Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Dana looked at him. Patrick laughed. “Television?” said Dana, with this look of disbelief on her face.

  “Yeah,” said Jenkins. “The thing that has pictures in it. ‘I Love Lucy’ reruns. ‘Charlie’s Angels.’ ”

  He smiled at her. He knew he’d somehow put his foot in his mouth and he was trying to get it out.

  Dana just shook her head, and then she said, “All I know is that we’d have to be crazy to go through there. We can’t go through a civil war.”

  Well it sounded like fun to me. The trip needed a little excitement. I’d had enough of lazing around on beaches in the sunshine to last me a while. But I didn’t say anything.

  Rockstar did, though. He says, “Well, I think we should go through, it’s about time we had some bloody action on this trip, it’s getting bloody boring,” and then he lets out a stoned

  giggle·

  Suzie gives him a cross-eyed look and says, “You been smoking that bloody boo again, have ya?”

  Rockstar looks just a tad sheepish. I couldn’t believe it. Like Suzie was his mother or something. I knew there was something kinky about those two but I didn’t think it was anything like that.

  “Just a little toke or two,” says Rockstar.

  “Bloody doper,” says Suzie. “Got nothing better to do than fry your brains?”

  “One man’s ceiling,” says Kelly, “is another man’s floor.” “What does that mean?” says Suzie.

  Kelly says, seeming just a bit peeved about something, maybe the post-breakfast conversation, “I think it means different strokes for different folks. Something like that. You figure it out.”

  Then she gets up and leaves.

  Suzie gave us all a disgusted look and lit up a cigarette and then she asked me, “Aren’t you ever going to write in the daybook?”

  I thought about that for a minute and then I said, “Guess what, Suzie, you caught me at exactly the right moment. If you go get me the daybook, I’ll write in it. Right now. Right here. Scout’s honour. Cross my heart, spit to die.”

  “Go get it yourself,” says Suzie. “Who was your slave last year?”

  “I can’t tell that story here,” I said.

  But she finally went and got it, as I knew she would. Suzie probably had all her school yearbooks wrapped in plastic and tucked away some place.

  I borrowed a pen from Patrick and wrote a daybook entry while everyone watched.

  “This should be interesting,” said Dana, which bugged me. I hate pressure.

  When it was finished, Suzie said, “Read it out loud.”

  I said, “Nah.”

  Dana said please.

  And so I did.

  Some little beach town in Turkey, Wednesday or Thursday

  Dear Cocaine Katie,

  Well, Katie, you haven’t missed much by staying home and pruning the home-grown. Just some dysentery and burnt French toast and more rain than Vancouver sees in an average December. I’ve been eating food that knocks your fillings out and sleeping in sleeping bags infested with more lice than you’d find in the hair of a lobotomized chimp. And of course everyone on the bus has a runny nose which only makes me miss you more. I’m just hoping that when I get to India I’ll meet the guru of my dreams and she’ll tell me the secret of life and this will all make sense. But we might not even get to India. Don’t know if I should tell you this, Katie, but the Shah has pissed off the friendly neighborhood zealots in Iran by bringing in Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets, old Raquel Welch movies and Barry Manilow records and so they’ve taken to the streets and they’re burning Gulf and Exxon stations right and left. Some of the people are all for kicking back on the local beach and soaking up rays until this thing blows over, which means I might not make it back to your sweet boobs and soggy Kleenexes until 1992 and that just won’t do so I’ll put a fire under a certain butt or two and tell them when the going gets tough, the tough get hammered. All we need is a couple bottles of raki and we can truck.

  snorts and kisses, yer lovin’ Mickers Mick

  Nobody was too impressed by what I wrote. What I wrote was, well, Dave says not to worry about saying what I wrote. He says that the daybook will be published along with what I’m writing. I don’t know how that’s going to happen but he tells me not to worry about that either. Anyway. Suzie was ticked off about this line I wrote concerning her burnt French toast. Well, maybe it wasn’t burnt. Just crisp, but it was just a joke. People are so damn sensitive.

