The End of The Road

He wears a brown-and-white-checkered shirt with buttons. He stays in motels and out of bars, and the only sound he hears is the turn signal in his ‘98 Buick LaSabre. He’s been driving for a while, and the last highway sign said:

THE END 267

He’s on the final leg of his journey. His earliest memory is waiting in a car while his parents busted Timothy Leary out of jail. His last memory was the girl who asked where he was going. Gas was $1.09, and so were her heart-shaped sunglasses. She said she was 19.

Heading toward the end clears one’s mind, though you could have always said that about Jesse. He’s never done anything dumb. The firearm in the glove compartment is registered under his name, he’s never been married, and has no kids he legally supports, and the last thing he said was, “San Bernardino County.” The other Jesse wakes up in the backseat. She’s been drinking beers, the champagne of beers.

“So this is living the High Life?”

She’s pale and explains that growing up in a desert town, you do things at night with the animals.

“Is that right?” asks Jesse.

Her hair is blonde and curly, but the side she slept on has straightened. She looks younger than 19 and wears strawberry short-shorts and a white, midriff-bearing halter top. She doesn’t wear a bra, or need to. She tries to climb into the front seat, but the other Jesse stops her just by raising his arm,

“Say, what do you do, mister, or what did you do?”

“Weld.”

“Welding gives you forearms like that?”

He doesn’t answer, he looks at the highway sign:

THE END 209

She flips her glasses into her hair and leans back, placing her feet beside his tan and unshaven face.

“Are you really trying to get to the end? Everyone knows this road keeps on going.”

“Hm?”

She pulls back her long legs; they’re too long for her body to be proportionate. She reminds him of Shelly Duvall in Nashville. He wonders if she knows where Nashville is. He looks into the rear-view mirror.

“You said you wanted to come.”

“I did! I just heard, like everyone else, that it never ends. I haven’t actually been to the end.”

“Then how do you know it doesn’t end? It’s got a highway marker.”

“Because everyone says it doesn’t end.”

“You believe everyone who tells you anything?”

“No!”

“But you believed me when I said I was going all the way to the end?”

“Yep.”

“Why’s that?”

She picks at her red nails.

“You don’t look like you lie.”

“And what does that look like?”

She looks up and squints. Not at the sun or glaring desert, but her answer.

“You can just tell.”

They are surrounded by desert rock, dust, and lizards that occasionally scatter into a hole in the ground. The mile markers stop, and down the road, they come across something unexpected. Something they thought they’d never see: A goat on top of a rock beside the asphalt of the paved highway. They slow down and open their windows.

“Is that a goat?”

“Yes,” says Jesse.

They stop to look at its yellow eyes and long white goat beard. It speaks English. A man and a woman’s voice in unison. Jesse opens his glove compartment and grabs his Colt. 45.

“What in the Sammy Davis Jr.!”

Jesse says this because the Goats’ first words to them are, “I’m the Candy Man, and the Candy Man can.”

“Whose that?” asks Jesse.

“Sammy Davis Jr.?” asks the Goat.

With one hand on the steering wheel, Jesse fires his pistol, but nothing comes out. He keeps his foot on the brake and checks the clip. Nothing.

“Sammy Davis Jr. was a singer, dancer, and actor—often referred to as ‘Mr. Show Business.’ He is best remembered as a core member of the Rat Pack and for his pioneering role in breaking racial barriers in the 20th-century entertainment industry. Your chauffeur is referring to his number one hit single, ‘The Candy Man’ in 1972.”

“I am not her chauffeur,” yells Jesse.

“Looks like it,” says the Goat. “Where are you going?”

The Goat’s dead, yellow eyes look at the girl in the back who leans out the window.

“The end.”

“Well,” said the Goat. “Everyone knows this road never ends, and as a matter of fact, nothing does.” He looks at Jesse, who is frantically looking for bullets. “Only an idiot would think that.”

“That last sign said 209 miles.”

“Go,” says the Goat. “I’m only a talking goat who was singing Sammy Davis tunes before you showed up.”

They do go. Jesse accelerates, and Jesse in the back lets her hair blow in the wind as she waves goodbye to the Goat, who gets up on two legs, turns black, and waves back. This does not scare her. She’s had many High Lifes. She leans forward.

“But who really was Sammy Davis Jr.?”

Jesse looks into the rear-view mirror and sees nothing. He looks forward and sees nothing. He hears her and says nothing. She falls back and crosses her arms.

“Why did I even get into this stupid car?”

“Do you know what Le Sabre means?”

“No, and I don’t care.”

He respects that and keeps his eyes on the road and the mileage of ‘The Sword.’ They’re close, but he pulls over and pops the trunk. She almost asked what he was doing until she saw his five-gallon red gas container, which he fills up ‘The Sword.’ He’s worked on oil rigs, done roofing mid-summer, and shoveled coal, but nothing has ever made his neck feel like this, nor has he ever been labeled carrion by the birds who circle the sun.

He tosses the container instead of putting it back in the trunk and continues driving. No birds follow, and waves of heat consume the frontier. Spatial zig-zags of fumes rising off man’s creation: the road, the highway, and the asphalt. Jesse springs forward and points beyond the limits of his eyesight.

“There!” she says. “There it is!”

“What? What?” he asks, scanning from side to side, but he stops asking, and she can see what he hears: birds. Not vicious vultures or hawks, but songbirds, and gentle flappers whose wings give a cooling effect the closer they get to a pond surrounded by lush, dark green trees and soft, cool soil. The road continues, but he stops. This is the exact mileage the sign showed for THE END. They get out of the car. First thing she does is jump into the water as another bead of water rolls from his blue eyes down his burnt cheeks. “This is the end?” he asks.

The voice of his mother and father in unison reminds him that there is no end, and that this road has no end: “You’ve stopped at a curve. Keep going. There will be more, and you’ll be surprised at what you find.”

He wished he could see them, but understood that that was not going to happen. Jesse was swimming, naked in the pond, in this oasis in the desert, and he walked, and walked, until he knew there was no end.