No More Dead Kids

by Thomas Marshall

  “I’m sorry man, just, you know…” Tim said, and they turned around to leave. And so did I. I started to walk away, that became a brisk walk, then I started to jog, and soon I was just sprinting. I ran as far as I could, there was no reason, no need to run, I just ran, I wanted to be back in that car as soon as I could. I walked when I couldn’t run anymore, and I panted my way back to the Walmart parking lot.

  Ken woke up when I opened the driver’s side door.

  “Are you just getting back, its three AM, where were you?” he asked, not able to see the left side of my face.

  “I’ll tell you in the morning.”

  . . . . .

  Day 30. I told Ken the whole story when we woke up, my face was a little swollen, and my jaw hurt a lot, but I didn’t look Michael in Godfather 1 bad.

  We had a hearty, heavy, all-American blue-plate special breakfast of coffee, eggs, pancakes, bacon, buttered grits, and creamed corn at Buttered Buns. After I finished eating the last of my creamed corn and drinking my coffee I felt better, and we drove on to the abandoned, toxic, ex-mining town of Pitcher, circling Rotary Park before leaving Miami for good. We drove past the mountainous chat piles, and through the deserted streets and parked by a lot of abandoned houses that were completely gutted, the walls stripped for copper wires, sans windows or doors. It was eerie, like what things would look like after the end times. And so we went into one of the houses, looked around a little bit, and found some writing on one of the walls, “C+S ‘10” and a burnt candle under it. It was strange so we went into an adjacent house, and then we fucked shit up. I ripped a grab bar out of the shower wall and used that metal rod to take out a significant portion of a few walls, as Ken kicked and punched his way through a few other rooms like something out of a Graham Greene story. And I have to say, it felt really good to do.

  After we exhausted ourselves in that house, we came across a dilapidated, rotting, old one-room wooden church, very symbolic. Above the entrance were the words ‘Christian Church’ in black paint over the peeling white paint of the churches slatted wooden façade. We went inside and smashed the remaining windows from the inside, and them, when outside, Ken swung a heavy branch and knocked out the single remaining support beam for the wooden canopy awning above the door, and it came crashing down, shutting off the entrance to the building; again, very symbolic for Kenneth to do. We thought of it as a public service, because it was dangerously close to coming down anyway, but we left in a hurry still.

  We walked around the outside of and looked in the windows of the town’s abandoned high school. And then we, once again, hit the road. It started raining almost immediately. I don’t think there’s been a single place on this trip since the deep South that it hasn’t rained at least a little bit for us. A constant raincloud following the two of us across the states.

  The rain got a hell of a lot worse, and so we sought shelter inside a Bass Pro Shop in Broken Arrow. We ran across the parking lot in the rain and had lunch inside of a Steak N’ Shake. And when the rain died down a bit, we pressed on, switching the wheel about every hundred miles because of how much it sucks to drive through rain like that.

  We crossed the state line on The 66 into Texas, and we were finally out of Oklahoma. Fucking Oklahoma, fucking Miami. My jaw still hurt a lot, and thinking back, they were really bad at being muggers. Like, they each had bouts of inspiration, but nothing concrete or really planned out. If they’d done anything together, they could have probably killed me. It really just seemed like some sporadic, haphazard, and spontaneous act, like something I could expect from a group of three young kids on drugs, in over their heads. I was mugged, but I wasn’t. I’ll leave a constructive Yelp review for them if I ever get the chance.

  The sky nearly cleared up by the time we were in Texas, and it was nice to be there again. We stopped in a Flying J for gas and walked into the attached Denny’s. It was 11 at night, and everyone there just looked sad. The cashier was talking to a man as he paid; well, he was more just talking at her, and she was surprisingly opinionated. You know, if you’re in the service industry, the general mantra is ‘the customer is always right,’ and with that, you just agree with whatever they have to say and move on quickly. But here, she just said ‘no, I don’t agree with that’ and it was awesome.

