at all complex; they all functioned according to easily identifiable patterns of behavior, scarcely concerning themselves with such trivialities as thoughts and feelings. Harry found himself particularly captivated by one protagonist, a somber man of few words who seemed to share his distaste for human company. When not hunting down outlaws or foiling bank robberies, he spent most of his time herding cattle and traversing the dirt roads of the Wild West atop his trusty steed.
Harry soon discovered that there were many such TV Westerns accessible to those who sought them out. His interest in the genre developed into an obsession, much to the chagrin of his parents, who thought that their son should spend more time interacting with peers and less stationed in front of the TV gorging himself on nachos and Spaghetti Westerns. And so, one day, Harry returned home from school to find his TV conspicuously absent from the perch atop his bookshelf. The next day, his parents returned from the opera in New York City to discover their son conspicuously absent from his room as well.
Harry had never so much as contemplated running away before. But the steady diet of TV Westerns had awoken something in him, an irresistible wanderlust that he soon diagnosed as the source of his tingle. Not yet ready to live on his own, Harry sought comradery in the form of a yuppie biker gang operating on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Life as a member of the Hollow Skulls could not have differed more from life in Short Hills, New Jersey. For a time, Harry’s tingle subsided, making itself known only as an occasional muscle spasm in his foot or shoulder. Yet, the pressures of social interaction with his fellow bikers gradually mounted, eventually bringing the tingle out of hibernation. He knew there was no way the Hollow Skulls would understand his problem. He had to get away, find some secluded place to collect himself. And so he did.
However, what he had initially intended as a week long “vacation” somehow evolved into a 10-year solo venture. Upon discovering the comfort of solitude courtesy of the interstate highway system, he could not bring himself to voluntarily rejoin the company of other human beings. All of their convoluted motivations and displays of unfathomable emotion set him on edge and, he soon realized, constituted the source of his perpetual anxiety. Better to live in isolation, Harry reasoned, than to subject oneself to that constant torture.
Harry’s newfound lifestyle did not require much in the way of funding. He purchased his meals at gas station, preferably Stewarts, taking a particular fancy to their pre-made egg salad sandwiches. On the rare occasions that he could work up the courage to break his all-important routine, the drive-throughs of fast-food establishments proved a satisfying indulgence. The roll of one hundred dollar bills Harry had stolen from the shoebox under his father’s bed before fleeing Short Hills kept him going for a while, but it eventually proved necessary to acquire another source of income. Fortunately, a chance encounter with a member of the Hollow Skulls in a roadside diner landed him a low-paying but steady job that required constant traveling and limited human interaction, which suited Harry perfectly.
Seizing upon one of the few childhood memories that he had not banished from his mind, Harry took to wearing a cowboy that he had acquired secondhand at Pittsburgh pawnshop for $10.95. He had initially bought the item to keep the sun out of his eyes while riding his Harley, but had retired without much thought after replacing his old motorcycle with the pickup truck that was now the only reliable presence in his life, aside from a few of his loyal customers. Try as he might, however, Harry could never dispel the feeling thereafter that something was missing; at times, he raised his hand to adjust the brim of his old hat, only to feel instead the sharp bristles he had inherited from his father. This would inevitably set off the tingle, mandating a hasty retreat into a service lane.
Fed up with unpleasant reminders of his former life, Harry decided to shave his head, which proved to be disastrous; with his collection of biker tattoos and baldpate, many important clients mistook him as a skinhead. That was when it occurred to him: why not take the old cowboy hat out of retirement? Although it made him look ridiculous as his biker companions never missed out on a chance to remind him, the benefits seemed to outweigh the cost. After striking out on his own, Harry never devoted much thought to his apparel; his chief concern in choosing what to wear was far more utilitarian than aesthetic (flannel and ratty old painter jeans was his outfit of choice). Besides, he considered the connotations of his signature headgear oddly appropriate given his lifestyle. And so the cowboy hat was brought out of retirement.
