Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  And in the darkness I thought I heard Jenkins’s voice saying goodnight as well. But I think it was maybe Teach.

  from Kelly’s diary

  Dec. 21

  It’s the solstice. Venus is getting near my Pluto, I’m near the top of the world & I think I’m also near to a major decision. Last night I dreamed about walking the Firewalk but this time when I woke up there was such a feeling of exultation. Later. The rest of the day seemed surreal, crowded together on a two by four in a cramped van under a forest of armpits trying to keep bodies steady, all that BO mingled together with a stench of vomit. Good environment for Tim & Mary to tell me about cleansing the body & spirit with Tim throwing around jargon just to see if he can discombobulate Pat., who let out 1 or 2 soft snorts of derision throughout the ride, but refused to bite. The trip was through a limbo. When we got to Nagarkot it was a different world, a new world. My ears popped. Pat.’s eyes bulged. It was beautiful. You could feel the energy pulsating from the mountains. I felt light-headed, high, a natural high, & I felt like I recognized the place, like I’d been here before. Even the young & handsome—perhaps he’s 12—Mr. Vanier, amateur host, guide & dope dealer, looked somehow familiar. Tomorrow morning he will take us up to the lookout point & from there he will lead Tim & Mary, & me, to Yasodhara, where I’ll shed a skin & purify this polluted soul & body for 6 months, & from there, on to Sri Lanka. C isn’t pleased. But that’s too bad. It’s my life.*

  Dave says deadline’s looming. It’s three in the morning. Give me one for my baby and one more for the road. Candle’s out I’ve got the lights on. Guy next door with cancer left yesterday no way he could get better, Soon said, he was goners so he was going to go to his sister’s wedding.

  The gum and the ribs woke me that morning we saw dawn over Everest. When I opened my eyes first thing I saw was Kelly by candlelight, writing. I reached into my pant pockets for those pills of Charole’s, only two Tylenol left. Knocked them back. Kelly glanced at me then looked back at the page she was writing. Look said you’re ancient history who are you anyway? That hurt.

  It was still dark when Mr. Vanier came knocking. He had a thermos of coffee for us and we sipped it as we stood out by the road waiting. Chilly as a Davie St. hooker’s heart, and then we saw it, far below us in the dark, a pair of headlights doing a slow crawl up the snake-spine road. Took half an hour for it to get to us and by that time the sky to the east was just beginning to turn grey. Inside the van a young Nepalese behind the wheel, an old Sherpa farmer in back. A couple of tourists, New Yorkers, they said, came running, cameras flapping, at the last minute. They said New Yorkers in a way that made me think they expected us to get down on our knees, scrape and bow. Picked up a couple more farmers on the way up to the summit. Picked them up and let them off.

  The sky was turning rabbit-nose pink when we got out of the van at the summit. Patrick snapped the cap off his Canon. Below, valleys full of marshmallow clouds and as the sun peeked over the range to the east of us, those clouds began to rise towards us as though they were on puppet strings and as they rose they changed colours, it was like I was on some great microdot. That’s what high altitude can do to you. There were Peckinpah pinks and mellow Jello yellows and cherry meringue violets and scavenger lavenders, and as for the sun, it looked like the perfect balloon as it paused for just a second on what might have been Mt. Everest though Tim deLuca said it wasn’t, Mt. Everest was the peak that seemed shorter than the rest, two peaks to the left of the sun. Patrick said was it Jimmy Connors who said, in ’74, that there’s no view quite like the view from the top? Well, if he did say it, Connors had it down. Big old orb, big old eye in the sky, and those mountains. Nothing quite like it. Best sunrise I’ve ever seen. Makes me wish I’d live to see tomorrow’s sunrise, just to see what it’s like. But then the spectacle was over. The sun drifted further up into the sky, you could see it moving almost, and the clouds just kind of burned away and then Kelly was talking to Charole. She’d been writing something in her diary and she handed that to Charole. Gave her a hug. She came and gave me a hug too, though her eyes seemed far away. Her glasses had misted up some. Take care of yourself, she said. I told her I would. And that was it. She went and gave Patrick a hug, an even shorter hug than the one she gave me. Tim and Teach gave Charole a hug and Teach said why don’t you come with us, which was just a tad late, I thought, and Charole said well, I might pay you a visit if I can if I decide I’m not ready to go home but I think I’m tired of travelling. Teach said she could understand that. Then she came over to me. You be good to yourself, Michael, she said as she shook my hand. I told her I’d try. Then Tim shook my hand. Eyes as inscrutable as ever. May the Force be with you, he said, kind of smiled. I laughed. Thanks, Ben Kenobi, I said. And then Mr. Vanier was saying goodbye, goodbye, waving at us, his subde hint and Tim and Teach hoisted up their backpacks and Kelly didn’t even look back with a little wave or anything, not to me, she did to Charole. Patrick took a couple pictures of them as they filed down the hill towards a valley full of evergreens, none of them chopped down. I felt a real hollow in my heart as I watched Kelly walk down into that valley. It took all the kick out of that sunrise. But I got some more Tylenol off Charole and about halfway back to Kathmandu, in a van full of Sherpa teenagers, I said to myself, well, it wasn’t meant to be. C’est la vie.

