High Desert High

by Steven Schindler

  The temperature was down to 92 and at the top of this hill there was a round sign that read WELCOME TO YUCCA VALLEY. Paul was surprised how many businesses were on this stretch of road: motels, motorcycle shops, the Route 62 Café, antique stores, and several more feed stores. But like that last stretch of commercial properties, these were also separated by abandoned sheds, dilapidated homes, and dirt roads that led to other rocky hillsides. Most of the other vehicles on the road were huge pickups, 4x4’s, motorcycles, or steaming beaters held together with duct tape and spit. Even though just about every strip-mall franchise was represented, from Applebee’s to a Walmart Superstore, in between those cookie-cutter behemoths there were also businesses like Vern’s Auto Repairs (with a half a Model-T sticking out from the front of the roof, complete with its wheels spinning), Alexandra and Farquar’s Magic Crystals and Gold Mining Emporium, and Billy Bob’s Feed and Tack Store (with life-sized statues of a horse, a steer, and a sexy woman dressed in a traditional Dale Evans-style cowgirl outfit with a rigid lasso above her head). Plus, dirt bike repairs, a gun shop, and a pawnshop, so you knew that although civilization was creeping in, they still couldn’t smother the Wild West nature of this part of the world. Not yet anyway.

  After passing the Walmart Superstore and a Home Depot, there was a stretch of road with just sand and Joshua trees on both sides, then a sign that read WELCOME TO JOSHUA TREE. So apparently there was a town of Joshua Tree in addition to the national park. There were little strip malls, but mostly with mom-and-pop stores (a liquor store, a Chinese restaurant, a used book store) and then the landmark he had been looking for: A wooden sign, with non-professional lettering that read JOSHUA TREE INN, the motel where Gram Parsons breathed his last breath. He pulled over at the end of property and parked his car. His New Balance running shoes crunched sand and gravel as he walked across the parking lot to the office. In the window there was a black felt letter board behind glass with white interchangeable letters, like the kind you might see in the lobby of a funeral home listing which room held which deceased person. This one read WELCOME TO THE JOSHUA TREE INN, OFFICE HOURS 3PM-8PM, THE HOME OF GRAM PARSONS’ SPIRIT. Paul realized things were different here.

  Physically, the inn was really just a cinder block horseshoe-shaped motel, probably built in the Fifties, but it was easy to see this was no longer an ordinary desert motor lodge. The windows had dainty curtains, wind chimes hung off the porches, and artistic Mexican tiles accented walkways and walls. He meandered around back and saw an odd collection of empty bottles, dead flowers, and rocks around a 3 ft. by 3 ft. stone slab with SAFE AT HOME written on it. He knew it had to be a tribute to Gram, but he wasn’t sure exactly what it meant. He noticed there was a door gilded in gold; room number 8. That must be it. The room where he made his final transition from artist to legend.

  A young white dude in a hoodie and dreadlocks down to his waist came out of the room and approached him. Paul thought the guy must be sweating his ass off in this desert heat, but he didn’t seem to have a bead of sweat on his brow.

  “Can I help you?” the soft-spoken man asked politely.

  “Is that the room where Gram Parsons died?”

  “Yes, room 8. I guess you’ve never been here before?” he asked, reaching down to pick up an old trampled cigarette butt. “You can stay there tonight. The folks in there are checking out later on and we had a cancellation.”

  “Really? How far is the national park?”

  “About a mile up the road make a right, and it’s about ten minutes down the road. Stop in the visitor’s center for a pass and information.”

  “Yes, I’ll take it. How much?”

  “One twenty four a night.”

  “That’s a deal,” he said as the man led him to the office. “What’s this Safe at Home thing?”

  “That was out in the park where Gram’s body was burned at Cap Rock. It got a little out of control and the park was going to remove it and destroy it. We’re the custodians of it now.”

  “Cap Rock? Can I go there?”

  “Sure. It’s in the park. We have some maps.”

  They entered the office. Incense was burning from a Buddha’s belly, tapestries and artfully framed vintage posters of The Byrds, Gram Parsons, The Rolling Stones, The Eagles, Emmylou Harris, and Donovan were on the wall.

  “Did all these people stay here?”

