Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  “Somebody put it out of its misery, okay,” says Kelly.

  That’s what men are for, of course. To put things out of their misery. I go over and stomp on the cat’s head twice with the heel of my left sneaker, and then Pete comes over and says, “I want you to keep an eye on that dead cat, okay, mate?”

  I say sure, Pete, why.

  He says, “I don’t want any of the hotel cooks to grab it, that’s why.” Deadpan as a rusty old skillet.

  Another example of Pete’s great sense of humour.

  I say, “Sure, Pete, on one condition.”

  “What’s that?” he says, just a little irritated.

  “You give me a room with Kelly. That’s all, just me and Kelly.”

  He thought about it. Then he said sure, why not, you got it. “Just as long,” he says, “as you keep an eye on that cat until after din-din’s over. Fair enough?” he says, peering at me from behind those shades of his.

  “Fair enough,” I say.

  Nov. 30

  M. seems to think my heart hangs on yo-yo strings. That’s fine. If he needs a hand to hold, he can hold mine any time, Pat. talks too much. Here we are, he says, in the belly of the bus, so many Jonahs & Janes. Did you know, he says, that bowels were once considered the seat of compassion? Are you aware, he says, that I get quite a charge out of you, Miss Winter? About an hr. ago, during lunch at the bottom of the Khyber Pass, D. came up to me & said well, looks like the best woman won, as though we’re in some kind of contest. Khyber Pass cries out for a paint brush but I’ve started on something else: “Mosque in Red Mist.” Crimson lake, burnt sienna, vermilion, cadmium red, & Mars violet. C likes it already & it hasn’t even taken shape. She’s collecting proverbs on her cast. Spends all her time sticking a smooth stick down the cast, scratching. It’s like ecstasy, she says, when she finds the itch. We’re into another gorge. R is in the tent cage, staring at S. S is still reading The Women’s Room. This morning in the can she quoted from it as though it were the Bible. M’s got his eyes closed, his hand on my thigh. Pat. just walked by, looking wounded. Aren’t these gorges gorgeous? he says. What a brave smile. I could get to like being a callous woman. & the sun falls lower, the miles roll past. We’re an hour out of Peshawar.

  Mick

  I don’t want to say too much about what happened that night between me and Kelly. It was kind of a special night. We lit a candle and took off our clothes and sat on the bed and talked till midnight about everything that makes us tick. I told her about Dave and she talked about schizophrenia and how she saw it all the time in those autistic kids she worked with. So she took Dave in stride, didn’t laugh or run for the door. So next I mentioned open chakras and she said yeah, there was a yoga exercise that helps open them up and she showed me how to do it, it’s called a morning salutation, kind of a hamstring stretch, push-up, touch-your-toes combination and after we did twenty of those, we stared at that candle for half an hour and then I had the very best sex of my life and I’ll never forget it as long as I live, and Kelly said neither would she.

  Next morning me and Kelly went down for breakfast together and it was like we were an old married couple, it felt nice. We sat next to the window. Outside the day was bright and blue and we’re talking about Dylan’s Desire album, those great background vocals of Emmy Lou Harris, when Dana and Charole and Pete walk in and Pete comes over, says, “Anybody who wants to see Dara, be out in front in five minutes.”

  “And what, pray tell, is Dara, Mr. Cohen?” said Patrick, who was sitting right behind us, by himself.

  “You’ll have to wait and see,” said Pete.

  “It ain’t more ruins, is it, Pete?” I said. “If it’s more ruins, I think I’ll just stick around here.”

  “I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t want to do that, mate. This is your cup of chai.”

  “You wouldn’t lie to me, would you, Pete?” I said.

  He just looked at me. He looked tired.

  I waited until Dana got on the bus before I got on. She sat right up front. Me and Kelly sat back at the tables across the aisle from each other, Kelly’s idea. She wasn’t like Dana, she didn’t like to rub things in. I don’t like people who rub things in, unless, of course, it’s Soon. I lit up a Marley, first of the morning, I was trying to ration them out again, and after Pete hit this old snake track out northwest of town, he put Al Stewart in the tape deck and Kelly said, “So, any more malaria nightmares last night?”

