The Drive

by Teresa Bruce

  For added effect, he runs into his closet and brings out a bizarrely pointed stocking cap.

  “This is my favorite chulo; it’s quite dashing, don’t you think?”

  He stands in front of us in a pointy red hat with pompom earflaps, holding a shovel with burning coals and what looks like a flaming grade-school science project. We follow the man in the dancing dunce cap around the house like he’s the Pied Piper of Tiquipaya, draining an entire bottle of wine as Don inundates the four corners of his home with acrid q’owa smoke. Margit adds the finishing touch to the First Friday ritual: a sprinkle of rubbing alcohol wherever Don wanders.

  “So Pachamama is never thirsty,” she reminds us.

  The q’owa burns out just as Don comes gasping from the last room of the house. Now it is time to burn ours.

  “You leave tomorrow; may this bring much luck to your travels,” Don pronounces with the seriousness of a shaman. The green sugar camper bursts into flames, and we run around the back of the house and through the chicken coops to reach the Avion in the driveway.

  “Hurry,” Don shouts. “We have just enough time to bless each tire. Then we must take it inside the camper before it smokes out.”

  He kneels in front of each tire, moving counterclockwise, and in the cold air the q’owa burns quickly. Gary holds the shovel of glowing embers while Don leaps into the Avion and then passes it up to him. Ashes of an unborn llama waft through the air, floating to rest on top of llama wool blankets. I help Margit up the back steps, but her entire bottle of rubbing alcohol spills over the seat cushions in the commotion. Our camper smells like smoke and rotgut, but faced with the prospect of mudslides between Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, Pachamama’s protection is worth the stench.

  Chapter Forty-Four

  THE DECISION

  Bolivian tour books stop just short of boasting about the country’s terrible roads; they’ve become something of an attraction. Footprint’s Bolivia Handbook lists “things to do” in highlighted sections, one of which is “Brave the helter-skelter ride down the world’s most dangerous roads.” Tour companies in the surreal and desolate salt flats compete with each other by the degree of assistance they provide to broken-down drivers. “We won’t leave you stranded,” one advertisement claims. The fact that you will break down is a given. Getting to Bolivia’s remote regions requires Land Rovers in the dry season and private helicopters the rest of the year.

  But Gary and I are not attempting to drive our disintegrating camper to extreme destinations; we are just trying to get to Bolivia’s largest city: Santa Cruz. According to the map highlighted by the bus drivers Margit interrogated in Cochabamba, we will be traveling over pleasant-sounding “secondary roads” and “carriage routes.” We have no idea whether we can buy diesel along the way, but the entire drive looks to be less than three hundred miles, and if we get decent mileage we should be able to drive that far on one tank.

  The secondary road that bypasses the mudslides starts out as a single lane of faded yellow cobblestone. It feels like we are driving on a sidewalk or up someone’s private driveway. The road stops when it reaches remote villages and picks up on the other side, so we have to backtrack, zigzag, drive over fields and through streams to wiggle around these road-squatting settlements. Gradually I wrap my head around what should have been obvious: secondary roads are used more by pack animals than vehicles.

  In the flat stretches between villages, it is slow going but stunning. We could be rowing through an ocean: waves replaced by a patchwork of overlapping hills, seagulls by Andean condors, crested glimpses of shoreline by the purple haze of distant mountains. Eventually there are no more villages to circumnavigate.

  That’s when the cobblestone secondary road becomes a cobblestone carriage route—which in plucky Bolivian map-speak apparently means lumpy wagon tracks. The air smells of peat and evaporating rain, and the vistas are so clear that the horizon slices the sky like a razor’s edge. In a place so pale and thin, it is irrelevant to look at the map, pretentious to imagine any sense of control. On paper we are a mere fifty-five miles south of the Pan-American Highway, but there is no way to connect the dots.