  But some people can’t take a joke, this is the one thing I’ve discovered in life. They’re so hung up on how other people perceive them that they get uptight and lose their sense of humour and their perspective on things. They don’t know how to laugh at themselves. Which makes it tough for guys like me. I think people are just hilarious. Even Rockstar. Here’s this guy who’s only got one testicle and he’s trying to make it through life the best he can, which means being stoned out of his gourd day in and day out, and he doesn’t have a due where he’s going or why. All he knows is that he’s leaving a murder rap behind him as fast as he can and he’s heading back home to a mother who used to stick his butt on a hot burner when he was being toilet trained and didn’t do it according to Hoyle. But just to break the ice, after I read my daybook entry, he says, “Hey, is today Malaria Monday?”

  Suzie says, “No, it’s Malaria Wednesday.”

  So Rockstar takes out his malaria tablets and a bottle of raki and knocks back about ten tablets with three or four gulps. Then he licks his chops and grins around at all of us. “I knew it was bloody Malaria something-or-other, ” he says.

  The only ones who laughed at this were me and Tim deLuca who’d showed up again out of nowhere. Teach tagging behind, stirring tea. Now Tim deLuca. That guy knew why we were all brought together on the bus, I can see that now. He had the situation cased.

  It’s the quiet ones. They’re the ones that know what’s going on. It’s because they watch and they listen. There was a kid like this back at Miller High. It was amazing the things he did in chem lab class. He made a stink bomb once and set it off in the girls shower room after a basketball game. He had me put it there. I was the one who caught shit. But I never told anyone who put me up to it, and he got me a date with Peggy dil-Schmidt, who was a cousin of his, and so actually it was his fault that I almost hung myself that summer when the old man and old lady went on the lam to Vancouver. But that’s a tangent, according to Dave. Can’t have tangents, he says. Don’t have the time. Tim deLuca, he says. Talk about Tim deLuca. Tim lets out that funny little laugh he has. Sounds like a squirrel choking on peanut butter. Rockstar swings his Gatling gun gaze in his direction.

  Immediately there’s this uncomfortable feeling in the air.

  None of us could ever think of anything to say to Tim. Except maybe Kelly and Patrick. Kelly would talk to him about the futility of wisdom without pain when you walk the Buddhist path and how important it is to let anger flow to the bowels where it can get let out with no one getting killed, all this from Dave, and I heard him talking to Patrick once about how life was just a dream dancing on the edge of consciousness, it was just the smell of baking bread and the whisper of angels from a fine-tuned flute.

  He seemed to be from some other planet. But he had our respect after what he did to Rockstar that day on the way to Kavalla.

  Kelly finally asks him what he thinks of this Iranian business. Tim says, “Looks like the jaw of the cold war monster has another cavity.” While he says this, he glances at me. Gives me, as all the best paperbacks put it, a rueful smile. “Hope it doesn’t rile the critter too much.” Rile. Funny word for him to use. Word Jenkins would use. His way of trying to make us feel comfortable, I guess, I don’t think he was mocking Jenkins or anything.

  Teach sips her tea and it looks like she’s about to say something in the silence that follows but Jenkins beats her to it.

  Jenkins says, “And you know, I told that damn monster to floss. But do you think he’d listen?” Tim laughs. We all laugh. Ev
en Rockstar. And the tension’s broken.

  Then Teach tells Tim she thinks it’s time they should do some laundry, and so Tim says see you all later and me and Kelly say yeah, she should as well and takes off too, sure, and Rockstar asks me if I’d like a toke, and I say well, why not?

  Me and Rockstar go down by the beach and we smoke the hash in that meerschaum pipe I bought in Istanbul. I wasn’t going to use it, in case some border agents gave me a hassle over it because of residue, but I found another one I liked better when we stopped for groceries somewhere, think it was Alanya. And this was good hash. Made the sunlight dancing on the Mediterranean look real nice. Pete had told us to make the most of the sea view because we’d be leaving it behind the next day.

  “So how’s things going with you and Suzie?” I asked Rockstar when the hash was finished.

  “They’re going okay,” says Rockstar. “She’s real nice to me in private. She just kids around when she calls me names. She doesn’t want other people to know she likes me.” He grins at me. “Because I like to wank people off, know what I mean?”

  Well, yeah, I got the point. And it was interesting, but I didn’t really believe it until I phoned up Dave and he said yeah, they were having sex on a regular basis, usually on a sleeping bag out on the beach when the stars came out.

