Day Thirty-One (Tuesday, July 27, 1971)

Otto was gone before I got up. His stuff was there, with Kelly Cooper’s phone number and address scribbled on a paper bag. Immediately I decided to do some venturing myself. I would hitchhike
back through Los Angeles. It was something he and I missed and I hadn’t felt good bypassing it.

“To hell with Otto!”

Thumbing was a snap. I got a quick ride to Buena Park. The driver was a guy from the East who bitched, “Jesus H. Christ, when I see a sign for Norwalk, I think Connecticut—not California. This place borrows everything from everywhere else. Nothing is original.” Two more rides and I was sitting below the ‘HOLLYWOOD’ sign on Sunset Boulevard. The sign was dowdy and in need of repair. That didn’t stop the tourists. Plenty of them handed me their cameras and asked me to snap pictures of them (I dumbly left my own camera behind).

I scanned sights on foot. A screenwriter and voice imitator named Jim Sills picked me up. He was elated when I told him my method of getting to California. He asked all about my trip. His generosity toward me turned boundless. The more questions I answered, the more attentive he became. He decided to bring me to his place of employment –- the Warner Brothers / Burbank studio, and the adjoining Columbia Ranch, “to show you around, get a feel for the place, the lay of the studio.”

“That would be huge.”

“Most guys I pick up aren’t seeking the yin and the yang, like you. They’re nothing but a bunch of punks, really. But you earned your way out here with your thumb. You deserve to see this place. Sound good? It’s nirvana for artists like me. It ought to be for you, too, with your creative bent.”

He gave me the “insider’s view,” the kind of look-see you’d never get on the regular Universal Studios tour (which I already brushed off when I saw endless lines and its astounding $4.25 admission).

“Just act like you work here or something. You’re dressed perfectly, teeshirt and cutoffs. That’s what they all wear out here anyway.” He flashed his gate pass at several check points and said hello to everyone by name.

We walked through the set of a movie in production, The Getaway, starring Steve McQueen and Ali McGraw, though the stars themselves weren’t shooting until nighttime. The street was built to resemble a small town whose bank gets robbed. Jim explained the research that goes into building a set. Behind the realistic store facade was scrap lumber and sand bags—hah-hah.

We drove past a props building and costume design studio where the TV show Love, American Style was taping. We walked onto a grassy mound that doubled as a make-believe island. Walking past the red light, we saw a scene filmed with Ricardo Monabon and his midget sidekick Herve Villechaize. Behind the set, off camera, actors in Hawaiian shirts were being dabbed with makeup. Hula dancers were sunning themselves on cots.

“Now you know what actors do most of the time,” Jim said. “They wait around doing nothing.”

As a final favor, Jim dropped me off in the middle of Beverly Hills, arming me with a “Map of the Stars.” On my suggestion we parted ways in front of the heavy wooden gate that belonged to actress Elizabeth Montgomery. It was cool just to stand there; I loved Bewitched.

“Elizabeth’s the foxiest woman on television. I’ve known her and her husband Bill for ten years.” He waved goodbye.

From there I hiked to Smokey Robinson’s house on North Oakhurst. His mansion was painted milk chocolate and had no fence or gate. For “BH”—whose every lush home had a massive flower garden, palm trees, a swimming pool, and an alarm system—his was relatively unshielded.

“Come on out, Smokey! Let’s play frisbee on your front lawn!”

Walking down the middle of the pavement (there weren’t any sidewalks), a cop stopped.

“What’s your business, son?”

“Walking around.”

“Doing what?”

“Admiring real estate.”

He smirked. “By yourself?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mind if I look through your bag?” It contained cheese tidbits, a half-empty quart of Coke, a banana peel, and napkins.

After he left I shouted, “I don’t own a car and I’m proud of it, dum dum!”

Mistake—trying to thumb a ride out of Beverly Hills back to Huntington Beach. I got weird looks from chauffeurs in Bentleys and towel-headed servants in Rolls Royces. I jogged out of there. That was my only escape, to get out by running. I got to Wilshire Boulevard and hailed down a guitarist in an old Rambler, but in the process he screwed me up. He brought me to a tight, curving ramp on the Glendale Freeway, which was the wrong freeway.

I fought my way onto the Long Beach Freeway, but before I knew it I was on the Santa Monica Freeway and headed in the wrong direction again. My spirit faded and it was getting late. I thumbed in vain for about an hour. The sun was heading down. Suddenly I changed gears and hopped on a RTD bus. I was brought to the main Greyhound terminal in downtown L.A., where I transferred to a Huntington Beach bus. For 85 cents, it slow but worth it. My survival skills saved me.

All our stuff was intact. Night had fallen. I had to track down Otto. I found him up on the municipal pier in the cold and mist, about half- way out. He didn’t seem happy. I was careful how I approached him.

“Evening.”

He looked over sharply.

“I figured you might be here,” I said. “Greetings.”

No response.

“How was your sojourn to Whittier?”

Nothing.

“Aren’t you communicating?”

“Where were you all day, Winans?”

“Passing time. It’s not important. I’ll tell you later. How about you? How was your date with Kelly? Did it meet your expectations?”

He scowled and looked down.

“What was that for, man? All I did was ask.”

“Kelly was busy today. I stayed here in town.”

“Euu.”

“Fuck you, Winans.”

“Sorry.”

“Fuck you and your mother.”

“I mean it, Otto! That’s bummy.”

He dropped an O-Bomb. “We set up somethin’ for tomorrow. I’m still goin’ to Whittier. I wanna see her. That’s that. I don’t care what you do, asswipe. Go croak. Jump in the ocean and die for all I care.”

I slipped my hands into my pockets. The pier could’ve split in half; that’s how wide a gulf opened up between us. I walked around in little circles, shaking my head.

“Oh no, George. That’s not in the stars. We’re clearing out of here. That’s been determined. We’re going to start back home like we planned.”

“No way, Winans. Bullshit! We’re stayin’ long enough to visit Kelly and Bristol. It’s all arranged. I got a special invitation and I ain’t gonna let it pass.”

“Oh yes you are.”

“Oh no I ain’t.”

I pointed in his face. “You go, and you’ll be hitchhiking home alone, too! I’m not going to fritter away my time feeding your fool ego! You should have done your romancing today! You’re just too lazy to get off your duff and pursue.”

“The hell I am. How do you know?” Rage filled his skin. “You always think you know everything and you don’t know shit.”

“Maybe I’m an asshole.”

“You are an asshole.”

“Then that’s your tough luck you’ve been stuck with me all these
weeks, isn’t it?”

“Mergatroid, Winans. What the hell you bein’ so stern about? Be flexible, for cryin’ out loud.”

“What do you think I’ve been all today? Your time is up. The buzzer sounded. The game is over. The ballboys collected all the equipment. I already told you I’m not going to hold your hand while you drag me to some bumfuck town to satisfy your juvenile fantasy. I thought you were bigger than that.”

“I’m bigger than you!”

Otto cocked his arm. I deflected his wrist an instant before he slapped me. Never before had he used his physical size against me.

“Ah, go play with your dinky.” He backed off.

“To hell with it!”

Three minutes of silence. “You mean to tell me someone you met for five minutes is more important than our history together? Thanks for the affirmation, palsie.”

“I guess you ain’t heard of love at first sight.”

“This is frivolous, man! Don’t you get that? I know about puppy love, but the point is you’re jerking your partner around. On purpose. You had plenty of time to court that girl. You could have been a hell of a lot more enterprising, but all you did was dance your tiring softstep.”

“Put your cock in your mouth and suck hard, Winans. Dance with that.”

“Stop the rhetoric.”

“Wiggle it around your ass while you’re at it.”

“If you’re so selfish, then I’ll be, too. How ’bout this, George: I refuse to go to Whittier. You understand? I refuse.”

Otto stormed off the municipal pier, walking wildly, and pounced down on the curb of Highway One. He sat defiantly with his arms strung around his hairy knees.

He and I sat on opposite curbs of the street, stewing. A good twenty minutes passed. Waves nettled and crashed against the coast.

“Are you ready for some rest?”

Dead silence, at least a minute’s worth.

“Where’s my pack?”

“Right where you left it. At the water tank.”

“Go ahead. I’ll be there when I feel like it.”

Day Thirty-Two (Wednesday, July 28, 1971)

Who was being more unreasonable? It was a nut buster. I didn’t want to do anything stupid for the sake of pride. On the other hand, I was serious about leaving his can behind. I didn’t need those histrionics. But step careful, Roger. One mile apart meant three thousand alone.

I sat for a long time on the protector wall in the morning sun, watching the cocoon-like figure of Otto Brackston George, Jr., lying asleep in the sand. The houses around were still. A salty breeze wafted through the scrubs and sandy path. The old water tanks had their share of must and mildew. As softly as possible I gathered my dirty clothes in a plastic bag. As I stepped away, Otto’s head peeked up over the wall.

“What the hell you doin’?”

“Want to go to the laundromat with me? Your clothes are dirty.”

“Hell no. I ain’t goin’ nowhere with you.”

“You don’t like clean clothes?”

“No.”

“All right, to hell with you. I can play your game.”

“Yeah, go play. You like to play with yourself, don’t you?”

“It sure beats playing with you.”

People of all sizes, shapes, and ages were busy folding clothes, loading washers, and doing all the things that people do in laundromats. I sat on a wooden bench, elbows on knees, glumly watching clothes swish around.

The guy running the washer two down from me was . . . Joe Namath! Holy moly! It wasn’t someone who looked like Joe Namath, the way we always joked. This was Joe Namath!

Being a New York Jets fan, I knew his habit was to report late to training camp. And I knew he liked California. But whooda thunk Joe Willie Namath, born May 31, 1943, in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania, would be right there at the Huntington Beach Spin-O-Matic?

It was surreal. He actually spoke to me first.

“Got a quarter for two dimes and a nickel?” He dipped his hand into the pocket of a flashy red outfit. “That change machine only goes one way.”

“Say, aren’t you Joe . . . ?”

“Shhh.” He smiled with the absolute whitest set of teeth I’d ever seen on a homo sapien. “Don’t tell Pete Rozelle.” He winked.

Joe was in there washing his clothes, just like everybody else. He had medium-length dark hair, clear blue eyes, a thick footballer’s neck, tanned muscles, and bad posture. He wore bright bellbottoms and sandals and a shirt with an open collar exposing a hairy chest and gold cross. After I gave him change I was stunned to see him ambling back next to me on the bench.

“Excuse me for asking, but you don’t look too good.” He smiled, hunching forward with forearms on his thighs. “You all right? It looks like your girl just walked out on you.”

“Not my girlfriend, Joe, my best friend. I’m on a trip. We just had a big argument. He and I hitchhiked out here from New Jersey. I’m not sure if we’ll be thumbing back together. It’s iffy right now.”

