by Craig Grant
Mick
Near nightfall the rain turned to snow and it took to melting on the highway, then freezing. The road got slippery. I guess that’s why we stopped for the night in Tabriz.
The Shah must’ve heard that we were coming because he had a nice little reception waiting for us when we pulled into town. Jeeps, tanks, trucks, all of them full of soldiers, lined up along the main drag. Patrick took out his little Canon, started clicking away, and even Rockstar got into the act with his SX-70, which I hadn’t seen much of lately, maybe because he was running short on film. You can’t pick up SX-70 film in countries like Iran and Turkey like you can Kodak.
The main drag of Tabriz could have been the main drag of any North American city. There were tons of billboards and skyscrapers and golden arches and Kentucky Fried Chicken outlets. The only fast food joint I didn’t see was a Taco Bell.
That night we stayed in a hotel that sold Marlboro. It almost made my day.
Pete threw me and Patrick and Rockstar into a long narrow room that reminded me of the hospital ward I woke up in after I cracked up the old man’s Buick.
We all hit the sack right away. That night Rockstar had a bad malaria nightmare and when I finally managed to shake him awake, all he said was, “Suzie.”
“Suzie?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. “Suzie and bloody Santa Claus.”
Bloody Santa Claus. Ain’t that funny. I’d forgotten all about Rockstar saying that.
Dave just phoned me up, wanted me to read over the last few pages. Said he was trying to nail down a land deal on a planet near Alpha Centauri and he hadn’t been paying much attention. After he read about Erzurum, he told me I took a nap on the bus too. Which is why I didn’t realize he’d gone into the hospital in Erzurum and got me a penicillin shot for the dose.
I did kind of wonder why the dose dried up by itself. I think maybe I just thought it was some kind of 336-hour bug.
So, there, said Dave. There were a few benefits to him taking over.
Yeah, thanks, Dave, thanks heaps.
When Rockstar didn’t have much else to say, I went back to bed. Lay in silence for a while. You could hear and feel the tanks rolling by on the street. Finally through the darkness came Rockstar’s voice in a whisper. Just when I was wondering if not having Tim deLuca’s quiet but definite presence on the bus might affect Rockstar’s behaviour in the long run.
“Muckle?”
“Yeah, Rockstar?” I said. Conscious of the fact that Patrick was likely going to be listening to whatever Rockstar had to say.
“You still my buddy?”
“Whaddya mean, Rockstar?”
“You ain’t had much to say to me lately, Muckle.”
I thought about that. It was true, no doubt about it.
“I’ve had a lot on my mind lately, Rockstar,” I said. “What with the tooth and all.”
“Oh,” he said.
There was something heartbreaking in the way he said that
oh.
Before dawn, Rockstar had another screaming malaria nightmare. He got them worse than anyone else on the bus, for a while there. I think he finally stopped taking the malaria tablets.
The next morning on the bus, I said to Pete, just before we left, I said, “Listen, Pete, I’ve sunk a lot of money into this little holiday here, and I don’t appreciate having to spend my nights with a malaria moaner like Rockstar. Like, if I have to pay extra for my own room or whatever I will, but I’m going nuts listening to his blood-curdling screams.”
Pete told me he’d see what he could do. I told him I’d appreciate that.
But that was the last I heard about it.
I spent about two minutes in Gorgan going over my finances and I didn’t have the cash to pay for my own room, it was that simple.
The temperature that morning was still around zero. The roads still slippery as bat shit.
We got into a mountain range around noon. I was starting to feel a little bit nervous. I could feel the bus wheels slipping a bit on the comers. Off to my right through the windows there was nothing but empty mountain valley.
So I was kind of glad when Kelly came back and sat across the aisle from me. Anything for a distraction.
“So are you mad at me or something?” she said.
I said no, why would I be mad at her.
“I don’t know,” she said. “You’re an individual. You have your own perception of things. Human communication is sometimes a tenuous thing. I was just wondering. You haven’t talked to me once since Sivas.”
