by Tyler Keevil
‘Because your girlfriend cheated on you, you mean.’
I eased up on the gas pedal and stared at him – just to let him know I figured that was a pretty low blow. I said, ‘I thought what’s said in the sacred cave stays in the sacred cave.’
He shrugged, as if the sacred cave, and what had happened yesterday, didn’t matter much. He had the top off the whipped cream now. He idly tipped the can back and forth, making the widget clack, then stuck the nozzle in his mouth and took a slow dose of nitrous.
I asked, ‘How many times have you been in that cave, anyways?’
‘I don’t keep count. I go there a lot.’
‘But, if it was a rite of passage for the Natives, they would only have done it once. That’s the whole point of a rite of passage.’
‘What, are you an expert now or something?’ When he said ‘expert’ I felt some spit hit me on the cheek. ‘Besides, I could say exactly the same thing about your road trip. Do you know how many assholes I’ve met out here, trying to find themselves?’
‘Sure – it’s a rite of passage. Which is why I’ll only do it once.’
‘That’s not what I mean. I’m talking about how clichéd it is. I’m sick of meeting all these middle-class kids in crisis.’ He gestured out the window – as if the kids he was talking about were lining the roadside. ‘Haven’t you seen those foreign people, with stick limbs and swollen bellies? Those people have real problems. Not us. Nobody else in the whole world has it this good. Nobody’s ever had it this good. Take a look around.’
I looked around. I saw parched earth, and a bunch of rocks and weeds. Also, in the midde of our lane I saw a dead snake, smashed flat as a leather belt. I drove right over it.
He sighed theatrically. ‘I didn’t mean look around right now. I meant it in a general sense. When you think about that, what does it matter that your girlfriend made a mistake?’
‘It was a pretty big fucking mistake to make.’
‘About as big as, say, shooting a bald eagle?’
He smiled, as if he really thought he’d put me in my place, and raised the can to his lips. Before he inhaled, I snatched it from him and took a hit myself. ‘That was an accident, okay?’ I said, and coughed. I’d breathed in flecks of cream with the nitrous. ‘An accident is different from a mistake. You can’t accidentally fuck a guy.’
‘Everything’s an accident,’ he said. He tried to grab the can back, but I held it away from him. ‘You and me meeting like this. Life itself. Just an endless series of accidents.’
‘The way you accidentally abandoned your pregnant wife.’
As soon as I said that, he went quiet. After a minute of silence I said I was sorry and offered him the nitrous, but he wouldn’t take it. He just curled up in his seat, as if I’d hit him.
Neither of us spoke for about three hours.
Later that day, the hitcher took off his seatbelt and started rooting around in his backpack. He had his food in there, and all his clothing. Also, he had what looked like a rubber mask.
‘What’s with the mask?’
‘Never mind,’ he said, pushing it further down. ‘I’m looking for… ah. Here.’
He pulled out a clear plastic bag, full of buns. They were wholemeal – the little round kind you buy at the bakery.
‘Hungry?’ he asked.
‘I’m fasting, remember?’
‘That’s so middle-class.’
He sat with the buns on his lap. Waiting. Every so often, he’d ask me again, and I’d say no again. Other than that, we didn’t talk. But in the heat, as we drove, he started farting. He’d let out these nasty eagle and beer farts, then deny it. He was giving off super-bad body odour, too – the dirty, stale stench of the road. By evening it was getting so rank in there I had to lean away from him and breathe out the window.
He’d been right about guests, at least.
‘Guess it’s time for dinner,’ he said, offering me a bun.
‘You go ahead.’
He tore off a big bite with his teeth, and chewed it lustily.
‘I baked these myself, you know.’
I switched on my headlights, ignoring him. The bun smelled good, though.
‘It’s important to break bread,’ he said. ‘To seal a friendship.’
Finally I held out my hand. ‘Fine. Give me a bun.’
He did. I tried a bite. It was a bit dry, but had a wholesome, earthy taste. I took another nibble. The eagle meat had reminded my stomach that it needed food. Now it kind of twitched, sensing more. I ate slowly, chewing each mouthful to mush before swallowing.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘These are good.’
