‘He’s driving your Hummer. Looks like he’s been up at your place. Pity there weren’t more landmines. Or more wild animals.’ Carousel said, and Chicco looked at him for a moment with an intent I couldn’t decipher and his nose wrinkled with distaste. ‘Now that ain’t right. You can’t re-steal a car. There has to be some sort of code amongst thieves. That dumb bulldog was rightfully mine.’
I laughed and so did he and then he had to pick his flaming cigar out of his lap where it had seared his sarong. We kept on driving to the sounds of smoking and Jewish humming and, finally, the receding drumbeat of my hangover. I took deep breaths of the air as we split it and, as my brain rinsed off, I remembered the bar and that I had told Carousel everything of my secrets and a sick discomfit filled me up, then I remembered the worst of it and turned immediately to the man beside me.
‘Can I ask you some questions?’
‘Questions?’ He was looking out the side into the horizon.
‘Jack questions.’
He answered with cowboy care. ‘No.’
‘And why not?’ I leaned back into the corner between the old beige leather seat and the door-frame facing him as best I could.
He looked at me languidly. ‘Maybe I am James Carousel of New York, and I live here in Mexico because it is hot and cheap and the weed is plentiful.’
‘You said you were Jack.’ I was sweating from the heat, little beads on my back and behind my knees glued me slowly to the car with my own stupidity.
‘Maybe I am Jack Kerouac and my French is archaic and Canadian and I didn’t have a goddamn idea what those teenagers were saying. Maybe. Maybe I told you what you wanted to hear because you are a very strange wild thing and I wanted to look at you a moment longer.’
‘Phh, wild nothing, don’t try and say flattering things to me, cos that is not at all what I find to be wonderful. Maybe if you had said I was whip-smart and found you out when no one else could, I’d be moved, but don’t give me any of that ‘mad ones’ rubbish.’ I snorted and rolled my eyes and happened to glance to my right to discover a hunking Hummer on our tail.
‘Shit, he’s back. Do you think he is really trying to find gold buried in the desert?’
Carousel shrugged. ‘I won’t discount it, people believe what they want to believe and they’ll die for it. If the captain believes it, and it’s obvious Adolf believes it, that’s enough belief to make a fact.’
‘Horseshit. Believing doesn’t make something true. That’s just pretty words.’
He looked at me. ‘Did you not just see a Nazi Jew Christian saved from death by a puddle of water in the desert? I didn’t believe it would save him. But I think maybe you did.’
I was unconvinced and the Hummer was within earshot. It was newer than the Cuda and its roar sounded pretend. ‘It’s still a theory full of holes.’
‘Is it? Who do you think I am?’
‘Jack Kerouac.’
‘Then maybe I am. To you.’ He looked back at the Hummer.
I was more disconcerted by the conversation than the Hummer reeling us in.
Chicco was shrieking at Adolf, ‘Stop holding her back. Let the girl loose, boy. Faster.’
But she couldn’t go any faster. And the Hummer could. And soon we were side by side on the road and I could see the captain in the passenger seat watching us, not gesturing or speaking, just waiting for us to pull over and hand over what he wanted. We travelled like that for a minute or two and then the Cuda started to whine and Adolf eased off a bit. The captain must have thought it was evasive manoeuvring, because instantly a gun jumped to his hand and the window slid down. The Hummer slowed to match us and he flicked us a message with his gun to pull over. In response, Chicco, who had spent the last few minutes swearing at the locked glove compartment, finally jimmied it open and pulled out a hand gun so heavy it took both his hands to hold it up. He hoisted it towards the Hummer and held it a few inches from the side of Adolf’s head.
‘When I say three, put your head down, boy,’ he yelled through his wind-flapped gums. Adolf gave no indication of having heard a word he said and kept up the driving.
‘One.’
The captain was pointing his gun at Adolf and I hoped to Wandering God that he believed in the gold enough to hold fire.
‘Two.’
Chicco’s arms were already tiring and his gun was now at Adolf’s shoulder.
‘Three.’
