Six Bad Things

by Charlie Huston

  In the brutally air-conditioned room I take a shower, flop on the bed naked, and smoke cigarettes. Soon the last of the adrenaline seeps from my body and I fall asleep. I wallow in utter blackness until four hours later when my wake-up call sends me jumping at the ceiling to dangle by my fingernails like a frightened cat.

  Cat.

  Shit.

  I miss my cat.

  CIVILIZATION ON the Baja, such as it is, clings either to the long ribbon of Highway 1 or to the coast, demonstrating two principles of survival: that life can be sustained either by water or by cars. It takes about two seconds of travel time beyond the edge of Cabo to feel that you are passing through one of the more forlorn wastes of the third world, which is apt, because you are. At the ABC terminal I pay pesos for the first bus going north. It will only get me as far as La Paz, but that’s fine with me. I just want to get moving.

  We roll up Highway 19 and I stare out the window at a landscape that puts me in mind of nuclear blasts. My brain turns on itself and I start thinking about all the things that can go wrong. It’s a long list and it keeps me pretty busy for the three hours it takes to get to La Paz.

  I HAVE an hour to kill. In the cantina across the street from the depot I’m able to buy a few packs of cigarettes; Marlboro Lights as they don’t carry Benson & Hedges. The place is quiet, just a few other people waiting for the bus, and the mother and daughter team behind the counter. I get some coffee and blow smoke rings at the TV, where the news is playing. The sound is off, but I watch it anyway. So it’s really impossible for me to miss the moment when photos of Sergeants Morales and Candito are flashed on the screen with the caption my spinning brain can’t translate except for the words cimentar, which I’m pretty sure means found, and muertos, which any asshole knows what it means.

  BAJA HIGHWAY 1 is more a theory than an actual road, an impossibly long and narrow strip that connects Cabo with Tijuana. Upkeep on the highway is constant, but hopeless. The substructure of the roadway is sand or shale or crumbling coastal cliff face. Erosion has the upper hand here. Crews work endlessly to maintain this lifeline, but it’s a losing battle and they know it. You can see it in their eyes when you pass them every hundred miles or so.

  I have an aisle seat right up front where I can watch every oncoming vehicle that plows head-on toward us before veering to the side and scraping past. Hours of it have numbed me. All I can do now is twitch as the driver casually one-hands the steering wheel, balancing us on this rail of death as yet another semi slams by and rocks us in its slipstream. It’s only about a hundred and fifty miles to Constitución, but by the time we get there I already feel like I’ve been on the bus for days. We have a half hour to stretch while passengers get on and off. If I time it right, I can smoke about ten cigarettes.

  There is only one other white guy on the bus. We make brief eye contact and he lifts his hand-rolled smoke toward me. It’s a joint. I shake my head and he turns and walks off a bit from the rest of the passengers to smoke. I wouldn’t mind a little toke, but I need to avoid falling into any casual conversations with people who might be able to identify me later.

  I smoke three cigarettes, grab a bottle of water and a couple pork tamales from a vendor, and get back on board. An hour later we start to climb the coastal mountains that run up the edge of the Golfo de California. That’s where the ride starts to get really fucking scary. The 1 is still just as narrow and in the same state of disrepair, but now it twists and turns around safety-railless blind corners. The driver continues to steer with just the thumb and forefinger of his right hand. I am now seriously wishing I had smoked some of that joint. I get Steinbeck out of my pack and try not to look at the little memento mori altars that commemorate beloved victims of highway death every mile or two. I know exactly what it looks like when a body flies through a windshield and I don’t need to be reminded.

  THE BUS station at Santa Rosalia is just a counter in a bodega. We pull in well after dark. I stand in line for the bathroom inside, then go out to smoke. Right across the road from the station is a massive concrete breakwater. I walk out onto it a little ways to kill myself a little more. The guy with the joint comes up behind me.

  —Hello.

  He has a French accent.

  —Hi.

  —American?

  —Yep.

  He nods. He’s got another joint, offers it to me.

