Authors: Jack Womack
"Godness-"
"Iz,"John said, seeing what I saw. "Evident misprediction.
There's a backup plan?" The public library's building still
stood in our world, if in ruins; here, it and its site had gone
missing, overrun by concrete supports twenty meters high,
bearing the expressway westward. A car-clogged ramp alongsiding the columns ascended from Madison's direction, rising toward Sixth. A green directional affixed to the
overpasses read: Al Smith Midcross Arterial / To Long Island /
Interstates 1-11 / West Side Hwy.
"Hang right. Look, phone boxes," I said, spying wooden
windowed sheds aligned along 42nd Street's northern ped-
way. "Pull over. I'll tap into info."
John curbsided our car in a spot evidently legal. Once
outside, inhaling air both purer and dirtier than that of our
New York, I hacked myself blind, choking on the chemical
tickle in my gullet. When I recovered I pulled, then pushed
the doorhandle of a booth and stepped in. John sat fingertapping the wheel while he watched cars slog up the ramp
to the roadway. After dialing the operator I heard a short
ring, followed by a click.
"Information, help me," I blurted into the receiver, conscious to word as they would. "Get me Memphis, Tennessee."
"Moment, please," said a woman's voice. Hearing undigi-
talized tones surprised me; I'd not expected to speak to
something not programmed. "What number in Memphis?"
"You got me," I said. "There's a listing for Presley?"
"Moment, please." Detecting a rustling sound above the
static, I fancied that she might be thumbing actual directories, however impossible that would have been. "First names
of your party?"
"Vernon," I said, "or Gladys."
"I have neither a Vernon nor a Gladys Presley listed in
Memphis, Tennessee," she said. "I do have an Elvis Presley
listed."
"Shoot me," I said.
"Pardon?"
"Address, I mean. Please." She recounted; I transcribed.
"Crazy. Many thanks." Extricating myself from the booth
after hanging up, I returned to our car; shouted to John
through the open windows.
"He's there," I said. "We're on."
"Seat yourself and let's fly."
"A map's essentialled," I said; glanced behind me.
"There's a magazine store. They'll supply."
"Hasten," said John. My skirt hobbled me from rushing;
as I tried to dash I sensed a lightheaded feel, as if I were
airshort after only a few steps. The store was small, no wider
than three meters; the single window was curtained by rows
of magazines held with metal clips. Within, racked magazines papered one wall; stacks of newspapers laid atop a
radiator bulwarked the window. The proprietor looked to be
seated behind a barrier of candy, and it was a moment more
before I realized that he stood. His other customers, two
prepube boys, pawed comics and stared as if they were mentally denuding me.
"Hi ho," I said; the proprietor stonefaced me. "I need a
road atlas. Can you give me aid and comfort?" He pointed
an ink-blackened finger toward a shelf near the boys.
"What's the damage?"
"Half a buck," he said. "You can't read, lady?"
"Fifty cents," I repeated to myself, trusting that I could
accurately convert. Finding two silver quarters in my purse I
handed them over, and he slung them into a wooden box;
they chimed, landing atop previous receipts. "And a newspaper," I added, seizing one of the smaller atlases.
"Okay. Which one?"
Nine stacks of different titles awaited my selection.
"This'll do," I said, retrieving a Daily Mirror, gathering from
its mast that it was national, not local.
"Nickel." The ones I had bore a bust of an AboriginalAmerican on one side and an animal on the other. He
sneered at my coin. "Lady, this ain't a nickel."
"Sorry," I said; another error of research. From my purse
I withdrew a dollar.
"Nothin' smaller?"
I shook my head; as he coined me in return I examined one of his nickels, but couldn't recognize the figures depicted. "You haven't history books, have you?" I asked.
"Why would I?"
"Would anyone nearby? I'll pay through the nose."
"Hey lady, you want a history book?" one of the boys
asked. His voice broke as he spoke; from his look I'd have
judged his age as no more than eight, but his sound suggested fifteen. I wondered if they went manly sooner, over
here. "You can buy mine," he said, passing me a hardcover
he carried. Its torn orange cloth bore the words The Growth
of the American Republic, Fourth Edition; the author's line
pronounced it writ by Casner and Gilbert.
"You don't need it?" I asked. "For schooling?"
"I'll tell 'em I lost it. How much you give me?"
"A fin?" I suggested, slipping him one of my tens.
"Yeah, swell." He and his friend evidenced no suspicion
as they admired the bill; I sighed, relieved that it suited, and
gratified as well that our mission's minor task had been
successed so soon. Taking my buys, I readied to depart.
"Hey, lady," the child said.
"Yes?"
