VLVL2 (1): Chapter 1 Summary (a)

[Tim Strzechowski]

In an effort to save myself time and typing, I will defer to the inimitable Meg Larson, who summarized Chapter 1 during the first VLVL back in September, 1998:

Chapter 1:

Chapter opens with one Zoyd Wheeler waking up to a glorious 1984 summer morning.  Blue jays come bearing messages, which Zoyd "understood it to be another deep nudge from forces unseen" (3.8) and connected to the letter that comes with his disability check.  The letter informs Zoyd that he has less than a week to do "something publicly crazy" (3.11) or lose his benefit checks altogether.  A-and he's out of cigarettes.

Zoyd gets out of bed, and finds a note from his daughter, Prairie, telling him that he had an urgent call from Channel 86.  After a delicious breakfast (sans bananas) of Froot Loops and Nestle's Quik, and after finding some smoakable butts in the ashtray, Zoyd calls the station only to find out that he's been rescheduled--everyone will be at the Cucumber Lounge, while Zoyd will be up at the Log Jam in Del Norte.  After chastising the family pooch, Zoyd heads for the Vineland Mall, where, after smoking a half-joint, he stops at More is Less and buys a "party dress in a number of colors that would look good on television" ("Oh my my, oh hell yes, got to put on that party dress") (4.16-7).  He then stops at the Breez-Thru gas station, changes into his party dress, gasses up the truck and the chain saw.  He has a brief conversation with Prairie's friend, Slide, to whom he confesses that this year, Zoyd will not be jumping through the window but going to the Log Jam to "see what develops from there" (5.3).  Slide warns him that the Log Jam is not what Zoyd is expecting.  Zoyd gets on the road, following a convoy of Winnebagos and is met with some derision from other people on the road.

He gets to the Log Jam, to find that Slide was right, the bar had changed. Zoyd was expecting "some heavy-duty hombres, badasses, spend all day narrowly escaping death by tree" (5.5-6), but what he finds are "[d]angerous men with coarsened attitudes, especially toward death . . . perched on designer barstools, sipping kiwi mimosas" (5.33-5).  The once-famous country jukebox is now home to New Age and classical music, and upon entering the bar, he is promptly hit on by a logger in sunglasses, "a Turnbull & Asser shirt in some pastel plaid, three-figure-price-tag jeans by Mme. Gris, and apres-logging shoes of a subdued but incontestably blue  suede" (6.7-9). Zoyd whips out his "tailor-made lady's chain saw," (6.21) named Cheryl, and notices that there are no media in attendance.  He then converses with Buster the bartender, who explains the changes in the bar, because "since George Lucas and all his crew came and went there's been a real change of consciousness" (7.18-9).  Seems that parts of "Return of the  Jedi" (1983) were filmed in the area, but Buster says that "underneath, we're still just country fellas" (7.28), to which Zoyd remarks:  "From the looks of your parking lot, the country must be Germany" (7.29).  Buster then advises Zoyd to stick to a specialty, "your own basically being transfenestration" (7.34),  and then goes on about the consequences of changing horses in
mid-stream, so to speak.  Buster tells a patron, Lemay, that Zoyd is here on government business; Lemay calls him an undercover agent but Zoyd says he's just a nut case.  "Well . . . that sounds like interesting work too . . ." (8.20).


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