  The carriage route to the next town on our detour, Aiquile, is a slick trough of mud one minute and a dusty washboard the next. When a Ford F-350 begins to toboggan sideways and slide up one wall of a giant ditch, the camper it is carrying leans precariously in the other direction. We can hear dishes flying from the cupboards and our eight-gallon drum of drinking water rolling down the center aisle. There are no other vehicles on the road. No one would find us if we landed upside down in a field.

  “Why are we the only ones out here?” Gary asks me.

  There is no good answer. If the Pan-American Highway is impassable, as the bus drivers say, there should be a convoy of trucks and buses sharing our route. I am not comforted by the solitude; this wretched route may be an exercise in the unnecessary. There is so much dust pouring through the cracks and crevices of the cab that I have to squirt water from a bottle directly into Gary’s mouth as he drives; he can’t afford to take his hands off the wheel for even a second.

  We are bone rattled and parched by the time the skies crack open with thunder and pelt the carriage route with rain. It is as if the dust-packed air were tinder for bolts of lightning, and there are only four rubber tires between us and instant electrocution. Each time the rain stops, our windshield wipers clear a view more terrifying than the last: rivers in place of gentle streams, sinkholes where there was once solid cobblestone, gorges where guardrails and gravel shoulders should be.

  A rocky outcrop ahead hovers like an oasis, the space below its overhanging ledge providing protection from some sort of waterfall. Until we realize we have to drive through it. The road doubles back on itself in a hairpin turn directly under a torrent of water cascading over the ledge. It is as if two giant fingers pinched the sky to the road and flicked the edge of the earth three hundred feet down on the other side just for spite.

  We get out and stand behind the camper, gaping at the prospect of turning back. Going forward requires the logic of a lunatic. The force of falling water could spin out the back wheels and sweep us to the bottom of the ravine. Even if we were to miraculously survive, and somehow surface near some kind of phone, any call I would make would sound like one of those Nigerian scams. My home fell over a cliff in South America and I’ve lost everything. Please send money so I can eat.

  I close my eyes and flash through my own slide show of the last seven months. Me squeezing the trigger at an Arizona gun range, angry men waving machetes in the Ocosingo jungle, Gary chasing earthquakes with a broom, shovelfuls of dirt filling Wipeout’s grave, and the smoke of burning llama fetuses wafting through the camper.

  All these images will fade, just like the memory of my little brother. This journey will have been for nothing, and I will spend the rest of my life wondering if we could have made it. I am relieved, in a cowardly way, when the skies open up again and the road behind us begins to dissolve. A rock and a hard place would be a nice choice to have, but the ground is literally washing out around us. There is no benefit in hesitation; I have been delivered from an agonizing decision. Cut off from alternatives, I am forced to acknowledge the vanity of control. There is only survival.

  I will have to serve as Gary’s eyes, checking the condition of the road that is slowly crumbling under the weight of the truck and camper. He will inch us through by feel, relying on me to say if we are too close to the rock face. I crack open the door. It might be the waterfall pummeling my eardrums but it sounds like Gary is telling me to jump out if the road gives way.

  The door is heavy, and even with my forearm pressed onto the window ledge I can barely hold it off the latch. Mud spins off the front wheel and hits me in the eye. I’m blinded and try to wipe my eyes, but when I remove my left hand from the dashboard, the weight of the door lurches my body to the right.

  Gary grabs for me.

  “What are you doing?” he scre
ams. “We’re almost through.”

  This time it is the image of John John that flashes behind my squeezed-tight eyes. He is struggling with a heavy door, looking down, panicking. I can’t help him. But I force myself to inhale through my nose. The truck is starting to fishtail, tires scrambling for traction. Keep breathing. Hold on. Stay calm.

  Then, suddenly, the roaring noise is behind me. We have pulled clear of the ledge; a flooded river is no longer crashing onto the camper’s roof. The relief is a suction force pulling me forward, first my lungs, then my heart, then my brain. I open my eyes; the windshield wipers clear the view ahead. I hear crunching noises; the tires are gripping. Gary looks like he might throw up; his eyes are sunken and the color drained from his face. I lean out my window to snap the side-view mirror back in place.

