Dear Grams:
You were right about me going crazy. But you were wrong about me going crazy like Mom. She went crazy from heartbreak and worry. I went crazy from feeling pent-up, like the bubbles in a boiling pot that keep lifting the lid up, popping and fizzing, needing somewhere to go. But not wanting to disappear into thin air, to amount to nothing, I knew I had to act, to put all this energy to something. So I’m going to Los Angeles. My mom and Antony belong to me, don’t they? I’m going to set things right. I’ll send you a postcard from the road so that you know that I’m making progress and that I’m alright. I’ll call you when I get there, and don’t worry. I’ll miss you.
Your grandson,
Robert
The bus terminal is on Houston Street, so I get to say goodbye to S.A. from downtown. There’s a lot of people at the station, all of them looking as desperate and shoddy as me. About a zillion kids are running around and it seems like they’re all screaming or jumping or crying, but it doesn’t bother me because I’m in a bus station, a bus terminal. And this bus terminal is connected to the bus terminal in Los Angeles. There is a line, a direct line, between here and there, and I’m going to be riding that line, the bus punching forward, every mile bringing me closer. I am starting my journey today, today, after all those days of waiting and wasting.
After I buy my ticket I head over to the sign that says L.A. Most of the passengers are already on the bus. They are trying to thwart my upbeat mood, to make their gloom govern the ambiance. My fellow travelers look fucking morbid, like they are being deported to hell. I mean, I didn’t expect a festival, but I didn’t figure on riding with the damned. I don’t get a choice of seats and the only three left are next to the winners of the Oldest, Scariest, and Fattest Passengers of the Day Contest: an old woman who’s trying hard not to look at me with the one eye that works; Frank Zappa’s identical, way more bizarre, more demented twin brother, and a fat guy with a crewcut who’s sweating all the way through his black “Don’t Mess With Texas” T-shirt and is wheezing like he’s got a grapefruit stuffed in his nose. I can’t hang with the fat guy. I need room, so I decide on Zappa. As soon as I sit down, I realize that I’ve made a mistake. This guy is definitely unclean.
He seems to be asleep until I sit down. “Yo man, good vibes, okay?” he says.
“Huh?” I’m not sure what he means.
“I’m dealing with only good vibes on this trip, right? I just want to keep the peace.”
I guess he’s not thrilled with my scarred-up face. “Yeah,” I say, “I could use some good vibes.” He seems satisfied with that. The woman across the aisle looks over and rolls her eyes to show me that either she thinks the guy is a flake or that he smells like a raccoon.
We get a move on, just ahead of nightfall. I lay back to get some sleep, but I’m excited. So I watch San Antonio disappear, each ten miles or so making it more final. A hundred miles outside the city, and I’m officially too far to turn back.
“Where you going?” Zappa asks me, his eyes still closed.
“L.A., but I’m stopping for the night when we get to El Paso.”
“Don’t do that,” he says. “El Paso is the deep, dark asshole of the Southwest, man. You oughta avoid it if you can. I know, I was born at its bottom, and now I gotta go back, and let me tell you, I’m booking it as soon as I can get away.”
“I have sore ribs. I figured it’d be better to sleep at a hotel than on this bus.” He shakes his head.
“Not really. Only real reason to stop in El Paso is to buy drugs. That place is full of fuckers, dickhead Border Patrolers, and crooked, stupid cops, the worst in the nation. Treat Mexicans like shit there and the air is so polluted the lungs of old people and babies are known to spontaneously shrivel up and die.”
“Why are you going there then?”
“I’m going for a funeral.”
“Who?”
“My stepmother,” he says offhandedly, a remark about the weather. “I’m just going for my old man, to be cool. I haven’t been home in a long time and my sis called me. She was all broken up about it. I was already twelve when my dad married her. She never liked me, I was too wild.” He looks around a little. “My buzz is wearing low. Wanna smoke up a little?” He puts a fist under my nose and opens it quickly and then closes it just as fast. Inside is a joint. “There’s a toilet in the back. Everyone’s asleep and we can blow the smoke out the window.”
With hours to go before we hit El Paso, sitting next to Zappa is starting to look like a good choice. We walk to the bathroom and I glance around to make sure everyone is sleeping. I don’t want to get kicked off the bus. There’s no one except a Mexican couple sitting in the back. We go into the bathroom. Zappa is skinny and so am I, but we’re still smashed in there. He lights the joint and I open the tiny window. We pass it around a few times, smoking it quick until things slow down, way down. Zappa smiles big, “Nice shit, right? Mellow buzz, too. Not harsh, no paranoia.”
