by Ivan Coyote
I shook my head. “I’m from Whitehorse. I live in Vancouver now, but I was born and raised up North.” Guys like Dennis don’t like city types too much.
Dennis raised his eyebrow and looked at me again. Ironically, I too, am wearing a big brass Snap-on Tools belt buckle, cowboy hat, and work boots.
“What’s your dad do?” he actually looked me in the eye this time. This was code for Are you one of us or not?
“He’s a welder. Does a lot of work for truckers. He builds aluminum boats, too.” I let a little pride slip into my voice. My dad can build anything. Nothing’s broken that he can’t fix.
Dennis nodded. Richard jumped up, made a beeline for the trailer, then came back with an army green backpack, and reached deep inside.
“I’m starting a carpentry apprenticeship this fall. Going to Edmonton for school. I made Grandma a coffee table, she says you can’t tell it from one you buy in a store, right Gran? Here, I’ll show you, I made this.” His slender hand came out of the backpack with a small treasure which he handed to me.
It was a wooden knot cut from a piece of pine tree, about the size of an egg. It had been hollowed out and a smooth cut piece of the bottom of a beer bottle painstakingly fitted into the hole. Etched carefully in an arc around the hole were the words FORGET ME KNOT in bold block letters. I turned it over in my palm. It had been carefully sanded and varnished.
“See, here, I’ll show you.” Richard grabbed it back from me, excited like a kid. He held it like a telescope up to one eye, and squinted the other one closed. “It changes how you see everything. Like rose-coloured glasses.” He gave it back, making a go-ahead-try-it motion with both hands.
I looked through it. The world was an amber-coloured shoplifting mirror. I nodded in appreciation, and Richard’s grin split his face.
“Tell her where you learned to make that, Richie. Go on, tell her. Where’d you learn to build things?”
His father’s voice caused Richard’s shoulders to fall back towards each other, and he went silent.
Dennis answered his own question. “Two to five for armed robbery, that’s where, ain’t that right? Didn’t even make any money at it, did’ja, who else would be so dumb to rob a fucking gardening store in October?” He spat in the dust and shook his head.
“Leave the boy, Dennis.” Rosie lifted one cane in her son’s direction. “Nobody is perfect, right, Don Juan? Should we tell our new friend where your third wife is? Or how ’bout you explain how you got that scar in your eyebrow?” Rosie stared with soft eyes at her son and grandson.
Dennis returned her stare for a second, then looked at his boots, took a long pull on his Budweiser, and ran the back of his hand across his mouth.
“Jesus H for the love of ... get that thing off the fire.” The kindness was gone from the old woman’s voice, and she scrambled to pull herself to her feet. “Did God put a brain in your head? Move it!”
For the first time, I noticed the carcass suspended over the little campfire. Nephews and cousins scurried to find sticks strong enough to lift it off the Y-shaped poles and over to the picnic table. It was a skinless, smallish animal, unrecognizable enough without its pelt, even more so now that it had caught fire and was enveloped in a ball of black smoke and flaming fat. After much swearing and tripping and running amok, eventually someone threw a wet dishcloth over it and put it out.
Rosie sat back into her lawn chair, out of breath from screaming orders and reprimands. “Let it cool off a bit, the inside bits will still be okay. A bit of burnt never killed anyone.” She turned to me. “The grandkids bagged a beaver this afternoon.”
I nodded, of course. Of course that was a beaver that just caught on fire. What else? I was starting to really like these guys. They made my family look normal.
Richard passed me another beer. “Tastes like chicken, I think. You ever eaten beaver?”
Rosie snorted so loud it sounded like it hurt, and choked a bit on her beer. “My god boy, maybe you are stupid. Look at her. What do you think? Looks like a beaver eater if I ever saw one.” She rocked back and slapped both knees, and laughed until tears ran.
Dennis smirked. I smiled. Richard looked confused. One of the grandkids interrupted this magic moment buy slicing the better part of his left thumb off with his jack knife, and I took the opportunity to pour the rest of my beer out while everyone was distracted by talk of stitches and where the first aid kit was.
