“I don’t see why—”
“Jesus, John! Would you pull over? I just want a look.”
“All right, don’t get your tit in a wringer.”
I swear, sometimes I like him better when he’s in one of his fogs. We pull over by a Dumpster covered with graffiti.
“Is that it?”
Through the binoculars, I see a line of cars buried headfirst into the dirt. There are no people around, just a couple of cows grazing nearby. “I think so.”
“Doesn’t look like they’re in good shape,” says John.
I hand him the glasses so he can take a look. “No, they aren’t. They’ve been all spray-painted and bashed up. They don’t even have tires.”
“That’s a shame. Why are they buried again?”
“It’s an art project, John,” I say, after he gives me back the binoculars. Then after a moment, “I have no idea.”
Yet the sight of these cars buried in the dirt does something to me. Tailfins pointed up toward the sky, there is something sad and disturbing about them. Our friends and relatives once desired cars like these. They were considered the height of style. We had a neighbor on our old block that lorded his new Cadillacs over us, thought he was better than us because he had a big shiny whale parked in his driveway.
“John, you remember Ed Werner and his Cadillac?”
“Oh yeah.”
“That old soak, getting home from work every night, stepping out of his Caddy with his bottle of Cutty Sark.”
“Crown Prince Sonny Boy, the car salesman.”
John remembers him all right. Now he’s long dead and these fancy cars are just junk, like what’s here at the Cadillac Ranch.
There was a time in his life when I know John would have liked to own a Cadillac. Not that we could have ever afforded one, not that I would have let him buy one even if we could. Those big cars are just too flashy.
Looking through the binoculars, my vision starts to falter, sweat collects beneath my eyebrows around the lenses. I feel languid and irritated, maybe from my meds, maybe not. This so-called art feels to me like a slap in my generation’s face, everything we worked for, everything we thought we needed after the war, our illusions of prosperity. After growing up poor, being middle class seemed like the most wonderful thing anyone could ever hope for.
The Cadillac Ranch gives me a pain in the ass. Oh, excuse me. A
discomfort
in the ass.
At Adrian, Texas, we stop at a little place called the Midpoint Café, located at the exact “Geo-Mathematical” midpoint of Route 66, whatever that means. I finally got my appetite back, even though I’m not sure what I can keep down. They do have homemade “Ugly Crust” pies, which intrigue me.
Our waitress, I’m happy to say, is not at all talkative. She looks as aged as us, which is rare for a waitress. Yet there’s no good-natured “
Hello dearie, ain’t we old?
” crapola. On her smock, she wears dozens of grandchild (and probably great-grandchild) photo buttons and flag pins. She jangles as she totters about with her slight limp and big sneakers squeaking against the linoleum.
I order banana cream pie for me, apple for John. And milk for both of us. When it comes, I take a big sip and the coldness almost makes me sick at first, then it settles and I know I’ll be okay. There’s not much to say at the table. John’s getting tired and quiet. I’m thinking we should call it a day soon.
The pie is absolutely wonderful. Sweet, but not too sweet, with a lard crust that comes off your fork like little flakes of heaven. After we each finish our slices, we order a slice of coconut cream and polish that off in no time flat. I feel a lot better with something sweet under my belt.
The waitress leaves our bill on the table without a word. I turn to John, hold up my glass with the last of my milk in it. “We made it halfway, old man.”
John holds up his glass and touches it to mine.
How do you find a ghost town? Just look for nothing and there it is.
Actually, you need to get off at Exit 0 (I’m not kidding) and cross to the south side of the freeway where the road is in lousy shape, pockmarked and scattered with gravel. I direct John to
turn right toward the old buildings up ahead. We have now entered Glenrio, a real ghost town along the old highway.
“Slow down,” I say. We pass an abandoned hotel with a sign in front of it:
LAS IN TEXAS
Half the sign’s busted away, but from my books I know that it used to say
LAST HOTEL IN TEXAS
on one side and
FIRST HOTEL IN TEXAS
on the other, depending on which way you were coming. Glenrio is situated in both Texas and New Mexico. The Texas side was located in “Deaf Smith County,” the dry part of town. All the bars were on the New Mexico side. The gas stations were on the Texas side, where taxes were less.
