RAISED WITH WOLVES

Bus Trip ‘Oh Ten: Episode 48–How Sweet Indeed

July 29th

I woke up this morning feeling mostly refreshed. My brain was still a bit hazy, and the past three days had run together like a three car locomotive stuck on the tracks, black and dusty. Tyler had driven all night, and after walking into yet another Wal-Mart, I determined we were in Gallop New Mexico.

I walked around the supermarket eating a free corn dog and some jalapeño cheese poppers, using my eat while you shop method that seems to work so well. After my off-balanced and greasy breakfast, I waited for everyone to get up, and then drove us on towards Albuquerque. The orange dots on our map, which was still hanging up on the back wall of the bus, had completed their meandering loop. Our adventures were almost over: from Alburquerque we would drive south to El Paso, and then back east through Texas, backtracking t0 Austin, where we would meet up with our friends and finally sit down, take our shoes off, and sigh.

The landscape from Gallop to Albuquerque, east on I-40, is a fantastical myriad of mesas springing up from the earth, red mountains shedding their rocky shells, and ancient black lava flow piled up along the highway, evidences of a violent geologic past. We stopped in a dilapidated vapor of a Native American town, a victim of the death of old Route 66, so Ben could search for “some crazy liquor with an Indian chief or somethin’ on it”, a souvenir for one of his friends back home. Of course, he didn’t find the boon for which he searched, but he did manage to find a ten-dollar bottle of Green chili wine and a for a dollar six-pack of a beer called “Beer:30″, and determined not to give up.

After driving a few more dry, listless hours, the next punctuation in our trip was a truck stop across the highway from an Indian Casino. I pulled the bus up next to rumbling semi trucks and let everyone off. Tyler and Ben ran across the road to do some last-minute gambling, Pual sat in his bunk on his phone, and while the bus was filling up, I bought a package of herbal energy pills made for those few truckers who don’t do amphetamines.

I stepped back onto the bus with a styrofoam cup full of cherry coke, and popped the herbal pills. Pual and I were both anxious to get home. Since Las Vegas, this trip had lost much of its sheen for me. Even the Grand Canyon seemed a little lackluster after exchanging blows with Tyler in a sleep deprived, heat induced nightmare. We had said very few words to each other beyond necessity,  and I was ready to get away from him, and the trip in general; ready to be comfortable back home.

While we waited for Tyler and Ben to return from inside the casino, I called my lawyer to inquire about my insurance settlement. His secretary picked up just as I felt the pills kicking in, and as I sat on hold, my heart raced as I paced the parking lot.n Jittery, I listened as it was explained to me that I would be getting around twenty-five thousand dollars for my wreck, after hospital bills, and that the case should be wrapped up by the time I got home. I immediately called Stephanie and my mother, in that order, to tell them the good news. It felt like a millstone around my neck had just been clipped off. I hadn’t paid my room mates back in Houston for the past two months of rent, and I didn’t know how I’d pay when I got home, only adding to the daily stresses of this “vacation”.  Looks like everything would be okay after all, though.

Of course I didn’t have that money in my pocket yet, so its not like I could celebrate with a trip inside that air-conditioned casino or a bottle of champagne or green chili wine. No, a trickling smile would have to suffice.

We met Susie in Albuquerque to catch up over cheap sushi. We waited for her at a Starbucks, where Ben and Tyler used the internet and I attempted to read “Breakfast of Champions”. My mind was racing and my hands were shaking as I turned the pages of the book. My eyes darted in my head like marbles rolling around in a bucket. I felt like I was looking at things but not seeing them. Vonnegut’s words began to blur into a shady haze. Those trucker pills were really working me over, but hell, at least I wasn’t exhausted anymore.

I looked up from my book just as Susie pulled up next to the bus. It was great to see someone familiar, whom I knew and loved, who hadn’t been in rambling, bouncing closed quarters with me for the past three months. She was supposed to drive us over to the sushi place, but when we all piled into her car, it wouldn’t start.

“We’re some kinda bad luck, Susie,” said Ben apologetically.

She said a few curse words in Spanish, smacked the steering wheel with her brown hand, and opened up the car door. “I think its just having white people overload,” she said with a smile.

So we loaded into the bus and drove to the place, where we used her coupon for forty percent off sushi rolls. The five of us crammed into a tiny booth, with a red light hanging overhead. Susie and I talked about our time together in Springfield, Missouri between mouthfuls of raw fish and rice. It had only been two years since I left that place, but for her, it must be like getting to know a stranger with the face of an old friend. I’ve changed so much since those days that I’m surprised the two of us found it so easy to pick back up. My belief systems, my lifestyle, my appearance, my goals, my priorities– must all be unrecognizable from that Christian boy she knew back then.

The girl I dated in Springfield is still one of Susie’s good friends, and I know she would never be interested in the person I am today except as someone whom she could win for Christ. I often regret not being able to be close with her anymore, but to her, it’s just not possible.  Two years, that’s all it took. I’m glad Susie isn’t so particular.

“You know she won’t even talk to me. She doesn’t even want to be my friend. Last time I talked to her she tried to witness to me. Can you believe that?” I said as I dipped my Philly roll in the soy sauce dish.

“You broke her heart, you know?” Susie replied. “You left her there at the end of the year, with no intention of ever returning, and she was in love with you. She hasn’t gotten over it. You should have never started dating her if you didn’t intend on finishing it.” Susie talks so fast when she knows she’s right.

“It would have never worked out. Look at where I am. Get a whiff of how bad I smell. Try to run your fingers through my knotted, greasy hair. I’m not as complicated as she makes me out to be, i’m just a little wild. It had to end some time, it would have ended no matter what. It’s just such a shame that we can’t just be civil towards one another. We were once so close, with kisses and sweet talk and touching and–”

“Oh get on with it,” Susie said, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t know, it’s just a damn shame that all I am to her now is someone to tell the Gospel to. She wants to see me in Heaven, but she doesn’t want to see me. Do you know how impossible it is to witness to someone who used to witness to others?? Once a sheep leaves the herd, he doesn’t need to be reminded of all the virtues of pastoral life. He damn well remembers everything.”

“You know, Russell,” Susie began, pursing her lips together, her brown eyes looking into the right corner of her brain, “You can’t get so caught up on keeping everyone in your life.” Her words slowed down and she sounded less Latina for a moment as she thought out what she was going to say. “You should just be happy that they were once important to you, and then accept that they no longer are. Its like the river: Streams and creeks flow into the river, they feed it, they power it, and once its all in there you can’t tell any of the water apart. Its all the same, and then it all just moves down the river and empties out somewhere that you never see again, but you just jump in and enjoy it all the same.”

After Sushi, Ben went to the third liquor store of the day to further his monomaniacal quest to find the perfect racist red-man liquor. After scouring the aisles for thirty minutes, while the rest of us waited outside, he came back out with Green Chili beer, the least appetizing drink I’ve heard of today.

We tried to jump Susie’s car off with the bus, to no avail. So it was all hugs and goodbye waves and we left her there waiting on her father–another friend fading in the side view mirror. But we were off to El Paso–and sorry Suze–I couldn’t be sad for more than a few moments, before the anticipation of being back on Texas soil, and that much closer to home, overwhelmed me. She was right, after all, the river would keep rolling on and spit me out back in Houston, back in the arms of Stephanie, and the rest of my family.

The Lone Star State was so close I could taste it. Tastes exactly like cow shit and salty sweat; how sweet, how sweet indeed.

Leave a Comment so far
Leave a comment