Last India Overland

by Craig Grant

  “At the end of the trip,” said Pete, “we’ll have a little raffle and somebody will get to take the book home.”

  Then he hung up the mike.

  “Well,” said Patrick, “it shall behoove the would-be wordsmiths among us to come up with either superlative or egregious material for this tome, to make it a worthy keepsake. Don’t you agree, Mr. McPherson?”

  I agreed with him and moved a checker. Eventually I won. Patrick said, “How would you feel about putting a wager on the next game, Mr. McPherson?”

  “Mixed feelings,” I said.

  “And why is that?” he said.

  “Because,” I said, “you could be a shark, setting this poor little fishy up for the kill.”

  Patrick let out a snort. “I’m afraid you overestimate my devious aspect, Mr. McPherson. A wager merely makes the game a trifle more interesting, that’s all.”

  By the time we got to Cologne for lunch, Patrick had about fifteen of my American bucks in his pocket.

  When we got downtown, Pete parked out beside a church that had been bombed in World War II and then he got on the mike and said that lunch committees would have stints of three days each and that me and Rob were the first lunch committee.

  Well, if there’s one thing I am, it’s a good sandwich maker. Used to be, at least, when I had two hands. Just ask any of my old ex-flames. Nancy Pickles once told me that my tuna fish and cream cheese sandwich was so good that it made her wish she was born as two slices of magnolia rye so that her life would have some sort of ultimate meaning.

  Just the same, it’s pretty hard to make a good sandwich when you don’t even have butter, mustard and pickles. When all you’ve got are rock-hard buns and salt and pepper, some lettuce, tomatoes and a sick looking Belgian cheese with green specks in it. Pete didn’t even have a jar of mayonnaise or margarine, and so I had no choice except to get a little heavy handed with the shakers, and that didn’t go over too well with a few people. Suzie threw her sandwich as far as she could throw it and Teach, that’s what we called Mary deLuca, after word got around that she used to be a teacher, had a sneezing fit. And well, yeah, maybe I did go too far. Even I was so thirsty after the sandwich that I poured myself a mug full of this stuff that Pete had in a plastic jug. It looked like thick lemonade. I knocked it back in one or two swallows. And immediately gagged it up. Tasted like sugar-sweetened STP. Turns out it was undiluted lime cordial. You’re supposed to mix it with five or six parts water. Suzie thought it was hilarious. So it didn’t take me long to make the daybook pages. Suzie took note and stuck my name on something she called the Blunder List. Right next to my name on the Chunder List.

  Nope. Didn’t take long for me to make my mark at all.

  Jenkins was nice enough to point out my mistake and pour some water into my lime cordial, and I was taking my first sip of the stuff and looking up at some birds flying around the church steeple, where you could easily tell the old bricks from the new bricks, when I sensed someone coming up behind me.

  I turned around. It was Dana. The tall redhead.

  “Are those peregrines?” she said, just as that lime cordial puckered up my taste buds. I knew I couldn’t swallow it, I had to spit it out.

  “Excuse me,” I said, wiping my mouth.

  “Rough night?” she said, smiling.

  “Kind of,” I said.

  “I’ve never seen anybody drink so much Scotch before,” she said.

  “It’s a talent,” I said.

  My mouth was suddenly way drier than it used to be. Dana was wearing a thin red blouse with spaghetti straps that day, and blue jean cut-offs, some sexy brown sandals. I must have some Italian blood in me. I love spaghetti straps.

  She looked back up the birds. So did I.

  “I think they must be peregrines,” she said.

  “Peregrines?” I said.

  “Yeah. Peregrine falcons. I hear they like to nest in high places.”

  “Oh,” I said. I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

  “That was a good sandwich,” she said, after five or six too many beats.

  “It was?” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I love lettuce and pepper. It’s my favourite sandwich.”

  She gave me a smile as if to say she meant it and then she turned around and walked towards the bus.

  She was doing me a favour, with that little view, and she knew it.

