The point is the driving. It's the cheap motel, the dust, the sweaty, salty, dirty skin, it's the wind in the window, it's the water, it's the map, which is for tracing where we have been, not where we are going. Mornings, we start driving in any direction, to see what there is to see, to see where we end up next. We collect the names of towns like children collect rocks. We mark them on our map, which is spread out on the beaded motel bedspread or on the burning hood of the car, heads together, we are here, we say, and here, and here, we trace our path with a red pen, fingernails stubby and filthy. In the car, we're propelled by some weird force. Our feet are heavy on the pedal. The place back there fades in the rear-view and we fly into the arms of something fantastical, more real than real.
We're gone for days, then weeks, a month. No one knows where we are.
THE BORDERLANDS.
We climb out of the car in a nameless town where there is a store, a post office, a white adobe church. The metal cross catches the sun and reflects it so brightly it burns the eyes. The flash of white light repeats itself on the back of my eyelids. We go into the store. The people in it look at us strangely, perhaps because we are gringos and perhaps because we are filthy and look a little nuts. We find a pile of maps. They are maps of the deserts that extend down into northern Mexico. We unroll them on the floor. Which one, which one should we buy?
We could get this one, I say, unfolding a map of the Chihuahuan desert. Sean glances at it.
Too far left, he says, and bends his head over a map of Arizona's Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument. We've been through Joshua Tree and Death Valley, where we said nothing and stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out at the vast expanse of the slender, twisted, black bodies of trees. We wandered off onto it, like walking through a de Chirico, or a Dali: all emptiness, haunted silence, cracked ground. We wandered till dark. Sean had a GPS with him. That was how we found our car.
Then through the Painted Desert, where I pointed out the window at rock formations and color striations. His head turned, almost in slow motion, as he followed things as they went past. The speedometer read over 90. It was excruciatingly slow.
This one, Sean says, triumphant, looking up from his map. I crouch next to him. I nod. Of course, I say.
We leave with a topographic map of the Sonoran Desert. It shows no roads, no towns. Only the infinitesimal, perfectly accurate lines that indicate where a hill rises up a hundred feet, where a stream circles the hill, the lines rippling out from a high point and widening down to a low. With this map, we are ready. Now we will know where we are if we get lost. We will be able to say, C72, lat 623', yes, obviously, now we can see. It all comes clear. We are explorers. We have the finest map known to man, the one true map, the map for those who grasp the real significance of the single step this way or that.
We get back in the car. The sun is falling. We drive past a sign that says GRINGO PASS.
Ahead of us is the border crossing, marked by what looks like a tollbooth made of shabby clapboard. We slow down and come to a stop. The border patrol watches us. We are frightened. They are police. We discuss our options.
Straight through, he says. That's one.
I nod. Or around, I say. We could go a little east and see if there's a fence.
They shoot you, he says.
True, I say. Then that won't work.
There are two buildings in Gringo Pass, at least on this side of the border. It looks like there is one more on the other side. We wonder if that is also Gringo Pass. We can't be sure whether we are in Arizona, or if, by virtue of being at the border, we are in Mexico instead. This confounds us. One of the buildings says, in flickering neon letters, REST ANT & STOR. The neon glows bright white in the purple-blue coming night. On the other side of the road, a large white sign reads, in painted red letters, GRINGO PASS MOTEL. Both buildings are low, flat-roofed. We are sitting there in my truck in the middle of the road. The decision is momentous.
We pull in to the motel's parking lot. There is only one room left. There are no cars in the lot. It is the most expensive room, the proprietor apologizes. "Thirty bucks. Busy night," she says. She is very tiny and old, her face made of worn leather. We stare at her in awe. She slides the plastic key-chained key across the cracked counter. "Housekeeping suite. There's pots and pans. Anything else?"
Sean snaps out of it. He pulls his hat off with a flourish. "Where might a man imbibe?" He looks at me. "Sorry." He turns back to the woman. "A man and a woman? As you can see." He gestures at me with his hat. "We are not lovers," he explains. She shrugs.