We go by the shell of an old gas station. In front of a skeletal gas pump sits a dusty white Pontiac from the ’70s, windows busted out, a home to the birds.
“They filmed that movie
The Grapes of Wrath
here, John. Remember? With Henry Fonda? Hard to picture him poking around in this mess.”
“I don’t like it here,” says John.
He’s right. There’s something unsettling about this place, hollowed out, yet gorged with memories. Still, at least there are ruins here to hint at the past. But they won’t be here forever. Slowly, history crumbles away, piece by piece, until even the ghost towns disappear.
I pat a tissue to my forehead. My mouth is so dry, it feels
like I’ve been snacking on mucilage. “You’re going to have to turn around. The road isn’t paved up ahead. Just pull off and circle back.”
John turns the van around, hits the gas. Just then, there’s a sound like a gunshot, which scares the daylights out of me. I hear
chunk-a-chunk,
and the van veers hard to the right, shifting us both in our seats. My armrest jams my side and I just about pass out. The noise gets louder. I yell to John, “What’s happening?”
John’s too busy holding on to the steering wheel, trying to keep control of the van. I see a vein sticking out on the side of his forehead. I hope he doesn’t bust a gusset. The van keeps veering hard as John pumps the brakes. He directs us toward the shoulder.
“Oh shit,” he says, his hands white and blue around the steering wheel. “I got it, I got it.”
I feel the gravel shift beneath us, the sound of rock crushed into itself, of Post Grape-Nuts amplified by a hundred. I’m sure John is going to lose control. I try to take a breath, but I can only suck air into my lungs, not breathe it out again.
“Ella, stop making that noise,” says John. “We’ve just got a flat tire.”
I hear dishes and boxes in the back of the van shift and hit the floor. The crunching noise stops, and the van heaves to a halt on the shoulder, not far from The Last Hotel in Texas. John turns off the engine and we sit there lopsided, listening to ourselves breathe.
Two long minutes pass. John just stares out at the road.
The look on his face is content, like he doesn’t have a worry in the world. I’m not scared anymore, but I am getting annoyed. “John,” I finally say. “Are you all right?”
He nods.
“Well, what are you waiting for?” I say. “You said we’ve got a flat tire. Aren’t you going to go out there and take a look?”
John turns and stares, as if to say “Who me?”
Finally, he opens his door and climbs out. I decide to join him, so I look behind the seat for my cane, but it’s slid back from where I stowed it.
“John!” I yell.
Nothing. I yell his name again. No answer. God only knows what he’s doing. I decide to get the damn cane myself. I get so tired of being helpless. I search around behind the seat and find a long telescoping stick with a two-prong fork that grips things. John sometimes uses it to flip open the door lock on my side of the van.
My cane has slid quite a ways back, into the middle of our kitchen area. I hear John making noise, getting something out of a storage area, which only makes me work faster. I lengthen the stick, grab one of the legs of my cane, and drag it toward me, past a loose Corelle plate on the floor.
Outside, I find John with all the equipment out, ready to fix the flat tire. The problem is, I don’t think he remembers how to do it. I wish I’d kept my big fat mouth shut. “Let’s call the Auto Club,” I say.
“I can do it.”
I try to be gentle with him. “I know you can, I just don’t want you to hurt yourself, honey.” I also don’t want to be here for hours.
John tries to put the jack together. It’s sad to watch. I head back into the van to use the cellular phone. The Auto Club tells me that a tow truck will be here in about forty minutes. I let myself down from the passenger’s seat gently, the old discomfort rearing its thorny head again. I find that John has managed to put the jack together, has it under the van, and is cranking away at it, but nothing is happening. The jack is clicking as if it should be raising the van, but something isn’t engaged.
“John, the Auto Club’s going to fix it. Come on, let’s get out of this sun. You shouldn’t be out here. You’re going to get the skin cancer back on your head.”
“Aw, malarkey.”
“Come on.”
Amazingly, John drops the handle and as we head back to sit in the van, a car blasts past us, the first one we’ve seen since we got off the highway. I see its brake lights flash. It’s an old Plymouth with wide patches of gray primer on the side and trunk. I watch it pull onto the shoulder about a half block up. After a minute, the driver gets out, then the passenger, who is holding a tire iron.
