Balder leans back against the seat, his arms behind his head. “Damn right.”
We drive on, the Caddy and its bull-horn hood ornament cutting a colorful figure through the slick sedans and dime-a-dozen SUVs. Some little kids press their noses to the windows of their child-locked doors, gaping at us. Gonzo opens a bag of chips and hands it to Balder, who takes a handful and forwards it to Gonzo.
“Dude, I can’t believe you whizzed on him.”
Balder wipes his hands on the Sammy Surfer bandana he’s now wearing around his neck. “He was very disrespectful. I have learned much in my current form. I have seen how those supposed to have no power can be disregarded quite easily. Just because I’m small doesn’t mean I have no worth.”
Gonzo nods. “Say what-what.” He puts a stubby fist on the back of his seat rest.
“What-what,” Balder says. He reaches up and bumps fists with Gonzo, and they go back to eating their chips in satisfied silence.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Wherein We Make Up Bumper Stickers and I Introduce the Joys of the Great Tremolo
We drive for miles. The Caddy takes us past ordinary sights that seem amazing and new glimpsed from open car windows on an unexplored road. Out in the fields that run alongside the endless highway, prisoners in orange scrubs that read PASSAMONTE CORRECTIONAL UNIT pick up trash with long pointed sticks and drop it into the huge Santa sacks tied to their backs. Parker Day’s blindingly white teeth glare from a billboard for Rad Sport—OPTIMUM PERFORMANCE DEMANDS THE OPTIMUM SODA EXPERIENCE! Dogs stick their heads out to catch the breeze and we answer their howls with our own. An eighteen-wheeler rumbles by on the right, shaking the Caddy. UNITED SNOW GLOBE WHOLESALERS. FREEZING LIFE BEHIND GLASS. HOW’S MY DRIVING? CALL 1-800-555-1212. Above us, the clouds drift along in a blue, indifferent sea.
To pass the time, we make up bumper stickers and deliver them in movie trailer announcer voices.
“I thought I was having an existential crisis, but it was nothing.”
“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.”