And so here he was, a modern day cowboy traversing the tar tributaries of the interstate highway system making deliveries, at long last content. Or at least most of the time. On this particular night, despite the comfort of an empty road, Harry could swear that he could feel his tingle rearing its ugly head for the first time since he had left the Hollow Skulls. He quickly decided that he must be imagining things and sank back into his trance.
The Lexus rapidly approaching in the lane adjacent to Harry’s was the first vehicle he had seen in what felt like hours, but so absorbed was he in his own contemplation that he did not truly process its presence. Under ordinary circumstances, this would not have mattered. Each driver sits in his own self-contained world on the road, Harry thought, divided from his fellow man by boundaries of space, glass and steel. But on this day, his headlights illuminated the X-factor in the equation. A flash of black and white, almost imperceptible to untrained eyes, triggered an instinctual response in Harry. His neurons fired a quick message, and his hands jerked him into the adjacent lane.
Harry’s first thought upon registering the crash was for his fellow human organism, the unlucky bundle of electrical impulses whose existence might well have been discontinued by the force of the collision. Empathy did not come naturally to Harry; his mind could never quite wrap itself around the fact that other people had thoughts, feelings and memories just like he did. Nevertheless, his mind dutifully ran through a list of possible scenarios. The one in which X expires (for at this point he has no details with which to label the organism in question) was disturbing to him. His mother had programmed him sufficiently well to ensure that causing another human harm would cause a negative reaction. Too bad the helpless old mare had never been able to protect him from the constant harm, physical and emotional, inflicted on him by his father.
But a part of him that existed beneath layers of lingering social conditioning could fathom why he should spare a single thought for an entity whose very existence would not have had any impact on his own had their vehicles not collided. Yet, he was obligated to investigate, if for no other reason than to avoid being reported to the authorities, and investigate he does, delayed only slightly by the jammed door of his pickup. A man, presumably the occupant of the vehicle he just collided with, is standing on the side of the road, sucking desperately on a cigarette with the single-minded intensity of an infant at his mother’s breast. He is wearing a puffy, mud-colored jacket and beat up cap over a thicket of straggly blonde hair.
The prospect of social interaction, even in a limited and impersonal capacity, is enough to set Harry on edge. Steeling himself, he walks over to join the stranger on the side of the road. He feels a sudden jolt as his right foot departs the comforting uniformity of the tar and alights on the uneven stew of rocks and pebbles that people refer to as the “side of the road.” Harry finds it odd that one would consider two entirely separate landscapes as belonging to a unified whole. Distressed by this bit of commonplace illogic, he was tempted to draw back and seek refuge in the familiar comfort of his vehicle. He stood poised on the precipice between the two surfaces for a moment longer than he should have.
The stranger spits violently onto the road, as if to express a deep-seated hatred towards it. He detects a certain innocence in the stranger’s bearing. This innocence reminds Harry of a small child, clad in an awkwardly large, zebra-striped flotation device, taking his first tentative steps into the ocean and drawing back at the kiss of the April waves, only to feel the cold, merciless hands of his father propelling him forward. Could the stranger’s bluster indicate an eagerness for confrontation? A gesture intended to cover up fear? Harry locks eyes with the stranger in a futile attempt get some sense of what is going on beyond the unreadable positioning of his features.
Harry experiences the instinct to introduce himself, as his mother has taught him, but knows it would be foolish to take such a risk. He glances at the stranger expectantly, waiting for him to make the first move and thereby reveal some inkling of personality or motivation. “Well, shit. Had this thing for years, now look,” the stranger laments, pointing to indicate the hunk of metal that had until minutes before been his vehicle. “And damn, we’re both lucky to be alive. What in the hell caused you to swerve into my lane like that? Forget to drink your coffee?” Harry is struck by the stranger’s humorous tone immediately following a near-death experience.
