American Road Trip

by Sarah Black

  “James Lee, this place makes the methadone clinic look good.” He studied me. “What the fuck’s wrong with you?”

  There was an old pickup in the drive, an International with deeply rounded curves. It was painted a deep pumpkin orange. I turned to Easy. “Is that your truck?”

  “1960 International, brother. It was a fine year.” He rubbed a hand back over his flattop. He looked a bit like John Glenn circa 1960. Easy jerked his chin toward Tino, who was running back and forth on the blocks, his high-pitched bark starting to sound a bit insane. “I like your dog.”

  “He came with the house.”

  A couple of the boys from across the street came to check out the action. They threw Easy some complicated hand signs, and he bumped fists.

  “Hey, man. You want to sell that truck? I give you a couple hundred, you could put a down payment on a Prius. Or one of those electric jobs. What they called, flowers? Shit, no. Leaf. That’s right.” He jerked his head in my direction. “Don’t you think Jamie wants him a Leaf? Then he won’t have to walk around on shank’s ponies.”

  Easy gave him a hard stare. “You don’t know about Hooker? Captain Hooker, he’s a stone killer, man. Don’t fuck with this guy.”

  The boys howled, bent double, pointing at me. “That ponytail model? Fuck you talking about, man?”

  Easy stared at me, shook his head. “I say again, what the fuck is wrong with you?”

  Chapter Three

  EASY GRABBED his bag from the truck. When we came through the gate, Tino ran over and gave him a sniff, obviously approved of something on the soles of Easy’s boots. I got my usual low growl, one canine tooth showing from the raised upper lip.

  “Put your boots on one of the kitchen chairs, you don’t want the rat king to chew on the leather while you’re asleep.”

  Easy bent over and talked to the dog. Tino gazed adoringly into his face. “Why you let that asshole ponytail model talk to you like that? Bite his ankles, he’ll show you some respect.”

  I ignored them both, pulled some ads out of the mailbox. Easy pushed through the screen door, settled back on the couch, and stared at me until I looked up from the weekly Domino’s specials. “We could get a large pepperoni for $7.99. Carryout only.”

  “Yeah, well, I don’t think anybody is going to deliver down this street.”

  “You’ll have to drive that big old truck that looks like a pumpkin.”

  Easy stared at me some more; then he leaned over and opened the side compartment of his bag. “This is what I’ve got.” He handed me a little pile of postcards. The first one was a street photo of Highway 66. It said America’s Mother Road and showed a neon motel sign that looked like the model of an atom. I shuffled through the stack. There was a concrete teepee with giant arrows, a roadside motel with a huge stuffed grizzly next to the door, a casino flashing neon feathers around an eager, goofy smiling face no Indian had ever worn. I turned the postcards over. Austin had written home about his trip: he was having a wonderful time, he was heading west, looking for America. He wasn’t going to stop until he had found America. His handwriting looked as bad as ever.

  “Oh, shit.”

  “You’re telling me, brother. It’s like a goddamn Simon and Garfunkel song.”

  I took the chair across from the couch, the one covered in faded roses. My grandmother had crocheted little doilies to cover the worn spots on the arms. She had sat in this chair to sew buttons back onto shirts and knit baby blankets for the grandkids.

  I leaned back, stared up at the ceiling. I was remembering the way Austin had looked at me, the way he had looked at his big cousin. I didn’t take the hero worship seriously. I was his leader, the captain. All the young guys looked at me like I could be depended on to carry them across no-man’s-land on my back. But that’s not the way things ended up.

  We’d been tired, I thought later, just that little bit too tired to take the care we should have taken. We’d packed up our forward station and were moving down the valley. It was our last move before we rotated back home. We were so close to gone we were all having trouble concentrating. I was in front, Easy in the second Humvee. Austin was in my vehicle, and the driver was a kid called Baker. We stopped three times to check out disturbances on the road that could have been buried wires, pieces of an IED. Or twigs. Or rocks. When Austin called out a fourth time, said he saw something brown coming from the side of the road, I waved him back, told him I was going to check it out myself. I was tired of sitting on my ass. We’d gone half a mile in two hours. Easy saw me get out of the vehicle, and he climbed out himself and leaned out into the road, watching me. I waved him off too. Austin was way too excitable for Afghanistan. He saw IEDs on his fucking dinner plate. The kid was getting jumpier every day. I needed to figure out a mission that would send him back to base for some R and R.