  Susan Byrnes’s daybook entry

  October 12

  I hate being first. I always had to be first in school, after Bill Alice flunked out in grade three. You never know what the rules are. Do I tell the truth? Should I wait until the end of the day or can I write it now? I’m going to write it now so I can get it over with. We just stopped in Cologne where there was a church. Patrick said it was full of priceless stained glass. I guess he wasn’t lying. I didn’t see any price tags anywhere. When we got back to the bus, Mick and Rob had some sandwiches made for us. I’m glad I don’t live in Canada, if those sandwiches of Mick’s are what Canuck sandwiches are like. I should’ve went to the McDonald’s across the street. Are those things bloody everywhere? They’re just like men with sex problems, you can’t go anyplace without running into one.

  We should have some lists in this thing. We could have a Chunder List and a Blunder List.

  Chunder List

  Mick

  Blunder List

  Mick

  Everybody knows how Mick got on the Blunder List. How he got on the Blunder List is he’s so dumb he doesn’t even know he has to mix lime cordial with water. We could have a Make-out List too. But I don’t think we’re going to need it, not with this lot. And that’s not just because of the cold showers either.

  Mick

  When I got on the bus, I put a bug in Pete’s ear about his grocery supplies and so about halfway to Heidelberg we stopped at a German version of Safeway and picked up some pickles and ketchup and other essentials.

  We got to Heidelberg just before sunset. Pete chugged us up a narrow, winding road to this old castle and told us we had half an hour to look around, which was fine with me. I like castles, and this one had the works. Lots of keeps and dungeons and a drawbridge and a postcard shop that had a postcard with the lyrics “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” on it in German. That’s what I could call this book. I Left My Hand in Ko Samui, My Heart in Kabul and My Head in Kathmandu. Or: How I Left Parts of Myself All Over Asia. Or Blood on the Bus Seat, that has a nice ring.

  The castle also had this big old empty cask that Patrick had me stand beside while he took a picture with his Pentax. Apparently it was Pinnochio’s wine cask. One night he dipped his snout in it and drained it dry.

  “Which would make, I would suspect,” said Patrick, “for a memorable hangover, don’t you agree, Mr. McPherson?”

  I said, “Yeah. Something like that hangover I had this morning.”

  Patrick chortled and then waddled over to the castle wall and stuck his wine-gut over it and started snapping pictures of Heidelberg, what with the salamander sunset, that’s what Patrick called it, and all the trees. Yeah, Heidelberg was a pretty looking town. Prettiest town on the whole trip, actually, now that I look back on it. Though Innsbruck was a pretty town too.

  Patrick also took a picture of Dana gazing out over that valley. Like something you see on a poster in the window of a tourist agency. Patrick had a zoom lens, she didn’t even notice him doing it. Rob, though, wasn’t so lucky. All he had was one of those Polaroid SX-70s. He crept up on her from the side, the Polaroid up to his eye, and snapped the picture as Dana turned to look at him.

  Me and Patrick were maybe a hundred yards away but we still heard what she said to him.

  “Next time ask permission before you take my picture.” Every syllable had an icicle hanging from it.

  “Okay,” said Rob. “Can I take your picture?”

  “No,” said Dana, and she stalked away, as they say in the grade B paperbacks.

  “Highly unfortunate,�
� said Patrick wistfully, looking at his picture counter. “I had five shots left.”

  “It’s tragic,” I said.

  About that time Pete honked the bus’s horn. I hadn’t even had my second cigarette yet. I went over to where Dana had been, and I was sitting on the wall, grooving on the view and smoking a Marley when Pete slid open his side window and told me to move it unless I wanted to walk to Kathmandu. I took a couple more puffs and flicked the butt down towards Heidelberg. Took one last look at that view. The sun was down completely and there was a sweet orange sky above the horizon just begging to be peeled.

  I took my time sauntering over and when I got on the bus, I said, “Gee, that was a real cream cheese sunset, Pete.” He didn’t say whether he agreed with me or not.

