Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Mick

  I gargled raki all the way to Kusadasi, and since it would’ye been a crime to waste it, especially since it was Patrick’s raki, I swallowed the raki, and so maybe that’s why I don’t remember a whole hell of a lot about that trip to Kusadasi. I don’t know. Maybe Dave took over. He’s not saying. I remember we saw an awful lot of ruins and I remember a high cliff and Kelly in her one-piece swimsuit, Dana in her bikini and Rockstar standing at the top of the cliff, taking forever to dive. I remember my cannonball, and thinking there might be sharks or sharp spears of rock under the waters. I remember that salt water in my nose, like a sniff of burnt-out match.

  I remember drinking lots of funny sounding drinks at the camp cantina afterwards with Patrick while he wrote a daybook entry, and Suzie coming up to him afterwards and giving him shit because it wasn’t his turn, giving me shit because I still hadn’t got around to taking my turn. Don’t know why I didn’t. I guess writing something stupid in some book just wasn’t high on my list of priorities but Suzie really took that book seriously. Because, of course, she was hoping to win it in the raffle at the end of the trip.

  Don’t remember much else about Kusadasi. I’m fairly certain I didn’t make a fool of myself or anything. Dave says I didn’t, cross whoever’s heart, hope to die.

  But he says I should mention the bites. How nobody noticed them when we went swimming. How I was hoping to get a little sympathy from Kelly because my body was plastered with all these red, mean-looking splotches and how I thought about trying to switch bags with Rockstar but didn’t, because I’m just too nice a guy and so I slept on newspapers instead.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Nov. 6

  C. told me that D. told S. she was going to fuck Mick before the trip was over & there wasn’t anything he could do about it. C asked me how I felt about that. Told her I wasn’t sure. We’re in Kusadasi. There’s a high cliff above the Med. & after camp was set up, it was by some common acknowledgment that dreaded moment, bikini time. So we all line up at the top of the cliff like lambs at slaughter. First goes Mick, no hesitation, in a cannonball, & then C, turning heads with her most graceful of swan dives. Pat., then Pete, & then me, casually stepping off, fingers to my nose. The fall transcendental. The impact brutal reality. But after that the pleasure of floating on salt water, watching the sun bleed its last rays into the horizon before finally winking under with an emerald twinkle. Watching Rob up above, arms spread out, a black crucifix against the cobalt sky, starting to dive, fatally hesitant, finally letting go & coming down horizontal, bent at the hips like a jack-knife, which is what the water must have felt to his torso when he finally hit. His red face bobbing to the surface like an apple while Pat. chortled as only Pat. can. Then D arrives in a bikini that leaves little to the imagination & all the guys watch quietly, reverently. A double flip, touching toes. I wish I could remember what that emerald twinkle means. Everyone’s gone drinking to the camp cantina.

  Patrick’s daybook entry

  The 27rd Day of the Great Indian Trek

  Yea, though I drive through valleys of Death on four-ply radials, I shall fear no drink, however rank and spurious, and lo, what is this sceptre I see in front of me, full to its lip with a lethal looking liquid. Aye, yes, raki and portakal blended together until smooth, a Freddy Overlander, as Michael McPherson has dubbed it from his position of pronounced ostentation, i.e., quite deep in his cups. He has that most curvaceous of maidens, the lovely Lucille, in his lap and he’s singing rhapsodies to a hump-backed rooster and an old yellow dog between sips and gargles of Sir Freddy. Yea, voice and instrument are spinning tangos in the dust-laden air, they’re doing trampoline twirls on the rough-hewn timbre of this seaside shanty, while beer bottle angels high-kick their way across the bottles assembled behind the bar, their innocuous yet poisonous gleam but another epiphany on this afternoon when most of us swam in the soft and buoyant salt-sea waters and watched while that lion-hearted rogue, Herr Scheisskopf, prepared to dive. We watched, yes, and we waited. And waited. And waited. And so amused I’ve seldom been, and so let’s have another round, I agree completely, and it’s down the hatch with the germ-killer, dear ol’ Freddy, gargle, gargle, and here’s a toast to surprising holes everywhere, the fine and fetid caverns, dental and otherwise.

