Day Six (Friday, July 2, 1971)

Morning broke damp and misty. My mind felt jumbled. I had to think for a moment: Where were we? Francis’ back yard? The Mississippi River? Oh yeah, that’s right—Omaha, somewhere in the outskirts.

Everything was wet. My nose was runny. Was my watch, tucked inside my shoes, still running? The sameness of the nearby housing development was frightening. They were all white, one story pre-fabs with tinny white sidings and silver shingles, each probably worth no more than $15,000.

I picked up, hoping to rouse Otto. He was immovable. I even tried to thumb us a ride. He was still immovable. I cursed a hundred comatose businessmen. Otto slowly got up and tried crawling around coordinating his crap. He was more asleep than awake. I got furious at those priggish, insecure male drivers, institutionalized by fear, branded by routine, as they passed by shamelessly with their arms strung across the back of their seats, surprised to come across our enterprise.

When drizzle began to fall, I was ready to cry.

“I don’t even know what you’re doin’ out there tryin’ to catch a ride.” Otto sat in a pile of wrinkles. “My clothes are dirty, and with this kind of weather I was gonna ask if it wouldn’t be a good idea for a wash-up. I remember seein’ a laundromat at a shoppin’ center down the road from the Texaco station.”

I was disappointed, but there you go again Roger Winans, being too hard on yourself. What was my problem? Where did I have to run immediately? Nowhere. Who was waiting for us? No one. Otto made sense. I lowered my thumb.

For breakfast, I bought a green pepper and ate it like an apple, one of my personal delicacies.

We finally made our sign. I bought a magic marker at a candy store and met Otto at the Texaco station, where he had scavenged a stray piece of cardboard. The rain let up, though the clouds were ominous and full of water.

Otto scratched out ‘California’ in crooked, small, uneven letters.

“Hey man, drivers aren’t going to be able to decipher that.” We started barking at each other all over again. “You call that recognizable?”

A Texaco mechanic overheard us. “Whaddiya got, boys?”

I tilted up the sign. He frowned and said, “Give me that there darn thing.”

He brought the cardboard into the office and flipped it over. In one minute he churned out an attractive sign in bright red letters with green backshading: ‘CALIF.’ A professional job.

“I never knew mechanics could be artists, did you?”
“We do now.”

We walked out. “Sorry for my bluster, O.”

In the course of a hitchhiker’s career, sometimes a long wait is worthwhile because it leads to a good ride. That was true of our next adventure, which took most of the morning to materialize. The driver was a guy who looked like singer Rick Nelson. Like most Americans, I grew up with the Nelsons watching The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Not many people knew that Rick was a native of the Garden State, born in Teaneck, New Jersey, in 1940. The first album I ever bought was Rick Nelson’s For Your Sweet Love (beating out Beatles ’65 by a week). One song of his called “Pick Up the Pieces,” still spoke to me strongly. In fact, I had been humming it just yesterday.

This Rick was teasingly close to the real thing: clean-cut and polite, medium black hair, gleaming white teeth, a well-toned physique, perfect complexion, and wearing a sports shirt and dress slacks. As unoffensive as you can get.

“Was it our sign that made you pick us up?” Otto asked Rick after we settled in.

“I didn’t notice any sign.” He stared at Otto until they both laughed. “I just like to pick up hitchhikers.”

Rick floored it 90 m.p.h. all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska. The whole time we had a great conversation about the origins of rock ’n roll. In Lincoln, he invited us to have lunch at his girlfriend’s, because he was bringing her some forty miles further west afterward.

“You might as well have something to eat before going out into the beginning of nowhere.”

His girlfriend was a petite cheerleader-type with short, bobbed hair, and dark, pebbly eyes. You guessed it—Otto and I referred to her as “Mary Lou.” She lived in a trailer park home, which was like living in an aluminum box. But she was as friendly as Rick, and her BLT sandwiches, brownies, and Gatorade were good.

