Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  Patrick. Patrick says, as long as we’re careful. Pete looks at me but he seems a long ways away. What do you think, mate? he says. You either come with us or you stay behind, it’s up to you. My voice, sounding like it’s coming from the end of a deep well, says, Well, I do kind of like Iran, Pete, but if it’s all the same with you, I’ll come along. I can’t even feel the ribs any more, I don’t even think they’re cracked, I think that doctor was cracked. Anything for a rial, you know. Hey, Rockstar, says Dave. That wasn’t electric Kool-Aid was it by any chance? Rockstar bays like a werewolf in heat. I thought so, says Dave, it did have that funny metallic taste. How many hits did you put in it? Rockstar says only three. You won’t be feeling no pain at all, Muck-hole, in an hour or two.

  Pete looks at Rockstar.

  You bloody idiot, he’ll be in great shape for the Afghani border. They’ll take one look at his eyes and bring out the bloodhounds, they’ll tear the seats to shit. Rockstar says sorry, Mr. Peter. Patrick says we could make him upchuck. Pete says nah, we’ll take our chances, and they spend the next few minutes moving me onto that cot of Suzie’s. Dave lets them. And when they’re through, he says, thanks, guys, but sorry, I really don’t trust you guys to get me down to the lobby in one piece, and he stands up, says, Praise the Lord, I believe I’ve been healed! Everyone looks real surprised. Pete says, you have a stronger constitution than I figured you for, mate. Dave says, thanks, Pete. And then Kelly and Dana and Suzie come into the room. They looked surprised too. Suzie says, bloody bugger, he’s been faking it all along, just so we’d wait on him hand and foot and carry his bedpan for him. Not so, says Dave. It’s just your basic miraculous recovery, that’s all. So what’s been happening since I’ve been out to lunch?

  Dave, of course, probably knew exactly what’d been happening. Maybe he asked the question for my sake, just to keep the act rolling.

  The upshot was that me getting the shit kicked out of me, along with all those corpses on the street, were the fined straws as far as Pete was concerned. He still hadn’t found the right radiator but what he did was take all the pepper shakers off the tables in the dining room and he poured them into the radiator, and I know it sounds like something out of Ripley’s but Pete said it works as a makeshift repair.

  Next thing that happens, everyone’s picking up suitcases and Dave picks up mine, follows everyone out. Kelly right beside him asking him if he feels alright. Just a little sore, says Dave.

  Outside it’s dark. East just beginning to turn pink. On the bus Dave heads for the back seat. Closes his eyes. Against the back of his eyelids I see that smashed phone booth. I’m somehow able to pick among the glass shards and pick up the receiver. I say, Dave. He says yeah? I say, we’ve got cracked ribs? Yeah, he says, and a mild concussion. I say, I want back behind the wheel. He says, you wouldn’t have enjoyed walking out to the bus and you won’t like riding on the back seat of a bus with cracked ribs, I’m doing this for your sake. I say, but I thought we had an arrangement. He says, you should thank me. He says, me, I like pain. He says, you don’t like pain, you won’t like it. I say, nah, I love pain. I’m a closet masochist. But I don’t like it in here. It’s like I’m a vegetable or something. Let me think about it, he says, and the line goes dead.

  And all there was was darkness and the sound of something being slammed, a distant hum of voices. But I couldn’t feel anything.

  I don’t know how long that goes on for. Couldn’t have been very long. I just lie back and accept it. It’s like I’m in jail except worse. There isn’t a God-damn thing I can do about anything. I never felt so helpless. But then I start to feel something happening. It’s an acid buzz coming on, I’d know the feeling anywhere.

  And suddenly I see something. First thing I see is Kelly, walking down the aisle towards me. Second thing I see is Dana right behind her. And then I realize that I’m not where I should be. I don’t have my head down on the seat with nothing to look at except the ceiling and the back of a seat and the bars on the tent cage. I’m up near the bus speaker, looking down. Looking down at my body. Isn’t that nice, says Dave. I ask him, scream at him, what the fuck have you done, which was maybe a wrong move, since Dave doesn’t like the F word much. He doesn’t answer me. But maybe it’s just that he’s busy opening up my baby browns so they can gaze up at Kelly’s brown-and-greens. You sure you’re feeling okay, she asks him, and he kind of half shakes, half nods my head, and says he’s fine, just needs some rest. Dana doesn’t say anything. She just kind of waves at Dave, or me, she has such a sweet, sad expression on her face, and she turns around and sits at one of the tables, and Kelly does the same, after squeezing my hand. Then Pete gets on the bus, and pretty soon we’re trucking through those dead Mashhad streets. One thing about where I was, I had a better view than Dave did. The only things moving are one or two tanks and trucks near some of the mosques and this one stray dog. About the time Pete hits the outskirts, Dave asks me, isn’t it nice to be literally high? Pete had the Some Girls tape on, turned up a tad louder than usual, maybe because Teach wasn’t on board. Sound was great. Seemed to breathe at me, just like the walls of the bus, the seats, everything. I finally tell Dave it’s okay, but if it’s all the same with him I’d like to get back inside my head and he said well, okay, in a little while, he just wanted to do some repairs while he had the chance, and I guess it’s somewhere near the Afghani border when I suddenly find myself back inside my head, and Dave says, see, you don’t have to worry about me, I listen to you, and don’t you feel lots better, and I say better than what? Better than you used to, he says, just after that chef took his boots to you. Those two or three seconds. I say yeah, maybe. But I’m lying. I still feel like I just got back from being the birthday girl at a porcupine orgy. But it was better than floating around near the ceiling. You never know what’s going to happen next when you float around near a ceiling.

