Day Thirty-Two (Wednesday, July 28, 1971)

Who was being more unreasonable? It was a nut buster. I didn’t want to do anything stupid for the sake of pride. On the other hand, I was serious about leaving his can behind. I didn’t need those histrionics. But step careful, Roger. One mile apart meant three thousand alone.

I sat for a long time on the protector wall in the morning sun, watching the cocoon-like figure of Otto Brackston George, Jr., lying asleep in the sand. The houses around were still. A salty breeze wafted through the scrubs and sandy path. The old water tanks had their share of must and mildew. As softly as possible I gathered my dirty clothes in a plastic bag. As I stepped away, Otto’s head peeked up over the wall.

“What the hell you doin’?”

“Want to go to the laundromat with me? Your clothes are dirty.”

“Hell no. I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you.”

“You don’t like clean clothes?”

“No.”

“All right, to hell with you. I can play your game.”

“Yeah, go play. You like to play with yourself, don’t you?”

“It sure beats playing with you.”

People of all sizes, shapes, and ages were busy folding clothes, loading washers, and doing all the things that people do in laundromats. I sat on a wooden bench, elbows on knees, glumly watching clothes swish around.

The guy running the washer two down from me was . . . Joe Namath! Holy moly! It wasn’t someone who looked like Joe Namath, the way we always joked. This was Joe Namath!

Being a New York Jets fan, I knew his habit was to report late to training camp. And I knew he liked California. But whooda thunk Joe Willie Namath, born May 31, 1943, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, would be right there at the Huntington Beach Spin-O-Matic?

It was surreal. He actually spoke to me first.

“Got a quarter for two dimes and a nickel?” He dipped his hand into the pocket of a flashy red outfit. “That change machine only goes one way.”

“Say, aren’t you Joe . . . ?”

“Shhh.” He smiled with the absolute whitest set of teeth I’d ever seen on a homo sapien. “Don’t tell Pete Rozelle.” He winked.

Joe was in there washing his clothes, just like everybody else. He had medium-length dark hair, clear blue eyes, a thick footballer’s neck, tanned muscles, and bad posture. He wore bright bellbottoms and sandals and a shirt with an open collar exposing a hairy chest and gold cross. After I gave him change I was stunned to see him ambling back next to me on the bench.

“Excuse me for asking, but you don’t look too good.” He smiled, hunching forward with forearms on his thighs. “You all right? It looks like your girl just walked out on you.”

“Not my girlfriend, Joe, my best friend. I’m on a trip. We just had a big argument. He and I hitchhiked out here from New Jersey. I’m not sure if we’ll be thumbing back together. It’s iffy right now.”

“You’re a cross-country hitchhiker? Nice to meet you, guy. I always wanted to do that.” He shook my hand. “What kind of spat?”

Joe’s shaggy locks nodded with empathy. It was ultra-cool to be telling my side of the story with a twenty-eight year-old NFL quarterback who guaranteed winning the Super Bowl three years ago and became the toast of the town.

“So you hitchhiked out here to California with your best buddy and now you’re feuding? That’s not right.” Joe’s lustrous eyes glowed. “You guys have been in the fox hole too long to start fighting now. You can’t let a schoolgirl come between you. Come on, guys stick with guys. Don’t you know that?”

He excused himself to pull out a bunch of striped shirts from the dryer. It occurred to me he had just given me more advice than my own father ever had. He continued, “It takes guts to come out here
on your thumb, so I like the way you’re playing it. Stand firm, guy. See what he does. He’s on the wrong side of this. He’s playing you off that girl. Your trip is too big to wash your hands and let it go. He’ll come around.”

“Trust and loyalty rules, right?”

“That girl should rate no more than a glance.”

I was amazed to be sitting in a laundromat in Huntington Beach, California, having a heart-to-heart with Joe Willie Namath. Already a crowd of women was gathering at varying distances, ready to pounce on him for his autograph when we were through. I saw him mentally preparing for the onslaught.

“So you going to make it?” He smiled bashfully through his spectacular teeth. A few girls shrieked. “I was only an industrial arts major, but you figure out a thing or two as you go along. Team sports is good for that.”

“I’m good. Thanks, Joe. You are so for real.”

“Naw.”

“And good luck this season. Win another Super Bowl, will you? The Jets need at least two.”