I followed Dennis’s truck out of the campground. I could see his cowboy hat move as he leaned over to put his arm around the injured boy. Rosie waved from her lawn chair, and Richard ran up beside my car and pressed the forget-me-knot into my palm.
Dust rose in a cloud behind the pick up and ground between my teeth. I couldn’t tune in a radio station; the digital numbers just rolled on and on, no signal to be found. It was eight o’clock and the sun still hung orange above the horizon, not on its way anywhere for a while yet.
It was good to be home.
MORE BEAUTIFUL
“There is for sure more beautiful canyons out there,” he told us. “But none that big. I mean, it really is a grand canyon.”
We were in the Powell Lake campground in Arizona and I had finally figured out why he was being so friendly. We were writing in our journals by candlelight the first time he came up to our picnic table. He had appeared, a shadow at first, backlit by the RV lights behind him, gas lantern in hand.
“You ladies wanna borrow this?” He held up the hissing light.
“We’re okay with the candles, thanks.”
He shrugged, as if to say “suit yourself,” and went back to his side of the white stake that marked our site.
“You doin’ any fishing?” He had a white ice cream bucket with him this time. “You gotta try anchovies. Fresh ones, that is. Be careful, though, they got laws now, no live bait, but everybody does it.” He gestured plaintively with his bucket of fish. “You wanna take a few?”
I shook my head thanks but no thanks. “We’re going to the canyon tomorrow. Won’t be fishing for a couple of days.”
“Me and the wife just came from there, the North Rim, though, it’s less populated. She doesn’t like the crowds much.” He shrugged again. “She’s in town right now, doing some shopping. Just dropped me off. Left my keys in the dash. I’m locked out of the trailer till she gets back, I guess. I’m s’posed to start the pork chops, too.”
That’s why he keeps coming over here. He was hungry. “Well, pull up a picnic table, and pour yourself a coffee.” We both spring up to move things around and make room for the poor bastard. He was lost without her. “There’s more noodles and stuff.”
He looked relieved, and helped himself, talking through mouthfuls. “You gotta go at least once, just to see the thing. But go to the North Rim. Less tourists, if you know what I mean.”
After he finished the leftovers, he showed us how to get there on the coffee-stained map. “That there is quite the mountain pass. You’ll want to get an early start, before the day heats up too much.”
It was like leaving one theme room for another, the way the desert and dry road dust gave way to a quick climbing mountain road and lush pines and wildflowers, and the car groaned at the heat and hill under us and up we climbed.
Jacobs Lake was the turnoff for the North Rim access to the Grand Canyon, and it was nine miles ahead. We were nine thousand feet above sea level when the fuel pump gave up the ghost as we rounded a bend and the car stalled to a stop in the gravel.
I took off my cowboy hat, licked my fingers to smooth down my camping hair, and stuck my thumb out. A guy named Bob and his son, Bobby Junior, picked me up in a haywired-together Chevy. Bobby Junior gave me half his turkey sandwich, and they dumped me off outside a faded Texaco.
“Sounds like a fuel pump to me,” the mechanic talked around the toothpick in his mouth and didn’t stop squinting when he walked out of the sun into the service bay. “And if you’re going to have fuel system problems, you’ll have them at nine thousa
nd feet for sure. That hill kills more fuel pumps....” He dialed the rotary phone with a dirt-worn-in finger. “Can’t fix it here, we only do tires.” He owned the only gas station, the only campground, and the only pay phone, which was out of order. “I’ll call Nick Ramsey in Kanab. He’s got the only tow truck around. He’s got a shop there, too, ’bout forty miles thataway.”
“Is he Triple A?” I mean, that’s why you pay into these things, for emergencies like this. He nodded and handed me the phone.
The tow truck driver’s name was JD, and he loaded us up onto his flatbed truck and off we went. We never once slowed to under eighty miles an hour, and I white-knuckled it all the way down the other side of the pass, as JD explained to us that he wasn’t just a mechanic, he was taking criminology at night school, and he was trying to get into the FBI. I watched his sausage-fingered hands pass over each other as he double-clutch shifted and smoked and answered his cell phone and played with the radio all at the same time as we careened into town.
