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Fawcett Books, $6.50
ISBN 0-345-41448-9
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The Mustang finally died somewhere west of Ely, Nevada, on State Route 50 just past the Little Antelope Summit.
God, don't ask me how I got here. I left out of Nashville four days ago--or was it five? Hell, I can't remember--enroute to Reno, trying to get there in time for the birth of my first child. I should have been there by now. When my girlfriend Marsha called me last week, she was eight months plus, just waiting to--as she put it--explode with baby. She--we already know it's a girl--could come any day.
The trip was just over 2200 miles, door-to-door. I'd hoped to make it in three days, maybe four. Unfortunately, I didn't factor in the noise and aggravation that comes from driving a car that's only about a dozen years younger than I am. A '68 Mustang that's already seen better days is a ride that's not much better than a fifties-era pick-up truck. You get about eight driving hours a day before hallucinations start to set in.
Still, I was doing okay all the way to Kansas City. That's when the heater core blew, so in addition to all the other discomforts, I now got to freeze my ass off as soon as the sun went down. That ended my nighttime driving, but by then I was so exhausted I needed a few hours in a Motel Six anyway.
Then around Lincoln, Nebraska, the Mustang seemed to be running a little hot. Nothing serious, but I decided I'd better keep an eye on it. I was on I-80, about 800 miles into the trip headed toward Cheyenne, when the car began to sputter and miss. I wrote it off to altitude at first, but I noticed that when I pushed the car much past sixty, it started to lose power fast. I stopped for gas west of Cheyenne and the carb vapor-locked on me. I had to sit there and wait for the engine to completely cool down before it would start again. Lost about two hours to that.
By now, I'm getting tired and really cranky. I wanted to do about seven or eight-hundred miles a day, and I'm getting maybe half that. I call my buddy Lonnie in Nashville. Lonnie's the repo man/bounty hunter/jack of all trades who sold me the car and rebuilt the engine a few months back. I was broke at the time, needed a cheap car, and this one was fine for knocking around Music City. Guess I should have traded it before I left.
I call Lonnie and get his answering machine, so I try his cell phone, then his beeper, and finally the special number he has that only a few other people even know. Nothing. Lonnie's probably off somewhere with his girlfriend, Sheba. Either that or he's sneaking through somebody's backyard getting ready to Slim Jim a car open because some jamoke's missed one too many payments, and he's just too busy to answer the phone.
So I limp on through day three or four--like I said, I'm starting to lose track of time--and manage to make it all the way through Salt Lake City, only by now the Mustang's got a top speed of about 45 miles an hour and I'm starting to get some pretty serious nasty looks from the other freeway drivers. Going up a steep incline near the Utah-Nevada border, some trucker tries to pass me, only he's carrying a load of steel and he can't get any speed going up the mountain either. So here's this guy in an old White Freightliner going side-by-side with me for about ten miles, with the traffic behind us lined up flashing lights, laying on horns, flipping us both off.
Finally, we get to the summit, the highway levels off, and the Freightliner gets past me. Traffic's whizzing by about ninety now. Some guy in a Porsche rolls down his passenger window and chucks a plastic cup full of soda out the window at me as he goes by. The next guy draws down on me. I mean, literally, he waves a pistol out the window and we make eye contact and I guess I sent him the right message, because he never fired it at me. Just wanted to make sure I got a good look at it.
I took that as divine intervention, and the word I got from on high was get the hell off the interstate. So I pull off I-80 at a rest stop just across the Nevada state line, near Wendover Air Force Base. Some kid at the gas station takes a look at the Mustang for me, but he's an oil change guy and a battery installer, not a serious mechanic. We let the car cool down and I check the radiator. There's a thin, foamy layer of slippery stuff on the surface of the coolant. That's not good. And on the dipstick, there's a thin sheen of water and oil mixed together.
"That's real bad, I think," the kid says. I agree with him. Probably a head gasket that's on its way to blowing.