“You’re a cross-country hitchhiker? Nice to meet you, guy. I always wanted to do that.” He shook my hand. “What kind of spat?”

Joe’s shaggy locks nodded with empathy. It was ultra-cool to be telling my side of the story with a twenty-eight year-old NFL quarterback who guaranteed winning the Super Bowl three years ago and became the toast of the town.

“So you hitchhiked out here to California with your best buddy and now you’re feuding? That’s not right.” Joe’s lustrous eyes glowed. “You guys have been in the fox hole too long to start fighting now. You can’t let a schoolgirl come between you. Come on, guys stick with guys. Don’t you know that?”

He excused himself to pull out a bunch of striped shirts from the dryer. It occurred to me he had just given me more advice than my own father ever had. He continued, “It takes guts to come out here
on your thumb, so I like the way you’re playing it. Stand firm, guy. See what he does. He’s on the wrong side of this. He’s playing you off that girl. Your trip is too big to wash your hands and let it go. He’ll come around.”

“Trust and loyalty rules, right?”

“That girl should rate no more than a glance.”

I was amazed to be sitting in a laundromat in Huntington Beach, California, having a heart-to-heart with Joe Willie Namath. Already a crowd of women was gathering at varying distances, ready to pounce on him for his autograph when we were through. I saw him mentally preparing for the onslaught.

“So you going to make it?” He smiled bashfully through his spectacular teeth. A few girls shrieked. “I was only an industrial arts major, but you figure out a thing or two as you go along. Team sports is good for that.”

“I’m good. Thanks, Joe. You are so for real.”

“Naw.”

“And good luck this season. Win another Super Bowl, will you? The Jets need at least two.”

I walked back to the sandy path laughing and crying. How did that happen? I felt uplifted and inspired, marveling at my dumb-luck fortune, but just as conflicted. Would life change because of meeting someone like that? When? Still, it was one of the best moments of my whole life. Life puts you in permanent gratitude mode, that’s for sure. Any other way to look at it is wrong.

“Guess what, I’m friends with Joe Namath!” I tried to convince myself over and over.

Otto was fully dressed when I got back. He was standing in the pathway, talking to a geezer with a stubbly beard and weathered face. I ducked behind a transformer, thinking “security guard.” Nope. Just a wily codger, croaking on about fishing tales, trawling deep water, and shipping disasters.

He moved on. Otto Brackston George, Jr. saw me coming and cocked his head. His loathing penetrated any veneer I tried to throw against it.

I took a deep breath from my spot on the on-deck circle. I stepped up to the plate, dug my foot into the batter’s box, and took some practice cuts. I was about to hit in front of 50,000 people at Yankee Stadium. If only I could’ve been a professional baseball player patrolling right field for the Yankees. Then I wouldn’t have to go through this. Then again, check that. If a superstar like Joe Namath was still doing his own laundry, and being sincere about it, maybe I did need to go through it.

“Clothes are washed.”

He glared. “What’s that to me?”

“Washed yours, too.” I sat on the protector wall. Otto sat on the sand in a Lotus position.

Neither of us moved nor spoke for a long time.

“Was your sleep as lousy as mine?”

“Worse.”

The same warm sun that felt so good across my back and neck bleached out Otto. It burnished his face.

He squinted. “I didn’t sleep at all.”

“Me neither.”

A long wait. Telling him about Joe Namath was postponed indefinitely.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking, man,” I said carefully. “You know what I’m going to say. I know you’re not going to like it . . .”

I paused for an outburst. Otto brushed sand off his upper arms, pretending he didn’t care what I was talking about.

“. . . it’s just that I’m not going to Whittier in any shape, way, or form. I’m sorry things didn’t work out with that girl, but I gave you time and nothing happened. That’s the end of it. We’re on this trip together. Going there together is not productive—for us. Why do I have to win one for the Gipper?”

Otto sat stone-like. “Go to hell. I ain’t no chimpanzee.”

“I appreciate how you stuck by me when I got banged up in Hanford. But if the situation was reversed, I would’ve stuck around for you. That was different than this. Hanford was an injury delay.”

“You are completely fucked up.” Otto gave me his queerest expression yet, his nose twitching to the left and his mouth twitching to the right. He squinted sourly. “Sometimes plans change.”

“Sometimes they do. But we’ve got 3,000 miles staring at us. That’s what I’m concentrating on. If we’re still a team, we operate on a two-vote system. Going to Whittier only has one vote.”

Otto stared at my feet. “It’s not along the way?”

“No.”

Otto looked up with a scowl, then down. I straddled my legs on either side of the wall. He poured cupfuls of sand over his toes. Another long wait.

“So?” I said. Otto looked up, squinted, and looked down.

I waited. “Well?”

He held his eyes on me, despite the blinding light. He still didn’t say anything.

“I’ll come along,” he grumbled. “But it won’t be gladly.”

Otto would not interact with me once he and I got situated on the shoulder. Wouldn’t talk, wouldn’t cooperate, wouldn’t soften. He acted with contempt for all my smalltalk. He thumbed several yards ahead in the sand, as if hitching on his own. He wouldn’t face me nor address me.

During our abysmal wait I threw stones between strands of a barbed wire fence and checked my Rand McNally. I didn’t feel confident. It was a house of cards. Did Otto know that the road we stood on—Beach Boulevard—when traced to its northern terminus, led straight into Whittier?

We took an awful ridiculing from people I thought would be allies—hippies, kids, ‘Back to Earth’ people, Age-of-Aquarius folk, all the open-minded liberal 20-somethings. My small ‘NJ’ sign got laughed at. People yelled obscenities. They sneered.

“Jack off, idiots! We got work to do!”

Otto was silent, brooding, sulking. I was so tense I couldn’t feel my body standing there. Too many scenarios existed for a bad ending. I pictured him changing his mind, declining a ride I accepted, entering a restaurant and not coming out, or just lifting his pack and walking away.

Three male freaks, bearded and sitting in the front seat, chugged over in a red 1957 Ford station wagon. All three wore sleeveless teeshirts.

Their hairy underarms were stinking awful. One guy in a brown bucket hat began with some jokes.

“Why do lawyers wear sunscreen when they’re at the beach? Because they’re used to doing all their lying indoors . . .

“What’s the difference between a lawyer and a pail of dirt? The pail . . .

“How many lawyers does it take to change a light bulb? None, they’d rather keep their clients in the dark . . .”

“No offense, guys, but neither of us is in the mood for a comedy routine,” I said. Otto cracked neither smile nor glance.

“How about we change from lawyers to sex?” The brown hat chuckled. “What’s the speed limit of sex? Sixty-eight. Because at sixty- nine, you’ve got to turn around . . .

“What three words ruin a man’s ego? ‘Is it in?’ . . .

“What do you get when you cross Raggedy Ann with the Pillsbury Dough Boy? A redheaded bitch with a yeast infection.”

What spanned before me on the boulevard stood my hair on end. A sign with a giant arrow pointed to the right, “GARDEN GROVE FREEWAY.” That’s where I wanted to go.

An even bigger arrow pointed straight ahead, “WHITTIER.” Home of Kelly Cooper and Bristol.

“Let you off under the sign up here?”

“Yeah.” I licked my lips and fumbled for my red duffel bag.

“Both you guys want out?”

I hesitated. “Yeah.” My heart pumped madly. No rebuff, no sound, no hint. Nothing.

My mouth was barren; my throat compressed. I felt stuffed in salt. The car rattled to a halt. I piled out with a prayer. I stood over the doorframe from the gravel shoulder.

Otto didn’t budge. He sat bolted, staring straight ahead, stationary—a gnome fixated to his fulcrum. No expression. No flicker.

“Guess he’d rather hang with the boys?” The comedians were ready to launch more jokes.

Just as my spirit splintered and was about to crack, so did Otto crack his defiance. He lifted his pack and pushed it towards me. I gripped that metal frame and carefully set it next to my stuff in the weeds. Otto stepped out with diplomacy. The comedy troupe rattled away.

I stared at his Kodiak boots pitched into the gravel next to me. My chest heaved. “The Ottorama has landed.”

He glowered. “Leave me be, Winans. Okay?”

“Okay, truce. But I’m glad you’re here.”

Hitchhiking was a folly. We waited an hour and a half each for three short rides that brought us nowhere, almost backwards. More than once it crossed my mind, “This merry-go-round is rubbish. Could going to Whittier have been half as bad?”

Like my excursion yesterday, we crisscrossed other freeways in amazing rapidity. There were no U-turns, no going back. Half the time the drivers themselves didn’t know where they were going. They navigated not by highway number, but by landmarks. “The Sambo’s.” “The ramp after the 3-M building.” “The road by the lake through the trees.” “The Suzuki shop.” “That Dunkin’ Donuts over there.”

The sixth ride, the first decent one all day, brought us to San Bernardino. The fading sunlight mellowed over red, gilded mountains. Not the tension. I led the way to an A + W Root Beer stand where we munched down in total silence, sitting back-to-back under a canopy. Not a single word was exchanged. Otto still knew nothing about my solo adventure in Hollywood yesterday, nor about meeting Joe Namath in the morning. He didn’t want to hear my voice, nor see my face.

I moaned when I surveyed the I-15 ‘on’ ramp. In the headlights of passing cars I saw hitchhikers, lots of them. Seven! They looked haggard and degenerate, two sleazy females among them. None looked overjoyed that two more were joining their ranks. The duo farthest down the ramp, in fact, moved their gear all the way onto the freeway proper and began waving at cars illegally.

One grueling hour turned into two grueling hours. Everyone was edgy, ready for a free-for-all if and when a vehicle stopped.

A VW bus halted at the end of the ramp. I raced up. It was between Otto and me and the two guys on the freeway.

A handsome guy of about thirty with a thick mustache sat behind the wheel. “I’m going about thirty miles up, if that’ll be a help.”

The first of the other two hitchhikers, a guy with very long blond hair, straight and dirty, lugging a pack as big as a silo, hustled up to the driver’s window.

“You headin’ toward Vegas?” He talked in a hoarse, scratchy voice.

“I’m not going that far, but I can get you thirty miles closer.”

The second hitchhiker was better-looking than his buddy but panting terribly. He caught up to his friend, set down his huge pack, and lined up in back of his friend like they were going to the movies. He was spaced out and nervous, looking in every which direction.

“We’ll take it.” The blond slapped his partner on the chest. “Pick up that bag. We’re gettin’ out of here.”

“We can all ride together, aye?”

The bus lowered significantly as everyone climbed aboard. Otto purposely stepped on my foot and smacked his backpack against my bad knee on his way to the rear. The dark-haired partner sat next to me on the middle bench seat; the blond was in the front bucket seat.

“I don’t know about you dudes, but I’m ready to get the flock outta here.” The blond patted his jean jacket for smokes. “Mind if I light a cigarette?”

