Tinker and Blue Read Free Page A

friggin’ hippie went and spit his sunflower seed husks all over the floor back here.”
    â€œSeed husks?” Blue replied. “What the hell do you mean, seed husks?”

3
    â€œGo west, young man, go west, as the other fellow says, and look at us, Tinker, here we are, almost there,” Blue remarked. “So this is Kansas, huh? Looks different in the movies. Tougher. They have tornadoes here. I read one time about a little girl who got caught in one ... no! ... it’s a story about a girl who meets a lion and something else...”
    â€œSounds like The Wizard of Oz ,” Tinker said from behind the steering wheel.
    â€œRight! That movie we saw when we were kids. And there was just this little guy behind the wizard, making people believe in magic. I remember now.”
    â€œWouldn’t it be great to visit a different world, Blue? Where people look like us, I mean, not creatures from outer space. I think about that sometimes, visiting a different world,” Tinker admitted.
    â€œNot me, boy. I like the world just the way it is. Farmer told me that when he was in Italy during the war, it was like a different world. The Italians don’t eat potatoes, Tinker. Spaghetti! That’s all. I don’t mind eating a can or two a week myself, but I likes me meat and potatoes, as the other fellow says. I’d hate to go somewhere that only had spaghetti to eat.”
    The guitar was welding with sweat to Blue’s belly as he banged out the chords to “The Wild Colonial Boy” which Tinker flawlessly bellowed for the third time through without stopping. Blue’s voice moved in to support him on the chorus but Tinker was unaffected by the discord. At summer beach parties and kitchen gatherings where Tinker was always coaxed by friends and even adults to lead the singing, Blue always considered himself an indispensable part of the duo. Tinker, unable to discourage his friend from the enthusiasm of that conviction, had trained himself not to hear the amusical contribution – the way people living beside the ocean no longer hear its eternal roar.
    They had been picking up and examining hippies along the way, comparing those specimens to what they knew of the more predictable world where men didn’t spill over into the women’s domain of abundant hair and sandals and abrupt shifts in fashion. Some offered joints or an unappetizing handful of dried mushrooms or spitball-sized bits of paper called “orange barrel” or “blotter,” but Tinker and Blue forsook them all in favour of a cold beer.
    Blue was getting more and more comfortably involved in dialogues with the backseat passengers, whether they travelled with them for an hour or a day. He had long ago put the screwdriver back in the cubby hole, convinced that there was no lurking danger in their passengers that he couldn’t handle with his own two fists. People who live on sunflower seeds, he noted to Tinker, probably couldn’t go two rounds with either of them.
    â€œYou know what I think, Tink ... Think, Tink ... Think, Tink, Tink, Tink,” plinking the sound on his guitar. “Hey, that’s not bad. I’ll have to use that in a song. But know what I think, Tink? I think these people are really frigged up. Must be the drugs. Why else would they want the Commies to win in Southeast Asia so they can invade California next?
    â€œAfter Vietnam, bang! bang! bang! Right across the Pacific and we’re next. I learned all about it in Modern World Problems. Made an eighty in it, too. My best subject because it was interesting. My homework was right there on the front page of the Herald every day. I just had to glance at it on my way to reading the comics. You should of took it, boy. You’d know more about the world than you learned in chemistry and math.”
    In high school Blue had tried to reason with his friend. “You can’t bullshit your way through