Still, there's nobody there who can fix it and the car is still running, at least for now. I figure if I can limp across Nevada into Reno, I can get it repaired there no matter how long it takes. Only no more freeway for me. I check the map, and see that if I take 93 down to Ely, then take State 50 west, I'll go straight into Reno and miss some of the worst of the mountains. Plus it's two-lane state road; I can drive forty-five without getting my head blown off.
Done deal, I think, so after the car cools down and I eat a quick lunch, I head south. It's only about 130 miles, maybe a bit over two hours in a normal car, but it takes me nearly four. It's high desert country here, stark and beautiful, with the clearest blue sky I've ever seen. This time of year back home in Nashville, we get a lot of gray. Gray clouds, gray skies, gray psyches. I've never seen anything this color; a piercing, intense blue that's almost unreal painted above the scrub brush and the bare, brown earth. I'm already in love with this country, despite my trouble getting across it, so I figure what the hell, it takes as long as it takes. I'll call Marsha when I stop tonight and be in Reno late tomorrow.
Maybe she can hold that baby in another day or two, I think, smiling at the thought.
So I'm about an hour west of Ely when I hear this clunking sound from just in front of the firewall, followed by a grinding noise and this feeling like there's no power at all left in the car. In the rearview mirror, I see smoke, blue smoke. That means oil; that's bad. I push in on the clutch and the moment I do, the engine's dead as a rock and I'm coasting to a stop.
I climb out of the car and do what every idiot does in a situation like this: I raise the hood and stare down at the engine. Like I can do something to it. I don't even have a toolbox in the trunk, not to mention that I wouldn't know what to do with it if I had one.
It's four o'clock in the afternoon now, the sun still high in the sky but not as high as it was an hour or two ago. I can see behind me on State 50 all the way to the eastern horizon, two lanes of asphalt without a two-legged living thing on it except me. Ahead of me, to the west, the two lanes stretch out for miles, finally dropping out of sight in a line of mountains that look sharp, craggy, impassable.
I do a quick inventory, my mind trying to focus on my increasingly narrow set of options. I check the odometer, which I just happened to glance at when I filled the gas tank just outside of Ely. I've put somewhere between forty and fifty miles on the car since then.
Way too far to walk back....
I pull out the map, check out where I've been and what's in front of me. Awhile ago, I went through what a sign said was the Robinson Summit, elevation 7588 feet. The engine blew on the western downhill side of the Little Antelope Summit. To my immediate left, in fact practically across the street, is the Humboldt National Forest. According to the map, Mount Hamilton should be off to the south and at nearly 11,000 feet elevation, pretty visible.
I set the map down on the roof of the car and turn. Yeah, there it is, huge and sharp and covered in white at the top.
Great, I think, snow.
The mental inventory continues. I've got no food in the car, no water, one-half of a twenty ounce Coke in a plastic bottle, no doubt flatter than hell. I've got no cell phone, no radio, no way to contact anybody. And when the temperature starts dropping in another hour or two, I've got a couple of sweaters and a leather jacket in my suitcase, but no blanket and nothing else to cover up in.
And let's see, there's a car with no heater that won't run anyway. I could siphon some gas out of the tank to start a fire but I don't have a hose. There aren't any matches either, and come to think of it, I even took the cigarette lighter out of the car because I don't smoke.
I turned back to the map, studying it as closely as I can while there's still enough light. Then, for the first time, I noticed in small print these little letters that run below the thin red line that is Route 50 on the map. I trace the letters as they dance across the page with my right index finger. Then it all comes together for me.
The little letters spell out the words THE LONELIEST ROAD.
I look to my left and then to my right. No sign of life anywhere. Not even a sound. If I strain real hard, I can hear the wind gently blowing past my ears; at least I think I can. Maybe I'm hallucinating.
"Holy shit," I whisper. If this road is so deserted they even call it the Loneliest Road on the map, then I really am in some trouble. Right now, it's just a question of how much.
I fold up the map and toss it onto the drivers seat, then pull my jacket out and put it on, zipping it all the way up to my neck. I'd always heard people say this, but only just now was I beginning to get a sense of what they were talking about: the desert gets cold as hell at night. Just in the last half-hour, I could feel it. It was mid-fifties, maybe low sixties a couple of hours ago. Now I'd bet the rent it was in the forties and just beginning to fall.