  “Nope, not one,” I said. I could feel Rockstar in the tent cage, glowering at everyone. End of the trip was getting near, and everybody just seemed to be holding their breath, waiting for it to be over, that’s the feeling I got. Though I was starting to enjoy it, since my tooth had stopped hurting.

  “How about you?” I said.

  She said, “One or two, none serious.”

  After a while we got into a conversation about soul mates. Kelly had this idea I might be her soul mate.

  “Like I feel very maternal and protective of you. And understanding. Like a mother can forgive her son anything,

  that sort of thing. How does that make you feel?”

  “Let me think about it,” I said, and I looked out the window. We were getting back into the mountains, and Pete was slowing down to a stop. It was a border crossing. There was an Afghani with a carbine rifle standing outside of a little shack, an Afghani wolfhound lying next to him. Pete slid his window back and talked to the guy for a minute or two, and when we’re back on the road, Pete picks up his mike, and says, “That dog’s been trained to tear off bollocks if it even sniffs something that might be drugs or gun oil. Remember that, Rockstar.” Pete’s eyes behind shades in the mirror. And Rockstar says, yessir, Mr. Peter, and he pounds on the tent cage with a sneaker. Anything you say, Mr. Peter! and he grins all around like a monkey.

  I’m wondering just what the hell is waiting for us in Dara, but I’m wondering more about Rockstar’s state of mind and Kelly’s state of mind.

  Somehow I’m on the verge of just saying to Kelly, well, I don’t know, Kelly, I’m not too sure about this mystical maternal stuff, are you sure it ain’t time you had a kid? but Pete gets back on the blower and says something about how Dara belongs to the Pushtun and they were the first tribe to start taking pot-shots at Russians. So I don’t, and then we’re in Dara, which is basically six shacks with a bunch of tents on the outskirts.

  A bunch of little kids crowded around the bus when Pete parked in front of the Kohiwal Arms Store, which had a neat sign, the usual psychedelic Afghani scribble surrounding pictures of a rifle, pistol and two huge bullets. Pete yanked on the brake and a couple old men in long white shirts and baggy beige trousers (I had a bad case of beige-vu in Afghanistan) and those funny round brown felt hats came out, had a palaver with Pete while the kids all gawked at us. This town was all old men and kids.

  One of the old men led us behind the Kohiwal Gun Store where there were some more old men standing or sitting round tamping ammo into bullets, screwing on stocks with a machine that was somehow hooked up to a water contraption. Then he took us into one of the shacks and showed us piles of rifles and pistols and Khyber knives. I was real surprised when the old Afghani picked up something that looked like a Bic pen and went outside and had one of the kids put a can on a post and he shot it off. From a distance of five feet or so. Then he grinned at us. Weathered old geezer. Had a beak on him, like most Afghani men do, that made him look like a vulture except he did have a sad old twinkle in his eye, kind of like the one the old man used to get when he got into the Scotch.

  “Those are twenty-two calibre bullets,” said Pete, and then he said to Patrick, “Take as many pictures as you want, they won’t mind.”

  That’s all Patrick needed to hear. He snapped to it, while Rockstar picked up one of those pens—took a long look at it. He was maybe thinking back to the day we drove to Kabul, and how he almost got his throat punctured with one of those things.

  The next shack the old man led us to was full of hash
. Lots of hash. Chunks of hash the size of basketballs.

  “Pig heaven,” I said.

  Suzie said, “I don’t believe Pete brought us here.”

  Patrick put a flash on his camera.

  Charole said, “This will likely turn into a malaria nightmare any minute.”

  There was a little hole full of embers and coals in one corner with a brick on a grate.

  Pete pointed at me. “Wanna go first, mate?”

  The old Afghani had laid down that pen-rifle and picked up a bottle that had its bottom knocked off and he was peering around at us all. It was dark in there but his eyes were glinting in the shadows like a wolfs. But a nice wolfs.

