‘You mind if I have a beer?’ the girl said. Her nerves were beginning to go. They were driving so far away from town. She had to work in the morning. She knew he wouldn’t want to leave the party. She’d miss work, she’d be put back on probation, maybe this time she’d be fired.
He handed her a beer. She opened it, took a drink from it, and put it between her legs.
‘You’re not gonna pass out on me, are you?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s just one beer.’
‘You’re sure?’ he said.
‘I won’t.’
‘If you do, do it in the car so I don’t have to look everywhere for you.’
‘I won’t.’
He finished the half pint, threw it out the window, opened the fifth of whiskey, and took a drink off it. ‘You know, Johnny Cash never spent any real time in jail. He wrote all that shit about it and about Vietnam by reading books. He wrote books himself. Now that’s something.’ He turned on the flashlight again, glanced at the flyer, then looked at the mile markers passing them and told the girl the turnoff was just after the next marker. She slowed when she came upon it. She saw the road leading from the highway, and turned onto the dirt and gravel surface.
They were in the desert now with nothing around them. No buildings or stores or gas stations for miles. They drove for twenty minutes on the dirt road. The girl drank the beer and got another one. She almost started crying.
She wasn’t listening to him anymore. She just pictured them driving on a mountain road, in the middle of nowhere. She’d open the door, and without him even noticing, jump out. It didn’t matter to her if she fell off the cliff or rolled down a mountain or got hit by an oncoming car. Just the thought of jumping calmed her. The thought and the image of his tail lights slowly flickering and fading away and her body falling, crashing, and disappearing.
Chapter 9
Sitting Bull
‘There sure ain’t nothing out there,’ he told her as he looked out the window. ‘I wonder if any crazy old hermit ever lived out here? Or some old miner or hippie?’
‘Do you see the fires in the distance up there?’
‘Yeah,’ he said.
‘They look strange, don’t they?’
‘I guess.’
‘How many you think there are?’
‘Maybe seven,’ he said.
‘I got to work tomorrow,’ she said.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I don’t plan on being here all night.’
‘Okay,’ she said.
‘Just park before the first car. That way we can get out easy.’
As the fires came into focus they could see lines of cars in front of them, and she parked behind the first car she came to. He got out and put the whiskey in his coat pocket. She put two beers in her purse and he carried the rest.
There were dozens of cars lined up along the road, and they walked past them for almost a hundred yards before they came to the party. There was a band playing on a makeshift pallet stage. There was a fire going on each side of it. There were people around them, talking. They walked to where they could see the band playing.
The singer had his shirt off, and had tattoos covering his chest, arms, and neck. The music was fast and he was screaming as hard as he could while the rest of the band played. When the song ended, the thirty or so people watching cheered and screamed. People threw beer into the air and onto each other. There were kegs that sat near the stage and the people there were drunk, laughing and yelling. There were tents and separate fires in the distance that she could just make out.
A kid walked past them with blood coming down the side of his head. In one hand he was carrying a beer and in the other a bloody shirt. He was laughing, talking to a couple other kids as he passed.
‘Jesus,’ the girl said and moved closer to Jimmy. ‘Did you see that?’
‘What a fucking idiot.’
‘He should go to a doctor.’
‘He probably doesn’t feel a thing,’ Jimmy said and turned to her. ‘Stay here for a couple minutes. I’ll go look around and see if Warren’s here.’
‘Can I come with you?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to just stand here by myself.’
‘I’ll be back in a couple minutes. I’m gonna search the fires. You look around here where the band’s playing. Don’t worry, if you find them, tell them to stay here with you until I get back.’
He then turned and walked into the darkness. The band played another song. The girl opened her purse and took a beer from it. She lit a cigarette and began looking for their friends.
A trail of men passed her dressed in matching German military uniforms. One kid wore desert goggles and had a short black mustache. One had his hair completely shaved, and the other wore an old German army helmet. They were drunk and talking loudly. The band finished another song and the crowd cheered again.
She finished her beer and took the last can she had and opened it. She was beginning to feel drunk and her nerves eased. The band started another song and she saw her friend Nan Endrick in the distance walking towards her.
‘It’s hard to believe we’re out in the middle of nowhere,’ the girl said.
‘It was raining last year,’ Nan said. She was under five feet tall and must have gained fifty pounds in the last year. Her arms were tattooed, her hair was one step away from shaved and dyed black and blonde. She wore Levi cutoffs and a men’s undershirt.
‘It’s been going for three days straight. Are you staying the night?’
‘I have to go to work in the morning. Did Jimmy find you?’
‘He pointed to where you were. I didn’t think you’d make it.’
‘We weren’t sure we could.’
‘I’ll show you where we’re camped,’ she said and they walked down a trail to an old army-issue tent, where the three men – Warren Cooper, Jimmy, and Keith Henry – sat inside at a portable picnic table drinking beer, talking. The smell of speed mixed with the smell of beef stew cooking on a Coleman stove and filled the tent.
‘We’re all gonna take a walk to the canyon,’ Warren said when he saw the girls. He took a backpack that lay on the tent floor and filled it with bottles of beer. He put two flashlights in a side pocket. He turned off the camping stove, covered the stew, and shut off the lantern.