‘It’s a special recipe.’
He had almost finished his first bun. He shoved the last bit in his mouth and, before he’d even swallowed it, reached for another. He sprayed the next one with whipped cream, and offered half to me.
‘Dessert?’
‘All right.’
He ate three or four, I think. I only managed one and a half. They weren’t big buns, but they filled me up. I felt as if I’d swallowed one of those expanding towels. It got bigger, and bigger, pressing against the insides of my ribs. I assumed the feeling would pass, but it didn’t. It got worse. My stomach started to cramp. I squirmed and shifted as I drove.
‘Oh, man,’ I said. ‘I think I ate too much.’
He was slumped against the car door.
‘No – I feel it, too. That’s supposed to happen.’
‘What’s supposed to happen?’
He looked at me. ‘You better pull over. It’s going to start soon.’
I steered towards the shoulder, driving with one hand and holding the other against my belly. It was spasming now, as if I’d swallowed a live squirrel. I parked and grabbed him by the collar. ‘What did you feed me?’
He gripped the back of my neck, pulling me in so our foreheads touched. His pupils were wide and black and I could see the gleaming circle of my own face reflected in them.
‘What do you know about vision quests?’ he asked.
He’d baked the buns with peyote. I hadn’t even known that was possible, but it is, apparently. The nausea was a side effect. Right after he admitted that, I staggered from the car and started gagging up mouthfuls of bun. It came out gooey and wet, as if the bread had reverted to batter in my stomach.
‘Try to keep it down,’ he said. He was gagging too. Not as much as me, though. I guess he was more used to it. ‘It will make the high stronger.’
‘Don’t want to be high.’
I could barely talk. I was choking and retching and crying a little. He guided me away from the road and eased me down in the dirt, among these little weeds that had furry purple flowers on them. I curled up, clutching my stomach. It was still cramping. I was aware of him moving around me. He was scratching patterns in the dirt with a bent stick.
‘You hoodwinked me,’ I whispered.
‘You wouldn’t have done it otherwise.’
It was true. But I couldn’t see how that justified it.
‘Have you done hallucinogens before?’
‘Mushrooms,’ I said, and retched again. ‘And acid, once.’
‘Think of those as appetisers. This is the main course.’
I cleared my throat and hawked in the sand. A spider’s web of spit stuck to my lips, hanging down. I wiped it away. I could still taste bits of bun and puke in my mouth.
‘Don’t worry. It will pass.’
I didn’t believe him, but it did – after what seemed like hours. By then he’d finished whatever it was he’d been doing. I managed to sit up. He’d etched a circle around me in the dust. The circle was divided into four and filled with symbols. I couldn’t tell what any of the symbols meant, but they looked fairly impressive. He squatted down across from me.
‘Now you need to prepare yourself,’ he said, ‘for the vision quest.’
‘I don’t want to go on any quest.’
‘Remember what I told you? It’s only when y
ou lose yourself that you find the key.’
I tried to explain that I didn’t want to lose myself – that if I got any more lost I might never find myself again. But he wouldn’t listen. He claimed that it was all part of my pathway to individuation. I didn’t have the energy to argue. The constant retching had left me feeling as empty and hollow as a gourd.
While we sat there, a desert breeze ghosted past, caressing my skin and cooling my sweat.
‘Feel that?’ he asked.
I nodded. I was breathing a little more easily. He began talking again. The words came out in a free-flowing stream. He talked about animal spirits and astral space and something called mandalas. It was hard to follow. My mind would get stuck on one particular word or phrase, and by the time I started listening again I’d find that a lot of sentences had flowed by.
‘You’ll be all alone,’ he said. ‘Alone with yourself.’
‘Aren’t you coming?’
‘I’ve been on lots of vision quests. This time I’m your shaman.’
I nodded. I was glad to have a shaman. I listened to my shaman’s voice, throbbing between my ears.