“A skunk,” Harry responds. “A skunk?” the stranger echoes in disbelief. “A skunk,” Harry answers again. The stranger appears oddly relieved by Harry’s answer. “Well, I suppose I understand not wanting to stink up your ride. But man, we could have both been pulverized.” “We weren’t,” Harry points out matter-of-factly. “And the smell had nothing to do with my decision.” The stranger is puzzled. “Then what? Don’t tell me you got sympathy for the overgrown rodents or something.” Harry does not exactly have sympathy for the skunk, but he cannot fault the animal for responding instinctually to a given stimuli. But he knows it would be useless to try and explain this. “Me, I fucking hate them,” the stranger continues. “My wife? She got herself sprayed once, when she was gardening if I remember correct. Couldn’t get any action for two weeks. First it was the stench and then her time of the month came right after.”
Harry is struck by the stranger’s willingness to openly discuss such private matters. He remembers his mother telling him never to mention sexual intercourse or one’s bodily functions; especially to someone he’s just met. The stranger’s failure to recognize this golden rule makes Harry feel very uncomfortable. In a panic, his mind grapples for a way to change the subject.
“There’s marijuana in your car,” Harry blurts out impulsively. “What- what makes you think that, huh?” the man replies. “ What in the world makes you think I’m carrying marijuana? Is it because I look like a hippie?” Harry curses himself for creating unnecessary tension. He wishes he could just change the topic, but social etiquette demands that he must wait until the appropriate time to make a transition. “No, I find that judging a person by his appearance is not an accurate way of predicting their behavior or course of action. It’s just that I have a strong sense of smell, like a dog. And your windows are broken. I would venture a guess that you smoked not 10 minutes ago.”
Harry is not good at reading body language, but even he can tell that the stranger is suspicious. “Oooh, you’re an observant one. Well I’ll tell you what, buddy, I’ve got drugs in my car that makes marijuana look like Cheerios. I deal for the Dixie Mafia, in fact. So don’t fuck with me.”
Harry knows that the stranger is lying. No dealer for the Dixie Mafia would ever advertise his affiliation to stranger, who could very well report him to the authorities. Flustered and unsure of how to respond, Harry runs his hand through his hair, the familiar texture calming him ever so slightly. He starts to respond, but stutters, giving the impression of a malfunctioning computer failing to execute a command.
He is successful on his second attempt: “My name is Harry J. Smith,” he holds out his hand, as his mother taught him, figuring that an introduction might help to alleviate some of the tension that is rapidly accumulating on the deserted, icy road. “And there is no need to get defensive. Your drugs are no concern of mine. I was merely trying to make conversation.” The stranger seems to relax a little bit, his aggressive demeanor momentarily replaced with puzzlement. Harry is immensely relived when the stranger offers his hand in return, accompanied by a wide, friendly grin. “You’re a real strange one aren’t you, buddy? Name’s Dale. Dale Swinton. Pleased to meet you. Not so pleased what you did to my car.” Harry smiles back, hoping that the stranger will relieve him of the responsibility of having to say something in response.
“Well then,” Dale says after an awkward pause. “Guess we should call the cops. You wanna do the honors?”
“No, no, I’d prefer not to.”
Again, Dale is puzzled. “With all respect buddy, we gotta call. For insurance purposes if nothing else. I mean, just look at the damage. I hate filling out paperwork as much as the next guy, but there’s proper procedure to follow. Price of being a citizen, I guess.”
“It is not necessary to call the authorities,” Harry reiterates. “Let’s just settle this ourselves. We’re free men aren’t we?” Harry reaches into his pocket and pulls out a beat- up wallet. He begins to rifle through a hearty collection of bills. Dale momentarily perks up at the sight of cash, but his common sense gets the better of him. “Look, I appreciate that you folks have a certain way of doing things out here, but I have to insist that we- “
“Folks like me?” Harry asks, puzzled. “Well, yeah, Southerners. I know you’re not so fond of government down here. I’m from Short Hills, New Jersey,” says Harry.
Impossibly, Dale’s smile broadens even more; Harry entertains the notion that if it expands much further the man’s face might well tear itself in half. “Well whadduya know, same here! Short Hills High, class of ’84. Sorry for jumping to conclusions; I’d be pretty offended if someone called me a redneck. But I suppose a lot of folks have made that mistake, seeing as you’re wearing that cowboy hat. So, buddy, what year did you graduate?”