Mary Lou graced the passenger seat during our bonus period. I began to envy Rick very much for his girlfriend. She was a Girl Scout swimming instructor, a distance runner, and wanted to be a translator after she got out of college. She entertained our carload by speaking French and German phrases.
The couple treated us to orange sodas at a gas station when they turned off. For hours afterward I was singing Rick’s biggest hit, “Hello Mary Lou.”

I could see what Rick meant by saying we would be at the beginning of nowhere. The topography of the land no longer varied. The former greenfields gave way to a dry, brown, dust-blown look. There weren’t any hills or valleys; just a long, gradual uphill. Any existing towns were fifteen miles apart, and they couldn’t have been very prosperous, not judging from the battered farmhouses visible from the interstate. Ironic how Mary Lou went to college somewhere out here.

“I hope you’re prepared for your all-time roughest stretch.” Otto inspected the ground.

“It’s banal.”

The number of vehicles on the highway dropped. Bunches of tractor-trailers still roared, but we already used up our allotment back on day one since it was atypical for them to stop. I didn’t like the giant posted signs: ‘PROHIBITED: FARM VEHICLES, WALKING, BICYCLES, HITCHHIKING.’

We tried it anyway. Sure enough, two Nebraska patrol officers stopped and asked to see identification. They ordered us off the interstate and onto the entrance ramp, “in front of the sign.” I cursed them loudly after they left, but we moved. Traffic on the ramp was zero.

Not only that, we had competition. A craggy old sot with a bent face stood at the head of the ramp, lifting his thumb on the rare occasion that a car schlepped past. I tapped my pockets, double checking my wallet and traveler’s cheques (currently $143). When I saw him slowly walking toward us, my stomach twitched.

“Ya know sumtun, buddies, weesa hurtin’ each other standin’ here t’gether,” he garbled, barely discernible. “Ya knows that?”

“We’ll keep out of your way. We’ll stay down on this end of the ramp,” I said, anxious to get rid of him.

“Yeah, you can have the first shot up there.” Otto lifted his head to where the guy had been standing.

“That don’t make no diff’rence. Tain’t got no traffic on here noways, besides! I’ve standed prit’near two hours as ’tis. Pooh!”

I breathed deeply and studied the cloud formation.

“Look, whad ya says t’ this?” The guy pointed to a decrepit luncheonette which looked as if it ought to be torn down. “I’ll goes up t’ that cafe fer a cup o’ coffee. You take it fer an hour. You don’t gets a ride by then, then you lets me have it.”

“You mean take turns?” I said. “All right, we’ll do that.” He added nastily, “But then I stays ’til I gets a ride, hear?” Otto was upset with me after he left. “Say Roger, what did you tell him ‘yeah’ for? This is a free country.

He can’t throw us off here. We shoulda told that guy to go stroke it. Now he’s gonna come back in an hour and expect to take over. No way, sons. I ain’t gonna!”

I wet my lips. “I said it because I know we’ll get a ride before the hour’s up. You need faith, that’s what. Let’s out-fox him. That’s how you’d play it, right? You’ll see, nothing to it. We know more about hitchhiking than that hobo ever will. Get ready, here comes a customer now.”

An old Thunderbird with a double-chinned, pot-bellied slob growled past.

“Turd!” Fifteen minutes later, a Dodge Daytona almost ran us off the ramp. “You freaking idiot!”

“All I know is we’re gonna stand here as long as it takes to get a ride, one hour or ten.” Otto looked like a teacher running out of patience.

I paced. I belched. I stretched. I cracked my knuckles. I gobbed on the pavement. I kicked up stones and gutted out thirty push-ups on the bare earth. With five minutes to deadline, I was timorous. We solicited only about half a dozen cars. I sang “Vehicle” by the Ides of March. I was afraid to tell Otto there were only a few ticks left on the scoreboard. “Get ready, here comes that guy now.” Otto nodded toward a dowdy figure approaching from a hundred yards away. “You deal with him, Roger.”

Just as the clock hit zero, a light blue ’65 Mustang pulled over. We needed every second of that one.