  We slept at a rest stop across the state line in New Mexico.

  . . . . .

  Day 31. Ken made the semi-short drive to Albuquerque in no time, where we made a brief Breaking Bad pilgrimage around town. The lady that lives in the actual White house seemed to be regretting her decision to allow filming there. She was surprisingly friendly to everyone that visited though, even though so many people did; I know I wouldn’t be nearly as friendly. She said she had to take a pizza off of the roof almost every other week. We drove away just as a group of about ten hipster-looking twenty-somethings showed up with Polaroid cameras.

  We drove through Santa Fe and on to Denver. It was the most beautiful drive so far, the clouds touched down low to the ground, shrouding the mountains and the green planes that stretched out for miles. Desert lightning flashed through the mist sporadically, diffusing through the vapor, lighting up everything. We made it into the city by night and slept.

  . . . . .

  Day 32. When we woke up, we wondered what there was for us to do before leaving. There were so many homeless people in the city, so many. Hobo Denver. Denver, high Denver; Denver, lonesome for her heroes. Denver in the sky, Denver in the streets, and Denver in the gutter, muttering for another fix. Reeking of pot, and stumbling with those who were homeless, Denver.

  We ended up just getting an early breakfast indoors at a McDonalds, with the elderly early-morning crowd. It seemed like a real hangout for them, and it seemed like they came every morning. The same McDonalds that in the late-night would play host to the gangs of the young and lost kids of America who stood outdoors; maybe the self-same individuals would sit inside in the early mornings of their twilight years. McDonald’s is the seat of America, the great chain respite. Drugs and music and roads connect these cities and the people of this country, and McDonald’s stands as the place where they can all truly be the same. Because they are the same. The thousands of McDonald’s splattered, spreading across the petri dish of America, colonies of fast food, the roads and veins of America feeding them, sustaining them, pulsing back and forth with new patrons across this old country. I have simply come to hate McDonald’s and love it all the same.

  We drove on from Denver to Grand Junction, I love driving through and across these grand, majestic mountains, with their curves, their vistas, their bridges, and their tunnels, the spine of the West. It had finished raining, and we drove with the top down, and the air was the crisp combination of the two best smells on earth, wet asphalt, and wet pine forest, the air was crisp and pure. The rain brings out the best in everything.

  We left The 70 at Grand Junction and headed down to Ouray, a spectacular and small mountain town sitting about 7,000 feet in the air. We parked and walked its few main blocks. Walked up Box Cañon Falls, and back, meeting a hitchhiker from the Midwest along the way. He was soft spoken and eating a PB&J sandwich, and like many hitchhikers, he had not rejected society, but society had rejected him. We parted ways as Ken looked for a branch he could make a walking stick out of.

  We walked to the other side of the town, and up the side of the mountain there, towards what we were told was a great waterfall. And it was, but we were the only ones there at all. I was the first to disrobe and jump under to take nature’s shower. Ken joined after a little bit. It was so nice, freezing cold, but incredible, and liberating. That involuntary exhilaration you get from jumping in freezing water.

  Baptized in the waterfall, we each shouted a barbaric yop.

  Ken soon shouted “fuck you Livi, fuck yooooouuu!�
� and he smiled triumphantly.

  “Fuck you Delilah, fuck you Phil Raymond, fuuuuck yoooouuu!” I joined in

  We dried off, shivering, and walked back into town and to the Ouray Hot Springs Pool. We stayed until closing and slept in our car in the parking lot. We were woken up at about 1AM by a tap on the window and a light shining through it. I woke Ken and rolled down the window to do the talking. The officer was really kind, but he said that there were pretty strict no-overnight laws in Ouray, so he gave us directions to a camping site a few miles out of town, and reminded us of the fact that we had a broken tail light. I drove to the campsite, and parked; Ken was already asleep.

  . . . . .