  That night we had to put the tents away into some storage shed, which meant that everyone had to sleep under the stars.

  Tim and Teach weren’t too keen on the idea so Pete drove them into Silifke, to stay at some hotel, but the rest of us made do with the beach.

  Kelly had met this Turk who invited her to smoke some hash and Kelly told him she wasn’t interested, and he got a little belligerent and so she came looking for me, and the guy finally took off, but he’d worried her, and since Charole had gone somewhere with Pete with her sleeping bag, Kelly asked me if I’d like to sleep next to her that night.

  I said sure, no problem.

  We walked about a mile down the beach and laid out the bags and then we sat on them and stared up at the stars. It was a warm night. The stars sparkled like the speckles in green ice cream, like cat’s eyes at night.

  “I love the night sky,” said Kelly. “I should be an astronomer or something. ’ ’

  “There’s probably worse professions,” I said, and then we were quiet for a while. And then Kelly said look.

  I took a look. Just in time to see a falling star streak across the sky, not too far from the fat quarter moon.

  “And I love falling stars,” said Kelly. “Especially in August, when the Earth goes through the meteor belt. When Lucifer’s Tears fall.”

  “Lucifer’s Tears?” I said.

  “That’s what the meteors at that time of year are called. Some mystics believe the meteor belt is the remains of a planet and the tears fall to remind us of what can happen if a planet isn’t careful.”

  I didn’t say anything to that. It was my turn to say look. Another star fell, one that blazed for a long time before fading away.

  “That was a beautiful one,” said Kelly. “They say that thoughts beneath falling stars have a special power, and wishes can be fulfilled.” She looked at me. “You didn’t happen to have any particular thoughts just then, did you?”

  I thought about it. And then I said, “Well, as a matter of fact I did.”

  She looked back at the sky. “What was it?”

  “Sure you won’t mind if I tell you?” I said.

  “The odds are on your side,” she said.

  I said, “I was thinking about sucking your nipples very slowly for a long time.”

  Kelly looked at me. Didn’t say anything. And I was just about to say sorry when she pulled up her T-shirt and lay back on her sleeping bag.

  I hadn’t actually been thinking about doing it for a long time, I was just thinking about sucking her boobs slowly, but I’m glad I threw in that bit about a long time.

  At one point Kelly even pushed me onto my back and let her boobs hang above me, but I’m probably getting too free with the details here, so I’ll just say that Kelly put a stop to it when I got carried way and stuck three fingers inside the back of her jeans.

  “Time is relative,” she said, pulling away, “but I hope you feel your wish has been fulfilled.”

  “How about your wish?” I said.

  “I’ll give it time,” she said.

  This was quite the little game me and Kelly were playing. I liked it. It took me back to high school when life and sex were a hell of a lot simpler. Women didn’t start expecting things from you just because you happened to get involved in a heavy petting session with them.

  Those were the good old days.

  I had a dozen or so malaria nightmares that night and one of them was about Dave. At least I think it was Dave. This guy had red hair and a freckled face and looked a bit like me. We’re sitting in front of a Dairy Queen, me and Kelly in the back seat of the old man’s Buick and Dave in front, and we’re slurping on milkshakes when Dave turns around and starts hitting me on the head with a newspaper that turns into a snake, and when I wake up it’s dawn and I hear something hissing close by.

  Turns out it’s Patrick. Only about ten yards away. He’s got his glasses off and he’s taking a whiz. He had a humongous ugly. It hung halfway to his knees. I was going to tap Kelly on her shoulder, she had her back to me still, so she could see it too but I thought she might make a noise. But then Patrick glanced around and he didn’t even seem to see us. He must’ve been blind as a puppy in love without his glasses. He started stroking his wang and got an erection. Behind him the sun was just starting to come up. After a while he lay down and took it slow, and when he finally came, his jism caught a few sparkles of sunlight before it finally landed up near his throat.

  Patrick let out a pleasant little sigh. I almost laughed but I didn’t. Don’t know why. I guess it was because Patrick had had himself a good time and I didn’t want to spoil it. It’s just the kind of guy I am.