  “Leave it,” he says. “I don’t want to see what we just went through. Let’s just get the hell out of here.”

  The only road back to Cochabamba is disintegrating behind us, and we have no idea how much worse the road ahead will get.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  THE MAP

  Finding my father’s camper has never seemed so unlikely, but we are past the point where giving up or going back is possible. I have often wondered why it took sixty-one breakdowns before my father sold the camper—why breakdown number thirteen or forty-seven did not bring him to his knees. The same numbness I feel here, in the Bolivian outback, must have rendered counting calamities moot. Rational alternatives evaporate in isolation; logic is inversely proportional to desperation.

  JUNE 29TH, 1974

  Drove all day. Prettier scenery—mountainous but not so high. Finally arrived in Santa Cruz and took showers.

  At this point in the first trip, my mother could see an end to the misery, but Gary and I have no idea where we are or when it will be over. There isn’t even a place to pull over and declare a campsite; Gary just steers the wheels off the ruts of the road and drives through low shrubs and stubby cactus until the ground underneath us feels somewhat level.

  Stars emerge from the murky twilight in cold, sparkling splendor. Strange noises gurgle from unseen animals all around the Avion, but I am too tired to be jumpy. We finish Margit’s leftovers and fall asleep somewhere near the center of a country in the center of a continent that feels like the farthest place from anywhere.

  DAY TWO ON THE CARRIAGE ROUTE TO SANTA CRUZ FEELS LIKE YEAR two. The road continues to deteriorate, and we inch forward at less than ten miles an hour. When we finally reconnect with the Pan-American Highway, it is so quiet I can hear all four tires humming against the surface as we work up speed.

  “Shift,” I remind Gary. He has spent two days driving in first gear.

  It takes several minutes before I remember to swallow and breathe through my nose again. The landscape celebrates our arrival with welcoming, outstretched cacti, then transitions into verdant valleys and gentle woodlands. We roll down the windows and let the scent of ferns and pine needles waft away the dust suspended in the air.

  There is a kilometer marker on the road just ahead; we are at least close enough to Santa Cruz to warrant measurement. I am expecting a burst of energy, a wave of confidence to carry me forward like a victory lap. The mudslides are behind us; grocery stores, clean water, and gas stations are within reach. We have come as far as my parents did; I have proved at least that this is possible after thirty years. We could press on for another hour and make it to the outskirts of Santa Cruz, but something pulls me back.

  I am not quite ready to arrive; my thoughts have not caught up to my longitude and latitude. It will take time for the last two days to drain from my aching muscles. I need to sob for almost turning back, weep for the frightened little brother who flashed before my eyes when I thought we would be washed away. I am shaken by the ferocity of panic, the suddenness of survival. I feel beaten down, unable to get back up and take more punches. Gary pulls me closer to him and we drive another five miles with my head resting on his shoulder.

  We pull up to the gate of a private picnic ground just as the manager is locking it up for the night. He hears the weariness in my voice and agrees to let us in. We have not quite reached Santa Cruz, and this park consists of nothing but wooden benches, tables, and a cold outdoor shower. But the air is warm and the ground is level, and we still have another meal’s worth of Margit’s kindness in the cooler.

  “Now what?” we ask each other after scrubbing off the grime of Bolivia’s outback. I dig out an e-mail from my father that I printed using Margit’s computer back in Cochabamba. It is too hot to close the camper door; we pore over the e-mail through swarms of tiny mosquitoes drawn to the light above our kitchen table.

  Sorry didn’t answer your questions sooner, but we seem to have forgotten where we sold that camper. I think they’re divorced now but as best I can remember, Jim’s wife would be between 55 and 60 now, and the kids’ names were James and Mary Sonja. There was a third but I can’t remember the name. Sonja also had a brother a few years younger who was good friends with Jim but I can’t remember his name either.

  The last time I saw the camper it was on a farm south, southeast of Santa Cruz and I think it was on the road to Puerto Izozog. Then continue south to Puerto Abapo then cut off S.E. on the road to Aymiri and Charagua and Boyuibe.

