Autumn in Maine

    Remember when you could drive into any old American town and find a tavern with character.  Those places where cigarette smoke oozed out of the walls and almost hypnotized you.  Nowadays every suburban dystopia has the “sports bar,” typically frequented by yuppies who scarf down chicken wings and guzzle beer as they endlessly discuss . . . sports.  Such establishments have all the appeal of a concentration camp. One could still traverse through the American landscape of the 1970s with echoes of the Kerouac energy. But Kerouac had been gone for a few years, a drunken and bloated pro-Vietnam zealot in his final days.

     Autumn evenings in Maine behoove one to get drunk and pontificate late into the night on obscure subjects.  My kind of place.

     As I drove into a small town somewhere around Bangor, I noticed a watering hole on the corner with neon sign blinking TOWARD ETERNITY.  Inside a collage of tables with four chairs and a bar.  Pall Malls dominated the air.   Like most taverns in New England the walls were covered with Red Sox memorabilia and snapshots of Ted Williams and Carl Yastrzemski.  Pictures of writers classed up the piece tenfold.  American literature pulsated from the anxious New England mind - Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Longfellow, Dickinson - those nervy temperaments of the WASP persuasion.  A quote from Emerson, hung on the wall in gothic script, “All life is an experiment.  The more experiments you make the better.”  My kind of place.

 I grabbed a stool beside two young men with longish hair and coke bottle glasses.  They were having an intense discussion about Night of the Living Dead.  

. . . .”Romero made the film of the 60s man.  Social breakdown.  People literally eating each other to death - having their babies for breakfast - that’s where it’s going man!”

 His friend replied, “Whatever you say Steve.  You need to slow down on the ale buddy.  I'm going home.”

     “Come on man, it’s 10pm  Friday night. These High School kids have pushed me to the brink of sanity.”

      As his bewildered friend was leaving, he implored, “Your better go home to your wife Steve.”

      “She likes her alone time.”

      Intrigued,  I took a stool beside the boisterous guy, “Sounds like you're a horror fan?”

       He looked at me with bemusement, “That’s right, we got nothing better to do up here. The isolation induces a little madness now and then.”

    He offered his hand, "Steve King, nice to meet you man."

    "Good to meet you. Name's Henry."

     “So, Henry, you don't look like you're from these parts?”

     “I’m from Boston, but now live in L.A. I'm scouting locations, looking old haunted houses for a movie that may shoot here. I love New England - feels like home."

      His face lit up, 'That's really cool man!"

      “Let me buy you a beer. What do you do for a living?”

     “I teach High School English."

      “What's that like?"

     “Well, the kids are cool for the most part.  But the hours suck and the job takes up all my time. No fucking time to write!”

      “So, you want to write horror?”

"It's my favorite genre, some of the best writing of the 20th century came from horror- Shirley Jackson, Richard Matheson, Ray Bradbury - those are the writers I admire."

"What drew you to horror?"

       A sudden, almost theatrical, darkness came across his face: “Goes back to my childhood.  One day I saw a kid get run over by a train.”

      He flashed  a deadpan look directly into my eye and then laughed.

      “Just joking, if I ever get famous that’s what I’m going to tell people.  Because if you write horror, they always want to know what fucked you up as a kid.”

      I laughed, amused at his zany nature.  We watched the World Series with some interest, the A’s and the Reds.  Catfish Hunter threw a masterpiece that night.  He went on about his college experience with the professors.

      “- No seriously man, in college they throw all that serious literature at you.  The professors have awful tendencies when it comes to what counts as "literature".  No respect for pop culture.   But it’s the wave of the future man - Psycho proved it.”

       “Right, Hitchcock took a pulpy novel and turned it into high art.”

        The bartender came over and I ordered another round.  

         I could tell he liked an audience; he possessed an infectious enthusiasm.  “We’re a pop culture nation now.  The professors don’t get that.  The generation that grew up on television is now coming of age.”

      “We all worship the Glass Teat.”

      “Maybe, maybe not. I embrace it all. I don't care.”

       I replied, “As times get crazier horror will get more popular.  People love the idea of paying for their scares.”

      “I suppose so, man.”

      The jukebox was blasting “96 Tears” by ? And the Mysterians.

     “So, who are you going to vote for - Nixon or McGovern?”

     “Let me tell you something man, I used to be as conservative as they come.  Hell, I cruised into college with a Goldwater sticker on my beat up chevy.  My consciousness changed with some chemical stimuli - I ended up the barricades in '68 and got myself teargassed by the Chicago PD.”

    “So, McGovern, I presume.”

     “You got it, the last decent man in politics.”

      I agreed, “Nixon’s like a demented Richard III you’d see in a third rate college production.”

      “I know man. America has always been built on corruption, but we're in a whole new thing now. Calling it corruption is way too easy, it's something worse than corruption. We don't have a vocabulary for it yet - whatever "they" are up to.  That‘s what I want my fiction to explore.  But hey man, it’s a beautiful fall night. Why go there?"

      ‘You’re right, but back to your point on pop culture. The Manson thing is already mythology, all the nonsense about the Beatles inspiring the whole thing. 

     Intrigued, he asked, "I hear you man, but how so?”

     “All the mayhem in the music and all the mayhem it supposedly triggered.”

      He smiled,  "Any type of art which inspires a bunch of crazies must have something to it.”

       Now on maybe his eighth at least, he looked at me thoughtfully: “It is something.  All the influence of the Beatles - there's something biblical about them."

        We continued drinking as we watched the A's beat the Reds. Everyone started to clear out. He had way too many beers to drive, so I offered to take him home.

"That would be great!"

        Before getting into the car he asked me, “Before you go home - want to experience something truly frightening. Remember the story about the train.”

      I chuckled nervously, “Oh yeah?"

      “Wanna go see where it happened, maybe it would a good location for your movie.

     "Sure," I replied with trepidation.

      “Then, let's roll!"

    Three miles outside of town on a dark country road, I mean dark, he told me to pull over, “Come on man, we're close.  We’re gonna have to walk the rest of the way.”

       I perceived an odd fear in the young man’s eyes, he looked at me as if I was otherworldly. His look changed.

      “Here it is."

     The night had turned cold.  I could see my own breath.  The trees grew thicker; the moonlight barely glowed.  We arrived at a clearing in the woods, I saw the old railroad tracks.

    “Are these tracks still in service?”  I asked.

     “Nope they stopped this line years ago.  Some still claim to hear them - phantom trains.”

     “So, this is where it happened?”

     He shivered as he spoke, “To the best of my knowledge.  This is it.  I was maybe six or seven years old. We were just here playing hide and go seek in the woods.  Suddenly, there was a horrible bang and then a silence. I caught a glimpse of the remains.  It was awful.”

 He paused and continued to speak in a lower tone:  

      “The image of something alive and vibrant transforming into something inhuman and ghastly remains the ultimate horror."

      I stood there in silence with him, lost in the past. Finally, he spoke like Nicholson in The Last Detail,  “Well, there man, you’ve seen it.  Let's get the fuck out of here.”

      Before I answered a sudden gust of howling wind and the unmistakable sound of a train whistle. Then an animal like screech, probably an owl, maybe a Wendigo.

We hurried back to the car. He had sobered up by the time we arrived at his home, a dingy trailer.

He shook my hand, "Good luck on the movie Henry."