I walked back to the sandy path laughing and crying. How did that happen? I felt uplifted and inspired, marveling at my dumb-luck fortune, but just as conflicted. Would life change because of meeting someone like that? When? Still, it was one of the best moments of my whole life. Life puts you in permanent gratitude mode, that’s for sure. Any other way to look at it is wrong.

“Guess what, I’m friends with Joe Namath!” I tried to convince myself over and over.

Otto was fully dressed when I got back. He was standing in the pathway, talking to a geezer with a stubbly beard and weathered face. I ducked behind a transformer, thinking “security guard.” Nope. Just a wily codger, croaking on about fishing tales, trawling deep water, and shipping disasters.

He moved on. Otto Brackston George, Jr. saw me coming and cocked his head. His loathing penetrated any veneer I tried to throw against it.

I took a deep breath from my spot on the on-deck circle. I stepped up to the plate, dug my foot into the batter’s box, and took some practice cuts. I was about to hit in front of 50,000 people at Yankee Stadium. If only I could’ve been a professional baseball player patrolling right field for the Yankees. Then I wouldn’t have to go through this. Then again, check that. If a superstar like Joe Namath was still doing his own laundry, and being sincere about it, maybe I did need to go through it.

“Clothes are washed.”

He glared. “What’s that to me?”

“Washed yours, too.” I sat on the protector wall. Otto sat on the sand in a Lotus position.

Neither of us moved nor spoke for a long time.

“Was your sleep as lousy as mine?”

“Worse.”

The same warm sun that felt so good across my back and neck bleached out Otto. It burnished his face.

He squinted. “I didn’t sleep at all.”

“Me neither.”

A long wait. Telling him about Joe Namath was postponed indefinitely.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, man,” I said carefully. “You know what I’m going to say. I know you’re not going to like it . . .”

I paused for an outburst. Otto brushed sand off his upper arms, pretending he didn’t care what I was talking about.

“. . . it’s just that I’m not going to Whittier in any shape, way, or form. I’m sorry things didn’t work out with that girl, but I gave you time and nothing happened. That’s the end of it. We’re on this trip together. Going there together is not productive—for us. Why do I have to win one for the Gipper?”

Otto sat stone-like. “Go to hell. I ain’t no chimpanzee.”

“I appreciate how you stuck by me when I got banged up in Hanford. But if the situation was reversed, I would’ve stuck around for you. That was different than this. Hanford was an injury delay.”

“You are completely fucked up.” Otto gave me his queerest expression yet, his nose twitching to the left and his mouth twitching to the right. He squinted sourly. “Sometimes plans change.”

“Sometimes they do. But we’ve got 3,000 miles staring at us. That’s what I’m concentrating on. If we’re still a team, we operate on a two-vote system. Going to Whittier only has one vote.”

Otto stared at my feet. “It’s not along the way?”

“No.”

Otto looked up with a scowl, then down. I straddled my legs on either side of the wall. He poured cupfuls of sand over his toes. Another long wait.

“So?” I said. Otto looked up, squinted, and looked down.

I waited. “Well?”

He held his eyes on me, despite the blinding light. He still didn’t say anything.

“I’ll come along,” he grumbled. “But it won’t be gladly.”

Otto would not interact with me once he and I got situated on the shoulder. Wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t soften. He acted with contempt for all my smalltalk. He thumbed several yards ahead in the sand, as if hitching on his own. He wouldn’t face me nor address me.

During our abysmal wait I threw stones between strands of a barbed wire fence and checked my Rand McNally. I didn’t feel confident. It was a house of cards. Did Otto know that the road we stood on—Beach Boulevard—when traced to its northern terminus, led straight into Whittier?

We took an awful ridiculing from people I thought would be allies—hippies, kids, ‘Back to Earth’ people, Age-of-Aquarius folk, all the open-minded liberal 20-somethings. My small ‘NJ’ sign got laughed at. People yelled obscenities. They sneered.

“Jack off, idiots! We got work to do!”

Otto was silent, brooding, sulking. I was so tense I couldn’t feel my body standing there. Too many scenarios existed for a bad ending. I pictured him changing his mind, declining a ride I accepted, entering a restaurant and not coming out, or just lifting his pack and walking away.

Three male freaks, bearded and sitting in the front seat, chugged over in a red 1957 Ford station wagon. All three wore sleeveless teeshirts.