‘The main thing is not to panic. Stay in your quest area.’
‘How do I know what that is?’
‘You’ll know. Now get going.’
He dragged me to my feet and gave me a push. As I shuffled away, he was digging through the big compartment in his backpack. He waved me on.
‘Go – don’t look back.’
I walked for a while and found a clearing, dotted with rocks and stones. I didn’t know if it was my quest area but I liked it. I kicked off my shoes, stashed my keys inside one of them, and undressed. That was one thing I remembered from what he’d told me: I was supposed to be naked. It felt weird to be naked outdoors, with the wind brushing my balls and tickling my dick. I stared at the rocks. They had mica in them and sparkled like stars in the darkness. I bent down and started to arrange them like actual stars, copying the patterns I saw overhead. I made my own version of the Little Dipper, and the Seven Sisters, and Cassiopeia, and all the other constellations. I don’t know how long it took me. A long time, I think. But I enjoyed crawling around in the dirt, naked and alone. I felt like a child again, playing in the sandbox.
Finally, I dusted off my hands and sat in the middle of the clearing. Now there were stars on the ground all around me, matching the stars in the sky overhead. I was at the centre of my makeshift universe. I lay back, spreading my arms and legs out, a starfish among the stars. Time passed. They were bright, those stars – brighter than any I’d ever seen. The light shining off them seemed to hang down in threads. The threads connected the stars above to my stars, and my stars to me. I sat back up. I could see more threads, delicate and wispy as smoke, stretching in an ethereal web between the weeds, the rocks, the landscape, and me. I knew it meant something. I knew it was what I’d come here to see, to know, to understand.
Then I heard a roar.
I looked around. The tendrils of smoke withdrew, like frightened snakes. The roar came again. Closer, this time. It sounded like some kind of animal. I scrambled to my feet, trying to gauge where it was coming from. The third time it roared, I saw it. It appeared out of the shadows: a giant cat that walked on two legs, like a man. A man-cat. It came towards me, growling. The man-cat was naked, too. I could see its dick dangling between its legs.
‘You are it,’ the man-cat said. It could talk, apparently.
‘I am what?’
‘You are it!’ it shouted.
At first I tried to make myself look big. I’d heard that worked with wild animals. I pushed out my chest, raised my arms, and widened my stance like a sumo wrestler. But the man-cat kept coming, muttering and snarling. I had to try something else. I waved my hands and made a lot of noise, hoping to scare it off. That only seemed to enrage it. It growled at me and got into a low crouch. I was thinking, this fucking thing is going to eat me alive…
I turned and ran.
It gave chase. Behind me I heard its footsteps, and its ragged animal panting. Then something hit the back of my legs, and we went down together in the sand. We rolled over and over, like cartoon characters, churning up a cloud of dust. Rocks dug into my back and scraped my shoulders. We wrestled like that, skin on sweaty skin, in a tangle of naked limbs. He was roaring and I was screaming. I wasn’t screaming words. I was just screaming.
Something connected with my nose. A knee, maybe. Then my face was wet, and I could taste blood. It clogged my throat. I lashed out wildly with my fists. I got in one good shot. The man-cat howled. His face bent and went all askew. I tried to squirm away, but he pounced on me again, clawing and raking and punching.
‘You’re only fighting yourself!’
‘Fuck you, man-cat!’
I ended up on my back. The cat loomed over me, pinning me down. His eyes and mouth were black: black as the holes cut in a burlap sack, black as space and time, black as oblivion. It was as if I could see right through him to the sky above. I struggled feebly as his mouth came closer, yawning wider. It descended over my head, and swallowed me whole.
chapter 38
I was being cooked on a grill – iron-hard and painfully hot. I opened my eyes. I saw dirt, pebbles, shale, and a beetle that looked enormous as a tank, crawling over the landscape towards me. I was lying face-down, with my cheek pressed into the dust. I got my hands beneath me and eased myself into a push-up position. For some reason, I was naked. My body was lathered with dust and covered in cuts, clotted with dried blood. My head felt like a roasted marshmallow.
