Zach hangs up. We quickly finish eating since we have several hours of driving ahead.
—C’mon, Zach. Time to make tracks.
—Where are we going?
—We need to hit Tulsa.
—Tulsa’s in Oklahoma will I get my own room again?
—You like that, don’t you?
—Yeah.
—Because it makes you feel grown-up?
—Yeah and oh Dad.
—What?
—Let’s not leave the camera.
We get onto I-44 West and drive for several miles, until I can no longer ignore that there is something dragging beneath the car and scraping the asphalt. I bang on the dashboard, which is the only way I know how to fix a car. It has no effect. I then naturally assume the worst, the high of the bungee jump replaced by the doom of disaster:
The underbelly of the minivan is hanging out like entrails. It is very broken. We are stranded in Oklahoma. We shall be stranded for several days with nothing to eat but a few old Cheetos that lodged in the front seat cushions.
We pull onto an exit ramp and find a place to stop. I get out and look under the car. I see a long piece of hard plastic that has wedged itself. I pull, and it comes loose with such ease there must be some punch line. Fixing the car couldn’t possibly be this easy, because nothing is ever this easy: my “repair” must have somehow punctured something, the muffler or the gas tank or the transmission wherever it is and whatever it does. I open the hood of the car and peer in, an exercise in meaninglessness since I don’t know where to start to look and wouldn’t know what to do even if I did know where to start to look. But back inside the van I find that the radio still works, so everything must be fine.
As far as I can tell, Zach has paid no attention. He has remained in the passenger seat, and it looked like he was talking to himself most of the time. But he has been watching with that unique style of his that is so deceptive, never letting on that he is the least bit interested. He offers summary judgment based on an ad for Staples:
—That was easy.
Around 10:00 P.M., we find a Best Western off a strip of overdeveloped highway near Tulsa. It is called the Trade Winds Central Inn. I like the name because it represents the eternal optimism of America, evoking beauty where there is none, trade winds where there are none, something where there is none: the name reminds me of housing developments called Piney Woods where there aren’t any pines or woods in sight. A club and restaurant called the Elephant Run are attached to the motel. No elephants; the name makes perfect sense. Black letters on a white sign offer AARP and corporate rates, none of which seem to attract much business. There is a gray refrigeration truck in the parking lot with a ladder hooked to the roof, catty-corner to a Ford Explorer. Behind the parking lot is a Shell station. Behind the Shell station is a restaurant called Johnnie’s. Behind Johnnie’s is a Circle J Mini Mart. Near the Circle J are two three-way lights for the highway.
America.
II
As we leave our rooms the next morning, we run through the mandatory checklist.
—We have everything, Zach?
—Yeah.
—Have your wallet?
—Yeah.
—Have your keys?
—Yeah and my phone.
—Good.
—You didn’t forget your camera did you Dad?
—You think I’m stupid, don’t you.
—Yeah.
He senses that he may have hurt my feelings. His fingers slide gently over my arm.
—I love you Dad.
—Who else do you love?
—I love everybody.
—What about the dog?
—I sometimes love the dog.
—You don’t even like the dog.
—Maybe.
We are hoping to make Odessa in West Texas by nightfall. It is the most brutal segment of the trip, six hundred miles of mostly sand and scrabble and dust bisected by two-lane tarmac like a strip of runway blackness. It is Zach’s idea to go to Odessa, a homecoming for him after nearly twenty years. He is aware that I wrote the book Friday Night Lights but unaware that I was threatened with bodily harm when it came out in 1990 because of unflattering depictions of racism and misplaced academic priorities where students leaned back and learned little, subsumed by high school football gone mad with crowds of twenty thousand and teenage kids subjected to unconscionable pressure in the name of winning a state championship. The animosity toward me finally lowered once Tim McGraw and Billy Bob Thornton came to town to shoot the film of the same name in 2003, and thousands of residents were invited to appear as extras. I became an afterthought. The Hollywood lights are always blinding, and Odessa officials had received assurance that the controversial themes of the book would be largely sidestepped. There is still a hard core who considers me vermin—a Yankee Jew who should have been denied a Texas visa. I don’t quite share the homecoming feeling.
Zach is desperate to see a family called the Chavezes, with whom we bonded when we lived in Odessa in 1988 and 1989. We’ve kept in touch with the family, but Zach hasn’t seen the patriarch, Tony, in nearly ten years.
—Remember eating dinner at the Striped Bass in Philly with Tony on November 16 1995 that Thursday?
—Zach, we’ve been through this. I don’t remember yesterday.
—I do.