Their hairy underarms were stinking awful. One guy in a brown bucket hat began with some jokes.

“Why do lawyers wear sunscreen when they’re at the beach? Because they’re used to doing all their lying indoors . . .

“What’s the difference between a lawyer and a pail of dirt? The pail . . .

“How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they’d rather keep their clients in the dark . . .”

“No offense, guys, but neither of us is in the mood for a comedy routine,” I said. Otto cracked neither smile nor glance.

“How about we change from lawyers to sex?” The brown hat chuckled. “What’s the speed limit of sex? Sixty-eight. Because at sixty- nine, you’ve got to turn around . . .

“What three words ruin a man’s ego? ‘Is it in?’ . . .

“What do you get when you cross Raggedy Ann with the Pillsbury Dough Boy? A redheaded bitch with a yeast infection.”

What spanned before me on the boulevard stood my hair on end. A sign with a giant arrow pointed to the right, “GARDEN GROVE FREEWAY.” That’s where I wanted to go.

An even bigger arrow pointed straight ahead, “WHITTIER.” Home of Kelly Cooper and Bristol.

“Let you off under the sign up here?”

“Yeah.” I licked my lips and fumbled for my red duffel bag.

“Both you guys want out?”

I hesitated. “Yeah.” My heart pumped madly. No rebuff, no sound, no hint. Nothing.

My mouth was barren; my throat compressed. I felt stuffed in salt. The car rattled to a halt. I piled out with a prayer. I stood over the doorframe from the gravel shoulder.

Otto didn’t budge. He sat bolted, staring straight ahead, stationary—a gnome fixated to his fulcrum. No expression. No flicker.

“Guess he’d rather hang with the boys?” The comedians were ready to launch more jokes.

Just as my spirit splintered and was about to crack, so did Otto crack his defiance. He lifted his pack and pushed it towards me. I gripped that metal frame and carefully set it next to my stuff in the weeds. Otto stepped out with diplomacy. The comedy troupe rattled away.

I stared at his Kodiak boots pitched into the gravel next to me. My chest heaved. “The Ottorama has landed.”

He glowered. “Leave me be, Winans. Okay?”

“Okay, truce. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Hitchhiking was a folly. We waited an hour and a half each for three short rides that brought us nowhere, almost backwards. More than once it crossed my mind, “This merry-go-round is rubbish. Could going to Whittier have been half as bad?”

Like my excursion yesterday, we crisscrossed other freeways in amazing rapidity. There were no U-turns, no going back. Half the time the drivers themselves didn’t know where they were going. They navigated not by highway number, but by landmarks. “The Sambo’s.” “The ramp after the 3-M building.” “The road by the lake through the trees.” “The Suzuki shop.” “That Dunkin’ Donuts over there.”

The sixth ride, the first decent one all day, brought us to San Bernardino. The fading sunlight mellowed over red, gilded mountains. Not the tension. I led the way to an A + W Root Beer stand where we munched down in total silence, sitting back-to-back under a canopy. Not a single word was exchanged. Otto still knew nothing about my solo adventure in Hollywood yesterday, nor about meeting Joe Namath in the morning. He didn’t want to hear my voice, nor see my face.

I moaned when I surveyed the I-15 ‘on’ ramp. In the headlights of passing cars I saw hitchhikers, lots of them. Seven! They looked haggard and degenerate, two sleazy females among them. None looked overjoyed that two more were joining their ranks. The duo farthest down the ramp, in fact, moved their gear all the way onto the freeway proper and began waving at cars illegally.

One grueling hour turned into two grueling hours. Everyone was edgy, ready for a free-for-all if and when a vehicle stopped.

A VW bus halted at the end of the ramp. I raced up. It was between Otto and me and the two guys on the freeway.

A handsome guy of about thirty with a thick mustache sat behind the wheel. “I’m going about thirty miles up, if that’ll be a help.”

The first of the other two hitchhikers, a guy with very long blond hair, straight and dirty, lugging a pack as big as a silo, hustled up to the driver’s window.

“You headin’ toward Vegas?” He talked in a hoarse, scratchy voice.

“I’m not going that far, but I can get you thirty miles closer.”

The second hitchhiker was better-looking than his buddy but panting terribly. He caught up to his friend, set down his huge pack, and lined up in back of his friend like they were going to the movies. He was spaced out and nervous, looking in every which direction.

