We go round and round with this all the way to Las Vegas and I wish I had kept my mouth shut. Meanwhile my mother keeps spotting burros, always with the thrill of the first time, and Hershel wants to know if the military installations are alien camps. Ned has made the mistake of telling him that this highway is called the Extraterrestrial Highway because so many UFOs are seen here. Max wants to know if there are Viking bones. Ned says no, but probably Indian bones and wild mustang bones and maybe even extraterrestrial bones. Max says he’s only interested in Vikings.
“Outlaw bones!” suggests Ned, but it has the ring of desperation.
“Give it up,” I advise, and settle back to take a nap. These days sleep is the only privacy I get.
When we get to Las Vegas we stay in a crummy motel with a swimming pool, on the outskirts of town. My mother elects to hang out with Hershel and Maya and Max around the pool all day while Ned and I go into town and look for John the Amazing.
“This is a good adventure,” I say to Ned when we arrive downtown. “It’s like a treasure hunt. Or being detectives.”
“Um-hmm,” says Ned as we drive down the Strip. He doesn’t look as excited about it as I am. We are looking to see if we can find anything indicating where John the Amazing is working but of course we can’t. He is small potatoes, says Ned. Who would put his name up on a billboard? We will have to park and get a newspaper.
But after we park we are ravenous. We go into one of the casino buffets for lunch. I have never seen so much food in my life. It is a football field of food. It is dark and cavernous and disorienting like the casinos but instead of taking your money they take your hunger. Instead of want want want, it is too much too much too much. Maybe it is supposed to balance out, all the food they shove into you, all the money they take out of you. Maybe they want to fill you so full of food that in a stupor you will wander upstairs and throw all your quarters into the nearest slot, unable to stagger to the next casino down the road.
We eat until we are ready to fall over, as designed, but foil their little plan by going right past the slots and into the bright light of midday.
“Now all I want to do is nap,” says Ned as we waddle out.
“Me too,” I say. “And we still haven’t found John.”
We pick up a newspaper but can’t find any ads for him so Ned suggests we walk around and check out casinos and see if anyone has heard of him. We do this for a while but it is hot and crowded and everyone is having a good time but us, and finally it is getting close to dinner.
“I don’t have a clue what to do now,” says Ned. He sounds so dispirited and disappointed that I feel bad for him. Is he sad because he wants to get rid of this money or because he wants to see his brother? It’s hard to get a fix on how Ned feels about his family. He never talks about them.
We get into the car and start to head back to the motel but there is a traffic jam and so Ned swears in his newly minted language, “Oh shuckserooni.” However, he puts enough venom into such a horrible corny word that he makes it respectably biting.
As soon as we get to an intersection, he turns.
“What are you doing?” I ask mildly, the tires squealing as he makes the quick tight turn.
“Trying to avoid this mess,” he says. “We could be stuck here forever.”
“Do you know where you’re going?” I ask.
“No,” he barks. We are both tired, footsore and sweaty. We really need water but we thought we’d be at the motel relatively quickly. The car has no air-conditioning and it’s blasting hot. This was not so bad on the highway with windows open, but sitting in traffic with the sun beating down and the honking and roar of idling engines, it is horrible. It is causing Ned’s brain to melt. He is making bad decisions. He keeps deciding there are even quicker shortcuts and turns this way and that until we are completely lost.
“Go to a gas station and get a map,” I say.
“Bibles, sometimes I wish you’d just sh—” he begins, when I interrupt him by shrieking. He pulls the car to a skidding halt.
“What? What!” he says, looking frantic.
I point out the window.
“Bibles, don’t you EVER do that to me in traffic again,” he says, but then sees what I see. On a sign in front of a crummy run-down old casino, black letters, some of them missing and askew, read JOHN HE AMA ING.
Ned and I Hit a Saloon
Ned leans his head on the steering wheel, with both hands still clutching the top of it. I notice that the back of his neck is red and sweaty.