Trying to stand made me dizzy. I stayed in a crouch, waiting until it passed, and then straightened up. The sun was directly overhead, pounding down like a pile-driver. I shielded my eyes with one hand. I couldn’t remember where I was, what I’d been doing. I hurt all over, but my nose hurt the most. I touched the bridge. The cartilage felt puffy and inflamed. When I tried to clear my nostrils, the pain flared and strands of red snot drizzled into the dust.
A little way off, I found a pile of clothes on the ground. I recognised them as mine. Nearby lay a rubber animal mask. A tiger mask. I recognised it, too. Things started coming back to me. I took the clothes, left the mask, and followed my own footprints – retracing my path and recovering memories of the previous night. There was another set of footprints next to mine. He’d come after me. Both sets led back to the circle he’d scratched in the dust. By the light of day, I could see that the mysterious symbols it contained were just spirals and swirls. I doubted they were authentic. Like most things with that guy, my vision quest had been half-baked.
My car was at the roadside where I’d left it. There were some scratch marks around the lock on the trunk, as if he’d tried to jimmy it. He hadn’t found my keys, which were still in my shoe. I dug them out and popped the trunk. My stuff was all there, including my visor. I’m pretty sure that was what he wanted. I tossed it on the back seat and sat sideways in the front, with my feet flat on the road, letting the cooked air clear out of the car. I checked my face in the rear-view. My nose looked swollen and dried blood surrounded my mouth like a beard. My face had a reddish hue. So did my chest, and stomach. I’d sunburnt my entire body, even my dick. I must have been lolling in the heat all morning, getting fried like a human wiener.
I didn’t have any water – just beer. I opened the can and splashed some down my throat. It tasted warm and tinny but, if I had to, I could get by on beer.
As I eased myself behind the wheel, I noticed a scrap of paper pinned under my windshield wiper. He’d left me a note, scrawled in chicken-scratch: I’ll see you when you get there.
I crumpled it up and left it at the roadside.
I drove. There were no cars going my way, and no cars going the other way. There were no cars out there, period. I had the entire road to myself. I started making use of it. First I swerved from lane to lane, slaloming between the road markings. Then I accelerated to top speed, and slowed to a crawl. Then I drove on the wrong si
de of the road – the left-hand side – just to see what it felt like. It felt exactly like driving on the right-hand side, only more daring. I decided I’d drive on the left-hand side of the road whenever possible from then on.
‘Left is always right,’ I said, chanting the words to myself.
I cruised along like that for about thirty minutes before I realised I had absolutely no idea where I was going. I eased up on the gas and my car inched to a stop, like a confused caterpillar. Ever since we’d turned off the highway to go to the hitcher’s cave, I hadn’t paid much attention to directions and navigation. He’d always seemed to know the way.
I got out my map, and tried my old trick of spreading it across the hood. But a map only works if you know where you are on the map. I didn’t. I didn’t even know if I was still in Oregon. I could easily have crossed the border into Nevada by that point. Or not. All the little squiggles and coloured symbols were meaningless. I hadn’t seen any signs for a long time. I crumpled up the map and got back in the car.
I had a quarter-tank of gas left.
The sky crackled blue, like an arc light. Floating around up there were a few clouds in the shape of sheep. As I drove, I stared at the sheep. One of them detached from the flock, and drifted down to me – right in front of my face, right in front of my car.
I hit the brakes, fishtailing on to the gravel at the shoulder. My heart was going like a kettle drum: thrum, thrum, thrum. I looked around. The flying sheep was gone. I was still high, obviously. Not as high as last night, but still pretty fucking high. I had no idea how long peyote lasted. A while, apparently. I lit a cigarette. It quivered between my lips, causing the tip to dance. I smoked it to the butt in long, calming drags.
Then I kept driving. More slowly.
At about three o’clock – the hottest part of the day – my air-conditioning started to make a rattling noise, like an old lady with a chest infection. Then it emitted a hacking cough and died. I fiddled with the switches and knobs. Nothing happened.