“Not at all.” The driver accelerated. He tuned the radio to a magnificently clear FM station: “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain.

“Hey, look at that. We got tunes, too.” The blond’s nod to his partner was returned with an absentminded gaze. “You’re not goin’ all the way to Vegas, eh? I didn’t think our luck would be that good.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, but the ramp I’m going to let you off at isn’t so bad. There’s a state forest through there and they keep a gas station open all night. It shouldn’t get too lonely.”

“That’s out in the desert, aye?” The dark-haired partner spoke with a strange English accent.

“No, it’s in the hills,” the driver replied, “the last exit before the desert.”

The blond exhaled smoke and laughed hoarsely. “Long as we don’t get stuck out in no desert. I can’t tolerate that misery, no way. We got enough problems to worry about besides wonderin’ if we’re gonna stay alive.”

“I can relate,” the driver said. “I used to do quite a bit of hiking myself. Never more than twenty miles at a time.”

“I counted nine hitchhikers after we got to that God-awful entrance ramp,” I said. “That’s a record for us, up from six. It erodes your morale.”

The blond spied me with a curious smile. “Yeah, it’s tough.”

“Believe me, I saw everyone,” the driver joined in. “I knew I couldn’t help everyone. But when I saw these fellows’ sign for New Jersey, I thought they needed help the worst.”

The duo gave Otto and me their full attention.

“New Jersey, eh?” the blond said. “That beats us. We’re goin’ to Detroit.”

“Michigan’s a good two thousand mile jaunt itself.” I nodded in the direction of the partner. “Wolverine State, also known as the Great Lake State. The state shaped like a hand.”

“Aye!” the partner said.

“You can say that again.” The blond stuck his feet on the hump between the seats, cigarette near his knees. “I gotta get home, too. I’m startin’ a new job on the assembly line Monday. I can’t afford to start off with a bad impression.”

“My old lady’s orders were be home yesterday,” the partner next to me said. Everyone laughed. He reminded me of a rock musician, but I couldn’t place who. He had British ruddiness, with long, wavy black hair, round, slightly drooping eyes, puckered lips, and a stubbly chin.

“Well, we gotta keep movin’, but there’s a few places we wanna stop in ‘fore we get home to Detroit. Vegas, for one,” the blond Detroiter said. “I hear it’s a trip.”

“I wouldn’t know,” the driver jumped in. “I stay as far upstream as I can. I come to San Bernardino for supplies, that’s my big weekly journey. I built a log cabin for myself and my wife on her folks’ property about five years ago. I run my own organic nursery and greenhouse.”

“A mountain man, eh?” Detroit nodded. “That’s cool, but I can’t help it. I was born and raised in the city, I like the noise, and I don’t think I’ll ever go nowheres else, long as too many of my friends don’t move out. Put me in the country, and I get lost.”

“And I’m just the opposite,” the driver said. “You put me in a big city like L.A. or Vegas, and I go crazy. There’s nothing but chaos. I need space to move around, and peace and quiet.”

“I can cuddle up and go to sleep anywhere.” The partner next to me yawned.

Detroit sparked up with a laugh. “Hitchhiking’s such a gas, ain’t it? Here we are from Detroit, these young dudes are from New Jersey, and this here smart-lookin’ dude lives in the mountains of California. I think that’s out of sight.”

“You guys spending much money?” I asked the duo.

“On butts and beer. You?” Detroit said.

“Our budget is four bucks a day.”

“Even if I had something, I wouldn’t bring it,” the partner next to me said. “I get by on good looks and etiquette.”

“I could tell immediately,” the driver laughed, joined in by everyone.

“I respect your spartan approach,” I said. “Good job, man.”

“Know somethin’ else”—Detroit paused—“it’s bullshit that hitchhiking is dangerous. I’ve never met friendlier people. What driver you know ain’t offered to give the shirt off his back, with directions, tips, food, or even a place to stay?” He confirmed with his partner. “We’ve gotten some pretty far-out rides by some pretty far-out people. I got no patience for anyone who tells me I’m crazy for hitchhiking.”

“The media gets it backwards,” the guy next to me said.

“You said it,” Detroit said. “Whatever they say, do the opposite.” He took out his Marlboros and tapped the bottom of the pack.

“Say, before you light up another cigarette—” the driver reached into his front pocket, “—how would you like to smoke one of mine?” He held up in his fingers a thick joint.

“I sure would!” Detroit went giddy. “Aye, definitely. A nice high will spread me out.”

“I’m game,” I said.

Otto smirked.

“See? What’d I tell you?” Detroit eagerly watched the driver fire the joint, then accepted it himself. The peat moss aroma filled the bus. “People who pick you up are the best goddamn human beings in the world. Ain’t that the truth? Hitchhikers know where it’s at!”

“I couldn’t say it better myself.”

“You guys see all sides, I’ll give you that.” The driver held in his breath.

I did all right for myself during the ritual—nice hits, no coughing— and passed on the marijane without fumbling. Otto waved off the bone, which made him an even a bigger Odd-o.

I was digging the current song on the radio, “Maybe I’m Amazed” by Paul McCartney. I was amazed by the tune’s cohesion, the conviction of the music supporting the words, the power of the bass guitar underneath the treble, how it related to my present situation.

“Dude, you don’t know how nice this is, to catch a buzz after you been all day without.” Detroit smiled with his eyes closed, practically crying.

“Aye, I like the taste.” Paul McCartney tapped the ashes and inhaled.

Paul McCartney! Sure, that’s who that guy looked like! Why not? The “cute” Beatle, even with the stubbles, like the way he grew out his beard for Let It Be. This Paul looked musical and witty, like he could bang out “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” on the piano right now.

Detroit rubbed the remains of the joint—the roach—in his fingers and let them fly out the window. He took a fresh cigarette and lit it. “Yeah, I feel a nice buzz comin’ on. That’s pretty good shit you got there. What’re we smokin’, Colombian?”

“That’s gold, Acapulco gold.”

“Aye, I knew it,” Paul McCartney nodded.

The volkswagen bus motor beneath us hummed neatly, quiet as a pin. The bus stood still—or was it? It seemed like the road underneath was moving, at a mellow gallop, while we stayed in place. Multiple shades of darkness stilted past. Rough, jagged edges of treeline shone brilliantly against the black night. The human silhouettes accompanying me were four mopheads of flesh and soul. If Paul McCartney was Paul McCartney, then Detroit was John Lennon, our leader. Otto could be George Harrison, the mystical one. Me? I was Ringo Starr, hardworking bluecollar drummer, the amiable bloke, the least talented Beatle but still able to shake my head and go “yeah, yeah, yeah!”

Hey Winans (I thought), your rear end is stoned. Got that, Ringo? S-T-O-N-E-D. I felt rearranged; my mind disengaged from my body and was soaring. Thoughts funneled through my brain chambers and made super logic, though rushing out the other side so fast that I forgot what they were a second later. I was floating, timeless, in close contact with my inner side, linked up to Eternal Source Energy. The physical world seemed meaningless. Objects appeared as separate entities, in super three-dimension. Like the headrest in front of my nose. Like my travel bag below me. Everything had Reason-for-Being. And the music! “I Put A Spell On You” by Spirit was playing. It sounded so in tune with itself; so well-crafted with care. Jaunty. Yet—a statement of intent.

Otto maintained his sulk; arms folded and mouth shut tightly.

“Yeah, that’s the kind of weed you should be able to buy at the chemist, aye?” Paul McCartney was speaking.

“I always try to keep a spare doobie rolled for special occasions.” The driver winked.

“Nice breeze up here in the hills.” Detroit twisted his hair through a rubber band to make a ponytail.

“This trip is one hundred percent, absolutely great. I’m thanking each and every one of you guys. You rocked my socks. I’m in the high heavens thanks to all of you.”

I figured we had to be close to this driver’s exit, and funny—just as that specific thought occurred to me, the driver flicked on his blinkers. “Here’s my exit, guys.”

Detroit cracked his knuckles. “End of the line, eh?” His face turned ghoulish. “Bummer. I shouldn’t allowed myself to let go like that. It looks black as Pluto out there.”

“What time is it?”

“Midnight.”

The bus jerked. Paul McCartney and I rose simultaneously and knocked into each other. I kicked over an open metal can. Gasoline oozed across my red duffel bag. The canvas reeked.

“Shoot, I meant to top that can this afternoon before I left. Don’t worry about that, guys. I’ll clean up the mess when I get home.”

“Sorry.”

“What happened?”

“He kicked over a gas can.”

“I’m wasted.”

“You’re gone, that’s what you are, Winans,” Otto blurted. “Way gone over the barrel.”

The four of us, Detroit, Paul McCartney, Otto, and I stood on the quiet interstate, swallowed in desolation. We sized up the vast canyon’s degree of severity. Our elevation was “high, very high.” The San Gabriel Mountains were stark and commandeering . . . abundant . . . multitudinous . . . whatever. The only hint of life was the glare of a Shell station on the far side of the interchange.

Not a lick of traffic came by in either direction. I’m not talking about the entrance ramp, dear reader. But I-15. Nothing. Zero. The twinkling stars overhead made me think I was in a planetarium. Crickets cricked. Bats swooped. The temperature, compared to an hour ago, dropped into a new range, from no-problem warm to “freakin’ frickin’ friggin’ chilly.”

“This looks pitiful. I’m glad I got a buzz on.” Detroit looked jaded. Paul McCartney yawned. I apologized again for the nauseating smell of gasoline.

“We might as well stick together for the night and keep each other company,” Detroit said. “No one’s goin’ nowhere anyway.”

“I’m wide awake,” Otto said. “I got my killer instinct on.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem, I feel restless.”

Detroit stared in his pack of cigarettes, and took one out. “I got three more butts in here. If we’re here all night at least I got a place where I can get a pack.”

We headquartered along the ‘on’ ramp, which kept us legal. We arranged our gear, four in a row, along the rough broken asphalt.

We talked into the wee hours. Our new friends didn’t know each other well at all before they started out. They met only a month before, at a defensive driving course mandatory in Michigan for people with suspended licenses. They got drunk on the final night, decided they wanted to see California, and next morning, they pulled their stuff together and took off, just like that. Detroit was in the middle of switching jobs and Paul McCartney was on “indefinite holiday.” Paul McCartney was from Canada, having marital difficulties with his buxom American wife. “She’s got breasts bigger than her brains,” he said. Detroit was single but crooned poetic about “two-legged deer with red hair, red lipstick, and red snatch.” Both seemed to be in their middle twenties—pretty old to be bumming around the country. They were taken aback to hear Otto and I were still in high school, entering twelfth grade.