“Well,” he says finally, lifting his head. “Let’s go in.”
“Yes,” I say, suddenly getting a second wind. “Let’s.”
We park and get out and head toward the front door. “The universe led us here! This is enough to make you believe in Nellie Phipps,” I say to him. Nellie was the preacher I had had real and fake mystic adventures with in Massachusetts. It had been hard to tell which were which and I’d sworn never to believe in anything again. Yet here we were, by great coincidence, where John worked. What were the odds?
“Just do me a favor and don’t pass out any Bibles,” teases Ned. Sometimes all it takes to restore someone’s good humor is the universe doing him a little favor for a change. Making things a little easier. Letting him know it’s on his side, despite former evidence to the contrary.
“Listen,” says Ned as he holds the door open for me. “I’m sorry about saying ‘Shhh’ before.”
“You were going to say ‘Shut up,’” I point out matter-of-factly.
“I was not!”
“You were too!”
“Wasn’t!”
“Was.”
“Yeah, whatever,” says Ned. Now he is casing the joint and doesn’t appear to remember what we are talking about. He has forgotten me already with the nervousness about the new task at hand. We are going to see his brother.
There is a woman behind the bar, with a long nose and a lot of blond hair piled on her head. She is wearing a spangled shirt that is low-cut and doesn’t seem to me to be proper afternoon wear. I think it should be more of an evening thing. She has long dangling earrings and is chewing gum.
“Hiya,” she says to Ned. “What’ll you have?”
“Well, actually,” says Ned, and he pauses like he doesn’t know what to say next. “I’m just looking for John.”
“John who?” asks the woman, her charming tight smile falling into slack boredom.
“John the Amazing?” says Ned.
“He doesn’t go on until eight tonight, honey,” she says. “Why don’t you have a drink in the meantime.”
I look at her in disbelief. It is only four o’clock. He would have to have a lot of drinks if the meantime is four hours. And doesn’t she see me standing there? Is it really her intention to contribute to the delinquency of a minor? I squint my eyes and try to look bored too. Even more bored than she is. Like she may be bored in this crummy bar in this crummy casino on the outskirts of nowhere but I’m even more bored because I’ve been directly to somewhere and back and there’s not much you can’t show me.
“I don’t want to see the show. I need to talk to him,” says Ned. His voice goes up a quarter pitch. Sometimes it does that when he is nervous. It is not his best feature.
“Why?” she asks.
“Why what?” asks Ned.
“Why’d you want to see him?”
“He’s my brother,” says Ned.
“Says who?” says the woman.
Ned pulls out his wallet and shows her his driver’s license. “See, same last name.”
She stares at it for a long time and then looks at him flatly and says, “I don’t know his last name.”
I snort. She gives me the same flat look.
“Well, is he around or not?” asks Ned.
“I dunno. Ask Gary,” says the woman, and turns to serve someone else.
“Where’s Gary?” asks Ned.
But the woman ignores him so Ned and I go to find someone else we can ask. We finally fi
nd a guy cleaning a bathroom and ask him but he shrugs. He doesn’t seem to speak English. There are people gambling all around the room and Ned says there must be security somewhere and we can ask them. He finally accosts a big hulking guy in a suit who is clearly patrolling the joint. The guy looks at Ned and says, “Why’d you want to know?”
“He’s my brother,” says Ned a little too loudly. I don’t think he should be loud with this guy. You can see his muscles under his suit. Ned seems to have no instinct about who to get tough with and who to get whiny with. I could handle this much better but I know he won’t let me be the spokesman.
“Who says?”
“Look, I just want to see him. Is he around?”
“Yeah, he’s around somewhere but I don’t know where and I’m not going to look for him for you. Why don’t you come back at showtime? He usually turns up for that.”
Ned whips about and heads for the casino door. I follow him, trying to present a sympathetic demeanor.
“Oh Christ, Bibles, I wish I had a cigarette,” says Ned when we get outside.