I have to say, they don’t look like your typical good Samaritans. They look like sharpies, actually. Both are in their late thirties. The driver has a moustache, tight jeans with a maroon Ban-Lon sport shirt, and a big high pelt of hair. The
one holding the lug wrench is just wearing jeans and a V-neck T-shirt and shower thongs. He’s got a scrubby beard and hair that looks like he just got up.
“Hey, folks!” the driver yells out as they walk toward us. “Need a hand?”
John looks suspiciously at them.
“We’re fine, thank you,” I say, smiling. “We just called the Auto Club.”
“Oh. Okay. When are they expected?” says the passenger.
“Probably a half hour or so.” Just then, something tells me I’ve said the wrong thing.
“That’s fine,” says the driver, pulling a knife from the back of his belt.
“Oh dear,” I say. I look over at John, who hasn’t realized what’s going on yet.
“We don’t need any help,” says John, pulling off his cap, wiping the sweat from his head with his wrist, then snugging the hat back down again.
“We’re not here to help,” says the passenger with the lug wrench. Maybe it’s his accent, but he doesn’t sound too bright.
John starts to understand. “What the hell,” he says, stepping forward.
“John, take it easy.”
The driver points at John with his knife. “Sir, you stay where you are. We’re going to need all your cash and then we’ll leave. We don’t want to hurt either of you two, but I don’t think it would be too difficult. Ma’am, I see you have a ring, why don’t you take it off?”
The passenger, wielding the tire iron, walks up to John. “Wallet.”
“Fuck you,” says John.
The passenger pokes John in the ribs with the tire iron. “I’ll just get it myself then,” he says, reaching toward John’s bulging back pocket.
“John, do what they say,” I say, handing my wedding ring to the driver. “You stay put.”
“I’ll need your purse, ma’am. Where is it?”
“It’s on the floor of the van,” I say.
“Damn,” says the passenger, fiddling with the back of John’s pants. “I can’t get his wallet out of his pants pocket. It’s enormous. Bring that knife here.”
“It’s a big wallet,” I say. “I’ll get my purse.”
He looks at me, narrowing his eyes. “Do it very slowly, ma’am.”
“That’s the only way I do anything, young man.” I press my cane into the gravel to walk myself to the open door of the van.
I hear them cursing away at John’s pants, then the tearing of fabric. I don’t know if it’s fatigue or the narcotics coursing through my veins or the fact that it made me very, very mad to give these cretins my wedding ring, but I know what I need to do. I don’t really give it a moment’s consideration.
When I turn back around from the van, I see that they have cut a plaid trapdoor in the back of John’s pants. The driver and passenger are laughing at their handiwork, until they look up at me, pointing John’s gun at them.
“Oh shit,” says the passenger, dropping his tire iron. The driver starts to raise his knife.
“Please don’t do that,” I say to him. “It’s a bad idea.”
The driver looks surprised to have an old woman train a gun on his heart. He holds the knife down by his thigh, tightening his grip on it. “He’s right here, ma’am. I could hurt him. You better put that down.”
“Yes you could, but I will definitely kill you. And if you think I’m afraid to do that, young man, you’re terribly wrong. You should understand that there is absolutely nothing for me to lose. I suppose you feel that way, otherwise you wouldn’t do awful things like this, but for me, it’s true. If you hurt John, I will most certainly kill you and do my best to kill your friend. I am long past the point of caring.”
The driver looks at the passenger, trying to figure out what he can get away with.
“It’s not going to work,” I say, taking careful aim, ready to shoot if he moves toward John. “Put down that knife.”
“Don’t forget to turn off the safety before you shoot him,” says John.
“Thank you, dear,” I say. “But it’s already off.”
“Let’s go, Steve,” says the passenger, his voice quaking. “Give them their shit back.”
I nod. “He’s right, Steve. Put the ring on the wallet and just put it on the ground and then you can get out of here. I’m not even going to call the police. I just want you to go away.”
Finally, Steve drops the knife and does what I say. He stands up, waiting to see what I do next.
“Now go,” I say, flicking my hand at him. “Find something to do with your life and stop bothering old people. You should be ashamed of yourself. You’re going to wind up a fish fly in your next life.”