  Day 33. We woke up in a campground far more beautiful than I’d noticed the night before. Well, I woke up, Ken was fast asleep, and so in the lonely cool before dawn, I walked to the campground outhouse and jerked off for the first time in forever. When I got back, Ken was just getting up, and he soon went back to sleep. He just wanted to sleep. So I drove into town, parked in the shade, and walked by myself, exploring all the shops and things on the main street. And here I am, on the most incredible trip ever, and I’m still lonesome for a girl back home. I’m starting to be sick for home, or at least the comforts of home, but more so just for Lila.

  Ken wasn’t there when I got back to the car, and so I just went on walking, settling in the downstairs of the town library to read and snack on trail mix before it closed at 2. Ken texted saying he was at the hot springs, and so I picked him up from there, and we left; coming through the mountains our tires hugged the turns like we were making love to them. The trees stretched up the sides of the mountains until they reached a distinct line of altitude where they didn’t, the rusty red-orange peaks glistening in the rays of sunlight that streamed from behind a cover of clouds. The road snaked along the mountains on one side of a valley divided by a sometimes stream, sometimes river, with another range of mountains on the other side.

  We stopped at an outlook, and from there the valley and the mountains were in full panoramic view before us. We could see the remains of an old mining town across the way, so we decided to hike to it. The river ran the same red-orange as the peaks, and it colored the rocks; as we ascended to the old town, a group of a few ATV’s whizzed by before us. We walked around the old encampment, and I was pleased by its feeling of history, time, and general dilapidation. Walking back, we passed a small grouping of abandoned houses that looked like they were mid-century, built in that wonderful time when we knew about asbestos, but we didn’t know that it was bad. For some reason, these houses were banded as ‘historical’ by a no-trespassing sign, but we trespassed anyway. We explored the broken-down domiciles, broke a few already broken things outside, and left. Why is destruction so fun?

  We drove on, deep into the night, flashes of desert lightning in the distance keeping the sky living, a thunderhead looming big in the dark distance. We got to about 100 miles out from the North Rim of the Grand Canyon by 2 in the morning. We parked at an empty rest stop in the middle of the desert under cover of darkness.

  . . . . .

  Day 34. We woke up at first light not only to find that the orange-tan mountains, valleys, and desert plains outside were absolutely stunning, but also to find that we were parked at a rest stop in front of booths where Native Americans sold brummagem wears to rube tourists in RV’s fully set up and selling by the time we awoke. We eagerly drove towards the canyon, passing and stopping by a rock-dweller encampment from the 1930’s. As I drove, the rain became torrential, and because the land there is so flat, the roads quickly became completely washed out, so we pulled into a parking spot at a trailhead site where we could see nothing and waited.

  I checked my phone and saw that I’d gotten a text from Lila, “Are you back in San Diego yet?”

  I texted back, and then I called. I stepped outside the car and stood underneath the cover of a small informational trailhead sign, and map as the rain battered the car (with Ken safely inside listening to music); the huge droplets of rain splattered against the rocky, sandy dirt and obscured the view to only a few hundred yards in any direction until everything went gray-white in the haze.

  “Is it raining where you are?” the only thing I could think to ask.

  “No.”

  I asked, and then Lila talked about work, and New York, I told her about being mugged, and we talked like friends, and I think I can be okay with that, it was nice. I’d crack jokes, and she’d laugh, I missed that. And then, because curiosity and its bad child jealousy are instincts stronger than self-preservation I asked her about her date.

  “It was really fun, we just got dinner and then walked around, it was really nice actually.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “Yeah, it was, he’s really good.”

  “Um, did you guys do anything else?” my morbid curiosity getting the better of me, but I needed to know, I just did.

  “I don’t really want to say, and it’s not your business anymore,” she said, something that almost exclusively means she did. Shit, I felt that pit in my stomach sink further.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m happy for you anyway. I’m happier for you than I am sad for me.”

  “It was really nice being with him, it was fun, exciting,” she started again.

  “What?”