“Usually?” I say.
“Huh?” says Ned, blinking in the dazed way you do when you come out of these dark caves.
“Usually turns up for his show?”
“Oh yeah. I caught that too.”
“So what do you want to do?” I ask Ned.
“I dunno. Go to the motel and come back for the show, I guess. Maybe we can all go. I bet the boys would like a magic show.”
But when we tell my mother she says Max and Hershel are done in. They have been swimming all afternoon in the motel pool and she doesn’t think they will last that long. Maya is watching television. We didn’t have a television in Saskatchewan or Massachusetts, and she is transfixed.
Ned looks at her sitting glued to something inane with a laugh track and says, “Don’t you want to see a live magic show, Mayie?”
“No,” she says without taking her eyes from the screen.
“Come on,” I say. “It will be fun. The magician is Ned’s brother.”
“I want to stay in bed and watch TV,” she says.
“All night?” I ask. “Mama is going to make you turn it off when the boys go to bed anyhow.”
“Then I’ll watch in the other room.”
We have taken two motel rooms.
“Mama isn’t going to let you stay in a motel room alone,” I say. “Which means you’ll have nothing to do when the boys go to bed except read.”
“Be quiet, I can’t hear,” says Maya.
Ned and I shrug. Ned says he will go pick up dinner from Burger King for us. My mother says this is the last fast-food dinner we are going to have for a while.
“I feel positively toxic,” she says.
“It’s hard to eat on the road,” says Ned.
“It’s hard to eat decently on the road,” she agrees.
“Don’t forget the toys,” says Max.
“Yeah, don’t forget the toys,” says Hershel. They mean the free toys you get with a children’s meal. So Ned takes them with him while I go for a swim and change into my best jeans and a nice shirt. I want to look presentable if we are going to a theater.
My mother does a little yoga in a corner of the room and then we sit on a couple of hard metal chairs in front of the motel and watch the sun drop over the desert. The edge of the horizon is almost cruelly sharp here, the land flat, chalky and jagged. But now at twilight the light changes it so that it softens, its edges rounding slightly, blurring into pale orange and rose and peach. It mellows even the hardest aspect of the desert, its giant cacti and stones and snakes. It makes you realize that even in the places that look most formidable, there is a great and gentle beauty with no thought to forward or backward, past, present, good, bad, should or shouldn’t. I mention this to my mother and she gazes out and nods.
“Maya is watching a lot of TV,” I say.
“Well, it’s short-lived because we don’t have a TV at home,” my mother says practically.
I don’t say anything. My mother smiles and puts a hand on my forearm. “Maya is fine, Jane. Maya is just impatient to go home and it’s making her cranky.”
Then the boys return. We can tell it is them a block away because Ned is letting them hang their heads out the window and scream into the wind. My mother never lets them do this because it is dangerous and they might get their heads lopped off. When we get to the car they have their seat belts on and are sitting like perfect gentlemen. I would think I had been mistaken about the screaming except that they are a little too perfect. The hands folded in the laps is the giveaway.
“Was that you screaming?” I ask Max.
“No,” says Max solemnly.
“No,” says Hershel.
I roll my eyes.
Ned and my mother almost waltz into the motel with the food. Sometimes when they are together, they look so happy to be in each other’s company that they appear in the simplest movements to be dancing.
After we have eaten and Ned has offered to take us all to the casino for the umpteenth time and my mother has looked at the yawning boys and said no, she is tired too, actually, Ned and I set off.
Ned is looking less nervous now that he has eaten and showered and it has cooled down outside. He is actually looking pretty sprightly and energized.
The casino, it turns out, isn’t really a theater where John performs. It is just a big room with a lot of tables and people drinking. There is a sort of makeshift stage and lighting and, suspended over the stage, a big hanging moon. It is the first thing you notice. It is enormous and obviously made from a blown-up photograph and shows all the craters. You can see the outline of a door in it too, even though I don’t think you are supposed to.