“Yeah,” I say, growing more conscious that I’m balls to balls with a strange hippie. “How long have we been in here?” I ask. “Maybe we should go back before someone tries to come in.” Just when I say that, there’s a knock on the door. “There’s someone out there,” I say, “We better get out.”
Zappa, who’s ready to bug, nods. We open the door after he wraps the roach up and puts it in his jean pocket. There’s an older man standing out there. He’s not too happy when we walk out. “Probably thinks we’re fagging off,” Zappa says, looking at him with menace in his bloodshot eyes. But the old man knows we were toking up. The place reeks. We make our way back up the aisle to our seats, and it seems to me like everyone is awake now, watching us. Zappa is beyond caring. He’s keeps meandering, oblivious to pubic opinion.
“Yeah, man,” Zappa says, “why you going to L.A.?”
“Going to see my mom and little brother.”
“That’s cool. Who did that to your face? Your old man? Are you running away?”
“Nah,” I say. “I’m just going to visit.”
“Hey, I’d be the last to knock running away. You travel around long enough, there’s not much difference. Not much difference at all. I left El Paso on a visit to my uncle’s about twenty-five years ago and I ain’t stopped yet. That old lady made it her mission to break me.”
“How old were you?”
“Younger than you. I was fourteen. Didn’t depend on anybody or anything. To me, my father was dead after that. He couldn’t stand up to her. How’s that for some bullshit? I couldn’t respect that. I didn’t go back to El Paso until about ten years later, and that was only because I wanted to meet my sister.”
“Me and my moms were never on the outs like that,” I say. “She just got sick. She needed some rest. I’m just going out to check on her, see if she needs some help.”
“Cool,” he says, settling back into his seat. “But there’s lots of things worse than spending your time a free man. Drifting’s been good to me. I’ve been all over the place, seen the best shit, cool shit, terrible shit, scary shit, groovy shit. All of that shit.”
“That’s a lot of shit.”
“You said it.”
“But still, don’t you ever get tired of just drifting? Don’t you ever just want to go home, sleep in your own bed, know that you don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t want?”
“Home is overrated, my man. When you’ve been on the road as long as me, you recognize that what’s really important is that you can survive, that you can do with what’s around. You learn to improvise, make do. That’s when you know you’re a free man. You ever read any Thoreau or Emerson?”
“No.”
“Do yourself a favor. Pick up a copy, find out about self-reliance. It’ll blow your mind. You’ll see everything differently.”
“Mexicans know all about that. We call improvisation rasquachismo.”
“Rasq who?”
“It means making do. Improvising. But Mexicans don’t like to wander. We do when we have to, like when my old man was a kid, his family had to travel up and down the Midwest picking crops. But they couldn’t wait to get home.”
“Yeah, well, a man doesn’t get to know himself unless he ventures out, like you’re doing. Drifting’s the way.”
“I’m tired of drifting. You don’t have to be on the road to do it, either. You can do it right where you live.” I stop for a minute and then decide just to keep on going. “I get this vision of myself like I’m a needle and I’ve got this red thread trailing behind me, and everywhere I’ve gone in my life, I’ve left this line, a threaded line, back and forth over this patch of white cloth, and if I look back to see if there’s some sensible pattern, I find that there’s nothing, just this messy crisscrossing web. It doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t mean anything. The way I’m thinking now is that this bus is the needle and it’s punching across the land, and I’m going to look back when I get to Los Angeles and I’m going to see that I left a beeline in my wake. I’ve got direction. I’ll be able to see that I knew where I was going and figured out, finally, that the shortest distance between two points is a direct line.”
“Well,” Zappa says, “they might say that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, but what they don’t tell you is that drawing a straight line is the hardest thing anyone can ask you to do.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Hell if I know. You’re the one talking about lines and thread. I’m just going with it. But I’ll stick with my drifting. Soon enough, you accumulate what you need. It builds up, but not so anyone can see it or touch it. It builds up in here,” he says laying his hand on his chest. “That’s when you figure out that you gotta live in here and not anywhere out there. No one tells me what to do. I’m my own man. Direct yourself or be directed by others. That’s the choice.”