"Suit yourself. Booze at the store." She waves a hand at the window. "Cross the road. Decent chili, eggs."
"Chili eggs!" Sean declares, fascinated.
"Chili, comma, eggs," I whisper, elbowing him in the ribs.
He stares at me. "Of course," he says, mortified.
He is losing his shit for the day, I see. I haul him outside and down the walkway to our room.
Inside, we pull all the pots and pans out of the kitchen cupboards, put them back, and go across the road to the REST ANT. We devour bloody steaks. We head into the STOR and buy a couple of bottles of whiskey. We go back to our room and pull our gold-colored, fraying, scratchy chairs out of the room and into the motel parking lot. We settle in with our notebooks to write. We pick up our bottles of whiskey from the ground, slam shots, and cackle. The border guards drive through the parking lot, looking for us. We are relieved that we are invisible. We laugh knowingly at their stupidity. We shout sections of what we are writing. Listen, listen! we gasp, laughing, knowing that we understand.
When you are mad, mad like this, you don't know it. Reality is what you see. When what you see shifts, departing from anyone else's reality, it's still reality to you. Sean and I know that what we see is true, and real. We know that we have each finally stumbled on the one other person who understands this, and we know that what we believed before was an impoverished, colorless misapprehension of what actually is. We wonder at the miracle that is us.
Crazy Sean walks ahead of me. We are in the desert. We have no map. I am talking to myself, certain that I have come to find the secret treasure. I stare down a snake. We walk in circles for weeks, or minutes, or years. Time has escaped me. Everything is sand.
Crazy Sean stops and turns. He says to me: It's over, isn't it.
He reminds me of Jesus. I nod. Yes, I say. It is. What is?
He shakes his head and sighs and squints into the sun. What? he says. What is? Lots of things are. De facto, he explains.
Ergo sum, I agree, and eat some gorp I find in my pockets.
We stand on a high white rock, looking up as the sunrise, or sunset, rises up, or falls down, over a flat red mesa.
Where are we? he asks me.
I think about this. Do you mean literally or figuratively? I reply.
Biblically, he says.
Ah, I say, and nod.
We lie down on the rock and sleep. When we wake, it's pitch-black but for stars. We have no water.
We'll die, says Crazy Sean. He wraps his arms around his knees. I expect we will, I say.
Peacefully, together, we are crazy, and we don't know where we are, and we are out of water, and we have no idea how to get home.
So we get up and start walking. It gets light as we discuss Dante, and Faulkner, and the nature of hell. We walk into the center of the desert, or into the center of the reeling sun, but again the light fades out and there in the night, at the end of the road, we are somehow back at the Gringo Pass Motel. The cook at the REST ANT spins our plates of meat onto our table, wipes his hands on his apron, and turns back to the kitchen without a word. We drag our chairs out into the parking lot again and guzzle whiskey like it's water and we are dying of thirst. We discuss the essential goodness of gold qua gold, as opposed to silver, though we allow that silver has a certain appeal to crows; and the crow, though not the raven, has meaning in and of itself; though the raven does matter, in a different sort of sense.
We speak continuously of death.
Texas. Scorpions.
The fear sets in.
How long have we been gone? It doesn't even occur to us. We scream to be heard over the wind. Colorado. We are paranoid, afraid of the crowded bar. We are afraid in the grocery store, trying desperately to find booze. We are coming in and out. We are a radio station. We are a short wave. We are the news. The fluorescent lights are threatening and burn my eyes. The terrifying checkout girl sneers. We recoil, run out of the store, lock ourselves in a motel room, all orange shag carpet, one of those horrible seventies globe lamps dangling from a chain. The chain concerns us. We discuss which of us should hang ourselves first. There are logistical problems; for example, getting down the dead one would entail undoing the chain from the ceiling, and then putting it back up, and then hanging oneself next; we decide we will skip it, and watch a horror movie on the television. It is a terrible movie. We are petrified. We are screaming. Someone is pounding on the door. We turn the TV up so our screaming can't be heard. In a fit of brilliance, Sean leaps out of the corner where he has been hiding, grabs the light's chain, and yanks it to the floor, where it smashes into a trillion pieces of orange glass lost in the orange shag carpet. That's good, then. Neither of us will hang ourselves tonight. We drink until the night has passed.