  (an aerogramme)

  Dec. 22 Nagarkot

  Dear Dex,

  What’s Nagarkot you say? Well, not much. Just a tourist 423

  lodge & a mailing address. I’m not even sure about the mailing address. It’s several thousand ft. above sea level, somewhere in the Himalayas. It’s 5 a.m. In an hr. or so I’ll be watching the sun rise above Mt. Everest. When Charole gives you this letter, she’11 also give you my diary. If you never see me again, the diary might explain to some degree this decision I’ve made. I’m not sure I can explain it myself right now. Suffice to say, the mystics feel that if you want to evolve you have to learn to let go of things. It may not work for everyone but I think I owe it to myself to at least give it a shot. Call me obsessed. But I have this thing about the Firewalk. So I’m going to spend the next 6 or 7 months in a Himalayan ashram, giving my soul a tune-up, so to speak. I’m going to stare at my navel & eat lentils & commune with nature. Sure, maybe Mom’s death has something to do with this. Freedom from parental expectation & all that. But it’s other things too. I hope you understand. I just may decide to stay here if I survive the Firewalk. Come & visit. Nepal is a wonderful country. Magical almost. I’ve only been here a few days & I feel changes upon changes. I blame it on this mountain chain.

  Happy new year, & light & love, K.

  P.S. The money arrived. Thanks.31

  Mick

  Charole and Patrick and I talked about Bali and Ko Samui and UFOs as we got close to Kathmandu. Charole had seen a UFO once in a wheatfield near Butte, Montana when she was necking with a tight end. If it hadn’t been for that UFO she would’ve lost her virginity three weeks sooner than she did. She said isn’t it funny, how when you’re a teenager you can’t eat because of butterflies in your tummy and all you can think about is having sex with the one of your dreams. Patrick arched an eyebrow, didn’t say a thing. Isn’t it funny, says Charole, the more things change the more they remain the same?

  I said it is, it’s hilarious.

  Dave says I’ve got to cut to the chase. In an hour he says Soon’s going to walk in here with her basin of hot sudsy water and her sponge. And here I thought I’d be dead. Dave says Soon only put mushrooms in a few of those capsules she gave me the rest were filled with ginseng powder, she’s intent on giving me one of my last wishes, not that it’s going to change much because he says once he rides the Sperm Express into the train station of Soon’s wild and untamed ovum I’m going to be so much cabbage looking for coleslaw, I’ll be riding off into the sunset with a lame, three-legged mule in need of sexual counselling.

  Well, it’s all good news as far as I’m concerned. I was in the mood for
one more dawn.

  Cut to the chase. Got it. Right. When we got to Kathmandu and we dropped Charole off at the Snow View, Charole looked at me and said she’d be frightened staying in her room all alone, she’s not good at being alone, she said. Patrick said by all means come on over to the Blue Star penthouse suite, we’ll order up some hot rum toddies. Charole ignored him. I felt like I was caught between a rock and a ball and chain but since it was Charole not Patrick who got me the extra money from the refugee camp I had to follow my nose. Told her I’d go pick up my gear and be right back. She smiled and kissed me said she’d be waiting. Patrick wasn’t too happy. He didn’t like being odd man out. No one does.

  As it turns out, though, he didn’t need to worry about it.

  When we get to the penthouse suite Patrick says well at least have one more rum and limca with me before you go, Mr. McPherson, you’re not in that much of a rush, are you?