  So, the next time, Dave says, when I ask you if it’s okay for me to take over, just let me, okay? I’ll try to find you a nice little apartment near your cerebellum where you’ll feel nice and cozy, okay? Just as long as you co-operate. I tell him I’ll think about it, and I hang up, but I don’t move, because when I move my chest hurts like hell and I can hear a crow flapping its wings somewhere near the back speaker.

  *a long wait at the Afghanistan border so your charges will lap up any information you may care to offer them about the country they are about to enter. You can tell them it’s a beautiful country, with beautiful spacious deserts, and the beautiful Hindu Kush, but if there’s any beautiful women, they’ll be hard-pressed to see them. Afghanistan hasn’t been Westernized like Turkey and Iran, and women in chadris will be everywhere. The women in the country are treated as second-class citizens and are far from ever being liberated. Be sure to advise against taking pictures of these women. The law of the land states clearly that the woman’s husband has every right to kill any such photographer. Invariably he will exercise such rights.

  2. Any display of skin is offensive to a die-hard Moslem. A woman who wears shorts or a short-sleeved blouse, or less, is asking for trouble and will certainly get it. This also goes for men—no shorts or going shirtless. An example of how Afghanis react to Western customs: a young couple were fined $400 U.S. for kissing in public. A braless woman in a see-through blouse could start a minor holy war.

  3. Afghanistan is notorious for its cheap drugs and its hippie colonies. There’ll probably be one or two people on the bus with spaced-out eyes who will be interested in knowing that 10 grams of hash costs between fifty cents and $3 U.S., depending on quality. A recent analysis of some hashish purchased in Kabul revealed it contained 45 % ground-up vinyl records. But also tell them things aren’t as free and easy as they used to be. The border crossing with Iran is particularly severe. When crossing this border, tell everyone to dress neady and conservatively, act politely, and, above all else, not to try and smuggle anything across. Anyone suspected of smuggling drugs will have their luggage thoroughly searched. The he
ms of their clothes will be let out, the heels of their shoes will be removed, their toothpaste will be squeezed out, their soap will be sliced through, their souvenirs will be destroyed. They will have to undergo a degrading body search. Most drug smugglers don’t stand a chance, mainly because the guy who sold them the drugs usually tips off the border cops and collects fat rewards.

  *The top portion of this page was torn off. — D.W.

  4. On entering Afghanistan it is important that the registration numbers of their cameras, tape recorders, etc. are listed in their passports. If not, it’s bye-bye, camera and tape deck. Border police have lots of relatives, with lots of birthdays.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Nov. 22

  We’re out of the frying pan & into Afghanistan. So far it’s been a 3 hr. wait. Pete gave us a little spiel, before we got to the border, about drugs & how Moslems don’t come much more puritanical than an Afghani Moslem. They have a medieval attitude to things remotely blasphemous & so we’re to keep our sexy flesh well covered & not take pictures of any Afghani females, lest we risk life & limb. Now we’re sitting at the end of a long line of buses, some painted with psychedelic swirls, gaudy silver ornaments on their hoods. Most are piled high with boxes of furs, no glass at all in their windows. Pete says that’s so they can easily stick a rifle out when they spot a tour bus. Though, he said, things should be a lot friendlier these days, since “the Russkies” were the backing behind the April coup. What April coup? First I heard of it, but D. said there was one. (D & C. & I celebrated our last night in Iran with a back massage session. S came in & spoiled the mood by rating our bodies on a scale of 1 to 10. She was more than kind & gave me a 7. Realistically, I’m a 4, tops, in bad lighting. But D. said she wished she had small boobs like mine, big ones can be a drag when you jog.) She said the coup made 3 paragraphs in Time around Mayday. It’s beginning to rain. M is still in bad shape, but sailing somewhere past Jupiter. Later. Just when we’d had enough of talking about where we were when J.F.K. died (S. said she was getting finger-fucked for the 1st time by a boy during recess when a friend of his came & told them both the news), Pete decided to take us on a tour of the customs building, specifically, we suspect, to show us the glass cases holding stuff smugglers have used to hide drugs. Everything from rusty mufflers to toothpaste tubes to suitcases to something that was labelled Doug Epstein’s stomach. Sick joke. It was likely a goat’s stomach. Wasn’t it?

  Oh, oh. A customs agent just got on board, took one look at Mick & hauled him inside.20

  Mick

  The phone rings and this time it’s Dave. He says to me, think poem. Think body stone, kidney stone, boulders. Then he said, they’re going to leave you behind, Mickers.