  I started off down the road, and then Austin was yelling, waving his arms from the top of the Humvee. I stopped, watched him hop down from the vehicle and run toward me. “Jacobs, I told you to stay in the vehicle!”

  “Sir! Sir!” Austin was panicking, pointing at something with his skinny arm. He was so agitated he couldn’t get the words out, pressing his hand against his chest, then pointing back toward the road.

  I looked at the surrounding landscape. Rocks, brown dust, some scrubby weeds and brush, a pile of goat shit. There was nothing there.

  “Jacobs, ease up. Take a breath.” I waved Easy over, and he came at a trot. “Let Easy walk you back to the Humvee and you can ride with him for a while. Send Stewart up to spot for me.”

  I turned when Easy came up, pushed Austin toward him, but Austin pulled away, sprinted up the road, pointing at the rocky shoulder. “Sir, it’s right here! I saw it, I swear I did!”

  Easy and I started toward him, the dust suddenly burning dry in my throat, but it was too late. He’d stepped on something, tripped some wire he’d spotted from the top of the Humvee.

  The IED was a dud, the blast much smaller than intended, and it petered out in a cloud of burning rubber and black smoke. But it was strong enough to blow Austin off his feet. He landed on his back in the road, fifteen feet away, and when I got his helmet off, there was blood running out of both of his ears and a dazed look in his eyes.

  I stood up, straightened the little crocheted doilies on the arms of my grandmother’s chair. Easy was watching me, and for the first time, he let a bit of misery seep into his eyes.

  “Let me get a shower; then we can track down this first postcard.” I pulled one out of the stack. It was the sign that looked like an atom on top of an old motel. “I know where this is. It’s just east of here, in Moriarty. We’ll get a burger in the diner, see if the old man who runs the place remembers seeing him.” I looked at him and smiled, let him see it was still me behind the ponytail. “We’ll find him. Okay? We’ll keep looking until we find him.”

  Easy looked relieved when I came out of the bedroom wearing jeans and a tee shirt. He was stretched out on the couch, Tino snuggled against him, tiny head resting in the comfortable V of a warm elbow. He glared at me when Easy slid off the couch. Easy stretched, then reached down and grabbed his bag.

  “Leave it. We’ll be back here in a couple of hours.”

  “Yeah, okay.” He reached down and ruffled Tino’s head. “I never saw a dog with a head the size of a walnut before. We’ll leave Badass on guard duty.” He followed me out the front door. “How did he lose his eye, anyway?”

  “Drive-by,” I said. “Gang shit.” I looked back at the house. Tino had his head stuck out between the curtains in the front window.

  Easy looked at him too. “He’s gonna have to come with us, we go off looking for the boy. I mean, you won’t find somebody to babysit him in this neighborhood, right?”

  “Oh, shit.”

  The pickup was tidy, a little trash bag behind the front seat stuffed with take-out bags. “We gonna take your truck on this little expedition?”

  “Yeah. I got about fifteen hundred for expe
nses. My aunt gave me some traveling cash and a bag full of fried chicken when I left home.”

  “I’ve got about seven hundred.” I looked over at him. “Not as much as I thought I’d have about now, but that’s the way it goes. We could rent a car.”

  “The truck’s good. I’ve been reading your blog. The mindfulness thing. Keeping tabs on you, I guess. Studying my drumsticks and appreciating their unique and special beauty before I stuffed them into my mouth.”

  I gave his shoulder a shove. “Dickhead.”

  “So what happened to the whole psychology thing? I thought you were going back to grad school.”