The day whirls around in a circle, and we tumble into the night again. It is the next night, or the one after that, or we have been driving for years. The road has narrowed to a red thread down which we are careening. Crazy Sean is telling me he loves me and has to kill me to save me. He's sobbing and trying to take the wheel. We haven't eaten for days. Someone is screaming. It may be me.
Idaho. We tear down the narrow highway. Sean is going to kill me. He says my soul is abandoned. His is black. He can feel it. He can feel the cancer of his soul. He will not shut up, will not stop talking, crying, filling my ears with cacophonous noise. We speed through narrow tunnels of concrete bordering a one-lane road, leaning around the bends, nearly lifting off. I tune him out. Somewhere nearby, someone is crazy. I am sane. I must stay sane or we will not survive. He will not fucking shut up! I scream, taking my hands off the wheel, tearing at my hair, beating him about the head, and he huddles away, crying, and I hate him, he is weak, he is not a good soldier, he has failed the battalion, the war is lost because of him, the car swerves, scrapes the concrete wall, I grab the wheel and we drive on.
Utah, red mountains. Washington State. Is it morning yet? Where have we been? We drive through Seattle like sensible people. We are speaking gibberish, hating each other and ourselves. Our language is tangled. We cannot make ourselves understood. I take him to his mother's house and drop him off.
In my rearview mirror, he is tiny, holding his sleeping bag.
Oregon
August 2000
I am driving through the dark, very fast. I glance at my speedometer: 110 mph, but that isn't so very fast after all, when you consider, and compared to other things and speeds, and there is no danger for I am invincible, I am flying, and it is very urgent that I get there, to the place I am going, I must arrive immediately, the space between places upsets me, the map in my mind sprawls out in all directions, I crest the top of a hill, or maybe a mountain, it's really quite high, the air is thin and cold, the vast and utter spill of the blue-black sky, like velvet, but spinning, crawling within and around itself, amazes me, the molecules of sky (but are there molecules of sky? Is it truly a thing in itself?) seething, and the sparks of stars are electric—I feel the hill must lead down into the deeper dark, for the road spins out before me like a snake's tongue unfurling and I see no side of the road, the road is suspended in the sky like a magical bridge over what must be a long divide, the mountains splitting apart from one another, withdrawing into themselves and leaving this wide swath of bottomless sky, and I turn off the lights and I fall through space, I fly, my wheels leave the road and I am free.
I am feeling my way through the little market in town. I am near the mustard, and I search the shelves for something to keep me alive, for I have to hide away from the world, and I need food in case of fires, bombs, or acts of God. The aisles seem to lean over me, threatening to collapse, and the bright white lights in the buzzing dairy case confuse me. I keep to the back of the store, not wanting to go out front, where the clerk might see me and suspect me, or someone might open the jingling door, coming in for their morning coffee and the paper—when I came in it was just barely getting light, the purple sky reeling overhead—and I can't have anyone see me, for they might see how crazy I am, they might know. I need to get out of here before I am seen. I hurry through the market, dropping things into my basket, anything in a can, sardines, soup, peas and carrots, beans, tuna, smoked oysters. I need to stock up, I need to fill the shelves at the beach house with food, like a bunker, keeping me locked away from the world for a while, condensed milk, pickled beets, my hand grabs things off the shelf and drops them in the basket, it doesn't matter what they are.