I played it straight all the way. I said I had a steady girl, Amy, liked the Yankees and the Jets and the Beatles and the Rascals, and was an officer in the school’s service organization. Otto, knowing he had to talk, amplified his bio with all sorts of lies. It started with, “I took all- county honors last year in basketball as a junior . . . but basketball don’t mean shit to me now.” It grew to, “When I go to parties, I bring along my king cobra. I take him outta his cage and wear him around my neck. The girls love to stroke it.” It culminated with, “I get laid whenever I snap my fingers. My girl Laurie loves tokin’ on my wanger. We signed an oath to each other by drippin’ blood on a letter and both signed it. Satan’s got nothin’ on us.”

The ratio of passing cars coming down the ramp was about one per hour. At 3:30 a.m. Detroit went over to the Shell station for cigarettes and a bag of peanuts. Otto joined him. Paul McCartney and I went to bed.

I laughed to see Paul McCartney unroll his sleeping bag on the rough shoulder and casually position his head only two feet from the pavement proper. He dropped into an immediate deep sleep.

A car turned down the ramp, and I popped out of my bag. I threw out a weak, half-hearted thumb.

“What’s the matter, Jersey? Why didn’t you get that car to stop?” Detroit’s hoarse voice chided me from far off. “We was watchin’ you.”

“Yeah, what’s the matter, Pistol Pete?” Otto called from his side. “You some kind of smarty pants?”

“I didn’t have the heart to disturb this guy.” I pointed at Paul McCartney on the ground.

Five minutes later I was sacked out next to Paul myself, positioned similarly, in my gasoline bag. The fumes stank.

“If a car comes by, I’m gonna let it crush your head,” Otto said.

“Gee thanks, friend. What a swell thought. Same to you.”

Day Thirty-Three (Thursday, July 29, 1971)

I did more fidgeting than sleeping, including bounding through an extended nightmare of gangsters trying to kill me because of something I said or did. It was uncertain if I was innocent—mobsters were debating. I tried to hide inside a college film class, but they tracked me down. I escaped via a train.

As soon as it was light, I was back on my feet and packed up, leaving Paul McCartney on the ground. Detroit and Otto were still up, blabbing about choice, risk, freedom, and destiny. “Three cars went by,” Detroit informed me. His voice was so hoarse his words were barely audible. Otto looked like a wreck himself.

Sunrise shadows were still long when a green Chevrolet C/10, its windshield wide as a jetliner, stopped. A lone person sat behind the wheel with its extended passenger section in the back.

“We got a fish on the line, boys!” Detroit reached for his pack.

I hustled over. Detroit walked over to Paul McCartney. He yelled “Hey!” and shook him by the shoulder. Simultaneously he sat up, pulled down his bag, chucked it over his shoulder, and made for the vehicle, all in one seamless motion. Otto inched over last.

The driver was a flat-faced female with strawberry hair, going to Barstow. My watch read 6:23 a.m. I plopped down in the last bench seat, hurting indeed. With Detroit representing our quartet up front, I felt it would be all right to get additional rest for my lids.

The sun was considerably higher when I woke. All windows were rolled up with the air conditioner blowing full blast. Otto and Paul McCartney were in the seat ahead of me, completely out of it.

Detroit was still wide awake, smoking cigarettes, blabbering with the woman. Ahead I saw: ‘WELCOME TO BUSINESS-FRIENDLY BARSTOW, CROSSROADS OF OPPORTUNITY.’

“Good morning, Roger.” The woman smiled into her rearview mirror at me. The personal touch was nice.

“Hey, know what?” Detroit planted a smile across his exhausted countenance. “This lady volunteered to go all the way down to the last exit so we don’t have to bother with none of the hassles of the town.”

“It sounds like you guys spent an epic night out there, so I want to help you out. There’s two freeways leading out of town and I don’t want you to get crossed up.”

“She’s all right, ain’t she?” Detroit waved a cigarette. He felt better than he looked. Bags hung under his cloudy eyes. In the daylight you could see how dirty he was. I’m not sure if two showers would help. “I gotta get my friend up,” the affable hoarse voice chided. He leaned over and swatted Paul McCartney’s leg. “Hey there!”

Paul McCartney jolted awake to a formal sitting position, ready for anything. “We here?”

The woman switched the radio from music to news.

“Get your game on for the desert, boys.” Detroit pondered the white glare reflecting off the ground. “I hope I can handle this. It looks wicked, like a blast furnace in the middle of hell.”

“There’s no fooling yourself. It’ll be hot. The Mojave is deceiving. It can be as malevolent as the Sahara. You’ll see how real it is for the next several hundred miles.”

I let Otto awaken by himself.

Stepping out from the pleasant, frosty processed air to arid, burning fire was something you don’t want to experience too often. The juxtaposition was startling. My skin felt braised down to its pores. My knees hardened. My eyes lost their tears. The cessation of life looked complete, nuclear complete. As I stood outside, my first time in a desert, it all struck me at once—the white-hot, treeless landscape, the flat horizon, the glaring sun, the hard pavement. It was definitely a time to utter my made-up word, “Euu.”

Detroit and Paul McCartney decided to retreat into shade, saying they needed to “think more about how to get to Vegas.” That lacked sense, seeing there wasn’t a structure in sight. But Detroit had an ulterior motive—he had to buy those cigarettes. The four of us bid each other good luck. They backtracked on foot into town.

“The only direction for us is forward.” I gauged Otto’s mood. He answered nothing.

I rolled up my shorts. “Man, it’s hard to believe the frozen snowcaps of Mt. Whitney aren’t that far away.”

“Neither’s the skullbones of Death Valley, you retarded twat plug.”

The wait was a mere half hour inside the tinderbox. A sputtering old station wagon pulled over—a bomb of a car. This wagon’s color, I’d describe, was “dirty black snow.” You wouldn’t think the people inside would be candidates. The driver was young enough, with a very long ruffled beard. But the passenger was a prissy old lady, fat as a whale.

The two were arguing about having us aboard, because when Otto and I approached I heard the young guy say, “Oh Mother, they won’t hurt you.” He turned to me benignly. “Going to Las Vegas?”

I smiled back. “The question is, are you going to Las Vegas?”

“That’s where I live. The back door is open.” His mother scowled, but she wasn’t the primary decision-maker here. Otto and I took the ride.

I couldn’t make out any resemblance between the kid and his mother. Here he had that gigantic beard, hanging under a long horse face, and a revolting crew cut. His skin was sallow. His arms were as thin as chop sticks, and you could see ribs sticking underneath his white teeshirt. ‘Mother,’ on the other hand, lugged around about 300 pounds, had orangy tan skin, tinted glasses, a black dress, and large, chinky jewelry.

Mother kept looking at Otto and me in the back seat, as though inspecting us.

“Mother, stop scrutinizing my friends. How would you like to be watched?”

I laughed uncomfortably. This guy was direct. Mother replied with an outburst. “I have nothing against either of them! But why create more trouble for yourself?”

“They’re no problem. What do hitchhikers have to do with my condition?”

“Ted, you are ignoring the fact that you are a sick man.”

“Mother, it’s my car and I’ll pick up all the hitchhikers I want. Is that understood?”

Ted turned toward Otto and me with a completely genial attitude. “I don’t think Mother would’ve picked you up if she was driving.” He guffawed through long, crooked teeth.

“You’ve got this cursed heat, this car doesn’t run well, and we’ve got to rush you to the doctor as soon as you get home. Why add to your problem?”

Ted looked back. “My mother confuses picking up you two with exerting myself. Actually, Mother, all I did was pull over to the side of the road and stop.” He smiled and winked. He reminded me a little bit of a mad scientist.

The sun bore down at an angle that made it seem no higher than a kite. The terrain was pure white, burning, with no variation. Heat blew on my neck from the open windows. No air conditioning now. All you could do was sit tight and accept. The black asphalt of the interstate stood in utter contrast to the white landscape. It looked solitary winding over the horizon. I was glad this was an express ride. The gas tank was full.

“Have you ever been across the desert?” Ted asked. “Isn’t the heat that’s produced just incredible? It’ll be like this all the way to Las Vegas.” Before I could answer, he added, “I’m hoping to make it all the way across without overheating.”

Already I’d seen an inordinate amount of cars conked out on the shoulder with their hoods up and engines smoldering. I studied the sound of the engine. Nothing sounded amiss to me. The temperature gauge on the dashboard, though, told a different story. The needle was pressed all the way over on “danger.”

“The tendency would be for the wagon to overheat quicker if I was going faster. That’s why we’re only doing forty-five,” Ted explained. “I hope it’s not too slow for you.”

“We’re getting there.”

“By the way, in case you want to know why I keep my hair in this style—most of it has fallen out due to my condition.”

“Oh Ted!” his mother cried, her fat, orangey face flushed and embarrassed. “You don’t have to tell that to everybody.”

“I want to tell them, Mother. Long hair is the style these days. Look at my friends here.”

Mother granted us a token glance.

“I keep this beauty,” Ted stroked his furry beard with his bony fingers, “to let everyone know what generation I belong to.”

“That awful thing should come off as well.”

“Mother, screw you. You’re forgetting. I’m the one living my life, not you.”

“And who is paying the doctor bills?”

“The insurance company.”

“Your father’s insurance company.”

“Same thing.”

Mother shook her double chin fiercely. She tugged at the end of her dress which had started to ride up. Her legs were puffy and bumpy, full of rashes and varicose veins.

“Aren’t mothers wonderful?” Ted turned back to Otto and me. “They always know what’s best for you.”

“Ted, have you seen the heat indicator? It’s all the way over in the red.”

“Yes Mother, I see it.” He sighed. “I regret to say we’ll have to stop at the next gas station and let it cool down.”

Where the heck was he planning to stop in this purgatory?! There weren’t any towns. Yet several miles up there was an exit for the sole purpose, I believe, of providing gas, food, and shelter. I decided to take the diplomatic approach. Stopping to fix the problem before it occurred was better than getting stuck, like the other poor souls I was seeing stranded by the dozen.

Ted shut off the motor. An ominous hissing rose from underneath the hood. Ted, Otto, and I got out. Ted was not only small, frail, and weak, but had a hunchback. His short arms could barely raise the hood. A cloud of steam billowed up from underneath.

“I think Old Nellie needs water.” He guffawed and hobbled over to Mother’s window. She was fanning herself with an Oriental fan. “Mother, do you have the credit cards?” She sorted through her pocketbook.

“This better not take long,” she demanded.

“If we give her a good half hour to cool down we should be on our way again. Let’s go in the café,” Ted said. “My throat is dry.”

I never heard of anyone having a beer so early in the morning—it was about ten a.m.—but there we were, sitting at a table at a near- empty restaurant in the Mojave Desert, Ted and his mother each with a Michelob in front of them. Ted looked like one of Santa’s elves who had been sent to the desert to recuperate. Several times he offered to buy a beer for Otto and myself. I drank Coke instead.