  I said yeah sure okay.

  We had to unlock the door when we went into the suite. Because we’d locked it when we left. But like I said before, there were a lot of beds in the penthouse suite. Anyone could rent one of those beds and get a key for the suite.

  Patrick didn’t turn on the lights when we went inside he liked the half twilight that the lights of Kathmandu gave the room and we sat down on his bed and Patrick pulled out his mickey and he was pouring out a double shot when Dave phoned me up and said there was someone else in the room.

  I turned around and looked and there he was, coming out of the shadows. Santa Claus. Standing at the end of one of the beds in the dark. I know from one look at his eyes who it is and my first impulse is to run for it. But he was between us and the door. And I was trying to get into the habit of not following my first impulses.

  Ho ho ho he goes and I say hey, Santa, I was wonderin’ when you were gonna show up, ya wanna rum and limca, and he says bloody right, Muck-hole, and Patrick groans, oh, God.

  Rockstar grins at him through his beard. How ya doin’, Dr. Livingstone? he says.

  Fine, up until a moment ago, says Patrick and I can tell he’s taking a close look at his first impulses, taking their pulses so to speak.

  I hand Rockstar my rum and limca and I ask him what’s new. He says he’s bloody tired.

  Yeah, I says, I did some walking too thanks to Pete all the way from Jammu to Amritsar and Rockstar’s surprised by that he looks at Patrick, says is that right, Dr. Livingstone and Patrick says most assuredly, Mr. McPherson walked his dogs off.

  Patrick gives me another rum and limca, I knock it back in a swallow like a good bird dog, he pours me another one, pours himself another too. I say to Patrick hey, you got any of that pot that Mr. Vanier sold you left and Patrick knew what I was thinking, pot tended to cool Rockstar out make him introspective. Ah, yes, indeed, he says. He rolls a fat joint, we smoke it and gaze out at the lights of Kathmandu, and I’m thinking this is going to go alright, Rockstar doesn’t seem too bummed out but then he says, where’s Pete? Gone home to Tasmania we tell him. Where’s Suzie, he says. Gone home too, we say.

  Long silence as the smoke curls up and the room gets quiet. Kind of silence that tends to come just before the herd of buffalo or the wild bunch show up on the horizon.

  Where’s my camera? says Rockstar.

  Patrick and I look at each other.

  Have you looked on the bus? says Patrick.

  Yep, says Rockstar. Bloodshot eyes full of cross hairs.

  But the bus is locked, says Patrick.

  So? says Rockstar.

  I laugh. Nuff said. Who was it in the old Marvel comics used to say that. Stan Lee had lots of characters say it or was it just Spiderman, or the Thing or the Iceman in the X-Men?

  Dave says it’s not important. I think he’s right. I don’t think it’s very important.

  Rockstar looks at Patrick. Where’s your camera, Dr. Livingstone?

  Patrick says you have already destroyed one of my cameras, Herr Scheisskopf, isn’t one satisfactory? What you call a basic crucial error in judgement, Patrick calling Rockstar that.

  Patrick took his cameras way too seriously.

  Then give me your Chargex card, says Rockstar.

  I really cannot do that, Robert, says Patrick. First time I ever heard anyone call Rockstar that. What Dave calls another tactical error. His mother always called him Robert.

  Patrick says, I need that card to get to Malaysia.

  Rockstar takes out a huge Khyber knife and he stands up walks over slow to where Patrick’s sitting.

  Well, says Patrick gulping hard like a beached guppy, I suppose I might he able to reconsider my stand on that score, just before Rockstar puts the knife under his chin.

  Hey, Rockstar, I say, where’d you get the Santa Claus suit?

  I killed this Santa down on Freak St., he says. He points to a rip in the belly. See this? Material does seem a little darker there.

  Dave says he was lying. Just saying that to scare Patrick. Dave says Rockstar had followed them all out to the Tibetan refugee camp and he got the suit there after they left. He’d cased the Blue Star. He’d got to Kathmandu on a bus a few hours after we did. Hired a taxi that took him around to all the hotels. Blue Star was the fourth one.

  Rockstar looks back at Patrick. He says to Patrick, pull down your pants.

