Everything is Relative

Days old cat asparagus pee, dank gas-station bathroom, fast-food grease on hot asphalt by the steaming dumpster with the grey, sun soaked and blistering meat and congealing dairy desserts: all the smells of “indigent” precede him as he climbs into my car, more like falls into, and I reflexively lean towards my door to avoid contact. He wears a heavy burlap-sack puffer coat despite the intense morning heat. The seams of the plastic grocery-store bags set by his heavy, lace-less shoes are splitting open from cast-asides, shirts and socks it seems. His heavy straw beard stores crumbs and particles of leaf and his pipe-cleaner hair angles out from beneath an Indiana Jones-like Fedora. 

Everything about him is heavy on this dog day of summer.

“Awful kind of you, young man.” Situating himself, he sniffles.

“Now there’s a most recognizable odor.” I grunt at the irony. I assume he is referring to the new car smell, the Meguilar’s Ultimate Interior Detailer I use regularly to maintain that showcase sheen of the high-end luxury foreign import. I feel I need to forgive him his off-putting “odor” descriptor, though “fragrance,” or “scent” is far more preferable for this resplendent display of risen. 

“Just bought her last week,” I glorify. I gently caress her dash. “I was able to finagle seven thousand off the MSRP. I think the dealer was a bit daunted by my knowledge of the inner workings, the added cost of activating the air-conditioned seats, for example, and my credit score is remarkable, so it all worked out. Where you headed today?”

           “KuhNEEtuh. How far down 64 are you going?”

           “Bethel/Greenville, not sure of the exit number.”

           He takes off his hat and sets it on his knee. “I’ll just tell you when to let me off, young man. I sure appreciate the lift.” He fastens the seatbelt, then pauses. It is a pensive pause, like there’s something going on. He scratches his facial bramble, and vacuum-cleaner debris flutters down, like dandruff. Definitely gonna have to have Carmine give her another detail between hearings tomorrow. “What have you got in there?” He points to the nearly full Big Gulp in the cup holder, beaded and dripping. He gives a dry swallow. I think I hear his throat click.

           “Coke, shaved ice. Can’t do cubes; not enough saturation.” I pick it up and take a long pull through the straw. Good stuff. “I’ve lived in Eastern North Carolina for ten years now, having risen to senior associate at…Schweikart and Cokley?”—I pause, looking for raised eyebrows or any other sign of impressed recognition at the illustrious name; my ride-along just stares at me, and it is now that I notice his startling azure eyes, like sea glass in a Mediterranean tidal pool—"though…though, I’ve gotta admit, I’ve never heard of KuhNEEtuh. You certain that’s the name?”

           “Should. I grew up there, after all.”

           “Huh. KuhNEEtuh, you say? Sure you’ve got the name right?”

           Those eyes are mesmerizing.

           “Well, alrighty then. Buckle up.”

           He pulls the strap to show he’s buckled.

I suck another three swallows from my Big Gulp and the rear fishtails as I gun it down the shoulder. Vehicle quickly approaching on your left, the console emphasizes, and we are nearly sideswiped by an eighteen-wheeler as I try to merge, its angry airhorn blowing past and rocking the car in its wake, and I blow my own horn right back and give that mother trucker the much-deserved finger, and I quickly check the blind-side video on my console to make a successful merge onto I-60 doing seventy on the gravelly shoulder.

-----

           “Do me a favor and hit that button?”

           “For the ejector seat?”

           “Funny, but no. That, my friend…what’s your name, anyhow?”

           “Name’s Maxim.”

           “Maxim? Like that men’s sex magazine?”

           “Noooo.” His inflection rises with the word, like the stay-at-home confronting her guilty husband. “I was born in 1962, Maxim is mid-nineties, and you’re riding the middle.”

I check the blind-spot cam on my resplendent console to shift to the left lane even though there is no one in the right to pass. “Just…do me a favor and hit that button there?” Maxim presses the button and his vent begins to oscillate and I press the button on the steering wheel that activates the vacuum on his side of the car. Vacuum, activated says the console.

“You’re kidding,” he chuckles.

“Sorry,” I say, “but she’s new and—”

“—was the Shop Vac one of those ‘added costs’ you spoke of?”

“Yeah.” I suck on the straw until I hear the slurp of emptiness. “I pretty much got all the add-ons.” I shake the cup, and slurp again. Maxim licks around his cracked lips, and looks out the window. “Sends any unwanted debris out the poop shoot. I’ve turned up the ventilation in the seat, though, to make up for the differential.” Maxim sits sentry-still and gently taps his finger on the armrest to a water torture beat, his azure eyes fixed on destination rather than journey. “Don’t know how much coolness you’ll be able to feel through your I CAN NOT BELIEVE THIS.”

Maxim looks into his side mirror as remnants of natural living float toward the oscillating vent. “Looks like you’re being pulled, young man.”

-----

           From the 105-degree heat shimmering off the asphalt, the blues and whites look like a waving flag, and the man approaching the car looks rubbery. I press the button on the steering wheel, activating the glove box; it opens with a smooth, robotic glide. Accessories compartment, open. Maxim’s tapping continues and, unfazed, he continues his stare, making no move to assist with the formalities. “Maxim, think you might,” but I’m interrupted by the officer’s knuckle-knocking. I press the steering wheel button, and the glass slides to the side like the window in a confessional. Window, open.