Our saviors were greaser girls. Two greaser sisters, as a matter of fact, Vicky and Marti, going “a long ways . . . ways out . . . to the high plains . . . ways past North Platte, even.”

You’d think two girls would have Otto and me drooling? Hold the salaciousness. These girls were bird brains. Vicky, the driver, looked like a hawk and had stringy, bleached blond hair. Marti was shorter and plumper, with a pug nose and fabricated orange hair. Both smacked gum, swore like sailors,
smoked cigarettes, wore Halloween-quality makeup, and played a malfunctioning AM radio too loudly.

They didn’t understand when Otto said, “You saved us.”

“Yeah, the official box score doesn’t show assists. But you gave us a big one back there, girls. Thanks.”

“Ain’t they the nines,” one of them said to the other.

“You girls got a flair for the dramatic.”

“On a ramp too crowded for comfort.”

“Youse guys is cute,” the other said. “Different.”

They drove us nuts with their noise. They didn’t talk—they clacked.

It was a sideshow without an off button. Arguing over hair spray. How not to dump a pan of chicken grease. The cute neighbor who petted their dog. A girlfriend’s tattoo on her butt. An infected hangnail. Fussing over hair styles and shoes. Quibbling about parents. Plotting practical jokes. Laughing about missed connections at the mall . . . endless.

Marti broke the pattern. She decided she needed her jewelry box from the trunk. Vicky parked in the shoulder of the interstate without turning on the emergency blinkers.

“Poop,” Marti announced. “I done locked the trunk keys in the trunk.”

Vicky erupted. “You stupid farmer girl!”

“Shut your face, you boy molester!”

It was comedy until I learned they had to extract the key from the trunk so their parents wouldn’t find out. We drove the streets of North Platte, Nebraska, trying to find someone willing to rip apart the back to recover it.

After several inquiries, some burly guy at an Amoco station agreed. The four of us stood abreast at the bays, watching the guy grapple with the back seat like he was on the high school wrestling team. Marti and Vicky fretted and smoked. I read maps. Otto tugged on the ends of his hair, dangling ever longer.

Westward ho! Miles marched by, pushing further out into space and time. To think, we were still only halfway across the United States. You had to respect that. I studied avidly everything coming into view as we continued our slow, seemingly endless climb across the amber waves of grain.

The end of the line was a small town named Ogallala. Here sagebrush was more prevalent than grass. My nose pricked of manure and fertilizer from the cattle drive next to the river. Feed and grain buildings, agricultural supply warehouses, and storage barns were randomly spaced among one-story ranches. It didn’t take long to notice real life cowboys, either. Otto ordered me on full alert.

“Cowboys got their own laws and traditions, Roger. They got more push than the politicians. Give ’em plenty of room.” True, they looked ready to kick ass. They were conspicuous in their ten gallon hats, flannel shirts, boots, and Wranglers. What an existence, and in the very same country as my own!

We strolled down the wooden planks of a tourist attraction called “Front Street.” It was a rendition of how the town supposedly looked in 1875, with a general store, undertaker’s, jail, post office, saloon, apothecary, and sheriff’s office.

“How ’bout takin’ our repast at the Hungry Indian Cafe down there? Mix ’n mingle with the natives.”

“Switching from the cowboys to the Indians isn’t going to do us any good.”

“Sure it will,” Otto assured. “Indians are a civil culture. They’re the original native Americans who got bullied out by the Europeans. Be astute for once in your life, Roger. I’ve heard their food is really good for you, full of nutrition.” He led the way inside to a table near the serving line.

It was an older cafeteria with pale blue walls, overhead fans, and plain wooden tables and chairs. The clock read an hour earlier than my watch, meaning we left Central Time somewhere and slipped into Mountain Time.

Otto balanced ‘CALIF.’ on the top of his backpack. “Haven’t we made enough of a spectacle just by walking in here?” “We made the sign to get us a ride. We might at well use it.”

My dinner was potato pancakes with gravy and a cup of coffee. Otto bought a chili dog and sauerkraut with a glass of tomato juice. The more I became accustomed to the place the better I liked it; its simplicity and absence of tourists were unexpected treats. Real Indians, too, seemed to be among the employees and customers.