  “Yeah, on the first night we met, well, I met him at that party, I got embarrassingly drunk.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I don’t really have to say, Alex.”

  “I can take it, I want to be involved in your life I want to be able to talk to you about things,” I said, though the real reason was again that curious, angry, protective jealousy. That and self-loathing. Why am I doing this?

  “Well, at the party, we danced there, we talked, and then we made out.”

  “Oh okay…” I said. My heart sank. But I guess it could have been worse.

  “Well, then he kind of took me aside, and I blew him on a park bench outside,” she continued. P-A-R-K, park bench? A fucking park bench?

  “Wait, what, Lila, why are you saying this?” frantically, my heart skipping a beat in the worst way.

  “You asked, Alex. And it was really nice, I gave him my number, and then he called to ask me on a date, I was so excited,”

  “Lila—”

  “So we just got food, and he bought me drinks, and then walking back we were just talking, holding hands, and I sort of just asked if he had a condom, and that was kind of it, he took me to his place, and we had sex. It was really nice, and he’s really good looking and charming in that very European way and—”

  “I’m really happy for you Lila,” I forced through my teeth.

  “Oh,” she said.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.”

  “What?”

  “Nothing, nevermind.”

  “Oh, okay. When do you get back?” I asked her just to ask her something, I already knew the answer.

  “In six days,” she said as I thought the same thing, “it’s really gone by so fast. I’m going to dinner with Phil tonight, and then I’m meeting this guy from work for lunch tomorrow, I want to see everyone I can before I have to leave. I’m going to miss this city so much.”

  “Yeah, it seems like it’s been great,” I said on conversational autopilot, my mind and heart elsewhere, and my stomach being pulled to the center of the earth. I felt like cutting again all of a sudden, the skin on my arms itched and burned for it, I hadn’t even wanted to do that for such a long time, I knew this was bad.

  “Well, have fun,” she said.

  “Yeah, you too. I’ll see you when we both get back.”

>   “Sure, see you then, bye.”

  “Bye, Lila.”

  I hung up and walked outside into the drizzle from under the wooden map and sign that explained the historical topography of the view we couldn’t see. I turned around and laid my fist into that sign, punching it over and over until my knuckles were numb and bleeding, not able to tell if there were tears or drops of rain streaming down my face. I clenched and unclenched my fist as I opened the passenger door and asked Ken if he’d be kind enough to drive.

  We kept pounding West, Westward to home, to the West of my future, Westward through time, Westward to the last frontier of my adulthood. The West of hope and of promise, the final resting place of Columbia and that great American dream, and the final destination of my American voyage. My heart has always lived in the West, and I’ll always be drawn Westward, like the birds or the pioneers. My soul resides in the West, but my love, and my past, is still trapped in the East. But I have to put that behind me now. So I continue Westward.

  I just don’t know how one person can have that much power over another? I let her, though. I’d still do anything to get her back, I still love her. I won’t let her be the one that got away. You can’t repeat the past, but you can make up for it, and I intend to. I made a mistake, and I’m paying for it, I just hope we can get back to the way things were.

  Ken and I stopped for gas at a station about half-way to the canyon in that dreary drizzle. When I stepped out of the car, on the asphalt and all across the gas station and beyond were hundreds upon hundreds of moths flapping helplessly on the ground, wings waterlogged and flightless. You couldn’t walk without stepping on them, the ground already smeared with dead ones. The attendants there swept them up into piles that filled whole trash bags. Whole trash bags. It was absolutely biblical.

  We filled up the tank and closed the distance between us and the canyon. We parked behind a row of trees, and walked past them to a visitor center, through that, and then the overwhelming beauty of the Grand Canyon revealed itself to us as the clouds dispersed. I was awestruck by the singular most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. After everything today, this was worth it. I sat on the rim for what had to have been an hour watching the low clouds that hovered through the canyon as far as the eye could see. This was America in all of her pure, raw, natural grandeur and beauty.