No More Dead Kids

by Thomas Marshall

  “What?”

  “We don’t have a counterculture, every other generation had one. What’s our counterculture? Hipsters? They’re a parody of themselves, their identity has been bought and sold, and you can find it on the shelves on any Target across America. Everyone just tries to be a goddamn contrarian.”

  “Huh,” I said.

  “Every other generation had a counterculture, the Beats, the Greasers, the Hippies, the Punks, but we don’t. That’s why we’re a lost generation, homogeny.”

  “Apathy,” I added.

  “Exactly.”

  “The irony and the apathy.”

  We sat in silence and watched the sun as it began to dip past the horizon. I smiled as the last sliver of sunlight turned an iridescent green as it crossed the horizon for only an instant.

  “Alex, I got the job for the summer,” he said into the silence.

  “What?”

  “My mom was able to get me the job at the law office with my uncle that I didn’t think I could get.”

  “That’s great! When is it?”

  “Now, the whole summer, I’m sorry, man.”

  “So, wait, what do you mean?”

  “I’m going to be working here all summer, we can’t do the trip.”

  “What?”

  “There’s always next summer, man, I’m sorry. I can’t let my mom down on this one, I’m really sorry about the trip not working out, man.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “I’m really sorry Alex,” he added, “but we can still hang out here over the summer. I’ll be here all summer.”

  And then it clicked. I wanted to get out of here, and I wanted to try to see Lila again, just to see. I felt as though I needed to now, all of a sudden. I needed to take that trip.

  “I’m still going to go,” I said.

  “What?”

  “I’m still going to take the road trip, even if I do it alone, I have to go, Dan, I just have to go. I need this, and… and I need to see Lila in New York.”

  “Alex, it was just an idea for us to go anyway, a fun one, but still a crazy one. This isn’t something people just do, it’s something people only dream about doing.”

  “Well, I’m going to do it, Dan, I’m going to, I need to.”

  “Okay.”

  “I need to, Dan.”

  “Well, have fun, man. I’m happy for you, I really do hope it’s the greatest thing.”

  “Thanks, Dan, really. I’ll see you on the other side.”

  . . . . .

  I called Ken and asked him if he had any plans for the summer.

  PART Two: American Road

  This is a story

  of The West.

  DAY 1. JULY 1ST. And so it begins. I hugged my parents goodbye, and I drove to pick up Kenneth before the sun rose. The Mustang was packed light with two sleeping bags, a week’s worth of food and drinks, a small fishing pole, clothes (for me: a pairs of socks, two pairs of underwear, a pair of shorts, a waxed canvas jacket, a sturdy denim over-shirt, a black t-shirt with a breast pocket, and a pair of flip-flops; I was wearing blue jeans, a pair of socks, a pair of underwear, one of those black t-shirts, and my simple leather walking loafers), and a backpack each with our effects (I brought a journal, a pen, my phone and charger, an aux cord, a half-full pack of Marlboro Red’s, the prom cigar, a lighter, multi-tool, a tiny spool fishing line with a small hook, and books: On the Road: The Original Scroll, Walden, Leaves of Grass, and Self-Reliance). After I picked him up we drove up the block to a bank where I had to withdraw some more cash from the ATM; in the parking lot, there we set the triptometer to zero, and we drove, first taking The 5 to The 8 and then we settled in for the long journey.

  We planned on taking The 8 as far as we could and seeing where we’d end up. About two or so hours in, we stopped at an old corrugated sheet metal Quonset hut in the middle of nowhere to urgently use the bathroom. At this, our first stop, we met Gary, an old man working in the machine shop, he let us stop to use the bathroom, a bathroom that was nearly all black with years of soot and wear. Our first interaction of the road. We continued onward towards the Salton Sea.

  Lila had stopped talking to me for some weeks now, and I respected her desire for distance. I miss her too though, but I know this trip will be good to keep her off of my mind.

