Do you think you
could beat me up?
The Letter Parade
For the family and friends of Bonnie Jo
Summer 1992
Jackie and the Tracker She says she feels like an animal in a zoo. People honk their horns in greeting, but she rarely bothers to wave back. Jackie openly expresses her distaste for the bored housewives who come daily to rally in support of her. "Dumb bitches," she scoffs as they return to the parking lot to get into their Ford Tempos and Chevy Cavaliers. Food is free, but Jackie accepts only sandwich bags of ice cubes to supplement the crackers and carrot sticks brought by friends. She doesn't like the book she is reading, but she hesitates to ask for another one. Only rarely does she talk to the man sitting next to her, the man with whom she has spent every waking and sleeping moment of the last twelve days. All in all, Jackie Dillon is getting kind of cranky.
Jackie was a finalist in a drawing held by a local rock-and-roll radio station, WRKR, which made her eligible to win a Geo Tracker, a sort of small, Japanese jeep. With much fanfare, the four finalists were packed into the vehicle. The one who would remain in this "Geosphere" the longest would win the vehicle. The contestants get a ten-minute break every six hours, at which time they are allowed to get out and move around, go to the bathroom or wash up in buckets. The rest of the time, however, contestants remain in the Geo Tracker, sitting upright, seat-belted into position.
This particular vehicle is called the "Geosphere" to suggest an analogy with the Biosphere II, out in Arizona, where a handful of people sealed themselves and the necessary supplies into an airtight bubble. The Geosophere is like the Biosphere in that everything that goes into the Geo with the contestants, stays in the Geo. If Jackie's boyfriend John brings her a packet of crackers, the plastic wrapper stays with her in the jeep; if he brings her a book, it stays, whether she enjoys it or not. Each contestant holds a bag of belongings--a change of clothing, pens, books, tapes, a radio, whatever--and a bag of accumulated garbage. Those who accept the free food from McDonalds, provided in generous quantity, must accept the bag complete with napkins, paper wrappers, etc. No one except the disc jockeys on duty may hand the contestants anything, either while they are in the car or during the breaks.
This promotional gag is being hosted by one of our local car dealers, who is giving away the prize vehicle. The Geosphere sits under a canopy in front of the Denooyer Chevrolet/Geo dealership, in full view of everybody cruising by--thus the honking. The list of rules which contestants must follow is fairly strict: no smoking, no standing, no vomiting, no lewd behavior, no diapers, and no driving. Participants must enter the vehicle in clean clothes. Contestants will not be allowed to verbally or physically harass other participants in the vehicle. Every six hours, after the ten-minute break, the passengers rotate positions in the Tracker, clockwise.
"It's hot," says Jackie, fanning herself with a copy of the Weekly World News. "Bor-ing," both syllables drawn out, is her most frequent refrain; her favorite gesture is an exaggerated roll of the eyes, usually in response to people yelling from their cars. By the eighth day, the number of competitors had dropped from four to two. The first guy, an unemployed burger flipper, had only lasted a day; the second loser was a young unemployed mother who Jackie had told us kept committing minor infractions--she stood up after spilling her coke; she was careless with her personal garbage. Jackie says she knew from the beginning this gal was doomed to fail, and on the eighth day she woke up from a nap, nauseous from the ninety-five degree heat and late morning humidity, and she stumbled to the port-o-john to throw up, which is in clear violation of the rules. When those two left the competition, unfortunately, their garbage stayed in.
Jeff is Jackie's sole remaining competitor. Jeff weighs about 325 pounds and spends his time contented and zombie-like, staring straight ahead and listening through ear-phones to his Walkman. His ankles have swollen up to the size of muskmellons from inactivity. On break when he gets out of the car he can hardly move--he walks stiffly, as though his legs were made of wood. I was horrified to discover during one break, that after sitting sipping iced tea for six hours, Jeff does not even go to the bathroom, but just takes a few strides around vehicle and stretches. When I express sympathy for Jeff's huge, ugly fruit ankles, Jackie rolls her eyes, as if to say that Jeff has the wrong competitor if he expects to reap any advantage from such an obvious sympathy ploy.