  —Thanks.

  Not wanting to be a hero on the next leg of the trip, I take a big hit. He points at the joint.

  —I could not do these long rides without it.

  —Yeah, I could have used it on that last stretch.

  I take one more hit and pass the joint back. He licks the tips of his fingers, pinches the cherry off, and drops the roach into his cigarette box. We start back toward the bus. He inhales the sea air deeply. There is a slight chill. I realize it is December and I am heading north for the first time in years. It will be strange to be cold.

  —Do you have something to read on the bus?

  I nod.

  —Yeah, but I’m still reading it. I saw some books in the bodega.

  We walk into the bodega together. The books are next to the cooler, mostly in Spanish, but there are a few tattered second-handers in English on the bottom shelf. I pull out a bottle of water from the cooler, grab a second one, show it to him.

  —Want one?

  —Yes, thank you.

  I turn for the counter, catch something out of the corner of my eye, look again because I’m stoned and this can’t be real. I grab a book from the rack and go pay for everything, my heart pounding. Frenchie was right there when I picked up the book. Did he see it?

  He joins me outside and I give him his water. He doesn’t look at me funny, just takes a sip.

  —Thanks.

  —Sure.

  He holds up a beaten copy of The Client.

  —The movie was crap, but I have never read any of his books. Maybe they’re good?

  —Don’t count on it.

  —What did you get?

  —Oh, one of those true crime things. I’m a sucker for that shit.

  The bus pulls back out. Most of the passengers are starting to settle toward sleep. I click on my overhead light and pull the book from my grocery bag. I hold it close to my body, like a poker hand. It’s by a guy named Robert Cramer and it’s called The Man Who Got Away. It is the unauthorized story of my life and crimes.

  AT GUERRO Negro we cross over from Baja Sur to Baja Norte and soldiers come on board the bus. This is particularly bad timing as I’ve spent the last several stoned hours reading about the forces that warped me as a child and the role my parents played in turning me into a killer. By the time I realize what’s going on, it’s too late to hide this book, which features several photos of me, including the three-year-old booking shot on the cover.

  One soldier stands at the front of the bus while another walks down the aisle. Behind me, he asks only one person for a passport. When a French accent replies I know what to expect: this will be a passport check for gringos only. There are more soldiers outside, all armed with assault rifles. Are they looking for me or is this normal? Do they control border traffic like this all the time? If I give these guys the Carlyle passport there will be all kinds of questions about how I’ve been living illegally in their country for three years with no visa. If the search for Morales’s and Candito’s murderer has gone far enough the other passport will get me dragged off this bus by my ankles. And shit, which passport is in which pocket, anyway? Why did I get stoned?

  The soldier behind me barks something and the French guy starts a stream of denials in Spanish. The soldier at the front of the bus raises his weapon and takes a step into the aisle. I close the book, tuck it between my thighs, and crane my head out into the aisle to see what’s going on back there. It’s pretty easy to figure out what the ruckus is about because the soldier is holding the French guy’s open knapsack in one hand, and what looks like about a quarter kilo of weed in the other.
They get the French guy off the bus and you can see by the looks on the soldiers’ faces how delighted they are to be busting a white guy for a change. The last one has just climbed off and the driver is getting ready to close the door when the soldier steps back in and looks at me.

  —Francés?

  —No. American.

  —Los Angeles?

  I shake my head.

  He narrows his eyes.

  —San Diego?

  I shake my head again, desperate not to be associated with either of these clearly undesirable locales.

  —New York.

  I move my hand, toward my pocket, offering to get my ID for him. Hoping he won’t want to see it.

  He waves his hand at me, shakes his head.

  —New York?

  —Yeah.

  —September eleven.

  —Yeah.

  He nods slowly, sadly, then smiles slightly and sticks up his thumb.

  —Go Yankees.

  I stick up my thumb.

  —Yeah. Go Yankees.

  He gets off the bus, and I make it to the can before I piss my pants.