“So what’s it like to hitchhike cross-country?” Ted said eagerly. “That’s something I’ll never be able to do. But I’ve thought about it.”

I ran down a few highlights.

“How about the women on your trip? Any of them want to make love?”

Did this guy ever get to the point! I sat up straight. “No, I never got that far.” I laughed uncomfortably. “I don’t know about my friend, though. Otto?”

Otto tilted his head queerly, snobbishly, making it clear he still did not want to bury his grudge. “That’s for me and my head to know.”

“Ah, very clever. I like the double meaning,” Ted said. “You’re one of those secretive, introverted guys. I’m the opposite. I like to talk about sex because I never found much other pleasure in life. My livelihood used to be to try and get all the women in my bedroom that I could.”

“Oh Ted!” his mother cried.

“Well, it’s true, Mother. Do you want honesty or do you want lies and deception?”

Ted went to check his car as we got back out into the heat. The radiator had been doused with water and filled again to its proper level. The needle relaxed some. “I’ll have to crawl along, just in case.” Ted eased behind the wheel with effort. “Sorry for causing all these problems.”

“You’re doing great, Ted. Our goal is Las Vegas. I fully believe we’ll see it happen.”

“But aren’t you fit to be tied?”

“You’re the guy with the automobile headaches, not us. You take care of yourself and we’ll take care of ourselves.”

“You guys are godsends, thanks.”

It wasn’t five miles into our second attempt that we faltered. The needle shot straight back into the red. Ted stopped at the next exit and cooled down the radiator again. We stayed longer this time at the “auto oasis.” Ted drank his beer by himself; I studied the geological charts and atlases on the wall, still perplexed how a major desert could exist within the United States. Air conditioning or not, I decided that anyone who gravitated toward a desert for any reason whatsoever had to be crazy.

Attempt #3: I kept my eye on Las Vegas mileage signs, anxiously counting down the distance to under a hundred miles. Ted reduced his speed to thirty-five. Other cars passed ruthlessly. Ted explained all the things on his lemon that needed attention: tune-up, valve job, radiator, alternator, brake hoses, battery, ignition system—everything.

We were headed for a third emergency stop when the lights from the dash lit up all at once. All power from the car drained. “Oh Christ, this might be it.” Ted glided to a stop on the shoulder. The hissing was louder than ever.

Ted got out, barely missed being hit by an oncoming car, raised the hood, and strolled over to his mother’s window. He wasn’t so jolly this time. “It’s dead.”

“I told you never to drive this car this way.” She fanned herself. “Now what are you going to do?”

“Tell you to shut up, for one.” He mulled it over. “Probably tow it in.”

Without being too enthusiastic, I asked what help he needed.

“I could use two strong backs to help me push this heap of rust into that gas station.” He pointed toward the exit—about an eighth of a mile along the horizon.

The blimp remained in the car, steering, while the three of us pushed. The ground was level, but the heat was overbearing. The metal burnt to the touch. The ground was like redhot coals. My shoes steamed through the rubber. Ted was a hindrance. He had no heave-ho. He gasped for air; was tripping and stumbling instead of pushing.

“Go ahead, Ted, get up there and steer. Relieve your mother of the duty,” I said. “My friend and I will push.”

“You penis head, Winans.” Otto cursed me under his breath, though he kept pushing in a token way. I did the brunt of it myself.

It was a sweating, stinking affair. My back and legs practically buckled. Pushing uphill on the interchange ramp was a feat worthy of lifetime membership in the Charles Atlas He-Man’s Club. Sweat rolled off my face like water. My armpits were saturated. My clothes squeaked.

Ted let the car sit and went to the restaurant to think it over. This time when he offered a beer, I accepted. Ted drank three. His mother switched to vodka. Ted decided his only recourse was to have the car towed the rest of the way to Las Vegas.

“He reminds me of his father—stubborn and procrastinating,” his mother mentioned while Ted was making the call. “He should have hired a car service from the start. That’s what I told him.”

“What does he have?”

“Leukemia—rest his soul.”

My own spirit, which started out optimistic, began to flag unpropitiously. Matters were getting out of control, fast. Any more complications, Otto and I might find ourselves stranded in the Mojave Desert without transportation.

The tow truck lifted the car’s back wheels off the ground. Ted got in the cab with his mother. “You guys ride in the dead wagon. It’s extra, but you’ve been a big help to me, so one good turn deserves another.”

Sweet deal! That was as good as a limousine. Think of it. A long private ride. Guaranteed to reach Las Vegas. Speed back up to 65 m.p.h. Riding backwards in high, reclining La-Z-Boys. If Otto hadn’t been so dour, it would have been perfect. I was glad we were no longer among the disabled. Dozens of cars were lined up in misery in both directions. Towing had to be the biggest single industry out here. No stretch was without an overheated car sidelined on the shoulder. It was the norm.

Ahead in the cab you could see Ted’s mother. One moment she was gabbing with the driver and the next, berating Ted.

“She’s sure not making his last days any sweeter.” Otto ignored me.

I feigned a laugh. “Man, pushing this hunk of junk made me feel like an Egyptian slave building a pyramid. Didn’t it?”

Otto stuck out his pointy chin. “I’m so sick of takin’ your orders, Winans! No way should we have pushed! Don’t you got no dignity? If it were ten degrees cooler, I would’ve been outta here and on my own!”

“You’re a lousy bluff, George.”

Otto shoved himself into the corner and folded his arms with his eyes tightly closed. Maybe I talked bolder than I felt? I flashbacked to a day ago: Was I right to force him to abandon Whittier and that fifteen year-old girl? Couldn’t I have relented if only to keep the peace? What was the big deal? Was I just as childish? Thoughtlessly harsh? How much time would it take to ease this kind of agony?

Crossing the state line from California into Nevada brought no regrets. “California better give another state a chance. Like it or not, Golden State, you’re only one-fiftieth of this country. You get only two senators like everybody else.”

The desert sure didn’t change. Billboards lined up like dominoes, advertising Caesar’s Palace, the Pink Flamingo, the Sands, and the Mirage. However, the dull white terrain, the formless hills, and mother nature’s heat, remained.

“How did a famous city ever rise from devilishness?”

A few minutes later we were within the city limits, chauffeured into an average residential neighborhood. Amazing—this block could have been any city in the United States. Modest, compact houses were mixed in with maple trees, people watering the lawn, kids riding bicycles, stores, playgrounds, schools, and churches.

“A normal residential area in Las Vegas?” I said inside the dead wagon. “What will they think of next?”

The driver backed onto a stone driveway. Ted’s house was white stucco with black shutters and a large gabled entrance with posts, pleasantly plump, with balconies outside two upstairs windows.
Mother, hot and flustered, got out of the truck flapping her arms. She tottered into the house, disregarding our presence. The driver unhitched the chains and towbar. Ted eased himself out of the cab and hobbled up to us on his sneakers like Albert Einstein.

“Would you believe this is where I live? Whoopee-doo-doo. Let me make sure Mother is all right and then I want to call my father. Then we’ll get in the other car and I’ll zip you out to the highway.”

“Take your time.” I felt funny accepting all this graciousness from a sick person. “We’re in no rush.”

“I am, Winans. I’m hungry. You wanna starve me now, too? Is that your plan?”

Ted powered us along Las Vegas Boulevard. We got an eyeball of all the glittering casinos and hundreds of gamblers walking around in extreme heat. It was like Reno, only bigger and gaudier. “The Strip” may have had sparkling panache but I wasn’t going to stop there—not on this trip, at least. It would have to wait for another time.

Ted let us off on the north side of downtown in front of a Rexall store which he said made a good corned beef on rye. We got out and that was the end of Ted.

Otto threw on his backpack and marched down the street. “Hey O-Otto, man—w-where you going?”

He wheeled abruptly. “I’m gonna wash up at that Chevron station. I don’t wanna be a filthy pig, like you.” I followed behind.

I gave up trying to be his friend. He was too stubborn, I was too depleted, he was too impenetrable, I was too disposed and miserable. There was too much heat and too much dirt matted across the back of my neck. My throat felt dry as sandpaper. There was no movement of air. My muscles were like dead fish.

My gasoline-soaked Yucatan bag made me feel nauseous. I stopped off at a Woolworth’s and replaced it with a red Jeri-Pak. I transferred all my items and tossed out the original, along with some torn maps, crumpled napkins, and snack crumbs. “As long as I get home with my diary, I don’t care if I arrive home nude.”

“The Trip” felt officially over. The end. I had no desire to linger, to tour Las Vegas, see any more attractions, to learn anything, gamble, or chat with colorful characters. The only thing I wanted to do was keep moving eastward. For the first time I said out loud, “I want to go home.” What a laugh to think the journey back would be lingering. I was displaced, restless, on edge. I felt evaporated and dehydrated.

My relationship with Otto was shot. Never again could I expect us to carry on in our unified way. Never again would we live in a world of playful, happy tightness where there was no second-guessing, no hidden agendas. We really were a “we” when we started out. Now all he spoke were snide remarks.
I blamed myself. I should’ve given in. Gone to Whittier. Swallowed my fucking pride. Kept my ego in check. I almost preferred to see him leave now, softly, than to witness it getting worse. It was like he wasn’t even there anyway. The sensational Winans-George Fusion Band split and was about to go its separate ways. What a cruel, unjust world: You care for someone with all your heart, you do all your best, and still screw things up.

“It shouldn’t be part of the oeuvre.”

I was sucked dead by the time Otto and I drudged out to the sizzling alleyramp in North Las Vegas which tilted back to I-15. Languor ruled my every breath. My head felt pounded by darts. A shocking view of the white-hot desert persisted. A time-temperature clock on a bank read 113. My body was awash in sweat; the odor was putrid. It occurred to me I was on the point of delirium.

“. . . Fuck you and your imbecile travel ideas, Roger. I got my own agenda.” His eyes bombarded me.

“Twenty-five cars, Winans, twenty- five cars. I’m gonna count down twenty-five cars. And if we’re not out of this hell by then, I’m headin’ for shelter. Hear that, cockface? This is inhumane. This is where the Devil goes for vacations.”

Twenty-five cars came and passed. No one stopped. “Good. I’m gettin’ the freak outta here.”

Traveler’s Rest Cantina was a small wooden structure adorned with hand-painted signs and cartoon characters, advertising slot machines, food, and tourist information.

“I’m a traveler and I need a rest and this is where I’m goin’.”

I pointed down Craig Road. “Could there be more of a selection down there?”

“Go wear yourself out lookin’ for another place, then!” He spit venom. “I’m not exertin’ myself, not in this heat. Go find your own amusement, Winans. I ain’t playin’ your dandy no more.” He stalked away wildly.