With the moon out and almost full, they didn’t use the flashlights, and Nan and the girl drifted behind while the three men disappeared in front of them.
‘He’s good looking,’ Nan said quietly.
‘Who?’
‘Keith.’
‘I don’t know—’
‘You never know anything when it comes to men,’ Nan said.
‘Maybe,’ the girl said.
The three men stopped and stood looking out over the canyon. There was a dry creek bed at the bottom and rough rock on the sides of it. The moon and the stars shone down on the sage brush with a pale blue light.
‘It’s the sort of place Sitting Bull might have relaxed at if he ever had to come down this far,’ Jimmy said and opened a beer. ‘He’d of probably sat back and smoked a pipe and thought things over. Tried to figure out what to do.’
‘He probably would have fucked some dirty squaw and then thrown her off the edge,’ Keith said.
‘Jesus,’ Warren said. ‘That’s an image.’
The two men laughed.
‘You’re an idiot,’ Jimmy said calmly. ‘Sitting Bull was a hero. He fought like a motherfucker. He didn’t want anything from us. Maybe guns, maybe he wanted them, but that was only ’cause he had to get them to beat us. If it weren’t for disease and guns, who knows what would have happened? He didn’t want to live on a reservation, live on shitty land with nothing to do but start drinking and wait for handouts. I got no problem with the Indians back then. It’s now that they’re all fucked up, and the government’s to blame as much as anything. But they have to quit drinking. That’s something. If they did that, they’d probably have most of it licked. Sitting Bull, he was nothing like you
think. He’s one of the great ones. His people believed in him. He didn’t want to integrate. He didn’t want his people to go to our church and be shit on or go to our schools and get laughed at. We should have cut off a state or two and let them be.’
‘I don’t give a shit about Indians,’ Keith said. ‘I don’t give a fuck what anybody says.’
Jimmy took a long drink from his beer and sat down.
‘I don’t mind Indians,’ Warren said.
‘You wouldn’t,’ Keith said and laughed.
They all looked out at the night, at the moon and the stars.
Jimmy leaned over to Warren.
‘You know the Indians,’ he said quietly, ‘they used to chase deer or buffalo or rabbits and herd them towards a cliff, and the animals would be so freaked out that they’d jump right off. They’d have other people from the tribe – the women and kids probably – below, and their job was to make sure that once the deer or rabbits or whatever landed that they were all dead. They’d have clubs with them. Then they’d clean them, tan the hides, and have a huge celebration that’d last for days.’
‘Jesus,’ Warren said, looking out over the canyon. ‘Can you imagine seeing that from below? All them buffalo diving off cliffs. Did they have horses? How’d they herd them off?’
‘I’m not sure how they did it, but they didn’t have horses for a long time, so I’d imagine in the beginning they did it without them somehow.’
‘The stupid fuckers didn’t have horses or much of anything before the white man,’ Keith said.
Jimmy threw his empty beer bottle as hard as he could down into the canyon and took a new one from Warren’s pack.
‘I don’t like wasting my time talking about Indians,’ Keith said.
‘Then don’t talk,’ Jimmy said. He was no longer able to sit still. His hands were twitching. ‘You shouldn’t be allowed to say a goddamn thing anyway.’
Chapter 10
T. J. Watson
She passed out sometime in the night and when she woke she turned her head towards a light, a lantern, and in a haze she saw Jimmy talking to a woman she didn’t recognize. He was saying things to her, but she couldn’t understand what, and then he began kissing the woman and his hand went up her leg. The girl closed her eyes and when she opened them again she was alone in the darkness of the tent.
She sat up, got herself together the best she could, found her purse and coat, and left. She went by the tents and passed the fires where people were still drinking and talking, and then by the empty stage, and finally passed the long row of parked cars, including Jimmy’s, and began walking faster. She’d have to hitchhike. She didn’t know if anyone drove that road at night, but she hoped she’d catch a ride before daylight. At least before the party broke and everyone left.
She stood alongside the two lane road for an hour, but only a single truck passed and it didn’t stop. Two cars had come down the gravel road from the party, leaving. When she saw the headlights from them, she laid down in the dirt behind sage brush and waited until they were gone.
Just after four o’clock in the morning, a tractor-trailer passed and saw her, then slowed and pulled over. She ran towards the cab as fast as she could and without hesitation got in, sat in the passenger seat, and shut the door.
‘I ain’t supposed to have riders,’ the old man who was the driver said. ‘I could get fired for it, but I ain’t about to let a girl sit out in the middle of the desert alone. My wife would have my hide if I did that.’ He was smoking a cigarette as he spoke, his face lit only by the dim dashboard lights. She guessed he was in his sixties. He was a big man who was overweight. The radio was playing and he was dressed in a white, short-sleeved western shirt and black jeans. He was balding and wore glasses with half-inch-thick lenses and steel rims.
‘You all right?’
‘Thanks for picking me up.’
‘My name is T.J. Watson. You can call me Tom if you want. What’s your name?’ He looked in the side mirror, put the truck into first, and started them back on the road.
