The old car lurched as I downshifted into the snowy parking lot. I had driven a stick only once before, and long ago. “Sorry about that,” I winced. Andy shrugged. “Nobody died,” he said. We were all tired. We had driven into the night, after waiting a few unplanned hours for the drive-away place in Sacramento to get our car ready, cramming our belongings into the four cubic feet of storage in the back of the Subaru. Half that space was filled by a gold statue of Buddha. It belonged to Dennis Banks. Jun-San had told Dennis she’d haul the thing to New York for him when he had to leave for the Onondaga reservation in a hurry. We padded it with our clothing. Outside Fallon Jun-San reached up behind me as I drove, went to work on my shoulders for ten minutes. “Domo arigato gozaimasu,” I said when she finished.
“You speak Japanese, Chris?”
“Iie.”
Austin, Nevada and time for coffee. I walked into a hotel with bar, ordered a cup, and the man behind the counter looked at me oddly. “Have you been here before?” “No,” I smiled, and paid for my coffee and left. It was ten years before I realized why all the women were standing across the room. Near Eureka Andy asked Jun-San how many times she had traveled across the country. “Four,” she said. And how often had she done so without walking the whole way?
“This is the first time,” she said.
Four hours in a motel in Ely and we were eastward again, crossing the Snake Range over Sacramento Pass, worrying whether there would be a gas station open in Garrison when we crossed the Utah line. There was, and we had gasoline to get us the hundred miles to Delta, where I pulled into the snowy parking lot.
The restaurant’s tables were Formica, a yellow gingham on white. The pattern extended to the backs of the menus, the waitresses’ uniforms, and the wallpaper. “If she stood against the wall and held the menu over her face, she’d disappear,” I thought. I was a scrawny goateed hippie with an anarchy button on my dirty vest, my companions a Sephardic Christ figure with back-length hair and a Nipponzan Myohoji nun with saffron robes and shaven head, a skin drum in her hand, and I was chuckling about how the restaurant looked. We drank our herb tea and escaped without incident.
Over the Pahvant range and through the Fishlake National Forest, and I laughed aloud as I got my first glimpse of the San Rafael Swell. Home! I thought, then wondered why. It was like nothing I’d seen before. And then a pang of guilt. On my way to see my brother who lay in hospital, I was no tourist. We stopped for lunch in mid-desert. I walked out into it a ways. A snake rattled hello.
The Green River gurgled low beneath the highway bridge.
Grand Junction and then Rifle, a long night tunnel of high-speed one-lane taillights and the gas station clerk said “Good luck getting over the pass.” Eleven thousand feet in winter: to what could she have been referring? We got off the highway at Idaho Springs, drove past miles of fifteen-foot snowbanks flanking one-lane road.
Four feet of Eldora snow kept the Subaru nice and warm all night.
Breakfast in Boulder and the trouble light went on in the dash. We checked the oil: it was low. We added some. Ten miles and the light went on again. The oil was still low. We added more. In Fort Lupton it went on again, and Andy went back under the hood. “Guys, I’ve been looking at the wrong dipstick.” We poured in some transmission fluid and the car was fine.
Jun-San gasped outside Ogallala. “The sun!” We were almost too late. The sun had started to bite into the horizon, sinking behind the linvisible Front Range. I pulled over to the shoulder. High plains winds had blown the snow into Eldora. Red-stemmed bunchgrasses held ice and old paper on their windward sides. Jun-San got out with her drum, faced the sun and began to chant a salute.
Na myu mo ho renge kyo, drum drum drum. Na myu mo ho renge kyo, drum drum drum. Andy and I stood a few feet behind her, watching the sun set. A rusted Ford pickup pulled over, the window rolled down. Two big guys coming back from fishing Lake Mcconaughy. “You guys need help?” “Thanks, no,” I said. “We’re fine. She’s just saluting the sunset with a little chanting and meditation.” “Is she Hindu?” I smiled. “Buddhist.”
The men pulled back on to the pavement, headed a few hundred feet east, then pulled off the pavement again and backed slowly toward us. Parked in front of the Subaru, they got out and walked toward us. They stopped, then bowed their heads until the sun had set. They nodded at me and left.
The next night outside Cedar Rapids the truck stop waitress took our order, two coffees to go, one herb tea. Something puzzled her about me. She looked at my chest. I looked down: she was studying my button, a red-circled A on a black background. After a time, she looked up and into my eyes with a thoughtful expression.
“We don’t get many anarchists in here,” she said.
Chris, you have had a most amazing life, one filled with so many interesting people and travels to places that may seem banal to most of us, but that suddenly come to life when viewed through your evocative writing. I hope that someday I will have as many stories and experiences to share with nieces and nephews (since I don’t plan on having any kids of my own, of course!) as you have.
Thanks for sharing, once again.
Maybe not many, but certainly some; anarchists in the deep plains that is. How all too well i know that route, those rest stops and gas stations and passes. So often, reading you is like climbing into Mr. Peabody’s wayback machine with Sherman, reminders of days longer ago than most are close it seems. And often too they come so synchronicitously, as just today i was writing about some time i spent on the Pine Ridge rez, the Oglala Lakota home.
Dennis and Russell, Crow Dog and Trudell, Leonard Peltier and Cedar Rapids, mmmm lots of connection there. A little zen practice is just the right thing for that.
I did the same thing with the oil/transmission fluid dipstick mixup on an old Toyota once. I finally drained two gallons of oil from the crankcase when I realized my mistake and the car ran like crap for the rest of its life.
I love the story. But I still don’t get why the women were standing across the room….
Lisa, here’s another hint. They were all standing in a line facing me and smiling, and they were not quite dressed for winter.
Ahh—I took a wrong turn at thinking they were *afraid* of you. Oops.
But over at Michael Berube’s, I did get all the jokes about the frogs.