I traipsed the sidewalk, aching slowly, searching for McDonald’s . . . Burger King . . . Wendy’s . . . Kentucky Fried Chicken . . . any familiar name that had air conditioning. The time-temperature clock inched up to 115. The paltry Las Vegas skyline sizzled in the white sky. I was floored at the businesses cashing in on the gambling craze. Every single dry cleaner, bank, gas station, nail shop, bakery, barber, car radio store—all displayed slot machines, prominently announcing ways to “get rich now.”

I was stumbly and weak as I passed Westco Supermart, its towering windows flush against the sidewalk. I entered and bathed under the sweet coolers inside the vestibule. Ah, mercy. Sweet charity. Beautiful providence. I bought a 64-oz. bottle of Coke and drank the whole thing in the heat along the curb. Acid never tasted better. My face felt sore and pitted. My eyes were watery and dim.

Could the hardships and misgivings ever be erased, Lord? Could they ever be forgiven? Why God, why hadn’t I gone to Whittier? What was my problem? My motive? For all I knew, we might’ve still been there, playing doctor with those girls. I could’ve pulled down the elastic of a girl’s panties, reached for paradise and maybe even found it. Instead, I encouraged this . . . hellraking. Why did I always insist on having things my own way? How could the world live in peace if every person had to have their own way? That’s what was wrong with God’s green earth in the first place. People needed to stay humble, to slant downhill. Do unto others. Live in gratitude.

Who was in charge here? “Not me.”

Not everyone had my youth, my physical strength, or my strength of will. But look at me. I had nothing. I was an empty vessel, a broken soul. And if I, the one so blessed (supposedly), had nothing, what did other people have?

“Oh God, I’m sorry. Forgive me.”

My bones were clay and mind was amalgamated mush. I could scarcely lift my Jeri-Pak. It was so hot I wasn’t even sweating. Perspiration burned off before it secreted. It was like pressing your face against the grill of a space heater.

A car driving in my direction slowed. A pudgy male, sloppy but benevolent, with black, wetted-down hair, called through the open passenger window. “Hey guy—need a ride?”

I stumbled over. “Yeah. But I’m going out of town—north.”

“Where?”

“Up I-15.”

“I’m making tracks to St. George, Utah. Would that be a help?”

“Utah?” Just hearing the word dazzled me. “Yeah, that’d help, but there’s one thing”—I took a big breath. “I’m with a friend. He’s at a cafe up the road. Think you could pick him up, too?”

“Sure can. Got plenty of room.”

He and I drove to fetch Otto. With grit up my nose and a thumping heart, I entered Traveler’s
Rest Cantina. Otto sat alone at a table against a paneled wall, absently thumbing through a pile of visitor brochures and pamphlets. A half-full Coke sat in front of him.

“Hey man, guess what? I got us a ride.”

Otto looked up. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. Some guy. Going all the way to Utah.”

“Utah? Some guy now?”

I nodded. “He’s outside with the motor running and ready to go.”

Somehow, Otto was ready. He chugged the last of his Coke, paid his bill, gathered his backpack, and left with a kick in his stride. I winked at the older, kindly waitresses.

We picked up.

Dusk reduced the intensity of the furnace. The temperature dropped to about 95. Sweat returned to my pores. I lapped up the salt like a panting dog. The guy was visiting his grandmother. We were in one state and out of another in quick succession. California, Nevada, Arizona, Utah. Yes, we nicked Arizona. The guy stopped at a vegetable stand to buy sweetcorn and a jar of honey in Littlefield, Arizona. Four states in one day seemed weird considering the piddily distance.

St. George, Utah, gave us a reality check. It was remote, hilly, and unsettled. We stood enveloped in darkness. The reception was tenuous and unwelcome, if not downright hostile. Every driver seemed to sneer, swear, or gesture.

“You ain’t gonna stay out here long, are you, Roger?” Otto bounced over to me. “I got no pep in my step to face this kind of adversity, sons. My nerves are already in shards.”

“True. We don’t need to be part of an unsolved crime.”

“See that cemetery across the street? I say if we don’t get a ride in fifteen minutes, let’s head up that pathway and bunk out with the dead.”

“I’m with you, Otto. A hitchhiker’s thumb goes only so far.”

A speeding Mustang screeched to a stop, then wildly backed up. I couldn’t believe it: The plain, cream-colored license plate with black lettering, ‘Garden State.’

“New Jersey! Hey Otto, I’ll be . . . ossified! Could this be real!”

Like all too many times before, there was one lesson I still hadn’t learned: I proclaimed victory too soon. I was still an overconfident boy. The Mustang’s space was diminutive and packed with possessions.

A meaty, brute of a male with a scarred face, looking like he wasn’t quite all there, opened the door with the motor still running. “Oh, I didn’t see both youse out here.” He unhitched the trunk as if expecting to find available space. There wasn’t an inch. A pimply-faced teenager leered at us through the back.

“You’re going all the way to New Jersey?”

“Exit 163,” he smiled proudly. “Paramus area.”

The front seat passenger, a guy who looked more like an ugly girl, got out. “I’m the one who saw ya’s.” He had diluted eyes with swaying black hair. “I saw the sign and thoit, ‘New Joisey!’ Then I saw both ya’s . . . I thoit maybe we could take one . . . or not.”

“We didn’t want youse guys to think we was passin’ you by or nothing.”

They vanished, mercifully. Silence ensued again. Otto turned to me with his most friendly gesture in days. “That’s what you call a tease.”

“I wish they never stopped. Travel By Thumb doesn’t accommodate pretenders.”

Five minutes later we copped a ride of our own. It was a convertible with a Californian corporate-type, a guy shrewdly buttoned down in a double-breasted suit, lathered in jasmine, with sharp, incisive eyes.

“Relieved to be out of the troubleland?” he said as we left St. George behind.

“That’s an understatement. Thank you, sir.”

“Cowboys and hitchhikin’ ain’t a good mix, either for him or me,” Otto said.

“My business takes me past this way. I’ve seen my share of badass delinquents. The culture out here is dreadful. You ought to be praising me—you got your chance to ride with an educated, well-bred gentleman like myself.”

“Thank you, Mr. Well-Bred Gentleman.”

“Don’t make light of my hospitality, guys. I helped you out. I know I’m good. You’re welcome.”

After a spell, he asked, “What part of California were you in?”

“Los Angeles.” Just keep it simple, stupid.

“Just L.A.?”

“Yeah.”

The guy chewed on a toothpick. “You know people down there?”

“No, we camped out.”

He lowered his eyes suspiciously. “Where did you camp?”

“Griffith Park.”

The guy spit out his toothpick. “The hell you did! I just came from L.A. and the cops were crawling all over that place!”

“Okay, okay,” I confessed, flattened out cold with a fresh beating. “We were at Huntington Beach.”

“That’s more like it. Don’t be a punk jerkoff with me. I don’t have time for wiseass hitchhiking kids. I told you, I’m above that.”

I was screaming at myself. What was holding me back from telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth? What did I need to protect? It was almost as if I had to withhold information, to appear less intelligent than I was, or to be ironical, or super witty, in order to communicate with people. Or else throw in a touch of evil. What was up with that? Is that who I meant to portray—a stunted person, half a person, a limited person? The more the guy turned over my gaffe, the madder he got.

Without warning he huffed into the shoulder. “All right guys. Out.” The car stopped.

“What’s that, sir?”

“I’ve never done this before, but I don’t give rides to liars. If that’s who you are, get your gear and get out of my car. Both of you. Now.”

Otto gripped the dashboard. “The punishment don’t fit the crime!”

“I’m the stupid one. Forgive me. Please. I’m so stupid.”

“I do, but that doesn’t mean you’re getting away with it. Out. Now. I got more important things to do. I got a woman in Cedar City who’s taking care of me tonight, and I’m running late. Out you go!”

I couldn’t even look at Otto as we stood on the lonely concrete of U.S. 91, enraptured by stillness. This was unprecedented. This was deal- killing. This was last straw material. This was exit-inducing.

“Sorry.”

There wasn’t an exit in sight, nor sign, nor any traffic to speak of. The only thing to do was to exodus on foot, northward.

“I’m not happy with myself.” Stones crunched underneath my feet as I forlornly hung my head. “I blew it again.”

“That makes two of us. I’m none too happy with you, neither.” Otto kicked a thistle.

“I knew this trip would have variety, but I didn’t figure the scheduled amusement included being thrown out of a car.”

Otto laughed. “I’m your hapless bride, Winans. I finally understand my role. I’m stuck with you, for better or worse, richer or poorer. We’re married. You make every moment dramatic, turn every step into suspense, but at least it ain’t borin’. I’m wonderin’ what you’ll pull next.”

I was shocked at his tolerance. “I’ll make it up to you, man. Next ride’ll be our best, promise.”

“Ah, don’t worry about it. That guy was no good stock anyway.”

I wanted to throw on my winter jacket, but remember? I dumped it in California. I had been so freaking sure it would be unnecessary. So now I was not only grubby, rebuked, discarded, hungry, and exhausted, I was freezing. I squeezed my upper arms. It got downright chilly in the desolation. I stared at the stars because there wasn’t anything else to look at that was good.

A rickety, painted schoolbus rumbled into the shoulder. It almost felt like we made a prior appointment to be picked up. The door swung open. A smallish adult wearing sunglasses smiled in the pitch black.

“Pilgrims, alight! Free yourselves from fear and attachments! Stay unaffected by the world’s turmoil. Welcome aboard, friends.” He put his hands together and bowed.

Was this a stunt? I marveled at the bus’s decorations, both exterior and interior. The cargo included a pretty brunette in the third row (the rest of the seats of the small bus had been taken out). A second, bearded passenger, ponytailed with earrings, had his arm wrapped around her.

“Are you guys into taking a quickie spin to the Grand Canyon?” the bearded passenger asked. “We’d love for you to join us. We need witnesses.”

“Grand Canyon—that’s where you’re going?”

“What do you mean quickie trip?” Otto lay his pack across a vacant seat.

“Vanessa and I are getting married at sunrise tomorrow. There’ll be adherents from across the country doing the same. We’ll truck back out tomorrow, same way we came in. We’ll be back out here by tomorrow evening.”

“You can get to the Grand Canyon from here?”

Otto stared me down with heavy eyelids. “You ain’t gonna say no to the Grand Canyon, are you, Roger?”

“I thought you had to go in from southern Arizona, Phoenix, or Flagstaff.”

“This is the North Rim.” The bearded guy understood my confusion. “It hasn’t been mutilated yet. It’s primitive and untrampled, perfect for Buddhists. That’s why the ceremony is there.”

I was taken aback by ceremony and Buddhists.

“Are we going to do this?” I asked Otto.

“The bus is already movin’. I say let the spirit take us where it will. I never mentioned it, Roger, but I was hopin’ we’d get to the Canyon someway or another on this trip.”