  Ken and I stopped at a huge Cattle farm and took in the oppressive sights and smells. We knocked on the door of the lone trailer office. A burly man that oversaw the operation was both kind and excited enough to show us around, and honestly, the dairy farm was worse than the slaughterhouse.

  We drove on from there and soon found ourselves at Salvation Mountain, the pastel and Papier-mâché monolith to all that people believe is good about religion, and it was gorgeous, and from its summit, the flat desert stretched out for miles in all directions. From there we drove further into the slabs to check out East Jesus, the arts collective that I’d heard of.

  After looking around the sculpture garden, we sat under a tree and had a bite to eat from our packs. While we were sitting there, the curator, Caddy, a bearded, shirtless, and dread-locked man carrying a sun-umbrella came out to us for a guided tour of the sculpture garden, after which he invited us inside the recycled-glass bottle walls of the compound and under their tent for cold water and conversation. He told us a little about the self-sustaining history of the site and all of its many comforts.

  We sat on old couches and car seats around a repurposed pool table and chatted with three of the residents there; Caddy, our guide (who we soon found spoke almost exclusively in internet memes), Jenn, his wife, and another slabite who called herself ‘Gypsy Angel.’ We talked to them about our travels, or at least our plans for them, and they talked to us about the sustainable home they had built for themselves out in the slabs. They were brilliant people, idealists but current on world events, funny, and hospitable.

  As we sat and talked a car blaring LCD Soundsystem’s “North American Scum” through rolled down windows and with a ‘HE < i’ sticker on the back bumper pulled up and parked next to ours. The music and the engine shut off and two young girls got out and entered the sculpture garden to look around as Caddy went to greet them and give them the tour. They soon sat down with the rest of us to get out of the sun and chat. Cali and Anne, they were two teenage girls, high-school grads, my age, and they were on the first day of a journey taking them from home (Arizona) up the west coast to Canada and back. We were on nearly the same journey, but different directions, different lives, and meeting somewhere in the middle on the first day. Caddy asked if the lot of us wanted to have dinner and stay the night. Ken wanted to move on, just because he wanted to make up a lot of miles on the first day, but after a chat with him we decided to stay the night, to say yes to every experience.

  It was 113 degrees, but at least it was a dry heat, and the four of us youngins drove into the nearby small town to pick up some groceries for dinner with the top down; it was the least we could do to repay their hospitality. We chatted with the girls and found out that they’d graduated from high school in Arizona, hating the small town, and they both looked forward to heading to college. Cali was valedictorian at her high school and was going to USC to study music, the other girl was going to BC for communications. They were really nice, and smart, and pretty, especially Cali. She was adventurous, outdoorsy, smart, and contemplative; like Marylou from On The Road crossed with an archetypal manic pixie ‘Sad Girl’ type of girl, with a healthy dose of Halsey thrown in the mix. She wore high waisted jean shorts, a crochet bra top, and an unbuttoned sheer blouse, her wavy suicidal ash-blonde hair tied back with a bandana. She had a tattoo in cursive across the side of her r
ibs that read, “And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.” The sticker and the car were hers.

  When we got back that afternoon it was even hotter than it had been before, so we went down to the river in a big pickup truck chassis that was built up all around with planks of wood to look like a boat, ‘the land-boat.’ We all piled in, picking up some more people on the way. The river wasn’t really a river, it was actually the Coachella Canal Aqueduct that fed the Los Angeles municipal water system. Caddy was the first to strip down and jump in, and I thought ‘fuck it’ leaving my clothes draped over the bow of the car. Cali did the same, and she smiled at me as she took off her bra and let down her hair. She ran and jumped into the water, and I followed, jumping in quickly before the blood thought to run into my penis. Ken hung back for a second, hesitating to strip, and jumped into the water in his boxers. The river was cool and immediately pulled me North in the strong current. It was like an infinity pool, you had to swim or hold on to the side just to stay in one place. More hot and haggard slab residents showed up as time passed and they jumped in as we all swam. We’d climb out, jump back in, let the current take us, swim back against it and repeat. And after exhausting ourselves, we’d lay in the sand and dry off in the sun; I looked at Cali lying naked, glistening in the sun, beside me less than a foot away, her body tan and wet down at the reservoir. After we were all sufficiently dry and sun warmed, we’d drive back to the compound, dropping off the various slabites on the way.

