struck our car,
however close they came. As John swerved the car into the
proper lane I saw his arms shaking; he was so pale as to look
leeched.
"Straight on from here?" he asked. "Iz-?"
"A direct slipstream, the map claims." Our lane elevated,
shooting off into the south. It shocked to see how ivoried I'd
turned; my hands looked as if they belonged not solely to
another, but to another's corpse. I tried untensing by studying the roadlining ads as they showed, one riff per second,
gleaning such phrases as I could: IT'S FUN TO PHONE/WHEN IT
RAINS IT POURS/DOCTORS RECOMMEND CAMELS/BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS/DIXIELAND ONLY 275 MIS"ONE MORE" FOR THE
ROAD? MAKE IT RUPPERT'S-
"There but for grace," John said, staring past me.
"Below."
Our road lifted us ten additional meters above the inbound lanes as they curved away from the mainline; following my husband's nod, I looked down and watched an
ongoing accident. Vehicles piled up as if they'd been
dumped out from a bag, blocking fifteen lanes; oncoming
cars and buses sutteed themselves upon the pyre sans cease.
Through the black billow I re-reregarded New York; the city
was already unseeable, blotted not so much by the smoke as
by the haze which, I now saw, hung heaviest above the interstate. Our lane rejoined earth, alongsided nineteen similar
and carried us away.
"They'll back up to Pennsylvania," I said, hypnotized by
the plume of the accident. Closing my eyes, I felt my aches
anew; whether brought on by fear, by stress or by ozone, my
head's pain doubled as if my brain was swelling beyond the
confines of my skull. "You're calming?" I asked my husband.
"By comparison," he said. "Should we have prepped at
all, considering? None of this is as they said."
"They estimated, nothing more," I said. His voice's tremble matched that of his body. "We're safe enough for now."
When I attempted to stroke his shoulder, he shook me away,
as if my touch might sear.
"So they believed," he said, nodding back toward the
flames.
" `The Federal Interstate Road Network,' it says, `designed
by Robert Moses in 1943 in accordance with the transportation directives of President Willkie's Provisional War Orders
of 1942, continues to serve the nation as it never needed to
in war-' "
"They're built to carry tanks, then?" John asked. I flipped
through the atlas's intro. "Does it detail?"
"No theory, only fact," I said, glancing across each page;
returned to my reading. " `Built between 1944 and 1953 at
a cost of-' "
"You adjust to it with such ease," he said, one unshaking
hand at rest upon the wheel; with his other he plucked fruit
from the bag he brought. "A smoother ride's unimagined."
My husband's apparent peace intensified mine; I put away
the atlas, and gazed windowways. Between the unending ads
I glimpsed Jersey suburbs, the treeless redbrick veldt. Forestpatches dotted the undeveloped stretches that remained,
resembling a futon's stuffing aburst at the seams. It struck
me that the billboards commanded, rather than sold; they
told this world's consumers to sleep eight hours nightly,
brush their teeth with chlorophyll paste, fulfill civic responsibilities whenever called, smoke tobacco products, marry
the right girl, keep regular, report suspicious behavior and
visit Dixieland.
"Dixieland's a city or country?" John asked, seeing another of its ads; this one had as centerpiece an upright pig
playing a violin as it hoisted one trotter skyward. SOOEE, its
words read, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT.
"A song, I thought." The interstate narrowed to fourteen
mirror-smooth groundbound lanes between cities; but at
Trenton's outskirts, at Philadelphia's and Wilmington's, it
reascended, cleaving each city's heart as it unthreaded, mul-
tilaning ever upward as if to the moon. One billboard, seen
repeatedly, proclaimed Three Days Coast to Coast by Interstate
and it must have been so; we reached Baltimore in two and
a quarter hours.
"You medicated
however close they came. As John swerved the car into the
proper lane I saw his arms shaking; he was so pale as to look
leeched.
"Straight on from here?" he asked. "Iz-?"
"A direct slipstream, the map claims." Our lane elevated,
shooting off into the south. It shocked to see how ivoried I'd
turned; my hands looked as if they belonged not solely to
another, but to another's corpse. I tried untensing by studying the roadlining ads as they showed, one riff per second,
gleaning such phrases as I could: IT'S FUN TO PHONE/WHEN IT
RAINS IT POURS/DOCTORS RECOMMEND CAMELS/BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS/DIXIELAND ONLY 275 MIS"ONE MORE" FOR THE
ROAD? MAKE IT RUPPERT'S-
"There but for grace," John said, staring past me.
"Below."
Our road lifted us ten additional meters above the inbound lanes as they curved away from the mainline; following my husband's nod, I looked down and watched an
ongoing accident. Vehicles piled up as if they'd been
dumped out from a bag, blocking fifteen lanes; oncoming
cars and buses sutteed themselves upon the pyre sans cease.
Through the black billow I re-reregarded New York; the city
was already unseeable, blotted not so much by the smoke as
by the haze which, I now saw, hung heaviest above the interstate. Our lane rejoined earth, alongsided nineteen similar
and carried us away.
"They'll back up to Pennsylvania," I said, hypnotized by
the plume of the accident. Closing my eyes, I felt my aches
anew; whether brought on by fear, by stress or by ozone, my
head's pain doubled as if my brain was swelling beyond the
confines of my skull. "You're calming?" I asked my husband.
"By comparison," he said. "Should we have prepped at
all, considering? None of this is as they said."
"They estimated, nothing more," I said. His voice's tremble matched that of his body. "We're safe enough for now."
When I attempted to stroke his shoulder, he shook me away,
as if my touch might sear.
"So they believed," he said, nodding back toward the
flames.
" `The Federal Interstate Road Network,' it says, `designed
by Robert Moses in 1943 in accordance with the transportation directives of President Willkie's Provisional War Orders
of 1942, continues to serve the nation as it never needed to
in war-' "
"They're built to carry tanks, then?" John asked. I flipped
through the atlas's intro. "Does it detail?"
"No theory, only fact," I said, glancing across each page;
returned to my reading. " `Built between 1944 and 1953 at
a cost of-' "
"You adjust to it with such ease," he said, one unshaking
hand at rest upon the wheel; with his other he plucked fruit
from the bag he brought. "A smoother ride's unimagined."
My husband's apparent peace intensified mine; I put away
the atlas, and gazed windowways. Between the unending ads
I glimpsed Jersey suburbs, the treeless redbrick veldt. Forestpatches dotted the undeveloped stretches that remained,
resembling a futon's stuffing aburst at the seams. It struck
me that the billboards commanded, rather than sold; they
told this world's consumers to sleep eight hours nightly,
brush their teeth with chlorophyll paste, fulfill civic responsibilities whenever called, smoke tobacco products, marry
the right girl, keep regular, report suspicious behavior and
visit Dixieland.
"Dixieland's a city or country?" John asked, seeing another of its ads; this one had as centerpiece an upright pig
playing a violin as it hoisted one trotter skyward. SOOEE, its
words read, YOU'VE NEVER SEEN ANYTHING LIKE IT.
"A song, I thought." The interstate narrowed to fourteen
mirror-smooth groundbound lanes between cities; but at
Trenton's outskirts, at Philadelphia's and Wilmington's, it
reascended, cleaving each city's heart as it unthreaded, mul-
tilaning ever upward as if to the moon. One billboard, seen
repeatedly, proclaimed Three Days Coast to Coast by Interstate
and it must have been so; we reached Baltimore in two and
a quarter hours.
"You medicated
Similar Books