Harry does not see how sharing a hometown necessarily makes him and Dale buddies, but he decides he’d better play along. “I graduated in 1981.” “Well whadduya know! So did my sister. Carrie Swinton. Did you know her?” “No.” In fact, Carrie Swinton was one of the few people Harry did remember from high school, owing to the fact that she teased him with a lively enthusiasm matched by few throughout his life.
“Well I prolly wouldn’t remember her either. Not the choicest piece of meat in the freezer, if I do say so.” Dale laughs heartily at his own jest. “Well, anyway, I’m sure we both have better things to do than chat on the side of the road in the middle of nowhere. So I’ll go ahead and call the cops and we can both be on our way. Lemme just go get my bud first and stash it in the woods. Wouldn’t want the cops catching a whiff.” With that, Dale spins around and starts toward his car, a lively spring in his step as if the matter has somehow been settled in the brief span of time spent talking about high school in Short Hills, New Jersey. “And all the other drugs too, of course,” Dale footnotes in deference to his previous lie.
Harry wishes he could just give in and allow his roadside companion to call the authorities. But he knows that the consequences of doing so would be dire, and so he is forced to declare: “I told you before, we will not call the authorities.” This time, Harry allows a hint of aggression into his tone, hoping that it will be sufficient to ensure Dale’s compliance. “What was that, buddy, didn’t quite hear you?” Dale shouts, occupied as he is rummaging through a pile of junk in the back of his car. “We shall not call the cops!” Harry repeats, his frustration mounting. “I appreciate your commitment to due process, and will pay you twice the cost of the damage to your vehicle as compensation,” Harry adds diplomatically. Dale withdraws from his car, clutching a ziplock bag that contains an eighth of premium marijuana. “Oh, I could never accept that, Harry. I’d feel awful. Tell me, what do you have against calling the cops?” Harry knows that he should not answer that question. But what other option does he have? Perhaps Dale would understand Harry’s reasoning if knew the truth. Yes, how could anyone not? It would be totally illogical.
And so, against his better instincts, Harry starts toward his vehicle and beckons Dale to follow. He opens the back door and proceeds to lift up the seat. A look of sudden comprehension slips across Dale face. Sitting in the compartment underneath is an assortment of illegal drugs, mostly cocaine and meth, but also a few others that are not so well known. “Holy shit,” Dale reacts predictably. “Well, now I’m definitely calling the cops.” Dale laughs and punches Harry playfully on the shoulder. “Come on, buddy, don’t look so horrified, I’m only joking. Wouldn’t want to mess with a big bad drug dealer. Listen, just pay me for the damage and let’s get out of here.” Harry flashes a half-hearted smile, but in truth he is not at all amused. How could someone say the opposite of what they mean and then call it a “joke?” It reminds him of the kinds of comments his peers used to make in high school. The same peers that mercilessly teased him only to play it off like a joke when he got angry or when, on rare occasions, when the teachers swooped in to defend him. Carrie Swinton had been one of those students.
Uneasy and eager to retreat into the hermitic comfort of his disfigured vehicle, Harry decides to bring the conversation back to the matter at hand. “I’m glad we’ve arrived at an understanding. I don’t have enough in my wallet to pay you double, so I’ll have to go get more cash from my glove compartment.” His smile staunched by Harry’s less-than-amused reaction to his sarcastic remark, Dale is all courtesy when he responds: “Sure thing. Take your time. I’ll just go wait in my car.” Dale returns to his vehicle with a bit more enthusiasm than necessary, banging his head on the way in.