Two such Indian girls were sitting at a table adjacent to ours, eating beans with melted cheese over brown rice. One was strikingly pretty for someone of another culture, with wide, upturned eyes and an aura of steadiness. She seemed like some kind of twentieth-century Pocahontas; black hair collected in a long single braid, high cheekbones, soft skin, and obvious intelligence. The other was a pie face: ugly, stumpy, coarse; no match for her friend at all. Both wore layers of loose-fitting, embroidered rawhide, further adorned with handmade accessories.

Otto was just about to bite into a second chili dog when these Indian girls turned to us in unison. In perfect English, the pretty one said, “We see you have a sign out for California. Could you use a ride through Boulder? My friend and I are heading that way tonight. I don’t know what your plans are, but we can help you out if you want a ride.”

Otto asked, “Where’s Boulder?” but had to be asking as a formality only. Boulder was somewhere in Colorado, west of our present location, and this was an attractive, fascinating girl speaking. I knew my vote.

“We’re traveling around, too, like you guys.” The pie face’s husky voice smiled mischievously. “Only we got a truck.”

“We’ve got road food and plenty of supplies. We’ve got extra sleeping bags and pillows and blankets,” the pretty one said. “Right, Tash?”

“Finish that chili dog,” I directed to Otto. I swigged my water and let the rest of my coffee sit cold.

What a set up! As usual, when you came down to it, I had to hand it to my loyal partner and his ceaseless supply of ideas. Our complementary factor was at work again—while I charged straight ahead like a bison, Otto hit the edges, painted the corners. We were here because of him.

The girls directed us outside to “the truck,” a high, rectangular former Wonder Bread truck, painted over several times, with both doors removed. A thick mattress topped by a woven blanket covered the floor area. The only seat was the driver’s round black stool. Hand-built food shelves lined the walls. Its rows were crammed with cereal boxes, canned goods, jars, and bottles. Clothes of all sorts and large canvas bags were strewn about. I took off my shoes and cracked my ankles. Otto bounced on the springs of the mattress and smiled widely. This could get sweet!

Alvah, the pretty one, slipped behind the deep-ridged steering wheel. The pie face, Natasha, sat cross-legged on the edge of the mattress, gazing out the doorway. She urged us to enjoy the blazing sunset stretching out across the plain.

Alvah and Natasha were one hundred percent Navajos. They spent the first fifteen years of their lives on a reservation, attending tribal school. Since then, they had been traveling all over the country, living off the land, promoting Indian rights which they said were theirs by virtue of various ancestral treaties but never acknowledged by the “shitnosed” American government. They had toured such divergent corners as Vermont and Alabama. They even remembered getting a flat tire on the New Jersey Turnpike.

Most of my attention focused on Alvah. Unfortunately, so did Otto’s. But what could you expect? She was tall and slim with a ‘D’ cup bosom; her shadowed profile was lovely. Her voice was lyrical and cherry-sweet. She provided every comfort a hitchhiker could ask for, treated us with respect, and was friendly.

Then Otto and I discovered these girls’ livelihood. They were the biggest drug pushers in the Western Hemisphere. You know those cereal boxes and miscellaneous containers on the shelves? Every kind of “up” and “down” was in them. Pills, powder, LSD, codeine, opium—the works. All the hard stuff. Alvah sounded like a hawker at a medicine show as she ran down her list of products and their corresponding selling price. My smiles and nods to Otto changed to disbelief and alarm.

Nineteen year-old Alvah and twenty year-old Natasha were “working their way through college” by traveling around the country, going into bars, and selling dope. Apparently there was a big demand for this.

“It’s the easiest and most profitable business in the world for a girl,” Alvah said. “If a girl turns on her charm to a guy, she can get him to do anything.” As I watched her slip off her moccasin, and her shiny, fragrant braid dropped close to my face, I fretfully thought, “’Tis true, ’tis true.”

