I wanted to talk about the generals, who were saying "this shit is fucked" in the papers all week -- that was the gist, anyway. My friend wasn't having it. People like to talk about their personal problems. Nobody likes to talk about generals except journalists and gunheads. It's pretty hard to get the journalists going, really. In California, at least, they would go on a little, but everybody would go on a little there. In Birmingham it was tough, as taboo as time.

My friend had escaped before I got a chance to ask. The bar's clock was broken. Not a cell phone in sight. We are virtual Luddites down here, I say.

I walked. Guy in a mid-80s Cadillac offered me a ride on his way out of town to Montgomery. Which sounds like a joke, I know, that might end at a flea market that's just like a mini mall.

I said I oh-so wished he'd take me by the old clock tower in English Village in Mountain Brook, among the granola Republicans.

"Is there a clock tower out there?" he said.

"I think so," I said.

The Caddy was beat down, puffing smoke, the minute and hour hands on the busted dash clock poised just left of the 6 position. "Your clock don't work," I said.

"You want to know what time it is, brother?" he said.

Of course I did.

"Just turn around," he said. We were on the 280 interurban, as I often pretentiously called it, by then, headed due southeast. "On the skyscraper, man," he said.

The upper marquee topping the building at Morris and 19th I can't remember the name of. I'd forgotten. But it was blinking fucking Morse code or something equally incomprehensible.

"It's broke!" I hollered.

The dude got a clear lane ahead and craned his neck around and... "Shit," he muttered. "All right."

It wasn't far to the clock tower anyway, if there was a clock tower, just over the hill, the very next exit, even, around the zoo and the botanical gardens where the granola Republicans all sent their kids to get married.

In the floorboard of the old Caddy was a pair of dusty desert boots. "You in the army?" I said.

He just nodded.

"How do you keep up," I said.

"I don't know what that means," he said. He nodded slowly to some beat in his brain, I guess. "I keep the time just like anybody else," he said. "Just like your ass." Just out of reach, always behind or ahead, depending on how lucky you feel whatever day we're talking about.

"I got that shit right here," he said. He balled up his right fist and started howling laughter at my wide-eyed surprise. I was a little scared, I'll admit. "S'all right, man," he said. He mashed the brakes at the main corner in the village. "This is your stop. Go on and get out. Have a..." I slammed the door to the Caddy and he pulled away. The clock tower said two minutes to midnight, no fame in sight, just the Billy bar where the Young Republicans were meeting at that very moment -- the sign on the front said so: WE ARE IN HERE NOW, it said. Signed, YOUNG REPUBLICANS CHAPTER T__. I wanted to talk about the Iraq war. It was Sunday and I figured they might go for it. Don't ask me why. Or when. I don't know what time it was.

MORE BY TODD DILLS

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