The guy driving with sunglasses was Milt. He was squat and squirrelly with a pork belly. Soft-spoken and relaxed, he was almost invisible. He put on headphones and zoned out to music as we got going. His driving seemed okay so I paid it no mind.

Vanessa was the bride. She was what my father would call a “poor little rich girl.” She had natural beauty with a tussle of curls, but kept her eyes averted. Her wedding dress looked like a patchwork quilt, but was stylish as a Saks Fifth Avenue window sample. Her bearded fiancé, Norbert, was a mellow stringbean intellectual egghead. He wore several shirts of different lengths, all sticking out in measured sloppiness, and high-topped sneakers laced up halfway.

“We already had our civil marriage at the justice of the peace, but to bow before Buddha makes it official,” Norbert explained. “Tomorrow is the most astrological day for the ceremony.”

Milt stopped at a drive-in where I devoured a grinder and replenished my fluids with Dr. Pepper. The bus belonged more in a museum than on the road. It was a 1952 Reo Gold Comet, its artistic paintover hiding rust and the original school’s name.

“My crew is getting two weddings, their honeymoon between.” Milt laughed as he bit into his grinder. “We’re helping out. We’re old Dharmists from way back. We drive them around for a day or two at a time, wherever karma tells us to go. It puts mind over madness.”

We took off again under the stars. Since this was understood to be an all-nighter, Otto and I crashed in the back. We lay down with our sleeping bags. That’s when I discovered a fourth person onboard— sleeping soundly underneath a raft of blankets. She was a sandy-headed pussycat who acknowledged us with a quick smile then went back to sleep under the pile.

“That’s Gwen. Milt’s galpal,” Norbert announced. “She marches to the beat of a different drummer. She’s the artist who painted this bus. She was chanting mantras like a Brahmin when we left Modesto, but she’s down for the count now.”

The highway stretched endlessly south, winding between gaps in the tooth-edged mountains. We crossed back into Arizona, sputtering forward at about thirty miles per hour. It was fun slipping back into Arizona for a double dip, albeit slowly.

I settled onto my sleeping bag with Norbert now driving. Vanessa kept him company, sharing a bag of popcorn. Otto was on one side of me; Milt the other. Gwen’s sleeping head was propped against a pillow in the far corner.

What an unpredictable, marathon day of ups and downs! A lesser person’s head would explode. It was wild but Otto was right, how can you pass up this kind of opportunity? Things weren’t exactly back to normal, but they were better than since Hanford, California. I was grateful for that. I heaved long breaths of relief into the high-altitude air, gripping my ribcage.

Milt was openly caressing Gwen, kissing and squeezing. I guess they thought everyone was blanked out, because they got quite busy. Gwen, wearing a halter top and shorts, climbed on top of Milt and began humping him.

Gwen’s derriere was tastefully huge. It helped make her freckled face look prettier by the second. In fact, watching them in secret got me aroused. With no underpants to worry about, I gave my wanger permission to pulsate as much as it dared.

I almost gasped—Milt flopped her over to my side, near my reclining head. How divine—Gwen’s tooshie lay three inches from my face!

I tilted back to check Otto. He was asleep, snoring lightly. This one was just for me, buddy! The wedding party, Norbert and Vanessa, were upfront, cognizant of nothing beyond themselves.

I drifted off into sleep, so tired I couldn’t even enjoy a girl’s squirming behind. When my mind knocked itself awake again, I couldn’t believe my eyeballs. Gwen’s shorts were pulled down to her thighs. Addressing me straight in the kisser, glorious as the day she was born, was her totally uncovered, high-class, buck-naked bottom!

O man O woman. Testosterone detonated from my sexual storeroom. Her face might’ve been Plain Jane with light acne. But her prized possession was roundly pristine, boisterous, and openly sizzling!

What the hell was Milt thinking? He wasn’t all over her like he should have been. He seemed to slack off, to fumble away his invitation, lost inside drugs, who knows.

Meanwhile, my rocks were off. It was getting hot down there. Gwen’s moans and quivers brought me to fever pitch. The sight was too grand, even though it was Milt’s fat neck that her arms were strung around.

Gwen bumped her merry booty closer to my face. Her hiney danced and my stimulation meter squirted. Pleasure streamed down my leg. Warm, sticky stuff matted through my pants. “If that’s my price of admission, I just bought a ticket.”

I didn’t writhe nor make a sound. Nor did I touch my johnson— nothing to prod Otto awake, nor break the spell. The object in question was displayed now—nude, backed up to my mouth as far as it could go. Her crack smelled like blueberry jam.

What an incredible day! We picked up! Indeed! My mind lolled as my body floated into peacefulness.

Yes, I was in a schoolbus in the outback of Arizona, lapping in sexual bliss. All was quiet; no one suspected a thing.

I disseminated into a deep sleep.

Day Thirty-Four (Friday, July 30, 1971)

Pre-dawn washed the sky from pitch black to steely red. We made a stop at a 24-hour plaza to fill up. Everyone got out to stretch except Otto, who stayed crashed out. The station was buzzing with Buddhists arriving for the wedding which I learned was called a “sangha.” They were strange ducks, all with some kooky physical feature.

My eyes kept dancing over to Gwen, wondering, “Who is this doll who stands apart from this circus?” The bus she painted was mind- bending: a psychedelic rainbow bursting with dynamic stars and streamers. Its message, written as graffiti—“Love All, Hurt None.”

She stood across the circle, smiling and being cordial to everyone. She and I caught each other’s attention more than once, flirting and exchanging coquettish smiles, full of innuendo. I smiled big, flashing messages with my eyebrows. She blushed and smiled bigger, talking without words.

“She knows everything! She knows that I saw. What’s more, she’s okay with it!”

We loaded back into the bus for the final leg to the Canyon. I moved down the center aisle, behind Gwen, to my spot, and grazed her tush. Was it me, or did she stick it out there at the last second to make sure I made the tag?

“Thank you,” I said.

She winked. “You’re welcome.”

Attending the mass wedding ceremony in the morning was mostly a distraction. It might have been meaningful, solemn to those involved, and a spectacle to observe (i.e. an oddity to the nth degree). It was hard to pay attention because the copper-colored, windswept backdrop of the Grand Canyon was overwhelming. The buttes drew my attention more than the Buddhists. God forgive me, they looked silly assembled on their mats. Fifteen or so couples, Norbert and Vanessa included, awaited vows in front of about six monks and a few dozen witnesses.

Otto, Milt, Gwen, and I stood in the back. I was in my own dream, head fixated on everything Gwen, Gwen, Gwen. Otto stood next to me, holding his hands at his waist, half facing the Buddhists and half facing the canyon.

“You know, Evel Knievel is nuts. He’s plannin’ to jump across the canyon in his motorcycle. I give him about five percent chance of comin’ out alive.”

Gwen didn’t seem bonded to Milt. They didn’t hold hands nor look like they were a couple. When she made a gesture to go off on her own with a book under her arm, he nodded.

“That’s her latest craze—birdwatching. She plans to spend the day taking notes. Geez!”

“She’s a bard—your girlfriend.”

“She’s too daffy to be my girlfriend,” he lobbed back. “All those bird names give me a headache. She needs to leave the details alone and enjoy Ma Nature.”

Contemplating the magnificence of the Grand Canyon—at the sun’s first hour no less—was the last thing I expected to do on this trip. But here I was, gazing before the immense panoramic vista with the rushing Colorado River 4,000 feet below.

A crashing gong signaled the start of the wedding. The earnest couples stood on their mats and bowed before a six-foot golden Buddha on a wooden platform. The head monk, or lama, declared the ground “sacred, worthy to hold a betrothal ceremony.” The grooms and brides bowed to each other and exchanged trinkets—candles, incense, jewelry, and replicas of the jolly, fat Buddha.

The couples kneeled and lowered their heads as the lama read from the Sutra. He invited each couple to “take refuge in the Buddha, so that you may have a complete vision of the Supreme Reality.” Each couple recited separate vows, noting things like “the virtues of generosity;” “the high place of ethics,” and, “our glorious rebirth within the heavenly realm.” In dead silence they were pronounced husband and wife. No cheering. Everyone rolled up their bamboo mat and bowed again to Buddha.

Norbert kissed the bride only after they headed off toward a reception tent, stewing with what Milt identified as “curds, vegetables, and yellow rice.”

The North Rim now took my full attention. Tourists popped up as the sun got higher. The viewing slabs got crowded. The views were spectacular no matter where you looked.

At one vista, Norbert and Vanessa came walking up arm-in-arm. After congratulating them on their nuptials, he said, “The group is having a TM session, open to the public. You should come. It expands your consciousness.”

“I ain’t never gonna turn down exercise.” Otto stepped up. “I got a few loose screws from the past few days that need tightenin’.”

“Um, no thanks, I’ll wait until the next time Jack LaLanne comes on channel nine. I want to go hiking. See you guys later.”

I ambled down the steep surface of the ridge, shouting “Gwen!” at the top of my lungs. How joyful to be inside this grand national treasure, to kiss the sky and embrace the bold. It was a crater in the middle of the earth.

I rested under a trove of fir trees, or where they spruce? “No chance getting struck by lightning today.”

A voice peeked out from behind a smooth black boulder. “I knew there was something different about you, Raj. What kind of bolts are we talking about?”

Gwen! She cheerfully strode over, pencil in hand, notebook opened, cap tilted. “What’s your impression so far?”

“Of the canyon? Or you?” I laughed. “I can’t get over this place. Its breadth. So alive. It’s like a sculpture made by the hands of time. You actually shift through different moods as you walk against the backdrop.”

“You’re a bit of a prophet, Raj. Aren’t you?” She smiled under her visor. Her small frame and cute rough face took on fresh radiance as she stood amidst a deep chasm.

“Pardon me for asking, madam Gwen, but you missed most of the wedding ceremony. Get bored? You ran off on my buddy, Milt.”

“I gave them my blessing.” She didn’t seem terribly concerned.

We came to an elbow of rock. She and I sat, sitting closer than neutral. She plopped her daypack between her opened legs. “—But then you know me quite well already. Don’t you, Raj?”

She wore a loose denim shirt over her halter top. The same green micro-shorts that were pulled down to her thighs last night were zipped around her petite waist. Her cap’s message said, “Ask Me Anything.”

“You normally lurk behind rocks? Always springing on unsuspecting guys to get your kicks?”

“That’s how us carnivores get our prey.” Her smile widened.

“Capture anything yet?”

“I thought I saw a coyote. But then you stepped between the schist and stole my concentration.”

We laughed in mutual understanding. “I thought you were studying birds.”

“I like all nature. But I got down to this place first, mister Raj. What’s your excuse for stumbling down?”

“If it’s natural, I like it, naturally. N-yuk, n-yuk.”