I stand staring at my hands as I count out my money, the clerk's eyes boring into me, I can feel them, he suspects, he can see. I mumble, Thanks, and at last it's over. I hurry out to the car with my bags. I make my way to the house, driving like mad on this narrow road, hunched over the wheel, knuckles white, because I am afraid that I will drive off a cliff, just jerk the wheel and go flying over the edge, and I can't do that, I can't, I don't want to die. I peel up to the house on this quiet, still-sleeping street, gray wooden fences and lush vines crawling over them, and towering, brilliantly colored flowers glowing in the mist—this is the terrifying outside world that threatens to swallow me whole. The house is familiar today, as if I have been here as a child, but I don't know whose it is. I am alone. I lock myself in and draw the curtains, because it is safer in here where there are locks on the windows and doors.
The cans I bought are impossible to open. The can opener is complex, so I will starve; I will bury myself under the house; yes; I stop crying, much reassured.
I sit at the table with my arms wrapped around myself. I hold myself to the chair so that I do not stand, for if I stand, I might go to the drawer, get the knives, and then who knows what I'd do? I want desperately to be sane. But I can picture myself having just done it, the first stab, and the look on my face, horrified, But I didn't mean to, I couldn't help it, I take it back—
I know, sitting here in the house by the ocean, that if I so much as touch a knife, I'll do it again, and this time I might, as they say in the business, succeed. The desire to do something with my hands, to strike, to break, is so powerful it's all I can do to hold them under my arms, crossed tightly across my chest. I keep myself sitting, because I am afraid that if I stand, even if I make it past the drawer where the knives are kept, I might grab my keys and get in my car. And I know, I know, that if I do that, I will drive myself off a cliff. At this moment, I understand with all my being why someone would commit suicide: there is no other way to get away from yourself, and I want nothing more than to finally escape the incessant shrieking of my mind, the crawling madness that has infested every part of me, body and brain. Don't ask me why I am focused, particularly, on the knife drawer and the idea of driving off a cliff. They happen to be the means of death my mind fixates on, and they keep me sitting in my chair for I don't know how long. Hours? Days?
Of course, I get up now and then. I get up to get another bottle. Then I put myself back in my chair, as if I am a little kid who refuses to eat her peas and is not allowed to leave her place until she finishes every last bite. I sit at the table with my feet on the chair, peeling the label off a bottle of whiskey, swimming in the drunken, tumultuous sea of my thoughts. I take a swig, set the bottle down, and study it as the liquor burns a path down my throat. It suddenly dawns on me that the drinking may be one of the things that is making me as crazy as I am. It is one of the things that has brought me to this point. I put my head on the table, hand wrapped around the bottle, and close my eyes. I know I can't stop. And
I know, finally, that if I do not stop, the madness will get worse, that the alcohol is like pouring gasoline on an already smoldering fire.
I find myself opening the phone book and looking up a twelve-step group. A few minutes later I'm driving like hell toward what seems the only chance I have to save my own life.
Hi, someone says. He's enormous, wearing biker leathers and a red bandanna. I'm Steve, and I'm an alcoholic.
Hi, Steve, the room recites. My vision veers in and out, and my hands shake so hard I can barely hold the Styrofoam cup of bad coffee. The coffee has little waves in it. It spills over the sides.
Hi, Susan. Hi, Sandra. Hi, Peter. Hi, John.
They come to me. I look around in confusion.
What's your name? someone asks gently.
Marya, I say, barely audible, my mouth sticky and dry.
They wait for me to say And I'm an alcoholic. A beat. They move on. Hi, Andrew. Hi, Joan.
They talk for an hour. I have no idea what they say. My brain skitters over the sound, catching snippets of sentences, a laugh. The circle of faces revolves around me, the room spins, and I grip the arms of my chair to keep myself from tipping over. And then suddenly the meeting breaks up, I'm wandering outside, and it seems that half the group hurries after me, calling my name. They crowd around, looking at me urgently, touching me on the arm. I look up at them, overwhelmed and confused, and try to follow the questions that come at me in a flurry:
Are you from around here?
How long since your last drink?
Are you feeling all right? You look a little—pale.
Have you eaten lately?
Do you need another cup of coffee?
Why don't you come back inside and sit down. You don't seem so steady on your feet.
I am pushed back into the meeting room and guided onto a couch. Someone hands me a cup of coffee. They pull up chairs.