“The biggest suckers are the boys that hang out in the small town bars. They’re geared up for action and bored to death.” Alvah grinned. “I get off sitting at a bar like Miss America and having them come up to me, one guy after another, offering to buy me a drink. As soon as I’ve got them hypnotized, I tell them I’ve got the best snort they ever tasted. They want to buy it hoping they’re going to get me in bed. But as soon as I pocket their money, I disappear into the bathroom and split. I’ve shit on some pretty big spenders.”

“I drive the getaway vehicle.” Natasha horse laughed.

My right leg wouldn’t stop jiggling. I was quite stunned, or stupefied rather. A frog lodged in my throat.

“Self,” I pondered, “what the heck are you doing sitting in the dark, lost in America, in an old bread truck encased with illegal drugs?”

They had a particular bar in mind they were going to hit that night. We were off the interstate and on a bumpy, deserted, two-lane blacktop. “You see more off the federal roads,” Natasha explained. “Those superhighways shouldn’t be driven. The government spent needless money on them that should have gone to the poor. They beef up their bank accounts with fringe benefits and put our people on land that is worthless. We do it in protest.”

Otto was making me jealous, the way he was hitting on Alvah by going through a check list of whirlwind topics that made him sound so clever. They talked about drug laws, the effects of hallucinogenics, the behavior of freaks, the plight of liberalism under President “Tricky” Dick Nixon, and how pollution was screwing up the environment. I tried to jump in when I could but got spit out like tobacco. Otto could be quite forceful when it served his own needs. He kept me outside of field goal range.

“Oooo goody, a new state,” Natasha said, as we came upon ‘WELCOME TO COLORADO, THE CENTENNIAL STATE.’

“Nebraska was too long and hard.” Alvah genuinely ached. “Where do you think, Tash, right up here on the left?”

“Under that juniper will be fine.”

“Bathroom break?” I asked.

“Heritage stop,” Alvah said.

Both girls laughed. Natasha explained how they smoke weed every time they cross a
state border. “It’s a pact we have from way back to celebrate safe passage. We stop and rest, no matter how busy we are, to show our resistance to capitalistic society.”

We sat in a circle on a grassy clump, boy-girl-boy-girl. No farmhouses or lights were visible in any direction. The stars were low enough to touch. The air was nippy and the girls sat with quilts wrapped up to their necks. Natasha was already speeding on “reds” and Alvah had taken half a hit of acid. It was beyond me how someone as graceful as Alvah would want to mess herself up with drugs. Nature’s beauty didn’t need additives.

I was leery about this pow-wow. Yet I made up my mind that should Otto and I be pressured to smoke, I would do so, for the sake of Alvah and sexual favor.

They passed around a couple of bowlfuls packed in a narrow, hand- carved peacepipe with feathers hanging off the end. I didn’t know Otto’s plan until the last second when he accepted the pipe from Alvah and drew fire. It was dark enough so you could fake it if you wanted. I half smoked and half didn’t. We sat out in the cold for fifteen or twenty minutes.

“Are you guys having a good time?” Alvah said. “Please, have anything you’d like. You’re not into heroin, are you? Too bad, this grain is so well cut. What would you like? Acid? Thai stick? Whatever you want, please, let me know.”

Natasha pulled out a paperback from her canvas bag, Steal This Book, written by Abbie Hoffman. He was one of the Chicago Seven who allegedly caused that rumble at the Democratic National Convention in 1968. She thumbed through a few pages.

“Ever read this book? Damn good literature. It’s a peoples’ manual for living free. It tells how to rip off clothes, food, furniture, how to make free phone calls, how to get medical care for free, how to rip off public transportation, how to find you way around strange cities— everything you need to know how to live. It’s loaded with good tips.”

“Weird title,” I said.

Natasha giggled. “That’s what you’re supposed to do—steal this book. Get it? That’s Abbie Hoffman’s philosophy. Rip off! There’s so many goods and services in the white man’s country that you should be entitled to some of them for free. I lifted the book from a grocery mart in North Carolina and I brush up on it every day. You guys ought to steal a copy yourselves. He tells how to use stolen credit cards, how to rip off meals in restaurants, how to con the government into giving you free housing or free land—everything. Every day it seems like we try out something new. I’ll let you look over our copy.”