  “Yeah pretty much and more. We try to downplay the current visitors. Here’s your key to room 8. How many nights?”

  “Do you need to know now?”

  “It gets booked fast.”

  “Let’s say two nights.”

  “Okay, and you can stay longer because of the cancellation.”

  “Great. Are there good hikes in the park?”

  “Mind blowing.”

  “Are there any bars within walking distance?”

  “The Joshua Tree Saloon is a about a mile that way,” the dreadlocked host said with a grin as he flicked his head east.

  “Thanks.”

  In any other motel, room number 8 would just be another small, cinder block walled room for tired truckers and low-budget hookers. But from the moment Paul opened the golden door he sensed something. Maybe it was the hippie-themed décor, the posters of vintage rock icons, and the pictures, drawings, and photos of Gram himself, or just being aware of its infamous backstory. He didn’t want to unpack his suitcase for just two nights, so he just placed it on the canvas straps of the folding suitcase holder next to the bathroom door.

  It was in the nineties in the middle of the afternoon, too hot for a hike in the desert park, so he decided he would do it first thing in the morning. He stopped at a café, Crossroads, and ordered a non-antibiotic, hormone-free, free-range buffalo burger, no sprouts, please. He wondered if the buffalo had been slaughtered or died of natural causes. It reminded him of the hippie health food restaurants that cropped up in the East Village back in the Eighties, like his favorite, Sightless in a Savage Land Sandwich Shoppe.

  Every worker and most of the patrons in Crossroads looked like they could be from central casting for a remake of Hair, which was strange since that was almost 50 years ago. But the vibe was more hippie than the current white bro hipsters who had taken over Manhattan and Brooklyn, which to Paul looked more like Hitler Youth with their shaved heads. Next door to Crossroads was a store stocked with rock climbing and camping gear that looked like it was made for pros climbing Everest. And listening to the multi-lingual conversations at nearby tables in Crossroads, he began to realize that this wasn’t just a mecca for hikers, campers, and rock climbers from SoCal, but from the entire world.

  The Joshua Tree National Park visitor center was teeming with tourists. He purchased a day pass for the next day, and some guides, maps, and brochures. Although he had been to the majestic mountains and forests of the Northeastern U.S., most of his time was spent drinking beer in a lodge and watching sports on television with several dozen of his closest friends. This was going to be something different for him. He was solo and he was going to let his feet and his mind do some wandering in a totally unfamiliar and alien environment. He had been exposed to every earthly terrain and type of body of water imaginable, except for the desert. This would be something entirely new.

  After leaving the visitor center Paul realized he was exhausted and headed back to his room for a quick nap. He kicked off his shoes, laid down on the cowboy and Indian bedspread, and before he could say three Hail Marys he was nodding off into dreamland. But each time he was ready to get some serious REM deep sleep, the sound of an acoustic guitar in the next room awakened him back to reality. It happened three times, but it was only 7 P.M. and he couldn’t in good conscience complain about somebody doing some tasty finger picking in their room on the other side of a cinder block wall at this totally acceptable time of day. He just waited until it stopped and then fell back to sleep again, until it happened a fourth time. Then he gave up trying to nap, and decided to see what a neighborhood bar was like in the mid
dle of the high desert. He put his shoes on, headed out the door, and paused to lock it. And just as he turned the key a Mexican cleaning lady exited the room next to his with her cart of cleaning supplies.

  “Hello, sir,” she said, her chubby cheeks smiling wide.

  “Hello, señorita,” Paul replied.

  Weird. He thought that was the room where the music was coming from. Perhaps it was the room on the other side. A less-than-a-mile walk would take only around 20 minutes at the most. He couldn’t imagine this gin mill would be anything like The Buckeye, back in the Bronx.

  The sun was setting fast and once in the twilight zone where day became night, he realized two crucial things about his walk. One: no street lights. And two: no sidewalks. Soon the mesh in his running shoes was letting all kinds of rocks and sand in, and cars and trucks were moving fast, really fast, just a few feet to his left. He wasn’t wearing light-colored clothing and probably the only thing that made him at all visible to the vehicles coming up fast behind him were the small reflective strips on the back of his shoes. Whenever a big rig blew by, it kicked up a tornado of dirt and debris that got in his eyes and mouth. He thought about the 100-year-old elevated trains that passed next to The Buckeye on Broadway and figured these trucks that went rumbling past would probably also become just an invisible part of the landscape that you eventually got used to as time wore on. But then again, an elevated train wasn’t about to come flying off the tracks and kill you. One of these big rigs easily could.