  Mick

  I think the next town down the road was Pamukkale. What the fuck happened at Pamukkale?

  Oh, yeah, that was Malaria Monday. Pete telling us if we aren’t taking our malaria tablets, we should be, and Monday was as good a day as any to take them, and I’d lost mine somewhere, so Kelly gave me some of hers. And the frozen waterfalls. Petrified rock, actually, but they looked frozen, especially near sunset when they kind of turn white.

  Sunset’s when we got there, and not a minute too soon. All day I had this fever. Think I got it from the bugs. Though it might’ve been a reaction to the malaria tablets.

  Our campground was at the top of the falls, and above town. It had a thermal pool, a big thermal pool, and my bites were so itchy that as soon as I got off the bus I shucked my shirt and jeans, and plumb forgot, as the old-timers say, that my gotch were all in my laundry Glad garbage bag. So I mooned the whole bus when I dived into the pool, which had an inch of gunge floating on top of it. Didn’t bother me. I’ve swum in some Saskatchewan sloughs that had three feet of algae floating in them.

  Funny thing was, though, no one seemed too upset, not even Teach. By this time on the bus, you had to do better than that if you wanted to shock anybody.

  Of course I had to wait until everybody else was busy putting up tents before I got out, and by that time Jenkins and Rockstar had our tent up, they were getting real quick at it.

  They were pounding in the last stake when I got there, about the same time that Dana ran past in a tight white T-shirt and shorts and sneakers.

  Rockstar let go with a wolf whistle that she ignored. “Wouldn’t you like to fuck something like that, huh, Jank-kins?” he said to Jenkins.

  Jenkins didn’t say anything. He pretty much did his best to ignore Rockstar and he did it better than anyone. It was like the guy wasn’t there.

  After I washed some clothes we sat around by the pool, watching Kelly and Charole swim. Me drinking raki, gargling, swallowing, while probing that hole in my tooth, I couldn’t get over how big it was. Jenkins and Rockstar drinking Trovas. Pete even joined us about the time we were talking about football. Him and a Heineken.

  Rockstar was trying to explain to us Aussie football rules mostly six point touchdowns and three point field goals and no stopping, no shoulder pads, was the impression I got, but that was boring, so me and Jenkins got nostalgic about the Saskatchewan Roughriders, about Ronnie Lancaster and George Reed. Turned out the last game he’d been to at Taylor Field was the last game I’d been at, before I left for Vancouver. Which was kind of funny. Synchronicity as Kelly calls it. A semi-final back in 1973 against B.C. The Roughies spotted the Lions a ten-point lead and then George Reed got into gear, scored a touchdown, Steve Molnar got two TDs and Charlie Collins got one and we ended up blowing the Lions away 33-13.

  I’ve never stopped cheering for the Roughies. Once a Roughie fan, always a Roughie fan, that’s what the old man would say.

  And then me and Jenkins talked about that game back in ’76 where Lancaster got injured but he limped back on the field in the last minute and threw a touchdown pass to Rhett Dawson to win it. Jenkins had heard the game on the radio.

  Pete just sat there listening to all this while staring at Charole in the water. Him and Rockstar both. And Jenkins.

  Me too, actually.

  You can’t find a much better combo than that. Talking football, knocking back raki, ogling women in bikinis.

  Yeah, so I’m a chauvinist. It’s in my genes.

  Charole was wearing a red bikini and she didn’t mind climbing out of the water every once in a while and walking around before diving back in.

  Kelly for her part stayed under water and just fl
oated, while watching us watch Charole. I think she was a little amused.

  Though every once in a while I caught her watching Charole as well.

  I can’t actually imagine anyone looking any sexier, though I haven’t seen Soon in a red bikini. But I’d like to.

  Pete finally got into the conversation and told us he saw a CFL game once in ’75 when he was in Canada, between the Argos and the Eskimos, and he thought the game was kind of slow compared to Aussie rules football, but he said that we should have a game of football, maybe using Aussie rules, if we ever happen to be in the same hotel as another tour bus, which should happen, he said, once we get into India. And then his voice kind of trailed away. He was looking at these two Turks who were walking towards us, on the road leading up from Pamukkale.