“We’ll take it.” The blond slapped his partner on the chest. “Pick up that bag. We’re gettin’ out of here.”

“We can all ride together, aye?”

The bus lowered significantly as everyone climbed aboard. Otto purposely stepped on my foot and smacked his backpack against my bad knee on his way to the rear. The dark-haired partner sat next to me on the middle bench seat; the blond was in the front bucket seat.

“I don’t know about you dudes, but I’m ready to get the flock outta here.” The blond patted his jean jacket for smokes. “Mind if I light a cigarette?”

“Not at all.” The driver accelerated. He tuned the radio to a magnificently clear FM station: “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain.

“Hey, look at that. We got tunes, too.” The blond’s nod to his partner was returned with an absentminded gaze. “You’re not goin’ all the way to Vegas, eh? I didn’t think our luck would be that good.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but the ramp I’m going to let you off at isn’t so bad. There’s a state forest through there and they keep a gas station open all night. It shouldn’t get too lonely.”

“That’s out in the desert, aye?” The dark-haired partner spoke with a strange English accent.

“No, it’s in the hills,” the driver replied, “the last exit before the desert.”

The blond exhaled smoke and laughed hoarsely. “Long as we don’t get stuck out in no desert. I can’t tolerate that misery, no way. We got enough problems to worry about besides wonderin’ if we’re gonna stay alive.”

“I can relate,” the driver said. “I used to do quite a bit of hiking myself. Never more than twenty miles at a time.”

“I counted nine hitchhikers after we got to that God-awful entrance ramp,” I said. “That’s a record for us, up from six. It erodes your morale.”

The blond spied me with a curious smile. “Yeah, it’s tough.”

“Believe me, I saw everyone,” the driver joined in. “I knew I couldn’t help everyone. But when I saw these fellows’ sign for New Jersey, I thought they needed help the worst.”

The duo gave Otto and me their full attention.

“New Jersey, eh?” the blond said. “That beats us. We’re goin’ to Detroit.”

“Michigan’s a good two thousand mile jaunt itself.” I nodded in the direction of the partner. “Wolverine State, also known as the Great Lake State. The state shaped like a hand.”

“Aye!” the partner said.

“You can say that again.” The blond stuck his feet on the hump between the seats, cigarette near his knees. “I gotta get home, too. I’m startin’ a new job on the assembly line Monday. I can’t afford to start off with a bad impression.”

“My old lady’s orders were be home yesterday,” the partner next to me said. Everyone laughed. He reminded me of a rock musician, but I couldn’t place who. He had British ruddiness, with long, wavy black hair, round, slightly drooping eyes, puckered lips, and a stubbly chin.

“Well, we gotta keep movin’, but there’s a few places we wanna stop in ‘fore we get home to Detroit. Vegas, for one,” the blond Detroiter said. “I hear it’s a trip.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the driver jumped in. “I stay as far upstream as I can. I come to San Bernardino for supplies, that’s my big weekly journey. I built a log cabin for myself and my wife on her folks’ property about five years ago. I run my own organic nursery and greenhouse.”

“A mountain man, eh?” Detroit nodded. “That’s cool, but I can’t help it. I was born and raised in the city, I like the noise, and I don’t think I’ll ever go nowheres else, long as too many of my friends don’t move out. Put me in the country, and I get lost.”

“And I’m just the opposite,” the driver said. “You put me in a big city like L.A. or Vegas, and I go crazy. There’s nothing but chaos. I need space to move around, and peace and quiet.”

“I can cuddle up and go to sleep anywhere.” The partner next to me yawned.

Detroit sparked up with a laugh. “Hitchhiking’s such a gas, ain’t it? Here we are from Detroit, these young dudes are from New Jersey, and this here smart-lookin’ dude lives in the mountains of California. I think that’s out of sight.”

“You guys spending much money?” I asked the duo.

“On butts and beer. You?” Detroit said.

“Our budget is four bucks a day.”

“Even if I had something, I wouldn’t bring it,” the partner next to me said. “I get by on good looks and etiquette.”

“I could tell immediately,” the driver laughed, joined in by everyone.

“I respect your spartan approach,” I said. “Good job, man.”

