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Highway Conversations

Mike Schneider

    I spotted him standing at the end of the salty snacks aisle, looking woefully out of place at a Pilot Flying J truck stop on I-75 north of Atlanta. He was impeccably dressed in a charcoal gray suit, white shirt, maroon tie, and black leather dress loafers with tassels. His clean shaven, handsome face was topped by dark hair long enough to comb but too short to grip. While absently scratching his jaw with his left hand three diamonds in a gold cufflink glistened when they caught the light. His countenance reflected grave contemplation.
    “I don’t think I’ve seen anyone so deep in thought since the other night when I had a dream about Socrates,” I said as I was passing by him on my way out.
    “My car has been stolen,” he replied.
    “Oh my goodness! Stolen here?”
    “Yes.”
    “Have you called the police? Or highway patrol?”
    “No, I guess I should explain. It’s not really stolen. From time to time my friend, Felix, and I play practical jokes on each other. I found his business card stuck to the curb where I had parked.”
    “That’s a cruel practical joke.”
    “Not as cruel as it might seem. Pay back for me flying off with his airplane a couple years ago. I’ll get my car back because I’m meeting him in Virginia at the beginning of the week. Now I must arrange alternate transportation.”
    He seemed like a nice enough fellow. You know, well dressed, well groomed, well spoken. Probably mid-40s, although I’m not good at guessing anyone’s age. While I generally don’t get involved with strangers I decided to make an exception for this man.
    “I’m going north on I-75. I could drop you in Chattanooga or Knoxville if that would help.”
    “It would if you don’t mind. Before going to Virginia I’m meeting a, shall we say intimate friend, in Knoxville for a few days R&R.”
    “Don’t mind at all, I’ll enjoy the company. That checkout line is getting fairly long so I’m going to go to my car and make a phone call. I’ll be in the red Ford Explorer SUV, straight out from the door. You can’t miss it.”
    “Thanks old chap. See you there.”
    I was heading north because I had left my crazy wife of 16 years at our winter residence in Tampa, was en route for our summer home in Cincinnati where I would begin pursuing a divorce.
    I had plenty of reasons to leave over the years, all of them due to her exasperating penchant for throwing out my things absent my permission, but the Royall Spyce capped it. The other items—my best spinning rod and reel, all my Flogging Molly CDs, plus dozens and dozens of others over the years were bad but with the Royall Spyce I finally snapped. After shelling out $68.80 for the bottle I got to wear it exactly once before Jenny tossed it in the trash and sent it off to the landfill.
    Next day when I discovered it I blew up, told her the marriage was over, that she could have the Tampa house since her parents live in St. Pete, I would take the Cincinnati house. Then I packed a few things, said I would be back for the rest and hit the road.
    “Very nice vehicle,” my new acquaintance said when he opened the door and got in. “Have you had it long?”
    “Couple years, it’s a 2020 model.”
    Once back on the highway I opened a bag of Happy Trails Trail Mix, set it between my legs to piece on.
    “So, what kind of car do you have?”
    I expected him to say Cadillac CTS, Jeep Wrangler Rubicon, or some other expensive recent model but he surprised me.
    “Today I was driving the Bentley. It’s an older one, pre-World War II but it purrs like a kitten, and whenever necessary still roars like a lion.”
    “Oh my gosh! That’s amazing!”
    We talked a while about cars and related subjects such as auto racing. He seemed most familiar with European vehicles, also European races such as the Le Mans, and Monte Carlo Rally.
    At some point I held out my hand, said, “By the way, I’m David Carlton.”
    He took it with a comfortably firm grip. “My name is Bond,” he said, “James Bond.”
    “No kidding! Did your parents name you James Bond on purpose or was it accidental?”
    “On purpose, of course. While babies may often be created accidentally, they’re never named accidentally.”
    We rode in silence for a while. Then I asked him, “What line of work are you in?”
    “I’m with Universal Exports, of London. They have several names for what I do but I like to call myself a trouble shooter. Wherever they have trouble, I go and take care of it.”
    After that we fell silent for about 25 miles while I tried to figure out what to do. He didn’t seem dangerous but if he thought he was James Bond, perhaps at any moment he might get the idea I was Blofeld, Scaramanga, or another Bond nemesis. I wasn’t sure what might happen then.
    I said, “So do you come to the states quite often to meet your friend from Knoxville?”
    “No. She’s not from Knoxville, she lives in the UK. We meet up all over the world whenever we happen to be in the same city or can get to the same city.”
    “That sounds like an exciting relationship. I’ve been married 16 years but now it’s over because my wife is crazy as a loon.”
    “Do tell! How so?”