  On the way down the hill, Suzie said to me she’d seen better sunsets every day back when she used to live at home, down in Oz. That irritated me just a tad. I hate people who always have to one-up everything. They seem to have this knack for taking a nice moment and wrecking it. When we got to camp, I asked Suzie if she was going to stay put in our tent. She just laughed. But then she said, “Why, do you want me to?” All kinds of possible answers washed up like oil slick seagulls on the shores of my mind. But finally I just told her it was up to her.

  That night for supper I cooked up some smokies on the bun and some French fries all by myself because Rob

  disappeared somewhere. Teach made a spinach quiche for her and Tim deLuca. Tim deLuca came over and apologized. Said he didn’t mean to insult my cooking or anything but him and his wife don’t believe in eating anything that has to be butchered or, as he put it, “in any way traumatized.”

  I said that’s okay, more for the rest of us.

  When we were eating the meal Dana asked him, not Teach, how long they’d been vegetarians.

  Tim looked at Teach. “I guess it’s been seven years, hasn’t it, dear?”

  “Eight, I believe,” said Teach.

  Then Suzie lit up a cigarette.

  Teach said, in this cold tinny voice, “Would you mind not smoking at the table?”

  Suzie said, “Why?”

  Teach said, “Because I’m very allergic to smoke, it gives me severe congestion and headaches.”

  “That’s funny,” said Suzie. “That’s what I get if I don’t smoke.”

  She sounded pissed off. But she put her cigarette out, and I made a mental note not to smoke around Teach.

  There was this tense lull in the conversation. Just the sound of chomping and cutlery scraping plates.

  Then Teach said, “We’re not going to be vegetarians forever.” Not really looking at anybody. “It’s just a phase. In two years time we’ll switch to only eating fruit.”

  Dana said, “You’re just going to live on fruit?”

  Teach said, “Yes, it’s quite possible. We know some fruitarians personally. They’re all very happy people.”

  I looked at Patrick. He was eating a potato skin. He grinned at me, as if to say, well, we’ve really got quite the fruitcakes here.

  He said, “Well I think becoming a fruitarian would be a splendid idea. At least that way perhaps one would not become constipated quite so readily, not true?”

  Turns out Patrick was eating the potato skins from the French fries because he happened to be constipated.

  “That’s very true,” said Teach.

  And then Pete said there was a friendly little pub down the road if anyone was interested, and yeah, a few of us were interested, and that little dinner chat was over.

  On the way to the pub, Dana walked beside me. We asked each other the usual questions. She was from Halifax. When she asked me why I was going to India, I said, “Well, the

  idea just kind of guru on me.”

  She laughed and so did Patrick. Actually it was one of Hasheeba’s jokes, but what the hell.

  Patrick said, “The lad does have a head on his shoulders.”

  Gee, thanks, Patrick.

  I asked Dana why she was on the trip and she casually said,

  “Well, in Halifax I worked for Legal Aid, and I helped put

  this guy in jail who’d molested his four-year-old daughter. He swore he was going to kill me when he got out which was two weeks ago. Which was when I got this terrific urge to see the Taj Mahal.”

  “Makes sense to me,” I said.

  The pub was a bright little family type place. The type where working class stiffs hang out with their wives or their buddies’ wives after a hard day of twisting bolts on Volkswagen axles. A pink-cheeked glow-worm took our order for six lagers and by the time he got back with the frosted steins, me and Patrick were talking about the best bars we’d ever been in. Patrick said he’d been in the original Ritz, in Paris, and a wonderful establishment in Manila called the Hobbit House, where all the waiters were dwarfs, and then there was the Sherlock Holmes bar in London, not too far from Canada House, he said, that had oodles of atmosphere, and he just went on and on. I think I was only able to mention one bar. Champagne Charlie’s in downtown Vancouver. Some of the sexiest women I’ve ever seen were women I saw at Champagne Charlie’s. That’s where I met Nancy Pickles. She was a waitress there.

  By the time the second litre came around, Rob was telling us about the scuzziest bar Charlie Putrid and the Carrion-Eaters ever played, some hole called the Zit Pit in East London where punks carried their razors onto the dance floor during the last dance and spent five minutes trying to slash each other.