           “Fancy car.”

           “Thank you. I just bought her—”

           “—you know why I’m pulling you today?”

           “Ummm…I was…maybe I shifted lanes without…?”

           The officer leans forward a bit. “Sir, is that the odor of alcohol I detect?” Noses really do wrinkle, it’s not just a saying, and at those words my legs become increasingly jellied.

           “Officer, it’s early, not even ele—”

           “Yes, Cody, it is.” Maxim is still staring at the same nothing, his finger now paused at mid-tap. “Been hitting it a bit hard again, as of late.”

           Officer Cody crouches a bit lower and squints into the cabin’s dim, strobing interior. “Do I know you, sir?”

           “Only bounced you on my leg oncet twice when you was a youngin’, Cody Pucket.”

           Cody squints. “Holy Christ. Mr. Hartwell? I thought you was—”

           “—jess headin’ home, Cody, to bury Momma. This young feller’s kind enough to give me a lift. The news hit me pretty hard, Cody, an’ I’m ‘fraid I rekindled my friendship with John Barleycorn.”

           “You still in KuhNEEtuh, Mr. Hartwell?” Cody Pucket was speaking with incredulous astonishment, as if witnessing the Second Coming.

           “Momma was, Cody. Daddy went Home seven years ago.”

           “Yes, I know. Awful sorry, Mr. Hartwell. Funeral’s tomorrow at Barrow, if I’m not mistaken?”

           “Be ‘bliged if you could make it. You and Emma Jean.”

           “It’s on our calendar, Mr. Hartwell. Strange circumstances, but it’s awful nice to see you ‘gin. Be good to catch up tomorrow.” And with that, Officer Cody Pucket, having seemingly forgotten why he pulled me, taps the window frame, thanks me for giving his friend a lift, and melts into the past.

           I take off the lid from the Big Gulp and tilt it back, tapping the bottom and slurping. The cylindrical form of shaved ice slides into my upper lip and watery bourbon-Coke drips down my chin and onto my silk Tommy Bahama camp shirt. The console speaks: Foreign substance detected on driver seat. The oscillation continues; the air appears to be purifying Maxim’s side. Despite the heaviness of everything he owns in the world and the weeks of caked-earth build-up and the bird’s nest hair, it is I who am sweating in the silent arcade of my sixty-five-degree luxury import.

           “’Good ‘til the last drop’.” An old Maxwell House coffee commercial.” Maxim is speaking to the trees. “Doesn’t leave you fortified, though, does it? Only wanting more? Maybe a bit more…anxiously?” He is now facing me, and part of me wants, right then, what is behind those eyes.

           “How’d you know?”

           “About?”

           “You just filled a role with that cop as though you’d been rehearsing it. How’d you know?”

           “Son,” he sighs, and brushes his Fedora, and brushes his pants leg, and leans back, and sighs again, “I’d been rehearsing my whole damn life for a part I never got.”

-----

           Maxim is driving now. He told me once we got to KuhNEEtuh I could “rest up” in his old bedroom, if I wanted, but I “sure as heck fire wasn’t driving anywhere soon,” so I “might as well.”

           “How far along are you?”

           “What, am I pregnant now?”

           He chuckles. “I like that sense of humor. No, son, in your drinking. You gonna need a hospital?”

           “Just decided to partake heading back from a weekend with the boys, Maxim. Nothing really to analyze.” I feel myself starting to get tense and there’s a definite edge to my voice despite his own soothing, innocent, completely non-patronizing question; I am the one with the one-hundred-grand car now feeling at odds with the universe while this guy, this derelict, despite his filth and his stink, doesn’t appear to have a single concern other than getting home safely. “How in the world are you so peaceful?”

           He chuckles again. “You mean, despite my filth and my stink?”

           “I don’t get it, man.”

           “Son, what’s your name? I feel I should know it by now.”

           “Name’s Wilson Pringle. Yes, I am an heir.”

           “An heir?”

           “Pringle? The potato chip?”

           And again, he chuckles. “Wilson, ‘Pringle’ is to potato chip as Epcot is to ‘international’ and you, my friend, just nailed why I am so peaceful.”

           I give an audible, most childish moan. “Maxim, pleeeeeze don’t feed me that ‘you had to lose it all to get it all’ Joel Osteen ‘git right with the Lawd’ mindfu…mind mess.” I don’t think Maxim approves of profanity, so I check myself.

“No, Wilson. No. I’ll keep it simple for you. I was a slave to liquor for thirty-five years. Fifteen years ago, I put it down; or rather, it was put down for me. Today, I am free.” Maxim puts on the blinker, and ignoring the video display that costs an additional $125 a month he “old schools” it: he looks over his shoulder. People still do this? “You, Wilson, are also a slave, and alcohol might, might, also be part of your eventual hell.”

I lean my head back. The car is spinning. Should’ve had breakfast. “Your hick accent, though. You actually seem pretty smart.”

“That ‘hick accent’ is what helped you avoid the judicial system, Wilson, and what helped me get home sooner. And yes, I am smart. For…a hick.” He chuckles again.

He puts on the right blinker again, and slows a bit. I look up: Exit 491, Conetoe.

“Cone-toe?

No, dipshit, the console illuminatedly speaks. KuhNEEtuh.