  I shrugged. “I’m not really sure what happened. It didn’t seem right. I wasn’t… something. I don’t know.” Easy was giving me a look, but he didn’t call me out for spouting horseshit. “You still like doing the barber thing?”

  “Yeah. It’s okay. Though I don’t think I can stay out in the country. Rural America’s gone to shit. Drugs everywhere. Though your neighborhood in the heart of Albuquerque don’t look a whole lot better.”

  “Most of Albuquerque looks okay. I just don’t know what to do with the house. I mean, I don’t have to stay there, but once it’s abandoned, it’s gone forever. We’re never going to sell it. I mean, that whole street, the whole neighborhood. I don’t know. I just….”

  “You don’t know what else to do. I’m surprised, James Lee. I never pictured you letting your life drift away. And you sitting back, letting it happen.” I got that keen-eyed stare again, felt the chill of his disapproval down in my stomach. “You need to tell work you might be gone a couple of days?”

  “I guess I do.” I wondered if my chair yoga students would have quit by the time I got back. “If we go by the postcards, he’s through New Mexico and into Arizona. When did your aunt get the cards?”

  “The last one was just over a month ago, end of March.”

  “How was he traveling? You know his car, the license plate?”

  Easy looked pained. “Bike.”

  “Austin drives a motorcycle?”

  He shook his head. “No. I mean a bike, with pedals. An old ten-speed. He’s got a trailer on the back, like you put kids in when you want to ride them around. He puts his gear in there. I thought he was just going camping for the weekend when he took off.”

  I stared at him. “Doesn’t he know about the Rockies? He’s going to ride a ten-speed across the mountains? And Death Valley? Really?”

  Easy shook his head, his jaw flexing like he was grinding his teeth. “Let’s just find him, James Lee. Find him and bring him home. His mom will look after him. Or I will, something. I don’t know.”

  I didn’t want to ask. “How’s he doing? I mean, is he thinking okay?” We could both hear the dread in my voice, and the hesitation. “The last time I saw him he was still at the VA. They said it was a traumatic brain injury.”

  “It could be worse. Most of the time you wouldn’t know anything happened, because he looks okay. Then he doesn’t remember what he’s doing, standing in the middle of the post office with a letter in his hand. He’s not working. His hearing’s bad. He’s real sensitive, you know? He’ll cry watching a commercial for AARP. He’s quick off the mark when he sees anything he thinks isn’t fair or right. He jumped into the middle of a dogfight because the puppy was getting kicked around. Didn’t notice it was in the middle of the fucking street. Nearly caused a pileup.”

  “So, he’s the same as always.” We smiled at each other, really smiled for the first time, remembering a boy who wanted to be an infantryman.

  “Yeah,” Easy said, turning back to the road. “Just a little more so.”

  Chapter Four

  FROM THE highway, Moriarty looked like a truck stop with a trailer park attached. “There’s more to it,” I said. “This is ranching country out here. Farms. You know, green chilies and pinto beans. Cattle and fields of onions.”

  Easy pointed to the sign out in front of the old motel. “And the ‘home of the Double XL, voted second-best green chili cheeseburger in New Mexico in 1987.’ Are we gonna get the authentic?”

  “I guess so. If this is your first trip to New Mexico, you really ought to try one. But one is big enough to split between us. They take pride in this burger being too much of a good thing.”

  Easy reached up, rubbed his belly under the tee shirt. I thought he looked good, about twenty pounds up from his Army days.

  The owner was behind the bar, leaning against a stool and watching a ball game on the little TV. Easy’s eyes bugged out a bit, looking at him. John had been a big man when he was young, but the years since the second-place victory for best green chili cheeseburger in New Mexico had not been kind to his middle. He was close to three hundred pounds, or maybe tipping the scales in the other direction. He sported a Double XL tee shirt with a picture of the famous green chili cheeseburger on the front. I reached across the bar, shook hands, and introduced Easy.

  “You boys want a burger?”

  “We’re gonna split one, John,” I said firmly. Easy didn’t look like he could speak. “And a couple of Diet Cokes.” He handed me the cups, pointed to the self-serve drink machine.