  I said well, sure, and I got down on my knees like a good little devil’s acolyte and the old Afghani dropped a huge chunk of hash on the brick and this smoke mushroomed up at me and I sucked it in until I felt like there were rusty razor blades in my lungs and then I held it, but not for too long, and when I let it go, I looked down at those coals and they all seemed to be smiling.

  “So this is Dara,” I said.

  “Me next, Mr. Peter,” said Rockstar, and he got down on his knees, and after him everybody has a couple tokes, even Pete, which surprised me, but I was getting used to surprises.

  That was some hash. When I walk out into the sunlight afterward it feels like I’m walking through water. Everything is real quiet, until Patrick asks Dana to hold one of the rifles. Dana says why. Patrick says because he wants to take a picture. So she did.

  “Hmm, Miss December for Guns and Ammo, I calculate,” says Patrick as he takes the picture and it works, it gets a nice stoned smile from Dana.

  “Take a picture of me, Dr. Livingstone,” says Rockstar, coming out of the rifle hut. He has a Khyber knife in his mouth. He has a carbine rifle in one hand and a pistol in the other.

  Patrick’s only too happy to follow orders. This is the guy, he’ll say, who hung me over a wall in Dubrovnik, this to all his buddies back home as he shows them the picture.

  Then Patrick goes back into the shack and comes out with the biggest chunk of hash and he takes a picture of me holding it. Old men and the kids are standing around grinning at us. They’re having a good time. They don’t seem to care what we touch or what we do.

  And we’re having a good time too until Rockstar asks the old Afghani how much he wants for one of the Khyber knives. Things get just a tad quieter then but the old man doesn’t seem to mind, he’s up for a little bit of barter but Pete says, “No way, mate, can’t smuggle it across the border,” and Rockstar says sure he could and they get into a little jangle. Me, I head back into the hash shack and drop some more hash on the brick and soon pink octopussies are dancing across my eyeballs and then I see that pen-rifle the old Afghani had put down and I figure what the hell, it’ll make a great Christmas present some day and I stick it in my back pant pocket and when I walk back outside, I bump into this old Afghani. He swings his head and looks at me. He’s got one missing eye. His right eye. It’s black around the edges. Buzkashi, I say, but he doesn’t answer me. I stare into that hole, and it seems to go on forever. But there seems to be a light at the very back of it, like a train’s headlight in a tunnel, and I’m just staring at that, trying to find my tongue so I can say sorry, chief, and then he looks away and I look to where he’s looking, and I don’t see it at first but then I do, a little speck against the brown western mountains, and it’s getting closer, real slowly, and I stand there next to that old Afghani, just watching that speck grow, and then he says something to one of the little kids and the kid takes off to the tents. A little while after that all these women, some of them wearing black, all of them wearing their veils, start coming out of the tents one by one, or sometimes two or three of them. By this time just about everybody is looking off towards the west and it’s real quiet again.

  And one thing I notice is Rockstar slipping into the weapons shack while everyone’s looking away.

  Things get a little bit crazy when the guy leading the two mules finally gets into town. On the backs of the mules are two dead Afghanis and the women flutter around those mules and there’s a high keening sound somewhere that I can’t quite place. The old Afghani is talking to Pete and then Pete’s saying okay, everyone on the bus and as soon as we’re all on board, he pulls out, with everyone looking back at that knot of people surrounding the two mules. A real sad little scene. It’s one that really sticks out in my memory.

  When we get to the border, all Pete does is talk to the guy for maybe all of thirty seconds. The guy doesn’t get on board, he could probably care less about what we were smuggling across.

  Of course, I’m curious about what Rockstar had smuggled across the border, so I call up Dave.

  Nothing much, he says. Just a Khyber knife, one of those Bic pens and lots of .22 bullets.

  And I don’t know what made me do it. It was because I was stoned, I guess. Or Dave made me do it. Yeah, probably Dave made me do it, but all he’ll say about it is maybe.

  But I’m staring back at those mountains that look like witches’ hats and I’m looking at Patrick who has this black cloud kind of floating above his head and I get this vision of Rockstar slicing my throat open and so I go up and I sit next to Rockstar and I says to him, in a whisper, “Tell you what, Rockstar, if you give me three of those bullets you heisted off the Afghanis, I won’t tell Pete about the knife.”

