Stopping in a gas station at night
I have the top up on my 1976 Triumph Spitfire, plying a long, lonely road east through the night, back into Davies territory.
I make a record of my thoughts and findings into a convenient electronic gadget lying on the seat next to me.
Davies File: August 22, 2014
Not among the first colonists settling out of Britain, but soon after. Contrary to my first assumption, the Davies are not descended from the Scotch-Irish.
Turns out they are Welsh.
The Scotch-Irish are largely tall and stark-featured. In fighting they are quick-tempered, fearless, indignant, and fierce with a tendency to physically overawe due to their sudden and explosive rage. But they fight as a matter of course, not as a matter of evil.
Not so the Davies, whose strengths lie in completely different, and one might even say, opposite realms – mostly those of the mind. At their weakest, like Ned Davies, they are merely cunning and wily; even cowards.
The Davies have converged from several lines going back in records they’ve preserved from as far back as the 6th century – so says Ned. They say that other than the Welsh, they are closest related to the lost peoples of the Iberian Peninsula, having for their nearest living cognates the Basques. Indeed, if you look at their photos, these Davies might pass for a certain type of Spaniard. But more of a lower sort of Spaniard, something along the lines of Pariah Dravidian Untouchables in India as opposed to upper caste Aryans. They certainly wouldn’t have been conquistadors or bullfighters.
While there are undoubtedly tall Welshmen (think Thomas Jefferson), this particular strain are short and stout (think John Adams). The Davies share a uniformly short physical stature, wavy, though not curly, black hair tending toward white and wispy baldness in old age. High, slightly beveled cheeks – a typical Gaelic feature – but without forming the dramatic hollows, which is so common to the Scotch-Irish. Squatness of torso and wideness of hips, with bandy legs, causing them to hobble from side to side when they walk, even in their youth. With age the hobble turns into more of a pronounced two-sided limp. Speaking of old age, the look of a Davies gets more diabolical and overtly malice-filled with time. But they are also better able to disguise it as a power of their wisdom and magnanimity, acquired with age.
According to Ned Davies, during the American Revolution, the Davies were notorious British Loyalists, known for torturing to death captured American Patriots in the most abominable and unspeakable ways – flaying them alive, tearing their tongues out, their eyes, castration, then cutting them open and tearing out their organs, leaving only the lungs and heart, until they died, or hanging them by their own intestines.
Ned Davies told me all this. I have no other sources to corroborate his testimony, nor have I been able to. How do I know any of it’s true? I’ve read a lot, especially on the colonists and the American Revolution, and I’ve never run across anything like this. Scalping, sure, tar and feathering, burning alive – but according to Ned, to the Davies that was all kids’ play. Although I have read of Negroes slowly roasted over fires, with the Davies not directly implicated.
So I’ll chance the history isn’t verifiable. But the crimes are – all the murder and the carnage and the slaughter. A vast country wading in blood. How do I know it all isn’t just one man? Jeb Davies, Josh Davies, or any and all other Davies, even Ned (who claims to be from among the lesser Davies, supposedly thrown out of the clan)… what does it matter what name he gives himself? Jeb or Josh, a network of clans, it can all be the same Davies – not many, just one.
But that would make him capable of being many guises of the same evil, and in many places at the same time – throughout history. And responsible for all those… Yeah, but Stalin murdered countless millions, and there are other mass murdering psychopaths throughout history. Whether he’s Jeb or Josh, or even an entire clan, Davies still doesn’t hold a candle to them.
Unless he is also… them…
I cross the double yellow line and pull into a roadside filling station and kill the engine. Slowly, cautiously, out of the dilapidated convenience shack, a tall, hunching, lanky figure in paramilitary garb and a submachine gun he is fingering strapped across his back.
As he approaches closer, I see he has one of those goof faces, with a long, back-projecting head, stupid features and a caved-in chin. His teeth protrude forward and are in bad shape; they push out his upper lip, exaggerating the receding effect – a face in retreat. His camouflage top is open, revealing a beige-green undershirt stained with grime.
“Whatchya lookin’ for? What’s it you want?”
“Well, ah, if it’s possible, I’d like to get some gas.”
“Ga-ha… Take your hands off the wheel and put them on top of the door so’s I can see them, nice and slow, fingers spread… that’s right… you follow instructions good.”