"How much for this?" He drew his forefinger in and out
of his mouth, slurping as if lunching up noodles. By his
laughter I gathered that the proprietor appreciated the
boy's mimesis; I didn't. Walking out sans reply, I briskfooted
as I'd entered, returning to our car.
"Police roundabouting," John said, shifting into drive as
I seated myself. "Our look peculiars in unguessed manner,
I'd reason."
"Let's take that big road," I said, peering downstreet; at
42nd's terminus was a tangle of ramps, resembling a razorwire barrier tumbled groundways. "Onload there. It'll send
us soonest, fastest."
Neither police nor any others approached as we merged
into traffic; at Ninth Avenue John steered us onto the Jerseybound ramp. Cars ahead stopped, started and stopped again; walls on either side of the ramp blinded our view of
what awaited, and it was only as we readied to blend that our
chosen course showed plain. The Midtown Arterial carried
twenty lanes; cars, trucks and buses hurtled by at unnerving
velocity.
"This wasn't forewarned," I said.
"Little has been," John said. "It's an Indy racecourse.
Brace, Iz. We'll thunder road."
We were over the river, on the highway's towerless bridge
before we commingled with the traffic flow; the water was
unseeable from where we'd laned ourselves. "Aim me, Iz,"
John said, twohanding the wheel, stilling the wobbles raised
by car-wind. "Which way?"
"Moment." Opening our new atlas I studied the metro
map, marveling at the network charted. "John, it's so different-" Two express routes-I-1 and 1-2-cut across Long
Island, splitting into four crosstowns before entering Manhattan; another pair, 1-3 and 1-4, came down from New
England, slicing the Bronx and Harlem before they, too,
divided.
"Shit, "John said, his stare fixing roadways. "Iz, it's hellbound. Viz this, would you?"
The six Manhattan crosstowns shot into Jersey, coalescing
atop the remnants of Weehawken and Union City, thrusting
an eighty-lane boulevard into the blurred horizon. Not even
LA had such roads in our world, in our day.
"What's the speed limit?" I asked as he floored. "Hypersonic?"
"None, as evidenced," said John. "We're topping out."
He held our car within our entry-lane; around us vehicles
bearing like look to ours, though of subtler hue, paced and
overtook us sans seeming exertion. The preponderance of
cars were a smaller model that was no more than a bulge
with running boards; appearing, grouped, as insects swarming over the highway's gray hide. Some lanes were used solely by double-length trucks and buses, moving so fast as
the cars though they held ten times the mass.
"Where now, Iz?" John shouted. "Inform! Hasten-!"
"Hold," I shouted, glancing forthback, attempting to
overlay the print grid with the one through which we mazed.
High steel towers, each shingled with a dozen directionals,
stood at roadside every hundred meters, forecasting which
lane would carry which vehicles where; in our rush their
words were indecipherable. Oversized billboards began lining the expressway's low outbanks, spaced every twenty meters, positioned at an angle visible, if unreadable, to all who
drove by. "I'll have it, momentslong-"
"Which way?" Seven lanes on our right plunged earthward as their course redirected north.
"1-3, bearing south," I said, fixing our position on the
Jersey map. Staring through the overcast I eyed an upcoming tower's signs; sighted the guidemark needed. "Go left,
ten lanes across."
"Ten?"
"As told," I said. 'john-!" One of those buggish cars
almost slipsided us as we underwayed our sidle. My husband
jerked the wheel; I cycled my feet against the floor as if,
against reason, I might assist in braking us. Horns blared,
sounding as a flock's migratory blast; no one 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 again before we left Queens?" I asked
John, noting his lingering pallor, fearing that this world's
germs had stormed his defenses.
"I'll redose this evening." The time approached eleven; by
our clocks it should have been that night, or the next morn ing. I uncertained which; my circadians hadn't yet attuned
to the off-beat.
"You've a bloodless look," I told him. "Aware me of any
complaints, John. Inoculations notwithstanding, unknowns
could be infecting even as we speak-"
"No complaints while partnered," he said, his voice so
gentle that I barely thought it his. "None to file. Look
roundabout, Iz. This is as it should be."
Whether John referred to the world without or the world
within our car was unguessable, and he didn't elaborate.
How much of his calm resulted from faux-nostalgia's sedative was unguessable as well. Were imagined memories of
this illusory past endorphing him with thought of tranquil
comfort, or were we simply feeling ourselves reborn as teenylovers, run away from an unendurable home? I couldn't pin
my own feeling, much less my husband's; continued studying this world's fossils, frozen in the amber air. I wondered
if one recalled a lover's lost qualities as one rebuilds, in
mind's eye, a lost house or school or street; were the true
lines inevitably remodeled when seen again through a haze
made heavier by years?