“Know somethin’ else”—Detroit paused—“it’s bullshit that hitchhiking is dangerous. I’ve never met friendlier people. What driver you know ain’t offered to give the shirt off his back, with directions, tips, food, or even a place to stay?” He confirmed with his partner. “We’ve gotten some pretty far-out rides by some pretty far-out people. I got no patience for anyone who tells me I’m crazy for hitchhiking.”

“The media gets it backwards,” the guy next to me said.

“You said it,” Detroit said. “Whatever they say, do the opposite.” He took out his Marlboros and tapped the bottom of the pack.

“Say, before you light up another cigarette—” the driver reached into his front pocket, “—how would you like to smoke one of mine?” He held up in his fingers a thick joint.

“I sure would!” Detroit went giddy. “Aye, definitely. A nice high will spread me out.”

“I’m game,” I said.

Otto smirked.

“See? What’d I tell you?” Detroit eagerly watched the driver fire the joint, then accepted it himself. The peat moss aroma filled the bus. “People who pick you up are the best goddamn human beings in the world. Ain’t that the truth? Hitchhikers know where it’s at!”

“I couldn’t say it better myself.”

“You guys see all sides, I’ll give you that.” The driver held in his breath.

I did all right for myself during the ritual—nice hits, no coughing— and passed on the marijane without fumbling. Otto waved off the bone, which made him an even a bigger Odd-o.

I was digging the current song on the radio, “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney. I was amazed by the tune’s cohesion, the conviction of the music supporting the words, the power of the bass guitar underneath the treble, how it related to my present situation.

“Dude, you don’t know how nice this is, to catch a buzz after you been all day without.” Detroit smiled with his eyes closed, practically crying.

“Aye, I like the taste.” Paul McCartney tapped the ashes and inhaled.

Paul McCartney! Sure, that’s who that guy looked like! Why not? The “cute” Beatle, even with the stubbles, like the way he grew out his beard for Let It Be. This Paul looked musical and witty, like he could bang out “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” on the piano right now.

Detroit rubbed the remains of the joint—the roach—in his fingers and let them fly out the window. He took a fresh cigarette and lit it. “Yeah, I feel a nice buzz comin’ on. That’s pretty good shit you got there. What’re we smokin’, Colombian?”

“That’s gold, Acapulco gold.”

“Aye, I knew it,” Paul McCartney nodded.

The volkswagen bus motor beneath us hummed neatly, quiet as a pin. The bus stood still—or was it? It seemed like the road underneath was moving, at a mellow gallop, while we stayed in place. Multiple shades of darkness stilted past. Rough, jagged edges of treeline shone brilliantly against the black night. The human silhouettes accompanying me were four mopheads of flesh and soul. If Paul McCartney was Paul McCartney, then Detroit was John Lennon, our leader. Otto could be George Harrison, the mystical one. Me? I was Ringo Starr, hardworking bluecollar drummer, the amiable bloke, the least talented Beatle but still able to shake my head and go “yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Hey Winans (I thought), your rear end is stoned. Got that, Ringo? S-T-O-N-E-D. I felt rearranged; my mind disengaged from my body and was soaring. Thoughts funneled through my brain chambers and made super logic, though rushing out the other side so fast that I forgot what they were a second later. I was floating, timeless, in close contact with my inner side, linked up to Eternal Source Energy. The physical world seemed meaningless. Objects appeared as separate entities, in super three-dimension. Like the headrest in front of my nose. Like my travel bag below me. Everything had Reason-for-Being. And the music! “I Put A Spell On You” by Spirit was playing. It sounded so in tune with itself; so well-crafted with care. Jaunty. Yet—a statement of intent.

Otto maintained his sulk; arms folded and mouth shut tightly.

“Yeah, that’s the kind of weed you should be able to buy at the chemist, aye?” Paul McCartney was speaking.

“I always try to keep a spare doobie rolled for special occasions.” The driver winked.

“Nice breeze up here in the hills.” Detroit twisted his hair through a rubber band to make a ponytail.

“This trip is one hundred percent, absolutely great. I’m thanking each and every one of you guys. You rocked my socks. I’m in the high heavens thanks to all of you.”

I figured we had to be close to this driver’s exit, and funny—just as that specific thought occurred to me, the driver flicked on his blinkers. “Here’s my exit, guys.”

Detroit cracked his knuckles. “End of the line, eh?” His face turned ghoulish. “Bummer. I shouldn’t allowed myself to let go like that. It looks black as Pluto out there.”