We teased each other using the names of the birds from her log—red-tailed hawk; mountain quail; western kingbird; black-billed magpie, ash-throated flycatcher. Everything seemed to work magic.

“So you’re a Buddhist who has fun. Forgive me, I don’t know much about your religion. It seems so . . . unhumorous.”

“I try to live by the precepts. But humans have a fallen nature, you know that. I don’t always make it, Raj. I like the Brahman’s psychological depth.”

She pointed to a bald eagle crossing overhead. We identified minerals from the layers of rock. By the time she lay her cap down, her temples of wisdom became my destination. Her hair, parted down the middle, was healthy and long. Her brown eyes had musical transparency without the normal filters and masks.

“Let’s go farther.”

We walked down a clay path with the south side of canyon in front of us. The red dust was speckle thin. It got onto my legs and shoes something fierce. It infiltrated everything, even my crotch. We zigzagged down the switchback. I was lathered in sweat.

“Let’s check out that cabin, Raj. They should have running water.”

I hand-pumped an old-style well from inside the subdued shelter. Gwen drank her fill. I refreshed my pipes. I swished the good stuff around my head and neck. It felt like bristles of a freeze pop. My hands were clean.

We sat inside on a plank, looking out the framed opening, breathing. “The cabin is ours, Raj. What do you make of that?”

“You’re four-star company, Gwen.”

I pressed my shin against her calf. “The wind even has its own whistle.”

“They say it blows uphill instead of down.”

“The shadows make delicious sights.”

“You’ve seen delicious sights the last two days, haven’t you, Raj?”

She lifted her throat. We tenderly touched lips, faces, hands, arms, hair, shoulders, and backs. We gripped each other’s sweaty cotton and skin. It was long-play, slow-motion heaven.

“You’re a flower, Gwen.”

“I’m nothing, Raj. I’m a Sagittarius college dropout from Merced, California. You’re a dayspring.”

We stood while caressing and kissing. She hugged me tighter. I squeezed down toward her hips.

“Go ahead, Raj. I trust you.”

I slipped my hand under her shorts. She firmly pressed her leg into my crotch. A group of German-speaking tourists tromped close, and we detached, abruptly.

“Milt’s a holdover,” she explained later, next to a pile of split wood. “He’s not for me. I’m trying to convince him to stay straight.”

“So that’s the behind-the-scenes story. You need to have your straightness verified, too?”

“You mean by this guy down here?” She reached down with surprising aggressiveness, and squeezed. We stepped back in unison against a cactus tree, still clamped. I was enamored. Another tour group of backpackers exiled us to the reality of the bright sun.

“Is that what we call a dance?”

“I’d say panoply, Raj.”

“Let’s be friends, Gwen. I want to share your goodness. That bus you painted is way-y-y-y out there. It rivals the canyon in magnifique.”

“Do you like my mantra? That’s classic Buddhist thinking.”

“‘Love All, Hurt None.’ Let’s petition the earth to make that the Eleventh Commandment.”

“You would make a beautiful Buddhist, Raj.”

“I’m all over it—that is, if it squares with Jesus Christ. I need an Almighty Being. I need holy trinity. God-is-big-and-we-are-small sort of thing.”

She wet her lips. “Would you have interest in becoming my maker? What if you made 1971 the year this girl’s miserable life became worth something?”

“Darling.”

“Kiss me again, Raj. You are the anecdote for a crying soul.”

The next time I saw Otto, it was in full company of the other four at the snack bar. Milt’s sunglasses still hadn’t been removed once. I ate a cattle burger “with everything” and shared a full-sized bag of Mexican chips with the others. Otto was loose and laughing, gloating over his transcendental meditation.

“It got me centered, Winans. That stuff works. I feel rested. I think I can handle even you from here on out. What’d you do?”

“Hmm, I went panning for gold . . . Gwen was down at the bottom.”

I thought he’d be able to guess something by the way I said it. But he said, “You mean with your willy in your hand?”

“She and I hiked down almost as far as the river.”

He shrugged her off completely, preferring to gloat about Vanessa. “Norbert’s got quite a Barbie to do his domestic duties.”

I was twittering. Coated with glee. I saw my chance, so I took a bath—in a horse trough. It was hidden by trees, the only running water around with an active spigot, so I quickly washed, feeling daring and bawdy and sensual. I rinsed out my filthy socks in the wastewater. I banged the red dust out of my shoes. Otto was licking clean a leftover bowl of salsa paid for by Vanessa and Norbert. He looked at me he said, “You know your animal, Roger? You’re a donkey. No wonder girls don’t look at you.”

The ride back to Utah seemed fast compared to getting there, even though the bus drawled. I was glad Otto was drawn to snobby Vanessa. Gwen and I chattered as much as plausible. I was in consternation about her soon-to-be-missing presence. Would I ever see her again? I wrote out my name and address and tucked the paper inside her bag when no one was looking.

“Know all the sleepin’ I did last night?” Otto said. “That was my preliminary for tonight. I’m gonna sleep as if tomorrow ain’t never gonna come.”

“Thanks for recommending this detour, man. Knowing me, I may have skipped it. But your vacation within a vacation program turned out to be a great idea.”

“Travel By Thumb’s deluxe package, sons.”

At dark, our group stopped at the same drive-in for more grinders, apples, and soda. The old school bus carried us about twenty more miles north. Gwen spied me plenty, offering small talk, smiles, and inward laughter. But with Milt on hand, there was nothing either of us could do. They were heading west, on the Extraterrestrial Highway of Nevada, then back over the mountains to California.

Otto and I got dropped off at Cedar City.

“Come on, Roger, that small clearing through the woods looks good. Let’s throw out our sleepin’ bags and have a real campin’ experience, the kind you been moanin’ about.”

“I feel rubbery. I need sleep, sleep, sleep; deep, deep, deep; now, now, now.”

I intended to tell him about Gwen, about everything. I was not one to withhold, you know me. But after we were done marveling about the Canyon and joking about Buddhists, I went out like a light.

Day Thirty-Five (Saturday, July 31, 1971)

We snored late into the morning. While he was still sleeping, I trucked half a mile to a delicatessen and picked up two sandwiches, two jumbo pretzel logs, and two quarts of orange juice for breakfast.

“We’re back,” I said, letting the salt granules of the pretzel melt on the top of my tongue. “Back on the road to equilibrium.”

“Did we really take that sidetrip? To the Grand Canyon?”

“It was a magic carpet ride of the highest quality.”

“Buddhists got wacky lingo, I’ll tell ya. I got all tuckered out channelin’ my bliss through the abstractions of my mental sphere.”

We roared. “That’s exactly what we did, Otto. We purified our formless receptacles. We made our material planes immune to delusion.”

“So tell me, Winans. Did I treat you right?”

“Always, Otto. That was the best damn jaunt on the trip. Thanks for moving us into position. That whole episode unfolded so . . . precisely.

 “I’m back—back to bein’ only a day behind from where I need to be.”

“You still a Christian?”

“Why, you ain’t?”

“Absolutely yes. All those monks gliding around in their robes made me closer than ever to the Gospel. But I worried for you, you know . . . about being too impressionistic. Ha-ha.”

“Think again, jack. The Buddhists ain’t convertin’ this kid.”

“Me, neither. I pledge my allegiance to Jesus Christ.”

“It’s all one God anyway.”

“Approach and perspective, that’s it. The way, the truth, and the life.”

“You got it now.”

“So we’re just two divinely-infused mortals who are thankful about everything. Let’s go.” We doused our campfire just it was getting too hot.

Mr. Businessman brought us to Parawan in a ’69 Buick Skylark. A beer distributor brought us to Provo in a loud truck. A redheaded Mormon squeezed us into his ’63 Porsche for a one hundred mile-per-hour cruise into Salt Lake City. Quarters were tight and the speed exhilarating. His family made cardboard boxes for a living, to ship fruit. Otto cut me off from asking more.

“You don’t wanna ask a Mormon too many questions,” he instructed afterward. “He may not wanna tell you about his ten wives and forty- three children and one hundred and twenty-eight grandchildren.”

It was good to scan over the gleaming cathedrals of Salt Lake and be able to say, “Been there before.” I recalled the odd troupe that swept us through the first time—Phil the evangelist; the greaser with a pack of cigarettes tucked up his teeshirt, and the sour-faced midget. I remembered Fellowship Mission and its pastor from South Korea speaking broken English. I remembered chucking ‘CALIF.’ and redoing it as ‘FRISCO.’ I remembered the beautiful woman with the scrumptious legs, her MG, my invitation to San Diego. How would the course of my life been changed had I taken that ride!

“After further consideration, man, I realize I’m better off with you,” I said to Otto’s startled gaze.

“You talkin’ in riddles, sons?”

“Forgive me, Otto, for almost throwing this trip in the crapper.”

“It’s over, Roger. Just go out and get us some good rides. I accept your humility.”

We ran the course on I-15 and fell back onto I-80, heading east. Salt Lake City was already in the valley behind us when a cigar-smoking old gent let us off at a gas station. I took a leak behind the bushes and went to get a Coke. Otto refilled his canteen. Two guys were standing near the pumps outside, next to their van. One of them gestured with his thumb. “You guys hiking? If you’re heading east, so are we.”

I stretched out on the hard metal of the Ford Econoline’s back compartment and picked away at grapes and watermelon at our hosts’ invitation. Otto looked at me, laughing. “We’re movin’ good and not even workin’ at it.”

“All day long. We’ve hardly participated in the process. They’ve been soliciting us. We’re on a roll, baby.”

Otto said nothing more and neither did I. But we both knew in the world of hitchhiking a great balancing force existed. For every two steps forward, you could expect one step back. Good luck like this precipitated a terrible pitfall somewhere down the line. Somewhere in the miles ahead—God only knew where—lay an abominably long wait.

My brain felt stretched out of proportion when I stumbled off the van in Rock Springs, Wyoming. Nighttime appeared out of nowhere. So did the familiar sage brush and barren mountains. I was drained but satisfied. Hard to imagine: This morning I was in the southern part of Utah. Now I firmly stood inside the brown state, Wyoming, pointed eastward. Again, I wished I hadn’t tossed out my winter jacket. Without clouds, the heat of day had no thermal layer to hold it in. As night took over, I was cold, almost shivering.

“Let’s make another campfire. Make believe we’re in an episode of Gunsmoke.” I looked around at the nothingness.

“Hey Roger, think there’s any rattlesnakes in this area?”

“George, you still believe a rattler’s going to sneak up on you? Let’s tempt fate, because I’m tired. I guess I’ll camp on the top of that hill. Care to join me?”

“I’m gonna pull an allnighter. This is the time when those big tractor-trailers are headin’ for New York.”

Without companionship, but feeling secure, I buried deep under my bag, away from the gleaming stars. The temperature had to be in the 40’s.

I slept, I dreamed, I shivered.