  It was a body stone alright. It didn’t take long to become aware of my body. That’s what Dave’s trying to say. It pretty well hurt everywhere. Every corpuscle screamed, and sang Beethoven. I could feel the cracked ribs pinching my tender flesh. I could feel the bruises turning as yellow and purple as prairie flowers. I could feel that black hole of pain in my tooth sucking in stars, and every one of those stars had points like razors. I could feel my bowels bulging, and it might have been gas because I hadn’t been eating a whole hell of a lot lately, but I couldn’t risk it being just a fart: I tried that once. Something I probably haven’t mentioned. It didn’t work. When Pete came along and told me he wanted the back seat and I’d have to make do somewhere else, I said well, okay, I’ll make a deal. You haul me to the nearest loo and you’ve got yourself a seat. He gave me one of the sickest grins I’ve ever seen outside of a movie. No deal, he said, and he hauled me off that seat by the scruff of my shirt and dropped me in another seat. My ribs did an accordion stomp, and I would’ve screamed but I pride myself on the fact that I don’t scream much. I really almost blew it when Pete dropped me in that seat. But I didn’t. Instead I just let everything settle. I let the ribs take their ounce of flesh and nibble on it. And while they were doing it, I felt my bowels getting set to explode. I admit it. I thought about just dropping my drawers and stationing my butt above Pete’s face.

  I didn’t do it.

  We still had a few miles to travel together.

  Instead I let out a croak.

  The only person who heard it was Patrick. Kelly didn’t. Dana didn’t. Patrick came back and asked me if anything was the matter. I told him everything was the matter, but none of it would matter unless I got to a can, pronto. He said I can understand the problem, from the reverse end of the spectrum, and with his help, I even managed to walk a little, which cheered me up some, since I thought my spine might have been broken, but just the same, the pain of moving like that, it was crazy, unless I’ve got a low threshold of pain, which is maybe why I’m having such a good time now when I’m doped up on drugs and there ain’t the kind of pain that I felt that day on the Afghani border when Patrick hauled me out to take a crap on some rocks, just a pile of rocks behind a shed, shit everywhere, and this one old bird who looked like a vulture when he looked my way, the beak he had, the way his shirttails hung down. I said thank you, Patrick, when he hauled me back on board the bus. He said, anytime, Mr. McPherson, I’m at your complete disposal. Him saying that, it didn’t really register completely till later.

  That was pain. I had to close my eyes.

  Why I opened them again, I was nudged. Opened them to this baboon face with a moustache. Yellow teeth. Telly Savalas eyes. He was holding something out towards me. It looked like a rabbit turd. But this face made it clear what it was. You like hash? it said. I said I love hash, Pedro. I was thinking body stone. Do like Kelly said. Make the pain interesting. Reached out for it. Pete’s voice came down like a sky full of lightning. Don’t even touch it, mate. Quiet lightning. I tried to find Pete’s face and found it somewhere near Cassiopeia but it was too late. Next thing I know I’m being hauled down a river of tears, rapids everywhere, me on a raft. The pain I felt, about ten minutes after that, when one of the customs agents looked at me, office had a dirt floor, all spaced out from pain, and decided I was a drug smuggler and had me hauled into a back room where one of them stripped me bare and another one looked through my clothes and another one gave me a rectal exam, free of charge, I don’t know. I vaguely remember telling Patrick he could have my soul, just haul me back out to the bus. Dave telling me, Look in your pocket, there’s pills. Dave saying, Aren’t you sorry?

  Kelly saying, You okay? Dana’s face melting to wax.

  Next thing I remember is waking up in Herat. Dave on the phone, he’s sighing, whispering, you let me take over. I say, like hell. He says you’re going to get to like Afghanistan lots, Mickers. It’ll be like you’re starring in your very own Peckinpah western, except the old footage will be reeling away twenty-four hours a day. That’s if you make it to twenty-four hours. He tells me not to worry, though, if I do let him take over. He’ll treat my body real well. A hell of a lot better than I ever treated it, he says. He says he’ll treat it like the temple the empress in Kelly’s heaven meant it to be, or is that Kali, he says, K-A-L-I? Whatever the hell that means. I open my eyes and it takes every ounce of strength I’ve got left to sit up but I sit up. Little pain twisters do wheelies all across my insides, I throw up.

  “Look,” says Charole. “It moves.”

  “Yeah,” says Kelly. “So it does.”

  I manage to squeeze out a few words, the gist of which is something along the lines of when does the bus pull out.

  “As soon as Frank shows up,” says Kelly.

  “When’s that?” I say.

  She says no one knows.

  I can see her sitting on the end of a bed, on the edge of deep bloody swamp mist.

  It maybe takes five minutes but I finally get across to her and Charole what I want them to do, and maybe it’s a couple minutes or an hour or so later, but Patrick and Rockstar show up and I tell them both that they can have my soul and even some of my cash if they’ll just haul me out to the can, and I don’t want to think about the next half
hour much, so I won’t, but by the time they lay me back on my bed, I’m doing my best to keep my brain pan on its back burner, which is when Dave says, you know, I never really realized how stubborn you were.