That seems to be the end of the conversation. Zappa closes his eyes. Maybe I pissed him off, making like he’s a lonely drifter with no home. Is that the only choice, though? Being your own man or having someone tell you what to do? Isn’t there some other way? I’m on my way to something, a destination. I’m looking to stay put. I’ve made a fucking mess of everything up until now, but as I move up this line, I know something is going to happen to me. Something real, something realized. I can’t put my finger on it yet, can’t define it, that is. Maybe it’ll be this thing where I’ll look back at the pattern I’ve made and it’ll all come together for me and I’ll be able to say, “Ahhh! So that was it.” But it’s not gonna come down to me worrying about freedom. You can’t build anything on a snowdrift. What’s the use of accumulating a formless pile? I want to ask Zappa that. I want to ask my old man that. He’s crisscrossed these highways, north to south, west to east, and I really want to know from him what it’s gotten him.
I stare out at the dark miles, invisible, falling away exhausted, left behind. This isn’t my first trip to California. I’ve been there twice. The first time was when my folks were still together. We drove in an old baby blue Impala station wagon, fixed and refixed, dented and gouged, heavy and clunky. We rolled out like the migrants of my grandfather’s past looking for a crop to pick. We were just a Mexican family in a junky car, a typical sight on a Texas highway heading west. Moms and Pops and two skinny-assed kids, me and my cousin Juan. Only we weren’t searching for a crop. At least one generation away from that life, we were looking for something else, each of us with a different vision of what California meant. My parents were looking for a second chance, my moms desperate to make it work, my pops guilty and sullen. Me and Juan felt just like we were going to the moon, some heaven place beyond our imaginations.
We’d been getting ready for weeks, my old man delivering the station wagon to Mr. Lopez, the friendly church mechanic who’d trust my pops to pay him later for the work. My moms took me and Juan to something like a Pants, Inc. outlet, where we could find some generic blue jeans and look presentable to the California relatives. My pops wanted us to look nice, not like the poor family from the sticks who came to mooch, which is what we were. We couldn’t afford the trip, but in one of those tragic deals, we couldn’t afford not to take it. It was like some magic cure lay in the West and in the trip itself. They felt like I’m feeling now, that there was some redeeming power in moving, even temporarily, leaving their problems behind, as if the problems would just dissolve, or at least loosen their grip with every mile we made. Maybe that’s why my pops drove like he was possessed with escaping. He wouldn’t stop for anything. I stayed up while my moms and Juan slept in the back of the wagon.
I was afraid Pops would go to sleep while he was driving and kill us all. He knew that by getting there quick, he’d be able to get back all the faster. That way, he could feel that he’d tried hard and could then unload his guilty conscience, just drop it behind him like the miles, and just quit without being accused of having run out.
Pops didn’t stop until the tank showed empty, and then only to fill up fast and get rolling again. That first day we didn’t eat. Nothing. Me and Juan cried and my moms pleaded with him that we were hungry, but he kept insisting that we would stop “in a while.” Finally, around eleven P.M. he stopped at some gas station where the only food he was able to find was a loaf of white bread, a package of American cheese, and about seven packages of Twinkies. My moms fixed us with cheese sandwiches. Plain, dry, and good. I swallowed it with some serious gulps and asked for another. Hunger makes everything taste right.
My pops was obsessed, though. He didn’t stop, even when night swallowed everything up, even the horizon. He drove relentlessly, driving the six hundred miles to El Paso by midnight and swearing to me that he would have us to Tucson by the time the sun came up. It was exciting and scary at the same time looking at him from the corner of my eye while I fiddled with the AM radio to find some music, anything but the preachers and strange talk shows that make the road so depressing at night. “Are you keeping your father company?” my moms kept asking from the back. “Don’t let him fall asleep.”
We finally arrived, and L.A. was everything I’d imagined. Everything was good there. My parents acted like they were in love, and my days were nothing but fun because my cousins took care of me and Juan. In Texas there was nothing but heat, but here, cool, bright days. The place smelled like hope. My moms’s mom, Abuela, even seemed happy to have us there. My parents told everyone that shit was cool now. They were going to make it. My tenth birthday was a blast. Abuela bought me a cake decorated with a football field. My cousin and his wife threw me a party and took me and Juan to Disneyland. I still remember this one picture. In it, my family is sitting together on some lame ride, the log one, I think, and we’re getting ready for the rush about to come, but we feel happy, safe, because we’re together.
