For the month of September, Blue Bicycle Books commissioned a 120-foot-long scroll story. This community creative writing project commemorated the 50th Anniversary of Kerouac’s On the Road, which was written on one 120-foot continuous scroll of paper. Our scroll went up Saturday, Sept. 1. By the end of the month it was 122 feet long, with 47 authors in total, including (we interpreted signatures best we could)): Ali Delambo, Fiquet Krueger, Olive Gardner, Edwin Gardner, Whitney Powers, Steven Grossman, M. Shipley, Davis, Kalyn Oyer, Hannah Brooks-Moh, Amberjade Taylor, Alex Sanchez, Jonathan Sanchez, Caitlin Binda, Amanda Mae, Karen, Madeline Dixon, Nat, Shelly, and Taylor.
The final edition is below. For photos please go here.
He rolled into town on the back of a flatbed truck, smelling of tobacco and crushed grapes; it smelled like Transylvania almost and I hated it. The summer heat expanded this smell almost to the point that it overwhelmed the senses. The truck rolled and he smelled, the truck, the summer, the whiff of Europe, somehow, in the corn.
He thought about Paris, Rome, girls he’d known. He thought: This morning, she woke up to his mercies anew…mercies anew, his mercies anew. Every morning her Father’s mercies are new. Chances are his heart was in it, but he wouldn’t dare admit the scandal and eventual seclusion it all entailed. Autumn leaves coat the dampened ground. Like so many misplaced memories scattered by the breeze.
Yet he found himself running away from the only person who could rake them into any order. He had left her standing there ‘cause she wouldn’t ask him to stay and now, in the girl with her thumb out on the roadside, he saw his second chance.
Through the dark depths of the ocean, past the murky squid, lay a pineapple under the sea. It was regularly summoned by Zeus, for the purpose of taking out the trash and other menial assignments, but then, one day, as he drove past this girl, with her thumb stuck out, he realized that in the back of his truck was the pineappley squid he had caught on his Alaskan fishing trip. He had grown fond of this pineappley squid and named it Jerome.
Therefore he took advantage of this second chance and picked up this long lost girl. He asked her where she was going but kicked her out of the truck because Jerome became restless. How he can hope to share this drive with her while conscious of his beloved Jerome’s discomfort. Change isn’t easy, as it were.
Suddenly Jerome started talking, but he had a language that sounded like this: Humina, humina, humina, humina!
(Sept. 4, 27.5 feet)
In Jerome’s mind he heard the sound, actually the clacking of his grandmother’s loom. He reeled, sensing his worthlessness, sleeping while his grandmother wove. Then the tapestry of his life was revealed. He would use the squid ink to dye the cloth. Little did he know that the culmination of learning the skill to harness the ink he possessed would lead him down a road that would force him to deal with his worst fear and succeed or die trying.
Finally, the memories rushed in and he finally remembered what would happen—this would break the spell and he would once again be a real boy ~~ squirt! It happened, voila! No more squid—except he was sitting on the flatbed in a black puddle. He was stranded in the middle of the city. He no longer smelled bad, he smelled horrible! He was dripping from head to toe, and he felt like he had been thrown out of his truck. He could not remember where he was or what happened. He thought and thought, but he could not remember.
Out of the corner of his eyes, his oasis appeared: a sauerkraut stand. His hunger overtaking him, he submitted to his desire and spent the last of his fortune on a tasty sausage. He was satisfied. Such a relevant term, but he was not like super-sized. He would have been if only the sausage would have contained a few cucumbers.
He cleared the squid from the back of the flatbed, slammed the door of the cab and drove on. Today was a special day, a new day, a day that has been a long day waiting! Until his new and special day was smashed upon the rocks of reality and he had to find a job. He had never been without the abstract concept of an occupation. It was the physical realization of selling one’s time and energy for minimum wage that he had avoided.
His mind was always synched with those around him; his hands quick and able to react in any second. There was no need for a “job” so far as a thing to occupy these capable limbs, however, the limits of others’ generosity were soundly exhausted. In order for him to assume responsibility for his obvious needs: water, food, maybe a new pair of overalls, he acquiesced and absorbed himself in yesterday’s classified section.
Debauchery or diligence; it always seemed to come down to that. Was there possibly some confluence of the two which would prove both remunerative and satisfying? But then, he remembered in that electrical jolting way that he knew so well – his cosmic (light ???) plugged into the universal socket – why do I keep being trapped in either/or dualistic thinking? I must remember the words of his most precious teacher… “Play’s more fun when your work’s all done.”
He then thought back to his dear friend Galen who trained pugs with a stroke of his chin and a tear in his eye he began to dial the number…
“Stuck Glue Factory, can I help you?”
“Oh, hi, you have an ad in the paper for a worker, and I’m interested.”
“Do you want to stay stuck the rest of your life?”
“Not really.”
“Then you probably wouldn’t want this job. But you can drop by if you like!”
“OK, I might. I’m already stuck, and what I really need to do is wake up!”
Hanging up the phone, he stood alone and considered “stuck”-its cousins in phonetic kin, suck…pluch…fin…oh that one, yes the glue factory- pluck it! And the job search began again…
And he whispered to himself angrily, “No one better sniff my glue.” He pondered, thoughtfully, considering what he had just done. A phone call…a job? What was he getting himself into? He wondered what a job in a glue factory could do for his life. “I’d get money and free glue…everyone loves free glue.”
Then he thought some more. Hmmm…free glue was good but did he have a better reason? Of course! His grandmother, Karen, and her broken loom. He needed to buy her a new one. “Maybe I should get a different job…professional sheep herding sounds nice…” That’ll do pig, that’ll do.
Well, maybe sheep herding is a bad idea, maybe work in a toothbrush factory would do, yes it would do. But how will I get a job at a toothbrush factory? If there is none here, I’ll have to find one. In the newspaper there is a job page and in it I’ll look. Let’s see here…chocolate factory. No!
Perhaps the ad for a job at the chocolate factory is an omen. I am destined for higher things, maybe one day I’ll open the newspaper and there’ll be an ad for…for someone like me.
“Watch the thinker,” he heard a voice say. It sounded something like the “humina” of Jerome. A cat walked in and howled. He was reaching in the fridge for some milk, kicked at the door, missed, it closed anyway, gave the cat a bowl of…then he heard a voice: “Smookie! Heere kitty.”
He picked up the cat and the saucer and went outside. Then he saw her, and at once they loved each other. They went on twelve dates and finally he proposed. She said, “yes” so they got married. But she never knew about his horrible secret- and she was about to find out about it.
She didn’t know if it was a secret of the most clandestine of natures, a smell of the familiar but unnamable. What kind of secret? What kind of idea was Jerome? Was he a Ralph Nader-like crusader? “Unless someone like you cares a whole lot, nothing’s going to change. It’s not.” .
He remembered the ’92 Subaru he bought in Boulder with that bumper sticker on it. He’d always felt a little guilty, even though he hadn’t put the sticker on the bumper, admonishing other when he didn’t really care himself. .
It was late. He was married with a secret even he didn’t know. Was he a squid? A hitchhiker? Jerome or Jerome’s friend? He didn’t know if he was driving or riding, working or unemployed. So much had happened, and yet so little, but at least there was the road ahead. .
