The White Line Man
The sun roared up like an arc welder's torch scouring the trembling desert, burning off any drops of moisture left from the night and brazing the surface iron hard. It set up dust devils, searching the ground for any un-welded grit, missed by the sun and whipping it up in triumph. The flying dust sent a sun bathing gila monster skedaddling away into its dark hole. The whirlwinds searched over some old mine spoil heaps, where silver dreams had melted away long ago. They rattled loose iron sheets on a few scattered shacks, shook the branches of a struggling Joshua tree, followed the road and dissolved into the distant heat haze. And that was Big T, apart, of course, from the big thermometer; an upright grid of welded iron, the tallest thing in town, supporting a column of neon numbers. Today, it read '102'.
Beneath the Joshua tree some pampas grass matting hung from a few poles. Angelo liked the idea of sitting there in the shade with Jess, but as soon as he sat down he would fancy sitting some place else, if he was very restless, he would make his way up to the old mine workings to throw rocks at the gila monsters. Whatever Angelo's game was, he always looked like he would soon be playing something else. On the other hand, whatever Jess was doing he looked as though he'd been doing it for a while and would be doing it for a while longer. Jess leant back against the trunk of the tree with his feet up, eyes half closed, staring out at nothing. Angelo squinted out along the road. 'What the Hell's that, Jess? Sure is kicking up some dust... maybe it's smoke.' The thing came and went in the flickering heat. Something white, something red, all shimmying around, not still for long enough to get a handle on. 'It ain't a truck, Jess.'
Whatever came along, Jess liked to feel he had seen it all before and if he had not he tended to sit back and wait until it had passed, then he could say to himself, 'Yeh, I seen all that before.' So, he would just sit and wait for whatever Angelo had seen to vanish, or explain itself, he was in no hurry.
Big T had taken a tumble back in the quake and folks never summoned up the will to rebuild it. So, one way or another, they left the desert to reclaim its own. Sal was Jess's woman and together, they ran the bar. She wanted to leave too but Jess said, 'Seen it all before, Sal. It'll be OK, we'll get passing trade from the road.'
'Why would anyone stop here and not drive on through?' asked Sal.
'Make 'em thirsty.' said Jess. 'God damn place is hotter than Hell. If folks knew just how damned hot it was, they'd pull up for a beer.'
The next day Jess set about building the thermometer. He did not do things on a small scale, or in a hurry, and the thermometer ended up sixty-nine feet tall, weighed six tons and took him the best part of six years to build. By that time the flow of traffic had dried up and when the few folks that did come through Big T saw the thermometer, and just how damn hot it was, they reckoned on getting the Hell out of there as fast as possible and letting the wind blow through their hair to cool them down. Folks soon got worn out saying 'Big Thermometer' all the time, what with the damned heat, so just called the place 'Big T'.
Jess's Sal stood by him during all those days of welding but she must of had some little worm eating away inside her because when the work was all done, she took Jess's truck, early one morning, and headed out of town. The road was long and Sal's little worm must have turned around because so did Sal. The gut wrenching lyrics from the local country radio station, and the damned heat, got to Sal. Searching around in the truck for something to drink she found Jess's supply of liquor and by the time she saw Big T, it was through a flood of anguish, alcohol and tears. She couldn't tell which side of the Joshua tree to drive, she hit the gas instead of the brake and Jess's truck leapt over a pile of rocks and slapped into the Joshua tree at fifty mph. The radio died and the impact catapulted Sal high up into the branches where she kind of stuck, just like a wet rag thrown at a barroom door will stick for a while.
Now, Jess did not know that Sal had left town when he came upon his buckled and steaming truck at the foot of the Joshua tree. Any other man might have been puzzled but Jess just stood there waiting for things to explain themselves. Sure enough, after a few moments, things explained themselves in the form of Sal falling out of the tree, like a wet rag will eventually fall off a barroom door. She landed on the hood of the truck with a dull ringing thud. Jess looked at Sal's broken neck and watched the trickle of blood dry on the white paint for a while, then he went and got the old dozer from the mine, dug a big trench and pushed his mangled truck in, with Sal still draped over the hood. By the time Angelo got up that morning, Sal was under the ground. That was all a while back and Jess never said what happened to Sal, or his truck, and Angelo never asked.
Today Angelo was trying to take it easy. 'One day', he said to Jess, 'I'm gonna travel that road, get the Hell out of here.'
Without seeming to move his lips Jess said, 'Yeh, I heard that before. How you gonna do that? No one's gonna stop to pick you up, less they're crazy.'