  Dave rings me up. Says it might be a good idea if I ever so casually push back the pocket clip on my Afghani pen-rifle. I say yeah, okay. I do what he says. Dave says now you’re going to have to do this, Mick. You’re going to have to put him out of his misery. I follow you I say and I did I think. Near the temple he says or under the ear. Me wishing I’d taken a practice shot with the thing. Dave says don’t worry, it’ll work.

  Patrick’s got his pants down. He looks at me. Saddest eyes

  I’ve ever seen, except for maybe that yak’s eyes before the axe fell.

  Rockstar’s saying get your bloody bloomers down too, Dr. Livingstone.

  I don’t have a lot of moral support to give Patrick, can’t give anything away, I just start edging closer and Dave tells me you’re going to have to move quick but everything’s slowed down and for some reason I have this stupid Linda Ronstadt song in my head, “All That You Dream.”

  I’m wondering exactly what all happened to Rockstar in the last few weeks to make him so chippy but then Patrick’s got his gotch down and Rockstar’s taking hold of his ugly. No time like the present, says Dave. I walk up behind Rockstar and I’m wondering if Dave’s maybe lying to me about how it’ll work and I’m wondering if this is maybe a malaria nightmare, an extended malaria nightmare and I’m hoping it is, when Rockstar twists his head around I push the clip there’s a small pffft! and I hit him in the left eye. The eye explodes towards me, slow motion Peckinpah-style. I end up getting spattered by some of it. It’s like when I got spattered by some of the old man’s blood when those hoods from the Regina Mafia stuck that shotgun in his face at The Olde Salvador Deli. Hell of a thing to happen, getting spattered by my old man’s eyes and brains. Nothing quite the same after that. Rockstar’s other eye looks just a tad surprised, I’m waiting for him to fall over but he doesn’t instead he tries to stab me with that Khyber knife but it’s a barrel-house swing, I step back and he lands flat on his face and suddenly he’s just lying there and Patrick looks like he’s having a heart attack. Rockstar like a fish out of water jerking around and Dave says put him out of his misery but I don’t have any other bullets and I can’t just step on his head so Dave tells me you’ll have to choke him to death and I say you’re kidding. Do it, he says. But I can’t. I just don’t have the balls for it. Then use his knife, says Dave. Great at directions, Dave is, always has been.

  I look at the knife on the floor. Rockstar is starting to moan and swear and twist towards that knife and so I pick it up and plunge it between his shoulder blades. He gives a little wheeze and then relaxes. Little runnels of blood trickle their way out from his head.

  I look at Patrick. He’s got his hands at his chest b
ut he

  manages to give me a sardonic, Merry Christmas, Mr. McPherson.

  Yeah, I say. Still with my wits about me, I’m amazed.

  Patrick says we’ve got to leave town. I nod my head. Dave tells me Rockstar’s got a moneybelt. Yeah, so? I say.

  I didn’t have all my wits about me, just some of them.

  Check it out, he says.

  I didn’t enjoy touching Rockstar’s corpse.

  Are you sure he’s dead? says Patrick.

  Maybe he was thinking of Wait Until Dark, when Alan Arkin was supposed to be dead, just like I was. Thinking it I mean.

  I touched Rockstar’s wrist. Nothing there. Yeah, Rockstar’s dead, I said.

  There was something though in the moneybelt. About a hundred American bucks, some rupees.

  We better take separate planes said Patrick and hide the body. We slid it under one of the beds put a Do Not Disturb sign on the door.

  I thought about leaving a message for Charole at the desk but that of course was a stupid idea.

  Who goes first? says Patrick. We flip a coin. Tails, I won. It was a nickel. Wondered if it was Kelly’s nickel but nope it was a Canuck. But I went first. Patrick said he’d stay behind until the morning plane, make sure nobody came in.

  It was all still a little unreal. I said sure. We shook hands.

  At the airport I had a mean bout of diarrhoea above a Nepali Delight that put some Turkish Delights to shame. I had a two-hour wait in the lobby. No sirens. No cops came.

  It was snowing when I walked across black midnight tarmac and climbed up the stairs into a China Airlines DC-9.

  Dave was right. Soon did come to give me a sponge bath. She apologized about the mushrooms but she hoped I saw things in a different light come morning. It’s true I did. It was a great sunrise. Better, almost, than the one at Nagarkot. But Dave is gone I know he’s gone he left on a silver surfboard just a few minutes after Soon started undoing the buttons on her unifo* ____