  He just looks at me. It’s a look that would chill the heart of Sid Vicious.

  “How’d you know about that?” he says.

  “I’m psychic,” I tell him.

  He gives me the bullets. Which surprises me a bit.

  But it’s a bloody good thing he did, as it turned out.

  Dec. 1

  Today we drove to Dara, some kind of a refugee/fallback outpost/munitions & hash factory. Smoked too much hash. Saw some war dead brought in from the front, wherever the front is.

  On Seokanno Square

  outside the Park Hotel on Seokanno Square in Peshawar Pakistan a cat has been run over by hoof or cart or both

  its one good eye shames me finally into action of some sort I’m so good these days at farming out responsibility

  a male heel rubberized and Westernized

  comes down on the cat’s head twice and then a third time, and now only a leg is twitching

  Mick

  Rockstar went back to his nest in the tent cage and thought about what I’d done. Then he climbed back out, came and sat across from me, said, “Whatcha gonna do with them bullets, Muck-hole?”

  I said, “Bite on ’em when my tooth starts hurtin’.”

  He thought about that. Then: “You’re a bloody piker, Muck-hole. You wouldn’t fuck with me just to get them bullets for that. You got your own little ballpoint gun.”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  He gave me a long look. Then he said, “Why ain’t we buddies no more, Muckle?” I could see a look like wounded rabbits get, second day with their leg in a trap. Or maybe it was just the hash.

  “We are buddies, Rockstar,” I said. “It’s just that I’ve had a rough couple weeks and I ain’t been myself lately. ” He nodded his head. “Yeah, you been acting strange, Mick. You been getting too much pussy, that’s what can do it. People act strange when they get too much pussy.”

  “It ain’t that, Rockstar,” I said. “It’s too many drugs. All those drugs you were so generous with, without me even having to ask for them. You’re just too nice a guy, Rockstar, that’s your main problem.”

  I half-expected him to smile at that. But he didn’t. Instead he looked out the window at those Pakistani foothills. “No, Muckle,” he said. “That ain’t my main problem.” He looked back at me. “Know what my main problem is?”

  I said, “No, Rockstar, I don’t know what your main problem is.”

  He said, “Suzie. That’s my main problem.”

  “Why’s that, Rockstar?” I said.

  “Because of things she’s been saying about me,” he sa
id in a whisper. Even though Suzie was way up in the front seat, where she’d taken to sitting lately. And everyone knew it wasn’t because she had a crush on Pete, necessarily, or liked the view of the highway.

  I asked Rockstar what she’d been saying about him, not that it was any great mystery.

  “You know what I’m bloody talking about, Muckle.” Cold stare. “Don’t’cha?”

  I said I didn’t have a clue.

  “Don’t matter,” he said. “She told Dr. Livingstone, I Presume. That’s all that matters.”

  Then he went and climbed back into the tent cage. I went and sat with Kelly at the tables. She had that picture of Jenkins out and she was working on it, letting the bus’s motion do some of the work on the pink background. Neat idea.

  “That’s a great picture,” I said. “You should be famous.” I meant what I said. It was a great picture. Though it made Jenkins look just a little sadder than I remembered him. Except for that one night when he was telling me about how he felt about Charole. How he felt like dying because she hadn’t even said good morning to him that day, this was in Skopje, I think.

  Kelly looked up from what she was painting, smiled a stoned smile. “You’re a real sweetheart, Mick, you know that?”

  “Yeah, I know that,” I said.

  “Famous,” she said. Little laugh. “Wonder what it would be like to be famous.”

  Then she went back to her painting. She was in her own little space. I let her wander around in it by herself.

  When we got back, we went for a walk through the streets of Peshawar. This was around sunset. Peshawar had to be the dirtiest city on the trip, worse than §ivas or Erzurum. And the saddest. There were whole families living in holes in the walls. In front of these holes, sawhorses, sewing machines, blankets full of trinkets and scarves. Small holes, whole families, maybe ten by twelve feet.