  THE FACTS of Robert Cramer’s book were drawn from public records and exclusive interviews he conducted during the year of “exhaustive research” he spent writing The Man Who Got Away. He also refers to an episode of America’s Most Wanted that seems to have featured me. The mind boggles.

  The list of people he claims to have interviewed includes a couple childhood friends, an old neighbor, my fifth-grade teacher, my high-school counselor, my Little League coach (whose statements about my competitive nature Cramer makes great hay of), one of the surgeons who operated on my leg, two old girlfriends (who don’t seem to have said anything too embarrassing), a few of my college professors, some former “regulars” from Paul’s Bar (whose names I don’t recognize), and the parents of Rich, the boy, my friend, who I killed when I crashed my car into a tree. Cramer quotes them as saying I showed no emotion at their son’s funeral (true), never contacted them after (true), and had dragged him into a ring of juvenile housebreakers before his death (not so much true, as Rich was already a member of said “ring” when I fell in with him and my other delinquent friends, Steve and Wade).

  Cramer dwells for some time on the “killer” competitive instinct my parents programmed into me as they sat on the bench at my baseball games with their “impossible to meet expectations arrayed about them.” He consults a psychologist to diagnose the impact of my baseball accident and to attest to how it forced me to channel those instincts into other areas; thus my brief life of petty crime. He exposes my failed attempt to find a healthy outlet as evidenced by my six-year sojourn through college without receiving a degree. He charts my “loner” ways after my college girlfriend “abandoned” me in New York. And finally, he points to the eventual alcoholism that lit the fuse on all my inner rage and stifled need to win, to “beat others.” And I am certain that if I had Robert Cramer in front of me right now, I would teach him all about beating others.

  I AM standing at the top of Kukulcan. It is night and I am surrounded by all the people Cramer talked to for his book. They are lined up along the edge, their backs to the drop behind them. I push them one by one into the pitch darkness that surrounds the pyramid until I get to the end of the line, where I find my mom and dad.

  I lurch awake with a slight cry. Still on the bus, still night. The book is open in my lap, facedown, the cover exposed. The old woman in the seat next to mine looks from the grainy black-and-white photo of my short-haired, clean-shaven former self and up to my shaggy, sweaty face. She gives me a sweet smile.

  —Pesadilla?

  Pesadilla. Nightmare. A word I actually know in Spanish. I nod, closing the book, tucking it into the pack beneath my seat.

  —Si, pesadilla.

  She smiles again, takes hold of my hand and squeezes it. Still holding it, she points into the darkness outside.

  —Cataviña.

  And out of the black desert around us, I see huge shapes looming in the light thrown by our headlamps. I’ve heard of this place. The Boulder Fields of Cataviña; miles and miles of boulders strewn singly or in mounds or in massive piles the size of small mountains. The boulders themselves range in size from cow to house, all dropped here by glaciers that carved the peninsula however many thousands of thousands of years before any of the people I’ve killed were ever born.

  I fall asleep still holding the old woman’s hand.

  I WAKE to daylight just south of Ensenada. I look to my left and see the Pacific Ocean, the ocean I grew up with. The old woman is gone. About an hour and a half later we pull into the terminal in Tijuana where the Mexican bus lines end because, NAFTA aside, the teamsters don’t want them in America.

  Inside I find the Greyhound counter and buy the ticket that will take me over the border. I pay the bathroom attendant fifty centavos to get in the john and clean up a little. Then I go to the lunch counter, where I see the Raiders and Broncos playing on the TV and realize it’s Sunday just before a score scrolls past at the bottom of the screen: DET 21 MIA 0 1Q.

  BEFORE I get on the bus I find a trash barrel. I start by dumping Cramer’s book, follow that with torn-up traveler’s checks, the passport and ID I’ve been using for the last two years, and the Carlyle passport. That leaves me with Carlyle’s driver’s license, library card, gym card, and all the stuff you’d expect him to have in a wallet except credit cards.

  I get on the bus. We drive a couple miles to the border and find ourselves stuck in a line of buses and cars, all streaming out of Mexico at the end of the weekend. The driver puts the bus in park and stands.