  When we got back to the compound, we all took turns showering and after that we sat in the main room around that pool table and talked, talked for hours, all until sunset, which we watched from the solar-panel-covered rooftop of a shipping container. We drank cool beers and ate dinner after dark, courtesy of our groceries and Caddy’s impressive culinary skill. The adults of the group packed in for the night after showing us the many guest sleeping quarters.

  Ken and I sat with the girls around a fire pit as the night got cool. Anne pulled out a grinder and a pipe from her backpack, and Cali pulled out a bag of weed from hers. We passed to the left around the circle, getting high with the girls. After killing the bowl, the four of us climbed up to the top of the shipping container and watched the stars from the rooftop there, the most beautiful stars I’ve ever seen. The grand celestial theatre played out above us, shooting stars and all.

  We looked up at the moon, filling a hole in the big desert sky. I don’t remember which of us was the first to start, but we all began to howl at it. Long deep howls reverberating out into the vast ocean of dark around us, it felt primal, and it just felt right.

  We laid back and watched the night a little while longer. Then Ken and I went to go to bed in a sunken bus as the girls stayed up chatting a little while longer. The bus had been converted to a two-bedroom motel; Ken took the compartment at the back, and I took the one in the front. I settled down to sleep, thinking that nothing could top this incredible first day on the road.

  I heard footsteps in the sand outside the bus, and then a soft knocking on the door. Cali popped her head in and smiled when she saw me.

  “Hey,” she whispered.

  “Hey yourself,” I sat up in bed, “what’s up?”

  “Oh, nothing, I just wanted to sneak away from Anne and say hi,”

  “Well, hi,” I said matter-of-factly as she sat down at the edge of the bed, leaning up against a post as she brushed her hair behind her ear; she moved closer, “Cali...?” I asked softly.

  “Yes?” she asked back.

  I hesitated to say anything, I didn’t know what to do. The moonlight was pouring in through the window, and she glowed in the light, she was absolutely stunning. I thought of Lila. I thought about these two gorgeous women, Cali and Anne, and then Lila, there are gorgeous women everywhere I thought, and I wondered what the difference was. It’s like the difference between gray and silver, I thought.

  “Yes?” she asked again.

  “I-I have a girlfriend,” I didn’t know what else to say.

  “Even on the road?”

  “Even on the road.”

  She got up and walked towards the door, but before exiting she turned to ask, “Is it love?”

  “I love her.”

  “Just because you feel it doesn’t mean it’s there.”

  . . . . .

  Day 2. Ken and I woke early and said our goodbyes to everyone; the man, the wife, the Gypsy Angel, the beautiful pot smoking valedictorian, and her companion. And then we hit the road.

  Ken drove. Riding in the passenger seat of my car with Ken driving was a bit like that scene in Annie Hall when Christopher Walken drives Woody to the airport after explaining his desire to drive into oncoming traffic, but after a little while, I could actually begin to relax in the passenger seat. We drove in shifts across the long flat stretches of desert highway into the horizon.

  At one of those routine Border Patrol stops we were of course stopped, but instead of being routinely waved on, the agent asked to see my ID. I was still sitting in the passenger seat, and I mentioned this, but he repeated his strong request. I complied while Ken sat silent and confused, and we were eventually waved on to continue after the agent gave several scrutinizing back-and-forth glances from my face to my ID and back again.

