As I rode toward Oregon, a state where more people are killed by pumas than are murdered, I told myself I’d have liked to be in the police force, because when you came down to it I had nothing against law and order. But I suspected that after what I’d done, they wouldn’t welcome me with open arms.
I passed a few cops zooming by on their Harleys. They looked as if they might be looking for a gray station wagon even if they weren’t. I rode all day on side roads. My size, and my unusually low center of gravity, made me leave that endless straight line running across country, used by truckers, and keep to the winding road that leads to Crater Lake. The higher I got, the colder I felt, in spite of the things I bought as I went: a wonderful horsehide jacket, sheepskin-lined gloves, trapper’s boots. The V-shaped twin-engine hummed reassuringly, while all the time my thoughts were running off in all directions at once. I felt like phoning my mother and explaining why I had done what I had done. She must know by now. My father must have called her. I suppose she’d pretended not to be surprised even if she was. “I told you the kid would end up a murderer.” From that point of view, she was right, she’d never stopped shouting it from the rooftops as if she expected me to give credence to her prophecies. But I wondered all the same if her joy at being proved right would be stronger than the drawbacks of becoming the mother of a criminal. She was the one who had carried a killer in her womb, and she’d never be able to deny that. My mother, who was so bossy and lectured everyone else, thinking everyone was beneath her, had raised a homicidal teenager. I couldn’t have made things any worse for her. I had turned her uterus into a repeating rifle, and that gave me a real kick—a kick that only faded when I thought about the future and how complicated everything was going to be.
I stopped at the top of a pass. The highest point was a summer vacation hotel by the side of the road. It was closed right now. A track on the right led off to Crater Lake. I left it and followed the main road as far as an intersection, where I turned left to get back toward the 101. There were some little vacation cabins alongside a stream. I spotted one that was more isolated than the others and decided to stop there. I shoved the door open with my shoulder and was afraid the rest of the structure would collapse on me. The interior was clean and tidy. I lighted a fire in the little stone fireplace, praying it didn’t snow during the night. I knocked back a bottle of whiskey as I made myself something to eat on the fire. Feeling only slightly drunk depressed me. The wind rose just as I lay down with my eyes closed on a hard bed, all curled up to stop myself going over. There’s no such thing as silence or noise in the country. It isn’t like in a town, what you hear always calms you down, as long as you trust life in the wild. I thought about my grandparents. I wondered where they might be now, if there was the slightest chance that anything remained of their carcasses, which must be decomposing while waiting for my father to show up. If their souls were on their way to heaven, I hoped they wouldn’t meet up there, I hadn’t killed my grandfather down here for him to have to put up with the old lady’s tantrums for all eternity. I took stock of the situation. I didn’t know when I was going to give myself up, but I didn’t want it to be before the funeral. The altitude and my tiredness got the better of me, and I fell into a deep sleep. I was just starting to have nightmares when I heard noises outside. I thought at first the cops had come to arrest me, then I realized bears must be prowling around the saddlebags on the bike, which I’d left full of food. I went out with my Winchester in my hand and saw two coyotes running off with their tails between their legs. It was impossible to get back to sleep after that. Early in the morning, I felt dazed, the whiskey had gone to my head. A guy knocked at the door with a cup of coffee in his hand. He was out of sugar. I gave him some. But that wasn’t enough for him, he had to talk. It’s often like that in this country. People look for solitude for some reason and then take it out on the first civilian who shows up, spouting off at him for hours. He told me proudly that Kennedy’s assassin had himself been shot down coming out of a station house or someplace like that. The killer’s name was Jack Ruby. He had murdered my hero. That made me sad. The guy who was talking to me lived a bit further down, and made a living doing odd jobs as a park ranger. I must have seemed strange to him, with that habit I have of always thinking about two things at the same time, which means I sometimes take a long time to answer. It’s always the subject that’s stressing me the most that takes precedence. Especially as I couldn’t give a damn about his life, which was really nothing special. If it had been, it would have bored me just as much. When he tried to find out a bit more about me, I clammed up, except that clams never look as mean as I apparently do when I’ve decided a conversation has gone on long enough. He apologized for disturbing me and walked away, but turned around several times. Something must have bothered him about the way I was behaving. I sat down on the two broken half-logs that served as front steps and looked at the motorcycle. I didn’t have any desire for anything anymore. I searched inside myself for something I really wanted, but nothing came. I left the cabin, closing the door behind me as best I could—I’d made a hell of a mess of it when I arrived. The Indian Chief started up again right away and I set off again in the direction of Canada, knowing perfectly well that I’d never reach the border because I didn’t want that any more than the cops did. Riding slowly down onto the plains brought me back to life. As I took the big turns, the cool air energized my mind. I started cutting across those turns, hoping that a car or a truck would come along and put an end to a life that had gotten off to such a bad start, you couldn’t expect anything decent from it. But I didn’t see anyone.