Alvah fired up a stick of incense and stuck it in the ground. “We’ve been living for free all year. I don’t think we’ve paid for our food or clothes once since we left the reservation. Have we, Tash?”

The two Indian girls traded positions as we reloaded into the truck. Natasha drove on, wearing a sombrero. Otto and Alvah started to schmooze again, for lengthy periods, mostly about Earth Day, created last year in 1970. I should’ve butted in, “Otto Brackston George, you’ve never picked up a piece of litter in your life, you lazy bum!” But I was too polite.

Steal This Book, meanwhile, listed in my hands. That was the last thing I needed, a book to encourage my criminal activities more than what they already were. All my life I was corrupt. It started with lollipops, bubblegum, and baseball cards stolen from the neighborhood corner store when I was a kid in Plainfield. It progressed to erotic magazines and cigars as a pre-teenager. Lately (right before the trip), I started sneaking into movies, dances, and wrestling matches, mostly with Otto. I was not even above stealing a large pepperoni from Dominick’s Pizzeria when the owners had a mix-up with their two young sons whom they were breaking into the business.

We arrived at the small prairie town where Alvah was set to make her drug deal. I got to my knees as we pulled in front of ‘The Garage,’ a one-story roadhouse with live music blasting from its doors.

“The guys in here bought a lot of bennies last year, so I want to stock up before I go in.” Alvah spilled out goods from a glass jar into a soft pouch.

“Do you allow spectators to watch?” Otto asked.

“Sorry, this is a one-person operation.” Alvah raised a hand mirror and wiped away a piece of lint, total business. “You haven’t seen any police around, have you, Tash?”

“No chief, the pigs are all in bed screwing their wives. Everything looks A-OK.” She guffawed, mostly toward me, with what my father would call a “shit-eating” grin.

Alvah stepped briskly out of the truck, radiating such brightness that made me wish I was the unlucky guy she would bait and hook.

I waited in anxiety with my two truckmates. Breathe in, breathe out. The silence was harrowing. What was I doing in a crime getaway car? It was insane! I wanted it thoroughly understood, for the lawyers of the Roger Winans Legal Defense Team, that I was just an innocent hitchhiker these Indian girls coerced into picking up.

“Are you guys buzzed?” Natasha asked.

“A little,” I lied.

“Ja-wow-wah. That pot gave me a Rocky Mountain bang. I’m elevated,” Otto said.

“By the way, where are the mountains? We haven’t hit an uphill yet.”

“Oh, they’re coming. Don’t wish your life away.” Natasha lit a cigarette. She pounded the steering wheel and began humming to the house music which you could plainly hear. “You should meet my brother sometime. He’s a crazy bandito, but I love him. He gives us an excellent price on all our dope and has good connections down in Mexico.”

“Euu.” I invented a word on the spot. I ferociously picked my cuticles until my right pinky drew blood.
Natasha smiled with her gross rotten teeth. I despised her for her crass attitude, this whole drug business, and the immorality of living off everyone else’s labors. I rubbed sweat from my palms onto my pants. Otto sat in the doorway, ready to act as Alvah’s guardian angel if called upon.

“Hurry up, let’s get out of here.” Alvah came trotting back. “Some guy bought a gram of hash, but he was so drunk that I took the twenty that he had on the bar.” She stuffed her bills in a coat lying on the floor.

“She’s a phenom.” Natasha cranked the ignition. “Just so happens we need a new case of motor oil. We’ll use tonight’s haul and buy it tomorrow.”

To my relief no one tailed us, and we got rolling again. I was even more pleased to notice Alvah yawning and rubbing her eyes. Maybe we were coming to the payoff from this awful ordeal.

“Do you guys want to catch some rest with me? I’m bushed. There’s room for all three of us in the back. We can lie lengthwise.” She picked up a few articles of clothes on the mattress, wobbling by the truck’s movement.