‘Allison Johnson.’
‘If you don’t mind me asking, Allison, what in the hell are you doing all the way out here?’
‘I was at a party. There was a huge party in the desert.’
‘Didn’t feel like staying, huh?”
‘Not really,’ she said. She looked about the cab. It was warm. The seat was comfortable and there was the smell of cigarettes and coffee. He was listening to talk radio.
‘My boy used to go to parties in the mountains. We live outside Reno, me and my wife. He and I rebuilt a 1972 Ford pick up together. We used it for hunting and camping mostly. He used to take that thing up into the mountains and him and his friends would have parties. I suppose a lot like the party you were at. He’d bring up his chainsaw and cut up some old fallen trees and start a big fire. Probably drank beer and did who knows what. You want a splash of coffee?’
‘Okay,’ the girl said.
‘The thermos is next to you and there should be a clean cup behind your seat.’
She reached around the seat and found the cup, then opened the thermos and poured the coffee into it.
‘Do you need a refill?’ she asked timidly.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m almost through, and I’m so jittery I’m like a goddamn jack rabbit. Listen, I’m done at the Flying J. They give us a room there. I hope that will be far enough. You heading back to town?’
‘Yeah,’ she said.
‘There’s probably a bus or something. Probably catch a ride easy then. Or at least wait until it’s light so you can see what you’re getting into. It can be dangerous, hitchhiking. I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Especially a young girl,’ he said and fell silent.
‘Does your wife ever ride with you?’ she asked after awhile.
‘She used to all the time,’ he answered. ‘When she retired I got on as a long haul driver for a different company, and they didn’t mind me having a rider. She must have gone with me for five or six years. All over the country. We’ve seen most of the highlights. Then she got tired of it, so I got a job with a company out of Reno. That was maybe five years ago. I’m only away two, maybe three nights a week. But I’m retiring in a year anyway.’
‘Did she like driving around? I mean at first?’
‘I think so. We used to do crossword puzzles. She’d have a couple dictionaries on her lap and we’d do them from every local paper we found. We started listening to books on tape. She’d read novels to me. Westerns mostly. Zane Grey, Louis Lamour. I like a lot of things, but a good western is nice to drive to. That or mysteries. Mysteries pass the time pretty good.’
‘I think I’d like that. To see things from here.’
‘It ain’t a bad life. Better than being in an office or a warehouse or at a desk. It’s got its good points and bad points like anything else. I hate to pry, but my wife, she’ll be curious about you when I tell her I picked you up. She’ll want to know. You get in a fight with your boyfriend? Is that what got you stranded out here?’
‘Kind of,’ she said and took a drink of her coffee, and then suddenly was crying.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said in a broken voice.
‘There’s nothing wrong with crying. You’re young, you’ll be all right. I know that sounds like a bag of hot air to you right now, but it’s true.’
‘It doesn’t seem to help,’ she said.
The man laughed. ‘My wife would probably have something better to say.’
‘I hate when I cry in front of other people.’
She set the coffee mug between her legs and wiped her eyes.
‘There’s nothing wrong with crying,’ he said and paused. ‘My boy, the one I was telling you about – he and his girlfriend were driving home from camping out near Elko. It was maybe three in the afternoon and a driver crossed the median and ran into them. It killed everyone involved. On a Tuesday this happened. In early June. Not a cloud in the sky, the roads were fine. The lady that hit them was
alone in the car, and she had three kids at home. She was married and was a teacher for a high school. They say she just fell asleep. It wasn’t drinking, and she wasn’t on drugs. But her just falling asleep cost me my boy, cost her kids a mom, cost his girlfriend’s folks a daughter. Imagine that. All ’cause someone fell asleep. My poor wife could barely get out of bed after it happened. She didn’t want to go out on the road either, she just wanted to stay home. So I quit my long haul job and got this one. But I can’t even tell you how many nights I’ve sat in this cab and cried my eyes out. Out of the blue it’ll just hit me. Like a breeze or a cough. Just pops up and hits down on you like a hammer, and then you just start crying. Sometimes it gets to where I have to pull the truck over ’cause I can’t stop. I just have to close my eyes and lay down in the seats. Or if I’m on this route and I’m in the desert, sometimes I’ll just pull over and get out. I’ll put on my hiking boots and just start walking. I’m never gone that long, but I feel better when I get back.’
‘I’m sorry about your son.’
‘Thank you for saying so,’ he said. He tuned the station on the radio and turned it up.
‘I’m pregnant,’ the girl said finally.
‘No kidding?’ he said and coughed.
‘I am.’
‘How far are you along?’
‘Almost three months.’
‘The boy, your boyfriend, what’s he say?’
‘He doesn’t know.’
‘You think maybe you should tell him?’
‘He’s not a good person.’
The girl began crying again.
‘You got any family?’
‘My mom and my sister.’
‘They know?’
‘I haven’t told anyone.’
‘You’d be surprised by people sometimes. People understand a lot more than you give them credit for.’
‘Maybe,’ she said and looked out the window. ‘Does your wife like Reno?’
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