    “She keeps throwing my things away without asking permission, always with a lame brain excuse for doing so. A while back she pitched all my Flogging Molly CDs because their music ‘gives her a headache’ and she didn’t want me to get one, too. Before that she sold my best spinning outfit at a garage sale because it was red and her mother told her that her great uncle Max drowned while fishing with a red pole. Latest was a bottle of Royall Spyce after shave for which I shelled out 70 bucks. She had to get rid of it because some guy she dated a couple times in college, who gave her a hard time, wore it. Early on it was kind of cute but by the end of the second year it had become a curse.”
    “Well, that would be a pesky habit for sure. You’re divorcing over it?”
    “Yes. I’ve threatened before but this time it’s for real. Right now she’s exactly 485.7 miles in the rearview mirror.”
    “That’s rather odd. You’re getting out of a marriage and I kind of wish I had gotten into one.”
    “Really?”
    “Yes. Well, I did get into one once but it didn’t last long. Other than that I have always been so involved in my career that I never made time for it. My friend I’m meeting would make a dandy wife and lifetime partner, but I’m afraid now we’re a bit late to the dance to start a family. I’d be retired, my kids would still be in preparatory school.”
    “Ironic, isn’t it,” I said. “We’re each in a particular place in our lives, wishing we were in the other’s place.”
    “I guess so. If your marriage is good, though, aside from your wife having that random quirk about your personal property, you might want to work on it. Doesn’t seem like something a devoted couple couldn’t accomplish.”
    After that we rode quietly for a long stretch as I thought about what he said. He had it right in that the marriage was good in nearly every other way. We get along very well, have a summer and a winter home. Money isn’t a problem, she has built a good business selling vintage fine and upper tier costume jewelry on the internet and in antique malls. I do well as a freelance sportswriter for major markets, both print and electronic media. We can work from anywhere. It’s a shame the bad part is something I simply can no longer endure.
    When I came out of my little highway trance, I said, “So tell me, James, are you on a dual mission with Felix?”
    He looked all around, including the back seat, his eyes searching.
    “Who’s James?”
    “You are.”
    “No I’m not. I’m Henry, like I told you.
    “Henry?”
    “Yes. You’re driving me to Fairlane where I’m meeting Harvey to go on a fishing trip.”
    Wow!
    “What’s Fairlane and who is Harvey?”
    “My estate in Dearborn, Michigan. And Harvey Firestone.”
    “Henry Ford?”
    “Yes. Harvey and I are meeting at Fairlane and quietly sneaking off to Lake-of-the-Woods, Canada for some pike and pickerel fishing. Taking the train over to Chicago and up to Duluth, then motoring the rest of the way.”
    “Firestone likes to fish?”
    “I think most people like to fish. Until a few years ago, myself, Harvey, Tom Edison, and our wives used to go camping every summer in the mountains—Adirondacks, Catskills, Blue Ridge—different mountains every year, did a lot of fishing then.”
    “Why’d you stop?”
    “It got to be too much of a circus. With equipment, food, and support staff we had a caravan of almost 40 vehicles, but after a few years more than that many followed us—newspaper reporters and magazine writers. Photographers. Newsreel people, too. It was ridiculous. So now I quietly sneak off with one friend at a time.”
    “Do you miss the camping trips?”
    “Very much. It was especially nice for my wife. I was always so busy running the company and making money that I probably didn’t devote as much time to Clara and Edsel as I should have, certainly not as much as I wish I had. You only get one shot at life and due to time your choices are really quite limited.”
    “I’m glad your marriage is working for you because mine sure isn’t working for me. My wife is a pain in the rear to live with.”
    “I’m sorry to hear that. What’s the problem?”
    “She wants to dictate what I have or don’t have, all for screwy reasons. Like one time when I bought some coffee house stock, she went and sold it because of the cups they used at Christmas that year.”
    “Women can be like that, men, too. Ten years after I started the company, Clara wanted me to unload it, said we would make a fortune and never have to work again. We came close to divorce that time, but then a couple years later when I wanted to buy the Shivelston Automobile Company and convert it to a Ford brand, she said I was too busy already with hardly any time for her as it was, and she’d leave if I followed through with my plans. I relented and have never been sorry.”
    It got quiet again as I attempted to figure this guy out. He was unique, to say the least, new ground for me. I didn’t know what to do.
    Finally, I asked, “So what’s Fairlane like? I bet it’s pretty nice, big mansion, lots of land?”
    “What’s Fairlane?”
    “Your estate in Michigan.”
    “Sir, my estate is a three foot diameter circle around where my feet happen to be planted at any given moment. Plus the rest of the world.”
    “So you’re no longer Henry?”
    “Of course I’m Henry. Who else would I be?”
    “Henry Ford?”
    “No, Henry Thoreau.”
    “Henry David Thoreau? The philosopher?”