“What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

The bus jerked. Paul McCartney and I rose simultaneously and knocked into each other. I kicked over an open metal can. Gasoline oozed across my red duffel bag. The canvas reeked.

“Shoot, I meant to top that can this afternoon before I left. Don’t worry about that, guys. I’ll clean up the mess when I get home.”

“Sorry.”

“What happened?”

“He kicked over a gas can.”

“I’m wasted.”

“You’re gone, that’s what you are, Winans,” Otto blurted. “Way gone over the barrel.”

The four of us, Detroit, Paul McCartney, Otto, and I stood on the quiet interstate, swallowed in desolation. We sized up the vast canyon’s degree of severity. Our elevation was “high, very high.” The San Gabriel Mountains were stark and commandeering . . . abundant . . . multitudinous . . . whatever. The only hint of life was the glare of a Shell station on the far side of the interchange.

Not a lick of traffic came by in either direction. I’m not talking about the entrance ramp, dear reader. But I-15. Nothing. Zero. The twinkling stars overhead made me think I was in a planetarium. Crickets cricked. Bats swooped. The temperature, compared to an hour ago, dropped into a new range, from no-problem warm to “freakin’ frickin’ friggin’ chilly.”

“This looks pitiful. I’m glad I got a buzz on.” Detroit looked jaded. Paul McCartney yawned. I apologized again for the nauseating smell of gasoline.

“We might as well stick together for the night and keep each other company,” Detroit said. “No one’s goin’ nowhere anyway.”

“I’m wide awake,” Otto said. “I got my killer instinct on.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem, I feel restless.”

Detroit stared in his pack of cigarettes, and took one out. “I got three more butts in here. If we’re here all night at least I got a place where I can get a pack.”

We headquartered along the ‘on’ ramp, which kept us legal. We arranged our gear, four in a row, along the rough broken asphalt.

We talked into the wee hours. Our new friends didn’t know each other well at all before they started out. They met only a month before, at a defensive driving course mandatory in Michigan for people with suspended licenses. They got drunk on the final night, decided they wanted to see California, and next morning, they pulled their stuff together and took off, just like that. Detroit was in the middle of switching jobs and Paul McCartney was on “indefinite holiday.” Paul McCartney was from Canada, having marital difficulties with his buxom American wife. “She’s got breasts bigger than her brains,” he said. Detroit was single but crooned poetic about “two-legged deer with red hair, red lipstick, and red snatch.” Both seemed to be in their middle twenties—pretty old to be bumming around the country. They were taken aback to hear Otto and I were still in high school, entering twelfth grade.

I played it straight all the way. I said I had a steady girl, Amy, liked the Yankees and the Jets and the Beatles and the Rascals, and was an officer in the school’s service organization. Otto, knowing he had to talk, amplified his bio with all sorts of lies. It started with, “I took all- county honors last year in basketball as a junior . . . but basketball don’t mean shit to me now.” It grew to, “When I go to parties, I bring along my king cobra. I take him outta his cage and wear him around my neck. The girls love to stroke it.” It culminated with, “I get laid whenever I snap my fingers. My girl Laurie loves tokin’ on my wanger. We signed an oath to each other by drippin’ blood on a letter and both signed it. Satan’s got nothin’ on us.”

The ratio of passing cars coming down the ramp was about one per hour. At 3:30 a.m. Detroit went over to the Shell station for cigarettes and a bag of peanuts. Otto joined him. Paul McCartney and I went to bed.

I laughed to see Paul McCartney unroll his sleeping bag on the rough shoulder and casually position his head only two feet from the pavement proper. He dropped into an immediate deep sleep.

A car turned down the ramp, and I popped out of my bag. I threw out a weak, half-hearted thumb.

“What’s the matter, Jersey? Why didn’t you get that car to stop?” Detroit’s hoarse voice chided me from far off. “We was watchin’ you.”

“Yeah, what’s the matter, Pistol Pete?” Otto called from his side. “You some kind of smarty pants?”

“I didn’t have the heart to disturb this guy.” I pointed at Paul McCartney on the ground.

Five minutes later I was sacked out next to Paul myself, positioned similarly, in my gasoline bag. The fumes stank.

“If a car comes by, I’m gonna let it crush your head,” Otto said.

“Gee thanks, friend. What a swell thought. Same to you.”