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the ones who always stop at fleamarkets and yardsales, parking their damn dinosaurs nose-to-tail half
on the shoulder and half on the road, so you have to slow to a crawl in order to creep by. They are the
opposite of the motorcycle clubs you sometimes see on those same turnpikes and blue highways; the
Mild Angels instead of the wild ones.
They’re annoying as hell when they descend en masse on a rest area and fill up all the toilets, but
once their balky, road-stunned bowels finally work and you’re able to take a pew yourself, you put
them out of your mind, don’t you? They’re no more remarkable than a flock of birds on a telephone
wire or a herd of cows grazing in a field beside the road. Oh, you might wonder how they can afford to
fill those fuel-guzzling monstrosities (because they must be on comfy fixed incomes, how else could
they spend all their time driving around like they do), and you might puzzle over why anyone would
want to spend their golden years cruising all those endless American miles between Hoot and Holler,
but beyond that, you probably never spare them a thought.
And if you happen to be one of those unfortunate people who’s ever lost a kid—nothing left but a
bike in the vacant lot down the street, or a little cap lying in the bushes at the edge of a nearby stream
—you probably never thought of them. Why would you? No, it was probably some hobo. Or (worse to
consider, but horribly plausible) some sick fuck from your very own town, maybe your very own
neighborhood, maybe even your very own street, some sick killer pervo who’s very good at looking
normal and will go on looking normal until someone finds a clatter of bones in the guy’s basement or
buried in his backyard. You’d never think of the RV People, those midlife pensioners and cheery older
folks in their golf hats and sun visors with appliquéd flowers on them.
And mostly you’d be right. There are thousands of RV People, but by 2011 there was only one
Knot left in America: the True Knot. They liked moving around, and that was good, because they had
to. If they stayed in one place, they’d eventually attract attention, because they don’t age like other
people. Apron Annie or Dirty Phil (rube names Anne Lamont and Phil Caputo) might appear to grow
twenty years older overnight. The Little twins (Pea and Pod) might snap back from twenty-two to
twelve (or almost), the age at which they Turned, but their Turning was long ago. The only member
of the True who’s actually young is Andrea Steiner, now known as Snakebite Andi . . . and even she’s
not as young as she looks.
A tottery, grumpy old lady of eighty suddenly becomes sixty again. A leathery old gent of seventy
is able to put away his cane; the skin-tumors on his arms and face disappear.
Black-Eyed Susie loses her hitching limp.
Diesel Doug goes from half blind with cataracts to sharp-eyed, his bald spot magically gone. All at
once, hey presto, he’s forty-five again.
Steamhead Steve’s crooked back straightens. His wife, Baba the Red, ditches those uncomfortable
continence pants, puts on her rhinestone-studded Ariat boots, and says she wants to go out line
dancing.
Given time to observe such changes, people would wonder and people would talk. Eventually some
reporter would turn up, and the True Knot shied away from publicity the way vampires supposedly
shy away from sunlight.
But since they don’t live in one place (and when they stop for an extended period in one of their
company towns, they keep to themselves), they fit right in. Why not? They wear the same clothes as
the other RV People, they wear the same el cheapo sunglasses, they buy the same souvenir t-shirts and
consult the same AAA roadmaps. They put the same decals on their Bounders and ’Bagos, touting all
the peculiar places they’ve visited (I HELPED TRIM THE WORLD’S BIGGEST TREE IN
CHRISTMASLAND!), and you find yourself looking at the same bumper stickers while you’re stuck
behind them (OLD BUT NOT DEAD, SAVE MEDICARE, I’M A CONSERVATIVE AND I VOTE!!),
waiting for a chance to pass. They eat fried chicken from the Colonel and buy the occasional scratch