    “That’s what some people think I am. Others say I’m a writer, naturalist, poet, essayist, or a number of less complimentary things. But what I really am, sir, is a lifelong consummate thief.”
    By now I was getting used to this.
    “Really?”
    “Absolutely. I steal apples, more than 5000 so far. I’m on an apple stealing caper right now, been searching out trees for three weeks. And let me tell you, if we pass an apple orchard, or especially a lone apple tree with fruit, if you don’t stop I’ll take those reins from your hands and halt these horses myself.”
    “Why stop for one tree?”
    “Because every one is a different variety. Or a new variety, and I want to taste all of them.”
    “What do you mean every one’s different?”
    “Apples require cross-pollination. Nearly all fruits do. If you have a Baldwin orchard you better plant some Pippins, or another variety, to pollinate them or you aren’t going to get very many apples.”
    “Ok. So?”
    “So the Baldwin tree pollinated by the Pippin will produce Baldwin apples. But the seeds of those apples will yield a completely different variety because they’re half Pippin. If a Sheep Nose had pollinated it, or a Rhode Island Greening, they would be different still. Theoretically, one Baldwin tree, or a tree of any other variety, could produce apples in one season whose seeds could grow 50 new kinds of apples, if there were 50 different kinds of apple trees around from which bees could gather pollen. Then the seeds of the apples those trees would produce...well, the possibilities are endless. And I aim to try every last one of those possibilities.”
    “What’s your wife say when you go off for weeks at a time hijacking apples?”
    “Sir, I have never married, nor even courted.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because to marry you have to court, and I’m afraid if I courted I would be tempted to lure my intended into marital liberties, and I would never want to debase a young lady like that. I did propose to Ellen Sewall once but did it by mail. She denied me. And to be truthful, my work is my wife, apples are my mistresses. I am fine by myself, even if I do suffer bouts of melancholy and despondency from time to time, maladies that do not seem to affect my married friends.”
    I didn’t know much about Thoreau but always thought he was a happy-go-lucky type of guy, that his search for Utopia was utopian in itself, as he did what he wanted to do.
    Long finished with my bag of trail mix, I uncapped a bottle of water, took a couple swallows while searching for what to say next to this fellow.
    Finally, I said, “They say Walden is selling quite well. Is that right?”
    “Walden?”
    “Your most famous book.”
    “Not my book. I wrote An Eye for an Eye, Marx vs. Tolstoy, and some others. Henry David Thoreau is the author of Walden.”
    “I’m sorry. I forget. You are...?”
    “Clarence Darrow. Are you sure you’re ok man? You’re taking me to Dayton, Tennessee to defend John Scopes for teaching Darwin’s Theory of Evolution.”
    “Oh, right. How do you think you will do?”
    “Between you and me, going to lose.”
    “Really? Why?”
    “The judge has let people know he’s going to have the defense present its case without the jury in the courtroom, then will rule on which parts of it the jury will be allowed to hear. Wouldn’t surprise me if he doesn’t allow any of it.”
    “Why would he do that?”
    “Like many people, he considers Darwin’s work blasphemous, that it goes against the Bible. It’s pretty hard, even for me, to win a case solely by cross-examining the prosecution’s witnesses.”
    “That’s too bad.”
    “It’s ok. I’m going to retire anyway after this trial, will probably take a case now and again but mainly want to enjoy my golden years with my wife, just the two of us. We’ve looked forward to itfor a long time. I love her like everything yet have caused her to suffer some over the years due to being preoccupied with my law career. I’m fortunate she stayed with me. When you get a good wife, son, by all means don’t let her go.”
    It went like that the rest of the way to Knoxville. I engaged in conversations with Robert Browning, Joe DiMaggio, and half a dozen others, including George Washington, who said the hardest part about the Revolution for him was being away from Martha for eight years. When we hit the Knoxville County line 007 reappeared.
    “Do you still want to be dropped off in Knoxville?” I asked.
    “Of course. Downtown at the Hyatt, if that’s ok, it’s just a mile off the highway. My lovely lady is waiting for me there, I can’t wait to see her.”
    As we pulled into the hotel I said, “I’ve been thinking about what we talked about earlier. You may be right, perhaps Jenny and I can work it out. Maybe we could get some marriage counseling. I’ve decided to turn around and give it another try.”
    “I’m glad to hear that, hope it works for you. Thank you for the ride, my good man, and the conversation.”
    “You’re welcome,” I said as he got out of the car.
    “Hey James, are you going to tell me about your lady. Is she a stunningly beautiful rich heiress, an exotic beauty queen, or a super-hot former opponent, maybe, from one of your adventures? Who exactly is she?”
    “A gentleman never kisses and tells, old boy.”
    “I promise I’ll never tell a soul. I’m dying to know.”
    He looked at me, smiled, winked, and as he closed the door said, “Moneypenny, who else?”

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