Adolf was fast, lightning in fact. He didn’t duck or put his head down or move anything but his arm, grabbing the gun from Chicco’s hand, firing it over the edge of the car at the Hummer’s front right wheel and using the last scrap of speed he had been saving to get us the hell out of the way as the Hummer blew out, turned sharply and rolled over and over behind us, finally landing the right way up in time for dust to wrap it from view.
We drove on unspeaking for several minutes before Chicco slapped Adolf across the shoulder and proclaimed, ‘Well, you may just be the first Adolf to win a war!’
11
Everyone has their stupid, Lulu, you just have to find what it is.
‘HE WOULDN’T HAVE DIED, HUMMERS ARE indestructible. All they have to do is change the tyre and they’ll be onto us in minutes.’
‘He’s dead. Broken neck, there’s not a chance he made it out of that. It must have flipped a dozen times.’ Chicco was arguing with me, but I knew it was mainly to stop me from thinking about the fact that I was pushing a gasless car towards a horizon that lacked a roadhouse.
‘It flipped three times. Maybe four.’ I changed my aching shoulder for a fresh one. The old men helped for about the first half-mile and then Chicco, who was still hungover, claimed his knees were turning to powder from the pressure and climbed back into in the passenger seat. It didn’t seem to change either the weight of the car or the amount of pushing we were doing, so we didn’t argue with him. Adolf told Carousel to join Chicco after he noticed Carousel’s face reddening and one hand clutching his chest as he pushed. Now we pushed it ourselves and despite the flat terrain it was hard to keep it at much more than a crawling roll.
Having changed shoulders I found myself face to face with Adolf, mere inches between us. He winked at me. It was one of those cheesy good-natured winks that meant nothing and it pissed me off. I didn’t want to be all Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn with him. And I didn’t want to be some boy-girl to hang with. I considered letting my hair down to remind him that I was a girl and then spent further consideration on what sort of slapping I deserved for that idea. It was hot and, while I was sunscreened, I didn’t have a hat and I was not feeling good. We pushed and pushed and each step began to smart and then ache and then feel like fire, and every time I changed shoulders there was a sharp pain as the old hurt was pressured again.
‘I can see something up ahead,’ Carousel finally called from behind the wheel where he was attempting usefulness by steering. We pushed harder.
‘It’s just a car. Sorry.’
He sounded disappointed, but Adolf’s eyes brightened and he said to me, through strained teeth, ‘Gas. We can syphon the gas.’
My mind jumped to the immediate conclusion that there would be no gas in an abandoned car, that would be why the fucking thing was abandoned, but I could see that Adolf believed it without hesitation and I wanted to be him. Why was his first thought always the good one? Why was mine always the suspicious one? He had stranger, nastier parents than mine by a whole genre, why did he turn out so fucking happy-go-lucky?
We syphoned the petrol with the tubing from a disposable enema Chicco had brought with him and, despite his protestations that it had not yet been used, and that it was true he had at least ten of them, we made him suck up the gas. Even Adolf’s casual goodness extended only so far as someone else’s arse.
There wasn’t much petrol in there, but there was some, enough. The Cuda coughed and coughed and finally started to breathe, and it was my turn to drive us on into the night and towards the next place we could stay.
I f
illed up the tank at the next town and kept driving, I had no faith whatsoever in the captain dying from a bullet to the wheel. A bullet to the skull would still have had me checking for vitals. There wasn’t anything much to eat though, and we would need a proper sleep before we tried to kill each other. I crunched on dried beans with minimal enthusiasm and they responded in kind with an internal melancholy of the sort that had me belching and questioning my own existence. In fact I got so far up my own arse about it that I was crying in the wind, blinding myself wishing I had never spoken my mother’s name and that Jack was Jack and truth didn’t have to be made up of belief.
And then the sun came up. Like it always does, and suddenly all my nights of self-sympathy felt self-indulgent and embarrassing and I mocked my own stupid introspection and I thought maybe I could take on the world and maybe I had found Kerouac in the desert.
‘We are only a few miles from Erendira.’
I leapt skyward when I heard Carousel’s voice from behind me and wondered how long he had been awake.