“Why don’t I get in the middle?” she said.

Holy crackers, was I about to participate in a ménage-a-trois? My hormones were ricocheting. My mind was bouncing off the shelves.

All three of us laid our backs to the mattress, our heads pointing toward the rear door. Alvah looked precious, lying with eyes closed, breasts vibrating atop her chest, her pretty head filled with drugs. Beyond her, on the far side, lay Otto, blocked and silent, hopefully in no-man’s land.

My hands were stiff and cold. The engine noise and gentle rocking of the axles offered a soothing cadence. I stared at the dark gray roof with my heart thumping. A lump rose in my throat.

Two seconds later Alvah turned on her side toward Otto!

His arm shot around her. Alvah squirmed in closer with her well- sculpted bottom. He buried his head in her hair, purring.

God. I never saw love at such close range. Otto and Alvah began French kissing, reaching around, caressing limbs. But why Otto? Was my company that revolting?

In the middle of a slurp, Otto opened his eyes and glared at me. He extended his thumb in a hitchhiking gesture, and raised his arm off Alvah’s back, snapping, “Out!”

I was mad. First he swipes a girl we had been sharing. Now he wanted to unearth my resting spot.

He wasn’t going to oust me as fast as he wanted. I decided to heckle him for awhile.

I propped my body on an elbow, and tapped him on the shoulder. His body was rocking in some kind of lover’s rhythm with Alvah. I pressed my fingers against his shoulder, hard, until he opened his eyes.
I shot him the finger. He wasn’t going to steal a girl from me and get away with it! His eyes flared. I flipped him the bird in a variety of forms: straight on, angles, upside down, using both hands.

He tried ignoring me, but I stayed poised. Sure enough, in due time he opened his eyes to see if I was still around. I shot him the finger, again and again, going right up to his nose.

I sat up and conceded. It was weird. Otto always acted vague with girls the same way he did with drugs. He always bent my ear with kinky sexual exploits of him and his girl, Laurie Daub. But you hardly saw them together. And whenever you did, they acted like they didn’t know each other. This current action, though, with Alvah, live in the present tense, couldn’t be disputed. Their legs entangled. Otto circled his hand slowly across Alvah’s stomach, inching uphill toward bare delight.

I sat cross-legged in the dark cringing at Natasha’s lard, as she guided us deeper into the Colorado night. I sauntered up front and carefully sat by the open doorway, holding my stomach.

“Ugh, those potato pancakes and gravy I ate for dinner didn’t mix too well. I’m nauseous. I thought I’d better come up here for some fresh air.”

“Would you like to smoke a joint? That would numb your body, and relax you.”

“No thanks.” I said with a small laugh, “I’m still stoned from before.”

She jabbered on through the wee hours, telling me about the “naked cleansing ritual in the mud and rain” she had with her Navajo tribemates; about her abortion, and more about the girls’ support for the rights of Indians. All the while Led Zeppelin music played at maximum volume in my head. I drowned her out and dozed off.

I awoke to uphill climbing and shifting gears and the gassing of the pedal. Finally we hit the Rocky Mountains, home of the 14,000-foot peaks. The inside of the truck was cast in an eerie yellow, accompanied by blinking red and amber traffic lights.

“Boulder,” Natasha announced.

Alvah, her face sleepy, clothes tussled, emerged from the back. “How’s everything on this side?”

“Just fine,” Natasha said.

“I’m feeling sick.” I explained my illness. I looked back at Otto the Oaf. “Hey Lover Boy.”

Alvah directed us to park at the foot of a tall mountain, where we would sleep for the night. The romantic duo set out for the hills with sleeping bags, pillows, and Otto’s rain slicker under his arm.
Natasha slumped her head against the steering wheel, smiling. I put on a disoriented look and wrapped my arms tightly around my legs.

“I think I’ll sleep right here in the truck, where I won’t be disturbed.”

A trace of hurt dashed across her face. “All right,” she whispered, “I understand. See you in the morning.” She rooted out a blanket from the back and disappeared up the mountain, too.