We pulled up to a clean and newer looking service station right on the main strip on the leaving town side of the highway.
A skinny-looking guy with no grease under his nails came out, wiping his clean hands on a clean rag. Skinny guy was the not-so-mechanical second son of Nick Ramsey, the guy who owned this brand new station, and its fleet of butch and shiny tow trucks.
“That’ll be a hunnerd and eighty bucks,” skinny guy said, with his chin jutting out towards me.
I whipped out my BCAA card.
He shook his head. “Don’t do Triple A tows. Hunnerd and eighty bucks.” He planted both feet in the red dust and surveyed my car, still six feet off the ground on the back of the flatbed. “Cash or credit.”
I paid him for the tow in cash; what could I do? JD lowered my car to the ground, unhooked the chains, an unlit smoke dangling from the corner of his mouth. “Leo in Jacob’s Lake says he figures it sounds like a fuel pump. We’ll know in a minute. It’s the altitude. Ten bucks says she’ll turn over just fine now we’re down the mountain.”
JD was right, my car started and ran fine. We could take our chances and hightail it out on a different highway, or we could get the car fixed and finally see the Grand Canyon.
Skinny guy looked at his watch and explained that it was the May long weekend and that theirs was the only shop in town open at all on the weekends and plus his family owned the only auto parts place, and that it was past six but that his brother or his dad would come in tomorrow and fix it, but it would cost me double-time on account of the holiday. I really didn’t like this guy and said I’d think about it.
“What’s to think about? You getting your car fixed or what?” he called out as I drove away.
There is always more than one mechanic in town, I know that much. Plus, you should never believe the guy who just ripped you off once already.
Sure enough, at the Chevron up the street a guy in coveralls stood smoking a cigarette and kicking the tires of an old car with another fella.
“Fuel pump went on the pass, had to get towed here,” I explained.
“Nick Ramsey didn’t tow you in, did he?”
I nodded. “Unfortunately, yes, he did.”
“He didn’t pull his Triple A scam on you, did he?” The guy in coveralls winced. “I hate it when he does that.” He shook his head sadly. “We got a truck, too, plus we’re Triple A. Wait’ll my boss hears they’re up to it again over there. Chamber of Commerce already wrote ’em up for it, but he thinks he can do as he pleases, on account of how he’s Nick Ramsey. His old man owned half this town, left it all to him. We’re not all like that ... Mormons, that is.”
They fixed the car for us the very next morning; the owner himself drove nine miles to the next town for the part. They all felt sorry for the poor Canadian girls and gave us free coffee and camping advice.
It was while we were drinking those coffees that the road trip gods smiled upon us so brightly that it even made up for the fuel pump. We started talking to these hippie juice squeezers who had a lemon yellow plywood stand beside the highway, offering beet and garlic juice and orange carrot juice and everything. She was really a folk singer and he was a rock-climber and they told us about a secret access road, known only to the locals, an almost unused dirt road into the Toroweep viewpoint of the Grand Canyon. A solitary view 3,600 feet down the canyon to the mighty Colorado.
After the fuel pump was fixed, we loaded up on gas and water, followed the highway back through town, turned right on a secondary highway, and took a left at the cow bridge. This is about where we could have used a four-wheel drive vehicle of some sort, or at least something with more clearance than a Ford Taurus station wagon. But if you drive fast over the washboard and slow between pot-holes and over jutting rocks, even a Taurus will take you there. We were worried about flats – we had already found out just how much a tow truck could set you back in these parts, but we didn’t even talk about turning around.