  We hauled ass through the rest of California, through Arizona and New Mexico to El Passo, Texas, where we had dinner at a southwestern place called ‘Los Banditoes,’ determined to taste the local flavors at each stop. We did stop briefly in Arizona to pick up a few more road things at a 99 Cents Only store, but then we were on our way.

  I took over driving as Ken slept and we hauled more ass through the night to and through San Antonio, and made it half-way to Austin by daybreak, alternating driving and sleeping between the two of us twice more throughout the night. We parked in a vacant home-lot as the new sun lit up the marshland that surrounded it, and we put shirts over our heads to block out the light and slept there.

  I fell asleep in the front seat, I never sleep in the front seat, I’m too tall.

  . . . . .

  Day 3. Ken woke me up after only about four hours of sleep when a car pulled up in front of ours. The man inside stepped out, took a look at us and made a phone call. The sticky humidity hit like a physical force once we opened a car door. The guy was very business, and so we guessed he probably owned the vacant lots. I drove us into the town for a Starbucks pick-me-up before we headed on to Austin. Texas is really the first different state we’ve been in, and it felt really different. Bigger. Everything was bigger. It was nice too, it was bigger, and it was less crowded because of that. We drove Austin, then San Antonio where we snuck past the line and toured the Alamo. We then drove down to Corpus Christie and took a dip in the clear blue of the gulf.

  Ken was exhausted and didn’t want to continue, he hated sleeping in the car. I didn’t want to not sleep in the car though, being on the road and all, I wanted to feel rugged and live that life. But we (he) broke down and bought a motel room for the night, he said he’d pay for it. I didn’t want this to become a pattern at all though, I knew Dan would never have slept in a motel on only the third night. But Ken and I had a good talk before we went to bed and he told me that he’d be up to the road and living on the road after the night’s rest.

  We unfolded the AAA map in that motel room, and we traced out in ink on the paper the paths we had carved in the asphalt on the highways and veins across America, and we kept tracing those lines like the nervous fibers of the nation as we’d drive them, drawing a living journal of our journey across the pulsing arteries of the country, flowing down the rivers of taillights and headlights, running red into the distance in front of you and flowing yellow from afar towards you into the night.

 
. . . . .

  Day 4. The 4th of July. Waking up late in CC, Texas to a complimentary motel breakfast, then driving to the beach at Padre Island. We swam in the gulf. We got sunburnt. We drove to Houston. Driving on this state’s endless highways, where the blown-out tire scraps blended together with the big-game roadkill stretching across the shoulders of the roads through small towns and winding asphalt. The drive to Houston took us on The 35, which we found out was not a main highway, but one that snaked through small towns and under stoplights that hung across the streets on wires.

  We stopped in one of those small towns, Bay City, and had the best barbeque I’ve ever had. We then stopped further down the road and bought a shit load of completely legal fireworks and drove down a backwoods dirt road and parked. Moss hung from the trees, and fireworks cracked across the sky in the distance as we set off some of our own. Sharing the cigar I’d brought we both laughed frantically and in sheer joy as we played with fire, filming each other on our phones, lighting off each different type of pyrotechnic we bought. And as the dusk turned into night, we lit off of the last of the explosives, and the light from the rockets would cast great stretching shadows of the trees and branches across the ground as they flew up into and across the sky, the smell of black powder smoke still in the air. Goddamn that was fun.

  I drove the car on through more small town and highway intersections, I smiled at Ken and he at me. We turned the music up and drove on through the night. I was really starting to love being on the road and appreciated having Ken. We passed through more towns, under trees, street lights, and-

  A loud crunch and the steering wheel pulls against me, as I swerve back and forth, slamming on the breaks. I fishtail and spin around, not even thinking, just experiencing terror, shock. Ken holds tight, braces himself against the glove box. Tires and brake pads screech. We come to a stop, facing the wrong way after what felt like minutes but what was really a second. We see an old pickup truck with a freshly busted right headlight stalled in the middle of the intersection look at us, turn its engine, and drive away into the night.