  He could see the bar in the distance, lit up like a Vegas casino with a floodlight and neon sign illuminating it, the only structure visible in the darkened desert town. The front of the bar was like something out of western: worn wood, hand-painted signs, and even swinging doors. In fact, it reminded Paul of a photo hanging on a wall inside of The Buckeye that showed what that Bronx bar looked like in the early 1900’s. The resemblance between it and the Joshua Tree Saloon was uncanny.

  He entered the bar and was hit with another familiar sensation: that smell of decades of beer, wine, and liquor infused into the walls, floors, and ceilings. There was a long bar on the right, with about a half-dozen folks, another half-dozen or so scattered at tables, two people throwing darts, and different baseball games on three TV sets. Paul took a seat at the corner of the bar, under the Dodger game, and put a twenty on the bar. At the other end, the bartender was talking to a young woman and noticed Paul.

  Like a lot of New York hipster bartenders he was twentysomething, white, bearded, tattooed, and had an earring. But unlike city hipsters, this guy had a rough-around-the-edges toughness; more like a biker than the guy behind the counter in a mid-town Manhattan Apple Store.

  “What can I get you?” he asked, placing a coaster in front of Paul.

  “You don’t have Guinness on tap, do you?”

  “No sir. Want to know the beers we got?”

  “Nah. Stoly on the rocks. Make it a double.”

  “No problem.”

  So far that was the only difference between here and the Bronx. No Guinness. And it only took two double doses of Stoly for the other revelations to kick in. He was alone, didn’t know where he was going, didn’t really know where he was, his ex-wife was dead, his daughter was no longer estranged but was still a stranger, he had no job, no friends, and no bookie. Paul wasn’t going to allow himself to be depressed. So the doubles kept coming, and with each trip down the bar to deliver his drinks he would ask the bartender questions that became more personal as the evening wore on: “Where do people work? What do people do? Did you grow up here? What’s the deal with the Gram Parsons room at the Joshua Tree Inn?”

  The bartender, Dwayne, was indeed a biker. He was also pretty wise for a young man. Unfortunately, as time and the Stolys wore on, Paul was drunk when he got to the important issues and could only remember three things by the time he left his tip on the bar: the Marine base in Twentynine Palms was important to the local economy, watch out for rattlesnakes in the dirt, and there’s weirdness in the high desert air.

  Paul had walked home from bars drunk thousands of times. His Bronx apartment was less than a half-hour walk from probably a dozen bars and five diners. There were times when he didn’t touch his car for the entire time he had days off, whether it was just a single day, or a two-week staycation. He loved to walk and didn’t think this under-the-influence trek would be much of a challenge.

  Exiting the bar put him in the bright glare of the lone floodlight that illuminated the entrance, but once he crossed the street the only lights visible in front of him were the scattered homes in the hills and the occasional cars whizzing past. It was hard enough not tripping on the relatively even Bronx sidewalks, but not having any sidewalk at all was a real challenge for an intoxicated stranger ‘round these parts. After a few hundred feet he recognized the lit sign of the Joshua Tree Inn, which gave him some relief. But it was still a good ten-minute walk away, bobbing weaving, and trying not to become road kill on Highway 62. Whenever possible he leaned against a signpost, but soon realized even that could be dangerous when he leaned against a tall object that turned out to be a gigantic cactus.

  “Ahh! My hand’s on fire!” he shouted into the darkness.