Harry is all the more disconcerted by the stranger’s sudden change in demeanor. Moments before, he had been grinning and cracking jokes, now he’s deathly serious. He is also put off by the stranger’s sudden willingness to accept twice as much cash as it would take to repair his vehicle. As far as Harry is concerned, offering to cover the damage at all was quite generous. How could he trust a man who could alter his demands and his behavior with little or no provocation? Harry eyes the stranger suspiciously before going to fetch the cash from his glove compartment. Behind a couple of empty cigarette cartons and several packs of stale chewing gum, he finds the bills. He looks up, only to find what a part of him had been expecting for the past few minutes: the stranger, frantically entering a number into his cell phone. Harry curses the stranger for making him do what he now knows is unavoidable. Reaching back into the glove compartment, he grabs the revolver that, up until now, he has never needed to use. There is no time for hesitation; the stranger will be connected to the police in moments, if he is not already.
The gunshot rings out in the night with a harsh finality. The stranger slumps over in his seat mid-conversation like a narcoleptic, a thin thread of blood trickling from the hole in his forehead. His distinctively wide smile remains fixed like the expression of a harlequin doll. Harry wonders how calling the police to report a drug dealer can possibly be a cause for mirth; perhaps this man deserved to die. Yes, anyone who would take pleasure in the prospect of condemning another human being to a life behind bars without cause is not worthy of sharing the road. Even as his mind cartwheels to justify his actions, Harry notices that his hand is shaking in a manner surely foreign to the spaghetti Western stars he grew up admiring. Depositing his devirginized weapon in his ample coat pocket, Harry walks to the drivers side door of Dale’s Lexus and grips its handle. He is rocked by a visceral jab of intense trepidation. Illogical as he knows it might be, Harry feels that the consequences of his decision will become real only when he opens the door. But open it he must, if only to make sure the stranger is dead. He has heard stories about men surviving gunshot wounds to the head, appearances notwithstanding.
Upon opening the door, Harry hears a voice rising from the floor of the car. Momentarily afraid that the shock of committing his first murder has driven him insane, Harry realizes with some relief that the voice is emanating from the stranger’s phone. “The stranger just dropped his phone. You’re not going crazy,” he reassures himself. Harry picks up the phone and puts it to his ear. “Hello,” he says instinctually, realizing only belatedly the foolishness of doing so. “Hello? Dale? Is that you? What happened?,” the voice responds. Harry wonders how the dispatcher could possibly know the stranger’s name. “No, no, this is… Lex. Lex Barker,” says Harry, using the first name that pops into his head. “Don’t worry, ma’am, everything is alright. The strange- Dale just dropped his phone down the stairs. I-I picked it up for him.” Harry curses himself for the implausibility of his excuse. He’s never been good at thinking on his feet; now the police will surely show up to investigate. “The stairs?” the voice responds, her voice permeated with confusion. “My Dale told me he was driving in his car. I don’t recognize your voice. Put my son back on the phone.” Harry’s heart skips a beat. “To whom am I speaking?” he asks, hoping against hope that he did not hear what he thinks he did. “This is Martha Swinton. Listen, mister, you put my son back on the phone right now or I’ll call the police. I want to speak to Dale right-” Harry slams the phone shut before Dale’s mother can finish her sentence. “Wrong. I was totally wrong. Totally… illogical.” Harry utters the last syllable with a venom that stems from years of despising the illogic of his fellow human beings for as long as he can remember.
As Harry speeds away from the scene of his atrocity (and that is the only thing he can call it), he considers what his mother would think of his behavior. She’d be horrified. She’d probably disown him. For the first time in over two decades, Harry doubts the life he has chosen. Sure, it has spared him the endless anxiety that comes with being forced to interact with other human beings. But at what cost? Perhaps it is time to go home, to become reacquainted with whatever humanity he had possessed before taking to the road. He may not have ever been normal, but the Harry of Short Hills, New Jersey would surely never have shot a man based on a mere suspicion. Seemingly of their own accord, his fingers enter in the coordinates of the affluent neighborhood where he spent his formative years in his GPS. No sooner do they finish, however, that he realizes the absurdity of this course of action. The Harry J. Smith’s of the world are not meant to dwell among other human beings. Harry has never been the kind to draw lessons from the frenetic shuffle of chance occurrences that is life. But if ever there was one, it’s that men like him are meant to live alone. And so he erases “Short Hills, NJ” from his GPS and guns the accelerator, leaving the pangs of conscience in his wake.