At the end of two weeks, we drove back to Texas. We were still the poor, little Mexican family. We were returning from the search. Migrants looking for shit they’d never find. My pops drove back even more determined, even more desperate because his decision was too much to bear, and he needed the release that only action could give him. Not long after we got back, before I could even give Grams this dumb picture I’d taken of me with three parrots sitting on my arms at Disney, Pops had decided to split again.
* * *
When we get to El Paso, Zappa, the runaway, gets off. He gives me his hand and says, “Later.” The bus empties enough so that I don’t feel like getting off here after all. I want to move on. Straight line.
At about four in the morning, riding through the desert, a big city jumps up from out of nowhere. It’s Tucson, the driver tells us. It doesn’t look like it has any business being there, right in the middle of these desert flats. What could possibly have brought people here, and what made them decide to stop and build this city? Probably all the runaways living by themselves in the desert decided, Fuck it, I’m tired of being alone.
I get off the bus at the station. The driver reminds the passengers that the bus will leave in half an hour for Phoenix. I don’t want to ride anymore, so I look for a place to stay. The sun is already coming up and I look around for a café or diner. There’s an IHOP off the highway just a few blocks away and I head for it. I like IHOPs. The waitresses are always these older, motherly types. I get there and sit down. The place is empty but I’m not that hungry anymore, just really tired. My ribs hurt and my stomach is acting up and I didn’t bring my goddamned ulcer medicine. The waitress, named Debbie, comes over and takes my order. She’s sweet. “You look tired, hon,” she says like she actually cares. “You been traveling?” She looks at my duffel bag. “Yeah,” I say, “I’m heading for L.A.”
“Well, hold on, you’re almost there,” and she smiles. It’s nice to have someone smile at you when you feel lonesome. I order a glass of milk and some fruit. Debbie brings my milk and fruit plate and I feel a little like a puss eating melon balls and milk, but I force myself to down them quick. I leave a five on the table and split. Back on the road, I spot a motel and head for it. It’s called the Scott’s Inn and there are hardly any cars in the lot. The place needs a paint job bad, and half the lights in the sign are burned out so that it reads SC INN, It’s creepy even in the early-morning light, like any minute the walls might start wailing. The night clerk is this young black guy who’s got really bad skin, pimply, maybe even boils. But at least he’s not all scarred-up like me. He’s checking out Ghost Busters on TV. He’s cool. He asks me how I’m gonna pay, and when I say cash, he just says, “Fine, but you have to pay in advance.” I’m down with that. I give him twenty bucks and he gives me a key.
The room is completely fucked. There’s a big water stain on the carpet, the faucet leaks, and the door doesn’t lock, but I’m so tired, I don’t care. I turn on the TV and switch channels till I find The Flintstones. I have to sleep. But the more I try to sleep, the more I can’t. Just knowing that I’ve got to hurry and fall asleep is making me even more nervous so I take a Demerol to calm me down.
I wake up around ten in the morning. The sun is beating down on my head. I get up and take a shower, which is a real hassle, an adventure in pain. I finish and dry up with my T-shirt because there’s no towels in the dump. Fuck it. I’m not on vacation. I put the same jeans on and a clean shirt. I look at my face in the mirror. My lips aren’t as swollen anymore, but the bruises look darker, especially around my left eye, where it’s still swollen and the white of my eye is mottled with blood clots. I hope that clears up before too long. It’s not very attractive.
Back at the station, I find out I missed the next bus to L.A. Now I have to wait until three P.M. I’ve got four hours. I don’t want to wait in the station, but I’m too tired to walk anywhere. There’s a newsstand and a couple of snack machines so I buy a package of Twinkies and a Coke for lunch, plus a couple of postcards. On one I write, “Grams, I made it to Tucson. Don’t worry. I’m okay. I’m feeling much better, and you’ll see, everything will work out.” I sign it and put a stamp on it. The front of it has a picture of Tucson rising out of the desert, the sun coming from behind the tall buildings, ready to beat its light over everything. The other postcard’s got a fat guy with his pants down just about to sit his bare ass on a cactus. The caption reads “Prickly Pair.” I’ll send it to Nacho. It’s just the sort of stupid shit that will make him laugh.