  —It looks pretty bad out there today. It’s up to you folks, but if I were you, I’d get out here, walk across the border, and catch one of the buses in the terminal on the U.S. side.

  Most of the people on the bus decide this is sound advice. It is soon apparent that if I stay here I will no longer be just one of an anonymous crowd of passengers should an Immigration officer come on board. I grab my pack and walk off the bus. It’s cool and I’m still dressed for the tropics. The sidewalk that leads to the border station is lined with vendor stalls. I see one selling long-sleeved T-shirts. I buy a white shirt with a Mexican flag on the front, Viva Mexico printed on the back. I look at the people around me, the Americans crossing back. Most are empty-handed or carry plastic shopping bags after spending the night getting drunk in TJ. I get a look at myself in a Corona mirror at one of the booths. I look like a vagabond who’s been living here for years, which is only right, I suppose, but not the appearance I want to cultivate.

  I kneel by the side of the walk and dig in my pack, making sure there’s nothing in it with any of my names. I take out my Steinbeck and put it in one of the thigh pockets of my pants, then walk to a trash barrel and dump the pack. At another vendor’s stall I buy a serape and an ashtray shaped like a sombrero. There’s also a liquor store, where I get a bottle of mescal. I put on my sunglasses and walk into the border station.

  The line is long but moves fast. The American officers thoroughly check the ID on anybody brown, but give just a quick eyeball for most of the white people. My turn at the front of the line comes.

  —Nationality?

  —U.S.

  —ID.

  I hand him Carlyle’s driver’s license, not knowing at all what will happen. The Man Who Got Away was published about a year after I left New York. Cramer says I disappeared virtually without a trace and that the NYPD and FBI assume I was either killed by rivals or fled the country. But that doesn’t mean he was right about what the authorities really knew, or that they haven’t put together more information since the book came out. For all I know, the name Carlyle being entered into an Immigration computer could open a trapdoor beneath my feet and send me dropping into a hole with Charlie Manson.

  The Immigration officer looks at the license.

  —Can you take off your sunglasses please, Mr. Carlyle?

  —Sure, dude.
/>   I push them up on my head.

  —How long you been down?

  —Friday.

  He looks at the license again.

  —From New York?

  Fuck me.

  —Naw, I lived out there for a while, but I came back after the economy tanked.

  —Where’s back?

  —Fresno.

  —You know this is expired?

  —Yeah, dude, but I don’t have a car anyway. I’m living with my folks right now. No work. Took the bus here.

  I flash my Greyhound ticket.

  —OK, but once it’s expired, a license is no longer valid ID.

  —Dude! No! Shit!

  —It’s OK, but get it renewed before you come back down.

  —Yeah, right. Thanks, man.

  He passes it back.

  —Anything to declare?

  I hold my shopping bag open.

  —Some crap for my folks.

  —OK. Have a nice day.

  —Yeah, you too, dude.

  I drop the sunglasses over my eyes, cross over onto American soil for the first time in three years, and see the camoed special forces types with black berets and automatic weapons. Well, that’s new.

  ACROSS THE border, I walk past the Greyhound terminal and follow the signs for the trolley to downtown San Diego. It costs two bucks and takes about forty-five minutes. Having just shown that Immigration officer my ticket, I have no intention of getting on another bus. I don’t want to risk flashing the Carlyle ID anymore, so flying is out, and I don’t have any credit cards to rent a car. What I do have is a little over four grand in cash.

  As we enter the city we pass through a couple sketchy neighborhoods that look promising. I hop off at 12th and Market and stand on the corner in front of a liquor store. I see a couple coin-operated news racks across the street and step off the curb. I’m in the middle of the crosswalk when I register something I saw back on the corner. I stop, turn, take a step, and almost get sail-frogged by a heavily primered VW Westphalia. The bus swerves around me, missing by inches, and I get to the sidewalk and light up. Three years of Mexico have killed my traffic instincts.