We’re also going to see Boobie Miles in Odessa, the Great Black Hope running back I wrote about whose high school career ended with an injury before the season even started. He was the book’s essential character, a figure of tragedy because of his shattered dreams, scorned by the town of Odessa with epithets of “nigger” after he got hurt and no longer mattered on the football field. Because of the book, he achieved a fame so at odds with the desperations in his own life and only intensified by the 2004 film where celebrity re-occurred. I have been close with Boobie ever since the publication of the book, a relationship going on two decades. I have become a surrogate father and he has become a surrogate son. I have received hundreds of calls from him and in almost all of them I have heard the genuine pain in his voice—unable to hold a job, unable to pay the rent and the electric bill, in and out of jail for petty offenses for which he can’t afford minimal bail, hit in court with overdue support payments. There is love between us. But there is also the subtext that what he really wants from me is money, and I am only enabling his self-destruction.
III
As we drive through the sand and scrabble and dust, Zach’s memories of Odessa fill the minivan like the sudden appearance of ghosts.
He remembers going to Palo Duro Canyon in Amarillo when we first got there.
He remembers that our neighbors Billy and Bonnie had a dog named Rascal.
He remembers that they used to have us over to watch the Dallas Cowboys.
He remembers that he once helped Billy plant a tree.
He remembers that he had his first taste of Dr Pepper.
He remembers that Gerry and he took Spanish once a week with a woman named Virginia.
He remembers the Raindance Car Wash.
He remembers that the Chavezes had a dog named Lucky.
He remembers their house had a pool and a slide.
He remembers that my first book agent stayed at the Lexington Suites and bought black cowboy boots.
He remembers eating Frito pie.
He remembers Brian and Sandra.
He remembers visiting a nursing home called Seabury Center and visiting Mary and Olivia.
He remembers Ed Shugert and his wife, Mary, and going bowling.
He remembers Gerry and him taking swim lessons at the YMCA with a teacher named Gilbert.
He remembers going to the Carlsbad Caverns.
He remembers Gerry and him walking with their raincoats and boots on during a rainstorm.
He remembers all these things from when he was five.
I realize I have been wrong in thinking that Zach’s memory does not richly enhance his life. The rest of
us, when we ask how so-and-so is doing, don’t listen to the response. Our eyes furtively dart toward the hors d’oeuvre table as we hope that the hosts are not vegan zealots. It is ingrained social behavior to not listen. But Zach always listens, and because he remembers what he hears, his relationships are always fresh and current to him, able to pick up exactly where he left off even if it was twenty years ago. The passage of time is irrelevant, as if there has been no passage at all. The ability forges new hope that there will be something else in his life besides bagging groceries and stocking supplies. But the hope is still tempered, always the bittersweet.
—Hey, if you could be anything in life, what would you be?
—Like anything in life?
—What would you do?
—What would I do?
—Yes.
—I don’t know how to think of it.
He stares at the map of Texas he has bought.
—What about a reporter? You love gathering information.
—And Dad you should go to the law firm Christmas party with me.
He has abruptly changed the subject again, another reaction born of his own sorrow. He knows he will not be a reporter, just as he also knows that he would love to be one. He told me that once, but as he has gotten older he has let the possibility go, an indication of his maturation and his increasing grounding in reality. Like all of us, aspirations do die.
The Quiet sets in. I refuse to default to extended brooding over what my son will be, won’t be, should be, should not be, would be, will never be. The exhilaration of the bungee jump is still within me. I cannot forget his arms clutching me, needing me. Needing each other. Nor can I forget the liberation I felt, which occurred only because of his resilience in making me do something I never would have done without him. He stood firm even when I confronted him with the possibility that we would die. I did not mean it. At least partially.
—You’re fearless. Like a child in that way. Completely fearless. There was one ride we didn’t do because it was broken, the Superman ride. That would have been crazy.
—I would have been scared?
—Yeah, but you would have done it. We would have done it. We did the bungee jump together. I’ll never forget how beautiful that was. We were arm in arm. You wouldn’t let go of my arm, do you know that?
—If I let go I would have fell off?
—You would have flown.
IV
We pass by exits for Sapulpa, Oklahoma, home of the rockabilly duo the Collins Kids who played on Tex Ritter’s TV show in the 1950s, and a baseball player named Don Wallace who had one season with the Los Angeles Angels and hit .000 in six at-bats. We pass by the exit for Sand Springs, a Tulsa suburb that was occupied in 1826 by the Cherokee Indians during their forced march from their original southern homelands on the Trail of Tears.
It becomes noon and we have been driving for about three hours. We need to stop somewhere and break up the monotony of the day, not an easy thing in Oklahoma. I decide we should see the memorial to the 168 victims of the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995. I think it is important for Zach that he bear witness to at least one site of historic and social significance during the trip. When I ask him about the bombing, he knows nothing about it.
There are two walls of black granite, referred to as the Gates of Time, that stand at opposite ends of the memorial. The space in between runs the length of a football field. There is the Field of Empty Chairs symbolizing those who died. In the middle is a reflecting pool. The memorial has the feel of a modern outdoor church, the solemn power enhanced by its very understatement. It does what a memorial should do—push you to fill in the images of that beyond-tragic day, the falling building and the trapped children and the noble efforts of salt-of-the-earth volunteers who worked for hour upon hour to rescue survivors trapped in chunks of rubble.