‘Okay. You wanna try and find somewhere?’
‘We should, but I don’t know anyone here, we’ve kept to the south in the last decade. I won’t be able to pull any favours and the locals will talk.’
I didn’t say anything, just drove the last hour of dawn until we reached sunshine and a town, and by then Chicco had discovered his lack of teeth for the second time and Adolf had sponge-bathed with a bottle of Evian.
We trawled the streets for a while and people were starting to awaken but it was not a tourist town, just a village near a beach, one cantina and a low rent hotel. There was nothing to do but keep driving. We sat disconsolately on the side of the street, hungry and tired and homeless, and then salvation walked past in a puff of blue.
I leapt from the car and ran after the tall, thin woman.
‘Wait, wait.’ I ran and put my hand on her shoulder. She jumped and looked at me warily.
‘Oh, the girl on the bus!’ She relaxed, then remembered her confession and tensed, then she remembered where she was and relaxed again. ‘How did you go with…whatever you were doing?’
‘I’m fine, but, well…’ I wondered what was the best approach. ‘Well, I’m looking for a place to stay, and maybe you know the town a bit by now? Is there a hotel or something. Something kind of incognito?’
With credit to her fast evolution, she got my meaning and offered a bland smile. ‘You know, I took your advice…I don’t even know your name. I took your advice and spent some of my money.’
‘Lulu.’ I told her. ‘What did you spend it on?’ I had my doubts as to the wisdom of any advice I had given and she clearly hadn’t spent it on a new lounge suit.
‘I bought a place by the beach. A rundown bed and breakfast place. I’m going to run a guest house.’ Her eyes lit up and so did mine.
‘Want your first paying customers?’ I asked her, and pointed back to the car. She glanced quickly, saw Adolf and had a longer look.
‘None of them are police or anyone official are they? I paid with cash and I don’t have any sort of paperwork or anything and well, you know…’ She trailed off, and I think she was wondering if I still remembered her story, as though people forgot things like murder.
‘Not at all. In fact, we’d really like to steer clear of any of the local law enforcement type of people. You know? We’ll pay cash—we have it.’ I was almost begging and any minute I’d resort to blackmail, but I wanted us to keep the kind of tentative friendship we had so far.
‘Of course you can. Fifteen dollars each for bed and food. Okay? And it’s not fixed up yet, I’ve only just started to paint it.’ She looked like she was trying to think of something else. ‘And you can give me a lift home, I don’t have a car and I need to get some stuff at that marketplace over there.’
‘Deal.’ I held out my hand and she tentatively reached for it, not shaking it but letting her hand rest there limply. I had forgotten that she had no real idea of the world so I held it tight and shook it. ‘We’ll wait in the car.’
I ran back and let the others in on the plan and they all sighed with relief that we had beds and a roof and possibly even good food, and I left out plot points about shattering skulls and stealing money, though it probably wouldn’t have bothered anyone one square bit at that point, except perhaps Adolf. I wasn’t sure how much of the other Jesus message had seeped into his own version, if it was at all similar then head-bashing and theft was quite possibly frowned upon. It brought up another thought in my mind. Wasn’t Jesus celibate? Was Adolf? That would certainly keep my fantasies in check.
The lounge suit arrived soon after with a crate full of wilted vegetables and faded boxes of flour, which Adolf took from her grasp and loaded into the trunk. Carousel introduced himself and Chicco who began a shameless program of flirtation that had her face mottled and pink within moments. I imagined she had never been flirted with before and felt protective. She gave us her name, which sounded made up, Rita. She seemed a lot more like a Betty or a Barbara, and we drove off down a non-road towards the beach and her new life.
The drive was short and yet within those few minutes Rita had fallen in love with Chicco, dead-set head-over-toes in love and was giggling and covering her mouth with her hand in antique charm. I think he genuinely enjoyed the moment as well, but I knew I’d have to have a talk with the old guy—this woman scorned might actually bash his skull in.
The house was beautiful, the forsaken dream of some American who wanted a new life and a quaint seaside business. I asked her why they had sold it and she said the last owner had died and left it five years ago to his maid and her family—a local woman who had no use for the property and a great many uses for the cash.