  Down at the end of the table, Pete and Tim and Teach were quietly listening to this. Teach was drinking a Virgin Mary, Tim was drinking tonic water and lime, Pete was drinking a Heineken.

  I had a feeling Pete wasn’t too happy about the group he 41

  was saddled with.

  And I had a feeling Tim and Teach had hopes for different types of travelling companions too.

  By the time the second litre arrived, Suzie was telling us about the job she had in London, working as a surrogate in a sex clinic, which perked up Rob’s ears. He was the one who asked her what all it was she had to do.

  She said she didn’t really want to talk about it but we managed to talk her into it. “Worked with closet transsexuals, mostly,” she said finally. “You know. Guys who wanted to be women. So they tried doing things like cutting off their wankers and all. Job was the bloody pits, actually, and I don’t know why I even mentioned it. I really don’t want to talk about it.”5

  So Jenkins changed the subject and we started telling stories about weird people we knew. Jenkins came up with this story about a guy he knew named Spook Slough who lived out in the middle of the Alberta muskeg. “He liked to play cards with some of the oil-riggers,” he said. “I think that’s how he made a living. I never saw him lose a game, not ever. The reason they called him Slough, though, was ’cause he stunk so bad. He never took a bath his whole life, some of the guys said, and I believe it because I was downwind from him a couple of times. Once I asked him why and he said he didn’t like running water. Preferred walking water instead.”

  Jenkins grinned that little boy’s grin of his and Patrick groaned and Suzie just looked confused, she didn’t get it, and so I asked her, “Hey, Suzie, what do you do with an Aussie woman with four balls?”

  “I don’t know, what?”

  “Take her by the hand and lead her to first.”

  She didn’t get that one either. I guess maybe because Aussies don’t play baseball.

  “Nerdballs,” she said, after Patrick got through chuckling. “I’m going back to camp and try to get some sleep.”

  I think it was right around this time that Rob got his nickname. Rockstar. Because of the way he was always spouting off about Charlie Putrid. As though being a roadie for some second-rate punk band made him special.

  It was me who gave him the nickname. No one else called him anything. They did their best not to refer to him at all. Except for Patrick. Who made the mistake of calling him Herr Scheisskopf a couple of times.

  Rockst
ar said to Suzie, “You want someone to walk you home?”

  Rockstar had hardly said two words all night. He’d just been drinking two beer to everyone else’s one.

  Suzie thought about it, then she said, “Nah, I’m okay.” “Well, there’s something I wanna ask you in private,” said Rockstar.

  “Like what?” said Suzie.

  “This ain’t private,” said Rockstar.

  Suzie just looked at him.

  Rockstar smiled at her. His best smile actually. The one where he didn’t show his yellow teeth. “Besides,” he said in this soft voice. “I want to go back to camp too but I’m scared of the bloody dark.”

  Suzie gave him a long look. Then she shrugged. “Well, it’s no beans off my blisters,” she said. “Come along if you want to.”

  She turned around and walked away. Rockstar jumped up and raced after her like a little puppy.

  Patrick looked around at the rest of us. “I do believe we have just witnessed an infatuation in full bloom,” he said.

  “That’s what it looked like to me,” said Jenkins. “It’s a real heart-warming thing to see, isn’t it?”

  Patrick let out a snort. “I’m sure they deserve each other,” he said. He looked at me. “What do you think, Mr. McPherson?” he said. “You’re the expert on Ms. Byrnes. I heard that was quite a frolic you were engaged in last night.” “Yeah?” I said. “Who’d you hear that from?”

  “The proverbial minuscule feathered creature who is known, upon occasion,” he said, “to take flight.”

  “This little creature wouldn’t have been bullshitting you by any chance now, would he?” I said.

  Patrick grinned that grin of his that made him look like

  Sneezy. “Anything’s possible,” he said. “Only the future will tell how reliable the source was.”

  “Well, there you go,” I said, and I signalled the waitress for another round.

  WEST GERMANY Heidelberg—Munich

  Day 3

  Departure: 8:00 a.m. 240 mile Route: Karlsruhe—Stuttgart—Ulm