Ned has the bag of money in the trunk of the car but he doesn’t want to bring it in. We try to go backstage to see his brother but the guy running the lights says we aren’t allowed and John isn’t there yet anyway.
“But it’s seven-thirty,” says Ned.
“So?” says the guy.
We return to our little table. Everyone else in the room is drinking away and no one seems the least interested in when the show is starting. There are even two slot machines with people standing around them.
“How are we going to contact him now?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” Ned says. “Maybe I’ll just have to stand up during the show and shout hello or something.”
I can’t tell if he is kidding. I hope so. That would be so embarrassing.
We sit and drink our Diet Cokes and tap our toes and finally lights go up on the stage and a woman in a very sparkling blue costume comes out to practically no applause. But Ned and I applaud dutifully. She makes some remark about how John the Amazing is going to be here any minute. He is just whizzing around the galaxy. “Wait,” she says, “can that be him?” She suddenly rises in the air. I think it is supposed to look magical but you can clearly see the harness. Then she floats or rather is yanked to the giant moon and opens the door in it and inside is … nobody.
“Aw, crap,” she says.
Hot on the Trail
“Hal, drop me down!” the woman calls to someone backstage.
“I tole you a hunred times, check to see he’s arrived before you start!” yells Hal. “Save yourself a ride.” And you can hear him guffawing loudly. He alone seems to be having a delightful time.
She dangles there a bit longer and I am thinking that Hal isn’t a very nice guy when suddenly she drops, landing with a thunk on her rear on the stage.
“Hey, WATCH IT!” she yells belatedly into the wings and then a man in a suit comes onstage and says, “Show’s over.” Just that. No apology. No explanation. He leaves without even helping her up.
“I guess they don’t apologize because they know the show is free anyway,” I say to Ned.
“Free, ha!” he says. “These Cokes are costing me ten bucks.”
“And look, no one is even listening. They’re not even moving. They just sit there d
rinking. No wonder he doesn’t bother showing up half the time.”
“Come on, let’s get out of here,” says Ned. “I’ve got an idea.”
We go outside and he leads me around the casino until we are in back of where the stage is. There is another parking lot with a few cars and a back door to the casino.
We start to go in but the girl in the sparkling blue outfit comes out. She hasn’t even changed. She’s with a man but Ned pulls her aside anyway.
“Listen, you gotta help me,” he says. “I’m looking for John. I’m his brother.”
“Oh yeah,” she says, squinting at Ned’s face. “You know, I can sorta see a resemblance.”
“No one will tell me where he is.”
“Well, jeez, no one knows,” she says. “You know, I think he might be gone for good this time. I gotta get a new job ’cause that rat dog isn’t coming back. Sorry, I guess no one wants to hear their brother called a rat dog.”
“Never mind that,” says Ned, waving his hand airily as if calling someone a rat dog is of no consequence and in fact is encouraged in some cultures. “What makes you think he’s gone for good?”
“ ’Cause last night after the show he says to me, ‘Shirley, this time I’m going to disappear for good.’ I guess I thought he meant the trick. Or something.” She frowns, puzzling. “To tell you the truth, I’m not sure what I thought.”
I think this may be Shirley’s major problem but I don’t offer this insight.
“But now, with this new evidence, I think, I mean, like, I can see a different meaning, if you get my take. Like, he meant, like, he was going to take a powder. You think?”
“I don’t know,” says Ned. “What do you think?”
“Well, gosh, maybe,” says the woman in a wondering tone as if no one had ever asked her for an opinion before and it is a momentous occasion. “ ’Cause I think he’s in a bit of trouble.”
“Oh no,” says Ned.
“Don’t worry, he’s always in a bit of trouble.”
“Any idea where he’d go?” asks Ned.
The woman gets some lines between her eyes as she puzzles this out. This is a very big night for her. Twice someone has wanted to know what she thinks. She is clearly racking her brain for any and all help it can give her.
Northward to the Moon Page 5