On top of that, the air's so thin up here it's giving me a headache. And it's so dry I can feel it sucking the moisture out of me as I stand here on the side of the road. My lips are cracking and my eyes feel dry, like there's no tears left.
One thing you can say for a thirty-one year old Ford: it's made out of stouter stuff than today's plastic cars. I hop up on the bumper, then across the hood, then onto the roof of the car, my weight causing only the slightest indentation in the metal. I put my hands to my forehead and strain to see as far off to the east as I can, where the purple and blue of dusk is already rising up from the ground like ink. A few stars are visible as sharp, distinct points of life maybe an inch off the horizon.
Nothing.
I scan the horizon a full three-hundred-sixty degrees, thinking maybe there's a house or a ranch or a trailer or even a well or something off the side of the road. Give me a hiker or a cowboy or Gabby Hayes mining for gold with his burro back in the hills; anybody with a canteen and a cell phone.
I'm from back east. I'm a city boy; my idea of roughing it is when room service closes at eleven. Even in Nashville, your car breaks down and the worst you've got is a pain-in-the-ass walk to the nearest pay phone and a tow truck bill. But here, in land as barren and empty as a John Ford set, I get the feeling that this is the kind of country that can kill you if you're not ready for it.
But here's the weird part; for some reason or other, I'm not scared. I should be. There should be panic, yelling for help, wailing and screaming. Only there's not, and I don't know why. Maybe it's the awesomeness of it all; that after being reduced to such insignificance that my whole life is only a spark against such a sky, there's nothing to fear because all is lost anyway.
I stood there, leaning against the Mustang, scanning the road in either direction, until the sun set below the western horizon and the purple and blue faded into black. By now it's just plain cold outside, but it's not that wet, humid cold we get back east, the kind that eats through your skin and muscle and all the way to the bone and then even deeper, into the marrow, until it's impossible to ever warm up. This is different; there's something about it that's invigorating.
All the same, I pull off the jacket, unzip the suitcase again and pull out both sweaters and put them on. Then the jacket goes on top of that. I've got five layers on now from the belt up, which ought to be enough to get me through the night. I crawl back in the car and roll up the windows and hunker down for the night. I drink half the flat Coke, which leaves a sweet, syrupy disgusting taste in my mouth, but at least it's not dust.
I look out the car window and can't see the road barely three feet below me. Above me, there's no moon, but the sky is bright with the sparkles of countless stars. Silence is everywhere, broken only by the rustle of my clothes as I move.
For a moment I worry about running down the car battery, then figure that's a useless concern since the engine's dead anyway. I pull the knob on the steering column and the hazard lights start flashing. I can see the rhythmic bursts of the white parking lights flashing off the hood of the car, while in the rearview mirror, corresponding spurts of red glow off the back end. There's something comforting about that, except the clicking of the relay sounds like a hammer hitting metal and I wonder how long I can stand it.
I reach behind me, into a small grocery sack full of paperback books, and pull one out, then flick on the tiny dome light inside the car. By now, I'm getting kind of hungry and really cold. I can't feel my feet much anymore. I check my watch: it's 7:30 now. I've been sitting here over three hours. It must be nearly freezing out.
I settle into the drivers seat and readjust the rearview mirror so that I can look out the front and back of the Mustang at the same time without moving. Right now, I'll take a ride in either direction. If somebody takes me back east to Ely, I'll be thrilled.
The first book my hand comes to is Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer. I don't know what made me throw the book into the car as I left. I'd tried to read it once as an undergraduate and it was too dense, too thick, for me to get much out of it. I took a shot at it because of its racy reputation, but truth is Miller is so philosophical about sex that most of it wasn't much of a turn-on. The writing seemed surreal, convoluted, and I finally put the book down and forgot about it. It stayed with me, though, in a box of books that I moved from place to place, through my years as an investigative reporter and from the beginning to the end of my marriage. Then my career crashed and burned and I got my license as a private detective. And always, this ever-present box of books that I dragged around with me as I descended one rung at a time down the socio-economic ladder.