For a while it seemed that Jeff was going to be a tragic figure. After six days in the car, Jeff's boss came to the Geo-site and informed Jeff that he was to return to work the next day, or else consider himself fired. Jeff informed his boss, on the WKFR airwaves, that he would, then, consider himself fired. At first I had thought it curious that the two unemployed contenders dropped out of the competition early, and that these people with jobs have stayed on. Jackie works at a gas supply house and ) stayed on; then then it occurred to me that if one can endure sitting in a small car with strangers for a week and a half, one can probably endure all the indignities and inconveniences of holding a steady job. Regarding Jeff's job, however, Jackie told us that the "firing" itself was actually a staged event, calculated to build sympathy for the big fellow. Needless to say, if it was gauged to impress Jackie, it was for naught. Jackie has told me that she thinks if she can just win this Tracker then she can sell it and get ahead moneywise for the first time in her life.
Jackie's ankles are looking slim and pretty. When she gets her ten minute break, she heads immediately to her personal chem-toilet (the one with her name on the door). When she returns, she smokes two cigarettes in succession as she jumps up and down and kicks her legs around. Then she rinses her hands and face in a bucket and combs her hair. Despite the fact that she hasn't seen a bathtub, shower or sink for two weeks, she looks pretty darned good. Her boyfriend John tells me not to say this to her, however, because she'll think I'm being sarcastic; she might get mad, throw something at me from the Tracker, and thus be disqualified.
Being in the Geosphere is probably something like being in prison and something like living in a submarine or a bathysphere. Except that, when you are in prison, or under the ocean, you are not roused at 2:15 a.m. by drunk people who got kicked out of bars and who are looking for more entertainment. These voyeurs are kept at a distance by ropes encircling the Geosphere. The ropes, along with the tent canopy, the buckets of water, and the flattened grass, lend the spectacle the aura of a carnival exhibit--like the site of world's smallest horse, largest pig, etc. The disc jockeys prevent the late night drunks from poking sticks at the Geospherians or throwing food at them. Jackie would probably really appreciate the beers they sometimes offer, but alcohol is against the rules.
On-lookers all ask the same questions. Jeff just stares ahead, disinterested, but Jackie still occasionally deigns to answer. How long have you been in there? How long are you going to stay in there? Do you get to go to the bathroom? Did Scotty "Bud" Melvin (a favorite morning disc jockey) really moon you guys on Friday? I try to find a silver lining to her cloud; I ask, "Don't you enjoy not having to do dishes?" She replies: "I don't do dishes anyway. John does them." "What do you miss?" I ask. Her house, she says, especially her shower.
On Wednesday, day twelve, southwestern Michigan is stricken with severe thunderstorm warnings and a tornado watch. The wind blows so hard that it pulls several tent stakes out of the ground. After reporting this, the radio station actually goes off the air due to a localized power failure, cutting us off from information about the fate of the Tracker Troupe. As branches crash around my house and the sky turns a tornado shade of gray-green, I become uncontrollably curious, and I brave the elements to drive out to the Chevrolet/Geo dealership to see what's going on. I find no tent, no Tracker, No Jackie. I wander around until someone directs me to a garage.
Apparently, the powers-that-be have decided to take the Geo and passengers inside the dealer's service garage, so Jackie and Jeff will spend the night indoors. It is a kind of disappointing to find them safe and under cover. I had looked forward to seeing them seat-belted in position, withstanding the sixty m.p.h. winds and the branches flying all around them. Jeff would be staring straight ahead, while Jackie sneered at the storm. Perhaps, then, the wind would have blown hard enough to sweep the Tracker into the air and suck it into the center of the tornado, where it would be spun around and whipped like Dorothy and Toto into an alternate universe, to the land of Oz or wherever. I ask Jackie what she thought about the prospect of being in a tornado. "That would have been interesting," she says, almost cheerfully, "A tornado. That would have really been something."
Epilogue: On day fourteen, Jackie was disqualified for smoking in the Geo. Well, she wasn't actually smoking. ("They just wanted to get this damned contest over with," she says.) The on-duty disc jockey said, "Ten seconds 'til break's over," and Jackie jumped into the jeep as she was pinching off the burning end of her cigarette in order to store the butt with her other garbage. So Jeff won the Tracker. As you might imagine, Jackie, who has just used up this year’s vacation from Amerigas Corp., is really pissed.
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