We stand at the black granite of the first Gate of Time, which commemorates the exact moment of 9:01 when the bombing began. We move to the inside of the memorial to the Field of Empty Chairs, made of granite from the destroyed building. There is a short inscription, which I ask Zach to read aloud:
The field of empty chairs is to the 168 Americans who were killed April 19, 1995, on a Wednesday.
What Zach said is wrong. The inscription actually reads:
The field of empty chairs is to the 168 Americans who were killed April 19, 1995.
He has inserted “on a Wednesday” automatically.
—How do you know it was a Wednesday?
—I just figured it out in my head.
—Are you sure?
—Yeah it was I’m sure.
I later check.
It was a Wednesday.
Next, we pass the reflecting pool so still you could walk upon it without a dapple. I am taking pictures, embarrassed by the constant clicks, an affront to the sanctity of those who died. In the distance, I hear someone with a thick southern accent ask a park ranger, “How are those boys that tried the first attack on the World Trade Center being treated?” I keep taking pictures, the chairs to the fallen, the reflecting pool, the gate at the opposite end of the memorial commemorating the moment at 9:03 when the building fell. Zach musters every fiber to understand, but I can tell he doesn’t understand. Then his eye catches something.
—See the baby ducks Dad take pictures of the baby ducks!
A mother lies still in the grass with three offspring behind her in a zigzag. It is the lone moment of life in a place dedicated to the dead. Zach finds it.
We get back on the interstate. One of the highlights of Zach’s day is deciding what to have for lunch. He has settled on Mexican. We find a Taco Tico in Elgin. He squeals “yay!” when he sees it, then he points out the crucial differences between Taco Tico and Taco John’s.
—They have those places in Wisconsin Taco John’s my teacher Dave goes to Taco John’s but actually they make the tacos they put them on hamburger buns so they call them at Taco John’s Taco burgers.
I must remember that.
—How do you think this Taco Tico is?
—I bet it’s good trust me.
—Trust you?
—Yeah believe me.
Not a chance.
—I don’t think it’s open.
—No it’s open it says it.
—Then why is it so empty?
—I don’t know.
—It looks scary. We’re not gonna get killed in here, are we?
The interior is trimmed in green and beige, and the windows have been painted so you can’t see out. On one wall, a mural shows a red pepper shooting at something. A worker dressed in black with a headset leans over the counter as if she might fall dead from a working life immersed in fast-food tacos. The only other diners are a couple. The man has steely white hair flattened out like the Dead Sea. He shoots me a glance that says blue-state foreigners are not welcome. He looks like he could skin me from head to toe while eating his second Taco Tico. Zach has the chicken quesadillas and eats with gusto. I have the beef salad and probe for shrapnel.
V
We make the Texas line at 2:54 P.M. at Burkburnett County. The weather has turned, splotches of blue losing out to the encroaching clouds. Near the border, on our right, sits the hollowed-out socket of a wooden shack. Hard not to wonder what it once was used for—a bunkhouse for cowboys herding cattle, the world’s first 7-Eleven, a one-woman whorehouse. There are wheat fields on the left with gigantic rolled-up spindles and a clump of trees chattering in the breeze like shy schoolgirls and the rusted bones of an abandoned car. We have about 325 more miles of this before we reach Odessa, about seven hours.
—What do you think of Texas?
—Pretty good.
—Pretty good? Pretty ugly.
—Why?
—What is there? What do you see?
—Nothing.
—That’s Texas. Telephone poles and a lot of mesquite.
—And grass.
—A little grass.
> —Was it like this when we lived in Odessa?
—Even worse.
Zach falls asleep. The miles melt into one another on Texas 277, a dried-up gulch. Zach doesn’t sleep for very long. He is having terrible trouble sitting still, repositioning himself almost every second. He talks to himself until I look over and ask him what’s going on, and he stops with embarrassment. The two hundred proof of his purity and ability to find good even in wrenching tragedy has no outlet here: there are no baby ducks. But he keeps trying because he wants to please me and also show he is engaged.
—We’re passing a lot of interesting places.
—Like what?
—Seymour.
—Ever been there?
—Nooooo.
—What’s interesting about it?
—Um I think they are I think what’s interesting about these um places um ’cause I think um I think um what’s exciting about them is um because um they are in um they are um interesting um they have interesting names.
—Should we go see it?
—Never.
We stop at one of those gas stations that appear every hundred miles. The white of the clapboard has turned gray with remorseless windblown grit. An attendant comes out. He regards us with blank eyes, a surrender to the relentless terrain and so little to do in the bottomless canyons of time. Zach says he is reminded of Yellowstone.
—Why does this remind you of Yellowstone?
—’Cause you know like in Yellowstone there’s nothing there just that hotel and nothing to do there really and also we didn’t have anyone to see on that trip.
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