No, Kelly, I wanted to say, you’ve got that wrong. You haven’t talked to me since Sivas. But instead I told her I was sorry, I just figured she probably had other things on her mind. I didn’t say like maybe a Turk’s hot lips, though I almost did. Wish I had. Because Dave just told me there was a red-hot necking session, up against a dark wall of the Harem Disco. Until the Turk got too carried away and Kelly made a beeline back to where Suzie was petting the cat.
The idea of it still makes me a little jealous.
Kelly finally said, “Well, it’s just that Charole’s a bit upset. The cast is getting itchy underneath.”
Charole was sacked out on the back seat. I think she was taking knock-out pills. She hardly moved from that back seat all the way from the border to Mashhad.
Kelly said, “And she’s worried she might not see Frank again.” She looked at me. “You wouldn’t happen to have any ideas about that, would you?”
I closed my eyes and put my fingers up to my temples, just for the hell of it, and called up Dave. He said, you’re going to be the only one who ever sees Jenkins again.
I said to Kelly, “He’ll be fine.”
She looked a little relieved but not much. She still had more than a few doubts about just how hot-shot a psychic I was.
We were quiet for a while. The bus was creeping along on that slick highway, a snail’s crawl.
Finally Kelly said, “You don’t by any chance know what’s been on my mind lately, do you?”
I called up Dave. He said three words and then hung up. He would’ve been a lot happier if I’d been talking to Dana.
“Sex and death,” I said to Kelly and then I looked out the window, as if to say I was bored with the conversation. Those mountain valleys were getting deeper the higher we went. Which is pretty much the way life works too, if you think about it.
“Can you actually see my fantasies?” Kelly asked me. As though she was really worried that I could. “Sure,” I said. “You have some real lulus.” I looked back at her. She looked away. As though she maybe thought I could see her erotic little fantasies slipping and sliding across her eyeballs.
But it was the bus that was slipping and sliding. I thought we were done like dinner. So I was glad to see this roadside gas-and-chai shop up ahead, and I was gladder when Pete pulled into it. Basically just a shoddy shack and a couple pumps and six wrecked cars.
While Pete put on the snow chains, the rest of us went inside and grabbed some chai. I sat next to Patrick, because I didn’t want Kelly testing me for the details of her sexual fantasies, Dave’s line had a busy signal.
Place was full of these ragged old men in ragged old clothes. Pita bread burning on an old wood stove, the only heat in the place. Place was chilly, and so was the reception. All these stares, burning coals in haggard faces, hate, that’s how I read it. We were the rich Yankee tourists in our souped-up bus and our polyester slacks. We were the vampires sucking their country dry. I could dig it. I was just glad they didn’t slaughter us.
Up above the wood stove was a picture of the Shah behind shattered glass, as if somebody tried to punch him out. In one corner were all these cartons of Cokes with rusty caps. I decided I’d rather risk a Coke with a rusty cap than lukewarm chai so I had one of those, and I was sitting by the window, just looking outside at the snow falling and at Suzie dancing around in it, her arms twirling around and then I noticed Rockstar packing himself a nice round snowball, packing it ti
ght, and I said to myself, oh, oh. He let it fly, smack, right between the eyes, and everyone heard Suzie shriek. All those old Iranians turned their heads.
“Deadeye Rockstar,” I said to Dana, who was pulling up
a chair next to Patrick.
“Vengeance is his,” said Dana. “Serves her right. She shouldn’t have written those limericks.”
“Nasty little limericks,” I said, for Patrick’s benefit.
But he wasn’t listening. He was looking at what was going on outside. Over near the gas pumps, a couple Iranians seemed to be giving Pete the hassle as he put the chains on.
Dana said, “You just know about the limericks because you’re psychic, right?” She said it with a straight face.
“That’s right,” I said.
Dana took a sip of her chai. “I went to a psychic once.”
“What’d he tell you?” I said.
“He said I was going to live until I was a hundred and thirty,” said Dana. “Mainly because of these drugs they’re developing. Can you imagine that? A hundred and thirty. I don’t know if I want to live that long. I hope I still have my teeth.”