We parked the car as discreetly as possible around the back. Extricating our overcrowded, tired and filthy selves from the car, we circled the house. It was low and long with a wide verandah all along the side that faced the beach, a still and quiet beach with a wide pan of sand that reached as far as we could see in either direction. The roof was not in the best shape, as corrugated iron tends not to be used close to salt, but it was holding on and the rest of the house, once painted a cheerful bright orange, was faded into a kind of mellow sunset. I liked it a lot and hoped that wasn’t what she was painting over. I think when it was fresh it would have looked like a foreigner’s bad homage to the Mexican love of bright colours—the wooden verandah was a kind of aqua and the doors were cinnamon-red, but time had given the place some artistic credibility and it was perfect, so perfect in fact that I was tempted to stay on and make beds and clean bathrooms. The air from the beach was fresh and while it was barely blowing, the temperature was more lenient than the desert roads we had sizzled across. I let the air clean the dust off my face and pulled the band from my hair to let it fall in a lump against my neck.
Rita shyly asked us to come inside and then followed it with rambling and ingenuous apologies for something she obviously adored. It was rundown, that was clear, but it was clean as a hospital and there were six rooms all made up and ready for guests, giving each of us our own beds. Adolf joked to me, ‘We will be much more crowded in that bed, won’t we, Lulu?’
I raised my eyebrows and attempted to smile before dumping both pieces of my backpack on the floor and sitting on the bed in a room that looked out over the water. I should sleep, I was tired enough to cry about it, but it was only midday and I would be awake all night if I did.
I heard the beds groan as Carousel and Chicco fell promptly into thunderous slumber, and I heard the door close on another room and assumed Adolf had done the same. I hoisted myself from the bed before stillness took hold of me, and wandered the house. The rooms were all identical, except the last two had twin beds, all wooden and rustic but not beyond the reach of a couple of new blankets and a picture on the wall to give them a nice retirement. I wandered into the bathroom where the painting was underway. At some point the tiles had been a bright and quite torrid yellow with terrible Aztec desig
ns embossed all over them and Rita, with obvious wisdom, was painting over them, though her choice of pale lemon wrinkled my nose. The paint looked fresh, as though she had begun that morning before her trip into town for supplies. The brush was still in the bucket and I thought painting was better than sleeping, so I prised open the tin, stirred it like thick Mexican coffee and began where she had left off, removing the blanched Aztecs from power and forcing the room under the tea and scones rule of Rita the husband slayer.
She came past at one point, and was surprised to see me there but she only said, ‘Oh. Thank you. You didn’t have to do that,’ before moving onwards down the hall and leaving me in my meditation. The room was large and had one of those antique claw-footed brass baths that looked as though she had scrubbed and cleaned it recently on one side, and as the light came through the window I could see why she wanted to paint the place yellow, the bath reflected a kind of rippled golden sea on the wall and it was sunken treasure. It took me a couple of hours to finish painting and then I moved on to scrubbing the bath with some caustic stinking stuff that tore away the years and gave it a baby gold finish. By the time I was done, afternoon light was leaking through the huge window and the empty wall, the one without the scuffed wooden mirror, was dry, and blank yellow. It was begging for a picture, and I love to draw but I’m only about as good at that as I am at everything else and that is in a mediocre kind of way, so I grabbed a marker pen from my bag and tried a small mark in the corner and painted over it. The paint covered the mark completely so I figured I could draw what I liked as long as I covered it up afterwards, and I shut the door cos no one wants to be watched while they do something of average quality. I knew what I should draw—the things I had seen the most of in Mexico—the Boojum, or in that case, one Boojum, and I don’t know if that is singular or plural. I drew the outline and the branches of the odd thing and looked at my creation. It wasn’t too bad if you like folksy simple sort of art and I decided—though it may have been the paint and cleaning fumes that were wilting my mind—that I might leave it and see what Rita thought. I didn’t have to wait long, she was in the doorway watching me.
We Ate the Road Like Vultures Page 10