  Patrick was very careful slipping out of his gotch, and he cupped the jism against his chest so it wouldn’t run down. Then he trundled down to the beach and washed himself off in the surf. Splashing the water like a little five-year-old kid.

  “You just missed a real spectacle, Kelly,” I whispered, for no particular reason since I thought she was asleep. But I was wrong.

  “No, I didn’t,” she said. “And spectacle is right. It was beautiful.”

  Well, it wasn’t the word I would’ve used, and I was going to tell her so, but I clammed up because Patrick was coming back, a short and chubby little Greek god, all wet. He kind of stood for a moment with his hands on his belly, facing the sun. He was humming something, from a Mozart symphony, says Dave, while he put on his gotch. And then he took off back to camp. Kelly, she turns towards me and unzips her sleeping bag. Her glasses were in the sand above her head.

  And she says, “Suck me a little, okay?” and she lifts up her T-shirt.

  I say sure. I take her perfect pink left nipple in my mouth and suck it as gently as I can. Do it for a long time, before switching. And it’s Kelly who takes my hand and directs it down, while I make a mental note to make sure and pour Patrick a raki before the day is over.

  TURKEY Silifke—Urgup (first hotel stop)

  Day 27

  Departure: 8:00 a.m.

  Route: Tarsus—Nigde—Kaymakli—Nevsehir (438 km). Hotel: Buyiik, tel.: 60-61. Hot showers, clean restaurant, good dance show, bar.

  Points: 1. Nev§ehir is a cute little town with square stone houses, typical of the region. It’s situated on the main Konya-Kayseri Road and it’s dominated by a casde built by the Seljuk turks and restored by the Ottomans.

  2. Cappadocia is the area in the heart of the Anatolian Plateau, probably some of the most scenic landscape you’ll see on the trip, so make sure they’re all stocked up on film. Successive eruptions of the now extinct volcanoes, Erciyes Dag and Hasan Dag (sound like ice cream flavours, don’t they?) have left the plateau covered in
volcanic tuff (that’s what it says here; sounds sexy doesn’t it?). Thanks to oxidation and erosion, this soft rock has been transformed into cones, columns and canyons (not to mention the fairy chimneys, which are very suggestive of something or other, your main squeeze will tell you what) all of which are in a fashion model’s wild array of colour, everything from warm smoky reds to cool greens and greys. For a thousand years, Christians hewed from this rock their homes and chapels.

  3. The Goreme Valley is the main attraction of Cappadocia. It contains a large complex of churches, cells, communal rooms and monastic complexes, the likes of which cannot be found elsewhere, so you can tell them not to bother looking. Some of the niftier churches: Elmali Kilise (Church with the Apple); Barbara Kilise (Church of St. Barbara, patron St. of miners—or is that minors); Yilani Kilise (Church of Snakes). Most of the frescoes in these churches (most of which have been defaced by the naughty Moslems) date from the tenth and eleventh centuries.

  4. Urgtip is the major tourist centre of Cappadocia. Those caves in the cliff on the edge of town are called troglodyte dwellings. The town is famous for its onyx and there’s a pretty fair pizza joint 2 blocks down from the Bliyuk.

  Nov. 10

  Another first this morning, courtesy of Pat. who was in a self-indulgent mood. While all that was going on, we were missing a cat fight between Mary & Suzie over ashes in an omelet. On the bus, before leaving the sea behind, Pete gave us a collective reaming out. We have to pull together, there might be some nasty sailing ahead. He was right about the nasty sailing. Our windshield is now a mass of cracks, thanks to a well-aimed brick. Later. We’re in Kaymakli, a so-called city, actually a labyrinth of caves where ancient Christians hid from Moslems, made love, bore children, died. C said if we were smart we’d follow their example, D. said no way, caves have bats. But it brings up an interesting point. Μ & I went too far this morning. Are we going too far? Pete did bring up the possibility of turning back. Radio was tuned to the BBC at breakfast & things are getting worse in Iran instead of better. But so far the major consensus has been eat, drink & be merry, & ever eastward, even from T & M. Later. We’re stopped above the Goreme Valley. Phallus-shaped chimney rocks catch the late-setting sun. C hopes they have a positive influence on her malaria nightmares.