Finally the bus gets there. It’s full of Mexico-Mexicans on their way to L.A. to get jobs. I sit next to this older guy. He’s got a big mustache and he’s wearing a Dodgers cap. I nod at him because he seems cool.
“Que te pasó a la cara?” He wants to know what happened to my face.
“I fell,” I say. “I’m alright.”
“Válgame,” he says. That means “My goodness.”
He’s got a big bag of beef jerky and he offers me a piece, but I don’t take it. I point to my front teeth. “Can’t bite into anything that tough,” I say. But he doesn’t really understand me, although one look at my vampire teeth and he gets it.
“Ta bueno,” he says and rolls the bag up. The guy’s old enough to be my pops. It makes me wonder what life might have been like if my pops hadn’t been a musician. If he had just been a regular working guy like this man. Of course, this guy is on the road, too, but he doesn’t look happy about it. It’s too bad that I can’t make conversation with him. I should’ve kept up my Spanish better. I can still understand it, but I can’t conduct a serious discussion. Goddamn school ruins communication for us bilinguals.
I stare at him from out of the corner of my bloodshot eye. He looks like he’s seen some shit in his life. His face is sunburned and dark from working all the time outdoors, and his hands are thick and hard looking. He’s got lines around his eyes from having to squint. He’s not like those bullshit stereotypical Mexicans you see in the movies, looking worried and scared and shit. Then again, he doesn’t look like he wants any trouble, either. He just needs to make a living. I feel like shaking his damn hand and saying, “Tenemos que hacer las cosas duras.” He’d understand that I’d seen the same thing in his face that I’ve always seen in my grams’s face. “One has to do the hard things.” Grams never gets tired of saying that.
I’m focused now. No more bullshit fantasies. I’ve got a job to do. I have a purpose. I’m into this positive visualization thing. Pastor Bud, who coached us basketball at Sunnydale, used to hand us that line all the time. “Just see yourself rebounding the ball,” or “Just see yourself making that pass.” Everyone would mock him later. Nacho would say things like, “See yourself banging that ass.” Or, “See yourself not being such a fucking pussy.” Or, “See yourself seeing yourself naked.” But I tried it a few times. I don’t know if it worked exactly, but it didn’t hurt. I’d lay in bed, that old, creaky metal fan going while I was feeling lonely as shit, missing Moms and Antony, and decide that I was going to visualize what I wanted to happen, and not just the obvious images of me being with them, or of us being at some corny-assed picnic, but I’d picture the process. And here I am on this bus, so for what it’s worth, I guess I’d have to say I’m a believer—at least as much as I’m a believer in anything.
In Phoenix, the Mexican worker gets out. I made the right decision staying in Tucson instead of Phoenix. It’s too big a city, with huge highways and miles and miles of suburbs and malls and all that L.A.-style horseshit. I’m glad when we pull out. Nobody sits next to me. I like it that way. I can relax and just watch the desert.
Riding in a car has always relaxed me. After Pops was gone, my moms’s first job ever was at Montgomery Wards. She’d work the night shift; at nine o’clock I’d put Antony’s shoes on and we’d get in the Malibu Classic Grams gave us, and we’d go pick her up. Antony would stand right next to me as I drove. We’d get there and wait to see her come out of the employee’s door. Sometimes we’d get there and go in a little early. We’d wander, nobody paying attention to us. Me and Antony, his little hand in mine, would kill time, usually at the candy stand. I’d buy us some fruit jellies. Antony’s face’d be all delighted, his mouth aslobber as I handed him the sweets. They’d make the announcement that they were closing and we’d head for the car where we’d listen to AM radio. Two big windows, rolled down, Antony all the time standing next to me peering toward that employee door like baby Benjy in Sound and the Fury, at where Moms was gonna come out of. When she did, he’d howl. The car’d go on, me driving it to the sidewalk and she getting in and Antony jumping on her neck and Moms smiling, tired and sad because she’d been thinking all day. She’d cheer up a little, though, just when she sat in the car and we’d start talking. We’d head home, windows open, radio turned down because Moms didn’t like it loud, and the wind blowing like mad all the while. I remember always feeling like that car could take right off the highway into the dark sky, like if we wanted, we didn’t have to go home to that depressing dark house. Instead, if we really wanted, we might just fly off, and just keep flying, too.