“Do you want me to get out of the car? I mean, I can get out nice and slow, too, and I can maybe fill the tank with gas. I promise I’ll move nice and slow.”
“Nah, you jes set there for now and leave any fillin’ to me.”
He walks up to the car. “Say, this ain’t no MG Midget. It’s 1970s all right, but I can’t place the make. I know my cars. Dang! An’ I read all them magazines.”
“It’s a 1976 Triumph Spitfire 1500.”
“Woo-hoo! Well, I’ll be danged! An’ I had it right on the tip a my tongue. Dang! What else she got, mister?”
“Well, like Wikipedia says, at the time, ‘While the rest of the world saw 1500s with the compression ratio reduced to 8.0:1, the American market model was fitted with a single Zenith-Stromberg carburetor and a compression ratio reduced to 7.5:1 to allow it to run on lower octane unleaded fuel, and after adding a catalytic converter and exhaust gas re-circulating system, the engine only delivered 52 bhp (40 kW) with a fast 0-60 time of 14.3 seconds. The notable exception to this was the 1976 model year’ – which is the one you’re looking at right here – ‘where the compression ratio was RAISED to 9.1:1,’ making this baby one of a kind.”
“Hoo-wee! You sho’ got it, mister, you sho’ got it down! Dang! If that don’t beat all!”
He’s broken out in a huge idiot grin; he’s holding the back of his neck with one hand and bobbing his torso up and down is an expression of his ecstatic pleasure.
“An’ what color is she? That ain’t exactly black, is it?”
“At night it looks almost black, but it’s really a deep dark green, or a black-green, as I call it.”
“Like some kind a pretty green bug escapin’ from the frogs in the pond at night. Woo-hee… Whatchya got on the seat there? What’s that thing there; what’s in that envelope?”
“Oh, ah, this here’s my convenient little electronic gadget which I use to record my thoughts while I drive, and in the envelope I got some pictures of Jeb Davies. In fact, I’ve been recording my thoughts about him on my gadget – if you want, you can listen.”
“Jeb Davies! Whatchya got pictures a him for?!”
“Well, I’m doing some research.”
“Whatchya doin’ this searchin’ for?”
“To tell the story – of the great man, get the word out, spread the good news. It’s all been authorized. I’ve got all my reporting licenses, permits, cards…”
“Oh, uh, yeah… authorized, uh…”
He’s got the nozzle in the tank. He’s filling her up.
“Well, uh, why you ain’t got no gun.”
“Soldier, we can’t all carry guns. Some of us have to tell the story.”
“Oh, uh, yeah, yeah…” – the tank is full; he replaces the nozzle on the pump – “Say, so where ya headed now?”
“Back down that way – to where I can get more of the story. Here you go. Is my money still good around here?”
He looks at the portrait of Andrew Jackson, stares at it, like he’s trying to remember it, or comprehend a truth behind it that’s being kept just out of his reach, then he folds it in two and stuffs it in his back pants pocket. “Yeah, it’s still good.”
He keeps thinking and thinking, and then he says, “Say, listen, mister. If you drive down that way, they got a roadblock, might not let you through, least not so easy, that is.”
“What might they do?”
“Mister, they don’t know you from Adam, and it’s nighttime, and nothing good ever happens in the night. What they gonna do? Beat the hell out a you, or kill you – once you done one it ain’t that far to the other – and take your car; story or no story, reporter for Jeb Davies or not, see. So I’m just gonna call on down ahead and tell ‘em you’re comin’. They’ll check you out some, but then they’ll most likely jes let you get on your way without no extra fuss. You jes give ‘em this” – he scribbles something on a pad, a note of some sort, a signature, and tears the leaf from the pad. I look at it; it’s some kind of voucher or pass.
He continues:
“After you give ‘em that, tell ‘em as accurate as you can where it is you settin’ to go. They should write out one of these here tickets for you like the one I jes give you, and it goes like that, from checkpoint to checkpoint, until you get to where you wanna be.”
I take the slip, fold it once, and stick it in my front shirt pocket. “Well, I’m mighty obliged to you, soldier.”
“All right, then. You take care now, ya hear?”
I start the engine and put her in gear. As I roll back out onto the road, shining my high beams into the unknown and outer darkness, I turn to look back at the station. He is standing there looking at me.
John Smith, August 22, 2014