  They seemed to know Pete. They said hi and shook his hand and asked him how the trip was going.

  “Bloody poor,” said Pete. “Worst trip I’ve ever been on, thanks to this lot.”

  He pointed back at the three of us.

  Rockstar grinned like a monkey and chittered a bit. “Thank you, Mr. Peter, thank you.”

  The Turks thought this was hilarious.

  Anyway, they invited us all down to a party, and so Pete invited them to stay and have some of Suzie’s French toast, and they accepted. Which was a mistake on their part. Most of the toast was burnt.

  After supper we all walked down the hill with the Turks. Everybody, that is, except Tim and Teach, who were keeping more and more to themselves every day, and Dana, who got back from jogging just before supper, but didn’t bother having any, just went to her tent.

  For a good reason, as it turned out.

  I remember the walk down that hill real well. There was this thin quarter moon floating above us in a starlit sky and Jenkins started up this chant, Ron Lancaster, Ron Lancaster. Then I joined in, and then Rockstar and Pete added some bass, and Suzie and Kelly joined in, and Charole, and even the Turks picked up on it even though they didn’t know what the hell it meant. We were jabbing our fists at the moon, so maybe they thought it was English for the moon or stars.

  I’m sure it would’ve warmed the cockles of that dumpy little quarterback’s heart if he could’ve seen us all chanting his name as we walked down the hill in southern Turkey. It might’ve made up for how they blew the Grey Cup game, back in ’76. Then again, maybe not.

  As for the party, it wasn’t much. It was in a little plywood shack and the two Turks picked up some friends along the way and when we got to the shack, they shooed the Turkish women into the kitchen and shut the door, which got a comment out of Suzie.

  “Bloody hell, these guys are worse than Aussie men,” she said.

  We all sat on big cushions on the plywood floor and the Turks brought out the wine, a nice wine, Buzbag, ’78, and before too long they brought out these huge reefers right out of a Cheech and Chong movie. And they had a tape player and they put on the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever and Pete and Charole got up and did some heavy-duty jive dancing that had the Turks all clapping and grinning from ear to ear.

  Good vibes.

  Except the joints didn’t have much kick. Patrick said it probably wasn’t pot at all, just oregano. Which kind of pissed me off. I was in the mood for a buzz.

  But what really pissed me off was this little Turk with calf s eyes sitting on the other side of Kelly. He talked to her for something like half an hour, about painting, I think it was. Yeah, he brought out some lousy paintings for her to look at.

  And somehow or other this litde Turk managed to wheedle his hand into Kelly’s, which teed me off just a tad, and I accidentally stubbed one of those joints out on his right wrist while leaning over to look at some tapes. He let out a little howl and said something to me in Turkish.

  “Same to you, buddy,” I said.

  Kelly said, “Say you’re sorry, Mick.”

  I said, “Yeah, sorry, Pedro.” But that didn’t seem to matter, the Turk got upset and Pete told me I’d better leave, and so I did, after grabbing a bottle of wine. And Kelly came with me, which was real sweet of her.

  She said, “I was thinking it was time to leave anyhow. He’d just proposed marriage to me.”

  “Maybe he was your soul mate, you should’ve stuck around,” I said.

  She laughed. “He could’ve been but I have my doubts.” On the way back up the hill, Kelly told me why Dana had missed supper. According to Suzie, those jogging clothes Dana had worn had got some Turkish women working in a field incensed and they’d started throwing rocks at her. One hit her on the cheek. “Dana’s having a very bad trip,” said Kelly.

  “Everyone’s having a bad trip,” I said. “It’s your basic holiday in hell.”

  “Hmm,” she said. “Holiday in Hell. That would be a good title for a novel, wouldn’t it?”15

  I said yeah, I’ll have to write the novel some day.

  “Make sure you let me read it,” she said.

  I told her I would.

  We stopped talking for a while to save our breath for climbing, and we were taking turns sucking on the wine bottle when we hear this roar behind us and it turns out it’s three teenage snots out for a Monday night hoot on the old man’s tractor. They stop and offer us a ride in the rock pick-up they had fastened on back, and since me and Kelly are starting to feel just a tad tuckered out, that was a long steep hill, we say sure, and we get in.