'Don't need them to,' said Angelo, gonna make my own way, take the cart from the back of the bar, some water, a parasol and head on out.'
The image, way off down the road, was getting itself together now: a box shaped thing with an open cab, and some sort of shading stretched over to make a roof. There were flames and steam coming out from underneath the trundling machine but Angelo still had no idea what it was. It spluttered its way up to the tree and, grinding grit under its steel wheels, it came to a halt in the centre of the road. The flames died away, there was a final hiss of steam, a jerk forward, some clicking and groaning from the hot iron and all was quiet. It looked like some crazy yellow road roller splashed over with white paint. The red ball, high up on the front, was some sort of gas cylinder. Behind that was an open cab with somebody moving around, wiping things with a rag and closing off valves. Then the man swung to the ground with the help of a couple of steps on protruding bits of machinery.
Angelo ran out of the shade to look. The newcomer wore a red work suit, his eyes were screwed up against the light, his skin tanned and worn, like an old saddle. His grey hair was in a scraggy ponytail.
'Big T, huh?' he said.
'Sure is mister, it's named after that.' Angelo said jerking his thumb backwards. 'That there, is the tallest thee-mom-meter in the whole world. Sixty-nine feet tall and weighs six tons.'
'Well, I'm damned. How hot can it take?' asked the man.
'As hot as you got. A while back it went up to a hundred and twenty-five but it'll go up to hundred and forty and there ain't nowhere that hot.' said Angelo.
'Are you sure of that?' said the stranger, dusting off Jess's chair.' Mind if I sit a spell?'
'Well...' said Jess.
'Sure, go right ahead,' said Angelo.
'So, who's the man who oils the wheels around here?' the stranger asked.
'What's your business, mister?'' asked Jess.
'That.' said the stranger, pointing down the road.
'Roads?' asked Angelo.
Jess did his best at looking like he had seen it all before.
'We got a road, mister; comes in one way; goes out the other. Don't reckon we need anymore roads.'
'I don't do roads,' said the stranger, 'I'm a white line man.'
Angelo ran out from under the tree, past the road machine and shouted, 'Well I'll be... if that ain't the prettiest thing.' The line was as white as bleached bones, dead straight, plumb down the centre, on and on it went until it broke up in the pools of fools' water, lying over the road, way off in the distance.
'If that ain't a wonderment.' said Angelo, 'That's a mighty fine line you painter, mister.'
'I've seen white road lines.' said Jess, returning to the shade to get his chair back from the stranger.
'That's not just a white line, it don't just follow the road,' said the man sitting down on Jess's chair and leaning back, 'it smoothes it out, finishes it off, like a crease in your Sunday pants. Lets you know where you've been, where you're going and whose side you're on.'
'Never seen anything so white.' said Angelo. 'Where'd you start that line, mister?'
'Some way back. The thing is which way now?'
'There's only one road into Big T and one road out,' said Jess, 'you painted the road in, so I reckon you just take that machine of yours, right on through, and out the other side.'
'I hate to be toilsome, sir,' said the man. 'but my understanding was to burn lines on freeways, when it comes to towns.... that's another bucket of grit.'
'We ain't exactly a town, just a few shacks.' said Jess. 'We've only got the one street and folks seem to know which side to drive down that without the need of any white line.
'But that's no ordinary white line, sir.' said the man. 'That's a thermoplastic light emitting highway control contour.'
'Whatever, we don't need it, mister. Now, that's my seat you're sitting on, I'd be obliged if you'd let me have it back.'
'My lines catch the light, amplify it and then re-radiate it, use a special mix of tritium and promethium, you see.'
The man got to his feet, looking out at his line and Jess brushed off his chair and sat down.
'Now, ordinary white lines use some twenty per-cent glass beads.'
'Wow!' said Angelo, 'glass beads, 'just think about that. Like a pretty necklace along the road.'
'But I got something special; there's point two per-cent of industrial powdered diamonds in my line mix.'
'Diamonds? D' you hear that Jess, there are diamonds in that line.
Jess did not move.
'Years of trials but I reckon that mix is just about perfect now. Yeh, white lining has been my life, son.' said the man putting his hand on Angelo's shoulder, '
Angelo knelt down in the dust, 'Where's that line go, mister?'
'Now, that line don't go anywhere, son, that line is coming. I seen sights from that line that could open a man's eyes wide enough to see into another's soul.'
