It
was as he had feared. "Continental," in this application, usually
meant that there croissants or something, but in this case it apparently
referred to war-torn France, with the Nazi occupation relentlessly tightening
its grip. A couple of empty warming trays with blobs and shreds that might have
been scrambled eggs and spam, a browning fruit salad reeking of sulfites, dregs
of coffee, and a couple of bagels. A quick squeeze showed that these were
noble, ancestral bagels, brought over in steerage from the Old Country and
handed down through dynasties of motel owners, well advanced in the process of
converting themselves into stoneware. He briefly visualized a bagel bomb, a
stack of antique bagels with a core of high explosive, filling the lobby with
razor-edged shards of unleavened death. Oh well, There was bound to be
something on the road.
The day's driving took him well into the night, and into the bleak terrain of
the Panhandle, where the road began a long up and down undulation. He found
this unpleasant. He wasn't a twitchy person in general, but one abiding dislike
was now appearing through the windshield. On the upslope, the headlights
illuminated the road and surrounding shrubbery enough to wash out any other
vision, and it appeared that he was driving headlong into utter blackness, as
if there were nothing at all on the other side of this road hump. Not a
half-comical precipice at the edge of the world, and Here There Be Monsters -
just nothing.
He came upon a small town, or former town, which bore the curious name of
"Xebico" on a sign with the usual bullet holes. Apparently someone
had taken special care to shoot out the population number which, from the
spacing, was only two digits. The one remaining highlight of greater downtown
Xebico, aside from several empty spaces, was a leaning building of sun-scalded
wood that seemed held together only by rust-scabbed Nehi and Coke signs, barely
able to stand the light pressure of the stars and gibbous moon falling upon it.
But still it stood, and it must have had some sort of roof, because the gaping
windows and doorway were absolutely black. What had stopped him was in the
rough grass and weeds pushing up through the stony beaten earth of the yard,
where it looked like handfuls of pinpoint rubies had been scattered. He began
to suspect what they were even before approaching with a flashlight. Hundreds
of wolf spiders, big and ugly but essentialy harmless, all watching him. What
had cuaused them to congregate here - a quick flick of the flashlight, left and
right, showed that they were all in a patch about thirty feet broad - was one
of those things he supposed he'd never know. He cast the beam into the gaping
doorway, getting only a vague impression of some sort of counter running the
width of the building, and toyed with the idea of checking out the interior;
but for some unclear reason, it didn't seem prudent. He turned and left, the
rubies shifting slightly here and there, watching him.
It reminded him, though, of a time when he had driven through what seemed a
mass migration of tarantulas. Suddenly, a horde of scuttling black bodies
appeared in his headlights and he was among them before he could stop, after
which the thought of sitting still did not appeal. He clenched his teeth and
drove on, expecting to hear a crunch and pop beneath his wheels, but there was
nothing. Within half a mile he was through, and he supposed he would never know
why the sere wasteland on one side of the road was any more attractive than
that on the other. He briefly imagined a tarantula waving an admonitory
pedipalp, saying "It's a tarantula thing, man. You wouldn't understand." No doubt.
The road curved away to the left, then the right. Far ahead, there appeared a
couple of greenish glows about the height of a deer's eyes, which blinked and
disappeared, as they usually did. It reminded him of an occurence one night,
several years ago, when he frequently rode a Greyhound bus beween Houston and
Bastrop. In a mostly empty bus he was sitting in the right front seat, enjoying
the drowsy feel of road hypnosis rather than fighting it. He had come to
associate the mingled smells of diesel fumes and the chemicals in the holding
tank of the tiny toilet in the back with the pleasant anticipation of journey's
end. He was jolted to full awareness when a doe stepped out in front of the
bus, almost mincing, somehow not noticing the noisy road leviathan bearing down.
What could have been a dangerous accident in a small car was here a nearly
inaudible thump, a barely perceptible tremor. The driver slowed down,
apparently considering what to do, but what indeed was there to be done? The
ruined body of the doe, punted into the roadside bushes, already seemed remote
in the darkness. Shrugging, the driver picked up speed again. Now thouroughly
awake, the rider considered that there was something odd about deer. He had
known many dogs, with attitudes ranging from murderous psychosis, through a
reserved but not unfriendly mien, to a joyfully indiscriminate "Hail
fellow, well met!" There was no point in saying that dogs didn't have
emotions. Just this morning, he had paused a few minutes to listen to a
mockingbird running through its grand salute, even attempting the cawing of a
crow at one point, although it really didn't have the lung power for that
raucous noise. It seemed a display of literally superhuman virtuosity for its
own wondrous sake. He know that there were subtlties in it, ultrasonic
modulations that he couldn't hear at all. As far as he could tell it was just
for the fun of it.
He could perceive, or thought he could, a certain intelligence in some parrots.
He remembered a mynah bird in a pet shop, which occasionally made loud remarks
that somehow sounded like clear English and yet were totally unintelligible.
Rather creepy, in a way. It would only do this when nobody was watching, but
when watched, it would only respond with a yellow-eyed stare. There was a definite
feeling of some strange kind of intelligence there. Some of the cephalods had
surprising abilities. It was nothing like human, but it was alive and alert.
With, he supposed, greater degrees of projection he imagined that he could
perceive the raptorial watchfulness of the mantis, and even the sober resolve
of beetles. All quite absurd, of course, but there it was. For deer, though, or
anything cervine - nothing. Their rare, strange whistling cries conveyed
nothing, and evoked not even curiosity. They were less interesting than the
trees around them, which had slow but surprisingly complex lives of their own.
The car topped one more hump, and the two red tail-lights disappeared.
Click here to go home.