I’m not going to let slip more specific directions, other than the clues I’ve already given above. It’s one of those places you’ve got to find in order to deserve to see it. At the end of the sixty-two-mile-long car-beating road was a definitely no-frills campground. It was a good thing we had lots of water, and a garbage bag, because there wasn’t even a trash can. There was nothing but a biffy and three tent sites. The non-descript sage and desert landscape gave way to low shrubs and desert wildflowers, then cactus, and then the rocks began to change, and we could feel it long before the road got there. The Grand Canyon. The best tent site was literally twenty feet from the edge of the canyon. There were no guardrails, no concrete, no tour buses. The most visited national treasure in all of the U.S., and we spent it alone, save for the biker and his wife, and a young man escorting an old lady and her watercolours.
We stayed until we started to run out of Marlborough Lights and fresh water, marveling over little blue-green lizards and the strange pull of a very big cliff just past the tips of your toes. My friend claimed she woke up several times a night with vertigo, her heart pounding with the gravity of it all. Me, I dreamt of wind and the smell of sheets fresh off the clothesline.
FEAR OF HOPING IN LAS VEGAS
To tell you the honest truth, I had never really considered marriage until that night in the taco shop.
She had a veggie special burrito and I was working on a chicken supremo. You can eat for very little in San Francisco, provided you like beans and rice.
It was day four of my favourite kind of road trip, the kind where you find out where you’re going when you get there, and we had a tablecloth made of road maps.
“I have always wanted to go to Death Valley,” I confessed to her. The van was running great, we both liked the taste of back roads, even the city smelled like good luck.
“Sure, Death Valley sounds sexy, but I want to go to Vegas first.”
“Vegas?” I raised an eyebrow. She didn’t seem like the bright lights, big city type to me. We had slept in cemeteries and junkyards all the way down, she drank green tea and cracked organic black peppercorns onto my sandwiches with her teeth. She advocated the use of natural menstrual sponges. She and I in Las Vegas? I couldn’t see it.
“Yeah, Vegas. I want to get married.” Sour cream dripped off her little finger and landed on the Oregon coast.
“Who you gonna marry?” I passed her a napkin and folded up the sticky road map.
“You, you bonehead. Will you marry me?” She licked her fingers.
Now, perhaps I should have thought a bit at this juncture, maybe about things like commitment and vows and responsible behaviour and what-not, but thinking is contrary to the whole spirit of eloping, so I didn’t. Think, that is.
“You want to think about it?” She asked me this, because she had proposed, time had elapsed, I was sitting open-mouthed, and had not answered.
“No – I mean yes, I mean sure, let’s go to Las Vegas.” My mouth moved with a mind of its own.
At high noon the next d
ay the desert was dry-brushed sage and dust. The only things painted vivid were the tiny flowers on the cacti, the colour of purple that teenagers like to paint their toenails.
We were fifty miles outside of Las Vegas and I was searching for a sign. She was up in the hills behind me, taking photos, and I was praying for some guidance.
Okay, God, or whoever is responsible for these things, please give me a sign. Should we get married?
Heat waves were acid-tripping off bone-coloured sand, and quiet was everywhere. Nothing but the distant hum of the Interstate.
Then I saw an emerald green lizard skitter across the gravel and disappear.
Okay, God. Bright green lizards are really cool and all, but this is a monumental question here, I’m gonna need a big sign. Big as you can muster up, the kind I can’t ignore. Hit me, Great Creator, to marry or not to marry?
I heard the grind of a tanker truck gearing down, and there it was. A sixteen wheeler painted painful white humped down the off-ramp and drove real slow, right past me. Stenciled on the side in block red letters was one word: LUCKY. And right behind that truck was another one, identical to the first. And then one more.
Three times lucky? Three times lucky! That settled it. Today was to be our wedding day.
My photographer fiancée came down from the hills smiling. “Take a picture,” I laughed. “Take three pictures. It’s a sign.” My boots crunched gravel in a prenuptial dance. I dropped to my knees, grabbed a handful of wedding day dirt and tipped it into my pocket, for luck. “Let’s go get married.”
“Okay,” she smiled again. “But it’s my turn to drive.”
The Strip in Las Vegas is a whirlwind of stimulation for a small town lad who doesn’t play video games. I was glad she was driving. The first strip-mall we found had a tired little storefront that advertised free maps, colouring books, and wedding information. They’re like that in Las Vegas.