Outside, Suzie was bawling. That kind of surprised me. I didn’t really think Aussie women cried. Must’ve been a real hard snowball. Rockstar was sitting on one of the wrecked cars yelling at her. Calling her some nasty names. Whore. Bitch. Pete just kept fastening on snow chains.
And when he was finished he stuck a nozzle in the diesel tank. Which is when one of the Iranians tries to yank it out while the other one makes these threatening gestures.
Dave rings me up. Says to get everyone outside. So I do. And I can tell that Pete’s glad to see us all coming out. First he tells us to get on board and then he tells Rockstar to go get his Polaroid. Rockstar says what for? Just do what I say, Pete barks at him. Rockstar gets on the bus, gets the SX-70. Pete tells him to take a couple pictures of the Iranian kids. Rockstar does, and Pete grabs the pictures as soon as they slide from the camera, hands them to one kid, and both of their faces change instantly, they can’t believe what they’re seeing. Back goes the nozzle, into the tank. Suzie’s still standing around in the snowfall, blowing her nose. Pete tells her to get on board.
“Like the pictures?” he says to the kids. I have a window open so I can hear this.
By this time all those old geezers are coming out of the chai shop and one of them’s yelling something at the kids but they
just ignore him.
“Trade you some diesel for those pictures,” says Pete.
But it’s all a moot point. Those old geezers spoil everything. One of them grabs the nozzle out of the tank, diesel sprays everywhere, and then Pete’s getting on the bus, pushing Suzie up the steps, the gas tank cap in his hand, and he’s slamming the doors shut in all those faces and bang, up into first, peels out, just as I see one of those Iranians lighting a match.
It’s the jerk of the bus as those chains bite into the icy highway that wakes up Charole. She rubs her eyes, wants to know what’s going on. Kelly tells her we were almost slaughtered while getting diesel.
“Oh,” she said. I think it took a while for it to sink in but when it did, she said, “I always miss the fucking action.”
It did give us something to talk about for the next four hours. That and Suzie’s swollen eye and Rockstar’s deadeye aim.
We ended up driving all night that night. The music loud to help keep Pete awake. Patrick and Charole and Kelly all huddled around Pete at the front, throwing trivia questions back and forth. I missed a loo-stop once and really pissed Pete off when I asked for another one five minutes later. My tooth was hurting so I lay back on the back seat, since it was empty for a change, drank raki until I passed out and I didn’t wake up until Pete shook me awake in Gorgan, his shadow above me saying, “Move it, mate, I need some shut-eye myself.”
I was a little slow to move.
“What’s with you, mate? Doped up again?” He yanked me off the back seat, dropped me in another seat, didn’t say sorry, nothing.
Everybody else on the bus was curled up and sleeping in their seats. There was heavy fog outside and through it I could see we were parked across the street from the Miami Hotel, which made me think, for a minute, that I might be having some kind of malaria dream.
But I wasn’t. My toothache and a knot in my stomach told me that much. I got off the bus, leaving the door an inch ajar, and went across the street to the Miami Hotel but it was closed, so I went down this back alley, and I was just about to drop my pants when I saw one of those spooky Iranian women in their chadris, their long dresses and veils, come through a gate
in a back fence.
I said, “You don’t happen to know where there’s a can, do you?”
She looked at me for a moment, and said pardon. I approached her and repeated the question.
She said yes, in a nice bright American accent, “Right through here.” She had big dark eyes, almond-shaped. I had a feeling she was beautiful beneath that veil.
Through the gate I found myself in the backyard of a mansion right out of “The Beverly Hillbillies.” She pointed at what looked like a biffy, except it was metal and painted orange.
Inside there was a nice new Western-style flush toilet, complete with toilet paper. I never ever thought I’d be so happy to see one of those.
While I sat on it, I said to myself, well, it’s the start of another day on the Lord’s green planet. What day was that, Dave? Right. November 16, 1978.