  The farm was somewhere slightly east of the road to Boyuibe, maybe between Aymiri and Boyuibe. It was a cotton farm and quite big. I also remember passing a military outpost camp on the way there and crossing a big railroad track from West to East. The track itself ran North and South.

  Hope this helps you—Love Dad.

  Gary and I have been so preoccupied with finding a route from Cochabamba to Santa Cruz that we haven’t cross-referenced my father’s recollected directions against an actual map until now. Bolivia is a country the size of California and Texas combined. It is bordered by Peru and Chile to its west, Brazil to its east, and Paraguay and Argentina to its south. My stomach sinks as I scour the map.

  The closest town to where my father remembers leaving the camper, Boyuibe, is actually two hundred twenty-five miles south of Santa Cruz. It is also so far to the east that it is only fifty miles from Paraguay. The route to the border is listed as “often impassable” during the rainy season. I find the north-south railroad line my father remembers, but it parallels the entire route. He could have crossed it at a million different unmarked points. Nowhere on the map is there a town named Aymiri.

  The scope of our miscalculation and the degree of my father’s imprecision are staggering. We don’t even swat at the mosquitoes draining our arms of blood. We have driven almost sixteen thousand miles in search of something that may no longer exist. We are contemplating the impossible and rationalizing the irrational. I am forced to admit that all I really know is that my father thinks he left the camper on a cotton farm somewhere east of a town I can’t find on an impassable road to an entirely different country than the one we’re actually in. Gary says nothing but pops open a can of beer. Then he walks to the door of the camper and starts pouring it all out.

  “What the hell are you doing?” It’s hot and there is only one other beer in the cooler.

  “Mess we’re in,” he says. “Seems to me Pachamama’s going to want more than just a sip.”

  Chapter Forty-Six

  LOST

  The next day we drive south, down Highway Nine, in the general direction of Paraguay and the last spot described in my father’s e-mail. Hopefully somewhere along the two hundred twenty-five miles to Boyuibe we will stumble on landmarks he mentioned: a town called Aymiri or a military outpost. As Gary drives, I scour through my mother’s journal for details my father might have brushed aside.

  “Does it say what your folks eventually got for the camper?”

  “No, but I’m assuming more than $3,500 since that’s what my father apparently turned down in La Paz.”

  This is how I avoid acknowledging the obvious, that this search is thirty years past probable. I have no r
eliable records, so I fill in the gaps with speculation. I am digging through the words my mother left behind like an archaeologist working only with the evidence of discard.

  Suddenly Gary slams on the brakes and we skid to a stop in front of massive steel pilings poking up from a flooded riverbed. There is a lone bulldozer on the other side of the river, bucket stretched out like a neck craning to see who might be coming. To our right is the old bridge—amputated between unconnected sections of road.

  “Are we supposed to walk on water?” Gary asks aloud. We are still staring, in disbelief, when a semitruck rolls up behind us and the driver begins honking his horn.

  “You got a better idea, buddy?” Gary yells out his window.

  He does, actually. Without coming to a complete stop, the trucker downshifts and angles his sixteen-wheeler down the embankment to our right. It is a well-worn detour passing literally an arm’s length in front of the screen porches of a line of riverfront shacks and running about a quarter mile to a railroad trestle.

  “No Bolivian way,” I say, reducing this entire country to a surrogate swear word. “That truck is going to cross the river on train tracks.”

  “So are we.”

  He begins to follow the truck, mud-coated gravel spitting up at our windshield. I’m just about to invoke our pledge—at least to think this through for a minute—when a semitruck approaches from the other direction. There is no room for us both to pass side by side, and this time the Avion is the smaller vehicle. The Law of the Third Lane demands that we back up, through the mud, climbing the embankment in reverse to let the smirking truck driver through. That’s when we hear a deep thud. Gary gets out of the cab to inspect the damage.

  “It’s just a signpost,” he yells. “Probably says keep the hell out.”