And now here I was, on the Loneliest Road in America, broken down and lost and the only question remaining being which would get me first: the lack of water or the lack of heat.
I cracked the window to get a little air and began reading.
It is now the fall of my second year in Paris. I was sent here for a reason I have not yet been able to fathom. I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the hap-piest man alive.
I looked out the windshield, at the vague black shapes that came up out of the ground and melded into the night sky and above them, the endless tiny pinpoints of light. I climbed out of the car, onto the asphalt that still glowed and radiated with a faint heat, and stood in the middle of the highway, my feet straddling the dotted white line that marked the lanes. At that moment, when I was totally alone and cognizant somewhere in the intellect part of my brain that I was facing a situation that would eventually get serious if it didn't change, I felt freer and happier and lighter than I'd ever felt in my life. I laughed out loud, surprised to hear my own voice cutting through the darkness. I yelled again, and then spun around deliriously in the middle of the road, a lost soul on a desert highway.
The Loneliest Road. The Loneliest Road in America, and here I was right smack dab in the middle of it, dancing in time to the rhythmic flashing of hazard lights.
Dancing for as long as they lasted, and then somewhere near dawn, when the flashing slowed and the lights dimmed, maybe I would dim as well. Maybe my lights would go out, the rhythmic flashing of my heartbeat fading slowly just as the day faded into night. And if they did, would anyone ever find me, or what was left of me? Would any of it matter, beneath this sky, this universe, that reduced everything in it to insignificance?
And then I thought of my unborn child, my daughter, and was suddenly very saddened. If I were to die out here in the middle of this high-country desert, I'd never see her, never know who the child was, what she would or could become.
I didn't feel like dancing in the middle of the highway anymore. From far off to my left, I heard a howling, like a coyote or a lost dog. I couldn't tell which. From behind me, another howl erupted in answer to the first. Then from the distant brush in front of me, I heard a squalling sound, a horrible, high-pitched caterwauling, like a horny tomcat trying to get to his girlfriend's house, only the tomcat's the size of an NFL linebacker and ain't nobody going to stop him.
Suddenly, the night desert erupted in a symphony of noise. During the day, the desert is almost completely silent except for the gentle hissing of wind; that is, of course until the wind picks up into a howl of its own. But that's about all you can hear.
But at night--at night, the desert comes alive. I rolled down the window, despite the cold, and listened until the wind picked up and my face felt like it was resting against a pillow full of broken glass.
I rolled the window up, then read until I drifted off into sleep.
* * *
I came up out of a restless, troubled half-sleep just as the blinking of the hazard lights was slowing down to nothingness. I came to, my lips cracked and dry, my throat parched. My sinuses had swollen shut from the cold and the dry air, so I'd been breathing through my mouth for who knew how long. I ran my tongue across my cracked lips, raked it across the roof of my mouth trying to collect any little bit of moisture that could be found.
I checked my watch: 4:30. The sun would be up soon. I knew that a car battery would recharge itself a tiny bit as long as it wasn't completely drained. No one had passed all night; I knew that for even when asleep, my senses were attuned to any car noise. I reached down and pressed the button to turn off the hazard lights. Immediately, the faint white blinking in the front of the car stopped. I shifted, sat up on the bench seat to check in the rearview mirror. But the lights were still there. I reached down, pressed the button again. But it was already in the off position. I looked up again, half-asleep, dazed even, trying to make sense of the white lights in the rearview mirror.
But the rear hazard lights were supposed to be red.
My heart seemed to jump in my chest as I strained to focus on the mirror, then turned and stared out the dusty back window. In the distance, two tiny pinpricks of light were growing larger by the moment.
My mouth opened, but nothing came out. I shook my head, trying to get my brain to work. I was dehydrated, blood sugar shot to hell, still half-asleep. I stared again.
Yes.... Lights.
I pushed the car door open and that's when I heard it--the faint whining of a car's engine, growing louder by the moment as the lights grew brighter. As I reached in to turn the hazard lights back on, I thought again of Henry Miller, starving in Paris, penniless, no hope and no prospects, and the happiest man alive.
Finally, I understood.
So what do you think? Drop me a line....