  He knew that removing the prickly spines would have to be a project for later-on that evening, and continued on his way. A big rig going way too fast swerved slightly into the shoulder of the road he was next to, and the draft from the truck almost sucked him into the street. But the motel was now only a few steps away. He gave a sigh of relief, paused, and felt something welling up inside him; he then puked into some tumbleweeds. Like a pro, after hurling, he barely missed a step and walked around the back of the motel to look for his room. The U-shaped patio was dark except for the single votive candle that sat among the empty bottles and dead flowers on the Gram SAFE AT HOME slab. He flashed on the many times when, as a kid in Catholic grammar school, he would light a candle for a dead relative in the vestibule of the church. He also flashed on his days as an altar boy when he was an acolyte, which meant he held the large candles at funeral masses as the priest sprinkled the coffin with holy water and the family members wept. A wave of dizziness suddenly enveloped his head as he struggled to focus his eyes, find his key, figure out where he was, Oh yeah, room 8, the gold door. He managed to get into his room, push the door closed, make it to the bed, and immediately fall into a drunken, deep, black-out sleep.”

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK.

  “Housekeeping.”

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

  “Housekeeping.”

  Paul shielded his eyes from the shards of morning sunlight slicing through the drapes right into his face.

  “No thanks. Not now. Come back later, please,” Paul mumbled from his bed, still trying to figure out where the hell he was and what was going on. He looked at the clock on the end table: 11:37 A.M.

  “Okay, thank you,” a female voice said from behind his door.

  KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK!

  “Shit,” Paul whispered. “What does she want now?” He got up from the bed, and looked in the bathroom mirror. “Christ, look at me,” he grumbled. He almost lost his balance as he opened the door. “Yeah, can you come back a little … oh, excuse me.”

  It wasn’t the cleaning lady this time. He thought maybe he was still dreaming and there was a vision, an apparition at his door. The sun was shining behind her, making it difficult to see facial features. But it was a woman, with wide, wild hair, spreading down like it was creating a pyramid, huge silver loops dangling from her ears, and a large medallion of silver and turquoise reaching down into her cleavage.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you. I’m Kate. I’m working the desk. Is everything all right?”

  Paul stepped across the threshold and was taken aback at the sight of this beautiful woman at his door. She could have been thirty-five, or maybe fifty-five. There was a serenity about her, even though she was obviously acting as security and checking on the drunken asshole in room number 8.

 
“Yes, um, everything is fine,” Paul stuttered as he collected his thoughts, trying to remember if he did anything stupid the night before. “Is there a problem?”

  “No. Can we step inside, please,” she asked politely.

  “Sure. Yes. It’s a little messy. I had kind of a rough night,” he said opening the door wider to let her step in. “You know, after a cross-country trip and all.”

  “A guest in a nearby room thought she heard some kind of disturbance in your room at about 4 A.M. But it was brief and she didn’t think it was an issue. She told me about it this morning, and I just wanted to double check.”

  “That’s very nice of you, but no. I don’t recall anything. But ah, I have been known to have nightmares,” Paul explained, knowing full well he had more than nightmares on a regular basis. In the world of alcoholics, it’s called the horrors; waking up screaming gibberish in the middle of the night and sometimes jumping out of bed, still asleep, and crashing into things.

  “That’s what we thought. Where did you come from?”

  “Oh geez. Let me think. Oh yeah, the Joshua Tree Saloon.”

  “No I mean, where are you traveling from? On your journey?”

  “My journey? Oh yeah, New York. City.” He was having trouble concentrating as his eyes and head began to clear and he could see that this woman was a special kind of beauty.

  Most real hippies had long disappeared from the New York scene. The Bernie Sanders/Occupy Wall Street/black lives matter/no GMO/climate change/alt whatever crowd certainly contains an element of hippie-ness, but it always seem to be tinged with an angry, demanding, hard edge. But back in the day, being a hippie was more about peace and love and mellowness, free love, and great live rock concerts. At least in Paul’s mind. Kate had that hippie vibe from the tip of her Birkenstocks to the top of her thick salt-and-pepper hair. Paul noticed an aroma. Could it be patchouli oil? And there was an earthy fragrance wafting around him as a warm desert breeze blew in from the open doorway. Was it incense, weed, witch hazel? It reminded him of when the great record stores in the Village like Bleecker Bobs and Second Hand Rose started selling rolling papers and would light incense to attract customers. Kind of like how throwing a piece of bacon on a bar grill gives drinkers an appetite. He hated having to breathe in incense while going through the rare record bins looking for Beatles, Stones, and Hendrix bootlegs, but Kate’s mixture of fragrances brought back a whirlwind of pleasant sensations.