  I pulled Easy over to a booth, and we watched John lumber off to the kitchen.

  “Shit, James Lee. I could end up like that. I fucking love cheeseburgers. He’s like the ghost from the future or something.”

  “You look good,” I said. I reached for the cups to fill our sodas. “I like the weight on you.” I looked down at him, into eyes the color of a sky about to storm. “You look good,” I said, and he could see I meant it.

  “So do you. I like the ponytail.” And I could see he meant it too.

  Easy was filling me in on what he knew about the rest of the guys from the platoon when John came back with the burger, neatly cut in two. He’d put each half on its own plate, filled in the space with curly fries.

  Easy stared at the burger, then looked up at John. “Are you shitting me?”

  John grinned down, set the plates on the table between us, and slapped Easy on the shoulder. “Now that’s what I’m talking about! You eat the rest of Jamie’s when he pushes his plate away, you hear me? You eat the whole thing, you get a tee shirt.”

  The burger was over seven inches tall, sported two half-pound patties, and between them was a thick layer of roasted green chili. There were grilled onions, grilled mushrooms, a scoop of guacamole, a piece of melting swiss cheese, and a dribble of mustard. The bun was sturdy and toasted with butter. I had to restrain myself from putting my hands into a mudra and doing some deep breathing to get ready.

  John handed me a knife and fork wrapped in a paper napkin. “Pansyass,” he said.

  “Hey, I need a fork too,” Easy said.

  John pointed to a plastic cup full of silverware. “Then you’re both pansyasses. Man’s got hands, don’t he?”

  Easy looked pained at that. “I don’t have many clean shirts left.”

  John waved that away, went back behind the bar, and opened himself a beer.

  “We eat first,” I explained. “You do a good enough job, we can ask him a question.”

  I took off my bun, set the two patties side by side, and divided up the green chili, onions, cheese, guac, and shoved the rest of the toppings into a towering pile.

  Easy watched me. “So what’s your method? You’ve got some experience with this.”

  “For me, it’s like a grilled salad on top of a half-pound hamburger steak. I pretend I’m a polar bear and I’m about to eat enough protein to last until the glaciers melt. Then I eat half.”

  “Got it,” Easy said. He studied his plate, ate a curly fry. He stretched his hands out a couple of times, made fists like I had the chair yoga class do to ease the arthritis pain in their knuckles. “I’m going to go for the full Monty,” he said at last. “Bun and all.”

  John kept an eye on him using the mirror behind the counter.

  It was a grisly sight, but Easy got his half of the burger down w
ith only one spill of guacamole down the front of his tee shirt. He also polished off his curly fries and half of mine, and the rest of my burger. John was impressed, brought him out a celebratory tee shirt in banana yellow with a picture of the original Double XL on the front.

  Easy showed him the postcard, told him about Austin riding around on a ten-speed, looking for America.

  John studied the little card. “He must have got this at the front desk of the hotel. You want me to ask Mary?”

  We both nodded, and John came back after a few minutes with the skinny old woman who ran the motel. She looked down at the table, shook her head at the scattered crumbs of the Double XL on our plates. “You’re gonna kill somebody one of these days with that thing,” she said.

  “Bullshit!” John huffed back around the bar, rescued his beer. “That fucking burger gets better every year.” He pointed at Easy. “That boy just won himself a tee shirt.”

  She studied Easy’s face. “Don’t throw up in the parking lot and make me clean it up. If you need to boot, go to that juniper out back.”

  “Bullshit!” John boomed it out again.

  Easy showed her the postcard. “My cousin. He rode through here on a bike. It had a little trailer attached, like for his camping gear.”

  “Yeah, I remember,” Mary said. “He did a load of laundry, sat in my laundry room in his underwear and washed everything else together. Luckily he was the only guest here at the time.” She glanced at John, who was ignoring us behind the bar. “I believe he declined the Double XL. Had him a good breakfast before he left, though.”