The day when things got just a little bit hairy.
When I came out of the can, the gate was open, the girl in the chadri was gone.
I looked down the alley. All I saw was more mist and the eastern sky turning grey. A small splash of pink around the edges.
So I went back into the biffy and heisted that roll of t.p. They probably had lots.
Back on the bus, Kelly was awake and sitting at the table writing in this little diary which I only saw once or twice on the trip.
I’d give an inch off the stump of my right wrist to read that diary. Knowing Kelly, she’d write about interpersonal stuff more than she’d write about landscape and mosques, and Dave says I’m right. Dave says she wrote mostly about me. You’re kidding, I said.
It’s not really what I wanted to hear.
Would I lie to you? he said.
I gave Kelly a smile but she just looked away.
She was maybe pissed off at the way Dana was flirting with me back at that gas-and-chai shop. The way she batted those long lashes of hers straight into my bleachers. I shoved that roll of t.p. into my satchel in the overhead rack and sat in a seat behind Kelly and watched while she wrote. And she knew
I was watching.
And when the sun rose, that mist in the street danced and swirled and melted up into the sky and Iranians began walking past, staring in at us, but none of them carried rifles or dynamite, not that I saw. None of them tried to storm the bus.
I was starting to like the women in the chadris. Really mysterious. No wonder the Iranian men are nuts, having only those eyes above the veils to look at. If the Shah was smart he would’ve legalized bikinis. It would’ve distracted all those students with hormonal overload.
What we were doing in Gorgan, I guess, is waiting for another Taurus bus to show up.
When Pete was through with his nap, he went across the street to the Miami Hotel. Dave says he got a message there that said the tour bus we were waiting for was still holed up in some hotel in Tehran.
And so we hit the road again.
Charole beat me to the back seat. So I played backgammon with Patrick all day and talked revolutionary theory. Patrick said that a vacuum of power in Iran is just what Iraq’s been waiting for, because Iran used its American backing to steal all kinds of oil fields from Iraq.
Dave says Patrick was right on, as far as that goes. Dave says there’s going to be a war between those two that’s going to send 500,000 people, a lot of them kids, straight into trench warfar
e worse than World War I.
“Ah, the world,” mused Patrick. “The world and its shambolic ways. Reminds me, Mr. McPherson,” he said, smiling, “somewhat of you.”
“Shambolic?” I said.
“Shambolic,” he said.
Just about the time we were driving into Mashhad where the Shah had an even bigger welcoming party waiting for us.
And I was a little confused when we pulled up in front of the Tehran Hotel because I knew we weren’t supposed to be going through Tehran, but that was what the hotel was called. The city was Mashhad, though. Iranians like to call their hotels after the names of other cities. You figure it out.
It was one of the ritziest hotels on the trip. It had a cigarette machine and an empty swimming pool littered with garbage off to the side and carpets on the lobby floor and bellboys and
elevators and a fat guy behind the desk. The only fat Iranian I saw in the country, most of them were skinny as Twiggy.
And Pete threw Rockstar into a room with Suzie, so they could iron out their problems, he said. He probably still hadn’t gotten over that limerick. And he threw me into a big room with Kelly and Dana and Patrick, which was nice, while him and Charole shacked up in the honeymoon suite.
Our room even had a hot shower, and we drew lots to see who took what turn. It had a Westem-style toilet too. No magic fingers on the beds, though. No TV.
And I guess it was the fact that my tooth was hurting so much that I wasn’t able to get to sleep that night. And so it happened that I was sitting on the end of my bed, next to the window, smoking a Marley, this was near midnight, when I saw this small shadow scoot into the street and fiddle with the diesel cap on the bus. I said to myself, oh, oh. But the kid found it locked and so he tossed what he had in his hand under the front of the bus. And I wasn’t thinking too swift. I’m sitting there wondering what the hell’s going on. Then there’s a whoosh and the kid is knocked to the street and flames start licking out from underneath the bus.
I swear, I said to myself. Something the old man used to say. When he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
I may have said it out loud.