'Bet you seen rivers, and the sea! Eh?' asked Angelo, 'Is it true that the sea is as blue as the sky. One day I'm gonna...'
'I've seen rivers bluer than the sky, son' said the man pulling up a box and sitting beside Angelo, 'and some the colour of the earth, rivers of all colours. I've seen rivers full of the blood of dead men; been through rain forests with rivers bubbling with bright green frogs; there have been black mud filled swamps, their banks swarming with lice and flies; rivers that have long since been swallowed up by the earth; vanished in the sand, full of the white sun bleached bones of dead cattle. I've sat on that machine cross deserts as wide as the world; through hail storms so heavy they'd smash cities and wash their stones to the sea; I've been over ravaged fields, long abandoned by starving tribes; through lands of constant darkness and watched over by the eyes of terrified hiding children. Yeh, I've been down that line.'
The White Line Man walked out from beneath the Joshua tree, into the light to gaze into town and beyond. 'Now that's the way to go.' he said pointing to the horizon beyond the town, 'Who knows what's out there? Forward into the future, to the Promised Land and on..... 'til the end of the world. Are you coming along, son?'
'Well,' said Angelo, 'it ain't that easy. I got things to get ready, can't just go wandering off in this heat.'
'Travel by night,' said the man.
'But it's as black as Hell out there at night.' said Angelo.
'Tomorrow you can follow my line, it'll catch the light from a single star on a cloud covered moonless night and will light up your way.'
'Diamonds? You're kidding, mister? Ain't yer?'
'The thing is,' said the White Line Man to Jess, 'Not employing my services could be a mistake but I'm in no hurry, I'll stay here until sundown and maybe you'll change your mind.'
'Your welcome to stay here,' said Jess, 'but the answer will be the same after another month of sundowns. We ain't gonna spend money on white lines here in Big T.'
'Who said anything about money?'
'Well, what else?'
'What about that?' said the stranger pointing at the big thermometer.
'What?' You've been out in the sun too long boy, you gone and boiled your brains. That thermometer is sixty-nine feet tall and weighs six ton.' said Jess walking off nodding to Angelo to follow.
Sometime in the early hours Jess awoke. A coyote was howling, then a couple more joined in. Jess got out of bed, took his rifle off the wall, pulled the mesh door open and stepped out into the road. A noise made him look up and, silhouetted against the Milky Way, he could see hundreds of birds flying over town, not just nighthawks but sparrows, larks, towhees.... Jess leant against the big thermometer to await a reason, as to, why every damn bird in the country was on the move in the middle of the night and at that moment the quake began.
Jess tried to move but the ground was sashaying around beneath him. The big thermometer was whipping about like a rattler in its death throes. It wouldn't take much more without buckling and crashing down. He grabbed hold of it. One man trying to steady six tons of steel. Then everything stopped, the thermometer creaked and straightened up. Jess lifted his hand to wipe the sweat from his brow but before his hand could reach his head, the quake started up again. Different this time, way off, a roaring, avalanche sort of sound, coming from behind the bar, like the land was being ripped apart. Then Jess's bar shattered, the ground split open and the big thermometer began to slide, slowly at first, down into the earth. Jess saw the numbers flashing past his eyes, the illuminated number seventy-two came past and soon the whole thermometer had gone. Jess stared down after it, standing on the brink of the crack. He noticed that the sand and dirt at the edge of the hole was beginning to trickle down into the chasm and as he stepped back, the edge of the hole gave way. Jess disappeared, and the night went silent.
Angelo was awoken by his bed rattling across the floor. He ran out the door but one of the boards outside had been loosened, his foot went down and the end of the plank sprung up hitting him on the forehead. By the time he came to, it was all over. Everything was silent with an unusual glow about the place. Something was missing though; there was no big thermometer. It had gone, all sixty-nine feet and six tons of it. Angelo walked over and looked down the hole. Then his eye caught the white line, like a neon strip, arcing through the town and out into the desert. He stared at it for a while then went to the back of the bar, found the old cart, filled a tub with water and took down the parasol. For a moment Angelo thought he heard his name being called out but where from? Under the ground? Up in the night? Or from way out in the desert. He could not tell. 'It ain't Jess, he'd never holler my name.' Angelo reckoned it must be the White Line Man, out there in the night, calling. He picked up the cart and set off. In the darkness, Angelo saw the glowing white line lifting up from the black road, slowly curving into the night, sucking in the twinkling light of a billion stars, powering it onward, shining out and lighting his journey.