  “Another adventure,” I say.

  The guys grin back at us and lift up their Trovas in salute and then the tractor’s in gear and I’ve been on some wild roller-coasters in my time, and the wildest one, the one out at the PNE in Vancouver, had nothing on that tractor barrelling up that hill.

  Yeah, it was a scary ride. But it’s scarier when we get to the top of the hill and we start yelling at them and pointing to where the turn-off to the campground is, and they just ignore us.

  They’re going way too fast for us to jump, not without getting ourselves hurt.

  Kelly and I look at each other. Then she shrugs.

  “Well,” she shouts, “let’s think of this as just another adventure on our holiday in hell.”

  I shout back: “They’re going to take us out into the country and rape us both. ’ ’ And then I knock the bottom off the wine bottle against the side of the rock pick-up.

  Kelly gives me a tired look and says, “Try not to be so paranoid.”

  I say, “I think you and me have two different ideas about what an adventure involves.”

  She just smiles. It was hard to talk because of the roar of the tractor.

  As it turns out all the guys want to do is show us their little thermal pool that was out on the edge of this two-camel town. It was in a little shack that was heated by coals. Pretty hot. These guys got down to their skivvies and jumped in, waved at us to do the same. They did look pretty friendly, actually. Just kids.

  Kelly looked at me and said, “I think they’re okay,” and she shucked her skirt.

  I looked over to the comer. There was a shovel there I could use if the sight of Kelly in a wet T-shirt made the kids go crazy. I had that wine bottle. And since my bites were itching, I stripped down to my gotch, and Kelly took one look at my bites and said what are those.

  “Love bites from some fans of mine,” I said, andjumped in.

  It turned out okay. They didn’t slice open my throat and gang rape Kelly. We got out of there alive. The water, actually, was nice and warm, and it took some of the sting out of my bites.

  On the way back to camp on the tractor the Turk kids sang songs for us and spent half their time looking back and grinning at Kelly.

  It was Kelly’s idea to go for a walk on the waterfall after the kids dropped us off. She said the tractor ride had woken her up.

  So we walked out onto the waterfall and we were quiet for a while and then she said, “It’s tough opening yourself up for someone.”

  I said, “Yeah, you got that one right. Once burned, twice shy.”

  She decided to sit
down and so I sat down too. That rock was rough on the butt. She gazed up at the moon. She said, “The first time I left myself wide open was back in high school. I had this friend named Roxanne and I guess I fell in love with her. We liked the same books, the same movies. We were the weird ones. The ones who didn’t gather in the washroom and giggle about boys. We used to brush out each other’s hair.”

  She looked at me and then stared down at the lights of Pamukkale.

  “Did you ever have a friend like that?” she said in a whisper.

  I thought of this guy I knew back in Miller High in Regina. Billie was his name. He started reading books about sex when he was fourteen, I think. He was the guy who told me about the clitoris. All the other guys talked about cunt and boobs. Billie talked about the clitoris and technique. We spent a lot of time driving down Albert in his old man’s Chrysler, talking about sex. Music, movies. He was a little like Patrick, actually. Maybe that’s why I liked Patrick.

  I said, “Yeah. But we never brushed out each other’s hair or anything.”

  Kelly looked away. “Where is he now? Any idea?”

  I said, “I think he’s in Calgary, making a lot of money on some government job. ”

  Kelly said, as if she hadn’t heard me, “One day Roxanne came up to me at lunch hour and said she was moving to Butte.” She let the thought trail away.

  She was sitting hunched up, looking cold. I didn’t say anything. When she spoke again, there was just the smallest of cracks in her voice.

  “The night she came to say goodbye, she didn’t come in. It was a warm summer evening and there was this screen door between us. And we just stood there laughing at each other, because we knew if we didn’t do that we’d cry. We couldn’t even say anything. And then suddenly she just turned around

  and ran off and that was the last I ever saw of her. My laughter turned to these loud sobs, just like that, it was like there was no difference. My mother had to come and lead me away____”