We emptied Clyde’s black Clipper of its spring-tension chromium crossbar; this supported half a store’s worth of sharkskin suits, iridescent shirts. Into our front-hall closet we loaded outfits that no self-respecting church-affiliated Christian of any race would wear. These threads were intended for handsome disintegrating men with gambling probs. The designer had laid odds that four colors on one shirt would snag the snake-eyes bookmaking interest of some railroad-hotel Romeo who preferred to always work the angles.

Soon as our Old and New Testaments (printed in one handy twin-pak) got spirited into the trunk of a highly waxed Bible-colored Packard, off we set.

Three miles into countryside, we began feeling relieved to be alone together and merely male. Dad and I were admittedly far simpler for that. Whatever Owner’s Manual had awarded each of us a stick shift seemed the Good Book, too. I’d sometimes say, “Man, I wouldn’t be a girl, not for a million buckaroos.” As if all women were my mopey sexy young mother. And, of course, to me, at six, they were.

Dad and I hit the far-flung motor courts of either Carolina. En route, we fought to overcome Mom’s higher-grade intelligence. We left it beneath a washcloth in their dark room; we’d abandoned her to the bedspread’s white chenille that cut Braille messages into Mom’s pretty pinkish neck. And once we sped six miles from town, Pop and I commenced to simplify and strip ourselves. Her moods always left upon our skins a sweetish smell; her sighs were clinging Persian cat hair you must shuck off all your darkest things. Each trip meant our efficient male jailbreak from her impossible female need to escape.

We soon grew wild with plain male speed. “Into the aiiiir, Junior Birdmen, Into the air upside dow-wnn,” we sang dumb songs I’ve not heard since.

We couldn’t really carry a tune, either of us. But that just made us louder and more male. Equally loud if hopelessly monotone, miles from her, we began to forgive each other.

Before front desks of many a motel, we did our Laurel-and-Hardy routines. I’d puff out my rosy cheeks, fluteplaying the air before my chest to mime Ollie’s fussed-with necktie. Clyde, a beanpole with huge hands and that bungled masklike head, became my immense overqualified Stan. He’d tug upward at his topknot of coarse hair; he’d give off dim Stanley’s weepy little pipings. And clerks dropped, laughing, literally dropped, behind their plywood check-in desks.

I now understand, the simple sight of us must’ve caused more merriment than our conscientious acting skills.—We never knew, until the end, just how we looked together.