Alive and Dead in Indiana Read Free Page A

I put my things away in the dark.
    Am I telling you too much? These things might not be to the point of the matter. But give me a little room to build up speed.
    I’m sixty-six years old, which should give me a pretty good enough excuse to act this way.
    I can remember fifty years ago as if it were yesterday. I can’t remember yesterday.
    The maps in my time you had to read. Three miles from the county line, turn left on the macadamized road, an old Indian trail, and at four and a half miles, with red barn on the right, take another left. This is county road 16. Oil mat . Roads weren’t lines then. Give me time and I’ll make the turn.
    I sell a recipe for fried chicken. That’s what brought me to Fort Wayne that night. I used to have my own place in Corbin, and I couldn’t complain. Business was good because my cooking was good. Country ham, black-eyed peas, red-eye gravy, okra and string beans, watermelon pickle, hoe cake, baked apples. Duncan Hines wrote me up in his Adventures in Good Eating before the war. Gave directions. The shed on your left, the fence on your right. That kind of thing. He got you right to my door. No Worcester Diner, tablecloths, and gravy boats. And the thing was in place. I even had a root cellar with roots.
    Eisenhower’s defense highways put me out of business. I sold it all for a big loss. My wife said that it was about time we went south anyway, and she wanted to head down that new 75, a clear shot to Florida, SEE ROCK CITY on every barn and birdhouse. But I wasn’t going to manage on my Social Security wearing Bermuda shorts, thinking twice about buying this pack of Beechnut gum.
    A few years ago, I taught a good friend of mine, Pete Harman of Salt Lake City, how to fry chicken with this recipe and every indication was that the chicken did a job for his business.
    There are some other places too. Other men who have heard about it. They would send me four cents, a nickel a bird. But it was nothing I worked at or thought about. And now these cars were passing my place. Though I couldn’t see the traffic, I could feel its steady rumble through my feet. Those roads are so big you can hear things like you can over open water.
    My last good days were feeding the crews who drove the graders and dozers. Their hard hats were lined up on the rack by the door like skulls. I’d rather wear out than rust through. So I got on that road, joined the rumble with the Pete Harman deal in mind. I put a pressure cooker, the spices and scales, my apron and knives in the backseat of my ‘53 Pontiac. It had an amber Indian head on the hood, and it handled like a boat. I shipped out over that sound.
    It was no great adventure. I’m an old man, after all.
    I started by cooking for my family. Time to get out of the kitchen and take it on the road since the road had up and gone. It’s not so strange. You fellows are fretting right now about what to do with your folks, I bet. I had to make up my own mind, had to make a little money.
    So I hadn’t met her yet. Instead, I am in a parking lot in Fort Wayne, waiting for this restaurant to open up for breakfast. A crew of high school kids is tarring and repainting the lot. They are making noise as thev close off a section with rope laced through the handles of gray sealer cans. I’m the only car in the lot. It’s a big lot. They lay down the parking stripes that look like fish bones on the tar. I can see the painter’s palette sign is turquoise. Down the way is the baseball stadium where the Pistons play. There are big silver pistons on the press box. I know beyond the stadium is a road being built.
    The elms look even sicker in the daylight. More like willows than elms. The restaurant has the look of being open now, though I haven’t seen anyone unlock the doors, and, sure enough, cars start turning in. I start mine and drive across the street carefully as the traffic is picking up. I park and go in. I like the place. The walls have stained, knotty pine